Author's Note

I wanted to see a pegasus use dark magic.

Dark Pegasus Magic

Twilight carefully picked through the stack of ancient books. Each one was probably the only copy in existence, and more than a few rang with magical energy. One, in particular, caught her attention. The black cover and silver letters made it stand out enough, but the strange aura coming from it, made it impossible to ignore.

“The Book of the Storm” its cover read in and old dialect of Gryphon. Twilight was fluent enough in modern Gryphon, and their language had changed very little since their first recorded words.

Opening the cover, Twilight had to catch her breath. The first page was a vivid splash of color. The ink still looking fresh, depicted a pegasus in armor. Sitting on a cloud of green and purple, was a pegasus that looked exactly like Rainbow Dash.

“Commander Aurora Typhoon, she who rains death and vengeance. My her eyes never see your horizon,” the inscription read.

Flipping the page, Twilight took a breath and read.

We were fools. We called them weak. We called them pery. We hunted them and chased them across the planes.

Twilight swallowed as the taste of blood filled her mouth. The book’s magic was reaching out to her, sharing the author’s memories. She winced knowing she was tasting the flesh of some pony from long ago.

While the unicorns hid behind stone walls, and the earth ponies under trees and bramble, the pegasus were at our mercy: so we thought. We do not know exactly when or who, but a line was crossed. A pegasus was killed, and an anger was lit. Commander Aurora Typhoon was known to us for some time before we made her a monster. She had killed many of our hunters in the sky. Her line of soldiers marked the place we could not venture past. But she did not have the force to chase us or press us on our own land. Until the day the sky cracked.

Twilight shook her head, looking up from the book, as wiped cold sweat from her brow. The still air of a storm still haunted her, and the memory of a line of solid ebony spanning the entire horizon sent waves of anxiety through her. Washing the vision for her mind, she returned to the book.

They say every chick in the griffon lands cried when the first lightning bolt struck. A hundred pegasus weaved streaks of green and purple into the stormfront, but at it’s eye, Typhoon’s anger soaked the clouds with so much hate that not even other pegasus could withstand the maelstrom.

She could see it now. From high above, Twilight was looking down on a churning disk of storm clouds. The center of the angry wheel was a solid mass of dark magic, while the rest of the storm was laced with tendrils of purple and green. It was miles across, she couldn’t even guess how big it was, easily enough to cover a city and all the farmland around it.

Those of us near, attacked the ponies weaving the storm. They had tried using weather against us before, and we had become very good at stopping them. Diving in amongst their ranks, we were decimated. Lightning ended the lucky, while winds killed the less fortunate.

Burnt flesh and ozone filled Twilight nose. A scream lurched her stomach, as it was cut off by the sound of wind and a body being slammed against the ground.

Slowly, it followed those of us that had survived. We could do nothing as tornadoes scraped our lands bare of fields and houses alike. Fire and hail left what was still standing ruined. We fled to the safest place we knew, the aire on the worlds tooth. Its crystal caves had sheltered us for generations, and now a dozen cities were fleeing for its safety.

Canterlot mountain came into Twilight vision, but there was no city of gold atop it. Instead, a thousand perched hung for the cliffsides. She watched in horror as the storm settled above the mountains peek. Rain and hail stripped the mountain clean to rock in a few minutes. Not one tree was left on the mountain, not one home was spared.

In the caves we hid, those few of us that had survived. Some of us battled to keep the tunnels from flooding, while others to keep them from collapsing. Many feared suffocating in a cave in, more than dying at the hooves of the ponies. Those that would went to their death outside, while others hid deeper in the mountain.

The memory of leaping from the cave, into the hail storm made Twilight rub at old wounds she didn’t have.

It was in our last hour, that the light saved us. A comet of gold and fire pierced the storm, and landed atop the mountain. The sun itself shined up at the storm. Black clouds hissed and evaporated at the sun’s touch, but the storm of hate only raged harder.

Twilight face and chest burned from the radiation heat of the descended sun, while her back was numb with cold. She could see nothing except the blinding light atop the mountain.

The living sun redoubled her light, cracking the web of hate in the sky. The legion of pegasus floated to the ground as gentle as leaves in the fall breeze. All but one. The heart of the storm only hardened at the attack. Hail like meteors crushed stone, while lightning licked the mountain.

“Aurora Typhoon,” the sun called to the storm. “You have had your vengeance.”

From some low place, Twilight watched the searing ball of light dim, and take the form of the Celestia she knew. She wore no regalia, and her eyes still burned white.

“Never again will ponies fear these monsters,” the storm growled.

“You are right,” The sun said. “They will fear ponies for the rest of their days. Their children will know you as agents of retribution. Their line will fear ponies for all of Creation’s time.”

The storm flashed. A new volley of destruction sent earth tumbling down the mountain. “They will not,” The storm said. “There will be none to remember.”

“Then you will be the monster. Take from them what you will, but spare their lives.”

A kind of fear Twilight didn’t have a name for coursed through her veins. The memory of the cloud hanging over the mountain seemed to last forever, but as it churned, its assault weakened.

The storm churned above the sun, till its anger faded and only snow fell from it. “I will take everything else from them then. They will leave their home, and I will build a pony kingdom here. Any that leave with so much as a stone in their talons, I will strike from the sky.”

Twilight watched the sky fill with fleeing griffins. Soon the memory joined them in their flight. She knew cold and hunger. She remembered a sense of loss and loneliness. There were chicks, and there were stories about the day the sky broke. In time there was a new home and there was hope. But always there was the threat of retribution. Poneis were a thing to fear and avoid. Homes were built to be hidden from pony eyes. Lives were lived to avoid attention.

The book snapped shut, and Twilight again jumped. The sun was a bit lower in the sky than when she had opened the book. Looking around, she found herself alone. Shutting the book down, Twilight left the room to find one of her friends. Not to tell them of what she had seen, but to simply be in their presence.