//------------------------------// // Part 3 The warrior and the Poena // Story: The Book of Ages. Volume 1. Harmony and Immortality // by Rune Singer //------------------------------// “A Poena was a spirit of punishment. Poenae were alleged daughters of a primordial Titan, who possessed dominion over the weather, especially the winds. The word poine also referred to the bloodmoney paid to the victim's family as expiation for the crime of murder.” Mythology beyond Equestria Tome III The way in which Pegasi conferred with their lodestone was not unlike what the earth ponies did, and a lot less intrusive as the unicorn’s method. While most earth ponies achieved their attunement through the very soil, food and contact with the effects of their lodestone, the elite priest caste achieve theirs through tonal and tactile contact with the tree conglomerate encasing the magical stone. In turn, unicorns where always in telepathic contact with their power conduit and the elite castes through complete attunement to the stone. Lastly pegasi spent most of their foalhood in the vicinity of their lodestone, receiving an enhancement of their race’s inert capabilities for weather control, spacial and directional awareness and off course the near mystical to other races, ability to fly. Parents where given homes to live in for the first years of their foals and these where built in a superbly octagonal rhymotomy, around the square in whose centre stood the lodestone. Seventeen years before the birth of the royal twin sisters, Azure Gale, sister to the newly wed Queen of Marelantis watched the frolicking foals, fillies and colts below her cotton white cloud. She hated this duty and wondered why it was even delegated to her. She was a high ranking warrior, one of the best her father had trained before falling to an enemy spear at the battle of Salaneighna, and she was put to watch over young-lings and so near the lodestone… too near… “Azuuure…” the whisper came riding in the soft breeze. The pony clutched the woven talisman around her neck and chanted the incantation woven with it. She needed more time and this was the worst place it could happen. “Spirit your name I know Poena I name you. Your hunger does grow My oath is still true. Blood payment and souls owed For lives taken and deeds performed.” “Azuuuuuure…” the whisper now louder as the breeze took up force, momentarily lifting manes and tails and skirting up sand on the square below. “…your dept! Whennn?” The pegasus chanted again with more fervour, adding a visualisation of the debt payed. Double the souls and blood for a victory and a future wish, she had promised the spirit and for the moment this seemed to satiate it. “Its the damned lodestone!” she thought “I am too near and she is attracted to it, damn her” and spotting a patrol flying high above, she left her cloud post and flew to meet them. They saluted upon her intercepting them and congratulated her on the victories after the battle of Salaneighna. Solemnly Azure accepted the fine words and the condolences of her father’s death. To them the tidings where new, to her and the warriors who continued the campaign against the centaurs, it was three months old. She bowed her head slightly and excused herself on having to speak to the pegasi elders after she asked the patrol to spare one pony for her post. Azure Gale did not need to speak to the elders. The passing of the torch had already happened immediately after her war party’s ship docked. Her advancement as commander would sooner or later be announced publicly, for now she needed solace to think clearly and most importantly be as far away from the lodestone as possible. Also definitely not by her sister’s side. Before accompanying her father to the campaign, her sister Rhea had burst out the news that the young King Cronus had proposed to her. All through the harrowing naval battle to recapture the city of Salaneighna, when her comrades quoted kin and kith, she sat embittered, being reminded of her sister and her thwarted secret plan. It was she, herself who was closest to Cronus, they had trained together, shed blood together, not Rhea. She was the most accomplished in all pegasi ways as well as the most knowledgeable of the two siblings. Azure could not fathom when her sister and the King have had the time to know each other so intimately. Rhea had professed more than infatuation from the moment Azure got the news, and certainly the pair to be wed acted all frolic and dreamy eyed. It disgusted the pegasus immensely. On one hand she was glad the King was emotionally weak towards affection, but on the other the loss of becoming Queen stung gravely. The battle of Salaneighna, of which already songs where sung and its memory would never fade from ponykind’s legends, marked the high-point of the Centaur and Scorpid alliance’s invasion into the pony colonies on the mainland. Although outnumbered and exhausted, the Commander of Marelantis, Themistocles the Valli ant, through subterfuge lured the enemy forces to a decisive battle in the narrow straits of Salaneighna and tried to block both entrances. In the cramped conditions of the Straits, the great Centaur numbers were an active hindrance, as ships struggled to manoeuvrer and became disorganised. Seizing the opportunity, the Marelantean fleet formed in line and scored a decisive victory. No number of Scorpid warlocks atop their ally ships could stand against Marelantean steel. In their retreat, however many of the enemy force that managed to come to shore, still wrecked havoc through the pony encampments. Exhausted to the point of collapse the pony commander mustered as many warriors as were able, in retaliation, loosing his life to an enemy spear. Azure Gale witnessed her father’s death as she flew in aid, and saw from her vantage point as a new enemy force converged from the mainland, fresh and rested, primmed for battle. In desperation and pain off loss, the pegasus called upon a Poena to claim the lives of their enemies. She would make sure she would pay that debt with more of them. It seem a small price to pay at the moment… For now, far away from the mainland and its battles and until she found a solution to her debt to the avenging spirit, she dreaded she had to be alone with her secret. Without having noticed, she had flown a long time and had reached the opposite side of the island. Over Pearl Bay she heard chanting and focused below at a earth pony priest, a unicorn mage and four earth ponies who stood by a small pen of animals. Landing out of sight she watched what she knew would happen. It was not a secret after all that meat was needed to be present for visitors, traders and other folk that were carnivorous. Despite the ponies not consuming meat, the art of drying or preserving it was not unknown and as long as it was procured by the most painless way, it was no taboo. A unicorn mage would lull the animal into a comatose state and after an earth pony priest would give thanks to the soul of the sacrifice, the animal would be put down fast. Azure Gale was about to turn and fly off, when she heard the bleating of a very young animal. Turning back she saw a tiny kit, being led to the mage and priest pair. It was obviously sickly and too feeble to live despite the knowledge, expertise and care the earth ponies possessed. It was a truth of life that some deaths cannot be avoided, especially when its a mercy instead living its last days in agony. The pegasus did not wish to be present any longer and took flight but almost collided with a short tree as she was struck with an idea. “Yes, this could work” she said aloud in triumph, “some deaths are necessary after all…” ———————————————— Ten years later, Azure Gale, celebrated commander of Marelantis’s entire army, walked along the length of the upper deck of the Tessarakonteres towards the stern of the craft. The weather was on their side for the last few days, needing not the slightest influence of a pegasus. They would sight the sentinel lodestones of Marelantis by the morrow and all was well. Upon climbing down one deck, she closed her cabin door and took off her light armour unceremoniously. As commander, she had the luxury of a bed instead of a hummock and she intended to use it gratefully. She had not been disturbed by the Poena since she had payed off her dept and she longed to sleep without nightmares that follow the first days after battle. The long table in her cabin was strewn with maps and plans, even the epic poetry of their bard. Many of those victories could have been won without the razing of villages and settlements. Azure Gale used her inherent talent to enthral the soldiers under her command with a near magical effect. Her speeches inspired soldiers old and new to claim lives that did not seem so innocent after all. Only after the last battles did her nightmares subside, guilt finally having been overshadowed by a goal met. She might even let her shield and spear rest for a time and let Aeolus take over her legacy. Yes she did start to tentatively allow herself to imagine settling down… Lulled by the gentle movement of the ship and the cool breeze coming from the shuttered window, she soon dozed off. Awareness gripped Azure’s mind painfully as the Poena wedged herself within the pony’s mind, forcing her to attention, but not letting her wake. “No!” Azure cried in horror “I payed my debt, the armies, the villages… Let me go!” The reply came only intoned with more pain, in the rhyming song of spirits, deliberately intoning sins and deeds, in order to cause more pain and guilt. “I see a battlefield in mud, and the dead of your kind. I feel your sorrow and regret The prize you did not get. Your sister got the King and the enemy your sire. You swore an oath and thrust your hoof in fire. You cursed and knelt deep in the blood. I came and all your enemies took the flood. I took them all with wind, sleet and hail,I expected blood back. Instead you called battle after battle, in your triumph you got fat. Azure Gale your debt is growing, these chains alone you wrought. When will you pay with blood, repay the deaths you bought.” The pegasus writhed in her bed, her mouth in a silent shriek, and briefly within her mind, she was able to answer back. “I gave you armies! Entire villages. Cursed abomination, I gave you cubs and foals!” Azure felt herself wane, she would soon lose consciousness all together and it would be a release in contrast to the pain the spirit was inflicting. Anger and a warriors sense of survival kept her from losing the battle with herself. The Poena’s song droned on, driving the torturing words like lances. “The battles in my name I did not mind Yet I demand reward in kind. Fool you are if you did not know That my powers not lie in what I bestow. My gift is the might in which I claim The song I sing, the vengeance I gain. When dept is unpaid. You sleep is flayed. Waking moments harrowed Happiness fouled. And now the kin of the dead summoned me still In vengeance to act against your will. How will you counter their wishes prayed When your debt you have not even payed.” “What do you want? I gave you all I could!” the pony called. The whisper that came was worse than the taunting song. It was ice itself. “What do you love most That is what their kin lost. Their sibling, mother and child. I demand sacrifice of your kind…” Azure Gale woke covered in sweat and promptly vomited bile and blood on the cabin floor. Through rasping breaths she stumbled towards a table and tried pouring water in a glass. Yet pitcher and glass dropped from her trembling hooves as she realised her demise. Where would she find ponies to sacrifice, how could she find any? And now she had the added bidding of the families of her victims to add to her dept. How did Centaurs and Scorpids even know about how to invoke a Poena against injustice? Moreover where would she find foals and innocents to feed the blood debt. Slumping against the table, the pony buried her muzzle within her folded arms, then lifted her head as she regarded a map half curled next to her. She read with half lidded eyes what it was of and then stood, stepping back as dizziness took over her. Letting herself fall on a stool she gripped the map as she perused the new and ill advised colonies of Marelantis along the shores of Tirre. Yes, the colonists foolishly took it upon themselves to not only detach themselves from the protection of Marelantis but to declare independence hardly a year after erecting the first towns. Azure’s eyes gleamed madly as she planned how certain pirates and rogue mountain griffins can be bought, only to be eliminated when Marelantis would come for Tirre’s rescue. Yes, a few campaigns and the Poena would be sated. Yet it was not to be. The attacks against Tirre and the subsequent campaigns to rid Marelantis and the colony off pirates and mountain tribes, took the most of five years to end. Still the Poena declared the debt not payed. Azure gale knew it herself. The campaign of Salaneighna and her own bloodthirsty acts against the Centaurs and Scorpid lands, counted more dead than the raids she bought off. For two years longer the pegasus sated the spirit with little numbers, growing from bitterness to a cold determination that all actions are just if they are meant for the safety of Marelantis. Her only solace and light in life besides a victory, was the colt she rescued in Tirre from her first battle against pirates. Aeolus grew not only become handsome, but strong and intelligent and as cunning as she. He loved and adored his step mother and agreed wholeheartedly with the plan of a political marriage to the current king’s pegasus daughter. As the Poena demanded the rest of her dues and not receiving the blood owed, she lashed out against Marelantis with her wrath. Namely with the power that created her kind in the beginnings of time. The titan whose daughters Poenae where, commanded the weather and a portion of his power, they wielded. The winds about the island grew erratic, the clouds unbending and unmanageable, the sea became perilous. The spirit did not seize to intone what she did, in her song when Azure gale slept and thus in desperation, the pegasus made her last promise. “Upon the wedding day of my son, he will walk the trial of kings. You can take as many unicorns and earth ponies as you need, and be damned to the ends of time!” —————————————————— Discord groaned again and set his minion selves to dance and sing as loud as they could to distract him from Pebble’s memories. “Even after this sappy part, I do not care!” He continued his plight, wishing the pony had recovered enough to manage a coherent sentence. “Speak invalid. How to you presume to free me if you think you are more powerful than I and how do you think to save any of your ponykind when you cannot survive outside your vase nor contact anyone. Pft! I think you cant even do that…” “Your crystal… transformed I can… channel it to me… I know how…through lodestones.” Discord had not had any reason to wonder why the crystal he wore about his neck, transformed into whatever he did, even smoke. It might be possible it was malleable to a form Pebble knew to use and channel through the lodestone. His hope rekindled he asked further. “So you can free me this way. I might let you live for that, my quarrel is not with you.” “Nor is it with my sisters.” Pebble intoned as much as he was able. “You promised.” Discord paused his reply and thought of his friends for the first time after a while. Aneris’s laugh and Concordia’s curiosity, their games and kindness but also their inability to be with him, to answer him and help him. He would not harm them if they did not stand in his way, but he was altered by his imprisonment. Friendship seemed petty and small before the power to be free and exact vengeance and so with an audible sigh, he agreed. “I promise to not harm them. Free me now.” “Alas, I can’t now. I will free you the moment I have amassed enough energy to do so.” His roars of outrage would have shook the walls of the cavern, had Discord been free. Pebble tried and succeeded in drowning the noise from his connection to the unicorn lodestone by focusing on the feedback closer to his physical vicinity. While the power he was gathering was to be used righteously, the source it came from pained the stallion more than his ongoing transformation. All about the earth pony lodestone, crops whithered and trees yielded fruit that were worse than rotten. No, seemingly succulent apples, fell apart in one’s hooves, dry as ash while any near well water reeked an odour most foul if not boiled. The twin brothers this time sought out the power to fulfil their goal from the lifeblood of Marelantis. In disgust Pebble began to bring about a quickening of his growth, to at least survive the time needed to warn his sisters. It was a complete unknown when Discord would influence the catastrophic earthquake planned, or the unicorn bring about another seismic action. Not would the Poena cease her manipulating of the Pegasi lodestone anytime soon. The consequences on the land and its population alone where devastating, let alone the massacre planned during the wedding of Aneris and Aeolus. Even if he managed to warn his sisters, Pebble feared his death would not be atonement enough for what the destruction he caused to achieve the warning.