There is no need to shove, Guard. I am quite capable of walking on my own, despite these manacles.
I would be faster if you took them off, of course, but I assume you won't hear of it. I wouldn't try to run, you know. Even if I could escape this golden fortress of yours and make it down the mountain, I could never get far enough away.
What's this? Is this where you carry out executions—in a great hall, filled with an angry herd? (I am not "struggling," Guard. The daystar's light hurts my eyes.) And here, the two diarchs of Equestria? Forgive me, but I don't know how one chief ruler should greet another, since you're the first others I've met in person.
Then again, I'm not a king anymore. You've made sure of that.
So it's a court, is it? I must say, I'm a little insulted you would even pretend to be doing some sort of justice, after what you and your army have done. In fact, I doubt you truly want to know my side of things.
Oh? Well... all right. It will do for passing the time.
First things first. If I read your Equine faces right, I would guess you're wondering why a Diamond Dog is so articulate. In short, our society has castes, and they (I can reasonably assume) are much more rigid than yours. The Dogs who work close to the surface are of the meanest sort, but in the grottos and caverns that you have lately rooted out, we had a culture. I doubt you could fully understand it, any more than I could understand that of the surface. I am last in the line chosen for their intelligence to be kings of the Diamond Dogs.
What I am about to tell you will sound unbelievable. You will probably think I am mocking you or trying to trick you. You may even stop me before my story is finished.
Oh? How quaint. Very well. I will start at the beginning.
Ten thousand generations of my ancestors lived beneath the surface before equines ever came to the land you call "Equestria." Other civilizations rose and fell here, while we endured beneath. (Therefore, I hope you will pardon my never having sent emissaries. I assumed our society would survive yours, as it did the others.) And we knew we must always endure, for just as you keep stewardship over aspects of the surface, so too did we tame great forces within the earth. Most of these you would find uninteresting, if you even understood them. But there is one you will find most relevant.
Beneath my kingdom, there is a cavern of tremendous size. Much of this cavern is filled by a stygian sea—leagues across, and unfathomably deep. Your troops, I know, were upon its shore when they ransacked our capitol. If they looked out across its black surface and saw what rests there, they no doubt mistook it for an island.
That "island" is only a part of the thing that sleeps there. No mortal alive today has seen it in full. But it is described in accounts written by my ancestors, those times when it awoke. Its size is such that it could pick up two bull dragons in its jaws with ease. Its many long limbs carry it fast through water and almost as fast over land. It is entirely covered in impenetrable scales, even at its joints.
We call it "Leviathan."
I have been carried to Leviathan by raft; examined it in the light of mining lamps; stood close enough to touch its scales with my paw. Though it was asleep, the mere sight of it in the light was nearly overpowering.
No one knows where it came from, but there are educated guesses. Its broad diet and scaly hide suggest a relation to dragons or sea serpents... or both. As far as anyone knows, it is the only one of its kind, but no doubt there were others in some dark, primordial time, before my people or yours ever existed. Now it preserves itself by sleeping, immobile, for some three centuries at a stretch, and awakening only long enough to fill its belly.
The more ignorant among us worship it as a god. It is nothing of the sort. A god might be reasoned with. Leviathan is an animal, with an animal's hunger. And while it is capable of devouring most things, it hungers for gems most of all. That was why we hoarded them, and why our people, among all canine-kin, are called the Diamond Dogs. Beyond a few lesser pieces kept by diggers as trophies, all of our mines' bounties went to Leviathan's feeding chamber.
How can such tiny mortals as us feed a creature that size? Because the mound of gems is built over the centuries during which it sleeps. You may have heard reports from your army of a single cavern filled with them—right to the edge of that underground sea.
And where are these gems now? Why, plundered by that army, of course. A victor always thinks himself entitled to spoils. They've vanished into the purses of merchants, mates, and whores across Equestria.
I see disbelief in your faces. Of course my story is too fantastic to be true. I must be lying, or else mad. The alternative is too horrible to imagine.
Ah, but wait! You begin to hear that distant booming that seems to come from everywhere at once. And now, a tremor from beneath. It is no surprise to me. Canines have very good ears, and these sounds have been going on for some hours already. Only now have they grown loud enough for you to hear.
You see, as I mentioned, Leviathan awakes from hunger every three centuries or thereabouts, looking for sustenance. Each time, we are forewarned by occasional small movements—small for a creature of its size, that is—and puffs of smoke as it begins to breathe the air again. In your faces, I see the unspoken questions: Have three centuries passed? Have any of the signs recently appeared?
The answer is "yes."
As to your next logical question: I am sad to say that any hope of subduing it is false. When it awakes, the mightiest of warriors are terrified. When it moves, the depths churn like a boiling cauldron. No weapon nor magic nor element of nature can pierce its scales or slow its advance. To Leviathan, iron is like straw and steel is like rotten wood. And it knows neither fear nor pity.
Now it awakes, and for the first time in millennia, sees that it must hunt.
I admit to my share of responsibility. If I had instructed the gem-gatherers to avoid interfering with ponies, a certain small group of them might not have tried to enslave one of your kind several years ago. The few cartloads of gems she made off with were only a minor loss. (You hear that? The tremors grow stronger yet.) But more recently, when she made to steal from us again, my people tried to make an example of her. This was a bad mistake, of course, but you can at least see the reason now—the importance of their work. They did not realize that pony was connected to the Equestrian royal family and could not have foreseen that you would consider their actions an act of war.
But I will not accept the greater part of the blame. You see, ponies do not eat gems. Nor do they have any other practical use for such. To a pony, they are mere baubles, worn for the sake of vanity. Equine vanity brought on the theft, and the theft brought on the war, and the war brought on Leviathan. Vanity is a close relation of arrogance, and your soldiers' arrogance made them turn our messengers away again and again, dismissing them as liars. The small-minded cannot believe in Leviathan until they have gazed upon it.
And all along, you thought it was we who were driven by greed.
Happily, the strength of the tremors means there is not much time to wait. If you gather at the windows now, you will be privileged to see what no one has seen in millennia: the whole being of Leviathan in the light of the daystar. I believe there is nothing more to say, except farewell. Farewell, farewell...
