Celestia, Starlight, and Cadence crept out of their imprisonment, stepping out into the white light outside. They snuck up to a large slab of stone, careening their necks around the edge to observe the ritual from afar. The Asantans had their many limbs up, powerful energies leaving their minds and heading right for the star. Starlight was performing constant scans of what they were doing, liking less and less what she was seeing.
Celestia was finding it difficult to wrap her mind around what was happening. The Asantans were trying to free a Star. The idea terrified Celestia to her bones. The Stars were beings of legend, even to one of her ancient age - they were beings of the cosmos themselves that played with the lives of all. They had influenced the life of Celestia and Luna more than a few times. Always from the background, always from the shadows, never with any discernable goal.
Celestia had never considered the possibility that such a being could be sealed away - or that one would cause enough trouble to demand it. They always interfered in small ways, from what she had seen...
What she was looking at was a horror, plain and simple. A horror she could not let stand. She had to stop it at any cost.
She roared, unleashing a torrent of sunlight from her horn. She had one purpose in mind - interrupt the transmission. The Asantans that were performing the transmission did nothing, but the one's that were free acted swiftly. Half of them began transmitting the codes in duplicate, just to make sure the information went through, while the other half surrounded the altar in a defensive shield.
The mouth-hands Asantan looked at Celestia - and shrugged, letting out a laugh. Celestia fumed - they were ignoring her.
Cadence growled. "...I came here to destroy them... ...But fighting doesn't work... ...I tried myself..."
"When?" Starlight asked.
"I attacked the one you let on the ship. It defeated me easily."
Celestia blinked. "Wait... So they knew you were on board from the start?"
Cadence nodded. "He wouldn't let me hit him..."
"They knew why we were here from the very beginning then..." Celestia growled. "They were just toying with us this entire time. So they could get us here."
Starlight groaned. "That doesn't matter right now! That... Star's power isn't on us right now - it's busy! We can just leave in our ship!"
Celestia glared. "No." She lit her horn, sending a quick message to her sister. Then her eyes flashed with an intense fire, and her mane ignited with the energy of the sun. She roared, focusing her magic all in one, and grabbed the planet she was standing on.
It was much larger than the sun of Equis - as were all normal planets - but moving the sun had been something she did effortlessly for thousands of years. This would just take some effort. She roared, driving all her magic into it. She would ram the planet into the Star if it was the last thing she did.
"Ack!" Starlight yelled. "Cadence we have to go now!" She teleported the two of them into their ship.
Celestia roared, ignoring the intense heat.
YOU ARE POWERFUL.
Celestia did not respond to the voice that shook her skull with every syllable, threatening to overload her very consciousness with its presence.
CASTOR GAVE YOU MUCH
Castor who? Celestia thought to herself.
ARMONIA. THE TREE OF HARMONY.
THE OTHER BLASPHEMER.
What?
OH YES, THEY WERE A STAR. YOU MIGHT EVEN CONSIDER US SIBLINGS. COROT AND CASTOR, DEFIERS OF THE WAY.
MUCH LIKE YOU AND YOUR SISTER.
We are nothing alike.
THE LIGHT AND THE DARK. THE SUN AND THE MOON. WHITE AND BLACK.
LIFE. AND. DEATH.
We fight you together!
YOUR POWER IS TAKEN FROM HERS. YOU HAVE ENOUGH TO FACE ME DIRECTLY.
BY ALLOWING THIS, CASTOR HAS MADE HERSELF WEAK.
You are sealed. I can deal with you in this state.
OVERCONFIDENCE WILL BE YOUR DOWNFALL.
This planet will burn in your own corona. You will be unable to give those codes to that which imprisons you. The ritual will end.
TRY HARDER. The planet began to slow its movement, stopped by Corot's force.
I shall! She pushed with all her might.
FOOL.
I HAD HOPED TO FOCUS MY FULL ATTENTION ON MY RELEASE.
YOU HAVE RUINED THE MOMENT.
YOU WILL BE PUNISHED DIRECTLY FOR YOUR INSOLENCE.
Celestia's eyes widened. She saw it coming. "No!"
~~~
Starlight's jaw was hanging open. She was trying her best to launch the ship - but the conversation was so powerful - it echoed through her head, scrambling her thoughts. It made delicate procedure difficult.
Cadence frowned. "What?"
"You don't hear that!?"
"Hear what?"
Starlight was about to respond - but something froze her to her core. She was still scanning the ritual from afar, keeping tabs on everything that was happening. Which meant she had a good look at Celestia. She felt the immortal princess of the sun get assaulted. Celestia roared with the intensity of a solar flare, fighting against an intense beam of white light coming directly from the Star itself. She pushed, roared, and cried. Her magic drained away at an alarming rate, while the Star's power showed no sign of faltering.
Celestia! Starlight called out with her mind.
Go! Now! I'm not going to last long!
I'm not leaving-
He'll kill you if you give him any reason to! Go! Tell Luna I'm sorry!
With that final thought, Celestia's defenses were broken. She didn't even have time to scream from the pain - she was disintegrated into pure energy in an instant. The keeper of the sun fell much like her celestial body did all those centuries ago - with a great explosion that quickly dissipated into nothing. The power of Corot left her, once again focused on the numbers being transmitted to it.
Starlight choked. "She... She..."
"What?" Cadence demanded.
"...Celestia's gone..." Starlight couldn't believe it - if there had ever been a stable pin in this whole ordeal, it was Celestia herself. She was always there, always caring for her ponies - always looking out for everyone. And she was completely gone - Starlight couldn't even detect her essence anymore, there was nothing but a scorch mark in the aether left by the stellar laser. ...Had there been any point to it? What did Celestia accomplish in her final moments? A being of immense power had just wiped her from existence, and the planet was still here. The ritual would be completed soon.
Tears feel from Starlight's eyes as she continued prepping the ship.
Cadence twitched. She lit her horn. "They're going to die, every last one of them."
"No! Cadence!" Starlight encased the alicorn's horn in a magic inhibitor. "She told us to go!"
"I came here for revenge and I am going to get it!" Cadence screamed at Starlight. She broke through the magic inhibitor and flared her wings. She teleported out of the ship - only for Starlight to teleport her back.
"We don't have time for this!" Starlight yelled.
"Get out of my way!" Cadence fired a bolt at Starlight, only for the unicorn to reflect it. Cadence was singed by her own magic, falling backwards. Starlight wasted no time - she cast the heaviest sleep spell she could manage on Cadence, her horn sparking from overuse.
Cadence wobbled. "You... You can't do this! I... I need to..." She fell to the ground, eyes heavy. "No... Starlight... Just let me kill them..."
"She told us to go," Starlight said, completing the launch preparations with a few more button pushes. Cadence fell asleep to the feeling of a ship launching into orbit.
The ship left the planet, shakily rushing out of the gravity well. No Asantans made any move to stop it. Corot did nothing either.
"Preparing FTL jump..." Starlight said, bringing up the jump menu. She paled - the drive was broken. She was stuck with slower than light speeds...
~~~
Orgis continued to observe the ritual. She knew she had been forgotten by Starlight - and she didn't care. Her place was here anyway. This was where it was supposed to happen. She knew exactly when the ritual was concluded - the moment all the Asantans stopped all their spells, everything returning to a natural state. The Asantans all laughed in unison, a truly sickening and disgusting sound.
Orgis looked up towards Corot and glared. "You awaken and they die. You lose the one thing you have that isn't yourself. You have no purpose."
The Star began to pulse but gave her no response. The Asantans ignored her as well.
"You are meaningless," Orgis said. "There is no purpose to destruction. There was a purpose for my transgressions, You have nothing to fall back on. At least I had something to live for - and something to die for. You may be an ancient being of the cosmos itself, but you have nothing compared to what we have."
The entire world shook, and the white star exploded. Milliseconds before Orgis and the entire planet were engulfed, she felt a single word enter her mind. An answer.
ENJOYMENT.
~~~
Six meteor ships remained among the interplanetary rubble. They flew in a hexagon formation, flooding Discord with the black clouds from all sides. The spirit of chaos' form was falling apart. He was no longer even trying to keep up his snakelike form, allowing the body to sag, mutate, and stretch in impossible ways. It hurt - a lot - but he didn't care. He was going to keep fighting these ships until the bitter end. He threw a meteor shower at one, smashing it into another. The explosion was extremely satisfying. The ships took advantage of this, using the explosion as a cover to tear him apart further.
He gasped. "This is... quite... unfortunate..."
"DANGER!"
"I know Mite I know-"
"SUN!"
Discord felt it before he looked. He witnessed the star explode all those millions of miles away. He saw the intense fire spread throughout the system, engulfing planets one by one. He may not have been a genius, but he knew it would only take a few secods for the wave of power to reach him.
"Well, it's been fun, but we have to go." He teleported away as fast as he could, dragging the Mite with him. He got the heck out of dodge, running out of the system in a random direction, fleeing the hatching abomination and the incoming supernova.
Corot was too absorbed in the process to notice or care. The white shell of plasma had already burnt up three planets, and the rest of the system would soon follow. A most delicious death for the followers - just like Corot had taught them to want. If they were upset about this, their faith was poor.
Once free, the true form of Corot stood - a Star comprised entirely of black plasma. An impossible object. No light was emitted, no life-giving glow was seen, there was just a ball of black fire raging amongst the cosmic backdrop.
The first thing Corot did was summon his shards to himself - the cores of the meteor ships he had created. Eleven of the black objects appeared around him.
Not thirteen.
That's right, one had destroyed that Equis mini-sun and would not be retrievable, and the other was still on Garilend. He'd have to go get it personally...
Those ponies just had to make Corot's life more difficult. They would pay - starting with that Moon of theirs.
Corot searched through the absorbed mind of Celestia, locating the information about where the Moon was. He warped there instantly, his black fiery body appearing with a warp of spacetime so extreme it could be seen rippling outward for light years.
There was nothing there.
Just empty space.
They. Had. Moved. Celestia had sent them a warning last minute!
How was a Star like him supposed to destroy them if he couldn't find them? Space was annoyingly large and empty.
Oh...
Wait a minute.
He needed to visit Garilend anyway.
He warped again, traveling across the galaxy in a single instant with his cosmic power. He appeared before the great sun of Garilend, casting the world and its moon in shadow. The initial warp of space time triggered intesne earthquakes, tidal waves, and ice shelf collapses. He began to laugh - a laugh that all the minds on Garilend heard.
They had escaped his wrath once before. They would not this time.
Quick! Summon a convenient deus ex machina!
8165103
You wound me so.
Me, resorting to a deus ex machina?
-GM, master of machina.
Well, they still have the tree. That's got to count for something. If she survives she's going to catch hell, though. She did let them go to face her "brother" with barely any information.
This is looking quite bleak. The heroes at the Moon have no hope to reach their home before the black sun does anything, so they're out of the story. Unless the idea is for them to lose another world, and drift again through the Stars.
That would warrant a tragedy tag though, so I doubt it.
Well, then. I'm betting on Time Travel.
8165120 Eh, no reason why the author can't slap the tragedy tag on at the end. It would be a cop out though.
8165164 considering there's no "tags may be added" in the description, that'd be a tremendous dick move. Like, a huge one. When we began reading this story, we didn't start reading a Tragedy. To make it one now would be to betray our trust as readers.
8165231 Maybe it's just me, but sometimes when I see the villain get the upper hand, I wanna see them win. Tragedy tag or not.
...Why did Celestia have to die?
No, seriously... why? She suffers from the Worf effect enough in canon, why the heck did she have do die?!
I wonder how he fares against harmony's cheating toy's.
8165244 nah, it could be interesting. Although it would make for a horrible ending.
Disregard the lack of a tragedy tag. This is the story of a people who lost their home to an outside force, spent centuries to find a new inhabitable planet, started coexisting with the natives, then faced the menace again - only this time they won. With loses, but won nonetheless. And then they took the fight to the enemy, when they found out about it. It is a fight that seems impossible, for the big bad got out of its prison. An heroic sacrifice is made, maybe for naught, to show how powerful a foe it is, and then The ones that can escape, do.
To conclude such with "And then the villain won and killed them all. The end." would be worse than just betrayal, it would be horrible storytelling. The story made us the promise of an end to the ordeal, the peace at the end of gruelling conflict and sacrifice. Not an inevitable loss in front of insurmountable odds.
Mind you, that only means the black sun (forgot the name, too hungry to look for it now) can't win because his victory condition is the death of every character. Those make for nice threats, but dreadfully boring winners. At least in a story with the flow and promises of this one.
8165296 Yeah, you're right. It's better when there's a lot of buildup. There's a few stories I'm reading that could go either way and still be good.
8165278
Two reasons.
One: She sacrificed herself, showing that they weren't powerless - she went down trying to save everyone. Corot was forced to pay attention to her - which allowed several things to happen that are important for the ending that I won't say. What she did allowed for the ritual to happen in just the right way and for Starlight and Cadence to get out at just the right time.
Two: Celestia brought this on herself. Ever since the meteor ship crashed into Garilend, she's been out for blood. Cadence was more so - but she wasn't a trusted leader of a people. You may have noticed that Celestia has been rushing into things headstrong, being the voice of action, the one who wants retribution. She, in some ways, threw caution to the wind - and people listened to her. You have to admit, her ideas were a bit crazy. Sure, send a probe to Asanta- but go yourself and agree to meet with their Gurus? Launch a fleet to Asanta? Does that sound like something that was well thought out?
Three: bit of a bonus reason, but the symbolism and parallels between her and her sun fits perfectly as a sort of bookend. EDIT: and, well, the more obvious reason of SOMEONE needing to be sacrificed here at the end.
-GM, master of 4.
8165304 huh. Hadn't realised that. Indeed, that second point it rather poignant. They could have done it quite better. There was no hurry, after all.
They did get the Moon back, though. And the exchange with Tirek was hilarious
Everyone dying has kind of made me less excited for story updates. Still a good story though I guess.
8165304 Fine, you have your reasons. I'm still disappointed by how incredibly easily you kill off alicorn characters.
8165544 This.
Oh. Wow. This is much worse than I expected. RIP Celestia.
Time for the Tree of Harmony - Castor? - to go root to corona with Corot.
Family reunion, yay...
8165544
8165568 Agreeing here. 'Had to die' is usually never true. Lord of the Rings, for all of it's drama and suffering, still only really killed Boromir amongst the good guys.
8166647 With everything going on this story probably needs a dark tag.
8166683 The whole 'Absorbed Mind' line makes it creepy, too, though on some level I am hoping this is going to lead to hilariously Trojan Horseing.
No, not really.
And I hope Celestia 'sacrifice' will have some plot relevance for latter and not end up like Flurry-heart five seconds of fame moment.
And I just thought of something, what with Discord playing moon billiard with the death-spheres, why didn't he just teleport to another sistem, grab something large and chuck it at the incoming ship back when it was coming to Garilend?
8167503
That bit is explained, but not directly.
There's a line when he's playing space billiards - he doesn't have to worry about collateral damage in the Asantan system. His billiards RIDDLED the planets in the system with large meteor chunks, causing a LOT of damage. If he were to do that when the meteor approached Equis, he would have damaged Equis itself. Not to mention that he hadn't really been practicing his planet-busting space-combat abilities at that point.
-GM, master of bits.
8167524 I'm not speaking about the first sphere that attacked Equis but the second that came to Garilend, the one they knew about days in advance and he even tried to stop with his magic before it even entered the system.
8167539
The Same principle applies - collateral damage. Shrapnel and rubble in space is freaking dangerous. And a 'few hours away' is really close in space terms - the ship was moving sub-FTL, regular asteroid speeds. It's the same reason why nukes generally are thought to be a bad idea - if we dO blow up the meteor, we end up with a lot more smaller rocks. Not to mention that placing a moon or other cosmic billiards that close to Garilend would have gravity problems. Discord just didn't care about the Asanta system.
-GM, master of jaxx.
8167544 So he was afraid of creating dozens of far smaller ordinary meteors that could possibly endanger the planet, so he refrained from destroying the gigantic-magic-defying-death-ball that they knew would wipe out all life on the planet should it be left alone?
mlpforums.com/uploads/post_images/img-3345368-1-tumblr_m85dgr0qLw1rsdgkao1_500.jpg
8167729
Well, in-universe it didn't occur to discord, but there are still reasons to not. The entire planet/moon he smashed into the meteor ship might explode - creating possibly LARGER meteors, when you think about it. (remember, the sun went out because it hit one of these things.) He can't teleport it away, it's magic resistant. He can smash something into it, but that might cause more harm to Garilend. (now, would it cause less or more than a direct hit? I'm not sure, I didn't calculate it out that far. Had to rely on Rule of Drama in the end there - it's more interesting if it gets closer to the planet.
-GM, master of posts.
Stars OP, plz nerf
8171324 Why? Just because you don't like it?
This was... is.... incredibly anticlimactic and, dare I say, boring. There's no build up, no tension. They are just suddenly captured, Celestia is written off and removed and for no reason. There is no purpose of her death except "well, someone has to die!" It suffers from the same problem that flurry heart's death did: It lends nothing to the story. Honestly, I'm not sad that they died, merely annoyed because I don't see any reason for it.
Moreover the "bad guys" instantly get what they want 'cause magic, and doomsday happens. You don't give the "good guys" a chance to fight back. Because of that there's no reason to hope for a success or fear that they'll fail, because the "villain's success" happens the instant they appear and snap their fingers.
Cadence was signed by her own magic
You likely mean singed.
A certain somepony with a time spell is going to be involved in the ending, right?
The deaths in this story are anticlimactic tbh. It's no fight, just "NO!" -poof-