Celestia in Excelsis

by Kolwynia

IV. Starswirl in the Underworld

Four:
Starswirl in the Underworld

Once, the black gates of Tartarus were guarded by three terrible demons. They were scaly, hulking creatures who would attack viciously any who tried to pass through the gates except during the night of the Winter Moon Celebration.

This was not that night.

“I’m hungry,” one of the demons complained.

“Didn’t you just eat a pegasus not too long ago?” asked another.

“Ah, but she was so scrawny. And her feathers got stuck in my teeth.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten her raw.”

“Quiet both of you,” said the third demon. “Someone approaches.”

It was far away, but they could hear the tinkling sound of bells.

One of the demons strained to see who was coming. “It looks like a pony,” he said.

“Only one?” There was a disappointed note in the creature’s voice.

“It will have to do,” said the hungry demon. He grabbed his massive club, which was stained with the blood of woodland creatures, and went out to meet the pony. The other demons sat down in front of the black gates and waited for him to return.

He didn’t.

“I still hear those bells,” said one of the demons.

The demon guards of the black gates got to their feet and waited as the traveler slowly made his way toward them. As he drew nearer, they could make out his features. He was old and gray, with a white beard so long that he had to take care not to trip over it.

“Greetings,” the pony said as he approached them. “I have traveled a long way. Do you mind if I rest here a moment?”

One of the demon guards narrowed his glittering eyes. “This is no place to rest. These are the gates of Tartarus.”

“I know,” said the old pony. “That is my destination.”

“And we’re its guards. No one gets by us except on the night of the Winter Moon Celebration.”

“I’m afraid I cannot wait that long.” The old pony took his eyes off the demons and looked down at his starry cloak. He frowned as he noticed a stain on it.

“By any chance did you meet a demon on your way here?” asked the other guard.

“Oh, was he a friend of yours?” asked the old pony.

The demon snorted. “Friend? We ain’t got friends. He’s a guard like us. When we heard your bells he went out to… see who was coming.”

“Ah. Well I’m glad you were not friends, because he tried to eat me. So I’m afraid I killed him.”

“You… killed him?” the demon asked, incredulous.

“Murdered him, truth be told. I know a sleeping spell that works on your kind, but I was in a mood.”

“You expect us to believe that you killed a demon of Tartarus? By yourself?”

“No. I expect you both to behave with incredible stupidity and try to stand in my way. Then I expect one of you, maybe both, to attack me, either for food or for sport. After that I expect you to die without ever knowing my name, which if you had known, might have led you to a wiser decision and allowed you to keep your lives.”

The demons exchanged an unimpressed glance, then both fell upon the old pony at once to tear him apart.

And that is how the gates of Tartarus came to need new guards.

* * *

Grimly, Starswirl the Bearded entered the sunless realm. It had been many years since he had last come this way. With a flicker of magic, he conjured a ghost lamp to light his way through the dark. Its blue light was a cold comfort in these damp caverns.

The old wizard’s thoughts were troubled. His takeover of Equestria had been ruined. By Celestia, of all ponies, his own student, a mere filly. A dead filly, he reminded himself. She had been dead when he left her after their magic duel in his house. Had the White Light somehow intervened? My faithful student, he thought, have you been saved by Harmony? He chuckled darkly. It was his own fault, if you thought about it. For a year he had tried to teach her magic. Not the magic of friendship, but real magic. And after a whole year she could barely levitate a teacup. So he had let her see his plans. He even let her read the book. Both of the books. He had to give her the choice, to prepare her for what was coming. And he had been so certain that she would choose his side. She had never known friendship’s power her whole life, and she was in his debt for rescuing her from the streets. She should have sided with him. But no, she had decided that she would serve Harmony and the magic of friendship. And what he had not been able to do in a year of teaching her, the mere idea of friendship had done in an hour. She had wielded magic like one born to it.

He had killed her for daring to stand in his way. Then, impossibly, she had returned to life. Fear had crept into his heart when he stood before her on the battlefield, and something else. Relief. Some part of him had been glad to see her alive.

Celestia was alive, and now she was a threat.

The cold caverns opened up into a vast subterranean land. Black rivers wound their way across the landscape like wet scars. In the distance, the faint lights of the black city burned. Starswirl had trained there in his youth. It was there, in the grand hall of Castle Midnight that he had won his first magic duel. If he returned now he would be welcomed. He could take power. A few short years and he could be standing outside of Canterlot with a demonic army at his back.

An army is nothing to her, he thought, frowning. She raised the sun by herself. Starswirl shuddered when he thought of the power that such a feat required. And she had done it as if she were levitating a pebble. No, if he was going to stand against his former student, he would need more than an army.

The Withered Wood was a tangled forest of the kind of trees that hate sunlight. Starswirl ventured deep within the wood, creeping along paths that nopony but he knew. The darkness closed thick around him. For miles he traveled in blindness, until the veil of shadows parted and he arrived at his destination.

Colored lanterns hung from the branches of the twisted tree, their flickering light keeping the shadows at bay. At the foot of the tree was a worn gravestone. An epitaph, carved with unicorn magic, glowed pale as moonlight from the face of the stone.

My life has been measured in Friendship

Starswirl stared for a long time at those words. A hundred years had not dimmed them. It was his own spell, cast long ago, that had cut them into the rock. They were the words his prize pupil had requested. Starswirl had never seen such blazing conviction in the power of Harmony in any pony… not until Celestia had stood atop his desk and challenged him to a duel she knew she could not win. All my students have been foals, he thought.

But only one of them had come back to life. How was it possible? Starswirl needed answers, and there were few places he had not already searched for them. But if he could not find what he was looking for in the land of the living, he would turn to the land of the dead. He knew a spell that would let him speak with the spirits of the dead. It was dark magic, the kind of spell no wizard of light would cast, but he had crossed that bridge long ago.

His horn glowed, throwing back the shadows, which slithered around his magic circle in serpentine twists and coils. Sweat dripped from his wrinkled forehead. A stale breeze blew across the gravesite. Starswirl’s bells tinkled.

“Clover the Clever,” he called softly.

The air above the gravestone rippled and a glowing unicorn shimmered into sight. The ghost of Clover the Clever floated above his grave. He wore his familiar hooded cloak, or a ghostly copy of it. There were chains around his hooves.

“Starswirl,” said Clover. “Have you fallen so far, my old mentor?”

“Has the news of my war against Harmony not reached the land of the dead?” asked Starwirl.

“I did not want to believe it. You are the one who taught me the magic of friendship, the power that once saved the world from the icy hatred of the Enemy.”

“I have changed. A century of life will do that to you.”

Clover’s look was faraway. “I wouldn’t know.”

“I did not summon you to argue philosophy. I have questions, and you are bound to answer them.”

The ghost sighed. “In life, I was a servant of Harmony and the True Magic. In death, I have become one more slave of the Enemy. His power over us is nearly absolute. So yes, I am bound to answer your questions and aid you in your foalish quest.”

“I thought Loyalty was one of the spirits of Harmony. If Harmony was as loyal to you as you were to it, it would have saved you.” Starswirl felt an old anger, one he had buried long ago, rising within him.

“One day, it will.”

Starswirl shook his head. “You know why I have come? You know my intention?”

“I do.”

“And do you know that somepony has come to stand against me?”

The first smile touched Clover’s lips. “I do.”

“I killed her. She should belong to her now, like you.”

Clover’s smile widened. He was nearly beaming now, and his ghostly light seemed to brighten. “Celestia will never belong to the Enemy. Harmony has claimed her.”

“So what? Didn’t Harmony claim you and your friends as well? And now all of you are dead.”

“Celestia is different.”

“How?”

“She has been chosen…”

“For what?”

“…to bear one of the Elements of Harmony.”

Starswirl’s eyes narrowed. He could feel the blood pulse furiously in his ears. “An Element of Harmony? Celestia?”

“Princess Celestia now,” said Clover. The ghost looked as if he were about to laugh.

“What?”

“Didn’t you hear? The unicorn tribe begged her to take the throne of Canterlot. Even now she pores over the books of magic you left in your archive, growing in power. Friends are drawing near to her, though she does not know them yet. Friendship will lead her to the Elements. And when the Elements of Harmony return to Equestria, the power of friendship will bring together all the ponies everywhere and drive hatred from the land forever.”

The ancient wizard found himself almost smiling. Princess of Canterlot? His Celestia? Good for you, my faithful student, part of him thought. But he said, “I will see her ripped from the throne. My demons will cut the horns off of every traitor that bends his knee to her.”

“She has become far more powerful than you.”

“Yes. That is one of the things I came to ask you about. What is she?”

The chains tightened around Clover’s hooves and his joy faded. “A being so rare that she is only the second ever to exist. An alicorn.”

“And what is an alicorn?” In all his studies, he had never come across the word before.

“An undying one. The phoenixes belong to Harmony, just as the windigos and the dragons belong to the Enemy. It is possible for one of them to give its immortality to a pony, if she proves worthy.”

“So… Celestia is immortal?” A foe that cannot be killed. Interesting.

“More than immortal. The source of phoenix immortality is the flame of life. There, lives bleed together, becoming one. She has within her the powers of every creature of light that lives. Every tribe of pony is a part of her. And like every pony, she is destined to have a special talent.”

Starswirl remembered her cutie mark. “She can turn the heavens by herself.”

Clover dipped his head. “All hail the princess of light.”

“So how can I defeat her?”

“You can’t.”

“Oh, you are clever, aren’t you? I can’t. But she can be defeated, can’t she?”

Clover was silent for a moment more. The chains squeezed his hooves. “There are ways to defeat even an alicorn.”

“Like what?”

“The Elements of Harmony, for instance.”

Starswirl growled. “What else can defeat an alicorn?”

“A being even more powerful.”

“What being is this?”

“I do not know. I only know that it exists. The phoenix court keeps its secrets, even from the dead. Especially from the dead.”

“How may I find it?”

“Only a phoenix can tell you.”

Starswirl’s heart fell. His own phoenix was gone. Treacherous fowl! It was she who had saved Celestia from death. But even if she were still alive, she would never give him information that would help him to fight Harmony. Phoenixes were creatures of light, servants of Harmony. It was hopeless.

“And is there a phoenix anywhere that would help me?” Starswirl asked hollowly.

Silence. Starswirl searched the ghost’s face. Clover was straining with all his might against the power that held him bound, but he could not hold back the answer.

His ghostly light dimmed. “There is,” he admitted at last.

Starswirl’s lips curled in a savage smile. “Show me where.”

The ghost touched the tip of his horn to Starswirl’s. A vision exploded in the old wizard’s mind. He saw a dark and tangled forest spreading out beneath the sun, hiding awful secrets. Deep in that forest, a young phoenix sat perched on a twisted branch, staring up through the canopy at the noon sky. Golden tears poured from eyes that burned with a hatred so fierce it would consume even the sun in its fury.

“What shall I call her when I meet her?” asked Starswirl. For he was going to find this creature. She would give him the key to a power that was greater even than Celestia.

“Her name is Philomena.”

Comments

[Hustlin Tom]

I still love how you are developing Starswirl to be the fallen master, and I especially love the extra mythology you've created with the Phoenixes. Both are intriguing and so far as I know, unique!

[Kolwynia]

1784736 Thanks! I'm trying my best to be a little creative with different elements of the show's mythology, while still remaining faithful to the show's canon. I want everything in this story to be possible within the canon of the show, so that when people read it they think: "It could have happened that way." If I can write this whole thing without having to stick on an Alternate Universe tag, I'll be happy.

And I'm glad you are liking Starswirl.

Next up: A lonely princess.

[Trevor Rain]

Favorite chapter so far. You've slowed down and gave us time to breathe and take in all the sights. I'm liking the depth you're giving Starswirl, though I am worried if it will make his character consistent. I'm expecting to see some conflict within himself due to his values and his overall plan. They do collide a bit. I do like it, a character that holds onto values that seems to be a counterpoint to his morality can prove to be an interesting one. He's catered to the last words of his past proteges while still having fond memories of them.

This could get very interesting if you continue to expand on this aspect.

No, I don't believe you're making him too evil. If anything, I'd like to see you push it a bit further.

You're using many of the established fantasy conventions (Bound spirits and the like) Which is great. It fits, considering MLP shares the same franchise as DnD (which also uses some of them).

Concerning the newest episode: It seems that the Timberwolves are possessed by some sort of spirit that gives the wood it's animation. Are you planning on doing anything with that? I could imagine it being some sort of curse conducted by Starswirl.

[Kolwynia]

1876408 Thanks! As for Starswirl's character, I have to be very careful because I'm pretty sure in the canon of the show itself he's not a villain. I've made him an antagonist here, but I'm waiting for the upcoming season finale to Alternate Universe my whole story. (I have a plan to avoid this, so long as Twilight doesn't get sent back in time and we get a fixed canon past.) But yeah, Starswirl basically represents the ultimate cynicism in the power of friendship. And Celestia has this kind of naive faith in Harmony. And Starswirl is on the tail end of over a century of life, while Celestia is at the beginning of a millenium. It makes for a fun dynamic.

As for the timberwolves... Something is going on in the Everfree Forest, isn't it? I see the Everfree as kind of MLP's version of Mirkwood (from The Hobbit). A dark power is at work there. Then there is that old castle where Nightmare Moon was defeated. What's the deal with that? That's the fun of telling a story set in the past, there's all these interesting questions that you get to offer answers to.

(Chapter Five is with my awesome pre-reader as we speak. It's kind of dialogue-and-exposition-heavy. Things should get serious soon, after Starswirl meets a certain grieving phoenix.)

Thanks for reading!

[vren55]

This review is brought to you on behalf of the group: Authors Helping Authors
Celestia in Excelsis
Grammar score: 9/10 I really didn't notice much of anything.
Pros: HOLY SMOKES... That... was... AWESOME... Evil Starswirl rocks. The characters are completely in character, (though I wish there was a little more Celestia development)
The plot is very well thought out and draws people in. I'm very interested in Philomena and what she will do
The mythology and history you've combined has created an excellent story
Cons:
You need more development on Celestia and why she chose to be good
The section in which she suddenly went to see the books is a bit sudden after part with the mirror.
How does a Filly grow up so fast?
Notes: I really liked your Celestia, but I need to see more of her. I've been seeing quite a bit of Starswirl, phoenix, but you need to do much more Celestia character development to show why she acted the way she acted. Other than that I'm faving this story!
I would like you to read my story Canterlot: Her Creation and Her Architects, it's got quite a bit of Celestia.

[Alondro]

1877608 Well, the problem with grasping the Season Finale as you have is the fact that the spell Starswirl was working on was attempting to unite the forces of the Elements. Meaning, he was working WITH them, not against them. He had no close friends, and so could not comprehend the depths of friendship to the degree needed to form the words of the spell.

Also, you've made dragons part of the Enemy's forces?

Tut tut, such speciesism! I represent the NAASP (North American Association of Scaled People), and we shall not stand for such derogatory insinuations and implications! The infatuation with the ultimatatum is an indication of vindication through the conflagration! CAN I GET AN AMEN!?!?!

[Kolwynia]

2265928 Well, the show is not explicit about what Starswirl's spell did. Don't worry, when it comes up in the story, I promise it will work with the Season Three finale.

I was worried that the finale would Alternate Universe my story, but when it was vague about Starswirl and had that line about him not understanding friendship like Twilight, it ended up working perfectly for my story's canon!

As for the dragons... it's going to matter a bit later on. I love dragons.

[Dinkledash]

Great!

[Wyrme]

1877608 Except Everfree lacks the giant spiders.
Which makes it better.(I'm an arachnaphobe)