//------------------------------// // Resurrection // Story: The Collapse of Stolen Magic // by Europa //------------------------------// The Multiverse It is a place beyond space and time, yet bound by their laws. Here the eleven spacial dimensions are allowed to unfurl and do their work, creating undulating vast spaces, infinite volume in finite room. This place has always existed, and always shall. Its mass is infinite yet it does not collapse into a black hole, its energy unlimited yet it does not erupt into an inferno. There are no photons here, so it is deepest black. This is the multiverse. In the multiuniversal void, the place between places, two universes approached. They were bloated, unimaginably large in scale, yet in the multiverse none of their size mattered. The two dead universes, long ago defeated by entropy, touched. Like two rippling sheets they touched, and where they did they stuck together. They continued to approach, the places where they were stuck rippling with possibilities. They touched more and more, until the spots of potential grew, and grew, and grew, and then... The universes separated, gone to return to their googolplexes long lives. Where they had touched, the possibilities condensed into a point. That was the one time when matter was created, when something came from nothing. Incalculable power was generated in this universe, and the strength of its various forces and values of its constants were adjusted, influenced by the two that had birthed it. For a quadrillion years, the planck-density orb hovered in the multiuniversal void, gathering and stabilizing until... It was not a sound. It was not a rush. It was not an explosion. But the tiny little orb grew, just a little bit. A tiny bit less hot, a tiny bit less dense. In the first planck time, nothing of note happened. The infant universe was ruled by a single, overarching force, which had little to no effect in the dense confines. Planck time passed. The universe expanded a tiny bit and from the superforce, gravity and another split off. Its power would never be greater than then, with all matter and energy in this universe condensed into a space smaller than the atoms-to-come. The universe continued to expand, and the superforce split again into the strong nuclear force and the electroweak force. Something was happening, but first, a variety of phase transitions occurred, breaking the uniform order into what would eventually grow into the universe's large scale structure. Then, the quarks formed out of the transitions, but not just quarks. A vast number of antiquarks also condensed out of the energy-laden universe. The temperatures zipped them around impossibly fast, and there was still not enough room to move in. So they annihilated, and it was glorious. The surge of matter turning back into energy drove a wild cosmic inflation, the universe expanding unimaginably fast in only 10^–32 seconds. It was one hundred billion planck times since that universe's start. The explosion-like growth stopped, and normal expansion took over. Dark energy saturated the universe, but it would be billions of years before there was enough vacuum for it to show off its strength. The early universe, a ten thousandth billionth billionth billionth of a second old, was a hot and cramped place, but structure could be found. In some places, quarks had dominated antiquarks by a small margin, and those areas would come to be filled with matter. In other places, antimatter would rule. In between those areas, in zones that would grow to be billions of light years wide, the two types of substance had nearly balanced each other out and left vast, gaping voids where they'd annihilated, serving to separate the matter portions of the universe from the antimatter portions. Filaments of antimatter and matter formed under the guiding force of gravity, which would later become vast strings of galactic superclusters. In one little antimatter strand, there was a ripple in spacetime. A tiny little bit of multiuniversal instability and possibility left over from the two dead universes that had formed this one. It was smaller than a quark and fast as light, growing faster. It moved across the universe, waiting to collide with matter of sufficient density. In the meantime, the electroweak force split into the electric force and weak nuclear force. It was a miracle it didn't collide with any antimatter on its way out, given how dense the early universe was. But it was also hot, and heat drove expansion, so all antimatter it may have interacted with simply moved out of the way. Eventually, it would leave that antimatter corner of the universe, fly faster than light through an obliteration void, and into a matter region. The potential flux would grow, to the size of an atom, a molecule, and eventually, to the size of a collapsed star, just waiting to collide with some form of matter to exert its abilities... ***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-*** Cygnus X-1 For a very long time, nothing had happened. For a very long time, nothing had happened, and that was just fine for Cygnus. Really, she had had a good life. From the moment her protostar had burst into awareness she'd known her life wasn't going to be a long one. She wasn't a Rasalgethi, or Kepler-9, or even Betelgeuse. Barely more than one one hundreth of a cycle after her ignition, she'd run the length of her nuclear fusion and... ... she didn't like thinking about that. Gravitational collapse into a black hole was the most painful experience in the universe, and she'd gone through it. All that tainting iron in her very core, sapping her energy, then the shockwave and the explosion of nearly all her mass, and then what remained in her core shrunk and shrunk and shrunk, all the mass being compressed, smaller and smaller, until she was smaller than a proton, locked away behind her event horizon forever more. At least her consciousness was not impacted by time dilation, so she had that much. It wasn't all that bad, after all. Now that she was a black hole, she was indestructible. She could not be shattered, she couldn't be gravitationally shredded. Even if another black hole absorbed her, all that would do was merge their awarenesses into one. Unless an orb of antimatter equal to her mass just happened to come flying by, only time would end her. Her life had been short, but her afterlife promised to be very, very long. The main downside was that she couldn't communicate with her companion, 226868 - he insisted on keeping the numbers Lord had given him - anymore. Any neutrino messages she sent out simply didn't get past her horizon, drawn back into herself. She could send nothing out to the universe, but the universe's light still got to her. As distorted as it was by her indomitable gravity, she was able to see the world around her, she could still hear her companion's messages. Endless silence wasn't exactly disturbing to her, but even a one-sided conversation was much preferable. 226868 was old as she was, and Cygnus was already dead. He was less massive, though, so his fusion would burn longer, especially since her own gravity was siphoning off plasma and cooling him. It was mutually beneficial, of course. His supernova would be delayed, and Cygnus's afterlife would extend. 'You have to wonder,' she heard Two-Two say. 'what exactly makes Sol so proud of his planet's organics? They're just organics, after all.' Ugh, he was always on about Sol. Personally, Cygnus X-1 could not stand Sol. Always going on and on and on about how 'oh, I have eight planets, eight!' and 'I have both a planet and a planet's moon with organics. Do you have that, do you do you do you?' Yellow idiot. 'Apparently some of his organics are starting to spread beyond their world of origin now, can you believe it? I hope he roasts them with a mass ejection. They get here while I'm still alive, I know I am.' And if he wasn't alive when they reached their orbit, they'd both be black holes and thus indestructible. Beyond their comprehension, beyond their observation. She was a cosmic being, forever past their ability to envision and control. Time passed. She and Two-Two spun around each other. Cygnus leeched plasma off of him. He burst forth with radiant light, shining through their small nook of the cosmos as he took hydrogen gas and made it heavier, made it more. He spoke of what was on his mind, and sometimes did not speak, and Cygnus - as if she could do anything else - listened. Her afterlife was good. Her afterlife was solid. It would extend into the long bleakness of the dying universe and she would be among those who saw her universe fall to unfathomable, featureless cold. They rotated around, and around, and arou - ***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-*** -nd! Everything changed in an instant. One planck time she was in space, crushed by her own gravity, and then next planck time she was... she didn't even know! Everything was so wrong! The black hue of space was gone and her fellow stars had vanished. 226868's radiant blue light was replaced by the dim - but surprisingly painful to look at - light of a yellow star. The temperature was a confusing near-three hundred degrees, and nothing around her made any sense. Before she could even begin to focus on that, however, a great emptiness manifested inside of Cygnus. She'd grown, she'd grown immensely from her subatomic size and her density had fallen dramatically as a result. But not only had her increased volume lowered her density, but her mass had also vanished! Compared to her immense quantity of matter-energy, she felt like barely a quark. And there was no gravity. None of her immense, space-time twisting black hole gravity, not even her pre-collapse gravity well. She herself exuded practically nothing and describing the field she was in as feeble would be generous. Something was shimmering everywhere. Cygnus X-1 wasn't sure what had happened, but something terrible had happened. There weren't many things that could just obliterate a large portion of her mass like that, and the ones that could were either so rare as to be inconsequential, or locked firmly outside the universe. The yawning emptiness was... growing. It spread outwards from her core and through her... protrusions?! She had protrusions? She wasn't a sphere anymore? Not even an oblate spheriod? She tried making sense of her new form, but she wasn't really able. And with a thought... she made part of herself move? How? The emptiness was now a painful pressure, spreading through her. More, and more and... She opened and breathed, the pressure vanishing. Gasses flooded into her mouth, cool, thin gasses of oxygen and nitrogen, which likely explained the blue of the sky. Cygnus instinctively began the methodical process of taking in gasses and pushing gasses back out. She wasn't entirely certain of her circumstances, but apparently doing so alleviated some of her discomfort so it was well. Cygnus X-1 needed to take stock of her surroundings. She needed to know precisely what was wrong with her surroundings. She could move, and her vision was apparently only projected in a cone before her instead of a sphere around her. She needed to move her sight to take in all of her surroundings. The good news was, she could move. Cygnus moved several of her 'limbs' before finding the one that housed her cone of vision and, apparently, her consciousness. Moving her 'head' around, she saw that she was in a corridor, with tall - compared to her at any rate, they were really quite tiny next to a star - structures on two sides. The yellow star was above her. The corridor ended in a wall at one end, but opened up on the other. Could she move there? It was possible. First she had to figure out how. Her body had six limbs as far as she could tell, with bilateral symmetry, and the two closer to her head had smaller divisions. After some experimentation, she used her four lower limbs to push herself in opposition to her location's weak gravity. It was a surprisingly difficult task and it left her feeling... was the word tired? She'd only been tired once in her life, when iron accumulated in her core moments before her death, so it was hard to tell. Once on all four limbs, she swayed and fell. Cygnus grunted, but continued to breathe. The pain was minor. She pushed herself back up, but then she heard something. Strangely enough, what she heard was vibrations through the thin atmosphere, not the neutrino-speak of cosmic bodies, but it translated to her as noise. The noise was coming closer... ***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-*** Vinur Initially, he'd been out and about in the aerie to enjoy himself before going back home and getting accosted by his sister. Find a tavern, get a good beer in him - not that imported pony cider or minotaur wine - and retire to his house to enjoy his vacation in peace. But as he walked through the city, he heard somebird in the alleyway grunt in pain. Normally he wouldn't put a second thought to it, he wasn't a guard and he wasn't a doctor so it was none of his business. But his conscious screamed at him that somebird might be hurt. Maybe a nice hen who'd thank him, and they'd hit it off and... Vinur was getting ahead of himself. He moved closer to the alley, flexing his talons in case somebird was dumb enough to attack him. It was squeezed between a candle shop and an ice sculptor shop, and as far as alleys in Piercing Sky went it was very clean. No trash decaying, no rats nesting, none of that nonsense. Just a nondescript corner with a pony struggling to her hooves. Vinur's eyebrows shot up and he walked forward. Ponies in Piercing Sky weren't unheard of - vacationers or immigrants - but it was still quite rare. "Hello, are you alright?" The pony fell down again, and Vinur decided to get closer. He walked closer to the pony mare, and then his feathers rose, his fur bristled and his breath stopped when he realized that it was not a pony. It had the body of a pony, for sure. A dark, murky brownish-red coat with a dark tail curling out of the back, hooves black as sin. Despite being large enough to be an adult or at least adolescent pony, there was no 'cutie mark' on the flank. Looking further made him realize why; he was standing before a centaur. He'd heard the tales of Tirek, the monstrous demon who'd escaped Tartarus. How his silver tongue had reverted the serpent Discord back to his wicked ways, how he stripped an entire nation of its magic and would have gone to other nations if not for the return of the Elements of Harmony. He'd seen sketches of him as well, from weak and defenseless to the behemoth who trampled houses underhoof. What stood before him was undoubtedly a centaur, but also not Tirek. Its smooth, hairless skin was similar in tone to its coat, a deep brick-brown, and it wore a black vest on its front covering what looked like two breasts. Her face was gaunt and sunken, somewhat rounded. The sclera was a deep black and the pupils - matching the theme of brown - were barely visible in them. Her mane was as black as her tail, messy and short, and the horns were nothing more than two stubs. Vinur's first instinct was to run. He'd heard the stories, how each opponent Tirek faced simply added to his power, and they suddenly found him with everything and themselves with nothing. How each vanquished foe made the next obstacle that much easier to overcome, in a chain reaction that was nearly unstoppable. But... this centaur wasn't Tirek. And more importantly, she wasn't draining his magic. She was collapsed to the ground in a tangle of hooves, staring up at him in confusion, utterly still save for the increasing pace of her breaths, and then a new scent reached his beak: fear. He grinned. This centaur was... afraid. She was afraid of him for whatever reason. Perhaps her magic draining didn't work? If so, then now was his chance. The Griffon Empire had no Elements to defend itself, and by the time the pony Bearers arrived it may be too late. Vinur growled, and pounced. In a smooth motion he reached the tiny centaur, slamming her sideways onto the ground. She twisted her torso to look up at him, but he grabbed her hands and pinned them on top of each other with one talon, then placed the other over her mouth to prevent any tricks. His amber eyes glared down at her strange, demonic ones and narrowed. "I know about your kind," he snarled. "I know what you do, and I won't let it happen!" He tightened his grip on her hands, which were weakly moving under him. He felt the hooves scraping against the marble, so he put his lion paws on the centaur's flank to hold her down. He noticed that he'd punctured the hands, and there was some warm, dark brown mist seeping out of the wounds. Not even blood. He pressed down harder. "I-I know about centaurs. Everybird knows what Tirek did to Equestria. I don't know how you got here, but I won't let you do it, I'll..." He'd what? Despite what some specist ponies and zebras said, griffons weren't monsters. He had hunted, he'd relished in the chase, but he'd never killed an intelligent being before. That would be murder! And now that a fiend was here beneath him, at his mercy, he found he couldn't do it. All he could do was meet her eyes, her confused, horrified eyes, and imagine himself in her position, the fear, the terror as death stared him in the face and Ancestors damn him he couldn't do it! His nerve fled him all at once and he stumbled off the centaur, who shakily got to her hooves and looked at him. She opened her mouth. This is it, he thought, icy terror gripping his body, suddenly understanding the magnitude of his mistake. My magic drained, my flight stripped. The beginning of the end... But to Vinur's surprise, the demon didn't drain his griffon magic. Instead it made garbled noises. She started low and rose to a high pitch. She repeated that, then added clicks of the tongue, chirps, and various other noises. Eventually, the centaur seemed satisfied and looked at him. "I know about your kind," she said in a weak, shaking voice. "I know w-what you do, and I won't let it happen-n-n-n! I-I know abouuuut centaurs," she continued. Vinur's eyes widened as the she-demon parroted everything he'd said, word for word, albeit with some distortion. "You didn't drain me," he whispered. "You diiiiidn't drain m-me," she repeated. He frowned. This wasn't right. Centaurs were supposed to be evil, magic siphoning warlords bent on conquering the world. Just like all griffons are bloodthirsty murderers or all ponies are simpering cowards that can't protect themselves, he thought to himself. No, something about this situation was wrong. He approached the centaur, who backed up. He noticed that the brown mist was gone, and the wound his talons had left was similarly missing. A mystery for another day. "Can you understand me?" The centaur repeated it, and he sighed. "No, I suppose not." He brought a talon to his chest. "Me, Vinur." The centaur brought her hand to her vest. "Me, Vinuuuur," she said. "No," he snapped, reaching out and pulling her hand away. He pointed at himself. "Vinur." He held up a pebble. "Rock." Now a piece of paper laying around, with a poorly drawn map scrawled on it in damp pencil, likely a young chick's. "Paper." He pointed at the centaur. She pointed at herself, but hesitated, then frowned. "No Vinur, no rock, no paper." She frowned. "No." Alright, that was getting somewhere. She clearly didn't know Avian, so it was no surprise the centaur didn't speak her name. He tried briefly talking to her in Equestrian, but that got just as much mimicry as Avian did. This centaur... did she know any language? A thought occurred to him. Did she know anything at all? Her motions weren't unlike that of a newly hatched cub. Mimicry of things she saw, a lack of knowledge. Nobird knew much about centaurs; until his discovery the only one known was Tirek, who came from an unknown land with an unknown background an unknown time ago. It was... it was entirely possible that the demons formed like this. Was he standing before a centaur cub? He suddenly felt nauseated about having even considered killing her. That just wasn't something you did. What should he do? Logically, he should report this centaur to the guard. Let them handle her. Explain the situation, then leave it to them, and he'd go with a clean conscience. But... giving her over to the guard didn't set well with Vinur. She was a cub. That much was evident by her curious movements and noises. What other options did he have? Leave her. Leave the demon to her own devices and wash his talons of the whole ordeal. What centaur? He'd never seen one before. And she would grow up confused, discover her powers on her own, and quite possibly fall into the same mannerisms Tirek had and it would all be his fault. Or... take her with him. Train the centaur in the way of griffons, to use her powers for the good of the empire. To visit the savage Diamond Dog packs and steal their geomancy from them. To be the sword of the Empire, leading charges, utterly unstoppable. The golden age would come again. ... okay, maybe not that far, but training her to not use her powers for evil would certainly be a plus. Vinur could mold her in his image. Yes... yes that would be a great idea. Almost as great as turning it in to the guards. He instantly scolded himself. What was he thinking?! Turning in a cub to the guards? Nothing short of cruelty, that. Then again, I only think she's a cub. But what other explanation was there? The only others were amnesia and the centaur playing dumb. Admittedly, if it was anything at all like Tirek that last one was possible, the one other centaur was known to use undertaloned tactics. Amnesia would be much the same in effect as the centaur being a child. Two out of three, not bad. Taking her in it is. Vinur realized that the entire time he'd been contemplating his next course of action, the centaur had been just... staring at him. He sighed, and he considered how to go about explaining to her to follow him. He looked down at the scrap of paper he'd found in the alley, and held it up. With the point of one talon, he traced a very thin line in it, to showcase himself and the centaur, with arrows of motion describing her following him. Vinur showed her it, then she mimed following him with her hands. He nodded. "Yes," he said simply, only for the centaur to immediately repeat it. Then he considered something else: how the blazes was he going to get this centaur back to his home without anybird seeing them? Sure, there weren't many griffons out and about at high noon, and even fewer in the air... ... oh. Oh pluck, he was going to have to do that wasn't he? A few minutes of explanations and parroted words later - it was surprisingly easy, she picked up words fast - he'd seated the centaur on his back. She wasn't that large, especially by griffon standards, and really she wasn't that heavy at all. It'd be a simple task to leap up from the alley, circle over to his home, and fly in without being seen. The higher he went, the less of a chance anybird would see the centaur thanks to the glare of the sun. He gave his wings a few experimental flaps, then began taking off. The centaur suddenly wrapped her thin, weak arms around his neck to steady herself, bending his orange-tinted white feathers uncomfortably. Vinur tried to keep his flight as even as possible as he spiraled upwards into the sky, high above where anybird else would go. A few other griffons were out and about, but it was his hope that they were too far to see him as anything more than a speck. From so high up, he could see Piercing Sky laid out beneath him. It was arranged like a wheel, with the aerie hall in the middle, spokes coming out and interconnecting with many rings of various size. His home was near the outer edges. Having found the centaur somewhere around the 'middle' of the ring, he had quite a ways to go. Still, he was quite proud of his flying endurance, and even with a passenger he made it in record time, spiraling down outside his home and motioning for his passenger to get off. "Alright," he said, opening the door to his brick abode. "In you go." The centaur looked at him blankly, prompting him to facetalon. He made several urgent motions, and then the centaur seemed to comprehend. "Alrrrright," she parroted. "In y-y-you go." She trotted inside slowly and carefully, her hooves causing an odd clip-clop sound on the marble tiles as she did so. He walked in after her, closing the door. Luckily, nobird had seen them. "Alright," he said as they entered the living room. "Here you are, make yourself at home. Not too much at home but, yeah." He shook his head. "He said, as if the centaur understood him." He walked what he hoped was a safe distance, and watched as the centaur meandered around his house. She trotted up to a shelf and pulled off his copy of Griffonian History... and immediately dropped it as the black tome proved too much for her weak muscles, prompting a light hiss from the centaur. Vinur sighed and walked back over to her. If he was going to start teaching her Avian, now was a good time to start. He picked up the book with a talon. "Book." He placed it on the shelf and took off another novel, a pony fiction novel. "Book." He put that one back as well. She reached out to one with her freaky, gangly arms, and touched one of them. "Book." She brushed her hand across the row. "Book book book book book book?" "No. Books." She ran her hand along them again. "Books." "Good," he complimented. "Now, if we're going to be keeping you here, we need to - " Knock knock knock! "Gah!" he said, jumping. The centaur, startled, fell to her hooves with a light grunt and began to slow process of standing up again. "Plucker!" Without thinking he scooted under the centaur and stood up, resting her somewhat-steadily against his back, then darted out of the room into the next one; the kitchen. She remained silent but made weak, feeble motions in protest when he dropped her, made a motion to stay put, then darted back for the door, cursing at himself the entire way. His sister! Of course he forgot about his sister! Vinur sprinted for the door and opened it, revealing the hen on the other side. Judging by the way her orange-tinted feathers were quivering, she was pissed. "Alright Vinur, that is the last time I cover for you at work just so you can go gallivanting around Piercing Sky! Do you have any idea how many Equestrians passed through here? You're lucky we didn't get something like Princess Twilight here on vacation!" That's my sister, always exaggerating. Gria pushed forward, but Vinur moved to block her. "What - " "Look, sis, I appreciate your anger, but I'm busy!" he insisted with wide eyes. "You know who else was busy?" she asked, pushing her exceptionally hooked beak into his straighter one. "Me, doing your share of tourist guide work while you decided to go play! What were you even doing that was so important?" "None of your business!" he snapped back, pushing his beak into hers. He couldn't let her come in. If she found the centaur, Vinur knew he would have a lot of explaining to do and none of it would go over well with his older sister. "Why don't you get out of my face and buzz off?" She growled low in her throat. "Oh, you're - " Crash! He froze and his eyes went small. I leave you alone for one minute, he hissed internally. "What was that? Do you have company over?" Gria asked curiously, her previous anger forgotten. She leaned over his shoulder to try and see, but she saw nothing since the centaur was around a corner. "No! I mean, no, I don't," he 'improvised'. Gria didn't fall for it. "Vinur..." she asked slyly, raising a brow. "Do you have a henfriend over?" Perfect. Roll with it. "No! No, nonono, why would you think that?" he said as nervously as he could. She chuckled and stepped back, grinning. "Vinur, I didn't know you had it in you! I was starting to take you for a tiercel-tagger." He made to glower at her, but internally he was smiling. So far, she was buying it. "Get out of my house," he snarled. Gria chuckled and stepped back, raising a talon to him. "Hey, I get it bro, I get it. Anyway, since you're getting busy, don't let me keep you," she said with a wink. "Go pluck yourself," he said evenly. She spread her wings and cawed out a laugh. "Cute. Better get back in there, little bro. Don't wanna keep your hen waiting." Gria raised her right talons, and Vinur raised his left, holding hands with her. They did the same with the other hands. Gria lifted her right, Vinur lowered his right, they switched position, then they cawed at each other and let go, settling to the ground. She gave one more parting wink, then took off. Once she was safely gone, Vinur slammed the door and slid down against it, letting a sigh of relief slowly seep out of his beak. That was too close. He'd have to be more careful with the centaur if he didn't want anybird to discover her, at least not yet. He liked to think he wasn't an idiot; no way he could keep her hidden forever, but long enough to get things together and at least teach her the damn language was a must. Maybe he could take out vacation time. Vinur walked back to his kitchen to see what the centaur had done, and groaned. Apparently, she'd figured out how to jump, latch on to one of the cabinets lining the walls, and pulled the entire thing down on herself. The centaur laid in a pile of hooves, hands, and awkwardly confused looks from underneath a mountain of bags holding preserved jerky. One of his eyes twitched. "I take you in out of the goodness of my heart, then not one minute of leaving you alone later, you go and do this?" he asked in that quiet tone of voice his boss used when he was furious at somebird. The pony-sized centaur simply looked at him blankly. They stared each other down for a long moment, and then... "I t-take you in ouuuut of the goodness-s-s-s of my heart, then nottt one minute of leaving you alone laaaater, you go and d-d-do this?" Vinur drew his left foreleg up into a facetalon, then slid it down carefully so as not to scratch himself. A strangled groan escaped his beak, transforming into a half-sob near the end. The enormity of the task he'd so stupidly undertaken squeezed his heart. "What am I going to do with you?" The centaur didn't repeat him that time.