Chapter Twenty-Two: Control

I found my vision restored seconds later. I found that I could see, I could hear, but I could not move. I couldn't. My body stood up. Had I fallen on the ground? I didn't know. I unwillingly looked to my side, and peeled away Fluttershy's bandage, revealing a fully healed wound. Powerful stuff, that magic. Wait, why was I moving?

"Zach! Are you alright?" Twilight asked me. I tried to respond, and found that I could not.

"I am fine," ,y voice said. It didn't sound like me, though, my voice was now slightly higher, slightly softer. Usually my voice was deep and quiet. This wasn't my voice. "The Elements now control this body," it said. Twilight recoiled at that.

"Is Zach still in there?" Twilight asked, concerned. She would feel awfully bad if she had replaced me with the Elements of Harmony, destroying me in the process. I was still in there, of course, and now I knew that I had been possessed.

"Of course. He will have his body back soon." That was reassuring, but hearing my altered voice talk without me controlling it was very creepy. "After we have achieved our goals," it continued.

"To defeat Discord, right?" Rainbow Dash said.

"Correct, miss," The Elements said.

"But how are we going to do that?" Twilight asked, "Zach's body isn't a weapon we can use."

"This is also correct. We will have to find the objects that already held our essence."

"Where would they be?" Pinkie queried. My head turned to face her.

"Discord has hidden them, but we have an alternative." That made sense, the objects, in this case me, that carried the essence of the Elements could detect other objects that contained them as well, like the gun had been able to track Twilight and her friends. "This body will also require an object to contain the essence currently present inside it." The Elements were planning to transfer to another object? Good, I didn't want to remain a puppet of theirs forever, I mean, that would suck. But, for now, I was just that, a puppet. My body started toward the exit of the room. I felt something else going on in my mind, like something had occupied the dark corners of my subconscious, and was watching me. This force could only be one thing, of course, and it couldn't possibly want to hurt me. Were they judging me? Testing me? I didn't have any idea, and it made me anxious to leave something else in control of my body. Whatever was going to happen, I could do nothing about it but watch. And watch I did.

The group had fallen silent as they followed my body through the castle and out into the gardens of the castle. Discord's statue was replaced by two statues of Equestria's two deposed princesses. How ironic. We approached the statues. My body began to mutter in some undescribable dialect. Now I was saying things I didn't know how to say? Creepy.

Suddenly, a fountain in the center of the garden, which had been spewing something other than water, a pink fluid, moved, revealing a stairwell.

"Nothing has entered this place in thousands of years." My body said as the group followed it down the stairwell.

"What is this place?" Twilight asked.

"A sanctuary of the Elements, built long before even Celestia. She never knew of it." Well, that was interesting. A sanctuary of the Elements of Harmony? Under Celestia's own castle? And she didn't know about it? Strange. "We will find the objects we require here. It is a great privilege to be allowed entry to this sacred place." My voice had little inflection, it was starting to creep me out even more.

The stairwell came to an end with a door bearing six seals, each one corresponding to an Element. Strange, one of the Elements had only been found less than two years ago, I thought. With another unintelligible incantation, the door opened, revealing the sanctuary. It was all white and gold, lit by unseen magics, with a great number of murals and mosaics adorning the walls. They depicted the Elements of Harmony being wielded by their holders over the millennia.

"Wow," Pinkie Pie said in obvious awe. "This is neat!"

"Do not touch anything. You are the embodiment of the Element of Laughter, yes, but you must understand that naught can be touched by anyone but this avatar."

"Okay..." Pinkie agreed, reluctantly. My body led the group to a large chest in the center of the large room. It was a gleaming golden white color, and opened with yet another incantation from the essence I shared a body with. The chest was absolutely full of artifacts, among them several copies of each Element's piece of jewellery, and some assorted pieces with no Element to be seen in them. My body distributed one of the objects to each of their respective holders. Without pausing, it picked up another piece, a crown. It had a single gray hexagonal gem in it. I heard a voice whisper to me as I suddenly regained feeling in my body.

"We entrust this to you, the Element of Order. You shall not fail."

Huh. I had just become one of the Elements of Harmony's bearers? And there was made a seventh? How would that help? There was time for questions later. I spoke, finding that my voice had returned.

"Well, that was odd." I put the crown on my head, finding it a perfect fit. Twilight gasped.

"Zach, you're back! Did they make you one of the Elements of Harmony's holders?" Twilight stated the obvious.

"Yeah. The Element of Order." Rainbow Dash flew to my side, and patted me on the back.

"Welcome to the club," she said.

"Uh, thanks. I think we should be looking for Discord now." I began to walk for the stairwell.

"What happened to you when we cast the spell on you?" Twilight asked, curious about my odd behavior.

"As the Elements said, they had assumed control of my body. I could see and hear, though, and it wasn't too bad. It seems like they healed me, too." I patted my side, and lifted my shirt to examine the site. Clean, not even a scar.

"Well, that's not fair! Why do you get to be an Element of Harmony and we didn't?" Trixie spoke for the first time since the battle. She had a few burns, and her mane was singed. Fluttershy had tended to some of the larger ones.

"I don't know, maybe because I let them use my body for a while. Does it really matter now? I don't even know how to use this thing." I tapped the crown on my head.

"Well, we'll have a chance to try it out soon enough," Time Piece said. He had been in awe since we first entered the sanctuary. The group continued up the stairwell, back to the surface.