Demigoddess
4:12 PM, Eastern Outskirts of Ponyville
But then none of ya would know what Luna told her afterwards, or what Celestia told her after that, and then what I told her about certain things about our universe.
In reality, I had no problem with Miss Sparkle other than her neurotic tendencies cripple her out of being a true scientist. In many ways, her inability to be fascinated by the bizarre instead of being attracted to it stunts her intellectual potential, severing her of her own creativity and the capacity to see the whole picture.
I warned Princess Celestia about it, telling her that Twilight’s devotion to her craft, and her infatuation with her is getting in the way of her doing great good in the world. She simply told that she agrees but Miss Sparkle is already too old to stop her from being set in her ways by talk. She needs to instead learn the hard way that the world has no right or reason to actually make sense.
I also told Celestia that that is what happens when ya teach somepony with that much raw potential in the New World style of the discipline of sorcery instead of the old ways of magical practice.
Ya only see the safe and rational part of the world instead of all its bizarre and barely explainable contents, and once ya are set in the thinking ya voluntarily refuse new knowledge that contradicts the narrow institutionalized view of the world instead of the dangerous and wild truth of the the flow of Ether and its extensive relationship with all life on a cellular level.
Though I cannot really blame Miss Sparkle. When you train someone to constantly control themselves in order to relate more to others and avoid harming them, essentially making them afraid of their own power, you get a Twilight Sparkle, a pony that in a way even when she ascends to alicornhood, is afraid of being exceptional.
But in an odd sort of way, it is for the best. I am a destroyer, the Black Knight, a merciless killer that serves as a force that instills fear and horror upon those that oppose my master. It just so happens that my master this time is no one less than Princess Luna. In many ways, I destroy monsters and criminals like myself, and when it’s all said and done, Twilight purifies and reforms all she can.
I preserve the legacy of Equine kind and destroy the horrors from the blackest parts of the eons of our existence, and leave the fields fertile and bare. She, on the other hoof, will take that and bring new life and peace to the baren world.
In the end she was meant to be pure forgiveness and renewal, and I was meant to be harsh justice and the manifestation of all those that die in horror and with their lives left unfulfilled and barren. I was the vengeance of all those that suffered the injustices of the world, a wrathful phantom made from the sorrow and pain of countless souls screaming for mercy, but never received nor shall ever receive such.
I will die with no glory, no recognition, and no love so that she can be remembered as the manifestation of harmony and peace.
That is what the Tree of Harmony wanted after all, and truth be told I really hated that thing.
For quite a good reason too, it basically behaved like a brainless divine being, warping reality around certain individuals that met its flawed and downright strict criteria for purity of heart. It also partially warps reality and gives the advantage to all the land, beings––either plant or animal––and even the damned air around all twenty-five million square kilometers of the North Equestrian Continent. As in, it benefits nothing but what is in that area, and even then sometimes the things outside of that area get worse or suffer misfortune so that area may become better and more prosperous.
Basically, it messes with free will, and it is guilty of favoritism.
Not that I could have proven it at the time; it was just a hypothesis back in the day, dismissed because it was more likely that I had simply grew resentful of the Elements of Harmony because they were making me, and others like me––the heroes, monsters hunters, and wizards of old––obsolete. They said that I unfortunately never planed for a life in peace where I could focus my abilities in more mundane pursuits, so that was why I concentrated so much in finding blame on one of the greatest resources in Equestria, and that I should seek psychiatric help…
Nevertheless, I brought Twilight Sparkle along with me to inspect the damage and see how the cleanup crew was faring.
“You know, it almost makes me think that you are jealous of us, how we lived in blissful ignorance,” said Miss Twilight Sparkle with the utmost smugness that she could muster. Part of me considered that that was how others felt with dealing with when I think I got the upper hoof in an argument.
I mustered a low groan as a response at that and said as a response the following.
“Ya like to have all the answers, thinking that the world, in its core, cares, like it even has a conscience, do ya? I have nothing against ya or yer friends, sweetheart. I just feel that, considering yer position, ya do not have the right to be that innocent in the real nature of life. Like ya think that everypony that confronts ya is just an insecure schoolyard bully with magical power.”
She naturally rolled her eyes.
“I’m not in the thought that you are a schoolyard bully that never grew up, as you are trying to point out. You seem to me like someone that has seen something so horrible that you gave up in following a moral compass and just does anything to win. No matter how horrible that action may be. It would seem to me that half a decade in prison would give you time to reflect.”
I exhaled and did my best to not get an aneurysm there and then. Did she not know that the prison that I would be sentenced too housed some savages that I placed there myself? Or how bad it is at actually reforming ponies? I had those thoughts swirling in me as I heard her words. She said it with such innocence too, probably thinking that it was nothing but a timeout in a secure building. Probably only read about it, must have never been in one herself.
“But Luna told me that you were there in Manehattan when the Thule Esoteric Order summoned Nightmare Moon, you were the first to confront her and you nearly died doing so. There is also the fact that you were the first pony to approach Luna without fear, even before she came over to Ponyville for Nightmare Night almost three years ago now. Not to mention the friendship that you both share. It makes me think that underneath the stallion of blood and iron lies a heart. Am I wrong?”
I looked at her with the utmost incredulity. I did not expect that was what Luna told her, and to be fair she probably told her more. I did not know whether she was asking me a trick question. One minute, she wishes me to fight for my life, probably leading to the deaths of quite a few as I make the hasty escape of whatever prison I would be sentenced to. The next, she is talking to me as if I were something more admirable. I was wondering if that mare would make up her damn mind already.
“Luna seems to have told ya quite a lot. But why the change of heart? Surely ya may think that she is just biased.”
She stopped trotting, and looked to her right at me. She gave me a smile, a rather adorable one if I can say that, and then sat. She closed her eyes and coughed before continuing with with her answer.
“Not at all; in fact, what she told me made me realize that you deserve another chance. In all, I think that you qualify for reformation here; the girls and I might actually turn you into the hero you are supposed to be. Sure you would need some five years, but that is only because your case is almost as bad as Starlight’s. But don’t worry, I see you passing with flying colors already.”
I could not believe a word of what I was hearing. It baffled me, it felt impossible, but that is what she said.
“Pfffffffffftt!! Hahahahaha! Really!? Ya cannot be serious, Sparkle. Do you even understand what you are saying? I mean, don't ya know? Yer standard of heroism is a modern invention, Miss Sparkle.”
I said that last sentence with the straightest face that I could muster at the time. Har jaw was left open as she continued to give me that one thousand meter stare of despair.
“Celestia, at some point, thought it through and decided that the old ways had to change, so Celestia started backing more individualistic philosophies only some four hundred years ago. Ya heard me, the idea of individual ownership and the right to vote has only been around for the last four hundred years or so with the rise of modern Equestria and Celestia’s fostering of more democratic and individualistic thinking.
“Back at, minimum, a thousand years ago, murder and rape on the streets was common, filth and disease afflicted most of the citizenry to the point that only nobility and royalty knew of hygiene! Go further back and in the ancient world the gods roamed and screwed over all mortal kind with reckless abandon, while basic cleanliness was certainly more common because of the existence of Empires like Romulus, and Ancient Xing. Wars were common, so common that most were not even named, and every empire of the time maintained a constantly grinding aptitude for war over resources and the wims of selfish and egotistical deities. Without the Witchers from the south of the Slavic Lands, the various monster hunting schools, The Ironclad Knights, the Druids of Erenn, and Celestia and Luna. The world would make what Discord did to this continent over a millennium ago seem like paradise!
“Oh, and let us not forget the fact that just how common bloodshed was. Do you have any idea how many lives Luna took before her time as Nightmare Moon during the Battle of Kamikazee in the country of Nipon, barely a year before Celestia’s and Luna’s arrival at the western shores of Equestria? I will tell ya, one hundred thousand and forty Xing and Mongolians died on the Pacific Ocean that day, attempting to invade Nipon, and she killed them all with the storm she created and the Zambato given to her by the legendary swordsmith Kaze. Bodies drifted to the western shores of Nipon for DAYS!
“Celestia brought down two ships, each with crews numbering in the hundreds, during her time gallivanting and eloping with Sinbad the Sailor. And let us not forget the thousands that died during the Unification War, the War Against Discord, and last but not least, the Celestial Vault Civil War that had seen the rise and imprisonment of Nightmare Moon. And that is just covering the BASICS. I could stand here talking for literal years about the entire history of war and divine intervention on our mortal plain, and it wouldn't be enough.
“With that said, it is insanely clear that heroics of the clean and bloodless kind are a new phenomenon of this modern age. And that most of Equine history has been bathed in blood, oceans of it!”
She slumped, she looked down at the grass, tears forming in her eyes, I could hear the slight wimpers of “Luna caused the Kamikaze? Celestia killed others?”.
She braced herself, but then told me this in retaliation.
“That was the past, we do not have to be like that anymore! What good is it we keep fighting if nothing has changed?”I looked at her, and then felt a sudden buck in the gut. The look on her tear filled eyes and flushed cheeks made me feel guilty, like a took away all that was good of the world before her very eyes.
“Not ‘we’ Miss Sparkle, but ye. Ya and yer friends are the ones that will give new life to the world, after all is done. Me, Luna, and the rest of my ilk are what is left of the old world. Those that have to make up for their sins and clear the path for ya to make a new kinder world. Me and Luna? As penance for our sins, we have to push back the ancient darkness of eons past, and dismantle the new rising evils. So that ye and yer friends can make right where we did so much wrong.”
She looked at me with understanding, probably in an attempt to give me some semblance of solace.
“It doesn’t seem fair for you. Why give up a chance at reformation?” Miss Sparkle said.
I sighed, I knew the answer. It was one that I had convinced myself again and again. One that I came to realize that, after going through therapy, I refused to follow my shrink’s advice to run the O.S.S. from a desk, to stop fueling the night terrors and settle down. That I should seek a more fulfilling and more stable life. But that is the thing, isn’t it? They just don’t train War Mages like me anymore.
“Something is coming, Miss Sparkle, smoke, the iron like smell of blood, the heat of the fire. I can already feel them. War is coming, a war like no other in history, things are stirring, things from eons before even the stone and the fire that were around even before the dinosaurs, and even the first dragons. We as a species have been eating away at the shadows, pushing back the monsters of old into deeper and more remote pits. Closer and closer they get to the resting place of ancient terrible things that no civilization can truly recall completely but were there before us, the dragons; before mountains, and before oceans.
“It will start with the burning of books, and it will continue with the burning of ponies. Equines will be the first to fight for dominion over the world against each other in the old world. I fear that the bloodshed and destruction will be more than ever in history, and that will stir the monsters that even the gods feared and could not themselves destroy when they were alive.
“Sorry to say, Twilight, but I cannot afford to be ‘fixed’. The world is going to need monsters like me one last time. I decide to be at peace and I would be turning my back on our species. Plus, I am thirty-nine; if there was a chance for me to have a family and settle down, it passed me already. My work might be the only chance. Though I suspect that I may be overestimating it.”
She shook a bit in frustration, her teeth gritting as she held back her answer––an answer she wasn’t going to hold for long anyway.
“I refuse…. I refuse! I refuse to believe that there is something out there so terrible and unfathomable that your way is the only sane way to deal with it! Maybe you, the Pillars, all the others that fought for the world and Equestria that came before me and my friends may have brought yourselves to think that way, to the point that even Celestia and Luna think that way. But me and my friends have something that they never had, and that Celestia and Luna only had for a brief span of time, The Elements of Harmony.
“Are you telling me that the seed planted by the Pillars is useless against what is coming? Me and my friends have faced Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis, Sombra, Tirek, and more! Surely we are ready for whatever you are afraid of.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked at her straight in the eye.
“By the way, no offence to ya or Celestia’s stepson, but the Ether Crystal grenade didn’t really quite finish the job. I had to be telegraphed and then brought in to track Sombra’s new body and clean up yer mess. And finally, I can assure you that the Tree of Harmony is insignificant to Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep. Let us not forget that it would not even care to help anyway.”
She started to dry her tears with her right forehoof, followed by a gentle tilting of the head to me in absolute confusion.
“Why? Why would it not help?”
I sighed, This was going to be painful for her.
“Because Yog-Sothoth is an entity of thought, knowledge, and order, while Nyarlathotep is one of deceit and chaos. They came to our world at the same time, intending to fight for control of the continents in a way that could be considered, in a way, harmony by the Tree’s stupid standards. That and, in the end, both Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep are beyond our comprehension and could have destroyed our world if it pleased them. But from what I can tell, one gives to his followers despite them not understanding what they really want and indivertibly always leads them to their doom, to the point that his followers embrace it as Yog’s plan. The other is a sadistic motherfucker that likes to see us suffer as part of his daily masturbation sessions, and does this mostly by manipulation and shapeshifting.”
She then looked up at the stars, and said her piece.
“If what you are saying is true, then in the grim abysmal darkness in our universe, there is only madness and horror. That we are so small, that like ants we would be stepped on without much notice….”
I decided to start trotting toward one of the O.S.S. tents that I see in the distance. I heard her as she got up and galloped to keep up. She reached me, and speaked to me with a worried voice.
“So that’s it? You tell me that there is no hope and you just trot away? Look, even if that is the case, you shouldn’t live like you do: like a dead stallion trotting. Going from case to case, and if not, from analysis to analysis with the weight of the world on your back. That sort of thing drives ponies crazy, hollows them out and makes them be more and more vicious individuals. If you keep on being ‘pragmatic’ then you will become no better than the creatures and madponies you fight!”
I don’t think she got the memo of me not expecting to live for long.
“And ya point is? I’m a doomed stallion, Sparkle, there is no happy ending for somepony like me. I try to be a good pony, and I become less effective in my decision making. I hate to break it to you, but in this situation I think that I made the right call.”
She sighed, she was going to say something.
“That is how it starts: you make one pragmatic decision, and then another one, and then another one. You trade lives, at first the wicked, then probably the weak next. And finally once it all is said and done you are left alone in an empty, dead, and scorched land if you are lucky. No, more likely you would be killed long before that conclusion.”
I stopped…
“I appreciate your concern. I’ll think it over.”
She wasn't entirely right, but not entirely wrong either. In the end, at least I could appreciate that she saw something decent in me. If only because she is genuinely a good pony.
In the end we kept on trotting, the sun was setting and Celestia was waiting for us both at the end with a smile on her face.
…..And that is probably the best you can hope for.
_The End_