Prose Equus

by Mandroid

Duality.

You stand leaning against the wall of the Bifrost Keep waiting. Your armor clanks as you shift your feet and rests heavy on your shoulders after how long you’ve been stuck wearing it. After you got back from your recent little “problem solving” adventure with Loki, the Queen had decreed that the Celestial Court was to be called to address things of their nature that needed to be handled.

No one was telling you what that was, but you had some suspicions; the Etir that nearly flooded the badlands and almost ate Celestia and Luna a while back, before you got wrapped up in all this Ragnarok stuff. Anything that could control them was bad news.

Hearing you think about them, you guess, the Bifrost opens in an eruption of rainbow light, letting the Sun and Moon into Asgard.

You bow “Great Skoll and Hati, we welcome you to the Realm Eternal an-“

”Please knock that off, Anonymous.” Luna says, walking towards you. Both of them had their more complicated royal regalia on, the things they reserved for state meetings "We always hated it when you did that back when you were alive.”

Celestia rolls her eyes. “Well met, Anonymous. I hope we’re not too late.”

You point your thumb back across the moat to the city proper where golden armored custodians stand shoulder to shoulder atop the ramparts and flying boats patrol the skies.

“Any longer and they’ll just fortify the place more. Come, I’ll walk you both in.” You turn and head down the bridge, the Celestial Sisters following you.

”Do you know who is attending, Anonymous?”

Let’s see, what other details have you covered today.

“Uh…There was the Arch-Druid of the Vanir, the Prince of the Deer, The Queen of the light elves came and an emissary of the dark elves showed up, had to keep the two of them from killing each other. The Quicksilver Emperor is in attendance, the Queen of the Skye, uh…”

”Is the Lightning Tsar here?” Celestia asks.

“The big mammoth guy? Yes, he’s in attendance. Any reason why you’re asking?”

”He owes me bits.”

Let’s see, who else. The ancient spirits of Zebrica, the Yak soothsayers, at least one Volcano Warband leader from Boardore, some normal looking pony in a trench-coat…”

Luna looks apprehensive. “So many haven’t gathered like this since Grogar…” she mutters.

”Or Discord.” Celestia responds.

“Just them? I’d have thought Tirek would have warranted a greater response.”

”Tch” Luna says. “He is all bluster, Tirek has a glass jaw and weaker knees.”

You chuckle.

Approaching the palace gates, you spot their eternal guardian Heimdall waiting by the doors.

“Hail, watchmen.”

He doesn’t greet you back, but does offer a bow. “Sun and Moon, we welcome you to Asgard.”

The sisters bow back with someone they’re less familiar with. “We are honored by the summons, Lord of the Watch.”

You fall in with Heimdall who’s been your boss for the day. “The keep is secure, you can close the Bifrost.”

”Already ahead of you…” Heimdall says, his eyes clouding over.

The lights from the Bifrost Keep signaling its activation dim and sputter out, sealing Asgard from Nine Realms. The legions of guards inside aside, no one wanted a repeat of the Frost Giants invading, you wager.

“Alright, then these two are the last.”

”Not quite.” Heimdall corrects.

You cock your eyebrow.

”We have one more arrival due.” he sayd.

“Then…should I return to the Keep? To meet them?”

”No.” Heimdall says, watching as silver sparks of power arc between the branches of the World Tree hanging above Asgard. “She will make her way here.”

Brilliant light descends from Yggdrasil and strikes the center of the courtyard before the entrance to the palace, everyone in attendance blocks their eyes as matter and mass are born of thought alone.

When the reaction dims, the final arrival waits in its place.

She stands as tall as the queen, folding a pair of tattered wings onto her back as the broken and reformed horn atop her head bobs in the wind they make. Through her mane of alabaster hair, she surveys the courtyard quickly, though you cannot see a pair of eyes behind them. The air fills with stillness, preserved in the moment of her arrival and stretched out to eternity.

Heimdall strikes his hoof on the ground. “Ordalia! Goddess of Order, Control, and Tranquility of the Silver City!”

The custodians and aids in the courtyard bow upon hearing her name, even Celestia and Luna do

“…Right, I’ll go get her over he-“

”No need.” Heimdall says, stopping you.

You almost wonder why before the palace doors fling open and Queen Sleipnir strides out, urging the attendants to bow once more in the presence of the two of them, but something was off.

The Queen was smiling, and there was an anima within her eye that you’d almost never seen.
>She looked happy.
>Which instantly made you, Celestia and Luna recoil as if you were about to be punched.
“Aw crap.”

”Well well, look what the manticore dragged out of her cave.” Queen Sleipnir says with way too much sass for the Queen of Asgard to be having.

More like Queen of Sassgard.

You instantly admonish yourself for thinking that.

”You know you’re one of the few that can.” Ordalia, Goddess of Order, Control, and Tranquility of the Silver City says, her voice sounding quiet, like the faintest touch upon a delicate harp.

”Though not one of the few who can stop you from stating the obvious.” The Queen says, approaching her final guest.

Many of the attendants and guardians had turned their attention away from the two, hoping to give them the grace of their pretend ignorance so they don’t get slapped, but you’re dumb enough to keep looking. You catch the two of them stand before each other and quickly knock their hooves together in a short and sudden gesture of something, ancient friendship? Eternal rivalry?

Did the Queen have friends? Were any of Her rivals still alive?

“Well that’s something you don’t see every afterlife…”

Heimdall grunts beside you and bows his head, urging you to do the same as the two Queens march up the stairs and into the palace, not even glancing your way as they discussed something between them, Celestia and Luna walking off in the same hurried motion as the doors slam shut.

“That’s a fine hello…”

"You sound spoiled by the Queen’s attention, No-name.” Heimdall says. You grimace and look down to him, but he just keeps his eyes trained on the horizon. “We guard the Realm Eternal, that is all. The goings on of that meeting are not ours to know.”

“You see everything and you’re not the least bit curious about one of the places you’re NOT able to see?”

Heimdall nods “Aye, I see all there is…which means I see enough to know better than to pry. If you’re that restless, go patrol the upper ramparts.

Well, now Heimdall’s position as the Queen’s gatekeeper made sense, they both had the same sense of humor.

---

Time does what it does and passes, you pass it by counting how many steps it takes to circle the entire palace but boredom gets its hands in you after you pass 15,000.

From up here you can hear the grand doors open, see the attendants of the Celestial Court let out into the courtyard. Like back on Equestria, now would be the time when they’d hobnob and talk amongst themselves about whatever was discussed, Celestia called this time the time when real diplomacy happens and stressed its importance, so you try to give it time to happen before you start clearing the place out.

What makes it difficult though is when it comes to you.

You’re just about to head into the watchtower that leads down to the ground when you are stopped in your tracks, seeing Queen Ordalia standing before the doorway and looking your direction. Well, “looking” may be the wrong word for it because at this distance you can glimpse that beneath her sight blockingly long mane, her eyes are even closed.

Still when you sidestep her gaze a bit, her head turns with you, locking the two of you in some awkward tango.

You sigh inwardly and just resolve to brush past her, letting the gods have their business for today after the icy reception you got from Heimdall.

However, as you go to pass her left, Ordalia speaks. ”I come up here because of how loud you’re thinking through the summit and you don’t even have the decency to speak? You have Sleipnir’s manners.”

You mentally bite your tongue at the idea of her reading your thoughts, only later realizing that it wouldn’t really matter, and right yourself.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Your Highness. I’m simply on my rounds.”

”Do not feed me lies, Anonymous. I am superior at seeing them than you are at telling them.”

“How do you know my-“ You turn back towards the Queen and get a bit uneasy. Despite her eyes remaining closed and her hair blocking her sight, you still feel the all boring eyes of the Goddess of Order looking through you. It was further than the sensation one felt when the Queen was mad at you, like this cosmic gaze saw all you were and all you could become at once, some queer relation to her having both eyes but none at the same time perhaps.

Ordalia leans in closer to inspect you. “Aahh…so that is her plan for you…but why? What lies at the end of that road…why do this, Sleipnir…”

You feel the gaze intensify enough that it actually starts to make your skin feel uncomfortable. Instinctually, you wave your hand in front of your face like you would wave off a fly and break the Queen’s gaze.

“Enough, enough. What? What plans?”

Ordalia recomposes herself in the briefest of moments, as her name implied.

”I cannot say.” She responds.

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

”Both.”

"Great."

You chew your teeth a bit. “Did you come up here for more than to look at me and provide vague and unhelpful commentary, Highness?”

You were a part of Sassgard these days too.

”Did I?” she asks. “Are you going to ask your question that you’ve been thinking all this time, or are you going to continue to think of awful puns?”

You simmer just a tad. You hate dealing with telepaths, partly because they were often always right.

You DID have a question burning a hole in your brain.

“Was there a point to all this?”

You had served under the Celestial Sisters for many years, and seeing them as cautious as they were had the hair on your neck standing up.

Ordalia turns her absent-yet-ever-present gaze over the city beneath you. ”Fear denies Faith, mortal.”

Well that was maddeningly unhelp-wait

“Wait wait wait…I’ve…I’ve heard that before, from Loki, and Baldur too.”

”Yes.” Ordalia says.

“But that was before I knew about…what happened to the Queen, and the Frost Giants, and those things underneath-“

”Say no more.” Ordalia commands, you shut up.

A tense moment passes between the two of you. ”The Silver City…holds within it the greatest library to ever exist, I ensure that. I record all there is inside its halls, neatly, safely.”

“Okay…”

”But what Sleipnir speaks to beneath the surface of the waves…I do not record, for that would tether it to the world more.”

You look the Goddesses motionless face over. “…You’re afraid of them, like She is.”

Ordalia doesn’t answer, simply looking ahead.

”Fear denies Faith…we learned such long, long ago. Before the realms were like…this.”

“I don’t understand. What does that mean though? Everyone is afraid of something.”

”You are not some simple brute, Anonymous. Do not act as such.” She commands before settling. “…Faith, the core of any god, is the power to act on something that you believe even when you do not have evidence for it. To trust that something you cannot see is there, to believe another loves you as you do, or that you may live to see another sunrise.

You quietly consider the truth of her words. “That you may survive another battle, I understand…”

Your mind flashes back to the conflict with Tirek, but you push it away remembering Luna’s jab earlier.

”Indeed.” Ordalia says. “Yet, within all living things resides the undulating black slither of fear…gnawing at the back of our minds and eating away at our faith. It stands in opposite to the Gods, for if fear were to spread further than Faith in us could hold, it could drive all that is to the mania at the end of that fear.”

Undulating…black…

”…If there were something that could unify that fear, an individual or an idea, then they could be the antithesis of the gods themselves.”

“Wait. Hold on, you picked those words deliberately. Is this about that black mass? The Etir? Does it relate to this…primordial fear?”

Ordalia doesn’t even try to meet your eyes, remaining quiet.

“And…an idea to unify it, would the end of the world be something like that?”

Now she speaks. “All who are fear the end…or at least most of them do.”

The tension returns to the air, you feel you won’t get any more answers out of Ordalia about this.

"How…do you know the Queen?”

”Mm?”

The fear Ordalia spoke of bites at you as you jump to conclusions in your head, but you remember the hassle Captain Geaus put you through making sure you had the guts to follow orders.

Listening to the beat of your own heart, you remember his most important lesson; You were breathing. While you breathe, you stand. While you stand, you fight. While you fight, you can still win. That lesson carried you through the grief of his death as well as dozens of other close calls, Tirek included. Compared to that, this fear was nothing, and you knew it. You steel yourself.

“You can read my mind but couldn’t see that question coming? Really? Everyone in the courtyard saw how…different she acted around you.”

Ordalia looks to the sky almost wistfully. “Perhaps…she was like that, once…” She looks to the limbs of the Yggdrasil, watching the cosmic wind move the leaves. “We’ve known each other since we were young, young and stupid. Known each other since…things happened.”

“Old friend then?”

”Of a sort, aye.”

“You know I’ve been told what happened when the Frost Giants attacked, I don’t remember you there…”

Ordalia is quiet for a moment. “I was busy with my own problems. I told Sleipnir taking a husband was a risk she was not prepared for…just like having a son.”

Again you sense that you won’t get anything more out of her.

A gust of wind rushes over the ramparts and draws Ordalia’s sight beyond sight. She sees something in that wind that only she could see. “Ahh…that is what you need then, hmm Slippy?”

Wait, Slippy?

Ordalia shrugs her shoulders and turns, making for the door. “Enough, Anonymous. You will get no more from me. If you desire more insight, use the Palantir you keep hidden on you so.”

You grimace and follow the Goddess, trying to lighten the mood. “Does everyone have to know about the secret amulet I have now?”

Author's Note:

I actually had this ready almost two months ago and just forgot to prosify it. Aint life just quacking crazy?

Comments

[LordMentat]

Eeeey, welcome back.

[Fireeaters]

If everyone knows you've got a magic necklace in your pants, then clearly nobody cares if you have it

[PaintedPony]

Glad to see this updated! I enjoyed reading it.

[Mandroid]

11743804
I rarely mean to leave for a long while, it's just been a hell of a year for Mandy.