Celestia soared through the sky at a breakneck pace to the point where her vision began to blue shift, clouds whizzing by and the ground a blurred mess. After receiving a report that her student as well as her friends were injured by a creature, she had sent several squads of guards to apprehend the creature. Soon more reports followed, and she sent three more. But even after sending over a dozen, the creature had beaten them all. With dread of being forced to fight after she had rushed over to protect her ponies.

The moment Ponyville was in view she slowed down, and immediately set her eyes upon the large white building that was the hospital. As she approached, she saw two figures, one on all fours and completely grey, and the other stood on two legs and carried a shield and sword. All around the figure were bodies of her guard on the floor, as well as a few making a perimeter around the two. Even from afar, she could tell her guard was afraid.

Celestia collided into the ground with a great thud at the same time creating a crater in the mud. The guards quickly turned to look at what happened, hope was evident on their faces as they realised who it was. Unfortunately, they left themselves open and a blast erupted from the two-legged figure, and they were sent flying. Celestia stared in shock at what happened, her focus was set onto the two figures who stood between her and the hospital.

The two stared one another down, Celestia in a slight defensive position, while the other two were calmly standing. “I, Princess Celestia, demand that you stand down and surrender yourselves. Otherwise, I shall apprehend you myself,” Celestia’s face was determined, ready to strike at the two in a moment’s notice.

What came after her demand surprised her. The figure stabbed the ground with his sword, and set his shield against it. He walked up to the princess and presented his wrists. The action took Celestia by surprise, but she quickly composed herself mentally. She prepared a spell to apprehend him, but before she could, something glowed in the others hand. In a near instance a lightning bolt shot down from the sky and connected with the sun princess. Before she could recover, the creature punched Celestia square in the muzzle. Her stance faltered for a moment, but that was enough time for her adversary to strike her several more times.

After getting a few in the creature fell back to his sword and shield. He took the shield first, his other hand glowed and he placed it on his shield. The shield began to emit a blue light, and he went for his sword. Celestia, quick to recover from the attack, launched magic bolts at him in attempt to stop him. The bolts collided with his shield and were absorbed. What on Equs did he do to that shield?

With the sword now in hand, he pointed it at Celestia, “I, Knight Artorias, request that you cease your attack. Otherwise, I shall do it for you.”

Is he mocking me? She eyed the figure, and the way he stood. He was on guard, with his shield raised. Casting a spell would be pointless, I’d be leaving myself open. With the thought in mind, Celestia quickly summoned her own shield and war hammer that were suspended in the air by levitation.

Seeing an opening, Artorias quickly maneuvered to close the gap. His shield connected with Celestia’s, and the force of the attack pushed it onto her. Artorias was unrelenting, as he spun around her to deliver a fatal strike, but was blocked by the handle of the hammer. Seeing that his rhythm of attack was interrupted, he immediately backed off.

Celestia took the moments to recompose herself before going on the offensive. She teleported, behind the creature and delivered a strike with her hammer. The strike hit hard and Artorias was sent off to the side, his feet leaving a trail in grass. Celestia rushed forward, and delivered a blow onto his shield. She commited to another that would be followed by another. The force was being absorbed by the shield, not one strike making a dent. She went for another attack, but Artorias used his shield to deflect it. Completing his parry, Artorias went for the riposte.

Celestia’s eyes were wide open as she realised what had just happened. She had tried to get one more strike in, but a second later she was now staring the tip of a blade. The sword was an inch away from her eye, and it stayed there. What just happened?

The sword was removed from its place, and onto the shoulder of her enemy,” We have much discuss Princess.”

Celestia stared at him in disbelief, “Discuss? After you have killed my guards! After you attempted to kill me! After you maimed my student and her friends! We have nothing to discuss you monster!” Celestia was fuming, and she brought herself into a guard.

Artorias on the other hand, returned the favor by staring at her in disbelief, “Kill? I killed your guards? If so, then why is there not a bloodstain upon my blade or the grass beneath my feet. If anything they are unconscious, and fortuitously, they’re right next to a hospital. And I didn’t try to kill you. If I wanted to, you would be dead already. As for your student and her friends, they had assaulted me first. Is it illegal to defend one’s self?”

“Regardless of whatever you say, you are a threat.”

“What of it? I am not here to harm others, in fact I came here to make sure your student received proper medical treatment. After a fiasco, I found some guards attacking my partner, if anyone's a threat, it's you and your guards. These kinds of assertions that you make are unbecoming of a ruler, to think the lands where my kingdom stood are now ruled by you,” though his expression was hidden, the disgust in Artorias’s voice was present.

“What are you talking about? Equestria has stood for over two-thousand years, built on barren lands. What you speak of, is a fabrication. The ponies of these lands ended the Age of Chaos, and brought forth helped my sister and I usher in an Age of Sunlight!”

“Oh and what came before the Age of Chaos little one?”

Celestia payed no heed to the insult, “Nothing came before it.”

“Then you know nothing.”

“And what do you know?”

“More than you would ever know. Does the name Age of Fire spur any thoughts?”

“That is nothing but legend a legend. A story fabricated to create hope for those who had lost their wills. So they could believe that somepony would save them from their suffering.”

“All legends bear some truth,” Artorias turned around and walked to the large beast.

“Where do you think you’re going?!” Celestia yelled as she rushed Artorias.

Quick to respond, Artorias met her hammer with his shield and blocked her attack. He pushed back, but before he could recover he saw a shield flying at him. He was tossed back by the attack and readjusted himself to land on his feet. Celestia kept the pressure by once again rushing him, rather than block, Artorias rolled passed her and struck down with the flat of his blade. Celestia slammed into the ground, the air escaping from her lungs. She tried to get up but she felt another force slam her head into the ground.

“I am wasting my time if all you want to do is kill me,” with that said, Artorias took his foot off the mare’s head and ran over to the other creature. Artorias mounted the beast, and the two quickly made their way into the forest.

He got away. Celestia thought as she brought herself back up. She looked over and saw a few of her guards getting up off the ground. A few were already dragging their comrades into the hospital. Indeed, as Artorias had said, none were killed to her relief. Still, the fact that he had bested her in physical combat was disconcerting. What on Equus is he?

Rather than mull over the thought, Celestia looked over to the hospital. Twilight and her friends were in there and were no doubt being treated, I need to make sure she’s okay. She made her way past the guards, giving a concerned look for those who still hadn’t woken. As she passed them, a few of the guards that were up and about saluted her and continued making sure their comrades were fine.

She made her way through the hospital doors and reached the reception desk. The mare on the other side of the desk had her face in a binder of paper, furiously writing. Every so often she would look over to more paperwork, and continue writing. The room was quiet save for the scratching of quill on paper, “Excuse me.”

The mare didn’t even look up to face Celestia, she simply grabbed a form with her magic and placed it before her, “Fill this out for whoever is injured, and place it in the basket. Celestia looked over to the basket where a tall pile of documents rested.

Oh my, so many were injured. Celestia sighed. If I hadn’t sent them and went myself… She returned her focus onto the mare, “I’m not here for that.”

“Then what are you-” the mare looked to up to face the diarch. “Oh my goodness! I am so sorry Your Highness!” once again the mare shoved her face into the binder, this time in an apologetic manner.

“Relax,” the mare looked up at the word. Celestia finally had a chance to get a good look at the mare. She was haggard, her mane was frazzled, and her eyes almost completely bloodshot. “I’m here for Twilight Sparkle and her friends,” Celestia said with a smile.

The nurse blinked and rubbed her eyes, she stared at the princess, “You’re real!”

Celestia could only give a small light hearted laugh at the mare’s words, “Indeed, that I am.”

“Oh… uh… uh…” the nurse was now flipping through the pages of the binder searching for the ponies the princess was here to see. She quickly raised her head, “They’re in Twenty-Two One-B. That would be the second floor, in the hall on your left.”

“Thank you,” Celestia said with a smile. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Pink Cross, your highness.”

“It’s a pleasure, and I was serious about relaxing. Instead I strongly encourage you to take a break and get some sleep. It looks like you’ve been at it all night,” with her advice said, Celestia made her way to the room.

It was only a few minutes walk through the halls, and Celestia found herself at the door of her student, as well as her friends’, room. She gave a knock, “Come in.”

“Princess,” Twilight said as she quickly got up from her bed. The motion was much for her body and she quickly came to regret her decision.

“Don’t push yourself, Twilight,” Celestia’s voice was quiet as to not disturb the others who were sleeping. “How are you?”

“In pain, and tired,” Twilight let her body fall back onto the soft bed. “What happened out there? There are guards all over here, and there was a large flash and… and…”

“Hush Twilight,” Celestia brought a wing up to quiet her student. “Just relax. What happened is that I had sent the guards to handle two creatures that stood outside the hospital. It wasn’t enough, so I stepped in.”

Twilight’s ears pointed up in shock at this, “Did you end fighting him? Are you okay?” Again, Twilight winced at her movements.

“Yes we did, unfortunately, he had gotten away. And as for your concern, just a little battered, nothing I can’t handle,” as per usual with her student she gave a motherly smile.

Another knock came at the door, followed quickly by a mare walking through, “Fluttershy! Are you okay?” the unicorn once again flinched at her movements. Which would be quickly comforted by Celestia’s gentle wings.

“Your highness,” Fluttershy gave a bow. “Hi Twilight,” she moved beside the princess and looked toward her battered friend.

“Don’t ‘Hi’ me! How’d you get away?” this time Celestia held her student down. “Did you get us to the hospital?”

“Oh no… I don’t have the strength to do that Twilight. It was actually Artorias and his friend Sif that brought you two to the hospital.”

“What? No, just no. He was the one who beat us up.”

“Well you guys did kind of beat up his friend…” rather than comfort her friend, Fluttershy decided to be as blunt as possible. Despite her efforts, she shied away behind her mane averting her eyes from Twilight.

“That’s because the wolf attacked the Crusaders.”

Fluttershy was quick to refute Twilight’s claim, “Actually, he didn’t. Sif’s such a sweetie, he would never do that. According to him, he said hello, and then Rainbow, AJ, and Rarity came after the poor pup,” a saddened expression formed.

“A pup? That wolf is already massive, are you telling me he’s going to get bigger?”

“He’s too playful to be full grown Twilight.”

“Fluttershy, you seem to know a lot about Artorias and the ‘wolf’ Sif,” Fluttershy gave a nod at Celestia’s statement. “Would you tell me what you know?”

“Uhm… well there are two others, one of which is still a statue. Apparently they were turned to stone after there uh.... Council?” Fluttershy gave a quick pause. With an affirmative nod, she continued, “Their council turned on them. And… uh… that’s all I know,” Fluttershy pondered for a moment if there was anything else they had discussed on their way back from the Everfree. “I didn’t get that many opportunities to ask them any questions princess.”

“That’s quite alright Fluttershy,” with an exasperated sigh, Celestia resigned to the fact that she maybe in the wrong. She turned to Twilight, “Twilight, if you ever encounter any of them again, do not engage them in combat again. Try talking first, I’m sure it will work,” She gave her student the most gentle hug possible, “I have business to attend to in Canterlot, the media will surely blow this out of proportions. Goodbye Twilight, Fluttershy, and I wish your friends a swift recovery.”

Twilight slammed the library door shut as a crowd of cameras and ponies greeted her as soon as she opened it. For the several days the headline of the Equestrian media surrounded the events that had recently befallen ponyville. Journalists and reporters alike flooded the small town in search of stories, information, some even trying to track down the creatures. Most articles were speculation or interviews, and others seemed extreme to say the least. After she and her friends were discharged from the hospital the onslaught started. It was a mild annoyance at first, but quickly escalated into what was outside.

“Ugh!” Twilight groaned as she fell onto her bed. “Just make it stop!”

“You okay Twi?” Spike chimed in as he was reshelving a couple of books.

“They’ve been at it all day!” she screamed into her pillow. Lifting her head, “Can’t a mare just get some milk? How about a nice stroll through the park?”

“W-Well I-”

“No! She can’t!” once again Twilight’s head collapsed onto her pillow. Twilight’s despair continued on for over an hour. She was brought out of it by and oddly harsh knock from the library door. To her surprise as she cautioned the door, the sound of reporters and or journalists was gone. She contemplated this, Maybe they went home? She looked at a clock that hung on a wall, No… at this time? It’s way too early.

Once again, Twilight thought about what was going on, but another knock at the door caught her attention. Just who is it? It could be one of the girls. No… they’re busy at this time. Not to mention, the press… ugh. The knocking at the door, wasn’t growing impatient, in fact it was as if the pony on the other side knew for a fact that she would answer the door.

Reluctant to open the door, Twilight braved the few steps that was left between herself and the door. She took the door handle in her magic, ready to close it in a moments notice. Taking a deep breath she opened the door, “Hello, welcome to the Golden Oaks Library.”

“I didn’t expect to meet someone so… chipper?” the being passed on the last word. “Oh well regardless, I am here to see the collection that is stored here,” The being offered its hand to Twilight. He was given no response as she continued to stare. “Excuse me, I’m sure I must introduce myself. I am after all the ‘foreign’ one here, I am Pontiff Sullyvan. Feel free to call me Pontiff or Sullyvan, Pontiff is just a title by the way.” Once again Sullyvan offered his hand in a friendly gesture.

With her mouth agape, Twilight took a hoof and placed it upon Pontiff’s hand. Immediately, the tall creature bowed down and placed his forehead upon her hoof. “Uh… Right…” Twilight managed to say, “Why don’t you come on in.”

“Thank you,” Pontiff ducked under the door frame, and made his way inside. Immediately he made his way for the history section of the library. Twilight stood off to the side, erring on the side of caution as he scrolled through book after book.

Is he really reading, or is he just skimming. If I had the ability to read at that pace then-

“Excuse me is this your entire history section?” he said as he closed a book.

“W-wait, you’re already done?”

“Yes, if that’s all do you have a science section?”

“W-well there are a few more history related texts in my room upstairs. I uh… can go get them.”

“Fantastic! I must tell you before you go, this Starswirl seems like an amazing person. So if you have anymore information on him, I would love to get my hands on it.”

“Yea… right,” with her confirmation, Sullyvan began looking through more books. Whilst he did that, Twilight made her way upstairs to both collect the books as well as herself. What in Celestia’s name is going on?! Why did I let one of them in! Why am I helping it?! I need to tell Princess Celestia.

With her mind made up, Twilight quickly summoned a scroll of parchment paper and a quill with ink. She quickly scribbled down what was necessary and would have Spike-

Spike! Oh… Where is he!

No, he’s going to be fine. He’s probably went to Rarity’s while I was wallowing. Twilight looked at the clock that hung above her bedroom door, I better hurry!

Twilight quickly used her magic to gather the books she had mentioned. When she returned she saw Sullyvan staring at a chalkboard. The moment she had made it to the ground floor Sullyvan spoke up, “Pardon my prying -Oh, I also reorganized the books for you. Besides that, a quick question. Is this a spell algorithm for creating a window to see anywhere and anywhen?”

Twilight was taken aback by the question, nopony she had ever met, not even her professors, were able to figure out what she was working on unless she told them. Yet, this creature was able to figure it out from a barebone rough draft. She wasn’t even done writing out the rest!

“Yea!” she said a little louder than she would have liked. “Yea… its a Chrono Inter-Dimensional Window. It should be able to do what you just said.”

“Would?” Pontiff turned around to face the mare.

“I haven’t been able to complete it yet. It’s basically kind of like combining two spells, time manipulation and teleportation,” She walked up to the board and began finishing what she had so far. “The two spells, just don’t want to connect. They have the same variables, but something’s missing.”

Pontiff stared on as she finished her work, only when she was done writing did he speak, “Well what type of magic is it?”

“What type of magic? It’s arcane magic.”

“Define arcane.”

“Nothing really distinguishes arcane magic from any other type of magic, the only real difference is the catalyst used to conjure the spell.”

“Well that’s your problem,” Sulyvan took a piece of chalk from the board. “You see, magic has a funny way of surprising you. One thing can do something else when you wanted it to do another. Algorithms are also funny.”

“How so?” Twilight was curious at Sulyvan's seemingly odd phrasing.

“Well, just because you combine two spells, doesn’t mean it will end up being the same type of magic that they were formed out of. You see, because of that you end up with a whole new plethora of problems. What your people fail to understand is algorithms, I know because I read all your books here.”

“I have all the most advanced spell books known to ponykind, from actual spells to theory. How can we not understand algorithms?”

“Simple, because you don’t know how to use those algorithms. Your ‘way’ of doing things is to get your spell to do everything at once. When you shouldn’t treat it as such, every spell have steps.”

“Of course we know that, we have a bunch of spells that require multi-level casting. Do you-”

“Let me finish. What I am mainly referring to is situational spells, or spells that have many confounding elements to them,” Pontiff then began drawing a diagram. “In statistics there is causation, correlation, and confounding. The first, one thing causes another. The second, the two are affected by the same thing. The third, there are too many variables that contribute to something. You treat every spell as if it were causation.”

“That’s because that’s how spells work, you do something to create another,” she began pacing around the room.

“And that can be true for some spells, but not all. You have to take in extra variables. The spell you’re attempting to do and quantum mechanics don’t get along because you didn’t account for variables.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Twilight gave up on pacing and fell onto her couch that was in front of the chalkboard.

“It’s a simple fix really. The window that you try to create collapses because it’s unable to handle infinite information.”

The words ‘infinite information’ caught Twilight’s attention, “Go on…”

“It’s a simple matter of the ‘Many Worlds Theory’ or other dimensions, I suppose. Your window is unfiltered, if you filtered it to this dimension alone then it should work,” he spoke as if this meant nothing to him, but to Twilight, this meant the world to her.

“You’re telling me, that my spell is peering into other dimensions,”he gave a nod. “And that the reason it's collapsing is because it’s unable to handle the infinite amount of information from an infinite amount of worlds,” the creature gave another affirmative nod. “And all I need to do is somehow filter this world from the rest,” He gave one final nod.

“I could kiss you right now!” Twilight was practically skipping around the room now. Suddenly, to the surprise of Sullyvan, Twilight jumped and gave him a hug. “I’ve been working on this for so long! You have no idea what this means to me.”

“You’re right I don’t,” he said as he patted the back of the lavender unicorn. “By the way.”

“Yea?”

“Are there suppose to be cameras outside the window taking photos of us?”

Twilight jumped away from him, “What?!” She ran over to the door and rushed into the outside world. As Pontiff pointed out, there were cameras looking through her windows and behind those cameras were the reporters and journalists who trapped her inside her home.

“What in the name of Celestia do you ponies think you’re doing?!” Pontiff could tell something had snapped in the mare's head, she was after all on fire.

I’d hate to be them.

Author's Notes:

Writing can be hard, and sometimes easy. It's sometimes hard to visualize what's your head into words. Sometimes you just got to push forward and try to the best of your ability, other times you can be like me and finally put a Wacom tablet to use.

No glowy magic bull! Too much detail and I'm lazy! Appreciate the minimalism with a splash of detail! Just to give you and idea what's going on in my head (before I post this), "Screw it! Im just going to do it!"

Also made a little something for I Burn. Should check that story out if you haven't, I'm not done giving free publicity.

Praise Parry King Artorias!