//------------------------------//
// 0. Prologue 
// Story: Ghost Recon: Phantom Hunt 
// by TJAW 
//------------------------------//

Unknown Location
Dawn
Saturday, May 1, 300 CE

It was raining. It rained so often in southern Eosia that to try and measure the annual rainfall with any precision felt akin to measuring the seas in pints. Twice a week it would rain all day and night, and sometimes it would rain even more than that. But the rainbows that followed could drop one’s jaw. The lush flora and plentiful wildlife thrived because of the weather, and the days without rain were truly gorgeous. 

Athena persevered through the torrent, her modest blue and tan cloak concealing most of her body. Her hood covered all of her head and mane, save for a hole specifically for her horn. She levitated a map from one of her pockets and gazed at it. She was a mere mile away from her goal, and so she marched on.

This was her chance to reunite her family, or at least what was left of it. A tragic accident three hundred years prior - a collapsing temple to be specific - had robbed her and her two sisters of their parents’ lives. After that, she’d had a falling out with the middle sister regarding their parents’ will.

There were three continents and three Princesses, groomed by their parents to each rule one. While the King and Queen had ruled all three together as one peaceful and prosperous entity, with their deaths the lands fell apart. The three sisters had been reduced to ruling a single nation on one continent.

Celestia, had insisted that only through creating a single prosperous nation could they begin to rebuild part of the Dominion. They would use diplomacy, compassionate expansionism and economics to slowly reunite the Helian continent as much as they could. With their near-infinite lifespans, they could eventually rebuild the continent’s former glory. And they would go no further.

Luna, ever attached to her elder, supported her goals wholeheartedly. In a mixture of love, respect, and borderline sycophancy, she became the second-in-command in achieving her sister’s objectives.

But at the time, Athena was much more modest in her goals, believing that Equestria was the only place they should rule. It was also the only place that would accept them as rulers as things were, being populated primarily by ponies. Crushed by her parents’ death, and seeing the dysfunctional storm of xenophobia, racism and conflict the world had fallen into, she thought that their best option was to turn Equestria into a beacon of light in a dark world.

Her pessimism and opposition to Princess Celestia’s expansionism earned her steadily more ire until the two clashed horns over the annexation of a then-small city-state called Trottingham. After the brief scuffle, Celestia and Luna exiled their sister to the continent she had been intended to rule, the northwestern continent of Eosia. They both regretted the fight on some level, but their grudges kept them from reconciling, and Athena had been the physical aggressor. 

After her exile, she continued to correspond with the guilt-stricken Luna in secret, and became the mare’s sole confidant. Over a decade, the she watched from afar as the youngest was consumed by envy, anger, impatience and wrath. A month after her last letter, one final letter from Celestia ruefully informed her of her sister’s transformation into Nightmare Moon and subsequent banishment.

Now, the exile quested to reunite the trio and end her sister’s solitude. For over a century, she had scoured the lands for knowledge and magical artifacts. Her goal was to free her baby sister from the clutches of Nightmare Moon and return her to Equis. And at long last she had found a way. A way for the three sisters to be together again, to be happy again.

The temple Athena strove to reach was her answer. From the magic-focusing structure, she could teleport herself to the Moon and bring back her sister, and use a series of artifacts to cleanse her of the foul influence. 

After half an hour of trudging through the rain, she was within sight of the ancient structure. The temple was a ziggurat, a hundred and fifty yards in length and breadth, and a hundred yards high.

She broke into a full gallop, heading straight for the door. As soon as she made it inside, she stopped and threw off her cloak.

Her coat was a soft silver, her eyes blue as sapphires, and her mane an ebony mass that flowed without wind. Her cutie mark was a golden shield with streaks of white emanating from it. Her tiara, shoes and necklace were likewise of enchanted gold and had inset sapphires, though the headpiece had been taken from her when her title as Princess had been stripped; the necklace and shoes remained with her.

She tucked her cloak into a magical pocket, a trick she’d devised that enabled her to store large quantities of items without physically carrying anything. After a nervous sigh, she headed to the heart of the temple. At the center of the first floor were a pair of staircases leading to a second floor directly above. Ascending the steps, she saw a lever embedded in the floor at the room’s center. 

Athena approached the lever and paused for a moment. Once she pulled this lever, the room would seal shut for several hours, the runes magnifying her already massive magic abilities and effectively forming a magic tether from her to the room until she returned. In a chamber downstairs, she would find the artifacts needed to end her sister’s century-long imprisonment in her own body.

The lever tilted as the pearlescent aura of her magic surrounded it. Stone scraped against stone and the chamber sealed itself. The runes on the walls began to glow with an aura matching her own, the intensity of their light increasing rapidly.

A thunderclap seemed to ring in the chamber, and lightning shot to the heavens from the apex of the ziggurat. 

The goddess opened her eyes to find herself in the heavens. She hadn’t put enough power into the temple, failing what was her only chance to save her sister. She looked at the moon and shed tears for Luna.

Then she looked at Equis. After seeing maps and globes of it so often, she’d become so accustomed to seeing borders, boundaries and geopolitical machinations with every scrap of parchment and every representation of the known world.

But what she saw, or rather didn’t see, was what changed her perception of everything.