HELLO BOYS AND GIRLS OF THE WORLD! This here is Aguion, and I'm proud to announce my new fanfic, The Will of the Elements!
... Nothing more to say aside that this was inspired by Another Hatchling by Tatsurou and Hc Svnt Equus Pinnis by Masterweaver, both on Fimfiction . net, really. Have a nice reading!
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I don't own MLP or Dungeons and Dragons, though I do own The Will of the Elements, the homebrew I made and inspired me to write this.
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"Thank you for coming, Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Shining." Twilight Sparkle smiled as she watched her fellow alicorns and brother step into her spell lab while she guided Spike through the last few details needed for her experiment.
"Hello Twilight, I hope you have been well?" Princess Celestia smiled at her former student alongside her sister, niece and said niece's husband.
"Yes, everything's been surprisingly calm these past few weeks." The purple alicorn nodded, handing her tome to her assistant, who accepted it without even looking at the mare, before turning to the other guests. She smiled and ran towards them, stopping first in front of her old babysitter, ready to do their little song and dance.
While that happened, Luna quietly left the group and walked to see what the younger mare was working on, curiosity getting to her. Ignoring the shatter from a few feet away she knelt down, happy that she had opted out of wearing formal clothes like the other four and instead wore her more casual blue t-shirt and jeans combo alongside her crown, and traced a hand near the large rune circle drawn on the floor as she examined the various glyphs written within it with interest, but no matter how much she studied them she couldn't make sense of the spell. "You have no idea how much I hate rune casting." She grumbled to Spike as he finished the last glyph.
The seventeen years old teenager dragon, who was wearing clothes as casual as hers with a green tank top and black jeans, grinned. "Hey, another thing I'm better at than you! Aside from cooking. And playing video-games. And drawing. And social interaction." He teased with a chuckle even as Luna slugged him on the shoulder.
"Shut up." She growled, though both knew she wasn't really angry.
The drake and mare had become close friends over the five years they've known each other, way back when Luna had been released from Nightmare's grip by the Elements of Harmony and their wielders. Spike had helped Luna learn about the recent world and how to interact with people informally, while the princess paid back by teaching him how to play the various instruments she had, as well as how to draw and enough how to fight. To her surprise, Spike was already very good at drawing – hence why he was the one who drew the rune circle – and was slightly competent when it came to hand-to-hand combat.
The lessons from both sides had the side-effect of one getting to know the other on a personal level – no, not like that, no matter what Rainbow Dash says – and become very close, to the point where they felt more tranquil sharing their thoughts and secrets with each other than with their own family, not that both families minded much. Heck, they actually encouraged it.
Aside from that, it also happened that their personalities influenced the other, with Luna becoming more relaxed and tomboyish when inside a circle trusted friends and Spike becoming more confident.
"So, what's this?" She nodded towards the magical matrix on the floor while standing up, Spike following her gesture.
"It's a space-time gateway! " Twilight squealed as she skipped to the side of the runes.
"And you distracted her from properly greeting you. Again." Spike smirked. Luna shrugged, she had said hi, that was enough for her.
"A space-time gateway?" Cadance asked skeptically, giving the experiment wide berth – she knew how often Twilight's experiments exploded or similar, and to her it was many times too much – as she examined it like Luna had done a minute before.
"Yes!" The younger mare nodded excitedly. "I've been studying the books from Starswirl's personal library–" Luna shot a disbelieving stare at Celestia, mouthing 'You let her?' while the older mare nodded quietly, "–and I found an old tome describing how he made the runes he used to create the mirror that opens the portal to the human world!" She squealed. "So, naturally I was very interested in learning the process, and after many months of rigorous studying, I've come up with this!" She waved her arms at the circle in the center of the room.
"And since it's called a gateway, it's safe to assume that's going to open a portal to another world?" Luna raised an eyebrow.
"It depends on how much magic we put into it and the coordinates the caster has in mind when activating it." Twilight corrected with a grin. "But yes, it can open a portal to anywhere both in this world and in others!"
"Interesting…" Celestia mumbled.
"Are you sure it's safe?" Shining Armor asked worriedly, also having knowledge of his sister's tendency to explode her experiments once or twice before getting it right.
"Should be, I haven't been able to activate it, but I think I know why." She shrugged. "I need more energy to fuel the spell."
"You couldn't activate it with alicorn levels of energy." The stallion frowned. "Sorry Twi, but no matter how useful this spell is it loses all practicality when you need at least two of the strongest beings on the planet."
"I put recording runes around the main rune circle to observe how it works, and so I'll know what parts I need to alter to make it more viable." His sister countered, pointing at four small glyphs forming a square around the main one. "Trust me, Shining, I've thought this through, nothing will go wrong."
Spike and Luna traded wary looks.
"So the reason why you called us is that you need help with testing your rune." Celestia summarized.
"Yes, that's right." Her smile diminished slightly. "I would be grateful if you helped me with this."
The five ponies looked at each other for a few seconds before slowly nodding. "If you're sure it will work, then we will gladly help you." Celestia smiled.
Minutes later, the four alicorns stood around the rune circle from a safe distance, with Celestia across from Twilight and Luna from Cadance, with Shining Armor standing besides his wife protectively and Spike besides Luna.
"So, how this works?" Luna asked, looking down at the matrix.
"It's actually very straight forward." Twilight pointed to some specific parts of the circle, starting with the circle of glyphs that made the outer part of the drawing, "The rune circle are the instructions for the spell," then the star-shaped mark that looked like an X from their point of view, "that is what spreads the magic through the whole circle," and finally to the circles directly in front of each princess, "and finally those are the batteries that stores the magic for the spell to work."
"That's where you'll be aiming you magic at." Spike noted as he looked at the batteries. The three older princesses nodded in unison and looked at Twilight for her signal.
Twilight took a deep breath to steel her nerves and lit up her horn with magic, a gesture followed by the other three while Shining inched closer to Cadance. "Go." She said and four beams of energy connected with the rune.
Spike squinted his eyes as the writing started to glow bright, and at the same time he could feel the magic in it powering up the spell. The dragon gulped and wondered if his draconian magic classes he had with Ember were enough for him to put up a strong enough shield to protect himself and Luna, knowing that the blue alicorn wasn't the quickest one when it came to defensive spells and came to the conclusion that his own defensive spells would probably be too weak to hold an explosion, so he just prayed it wouldn't and powered up his magic sense just in case.
Multicolored lightning arced along the runes and the star as it cast the space-time bending spell, a small sphere glowing with a kaleidoscope of colors formed at the center of the circle and started to expand. Twilight grinned as she saw her spell bearing fruit and started to unconsciously put in more energy in her excitement.
Spike felt the shift on the energy flow and turned to warn Twilight until the whole energy of the spell seemed to turn inside out, making him gasp in surprise and no small amount of fright. The lightning started to lash out wildly at the surroundings, forcing the princesses to cut off the energy and step back. The orb started to waver violently as the energy keeping it open descended into chaos and started to blast it outwards with small pulses of magic, until without warning, it exploded into a pulse much more powerful than the others before it, making all present cast a shield around themselves.
Celestia, Shining and Twilight's shields held up strong, but Luna and Spike's were destroyed as soon as they were hit, throwing them clean off their feet. Eyes wide as they hit the far wall, they noticed that the orb was starting to waver again and was going to explode again, and this time they knew that their shields weren't enough to stop it and attack the orb was a braindead idea, so they did what they could and cast a teleportation spell towards the inside of the shield of their respective siblings.
Big mistake.
As soon as the teleportation started to bend space to move the duo, the orb's wavering turned even more erratic and it blew up instantly and even more violently that before, engulfing the whole room before the spell was fully cast.
An earthquake rocked the room alongside the wild magic around them, and even the three strong shields started to falter, multiple cracks appearing along them while their casters did their best to hold them up. After five seconds that felt like five hours, the magic disappeared completely, and all casters let their shields fall just as their exhausted bodies hit the ground, Cadance being the only one standing up as she only put her magic to power up her husband's spell when it began to break, and as such wasn't completely drained.
Spike and Luna were nowhere to be seen.
Two months later…
Celestia walked inside the castle of friendship silently, not even trying but still managing to feel the gloomy mood that seemed to engulf the whole structure and sighed. After the incident with the gateway and Spike and Luna's disappearance, Twilight had become a nervous wreck, blaming herself and her "stupid rune" for their impromptu vanishing act.
She couldn't hold the dry chuckle that escaped her lips as she thought of checking the moon again.
Entering her former pupil's personal library, she quickly spotted the purple mare and her own student Starlight Glimmer sitting at the central table, the pink mare looking at the other in worry, as Twilight had her head pressed against the wooden furniture while many books where scattered about in no order.
Starlight turned her head to see the princess walk in and smiled slightly. "Princess." Twilight lifted her head an inch before setting it down again.
"Starlight. Twilight." Celestia smiled, quietly walking towards one of the vacant chairs besides the two mares. They sat in silence for a minute before Celestia sighed. "Twilight, look-"
"How can you be so calm?" Twilight cut her off. "It's been months, Celestia, and yet…"
"Because I believe in them." Celestia said calmly. "Worst things happened to Luna, a simple teleportation to an unknown location won't bring her down, and I know she'll be able to protect Spike, if he needs protection."
"There's the chance of them being in another dimension altogether, princess…" Starlight murmured.
"I know. But I know my sister better than you do, and I'm beginning to think I know Spike better as well." Celestia frowned, making Twilight wince and lift herself from the table.
"It's still my fault… I shouldn't have tried to make that rune in the first place." Twilight whispered depressingly.
"Maybe." Celestia conceded.
They sat in silence again for a few more seconds before Twilight looked at the white mare with desperate hope. "Do you really think that they'll still return?"
Celestia was about to answer, but a twitch of her ear and two familiar magical signatures popping out of nowhere made her smile broaden as she shot the Everfree a discreet glance. "… Yes. Yes, I do."
Starlight smiled and stood up. "Excuse me while I make some tea for us."
Within the dark forest, a portal appeared with a crack of lightning that frightened the critters brave enough to live there and two figures walked out of it in a relaxed pace. When the portal closed, the few animals that remained managed to spot the details of the beings.
One was an adult dark blue equine with an azure mane and tail, and bat-like wings of a purple so dark it was almost black along with her cyan slitted eyes. She wore a royal blue wide neck with an eight-pointed star print over her DD-dup breasts – and she wasn't even the biggest of their group of friends – that fell on her left arm, revealing a black top, along with black denim pants, a pair azure armguards and hoof-shaped greaves. Two disks were hanging from either of her hips, but aside from the star mark on them it was hard to know what they were, unlike the pendant around her neck shaped like her cutie mark. "Hey, we're not dead." Luna noted offhandedly as if talking about the weather, scanning her surroundings.
Her companion was surprising however, an adult purple scaled dragon with emerald green spines sprouting from his head and long tail, the same color as his own slitted eyes. He wore a t-shirt with ripped sleeves of the same shade of green and a tribal-styled print of a black dragon along with his black denim pants and black and silver armguard. On either hip he had a custom pistol and sticking to his back was an oversized sword, definitely the same height he was, that gleamed on the few sunrays that managed to pass through the dense foliage. "So it seems." Spike chuckled. "Damn, it's good to be back."
"I'll say, you're not the one who lost your immortality." Luna groaned happily as she felt herself connect once again with her beloved moon. "It's been so long…"
"Yeah…" Spike sighed with a smile, starting to walk towards where he could feel multiple active magical signatures and assuming those were the unicorns in Ponyville.
Luna frowned slightly and looked down to her left arm, fourteen marks, all but one with faded colors glowing from her skin and appearing over her armguard. "I can't feel them…" She muttered, the marks disappearing from her arm as she lifter her left hand to touch a fifteenth mark, a yin-yang symbol with black lightning arcing from it but with their colors also faded, appearing in full display.
Spike nodded as he lifted a hand to his own mark, a pink heart with three gradient silver-to-pink fox tails sprouting from the bottom and two pinkish chains around it, but it also had faded colors. "Volt and Lighty said it was going to happen since the marks only allow us to feel them if they're in the same plane as us. Remember the whole thing with Alpha?"
"Oh yeah, forgot about that." Luna admitted.
A growl came from path ahead of them, a manticore slowly revealing itself from the bushes and stalking towards the duo, who didn't even bother to look threatened as they continued to walk forwards. "Huh, déjà vu." Spike mused with a grin.
Luna laughed. "Hahahah! It looks a lot like that day, doesn't it?" She cut her laugh short with a shuddering sigh and lifted a closed hand. "Even."
"Odd." Spike put his hand forwards with a two against Luna's three. "Suck it, five." He chuckled at Luna's pout as he reached for his sword with his right arm, effortlessly lifting it with just her arm the moment the manticore pounced at them.
In a fraction of a second, Spike's blade burst in green flames and he slashed with it before the manticore was even close to them. Finishing the slash, he put the blade back in its place. "Elder Dragon's Flame: World Cleave." He said with a grin.
The manticore was abruptly cut in half in mid-air, the symmetric halves falling to each side of the pair, wound already cauterized and as such without the spray of blood from the cut.
Spike and Luna didn't even blink as they continued walking towards the city. "I was half expecting you blade to melt, then it would be a complete copy of then."
"Nah, Faerie was the one who did it, remember?"
"Uhum…"
The walk was silent from then on, with both trying to organize their thoughts and emotions as they slowly approached the town: how to explain their absence, what happened, why they were older, their soon to arrive friends – especially the sadistic/idiotic/slutty ones – and their spike in power. Later than they wanted, and yet sooner than they hoped, they were walking through the streets of Ponyville, making a beeline to the crystal castle even as all the citizens of the city stared at them.
Walking up the stairway to the doors of the magical crystal tree castle, they paused. "Hey, sis's here too." Luna grinned.
"I feel her." Spike nodded with his own smile. "So, how do we do this?"
"Well, we could do the responsible thing and enter calmly, approach our siblings and hug their lives out." Luna pointed out. "Or… we could be jackasses and invoke a dead meme just for the laughs, it's what Faerie would tell us to do anyways."
Spike didn't spare half a second to think and pulled his left feet back, with Luna doing the same with her right one. Both grinned and prepared to flare their presence the moment they kicked the doors open, and practically punted them off their hinges.
"SISTEEEER, HOLY FUCK!"
The God of the Spiritual Flame and the Goddess of the Lunar Melody were home.
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Right! Hope you like how this piece of madness started!
In the next few chapters I'll start describing just how OP Spike and Luna are after their impromptu trip, but I think it's a bit too early for that.
Until the next chapter! This is Aguion12, signing off!