Lord of Sins: Rebellion

Lord of Sins: Rebellion

Book One in the Lord of Sins Trilogy

Written by Fallen Astral

Assisted by Galatais

Now being co-written and edited with CrystalSeeker!

Prelude:

Era of Darkness

Green was never my favorite color. But, if I had to pick one, it would be blue, however cliche that might have sounded. Purple does come in at a close second, mainly because it is so similar to blue, but it retains a more mysterious aura to it. Rarely, however, do I get to experience these colors. More often, the colors I see are black.

This is often how I see life. A dark, murky black, one which envelopes the world in its mystery and darkness. More often, I see it as something else. Life is such a short, meaningless span of time, what with its joys and sorrows, pain and grief, sadness and hate, its life and death. Ponies come, and they go. Some go missing. Others might go hungry. Most care for only themselves, and not the problems of others.

    Life is quite the catastrophic period of time, after all. However, it can still be seen as something much simpler than that. It’s the long and winding journey to your final demise. It’s the way things are meant to be. Everyone dies, whether their time is now or later. It’s the circle of life.

    And that’s normally how I like to see things. Or, at least, how I try.

Here is a small fact: You are going to die. Despite all effort, no one lives forever.

Sorry to be such a spoiler. However, my advice to you is when the time comes, don’t panic. It doesn’t seem to help.

    Does this worry you? I urge you - do not be afraid. I am nothing if not fair.

But I in all my truthfulness try to be cheerful about this whole topic. Although, most would find themselves hindered in their belief of me, no matter how I put it. It is true, however. I am never seen as the kind of person to be any kind of happy.

    Please, you can trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. Only, just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

Of course, an introduction. Somewhere from which to start. Where are my manners?

I could introduce myself traditionally, of course, but there is no need. You will know me well soon enough. Although, that depends on the diverse range of infinite variables. It however will suffice to say that the ending result will consistently be the same, no matter the reason or cause. At that moment, I will be standing over you, genially as possible.

    You will be lying there (I rarely find ponies standing up). There could be a small discovery; a scream might radiate through the air. But the only sounds I will hear afterwards will be breathing. The noise of my own breathing, and the sound of my footsteps. But when? And why? All of these questions, each one easily answered; it’s only a matter of time. But what is time, really?

Time has been called many things. Some say it is a straight line - unchanging, unfaltered in its steady progression through the ages. Others will say it is like a circle - everything that has happened before will happen again like a giant, neverending loop that continues to spin for all of eternity.

    It has even been referred to as a big ball of timey-whimey . . . stuff. While I do not profess to understand the last one, I do know what time really is.

Time is a river.

It has its beginnings, and it has its ends, though it is the events that occur between those two points that really matter. The water is a rolling mass of choices; they can either branch out and widen the river’s banks the more of them that are made, or it can narrow to a stream when there is no choice.

There are changes in the currents as well as the points where some of those choices will send the water in two different directions, only for the specific change to sort itself out on the far side of the obstruction in the river. With enough time, even these small changes will be worn down and will erode away by the unrelenting flow until one questions if any choice had ever even been made at all.

Then, there are the big choices, the ones that do not just change what dress or other form of attire you wore that day, or if you called in sick or not, or even if you decided to side with with one group or another in a war. There are choices that will alter the flow of time completely, causing the river to split and flow in a completely different direction.

    Sometimes these choices will end the flow of time prematurely, dead-ending into a destination far short of what the original course was meant to be. Sometimes, however, this new river of time flows on just as long or longer than the main branch before reaching its end. Sometimes, it even rejoins the first timeline further along its path.

Splits like this do not happen often. They cannot, or time would be spread so thin that it would become more like an ocean than a river. But sometimes a choice is so drastic that time itself cannot help but to diverge, even when the choice is something as small as choosing love or choosing duty.

    That choice was presented to one stallion at a point in his life. He had served for years, his duties unquestioned, and even found love in whom he served after many shared trials and tribulations. He had friends who would willingly die for him and whom he would die for as well, people who would follow him no matter his choice.

This time, fate offered him a cruel and unrelenting choice: to save the lands he was sworn to protect from a nightmare eternal, he needed to betray his love. His other choice was to let the world fall to the darkness so that he may remain at her side.

You are likely familiar with the first choice. Jer’rahd Kaisur, a stallion who represented unquestioned loyalty, sided with the goddess of the sun, Princess Celestia, to defeat the goddess of the moon, Princess Luna. Princess Luna had turned into the creature of darkness by a lust for power and supposed jealousy towards the Princess of the Sun. She was sealed away and her love and his friends followed her to imprisonment.

That is where the river splits. This is where the river of time diverged.

All of this was before my time, however. In my age, a curse has gripped the world and created tensions in places where none existed before. At the same time, the stars in the night sky are fading out, vanishing into nothing. Many believe there is a connection; many see it as the end of all things. I have been studying for years to try and find the answers, to try and find the cause for this.

    The darkness is closing in, and I fear there is little left in this world that will be able to stop it. And already, the darkness has begun to claim the land, to seize it under the curse of the black night. This was the first moment I knew that time was running out. The world is headed for disaster.

As I’ve been alluding to, my one saving grace is distraction. It keeps me sane. It helps me cope, considering the length of time I’ve been performing this job. The trouble is, who could ever replace me? Who could step in while I take a break in your stock-standard resort-style vacation destination, whether it be tropical or of the ski trip variety?

    The answer, of course, is nobody, which has prompted me to make a conscious, deliberate decision - to make distraction my vacation. Needless to say, I vacation in increments. In colors.

Still, it’s possible that you might be asking, why does he even need a vacation? What does he need distraction from?

Which brings me to my next point in our lengthy discussion. It’s the leftover ponies. The survivors.

    They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.

    And that brings me to the subject of the day. Whether it be today, or tomorrow, whatever the hour and color may be. It’s the story of one of these survivors - an expert at being left behind to die alone.

It’s more of a simple story about, among other things: an army for good, a bit of time travel, a small prophecy, some stupendous sounds of silence, a bit of dying, and the Lord of Sins. But before I can tell you about that particular story, you must learn of what had come before.

    And so I shall tell you of it. Our story begins a few years before the beginning of this particularly tragic tale, in a world that may at first seem unfamiliar to most, but is actually very similar in many different ways. This story, however, is much more tragic than most would wish to care.

It all started many moons ago, just after the banishment of Princess Luna. It started with fire, and the smell of corpses.