The forests of Roanoak are as expansive as they are ancient, and the great oaks of the Empire have endured much and seen even more over the nine hundred years since Roanoak’s founding… And within the realm there are a great number of places where fantastic tales of great valor and bittersweet sorrow have originated.
One of these places would be a mysterious ruin just north of present day Astur – the castle of the Empress in Ardennes…
Local legends regarding the ruin are as numerous as the ponies who recount them, but there are a few commonalities; that the ruin was once a large keep many hundreds of years ago, and that it belonged to a very powerful Unicorn Mage who sought the solitude of the region in order to pursue his study of the Old Magics of the Alicorns – the powers of creation itself.
The most prominent tale paints the Mage as both an elderly Unicorn of pale blue coat and cloud white mane, and a pony who was very, very grumpy. He was supposedly as long of beard as he was long of horn, and simply far too busy with his research to be bothered by such inconvenience as random company. For him there was only the next great secret of the Old Magic to discover and master, and any interruption of these pursuits was met with a scowl and a slamming door at best. So nopony ever went near the keep for this reason – and this suited him just fine.
There was one pony though who braved the ire of the Mage once every week.
Due to the remote nature of the keep, the Mage had his provender delivered by an earth pony mare who lived in a village down in the lowlands. She was an older mare of obvious draft pony descent, but she still had a spring in her step and a twinkle in her eye, and she made her living making deliveries between her village and the port to the south. And every Saturday, sun or snow, she would make the long trek from town up into the hills with her cart to deliver his order.
And every Saturday he would fuss and bluster about how she was interrupting very important experiments or delaying the discovery of the one piece that would solve his current conundrum... He would frown and stomp around the small yard inside the keep’s walls as he directed the mare to place the bales of clover and timothy just so, or stack the barrels of oats so that the labels were facing just the right direction, and to ensure the firewood was in the perfect spot. And when she would finish he would give her a small sum of bits, scowl once more, and slam the door behind him as he returned to his work. The Earth Pony mare would simply wave and smile, and cheerfully wish him a wonderful week and state that she would return next Saturday.
Until one snowy Saturday when she did not arrive.
The Mage was terribly upset at her tardiness, for it was throwing his entire day into disarray... She always arrived in the morning for her terribly inconvenient delivery, and was always done with her interruptions by lunchtime so that he could send her on her way and get back to his tasks.
But today? Today there was no delivery.
He paced the floor as he waited, for he could not get back to his work if he was simply going to be interrupted at any moment. An hour passed, and then another. And by the third hour the Mage was so cross he determined to get bundled up and head down into the village to give the mare a piece of his mind for so utterly wrecking his day.
The Mage shuffled through the fresh snow that had fallen over the path to his keep until the sun had begun to set behind the mountains. He was cold, wet, and the icicles that hung from his beard were highly annoying – not as annoying as the icy patches of the path, or course – but very, very close.
And as the last rays of sunlight lit the snowy hills in crimson hues he spotted something odd near the path – an overturned cart… The cart that belonged to the Earth Pony he was seeking.
He ambled up to the cart, the scathing words he intended to employ to make clear his upset at this disorder of his day ready as a rapier – but as he rounded the toppled conveyance the fire in him vanished.
There, lying still in the snow was the Earth Pony mare.
It was some sort of accident; her hoof had slipped, a trace had broken – perhaps a wheel had come loose on the ascent. Whatever it was, it had gravely injured her. He noted the shallow rise and fall of her side – she was still alive – but in this cold it would not be for long.
The sky-blue light of the Mage’s magic worked loose the harness from around her, and he gently touched her shoulder with a hoof – the connection required to move them both though the aether to his keep via teleportation.
In the blink of an eye and safe within the thick stone walls of the great room of the keep, the glow around the mare slowly faded as she was set gently before the fire. A thick woolen blanket settled over her gently as he offered a pungent mix of herbs that would take away her pain - and she sighed a weak thank you as the potion took hold… The Mage was no physician, but he was learned enough that he knew her final chapter was coming to a close.
A final chapter in a long story he knew nothing of. As he lay there on the rug before the fire, next to her and offering at least the solace of closeness, the gravity of his treatment of a fellow pony weighed heavily upon him. He had been nothing but course and upsetting to this mare who had done nothing but accept his obstinate nature with a smile and a wave. She had seen to his needs, week in and week out, with obvious personal risk, for little more than a few coins and his perpetual scowl.
And he felt quite the monster for it.
He kept her company all though that long evening, asking her about her life and the village. He learned that she was once married, but was now a widow. She had never had foals of her own, but saw to other’s foals as time permitted... She had a full life, a worthy life, but none would recall her once she was gone. And this thought tugged at him, nagged him; that he, a master mage and at the top of his art – but yet a miserable sad excuse for a pony, was the last being in the world to know of her...
As she became so weak as to fall into a quiet, peaceful sleep, the Mage rose to his hooves with a determined look. He would repay her kindness and ensure her life would be remembered. Quickly he prepared the spells he had spent a lifetime discovering, and drew forth a huge pristine diamond that had been masterfully faceted – and the object he had spent all of his wealth upon, save a small stipend for his food and firewood. It was to be a component for the spell that would grant him immortality, like that of the Royals – but here, now, he had found a better purpose for it.
And that evening the Mage cast into that stone all that the mare was; all of her good, her caring, and the warmth of her ever present smile was within that gemstone, and with his will he set to it a powerful spell that would preserve it against the ravages of time itself. He set it to float slightly above a marble dais in the great hall of the keep, where the sunlight that her smile reminded him of would fall from a high window and set the diamond aglow with the light of her eyes.
While the mare would be forgotten in time, as all things were eventually, her nature would be remembered by any who laid eyes upon that stone. They would be filled with her compassion and made at ease by her caring – and in that way she would have some small immortality of her own.
The years have passed, the once great keep has fallen to ruin, yet the gem still floats above the stone, just as it was willed to do and just as pristine as it was that night oh so long ago. Many have tried to remove it, for it is worth a small fortune – but it resists any and all manipulation…
The darkness that shrouds the ruin itself is the remnants of a spell intended to hide the stone until some nameless thief of a bygone age could find a way to claim it – but the thief is long passed into nameless history, but the stone still shines – and all the more brightly for the perpetual gloom.
There are many rumors about the stone itself; that it can heal the sick, that touching it brings good luck, or even that true evil cannot enter the ruins due to its presence. One thing is for certain, the magical power of the stone is immense and the spells it contains are of a sort none have been able to decipher.
As for that Mage, he was never seen in the village again after that winter. Most say he moved back to one of the northern cities to try and reconnect with the ponies he had forsaken in his quest for power… Some say he passed on later that winter from simple old age…
But a few say that on the coldest nights of the longest winters, then the moon is full and the world itself is still and silent, you may be able to follow a set of mysterious hoof prints into the ruin and see a mysterious sky blue Alicorn stallion paying his respects to the stone therein – but that is always the way of legends…
