A Truth Comes to Light: Myriadess
The flash of white that filled Ancepanox’s vision was followed by an intense, ethereal emptiness, and she was once again overwhelmed by the feeling of falling. However it was not so much of a physical feeling than a mental one, like her mind was slipping through the cracks of the world. The feeling of disconnect was so intense that for a moment she believed Myriadess had killed her, but eventually things came into fleeting focus.
She was in a world of soft light and color, detached from any sensation but one of, ironically enough, detachment. She recognized the realm by description.
"This place... This is the Dreamscape, but..."
Celestia had explained the Deeper Dreamscape with poetic accuracy in her lessons.
All around Ancepanox's point of conciousness were motes of glowing thought, floating slowly. Most of them she looked at filled her with alien sensations of animalistic hunger, fear, or anger, surely the dreams of the monsters of the Everfree. In the far distance she saw more familiar minds belonging to the Ponyvillians, apprehensive for the most part, troubled by worry for the future.
Nearer than them was a spreading mass of black, tangling and twisting around the sinners’ minds, and reaching out for four innocent minds. Ancepanox was saddened to see that the hold the nightmare had on Applejack and Dash extended past the physical world, though she made a grave mistake by not paying closer attention and seeing that it was a unicorn with a heart full of hate from which that black intent was spreading.
If she was more single-minded in her search for knowledge she needn't have looked so far afield, for it was clear Myriadess had intended her to look at the dreamers closest to her. One was supremely exotic, a raging ball of red fire barely contained by twisting black vines. The other was her own, a soft purple glow, which regarded her with the same prying curiosity that she applied to it.
“Welcome to the realm of absolute abstraction. In practice, the dreams are infinitely close together, with no room between them. Seeing the space between them is very difficult for most creatures, though the sufficiently powerful can use it to various ends. You know that, surely.” The voice of Myriadess was a momentary string of word and concept linking her mote to Ancepanox’s. It was an odd thing to see from an outside perspective, the two flecks of dream connecting. Ancepanox had the revelation that Astral Nacre and other psychic creatures communicated the same way.
“That's my... my dream?" Ancepanox wondered.
"It is the shell of one, the 'housing' if you will. If you had a dream, that is where it would be." Myriadess explained.
Perhaps it was the absurdity and sureallness of it all, but Ancepanox took a while to process and respond that claim. "What?"
"You lack a dream, viscountess. It was taken from you."
"I- I have a dream. Of course I have a dream." Ancepanox objected. "Who could have taken-" She stopped. "Forlorn Spark."
"Indeed. The dream you lived your life with now belongs to another. As they wear your body, so too your soul. They are you, viscountess, more than you are you." Myriadess said solemnly. "What you have is a placeholder. Mortals can not survive without dreams, but they do not form spontaneously. They are deep expressions of concepts greater than even the pony who bears them."
"And how, praytell, did I get a 'placeholder' dream." Anceapnox demanded.
"I do not know. One of the Celestiaan sisters could have given it to you, to stave off the insanity a dreamless mortal descends into. I doubt you fashioned it yourself but I do not deny the possibility."
"Great load of wisdom you're providing so far. Good job." Ancepanox said sarcastically. She observed how brillient the mote of Myriadess was a rose fire imprisoned in the bristling bush. Alicorns and greater being didn't have dreams, allegedly. Myriadess's intrusion into the Dreamscape was temporary, while all the mortal dreams around them would float eternal. "Are we here just for this?"
“A more cynical pony might accuse me of showing off by bringing you here. Yet I have no reason to brag; I know that as soon as one takes a broader look I am just a soul in a lavish box.” Myriadess brooded. “We can continue as soon as you are willing.”
“Continue to where?” Ancepanox wasn’t even sure how to move in the recondite domain.
“To shallower water, as it were.” Myriadess elaborated. “I have always held that there is nary a better place for a learn than within your own mind.”
How did somepony enter their own mind? Wasn’t that where they always were? Ancepanox was feeling a bit sour based on the initial encounter with Myriadess, but nothing dealbreaking. "You want me to go into my own dream? My 'temporary' dream?"
"I do. Do you not wish to understand it better?"
Ancepanox did. By calling upon the same patterns of magic that would have let her enter a pony’s dream from the physical world, she slipped back through the cracks in the dreamscape's meta-reality.
It was a strange place that Ancepanox now found herself immersed in, familiar yet unfamiliar. It was best described as a
cathedral library, a million books with everything she had ever thought or seen. It reminded her most of Twilight Sparkle’s old tower at Canterlot Castle, though with many more floors opening into an atrium down it’s center. Ancepanox could see all the way to the pinnacle ceiling of the structure a marvelous glass dome, the ceiling around which was painted, most curiously, with the imagery of two snakes consuming each others tail.
However she was not alone in the grand library. In fact she was surrounded by ponies, mostly in the image of Twilight Sparkle, each wearing a different color or style of garment, engaged in scholarly pursuits and going about their business reading or moving the tomes of her life’s events. Some of them, she noticed, were maligned by darker fur on some or all of their bodies, a fact none of the others seemed to notice.
At the corners of the the grand cathedral were ominous specters of black alicorns, some mirror images of Ancepanox, some without the familiar blue steel armor, and some made of black smoke with a dozen eyes. They were reading and transcribing as well, though with much less enthusiasm, preferring to wander up and down the aisles and fly between floors or watching silently what everypony else was doing. While the little Twilights were not bothered by the ghastly visions of Moon, Forlorn Spark, and her twisted self, the alicorns seemed to actively avoid the Twilights with the darker fur. It was a society to itself, reflecting something about the dream Ancepanox could not begin to guess.
“To find a pony’s mind to be a library is less common than you might imagine.” A growing patch of heat and light bloomed next to Ancepanox, becoming a floating tangle of vines the size of a pony’s head, holding up a burning red eye. Myriadess’s voice was less echoing and slightly more feminine than had been perceived in the antechamber or in the Deeper Dreamscape. “It seems to be linked to what they value in life. I have seen memories growing strong in a field in the mind of a farmer, and a never ending opera of life in the mind of a performer. Celestia’s dream was a empty, sunlit plain, her past the pale ground below her and her future streaming down from the heavenly sun. Her sister’s was cloudy even a century before her rebellion when I felt it, a grey planet sprouting black towers of her knowledge.”
"Do you know what my original dream was?" Ancepanox asked.
"No."
Then what good are you, Ancpeanox wondered in a flash of annoyance. "Does this place still connect to me? Are these my memories?” Ancepanox observed at the cathedral around her for a while. It was so clearly a reflection of Twilight Sparkle in some fashion.
“Yes and no. ” The black vines flailed around the space in a sweeping gesture. “The Dreamscape is the realm most directly linked to the mental energies of the physical world. They affect each other to a great degree, and that is why sleeping ponies walk it in their dreams. Some ponies think that this realm, at it’s deepest and most pure, was the start of all sentience in the world.”
The burning eye could see Ancepanox had become impatient. “Oh, but you already know all of this. The benefits of one of the finest educations in the world, I suppose.”
“I’ve been here so often over the last few months I might as well buy real estate here.” Ancepanox joked emptilly. “It’s gotten to be an effortless transition.”
“But this is no mere dream, young viscountess. This is the dream for you, an insight and a window to the soul, temporary though one may label it, it still acts as your consciousness's footprint in this realm.” Myriadess said. “It is obvious there are discrepancies, however. With how rarely you have been dreaming of late it has not fully adjusted to represent who you are.”
“I have to physically sleep to connect to this place? Are you sure?” Ancepanox questioned, dodging the scholar Twilights as they trotted by, oblivious to everything except their work. “How does that all work?"
“Such a place exists for every creature that can sleep in the way mortals do, resting their minds, opening them for the energies of the dreamscape connect with their magical soul. In waking the connection is not severed fully, and in magical circumstances swell to match that of sleep."
Some of that was old news to Ancepanox, and some of it was new. "When alicorns sleep they don't open their minds? That's why they don't have dreams?"
The red eye did it’s best to nod in the affirmative. "The dreamscape reaches out to the dreamer. The relationship of the alicorn to the dreamscape can not be easily explained. Put simplistically, your statement is correct. For example I do not dream, nor can I affect dreams any way except by what the dreamer perceives of me. You saw that I am cut off from this realm. Through communication with you, I change this scene by proxy.”
"Listen, I have all day. I want that nitty gritty detail." Ancpeanox pressed. "What is it about alicorns that keep them from dreaming? And why did Celestia and her sister break that rule?"
Myriadess was still and silent for a long while. "The soul of an alicorn is already made of energies similar to the dreamscape. What is a gift to mortals is inherent to alicorns, simply part of their consciousness."
"But I could say dreams are inherent to ponies, mortals. How is it different?"
Myriadess was getting more reluctant to explore this topic. "As your experience has proven, mortals can lose and change their dream in traumatic moments. That can not occur to an alicorn. It would destroy or decay them awfully. The things a dream is, specific aspiration, purpose, and drive, can be removed from mortals but not alicorns."
"Decay them... destroy them..." Ancpeanox trotted in a little circle as she thought this over. “I think I understand.”
SHe took advantage of the lull to scrutinize her guide in more detail. She had thought that the vines around the burning eye of Myriadess were a part of her form, but with closer attention she saw that assumption was wrong. The red eye was in visible agony, pierced and torn by the thorns of it’s brambly prison. She wondered if the vision she’d seen in the antechamber, the innumerable eyes born aloft by the vines, wasn’t more a scene of a torture, each eye being held up like a fresh heart torn from a victim.
“You have a grave look about you.” Myriadess appraised.
“I'm just thinking.” Ancepanox shook away the gruesome mental digression. “Let’s get on with it. Tell me everything.”
“Very well. Allow me to regale you with the storied mythology of my kind. Listen very well, young viscountess. I fear that I may only make this elucidation once…
The First Cycle: The First Giver
In the beginning of the world, there were two entities fundamentally opposed.
Calling them entities would misrepresent them. They were concepts, but more than that. They were absolutes, everything.
There was that which came to be known as the Giver. He was a creature who possessed all the energy in this primeval world, in all it’s forms. He thought all possible thoughts, and he dreamed all possible dreams. All magic and potential for being existed within him. He was comprised of two smaller, forces: Will and Destiny. He was a god in the truest sense of the word, though he had only one follower to lord over.
For there was the Have-not. He was form, base matter, and nothing else, utterly inert, but existing in his own way. He had no will, and he had no destiny, for those were both possessed within the Giver. The Have-not existed, but did nothing else. He did not live, nor did he have a soul. Though he was everything physical, he was empty.
The Giver saw the plight of his fellow entity. Possessing within himself all possible dispositions towards Have-not, Giver was momentarily driven by generosity, and he decided to give up part of his essence. His his generous side, championed by more altruistic and empathetic force of Destiny, volunteered to be the one given to the unfortunate Have-not, along with every positive and good aspect Giver could think of. He wanted Have-not to be truly uplifted.
Before I go on there is something you must understand, young viscountess. The fundamental forces were not aligned as they were before this moment. All things existed within Giver, complementary with or negating each other. Will and Destiny were devoid of attachment to aspects of emotion or function. The forces were pure.
But when Giver bundled up his gift to Have-not, leaving himself with Will and the aspects that wanted to stay, a great change occurred. The aspects of jealousy, pride, and arrogance, among others, overwhelmed Giver without their foils. With the gift still in his outstretched palm, Giver wanted it all back.
But within the Giver and within the gift there were aspects who did not want to go back. The more Giver tried to force it, the closer he crushed the forces and the aspects together, until they were fused within himself and the aborted gift.
The Light was formed within the gift. It held within itself the force of Destiny, and such aspects as authority, truth, and giving. Unable to take back what was once his, Giver threw away the gift in anger, and the Light spilled out into the unformed world. Have-not was ambivalent; He had no faculties to be anything but.
The Dark was forged within the desperate Giver. Bound by the force of Will, Dark held within itself the aspects individuality, progress, evolution, and taking, and so many other, less pleasant things. Enraged by his inability to take back the light and return to perfection, Giver decided to curse the world with the wretched Darkness that bloomed within him. He made a second gift, placed within it the Dark. Then, having given away everything that he was, he dissolved into nothing.
Thus ended the first cycle of the world.
The Second Cycle: Commencement of the Gods.
The energies of Light and Dark were spilled over the empty world.
From the Light there came a magnificent, radiant being, nearly as divine as the Giver. This infant consciousness was everything the Giver had wanted for Have-not, but he lacked form. His name, as he is known to ponykind, was Wintertide the Pale Flame.
Wintertide was born into a world that he believed contained only himself and the idle, soulless Have-not, so he created company for himself: Countless children, made of pure Light as he was, to enjoy existance with. I was likely among them, in some form. Wintertide ruled absolutely over the force of Destiny and the associated aspects. He knew not of the opposite energy of Dark, that had fallen beside him. He had no way of even comprehending it.
Something came forth from the Dark too, you see, a creature too horrible to comprehend, never having ever known the touch of the Light but still possessing a godly power. Anima Astral Nacre, the Black Flame, so mired in Dark was compelled by the force of Will she was born from, and created a race of underlings to match Wintertide. She could feel nothing but the darkest intention for the children of the Light. She was incapable of doing otherwise.
The inevitable first conflict between them was almost comically psychotic. The children of Light and Dark were sordid fragments with only the barest sanity needed to function. What was bravery without recklessness, or justice without punishment? Astral Nacre’s single minded assaults against her foe destroyed them both.
The war destroyed not only the gods. The Have-not was fractured and scattered across the world, polluting the emptiness of the space with the emptiness of his soulless form. Matter and energy were now loose in the cosmos.
The Thousand Cycles
However the primeval souls could not be kept unformed. Lord Wintertide and his children were reborn, and so too was Astral Nacre and hers. Every time they regained their power, they repeated the same mistakes they had before; They had no other choice. Again and again, the gods of Light and Dark slaughtered each other, too evenly matched for there to be a victor. I do not remember this time very well, for unlike Wintertide or Astral the memories of we children decayed every cycle. The pain, however, I recall very well.
Without our realising, something mystical was happening with each passing cycle of destruction. Every time the lifeblood of the gods was spilled, and they returned to unformed and unconscious Light and Dark, a slight mixing occurred. The children of Light were tainted gradually by Dark, and the children of Dark were stained by Light. We changed, filling out as consciousness, becoming less neurotic, but also less pure.
Over a thousand iterations this mixing also extended to the world around us. Our energy diluted and diffused into the world’s form, giving it magic, heat, life and soul. Every cycle, when more energy was spilled, more was absorbed into the the universe. The earth came more and more alive.
Form, in turn, started seeping more and more into us gods. We gained form at the same rate that we gave the world Light and Dark, Destiny and Will. We became solid, able to harm each other at both the physical and magical levels.
The Ancient Alicorns
At the beginning of the thousandth cycle, the distinctions had been thoroughly muddied, but not quite erased. Astral Nacre was not as mindlessly hateful and vicious, and Wintertide was not so naive. They realized that if they let the conflict consume them again they would lose their supremacy over the world, and that was a detail they were both able to appreciate. A truce was forged, and to solidify the new agreement Wintertide and Astral were wed.
Wintertide and Astral faced a new paradigm: A world dominated by form. They had not noticed how creatures had grown and evolved. They had not even noticed the genesis of the planets, the cosmos, or the Sun and Moon, so focused had they been on the war. So with a new promise of tomorrow, they set out to tame their universe.
Energy, ebbing, flowing passing through the plane world of matter, had forged a new type of entity: Life. Plants, animals, microbes, titans… Opening our eyes to this reality was a shock. In our determination to annihilate each other, we gods had lost a certain measure of our uniqueness in the universe.
The physical bodies of the gods had grown in varying and odd ways by their gradual formation. Wintertide and Astral set out to tame they bizarre menagerie that their prodigy had become, and so they learned to manipulate form, and designed an archetype for themselves.
The ancient alicorns were not how you understand the idea of an alicorn today. The number of eyes, wings, tentacles, and even heads varied greatly from one to the other. As long as it had at least four legs, or in some occasions three legs and pseudopod, it was perfect as far as Wintertide and Astral were concerned. I personally was a bat-winged lion with a burning red mane but the head of a snail, with a hundred red eye-stocks.
The new race of gods were a far cry from the omnipotence of the Giver, but we were still superior to the other creatures of the world. The zebras, griffins, ponies, and hippogryphs were all struggling to begin their civilizations, and from time to time we visited them. For the large part, we stayed within our small but great nation. Most of us were content to exist without threat of destruction. It was a largely uneventful, but mercifully peaceful, existence.
End of the Ancient Alicorns
Anima Astral Nacre, however, was not happy with the constraints of her existance. She desired nothing more than to return to absolute divinity now that she had the faculties to enjoy it. Nor was she happy for having to compromise with Wintertide, for she coveted power over others. Outwardly she acted civilly, but inwardly she dreamed of resuming her crusade against Light despite that it pervaded within her as well. She started looking for opportunities to attain her goals.
Anima Astral Nacre somehow invoked a great entity of deceit and treachery. It was a powerful Dark creature that had been born separate from the races of gods, which we called demons to distinguish them from our own. With him, she created a master plan to destroy her husband and the children of Light.
She presented a ritual, by which the gods would give up their power in mimicry of the Giver, and in so doing transcend back to godhood. The deceit of this plan was immediately apparent to some, but enough fell for the ruse that Astral would have easily overpowered the rest.
But the new divine power went wild, defying Anima Astral Nacre's intentions for it. The power she rough raged, tearing apart Astral's demon ally, then blew apart the refuge of the alicorns. All the children of Light and Dark tried to confront and subdue the maelstrom, but all where destroyed. Abruptly then, after uncountable time at war, and eons again at peace, the Ancient Alicorns were no more.
The Interregnum
With the ravaging of the ancient alicorns, the calamitous power Astral had created was calmed somewhat, sealed up by an amalgamate of our corpses. Since it was formed from both Light and Dark, and both the children of Light and Dark had died to seal it away, the divine energy assumed a position of balance between the two. This power, this force, was in essence a realization of total harmony. It has been called such throughout history. Harmony.
This Harmony was a shockingly new, for never had anything possessed Light and Dark in equal peace since the Giver. Wintertide and Anima Astral Nacre agreed that the new harmonious power had to be hidden, lest the world realize that they had been made obsolete, an amusing fear considering they faced their demise. Secretly Astral was pleased that she had succeeded in recreating true divinity.
Alas we race of gods was all but dead. Those that had not been tricked into giving up their power to Astral’s ruse were now bereft of their alicorn forms. We had grown dependent on physicality to continue to manifest ourselves in the world, and with our bodies destroyed our souls began to fade into static. Our hegemony was over.
Here I came into some noteworthiness. I fled our ruined nation of ghosts, searching for anybody who could help me before oblivion overtook my orphaned soul. I wandered into the fledgling hippogryph civilization, who I had visited several times before, and there I found a mortal willing to create a vessel for me.
Prince Cadmirzan, lord of Mardia, welcomed me as a friend and committed the resources of his principality to construct a new vessel for me. The result of many iterations and experiments was a platinum orb of unrivaled perfection, painted with the ichor of crushed roses, that housed my consciousness perfectly.
As a condition of this gift, Cadmirzan asked that I lend him a part of my power until his death. He hid me inside his sarcophagus, so that I would be let free when it was opened for his burial. Little did I know that I had been tricked, and Cadmirzan had already made identical covenants with my siblings, the other orphan children of Light. He had a whole temple full of sarcophagi and platinum orbs.
When Cadmirzan attempted to harness all of our magic simultaneously, the power overwhelmed Cadmirzan and his body was burned to cinders, turning him into a lich. Reviled for his despicable transformation, he was overthrown by his court. The maredians discovered their old rulers secret, and instead of freeing us they extended our imprisonment.
The Fires of the Gryph, they called us, hundreds of us entombed in as many exquisite sarcophagi. My father Wintertide, listless in his defeat, was lured by our aura. He was too faded to resist their trap, and was bound as we were to serve as a figurehead for the new theocratic regime. Our collective fire spurred a fire within the race of the hippogryphs, granting them unnatural magical aptitude and control of pyromancy.
And so we languished for centuries. Despite our near deific status, the hippogryphs prefered to worship the shells that imprisoned us rather than face the more pitiful reality of our existence. Some of us were embittered, and my father Wintertide in particular began to court dark thoughts. I remained upbeat, willing to give advice and wisdom to hippogryphs I found intriguing, if only to stave off encroaching madness.
My brothers-and-sisters-in-law, the children of Dark, fared far worse than we children of Light. A great many perished in the shell of our old home or in the wild places of the earth, unwilling to seek help from others. Not all were so blinded by pride, and they found refuge among isolated tribes in dark corners of the earth. Wherever mortals had discovered the ability to smelt pure platinum, a Dark One could be found. Their vessels were never as fine as the ones Cadmirzan created for the Fires of the Gryph, and over the eons the children of Dark diffused into their followers.
The more clever and powerful of the Dark Ones realized that there was another way for them. Hunting was not something unfamiliar to the alicorns, and indeed it was a sport to some of the more sinister of us to chase down and consume the souls of mortals.
Astral Nacre, the Black Flame, found that the hunt allowed her bodiless soul to live indefinitely. She and two of her children, the infamous savages Wuleai and Ankou, roamed the world as specters devouring whomever they wished. At some point, they began to experiment, and reversed the spell to force their souls on others. They could take over vessels of flesh, becoming parasitic dreams within the races of sentient mortals. The Dark is linked with the Dreamscape, and the Dreamscape holds the mysteries of mortal consciousness. You know what it is like to have a Dark One try to steal your body through your dreams. In a way too, Anima Astral Nacre and her twin sons became the first nightmares.
Years passed, and Anima Astral Nacre began her next project. Astral used that nightmare power possess the most gifted dragon smith in the world, named Sojourn. Sojourn was a stunted creature, lacking in the might of his kin, but marvelously clever. He lived away from the others, in the cave systems under the Smokey Mountain. I do not know if he welcomed Astral into his heart to further his power, or if she conquered him, but in either case Astral had control enough to used him to craft great vessels for her twin sons to inhabit.
Out of the Dark child we called Wuleai, a purveyor of destructive conflict, Astral and Sojourn crafted tools of war that would brand his will onto any who used it. Made in the style of the east, it was lacquered lamellar armor and a broad sword, painted black.
She gave the tools as a gift to a unicorn tribe in Equestria, and Wuleai gave them the power to forge a new dynasty. They named themselves in his honor as Blackhorns, and named him their eternal prince, the Black Lord. Over the generations Wuleai’s soul faded, but his madness remained within the ponies of that line.
Out of the Dark child we called Ankou, patron of deadly despair, Astral and Sojourn forged an amulet of deceptive theavery. Platinum, ruby diamond, and chrome it was made of, hammered and shaped into Astral’s profile: an alicorn.
It granted the wearer incredible Dark power at the cost of the progressive decay of the soul and mind. If exposed too long, the wearer of this Alicorn’s Amulet would be entirely consumed by it. Initially Astral intended the amulet for the hippogryphs, to provide them an idol to turn them away from the Fires of the Gryph. However it was misplaced, and did not resurface until centuries later in Chitin. Spurred by Ankou and the Alicorn Amulet, great empires rose and fell, until the amulet was lost in the depths of a ruined city, or even deeper still into the evil pits mortals built for themselves
For her own vessel, Astral strained the limits of Sojourn’s ability. Through him she constructed a masterful new body that could bear the burden of her soul. It was a replica of a unicorn pony, the mechanical made in the image of the flesh. That synthetic mortal came to be known as the Dark Lady.
The three vessels complete, Astral Nacre planned her next moves. She kept Sojourn as her thrall and tasked him to forge an even more perfect body, something to return to her the grandeur and power she enjoyed as an alicorn. But the machine would not be ready for many generations, so Astral wandered off with the Platinum God, and joined the society of the ancient Equestrians.
Oh Astral. I did care for her dearly during the time she was wed to my father Wintertide. Indelibly clever, undeniably sinister, she was the step-mother that could liberate or oppress we children of Light with the slightest murmur. While we were united in one nation we believed she would use her powers for our common benefit, only to victimize the mortals. Alas we were arrogant and blind. By the end you shall know she escaped the eons much profited by her endless deceptions.
Life went on in the world. Demons became more dangerous without the alicorns to keep them in check, but the mortal civilizations rose to the challenge, advancing to new levels of science and magic that we had never needed. All in all, the world had survived the death of the gods infuriatingly well. They did not realize what Dark things still hung over them.
The birth of the Twisted Sinner
One day, in one of the petty principalities of old Equestria, in what is now known as the Frozen North, a unicorn was born. She was intelligent, kind, and very magically adept. Her family was unremarkable, except that the firstborn of every generation was female. Her name was Clover.
She apprenticed under the sorcerer Starswirl, who was still quite young and conventional at the time. After completing her education she served as court magician, advisor, and lackey for the Platinum Princesses, playing a pivotal role in the great migration of the Equestrian tribes south away from the advancing ice after the end of the pre-classical warm period. As the Equestrians began to settle the new land today's Equestria, she rejoined her old teacher Starswirl just in time for the zenith of his creativity and ability.
Deep within Starswirl’s Mountain laboratory and arcanum, they two hammered out discovery after discovery and spell after spell. They pushed the limits of conventional spellcrafting, sometimes venturing into arts considered taboo by the established academia in order to find truth.
The years began to take their toll on the couple. Starswirl accepted his aging gracefully, but Clover was devastated by the loss of her youth. She feared that her mind was next, and sought out a deeper understanding of life in order to stop the decay that time wrought on her.
Clover's search started out small, but soon expanded into questionable areas. She traveled the world extensively collecting artifacts of past ages, hoping that the relics of the ancient alicorns would allow her to glean some insight. Slowly but surely she began to piece together the ancient knowledge, discovering the legacy of the Ancient Alicorns and our fate. She attempted and failed to reach the Fires of the Gryph, but uncovered many other fragments of the alicorns, mostly old totems in isolated heathen villages, once the vessels of Dark children. She even discovered the origin of the Black Lord, heirloom of the Blackhorns who presided over Canterlot just outside Starswirl's Arcanum.
Just when she thought she had found all there was to be found, and that her search would be ended in vain, Clover met the lich Cadmirzan residing in the darkened underbelly of some Roanish colony. Cadmirzan, ancient and seemingly immortal, was seeming confirmation that the energy of the divine could allow mortals to surpass their earthly bonds. The old lich lent Clover his collection of texts he had collected over his many centuries of unlife. Among them was a blasphemous black book, dedicated to the Dark and its power, written by a Dark god. Clover, upon seeing this, was struck by a feeling of recognition. When she read it her eyes barely focused on the words at all, for she already knew every part by heart.
For you see centuries previous, when Anima Astral Nacre had gone to old Equestria in pony form, she found herself subject to the more mortal of the Dark emotions, particularly desire. By the time her body died she had dozens of new, mortal children. The firstborn became her new vessel, and so too did the firstborn’s firstborn, and so on for many generations until Clover. When Clover saw the blasphemous book ancient ancestor Anima Astral Nacre, the Black Flame, was reawakened.
Clover returned to Starswirl with her answers. She introduced him to the Dark, a force swirling through their dreams yet unrecognized, and Starswirl was dazzled by its untapped power. He saw the potential for the greatest magical advances ever made, and possibly a new world of where ponies embodied the example of the Giver with equal Light and Dark in Harmony. His idealism led him astray, when Clover asked him to help her study the Dark in depth.
Anima Astral Nacre would not be content standing by, and began to assert herself against Clover more and more. The stream of discoveries was no longer enough for the scholar, and she began to lose sight of the world around her. She had eyes only for the goal, 'ultimate' truth, which Astral began to gradually pull farther away from her. Starswirl was too enamored with the Dark to see what it was doing to his friend, and followed Clover all the way to the pinnacle of the search.
In order to truly pry into the nature of magic and reality, they had to confront it with it’s every facet. Clover and Starswirl discovered that the innate force of will within the Dark asserted itself uniquely against every race, and that by distributing a spell pattern across multiple races they could fill the gap of any one of them. At the pinnacle of that work was a spell of unparalleled intimacy, that could alter form and consciousness on a level even the alicorns had lacked.
The Ritual, it was simply called by most. What more need it be called? It was THE ritual, the only one worth speaking of. The ritual would allow Clover and Starswirl to bend the whole spectrum of magic in whatever way they desired. Clover had a very specific purpose in mind for it.
With the ritual, the duo launched into their darkest work yet: Experiments on ponies, trying to perfect with magic where biology had failed. It is likely you could find their failures even today in the deepest dankest depths of the Vacuous Arcanum, misbegotten ponies and half-formed demigods.
Clover found that ponies sharing similar blood to her own, those tainted with godly ancestry, were the best foci and catalysts for the ritual. Her disciples scoured the land for such ponies, abducting and hauling whole families into the Mountain.
At first there were only a few successes, but once the method was perfected, every test produced a viable specimens. Nascent alicorns, hundreds of them, imprinted with absolute devotion to their creators, were manufactured en masse. The Mountain, which had once been a beacon of eccentric but fantastical learning, had turned into a menhir of Dark despair.
As if things were not bleak enough, Anima Astral Nacre’s immortal thrall Sojourn resurfaced from the gloom under the crags of the Smoky Mountain. He went to Clover and announced that he was nearing completion on the great weapon that Astral had tasked him with. The platinum alicorn, a machine to conquer the world, had only to be taken to the Mountain and bound to Clover’s will. Thereafter Anima Astral Nacre would return to near-omnipotence.
The Celestiaan
The children of Wintertide during the second cycle had the vaguest awareness of something with them in the formless world. The last vestiges of the Giver and his gift evolved along a different path from the gods, their Light and Dark staying dormant through the birth of Wintertide and Astral, and the first deaths of them and their children.
These last vestiges, forgotten scraps of energy that did not take on life, became something else, the centers of the new Sun and Moon: Not communal entities as became the children of Dark and Light, but vast enclosed monoliths, that despite their great power did not assert themselves onto the world. As matter and energy began to dilute more and more over the cycles, that began to change.
After the destruction of the ancient alicorns, the Sun and Moon came into their own as the great overseers of this planet. Distant, inexplicable, yet closer than anyone could imagine, the Sun and Moon have their aura wrapped tight around the Bright World.
An aside, viscountess, do not trifle with the power of the Sun and Moon. Do not take them lightly. They are immense, past all comprehending, and you are so very tiny. Even Anima Astral Nacre could not oppose them, granted she was hobbled, but they were billions of hooves distant.
And to that opposition, you see, you will discover the first time the Sun and Moon began to assert themselves on the world more directly. When Anima Astral Nacre took hold of Clover and reached the conclusion of her ultimate machinations, those celestial entities reached out.
Perhaps a mortal summoned them, beseeching the unknown to stop Astral's victory. Perhaps they took initiative themselves by their inscrutable motivations. The results, whatever the cause, were new gods.
Two divine sisters, the daughters of the celestial, the Celestiaan. At first they did not at all resemble what visages they settled into, appearing to anyone who saw them as amorphous and ever-shifting souls. They found the archetype of the ancient alicorns fit them best: Four legs, wings, and a horn. Interestingly, they chose to appear pony-like, though that their main threat was in Equestria likely contributed to that decision.
The elder of them wielded the Light of her mother Sun. She was overbearing and stern, but magnanimous when it was called for. She was blinded by her own brilliance, and was unwilling to tolerate or give any quarter to the Dark. She was the demigod who came to be known as Celestia the First.
The younger of them lived within the Dark, but all anypony could see of her was the little amount of Light she had, a pale reflection of her sister’s glory. Such with her patron moon, yes? She was very reserved, with cruel eyes that saw everything around her. Any who saw her would wonder if there was more to it than what was apparent, but she concealed her Darkness well, pushing it deep inside herself lest she draw her Celestia’s ire. She knew that the task of mitigating Astral’s power was vital to the health of the world, but her sister’s zeal often made her wonder about the righteousness of the task.
Her name, for better or worse, is lost.
The Celestiaan came to stop Astral, and so they applied themselves immediately to that end. They entered the Mountain through Canterlot and effortlessly passed the traps and guards, to arrive at the gates of the Vacuous Arcanum. Celestia cut through the students and slaughtered the young ritual alicorns, while her sister looked crept through the bloodied halls and read everything she could find.
When they faced Clover, Starswirl pleaded with them to spare her life, but he came to realize that his cherished protegee, college, and friend was too far gone. Unfortunately, Clover had already started the ritual, and when the Celestiaan tried to interrupt it miscast with terrible consequences. Large portions of the school collapsed, and malformed monsters and wild magics poured out into the Arcanum. Clover was missing presumed dead.
Celestia and her sister made peace with Starswirl on the condition he abandon his research. He wandered from city to city for a time after, a shell of his former self, before disappearing from history. Most would say he returned to the Arcanum, though whether with good or ill intent cannot be known.
Alas, the ritual crisis was ended with terrible loss of life, but a much greater holocaust was averted.
Their task complete, the Celestiaan roamed the earth waiting for their time to expire so that they could return home. The more they learned about the world, the more they found the mortal life amusing and even appealing. They began to court the idea of staying, and ruling over their own corner of earth like the ancient alicorns had.
Concerned by the unfamiliar ambition she felt, Celestia decided to consult the last known survivors of the race of gods, we Fires of the Gryph. Over the centuries, our role in hippogryph society had not changed drastically, except perhaps becoming more sacred in their eyes for the years we unwillingly watched over them. The Maredian fire priests denied the Celestiaan an audience with us, decrying Celestia as a false flame and a misleader of the honest. In response the sisters attacked the temple. They slaughtered hundreds of hippogryphs, and for their crime Wintertide denounced them. Incensed, Celestia stole the sarcophagus I was in and took me as a prize.
Naturally, Celestia asked me what I saw in her future, hoping a more favorable portant than the one my progenitor Wintertide had given. I was angry, but I spoke the truth when I foretold of their doom.
Despite my warnings, the Celestiaan decided to found their own nation, where their growing ambition could be used to a beneficial end.
They buried me here. There were hundreds of hidden storerooms like this one, where Celestia kept looted artifacts. They built their Everfree principality over top of us, taunting us with every confident hoofstep that echoed through these subterranean prisons. I took some small solace in my knowledge that their doom would come and it that would be, as it always was, of their own creation.
The Traitors
As the years dragged on, the idealism of the Celestiaan wore thin and the realities of a fractured Equestria settled on them. A great war was raging in the north between the main line of House Blackhorn and a rogue son, Sombra Blackhorn, who had carved a kingdom out of the far north. Celestia led her new principality in an intervention, but even with her enormous powers she was too impulsive for the the necessities of warfare, and only exacerbated the suffering of the ponies of the North. Evil forces scattered to the four winds, Lord Sombra included, dissatisfying everyone. Far from being a decisive unifier, an alicorn playing at secular leader drove ponies to be more contrary and distrustful.
The Celestia’s sister observed her elder’s impotent weakness. She saw that the sun princess had overextended greatly, trying to assert both a magical orthodoxy and political alignment over millions of ponies who desired neither. The younger sister did not immediately jump to traitorous thoughts, but she began to more overtly court her Dark tendencies. There would be an opportunity soon, she deemed.
While this was happening, sitting in the bowels of this hidden prison, I received a visitor. The first visitor besides the Celestiaan, actually, and the only one in decades as the Celestiaan had long since stopped caring to taunt me. However this visitor was not there to taunt me. She was there to confide in me.
It was Clover, or had once been Clover. The former unicorn prodigy had been hideously malformed unicorn, a warped monstrosity that defied description. A onetime seeker of the Fires of the Gryph...
Forgive me, viscountess. Even after a thousand years is it difficult to speak of her. I came be quite fond of her, you see. Her condition was the fault of the ritual that the Celestiaan interrupted. She had escaped death but at terrible cost, her body merging with, the platinum alicorn vessel, and whatever flesh she could scavenge for herself after the slaughter of her students. Her soul was an awful amalgam too, and sometimes she spoke as Clover, other times as Anima Astral Nacre, or just screamed madly. Yet within that contradiction was a dreamer on the verge of greatness, and a god almost returned to heaven. The twisted sinner was as fractured in mind as she was in body, and came to me desperate for answers.
I was bitter, so very bitter at what the Celestiaan had done to me, separating me from my family and my only friends. I was willing to help that Twisted Sinner get back at them. I told her to finish what she started and unleash the Dark upon the unrepentant oppressors, and destroy everything the Celestiaan held dear.
The Twisted Sinner gathered eleven other creatures who would be willing to help her. Their professions and origins were disparate as could be, but they all shared an absolute arrogance, a dedication to their own self-interest, and not a small tinge of insanity.
Sojourn, the ancient dragon smith who was still in Anima Astral Nacre’s thrall.
Phyte, a unicorn musician who coveted her lost youth so that she could have children.
Shale, a pegasus rune mage who wished to inscribe her name into the gods'.
Master, a changeling scholar who wanted to resurrect the legacy of the empires of Chitin.
Zero, a changeling mage and consort, who wanted to spend eternity with his love.
Prysma, a unicorn enchantress, who hoped for divine beauty.
Flair, an earth pony knight who wanted immortality so that he could fight forever.
Axium, an earth pony channeler, who wanted to extend the life of his faithful dog.
Black Bell, an earth pony alchemist, who was obsessed with a wish to fly to heaven.
Radial Edge, a pegasus who wanted to be have the power to force all others out of the sky.
Cadmirzan, the hippogryph lich who wanted the power to repair his rotten body.
Clover and Anima Astral Nacre, bound as one within the Twisted Sinner, was the twelfth.
Together, they were the Stars, and their ultimate goal in joining together was to aid in completing the ritual to their own ends. Some had simple desires, some grand, some impossibly farfetched. They all saw the answer to their desires with the ritual. They were foolish not to suspect that the Twisted Sinner was lying to them from the first moment.
Nightmare Pretender and the last Cycle.
With the Stars behind her, the Twisted Sinner approached the younger Celestiaan. In the dark shadows of the Everfree Castle, the sinner found she was expected, for long had the younger sister waited for a messenger from the Dark. The Twisted Sinner whispered disloyal temptations that played on her growing dissatisfaction with Celestia’s zeal. She promised a world where creatures of all sorts were lived free, where the Dark held equal place in the hearts of ponykind to the Light. To the detriment of all, the younger sister was swayed.
Celestia’s sister began by solicited the help of the neighboring principalities, who had all lost territory to the Everfree. Three unicorn warlords, three pegasus skylords, and three riverpony dukes joined her, eager to get revenge and replace Celestia with somepony they believed would be meeker and more conciliatory.
There was no delaying. While the armies gathered for surprise attack, the young Celestiaan withdrew to the forges, to create her armor. Yes, the armor you are now burdened with, viscountess, was cast in the lost depths of Everfree Castle, where the younger sister was sure not to be found. It was there that she began to experiment with emotions she had denied herself for so long, and set herself on the course of corruption.
With the coalition amry ready, the younger sister disappeared from the castle, leaving a note stating her declaration of war against her older sister. Celestia was so shocked and heartbroken she withdrew from public life, and it fell to her advisors to summon her own allies and rally a defense. But the younger had the advantage of planning, and she routed the Everfree armies in a quick advance into the principality.
The Twisted Sinner and the Stars joined with Celestia’s sister to lay siege to the Everfree Castle, and the pony coalition fanned out to occupy the surrounding and outlying villages. Celestia stalked the halls of the castle in listless depression, either unwilling to accept what was happening, or fully and fatalistically accepting it. Perhaps she remembered my prophesy and believed that it was fate that everything be destroyed in the conflict.
The Everfree Castle held firm against all artillery and attack, even without Celestia’s intervention. Moral began to slump in the attacking coalition's camp, and some of the princes even threatened to abandon the campaign. Disease hunger chipped away at both sides, with the difference being the attackers had a way out. Desertion began such a large problem that the younger sister feared that the siege would become unsustainable.
When she deemed that the younger Celestiaan had become desperate enough, the Twisted Sinner came to her with a solution.
At first they only muddied the lines, and began accepting the help of the Dark ponies hiding since the fall of Lord Sombra’s Kingdom, but soon they started soliciting any and all. Marauding warbands, fell beasts, heinous cabals, and corrupt demons joined in at the chance to kill Celestia. The Stars used their necromancy to rise any fallen soldiers, stopping the attrition aside from any undead who had come back as raving madponies.
The Twisted Sinner returned to me every day of that siege, wasting away the hours in conversation while Celestia’s sister wasted countless lives. It was from her that I heard every bit of the events I did not experience myself.
Often she talked down to me, as though she were still married to my father Wintertide, and I began to suspect that she was so horrible because she had one hoof in her native cosmos already. But she was not purely as I remembered Anima Astral Nacre, and the wit and cleverness of Clover came through very strongly in her. Then as I said she fell into fits of mania and depression, her focus on the end goal the only thing keeping her sane. See how I go on about her... She was very compelling. I could bare the sight of her barely, out of necessity; For revenge.
As was the Twisted Sinner’s plan, the besieging army was insufficient even with the aide of the evil beasts. The principality was growing foul with thousands of corpses and fouler still with the anguished souls of destroyed demons and failed necromancy. The earth turned poison and the weather ran wild. With her leap of glory falling short, the younger Celestiaan sister became truly frantic.
She decided that it was time to use her power to end the stalemate and force Celestia’s hoof. She decided to tap the Dark within herself, which she had sealed away for so long. I can only speculate to what her expectations were, of a magic she had estranged herself from for so long, but whatever it was her desperate act did her no benifit.
For when the younger Celestiaan reached for the Dark, it rushed to her with the fervor of a long lost dog. With the moon overhead, she chanelled into a principality's worth of Dark suffering, malevolent and toxic, and was reborn by it. Yes, guided by her patron moon, the younger sister embraced her purpose, to rule in shadow.
With the Twisted Sinner and the Stars gathered around laughing, the Nightmare of the Moon rose.
Nightmare Moon's assault on the castle was devastating. She broke apart stone and flesh with blasts of Dark magic, and disintegrated whole towers with her tempestuous mane. Celestia did not rise to her challenge, so Moon was forced to seek her out.
They met in the throne room, and at first Nightmare Moon stayed diplomatic, trying to talk her sister into surrendering. Celestia considered the demand, but before she could decide Moon was overwhelmed by her murderous urges. The two sisters began to battle, sealing the doom of the Everfree.
Their clash was so great I could feel it from here. Later the Twisted Sinner described it to me as being greater than the sum of a hundred cycles of war between Astral and Wintertide, though that is obvious exaggeration, but I understand the sentement. The sun and the moon unleashed their full powers in mortal skies, terminating all life within a great radius of the castle with mere motions. It is a display likely never to be seen again.
Somewhere in the melee, Celestia found the resolve to end the fight, and unveiled her trump card.
You see, Celestia had uncovered the mote of Harmony that Astral Nacre had created at the end of the ancient alicorns, centuries previous. Here I must profess a great ignorance, as the Twisted Sinner refused to speak about it much, but I inferred that Celestia had hidden the force of Harmony under Everfree Castle itself, and that the climactic battle had caused the cavern to cave in.
The younger sister sster may or may not have known about this powerful living artifact, but either way it did not keep it from being utilized against her.
Harmony or, The Harmony as the Twisted Sinner called it. I shudder to think of it. It destroyed my home and all of us ancient alicorns. It was lost for an eternity, and its reintroduction to the world was to be used as a weapon again. How contradictory that a force of balance causes so much destruction, but then again one must be honest that mimicking the power of the ancient Giver logically ends in self destruction...
Alas, Harmony was unleashed, and with grave silence I am told, worked to sooth unevenness. For Celestia, who had begun harboring Dark thoughts since her sister’s betrayal, the weapon affected her only slightly. Against Nightmare Moon, who had cast away all Light within herself, it was devastating. The Harmony erased Moon from the world.
But this was far for a defeat for the Stars. Yes, Anima Astral Nacre had known what was coming, and the moment they had been waiting for arrived. They were deviously prepared.
They sat at the very edge of Harmony's reach and began the Ritual. When the Harmony began to assail them with tremendous amounts of Light in an effort to cancel out their Dark, they instead snared and channeled that magic into the ritual, giving it power beyond anything in creation could provide. The ritual completed, and the Stars withdrew into the night, leaving a scarred land and a solitary princess.
And that was it. The brief war ended in total destruction.
The Twisted Sinner visited me a last time to say her goodbyes. She was changed, but not in ways I could explain. She would not tell me if the ritual had done what she wanted, or what it had done to the other Stars. She left to talk to Starswirl about some revelation she had made, leaving me to live out a thousand years of loneliness.
I suspect, young viscountess, that whatever the result of that ritual, that Anima Astral Nacre lurks in the depths of the cosmos again, watching from the shadows of stars. She got her way, in the end, to roam omnipotent while all the other gods waste away.
Alas...
You likely know more about the thousand years since then. The Harmony could not save the Everfree from the pain of the war, and the forsaken land began to warp. Plants that grew back were sickly, and wild animals moved in. The Dark of the anguished souls began to pool around me, attracted by my Light. Everything in this principality fell to ruin.
Celestia abandoned Everfree. She was freed from the burden of leadership by the fires of destruction, but not for a moment did she reconsider her choice to rule. The trauma of the siege made her more resolute if anything, and she was willing to unify Equestria by whatever means necessary. However her success came with stipulations, and she compromised with the aristocrats and landed nobility, sacrificing the equality she had once envisioned for ponykind for unity. Celestia had to compromise in other, more suspect and sinister ways as well, which I can not get into.
The tragedy of Everfree followed her until her succession.
And now, we move to current events.
Celestia and Nightmare Moon’s death this night has triggered a change in the world. The cycle is turning over, and very soon everything will change.
Young viscountess, the company you bring is the first I have had in near a millennium. You were not very difficult to read, for all your burdens are too great to conceal. You see, the Light and Dark is the paradigm through which all the world must be viewed. The truth of Light and Dark is the acquittal from morality and the social imperatives and contrivances.
You must be an heir to one of them! Celestia and Nightmare Moon are fallen, and new champions of the primal energies are needed. They are ever in need of protection and propagation, and yet they will always be in balance.
This is your choice! You must take up the torch, or the-
“Ahem.” Ancepanox interrupted. “I know you’re reaching the climax of this monologue, but I have a few quick questions."
The cathedral library was deathly quiet. All the dream ponies, the scholar Twilight Sparkles and the stoic black alicorns, had either stopped to listen or transcribe Myriadess’s great revelations. Now that she was silent they seemed tense and anxious for more, glancing angrily at Ancepanox for her disruption.
“First off, thank you. That was a fairly comprehensive, insightful lecture." Ancepanox said. "You've clearly practiced."
Myriadess's red eye stared blankly for a few moments, before she composed herself from the tremendous digression from her previous train of thought.. "Um, thank you. I have, yes."
"It’s not that I haven’t been satisfied with everything you’re telling me, but, well, It's not tremendously helpful to my current situation." Ancepanox continued. "Hearing about Clover and who Anima Astral Nacre was cleared up a lot of gaps. It's just that I have to know certain specific, more pertinent things. You know, my answers, that you promised.”
Myriadess was another few moments in answering. "Viscountess..." She began, cautiously. "I do not wish to read insensitiveness in your tone..."
"I'm not ungrateful. Far from it. I actually feel a lot better now. Less lost, you know." Anceapnox fluffed her wings, seemingly rethinking what she was going to say.
"So, then, if you want to talk more about the Ancient Alicorns-"
"I have no specific desire to talk about the ancient alicorns." Myriadess huffed. "But ask."
"Uhh, so, what are the vines tangled around your eye. I mean, I assume your eye is you, being crimson, but those vines are very different.”
Myriadess's eye rolled in said encasing vines. “I do not know what the vines are. Some parasite entity seized to my bound soul, I assume. They began to infiltrate my dreams several years after Nightmare Moon’s rebellion. I believe they connect me to the Twisted Sinner in some way.”
“Assume? If they infiltrated across the dreamscape they can be traced back-” Ancepanox caught herself. "Wait, parasitic? Does it have anything to do with the nightmare?"
"No."
"How do you know? A parasitic dream entity sounds like the nightmare exactly." Ancpeanox pressed, swiping a hoof lazily at the vines, which retreated from her touch. "I mean, unless you Ancient Alicorns knew more about the dreamscape than modern scholarship-"
"I would appreciate if you do not speak of my bretheren with such aimlessly familiarity."
"Hey, you were the one that went on that spiel about the mythology. I thought that's what you wanted. I was just being nice." Ancepanox said, a bit testy. "I want to talk about the nightmare, since, you know, that's what I have to deal with, not long dead gods."
"Watch it, viscountess." Myriadess warned. "I brought you here to inform you of you new responsibilities to this world."
"Okay, but did the nightmare curse that brands me now start with Anima Astral Nacre, or Celestia’s sister?”
“I told you already, your Dark has no connection to them. Their curse started and ended within themselves, yours with yourself.”
Ancepanox pursed her lips. “Yes, you did say that, and it didn't make sense the first time either.”
“The ‘nightmare’ is a parasitic dream, but it is always originating within one’s own Dark. In some ways it is the purest expression of will, to have a second dream spring forth within oneself. Will, unfettered from destiny. Some would call it a liberation. Not I, but some." Myriadess droned
"Do you recall your berzerk rage against Glori Sabonord, and your hungry prowling in Ponyville? That was your Dark. It was not Nightmare Moon's, or anypony's, but yours. Certain events may trigger it, but not cause it. Yes, viscountess, one's dark always originates within oneself. You, Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash, all of you have-"
“Wait. Wait! Stop talking.” Ancepanox sharply interrupted. “What you’re saying makes no sense! The other ponies and Forlorn Spark were mixed up with the nightmare. I’m NOT a nightmare. I retained my mind and my sanity, because it remained seperate from me. I am just the carrier!”
Myriadess and Ancepanox stared at each other, until the large red eye, born aloft by the vines, dipped forward. "Viscountess, you are wrong."
“Oh yeah?” Ancepanox’s eyes narrowed.
“I will not cousin this lesson. You need to be told bluntly.” Myriadess words were stern but tinged by sadness. “Ponies sometimes need to be confronted instead of coddled for them to improve, and this is one such moment. You see, viscountess, you were born with the Dark that compelled you. That of itself is not so strange. What is, is that you were so naturally mired with Dark, it shared your dream with you instead instead of forcing you out of it. Twilight Sparkle was a naturally Dark, evil pony."
Silence reigned again. Ancepanox's lip slowly curled. "Evil."
"Dark is Evil. You were Dark. It follows."
“No, you don't know that. You don't know any of that.” Ancepanox whispered. She bent forward, running a trembling hoof through her limp mane. The dream ponies around them recorded the torment in their never-ending records. "You're... You're making that up! You've made all this up! That’s incomprehensible!” She pointed up, to the many levels of the dream library. "Does this look like the dream of an evil pony?"
“Do think now! Are you naive or blinded by ideology?” Myriadess loomed over her. "Just because I am telling how things once where does not mean you are shackled to past sins. Forlorn Spark now owns Twilight Sparkle's dream. Yes this dream is hopeful, but because YOU made it that way. Dreams are inherited, family endeavors. You have made something good for yourself and this is to be celebrated not despaired."
"Celebrated? CELEBRATED? No, Buck you!" Ancpeanox barked. "Twilight Sparkle was not an evil pony! My family are not evil ponies! My nightmare came from the moon!"
"There WAS no nightmare that you did not create, lady viscountess." Myriadess growled, getting aggravated herself. "Do you think that your friends Rarity and Applejack would still be alive if there was an old, vicious nightmare within them?"
"But I have a hundred counter-examples! I was compelled to hunt! And Nightmare Moon told me, no ambiguity, that my corruption was her fault, and that was when she was clear of head for having done so!" Ancepanox straightened herself, matching the red eye's unblinking stare with her own, wild gaze.
By the way she was working her jaw, breathing slowly, running her hoof in little circles on the marble floor, there was something grave on her mind. She wanted to argue the point she was a good pony. But she could not. Good ponies would not have done what she did in Canterlot's shadow, massacring and hunting hundreds of ponies. Who could have done something like that other than the foulest, most evil of creatures.
Now Myriadess was telling her she couldn't blame the nightmare for her actions?
"You're going to upset me, alicorn." Ancepanox said quietly, maintaining the stare.
"Or you me. This arguing is pointless. I'm telling you this so you realize that because both exist with you, good and evil, Light and Dark, you have a choice. I say to you, that you have a personal responsibility to do the right thing. You are NOT a pawn, or a victim of fate."
“Oh? OH?! If I'm not a pawn, why are you treating me like one? There was nothing in you well practiced, cynically executed history lesson that resembles an impartial opinion. ” Ancepanox stood up, and began to circled the room, weaving around the desk and tables stacked with scrolls and tomes. "Child of Light, Child of Wintertide... You think you're an oracle or some mystical fount of wisdom. You're a hundred-thousand year old propagandist and nothing more."
“TWILIGHT, DO YOU WANT TO BE A NIGHTMARE FOREVER?!” A plume of infernal flame ignited around Myriadess's red eye, rising up in a great plume. “Am I happy Celestia is destroyed? Yes! Why? I celebrate the destruction of the Celestiaan because I see a hope in mortals like you to be purer expression of Light than they could be. You could be very powerful, viscountess. I wish for you to make the right choice. Earnestly."
Rage filled Ancepanox. She wanted to reach out and tear the red eye from it’s prison of vines and crush it under her hoof. She wanted, for once in her life, to punish one who would abuse her.
‘control, control, breath in, breath out’ She muttered to herself. She looked back up to the alicorn eye. “You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
“I have.” Myraidess intoned. “Millennia, in fact. I knew the Celestiaan would be destroyed from below, as I forsaw. How lucky that it was by somepony as interesting as you."
"You're a fraud. They destroyed themselves. Me, Forlorn Spark, and any other mortal just happened to be there to watch the show."
Myriadess quivered, flames still curling around her. "Do not presume to stray from the destiny I have foreseen.”
“Oh I get it all now. I’m the one standing in between you and your happiness.” Ancepanox nodded, again feeling anger. “I've just got one question for you: What is the Tower?
"The Tower... Yes, the Tower of the Bard." Myriadess repeated. "Do not worry about the Tower. The Tower represents the old, the obsolete."
"Oh the gall. You lecture me about worrying about old news?" Ancepanox snorted. "I'm only going to ask again. What is the Tower?"
"An old dream. A forgotten dream, hopefully. Dreams like the Tower of the Bard deserve to decay in anonymity." Myriadess insisted. "Indeed if Forlorn Spark, and thus that doppelganger Twilight Sparkle now holds the Tower, we may have to make steps to sequester her."
"I see." Ancepanox hung her head, hiding her bared fangs. She was losing control over herself, trembling with hate. "I'm glad you know best. I really do. I would hate to make decisions for myself."
Myriadess paused. "I am detecting... the Dark welling from within you."
"Imagine my surprise." Ancepanox voice was hoarse. "Let me pose this to you, alicorn. I believe, wholeheartedly, that Twilight Sparkle was a good pony. But you tell me she was Dark. Rather than accept you interpretation of the morality of the situation, wouldn't it make more sense for me to conclude that the Dark is not evil?"
Myriadess seemed to be catching on that the black alicorn was more than just confused. The red eyes searched Ancepanox’s for her intent. “Lady viscountess… Nightmare Moon and Anima Astral Nacre were blights upon mortalkind."
"And I'm to accept that mortalkind suffering is bad a priori?! I reject that. Not only because of everything Moon taught me, but because I'm mortal, and I deserve to suffer!" Ancepanox snapped. She wondered if she looked like Nightmare Moon, self-confident and lethal, or how she felt, savage and animalistic. She wanted to kill and destroy, and it took every effort to make pronounce her words instead of growling them. "Let them suffer! MAKE them suffer! I want to show all you fucking gods that mortals are perfectly capable of bringing ourselves the joy and agony they proscribe!"
"You don't believe your own words. You're falling into your Dark. Take a moment and calm yourself." Myriadess ordered.
“No, no no no. No hesitating. Hesitating has cost me everything.” Ancepanox laughed. “I understand now, the truth you’ve spoken. Dark is swift and decisive action, brooding vengeance, lethal retribution! According to how you’ve characterized me, it is wrong- WRONG for me to wait."
"Though you mean to mock me, you speak the truth. We are defined enterally by those fundamental energies, we can not escape their pull. Even my kin and I, the ancient gods." Myriadess intoned. “You will fulfill the destiny I have foreseen. Do not be upset with the truth.”
"No." Ancepanox leaped up on the table, bringing her nose inches from the red eye. "I already had one god telling me what I'm going to do, and she was a lot more authoritative than you." She flicked her tail. "I recommend you recant, alicorn. Take back your mythos and your prescriptiveness, and tell me about the Tower."
"I will not tell you about the Tower."
"Then what is the point of you?"
"Do you think ideas of fate and destiny are thrown out lightly by we creatures of Light? If you do not want to be the champion of the Light, there is another mortal out there who will be. There is no divergence from what I've seen." Myriadess accepted the shouting match. "Perhaps in time you will see the wisdom of what I've said. I am not pressed; I waited a thousand years for the Celestiaan to die. I can wait longer if I need to."
"All very good and well..." Ancepanox grit her teeth. Visions of Celestia and Nightmare Moon flashed before her eyes. "For having crafted your philosophy for a thousand years, it is heavily flawed. Destiny comes from above. It shines down on us, warms us, guides us. Newsflash, the sun's not out right now."
“It won't be night forever.”
“For you it will. I've decided I'm going to kill you.” Ancepanox laughed.
“You know you cannot damage me, for this avatar before you is as an illusion, your perception of the psychic link between us. I am not a dreamer, if you remember. So, my lady, you will calm down before you hurt yourself.” Myriadess’s cool words hinted at a threat. “You do not want to damage your own mind, would you?”
“But you perceive me back. Your view into my mind is dependent on what I show you.” Ancepanox waved over the library, and the many purple onlookers. “To be able to hear me, you must be listening to what psychic messages I send back. Without even trying, I bet I could crowd the link with overwhelming clutter…”
Ancepanox jumped backwards into the open atrium with a sweep of her wings, letting an arc of magic off her horn. The energy twisted around all the dream ponies in the room, be they purple or black, and in a terrible instant of screaming of pain and agony, the dream ponies descended on Myriadess in a feral frenzy. The thorns around the red eye thrashed violently to keep the howling dream ponies back, but others jumped from the higher floors and pushed it down into the throng.
Ancepanox watched for a moment, enjoying the satisfaction at Myriadess’s confusion and pain.
"Now... how do I get out of this place?"
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she was again a mote in the deeper dreamscape, observing the etherial connection between her dream and Myriadess's soul tremble. The alicorn had been forced to retreat.
But the old god’s trembling voice followed her, strained and desperate. “Fighting me will accomplish nothing, you want young viscountess.”
“Accomplish nothing but my pleasure. Your crime is annoying me, and the punishment is death.” Ancepanox snickered. “To tartarus with you. I will frolic like a babe in your ashes.”
Focussing with all her might, Anceapnox tried to push away the alicorn completely. Myriadess trying to say something else, but it was lost in the void as she pulled free.
With a gasp, Anceapnox awoke in the real world. She was in the darkened antechamber, laying on the stone pyre. With careful effort she took conscious control of the trance spell that had been shielding her from the corrosive black fog.
"Look at you. You present yourself so grandly in there. Out here, you're just a big box." She climbed off the sarcophagus. “And you make for a terrible bed.”
A hushed whisper emanated from the faint light off of the stone pyre's embeded jewels. “Do you really want to be alone in the new world, young viscountess?” Somewhere inside the sarcophagus was a small platinum sphere, painted red with the ichor of crushed roses. It was so small and vulnerable.
“I don't know yet, but I'd like one without you. Thank you for everything you've told me, Lady Myriadess, and goodbye.”
Ancepanox’s horn stopped glowing, and her protective shield disappeared. The black fog that pervaded the enclosed space rushed to fill the air. But it did not eat away at her, no, it absorbed into her. A tarry blackness began to radiated outwards from her eyes like foglamps.
She struggled to take in breath. All the foul things that had seeped into the ancient sepulcher over the millennia, the tormented dead of the Everfree, filled her with a feeling like she’d never experienced. Single-mindedly she acted, the compulsion to destroy and dominate deafening in her head.
Without hesitation, Ancepanox unleashed all the power she had consumed. The damnable magic made no sound, but it tore through all matter it touch all the same. Within the deeper dreamscape, the bright red mote of light encased in black vine faded out, leaving the dream of a brilliant purple dreamer, whose mind was a shade darker than it had been before.
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Oh Boy, things are getting out of hand now. RIP Myriadess, Princess of Exposition.
This chapter answers quite a few questions. I'm so completely overwhelmed I'm going to have to write my thoughts down.
First, I'm completely convinced now that the alicorn Twilight Velvet created is not the real Astral Nacre. The inherited curse she thinks she got from her mother must be the Dark, which is very strong in house Twilight. Twilight Sparkle was the same and, just like her mother, used the Dark to make a new creature. I'm intrigued that the two families we know about with large amounts of Dark are noted for having firstborn daughters. I wonder what caused that and why Shining Armor broke that pattern. Maybe Night Light and house Bright are related to Wintertide.
I'm very reminded of eastern philosophy and mythology by the lore you've created here. The light/dark duology, the cycles, and the sun/moon yin/yang thing. I'm happy that you didn't outright declare what Myriadess said to be the truth, just another proposal among many others for how to look at the world. I wouldn't be surprised if it's all lies, like Ancepanox said.
I have no doubt that the Stars and the bodies Astral created are going to play a big part in the future. You've simply alluded to the too much not to. We only know what happened to Phyte, and a little bit about Shale, Prysma, and Master. We know a little bit about the Black Armor, but nothing about the Alicorn Amulet.
I'm still waiting for the tie-in to the Forlorn Spark/Twilight 2 POV chapters. I'm don't see this ending well.
5610951 Myriadess, by being reductionist to the point of absurdity, missed the point of the duality of Light and Dark. She seemed to think that they alone could explain sentience and the course of history. She was literally seeing the world in black and white, and so she thought the only way that Ancepanox could become powerful was to commit to one or the other.
You definitely hit on something with the Velvet-Astral and Twilight-Forlorn connection.
Astral is single-minded in her desire to be the god of life, and Forlorn Spark wanted absolute power and control. Maybe those fixations are perversions of the dark within their progenitor. Who's to say...
Seems a little crazy and "Twilight' is an idiot. It sounds as though most of the evil is either born of those without Light or those who let their own inner Darkness overwhelm them.
I have to say that the transition from Twilight Sparkle to Ancepanox is very fuzzy and unclear.
I changed the end of the chapter a bit to better explain why Ancepanox killed Myriadess.
What the fuck just happened?