Acheron's Call: Chronicles of a God

by Talon19912

Chapter 5: Ascension and the Elemental Stars

Acheron’s Call
Chapter 5: Ascension and the Elemental Stars
Location: Everfree, Inside City, two hours after the battle of Everfree.

Ascension, the greatest trial a life form can go through. It’s not limited to any race in particular, a diamond dog for instance, once it undergoes ascension, their intelligence is boosted exponentially, that’s where alpha diamond dogs come from. In the dragon family, they ascend into elder wyrms, the dragon leaders. Ponies, in particular pegasi and unicorns, once they ascend, will on incredibly rare occasions ascend into Alicorns. Most times though it comes only with a significant boost in the ability where most of their potential lies. Such as a Unicorn who has amazing magical power, or a Pegasus who has an incredible increase in their speed, there are even accounts of earth ponies gaining incredible strength, or a one in a billion ability to break the laws of the universe, that happened only once, a very long time ago. Ascending into an Alicorn happens only when Alicorn blood, however miniscule is present in a family’s ancestry.

Ascension is a rare and exciting event for an outsider to witness, but for the one undergoing natural ascension it is commonly an excruciating experience, the physical pain is only intensified by the intense sickness that come with it. Ascension sickness as it is commonly called, is an affliction in which the body’s natural defenses are dramatically weakened while their body undergoes a physical change of some sort. After the physical change, the newly ascended will be incredibly sick for days afterward while their body’s immune system plays catch up. However after ascension an individual becomes incredibly robust, able to weather all but the most life threatening diseases and even then they’ll at worse experience only flu like symptoms, their strength is doubled, their magic, if any, is also doubled, or even tripled and, with proper tutelage, will only grow stronger, an individual’s memory is enhanced as well, they’ll be able to remember almost anything that happens after their ascension in perfect detail, couple that with the fact that it at the very least doubles your lifespan and it suddenly seems like a blessing, However the downside to natural ascension is that it has a sixty percent fatality rate amongst unicorns, forty percent rate amongst pegasi, and an eighty percent rate amongst earth ponies.

Artificial ascension is forced ascension through use of a special spell that mimics natural ascension, except it has none of the benefits or the drawbacks of natural ascension.

Of course it wasn’t artificial ascension that young Celestia was going through. Talon stood at the foot of the bed, his horn alight in concentration as he used a healing spell to ease the pain Celestia was feeling.

Zoe sat at one side of the bed using a cloth damp with cold water and a special mixture of herbs to help ease the fever that her daughter was experiencing. One would only have to look at her face to see the worry she was feeling.

Thanatos was sitting on the other side of the bed anxiously watching over his eldest daughter. As the god of death he had no healing skills, so all he could do was watch and wait as Talon and Zoe did their work.

There is no known cure for Ascension sickness; the only thing you can do is try to make the patient as comfortable as possible as the affliction runs its course.

+++++Celestia+++++

Celestia had been in crippling pain for she didn’t know how long she was stuck in the embrace of the intense fever or pain she had been feeling. So when she finally woke up it was only natural that she didn’t know where she was. She only knew she was in a bed in a room with a white brick wall.

Her vision was blurry and everything around her was muted, she could vaguely hear someone say “She’s waking up,” but that was it. Her body felt like lead as she struggled to sit up. But she felt a pair of hooves gently push her back onto the bed. All she saw was a white and gold blur.
“Don’t try to move right now, Celestia,” a hauntingly familiar voice said. “You need to rest; you are still weak from your ascension,” the clearly female voice said.

“How is she Zoe,” an unfamiliar voice said. This time a white and silver blur came into her field of vision.

“It seems the worst has passed, my lord,” the female said. “She awake as you can see but she’s unfocused,”

“Yeah, that’s known to happen to newly ascended Alicorns,” the male voice said. “The power she’s radiating is astounding,” he said. “It’s surprising given how young she is,”

“Is it possible Luna will go through the same thing” the female asked.

There was a slight pause. “It’s almost a guarantee,” The male replied. “I did some ‘research’ a while back out of curiosity on my part, and found something interesting about your family tree,” he said.

“And what did you find?” the female asked, the curiosity in her voice was obvious.
“Did you know that two of you ancestors were Alicorns?” the male asked.

Celestia blinked rapidly. She was related to an Alicorn?

“Really?” the female asked.

“Yeah surprised me too, and you should know that isn’t an easy thing to do,” the male replied.

By this time Celestia had already put two and two together about who was speaking in the room. The name Zoe had already given away the identity of one and she was relieved about it, extremely so. The other she had to guess but, she believed it to be that Talon pony her father talked about.

Her vision began to clear and she looked around. She notices two white ponies much larger than an average pony. One was a mare, she recognized her as her mother even if she didn’t physically look much like her any more. The other was a stallion, a little larger than her mother.

The stallion notices her staring at him and looks towards her with his sapphire blue eyes. Celestia immediately tensed as she stared into his eyes. That stare of his absolutely radiated power, as she looked deeper she began to feel a familiar presence in her mind start to react. A presence she hadn’t felt since before coming to Everfree with Luna. Suddenly warmth began to fill her body, and then she felt it, a sudden burst of power so strong, it was beyond anything she had ever felt in her life.

Then she began to feel another presence, this time from the outside. She then felt a power that dwarfed her own by… well by a lot. She searched for the source of the power only to realize the stallion in front of her was the source of the power in front of her, only the power was almost identical to hers, it was cool like a summer breeze, but it was as hard as tempered steel. Something like that could only be achieved by many years of hard training and discipline. Most average ponies will never live long enough to demonstrate that kind of control over their own power. She felt something else though, it was hard to describe. She knew it was the nature of his power, but something was familiar about it, she then realized what it was. This power was the same as her own. His eyes though showed more than his power, but also allowed a glimpse into his soul. What she saw enchanted her but also frightened her greatly. In his eyes he held a deep love of life and the creation of it, but he also held a deep pain, far deeper than anything Celestia had ever experienced. She swore she could feel that pain herself. But then a Vision appeared before her, a vast expanse of space billions of stars shining in the night sky, then she was moving, flying through space towards one star in particular, as the star came closer the realized what she thought was a star was actually another planet, as she entered the atmosphere and touched the surface, she was greeted by an amazing sight. In front of her was a castle made of white crystal that shone in the light of a nearby white dwarf star, it was amazing, the crystals acted as prisms to create a rainbow of colors which then appeared in the sky above creating an aurora, But inside the castle was another source of light, Celestia walked the arch over a lowered draw bridge, following the source of the light. She quickly found herself in a throne room of some sort. In the center of the room floated a ball of white light centered in the middle of three golden rings that encased and slowly revolved around it. On the rings were runes that glowed with rainbow light. Celestia slowly approached the light, feeling drawn to it, she reached out a hoof to touch it, and then suddenly everything stopped. There was a flash of light then she found herself back in the room with her mother and the stallion.

+++++Talon+++++
Talon had looked at Celestia and watched as her eyes clouded over. He idly wondered what she would see in his eyes, after all eyes are often called a window to the soul.

“Milord what’s happening,” Zoe asked as she looked at Celestia.

“Your daughter has decided to look into my soul, kind of surprising really,” Talon replied.

“Is it dangerous?” Zoe asked.

“Not really, most of what you experience will be emotional, but sometimes you are greeted with visions,” he said.

“Of what?” Zoe asked.

“It depends on the pony,” Talon replied simply.

Suddenly Celestia shook her head and her eyes cleared.

“I take it you saw something,” Talon said. Celestia nodded.

“What did you see?” Talon asked, though he had a good hunch on what it was. Celestia slowly explained everything the experienced in the vision.

“I see,” Talon said. He looked at Celestia who flinched under his gaze. “You saw something that nobody beyond Acheron has seen in a million years,”

“What was it she saw,” Zoe asked.

“Aurora, the Star of Light, origin of all light magic,” Talon said. “I always thought it was destroyed long time ago,”

“Light magic?” Celestia asked.

“Yes, call it what you wish, holy magic, divine magic, celestial magic, healing magic, or even light elemental magic. They are all just a part of light magic. Celestia if you saw that in a vision, it means you are highly in tune with light magic, possibly on par with Acheron himself, I myself am in tune with light magic, however I specialize in Elemental and Divine Light Magic I also dabble in Healing Magic. Acheron is a master of Light Magic in all its glory.”

“Aurora is only one of the Twin Stars, the other is Noctus, the Star of Darkness, which governs, curses, hexes, death magic, celestial magic, and dark elemental magic, together they rule over the five Elemental Stars, Kazes, the wind star, Pyrus, the fire star, Terrus, the earth star, Takius, the water star, and Surgex, the lightning star,” Talon explained. “Every star governs a specific race; sometimes a single star will govern multiple races, or a single race will be governed my multiple stars,” Talon explained. “Sorry about that, but as an Alicorn you need to be aware of this, Alicorns are the only race besides dragons to be governed by all the stars, and it will show in our manes, once we master our specialization, our manes will turn ethereal and reflect our specialization, an example is that in my unsealed form my mage shines with silver light, reflecting my mastery over Light Elemental Magic, yours will reflect your specialization eventually as well,” Talon explained.

“Will you be teaching me?” Celestia asked.

Talon looked at her “Either myself or your mother, since she is governed by Aurora as well,” he said.

“What about my father,” Celestia asked.

“Unfortunately, your father is governed by Noctus and won’t be able to teach you much of anything really,” Talon replied. “But listen, we’ll talk about this later, you need your rest, and I have a few errands to run around the city tomorrow, so rest up and the day after we’ll discuss this, alright,” Talon said.

Celestia yawned and nodded “Alright,” she said. Within moments she was asleep.

“If it’s alright with you I’ll stay with my daughter, for now,” Zoe said.

“That’s fine,” Talon replied and walked out the door.

Author's Note:

Here we go the obligatory information chapter. Some people may be asking why I dumped all that information on them in this chapter. The answer is, that I felt it was necessary for building the world that I'm trying to portray. There is also a lot of foreshadowing in this chapter if you care to take a look. The Elemental Stars act as my medium for explaining the nature of magic in this particular version of Equestria. Like I said in a comment i wrote, this is an Alternate Universe, so canon events may or may not effect how this story ends up.