So, destiny flows like a river · 4:56pm Jun 16th, 2014
It is a concept I've played with in my head for a long, long time, and something I so desperately wanted to explore as I wrote. What if a pony failed to meet his or her destiny? What if they had a grand future, something great, but they fell to corruption, or complacency, or temptation or any number of things anybody could fall to in life. So, this sense of destiny is passed along to their heirs, and similar events formed around all those involved in this inherited destiny. And then the next in line also fails, so it is passed along to their children, and so on, and so on.
Each generation lives under the shadow of what their ancestor failed to do. In the universe in which The Chase happens in, Princess Platinum and King Sombra were supposed to be good ponies. Great ponies. Princess Platinum helped to found a new nation based upon the ideals of friendship, mutual trust, and tribal unity. King Sombra was supposed to be the great guardian of his empire. Both of them clearly failed. Sombra failed to deliver his empire from shadow, and became a tyrant. A terrible tyrant. He was so horrible that, rather than face losing, he sealed off his whole empire and banished it and himself for 1000 years, hoping to do better in round two. That's pretty evil.
Both of them failed though. Princess Platinum allowed a trace of greed to remain within her, and left allowances that gave her heirs the upper hoof in the new government. She wanted to be a good provider, she had good intentions, she meant well, but her children were awful ponies. I mean, really awful. The foals she had with Sombra were just really awful ponies that couldn't be trusted. They abused these allowances, which were small at first, but grew over time and each generation became more powerful than the last. House Avarice became an empire in and of itself, an empire within an empire, a festering boil on the otherwise pure flesh of Equestria.
So, her awful children inherited their father's failed destiny, and one by one, much like their father, their grandfather, and their great great grandfather, they failed to meet this destiny and slipped further and further into the darkness and shadow. In this family history, there were a statistically odd number of horn losses, and many deaths due to this fact. Darkness and oppression continued, House Avarice so thoroughly subduing their enemies. In no time at all they formed a penal colony for their deposed foes, and oppressed them cruelly. The dark shadow continued to grow, but none of the scions of the Platinum line rose up out of the darkness, they succumbed to it one by one, failing their inherited destiny, becoming tyrants, adding more darkness to the world rather than delivering the world from darkness.
Finally, a thousand years later, so many sins since compounded, the long heavy chain of destiny finally shackles yet another scion of the Platinum line, ready to pull him down into shadow like so many others before him. It is fearsome chain, each failure adding another link, adding more weight, more to deal with as each failure comes with it a price to be paid. And the chain is long. For every ancestor that has failed, the chain has grown, and it has been a thousand years.
Unlike the others before him, he loves. It is what makes him different. And he will not go quietly. As the chain pulls on him, he pulls back. Deep within the darkness, as something tugs upon the chain, an ancient lurking shadow awakens, sensing something might finally break the chain and free them all. He struggles within his dark prison, hoping to find the strength to offer a boon to the one who would finally break the chain that connects them. One is bound to the beginning, the other to the end.
The chain must be broken and the shadows must be faced.
Even after ten centuries of failure, redemption is still possible for the two connected by the chain.
I almost thought you were alluding to the Suicide Solutions when I started to read this as Luna is doing what she can to stop the destinies from being lost like that. Though technically there he was destined to commit suicide to find his destiny which really can hurt your head if you over-think it unless you are Pinkie Pie.
Oh, this is going to be awesome. I almost wonder if a certain stallion will earn wings for this, but it's probably not that kind of destiny.
2211123
Already stated, no alicorn Bucky.
But he will figure out how to ascend. He will walk away.
I like it!