Celestia in Excelsis

by Kolwynia

III. All Her Armies at the Rising of the Sun

Three:
All Her Armies at the Rising of the Sun

As soon as she sets hoof in the door he can tell that something is wrong. She doesn’t have to say anything. He can tell.

“Celestia, is everything all right?”

The little white unicorn lies with a nod.

The old wizard frowns. “Come here and tell me about it.”

“It’s just something some kids said. Nothing important.”

“Oh, I find the things children say to be of supreme importance. What was it?”

“They called me a blank flank.”

“Ah.” That would explain it. In the hundred years he had lived, children had not changed. Nothing ever changes, he thinks. Nothing.

“When I was still…” Something flickers in the filly’s eyes. There are still things she avoids talking about, even with Starswirl. “I mean before I started living with you it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. It’s just words, after all. But today it felt different. It hurt.”

Starwirl smiles warmly at his student. “It’s okay to feel hurt about things like that. It is the little things that we think are petty and unimportant that sometimes turn out to have the most impact on us.”

“Do I have a destiny?” she asks. She is wearing her expression of utmost seriousness. It is the same look she gets when she sits down to study magic, which she is not terribly good at yet.

“Of course. Everypony has a destiny.”

“What is mine?”

Starswirl stares at her with the same fondness with which he looks through a telescope, contemplating the heavens.

“Something special, I’m sure.”

* * *

Starswirl the Bearded looked tired, which was unusual for him despite his advanced years. Often ponies who met him for the first time remarked about his vitality, the way he moved, as if he were a younger pony wearing an older body. But this night he looked his age, all one-hundred-and-who-can-remember-how-many-more years of it. He scanned the map of the battlefield that was laid out before him, red eyes dancing over the lines and figures representing the troop movements of the converging armies.

“Sir…” a young voice called from behind him. He turned to see a messenger pony standing in the door of his tent.

“What is the news from the front?” asked Starswirl.

“I’m not sure, Sir,” said the young unicorn, blushing. “I’ve come to tell you that… um… that is to say, we’ve received word that… well…”

“Go ahead and tell me. I promise not to incinerate you on the spot.”

The messenger gave a wary laugh. “I’m afraid that… your house has been destroyed.”

Starswirl raised one fuzzy white eyebrow. “Destroyed? Interesting. Do you know how?”

“Fire, Sir. It burned down. I… I’m sorry…”

“No, don’t be,” said Starswirl, and he got a faraway look in his eyes. There was not the slightest drop of emotion in his voice as he said, “It’s quite all right. I did not leave anything too valuable in there.”

* * *

A thousand years after the last battle of the three tribes, classrooms full of fillies and colts would put on school plays about it all over Equestria. They would wave streamers of scarlet paper to show the bloodshed, and the little ponies would fall down on the stage in adorable mock deaths that would send their parents into a frenzy of picture-taking. Those kinds of school productions invariably focused on the ending of the battle, the moment when the beautiful Princess Celestia made her glorious appearance and rescued the three tribes from the horror of war forever. But so many details were lost in the haze of the past. Nopony remembered which tribe started the war, or what they almost did in their pride and greed. The unicorns’ dark plot was never recalled. Starswirl the Bearded never even made an appearance in those plays. Neither did a young earth pony named Victory Song, who was completely forgotten by history, though the fate of generations was decided by a choice she made on the battlefield that day. A thousand years after her brief life, she was only remembered by one.

Victory watched as blood poured from the wounded pony lying in front of her. It was the first time she had seen anypony bleed more than a drop or two. It looked nothing like a paper streamer. Her complexion paled as she watched the doctor apply the salve she had brought, made from special earth pony herbs that were supposed to be as good as a unicorn’s healing spell. Except they weren’t. The bleeding lessened, but not enough, not nearly enough.

Eventually, the doctor shook his head. “Too late for that one,” he said.

“I came as fast as I could,” Victory said, her voice hushed in the presence of death.

“Not your fault, little one. Many of us earth ponies are going to die this night.”

“More than unicorns and pegasi?” Victory asked.

“I’m afraid so. The pegasi will call upon their storms and the unicorns will cast their magic and we earth ponies will hope to hold out long enough for them to grow hungry.”

Stupid unicorns and pegasi. If any of them ever need my help, I won’t give it, she vowed. A vow she would break within the hour, and once more, much later, at the moment of her greatest triumph. She felt a fierce loyalty rising within her, and though she thought it was loyalty to her tribe, the ones Victory was really loyal to were the weak.

The unicorns were the ones who deserved her hatred the most. They were the ones that started the war. Princess Dewdream delivered her ultimatum to the other pony tribes: submit or die in darkness. There were rumors that her court wizard was really the one pulling the strings. He was the one who led an army of unicorns to use their magic to force the sun from the sky. The other tribes watched helplessly as unnatural night fell on the land.

There would be no sunlight until all of Equestria was ruled by the unicorn tribe.

It is said that a hundred years ago, the tribes were at one another’s throats when the windigos came with their terrible Frost, to make the land as cold as ponies’ hearts. And for the sake of the friendship of a few pure hearts, the power of winter was broken. But now the hearts of the tribes were colder than ever and the only thing covering the land was the unicorns’ darkness.

The pegasus and earth pony tribes united to fight the unicorns. But more earth ponies died than pegasi. And the unicorns were not easily defeated. Their dark wizard summoned fiends from Tartarus and awakened the dread Ursa Minor to fight the free tribes. It was a bloodbath.

Victory ran back into the fray to see if she could find any wounded earth ponies that might be saved. She wore the vest of a medic-pony to show that she was a healer, not a combatant. A lightning bolt cut a bright gash through the air next to her, nearly striking her. She trembled and kept going, ducking stray spells and dodging great hail stones. Everywhere the bodies of the fallen lay unmoving.

“Help!” a weak cry, carried on storm winds, found its way to Victory’s ears. Heart racing, she ran toward the voice.

It belonged to a unicorn.

“Please… help me,” the unicorn groaned. She was a blue filly with a mane the color of violets. Her cutie mark was a cluster of stars, but there was a gash over them where she had been wounded, Victory couldn’t tell if by unicorn magic or pegasus lightning. Her eyes were pleading. Victory stamped her hoof in frustration when she saw that it was a unicorn, then sighed. Somewhere deep inside her, a little ice fell away from her heart. She treated the filly’s wound as best she could, then helped her up and started to head back to the medical tents. They moved slowly through the battlefield, the wounded unicorn filly leaning on the earth pony every step of the way.

And so young Victory Song saved the life of Page the unicorn, the granddaughter of Starswirl the Bearded.

The moment wove itself into the thread of history without any fanfare.

Before they could escape the battlefield, the armies sent another wave of troops to crash against one another. The air was full of icy wind, and lightning, and glittering beams of deadly magic.

And then…

* * *

No history book, no heroic song, no schoolchild play could ever do the moment justice. As the armies surged forward, ready to pour out more of their lifeblood on the thirsty ground, as the wind howled, drowning out the cries of the fallen, as hundreds upon hundreds of hateful, frightened ponies surrendered the last wisps of hope from out of their hearts…

…she appeared.

A star fell from the blackened heavens into the middle of the battlefield, right at the point where the three armies were about to converge. Thousands of soldiers stopped in their tracks as a wave of power rippled through their ranks. They stared as the star reared up on her hind legs and spread her great white wings, every feather glowing like an enchanted blade, horn shining like a beacon of pure gold.

“Enough!” cried Celestia, and the armies stood still.

Her eyes flashed as she surveyed the battlefield. Hundreds of ponies lay dead. Feeble moans came from the wounded. White fury roared inside her. She felt every death. Their air seemed thick with ghosts whose presence she alone sensed.

For a few soldiers, the initial shock of seeing her wore off and they rallied themselves against this new enemy. She has wings, thought a few unicorns and launched a wave of deadly spells. Celestia’s horn glowed and the unicorn spells fizzled out like the flames of worn-down candles. She has a horn, thought a few pegasi and threw hail and lightning down upon her. Celestia shattered the hail stones into harmless chips of ice which fell around her in a glittering shower as she caught the lightning and flung it back into the sky. The armies watched her in awe.

“What are you?” a unicorn soldier breathed.

Celestia fixed him in her fiery gaze. “Where. Is. Starswirl?”

The unicorn army parted to make way for the old wizard, who walked slowly, the bells of his cloak tinkling softly with each step, shadows pooling around him even where no shadows should be. When he saw her, his eyes lit up.

“Look at you,” he said.

“You did this,” she accused. Her voice was an executioner’s blade.

“You were dead,” he said wonderingly.

“Not anymore.”

Starswirl regarded his former apprentice coolly. She was more than a unicorn. Perhaps more than a pony. And she knew of his master plan, if he was to believe what she had told him right before he put a spell through her heart. Was she powerful enough to interfere? He doubted it. But he had learned not to underestimate the power of the White Light. He who opposed Harmony dared not take his opponent lightly.

Celestia felt power surge within her like a rising tide beneath the moonlight. She wanted to unleash it on the wizard. And she could. If she wanted, she could rip him apart as if he were a drawing on a roll of parchment, and set fire to the pieces, until he was nothing more than ash, and scatter the ashes to the pitiless winds. She had never felt a hatred so vast before. She might not have been capable of it before. But she was now.

“Are you going to try to stand in my way again?” asked Starswirl.

“If they knew what you intended, every pony here would stand in your way.”

“They don’t concern me.”

“No,” Celestia agreed. “But they concern me.”

Starswirl shook his head. “Will you not reconsider? It broke something in me to kill you once. I don’t know what killing you a second time would do to me.”

“Something was broken in you before we ever met.”

A shadow passed over the old unicorn’s face. “It’s not just me you face. I have an army of unicorn magicians at my back.”

Celestia lifted up her eyes and saw the sea of faintly shining horns stretched out behind Starswirl. They were not her enemies. They were angry and afraid and they were all being played like cheap instruments by the ancient wizard.

“No,” she said softly. “They are not yours. They are mine.”

“You are not part of the unicorn tribe anymore. You are a freak.”

Life is one, the voice of the phoenix whispered in her memories. “I am part of every tribe. And I won’t see another pony dead from any one of my armies.”

“Then tell them to stand down, if they’ll listen to you. For my army has pulled the very sun from the sky and cast the whole world into darkness. Without us, the crops will fail and your precious ponies will starve. If you really want to save their lives, you only have one option.”

Celestia smiled. “Do I?”

And her horn began to glow.

Like sunlight…

Starswirl felt the tug on his spell. Hundreds of unicorn magicians felt the same. She was trying to raise the sun. By herself.

“Impossible!” he gasped. His horn blazed with violet light, like a signal flare in the darkness. His magicians followed his example, strengthening their hold on the sun.

Celestia pushed off from the earth and spread her wings. Come to me, she called out with her magic. A thousand chains of unicorn magic were broken in a flash and the effort did not even cause her strain. As if I were born for it, she thought. The heavens turned overhead. The horizon began to glow…

And there was light.

Three armies stood blinking in wonder, all their armor glinting in the morning light. Starswirl stepped backward away from the white-winged filly as she descended back down to the earth, beaming at all three tribes gathered around her. The sun was shining in her mane, which gleamed with every color of the morning sky.

The unicorn army knelt before her. All except one.

“It’s over,” said Celestia.

“I suppose so,” said Starswirl, dipping his head. “It looks like you’ve finally found your destiny.”

She glanced at her flank, where the new shining sun was emblazoned, then back at Starswirl. “To stand against darkness forever,” she said. It was a solemn promise.

“Poetic, I admit,” said Starswirl. “But even the sun is only one tiny star in the great sea of night. You think you’ve won, but what do you think is going to happen now that one tribe has threatened the other two? Dark days are ahead for the unicorns.”

“If the tribes could learn to be friends before, they can again.”

“How can you believe in friendship? Don’t you remember where I found you?”

Of course I do, she thought.

“No,” she said. “But I remember where you left me.”

“So you see where trusting in the power of friendship gets you.”

She smiled and flexed her new wings. “I do.”

“I’ve lost you, haven’t I?” He seemed genuinely pained. “You belong to Harmony and the power of friendship. And you’ve never even had a real friend.”

“I thought I did,” she said, remembering his kindness that day, as he carried her home. “For a little while.” She felt very near tears, but she would not let herself cry in front of him. Never again. They were enemies, now and forever.

In the middle of three armies, on that field of blood and death, they seemed to face each other alone.

“Farewell, my faithful student. We will meet again. One day, I swear to you, I will stand in the ashes of the Elements of Harmony themselves and proclaim a new world.”

Celestia shook her head. “I won’t let you escape. Not after what you’ve done here.”

Then Starswirl smiled one of his rare smiles. “My dear Celestia. You may have learned far more about magic than you ever knew before, but you still do not know everything.”

And with a flash of violet light, Starswirl the Bearded was gone.

Celestia was alone. Hundreds of ponies surrounded her, a third of them on their knees before her, and she was alone.

“What happens now?” a pony asked.

“A long time ago, three ponies made a promise,” said Celestia. “Now its up to you to keep it.”

“My sister is dead!” cried a yellow pegasus. “The unicorns have to be punished.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the soldiers of two armies.

“I won’t allow any more bloodshed today,” said Celestia. “The battle is over. Nopony else dies. Not a pegasus, not an earth pony… and not a unicorn.”

Her words cut through the angry voices of the crowd. They were whispered from pony to pony until those in the farthest ranks had heard the news: the one who had raised the sun would not allow any more lives to be lost. Not even the lives of the unicorns.

“It was Princess Dewdream and Starswirl, not all the unicorns,” somepony reasoned.

“But Starswirl has escaped.”

“And besides, they all helped him to bind the sun.”

“Dewdream cannot be allowed to remain princess of the unicorns. The other tribes won’t accept peace while she still reigns.”

“But she is the last of her line. If she is deposed, who will rule in Canterlot?”

The question hung in the morning air. Then a pale unicorn magician rose from his kneeling and approached Celestia. “My lady… what should we call you?” he asked.

“Celestia,” she said.

“I have an idea, Celestia, if you will hear it. None of our royalty are without guilt. Would you be willing to protect the tribe that tried to bring darkness to the world?” Behind him, the other unicorn soldiers raised their heads and listened.

“What are you asking me?”

“This is an emergency. The unicorn tribe faces its greatest crisis. Our most powerful wizard has abandoned us. Our rulers gambled everything on his scheme. None of us are innocent anymore. If we are to live in peace with the other tribes, we need somepony to rule us who has no pegasus or earth pony blood on her hooves.”

The unicorns murmured their agreement.

“You can’t mean…” Celestia’s mind reeled.

“If you would have us.”

She thought of Starswirl, scheming his dark scheme for Equestria. It would not be long before he returned to finish what he began here. She thought of what would happen if she denied the unicorns, how the other tribes clamored for justice for their fallen soldiers. The ghost of war hovered over the armies. Thousands of ponies stood trembling in the dawn. And she was all that stood between them and the powers of darkness.

“I will,” she said.

A cry went up from the unicorns, and even though they had lost the battle, you would have thought they won a great victory. Celestia couldn’t help but blush, though she was beaming at her army. At all her armies, for the other tribes realized that an innocent on the unicorn throne was the only chance for future peace. And the cry was picked up by some of their number as well, until the air over the battleground vibrated with the sound of their joyous cheering. A name, glorious in its newness, shouted to the sky over and over again:

“Princess Celestia!”

Comments

[yawkat]

Verryyy nice. I love this chapter. I cannot wait for more.

[Kolwynia]

1588041 Thanks! There will probably be a short delay this month because I have a whole slew of end-of-term papers I have to write for school......but I promise to write like a madman when the semester ends!

Next up: Starswirl pays a visit to an old friend...

Thanks for reading!

[Tousle-Headed Poet]

That was the most perfect and lovely Celestia cutie mark story I have ever read. Not that I have read too terribly many but still. Excellent.

[DaughterScrewball]

>11:47
>School Tommorow
>Important Test
>Getting caught up on this tonight instead of sleeping
>Goddamn it

[Dinkledash]

When Celestia came in for a landing I pictured all the troops in the armies stopping and squinting, trying to make out the form in the star that came to earth and was blinding them, preventing them from fighting. When she said "Enough!" I imagined a wave of force emanating from Celestia, knocking and deafening down the soldiers nearest to her, disarming and stunning others in further ranks, and passing through the armies to lift up the dust and debris of the battlefield and blow it through the trees beyond, bowing them down and stripping them of their leaves.

I really enjoy the casting of Starswirl as the villain. We all think he's this kindly magician who just writes down all the spells he knows and wears cute bells on his hat. But that's only what history has taught the ponies, not what actually happened. I love the way you challenge the perceptions of the reader when it comes to his existing characterization but at the same time you keep it a logical historical possibility. I wonder what the bells are for? Something sinister?

[SIGAWESOME]

2272419

I really enjoy the casting of Starswirl as the villain. We all think he's this kindly magician who just writes down all the spells he knows and wears cute bells on his hat. But that's only what history has taught the ponies, not what actually happened. I love the way you challenge the perceptions of the reader when it comes to his existing characterization but at the same time you keep it a logical historical possibility.

That certainly casts a sinister light on Twilight's Nightmare Night costume choice.

[Emileaster]

YAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!

[Wyrme]

EPIC!!!!!!