Aren did something that he did many times before on this day. He sighed. That ratman wanted a duel, of course. No, it can’t be a simple fine or an apology. It had to be a duel to the death. Why do these ratmen always make such a big deal out of injustice? He wanted to kill him in a duel because Aren cut in line. It’s honestly not understandable.

“Seriously?” he deadpanned. The ratman huffed.

“Yes!” Another sigh from Aren. He turned to the bigger of the two who seemed to feel uncomfortable.

“Are you his apprentice already, or were you here because you wanted to be?” Before the burly guy could answer, the ratman shot between them.

“Don’t you dare addressing my apprentice. You don’t see me talking to your…” He looked to Celestia and watcher her for several seconds. “Flying-horse-thing.” Celestia felt hurt, by the condescending tone which the ratman used, but she didn’t want to say anything. The situation was like two parents arguing with each other while the kids could only watch. Aren seemed to pick up on Celestias’ pain.

“And you don’t see me, talking down to your apprentice. Now tell me, is he your apprentice already?” The ratman seemed outraged but still answered the question.

“He would be by now, but you and your mount had to cut in line.” Mount? Alright, that’s enough.

“Alright, it is on!” Then all four of them vanished.

They reappeared at a big clearing. The floor was made up of gray cobblestone and had a round form. Around 30 meters was the diameter of the round clearing with the cobblestone floor. Beyond it, were just plains and many other round clearings placed in ordered intervals, and loud fighting could be heard and seen from many other clearings. Apparently, this was some kind of field for people to do duels.

“Horse, get out of the arena.” Celestia turned to the ratman, who just gave her an order. She looked around and saw that the fat guy who accompanied the ratman was outside the arena and looked to her. Celestia saw that he also seemed to feel awkward. Judging that he probably wasn’t as mean as his master, she walked over to him and sat down beside him. When she arrived, she wanted to start a conversation.

“So, have you witnessed one of these duels before?” The big fat guy looked a little surprised that she wanted to talk to him, but answered.

“Yes. Master likes to duel a lot.” He said in a nervous voice. “Have you seen a lot of duels, horse?” Celestia winced at the word horse.

“Could you please stop calling me horse? I am a pony or Celestia if you presume my name.” The beefy guy lowered his head a little.

“I’m sorry, Celestia. My name is Nuzzleb.” He offered his immense meaty hand and Celestia placed her hoof in it. They both shook their appendages. “So have you witness a lot of duels before, Celestia?” She shook her head.

“I fought a lot with my master, and some other immortals, but I never witnessed a real duel before.” She decided to call Aren, master when other ponies were around. It seemed kind of silly and disrespectful if she would refer to her master as simply Aren. Nuzzleb sighed, which created a gust of wind due to his size.

“I am very sorry for you. I witnessed my master dueling with many masters before, and he always won. Seeing the faces of the apprentices, feels like a shot to the heart.” His deep voice resonated like a bass. Celestia witnessed this, and could feel the sadness oozing from the big heart, but she wanted to continue the talk.

“How have you met your master, Nuzzleb?” Celestia asked with a warm tone. The giant had to laugh at this.

“I was the general of our army from my home country. We were fighting a war against the forces of evil, and there was no hope. We just waited every day for the final battle, in which we would be put down, and move on to arkbarzia. When the day arrived, we suddenly got a visit from someone from the multiverse. He was just drinking in the tavern, and when the forces attacked, he ignored them.”

He had to chuckle. “Yet the forces made a mistake. They knocked over the drink of my master, and he was very upset about it. He then slaughtered every last one of them and won us the war. I witnessed this, and offered him my live for him to be my master. He accepted with the reasoning that he didn’t have anything planned anyway. We traveled around some worlds, and my master would challenge many other masters to a duel. Mostly because of petty reasons, like cutting in line.”

Bringing a whole race to the brink of extinction just because of a spilled drink. Celestia didn’t know how he could act this destructive just because of this. Nuzzleb crooked an eyebrow and looked at Celestia. “What’s your story?” He inquired. Celestia hummed and answered him.

“Well I am the princess of Equestria, and we were invaded by an immortal from the multiverse. We then began summoning somepony who could be able to stop him. We ended up with my master, and he has been training everypony in whole Equestria for nearly a year now. Just an hour ago, I proposed to him that I want to be his apprentice, and he accepted.” Suddenly they witnessed the two masters parting. It seemed like the duel was about to begin.

Aren looked at the ratman. “You know, I really don’t want to drag this for too long. So let’s just begin ok?” The ratman huffed and took out his partisan, which then began to shine in a mixture of lightning and lava. Celestia felt impressed. She didn’t know that it was possible to enchant weapons with elements. On top of that, he did it with two at once. Aren just pulled out his sword nonchalantly.

Celestia heard a gasp from beside her and saw how Nuzzleb looked at Arens’ weapon in shock. She looked to the weapon, but couldn’t see the reason why he looked so shocked. “Excuse me, Nuzzleb? You seem rather startled after seeing my masters’ weapon. What’s the reason for this?” He turned to her and had a look like she just grew another leg.

“You don’t know anything about your masters’ weapon?” Celestia pondered about this and saw that he was right. She actually never heard anything about it. At last, she shook her head. Nuzzleb gestured to the weapon.

“This weapon has been forged by Black Fire, the personal smith of The Bearer. Only the best and strongest ones can claim to be worthy of a weapon of his creation. How did he obtain it?” He asked her, but Celestia just shrugged. He looked back at the arena. “If he has a weapon of Black Fire, then he is more than a match for my master.” The ratman also didn’t look as calm anymore.

“How did you obtain that?” Aren crooked an eyebrow.

“This old thing? I had it forged for me about 100,000 years ago.”

“LIAR! You stole it from someone, didn’t you?” He instantly accused. Aren just shook his head.

“Nope, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” He then looked at the enchanted weapon of ratman. “So you are fighting with a lightning, lava combination, eh?” Then he looked at this sword. “I think I’ll show you how you use that correctly.” Before the ratman got a chance to answer, Arens’ weapon was suddenly engulfed by red and black glowing lightning. “This is lightva” The ratman shook his head.

“What is this trick? You can’t combine lava and lightning into a new nonexistent element!” Aren crooked an eyebrow.

“You don’t even know of merging elements on a subspacial-plane? How old are you? Ten-thousand?” The ratman just shook his head.

“Enough of these games!” He screamed while charging in an unreal speed at Aren, who simply slashed with his sword at the weapon of his opponent. When the weapons met, a loud cling was heard throughout the area, and in the center of the arena stood Aren, his sword pushing back the partisan of the ratman.

The ratman growled as he sidestepped and hoped to destroy Arens’ balance with this. Aren anticipated this, and changed the direction of the swing into a sideways one, but the ratman was too fast, and was able to back step another time, so the sword couldn’t hit him. Yet, the ratman didn’t give Aren any time to take a breather, and instantly summoned three burning swords, which whirled with unreal velocity. The burning swords were now whirls of red color, and they flew at Aren, who simply summoned a gigantic metal shield, which blocked the whirls.

That wasn’t everything the giant shield did. Apart from redirecting the swords, it changed their color into an orange one, and the swords turned around and started flying at the ratman. He anticipated something like this and took a step back but instantly pushed himself into the sky with his partisan because he felt that he stepped on a trap-spell, from which an explosion of lightning sprung out.

The swords flew straight at the partisan, and they got flung away by it since the weapon was too masterfully crafted. In the air, the ratman did some amazing somersaults, from which small lightning-balls shot. Every lightning-ball started flying straight at Aren, who made one swing with his weapon. The resulting shockwave destroyed every lightning-ball, but when the shockwave hit the ratman, he just pulled his partisan up to him and blocked the shockwave.

He got shot back by the force of the shockwave, and landed with his feet first at a barrier he conjured around him in the sky to stop his flight. Instantly pushing away with insane strength, he shot at Aren. The ratman instantly slashed an overhead slash, before he reached Aren. This looked pointless at first, but it seemed to have a purpose because with his slash, he destroyed a little board-barrier in his flight, on which a trap-spell laid.

Aren shot lightning at the ratman, but he seemed to grab the foundation of the dimension and seemed to shift it. There was a blue streak before him, and the lightning passed through the streak, into another dimension. The ratman then instantly held up his partisan to block lightning that was coming from the top. Aren saw that the ratman opened up a dimensional gate, and found out, through a dimensional scan, which dimension the attack went, and opened up another dimensional rip behind the ratman.

The lightning shot back into the dimension behind the ratman, and Aren summoned an iron-cube in the path of the lightning. The lightning hit it and was enchanted into it. Aren then switched the cube with a dense form of air, over the ratman because a swap spell is instantaneous, and the half second delay of a teleport-spell would take too long. When the cube was swapped, it let out its’ lightning to the nearest target, which was the ratman who simply blocked it.

But this wasn’t Arens’ full plan, because while the ratman blocked the lightning strike from the top, a concentrated beam of lava shot out of the floor. The ratman realized this fast, and created a barrier under him, to block the lava. Smirking, he looked forward to the target he was flying to, and the last thing he saw in his life was the edge of Arens’ sword, 20 centimeter in front of his face. The fight was over.

The two apprentices stood there, slack-jawed. Celestia only thought one thing. ‘And we are supposed to win against him in a fight?’ She looked over to Nuzzleb and felt sympathetic. Nuzzleb was still shocked. He couldn’t believe that his year-long mentor died. Whom could he learn from? What could he do now? Was his master truly dead? He can’t just simply die like this!

While Celestia watched Nuzzleb, Aren made a last gesture of respect towards his former opponent and teleported the corpse, back to its’ home dimension. He didn’t actually want to kill him since he had an apprentice too. Maybe he just wanted to boast a bit and look good in the eyes of his apprentice? There wasn’t enough to judge him upon since they haven’t really talked a lot.

But even if he didn’t want to kill him, he still had to. Getting challenged to a duel to the death, meant to the death. Forfeiting meant sure death to the loser. Ever since, they stepped into the ring, it was decided that only one of them would walk away, and he is not that generous that he would die so that a master can boast to his apprentice.

Walking over to the two apprentices he looked at the big guy, who was still in shock. “Hey kid.” The big guy turned to him, sadness, confusion, fear, and shock in his eyes. “Where’s your dimension? I will send you back there.” Nuzzleb didn’t answer, and Aren groaned.

“Listen, this wasn’t my first time killing a master with an apprentice, so let me give you some tips. Just because, I killed your master, doesn’t mean that you are a bad apprentice or that your journey ends. If you want to find another master, go to the dimension located at ARFX-128. It’s an exclusive place, where masters go to find apprentices. Maybe you can search for a new one there.”

Deep inside, Nuzzleb was angry at Aren. How could he just simply kill his friend, companion and master? Yet, he accepted his advice since his anger was contained by his logical reasoning. He knew that the duel involved the danger of his master dying. It was a fair match. He got a tear in the eye and looked down to the floor.

“ABBZ-062.” He simply said. Aren nodded and not a second later, the fat guy vanished. He then turned to Celestia.

“So, wanna go back to Equestria?” Celestia still didn’t know what she should feel. It still felt wrong to kill, and even more wrong if the reason was such a simple thing. It also still shocked her, how Aren could kill without any remorse. How can he be so cold hearted? Aren crooked an eyebrow. “Something bothering you, Celly?” He asked.

Celestia just shook her head. She accepted Arens’ teachings and was willing to learn his ways. If she genuinely wanted to be his apprentice, then she needed to get over such feelings. Taking up one hoof, and rubbing it against her eyes, she was able to calm down. She looked up at Aren, and wanted to distract Aren with a question, so he doesn’t realize that she still hated seeing ponies die.

“What were you talking about earlier? With these letters and numbers?” Aren tapped on his chin, but then he knew what she meant.

“Oh, you mean the catalogue-system?” She didn’t know what that was, but just nodded. “The catalogue is a list of every dimension in the A-cluster. You should know that the A-cluster is the group of dimensions over which The Bearer rules. The worlds in the dimensions of the A-cluster are all marked with four letters and three numbers. The first four letters represent the dimension while the last three represent the planet in the dimension. With a special spell, we can access waypoints in the dimensions so we can go there just by knowing the catalogue-number. It’s pretty smart.”

Celestia didn’t really listen to this because she was still thinking about her position with Aren. It was obvious that she will have to deal with worse things than a death in a duel while learning under him. ‘No, I thought long enough about this and I made my decision. I won’t be bothered by something like this!’ She thought to herself, but still felt doubt. She shook her head again.

“Can we go back to Equestria?” She sounded worried, but Aren could guess what this was about. It was impossible for such a pure and innocent being, which hasn’t killed before, to just jump into something brutal as the multiverse and shrug it all of. He knew that the best thing he could do for her, was to let her have some alone time, so she can sort things out. He put his hand on Celestia and then they vanished.

They reappeared in Celestias’ bedroom. Looking outside, they realized that it was night. Apparently, Luna lowered the sun, and it was indubitable that Luna would be worried over her sister. Celestia never forgot to lower the sun. Never. Celestia knew this and felt guilty.

“Oh no, I need to get to Luna. She is probably worried sick.” She looked over to Aren.

“Yeah, you go do that. I’ll be back in my room. I have to think over some stuff.” Aren said, and then simply vanished. Celestia just hoped that he didn’t have second doubts about her being his apprentice, but there were more important matters at hoof right now. She needed to find Luna, and tell her that she was fine. Some seconds later, she too vanished in an explosion of light.

Aren reappeared in his room, and instantly realized that he was in danger. Through his 350 Omnipresence-spells which he always has activated, he saw that over ten ponies were ready to attack anything that appeared in the room, but before he thought about anything, he built a barrier around himself. Not too late, because several spears and magic-blasts were shot at him right away, which couldn’t damage the barrier.

This wasn’t training, and he wasn’t in the rezz-field. They seriously tried to hurt him. Since this wasn’t training, he also wasn’t bound to spells which should have been created in Equestria already. With a flick, he stopped time in a certain radius. This was a spell, which was way too advanced for Equestria right now, so they couldn’t have the easy defensive spells for this. He didn’t use such spells in training, because he couldn’t teach the defensive spells against this, since Equestria would not be ready to learn them.

He searched around, and spotted Luna standing in the doorway, readying a spell. Probably some stun spell or something similar. Walking over to her, he stepped aside beside Luna and let time flow again. Luna suddenly went wide eyed because her target just vanished.

“So what’s with the sudden hostility?” Aren asked, and Luna jumped into the air and turned to him. She quickly shook her head and changed her expression back to a serious one.

“Where’s Tia!?” She nearly screamed. Aren looked confused.

“The last time I saw her, we were in her room, and she said that she wanted to look for you because she thought you would be worried sick about her.” He then looked at some random stone. “And you Ravien, stop hiding there, and get down here.” One stone just moved, and transformed into Ravien, who just flew down beside Luna, who looked like he slapped her in the face.

“Don’t give me that! We searched all over her, and her and your magical-traces were nowhere to be found in Equestria. You ponynapped her!”

Aren had an ‘Are-you-kidding?’ expression on his face. “Ponynapped? Really?” He then just shook his head. “Well never mind that. You couldn’t find our traces, because-“ He interrupted himself because he had to absorb a fire-bolt which was flung at him from behind, and shot an unreal amount of teleportation spells at his attacker, so she couldn’t block the spell with her magic. A second later, Chrysalis was teleported beside Ravien.

“Because she wanted to visit my home-dimension. If you could try your detection spell again, I am sure that you would find that Celestia is back in the castle.” He explained. Luna shook her head.

“Tis a lie! If this was the truth, then I would’ve alrea-“ She got cut off by a unicorn, dressed like a scientist, who came running down the hallway yelling ‘Princess Luna’ over and over again. When he arrived, Luna gazed sternly at the scientist. “Go, this is no place for a scientist to be.” The scientist had none of that.

“Princess Luna, we found the energy of Princess Celestia!” Luna made a double take on that.

“What? Where?” The scientist rubbed the back of his head with one of his hooves.

“Actually, she is right here in the castle.” She turned back to Aren, who just raised an eyebrow.

“I thought, after one year we were over something like this.” He then walked to his door, around the guards who watched with uncertain eyes. When he arrived at the doors, he turned to the guards. “Don’t forget training tomorrow.” He said and closed the doors behind him. Shortly after, some guards who were still hiding in his room, were ported out front.

Luna turned her head away from the door and searched for the magical energy of her sister. She made an imaginative jump of delight, when she found her, in her room. Luna instantly gathered her energy and ported herself to her sister. When she appeared in a dark explosion of light, she looked around and had a wide smile with teary eyes when she found her sister.

“TIA!” She screamed and ran to her sister, embracing her in a loving hug. Celestia was a bit surprised by the suddenness of this action, but also hugged Luna back. “I thought I’d never see you again.” She whispered into Celestia, who just strengthened her wings around her.

“Shh, everything will be ok Luna. I’m here.” She also wanted to say, that she would never leave Luna alone, but this wasn’t the case since she was now Arens’ disciple. Instead, she just continued holding her. Luna began to sop quietly into her while they both shook in a soothing rhythm. She looked down to her still sobbing sister, who now tried to form words.

“I thought *sob* I thought, Aren pony *sob* ponynapped you. I was so afraid that you would never *sob* never come back.” Celestia gulped. Luna won’t take the news of her new status well. Instead of telling Luna where she was, she just continued holding Luna, feeling tears in her own eyes. She hasn’t realized until now that she will leave everything behind. She won’t see Luna for an awful long time. Only now, she fully realized the size of her decision and also started crying.

After a while, they both laid on Lunas’ bed and just held each other in sisterly love. After some minutes, Luna was fast asleep, and Celestia was able to calm down. She looked down at the sleeping face of her sister, and had to think about something.

‘I didn’t know that Luna was this worried about me, but I made my decision. I just can’t continue living this monotone live. Also, I won’t disappear for forever. Aren told me that I won’t see Equestria for an unusually long time, but he also told me that when I return, I can visit as much as I want. It will be only for one long time, then everything should be alright again.’ She then thought about, how Luna would take this. She would certainly think that she would never see her sister again. Celestia sighed.

“By my own beard, this will be hard to explain.”

Author's Note

By Celestias' beard!

Sorry to end such an emotional chapter with that, but I couldn't resist. I also think that I suck at writing emotional scenes, so it doesn't matter thaaaaat much.

Oh, and I edited that "endless generosity" part out of "clearing under attack"....I had to facepalm so hard when I realized what I actually wrote there.