The Balance

by Avatar Titan

Chapters

• Order
• Chaos

Order

Nighttime. The bright round moon shone down across a flat blue lake. No wind, nor sun, nor beast dared touch its surface, for this lake was sacred. This lake was alive.

Deep within its bowels a gem caught the light of the moon. It was clear, rid of edges and of imperfections, and shone like glass. Its glow could be seen from the water's surface, if anything dared to touch it.

The water around the gem was cold, as if only recently thawed. No plants grew around the gem - no plants grew in the entire lake. Everything around it was held in place - in perfect stillness, never aging, never dying, never ending. Endless, endless order.

Nothing ever happened around the lake because nother needed to. It had what it desired - order. Nothing could ever disrupt it, not even the life that settled near it, not the rain that fell on it, not the winter nor the summer nor the fall or spring. It was just endless, ceaseless stillness.

The dragons changed all that.

In huge numbers they came, untamed and untrained. They blotted out the sun with their black wings. These dragons were pure - unaltered by the forces of nature. They breathed orange flame, as unaltered dragons did. Like a storm they swept over the countryside, destroying the progress of the beasts and the land and reducing everything to ash. There was seemingly nothing that could stop their attack. Resistance was met with smiting fire, and blades broke against their rock-solid scales. They disrupted the landscape, tore great canyons and fissures into the flat ground, made mountains and rivers and the rolling hills, wherever their evil talons landed.

One dragon made the mistake of landing near the lake.

The lake's realm suddenly changed. Something fell out of place. A mess had been made. Sensing that its order had been broken, the crystal sought vengeance against its disruptor. The dragon, unaware, was swept up by the gem's full power.

A cascade of water, power, and energy washed over its stone scales, hardening the rock into metal. Where drab, cracked armor once was, now was a shining bulwark of steel. It warped his mind and his memory, erasing his past and destroying his self. No longer itself, the dragon fell prisoner to the crystal's power. His pointed horns curled into a halo behind his head, where the crystal found its new home. His orange flame was reforged in blue, a thousand times hotter. His talons, once made of bone and muscle, became blades and arrows, gears and cogs, a perfect orderly killing machine that the crystal could use. With this vessel the crystal could create a new lake, a new peace. It set off immediately, black wings shining in the sun.

But it could not find peace. No, there was no peace here. The world had been devastated, and there were no more peaceful lakes where it could rest for all eternity. The dragons were rulers now, with the lesser beasts and the lesser mortals slaving under them.

The crystal saw the temples and the shrines they built. Massive structures, made out of stone and mortar. Orderly structures, without flaw, that could stand for eons at a time. Within the mortal's art it found a plan.

One day it took over the mind of another dragon, turning his scales to steel and his flame blue. Within another day the same two dragons had become four, four becoming eight, eight becoming sixteen. Like a plague Order spread through the dragons, until only very few remained that were not corrupted and changed. With millions of consciousnesses under his control, the crystal began to think - truly think for the first time in its unchanging existence. It gave itself a name - Order, and it gave all the dragons under its control names, so it could not forgot who they were.

Order then turned his attention to the mortals - the ponies, the griffons, the deer and the bulls and all the beasts that were enslaved by the dragons. It gave them emotion - the ability to feel, to know whether something was good or bad. Then, by pulling a few strings, Order soon created an empire of stillness, populated by a mixed race of quadrupeds who worked because it made them feel good, not because they wanted to.

For a brief, short moment the world was still, and Order was pleased.

Nothing could stand in the way of his rule. Order and his immortal metal-dragons ensured that the stillness would last. Nothing had will. Nothing could for itself, forever a slave to their masters and their desires. Order had everything he wished, and so he willed the world stay that way.

But the existence of peace only confirms the existence of war. And every force has an equal and opposite. For Order, even his immortal empire would eventually die.

Chaos

When Order became supreme in the world, there were some that opposed its dominion. A small sect of the uncorrupted dragons refused the might of Order and fled to the mountains, their own creations. These dragons were untainted - they still breathed orange, and their scales were still stone. Black wings carried them far from Order, to the opposite side of the globe. And yet, even here, Order's enforcers attacked them, blue flame on orange, steel against rock. The dragons could not stay still - if they did death was inevitable. One by one the uncorrupted dropped until there was only one.

He had no name, because it was not needed. All that was required was knowledge that he was the last of his kind - the dragons that did not fall to the cold grip of Order. But even he would fall.

A phoenix - a massive, burning bird clad in steel and fury found him. Day after day they danced in the clouds, flame meeting flame, talon against steel. Sparks flew from their clash, igniting the earth and burning away the trees. Impacts from their crashes molded the soil, creating massive lakes when the rain cried out in fury. Oceans formed under their deadly duel, and yet one was still no stronger than the other.

An equal and opposite force. This dragon, this final unchanged dragon, slashed open the chest piece of the phoenix, and with his bone talon brought it down.

But Order is not one to give up easily. Injured during the battle, and having caused severe damage to the surrounding environment, the dragon had nowhere to land, and nowhere to rest. Magma covered most of the orderly earth in a scorching sea, save for the still empire that was thankfully far away. Exhausted, the uncorrupted fell into the waves of molten rock, where he was incinerated down to the bone.

But in his battle, the dragon had uncovered something - another crystal, this once black, opaque, and covered with points. It found the bones of the dragon, without life and without soul.

This crystal called the flowing magma home. Change was natural in its heated home, and day by day everything changed. This was no exception. Seeing a part of its world become static and unmoving, it desired nothing more than to tear down the Order. This dragon could perhaps serve a purpose. A perfect vessel to spread the corruption.

It was dead, but that did not matter. The crystal changed it anyway. It rose its skeleton out of the waves and took it to the unchanging lands. There, it molded life into it - the trees, the beasts, the animals, none were spared in the reconstruction process. The end result was a twisted mess of mangled flesh, with wooden bones, wolf teeth, owl eyes, bat wings, and goat horns. When life was sparked into it the first thing it did was scream. Perhaps it desired death, or destruction, but the crystal would have none of it. It burned its will into its own, becoming one and the same. Suddenly the reanimated Frankenstein of a dragon had an overwhelming urge to crush and destroy the Order that had purified its land.

It called itself Chaos. And it too was infectious.

Order suddenly found his army dying. One by one, the metal-clad beings of stillness and peace became abominations of stone, wood, and flesh. Suddenly his subservient dragons had wills of their own, and desires that they pursued. Many of these desires came from deep within - the minds of the former dragons suddenly being in charge instead of Order's indomitable will.

Order ordered them destroyed, and mobilized vast armies of mortals and dragons to take them down.

The mortals would prove to be his downfall.

The chaotic crystal changed the mortals. It gave them freedom - released them from Order's chains. And suddenly Order found his armies attacking him.

It was over before he realized. Order had been destroyed. Splintered. Gone. It withdrew from the now freed mortals, its empire gone. Chaos, its mission successful, left the mortals to their own desires.

They became nations. The Loxodon Union. Equestria. Bull Tribes. The Isles of Gryph. Cervidium. Saddle Arabia. They forgot that they were once ruled by dragons. The dragons that now stayed in their mountaintop rookeries, afraid or not needing to interfere with the lives of mortals. A peace, if that was even a proper name.

But peace is merely a prelude to war. And war will come.