Divine Jealousy and The Voice of Reason

by Jordan179

Chapter 12: The Creatures From Beyond

Luna

He was the first of us to be born.

Thou hast doubtless heard of this from my Sister, no doubt. Of Shady, emotionally the weakest and most easily distracted of all the immortal Ponies of Paradise Estate, who brewed strange substances in an effort to regain the gladness she had felt when she was young and the world easily divisible into friends and monsters. The complexities of divided loyalties, the loss of friends and lovers over centuries of time, the unfairness of a life in which she had been part of the grand glorious Reclamation, only to see the harmony of those early times fall to fanaticism and hate, then witness an enlightenment and rise to the Age of Wonders, only for that Age's highest dream to come crashing down in Cataclysm; all this had worn down her soul.

And though Shady's ageless form was immune to Time, her disordered mind was sick with a malady incurable by any skill Paradise Estate possessed, and close to dying. So she made her medicines, which lightened her heart or brought her visions of those she had loved and lost for ever, letting her know peace for a short time, until she needed her next dose.

Perhaps something she compounded opened her to darker influences than she imagined -- for Shady was always one to hope for kindness in strangers, always one hurt when the world proved crueler than she expected. There are drugs which can weaken the barriers between the world of flesh and that of spirit, and there are things that wait outside our world seeking vulnerable hosts. And the Cosmic Discord is lazy, but he is also subtle, and ever one to spy a way in to a guarded place. Never mistake his indolence for simplicity.

So it was that Shady conceived, though she had not lain with any stallion for many long decades. And she was seized with a strange dread, and fled Paradise Estate, the only place on Earth where she was safe, into the wilderness. There was privation, there were brigands, there were monsters, there were warlocks who well guessed what secrets lay within our Veil and would have done far worse than to abuse one poor confused immortal mare to obtain them. There were potential dangers all around, and some fell influence seemed to be drawing evil along her trail.

Yet none of them touched Shady. Wandering aimlessly, she always found food, always found water, and these were wholesome and pure, and more than enough for her, as if something was warping her worldines to lead her ever toward sustenance. The brigands fell to quarreling with one another and died by the hands of one another, or fell victim to the monsters, without Shady's gentle eyes ever being troubled by the sight of any violence. Sometimes the monsters came, but only to fawn upon Shady, who imagined them but some of the many hallucinations to which her damaged mind was always prone.

The warlocks were drawn to her, all right, to the vast Power which they sensed growing in her womb, but they were drawn like moths to the flame, for their own magics turned against them and surged from them, feeding something terrible. Some were burned alive, some struck by lightning, some swallowed by the very earth, some drowned in floods. Some suffered worse fates -- they were twisted, turned into monstrous things that cried out to the searchers to end their anguish.

For of course there were searchers. Shady may have been the least of those immortals, but she was still one of their herd, and they loved her and feared for her life, wandering alone as she was in the wild outside the Veils. After they saw the fates of the brigands and warlocks, they took with them some artifacts from the Estate, and none of the searchers were afflicted as had been those unfortunate Ponies.

Strangely, though the most expert trackers on the Estate sought Shady, though she was scarcely expert in woodcraft herself, and though -- through the dire fates that befell her potential foes -- she was literally leaving a trail of corpses behind her; Shady's trail could not be followed. Seemingly clear sign would dwindle to nothing, paths which should have led straight were changed, and the fresher her marks became, the more confused were their meanings. Wind Whistler's deductions, Galaxy's hunches, Twilight's wishes -- nothing worked to dispel what was obviously some illusion sent out to cloud the minds of the searchers. And what worried them the most was that this was something far beyond Shady's own powers.

Finally they gave up Shady as lost. If they spent too long outside the Veil, they risked losing their own immortality, and they feared that the curse upon those who sought her might eventually work its way through their wards. They did not want to risk losing more of their little herd. They had become, thou mayest have discerned -- far too timid after three and a half thousand years incarnate. I pray that I may never become so cautious!

So Shady gave birth, months later, alone in the wilderness.

It was a difficult birth, and it nearly killed her. It would have killed her had the newborn not teleported himself and herself back to Paradise Estate, where her friends saved her life. Once again within the ambit of the Rainbow, it was easy -- her body began regenerating even as Wind Whistler and Posey ministered to her. And everypony stared in horror at the thing to which she had given birth.

The Ponies of Paradise Estate were, of course, familiar with many species of intelligent life. And they knew better than to assume that a frightful form meant a foe, or a fair form a friend. Though to actually see such a chimeric being born from a Pony ... this reminded Wind Whistler of ancient and unsettling prophecies, terrible warnings of the advent of an Anti-Megan who would wreck the world of Ponykind as thoroughly as The Megan had once saved it, and plunge all into a thousand years of Chaos.

But Wind Whistler did not know the meaning of this strange birth. And uncertain, she could not kill a helpless foal. She was the most ruthless member of her herd, but she was also one of the most decent and honorable. We are a kindly species -- to us foal-killing is among the worst of sins.

Thou seest me as ruthless, but also very decent and honorable? Much as Wind Whistler? I am touched by thy praise -- thy good opinion meanest much to me. And it is a flattering comparison -- Wind Whistler was a truly great Pony, despite her lack of any special powers. I hope that I remain high in thy esteem, by the time I reach the end of this tale ...

Thou knowest his form well as it is today. Imagine him smaller, stubbier, rounder, his eyes wide with innocence, no marks of millennial malice upon his countenance. I was not yet even conceived, but I later gazed upon his baby pictures. And ... I knew him so well later ...

He loved his mother Shady, but was at first terrified of all other Ponies, glaring and hissing at them, hiding under Shady if they came too close. And though Shady had at first been terrified of her strange foal, but quickly she came to love him uncommon fierce, and she would permit none to approach him save by her leave. As sometimes happens, she found in her mother-love a new life purpose, and when he was with her she was happier than she had been for centuries.

Shady did not know what to call him. "Baby Shady" -- the standard name of the young in the Time of Extermination, and thus in Paradise Estate, was simply "Baby" prefixed to the mother's name for fillies, or father's name for colts, until their Marks appeared -- somehow did not seem right. Then she dreamed of a great horned serpent, so huge that it encircled the world like Jörmungandr in the myths of the Northern Islands, and it told her that her foal's name was "Discord."

So her foal was named. It was an ugly name, implying disharmony, and it was soon shortened to "Dissy," by which name we -- my Sister and I -- much prefer to call him when we speak of the days of his innocent youth. For truly that colt did not deserve to be tarred in memory with the dire deeds of his later life.

It was a month before Shady recovered. Thou might think that this was because of the rude surroundings of her labor, but this was unusual -- Paradise Estate had medicines devised in the Age of Wonders, and thou shouldst remember that the Rainbow also strove to heal her. It was as if something had drained Shady, and Wind Whistler bethought herself of the drained and dying warlocks, and wondered if similar effects had proceeded from similar causes.

But again there was no proof.

Masquerade, who was canny and often saw truths that were well-hidden, must have suspected something, for she left one day, unannounced and bearing off with her copies of many crucial books. At the time they mourned her defection and the absence of those books -- later they were right well glad of both!.

This would neither be the last time they saw her nor those books, and the salvation of both was almost surely due to her wisdom. Had she told them where she went, he would have known, or, to speak more strictly -- What watched over the innocent little foal. And I think It would have destroyed Masquerade, as It had all threats to the survival of this Aspect.

There came more uncanny signs. He feared the Rainbow, and though he could bear its existence at the Estate, when directly before it he would hiss and shrink and hide from its glory. If forced to suffer its presence for long he would become sick, and Shady swiftly forbade further experiments. Never before had anything good feared or been harmed by the Rainbow, a fact which increased Wind Whistler's misgivings.

Yet little Dissy did nothing actually bad, anything to justify Wind Whistler's darkest fears. He cried, and complained, and made messes, but that was hardly uncommon for a foal. He had strange insights -- he seemed to ken things that he should have had no way to learn -- but, thou must ken that each and every denizen of Paradise Estate had their own unusual uncanny powers. We were all enchanted, all unique -- all ridden by our own strange destinies.

Rather a lot like thee and thine own Companions, really.

One thing worried them. After Shady dreamed of the great horned serpent, Dissy began dreaming of it as well. Nightmares, from which he awoke screaming and trying to hide under Shady. He told them of this when he developed the power of speech -- which came early, and he said: "It's looking for me. It wants me. If it catches me, I won't be any more."

The Ponies of Paradise Estate had far too much experience with dark supernatural forces to take that lightly. It occurred to them all that -- fundamentally harmless as little Dissy seemed -- Whatever sired him might be much more malign. Galaxy, Mimic and Twilight the First reinforced the Veil and the other wards around the Estate, while Wind Whistler redoubled her researches, reading about the Jörmungandr and everything like it in every myth and tale, trying to understand what Dissy was, and What wanted him.

The truth was, of course, beyond her ability to find in the books in our Estate. The truth might have been beyond the sum and total knowledge of the Age of Wonders even after the Magic came back. Would even the Moochick, that strange survival of a strange species, have known? His library was now part of Wind Whistler's own, and she could not find the truth in there. And she was perhaps the wisest Pony that ever was -- I wish that thou might have had meeting with her, dear Twilight. The speech between you twain would have been something truly wondrous to witness.

There was a very old legend which seemed to fit. Of two great families of gods, or demons, or embodiments of natural forces, which had together created the universe and warred over it since the Dawn of Time. This was connected with the other old legend, that when Ponykind had been young, a white goddess and a great serpent had met in love, or war, or play to between them create its earliest civilizations.

There were frequent references to the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsoof, which to Wind Whistler's frustration seemed to be available neither in our own library nor that of the Crystal City. The original had been penned by the Chi-Neighse, the inhabitants of the Empire of the Celestial Dragons, far to the West, across the vast and hostile Cruel Sea. There might be a copy in the Heartspire of the High Unicorns, in the southwest of North Amareica itself, but they did not part with their lore lightly. Going to either place would itself be a long and difficult quest, and they were too few then to mount such a venture.

Wind Whistler was not herself much of a mage -- that she had any skill at all in that field, as a Pegasus, was solely due to her vast lore. Galaxy, Mimic and Twilight were our mages, and though they did not make much of it, they had the lore and skill of three and a half thousand years of life on which to draw. They were perhaps the most powerful mages on the Earth, until Dissy was born, and they did not yet know Dissy's power. Or of That which hunted him.

Mimic did a very brave thing -- a rash deed, as Wind Whistler later told her. Mayhaps she was fated to do this. Could any other Pony, one not the bearer of the Horseshoes, have survived the consequences?

She went outside the veil, with only Twilight for companion. There she cast a scrying spell ... one designed to open her to outside influences. She was hoping to contact the other race of demons, the ones opposed to the great serpents. They had a somewhat better reputation -- in some of the legends, they had been characterized as messengers from the All-Father Himself. Still, what she did was far from safe. And she knew it.

With Twilight weaving wards against malign forces, Mimic cast her spell. And it worked. Though the only obvious and immediate consequence was that she gasped and fainted, right before the eyes of her horrified friend.

Twilight brought Mimic back to the estate. Wind Whistler and Posey tended her, and Wind Whistler gave Mimic an exasperated, loving scolding when she awoke. They all loved one another, you know. Over three thousand, five hundred years their spirits had worn together, learned each other's little oddities and secrets, and each of them fitted into comfortable little grooves in the souls of the others. It was a companionship like ... like what you and your friends may become, given several more centuries together. Only they were isolate from the rest of the world, so it may have been even closer.

Of course Galaxy and Wind Whistler thought of infiltration. Really, mine own dear friend, I some times think that thou dost imagine that thou invented magical precautions entire of thy own devise, yesterday! The first thing Wind Whistler did when she found them was slap on amulets that would bind anything which had entered them firmly to them, and Galaxy checked them to make sure that no additional spirits were riding them into the heart of our psychic fortress.

And Galaxy found something. There were, in fact, two additional spirits within Mimic now. But they did not seem like demonic possession. Rather like something else, which should have been impossible, but which Shady had already demonstrated was anything but impossible. When she informed Wind Whistler -- I later learned that Wind Whistler gave Mimic one of the most exasperated "I told you so" expressions ever seen on the face of that Pegasus.

And, given Wind Whistler's personality -- she was a very sarcastic Pony, like unto .... somepony else whom I do love and esteem most greatly ... what, Twilight? Did I mention you by name? And yes, I know that I share that trait. It is actually one I find endearing in you, too. Well, in any case, for Wind Whistler, that was saying something.

Mimic was not suffering from demonic possession. Her condition was something else entirely, one which Mimic had not experienced for centuries, for the very good reason that Mimic had not lain with a stallion for centuries.

Mimic was pregnant.

And so, unknowning, unaware, as yet physically nothing more than two microscopic clumps of fast-dividing cells, though the spirits connected to those souls were powerful ones, did myself and my Sister first enter Paradise Estate.

Author's Note:

Music playing as I write part of this, Iron Maiden's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son album. Oddly or not so oddly enough, very good background music for dealing with the young Discord. If you think about the roles of Wind Whistler, Mimic and Celestia in the tale, parts of it fit almost terrifyingly well. Though there's no role there for poor little Luna ... then again, in retrospect she's the lucky one of the Two Sisters in this. And their former best friend. Discord's later life is not exactly a happy one.

The Ponies are in between Humans and their own Horse ancestors when it comes to ease of childbirth. They are primarily quadrupeds and hence have a wider pelvic structure: their mares do not suffer the contradictions between the engineering requirements of comfortable bipedal walking and passage of the baby that bedevils Human women. On the other hand, their craniums have expanded to meet the demands of housing sapient brains, and hence birth is less comfortable for a Pony mare than a mare of the species Equus caballus -- and real horses have more difficult births than do many mammals, for their foals are born more developed than is the case for many species. And Discord's hardly a standard-shaped foal.

Thus, Goldie Pie has a profession beyond "mad scientist." Too bad Shady had no midwife.

And it looks like there are two more foals coming.

This is very much a re-telling of part of Episode 54 of the Pony POV Series by Alex Warlorn, much more so than any of the earlier parts. I hope that I did the original justice.

Comments

[scoots2]

SO MUCH LORE. This is why I read your chapters slowly, and go back and re-read them again.

As for pony pregnancy--well, yes, in some ways they have it easier, but twins are very difficult for them, which makes Flim and Flam some very unusual ponies (and Cloudy Quartz's ordeal truly needed all of her mother's expertise, Paradise children or no.)

[Jordan179]

4586235

Why thank you! Here, most of the lore was actually Alex Warlorn's though. My additions were principally the way in which the machinations of the Cosmic Concepts have filtered through to Pony myth, and some thoughts about the ways in which the surviving Ponies of Paradise Estate might have used their skills to deal with their unusual visitations.

My intent was very much to show how creepy and horror-story-like this all would have seemed to them. I hope I communicated that adequately.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Cosmic draconequui seem to take a much more active hand (or paw, or claw...) in their incarnations' well-being. That, or Discord just didn't want the hassle of having to find another viable host, because effort. In either case, it's definitely a very alien sense of "well-being."

I can certainly see Mimic's logic. When in doubt, ask those who would know. Unfortunately, she phrased the question in the form of an invitation. Well, relatively unfortunately.

In any case, looking forward to more. Luna's running out of ways to pad her story. She's going to have to bite the bullet soon.

[Jordan179]

4586344

Heh ... I hope it's not dragging too much. I'm trying to develop all three or four main points of view.

[Alex Warlorn]

http://itsfrompeople.deviantart.com/art/Shady-Line-Of-Fate-300014343
READ THIS!!!!

It was a companionship like ... like what you and your friends may become, given several more centuries together.

If al six manage to become Alicorns.

[Jordan179]

4586576

I read it ... it was seriously awesome! And built upon a throwaway line of Celestia's in your original chapter.

[Alex Warlorn]

4586764

Tell the author that.

[Jordan179]

4587417

Did.

[scoots2]

Hey, congrats! This got a review by Seattle's Angels!

[Jordan179]

4599953

Really? I gotta check this out ...

[Jordan179]

4599953

Could you point me to the thread?

[Flashbunny]

4599983
It's in their latest roundup blog-post. Check your feed.

[scoots2]

4599983 Or it's here.

[Jordan179]

4600267

Thank you. I was very pleased by those reviews. Thank you for showing them to me.

[Jordan179]

4607498

A combination of Robert Bloch's "The Shadow From the Steeple" (1950) and Alex Warlorn's Pony POV Series Season Four: Generation Transitions & Origins. Alex probably got the idea from Bloch, but I might have used it anyway because I am a huge fan of the Cthulhu Mythos.

[Jordan179]

4629581

Hee hee, I fixed that. Though Pinkie probably could do that to Pinkie!

[Andy Soshal]

4675438 Hey, Twilight does it to Twilight (Lesson Zero). If she, limited by the shackles of her logical worldview, can do it, Pinkie Pie can.