Before the world ever took shape, there was conflict. A battle between two primordial entities whose power stretched beyond that of any and all comprehension. They were: The Radiant, the force of good and well-being, and the Dire, the force of evil and destruction. Tired of the Ancients’ ceaseless brawl, the four Fundamentals, sapient beings of great power, entrapped the entities into the Mad Moon, to serve as a prison in order to prevent the two powers from destroying not only this plane, but the countless others. Seeing as the prison held the two eternal beings forever apart, the Fundamentals went their separate ways, vanishing into the great fold that was the bridge between planes.

As the world took shape, its gravity drew the Mad Moon closer to it. Not that the Fundamentals were worried, though. They truly believed that the Moon would hold the Ancients inside them forever. Oh, how wrong there were. The Ancients joined together for the first and last time, something the Four never expected from two eternal brawlers. Together they decimated the Mad Moon, tearing it apart and throwing themselves down to the earth. The chunks of rock that remained from the explosion granted civilizations around them power, in the form of raw kinetic energy, mana, protection, even resurrection. A single shard found its way through the fold of the planes and entered another realm... but that is a story for another day.

Unable to let go of their pasts, the two entities, Radiant and Dire, found themselves at war again. Only this time, their conflict blossomed into all-out battle, with the inhabitants of the new world where they lay fighting for their chosen side... or defecting to the other. Whatever their alignment, the battle between the two Ancients stretched across the globe, the scale of the conflict calling forth the Fundamentals again, this time not to imprison the Ancients, but to fight alongside them. Beings from other worlds and other planes came to this lonely planet in the massive void around it, all to fight for a being that neither spoke nor moved, but granted power to any and all who took up arms.

The land where armies fought and where armies died began to be known as the Battlegrounds, the place of much suffering and strife, but also where great honor and glory could be found. Heroes fought alongside their creeps, Heroes from hundreds of different backgrounds, each using their own unique powers in tandem with others to fight and to win. Eventually, a section of the Battlegrounds was fenced off by enormous trees, preventing all but a select few to enter: The chosen Heroes. Each Ancient picked a team of five brave warriors from a pool, then sent them to battle so that they could be victorious. Victory in the Battlegrounds is no small matter, and destinies, prophecies, even the greatest predictions have all been proven wrong or right by battle in the Battleground.

So here we are today, in the height of a battle between two completely opposite Heroes. It is night-time, or rather, Darkness-time, for the Night Stalker has clouded the sun again with his powerful magic. He sprints through the woods of the Radiant jungle, searching for his prey with keen senses, sharp eyes, and his powerful echolocation. Bursting through a packet of trees, he sees the artificial moonlight shine on a black beast riding deeper into the woods. A glowing purple blade, in the shape of an “S” bounces along with the beast. With a mighty roar Balanar, the Night Stalker bursts after Luna, the Moon Rider. His speed and power and strengthened by the night, and his maw opens to reveal his three-sided mouth and rows and rows of sharp, serrated teeth. Sprinting after her, he activates his Phase Boots, becoming as immaterial as a ghost. He runs without fear of the trees, for the boots prevent him from hitting anything. As silent as the moon, he jumps on Luna, summoning a cloud of bats to slow her down. But as he rakes his claws over the maiden's back, she disappears in a cloud of smoke.

Balanar bursts out of the woods, turning his head left to see the real Luna, holding a small axe in her left hand. It’s blade is made out of some kind of crystal, and whenever she let the artificial moonlight bounce off it, two illusions of her would appear at her side.

“You know its best not to fight me when I’ve got Manta Style.” she said, her illusions and her real self raising their Moon Glaives, ready to throw them at Balanar.

“And you know I like eating during the night. Your cat... looks like a delicious snack.” said the Night Stalker.

“How dare ye insult Nova?” shouted the Moon Rider. “Just fer that, I’m going to kill you!”

She raised her glaives, all three of her, and together they tossed them at the Night Stalker. As the real Luna held her arms to the sky in order to call down a stunning Lucent Beam, the Stalker disappeared, poofing into shadows just as the curved blades hit the ground.

Luna looked left and right for the Stalker, her unnaturally good night vision scanning the dark woods for the blue beast. Suddenly, she felt one of her illusions die, and before she could turn her head saw her second illusion get run through with a purple blade, grasped in the claws of Balanar.

“Shadow Blade” he said. “Sometimes I question its worth, but it serves me well tonight.”

He ran towards Luna, swinging his new weapon. Purple metal met purple metal as Luna swung her glaive at the last second, deflecting the blow. Balanar staggered back, unused to wielding a sword. He then charged at Luna, his maw open again, this time radiating a powerful aura of fear that utterly silenced the Moon Rider and causing her to drop her glaive.

She barely managed to utter the incantation for Lucent Beam before the Staker stuck, cleaving his blade across her chest. The Moon Rider dissolved into nothingness as the power of the Radiant Ancient took her mortal body away to be resurrected. Then, the Lucent beam struck. It hit Balanar full force, the purple blast of pure moon energy burning his blue skin. It did little to damage him, but it stunned him quite well, causing him to drop the Shadow Blade. What happened next would spell out his fate.

Seeing that the Stalker was stunned and helpless, Ezalor, the Keeper of the Light, rode in from the River, his staff raised. His body glowed with bright light, energized by the power of the sun. With his illuminated form, Ezalor was able to resist the effects of the darkness that surrounded him. Balanar could barely respond as the Keeper lowered his staff and pointed it at him. A blast of light shuddered through his body as the force of the Blinding Light spell blew him back and roasted his eyes. As the Stalker struggled to get up, a powerful shockwave shot through his body, and he turned his head to see a short, yellow, humanoid creature holding two wands with glowing tips firing golden lightning at him. While it did no damage, the electricity held him in place, completely helpless to want would come next. No amount of struggle would work, no magic would come to him, no darkness could save him now.

“Balanar... I think that was your name. I will wipe you from the surface of this earth, and rid the world of your darkness forever.” said the old man on the pale horse. “At least, that’s want I thought I was going to say.”

“Hurry up, Keeper! I can’t bind him forever!” yelled the Shadow Shaman. “He’s already struggling enough!”

“Yes, yes, hold on. I’m trying to... Ah! Right.” said the Keeper. He lowered his staff again, but this time, instead of simply letting loose another blast, he began charging the light at the tip. As all light sank into his staff, it shook more and more, until the Keeper had to hold it still with both hands. Then, once it could not gather any more energy, he released the blast, sending a column of angry horses made of pure light straight at Balanar.

“Illuminate!” shouted the old man.

As the darkness faded away, the horses smashed into the Stalker, breaking him and burning him with light. His blue body rapidly became golden, and pillars of light shone out of his eyes. The sun peaked over the horizon as Night Stalker turned to a small, smoking pile of ashes at the Shaman’s feet, and Rhasta was finally able to let out a breath as he let go of his binding spell.

“Well, that’s it, then. Let’s go and push top while we wait for him to respawn.” said the Keeper, turning his horse to face upriver.

“So we can gank him again?” said the Shaman, walking along behind Ezalor.

“Indeed.”

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Long respawn times were nothing new to Balanar. Dying really, really late into the battle has its consequences. Of course, this death was in the middle of the fight, and it shouldn’t have been this long. As he waited for the Dire Ancient to bring him back to life, he felt something grab him around the waist. It dragged him around the dark waiting room, almost like Pudge’s Meat Hook, and pulled him into a tiny hole in the ground that could barely fit him. Tired and crestfallen after his recent death, Balanar could barely struggle as the hand pulled him through the gap and sent him away. He was gone.

Razor and the others waited patiently for his return. But he did not come back, even as the others did. With only four heroes on the Dire team, the Radiant were able to secure a smashing victory over them, killing the Dire heroes with record speed and steamrolling their towers. It didn’t matter that they had backdoor protection: Centaur crushed them with ease. It didn’t matter Invoker could summon as many spells as he could remember: Rubick could steal them and use them against him. It didn’t matter at all how powerful Razor was: Shadow Shaman turned him into a chicken for most of the battles he fought. It was over in less than an hour, with the Dire team panting for breath as the Radiant unleashed their blows upon the Ancient.

RADIANT VICTORY!!!

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Now is the time to tell about that one little Nemesis Stone that made its way between planes. It drifted for some time, before a meteor smashed into it. Reluctantly, that shard of the Mad Moon grew in size as more and more space rocks collided with it, forming a small, white sphere of stone. This ball traveled in the void for countless centuries as war raged on its homeworld, the Radiant and Dire fighting for dominance. But this Nemesis Stone didn’t care: it was too far away from that to be of any use, and it was weakened by hundreds of impacts anyway.

Eventually the sphere found a planet orbiting a sun to call home, and the gravitational field of this green and blue ball drew the sphere in as its new moon. The sun shone on the white sphere of rock with the Nemesis Stone deep inside it, and something happened. The Nemesis Stone began to glow, to glow with a light that had been lost for centuries. As the light of the sun reflected off the white moon, the piece of the Ancients that had been lost within the planes decided that it had found a world to influence. It released some of its power with the following moonrise, and the energy of the Ancients fell upon the world with the moonlight.

That world was Equestria. You have just witnessed the creation of the unicorns.

The magic that radiated from the Nemesis Stone bathed fifteen hundred earth ponies in pure Ancient power. That same day, tumors grew in them, in their chests, in their lungs, everywhere. The tumors, however, reacted symbiotically with the body and stored the vast amounts of energy, that is, mana, that the moon provided. A final tumor grew on their foreheads, pointed and spiraled, with bone beneath. Unicorn magic was discovered three days later, and the original fifteen hundred grew to fifteen thousand, then one-point-five million. The unicorns became the third tribe that the ponies needed, one physically weaker than the others (due to the tumors) and suffering from mental health issues (again, because of the tumors) but capable of raising and lowering the moon and sun with their telekinetic magic.

Earth ponies don’t just spontaneously turn into full-fledged unicorns in the moonlight now. The Nemesis Stone has run out of energy, and ceased to function, leaving only a single spark for a dire emergency. However, the energy contained within one of the first fifteen hundred is roughly equal to the Nemesis Stone’s, and with training and development an original unicorn can bestow the horn upon other ponies who wished to wield magic. Thus, becoming an unicorn artificially became a trivial task: find an original unicorn and persuade them to give you a horn. A pegasus no longer needed to be alicorn-born to be an alicorn: all they had to do was find an Original.

Now, in the modern world, there are but four alicorns: Celestia and Luna, two of the fifteen hundred Originals and the only exception to the earth pony rule - they were both pegasi before receiving their horn, Cadence, who was gifted with a horn by Celestia after mastering Love at a young age, and Twilight Sparkle, a unicorn who was given wings by Celestia and the Nemesis Stone’s final spark and made immortal by its power.

Equestria. A land that would have become something entirely different if it wasn’t for the shard of the Mad Moon that found its way there.

And its was on its earth that Balanar found himself, crawling out of a hole in the ground in the middle of a dark forest, clutching his injured sides.