The Beginning of Witches

by crash826

Revelation

You were a righteous man. You knew you were a righteous man. You had always been one, since childhood; you remember your father as a massive flesh-carved colossus of a man, as all small boys remember their parents, clutching a book to his breast before slowly reaching down and handing it to you. He told you, choked up with emotion, that this was the Book that he believed in, that he took all instruction from. This was what he lived his life by, and he was giving it to you, to do the same. You were just a child then, barely even able to open the refrigerator, but you swore- as much as a boy can swear, on Santa Claus and snow days- that you would read it from cover to cover, and you would live the same way that he did, through this book that he so loved.

And so you did, reading at night in an old armchair, cover-to-cover, making notes in a child's shorthand. You asked your father what parts meant, and he told you what he thought- where there was metaphor and where it was literal, and whether that could even be applied. There were men out there, said your father, who abused the book, used it to tell others how to live without ever really reading it, ever scouring the pages for what was real and what wasn't, where stories of what happened ended and stories that should have happened began; he would not have you one of these men, who hid behind their books and carved lies into the cover. So you endeavored to accept others, allow people to live by your words, to only offer the Book to those who would take it. You accepted that they did not believe, and that you could very seldom change that- as a young man you thought otherwise, and stood on corners with leaflets or rung doorbells and smiled with all the force of a sun and promised salvation. You learned to accept that sometimes doors would slam, later in life. But you kept going, even if you had a chance in a million of conversion. You studied the Book in school, and you felt it like a light in your eyes, something eternally guiding you. You knew it was paradise.

Then, one day, it happened- the last phenomenon, the schism of the air, the fracture in the world. You had been doing your work- you were a bit old for it at this point, but you considered every day an opportunity to do good, age or no- and as you rung the doorbell a greater ringing came from behind you. You turned, and there the sky shone with slowly sliding hairline cracks, where once you had stared all day with a birthday telescope, searching for the face of your Father and your father alike. The cracks centered on the sun that had burnt your eyes through that telescope, one you still owned, pointed into the sky always. And there, where there had been sky, now you saw a blue no longer that of the sky around it- no gray, but the deep midnight color of a vein of cobalt, a blue that seemed to you to be that that floated in the sky at Creation. Clouds were severed- half in the beautiful unaltered azure of the hole, the other half carrying on to more dismal skies.

For a moment, you imagined that Paradise had come early, that the world was ending and that this was the hole that would take you and all your righteous folk to that place you had been promised long ago, that place given to you by strong hands and a strong voice that was choked with emotion. But nothing came, though a few vague blurs that you imagined might be angels blurred into the distance and revealed themselves to be equine, wings, yes but equine little creatures, something dimly remembered from classical literature as the pegasi. They spoke to you, said they were envoys of a great and benevolent force from another world, here to take humans somewhere sunny, somewhere beautiful. You wondered if they really were angels- the book never specified a shape they'd take besides wings and gentle golden faces, and some had both.

Eager to know the implications, you followed them, through their tear in the sky, the patch of the world beyond- an azure world, a fresh world, with no noxious smog from iron mills, no dirty puddles pooling in the streets. The fruit was sweet and clear, the heavens always perfectly gleaming and the storms organized according to a rote and helpful routine- this seemed, to you, to be the place you'd read of in the Book, the strange promised land in half-described terms. Perfect, to the point where you felt you were forgetting your old world, where everything felt ephemeral and storybook, unreal. The air felt thin and slightly icy, as if you had ascended to the peak of some vast mountain, staring out over an undiscovered continent- or, maybe, the feeling of walking on clouds, deep within the sky's bastions. You envied those pegasi their homes on the clouds, even here in paradise. You could see their cloud city, every day as it passed above, and remembered childish dreams, falling asleep with the Book in your hands, letting your notes and your memories blot clumsily on a worn notebook in red ink.

And, you noticed, no places of worship. No places where the Book was kept. This, perhaps, was paradise without the Book's teaching, an almost-perfect world that only required the spread of that which you knew to achieve true perfection, to ascend, to come under the watchful eyes of the Father in the sky. So one day, you came to a local home- the place was even named Paradise Estate, a piece of pure serendipity- knocked on the door, and asked politely, the old smiles of missionary days back on your face and your Book clutched to your chest. The ponies came out- not pegasi, the first you had seen, and still symbols of the brightness that you had found here, but one of their enchanters and a farmer. Listening politely, as all ponies seemed to do- never having experienced home molestation, another of the tiny details that made this place work without any failures, a neatly ticking machine of feathers and souls and stars- they listened patiently through your explanation, the passion in your voice, tears in your eyes, the story of the Father that your father had handed down to you.

They paused, glanced at each other for a moment, then looked at you, and one said "That sounds like the Princess."

You didn't know who the princess was. And so, they told you. They told you that she was everything you had described in the Father- a benevolent ruler, a bringer of fortune to those who deserved it, she who had sacrificed part of herself for their own good. You heard these stories, and- after a moment of pondering this Princess, a Mother of this realm- asked to see their Book of her Word.

They exchanged glances again. "You don't need a book about Princess Celestia. She's… just here. Just real." The other looked at me and smiled, extending a hoof. "Say, mister- there's the Summer Sun Celebration coming up soon. We can bring you over and show you when she comes to raise the sun, if you'd like."

You gave assent, and three days later, you caught a glimpse of their Princess. And she was radiant.

She glowed with an inner light, visible just as clearly at night as day, and she moved as regally as any dream you've had of the Father, staring down at you. She was serene, radiant, benevolent, surrounded by her adoring subjects. She was the most divine creature you had ever seen, and yet you could stand firm in your knowledge that she was no Father, no true divinity but a simple idol, though you felt dread in your stomach that there could be a coming of her worshippers unto your world- a spread of Celestia-Worshippers, people so seduced by the glory of this creature that they forgot the father. Even you felt something, and if you- a man of your piety- felt tempted, felt that she was the truth, the real one, the goddess in a world of thin, cold, unreal creatures-

And then she lifted the sun, and in the ascent of the star to the sky you felt a sensation of awe that somehow burnt in your stomach like sulfur. You didn't understand it. You could feel something there, the clouds in your stomach, but where once that feeling of awe had comforted you, felt like you were lifted to that paradise you had read about, dog-eared and handed down through paper, now you could feel Eden burning infinitely, fuel to a grand star.

You walked away, retreating from the Princess of the Sun, that feeling of dreams dying in your stomach. You fled to the woods to stop, to think, to contemplate, and there something…

Happened.

There you felt something. Something that whispered, and moved, and held you in its strong, bodiless arms, and told you this: that you were not wrong, that you were being taunted, tricked by this false idol, and that at the same time you had been deceived, that you had lived a lie, that all this time in these clouds you had been burning. And it asked you: Which one would you like to be made true?

In your mind's eye, you could see your childhood again, when you had found strange, unnatural or even self-contradictory rules in your Book, carefully written them down in red ink, organized your thoughts with question marks and come to your father. As you approached, full of contradictions to be explained, you saw him kneeling on the ground, shuddering rapturously, staring penitently into a world only he could feel, and you carefully threw away your paper of red ink and nagging questions, and slept and read your Book until you could no longer remember those things that had threatened the dream. Now the ink came back into you, filling your veins, burning the clouds within you. And it handed you a solution, a beautiful, elegant technique, written out in that same crimson ink on the inside of your eyelids, and a holy power to accomplish your goals.

You emerged from the forest, full of burning bridges, storm clouds. The thunder of heaven. You raised an arm, and ink flowed from your hands scarlet-carnelian-crimson-lies and a tree fried into ash, that brimstone thunder from the sky burning for a single instant before the whole thing collapsed. You fried another tree, to test your righteousness, and then simply struck at a third, neatly severing it from its roots with a fist as your muscles throbbed with red ink. That ink had replaced everything inside you. And now you- the Righteous Man- stared into the castle, and contemplated the idea you'd had: that there could only be one god at a time. You had heard that there were others gifted with power, though you had thought it witchcraft at the time. They had retreated somewhere within the forest, undiscovered by the royals. So if you could convince them, if together you created a void where the Princess was…

Then something would have to fill it. Some other deity. Maybe, this time, it would be yours.

Comments

[crash826]

New chapter. And thank you, Exuno- I figure I'll give case studies of individual witches and the ways that they are spawned.

[shutaro]

Ahh, Religion...
And the old fight about who has the cooler imaginary friend begins anew.
Now I don't want to be too critical, but in the first chapter it was easier to comprehend the which-to-be's motives. Or it least it was for me, but on the other hand, I never got the allure of religion either.
You used "Paradise Estate" from G1, so it's save to say that this is not G4 but an amalgam of Ponyland and Equestria?

[crash826]

Might be a mash-up of Ponyland and Equestria. I figure that it's just a house name, myself.
Feel free to criticize! I'm always looking to improve myself.
See, I might have written this wrong, but this guy has been raised religious, and religion was what powered his father like a turbine; when he had questions about religion, things that didn't make sense to him, he saw that bringing it up would destabilize the man and didn't, then- to reconcile his own belief- made himself forget his questions, believing implicitly. So here he goes through the revelation that he has essentially been living in a lie he made for himself, and that now he could simply redefine truth however he wanted again, know that he was the avatar of a righteous god and- at the same time- know that his god does not exist. Guy is caught in doublethink.
Personally, I have nothing against religion, though I'm not religious.

[Shamus_Aran]

This is... pretty powerful.

This could be EqD-worthy. Lord knows it deserves the extra attention.

[Leave a Whisper]

This chapter was quite frightening. How quickly even the kindest people can turn when something makes them question their long lived religious beliefs.