Secret History
Luminoth was what was known in the parlance of Starfleet as a Garden World. Underpopulated even for its small size, and that population somewhat under-sized, it had large areas of land that were not under cultivation nor construction. Rather, under the light touch of gentle conservation efforts, they brought forth virgin forest, raw meadow, river and stream teaming with fish and game and every kind of life. All manner of creatures, who might have found themselves hard up against in a world with a larger population which felt more pressure to expand and build upon every inch of green on which it could lay hands, could thrive on Luminoth free from disturbance.
It was on this garden world, upon a verdant meadow in this green and pleasant land, that the sentinels lounged idly as they waited for…something. Raven hadn’t told them exactly what they were waiting for, she’d only told them that they were waiting for something. She had brought them here, out through the gateway from United Equestria and out from the fairy city of Mab’s Town before they were discovered by the fairies or their Starfleet protectors. She had brought them here, to this place where no one dwelt, far from the prying eyes of Starfleet, and then told them to wait.
Nobody seemed very unhappy about the delay. On the contrary, as Eve watched her companions she was surprised by how…content they all seemed. None of them could really be said to be doing anything, except maybe Alpha who was sitting beneath the shade of a tree reading a light novel that she’d picked up at the gateway station on United Equestria. The rest were simply…doing nothing, and looking as if they were enjoying the experience. Bravo was lying on the grass, hands tucked behind her head, earphones in as she stared up at the clouds.
“Wow!” she murmured. “That cloud looks just like a whale! This is so cool!”
Two and Charlie were playing a game that seemed to involve nothing more than dropping sticks into the nearby river on one side of the bridge and then seeing which stick would come out the other side of the bridge first on the other side; despite the apparent simplicity they seemed to find it fascinating. Delta was standing as still as a statue, a butterfly with bright blue wings had landed on his nose and he seemed unwilling to do anything that might disturb it. The butterfly flapped its wings lazily. It had big black spots on its wings that almost looked like eyes, and half gave the impression that it and Delta were having a staring contest.
And then he sneezed, and the butterfly flew away, lazily flapping its wings as it went.
Delta snorted. “I wish it could have stayed longer.”
Eve smiled. “You’ve never seen a butterfly before?”
“No, I haven’t,” Delta said. “It was…it was pretty.”
Eve stared at him. Of course he hadn’t seen one before, he’d been bred in a lab and then kept in a cell, it was the same for all of them. No wonder they found this idleness so appealing, no wonder they found clouds and sticks and childish games so fascinating. They had never experienced anything like this before. In some ways, most obviously the physical, they were adults, but in other ways they were more like children: their age, their experiences…there was so much they hadn’t done yet, so much that they had no conception of doing. They had been bred for war, and kept caged until they were needed to carry out some warlike task. The simple pleasures of smelling a flower, watching a sunset…these things had been denied to them.
And to me, too. She could not exempt herself. It occurred to Eve quite abruptly that she had never seen a butterfly before either. Twilight had, to be sure, and Eve had memories of it through Twilight…but she wasn’t Twilight. She had no memories of her own of butterflies or sunsets, of picnics with friends or hikes through the woods. She had only Twilight’s memories, disconnected things devoid of emotional connection. To claim that her experiences were any greater than those of her clones it was…it was like trying to pass someone else’s home movies off as your own life.
I possess Twilight Sparkle’s memories…but I am not Twilight Sparkle. I am myself, Evenfall, and I must make my own memories if I am to become someone real.
She felt a hand upon her shoulder. “Bit for your thoughts?” Raven asked.
Eve looked at her. Raven had thrown back her hood, allowing the light to fall upon her grey coat and her golden horn. Absent the shadow of her hood, Raven’s horn glimmered in the bright light of the day. Without the shroud of darkness, the grey of her coat did not look so dead or decaying. And her eyes were a deep blue, like the ocean. Or at least the way that Twilight’s memories told her the ocean looked.
Raven tilted her head. “Is something wrong?”
“I…” Eve felt her cheeks beginning to heat up. “You’re…surprisingly cute with your hood down. Without the shadows, with the light on your face…”
“I barely look like a monster at all?” Raven said.
“I didn’t say that,” Eve said.
“No, you didn’t,” Raven murmured. “But you didn’t have to, I know what I am. Although…I wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
Raven smirked. “I came here to ask you what was troubling you.”
“I know you did,” Eve replied. “But we seem to have started with you already so…why don’t you finish.”
Raven chuckled.
“I think that might be the first time I’ve ever heard me laugh without you sounding malicious,” Eve said. She hesitated. “I think…actually, this might be the first time that I’ve ever heard you laugh. It was…Twilight, who heard you laughing before.”
“Well, yes, I do tend to put on my best evil cackle when I’m about to kill someone,” Raven said. She blinked. “Ah, so that was the reason behind your brown study?”
“It just struck me,” Eve said. “Look around at everyone, they’re having brand new experiences and they’re not afraid to show it. They’re…living for the first time. I should be doing the same. This is my life, this is my first time feeling the breeze upon my cheeks, this is my first time free to just lie on the grass or stare at the clouds or smell the flowers…but Twilight’s memories keep getting in the way. It’s like my own mind is trying to trick me into thinking that I’m someone other than I am, that I’ve live some way other than I have.”
“You want to lose them?” Raven asked. “The memories?”
Eve hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I’d get rid of them all, if I could.”
“That might be possible,” Raven said softly. “Not now, but…later. When our quest is complete, when we’re free from Starfleet and all the rest. Together, you and I will have the power to remake the world in our image and if that includes erasing all your memories from before…whenever you want, then we can do that.”
“That…that would be…” Eve found she couldn’t really imagine what it would be, to be free of the ghost of Twilight that clung to her, occupying her mind, clogging up space in her head. But it would be good, she was almost certain of that. She would be free then, free of the past and the plans that her creators had had for her, free of the expectations, free of all of it. Free to be herself, to make her own life, to forge her own path. “But I don’t understand why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you’re helping me,” Eve said. “Why you care about my memories, or any of it.”
Raven was silent for a moment. She bowed her head, and looked away. “Tell me, Eve, when the saint lies down with the sinner is the saint corrupted by the contact, or is the sinner uplifted? When Beauty falls in love with the Beast, does she turn him back into a handsome prince…or does he turn her into a monster like him? There are fish, in the deep dark waters of Mariann Three, that never see or feel the touch of sunlight upon them. They live at the very bottom of the deepest abyss, in complete darkness…and they are the most ugly creatures that you could possibly imagine. Hideous things to look on, blind, wretched. But do you think…do you think that if those poor sightless creatures could ever rise above the darkness, could ever feel the touch of sunlight caressing them…do you think it’s possible that even repulsive things like them could…become beautiful?”
“Raven,” Eve murmured.
“I was bred for war, just like you,” Raven said. “Like you, like all these others, I was created by my father to fight and kill in his name. The only reason I exist is to eliminate his enemies. But unlike you…I wasn’t so lucky as to escape before I got my hands dirty. Twilight…she wasn’t the only person I’ve killed. She isn’t the one that I regret the most…not by a long shot.
“I’m a monster, Eve, but you…you’re an innocent in all of this. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve only fought to survive. I believe, I truly believe, that you have the power to save yourself and break this whole damn thing once and for all. And maybe, just maybe, while you’re saving yourself…you can save me to.”
“I had no idea you could be so sentimental, Raven.”
Raven’s whole posture changed in an instant, becoming harder, tensed and ready to fight. “Instead of listening in on my private conversations, Mysterious, why don’t you come out and show yourself to all these good ponies here?”
“Mysterious?” Eve said. “But…he died during the first war with Titan. I…Twilight saw him die.”
“And die he did, and so did Dementia and Rep-Stallion, and even Titan himself,” Raven said. “But what is dead may never die. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; from dust and death where they made, to dust and death they then returned…why should they not return from a death and dust anew, again and again, for as long as they are needed until their task is done?”
Eve frowned. That made a certain kind of logical sense, that what was made from dust and dead things could be ‘reborn’ even after it was ‘killed’ since it could be argued that it had never been alive to start with. And yet, at the same time, as an explanation she found that it still left something to be desired. “I still don’t really understand.”
“You will,” Raven assured her. “Trust me, we’re about to explain everything. Mysterious! Show yourself!”
“Now is that any way to speak to your eldest brother?” Mysterious asked, as he appeared out of the shadow of the tree beneath which Alpha was sitting, reading. At first it was simply the shadow lengthening, and them forming into the image of a bipedal pony, and then that shadow began to rise up out of the ground and form into something almost solid. Alpha let out a squawk of alarm as she scrambled away, attracting the attention of the other Sentinels who turned, reaching for their weapons, to face this new intruder.
“Relax,” Raven said. “He’s a friend.”
“A friend of yours maybe,” Delta muttered.
“A friend of all of ours,” Raven said firmly. “Everyone this is Mysterious. Mysterious, these are the Sentinels. And this is Eve.”
“Of course, she gets special mention,” Bravo said.
“A pleasure to meet you all,” Mysterious said, as he advanced upon Eve and Raven. “Especially you…Eve, was it? You’ve given yourself a new name.”
“Raven suggested it.”
“Did she?”
Raven shrugged. “She’s not Twilight, why should she bear Twilight’s name? Why not start afresh?”
Mysterious did not, strictly speaking, have a face. His head was just a shadowy mass, with no eyes or mouth or any distinguishing features. How he saw…clearly he was using magic to compensate somehow. Nevertheless, for a shadow creature he managed to express his amusement in his stance and tone quite well. “Physician heal thyself, perhaps?”
“That’s completely different,” Raven said. “I’ve done things as Raven that can’t be escaped by changing my name. She doesn’t have to go through the same. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“I thought we were here so that we could be free,” Mysterious replied. “We’re placing a lot of faith in you, young lady, if our father knew what we were planning then he’d kill us both.”
“Is anyone else in?” Raven asked. “Rep? Dementia?”
“Rep’s dead,” Mysterious declared. “Killed by a dragon in Rangiveria, along with the latest Titan copy.”
“Spike,” Eve murmured.
“Dementia doesn’t think this can be done, but she’ll come around,” Mysterious continued. “And she won’t tell.”
“What’s going on here?” Two demanded fiercely. “What is all this? What are you two talking about?”
“An excellent question,” Raven said. “Listen well, all of you, and you will hear the truth that you never imagined. But first, tell me: do you believe that free will exists?”
“Yes,” Eve said. “Of course it does.”
Raven looked at her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Eve repeated. “And I can prove it too, look.” She levitated a pebble up off the ground by her feet. “I decide to pick up the rock and I do it. I decide drop the rock,” she let the pebble fall to the ground. “And I do that to. I take actions based on my own choices, that is the essence of free will.”
“Then what price destiny?” Raven asked. “What price that numinous thing that ponies value so?”
Eve folded her arms. “I…I don’t know. I’m not a philosopher.” Twilight had been, amongst many other things…but she wasn’t Twilight.
“You’re right, of course,” Raven said. “You have the power to make your own decisions, to take actions, there isn’t an invisible puppeteer pulling your strings…not in the small things, anyway. When it comes to picking up stones and then discarding them you are free to do exactly as you like.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ incoming,” Eve said.
Raven smiled. “But when it comes to great matters, when it comes to the destinies of worlds and nations, to the progress of lives, to wars and battles and the deaths of heroes…I am afraid that free will is an absolute illusion. All of us, Twilight, Lightning, the might of Starfleet, Queen Celestia, the Grand Ruler himself…we’re all just puppets dancing on the invisible strings of my father Lord Titan.”
“Titan?” Eve gasped. “Titan’s dead, you just said so yourself and he’s died three times before then. Titan is the most incompetent villain ever but you tell us that he’s…what, some kind of mastermind controlling everything?”
“Clearly you need to explain a little more for context,” Mysterious said.
“Yes, yes, I’m getting to that,” Raven snapped. “Everyone’s a critic. Ahem. Now. Where shall I begin?”
“How about at the beginning?” Alpha suggested.
Raven grinned. “What a marvellous idea. Yes. At the beginning. In the beginning-“
“I kind of meant at the beginning of the story, not the beginning of the world,” Alpha said.
Raven laughed. “In this case, the two are one and the same. Now, in the beginning, there was darkness. There always is. Before there can be light there must be dark, before there can be love there must be hate, before there can be life there must be death. And before there can be heroes…there must be villains.
“So in the beginning there was darkness, from the darkness arose the Dark Lord Titan, born out of greed and malice, filled with a desire to make all things in his own image. He rose from the darkness and looked out across the world and was filled with both desire to possess it…and to destroy it, and remake it exactly as he wished.
“Uh, can we go back to the part about your father-“ Eve began.
“Shh!” Raven hissed. “You’re interrupting story time.”
“Right, sorry.”
“But he was cunning, our father, at least at first,” Raven said. “He approached the peoples of the universe not as a conqueror but as a friend. Though he was a creature of darkness he could yet cloak himself in light, and in the light he approached the elves of Elfaron, the serpent-people of Serpentera, the Crystalites of Jemina, and from them learnt their arts and powers, even as he taught them some few scraps of knowledge in turn. He travelled across the universe, meeting many peoples and learning their ways…and more importantly learning their power. And once he had learned all that he could, once he possessed all the power that he could acquire through trickery and deceit, then with his purloined arts he fashioned a great key, magical wand with the power of which he could recreate the world, altering all things as he would, creating a universe entirely in his own image, a fitting place for him to dwell.
“But, as I’m sure that you’ve all realised by now, before he could remake the world…our father would have to first destroy the world that was already here. And that is exactly what he set out to do. As soon as the elves and the serpent-people and all the rest realised that they had been betrayed they determined to resist him, but by this point Titan had become so powerful that there was little they could do. Dragons, magic, hosts of elves in armour of the elder days, our father laid waste to all of them. Darkness spread across the universe, devouring all in its path.”
“The great war,” Eve said. “The war between darkness and light that destroyed so much of what came before, leaving only ruins and artefacts…that was Titan.”
Raven nodded. “The same war, driven by my father. He had almost won, the triumph of darkness was almost complete…but Titan had forgotten that where there is darkness there will also be light. Light may get there a little slower than darkness, but it arrives all the same. From the light arose six heroes to challenge him, six heroes to embody the goodness of the world, and with the powers of the light they set out to stop Titan once and for all.
“They were only partially successful. They could not destroy him, he was too strong. But, at the cost of their own lives, the six legendary warriors were able to gravely weaken him, and seal him away beneath the surface of A’Baoa Qu. The Seraph Key, which could not be destroyed, was hidden away on a temple on the moon of Helsinore, far from any grasping or acquisitive hands. And so life went on, and eventually the Great War faded from memory, and become nothing more than dusty legend of interest to none but the most devoted of antiquarians.
“But as the years passed, so too did Titan regain some of his former strength. He was still bound within his prison, unable to escape it, but he found that nevertheless he was not without the power to influence the world. For you see, by concentrated exercise of his immense powers, Titan could bring forth life. He could split off some of his own essence and fashion from it what you might call…children.”
Eve’s eyes widened. “You. That’s what you meant when you told me you were born for war.”
“I’m actually the youngest of all of Titan’s children, of all of those fashioned out of his soul and his darkness I was created last of all,” Raven said. “Mysterious is the eldest of us, the very first to be created. Why, he’s even older than Celesto, aren’t you Mysterious.”
“Wait, what?” Eve gasped. “Celesto? As in-“
“The Grand Ruler himself, champion of all things good and pure and inveterate enemy of evil,” Raven said, with gleeful relish. “I told you that darkness could cloak itself in light, didn’t I? My father did it once, and then he sent his son to do the same. Unable to escape, Titan knew that no fragment of his that he was able to make and send out of his prison would be able to conquer the universe alone, so he created Celesto from out of himself and sent him out into the world in the guise of a hero. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how many things that would be decried as evil and monstrous you can get away with so long as you cloak yourself in purest light and staunchly maintain that you’re a hero.
“Celesto set out across the stars, and sojourned for a brief period upon Equestria, where he was filled with the most passionate desire for the princess whom he found there. He vowed that, as much as his duty to our father allowed, he would possess for his own one day. But then, obedient to his command, he left her for a while and came across the uninhabited planet which would be known as Unicornicopia, where he brought forth children of his own, the very first space ponies. This was the key part of Titan’s new plan, you see: although none of his children could conquer alone, Celesto’s task was to bring forth a great army, and with that army to build a great empire, and with that empire to arrange all things for the destruction and remaking of the world once Titan was freed from his prison.” Raven laughed. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? All these years, ever since it’s foundation, Starfleet has been doing the bidding of the very evil that it claims to oppose.”
“And the Titan that we fought?” Eve asked. “I mean the Titan that attacked Equestria, the Titan that-“
“Has died so many times?” Raven finished for her. “Each one a different fragment of our father, sent out to provide a convenient villain to nudge things in the right direction. The beings that Starfleet called Sombra and Nightmare Moon, Mysterious, Rep-Stallion, Dementia, Melantha, Frost-Eye they were all children of Titan, brought forth by him to mask the true progress of his and Celesto’s plans. All of the enemies which Twilight fought against were fragments of the one true enemy, and all of them false flags conducted to mask the true purpose of Starfleet. And now that purpose has nearly been fulfilled, for under the auspices of great light the darkness has all but won. The elves are a broken people under the heel of Starfleet, the serpent-people and the crystallites have been wiped out, the ponies…you know as well as I do the state that ponies are in. The six heroes of the light are dead and where are their descendants now? All opposition has been crushed, all power has been acquired, Starfleet is absolutely predominant and Celesto is the undisputed master of the Starfleet.”
“It’s kind of hard to imagine what he needs his father for, in that case,” Delta said.
Raven’s smile broadened until you could see her fangs. “Give that clone a cookie because he’s just hit the nail on the head. Celesto may be born of our father, but he has – of necessity – been kept on a much longer leash than the rest of us. And he likes that. He has no desire to be under the paternal thumb or worse. He will carry out the plan, but once he has all the necessary ingredients then he will kill Titan and remake the world in his image, according to his desires.”
“Awesome,” Eve muttered. “And what about you?”
“I want to be free,” Raven said. “That’s all that the rest of us want: me, Mysterious, Dementia. We’re a lot alike, you and I: we were both created through artificial means, we did not come into this world through natural birth. We were brought into a world at war to do one thing: to kill. Each of us has our roles to play: Mysterious is the spy, Rep-Stallion is the Warrior, Dementia is the Guardian and I…I am the assassin. I clean up problems for Celesto and my father. Twilight Sparkle was getting too close to some of the less savoury truths about big brother Celesto, and if she’d kept on going down that rabbit hole she might have found out even worse things…and so I was ordered to take care of her. Just as I’ve taken care of innumerable problems over the years. And I’m sick of it. We’re all sick of it. Sick of being tools, pawns, puppets, we are alive! We live, we think, we have our own hearts but our father uses us as mere extensions of himself. And we are powerless to do anything about it. The moment that we turn on him, the moment that he even thinks that we might turn on him…he’ll destroy us with a thought.”
“Which is where you come in,” Mysterious said. “The false Twilight-“
“Don’t call me that!” Eve snapped. “I’m not Twilight, I’m not just a copy, an inferior reprint of the original, I’m me! If you have a right to exist as individuals then so do I!”
“Yes, you do,” Raven said calmly. “But you won’t, not unless we act now. There is no place for you in the world that will be made anew once the plans of Titan and Celesto come to fruition. Whichever of them wins in the end – and my money’s on Celesto, he has the power of Starfleet behind him, and father has grown lax and indolent in his captivity – there will be neither peace nor freedom for any of us. We will die and be forgotten. But you can save us from that Eve. Titan has no hold on you, Starfleet has no hold on you. You have all the power of Twilight Sparkle and more, you and you’re friends have been engineered to be the best that there can be. You can destroy Titan and, once we have the Seraph Key we can be the ones to remake the world the way that we want. We can make a place for ourselves, somewhere we can be free, somewhere…somewhere we can find a better way forward than the lives we’ve lived up until now. What do you say, Eve? What do you all say?”
Eve glanced at her fellow clones.
Two shrugged. “Evil on one side, evil on the other side and us in the middle, screwing them both? Sounds like it could be fun.”
“When good fails, sometimes self-interest must take the lead,” Mysterious said.
One by one, the other Sentinels all nodded their agreement. They all knew that Raven was right: they would find no peace in this world while Starfleet hunted them, and if either of these plans came to fruition…there would be nothing left for them anyway. Which was why they needed to put their hand upon the tiller, set the direction themselves. If it was true, and Eve didn’t think that Raven would lie to them now, and everything had been a lie, strings pulled by Titan and Celesto…it was about time that someone else started pulling the strings.
“We’re in,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
“Excellent,” Mysterious said. “You should take this, you might find it useful.”
He threw something about her, a gem on a golden chain. Eve caught it in one hand, it was a kind of lavender-coloured sapphire, if such a thing existed (there were purple sapphires, so why not?) except that it was glowing, pulsing with power. So much power, a power almost as great as she possessed, Eve could feel it pulsing inside the gem, she could feel it so close, she could reach out with her own magic and touch it.
Hello?
Eve recoiled mentally, nearly dropping the gem as she realised that magical power wasn’t all that was inside it. There was something else there too, a consciousness. A consciousness that seemed to have woken up, judging by the way the glow of the gem was brighter and the pulsing more frequent.
Who are you?
I’m Twilight, came the reply from the consciousness within the gem. I’m Twilight Sparkle. Who are you, and why do you seem so familiar to me?