As it turned out, Periapsis never truly abandoned her fascination with the mortal ponies. While her nurturing attention was indeed given to the young royal sisters… as they grew older, she found time to rekindle her old hobby of tending to her “pets”.
When Celestia reached the age of ten, Periapsis introduced her to pony-tending. She taught Celestia how to keep and care for them. Celestia was eager to learn the art of managing the mortals because she adored her mother and related well to her nature. She wanted very much to follow her mother's example.
Hyperion became incensed that Peri continued her obsession with the mortals, and worse, encouraged their daughter in the same. What an outrage! Here, the problem had gotten worse, not better. Now there were two alicorns irrationally obsessed with tending to insects.
Celestia screamed for him to stop.
“What’s the matter, Sunshine? I’m trying to teach you something.” His voice was cold and authoritative.
Celestia stared at the lifeless body before her. The other one was still alive and had fixed onto her with terrified eyes as she sat there, trembling. The mare’s eyes were magenta, just like her own.
Tears rolled down Celestia’s cheeks. “I won’t do it!” She was ten years old.
Her father looked down at her, his expression unreadable. He waited.
She glared hard at him, a look of fierce determination set in her eyes like diamonds. She stole a quick glance at the slain pony lying in an expanding pool of blood. After a full minute, her father took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nostrils.
“I will not have you following her example. One obsessed alicorn is more than enough for—”
“Mother is not obsessed!” she blurted out in desperation. “This one belongs to her, and I will not—” Celestia felt an impact across her face followed by blood trickling down her nose.
“Do not interrupt me, child. Now, I gave you a task.”
Celestia stared at the pale-blue mare once again. He was wrong about them. He had to be. She returned her gaze to her father and stomped a hoof on the ground.
“Very well. If you won’t do it, I will. But you will watch.” With that, Celestia found she could not look away. A flicker of light sparked from the tip of Hyperion’s horn. Celestia heard the loud crack of a bone breaking and the chilling screams of pain coming from the pony before her. Then another crack, followed by dozens more within seconds. The pony vomited up a liter of blood, then collapsed dead onto the ground.
Hyperion spoke softly. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Celestia was hyperventilating. She couldn’t take her eyes off the mangled body of the mare lying before her as the rhythmic hoofsteps of her departing father faded away.
In a fit of anger, Hyperion destroyed a small pony village. He was surprised by how much satisfaction this brought him, if just for a moment, to smash the object of his frustration. He knew Peri would not be pleased with this, but she would get over it.
To distract himself from his frustration, Hyperion would divert much of his attention to his daughter, Luna, teaching her his talents in crafting magnificent vistas. Luna seemed to prefer applying this talent at night as she manipulated the appearance of the sky in all its glory.
Hyperion also was not neglectful in teaching Celestia the art of astronomical manipulation. By the time they reached their late teens, both Celestia and Luna had mastered the ability to manipulate the sun and moon in the sky using the abilities their father had given them.
As the sisters matured, Periapsis foresaw heightened conflict with Hyperion. To prepare for this, she clandestinely taught each of her daughters a secret way to meet and talk about things in a manner immune to Hyperion's interference.
To Celestia, her mother gave the secrets of the Aether and how to enter it at will. From here, she would have access to unique advantages such as a limited exploration of history and meeting with others in a nonlinear timeline. Here, time operated very differently from the physical world.
To Luna, her mother granted the secret of dream-walking, enabling Luna to enter the dreams of others and observe what their subconscious was doing. She could also interact with the dreamer, offering solace and resolving troubled sleep. Periapsis sometimes did this with the mortal ponies she cared for, as they often suffered from night terrors.
11822732
Yes, the way it works is ponies have a set of forty positive traits or virtues that they exhibit in their lives. Most ponies have a few but nobody anyone has all of them. Nobody besides Equinox himself I suppose. So if a pony exhibits a trait in the 99th percentile, it's called a 'Virtue of Harmony'. About a third of the mortals have one. Some have two.
What's different about alicorns is that as they mature, they hit a transformation point, around the age of 22-25. Up until this point, the young alicorn is very much like a regular pony in terms of where the magical energy comes from and the fact that they can actually use up what they've got stored internally. The transformation itself has several key stages, beginning with nightmares and some magical outbursts. Early uses of magic directly drawn from the Aether for example. Black Feather showed Nyx doing this after she saved the child from the sniper. That was not her own energy she used, and the clues in the story follow her trying to understand it. Her conversation with Twilight and later Luna are all meant to bring Nyx closer to understanding what is happening to her.
After the young alicorn completes the transformation, they no longer store energy internally. It's channeled directly from the Aether through the horn and into the world via the alicorn's actual will rather than spells. The other effect is the alicorn loses all connection with the traits of Harmony as well as losing almost all memory. They become "amoral" which is to say they lack any specific morality. They only do as they please and while not malicious (usually) they really don't view the mortals as people anymore. You could think of it like Doctor Manhattan from the Watchmen if you want a solid analogy.
Thanks! I was hoping that would be the case. It's technically not a "story" in the sense of there not being a protagonist. That's why I called it a chronicle. But I still wanted it to be emotionally rich.
Prior to being fully matured, even alicorns born of alicorns have a connection with the ethics of the mortal ponies. If they go through the transformation of fully maturing, they will become exactly like their parents. It becomes a strong temptation in the early 20's to abandon one way of life and embrace the other.
Yes, I've been working on the same project since late 2014. It's all related, though it has gone through several evolutions. But yes, my magic system was firmly established as early as 2015 and Hyperion was probably my single most influential character ever in terms of the sheer impact he had on absolutely everything. Originally, I just wanted to be able to explain why everything we see in MLP was the way it was. But now my motives are obviously quite a bit different.