Equestria Quest: The Chaos Lord

Escherion was never the type of person to help others unless he received something in return. He never wanted to help the ponies that the ghouls terrorized, he just preferred living to the next day and killing some worthless ghouls always relieves stress. Now Escherion lies unconscious in the old Appleloosa train station surrounded by the ponies he saved, wondering who their savior is.

Escherion opened his heavy eyelids slowly, his head was aching immensely and his body was drained of all energy. He put his hooves to the ground and tried to arise only to fall back down. He knew that those blasted ponies would say something about those ghouls and why they seemed interested in him. Going home will be harder than I thought.

To Escherion’s surprise, he did not hear the sounds of the dreaded ponies or anything at all, no wind, and no dust, nothing…

He quickly opened his eyes to see that the world of color and life was replaced by a dark void that lacked any detail of reality. Escherion went from annoyed to confuse in a matter of seconds as he finally arose from the utter darkness he stood on.

“Hello!!!” Escherion continued to shout into the darkness hoping for a reply, but there was nothing...

For what seemed like hours he just shouted, ranted, and cursed anything and everything he could think of. The list ranged from his rage for the hero that turned him into a frog for five miserable years to his hate at Drakath for using him, then leaving him to die. Escherion hated Lore with great passion, however as the more time he spent in this utter blackness the more he began to just set down and try to think of a way out.

Then a bright golden light burst from the farthest sides of the dark void filling Escherion’s black cage with warm but alien light. Escherion shielded his eyes from the light, after a few seconds he put his hoof away from his face and opened his eyes. He was still a pony but he is now translucent blue like a ghost in the sun, but what amazed him was that the void now looked like his old life in Lore, from his life in the Mages School to his travels around Lore, The meeting with Drakath and becoming a chaos lord then the memory of the battle Escherion had with the hero of Lore inside his Chaorrupted tower.

The hero in Escherion’s opinion was foolish novice who was trying to play the hero as he fought in old paladin armor while welding a common soldier's sword, not to mention the hero gave Escherion the item he needed to summon the chaos beast for Drakath without knowing its purpose. The memory fast forwards to the point in the battle where Escherion fires a blast of chaos energy from the Staff of Inversion in the hopes of turning the hero inside out but is defeated when the hero pulls a magic mirror from his bag and reflects the blast.

The memories played the part were Escherion uses Polymorph and ends up a slim cover frog. Then the past five years as a frog in the ghouls swamp flash by in an instance as Escherion soon came to the conclusion that whatever is causing these memories to appear was also looking for something in his mind.

“Well, now that we had this little trip down memory lane, let’s get to business.” A wicked voice boomed across the void causing the memories to shatter like a glass window. Bright colored shards falling and fading.

To Escherion’s shock and confusion, the black void returned but a few feet in front of him was an odd misshapen creature sitting on a pink cloud with what looks like chocolate milk raining down from the bottom to oblivion. It had a head of a pony or goat, mismatched yellow and red eyes, and different body parts of various animals. At this point Escherion thought he had gone insane, and then the creature spoke to him.

“Well I must say you have had an interesting life in that crazy world of yours.”

“Who are you and why am I here!?”

“Calm down there my little pony, you’re here because I wanted to see what your universe had to offer and is seems that Lore is a lot more chaotic then this realm of harmony.”

“Your name now!" Escherion screamed with pure aggressive.

“How very demanding of you, but where are my manners? I am known as Discord, the spirit of chaos and disharmony.”

Discord snapped his eagle claw fingers, out of nowhere, a large fancy chair appeared from thin air, and the spirit sat upon it like a king of the lands. Then he snapped his fingers again and a movie screen appeared next to him and Escherion, it was playing video clips of Discord's memories.

“Let me get you up to speed, I was once the ruler of the world and all those ponies you despise so much, I made the lands my little slice of chaotic fun. That is until those bothersome princesses Celestia and Luna used the elements of harmony to break up my fun and turn me into a statue, which by the way is quite painful.”

“I escaped thousands of years later ready to bring the chaos back to Equestria until those annoying ponies of Celestia’s used the elements on me again.” There was a hint of anger and regret when he said anything involving the princesses and those six ponies. Escherion saw what was coming a mile away as he turned to Discord and told him.

“Let me guess you want me to break you out of your stone prison, right?”

“That would be the normal case in these universe hopping adventures, but first you need to save the Elements of Harmony from my brother, Drakath.

Escherion was speechless as this creatures told him exactly what he was.

"You’re this world’s Champion of Chaos and you’ll the son of the Queen of Monsters!"

"Ding ding ding, we have a winner!"

"But why are you telling me this? By all the evidence you work on the same side as Drakath."

"That’s the beauty of Chaos, it always changes. but to go into more detail, after Celestia sealed me in stone the first time I had thousands of years relies my dear mother will do the same thing she will do to Drakath and betray him.”

"I see, but why do I need to know this?"

"You see I have a wonderful plan in motion. I like to call it vengeance for all."

"Let me explain as best I can...The only thing in the cosmos that can stop and destroy are the Elements of Harmony. However only chosen ponies can use their power, so the Champion of Chaos that wants to end the wielder's lives. Equestria becomes Chaorrupted, from there the Multiverse is for the Queen’s taking.

"However my plan involves saving Equestria by saving those little ponies. I will go into more detail later when you fall asleep again."

"But that doesn’t make sense."

"Where’s the fun in making sense?"

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“Is he ok?” a voice with concern echoed in Escherion’s ears. Several voices talked and whispered to one another thou Escherion could not make out the conversation he figured that those blasted ponies would say something.

“Escherion are you alright?” the voices belonged to Strongheart and Braeburn as they gazed at Escherion with worry.

“Yes…I’m fine, just a little drained.”

As Escherion finally found his balance and arose, he could see the confused stares of the whole town of Appleloosa. Then Pinkie Pie jumped up at Escherion from the crowd like an excited child hopped up on candy.

“That was amazing Eschey, you took out those green what-evers with no problem, and you’re an earth pony that somehow knows magic, did you get bit e by a magic spider or something…” Pinkie was clearly excited as she continued to ask Escherion question after question while calling him Eschey to his dismay.

“I have to say on behalf of townsfolk of Appleloosa I want to thank you for saving our town” Braeburn and the town cheered their hero even if they had no idea who he really is.

“Thanks…”

“I am a quite curious that an Earth pony my friends found in the middle of the desert grew a horn that disappeared right after you used that dangerous spell, I’ve never seen in all of my studies.” Twilight did not waste time to ask Escherion about what just transpired as she was now inspecting him all over his head looking for that horn he grew.

Escherion wanted to lie to this purple interrogator but suddenly out of the sky two blue suited Pegasus ponies landed perfectly next to the train station, it was two members of the WonderBolts Spitfire and Soarin who were panting heavily with worried looks on their faces.

“Whoa, looks like those things hit this place too.” Spitfire took out a scroll from her jump suit and walked in front of the townsfolk.

“Attention ponies of Appleloosa, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have requested all ponies that are willing and able to assemble a militia and travel to Canterlot immediately.”

“What’s going on here?” Applejack wanted to know more as she moved in front of the crowed with Pinkie and Twilight.

“Canterlot is under siege by strange monsters, the Princess tried to talk to the creatures but they attacked her and the guards on sight.”

“Is Princess Celestia alight?” Twilight feared the worst for her teacher.

“Yes, they managed to fly back to Canterlot, but the creatures are now at the city gates clawing at the walls, they need more reinforcements as the leader of these creatures is using some kind of odd powerful magic to make more of them.”

Escherion heard this and could not help but to think that not only are there more ghouls but one of them is Chaorrupted and very powerful. However, Escherion had no clue why these ghouls were attacking the ponies capital city, there must be something there of great value to Drakath, maybe the Elements of Harmony that the spirit was talking about?

The townsfolk were setting up their militia and putting what supplies and ponies they could spare on the train, meanwhile Escherion snuck away on the train’s luggage cart, however he had unexpected company.

“Stop right there.” Twilight knew this pony must have the answers to this mess.

Twilight, Applejack and Pinkie found Escherion trying to hide inside a barrel of fresh fruit; they clearly would not leave Escherion alone until he told what he knew about the ghouls. The train had finished its preparations and was now heading for Canterlot as train cars were filled with Appleloosa ponies ready to fight this unknown enemy. The four Ponies in the luggage car were now on a one-way trip to the battleground.

“Fine, I’ll cooperate.”

“I want to know what those things were that attacked us back in Appleloosa?” Applejack was almost as determined as Twilight in finding some honest answers.

“Those creatures are called ghouls, think of them as weak minded monsters that usually obey their masters, but these are wild ghouls.”

“I take it you know these creatures?” Escherion was surprised and impressed that Twilight had guessed correctly.

“Yes, I lived with them once, but it seems that there leader wants something in Canterlot.”

“I have no idea; there are hundreds of things valuable in Canterlot.”

“They are after the Elements of Harmony.” Escherion spited out

“Why Eschey?”

“Stop calling me that, I can’t explain now but it is best for your world if the ghouls don’t get their claws on them.”

Escherion and the three ponies stop talking as soon as they saw the smoke rising from over the horizon. The battle had begun.

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The once peaceful city of Canterlot was now a war zone as the army of ghouls had breached the city walls and were swarming up the clean white buildings trying to claw their way to the poor ponies inside. The royal guards on Celestia’s orders had every pony hide inside a newly constructed safe house built into the side of the mountain, while the guards tried to remove the invading forces. The Ghouls were overrunning the guards and the militia from the other cites as there leader, the chaorrupted ghoul Vile used his staff’s magic to multiple his army.

“Find every pony in this pitiful city, I want them alive.” Vile’s roar of an order echoed over the ghoul army as he stood in the city’s main street to the castle

“Stop right there you villain!” a ray of sunlight burst through the clouds as Celestia descended.

“You will not stop me, I will have what I came here for!” Vile readied his staff as the princess landed on the battle scared street.

In all the chaos of the fighting, two powerful beings were now set to duel each other to the death.