The Prophesy of the Phoenix Foal
After Chaos is made still
And the shadowed sire banished into cold
The two who are of three shall rule briefly in harmony
Until shadow divides the two for a thousand years
And leaves one to rule alone
Towards the end of this solitude
There will be born an heir of the air
A descendant of the first line
They will know death before life
Pass through fire and dust
And from ashes they will be born
Through an act of will alone
To rise like the Phoenix
To claim the clouds home
They will crown themselves with thunder
Trail a cloak of broken light
And with six they bind together
Unlock love from dreaded night
Yet from hidden heart from darkness
The shadowed sire again shall crawl
Until their form from love’s light shattered
But their power not lost to all
A friend fallen from good graces
A fellow cast from spired heights
To shadow’s venomed comfort
To vengeful crown in darkness gleaming bright
Before all those bound
Of hoof and horn and wing
The one by death shall stand alone
Before the dread named darkness
More feared than endless night
While before them be the choices
Of death or for all reveal the light
Okay… Rainbow Dash thought as she reread her mother’s translation of the ancient pegasi script in the book. The two who are of three, she figured were Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. The two alicorns had defeated Discord, whom the passage simply called ‘Chaos’, by turning him to stone. That was probably the ‘stilled’ part.
Spending a thousand years as a statue didn’t exactly rate high on the list of ‘thing’s to do’ for the borderline hyperactive pegasus pony. Still there was something to the passage now that she thought about it. She knew the parts that referred to her ‘birth’, if it could even be called that. She guessed there wasn’t any other way to describe it really.
There was the part that described her connection to her closest friends, ‘with six they bind together, unlock love from endless night’. They had come together under Twilight’s guidance to reunite the Elements of Harmony, and save Princess Luna from her alter ego of ‘Nightmare Moon’. But it had been Rainbow’s first Sonic Rainboom that had connected the six long before that, coinciding with them each earning their cutie marks.
The next part, probably referred to King Sombra, and the Crystal Heart, but after that … she wasn’t sure. It seemed to suggest a destiny of sorts but … she couldn’t figure it out. Could Luna become Nightmare Moon again? Could Twilight, or one of her other friends fall to the dark side and the power of this ‘shadow’ thing? Daring Do was right, prophesies were a lot easier to read in hindsight.
Rainbow Dash looked over the passage again, gently stroking the brilliant pink silk bookmark that bore the twin thunderbolts of her mother’s cutie mark embroidered in dazzling electric-blue as she lay on her bed. The actual ancient pegasi version was probably more poetic, Dash figured, than her mother’s translation. It had been the last thing her mother had been reading the night she had died.
And I died with her … The thought trailed through the sky blue pegasus’s head as she recalled what her father had told her only a few days earlier.
What she remembered most was the ghostly image of her mother, Firefly, standing opposite her in the bedroom’s mirror affirming what Rainbow had finally realized, but couldn’t bring herself to believe until then: she was the Phoenix Foal. She was the true heir of the Pegasi royalty, the master of the Sonic Rainboom.
That was all awesome stuff, stuff she had promised her father that she would not tell a single soul about. Promised with her mother’s personal unbreakable vow. But that didn’t matter. Rainbow brushed the forelock of her rainbow colored mane out of her eyes, wiping a tear away in the process. The most important words she’d heard that night were the last ones her mother, Firefly, had said to her before Rainbow had passed out.
You are my daughter.