Ageless, or Celestia Plays Dice With the Universe

by Cynewulf


VIII. The Last Enemy That Shall Be Defeated: Luna's Boast

Cadance clapped happily, down another glass and a half of sweet red. Her face was flushed with life, her eyes neither dim nor alert, her smile wide as could be without a shadow about it.


“Bravo!” she said, and laughed when Celestia bowed. Quickly, she tried and failed to assume her Twilight impression. “Oh wow, Princess!”


Celestia snickered, and then sat back down with a content sigh. “Oh, it’s horrible, but surely there’s no malice and ribbing a mare we all love.”


“Some of us more than others,” Cadance said lightly.


“Hark! The young pink scoundrel wishes accuses one of us, Tia! Needs be we must all prove our devotion to the youngest of our sisters.” Luna had partaken in far too much alcohol, but that was normal. Celestia wasn’t sure if the fact that this was a rather mild bender should concern her or not. She would think about it in the morning. At least it didn’t get in the way of her duties.


One of the benefits of unicorn magic was the ability to zap away intoxication. Thank the ever-shining stars for Starswirl, she thought. He had gotten a lot of use out of that spell, and so had she. Clover hadn’t. She hadn’t approved of carousing, or of most anything that she couldn’t confine to lists. She had been a lot like Twilight Sparkle, actually, if Twilight had been severe and a bit less forgiving. Regardless, Luna would be fine for when the sun and moon needed to trade places.


“And how, Lulu, do you propose we prove to said wastrel that we are so devoted?” Celestia asked, resting her head on a single hoof. Her own goblet, which had been used rather gracelessly as a prop in her grand boast, was quite empty. She wondered if she should fill it.


Luna filled it because she was herself, and while much had changed, that had not. There was a reason one of the oldest ordinances of Cloudsdale was that Luna was no longer allowed to be the Symposiarch of any gathering within the city limits. Idly, she wondered if anypony even knew that anymore.

“You always forgot to add water,” Celestia murmured as she looked into the goblet Luna had pulled up from her ancient treasure vaults. “Always.”


“Ugh,” Luna responded with what was obviously a very graceful and regal tone. “I blame the unicorns for that ridiculous tradition. Just because they could not hold their spirits--”


“Wine isn’t a spirit,” Cadance said, giggling.


“Regardless!”


“Yes, yes, I’ve literally heard this one a thousand times, Lulu,” Celestia said with a smile.


“Bah, old mare. It is my turn!”


Cadance sat up straighter. “Wait, so we all have to do one?”


Both sisters looked to each other and shared what could only be described as a predatory smile.


“Absolutely,” they said as one.











Luna stands, and demands attention:


Twilight of Ponyville, I will echo my most excellent and most boring sibling: I have seen things you would not believe.


If she can boast of the triumph of long life and its sundry glories, then I must craft for you--far off in in your newfound citadel--an image of that which she leaves out. If the sun knows victory and shies from darkness I cannot blame it. But the night has glories also, and in that darkness into which you must also peer there are things of worth.


I have seen the fields of a thousand battles, and heard the shrill horn cries of marching millions. I was there when the city of Mylae was burned in the night, fighting in the streets. I have felt the blood in my ageless, enduring body sing such a song that would chill your own blood, that would strike fear in the heart of my sister’s most iron-wrought warriors in this peaceful age.


I have traversed the lonely dark places where no pony has trod but myself. I alone know what it is to be so utterly alone that the mind unravels itself in madness, and have seen the light beyond madness.


The tragedy of the walls of night? Aye, but what beauty is there in that tragedy? Plenty. If my sister spoke to you the glory of her building, then I will boast in the failing of things and the glory therein!


You have danced and sang and loved immortals already. You have been fooled by time and space, and have judged them and yourself by the outer wrappings. But soon, you will learn the truth: that all of our little ponies share in our fate. In their dying, you will find yourself bereft. But in their dying they will pass through the serpentine twists of death into a place we cannot yet follow, and they will have victory.


For in all breaking there is an inviolate sense of further triumph. That is the lesson I impart to you, Twilight of Ponyville.


For I have seen the cities that burned, and how those fires lapped like tongues at the works of honest pony hearts. I have seen the day after demolition, when the smoke lingers heavy in the air, and the faces of the damned--hollow, aye, and without the hope that was meant to be an unquenchable fire in their breasts! I myself have destroyed life with magic and with my hammer and with orders signed in my name.


The tragedy that I have seen is overcome. You will feel all things deeply, be a part of them intensely. No time will tear you from the horror of death and the folly of mares. No amount of living will ever dull the agony of despair in the hearts of your comrades and even of strangers. Their fear will scourge you and their jealousy will wound you--their neglect will drive you to the ends of the world and their love will keep you alive.


You will see lives fail. You will feel the hearts around you break under the wheel of time. Helpless, you shall witness cities crumble and decay, and in time perhaps you too will stand upon a battlefield. Like I did at Maldon you will wail and lose dear ones--friends or lovers, parents, siblings, grandchildren--to the blades of vile ponies or even worse things. You will see the darkest corners of every sort of heart. Witness, now, what you think is evil and imagine what you will see in three centuries at least of the world’s moving. Twenty winters are you, but when you are forty the evil in the world doubles, and when you have seen three hundred it will mount until you will have seen everything that can be done, that can be ruined under the sun or the moon.


And then you shall see five hundred, and you will see things then that you would not believe.


My boast begins in that I have seen all and passed through, but my sermon begins with: you too shall overcome. You too shall see these things and unlike me, you shall not fall to the sickness that is unto death. The greatest enemy, the last enemy of our kind, is death itself. The illusion of non-existence.


What is it to be an alicorn? I boast alone in this: that even as generations were ground into dust, we have preserved them in our hearts for eternity, and beyond us they live yet still in the fabric of the universe. In our long living, we shall redeem them by loving life until everything is ash, or until we fall.


And you will be with us.