//------------------------------// // Prologue - The Princess // Story: The Tower of the Fallen Star // by Raleigh //------------------------------// When one wears the same crown for sixteen hours every single day for a little over a thousand years one gets very used to it, so much so that when it is time to give it up its absence is very noticeable.  Celestia, the newly-retired Princess of Equestria, thought on this as she considered the absence of the weight of gold upon her head.  More than a little drunk, she staggered down the ancient, uneven stairs, her way lit by the brilliant yellow light of her horn, but despite her inebriation her hooves settled in steps she had once walked down countless times long before a united Equestria was even a dream.  A princess was not supposed to get drunk.  One could certainly drink, but being seen as drunk at a public event was strictly Not Allowed.  However, though she was no longer a princess as of seven o’clock, masking her drunkenness with regal poise was an old trick she would have to work on un-learning to properly enjoy her retirement. Princess Twilight Sparkle’s coronation party (technically her second, as Mudbriar had pointed out) had wound down about an hour ago, and it was time that she and Luna retired for the night, ready to begin their new lives as former princesses in Seaward Shoals the next day.  There would still be duties, of course, as Parliament had elected to maintain some level of spiritual continuity between the ancien regime and the new one, but nothing quite as taxing as before -- open a new library, visit a new hospital, dispense advice, that sort of thing.  After all of this time, more than two thousand years of life, give or take a few as she had lost count after the first three-and-a-half centuries, she had finally earned a break. Yet something compelled her to come down here, through a secret door in the catacombs beneath Canterlot Castle through which no pony had entered for more than a millennium.  With this new milestone in her long life, Celestia had felt the need, almost certainly aided by the veritable gallons of fine wine she had imbibed that night, to visit an old friend she had not seen since she banished Luna to the moon. Dust that had not been disturbed for a thousand years stirred under her hooves and stained the pristine white coat on her long, slender legs.  Walls that had not seen light in that time glistened with moisture.  The air was damp down there, and stank of the decay of the ages long past.  The stairs stopped at an open doorway, for the wood had rotted away into mush centuries ago.  Beyond this dark portal, slowly illuminated as Celestia strode inside, was a simple cave, and at its far end was a stone statue. The pony it depicted was that of a warrior, clad in furs and cloth, and  bearing an iron helmet upon his head.  He sat on his haunches, resting a sword on his shoulder held steady by a hoof.  Though the artistry was rather simple, especially by the standards of the classical era, being Equestria’s golden age of statue-making in her opinion, the stallion’s sneering expression of grim disdain was captured perfectly.  As Celestia approached the statue, she felt its cold judgement weigh her down.  She stopped and sat before it. “Hello, Crom,” she said, her reverent voice echoing in the cave. The statue was silent. “It’s been a very long time,” she continued.  “But I don’t suppose you cared.  You never did.  You only cared about strength. “I gained my crown through your strength.  I tore it from the severed head of a tyrant.  I have guided the kingdom for more than a thousand years, while you sat silent in your mountain.  Tonight, I leave it in the hooves of another, and not one I think you would have approved of.” Celestia sighed and bowed her head, pausing from her rambling to try and gather the mish-mash of thoughts swirling in her mind into something resembling a coherent point.  “Yet what has your strength and your callousness brought you?  The Magic of Friendship has brought Equestria peace, prosperity, safety, and friends.  You offered only violence and struggle.  Ponies have forgotten you, except as a footnote in books on ancient history.” She lifted her head, staring up at the hollow, sightless eyes of the statue. “But I remembered,” she said.  “Things were different back then.  I was very different.  Ponies no longer have need of a god like you, but-”  Celestia smiled gently and touched her slim chest with a hoof.  “But I don’t think you would have minded that.  The world changed, I changed, but gods don’t change.” Her light dimmed and the corners of the cave receded into darkness.  The shadows on the statue deepened, lending it a darker, more menacing mien more befitting the cold, distant, and uncaring god that it honoured.  The preparations for her journey into a quiet life of retirement would continue without her, Luna and the staff would see to that.  And so, a mile into the core of Mount Canter, with alcohol fogging her mind and the hopes and fears of a new life before her, Celestia remembered.  Her eyes focused upon those of the statue, her mind travelled backwards in time to more than two thousand years into the past, before even the name of Equestria came into being, to her youth as a barbarian.