Here we are. The first official chapter of this side story. Just so you remember, everything I write here is canon to the original.

Reviews:

SubZPhantomX: Lol! Witchcraft 4 life! But yes, they are vegetarian. I introduced the chili toast way back in X Files. So long ago…

graysean86: Eh, maybe.

Thatdudethere789: I've got plans for that.

kaijudude1000: Awesome! You have to PM me when it comes out!

BLTSweg: I am.

Psychic Nature: Thanks!

blueflare202101: I hoped someone would!

"So why'd you stop me?" Cobalt asked as he and Merluna walked through the forest.

Merluna's eyes took on a look of concern. "For you would have died."

"Seriously? That's a lame reason." The dark blue pegasus rolled his eyes.

"What is injured about such an argument?" Merluna wondered. "Oh well, it is not of importance. Even though you are a hero, there is no way you would ever stand a chance against the Queen."

Cobalt narrowed his eyes. "Who can't fight a giant letter opener?"

"It is not the 'letter opener' that is the threat, but its scabbard."

"Really? What's she gonna do, poke me until I die?" Cobalt laughed.

"No hero, but the scabbard will heal her each time she is defeated. You must disable this power with the four sacred swords from the Knights of the Round Table."

"Huh. Okay. Shouldn't be that hard." Cobalt shrugged.

"Do not overestimate yourself, young one!" Merluna warned. "The four knights are strong. If you are not careful, then you will be dead!"

"How strong can this scabbard actually be, though?" Cobalt mused.

"Strong enough to turn the Queen's subjects into creatures of the underworld."

Cobalt's face twisted into one of disgust. "That's… sick."

"Indeed, which is why I have summoned you, hero, to aid in my resistance." Merluna smiled.

Cobalt froze and got an angry look on his face. "I'm not a hero. Never call me a hero." He sighed squeezing his eyes shut and opening them wide, then letting them return to normal. "But I am one of the good guys, and I will help you."

"That is good then." Merluna's confident expression had wavered when Cobalt had so vehemently denied that he was a hero. Now it was set in an arrangement of confusion. "But I cast the spell to summon a hero, and specifically a hero."

"Well sorry, but you got me." Cobalt growled, his shoulders hunching over and turning his walk into more that of a predator stalking his prey. "So what do I do?"

"There is a fifth sacred sword, the most powerful of them all, which lies in the middle of this forest. Only one with pure intent to save the land can pull it out." Merluna informed him, gesturing with her hoof in the general direction of southeast.

"Good. I'm off to get it then." Cobalt saluted and started to prepare one of his rocket takeoffs.

"Wait!" Merluna called out, tossing him a rusty sword, which he caught in his mouth by the handle, barely missing getting stabbed through the neck. "Take this, you'll need it."

"Let's fight letter openers with letter openers." Cobalt muttered dryly, quietly enough that Merluna wouldn't hear him. "Okay, thanks!" he said a little more loudly, nodding and performing the takeoff he'd tensed his muscles for.

Merluna watched him go, smiling sinisterly. She walked elegantly over to a healthy tree and ran her hoof up it, like a mother would small foal's chin. The tree immediately turned black and withered, crumpling in upon itself like a piece of dried out paper, leaving nothing but a pile of chapped dust.

As he flew past several wooden targets that he slashed in half easily, Cobalt realized that the sword was only effective if he was able to start a slash early and cut through the as quickly as possible so that he didn't hinder his natural speed.

He smirked as he performed an aerial roll over a small cliff and slid under a low hanging branch. "Sure is challenging here." He muttered sarcastically. "Let's see a real fight."

Suddenly there was a loud grumble, and the ground started to shake. Cobalt's pupils shrunk and he grinned widely, giving him a crazed look. "Something big!" he stated the obvious. He suddenly recalled a sign he saw at the entrance to the area. It had said 'beware of the dragon, though it was misspelled, so it more looked like 'bewhere of the draggon'. A skull and crossbones and a cartoonish drawing of a large dragon eating a pony had lavishly decorated the sign. "So if it eats ponies, then it's evil…" Cobalt reasoned to himself, finding some sort of moral in the deed he'd proposed to himself and unconsciously decided to carry out anyway. "Yep, I'm killing it."

Rrrrr… who dares to trespass on my killing grounds…? A deep voice growled as the rumbling ground started to settle into steady tremors that sounded uncannily like giant footsteps.

Yep, evil. Cobalt confirmed. "Hi!" he shouted, sounding innocent and childlike. "Look at me! I'm a target!"

You will pay for alerting me to your presence… The dragon rumbled, and then a large head protruded from the mist that had been veiling it from Cobalt's vision. The giant head stretched its jaws wide in an earthshaking roar, blasting Cobalt with hot wind.

The blue pegasus withstood the torrent and smiled even wider. "Aren't you a big one!" He pulled his sword out of the sheath of the earth he'd stuck it in to talk to himself. "Okay, let's go!" he shouted through the handle, and launched himself in forward thrust at the dragon's face. The dragon was too big, too slow, and too unprepared to deal with this sudden onslaught, and so Cobalt's sword drove straight through its eye, half blinding it.

It let out a snarl of protest and pain and shook its head side to side, trying to get the annoyance off. It wasn't too worried about the wound, for it was a dragon from the underworld, meaning that it would replenish itself at midnight, so long as it wasn't killed. If that happened it was gone forever; it couldn't come back, and its eternal soul would be granted to another dark creature. It was an endless cycle, the dragon reflected, but it still didn't want to die. It quite liked being alive and able to eat ponies as he pleased.

Cobalt drew out his sword and flapped into the air, preparing a dive thrust. He shot downward, but the dragon was prepared for him this time, and knocked him away with its claws, heavily bruising him in the process. The pegasus hit the ground and rolled a couple of times, eventually coming to a skidding halt a few hundred feet away from the spot where the dragon stood. He didn't move, though the sword was still firmly clenched between his teeth.

The dragon lumbered over and stared down with one eye at its foe. Is it dead? It asked itself. Oh boy, I hope it is! Then I can eat it!

As it leaned down to sniff the limp form one more time to make sure it didn't smell of sickness, the pegasus opened one eye, grinned and mumbled, "Gotcha!" swinging his sword in a high arc and slicing the dragon's horn clean off.

The dragon stared at its severed horn, then back down at the pony who'd cut it off. Oh. It said, and then dissolved into shadow.

Cobalt grinned, jumping to his hooves. "Nailed it." he muttered to himself, and started walking further into the mist.

A WHILE LATER

Cobalt stared up at the cliff, where he'd seen a rock with a sword protruding from it. He made the safe assumption that this was the sacred sword. He spat out the sword he'd gotten from Merluna and flew up there. After assessing the situation, he tilted his head sideways and gripped the handle between his teeth, pulling what he felt was sideways, but was really up.

The sword came loose as if the rock were butter, and he pulled it cleanly out. Easy. He thought to himself. He noticed that there was a tiny face close to the handle, and raised an eyebrow. Just as he was dismissing it as nothing, the eyes of the face opened. "You could say 'hello'." The face said agitatedly.

"Gah!" Cobalt dropped the sword and backed away from it in fright. He hadn't expected it to talk. After the initial shock passed away, he came closer and looked the face square in the eye. It didn't say anything more, making Cobalt wonder if it had been just a hallucination.

"Just stare at me then, I am majestic after all." the face said, smiling.

Cobalt frowned. "Not to mention egotistical."

"Caliburn is never egotistical!" the sword, Caliburn apparently, exclaimed indignantly. "And what can thou sayest of thyself?" Caliburn's tiny eyes swept up and down Cobalt, assessing him. "Thou carryest thyself as a racer, and not a swordspony. This is it? I have been drawn by a mere knave?!"

"Hey! I've helped save the world at least…" Cobalt counted in his head. "I don't know, twice at least!"

"Certainly not this one, I suspect." Caliburn huffed. "Look at the state of the forest! In the past it was lush and green! Now it is black, and the trees are dying!"

"It wasn't, though!" Cobalt protested. "I got summoned here and now I don't even know how to get back to my own world!"

"Oh, pity the knave!" Caliburn mocked. "For he is so stupid and senseless that he cannot even sense the presence of an enemy lurking behind him!"

Cobalt suddenly understood what the rude sword was saying and lunged forward, grabbed Caliburn's handle in his teeth once more, and whipped around in time to parry a blow that would've cut his head clean off had he not blocked it.

Queen Celestia towered over him, with her jagged sword in her mouth, ready to strike. "Thy reflexes are… adequate, for a knave." She grudgingly acknowledged.

"I know!" Caliburn agreed. "He seems to fight like a dead badger!"

"Whose side are you on, anyway?!" Cobalt demanded, carefully retreating a few steps.

Celestia scowled. "Follow me if thou darest, knave!" she shouted in the royal Canterlot voice, nearly blasting Cobalt's eardrums out, and galloped off, leaving Cobalt in the dust.

"Will not thou accept the challenge?!" Caliburn demanded.

"Well duh!" Cobalt growled, launching himself after Celestia.

A few seconds later he caught up to her and began running after her. Every so often she would stop and turn to fight her, letting him retaliate against her blows, and after she let her guard down for a single moment, he leapt in and slashed across her helmet, forcing her to retreat or suffer worse.

After a while of this, she stopped the chase, breathing hard, and Cobalt slashed one more time across her chest. She let out a shout of pain and fell to her knees. The scabbard she wore on her side started to glow, and all of her wounds suddenly healed, including the scratches on her armor. "I shall leave thee alone… for now." She decided. "It befits not a queen to fight knaves such as thou." She vanished in a plume of black smoke.

"In other words, you're a COWARD!" Cobalt exploded angrily at the place where she'd vanished from, breathing heavily and bleeding from several of the bruises the dragon had given him.

"Calm thyself, knave, for you have won this battle." Caliburn told him. "Thou hast proven that it is within thy power to purge the sickness of this land, and thou must only collect the sacred swords to do so." The sword laughed. "Maybe thou might even become a knight thyself in the process."

Cobalt released the sword and let it hover on its own. He frowned. "True… I suppose it can't be that hard to do it."

"That's the spirit!" Caliburn encouraged. "Now onward, let us find the knights!"

Chapter two? Done.

I've taken a couple of words from the prologue and expounded upon their use in this chapter, having different characters them in different ways. See if you can find them.

Radicool223 out!