The Handmaid

by GMBlackjack

IV - Self Fulfillment

Far, far away, further than could possibly be understood, something stirred back from where Aradia had come. There was a large, dim room in this distant location, inside of which stood ten clocks, proud and tall. Each one was motionless, pendulums stationary at a direct upright position. Each of the timepieces was adorned with a single symbol in their upper window. Six of the symbols were unique, four were not. Two of those four were imprinted with suns, while the other two held ten-toothed gears.

One of the clocks with the gears began to tick without warning, the pendulum swinging to the left, then the right, then the left again. It seemed to stop at times at either end but would keep going just when it seemed like it would never move again. Left... Right... Left... Right...

Center.

The clock stopped, the pendulum squarely in the middle. It glowed with an awe-inspiring light that sped through the heavens...

~~~

Aradia's eyes flew open, new life filling her body. Powers beyond even her control restored her to life, demanding that she wasn't done yet.

She stood up and removed the sword from her chest, examining it closely. It obviously wasn't meant to be wielded by one of her size, or even by hands, but she just used her telekinesis to compensate for that. Her own blood dripped off the blade to the ground, pooling on the white ground in a fascinating pattern.

She grinned. "That was fun!"

The black unicorn - evidentially royalty, if his robes and armor were anything to go by - growled. "No... No! You were supposed to die here and never cause me trouble again!"

Aradia shrugged. "Can't really give me a Heroic death if I haven't done the thing you hate yet, can you?" She thrust the sword at him, stopping it millimeters from his face. "Though you do have my attention now, whoever you are."

He notably did not find the fact she didn't know him odd. He seemed to be expecting it. "I am King Sombra, the one who will be your arch enemy!"

"Really? Do we duel across time? Oh that'll be so cool when it happens!"

Sombra growled, summoning a crystal pillar under Aradia with intent to impale her. She just aged the crystal to dust with ease, continuing her smile. "I'm beginning to suspect we aren't really rivals and I just ticked you off somehow. That was a pretty... Generic move there."

Sombra tossed thousands of crystals after her, but she just jumped three seconds into the future to avoid them. She yawned. "Not really looking forward to those confrontations anymore..."

He twitched. "You... I went to such lengths to kill you here..."

"Oh, I did die just there, you succeeded. I came back after because it was a pretty meaningless death, from my perspective anyway. Dunno about yours yet."

She saw Sombra slowly realize that his plan - to kill her before she could cause him whatever trouble she was going to - was doomed to failure because the criteria to kill her permanently couldn't be without her already having done these things.

Aradia put on a pitying smile. "There there, I'm sure it's not that bad! You'll probably get to a future me sooner or later!" She was pretty sure he wouldn't - she was particularly careful - for the most part - not to get herself in situations where she might suffer a Heroic death - or Just, she supposed, though the chances of her going out with a Just death were always pretty low.

Sombra roared in rage, throwing more attacks at her. She shrugged, allowing herself to take a crystal to the forehead, dying again.

"Ha! Ha!!!"

She got up again in less than a minute. She had some difficulty removing the crystal from her forehead, and she had a headache now, but she felt fine. "See? Not happening, sorry Sombra. Oh, well, not really, since I like being alive, and you seem preeeeeetty evil."

Sombra was in a complete rage at this point. Aradia considered just leaving this time and doing research elsewhere, but a beam of white light from above caught her attention before she could follow through with the idea. It hit Sombra square in the face, sending him flying. A brilliant white winged unicorn descended from the sky, her soft multicolored mane weaving in the cold air. A darker, smaller winged unicorn landed at her side. The smaller one saw Aradia first. "Sister... the Handmaid."

The white one turned to Aradia, her eyes widening.

Aradia waved her hand. "Hi!"

"...Do you know me?"

"Nope!" Aradia grinned. "But you obviously know me!"

"Yes. I am Celestia. You told me to give you a message when you met me."

"Oh?" Aradia asked, loving what she was hearing.

"Return to the Tree of Harmony, Handmaid. Return to the moment of its inception, and take the place you are meant to take. Witness our history."

Aradia nodded. "Okay... And?"

"When Sombra begins his reign of terror, use the reputation you've built up to get me to listen to you - and declare war."

"It isn't something you'd do otherwise?"

Celestia shook her head. "I don't believe so. I was too deeply rooted in my pacifism. I almost ignored your counsel on the matter... I fear what would have happened if I had done nothing."

Aradia nodded - she was, however, grinning like a child on her birthday. She was going to see the origin of the Tree and gain some insight into her purpose - her role as the Handmaid. She was about to become the figure of legend, and this was how! This was a bit arbitrary, but considering that this was an altered timeline, the original reasons for these actions might have been muddled...

She did have a question though.

"Any idea why I call myself the Handmaid?"

"That was a name we gave you," Celestia said, "you never told us yours."

"Aradia. Aradia Megido."

Celestia let out a mildly exasperated sigh. "And that's probably why you never told us right there..."

The dark sister nudged Celestia. "Sombra's getting away."

A dark cloud of magic energy had risen into the sky and was taking off to the north.

"We'll get him, Luna. He knows he's doomed," Celestia said. "Handmaid - Aradia, will you do as asked?"

"I kinda think I would have done something like it anyway, but okay! Bye!" She flew south - away from Sombra and the Sisters and towards the Tree of Harmony. She felt time powers activate from a version of herself, stopping time. Aradia didn't care at the moment - she'd figure out why she was here stopping time eventually. She didn't even bother to look, she just continued her journey. She began to rewind time as she did so, gliding over towns that vanished beneath her, roads that were replaced with trees, and rivers that shifted back and forth. Canyons were filled, mountains collapsed, continents moved slightly. Reverse timeflow on a geological scale was something to behold.

She arrived at the Tree relatively quickly, checking it for the symbol. It didn't have it. She considered making it just to complete the circle here but remembered she was going back through time right now and would see it if she was going to do it. The brain-burning nature of the dilemma brought forth a chuckle.

She accelerated her backward flow of time to eons. The Tree was a constant with its six crystals centuries back - but eventually it shrunk, becoming a seedling, then a seed, then nothing, nothing but the Everfree Forest... But Aradia could still sense the energies here, the energies of Harmony. A sixfold power that had been with this world since... Will, since near the beginning apparently, because the forest was shrinking, the atmosphere was thinning, the world was becoming a lifeless rock...

And then she felt when Harmony was gone. It was a jarring feeling, forcing her to stop. She was now on a dead rock...

Aradia re-entered time in a forward manner. Something had happened too quickly for her to see, something that had added the energy of Harmony - but hadn't happened yet, obviously. She was on a lifeless rock with no sun, only the distant glow of stars was available to warm it. No Tree, no life, no evidence of anything. The planet was a dead world, well and truly. It had two moons, both roughly the same size, though one was slightly larger than the other, albeit further away so it looked the same.

Then Aradia saw something else. One of the stars in the sky was shaking, growing in size - coming closer. Aradia paled - it had to be going somewhere really close to light speed for it to be moving at that apparent velocity. While the star would have had to wait decades - if not centuries - for its journey to be over... if the light was reaching Aradia now that meant that it was almost here. A star was coming right for the planet and it would arrive within moments.

A tremendous blue star dominated the sky in an instant, stopping just short of engulfing the poor planet and its moons into the heavenly fire. Aradia knew in that instant this Star was alive, and that it knew she was here. Aradia felt enthralled but also terrified at the immense being before her. She momentarily was shocked into forgetting she had almost complete dominion over time, overcome by the beauty and power.

And then the star died - the second star death Aradia had seen in twenty-four hours. This one was very different - a black sphere cut right through the blue Star, upsetting the solar forces of the cosmic being. The dark assassin flew off into the inky blackness without so much as changing speed or giving a thought to its actions.

The Star roared, shaking the cosmos with gravity waves as it died. Blue lights shot out of its dying form, purposefully directed away from the planet so not to harm it. Aradia's jaw dropped as the star shrunk from an impossibly huge scale to that of a tiny point, fire jetting off into the darkness. Eventually, only a tiny part of the Star's core remained, and it fell to the planet, crashing into the ground mere yards from Aradia, planting itself deep in the earth. It somehow didn't make that large of a crater - merely a hole.

And then it grew - crystal shapes sprouted up from the crystal seed, driving themselves out of the hole. Six colored gems flowed out of the hole, demanding to be seen, to be cared for by the rest of the crystals. These six essences dissipated into six Harmonious energies, swirling around the point of impact. The light of life sparkled, defying the will of the Stars for it to die.

It would live.

It would fill this entire world with life through its continued existence!

Magic surged through and around the planet - the world's two moons reacted, the larger one summoning the blue fire the Star had ejected to itself, igniting and transforming into a brilliant sun. The other moon shone with the thoughts and dreams of what lay beyond. Some lichen began to grow around the Harmony Energies - magic itself - despite the current lack of atmosphere or water. All it needed was magic and the light of the new sun.

Aradia put her hand on the newborn magic of the world, smiling. "You are the First Guardian of this world... The equivalent, at least."

Aradia felt... Affirmation from the forces that would become the Tree.

"Is this what you called me here for? To witness?"

Aradia felt like this was only part of the reason, and that she should already know the other part.

"I... I am here to protect this world... and to fix time wherever needed... For you are cursed with a weak timeline, one that could break completely if strained. That's what the future me's were doing... Their job, their purpose, why they were called."

The Harmony Force gave feelings of gratitude.

"Thanking me before I begin? Well, I accept!" She chuckled, putting her hands on her hips. It was time to see this world take shape - and help it through its past. She barely knew what the future held, but something told her it was exactly what would come about because of her actions.

She watched as the sky turned blue over time and how magical life flourished. The Everfree Forest sprung up around her, serving as the nexus for freedom and magic - and as the origin of life. She saw how the races came into existence - dragons, centaurs, demons, griffons, dogs, and of course, ponies. They were simple-minded at first - the demonic beings were powerful and cruel, keeping the others from their full potential with ease. But they were eventually driven away, the worst sealed in a prison deep within the world's mantle, a prison called Tartarus.

Aradia watched all this time - jumping forwards and backward through the temporal knots regularly, watching events closely, nudging them when she thought it was needed, or knew it was needed. She inserted herself into the past, taking the role that was needed. Demonic kings attempted to use time as a weapon - but so did the good-natured unicorn wizards, and she was cleanup every time just to keep the structure of time from falling apart at the seams. She guided the world towards Harmony that she had seen in the future. She became especially attached to early Equestria and the halls of Canterlot, becoming a mysterious ancient presence that was sighted every few years, almost like a ghost. She watched Celestia and Luna particularly closely, their lives bringing joy to her own. She became instrumental in giving the Harmony Forces the physical form of the Tree.

The legends of her soon surpassed her exploits - she was not the force behind every major event in history. Remarkably few, in fact, but the stories claimed she was, even if they couldn't prove it. She rarely interfered large-scale beyond simple timeline cleanup, ensuring all loops remained stable, and that unstable ones were made to be stable. Small scale she interfered regularly - sometimes as a benefactor, other times as a simple troll who wanted a good laugh. And yet, even these actions guided the world to Harmony.

It was one moment where she had played a prank and brought peace between two feuding families when she knew why she allowed herself to take the title of her Ancestor. Damara had guided Alternia as the Handmaid, so was Aradia guiding Equis. She was a force not originally intended to be present, but fundamentally needed nonetheless. The world may have been destined for Harmony anyway, but Aradia not only ensured it, she kept it stable.

And now she was going to walk up to Celestia and have an actual conversation with the monarch. This would be the second one through Aradia's perspective, but the first by Celestia's.

Aradia was excited, though she was almost perpetually excited nowadays.

~~~

While she has her own reasons for accepting the title of Handmaid that are beyond us, we can trace back to why we came up with the name. The 'hand' part is easy to discern - she is one of the few beings in our legends that have full hands, a feature rare in this world's biology. It has become one of her distinguishing features in myth and legend, followed closely by her distinctive horns.

The 'maid' half does not come from the many sightings of her doing menial chores within Canterlot castle, it refers to her role in our world. She once revealed that our world's time is very prone to splitting with very little strain. She is there to clean up the mess of time when it breaks; when we break it. She is our maid. IT was why she was called. The Tree of Harmony knew it needed someone to do what it could not - keep time in order. She was the one who answered the call.

But even she wasn't perfect. There was one moment in time that affected her own flow of time. A moment that involved her counterpart, the Doctor...

Comments

[Keywii_Cookies55]

I feel as though Wanderlost is now canon to this story.

[GMBlackjack]

8324677
Ahahahahahahahahahahah-

No, but something similar is going on.

And that 'no' is not quite what it seems either. Remember, this is a Prelude.

-GM, master of yalls

[My name is R]

I too was reminded of Wanderlost. And Evermore Recursions, and Project Horizons, which I've never actually read. But I seem to recall some similar Tree backstory. And Amber Ashes.

The chapter title is misspelled. I felt like I should share.

"is this what you called me here for? To witness?"

Is