//------------------------------//
// The Great Divorce, Part One [Alicorn Pre-History] 
// Story: Cryptic Coda & Obscure Odysseys 
// by Ice Star 
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When the world was still young and the great crystal roots of Harmonia still were seen wrapping around the world, the Alicorns were fewer and among the planet's only life. Ponies crossed no plains and foraged in no forests, for no ponies tread the world and their ancestors were still unrefined in the arcane, looked to herds for safety, and hardly bigger than dogs. Horns more akin to nubs were the most revered things in the hearts of these creatures, and the Alicorns looked over these creatures sparingly, with patience to see if they might grow into something proud beyond curious, runty little animals with more than stubby wings, promise, and potential. And that potential for more — for languages, art, and advancements like those of the Alicorns — shone like the gleam developing in the coats of the northernmost would-be ponies.

Like the ancestors of ponies, other mortal creatures had yet to grow. Those that would be griffons, dragons, changelings, bovines, and other creatures flocked Harmonia's young world with the dawning equines, and they too were only outlines of what they would become and how their magics would unfold. With them were all other creatures that had grown on Harmonia's world, all things big and small, for primordial serpents and their many beastly kin shared the world that was always growing, and no soul was spared of being predator or prey. 

Harmonia herself took the greatest pride in her flourishing planet, and as all world trees do, her mystic insight into the future of her world and the visions brought from such knowings ran deeper than all mortal marvel for her titanic roots across their lands and under their sea. Such was the only true unity on her planet, for before there was any final sense of maturity and identity in mortal creatures, the very span of the roots of their World Tree before motions of the planet buried, wrapped, formed, and folded atop them was the only shared sight for any creature. 

In this old age, there were no Northern Lights to shine majestically in the roots, for there was no Empire, and no Heart to make them. Forests were few, so there were hardly dappled shadows from leaves. Every land knew different nights, different days, and different everything, but no matter how fickle the moon and sun whirled about the world, sunlight, and starlight would always find the roots at some point, somewhere, and all could look upon the beauty. As prehistory marched on, some of the mortal's first stories would tell only of Harmonia's roots. Draconic ancestors knew that no lava could melt them, sea creatures told of how no wave could budge them, and those that would be buffalo told of how no stampede could break them. 

From the ancestors of the mortal equine, zebra would tell of the dreams sleeping in its shadow gave, sea ponies would sing of its beauty, and flutter ponies told of how the roots winding through their land were something their cousins, the pegasus, could catch no sight of from their earliest cloud cities. Donkeys recalled how the roots spanned so far none could follow. 

From the place from which she sprouted strong and unmoving, Harmonia was just as awed by those who sprang from her creation as they were with her. Even when the emotion of her creatures came from a place of ignorance, her power of foresight did nothing to cloud Harmonia's vast enjoyment. To see the beginning of the life stories of her creatures as they were fostered a steady, quiet excitement in her for when their evolution would bring a plethora of species borne from unity as the stories of her were. Then, there would be sirens in the sea, mules in the prairies, and kirin in the mountains.

Harmonia took no shape in this time and saw the development of her world from between the brief periods when she woke, and from her roots was fed the information of the present, while in the crystalline core of her trunk, past the ripening Fruit of Magic, flashes of future-knowings danced beautifully in her being. Harmonia was a being above beings that could feel no loneliness, want no company, experience no hunger, and while she was plentiful in all things a World Tree must have — magic, knowings, peculiar fruit, power, and ancient dreams -—she had none to bestow upon some of her most important gifts: prophecies. Around her were only mere mortals on her continents that split into new ones every time she woke! Mortals lacked language, time, and anything that could be of use to her! 

Such omens bubbling up in Harmonia sprouted from impatience nagging enough that she nearly wished to shake her branches to rid herself of the feeling, preferring her usual cool, dreamy serenity of heart. Her impatience was not born from loneliness, but her wants. She who saw the world with the past, present, and future as layered and with multiplicity did not desire her need for manifestation and speaking to be fulfilled for conversation and company. A thought like that was nearly petty to a being above trivialities and with a cosmic pedigree. She was granted a life along tangibility and the metaphysical, and as expected from any World Tree, from her roots and her labors came the planet which all lived upon, and with its growth side-realms built-in magic were birthed and waiting to be unlocked by any being worthy to call them and claim them. The idea that she needed to speak to a creature out of a feeling she could only interpret as whiny from the mortal echoes of it that feed her roots. Harmonia did not drift through space for eons, building her planet sprouting from her for just as long, to have the same feeling that a tree's cupule did when it fell from the boughs and was squashed into the mud by a hoof. 

What she needed was a creature who would have the capacity for understanding her prophecy as they were now, a chance to fill it and the good sense to live long enough that it might serve a purpose or be passed on. Without even her knowings, Harmonia could spend a few decades finding sensible reasons for why a mortal would never suffice for her needs and such a list would be finely crafted, too.

To list, to order, and to organize were all qualities at which Harmonia could claim to be within her vast arsenal of skill and ability. Before she would ever let loose a prophecy, action, or allow herself anything beyond her crystalline self, she was to take in all possibilities and consider any facet of her plans, words, and actions. A fine Tree like herself was as naturally endowed with all but total omniscience from the moment of her creation, and while she was nigh-omnipresent with her magic and roots, she was not wholly omnipotent in any capacity, as no being and nothing were. For all her great ability, whether it was to create, to see and know beyond, and to live as long as her planet, Harmonia was rooted. Her manifestation capabilities were limited to the grove where she resided, and there her physical presence and much of her metaphysical presence were tethered in a meeting place of the two states.

Luckily, Harmonia's world was not so new, so primitive, or so barren that she was without immortals. Native to her frontier planet, beyond any known civilizations of the stars, were a modest amount of Alicorns. Born to her world were those who held their own awe of the beings still to evolve, and those were the first Alicorns of the budding planet, most of whom were of the mountains and volcanoes. They kept to themselves, for the most part, and phased in and out of the forming mountains that they guarded as their homes. The Alicorns would grow over the many ages to include about a dozen or so as the two couples brought more foals with magma-flowing manes, stone-flecked coats, and a variety of features boldly showcasing their natures. 

Each of the mountain Alicorns were as varied as the peak terrains to those who only gave the briefest looks to them, neglecting their familial resemblance. Such was rooted in them as much as their real variance: the temperaments and hearts of each could be no similar to one another than a pebble was the eruption of a volcano. Despite this, the elders would still descend from their ranges and lava domes to observe the progress of civilization. To griffons, they gifted the right stones for spears; to minotaurs, they showed them ash-enriched soil; and for the kirin, they served as a muse unlike any other, and drew many an odd creature and ghost into the woods around their peaks, sparing many a mortal. 

This gaggle of wide-spread Alicorns had yet to flourish into their full potential but still were the most breathtaking beings in the world. Theirs was the first language spoken, their homes crafted from magic and mountain were the first castle-like places, and their food was plentiful, having been sown into the rich soil around what mortals could only fear as fire-mountains greater than the meager flames they were just learning to spark. 

It wasn't long before many of the earliest mortal legends were filled with this strange family, with their odd muzzles, magic to tremble before, and baffling ways of living. It was like the only thing the tall, sweeping Alicorns had in common with the mortals were the marks that marked both their flanks in time and the magic everything possessed. 

The mountain Alicorns upon Harmonia's world were the first to widely be held with a vital reverence that would pave the way for how Alicorns would become understood, worshiped, and lived with long into the future, past when Alicorns would come to rule then-future mortals, but long after the Age of Alicorns would begin and Collapse. What other Alicorn were they to see? The World-Tilters and the other two Wayward Sisters had yet to fall upon the planet, the Prince of Spirits had yet to live, the lone ocean Alicorn was a colt who had yet to rise to godhood and pull the Shifting Isles up from the sea, and the blue mare of the north had yet to cut out her heart and pluck out her eyes. 

Mountain Alicorns were friends, however enigmatic, and their acts to mortals were more than the first legends. They offered acts of friendship to those who could not understand them, enacting fully-aware demonstrations of charity. Mortal creatures relished in this, knowing from what was passed down that no matter how the Alicorns might seem, these were the great beings that were friends with their grandparents, their grandparents before them, and even further generations back. Even when their arguments with one another shook the mountains and it was within their powers to blow the tops of them off as much as they were capable of healing the sick, it would always be Alicorns who were preferable to deal with among immortals.

Draconequui were not going to neglect to find Harmonia's world forever, and a small pack of them were gleeful to discover her frontier planet. They readily took part in terrorizing the variety of unseen creatures with their pranks and powers. Crops were transformed, minds warped, and many of the first huts were given legs. The world of mortals was now turned upside down, and they found themselves under attack by beings as everlasting as the Alicorns and a great affinity for eating everything in the rubbish heap. 

There were times when the upheaval of the draconequui was too much, and mortals were overwhelmed before they could summon aid, with only those below the water's surface being spared the calamity. With their Alicorns living in the distant mountains, and equally capable of residing within the mountains themselves, the only hope to summon rescues when mortal abilities faltered was through the sky. 

Griffon ancestors swooped from their aeries on the lesser peaks to scream their panic. Bovine thundered across the ground, wanting to loosen stones to crush draconequui and use their dances to summon the mountain gods. Kirin rushed to their dragon kin for aid, shrewdly wishing to buy their fang and claw with trinkets and wealth, if only for the curses twisting the enchantments of their forests into places of despair, only to learn that they would have no dealing with the egg-thieves and magical might of the draconequui. The immortals stirred fear in those whose array of magical abilities had deemed them protectors. Giraffes and zebra found their weapons useless against draconequus transformations and their medicine feeble in the shadow of the sicknesses they could bring. 

In their lands, ponies and horses scrambled to the prehistoric temples they constructed in their camps and villages, looking upon the paintings of Alicorns who often brought them such gifts and they considered their friends. They fought for any chance to light their signal fires so that their smoke might drift up to the mountains, and neither mortal magic, feather, utter-flutter, or the skills of the other races could do more than dent at the power of their tormentors. Trick upon trick was cast on the ponies who went to lit the fire, and unnatural changes befell every piece in the process: kindling, pony, and the will to do so at all. 

With no signals across the world, the few mountain Alicorns not dwelling within their god-worlds and mountain hearts rose from their labyrinthine halls of stone, only to find the very pests of chaos that their patriarch had warned them of. The great Alicorn stallion Canterhorn was the eldest under the earth of all the mountain gods. He knew tales of the creatures, and stood tall as the spire that took after him — for that was the way of the Alicorns and their mountains — and saw how the few of his family and friends were challenged by the draconequui. It was through the others of his kind and their dominion and connection to the earth's very bones that he felt their panic. When he found his dear wife and the few who were present on the mortal plain beleaguered and bullied back into merging with their mountains, he urged them to stay there. Closed in, they may be, but there the draconequui could not match the stubbornness and ability of an occupied mountain. 

With his fury set in stone, his loved ones upon his mind, and righteous anger within his heart, Canterhorn traversed all places with fury, teaching whatever draconequui he could what the magic of a spurned god and father tasted like. He passed plains and hinterland, driven only by his mind's eye until he found the most enchanted forest in the world. He needn't even see the astonishing peculiarities of the place to know that it was so, for in his travels he had flown above the reach of mortals and seen where all the roots of the world led. Here, a forest so sprawling and dense it all but quivered with venom for the draconequui, tangibly yearning to pick them to their bones — something the creatures hadn't been able to do to this sacred place. 

He foraged past a great density of magical animals and plants intent to erase all evidence of his trespassing. Though he did not need such a thing, Canterhorn's inability to get rest nagged at him. This forest was truly forever free, and it did not slumber! At night it was teeming with all that was unseen, ready to claw at him, snag him from the forest's floor, and the crystalline roots of the world shook the moss from them with the harshest quakes, sending all manner of creatures zipping past him in the lightless place, biting at him and stinging him in the gloom.

Who dares intrude upon my forest?

Who dares violate my heart?

What foulness have you brought?

Why do you trespass upon the most sacred grounds on Havenfell? How is it you plan to bring harm to my young planet?

Canterhorn could not have understood that Harmonia's sight was vaster than anything he would ever know, not then. He was in a place without even the stars to guide him, and his family was in peril. In all the dealings he would later have the spirit, he would never understand why she thundered such questions at him — not because she used such a force to shake her forest more than before, or because she spoke with no voice, but because no proof against her omniscience existed to him, or to any who would tell him; the very one who would ever know of blind spots in Harmonia's vision during his time was one Wayward Sister who still had yet to fall from the sky.

All that Canterhorn could know was Harmonia with no prophet, but the first of her many omens quivering in every leaf in what would become known as the Everfree.