Far Star
They were such a tragic love story, everypony said. She was in love with power, and he was in love with sadness, and neither had room in their hearts for another. And yet, time and time again, they found themselves wrapped in each other’s legs. For he was a great wizard, and she coveted his powers for herself. And she cared nothing for him, and every time they lay together, he would realize it anew, and a stabbing pain would blossom in his heart.
Or so everypony said.
Three times, the White Queen anointed him a master. First at sixteen, when he reanimated the dead. Second at twenty-four, when he stole the secret of shapeshifting from the changelings. Third at thirty-two, when he plucked a hair from Celestia’s tail.
Each was an attempt to be rid of his lover. At sixteen, he challenged her to a duel, and with his powers of necromancy struck her dead. But her ghost would not leave him be, and in time she compelled him to bind her spirit to the body of a beautiful virgin mare. At twenty-four, he used the power of shapeshifting to take the form of a waifish filly, and thereby to hide from her. But she could not be deceived, and stole the power of shapeshifting from him in turn, and thereafter became a charming and forceful stallion. They made love in public view.
At thirty-two, he wove the hair from Celestia’s tail into a ring, and with it proposed to his childhood companion. She agreed at once, and they were married in a lavish ceremony. But the mare who would be his wife was not strong of spirit, and heeded the whispers of those darker than herself. True love they said, was selfish, and she had always been a generous mare. And so, she gave her husband permission to cheat on her, and abandoned him to his fate, as his lover dragged him screaming into the darkness.
The wizard’s name was Far Star. His wife was Surplus. His lover was Violet Shroud. They all lived in the Heartspire, a mighty tower so vast it contained an empire. It was a monument to the superiority of the unicorn race, from which the White Queen ruled over the only parts of the world that mattered.
“Attavey, Far Star!” Surplus called. She was a petite unicorn mare, with a blue coat and a wild white mane and eyes as golden as the sun. When she found him, he was in the form of a frail, unkempt young stallion, seeking to hide from those who might otherwise recognize him.
“Attavey, Surplus,” he answered, hanging his head as she approached. “How did you find me?”
“Your powers of shapeshifting avail you not,” she said, making herself at home. She wrapped herself around him, nuzzling against his neck and into his mane. “I would know your eyes anywhere. You are the saddest unicorn in all the world, my husband.”
“I meant, how did you find me here.” And it was not an unreasonable question. The cafe around them occupied but one fifth of a floor, being rather low in the tower and not an institution of exceptional breeding. The chairs were made of silver instead of gossamer, and the tea made from boiled leaves rather than etheric essence.
“Why, I was stretching my legs,” her tone was light and mellifluous, like little chiming bells given life. “Here I am out for a walk, when what do I behold but my favorite wizard in the whole of the Heartspire, sitting alone in some quiet cafe. And I thought,” she lifted a hoof, “he wants company.”
“I do not.”
“You do, husband,” she grinned ear to ear, “now turn into somepony handsome and kiss me.”
He did, taking the form of Force Bolt, a powerful unicorn warrior who he had seen his wife flirt with on occasion. She sighed and groaned appreceatively, but did not prolong his torture, releasing him after only a few moments and taking a seat opposite him at the table.
“You make me happy, you know,” she told him, her voice sweet and sincere. But she did not afford him the chance to reply, instead demanding: “I want tea and biscuits. Why haven’t they appeared?”
“The table isn’t enchanted. You have to call for a waiter.”
“Oh, you do love slumming it, don’t you?” She turned to the waiter, an emaciated earth pony who stood in the shadows under the cafe’s main awning. “You! Mint tea, biscuits, wine, butter. Chop chop.”
The earth pony leapt into action as though he had been whipped, vanishing into the back. “They don’t have wine here,” Far Star said, and after a moment, he materialized a bottle and a crystal glass.
Surplus poured herself a glass, sniffed at it experimentally, then swirled it and took a sip. “It’s terrible,” she pronounced, “you’re a better wizard than a sommelier. But, thank you for trying.” She downed her glass anyway, and immediately refilled it.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“You haven’t been to our home in weeks. And, I was going to invite some friends over.” The waiter appeared, bearing a tray of butter and biscuits, and a pot of mint tea. It was piled so high it might have weighed more than he did. “You should come.”
“I know what our house looks like. I don’t need to be reminded. And your friends know I don’t actually live there.”
“I’ve been improving it while you were away,” she says, feigning hurt. “I added a hot-tub that uses metastatic clouds instead of water. So you can touch them like a pegasus. It’s warm and light all at once, far better than a regular bath. You must try it.”
“I never cared for public bathing.” He looked at the table in an attempt to deter her.
“It won’t just be my friends. Your peers will be there. Mmm?” She leaned her head down and tilted her face to catch his eyes. “I acquired a seven dimensional object from some changeling traders. It’s a rubik's cube! I’m no deep intellectual, but I do need some way to keep the clever ponies happy. You love those puzzles, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t want to make anypony wait for me while I solve it.”
“Have you done cocaine? You have, haven’t you? That’s right, I made you try it.” She thought a moment, then grinned. “We’re going to have a pile of it.”
“And for our guests who don’t enjoy cocaine?” he asked, with biting sarcasm.
“Oh, you do know me!” Her grin widened. “We also have opium. And wine too. Good wine. Better wine than this.” She finished off her glass, and again refilled it. “We have a wine fountain now. It actually makes the wine. Out of the thin air, like you did! Attavey indeed, no? You’ll love it.”
“I don’t like crowds.”
“For you, my clever stallion, I’ll kick out every other guest. We’ll make our own party. Just you, me, an empty house, and every object in it you want to bend me over.” Her tail wrapped around and under his, the tips of the hairs flicking some particular parts of his anatomy.
“Why won’t you take no for an answer?” he demanded, his voice turning sharp. Notes of genuine anger entered his voice, and he lifted his head to glare at her.
“Because you’re crying,” she said, reaching out to brush the tears from his eyes. He had not even noticed them there. “And I’m worried about you. I may be a terrible, faithless wife, but I am still your friend. I do not like it when you are sad, and I would miss you if you were gone.”
“Really?” he bitterly demanded.
“Truly,” she said, and she reached a hoof out to rest it over his.
It hurt her, to be silent for so long, to make such a tender gesture. And as the quiet hung between them, he could see the strain on her face, the pinching at the edge of her eyes. She was as a slave lifting a great load, their knees trembling with the exertion.
He could not bear to see her suffer, and so he rescued her. “The tea is best if you drink it hot,” he said, “it’s not nearly as good once it cools.”
She didn’t bother with the cup, but stuck her muzzle right into the teapot, and managed to consume the whole of it in a few terrifying moments. It was like watching a snake eat a mouse, or a wasp hollow out the inside of a paralyzed rodent. The teapot fell to the ground and shattered, and she let out a sigh of relief. “So you’ll come?” she asked.
“I’ll come,” he agreed.
Ponies sometimes wondered why a great wizard three-times honored by the White Queen would lower himself so far as to marry a creature like Surplus. She was ill-bred, ill-thought of, generally giftless and tastelessly debauched.
The answer was that he respected her. And in many ways, he envied her. She never turned to face that from which she fled, and he thought her better for it.
Far Star and Surplus’s home was on the 347th floor. Not the highest, but high enough to inspire their peers to sweet jealousy. It occupied the entirety of the floor, and would have been a castle by the standards of the lesser races, having thirty-seven rooms, plus the greenhouse. Twelve earth ponies were worked to death in its construction.
Each of them had enchanted it in their own way. Far Star had done the proper things that a wizard and a husband should do; warding the building against harm, against evil spirits, against malicious intrusion. Surplus, whose unicorn magic primarily focused on toxicology, enchanted the building in another way, rendering it impossible to overdose within the walls.
Their guests could drink casks of wine, snort mountains of cocaine, inject inhale or consume whatever they wished, and so long as they slept on the grounds, they would suffer no more harm than mild indigestion the next morning.
Ponies said it was the only reason her parties were remotely tolerable, and when they said that, she drank until she forgot.
They stood by the door together, her with a glass, him with a smile, greeting their many guests as they arrived. “Doppler,” Surplus said, kissing a stallion on both cheeks. “Welcome. Wine’s in the back, orgy is upstairs. I don’t think it's started yet. Help yourself.”
She said much the same thing to Sapphire Daisy, Star Petal, Comet Dash, Dot Dash, Apple Road, Jade Ace, and a hundred or so other ponies whose names Far Star could not be bothered to remember.
Then came a young unicorn mare, who appeared to be unwell. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face sagging, her coat was turning patchy in places, the tops of her hooves bleeding with each step she took.
“Violet!” called Surplus, by that point so drunk she swayed on her hooves. “You slept with my husband you wretched whore.”
“And you stole my true love you drunken bitch,” Violet shot back. Then they both laughed and hugged. “Oh, you look great.”
“And you look awful.” Neither of them thought to address Far Star, who continued to stand there silently. “I thought the whole point of being a shapeshifter was to be pleasing to the eye. You look half-dead.”
“Oh, well that’s just it, I am.” She ran a bleeding hoof down her barrel. “This poor dear’s just about had it. I try to be gentle with her, I do, but she’s just so susceptible to necromancy. Dying from the inside out.”
“Awww,” Surplus sighed theatrically. “That’s so sad. Far, you will bind her to a new body, right?”
“Of course,” he said, dull.
“Perhaps somepony you two would find exciting?” Violet suggested, batting her bloodshot eyes at them. “We are family, after all.”
“Oh, we get to pick?” Surplus sagged against her husband’s side, casting her gaze up into the air. “Well, as the only one here who isn’t a shapeshifter, I have a bit of a preference for it being male. I can do either, it’s just easier to share you that way.”
“I’ll happily turn into whatever you like once I’m in a body that isn’t falling apart,” Violet said, “so I can do ‘male’ no matter what.”
“Does it even matter who we pick then?” Surplus wondered aloud. “I mean, is it just like, whatever?”
“Visually, no. But maybe something that would hold your attention. I could be a virgin again.” She made the offer sweetly, but Surplus rolled her eyes.
“We’re out of virgins,” Far Star said.
“We’re out of virgin unicorns,” Violet said.
That brought the conversation to a sudden halt. Far Star stared. Surplus dropped her glass, which shattered on the floor. “No way,” she said. “That’s a racial crime.”
“Sleeping with an earth pony is a crime, but I am a unicorn, regardless of whose body I happen to be using as a puppet at the moment.” She pressed a bloody hoof to each of the ponies in front of her. “Come on. I bet that’s something you’ve never done before.”
“Oh. Oh, she’s right. I’ve never done an earth pony before,” Surplus said, squeezing Far Star against her. “I’ve never even heard of anypony doing that. Oh, can we, please? I hear they’re weird.”
“Where would we even get an earth pony?” Far Star asked. “All the servants on the lower levels look worse than you do. I don’t want to sleep with a pony that can barely stand.”
“That’s just the domestics. The heavy laborers and ones that are bred as test subjects are kept in good health.” She looked up at him, imploring him with those bloodshot eyes. “Please?”
Under the weight of the two mares around him, he agreed.
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Oh, fuck, yes. I just recently reread that chapter of Lost Cities, too, to remember its masterful atmospheric writing. Let’s go!
And they deserve it.
Hell of a first chapter!
Well, these vultures are properly abhorrent. I can't wait until they fall from the sky, screeching in abject terror and disbelief, but I suppose I must.
i.imgflip.com/6c061.jpg?a468168
I sent GaPJAxie a PM because I don't want to clog the comment section with my feelings about how good this first chapter is.
Even if the story
~was~never~continued,~hypothetically never gets continued for some reason, it is still Wonderful HorseNot really for 12 year old 'blow stuff up real good' philistines though
Debauchery! Orgies! Malaise!
Yep, it's another Jaxie story hot off the presses.
It's always interesting to see how you do some worldbuilding so quickly, even taking what we got from Lost Cities. It's also chilling to see how utterly callous the characters are, given that their first concern is racial purity and not, y'know, forcing control over another individual's body.
One thing that undercuts that latter aspect, though, is that Violet's current host is also a unicorn... in a unicorn-supremacist society, is it really okay to mindjack another unicorn, especially a presumably young one? I'm a bit interested to see how that came to be.
11600384
At the very first I was ready to feel sorry for Surplus (and possibly the wizard), being led astray/trapped by the *itch who goes by the title of "Queen" but at the end I practically felt ill from this sheer bloody hedonism, nothing is too far for these creatures. I look forward to seeing Celestia and Luna's "first and only" visit.
Such a love letter to "Lost Cities."
Well, premise and execution are commendable
Thanks for letting get acquainted with the source material, it is very solid
"Dream Spire" was my favorite of the "Lost Cities" series.
Thank you this expansion on that glimpse into the past.
Not sure what is this, but I like it so far. I never read Lost Cities, but I hope it's not necessary to fully understand this going forward.
That is some seriously fucked up ponies. And I suspect none of them are the slightest bit happy, no matter how hard they fake it.
11600874
You should, it's some damn good stuff.
I'm impressed. These are some fascinatingly loathsome creatures you've written here.
i.pinimg.com/originals/69/2b/67/692b676122f4755b35f8841fbff8901e.gif
Intensely psychedelic, twisted fun. The style calls to mind 60's fantasy, the kind of dungeon-crawling epics that arcade video games are based on.
An unexpected, daring, and deeply engaging sequel. Eagerly looking forward to seeing how you explore this tower of hubris and the fascinatingly wretched creatures who inhabit it.
(Also, sorry for the extra notification. Clicked the wrong shelf at first.)
I feel like this should be m rated and i love it!
Yeah, these people don't even realize how repugnant they're being.
11600523
Cold in Gardez does some of the best damn Dunsany I've ever read, anywhere. And it's not the existential horror or the worldbuilding he chooses to recognize, but the thing that really makes Dunsany Dunsany: these little tone-poems of description.
Dunsany's "Bethmoora" or "In Zaccarath" could fit quite neatly into Lost Cities and if you didn't already know they weren't Gardez's you'd probably never guess.
(Now that I think of it, this story has very strong echoes of "In Zaccarath")
I am enthralled.
"“Why won’t you take no for an answer?” he demanded, his voice turning sharp."
Ohhh. Well, maybe ohhh; we'll see if I'm right. But if so, it's at about this point I figured out, after having been feeling for a bit that something was off, that, well, the story didn't actually say what had happened to the spirit already bound to the body of that beautiful virgin mare...
"ill-thought of"
"ill-thought-of"?
...Oh, hm, or not, apparently. I'd thought that Violet Shroud was bound to Surplus, with Surplus meant to be the one control and Violet had persuaded her to give her control instead.
...I do wonder where they get the unicorns to bind Violet to, though.
Anyway, thanks for writing! Looks like another interesting one.
These characters are definitely not going to get killed by Celestia at the end I'm calling shenanigans
You've set this up as a morality tale, and morality tales are never interesting or moral. Lumping together casual sex and mind-altering drugs with slavery and murder in your moral calculus characterizes unthinking Puritanical views; you may as well show your villains dancing and playing cards. You've written thoughtful stories that subverted black-and-white morality, but it would be quite a trick to turn this into one of those.
I'm kinda shocked that something with mass appeal, high quality (other than a lot of grammatical errors, very atypical of your writing), and good cover art, posted by someone with 2300 followers, got only 432 views. Probably you just got bit by the perennial randomness of the featured box's poorly-designed algorithms, but it augurs poorly for authors here.
11627764
I appreciate the thoughtful and detailed comment, but one part of it has me confused. Most of my stories are morality tales.
Siren Song is a classical judeo Christian morality tale about a girl who's in hell for the sin of pride and has to accept she can't get out of here until she humbles herself before a deific figure and asks for forgiveness.
Arbitrage of Moments was a Morality tale about forgiveness. Canterrevolutionary was a morality tale about charity. Would It Matter If I Was was a morality tale about diversity and acceptance.
Like, I take your point about sex and drugs, but writing morality tales is not new for me.
11628931
Also foreign thoughts was a morality tale about racism. Also Twilight sparkle versus social justice was a morality tale about history. Etc etc.
11628931
True, if you use "morality tale" to mean "a tale about morality" or "a tale which deals with morality". I meant it in the way I've usually seen it used, which is to mean a story whose only purpose is to preach an over-simplified moral, e.g., "a medieval morality tale". I'll try to find a better way to say that.
Who was the deific figure in Siren Song? I don't remember that part. I didn't catch the humbleness & forgiveness aspect, or didn't connect them.
11629157
Celestia.
The story literally ends with siren praying for Celestia's forgiveness, while understanding that fundamentally she deserves to be in hell for being a bad person.
Like, I didn't think it was subtle. Siren refers to her conversations with Celestia as letters, but they aren't. They're praying.
11630282
Sorry; I wasn't criticizing. I just didn't catch it. I'm a better writer than reader. I hope.
That's certainly a new dynamic for me! There's the idea of hating yourself but choosing your partner to revel in the neglect and indifference is curious.
I'll be honest, I was unsure if this meant his lover was the White Queen since that's a title to be shared.
While in his waifish form? Such debauchery!
The surest way to sorrow is to let yourself be happy...
Didn't expect that, considering the flex of how they "conquered nature" on the first floor I'd have thought they'd keep their servants fat just to show how wealthy they are.
Oh wow, yeah she's nothing like I imagined! Certainly interesting.
So that's what he meant by she never faced what she fled from, rather escape in self destructive tendencies then confront her problems.
Cadance and Chrysalis are here!
Huh that's certainly... Huh. Is that wrong? The whole thing is morally reprehensible but once it's done she's still herself regardless so.
11628931
I mean that's not Judeo Chritsian. That's just Christian. In Judaism you don't need a god to forgive you, you just need to work to do better and acknowledge what you did was wrong and feel remorse. No Jesus or G-d needed.
11744006
I sort of conflate the two but yes that's a fair point.
11744023
That makes sense. Their often conflated. The 2 religons have many diffrences and conflating the 2 as the same while pointing to just Christian beliefs is highly misleading and can lead to people having a very bad understanding of Judaism.
I'm not blaming you by the way. People do it all the time and I understand you didn't mean anything bad by it. But I personally feel it's important to fix this misinformation and I hope youll be more careful next time.
I hope I didn't offend you.
11744044
No offense given! I appreciate the number and correction. :D