The End, The Beginning, The End, The Beginning, The End, The Beginning
The End, The Beginning, The End, The Beginning, The End, The Beginning
I awake again, I'm not in my bed, and it isn't time to raise the sun. But I didn't expect it to be. Not anymore. I've long since stopped hoping that this time would be the end of it. Even to return to Elysium and sit again among the Cosmic Council is a hope that has long since died in me.
I am Princess Celestia of Equestria, and I am about to be executed. Again. You know the old joke among criminals? 'Wouldn't want to be executed twice!' If that joke was ever funny before, it isn't funny now.
I have been executed twice, thrice, so many times that I have at last lost count.
I awaken already condemned. And I am executed. And I awaken again and the cycle continues.
Why don't I escape? Why don't I learn how my captor think and play them like puppets to enable my escape within seconds of my awakening? Why do I not simply train my magic in the infinitely at my disposal and obliterate my prison and flee?
This is not some foals' game where you memorize the patterns of the mindless game characters and you have infinite chances to win. Every time is different: who is there, their temperaments, where I am, when it is, how I am being held, my physical state... how my life is ended.
Everything is different, and yet everything is the same.
Sometimes I was apparently always evil incarnate behind a pretty face. Other times I was a mad pony driven insane by the weight of centuries. Other times I was a paranoid creature who thought those who were different would ultimately corrupt or destroy my ponies. Other times it was seemingly part of some twisted scheme to increase Equestria's numbers and then conquer Equus. Other times I was apparently deluded and thought I was doing a great service to those I was wronging. In a few of the bit more 'forgiving' ones I was apparently under the corruption of Tirek's power. And there was that one where I woke up in Queen Chrysalis' body and saw myself with my sister condemning me to death for replacing 'Celestia' and engaging in this scheme.
Sometimes it is a trial. Sometimes it is simply an angry mob of ponies, griffins, humans, or other creatures eager to claim my head for the unspeakable evils I'd apparently done.
'Tis a jest truly' as Lulu would say. I remember all those times Luna insisted that I didn't meddle enough with my ponies, that I was too willing to let them trip then pick themselves up. I'd retort to my sister that our ponies had to learn to take care of themselves or they never would. Now I was executed, over, and over, and over again, for violating the lives and destiny of countless innocent creatures. 'The genocidal, tyrant rapist' is a common combination of words thrown at me between my awakening and my death.
It is madness. But it happens anyway. Then it happens again, and again, and again.
Oh. And I apparently never raised the sun, apparently that was all a lie. Wish somepony had bothered to tell me so, coaxing that giant ball of flames, (that which was much a part of me as I was a part of it), up and down from the horizon was a lot harder than it looks. On some rare occasion, Luna has apparently taken over my duties as I had done for her for a 1000 years when madness took her.
Oh right, what am I being executed for? That least is somewhat consistent. And in a way, that is what sickens me the most. Well, it did sicken me, now there is only a numbness as I hear it thrown at me, sometimes with frothing rage, other times with professional indifference, sometimes with a mix of revulsion and pity, and countless other variances.
Apparently Equus' reality had crashed with Earth, well, a DIFFERENT Earth from the one my students Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer had gone to. Nor the one the legendary hero visit our world with the aid of the rainbow bridge. The end result was Equestria being forcibly transplanted to their world.
Except it wasn't a clash, apparently it had been part of my Evil Plan from the beginning to leave an entire world where I'd spent centuries building alliances, forming friendships, and where the entire world needed my sister and I to keep the cycle of life moving with the raising and lowering of the sun and moon. Sentencing Equus to a slow death with us gone, and the chaos and destruction that would result from Equestria vanishing and an ocean taking its place.
And then the was where our patch of reality met the native universe we'd found ourselves in. Except it wasn't where the two patches of existence met after all. Apparently it was a magic forcefield more powerful than anything Shining Armor or myself had ever been able to create, and one we apparently had the power to expand (opposed to the invasive reality we'd ridded on bleeding into their universe).
And apparently ponies could enter and exit this force field without trouble (no mention was made of the other hooved beings who existed in Equestria), but humans would be killed by it (rather than to us in the native universe beyond, which made no sense anyway with the legendary hero and Firefly The First visiting each other's worlds), along with any of their achievements being erased as well.
Sombra? Chrysalis? Discord? Tirek? They... seemed to almost never exist. No mention of them taking advantage of the chaos resulting from such things, playing two sides against each other as is their nature, no striking when two sides had exhausted each other... they just... seemed to have been removed. They sometimes appeared... but... aside from the time I mentioned with Chrysalis, they seemed there almost as an afterthought.
Oh yes... I haven't gotten to the meat of things. The heart of my Evil Plan. Apparently I had the unspeakable, unforgivable, unholy, nightmarishly wicked, truly despicable scheme of delivering the most horrible, horrible fate upon innocent humans... turning them into ponies.
I sincerely can't decide what is more racist, that being a pony is such a 'deplorable fate' that death is seen as better, or thinking that I and/or my ponies are such delusional zealots that we think anything alive must be the same as us.
Oh... and in spite of no species transformation spell in the history of magic actually doing such a thing, the humans transformed by this magic suffered at best their original personality being killed and replaced with a pony who thought they were them with their memories, or at worst a soulless, spineless, devoid-of-identity parody of a pony that 'was better off dead.'
I have had nightmares on how much destruction I could bring down on the world if I stopped restraining my power. But this... this felt like some vicious parody of those fears.
Oh, and it gets better. Sometimes, there are aliens who trapped little girls in a cycle of hope and despair to starve off the heat-death of the universe who condemn me as the ultimate evil, giant evil robot space squids who melt down populations into metal goo condemning me as the ultimate evil, and then the genocidal octopi in salt-shaker tanks who condemn me as the ultimate evil, and then the human's version of Tirek shows up and condemns me as the WORSE ultimate evil, and then a genocidal murder happy lunatic who condemns me as the ultimate evil... the list goes on. If I was watching this affair from the outside, I think I'd be laughing my head off the insane level of egocentric hypocrisy. It's a different story when you're living it.
So the humans did what any civilization does when faced the obliteration of their culture, and face being turned into mindless zombie slaves, they forget how much they hate each other and instead hate the new enemy they can all focus on. And... of course, Equestria constantly loses, badly.
Royal Guard march forward to be mowed down by machine gun fire like sheep. Unicorns seemed to forget how their telekinesis work as they are slaughtered. Pegasi are ... if it was a comedy... I'd ALMOST be laughing at the easy that they're blown to pieces, gunned down into mince meat. Seeing competent, highly trained flyers be obliterated and showing no ability to learn that 'pointy stick goes boom and kills you.' The complete and total LACK OF INTELLIGENCE on the part of everypony I learned of in the brief time between my awaken and my execution was astounding.
I think of my wicked self on the other side of the mirror, thinking how she and her sister would have reduced the planet to a wasteland before letting the barrier sweep over the corpses if their goal was truly not to rule, but simply to obliterated everything.
I am fully aware of the population difference, but tell me, how many ponies, and all the other creatures, do you think live in Equestria? How big, do you think Equestria actually is? I didn't think you knew the answer.
I am also fully aware of the centuries these civilization have had of warfare... how many times, do you think ponies have been seen as easy prey for enslavement or extermination, we've had to face? And how many eons of experience, do you think I and my sister have?
I am also VERY aware of the differences in firepower... of the tools of war they developed without magic. And that suits of armor and a spear are worthless again such weapons ... And I can't remember the last time I used my solar flare spell, and I never want to. There's a reason ponies fight with pies these days.
I know it would be a brutal and long and horrific war... one you think a broker for peace would be possible when neither side had the option of simply obliterating the other... or if it might come down to that, and both sides destroyed each other at the same time.. ugh. I do not like to think about it.
The point is, my ponies apparently showed no ability to learn, no ability to evolve, no ability to develop new tactics, no ability to abandon old ones, no ability to develop new magics or new equipment, the list goes on. While the humans learn, adapt, and basically show all the traits ponies themselves had to have in order to not become griffin food.
Oh, and apparently that was completely and totally my fault as well, keeping my ponies frozen in the middle ages with no progress what so ever. I didn't think the middle ages had movie theaters or radio.
Of course... I THINK that's the case.. perhaps I AM getting too full of myself. I don't remember any of it. I don't magically get memories of how things went this time when I awake. I have to piece it together in the time I have. And wars are infinitely complex affairs, and each one in each cycle is different somehow in what way humans utterly crush us.
Sometimes my ponies win, followed by an overwhelming force of nowhere appearing and bringing down swift brutal justice upon us.
Whatever the result, engaging in an insane war no sane pony would have ever started, Equestria is of course defeated without any real resistance or my ponies being so laughably easily conquered, you'd be left wonder how the world they'd actually not been conquered centuries ago.
Sorry. It's one of the few things left that can still raise my temper... showing my ponies as weaklings, as idiots, not as a people who had pushed back genocidal conquerer after genocidal conquerer, but as blind fools who were so insanely lucky that the universe itself would implode from the unlikelihood.
Not that any of it even remotely matters. Not in the least. This is just the backdrop. Things that had already happened before I awake. Things that had happened because they must have happened for things to have come to this to begin with. Things I can't change, or even argue against, because they've already happened, and are set in stone.
... At first I thought this was just a normal nightmare, and that sooner or later, Luna would come and save me. I lie, at first I thought this was all just some grand practical joke by my sister. I remember laughing out loud when I heard the charges the first time, I remember wiping a tear from my eye as saying what a huge joke it was. No one else laughed.
And no... no 'plead of insanity' has ever worked... Because if that happened, I wouldn't be executed as the monster I apparently am.
Truth be told, I do have some precedence, like the nightmare where Equestria thought I was madly in love with tea instead of cake, and I couldn't stand the taste. And when I said as much, my sister, and Twilight, her friends, and her brother, all thought I was Chrysalis in disguise and attacked me all at once, then thought I had been corrupted by Discord and made relive every moment I'd tasted tea all at once to 'cure' me.
Lulu had given me a dream of visiting Puppy Land as therapy after that one.
Even if this was to end (and it never will), I doubt I could ever function as the Princess all of Equestria knew and loved ever again.
Then, I spent several times thinking this was some sick of game of Discord's taken way too far in his demented definition of 'helping' me somehow.
After that, I thought I was trapped in one of Chrysalis' cocoons, having the love drained out of me as I experienced this nightmare over and over.
Or this is Sombra somehow back from the dead, and inflicting all my worst fears bundle into one.
I've long since realized that it could be none of them. Because none of them could bear NOT to have gloated to my face right now and not let me know it was them who had condemned me to this eternal suffering. None of their massive egos could have allowed them to have doomed me so and not rubbed it in my face.
I sincerely wonder what other sadistic creature this thirsty to quince their hatred could have spawned such torment as this. Though to call it torment doesn't even fit anymore. I've given up trying to reason with those around me, let alone fight or try to escape. I'm just another cog in the machine of this endless cycle. For me to be condemned as the most vile creature in the history of creation, and then my life to be snuffed out in any number of ways.
I have no friends here. My sister despises me. She is like a horrid stranger to me. It reminds me too much of Nightmare Moon. I suppose I can't blame her, I might feel exactly the same way to her if these sins were on her back... though I hope I'd help her try to find salvation before the end. My student Twilight, for she is always my student, she is never a Princess... it is like everything that happened since she became a Princess never happened. Let alone Discord being freed and reformed by Fluttershy. And let alone King Sombra, and the Crystal Empire's whose barrier had held back the chaotic might of Discord himself. And as I said, only for that one time, it is like the changelings never existed.
There is no sign of Flurry Heart, not that I am surprised given all else. Let alone any sign of the mirror that led to the other human world. Or even as sign of Sunset Shimmer, mostly, the few times she has been mentioned at all, it was only in a dismissive way referring to her death long ago. My little sun, I am so sorry.
Twilight, she either is 'still' blindly devoted to 'my cause' that is a a parody of the desire she's always had to please me and see me happy, or she has 'woke up to my true nature' and hates me with the same black fire as my sister, or is chillingly indifferent. The other Elements of Harmony are much the same. Some had joined 'the resistance' of ponies who had apparently risen up against my tyranny, or had been left a broken mess against humanity's supreme unquestionable might, such as the one where Shining Armor had lost his legs.
Sometimes I am beheaded, sometimes I am thrown into a black hole. Sometimes I am simply shot with a revolver to the head (I like to think I am made of sterner stuff than that, but I don't have a say in the matter). Blood letting. Impalement. Poison gas. Electrocution. Lethal injection. Drawn and quartered. Hanging. Dismembered. Disemboweled. The list goes on.
I don't even respond when they speak anymore. I don't even bother to identify who is there, who is not there, who is looking at me in hatred, who is looking at me in pity, others in revulsion, because it doesn't matter. I die. I awake. I die. I awake. An endless cycle. Quite the joke on the cycle of day and night my sister and I once shared.
Hmmmm. This time, I am drained of all magic, reduced to a withered old nag as the centuries suddenly catch up with me. And I am pushed over a cliff, my wings somehow useless. I fall, hitting jagged rocks, and crash into the bottom of the ravine, my brittle bones shattering to pieces, and I slowly bleed out.
I awaken back in my cell, this time my horn and wings start out cut off, my face muzzled, and heavy weight chains on my withered and weak legs. My hateful sister comes again.
"It is time," she said with a voice like ice like she always does, or it's a guard, or my student, or a human I don't know, or it is spoken over a speaker or no message is given at all and they simply come and dragged me away like a show pony to be spat upon and have rotten fruit thrown at.
And I am executed. And I awake. And I am executed. And I awake. And I am executed. And I awake. And I am executed.
And so it goes on.
