My Last Words Before The Final Battle
My Last Words Before The Final Battle
You can call me Cadence. I am the Fourteenth Tarot, Temperance.
I am the Concept of Music and Harmony. I am not the Concept of Love.
This is my final record before I face the mad avatar of the Father of the Draconequi. I have asked the spirits of my family to give me their strength, but even that might not be enough. Discord and Destruction tried to stop me, I stopped them.
At this time, in this place, my full name is Mi Amore Cadenza, but I've had many other names. Not only on Equus, but on every planet where my Concept is known, in languages that ponies lack the physical capability to speak. I will be called many more in the future. They are all my names.
Once, I believed that there was a great wrongness in the universe, a force of ultimate disharmony that pretended to be the very core of harmony. A force called Magic.
I saw countless mortals turned into soulless zombies. The elites of many cultures used magic to keep the masses controlled as if they were livestock, raw material to be exploited and discarded as they pleased. I saw ambitious mages try to unlock ultimate power, only to unleash untold terrors or destroy their world in an instant.
Unlike science, which is how mortals understand the rules, magic practically granted them access to rewrite the rules. Or at least, that was how it seemed to me. The greedy and the hateful were always quick to snatch it up, rewriting the rules of reality itself the way petty villains bought politicians to rewrite the rules of their nations. I saw too many worlds reduced to blasted wastelands by mages who cared more about their personal power than what fate they were dooming their fellows to.
I saw my mortal faithful turned to stone, and their granite corpses put on display by an 'artist' claiming they were his works of art.
Some mortals saw the evils of magic, and tried to pretend that magic didn't exist. Others decided that for the greater good, all must be kept ignorant of magic's existence, like foals who didn't know what a sword was or what it was for. Ignorance did not save them when enemies who did use magic came calling. Those poor souls had no power to erase magic altogether, everywhere, once and for all.
I do.
I knew I'd be punished, I knew I'd be doomed, I knew that I'd never be welcomed by my family again. I knew what my final fate would be, but for the sake of those toyed with and tormented for the crime of not being able to defend themselves, I had to try.
I tried to kill Magic. Make Magic like it had never existed to begin with. Magic, my sister. She had already met me, but I hadn't met her yet. Strange how things work when you can move up and down time's river.
I was surprised when Mortis, my brother, the Concept of Death, actually chose to warn her. I thought he'd understand... all the meaningless deaths I fought to undo, all the mockeries of his purpose I was opposing.
Magic and I fought. I used everything and anything I had. I never hated her. I never despised her. Regardless of what she thought. I was doing what I thought I had to do. For the sake of so many, I couldn't give up, I wouldn't give up.
Some thought me spiteful, mad, genocidal, bloodthirsty. I was trying to stop bloodshed, I was trying to stop genocides. I bore her no hatred; I wished to have ended it quickly and painlessly, but Mortis prevented that.
Contrary to the fantasies that many, MANY mortals embrace, living Concepts are not some oppressive cosmic bourgeoisie to be pulled down. Concepts cannot be separated from our power, our power is us, and we are our power. I couldn't simply 'make' Magic into a purely mortal soul.
To save countless lives, to prevent the existence of many dictators and mad artists, I fought my own family, fully intending a battle to the death. While the Father of the Draconequi and His spawn who hadn't been born yet watched my violence as an object lesson.
Magic never stopped trying to reason with me, she never stopped trying to convince me my path was the wrong one, she never stopped trying to end the fight non-fatally until that final absolute moment. While I refused to see it then, she was also Happy Endings, and how could she not desire one for this?
I gave everything I had and more, for the sake of everyone else, but in the end, it wasn't enough. And still she felt no spite, no desire for revenge for what I had tried to do to her. Bless her heart.
I discarded the blackened and impaled avatar, leaving the empty vessel to float forever alone in the dark. I sought to find what wisdom I was missing, trying to find what Magic saw that I did not. The vast and omnipresent understanding of a Concept had not taught me what I was lacking. To know the mortal world, I would have to live within it.
My first incarnation was given the name Brightglow by my mortal parents. Three of my siblings had lovingly followed me into the mortal world to become my mortal siblings as well, though none of our mortal selves knew this. When Patch and her friends combined magic, science, and the Rainbow of Light to completely rewrite the world into paradise on Equus, I had a new name, Sweetie Belle.
It could not last. Yet again, mortals had grasped magic and reached too far. Even with the best of intentions, magic would be their undoing.
Thousands of years of innocent childish play later, reality began to unravel from flaws in this paradise's existence, all ignorant of the spell even existing, and my family and my in-laws were forced to amputate events from the moment reality was rewritten onwards. And yes, I was forced to participate as well… such is the burden of existing outside time. So I became Brightglow once again, this time in a world ruined by magic ran amok.
The me who had been Sweetie Belle was used along with many other souls to populate a future that didn't exist yet. I wished her luck and happiness, and hoped her life would find its own purpose.
Celestia, or rather her incarnation Star Catcher, fought to the bitter end to protect the world from us, for the sake of everyone she loved. She was determined to keep that world on life support forever if that's what it took. She failed, and she was sentenced to live a normal lifetime with none of her divine knowledge or identity. Life as a mundane horse on planet Earth. For a dumb animal, she managed to have a relatively long and meaningful life.
We welcomed my sister back after she died. When she regained her divine form to fight Strife, she regained some measure of enlightenment, but still she made her choices, and the choices of a Concept can have cosmic ramifications. So while Our Parents punish, they only do so because the weight of our mistakes is greater than anything a mortal can ever... or should ever know.
I was thankful that Brightglow couldn't appreciate the irony, that her world never would have suffered so terribly if I had done away with Magic. Many ponies were left brain damaged husks, and yet… the same surge of runaway magic transformed many dumb beasts into sapient beings who would someday write their own songs, something I failed to appreciate at the time.
After myself who was Brightglow was reunited with Patch, my mortal siblings and I, each in our way, tried to help the world heal. It mattered little. Ponies fell into a dark age, burned out and ruined technology reduced to less than fairy tales, and history became legend and legend became myth.
Three of the pony races fell into tribalism, while the seaponies and flutterponies withdrew into themselves. It became a pressure cooker; the uneasy balance that existed between the 'Three Tribes', all loathing and despising each other, was a time bomb waiting to go off. Celestia, my family, Concept of the Sun, didn't want ponies to suffer again, this time from revolutions that would not be bloodless.
She asked Discord's Mother for help. From Celestia's reflections in Entropy's kingdom of ice, Discord's Mother created spirits of unyielding cold that would obey all of Celestia's commands to the letter.
Luna, myself, Leo Fortis, Justitia, and Turris were to stop her from introducing these things to Equus.
I... I couldn't bring myself to fight a member of my family again... So I left, neither helping nor hindering her.
Luna sided with Celestia, and Discord arrived with his usual knack for popping up at the worst time and place, ready to help his two former lovers.
Luna and Discord were stopped and punished, but Celestia got the creatures to Equus.
"I command you. End hatred among ponies. Erase it. Make it as if hatred never existed on this world!"
"We-O-bey!"
And they did. Poor loving, beautiful, kind, magical, fun and funny, naive Celestia.
These things had no empathy, no emotions, no morality, no sense of right or wrong, and they were born from the goddess whose duty was to snuff out the universe after it had run its race, without Shadows of Existence nor the contribution of Fear Himself. Pure drops of the End. Even the Shadows of Oblivion are less empty than them. Is it really a surprise how they decided to follow Celestia's vague command? And they'd ignore all others until it was complete.
Celly blamed Discord, then blamed Entropy, and Discord's Mother did something I hadn't heard her do before and I don't wish to hear again, She laughed.
"YOU DID NOT ASK FOR THEM TO MAKE IT SO THEY DID NOT NEED TO HATE OR FIGHT. NOR A WORLD WHERE THEY WOULD NOT HAVE TO. NOR TO MAKE PONIES BETTER THAN HATRED.
YOU TOLD THEM TO MAKE IT AS IF HATE HAD NEVER EXISTED ON THAT WORLD AND TO BE IMPOSSIBLE TO RISE AGAIN.
-
YOU WISH TO SEE WHO HAS BROUGHT THE FROZEN DEATH TO THE WORLD YOU LOVE? LOOK NO FURTHER THAN IN MY MIRRORS. MY LITTLE ALICORN."
Celestia still has those mirrors.
Celestia turned herself in. She was punished, she was made… no, she CHOSE to live the life of a member of one of the families that the Windigoes had doomed to a frozen death. Remember how I said time doesn't exist for us? With their lives extended, Bright Glow and Patch met her in that life, but she was so blinded by her rage and hate at the tyrannical unicorns and pegasi who had lorded over her people, that she refused our help. She died cursing the one who had done this to her family... she returned to the spirit world a changed mare when she realized she'd been cursing herself.
Did we ever declare Equus a lost cause? Never Equus. Even if that world was doomed, we'd have stayed by our children to their final moment. We didn't abandon it in the darkest times of Tirek's reign, and nor would we then.
Then a miracle happened. Three ponies of three different tribes, having been told all their lives that the other tribes were their enemies, still found friendship and love with each other. This brought down my true Mother, Fauna Luster, and She obliterated the Windigoes. She is the fire of friendship, and the fire of friendship is her.
But this changed everything. The Windigoes had been part of Entropy, Discord's Mother, and she felt the pain of their end. An Elder concept had been damaged. This was supposed to be impossible. This wasn't some epic moment of overturning some powerful ruler, this was the explicit and undeniable damage to reality! Mother and Entropy could dance without undoing each other, but the ponies had managed to burn Entropy's ice with Mother's flames. The idea of entropy itself had been damaged. We are the world's pillars underneath it, not kings sitting on thrones atop it.
And if three ponies in their incredibly underdeveloped state could do that once, what was to stop ponies from doing it again? They could very well destroy all of reality. We had seen something like this attempted by Tirek, and tragically achieved by the death of Cupid. That resulted in millions, nay, incalculable number of lives erased. This would have been catastrophic even compared to that.
Because Entropy had felt pain, Her children and Her husband felt Her pain too. They had all felt Her agony. And great was Her Husband's wrath at seeing His Wife harmed. So, to prevent ponies from some day obliterating the universe, the Draconequi, Nature's Fury, demanded Ponykind be offered up to Entropy.
Ruthless. But to be honest, none of us knew what to do in that situation. It is in the Draconequi's duty to be swift, decisive, and to the point. It is the Alicorn's to be patient, measured, and thoughtful. Or I think so at least. Thus is our balance. Thus was how we went about trying to respond to an inconceivable event.
And for the record, no, Entropy did not deny allowing the Windigoes into the mortal universe was exposing Herself. The Elders ask their children to take responsibility for everything they do, do you honestly think they would not do so themselves?
Maybe that was when I finally understood why Magic defended her own existence with such determination, as I sought to destroy her for the greater good.
We wouldn't stand for it, we Alicorns. Nature's Law wouldn't allow our cousins and in-laws to obliterate Ponykind. Mother even argued that She'd never allow Herself/Her Power to be used to end creation or the Mother of the Draconequi. So yes, that means Mother ALLOWED most of the Windigoes (parts of Entropy) to be destroyed for the sake of these little ponies. This did not go over well.
Venus argued that she'd only sought justice on the filly who had murdered her son, while these three ponies had only unwittingly injured entropy in self defense. She was told coldly, that her son wasn't as important. Her reaction to that is best left unsaid.
Imagination, she desperately suggested maybe for only the three ponies to be offered to Entropy for the sake of the rest of them. It would have been less horrible than what we were trying to avoid… and those three loved their world so much that even when asked in a dream, they would have willingly given their lives to save their people. Justitia meanwhile suggested to offer three 'lowest of the low' ponies as proxy sacrifices.
It didn't help. The inevitable, the unthinkable happened… We went to war.
What epic battles happened across different planes of reality! So beautiful they might look to a distant observer. And so horrible to any poor being who happened to be participating or caught in the crossfire. I remember Puerilis painfully laughing at the absurdity of it all.
Mortals think they can comprehend what a battle between gods would be like, but they're thinking on the scale of nations, cities, a planet. Maybe they think galaxies? No, still wrong, think entire planes of reality! The elephants fought, and the grass was trampled. No, imagine two sea serpents the size of Dracozilla fighting, and a speck of dust on a bubble in the ocean they fought... everything and everyone you have ever known is that speck of dust, that is the scale. And both sides lost members of our families we can't even remember now, or maybe we didn't, we'll never know.
Discord's Father even created an avatar of himself to take part in the battles, but this avatar went out of control. It was made for war, and it fed off the chaos, and eventually, it lost sight of why it had been created and went wild. Havoc desired to protect His family, His Avatar desired to turn all the destruction and ruin into a love sonnet to His wife that She didn't even want.
This tragic nightmare might leave Sun and Moon with a lasting, terrible trauma against our cousins and in-laws long after the fighting was over. A damaged view of our counterparts seen through the lens of this awful war.
How determined was Discord's family to win? They released a prisoner I'd hoped not to see again. Morning Star, Concept of Perfection and Beauty, The Fifteenth Tarot, The Devil, the Fallen Alicorn.
Justitia called him the Perfect Disappointment, the Perfect Failure, but I wonder if the failure was ours. 'Who prays for him, the greatest and first of all sinners?' a pony philosopher once asked, who caught a glimpse of our world. But I honestly wonder, can something that sees itself as perfection itself ever hope to change? ... I don't like the answer I keep coming to.
Morning Star. Where to even begin with him?
When the time came to construct this newest universe, Father and Mother wanted all of us Concepts of Reality to be both self-consistent, and to work perfectly together. To bring about this perfectly-designed beautiful universe, that the Four Elders had spent longer than I can comprehend between Entropy's dusk and Mother's new dawn planning.
My little brother was born right after me. I would ensure the music of the stars to the music of the vibrating atoms themselves would play in harmony. My little brother would make sure that it all fit together perfectly, that each rule of reality, in other words, each of us, did not contradict ourselves, and that there were concrete rules in place for when we brushed against each other in the course of performing our universal duties.
Little Sun and Moon reminded me of us, with how they were always together. Though I felt sad with how they always fought so much, compared to Morning Star and I. We never had a single fight. Like two peas in a pod. Little sister Galaxia came to call me the “Evening Star" since I was always accompanying Morning Star.
It's been 'billions of years' since I heard my nickname.
We also both shared a frustration with our cousins and in-laws, Nature's Fury, the Draconequi. We were both infuriated with the randomness they threw into creation, the conflict, spirals of ideas consuming each other, the perception of impossibilities, obliterating what was there to leave a void to be filled again. All the random notes and incidental lyrics they threw into our music! I didn't understand why Our Parents allowed them such free reign in those primal years.
I... I used to blame them... I actually blamed them for a time for what happened to Morning Star. That they had driven him to madness, that he wouldn't have been pushed so far if not for them, that he was only trying to protect the universe from the chaos they sewed into the universe. And I almost believed it myself... and sometimes, I fear I taught poor Celestia to share it...
The exception was their First Born. I didn't understand why he and Morning Star didn't get along in those early days. The First Born of the Draconequi was delighted with mortals when they first appeared, not as pets or playthings, but inspired by all the great things these tiny creatures with their brief moments in the mortal universe could do, building on each other's songs, each note adding to the rest, growing greater and greater, the symphony always changing, growing larger, but always consistent.
He had leapt into my song many times, becoming one of the notes, allowing an uplifting verse to rise from a darkened series of chords. How absolutely wonderful he was! Maybe, maybe that's what happened, and maybe that's what can help me understand what happened to my brother too. The First Born... I think he stopped being able to see the song through the notes. Morning Star couldn't see the notes through the song.
When I heard the First Born had intended to undo us all, along with his entire family, for the crime of... of well, existing, I didn't know what to think. Him and Morning Star both? What was wrong with us? For all the vileness Discord has brought with his vicious little games, it would have been a drop in the bucket to the calamity his big brother's good intentions would have brought forth if he'd succeeded in his genocide of Alicorns and Draconequi. I wonder if he saw Morning Star as his justification. He loved mortals as much as my baby brother hated them.
I still don't believe the First Born was ever evil, since he was never self-serving. Maybe as he leapt into the song again and again, to liberate this verse and that verse from a dictatorial rhythm, he began to hear them everywhere? The duel between Her unassuming avatar, and Her First Born shook the eternity of her plane of existence. Herself, in other words.
The simplistic avatar of Discord's Mother who could simply say something didn't exist and it never did, dueled against one who could just perceive himself back into existence... much like his Father.
He summoned imitations of the companions who fought alongside his various incarnations, trying to reason his Mother out of existence, or at least to pull her down to their level, instead, she reasoned them out of existence. They gave soulless screeches and shattered like glass. He called forth a torrent of copies of himself in his countless lives as the hero toppling false god after false god, all at their absolute peak, only for her gray hooves to shatter each with one blow each, 'swimming up' the 'river' until She reached Her son. He conjured an inexhaustible array of weapons from blades to guns to state-inverters, and Her gray avatar never fought with anything but her bare hooves. Heaven and Hell trembled.
I wasn't there personally, or even close by, but I saw Mother spread Her infinite wings and intervene in the final moments of the duel. My Mother and His Mother, they danced, as siblings would, and something great came forth to their combined dance, and a beam of magic that stretched from one end of the universe and looped back to where it began was struck, and his essence was separated back into that of his Father and Mother's.
His various incarnations became empty vessels for the Those-Who-Watch to inhabit and live out his heroic quests to save the world with no personalities of their own.
I cried for him as much as Pandora after His Mother took back what She gave him, and his empty shadow fled into the dark. I don't blame the First Born's Father for not forgiving His Wife.
Mother... She had helped end something. For Entropy, the act of Beginning is the most painful thing, for Mother the act of ending is the most painful. Such is Their nature. The Equilibrium shook in agony.
"HE COULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO SUCCEED, THE COST WAS TOO GREAT...BUT I FIND NO JOY IN IT..." Mother told us when we, as any child would, spoke to Her about her pain.
That duel was only a prelude of the war I've now fought.
Little brother truly had a love for himself, and he wished to share that self love, to share beauty and perfection with everything in existence. And I never saw the warning signs. Or maybe I did, and I simply chose not to see them. Morning Star... what happened to you? Or was this always you? I'm scared to think which could be worse.
What began it all? There was no grand moment he suddenly became something else, nor a suddenly switch in who he was to what he became. We carried on as we always had.
Maybe it was when mortal life appeared, and Morning Star became infuriated at the endless parade of mistakes they kept making one after another, often repeating the same ones in a slightly different way, and thought Rota Fortuna and her free will was the problem.
"Why are we letting these insects leave their dung trails all over my beautiful painting?!" I once heard him exasperate.
'My painting.' I should have known then.
But it went further back than that. It grew slowly, like a cancer. Morning Star... as the project continued, as the universe was designed and built... he steadily became more intense. Less willing to compromise. Eventually... he shifted from being a fellow composer of creation's song. He wasn't content to be a mere editor... he wanted to be the publisher.
Everything, and I mean everything had to meet his approval, it wasn't enough that it internally fit, it had to meet his standards. His personal mark of approval.
"Morning Star, what's wrong? I got my seapony evolution to work just fine, and I found a way to cross their magic with Cadenza's power," Leo asked.
"That's not how I TOLD you to fix it! I thought we agreed on a hive mind through harmonics! Is this how you treat the help I give you?!"
"They aren't insects, brother. A hive mind doesn't fit with the possible evolutionary paths I've been preparing for them. I found ways to make their sense of community stronger than in the other equines WITHOUT needing the reinforcement of a hive mind!"
"So all the work I did for that MEANS NOTHING!?"
"But… I thought you'd be pleased! I used your ideas as a base and improved on them. By simplifying their evolution..."
"Improved!? If it could be improved, I would have done it in the first place!"
-
"WHY are you giving your angels this much discretion? Don't you see that their purpose is to carry out your will? They don't NEED personalities or advanced reasoning. What if they chose to disobey you? Such wasted effort!"
Mortis didn't flinch. Rota Fortuna has seen that Mortis would be bested someday, but Morning Star was not that one. "They are my creations, it's my business."
"Except they're also part of the universe I have to make sure is perfect! What difference does it make once a soul is dead?! Just ship it off to its proper place! Why waste time with pleasantries?!"
"After mortals cast off their fleshy shells, they need to know what's waiting for them is fair, and is even more alive than the world they're leaving. Otherwise they'll cling to their material world, and part of their spirit might be lost in the process, the results would be... horrific from what I can tell, leaving them hollow."
"If your angels didn't waste time BEING NICE, then maybe they'd actually DO THEIR JOBS."
"Their JOB is to help souls into the next life, not pick-up and deliver raw materials."
"So you care more about your reputation as a NICE death than about BEING death!? How can you be THAT selfish?!"
-
"Imperatrix! Princeps! What IS this nonsense!? This... this vulgar... ugly... disgusting... "
"It's our Concepts! We've realized them! We're fully formed ideas! We've become whole! It'll take a few million years to be fully realized, but between the two of us, we might be able to expand it even FURTHER in a billion years or so after that!" Princeps said happily.
"BUT! BUT! They're MIXING their DNA!! It's CORRUPTING the hard work! You're taking puzzle pieces and throwing them all into a mixer! There's no telling what this could do!"
"Isn't it exciting?" Imperatrix smiled next to her twin brother.
"CHAOTIC is more like it! All the hard work torn up and glued back together! Do you want them to die out?! Producing identical copies of themselves is simpler and more practical."
"But imagine how it'll help them adapt as life!" Princeps said, proud of the possibilities.
"They shouldn't NEED to 'adapt' in the environment they're born into!"
"We discussed the idea with Strife! She thinks this'll help evolution immensely!" Imperatrix defended her twin.
"SO YOU'RE TAKING ADVICE FROM DRACONEQUI NOW INSTEAD OF PERFECTION?! ARE YOU THAT GULLIBLE, YOU FOOLS?!"
-
And when any dared do anything 'behind his back' as he liked to call it, he flew into a fury.
"HOW DARE YOU STAB ME IN THE BACK?!!" He'd snarl. In spite of things working, he didn't care. They had to fit as what he WANTED THEM to be. The building of the universe began to slow down as we slowly became afraid of being on the receiving end of his wrath, scared of any unique idea that he might disapprove of. It was why he had been created after all, wasn't it?
His paranoia just grew worse. Any mention of his name without his presence was proof of conspiracy, any independent verse in his poem was a subversion of the authority he'd been granted. Even when it was internally functional and didn't contradict anything he'd approved of so far.
It was for our own good, after all.
He'd call us lazy and selfish, that we didn't care if the universe fell apart in the first million years or not, that we weren't willing to work together.
And I... I was his apologist. I defended him as best I could to my siblings. I calmed him down as much as I could in those days. He was doing this all for us after all, he just wanted us to be the best we could be. He loved the universe, he really did, didn't he? He didn't just love himself, no, of course not. Never.
Right?
No, Morning Star did not suggest I 'do something about' Magic. If anything, I think Morning Star was delighted at Magic's sense of order and reason. I'm happy she'll never know.
We began to drag our hooves on tasks. The joy of creation had been bled out, replaced by a dread and a weariness of what the next encounter with Morning Star might bring.
Our Parents saw this, and brought us all together.
"Your Sisters And Brothers Have A Right To Be As They Choose To Be," Father Said.
"I AM PERFECTION! THEY SHOULD ALL BE AS I SAY THEY SHOULD BE!"
"Your Dedication To Your Purpose In Creation Is Admirable, Son, And Your Strength Of Will Is Worthy Of Praise. But Know That Your Siblings Too Are A Perfection In Their Own Right, Within Their Own Purpose, And In That Is Their Beauty, And Therefore Is Also You. Loving Them Is The Only Way You Can Truly Love Yourself."
"Pseudo-philosophical gobbledygook!" was what Morning Star had to say to that. We were all shocked to our cores at his total disregard for Father's words.
But this wasn't when he was sealed away. My Parents still tried to help him. But I think that was the moment Morning Star decided that Mother and Father had to go.
"As Perfection Itself, it's obvious I was created to replace them. They should be subservient to me!"
I still don't know when his concept truly became corrupted, when perfection itself fell. His beauty remained forever perfect and without flaw. I told myself for so long that he was still working for the good of the universe, that he was only misguided, maybe simply misunderstood? What a silly little filly I was.
Then there was when Mother first began birthing our half-siblings, the first souls...yes, half-siblings, all mortals are Mother's children, are they not? What could they be to us Concepts but our kin? Newborn mortal souls are unfinished, incomplete things, Morning Star bristled at the sight of them. For him, they might as well have been sketches duct-taped to his most beautiful oil painting.
I think he realized that fighting on all fronts was futile, so Morning Star became focused on one point, one stance: Free Will.
"Free Will causes mistakes to happen, it corrupts the universe!" He first argued, pointing towards the mortals. "Look at how they steal that free will from each other like vermin with their slavery! WHERE IS THE REASON OR SANITY IN THAT?!?!? IT'S BETTER THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE SOMETHING THAT THEY'RE JUST GOING TO FIGHT OVER FOREVER!!!"
Rota Fortuna herself pointed out, "While slavery itself is vile, it is actually a step up from how these tribes at first fought merely wars of annihilation, and for the first time ever, it makes them consider the idea that the lives of the other tribes might have value."
"WE SHOULD HAVE MADE THEM BE PERFECT! LIKE ME! NOT THESE WORTHLESS SAVAGES!"
"They're not STATUES, Morning Star!" I heard myself say in that fateful moment. "They're living things! They're MEANT to grow and change!"
Eremo, my hermit of a brother, Concept of Knowledge said, in one of the rare times he volunteered ANYTHING, "What's the point of a story that contains only the ending sentence?"
And Morning Star gave us all a savage look, as if we were traitors to creation itself. "The universe will never be flawless as long as blind foals get to scurry around doing whatever they feel like."
I wondered if he meant us or mortals, I didn't realize until later he might have meant both.
He had already crossed the line, and we didn't even know it yet. He stole Black Magic from Pandora, introduced it to mortals, and created the most terrible tyrant that poor world would ever know. And he didn't choose the world at random. There was no way. The planet ruled by equines, Leo's creation, and Celestia's favorite, there was no way it was by chance.
This would be the world where Morning Star would make his point.
One of Leo's prized creations, the Centaurs, had already fought Tiamat and Bahamut's children and won dominance of the planet. As a happy side effect, Tiamat was begrudgingly forced to admit that intelligence was not a waste of energy on her children or the road to self-destruction, or at least she accepted intelligence in her dragons as a 'necessary evil.'
Evil. We had no clue where this new idea in reality had come from, or how it had come to be. It was like while we were making the song of all things, someone had snuck in a twisted, malefic chord into the mix to taint the whole. But we'd learn the source of it soon enough. This was not just a mother animal choosing to eat their own young to get back the energy used to birth them and live to breed another day. This was not two males fighting to the death for the right to mate for a female who didn't care who the winner was. This was malice for the sake of malice, this was cruelty for the sake of cruelty, this was suffering for the sake of suffering.
I can't begin to describe the shock finding out who had orchestrated this corruption.
"See?! See what you've done? This is what you're leading every mortal to! Your intentions on freedom are just leading them into the belly of Havoc and destroying everything around them! I HAVE to show you the consequences! Blame yourselves!
"If any of you selfish, selfish, selfish, SELFISH Elder Concepts would pull your heads out of your tailholes and just let Me lead you all into perfection, into myself, your precious universe you don't even truly care about would ALREADY be rid of its problems! But you're all too proud to admit that I'm just smarter than all of you! Or that you created something that's JUST BETTER THAN YOU!"
Morning Star invited me and the rest of our siblings to look at his realm where he'd made a 'scale model.'
It was a blindly beautiful vision of silver and gold ponies who were born and died fully formed, each pony a glorious exemplar of their craft and talent. Each work of art as breathtaking as the next. Night and day always equal in length and beauty. Its climatology was devoid of thunderstorms, floods, earthquakes, meteorite strikes, volcanic explosions, or anything equally violent. Prey didn't run but allowed itself to be consumed. No creature bred more or less than its environment could hold. No wars or crime. The entire creation was a beautiful symphony, free of fear. I was entranced by its purity. Maybe my baby brother had been right all along?
Then I focused more closely, and my bedazzled state turned to shock and horror.
"Cadence? Evening Star? What's wrong?" He asked, genuinely perplexed.
We weren't staring in awe or realization he was right. Now we were staring at the realm, at him.
A Concept's Realm is inseparable from them. If they fall into corruption and decay, so too does it. Morning Star's realm, once the single most beautiful place in creation other than Father Himself, was twisted into the most vile, unspeakable place one could imagine.
When you are within my sister Venus, you feel as if every life that ever has, is, or will ever feel love... is showing their sincerest love to you in that moment. Stepping foot inside Morning Star, on the other hoof, was equivalent to stepping into every heinous act every individual mortal had ever performed happening all at once. I've seen the worst Havoc had to offer the damned, and this was worse. At least Hell has justice and never harms the innocent. I think even the true Havoc is rooting for me now.
And the saddest part was, Morning Star could not see it. To him, he was still as beautiful as ever.
And we come back to what I said, Nature's Fury was so determined to win, they released him, using him to add to their side's numbers, and to lead His children into battle against an enemy he knew perfectly. None of His children liked it, but obeyed Their Parents' decree to follow his commands in battle. Morning Star believed that Havoc and Entropy should be as subservient to him as Father and Mother 'should be' in his mind, Perhaps he was simply mad.
"I am the rising star! None of you are necessary!"
Nature's Fury called for every entity and force across reality that would fight at their side, their cousins the Outer Concepts to in-laws, to ancient horrors and their own spawn. Mortis' three true children, Bellum, Fames, and Pestilentia, chose to side with their mother, Strife, since she thought to ask first. He never held it against them.
"I told you free will would ruin the universe, but none of you believed me. Who is the fool now?" Morning Star had sneered.
What about... I thought we would be best friends forever, but now my Little Brother had become a stranger to me... or maybe, this had been the real Morning Star all along? Like I said, I'm terrified of the answer.
Did I see what he became, or what maybe he always was? No... I won't give him that excuse. Morning Star made his own choice.
In spite of everything Morning Star had done, he was still a concept of reality, and he did something I don't remember him doing before. Three mutant seaponies who were a bane upon free will, and cherished their beauty, and were an example of everything Morning Star wanted to present to us as wrong with freedom of will (much like Tirek), but unlike Tirek, Morning Star gave these three his divine blessing! This marked them as his chosen, those who would enact his will among their fellow mortal creatures. Worst part was? I remember when three seaponies were five, before the disaster that stole their base form's beauty from them, and stole two of their sisters from them, before they were left as pariahs. Before they used their new state to consume darker emotions and sought ways to invoke it instead of clearing the world of it. I remember when five seaponies were my blessed, spreading the joy of music and crossing cultural boundaries. Morning Star had taken them from me, forever.
I don't know if it was before the war, or during the war, but Discord, after repeated rejections, came under Morning Star as his pupil, learning anything and everything Morning Star knew about manipulation and the overwhelming power of words. It was under Morning Star's lessons that Discord truly became a grand puppetmaster... Which might be how my sister Rota Fortuna was captured and tortured by Discord, resulting in her losing one of her beautiful wings forever.
Discord was always a selfish child, but now Morning Star had given the child a handgun.
When Discord maimed my sister, I suspect that was the only time Morning Star would have ever shown even the barest hint of pride for his student, as well as pride for himself as a teacher. Free Will, the Concept he hated more than any other, maimed forever.
I wasn't the one to fight Morning Star, that was Justitia, who was comforted by Judicium. Those two were always together... and they debated more than once where one of their concepts began and the other ended. More than once leaving in a huff. But they never once came to blows, nor did they once try to subvert each other, not once across all of creation.
I'm thankful to Justitia. I know the monster I would have fought wasn't the Morning Star who had existed only in my perceptions, but... I am thankful to her for taking up that terrible burden.
And that brings me back to here, to this final battle. Where I'm the only Alicorn left standing, and the avatar of Discord's Father is all that remains of the opposing army.
I've had Galaxia take Celestia and Luna away from here. The paths back to the Equilibrium are barred, even if I win I don't know when the path will reopen, looks like I might become the first Alicorn to incarnate more than once.
It comes down to us. If Havoc's Avatar wins, a proven threat to very the universe, and possible many universes, is removed. If I win, an entire civilization, an entire species, countless PEOPLE are free to live their lives as they choose, never having to know how close their ancestors all came to dying, and perhaps one day get to spread their message of harmony and friendship to other worlds as well.
Okay… Here we go.
Author's Note
Side story of the Pony POV Series.
Pony POV Series:
Mistakes of the Goddess of Music
By Alex Warlorn
Proof read by Mtangalion.
Grammar Checked by docontra
Edited By Louis Badalament
Edited By Wolfram-And-Hart
The war between Nature's Law and Nature's Fury is reaching its climax. I, Cadence, Goddess of Harmony, am about to do battle with the avatar of Hell Itself. I need to lay all the cards on the table, in case I do not return. This is story of my family, and one member of my family in particular. My Little Brother Best Friend Forever, Morning Star. The Concept of Perfection, and the Devil himself.
Don't forget the trope page. It's REALLY not been updated lately, at all.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/PonyPOVSeries</b>
FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE check out the ton of recursive fanfics of this fanfiction series. A lot of heart went into them! They also answer a lot of unaswered questions. http://mlp-pony-pov-series.deviantart.com/ For heaven sake they rock! Kendell2 and Oracle Mask and Richforce and Ardashir and Jawmax and Persona22 and Dragon of Twilight and ItsFromPeople and all the rest!!! http://alexwarlorn.deviantart.com/journal/Pony-POV-Series-Fanworks-fanmedia-By-Category-332817406 Seriously, they rock.
JOIN THE PONY POV SERIES GROUP! http://mlp-pony-pov-series.deviantart.com/
MLP FiM: Copyright Hasbro.
Previous: http://alexwarlorn.deviantart.com/art/Pony-POV-Series-Last-Battle-7-Round-1-FIGHT-673960368
Next Chapter:
First Chapter: http://alexwarlorn.deviantart.com/art/Pony-POV-Series-Fluttershy-FlutterCruel-Pearls-260092460
Cover Art by Wolfram And Hart!
Nominally set during Celestia's Origins Saga!
