One small insignificant planet floats through the cosmos, unimpeded from it's course by the events, large or small, that transpire on it's service. This planet has one solitary sun and one lonely moon that float around its surface, helped along in their path from time to time by two beings. Two sisters moved the celestial bodies around using their magic. For a thousand years this task was taken on by one of them while the other was imprisoned in the moon. On the surface there is a kingdom that has no kings or queens, only the two princess. One of celestial light, the other of heavenly night. When sun outshone night they had a fight, and the two became one. Much later, the other came back from the moon and was forgiven for her betrayal.
The two princess were later joined by a third princess. She had proved her worthiness to the position when she and her friends defended the kingdom from many dangers, and learned many lessons about friendship along the way. But this is a big world. It has many countries and lands beyond the kingdom. The stories that happened around the third purple princess and her friends are but one viewpoint on the lens of history. There are many stories surrounding the magical land of Equestria, and the Elements of Harmony. Such stories often do not include creatures that have a unique view on the history of this planet moving through the cosmos, but some have such a long history that they can recall such pain and anguish from having lived such long lived lives. One such story happens to start many years after the night of mares and moons.
Years after the purple princess rose from her station of Celestia’s number one pupil, and into a station of rule as the princess of friendship. This story, while long, has an end, but must be told in two parts. The first one starts outside the east border of Equestria, some leagues out to sea. There on a small island, some years after the princess of the sun cast the lunar princess into the moon, was constructed a small lighthouse. It was constructed to facilitate the new trade between the lonely princess and griffons. It was named for a lost kingdom from long ago. So mythical the kingdom was, it was said that it had never existed at all. Some others claim that it was lost overnight do to unforeseen and unknowable events. All that remains of the legend, is this little lighthouse.
As the years past, the griffon’s nation fell into ruin, and so too did the lighthouse as the trade dried up. After that, it was used by sky pirates as a mooring for their skip. Their leader was a shark with a propensity for dropping his victims from the top of the clouds and into major areas of population. They worked that sea for thirty years, and in that time they built a deck from the top for a more convenient way to disembark. After they were captured the leader was asked why he did what he did and he said he was just wanted the victims to see heaven before they died. During his stint as captain they broke the light on the top of the lighthouse so that the light never shone and none would see the island. One member of the crew, the first mate, escaped capture and moved to Ponyville to try to sell custom clothes from a boutique. He wasn't very good, but made just enough to keep the shop open.
After the pirates stopped paying the lighthouse regular visits the place went uninhabited for seven years, until a lone hermit took up residence within. They lived there for some thirty years until the reason they become a hermit came calling. The money lenders that came looking for the hermit knocked the door off the hinges and broke several pieces of furniture beating thehermitto death inside. They hung the body from the rafters before they left. After that, the place was avoided and was viewed as a haunted house. It was eventually forgotten and left as a ruin, but this structure was made to last. Even as the windows grew old and fell out, the lighthouse stands as a dark sentinel on the horizon.
Around two-hundred years after the last living thing was reported to reside in there, a wooden boat fell on it's shores. This was not a big boat by any stretch of the imagination, no. It was a simple and worn rowboat that only held one solitary passenger. The boat was of an old make, the fig leaf pattern on the side as well as the silver trim on the top told of it's famous maker. It was a good boat. The passenger had traveled a long way to get here. Over the vast Badlands and it's deserts with their shear wind. He had bought the boat at a small town so near the shore the only source of income the town had was fish. It was the first time the creature had paid for something, and the act had made him feel some sense of accomplishment.
After setting out from the small town by the docks. The sea had been his next challenge with it's ever changing surface, and him in just a rowboat. The constant cloud cover made the storm hard to spot and when the storm hit it had set him back three days. That was time that the creature didn't have. When the occasional sea monster had dared to stray too close it had become his food. He would just latch on with some tendrils and corrupt it, but even this small act that used to come so easily, now, took so much out of him. When the creature came upon the island he dared a smile, but had to beach the boat on the sandy shore because, over the years, the dock for the lighthouse had fallen ever deeper into the sea. The dock for all it's worth had been nothing special, just some planks and piliers. Passing ships used to stop by and trade food, as well as information. It had suffered minimal damage over the years and had been the last thing, besides the walls and one other thing to remain. The creature, himself, was an old soul, having lived longer than he was supposed to. Even now, as the waves lapped at the shore his mind swam back to the past, back to all the memories he had built up over the years. The time in the darkness, The Order, and Ivory. Oh Ivory. I'm so sorry, he thought sadly.
He shook the past from his mind, there would be plenty of time to dwell in the past after he got inside. Besides, that was too painful to think about now. Taking a tentative step out of the boat and onto the beach he very nearly fell over the side, the creature tried to regain his land legs making a few curses as he did. After a few moments of swaying, he steadied himself, looked back at the boat, and used the horn on his head. The boat was covered in gray light and was magically dragged off the shore. Pushing the boat out to sea and watching it float away, the creature nodded approvingly. Nothing would know he was here. He checked the book in the saddlebag at his side. It was dry even after the storm, and him nearly falling on his flank into the water. He held the book close like a precious child. Even if the book was blank, it represented a potential towards salvation. The book was bound in leather and steel, with a black opal set into the steelwork that crisscrossed the front of the book. It held a deep blue color to it and had a lock on the side opposite the binder.
After returning the book back to the saddlebag, the four legged creature put one hoof in front of the other toward the old decrepit lighthouse. Each step was as painful as the last and it was hard going for him, up the bank his legs would lock up from time to time despite the fact that island was only a little bigger then the lighthouse, so the trip from the beach to the door was short, yet long. After a few minutes he found himself standing in the place where the door once was, and collapsed into the door frame as his legs tried to dissolve out from under him. After a few moments of grunting, and a few swears, he managed to will his legs back into existence. It would take more concentration now, but he could manage. As he took the long trip to standing up he reflected on his own mortality. He once had the power of a Demi-god, but now he was in this state. Sylver was really inconsiderate. The creature’s power had been disconnected the moment that Sylver tongued devil had died. Now, the creature was just a fragment of himself, and he was fading. Having regained a standing position he looked around. He could see that the wooden floor of the lighthouse had partially fallen through into the basement in places and most of the furniture was gone. Lost to time, or looters, or the weather. The stone stairwell leading up was just gone, and there was a thick layer of dust that covered everything. As the creature tentatively stepped inside, the dust was disturbed up into small clouds with each step, making him sneeze.
After the fifth sneeze, the creature had finally had enough and flexed its wings out and flapped them hard disturbing the dust. He couldn't fly with them anymore, but he could still use them like this. He used his horn, capturing the cloud in a bubble, he filtered the dust outside and into the sea. With the room a little cleaner, at least, the creature’s red vertically slitted eyes saw what he was looking for. His mouth pulled into a fanged smile. It was a desk, just a simple desk. They didn't make desks like this anymore, not after taking wood from the Everfree was banned. He didn't know this, but the desk was originally from a rich Canterlot family. It was being transferred from the, then young, city to a resort home up north when the pirates stole it.
The creature, making sure to avoid the holes in the floor, slowly moved over to the desk with every step producing a creak or moan out of the old floor and, ever so gently, set the book upon it with only the barest hint of a sound. He didn't want to damage the already old desk. Standing this close he could now make out the marks, nicks, and the beer stains that now completely covered the surface of the desk. He took a seat in front of it, grunting from age as he did, and pulled out the ink and pen out from the saddlebag. After setting them up to the side of the book, he opened it, dipped the pen in the ink, and began to write. Not about beginnings, not of endings, and not for others, but about his story. His connection to this small insignificant planet floating through space. To prove that he was here, he existed, that he had loved another, and at one point she had loved him back.
Author's Note
This is my first attempt at serious storytelling, I hope you enjoy it.
Beginnings, beginnings are never easy. Sometimes they take entire lifetimes, other times they take only a second of thinking. This is one of those times where it took me to the end of my life to put a single word to the page. The things written within this tome are all true to the best of my memories. Though that is not all that is here. I implore you to keep an open mind. I am Pution Rorc Knight, and I know that is a name that will scare some of you. I beg of you to not burn or destroy this book. It will probably be all that is left of me, and it is all I have left. You must understand, the world I came from was an old world, where there was a need for creatures like myself. But I will be the first to admit I am no longer needed in the current age. I will not apologise for anything written within these pages, except for one act. I know what that makes me, that one act has haunted my waking dreams, chased me across five continents, and I've kept it close to my heart for over one-thousand thirty five years. Yes, I am that old. If you are of the Knight family… well, please know that I have earned that last name. The act, that I spoke of earlier, is the worst thing I have ever done, and I have destroyed hundreds of lives, smashed kingdoms to rubble, and made a god cry. I know, I'm a monster… I know that fact with every sense of my being. Besides, I've been called worse, but you didn't start reading this tome to listen to an old stallion ramble on about how sorry he is. You started reading to hear a story. Know that I will not lie or mislead you in any way. I only present the events as they happened, from my perspective. Good or ill, from then to now.
For me, the beginning was nothing. No, not that mythical nothing that we all come from. I was a floating consciousness, and it was very dark. There was no great moment of birth, no song of beginnings. I just, was. There was a distinct me and I was aware that I was. The darkness was all around me. Yet, I could make out distinct clouds rolling above me. Shapes in the darkness. It's not that I couldn’t see, I could… a little. I would not call it lit up by a source of light. There was a horizon in my dark world, and the 'floor’ was a mirror that reflected the dark sky far into the horizon. As I said there was nothing. Who is to say how long I was there. Days, weeks, months, or mere moments. Time was a foreign concept to me, and even if I did know time… well it was impossible to track. There was no day/night cycle. No celestial bodies to track my days. It's different now, but things… have changed. I didn't get bored, nor did I sleep. Life was a foreign concept, friendship was unknown, and so was hate. The time I spent in that darkness was full of thoughts. Very few thoughts, mind. My life experience, as I've stated many times already, was limited to this space. So, it was like dreaming without having anything to dream about. If I 'pushed’ out with myself I would often come to a wall or barrier, and I could not push any further. This was my home for a time. It was the only thing I knew. I didn't know sight, sound, or touch. My only sense, was the sense of self that I had to cling to. Do you know what that is like? No, I don't suppose you do… that space was, as I look back on it now, a prison. Not the normal kind of prison one would find. There was no bars, no guard, and no lock. I was just trapped in that darkness for, what seams like, an eternity. This was, and still is, my first memory. Even now I feel it's call from the past into that darkness.
It was not, as you might assume, terrible, no. In fact, I could call it fairly nice. I didn't know companionship, so the experience, while still a prison, was nice. There were no others to call me names, no one trying to destroy me, and… no one to break my heart. Out of all the places I've been locked into over the years it wins by far, but it wasn't to last, sadly. One day, I assume, six voices reached out to me from somewhere distant unknowable, somewhere apart to my current state. One voice was full of hate, one full of hunger, one full of lies, one full of disruption, one full of sorrow, and one full of tricks. These voices were in the darkness, and a the same time, they came from my own mind. From within and from without, as they say. They are the first thing that made me realize the distinction between myself and others. They started as a quiet whisper, and grew ever louder. I could never understand what they said, even as they grew to a cacophony of sound so loud that my mind was in a state of exhaustion. To the point I was unable to think of anything else. If I had ears I would had covered them. This went on for some time till the darkness receded and my world became light, blinding light. I remember thinking for something to come and save me. Something to make this stop.
Then after, what seams like forever, they did, and my little world was quiet once again. The only difference was that I was not in total darkness anymore. The light had broken into six lights and now shone from the opposite sides of the horizon. They had spread themselves evenly along the edge of my awareness. I remember them looking like stars in a night sky just poking up from the edge. After some experimenting I found I now had a sort of formless form. Wait, let me explain what I mean: Normally I would just inhabit the darkness, but now I found I could concentrate my mind into, a sort of, body. The light had helped me, I think. Though this new existence was still without any feeling, just a new way to exist. I could move around in the darkness, but now I had somewhere to go. Unlike before, where I just wandered. If I traveled in one direction for too long I found that the stars started to come into focus, and take shape. If I traveled in the other way they became just specks of light, back on my horizon. The 'floor’ didn't mirror them at all. Which I found unnerving. After some trepidation, I decided to travel to one at random. After all I could just go to the next one if this one was nothing. As I got closer the white light it waxed into yellow, and took the shape of a pointed, and very sharp, diamond with pins at the tips. The closer I got the bigger the shape got till it towered over me. Till it threatened to swallow my very essence. It was big, and I was so very small. It dominated my peripheral till it was all around me. Being this close to the thing also meant that I could hear it better than when it had spoken with the the others. The words it spoke were ever present but still indistinguishable gibberish. All I could tell is that it was full of hate. I had to get away, had to run from this thing that was so large. It was too much, I couldn't distance myself from this… this overwhelming weight that threatened to consume me. The spikes seemed to reach for me, yet I ran from this giant. It followed till it was almost on top of me. Then, like magic, it was a yellow light on the horizon again. If I stared at it for too long it begin to whisper words of hate to me. I resolved to not do that unless I could stand that onslaught again, and turned back to the darkness and my formless self.
I could neither feel nor see myself, but for the sake of descriptions: I was akin to a dark cloud of energy. I didn't have have a form to copy and I was afraid to copy the yellow shape. It might try to take me again. Some time passed as I contemplated myself and this new experience. A question rose in my mind that had never been there before: What am I? It was such a simple question, yet it had never occurred to me to ask that one before. As I contemplated the new question I failed to realize the voices had returned. As they did the stars on the horizon grew. The yellow one now joined by new colors. Green, black, silver, purple, and red. The colors grew so large that they dominated my word so that it was no longer dark. Then the light shot into me from the center of the other lights, and it hurt. It was my first taste of the physical sensation. Pain. It hurt so much that if I had a mouth I would have screamed. It burned my everything. If I had eyes they would have melted. The light grew with the pain. It was blinding and painful. I couldn't do anything I was desperate to escape, but didn't have anywhere to go. I was 'pushing’ in all directions. Harder and harder I pushed till there was nothing left to push. Then, like a pop, it didn't hurt, but it was still bright. It didn't hurt anymore because I wasn't in the dark place anymore. It was still bright because it was the first time I could see. I could see… well that would be the wrong way to describe it. I could 'sense’ the things in front of me. What I 'saw’ first was the two large sanguine bloodshot eyes staring back at me. These eyes were in the eye sockets of a white unicorn and I was being suspended in the air in his grey magic. He was smiling a big toothy grin. “Yes!” He said rather happily, I remember. “Yes, I did it.” What he did, was to confuse me.
I had no idea what he meant, I don't even know where I was, much less know what he did. “I finally did it. It works!” His eyes were so full of glee then, but what I remember about them most was the way they looked. I remember the way they seemed to burn into your very essence. His words dripped with hate, despite the happy tone. I remember him scaring me when I first saw him. It, well… first I should explain. I didn't so much as hear him, as the sound bounced off me and I understood it. As I took stock of my surroundings, I found I was in a rather dark room, lit by his magic and single candle. When I tried to move, like I did before, I found I was unable to. Out of all the thoughts running through me. The thought of how I had gotten here was the most prevalent. It dumbfounded me, but the large thing in front of me was speaking again, “You will show those fools what can be done with those gems of power.” A dark smile crossed his features. “They didn't listen when I told them…” He reached out with his hoof and caressed me. As his hoof made contact with me, a soft *tink* emanated from me. What was I now? That, I didn't know. “You’ll show them, yes.” He let the magic drop me into his hoof, and another tiny *tink* sounded. “Now, how well did I do?” He said as he inspected me with those dangerous eyes, now so full of criticism. He made a few hums and grunts as he looked me over. I was forced to look into those large eyes up close. He seemed to nod in approval, “...Yes you'll do.” Great, I'll do, for something… I can't stress how weird this was for me. I was having a nice time hanging out in my darkness, then was attacked by those lights, and now I was here. What had I done to be here? As I pondered what I was to do he walked over to a table that was out of my 'sight’ and set me upon it. When he did my sight turned from front to up.
The desk had many a book on it, and one single candle that lit the whole of the room. The candle had melted over some of the books locking them in a waxy prison. He set one of the books next to me and began to flip through the pages. For my part, I couldn't even read. So I was just waiting and looking about the rest of the room. The ceiling was made of rough hewn wood that had six cross beams supporting it. The wall and the floor was flat rock. The room I was in must have been carved out of the rock itself. Covering the walls and the floor was inscribed various magical circles. Most likely for convenience. The rest of the room had stacks of books randomly scattered about. “There it is.” The sudden outburst from the pony disrupted my thoughts. “The balance must be maintained… regulating energy will… “ He was mumbling something I was unaware of. That pony…. Hm, I can't keep calling him 'that pony’ can I? He needs a name… Harold, his name will be Harold. So, Harold read something from the book and then looked at me. So, since you don't have a bearer, I need to bond with you.” He. frowned, “But, first I need to name you, yes...” He brought his hoof to his mouth as he started into the near wall. Then his face lit up with possibles. “I know, I'll name you after my intent for you. You are now, The Element of Corruption.”
