Cast-Iron Cast-Offs

by Cast-Iron Caryatid

【Sharing the Night】 Old Epilogue

Author's Note:

This is the controversial last section of the previous version of Sharing the Night’s Epilogue, which involves Celestia being a bit OOC (Though her logic is explored a little more in-depth in the new version) and a rather downer ending. Still, I’m preserving it here for posterity and the rare occurrence wherin Discord actually managed to fluster Celestia.

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As Celestia ascended the side of Canterlot mountain pulling a wagon of gold and jewels appropriated from the treasury, she couldn’t help but reflect on the matter at hoof. It was hard to believe that the pile of twisted metal in the saddlebags on her back had been any kind of pony, let alone an alicorn.

Her feelings about Harmony were complicated, but among them were guilts of several flavors. That the situation had broken down in such a way that Harmony had needed to sacrifice herself to save Luna in the first place felt like a failing on her part. She felt bad for being caught unprepared by Astri’s desperate escape, and that she hadn’t even borne witness to it was a particular regret.

These burdens, she was used to as much as one could be. She had lost—and failed—many ponies in her lifetime as a ruler of a nation. It was inevitable, and she could only endeavor that she would always do her best.

The fresh guilts that she wasn’t used to, on the other hoof, shamed and disappointed her. There were several of these, all mixed up around the fact that she did not entirely want Harmony back.

Part of it was simply recognizing that Harmony had not entirely welcomed life to begin with, though that, perhaps, could have been overcome with time.

Another part was the simple pragmatic conclusion that the Elements of Harmony had been more useful and more powerful than the alicorn herself. Perhaps this was because she had needed the guidance of the pure of heart to truly connect with the purity of purpose that slept inside of her; if so, then that, too, might have been a path that she could have walked eventually.

If it had been just those things, part of her might have shamefully hoped for the easier option, but the path forward would still have been clear; she would never have seriously considered anything else.

No, if all that Harmony had needed from her was a mentor and guide, she would have done her best and hopefully one day be proud of the mare that Harmony could have become—but that was not all that Harmony had needed from her; not according to Twilight Sparkle.

Celestia also felt guilty for the envy she felt for what her student and sister had, and while that, too, was a situation where her path was clear—if one that ached more than the others—it was also the root of her larger problem, because when Celestia reflected on the assertion that Harmony was her only option for romance, well… the only feelings she could drudge up for the matter were pangs of disappointment.

She didn’t truly blame Twilight her indiscretion. Certainly, she had not helped matters, but she would have inevitably considered it on her own, if only to distract herself from wanting what she could not have. Truthfully, she should probably thank Twilight, if only for preventing her from going too far down the rabbit hole looking for love in all the wrong places, considering that the list of otherwise eligible immortals included Discord.

Honestly, if Twilight had told her that Discord were her destined lover… well, she would have assumed it a joke, but it still wouldn’t have been as bad as Harmony. Discord’s antics made her feel like a parent with a rowdy child, trying to keep up, but Harmony just made her feel old—full stop.

Perhaps she was wrong, though. Perhaps Harmony would return and find wonder in the world; perhaps she would develop a biting sense of humor or become an incorrigible lech. One could say that this, too, was something that could be worked on—that they could fix.

But she shouldn’t—she couldn’t go into things want to ‘fix’ her. She could coax and guide a student to make them better to face the world, but she knew better than to try and change somepony so they might make a better partner for her. There was a small part of her that whispered in her ear to say that, intentional or not, this is what she had done with Twilight, and that would have turned out fine if not for matters that she could not have foreseen, but she quashed it with great prejudice. It was a line that she would not cross.

Shivering, she shook the idea from her train of thought. There was no point in tormenting herself drudging endlessly through moral quagmires when in all likelihood there would be no Harmony for her to pervert her mentorship of. She would find out soon enough, in any case; she had arrived at the summit—or close enough to it. The actual peak of the mountain was another few dozen feet up, but Canterlot mountain was as sharply topped as it appeared to be from a distance, and actually standing atop it, while satisfying a sense of drama, was not necessary.

The last time that Celestia had forced Harmony to manifest, she had used Canterlot’s largest telescope to focus the light of her sun in order to provide the power and environment that she had needed. This had been necessary because, unlike Luna, whose absolute control over her light had been shown the night previous, Celestia’s light became more of a thick, viscous conduit for her magic that she could only direct in heaving gouts of power when she took hold of it, as she had when fighting off the nameless dragon that Twilight and Luna had riled up.

What, then, was she doing here now? During her first, nearly disastrous attempt to create a body for Harmony, overexposure to Celestia’s magic had nearly killed the weakened alicorn, so what did she plan to do here, where her access to her magic was at its greatest?

Quite a lot, actually.

Her first action was to undo the harness and decouple herself from the wagon. Once she was free, she took a moment just to stretch and rest. With it being daylight, she could have simply remanifested herself as Twilight had become accustomed to doing, but for her, the relief she felt was worth the ache in her muscles it took to bring it about, and it wasn’t often she got a chance to experience it.

Once she was satisfied, her muscles cooling, Celestia walked around to the back of the wagon and made to undo the latch at the back. Somehow, it had stuck. Not terribly concerned, she turned around and gave the side of the wagon a good kick, successfully knocking the latch—and something else loose amidst an avalanche of riches that came pouring out the back.

“Oof, ow,” grumbled Discord as he pulled himself free of the surprisingly heavy mass wearing several necklaces, two crowns and somehow having found the gaudiest of rings to fit all the digits on both his lion’s paw and griffon talon. “I swear, this is the last time I ride coach.”

Celestia rolled her eyes, not terribly perturbed by Discord’s presence—which wasn’t a thought that she’d ever expected to have, but it was easier to entertain his sense of humor when he was no longer capable of turning the sky into blurple jelly when he was pitching a fit.

“Hello, Discord,” she said, welcoming him with as placid and serene a smile as she could manage, working around him to levitate the gold into a clean mound, plucking bits and bobs off of Discord as she went. “To what do I owe the pleas—oh.” Celestia halted her preparations and took a moment to look him over in a new light. “You… actually care about her?” she asked, caught somewhat dumbfounded by the concept, not just because it was unusual for him, but because he might actually be the only one who really, honestly did.

“Pfah! Me? Care? Don’t be absurd,” he insisted, waving the notion off like a bothersome fly. “But, ah, you know, since you mentioned it, I don’t suppose you’d mind if I stuck around and watched? Professional curiosity, you understand. In magic. I was quite the magic-dooer in my time.”

“Magic-dooer?” Celestia repeated, cracking a wry smile. “Is that a technical term?”

“Don’t listen to these kids nowadays with their horns and thaumamagical-whastsits,” he said, miming as if shoving the very idea away with his hands. “Real magic-doing comes from the spleen.”

“Not the heart?” Celestia asked, playing along.

“The heart?” Discord repeated, scoffing. “As if the heart ever has time for magic, always thump-ba-dumping—no creativity, no pizazz.” Discord sidled up next to Celestia and—to her stunned shock, since she’d thought him completely without his tricks—opened his chest just a crack as if it were a trenchcoat and he was selling watches. Inside, Celestia saw what looked like a stylized heart burning green with dragonfire. “No, my dear, the heart functions on an entirely different set of priorities.”

“I… see,” Celestia said, though she really didn’t. Her short briefing on Discord’s origins had been rather truncated, given Harmony’s presence at the time and her desire not to revisit past events. Clearly some important aspects had been left out. “In any case,” she continued, extracting herself from Discord’s personal space as he put his heart away. “You are quite welcome to watch my magic-doing, so long as you don’t interfere.”

“Interfere?” he asked, predictably feigning innocence. “Why Celestia, it’s as if you don’t even know me.”

Deciding that it probably would have ruined the mood if she’d pointed out that she really didn’t know him all that well, Celestia continued her preparations, shooing him away from the pile of gold and separating out the gemstones, using small applications of her magic to soften the fittings where necessary. When she was finally just about ready, she removed the saddlebags containing the damaged pieces of Harmony that Fluttershy had collected, thinking to set them away from her work area for the time being, and it was then that an idea struck her.

Looking down at the saddlebags floating in her magic, Celestia asked herself if this was really a good idea, ignored herself and held them out to Discord. “Would you like to hold her?” she asked. “I need her kept away from too much of my magic.”

Discord hesitated, but soon enough took the saddlebags from Celestia without a word. Sometimes, she thought as she watched him back away, it really was just like dealing with a rambunctious child. He was willful and prone to break his toys when he threw a fit, but not altogether a bad pony… dragon… whatever-thing.

Finally ready for the first stage, she pushed thoughts of Discord from her mind and pulled the thinnest strand of her magic from the sun as she was able and got to work fashioning something much like her original attempt—a golden sarcophagus imbued with her magic. The metal, saturated with enough power to destroy Canterlot, would make it impossible for any other magic to coexist, thus preventing any magical interference from outside the shell.

To this, she added the gemstones, lining the inside of it from wall to wall until it shimmered like a geode, each one enchanted with a particular spell attuned to her magic. The spell would crystalize her magic, containing and preventing it from damaging what would be placed inside.

Finally, quickly, as the cracks between the gemstones began to fill with crystalized magic, Celestia added more gold—a thick, heavy layer of it heated by proxy in a crucible and poured in by hoof so as to leave it as magically neutral as possible. This final layer all but filled the inside of the sarcophagus, leaving only a vague hollow pony shape that was not quite a mould in the center of it, shaped in such a way as to circulate the trickle of magic that Harmony’s remains were producing in the same way that Celestia had before. By the time she was finished, Celestia was sweating from handling the molten metal and was glad to step away from it, if only for a moment.

Wasting no time, she waved Discord over. “Quickly, we must place her inside and completely seal it. The remaining heat should do no harm.”

Discord looked dubiously at the contraption resembling both an implement of torture and something to bury a pony in, but didn’t hesitate in handing over the saddlebags and helping to arrange the remains of Harmony inside of it without simply dumping them in like a sack of plaster. Once that was done, Celestia did as she had said and shut the sarcophagus with a heavy, muted thud that was more felt than heard in the silence of the windswept mountaintop. Small additions of her empowered gold were made to ensure the seal, and then, it was done.

“And now?” Discord prompted.

Celestia let out a heavy breath and walked over to the wagon. Hopping up into the back with the slight help of her wings, she set about to find herself a comfortable place to sit. “Now we wait and see.”

And so they waited, and Celestia and Discord talked. It was an interesting experience for her, if a little frustrating at times, because of all the things that Discord was, he was never contrite or apologetic for anything he’d done. He was childish, but not a child. In fact, the more she talked to him, the more she thought of him instead as an old hermit that had long lost any care for the trappings of maturity, simple in his desire for novelty and so isolated that the concerns of others had ceased to register. She would almost feel guilty for sealing him in stone for a thousand years if not for the fact that his isolation had been measured in eons before she had even been born and he had not changed appreciably since—at least, not until he had lost his powers to Twilight’s ascension.

Now… she didn’t know what to think, or how to judge him. As he was not a child and had, at one point, known, understood and abided by the tenets of society, his actions could not be dismissed under the defense of ignorance. Being immortal, senility did not apply to him, but all the same, he had long since broken in ways and for reasons that he could not be blamed for. Responsibility for the actions of a drunk or otherwise mentally impaired pony’s actions sat squarely on the pony who had put them in that state, but assigning blame… wasn’t entirely the question at hoof. The question was what to do and how to treat him.

In the end, she failed to come to a reasonable conclusion by the time the sun was setting in the sky and she decided that it had been long enough. She waited for the next lull in the conversation, took a breath to prepare herself, and stood up.

“Is she…?” Discord asked.

Celestia hesitated, realizing that she had not really explained her expectations. “Perhaps,” was her vague response. “Normally I would expect a newly manifest alicorn to break free, but with how Harmony was, I can envision her waking up in an enclosed space and deciding to simply lay there unmoving. Alternatively, she may simply require more time; the magic that the remains were producing was quite a bit weaker than when she was the Elements of Harmony.”

When Celestia cracked open the sarcophagus, however, it became clear that Harmony was not simply waiting for them, nor did she require more time. What had formed inside the mass gold was… not an alicorn—not yet, though that was perhaps too optimistic a way to say it. The magically-neutral gold had been cannibalized like the white of a yolk, as it had been meant to, but what had grown in its place was a twisted and gnarled bramble, and at the heart of it, a seed.

Celestia look in a long, slow breath and let it out. “I’m sorry,” she said, and to her relief, she actually was.

“Ah, well,” Discord said, turning away from the sight while giving every impression that he was only mildly disappointed. “It was nice while it lasted.”

Celestia shook her head and let him be. She was, as she had expected to be, a little bit relieved. Things had just become much simpler for her—or so she thought. In abandoning her old concerns, new ones sprouted to take their place as she asked herself what this would mean for her when the seedling sprouted.

Presumably, they would have four alicorns once more, only this time instead of being faced with the moral dilemma of trying to change a guileless ancient alicorn to better suit her, she would have a foal; a blank slate who was completely innocent with only Harmony’s power to sustain her. Even if Celestia did not raise her, even if she somehow managed to avoid tainting their interactions with the shadow of what was expected to come later, this new alicorn would never be her equal.

Not unless Celestia made them equal.

Celestia did not know the story of the alicorn that Harmony had refused to hear named in her presence; she did not know the tragedies of her life or how things had devolved to the point that the world was destroyed and Harmony was created in order to give life to Twilight and Luna, but she did know that Twilight had referred to Harmony as ‘the last good that she’d had.’

Clearly it hadn’t been much.

Celestia, on the other hoof had… quite a bit more—not that she was foolish enough to rip out her good and place it in this seed, but what she knew of history said that she could, and that opened up a great number of possibilities. Here and now, she had the power to influence how this new alicorn would grow and develop in any of a number of subtle ways. She could make them equals and hope for the best, or she could mix some of her essence in, wrap it around this alicorn’s being at the moment of conception so that matters between them were never in question.

The very thought disgusted her, but she held onto it as a reminder that if she did the wrong thing here, the consequences of her mistake would ripple out into the future without end.

It was for that reason that she already knew what she would have to do. She could not contaminate her choice with wants or wishes, hopes and dreams for what might be. She could not rely on things going right, or the truth of the matter never coming to light. Her choice would have to be unassailable and entirely selfless.

“Celestia?” Discord prompted, interrupting her train of thought. “It’s getting dark. I don’t suppose you planned an easy way off this mountain?”

She was sorely tempted to take the out that Discord had given her—to go home, to plan and to think. It was the only reasonable option—but she could not afford to be reasonable here. She could not afford to calculate the pros and cons or gather more information. Nopony was threatening her, yet here in this moment, suddenly and without warning, she was faced with making a choice that would the shape everything to come.

“I’m afraid you might have to find your own way back, Discord,” she said, never taking her eyes off the seed in front of her.

Discord was taken aback. “What, you’re just going to go off and demanifest without me? That’s cold, Celestia,” he said, rubbing his arms for emphasis. “Literally cold, too—brr!”

“Someone gave you the fire of a dragon,” Celestia reminded him flatly. “I assure you, you’ll be fine—though no, I won’t be leaving.”

Discord stared at her, flummoxed. “I’m not sure I entirely like the look on your face. Please tell me you just really, really wanted to go camping after all?”

Celestia motioned at the seed. “This… will not solve matters; only put them off for the future. There cannot be two unequal alicorns of the day.”

“I would be less creeped out if you took your eyes off the divine embryo—just saying. I mean, I’m all for birth control—some ponies really should not breed—but this is taking it a bit far.”

Celestia shook her head. “No, I shall not destroy it. I suspect that doing so would only delay the inevitable—though it would, at least, put them out of my reach until they ascended. They would still always be second to me in all ways, however, and that I cannot condone. No, instead I shall take them into myself and—”

“NO!” Discord shouted, bodily tackling Celestia away from the seed. For goodness’ sake—what is wrong with you freaking alicorns.”

Celestia froze, completely unprepared for the eventuality that she would end up with Discord on top of her. Once she had collected herself, however, she levitated the draconequus off of her and stood. “You cannot dissuade me, Discord. It must be done. Things have been out of balance for far too long, and for my own unwitting part in that, this will have to be my recompense.”

“A single point cannot be balanced!” Discord yelled, squirming in the air as Celestia held him aloft. “Release me so I can smack some sense into you!”

Celestia blinked and did as he asked. Sure enough, no sooner had she put him down than Discord leapt to his feet and ineffectually smack Celestia upside the head. “Monotheism—is—bad!” he said, pausing to whack Celestia with his feeble mortal arms—though the lion’s paw still packed a bit of a wallop.

Celestia tried to hold him back with just her foreleg, but unlike her little ponies, Discord actually had more reach than her, though he seemed to be weakening rather quickly. “St-stop that!” she cried, too bewildered to think to just pick him up again or properly defend herself with magic. “Yes! Monotheism is bad! I’m going to join with the seed and split myself back into two equal alicorns!”

Discord froze, his griffon talons gripping Celestia’s horn and his lion’s paw wound up for another smack. Abruptly, he let go and stepped back, looking at his hands like they had touched a god—or a goddess, which, of course, they had. “Did that actually work?” he asked nopony in particular.

“No!” Celestia yelled, huffing with indignance, her cheeks red with embarrassment. “You just interrupted me!”

Celestia’s denial brought Discord’s attention back to her. For a brief moment, he looked uncertain, then he scrunched his face up in petulance. “Nope, if you do this, that’s what I’m going to tell everypony—that I smacked some sense into you and you sacrificed yourself in contrition to be reborn as two wee foals that I hid amongst the peasantry to hide them from the evil princesses of the night.”

Honestly, after their little kerfuffle, Discord did not look like he could handle one foal at the moment, let alone two. If she didn’t know that he would be fine, she might have actually been concerned for him. “Firstly, there is no reason that my resulting selves would regress entirely to foalhood. I cannot say how much of me shall remain in them, but with the proper division of celestial mass between them, they should be no younger than my sister.”

“Your other sister, you mean, as two of you will make three in total,” Discord said, cocking his head as he looked at her. “Well, you always did strike me as a bit of a narcissist, but I never suspected incest.”

“Second,” she continued without dignifying that with a response. “I would not leave myself in your care even if the only other choice was a rockodile—and third, I wasn’t asking.” Without another word, Celestia plucked the seed from its cradle of brambles, bent her legs and launched herself into the sky, leaving him behind as she headed for her sun as it neared the horizon.

Out of the corner of her eye, Celestia saw Discord collapse under the wave of pressure from her takeoff. He was such a drama queen, she thought privately to herself as she flew off literally into the sunset, never noticing that the seed cradled in her hooves was rather warm and glowing a faint green.

★ The End ★

Comments

[Wydril]

Huh, I didn't pick up on it the first time I read it, but he was weakening and knocked over so easily at the end because he had put his dragonfire essence into the seed right then. Celestia thinking he's being a drama queen is just her missing the reasons behind it. Always finding new, clever details whenever I re-read any part of this story, even a re-written and Cast-Off sorry epilogue.

[The Red Hawk]