Lessons for a Benevolent Tyrant

by Hustlin Tom

Chapter 1

The battle was over, and the day was won.

Nightmare Moon was defeated and banished to the moon, and a new age was begun at that moment; Princess Celestia, Regent of the Sun, Guardian of all Equinity, was now sole ruler of the sovereign nation of Equestria. Now in the final stages of her journey to the moon and back, she was re-entering the atmosphere from the cold lifeless vacuum of space. She raised a magical shield to protect herself from the friction of falling through several miles of air, the sheer heat of which would have burned any normal substance, living or not, into superheated atoms and plasma. In just the last two hours, the Princess had learned more about herself than she had ever known in her near four hundred years of life. She had of course come to the conclusion that age nor disease had any effect on her early in her life, after her third husband had died and she remained as static in appearance at the age of one hundred and forty-three as she was at the young age of twenty nine when she had taken her first husband. Now, in her battle against her fallen sister and former co-ruler Princess Luna, she had learned that she was, for all intents and purposes, unkillable. She had been stabbed through the chest with a magic sword, collided head on with a granite statue, tossed through the old observatory of Everfree Castle to have the entire tower collapse on her, and bludgeoned with meteors from the heavens above. In the last few minutes of battle for the fate of all life on the planet fast approaching below, she had absorbed some of the powers of the Elements of Creation. By partaking of their energies, she had overpowered her opponent, and cast her substance across the moon’s surface to be imprisoned there for a thousand years.

The atmosphere began to burn through her shield as her power boost from the Elements drained away, and it finally shattered into tiny particles of crystallized energy. Flames began to eat away at her mane and tail, and her very body was wreathed in fire. She vaguely felt the pain caused by it, but it was dulled by the healing energies of her body repairing itself. A cauldron of golden power churned inside of her, and she began to wonder if that was her real body, and the form of the white furred, violet eyed, and now pastel colored mane and tail of her physical body was just a dainty glove that her real form put on for the benefit of others. Roaring waves and tendrils of magical power enveloped her, as they repaired and remade her form wherever it was getting too thin to sustain her. As she saw the horizon change from black to blue skies, she felt the pop of entering into breathable atmosphere, and her regenerative powers began to finally overcome the flames crackling on her body, extinguishing them. She was still approaching the earth below way too fast, and she didn’t have enough time to cancel her terminal velocity through magically induced deceleration. She saw a large body of water fifty miles away from where she predicted she would land, and she quickly strung together multiple teleports in the direction of lake. The act of traveling from one point to another through subspace a multitude of times was just enough to slow her fall, so that she wouldn’t splatter into a Princess pancake on impact with the crystal-like waters below her. She involuntarily took a breath and held it as she quickly approached the surface of the lake directly below. Striking the calm, placid loch with the force of a falling asteroid, she soon found herself slammed against the murky and muddy bottom almost two-hundred feet below the surface. The tidal wave created by the falling Princess was immense, lifting waves sixty-five feet into the air. A pine tree grove near the lake was utterly demolished as the waters overflowed their beaches, ripping them out of the ground like a foal ripping little saplings from out of the dirt, and pulling them back into the lake’s icy depths. The flooding water slammed against a large cliff face to the north and east, ripping bits of clinging foliage from the mountain side and drawing them back down into its watery grip. The primary force of the aquatic blast eroded down a small valley to the south, creating a shallow inlet into which the retreating waters found a new home.

The Princess had had some time to think between the flight back from the moon to her landing in the near arctic waters deep at the bottom of the lake. Equestria needed radical reform in many different ways; the royal line of Diamond I, ancient king of the unicorn nation, was dead at the hands of Nightmare Moon. Pony society had become a breeding ground for superstition, mindless fear, and irrational hatred, and she had not seen it until it was almost too late. Princess Luna had tried to force equality for all pony races through a royal decree. The public had rebelled, and some had even gone so far as to speak treason against the Princess of the Night directly; the late Lord Adamant, sole direct heir of the Diamond Dynasty, chief among them. Her sister had given into grief when she had lost a dear friend, a bat pony named Orpheus, to what she believed was a plot orchestrated by Lord Adamant. She had sought her vengeance on mortal life in the form of Nightmare Moon, and in her bloodlust had lost her original and noble cause in favor of a plan to create total holocaust on all races. The Princess of the Night had accused Princess Celestia of being too soft, and slow to act against the social troubles of Equestria.

The Princess began to slowly levitate her form up towards the shore of the lake from out of the mud and grim, quietly gliding through the deep water. Perhaps her sister had been right. She had been so focused on making the majority of Equestria happy that she had not considered she might be making them happy at somepony else’s expense. Being tucked away from the world in the now demolished Everfree Castle, she had ruled from a sense of accepting callousness to societal deterioration and from out of the desires of the nobles. Now, the nobles had been annihilated, and those whose veins held any royal blood were dead. She knew from years of political experience that the nobility would have ruled from their coffers before their hearts, and they would have known that the commonponies thought from their hearts more than their minds. Civil change of any kind would have been bad for established money, so the lords and ladies would have been spineless when it came to transforming the herd’s cultural heart. There was one solution that would solve all these problems in one fell swoop, and while the Princess was apprehensive to pursue such a course, she was ready to do anything required of her to make her ponies truly change their hearts and minds, while bringing equality to the second class citizens, and simultaneously solidifying her authority in the power vacuum.

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Ponies from all over the countryside came to see the fallen star that had come from the heavens. Some were curious, while others were troubled. In the past few hours, the nation had experienced great joy, as this day was the Summer Sun Celebration, but at midday, terror had seized many hearts as the world had witnessed its first and only solar eclipse due to the schemes of Nightmare Moon. It was fast approaching eventide; darkness would envelope the land again, and while some were positive that the threat of the world’s end was over, others were less sure; was the boiling lake and falling star a sign for hope, or of an ill omen?

As the waters of the lake calmed from their frothing fury, ponies gasped in awe and confused wonder. From out of the depths of the blue, watery loch stepped the form of a large horse. Shining in a kaleidoscope of golden, sapphire, emerald, and pink light, a horse with both a unicorn’s horn and a pegasus’ wings processed onto the brown, sandy earth. Her coat was as white as the purest snow, her eyes glowed like twin shining suns, and she wore a golden crown and ceremonial yoke made of light. She looked upon on all the gathered ponies; there was at least one hundred now, but that number was steadily growing as word spread of the fallen star pony. She smiled at the ponies before her, and with some trepidation, the other ponies began to smile back.

Spreading her wings and rising to a height of fifty feet, she spoke to them all in the Royal Voice of Declaration, “MY LITTLE PONIES, DO NOT BE AFRAID. I BRING YOU TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY; THE THREAT TO YOUR SUN IS NO MORE.” The ponies below cheered and danced for joy, but the shining alicorn raised a hoof to silence the crowd, which they eventually complied to, “A GREAT DEMON OF TARTARUS NAMED NIGHTMARE MOON TRIED TO BLOT OUT THE SUN, BUT SHE IS DEFEATED, TRAPPED IN THE MOON. I WAS ONCE PRINCESS CELESTIA, BUT NO MORE! FROM THIS DAY FORTH, I AM SOL INVICTA, THE INVINCIBLE SUN. I WILL BE YOUR DELIVERER, YOUR SHEPHERD, YOUR SOLE PROVIDER, AND FOR THIS I WOULD ASK THAT IN RETURN YOU WOULD DO AS I COMMAND.” The crowd rejoiced and praised the sun, worshiping the newly christened Sol Invicta as a god, who both flew on high and who walked the earth below.

Comments

[King X2]

WOW!

[Csquared08]

Well, that's one way to start a story. I'm hooked.

[Scarheart]

Okay...will fav and read further. You sucked me in like a band new vacuum cleaner!

[Alan Smithee]

She's invincible, sure, but so are Deadpool and Wolverine!