Not long after the figure of Verlax vanished from beyond the swirling blizzard, the shadows re-coalesced. Only now, they took on new shapes and forms before Rainbow Dash. She blinked, her ruby eyes trailing after chaotic vortexes, nebulae, and other cosmic configurations. As the shadows spread apart, a singular shape—narrow and cylindrical—floated freely amidst the pale white frost.
“We live on a piece of the whole,” chanted Verlax's voice. “Either by malice or manifest destiny, it was removed from the rest by those who would be the progenitors of this world's ailing civilizations.”
Before Rainbow Dash, a sliver of the gigantic cylinder broke off, casting itself deep into the ethereal void.
“Whether it was the only part of Urohringr that was lost to the Sundering, or one of many several pieces that were cast adrift into the universe, I do not know. The beacons' flame beneath Rohbredden have only taught me so much, and such information was gathered through sheer manipulation, courtesy of chaotic stress. Perhaps—in time—these flames will teach you more than I've come to know. But that is not my place to discover, now, is it?”
The singular sliver enlarged, turning into a shadowy horizon. Zooming in, Rainbow bore witness to the silhouettes of trees, rivers, valleys, and mountains. Atop one such peak, a brood of five enormous dragons sat, their winged shapes blotting the sky.
“My sisters and I were born here, and all we knew was the chaos and emptiness that surrounded this plane. The Sundering took place shortly before our hatching, and it is my firm believe that we were willed into being because of it. Where there is confusion, order blossoms like a candle, and our five hearts burned brightest amidst the endless twilight. Oh, there were other beings who struggled to live on this derelict speck of purpose, but we paid them very little heed. In fact, it wasn't until the alicorns chanced upon the landscape that any being of any importance sought to eke a semblance of civilization out of the threadbare castaways clinging to this metal.”
Equine shadows descended upon the plane. One by one, the dragon shapes split up, abandoning the silhouetted mountaintops.
“Some of us took interest in what the alicorns had to offer. Sturke, in particular, became fast friends with the hoofed aliens. She helped the alicorns nurse the equine population into a place of dominance, as they most closely resembled the beings who had stumbled upon us from afar. While Sturke shared her innate knowledge on temperature and weather, Nevlamas communed through her mastery of magics. If it weren't for the tools of the trade that my younger sisters shared, ponykind would not even remotely exist as it does today. Axan, in the meantime, kept her distance. She talked with the alicorns on occasion, but she was always somewhat distrustful of them, and to this day I do not blame her. The Divine of Flame felt most comfortable living in solitude, nurturing her broods and protecting her hoard. Endrax, however, being the oldest, wisest, and most speculative of us, could not sit so idly in one place while the effects of the Sundering continued to unfold. She was always a Divine of tomorrow. She thought in the future, dreamt in future. She knew every sentence before she finished it, and could guess the start of a soul's next phrase before it was uttered. Her eyes were always on the big picture. So, while the alicorns were concerned with nurturing the birth of this lonesome plane, she was always focused on its death. Thus, in a spirit of lonesome ambition, she sought a way to usher in the inevitable hospice.”
One shadow broke from the rest, gliding towards the furthest edge of the horizon, dwindling into darkness.
“Only an age before, the alicorns had constructed a magnificent sarcophagus to house the source of the power that had brought them here. The Midnight Armory—as I'm sure the princesses still call it to this day—was placed on the side of the world that their good graces could not protect through sheer presence, since their numbers were few. The alicorns chose to focus their power on one side of the plane, under the belief that through imminent concentration they could establish a harmonic civilization that would never perish. It was their presumption that positioning the Midnight Armory on the opposite plane would allow a form of counterbalance to this piece of Urohringr. My oldest sister, Endrax, did not share their confidence. She sought to reach the center of the dark side, to guard the Armory on her own. For centuries... millennia... the rest of us lived in her absence. Sturke and Nevlamas had full faith in Endrax's ability to uphold the alicorns' vision. Axan, on the other hand, did not pretend to care. But I?”
At last, a final shadow took wing, its draconian shape piercing the heavens.
“I used to be the most anxious member of our brood, a middle child with no clear distinction on where my loyalties lied. Ultimately, it was my love for my siblings that drove me to do what I did next. I flew after Endrax... but I did not find her. For years and years, I scoured the dark hellscapes of the twilight world, the sunless canyons and the lifeless ravines. I flew over hundreds of thousands of miles of blight and desolation. I glided along those frigid winds for so long that I witnessed the spread of life across the furthest edges—threadbare tundra, shambling beasts, and listless haunts—all of the hapless creatures who made it over death's edge through sheer panic or desperation. And amidst all of the forsaken denizens on the edge of the unknown, I could not discover my beloved Endrax.”
The swirling blizzard around Rainbow Dash turned dark, and only a faint gray outline of dragon wings could be seen against the interminable blackness. The mare watched as the shape streaked upward, outward, further into the void.
“So, I sought truth from beyond. I flew straight into the void. Perhaps years of flying beneath the twilight had tempted me to make such a fortuitous leap. Or, quite possibly, I had secretly given up hope on ever finding Endrax, and this act was my subconscious surrender to cosmic desolation. Whatever the case, I knew that I couldn't find any truth on the lonely island that was this plane, so there had to have been something encompassing, a reality that existed on a higher plane, something that I had been blind to for all my eons of existence. I flew high and far, Austraeoh. Further than you've flown or ever will... past the clouds... beyond the atmosphere... surpassing the orbit of the two Sentinels still locked with this piece of Urohringr.”
The gray outline shuddered and stalled. Its fragmented wings hung limply in place, and soon the dragon was floating like a lifeless mass across the ether.
“I flew until I no longer had any breath to fuel my muscles further. That was precisely when I reached the edge, the furthest reach of this plane's gravity. The bitter cold blight of that nothingness consumed me... infested me. I wasn't always the Divine of Frost, my little pony. Some things in life are earned, like knowledge... and curses. More often than naught, they are both one in the same.”
A pair of blue eyeslits suddenly opened in the center of the gray outline's cranium.
“Exposed there to unbridled nothinginess, I was cursed with the lucid realization that chaos will always defeat harmony... but it will never destroy it. We live in a linear world, subject to endless decay, where all warmth and matter eventually surrenders to annihilation and cold. To delay the end is inevitable... but that does not mean that we musn't delay it anyways. Harmony will never disappear completely. It will be diminished, yes, but tearing something into halves from here to eternity will only turn it into smaller parts—and those infinitesimal parts, however unsettling and inert they may appear—will still be something far greater, warmer, and more delicious than nothing.”
The blizzard turned pale again. Rainbow watched as a pair of flapping leather wings carried the shadow—much thinner and more frail—back down to the plane.
“I came back from that journey a changed soul. And although I would not discover the fate of Endrax until much, much later—it no longer mattered. I came to understand everything, including the reason why I could not find her. To solve the problems of this world, you must embrace them, and learn to rebuild from the ashes, for that is the fate of all things anyway. The Sundering is the perfect blueprint for all things both accidental and purposed. The only issue is that no soul living on this metallic strip had realized the truth until now. Urohringr knew, and its constitute parts—imprinted upon ruby flame hidden deep beneath the metal layers—had given hints to the truth, a truth that I would not learn to exploit until the chaos from beyond bestowed a lexicon upon my inquisitive mind.”
The draconian silhouette of Verlax flew over a continental landscape. Before Rainbow's eyes, shadows of ponies, sirens, griffons, and other winged beasts flocked after the Divine. Soon, the dragon's wings cleared the clouds away from the tallest mountain, and she settled there, her equine skull bearing a crown as she presided over the five bowing races.
“But I needed time to learn... to more properly understand what my place was in the instinctual patterns demanded by the fossils of Urohringr. And, over time, while I practiced my new and enlightened philosophies on the kingdom of Rohbredden, I discovered... that I had no place in such a destiny. This world is a broken tool of an even larger machine. It did not need a dragon to ignite its engines. It needed a spark. Cyclical forces were at play long before my sisters and I were even hatched, and every eon or so the trailing energies that powered Urohringr beckoned... called for a mighty flame to scale the lengths of its wounds and restore them back to normal. Only through the kindling of this flame... this living torch... would that which was destroyed become fully constructed again. The latest pattern in the Sundering would be undone, and all misery and pain as we've grown to know it on this plane would cease... if only for an epoch...”
Man, there was a lot I didn't remember. I remember the name Endrax, but I guess I don't remember much about what happened to her.
So we finally get get down to the whole point of Rainbow Dash as the Austraeoh. Verlax story is kind of sad, but I still can't help but distrust her. Spending that much time alone in a chaos infested land left a mark that will bleed out madness one way or the other... at least she's not trying to kill Dash... yet
I think Verlax is taking this whole someones/somethings dog, somewhat badly.
So......Verlax gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed back into her. Sounds legit.
Verlax is just as foolish as the other Divines, with her frozen heart - reminds me of A Christmas Carol. Perhaps she can find happiness like Mr. Scrooge did.
6402194 "Can't help but trust her" means you do trust her
Reads to me like a nice spin on entropic heat-death. Over and over, everything contracting, shrinking, down to a single mote, an impossibly dense singularity, and then flash! A spark in the black . . .
So she's saying that harmony and chaos fight, but harmony can't fully lose. It will always come back.
Cycles, Ages. Now is the turning of the wheel to the age of the reformation of Uruhringr. Which will be followed by an age of harmony, then a fall and separation of Urohringr again. And again and again. Is she saying that?
If harmony can never be fully defeated than can chaos never be defeated either?
Verlax still needs to explain what she's doing now before I make a good/bad/neutral decision.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Recycle001.svg/2000px-Recycle001.svg.png
Alright, so we still haven’t heard just what Verlax wants out of all of this. Never mind that anything she says is suspect and there's no way to know how much of her words are true, she still hasn't made any requests, demands, or ultimatums of Dash. All this explanation has to have a point that Verlax is leading towards, otherwise why go through the trouble of meeting with the Ausraeoh at all?
6402297
Meant to write distrust ... that's what happens when you comment at 1 AM >_>
In other words, Rainbow Dash needs to reignite the flames to the west of Equestria as well.
Maybe even the flames accessible under the surface of the dark side?
Sounds like there were two Sunderings? First, a ring got sliced off the cylinder, then the ring broke into twelve parts. By "undone," does she mean that the ring will reform, or the entire cylinder? Or something else that happened after the breakup?
I'd like to see her cold mind shatter at the thought of those supposed constants she's learned to accept somehow changing with the advent of Awesome.
Go on. Just imagine it, Snow Queen.
Bit of a pot luck when it comes to the effects of chaos. Terrible mutations on the one hand. Discovering a new course of study on the other.
If there is one thing that I find worse than malicious actions, its total slefish apathy. At least an evil overlord is recognising your existence by oppressing you. You're not making me a fan of you with this line Verlax.
Patron Saints of Pegasi and Unicorns so to speak... I wonder who the Earth Pony Divine would be.
Great, bet she has Dark Side corruption of some kind.
See above comment. Also, see the word 'Infested'. Thats not a friendly word to me.
yeah... uh you're drifting into "Destroying the World is the only way to save it!" territory
6402292 Considering that is a Nietzsche quote, and who the author is, that's very apt.
So... if she wasn't the divine of frost to begin with...what was she?
That's the most pressing question on my mind right now.
Keep the exposition flowing dragoness...I'm liking this.
Rings and a cylinder... still getting that Ark and Halo's vibe.
-Memories given light, ease a lonely flight. Ynanhluutr.
Cylinder? How strange.
You know what would be cool? If the cylinder was DESIGNED to split into rings. Maybe to spread out among the stars.
Ok so we are coming up on a reformation of Urohringr (which we already knew) and then some time after that chaos will beat harmony and break Urohringr (along with the thing it is apart of I guess) again therefore starting the cycle all over. I'm going to guess that her plan is to speed up this process or perhaps disrupt it somehow so every doesn't have to suffer as long.
I still think she's not a villain.
6402583 She doesn't have to be a villain to be a total bastard.
I'm betting on her being a "good guy" too, but I'm also betting on her being a holier than thou, extremist-ish bitch of a dragon.
Her circular morality is still incorrect.
What's your game, Verlax?
What do you want with the Austraeoh??
WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR SANITY???
Also, she mentioned two sentinels still locked in orbit with this piece of Urohringr...
What are they? And how will they play into Rainbow's journey??
Many questions, hidden answers....
6402606 I can't reasonably disagree, but even without any solid ground on which to stand, I find myself a passionate proponent of the "Miss Sneaky Snake, is she all bad?" school of thought.
Also I have a thing for Dragons.
6402653 Functional Sentinels would make it a whole lot easier to reach the Armory. Might even be able to do it in a single book! Of course, she'd have to reach a Sentinel first. Seems like that is something Verlax is capable of. Probably a two-book job.
Oh, just get your monologging over with and let Rainbow Dash light the flame. Besides, Twilight and Rarity must be freaking out by now. They've must have tried reaching Dash, and obviously failing.
6402697 That would mean:
Book 8: Reclaim rest of ghost Friends
Book 9: Reach Sentinel and begin trek on the dark side of the world.
Book 10: Reach Midnight Armoury; continue to the light side of the world.
Book 11: Fly east once more, towards Equestria.
Book 12: Reach Equestria; story resolution.
Now that I'm looking at it, it actually makes sense...
6402354
A heat-death perspective is fairly fitting for a Divine of Frost, no?
My god! That syntax... could it be?
She's from Darkstine!
Soooo... these two other Sentinels... the sun and the moon?
This is a lot to think about, once again. Perhaps this confirms the theory that Urohringr must be brought together? Or, does it simply mean to fix the wounds caused by the Sundering, in their little corner of Urohringr?
-Spirit (Yeast and Treacle)
6402531 Moreover, the fact that she's the Divine of Frost now means she is no longer the Divine of that original aspect. Going by basic logic, that only leaves her as the Divine of Warm Summer Days, and something tells me that's a little ways off the mark.
6402900
Oh, I'm not complaining. It's a great theme, and the specific take on it here I have not seen before. You're quite right, as well. It fits Verlax more than any character we've seen to date, both thematically and based on personality. It's not a philosophy I can see east horse getting behind, for example.
Oh god, it's worse than I thought!
She's not evil! She has middle child syndrome!
I can't be the only one chuckling at the sheer apprehension so many of us commenters are voicing at Verlax.
Let's see... She understands the doing and the undergoing.
Also, Cold is not a thing but an absence of heat, like Dark is not a thing but an absence of light.
Net entropy never decreases, and order-y-ness is easier when everything spreads apart (reduces quantum effects too).
and
I guess in this universe, it actually does take a god-knowledge to understand enlightenment, and that she's seen the mountain's birth, the path to the shrouded peak, and Verlax also knows that Austraeoh is to make the climb. So the only thing I get to question going into next chapter is how RD is either going to put up with, or dismiss some of the more interesting tidbits of Frosty's.
hoo boy
We're
2/3rd5/6th the way through Book 7. Have you been waiting all these years to put in such an entertaining character IC? Verlax might be the character to challenge RD on a level other than headbutting.Urohringr is suffering, dukkha. (Let's see how many people get that this sentence has one verb and three nouns)
EDIT: 6403505 caught my fraction derp.
Well, there's quite a lot to chew on.
- We'd already gleaned that the world was split off from a huge cylinder-shaped machine, but this is a little more direct in describing it. It makes me wonder who built this machine. Might it have been the alicorns? I mean, we know they are "aliens", and they seem to possess both the power and the harmonic nature to create such a thing. It might even explain why they sought out the sundered piece and settled it, as it was (theoretically) a missing piece of their creation.
- This suggests that ponies lived on this plane before the alicorns, but that they didn't achieve greatness until the alicorns took them under their wings. How do the ancient proto-pegasi fit into this (as in, the ones who seem to have lived in Stratopolis before Commander Hurricane discovered it)?
- Speaking of the Sentinels, it mentions that there are two on this plane. I can only assume we'll see the other somewhere down the line.
- What happened to Endrax? Verlax mentioned that she eventually found out, but didn't go into details. I'd always envisioned Endrax as some Lovecraftian arch-villain, but this makes it sound like she was an ally of the alicorns, to a point. Is that still the case? Also, the fact that she has powerful foresight and is obsessed with death sounds ominous.
I know answers will come sooner or (probably) later, but it's still fun to sift through it all. This story continues to have some of the best internal mythology I've ever read.
6403299
And just like that, no one hates her for being a villain.
6403378
While I agree with most of what you said, I can't help but point out we're way past the 2/3rds mark of the book, seeing as we're 167/200 (83.5%) in. Really looking forward to the remaining chapters and the next book already!
How interesting. We've gained some powerful insight and priceless information on the history of this plane. I like Verlax, I do, but I am still wary of her intentions. They seem flawed, in a way, but it seems she's got the eye on the prize nonetheless.
This is getting less and less Dark Tower and more and more Dark Souls with every other chapter.
6403383 It was already said that Endrax is dead at some point, probably somewhere arund the time of the talk about the Trinary War on the dark side. I think it was the talk with Chrysalis at the end of Yaerfaerda.
She has been giving me this vibe since she appeared
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But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
All those moments will be lost in time... Like tears... In... Rain.
If she weren't an immortal dragon, I'd say she needs to get laid.
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6404704 I think she needs to get laid anyways, the question is, Who do we ship her with???
6416741 ...Luna!
Ahh, so she sees both, but prefers chaos. Perhaps her and Dash will not see eye to eye after all.
6416741
I'd say Spike. Since he was raised by ponies and alicorns. Thus knows the power of harmony. Maybe he can fill her with it's warmth ... even if I am normally against shipping Spike with dragons. She'd need it, and he'd live a long enough time rather than a mortal.
Ah yes, the huge salami that Urohringr is just one tiny slice of. All of RD's journey has been crossing one half of one side of a sliver of a slice of the whole.
I remember the vertigo I felt back in Innavedr when the ring shape was revealed the first time... the scale on which that ring becomes just a slice of a "narrow" cylinder...
"From this distant vantage point..."
Cautious interjection: You're not going to keep talking like that, are you?
A belated realization here, as the concept of the machine world talking is brought up again. All these times that RD has been visited by "Whitemane" in the machine world... that wasn't actually Whitemane, was it? It was just "A Form You Are Comfortable With" for Urohringr itself talking to her.
Because as wise as she is, she's barely an alicorn. She's a lot less powerful than Celestia and Luna; at this stage she's almost as far away from RD as they are, and neither of them have been able to contact RD through the beacons.
Are there three then, or has Verlax simply not heard of what happened to "Stratopolis"?
The latter wasn't "orbiting", so I'm guessing there must be more. But IIRC it was two sentinels per segment.
Dang, just how high past the plane did Verlax fly?
This kind of message is why I like this story so much. Sure, it's a story about a crazy rainbow east horse kicking flank, but deep down it reflects our own struggle against the vast, empty, uncaring cosmos of our reality. The idea that our lives are pretty much pointless and minuscule and will inevitably fade in time, yet are still meaningful in some small way, is a really beautiful one.
Thank you for this experience IC. I can honestly say that this story has changed who I am. Even if it's never finished, or if a solar flare destroys the internet and nobody ever reads it again, it'll still mean something to me.
So Verlax is the Divine of Frost because she flew into the coldest reaches of space?
Jeez, that's metal as all hell.
Verlax is a very interesting, relatable character for me. I have to say that this story has changed me in ways I cannot put into words. At times I found myself lacking interest but this? This reminds me why I am so invested to begin with. I hope Rainbow sees her point.