Author's Note

Just a warning, the characters here are probably going to be quite OOC, as I haven’t watched much of G5.

But, the idea of all the magic being hidden away has always stuck with as odd, and the images of that line (which, no, isn’t actually in this story anywhere) has always proved an interesting idea to me. I left in on the backburner for a while, and when this contest popped, I felt like it was a good time to make something with it.

Never Meet Your Heroes

“This place is... so strange...”

“Ain’t that watcha expected, Sunny? All the magic’s gotta be making that place super wacky!”

“I knew that even before entering, Izzy, but... I definitely didn’t expect to be like this...”

“Pan your cam around; I wanna see all of this place.”

“Tsch...”

“Whoa... are you on a wall right now?”

“I think the idea of a ‘wall’ is a little moot right now, Zipp.”

“Oh, you know what I mean!”

“Yep! Sparklies don’t get made like that anywhere else!”

“I do hope you don’t get lost down there, Sunny. You’re already in enough danger...”

“Aw, come on, she’s fiiiiine. We’ve all been through a lot more than a ‘spooky magic cave’!”

“Quiet, Zipp. Thanks for being so concerned, Hitch, but I’m not looking to get into any trouble down here. If there’s anything dangerous, I can just teleport out.”

“You weren’t that consistent with it only a few hours ago, Sunny. And, none of us understand at all how magic works really, so at any moment, things could come down and you might not be able to do anything about it...”

“Oh, quiet, Mr. Joykill. We’ve barely seen anything out of this cave yet, and besides, Sunny knows what she’s doing!”

“I—that’s not... That’s not what I’m concerned about.”

“I don’t know wha—krzztchkz—been fine ‘til now!”

“Um, about that...”

“..Yeah, we just got that too. The cam spazzed for a sec here. You still ain’t finding anything weird?”

“.......Define ‘weird’, Pipp.”

“Oh, come on, you know what I meant!”

“....Both of you are really annoying right now, you know?”

“Aww, don’t be like that, S—kkrrakzkzkkzappaak—eve in you!”

“Er, sorry, I didn’t catch about half of that?”

“I.. think we’re starting to lose connection. Please be careful down there; that place’s gotta have more magic than anything we’ve seen before...”

“I know. But we have dealt with worse than a cave, and even if I can’t teleport, I can just fly out just fine.”

“Yeah, Hi—sttkktktktchshsk—trust her!”

“...That’s not the poi—rrkrkzzzttzzktrtktak—”

“—even worried about...?”

“..You’re picking that up too, huh?”

“Yeah, some sort of rumbl—kkrrzkktztchtczkrakk—...um, what does it sound like on your end?”

“...More like the cave is humming, honestly.”

“—zzsktkr—..sorry, what was that?”

“Humming, Hitch. Sort of like those magic crystals when they vibrate with electricity.”

“Oh, you mean quartz! Yes, yes, they do tha—kkrakKRKTRZzzptrt!—”

“—interrupt, but, Sunny, would that be why it’s breaking our co—zzrt-KRKAKKAZZzzZT!—”

“...Yes, it probably is. The different electric waves between my phone and the cave interfere, and distorts data that is carried by them.”

“...KRRZRAPT-T-TRrrzzrzzzZZppztpt...”

“...That humming is only getting louder, and... ow, I think it’s giving me a headache...”

“...TCTCHHZZAT!—...Ugh, there. None of this of this stuff is gonna make it on the internet, is it?”

“Is that really—KRKRZZAZZZTTCHKRK...”

“Gah...! Ow, that is... not pleasant.”

“...KRKKRAZZZTZKTZKT...”

“.....Urgh, my head...”

“...ZZKZKTTTRRZRZTT-TVRTKRRKR—beoowwwww...”

“Oh... It actually disconnected... dang it.

“Well... This still doesn’t feel that dangerous, and.. I still need answers.”

“...What is with this cave? I don’t think magic is supposed to be able to do that...

“I may not know much about it, but magic is supposed to have rules. Even the other types of magic Opaline and Allura used still must have them, even if they act differently...

“All this magic’s gotta be down here for a reason... even basic entropy says this was intentional on somepony’s part—or.. maybe some other creature?”

“..Nngh, it’s gotta be the m-magic itself that’s doing this, huh..? Tons of electric waves are.. normal, this is... different. Why—”

“Cease your incessant chatter, child.”

“.........what? ...Who is..?”

“Do not think as though you understand the capabilities of magic, child. You are but one stubborn soul in a world so lost to it.”

“..It’s so loud, and.. like it’s vibrating through my soul.. Um, who—”

“‘Tis your magic, child. Mine own swarms yours, drowning yours, until it leeches you dry. ‘Tis only your stubbornness that stays your magic from returning to where it best be.”

“‘Best’... You did this, didn’t you? You, somehow, pulled the magic from Equestria and hid it here?”

“I did, and I do not like the offense in your tone, child. You think you know best. You are wrong.”

“..How would you know? How would I know that you know; you’re just a voice in this cave!”

“Such insolence... This.. is a cave suffused in magic, child. I am no simple wayward spirit or lost ghoul.”

“Then, who are you?”

“...That.. is a question I do not believe you wish to know the answer for, child.”

“I do wish to know. I want to know everything, about magic and why it all went down here.”

“...But, do you need to know?”

“...I’d say so. I’m trying to spread the magic back to Equestria, free the Ponies from the politics and systems that’ve trapped them, so they can be happy and safe with what they can do with it.”

“..Ha..ha..ha..ha..ha... You remind me of myself before, child. Optimistic... curious... stubborn and foolish, and oh-so-ignorant... I once wished exactly what you do now, child... and look where that has landed us.”

“What..? How is that supposed to cause...?

“Nevermind—who are you?”

“...Ha...ha...ha...ha... You still do not know? Even after all your worship of what I mean?”

“.......no, you can’t be her...”

“Oh, I can’t?”

“....no-no-no-no-no-no-no-nononono... I’ve seen the real Twilight Sparkle—you’re not her.”

“You mean that message I left. I spoke of a pony that meant to steal magic from Equestria, and now you must believe that the message spoke of I.

“You would be incorrect, child. The message was partially destroyed within what came decades later, leaving me where I am now.”

“‘Decades’? If you’re really her, why would you need to do that so long before doing this?”

“...’Twas distracted. ‘Tis difficult to keep ahold of such fleeting imprints of magic when I must fend off beasts and monsters made of it. It was manageable back when I created that message, back when my friends yet lived. My mentors had already fled, my family had already passed on, but the magic I shared with mine friends kept them alive for some time longer, keeping mine mind whole, until they fell at the might of that which we faced.”

“.......”

“..In that message, I spoke of Opaline Arcana. You have met her, faced her, and defeated her already. It has not been long since you had thrown open the gates of magic that she has come back for what she falsely claims as her right. And, she is hardly alone.”

“...Allura. Me and my friends have already defeated both of them, and we’ll defeat anything else that tries to cause Ponies harm. You’re definitely not either of them, but you could still be something else...”

“...Heh... In the end, child, it hardly matters who I am, it only matters what I have done and what I will say to you. And I will say right now that, as manageable as things look for you at this moment, they will get worse. Far, far worse than you can imagine, with evils forgotten to time and wronged mortals who wish to see vengeance all to come upon you and yours. You may defeat some, many, or nearly all. But all it takes is one villain to destroy all of what you wished to make of the world, and you will be unable to take it back.

“It would hardly be a challenge for many of them, as I can already tell. Magic... and the friendship that powers it so, is fragile, and all it may take is an argument at precisely the wrong time, or simply a well-placed arrow... and you will truly experience what it is like to lose. You have already built so much upon yourselves... and it will all come crashing down soon enough.”

“...Do you really think friendship is so weak? If you’re really Twilight, then you’d all of what it can do, the evils it can defeat, the good it can inspire in others, and how strong it makes everypony involved. Our friendship isn’t going to up and shatter just because of some dark spots!”

“Heh... you have no idea what you truly speak of, child. I have indeed seen what good can come of friendship, but also the ignorance that comes with it, and the consequences thereof. If I had not opened myself to friendship, then I would be resting in peace—I likely would’ve died a rather miserable mare, but I would not have been forced to deal with what I did in reality. You... are no different here, child.”

“..What are you talking about?”

“How old do I look, filly? Some few decades, perhaps? Getting up there, my body slowly fading until I am no more than dust and bones?

“Neigh, for I am more than a century and a half of age.”

“T-that’s...”

“More than twice what I should’ve lived, yes. And now... you see what I am ‘talking about’.

“It took me far longer to realize the true horror of what I had wrought upon mineself, for such simple curiosity and stubbornness had led me to the precipice of life itself, forced to endure everyone I know dying... My friends... my brother... my children... my grandchildren...

“The only others that stayed beyond time fell away from me as well. The other Alicorns left of their own accord, never to return, the other immortal rulers either died or fell out of communication with the rest of the world, the evils are either slain or at large...”

“There’s more, though... I’ve met them...”

“And you know why they cannot help you. Discord has lost his will to affect change, and Spike.. his ability. Even if they were regained, by therapy or politics... you should not trust them to help you. We’ve already made a mess enough...”

“....Before, you said how being ignorant led to the Equestria we know now. ....What happened?”

“..I can never truly impart all the dangers of immortality onto you, child. They are far too numerous and complicated for one so young as you to grasp. But... I will say now that the fundamental dangers were to more than just ourselves...

“You see, as a being that lives past the lives of others, we are given reign over the way time shapes them. Their beliefs can erode over time, shifting into something new that we can mold to our liking, and it is only as long as those who originally held the belief live that the belief itself lives. Once they perish... so too does what they know.”

“So... it was... the Ponies forgetting the friendship you taught them, or... no...”

“Not quite, child. It was my presence that brought them safety, and mine ignorance that fueled their’s. I could protect from imminent and external threats of any sort, but I could not stop a threat I wasn’t aware of... one that slowly bent my Ponies against each other, all as a final strike out of vengeance that I could never quell.”

“..Who did it, then?”

“‘Twas... an insect. A shape-shifter. A Queen... Her name was Chrysalis.”

“....‘was’?”

“I made certain to kill her this time.”

“..Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“.......Oh.

“But... why did she want to...”

“Vengeance... It is a complicated matter, child, and one not beholden to logic. But, that does not mean there is no reason behind it. In her eyes... me and mine slayed her race, and she’s not wrong to think that.”

“What... did you do?”

“...One may say she threw the first strike, but it was the Ponies’ lack of empathy for a parasite that sparked the war. They feed on love, you see, and when a wedding was upon us, she saw fit to take was she thought was owed.

“However, our overzealous self-defense led them further into starvation. She was bound to strike back eventually, and she did so in a manner that... by all rights, ought to have worked. ‘Twas only through the fraying trust her subjects had in her that they developed their own mentality, and defied her to save us all. That mentality, though, spelt their own demise, as without a Queen or without the will to create another, they were left to wither with no way to reproduce.

“The Queen herself had fled out of rage, and that... ought to have been the last we saw of her. Yet it was not. Allied with what I could only call a pair of demons, she nearly tore down the entirety of Equestria though force alone, but as always, ‘twas not to be. ‘Good’ had succeeded, and ‘evil’ had failed, and we sealed them in stone for what should have been centuries...

“I am... uncertain as to the mechanisms that led to her escape far sooner, hardly two decades after we sealed her, but... perhaps it was simply mine own doubt about leaving her stuck in time... The outcome is the same, regardless, whereupon our defeat of her and the peace that came after left us ignorant of the dangers we left in wait. She escaped, and remained out of our grasp until once more, we forgot about her.

“From there... she sealed our fate. Keeping away from us who was defeated her at every turn, she used her abilities and knowledge to seed doubts into the mind of all creatures that walked the planet, damaging the relations between other nations that we were attempting to build.”

“Other nations... I’ve barely even heard of any these days.”

“There was always relations between them; the Dragons, the Gryphons, the Hippogryphs, and yet more... but then I wished to properly integrate our societies, tearing away at arbitrary restrictions for creatures based on race and not ability, attempting to leave us all more free and happy with the newfound friendships... But these ideas of mine were loosely accepted at first, and took time to set in... and it was hardly deep enough by the time Chrysalis begun to strike.

“Vague remarks and twisted rumours she seeded into the everypony, rotting Equestria’s beliefs from the ground up. Fights broke out, discrimination spread, and the nations retreated their advances from this project of mine, keeping to their own... and once that was accomplished, it was on to Equestria itself.

“Me and mine wanted to find Chrysalis, and seal her truly this time, but she was far too clever. Amidst her actions to isolate Equestria, she added one final bomb to hang above our heads, exploding forth distrust in us if we showed even a modicum of issue with the populace. ‘Twas insidious... we had not even noticed until we managed to confront her in public, and she posed her ultimatum.”

“She’s a shape-shifter... Isn’t there any way you could show everypony that she was actually this Chrysalis, so that what she tried wouldn’t have worked?”

“Her subjects were still alive by this time... While few remained in Equestria, their magic wasn’t as familiar to us as we had liked, so we could not cleanly dispel her magic. There are other methods, but they would’ve lighted the fuse she had laid upon us.

“After... she then wedged apart Equestria at the already-present seams. Our tribes have always had a subtle power difference between them... The prestigious Unicorns, the flighty Pegasi, and the stubborn Earth Ponies. She leaned in to those qualities, and made them stay to their own.”

“So she wanted to weaken Equestria? So.. when something else came, you all were unable to stop it?”

“Indeed... but only in part. ‘Tis not just our politics that would be weakened, but our very magic. Opaline was a threat recently brought to our attention, and enough of one for me to create that warning, but... no threat was greater than that of the Windigos.”

“Windigos..? I’ve.. read of them, I thought they were little more than myth.”

“Ha.. ha... Child, rarely is something in this world truly myth. Time upon time, ‘twas simply forgotten history that came back to fight what we wished to make. But the Windigos... were a far more existential threat. They were no mere villain to be defeated, as they could not be defeated. Even when the flames of Hearth’s Warming were lit, they were only forced away, laying in wait for the poor fools that would stumble back upon them, and drown within the icy depths they inhabited...

“‘Twas too late when I realized the threats upon us, and so mine only option was to... remove the magic that could be stolen, and the hatred that parted us so...”

“...‘Only option’...? Couldn’t... you and your friends hold Equestria together somehow? I’ve heard of what you’ve all managed to do...”

“...Ha..ha..ha..... By that time, child... they were dead.”

“...Oh.”

“Indeed.”

“..But... it doesn’t have to stay this way... Opaline isn’t a threat any more, and I’ve returned the magic to Maritime Bay, and we’re all much better friends because of it.”

“...You foolish... impertinent child... Their friendliness comes with merely the novelty of magic, not what it truly is or is capable of. Once the years pass, and magic becomes a normality, the races will split apart even further... no differently than what I’ve seen mine own handiwork become.

“I see the interactions between Ponies of different tribes in the present, and I can only recall the interactions my subjects had with other species when I wished to bring them together. It begun as blithe platitudes of friendship and sympathy, but soon devolved into a morass of mistrust with the differences in magic and culture between them. Dragons and Gryphons shunned for their more prideful and violent tendencies, Diamond Dogs and Yaks for being ‘dirty’ and ‘stupid’, Changelings for their ability to mimic and take the shape of others... All without much influence from Chrysalis.

“Our merging would’ve taken much time of peace and a wise hoof to guide it, but we had neither of those things. I was nowhere near prepared for the task I sought to accomplish, especially with mine mentors having left around that time, and when Chrysalis came about, it hardly took much from her to shatter mine dreams.

“‘Tis all... no different than what we see now. I see the Pegasi keeping themselves above the rest, no different from the Unicorns of my time, the present Unicorns instead relegated to fear-mongered beasts living in the wilds, akin to Changelings and Dragons...”

“Uhm, about that... I’ve heard that they were feared like because of something your Unicorn friend.. Rarity, did. Is that true..?”

“Tsch... we speak of a shapeshifter that wishes to destroy our reputation and tear apart the tribes of Equestria. Take a guess.”

“Oh... well, but..... It would be... as if it were the Unicorn’s dying breath..?”

“‘Tis hardly how the story is depicted, but ‘tis true. ‘Tis also true that Earth Ponies’ magic has always been poorly understood, with the Unicorns—and now, the Pegasi, above them keeping their knowledge about their capabilities from growing. You’ve seen well the dangers of this.

“But... perhaps regardless of it all... the Ponies may not have been the true cause of our own demise. Many a monster were made of magic, and they’ve always posed a threat to us for before history itself. I could not stop them in their entirety, even with the greatest power in my grasp, nor could my mentors, with millennia of time to do it. Even if Opaline is truly a threat no more, even if Equestria truly binds itself together under your eye, and even if you defeat any magical monster that comes your way, there shall always be more to face. You must win time and time again... but they must win but once.

“And then... Equestria will crumble with nothing to support it, and you will be left broken and alone, just as I have been. Just has Discord has... and just as my mentors before me. I do so wish to take the magic back right now, but as of now, all I can do is hope that you will understand what you have wrought and allow me to do it... lest you come back later and be forced to beg me for it.”