The Beginning of Everything
Many beings in the world will tell you that Equestria is one of the happiest nations in the world, and is the strongest to ever exist. This strength comes from the two that command the Sun and the Moon, the forces of allied nations, the Spirit of Chaos himself, and the six mares that take on the power of Harmony. Few would add another entity to that list, one that is just as important. That entity is the Tree of Harmony. It is a heavily guarded secret that the Tree of Harmony exists, but the Tree of Harmony is the reason for the world itself existing. The Tree of Harmony isn’t what anyone think it is though. The tree had been around tens of thousands of years ago, long past the memories of the immortals of the world, long past recorded history, and long past any of the species that exist on the planet today. What happened to create the tree itself is a mystery to everyone, but the tree itself, or the being that created it, knew the real story all too well.
Many hundreds of thousands of years ago there was a species known as humans. These humans numbered well into the billions and had the planet under their control, and the humans were the only sapient beings in existence at the time. They were also part of a checkers game between the spirits of Chaos and Harmony, with global leaders being the kings and everyone else a simple piece. The Spirit of Chaos hated the Spirit of Harmony with every fiber of his being, while the Spirit of Harmony wanted peace between them. The Spirit of Harmony wanted things to go back to the way things use to be, while the Spirit of Chaos wanted absolute control over the universe itself.
Early on the two were friends and they was the perfect example of yin and yang. The Spirit of Chaos had a bit of harmony in him and the Spirit of Harmony had a bit of chaos in her. The two spirits were simply traveling the lifeless universe at this point. Despite all the power they had, the spirits themselves stood only twenty feet in height. One day, the Spirits came across the planet Earth. The Spirit of Harmony stopped her friend. Through the many millions of years that the two were friends and wondering, they had never once found any life. The two spirits were the only beings in existence and the Spirit of Harmony wanted something more. She had been attempting to create life in secret from her friend, but her power alone was not enough, living beings need both Harmony and Chaos. She pleaded with her friend to help her create life. The Spirit of Chaos wasn’t furious or even annoyed at his friend for doing experiments with her powers without telling him, he did the same thing with his own abilities. The Spirit of Chaos happily agreed with his friend, he too wanted something more, they both wanted to bring life into the universe.
It toke well over a thousand years of just planning what the creatures would look like and how things would work on the planet. The two Spirits finally put their plan into motion and combined their abilities. The result was a planet full of life, full of both animals and plants of all shapes and sizes. The two Spirits agreed early on that they would not give any species powers like their own, both of them believing it would just make things harder for them to control things. The world had no humans at this point and none of the creatures were sapient beings. The two spirits began interacting with their world, using their combined power to keep things in motion. The Spirit of Chaos was the one who wanted predators to exist to control the populations. Harmony agreed, understanding what Chaos meant by controlling the populations and keeping balance.
For centuries things continued this way, the two Spirits simply monitoring the world and keeping species from going extinct. They could not communicate with the beings at this time and soon the two agreed on a new idea. They agreed to create the first sapient creatures, humans. The humans would be shepherds of the world itself, protecting weaker creatures and keeping things in order, Every single time they tried to create this new species however, they failed. It took them a hundred years of trying to realize something was missing for sapient creatures to exist. Sapient creatures needed a soul, a spirit so to speak. The spirit would let them not only have memory, but would also let them have real emotions and feelings. They had never attempted to create souls before, but they were nothing short of determined. They desperately wanted more beings to talk to. After a few more attempts, the two finally succeeded in creating sapient creatures, they created beings with souls.
The first humans would come to worship the two spirits as gods. For centuries the spirits were happy with their creations, talking with them and giving them knowledge beyond man’s wildest dreams. Humans were wanderers at first, just like the Spirits. They came to the decision to settle into settlements, copying the spirits they worshiped.
One day while walking through one of the settlements alone, the Spirit of Chaos was approached by a man. This man was different from the others, as he had much more chaos in him than harmony. His heart was dark as night and full of hatred, something few beings even knew existed. This man was also a liar and a thief who wanted nothing but power. He used his lies to convince the Spirit of Chaos to help him. He said he traveled from a distant settlement across the world itself, just to find the two spirits. He pleaded with the Spirit of Chaos to lend him some of his power so he could save his settlement from starvation, claiming that the land was no longer able to bear fruit. The Spirit of Chaos took pity on the being and gave him a small portion of his power, not being able to tell the difference between lies and truth. The man left the spirit and using the power granted to him, hatched a plan to make the Spirit of Chaos obey him and him alone.
The man spent years on his plan, using his powers to create a single piece of fruit. This fruit was full of hatred and he took it to the Spirit of Chaos. He offered it to the spirit in thanks for helping his settlement, an obvious lie hidden behind a false gratitude. When the Spirit of Chaos bit into the fruit and ate it, he was filled with hatred. The man used his silver tongue to convince the enraged spirit to take his anger out on the world itself. One thing the man didn’t account for was being the first victim of the enraged entity. With hatred in his heart, the Spirit of Chaos struck down the man and committed the first murder in the world. With pure anger and hatred, the Spirit declared that he would burn the whole world and turn it to ash.
Early into the spirit’s rampage, shortly after burning his first settlement to be exact, he was approached by his friend, the Spirit of Harmony. His friend begged him to stop, but the Spirit of Chaos had never felt hatred or anger before and it consumed him. He struck his friend and said that he hated her and vowed to destroy what they created. The Spirit of Harmony pleaded with him, but the Spirit of Chaos would not listen. Before the Spirit of Chaos could leave though, the Spirit of Harmony made a deal with him. She said that the two should “compete”. This gained the interest of the Spirit of Chaos and he asked her what she had in mind. The Spirit of Harmony mentioned playing a game, with the world being the pieces. The Spirit of Chaos agreed, declaring that he would not only win this game but would humiliate his former friend in the process.
The two Spirits used their abilities to turn themselves invisible, and began running things behind the scenes. The world gradually forgot about the two, but their presence was felt. The Spirit of Chaos was felt when famine, war, disease, pestilence, and death occurred. Everytime someone felt anger or hate, the emotions were coming from the Spirit of Chaos' influence over the world as well. The Spirit of Harmony's influence was felt when love, peace, and friendship was in the air. Happiness and positive emotions also came from her influence over the world. Humanity created words for these feelings, chaos and harmony. The two Spirits took these words as their names.
It took just fifteen thousand years for this checkers match to have a winner. The Spirit of Harmony was soft, unable to kill her opposition. The Spirit of Chaos had no such problem and with his powers he forced knowledge unto mankind, knowledge about machines that would pollute the air and poison the very world itself. His crowning achievement came in the form of nuclear weaponry, weapons strong enough to wipe out miles of land in the blink of an eye. He was the one who won, by starting World War III. This war was the first to really use nuclear weaponry to its fullest. After the first nuclear weapon was launched, all reason went out the window. This was primarily thanks to the influence of the Spirit of Chaos. The Spirit of Harmony tried her hardest, but the hate in humanity's heart was to strong and thousands of nuclear weapons were used. Needless to say, the world paid the price for such a massive amount of nuclear weaponry being used all at once. All life was destroyed on the planet.
The Spirit of Chaos began mocking the Spirit of Harmony immediately after. The Spirit of Harmony was devastated by her failure to protect the creatures she loved and cared for and began shouting at the Spirit of Chaos. The Spirit of Chaos began to get annoyed with his former friend and soon, with anger in his heart, he attacked the Spirit of Harmony. The Spirit of Harmony fought back though, something that surprised the Spirit of Chaos. Seeing everything she loved destroyed right before her eyes was enough to finally make the Spirit of Harmony put aside her feelings about the past that the two friends shared, and the millions of years they lived together as friends. Her heart was full of a divine wrath, and she wanted nothing more than to bring her friend to justice for his actions. What followed was a battle between the two that would last several years, and drastically changed the very solar system that the planet Earth was in.
The Spirit of Chaos knew that his former friend would protect the world they built, so during the battle he would target it with his magic, forcing her to leave an opening for attack. The Spirit of Chaos even played a dangerous game of tug of war with his friend over the moon itself, leaving the moon unable to move on its own. Near the end of their fight, the Spirit of Chaos stole power from the sun itself, leaving it much smaller in the process. He used this energy to knock his former friend down and slam her into the planet. He knew he had won at this point, he was stronger than his friend and she wouldn’t dare use her full power while on the planet they had made, out of fear of destroying it. The Spirit of Chaos didn’t have that issue. The Spirit of Harmony did just what he expected, attacking him without using her full power. In a show of strength, the Spirit of Chaos left a massive ravine in the earth itself and slammed his friend into it, creating a massive cave opening from the impact of her body against the wall of the ravine.
The Spirit of Harmony lay there, broken and knowing she would lose. The Spirit of Chaos approached his former friend, who was laying on the ground of the cave, and began mocking her. He claimed she was nothing but a weakling. Standing on shaking legs, the Spirit of Harmony did something that took the Spirit of Chaos by surprise, she hugged him. With a heavy heart and tears in her eyes the Spirit of Harmony used her full power, imprisoning both beings inside a large tree with gemstones at the end of its branches, with one hidden inside the trunk. This forced the Spirit of Chaos into a permanent sleep, letting the Spirit of Harmony use his power herself by stealing it from him when it wasn't being protecting by his mind.
The Spirit of Harmony used her power to forcefully remove the hatred and evil in the heart of the Spirit of Chaos, creating something that would come to be known as the Everfree Forest in the process. The Spirit of Harmony didn’t use this power during their fight because of the costs, she would never be able to escape the tree itself and her friend would have no memory of his life if he was ever freed. The Spirit of Harmony would also never be able to sleep, forcing her to watch on as eternity passed her by and she was also forced to use her power to keep the Everfree in check, lest it consume the world. It was a devastating price to pay for both entities.
Using the power of her friend, the Spirit of Harmony began repairing the world. She removed the pollutants that man had made, turned their buildings to dust, and removed all evidence of them ever existing. She used the power of her friend to move the sun and moon, the moon was no longer able to move itself and the sun had to be moved closer to the planet due to being much smaller. At one point in their fight the planet itself stopped rotating, the Spirit of Harmony made it start rotating again but she ran into a problem. She could not, however, get it to move the way it use to around the sun, since the sun was so much smaller now and had less gravity. As a result, she was forced to make the sun rotate around the planet. She was also forced to make the weather herself now.
It took several thousand years of work to repair the damage done to the planet, and soon life returned. Things were different this time around, as many species now had some level of sapience and all of them had some of the abilities the two Spirits once had. These abilities would come to be called “Magic”. Unicorns were created to take control over the sun and moon, letting the Spirit of Harmony focus on other things with her power. The Spirit of Harmony gave species with wings the power to touch, move, and create clouds. She granted extra strength to the animals that couldn’t fly, letting them be better at farming. Ponies were her favorite species that she created and when the ponies made their homeland, she was happy to be able to watch them much better than she had been able to before. She loved the ponies because of the harmony they could bring, and she saw herself in many of them.
The Spirit of Harmony freed her friend at one point, and was saddened when he began acting out. She suspected the reason for this behavior was due to his lack of memories. He no longer had any restraint when it came to his magic. There were two alicorns that used the gemstones on her branches and the one in her trunk to turn him into stone, the alicorns she created in preparation for freeing him, believing they would have the power to stop her friend without having to result to such measures. When he was turned to stone though, her heart nearly broke, but when he accepted them as friends a thousand years later, she was filled with joy. The gemstones did get returned to her eventually, though she almost died that day thanks to her friend planting plunder seeds to steal her magic. Even with everything that happened though, the Spirit of Harmony was happy. She was truly happy watching the world from the sidelines, simply letting things go on. She was content with the role she had now, for she was no longer the Spirit of Harmony.
For she was now the Tree of Harmony, and she will be for all eternity.