Prologue: Fairy Tales
~BlackRoseRaven
She remembered the old fairy tale: how once upon a time, there had been a Princess of the Sun, and she had been loved by all. Yes, loved and adored, because she had ruled with empathy and kindness and generosity. Her name had been Celestia, and she had become the spiritual beacon of her nation, the proud country of Equestria.
But she had been very lonely, and very sad: she had been forced to banish her own sister to the moon, and it had left her without a family. Until one day, a dragon had come to court, in his perfect white suit, with his perfect white scales, and his perfect white smile... and amber cunning in his eyes.
He had made such promises. He had given such gifts! And she had been taken in by him, and given him her trust, her attention... her love. And he had given her a child, whom she had named Thesis. He had been born an earth pony, but it had only made him all the more noble in her eyes.
The dragon had stayed beside her, all that time, and shared things with her... wonderful things, and terrible things. And she had begun to look the other way for him, letting him do things that first twisted morality, and then eschewed it entirely. But how could she say no to him? She had come to love him. He had given her a child. He had brought such beautiful technology and magic to her world...
Princess Celestia had been foolish enough to believe that the ends would justify the means, that the reward would be greater than the cost, especially as their nation plunged into war with the griffins. Seeing her people dying had hardened her, and the dragon's whispers had become more tantalizing, his ideas first hesitantly accepted as a way to end the war faster... and then welcomed as a method of revenge.
Too late, she had discovered that even a noble princess could fall: too late, she understood that no matter what they called her, 'sun princess' or 'mother goddess' or 'wise matriarch,' she was only a pony: her wings were only feathers, and for all her good intentions, for all her hopes, her aspirations... she had flown too high, and too close to the real sun. And she had discovered too late that it burned, it melted, it was ruthless and heartless... and how she had fallen, from those heights so high...
Her country had gone from a world of growth and beauty, where ponies worked in harmony with nature, to a world of machinery and torment, where mother nature was kept in shackles and chains, tortured into providing whatever they wanted from her at the time. Where the mountains were ripped down to make place for vast and terrible structures of metal and steel, where the old and weak were 'retired' from society, where everything had a place... and if something broke or stood out, it was cruelly hammered and reshaped into a better fit for wherever it belonged.
And in the end, the Princess of the Sun had become a victim of her own foolishness, of her curdled love: and the worst part wasn't seeing her world corrupted, wasn't realizing that all along, the dragon had been playing some kind of sick game with them, or seeing her son Thesis rewired like he was just a piece of hardware into a little toy soldier for the cunning, cruel monster who had played with her heart...
It was being left behind, in her broken world. It was being saved by the dragon... only to have him abandon her, in this broken and decrepit prison that soon became nothing but a cesspit of darkness and machinery, a dumping-ground for failed projects and wretched miscarriages of science. It wasn't losing her body, but losing everyone who had ever been important to her...
But fairy tales never had pleasant endings, did they? And she had long outgrown stupid stories, and long forgotten and abandoned foolish, idiotic 'Princess Celestia,' who had thought she could save the world with love and trust in strangers.
A sallow face bared metal teeth in a cold smile in the darkness, neon-blue eyes glowering out of sunken sockets through a mane made of cables and living lightning. She cracked her neck moodily before a crystalline horn sheathed in solid metal glowed brightly, and she commanded crisply: “Systems on. Time to get up.”
Lights flashed on, translucent screens appearing throughout the room, projected by the magical crystals that were spaced evenly throughout the walls: over these holographic images, countless statistics, graphs, and images played in soundless and eternal streams, constantly updating and changing. That alone was a magnificent blend of science and magic...
And yet the true spectacle wasn't the screens or the sparse furnishings, or even what looked like a massive suit of armor currently resting against one wall: it was the fact that the occupant of this room, the sallow-faced mare, was nothing more than a head resting calmly on top of a large pedestal near the front of the room. She was currently glaring at the massive set of armor, her eyes narrowed dangerously before she whistled loudly and snapped: “Activate!”
The massive, headless set of armor flinched as if it was alive before several large clamps almost grudgingly released its arms and legs, and the bipedal suit straightened of its own accord. There were several loud clicks from beneath a breastplate that had been chiseled into the shape of masculine muscle as flexible claws clenched and unclenched at its sides, and then the heavy suit of white and silver lumbered slowly forwards.
It reached down and grasped the head gingerly in its steel claws, then carefully spun it around once before lifting it free. The head scowled, rolling itself again on its neck; this stump was covered securely by a metal cap fused to the mare-head's neck, with what looked like a large, sparking plug sticking out of the bottom.
The metal claws calmly shifted the head around to slip it into place into its own neck: the plug clicked loudly as it slid into position, and the head spun slowly around once to secure itself before a large, metallic collar sprang up and locked tightly around the mare's throat. And then the mare smiled coldly as she flexed her mechanical arms: she'd have to tinker more with the AI, but at least everything else seemed to be working properly.
Then the mechanical mare looked moodily up as she heard a beeping, looking towards one of the screens and seeing that the statistics had been replaced by an emblem of a dragon's head. She was really going to have to change that, one of these days... this was no longer Valthrudnir's world or Valthrudnir's empire, after all. The dragon, the Jötnar, was long dead... and all the projects and worlds he had once ruled with spite now belonged to her.
She gestured irritably at the screen, and it flickered before the face of a pony appeared over it: the details were indistinct and all vaguely blue-tinged thanks to the fact he was probably using one of the older transmitters, but she still recognized him clearly, asking before he could speak: “Thorn, what are you doing? I told you to rest.”
“I... just need to work today, I guess.” Thorn gave a brief smile; but then again, all his smiles were brief, and never quite reached his eyes. “I wanted to let you know that I already sent out a message for everyone to gather at uh... fourteen hundred hours in the convocation theater for their assignments. You also have a conference with your backers in one hour, Queen Hecate.”
Hecate looked at Thorn for a few moments, and then she gave a brief nod, saying moodily: “Fine. Next time, contact me before you send out the messages, though. I may be delayed.”
Thorn nodded to her, and Hecate hesitated only a moment before she said in a quieter voice: “Go and rest, Thorn. Take it as an order from your superior if you won't listen to your mother.”
The unicorn bowed his head humbly, and then he murmured a quiet goodbye before the screen flickered back to its usual array of statistics, and Hecate sighed and shook her head slowly. She was the mechanical empress of a world that prided itself on order and control, her heart cut out a long time ago to make room for all her gears and microchips...
But it seemed that no matter how deep you cut the flesh, you could never excise your soul.