//------------------------------// // Most Divine Moments, Frozen in Time // Story: Ynanhluutr // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// Not long after the figure of Verlax vanished from beyond the swirling blizzard, the shadows re-coalesced. Only now, they took on new shapes and forms before Rainbow Dash. She blinked, her ruby eyes trailing after chaotic vortexes, nebulae, and other cosmic configurations. As the shadows spread apart, a singular shape—narrow and cylindrical—floated freely amidst the pale white frost. “We live on a piece of the whole,” chanted Verlax's voice. “Either by malice or manifest destiny, it was removed from the rest by those who would be the progenitors of this world's ailing civilizations.” Before Rainbow Dash, a sliver of the gigantic cylinder broke off, casting itself deep into the ethereal void. “Whether it was the only part of Urohringr that was lost to the Sundering, or one of many several pieces that were cast adrift into the universe, I do not know. The beacons' flame beneath Rohbredden have only taught me so much, and such information was gathered through sheer manipulation, courtesy of chaotic stress. Perhaps—in time—these flames will teach you more than I've come to know. But that is not my place to discover, now, is it?” The singular sliver enlarged, turning into a shadowy horizon. Zooming in, Rainbow bore witness to the silhouettes of trees, rivers, valleys, and mountains. Atop one such peak, a brood of five enormous dragons sat, their winged shapes blotting the sky. “My sisters and I were born here, and all we knew was the chaos and emptiness that surrounded this plane. The Sundering took place shortly before our hatching, and it is my firm believe that we were willed into being because of it. Where there is confusion, order blossoms like a candle, and our five hearts burned brightest amidst the endless twilight. Oh, there were other beings who struggled to live on this derelict speck of purpose, but we paid them very little heed. In fact, it wasn't until the alicorns chanced upon the landscape that any being of any importance sought to eke a semblance of civilization out of the threadbare castaways clinging to this metal.” Equine shadows descended upon the plane. One by one, the dragon shapes split up, abandoning the silhouetted mountaintops. “Some of us took interest in what the alicorns had to offer. Sturke, in particular, became fast friends with the hoofed aliens. She helped the alicorns nurse the equine population into a place of dominance, as they most closely resembled the beings who had stumbled upon us from afar. While Sturke shared her innate knowledge on temperature and weather, Nevlamas communed through her mastery of magics. If it weren't for the tools of the trade that my younger sisters shared, ponykind would not even remotely exist as it does today. Axan, in the meantime, kept her distance. She talked with the alicorns on occasion, but she was always somewhat distrustful of them, and to this day I do not blame her. The Divine of Flame felt most comfortable living in solitude, nurturing her broods and protecting her hoard. Endrax, however, being the oldest, wisest, and most speculative of us, could not sit so idly in one place while the effects of the Sundering continued to unfold. She was always a Divine of tomorrow. She thought in the future, dreamt in future. She knew every sentence before she finished it, and could guess the start of a soul's next phrase before it was uttered. Her eyes were always on the big picture. So, while the alicorns were concerned with nurturing the birth of this lonesome plane, she was always focused on its death. Thus, in a spirit of lonesome ambition, she sought a way to usher in the inevitable hospice.” One shadow broke from the rest, gliding towards the furthest edge of the horizon, dwindling into darkness. “Only an age before, the alicorns had constructed a magnificent sarcophagus to house the source of the power that had brought them here. The Midnight Armory—as I'm sure the princesses still call it to this day—was placed on the side of the world that their good graces could not protect through sheer presence, since their numbers were few. The alicorns chose to focus their power on one side of the plane, under the belief that through imminent concentration they could establish a harmonic civilization that would never perish. It was their presumption that positioning the Midnight Armory on the opposite plane would allow a form of counterbalance to this piece of Urohringr. My oldest sister, Endrax, did not share their confidence. She sought to reach the center of the dark side, to guard the Armory on her own. For centuries... millennia... the rest of us lived in her absence. Sturke and Nevlamas had full faith in Endrax's ability to uphold the alicorns' vision. Axan, on the other hand, did not pretend to care. But I?” At last, a final shadow took wing, its draconian shape piercing the heavens. “I used to be the most anxious member of our brood, a middle child with no clear distinction on where my loyalties lied. Ultimately, it was my love for my siblings that drove me to do what I did next. I flew after Endrax... but I did not find her. For years and years, I scoured the dark hellscapes of the twilight world, the sunless canyons and the lifeless ravines. I flew over hundreds of thousands of miles of blight and desolation. I glided along those frigid winds for so long that I witnessed the spread of life across the furthest edges—threadbare tundra, shambling beasts, and listless haunts—all of the hapless creatures who made it over death's edge through sheer panic or desperation. And amidst all of the forsaken denizens on the edge of the unknown, I could not discover my beloved Endrax.” The swirling blizzard around Rainbow Dash turned dark, and only a faint gray outline of dragon wings could be seen against the interminable blackness. The mare watched as the shape streaked upward, outward, further into the void. “So, I sought truth from beyond. I flew straight into the void. Perhaps years of flying beneath the twilight had tempted me to make such a fortuitous leap. Or, quite possibly, I had secretly given up hope on ever finding Endrax, and this act was my subconscious surrender to cosmic desolation. Whatever the case, I knew that I couldn't find any truth on the lonely island that was this plane, so there had to have been something encompassing, a reality that existed on a higher plane, something that I had been blind to for all my eons of existence. I flew high and far, Austraeoh. Further than you've flown or ever will... past the clouds... beyond the atmosphere... surpassing the orbit of the two Sentinels still locked with this piece of Urohringr.” The gray outline shuddered and stalled. Its fragmented wings hung limply in place, and soon the dragon was floating like a lifeless mass across the ether. “I flew until I no longer had any breath to fuel my muscles further. That was precisely when I reached the edge, the furthest reach of this plane's gravity. The bitter cold blight of that nothingness consumed me... infested me. I wasn't always the Divine of Frost, my little pony. Some things in life are earned, like knowledge... and curses. More often than naught, they are both one in the same.” A pair of blue eyeslits suddenly opened in the center of the gray outline's cranium. “Exposed there to unbridled nothinginess, I was cursed with the lucid realization that chaos will always defeat harmony... but it will never destroy it. We live in a linear world, subject to endless decay, where all warmth and matter eventually surrenders to annihilation and cold. To delay the end is inevitable... but that does not mean that we musn't delay it anyways. Harmony will never disappear completely. It will be diminished, yes, but tearing something into halves from here to eternity will only turn it into smaller parts—and those infinitesimal parts, however unsettling and inert they may appear—will still be something far greater, warmer, and more delicious than nothing.” The blizzard turned pale again. Rainbow watched as a pair of flapping leather wings carried the shadow—much thinner and more frail—back down to the plane. “I came back from that journey a changed soul. And although I would not discover the fate of Endrax until much, much later—it no longer mattered. I came to understand everything, including the reason why I could not find her. To solve the problems of this world, you must embrace them, and learn to rebuild from the ashes, for that is the fate of all things anyway. The Sundering is the perfect blueprint for all things both accidental and purposed. The only issue is that no soul living on this metallic strip had realized the truth until now. Urohringr knew, and its constitute parts—imprinted upon ruby flame hidden deep beneath the metal layers—had given hints to the truth, a truth that I would not learn to exploit until the chaos from beyond bestowed a lexicon upon my inquisitive mind.” The draconian silhouette of Verlax flew over a continental landscape. Before Rainbow's eyes, shadows of ponies, sirens, griffons, and other winged beasts flocked after the Divine. Soon, the dragon's wings cleared the clouds away from the tallest mountain, and she settled there, her equine skull bearing a crown as she presided over the five bowing races. “But I needed time to learn... to more properly understand what my place was in the instinctual patterns demanded by the fossils of Urohringr. And, over time, while I practiced my new and enlightened philosophies on the kingdom of Rohbredden, I discovered... that I had no place in such a destiny. This world is a broken tool of an even larger machine. It did not need a dragon to ignite its engines. It needed a spark. Cyclical forces were at play long before my sisters and I were even hatched, and every eon or so the trailing energies that powered Urohringr beckoned... called for a mighty flame to scale the lengths of its wounds and restore them back to normal. Only through the kindling of this flame... this living torch... would that which was destroyed become fully constructed again. The latest pattern in the Sundering would be undone, and all misery and pain as we've grown to know it on this plane would cease... if only for an epoch...”