“We’re crossing the border now your Highness, we’ve made it!” Gossip’s enthusiastic call startled Twilight from her thoughts.
She’d been staring through the Bloomberg’s windows, into the distance and yet her attention had been elsewhere. Twilight barely noticed that they had crossed the mountains and the frozen plains surrounding the Crystal Fiefdom that were now spread out before them.
“Yes..Thank you Gossip, “ Twilight replied uncertainly.
Things were far from resolved, Twilight knew it only too well. The final words of Elzana still lingered in her memory, others would come looking for the Seed and Twilight was in little doubt that they wouldn’t come asking for it nicely.
She clasped the magical gem in one hoof and studied it for a long time. Its details seemed to change from one moment to the next, sometimes it was a pale green, others a fiery red and several other shades in between.
Nor did it stay the same shape for long. When Twilight had first received the Seed it was a tear drop shape. But over their several days flight it had changed to a heart, a globe and even what looked to be a sword. The tiny jewel was practically throbbing with potential.
“You think they will come for it, the rams and their ‘pets’ I mean,” Boldstorm stated more than asked and Twilight nodded.
“I don’t think they will give up their prize so easily, this gem has the power to…” Twilight trailed off, “Honestly I don’t know what it may be able to do but I believe it can cure the lithi and that’s what we came here to do.”
A seed from the Tree of Harmony itself, it was so astounding that Twilight could hardly bring herself to accept she was truly holding such. The very essence of creation held in her hoof. Could it sprout if planted? Could it conceivably grow into a new Tree of Harmony? It was overwhelming to think so.
She ran the last few days over in her mind, Elzana had given Twilight the Seed, did that make it hers? Was it truly his to give to Twilight? Was she even now holding a treasure that rightfully belonged to the current rulers of the rams? Did they even have a ruler?
Questions and indecision nagged at Twilight’s mind. She’d gone to the north simply seeking a cure, yet now Twilight’s actions may be the catalyst for an international incident. Twilight suddenly longed for the basic life of a unicorn she’d once had. Things had been much simpler then. She did what she thought was right and that had been enough, Celestia had taken care of the complicated issues.
Even with many years behind her as a Princess of Equestria Twilight still didn’t quite feel up to the responsibilities she’d been ‘blessed’ with. But if not her then who? One didn’t simply turn down such demands of ‘destiny’. Would Twilight choose to do so if the option was placed before her again? Could she even have been able to turn down what seemed to be her place in some grand design?
She thought of all the things that had been achieved by her and her friends. The more Twilight looked at it the more she honestly thought they were heading in the right direction. Not just the technological advances, they were impressive but not what Equestria truly stood for.
An example, that’s what they’d become. The other nations looked to Equestria as a beacon of light. The world beyond their borders were harsher than Twilight could have ever imagined and with the powers of, well, harmony behind them Equestria had blossomed as never before.
Nor were they alone in such prosperity, as other races had come into the fold each had added their own ‘element’ to the mix. Now Twilight was co-ruler of possibly the most powerful nation the world had ever seen, brought within an alliance of mutual protection and support.
She turned again to the plains outside and saw they were lit by the magical aurora of the Crystal Fiefdom. Its radiance danced above the city in a swirling field stretching out its power across the lands all around. It was visible even during the day and Twilight smiled at the fond memory of her first visit.
Twilight, her friends and of course Spike had saved the city from evil. Now years later she was fleeing the wrath of others who dabbled in forbidden arts and was leading them right to that same city. Was that still in the name of such noble ideals? Did the possibility of saving a hoof-full of lithi worth gambling the peace and safety of that city full of Equestrians? Twilight hoped so, that was where her choices had led them.
“A good shepherd cares for all their sheep,” Twilight was startled by the sudden impression in her mind. It wasn’t a voice as such, more a feeling of wisdom being imparted straight to her soul.
She stared at the gem which was now pulsing with a faint light, “They seek the lost and hurt and tend to them, that’s why the successful shepherds have so many sheep. Each one is important to them and in saving the few it can sometimes lead a predator to the rest, yet it should still be done.”
Twilight knew these weren’t just her own thoughts. She studied the Seed and had the distinct impression it was speaking to her, “Um hello?” Her voice was barely a whisper and Twilight felt a little silly when there was no reply.
“Did you ask something your Highness?” Bold asked and Twilight hastily let the Seed hang on its chain.
“No Bold I was just thinking out loud,” Twilight replied with a forced smile. The Seed’s weight on its chain necklace feeling as if she was carrying an anvil. yet when Twilight raised a hoof to steady it the seed was no more weighty than before.
“Message coming from the Fiefdom,” Gossip announced holding his hoof to his headphones, “The other Princesses are glad to see us and are greatly cheered by our return.”
“The Princesses? You mean Celestia and Luna are there?” Twilight asked with a sudden apprehension.
There was a moment where Gossip spoke quickly into the microphone before turning to nod at them again, “Confirmed your Highness, your fellow rulers are all present in the city and are eager to talk with you about pressing matters.”
Twilight stiffened, “They know we’re bringing trouble with us.”
Gossip continued to listen and his face became pale, “That may be true Princess, from what I can pick up, several regiments of the Equestrian defence are forces present,” Gossip frowned, “That’s not what they want to talk to you about however, it seems that Foresight and Impasse have gone missing.”
The apprehension blossomed into full grown dread and Twilight forced her voice to remain calm, “You’re sure? We left them in the charge of Cadence and Shining Armour.”
Gossip nodded solemnly, “Confirmed your Highness, they haven’t been seen for several days now. Cadence and Shining Armour send their personal apologies but assure they have forces searching for them even now.”
Twilight felt the seeping certainty that something terrible was ahoof, “Oh Foresight what have you done?”
Foresight sagged as the effort became too much. She’d been answering questions for what felt like hours. Her captor was insistent on hearing every detail and when Foresight didn’t give an answer it believed, or it suspected Foresight was holding out and another chunk of Impasse would tumble to the ground.
Foresight felt terrible indulging this creature, telling all she knew about Equestria, the princesses and other stranger things that seemed to have no reason. The colours of her parents eyes, her favourite food and music. These odd questions were thrown in at random it seemed but Foresight dared not refuse to answer, the sickening pile of stone chunks before her made sure of that.
At last the questions stopped and Foresight was left alone for a time. The dark shadow seemed satisfied with all it had learned for now, yet Foresight was sure it wasn’t done with her yet. She could sense its presence prowling around the cave library and every so often it would mutter something just on the cusp of hearing.
Foresight wasn’t sure what scared her more, the fact that this evil was real or that it seemed to be uncertain about what it truly was. It was like snatches of song mixed in with static.
One moment the ‘Wraith’ as Foresight had come to think of it would show its brilliance and cleverness in its questions. Galloping circles around her verbally and tricking Foresight into saying far more than intended.
But at other times, when it would ask the more confusing questions, it seemed to be desperately trying to understand something. As if there were huge parts of itself missing, not just memories but the very substance of its being. Why it thought as it did, why it hated and why it was so angry. Foresight could feel these frustrations bubbling just under the surface of the Wraith’s questions and thoughts.
She was in little doubt that if the Wraith was in full control of its mind and powers Foresight would have been dead long ago. That didn’t bring her feel much comfort, being at the mercy of a deranged force that was confused could be argued to be worse in some ways. Especially when it took out its enraged confusion on Impasse.
Now that she had some time to think Foresight was able to focus on the question that had puzzled her since this whole sorry mess had begun. If it was really true that Sombra had once been a normal pony but was hollowed out and then filled with the darkness of this place then why didn’t the Wraith just do it to her or Impasse?
Surely that would be a far simpler way to learn what it wanted? Even when Foresight had been unwittingly under the Wraith’s sway she was still herself. Deluded and tricked into awakening this beast, yet still herself.
Was it because the Wraith had never come across cursed ponies before that it didn’t know how to manipulate them in the same way as the pony Sombra had been? It was an ironic and almost laughable idea, but Foresight could think of nothing else to explain it. This coupled with the fact the Wraith’s mind was fractured may be the only reasons that Foresight and Impasse were still alive.
Foresight’s thoughts were interrupted as the Wraith made its presence known again. She watched as the glittering ice crystals showed it darting from one shelf to another as if frantically searching its own records for answers. Each book or stone tablet would be briefly enveloped by a deeper darkness before the Wraith would move on again.
Foresight took a hesitant step towards the still blocked entrance way, seeing the dark ice clear of the Wraith’s shadow. The searching creature didn’t react so Foresight took another, still no change. The Wraith continued to jump from one record to another and so Foresight shuffled as quickly as she dared towards the wall of summoned ice.
It was just as solid and inert as when she’d first created it but Foresight didn’t lose the growing hope. With a frightened glance back towards the ever more agitated Wraith, Foresight resolved to act.
With sweat trickling down her nose, Foresight lent forward and touched her horn to the barrier. She reached out, her heart hammering, to try and pierce the enchanted wall with the tiniest sliver of magic.
It was like a drop of water in a lake. The coiling malice within the ice was heavy with fears and resentment so Foresight’s tiny probe was washed away instantly. Desperation caused Foresight to throw caution to the wind and she poured all her magic into the darkness.
She caught hold of her feelings for Impasse and threw them at the writhing barrier. Foresight knew it was her own fears and insecurities that had fed the Wraith. She hoped these opposite emotions would drain the spell that now sealed them in.
It was a tiny hope, but at this point it was all Foresight had. She threw everything into her attempt and quickly felt her knees begin to tremble. Foresight’s whole body shook as she forced every ounce, every little bit of effort into a single cry for help.
Through the pounding in her ears Foresight heard the Wraith give a terrible cry behind her, yet Foresight didn’t stop. There were flashing lights lining her vision, the edges of her sight were beginning to cloud over and still she threw all she could at the spell.
The wall of ice began to clear and several cracks began to spread across its surface. and Foresight caught the briefest glimpse of the cave outside. The welcome sight of the crystal roots leading to the city above gave made her heart soar.
Foresight pushed harder, drawing on strength she didn’t truly have. Her head swam and the world seemed to be tilting, but Foresight managed to thrust an impression beyond the ice and into the root. A simple impression of pure desperation, that conveyed their need before the metaphorical claws of the Wraith raked Foresight’s soul.
Fire and heat had always been what Foresight had feared, as the dark unicorns were creatures of cold. Yet the utter blackness that struck her when the Wraith attacked was colder than any simple ice, harsher than any snow storm and deeper than an abyss. She screamed, a wail of pure distress as the gulf opened before her and Foresight saw what was truly behind all her woes.
It was always a mixed blessing having a natural attunement to mind magic or ‘Cognomancy’ as Foresight’s parents had explained to her. It gave great insight, but opened you to the perils of others minds. Never before in her life had Foresight wished more to be able to block out her inborn abilities than at that moment.
Yet the Wraith had her in its grip now and was forcing its thoughts upon Foresight with malicious glee. Her feeble attempts to shut out the bottomless hate and loathing for pony kind blasted aside any mental barriers she had like a giant crushing a toy fort.
That was when ‘it’ happened. There in her own soul was the long caged resentment of the unblemished ponies of Equestria. The hurt buried so deeply that not even Foresight knew it was within her. It was so alien to her yet so familiar and what shocked Foresight the most was that it fought back against the overwhelming assault of her captor.
That darkness in her own being didn’t want to wipe out and ponies. It longed for their love and adoration. It craved approval from her subjects it….. The realisation sent a shiver through Foresight along with terrible understanding. Nightmare Moon.
The Royal Pony Sisters were beings from the dawn of time, when the world was still fresh they walked it in wonder. Nor were they alone, other ‘First Born’ had shared their world and like called to like.
Buried deep, under layers of generations and elements of her own spirit, the tiniest fragment of Luna’s alter and insane ego was trapped within her very soul. A sliver of that same ‘essence’ had been carried down in Foresight’s ancestry, from the dark unicorns that had been created by Nightmare Moon.
It was that ‘sliver’ that had fought back so ferociously when the crystal ponies had tried to cure Impasse, beating their efforts back and corrupting any good thing they tried to replace. The lithi was among the first to be cursed and had no descendants. There was no ‘dilution’ of that curse, but neither was it so ingrained into his makeup either. It had power, dark and terrible but was clear to be seen.
In Foresight and the other dark unicorns it was buried far deeper. The Wraith had unlocked that sliver now, called it out with its own malice and that tiny fragment of Nightmare Moon would not share its ‘prize’ with anyone.
Pain unlike anything Foresight had ever experienced flooded her, not just in her mind but coursing along every nerve and tendon. She wanted to scream, but instead her throat released a maddened roar of anger.
Foresight was consigned to the background inside her own head as the two opposing dark powers fought one another. Both were only fragments of something greater, yet it was easily powerful enough to make Foresight completely lost control of her limbs. They flailed and spasmed as the pain continued to wrack her.
She saw in her mind’s eye fragments of two terrible beings, both twisted by madness tearing into each other without restraint. One a black alicorn, the other a malevolent beetle just like the image adorning the library’s far wall. Neither force held Foresight in any high regard, one out to utterly destroy, the other to enslave for its own gratification.
As they fought, slashing and kicking out at each other Foresight felt every blow. They were both linked to her, one pressing in so hard that it meshed with her mind, the other snarling up from her soul to fight back.
Agony and pain, madness and darkness writhed about Foresight’s mind as she thrashed on the ground. The two powers clashed, vying for her very being. The fragments of, for want of a better word, demi-gods trampled and raged, all the time causing Foresight unspeakable distress.
The Wraith hadn’t lied, Foresight now understood that with terrible clarity. It truly had been there at the birth of the world. It had influenced its creation and not for the better. Order, irresistible control and domination. A world where nothing happened out of place, where everything was predictable and no freedom would get in the way of peace.
It was like a dark mirror of a noble idea of ‘tranquility’ but without anything to compare it to. There would be no wars, but there would also be no peace. Both required free will and if the Wraith had its way then neither would exist. The order of an ‘empty room’ and that was more frightening to Foresight than any evil that Foresight could conceive.
A world of order, but with no purpose to it. Nothing would grow, no lessons would be learned. Only the ‘stale’ unchanging emptiness. That was the Wraith’s plan and in the choice of two evils Foresight knew who’d she would side with. Nightmare Moon
Not that this helped her as the two powerful shreds continued to fight each other, laying waste to her mind in their wrath. Foresight was about to simply give up, let them fight until there was nothing left of her when a glimmer of light filled her world.
It started small, but grew steadily. It drove back the blackness with a determined force, just like a candle banishing the shadows in a room or the sun rising to….
“Still you test me ‘Sift’, even after all these centuries you try to fight a battle you lost long ago.” Foresight knew that voice, but in her haze of torture she couldn’t clearly recall who it belonged to.
“I cast you down, even when it meant unprecedented destruction upon the world. I killed a fellow First Born and the very world writhed in pain and still your influence tries to drown the world in its falsehoods.” Foresight finally was able to put a name to that voice, it had been so hard because of the anger held within. Foresight had never heard that voice raised in such wrath before and it sat at odds with the being she knew it belonged to. Celestia.
The light continued to grow, burning in its intensity and with it came heat. Growing from the gentle warmth of a summer morning until it was the blowtorch of an open desert. “I should have known you would have been behind Sombra, he had all the hallmarks of your ways.”
Foresight felt a surge of relief, Celestia had come to save them! It was more than Foresight could have hoped for and yet she felt the anger pouring off Celestia in a torrent. Her hopes were swept away in terror of Celestia’s wrath. .
Through her bloodshot eyes Foresight tried to focus on her ‘saviour’ but the light was too bright and her eyes burned with the heat. Nor was she alone in her discomfort. Both slivers, turned their attention upon the newcomer. If there was one thing they both hated then it was surely Celestia.
A pure cry of rage escaped from Foresight’s ravaged throat completely unbidden by her and to Foresight’s horror she began to summon a feeble spell to hurl at the Regent of the Sun. It was almost unthinkable, yet the twin wills now united had taken control of her.
Foresight was forced to look at Celestia, even though it was agony to do so and saw the glowing princess raise a saddened eyebrow. There was fire swirling around Celestia and she shone like the sun she represented. It was terrible and frightening to behold and yet Foresight couldn’t look away.
“Oh my little pony, what have we made you into?” The anger was muted for a time in Celestia’s voice, replaced with a depth of sadness that made Foresight want to cry. The feeble spell was easily deflected by a wave of Celestia’s horn. The will of two fragments of divinity may have been driving the spell yet it was still only Foresight’s tired, starved body which fuelled it and that was nothing compared to Celestia’s might.
“I’m so sorry Foresight, all of this is our fault. The feuding and fighting of beings who should have known better and always it’s the mortals who pay the heaviest price,” Celestia’s manner changed, her face became hard and her eyes glowed like supernovas. Fire flashed out and the resin tendrils binding Impasse withered away before falling as ash. To Foresight’s horror a mangled and utterly shattered collection of stone came with it.
The pain redoubled, as the collection of small stones and rubble clattered across the ground. The one thing that had held Foresight together through the years of loneliness and loss was now nothing more than rubble. She screamed, for one horrible moment all her sorrow eclipsed even the hate and anger of her two unwanted ‘guests’.
Foresight cried, the tears falling and shattering on the ground in an unstoppable torrent as Foresight sank to her stomach and cradled the inert pebbles that had been Impasse. The physical pain hadn’t gone, it was just completely overshadowed by the anguish of Foresight’s soul and even both Nightmare Moon, ‘Sift’ and Celestia paused at the sight.
After what felt like an eternity Foresight was able to lift her still streaming eyes to Celestia who watched her with misery. The fire had gone and now only the faint glow of Celestia’s inner radiance lit the smouldering room. The books were ash, the stone tablets that had stood for centuries were now nothing more than cooling heaps of slag.
Foresight still twitched and spasmed, the fragments inside her stirring again. They would never be gone from her, Foresight realised in an aching moment of understanding and with one glance at Celestia she knew the princess understood it too. The darkness long buried was now freed and it would never leave Foresight in peace again.
The library, Sift’s last refuge had been obliterated by Celestia and the remaining vestiges of ‘soul’ were now meshed with Foresight so tightly that she would never be free of them either. They would fight and rage, until….
“Please…” Was all Foresight was able to say and with a solemn bow of her head Celestia nodded in return.
“I’m so sorry Foresight. Go now and find the peace you have earned a thousand times over,” Celestia gave the briefest flash of her horn and Foresight felt all the worry, the pain and the cares of this world fall away.
As her mortal body was reduced to ash Foresight saw a chestnut earth pony with a corn coloured mane smiling at her. He wore familiar armour and stared with a pair of sparkling blue eyes. Besides him was a mottled pegasus who beamed at Foresight, “Impasse? Sky Strike?” Foresight asked quietly and they both nodded happily.
Foresight turned to look at Celestia who was smiling sadly directly at her, “Go on.”
The two stallions led Foresight forward to a whole crowd of ponies, family and friends from the past that she knew and loved. Foresight let herself be ushered into a dazzling light that was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen and for the first time in her ‘life’ Foresight felt truly at peace.