Chapters From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
Epilogue...And The Start of Another
And so in his moment of triumph the great Lord of Order was devoured and Ordina ruled supreme over all for a time. But soon enough she too was drawn into the great slumber of death out in the expanses of the Shimmering Void. Yet again the inhabitants of Equss had survived the return of another ancient evil lost to time. Though Equestria was now a land of death alone the New World awaited the survivors, there they grew and formed new nations to call their own away from the memories of their homes, there civilisation rose anew and just as before the crimes of the Lords were forgotten. But just because the Ancient Lords were gone did not mean the world was safe.
The legions of the Blackmarch still patrolled the Old World looking for kills.
The gates of Tartarus remained unguarded.
The Descendant Queens still remained, sleeping in their great domains awaiting the return of their prime soul. For you see though Sator was devoured and his soul destroyed he did not die. I am very much alive,after all Lords do not die, they are only broken down.
Just as before I hang suspended in orbit around this world, but at least I'm not alone the stars are bright out here and the new sun blazes with a life none have known before.
From here I have watched them grow and prosper whispering in the dreams of a chosen few, and I must say the changes have and will bring are most interesting.
Most interesting indeed.
Author's Note
After almost a year its done.
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
We think that went well we thought to ourself.Though we could have handled our interactions Luna better .
Ah yes Luna, the self proclaimed goddess of the night and sovereign of dreams, we would have to see how she handled the fragile minds of her citizens. So we cast our perceptions to the land of dreams in search of our target, five targets to be more exact after all,shouldn't we be the one to introduce ourself to the element bearers rather than have their royal friend turn them against me before I had a chance to say hello. We searched far and wide doing what we did best, observe. We have seen many dreams in our time, dreams of success, dreams of fear, and dreams that were not worth mentioning for one reason or another. But the dreams in Ponyville on the other hand were...different. These were the dreams of a people who experienced world ending dangers every other week, the Princesses themselves had said that the gap between the elements being rediscovered and Twilight's coronation had been only a year long, how Ponyville had managed to not only survive but quickly recover from a forgotten goddess, an ineqine chaos lord and a thaumophage who was equal in strength to all known alicorns was honestly beyond us. If these did not phase their minds then it would take quite the nightmare to scare them.
Nightmares, now there was an interesting idea. Why bother introducing ourself to the Elements when we could toy with them instead? That would surely provide me with enough to talk to them about.
With a new plan in mind we made our way to the first of our targets, that apple farmer who lived at the edge of the town. Applejack was her name we believe Element of Honesty and annoyingly stubborn we wondered what she would be dreaming of.
Apples. She was dreaming of apples. Predictable.
An endless field of trees bearing apples of all varieties stretched across to the horizon ripe for the picking. Applejack was happily galloping from tree to tree bucking them clean of their apples into the barrels below.
Now what would a hard working farm pony hate more than anything else? we pondered. Why pestilence of course we concluded, and with that we manifested in the form or a particularly large vampire fruit bat swarm which was on fire for a bit of added affectand descended upon the fields below.
Not a single tree was spared. every apple was drained and every trunk scorched.
The look of utter horror on Applejack's face as her little slice of heaven was completely destroyed was worth the effort. Too bad she had to wake up so soon after the fun began.
Oh well we thought to ourself. There are others to play with .
Who to chose next? That was a difficult choice, whose mind would we shatter against the rocks of madness next?
Rock...That gave us a truly evil idea. We went to Rarity's dream next where thousands of ponies were in awe of her wearing a dress with an illogically large amount of sequins. She looked so content here on the stage being loved by everypony and finally achieving her life long goals.
We would soon remedy this.
"Rarity?"
She looked around trying to find the source of my voice.
"Why did you leave me? I thought what we had was special,"
She turned in my direction and immediately started backing away from me.
"What are you doing here? I thought you went away after that ruffian Discord was locked away,"
As you probably guessed I had manifested as that boulder Tom that Rarity had carried around after Discord made her think it was a large diamond. Clearly that had been something she had tried hard to forget.
"It gets so lonely in the maze, please come back, the kids miss you" , around me a few smaller rocks shaped like pony heads appeared.
"Please come back mommy,"
"We miss you mommy,"
"Why did you abandon us mommy?"
The crowd clearly did not take well to this revelation yelling 'dead beat mom' and 'horse' at her as she avoided rotten tomatoes and small stones and eventually food carts. She ran away as the stage crumbled behind her into the void as the most generic giant phantom ponies ran after her as she let out one continuous scream.
Well we thought to ourself That escalated quickly and on that not we moved on to the next dream.
Fluttershy's dream was different from the others in the sense that there were no ponies to be seen which made sense for such an introverted pony such as herself. In this dream it was only her Discord and a few animals in an open field eating cucumber sandwiches.
It was only her and Discord. Discord had manifested in her dreams.
This is most interesting we thought to ourself. Someome trusts him enough to allow them into their mind . Two nightmares for the price of one we thought with glee.
Now if we remember correctly Fluttershy was particularly afraid of dragons, and with Fluttershy being Discord's only friend it would be safe to assume that he would fear losing her.
Now, how to ruin this little get together? we thought. First we added a dense layer of clouds across the sky blotting out the sun in the sun in the process to add some atmosphere.
"Discord?" Fluttershy asked "Why did you bring those clouds here?"
"Clouds? I have no idea what it is you're talking about my dear Fluttershy," Discord replied as he look up to the new clouds intruding on his sunlight.
Now to make things really ominous we made every last plant and animal shriveled up and died.
"D-Discord is this is your idea of a j-joke?" Fluttershy stuttered clearly being disturbed by the sudden death of her animal friends and the surrounding flora.
"Fluttershy do you honestly think that I would ruin our picnic as a joke? Whatever is doing this is clearly is out of our control,"
And there was our cue.With a resounding roar we manifested a colossal black dragon and began to set the dried field ablaze in emerald flame. Erasing any signs of life in sight.
"Discord,"
"Yes Fluttershy?"
"Could you- that is you want to, please make the big scary dragon go away?"
"Consider it done," Discord replied as he snapped his talons with a spark of chaotic magic. But I was still there. Discord tried again, and again, and again getting more panicked with each attempt.
"Oh it's going take a lot more than that to get rid of us" we boasted as we swatted him aside with one hand and grabbing Fluttershy by the tale with the other.
"Discord!" Fluttershy screamed in pure terror.
Discord grew in size to a size matching my own with pure anger etched into his features.
"Put Fluttershy down," He growled.
We simply grew even larger as we just barley held onto the small yellow mare in our hands.
"And why should we?" we said down to him. "You couldn't save her from Tirek, what makes you think you can save her from me?" Discord began to shrink back down to his normal size as he crumbled under my ridicule.
"Poor little Discord a being who brought the world to its knees yet he can't even save his only friend in the world, such a shame,"
We threw Fluttershy into the air directly over our gaping maw.
"Discord!"
"Fluttershy!"
And with a muffled crunch the dream came abruptly to an end.
I wonder we thought to ourself at what point did we shift from comically mischievous to disturbingly malicious? . We would have to find out later.
Pinkie's dream was one large party in the Manehattan Square where every pony, dragon and what have you were there dancing or drinking punch and gorging on inequine amounts of baked goods. All the while Pinkie was on the stage singing about happiness and friendship and never being afraid of monsters. Sometimes it was somewhat annoying just how cheerful Equus was, most of them wouldn't last a day in the Whispering Isles or The Plane of Screams if we were to send them there.
But underneath that happiness we sensed some kind of...instability in the pink mare, as if she were a balloon stretched to the point of near bursting.
With a mind so fragile this will be easy we thought to ourself as we manifested as just another stallion in the crowd, waiting for our chance to strike. That is until a particular party pony snuck up on me.
"Hey Animad! What are you doing in my dream party?" she asked.
"Oh you know, having a few drinks, catching up with friends and-wait a minute how did you know I was here?"
"Silly Annie, I know everypony and everydragon and every-ancient-elder-being-from-beyond-the-veil-of-knowing,"
"Do not call me Annie, the last person who did that began an intimate relationship with a high velocity boulder," I growled at her in a attempt to intimidate her. But to no avail.
"Oh I was right about you Annie, you're a big meanie pants who only wants to hurt ponies with boulders. You know what happens to ponies like that? They go to the naughty corner,"
With that said a small stool with a dunce cap appeared next to her.
"You cannot be serious, we are powerful beyond knowing, we have ended more worlds than you know of, we have vanquished creatures you would perceive as gods! There is no way you can just 'put us in the naught corner' like some common foal,"
She put me in the naughty corner. Like a common foal.
Animad, ender of worlds, spawn of shadows and bringer of nightmares had been relegated to the naughty corner.
This may have been the most embarrassing moment of our life. Any attempt we made at leaving resulted in Pinkie Pie appearing from nowhere to tell me she was watching and that if we tried to escape again we would be sent to the 'super naughty chair'.
We were stuck there all night, which was a shame. We didn't even get a chance to torment Rainbow Dash or Twilight Sparkle. We had this plan laid out involving a failed Wonderbolts audition and Sombra returning respectively, too bad that would never come to pass.
Around the time that the sun began to rise in the material world Pinkie Pie came back to my little stool of shame.
"So Annie, what have you learnt today?"
"It's wrong to hit ponies with boulders," we grumbled indignantly.
"See? Your learning! Now you better get back to Canterlot I bet Twilight and the other princesses are probably waiting for you,"
We began to fade out of the land of dreams then Pinkie grabbed us and look us dead in the eyes.
"But remember I've got my eyes on you,"
We do not believe that this will be the case for we immediately replaced her eyes with wasp nests.
Because no one calls us Annie and gets away with it.
Author's Note
At no point did Pinkie say anything against THAT!
Anyway I got the second chapter done
************************************
This will probably be the last update for the next few weeks as I have to get ready for my trip to South Africa.
Hoped you liked the new chapter
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
Such a shame we thought, we didn't get the chance to torment the others, oh well, there's still today's meeting with the elements .
Though Twilight never mentioned such a meeting we were sure that she wouldn't leave her friends out on all the fun that would soon ensue. We searched the castle until the sleeping form of Twilight Sparkle was within our incorporeal gaze. She looked so peaceful in her bed, her mind drifting through the land of dreams where the worries of the world could not harm her.
We would have to fix that.
"TWILIGHT! WAKE UP!"
"DAAAH!" Twilight screamed as she tumbled out of bed with her blanket and man pillows in tow. "What's happened? Has Discord turned on us again? Have the changelings invaded? Has someone awoken the Dead Queen?". It took a few moments for her to calm down. "Oh it's just you Animad, you really shouldn't startle me like that,"
"Dead Queen?"
"A unicorn from Germaneigh that discovered a school of magic based around manipulation of life energy and raising the dead known today as necromancy, " she explained. "A few centuries ago she conquered Germaneigh ruling as its Queen for 30 years before she was dethroned and put into magical stasis, I would have expected someone who is 'older than all' to have known about someone as legendary as her,"
"Not much happened after Luna's imprisonment that caught our interest so we went elsewhere, but we’ll retain that information for later use" we replied. 'Twilight',
"Yes Animad?"
"Does Equestria have anything resembling religion? We remember there used to a major one brought here by the first Equestrians from their homelands but we haven't really seen a trace of religion anywhere,"
"Well," Twilight began "We could always check the archives if you want,"
"We would appreciate that,"
"You seem to be a lot less annoying than you were yesterday,"
"Oh we haven't changed, we will still bring divine retribution on anyone that calls us Annie," we replied with some attempt at false anger.
We made our way to the archives with nothing out of the ordinary occurring.
That is until we introduced ourself to the archive's guards.
"What happened here?" Celestia asked in absolute shock at the scene before her. Seven of her unicorn guards were unconscious with broken horns, the Archive door was a burning pile of debris and there were boulders and swords embedded into the walls. Not to mention the 10 foot hole the had been blown through the outer wall to reveal ten more guards who had fallen from the palace into the smoldering remains of the stores below.
"We introduced ourself to the guards, it did not go well," we explained "They thought we were disguising ourself as Twilight whom they attacked so I had to...Incapacitate them,"
"Incapacitate them? You destroyed most of the financial district!" Twilight yelled "I don't care how much older than civilization you are. Fix.This.Now!"
"If it will make you stop whining then we will," with a thought and a pulse of magic we watched as time seemed to reverse, the unicorn's horns reattached to their heads the boulders and swords moved out from the wall and vanished and the rubble in the stores rose up with the guards in tow back to where they originally were though slightly disorientated from the earlier fight. When we had finished repairing the damaged hallway we added a layer of polish on everything, including the guards much to their annoyance.
"There we fixed everything, now may we enter the archives?"
"In honestly don't think we would be able to stop you even if we wanted" said on of the guards.
We'll take that as a yes,
"After Equestria's founding there was a religion that worshiped alicorns known as the Celestial Temple, after the Age of Chaos when Celestia and Luna were crowned as the rulers of Equestria they became the main objects of worship in the temple. Eventually the faith fell apart after the Lunar Rebellion caused a schism in the temple between those that supported Nightmare Moon and those who opposed her, this combined with the faith losing popularity due to its association with worship of Nightmare Moon eventually led to the Temple being disbanded,"
Twilight had spent the last few hours telling me about the history of Equestrian religion while we had been searching for more tomes to see what interesting events we had missed between the Luna’s rebellion and her return. After some searching we found the book we were looking for.
‘Dragon Faith Structures and Religions’ an interesting read on the history of Draconian religions throughout the millennia , some even dating back to before the Great Winter drove the Equines from their homeland.
”Twilight, have you ever heard of the Cult of the Ancient Lords?”
“Them? Oh it’s an old Draconian faith based around the worship of beings they called ‘The Ancient Lords’ who they claimed created the sun , moon and stars as well as the rest of Equus, the original beliefs and teachings of the faith and most knowledge of who these Ancient Lords were supposed to be were lost with the Age of Chaos . But don’t expect to find anything interesting on the modern cult, the entire faith now days is built around the belief that dragons were the superior race and provide them with an excuse for them to enslave other sentient races,”
”And how exactly did you come to that conclusion?” we inquired.
“Their holy book claimed that dragons were created by an Ancient Lord called Sator Ni’Mad the ‘Father of Dragons’ and ‘Bringer of Nightmares’ to rule the skies and all things below it, if that isn’t dragon supremacy then I don’t know what is,”
”The book does describe an old temple in Draconia that’s been abandoned for centuries, we should go there,”
“That sounds like a great idea I bet its lack of visitors has nothing to do with it being situated in the middle of Lands of Screams or anything,” Twilight replied sarcastically. We were about to conjure another boulder when we remembered what she had told us about how it wasn’t nice to hit ponies with large chunks of rock so we decide not to. We hit her with the Condensed History of Equestrian Magic volumes one through twelve.
“I would really appreciate it if you stopped doing that,” the pile of books, or rather the pony within the pile of books said.
After Twilight had dug herself out of and reshelved the books that had almost become her grave she went on her way to the train station to meet her friends while we waited observing the morning court. The nexus of politics where the common pony was able to voice their concerns in the hope of making their nation a better place. Sadly for them the common pony usually didn’t live in Canterlot so the nobles were left to petition the crown. Oh the things that nobles would petition the princesses for. Especially after Twilights ascension.
“For the last time Blueblood we are not going to make you an alicorn, there is honestly no good that could possibly come out of it,” said Celestia.
“So your saying that you’ll allow a filthy commoner to become royalty but you won’t even entertain the idea of doing the same for your own nephew? What kind of princesses are you?”
”The kind who know not to put you in charge” we whispered into his mind.
“Who said that?” Blueblood asked as her looked from left to right in a futile attempt of locating me.
”Oh don’t bother trying to find us, it will merely be a waste of your oh so finite life”
“You can’t just invade my mind!” Blueblood exclaimed much to the concern of the court. “Who do you think you are?”
“We do believe that we are the chosen rulers of Equestria, what do you believe us to be nephew?” Luna replied with that detached air that only the old Unicorn Kings could have replicated.
“Not you, the voice,”
“Voice? You’re hearing a voice in your head? Blueblood are you feeling well?” Celestia asked clearly concerned for her nephew’s mental health.
“You don’t believe me do you? Well I’ll prove it, voice speak to the princesses,”
”You have no evidence we are anything more than a figment of fractured psyche Blueblood,”
“You can’t just wash your hooves clean of me like that! Speak to them voice, speak to them!” at this point the court was begin to become distressed and Luna had called for the castle’s medical staff to take him away.
“No! You can’t do this to me! I’m a prince you hear me, a prince! I’m telling the truth the voice is real!”
”Don’t worry Blueblood, we’ll tell Rarity to come visit you later,”
“I’ll get you for this voice! I’ll get-” and whatever else he planned to say was drowned out by the sound of the throne room doors closing.
We’ll have to check on him later, maybe cause a little more trouble for the poor fool we thought. For now we must prepare for the element’s arrival .
Rarity, Applejack and Fluttershy had clearly not slept, but few do when they are visited by the Bringer of Nightmares. Rarity’s left eye twitched at random any site of a remotely rock shaped object brought nervous spasms through her being, Applejack merely seemed tired with heavy dark bags underneath her bloodshot eyes, her hooves methodically moving one in front of the other as if it took all her willpower not to just pass out on the spot. But Fluttershy…
Fluttershy was a nervous wreck.
Her usually slightly curled mane had devolved into a mass of split ends and tight knots, her body shook with barely restrained fear and her eye’s constantly darted from left to right as if searching for some invisible threat.Most likely because of us we thought. Nice to know we haven’t lost our touch though . If it was any consolation for her, Discord was with her probably to make sure she didn’t see her own shadow and bolt back to her little cottage by the forest.
Also Spike was there, though that hardly mattered. He would probably disappear by the end of the conversation.
“Now everypony,” Discord and Spike raised an eyebrow each “and dragon and draconequus,” Twilight continued “there’s someone I’d like you to meet, he’s not exactly what you would call ‘normal’ though”
“Twi’ we’re *ahem* ‘friends’ with Discord” Applejack said, making sure to add the air quotes “It doesn’t really get any weirder than that”
”Oh you may find me to be of a different ilk to your draconequus friend,”
“Oh you’re…Here sort of,”
“Twilight dearest could you please explain to us why there is a disembodied voice speaking to us?”
“He’s who I wanted you to meet. Girls meet Animad, don’t call him Annie he assaulted Cadence with a boulder when she called him that, ”
“How exactly can this disembodied voice of yers move a boulder let alone attack Cadence with it?” Applejack asked.
”The same way we can do this,” we levitated her hat away.
“Mah hat!” The we made her mane disappear then replaced her hooves with orange taffy.
“Oh I’m starting to like him,” said Discord as he watched the events unfold from his reclining armchair with a popcorn at hand. “Speaking of which, have we met before?”
”You may have met us when we ruined your little dream picnic last night,”
“That was you? You’re the one who made Fluttershy a jittering mess?”
”I’m sure she’s fine, see? Fluttershy, BOO!”
“AAAHHHH!” Fluttershy screamed finally recognising the dragon from her nightmare, she ran straight to the courtroom door. Directly into the courtroom door.
”Looks like nurse Red Heart will be having a new patient today” we chuckled as we sent yet another pony to the castle’s medical ward for a concussion.
“Animad,” Twilight groaned as she massaged her temples “what did I tell you about harming ponies? And of all the ponies to do that to why Fluttershy?”
”Not to attack them with boulders and because she’s got weaker sensibilities than a wet tissue made of tapioca pudding respectively,” we replied ”Which has nothing to do with the current situation, and it’s not like we only gave her nightmares, there was also Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie Pie,”
“Why in the name of harmony would do that to another pony?”
”Don’t act like you would even be capable of understanding, besides it’s not like we simply created your nightmares, we simply built off your pre-existing fears and anxieties, Applejacks fear of everything her farm failing for the last time, Rarity and her inability to truly accept what she is capable of becoming, and Discord. Poor, lonely Discord, a being feared by all except one, the only one you have ever called a friend, and for that fleeting moment you felt true fear,”
“I’m…Going to go check on Fluttershy in the medical ward,” and with a snap of his talon Discord was gone.
”Coward,”
“Hey Animad, you replaced my eyes with a hornets nest, what does that represent?” Pinkie Pie asked as she bounced around imagining the possible meaning behind it.
“Absolutely nothing, we just don’t like being called Annie, ”
“Well that makes as much sense as anything else,” Spike said with a shrug.
”Now that we are done with introductions I think it’s time we went to Celestia and Luna,”
“Whatever for Animad?”
”We have an…Idea we wish to share with them”
So the element bearers minus Fluttershy made their way through the courtroom doors towards the Princess’ chambers.
Author's Note
A new chapter done! And just before the first day of the new school year (WEEPS INTERNALLY)
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
The party was a most lavish event of sorts with every noble within a 20 mile radius of the mountains base coming to celebrate the incarceration of the single worst pony to ever grace this world. Cakes of various sorts chocolate cascading in molten fountain spouts in the view of large frozen sculptures all arranged in the most efficient means possible.
Along with enough alcohol to make berry punch swoon.
While the elements were off enjoying the festivities we decided to partake of the fine liquors presented to us. Crystal wine from the Frozen North, froth laden brews from Germaneigh and drinks so old that they were no different from drinking vinegar mixed with powdered lime. Too bad we couldn't actually get drunk off of the options before us, if only Dionysus were still alive she was a pony who knew her liquor but it had been… nine thousand years ago hadn't it? It can be difficult to keep track of all the corporeals that we had met in our time. While we had been recollecting on past acquaintances a pony had walked up to me. A mare. Unicorn, around twenty-five years of age with a soft silver-grey coat similar to a small cloud in a storm, her mane was alternating lines of grey and white tied into a three strand arrangement with the coil of her mane hanging over one of her shoulders. Shoulders which were covered by a sultry black velvet dress which we honestly thought showed too much flank.
Or at least that was thought at first before we remembered that ponies usually don’t wear clothes though they could be used to emphasise certain…Features in a pony so to speak. We would have continued to ponder how clothing affects a pony’s mating habits if not for the mare having decided to speak to me.
“Why hello there, I don’t think we’ve ever met before, and I do like to know about any stallions joining the court,” she said with the sultriest voice possible with her eye’s half lidded, we knew that this was going to be an uncomfortable situation for us.
”We are Ani- *ahem*” we used the time given to us by our short cough to alter our voice to one that sounded more…natural. “As I was saying I am Star Seeker, nice to meet you,”
“Star Seeker, what a lovely name, I am Silver Script, next in line for the title of Countess of Derbyshire, do tell, what brings you to our little celebration?” she said stepping slowly closer to us.
“I arrived here two days ago. There was an incident somewhere in Draconia that had to be dealt with, the element bearers and I are leaving tomorrow to deal with it” we told her.
“Draconia? My, you really must get around,” she said raising an eyebrow coyly, oh how we disliked euphemisms. As if the situation couldn't get any more awkward we could sense Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle walking our way. Oh Goddess help us we thought as they walked up to us. Rainbow Dash looked from me to Silver and back again, a grin crossing her face.
“So…Who’s your friend?” she asked.
“Oh this is Silver Script she’s-”
“His marefriend,” Silver said cutting us off before we could explain our situation.
“What.” We and Twilight said flatly. “You? Him? How? Why?” her brain straining as it tried to process what it had just heard. This was honestly getting ridiculous, we had come here to celebrate putting someone in mental care with alcohol and cake not introduce Twilight and company to the significant other that I had apparently just gained in the last ten minutes. We had to regain control of the situation.
“No you don’t’ understand we’re-”
“Not going to stand by and let you get in the way of our love!” she yelled loud enough to garner the attention of some of the nearby guests. “Come on Star Seeker, let’s go and take long strolls on the beach and write sappy poems about each other or whatever it is that lovers do, ” she said her head raised in offence as she dragged me away with her silver aura. I am currently being foalnapped we thought to ourself. First time for everything we suppose .Once we were out of earshot of the guests I turned to Silver Script as she continued to drag me away.
“Could you please explain why you claimed to be my marefriend and then foalnapped me?” we asked her cautiously hoping she wouldn't injure our vessel too badly.
“When you noticed those two mares heading towards you I could tell that you disliked them for one reason or another so I took it upon myself to make your chat with them as short as possible,” she replied as she took us to one of the tables nearby with two wine glasses in tow. “Now then tell me more about yourself,” she said leaning on the table with her forelegs and looking at us with those grey half lidded eyes of hers. This was beginning to get most uncomfortable.
“Well we came from outside of Equestria , we arrived here sometime after Lord Tirek was defeated, interesting character that centaur, we used to play chess every now and then, we mostly enjoy studying world history and magic and a bit of psychology on the side as well, especially the study of dreams,” we told her.
“You were friends with Lord Tirek? Star Seeker what trouble have you been causing recently?” she said clearly amused and intrigued by our history.
“HE ASSULTED PRINCESS CADDENCE WITH A BOULDER!” the screaming lavender mare known as Twilight yelled as teleported onto our table. The entire hall went quite as every noble turned to look at her and by extension us. We could see the Solar Guard preparing their weapons in case anything bad were to happen at this moment. Which was understandable considering that everyone’s faces were plastered with abject horror at Twilight’s accusation. Everyone except Silver, who was just looking at me with a smirk.
“Star Seeker, have been a bad stallion? Am I going to have to punish you?” she said her eyes still half lidded.
“I. Am. Not. A. Sub!” we yelled further gaining the attention of the other patrons with our outburst, and yet again Silver continued to make things more awkward by suggesting things involving a saddle and whip and that was when we decided to try and shift her attention elsewhere. “Who wants to hear me sing?” we said in an attempt to change the subject.
“Oh I have got to see this,” Discord said from above in his favourite recliner with a bag of caramel popcorn in hand. “Go on ‘Star Seeker’ we all want to see you sing now don’t we?” he said to the surrounding party guests, who nodded in agreement so as not to incur the illogical wrath of the great Spirit Of Chaos. We teleported to the stage near our table and passed sheet music to the small orchestra to my left. Before they could refuse we manifested a large bag of bits in front of each of them, after all who is going to charge a god with forgery?
The orchestra began playing with deep tones played over soft muffled beating sounds like the heart of a dying god. Our breathing slowed and all perceptions of us being a normal pony ceased as we began to sing. The song had been intended to be song by a mare but we think we did a good job at singing it with our echoing voice.
♫ “Ask not the sun why she sets Why she shrouds her light away Or why she hides her glowing gaze When night turns crimson gold to grey
For silent falls the guilty sun As day to dark does turn One simple truth she dare not speak: Her light can only blind and burn
No mercy for the guilty Bring down their lying sun Blood so silver black by night Upon their faces pale white”♫
The sun dipped in the heavens as the moon and stars rose to shroud the land in its pale light.
♫”Cruel moon, bring the end The dawn will never rise again.” ♫
We walked back to our table where the rest of the Elements and Discord as well as the Princesses minus Cadence had gathered to watch our performance. “So what did you think?” we said not bothering to mask our voice anymore.
“That was…,” Twilight said.
“Amazing” Rarity said.
“Su’prisin’” Applejack said in turn
“Somewhat worrying,” Celestia said “What could I have done to make you sing something like that about us?”
“Firstly we didn't write it, Luna’s supporters during her little rebellion did, a sort of prayer to their new goddess, and just to clarify on things, we don’t hate you Celestia despite what you think. You’re kind of like an ant, ponies step on so many of them without noticing as they go about their lives, to the ant it would make you seem like some unknowable genocidal monster, but we bear no malice against you, you are too insignificant to garner such emotions from us, if we were to crush you it wouldn't be because of hatred or some petty grudge. It would simply be because you were in our way,” we replied with a grin plastered on our face, savouring the Celestia’s face of horror as she tried to comprehend what we had just told her.
“Well I thought it was wonderful dear,” Silver said as she planted a kiss on our cheek. By that point we had honestly given up and had just accepted the way things were. “Now then let’s get back to the matter at hand we are here to celebrate Prince Blueblood being sent to th-”
The twin doors to the ballroom swung open and who else but Prince Blueblood was on the other side with the remains of a strait jacket holding on to his expanding and contracting barrel.
”Why hello Blueblood how was therapy?” we asked. The enraged prince turned to look at us remembering our voice from our earlier…Chat.
“YOU!” he yelled “YOU’LL PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME!” he began charging towards us most likely intending to stab us with his horn, he never got the chance as we had grabbed him and suspended him in our black magical aura.
”Now Blueblood, we are both gentlemen here. If you want to get back at us we would recommend a duel rather than attempted murder, how about tomorrow?” we suggested to him, after all it had been a while since the last duel I had fought, and we had already broken his mind from what we've seen so why not a few of his bones as well? We dropped him onto the floor and watched as he trudged to another part of the castle, most likely the armoury to prepare for tomorrow’s battle. Twilight, Silver Script and the Princesses along with Discord walked towards us.
“Would you be kind enough to tell us what it is you did to him dear?” Silver said as she walked towards me.
”We may or may not have whispered things into his mind until the princesses sent him to the medical ward for ‘psychiatric evaluation’,” we said while making air quotes with our hooves.
“Thou art the voice Blueblood spoke of?” Luna asked as she too walked towards us. “Thou art aware that what thou hast done is extremely illegal,”
”Typical, when I play around with a ponies mind it’s a crime but when your niece uses the same magic to remove ‘bad thoughts’ she’s praised for it!” we yelled in righteous frustration ”and when Twilight almost brought utter anarchy with that ‘want-it-need-it’ spell of hers and almost got Ponyville eaten by parasprites all she suffers nothing but a wounded ego! How she of all people became an alicorn is honestly beyond us!” we concluded as we took deep breaths, such an odd feeling really breathing kind of like swallowing a bit of the sky and vomiting poison at it, kind of strange we began to contemplate the implications of this. The Silver started nuzzling us.
“Star Seeker,”
“What?” we replied with our voice booming from our residual anger.
“Could you please calm down, your anger’s making your mane catch fire,” and she was right, there was a flowing blaze of black fire where our vessel’s mane and tail used to be making us look like something that had just crawled out of Tartarus, we took a few deep breaths and set our mane and tail back to their original form. Odd we thought to ourself We weren't even sure if we could manifest on this world anymore, and now we can place more power into it? Most interesting . Before we could test the new extent of our skills Blueblood once again burst through the door this time clad in the armour of the solar guard with a great sword held with his telekinesis. The guests seeing someone who they assumed was most likely insane did the logical thing and ran out of the room like Cerberus was trying to devour them.
“Blueblood, I thought we decided that the duel would be tomorrow,”
“NO! THE DUEL STARTS NOW! A DUEL TO THE DEATH!” he yelled with murderous zeal.
”Then it is a duel you shall have…”
We held our duel in the Canterlot Gardens near the edge of the mountain. Blueblood was still clad in his golden armour with a greatsword the length of his hoof in tow, the blade was made of steel of course, high carbon variety with a gold plated hilt. We chose not to wear armour and as for our weapon of choice we decided to use dual blades. Blades of high carbon steel never touched by the ravages of time the cross guard shaped like the great maw of a dragon with the two blades making up each sword being its fangs. We stood on either side of the garden weapons primed, fully aware that the winner of this fight would be the one who survived.
We looked to our left and saw the princesses and the elements watching us as we prepared for battle, even Rainbow Dash was not willing to speak as the tension rose in the garden surrounded by nobles.
”Blueblood if the little honour you have means so much to you then we could always apologise,”
“DIE PLEBEIAN!” the half mad prince yelled as he charged towards me. We took one step to the left and let him run into the tree behind us. Shaking the blur out of his vision he charged at us again, we teleported five inches to the right. He charged again and we shifted slightly like clockwork. We would have been willing to keep doing this until he passed out from exhaustion. If he had not said the worst possible thing.
“What’s wrong Annie? Are you too afraid to fight?” He said with a grin.
Annie…Memories flashed by. Memories of the moon blotting out the sky in a glowing corona, a world frozen over and wandered upon by beings of frost and images of a mad god sitting upon his chaotic throne. We don’t know where he learned about that accursed nickname. Only one thing mattered.
No one calls us Annie and lives.
We struck out with one blade for him to block and with the other we slashed at one of his forelegs drawing blood in the process, and with one swing of our blades we severed his horn from his head and struck him hard enough for him to fly across the garden.
We could feel our body changing, our horn splitting into two draconian ones; our mane became a swell of swirling black flame as our coat dripped with shadow, our hooves becoming claws, and our eyes becoming empty glowing white voids. We leaped into the air and landed upon the prince with enough force to indent the earth.
”Gi mgirsgrech giwgiits ugil mortgil” we uttered in a thousand voices ” Na iem aarthia mael dannan” . Blueblood stared at us with pure unadulterated fear quivering in our dark glory tears welling up in his eyes.
“Please, don’t do this. I don’t want to die!” he pleaded.
“What happened to the murderous glee in your eyes just five minutes ago? What happened to that air of superiority you prized so much? If you didn’t wish to die then you would have never challenged us,” the grass around us began to pale and whither as we carried the whimpering prince in our magic, a black smoky mist towards the edge of the garden where we could see the ground so far below. We held Blueblood over the edge by his tail, and just when we were about to drop him the Twilight ran towards us.
“Animad! You can’t just kill him!”
”Tell us Twilight, why exactly can’t we?” we said still holding the gibbering Prince over the edge.
”Because it’s not ethical,” she replied “Please Animad, just let him go,”
”Poor. Choice. Of words,” we let go of the prince just as she had asked. Over the edge of the cliff, his screams continuing until he hit the ground several hundred feet below where he became nothing but a red pool and an unpleasant memory. The others looked at me with disgust and horror upon their faces except for Silver Script who was in the middle of appreciating a glass of fine wine. Twilight walked up to us, giving us and indecipherable look. Then hit us across the face with her hoof.
“What is wrong with you?” she yelled at us staring daggers of righteous fury at us.
”You've never actually seen someone die, have you?” we asked with a mixture of amusement and concern ”Just wait a few decades, then you’ll get to attend one of your friend’s funerals. My guess is Rainbow Dash will be the first to go,”
“Answer my question Animad, what is wrong with you?” Twilight hissed at us.
“Now Twilight is that any way for the Princess of Friendship to act?” Discord said as he appeared in a flash of white light. “You really have to see things from his point of view after all,” he brought up a blackboard from the ground and a headmasters robe, complete with a rod for pointing. On the board were two pictures, one of ponies living in small little houses and prancing in fields of buttercups. The other was a picture of a world of utter madness. “Look you see Twilight different species have different concepts of what is and isn’t good. For example ponies work best in a harmonious environment and so would perceive harmony as good. Draconiquii, Windigoes, and Nightmare Beings on the other hand have a completely different outlook on what is good, we thrive in a chaotic environment by our very nature, Windigoes feed on negative emotions, Draconequii if there are any others prefer a chaotic world because we simply hate stasis as a concept” he then flipped the board to show a diagram of…us, or at least the vessel we were using. “Shadow Death the Destroyer over here on the other hand is…Not from around here,” Pointing to a planet with a big question mark on it. “He would obviously not follow any morals you consider ‘good’,” We guess Discord can be informative when he wants to.
”Now that this lecture is over we will be retiring to our chambers to read a few tomes, Silver you are welcome to join us,” we said as we walked towards the castle.
“I would be delighted to,” Silver Script replied as she followed, and as we made our way towards the door I looked up towards the moon.
And felt the veil grow weaker.
Author's Note
I just finished writing a 50 point list outlining the plot of this story starting from this chapter onwards and I've already deviated from it in the span of a couple of thousand words. Silver Script wasn't even supposed to exist.
Also the song is 'Daylights End' from League of Legends, you can listen to it here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-U2JdiHBsc
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
We had continued conversing with the mare we had met that evening in our chambers. Actually they were less chambers and more 'spare room we took for our own' as we had said we didn't need one when we first spoke with the Princesses. Our conversation with Silver Script was much more enjoyable than we had thought, as her mark had indicated her skill was writing and literature which most would assume would mean that she was an excellent writer and nothing else even we had assumed as such until she had revealed an interesting bit of information to us.
"You. Silver Script. Wrote 'Fifty Shades of Hay'." we replied flatly at her experiencing some difficulty accepting this. The mare in front of us, was apparently the author of what we consider to be the single worst thing short of those news articles writing about Twilight's completely fictional love life to ever be conceived by mortal minds.
"It takes an artist to write good literature dear," she said with a chuckle "but it takes a genius to write garbage. Also I lost a bet and made the most of it," she finished as she took a sip of some wine. Having completely lost the argument our attention drifted to the books and document we had 'acquired' from the royal archives, including a few maps of Draconia, old records on defunct forms of magic and most interesting of all, the sole surviving grimoire in the kingdom on necromancy written by the Dead Queen herself. The tome included many interesting concepts including but not limited to: necromantic spell matrices, reanimation spells and most useful or all.
Phylacteries.
A means of storing parts of or an entire soul within an object, weather it be a gemstone or an oak tree. It did not matter as long as the engravings did not tarnish, if that were to happen then...Unpleasant things would happen, a flawed magical engraving could have an untold number of effects on the spell and in turn the spell potentially twisting its inhabitant into something resembling a tumorous mass fused with a pony. We wonder why the Dead Queen never used one? Probably because she never found a way to sever souls from their bodies in a controlled manner. We set the book aside for when we would have a chance to make some in the event our current plan were to turn out for the worst and picked up a new one. We began absorbing the knowledge presented before us and would have continued if Silver Script hadn't gently pushed the book out of our field of view with a hoof.
She was staring at us with her eyes half lidded again, we slowly turned our eye's to the quarter-empty bottle, a quick bit of analysis magic later we found the alcohol percentage volume of the wine.
First, it wasn't wine. It was absinthe.
Second of all it was sixty percent alcohol. We then noticed a small sticky note attached to the side of the bottle with a short message on it.
'Have fun Annie! -Rainbow' . At that exact moment we swore to Ordina that we were going to blast a hole through her sky coloured head. While we had begun planning out our revenge Silver Script had moved next to us, her cheeks slightly red, most likely from the alcohol.
"So...Animad, that's your real name isn't it?" she asked leaning against leaning. "Are you just going to sit there reading those books all night?" she leaned closer to our face.
"If you don't do something you'll regret then yes, we believe we will," we replied as we lifted up our book again while softly nudging her away from us. She clearly didn't get the hint as she just moved in closer and began nuzzling us.
"So anything you want to say to us Animad?" she asked.
"Don't hate us too much for this,"
"Hate you? For wh-" and her eyes glazed over as she fell over and passed out as we hit her with a mild anesthetic spell, something that would keep her asleep for an hour or so and help with the inevitable hangover that the absinthe caused. She looks so peaceful we thought as we tucked her into the bed placing her dress onto the dressing table along with the bottle of absinthe. We delved into our memories looking for a particular spell and when we had found and cast it we threw the bottle through the mirror and savoured the screams of Rainbow Dash from across the hall. Oh how we loved Astral Magic, too bad the equines and other races couldn't use it, the wars would have been a lot more interesting if they had. Before we had even gotten the chance to laugh at the thought of Celestia summoning Doom Horrors Rainbow Dash had burst through our door with murder in her eyes and alcohol dripping from her soaked mane.
"Why hello young Dash how may we help you this fine evening?" we said with a smug smile. She dashed towards us her muzzle pressing against ours.
"Apologise," she growled.
"For what?"
"For splashing all of me with alcohol you dweeb!" she yelled presenting her world famous maturity.
"And how, pray tell do know that we did it?" we replied feigning innocence
"Because I'm the one who replaced your wine with absin- Oh buck," Rainbow turned towards her friends with am an anxious smile. Her friends didn't. "It was a joke?" she said trying to get someone on her side while floating just out of immediate hoof reach. "Come on guys it was only a joke!" she yelled as she followed the four equines leaving the room. Leaving only us, the sleeping Silver Script and Twilight Sparkle who was looking at the objects we had placed on the central table.
"What are these?" She asked as she picked up one of the crowns. We had made them to appear similar to the Element Of Magic except in the place of a magenta star we had placed a marquis-cut onyx attached to the silver frame that made up the rest of the crown.
"Those are part of a project I'm working on, a magical feedback generator," we explained "a sort of magic amplifier if you will,"
"Then what is this? This is definitely not a feedback generator," instead of picking up on of the books we had written she picked up the one object we had finished. To the common observer it would seem to just be an ornate hourglass held in a stainless steel frame with a small clock held in front of it by two steel bands. But if you were to look closer you would see runes carved into its surface, not the standard runes used by Equestrian mages but in a language not native to the continent, or the world itself. The runes shimmered an ancient silver texture as the sand was fixed in place by its frozen flow of time.
"That," we explained "Is a timepiece that measures immediate danger rather than time, the greater the danger the closer it gets to midnight," , we demonstrated by summoning a dagger and watched as the sand shifted slightly and the minute hand shifted making the time 12:02 AM and watched as it shifted back to 12:01 AM as we made the dagger disappear.
"How did you come up with something like this?" Twilight asked as she turned it over, child-like curiosity sparkling in her eyes at the feat of magical studies in her grasp "I'm not even sure if Starswirl the Bearded could have come up with something like this!"
"Starswirl?"
"Wait you've never heard of Starswirl the Bearded?" she said with a shocked expression on her face.
"We have, It's just that there are...Discrepancies you might not know of. Actually forget I said anything I'd rather not cause you more stress,"
Twilight teleported across the room to stand right in front of us with a huge smile of glee on her face "You have to tell me!"
"I'm not sure if you handle it well,"
"What is it that you can tell us that could possibly do th-"
"Almost everything you know about Starswirl is a lie," we said flatly. The smile never left her face but we could see her pupils slowly shrinking to pinpricks and moving in different directions as the gears in her mind screeched to a halt
"I'm sorry could you please...repeat that again please," mental whiplash apparent in her speech.
"Your understanding of magic is not as complete as you would like to believe Sparkle. There are forms of magic that have been lost and forgotten over the millenia" we explained as Twilight sat down in shock. "Starswirl, the real Starswirl was a practitioner of an arcane art known at the time as Astral Magic, a magic unlike any other, your kind and the kin of all this land draw from a singular source to fuel you spells and enchantments. To use astral magic was to reach out to the void and bend the world to you imaginings for better...or for ill. Tell me, have you ever heard of the legend of the Eclipse War? " The captivated mare nodded slowly as she awaited more knowledge "It was a war like no other, as Lord fought against Princess and dragon against equine at the birthplace of Chaos, and with it's end came the end of an age and with it The Age of Chaos and later what you call The Celestial Era began under the rule of Celestia and Luna, as the memory of the greatest war waned from mortal minds," The look upon her face. The look of a mare who stood before something other as they told her of an age forgotten by all but two. We slowly lead the near catatonic Twilight Sparkle back to her room and watched as she slowly drifted to a trouble slumber.
As we strolled back to our chambers we heard a pained groan from the other side of the door, we looked towards the bed as we opened the door, Silver wasn't any worse for wear but she clearly had a minor though annoying headache.
"Uhhh...." she murmured softly through the mane that she was currently using as a shield against the great malevolence that was indoor lighting. She slowly and gingerly lifted her head from the comfort of her pillow and looked at us in confusion. "Star? Did we-"
"No, none of what you think happened has happened. There was never a case where it could happen.Don't even imply that it could happen," we replied briskly
"Okay, calm down" she bristled at our response. We walked towards our latest project, and with the inscribing done we reached out into the crowns.
It's an interesting feeling imbuing a part of yourself into a phylactery. You feel your very being go liquid as a small part bubbles to the surface only to break free and be bound deep within the grasp of the crown. Deeper within the crowns we could feel the shimmering void twist in on itself as it began to take shape and gain self trapped for now in the ornate prison we had crafted for them. Go my children our thoughts echoed towards the godlings trapped within, and take this world when the time is right . We sent one crown and one book to three so far forgotten locations of historical significance where they wouldn't be found for four to five centuries at least. Then we felt a soft tug on our tail as we were picking up the tomes we had borrowed.
The tug soon became a strong heave that made us drop our books as we were pulled away from the table. Soon after we were in the same bed as Silver Script ."And the purpose of this is?
"I want somepony to cuddle," she said with something standing between faux-innocence and sincerity. She held onto us and quickly went to sleep. Seeing as our plans for the day had been completed we decided we would do the same.
So we let go of our body and cast our perceptions elsewhere.
We looked across Canterlot seeing what things of interest we would find out in the city. Among the many things we found we saw a mare running along the railroad leading to the city with what appeared to be a tome of some sort in her saddlebag. She ran towards one of the houses within the walls of the capital and burst through the door. On the other side of it was an old pegasus stallion who had been in the middle of writing something. The stallion turned in shock as the mare pulled out a needle and stabbed him with it. Not something that would cause serious injury but enough to cause a small trickle of blood to form along his foreleg. The mare took the blood and pressed it against the book which glowed in response and in an instant the mysterious mare was gone leaving both the stallion and us extremely confused.
We began searching for some clue as to who she was when we felt a pressure. A form of prodding just outside ourself like something of someone was trying to ease their ways into what they thought were our dreams. Obviously Luna would be studying us after the incident with her nephew and where else to learn a being's secrets than in their dreams?
If it was secrets she wanted, then it would be secrets she would have. We reached out to her mind and pulled it into our own, she struggled against us but soon she was engulfed by our being.
We could sense her. The soft clopping of her hooves as she explored her new surroundings. The soft sound of her breathing.
And the sound of her thoughts.
The lost goddess wandered across a seemingly endless desert of black sand shifting and swirling in ordered and controlled patterns beneath a colourless void of a sky. She looked to her left and her right, her curiosity apparent to us. She saw across the desert obelisks carved from what appeared to be volcanic glass that shimmered organically under the unseen light of the sky. Each obelisk was part of row and each row part of a greater pattern of straight lines. The obelisks held tomes within them, each tome holding our memories and knowledge. Some described semi-corporeal illusion magic, while others would describe in detail the fall of the Roaman Empire under the rule of the Mad King. We saw Luna flipping through a few as she passed each one seeming to be searching for something in our endless library. She traveled past structure after structure, her search for anything indicating who or what we appearing to be fruitless. Until she stumbled upon something.
An obelisk that dwarfed the others and stood at the nuclear array of the grand library that was this world. Upon it were carving shimmering an ethereal green depicting the rise and fall of civilizations on its colossal faces. Luna reached out a hoof to touch the structure and vanished from this place. We could feel her fear as her wings swung out to stop her fall into what appeared to be a shimmering void only to feel her hooves standing upon a solid nothingness, she walked onward looking for answers.
What she found was nothing like what she had expected.
We could hear what she was thinking about what she saw. She had expected a demon or a malevolent spirit but this...
This was something else entirely.
It hung unmoving in the the forbidding and endless, unfeeling sea of black. She thought she was seeing a starry night sky before her but as she looked further in each direction she realised it was something greater. The points of light and stellar clouds drifted along the breadth of its vast being. She saw titanic constellations and nebulae form and fade before her across the endless sky that was this grand form. To call it draconian was to compare a speck of sand to a continent. To look upon was to know it was the night. It was not an I it was an Us , one made of many who's minds she felt stirring deep within, a being that dreamed from the void and from its imaginings creatures would leap from it as Ursas, Lupas, Scorpios and twisted formations born from the mortal minds below. The creature's thought reached out to the world shielded within its light as inside it shook and tore at the chains placed upon it long ago hungering for the worlds end.
Luna could not look away from the thing to which she was but a pale imitation. Before her was the Forgotten Night and the Dreamer of Death.
Before her was an Ancient Lord.
Author's Note
Luna must make a successful saving roll or suffer D20 SAN loss
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
7 And You Will Know I Am The Lord
The Ancient Lords...They called them gods once unknowing of their true nature beyond their perceptions. The being before her was older than all.
"Selene...Nightmare...Luna..." it uttered, the midnight blue equine flinching in surprise. "Goddess...Night-bringer...Usurper. What brings you to our Shimmering Void child?"
"Who...What are you?" she asked us, too scared for her speak to devolve into middle equish for the time being.
"You don't remember us...Few of your kind do. After all, your sister wouldn't allow it," it chided "You've met us before, less than a day ago in fact, you know us as Animad," her fear was apparent in her eyes as her irises contracted to pinpricks. She shook her head refusing to accept the truth before her.
"No...No. How could no one have known about you?" she screamed in frustration at more at herself holding her head in her hooves seeking comfort and refuge away from us and the piercing gaze of our slumbering eyes searching for any explanation for how this could have eluded her, the sovereign of dreams and keeper of night.
"We have been here longer than you believe Luna, we were there at your birth... We were there at the birth of Discord and the Age Of Chaos...And we were there when you and your sister struck us down and dragged our corpse across the void for the millenia since the end of our age,"
She slowly lifted her head from her hooves and looked at us. The stars shimmered upon us as nubulae came and went upon our ethereal wings, wings that enveloped the seemingly petite and fragile world she called home. In its orbit was two orbs of light surrounded by the remains of smaller but still vast creatures surrounding it. "Your...But your supposed to be dead...We killed you!"
"Even dead gods dream," . We couldn't help but laugh at what she had said. She had honestly believed for almost ten thousand years that she had killed us that day. That she had proven her power to us by robbing us of the night sky at the end of our forgotten war. "You believe yourself to be victorious? You believe yourself capable of even harming us? You are not the valiant hero in some grand tale that will win you back the love of Equestria. You are but a pawn shaped from the ashes of gods to fill a role. You believe yourself to be independent, even after you cast us out you have been nothing but a puppet to The Tree of Harmony and the Lord it embodies, kept around until you were no longer needed," we could feel her self-doubt and regret rush through her as she shook under the force of our words, the suppressed pain and anger of a thousand years of standing in the shadow of another, the anger at the knowledge that deep down she knew that what we said was true. A weak mind is so much easier to break.
Our mind stretched out towards hers, pressing against its cracks and faults forcing ourselves deeper into it tearing away at its supports and crushing its foundations. "The world you hold so dear will not last. You did not defeat us, merely slowed us down. The skies will burn bright as ashes fill the air, the dead and dying will rise thirsting for the souls of the living. We will rise to impose order upon your precious world through its glorious destruction. Our return is as inevitable of death...As inescapable as fate.Long after you have drawn your final breath we will endure, waiting beyond the veil to consume the mortals you guard. There is nothing you can do to stop the Blackmarch," The small shaking form of the Princess of night shook and sobbed softly.
"No!" she yelled in stark defiance "I will not let you hurt them!" her horn glowed shades of blue as she charged a spell intending to harm us in some way, hoping that she could in some way stop us.
What we said to her next crushed the sputtering embers of hope that still lived inside her. "Why bother? You have no purpose outside of what we give you," we said to her as tears flowed freely down her muzzle dripping into the nothingness below. "You are a loose end, a failure. We have no further use for you," her horn dimmed as her mind began to fade "Let go...And embrace the void" , and at that moment we broke through into her mind.
She felt no pain, no want in heart and no need in her soul. For she had hidden herself away deep inside her psyche where the outside world could not hurt her, where our words could not burn her. Though her body remained her mind had run off to the darkest and most secluded parts of her mind, and outside in the world of the woken mortals her coat changed as its many shades of blue faded away. We had not broken her, we had merely applied pressure to the cracks in her mind formed by millennia of neglect and a want for love that she would never gain now. Her body drew breath, would respond to stimuli and digest nutrients, but she was anything but alive now. Her soul had moved on.
She was a husk, no more useful than she had been to us two minutes ago.
"Pathetic," that was all we said as we cast out the shattered remnants of her mind from ours own. One more annoyance had been removed. Another step in our plane completed. With one of the Triarchs removed we began the next step. We pushed our mind against the veil, prodding and twisting at it pushing our thought into the world. Across the continent ponies awoke, ponies descended from the Priests of Order. Throughout the continent our call was heard.
"Rise," that was all they heard before they vanished
Far across the land ponies were shocked from their slumber unable to resist the call of their Lord. Earth pony, pegasi and unicorn vanished as their marks changed to grey star bursts with a single unblinking eye formed over it. Wives and husbands disappeared from their beds, children suddenly falling from their mother's embrace as she vanished, law makers blinking from existence in the middle of planning their new laws. All of them disappeared only to materialise in the Nightmare Wastes near the abandoned temple within.
They began rebuilding. Boulders, rubble and bones were swept away to make room for new pillars and foundations, the sparse life their was removed to make way for new structures.Even half built it was a magnificent feat of architecture, great spires reached out to the heavens and spikes dug deep to the earth to hold it it in place, great black walls were raised to push back the world. Our remaining temple would soon stand tall in the great wastes of Draconia.
No thought existed outside of our own, they built and toiled to bring back our presence to the world. Our Cult of Order would be built anew guided by High Priestess Silver Script.
We awoke in our chambers, finding ourself alone, we looked outside and saw that it was still dark.
"Well, seems our work here is done" we said to ourself as we walked out of our room. "Now to make sure that we will be followed," we said as we made our way across the hall.
The sun rose slowly as Celestia gently pushed the solar orb into the sky bringing with it the start of the new day. We saw confusion make its way onto her face at the sight of the moon and stars still hanging in the sky. That confusion became concern as she made her way to her sister's chambers only to find her gone, after all it would make sense for her to sleep during the day when she had to raise the moon at the days end. Yet she wasn't there. We saw her start running from room to room looking for her unable to find her. She kept running until she happened to run into the elements minus young Rarity.
"Twilight have you seen my sister by any chance?"
The lavender mare shook her head in reply "No, have you seen Rarity?"
"I can not say I have, maybe their in the throne-" Before she could finish her sentence a piercing wail was heard from the aforementioned throne-room, the six mares ran towards the source to the scream. Celestia flew ahead of the rest and burst through the door hooves first, and immediately regretted it.
Scattered across the room were the bodies of Lunar and Solar guards lying motionless on the across the room, their eyes white voids, and their fur muted shades of what they used to be. Seated upon the throne was the lifeless husk of the princess of the night her hair lying limp against her face hiding the same void in her eyes that looked towards the body of Rarity lying at her feet. Their souls had departed, moved on from their physical shells to join us beyond the veil.
Celestia shook in place tears streaming down her eyes, sorrow and rage visible on in her eyes as she saw the symbol scorched into the wall above the throne. An eye imposed over a starburst with text written in bold capitals above it.
BLACKMARCH AWAITS
Author's Note
Why yes, I did just kill best pony.
Six little ponies who saved many lives One was lost in slumber and then there were five
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
8 When I Bring My Wrath Down Upon You
8 When I Bring My Wrath Down Upon You
"You like it? Abstract art isn't really our forte but we think this was a good first attempt" our vessel phased into existence next to the throne, only to warp away from it as Celestia blasted at us. "Now Celestia, please be civil about this,"
"Civil? Civil!" we felt gravity lose its grip on us as Celestia slammed us against the wall with a muffled thud."You are going to tell me what you have done and fix it before I gut you like a fresh trout!" Here we were slowly being crushed to death by an enraged lesser deity while remaining the voice of reason, it was good to be in control.
"Only on one condition," our mind reached out to theirs and pulled at them, "no magic" we immediately fell down to the ground on our hooves, we looked at the equines standing before us, Rainbow Dash had fallen to the ground, Twilight face was a burning red from multiple futile attempts to cast a spell while Pinkie Pie was in a state of panic, her mane having straightened out and lost its capacity to store objects. Applejack's legs bent inwards ever so slightly almost as if her body had gained some phantom weight. Fluttershy on the other hand had not changed in the slightest seeing as she had been able to jump behind her friends in the hopes of using them as flesh-walls as per the norm. With everyone incapacitated we slowly walked down the stairs leading from the throne, "Now that I have your attention, I'll answer some of your questions,"
"What did you do to Luna?" Celestia snarled through clenched teeth as her knees buckled beneath the weight of her own body. We lifted Luna's husk in our magic towards us.
"She stared into the void, and we stared back," we replied.
"What. Did. You.Do?" Celestia said with a glare that could melt glass still trying futilely to cast another spell on us. A small smile appeared on our face.
"Why are you so angry? We've merely prevented another Lunar Rebellion, after all nightmares are not so easily forgotten," Luna's coat shifted from a muted shade to an ebony shade through a simple illusion. The mares standing before us was to put it lightly deeply shocked by what we said. Twilight's first victory, her moment of triumph had accomplished nothing. Though few of her adventures really did. "If she was so devoid of darkness as you thought she would be alive, now," our form shifted growing taller growing wings and our coating changing into a deep blue while our voice became more feminine , "She lives forever within us," our appearance shifted to the element of generosity "As so many others do," our appearance changed again and again to faces from a forgotten empire, faces and names no one remembers.We turned our attention to Twilight Sparkle who stood staring at the husk of one of the fallen guards, his armour and weapon untouched on the floor of the hall. She looked up at us and asked the question she had asked only a few days ago.
"What are you?"
Shifting back to Luna's appearance we knelt down so that we were eye level with her"We've know each other for a while, we guess we'll tell you about ourself" we held out a hoof and a small white ball, roughly the size of an orange appeared with lines matching the shapes of the planet's continents, "Now imagine that this is your world," we watched as the orb rose into the air until it was halfway to the ceiling. Behind it another image formed, a deep purple projection of our true form who's wingspan stretched from one end of the room to another its head tilted downwards at the small sphere before us. "That, dear Twilight is us," we gave her a short moment to drink in the image before we continued "We have been known by many names in many tongues. The Bringer of Nightmares, The Father of Dragons,The Forgotten Sky,The Lord of Order and Death even the Queen of Night, these are only the names given to us by the denizens of this world. But the name we identify ourself by...Is Sator Ni'Mad," The others showed signs of confusion but Celestia, we could see in her eyes that she feared for her life.
"But...Your supposed to be-"
"Dead? That's what your sister said when she invaded our dreams," we said as we trotted slowly towards her lifting her head to face us with a hoof. "And we all know how that turned out for her," we said with a small smile, we slowly lifted her and the element into the air in our magic and watched as she struggled in vain.
"Wha-What are you doing?" Fluttershy said as she finally found the nerve to speak.
"Removing threats," we replied before dropping them again, all except Celestia. "Its been so long since we've harvested souls, we believe that a little...Practice is in order" we pulled Celestia closer to ourself "How long has it been Celestia? ten-thousand years now? Our face creased into a frown Ten-thousand years trapped in our own body, ten-thousand years left to watch worlds grow and fade unable to do anything but speak into their minds," the blade we had used in our duel the previous night formed before us moving closer to her face as a small smile crossed our face "Ten-thousand years waiting for this moment," but before we could do anything we felt a strange...Feeling piercing through our chest. A sharp cutting sensation that stung our thoughts and clouded our mind.
Pain we thought as we looked at the sword tip protruding from our shoulder . Its been so long since we've felt your sting . We looked towards the door of the room to see the prince of the Crystal City State, murder on his mind and meeting our gaze with a burning glare. But he had a weapon, we had observed him and the guard before, dual weapons were not part of their armory only individual blades were employed, it couldn't have been him. Then who? we turned our gaze towards the hilt of the blade.
Only to see it held in Twilight's jaws. A mixture of anger, fear and shock danced across her face as she looked into our eyes. Odd...This is unlike her, an anomaly...A weakness . A weakness that could be exploited, she may still be of use after all we thought.
"Well...We guess congratulations are in order Twilight, you've surprised us yet again, what an odd anomaly you seem to be," we said with an almost affectionate smile. "Sadly," we began as we slowly pulled the blade out of our chest "We don't have any more time to converse," we walked towards the open door, Shining Amour still stood there brandishing his weapon as we walked past, stopping to look back at the six equines behind us "After all, we have an apocalypse to plan,"
"W-we'll s-stop you! You won't get away with this!" Twilight yelled at us. We smiled warmly at her.
"Your always welcome to try, but for now we're sure you have bigger problems to deal with," and by some great twist of fate a sound of screaming from outside the castle and what sounded like a mob heading towards it. "After all most of your citizens won't respond well to the death of a monarch," small parts of our body began to break away an fade from view as we walked away only to be blocked by Twilight's brother.
"Your not just going to walk out of here after what you've done! Turn yourself in!" emphasizing his point by moving his sword closer to our face. We don't have time for this we thought as we slapped him across the room into the throne where Luna's body once sat. There is still so much to do
We appeared in the centre of a collection of circles, each circle surrounded by another and the spaces between them lines with even more all carved from black stone with runes and carvings of events from our past but four in particular caught our attention , carvings of dragons flying away from the mainland, images of maremaids building under the watch of a siren-esque creature, and a twisted monstrosity made from a thousand creatures bursting from the body of a serpent. But the largest of them all was on the opposite wall, a large stone tapestry of us diving towards the Princesses, elements armed and glowing, pointed at our avatar in all its dark glory, all engraved upon the ebony walls.
Our attention was sadly redirected elsewhere by the sound of metal boots heading towards us. "Silver, how goes the construction project?" we said turning to face her she wore the garb of our cult, a black robe with silver patterns on its edge with a silver necklace bearing our mark and a simple headdress, a tiara in appearance but with its point pointing down towards her brow. She stopped before us and bowed.
"The walls have been raised and the runes carved," she replied before lifting a rapier to us. A silver gray weapon with a chamber containing what appeared to be a crystal between the handle and the blade with runes carved into it, "Interesting ," we replied as we slowly swung the blade back and forth , a combination blade and casting tool, the battle mages wouldn't have to depend on ranged attacks and all non-unicorns could cast basic offensive and defensive. We placed the blade in silvers hoof "Make sure everyone is outfitted with these," .
She gave us a look of confusion in response to our command "But my lord, we haven't even completed the temple! The walls are the only thing-"
"That we need for now," we interjected. "We've already bought you enough time to prepare an army, but there is not enough time to waste building the temple. Celestia will be attcking with an army by the end of the month and we need a standing guard by then, not a palace for them to tear down," we said with a hint of annoyance at the reality of it all, they might have been loyal cultists but they were still only mortal ponies, and we needed something to fight off whatever Celestia could throw together. We looked outside the temple, and saw the great rocky plains of death that were the Nightmare Wastes, we looked to the west and saw the mummified body of dragon, left untouched over the centuries when a grin curled its way across our face. We teleported ourself along with Silver to a nearby hill overlooking our temple. "Tell me Silver what do you see?" we said sweeping a hoof across the landscape before us.
"Clouds, rocks and a lot of dead bodies," she replied instantly.
"You see dead bodies, we see an army waiting to be raised" we smiled at that adorable look of understanding that appeared on her face. We teleported back to the walls of the temple "Raise the dragons first then work on building up some foot soldier and maybe some golems if possible" we stretched our wings and prepared to take flight.
"Where are you going?" Silver Script asked.
"You seem fully capable of raising keeping everything in order, after all we did choose you as our High Priestess," she replied with a blush and some mumbling so we took off to the west back towards Equestria.
It took most of the day but we managed to make it to our destination before sunset, we could have just used a few long distance teleports to get there but we found that flying was more relaxing. We turned our gaze downwards to see the mountains north of the Crystal City State.
The snow storm had died down giving us a clear view of the ice scarred ruins of the Old Kingdom. The Frozen North that was what the Equines called it though few knew it even existed 'an old pony's tale' they called it, just like us. We touched down on a terrace on the castle, ancient unicorn architecture if we remembered correctly making sure to clear away the corpses before sitting down. We looked to horizon and saw the sun dip in the sky, its descent turning the sky a burning orange in the process, we let out a content sigh Its all so...Calming. Too bad we're going to destroy it all . It had been a while since we had been quite this happy...Then he came.
"Oh look! You still know how to smile," we heard as with a flash Discord appeared. "So, Annie" he said as he put us in a southern bell dress, we tried our hardest not too kill him right on the spot "What seems to making you so happy?"
"Just enjoying the first feeling of serenity we've had in a hundred thousand years. Why, pray tell are you here?"
"Because I enjoy you company" he said with an insultingly fake smile an squee. We raised an eyebrow in response. "Fine," he flashed again and returned as a judge looking over a scroll "The defendant has been charged with twenty counts of murder, one account of count of regicide one account of assault, grievous injury, causing twenty thousand bits worth of damage to private property as well as inciting rebellion in the capital, and according Shining Armor you hit him" he said looking over the glasses he didn't need.
"Is it really regicide if her body's still alive? After all we only took her soul,
"I would be of the mind to agree Annie, but old Sunbutt," he said materialising Celestia's wings and crown "Isn't exactly over the moon about it, no pun intended,"
"Did Celestia send you here hoping she could get her precious sister back by asking nicely? Cause if that's the case she's going to be sorely disappointed " we replied with a small grin.
"What she's asking for is your unconditional surrender," he said holding out a treaty asking for our imprisonment That got a genuine laugh out of us.
"Celesta wants us to surrender? You cannot possibly be serious, Discord did not flinch making us stop laughing "You're actually serious...Well then, tell Celestia that if she wants to stop us she's going to have to get off her royal posterior for once and protect her people now that her go to weapon is broken,"
"I don't think you understand which ponies your dealing with,"
"And we don't think they know either," we replied with a steely glare "Now leave, we don't have any more time to converse nephew,"
"Fine the-Wait, what was that about neph-" we teleported him away and looke back to the horizon only to see that the sun had already gone and with it any sense of peace we had left. So we spread our wings and took flight again.
After all we had a war to plan.
Author's Note
What did you think you could evacuate THREE NATIONS without anyone dying on the way or simply refusing to leave?
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
The moon was held high in heavens gleaming shades of pearly white seemingly in mourning over the loss of its sovereign. On our way past the Crystal Mountains we sensed something...Dark below us somewhere in the snow, we slowly descended to the ground to take a closer look."Well...What have we here" we said as we lifted up what appeared to be a curved horn from the ground. "You might be of use," . We kept hold of it in our magic and continued flying back to the temple.
We flew back to the temple and looked to the skies. Here in the Nightmare Wastes clouds were ever present, thick enough that the stars were obscured but thin enough that the moons light shone through. But the moon was not alone in the sky, we looked to the point above the centre of the circles and saw the soft glow of the the rift that Twilight had been so kind as to 'donate' to us. "We could open the gate right now," we whispered to ourself "Everything we would need is already in place, but there still so much to do," we continued to stare at our means back into this world, if only in spirit.
"So, how was your little trip dear?" we heard behind us, Silver Script was standing there waiting for a response, holding two glasses of wine.
"Not very eventful, the Princesses, at least the ones that are left asked for our unconditional surrender," Silver Script covered her mouth attempting to mask a quite snorting.
"They...Cannot...Possibly Be...Serious," she said in between bursts of laughter. We didn't respond "Oh they were actually serious." she stopped to clear her throat "So, did anything else of interest happen?
"Well, we did find this," we replied pulling out the gradient red we from behind our wing. The look on her face made it clear that she had some idea of what it was. "We think it may be of use to us,"
"You can't possibly be thinking of using him in the army, Sator" she balked "we both know he cannot be trusted, he would sooner eat his own hooves than follow your orders,"
"We are aware," we said as we walked to the centre of the circles "but he was strong, he may have even ascended if not for Amica's meddling," we pulled at the ground forming a pedestal rising to the base of our neck in height."Even if we choose not to bring him back, his horn could work as an exceptional focus for the spell," we explained as we placed the horn into a small hole in the pedestal. And once its done we thought to ourself we'll finally be free . We thought about the plans for the next month, we would have to check the progress of Celestia's guard as well as prepare a decent enough defense. Speaking of defenses...
"Would you like to see the army Sator?" Silver asked, we nodded and followed her to the camp nearby, watching as she hopped slightly in excitement as we trailed behind her, and for the second time that day we had been surprised.
Sixteen legions of undead equines stood before us a deep purple glow shimmering inside them, all equipped with with swords, axes or crossbows and in front of each legion stood an animated dragon corpse a cold flame burning deep inside their chests awaiting their orders to destroy our enemies. These were not merely flimsy corpses given life again, they were a proper army, a soulless army but an army none the less, if any fell it would not be for long as their wounds would heal not having to fear death in any way. We looked at Silver Script looking at us with a smug grin waiting for our congratulations.
"You have impressed us Silver, we did not expect you pick up necromancy so quickly," we said as we rubbed our chin in thought.
"Well the others helped too," she pointed towards a group of twenty other cultists still at work raising and arming their creations, next to them was an earth pony hard at work shaping and carving large crystals into shapes vaguely resembling a giant diamond dog before carving runes into its arms and legs as well as inside what seemed to be a hole in the top where he placed a gem seeming to spark the construct to life and walk to the ever growing line of similar golems.
"Well, it would seem that everything is going according to plan," we said with a smile "If you need us we will be resting in our tent" we turned back to the camp when we heard Silver lightly hit her head with her hoof in fake self annoyance.
"Oh I knew there was something I forgot," she said as she walked up to us "Lucky for you there is plenty of in my tent," she said in a sing song manner wiggling her eyebrows at us. We stared blankly at her turned on our heels and walked away. "Ah, where are you going dear?"
"We're going to go talk to one of our sisters" we replied with no attempt at masking how annoyed we were about it. As long as it gets us out of this situation we thought as our body faded away leaving a cloud of dust and a dissapointed priestess behind.
Celestia had been having a good dream, she was alone in a room filled with eclaires and donuts, cakes and pastries and scones filled the room to the brim as the sun shone through the open window making the desserts and Celestia's eyes sparkle with joy. She picked up a particularly sugary coated donut when we decided to make our presence known. She bit into the ball of fried pancreatic failure to find the inside black and oozing with bile making her stomach turn. As she dropped the rotting ball to the ground the decay spread consuming everything in sight and adding it to its black secreting mass leaving behind an empty unfeeling void.
"Solaria...Celestia...Goddess...Monarch..." she turned slowly to see behind her a dragon of pure black with stars shimmering in the purple skies of its wings. We looked down at her from a hundred hooves above and saw her glare at us, charging a spell to fire at us. "That won't be necessary child," we said as her magic faltered and blinked away.
"Sator!" she spat out "Explain yourself!"
"Oh Celestia, stop acting like you can actually make us do anything," we replied as the background of her dream shifted. The void was filled with a blue haze that filled the sky, a sky filled with giant rocks and landmasses floating on their own accord in the sea-like sky. "We came to show you something, or rather someone," . A shadow fell on Celestia, blotting out all light falling on the island she stood upon, she watched her slowly turn her head around and savoured the look of shock on her face.
"Oh, who might you be little one?" the behemoth asked. The creatures body spanned a similar length to ourself, its body at random intervals segmented into the appearance of another scaled creature, its body ended with a large black whale fluke that waved away islands as it gently swayed back and forth. Lining the length of it back were wings, thousands of wings of all kinds with two pairs of wings near her shoulders being the largest, one pair resembling a chagelings and the other pair reminiscent of a moth's. Feathered, scaled chitanous and leathery wings twitched softly as the creature slowly spiraled around itself, its myriad of legs and other appendages scraping against the clouds that drifted by. To top of the chimeric appearance of the being was her head, adored with hundreds of horns and ears and seven crimson eyes all placed upon a black equine head looking down at the frozen form of Celestia. It spoke to her like a doting aunt would speak to a foal "Why hello there, my name is Ordina, but you can call me THE DEFILER OF COUNTLESS MINDS! " she yelled "Oh that came out wrong, what I meant to say was I WILL BRING ANGUISH AND RUIN TO ALL YOU HOLD DEAR! No that's even worse!" she yelled bringing a polar bear paw to her head "I am Ordina, Patron of the Mad and Mother of Chaos, and who might you be deary?" she said with what we assumed was supposed to be a friendly smile but instead turned out as terrifying to lesser beings.
"I'm Celestia" she replied not bothering without giving her title staying perfectly still as not to provoke the monstrosity before her
"Oh how delightful, you must be the pony Annie has been telling me all about" she said turning to face us "Hi Annie," she said waving a few paws, claws and tentacles at us.
"Hello sister, how long has it been since we last spoke?"
"Oh its only been three hundred years, nothing noticeable," she replied nonchalantly. "Now tell me why this little cutie THAT WILL SOON KNOW TRUE FEAR here anyway?"
"We thought we would show her a bit more about us seeing as she thought we were only a very powerful dragon, and seeing as we're going to kill them all soon we thought it would be nice if she knew a bit more about our pantheon"
"Oh how precious!" she said as she lifted the stiff body of the ivory monarch ""I'm going to laugh when you die, HAHAHAHA!, but then I'm going to cry because I won't be able to TORMENT YOU FOREVER !" she said as she destroyed a floating continent with a flick of her tail. "Now I'm sure you have some questions about us so ask away,"
"I thought I knew what you were, but clearly I was wrong," Celestia said "What are the Ancient Lords really? Where did you come from?"
"Oh that's a simple one deary, when two gods love each other very much, they get together and BEGIN A CONFLICT THAT CAN END CIVILIZATIONS ONLY ENDING WHEN ONE IS CONSUMED" "
"Consumed? what do you mean consumed?"
"You Celestia, are immortal you will never die of disease or old age, but you can die by other means, Ancient Lords however, are omortal, we wish to exist therefore we do, we think therefore we are," we explained "Whether or not we can die is entirely our choice and ours alone, we cannot be killed, only broken down into weaker pieces, and those pieces can consume other gods to try and remake us, if given the chance,"
"And trust me, there are a lot of gods out there who would like to see us dead, like Gaia, you remember Gaia don't you Annie? You set her world on fire and left her there trapped forever," she said in the same manner a pony would talk about an ant they stopped on while walking home "I never saw the fun in killing ponies, you can't torment them if your dead, their souls just fade away into the void. I'm more of a drooling insanity kind of god myself," she said as she summoned a rabid dog into existence only to collapse face first. We watched as a small whisp rose from its body playing a small little harp which Ordina immediately ate as we both laughed. Celestia didn't see the humour in it.
"Fade away? Burning worlds? Drooling insanity? What are you two talking about!"
"What we're saying Celestia, is that there is honestly nothing you can do to stop us. If you succeed in trapping us again then-"
"It'll be my turn to bring cotton candy, chocolate rain, UNENDING LAUGHTER AS FOALS WEEP TEARS OF BLOOD and sandwhiches with rocks for bread!" Ordina yelled, "We have a pool going, three quintilian souls to the first one to break us out of this cage Amica made for us,"
Celestia looked from Ordina to us and back "You-Your worse than Discord, worse than Sombra!"
"We would think so, since we created them," we said as we rose off the island to float next to our sister
"Oh don't bring up that disappointment of a child," the draconequss spat "All I wanted was for him to settle down, start a family and bring about unending ruin like a good child should, but instead he sides with Amica's puppets , it's like he doesn't even know I exist," her face shifted from angry to furious then to sad before shifting back to a disconcerting smile. "one quintillion souls if he survives the Blackmarch,"
"Dear sister we do believe we have a wager," we chuckled. Our small bout of laughter was cut short by a small bolt of light that struck at our head, it didn't hurt but it was annoying
"You can't just bet the lives of entire worlds like they were some cheap currency!" Celestia yelled "You have no right,"
We brought our head down towards her and glared at her through the glow of our eyes "We can...And we will," we growled, we spread our wings out in one stiff motion casting out the islands and clouds of the dream leaving only an unending void "The weapons you wield will be the means to your end Celestia, remember that as you send your army our way,the spark shall set us free," with our cryptic message delivered we sent her back to the woken world to contemplate what she had seen.
"Oh, did you have to send her away? I had thought of so many lovely ways to MAKE HER WISH SHE HAD NEVER BEEN BORN that haven't had the chance to try in aeons," our sister whined her lower lip trembling. We stopped flapping our wings and touched down on the remaining island in the void.
"You're twenty solar cycles old, you can wait a few millenia to torment mortals,"
"But I was asleep for six of those, its not my fault I take short naps Annie,"
"I'll save a few million equines for you," we replied as we curled up and prepared to sleep.
"Oh, you don't have to do that for me." she said as she flew over to give us a multi-armed hug before disappearing with a white flash. We closed our eyes and began to dream, dreamed.
We stood, our wings stretched out illuminating the dark side of Equss, unable to move as we mentally strained against the spells that bound us as we had done every day for ten thousand years. The Shimmering Void, the place where gods feared to tread ,a great unfeeling nothingness separating Equss from the rest of Creation, a great empty prison to contain the 'Bringers of Ruin' as some called us, a place where at its edges were filled with half -formed things born from our violent dreams before we had begun to awaken, the place where mortal minds would experience what they called nightmares and be driven to madness if given the pleasure of meeting our sister.
All of this was guarded by Amica, The Traitorous Warden and Lord of Harmony. She was young only ten millenia old taking the form of a shimmering blue alicorn with a varied chromatic mane, it was her who had helped the Princesses in their rebellion against us and has kept us trapped here since that day, not because she cared for the other worlds as the other gods would like to believe, no she did it simply because she wished to maintain harmony in the world we had threatened. And now that we had begun to awaken once more we were prepared to take back our freedom, but she would not act, not yet. The mortals could not know about her lest it upset the fragile balance she had built since Luna's banishment.
We were not alone. Shimmering creatures of shapeless dark and undying starlight flitted around us like flies but to the mortals below they were twisted mockeries of the constellations that roamed their world. Pisces the size of islands waiting to feast upon the seas, plated Ursas running across the void on six limbs that would bring ruin and death to the towns and cities, Scorpios that skittered on a thousand legs reaching out with blackened claws reaching out to the world, a void filled with things that would tear at the minds of mortals, just like a thousand years ago when one of them got summoned by Luna and almost brought eternal night,. All of them hungered, and they would soon be fed. Soon our children would claim this world and tear at its foundations, only then would we be free to impose order on the world that thought us gone.
We looked down at Canterlot, they were preparing their army, six thousand in total preparing to leave for the battle field. They won't survive we thought to ourself not once we have The Spark we looked down at the sleeping form of Celestia's former student.
The Spark shall set us free.
Author's Note
Yep Equestria is in the middle of an eldritch location
Also did you know that the average lifespan of a star is 10 Billion years?
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
Three weeks passed as Celestia attempted to calm down the uproar that her sister's fate had caused. Canterlot had been simple enough to calm down after her promise of bringing us to justice.
The smaller locations on the other hand were not so easily satiated, protests and violence continued to spread across the west, they weren't simply angry about the death of a Diarch they were angry at the failure of those in power to protect one of the most important members of their race. After all if Luna could be killed then what of the common pony? This was what they fought for as Equestria finally began to start the reformation that Amica would never had allowed. Sadly for Celestia this would have to be a problem to solve later as she prepared for the assault on our cultists.
As we said that was three weeks ago.
The sun hung low in the sky as it made its slow and hesitant rise towards the opposite horizon only stopping when it had reached a quarter way up across the sky, and floating slowly over the ocean was a fleet of Equestrian airships carrying the soldiers weapons and supplies needed to attack our temple. It was around this time that we had decided to see what my favourite equines were up to. What we saw may have been the most adorably pathetic things that we have seen in ages.
Twilight Sparkle. Was wearing armour. We couldn't decide which was more amusing, that she had gone out of her way to have custom made armour built for herself or that she actually intended on fighting. Yes, it was true that she had participated in battles before but during one of them she was wielding the power of four minor goddesses and in the other she was being used as a minigun so our amusement at the idea of her fighting in her current condition was completely founded. When we had taken a closer look at the war room of the airship we noticed that they were in the middle of discussing how exactly they could develop a good plan when the area they were attacking was almost completely unmapped.
"Your majesty I can not condone a plan like this without scouting the area out first" the General, who's name we later found out was Storm Front insisted.
"And I keep telling you there's no time to scout, its either go in immediately or let him destroy everything!" a clearly agitated lavender princess yelled in reply. There was a lot of back and forth banter between them as they tried to decide on a proper course of action. As for Celestia and the other elements, they were staying quite so as to avoid drawing the ire of the two equines bickering before them.
"Now offense your majesty, but you are not qualified in the art of war,"
"How adorable, the ponies are playing at war," we walked towards the table as our vessel, once again bearing Luna's appearance faded into being. Two guards standing at the door leveled their spears and without an ounce of fear charged towards us. Too bad they never had a chance to show their love for Princess and country as we took the minute amount of effort necessary to cause a... communication problem between their brains and every non-vital component of their anatomy leaving two guards experiencing a particularly unpleasant seizure and us unscathed. By the time we had looked up from the pathetic display before us the others were in fighting stance waiting for a chance to strike, everyone but Fluttershy who we could not see. Where is that mare? we thought before we were struck to the floor and pinned down by none other than Fluttershy herself.
"Now listen here mister- or missy, I don't care, but what I do care about is the safety of others and you can't just go around bringing so much anguish just because you think you're above it all!" she yelled at us "you might have destroyed worlds devoured who knows how many souls but you. Will. Not. Hurt. My. Friends." we didn't reply "WELL?"
"Oh, we're sorry was that supposed to intimidate us?" we reached out to her with our right foreleg which now ended in a a crystal claw and threw her off of us. "Just because that rant worked on one of our children it does not mean it automatically works on us" we picked her up by her tale so that her eyes were level with our own eyes which had begun to glow white "So unless you want to know the literally soul-shattering fate that awaits the dead you will be a good little filly and whimper softly underneath that table," but she was not capable of even that as our tirade had left her passed out from fear. We turned towards the table snuffing out the spells that the Princesses had been charging and walked towards the table.
The glare that Celestia gave us would have crushed a weaker being. "I am not afraid of you, "
"If what you say is true then why did you offer us a peace agreement?" Twilight balked at the thought of her beloved mentor ever doing something so vile as trying to choose the option that didn't result in the deaths of six thousand unwitting guards.
"Celestia, why?" her voice saturated with a feeling of being betrayed. Celestia refused to meet her gaze as she began to explain what she had been told, the nature of the Ancient Lords, the fact that there were others and the sheer scale of our plans.
"And that brings us to why we are here" we stretched out a hoof and in it a small burning sphere bearing three blue gems on its face flickered into being. "We have come to present you with an offer," an offer which we knew she would refuse. "The return of you friend's soul in exchange for unimpeded access to the Everfree Forest and all it contains"
"B-but why?"
"We have our reasons," we replied. "Now then will you accept our deal?"
Twilight sat there in silence deliberating over if she should or shouldn't accept the deal, wondering why we would ever need to go there. After a few minutes of thought she came to her decision. She walked towards us her legs shaking and her breathing heavy with the weight of her choice. "N-no," she answered "I know... How much she means to us, all of us." she spoke hesitantly "B-but she wouldn't want this...For us to give up the fate of our home just to save her,"
"What a shame..." with one swift motion we brought our hoof down with a thunderous crash, crushing the flame into tiny shards which faded to a deep black colour. Twilight looked down at the shards brushing them together with her hooves her hooves stained with the tears that fell from her eyes as if hoping that she might have been able to put it back together if she tried. But she soon fell to the ground sobbing as she lifted the pieces up only for them to fall through her hooves.
"Don't worry my little spark," we said softly "You will join her in time," we turned our attention to Storm Front "And as for your six thousand guards..." a series of roars and crushed steel rung through the skies as every single other airship was struck from the sky by our dragons "We would advise contacting their next of kin." We walked away through the walls or the airship leaving five thousand-five hundred or so dead and a Princess who's spirit had been broken.
Author's Note
Much shorter than most of my recent chapters but it does its job, had to move the other half of it to the next one.
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
11 The Spark Shall Set Us Free
We landed at our temple smirking to ourself, things had turned out just as we had expected, they were too distracted to notice the dragon attack and now Celestia's dear student was emotionally distraught. That would make her act irrationally , not accounting for every possibility as she would usually have done, Celestia was angry, the elements would be ready to destroy us at a moments notice, and with the orders of monarch guiding them the guards would be another few hundred souls for us to take for our own.
Now all we had to do was wait.
After two long tiring days the five hundred and seven equines had reached our temple and another two for them to prepare and rest for the coming battle. We watched as they pitched tents and light their fires signing and drinking and telling tales of their previous battles. The poor fools we thought with a small twinge of pity they know not what awaits them.
The sun hung high above the horizon, its rays muffled by the ever-present gloom of the of the clouds overhead, the only other light coming from the rift floating above our temple waiting to be opened. The guards were stretched out in lines of one hundred forming four rows spears and bows leveled above them hovered a hundred pegasi lead by a mare in what appeared to be armour based on the ancient centurions.
Standing a mile from the temple was our army, legions of undead supported by our cultists and golems.
"What are your orders my lord?" one of my cultists asked us as they bowed.
"Keep enemy casualties to a minimum, but keep the Princesses and the elements alive. We have...Use for them," .
Our army leveled their weapons and charged towards the guards murderous cries emanating from their form and bright flames glowing in their chests. Flames that were outshone by something descending towards them burning with lavender light and releasing an unending piercing scream as it impacted with the ground and bounced back into the sky wiping out more and more with each strike, then we realised that it was heading towards us. We have two options here we thought to ourself not run and keep the plan going but have an enraged minor deity beat our skull in every time we make a vessel, or run away and wait a few more millenia for something else to kill everything. We reluctantly chose the option that would free us sooner. We closed our eyes and waited for the impending strike of the Element of Magic, after a short passage of time we opened our eyes and saw that our vessel was still intact, we flew to one of the temple walls to see where Twilight had gotten to. Just in time to watch her destroy our cultists in one swift strike before landing in front of our temple.
We took a brief moment to slam a hoof against our face, those had been the last living equine descendants of our cult. We heard hoof steps from outside the walls heading towards us, we recomposed ourself and greeted our visitor with a smile. "Why hello Twilight, welcome to my temple, how may we help you?" Twilight replied with a blast of energy that just barely missed and scorched an outcrop of rock nearby. "We see that your aim hasn't exactly improved,"
"For once, could you please, have a serious discussion," she hissed through clenched teeth and weighted breaths.
"We are trying to and failing to do so, and in all honesty we're not sorry about that," we replied as we took a small sip of tea from a cup we had conjoured "Now as we said before how can we help you?"
"You can 'help' by turning yourself in and paying for your crimes before I beat your head into a smoothie," her horn glowed as she charged another blast this time aiming for our head.
"Crimes?" we asked with what appeared to be feigned ignorance "What crimes?"
"Almost too many to bother listing," she growled at us "Murdering Luna, killing guards as if they were an annoyance and worst of all, she charged into us and pinned us to the ground "What you did to Rarity." We tried our best not to crack under pressure but we couldn't help but make the most non-intimidating snort ever heard in Equestrian history.
"We honestly can't that we made you fall for that," we chuckled much to Twilight's annoyance "Did you really think we would just waste a soul, the soul of an element bearer no less, just to make you angry? No," our horn began to light up, similar to the one Twilight had cast all those months ago "Your worth more to us...Alive."
The runes lining the walls of the temple lit up like flames in succession, each circle and the circles within them glowed an eerie shade as more and more magic was drawn into the spell pressing against the veil until it could take no more as the rift opened.
And shattered the sky.
The skies were saturated with numerous shades as light red-shifted, dust was cast higher into the air than any pegasus could hope to reach and the rocks and corpses below shattered and decayed as the little life left in the surrounding earth was drawn in to maintain the rift from which our eldritch mirrors of the constellations that wandered their world crawled into being. All this occurred in the shade of a great ancient blackness that seemed to flow and ebb out of the breach in the sky before charging down to the ground below shaking the bones of the equines below as it lead out one infrasonic roar.
And at the centre of it all was Twilight Sparkle, her irises barely visible as she looked up at the display above her, and the thing that fell down upon her.
Twilight Sparkle's eyes fluttered as if in response to an outside light, but as she looked outwards all she saw was blackness. Complete and unfeeling blackness.
"Hello, is anypony here? Where am I?"
"Anypony? Some would that kind of presumptuous behaviour offensive." Twilight flinched at the omnidirectional sound of our voice entering her mind "As for your question, you are currently in that lovely and short span of time between when a resident of your world dies and when their souls are devoured by starspawn. Isn't nature just beautiful like that?" Twilight didn't respond, she simply sat down and looked at the floor with a blank stare, not moving and even refusing to speak for a few minutes.
"I failed...I failed everpony...Everyone. Celestia, Luna, my friends. All of them," we appeared before her bearing Luna's form. She looked at us her eyes showing pure contempt "Why? Why all of this?"
"There are three things that define a being. What you think you are, what the world sees, and what you truly are," a collection of projections representing each point appeared, each shaped like Twilight. "You see yourself as a scholar, but your subjects see you as a saviour and a ruler, but at the end of the day you are an equine just like all the others" the projections shifted to resemble us "We see ourself as the bastion of order, the world sees us as an unimaginable malevolence that will only be satisfied with the death of all things, but what we are...Is entropy and void, the eventual winding down of all systems and the purest form of order. It is our nature to destroy and we will not deny it. The one thing that differs us from Discord is that we are not tied down by commitment to anyone. Where he sees friends we see only potential pawns and momentary distractions"
"And what if what if the world says is true? You are nothing but a monster,"
We raised a quizzical eyebrow in response "And why is that, because we have killed? Is that why?" Twilight nodded in response "Then what does that make Celestia?" Twilight was taken aback by our question and stepped away from us.
"C-Celestia?"
"Don't you remember what she said to us a few months ago? 'You were supposed to be dead'? Celestia considered us so great a threat that she tried to kill us. Does that make Celestia a monster? What of your brother and the guards he leads, surely they will have some blood on their hooves from stopping would-be assassins" We brought our head down to her height so that our eyes were level "And what does that make you? Princess Sparkle slayer of hundreds of innocent ponies bound into the servitude of an eldritch god. What really makes you believe you are no worse than we are?" Twilight fell back to the floor stupefied.
"No...No..." slowly we lifted her in our magic "What are you doing?"
"To be a monster you must first think like one," In a pulse of magic the world went from a great silent void to a plane of whiteness and screams.
As we had told Twilight the time span between death and cessation of existence is very short, so while what felt like twenty minutes had passed only one minute had actually gone in the world of the living. In that time Celestia and the elements had run into the temple through the black haze that had fallen upon it to find the darkened spasming form of Twilight Sparkle lying on the stony ground.
Despite being on the brink of death she was still able to say one thing "C-Celestia...Help us "
"Twilight, hold on. Please." Celestia cradled Twilight in her hooves like a newborn foal. Twilight looked at her and then to her friends with a look of guilt crossing her face.
"E-every...Pony. We're sorry," Her eyes became a blinding white as she rose into the air and let out one continuous scream as her being was flooded with souls, fragments of our being plucked from the sky above. The kind of scream that only someone who's mind had been flooded with more knowledge than they could ever have wished for, the machinations of her world, the history of Equss, the final fate of the dead and so much more. As she screamed her body shifted, proportions were changed, features where gained and lost as we altered and shaped her body into one better suited for our plans. Her friends backed out of the temple shielding their eyes as Twilight continued to grow in size. When the light faded they opened their eyes and what they saw was unlike anything to have ever wander their world.
She looked like a two legged minotaur, her legs ending with pointed feet, her forelegs had been replaced with two slender arms each ending with a five fingered hand, her head lacked a snout instead it bore a small nose with two nostrils who's bridge lead upwards to the glowing spaces where her eyes were supposed to be. All of this being visible only because her body was devoid of body hair except for the shoulder length mane on top of which was the same crown she had worn over the months bearing five amethysts.
Deep purple robes reached to her ankles and golden armour surrounded her torso, and encased her arms shimmering in the light of a non-existent flame with enough space for her wings, now shaped more like those of a hawk than of a pegasus or alicorn and stretched down to her knees, each flap generated a small pulse of air that was felt by the equines below. To put it simply, Twilight was human, a winged human that stood a hundred feet tall but a human none the less. To the rest of Equss however she would be remembered as a monster unlike anything they had seen before. For on that day the first of the Descendant Queens were born.
And for the first time in history the Doomsday Clock struck midnight.
Author's Note
I'm dreaming of dark christmas
Five little ponies that marched off to war One became what she fought and then there were four
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
13 Dear Princess Celestia
"What was that?" the improved Twilight asked us.
"Just chanting, like the First Gods did, lovely beings, except for how they tried to tear us apart and stuff the remains into a star. Other than that lovely beings,"
"And how did that go for them?" she asked.
"We forged our forms from their blackened souls before Creation came crashing down upon itself," we replied. Twilight opened her mouth as if to reply when, despite her eyes being white voids seemed to focus on the now in comparison tiny Pinkie Pie who had somehow made her way onto her nose. We could have subsumed her there and then but we knew that someone was on their way and our little chant would make no sense if we had done something. That and the look of confusion on Twilight's face was in our opinion just adorable.
"Hey-Twi'! Lov-ing-the-new-look! So-when-do-we-stop-Ann-ie o-ver-there-and-go-home-for-cake?" she said hopping with each syllable so that she could remain at eye level with her colossal friend.
"Cake will have to come later Pinkie," her hands began to glow a deep violet shade that matched the field. "We'll celebrate after Sator's freed," her focus was quickly lost by a large pie impacting into the side of her head.
"Twilight I'm disappointed.What ever happened to the magic of friendship?"
"Discord, what brings you here?" we spoke as if welcoming an old friend.
"Oh just here to take in the scenery and pick up my friends," he snapped his talons and the bearers were gone along with the guards that had joined them. A shame really but we could always get them later. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking my leave,"
"You're just going to leave us like that Discord?" we said with false sorrow "Without getting a chance to learn about your mother,"
"Oh that isn't necessary,"
"Oh but we insist, sadly she can't meet us today though we're sure she'll visit soon," the rift began to glow brighter as we pour more of our power through it. "But we can share our earliest memories, at least the ones that will cause the least mental damage," our thoughts pushed against his own flooding his mind with images of our birth, his ancestor and the great deaths that spawned us. When he was reduced to a babbling mess on the floor we sent him back home where Celestia later found him cowering in a corner muttering about hiding from and we quote 'the things, horrible eldritch things that cast shadows upon the stars born at the death of Creation, that look upon me as a blasphemy and an offense to their being that shall tear down the veil and reach across time to hunt me'. Everyone else found it ominous but we found it endearing that there were those that feared us like others had long ago.
But that is the past, we must focus on the future we thought softly to ourself, then time will no longer bind us. This would require a better army, the one Silver had made had been sufficient at the time but... Ineffectual, what our army needed was an upgrade of sorts the undead were difficult to kill but also physically weak, the golems had been strong and resilient but lacked intelligence so we dredged up what information our souls had on automatons and made a new soldier to replace the army we once had. They would be shaped from an alloy that had been developed by a civilisation we had comsumed in the past, equal parts magnesium, titanium and lithium to make something light but stronger than anything this world had seen yet
These pieces would be arranged in a configuration of parts and segments linked by cables and crystals carrying charges from one point to another. Their components engraved with runes and circles to counteract what little weight they had and give them basic magical abilities as well as the capacity to sense their environment, and at the core of each one would be a soul plucked from our being to fuel it all. When we had presented the idea to Twilight she had been somewhat skeptical.
"The idea itself is quite impressive but where on Equss are we going to build these?"
"I'll get back to you on that in just a moment," we moved our perspective to outside of Equss and plucked a soul from our being, with a few alterations we made the soul into an emotionless sentience built upon logic and rules rather than emotion and a multilayered .
[what is this units purpose?]
"Serve Twilight Sparkle, and maintain your vessel unless commanded otherwise. Unit designation: Torem,"
[Designation accepted. Vessel required]
We poured more power through the rift converting it into matter and building for Torem a vessel, it was a great floating structure the size of a city, a great factory to construct and deploy our armies, though it would only be one of many.
"Well that answers the question of construction but how much magic will this use,"
"Your world is filled with roots stretching from one point to another all centering on the tree, this maintains the flow of magic and functions as our sister's body and cage." we explained "That is where we will get the magic from," Torem adapted to his situation well and integrated himself into the structure and began to build our army, it was efficient but it would take time for it to produce a sufficiently large force, so we decided to move onto the next phase of our plan.
"Twilight, take a letter. Dear Princess Celestia..."
It had been three days since the attack on our temple, three days since Twilight had been incorporated into our being and many months since Luna and Rarity had shared a similar fate. Now after all this time Celestia had a chance to mourn.
Before a procession of Canterlot natives, people that the elements had helped and their families. "My little ponies, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of Rarity Belle, Element of Generosity and my sister Luna, Princess of Night and Sovereign of Dreams," she spoke softly trying to hide any weakness for few outside of the elements knew of what had caused their deaths all they knew was that it was in some way related to the strange phenomena that had occurred months before. "Though like any other pony they were flawed we must remember them by what they meant to us, as sisters, as guardians and as friends. Though it pains us all to see them go, I know that they..." Celestia bit her lower lip regretting what she was about to say "are in a better place."
Family members and other loved ones took turns to say their final goodbyes to the deceased, when they were done Celestia moved towards the coffins, having to pry Jacqueline away from a place I would have expected Spike to take, and began to lower them into their graves. In a small burst of magic a scroll appeared before her which she reached out to open, if she had not already lowered the coffins then what she saw would have made her drop them.
The letter was from Twilight.
With faltering magic she slowly rolled the scroll open and read its contents
Dear Princess Celestia,
Over the last few days I have learned so much about Creation now that I've been made into one of Sator's primary souls. Did you know that there used to be seven fundamental forces including magic? Now there are only five and two of them aren't even known to ponies yet! There's so much to learn about and I have forever to do so!
The Ancient Lords may be some the oldest beings in Creation and I get to be part of one. Words can not begin to describe what its like sifting through the knowledge and culture of millions of civilisations, its a scholar's dream come true and I can't wait till the rest of you can experience it.
Hope you'll join us soon, Twilight 'Tiamat' Sparkle
P.S Sator asked me to send a crystal with this letter, he said its message he wanted to send with the scroll
Celestia's knees seemed ready to buckle in on themselves as she called the remaining elements to a private room. She lifted the crystal in her magic and poured a small amount of magic into it, the crystal glowed and projected an image of a small white sphere into the air.
"Hello Celestia, if you are hearing this then that means that Twilight has mastered long range teleportation and you should be terrified by that," some of the mares and the one young dragon in the room winced as they thought of the implications of that information.
"Sadly right now we're a bit busy re-building our army and planning the fall of Draconia so we won't be able to harass you for a while. So we made this recording, so that you could better understand why we're trying, and succeeding if we may add, to commit genocide on a scale unknown by your world." The image blinked out of existence and was replaced by an image of Equss cracking slowly before exploding "To understand our story you'll first have to go back to the beginning..."
Author's Note
WARNING! EXPOSITION INBOUND!!!!
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
14 In The Beginning There Were The Lords
14 In The Beginning There Were The Lords
But first let's get a misconception in the letter. We are not old.
Your species is old, your world is old, Creation is old. We are ancient, younger than none and older than all. Now back to the story.
In the beginning, or rather the time before the beginning , there were the Ancient Lords. Amica, Ordina and us, Sator Ni'Mad. In this age before time there was only the shapeless void. This place was where we all resided, time and space, change and stasis, life and death, nothing had shape, not as long as it remained there. This void was of perfect order and we slumbered in contentment, but our sisters wanted something that could never form here. They wanted change.
They shaped the void, bending and tearing it away from itself and through their actions time was somehow born though they do not know how. With it came the change that they had wanted.
As time flowed space chased it down as it came into being and made what would later be dubbed Creation for it was that act that birthed it. In the early point of its existence Creation ran wild colours, energies and possibilities you could not imagine nor perceive bounced through time unbound by such petty rules like logical causality. Ordina looked upon this place and was content for it was as chaotic as she was and could in be so easily molded, Amica saw the sea of wild power as too chaotic and random and wished to improve it, and we saw it only as tainted by chaos, something that had to be drawn back into our void. Whether we liked Creation or not we were unable to enter it for it existed separately from the nothingness beyond and it seemed that this maddened realm would blight us forever.
That was until from the infinite fates of the primordial chaos the First Gods were born. Beings of incandescent light and corporeal sound and possibilities who's presence pained the soul and deadened the mind, they were in all sense of the word souls formed from the wild magic of Creation coalescing into a sentient framework.
They converged and chanted their eldritch songs writing the laws that would govern the world seemingly on a whim so as to make it easier to shape. They were cleaver beings back then, they built great things and never died, with their introduction of laws to bind reality the energies slowed and condensed leaving the world black.
Then a light appeared, the first star. The First Gods were enraptured by its glow and sparked a thousand dawns. These stars moved and grouped forming galaxies and clusters growing and dying in a great harmonic cycle that spanned across the great innumerable vastness of reality.
Amica was pleased and enraged, for though a harmonic cycle had been born the First Gods lived outside it and would push back the laws they wrote if they began to inconvenience them. But they continued unabated making things built on dead constants and destroyed laws and held they figurative heads high for they were the sole rulers of their lifeless dominion. That was until they discovered the Ancient Lords, and our intentions.
For the first time in their existence they felt an emotion that was later named fear. So they shaped Creation into vast bodies so that they could fight us and they made the greatest of their stars into a cage to house our remains and sang their songs to draw us into their realm.
But instead they were dragged into ours.
From their souls we forged our body a great draconian void that shimmered like the stars that had cherished so dearly , from their corpses in all their variety Ordina made her patchwork form and from what was left Amica made a great crystal tree that glimmered with their light. What entered Creation was greater than even the First Gods had been, we each had seven souls each making up a part of our being with our prime soul at our centres. We drifted into different points of existence our minds adjusting to a vast but finite form, and prepared to shape Creation as they had. Only one of them survived past this point and gave us each the first of our many titles based on their songs.
She Who's Melody Deadens Thought.
The Song That Unfolds Reason.
And last but not least. He Who Shall Sing The End of Time.
Then space collapsed. Apparently opening existence itself into a realm who's sole defining feature was its lack of being never ends well for anything. Every star, every world, every God was lost to the dark and with the collapse of Creation it was born anew with just enough force to push us into slumber. So we slept through the births and death of stars and worlds, and when we awoke we were each introduced to something new.
Life.
The living things of creations were lesser than those that preceded them, they did not articulate concepts, they did not build like the First Gods had done, they were small, their lives measuring in years at the most and days at the least, they were merely animals who did not resist as we and Ordina began our crusade against what was and shape it to our ideals. Each of us bore seven souls to house our sentience, even one of which could easily oppose a First God, ours bore names that even now dragons and their relative species associate with their gods, Tiamat, Bahamut, Leviathan, Behemoth, Kur, Apophis and our central soul Sator, we traveled through the streams of time like you would through air feeding on the magics of worlds and stars, Ordina took a segments of Creation and made places where time moved oddly, days could become centuries, millenia could become seconds. As for Amica, she took root around a star and stretched her roots across time so that she could raise and tend to the harmonic cycle of life and death that life had introduced to her. Of us all Amica was the most content, happy with the world's she'd built and guarded, but in time even she saw fault in her perfect realm, a fault the rest of us happily accepted. The first sentient beings.
They were no stronger than the beasts they shared their world with, yet they were clever, they made tools and fire to push back the wild, they grew crops to last through the winters, and they in time built civilizations and other great things, like the First Gods.
Oddly like the First Gods.
Suspiciously like the First Gods. Because in a way that was what they were, because there is really only one thing that separates sentient beings from animals is that their bodies are vessels for their souls, the only real thing that differs between a pony for example and a First God is the amount of magic that makes up their soul, which meant that if we took souls we could make them into little First Gods and with enough of them reach a point of power where we could sing the end of time, and with it retroactively omit Creation from ever actually being.
Our plan went from large scale genocide, to metaphysical annihilation which we dubbed the Blackmarch.
Amica's went from cultivation of life to extermination of sentience lest they become like the First Gods before them.
And Ordina... Went on being the same but now with someone to 'appreciate' her work.
So we marched through time devouring civlizations and then destroying them again two thousand years later amassing souls from their bodies and their gods and in turn power leaving only an ever growing trail of paradoxes behind us. After the first two billion years of linear time we were really the only thing holding the timeline together. A detail that became really important later on.
When we reunited with our sisters.
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
15 And There Was A War In Equss
When we finally found our dear siblings we were in the process of devouring your part of creation and stumbled upon your world, it was pretty nice actually, the wildlife was sedated the locals friendly and the sky was going to war with itself in a battle that would have spelt the permanent destruction of your world, your souls and anything and everything within a 100AU radius, and it was all entirely your fault Celestia, or at least your predecessor's.
Your world had the pleasure of being the home of two of the few First Gods we had failed to consume, Solaria and Selene. Now your world had been interesting from the beginning since they had designed it to make peaceful coexistence between species a source of power, things were going well for them up until they began to dispute over what to do with said power.
Solaria being the hot head she was wanted to make more worlds like it and try and attack us, really I have seen lemmings that had a greater sense of self-preservation than her, Selene on the other hand thought that we could be reasoned with and talked down and we could all live happily together till the end of time, instead of, we don't know completely eradicating her as each of us saw her as an imperfection that had to be removed. What we're saying is that both of them were very naive and never seemed to grasp how in over their heads they would be if either of their plans were set into motion.
Luckily for them neither managed to do anything as they destroyed each other in an event your legends refer to as The Eclipse War, when Selene Eclipsed Solaria as a form of protest and died soon after in a cataclysmic battle of ideals leaving them in pieces and your world in shambles. Then we arrived, we brought our dragons, Ordina brought her draconequii and Amica brought...The Ravengers, horrible abominations that lacked souls yet thought in direct opposition to how things had actually worked and shared their creators pure hatred of sentient life. If you ever saw one you would be faced with two urges, run, or purge the world of their taint the moment you saw one. But that is somewhat irrelevant what is relevant however is what happened next.
Our little reunion was a lot like the Apple family reunions really, fun, games and happiness all around. If you substituted 'fun' with 'mass genocide', games with 'the fragmentation of the psyches of most your worlds inhabitants' and 'happiness' with 'slow and painful fragmentation'. As you can guess from this wonderful description of our meeting none of us were thrilled to see the other and immediately tried to send each other to the void from whence we came. The battle stretched the span of ages and saw the destruction of one third of creation, we tore and bled across the cosmos destroying each other one soul at a time and weakening with each blow, and of us all Amica was the weakest, her prime soul only being the size of your world, she knew we would easily destroy her if given the chance so she fled back to your world, now dragging the remains of the twin goddess across the sky to bring day and night.
There she made you, Celestia and your sister, though you were much stronger then. She lured us back and unleashed her weapons upon us, letting you tear all of us down to our prime souls before she rooted herself in your world and building the Veil to lock us outside Creation. This was in all honesty the most unpleasant thing to ever happen to us. No, unpleasant is an understatement, our minds were forced to occupy a seventh of what they used to after being basically lobotomized, leaving us in no condition to hold things together and took six millenia to piece our minds into a functioning state
After aeons of death and torment Creation could no longer take the strain of our actions and without us to keep the timeline stable Creation collapsed into itself...again, worlds never were, gods had never been and new events and ages that never occurred came to pass as slowly but surely reality healed itself, but into a different much smaller form, after all one third of Creation had gone with us,
One third of all space.
One third of all time.
One third of the physical laws that bound reality. So our age came to an end and our wings decorated the night sky, Amica fed on the magic of your friendship and we and our sister attempted to escape through vassals you may have heard of, Nightmare Moon, Discord, Sombra Rex all of them products of the Ancient Lords... All of them failures.
"And that is how we ended up here" our message concluded "Now we're in the process of rebuilding ourself to more preferable levels, which requires that I take your bodies and souls and mold them into extensions of myself like dear Twilight," we explained to the group standing around the gem "But then we thought, 'we need a new body to use', we soon remembered that you had two just lying around," The sounds of splintering wood and cracking stone followed by screams of mortal terror emanated from the chamber door. "So we decided to help ourselves,"
Celestia and company burst through the door just fast enough to see the white robed, humanoid form of Rarity marching north followed by what appeared to be twisted mockeries of the crystal ponies. Directly in front of her floating softly on six wings and breathing in the souls of the fallen funeral goers.
"Its really has been a while since I've had hands," we said softly clenching and extending our fingers in one part nostalgia and another part glee "We almost forgot how much better that hooves they are, though we think the extra wings may be a bit excessive" There was no response, only a small pulse of power and a shift in how much light fell onto the courtyard "Celestia?"
"Celestia's a bit predisposed, but we would be happy to provide my own input, brother dearest" a voice boomed behind us, demanding the attention of the bearers, the survivors and us.
Behind us stood our sister and warden, Amica having shaped the broken psyche of Celestia into a human vessel of her own. In the brief moment it took us to grasp the situation many emotions raced through our mind, surprise, shock, confusion and a small bit of joy that our sister was actually going to intervene in our plans, after all where was the fun in genocide when there was no challenge to it?
"Amica! We haven't seen you in so long," we dashed across the length of the castle to crush the hundred foot colossus between our arms. So, how has being trapped in a world filled with the one thing that disgusts you most?
"About as well as one would expect," she forcibly shoved us off of her sending us falling towards the base of the mountain before dropping to join us. "But the real matter at hand would be this Blackmarch you're starting," she stretched out a hand and formed a formidable battleaxe before taking a moment to see if the edge was just sharp enough "And I can't in good conscience let you bring about the end of time now can I? " she stood there looking at us with those glowing eyes of hers "You have two choices, return to your slumber" she lowered the axe towards us "Or face me in combat." Now as reasonable as that offer was we were forced to pass, considering we had an aversion to well...dying. We reached out to the axe and gently swatted it away before lifting ourself off the ground.
"I would love to do so, sister but the Blackmarch has barely even started yet, those dragons still exist and we would really like to change that," we spread our wings in preparation for flight then looked back at her "By the way, how valuable would you say Canterlot is to Equestria?" Amica pointed out that being the capital and centre of the country made it a very important part of trade and government "Good to know," one of our hands glowed with green flames as we charged up that spell that had ended Gaia's world and pointed it at Canterlot.
Everything went white as the blast completely erased Canterlot off the map.
"Canterlot...The bearers, I thought you needed them,"
"I needed the bearers, not the city and anyways they're fine," we replied with a brisk hand wave "Now if you'll excuse me there is a continent we have to purge," our form crumbled to dust and faded from existence leaving our dear sister, Amica to try and keep order in what would soon be a civil war riddled hellscape.
Meanwhile in Ponyville amdist the locals who were panicking about the recent destruction of Canterlot, four mares stood in confusion.
"Uh...Pinkie, what just happened,"
"Oh that's easy! Everything that happened since Annie appear-" she hopped just in time to dodge a boulder "-ed was because of three elder gods being locked into a room together because two of them keep breaking her stuff,"
Author's Note
I'm sorry that this chapter was posted later than usual, moving and changing schools and preparing for exams has been eating into my time.
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
16 The End of One Tale...
Equss was dying. There was no way of sugar coating it, the world as its natives knew it was ending. The gods of the sun and moon had fallen to the whims of eldritch deities that looked down upon them with non repentant disgust, calling their being and very way of life an utter abomination beyond compare.
Equestria and Draconia lay dead and forsaken, their great machinations lost to the iron legions of The Father of Dragons, everyone having migrated west under the orders of The Treacherous Warden to form a new nation, a nation that would built underneath her heel in a land we had yet to strike.
But some good had come from this. Equestria a land of ponies and ponies alone grew closer to their brother and sister races, joining together against the storm we had wrought, though their new nation would be totalitarian and cold, putting the good of the many above the few, they would at least have each other. But it would not last, for if, no when we won everything they knew and loved would cease to matter, for they would all become one with us and live forever within our void.
Yes...Equss was dying, and we were bored.
Yes, we were bored, the Blackmarch moved slowly but consistently across the majority of the world, tearing away at whatever it could find, but when the bulk of your forces happen to be unenhanced shambling corpses you end up having to deal with problems like decay, heat and humidity rotting them away, not to mention the carrion eaters that roamed the wild picking off some of our horde every once in a while meant that areas such as the Changeling Hive and The Crystal City-State had survived more due to their climate than any tactical genius on their part and they were such minor targets that we couldn't spare the resources to send anything beyond a force meant to keep them occupied.
This would have all been much easier if we could send our component souls out there to deal with the issues themselves, but that was a terrible idea for many reasons, the main one being what would happen if they died. Each component was not just some powerful minion, they were an extension of our being, aspects of our psyche, they were us, hence why we always refered to ourself in plural whether grammer allowed it or not. To lose something like that was, as we had stated before, extremely unpleasant to put it the least, the idea of having parts of our own mind no matter how vast it might being pulled out one by one was in all honesty horrifying . Though we could build ourself back up as we had stated to Celestia before the process always left its mark. As a fragment of our mind the loss of a component soul would lead to a fundemental change in psyche, for all intended purposes if our prime soul or any of our components died we would survive but it would mark the end of us as a distinct entity with a new personality in our place.
Ordina was a a clear example of this effect, with Mania as her only remaining soul she had rebuilt herself as a twisted and broken lord, this along with how it had taken thousands of years for us to adapt to only having one soul and another few for us to actually focus on Equss again lead to us to hide our components in safe locations and lead the forces from there until everything was in place, no matter what we would not go through...that again.
We leaned back into what was left of Celestia's throne and let out a calming breath. There is no need to panic we assured ourself. What happened in the past won't happen again, we'll make sure of it after all we Lords often used less than our full power just for the challenge. That small bit of information was enough to calm us, our thoughts drifted back through the ages reminiscing about the days when Creation was the realm of the Ancient Lords...
On a distant world orbiting a distant star a pantheon ruled from atop a great mountain, there they watched and toyed with the mortal realm they had taken from their Primordial parents, here on their world they were the beginning and end of all things bowing only to their brother and king Zeus, bound by a pact of non-aggression the gods did not know war for thousands of years. Their world was far from perfect being run by impotent and jealous children but at least they weren't in a constant state of turmoil.
But that soon changed when their court was graced by a strange visitor, her skin pale as fresh snow, almost all of it covered by red robes twisting and writhing in unseen directions hurting the eyes of all but the greatest of the court.
Immediately she was surrounded by soldiers, all of them with their weapons bared and the desire to kill burning in their eyes.
"Oh, do put those away dearies, someone might get hurt" immediately the soldiers eyes blanked and they dropped their weapons before moving out of her way "Oh how kind of you all" she chuckled. Her hand reached out and small bags of gems appeared in each soldiers hands "Go buy yourselves something pretty." making her way down the hall towards to the hall and bowing to the god sitting upon his throne.
"You are either the bravest being to grace this world, or a fool beyond compare to march into my realm and remove my guards." His statement bore no malice or anger, only the mild amusement that an deity who has seen stranger things, "Tell me, why are you here? What god do you serve?"
"Ha! Serve, that's a good one, I serve no one but myself." She turned away to look at the rest of the pantheon, glee shining in her eyes "And I'm here because I have seen a glaring error in how you run things around here." That definitely got the pantheons attention.
"And what pray tell would that problem be? I have worked hard to make sure this pantheon of mine is stable under my rule,"
"Ah, but that's where your problem lies your majesty," he heard whispering into his ear, his head snapped to the left to see the strange maiden hanging from the tip from his throne, "To prove my point answer this question, which of you in your little rogues gallery?"
The look in his eyes made it clear what he thought: What a foolish thought, I am the king of the gods, none are above me!
"We thought so," she responded "You know who is the most powerful, but that's all you know! " she suddenly appeared back in the middle of the room. "You don't know who is the bravest, or the strongest or even the most beautiful!" The female portion of the gods eyes drifted to eachother as envy began to take hold "I came here to give this crown," a small but ornate crown formed in her outstretched palm "To the fairest goddess on this planet, but none of you can tell me which one that is! Oh now what shall I do?" At this point she was one inexplicable fainting couch away from becoming a particular white mare we used to know.
"Oh dear that is but a simple question with a simple answer, clearly I am the fairest of us all, so I believe I shall take that crown now," she gingerly placed the crown upon her head.
"Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder," another said "and to my eyes you are about as fair as an in-bred goat!" she wrenched the crown from her sister's head, then another did the same, then another, soon weapons were being drawn and soon the gods and goddesses were up in arms against eachother over which goddess deserved the crown.
"What have you done?" the king of the gods roared, his voice becoming only a drop in the great ocean of noise that was now his court.
"Who, moi?" the stranger replied false confusion creeping across her face "I did nothing, all I did was point out some cracks after all my comment about command was completely true, now if you'll excuse me I must be off, stuff to do, civilisations to collapse. All that good stuff."
The king face hardened he slowly rose from his throne "At least tell me your name...So I may engrave it on your tombstone!" He hand struck out, a pulse of glowing energy zipping through the air towards her only to pause in mid air and fall to the ground in small sparkling shards.
"Well, since you asked so nicely I'll tell you *ahem*"
The world seemed to be washed away in a wave of light leaving him in a realm of impossible colours and lights bending a twisting at impossible angles. At the centre of it all was a great bird of prey composed of ever shifting smoke and embers, its countless wings extended seeming to stretch on forever.
"I am the forge of passions! The flame of war! The spirit of rebellion and collapse! All nations great and small shall one day fall and be cloaked in shadows of my wings! " her voiced boomed across the chaotic expand mixed with the sounds of crumbling structures and fading screams. "I am Pandora, Ordina's wrath." she concluded, the realm vanished and the king of gods found himself back in his throne everyone still in conflict as if he had never vanished, maybe he never had and it had all been a mad delusion of his, it had to be otherwise he would have to accept the reality that-
"You are so unimaginably puny to someone, and yes I can read your mind." She said bringing the king's potentially mind shattering train of thought to a cataclysmic end leading to the destruction of many small rail-side villages. "Now I'm sure you have a lot of questions in that little head of yours but I must away, my brother will be stopping by soon and as much as I love him I'd rather not be in this part of reality when he does buh-bye!" and with that she was gone leaving the king of gods with only his thoughts to comfort him.
Their world was burning. Many gods had died and many more were injured sending to the house of the dead so many fallen souls, the gods had failed their mortal subjects and of those that had survived many more of the gods were struck down by those they had promised to guide as their people raged against the heavens and like many worlds before them Ordina had brought chaos even with only a few choice words.
Then the moon bled, its surface taking on a deep crimson shade that reddened the skies around it as from the void beyond a great serpent descended winding through the sky on its path to the earth. His scales shimmered and writhed and twisted covering every square inch of his body in black, all except him head where only flaps of skin and a skull welcomed those who gazed upon it, all who's eyes were filled with vastness felt inside them a rage, a great burning flame of anger as resentment burst through the great wall of thought and scorched the lands and toppled their kingdoms.
"Rage...Gods sing the rage of the void and the disgust of its masters, if you will so happily accept the chaos of your kin then you shall embrace it, anger wrath and all,".
That was the last thing he heard as order was brought upon his world
"Ah, Apophis," we muttered to ourself "We always had to keep you away from the others what with you trying to kill anything that wasn't a member of your legion." a smile crawled over our face as we thought of the being we had once been, grand and vile reveling in the destruction of the mockeries of our realm and reaping from the charred husks of countless worlds the souls of the fallen, and now. Now we had spent months doing what would have once taken us an hour at most. Oh how the mighty have fallen...
That train of thought came to a screeching halt when we head someone yelling at us. In front of us was unicorn, a stallion weak tired and clearly in need of something to eat, but his armor indicated that he was, or at least had been a high ranking member of the guard, most likely a noble that had inherited the position. "Monster!" he yelled, "I have fought through legions of the dead and traversed the hostile landscape of this terrible realm you have claimed as your lair so that I may bring the justice you have for so long evaded!" he swung the lance he was carrying in wide waving arcs as if trying to intimidate us. "What say you devil?"
"We say no." we replied flatly.
"Yes! Prepare to fal-" he had stood up on his rear legs to a stance of what was supposed to be bravado but really just made him seem foolish, he stopped mid sentence and looked up at us with incredulity "No? What do you mean no? I have fought thro-"
"The legions of the dead, you made that very much clear the first time" we rested our head upon one of our hands. "But really, why should I bother? We have no real reason to try, we have vanquished your gods, torn down your homeland and taken your greatest heroes as vessels of my being." We stood to our full height and spread out our wings to cast as large a shadow as possible upon him. "What chance do you have against us?"
He stood there for a moment, fear apparent in his eyes, but that fear quickly vanished as he looked at us with a smug smile. "Oh yes, truly you are a great being ," he began, his words dripping in sarcasm, "So great in fact, that you just sit there on your throne and wait for your subordinates to do everything for you, truly a great being is what you are."
We stood there, our face impossible to read, while he just stood there, finally we chose to speak. "Your right."
"Then face me in battle and prove yourself worthy of being a vile legend!" he twirled his lance again to punctuate his words.
"Oh no, we don't plan on fighting you." we began to walk to a nearby hill and look out to the world beyond, "What I meant is your right, we've been too careful to slow. We should be out there reaping the souls of the fallen with our legions." We cleared our throat and sent a message to all who could hear me We have been slow for too long, go out, charge them, burn them kill them! Do not stop until everywhere south of the Crystal City-State is wiped clean of the taint of life! our thoughts we flooded with inquiries about the ones who were travelling west to escape, we told them to leave them be, we would return for them later.
We spread our wings and prepared to travel North-West where the crystal ponies had holed up.
"You can't just leave!" the stallion yelled. "Not till I have vanquished you, I have travers-"
Yes, yes we know. we waved our hand and a small ornate throne formed on the earth where we placed the wearied warrior, the moment he came into contact with the surface of the seat it lit up, holding him in place and causing his eyes to glow. "Now, we'll come back for you later, for now just relax and watch the end of your world."
We burst into the skies above piercing the clouds that chocked the skies of the Wastes and made our way for the last northern stronghold of Equine civilisation.
Far above the stars and moon lit the sky in their pale light, but here no one would have known for in the north the frigid grip of winter never loosened and the skies were ever grey. Everywhere, except for a city.
In the frozen wastes of the north a great light shone deep within the great frozen expanse. There in all its glimmering splendor was the Crystal Empire, or was we preferred to call it, the Crystal City-State as it was a much more descriptive name. The areas of earth that had not been paved over with radiant crystal bore short and verdant grass. Just beyond the greenery to the west of the city's edge we could see our forces, standing stock still waiting for the chance to bring death to the Crystal Ponies, but for now the city was shielded from the violent storms and our creations by a large polygon mesh of magic.
Well Armor, its nice to know you took my advice to heart. We thought to ourself as we floated above the storm casting our mind out to see what state the city was in.
Despite everything that we had done to their land the population seemed to be happy, which was understandable, if they fell then the other beings who may or may not still be on their continent would fall with them. Which is why we decided to go straight here instead of taking out the western nations like Neighpon which had been able to hold out for the time being.
We directed our gaze downwards and saw the perfect means to put things into place, below us was a group, six unicorns, all mares and dragging behind them what appeared to be a mobile stage, from this we deduced that they were probably some travelling theater troupe that had planned to seek refuge with in the city. A great black cloud descended upon them masking their presence from the outside world.
Though she tried to hide it Cadance was clearly tired, her head held slightly lower than before, her stride a little shorter and her pace a little smaller, but that was to be expected. Everything and everyone she had ever known was gone, her aunts, her friends and the unicorn that had been like a sister to her, all of them were gone. But she wouldn't just curl up in a corner and wait for the void to claim her.
No before her was her nation, her people, her ponies and as long as they lived Equestria lived. As she walked along the borders of her demesne she saw a group of weary and tired mares dragging a stage behind them slowly making their way towards the border. Stopping her thoughts she ran towards them and with a flash of magic created a small opening for them, the group trudged through the gap before finally stopping for what appeared to be for the first time in days.
Cadance ran up to the resting group. "What were you doing out there? Don't you know Sator's forces were out there?" equal parts concern and anger comprised her tone.
The leader, an earth pony mare with a dark blue coat and silver mane and matching tail rose to her hooves and bowed before her. "We-we had nowhere else to go..." her knees shook as she struggled to stay standing "Everything's...Gone." She whimpered on the brink of tears.
"Its okay, you're safe now." Cadance conjured blankets and distributed them between the group who grabbed onto them for dear life. "To be honest you may have picked the perfect time to arrive. Your stage performers aren't you?" The group all gave signs of agreement "Well, I would be honored if you performed for us at this year's Crystal fair." She began to walk away but stopped and looked back at the tired mare. "Silly me, I almost forgot to ask, what is your name?"
The leader bowed "Star Seeker, Your Majesty."
The Crystal Fair the figrative heart and soul of the Crystal Empire and its culture, booths and tents lined the streets selling delicious pastries and crystal corn-on-the-cob as well as other traditional goods were arrayed around the grand spire that was the Crystal Palace home of the Crystal Heart, the literal heart and soul of the Crystal Empire and its culture.
Just in front of it the theater troupe had everything in place, the stage was set, the backdrop in place, and the performers were all dressed in red flowing robes and harlequin masks. The crowd gathered and awaited their performance. They began to dance twisting and weaving around each other, colours dancing off their flowing robes as they waved through the air. The crowd was filled with sounds of amazement.
"I hope the performance is to your liking Your Majesty." Star Seeker said to Cadance.
"Oh its simply amazing, and please call me Cadance."
"Well then Cadence, just wait, things are about to get more...Intersting."
Confusion was clear upon Cadances face until she turned her gaze back to the stage. The dancers...They turned and bent and wove in ways that were impossible for equines, colours unknown and without name dance from their robes, coats skin and eyes. Nothing of it made sense and the air felt saturated with a great sense of wrongness . Or at least that was what Cadance saw, the regular ponies saw little as the image seared into their minds.
"What...Have...You...DONE!" Cadance's horn flared as her magic wrapped around the troupe leader.
"You like it?" she replied with a smug grin, "Just something Leviathan composed while on her campaign to the east." she looked at Cadance ,once again confused. Star Seeker rolled her eyes and continued "Really Cadance? Its only been a few months don't you remember dear old Annie? " the princess' eyes widened as our voice changed. "Now you must be wondering why we're here, well other than to kill you all. You see we found an interesting bit of information in Tiamat's memories." we reached out to Cadances mind, one mental push and her magic faltered enough for us to break free, another one and a memory entered her mind. A single sentence:
"If the kingdom is filled with hope and love, then those things would spread all across Equestria. But if hatred and fear take hold..."
"No..."
Sparks of purple-black lightning arched across the sky, the shield lying between the City-State and the frozen wastes of the north flickered before finally dying to reveal a pale twilight sky, there suspended in the air wings flared, wearing gleaming silver armor covering a grand dark starry expanse shaped in a human form with starry hair flowing in an ethereal breeze was us.
We had come, though our truest form would never walk the earth we had come, we would speak with voices of a thousand realms, through our deeds we would drag Creation back into the void that had birthed it. In that moment death had fallen upon the Empire that stood united as many and marched as legion. For we were Sator Ni'Mad, First among the Lords, consumer of worlds, slayer of gods and the last song that would be sung by Creations dying breath.
For we were Sator, and we had come.
We won't lie, we laughed, we laughed for we had won, the Crystal Heart would drive what few survivors were left on this continent into a madness from which no mortal could escape and give us the power we needed to break free of Amica's chains.
Speak of the devil and he shall come, yes that was how that saying went. For at our greatest moment victory was grasped from our hands as we were struck down from the west by none other by our dear sister Amica.
Words were not exchanged for now it was clear that whoever lost would be destroyed by the other. We burst from the earth burning swords in had as we dashed across the horizon towards each other.
The sky and earth roiled as the sounds of the battle between my legions and the those of the Crystal Empire blared out below. Amica stayed on the defensive, twisting the earth and snow to block our path briefly enough to try to strike at us with a two handed battleaxe and bursts of magical flames. We would blink from one point to another around her, staying in one place just long enough to deliver minor cuts and scrapes rather than the devastating wounds that Amica aimed to deliver, even as the Cyrystal Ponies were each claimed one by one by our legion and the snow began to melt from the energies we threw at each other the tide of battle did not change.
Then we made a mistake, our teleportation just off point, our location too imprecise and our reflexes just too slow. That was all she need, with a victorious cry she embedded the blade of her axe into our spine and pouring the power of the sun into it, burning layers away from our vessel and only stopping when we fell to the ground below like a rock.
She stood above us, axe in hand, contempt clear in her eyes as we slowly lifted ourself up. "I must say Sator, you have gone much further than I had expected, " she said as she paced around us "But I'm afraid this has to come to an end. Anything left to be said brother dearest? " We felt it, a small pulse of energy, that was all the assurance we needed.
"Don't...Move." Amica only had a moment to register what we said when the Heart released a pulse of magic that spread outwards, past the snow and frost to the rest of the continent, saturating the air with the dark energies it accumulated as the continent was plunged into madness. We reach out and drew in the souls and power towards us, floating in the air as our dark form rose into the air. We drew back a hand, glowing with power and slowly moved it through the air creating a trail of dark magic like a whip. We drew our had back again.
"Wait. What are you doing? STOP! " Amica tried to flee but before she could even move, our hand shot forward fast enough for a great boom to be heard. The whip of magic followed splitting Amica's vessel in half and erasing whatever was left, then it continued, through the north, through Canterlot Mountain, through Ponyville as it scarred the landscape. The great snake of power stopped only when it passed straight through its target shattering it into a thousand blackened peaces.
The Tree of Harmony, Amica's prime and only soul was destroyed. We gave one roar of triumph as we vacated our vessel
The Veil shattered, our bonds were broken, to the mortals below it would have seemed as if the stars were moving impossibly fast as for the first time in ten millenia we moved through the void surrounding Equss. We were free! Nothing could stop us now! From this point onward now and forever we would drink our fill of the souls that Creation had to offer, the Blackmarch would finally begin anew once we finished up with the evacuees to he west. That had been the plan, but we had to forget about a detail, a large detail.
"Oh Sator! How nice of you to stop by, tell me how has REAPING THE SOULS OF THE LIVING been for you?" We were massive, large enough that the inhabitants of Equss saw our wings as the night sky, but Ordina...Ordina was immense her mouth alone was big enough to swallow us whole, and from the look in her eyes she very much intended to do so. "Now then about that bet of ours."
"Bet? We've broken free, we've won, the Blackmarch has been a success!"
"Yes deary it was, congrats on that by the way. But, those weren't the terms, you bet that my dear Discord wouldn't survive your little campaign..." her maw curled up into a disconcerting smile "And I don't sense any draconequss souls in you, now do I?" we flew as far away as the Shimmering Void would allow, and considering it was an endless space outside reality that was a long distance. "Oh why are you running? I just want what you promised me."
"Stay away from us you chimeric wretch!"
"Come one Sator! GIVE YOUR SISTER A HUG! "
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
1 Greetings My Little Ponies
As we cast my perceptions away from the worlds beyond and prepared to rest we felt a strange shift somewhere as if some balance of power had shifted. Inquisitively we cast our eyes back into the realms in search of what could have caused such a palpable reaction on the Planes, few event would make the worlds acted as if some sort of deity had been born.
After some searching we eventually found the source of this disturbance. Coming from quite the interesting world.
Now it was our turn to create.
We cast our mind down to the realm below searching for that unicorn I had heard so much about. She had rescued a monarch and defeated a deity last time I had heard. Yes she is the one we would look for.
We eventually found our way to that odd little place they called Canterlot on the side of the mountain. Surely if Twilight was here then the Princesses would also be there, maybe the rest of the Elements would be there too.
This will be a most interesting meeting to observe we thought gleefully to ourself. But that glee was quickly replaced with confusion as we noticed all the banners bearing lavender stars hung throughout the street.
Odd. The Equines have never celebrated Twilight's actions like this before. Surely it must have been quite the achievement for them to hang these banners throughout the city we thought, hastening our search for the young unicorn, who we eventually found in the palace courtyard wings and all.
...
Wings?
This was most odd, a mere mortal becoming an alicorn was unheard of here, and what she could have possibly done to be considered worthy of such a gift was beyond us. This was clearly Celestia's doing.
'Speak of the Devil and he shall come' was the saying if we remember correctly and as the saying goes Celestia did arrive in the courtyard along with Luna and their neice and began to converse with the newly crowned monarch. We decided to observe them so as to glean some information on the current state of things in Equestria.
We did find some useful insight into the current state of the world, Discord had been reformed, Cadence had been crowned ruler of the Crystal Empire which had apparently come back and Twilight had apparently defeated some sort of thaumophage as well. But the majority of the conversation was mere small talk about their families but Celestia soon steered the conversation to the recent coronation.
"Twilight I would like to personally congratulate for what you have accomplished today," Celestia said with pride,"Few would have shown such resolve in the face of a predicament like yours, I am so proud of what you have become."
"Yes congratulations are in order."
Their reaction was less than positive, every one of them began conjuring up every spell they could think of and were clearly expecting a fight (maybe I should have dialed back on the booming echoes in my speech) Luna in particular seemed eager to fight.
"Show yourself fiend or will I have to force thou to do so myself?"
"Oh Selene, please show a little courtesy"
The look of shock on her face clearly denoted that it had been quite some time since someone had referred to her by that name and had seemed to have broken her focus as the glow of her horn blinked out completely.
"Who are you?" Luna asked instinctively directing her gaze to the sky. Odd how corporeals always respond that way.
"Oh, we have gone by many names in many tongues but you can call me...Animad"
"Annie for short?" Cadence replied.
"..."
"I'm sorry did I offend you?"
The small boulder that connected with her face soon after indicated 'yes'.
"Cadence! Are you okay?" Twilight screamed as she lifted Cadence from the floor who was too busy staring blankly into space.
'All I fell is pain' was all they were able to get out of her for the rest of the conversation so they turned their attention back to us, or rather they looked in what they presumed was our general direction.
"Why would you do that!" Twilight exclaimed as her the ends of her mane started to crackle, we would have to give her an explanation before she had another magical meltdown. Not that we feared for our own safety or anything, we were outside her reality she could not harm us out here. Canterlot on the other hand would not as lucky.
"She insulted us so we dealt swift high mineral justice upon her"
"You can't just go around and throw boulders at ponies that upset you!" Twilight exclaimed clearly exasperated by our act of divine reckoning.
"I can and I will. Cadence should be considered lucky, you should have seen what happened to the last pony that upset us. We taught his world how to create powerful spells that bathed the world in corrupted phoenix fire forever wiping his world clean of life and we left him alone to wander the ruins of his beloved home for all eternity,"
We were not aware that a pony's pupils could shrink to such minuscule proportions.
"What are you?" Twilight asked from behind Celestia.
"I am immortal, younger than none older than all. Any other questions?"
Cadence slowly and shakily picked herself up from the floor having somewhat recovered from the boulder.
"Ieeeee gotsa question," she slurred "how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if I divide by harmony?"
None, because harmony is not a wood also that isn't a logical question
"Arrr you insulmiting my brainigence? Ya wanna fight?" Cadence replied raising her hooves as if preparing to...box? Do ponies box? We would have to find out later.
"No, but I do want you to leave," and with that Cadence was gone leaving only her horseshoes and her tiara in her wake.
"Where did you just send her?" Twilight asked with some muted shock.
"To a hospital to treat the large concussion that I have most likely given her, any other topics you would wish to discuss?"
Twilight just stared up with an open jaw at how nonchalant we were about giving a member of the royal family a head injury. "You know what? It is too late in the day for me to be dealing with this right now, can we pick this up tomorrow? We could provide you a room in the castle,"
"Oh that won't be necessary, we don't believe that you would have a room large enough for us anyway"
"Not enough space?" Twilight said with a raised eyebrow "How big are you? Actually the better question would be where are you?"
"We won't tell you where we are, that is a conundrum for you to solve. We'll even make it easier for you, we'll blink once,"
"You will close thine eyes once?" said Luna "How wouldst that possibly aid us-BY CELESTIA'S BEARD!"
"Beard? I don't have a beard, what could possibly make you think I have a-MOTHER OF ME! "
During all this Twilight just stood there jaw dropping near to the point of complete dislocation at the sight before her.
The sight of the moon and stars blinking.
"Well it would seem you have found us. Save all your questions for tomorrow. Sleep well,"
With our conversation brought to an abrupt end we blinked the princesses away to their chambers.
Yes I thought to myself. This will be most intriguing .
Author's Note
So here's my new project (hopefully I won't abandon it immediatly after posting) and done only a few days before I go to South Africa.
Also lets play a game! It's called "Name the character who's name is connected to their role"
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
“Now Animad,” Celestia said looking up from her paperwork “Please explain to me why exactly I should let Twilight and her friends go with to Draconia to the single most dangerous place on the continent instead of doing the logical thing and let make them stay?”
“We can be quite convincing when we wish to be, Celestia,”
“Animad I am trying to be as polite as possible but there is no way in Tartarus that I would- ”
”Even dead gods dream Solaria,”
Her muscles tensed for but a moment before letting out a reluctant sigh “I’ll get you and the elements and airship to the edge of the Wastes you’ll have to walk from there. If you let them get hurt then so help me I will end you!"
”Equines, always so assured that that the power of friendship can conquer all. Trust me when I say this Celestia there will come a day when that power will not be enough and there will only be you to blame. Now if you will excuse us we have a nationwide paper shortage to prevent,”
“Animad,” Celestia said “What did you do?”
”Your student wasn’t very fond of the idea of letting me talk to you alone and foolishly tried to stop me, but she was suddenly predisposed as someone has seemed to have gotten the idea into her head that there might be a repeating number in pi and she is quite adamant to find this error,”
“How long has she been writing?”
”Ten minutes and 18 seconds so far, so she has used roughly an equivalent of…twelve eighteenths of the Archives weight in paper,”
“And that is…”
”So much paper that your student is currently trying to create a pocket dimension to store it all,”
“But Twilight knows those spells haven’t been properly teste-”
BOOM!
Celestia opened her eyes having expected for her hide to have been peppered with large and potentially fatal shards of debris. Instead everything was frozen in mid blast giving her a clear view of her student a fraction of a second before she would have been completely have been reduced to ash and pleasant memories.
“You would have thought that your prized student would have been smart enough not to use experimental spells to fix minor problems but if Lesson Zero has shown us anything it’s that Twilight clearly has some deep seated issues with failure,”
“Animad! This is far beyond acceptable!” Celestia yelled “First you assault my niece with a boulder then you severly injure two of my guards as well as destroying the market district. But this. This is going too far! You’ve driven my student to the point that she’s about to destroy Canterlot if not the surrounding province! I don’t care what you are but I will not stand idly by and let you treat my subjects like they’re your personal playthings!”
”We’re sorry Celestia but we have…Plans for the bearers and we require your cooperation if we are to bring them to Draconia without arousing their suspicions, but if you are not willing to do so then we’ll have to make a reason for them to go Twilight’s little ‘accident’ will be of more use than you are currently,”
“Animad what your doing is wrong! It does not matter what power you wield, you will fail!”
”Now say that like you believe it,”
With our little conversation over we erased the immediate memory of every pony who would have seen or detected the blast as well as undo the damage caused by Twilight’s latest psychotic break, as far as anyone knew she had simply fallen asleep in a pile of paper while trying to write pi. We left Celestia in her chambers sound asleep thinking that our conversation had been a bad dream when she awoke, it was sad that that it had to end so badly so soon after we had gained her support but we could make do with what we had for the time being.
After all we thought. A rift can be quite useful in the right hands .
With everything in place we decided to in on the medical wards newest patients, Fluttershy and Cadence to be exact. Not surprisingly, Discord and Twilights brother Shining Armor were both present. Shining had clearly not been getting the recommended eight hours of sleep as his bottom eye lids were straining under the weight of the bags beneath them, he have been waiting until the mares would awake. After all ponies have thick skulls that can take a good hit or two. Or was that bison? It was most likely bison, Cadence and Fluttershy might very well never wake up, we then began to ponder what was the maximum amount of force would be required to cause impact induced comas in ponies until we remembered why we were here.
Filing my thoughts on equine skull resilience for later pondering we decided to introduce ourself to the sleep deprived captain. After all his sister and his wife had the pleasure of meeting us so why shouldn’t he?
”Why hello Shining Armour, how are you on this fine morning?”
“Things were going par the course until Cadence got hit by a-Wait am I hearing voices now? How long have I been awake? ”
”You’ve been awake for the last 32 hours, and we are not a figment of your sleep deprived mind, we are Animad and we are the one who hit your wife with a boulder two days ago,”
All semblance of exhaustion vanished from his face at the knowledge we imparted onto him.
“You had the gall to attack my Cady, who is a Princess of the Crystal Empire mind you,”
”You equines have very odd standards for what is considered an empire don’t you? Most would consider it a mere city state if it weren’t an Equestrian protectorate, now if you wanted to see a true empire you would go to Roam, before its collapse of course,”
“Hey! I’m the Prince of the Crystal Empire and I won’t let you insult it!” Shining Armour responded punctuation it with a huff from his nostrils.
“Prince Consort which doesn’t have any inherent power behind it without the existence of the actual monarch in question, without Cadence you would be only the Captain of the Guard, and not a good one at that,”
“Hey, I take offence to that!”
”Only because you know its true,” we retorted.
“If you’re so smart then tell what I’ve been doing wrong then,” Shining Armour said clearly not expecting a response.
We manifested a large whiteboard onto the opposite wall along with a marker.
”We hope your good at taking notes,”
“Shiny, are you still here?” Twilight said as she leaned her head through the door “Princess Celestia wants to meet us in- When did you start writing this?”
Twilight had arrived just in the middle of my lecture where I was pointing out the flaws in his strategies and plans which we continued despite her minor interruption.
”As you can clearly see the shield you place around the city is not a perfect sphere, but rather a layer of solid magical energy spread out between thousands of nodal points, The shield you used had already surpassed the Pressure Point Limit. The point where adding additional points no longer reduces the units of pressure per nodal point of energy,” we said pointing the marker at a diagram of Canterlot with a large bubble over it then pointing to a similar diagram but with a large polygon instead of a sphere ”It would have been just as effective and much more energy efficient to use a medium resolution polygon than a multi-point near perfect sphere as fewer points would have to be generated for the same result, you could then use the left over energy to enhance the shield or create multiple layers of smaller shields beneath it,”
“That actually makes sense” Shining Armour said rubbing his chin in thought. “Oh! Hey Twiliy, your friends been showing me some tricks for my shield spell,”
“Animad? As in the one who assaulted your wife with a boulder?”
”The same wife who survived being thrown from the highest point in the Crystal City State-”
“Empire!” Shining Armour yelled.
”City State, directly at an ancient unicorn king made of shadows? We would be most disappointed if alicorns had some inexplicable weakness to boulders” we replied ”Now what was it you needed to tell us about?”
“Princess Celestia and Luna wanted to see us all about some important business involving Draconia,”
“What about?” Shining Armour asked.
“Something bad from what she’s told me so far,”
”Well we shouldn’t leave her waiting now should we?”
We love when a good plan comes together.
“It would seem that we hath a most odd of scenarios before us elements,” Luna said before an illusion base projection “a large rift of magical origin has been reported in Draconia that may be of some danger to the surrounding area,”
“Wait we’re being called because of some magic hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere?” Rainbow Dash asked “Can’t we just send some of those egghead mages to fix it for us, it’s not like nightmare moon is going to burst out of it or something,”
“If this were just a regular rift then we would have sent the mages guild to deal with the issue,” Celestia explained. “But there’s something odd about this rift not only is it bringing strange creatures into our world but it has been indicated by the Dragon Lords there that the rift is of Equestrian origin,”
“and how exactly are they know that it’s Equestrian?” Twilight asked.
”Magical signatures, the race of the caster and rough location of casting can be estimated by study of its field, but we would have expected the Princess of Friendship to know that,”
“Smartflank,” Twilight muttered beneath her breath.
“No offence dear but we have much more important matter than your ego,” Rarity said gently patting Twilight’s head to soften the blow of her insult. “Now back to business, what are we to do your highness?”
“We are going to send the six of you to investigate the rift as well as maintain relations with the Dragon Lords, we would rather not have another Dragon War on our hands,”
“Woah woah woah, hold it right there! No offense Princess but I don’t see why we should make friends with slave owners,”
“Now ah don’t know much ‘bout dragons but from what I’ve seen they ain’t the nicest of creatures out there,” Applejack said in reply.
“D-did you say we’re meeting dr-dragons? ” Fluttershy asked from across the room.
“Fluttershy? When did you get here?”
“Oh I was here for the last five minutes, I wanted to say something but it looked like you were talking about something important so I just waited here, now what’s this about dragons?”
”I have honestly seen invertebrates with more backbone than you Fluttershy,”
“Hey you want to talk trash then you better be able to back it up buddy,” Rainbow Dash said to the ceiling (honestly why do they keep doing that?). In response we made one of her wings 33% longer than the other and watched as she crashed through the door.
”Now that she is dealt with, we all are going on a little trip to Draconia, and by expedition we mean yet another life threatening crisis that Celestia has put in the hooves of her oh so faithful student instead of solving the problem herself ,”
“Animad, can you for once please be civil,” Rarity said.
”Trust me when us when we say that we have your best interests in min-Fluttershy if you sneak out of that door I will summon the largest mind flayingly horrific arachnid that has ever violated the dreams of mortals, you understand?”
“Y-yes Animad sir,”
”Now then, when do we leave?” we asked already anticipating our departure.
“You will all be leaving by tomorrow as we have been preparing a ship for you just in case a situation like this ever occured,” Celestia replied. “
”That will plenty of time for us to attend the ‘Blueblood has been thrown into an asylum’ party then, I’m going to need a form of some sort,” so we formed a body, it was a simple design, a unicorn of slightly above average height and build with mild a mild grey coat which we thought complimented our white and black mane, and to top it all off we decided on a mark of a star covered by a large eye.
”We recommend living today like it is your last, for it most likely will,” we said to them as we walked out of the door with the air of a stallion that could get away with murder if he so wished.
“That Animad there, sure is chock full of surprises ain’t she girls?”
“mmmhmmm,” I heard them say in agreement.
Oh if only they knew we thought with a chuckle If only they knew .
Author's Note
You know what's fun?
From Beyond The Veil Of Consistency
Hidden in shadows where the Starspawn lie Where the souls of the mortals go to die
There the Ancient Lords were placed and locked away, and left to slumber since that day When they converged on a world like any other Where parent found child and sister fought brother
The corpse brought madness, The soul brought decay And the tree arrived and locked them away.
They watched the rise and fall of nations and herds From the beyond the veil where their calls were unheard
For there they slumbered at the end of their age And two of them waited to escape their cage
The dragon who stood in the place of the sky Slowly awakened and prepared for his rise.
He turned in the dreams of the ponies and became their minds blight And soon corrupted the second queen of night. But his plan failed to depose the lesser divines So he focused on the six puppet equines
Six little ponies who saved many lives One was lost in slumber and then there were five
Five little ponies that marched off to war One became what she fought and then there were four
Four little ponies, through chaos they were freed History was repeated and then there were three
Three little ponies who mourned the moon A family was abandoned and then there were two
Two little ponies who hid with the sun One's children were saved and then there was one
One little pony who gave up her run She simply gave in and then there were none
Author's Note
Don't look to me for answers
Though if you want a clue look through the chapters again. I made a few minor changes
