//------------------------------// // Myths — She of the Flaming Horizon // Story: In Sheep's Clothing // by Kydois //------------------------------// — The circumstances of Philomena’s birth were as unusual as the times. Soon after the unification of the pony tribes, a new threat had made itself known. The Bringer of Chaos, the Spirit of Discord, had made itself manifest. Though no one knew from whence he came, he wasted little time in making his presence known. The landscape was changed into unnatural shapes, animals and trees were modified with a snap of his fingers into disfigured monstrosities, and the ponies found themselves turning on each other. Day and night changed at random intervals, the sun and moon zipping through the sky like cats chasing a mouse. They say that it was during this time of disharmony that the Spirit of Discord shook the sun hard enough that a small fragment of it was flung off, landing right onto Equestria. The small piece of the sun found itself out of its element. It looked around and saw not endless space and cosmos, but a warped landscape teeming with life. It looked up in the sky and saw the great star from which it had been born, and though it yearned to return, it found that it was bound to the ground, unable to travel to where it wished to go. It looked around once again and saw a bird, and it saw that the bird could go as it pleased, whether it was down onto the ground or up into the sky. The sun fragment sought to emulate this freedom and changed itself into the first phoenix, its feathers splendid and magnificent and its body strong and hale. Surely, it thought, with a form such as this, it could return to its home. But the sun bird found that it could not reach its goal. Its body tired too quickly, and the once friendly space outside of Equestria’s atmosphere had become hostile, the empty expanse too wide. It tried to make the journey many times, but each time found itself crashing back down to earth in an uncontrollable fireball. It mourned the loss of its home, and it lost hope that it would ever return, so crestfallen it had become. Meanwhile, the Reign of Chaos had been put to an end, and in a much less inhospitable world, ponies began to expand once again. Such it was that the sun bird met its first pony. The pony, in wonder at the beauty of the bird, sought companionship in the despondent sun, and the phoenix, having lost all else, returned it. It gained a name, Philomena, and found in the pony a steadfast friend. Years passed, and Philomena was a permanent attachment to the pony. The nation of Equestria was rebuilt from the destruction of the earlier era, and the two were a constant sight. Following the habits of its first friend, the phoenix became just as well known for its assistance in building up Equestria as it was for its mischievous nature. But the road to rebuilding was not so easy. The dragons received news that the pony lands were no longer plagued by chaos and moved in to claim the fertile land, and the pony races, having only recently unified and put through Tartarus, were forced to fight off the formidable lizards. Dragons razed Equestrian villages with impunity. Though they were few, their innate physical advantages in scale and flame won them numerous victories. It was soon decided among the ponies that their best hope of repelling the dragons was in defeating the Dragon Lord. And so Philomena found herself in the Dragon Lands with a large portion of the remaining Equestrian Army alongside the pony she had formed a bond with all those years ago. Under the cover of night, they moved on the dragons, but they were intercepted by a small advance force and the Dragon Lord himself, a being as large as a mountain and wielding the Bloodstone. Despite the ponies’ magic, their champions could do little more than contain the Dragon Lord’s depthless ferocity, and there was news that the bulk of the dragon forces were fast approaching. Philomena was busy holding off the dragons accompanying the Lord, but she knew that if the main forces were to regroup with their leader that the ponies, who she had spent so much of her short life with, would be wiped out. She made her decision swiftly and without hesitation. The phoenix flung herself into the air, flying straight past the Dragon Lord into their lands. She began to burn once again with the sun’s light, having restrained her true power in order to interact with the ponies she had learned to love. Her path inwards was set ablaze, and though the dragons boasted some resistance to fire, they found they were little protection against the intensity of the first phoenix. Philomena’s inferno emitted powerful flares, and motes of conscious light split off from her. They became lesser phoenixes, new beacons of flame plunging deep into the dragon forces and decimating their ranks. The dragons quickly recognized the new threat in their midst and fired back, and though Philomena was powerful and vaporized many of the projectiles, she was still confined to a physical body and was struck with a mortal wound. Thus falling, plummeting once more to the earth who had always come to claim her, did Philomena become known over the world. To the ponies, she became known as She of the Flaming Horizon. To the griffons, the Earthbound Star. To the dragons, she became simply known as: The Cataclysm. She reached deep into her ever-burning, ever-collapsing core and released the entirety of her essence in a violent flare. She returned not to the form she had when she first crashed into the world, but to an even more primal form, and the deep night that hung over the battlegrounds turned into scorching day. It seemed the entire world had turned ablaze, so powerful were the solar winds that sloughed off of the falling sun. The main forces of the dragons themselves were burned out, and their fate was sealed when Philomena finally fell to the ground, creating an explosive eruption that was felt around the world. The once lush jungle of the Dragon Lands was turned into volcanic wasteland, and the final impact would see the land barren for centuries after. The Dragon Lord himself, though possessing an almost infinite wealth of energy, found his advance force falling under the rallying of the ponies under broad daylight, and alone against the two heroes of the ponies, he was forced to concede and made his promise to force the dragons in Equestria to back down or return. Following the fight, a single pony split off from the rest and ventured into the Dragon Lands, frantic to find her friend. — “Philomena? Philomena?” The white pony scanned the world around her frantically, jumping towards any hint of a flame in the dark night. The phoenixes she had seen on her path inwards seemed to recognize her, but none of them responded to her call. None of them came to her. The pony galloped inwards towards the massive crater where Philomena had been last seen, trodding over the ashes of trees that once reached high into the sky and over the unmarked graves of hundreds of dragons. Her coat was smeared with grey, and her hooves were caked with muck. The bandages that wrapped around her barrel and wings had become soiled with dirt and smoldering ashes. She finally arrived at the edge of the crater. It was eerily quiet as she looked downwards into the clearing. With a hop, she slid towards the center across the smooth walls of the depression, heedless of the lingering heat. “Philomena? Philomena? Art thou there?” The pony rushed forward, but her hopeful expression began to fall as she found little more than a pile of dust awaiting her. “Philomena?” she whimpered, wiping off her tears and snot and only succeeding in further disheveling her appearance. She dropped heavily into a sitting position, her energy drained from her at the continuing silence, and she lay down beside the middle of the crater. Minutes passed. The pony’s sister had arrived and chose to lay beside her. Even a few of the neophyte phoenixes had begun to tentatively approach the two. It was soon after the phoenixes had surrounded the two that the entire flock let out an ear-piercing, “SKRREEEEE!” The two ponies jumped at the sudden noise, and they let out loud shrieks of their own when the pile of ashes in the middle exploded in a loud, “PKAAAWW!” And the entire flock of phoenixes seemed to fall to their backs in uproarious laughter, but there was no bird louder than the phoenix at the middle of the crater. The white pony let out a frustrated howl, and she flung a nearby wad of dirt at the newly reborn phoenix, wailing, “THOU WRETCHED FOWL, HOW DAREST THOU!” She stomped the ground repeatedly, sobbing and laughing in equal measures, and Philomena finally approached her with a caw. The phoenix was pulled into the white pony’s reach with magic, and the two shared a warm embrace until the first rays of sunlight finally broke the horizon. And to this day, Philomena flies the skies of her new home, her newfound purpose as undying as the everlasting core of the sun within her breast.