East of Canterlot, past the Foal Mountain’s icy slopes, past the Hollow Shades, past the verdant farmlands north of Fillydelphia, one finds the Endless Ocean.
It is not, strictly speaking, endless. It is only two thousand miles across, but when the first ponies reached this shore, refugees from the fall of Dream Valley, they had never seen such an expanse of water. It stretched across the horizon, still warm even in the depth of winter, and in its rolling waves they felt the ocean’s inexorable strength, its vastness. They fled from its creeping tides, from the stinging salt spray and the soft sucking sand beneath their hooves. They found other places to build their cities.
Today, ponies no longer fear the ocean. They tread its beaches and fly kites in the constant shore breeze. Foals play in the sand, building castles and watching the waves devour them. They gather seashells and driftwood and imagine they are treasures.
They were treasures, once.
* * *
The ocean’s waters are turbid and opaque. A pony who stands in the waves cannot even see as far as her hooves; the foam and silt conceal them. The water hides all it touches.
Sometimes, ponies will keep swimming, long after the bottom has dropped out beneath their legs. A few hundred yards offshore, the tips of the waves obscure all but the tallest trees back on land. Ponies who swim this far can no longer hear the shouts of foals on the beach. They hear only the churning waves and the cry of gulls overhead.
Some swim further out, a mile now, and only a faint smudge on the horizon remains of the rest of the world, visible when the bobbing waves reach their crest.
Ponies are not renowned as swimmers. Their hooves make for poor paddles, and although their lungs are deep and their endurance endless, they cannot swim forever. Eventually they will sink, and leave behind the air and the land, the sun and the stars, the wind and the light, and they will plunge into the depths. The water around them darkens rapidly. If they look up, they see the surface world fade and disappear, and the sun is a single solitary star flickering between the waves, here and gone, here and gone, and lost.
They are blind in the land of night. The water presses all around them, crushing them with darkness, and they can no longer tell down from up or sense the depths into which they are falling. Nothing remains but the black ocean.
And if they live long enough, as they near the ocean floor, they may see a faint glow tracing the crevices and canyons beneath them. They may see points of light dancing just beyond the reach of their hooves.
Aquastria is the last city of the seaponies, but it is thousands of miles away, off the west coast of Equestria. Out here, offshore to the east, there are no cities anymore. The largest empire to ever exist, sprawling across thousands of leagues beneath the waves, is gone. Only fragments remain, scattered here and there along the ocean bottom or cast like driftwood upon the beaches far away.
Ponies who come here now, who sink to these depths, have found the heart of that lost empire. The lights they see, shimmering all beneath them, are the edges of the Starlight Trench.
* * *
Legends tell of the Tide Queen, the second-to-last ruler of the Starlight Trench and the millions of seaponies who lived within its coral mazes. Hers was a long line, stretching back thousands of years, before terrestrial ponies ceased their migrations and built the first cities on land. Her rule was gentle, the pace of life slow. The seaponies were content, and they lived in harmony with the other races of the deep -- the mermares, the whales, the kelpie, and more.
The queen and her court lived in an enormous palace crafted from mother of pearl, thinner than an eggshell, clear as glass, pregnant with all the colors of the ocean. The castle stretched for miles along the Starlight Trench. Entire cities grew within it, floating amidst forests of kelp and the rocky salt pillars that suspended its high ceilings.
Where once this palace filled the Starlight Trench, only a vast and empty canyon remains. Far below, embedded in the silt, one might find thin shards of nacre, curved like the shell of an egg, so brittle they break at the barest touch. They are all that remain of the palace, and soon even they will be gone, ground into sand or consumed by the snails and worms that crawl through the muck.
* * *
Legends tell of the Tide Queen’s four children -- three daughters and a son.
In her final years, the queen set a challenge for her daughters: whoever could secure the greatest boon for their people in the course of a year would receive the coral crown. The other children must bow to her and acknowledge her as their sovereign.
The eldest daughter, a siren pony whose scales shone like pearls, set out to live amongst the whales. She swam with them for a full year, crossing the ocean from pole to pole, and from them she learned to sing. Her voice filled the waters of the Starlight Trench when she returned, and the Coral Court wept to hear her. In the land of night, no artwork had such a reach as song, and this she taught to her people.
The second daughter, a lionfish pony whose mane was a dozen striped ray fins, swam to the shore. She called up to the pegasi spiraling above, and for a year she lived bobbing on the surface, speaking with them, learning of their world and sharing hers. She brought back to the Coral Court tales of far-off cities made of rock, of ponies like gods who controlled the stars. She was the first ambassador of the seaponies to the walking world, and she laid the first stone in the bridge between the land and the ocean.
The third daughter, a sailfish pony who swam like lightning, sought out the sharks and marlins. She found the fastest fish in all the seas, and she joined their races. For a full year she raced, and when she returned she brought back the spirit of friendly competition. She gathered all the peoples of the seas and founded the first great games to test their skill and strength and to crown a champion.
And so the daughters appeared before their mother the queen and bowed to hear, ready for their coronation. Each was confident that their gift would win them the crown.
And then the son arrived.
He was a barracuda pony, smaller than his sisters, narrow in body and snout, with tiny fins and a wide jaw filled with needles. For the past year he had lived with the mermares, the carnivores who dwelled in uneasy peace with the seaponies. The mermares saw in him a will to power; he saw in them a means to an end. And during the year while his sisters built new friendships and treasures for their people, he plotted. He made pacts, and when his family had at last assembled to select a new queen, he arrived with his army.
The seaponies had never known a king, and the son decided he would not be the first. Instead he styled himself emperor, not merely of the seaponies but of all the ocean. He blinded his sisters, slew his mother, and took her crown for himself.
* * *
Scattered throughout the Starlight Trench are broken statues. There are thousands of them, half-buried in the mud, and there must be thousands more sunk or shattered into pieces too small to discern. In some parts, where the undersea currents are strong enough to sweep away the silt and mud, the statues cobble the floor of the trench, a long road through the darkness, beginning in nothing, ending nowhere.
The statues are all the same: a barracuda pony, his lips twisted in a sneer of cold command, his stone eyes judging the empty wasteland all around.
Some statues are more or less untouched, as though they escaped whatever force had broken their kin. Along their bases are inscribed faded lines in an ancient script, so old and debased that no ponies today, not even other seaponies, can decipher it. Whatever wisdom they once contained is lost.
Not a single inscription is fully intact. Even on the few unbroken statues, those otherwise unblemished, a single word has been obliterated. It is chiselled out, or smashed, or scored, and not in one statue out of the thousands littering the Starlight Trench can this word be read. It has been erased from history.
Aside from the worms and snails and crabs, the statues are the only inhabitants of the Starlight Trench. All the rest is water, and darkness, and dancing points of light, drifting just out of reach.
2890485
2890391
Only for you guys.
...shoo-be-doo, shoo-shoo-be-doo...
Sic semper tyrannis...
And so the Nations of old fell, and Time once more claimed victory for all to see. And the great cities once ripe and bountiful wither to dust in the glare of the sun and the harsh reality that is the moon.
Yet new nations arise and they rejoice, as their accomplishments are awed by thousands. Yet they do not know of the enemy, for Time merely waits upon its ticking throne and awaits the time that it will once again turn all into memories once more.
5102656
Interesting statement, but Time is not a creature that it waits for anything, nor is it an enemy, for it antagonizes none. It merely is.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea —
No heavings hint that winds have been;
On seas less hideously serene.
I almost needed new pants when I saw there was a new chapter. As always, a great read. I love how the story is told with no words and almost nothing but descriptions. Great work! I get chills just imagining the history of these cities.
Have some moustaches:
oh yes.
Magnificent, absolutely magnificent.
5102526
Aw, yiss. And he does not disappoint. Another chapter full of the howls of ghosts who have not yet caught on that time has made none of it matter.
the way you write is almost addictive in nature. if someone were to make a history textbook on equestia's past, I would vote you to be it's writer. the visualizations are incredible, and its almost like i can smell the place you are describing. write on my friend.
Not to presure you or anything, but you you should totally do a chapter for Tambelon. That would be sweet!
And as punishment, the great goddess Faust turned him into a human and banished him to live in Russia, where he took the name Vladimir Putin.
5102682 I am fond of saying that it's not that the Universe doesn't care about humanity, it's that it's incapable of caring.
People have this tendency to anthropomorphize everything, even abstract concepts.
While it's occasionally interesting to use as a metaphor or dramatic device in literature, it's not meant to be taken as a factual concept.
Some, invariably, make that mistake.
wow.
I like the Ozymandias references at the end. I'm really glad that you're (sort of) expanding this - these little snapshots capture the imagination like little else.
Hehe, the Driftwood Emperor.
Was that a Game Of Thrones/Song Of Ice And Fire reference, or just coincidental?
5105786
Just coincidence, though I do enjoy the series.
5102682 It's a metaphor. Ever heard of it? The story is full of them.
Barracudas can't be trusted; all vicious serial killers.
Great update, and I really like the idea of the different types of seaponies.
Reminds me of Rameses II, though much wetter. Also, it's pretty certain that ////////'s name was what they scratched out.
The mood for these extra chapters is great! A very heavy atmosphere, though the water pressure probably adds to that somewhat.fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/354/7/8/applejack_underwater_by_martinhello-d5olnny.png
Dammit, now I can't get that song out of my head...
(I bet he burned, burned, burned, burned to the wick.)
Also: Lord Dunsany, "In Zaccareth."
5108061
I know what a metaphor is, but it sound more like anthropormorphizing to me
5116349 It's a common-ish metaphor, very similar to the one for water. Water and time, they always win. They just have to wait. And they have all the time in the world.
Did they chisel out his name in revulsion of what he'd done, or was there a word so dangerous that it couldn't be allowed to exist?
So... the one male of the bunch was automatically excluded from rulership, by sole virtue of being male? Can't really blame him for being ticked off.
This was good (no surprise there), but it felt... different from the rest, even the other undersea chapter. Maybe because the seaponies don't have the same connection to the Equestria of Canterlot and Ponyville we know from the show. Is this empire, or its descendants, somewhere you plan to return?
5116368
Please don't patronize me. I know exactly what the metaphor is. The point is, in case you haven't gotten it yet, that it was written in a manner that anthropomorphized it. And you are slipping close to that as well. Water and Time simply are, they don't wait for anything.
5120466
Blinks.
And why is anthropomorphism in a comment on a site dedicated to fiction bad?
If this was Science Central, you might have a point. But this (going back to the original comment) is a comment that tries to evoke grandness and the inevitability of entropy, for a story that is about grand images and inevitability of entropy, on a site where everything is focused around fictional technicolor equines. I fail to see the issue.
Not trying to put you down personally, mind, just curious as to why the comment comes off as bad to you.
5141494
Because it's making Time out to be some sort of villain, lurking ready to destroy things when time is simply a measure of change. There's really no reason at all to anthromorphize time except to perhaps to rage at it. The person who wrote the words then proceed to try and tell me it was a metaphor, which it wasn't really. There's no intent behind time, things just don't last. It's the way things work, not some evil entity ensuring that things otherwise eternal will crumble.
You need a good reason to anthropomorphize things, particularly ones which are not sentient and which frankly are, to some degree, forces of the universe, a gear in the mechanism.
Like I said before your stories are so fabulously eloquent!
As well as sorta sad.
Evert thought about moving away from ponies? Gryphons or minotaur's would be neat.
5112971
"And only the other day I found a stone that had undoubtedly been a part of Zaccarath, it was three inches long and an inch broad; I saw the edge of it uncovered by the sand. I believe that only three other pieces have been found like it."
I'd love to read about a lost changeling hive.
5371936 I'll second that. Marvelous writing. The following chapters are good, but the first four are better and this is the apex. Hauntingly beautiful.
I listened to Illya Leonov's reading, and I don't think anyone else could have done justice to your wonderfully descriptive scenes.
Keep up the good work!
Wow. This was absolutely breathtaking. You are the god of world-building through narrative. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a story that didn't have a single line of dialogue like this so much. Brilliant work.
Another great piece. I'm reminded heavily of another great story, "Statistics" in the way the unconventional storytelling is accomplished. That one uses numbers to color in the perimeters of a story, and the reader fill in the rest. Here, you use empty cities to show us the outline of their missing occupants and histories. It was, overall, executed brilliantly. The one exception was the Seapony chapter, wherein you lapse into recounting a legend directly (becoming a story in and of itself) rather than the more detached view the rest of the piece has. Still good, but I think it broke form slightly.
5118882 Yes, that certainly well justifies taking the throne by violence and exercising all its power in oppression!
… Oh wait.
No, he could have at least made an honest attempt at showing how remarkable his own creative achievements could be. Choosing destruction instead, he was rightly destroyed utterly.
5743714
I forget the exact date, but it was added before I came back from Afghanistan. No later than mid-September, in other words.
I am so glad that I finally read this collection. Each story is haunting yet enrapturing, the tragic beauty of ruins captured in prose. Thank you for it.
Swamped in updates as I have been, it took me a while to notice that you added two new chapters here. Very nice, both of them. The frozen city one previously appeared in a blog, if I'm not mistaken? I recall reading it before, but apparently not on the story itself. But the second one is definitely new to me. Very much like the Ozymandias reference. I'm not much of one for poetry, but that was always one of my favourites. The struck out word, which I'm assuming is his name, was a nice touch. I'm also always happy to see authors making use of secondary canon, so good show there, too.
"...and that is why stallions are not allowed to hold power in Equestria."
Whoa... Amazing, eloquent, and I love it!!
Really creepy description of drowning.
5616868 Statistics was one of the first pony stories to really impress me.
Beautiful.
F'naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Anyone ever hear about the Deplorable Word from Narnia? It was a single, magic word, that when spoken, would kill everything, exept the person who said it. I am assuming the scratched out word is a single word, that evoke suck fear, that when the emperor died, they erased the word from history.
The contents of this story have now been incorporated into my headcanon.
You are awesome and you should feel awesome.
The term for that punishment actually is obliteration, literally "striking out what is written". The person who is sentenced to obliteration is not only executed if they're still alive, but every mention of their name in any record is destroyed, erasing them as if they'd never existed. Often the spoken name is also declared anathema, so they can only be spoken of in by reference ("the nameless one", "the former ruler", "the faceless", etc).
Obliteration is traditionally accompanied by effacement (literally "removing the face") -- every image of the person is destroyed, sometimes completely, other times leaving the statue, mural, or relief intact, but with the face chiseled out.
The end result of obliteration is that, when the last person who remembers the victim has died, they have been purged from history. Everything they did, forgotten; everything they made, uncredited; everything they were, gone forever.