Redux: Lineage

I awoke to a splash of freezing water in my face, an experience that was becoming too frequent nowadays, and gasped loudly. I tried my best to blink the moisture out of my eyes, unable to use my hands due to them being tied to my back with thick rope and chains, all the while being held up by two guards wearing armour I did not recognise. I eventually had enough of the water drip away to see where I was. The room was coated an icy white colour, with the hanging tapestries, long carpet that ran from the front to the back of the room, and the clothing of those gathered around being a stark white with highlights of blue.

I was violently gripped by the fringe, having my head yanked upwards by one of the guards and my visage presented to what appeared to be the ruler of these people.

"What is it, Your Grace?" they asked.

I locked eyes with the being sat on the throne ahead of me. It was female, that much was obvious, with cold, white eyes that lacked any kind of pupil, long white hair, and frozen blue skin, just visible under the high-necked robes she wore. A crown of what looked like pure ice sat atop her head, constantly emitting some kind of frost that swirled and drifted around her head.

"I do not know," she said in a clear, multi-layered voice, sounding as if several different people were speaking at once. "Where did you find it?"

"I can hear you, you know?" I asked in a bitter tone.

That response was met with a powerful thwack to the back of my head. After having been in this situation before and been there so recently, I may admit I lost my temper quite substantially. I rocketed my head sideways, headbutting the guard holding me in the face, causing the frost-coloured helmet he wore to clang loudly, something that hurt me plenty but also caused him to stagger.

After that, I tore myself away from the second guard and, using the only tool I had at my disposal, proceeded to kick them in the chest and send them sprawling to the floor. Their armour was light and they were lighter... something that only made it easier to kick them around. More came charging, this time with weapons drawn, and I knew I was in trouble. The scuffle was interrupted by the queen getting to her feet and waving her hand, ice walls erupting from the floor to prevent the guards from moving closer while an icy hand grabbed hold of me.

"How dare you assault my-" she began in a haughty tone before I cut her off.

"How dare I? How dare you!?"I roared, my voice lathered in fury and bitterness. "I come to this land from my own, offer no hostile actions or intent to harm, and yet your people attack me, chain me up, and present me as some kind of monster!"

"And yet you stand here attacking my men and presenting us as the hostile party?" she scoffed. "You were at the scene of a slaughter, we had our right to be suspicious."

"But where was your right to assault me without being provoked?!" I roared, teeth bared and eyes wild. "If you were to truly sit there as the morally superior party, you and your gang of archers would've stepped forward to question me about my involvement, but instead they immediately rushed to violence without so much as a question thrown my way as to who I was!"

"And who are you to pretend to know so much about the workings of law?" she demanded.

"I am Crown Prince Richter of the land of Equestria, and one of the Alicorn, a race of holy beings created by the Goddesses to protect and serve the people of my realm!" I growled. "Who are you to accuse me of a lack of knowledge?"

The look of fear on her face became evident instantly, eyes widening in shock and a hand clapping to her mouth to hide away a gasp.

"An... an Alicorn?" she asked, looking me up and down. "But you don't... you can't..."

Her mind seemed to work through what I'd said, using her own knowledge to piece together something and determine it as false. Her expression hardened once more as she glared at me, the icy hand gripping me squeezing tighter.

"There is no Equestria," she growled. "You not only murder refugees of my kingdom, but you also spread lies and falsehoods regarding this world's sworn protectors?"

Well... if I'd needed any more evidence that I was in another realm, the fact my homeland didn't exist appeared to check that box rather quickly. So this meant I was in a bad spot here. Not only were my friends not here with me, I was imprisoned, probably about to be executed for heresy, and had no chance of any of my family members teleporting in to save me.

It seemed like I was well and truly fucked here, as the Lady Luck of this world proved to be no lover of mine.

"An Alicorn?" came a female voice from behind me.

I wanted to turn and look, eager to see who was going to beat and harass me now, but the ice prevented me from seeing who was there. But from the loud and collective gasps, I imagined it was going to be somebody interesting.

"Mother Illuminia!" came the exclamation of admiration and terror.

Wait.

"The Great Goddess herself!" came another voice.

What?

"Let me see him," came the strong, commanding voice.

What?!

The ice hand dropped away, as did the walls of ice, allowing me to whirl around and lay eyes on who they spoke of. If there was ever a 'godly aura', this woman had it. She radiated a dim light, every inch of her body covered in the glowing aura, from her fingertips to the tip of her sword. She was an enormous woman, standing easily eight feet tall, with flowing blonde hair that fell out from underneath a helmet of a strange design, being a strange golden object with an elongated area for the jaw, a large gap down the front of the face, and open eyes instead of a visor. The strangest touch was the long... mohawk-esque thing atop the helmet that, an ivory white.

The rest of the armour was just as foreign to me, being an entire moulded breastplate seemingly made of gold, a long white cape, bracers and shin guards instead of gauntlets and boots, and... sandals.

What the fuck kind of warrior was she?

Her glowing yellow eyes looked down to me, making me feel even smaller than I usually did standing next to Celestia, who, standing next to this woman, felt like a candle next to a funeral pyre. She had snow white skin, almost blinding to look at when combined with the white and gold armour as well as the heavenly aura. She narrowed her eyes slightly, before darting a finger out faster than I could register, invading my mind rather thoroughly and seeming to look at everything from my birth to the last five minutes of my life.

Her face showed a mixture of emotions, each cycling through their time: nostalgia, disappointment, disgust, surprise, and eventually settled on a pitying expression, whether for me or for the fate of my people, I did not know.

"The boy will come with me," Illuminia said in a booming voice.

"Y-Yes, Your Holiness," the ice queen bowed, lowering her head and clapping a hand to her chest.

With that, Illuminia took hold of my shoulder and teleported us away from the snowy castle, dropping us in... a white void. With nothing. At all.

"You are a long way from home, boy," she said in a warmer tone, turning to me with her arms folded.

"That's an understatement," I said with a sigh. "Can you help me get home? Can you reopen the portal?"

Illuminia was silent for a long moment, her gaze dropping to the ground, before she looked at me with a hefty sigh.

"No," she answered, the response sending a shockwave through my very core.

"What? Why not?" I asked. "You're a Goddess, aren't you? Can't you do anything?"

"The power I possess is great, yes, but it is not enough to do anything," she sighed, looking into the white distance as she spoke. "The portal you came through was not something of our own creation, but instead a remnant of the jump we made from our home to this realm so long ago. It opens and closes as it pleases now, and we cannot control it. Believe me, we have tried."

"Why?" I asked.

"You noticed it yourself. It does not play by the rules of magic as we know it, it exists outside of anyone's ability to tamper with it, and we know not why," she explained. "We've gone so far as to warp reality around it, but have failed to open it ourselves every time."

"But... you said that it was made when you came here, right?" I asked. "You and the other Goddesses. So why can't you just jump me back?"

"The jump was made with every drop of power all thirteen of us poured into it, tearing open space in a way that has never been done before and has never been done since," she began. "It took all of our strength, but we succeeded. Once we arrived here, we rested for over three months in catatonic states, our bodies slowly refilling our magical powers before we awoke..."

"And... what, you vowed to never do it again?" I asked.

"Not quite. We have not contacted your world and its people for so long because we choose not to... we have not contacted it because we cannot," she sighed. "The portal you came through... rejects us. We cannot put an arm through it, nor can our voices be heard. We would have sent messages and love through it, if all we put through that carried our aura was not destroyed."

"That makes no sense," I said. "Could you send your own people through?"

"Yes... so long as they were not tasked with speaking of us," Illuminia explained. "We send envoy after envoy through, trying to carry messages, but once they stepped through the portal their memories were... wiped. They could not remember us, nor could they remember our words. Our gifts were destroyed upon leaving this world, even if they were words woven into clothing."

"Why? What could've caused it?" I asked, utterly confused by that.

"We have long since wondered that ourselves. We believe that it is either the two realms forcing themselves to keep their knowledge separate... or it is the actions of a higher power punishing us for abandoning our home. It is a matter still heavily debated to this day."

"And the huge jump?" I asked. "Couldn't you make that again?"

"We could if all thirteen of us were able to do it..." she said, nodding slowly. "But... one of us never woke up."

"You're not serious," I said in horror.

"She remained asleep, never rousing from her slumber," Illuminia explained. "And as I said... the jump took every drop of power from all of us. It is impossible to make with only twelve."

I felt sick to my stomach at this revelation. How could I get home? Was there anyway for me to leave this place? Was I ever going to see my family again? Grael, Zane, Anne... what were they going to do?

"Is there any way I can get home?" I asked her.

"Yes. The portal that you came through," she answered in a simple tone.

"But... you said it had closed," I pointed out.

"It has. But it often reopens, on a cycle actually," Illuminia clarified.

"And... what is that cycle?" I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"During our attempts, we timed it to opening one every four hundred days for a period of around eight days," she explained. "A good window for a lot of attempts to cross through... but none of it worked for us."

"That's over a year..." I said in shaken disbelief. "I'm supposed to sit here for a whole year until that portal opens?"

"I'm afraid so, boy," she said with a reluctant nod. "But do not worry. You are one of our children. We shall look after you until it is your time to go home."

I felt sick to my stomach at this point, feeling winded by the prospect of having to wait so long to go home.

I sucked in a breath, steeling my nerves and looking at it objectively. It was over a year. Just one year. I was an immortal, years meant nothing to me, and the guarantee of returning home was there. It wasn't a 'you have a slight chance of this portal reopening if you do three hundred ridiculous tasks'. It was a matter of sitting on my ass for that period of time until I went home. Just like a long-distance voyage. I would make it home. I would see my family again. I was just on vacation right now, plain and simple.

A smile crept onto my lips as I exhaled slowly, that knot in my stomach disappearing as a sense of relief washed over mer.

"Are you feeling better?" Illuminia asked.

"Yeah... just rationalising with myself," I said with a nod. "Do... do you mind if we go back to the mountain? I need to pick up my sword... that is, if the Elves didn't steal it."