//------------------------------// // 6: There's A Dead Salmon Frozen In A Waterfall // Story: Éadóchas // by Jake Was Here //------------------------------// It was, Twilight Sparkle thought, a depressing reversal of fortunes. Ordinarily there was nothing more she enjoyed than staying up until the early hours of the morning, paging through some neglected book from the library shelves, her brain whizzing with newly and eagerly acquired knowledge. She had come to consider her occasional bouts of insomnia more a blessing than a curse; time spent awake was usually time spent learning, and there was little that she loved more. Now, however, she was torn. Despite the brightly lit room, her eyes could barely focus on the book lying open before her. It wasn't even a particularly interesting book; she'd read it at least three times and could probably quote it verbatim, in the unlikely event that anypony asked her to. The thought of her empty bed lying in the loft upstairs was an enticing one... but despite being drowsy, she felt very little desire to set the book aside and go to sleep. The description Pinkie had given of her dream yesterday had played havoc with Twilight's nerves when she laid herself down to sleep that night; she had awoken the next morning feeling unrefreshed, unrested – as though some echo of Pinkie's fears had been resounding in her head the entire time. The day was mercifully uneventful, and she had managed to stumble through it, one hoof at a time, trying and failing to shake a sensation of irreality that pursued her wherever she went. It seemed at times that the solid and genuine world around her was a mere veil, cast over some intangible and unattainable truth. At times, when she felt especially dizzy, the veil would appear to shudder in a wind of unknown origin, and she was not wholly certain that she wanted to see what lay behind... Twilight blinked, realizing that she had paid no attention to the book – or anything outside her own head – for some time. Taking stock of herself, she discovered that she was staring out the window, to where the other buildings of Ponyville sat silent in the night. The horrible idea occurred to her that sheer exhaustion had made her fall momentarily asleep with her eyes wide open, and she gave a sigh of disgust. "Why are you doing this to yourself?" she mumbled. The answer was obvious. Because I'm afraid to go to bed... there, I said it. I'm scared half to death. Didn't you see what happened to Pinkie? I don't want to have any dreams like she had, not tonight nor EVER. Yes, and so what? came the response. Look, I know it's late and we're a bit tired for logic, but let's not be outright foolish about this. Fact number one: Dreams are capable of evoking an extraordinarily deep emotional response. Fact number two: This response is frequently negative, to the point where it can affect the waking mental state of an individual for some time after she has the dream. Fact number three: Occurrences of actual mental illness resulting from dreams are, however, so medically rare as to be statistically insignificant. Fact number four: There is no case, in any historical or medical record, of a pony receiving direct PHYSICAL harm from a dream. And fact number five: Your obsessive-compulsive tail, and the obsessive-compulsive butt attached to it, both need to be upstairs and in bed as soon as possible, before you pass out facedown in this book and drool all over the pages just like you did last time. "Ugh," she said to herself. "Don't remind me." Her conscience had made a solid argument, however, and she closed the book, put out the many lights she had lit, and trudged reluctantly upstairs. Bed was beginning to sound better and better to her tired mind and body. Nevertheless, as she blew out the last candle and laid her head down on the pillow, she was conscious of a distant sense of dread, and silently wished that no visions would come in her sleep. Beneath its uncontrolled blanket of fog, the town was a barely visible ruin. There were no visible landmarks by which Twilight could mentally place herself; in its shattered and destroyed state, it could have been anywhere in Equestria. The surface of the street beneath her hooves, though broken and uneven, was not quite familiar to her – neither flagstones nor cobble, it seemed that it had once been all of a single piece of smooth stone before the innumerable cracks had eaten into it. And the cracks themselves were very old, their sharp edges worn down by erosion and exposure like something she had once seen in a geology textbook. Twilight was acting solely on instinct – she did not recognize this place, and was unsure about the identity of her destination, but she felt that somehow or other she knew where she was going. A crumbling shadow loomed out of the mist ahead, and it was to this that she felt drawn. The shadow resolved itself into a gate, or the archway over what had once been a gate; on closer scrutiny, Twilight saw the hinges worked into the rock, but not one scrap of wood or metal remained from the actual gates. Beyond the arch, the path seemed to be overgrown to either side with weeds. It wound to one side, then another, beneath the branches of old and dead trees. No one, it seemed, had carried out groundskeeping duties in this place for a long time, whatever this place actually was. As Twilight came around the final bend in the pathway, the mist dispersed slightly, revealing a large open area, paved with flagstones between which tufts of greenery had insinuated themselves; there seemed to be some kind of structure towering at the other end, but she could not see it clearly yet. Two tall, massive plinths stood there side by side, with statues of indeterminate shape atop them; a line of shorter stone tablets or steles stood before the other two. What was this, some kind of memorial? Was it all constructed of marble? She couldn't see, not even after walking halfway across the space toward it. This is it, she thought. This is the reason why I'm here. Now if only this miserable fog would lift, I'd be able to figure out what it IS, and – As if in response to her wish, a wind suddenly rose, blowing through the air from somewhere off behind and above her. The fog curled, shredding into ribbons, and began to dissipate; a ray of sunlight fell in through a crack in the cloud, illuminating the statues atop their pedestals... Twilight stopped in her tracks and let out a stunned gasp. Sharply defined for the first time, the statues proved to be ancient – marble they were indeed, but no longer beautiful in the same way that they had once been. They were weathered, eroded by the passage of time (but how much time, how many centuries, would have been needed to reduce them to this?), and speckled with unremoved bird droppings. One was meant to have a long unicorn horn, but the upper half of it had worn or snapped off and was nowhere in evidence, unless it was lying on top of the pedestal where Twilight couldn't see it; the other, ostensibly a pegasus, had been depicted with its wings thrown wide, but the left wing had broken off and lay in a half-dozen chipped pieces at the statue's feet. No, wait a moment: On the brow of this pegasus, above the weatherbeaten wreck of what had formerly been its face, was the broken but unmistakeable stump of a horn – and the other, the unicorn, had the vestiges of sculpted wings folded against its body... These, then, were alicorns. A pair of alicorns. ...Oh, no. How many famous pairs of alicorns were there, anyway? ...Oh, no. Twilight could not bear to look at the blasted visages of the marble statues anymore. Her eyes drifted downward, away from all that ravaged beauty – and she found that there were words inscribed upon their pedestals. ...Oh, no. No. No no no no no. NO. The inscriptions were very elegant, very simple, and etched so deeply into the marble slabs that time had failed to eradicate them. A single word each. —— CELESTIA —— —— LUNA —— Twilight Sparkle choked back a scream as the full meaning of this place fell upon her. The sun was sailing merrily above the clouds and doing its level best to pierce and weaken the fog, but she could not guess how, if it was without a custodian... For these were not mere monuments. They were the royal sisters' tombs. Her mind filled with blind panic. For one terrifying second she could think only of her princesses, think of Celestia who had been her mentor and guide since childhood, and wonder how it could ever be possible that the wise, ageless, strong, beautiful, eternal diarchs that she had served and loved were dead... Twilight sprang forward, breaking from a standstill into a full gallop – and ran almost face-first into a heavy, rusted iron chain, strung along a series of bollards that appeared to encircle the entire monument. It hung directly between her and the line of marble steles that stood before the two giant pedestals. Her brain, still overwhelmed by the horrific thought of a world that could go on existing without Luna and Celestia, had hardly registered their presence, but now that the fog had fallen back from them, she could examine these slabs of rock as well. Or at least try to examine them – they seemed somehow more ancient than the tombs of the alicorns. Twilight's eyes roved over them numbly, trying to make sense of the faded and barely legible reliefs carved upon them. They seemed to hold the remnants of portraits, although she saw few clues as to who the ponies in question could be. There was just barely enough of them left to tell that this one had been a unicorn, the next one an earth pony – or was it a pegasus with its wings folded? There were markings beside and upon the pictures, but they had been so utterly worn away that Twilight could not make them out. Pacing back and forth in front of the stone slabs, she stumbled over something that clicked and whirred when her hoof struck it; she looked down and found among the stones of the pavement a small, flat, black box, quite small enough to be held in the hollow of one's hoof. She picked it up with her telekinesis for a closer look, and as she turned it over and inspected it from multiple angles, it began to seem the oddest of all her unpleasant discoveries. For one thing, most obviously, she had no clue what the black material of its shell could be; it looked like no wood or metal or fabric she had ever seen or heard of, and it made a hollow clacking noise when she touched it gingerly with a forehoof. It might have been one of the University chemists' newfangled plastics, but those were approved for mass production so rarely... And another thing: Like everything else in this place, the box looked old – as though it had seen years of hard use, whatever it was. There was a surface all along one of the flat faces of the box with what seemed to be a smooth (albeit seriously scuffed) glass window. Twilight probed at this with her magic, and was astonished at the response – the window lighted up with tiny yet legible letters in the Equestrian alphabet, orange against a background of black. The words were in a language she had never seen before in her life, and it startled her to realize that despite this, she could comprehend it perfectly. What they said was something like: Equestrian Global Positioning Network status: Active. Deriving latitude and longitude... There was a moment's pause, followed by a brief, shrill chirp (unlike that of any bird known to Twilight) as the image in the window altered. The regular lines of a grid streaked across the window, overlaid with – was that? – yes, it was a contour map, showing a mountainous region overlooking what appeared to be a wide river valley. A red dot beside one of the mountain peaks blinked several times, then solidified, and two red words appeared next to it, words which she somehow knew meant YOU ARE HERE. Twilight found herself oddly grateful to this box for finally saying something she understood, although she couldn't imagine what kind of impossible machinery inside it would be able to make such a calculation. More information spilled out upon the screen. Capital Ruins, Mount Canter. National Park and Designated Historic Site of the Equestrian Democratic Republic. It seemed like only so much gibberish to Twilight, even if she could read it... but then a picture in orange-on-black monochrome slid into place, and she gasped again; it was, as far as she was able to make out, a photograph of the exact spot where she was standing. A caption labeled it Tombs of the Ancients. Another square popped up in the window, displaying the text: For audio entry from Long Stride's Tour Guide to the National Parks of Equestria, press here. Even in this extremity, Twilight's curiosity could not be stifled entirely. She reached a forehoof out and gently tapped upon the surface of the screen as the box floated before her, and promptly almost dropped it when it began to talk – as though there were a miniature phonograph, complete with cunningly concealed speakers, hidden away inside it. Again, the language was unknown to Twilight, yet she knew exactly what the little metallic voice was saying. "Precious little is now known of the ponies memorialized by the Tombs of the Ancients, one of the oldest surviving monuments in Equestria or, indeed, anywhere upon the continent. The smaller marble reliefs have been dated back roughly seven thousand years, to the heights of Middle Equestrian civilization, while the two large statues have been estimated at five thousand to fifty-five hundred years of age – the end of the Middle Era. "Practically no records of that time have survived, but what little information archaeologists and historians have been able to recover or reconstruct suggest that, even at this comparatively late date in Equestrian history, the pantheon of equine deities were still regarded as closely involved with the day-to-day functioning of society; it seems that the queens and supreme rulers, of whom there were always two, would assume the names of their two chief goddesses upon taking the throne. One goddess, presumably 'Luna', governed the moon and the night, while her sister 'Celestia' – believed to be the elder – ruled the sun and the day; it was even said of them that they actually raised the sun and moon. The two statues here represent the largest and most elegant of the monuments to these twin queens that survive." "Princesses," Twilight could not help snarling at the box. "Princesses." "It was thought for much of modern history that the tombs of two of the rulers who bore these names and titles might lie here, hence the name by which the two statues were collectively known. However, an archeological excavation two hundred years ago, in Year 3714 of the Republic, revealed that the plinths were hollow but contained no mortal remains. It is, of course, extremely unlikely that the original queens of these names – if they existed at all, outside of myth – were both alicorns as depicted here. Alicornism is now known to medical science to be a rare, nonlethal and non-inheritable genetic mutation present in, on average, one in eight-and-a-half million ponies, and there has not been to date a single recorded case of it occurring more than once within twelve generations of the same family. There is, of course, the possibility that the twin queens were not actually sisters, but surviving legends and oral traditions do not support this interpretation either. "The six marble reliefs standing before the tombs were rescued during an even earlier excavation, in the year 3608. According to legend, it was an ancient earthquake, with subsequent landslides and fire, that devastated the city that formerly stood on the sides of Mount Canter and destroyed its historical records; the scientists participating in the 3608 dig had theorized that other items of interest to them might have survived in the smaller mountains of rubble that had fallen. The site of the Tombs was surrounded, in an odd fashion, by mounds of dirt that had been in place for millennia and never moved." The screen changed, to a sketch of the site as it was at the time of the expedition. The tombs were in the same place, but there was no park built around them – they stood alone in a yards-wide depression in the ground. Twilight's practiced eye detected, or thought it detected, a magical influence: How likely was it, after all, that a massive landslide had struck in the vicinity of these statues and missed them entirely? But she didn't want to think about landslides any more than she had to... nor about fires, nor about the ancient ruins she had passed through on the way here. She knew all too well where she was now... no, she would not think about it. Besides, the box was speaking again. "The leader of the dig was Professor Giacomo dell'Aquila, visiting lecturer at the University of Manehattan." The screen changed again, showing a monochrome picture of a griffin sitting on a hillside, in a patch of ground that had been cleared of grass and other growth; he was crouched over a slab of stone that stuck four or five inches out of the dirt, holding a brush in one foreclaw and smiling triumphantly into the camera. "He himself uncovered the first buried sculpture, the one that now stands just right of center in the line. Further excavations by the same crew revealed a total of six sculptures, carved as you can see in bas-relief, sitting in a wide and carefully calculated circle; the two statues in the center were presumably erected much later. "Unfortunately, Professor dell'Aquila and his team removed the stones from their place and returned with them to Manehattan to conduct more detailed studies. There was a small but ongoing public outcry against this decision, and after four years the stones were returned to where they can now be seen, and placed on a new and more permanent foundation." Twilight's eyes darted briefly from the box to the bases of the marble slabs. The foundations may have been permanent in the eyes of those who had left them there, but they were cracked and crumbling just like everything else. "The University's investigation did not prove fruitless," the box went on. "Although most of the details have worn off, there remained sufficient hints to link the six ponies depicted on the reliefs with the piecemeal, disjointed, and often contradictory mythos of the Inner Circle, a council of demigoddesses who arose to do battle with threats to Equestria. The most persistent of these myths treat of certain great villains who wreaked havoc upon the land. One legend recounts the history of an evil queen, a queen not of night but of darkness, who either kidnapped or outright killed a noble member of the royal house who in turn was either rescued or avenged by the Inner Circle. Extant fragments are either unclear or in outright disagreement as to the exact details, and there is therefore no way to be certain that this 'queen of darkness', so-called, is not the same who appears in another legend and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce another high-ranking noble to the will of evil. There is another, even more alarming tale which purports to be of the Inner Circle's struggle against an amorphous force that attempted to carry out a violent revolution against the very concepts of order, peace, and social harmony in Equestria, replacing them with a sort of 'dictatorship of chaos'. This, however, is yet another case in which no verifiable details exist, and there is only myth, conjecture, and oral tradition to go upon. We do not know the names of the Inner Circle, nor their precise connection to the throne, nor the exact nature of the threats they heroically faced, nor what mystic powers they may have exercised in the realm's defense – only mere rumors, and the paltry evidence at sites such as these, to assure us that they or something like them must have existed once. "Historians have long bemoaned the loss of the apocryphal Archive of Mount Canter, a library of magic and history which is said to have been destroyed by the fire and devastation some four millennia ago. It is believed that, had anything of value been saved, we would have to this day a complete account of the Inner Circle's doings and dealings with the throne of Equestria. As it is, our nation's records of its own ancient past are tragically and damnably incomplete; and at this time when so many are looking to the future, the lack is felt more deeply than ever. The best that we can do is to give reverence to these fragmentary bits of folklore; to honor the memories of our mythical heroes, even if their names are lost to us, and to treat these simple cenotaphs with all the respect that genuine tombs would deserve. "From A Scholar's Tour Guide to the National Parks and Historic Sites of Equestria, by Long Stride, copyright Year 3951 of the Republic, University of Vanhoover Press. All multimedia rights reserved. Reproduced by per – permi – permis – perm – " The voice sputtered and died, and the words on the screen suddenly went out. Twilight looked blankly at the box for a few seconds, then gave it a good hard shake; despite her hopes, this did not untangle whatever mechanisms inside had gotten stuck. The box was inert. A wave of inexplicable revulsion washed over her, and she flung the box away, hardly hearing it clatter on the paving stones behind her. The six stones now glowed mockingly in a shaft of sunshine, and Twilight could make out some of the remnant carvings. Her heart had leapt with sheer horror when she first saw the royal sisters' memorials for what they were, but now it had sunk far down and lay cringing in her stomach. Her eyes traced the faint outlines, the rough shapes of ponies – the corrupted and withered images of her friends – and before she knew what she was doing, she found herself clambering over the rusted and heavy chain and moving right up onto the dry grass before them. This one at the far left, with a stubborn trail of ivy crawling up one side, this must have been Fluttershy; she saw the hints of wings and a long draping mane. The next one still faintly resembled a unicorn, and the three shallow, roughly four-sided markings next to it had surely once been meant to depict Rarity's cutie mark. A third bore no horn nor wings; if it was an earth pony, it had to be Applejack, if only for the way its hair seemed to hang down over one shoulder. I can't see her hat anywhere. Would they have depicted her without it? The next – but Twilight's eyes slid off that one, as if in rebellion against her intellect, and refused to see it. On the farther side of that stone, to the right, were a pair of carvings that had been treated cruelly by the ages; Rainbow Dash's wings and Pinkie Pie's extravagantly curly mane were still visible, but otherwise they could have been anypony at all... their faces had been rubbed almost totally away, and not even their cutie marks were left to give their identity. If there had been any writing on any of these reliefs, that too was long gone. Now go back, Twilight, she thought. That fourth one. Face your fears and just LOOK at it. Steeling herself for the moment, she planted her hooves squarely before the last carving and forced her eyes to remain open. She looked, all right – looked bitterly upward at the pathetic residue of her own portrait, at the scarcely visible horn, the worn-out and vague sketch of her mane, the feeble and time-eaten asterisk that had formerly been the cutie mark she was proud and grateful to wear. "Inner Circle, my flank," she said aloud, hearing the sourness in her own voice. "We were the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony." She turned to the empty, overgrown park, her voice rising sternly and indignantly, addressing itself to absolutely no one. "We were heroines of Equestria. We rescued Princess Luna. We defeated Discord. We fought the Changelings..." And here she surprised herself by bursting into tears. "We... we mattered!" she wailed, the world going blurry before her eyes. "We helped! Things were better because of us! We made a difference!" For a second, there was no response but the sound of a soft breeze blowing, and the echo of her defiant cry ricocheting off the pavement and some distant, moldering wall. Difference – difference – difference... Then something happened. Not the worst possible thing; no, it was worse, because it was patently impossible. Twilight's eye registered the presence of the box, lying beaten and dented and looking rather pathetically alone upon that expanse of flagstones... and it began to speak again. "Contained no mortal remains... fragmentary bits of folklore... more permanent foundation... anything of value... rumors, and the paltry evidence... day-to-day... fruitless... lie here..." Random bits of the recording she had listened to spewed out of the mangled box, the androgynous, emotionless voice taking on an acidic tinge of distortion. "Most of the details have... late date... buried... names are lost to us... landslides and fire..." The sun was disappearing, but not under a cloud. When Twilight looked up, the light appeared simply to be going out of the world. "Outcry against... Historians have long bemoaned... exact nature of the threats... of the Republic... night but of darkness, who either kidnapped or outright killed..." A loud cracking and crumbling noise erupted from directly behind her. Twilight spun around, fear shooting up her spine like electricity. The terror worsened when she saw what had made the noise. A gigantic crevice in the shape of a thunderbolt had shot through the statue of Luna, all the way from the bottom of its pedestal to the crown atop the Princess's head; as she watched, chips and then larger chunks of marble began to flake off to either side of it. The fissure widened, then split clean in two with a mighty tearing sound, hurling dust and fragments of stone in all directions. The right half of Luna's body fell sideways and struck the statue of Princess Celestia, which abruptly splintered clean off from its legs and plummeted forward to the ground, shattering at the foot of the plinth. The head snapped free of the neck and mane, and rolled along the grass; when it stopped directly at Twilight's hooves, she screamed and leaped back. In the near distance, the voice of the box droned, hiccuped, and droned again, penetrating even through the chaotic rumble of fracturing stone. Was it getting louder? "A sort of 'dictatorship of chaos'... wide and carefully calculated... of modern history that... upon. We do not know... damnably incomplete... ancient... existed once..." Twilight's eyes had been fixed upon the marble head. In the moment of total panic, she had taken it for a skull, then for the actual head of Princess Celestia – but now she could see that it was simply stone. She raised her head again, frantically, thinking of the six reliefs, and in the dimness of the light she could not even make out the figures etched upon them. All the images had vanished, hers included. The wind was up again, and blowing around her. Literally around her, she thought: it roared like a great ripping gale, and she could hear the trees and bushes of the abandoned park rustle violently... but it only slightly stirred her tail and mane, and did not sweep her copious tears from their tracks. And the unholy half-darkness could not conceal what else the wind was doing. The statues, all eight of them, were simply disintegrating and shredding away, as though they were made of sand and not hard stone. As she watched, the wind wore them down to mere nubbins of rock, things that no pony would ever believe had once been carved and beautiful. Without warning and without a flicker, the sun went out, like a candle with a snuffer unexpectedly clapped down on it. Twilight was alone with the wind and the rustling, creaking trees – and the box, which chattered mindlessly on over the howling of the tempest. There was an obscene contrast between the voice's placidity and the sputtering fits and starts in which it spoke. "Much later... genuine tombs... disjointed, and often contradictory... never been moved..." It was as if the universe contained nothing but Twilight Sparkle, the wind, and the drilling, keening voice. "The year 3608... best that we can do... were collectively... what little..." "Stop it," muttered Twilight. "Precious little... A Scholar's Tour... at the time of the expedition..." "Stop it," she said to herself. The box was far louder now, battling through the wind. "Nor what mystic powers... if they existed at all, outside of myth... in Equestria or, indeed, anywhere..." "Stop it!" she shouted. "Amorphous force," said the box. The voice had risen to an impossibly loud volume, as if to drown her out. "Four millennia... ancient past... looking to the future... there has not been to date... public outcry against... end of the Middle Era... at the time..." "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" she screamed into the void. "Whoever, whatever you are, PLEASE STOP DOING THIS!" "Struggle against... darkness... fruitless... no mortal remains... the time... the time... the time... Precious little is known..." The voice and the wind were joined in a foul and savage chorus. The words were no longer distinguishable from the rest of the remorseless roar that now deafened Twilight. She could feel the ground dispersing from underneath her hooves, leaving her standing on absolutely nothing. Her whole body trembled in misery and rage, and she longed to know the identity of the one responsible for this catastrophe. She would destroy him, or her, or it – strangle it, beat it, tear it limb from limb even as she sobbed... Then came a shock of revelation that staggered her: The name of the enemy was Time. Time had decayed the statues, burned the histories, crushed the castles. Time had condemned her to oblivion, and all her friends along with her. Time was sniggering at them all, mocking their friendship, sneering at their love, chortling in malevolent glee over the futility of their heroism. Time had defeated the Elements of Harmony; Time had consigned the very goddesses of Equestria to the realm of myth, legend, and fairy tale. Can you throttle Time, Twilight Sparkle? Can you tear it limb from limb? Can you fight it at all? Can you plead with it? Can you ever stop it? "No," she said, anguished, the word lost on the wind as soon as she spoke it. "I can't stop it." Suddenly there was silence – and a new voice, a voice of infinite calm, spoke in her ear. "Of course you can't. But I can." She turned her head to see... Entirely unbeknownst to one another, six sleepers in Ponyville simultaneously awoke, jolted out of their beds; and six terrified voices rang out in accidental unison over the slumbering town: "NO!!!"