Friendship is Forever

by fabrosi

How Equestria was Made

Chapter 14: How Equestria was Made

"As I was telling Rainbow Dash earlier," explained Princess Luna as they walked, "my sister—well, it pains me to discuss it, but let's just say she really isn't the perfectly benevolent ruler she appears to be. I disagree with many of her decisions, but unfortunately, she's far stronger than I am—which is why, shortly after my return from the moon, I founded a hidden town here in these woods, hoping to free as many ponies as I could and bring them here. This was where I encountered Rainbow Dash earlier today."

They were briskly but steadily marching down what have been the remains of a very old trail, almost too faint and overgrown to detect in some places. Luna had assured them it would lead back towards Zecora's hut, where they could pick up the Crusaders.

"What exactly is the princess doing that everyone's so concerned about?" asked Twilight. "Aside from the war in Sustria, I mean."

"In order to understand some of Celestia's current… policies," she explained, "you'll need to know how she first came to be the undisputed ruler of Equestria. Over a thousand years ago, when Equestria was just a small, largely unknown collection of tribes, nested in untamed mountain ranges. Most of the ponies in the known world lived in other regions, nearly all of which were lorded over by families of alicorns." Seeing the ponies' shock, she added "Yes, alicorns have never exactly been common, but there were far more back then than there are today."

"Whenever two or more royal houses declared war on each another, any battles fought by earth, pegasus, or unicorn ponies—the 'lesser' ponies, as they were then called—served as mere formalities, performed only because the alicorn families expected their subjects to embody their own values and desires. The real battles took place between the alicorns themselves, who would constantly assault one another's castles—either because they were insatiably power-hungry, or because they were terrified of those who were and wanted to gain power for the sake of self-defense. In one particularly bloody century, the conflicts escalated to the point where not one alicorn family was at peace with any of its neighbors. This is where Celestia and I came in…"

…

She shivered at the unexpected gust of cool air on her face as she materialized on the castle roof. She felt strangely guilty, for even though this hadn't been her intention, she'd half-expected that it might happen, and had dreamed of stepping beyond the castle walls for as long as she'd been aware there was a world outside—and now that world was laid out before her: craggy purple peaks of mountains standing as great sentinels over rivers winding through verdant fields—she tried to take it all in as quickly as possible, knowing she surely wouldn't have much time. She'd seen framed, limited scenes of the surrounding area through the castle's precious few windows, of course, but everything looked so different from the roof, so alive and present—she wasn't just looking out at the world, she was in it, and a part of it, and she longed to fly up and dance on those beautiful clouds…

"Luna!" she spun around to see her sister carefully edging towards her, trying not to slip.

"It was an accident," she explained quickly. "I teleported for the first time just moments ago, mere seconds…" It wasn't true, of course—she'd been able to teleport for a few days now, and had been practicing whenever she was alone.

"You need to come back inside," insisted Celestia. "You never know who might see you."

Luna looked down to the ground below the castle, hundreds of feet, feeling vertigo for the first time and not knowing what it was. "I doubt that they will see me from down there."

"Not from the ground," said Celestia in a pleading tone, "from the sky! Please, we must return inside!"

Luna sighed, defeated, and as her sister charged her horn with magic, she took one last look at the world she wouldn't be a part of for years to come…

…

"…Our parents also made sure no one knew of my birth," explained Luna. "They hoped to gain the element of surprise, since even a young alicorn could often make a crucial difference on the battlefield."

"I have said before that lesser ponies—if you'll excuse me for calling them that—had no effect on the outcomes of battles. Perhaps it would be more accurate, however, to say that this was the case when there were very few of them. My father realized that a family of three or four alicorns could only be in so many places at once, and that there might be some advantage to amassing a large army of loyal soldiers—if only to act as advance scouts, or to march through areas where an ambush might be waiting, thus exposing the attackers without placing valuable alicorns in danger."

"What a terrible way to live," observed Twilight. "You make it sound as though ponies were treated like chess pieces, measured by strategic usefulness and nothing else."

"Yes," sighed Luna, "that's exactly how things were… Oh, look where we are!"

Before them stood the crumbling, moss-covered ruins of the ancient castle where, long ago, the elements of harmony had given them the power to defeat Nightmare Moon and restore her to her true form as Luna. Everything had been untouched since Twilight and her friends had been there.

In spite of everything, Luna couldn't help but laugh a little. "It certainly has been a while since we were last here, hasn't it?" said Luna. "While it wasn't my intention to bring you here, this castle happens to be quite important to the story: it was where my family and I lived, and where they kept me hidden for years."

She led them onward past the ruins as she continued her story: "As I was saying before, my father had the idea to build up a large empire of ponies, which he accomplished by ruling with benevolence and kindness. Celestia and Corona followed his example, and soon our territory extended across a region nearly half the size of modern-day Equestria. More than anything else, our army provided us with information: we knew when an alicorn was killed, when one was entering the forest, when a new one was born, and so on. One fateful winter, however, my father grew very ill…

…

Luna crept into the dimly lit bedroom alongside her brother and sister, sensing inexplicably that she was intruding upon something forbidden or sacred. It was upsetting and strange to see her father, one a mighty ruler, warrior, and protector of his house, brought low by time, the only force in the world stronger than an alicorn.

Her mother was crying, and she felt immediately heartsick and tried to figure out if she was supposed to cry, too.

"My children," he told them, "my time is very near. This is not an alien sickness, an invisible enemy come to steal me away, but something I have borne for every millennium that I have lived: age, that specter of senescence which comes to all, through the rise and fall of empires and times of peace and war, to us just as surely as to the common ones. To age and die is as natural a thing as being born, and I have lived as good a life as an alicorn might ever dream."Behind his worn eyes twinkled a lucid, tranquil intelligence, a mind that perceived with such totality that its epistemology was as a cosmos.

"Do not speak so," sobbed his mate. "It is pain enough to see you like this."

"There must be something we can do to make things easier for you," said Corona, stepping forward.

He looked at his children: first Corona and Celestia, and then at last his gaze fell on Luna, and his face looked so familiar, yet so decayed by his recent and sudden lapse into infirmity that she couldn't help but avert her gaze from this soon-to-be corpse that was somehow her father.

"It is comfort enough to see you all here," he assured them. "I think it is no coincidence that I should fall from health now, of all times—things are going to change soon, I can sense it. Soon there will be no more war, for the warmongers will destroy themselves, and you all can know a world of love and wonder. Luna, I think that you may never need to know the life of a warrior. The time of peace is very, very soon."

Luna listened to his prophetic words with wide eyes while Corona and Celestia, older and more experienced as they were, smiled weakly at their obviously delirious father. The wars would go on as always, of course, and they would all have to fight them alone, without the wellspring of strength and security they had always known.

…

"Outside the forest, alicorns were dying at an unprecedented rate, and soon only the most merciless among them would be left alive."

As they walked, there was a subtle change in the forest—the trees grew taller, the canopy thicker, the air wilder, and the vegetation less familiar—ferns, shrubs and briars were replaced with thick mosses and vines. This is the old part of the forest, Twilight realized.

"As it turned out, their merciless nature really would be their own undoing. One by one, they whittled down one another's families until every surviving royal house—except mine—was presided over by a single alicorn. Upon learning this, our father sent Celestia and Corona to use their superior numbers to overpower our remaining enemies. It appeared that after centuries of bloodshed, there would soon be a chance for a lasting peace. With the vicious warlords dead and only the weaker and the more mild-tempered alicorns remaining, my family could take control and rule over a newly unified Equestria."

"Before this came to pass, however, something went terribly wrong. At one point, outside of my family, there were only three alicorns left alive: Princess Terra, Prince Aleph, and Prince Nocturne. Mistakenly thinking that there were several others, my father sent Celestia and Corona to kill Princess Terra, since her family had shown ours more aggression than any other while they'd been alive. When a scout informed my father of the situation, he realized that this might very well mean the extinction of the alicorn race, and immediately sent a message to his children warning them not to kill anypony. Unfortunately, the message reached them too late, arriving only after they had killed the princess in her sleep."

"Deciding there might still be hope if the other two remained alive, my father sent a scouting party to look for them. Through some cruel twist of fate, however, they were found dead together. It appeared as though Prince Nocturne had barely succeeded in killing Prince Aleph before succumbing to his own wounds."

"My father was stricken with grief by the news, for although my siblings and I were still very young, it was an absolute certainty that one day we would meet his fate, as well, and after that alicorns would cease to walk the earth. By this point my mother had also entered the final stages of life, and I spent nearly every waking moment caring for both of my parents. Then, one day, I overheard him speaking to Corona…"

…

Luna crept through the hallway, unsure what had compelled her to get out of bed so late at night. Suddenly, she spotted her brother glancing around furtively before slipping into their father's room.

As she approached, she was barely able to make out the sound of her father saying "My time on this world is finished, son. I have mere minutes left, yet I must ask that you repeat to no one what I tell you this night." Confused, Luna drew closer and found the door closed, so she peered through the crack, listening breathlessly in the darkness.

"I have thought much about the fate of our race," he told his son. "Have you confirmed that we are the only remaining alicorns?"

"We have. We have searched the earth thoroughly, crossing mountains and oceans, but nowhere have we sensed anything even approaching the magic of our kind… I am sorry."

"It was not your fault"—he coughed violently, and Luna bristled for a few tense seconds. "You couldn't have known what had happened," he continued, "but there is still the future of our race to be concerned with, for without us all of ponykind would fall prey to dragons, hydras, and behemoths more terrible still. I have thought long and hard, and there is only one solution."

"What is it?"

There was a long pause, and Luna pressed her ear hard against the door to make sure he wasn't whispering, but relaxed somewhat when he spoke again:

"It is a terrible thing that I must ask you to do, my son."

"Anything, father. I'll do anything you ask."

"This is something more despicable than you could imagine. What you must do will haunt you for as long as you live."

"Just name it. I will not fail you."

"To ask something so vile, so depraved of my own son pains me more than dying."

"Please, father"—Luna could hear him fighting back sobs—"Just tell me, and I'll make sure it happens, really!"

"You must conceive the next alicorn."

Another pause. "I don't understand… with who"—

"With one of your sisters."

Luna's stomach sank so far she thought it might fall through the floor.

"I—father, to do something of that nature…"

"I warned you that it would be horrible."

"What you ask of me… I'm not sure I can."

"It is my last wish. Promise me, son."

"I…"

"Promise."

For a few seconds, all Luna could hear was her own pulse, pounding in her ears. Then:

"I promise."

With that, his father gave one deep, final sigh, after which Corona begged him to respond, to come around, and then only the sound of his intermittent sobs came from behind the door as the reality of his father's death overwhelmed him.

…

"Corona did not try to fill his promise right away. The three of us continued to care for our mother until she suffered the same fate as our father—no doubt accelerated by her heartbreak. Today, both of our parents are still buried beneath those ancient ruins." Twilight instinctively looked behind her, but they had walked far enough that the ruins were no longer in view.

"As the only three alicorns remaining in the world, we might have declared dominance over Equestria then and there, but devastated as we were, the idea seemed pointless. Then, one night as we were sleeping out on the plains, under the stars, I overheard Corona confess our father's dying wish to Celestia…"

…

A fierce rain poured down on three alicorns out on the plain, many miles from the castle they'd left behind. Two of them stood, speaking to one another in hushed tones.

"He said something to you before he died?" asked Celestia. Luna was lying on the grass nearby, lying down with her eyes closes as she pretended to sleep.

"It wasn't something easy to tell you," explained Corona. "He said his last wish was"—

"His last wish? He told you that and you still haven't told us?"

"Celestia, you have to understand, I,"—

"and why are you telling me just now?" Her voice was shaking. "What has happened that should suddenly grant me the privilege of knowing the last thing my father said before he died?"

"He told me he didn't want our race to go extinct." He spoke quickly and softly, distancing himself from his words.

"So… he wanted us to find more alicorns? But we've already searched everywhere, so how are we supposed to…" She trailed off, and her eyes widened. "No. Corona, you can't possibly mean to…"

"Wait," interrupted Pinkie Pie. "Why couldn't she have a foal with a unicorn or a pegasus?"

"Unfortunately, that is impossible. Many tried during the great alicorn war, but nopony ever succeeded. Corona argued with Celestia, saying she was spitting on our father's grave by denying him his dying wish..."

"We have to do this as soon as possible," he said, "before I lose my nerve. Sometimes I think about just flying away and trying to get so lost that I can live the rest of my life without seeing you or Luna again, because that promise has been tormenting me every day since I made it and I wish I didn't have to keep it, but he was my father, Celestia, and yours too"—

"We'll live thousands of years," she reminded him, under-reacting because she still refused to fully believe what he was suggesting. "We can remake Equestria as one nation, give the common ones everything they need to prosper…"

Corona shook his head, though Luna didn't see this. "For a time, we can, but we're going to die someday, and if there's going to be anyone left to keep ponykind alive after that, we need to…" He swallowed. "We need to make sure we don't die out."

The moon shone impassively upon Celestia's face, illuminating the rivulets of rain dripping down her face as she blushed. "I won't do it."

"It was father's last wish."

"There's no way I could go through with it."

"The one and only thing he told me he wanted, right before he died."

"Maybe things will change. Maybe the common ones can protect themselves, but what you're suggesting is beyond disgusting."

"You think I want to?" His voice was rising and Luna worried that her shivering would give away her wakefulness. "I'm as disgusted by the idea as you are, which is why it has to happen now, before I lose the nerve."

There was a pregnant pause, and Luna wondered if Celestia had turned to walk away. Then, a terrifying thud prompted her to bolt upright and face the impossibly ghastly sight of her brother pinning her sister to the ground. Instinctively, she charged her magic and tried to sweep Corona off. He swung backwards partway, tottering unsteadily on his hind legs as the threatened to fall backwards, but quickly used his own magic to reverse his direction, falling forward once again just as Celestia lifted herself up.

Corona was backing away, shaking like mad. In a flash, he was gone, leaving Luna crying against her sister's coat.

…

"A few days later, we found him dead, almost certainly by his own hoof. I think between betraying Celestia like that and failing our father, he hated himself more than he could bear. Celestia was tormented beyond words by what had happened. As we buried him, I heard her whisper 'sorry' to him again and again."

They waited for Luna to continue her story, but all she said was "This is… hard for me."

"I think you have a very strong spirit," said Rarity, "to be able to move on with your life after an experience like that." It felt strange, comforting a pony more than a millennium older than she was, but she didn't know what else to say.

"Well… it was a long time ago," replied Luna simply.

Everypony still had unanswered questions about Celestia, but nopony had the heart to ask. At that moment, their greatest priority was evading capture, and Luna could finish her story when she was ready.

They trudged on in silence, and Twilight suddenly knew the answer to something that had puzzled her before. A part of her had struggled mightily to forget, to abandon the question she'd had and the much more ancient question behind, to distract herself with this mission. Here, however, was a thick forest where killing and dying were everyday occurrences, where every precious life could be snuffed out in an instant by the cruel whims of chance. This was death's domain.

She knew now exactly what she had been running from in the dream, and of course it hadn't been a dragon, or a hydra, or any other monster. It figures, she thought, her mental voice trembling, that it would've been something abstract, something that was inside me all along.

It figures it would be the skeleton in the black cloak.