Immortality's End

The unicorn raised his head, slightly confused at the name the entity behind the door had chosen, but choosing not to comment on it. Slowly raising the rest of his body to a standing position, the unicorn said "I expect greetings are in order, Master Avelli." Moving into a sweeping bow, the unicorn said "Welcome back to Equestria." Straightening again, the unicorn said "Furthermore, I would assume you have some sort of charge for me?" The unicorn raised an eyebrow the faintest amount in expectation.

A brief feeling that would possibly indicate a smile was conveyed over their mental link, and then Avelli responded. With a tone of utter seriousness, the Elder God behind the door said something which had not been said for a very long time, and even if it was said, the speaker would have been locked away in a mental asylum. The entity said, slowly and with great feeling, "Your charge... is to kill Princess Celestia." The unicorn, stunned, opened his mouth to say something, but Avelli cut him off before he could speak.

"I do not care how long you take, nor what methods you wish to use. Just know full well that this is the one task you will ever have, and I expect you to complete it. I have waited nearly two thousand years for this moment, to find one acceptable for this purpose, and I will not be dissuaded by cries of 'That's impossible!'".  The unicorn opened his mouth to speak again, and then shut it in favor of thinking the situation over carefully. His father had always prepared him for this task, though he was not aware that this practical impossibility would be what the ritual would entail.

However, he had to admit that the allure of the rewards behind the door, not simply of material things, but the spiritual rewards as well. The unicorn shifted his weight uncomfortably, causing the silver sword on his back to clash against the steel blade next to it. He still did not feel entirely settled within the idea, but he considered what he had been brought up to believe, and what the his father had told him of the tyrant across the Islandi Strait, the cruel white-coated alicorn who ruled with an iron hoof upon her poor subjects. Liberation was an admirable goal, the unicorn believed, and thus, he made his decision. Unfortunately, it was without any other knowledge than that of his forefathers.

This time, it was the god whom waited. Then, the unicorn finally spoke. "...I will complete thy task to the best of my abilities, Master." The entity's voice in his head seemed to chuckle, and then the prevailing mood on the mountain suddenly got far darker. "Not to the best of your abilities. You are, quite simply, the last one of your specific order and family, and arguably the best. Therefore, while your first ancestor, Indigo, came all the way to the Royal Castle and fell to no less than Princess Luna herself when she was fighting in Celestia's defense, then I expect you to go even farther. You are not one to say 'best I can do', you are one to say 'This is a certainty'. I believe you are fully aware of the responsibilities placed on you by your position, and know what the consequences will be if you let the tyrant Celestia live even a moment longer than you could have ended her."

The unicorn went thin-lipped, but curtly nodded in agreement. "It is assured, Master." Avelli would have smiled if his only presence in this particular dimension wasn't inside the head of the Keeper, but instead said "Excellent. Now, I believe at this point, the Keeper is named, symbolizing their connection to divinity, correct? Actually, I know it's correct; I gave your great-great-great-great-seventeen times-grandfather  those exact words in writing. Therefore... Kneel." The unicorn dutifully kneeled before the door on the hard black stone, bowing his head to the earth. "Perhaps..." The Elder God thought for a long moment, considering the possibilities.

Of course, for it to be a real, magically binding Name, it had to be said in the Ancient Language by the binder. Which was the entire purpose behind the ritual; as no pony knew but him (and Avelli didn't exactly count as a pony), the naming ritual was meant to give the entity a powerful hold over the actions of the one named. Therefore, to make absolutely sure that this especially recalcitrant Keeper obeyed him to the letter, especially in the unfortunately moralistic Equestrian society he would soon be exposed to, Avelli would name him and thereby bind the unicorn to him forevermore, or at least until the unicorn voluntarily rejected him, with the help of an immense source of magic- something definitively impossible. However, for the spell to work, the name had to have some connection to the named.

Avelli thought for a moment more, as the unicorn shifted on the rocks, and then finally pronounced the name. "I name thee... Argentum Gladio. Now, go forth, Silver Sword, and redden thy blade." Avelli had to admit that that last part was melodramatic, but in the interest of the classic villain feeling, he simply had to. It wasn't a compulsion, it was just a necessity. As for the newly named Silver Sword, he merely smiled, slowly and with a bit of a predatorial edge to it. Thanks to some tiny tinkering by Avelli using Silver's new true name, the unicorn knew his purpose. Thus, Silver was about to do the impossible.

He was about to fight the foremost deity in the land, and, through sheer determination, win.

Calmly, the unicorn walked over to the house where so many of his line had spent their days, including him, and picked over a cupboard. Loading his saddlebags with food, a carefully plotted map of the land from the small, mountainous island that the Door was kept in isolation to the mainland of Equestria, and from there, Canterlot. Examining this map one last time, Silver stored it in his saddlebags, rolled around a whetstone for his swords. Into his bags also went a small crossbow, several bolts rolled in a linen kerchief, and his tools for picking locks, each pick carefully placed in its carrying loop. Strapped to his steel sword's hilt with twine was a small bag of bits, carefully weighed and measured, and placed in his bags was two books, one on Zebraic alchemy and the other, the compendium of all the works of his bloodline- a living document, edited over the years for the final Keeper's possession.

Silver placed this softly in his bag, careful not to disturb the brittle paper or loosely bonded cover. They had to work with what they had, and what they had was a geologist's playground, but not so much the dream of a bookmaker. Taking out his map once more as he stepped out of the cottage, he held it levitated in his blue-green aura while he looked it over. Briskly rolling it up into a tight cylinder and putting it back away, Silver knew exactly where he had to go. Out loud, he said "First to Lindise, then from there...." To the airship docks at Illirea. Silver's mouth curved up at the edges as he imagined commandeering a military aeronaval vessel, but it would draw far too much attention, and in any case, he had many days' travel ahead of him, too many to already begin planning what he would do at Illirea.

Suppressing a small sigh, Silver looked down the side of the mountain, turned to see his house and what was left of his father's funeral pyre, and briefly considered a moment of silence before- something- told him he shouldn't waste any time, especially with Celestia more than likely aware that he had already begun his quest. With a faint shrug, Silver turned down the mountain slopes, aiming for the thatched roofs of the village far below. Soon, the methodical clopping of hooves against stone faded into the air, and once again the only noises on the peak of the Black Mountain were the cry of hunting hawks, the whipping whistle of the wind, and, at the very edge of one's hearing- or was it even your hearing, or just your mind?- could be heard the sound of a stallion laughing, as if everything just fell into place as he expected.

Which it had.