The Rariad
By Tundara
12: Gaea
Queen Dido proved to be a most generous hostess; too generous in many regards. She met the Athenians at the gold and basalt gates, smiling wide and surrounded by a teaming crowd.
Dido wore a dress of cobalt blue to match her eyes, her black mane with a silver streak done up in a weave of golden chains that matched her coat. Slits along her supple flanks highlighted a crescent moon cutie mark very similar to Trixies, but in place of a wand was a scroll bound in black ribbon. There was a sensual playfulness to her eyes as she gazed on Trixie and Mystalicus.
“Welcome, cousins of Athens, sister city of our dear Alnyxandria, first home of wondrous Athena. I am Dido, and have been granted stewardship as queen.” Dido bowed low, and the crowd with her followed suit. “Come, weary travelers, come and recount tales of your exploits to reach our city. Tell us of the north and Athens, and how the city of wisdom fares in this age. Join me in my halls and let the toils of the sea and road be washed away with wine and friendly company.”
The city herself was as magnificent and beautiful as her queen. A gift for Nyx by holy Athena herself, the city had been planned and laid down to her own design. Main roads ran east-west, with long fountains shaded by tall trees for shade. North-south ran interconnecting lanes. The main body of the city sat against twin bays, a narrow stretch of reclaimed land leading to the island of Queens, on which Dido and the other Alnyxandrain nobles had their palaces. Another land bridge led to a towering lighthouse, on which a magical fire continually burned.
Beyond the walls lay verdant farms, fed by a network of irrigation ditches fed by an ingenious aqueduct that cut a straight line across the desert from the distant Nile dozens of leagues to the east.
Tixie was reminded strongly of her lessons on Saddle Arabia, Camelon, and other mysterious lands ponies of Equestria only knew from maps of the distant parts of Ioka’s disc. Looking at a large mural map of the coast placed on a wall in Dido’s palace, Gaea was very similar to the Mareteranian Sea, but expanded. Like a giant eye had zoomed in on the sea alone and enhanced the size of the land, sea, and their features to encompass the entire disc, rather than just a small segment of her overall surface.
“Is this to scale?” Trixie asked Dido on seeing the mural.
“Why, yes,” Queen Dido smiled beatifically after a moment of contemplating Trixie. “This entire palace was intended for Nyx, and great Lady Athena made this mural for her dearly beloved aunt so that she could know the entirety of the fair disc at a glance.”
Performing some quick calculations, Trixie sighed and shook her head. “Are you certain this is all there is on this disc? It seems to be only about a third the size of Ioka.”
“Indeed? Then perhaps you should show us your home. Bring before us Ioka, this distant world of which you come, so that we may see her mighty splendor,” Dido teased, and indicated a plaque with hoofprints placed beneath the mural. “Athena enchanted this mural so that distant visitors could show Nyx their homelands. Place your hooves there and think of your home, and you will see it in all its glory reflected above.”
Trixie did as instructed, closing her eyes as she thought of Equestria. Of the rolling farmlands of the Heartlands, and the towns of the coast, of the settlements springing up among the plains, and the twin cities far away on the western shores.
A rippling gasp came from the ponies with her and Dido, and when Trixie opened her eyes she found that Gaea had been replaced on the wall by a similar map of Ioka’s broad disc.
Mystalicus clicked his tongue, looking over the continents on display, from Equestria in the west, to the central bulk that comprised the Old Queendoms, divided from the Great Dragon Desert by the Mareteranian, with Zebrica and Grifonia further south, Neighpon near the eastern rim, and lands unnamed in the far south.
Trixie held her hooves to the plaque just long enough for the pang of longing to build in her heart until it was overwhelming. Tears pricked her eyes, and she dearly longed for the comforts of home. To be able to curl up in front of the fireplace on Hearthswarming Eve with her favourite blanket and a warm cup of cocoa. To feel the breeze rolling over golden fields of wheat on her face as the harness for her wagon pressed against her chest. The taste of ice cream on her tongue as she sat watching Sol set. Applause from an enthralled crowd. And the distinct skyline of Manehatten appearing as she topped a hill.
She missed it with an intensity that was like a knife being driven hilt deep in her chest.
Even the balmy days in Alnyxandria could do little to take away that pang.
Or the mystery of the magic she’d used to slay Techatallicus.
Alone in her room, she closed her eyes and tried to touch on the magic, to reform the spell, and found both there, deep, deep in the middle of her aether, like a dragon sleeping beneath the depleted waters of a lake. The runes and accompanying spell were both familiar and alien, containing traces of some faint power ancient beyond compare, untainted by the use of ponykind, yet also worn, frayed from constant use like a foal’s favourite blanket dragged through the dirt and dust.
Just looking caused the spell to begin to reform of its own accord, the sleeping dragon waking for a moment before returning to its slumber, the weave of magic breaking apart again to settle. Drained by that small effort, Trixie collapsed on her bed and fell into a fitful rest.
A month in Dido’s palace came and went, and it became clear that the queen was loath to let her guests depart.
She fawned over the Athenians, hosting large feasts every night, with dancers to entertain and Poletemus, the silver tongued poet, descended of the line of Homer, the greatest of all the poets, to regale them with legendary feats of the mighty heroes of ages past.
Trixie learned at length the tales of Lepidu, King of Halla and Champion of Artemis, who led his ponies, descended from a mingled line of unicorns and elk, from the frigid lands of the northern wilds. On the hills of the Dardanelles he’d battled time and again the encroaching Achaeans, until he alone remained of his people. How he’d stood before the gates of the Citadel of Light on the final night and, possessed by Artemis, challenged Ares himself, and had even wounded the god, inflicting a shallow cut to the war-god’s chin before being crushed beneath the god’s hooves.
They were regaled with the poems of ancient Hector, mightiest of the Alicornians champions, and who after many ponies would name their colts. It was he who slew Patroclese, and almost drove the Achaeans back into the sea with the blessings of the gods, but was in the end bested by brave Achilles.
Many more were named on both sides of the war. For the Dardanians there was Helocemia, Sopheclese, and Hematreclese. Ajax the Greater and Ajax the Lesser, Diomedes, Odysseus, Mephodon, and Agamemnon were kings of the Achaeans. In great detail were their exploits recounted, from the onset of the war between the gods brought about by Athena’s actions in stealing Nyx and Artemis from Tartarus, slaying Hecate in the process, to after the destruction of Mount Alicornus and the journeys homeward for the survivors as the Olympians grew silent in their sudden, calamitous victory.
Among these many tales were those of Trixelion, Queen of Trot and Champion of Astraea, a fierce tribe of mare-warriors from the west. A wild mystic, she countered the Achaeans with mighty magics, calling down stars and summoning beings of icy fire. Seeing visions of the end of her tribe if Achilles, King of the Myrmidons, took to the field at the head of his army, she attempted to seduce the Achaean hero on the eve of battle and lull him into a deep sleep so as to miss the battle. He saw through her trickery, and in the ensuing fight, slew her with his spear. Other accounts told a tale of her falling for Achilles as she hovered over him with a dagger poised to plunge into his throat, and in shame she fled to an unnamed island in the Aegean sea.
Trixie’s ears perked at this tale.
“She could call the stars?” She asked, and the poet bowed.
“So the ballads claim.” Poletemus bowed. “It was foremost among the gifts of Astraea, who watched over all with her many eyes, bestowed on her champion. The Cascade of a Thousand Stars, as it became known to enemy and ally alike as it laid waste to the Achaeans on the beaches and at the base of Mount Alicornus, and is said to be the lesser version of the mighty magic Astraea herself weaved to destroy the mountain and prevent the Olympians from capturing the Alicornians.”
Pondering what she’d learned, Trixie wondered if the magic she sensed inside her was her own, some remnant from Twilight, or perhaps a tiny fragment of Astraea left over from when the dead goddess’ shade had attacked her. Ultimately, Trixie didn’t care about the origin of the magic. If she could find a way to control it, to be able to use it when needed, then even if the demons found her again, she would be able to defend herself.
After hearing about the heroes of old, Dido asked Mystalicus and Trixie to regale her court with their own adventures.
“Is it true that your curious galley—though it can hardly be called such, with no oars and such large sails, and being both wide and short, but also so fast as she is pushed by the zephyrs whipping over the waves—was given to you by a new god? Tell us, fair travelers from our sister-city to the north, is it true that Hera herself has taken residence among you? That the time of the gods’ isolation is at an end?”
“I will not speak ill of the gods, as only the most foolish would dare to incur their wrath.” Mystalicus said as he stood to address the dining hall. “It is true that Hera for a time dwelt within Athens, our city that she once so despised giving her shelter and alms, and she blessing my own daughter, Hypocemia, with her mark. On the walls of Athens did Hypocemia face the brothers of Lekos and Cretos, both marked by Ares, slaying Cretos, though she’d never before fought in her life.”
This drew applause and some whispers. New heroes and ballads were topics much discussed and sought.
Mystalicus continued, “Hera was among us as Athens had become home to a strange goddess from no legends, poems, or ballads, who claimed to be from a world very distant from our own. The same world from which Trixie, who is this goddess’ champion, hails. The ship came from the mind of Rarity, Goddess of Beauty, who among all the gods loves mortals the most. It is by Her decree we have departed Athens in order to retrieve our priestess, Chryseis, whome Lekos stole in his escape.”
Queen Dido listened with rapt attention, chin perched in the peak of her steepled hooves, a misty look to her eyes. In the shadows behind the queen Trixie perceived for a moment movement, somepony shifting about in the dusky gloom between the curves of light cast by flickering torches set in golden sconces. A pony emerged briefly, slender and pretty faced, with long wings and a sharp horn. He winked at Trixie, and from his side appeared a little bow.
For an instant Trixie froze, the room about her growing silent as a heart shaped arrow was placed by Cupid on his bow, and fired at Dido, piercing her in the back before vanishing in a puff of pink. This done, Cupid too vanished.
No other pony reacted to Cupid’s presence, his magic rendering himself invisible to their senses. Trixie rubbed her eyes, and blinked, and said to herself that she must be seeing things. That she’d was getting too lost in her thoughts, the heat was rather intense even in the late day, and that it had combined with all the stories to make her imagine seeing an alicorn.
Leaning closer now to Mystalicus, Dido cried out, “And so you would face the mighty Spartan host with so few? Were it just them it would be difficult enough, but there is the entire league with which to contend, allies aplenty who hold no love for Athens and the surviving cities who supported the false pantheon who sought to break from Olympus.” Dido gasped, and shook her head. “That is madness in measure equal to your bravery! Surely you will all perish, as only Trixie among you is a true hero marked by the gods for greatness, and Sparta has always been Ares' favourite. We must seek the gods’ advice on the matter. I will have a white heifer offered to Nyx at the turning of the next moon, so that she may give us some sign as to the course you are to take. Yes, yes, until then I can not permit you to leave. You must stay here with me, dear King Mystalicus. You and your brave stallions.”
Mystalicus bowed at this and graciously accepted the queen’s offer.
Dido then turned to Trixie. “You have not touched your food again, dear friend,” Dido said, “Hardly do you eat, but a few grapes and perhaps a small piece of bread passing your lips in a week, and yet you are hale and hearty, where as any other pony would be skin and bone, two hooves on the banks of the Styx.”
Trixie looked up from her ruminations, mind still churning over all she’d learned, to see her plate untouched.
“Trixie, the great and powerful, only needs her magic and the favour of her goddess to survive.” This last she thought would please her hostess, and saw that she was correct as Dido smiled widely. Emboldened, Trixie continued thusly, “Trixie has died once, and death now ignores her thinking it has done its job.”
This brought some murmurs, and Mystalicus himself frowned and shook his head. Queen Dido drew closer to Mystalicus, laying her hoof on his broadly muscled leg.
“Surely you jest,” Dido said. “Everypony knows that those who die will one day rejoin the realm of the living, incarnated in a new form with a new name, though the fabric of the soul remains the same. Why, I myself bear the soul that was once Queen Penelope, whom you have heard legends of this very night, the Seers having peered into the past depths of my being to tell me so. It is the same with everypony. But you claim to have circumvented this natural order. To have died and yet walk the lands of the living again.”
“Nay, she means that she descended into the Underworld, like mighty Aeneas, only venturing deeper still, and wrested fair Rarity, the Goddess of Beauty and new protector of Athens, from the fiendish realm.” Mystalicus attempted to correct, but his assumptions were wrong, and Trixie corrected him in return.
“No, Trixie died. She was on the boat to Elysium when Rarity grabbed hold and threatened to drag us both into the river. Hades and Lethe charged Trixie with watching over Rarity.”
“An Elysian!” Dido gasped, and the sound rippled around the room.
Trixie had never mentioned this part before, and she bit her tongue in frustration at having let it slip. The instincts she’d built up to keep that part of her hidden in Tartarus flared. It took a long moment for Trixie to recall that this was not Tartarus, with its endless hordes of the dead seeking to tear her apart in a futile effort to escape the underworld for the golden paradise of Elysium.
“Then you are an even greater hero than we imagined!” Dido continued in an awed rush. “For, few are among even the already blessed chosen who are admitted into the golden fields of bliss in the afterlife. Yet, here you sit, among us mere mortals, while you are something so much greater! Truly, you are unique, as in no tales are there any mentions of a soul ascending to Elysium, and then returning to the mortal realms. Among the Elysians, only the rare archon is ever heard, even the gods barred access to that mysterious place.”
Over the next week, Trixie took careful note of when she was hungry, thirsty, and how much she ate and drank, and was frightened by what she realized. She was never hungry, and was never parched. Food was taken only socially, and only in a few bites, her water mixed with wine sipped.
Deciding to test whether she just needed to eat less, or if she needed to eat at all, Trixie abstained from all food and water for the next week, and suffered no ill effects.
“What does it mean?” She asked Argentes after the week of fasting came to an end.
“That, though you may appear a mortal, you are still of that transcendent race of Elysium.” Argentes replied, clapping a hoof to Trixie’s withers. He grinned and said nothing more on the matter, turning instead to consider the Benevolence of Beauty at her mooring in the bay, an enchanted chain that could be undone only by Dido holding her and the Athenians in Alnyxandria.
Following his line of sight and thought, Trixie murmured, “We’re her prisoners, aren’t we?”
“In a manner of speaking. Ordinarily I would say even she would soon realise that she must let us go, lest word of her perfidity begin to spread and traders begin to avoid this port, and even the gods take notice and send torments to force her to release her grip. But, some foul compulsion has gripped her, tying her madly to our King so that she never wishes to part from him.”
The offering came and went, and still the Athenians were kept as Dido’s guests.
Frustration growing, Trixie confronted the queen.
“Your majesty, enough is enough. You have to let us leave.” Trixie said as she entered the bathhouse, where Dido lounged.
Situated on a small rise, the bathhouse had a majestic view over the twin bays and perfectly ordered city. Dido sat in the large bath, more akin to a pool, by a window staring down an inner part of her palace where Mystalicus and the Athenians were spending their morning at physical and martial training. She jumped, like a foal caught trying to sneak out of the house, and blushed deeply as she turned away from the window.
“The offering was inconclusive,” Dido responded, leaning back in the warm water. “We will do another next month, and see if the council of the gods has changed.”
“No, you will let us go.” Trixie stamped a hoof, sending ripples out across the surface of the wide bath. “You Gaeans put too much stock into the alicorns. Maybe if they lived among you, you’d realise that they are as fallible as any other pony. Princess Celestia, as ancient and wise as she is, makes them from time to time. If she were as great as you believe the gods to be, then Trixie wouldn’t be here, and neither would Rarity. The alicorns of Ioka failed both of us.
“So, think for yourself. We have a mission. Trixie has a friend that has been taken captive, and Trixie promised to rescue her.”
“But, I can’t! You will be killed! All of you will die, and I can not bear the thought! No, go away yourself! Take some other boat and go alone, if you must go at all, but leave my precious Mystalicus here. He does not deserve to share your cruel fate, for it is a fate most awful that lay in store for any who seeks to enter Sparta as an enemy.”
“That is our decision to make, not yours.”
“I refuse to accept that I must allow you to drag Mystalicus, surely the wisest and strongest of kings in this age, to his death.”
Trixie rolled her eyes at the theatrics. “Stop acting like a silly filly with her first crush. ”
“Crush? No, this is no mere fleeting fancy. A fire has ignited in my breast, stoked by some passion I tried to keep locked away, but now set free. It rampages through me, consuming my thoughts. I am not myself anymore, my mind continually turning to Mystalicus and unable to focus elsewhere. I love him as I have never known was possible. I can not bear the thought of losing him. I would stab myself, take up his sword and thrust it through my breast upon the pyres, were he to leave me, and curse all Athens for tearing us apart.”
“Okay,” Trixie threw up her hooves in frustration. “Then come with us. We have room. Marry him. Join his herd.”
“Herd?” Dido tilted her head at the word. “Like sheep? I do not understand.”
Groaning, Trixie massaged her forehead. To herself she grumbled, “Of course. You don’t do herding on Gaea.” Speaking louder she said, “On Ioka it is common for there to be two or three mares married to each other and a stallion. For some reason, we have a lot more daughters than sons. Anyways, that hardly matters! Trixie doesn’t care if you are in love or not. All this melodrama is giving Trixie a headache.”
“If only I could join you, but a mare’s place—”
Trixie cut off whatever Dido was about to say with a sharp, riotous laugh.
“So, because you are a prisoner in a gilded cage, you will make us prisoners as well. You are in a real pickle, trapped between your crown and your heart, and ruining both as a result.”
Dido blushed harder still, and bit her tongue to withhold her remarks. After a time, she asked, “Could it really be so simple? But, what of my city? What of my ponies?”
Trixie shrugged. “Ask Nyx, you Gaeans can’t seem to do anything without asking one alicorn or another first. You are like a bunch of foals with absent parents, desperate for their love, but they just ignore you.”
“You speak blasphemy! She who would deny the will of the gods is truly a fool.”
“Trixie just hates how much importance you place on them knowing what is best for each individual pony. Even Celestia, who lives among ponies and rules Equestria, doesn’t try to micromanage everything. Ponies try to get her to tell them what to do, and she gives them platitudes, trusting them to know the best course of action for their own unique situations. Make up your own damn mind, Dido! What do you want?!”
“I want Mystalicus! I want to lay in his hooves hearing his gentle voice as he weaves wonderful tales of the lands to the north. I want to bear him strong sons and graceful daughters. I want to spend every last day with him.” Dido exclaimed in a breathless rush. “But, he is the king of Athens and married to Hecuba, who is by all tales a just, kind, and dutiful wife. These feelings I have are wrong, I know, and a punishment surely set upon me by the gods for I know not what infraction.”
Taking a deep breath, Trixie pushed out her frustrations and took a moment to reorder her thoughts. Slipping into the bath, she soaked in the refreshingly cool water. Something twigged in the back of Trixie’s head, and she thumped a hoof to her forehead.
“Of course! That stallion at that feast! He shot you with some arrow. Trixie, great and powerful as she is, thought she was hallucinating.”
“Stallion? Arrow? Surely you do not mean Cupid, son of Aphrodite, who by her command binds ponies in love!” Cried Dido, surging across the bath towards Trixie. She clasped Trixie’s hoof with her own. “Then I was right, and this fire in my breast is the work of the gods.”
“From the stories Trixie has been told, Cupid is more of a trickster who uses love to cause mischief. A far cry from the guide towards True Love that Cadence provides on Ioka. Wasn’t it his arrow that caused Hades to take Nyx to the Underworld to begin with?”
“I believe you are getting the stories muddled, dear friend Trixie,” Dido held Trixie’s hooves tighter, her eyes sparkling with delight. “However, you are correct that his arrows cause mischief far more often than naught. Oh, whatever am I to do then? That this is god-sent is undeniable, but is this to be some test of the heart? Must I choose between my crown and a love that can never be reciprocated? What cruelty fate has laid upon me, to tear my breast in two halves and leave me wounded forever more no matter my choice.”
Dido returned to staring out the window, watching Mystalicus and Argentes wrestling in the dusty space. The old friends gripped each other and struggled, well toned legs straining, and steely hews taught until Mystalicus overcame Argentes, and they fell to the ground.
“I will release your ship, and you may leave Alnyxandria,” Dido whispered, tears in her eyes. “And I will remain here. My heart goes with you. See that he is not harmed by the perfidious Spartans, no drop of his thick blood touching the ground, or I should never forgive you.”
Trixie promised that she would protect Mystalicus, though in her heart she knew it was a promise she’d be unable to keep.
The next morning the Benevolence of Beauty sailed into the mild seas. Her crew lined the rails shouting final farewells to their friends they left behind. Trixie and Mystalicus alone stared ahead, gazes fixed on the horizon, and Sparta.