Aren just stood there, in the middle of the four immortals and waited for them to begin, but it seemed like they had other things on their mind. Celestia obviously expected something like this, but right now? She was not comfortable with the idea of fighting till the death with him. Luna didn’t quite know what to think of this. On one hand, she can finally let her aggressions against him free reign, but on the other hand, she knows that she right now has no chance against him in a fight.

Chrysalis was comfortable with the idea. Why not? Ravien heard from his parents that this would come pretty soon in the training. He was ready to go into the fight, but there was one question, every immortal had on its’ mind. How can we damage him? The only thing they can do with their magic, in terms of damaging somepony, is to simply throw a beam at him or use telekinesis on something to throw.

Aren tapped with his foot impatiently. “What are you waiting for? I give you the chance to strike first, so take it. If it calms you down, I won’t use any magic. This session is more for pure combat.” He exclaimed while waiting for them to start attacking. They still needed to think about a way to attack him. Celestia was the first to come up with an attack plan.

She sighed. ‘I will kick myself in the flank for this, later.’ With that thought, she lowered her head and charged at Aren with her horn pointing at him. Celestia used a movement spell and was now three times as fast. Aren saw her preparing this spell through his aura-vision and was prepared for the sudden burst of velocity and could simply sidestep. Suddenly Luna came from behind him.

It seemed like she teleported behind him and started charging at him. Through his vision spell, he could see her when she charged at him, and he just jumped up while she charged. He landed on her back and grabbed her neck, instantly breaking it. “One down.” He stated. Even if, it was only training, it still hurt Celestia quite a bit to see her sister get killed before her eyes. Aren suddenly jumped up, and at the spot where he stood before, a red explosion happened.

Ravien shot a chaos-blast at Aren that seemed to miss. He knew that Aren could absorb and control normal magic, but the uni-magic of the arcadians is no normal magic. Suddenly Chrysalis started and flew straight at him. He turned to the side in the air and grabbed her while flying. Aren wanted to end it, but he lost his grip when Chrysalis suddenly turned into a little foal.

He didn’t expect this and landed on the ground, instantly rolling to the side to evade another charging Celestia. When he stopped rolling, he got greeted by a chaos-blast that nearly hit him, if he wouldn’t have fallen to the side on purpose. Aren rapidly stood up from the floor and looked into the eyes of Ravien who stood smirking before him. Realizing that this could end real badly, Aren turned around and noticed a Chaos-bolt flying to him from the opposite side.

Crouching down by reflex, he evaded the blast by a hairs width, and it passed over him straight into Raviens face, exploding it to bits of black pieces. The bits were all black and green, indicating that this Ravien was just Chrysalis in disguise. Aren chuckled a little nervously. “Well, two down. Even though I didn’t do this.” The real Ravien cursed silently under his breath and readied himself again for the next round.

Suddenly Ravien hammered his hands in the ground, and the training ground instantly transformed into a stone maze. Aren wanted to use his omnipresence-combination, but stopped. He promised no magic, so he just ran through the maze. He suddenly stopped, and a stone hand came out of the wall that smashed the other side of the wall. Jumping back and up, he could evade a charging Celestia, who now passed under him. Suddenly Celestia teleported under him, but that’s not where she planned to be. Normally she wanted to teleport above him. Then it hit her, in all the action, she forgot that he can manipulate auto-spell targets if they are close to him. How could she be so foolish?

Suddenly feeling a weight plopping down on top of her back, she knew what was coming. “Sorry, Celly.” And then it was over for her. Jumping away from Celestias’ corpse, Aren searched for Ravien. Seeing a red orb flying at him, he jumped up and saw Ravien over him, shooting another orb. While the orb was flying, Aren saw that Ravien planned to teleport to the other side of the small hallway. ‘Time to show him something.’ Aren smirked.

Ravien teleported to his spot and looked down at Aren but didn’t see Aren, instead there was his red chaos-bolt flying straight at him. When the sphere was flying at Aren, he steeled his arms and angled them 30° to the impact way. A little mini-impact came out of the sphere, but the rest got deflected to the new spot Ravien was now. Out of reflex, Ravien consumed his own uni-magic, and looked down where Aren should be.

Suddenly, he felt a touch on both sides of his head. “Nice try, Ravien.” And it was over for him too.

All of the immortals woke up with a start. They were all standing in the normal training ground, looking at Aren. He simply flicked with one of his hands and some kind of flying screen appeared. “This is a recording of the whole fight. We will go over it, and I will tell you what you did well and what you did badly.” He flicked once more, and the video started.

After the first charge of Celestia, it paused, and Aren turned to her. “Alright, the idea to use a movement-spell to speed up your charge is a very good one, but you made three mistakes. First, you activated it too early. Second, you should’ve known that I saw you activating it and that I would know that you would charge. So you should be ready to change course to the direction I would most likely evade to. Third, you should never charge this openly at me. If I would have been allowed to use my weapon, I would have just held it in your charge-path.”

Celestia nodded once accepting his criticism, and Aren continued. After Lunas' charge, it paused again. “The idea to teleport behind me and charge at me is a very good one, but the execution is flawed. You should have already started to charge before Celestia even got to me. I was able to recover from her charge and was ready to evade yours. If you would’ve run earlier, you would maybe have gotten me. On top of that, you should have used a movement-spell like Celestia.” Luna just huffed and looked away. She didn’t like to get patronized by this arrogant-prick.

Luna winced once when she saw the part, where he broke her neck. Witnessing your own death has a unique feel to it. The next time it paused, it showed how Aren took hold of Chrysalis. “Your charge was the best one since it was timed perfectly, but you too made a mistake. You were aiming too high. Remember that, even if it’s hard, people still can evade slightly in the air. You aimed too high, which made it easy for me to evade down, and to grab you.” The video stopped the next time, when she transformed into a foal.

“I must say this was really a great idea. I honestly didn’t anticipate that, but there was still one last problem with this. You should have only been in this form for less than a second, so I lose my hold. You were longer in this form, and if I would have known that you would transform, then I would have plenty of time to crush your little foal form.” Chrysalis just looked indifferent. She seemed to accept what he said, but she was not happy about it.

The video stopped again, shortly after Aren evaded the first chaos-blast after his landing. “Good idea, but you should have fired it on that timing that it would explode on the ground before I touch it. This way I would still get hit by the explosion, and wouldn’t have an opportunity to evade.” Ravien nodded acceptingly.

It stopped again, when Aren stood before the fake Ravien. “Very good idea. You knew that I knew that Ravien was the only one who could get really dangerous to me. So you disguised yourself as him, to bring me to turn around and run straight into his blast. Really remarkable, I see absolutely no flaw in this.” Chrysalis grinned complacently.

The video paused again, when Chrysalis got the chaos-blast to her face. Her grin instantly vanished, and Luna had to suppress a little giggle. “You should have simply side-stepped it. I honestly have no idea, why you just kept standing there, even though your goal was fulfilled.” Aren told her, and like Luna before, she just huffed and looked away. Luna was watching intently again since she wasn’t able to see the rest of the fight for obvious reasons.

Then he paused when the maze was created. Luna and Chrysalis looked at this with raised eyebrows. “Interesting idea, to change the terrain into small hallways. I can’t evade to the side, which gives Celestia a good chance to attack me.” He let the video continue until he landed on Celestias’ back, but instead to Celestia, he turned to Ravien.

“I was on her back, why didn’t you shoot me?” He asked him. Ravien looked at Celestia.

“I didn’t want to hurt her.” Celestia smiled a little, but Aren just shook his head.

“I was on top of her. If you wouldn’t shoot me down, her death would be 100% sure. Remember that you are a team and that you need to help each other to defeat me.” He said, and Ravien acknowledged that he should have just shot at him. Aren paused the next time at a particularly entertaining part. He looked over to Ravien.

“Why did you close your eyes, when the sphere flew at you?” Ravien just shrugged embarrassed. Aren just groaned. “Never close your eyes, and always keep your opponent in sight. Because you closed your eyes, I could sneak up on you and end it.” Then the video ended. He walked a little away and turned again to the immortals.

“Now for the fight I have only one thing to say.” He looked over their unpleased expressions, but he just smiled. “You fought better than I anticipated. That doesn’t happen often so, congratulations.” The gathered immortals, looked pleased, except Luna who didn’t want to show it to Aren. He clapped once in his hands.

“Alright, that was the fight for the day. We will all fight one time a day and will review it afterwards. Now I want to show you something else.” He looked over to Celestia. “Celly, could you take some steps forward?” Luna only crooked an eyebrow.

‘Celly?’ but she dismissed it. Celestia reluctantly walked some steps forward, and on her fifth step, a circle with lots of forms, numbers, and letters appeared where her hoof stepped on. Suddenly there was a whopping gust of wind, and her mane got thrown into every direction. The gust calmed pretty fast, and her mane looked ridiculous, which forced some giggles out of Aren, Luna, and Ravien.

“This is a trap-spell. These are spells that are only getting activated when someone steps on them. There are special trap-only-spells and normal spells, which can get put into a trap circle. It’s not hard to perform them since the only thing you need is a trap-circle and a spell mixed with it. I mixed a simple gust-spell in the trap Celestia walked into.”

“There are another three traps on the training ground, can you find them?” He asked with a smirk. The immortals instantly changed into aura-vision and looked around, but they couldn’t find anything, and shook their heads. “That’s the advantage of the trap-spells. They can’t get discovered unless you step on them, or by the trap-placer.”

“Another perk of them, is that they don’t need much time to get set up. Based on the strength of the spell, it can be nearly instantaneous or could take up multiple hours. So you can create standard and weak traps while fighting. If you haven’t used trap spells before, you would need to stand multiple seconds before a trap, to create it. Later on, you can create a trap spell, with a trap-creation-spell that doesn’t need you to be near the trap in order to activate it, but this comes in some months.”

He flicked with his hand and sheets of paper appeared in the air. Every immortal got one sheet. “These are the spell-sheets to create a trap-spell, and how you will be able to inflict them with your spells.” The immortals looked the spell-sheets over and realized that this was actually pretty easy.

After five minutes, everyone was able to conjure a trap-circle with a weak spell, and Aren nodded approvingly. “Well that’s all I can teach you about traps. Just like with the moving-magic-manipulation, you just have to practice in this to get better results.” He clapped once. “With this, I stop teaching new spells for a while. You have four tasks over the next month.”

“First, you need to be able to create an elemental beam of a basic element. Second, you need to get the absorbing of elemental-attacks into your reflexes. This means that you should be able to instantly react if a fire beam is being shot at you. You can ask me, when you need to test it. By the way, you should also be able to absorb magic now since it’s even easier than fire.”

“Third, you need to learn to use traps before the fight and while fighting. You should also internalize the workings of the trap spell in order to use it faster and in rapid successions. Fourth, you come here every day at 14:00 in order to fight with me. It’s just one fight per day and a following review. That is all.” Aren left the training field and walked back into his room.

One month later.

Aren jumped back, and instantly bolted up again. A Pinkie Pie charged through under him. He held out his hands and blocked the hooves that nearly wrapped around him, by Rainbow Dash in the air. Noticing the flying rope, Aren turned Rainbow Dash around so the rope would engulf her instead of him. Suddenly the rope shined light blue, and it extended further, to his new position.

Aren pushed himself away from Rainbow Dash so he could get momentum in the air. With this, he was able to dodge the rope, and landed on the floor, skipping backwards. After some skipping, he smashed into a stone wall. ‘This wasn’t here before’ he thought. ‘That’s probably Twilights’ doing.’ Then he noticed that something was teleporting in front of him, just outside his reach to stop it with his magic.

He turned to the left and saw Applejack running at him. Looking to the right, he saw Pinkie running straight at him. Looking to the top, he saw Rainbow Dash dashing at him. Aren backed further into the wall. If he timed this right, he should be able to use the wall as pushing stone to shoot him into some kind of opening.

He leaned against the wall, and suddenly the wall vanished, and he lost his balance. He fell back and felt hooves wrap around him. Shocked, he looked back and saw that a certain shy pegasus was standing behind the wall that just vanished. Fluttershy had her hooves wrapped around him and had a happy smile on her face.

The friends stopped and looked at Fluttershy, having Aren in a bear-hug from behind. They looked at the pair and then broke into cheers.

“YES! WE DID IT!” Twilight screamed while embracing Rarity, and turning in a circle, while hopping around.

“HOW DO YOU LIKE DEM APPLES?!” Applejack simply shouted.

Rainbow was just flying calmly in the air, saying how easy this was, and how they totally not needed a full month to accomplish this. Pinkie was just bobbing all over the place, shouting about her We-caught-Aren-party. Fluttershy just continued having him in the bear-hug, still being shocked that they actually did it.

“Eh Fluttershy?” She looked up to Aren. “You can let go now.” She then let go and moved back, blushing a little. He smiled happily and let the elements have their little party since they deserved it. After another five minutes, he had to stop it since it began being ridiculous. With one loud clap, he silenced them.

“First of all, congratulations on passing the first test. You did magnificent.” The ponies smiled broadly again. “So since you successfully got through the teamwork training, I let you off for today. Tomorrow we will start with evasion training, and again. Good job.” With this said he walked into the castle. He didn’t need to have Celestia around anymore. They trained on that, and he was now able to control his urges without her around, even if it still was hard when there were emotions involved.

Luna and Celestia were always training together while not fighting with Aren. After some weeks, they even tended to battle each other in the rezz-field. Ravien and Chrysalis also trained together often, but not as much as the two sisters. Everyone came at least three times to Aren to ask him a question or to request his assistance in testing something.

The guards were even able to inflict some damage to him at some points in the last fights. Aren looked forward to them, passing level one of the guard training. Level two would mean that he would be allowed to use his sword to fight them. If they would be able to win against him on level two, and that’s a monumental if, their training would be finished since it is nearly impossible for mortals to win against an immortal if he uses his magic correctly.

Theoretically, he could just create a gigantic explosion that utterly overpowers everypony in the barrier, and they couldn’t do anything against it. So their training would be complete with doing level two.

But the immortals will feel level three, when they will complete level two. They were also real close to doing level one.

Guard training went smoothly. The guards were able to make multiple small cuts across his body, and even broke one of his bones in the fight, but they still lost. Then it was time for immortal training. This was the day where everybody should have completed all their tasks.

The immortals gathered at the training ground and waited for him to announce the beginning of training. “So today is the day, where you all should be finished with your tasks. Let’s see them. Ravien, could you begin first?” Ravien walked to the front and waited for the orders. “Show me a fire-beam.”

Ravien shot a solid beam out of fire out of his claws to the barrier, holding it for multiple seconds. It was pretty easy for him since he was able to do this for two weeks now. “Very good.” Aren said. Suddenly he shot a beam of concentrated cutting wind at Ravien, who instantly began absorbing it. Aren smirked again. “Well done.” He then told Ravien to go back to his position, since everyone was already able to conjure the traps with ease.

“Celly, you are next.” Celestia stepped to the front and pointed her horn at the barrier. Suddenly Aren shot to Celestia a fire-beam, which she easily absorbed. Having battled with her sister a lot, she already developed the habit to create her barrier whenever she sees fire moving rapidly. Luna had to laugh, when Celestia did this while being startled by a column of smoke that came out of an oven, when she wanted to bake something.

She then demonstrated four different beams of every basic element in rapid succession. “Outstanding. You can go back too.” Aren told her, and she walked back. Luna and Chrysalis also had no problems in proving themselves, and after everyone was finished Aren looked to them once more.

“Good job all of you. Today I will show you, how it is possible to use different elements, than the basic elements.” All four of them couldn’t contain their excitement and looked expectant at Aren. They wanted to know how to do this for the last month. “It is very hard at the beginning. I doubt that you will be able to do one in the next two weeks, so don’t get your hopes up.”

“The key in shooting another element, than the basic element, is to use a combination out of basic elements. This means that in order to create steam, you need to morph your magic into fire and water at the same time. It sounds impossible at the beginning, but it also sounded impossible to mold moving magic in the first place. Remember, every element consists of the basic elements.”

“You can mix elements in four different actions. The easiest one is to add them. It’s something like this.” Aren shot out of his hand, a burning column of earth. After this, he shot bubbling water. “I admit that those two spells seemed kind of useless, but I only needed a demonstration. What I did first, was to change my magic while it shot out of my hand, into earth and directly after it, added another layer of magic to it, which then was molded into fire.” Then he smirked.

“But there is one very effective addition spell out of basic elements. Watch this.” Suddenly he shot out a ball of dirt. It was just flying like a ball, nothing special, but when it impacted with the barrier it exploded violently. “I added fire with air and added a layer of earth over it, so it can’t go out. When the earth shell broke, the thing got out and exploded. You will be able to add two elements in about two weeks I think.”

“The second method is to fuse two elements. If you fuse two, they will create a new one. Those for example.” He shot out a stream of lava. “That’s fire fused with earth.” Then a stream of steam. “Fire and water.”

“To fuse two elements, you need to think of both properties’ of the elements at the same time, and need to mold them both together. It is very hard on the beginning, but you should be able to do two basic elements in three to four months. In a few years, you may be able to do my personal favorite.” He then shot a beam of lightning out of his hand.

“In order to produce lightning, you need to fuse fire with water to create steam. Then you need to create fire and water again in order to make more steam. Then you add steam with steam to get cloud. After this, you add fire to cloud in order to produce energy. Lastly, you fuse energy with air, and you get lightning. It seems undoable right now, but you may be able to do it in some years.” The immortals looked unsettled. They didn’t know that creating lightning was this complex.

“Now to the third method. The third method is to split the elements. You won’t need this much, but it’s essential for some important combinations. You need to know that when you fuse two elements that the resulting element can be split into a basic element and a property of the result element. For example, if I fuse water with earth I get mud. When I then add fire to mud, the mud transforms into fertile dirt. If I then split fertile dirt, I get earth and effectiveness. Don’t ask me how, but that’s how it works. If I then combine effectiveness with fire for example, my fire burns more fiercely than before.”

“Another good combination is, fusing earth with earth to create stone. Then fuse air with air to create pressure. Then add stone and pressure to create diamond, and now comes the mind blow. When you split diamond, you get hardness and earth. If you then fuse hardness with anything, it gets hard. If you for example, fuse hardness with fire, you shoot out a fire beam that shoots through stone before it dissipates. You can also use a pure hardness beam, to inflict the target with the properties of hardness.”

“If I shoot a pure beam of hardness on glass, then the glass will be as hard as diamond. This can, for example, be useful for windows in prisons, but let’s go to the last and most difficult method. Negation.”

“With negation, you can transform the properties of an element into the opposite. If I have a beam of hardness and I negate it, it gets to a beam of weakness. I could shoot this beam at diamond, and would then be able to crush the diamond between two fingers. Negating elements, is extremely strange. You get the weirdest and craziest results with negating an element.”

“If I negate lava, I get molten iron, for example. Don’t ask, I know that Lava is molten stone and not molten iron. That’s why I have absolutely no idea what logic is behind that one. It just happens. If I negate plant, I get moonstone. Again no clue why. In order to negate an element, you need to completely reject it. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. This is the hardest method to learn, and it will take at least five months for you to learn it.” Aren flicked with his hand and four books appeared. “Everything I said is again explained in those books.”

“One last thing before you go. The key to win against an immortal, is to being better than him in fighting, and to being able to conjure more and more dangerous elements, which he cannot defend himself against. The key to create new elements is to use every method on everything and write down the outcome. 99% of the results will be useless.” He smirked once.

“But with the right combination you can destroy whole continents. Wait let me just create a strong barrier around us.” He took nearly five minutes to create the barrier. When he was finished, he talked again. “Sorry that this took this long, but it’s necessary. Now I will explain what I will do.”

“I need to make around 25 steps in order to get the element Atom. If I then fuse atom with energy, I get something extremely dangerous. Look at this.” He then conjured one ball, not bigger than a pearl and it hovered slowly to the border of the barrier. Aren instantly started screaming and put all of his power into the second barrier. When the ball reached the border, it exploded with ferocity that has never been seen before in Equestria.

The barrier nearly collapse, which Aren conjured, but he was able to hold it. The whole earth shook like the moon just crashed into the earth, and nothing was left where it exploded, except the two barriers. Suddenly everything was back to normal, and looked like before he shot the ball.

“This was an atomic explosion. By the way, everything is back to normal, because of a time resetting spell that I used on this area. At the time of activation, it saves the current status of matter, and waits 30 seconds until it sets everything back. If I wouldn’t have used this, we would have a problem with radioactivity right now.” He looked back at the slack jawed immortals.

“This counts as the most dangerous spell in existence, and only very few immortals can use it since it is extremely difficult to combine two elements which need 25 steps to being created and then combine them.” He then smirked a little. “Well, it was the most dangerous one until a month back.” He chuckled a little. “Well training is done for today. Remember to read those books and to practice in creating new elements. We will see each other tomorrow.” He then skipped to the castle.

The immortals looked at each other and knew that this won’t be easy to master, but they were also motivated to do it.

When Aren was alone, he instantly collapsed to the floor, but before he lost consciousness, he thought one last thought. “Why did I try to block an atomic explosion with a normal barrier?”

Author's Note

Don't ask how moonstone is created by negating plant. No one knows this.