Chapter 1
“Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.” – Elie Weisel
* * *
“In the beginning, there was nothing. However, from nothing came life,” the robed figure was unlike anything the alicorn had ever seen in her brief existence, a being that walked upon two legs and had two appendages that reached from below its robes with separate smaller digits where its hooves should have been.
“Who are you,” her voice was calm, even as she noted that her dark haired sister had yet to rise from a deep slumber.
“The better question is to ask who you are,” the figure regarded her from beneath the cowl, “do you know who and what you are Celestia?”
“How do you know my name,” the alicorn would not relent to the mysterious being before her.
“How do you know your name,” the robed head seemed to tilt, “after all, you just came into being moments ago alongside your sister.”
Celestia rose to get a better look at the strange creature, “I just…know.”
“You know because you and your sister chose the names you both bear,” the robed figure leaned closer, but still remained fully shrouded from view within the ethereal fabric, “or rather the pony shamans who died chose those names for their two combined reincarnations.”
She stumbled as the man’s words brought forth a few shattered images to her mind. There were groups of ponies from each of the three tribes gathered around a set of great fires and this robed figure walked among them, conversing with those who seemed to hold the highest ranks.
“You created us,” the Princess of Equestria whispered.
“I helped,” the figure shrugged beneath its disguise, “I told them how to go about making their deaths matter. I even contributed a bit of myself to the sacrifice that created both of you.”
“You’re our father then,” her voice remained guarded but inquisitive.
“To an extent,” the man’s reply was honest, “I had to see the cycle continue.”
Celestia willed herself to stay upright as a new set of images flooded through her mind. Men in strange armor, with two legs like this one, throwing themselves against monstrous creatures that defied the imagination while a mighty gold clad figure bade them to carry out his will, despite remaining paralyzed light years away. Skeletal abominations firing eerie glowing staff weapons marched through hordes of green skinned brutes.
“There is a great enemy Celestia. I thought I had nearly destroyed its hold in our material universe when my son betrayed me,” the figure’s posture slumped slightly in its disguise, “I was wrong and I was crippled. Eventually this enemy destroyed everyone, including itself for the most part, just as it has uncounted times throughout the life of the universe. In the end, I was the only one left; none of my people, none of the other warring races, we were all wiped from existence.”
In her mind’s eye world after world was desolate. Great storms raged across the cosmos and slowly flickered out and died as their inhabitants tore one another apart and as the belief that sustained them was cut off suddenly.
“Then I realized more time had passed than even I believed. Life had begun anew, seemingly from nothing. Ponies that, to an extent, resembled creatures of my own home in its primitive era; yet their shamans were facing the same problem my people’s had…though the immaterium was relatively calm, fewer were being reborn.”
“So you intervened,” Celestia remembered that part clearly, seeing the robed figure in her memories through the eyes of a unicorn shaman.
“I intervened,” the figure confirmed with a nod of its hooded head, “your little ponies needed protectors. Don’t do as I did Celestia. Allow your ponies to worship you, encourage it even, but even more I would tell you to cultivate their friendship.
Often, you shall find, that friends are less ready to betray than your own family.”
She stumbled once more, unable to stay upright this time as another flash of memory overtook her. Now she was a man in golden armor, badly wounded and wielding a spear of magical energy as she erased her favored son from existence even as he realized what he had done and shed a tear.
“Do not do as I did and use war as a method to propel them forward to new technological heights. For the time being, this planet holds the only life left within the galaxy; allow peace to flourish and you will partially starve the dark gods of the immaterium.”
She began to rise again, the fractured memories of wars from ages past roaring through her mind. They were horrible, but nothing compared to striking down one’s own flesh and blood, it almost seemed trivial. She found her voice as the robed figure ceased to speak, “This all seems a little rushed, as if you’re in a hurry.”
“I’m dying,” the response was deadpanned, no emotion negative or positive, “I welcome it really.”
Princess Celestia understood, through the lens of the memories she had been able to access from the reincarnations that had died to create her, “I see. Will Luna and I die one day?”
“Not naturally,” the man gave a dry chuckle, “but you can through violence. You’re more durable than your little ponies, but I would not recommend you take it up as a hobby.”
The ethereal man rippled, “one more question Princess. That’s all we have time for.”
“How did you come to be,” the alicorn believed she knew, but she wanted to confirm her suspicions lest she be left with a mystery for eternity.
“The shamans of my people, humanity, did as I instructed your pony shamans. I am for my lost people what you and Luna shall be for ponykind.”
“I thought so,” she took a breath and willed herself to remain calm, “is there any other wisdom you will impart before you take your final journey?”
The figure paused, as if considering what she had asked, “Celestia, if there is one piece of advice that I would pass on above all others as you shepherd your little ponies, it is this; friendship can overcome so much. I blinded myself to that need to maintain friendship with my son, my greatest student, and it lead to our downfall. In the worlds that came before, a wise man once said something I want you to remember, ‘Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.’
“Remember friendship Celestia. When the primordial enemy is given a form by your little ponies, it will be needed to stop the end of all things.”
Celestia, one of the two newborn goddesses of Equestria gave a nod of her head in acknowledgement as she watched the robed creature fade away. Despite his disappearance, she knew that she would see him again one day. However, she cast
a glance at her stirring sister, there was no need to worry Luna with what she had just learned.
* * *
“My sister betrayed me,” the white alicorn spoke quietly to the massive golden throne before her, “just like your son betrayed you.”
She did not expect him to reply, but he didn’t need to. Thousands of years ago the Sun Princess had found him and his massive throne buried beneath this mountain. This Golden Throne, with the skeleton seated upon it was the reason that she had chosen to build Canterlot here, though Luna had never known her reasoning. His remains, though the spirit was ten thousand years gone, were a reminder of how things could crumble just as easily as they had come about.
“Our friendship allowed us to wield the Elements of Harmony and stop Discord.”
Discord. The name of the creature filled her with an instinctual revulsion. She had been warned that the enemy of all things, that primordial force of destruction, would one day take a form. It had, born of the chaos that erupted in the Great War between Equestria and the Diamond Dogs’ seemingly endless armies.
“One day though, my sister will be free. Discord will be free,” the alicorn’s hoof dug unconsciously at the ground in agitation, “and I must ask myself if I will have any friends capable of helping me to stop them…or will I share your fate and the fate of all the cycles that have gone before?”