//------------------------------// // It // Story: The Ash // by Raging Mouse //------------------------------// Chapter 6: It “Some time before the day the mountain fell I had a vision. You know my premonitions are usually little more than feelings, a vague memory of things yet to pass, so seeing a great chunk of incandescent rock hurtle towards me was quite a shock. I was even more surprised when I realised I ‘remembered’ the exact time and date this would happen. That is a clarity nearly unheard of.” Celestia shut her eyes and shook her head slowly. “I should have remembered there’s always a balance to these things. In any case, I was now aware of the exact time a rock would exit my sun and fall towards Equestria. Rarity, I see by your perplexed expression that Twilight has not had the opportunity to lecture to you about the nature of my sun.” Rarity shook her head gently while carefully staying away from the railing. She had no desire whatsoever to look down to the floor again. Celestia nodded to her and continued. “My sun is a hole in time and space. It could be described as a wound in our reality, or a door out of it, but it leads nowhere. I ventured through the sun’s portal several times during my youth, when I’d just been associated with it, and it was always the same. There’s nothing on the other side – nothing at all. No air for your wings, no light to see by and no sense of time that you could call consistent. All I ever felt was a gentle force halting my advance and then pushing me back through, and with nothing to brace against I couldn’t fight it. I tried teleporting, and the spell seemed to work, but I didn’t travel anywhere. The opening remained ever nearby. By itself the portal would be invisible except while passing between an observer and a background star, but part of my special talent is being able to coax energies out of that boundary, creating the incandescent halo that we commonly call ‘sun’.” “Although the sun doesn’t generate enough heat to have much of an effect on Equestria – were it to go dark permanently we’d only get a couple days’ additional winter – it does get immensely hot if you venture close to it. That’s why the scholars I gathered and offered a chance to study the rock asked me to temporarily move the sun away from its normal orbit so the rock would fall down to the badlands just inside the Equestrian border if I failed to catch it, and to dim its light so the rock wouldn’t melt while passing through the searingly hot region closest to the portal. I was only too happy to aid them as any kind of matter exiting the portal was unheard of before this.” Twilight was still staring at the floor down below. She spoke in a low monotone without moving. “You said you saw a rock appear out of the portal. Only one rock?” Celestia drew a shuddering breath and nodded. “Just one rock, about the size of a small cottage. Big enough to seriously hurt me if I stood in its way, but easily manageable even with my lesser telekinesis compared to Luna’s. My sister here is the strong one when you want lots of matter shifted. It goes naturally with being tasked to raise the moon, which is all rock and dust. My sun weighs nothing at all.” The princess let her head fall down to rest on Twilight’s back as an expression of pain briefly twisted her face. “That was the plan, and the reasoning behind it. It fell apart the moment I felt my grip over the portal disappear and the sun nearly extinguished itself. I was scared: I had only moments before reduced its light to a quarter of the usual, hoping it wouldn’t cause much of a disruption, and I dreaded having done something wrong. I haven’t experimented much with the sun, since it is such a powerful and volatile thing, so I had absolutely no idea what was happening. In hindsight no amount of experiments would have prepared me. So I flew up to it, trying to re-establish my control all the time. I could feel the link, but it was very tenuous.” Twilight stroked Celestia’s mane without looking and sighed. “We saw you. Well, most of Equestria saw you. I spoke to Rainbow Dash and she said nopony could survive flying even close to as high as you were. Do conditions improve past a boundary as you get higher?” She tore her gaze away from the thing below and turned to look at her mentor. “They don’t. I have the means to counter every hardship of the astral void. My cutie mark is not a glowing portal out of coincidence: travel and light are my special talents.” Celestia shuddered and moved her head to look into Twilight’s eyes. “When I arrived at the sun I could sense the moment of my vision was imminent, but everything was wrong. I had seen a rock fly out of a quite normal sun, but in front of me was something else. I looked into the gate and for the first time had a sense of depth. I saw the shape of something immense approaching, though from what distance I couldn’t tell. I immediately knew this was not the comparatively tiny rock I had expected. In fact, whatever was approaching was far too large for my magic. I knew it would cause terrible damage, but I wasn’t yet aware of the true size of it as I was seeing only the tip. I panicked then: my attempts to regain control became desperate attempts to close the portal. And I knew I had failed Equestria already.” Twilight looked into Celestia’s eyes, her sadness and confusion matched by her mentor’s bitter sorrow. She stroked a hoof along Celestia’s foreleg and listened silently while the princess continued in a hollow tone. “A clear vision, no matter how erroneous, is unusual in itself. I should have also considered the possibility that there’d be more rock, rather than less or none at all as I suspected, and prepared accordingly. Luna is the mistress of matter but I did not even consider waking her and asking her to accompany me.” Luna ruffled her wings and shook her head. “Sister, it is highly unlikely I would have fared any better. Rather I suspect I would have worsened the situation.” Celestia nodded her agreement and resumed her story. “When I couldn’t close the portal I tried to reach through it with my telekinesis and shove the rock back. I do not have a true comparison, but I imagine it felt a bit like applebobbing on Nightmare Night, but instead of water the tub is filled with acid. I could feel my grip on the rock, but even that slight touch was unbearably painful! I had to fight hard to end my telekinesis and it was a close thing indeed. After that my horn was numb. I watched helplessly as the mountain entered the skies above Equestria. Waiting for my magic to return was horrible, for I could see I had to give some kind of warning – if the ponies were caught unprepared when the repercussions from the crashing mountain reached them then the toll would – would be—” Twilight made feeble soothing noises, hugging close to Celestia’s chest, as her mentor sobbed and fought for control. Luna spoke kindly. “Beloved sister, your magic did return in time. You did send a warning. Thus I awoke and looked out my window, to where the mountain was already crashing. Thus I knew I was too far from it to reach out and grab it – I would have had to relinquish my hold on the moon – and also that there was no time to get close enough. But thanks to your message I held Canterlot and the castle firm against the rocking earth.” Twilight blinked and gazed at Luna in wonder. “I tried to do that in Ponyville! I— It didn’t... It didn’t work so well.” Luna paused and regarded Twilight with a touch of coolness in her gaze. “If you are still here and able to speak coherently then you did better than most magicians trying to imitate my hold over the moon. For that kind of effortless control you must spend countless hours meditating and communing with the genius loci, or spirit, of the place or object you want to manipulate. My soul is tightly bound to my moon, and Mount Canterlot has known me for over a thousand years. I spoke to the mountain even while under the influence of Nightmare Moon, and it relayed to me how Celestia was faring during that time. You are merely acquainted with Ponyville, nothing more. You are lucky to have survived your attempt. I am sorry, dear sister: we are interrupting you. Please do continue.” Celestia had regained some of her composure. “I was going to fly to the impact site once the last big piece had exited the portal and only lesser rocks and debris remained to fall, but something made me look back and inspect the final piece of the mountain a bit closer. I saw what looked like dirt and grass upon the rock. And then I saw, clinging to the grass... it.” She pointed a hoof over the railing and down to the floor. A vaguely quadrupedal shape lay on a marble block in the center of the room, surrounded by complex magical diagrams painted on the floor. It was burnt to a crisp, covered by flakes of black soot. Twilight could see that it wasn’t meant to walk on all fours. Its hip made her think of the species of apes who frequently balanced on their hind legs. With that image in her mind she focused on the creature’s forelegs and did indeed spot something like a hand and even fingers, though from this distance and with the body in such a poor shape it was hard to tell. The short neck and the positioning of the head also hinted at something that balanced their head on top of their torso. The features of the thing’s face were impossible to make out, but the jaw seemed to be too small and weak. “Is it some kind of ape?” Celestia nodded. “That’s about as close to a classification as I’d dare to make at this point. The trouble is that from what I saw it had very little fur, mostly concentrated on its head rather like a mane. The skin was a mixture of tan and pink, and the mane was chestnut. It also seemed to be wearing clothing. It had blue covering its hindlegs and hip, and something loose and green covered its forelegs and torso. It – it looked at me, Twilight. Its eyes were much like a pony’s, a blend of blue and green. It reached out to me, mouth open, and I think I read fear in its expression. Then it started to burn.” Celestia buried her face in Twilight’s mane. “I – I could feel the heat on my back. My sun was regaining its power. And this close to it, the temperature rose in mere seconds to something that boils rock. The poor creature recoiled and tried to shield itself with its arms while the grass around it smoked and withered. I reacted on instinct and used my magic to shield the creature, but to my horror its touch was just as painful as the alien rock. I should have expected it, though.” She swallowed before continuing. “I couldn’t keep it up for long, so instead I thought of an indirect approach: I flew in closer and twisted space around the creature. It started to fall in the direction I was flying. When I was clear of the rest of the debris I whisked the chunk of the astral void containing both of us to within spitting distance of Canterlot Castle. All of this took mere seconds, but by the time I arrived the poor creature had reached the state you see below. I did the only thing I could think of at that point and twisted space around it even further, to the very limit of my ability. Inside that magic circle only sixteen seconds have passed since I rescued the creature.” Rarity gagged. “Does it – is it still conscious?” “I don’t believe so. No creature I know of with that extensive damage would be conscious. I know it still lives, but I am also quite sure it is mere seconds from dying. There is also the matter of air. I am quite sure the creature breathes some kind of air – It has the necessary lungs – and it is highly unlikely that our Equestrian variety of air would be suitable, but we’ll talk about that some other time. Even if it could breathe our air it doesn’t matter as the region surrounding my sun’s orbit is airless. It had nothing to breathe when it exited the portal. You probably don’t realise how deadly that place can be even without the presence of my sun, so believe me when I say it is highly unlikely that the creature was equipped to survive just being there. Sometimes I wondered if it was trying to scream. I wonder what it sounds like and I—” Nopony moved for a few heartbeats. Then Luna walked up to and gently draped her wing over her sister, who was shaking and crying into Twilight’s mane. Twilight did her best to try and soothe Celestia but she was quickly being brought to tears of sympathy. Suddenly Twilight felt Luna’s breath on her ear as the princess of Night whispered instructions. “Twilight, I am going to lead my sister to her chambers and try to console her. You might not believe it, but you have already greatly benefitted her state of mind. I know you’d like to remain with her, but for now it is best if I talked to my sister in private. Meanwhile you are free to stay here. I have taken the liberty of arranging your old quarters for you to stay in, and nearby rooms for your friends. Do understand that the conditions of the geas require that you take them to this room should you wish to discuss these matters with them. Twilight Sparkle, I cannot thank you enough and I hope I can repay you eventually. Fare you well until we see each other again.” Luna gently tugged on her sister. Celestia allowed herself to be led out of the hall. Neither Twilight nor Rarity moved, merely watching the two princesses leave until they were out of sight. Then they stared at each other. “Twilight. Your mane. It’s a mess.” Twilight managed to chuckle and sob simultaneously. Then they were hugging each other with great force, and crying just as much.