//------------------------------// // Chapter Six: Primeval Remembrances // Story: Tia's Reign of Terror // by Knight of Cerebus //------------------------------// “Princess…” Twilight began. “I know you’d never hurt anypony without good reason. I mean, I’ve done some pretty terrible things and you’ve never done more than raise your voice at me. The same goes for Trixie, and Sunset. I don’t see you banishing them for what they did, and you certainly didn’t punish me for any of my mistakes. If you did something in the past to hurt somepony, they probably weren’t capable of learning or changing. The pony I know didn’t banish Nightmare Moon or seal away Discord because it was the easy way or the way she wanted—she did it because it was the only way. Because she’s kind and wants others to prosper, not because she wants to control everyone or trample over whoever opposes her.” There was a proud smile across the younger mare’s face. And then the winds of introspection took her. Twilight looked down, holding a hoof to her heart and creasing her brow. The shadow of one of her inner demons fell upon her face for a moment, and she gave a guilty frown. “You’re a lot stronger than me, that’s for sure. I sure wish I wasn’t too weak to take the hard choices and too selfish to make those kinds of sacrifices.” Celestia let a claw side along Twilight’s face, then drew it back to her pen and paper. “How can you say that about yourself, after all you’ve done?” That perplexing blush was back again, accompanied by that piercing frown and those darting, haunted eyes. Celestia put her claw back under Twilight’s chin, her gnarled and gigantic digits forming a tender cradle. She stared deep into Twilight’s eyes with her own slitted pupils, searching for the truth of what really tore at her heart. But all she could see looking back at her was that same soul so haunted and tormented, doing its best to put up a defense against anypony that hoped to repay the kindness it was so quick to bestow upon others. A creature that damned herself with unbridled hate as much as she blessed everyone around her with naked love. Celestia nuzzled her younger companion, letting her great head bow to Twilight in a salute to how much she weathered from her thoughts. For a moment, brief though it was, Twilight’s tension slacked. And then Twilight let go and pushed her love away. “I can’t,” she breathed out a heavy sigh, “I can’t do this. It isn’t fair to you.” “Isn’t fair?” Celestia let the words flow naturally. “I feel so...so...dishonest!” Twilight groaned. “Like I’m lying to you a little more every time we get closer.” “You aren’t lying where it matters.” Celestia slid the paper under Twilight’s nose. “You don’t know that.” Twilight sagged herself into the bed, grabbing one hoof with the other. “I know you.” “You trust me, you mean. “ “Now you’re lying.” Celestia wrote out another note, making sure she wrote these words carefully and spanned them across the entirety of the page. “To me and to yourself.” “Alright, I…” Twilight looked down. “You don’t understand how deep my feelings run. You don’t understand how much I need it. It’s not right.” “And you don’t know how much I need it, either.” Celestia wrote the words quickly and easily now. “More than I ever knew.” Twilight opened her mouth, looking to challenge, to take comfort in the safety of her unimportance, expendability, inferiority. But there was this courageous giant, sharing her very heart with her, and all at once her desperate clawing for safety was replaced with something much braver. She saw the way Celestia looked at her, felt the coals of this wonderful being stoking the furnace of her heart, and suddenly she swelled with a bold, simple thought. She sat down and poured out her heart to Celestia. “You’ll never know how much—” Twilight stopped, then started again. “When I first met you, all I could think of was how amazing what you were doing for us was. I studied magic because of you. But not because of how incredible your skill was. It was the faces of the ponies in the crowd. I saw how they looked at you and I knew, I just knew our lives were so much better because of you and what you did. I didn’t want to be like you because of power, but because in that moment I saw how much they loved you and why. I saw how much you deserved it.” She put her hoof on Celestia’s arm, then looked up at her and gave an earnest, shining smile. “Even more so for everything you had to give up to reach this wonderful world we have today.” Twilight swallowed a ball of scrap metal that was eating away at her throat. Her eyes turned inward and searched the churning fog of emotion Celestia evoked within her soul. Though she risked being snatched up by the jaws of cowardice, shame or self-loathing, still she took her first shaky step into that dangerous mist. Then, with a tremble in her lips and in her heart, she opened herself up to Celestia in full for a single terrifying moment. “I realized in that moment that I loved you. For everything you did to make our world so much better, I loved you.” She concluded the quick and life-risking speech with a whispered sentence more powerful than even the words that had come before. “And I hope I’ll never stop.” The giant bird before her tilted its head, then gave a tender cooing. Celestia swooped down like a giant dove and embraced her closest friend as tenderly as she could. The terror bird squeezed into Twilight, feeling that fear-born tension grow stronger and then, ever so slowly, melt away with a long sigh. Twilight pressed her face into the feathers offered up to her, then began to stroke her hoof along Celestia’s gigantic back. Celestia looked at Twilight’s guilt-wracked form, her mind wrestling with what she did and didn’t want to say to her. For a moment they weren’t princesses, or alicorns, or liars, or saviours or heroes or tyrants or villains. They were two souls clinging to each other in the harsh windstorm of time. They were two broken halves shattered by past tragedy and demons of the mind. They were two broken halves hugging together into one greater whole, hoping to snatch the joyous fire they could see in their better’s heart and share it with the world. Celestia closed her eyes and remembered. Twilight let the words fade between them, allowing her own eyelids to obscure her vision and sharing Celestia’s moment in silence. And then Celestia was worlds away and centuries ago, during the dying days of the terror bird. Towers of gold and obsidian burned with a fire even their owners, the magnificent dragons, had never faced before. The skies above were choked with angry black clouds of ash and smoke, and behind those dark clouds the sun burned with savage violet light. Rings of runes orbited around the astral body, and wherever its rays focused the very earth erupted into molten, tortured streams of fire and light. Tornadoes that stunk of pegasus design ripped through buildings that had once been intricate art of platinum and pearl. Reptiles the size of mountains winged through the skies, picking up ponies in their massive talons or unleashing burning streams of fire from their maws. Their flames were met with artillery shots powered by unicorn horns or earth pony ingenuity. Some were battered by the chunks of stone and forced to take further to the skies, but just as surely other drakes would swoop down upon the sources of the lobbed boulders and burn them into submission. Magic hung heavy in the air, dancing unnatural spirals through the air surrounding the fire drakes and their citadels, but the dragons paid it no heed. Spells bounced off their armor, and when they touched telekinetic vortexes they dissipated. To those ponies caught on the ground, it looked to be the end of the world. Then, one by one, the dragons began to plummet from the sky. The magical fires that burned their city were nothing to the old rulers of the world, but the byproducts of that same magic were a different story. Their magical immunities did not extend to the after-effects of the spells being cast—the natural results of an unnatural phenomena—and so they tumbled from the skies they once dominated. Burning rays focused from the sun through magical lenses felled them, as did the smoke and raw heat rising up from the magic flames set below. One by one, the dragons either fled or succumbed, and soon the skies that had once rained destruction down upon the ponies below were cleared. Only the wisest among the giant creatures dove to the cover of the city itself, where the rising heat was more bearable than in the choked and burning skies above and where the platoons of ponies protected them from the rays of the deadly sun. But even there was a poor refuge, for there they found a sight worthy of shattering their morale. The streets were clogged with rubble and broken weapons. Screams of terror and ragged battle cries rang out in and amongst the last and largest of the great draconic cities. The once-great civilization had its back to the wall, its emergency capital a twisted warzone of panicked civilians and clashing armies. Here, the real battle was being fought. The great drakes could always flee the city and scatter into their mountain refuges, but their many one-time allies could not. Earth pony and pegasi warriors clad in heavy, rigidly ordered bronze armor were interrupted from their march towards the city center by an ambush. Out from the rubble rushed a giant, carnivorous bird, a creature that triggered primal fear even in the disciplined mares and stallions of the Royal Army. A beak swung like a heavy axe, battering through shield and pony alike, but the lances of the ponies brought it down. When another rushed them from behind, they were more prepared. Then more of them came, and the army truly began to dig itself in. Despite being surrounded and outmatched for natural weapons by a wide margin, the ponies managed to hold firm even against assaults of hordes of their blazingly fast opponents. Technology had never been the strong suit of the gigantic animals and their unwieldy, two-fingered hands, and so stone axes and simple spears were all they had to meet the bronze pikes, swords and pilum of the pony armies. They slowly backed towards a ruined building, hoping to rob the birds of their cover advantage. Even then, the birds harassed them and forced them to slow and dig in where before they had been taking outpost after outpost from the small, young and unarmed drakes that had been stationed before. And then Celestia arrived. In place of her usual mane of rainbow auroras was replaced with winds of solar flame. Her eyes glowed a volcanic red, body coated in runes and petryl replaced with a talisman of intricate and arcane design. The ground surrounding her ponies split and fractured, the supernatural heat of her radiant body turning pyroxene to shards of obsidian and churning up the black and tortured earth. The twisted sun above her vaporized rubble and left terror birds seared by the ash and heat in its wake. Fires lit by her unnatural magic set natural fires of their own, and soon what had been a guerilla war became a route. Her eyes flickered upon one of the few buildings remaining, a familiar sigil catching her burning gaze. A flag bearing the coat of arms of the terror bird leaders flew proudly from the tallest structure on display, the proud creatures having raised a banner even in this darkest day of the war. Celestia immediately blasted her way into the building, a ball of fire expanding in her wake. She arrived to find only one creature in the room, seated calmly behind a broken piece of obsidian. The gaunt form of an especially thin terror bird rose up to meet her, his predator’s eyes twinkling with a wild and dangerous intelligence. Plumes of feathers more like a coat of shaggy white fur coated his entire body, save his raptorial legs, which instead bore claws that were the same off-yellow colour as his beak. They were no less deadly, either, for powerful muscles propelled him towards Celestia with a slow, purposeful and unsettlingly un-equine gait. The wily glimmer in his eye and his familiar half-smile greeted her as if she were still an old friend. Celestia would have none of it. “Ya’rla The Betrayer. To what do I owe the pleasure?” She stood her ground, ignoring the sound of gigantic claws scraping against the smoothed glass floor around her as best she could. Instead, she stared deep into his eyes, challenging him to justify himself to her. His bony, faded yellow beak was as wide as Celestia’s head, and half again as long. A hook like that of a jagged pickaxe terminated the beak on one end, while slitted, cat-like pupils finished the opposite side. “I take it this means our last attempt at negotiations has failed.” Two giants amongst their own kinds stood over the burning city. Molten metal ran down the sides of the tower, but the two paid the absurd heat no mind. “The dragons decided to grant us some of their limited fire resistance for this final battle, knowing that you were coming as they did. The crucial word there is, heh, limited.” Ya’rla wagged one of the savagely clawed fingers on his prehensile, elongate hands. The other claw rested against his side, folded rigidly like the wings his ancestors had once used. “I did mention, to my credit, that charging directly into a firestorm just to lobby artillery strikes at you was a poor tactic.” He shrugged his arms at the elbows, his shoulder muscles being rigid like those of any other bird. “Which is why I have decided to negotiate terms of surrender on behalf of my people.” “Unacceptable. We speak to the dragons and the dragons only.” Celestia moved forward, allowing herself to join her companion in a predatory prowl of her own. “You had your chance to join us when the war began, we offered you second chances all along the way—you responded with ambushes. You aren’t a slave race, Ya’rla, and until the dragons release those who are—the minotaurs, the sea monsters, the mules—we will accept no conditions of surrender. Now bring me Ancalagon and end this farce.” Ya’rla’s good cheer flickered for a moment. “In hindsight, we chose poorly. But we are a people mired in tradition. Our clutch-brothers were our first choice in a total war, not our one-time pets. I regret the decision more than you know. We should have taken your kindness, but I put too much faith in draconic good-will.” “Pets?” Celestia scoffed. “We may have once been primitives, and our peoples closer, but you ate us just as readily as you gave us technology. Your kind ate us, Ya’rla, and no amount of good faith will change that.” “Yes, pets. From our perspective, five hundred years of diplomacy have been us taming former meals. Your kind were barely sentient during those early formative years and you know it. Transitions are never orderly and never clean. Look at us now. Your kind is a race of giants, overturning world order and bringing freedom and peace to the world, whether we like it or not. How many do you think have been trampled beneath your hooves in your stampede towards the top? And us? Barely a mob, hunted by dragon and pony alike.” Ya’rla turned whimsical again. “Is it really so hard to believe we thought you were an amusement at first?” “At first, perhaps. But we held an alliance. An age of prosperity for our peoples forged upon good faith. Five hundred years, Ya’rla. Five hundred years we have worked together. You argued alongside me. Fought with me to stop this war. And now you stand here speaking to me of pets.” Celestia stood to her full height, though Ya’rla was easily taller. He dwarfed her six feet with a menacing twelve of his own, though her body itself was about twice that of his in length. Her wings flared and she let her horn point towards Ya’rla’s head, to which the bird raised his arms in surrender. “Well met, little pony. But that is our history together from your perspective.” He took a step back from Celestia, then walked over to the hole in the tower’s wall through which Celestia had flown. “My father told me why we were so quick to take you into our ranks when I ascended to his throne. It was an exchange based on survival, little one. Your crops attracted prey, your pegasi brought water. Your magic was amusing. You were amusing. And if we were starved, and we had no other food source to find? Why, we had an emergency supply living under our noses. It was mutual benefit, with a side of predator’s pragmatism, that brought us together, little Princess. That is all it has ever been. And now our roles have reversed. When this is over, my people will become curios; relics of a bygone age. You will use us as easy labor, if indeed you find any use for us at all. Look at how the cows and the pigs live under you. Herbivore’s pragmatism, yes?” “And what of us? Of the others among our people who lived together? Friends? Adoptive family? Lovers? Do they mean less to you than ‘draconic goodwill’? Were we less than the goodwill of a bunch of slavers?” “In my eyes, come what may, you will always be my friend.” The cheer left Ya’rla’s face entirely, and with it the last bit of whimsy he held died. “They have our eggs.” The taller of the two creatures shook its head, looking down at the anarchy below with regret in its eyes. “We did not know they were so desperate to have our kind under their control. Rumor is they expected us to turn against them. I cannot help but think that if we had not been so close, they—” “No. The dragons are to blame for their own sins. No other creature. I always treasured your friendship, Ya’rla.” Princess Celestia looked on the dark spectacle with no brighter an expression than her enormous comrade. Even her gigantic form was dwarfed by the creature beside her. A bitter laugh came from the depths of Ya’rla’s overlong throat. “I was a fool to trust them. You were right—I did choose the dragons over you to begin with. We thought we could talk sense into them, end the war on a bittersweet peace, at least. By that time, it would be my successor’s problem, and perhaps he would be less conflicted than I. Was that selfish of me?” He shook his head again. “Regardless, once we saw the depth of their cruelty, every terror bird regretted my choice. I more than any other. But by that time, clutch-brothers became clutch captors, and there was nothing more we could do.” Celestia searched the terror’s reptilian eyes for the spark of genius and humor they’d once held, but she found in their place something dull, resigned and quiet. Something full of predator’s pragmatism, where before there had been a creature quite the opposite. “Then you’ve truly forsaken hope in its entirety?” Ya’rla shook his mighty head, then closed his eyes and whispered. “My troops are to fight to the last bird. They have taken our eggs to the nursery, along with those of all drakes who have not sworn loyalty to the king. They are to smash them if even one among our ranks does not fight to the death. ‘Like taming phoenixes,’ the guard dragon said.” He laughed another empty laugh, darker than the pyroclastic clouds that hung above them. “Now we’re the pets.” “And your civilians?” “We are a race of carnivores, and have no room to protest. In the eyes of Lord Ancalagon and his people, we have no civilians.” “And what of you?” Celestia searched the aging giant’s face. “Why were you not called to the battle?” And then it clicked. Celestia’s eyes widened, and a look of pure hurt and naked disbelief ghosted across her face. Ya’rla gave a laugh like a dying wind. “Predator’s pragmatism. You always were a smart little pony. I can only hope our last discussion has kept your sun from my people long enough that they can use yours as shields.” Ya’rla stepped forward to tower over her, his giant claws unfurling and hanging before him like a butcher’s knife set. He stretched a beak the size of a battle axe well above Celestia’s head, and his elongate toes stabbed into the ground until the heavy rock cracked beneath them. Celestia, for her part, looked troubled for only a minute. Her gaze hardened, and her body crouched low, horn pointing at her aggressor’s chest. The horn lit, and she let out a silent prayer that she could buy herself enough time to escape. There was no safe place to teleport, and allowing Ya’rla to join his troops would be a fatal error of the gravest sort regardless. So she vowed to hold him here, however she might have to. She held her wings out at her sides, ready to spread and unleash a powerful blow if given a moment’s notice. “I never thought to see you so weak, old friend.” “It is not weakness to make a sacrifice in the name of those you love.” And then he was upon her, claws slashing and beak stabbing in a whirlwind of bladed limbs. Celestia’s instincts screamed for her to break and run, shouting warnings of the nightmare that was this towering giant that would surely devour her like the prey she was. But Celestia was not an animal. She was a leader, and her mind defined her, not her body. She ducked under Ya’rla’s head, catching his wickedly curved claws in a slash across her midsection in the process. Then she pushed with all her might, legs meant for running turning her into a battering ram and a weight meant for processing grass lending her strength against her lithe and athletic foe. Her old friend toppled over, claws still scoring across her barrel. Her wings and legs formed a barrier to protect her weaker belly and the precious organs held within. Abruptly, a pair of jaws backed by layers of brutal keratin wrapped themselves around her head. Her hooves crashed down on the neck of Ya’rla before he could snap her own, but in the process she let herself suffer a cruel and long rake across her exposed belly. She responded by beating her own hardened keratin hooves against Ya’rla’s prone form, attempting to beat him into submission where he lay. Blow after blow struck his body and neck with a potent smacking noise, her golden shoes hitting against him with brutal blunt force. She stood to a towering height, poising to bring both hooves down upon the prone form of her fallen friend. Ya’rla reacted with a crushing blow of his own. He raised a heavily taloned leg against her, sending it forward to deliver a punch to her chest that nearly shattered her ribcage. She flew across the room, landing with a resounding crunch against the obsidian floor and sliding to hit a window with enough force to spider its surface with fine cracks. If she had not been bolstered by the strength of an earth pony, she felt certain that either the impact itself or the damage she sustained from the landing would have twisted her spine into an unworkable shape. Instead, she raised herself to her feet, if shakily. In front of her, Ya’rla was propping himself back up using his smaller forelimbs. She could see that he was leaning to the right, and that there were patches in his feather coat where her hooves had collided heavily with animal skin. She could only imagine what she looked like. “You were always my favourite, Celestia. You had a spark like no other. Intelligence made the slave of kindness. A beautiful arrangement if ever there was one.” Both creatures paused to draw breath, one trying to suck the wind that had been knocked out of her back into her body and the other attempting to gather his bearings after multiple blows to the head. Celestia’s horn shone again, her spell from before still preparing. She only prayed it would be ready in time. “If I am to battle any creature today, I should be honored it is you.” She saw a glimpse of her old friend for a moment, a sad smile upon his face. “I would die by your hoof before a dragon’s claw any day.” And then the glimpse was buried, the killer gleam of a predator back in his reptilian pupils once more. “I only regret that you will die by mine.” He flexed his killing claws for emphasis, hurtling forwards at her with the unreal speed all his kind possessed. Celestia rolled out the way, waiting for the impact against the window that her one-time ally would inevitably suffer. She was instead doubled over by a bird ramming her up against the wall, his own legs having propelled him in a leap at her at the last minute. A claw seized around her throat, lifting her high above the ground. Then a feathery body pressed up against hers, preventing her legs from kicking out against the giant standing before her. Terrible digits wrapped around her horn, and the bird closed in for a killing blow. But the bird before her hesitated, and for a moment, it looked as though he might stop. His eyes flickered, searching down to the battlefield below. Ponies fought birds with spear against beak, talon against shield, and though casualties were great on both sides, he could see that the birds were breaking against the greater positioning of the ponies. Crumpled birds littered the warpath the ponies were forging towards the town hall. The mighty nation he had once led was now a warband, and a dwindling one, at that. Then the bird clenched his grip again, and the life began to drain away from the helpless creature before him.