Immortality's End

  Once, on top of the darkest mountain, a fell slope of jet-black obsidian, there was a door. A door, chained down, a circular door with silvered edges and a mirrored finish, its bottom corroded in rust and something else yet unidentifiable. In front of this door, as the winds swept across the mountain and through its valleys and clefts, a single unicorn kneeled, his coat palest gray, his mane and tail a shock of white.  He paid no mind to the keening of the wind at his lofty altitude, nor the sheet of flame that flickered behind him, for he had set the funeral pyre himself, as was his father's wish and the tradition in the family. The unicorn remained kneeling there throughout the next cycle of sun, moon, and stars, as the sky turned around him. During this time, he went over the rites again and again, steeling himself for what was to come. Then, when he could think no more, he lowered the iron barriers around his mind, expanding his consciousness to see every life around him, touching each minuscule mind and recording it in memory for later.

  The funeral pyre burnt itself to ash, simmering and then cooling, broken, charred wood and charcoal lying scattered across the black plain, ash wafting in the wind. The unicorn still kneeled before the chained door, under a sky that hung not much unlike a steel plate would overhead; foreboding and grey. One more day and night passed, and yet he kneeled, this time not cataloging the life around him, but merely moving objects around restlessly, using his telekinesis to build a pyramid of stone and then knock it down, repeated again and again with minute variations. He breathed deeply and, and his eyes followed the moon as it went down, its light silhouetting the unicorn against the crags. He smiled then, for as the moon went down, a new day began; for the unicorn, Day 3650 since the last time a pony had tried to become Keeper of the door; in the day of his father. Though trepidation filled him, also present was a religious kind of fervor, calmly contained and stored. He had learned not to waver in his concentration, among other things; how to steel the soul against pain or desperation; how to fight with a saber; how to use magic; all this for twenty years, with his father alone on the summit of Fell Nängoroth. Now, it was just him.

  When the sun rose again, and the world began to brighten in reds and pinks and lavender, the unicorn stood on his four legs again, and made his way to the door. He raised a single foreleg in front of the circular object. With an impersonal air, he picked up a knife made of the mountain's jet-black material with his telekinesis, catching the handle on the silvered platter that bore it. The platter screeched across the underlying stone pedestal with a high-pitched yowl of protest. The unicorn did not mind. He was deaf to such noises; his mind was open wider than it had ever been, wider, even, than his sire may have said was wise, as anypony could have invaded his mind and taken control of his thoughts. But to his sire, he felt nothing but a sense of responsibility and duty, and an even fainter sense of regret. The ponies of his order -his lineage- had been bred over many centuries to have a lack of those feelings; it went with the namelessness of each member, as that which is personal was seen to interfere with the purpose of each Keeper.

  The unicorn began to chant; a gutteral, hard, angular-sounding series of syllables, words that presented themselves to the mind in strange block letters that could not be identified as letters. The chant was notable not so much for the words used, but for the fact that they were almost-words, words that were notable only because they were not. As the unicorn finished his chant, he bowed to the door- another item notable because of the way it was unfamiliar in this world, of blasted peaks and black altars- and cut his proffered foreleg. The obsidian knife slid smoothly through the skin, with a coldness and a impersonal sort of pain. At this moment, the unicorn drew on every life he found, plant, animal, or other, and took part of their life force from them, distilling it within him. None died; he was too well-trained to take too much of the soul. The unicorn held the leg over the door, and waited. After a few moments, a single, shimmering, oddly iridescent, drop of blood fell down, hitting the burnished surface, splitting over and around a thick iron chain, and finally merging with the unidentifiable substances that marred the bottom of the door. Then, there was utter silence on the peak of Fell Nängoroth. The wind slowed until it was the merest of breezes, and the proud hawks that rose the thermals below the summit stopped their fierce cries and waited. The universe seemed to hold its breath. A presence stirred in the void, roused from its slumber. A single crystal set into the face of the door, one of three, shed its tarnish and shone as if newly minted.

  Then, the unicorn felt a vast, alien consciousness- if it could be named such- press against his mind, and as he fought the urge to reflexively close the barriers around his self, he waited once more. His lineage had spent centuries waiting for this moment, so the unicorn knew he could spare a hoofful of moments for what would decide the fate of his bloodline; the fate of his order. If the door- nay, what was behind the door in the strange aeons beyond- did not accept him as Keeper and Opener, then it would mean the death of the order that lasted for nearly two millennia. The presence slowly went through his mind, examining his memories and his training, and trailing behind it was a strange sort of magic; to a unicorn, and especially the unicorn, it seemed as music, a otherworldly strain of violin and cello and viola. Gradually the presence extracted itself from the unicorn's mind, leaving a faint impression of its consciousness  behind. There was the space of three heartbeats, though they seemed a eternity. Then, after one thousand, seven hundred years since it had spoken last, the presence spoke, in a voice as mellifluous, smooth, and honeyed as any bard in Equestria- perhaps deliberately so. "Dàfraic Kuaeipe. Welcome,  Keeper. You may call me..." It paused for a moment, as if thinking, or perhaps sharing a private joke with itself. "Avelli."

For one thousand, seven hundred years, Celestia had been raising the sun. For a thousand years, she had raised the sun and moon both until her sister, Luna, resumed her diarchal duties. She had ruled for a very long time, and she had always performed this ritual since she was only a mere hundred years old; it was her way of meditation, of connection with the harmony that underlay Equestria. On this day, she woke at the exact same time she always woke- the only exceptions being the Nightmare Moon incident, Tirek, and the day of Twilight's ascension- 4:17 and three seconds past in the morning.

  She fumbled for the light at the edge of the bed, tugging on the cord to activate the illumination rune inside, and blearily blinked, once, then twice. She stood from the bed, temporarily off-balance, and she reached a hoof out to her nightstand to steady herself. Celestia breathed deeply, holding it in for exactly five seconds, and exhaled.  On her way to the balcony above Canterlot where she stood every dawn, she took the ceramic cup of coffee from its constant place, causing the muted clink of ceramic against the metal of the tray. To her balcony she went, hooves moving along well-worn trails in the carpet, and she set her coffee cup down on the railing. After a thousand years, one values order, Celestia thought to herself. Her horn flared with cosmic light, golden-yellow with a orange core, and she spread her wings wide, the pure white feathers almost touching the edges of the wide doorway.

  Putting her full concentration into the spell, as she must, the sun slowly rose from under the horizon, bathing all of Equestria in its rays of light. The gray sky began to lighten, and the moon crossed below the horizon as on the opposite side of the castle, Luna did her part in the ancient ritual as well. Celestia remained on the balcony for the few scant moments she had before she had to resume her duties, and a beatific smile graced her face as she watched her little ponies begin to bustle around the streets of Canterlot, bakeries and other shops wafting their delightful smells up into the air as they cooked today's goods. From outside, there came a tentative knock on her door, sending Celestia abruptly back into reality. "Princess Celestia? You have the audience with the Griffonian ambassadors in a hour; they refuse to wait any longer. Please, we'll need to get you ready and... I'll just wait."

  A wistful edge tainted the formerly gentle smile, and Celestia spared a brief glance back at the streets of Canterlot, gleaming in the early morn, before she turned towards the doorway, already projecting the royal presence that was expected of her. She had picked up the coffee cup in her telekinetic aura when she was suddenly seized with a burst of pain in her mind, as all the alarms she had placed on the Cursed Door tripped at once. Her aura guttered and shut off, and the cup crashed to the floor, shattering into fine shards, the brown liquid inside soaking into the carpet. The support of her rear legs suddenly abandoned her, and she sunk to the floor on her haunches. "It awakens." Her voice did not tremble; it was iron. No other words needed to be said.