Twilight immediately began scrabbling around the room, wings fluffed and outstretched as she rushed up the stairs. There was instantly a loud clanging and a muttered, “Horsefeathers!”
Spike sighed, reaching up to look at the single word and raising an eyebrow. “Can you get the door?”
Turning his head, I raised my own eyebrow back at the dragon.
Before I could say anything, two solid knocks sounded from the door, and Spike’s face became almost unbearably smug.
Chuckling, I stood up and walked over to the library’s door as the littler draconic being waddled towards the kitchen, muttering about having to find the fancy cakes and the ground coffee.
As I neared the entry, I paused, paw outstretched towards the knob.
I didn’t know anything about these princesses beyond that Twilight was very fond of Celestia, and the seven of them had done some great things to impress these two rulers. I didn’t know this kingdom, this era, or even these mare’s last names! What would I do if these two beings were here to destroy me like some sort of monster, or—
Another set of knocks, perfect copies of the first two, gave my anxieties a swift kick.
Taking a deep breath, I continued reaching out and turned the knob.
Two ponies stood there, and to my complete and utter shock, I recognized them. Their garb, at least.
While back in my time, most alicorns had considered themselves far above the ponies surrounding them, their true rulers, or found them completely inconsequential either way. A select few wanted to help those around them, either elevate them to their station or, much more frequently, make those around them happier and friendlier to their fellow ponies.
And since these two didn’t have giant scissors or needles and weren’t covered in blood, I assumed they were the latter sort.
The white one on the left cleared her throat, but the shorter blue one beat her to it, enunciating something in a deep voice. My fur stood on end but I was pretty sure she wasn’t trying to stop my heart with a spell.
Pretty sure.
“Uh, hello?” I asked in Equish. “My name’s Kiirdotiid, uhm, for now.”
They stared at me for a moment before I remembered something Twilight had taught me and awkwardly put my paw out for a shake.
Both rulers looked down at my paw as I extended it, gazed at it for a beat, then looked back up into my face.
“Oh, you’re new to this,” Celestia mono-toned. Then with a sharp glance at the other princess, she reeled a hoof back and punched her in the shoulder. “He’s new to this!”
“Ow!” the princess muttered, punching her sister back as she said, “I didn’t know! Stoppit, ow—”
I watched, speechless, as the two rulers of the most prosperous kingdom in all of Equus per Twilight devolved into a flurry of strikes and name-calling.
There was a crunching noise beside me, and I looked down to see Spike standing there, eating a darkly golden cookie and watching the wrestling match with faint amusement.
“Do they do this often?” I asked.
Taking another bite, Spike thought about it for a moment before deciding, “They don’t usually hit this hard.”
“Ah,” I murmured, before returning to watch as the princesses of this land, raisers of the celestial bodies, etc., wrestled in the dirt.
The dark one had the other in a headlock.
“What are you two doing!? They’ll be here any second now, and I need to make sure my room is completely spot—”
Twilight shoved her head between us, saw the dust cloud in front of her door with a random blue wing and golden hoof shoe showing briefly, and sighed. “Oh, they’re here. And fighting. In the dirt. Like foals.”
We waited and watched for a little bit before Twilight sighed deeply.
“D’you wanna—?” Spike started to ask.
“I’ll go get the garden hose!” Twilight half yelled before cautiously edging around the flurry of blows on her doorstep.
Two minutes, quite a bit of yelling, and a drying spell later, the two rulers of all ponydom were sitting beside each other, sipping at cups of cocoa and pretending not to elbow each other whenever Twilight looked away.
“So,” I said, placing a paw on the table. “My name is Kiirdotiid, or Kiir. As you’ve gleaned from my name, apparently, I’m new to….”
My eyes tried to lose focus again as I looked at the ceiling for the words, but I ended up shaking my head.
“So I’m new to being alive again,” I said, waving the same paw around before snagging a cookie from Spike’s plate, ignoring the “Hey!” as I munched on it. “Especially like this,” I said, gesturing at my chest and waving the cookie up and down in the air.
Gingery. That brought back memories of certain actions undertaken by unicorn nobility.
Scandalous.
“Well,” the white one, Celestia seemingly, started, “there are a few ways that beings such as yourself arise. The most common one is, well, conception. But then you’d have parents around, and you wouldn’t normally sleep for centuries, much less millennia.”
“Normally?” Interrupted her sister, looking over at her with white froth covering her upper lip.
“One happened, but it was more of a Cockatrice thing,” Celestia said quickly, glancing at her sister. Luna made a small ‘o’ with her lips before nodding.
“In your case,” she said, returning her gaze to me, “it’s more likely one of two things. Back, way back in times before even we were born, draconic mages created homunculi with spells to intertwine their ‘essences’ with that of other creatures. At the time, the conception of children between dragons and ponies was known, although highly taboo for both races, so most mages didn’t bother with this form of a homunculus.
“But it’s not unheard of,” Twilight murmured, starting to pull a thick tome off of a shelf across the library.
“Mmm, that’s not what happened,” I interrupted, holding a paw up.
Twilight still brought the book over, but she placed it to the side instead of diving into it.
“I was,” I started, but paused when I saw Spike perk up.
“I’m, uhm, not sure as to how suited this story is for younger creatures,” I murmured, looking apologetically at the dragon.
Spike, to my surprise, didn’t complain, but immediately both Twilight and Celestia began protesting.
“Ah,” I said, holding up my palms, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell him, just that I wasn’t sure.”
Both mares looked at me unhappily, but Spike put his paws out and touched them gently. “He doesn’t know,” Spike said softly, smiling up at them, “and I’ve been pretty childish today. Don’t worry about it.”
When Spike nodded at me, I nodded back slowly, then began telling them of how I’d stumbled into Dovbormah’s cave, finding the dragon wounded. I spoke about how I’d assisted the dragon, but when I began to tell of how the dragon had wanted to pay me back, both of the older alicorns drew in a breath and sat fully upright.
“No,” Celestia said, aghast, almost terrified. “No, no dragon has been named as a Creator since—“
“Dovbormah,” Luna breathed, “Dragon Father. He didn’t mean metaphorically, he meant it literally,” she said, glancing wide-eyed at Celestia.
Celestia and Luna both shared a look before glancing around the room. Their heads snapped back together, and they began speaking at intense speed, in a language no one else in the room recognized, I guessed by Twilight and Spike’s looks. It was strange, rapid-fire, almost like a gust of wind but with more structure. Listening closely, I could barely make out strange, song-like consonants and lingering vowels.
“Spike,” both spoke simultaneously, causing the dragon to jump in place as they whipped their heads toward him together.
“You can’t—” Luna began to say breathlessly but paused when Celestia put a hoof on her shoulder, biting her lip. Actually biting it, Kiir could see it bruising and healing in waves.
“Spike,” she said, slower and measured, “what you are about to hear… It’s a deep secret of the world. Normally I would never allow it, but….” She looked at Twilight, then at me. “But I trust you.”
Looking between the larger beings in the room, Spike seemed to shrink in on himself, his thumbs twiddling as he looked between Celestia, then me, and finally at Twilight. Taking a deep breath, he visibly steeled himself, then nodded.
“I won’t tell anypony,” he started to say, but Celestia shook her head.
“Not only can you not tell anyone,” Celestia said sadly, gazing deeply into his eyes, “but you are never, in any circumstances ever, to duplicate what you are about to hear. Not only is it lethal for the dragon involved, but….”
Luna looked at her as she trailed off before saying, “It has only been done three times before in the history of the world.
“This action that Kiir describes has resulted in three beings of unnatural power and ability,” she continued. “The first time, completed with twins, begat the beings who would grow to give their lives to become Sun, and Moon.”
Twilight inhaled sharply, looking at her teacher. “Wait, the sun and moon…?”
“No, Twilight,” Celestia said rather forlornly. “Not the sun and moon. Properly, Sun and Moon.”
Luna nodded sadly before going on.
“The third was….” She sighed deeply, shifting uncomfortably, before saying, “The third was a mistake. One of my and my sister’s designs.
“Back, and before even then, we tried to… force, the transformation. We found a dragon, unwilling, and used the process to attempt to turn one of our most trusted friends, a pony, into what Kiir has apparently become.
“We created Discord, the first Draconequus,” she murmured, looking at her sister, the both of them nearly in tears.