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. Next Chapter: Chaos Estimated time remaining: 4 Minutes