//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5: Fire 
// Story: Sun & Moon Act I: Ascending Star 
// by cursedchords 
//------------------------------//

“The earth I shall tame with iron, the sea I shall dry with fire, and the sky I shall rend with lightning. And all the world shall look upon my power, and it will know my strength.”


- King Solaris VII of the Unicorns


High up on the mountain upon which Eridian sat, beyond the tallest ruins of the lower city, in amongst the clean and well-maintained green spaces of Upper Eridian, Seraph walked with his head held high. As it did every night, the idea that he lived right on the High King’s very doorstep set the earth pony’s spirit alight. Places like these were where the real work of the Resistance ought to be done. While the others waited and bided their time in secret far away, he was here now, and poised to strike should the opportunity ever show itself.

Tonight, as was his custom, Seraph wore a crimson cape tied round his front shoulders with a golden brooch, set with a choice ruby. The fiery stone went well with his dark orange coat, and captured the prismatic shimmer of his vermilion eyes. An exquisitely coiffed mane completed the arrangement, red hair struck through with orange highlights. Tonight, a finely crafted monocle and black top hat also complemented his features. Indeed, he was the picture of a true gentlecolt.

He had lived here for nearly twenty years now, in secret amongst the traitors of Upper Eridian. Tonight, the nobility was all crowded into the courtyards around the King’s castle, milling about and socializing before the court came into official session. The grassy clearing around him was filled with knots of ponies, murmuring with gossip in the still evening air.

Seraph strolled in between them, aloof, above all of their petty concerns. The act was just that, though, an act. In truth, they were all merely servants of their lord, only a single step up from the huddled majority in the rest of the city. They still lived under the same lightless sky, still searched for meaning in the dull routines of their lives, and they still lived in fear.

Seraph hated all of these obsequious fops, so abjectly terrified of the High King that they would bend over backwards to grant his every whim and desire. They scuttled about in service of their master, perhaps holding to some ridiculous hope that they would somehow be happy, if only their world was just a little bit brighter than their neighbour’s.

The burning torches in the courtyard cast flickering shadows across the grass, which was long and dewy underfoot. Reluctantly, Seraph approached a small group of his “colleagues”, clutching at snifters of brandy and incessantly discussing the latest court gossip.

“So I told her, if you think I’m going out in something like that, you’d best have that horn of yours examined. I think I might be scratching your brain!” exclaimed the stallion that was talking just then, earning a chorus of titters from the assembled group. His moustache was tightly stretched out over a generous mouth, holding teeth which appeared white enough to light a room.

“But it is indeed a most smashing outfit!” gushed one of the mares beside him, her gaudy jewellery clinking as she spoke. “Perhaps not one to match Lady Couture’s from the other night though. Have you seen it?”

The other mare in the group, a teal earth pony with a ridiculous stack of silver curls atop her head, nodded vigorously. “With the Fillydelphian ice diamonds on the brooch? My, what a sight that was!”

Seraph tried to pay attention to the inane chatter, but he could not fathom the worth of the conversation. How deluded these fools were, to discuss matters of such inconsequence as their country rotted around them! Still, though he found the politics of the court to be tedious, it was important to pay attention to which ponies had their reputations on the upswing, for they were the ones that could potentially accumulate real power in the apparatus of Upper Eridian.

For though some of the ponies here might have been fools, Seraph knew that all of them had come here for the same reason: a personal greed that could only be satisfied by supporting what was currently the winning side. And all of them recognized that there were threats to the peace and security of their way of life, though some chose simply to ignore them. The truly ambitious ones realized, though, that giving Discord concrete information on the resistance would surely result in their permanent success. And so the elite sent out their spies and households throughout the population, seeking everywhere for that elusive lead that would guarantee them the favour of the High King. In a way, the contest amongst these inhabitants of the inner circle was just as desperate as it was for the regular rabble out on the streets.

Finally, in unspoken agreement, the court members funnelled into the crumbling grey hall that served as Discord’s audience chamber. Much like the rest of the castle, the room was dreary and unadorned. A large rectangular stone floor stood cracked and barren, broken only by a colonnade that encircled the room. Beneath the columns stood the courtiers, waiting for the King to make his appearance. It was no secret that Discord carried on this assembly only for his own amusement, and that meant just about anything could and would happen. The King was just as likely to walk in the door as he was to rise like a wisp through a crack in the stone walls.

But today the room was silent as a grave. As a few minutes ticked by, the courtiers began to shift uneasily and murmur amongst themselves. A group on the far side from Seraph erupted momentarily in a fit of giggles, apparently the result the result of an exceptional bon mot from a stallion in back.

Seraph ran his keen eyes slowly over the chamber. Clearly this was all just a bit of fun on Discord’s part. Likely he was already here, watching and listening from some dark perch, laughing to himself all the while. Or perhaps he was hiding in plain sight, waiting for some observant fellow in the crowd to see through his ruse. It took the orange stallion several seconds, but soon enough he saw the trickery. Clever, he thought. Even after four hundred years, he still finds ways to surprise.

With a cackle, Discord materialized in the room, transforming out of the high-backed wooden chair that was normally his seat for these occasions. The feat was met with respectful applause from the ponies of the court. “You have your King, Equestria!” he proclaimed in a booming voice. “As any good monarch must, however, tonight I am at the will of the suffering public,” he continued with a gleeful smile. “Tonight I almost feel merciful. We’ll see what entertainment the rest of the evening brings.” With a mischievous snicker, he snapped the talons of his left claw, creating a new seat at the head of the room, as well as opening the door to admit the evening’s first supplicant.

The pony that entered was light green, and dressed in faded overalls that spoke of hard work. A day’s worth of stubble was growing over his drawn face, and the deep purple irises of his eyes showed little hope. Still, he carried a reasonable degree of determination for a task that he probably knew was only a futile gesture.

Coming to a stop in the center of the chamber, the stallion bowed low and addressed Discord in a respectful tone. “Most High King of Equestria, and Eternal Lord of all the Ponies, please hear my request!”

Discord nodded very slightly, checking the claws of his lion’s paw. The supplicant continued, “I come from a long line of carpenters, gracious King. We have plied our trade on the outskirts of your fair city for many ages. But with the Sun shrouded, the forests we relied on for raw materials have all passed away. Please, restore light to our lands, such that we may have hope for tomorrow!”

Seraph had to admit a certain degree of respect for this peasant. Though he knew his plea was desperate and unlikely to succeed, he still came in here with honour, and had not stooped to kiss the King’s feet or begged for mercy. At least he still had his self-respect intact. Most of these “supplicants” were in fact ordinary civilians that the nobles rounded up and coerced into coming just to give Discord some entertainment. Seraph wondered if that was the case here, or if this stallion had actually had the gumption to try it on his own.

The King seemed to mull the request for a moment, and then had a brainwave. Leaning forward in his seat, Discord levelled his decree. “You say you are a carpenter, hmm? Then make me a stool. I’ve been on my feet all day and they could use the rest. Surely you can sympathize?”

The stallion was taken aback by the answer. “Indeed m’lord, but I have no tools or wood to work with.”

In response, Discord simply winked. The hall was silent for the briefest moment, before being punctuated by a distinct rumbling. All at once, two great trees pierced the floor around where the supplicant stood, stretching out their voluminous boughs to both ends of the cavernous hall. The unfortunate carpenter was caught up in the surge, and ended up desperately clinging to a branch near the room’s ceiling, casting his wild gaze about. With a chuckle, Discord tossed a small handsaw and some other tools down to the base of the newly grown foliage. “No worries now, right?”

What followed was an unfortunate display. Seraph felt real shame pierce his heart as the carpenter attempted to find his way down the hulking tree, then sat wondering how best to fell a metre-thick trunk with only a 30 centimetre blade. Throughout the ordeal, he was subjected to the mirth of the King, which was answered by all the courtiers in the chamber, careful to match their master’s timing and sure not to miss an opportunity to pass a sly remark.

Seraph could only watch the ridiculous display with sadness deep in his stomach. How had Equestria fallen so far? How could these ponies live with themselves, crawling over each other’s backs for a taste of imagined power? How could they be reduced to such barbarism, in the pursuit of the favour of a cruel leader? Seraph silently vowed, as he often did, to fix this broken nation, once and for all. Meanwhile, he laughed along with them. Discord would surely be watching to make sure none of his admirers was hiding any secrets, and he most certainly did not wish for his true thoughts to be discovered.





Several hours later, Seraph found himself back next to his own home. On the outside, it was a large house, with striking tall windows, and a steeply peaked roof. In reality though, as with so much in Upper Eridian, it was just for appearances. Seraph made use of the residence only very rarely. His business was generally conducted in other, more secret places.

Coming around to the back of the home, he casually unlocked the sloped doors leading down into what appeared to be a root cellar. He cast a look around to make sure that he was not being watched, and then silently he disappeared into the gloomy, dank darkness, carefully relocking the door behind him.

Sure of his step in spite of the piercing blackness, Seraph reached along the wall and found a well-used lantern, which he quickly lit with a couple of matches from a pocket of his cape.

The lantern’s glow revealed a view that was anything but a root cellar. A rough-hewn passageway spiralled down and out of sight, stretching hundreds of feet into the mountainside. As he descended, stepping carefully in the smooth, gently sloped passage, the air grew drier, and a warm breeze wafted up from beneath. Slowly, a yellow ambient glow from the depths of the mountain began to be visible. Seraph breathed a contented sigh. Finally, he was home again.

The passage ended in an immense stone chamber, lit by burning cauldrons and torches. It was his fortress against the unpredictability of the world, his refuge in the regularity of fire, and the mechanical work of his own hoofs. Lining the far wall was a row of massive boilers, fed constantly by hulking mounds of coal. From them emerged myriad ducts and pipes, carrying the life-blood of steam off to the various other devices in the cavern. Other areas in the space were occupied with all the necessary equipment to feed Seraph’s voracious mind: massive furnaces and foundries, workshops, laboratories, assembly lines. Seraph looked out over his domain, blazing with the fire of enlightenment, and felt his heart fill with hope again. Here was where Equestria’s true future lived.

As he rode up a clockwork-powered elevator to his private apartments, which were erected along a wrought iron truss high on the near wall of the cavern, Seraph thought of all the potential in this room. Since the days of his youth, he had always been enamoured of the power intrinsic in fire and machines. He remembered playing around with water-wheels, and marvelling at the might of lightning. Truly, he had thought, it was the destiny of any ascended species to harness this potential.

But Discord stood in the way of all that, which was why Seraph had chosen his current path. Twenty minutes later, he was in his own sparring hall, ready to work away the stress of life aboveground. Walking over to his personal armoury, he reverently withdrew a lengthy blade of layered steel, sharpened to a razor’s edge, and balanced precisely to his fighting style and proportions. Approaching a worn-in training dummy on the practice floor, he assumed a proper stance. As he always did in these practice sessions, he simply summoned the memories of his own disgrace, how his one-time friends had proven their true colours in their final dealings with him. With a roar, he fell upon the dummy in flashes of bright steel.

The three of them had been perfect, Equestria’s ultimate answer to Discord’s stifling repression: Aqua, the tactician and magical prodigy, Atlas, the idealist and flyer extraordinaire, and of course, himself, the genius engineer and master of the blade. All his youth, he had dreamt of earning that chance, to set things right once more, and claim his proper place at the head of the new Equestria.

Seraph caught himself, and stepped back. The dummy had been fully dismembered, and he would probably have quite enough work putting it back together for another session. As he wiped sweat from his brow, Seraph sauntered out to the balcony overlooking his factory floor. Smoke billowed from the chimneys of the foundries, as iron was smelted into steel for construction and metallurgy work. The exhaust was all diverted carefully through pre-existing funnels in the rock ceiling, eventually emerging to mix harmlessly with Discord’s eternal shroud.

Although he had purged his mind of the day’s business, his heart still burned bright from the remembered betrayal. When confronted with the ultimate choice, of facing destiny or hiding from it, his friends had chosen cowardice, covering themselves with the flimsy veils of tradition and history to avoid facing the obvious truth. Equestria had lost its chance at freedom, and so it continued its slide into nothingness, forgetting its once-hallowed place in the world.

Atlas and Aqua had tried to explain their reasoning, but Seraph could only look at either of them with contempt. How he had ever imagined that they might be the saviours of his country, he could not now say. But he had known what his destiny was, right from the start. They could not stand in his way, any more than they could hide their personal flaws from the test of destiny.

Seraph turned his gaze upward to the ceiling, imagining Eridian above him, the potential for greatness inherent in every pony. He had trusted in friends, certain that they would never betray their ultimate cause. Now, the task fell to him and him alone.

And when Equestria rose from the ashes of its mire, he would be there for it, a shining example of everything it could aspire for, everything that ponies could accomplish. A mechanized state, built on the principles of order and responsibility. A just society, rewarding intellect, effort, and honour. He would lead his country into the fair dawn of its glorious future.

Seraph smiled contentedly, for perhaps the first time in a long while. All in its due time, I will be King, and the future will be bright.