//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: Reaper's Rise 
// Story: The Legend of the Scorpion Queen 
// by cursedchords 
//------------------------------//

	Chapter 3: Reaper’s Rise	

As the moons went by, Antares soon forgot about that night. Autumn faded into winter, giving way to bright spring and glorious summer. She and Jupiter went back to their normal routine, working together by day, enjoying each other’s company. During the day, they were just like they had been before, simple, honest, and pure. It was only during the evening that she had to once again confront who she really was, and remember that it was all only temporary.

Still, as the months turned to years, Antares held on to hope. Even once Star Light’s magic had done its work, she would convince Jupiter to let go. The two of them would still have each other, they would still have their love. They would still be together. But there was no point in thinking about that now. Every year, as autumn began, and the harvest once more sat ready to start, they would return, to pick the first fruits together, and in her mind Antares would celebrate that anniversary, when their marriage truly began.

Eventually, of course, Star Light’s magic made its presence known. It began slowly, a few dead branches here and there, themselves inconsequential amongst the magnitude of the tree’s girth. But she knew that they were only the beginning. 

She awoke with a start in their shared bedroom. It was still dark outside, and the open window allowed a gentle breeze into the room. But the silence of the night was not absolute, and borne on the breeze, Antares could hear the sounds of a shovel at work in the garden, along with a few whistles, as Jupiter went about his work. She could not see him from the window, but she knew where he would be. With a sigh, she threw on a light coat before making her way down to the ground floor.

These sorts of awakenings had become more common for her over the years. As the slow decay had accelerated upon his tree, Jupiter had begun working harder and harder to care for it. He stayed in the garden long into the evening, and had gotten up earlier and earlier to tend to it. To her dismay, rather than taking refuge in her steadfast love, he had started wistfully gazing towards his garden again, whenever the two of them were together indoors.

Antares could not blame him, knowing what the garden meant to him. If she imagined herself in his place, she knew that she would want to do everything that she could to save the things she loved. But she knew that his struggle was futile. Though every facet of her being cried that she should help him in his fight, Antares knew that nothing either of them did would prevent that tree’s ultimate fate.

She had to make Jupiter see. She had to make him let go. She had to make him accept that it would be gone, that they would only have each other from now on. Antares stood now on the brink of achieving everything, of fully capturing Jupiter’s heart, and yet with the choice now lying in front of her, she felt no incentive to take it. But there was no other way.

She found him exactly where she knew he would be. Jupiter was carefully tending the soil inside the ring of stone at the center of the garden, right in beneath the boughs. He wore a carefree smile, but Antares knew that his happiness was not genuine, and that he hid an anxiety that ran deep within him, an anxiety that she knew would destroy him eventually if left to fester. A pile of yellowing, decaying branches and leaves was behind him, ready to be taken off and burned.

Antares stood on the ring of stone, not announcing her presence. She waited while Jupiter, still whistling, made certain that the soil had precisely the right temperature, moisture, and texture. When he finally looked up and noticed her, he grinned wide. “Antares, my dear! Come on! There’s plenty to do.”

Antares remained looking at him. His face and legs were all stained with mud and clay, and his mane was unkempt, dripping with sweat as he stood there. But he looked happy, and she wanted to join him, just like she would during the day. Not tonight though. Tonight it was time to do what she knew she had to.

“Jupiter,” she said, her voice soft and tender, “why don’t you come back to bed? It’s lonely in the castle without you.”

“Nonsense,” he replied, “here is where I belong, and I just hadn’t noticed it before. I’ve been neglecting this place, and it’s been going to tatters. I’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“Leave it to the morning, dear. You need to get your rest.”

Jupiter put down his shovel and walked over to her. “Why rest when I can work?” he asked innocently, but then his voice became more serious. “But this doesn’t sound like you, my love. Is something wrong?”

Antares resisted the urge to laugh. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “You spend nearly all of your time here. What about the rest of the kingdom? Ponies need to see you and have you settle their disputes. And you can’t do that if you don’t get any rest.”

Jupiter looked off toward the castle. “They don’t need me!” he said, chuckling. “They know how much I detest all of that, and figured out how to live without me years ago. This—” and he turned back to her, sweeping a foreleg out over all of the garden “—this is where I belong. And you belong here by my side.”

As he spoke, Antares suddenly remembered Star Light and what he had said about the King: “He cares more for his garden than properly administering his kingdom.” More than anything else, she finished with her own thoughts. How could she change that? Was it her right to change that? “If it’s going to kill you, maybe this isn’t where you belong, dear. You’ve accomplished so much here; maybe you should take a step back and remember the rest of your life.” Remember me.

Jupiter put his leg across her shoulders and turned her around to look her in the eye. “What are you saying, Antares?” His eyes entreated her, wide open and clear. “This isn’t like you. This garden is everything, it’s what we have together, it’s what we share.”

She twisted away from him. “What about our love, Jupiter? It’s more than just this garden, isn’t it?”

Jupiter looked down as her words struck him. When he looked up again, his expression was more contrite. “I’m sorry, Antares, but you must understand what all of this means to me. It must mean the same to you.”

“I do, and I’m telling you that you’re wrong!” she shot back at him, feeling a sudden rush of anger course through her. All her years of working her way into his heart, all of her frustrations at his blind devotion to these plants, which gave him back nothing, when she would have given him everything, all of it came to the front of her mind, and demanded to be let out. “Forget this cursed garden for one day of your life! Remember who you are as a stallion, as a King, as a husband! We can be happy together, Jupiter, without all of this!”

Jupiter took a step back from her outburst, but his eyebrows remained high above his eyes, and his voice remained confused. “How can you say that? Every day we work here together. We met here. This garden binds us together, more surely than any ring. We can’t give it up.”

“Well, you have to, Jupiter! Can’t you see that your tree is dying? Can’t you see that nothing you or I can do is going to save it? Can’t you see that there is nothing left for you here? I am all that you have now!”

He did not answer her. Indeed, he merely looked up at the behemoth that stood before them, searching it with his eyes. Antares guessed that her words had hit their marks. Finally, he understood. She walked back to him slowly, and placed a tender, comforting hoof around his neck. “I’m very sorry, dear. But you know that I had to say it.” And she leaned her head against his shoulder lovingly.

But instead of returning her embrace, Jupiter stepped away. Still not looking at her, he whispered, “Why would you say such a thing, unless…” Antares felt suddenly nervous, for his voice had not been kind, nor tender nor caring. It had been cold, reasoning and rational.

She tried to step in close to him again, but as she approached, he whirled and fixed her with a steely glare. Within his eyes she found many things that he had never directed at her before. They were eyes of distrust, eyes of suspicion, eyes of fear. But Antares was the one who was now afraid. “Jupiter?” she implored him in a shaky voice.

“What is it that you want, Antares?” he asked in a tone of ice. “What is it that you’ve ever wanted?”

“To love you!” she cried to him desperately. “All I’ve ever wanted is to be with you, and this is no different! There is nothing for you here, nothing but your destruction.”

He looked back to his tree. “I thought that I had met the real you when I saw you here, in the trees. How long did you play me? How long have you wanted nothing but to get me away from here?”

Antares hid her fear, letting out the last of her anger as hot tears of sorrow burned down her cheeks. “It’s useless, all your work!” she cried. “Your tree is dying! It can’t be saved!”

But then he fixed her with an angry stare, and his eyebrows drew close together. “How do you know that?” he said, anger rising in his tone. Antares slipped down onto her knees, unable to bear the ferocity of his gaze.

“How do you know that?” he repeated, now shouting at her with the intensity of a gale. Antares could only sob.

“Please,” she croaked to him gently, unable to raise her eyes to see him, blazing with the fire of his rage. “Please,” she whispered, whilst she cried, tears of sorrow for their lost love, tears of anger at herself for betraying him, tears of grief, that this had to be how it would end. “Please.” But she could think of nothing else to say.

Finally, Jupiter looked away and exhaled deeply, letting go of his anger. When she heard his breath, Antares raised her eyes to look at him, though she could barely see through the rain that fell from her eyes. When he turned down to her again, the expression on his face was just as it had been when they had first met in his throne room: bored and disinterested, and it terrified her. “I don’t ever want to see you here again,” he said, his tone vapid and expressionless. Then he turned and left, walking slowly through the garden and not once looking back.

Antares couldn’t move. She lay there, weeping uncontrollably for everything. The plants offered no help. Indeed, they stood over her as righteous victims, gloating that their destroyer had finally been unmasked. She could not look at them. She hated them for their unbreakable hold on Jupiter’s heart. She hated Star Light for forcing her into this perilous position. But more than any she hated herself, for not having the strength to stand with him, even when she knew it would be futile, for not having the courage to let him live his life, and live along with him in love. Jupiter, though, she could not hate, despite everything that she had once blamed him for. Whatever he had once done to her now paled in comparison to all that she had done to him. If anypony deserved vengeance in this world, it was he, not she. Finally, as afternoon turned to evening, she gathered herself up and left, quickly, heading straight for Star Light’s quarters.

She could not go on like this. There was no longer anything holding her here, there was no longer any reason that she needed Star Light’s help. Jupiter would never again let her close to him, and without his love, there was no reason for her to exist. Antares barged through the door to the underground chamber loudly, finding Star Light bent in thought over a book on his workbench.

“We’re through, Star Light,” she announced loudly, still breathing hard from her run here from the garden.

“Is that so?” he said nonchalantly, without looking up.

“I’ll do no more of your dirty work for you, and I’ll carry on no further with our deal. Find your own way to get your damn fruit!”

“I suppose I could.”

“You’ll have to!” she yelled into his ear, glad that she could take out her anger on somepony. And it had mostly been Star Light’s fault that things had gone as they did.

“And what about you, Your Majesty?” His shrewd tone had not wavered, nor had he yet looked up to acknowledge her.

“I don’t care what happens to me! Let me turn back into a scorpion, or whatever. But I’ll never work for you again.”

“Hmm.”

Antares wheeled on him, her anger intensifying at this old fool’s unwillingness to even pay her any notice. She grabbed him by the collar and roughly turned him around so that she could see his face. “Are you even listening to me, you old goat?”

Antares gasped and let go of Star Light. For looking at her now was not the shriveled and twisted face she had known, but a youthful, clear set of eyes positioned over a well-toned nose and mouth. Star Light smiled a wide grin filled with gleaming white teeth. “Old goat,” he chuckled in a deep, clear voice. “Not quite, my dear scorpion, thanks to you. But I do find your words troubling.” As he stepped forward, he let his cloak fall away to reveal a full, straight mane falling down over a powerful neck. No longer did his gait have its usual limp and sway, instead his steps were direct and precise.

Antares backed away from him, all of her anger suddenly draining out of her. She had not noticed a change creeping over the old wizard these past years; she had done her best not to notice him at all, when she came down here to have him do his work. The magical fruit had clearly done more for him than she had suspected it would.

“You have been kind to me,” Star Light continued, “very kind indeed. I would thank you, if I didn’t know that you weren’t doing it for me. You wanted your revenge, Antares, isn’t that right? You wanted Jupiter to suffer just like I did. Well, we are very close to getting there, aren’t we? Why the change of heart?”

“That’s none of your business,” Antares stammered back to him, trying not to meet his gaze. “I’ve had enough and I’m terminating our—”

“Do you think I care what happens to you?” Star Light shouted at her. The lights in the room dimmed perceptibly, as though they had suddenly run short on fuel, and the fire in Star Light’s eyes now illuminated his face in sharp relief from within. “Do you think I need you, you rotten creature? Do you think that you’re threatening me?” He laughed, as if he had just made a joke. The sound echoed off of the bare rock walls of the chamber, seeming to surround her. For the first time since they had met, Antares once again felt small and insignificant in Star Light’s presence.

“That’s funny, you see,” he said when he had finished. “A little animal like you, who owes me for everything, now wants to hold it over me, like it gives her power!” He flicked his horn, and there was a flash of bright teal magic. Antares winced, but after a second she looked down and realized that Star Light had merely renewed his spell, like he had done every night previously. “Count yourself lucky I let you keep on living. I don’t need anything from you, but I won’t kill you if I don’t have to,” he said as he turned and stepped back to his work. “Now get out of my sight! I have planning to do.”

Antares turned and ran, not stopping until she stood once more in her old room, the one that she had occupied when she had first started to court Jupiter’s hoof. Not surprisingly, she found her personal effects on the floor, where her husband had unceremoniously dumped them. Antares didn’t care. She sat down on the edge of her bed, with her head cradled in her hooves. She wanted to cry again, but felt like all of her emotions had already been drained out of her. Now she had nothing left. She was trapped, with nothing to hold her in this life, but nothing to return to in the other. And Star Light standing menacingly in the way between them, only grinning and laughing his cold, grim, maniacal laugh. What was there still to do?

Through the open window, she could once again hear a whistle from the garden, itself a gruesome reminder of the way that the day had started, still so hopeful and full of life. She tried to feel some relief knowing that Jupiter was happy again, as he toiled anew with his plants, but she knew that he would feel empty too, working alone once more. And now his mind would hold that seed of doubt, planted by her own words, telling him that everything was in vain. She had destroyed him. But even though this had been the purpose that had set her off down this road, it brought her no happiness, only a deep, empty sorrow.

His whistle from the garden continued to torment her as the moons once more passed by. In public, the two of them remained King and Queen, settling disputes, welcoming dignitaries, and celebrating banquets. But in private, Jupiter acted as if they had never met. She could watch the progress of his decline from the window of her bedroom, for she never did go down into the garden while he worked there. The magic continued to do its work, and Antares began to notice its effect on Jupiter as well as the months went on. He grew more listless and less energetic. The spark of adventurous enthusiasm left him. Eventually, one morning she awoke in pleasant silence, and realized that his whistle was nowhere to be heard. She never heard it again.

The two of them continued keeping their anniversary, officially opening the harvest by plucking the first fruit of his tree. At first, the general happiness of the occasion was enough to lift Antares’s heart, but soon, as Jupiter’s melancholy grew, it became a solemn memory for her as well, and she found herself just blankly going through the motions.

Twenty more years had passed when she awoke once more, on the day that she would set off another harvest. The sky outside was dreary and overcast, and the world seemed grey, devoid of all life. Outside her room she found a collection of courtiers, and the morning was, as usual, occupied with preparations and ceremony. After a short luncheon, she walked at the head of the procession into the garden.

She had to duck as she entered, since the entryway had become overgrown with hanging branches and tall grass. In fact she had to watch her step the whole length of the path, for the flagstones had been split and broken by weeds that had grown up around them. The garden around her reflected the lifelessness of the sky overhead, its new bare patches punctuating the decay of the flowerbeds, no longer cared for, the orchards, no longer watered, the vineyards, no longer pruned. Stretches of sand now dominated what had once been beautifully architected flowers and vegetables. Coarse knots of vegetation still struggled on, scratching out an existence in the wasteland that had once been a bountiful paradise. She could barely detect a faint smell of fruit, a tantalizing whiff on the dull breeze that wafted through the place.

Seeing the devastation, Antares did her best not to cry. This is all his fault, she said to herself weakly, knowing that it wasn’t true. You always did the right thing, she tried to repeat, knowing that she had earned this reward, that this was her heart, reflected into the world for everypony to see. She had taken his garden away from him, and she had remade it in her own image. The desert around her was exactly what a scorpion would want.

In the middle of the space, the ring of stone still stood, though now cracked and broken. In its centre, barely visible amidst the tufts of weeds that grew here and there, a single bright yellow fruit was visible, dangling precariously from the branches of a worn sapling, all that now remained of the once-mighty tree. It had fought on bravely in the fight that it couldn’t win, and still valiantly put forth all of its effort into this one last offering, the final spark of beauty in a world that had died around it. The group stopped outside the circle, and Antares walked on until she stood beside the tree. With a bare effort, she plucked the fruit from the branch. “The harvest has begun,” she said. There was scattered applause.

Thunder rumbled overhead, announcing the onset of a cold, drizzling rain that followed it only by seconds. Antares didn’t care. What difference did it make whether it rained or not? Whether the Sun shone or the clouds darkened the sky forever? Whether the world bloomed or the plants died away in the soil and there was nothing but wind and sand left? None of it mattered if she was alone.

She jerked up her head and scanned the crowd, realizing suddenly that Jupiter wasn’t there. Normally, he wouldn’t have spoken to her, would have done everything possible to avoid contact with her during this necessary ceremony, before once again going back to pretending that she didn’t exist. She had been so consumed by her own grief that she had not even noticed that today, he was truly absent.

“Where is Jupiter?” she asked the nearest pony of the court, who was just then turning to leave along with the rest of the onlookers.

He looked surprised at her question. “His Majesty took ill a week ago, Your Majesty,” he replied. “We have not seen him in some time.”

Antares suddenly felt cold. “Take me to him at once!” she commanded, clutching the fruit close to her heart, as a desire to see him suddenly awakened deep within her.

Again the stallion looked surprised. “His Majesty wishes not to be disturbed. If he sends for you, I will let you know, my Queen.”

“I’m his wife, you fool!” she answered back quickly, not willing to let herself understand the fear that now coursed through her veins. “I need to see him, to be at his side.”

“I suppose so,” he agreed after a moment’s thought. “This way, please.”

As she walked through the intensifying storm, Antares tried to avoid thinking about the feeling that she knew drove her now to Jupiter’s side. She tried to avoid seeing once again the progression of his fall, how he had increasingly taken absent from his public duties, how the kingdom had slowly forgotten his image, how she had seen this end coming. He is merely not feeling well, she said to herself, but knew it wasn’t true. And she held the fruit even closer to her chest, as if it were her last link to him, as if it could bring back the memories of the times that she had lost.

Inside his chambers there was silence, except for the pattering of raindrops on the roof. The guards at the door to his bedroom required some additional convincing to let her in, but eventually they acquiesced and stepped aside, allowing her into the room. When she saw him, Antares felt her heart skip a beat.

Jupiter lay face up on their old bed, the regal sheets drawn up close to his neck. He looked pale, and seemed far older than she had ever seen him before. Worries and cares hung about his face in stern lines, and his eyes were half-closed, hanging down with stress. The stallion that she had loved could not be seen, but somehow she felt that he was still there, that just as he could hide himself when he was in the court, so too he remained, waiting to jump back to his work.

Antares walked slowly up to the side of the bed, with every step willing him to turn and look into her eyes, for that eternal spark to rekindle in his face, for all of the past twenty years to be erased. But he did not turn.

With a sigh, she put the fruit down on his nightstand. Over the course of the past twenty years, she had wished for a moment like this, a chance to set right her mistakes, a chance to be open, to rectify the break in their relationship. But now it seemed too late. Words would not be enough to heal Jupiter’s heart. Still, she knew that they had to be said.

“You were right, Jupiter,” she began, slowly, searching for each word in the depths of her mind, knowing that each one had to be perfect. “It was not the real me that you fell in love with, nor was it she that you met when we were together outside. If you ever saw the real me, you would not even recognize her.” She paused, waiting for any response. If he heard her, he did not indicate it, and so Antares pressed on.

“We first met far away from here, in the deserts of the east. I was no pony back then, but merely a scorpion whom you scooped up and delivered here, into your great garden. But, great though your garden was, it was not my home, and I resented what you had done. I wanted to take away what you had loved, as you took away those things from me.

“The Lady Antares first came to exist some moons later, when I made a deal with your court wizard, Star Light the Bright. He also resented you, and was willing to work with me to destroy you.” Antares paused. She found it hard to believe that her next sentence was actually true. “Back then, it was only your suffering that I wanted, and I planned to gain your love, then disappear, and observe your torture from afar.

“But as I got to know you, I understood you as more than the stallion that I had resented on our first meeting. I came to understand your love of nature, your free spirit, your gentleness and your kindness. You were not the pony that I had so detested.

She found herself speaking faster now, as the words, now started, welled up inside her, a torrent that she had kept back for far too long. “When we were wed, I found that I could not leave your side. You were more to me than I realized then, but I thought that perhaps you did not know it. You were so attached to the plants of your garden that I grew envious of them. I wanted to destroy them, so that you and I could have each other, so that nothing could interfere with our love.

“So I did. Star Light gave me magic that would slowly destroy your garden over time, and I hoped that you would see, as the years went on, that there was nothing for you there any more. That you would see that I was all that you had left.

“But you wouldn’t give it up! As the years went by, I grew worried for you. Your work would destroy you, I knew, for the harder you tried, the less good it would do. I couldn’t stand by and let you come to ruin. I thought that if I stepped in, I could save you from that fate.

“You saw me then for who I really was, but that wasn’t me anymore. I started down this journey with nothing but darkness in my heart, but then as I got to know you, that darkness was replaced by love. Now, since I have lost you, I have nothing left.

“But you were right. The pony that you loved didn’t exist. She never has and she never will. Now you know all that I am.”

“Oh, shut up, Antares!” She jerked her head up to look at him, but Jupiter did not look angry. He had sat up in bed to look at her, and a tear had sprouted from his eye. “Don’t you remember anything of when we were together?” he said, his voice kind and tender. “What we had was real. I felt it, and I know you felt it too. How could the mare I loved not exist, if I could know her for so long?”

His words made her stop and think for a second. Jupiter was right, about all of the time that they had spent together. But it was gone, irretrievably. “It was all a lie. Your wife was nothing but magic drawn over your eyes.”

He held out a weak, trembling hoof to her. With a tremor of her own running through her muscles, Antares reached out and grasped it.  “Maybe it began that way,” he said. “But if all that you’ve said is true, at some point that changed. Whether or not the mare I loved ever existed in reality, she was always very real in my heart.”

 “But we can never go back. What could we go back to?”

Jupiter chuckled, and a thin smile came to his face. “You always used to wonder why it wasn’t enough for the two of us to be together. Maybe it can be, for once. Today was the start of harvest, wasn’t it?”

The sight of the smile on his face steadied her, like a sturdy post that she could grab ahold of. “Yes. I have the harvest fruit here.” She picked it up again from the table and passed it to him.

Jupiter took a bite, and a bit of colour returned to his complexion. ”You were the first one to show me just how much I had missed,” he said.

“No, it was you who first showed me what I was missing,” she replied, thinking back to the first time that she had lost herself in his company, that first afternoon long ago, when she had forgotten her plots, forgotten her lies and secrets, for one blissful day, when the two of them had just been together. 

Jupiter smiled knowingly as he watched her. “Whatever I said, I knew when I met you outside that I was seeing the real you. I knew it the moment I saw you in the garden, and I knew it even more as we lived and worked together. These twenty years…” He sighed, letting out all the tribulations of his exile in that one single breath. “I missed you, Antares.”

A tear bloomed upon her cheek as she reached down to him and turned his head to face her. There was silence between them, as they gazed long into each other’s faces. Then she kissed him, solemnly, slowly, wishing that it would never end, while knowing that this was the end, and it was the only end that could be. “I love you,” she said to him once their lips had parted.

“I love you,” he returned, and then he closed his eyes, looking as though he were merely dropping off to a contented sleep. And maybe, just maybe, Antares could believe that.

She stayed by his side for some time, thinking. The pony that Jupiter loved didn’t exist, she knew. It was only a construction of magic, only another sham perpetuated in front of his eyes. But she was real in his heart, and maybe she could exist even without a mare’s face, even without a unicorn’s horn, even without a pony’s body. Maybe she could exist within Antares’s heart too. Maybe she had always been real in there, and could keep on living, even when all trace of her physical existence disappeared.

So Antares planned. She thought long and hard about what she would now do, out in the garden, in that place that she had destroyed. First, however, she had a small matter to attend to. When night had fallen, she came down from Jupiter’s chambers. She grabbed a cloak and a lantern from a passing guard and set off into the darkness.

The night was dark and cool, and Antares felt a chill pass over her skin as she walked that made her wrap the cloak around her shoulders tighter. Once again, just as she had twenty years ago, she felt as though she walked not as herself, but as somepony else. Not as the scorpion of old, but truly as the Lady Antares, doing what she should have done years ago.

Though twenty years had passed since she had last come here, it was not hard for her to find the secluded clearing where she had planted Star Light’s seeds. Even if the place wasn’t burned into her memory, tonight the clearing shone with the fire of a dozen bright yellow fruits hanging from the sturdy branches of the young tree that now grew there. 

Antares paused in front of the tree, holding her blazing lantern aloft just in front of her face. Here was her betrayal, growing far off where she had been able to forget it. Here was what was left of her past self. Here were all the lies, all the work that she had done for Star Light, to pay him for the life that she had no right to lead. Now that that life had ended, it was time for her to take back everything that she had stolen.

“Ah, it’s just you,” came a voice out of nowhere.

Antares whirled around, her breath catching in her throat. That had been Star Light’s voice, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. She had not anticipated company.

Derisive laughter echoed around her. “Don’t worry, my dear, it’s just me,” Star Light said, finally materializing out of thin air right in front of her. “What brings you here tonight, Antares? Have you come to kick off our first harvest?”

Star Light had grown taller over the years as his magic had grown more powerful inside him. He looked down at her now with suspicion, not unlike how he had glared at her when they had first met. She had to think fast. “Jupiter is dead,” she said to him, willing the anger in her heart into smug satisfaction on her face. “And his garden is no more. We’ve won.”

“Superb!” he chuckled back at her. “That’s the old scorpion I remember. What was it like, I wonder, to look into his eyes and see your victory at hoof?”

“I won’t soon forget it,” Antares replied honestly, though she kept her voice hard. “What then for you, Star Light?”

In answer, the wizard disappeared once again with a flash. “My full powers have returned to me,” he said, once again seeming to be all around her. “Without this fruit I would soon wither once more, but of course thanks to you I shall never want for it again.” He reappeared standing beside her, leaning over her right shoulder so that he could whisper right into her ear. “Thanks for that, by the way. You prolonged your life a number of years by continuing to help me.”

She spasmed away from him, wheeling so that her back was facing the tree, and she could look her old captor in the eye once more. Star Light was grinning his classic twisted smile, and she had no doubt as to the meaning of his words. But she had to delay him a few seconds more. “What do you mean?”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Star Light replied, scratching his chin mockingly. “What use are you to me? You’ve got me my tree, dealt with the King for me, and even been kind enough to keep quiet. But now, I don’t believe that I need you anymore.” A swirl of his magic began to materialize about his horn. “What did you honestly expect?”

At that moment, there was so much magic present in the clearing that Antares was able to sense its presence, radiating gently from the tree behind her, and pulsing dangerously about Star Light. But there was other magic at work here too. She stole a look up at the moon, noting its position over the horizon. Any second now. “I thought that we would rule together,” she said, not looking at him. “We’ve been partners up to now.”

“I don’t think so, my dear,” he replied. “Given what you did to the last King, I don’t really think that I could feel safe with you still around. If it makes you feel any better though, I can give you something really special, as my last favour to you.” He concentrated a moment, adding a red shimmer to the spell that sat waiting for its trigger. “Goodbye, Your Majesty.”

There was an explosion of teal magic immediately in front of him, followed by a fireball of orange and yellow as Star Light’s spell impacted on the falling lantern, shattering it and setting the clearing ablaze. When the unicorn uncovered his eyes, the tree was engulfed in flame, and he could barely make out a scorpion scuttling its way into the underbrush.

The scorpion hurried back to the garden, moving as quickly as she could through the town. It took all night for her to get back, and the sun was rising when she finally made her way through the overgrown gates. She was just about to move off the trail to seek out her old dwelling, when suddenly she realized what she was seeing. 

Far in the distance, now visible over the eastern horizon, the Sun’s rays caught the underside of clouds that gathered over the far desert, colouring them a fiery orange. As the minutes ticked by, the Sun rose higher, catching more clouds in its shimmering light, and suddenly it was as if the whole sky had caught fire, bathed in prismatic reds, oranges, pinks, and yellows. It was exactly like Antares remembered it. But though this was the moment she had craved, that had set her off down this path, the Sun’s light brought no warmth to her soul. Surely, she knew, it would have been far better had it dawned on a living world, one where she had Jupiter here to share it with.

But though she felt sorrow once more rising within her, Antares knew that this was not the end. For while a scorpion would relish these new surroundings, Antares was not a scorpion anymore, despite all appearances. Even as she had remade the garden in her own image before, now she would bring it back to life. Antares vowed that she would never cry again until that task had been fulfilled.

And so, over the years, Antares worked. It was slow going, of course, stealing seeds one at a time from the castle, and caring for them as best as she could. But Antares never tired, and indeed as she worked she felt happy again, now that she was righting the wrongs of her past. Soon enough, flowers once again bloomed in carefully managed rows, saplings once again took root to anchor the sand, and water once more flowed through the land.

There was only one place that Antares did not care for. The spot at the centre of the garden remained bare, and every year, on the anniversary of the harvest, she would return, to remember it all again, and weep a few more tears for Jupiter.

As the garden once again grew vibrant, the spirit of the whole kingdom, which had faltered after Jupiter’s death, rose along with it. Fifty years later, long after Antares had passed on, a new tree was found growing at the garden’s center, exactly where the old had once been. As prosperity returned to the kingdom, the old tradition of picking that tree’s fruit to start the harvest returned with it, and has continued to this day.

That’s why every year, on the eve of the start of the harvest, we watch the eastern skies. Just before dawn, the scorpion returns, led by Antares herself, shining bright in the night sky. She rises alongside Regia, the Crown, and so once again the King and the Scorpion Queen fulfill their anniversary, and start the harvest anew.