The Expedition
You’re Anonymous, prince of the Solar Court, and you don’t know what to say.
The icewall is perfectly smooth, blue and opaque, like thick glass. It's still, in the way a tree is still, and protrudes higher than any castle. In the massive distance, through your failing vision, it begins the subtlest curve.
"Mom, is... is this real?" You can tell, from the windless cold, that your conversation is the first sound this place has heard in a long time.
"Yes, Anon. This is the edge of the world."
"Does it really go around the whole world?" Your tutors had shown you maps of Equestria, circles outlined in thick white rings, but you never imagined...
"It does. We're on the westmost edge, almost exactly. Nopony has ever crossed this terrain."
"Not even a pegasus, or a superpowerful unicorn?"
She smiles. It's the smile she makes when she doesn't want you to know she's sad. "No. Pegasi run out of air long before they reach the peak. Several unicorns have claimed that they traveled to the Ring, but none managed to pass through."
You stare at it for a while, and finally say. "...What about you?"
She looks at it with you. "...I've wanted to, sometimes. But my subjects need me, and I worry about what might happen if I ever tried to break through."
That confuses you. You don't think you could get through?"
She shakes her head. "I'm worried of what could be on the other side."
* * *
You’re Celestia. Your son's inspecting the Ring more closely, sunstone hung around his neck to keep the cold away. The cold isn't vicious here, only constant. There aren't many storms or winds, unlike the center of the world, near the Crystal Empire.
You should just tell him.
Anon is growing up. He stands level with you now, eye to eye, and he may still be growing. It amazes you, every day, how much more of the world he takes in. You feel bitter that he will never be your heir, and then drive those thoughts away on reflex.
Better not to dwell on that.
Just spit it out and get it over with, tell him.
It took a great deal of magic to bring you here, and it's going to take more to return home. The Ring is elusive to regular teleportation, and you had to open a pathway through your sun and route yourself here. Carrying your son with you took hundreds of extra, layered precautions.
Which means that, not counting the parts of your magic that are still keeping the orbit steady, you're in a particularly weak state.
If it took so much effort to come here, you can't go back without saying it!
You decided not to tell him about the attempts in detail. How your old friend Puddinghead died trying to prove you lived on a sphere. The terror in the eyes of the unicorns who did make it back, and the fantastical stories they told. How Sombra broke into it against your warnings, and came back a slavering monster…
You turn away from the wall to the sun, letting it give you some peace overhead.
Call him back to your side! Talk to him!
You sigh. You'll have to, soon.
* * *
You’re Anon again, and you’ve discovered something. The ice isn't opaque, there's just too much of it. Like holding two mirrors against each other, murkiness creeps in.
It's like looking into another world, almost. Dark shapes, half-shadows, peer from beyond your dim reflection. Nopony knows what's past this, maybe not even your mom. If it weren't close to the edge of the world, though, you assume her sun would smash through some of it.
You feel something drip, and realize the ice is melting a little. Your sunstone's been pressed up too close to it.
Then you stop. The ice is melting.
You grip the enchanted orange rock, emblazoned with your mom's cutie mark, and force some willpower into it. A more focused, noticeable beam appears, and the ice starts to yield. You focus it toward one of the splotchy shadows, just for kicks.
Juuust a little more… There, there's something... brownish, pressed up against the ice.
A hoof? No. Cleft, split into three sections. More like one of your hands. You peer closer, and-
Crap!
It twitched!
The ice is melting in front of it, too. You panic and try to halt the sunstone, but the effort only increases its output. You shake it, and then let go like it's on fire.
As it falls back against you on its necklace, the beam stops.
Phew! There's only a little hole, much smaller than the twitching thing. You turn to get your mom's attention. Maybe she'll tell you it's a-
Beyond all logic, the thing turns fluid and slips through the gap, streaming out towards you.
You scream.
* * *
You’re Celestia something's wrong with your baby your sononymous is in trouble is he hurt?!
You turn, and see a river of something living coming out of the ice, steaming and sprouting eyes, flowing around Anon but not touching him circumventing him oh thank your sister's stars and then heading straight for--
You.
It leaps into the air, still snaking out behind, like filth caught in a nozzle. A train of teeth juts from its underbelly. Anon is still screaming.
You unleash a beam of true light from your horn, ripping through the abomination. It turns to ash before it can complete the jump. The rest of it scuttles away from you, and then the stump bubbles, and more unsheathes from the inside, pooling out into a flytrap-mouth larger than one of your wings.
You're already flying towards your son.
It's coiling around him, constricting and leaving a pattern of black stains in rings on his clothing. Eyes and mouths appear, snarling and giggling. He's stopped screaming now, frozen stiff instead.
You could blast it, but it would mean hitting him too, and your magical resources are mostly used up right now. You try to wrench your power back from your sun, let it hang in the sky while you incinerate this creature.
A thousand years of reflexive habit win out, and it continues to set. Your power isn't coming.
You make your decision.
Anon's eyes are glued to the creature, and you want them to stay there. You dart forward, snapping out your neck, and grip it in your teeth. Some touches the inside of your mouth, tasting of char, and grips back in a demented kiss.
Channeling your magic through your body, you pull. Whatever it'll do to you, you won't die. You'll disentangle yourself from it, even if it takes a while, and then build up the power to return.
Right now you just have to use your power to throw Anon back through your sun and into safety.
He looks up at your effort, and his eyes widen. Just use your...
The monster comes free all at once, sticking to you. Your horn sputters as you begin building the necessary protections around your child.
"Mom! What's-"
"Stay back, Anon! Get away from the rest of it!"
He realizes that the creature's reaching back out for him, and freezes. The rest of it's slipping out from a hole in the ice and pooling around you. That must be how it got out.
He follows your eyes. "I'm sorry, the sunstone, I didn't think, I don't know what-"
"Hush, Anon. It wasn't your fault. Just... stand still. Close your eyes..." The creature's wrapping itself around you now, sinking teeth into you indiscriminately.
"But! But I--"
You drop to a knee as it bites your neck. The slurry of its body drapes over you and puddles to the ground, gripping into the ice with thick hooked bone. He's crying, openly, standing in your long shadow as it devours you.
No, no distractions, you have to--
Finish--
Casting!
"Don't look, honey!"
But he's transfixed. More of the gunk climbs up your horn, and your magic starts to give.
"Mom!" Anonymous rushes forward, interrupting your work.
"No! Anon, stay back!"
Your protections shatter. It umbrellas over you, blotting out your sun.
And your sunshine.
* * *
You’re Anonymous. Your mom is on the ground dying and it's your fault.
Your fault.
You don't want to be here any more.
The thing, it starts inflating, forming a massive mouth above your mother's head. You realize, dimly, that it wants to eat her all at once. None of its eyes are looking at you, you're nothing. You're next.
That...
No.
Still greasy, still sore from the pain of it gripping you from all sides, you step forward. Your knees shake. If you fall over into this thing, you won't get back up, but you run to her side anyway.
"Leave..."
Ice gives way to crackling skin underfoot. Some of it sticks, and the rest starts reforming and questing for you.
Don't think about it don't think about it don't think about.
"Her..."
You jump, and grab hold of the "head" next to the mouth. The eyes, dozens along its bump-studded back and inside the mouth, swivel towards you. The stench is so bad you almost puke.
And under it, white banded in shit brown.
"Alone!"
Your left hand's stuck inside it, like a pile of wet leaves. It squeezes yours with a hand of its own, wrinkled and thin. You rip the sunstone off of your neck and concentrate. It burns your palm, but you focus.
The thing reorients its mouth to swallow you.
Concentrate, concentrate… Now!
"Leave my mommy ALONE!" You bellow into that void as you throw the sunstone into its throat.
The light shimmers deep inside, and cuts through, beaming out against the ice and sky. A crackling, low, keening moan, from a voice only just discovered. Then the explosion.
* * *
You’re... Celestia. You're still aware as the net disintegrates around you.
Unmoving, with the world muffled around you, a fraction of your strength's returned. With a grunt, you stand, and the hissing liquid ribbons at your hooves are bathed in searing heat.
Now. Where's your son? You scan the ground, and - there he is.
Laying on his back several feet away, staring up, shivering with his clothes singed, and watching the sunset. You walk to his side and check him for injuries.
The cold around him disappears as you step closer.
"I'm... sorry..."
Skin-deep burns, muscle-deep on one hand. You sacrifice a little more power to heal them.
"I should have been... careful... I-"
Gently, you put a hoof to his mouth. "No, Anon. I'm sorry. I should've warned you about what could happen, instead of telling you vague stories."
...Okay. You take a deep breath. You're really doing this.
"The reason I didn't tell you more is because... well, I've been here before."
"The wall?" He says around your hoof.
You retract it. "No, this point. The westmost edge of my domain."
He sits up, watching you intently. It's the expression he wore for a hundred bedtime stories.
You sigh. "There was a prophecy that told me to be here, exactly, at a specific date and position of my sun in the sky. I thought it was a herald of Nightmare Moon's return, or a point where the Ring would be breached from something outside. I spent months trying to plan for it."
"What happened?"
"I came here alone at exactly that time, not willing to risk the lives of my subjects against whatever I might find. It didn't take long for me to find..."
"What?"
A basket. Not outwardly magical, although something had delivered it here. Like some kind of cosmic joke, only it got even worse. You had felt the warmth being lost from inside. There was something alive in it.
You came close enough to radiate your warmth onto it, and you heard a familiar sound. Crying.
Increasingly troubled, you had pulled the basket open. Inside was a baby, green, wrapped in blue blankets. A baby of some species, certainly, so young that its eyes hadn't opened yet. You examined it carefully. Wherever it had come from, there was no evidence of its arrival.
Eventually you took it back with you, because you couldn't leave it to the cold. None in your court, even your wisest and most esoteric historians, could place the child. Some, the panicked few who you revealed these origins to, suggested you destroy it. They were merely scared, and you ignored them.
But in the end, you were the only pony you trusted to raise him. You tried to make your child feel as welcome as any other pony, to play the part of any other mother. And from then on, you debated to yourself whether you'd tell him of his origins, and whether or not fate would leave you the choice.
You pause in the telling.
You don't want to list your fears to him, not when they might come true. Anger at never being told where he came from. Disgust at you for being so secretive towards him, not telling him as soon as he was old enough to understand. Or self-hatred at knowing this was his birthing place, the feeling that he would never fit in that you worked so hard to keep away.
Or even a shrieking moment of realization where he might turn into something as deformed as the monster the two of you slew.
Whatever his reaction, you can't halt it. You did what you had to. You close your eyes to hold back your tears.
"I'm sorry, sunshine. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."
...You feel his arms around you, tight.
"It's okay, mom." A dozen-year doubt lifts. You extend your wings to pull him tighter against you, and he slumps. "Can we go home now?"
In that moment, your power waxes. Protections and defenses knit their way around both of you. You look toward the crescent of your sun, still shining above the dark blue ocean of the Ring.
And then you're gone, leaving the quiet and the cold to their own dim devices.