A Journey Unthought Of

by Hustlin Tom

Chapter 45 REVISED

Celestia awoke with a sudden burst of energy, her eyes whirling around her environment. Craning her head this way and that all she saw was grey air and a rolling fog. Strangely the fog only seemed to cover the ground around her, as it did not touch her in any way or come near her within a five foot radius of where she lay. She didn't remember when or why she lost consciousness, only that she had been crying over Luna-

She stood up in a rush, her wings puffed and ready to flare. Though there were no threats around her in the enshrouding mist, she couldn't help but feel on edge. Where was she? This had to be the work of the Ruined, some sort of prison perhaps. She couldn't be dead. Once again her mind flashed back to what she last remembered; her sister before her, a deep gash in her side, placed there by her own sword. She couldn't really be dead. Neither of them could be. After hundreds of years of life and eternal vitality they couldn't possibly be gone from the earth. Was Equestria truly left without the both of them? Certainly there was still Cadence, but-

No, she thought as she shook her head, I'm not dead, and even if I were Equestria could carry on. Even so, her mind carried her back to the image of the two Ruined, Adam and that Doctor fellow. They goaded her into attacking and like a first class foal she had fallen for it, allowing her sister to become injured. She then came to realize now what might be the possible explanation for why she was here, why she couldn't remember falling asleep. Her sword flared to life again and she whirled around, watchful and aggressive. This was her mind; they had to play by her rules in here.

"Show yourselves, monsters! It doesn't matter where or what I am; I am Princess Celestia, ruler of all equinity. I'm not amused by your parlor tricks. If you want to try and ensnare my mind, face me now!"

"I'm not trying to take your mind from you. If there's one thing I can be accused of, it's the crime of abandoning you," she heard a mare's voice say.

"Who goes there," she called out undaunted, "Face my challenge or get out of my way; my world will be defended."

"On that we can both agree, my bright, little Dawn," the voice continued. A form appeared out of the mist to her right, and she whirled around to confront it. What she saw bewildered her to no end. As the being had exited the fog she saw now more clearly her features, namely her white coat, long horn, and wings. Her blue eyes looked weary, as if she held back a thousand eons and a billion worlds on her shoulders. Her mane and tail were vibrant scarlet, groomed and combed straight, "but are you looking at the right enemy?"

"M-Mother," Celestia exclaimed in shock, "but I thought you were-" Her surprise subsided and her face steeled again as she turned away, "No, this is an illusion. It must be."

The other alicorn nodded solemnly, "In many ways, yes, it is."

Celestia turned once again to look at the facsimile; why would this shade out and out tell her this wasn't real instead of maintaining its ruse? There must be some deeper trick, some hidden strategy.

"The form you've given me in your memories," the alicorn looked at her wings with a glance when she brought them out to in front of her muzzle, "is built on what you thought you knew of me; what you expected me to be. I wasn't all-powerful, I didn't create anything worth mentioning. I gave you the power to stop Discord, but with the same stroke I took everything else from you, even your real memories."

"Get out of my head," Celestia said angrily as she walked closer and swiped at the image of the alicorn, but it vanished in a whisper as she meant to bring the blade down on it. She whirled around to see the image behind her, and she snarled, "How dare you try and use my own mother's image against me. Do you truly have no shame?"

"I am ashamed that I used you," the alicorn said, tears coming to her eyes, "I am ashamed that I lied to you, but more than anything I am ashamed that after it was all said and done I left you and your sister alone to find you way in the world, with a responsibility no parent should force on their child."

"You are not my mother," the Princess yelled, her horn blasting a yellow beam at the projection in her mind.

In the waking world the same occurred, blasting a hole in the cathedral's western wall, masonry obliterating in its path, stain glass melting back into silica around the hole and dripping to the floor. The two guards keeping watch over her quickly retreated back towards the antechamber.

"There's a good chance if she keeps this up she could bring down the whole damn structure," one guard said as they hid around the corner, while the other only offered a nervous nod in reply. The Princess' head reared back up suddenly.

In her mind, Celestia was alarmed to feel something stuck between her teeth reining her in. Her eyes grew wide when she realized it was a bit, and angrily she snarled, whipping her head back and forth. She tried to summon a shockwave to clear whatever in Tartarus was on her back but for some reason she couldn't cast. Instinctively she started bucking her back legs and jumping into the air, her legs slamming down into the floor like steel pistons, smashing through the stonework below. Even as she was bucking she did manage to get her head around just enough to catch a glimpse of her captor, only to see it was a red haired, blue eyed human, clearly a female.

"Get off me Ruined," she bellowed even through the obstruction in her mouth.

She felt the female's legs squeeze tighter, "No! Not until you will listen."

"I can do this forever," the Princess retorted, "I never age, never fatigue, never die. There's not a chance in Tartarus you'll beat this horse to death!"

The guards were just as surprised by her use of a slur as they were when she first fired off that blast of energy. Their articulate, respectable leader, a paragon of restraint was devolving right before their very eyes, and never would a soul believe them.

"You might be able to," the Maiden yelled into her ear even as she gripped her arms around her neck, "but your ponies don't have much longer, and they need you!" She gripped tighter, even as she closed her eyes to hold back further tears. She held her head firmly against Celestia's neck, "I don't want to do this to you, but I need you to listen! Humanity was dead; extinct, and should have been forever! There is no army, or invasion, or whatever lies you've been told. We're all dust! Your ponies walk across our graves every day, except soon they and this entire planet will be gone too, not even dust to show for it!"

At last Celestia finally stopped her bucking, and she stood in place as she realized what the ghost was saying. Even though she wasn't calm, only momentarily still, the Maiden gave the bit some slack, but still she remained on the alicorn's back. The pony craned her head to look at her momentarily with a glare, before she returned her gaze forward, "If that's true, where did the other two come from?"

"A different place," the Maiden replied gently, "Through a crack in space and time; the very same one ready to devour the entire world." An image appeared in front of Celestia's face, one which showed a eerie sphere of clashing white and black colors. With each second it grew noticeably bigger. In the forest below the image into reality they could both see all kinds of animals escaping to safety out of the forest's protective embrace. Among them was a group of ponies, one of whom was clearly-

"Twilight," she quietly exclaimed.

"You know her," the Maiden asked.

The alicorn gave a quick glance behind to the human, her eyes now more soft and her face less stern. She turned back to the image, "I thought she had been taken."

"She was never captured or indoctrinated if that's what you thought," the Maiden said quietly, "I never touched her, and neither did the other two. She may have seen only a little more than you did, but she freely made her choice, and it led her in a much different direction than you ever expected."

Twilight's words from just earlier that day came back to Celestia in that very moment. Do we truly act against an individual for the supposed sins they share with their race because we expect, without evidence, that they will act the same way?

"I know it will be hard, reevaluating everything you have been told about my species," the Maiden said as she drew her leg over and off Celestia so she could step down to the floor. Even as she was speaking the bit in Celestia's mouth completely vanished. The red haired female came around to her face, her eyes still very much the same weary ones she had seen on the illusion of her mother's memory. "Right now I don't even need you to trust me, or a single word I say. I simply need you to be open to your senses, use your own judgment instead of relying on others, and now see for yourself what is out there."

The fog around her lifted, and the human's face disappeared from in front of her. She now saw that she stood in the Cathedral of the Elements still. Seeing an enormous pool of moonlight fall over the floor in front of her, she turned to see a still cooling hole in the western wall, a fresh chunk of stone falling out of the top of the hole and onto the floor with a solid crunch. Alarmed, she now realized that everything she had said and done in the mist had had real world consequences. She noticed out of the corner of her eye two very alarmed guards who were trying to still keep their dignity and their armor presentable, but who definitely were cowering around the corner leading to the site's entrance.

The thought then occurred to her that if she had wanted to the human could certainly have allowed her to continue obliterating the environment around her, even destroying the entire chapel, yet she had kept her from doing so. The human had been protecting the ponies around her even when she had been inadvertently putting them in harm's way. Now a little more willing to take the human's words and council, she reached out into the world with her mind with every sense that she had. Gravity was exactly as it needed to be here, as were the minute changes in heat and air pressure surrounding the city. She closed her eyes and reached out further. She could feel the soft, ambient radiation of magic all around Canterlot, even down to the lake below the city where invisible energy penetrated straight through the ground to bounce off of hidden aquifers below, or tunneling straight into the mantle deeper still. There was something wrong. Some of that energy further to the west was being drawn up from the ground, out of the air, and from every which way it could, into an ever expanding singularity beyond which there was nothing: no mass, no energy, no life or time, just an empty hunger in the space between planes of existence.

"You may have used our plans and the tools I provided you," the Maiden said from the particles of light stuck to her coat, "but you remade this world, despite how thoroughly it was destroyed. You made a new sun, one that should by no rights even exist according to the natural law, using our old weapons."

Ancient memories, many hundreds of years old, appeared in her mind's eye. Cold canyons of ice dropped away below as she and her sister flew in pursuit of Discord, the mad titan. Red, purple, and golden lightning flashed all around as they waged war against the Lord of Chaos. When he was at last sealed, the Elements of Creation traced circular patterns around them before a gigantic explosion of life and light emanated out of them. Trees, grass, and flowers spontaneously germinated out of the diseased, scourged soil. Deep in space she had taken several capsules and in an instant caused them to collide together, sparking an enormous but silent explosion. Her magic had contained, guided, and polarized it. A steady stream of hydrogen was injected into it from a pocket dimension, all of it compressed into a tight gravity well to maintain the warm, life giving reaction for all growing things beyond its reach.

"What is all this," she murmured, "And why only now is it appearing?"

"You've had longer to forget," the Maiden said, her light flashing in time with her voice, "Though your sister didn't immediately recall any of this either. Dusk's memories are much younger because of her...slumber."

She winced a bit at that. It made sense that her memories were perhaps a thousand years younger because of the banishment, but that still left everything else, "Why not before that? Before Discord?"

"Your mind couldn't take the strain of the transformation to adulthood, much less that of a winged unicorn." The Maiden paused, and then quietly replied, "Perhaps if we'd had more time things would have been different. It didn't make a difference then whether you remained Dawn or not; Discord had already begun to wipe out the last remnants of humanity, and he would move on to torment others after us. You stopped him, and that was all that mattered. I can tell you more later, but right now there is no time left to waste. Discord's fall was already decided by history, but this moment still hangs in the balance. We've already delayed for far too long. You need to go!"

The Princess gave a glance to the guards who at first flinched when she looked their way. She gave them a soft, embarrassed declaration of "Sorry," before she unfurled her wings and took flight through the very hole she had made in the cathedral wall.

The two guards quietly emerged from around the corner after she had left. One pawed the floor with his hoof slightly, and then looked to his fellow, "What do we say to the commander?"

After a long pause to think, the second replied, "I think we do what any guardspony would do when faced with a...situation like this."

"Say nothing and take it to the grave," the first guard said.

"Aye. That will do."

Comments

[Hustlin Tom]

And the last dump is nearly complete! I've got two more chapters ready to publish and an epilogue that I'm still working on. Once the epilogue is done this rewrite will finally be done. After that, well I need a small break. Writing has forced out all my other hobbies a lot, and having a job has certainly complicated things even more so, what with earning a living and expecting me to be places during certain times doing things.

The question I'm sure no one is asking is "Hey Tom! What are you going to do with the old version of AJUO?" Well, I'm doing what is both the easy and the humbling thing: I'm leaving it right here, for everyone to see, present typos and all, and here's why. Five long years ago, almost to the day, I started typing up a story as a framing device for a thought experiment of how I thought an ordinary human might react to being placed in contact with a group of intelligent non-simian lifeforms. Things have certainly changed; I'm more confident, more positive, and a more skilled writer than I was back then (which should put me around the level of a half-drunk creative writing freshman now.) So if you want, you can compare and contrast, but I'll be blazing new trails and ideas, specifically an Equestria Girls *cough* reimagining. No ETA on when I'll start uploading that, but I need to start by nailing the story down more thoroughly. After that, for sure AJUO 3, and maybe a story or two after that.

[Luckyfanisaac]

I left you and your sister alone to find your way in the world,