//------------------------------// // Revelation and Destruction // Story: The Hag, the heroes, and a few other things // by Amaranthine Thought //------------------------------//             I woke in that white void again.  Something gently pulled at me, woke me from my rest, and I saw the endless white once more.             I was lost and confused.  I didn’t remember much at all.  I was formless, my spirit loose from my body and I didn’t recall anything.             But I tried, feeling that gentle comfort still.  I focused and thought, looking for my memories.  I found them soon, and gasped as I recalled.  And then I frowned; the white void was no afterlife and I was a little upset that I was there.             That is when I finally noticed.  It wasn’t a void.             It was a spirit.  An unimaginably massive spirit.  I stood in its hand like I would have stood upon a vast plain.  I was nothing to its size, its hand fit to hold a mountain.             I stared up at its eye, the one I could see.  Filling the space above me with a whiter white that I could see.             I heard it sigh.             “I’ve been waiting for this.” it said, its voice massive, and coming from everywhere.  “Waiting for you to finally see me.”             “…See you?” I asked.  “I do not understand… Where is Uwe?  Why am I here, and not there?”             “Because I wished for it to be so.”             “…Nothing can do that.”             “Only because I said so.”             “What?”             “I am who makes the rules.  I determine right and wrong, and what is and isn’t, and what can be and what cannot be.  I say how the deals work, and my power is gifted to spirit, avar, forest, land, and hag in unequal measure.”             I understood and gaped.             “I am who tells The Order what is ordered.”             “Avarantus…” I named him in awe.  The greatest spirit.  The first spirit, a god.  The one who caused how everything works.             He was why spirits exist, and why I could be a hag.  The reason behind the power of the land, and the nature of nature.  It exists without him, but he gave it cause and direction.  He made the rules that bind it.             “Do not be in awe, nor worship me.  It doesn’t matter, and I wish for something else from you.”             “…What can I do for you?” I asked.  “I am nothing to you.”             He is silent for a time.             “Can you feel that?” he asks me.  “That little tug on you?”             “…Yes.  That is you, holding me here.”             “No.  It is something else, trying to never let you go.”             I understood and gasped.  “Rose?!”             “Yes.  She is scarred but will not leave the tree.  Feeling for you and screaming your name into the voids beyond, she will not rest.”             “I need to return.” I said, but hesitated.  “What do you want?”             He chuckled without much mirth at all.  “I see you understand.”             “I am holding you hostage with me.  Until what needs be done is done.”             “I wonder if you might find it odd or strange?”             “Just tell me!” I yelled at him, impatient to be done and return to her.  “Tell me!”             “Look at me.  See my size, and power, and remember the tales you know.”             “How old am I?”             I pause.  Avarantus is very old.  Most stories say that he is ‘older than any’ or even ‘without age’.  There is no known measure for his age, and I can only imagine what it could be.  Even lessor spirits have ages in numbers that I assume exist, but I’ve never used.             “You do not know, nor can guess.  That is fine; I never found one who could.”             “I have lived for ages uncounted.  I have seen the growth and change of everything.  Patterns repeating without end.  Humans growing, building, and then dying, only to grow, build and then die again, other races doing the same in their own ways.  Everything repeats.”             “I influenced those patterns.  I created a few new ones, wove the tapestry of my power.  Fragments of my power sent away, each one given a different purpose.  Create, heal, protect.  Destroy, hurt, kill.  Innumerable shards, and not one is the same.”             “And yet, I grow bored.  I’ve been bored for too long.  I have seen everything there is to see, known everything there is to know.  I’ve been every kind of life, seen every kind of soul.  The little variations are no longer enough for me to care for.”             “More and more, everything turned white.  Everything blurred together.  They lost their uniqueness in my eyes.  Every life looks the same.  Every place looks the same.  Every sight, every experience, the same.”             “I live within a white void where nothing happens, and I feel nothing and see nothing but that which I hold.”             He was silent for a moment, and I felt a touch of sadness for him.  I couldn’t even imagine what he must have felt like.  How long he must have lived, and how that affected him.             “And when nothing, nothing was anything but white, I tried something else.  I created again, and I went mad.  I fought myself, I tried to make myself be my own experience.  I sundered my mind into fragments and pieces and my body into parts and fought myself.”             “And now, I can’t remember which one is myself, if any of them are.  I’m insane.  A maddened being in nothing, suffering and bleeding alone with myselves.  I felt myself drifting to Madness.”             “So I pulled myself together, and decided to try something... drastic.”             “I changed your birth, and gave you a talent.  I broke my own rules, and carved a path for you.  Your life has been chosen by me, from the very start, to the very end.”             “What?” I asked, blinking.             “Like a drowning man clings to driftwood, or a freezing one threatens to burn himself next to the fire, I gave you what I needed you to have.  I made you a monster like no other, the destroyer that cannot be stopped.  I frightened you with your own visage so you would run from yourself.  I pulled your love from far and wide to meet you, and gave you the nightmares just so you would run from him.”             “I forced Uwe to spare you and take your fate.  Through him, I made your path still, every person who found you, every monster that you killed.  Every choice you made was the one I chose for you.  To grow how you needed to grow, to learn what you needed to learn.”             “I gave that girl the talent you would see, knowing when you would see it and how you and she would react.  And then I gave dark power to a few raiders, and had them slaughter everything you cared for.  To begin the final path.”             “I threw you to Equestria, knowing that you were ready.  I showed you how to break the unbreakable.  I made Discord find you.  I hurt the fillies so you would find them.  I chose the action of everything around you.  Discord threw you, and I caught you and tossed you into Rose’s rose bush.”             “I sent the drakes to you, and I pulled Honest to be where he would be found, whispering so Rose would find him.  I used your spell to my own ends, so you would arrive where you did.  I made the Timberwolves be where they were.  I told the fairy what to say.”             “And in preparation for your coming, I shattered the griffon empire.  I made them who they are, just so you would find them like that.  I corrupted the mind of Greatwing to kill his brother, and I made his brother drink the poison to fall where he did.  The changelings struck as I knew they would, and I kept sculpting, almost finished.”             “A little bit of dark magic.  A few moments to nurture it, a few to keep you yourself.  And then I ripped the mask from you, and allowed the monster freedom.”             “I whispered to Rose and told her how to call you.  You came, and I gave her the strength she needed to have so she would see and know what she needed to.  To get you in the place between evil and good, chaos and order.”             “And where the elements should have purged the darkness from you, left you whole and healthy, I made them burn.  I made them destroy where they should have saved.  All for one thing:”             “That you would arrive here, as you are, knowing what you know.  Your entire life made so that this would occur, and that you would know what you needed to know.”             I was speechless.  I was unable to even really think at his revelations.  His exact words were far more explicit, and I knew that he wasn’t lying.             He had made my life and me to his desire.  Nothing I ever did or chose was my own action.             It was Avarantus, using me, and everything near me, like puppets on strings.             “But now, it is over.  You have the talent and the knowledge and everything you need.”             He shifted and I saw a red glow appear before me.  I knew it, despite no one ever knowing it.             It was his heart.  The place that he lived, the true essence of his being.  I knew every spirit had one, and I knew that I only knew that because of him.             “Strike.”             I stood perfectly still.  Trying to think what I could do, or say, and if anything I did or said was being influenced by him.             It was the worst thing to discover that everything about your life was written in advance.  I felt… I felt like I was nothing.  Like nothing I was mattered.             And then I felt that he knew I would feel that way, and then wondered if he had even anticipated that.             I wondered if I had ever had a choice made by me, by myself.  If anything I ever experienced wasn't chosen by him.             I don’t think so.             “Finish this.” he said, his heart pulsing with his words.  “End me, destroy me, and find peace.  Cut the strings I hold, and find your own way.”             “You killed me.” I muttered.  The one real thing I could hold onto.             “And my last gift is to give you life again.  Kill me, and my essence will be enough to remake you.”             “Do it.  Fulfill your birth.  Be the destroyer I made you be.  Shatter my heart into a billion shards.  Be what I made you to be.  Finish what I destined you for.  Break the pattern.  Stop the repetition.”             “All your hate, all your power, all your darkness, use it!  Everything I gave you, take the threads and rip them asunder!”             “Save yourself, and be reborn with my death!  End my existence, my agony, my void!”             “Save me from madness!  Strike!”             I hated it.  I couldn’t stop it, but I hated it, and hated it, and hated it.             I hated him, hated that I hated him, and then hated that I hated hating him.  I felt everything he had made me resonating.             I was angrier than I had ever been, more than I should have been capable of being.  Hate, pain, darkness.  I saw patterns that I despised without reason, life I hated without cause.  All I was, was a nightmare.             A nightmare to end him.             I rose up and struck at his heart.  I felt all the strings of fate he held.  Everything he was made of.  The eternal thing he was.             And I tore at everything with such hate that I broke what should have been impossible to break.  I ripped and tore and scratched, snapping shard after shard.  Piece by piece, I broke his heart, until it could take no more and shattered.             I stopped then, my hate vanishing as if it had never been, and I watched the spiraling shards of red in the white.  I saw Avarantus fading away like he had never been. “Thank you…” I heard him whisper as the last parts were gone.  “Be free…” I felt it then: his hold on me faded with him, a grip leaving me.  I had never noticed before then, but I felt…             I don’t know how I felt at that.  That freedom that I never had, but never knew I lacked.  I was suddenly aware of his grip, and then it was gone.             I was free, but I had never been imprisoned.             It was confusing.             Rose’s tugs were a little stronger, and I almost denied it.  Almost denied his last gift from spite.             But if I left it, what was I?  What would I be?             Nothing.  I fulfilled what I had been born for, and was left… renewed.  Empty.  Directionless.  Nothing ordered me anymore.  I made a choice.             I grabbed the shards of his heart, and found the power in them.             I suppose I can compare it to knitting.  Like I was knitting a new form together.  I chose what I wanted, and I knew that it was only my choice, influenced by only what I wanted to be influenced by.  And I knew what I wanted.             I was going to be a small, elderly, white pony, with a silver mane and tail.  One eye blue, and the other green, with little bouts of stiffness and pain.             I was going to be Hag.             It took some time to create, though time in the white void was a strange and sometimes useless thing.  Then I was done, filled my new form, winced at my sudden aged body, and smiled.             Then I turned, and followed Rose’s cries.             I had so much to tell her.  So much to apologize for.  So many things to say to so many ponies.  So much to mend.             My life my own, my body my own, my fate my own.             I left what was now truly nothing more than a void.             Though…             I would swear that I somehow felt Avarantus smiling at me as I left.