Chapter 18: Aurora
Chapter 18: Aurora
“The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” Plato.
Daphne
Twilight Sparkle checked another item off on her scroll, and I breathed a sigh of relief as she beamed. “Excellent!” she enthused. “You’re really coming along nicely, Daphne.”
I reached a hoof up to rub at my sore horn, looking at the array of colored children’s blocks stacked in increasingly improbable arrays across the cabin. “Nicely for a unicorn of my age, or nicely for a unicorn who just got started?”
“The latter,” she admitted, but she added with an upbeat tone, “and I predict that with a few months of practice, you’ll be out of kindergarten-level magic.”
“Oh,” I said with a toss of my head, “joy of joys.”
Twilight smiled warmly and swept the blocks up in a wave of magenta, dancing them across the cabin to stack themselves in neat order. Their progress was envious—though I could create illusory images of startling clarity and precision, I felt clumsy when it came to manipulating real objects, unable to apply force with any real accuracy. It wasn’t unlike putting on a pair of snow mitts and trying to handle an instrument. I could saw at the thing all I wanted, but I would be lucky to produce sound, let alone actual notes.
“Are you going to keep practicing?” Twilight asked as she latched my trunk up. “I was thinking of heading up to the deck, myself.”
“Yeah, I think so.” I rubbed the quilted comforter on the bed with a grin. “Nice and warm down here. You can go freeze your horn off up top, though, if you like.”
She laughed, turning towards the door. “All right. Pinion wasn’t sure when we’d arrive, but I’ll send somepony down if we get close to the island.” She clipped smartly out and shut the door behind her as she went.
Even as she left, I turned my attention to the air, and the things that awaited me there. It had been hard enough ignoring them when Leit Motif and Twilight were there.
My mouth creased as I regarded the shapes whirling unbidden and uncontrolled in the still space of my cabin. Angular snakes swam in zigzagging courses. Wheels turned and glittered. Letters hung like cloudy mist, colliding every so often to form words, and those to form phrases. Pictures and lines shaped like birds snatched up words like wriggling worms and devoured them whole before soaring away through solid wood.
It didn’t stop there, either. Without any prompting, images of my school and Ponyville wavered as behind a clouded glass. People and ponies occupied dimensions running perpendicular to one another, such that I could turn my head and see one or the other in some bizarre hologram.
“Practice?” I muttered, “I can’t seem to stop.” I drew the comforter over my head and buried myself in darkness, but closing my eyes only served to draw greater attention to the strange phantasms.
It had been so since the moment I’d unleashed my talent. Perhaps I’d been too tired to notice at first, but they became increasingly clear as we loaded onto the airship and took off. Every kilometer we ate towards the Well made them more aggressive and numerous. The flood that had opened up within me had left a shattered dam in its wake. A trickle now oozed through the cracks, a steady stream of thought.
Squeezing my eyes shut more tightly still, I tried to restore order to chaos. With a brush I swept up the scattered images and shoved them into a jar. The image of the jar I embellished, spelling out its details so that it would remain fixed. It was a heavy-bottomed amphora, detailed with wavy lines. The lines moved, sawing in opposition, such that it seemed that there was a live ocean on its surface. I reached out and slipped my hooves into the handles, gently swirling the jar, watching within as light swelled and spun. Everything else was pushed away, leaving a dark void as I turned the jar over, pouring out the liquid thought, concentrating intently so as to make sense out of what I saw.
Music thrummed about me as the stuff of imagination gained substance, churning into clouds. Within them, I saw Flash and a rainbow mare clashing amidst lightning. A light entered a wingless Twilight Sparkle’s eyes as she confronted a mare of inky darkness. The roots of a great tree split the streets of an American city like a plow through fresh earth. A silver alicorn mare wept to fill an ocean. Amelia, shining like the sun, rose in the morning sky, while the great and the low alike bent knee.
Over the Earth I stood and poured, a remote figure above the clouds. Wherever my green mists touched, light and life sprang forth in profusion. Six gems glittered at my brow, radiating peace and serenity. From the stars I plucked a sword to sever injustice, a shield to preserve the peace, a chalice to relieve the weary, and a staff to guide the uncertain…
Gasping for air, I scrambled out from under the bed sheets and stood panting in the center of the room. My breath frosted in the air, and I was as cold as ice all over. I rubbed numb legs and fumbled telekinetically for the vent. To my surprise, it stood open, and was breathing in warm air. The sounds of the ship’s engines vibrating against the floor seemed too loud to be real, and my every step reverberated in my head like the beating of alien drums.
Heat worked slowly back into my body. Feeling constrained by the cabin, I pushed out into the hallway and stopped a sailor. I recognized her at once from her distinctive golden curls. “Honey Dew? Hey, I was wondering if you saw where Leit went.”
The mare edged back from me and spread her wings slightly in a seemingly unconscious gesture. There was no recognition in her gaze as she regarded me. “Uh. Have we met?” She tilted her head with a puzzled frown. “Are you with the Princess’s entourage? I’m sorry, ma’am, I must have forgotten…”
“No!” I said, too loudly. “No,” I repeated, reaching out a hoof only for her to shrink back, her eyes widen in concern and a touch of fear. “I… I’m sorry.” For once in my life, I couldn’t place where I’d met her before. There was no excuse. I pulled my hoof back. “Sorry, nevermind.”
Her expression cut deep, and I hurried away down the hallway as quickly as reasonably possible. That look, that sudden shock, reminded me just a little too much of how my parents had regarded me, long ago.
Once again, the sound of my own hooves thundered in my ears. The doorway to the library provided a convenient resting place while I rubbed at my temples and wondered just what the heck was happening. All the background noise—the ship’s engines, the sound of echoing hoofsteps, even my own heartbeat—grew deeper, thrumming and overwhelming. Desperately, I pushed it away and watched as the hull of the ship faded into insubstantial mist, peeling away layer-by-layer to reveal the night sky. The ship plowed through curtains of black cloud, and I peered through even that to see what lay beyond.
My breath caught in my throat. There, beneath a green aurora lighting up the night sky, sat the island from my dreams. Not my figurative dreams—the actual memory palace I’d constructed. Its seas were no longer calm, churned as they were by storm winds, but there was the waterfall, and the ancient town climbing up its slopes, and the pool surrounded by columns by the living rock crevice.
“No,” I muttered, “of course I would imagine that; there’s nothing special about it.” I ran a hoof over my face. “I’m not going crazy. I’m not crazy.”
“Of course you’re not crazy, Daphne,” a soothing, masculine voice said from within the library.
Wheeling around, I stared, jaw unhinged, at the man seated there, flipping idly through a book on earth pony agriculture. He looked up to me through his wire-frame spectacles and smiled warmly. Big and bearlike, he nevertheless came off as completely unthreatening, a comforting anchor in a storm-wracked world.
My breath froze in the air.
“You are not crazy, Daphne,” the psychologist said as he laid the book back down, “and you never have been.”
“N-no,” I whispered. “You’re not here, you’re not real. This… this is just a hallucination… brought on by… by f-fatigue, and stress…”
“If it were another person, probably, though you well know that you are not fatigued.” He folded his hands together, leaning forward to gaze at me intently. “A normal person. But you are anything but normal, aren’t you? Sane enough, but different. Different in a way few others are. Touched by forces beyond yourself.”
I took a nervous step back, my ears alert. “Who are you? He never spoke like that.” I leaned away. “No… what are you?”
“I’m a messenger,” he said, “from someone very important to you. Though you haven’t met her yet, she has met you. She was there from the very moment you were conceived, and she’s been waiting for you all of your life. We all have been waiting for you. The whole world has been waiting for you.”
“What? No, I… I don’t understand!” My legs shook, threatening to dump me unceremoniously onto the floor.
“And you might never get a chance to. Hurry, Water-Child.” He rose, pointing to the image of the island still hanging in my vision. An enormous, bulky air fortress listed in the air as it burned and smoked. “It doesn’t end here. It must not—” Thunderous booms echoed through the night, and he turned to meet my gaze once more “—yet it will, unless you act.”
Cannons pinged off the armor, erupting in quick succession, only for the next volley to tear through the weakened plates and erupt all around me, sending hot shrapnel and splinters of wood through my flesh. Twilight Sparkle, standing on the deck, threw up a shield too late, with fires already raging throughout the hull—
A hoof shook me, and I woke covered in sweat in the corridor outside the library. Honey Dew and a stallion with a bandage cutie mark were looking down at me, their faces wide with concern. I stared around wildly, but found the ship intact.
The faux therapist’s words echoed through my brain, and I surged to my feet, throwing off the two well-meaning ponies as I galloped to the stairway. My hooves scrambled across the deck. The clouds were already beginning to part. Green light touched the sky, threatening to drown the stars.
“Shield!” I screamed as I laid eyes on Twilight Sparkle. “Put a shield up!”
It was exactly as it had been in my mind. There, sconced in the churning sea below, the island gleamed under a sky lit in viridian flame. Over it loomed the titanic airship, its engines straining mightily to keep the bulky craft in the air even as it took damage from within. What were perfectly functional, however, were the cannons along its side, arrayed in batteries that were already turning our way.
Once again, I experienced that deafening retort as the surprised goblin gunners targeted our unexpected craft. In my mind, the shells arced through the air towards us. It was like watching a movie for the second time, hoping and praying the horrific events to come wouldn’t.
Then, with a brilliant flash of blue light, they didn’t.
Bone-shuddering failed to encapsulate the sound that followed. Spiderwebs of force splintered and wavered under the fusillade, but held. Fireworks burst mere meters from where I stood, but spent their fury fruitlessly against the canopy of fire projected from Twilight’s horn.
Marcus swore loudly, covering Leit Motif’s body with his own as he threw her against the deck in a surge of adrenal strength.
“Jumpin’ jiminy!” Applejack shouted. She leapt to catch Twilight as the princess found herself blown back with the force of the blasts. The two skidded to a halt near me. “Cap’n! Can we answer fire?” she demanded as the air cleared. There was no second volley—perhaps they were confused that their target was still in the air.
“This ship wasn’t outfitted with cannon,” I said, shaking my head. “They had some planned, but the order was cancelled.”
“This ship ain’t armed, we were going to be, but—” Captain Holder stopped and stared at me.
“N-nevermind!” Twilight gasped and crawled back to her feet shakily. “We need to fall back!”
“Take the ship around the island,” I countered. “The gunners on that side aren’t at their posts.” In my mind’s eye, their posts stood empty and abandoned, with seagulls feasting on forgotten snacks.
Captain Holder and Twilight looked ready to argue with me, but once again her shield lit up, scattering sparks and flashes of lightning as it cracked and splintered. Applejack braced her friend, holding the alicorn up as she strained to hold her spell tight.
You must hurry! the woman’s voice from before urged me, Please!
“Just do it!” I said, my tail bristling. “We’re so close!”
“To what?” Pinkie Pie asked, sounding genuinely confused.
I opened my mouth to answer her, but nothing came out. I snapped it shut and stared down at the island. Never before in my life had such a potent sense of nameless purpose seized me before. I knew, without knowing why, that I needed to set foot on that island, to run the path to the hillside and plunge into the depths of rock and stone.
“Do it, Captain,” Twilight heaved.
The captain grunted and ruffled his feathers, but his barked orders held no trace of hesitation. His sailors gathered clouds around the craft, slipping out from beneath Twilight’s protective shield to form a screen of dark storm clouds about us. More cannonfire ripped through the night, but few found their mark, and our passage was heralded by bombs bursting in air with flashes of red and gold.
Naomi found her way to my side as we sailed, sliding to her knees beside me. She put a hand on the back of my neck, asking, “Are you sure about this? What’s going on, Daphne?”
“More sure than I’ve ever been,” I muttered, staring through the clouds at the ruins below. Perhaps the goblins found them a hindrance, but they inhibited my sight not at all. “I have to hurry. Can you get me down any faster?” I asked Twilight.
“I’m not sure I could manage a teleport right now,” she said demurely, rubbing her head. “That shield won’t last, I… Well, I wish my brother had been here, let’s say. Maybe the pegasi can carry you?”
“Uh, there’s like a whole garrison of goblins down there,” Pinion said, belting her armor on. “I’ll try to talk them down, but we’re safer in numbers.”
Lyra trotted up, looking as ever as if nothing particularly strange were going on. “I have an idea. This ship has lifeboats with gliders for carrying away the wounded and ground-bound. We can all take a couple of them down.”
“I wouldn’t want to take away the crew’s lifeboats,” Rarity said, biting her lip.
“If it’s important to Daphne,” Leit Motif insisted as she joined the group, “then it’s important to all of us.” She gave me a knowing glance, her eyes intent. They were the same shade as the eerie lights in the sky.
“All right,” Twilight agreed with a nod. “Captain, we’ll signal you for a pickup if we need help, but do not, under any circumstances, risk your ship against—”
“With all due respect, Princess,” the Captain cut her off gruffly, “this ship and everypony on board are yours to the last. You do what you need to do, and trust us to do our job.” He met her disconcerted look with one of grim determination, his gaze narrowed, his jaw set. “We ain’t about to pick a fight with that behemoth, but we’re not leavin’ you in dire straits without a chance of rescue.”
A group of earth ponies were already levering a pair of hefty wooden craft to the deck and affixing sturdy wings to them. Twilight sighed and nodded, then we crowded in. With a heave, the sailors swung us out over the empty air, and I reached out and gripped both Leit Motif’s and Naomi’s legs. We huddled together in a pile and braced. Then, with an exhilarating rush of air, the sailors released us and sent us soaring downward at terrifying speed.
Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Lyra, Marcus, Pinion, Leit Motif, and even Fluttershy all worked with magic and muscle to pull us out of the dive as we fell below the cloud layer. Lashed by fierce rain-laden wind, we aimed as best we could at the hillside. Applejack, in the lead vehicle, waved her hat wildly and pointed, her words lost in the screaming air, but her intent became clear enough when she turned the glider and aimed for a long boulevard winding around a cliff face on one side of the island. Closer and closer we came, with apprehension building by the moment, until the earth rose up to meet us. Lead glider and follower touched down on the ancient stones of the abandoned road. They shuddered, thumped, and bounced their way along, shaking their passengers and threatening to toss us free. At last, we skidded to a haphazard stop, alarmingly close to the gaping cliff edge.
The ground seemed to tilt and sway as we wobbled off the life rafts. Powerful winds tore at the wings, threatening to push them closer to the edge, while the waves lashed and punished the jagged rocks down below. Together with the other unicorns, I lit my horn and retrieved our supplies. Naomi’s eyes lingered on the airship as it slid safely into the concealing clouds.
“He’ll be all right,” Marcus said, laying a hand on her arm, “I think ponies know how to take care of a horse.”
“Will we be all right, though?” Leit Motif asked gloomily as she stared around. Crumbling plaster and brick houses lined the street around us. Their ravaged facades spoke of ancient tragedy, and the weathering of ages had only served to strengthen that impression. Statues of men and horses alike seemed to weep with dark channels of grime.
The curious duality of the lost town struck as we made our way up the hill. Few staircases were narrow or tight, ramps were everywhere, and many public buildings were broad and open. The fact that many of the pony statues were clothed in like manner to the human ones was evidence enough. Wherever we looked, there were signs of human and Equestrian cohabitation. If not the same houses, then certainly the same public spaces.
“Is anypony else getting the willies?” Pinkie Pie asked, for once less exuberant than apprehensive as she stared around. “My tail’s getting all twitchy.”
“Please don’t tell me you have a ghost sense, too,” Twilight Sparkle groaned. “Not that ghosts are real.” She froze and glanced over to Pinion. “Right?”
“Beats me!” the goblin said with a shrug.
Perhaps ghosts are real, and perhaps they aren’t. It’s a question I don’t have an answer to yet, though I doubt it is so. After all, if any place was haunted, it should have been this one. Everywhere we went, it felt as though I could trip and fall through a veil if I weren’t careful. Shapes moved out of the corner of my eye. Anger, rage, fear, and helplessness pressed at the edges of my mind.
When we turned up the road towards the temple at the summit, I suddenly found myself walking into direct sunlight. Blinking, I stared around to find myself alone on the path, which was no longer choked with weeds and dust. Screams echoed up from the town, and my ears flattened against my skull. I heard hooves pounding and turned to find a crowd of heavily armed stallions charging past me. One of them shouted at me, “Run, you fool! The humans will be back! Don’t make our sacrifice count for nothing!”
It wasn’t in English, but I could understand it all the same. They charged against a city aflame.
Above, a figure soared in the sky, lightning crashing around it. A man mounted astride a white figure, clashing against another winged horse.
“Daphne?” Naomi’s voice pulled me back to the storm-tossed darkness. I stood on the threshold of one time and another, one hoof poised in a distant past under an unforgiving sun, and the other in a night-shrouded present.
“I’m all right,” I said, walking back into the then-and-now. A few looks were cast my way, but no pony seemed to have noticed anything odd beyond my behavior.
None of them could see what I saw. Honestly, I’m glad they didn’t have to.
Armored goblins groaned as they littered the path. Several stirred before collapsing into heaps again. A quick investigation showed hoof indentations in their helmets and breast plates, a recent and savage beating by somepony very fast, strong, and motivated.
“Rainbow Dash,” Leit Motif concluded at once as she poked a burly goblin’s dented bucket helm, “I’d recognize her path of devastation anywhere.” The goblin tried to sit up, but she aimed a ringing buck at its head and put it down again.
“This couldn’t have been that long ago!” Rarity said, excited. “She could be here, right now! We should—!”
Whatever we should or shouldn’t have done was lost in a sudden crash that knocked all of us off our feet. Dust billowed up as something huge and heavy fell from the airship and ploughed a crater into the earth.
As we all found our footing once more, the thing rose. A huge hand pushed a pillar aside as if it were no more than a sapling, sending its heavy segments crumbling and bouncing across the cracked tiles. The wind caught the dust and blew it away, to reveal a chimeric mountain—a powerful blend of man and horse.
There was more, though. Of us all, I’m positive only I saw it. There was a light shining from within him, a halo of it rimming his head. He had a presence that seemed to exist beyond the mere flesh, and it felt as though I could reach out and touch it, if only just barely.
“No plan,” the Wand King growled, his voice deep and menacing, “ever goes quite as you expect. You’ve come a great deal earlier than I expected, Princess Twilight Sparkle.” When he stepped out of the crater, the great centaur towered over us. He stood head and shoulders over the tallest men alive, and all of it was clenched with rage. He held a vast ash staff so tightly I thought he might splinter it.
Quickly, we set ourselves as best we could. Most of us took cover behind fallen building stones, even though we knew they represented minimal cover to such a behemoth.
“Are you the one who’s responsible for all this?” Twilight shouted over the wind, standing her ground. “Just who are you, anyway?”
“Nessus,” I muttered, “King of Wands.”
“Who I am is none—” His head whipped around and I jumped as his eyes fell on me. I’d had no idea his hearing was so sharp—not that I’d really been thinking when I’d spoken. “So, the Morgwyn brought you lot as well, did it? I’ll need to be particularly inventive with Fetter. I’m sure I can find something suitably revolting for him to spend the remainder of his worthless days as. As for you, Princess, I can’t have—”
His speech was interrupted with a hail of gunfire. Marcus, apparently taking the old adage about never leaving a villain to monologue to heart, unloaded round after round into the centaur, pausing only long enough to aim and fire again in split-second timing.
King Nessus jerked as the shots tore into his bare chest to the accompaniment of gasps from the surrounding mares. Everypony braced as the echoes faded, watching the centaur as he straightened and looked down at his chest. A pitiful trickle of blood matted the heavy hair and he brushed a hand across the wounds. Flattened bullets clattered to the ground.
“Ah, crap,” Marcus muttered.
The staff lit up with a magnesium-bright glow. White fire arced along its dark ash surface. “Humans. Always breaking the drama.” King Nessus scythed the staff and a smoking bar of light slashed across our ranks.
Horrified at the prospect of being transformed against my will once more, I was already diving for cover, but the light seared through stone as if it were air. Just as the beam overcame us, though, a blinding flash met it. Hot air blasted me back into a stone wall and knocked the wind right out of my chest. When I got back to my feet, dazed and half-blinded, I stared back to find six crystals interposed between us and the king.
Twilight gaped, but recovered first. “Hah!” she said as she tossed her windblown mane, as though she had planned it all along, “whoever and whatever you are, your magic can’t touch us!”
“My magic, no,” the centaur said, and reached down to pick up a slab of marble that must have weighed half a ton in one meaty hand. “How about this?”
“Uh.”
The slab flew, and Lyra and Leit Motif blasted it in unison, but the fight was already upon us. The best that could be said about it was that it had been short, however one-sided and brutal. Ponies are strong creatures, but Nessus had the might of ages and the will to use it. He shed bullets like hard rain, and when his hooves flashed, earth and stone shattered. A full buck from Applejack barely swayed him, while his return strike sent her flying into a column to bounce off with a sickening crunch. A purple shield splintered and shattered under a fist, which grabbed Twilight Sparkle by the midsection and flung her clear across the ruined temple. Lyra, bold and beautiful in gold, flung herself in front of Naomi to take a blow that would have shattered the thin girl’s entire body. Instead, it broke Lyra’s armor and sent her spinning.
In desperation, I flooded the world with green smoke, hoping we could run to safety while he floundered. Nessus, however, turned to face me with his terrible eyes piercing the cloud. “Mere unicorn tricks will not hinder my sight, mare.” Huge hoofsteps carried the mountain, and he snatched Marcus up as he tried to run in one hand and hooked Fluttershy out of the air with his staff. He held both in his titanic fists and began to squeeze them as they struggled and fought for air. “This ends now!”
“No!” I screamed. Across the battlefield, my eyes met his, and at once the shapes and sights that threatened at the edge of my sight came alive. Fear, hate, anger, pain, loss—they sparkled in the air and I drew them together. The green fog coalesced at once into a shape, a human shape, a woman with long midnight hair who stood in mute protest before the centaur with her arms held wide as if to bar him.
It was as if someone had reached out and pressed the Pause button on our lives. Nessus froze as still as carven stone, staring at the woman’s image. For that brief instant, he stood transfixed. Then she faded and our eyes met again.
* * *
As suddenly as that, I was somewhere else, watching.
Somewhere warm, under a hot sun, with moisture rising off the wet earth and rushes beside a fierce river. Unaware of my presence, two people stood under the fronds of a date tree. One was a beardless centaur youth, a Nessus before he became quite so massive and fierce, while the other was slim and female, the woman whom I had conjured. They spoke in low voices for all that they thought they were alone—he with bitter, helpless anger; she with soothing comfort. Her hands were on his broad chest, for he came not so high as he did millennia later.
Scenes flashed before me like bursting bulbs, irrespective of time or place. They kissed knee-deep in a river, or they were riding together across the hills with her on his back. A bearded Nessus crushed flowers atop a cairn of stones. A sea-green alicorn sheltered a pair of centaur colts beneath her spreading wing.
A pegasus stallion shouted down at Nessus as storm winds tore at his mane. “Traitor! Half-breed scum, you brought his wrath down upon us! On your own blood!” Nessus, stricken, tried to protest his innocence as blood ran from his gut to stain the water black.
A man’s broad figure, wreathed in light, loosing arrow after arrow to wither the shapes of centaur stallions and mares alike beneath his unnatural hail.
“Brother!” Nessus shouted, now holding the limp form of another centaur. His huge hand pressed against a green-flecked wound, struggling and failing to staunch a torrent of blood. “Brother! I beg you, do not go!” A bag of healing herbs stood emptied, many glasses and jars discarded helplessly across the cave floor.
“The stars await, brother mine,” the older centaur said in a voice thick with pain but as strong and steady as a river. “The child… you must…” He wheezed and hacked, blood dribbling from between his lips.
“Damn the child!” Nessus swore, his eyes stinging with tears. “Damn her, Chiron! Her kind slew you, they betrayed us! What do I care for some whelp while my own blood lies stricken? When…” He looked away. “My fault. This is my fault…”
“Do not… hate them, brother.” Weakening hands gripped Nessus’s shoulders. “Do not… condemn all… for the actions of one… I…” Coughs wracked his body again, shaking the powerful centaur as if he were a frail, bedridden child. “Do not… you must… for the sake of… the worlds…”
“No!” Nessus screamed, as the figure began to fade within his arms. “No! Chiron, no!” But it was too late for pleading, and the centaur Chiron passed into twinkling lights that shimmered and vanished.
Jarringly, without warning, I was somewhere and somewhen else again. A storm wracked the river as Nessus struggled to cross with his bloody wound. The pegasus stallion shouted down at him from above. “What madness led you to betray your own kind, Nessus?”
“A special kind of madness,” another man’s voice answered from the far shore, deathly quiet. “A madness which has laid low greater creatures than we. The madness of love.” In the following silence, the storm air crackled as a mighty bow was drawn.
* * *
Nessus’s scream split the air of the ruined temple. Wordless and primal, it shook the very foundations. Marcus and Fluttershy were flung aside as he raged mindlessly, destroying everything around him, smashing statues into powder and toppling ancient pillars. “Deianara!” he screamed at last. “Deianara!”
Even before the echoes faded, he returned his attention to me, his hair wild across a face red with unholy fury. His nostrils flared, and he snatched up his staff. The King of Wands called down no magic—he would need none to bludgeon me into a smear. Thunder crashed around us as lightning struck the cone of the mountain behind him. Part of me felt keenly the need to be there this very instant, but he still barred my path.
“The story doesn’t end here,” I said, and knew it to be so. I said it in his language, in the tongue of the ancient Greeks.
“Yours does,” he said, as deadly quiet as Heracles had been on that fateful day. “No more tricks can save you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ve already delayed you enough.”
Lightning Dust swooped down from the sky between us, sending burning stones flying as she knocked me clear. Actual lightning bolts struck all around us. Expecting more pegasi, I was more shocked when a woman, brandishing a writhing tongue of sparkling electricity in one hand, appeared before Nessus. She turned aside the Wand King’s return stroke with her strange sword and pressed him back with her answering swipes, as if they had been of a size rather than dramatically mismatched.
Looking up revealed a small fleet of aircraft hovered above. Lightning Dust checked me over for injuries and gave me a sour gaze. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to dodge when someone’s swingin’ a shillelagh at your skull?”
“Afraid I missed that lesson,” I muttered as I pushed back up. “What in the hell is going on?”
“The Courts have come to war,” she told me with a smug grin. “Well, Sword anyway, them and…”
A shimmering crystalline wall erected itself around our party as Nessus charged back on the offensive. It inhibited him not at all, but when he struck at Pinkie Pie and Leit Motif his blows slid off harmlessly. In the center, on the smoldering remains of the slab he had thrown at the start, a wizened old goblin held aloft a circular device that shone with a pure light.
“Ring,” Lightning Dust finished brightly.
Even as the rescue spared us from death, though, the mountain lit up. Peal after peal of lightning crashed around it, a long, rolling blast that rocked the ruins as the mountain was struck again and again with blinding forks.
No! the mysterious woman’s voice screamed in my mind, and I screamed with her as my vision was dragged through the ruins, racing along an invisible path through the crack in the rocks and into a grotto filled with brilliant light. There, a shining human shape placed a burning golden bridle across the face of a blue mare. No! We are too late!
Lightning Dust held me as I came back to myself, and I stared helplessly as golden radiance poured from the crack at the top of the mountain. “No.” A streak of rainbow light shot forth from it faster than the barrel of a gun. It turned in the green aurora light, tearing and shredding the delicate folds till they dissolved in the warm night air, before arching off across the sky.
I knew who it was. I could see her face. I felt her heart beat.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She should have been far away. She never should have been able to set foot here on the soil of this island.
I knew it in my heart, but, for once, my heart was wrong.
My voice rose in a weak, plaintive call.
“Amelia. No.”
The world shivered around me as if it were some cheap set ready to fall away, but I braced and forced myself to confront the world at hoof rather than the one that awaited on the other side. Nessus raged and spent muscle and magic against the people in the crystalline barrier to no avail—he could neither strike nor grasp any of us against our will, and when the woman struck back he howled in pain as her electric blade seared even his skin. The wizened goblin who held the shield fast faced the demigod impassively and did not budge.
“How now, King of Wands?” the cowled woman asked in a lilting voice, lifting her blade of spark-spitting lightning as if to charge through the barrier and strike. “No prize for you this night.”
The night lit up again as our airship’s spotlights made a pool of brightness, and Nessus looked up. Doubtless he saw his flagship being harassed off the field as well as we did, with swarms of pegasi and smaller vessels buzzing over it like flies. “You’re wrong in that, Knight. I’ve already won my prize, and my champion will write my victory in the stars, as it was in the days of old. Keep your wretches—you’ll find them a poor reward.” Huge legs coiled and sprang, carrying him high into the air and out of sight in the darkness.
The shuddering impact of his landing paled in comparison to the way the world shivered around me as I began to fade out again. I wobbled across the ground towards Marcus, my hooves refusing to find stable footing. It was as though my body were trying to walk on two legs again and found all of this mucking about on four a hassle. I threw my hooves over him and lifted his shirt to check for injury. Still gasping for air, he pushed my searching muzzle away, only to stop when he met my eyes.
“Daphne? Are you all… right…?” His voice echoed dimly, as if from a great distance. He receded from me, the world shrinking to a bright tunnel.
I turned toward it, blinking away the sudden sunlight that threatened to blind me all over again and stared around. This was exactly where I had been moments before, but, instead of ruins, the hilltop temple was fully intact, if equally empty. A warm summer breeze rose up from the tropics to stir at my mane and carried with it a woman’s voice.
She sang, a deep-voiced mourning in that ancient tongue I knew as well as the English I had been born with. Following it, I walked past the statue Nessus had destroyed in his landing to reach the caves. Every step was familiar to me—after all, this was the place of my dreams. I didn’t need the smell of salt water or the crevice in the rock to tell me that, for scattered around were neatly ordered crates and boxes and pedestals stuffed to bursting. Entire books paged silently in the breeze and reels of film stacked one atop the other in tin towers, committed to memory everlasting. Every toy I’d ever owned sat in racks along the cave walls with album after album filled with photographs depicting every face I’d ever laid eyes on. The caves split and diverged in a dense labyrinth of tight passages, but I’d only filled a fraction of them, and barely touched the ruins beyond.
It was a wicked irony. If I’d dared explored my own dreams more, perhaps I’d have had more knowledge of the pony race long before my tragic and nearly terminal encounter with Fetter.
Putting a hand to guide my way through the narrow passageways, I wondered if Amelia had noticed the branching pathways when she came mere minutes before me in the waking world. She had a way of rushing headlong into any situation, and, if the fires on the Wand juggernaut had been any indication, she’d done so with the forces of hell on her tail.
Thinking of tails, I noticed only then that I had hands, and looked down in surprise to find myself clad as I had before my very skin had been stolen away. A girl once more, and not a horse, if only in my own mind. All of that agonizing over whether I’d lose my identity, only to come to terms with being a mare, and here I was on two legs again.
It felt anticlimactic. Worse, it felt cheap. Silly, but there’s no accounting for emotion.
The alicorn waited for me in a chamber at the top of the caves. Impossibly, the open balcony looked not upon the sunlit island, but out over the clouds, miles above where we ostensibly sat. Her mane spread long and green across her chair, and her soft seafoam coat glistened like morning dew with the twinkle of stars. Her eyes creased with sadness as they fell on me, but with a longing that pulled more keenly still. A mother’s eyes.
I shifted uncomfortably in my tennis shoes under that gaze. It reminded me far too much of the fact that my own mother lay very far away. In my mind’s eye—something that sounds oxymoronic when I was inside a dream, but still—I saw her sitting with her phone in the living room, checking the messages with only the faintest spark of hope. How I longed to reach across the void to her, for her to hear my voice and know that I was safe, even if in reality I had just survived a terrifying battle.
“Alas,” the alicorn mare said quietly, “we cannot always commune with those whom we see in our hearts.”
“Pirene,” I murmured, facing her again. “That’s your name, isn’t it? You’re named in legends—though they seem to have left out the part about you being a magical horse. Then again, they also failed to mention the part where Nessus wasn’t trying to rape Deianara.”
“Be they by human or equine tongue, legends oft lose their meaning when repeated down the long centuries,” Pirene said, the starlit mare rising from her seat to approach me; unlike most of the Equestrian race, she stood taller than Marcus, even without the aid of her graceful horn. She lifted a hoof and pressed it to my cheek, uncomfortably reminding me again of my mother with her tenderness.
“The son you grieved was Pegasus, wasn’t it? The Pegasus,” I said as our eyes met. Vast gulfs of time raced together, bridged in an instant. I could see him, proud and strong, a bolt of lightning in the sky. “Cloud Breaker,” I named him. A flash of gold, a bright bit. “Taken by man.” Swords wrought in bronze, spears, clashing and shattering. “It started the whole conflict. The reason our worlds moved apart.”
“One of many reasons; the greatest and most egregious sin,” she said with a heavy sigh. “My little Water Bearer. I am so sorry.”
“I…” I swallowed heavily. “I’m not…?”
“Mine?” She laughed liquidly and withdrew her hoof. “No child of my body, certainly. Of my spirit, though… well, that will have to wait. Gods, how I had hoped this meeting would be under better circumstances.” She shook her head. “A moment may be stretched only so long, child of my spirit, so know this from my own mouth before you hear it from others: this was not meant to be. The Event has not come to pass.”
“What Event?” I asked breathlessly, hardly failing to notice her emphasis. This “child of my spirit” business left me heady with confusion, but I had so many other questions spilling out of me I hardly took notice just then. “Please. You’re the only person I’ve met with any inkling of what’s going on who isn’t trying to kill me. Why do I see things? What is this place, and why am I here? I thought all of this… I thought I was just a bystander, an accident, but I’m not, am I? What is the Water Bearer and why am I it?”
“You see the truth, Water Bearer, for that is my gift to you,” she said. “Knowledge flowing from the stars to the earth through you, my vessel.” She put her hooves about my shoulders and held me close. Despite my misgivings, the sensation was so familiar and warm that I found myself wanting to nestle into her and forget everything else. “Do not fear it. It is a blessing, to clear your sight for the trials ahead. Even if your destiny has been stolen from you, even if you may never reclaim your exalted purpose, know that you will always have that.”
“What—” I croaked and had to start over. “What about Amelia? What’s going to happen to her? What has happened?”
“You will know soon what befell her,” she said sadly, “and you must be strong. There is hope for her yet, she is not so far gone as she realizes. Deep down, she is still the child you know, no matter what darkness hangs over her now.”
Well, that was about as ominously phrased as it could have been. Weakly, I laid my cheek in her soft coat. “You’ve barely told me anything.”
“I know, and for that I am sorry.” Pirene stroked my hair. “I wish there had been more I could do to help. I cannot express how frustrating it is to look down from on high and be so powerless to change what I see.”
“Chiron,” I said on sudden inspiration, “probably feels the same way. You both faded away, didn’t you? Out among the stars.”
“Clear-sighted as ever.” Pirene offered me a bright smile. “You never should have put your dreams away, child. You were made far poorer for it. Would that my poor Chiron had lived to see you; I think he would be proud of how far you’ve come, entirely on your own.”
My eyes lowered. “I know that now. I’ll… I don’t know. I have my life ahead of me, if I live through this.” Shaking my head, I looked up at her. “Will I? Me and Marcus and Naomi and everypony else?”
Pirene looked out the window. “Who can say? Today, destiny shattered in your sister’s hands, and a new day waits to dawn.”
“My sister!” I said. For just a moment I felt like pricking my ears, only to realize I couldn’t here. “What’s happened to her? Is she all right? How did she ever get away from the goblins?”
She looked at me with sad eyes and sighed heavily. “Your sister is her own rescuer, and hale, but… hurt, too, in ways that lie deeper than the flesh. You must go to her. She may be free in body, but her spirit is shackled in hate and fear. The Seer will tell you more.” The nymph gave me a gentle push with her head as she turned back to face me. “Go, child of my spirit. Your friends await. We will speak again. Help Celestia and Luna—my nieces have faced enough tragedy in their lives.”
“Wait!” I cried, but it was too late. Her first push lifted me off the floor, and her second buffeted me through the air. My lungs were squeezed as I found myself contorted back into pony shape.
“No, come back,” I slurred plaintively through my muzzle as I struggled against the darkness, “I have so many questions…”
“Bork bork to you, too,” Marcus said, somewhere over me.
Naomi’s voice answered back, waspish. “That’s Swedish, Marc; she was clearly speaking some form of Greek. Also kind of offensive. Also not helping.”
The darkness, I soon realized, had the name of Leit Motif, whose inky mane pressed up against my face as she held me tight. Shifting my face, I found us belowdecks in the airship once more. Marcus’s shirt was off, revealing a bandage where Naomi or somepony had patched what must be broken ribs from the centaur’s grip.
Twilight Sparkle’s face appeared in my field of view and brightened as she saw my eyes make contact with her. “Oh, good, you’re responsive again. Goodness, I thought it was another false alarm.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“You’ve been staring into empty space for the last several minutes,” Leit Motif said, nosing at me as if worried I’d fall over again. “Twilight had to carry you into the ship.”
“Several minutes? That short?” I glanced around the cabin. “You ponies don’t waste any time,” I said, rather than admit to feeling as if I’d been gone nearly an hour. That was a conversation that could wait.
“Captain Holder interpreted the blinding flashes of light in our battle as a signal,” Rarity said, with an irritated little click of her tail. “Really, you can never rely on a stallion to stick to any reasonable pre-agreed plan in this day and age.”
“He did scoop our hides out of the fire again, Rares,” Applejack drawled from a porthole.
“Hardly! We had already routed the enemy.”
“We?” Lightning Dust’s voice cut in, as irascible as ever. “Who’s this we, sister? I seem to recall being the one to bring the cavalry while you lot were playing centaur bowling.”
Twilight spread her wings and shouted, “Girls, please! This isn’t the time to argue. We need to figure out what to do next, and Daphne is certainly in no shape to be stressed out right now.”
“I’m fine,” I protested, craning myself up. Leit Motif helped me to the floor and I gave a shake of my tail. “I was just… I mean…”
“Having a communion,” a new voice suggested in a tone of quiet certitude. It did not raise itself against the noise of the cabin, but it did not need to—when this one spoke, others quieted to listen.
Behind me stood the stooped form of the goblin who helped rescue us in the ruins. A staff propped his aging form up, one hung with rings in tin and brass and other base metals, while his long nose protruded from his cowl almost as much as his long, wispy beard. Against the wall behind him leaned the goblin woman who had faced Nessus in battle, the one the Wand King called a Knight. She certainly looked a warrior of some sort—even at apparent rest she had an alert, bladelike quality to her. Now that her hood had been thrown back her features were clearer, a short mane of bristly sandy hair and alert ears over a cat-like face. Marcus, I noticed at once, averted his gaze from her with a pinkness about his face.
“Oh, you haven’t really been introduced to our new friends yet, have you?” Lightning Dust asked as she pushed forward. Practically preening, she stretched forth a hoof to indicate the girl at the door. “That there is the Knight of Swords, whose name I’ve totally forgotten.”
“Saria bin Domad, you have been told,” the Knight snapped, a tail flicking beneath her robes. In her amber eyes I saw fierce pride and blowing sands. Cool dates beneath a sheltering tent. Hot blood.
“Whatever.” Lightning Dust’s eyes fell on the older goblin, and she took on a respectful, almost reverent attitude. “Daphne, this is the Seer. He’s the Page of Rings—has been since any of our grandmothers were born, I’d wager. Even Kings walk lightly around him.”
“It is because my bones are so fragile these days,” the old goblin chuckled, “one false step would crush the life from me.” He turned his gaze to mine and, when our eyes met, I saw a storm-tossed shore against high, brittle cliffs. I saw his true birth name on the lips of a lovely maiden long dead. I saw acorns turn to flowering oaks and deserts to forests. I saw him holding his ring of office to the stars and gazing across time and space.
When he smiled back at me knowingly, though, I had the strangest feeling that he’d seen as much or more of me than I had of him in our brief contact.
Whatever he saw, it didn’t really matter. That obscure prodding was telling me something new, and I was getting better at following. “You came to tell me what went wrong, didn’t you?” I asked. My “communion” had, if nothing else, taught me to second-guess my instincts less. I had some inkling of where they were coming from, now. “In fact,” I added on a second impulse, “you were the one who started all of this, weren’t you?”
The others, who counted everyone but Pinkie Pie, Lyra, Fluttershy, and Pinion, watched our exchange in silence. Some comprehended, a little or in part. Leit Motif seemed to understand best of all, but even she only offered silent encouragement with her close proximity.
The goblin’s staff tapped as he went to take a place near the center of the room. “Indirectly, I would like to say, but it is a poor clairvoyant who lays responsibility at the feet of those who listen to his words.” He turned to look at me again, and I saw in his eyes the broad, kind face of Chiron the centaur. “Old men sometimes forget that wisdom is the lack of choice, of knowing there is only one right path, and yet we scurry about seeing alternatives regardless. Sadly, all the wisdom in the world cannot mend a poor choice.” He settled on a backless chair and laid a hand on a gnarled grey knee. “Yes, Water Bearer. I am the one who set the prophecy that started all this. The prophecy that was to have as its opening act your claiming of the terrible bridle which lay at the center of the worlds’ strife at the Well of Pirene.”
Marcus raised a hand and asked, “Ah, pardon me, but it sounds a bit like you suck at prophecies. I don’t know what I saw back there, but I’m pretty sure Daphne did no such thing.”
“Mind your tongue, boy,” Saria barked. “The Seer, he has spoken truth to gods and men alike. Do you think destiny a toy for the uninitiated to play with?”
“Peace, Knight,” the Seer said, raising a hand to still the prickly woman. “It is a fair question. After all, he has seen with his own eyes what has become of my utterings.” He cleared his throat. “I see I have a few misconceptions to clear up. It sometimes feels as though my life is one long repetition of the dangers of trusting too much in moldy old words.” He settled his sharp eyes on Marcus. “The truth of the matter, young Marcus Flores, is that you misunderstand the meaning and purpose of prophecy. It is not foretelling how the future and events are to be, like some history book written in reverse. Prophecy is a lantern, to reveal the path in the murky, uncertain swamp of the future—it is a guide. Should one strike out on their own, they must contend with paths unseen.”
“Something of an instructional?” Applejack asked skeptically. “Like a map, or a repair manual?”
Rarity perked her ears. “Dare I say, I think I get what you’re thrusting at—they’re instructions on how to obtain particular results, yes? When the future is uncertain and frightening, you offer a means to achieve a given end so ponies—forgive me, people—can have confidence in the future.”
“And,” I finished, “like a manual, if you fail to follow the instructions you end up with a totally unexpected product.” It confirmed everything I had already known in my heart, everything that deep down inside me struggled to come free. “So,” I added quietly, “it’s all true then; I was supposed to come here, I was important in some way. Was. And now I’m… discarded.”
“In a sense of the word? Yes.” The Seer looked around at the others sharing the cabin. “You should understand the fullness of it, however, that you may better understand what has transpired. It may be that you would hear it by yourself first.”
“These are my friends,” I said with a frown. “I don’t have secrets from them.”
“No? Not even the visions?” he asked with a shrewd gaze. “Nor the shapes and portents that haunt you even now?”
Immediately, my cheeks reddened and I looked down at the floor. “I… I didn’t understand what they were.”
Marcus and Leit Motif opened their mouths and spoke over one another, reaching out for me at the same time. They gave each other a glance and blushed as well. Marc gestured for Leit to go on and she said, “If you want us to go, we won’t mind. I—well, we—have been noticing how strange you’ve been acting, but it’s your business.”
I laughed weakly. “Thank you, but… this isn’t just about me. I’ve dragged all of you into this after me. If anypony has a right to know, it’s you girls.”
“And me,” Marcus added.
“Yes, you girls.”
The Knight of Swords chortled into a mug of apple juice Fluttershy passed her.
“As you will,” the Seer said in his grave voice. He held the Ring of his office up, a beaten bronze circle a little more than a hand across. It hung there, and when he gave it a spin it began to rotate unsupported. Ghostly images appeared within, of men and women and ponies limned in sunlight. “It all began such a very long time ago. The Age of Heroes was in its twilight. Men and ponies and other creatures stood near as tall as gods in that Age, but we all knew its end lay near. Where lives had once been bounded only by violence, each succeeding generation knew death as they never had before. With their children subject to decay and aging, the heroes could only watch helplessly as jealousy and hatred grew among their kinds, and they forgot the harmony that had once reigned between them.”
Twilight Sparkle, listening raptly, furiously scribbled notes in her corner of the cabin with her tail twitching in the air like an excited cat’s.
“While we could still touch the magic of the gods, we made what provisions we could.” A staff, a ring, a sword, and a cup rotated around one another. “Even as conflict brewed between the races, the greatest sorcerers pooled their strength, forging sacred power into four great Arcana, vessels of symbolic might through which we continue to preserve and protect the world. Wizards and wise spiritualists from each corner of the known ancient world and the worlds beyond gathered in the land that would come to be known Mag Mell, to draw down the last ancient powers left to us by the departed gods. By then, however, it was too late.”
My heart thumped in my chest. It seemed as if I already knew this story—would that the words written on my heart would come to me sooner, when I needed them, instead of moments before another told me of them. Perhaps it was because Amelia had stolen my place, leaving me broken and incomplete.
“A force came into the world, then, sweeping across the halls of the minotaurs, the wild Vanara nations of the jungles, the windblown mountains and their griffin fastnesses, and the hoofed races of field and glen—”
“Dominion,” I murmured. My eyes were fixed on the shining golden bridle depicted in the spinning disk. I could have sketched it myself given paper. An iron law spread to every corner of the earth like the creeping shadow of night.
“Just so.” The Seer inclined his head. “Total dominion. Rulership over all the spaces of Midgard.”
I could tell that the others in the room, unable to keep up with the explanation as I could, were being left behind. “How did it happen?” I asked plaintively. “We were such good friends. Why did we turn against all the others races? What could have given us such power?” I bit my lip. “Power to turn people into beasts. To make slaves out of whole kinds.”
“Who can say? Some say it was a hero, spurned and filled with loathing, who turned all of his seething hatred and power into a device to capture the other kinds and make them serve his kin.” The Seer shook his head. “Perhaps it was a god with a voice of thunder, a god of men who sought to give his chosen total control. The Ring gives me great sight, but it cannot pierce the mists that veil the origins of the Golden Bridle, only help unravel its blood-soaked course through history. Man fought against the equine kind and their allies, and corruption sank into the very bones of the earth.”
“We heard some of that through Pinion,” Leit Motif said grimly. “What relevance does this all have to Daphne, though?”
“It sets the stage of the event,” the Seer said. “We—the sorcerers and wise folk of old—knew that so long as the world decayed and grew corrupt, the situation would only grow more dire. The alicorns split Midgard in twain, and with their magic sustained a second world, but it, too, was vulnerable. Creatures from the First Age, the Age of Creation, slipped through and plagued it with their chaotic powers, and threatened to spill over beyond.”
“You don’t mean… Discord?” Twilight asked.
“One of many. True monsters, hekatonkheires, cyclops, and worse, many of which are imprisoned behind your Gates of Tartarus, some slain or sealed on earth by the last remaining heroes or those of the Arcana courts, some escaped to rampage across the other worlds.” He fixed his gaze on Marcus and Naomi. “And on the remaining earth, true magic has become a thing of legends and lies, of whispers in the dark. The soul has gone out of Midgard, a world growing colder and crueler; their present age of prosperity is only the precipice before an abyss of blood and despair, one iteration of an endless cycle that plagues their race and will draw them ever deeper into despair.”
Naomi paled, and looked ready to demand more, but Marcus put a hand on her arm and shook his head. They listened quietly.
A tree sprouted in the midst of the spinning disk. In its highest boughs, astrological symbols migrated like strange birds. “So it was that we looked to the stars, and planned ahead. One turning of the cosmic tree would we need to wait—to pass from the end of the then-present Age of Aries through the Age of Pisces. Throughout those long centuries we would prepare the way, keeping cataclysm at bay, until the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. To the greatest teacher of our age we entrusted a task—to bring together the houses of equine and man and raise a child who would embody the principles we desired.”
Where it had run hot, now my blood turned as cold as ice. Goosebumps prickled on my neck as I said softly, “Chiron. The teacher of heroes—you entrusted the task to him.”
Marcus and the ponies gave Naomi a puzzled look. She cleared her throat. “Chiron was reputed to be the greatest of centaurs, an immortal quite unlike his brutal race. He was an intellectual, gifted in medicine, music, and an athlete as well, skilled in archery and hunting. Most importantly, he trained many of the heroes of myth, including Achilles, Jason. Perseus, Asclepius, and in some traditions even Heracles.”
“A suiting mentor to bring forth a new hero,” Knight Saria said, her liquid voice bitter, “for a new Age.”
“To this new hero would be entrusted the Golden Bridle, to break its chain of violence; with the Elements of Harmony at their side, they would gentle its fierce power,” the Seer said as a youth of indeterminate gender appeared, holding a jar that poured out clouds. Depending on how one looked at it, the figure could be human or equine, so indistinct were its limbs and head. “So, too, would they pass through trials, to earn each of the Arcana as seals of office, and thereby win the power needed to bring hope to worlds old and new, to reawaken the spirit of a dying earth and begin to reverse its dire state of decay.”
“Except…” Naomi glanced between the Knight and the Page. “Well. Chiron died. Heracles killed him, deliberately or by accident, with a poison arrow. Or is it like Nessus and rumors of his demise were gravely exaggerated?”
“Deliberately,” I murmured, “and Nessus was there to see it. To hold Chiron in his arms as he faded away, among the bloody remains of their families.”
The Seer smiled a tired, sad smile. “Yes, and to receive the secret, the charge to bring up the new hero. The Water Bearer.”
“Well,” Applejack said dryly, “I take it he didn’t take it very well.”
“I cannot speak to Nessus’s reasons nor his intended aim, but he took what had been a perfectly good prophecy and perverted it,” the Seer said. “He wished to alter the events, to raise the child as his creature in a manner of his choosing.”
“So where does Amy come into this?” Marcus demanded.
“Amelia?” The Seer raised an eyebrow. “Why, no where. She wasn’t even a fluke—the possibility that one other may usurp the place of the Chosen One wasn’t even considered. She shouldn’t even have been relevant in the child’s life. If all had gone according to plan, Chiron would have raised the child himself after engineering her birth, and Nessus certainly aimed to kidnap her at the earliest possible convenience.”
Child of my spirit, Pirene had whispered. Would that I knew what that engineering entailed, but I could not focus enough to ask the wizened goblin just then.
“Yet, here she is, taking Daphne’s place.”
“As I said at the outset, destiny is not an immutable force, nor is prophecy an ironclad contract,” the Seer said, catching his ring out of the air as he did, “we see only possible futures. If the instructions we hand down are altered or misinterpreted, the result must needs be different as well. Amelia usurped the place of the Water Bearer, and I do not know if even the departed gods know what she will do.”
“How did that dreadful Nessus fellow fail to capture our Daphne in the first place?” Rarity asked as she bestirred herself from the seat she shared with Fluttershy.
“That, perhaps, is the most troubling part of all.” He glanced to me. “Perhaps the true Water Bearer might have some insight.”
Of course I knew. It had been plain as soon as I remembered that terrifying night in the woods. “The…” I caught my breath. The name hung on the tip of my tongue, but some twinge warned me not to say it aloud. Indeed, I dared not even picture the creature as I had before. Blue eyes haunted me with fierce intent. “A harbinger of chaos and death. Black as night, smoke and blue flame.”
“The Morgwyn?” Marcus asked, damn him, and a pall swept over the cabin. At first I thought only I noticed it, but I could see the wizened Seer touch his ring and murmur something. A moment later, the feeling evaporated like a thin mist on a summer day.
“A creature of the First Age,” Saria agreed, “an age of chaos, when the rules changed from day to day—such as there were days, no, Seer?”
“It intervened, and It has stalked her steps,” the Seer agreed. “Instead of a hero to bring forth, It ushered in a champion of chaos.”
Marcus bristled. “Amelia wouldn’t do anything wrong,” he said hotly, looking down at the goblin with his fingers tightening on the table’s edge. “Amy’s a good kid. So she’s a little eccentric and, okay, maybe a little greedy at times, but she’s eight.”
“The Amelia you knew on earth would not have,” the Seer said gently, “but even I cannot say what she has been through, with the Wand King’s ministrations and her subsequent escape.”
“She bridled Rainbow Dash,” I whispered, “I saw it.”
The other mares looked at me with abject horror. Even Leit Motif, who made no secret of her dislike for the missing pony, seemed as though her stomach had dropped through a hole in her belly.
“A child’s innocence can be their undoing. It is a sad truth,” Saria said as she stepped forward. Surprisingly, it was not me the cat woman went to, but Marcus, prying his hands off the table where the knuckles had turned white. I felt ashamed for reasons I couldn’t readily explain—I knew he’d gotten on well with her, but not how well, and it suddenly bothered me deeply that I didn’t know him quite as well as I’d thought. Perhaps his mind went to his own numerous siblings, too.
“What do we do?” Naomi asked, wrapping her arms about her thin frame. She looked like nothing so much as a scared little girl then, a sight I liked no more than seeing Marcus’s helpless anger; Naomi could be silly and frustratingly stereotypical, yes, but she was strong. “Can we… can we push things back the way they should be?”
“I do not know,” the Seer admitted, and for a moment he seemed to wear every one of what must have been several thousand years of his ceaseless vigil. They tugged at his leathery features and sank his rounded back and shoulders. “Even in Equestria, turning back the clock is a daunting task, and what has been done is not readily undone. One may sooner turn a rotten apple ripe and return it to its tree than reset an Age.”
Applejack tilted her hat back. “You sure came to the right bunch for that, then.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps I have. Regardless, there is something we can, nay, must do: stop Amelia before it becomes too late to do so.”
Though no signal had been given, every head in the room turned to look at me. For a moment, I wasn’t certain if they were asking my blessing, seeking my advice, or turning to me for direction. I sat there, a useless lump of unused clay in the dim candlelight.
It all seemed so dry and clinical now that I laid it all before me. A fantastical destiny awaited me since birth, a birth foretold in ages past and watched over by a demigoddess. It had been my fate to be brought up by a figure of legend, prepared for the daunting task of bridging two lost worlds and healing them.
When I had been a little girl, it would have been the greatest, most exciting discovery in the world.
Little Daphne, so full of life and energy, would have devoured the chance as readily as she devoured everything else. Magic, history, a proud heritage and a vibrant future would have filled her with courage and purpose.
Now, as I looked down at my beige hooves, it all crumbled into dust around me. That beautiful destiny belonged to another Daphne—a Daphne long gone and remembered only by myself and dimly by Leit Motif. The Daphne of this reality had only been able to watch helplessly as the very sister for whom she had crossed worlds usurped her place in the order of the cosmos. Amelia had torn through the aurora that was to herald my coming like the ghost of a dream that it was.
I knew then, in heart and head, that I wasn’t ever going to be the same bright-eyed girl I had been. I could never, would never be the hero of that story.
The worst part was that the world was too small to contain all that grief. I could barely process that it had happened at all. I snatched at tatters and scraps and found only the remnant of a remnant.
Anyone who says you can’t miss what you never had wasn’t in my hooves then.
Leit Motif broke into my despondent silence with a touch of her nose. Her long dark mane fell across my side as she laid her head against my shoulder. Her eyes were the green of the aurora, and they spoke to me with more depth than any words could convey: here was one life, one soul, I had dredged up from darkness.
Perhaps I couldn’t be the hero the world needed. I wasn’t fighting for the world, though. Through forest and hill, over sea and ruin, past dream and memory, I’d come seeking my sister to save her from the clutches of a terrible fate.
If there was even the faintest chance I could save her, I had to take it.
“All right,” I said quietly. Even with the distant thrum of the airship’s engines, it sounded almost loud with everypony straining to listen. “Anything we can do.”
Fluttershy raised a hoof tentatively, just as we were beginning to pull together around the Seer. “Uhm… not to interrupt or anything, but, uhm…” She rose to her hooves and walked over to a dark porthole. “Does it seem odd to anypony else that the sun isn’t up yet?”
There was a pause, and then a brief scramble as ponies searched for a time piece. Twilight Sparkle simply glanced out the window and frowned. “You’re right. Judging by the stars setting now, the sun is… about a half hour late. It should have been dawn.”
A tense silence fell over the room.
“Sweet heavens,” Rarity said tremulously, “then where is the sun?”
* * * * * *
Action! Excitement! Nice to have that after an extended break, huh?
The pace is really starting to accelerate as we careen towards the end, as you can see. Not many breathers coming up after this.
Next two chapters are going to be Amelia-centered. That ought to be fun! How much damage can an eight year-old little girl do, anyway?
Oh dear.
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Well, Amelia hasn't stabbed anyone through the neck YET.
So... let's hope for the best?
4217848
Is there silver in the village? Gold? Where is Beric Dondarrion? Where is the Brotherhood Without Banners? Is there gold in the village?
Here's to hoping the Bridle doesn't eradicate a victim's self and turn them into a mindless slave.
Also laughed way too hard in the Author's notes. Knew you were talking 'bout Arya before scrolling the picture up. Now that Amelia broke the prophesy, pretty sure they can tell Destiny to bugger off. Though how they're going to confront such a character us up in the air. Also Marcus, next time aim for weakspots or when he's distracted. Personally I'm comparing Amelia at the moment more to Joffery, what with the power in the hands of a brat. We need a Tyrion to impslap her!
You already know how much I love the characters and the things they do, and this is the chapter where the world-building really impressed me more than usual. Prophecies as tools for manipulating fate, rather than nonsensical predictions that are so broad that they can mean anything (e.g. "the child of light shall drive back the storm!"), is about a million times more interesting. I did the math.
Oh man! New chapter!
After those last couple, I'm kind of scared to read this next one.
4218153
I loathe Chosen One stories, so I subverted it. I loathe vague prophecies, so I made them more appealing.
It's really neat how you combine Equestria with ancient Earth legends. So many other stories that use a human origin for the characters only ever use the show and how the world is imaginary. Creating an actual link between the worlds really does feel like a good touch, even if you don't use the show as a reference at all.
Even if she hadn't taken Daphne's destiny and the Bridle, I think generations of goblins would have been hearing stories about how an eight year-old little girl tied two entire courts in knots. With the bridle? I hope she at least first turns that power towards rescuing the CMC from the court of Cups.
Incidentally, I know we saw auroras during the chapter, but as a chapter title Aurora makes me think of a name. Is Aurora the silver alicorn?
Or maybe it's a cruel joke, since Aurora can mean "dawn", and apparently there isn't about to be one.
4218484
The seafoam alicorn was Pirene herself.
4218488
Ah, I was sure I'd seen "seafoam" used to mean green-ish before. So the silver alicorn is Pirene. Is the green alicorn Aurora?
4218515
Nay, that's the green one. Seafoam is green.
The silver one is Celestia's mother.
Sorry isn't enough, eh? Perhaps. But a question i'm waiting for, is how one answers "What is enough?"
But an interesting end, not out what was broken. How far will the world tree be shattered for ragnarok? The world is already split, shattered, and broken. Will it be united, only to be shattered by the broken heart of the lost?
A fun backstory episode to tie in things, of the alignment of each arcana, and how a small stream can erupt into a might river.
Are we supposed to know who that pic is of or is it just some random girl?
4218950
If you aren't familiar with A Song of Ice and Fire, it's Arya Stark.
She's 8 years old and a murderer.
I... uhh... Might skip the next two chapters...
4219124
Nnnnope, they're gonna be important.
The grass is always greener in the other side of the hill. "No Fate But What We Make" is a famous line from Terminator, yet, the fact is, we are not the only ones making said fate, there are others, is a clash of wills, and in the end, only one can win.
Chaos is ultimate freedom, do what you want, when you want, how you want. For chaos something like destiny or a prophesy is the ultimate insult, no wonder then so many prophesies never have come to pass. After all, a prophesy makes things predictable, predictable means boring, but also a lack of freedom.
But, is not said that without chaos, order cannot exist?
4219169
Well, no, that's not really a thing. Order can totally exist without chaos.
4219157 But I don't want the urge to strangle a little girl drunk on the Dark Side.
4219300
Let the hate flooow through you.
Why is my first instinct to worry about the fate of Celestia?
4219175
There are no such things as pure Chaos and Order besides having them as abstracts concepts. Even if it was possible to create a world with living beings that was as orderly as possible, it would be a bad thing. Too much Order means lack of choice and freedom. There is a reason why places where your whole life is planned for you have such high suicide rates. Even if it might work against them, sentients beings want to freedom to make a choice.
And why the things have derailed so much? Butterfly effect, because things did not went as they where supposed to, Daphne lost her chance as a child and Amelia was born. That added yet factor that was unforeseen.Greeks believed in four ultimate forces. even beyond the fates. Strife, Discord, today we know it as chaos. Harmonia, Harmony not really need to explain this one.Chaos (Greek χάος, khaos) refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth. The kitty represents this one, not the one Discord represents. His ultimate objective is to return everything to the void. Basically, chaos as in the end of everything.And finally Cosmos is the Universe regarded as an ordered system. The philosopher Pythagoras is regarded as the first person to apply the term cosmos (Greek κόσμος) to the order of the Universe. While it needs Harmony, is basically the opposite of the void, as in life. Sailor Moon used this concept, having Sailor Moon as the herald of Cosmos, who wants to preserve the existence of life and the universe, versus the enemies representing Chaos. who wants to end all life nd destroy the universe,
4219740
Mathematically there does not need to be chaos for order to exist. Your statement is false before you even started.
If you want to talk about practical reality, well, we only have one universe to examine.
4219753
Mathematics are a abstract concept, and I said there is no pure Chaos and Order besides having them as abstracts concepts. Therefore, I did not lie.
4219779
Yet when you boil the universe and the multiverse down into its basic components you find that it is fundamentally mathematical.
I've said it once and I'll say it again. It shouldn't be humanly possible to write this well. Your prose is superhuman. I hate you so much for being so much better than me.
If I ever stumble upon a world of magic, I'll probably stop at Lv1 Fireball.
Little hard to follow the story from the perspective of someone that can see so many things at once. You get used to it though.
Well most siblings only need to worry about breaking each other's stuff. Here we have a sister who broke the elder's destiny.
I wonder how grounded she can get for that. 
4218957
Is that a book, movie, or TV series?
This must be one of the few stories that I can remember in details even after several weeks of non-update.
Which is nice.
I liked this chapter very much. Very good update.
4219836
Glad someone appreciates that scene.
4220690
Twilight will be very very disappointed!
4220719
What gives you that impression?
4221002
Grounded to Hel.
4221316
First a book series, then a TV series.
4221878
Oh good, so can I!
4221316
You might have heard of the show. It's called A Game of Thrones.
4222550 We can't all be great scholars of magic.
4222550
What impression?
4222669
Which section was that?
Every day since January I hoped for this update.
It was worth it!
If the 'Run you fool! part was supposed to be a nod to LotR, he (Gandalf) says Fly, not Run. If not, then ignore this
Holy crap, that dream. Dreams. Premonitions?
I like Marcus' reaction at the start of the fight, though it's a shame he wasn't firing something with a little more stopping power, Nessus really needs to be put down.
Wow, so they were that close to catching up with Amelia before she bridled Dash? Pity they had to stop for that fight with the Wand King, and they were damn lucky that some friendly goblins showed up to help.
Knight of Swords? Page of Rings? Some heavy hitters, it would seem, especially the Page. Oooo, and such delicious exposition about what is actually going on, and what the original Plan was regarding Daphne.
Yikes, that's not a particularly positive reaction on the part of the Equestrians regarding what just happened to Dash. Makes me wonder how the Bridle would have been used if events had gone as intended, would somepony still ended up bridled?
That doesn't bode well for Celestia, and possibly not for Luna either.
Have you met Charlene Roberta McGee? (no relation
)
4224156
Nope.
4224710
Hilariously, it wasn't the lack of stopping power, but the lack of penetration.
Of course, if he'd had something with less stopping power and more penetration, it wouldn't have done very much damage.
Daphne would essentially have used it in reverse. Wrap your head around that one for a while.
4224809
That makes a really unfortunate name choice on your part.
"Just once I'd like to face an enemy who wasn't immune to bullets." Marcus has got his head on straight, shame it didn't do much but storywise it would be pretty anticlimactic (though really awesome) if it had been that simple.
Alright so Daphne hasn't gone native and Amelia's not too far gone to rescue but the revelations only work to add more questions. At least they finally meet up again. "Your sister is alive...but she's screwed over four innocent fillies, destroyed the ancient prophecy you were to fulfill, and is now attempting to take over the multiverse. That part won't be a problem will it?" It is a good spoof on prophecies to have this one going so far off the rails.
Lightning Dust sure knows how to make an entrance.
My money says that THE NIGHT SHALL LAST...three maybe four chapters.
4224934
It's a complete coincidence! Granted, our family reunions tend to end in fire and chaos more often than not, but I tend to believe it's just a massive coincidence.
4225295
He's being entirely unfair, too, since he totally shot several goblins to great effect back at the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.
I've been waiting for more Amelia ever since the last Amelia chapter. You return after weeks of hiatus and she's still not the focus, so I'm more hyped than ever. Granted, I was also waiting for Daphne and company to realize just how bad things have gotten now, so at least that's happened by now.
One of my favorite songs of all time strikes me as having a very similar mood to what Amelia's emotional state at the moment.
Am I the only one who sees this connection?
4224934
Undoing things already done to the entire world by the bridle with the goal of enslaving other creatures, maybe? The river seperating the worlds kept out humans who weren't riding on bridled horses or ponies, which seems to be a remnant of its power used to alter things at the level of the entire world, so I'd assume there are other similar things.
Incidentally, it's not specifically brought up, but did The Morgwyn just take advantage of Amelia being in the forest at this particular point in time, or did he specifically intervene years ago to keep young Daphne out of Nessus' reach, which presumably would have included escorting Leit Motif safely across the Everfree in a complicated plan to have the adults around Daphne suppress her imagination and inclination to roam where Nessus could find her?
Also, since the sun isn't up, I wonder if this little bit is of relevance:
Has the world been thrust back into something like the First Age, where there being reliable days is not something to be expected?
This story does a very, VERY good job of bringing ancient lore to light and using it to your advantage. I mean, this is the first story I have read that has used such a good idea. Props to you and keep going, I both want to see the ending yet don't want it to end lol
4226600
One of the purposes of the Water Bearer is to end the era of slavery, so no.
Excellently perceived, neighbor. Wait and see next week.
When you're an ancient chaos-beast with unnatural causal perceptions, strange solutions come more readily.
The explanation is quite a bit simpler than that.