On the Origin of a Species
Author's Note
This is some backstory on Celestia that I considered putting into Winter Storm, but to my eyes it just didn't seem to fit right anywhere in that story. But I liked it too much to throw away, so I decided to make it a little side story for my readers instead.
Your feedback is, as ever, requested and appreciated.
On the Origin of a Species
Thousands of years it has been and all may have forgotten, but still, I remember.
My mother used to tell me stories of how our race began. Queen Gaia was a tall alicorn with a deep, earthy brown coat and a flowing green mane. When I was small, she would take time out of her duties to play with, but more importantly to educate me. It was vital that I understood where we had come from, so I would know where we must go.
In the beginning, our world was made by the combined efforts of many great cosmic spirits, which we know as the gods. At first they worked in unity, and through their efforts many kinds of life populated the planet they had formed. Unfortunately, in time the gods came to disagree with one another on what course life should take. Eventually, these disagreements turned to violence in the heavens.
But war between the gods could never hope to remain just between them. As worship empowers the greatest spirits, it came to pass that one god’s mortal devotees were sent against those of another divinity. Who exactly struck first is a matter of debate and faith, but it was not long before great armies of mortals fought one another in the name of the gods, a conflict that came to be known as the Great Spirit War. For hundreds of years, war wracked the heavens and earth, until at length the mortal races were so exhausted that they were threatened with total extinction.
When the gods realized what their conflict had done, they knew deep shame and regret. In the heavens, war is a matter of power and influence, but all are immortal and none can be truly slain. At most, they can be bound and sealed away for a time - little more than a time-out from their perspective. The gods did not fully comprehend the costs inflicted upon their mortal worshipers until it was too late, for from their view the centuries passed in the blink of an eye.
Bitterly mourning their choices, the gods came to a decision that they could not properly rule over mortals while they were yet alive. As ageless spirits that need nothing and cannot die, their perspective is too alien to the lives and requirements of their creations to be of much use. They resolved among themselves to create a barrier between the world of spirits, where they and the departed souls of mortals reside, and the world of the living, so that their creatures could properly recover and grow strong again without tempting errant divinities to repeat the mistakes of Great Spirit War. They would abdicate their role in this world to a new power.
To watch over and guide the mortal races, the gods resolved to create new kind of being. A blend of the divine and the mortal, these creatures would be born, grow, and live among the other races of the world. At the same time, they would not die, and their strength would be beyond that of any other race. They would be leaders and caretakers, reigning over the planet with wisdom and beneficence. So it was that the alicorns were created, and given their divine mandate.
Know that this is no half-remembered myth of the mortals, passed down through centuries of oral tradition and miscommunication until it is rendered utterly incomprehensible to those who lived it. This tale was passed on to me by my mother, Queen Gaia. To her, these events were not myth or legend but facts well-remembered, for she was there on the day when our kind was formed. She recalled with perfect clarity our creation and mission, and passed it to her eldest daughter.
I remember also the time when the alicorns ruled this earth. Though we were small in number – no more than a few hundred even at our height – our power was beyond that of all but the gods themselves. The sun and moon, the earth and skies and all within them… all bowed to our will. The mortal races knew of our might, our wisdom, and our agelessness. Many prostrated themselves before us in subservience or even worship of their own volition. Those we reigned over with undying grace and benevolence.
Of course, there were also those who resisted. There always are. Whether out of misplaced pride, spite, hunger for power, jealousy, or simple stubborn independence, many generations of mortal creatures lived and died outside of our care. It saddened the leaders of our race, but tyranny of brute force is not our nature. If that was what they wished, then so be it. We could be patient. Generations passed, and as they did the potency of our blessings on our subjects became evident to all. Our lands knew calm, comfort, and peace between the mortal races. War, famine, and plague were distant memories.
Those outside our rule did not enjoy such prosperity, and the differences began to tell. To put it crudely, those in our lands simply multiplied more than those outside, and more of their children survived infancy. Additionally, word of our beneficent rule spread through traders and travelers between realms over the course of centuries, drawing immigrants seeking opportunity from across the world. At first, this was a trickle. In time, it became a flood. In times of disaster we would open our hooves to any who wished our aid, if only they would come to live in our lands. The process took many mortal generations to complete, but in the due course of years our patience was rewarded. The mortals living in our lands came to constitute a majority of the world’s population, and eventually almost all of it. Had things been different, I know that eventually we would have come to embrace every single individual on this planet, fulfilling our racial destiny.
Alas, such was not to be. It was Discord, the great spirit of chaos, who brought the age of alicorns to a close. His coming disrupted all we had worked to achieve, for such was his power that none could face him and hope to prevail. He took not even our strength seriously, toying with our kind and easily and thoughtlessly as he did mortals. Wherever he went, chaos reigned, and for an age not one of us could stop him. Those mortals who had flocked to us purely for our strength, or for the material benefits we could provide, began to abandon us in droves when it was clear that Discord was the stronger and could do as he pleased anywhere in the world. Only those bound to us by friendship or love stayed true.
You may ask how I know all of this. The answer is simple: I know it because my father told it to me. King Solaris, a great orange alicorn with a fiery red-gold mane, taught me much of what had transpired before my birth. I was one of the only alicorn fillies born in the time of Discord, and I had but a scant few decades to learn the saga of my race. When I was a mere hundred and seventeen years of age, my parents, along with all the other alicorns who were grown into their power, left to fight the spirit of chaos. The battle was long and fierce, with magicks unleashed ravaging the planet itself with their fury. It was, I believe, the only fight in all his history that Discord ever took seriously. In the end, the combined strength of my kind banished him from the world for millennia, but the battle claimed all their lives.
Needless to say, without their ageless rulers to guide them the nations of our kind collapsed within the short space of decades. Those hooful of alicorns that had survived were but the children and adolescents of our kind, not up to the task of maintaining the intricate political systems their elders had created. Treachery, rebellion, and attack from without hastened the end. Though Discord had been defeated, many of his creatures still walked the earth, and other evils long hidden burst forth at the scent of blood. The last of my kin fell to assassins, sorcerers, windigos, sirens, changelings, and worse. Myself and those closest to me fled for our lives to the far north with an army on our tail.
When the dust at last settled, my sister Luna and I, along with our infant cousin Elysium, were all that was left of alicorns. Besides ourselves, some mortal unicorn children of our mother’s relations were the only family we had. They helped us in those days, hid us from those who would have seen the last of our kind slain. At the time, I was so grateful that I swore that their line would know prosperity for as long as I lived. The descendants of those unicorns would eventually go on to found the ancient and noble House Blueblood in Equestria, and though I have found some of them... exasperating, to this day I honor that oath.
It would be many years before we dared to show our faces before the world again. But that is another story.
