Return of the Lord

"Senventior disthine molenko!"

Sedridor said the chant in a powerful voice, whilst calling on his inner magical power, and then, without delay, the awaiting miner who stood before him was teleported away into the rune essence mine.

That gets more fun each time!

Sedridor smiled to himself, amazed, as he always was, at how far mankind had progressed in the study of magic in the last few hundred years. He returned to his desk, and at once, returned to a theoretical work he was currently developing.

In short, Sedridor was writing a book on theories about the possible existence of realms outside those linked by current methods of transportation and teleportation, and he then went on to explain the interesting magical physics involving existing teleport spells, which are able to teleport people across realms, and then back to the starting realm, in the complex processes involved in teleporting adventurers to different places in Gielinor, and in the case of the spell he had cast mere moments ago, to the rune essence mine.

Sedridor then discussed how it was possible for these spells to have been developed in the first place, and how this knowledge could possibly be harnessed to travel to new, undiscovered planes of reality.

Sedridor was proud of it, and felt comfortable it would lead a good existence rotting on a shelf in the library above, where no one would read it for centuries and centuries and centuries.

Ah, what a wonderful thing, to be a wizard!

After finishing his ponderings, Sedridor left a note on his table and packed away some essential items, for he needed to make haste to Varrock, as he was to be staying at the wizard Aubury's house for a few days, whilst they conducted some magical experiments of great importance.

Twilight carefully crept through the library, being careful to not be noticed, as she made her way to the Star Swirl the Bearded wing of the Canterlot library. She was technically allowed in there, but Twilight always felt more comfortable being stealthy as she approached and entered the library, even if it was unnecessary, for she felt there was something special about the wing which meant that it should be guarded, lest the knowledge inside be forsaken.

Of course, the wing is inside the palace, and that is guarding enough. The library contains rooms full of parchments and texts, filled with ancient spells and magic that is very old, all of which is very powerful, and it would be very dangerous if anypony was allowed to come and take a look. Thankfully, they are not permitted to do so, but there's no harm in being sure.

Eventually, Twilight found herself in the familiar hallway, and making sure nopony saw her, even though it wouldn't really matter if they did, she snuck into the secluded area of the palace. Once inside, her eyes were met with shelves and shelves of books and ancient scrolls.

The answer to who Midnight Feather really must be in here somewhere, I can feel it!

And with that thought, she began to read.

Rarity sat at the table, deliberating over which muffin she should choose. Much to her delight, the ponies around her hung on her every movement, every breath she made, every look, everything.

She started to consider one muffin, and some of the ponies almost picked that muffin up right then, but as soon as she swapped her attentions over to the other plate, much to her delight, the surrounding ponies' attention vanished from the previous muffins and was now centred on whatever Rarity appeared to want to eat.

Now, this is something I could get used to!

Rarity finally made her decision, and after taking one, within seconds all of that particular type of muffin was taken from the table.

Rarity simply smiled, if anything Rarity does could be described as such.

Rarity had already visited several parties and venues in Canterlot since her arrival, and most ponies had treated her with the respect a proper lady deserved, which pleased Rarity to no end. She knew she was going to enjoy the following days, or possibly even weeks, in Canterlot, especially that she didn't have a birthday to worry about this time.

The rabbit twisted a little in pain, but taking great care of it, and with soothing words, Fluttershy managed to get it to stay still for long enough, whilst she applied a bandage to the wound.

"There, that's better now, right? I'm afraid you will have to stay in bed for a while though, to give you time to heal." Fluttershy cooed in a soft voice.

The rabbit stared nonchalantly at her, despite its injury, and almost at once, it fell into a deep sleep. Smiling, Fluttershy gently flew to the other side of the cottage, where she had a small, rabbit-sized bed ready, and placed the frail animal inside of it.

She had found the rabbit over near the edge of the Everfree forest a couple of hours ago, whilst she had been walking around trying to think about important matters, but at the sounds of the animal's pain, those thoughts had quickly disappeared and Fluttershy had brought it back to her cottage to care for it, as it had tripped and injured it's leg on a stone.

However, now the rabbit was all taken care of, those unwelcome concerns returned.

Fluttershy was not normally one to judge ponies, but Twilight and Rarity had both gone off to Canterlot a few days prior, bringing along with them a strange pegasus that had arrived in Ponyville in the middle of the night, and a pegasus who no one even knew or knew anything about.

Fluttershy had met him before at the party Pinkie had held for his arrival in Ponyville, and although she had made attempts at conversation, at one point being almost concerned for him, she had quickly realised just how strange he really was, even if none of the others noticed it.

First of all, Fluttershy couldn't help but notice that he behaved very unusually for a pegasus: he let his wings brush against anything or anypony, which was almost unthinkable for a pegasus - wings were very private, and an item of pride, not to be used to clean a table or another pony's fur. She had hoped Rainbow Dash would notice these things, but Dash isn't the most perceptive of ponies, as she had quickly realised.

Secondly, and the thing that worried Fluttershy most about the strange pony, was his presence, as such. Fluttershy was renowned, almost feared, by her friends and animals for her ability to stare down even some of the toughest creatures in Equestria, but compared to Midnight Feather, as Fluttershy seemed to recall was his name, that was nothing. Fluttershy hadn't seen him intimidate anypony, as such, but he almost seemed to give off a strange aura of dominance and power, which scared Fluttershy a great deal. The thing about the strange pony that Fluttershy feared the most, however, was his eyes. They were cold, they were harsh, they were empty.

What have I done?

Fluttershy despaired. Here was a pony with so much so cruel about him, and Fluttershy had let her friends go somewhere all alone with him. No, she had happily sat by and watched two of her most valued friends simply run away with him.

What have I done?

Checking nopony was nearby, Zaros snuck into a long hall, it's length decorated with towering stained glass windows detailing famous Equestrian events and victories, and more recently, the element's defeat of Chrysalis, Discord and Nightmare moon. At the end of the hall lay a tall, arcane door, surrounded by a solid gold doorway encrusted with six gems, and intricate carvings. The door itself was violet, pink and purple, and had six white circles painted on it.

What intrigued Zaros most was a yellow star in the middle of the door. At the centre of the star decoration was deep hole, presumably meant for a key of some kind. Zaros smiled, a little contemptuously, as he observed the door.

He could sense the princesses' presence elsewhere in the palace, but one seemed to be in a deep slumber, despite it being day, and the other was on a distant side of the complex, attending to something that seemed to require a great portion of her focus and concentration.

Confident he was safe, Zaros turned his attention back to the door. Or rather, what was behind the door. Reaching out, he could sense six items of jewellery positioned in an enclosed room behind the door. Drawing on his power, he enveloped the portion of the space-time matrix containing the six items, and condensed it, much like runecrafting pouches are able to, although they had not been around when Zaros was still on Gielinor. With the elements successfully stored in a pinprick of light and pure energy, Zaros teleported the condensed items to the other side of the door, where he was awaiting.

Now that the elements were within his possession, he summoned a saddlebag from his quarters, once more using teleportation, and enchanted it so it could hold five times as much matter, whilst remaining the same size and density. He then expanded the elements back to their original size, and placed them inside the saddlebag. With the vault empty, and the six elements in his saddlebag, Zaros quickly teleported himself, and mere moments later, he was back in his tower suite in the palace. He carefully set down the saddlebags, and cast an illusion spell on them, so that they would appear to be non-existent, or invisible, to anypony who may attempt to observe them.

Zaros checked the two princesses once more, but they did not seem to have noticed. Examining the elements himself would have to come later, however, so he started to make his way to the palace library, following some directions a guard had given him.

It was getting late, and Twilight had been studying and researching all day, yet to her immense frustration, her efforts had yielded nothing at all.

The palace library was mostly composed of spell books rather than factual scripture, but Twilight had read through everything she had found and thought relevant, yet she seemed no closer to solving or figuring anything out about Midnight Feather.

She had read through encyclopaedia's full of thousands, no, millions, of examples of cutie marks, and not a single one matched Midnight Feathers. Throughout all accounts of famous or strange ponies in the library, regardless of whether they were a pegasus or not, Twilight could find no evidence of anypony in the whole of history having such a cold presence as Midnight Feather.

Twilight wondered briefly if she had gone slightly paranoid, and as she looked at herself in the mirror she could see her mane was rather messy, and her smile was unnaturally wide and crooked.

Wait, why am I smiling?

Twilight frowned. Shaking her head, she continued to read the book she had open, but she was still thinking about whether she was simply imagining these things about Midnight Feather, and maybe he was just intimidating because he was rather big, and that it wasn't possible to categorise every cutie mark, leaving plenty of room for one such as Midnight Feather's to exist undetected.

As she was thinking, however, Midnight Feather himself trotted into the library, and Twilight was filled with the same sense of intimidation she had tried to ignore that first night when he had asked her to stay in the library. He picked up a book on significant magical advancements in Equestrian history, and settled down in the corner to read.

Why is he reading a book on magic? He can't even use it...

But she had decided her studies in this area would be useful to her on other occasions too, so temporarily convincing herself that Midnight Feather was a perfectly normal pegasus, who wasn't actually very big, and didn't have empty, cold eyes, and didn't emit a constant magical presence that Twilight could neither fully detect or fully ignore; Twilight continued reading.

As the sun rose, Zaros sat in his suite once more examining the elements. They indeed held a great deal of innate power, but would only grant its use when six qualities of friendship were present, a most unusual enchantment. Zaros had also learnt from reading that the element's effects, however, tended to be a little unpredictable.

Zaros did not wish to use the elements, as such, however. They still contained a source of power, which could be harnessed to help with extreme spellcasting, or assist godly powers. It was this innate power Zaros planned to use to travel back to Gielinor, as by definition, realm travel was impossible using one's own power alone.

Simply put, every object has mass, and their spirit also has mass, and their power and magical ability also contributes to this total mass. To transport a being across realms, enough energy is required to first tear open an inter-realm portal, and also an amount of energy equivalent to the total mass of the being transported. Since Zaros' power is included within this mass, even he does not have the power to transport himself across realms. This is why objects of power are needed.

Zaros cast his memories back to when he first travelled across a realm by himself, the only time he had- when Zamorak betrayed him. To him, it seemed as mere weeks had passed, but from his conversation with Azzanadra, he suspected millennia had gone by.

Zaros had only managed to do it then because the staff essentially stored his power in Zamorak, like Zamorak himself was an object of power. Harnessing this power directly from Zamorak, as the staff was too powerful to attempt to harness, and was currently rather aggressive, Zaros managed to single out his concious being, and that alone, greatly reducing his mass, and used his stored power in Zamorak to perform the teleportation.

It was a miracle it had worked, but Zaros had most likely been flung between realms before ending up in a random location, which turned out to be Equestria. However, Zaros had been to Gielinor before and could use this as a beacon, as such, to allow him to direct the teleportation spell.

The elements, however, do not contain enough power to allow Zaros to get back through to Gielinor, he was going to have to send through a pony first, and then hope that Azzanadra would regard it as suspicious and would contact him about the incident.

It would have to be a pony powerful enough for Azzanadra to notice, yet not so important that their absence would create chaos back here in Equestria.

Zaros knew just the pony.