//------------------------------// // Shadows Of Virtues // Story: A New Sun Rewrite // by Pinklestia //------------------------------// "Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect." - by Sydney Smith Sermons, 1809 book by Sydney Smith. Celestia gave the Eldest her sunniest, gentlest smile, so of course there was something a bit fake about it. Mag thought that maybe she was projecting, that it was her hate for the Eldest. Why did she even hate the guy anyway? Ah right, what had Celestia said about Earth and the Eldest before they even meet the guy? "A Regent is the being responsible for taking care of a world, a supreme God if you will." “You know, the more I stay here the more I notice it, this world is broken. Is like they fit a square box in a round hole." Ah yes that was a good reason to hate the Eldest. But not good enough is like hating the Eldest just... just feel right. But Mag only acted that way after Earth's Regent revealed himself. Strange. And considering that she knew a magical pony princess, that was saying something. “I'm happy you found me. I had intended to begin searching for you after breakfast, but I could see no simple way to contact you and I've heard nothing of any palace or fortress you might maintain, so I wasn't certain how to go about finding you.” The Eldest returned the smile or showed his teeth at least. “I'll walk over there,” he pointed at the mouth of an alley about 30 or 40 yards away, “and you two can talk amongst yourselves for as long as you need. Then you'll follow me if you want to discuss what you're doing in my world, and why one of my subjects is following you around like a duckling.” Then he walked away. Celestia watched him like a cat watching a stranger. “So,” Mag said. “Your Regent,” said Celestia. She let go of the hold she had of Mag with her magic and the human woman rubbed her hands and then massaged her fingers. Stupid magic. “So why can't I feel him the way I feel you? And any idea of why I wanted to hurt him?” “You can't feel him because you've always felt him,” said Celestia. “He guided the history of your species, and every single one of you have been influenced by him in countless ways. I don't know his powers or his methods, but I can tell you that, as Regent, it is he who decided what it means to be human, what it feels like from day to day. And that also makes it quite strange that you felt the need to hurt him. That might or not have to do with how Earth is broken." The Eldest had reached the alley. He leaned against the wall and lit one of the cigarettes Mag had given him, looking as if he was prepared to wait forever. “Is that right,” Mag said under her breath. “You've lived your whole life in the shadow of his hand.” Celestia shuddered. “Skies above, his aura . It feels like delirium and cold winds.” “'Aura.' That's another word for the thing you do? Or you both do, I guess.” “I think humans can feel my presence in the same way I feel his, yes,” said Celestia. “I wouldn't expect a species without magic to perceive auras, but I suppose encountering a foreign Regent must be like finding a patch of snow in the desert, even to a creature who has never touched the aether and doesn't understand what it is she's feeling.” “Huh. Well, your aura reminds me of Broadway music, or possibly a children's choir, if you were wondering.” “I know. I've been told it's a bit cloying.” A look of concentration crossed Celestia's face. After some thought, she said, “Two aliens are sitting in a bar. One alien says, “Blorp, bloop, blee noog warble.' The second says, 'Goodness, I think you've had quite enough.” Mag nodded. “Very corny. Good job. Did it help?” “No,” said Celestia sourly. She squared her shoulders. “I suppose we'd better just follow him.” Then Mag have Celestia another hug, weird since she didn't remember being a hugger. "Do you really have to?" Mag almost whined while saying that. "Yes, this is his world after all." Mag shrugged. “Fine. If it makes you feel any better, you're probably just as hard for him to take as he is for you. You tend to give me a... how do you call it when you feel you could have done something better?" "Guilt and regret perhaps? I would just as soon seem harmless, but I'll keep that in mind,” said Celestia. “And I don't suppose I could convince you to stay behind while I talk with him?” “Are you kidding? Leaving you alone with him would make me feel as if I killed a puppy and I would hate myself. And even if you come back without suffering any harm I would still feel horrible." Since when it was she who was mothering Celestia? Or was she like a child that didn't want her mother to go to face danger alone? “He's an exceedingly dangerous being,” warned Celestia. “He smells of insanity, of the dangerous kind, and I'm not certain how much value he would attach to an individual subject even if he is sane. I've spoken with Regents who would harm one of theirs to make a minor rhetorical point, or because it didn't occur to them not to, or because they were hungry. But I appreciate the fact you care about me that much, thanks Mag, for being a good friend." “I'm not going anywhere, sorry.” Not waiting for an answer, Mag walked toward the alley. Celestia caught up. “As you wish. I'll do what I can to protect you. I would suggest you stay silent, but I get the feeling you already have other plans.” “What gave you that idea?” Celestia just looked at her. "Right, let's go before I get paralysed by terror." Most of the snow had melted by this time, but little drifts of dirty snow still lay in certain shadows the morning sun couldn't reach. The Eldest's alley was narrow, about six feet wide, so direct light hadn't touched it yet. Snow lined the bottoms of both walls, and the pile of wet trash stuck to the fence at the back of the alley was still frozen. The Eldest glanced at Mag and Celestia and stepped into the alley without looking back, apparently trusting them to follow him. They did. He led them to the end of the alley and to a metal door to one side. The door had no handle. The Eldest laid his hand where the handle would be, flexed his hand, and pulled. There was the sound of wrenching metal and the door opened as if his hand were a magnet. Inside was a flat plane of wood. The eldest shoved it with both hands and it tipped over, revealing itself to be a rotten pressboard bookcase. Behind the bookcase was an empty room lit by a broken window covered in bars. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were all made of discolored concrete. Five large concrete blocks had been scattered in one corner, each the size of a park bench, and there was a pile of bricks next to the door, possibly an ex-fireplace. The room was otherwise bare, and colder than a meat locker. The Eldest stepped over the bookcase, walked to the corner, and sat on one of the concrete blocks with his back to the wall. “Today,” he rasped, “this room will be my court. We won't be disturbed. Princess, you're here as a supplicant, yes?” “Yes,” said Celestia. She sat down on another block seven feet away. Mag followed suit. “Uncomfortable?” asked the Eldest. “Not terribly,” answered Celestia. “I mean my presence. I know how I feel to other Regents." "I can endure it. How about myself? I am too uncomfortable?" "You are like the worst hangover ever combined with a mother I don't want to disappoint but I always do. I am probably going to get very very very drunk after this." "Okay, if it makes you feel better you are actually very uncomfortable to me, like having my skin being rubbed all over with broken glass." “Good. Welcome to my court. You are Princess Celestia, and you are Margaret Taylor Wilson. Don't look startled, girl; you're mine and I know everything about you. As for myself, I am Eldest of the humans, wandering king, builder of cities. My name is none of your business.” He held out the paper sack with the bottle. “No toasts.” Celestia took it, sipped lightly from it, wiped her lips, and passed it to Mag. Mag sipped as well, and choked. “What the hell is this? It tastes like Wild Turkey and Nyquil.” She swallowed with some difficulty and handed it back to him. “That's because it's Wild Turkey and Nyquil,” said the eldest. He drained the bottle and tossed it over his shoulder. It broke against the wall behind him. “Introductions and shared drink, as per the old rules. We can begin.” Celestia nodded graciously. “Thank you for hearing me. I am—” “Sorry, sorry, one thing,” said Mag. She stood up. Celestia gave her a warning glance, but stood up alongside her. The Eldest stood up as well. Mag's forehead came up to his Adam's apple. “Just as you like,” said the Eldest. He gazed down at her with his calm, hard eyes. “Cool. You're the Regent of Earth?” “That's right.” “Guard and guide of the humans since the beginning of the species?” “King and builder,” growled the eldest. “But basically yes?” “King and builder.” “But basically yes.” “Speak your piece,” said the Eldest. "Why do I hate you then?" “Mag!” shouted Celestia. "Why should I tell you?" The Eldest grinned showing his teeth. Mag had to mentally chant about unicorns and not making Celestia sad to avoid punching him, since he had such a punchable face. She still clenched her fists in anger. Celestia interposed herself between the two humans, even if one of those humans was actually a God. They stepped back, glaring at each other. “I think we should discuss this in a different way,” said Celestia. “Oh, but this is the human way,” said Mag. “Melodrama?” asked the Eldest. “You are the Regent of Humans, do you really need to ask?" “Mag, Eldest, please sit down.” said Celestia in a firm tone. It was like being lectured by your mother. Mag ground her teeth, but sat down. So did the Eldest, then Celestia. “Thank you.” Celestia laid a hoof on Mag's shoulder, she felt better somehow, her anger lessening. Magic was bullshit. “Mag, you are asking what sounds like a very valid question, but is up to him if he wants to answer the question. Starting a fight you can't win would just get you destroyed. I know you did not hit him but it was close." “You were also trying to talk about something important when I changed the subject,” said Mag, squeezing her eyes shut. “Sorry.” “You do have the right,” said Celestia, frowning at the Eldest. “As for you, old one, if you don't like to be asked impertinent questions, why would you teach them to be so curious and so angry? And I, too, wish to hear your answers to her question, because the answer may change how I approach this hearing. I'm going to step back and let her speak first. Mag, would you like to try again?” “Hold,” said the Eldest. “Princess, you asked a rhetorical question just now and I'm going to answer it. It's simple. I taught them anger and curiosity by pretending not to exist, so of course I'm not going to want to answer questions.” “You let people kill each other because you don't want them to know you exist?” said Mag. The eldest sneered. “What do you want me to do? Go public? You think all the wars are going to stop if I go on the news and tell people to knock it off?” “Well... considering the fact I hated you the moment I found you were Earth's Regent... no." “Are you seriously suggesting you can't stop a war?” said Celestia, genuinely surprised. "And I admit that I share Mag's curiosity about why she hates you." “First I don't stop wars,” said the Eldest and Celestia looked at him as if he'd just eaten a child. “Sun and Moon, why not? I know you couldn't stop every one but-" The Eldest glare silenced the pony Goddess, then he took a last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt away. He'd smoked it down to the filter. “Because I mostly can't. Oh, I can prevent them. I prevent wars all the time. If you all built a monument for every battle I've prevented, you'd run out of space for anything else." He lifted Mag's pack of menthols to his lips, sucked one out, struck a match on a concrete block, and lit up behind a cupped hand. “Can't prevent all of them, of course. Doesn't matter what I do. Sometimes someone picks the wrong place and time to mention God or communism or whatever the fuck, and then it's off to kill and die. And I'm not a wizard. I can't walk onto a battlefield and stop time, and if I could, they'd just start dying again after I left. Sometimes humans kill. It's something we do.” "Fine. Then why do humans hate you?" She could have asked about the Eldest powers but that would lead to an argument. She already knew Earth was broken and knew the Eldest was responsible somehow. "Do you really want the answer? Is not a nice thing to hear." "Yes." "You can feel it, don't you? How this world was never made to be ruled by just one person. It works, but it's lopsided and warped, like a house missing some of its supports. And there's an emptiness to me, a ragged hole were something that should be there just isn't." "You had a brother." That wasn't a question, it was an affirmation. "Yes and I killed him." Mag jumped backward off her seat, stumbled back and then hid behind Celestia. "Why?" Celestia voice just sounded sad. “I smashed a butterfly,” said the Eldest. "An important part of my job is controlling the variables in human history. My brother would have been the biggest variable, and there was only one way I could control him. It was almost the first thing I did in life. Do you know, killing a God is a lot easier when you can see every possible future? You just have to look for a future where he's dead, then see how that future came about, then make it happen.” His eyes narrowed. “What's wrong, princess? Never had to make a tough call before? Or maybe that story sounds familiar to you. You had a sister, didn't you?” Celestia almost fell into his trap but didn't because she had a scared human woman behind her. A scared woman that might not be one of her little ponies but it was her only friend on Earth. "Mag hates you because you hate yourself isn't it?" The Eldest laughed. Mag felt nauseous. “The oldest human, the guy who decided what it means to be human, kicked things off with a murder... and then guilt .That was our defining moment. It makes sense.” “This is another reason I never explain myself,” said the eldest. “Listen to me. Live a couple of decades or walk a few miles, look around, and you'll see that right and wrong have changed a little. Walk further or live longer and even more changes. You want to know what life would be like if my brother were alive? It'd be incomprehensible to you as you are now. You'd be horrified. You wouldn't even call it civilization, and you wouldn't want to call them humans. The princess would have appeared on the lakeshore, climbed up the hill, met a few of us, and walked right back to the lake to search for a different world. I know this. I stood in that tall grass for the first time at my brother's side, looked at him, and saw. I saw all the futures of humanity, ladies, and this timeline is the only one I could stomach.” “What kind of twisted world Earth is that... that you're the good twin?” asked Mag, attempting to process all this in terms she could understand. “Oh my brother was the magical one, all glorious and perfect. His head was full of hopes and dreams, and then I strangled them out of him. Why? Because with him humans would just be mere toys to used and be discarded. I have humanity it's free will but that makes me no hero, it makes me the villain. Did you know that I can't enter a home? Our aether laid a punishment on me for what I did. I killed my family, so I can never have another, at least not like that. I can only wander. But that wasn't enough, that's why you hate me, because I want to die, I want to kill myself for what I did. Hence why all humans want to kill or at least hurt me as soon as they find out who and what I am. But if I die so does Earth. One murder was enough thank you." Mag's head whirled. She could tolerate the idea of a flying unicorn princess, because she was crazy. And this mad and somewhat pitiful suicidal God fit nicely with what she knew of the world, or so she would have said if someone had described him to her a week ago as a purely hypothetical being. What she couldn't do was accept the idea of these two beings existing in the same multiverse. Mag sat down on the floor and pressed her hands to her eyes. "So... who creates worlds? Who is the one responsible for this big fuck up that ended with humanity being murderous suicidal people? Because really... this... this is rather cruel." The eldest chuckled. “I don't know, and your beloved pony princess Goddess doesn't know either. But don't try to whitewash what I did, I am the bad guy here, just one that didn't like lack of free will. Now let's move on to what this meeting is really about." “I have two things to say, first,” said Celestia, who looked... wonderful in Mag eyes, much much more than she ever saw like that before. That made her feel better for some reason. “Go ahead,” said the Eldest. “One. I won't go into detail, but if you can see the future then you know I'm not bluffing when I say that, if you don't apologize to me for that comment about my sister, and to Mag for making her suffer, you won't like what follows.” She might not have fallen into that trap to distract her, but the comment still hurt and Mag was her friend after all. “Fine, fine,” said the Eldest. “I'm sorry, Princess Celestia, for comparing the two of us. I was trying to say that we both know what it means to make terrible personal sacrifices for our people. Ms. Wilson, I am sorry for making you learn this. But it was your choice to get into this meeting and ask what you asked. I could have been gentler in how I revealed things but I am not a kind person in the best days and Celestia being this close to me gets me really irritated. There, princess. Good enough?” “For now,” said Celestia. “Two. In all the futures, was there a world where humanity would have got free will without your brother being murdered?" The Eldest was no longer smiling, he looked actually sad. “Of course. If you can describe a world, it was a possibility at one point. Do you realize how many futures there are at any given time? In a chess game, that's one of the simplest worlds I've ever come across, there are 400 possible different board configurations after both players make their first move of the game. After they go a second time, it's about 200,000. After the third turn, the number is 121 million. Now imagine a board game as complicated as your world or mine, played over the course of eons. That board game is the game I'm playing every day.” He chuckled again. “I went for the choices that were most likely to get humanity free will. Yes that means I became a murderer and that my guilt eats me every day, at every moment. So you can imagine how unlikely the other options were my brother lived were. Yes maybe I could have done it, maybe I would have failed and my brother would have been the murderer instead. But what's done is done. Did that answer your question?” “To my satisfaction,” said Celestia but she didn't look satisfied at all, if anything she looked ended sadder that when she cried about losing her World. “Then make your other request,” said the Eldest with a languid, magisterial wave. “Yes, I'd like to leave your company as soon as possible.” “Then get to the point.” Celestia sat up straighter. “I want to submit a request for safe passage and temporary residence in your world, along with any refugees I may find who would normally be under my protection. If you're willing, I would also like permission to bargain and treat with your people, helping wherever I may. I will neither make nor request any oath of fealty. I will offer no threat to your sovereignty. I—” “Boilerplate, boilerplate,” said the eldest. “The standard refugee arrangement. Request granted. But what about your little friend? Protect her and order her around, if you like, but she's not yours.” Mag glared at her Regent. “I'm not yours either, you bastard.” Celestia grinned back at her. “You're my responsibility,” said the eldest. “That's what the word 'mine' means.” Mag could have the rest of her philosophical crisis later. “Then I can't possibly be yours, because I'm my responsibility. I make my own decisions. Yeah, you created the world as it is. You're pretty much God. You even created me, sort of, because you made a bunch of choices about how history should go and now here I am. The only real limit on your power over the world is human nature, and you created that too, didn't you? But you know what?” She leaned against Celestia, laid a hand on her back, and rested a cheek on her neck. “Hail Satan.” The Eldest threw his head back and laughed. “Well, just call it a contract between the two of you and it'll be covered under the part of the agreement about bargaining with humans. But princess, don't ever forget that even if I gave her to you and declared you her regent, she'd still be a human. She always will be, and if you try to change that, you'll break her.” He cracked his knuckles and neck, stood, stretched his back, rolled his shoulders. Celestia stepped off her own block. “We done here?” said the Eldest. “I'd say so,” said Celestia. “Hopefully forever,” said Mag. "But I know that's very unlikely to be the case." “Good. Thanks for the cigarettes,” said the Eldest. “Oh, and Mag? Someone robbed your store last night because you didn't activate the alarm. I didn't do it.” Then he left. Mag and Celestia stared at the door for a while. Celestia folded a wing around Mag shoulders, and Mag pressed her face into Celestia's side. "Is okay, the store is insured... " The human know as Mag said in a weak voice. "I will just get fired because I wasn't at my job while I should have been." "I am sorry about that, is my fault isn't it?" Celestia asked sounding worried. "No, is mine. If that asshole isn't blaming whoever created my world for having to kill his brother, I can admit that I was irresponsible and that forgot to set the alarm while also ditching work." "That's quite mature of you Mag. Do you think you could try to be more polite from now on?" "Now that's just crazy talk." "But Mag, aren't you crazy?" Celestia smile was so wide it was a tad creppy. "Darn, you got me princess. Fine, I will give it a try."