Back at the castle, in front of a large round wooden table, Princesses Celestia and Luna are intently looking at some documents when the doors to the Thrones Room swing open, letting in the Elements of Harmony and the Lord of Chaos.

"You two will be happy to know that all staff and everyone else in the east side of the castle have been properly evacuated and most of the damage has been repaired; you're welcome, by the way," Discord said with mock haughtiness.

"Yeah, yeah! We saved the day, once again," Rainbow Dash huffed, floating above the others, her front legs crossed, a tinge of annoyance in her words.

"Last time I checked, that's a good thing. What seems to have gotten into you, Rainbow Dash?" Rarity gave the pegasus a pointed look.

"Don't pay any attention to her, Rarity," Applejack replied, grinning. "She's just making a fuss about not being able to face the wild creature that caused all this ruckus."

"Hugh! I was so ready to kick some butt and show off some new combat moves I've been practicing," the blue pegasus fly skyward throwing out some kicks and karate chops, with a few aerial flips and spins in between.

"I'm glad you didn't," Celestia finally spoke up, her serious tone gaining the others' attention.

"Why that, Princess? What do you have there?" Fluttershy asked, she and the rest of the Elements of Harmony approaching, taking places around the table.

"The reports we've been getting regarding the intrusion of this beast," Celestia said.

"And this one in particular has us worried," Luna followed. "According to the testimony from, and quoted as 'The only guard who didn't close his eyes when the beast was about to gore them out': In the middle of the brawl, a shadow appeared in the garrison. When the beast was about to pounce, the disembodied shadow positioned itself beneath it and 'ate it whole', leaving without a trace."

"What does that mean, Princesses?" Applejack asked.

"It means that this wasn't the occurrence of a wild animal accidentally entering the castle, it was a deliberate attack," Luna replied, her brow furrowing in irate.

"What we need to know now is, for what reason?" Celestia finished, slightly bumping her sister, trying to snap her out of her anger and keep her calm and collected.

The Diarchs and the others did not spend long searching for an answer, as it suddenly came from the hallway.

"It was a distraction!"

Twilight shouted, galloping into the room at high speed. And once she caught her breath, she proceeds to share what had happened in the library, her encounter with the being called Pride and the raven-faced creature, who from what she could see of its abilities, was the shadow that took the beast that rampaged through the castle, identified as Wrath.

"Twilight, are you okay?" Fluttershy, being the first to recover from the shock of hearing her friend's life almost come to a violent and abrupt end, flies towards her, seeking to comfort her.

"I'm okay, girls," the Princess of Friendship tries to calm her friends' worries with a not-so-convincing smile, hiding the fact of the discomfort and shock that being surrounded by those two sins caused her.

"And as for the reason for his presence," Twilight continues, wanting to steer the conversation back to what the sins were doing in the castle. "The only thing Pride revealed to me was that he was doing some research. But before they left, I managed to take from them the piece of paper he was making his notes on."

With great curiosity, everyone looks attentively at the piece of paper that Twilight places in the center of the table. On it can be seen a long list of symbols that none of the pony present had seen before.

For his part, Discord narrowed his eyes at them. Something about those symbols seemed extremely familiar, making him feel like an itch in the back of his head, as if a long-forgotten, blurry memory was struggling to be recalled, but no matter how much he scratched in search for it, he just couldn't get his paws on it.

"So... Can anyone understand those scribbles?" Taking the sheet of paper and tilting it in multiple angles, Rainbow Dash asks the question she thought was on everyone's mind.

"I assume these symbols are part of an alphabet from some sort of language I've never seen," Celestia answers.

"That's correct, Princess," Twilight says, taking possession of the paper with her magic from her pegasus friend's hooves, and then adds, "I've already cast a spell that should have decoded it, but..." then the purple Alicorn proceeds to tap the piece of paper with the tip of her hoof. At this, everyone can see how Twilight's magical aura begins to transform the symbols into something that resembles the Equestria alphabet, but as quickly as a letter begins to take form over one of the symbols, an aura of a darker purple hue pushes and dissipates Twilight's, returning the symbol to its original form.

"It seems there is some sort of magical energy emanating from those symbols on the paper that is fighting against mine to prevent my spell from translating what is written. Nonetheless, I am fairly certain that my spell will prevail... but at the rate the translation is going, it will require a lot of time, possibly days, and I am not sure we have that much time to stop whatever Pride and his group are planning."

"Well, Is there anything we can do to help speed up the translation?" chimes in Rarity.

"I'm afraid not," Twilight answers, her head downcast. "We could pour more magic into the decoding spell to overcome the energy that's preventing the translation, but this is just a plain piece of paper, and overloading it with magical energy could destroy it, making us lose our only clue and chance to stop Pride's plans."

"The only thing that might help speed up the translation process would be if we knew the meaning of some of these symbols beforehoof," Twilight added.

"Uh, uh, uh!" Pinkie exclaimed, shaking her hooves frantically to get her friend's attention. "These symbols mean 'HA!'" the pink pony said, poking at a pair of symbols at the beginning of the first line with her hoof. These were slightly separated from the rest, larger and less carefully written than the others.

After a few seconds of silence, confusion on everyone's faces, Twilight spoke up:

"'HA!'? Are you sure, Pinkie? What is 'Ha!' even supposed to mean?"

"Oh, Twilight, you silly filly, you know!" Pinkie laughed. "It's 'Ha!' as in 'Ha, ha!'. It's a laugh." Pinky explained, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.

"A laugh? Pinkie, how would you know that?" Twilight pressed in disbelief.

"Oh, Twilight, laughter is a universal language, and I can recognize a good laugh no matter what language it's expressed in," Pinkie explains, jumping and giggling around her friends.

Twilight raises a hoof and opens her mouth ready to mention that regardless of the veracity of Pinkie's statement and how it breaks all the rules of logic, it shouldn't literally work on paper; but before the migraine she's been feeling at the point where her horn attaches to her head can spread to the rest of her brain, the Princess of Friendship sighs, giving up.

"Okay, Pinkie, I... let's do this."

Pointing her horn at the paper, Twilight fires a beam of magical energy at it. Her magic suddenly overwhelms the other magic on the paper, transforming the symbols Pinkie pointed to into 'HA!'.

Everyone gasps in surprise, but their joy is short-lived, as Twilight's magic is fizzled out by the darker color one, once again returning the symbols to their original form.

"I'm sorry Pinkie, but it seems that wasn't the case," Twilight replies, trying to soften what she assumes will be a blow to her earth pony friend. To her bewilderment, the pink earth pony doesn't seem affected.

"Well, duh! That's because you did it backwards, Twilight," Pinkie clarifies in her typical, exaggerated way.

"Backwards?" repeat a confused Twilight.

"Yes, Twilight," Pinkie moves closer to Twilight, pulling her into a hug in theatrical confidence so they can both look more closely at the writing on the paper. "These doodles," Pinkie again pokes at the symbols at the beginning of the first line. "They're a 'HA!' laugh, but it's not written 'HA!', it's 'AH!'. You know, backwards, just like the comicbooks Fluttershy keeps hidden under her bed."

“They’re called mangas,” Fluttershy whispered barely audible, feeling a growing dismay at the fact that Pinkie (and now the Princesses of Equestria and even Discord) know about that, a red tint spreading across her cheeks, threatening to leave her face as red as the apples in Applejack's cutie mark.

Twilight looks incredulous and reluctant to believe Pinkie's words, but seeing how confident and sure her friend was, she relents and reloads the spell, making sure to modify it according to the input of the Element of Laughter.

To everyone's surprise (except Pinkie) and Twilight's joy, her magic overrides the magic on the paper, transforming the first symbols into '!AH', this time staying it that way, the Princess of Friendship's magic now struggling to translate the rest.

The sun had already gone down behind the visible horizon from the middle of the forest, the moon was shining and the stars twinkled over a sky that was being claimed by dark clouds. A large part of the Everfree looked like a barren desert, thousands of square yards had been deforested and the remains of the trees transformed into platforms, carts, levers, pulleys and other types of machinery with which the sea of imps worked tirelessly to transport, lift and assemble countless quantities of blocks of brick, limestone and granite, dedicated to the raising of a gigantic cathedral looking construction around a deep and dark hole, which was made larger and deeper thanks to the effort of the thousands of imps who were digging it.

One of the many paths made in it leads to a flattened area of land as wide as the Castle of Friendship ─and yet it was only a small fraction of the space already converted into a wasteland─, used as a provisional supervision space, populated with improvised gnawed tents where some imps argued among themselves about the plans, resources and construction processes, sheds to store some of the work tools and corrals where gigantic infernal beasts were housed for draft and carrying materials; a wide mix of animals with the looks of moles, anteaters and badgers.

In the middle of this, Pride watched as the construction unfolded, in the background Wrath could be seen busy, tearing off his body, with nothing but a feeling of annoyance and dissatisfaction, the weapons with which the ponies of the royal guard had dared to attack him.

"The imps are following your instructions to the letter," a large, floating ball of light that was Sloth lazily approached and informed him.

At that moment the rope of a crudely erected tower crane carrying a gigantic block of granite snapped, dropping its massive load of several tons onto a dozen unsuspecting imps below, crushing them with a resounding *Thwomp*. From between the cracks in the ground caused by the stoning and the clouds of dust that followed, a reddish mist rose, and as if drawn by a powerful suction of air, it moved towards the seemingly bottomless pit, disappearing into its darkness.

"Good," Pride replied, unfazed by the event. In fact, not even the other imps seemed perturbed by this, with a new group of them showing up to repair the damage done to the large tower crane and continue their work.

"Just make sure everything is ready on time," Pride ordered.

"Yes, boss," Sloth replied in a tired, apathetic tone, and floated away slowly. Had it made an effort to create a body for its avatar, and had it even bothered to give it limbs, Sloth might have made a gesture of bringing a hand to its forehead to signify that the order had been understood, only to stop halfway and let it fall back under the influence of gravity.

"And speaking of time," Pride says to himself, opening his golden watch. Having seen his reflection in the glass, he smiles, appreciating what he sees, seconds later he moves his face from side to side, looking for a detail to correct, finishing by polishing his white teeth with his tongue.

Just as the minute hand on the clock reaches its zenith, a black, shadowy portal appears behind them.

"Ah, girls, welcome back!" Pride turns around in a gallant motion, welcoming them.

Through the humming portal, Lust is the first to come forward, a pleased expression on her face. Behind her was Gluttony, whose new bulk takes up almost the entire width of the portal to pass through. At the end, looking downcast, with rivulets of tears under her eyes, was Envy.

Once the robed creature finishes crossing, the portal shrinks and fades away, a bit of silence having returned to the place.

"Sorry for the delay, boss," Envy apologizes, meekly, nervously stroking the top of her wing.

"It's just that we had to make sure Gluttony didn't overfeed," Lust finishes replying, her tone jovial, yet accusatory.

Fearful and averse to face any reproach, Gluttony steps away from the other Sins and heads toward the imps who were waiting for them.

Once a large space has been vacated in front of the rotund Sin, it opens its grotesque mouth, almost as big as its entire body, and as many imps enter it as come out, taking out all the medical equipment stored inside it that they had stolen from Manhattan Central Hospital. Dental chairs, containment chambers, centrifuges, vital signs monitors, electrocardiogram machines, electrosurgical units, surgical tables, surgical lights, shelves and drawers filled with forceps and needles, syringes and other medical and laboratory equipment.

As Gluttony feels the last of the medical implements being removed from within, it begins to close its mouth. Feeling the tremors and the fading of light, seeing the only way out shrinking in the distance, the imps still inside Gluttony stomach rush about in fear of being devoured, but only a few manage to reach the outside, to escape the molars of the Great Sin; the unlucky rest are immediately chewed up, their remains ground and crushed by Gluttony's enormous teeth, nothing of them escaping its monstrous belly.

Some time after that, the Sins were free to their own devices. In the center of all the noise and organized chaos produced by the imps still working tirelessly, inside his private tent, renowned for having the most 'gaudy' appearance among the other sins, Pride was virtuosically performing a sonata on a golden violin. With his eyes closed, absorbed in his work, and with his hand gently, gracefully guiding the bow over the strings.

Once, a foolish composer had made a pact with him in exchange for Pride to teach the music to him; and Pride had done it! In a dream. To his credit, the composer immediately upon awakening went to pick up his violin in order to retain what he had experienced in his dream. The sonata he then composed was undoubtedly the best he would write for the rest of his career, but this only made his life more bitter, his soul forever tortured by the knowledge that what he had written, his most lauded work, was nothing more than a pale, vain imitation of the original. The piece was called 'The Devil's Trill', but to Pride it was always Remembrance.

And while he played for everyone to hear, he played it only for himself.

"Boss, a few words with you," Greed came from behind him, emerging from a shadow on the floor, his intrusion not causing Pride to falter or stagger in his musical display.

"What is it that you can't wait for me to be done to tell me?" Enthralled with his own music, having reached a new part of his sonata, his hand waving more vehemently, the bow drawing out more intense notes from the golden instrument.

"It's related to what I saw in the castle," Greed said, licking his beak expectantly.

"Oh, yes! I remember you seemed quite interested in telling me something back there. What was it?"

"Boss, there's an avatar of Chaos loose in this world, and it seems he's friendly to the Ponies."

*THUNG!*

The music had suddenly stopped and with it the sound from the noisy surroundings had died down; all signs of work outside had stopped. A string on the violin had broken.

Pride's eyes snapped wide open, his pupils had shrunk to the size of pinprick, and though the smile he always wore hadn't wavered one bit, every muscle in his face seemed to have tensed, his jaws shaking slightly, cracks forming and spreading across his fanged teeth.

Greed couldn't see this reaction in Pride, but he knew it was there; and although his current form didn't allow it, if he could, a smirk would have formed in his beak, enjoying the anguish of his 'boss'.

"Are you Ok, boosss?" Finally, after a few more seconds of reveling in the silence, Greed pushed for a reaction from Pride, making sure to draw out the last word, just enough to make it pointed, but not enough to make it a punishable taunt.

"Of course I'm fine!" Pride replied, clapping his hands, the golden instrument disappearing the moment his hands released it, his teeth returning to normal. "And of course I already knew about the existence of this piece of Chaos in this world. And that's why I already had a plan ready and prepared to deal with this unpleasant situation!" The Sin of Pride exclaimed confidently, giving Greed a self-assured expression.

Greed wanted to narrow his eyes in disbelief, but restrained himself from doing so. He had nothing more to say or gain from the matter.

"Now, you know what you need to do. Go," Pride told him in a friendly tone, adjusting the knot of his tie. But beneath all the courtesy was an apparent sense of menace.

Showing no signs of having sensed the threat, Greed sinks into his own shadow and promptly leaves Pride's tent. The tension of the moment dissipating amidst the sounds of the imps that were eavesdropping the conversation returning to work.

Left alone, and overcoming a strong urge to sigh in relief, Pride reaches into the pocket of his jacket and freezes.

Slowly pulling his hand out he realizes that inside, where two things should have been, was only his watch.

Opening it, confusion doesn't stay with him for long, feeling the presence of a small amount of clear purple energy ─not like his own─ clinging to it, immediately understanding what had happened.

Looking at his reflection, searching for any imperfections in his appearance, he straightens the button on the collar of his dress shirt.

"Clever girl," Pride let it out through his sharp teeth, snapping the watch shut, his smile widening.

Author's Note

A little tip if you're reading this. Those symbols are part of a real alphabet. If you wish and could translate it, you'll actually get hints of what's going to happen for 90% of the rest of the story. But if you do, no spoilers in the comments, please.