The Epic of Thunderstorm and the Four Winds
Gather Round young ones
And let me tell you the tale of the one
Who tricked the Four Winds And Their King.
So long ago this was
That the color of her mane and wings have been forgotten,
But we must never forget what she did for us.
Her name was Thunderstorm
The one who flew to the Utmost North and found the Flowers of Youth
The Mare who fought and drove off the Corvid Cormaer.
And many great things.
But those are stories for another time.
In her time,
The winds were untamed
And the clouds were as sturdy as
The truths that the tongue of Discord spins.
Cold rain and uncaring wind whipped the air into frenzies beyond anypony's control.
The pegasi had the worst luck.
The earth ponies who knew architecture built houses for their young.
The unicorn built great fortresses to shield from the weather.
THe pegasi?
The pegasi made do hiding in the dusty bowels of the earth.
And Thunderstorm saw it all.
Saw it from when she was still in her mother's embrace.
Some things simply are.
Something you suffered from all your life
May seem as common as the idea of fire bringing warmth.
And so it was for Thunderstorm.
None know when she began to wonder how life could be
If the skies were under their control,
But when that thought came,
She acted.
She began her greatest journey.
Her journey that would take her innumerable times around the world.
She would meet the Four Winds time and time again,
She flew to the cold and unforgiving North,
Just as she had when she searched for the Flowers of Youth,
To meet the North Wind.
Grim and Surly he was,
Caring Nothing for anything he saw lesser than he,
He blew with the other winds,
And his was the one that brewed storms of devestation.
Growling to Thunderstorm's approach,
He heard her plea to teach her the secrets of taming the winds,
And like the lion warning a scavenger,
Told her to leave.
Thunderstorm,
Seeing no hope
And danger if she were to pursue the answer,
Left to find the South Wind.
She flew back over the icefields and glaciers of the Frosty North
Until she passed the mountain that she had called home,
And continued on.
She flew over vas plains,
Over valleys carved with the patience of water,
Over forests tangled in threads of green
And moorlands covered in blankets of heather.
The Corvids who lived there,
In the Moorlands,
Dared not bother her
After seeing her defeating Cormaer.
She found him over the ocean,
Gently blowing wales in the ocean
The tips as grey, gloomy, and calm as he was.
The Stoic South Wind
Charged with blowing steadily,
And as such was tame compared to many of his brethren.
Thunderstorm presented her plea at the edge of where the land met the grey Southern Sea,
But the South Wind did not respond
And simply returned to his southern home.
Tasked with blowing steadily,
He also had to travel the farthest before he met his three brothers
Near the homeland of Thunderstorm,
And as such was tired and wished to go home.
Thnderstorm,
Persistent pegasus she was,
Followed him and asked again.
South Wind was tired and wished to go home,
Flew faster.
Faster he flew.
And still Thunderstorm chased.
Her plea beginning quite calm,
And ending in only what could be called stormy indeed.
He flew quick.
She followed.
He flew quicker.
She followed.
He flew yet quicker.
She followed.
And so it went for a time.
But the South Wind was the Wind
And so returned home
With Thunderstorm becoming lost.
She cursed everything and flew to the West..
She flew past the moors
Till they solidified to Glens,
She flew past the Glens
Till they rose to mountains and valleys.
And then she flew past the mountains
Till they dropped to dusty plains that stretched and seemed immeasurable
And on top of the plains stood slaves who toiled.
A million labourers working on the plains of dirt and sand,
And their labour blew the dust up high to where Thunderstorm flew
And stung her eyes.
A western Empire,
Cruel and large
Ruled here by a spoil Imperator who cared for nothing
But wealth.
And it was here that Thunderstorm knew,
She would find the West Wind.
She waited till nightfall to free the West Wind.
Inside the largest of its cities,
And the grandest of its buildings
was where she found The North Wind,
But it is very hard to free what does not want to be free.
For the West Wind had been spoiled by the luxuries the Empire provided,
And had fallen in love with the spoiled Imperator
And simply threw her wind out to keep the sky and fields clear.
By the time, the winds reached the mountains of her home,
They became cold and dusty things,
Blowing pegasi out of the wind as surely
As a lightning bolt.
When she spoke her plea to the West Wind,
The West Wind sneered and called to the guards
To throw the vagabond out.
With gifts of arrows and a salute of javelins,
Thunderstorm exited gracefully out the glass window
And flew to her last hope,
The East Wind.
Flying back home to her mountain,
Passing the plains, the valleys, and the glen,
She circled her home once for nostalgia
And to remind her of her hope and mission.
And then she flew with hope on her face,
And the weight of dread on her back.
She flew past the other mountains,
Past the earth pony villages,
Past the unicorn castles,
And past the greatest of the mountains.
She stopped and rested.
As she did, she gazed past the beautiful blue Eastern Ocean where no end seemed in sight.
Had any other pegasi been in her hooves then,
I do not want to wonder what they would've done.
Most would have left,
But Thunderstorm?
She spread her wings and flew.
For a moon cycle
And a day,
She flew,
The ocean becoming a tapestry of endless blue.
A rocky island greeted her,
Seeming to have risen out of the waters
Just for her.
She landed,
Tired and exhausted,
And was greeted by the most dangerous of the winds.
The Eastern Wind.
Old and powerful,
Pegasi had feared it since their own creation.
Never tiring,
The storms it threw westward were the most dangerous of all the storms...
Even the wolflike North Wind.
But in its long life, it watched the ponies.
Watched them live their lives,
Build their homes,
And struggle.
Fascinated with them,
He had begun to feel a kinship with them in the world they shared
And cajoled the earth to rise up to create the Mountain Shield,
Even if it meant,
It could not watch them as well,
To protect ponykind from his violent storms,
It had seen Thunderstorm struggles
Had known she would come,
And so he sat and waited on the island.
Whether it was always there or whether he had asked the Earth
As he had when he made the Mountain Shield,
The island has never been mapped on any map.
The East Wind smiled and waited for Thunderstorm's plea.
He thought for a while before relenting.
“Tricky. I think I might know how you can gain that power
But it won’t be easy.”
Thunderstorm growled with determintion.
“That doesn’t matter.
It hasn't been easy before,
Why should it be easy now?
Tell me,”
“We Four Winds are great and powerful,”
"But their is one we all answer to and dare not defy,
"The High King."
"Terrible, wrathful, and jealous of his own power,
He dwells past the highest clouds beyond the reach of all flight
"even yours."
" He commands us with his own mastery,"
"And he grows his pride by commanding us to blow unceasingly"
" so that the world will always be aware of him"
" Stealing his power from him won’t be easy. But it canbe done.”
“How, if he lives beyond even my flight?”
“You must bait him out.
Sting him in his pride,
And he will come forth to fight you,”
Other than his mastery of the sky and the Winds,
Only his pride is his alone.
And to sting his pride, you must defeat his servants below the clouds,
We, the Four Winds,
He must see us fleeing back up to his stronghold.
Then he will descend to have revenge.
You must steal his power then and free us.
Or die horribly.
Whichever suits.”
"How can I defeat you?"
“We are not above weakness.
You yourself must find them
"“I suggest leaving me until the end, though.
I shall be compliant, and you’ll need your energy.
For now rest."
And Thunderstorm rested on the island with the East Wind.
Rumour has it that they may have fallen in love,
But that's only a rumour now.
With the East Wind under her wings,
she returned to her mountain in a week's time.
She circled her mountain once, twice, thrice,
Thinking, Thinking, Thinking,
On how to undergo the greatest gamble that the pegasi would ever undergo.
She flew North with resolution to defeat the North Wind.
Past the icefields and over the glaciers she flew,
And she flew directly toward the North Wind
Who Bellowed
“YOU DARE RETURN TO ME IN DEFIANCE?
“YOU WISH TO DIE THAT BADLY?”
With fear coiling her heart,
Instinct flapping her wings,
Enchanted hoof shoes that she stole from a unicorn prince on her hooves,
Stupidity clouding reasoning sufficently,
And Bravery in her eyes,
She went and gave the North Wind an uppercut
Just as it came bearing down.
And so it began.
A sparrow in a storm,
Thunderstorm fought with the North Wind.
She flitted past the swipes as the North Wind
Lumbered around the Icy Landscape.
And for all his bluster,
His fearsome reputation,
He was quite soft,
Quite weak.
Before quite terrifying,
The North Wind limped back to his birthplace in the sky,
Blubbering like a whipped dog.
For all his strength,
He could not take his hits well.
Thunderstorm,
The only pegasi to ever witness this sight,
Smirked to herself,
Taking a petty pleasure at the picture
And then flew south.
Past her home,
Past the Valleys.
Past the Glens.
Past the Moorlands.
Till she perched on the sullen beach of the South
Facing the Gloomy Sothern Sea where the South Wind was at work.
Thunderstorm was clever,
So she hid,
And like the last time,
Waited for the South Wind to shamble in.
The South ind would have been just as fast,
No faster!,
Than his brother, The North Wind,
But seeing his journey was longer than the others,
He would be too tired to fight.
And she had the future to fight for.
So she waited till she saw him,
Then jumped on him, pinning him,
And pounded on him,
Laying blow after blow on his back,
Till she was sure he was too hurt
To fight back at all.
He fled too
Shouting a threat behind him.
She took a long breath then.
Longer than the one where she fought the North Wind for some reason.
Looking down at her hoof,
She saw it tremble.
At first she thought it was fear.
Two winds she had fought,
The winds that had plagued pegasi for eons,
And she had just forced two to flee!
She then realized,
She wasn't scared.
She was excited.
The weight of dread
Had slipped off as she sent the South Wind away in fear.
Thunderstorm grinned then with the knowledge she could do this.
She then flew past the Moorlands, the Glens, The Valleys,
The plains came to view,
And the dust stung just as fierce the first time from the farmlands below.
She knew where the West Wind lived as a guest of the empire
And so hid on the roof till Nightfall.
She slipped in through the window and found the West Wind sleeping with the Imperator.
Thunderstorm roughly served her awake.
The West Wind rose surprised and asked,
"You again!"
Thunderstorm snorted derisively at the mare,
"Me again. That makeup doesn't do much for you."
The West Wind rose in fury and in a ballad of blows,
Broke the Glass Window once more,
Leaving the Imperator in the bedroom wondering at the event.
Their battle measuring the immeasurable leagues of plains that the Empire controlled,
The West Wind and Thunderstorm's battle was visible from even Thunderstorm's home mountain,
The largest Twister to touch the ground in millenia was their battleground,
Dust and flashes of light were the only thing that gave even a hint of the combatants inside.
Though pampered and soft,
The West Wind could be as Swift as her Southern Brother
And as strong as her Northern Brother
When she chose.
But it was blinded by rage,
And what power it wasted only helped Thunderstorm,
Giving her wings strength and speed,
The clashed for days until the West Wind finally collapsed,
Completely spent.
Towards the end,
The West Wind had fled from Thunderstorm,
But Thunderstorm only pursued it and battered it while it was down,
Until the Wind finally staggered up into the sky.
She cried,
"I shall call the High King to burn your mountain down to ruins!
And burn the ruins to ashes!
And then burn the ashes for good measure!"
Thunderstorm only laughed
As the West Wind fled.
Only when the West Wind was truly gone,
Did she lay down and cough the ill begotten dust from her lungs.
Thunderstorm was still strong,
But years had passed since she had first began her journey for the secret to commanding the skies
And the battle had taken a larger toll than she would willingly admit.
But with a determined will,
She forced herself to recover
And to return to face the last wind,
The Eastern Wind.
Several times over her moon cycle and a day flight,
Thunderstorm awoke to find herself drowning in the waters of the Eastern Ocean.
Finally alighting on the island where she had once rested,
She staggered to the East Wind who only looked on with seemingly uncaring eyes.
He asked," Have you defeated my brethren?"
Thunderstorm only nodded exhausted.
She despaired inwardly when she saw it stretch for battle.
"Let us finish this then.",
And the East Wind called forth a storm
Stronger than the North Wind's One,
Swifter than the South Wind's One,
And deadlier than the West Wind's One.
Thunderstorm,
Having been near the East Wind
Was spared the worst.
But she was still buffeted about
With her rear hoof catching the East wind on the side.
Immediately, he dramatically collapsed,
Calling off the storm,
And said,
"Woe is me! Such strength! Such strength!
What is a weak wind to do?
I must go tell the king!"
Thunderstorm patiently waited
And then asked,
"When will you tell him?"
"I must tell him soon.
You can rest now,
But you must hurry back.
When I tell him,
He will take vengeance on your flock."
Thunderstorm cursed to the heavens
And immediately took flight back.
The East Wind followed closely behind her
And eased her flight,
It is said that their flight was followed by lightning.
Such was her speed that her own winds were hindrances to her flight.
Any normal pegasi would have collapsed at the pace she flew,
But she returned to her mountain,
Past the Glens and Moors
And the Mountain Shield,
In days rather than weeks.
The East Wind had left her,
But left his winds to aid her.
As soon as she alighted on the patch of grass
That when she was young would nap on,
Then the sky darkened to black,
And then opened up
With cracks of thunder and fingers of lightning tearing open a hole
For The High King and his Four Winds
The High King,
Fearsome he was.
He called forth the one who had challenged his servants and thus him
And Thunderstorm came.
She shouted to the heavens,
"Give the Pegasi control of the heavens!"
"I think not!"
The High King denied her,
"Servants take her!"
The North Wind feared her, remembering his beating,
The South Wind found her irritating, wished to go back to his work,
The West Wind was vain and found such things too bothersome
And the East Wind wished to help her, winking at her.
The High King,
Prideful as he was,
Declared,
"Then I shall deal with her myself."
And with a tendril of power brought the sky down on her.
Thunder was the song that the High King played.
Rain was the curtain he drew upon her.
And on the stage that was for the lone actor
That was Thunderstorm
Death was her partner.
Over and over, Thunderstorm flew to the opening in the sky,
And over and over,
The High King would call forth the rain and lightning,
So that the sky was her foe.
Time and time, she flew around the mountain to buy time,
And lighning chased her,
Striking the rock and boiling it,
So that even the earth attacked her.
And then after innumberable times of falling down and recovering ,
She stopped to think.
And the High King threw lightning on her back.
Pain danced down her nape, down her back, down and through her,
Sending her to the grouund in blissfl sleep.
When she woke to the ground at speeds where she would've died if not for her enchanted armor,
She was greeted by a rain of feathers.
The hollowness on her back,
Far worse than any pain,
Told her the tale.
Her wings,
Her wings that had been born to her.
Her wings, the greatest gift she ever had,
Her wings, the wings that had been with her through her rcountless travels,
Had been torn asundered by the lightning the High King called forth.
And the High King laughed.
Sneering, he commanded his servants,
The Four Winds.
"“We are done here
Return to your posts,
And visit storms upon this wretched land
That will scour it down to the core.
Hem them in
And make sure they see their doom approach.
Teach them the price of disobedience."
Each one of the winds began to leave.
None of them looked back,
Save the East Wind,
Who only looked upon sadly.
And Thunderstorm?
What of her?
She laid on her stomach,
Listening to the High King.
She thought of her flock,
And she heard them,
Heard their cries as they were pinned in their caves.
And she remembered why she did this.
She was the hero.
She was their hero.
Thunderstorm glanced up at the closing breach in the sky,
A rapidly fading blue surrounded by black.
She saw the High King's white eyes looking down in Triumph.
Thunderstorm decided she rather didn't like that look
So she stood up.
The ground was still molten,
Her fur was bonded to her skin by the intense heat,
And only her enchanted shoes kept her hooves from fusing with the ground.
The pain was overwhelming.
And logic dictated that without wings,
A pegasi couldn't fly.
Ignoring all that,
Thunderstorm went on the greatest flight that she ever went on in her entire life.
Only one thought went through her mind at that moment,
All she had to do was make it through the rift.
She began with a hobbling step,
It turned into a slow trot,
Then a quick one,
Became a lively canterr,
And before all who saw it,
She had begun to gallop to the highest point of the mountain wherer it still touched the rift.
The High King growled
And quickened his efforts to close the gap in the heavens.
He sent lightning bolt after lightning bolt down,
He double the already heavy rain,
And still she galloped,
Still she danced arond all the things he threw,
For she was pegasus,
With or without her wings,
Her will would always soar high above all the obstacles,
But victory would be his,
The sky was past the point where Thunderstorm could fit.
Thunderstorm saw the small hole,
Knew it was over,
But in her pain,
She still ran.
"Leap!"
The East Wind.
He alone of the winds had stayed,
He had bided his time until he deemed it right
And now he leapt,
He gambled just as Thunderstorm had gambled all those years ago,
And openly defied his king and held the rift open.
" “Leap now, while I have the strength!”
THunderstorm reached the peak of the half melted mountain and leaped,
Her hooves still galloping,
It seemed almost as if she was running on nothing but air.
If she was,
This truly was her most legendary flight.
The East Wind blew,
And for the last time,
Aided Thunderstorm in flight
As she soared through the opening.
The High King in his surprise,
Had gathered all his power in for one last attack,
Thunderstorm knocked all of the power down into the heavens
To the sound of the High King's scream.
Her last, tired laugh drowned out by the blustering wind.
For a few long moments,
None dared to go out.
But then one came out of the cave.
Two.
Three.
Then they surged out and looked at the power that Thunderstorm had stolen for them.
None remember how it looked,
But we remember how it felt.
How it felt to control the wind,
How free it felt to fly with the wind,
Instead of against it.
And as soon as the pegasi of Thunderstorm's flock understood what they had,
They immediately flew up to the sky and rendered the thick, black blanket
To threads in search of Thunderstorm's body.
But all they saw was blue.
All the surrounding settlements saw the blue sky
And were in awe.
Before Thunderstorm had stolen,
It was in a state of perpetual storm,
And that blue was beautiful.
But for the pegasi,
It seemed almost mocking.
As if it was telling them to be happy in spite of the sacrifice that Thunderstorm had given them.
They searched for a year,
But all they saw was the sky.
Each day and each night,
They would sing songs in her honor.
Gradually the bitterness turned mellower
And they began to recall in fond memories
Her deeds and times with them.
In respect of her gift,
They spread the gift,
Taught all how to use the gift.
And told their young the tale of Thunderstorm and the Four Winds.
