Chapter 1
The emotion of the moment was overwhelming, the sheer joy we felt upon reaching the end, the end of everything. We had done it, we had found it, the end of the multiverse.
Our travels had led us to a wall that went on forever. And once we found out where that wall ended we would have a corner of the multiverse, and then someday we would know the exact size of the multiverse.
We were happy and excited to finally have a limitation, to finally reach the end of infinity. It was in the midst of our celebration that an idea percolated throughout us: an awful, horrible, pessimistic, and downright distressing idea. What was on the other side of that wall?
---
Queen Galaxia eyed the newly arrived sphere. She cracked it open, surprised to find the usually crowded container empty.
She opened it further, casting a searching spell for any souls that might be hidden. When the spell pinged, she magnified her view until she could see that a single, glowing gray orb was the only cargo. She held it out in her magic, staring at one of the dimmest souls she had ever come across.
She checked to see if the soul had been assigned to a world before, casting a spell to read its memories. A torrent of information rushed to become part of herself. She never could get used to the process, and the foreign memories drowned her for a few moments until she could categorize them and understand, eventually parsing through each of them in turn.
Forty-seven lifetimes.
The number was almost as staggering as the variety of the worlds the soul had been to. There was a lifetime spent on a world of sentient intertwining trees. One spent on a hive world of insect-like creatures, immense cloud worlds on giant gas planets where balloon-like beings could float up and down for a lifetime, majestic water planets of exquisite interconnected coral mountains. A technological world where beings spent their days doing whatever they wished in virtual environments of their own making. A world of isolation. A world of intertwining social systems. Worlds filled with war, peace, chaos, and harmony.
It had hated all of them.
Galaxia stared at it, unsure of how to proceed. She sighed before forming a temporary recreation of the soul’s last world, making another attempt at the soul’s after life interview.
The soul’s last world had been a planet inhabited by legless, flat, manta ray-like birds that never touched the ground. The planet was actually a sun burning at a relatively cool temperature. Not cool enough for the birds to land on, but enough to provide thermals to lift the creatures, and their light nests. The physics of the sun planet made her head spin, it didn’t follow her ruleset, and she should not have expected it to. After all, each world was required to be an experiment in one way or another.
She slid herself out of her domain and changed herself into one of the creatures, a blue, flat, broad winged bird. Galaxia breathed out onto the soul and navigated it to a temporary body she had created.
The green bird started to breathe. Her temporary form hung motionless in the air, fear etched in her doleful eyes.
“Hello, Asvarel,” she said, adept at speaking in the creature’s hums and beak clacks that passed for their language. “How are you?”
“I’m dead... aren’t I?” Asvarel said slowly, trying to take in the vast space and the blue creature before her.
“Yes, you are,” said Galaxia, changing the subject quickly to ask the most important question, the one that affirmed continuing the experiment. Any positive response would justify a King or Queen in allowing a soul to stay reincarnating on a world indefinitely. “What did you like about your life?”
The bird wavered in the air before answering. “I hated it. Every moment.”
The overwhelmingly negative response to such a basic question had led Kings and Queens like Galaxia to pass the soul elsewhere. She was an extreme outlier. Most souls got placed on their first world, the slowest taking at most five. Galaxia’s wings adjusted for the briefest of moments before going flat again. “But your home was so lovely, the beautiful sky above, the soft warmth of the sun below. Didn’t you enjoy that?”
“No.”
“What about your family, your father, or your mother? Surely you loved them very much?”
“They provided for me.”
“So you loved them?”
“I tolerated them.”
Galaxia tried to hide her pained expression. Her form was nearly incapable of producing external emotions besides from the different floating patterns. She tried to keep her position floating in a soft commanding posture.
“What was your favorite moment home in Kial?”
“The part where I tried to prove everyone wrong.”
“By doing?”
“I placed a wing on the surface. No one had ever done it before and survived.”
“And how did that turn out?”
Some of her tail feathers drooped. “I’m here now.”
Galaxia let the full weight of the soul’s admission sink in. “I’m so sorry.”
Asvarel didn’t say anything.
“What is your greatest desire?”
The bird didn’t answer for a few moments, before responding with humming and broken clacking noises. “To leave.”
“Do you think that would make you happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to be happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want?”
The creature wavered, searching for something she desired. Galaxia awaited this response. Any desire would give a clue as to the right environment to place the soul in.
“I don’t know,” repeated Asvarel.
Galaxia pondered what to do for it. Most approaches had already been taken, her past lives evidence of that. And this interview wasn’t granting any clues. It was one of the conundrums of her role. If the soul mentioned a happy memory, or any clue to go on, then that would be enough happiness to justify leaving them there for lifetimes on end. The interview hadn’t helped, and Galaxia had known it wouldn’t, but that still didn’t stop her from trying.
“I’m going to help you find someplace, Asvarel,” Galaxia soothed the soul. “Someplace you will be so happy that you will want to stay forever.”
“I doubt that,” she said, softly floating in a more defiant pattern. “I don’t want to be anywhere. You can’t help me.”
“I can help you. I’ll help you find a place where you belong.”
“There is no such place.”
She stared at the floating creature before speaking, an idea crossing her mind. “Perhaps something different can be arranged. You have had many lifetimes, Asvarel. If given the chance, I’m sure there’s some place or some combination of places that you could enjoy.”
In the silence that followed, she removed all the barriers on Asvarel’s soul, unlocking the rest of her memories. One by one, all forty-seven other lifetimes returned to her.
Galaxia floated there, watching the soul as it stopped and considered each new piece of information, each lifetime spent on each world, and how each previous interview with the other Kings and Queens ended unsatisfactorily.
After a long time spent in silence the soul eventually asked, “Why are you all doing this?”
“I want to find a planet for you to reincarnate on continuously. None of the worlds you have been to so far have granted a satisfactory response from you. Which lifetime, or combinations of lifetimes, did you like the best?”
“None of them,” said the soul, the floating pattern of her body conveying anger. “I didn't like any of them.”
“Just give me some idea of what you want. Someplace that you might find happiness enough to stay?”
“I don’t want to stay anywhere,” seethed Asvarel, her feathers quivering. “I don’t want to reincarnate. I don’t want to be a part of this system. I don’t want to be ruled by you. I don’t want to be ruled by anyone! I—” her fluttering form slowed down to complete calm. “I don’t want to exist.”
Galaxia had had enough. She snatched the soul out of its temporary body. The blur of the soft glowing gray orb floated in front of her. She held it aloft as she elevated up to her control space, transforming back to her preferred form.
She had thought granting the soul access to the memories of her past lives would be a learning experience for it, a chance to see life—existence— differently.
Instead it had shaken Galaxia. Those that desired nonexistence, the voidwishers, were tricky to deal with. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that souls cannot be destroyed. The ending of universes, big bangs, black holes, and the foulest of corrupted Kings and Queens cannot so much as scratch a soul. The most those like her could do is to give them a more complex form to interact with the universe better. The only thing to do for a soul that didn’t want to exist was to keep sending it through the reincarnation process like every other soul. It didn’t change the outcome, but it was rather discouraging.
Where could she send this soul that others had not tried? Most of her current projects involved her interconnected sentient tree worlds, but a King had already tried several plant based environments. One of her sea serpent worlds? No, the soul hadn’t liked worlds like that either. Everything bipedal ended in disaster, despite a variety of social constructs. Perhaps something quadrupedal?
No, species and the number of legs didn’t matter. Maybe the emotions of the place were the cause of this soul’s depression? The soul had been through an incredibly saccharine world, as well as a war-torn world. It had been through happy families, broken ones, and an orphanage. Perhaps it could be better suited in a more neutral family? Something tight-knit, but not necessarily visibly happy, a gray family with little extreme in any direction.
Galaxia scanned through the worlds she was working on. She pondered for a long time, considering each of the current twelve worlds being prepared for habitation. Every single one of them shared too many similarities to worlds that the soul had already lived on.
Her mind wandered off, reviewing some of the sixteen million worlds that she had personally set in motion. Ideally, they would never to be touched again until the final data harvest millions of years after all traces of life there had been extinct. Galaxia’s mind ended up locked onto a planet she hadn’t had an after life interview from in millenia.
The inhabitants of the world in question were much different from the sapient plants and aquatic life forms she usually created for souls. An experiment among many that seemed to be doing fine on its own. The tiny sun that had orbited the planet had been taken from a separate universe entirely, which was a quick fix to allow for magic to control the sun directly, in defiant opposition with how she had set up suns to behave during the spell she cast for this universe’s big bang. It had been a collaboration with one of her acquaintances, Cosmos. After some successful habitation on the planet, she had placed two princesses on this world many millennia ago.
She had made a habit of deciding that a few select souls she liked could be allowed special privileges, becoming one of her Princes or Princesses. Sometimes her approach was an avatar, a soul that would help the world by reincarnating along with all of the other souls on the planet. But this world was a different experiment, and with some prodding from Cosmos and special permission from Hope, she had been allowed to have the avatars of this world be immortal and skip the reincarnation process. It had been different from the norm, but every world was different from the norm in some way or another.
She headed with the soul to the world to visit with them, two remarkable souls to whom she had gifted a world to oversee and cultivate for those that reincarnated there.
She flowed out of her comfortable controlled space and extruded down into tangible existence, taking on the form that her princesses would find familiar. The body formed around her, a majestic, tall, almond alicorn with large billowing wings and a slender horn, her mane and tail flowing into an image of the galaxies she was in charge of, a single spiral galaxy as her cutie mark. Once she was finished with her transformation, she landed softly in front of Celestia.
"Mother?" Celestia said as Galaxia’s form entered into the court, her presence radiating light and illuminating the room almost as much as the sun shining through the stained glass windows. Time had stopped and the earth pony that Celestia had been conversing with had been frozen mid-speech. Celestia whispered out at the regal, cosmic alicorn, “is that really you?”
“Yes, it’s me, Celestia,” said Galaxia, a smile forming on her muzzle. Celestia flew off her throne and landed in the center of the great hall next to her mother.
"I thought you would never return," Celestia said as Galaxia raised her hooves to embrace her.
“How have you been? Where is your sister?"
At this, Celestia froze. "Mother, I'm so, so sorry—I didn't know what to do. I—"
Galaxia couldn't understand Celestia’s distress through her disheveled words and soft tears. She continued to embrace her while absorbing her memories. The history of the beaming, bright turquoise soul seeped inside Galaxia, every feeling, thought, and word of her lifetimes experienced by her in a moment.
The memories came all at once. King Sombra—Discord—Nightmare Moon—the one thousand year banishment—the underlying melancholy that Celestia had been hiding for centuries, every experience, thought and action understood as clearly as if they were Galaxia’s own memories. Just like Hope had warned her, the immortality she had given Celestia and Luna had been a painful gift. The memories of the entities of Discord and Nightmare Moon baffled her and required further investigation, but for now, comforting her daughter remained her top priority.
”It’s okay Celestia, I'm here."
"What else could I have done? The ponies would have had no sun to grow the food they needed to survive. I—"
“You did the right thing." Galaxia said.
"I... I did?"
"Yes, you did. And I’m proud of you.” Galaxia held onto her hoof. The event hadn’t hurt anypony or changed the landscape of the world in any significant way, and there were always worse end results for immortals. Galaxia spoke, “I’m not often wrong about my selection for Princes and Princesses, but it looks like I was wrong in this case. Luna will have her immortality revoked, and I will arrange her next incarnation.”
“No, mother, please no.” Tears started to well up in Celestia’s eyes.
“You know that immortality is rarely granted. I’ve shown you and your sister how other worlds work and how special you really are. Luna knew what she was doing. I simply selected the wrong choice, she will need to reincarnate, just like every other creature here.”
“But, I love her!” Celestia argued back. “She’s had almost one thousand years to reflect on what she’s done. I know she can be reformed. I know she can make it.”
“What would you have me do?”
“There’s a prophecy about Luna, about Nightmare Moon.”
Galaxia accessed Celestia’s memory and pulled out the prophecy, repeating it aloud. “On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape.”
“Mother,” Celestia began, “you are the stars. You will free her, and I will reform her. Please, at least give her that chance.”
Galaxia watched as her daughter’s silent tears fell to the ground. What Celestia called a prophecy was merely a rumor she had started and leaked into the myths and legends of Equestria. More of a desire of hers than something set in stone to occur.
“I suppose it was a good thing I came back.” She sighed. She had simply wanted to find a place for the soul, not worry about another one in the process. A few stray thoughts formed on the edge of her mind of how she could fix this.
“I will work something out, Celestia. I might be able to save two souls if I can make this work.”
“Two souls?” Celestia perked up a little.
“Yes, I’m bringing another addition to the reincarnation pool of this world. I’ll be searching around for good souls to be part of its family.”
“Yes, of course,” Celestia said. “And my sister?”
“I only have snippets of ideas at this point, Celestia, but if I configure this correctly, then yes, I’ll be the stars that aid in her escape.”
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Have you been reading Pride and Prejudice?
No way... PurpleSmart is the emo soul?
Interesting work so far.
Was she, perhaps, the last Airbender at some point?
How can you be sure there is a corner at all? For all you know the multyverse is so dern big that a seemingly flat surface of the wall actually slightly curves into a sphere.
Oh, is that so?
The meta humor is not lost on me.
Rock farm here we come!
The way I'm interpreting this so far is that there is one King or Queen in each universe in the Multiverse since Galaxia operates many Galaxies not just one it seems to be more of a name so I assume the entities know as Cosmos and Hope are the same way too.
~Leonzilla
That soul sounds like my mother-in-law. There is just no pleasing it.
Jokes aside, I stopped the sequel to this story and came to this one. I'm liking it much more.
"If the soul mentioned a happy memory, or any clue to go on, then that would be enough happiness to justify leaving them there for lifetimes on end."
This sounds horrifying, and if this is the system that the Queens and Kings intentionally created, they're evil.