"Do you have a religion?"
Twilight had been wanting to ask this question of her "volunteers" for the book for quite some time. And she wanted to find out the truth. She knew that asking about people's religion could be a deeply personal subject, but she simply couldn't help it. She wanted to know, and so she held her quill up, eyes forward, face solemn as she looked over her interviewee.
"My experiences with it were not helpful to me." Tirek remarked calmly as he folded his arms over his chest and gave her an amused look, his dark eyes glittering like coals. "I take no interest in such things. Churchgoing brings different classes and psychologies together. It brings about unity and understanding, a shared idea and sense of belonging. I've no need for that. If I wanted to join a club, I would. I tried to go to several in my younger days. Both disappointed me. I expected more."
"How so?"
Tirek laid back in his cell, calmly thinking, memory flickering before his eyes. "The first was run by a vicar who had been so long engaged in watering down faith in the Elements of Harmony. All for the sake of a supposedly incredulous and hard-headed congregation, so much so that he soon became the one shocking parishioners with unbelief, not the other way around. He wanted to spare all of them the difficulties of the teachings of Harmony, so he got rid of the proper lectures, the psalms, all that had real meaning and it devolved into just his fifteen favorite psalms and twenty favorite lessons in the most adorable little church you've ever seen." He said, clear mocking distaste in his deep voice before he chuckled coldly. "It would have been funny if I didn't find it so pathetic."
Twilight didn't find it funny. She found it sad. The idea that someone who's life was suppsoed to be built around teaching the Elements of Harmony to others and all the good they represented, the idea that they'd become so numb to it all that it was just rote memorization? That was horrifying to her. How could anyone care so little about something so important and so meaningful? "And the other?" She asked with a quiet frown on her features.
"Ah, yes. Dearest Father Abbadon." Tirek said with a big, toothy grin, stroking his beard. "His congregation was always so very puzzled as to the range of his opinions. One day it seemed like he was advocating for communism, the next day he was a full on theocratic fascist. One day he would be intelligent, scholastic and reasonable, the next day he'd be fiery, passionate and foolish. I, of course, recognized one thing ran constant in his sermons, and it was hatred. Ohhhh...how I LOVED that, at first." Tirek said with a smile. "Hatred. He couldn't bring himself to preach anything that wasn't calculated to shock, grieve, puzzle, or humiliate. He could drive his own parishoners to suicide if he wanted to. But there was one fatal defect he had in him."
The smile faded. "He really, really believed in the Elements. And that ruined it all. I couldn't stay and hear him speak of such things. Not when I knew, deep down, he was a true believer in that rot."
"Why do you call it "rot"? The Elements are real. They're powerful, they're immensely helpful-"
"They're a pathetic crutch, a replacement for true power." Tirek snorted. "They're not uniquely yours. They're something you're all sharing, not the true power unlocked from within. I had that true power. I am a self-made man. I made my own destiny."
"Oh yes, and how'd that work out for you, I wonder?" The Shadow Lord mused aloud as Twilight informed him of what Tirek had said, Sombra laughing uproariously at this. "Oh, how amusing. He, who steals other's powers, thinks that that is somehow a gift unique to him that makes him special. He's a pathetic little parasite."
"Did you have any religion in the Crystal Empire? Before or after you took power?" Twilight inquired as she wrote down on her notepad, tilting her head slightly to the side as Sombra calmly drank from a goblet he'd been given.
"I used to believe." Sombra admitted. "I believed in an Almighty God, in fact. In the idea that whoever put down the Elements of Harmony onto our world continued watching over us, caring for us. And I believed I could see him whenever I-" He trailed off, but Twilight knew what he'd been about to say.
"Whenever you looked at Radiant Hope?"
Sombra looked slightly away, his face set like stone before he finally spoke up.
"Do you want to know why I decided I no longer believed? You were right before. I wanted to have control over others to feel I controlled my own life. I began to feel that Life itself had patterns and systems you were forced into. That you were put on a railroad without any control over where you went. And that nobody was really looking out for you. Certainly not any God." He went on with a sigh. "I was just a child when I learned of what I was going to do. When I first got a hint of my true nature. I was too frightened to talk to anyone about what I'd seen. I wanted guidance. But I didn't get anything that really put my soul at ease. I got told something that essentially destroyed my life." He chuckled quietly, shaking his head.
"I mean, don't get me wrong. I tried to destroy the Crystal Heart in secret. I thought maybe if I could do that, I could keep being with Radiant Heart and nobody would be the wiser. But it didn't quite work out that way."
"You think that not being magically given answers means there's no God?" Twilight asked.
"Is it any less reasonable to ask when the Elements themselves grant you and your friends such power? Or how the Crystal Heart has such might? Let me ask you this. Why does Evil exist?" Sombra inquired, waving a hoof in the air. "Why, if any God exists, is evil allowed to exist? You could possibly make the argument that terrible things are needed in this world in order to be overcome, perhaps to bring others together. But you don't need that to bring others together. You don't have to bond over the loss of your parents or your home. You don't need some great monster to overcome in life. What does that really do? Give you a decent story to tell your fillies and your little foals?"
He snorted. "Yes, I'm sure the hundreds that the hydra killed before you finally did it in with your friends would appreciate that. "Sorry you had to be digested alive, but we needed these ponies to learn a lesson about how if they work together, they can do anything". I don't buy it. If God truly existed, he's a monster for allowing evil to exist."
"Maybe it's something that has to exist in order for Good to be defined." Twilight reasoned. "I mean, you don't know what a crooked line is if you don't know what a straight line is. A blind man would never know what color is because he's never seen anything."
"But does there need to be so much of it?"
"Maybe there isn't as much as you think." Twilight said. "I mean, being sad or unhappy is bad, but it's not inherently evil." She remarked. "Because at least when you're sad, you can also be happy about it, because it means you care so much about something. And it's better to care about something and have your heart broken than to not care at all. Apathy's a terrible thing to have. And our world isn't that awful. Not really." She went on, shaking her head. "There's so much beauty in the world. So much love and kindness. And to me, that means everything. But evil?" She shook her head. "Do you think it truly brings anything to the world?"
Sombra raised an eyebrow. "Not really."
"Then it doesn't have any value. So evil things have no value, but good things do. Then doesn't that mean, ultimately, that in the big picture, it doesn't matter if bad things happen, because whatever good things that happen in your life will always make Life worth it? Aren't you glad you got to know Radiant Hope even though you couldn't stay with her?"
Sombra placed his hooves together in his lap, and he thought about this. "...perhaps you're wiser than I thought." He admitted. "But I still doubt we truly have free will. Especially now that I've gotten chances to talk with Discord."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, if you want to know if I believe, I've met several Gods. MANY, MANY Gods and Goddesses." Discord remarked as he sipped on some chocolate milk from a large glass before swishing it around, sitting on midair as he stroked a...well...
"And what is that in your lap?"
"Leonard. Half kitten, half monkey!" He proclaimed, Leonard "meowing" as he scratched at his chest, sticking his lips out in a puffy way. "He likes to be scratched behind the ears."
"So you believe in multiple Gods and Goddesses?"
"Oh, I think they're quite real. But I believe they're all ultimately useless to an extent. As, in a sense, am I." He remarked with a wave of his hand. "You see, the multiverse is truly terrifying when you actually begin to think about it. The existence of infinite dimensions makes free will obliterated."
"How so?"
"Think about it. In another dimension, there is a you. A you who is making choices similar to your own. And in another dimension, there's another you. And another, and another, an infinite amount of Twilights! And if there's so, so many dimensions, so many people, then...what point is there to it?" Discord asked. Leonard began looking uneasy, glancing from Twilight to Discord.
Twilight scratched her head. She didn't like where this was going. "Huh? What do you mean?"
"With the existence of so many dimensions, I came to realize that every decision you make is already made." Discord said as he scratched in midair, little Twilights of chalk being drawn as they did things like scrubbing themselves in the bath, or jumping rope, or eating breakfast. "Every choice is played out in a parallel universe. So your life becomes meaningless. It doesn't matter what you do. Every choice you could ever make's already been made, so you've no responsibility for any of your decisions! It's not your free will making a choice, the choice is going to make itself!"
Twilight scratched her head, frowning slightly. "Wait a minute. It matters in YOUR dimension, doesn't it?"
"But does it?" Discord inquired, Leonard now writing down equations on a notepad of his own, looking panicked, sweating visibly. "Because not only is every decision you make played out, every decision that ALL of us make is played out. So, now an infinite number of dimensions are being played out, with billions upon trillions of people making choices. So many versions of you making so many decisions that ultimately, the decisions you make are truly futile. It doesn't matter if you made a choice that saved or damned the world. Because every decision made has already been made and there's billions of worlds and billions of yous. So who cares?" He asked with a shrug.
He then blinked and they looked down. Leonard had strangled himself with his own long tail and Discord cringed. "Oh, damn it. They keep killing themselves every time I do that speech."
"But how do you know that the multiverse you or I are in is even real?" Twilight asked. "I mean, what if ALL of this is fake but true dimensions exist in places beyond even you? Or what if you're not even real and you're just being dreamed by me or someone else? Or if you're just plain lying to me about all of this for fun?"
"That's a possibility, or what if we're all in someone else's dream and everything we think is real isn't, even the many multiversal dimensions I've visited and-oh no, I've gone cross-eyed." Discord said, blinking stupidly, waving a paw in front of his face. "I...may have broken my own brain. Could you give me a minute to clean it?" He asked, removing the top of his skull and taking a soap bar, scrubbing away at something in his paw as Twilight blinked before the thing began coughing, Discord stopping the scrubbing.
"Not so high!" The little Discord said to the bigger Discord as it put it's hands on its hips. "You don't wanna scrub out your memories of the film "Gattica"."
"Right. Of course. I want that film to stay in my heart forever." Discord sighed as Twilight gaped at the sight before her, Mini-Discord pointing at himself.
"This is your brain on drugs!"
"I...might need a drink." She reasoned.
"Here."
The Huntsman reached inside of his chest, a small smile on his features before he pulled out a small goblet of red wine, handing it to Twilight. She took it in her hooves and drank it down, giving him a thankful smile before he took the goblet back. "Where'd this come from?"
"An offering to me. I've many, MANY people who worship me within my being. It can get to one's head, I admit, having people look up to you and worship you. It can have you start thinking that it's not really so bad to keep interfering, but you need to draw a line or else those who look up to you become unable to really do much of anything on their own. People must be free to choose and reach their own destiny. People like your Celestia are there to catch them when they fall." The alien hunter admitted, the guard of Tartarus spreading his clawed hands slightly. "But you'd no doubt like to know if my kind believed in anything. If we had our own patron deity."
"Do you?"
"Well, we had two beliefs that were something at war with each other. The first was a belief in the God known as the White. A burning, brilliant being that supposedly created our race, taught our further forefathers how to read, to write, to help care for ourselves. And the second was a belief in what we called "Big Bang Theory", which we crafted after our study of the universe and ourselves. The idea was that when we die, we are then reborn as new galaxies, and that we carry nothing with us when we are reborn but our deeds, good and ill, and this shapes how we're reborn."
"How do you know which was right and which was wrong?" Twilight inquired. "I mean, you're living galaxies. I can imagine finding a naturally-dying living galaxy would take centuries upon millenia."
"Indeed, that was the issue. And it didn't help that my kind died out when our planet was cut off from the rest of the galaxy, meaning we didn't die by natural means the way we were meant to." He cringed, holding his head in one hand and shaking it back and forth. "It got...disgusting." He muttered. "I came to no longer put any stock in the idea of reincarnation. Not merely because I felt it sort of cheapened life if you merely popped right back into it. It'd be like losing a life in a game. You've so many, it almost doesn't matter how you live it if you're returning so quickly."
"Why else did you not want to believe in it?" Twilight inquired politely.
"When you actually looked at how it compared to the White's teachings, I felt it wasn't so much any kind of moralized or philosophically matured belief system so much as oil and water coexistence of philosophy living alongside paganism unfettered. A meditating Cosmo Sapien sitting atop a stump in the forest whilst only a few miles away living beings would be cooked and eaten alive, begging all the while for their lives but to no avail." He shook his head again, his face solemn, light blue eyes cold. "I couldn't put stock in that. Besides, the White was a real being. We had historical evidence for him. It seemed to make more sense."
"Even if his exploits might have been exaggerated?"
"As more and more time passes, even your own exploits will become exaggerated. Doesn't mean you didn't do fantastic things, now does it, Twilight Sparkle?" The Huntsman inquired.
"Ugh."
Twilight was surprised the Sirens had been willing to talk, but when she'd brought up Religion to them, they'd all scoffed, especially Sonata.
"The less we know about that, the better. Everything would be so much easier if people didn't cling to such stupid things." She grunted, sitting by her compatriots as she shook her head back and forth.
"But things like the Elements are real." Twilight reasoned.
"The Elements are just powerful glowing things. You just ASSUME they're metaphysical forces because to you, they gotta be."
Twilight was confused by this, her head slightly tilted. She couldn't understand what they were getting at. "But they're clearly tied into Friendship and-"
"Are they representations of such forces, or do they just react to something you're giving off? For all you know, they're just amplifiers of something that's already there. It's just a different kind of magic, not anything special." Adagio spoke up, snorting.
"What if magic itself is something special? What about your own powers?"
"We've always had them and always will. Nobody gave it to us." Sonata snorted, looking amused.
"Yes. People such as yourself just wanna look for some kind of big meaning where there isn't, so you buy into a lie that sounds reasonable." Adagio added.
"This from people who hypnotize, manipulate, and lie their way into power?" Twilight cooly inquired. "Don't you think it's hypocritical to claim that it's stupid for people to believe in something greater when you're constantly trying to be the greater power to other people by brainwashing them?"
Sonata rolled her eyes. Adagio snickered. Aria suppressed a snort of laughter. "Really?" She asked. "That power comes from us. Not from some big thing in the sky that doesn't exist. At least you can see and touch us."
"Oh, I want to touch you, alright. In fact, I want to give you a gift. A fist. It's for hitting people with. And the best part is, you could use it again and again and again." Twilight grumbled darkly. She had forgotten how downright ugly the Sirens were deep down. "Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there. Absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absence."
"Usually is though, isn't it?" Sonata remarked.
"What about Hoofspeare? He wrote 48 plays, 200 sonnets, and yet there's no evidence of his handwriting or what he was personally like. All we have are dry legal documents and the plays themselves, but nobody looks creative if you only read their tax returns." Twilight reasoned. "But most ponies believe he wrote them. Do we just not believe it simply because there's not ENOUGH evidence that we'd like?"
"Yes. I'm glad to see you're catching on. And frankly, the idea someone without a proper education could craft works so brilliant is positively idiotic. Do you expect some commoner from the boondocks to be capable of true art?" Aria commented coldly.
"And where are you from?" Twilight asked pointedly. "Where'd you grow up?"
Adagio gave her a dark glower. "You're trying to "catch" me."
"Well, you haven't exactly told us much about where you come from."
The Sirens looked at each other, then chuckled all at once.
"You'd really like to know?" Adagio inquired softly. "Because we'd love...to tell you."