Chapter 11: Lore
Chapter 11: Lore
Starburst glanced up from the ancient spellbook. He looked very serious. “You should do this, Sweetie. You’d be better at it than me.”
“I can’t, I’m too nervous.” Twilight was practically vibrating where she sat. “I’d mess it up or something, and I don’t think I want to risk messing this up!” There was a funny kind of look in her eyes. It was more joy than terror, though terror was certainly there.
“Alright,” he said, looking back at the book. “Okay, a spell to detect heartbeats.” He turned a few more pages. “A spell to detect sapient beings, and another one to confirm the presence of sentient souls. These are some seriously arcane spells -”
“Sweetheart, the spell you can’t cast doesn’t exist,” Twilight said. “You know it, I know it, and we both know what a nervous wreck I can be under pressure -”
“Oh, rubbish, Sweetie. You’re a rock, always have been -”
“That’s crap and you know it, I always screw important things up, so just do it!” she squeaked, closing her eyes. “No! Wait! Stop, don’t, I’m too nervous.” She opened her eyes again and looked at him. “What if it’s, what if I am, um, I mean, what will we do?”
“Well,” he said, “we’d start with a party. Then the announcements. Then, I dunno, bask in the adulation? Neither of us like it, but you know what everypony will say. Everypony’ll think that this is the happiest thing to ever happen to Equestria.”
Twilight started shuddering, terrified by the very thought.
“I’m gonna do it,” he said. He looked down at the book before she could object. His horn started glowing deep reddish-purple.
Twilight felt his heart leap as he cast another spell. Her own heart followed suit as he flicked a couple of pages back and cast the first spell he’d found. The explosions of joy were going to make her collapse if they kept up. Starburst started flicking madly backwards through the old and obscure spellbook.
“Guess what?” he asked as he flipped pages with his hoof and his magic.
“What?” Twilight breathed, feeling his massive excitement and joy.
“There’s three sentient beings in this room. I counted three separate souls, and I heard three distinct heartbeats. Well, two of them were beating in sync, and the third was really small and faint,” he said very quietly as he stopped turning pages and read voraciously, “but there were definitely three beating hearts.” He scanned down the page he’d noticed earlier. He skipped past the insect, avian and reptilian paragraphs and read the brief directions for a spell titled Gender Determination in Mammalian Species via Magical Gene Inspection. His horn glowed briefly, and so did the area of Twilight’s belly below her solar plexus.
He looked up with a face-splitting grin, straight into her expectant eyes.
“Well?!” she asked, unable to take the suspense any longer.
“Filly.”
She squealed in delight and grabbed him into a hug. It was good to forget that she was so old sometimes. She didn’t look old, but, still...
You’re only ever as old as you feel. And I feel so young right now!
“We should tell Celestia and Luna and my parents at the same time. How about now?” Starburst asked. Twilight nodded, then there was a sudden tap at the doors. “Ahhh, crap,” he said. He kissed his wide-eyed wife and turned to look at the doors. He magicked them open.
A unicorn guard stood there, saluting, between the two usual armoured pegasi. “Your Highnesses,” she said, “I’m sorry to disturb you both. Princess Twilight, your Royal Sister requests your presence in her private rooms, as soon as possible.” She bowed.
“Oh! Does she know? How’d she find out?” Twilight got to her hooves and looked over her shoulder and out the nearest window. The sky looked perfectly normal, like any other late-morning clear blue sky. So she hadn’t accidentally coloured it pink or started a shower of comets in her excitement, at least. Funny things tended to happen when she lost control of her emotions. So, a coincidence? Well, she’d find out when they got there. “Actually, this might work really well. Thanks, Shebang.” The unicorn bowed again and trotted off towards the staircase. “Thunderstrike?” she asked one of the pegasus guards. “Could you deliver a message to Lord and Lady Star for me, please?”
“Certainly, Your Highness,” the armoured pegasus said. He was already standing ramrod-straight but he somehow managed to stand a little straighter.
“Would you please ask the Lord and Lady to come up to the castle right away? Evening’s probably going to be at work, it doesn’t matter. Just find them, wherever they are, and take them up to Celestia’s tower. It's very important.”
“At once, Your Highness!” the pegasus said, saluting and leaping into the air to race off and deliver the summons.
Twilight and Starburst trotted down the winding stairways and cloistered halls of the enormous palace. They could have teleported - the message did say “as soon as possible” - but they needed to have a very important private conversation first. Like, how to broach the subject with their family.
“We should wait until your parents arrive, at least,” Twilight was saying as Celestia’s guards saluted and opened the chamber doors for her. Then they took to the air and flapped along the hallway and out of sight. “Hey. Where do they think they’re going? They’re on duty!”
“They’re following my orders. We need privacy, Littlest Sister,” Celestia called. “Starburst’s perfectly welcome, of course, but this has to be for your ears only. Our ears only. No guards, even on the other side of the door.”
Twilight and Starburst walked in through the doors, which glowed gold and closed behind them. All the curtains were drawn and the lamps were blazing bright. Celestia stood, looking uncharacteristically grave, near her roaring fireplace.
And beside Celestia, mud-splattered, bedraggled, looking exhausted and relieved in equal measure, stood another alicorn.
“Big Sister!” Twilight bounded forwards and gave Luna a hug, ignoring the caked dirt that was dropping off the Princess of the Night and soiling the floor all around her. “I haven’t seen you in ages! Not since the wedding! Where have you been? Celestia kept brushing me off, saying you were doing something personal -”
“I’ve been looking for something, Little Sister. I was already looking for it before your wedding, but I came back for that special day. I couldn’t have missed that occasion. Big Sister’s been handling all of my tasks and duties for more than a year, even bringing the night sky. I’ve been out of Equestria, combing every inch of an ancient forest, digging up and replanting nearly every tree in the entire place, searching for something my father left me on his deathbed.”
Twilight took a step back and looked at Luna. Then she glanced at Celestia, and then at a slightly awed Starburst as he came to stand beside her. She said the only thing she could think of saying. “Huh?”
“I couldn’t even take the time to clean myself up. This is incredibly important, Little Sister.” The muddy, messy alicorn tapped the small slimy box at her feet. “There’s a book in here. We should have read it thousands of years ago. I should never have hidden it, but Father’s instructions were perfectly clear - we had to wait for a sign. I found it less than ten minutes ago and flicked it open. I’d barely started reading before I realised that we all needed to hear this together. That chapter I’d opened it on tells of Oracles, like our parents. The first chapter tells of the Elements of Harmony and how they came to be.”
Twilight and Starburst were looking at the box in awe. Their little announcement could wait.
“This book was written eight thousand years ago. It’s been buried in a magically-sealed wooden box since the day it was given to me. The pages are vellum, Little Sister. Not paper, as Mother’s book was written on.”
Twilight’s look turned from astonishment to distaste. Living things had died to make this book. Times were very different back then, of course. She couldn’t tell what kind of skins had been used to make the pages, but nowadays, with almost every living creature and species in the world being classified as fully sentient and sapient beings, such a thing would be considered murder and wilful ill-treatment of a body. She shook her head. “Well, that can’t be helped. You had to wait for a sign? What sign?”
“We didn’t want to tell you until we knew. Really knew,” Celestia said. “The guards have been looking for her for just as long as Luna’s been looking for this book. They nearly caught her in Manehattan, which is where I ran into her. Well, where she ran into me, I should say.”
“Nearly caught who? Who have they been looking for?” Twilight asked. “I could have helped to look, I could have magically located whoever you’re looking for. All those extra guard patrols were supposed to be a training exercise -”
“They weren’t.” Celestia had magically maneuvered a soft cushion behind Twilight. “A few days after the announcement of your wedding last year,” she said, “Luna and myself went to see what Our subjects were making of the whole engagement. Turns out they were all over the moon about it. I bumped into somepony I hadn’t seen in a while, and she gave me a very interesting message. I’ve passed it on to Luna, but I have to pass it on to you as well.” Twilight had cocked her head, looking intrigued and puzzled at the same time. Celestia braced herself and spoke on. “Pinkie Pie sends her greetings.” Twilight’s mouth dropped open and she sat down in a blur.
The cushion would need a few seams repaired. Thankfully, the feathers didn’t make too much of a mess. Twilight’s face, however... “Tell me this is a joke,” the lavender alicorn said flatly.
“No joke, Littlest Sister,” Celestia said, moving cushions for herself, Luna and Starburst over to Twilight. “I didn’t recognise her at first. She’s got a unicorn horn.”
“Seriously. Stop messing around. This isn’t funny. This isn’t bucking funny at all. That can’t have been Pinkie, it could have been anypony. There’s lots of pink ponies and she wasn't a unicorn anyway, she was an earth pony -”
“That’s true. That there’s nothing funny about this at all, I mean,” Luna said, sitting down and holding up her father’s ancient book. “It’s in here. We need to read this.”
“This has to be some sort of mistake, Pinkie Pie’s gone, she’s buried down in the garden, she can’t still be -”
“Her grave is empty,” Celestia said. “I’ve checked. We had to know. I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, later that night I started throwing up. I couldn’t stomach food for days in fact.”
“Do you want answers?” Luna said. “They’re in here.” She waved the book back and forth. “There’s a couple of very strange things about this book.”
“Like what?” Twilight asked softly, a buzzing sound starting in her ears. Starburst sat down next to her, a serious expression on his face. She leaned into him for support. She needed it right now. The buzzing died away with his warm comforting presence right next to her.
“Well, what’s the first thing that you notice about it?” Luna said, floating the book over to her Little Sister. Twilight took it and opened the blank cover. It was a very short book, nothing like Starshine’s enormous collection of predictions. Maybe twenty or thirty pages in total. The cover was easily twice as thick as all the pages put together. She read the brief message on the first stained, yellowish page twice before she realised what was wrong with it.
My dearest Luna, if you’re reading this then things are rapidly coming to their conclusion. Share this with your Sisters. You should have two of them by now. When this book is needed, you should have no trouble understanding it. Your father does not know what the strange symbols he is writing could possibly mean, as they don’t exist yet. These are not his words, they are mine.
- Cingretto Sclacta
Some of the letters were a little spikier and thinner than those she was used to, but they were essentially the everyday alphabet. And the language... The language was Modern Equish. The language she spoke every day, the language that everypony in the land spoke every day. The official language of Equestria.
“This is written in Equish. How’s that even possible?” she exclaimed. “Equish didn’t even exist until a few hundred years ago, it’s a really modern tongue. Old Equestrian, you know, from back when I was a filly, that wasn’t even remotely like it, and that’s not even mentioning the language that Starshine’s book was written in -”
“Who wrote the book, Littlest Sister?” Celestia asked.
“Cingretto Sclacta,” she said. “Who’s that? Sounds almost like ‘twisted branch’ in Old Equestrian.”
“Almost right. In fact, that’s very nearly poetic,” Celestia said. “That, Twilight, is a name that Luna and myself both heard in our minds, the name of the voice that called us together to the heart of the Everfree Forest in the days after Equestria’s founding. Right after Discord’s conquest. He couldn’t poison the reunited tribes’ hearts any longer, so he attacked them openly. We were directly needed for the first time. It’s Caballusian, the language spoken at the time. 'Cingro Sclaia' is Old Equestrian for 'Twisted Branch'. 'Cingretto Sclacta' is Caballusian for 'Broken Peace'. It’s what the Elements of Harmony called themselves when we first found them.”
Twilight closed the book and lowered it to the floor, staring at her Sisters with shock on her face. The silence stretched on. Starburst broke it, beating Twilight to the same question. “This book was written by the Elements of Harmony?!”
“Yes,” Luna said, picking the book up and opening it. “The first chapter’s titled ‘Harmony Lost’. I think this will be an eye-opener for all of us.” She cleared her throat and read aloud, as the other ponies looked on in open awe.
“The day that the world first started to break was, coincidentally, the very day that Celestia was conceived. It had been tens of thousands of years since magic came to the world, and a thousand generations of unicorns had unlocked most of its secrets. Something was missing, though. The world was peaceful, and unenforced peace just can’t last. Something will always try to upset the balance. Something did.
“A cosmic event of world-shattering power created myself and The Lunacy, as I said, on the evening of Celestia’s conception. The event itself, well, I have no knowledge of it. Nor does The Lunacy, I believe. However it happened, we suddenly came to be: pure magic, two opposite sides of the same thing. Order and chaos. Light and dark. Peace and war. Happiness and suffering. I couldn’t destroy the monster but I banished it, sealing it in stone just a few days before Celestia was born.
“No creature ever knew of the battles that we fought so far away from every other living thing, though the scars of our magical war can still be seen all over the world in what will one day be called The Deadlands -”
“The Deadlands?” Starburst asked, interrupting. “Like, that’s everywhere but Equestria, right?”
“Nearly. You know that most of the world’s uninhabitable,” Twilight said faintly. Her head was spinning slightly.
He nodded. “I never knew why though. It never occurred to me to wonder why. It feels... wrong, to be wondering why. Like I’m not allowed to think about it.”
“That’s part of the magic that keeps us safely here. We think that something prevents ponies from thinking too much about the places beyond the borders,” Celestia said. “The Deadlands are almost everywhere, no living thing could ever visit them, there’s far too much dangerous magic in the ground, in the very air. Even We can’t visit them. Our powers start to fade as We get too near their boundaries. They’re why everything has to live on this one little continent, barely two thousand miles from one side to the other. An island in the stream. Equestria and the lands around it. And we never knew what made The Deadlands so dangerous. So it was because of a war between The Elements and The Lunacy?” she asked Luna.
“Apparently so,” Luna said, then she read on. “Ahem. The Deadlands. I left the monster alone, buried in the centre of the most magically-infected part of the world. And a few days later, a very strange thing happened. Your elder sister Celestia was born, and I was drawn to her. You did not even exist yet, my dear Luna, though I sensed you would soon come to be, and also that you would be as important as the small, white winged unicorn I saw in your mother’s embrace. Winged unicorns are rare and always a cause for particular celebration. But despite appearances, your sister was not a winged unicorn. She was a magical creature of phenomenal power, as are you.
“I had no idea of why at the time, but I knew that your sister and yourself would be the key to defeating The Lunacy. There was something different about your parents, too. The magic that had created Harmony and Chaos, and had created the first of three eternal ponies, had changed your parents. I guessed that your parents would have the ability to see the future as I can, and so to give you and Celestia the best chance you could have, I enhanced their innate magic with a spell. The moment I cast it, I felt The Lunacy vanish from its prison, and before I could do anything about it, I broke into pieces. Six pieces, to be exact. I seemed to have gained a physical form. I appeared in the centre of a forest on the other side of the world from where The Lunacy had been overpowered.”
“The very centre of the Everfree Forest. So that’s where they came from,” Celestia breathed. All three alicorns looked a little unsettled. Starburst just looked puzzled.
Luna continued reading shakily. “I waited there, unable to do anything alone, while your sister and yourself grew. I saw what The Lunacy had planned. Like myself, it seemed to have shattered into pieces as well. It couldn’t do anything directly. Now, the future. The rest of this hasn't happened as of the moment that your father is putting quill to page. But it will happen, so I will speak of it as if it has already done so. The monster made itself a servant when you and Celestia were approaching your nineteen hundredth birthdays. It destroyed the free will of thirteen living creatures, made them lose their minds and attack and murder each other, then it melded their sacrifices into the creation of its servant, the monster that would bring misery and chaos to the world.”
Luna looked up from the book. Everypony looked sick. “Well, Big Sister,” Twilight said. She’d gone slightly pale. “That explains what happened when you... Thirteen corpses. Ugh.”
“What did I miss?” Starburst asked. Nopony wanted to answer him. He was about to apologise for asking when his wife finally relented.
“Discord. Draconequui aren’t... They’re not a natural species. There have been a few in the past, but they usually just like to cause a bit of mischief. Nothing mean-spirited, I mean. He was the only one that was actively malevolent. He was huge, too, they’re usually smaller than a pony. When Luna defeated him, he... He dissolved into the rotting corpses of thirteen different creatures. Thirteen different sentient creatures. Including a lion, a griffon, a goat, a baby dragon, and three different ponies.” Starburst started to look as ill as the alicorns.
“I’ll never forget their Cutie Marks,” Celestia continued. “The sun, the moon, and a star. Kind of fitting, as the three of us had just managed to kill him. We buried those poor, tortured ponies. We buried all of the poor creatures. That monster always was a vile bastard but... Discord has thirteen separate graves. That wasn’t pleasant.”
“Wow. You girls sure have had some adventures,” he said faintly. “I knew Luna ended the Windigo Wars, but... Wow. Sorry. I won’t push if you don’t want to answer, if it’s...”
“There’s no keeping secrets from you, Sweetheart,” Twilight said, smiling faintly at him. “I’m sorry I never told you before. I guess we were all just trying to forget it.” She leaned against his side again as Luna read on.
“Your sister and yourself will eventually defeat this monster, using me, or rather, using whatever I am now as I sit here, buried in the cold ground, speaking to your father from so far away. It won’t be the end, though. This monster’s power will be immense, and its first defeat will freeze the world, separate this place from the rest of the universe. I believe that the two of you should discover your special talents around this time. I think you will be needed by all the creatures of the world, for a very long time to come.
“Alone, The Lunacy itself will remain almost powerless, just like myself, but will still be an enormous threat. My beloved Luna, I see the monster bending you to its will, though I also see you escape its grasp on a day far, far in the future. A day when I will be united together again by six unknown ponies, the final Heroes of The World. I see one of their number being so skilled in magic that she would find the sixth part of me and ascend her mortal form to claim me for her own. I see her going on to totally destroy The Lunacy itself, and joining you and Celestia as your third sister. The servant will outlive its master, however. In the last confrontation, you, Luna, will start the world on the path to the end of chaos. Your father’s tool should have helped you enormously.
“The world will stay frozen as it was for a very long time indeed. You and Celestia have incredibly-powerful illusion magic. You know how it is when you put your legs into a stream, they look as if they bend at the point where they touch the water, but they don’t really? You and your sister will need to do this, on a worldwide scale. You should have discovered your talents for this in time. Without your magic bending the light from the sun around the world, everything will be dead within days. It will feel real but it’s only illusion. It’s not what it feels like. The servant’s curse holds everything frozen in time. As the servant outlived the master, the curse will outlive the servant. But everything, eventually, will die. Don’t give up hope.” Luna looked up. “That’s the end of the chapter,” she said blankly. Her expression was ashen.
“Well, holy horseapples,” said Twilight quietly. “That explains a great deal.”
“So, we don’t move the sun. We don’t move the moon or the stars. It feels like we do,” Celestia said, “but nothing could do that. Even the Element of Harmony couldn’t do that, it would be like a fly lifting a mountain. When we grab hold of the sky and move it, or send it on its way for the day, we’re only changing where it seems to be?”
Luna nodded. “I don’t really understand, because it sure feels like I’m moving the moon and the stars around, but this says ‘legs in a stream’. Like a putting a spoon into a cup of water I guess. The spoon seems to bend, but it doesn’t. It just looks like it does.”
“So,” Twilight asked, confused, “we’re bending light? Bending light and heat and so on around the world? But it really does feel...” Her horn flashed and she poked the sun off to the side a bit. “It feels like an impossibly heavy ball of white fire. And it does feel like I’m moving it.” She nudged it back onto its proper course.
“It’s always felt like that to me,” Celestia said. “I’m just casting an illusion? Almost takes the shine off it. Well, the Element was right. That book was right. Discord spent two years causing, well, discord. He made everypony hate each other, until a few very level-headed ponies outsmarted him. The tribes united together and defeated the magical winter that he’d helped to bring, and then they founded this very land. And he turned up a week later, on what would eventually be dated the third of January, 1 F.E. - the calendar wasn't worked out properly until Our coronation the following year - and he made everypony’s life a living hell.”
“And then the Element, or the Elements, plural or singular, called you? Wow,” Starburst said as Celestia and Luna both nodded. “I could write a book about this. Nopony’d believe it though,” he snorted. “What happened next?”
“Yeah,” Twilight said. “How come you never filled me in on that? I always wondered how you found the Elements. But then, I never asked, did I?” She almost grinned.
“I’d have told you if you'd asked me, Little Sister,” Luna said. “This all happened so long ago. For my part, I was trying to forget it. Well, yes, Discord came, then Celestia and myself found five small engraved rocks buried in the Everfree Forest. We knew there was a sixth but we never found it. We didn’t need it at the time. They called Us, We found them, We used them. We trapped Discord in stone nearly three months later. On April the first,” she smirked.
“Foolish Foals’ Day,” Twilight snickered. “Makes sense. Curse him and curse his foul memory but I think Discord would have gotten a kick out of that.”
(Note: The following blue text was accidentally left out of the chapter when I imported it from Google Docs. Sorry I didn't notice!)
“It was a very difficult day. The few settlements were in ruins, and when we sealed him in his prison... The night sky went completely black. And later, the sun didn’t come up. It was four or five in the morning when we trapped him, just before dawn, but there was no dawn. There was no sunrise,” Luna said. “You can probably imagine the panic. The population had just been released from months of torment, and now there’s no daylight.”
“Well, we knew we would be needed. As we met with the tribal leaders to see what could be done, Little Sister and myself got our Cutie Marks,” Celestia said. “After nearly two thousand years with blank flanks. And I rose the sun for the first time. The first of... The first of millions of times. And that evening, I lowered it again, and Luna brought out the moon and the stars.”
They all sat in silence for a few moments, pensive, thoughtful. “Hang on, what about Pinkie Pie?” Starburst asked suddenly. “What does this have to do with Pinkie Pie?” He knew a great deal about his wife’s legendary friend, and had seen how badly Celestia’s news had shaken his Sweetie.
“A lot,” Luna said. “The page I saw when I opened this book. What I read there... Well, it explained...” She was flicking pages. “This chapter is called ‘Oracles’ and it’s only a single page.”
“Luna was telling me about it when you arrived,” Celestia said to Twilight and Starburst. “Before your wedding last year, Little Sister and myself decided to visit various cities around Equestria. In disguise. So we could judge the mood on the streets for ourselves, with no Royal nonsense getting in the way. And I met Pinkie Pie. She found me while I was enjoying a drink, and she gave me a prediction that sounded almost exactly like one of Mother’s.”
“Are you really sure?” Twilight asked. “I mean, she died so long ago.”
“As I said, her grave is empty. Think whatever you want about me for this. I inspected all their graves with magic. Spike’s jewel, his gift from Rarity, it’s there and it’s still perfectly at rest. As are all your other friends. It’s as if no time’s passed at all since they passed away. They just look like they’re asleep.” Tears had started to glisten in Celestia’s eyes at this. “Don’t go and look for yourself, Twilight.”
“I...” Twilight had started to tear up herself. “I couldn’t. I’ll just take your word for it.”
Luna sniffed herself and started to read from the book again.
“I believe that certain ponies have the power to see what the future might bring. My dear Luna, your mother certainly had this gift. Your father shared it, though his gift wasn’t as powerful. I believe I’ll meet another pony some time in the future who also shares this gift. Just one other pony, I think. You’ll probably know her if you meet her. Starshine used to have these strange shakes and wiggles that she’d learned to interpret. If something was about to fall with potentially injurious results, for example, she would experience a strange sensation in her tail -”
“Twitchy tail,” Twilight whispered as she stared wide-eyed at Luna.
“Yes,” Celestia said. Twilight’s cheeks were colouring. “Pinkie Pie could see the future, just like Mother. She’s gone, I know. I was at her funeral as well, Littlest Sister. But I met her in Manehattan all the same. The Elements must have done something to her after she died. I can’t imagine what -”
There was a sudden loud knock on Celestia’s doors. Everypony’s head whipped around in surprise as they swung open and Evening and Rising walked through, side-by-side.
“Good morning, Your Highnesses,” Evening said cheerfully as Rising closed the doors again. “How are you, Twilight dear?” As Twilight was now her daughter-in-law, she felt a little bit better about addressing a Royal Pony Sister by her given name.
“Little Sister?” Luna asked as she closed the book and, finding herself suddenly self-conscious, magically brushed the worst of the encrusted filth out of her mane.
Twilight and Starburst looked at one another, then nodded. “Uh, we have to put this off for a minute, Sisters,” Twilight said. “As much as I want you to keep reading, Luna. We, uh, we have something we need to tell you. To tell all of you.”
“And it’s why we asked you to come here, guys,” Starburst said, trotting over to his parents and smiling at them. Twilight joined him. “It’s pretty big news.”
“What?” said Rising, Evening, Celestia and Luna all at once.
Twilight coughed. “I’m... Um... I’m... Starburst and I...” She coughed again. “That is to say, the both of us, um. A-ha. Sweetheart? A little help?” Twilight was now blushing furiously. Her mind was reeling from the contents of that book, but there was something even more important to talk about right now.
“You should say it,” he said. She shook her head furiously. “Oh alright. Mom, Dad, Sisters-in-law, we’re going to have a foal. Twilight’s pregnant.”
“WHAT?!” Luna and Celestia yelled in stereo. But Twilight was preoccupied.
Rising had grabbed Twilight around her neck in a hug. Looking through his mane, Twilight saw that Evening was practically smothering her son. Tears were running down the middle-aged mare’s face and she was smiling, smiling as if all of her dreams had come true at once. Twilight’s own grin got bigger as Starburst’s father started sobbing into her ear.
“Twilight, oh Twilight, that’s wonderful, a grandson or a granddaughter! I just don’t know what I should say, I couldn’t be happier, I don’t know what...” Rising Star broke down as happiness overcame him.
“Granddaughter, in fact. Starburst used a spell to find out. She’s a filly,” she said. He hugged her tighter, laughing and crying in equal measure. Then, through his mane once again, Twilight caught sight of her Sisters.
Celestia and Luna were both sitting down, legs splayed, wings drooping. Their mouths were hanging open and their eyes were very wide indeed.
“What?” Twilight asked, a little grumpily.
“You... You’re... You are with child?” Luna whispered, her eyebrows so high that they were almost touching her mane.
“Well, yeah, if you want to put it that way,” Twilight said over Rising’s shoulder. She extricated herself from the overjoyed stallion - who immediately bounded over to his beaming, sobbing wife and his grinning son and swept them both into an immense hug - and frowned at her Big Sister. “It’s a fact of life, Luna. What’s the problem?”
“You’re pregnant?!” Celestia shrilled.
Twilight narrowed her eyes. “Very pregnant. About two months. What’s going on?”
Celestia had stood up again, but Luna stayed sitting awkwardly on the floor amidst her small pile of dirt. The eldest alicorn took a hesitating step forwards. “You’re pregnant? Really? You’re going to have a foal? Really?” She looked like the bottom had fallen out of her world.
Starburst and his parents were staring warily at this sisterly conversation. Twilight squared herself and glared at Celestia and Luna. “Yes. Really. I’m pregnant. I’m ‘with child’. I’m knocked up. What’s the problem?” she said angrily. “I’m going to have a foal. You should be happy for me! What’s going on, Big Sisters?”
“But we... Alicorns can’t...” Luna spluttered. “We’ve never been able to...”
“I... This is unexpected,” Celestia said. “Are you sure?”
“Very sure,” Starburst said. “Really? You can’t... You can’t conceive?”
“No, we can’t, we’re eternal and unchanging. Twilight, you look the same today as you did when you were only a hundred years old. That’s part of what being an alicorn is about. You can’t change. You can’t be hurt, you can’t be killed, you can’t be changed. This is change.” Distress and worry was all over Celestia's face.
“Well, I wasn’t born an alicorn -” Twilight began.
“- but you are one now!” Luna exclaimed. “Little Sister, this could be dangerous. We never warned you of this because... Because, well...” she spluttered.
“Well, because we never dreamed you could possibly conceive!” Celestia cried. “Who knows what will happen?! Who can say what the child will be -”
Twilight’s eyes went wide. She blushed bright scarlet. Her eyes filled with instant tears.
“Oh!” Celestia and Luna both said in unison. Then, the sun-white Sister continued, blushing furiously herself. “Oh, Twilight, I’m sorry!” She galloped forwards and pulled her Littlest Sister into a hug. “I’m so sorry!” There was a thump and the grasp of another pair of forelegs as a crying Luna joined the embrace. “Of course I’m happy for you, I’m overjoyed for you! I’m just... Surprised, I'm just surprised, that’s all!” Celestia was sobbing, and from the sound of it, so was Luna. It took a very long moment before the hug broke up. All three Royal Pony Sisters were crying like foals, though they were also smiling furiously.
Starburst and his parents all stood very still and pretended they were completely invisible.
“I’m s-sorry,” Luna sniffed as she beamed at her Little Sister. “Th-that was just a sh-shock. It’s, l-like you’d just t-told us you c-could breathe und-underwater -”
“I can breathe underwater, Big Sister, and so can you, and so can you,” Twilight said, pointing at Celestia and laughing through her tears.
“Well, yes,” Luna said, wiping her nose. “I mean, well, if you were a mortal pony and you told us you could breathe underwater. Or fly to the moon. Or move the sun. You know what I mean. This is incredible. Incredible! A little foal! A little filly! A little niece!” She was starting to bounce where she sat. Her tears had cut tracks through the grime on her face.
“I know, it’s amazing, isn’t it?” Twilight laughed again. “Who knows how it happened? Who cares? Who gives a flying feather?! I’m going to be a mother!” she almost shouted.
All three Sisters smiled very happy smiles at each other and wiped their tears. Starburst coughed. They whipped around and stared at him. He was standing there next to his mortified parents, forelegs folded, frowning at the three Eternal Sisters with gruff disapproval. His smiling eyes gave the game away, though.
“If you three have quite finished terrifying Mom and Dad?” he asked, tapping a hind hoof.
He and the three alicorns burst into peals of laughter. Starburst hugged his parents again as the three Sisters came over and started apologising through their joyous tears to the two nervous-looking unicorns.
“After all, we’re all family now,” Celestia said as she bade them farewell, half an hour later. Twilight and Starburst had gone back to their tower, and Luna had gone to take a bath. Probably a very, very long bath. They’d decided to continue reading the book together tomorrow. Luna had it locked away somewhere safe until then.
Celestia was halfway to her writing desk so she could pen the draft proclamation for the national celebration for her amazing, incredible new niece - unborn as yet but she could still have fun with the wording - when she stopped dead in her tracks.
Pinkie Pie’s prediction.
“‘Beware the dragons’,” Celestia said, slowly and quietly.
She blinked. She swallowed.
“‘...steal the little one from Equestria and drive her mad with grief...’”
“Oh no,” she whispered.
Pinkie Pie woke up screaming in the dark. She threw off her blanket and jumped to the floor of the cave, still shrieking, and crashed and banged over to her washbowl. Splashing cold water onto her face from the shallow stone basin, she managed to squash the screams down to whimpers for a moment. She took a deep, calming breath, but then she began choking and spluttering in terror.
The only emotions she’d ever felt were those of sadness, hopelessness, despair. Well, no, that wasn't totally true. She still remembered the first day she’d woken up, in this very cave in fact. On that morning long ago she'd felt surprised and confused, and later she’d just got even more puzzled when she’d gone wandering through the strange town at the foot of her mountain. But she hadn’t had any of the dreams then. That very night she’d had her first one, and she’d been sad ever since. Now, for the first time since the second day of her life, there was no sadness in her. Her perpetual misery had been completely displaced by white-hot terror.
She stumbled along the narrow rock passageway and pushed the wooden flap aside, emerging into the early dawn. Her breaths were fast, unsteady, ragged, and she hoped that some fresh air would help. Sitting down beside the entrance to the mid-alpine cave she’d called home for more than sixteen hundred years, she inhaled deeply, held her breath for a moment, then tried her hardest to just blow the emotions out with her exhalation.
It didn’t work. She was shivering, and it had nothing to do with the chilly pre-dawn air. She was almost screaming again, she was so scared. She’d never been so terrified in her life.
She’d seen thousands of horrific things in her dreams, but that had been the worst nightmare she’d ever had. That... That monster! What was it? What could it be? What was it doing to that poor creature?
It looked like a pony, a pony with widespread wings and a very long and sharp horn. It was huge, monumentally massive, gargantuan... No. Those words weren’t enough. That horrifically-nightmarish thing must have been ten miles tall. Enormous, colossal, twice the height of the tallest mountain in the world, speckled brilliant blazing yellow-white like the sun, and it had been screaming in fury at the cowering creature at its feet...
It had been screaming at a dragon, a huge dragon, a thousand-foot-long dragon that was huddled in quaking terror near the vast blazing forehoof of the titanic monster that was screaming down at it. That enormous dragon had looked smaller than a cockroach next to that... That... That...
Pinkie hugged herself and shook and shivered and hoped she’d never meet that monster. She closed her eyes and prayed, as she did every day, for death to take her away from the horrors she saw coming.
She knew it was fruitless. Her despair had driven her to try ending her own life so many times, to spare herself from the many, many oncoming storms she saw in her dreams. It never worked. She couldn’t be killed, she couldn’t be hurt, she couldn’t even stub a hoof. She could sit there all day smacking her face into a rock, and the only outcome would be a shattered rock. She couldn't remember ever experiencing physical pain - she knew of it from somewhere, but that was where her knowledge ended. Emotional pain, on the other hoof... Now, that was a completely different story. She couldn’t bear the agony. She couldn’t bear to see it happen. She didn't ever want to meet that... That... That horrible, horrible thing! Collapsing to the ground in her helpless terror, Pinkie Pie covered her eyes with shaking hooves and screamed damnation at the Element of Harmony. The true monster, as far as she was concerned. The thing that had ripped her out of her eternal rest at the very moment that Rarity had died. And what made it even worse is that she had no idea what this ‘Element of Harmony’ was, or who this so-called ‘Rarity’ might have been.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you torturing me? Why? WHY?! Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you just let me DIE?! WHY? WHY?! WHYYYYYYYYY?! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Her screams echoed down the deserted mountain valley. The echoes were followed by choking, shuddering sobs.
The Element of Harmony heard her.
It didn’t answer. It couldn’t answer. What could it have said? How could it explain?
It wasn’t that it didn’t care for its Oracle. She was only its messenger, as Starshine and Moonglow had been, eight thousand years before. Her eternal spirit was safely tucked away in The Everafter, happy as a lark with all of her family and friends, and ignorant of the torment that her resurrected soulless body experienced... Well. That didn’t matter.
Pinkie Pie was the only pony who could possibly do this. She was only the third pony ever, out of all the billions who had lived, who could visit the future in her dreams. It despaired when it learned this, for as the six separate Elements, it couldn’t make the changes needed to her body and her mind that would allow her to remember the dreams she’d had since she was born - as far as the Pinkie Pie of two thousand years ago had been concerned, she'd never experienced these dreams, because she couldn't remember them. All she was aware of was a certain amount of unease when she woke up some mornings. And of course, her close-afield precognition. She'd called it her ‘Pinkie-Sense’, though it ran far deeper than she'd ever known. The Element was whole when Starshine and Moonglow had been alive, so their transformation happened the moment the Element learned of their existence and their potential.
It couldn’t transform Pinkie Pie into an Oracle as six separate Elements. Pinkie Pie would die before it could act, and the third Oracle would never appear. The Lunacy’s curse would never end.
But a glimmer of hope surfaced on the day that the Bearer of Loyalty died. Pinkie Pie was a Bearer. She once possessed and commanded part of the Element, and her mortal body could not decay after death - not until the Element died itself. So at the moment that the Element had become whole again with the surprisingly-delayed death of the Bearer of Generosity, its full power open to it for the first time in more than sixty centuries, it had removed Pinkie’s undecayed and deathless body to this little cave and breathed new life into her, remade her as a young pony, a unicorn, had given her the magic she would need to perform her task. She had to remember the future she saw, so that she could tell the right ponies about it. Such a pity that Pinkie was the Bearer of Laughter. The important parts of the future were never happy, and it was torture for her to see them.
The Element managed to convince itself that Pinkie Pie’s torment didn’t matter. That she wasn’t really Pinkie Pie. That Pinkie’s body didn’t have a soul. Even though it knew that was a lie - when Pinkie died again, something would Go On. Her experiences since the day that it woke her up again counted as a soul, didn’t they?
It knew that it was deluding itself, but it managed to ignore those thoughts.
Not important. They weren't important. True Harmony was all that mattered. And True Harmony was coming. Soon. Very soon. Less than a century now. Perhaps eighty, perhaps ninety years, and then the end would come. It would be shattered apart again before that happened. It had a lot of work to do in a surprisingly short time.
The Element really should have spoken to Pinkie Pie, but it couldn’t. It couldn’t face its Oracle. It was far, far too ashamed. Perhaps later. Maybe it could try to explain things to her if it were welcomed into The Everafter. It wouldn't be surprised if it was turned away, after all the horrible things that it had done in the pursuit of True Harmony.
It just sat in its little box a thousand miles away.
It waited.
If it had had a mouth, it would be smiling for the future.
If it had had eyes, it would be weeping for what it was doing to Pinkie Pie.
But it had no choice.
Stats
Page generated in 0.032 seconds
Total duration
969 users online
2,270,077 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Wow. This was hard. See you next time with the joyous birth of a small, purple, winged unicorn.
It gets better, I swear. It gets worse first, but trust me, it really does get better.
Hugs.
wow bro this is amazing its o really serious story taking turns and twists that make you feel the story
ita amazing
It gets worse than the embodiment of joy and laughter being reduced to a shell of her former self, living in mind spiting terror throughout her days, enough so to end her life. But can't, and it forced to live through every moment.
...
...
...
D:
Kool story bro...
849715 Yes. Worse. But then better. SO better. Like, I hope I can do justice to just HOW better everything gets.
I won't leave you hanging, bronybros. I'd be an asshole if it got sad. That's not how you end a story.
I might send the final chapter draft and a hundred tax-free American Bucks to Sleepless so he can make it happy. And cloppy. Wait, no.
So many things. I love what you did about time affecting language. I was just starting to wonder if you'd opted for Universal English.
The lore itself is amazing. So deep!
Another thing I liked was that the Element isn't some always-right being, that it actually has to lie to itself about what it's doing.
More, please?
849749
Doesn't Twi kil herself with the elements, or was that just an ending for your previous story?
Now that's what I call a good history chapter. Also, poor Pinks
At least the Element feels bad about it.
849823
I think I know the one you're talking about, and in that one I think Twilight only lasts a few centuries without her friends before succumbing.
849930
I think she was actually like 2000-something years old
Well i would say that you are an asshole for making it this depressing but it turned out rather well for your last story, so why not?
good luck in not having a mob of people at your door with torches by the end of this smayds!
Celestia and Luna's reaction to twilight being pregnant
media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lutgy7QUXw1qjmwxa.gif
849542
Good, I very much like Grimdark (although I also like heartwarming endings too)
I am happy and hope to see what happens next soon!
And darker than Pinkie Pie being resurrected as a soulless embodiment of the will of the Elements while living a several-century-long life of depression? SERIOUSLY!? Is that even possible?
Oh god. An update. Wow.
T'was amazing.
At the beggining of this chapter I was
Then I was D': at the end
Heads are gonna roll
DAMNIT.
Two whole paragraphs got left out in the GDocs import. They're highlighted in blue for ease of finding them.
I blame HER ->
She had ONE job to do. Pick up the text from Google Documents, fly across to FiMFiction, and put it in the edit box. Damn her and her massive steel arse!
(I suppose I should be grateful that the website's not a smashed ruin with an eldritch abomination poking out the top. Wait, I'm mixing canon and fanon again, aren't I? I need a gipsy, STAT!)
I can barely bring myself to keep reading, because I know what the total outcome will be...
NYAAAAAARGHA
-Jorofrarie
Oh dear... I hope the element gives that tortured soul in pinkie's body a happy ending, it owes her that much and more, but that much at least. This story is shaping up to be as great, if not more so, as the story which preceded it. (to be honest, I actually like this one better not that it's prequel was bad or anything!)
849715
cdn.head-fi.org/8/88/880526bc_mother_of_god.jpeg
Now that was depressing sad Pinkie is bad enough, screaming in terror, possibly soulless, nightmare fueled Pinkie is
Also, the Elements as a sentient being is an interesting concept.
Many manly tears were shed
And I can't even have a faintest little hope about a happy ending because I've read "Not My Destiny"
...still, this is so well-written!