//------------------------------// // Chapter Thirteen - Genesis/Impetus (Dream Sequence) // Story: Cantering Death // by Scriber //------------------------------// It was like being afloat, yet not. Twilight Sparkle knew that she was dreaming. She couldn’t feel the slightest bit of her body as she saw herself dangling in mid-air over a massive void, an endless chasm that sprawled onward into infinity. A low, rumbling thrum, a single constant note resounded in this not-world, resonating in her very body, shaking her to her core; her soul cried out in harmony with the tone. In the vast reaches of this nothingness, a flash of distant lightning would every so often come to be, leaving existence as quickly as it came. She saw her violet hooves hanging limply beneath her as she struggled to move them. “Why...why can’t I move?” she asked aloud, panic creeping ever so slightly into her tone. It is because thou art in my domain, Twilight Sparkle. Worry not, for thou art safe. “That voice...” Twilight said. “P-Princess Luna? Is that really you?” Verily. It is of a relief to us that thou art well, given the events of this evening. Prithee, how doth thy companions fare? Are the bearers of the Elements safe? We have only sensed but a few of them slip into the realm of dreams... “They are,” she answered. “It took a lot of work, and some dumb, blind luck...but everypony is safe and sound, here in my Library. Even Spitfire, too. But, uh... where are you? Do you have to be asleep as well in order to be in my dream...? Should this night have occurred even twenty moons ago, we would not have been strong enough to slip into our Dream Realm while still conscious. There was a pause, the first of many. In that moment in time - one, tear-streaked, flying erratically through the biting winds beyond Canterlot’s barrier, horn aglow with a lambent, light-blue righteousness, a fury that permeated her very being, damning her to see her sister’s executioner slain... the other, asleep deeply, yet still restlessly on the floor of her library home, surrounded here and there by the likewise-asleep and yet-to-be-asleep fortunate (or misfortunate) survivors of that horrible, blood-soaked first night. Twilight finally spoke. “But Soarin’... he... he didn’t make it.” An unfortunate turn of events. He was ever loyal to our sister and we. He shall be missed. There was a moment of silence, an unspoken pause in the exchange out of respect for the fallen. Then, Luna’s voice sounded in Twilight’s mind once more. It comes as quite a relief that thy friends are well. The Elements of Harmony... though they may be unreachable themselves at the moment, it is of relief to us that the bearers remain unharmed. Thee and thy friends are needed to purge the evils that have awakened this night.” “I suspected as much,” Twilight replied. “But what did you mean by, ‘unreachable at the moment’? What...oh no...” This is... difficult to say, Twilight Sparkle. Thou may not be prepared to hear it. “I need to know what happened,” Twilight said in a stern voice. “The better informed I am, the better prepared I can be for when the Elements need to be used again.” ...very well. Thou art most correct, in any event. Celestia spoke true when she spoke of your wisdom. However, in order for you to understand the horrors taking place on this night, you must first understand how these horrors came to be. There was again a silence, just for a moment. Many, many ages ago, there was a great evil that came to be in this world. This was in a time when many of the lands that made up Equestria today remained unformed, devoid of life and purpose. Celestia and I were only beginning to fully understand what it was to create life, let alone sapient individuals, ones who were capable of living meaningful, happy existences in their own courses of time. All things considered, we should have anticipated what was to come; verily, there can be no life without death, much as there can be no order without chaos. Our sister was particularly frustrated at our culmative failures, to see what little life we managed to create fizzle and fade back into nothingness, back into the relative chaos that was the state of things at the time. She paused, briefly. Tell me, Twilight Sparkle - what do you know of the wellsprings? Twilight blinked, her brain firing on all cylinders, accessing any and all pertinent information she had gleaned from her studies. “Well, from what I can understand, the wellsprings are large depositories of wild and untamed magics, held in place deep underground by a sort of warding spell that keeps the energies from seeping into the regular, controlled magic that permeates all of Equestria.” Correct again. It was at the behest of our sister, after all that happened, that the magical wards were set into place. Thou must understand that this all took place before written history - nay, even before the concept of writing took hold. In this... proto-Equestria, if you will, the magics now contained in the many, many wellsprings across Equestria roamed free, unbalanced and unchecked. These magics had the ability to make manifest an individual’s will, whether that individual was conscious of the effect or not. Additionally, they had the power to feed off of particularly strong emotions, to take the raw, vibrant energy of joy and happiness; or to take the low, relentless negativity of frustration and rage and shape it into something tangible. I was born of the former, incidentally, but that is a story for another time. Something else was born of the latter, you see. When Celestia’s perturbation and discontent had reached its zenith, when she had all but given up hope at pushing, cajoling life into existence, those emotions bled out into the world, cascading over the mountains and the plains, broadcasting their power to the rampant magics that had previously lay, for the most part, dormant. They were awakened with a terrible force, and coalesced into something new - what we would later come to call the Necrophant. “Necro... phant?” Twilight postulated. “Part of that sounds like ancient Equestrian...” Quite so. It means ‘bringer of death.’ And death was what it brought, indeed - before the Necrophant came to be, death simply did not exist. That is why Celestia and I have endured through countless millennia; the concept of death, the cessation of life had never, not once, occurred to us. In a cruel twist of irony, it was the Necrophant that ultimately allowed life to exist in Equestria. That... horrid creature despises life, yet as I have said - there can be no life without death. Our sister was overjoyed when the first inklings of life took hold - a flower here, a woodland creature there, perhaps a school of fish swimming in what was once an empty stream. She finally felt the confidence needed to see to the advent of the very first ponies. She reached out into the lands with her will, seeking naught but the genesis of creatures in our own image - and when they came, the two of us rested. We were finally able to step back and properly observe the life we had encouraged to grow; we were, needless to say, pleased with the results. All was well for several years or so; that is, until we witnessed the very first death. One of the very first ponies, a young foal, ventured too far into the surrounding wood. It was there that she encountered a serpent, a mottled green-and-black thing which hung from a tree branch. Curious, she trotted over to investigate - it was then where she received what would be a fatal bite, for the serpent’s venom was strong, yet slow to act. Crying with the pain of the bite, the foal dashed blindly through the thick overgrowth, seeking its parents. When the three were reunited, the mother and father did their best to comfort the foal, but it soon succumbed to its injury. The mother and father wailed with lament, their first and only reaction to something so horrible, they could not even comprehend it. When Celestia and I saw this come to pass, it was a tacet understanding between the two of us that we were to intervene, for to see our little ponies suffer in such a manner was greatly painful to us. They cowered in fear of us, as we were then as we are now - tall and imposing things. We managed to calm them, placating their fears, assuring these first of ponies that we meant them no harm. Our intent was to revive the foal, and we were right in assuming that this was well within our abilities: we were, after all, the beings who helped to encourage life in the first place. When we joined our magics as one and reached out towards the lifeless body before us, however, something that neither of us expected occured. We were met with a great magical backlash... it is difficult to explain. Imagine, if you will, a crystal goblet free of imperfections - if you were to strike it on its rim, a single musical note with many overtones will resound. If, however, one was to amplify that note - its resonant frequency - several times over, the vibrations within the structure of the crystal itself would cause the goblet to shatter. Take this concept, and apply it to an alicorn’s horn. We were made to cut our spells short, lest we suffer greatly at this backlash. Understandably, we were confused, having never experienced magic this powerful and apparently hostile to our attempts to nullify it. Despite several repeated attempts at the foal’s revival, we were ultimately unsuccessful. Before we were able to search for an explanation, though, the explanation presented itself to us. “The Necrophant,” Twilight said. “It appeared to you then, didn’t it?” Yes. A foul bastardization of an alicorn, it came through a blackened portal in the sky, crackling with the very same energies and exuding the very same sentiments as Celestia’s frustrations from years past. Blacker than the deepest void of space, eyes glowing red with malice, its body riddled with rips and tears which oozed a dark purple-red ichor, it came to us. It mocked us. Bristling with divine fury, we demanded that it identify itself, to make itself known to us, to state its intention in this land. Laughing a laugh that sent an unholy chill up our very spines, it only spoke these words: ‘Thou made us to unmake thee.’ It revived the foal, but not in a way any of us could have ever foreseen. What came back, that... that thing... ‘twas not a pony, Twilight Sparkle. Tell me... dost thou recall your studies on the abilities of the Alicorns? Twilight blinked. “Well... well, of course, but-” Think, Twilight Sparkle. Think of what the Necrophant came from. Think of what those whom his evil, corrupting magics dwell within. A pause. “The wellsprings.” Right again. What you won’t find in any book is a fact that our sister and we deemed necessary to withhold... Imagine, if thou would, the simple force of magnetism. One force attracts, one force repels. The native magics of the wellsprings come from a time before death, yet they are enbalmed in the evils of rage, of regret, of anger... and of guilt. Put simply...  “The wellsprings, coupled with the negative energy, repel life. That is simple enough to infer. However, knowing I’ve read at some point or another a number of lesser-known essays by Starswirl the Bearded, that at the very least hinted at more or less the same conclusion. Taking that information, I can thereby assume that your inclusion of the properties of magnetism in your carefully-worded verbal banter with yours truly - which I really do appreciate, by the way, because I haven’t had a good debate with wise, confident alicorns since my University days at Canterlot... but in any event, to sum up a somewhat long-winded postulation, I’m just gonna go ahead and assume that there’s something that attracts the corrupted wellspring energy.” Luna was actually shocked at how quickly Twilight got all of that right. “I’ll then further assume that, since the universe apparently amuses itself by testing myself and my five best friends - and occasional dragon assistant - in some of the most threatening events to take place in Equestria in, arguably, at least five or more centuries... there’s going to be some sort of dungeon we need to cross through, and it’ll be really, really dangerous, and spooky, and possibly full of... *eep* snakes...” Twilight heard Luna clear her throat inside her head, which was an odd sensation, to say the very least. Well... yes and no, we suppose. Thou art indeed correct that there is a way to siphon the darkened wellspring energies, drawing from across a great radius, to a single artifact - something so powerful, that we, at last count, believe only seven ponies in all of Equestria to know of its existence. Twilight gulped. “And... and how difficult do you estimate its’ retrieval would be, theoretically...?” ...we do hope of you’ll pardon your Princess in a bit of rather frank language, Twilight Sparkle, for we have just lost our sister tonight, and we have little time to act. It is going to be the most difficult fucking thing you and your friends have ever fucking done.