//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: Seraphim 
// by Salacar 
//------------------------------//





Seraphim


Chapter 3

 
 
We spent a few more minutes in the cave, myself recovering from the fatigue and cold after sleeping on hard rock for the better part of a night, while Crystal Heart was bouncing around with an energy I very much envied her. Her joy of finding a new friend was rather infectious, and I couldn’t help but feel happiness myself, despite my earlier experiences and current predicament.
 
With a final stretch of my sore back I started heading out the cave opening, the excited filly following me with a constant smile on her face. As we stepped into the clear morning air, the early day sun banishing the uncomfortable cold from my body, I noticed something I hadn’t the day before.

The world was absolutely beautiful, I guessed that it was currently early spring, the sun’s glow was warm and soothing in the cold morning air, the recently bloomed trees spreading out in every direction, birds chirping could be clearly heard and there were green fields stretching out from the edges of the forest. Most of all though I noticed something I hadn’t been able to last night, the colours, they were so very vivid, as if some mystical force had increased the intensity of it all.
 
It was breathtaking to say the least; even Elysium could only reach this level of beauty on a good day, and without noticing my mouth spread into a small smile. I was brought out of my reverie by the sound of a giggling unicorn at my side, shifting my head to look down at her with a somewhat sheepish grin.
 
“You look like you’ve never seen trees before,” for a moment her smile faltered as a realisation hit her, gazing up at me with slight sadness in her voice. “Oh no, don’t they have trees where you’re from?”
 
I couldn’t contain a chuckle, her question and worry was quite endearing, if not a tad silly. “Don’t worry Crystal Heart; there are indeed trees in Elysium, I’ve just never seen any quite so beautiful before,” I said, doing my best to dispel any worries that she might have upset me. “Actually, do you think you could tell me something about your world? I’d like to know more if I’ll be staying here for a while.”
 
This seemed to brighten her up, and with great joy she started telling me everything she knew about the subject, most of which was apparently taught to her by her mother. It turned out that the country we were in was called Equestria, she wasn’t sure what the world was called, but she did name a couple of the surrounding lands too. To the north of Equestria were two larger stretches of land, a mountainous area known simply as the Gryphon Kingdoms, in which Griffins apparently lived, and the Badlands which was a wasteland of barren rock and sand. To the south of Equestria was a large ocean, and on the other side of it a country called Zebrica, she knew that zebras lived there, but nothing much else.

In the western part of Equestria was the Mild West, and beyond that she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know about the lands east from Equestria, but her mother had told her that it was primarily dragon country. She also told me about the Royal Sisters Celestia and Luna, a pair of very powerful winged unicorns who apparently ruled Equestria as a diarchy, and from what she told me they also raised the Sun and Moon every day and night. The concept wasn’t something I had encountered before, I knew of deities which were revered as the sun or moon on individual planes, but not for a creature to actually move a celestial body like these two supposedly did.
 
I came up with two possibilities regarding the Royal Sisters, the first being that this planet was the center of their celestial system, with the sun and moon moving around it instead of the planet moving around the sun as in a common solar system. This would mean that other planets probably didn’t exist, with the sun, moon and stars being sufficiently different from the celestial bodies I was familiar with to allow a pair of powerful creatures to manipulate them in a day/night cycle. The other possibility was that the standard solar system model still applied, which would make the Royal Sisters the most powerful beings I had ever heard of, literal Goddesses in every sense of the word.
Suffice to say, I decided that the first option was more likely.
 
Crystal ended her speech with her head held high in pride, obviously finding great pleasure in showing me, the clueless alien, exactly how much she knew.
 
“Thank you Crystal, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I gave her a pat on the head as thanks, the little filly beaming at me in response, and the cold shiver returned for a second. “I suppose we should head out. Not sure about you, but I’d rather not spend another night in a cave.”
 
I was just about to look for a path down the cliff-side when I remembered my broken arm, I wasn’t entirely sure, but I would guess that travelling with it in its current state was a bad idea. “Actually, Crystal, do you think you could help me with my arm? I’m probably going to need a sling for it.”
 
What followed was an attempt at creating a sling for my arm using another piece of ripped off cloth from my pants, I say attempt because I had never had to care for a broken bone, and Crystal hadn’t actually ever seen an arm before. In the end, with great help from Crystal’s unicorn magic, we managed to make a somewhat reliable sling for the broken limb, I’m sure it wasn’t perfect, but at least it would keep it somewhat steady.
 
After making sure that the cloth sling would hold we turned our attention back to the mountain-side on which we were residing. It wasn’t entirely steep, but trying to climb down it with hoofs wouldn’t be easy, saying nothing of trying to do it with just one hand.

While I was pondering our predicament Crystal turned to me, and nudged me with her muzzle in order to get my attention.
 
“Didn’t you have wings before?” she asked me questioningly. “Couldn’t you just fly us down?”
 
I took me a moment to comprehend what she had just said, after which I promptly put my hand to my face in excellent facepalm. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t even considered using my wings; they were a natural part of me after all.
With a sigh at my own stupidity I released the seal on my wings, spreading them out from my back in a single motion.
 
And instantly regretting that I had.
 
Pain ran up my back like a surge of lightning, causing me to wince and involuntarily fall to my knee. Earlier they had felt like they were made of lead, now they felt like… well I’m not sure exactly, something heavier than lead at least. I wasn’t sure what was causing it, but if I had to wager a guess I’d say that it had something to do with trying to fly last night, apparently the surge of strength and exertion had left them damaged somehow.
 
“Lysander! Are you alright?” Crystal was looking at me with worried eyes, clearly upset at having made me bring out my wings. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t want you to get hurt!”
 
With another flinch of pain I sealed my wings again; gasping slightly for breath as I did my best to smile at her in reassurance.
 
“I’m fine Crystal, you didn’t know that it would happen and I would probably have tried it anyway at some point. It was for the best I discovered this now rather than later.”
 
After a minute of gathering my wits we went back to our current obstacle. With wings out of the question the only remaining option was to climb, something I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be able to accomplish well, considering I had never had to do it before, having flight and all.

I scooped up the small unicorn and placed her on my left shoulder, telling her to hold on as securely as she could, a few moments later she nodded and told me she was ready. What followed was almost twenty minutes of me clumsily moving down a somewhat steep mountain-side, the entire experience made even more hazardous by me only having one functioning arm, and a still wounded leg.
 
Covered in sweat and dirt I finally made it close to the ground, Crystal giving me words of encouragement the entire way. Just as I entered the last stretch my grip found a loose stone, causing me to give off a surprised yell as we plummeted the remaining ten feet to the ground. I just barely had time to grab Crystal and bring her to my chest before my back hit hard earth with a loud thud, followed by a yelp of pain from me. I felt the pain shoot through me, my breathing was heavy and painful, and I just hoped that I hadn’t damaged anything else in my now annoyingly frail body.
 
Crystal’s worried visage came into view as I lay there on my back, nuzzling me gently as if to make the pain go away. I simply responded by running my hand reassuringly through her mane and smiling at her.
 
“I’m okay, just give me a minute to catch my breath, alright?” She nodded in response, but kept lying on my chest in order to comfort me. It didn’t exactly make it easier to breathe, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to jump off.
 
A few minutes later most of the pain had subsided, the pressure in my chest replaced by the comforting warmth of the filly’s steadily breathing form. I’ll admit that I had to gather a lot of willpower before I was able to tell her to jump off, giving her another pat on the head as thanks.
 
Another few seconds and I was on my feet again, my aching body complaining quite harshly at my action. After making sure that I hadn’t damaged anything else we set off into the forest, using the sun’s position and Crystal’s knowledge to point us towards north, and hopefully Crystal’s home.
 
We walked for a few hours through the forest, it was rather well illuminated and didn’t have quite the same oppressive feeling it had last night. From what Crystal told me most woodland predators in Equestria were nocturnal, meaning that we’d be mostly safe if we just travelled during the day and found somewhere to sleep before dark. She informed me, once again in that lecturing voice of hers, that the closest village in that direction was just a few hours north from the forest, established around an older quarry where most of the male population worked.
 
Just as she was explaining why mainly earth ponies, the name they used for the ‘regular’ ponies, were the primary workforce, my stomach made a rather loud growling noise. I stopped in my tracks, looking at my stomach with no small amount of confusion.
 
“Oh, are you hungry?” Crystal said as she picked up on the sound of my stomach.
 
“Hungry? I’m not sure.” So that’s what it was, hunger. I had never experienced it before, Ascended were able to gather what nutrients they needed from the aether, eating food only for the taste and the extra energy it gave. “I suppose I am, do you know if there’s any food to be found in here?”
 
She looked unsure for a second before bringing her hoof to her chin in silent contemplation, obviously thinking very hard about it. After a while she nodded and told me what she knew about food you could find in forests, she didn’t know a whole lot about it but we decided to try our luck at it none the less. I was fairly certain that we’d die if we didn’t eat anything; at the very least I wasn’t very eager to find out.
 
At that point we started wandering the forest, keeping an eye out for anything edible on the way. Another half an hour or so later my stomach was practically killing me, but we had managed to gather up a fair number of berries and wild apples. We had also come across several very colourful fruits, but something told me to avoid ingesting anything too colourful like those.
 
During our search we had also managed to find a pond of sorts, a natural spring as it turned out. With a source of water and a decent amount of food we started eating, as we did I told her more about myself and where I was from, though I did leave out a few things, such as the Fiendish invasion, and how I was probably the last of my kind.
 
I told her about the Ascended Order, how we were made up of sentient beings from various species granted immortality and power after proving ourselves in our mortal lives. Then I told her of the various groups within the Order, the Seraphim Council which was our ruling body, made up of the Seraphim, or Seraph in singular, the strongest and wisest Ascended, the Caretakers who took care of nurturing souls for rebirth, the Pathfinders who travelled the planes as explorers and diplomats, the Scholars who dealt with research and knowledge, and the Legion which was split into two groups, the Guardians who were the protectors of Elysium, and the Solars, great warriors who fought against evil throughout the Planes.
 
As I finished I could tell that she didn’t entirely believe me, it was quite a bit to take in after all, and I honestly didn’t blame her for her disbelief. I did notice that she didn’t eat all that much, then again I had no way of knowing exactly how much ponies ate, especially not when it came to unicorn fillies.
 
“So, if you were really immortal, how old are you?” She asked, her face still showing that she didn’t quite believe my story.
 
The question was rather simple, but as I thought about it I wasn’t actually sure about the answer, it’s not like Ascended celebrated birthdays, so I had never really kept count.
 
“I really couldn’t tell you, I recall that my mortal life ended in a battle somewhere, and I was probably around thirty at the time.” I wracked my memory, trying to come up with some indication of exactly how many years it had been since then. “I don’t think I’ve passed a thousand, but I’m at least a few centuries old.”
 
Crystal looked somewhat unimpressed as I turned my gaze back to her. “That’s not all that old; I heard that the princesses are really really old, like several thousand years old. And there’s probably Spirits or dragons close to that age too.” She stated matter-of-factly, once more in her lecturing tone, as if she was schooling a student.
 
“I’m actually happy that I’m not that old,” I said with a smile as I playfully rustled her mane. “From my experiences beings that old tend to be very grumpy.”
 
The unicorn filly giggled and rolled to the side to get out of my reach, sticking her tongue out at me in challenge. Then she sniffed the air and scrunched up her nose, waving her hoof in front of her face as if to ward off some foul smell.
 
“Eeeww, you really smell, I think you need a bath.”
 
I blinked a few times before turning my attention to my body odour, picking up the rather strong scent of sweat, blood and dirt. She was right, I definitely didn’t smell all that good.

Glancing to the small spring we sat at, I decided that it was probably a good idea to get cleaned up, and especially take a look at my wounded leg. With a shrug I proceeded to remove my dirty white tunic, though I did require a fair bit of help from Crystal’s magic. Unicorns apparently having telekinesis at will still impressed me greatly, I could imagine that it made pony life much easier.

Opting to keep my pants-turned-shorts on I turned my attention to the cloth bandage on my leg, carefully removing it with a gratuitous helping of unicorn magic. The wound was still there, though a light scabbing had already started covering most of it, and once more I was reminded of my own mortality, the revelation doing nothing to ease my mind.
 
Following a very unsuccessful attempt at coming to terms with my current condition I decided to slip into the spring pond, the cool water bringing instant comfort to my battered and bruised body. It felt absolutely amazing, as if all my worries just seeped out of me into the clear water, in all of my long existence I had never felt as alive as I did in that moment.
 
Then Crystal Heart happened.
 
One moment I was enjoying the bath, the entire world closed off from my senses, and that was a really bad mistake. The next thing I knew something small and furry collided with the back of my head with a loud ‘weeee’, sending me sprawling into the pond head first with a yelp of surprise.
 
‘So much for peace of mind…’