Author's Note

I broke this one into multiple chapters, but the whole thing should be a single chapter. I will not post them all at once because the site is going to mess notifications up. I’ll post one, then wait a few days (editing), and then post the next. This way, the site’s weirdness with the notifications should not get people into reading the wrong order. More importantly, I'll give myself time not to mess up.

Pony OS v1.0 - Hello World!

As Twilight and her friends walked into the cave, the cold air of the night turned damp and heavy. Breathing came with puffs of mist. The stone became slippery with moss and a fine sheet of wetness, but a line of mats made with rough spun grass helped them walk with confidence. Candles, placed on natural outcroppings and niches on the stone walls, lit the path which winded down a gentle slope. A snaking path between the rocky walls gradually became narrower and forced Twilight to lead the way, with her friends following in a single file, brushing the stone. Cracks sheltered tiny rats that came out to stare at the ponies, and Rarity cried at the tiny eyes reflecting the light from the candles. Despite the upstart reaction, nothing of note happened along the way. It was only a damp cave.

“Is it just me, or is it getting a mite chilly?” Applejack spoke softly, as though she feared disturbing the cave itself. Her head swiveled and her eyes scanned the cracks. Next to her, Rarity’s hooves avoided the dampest mats.

“It is getting colder,” Fluttershy confirmed, while holding her eyes over the tiny creatures scurrying about, followed by an impatient Rainbow Dash.

They walked for a while, and Twilight pressed her steps onward as a soft glow came from behind a bend in the path ahead. She ignored her friends’ banter and Rarity’s complaints. So much for the rustic charm, apparently. The cave opened into a tall and wide gallery. Stalactites reached for their counterparts on the arcing ceiling and little magical beasts flew in between.

“What are those?” Shining Armor turned to Fluttershy as they walked.

“Cave wisps.” She also eyed the creatures above. “They’re like bats, but crystal-y and rainbow colored.”

The tiny creatures chased after each other among the limestones, and below, an internal lake cast a kaleidoscope of wavy light and shadows at the white stone of the ceiling. The magic radiating from it brushed on Twilight’s legs, a wet warmness licking up her limbs. Her horn tingled with the flowing energies.

It was not overwhelming, but it was like entering a room that was too bright after the dulled dark of the cave. Arcane energies came at her from everywhere and clouded her magical senses to the usual background noise of the world. Rarity and Starlight Glimmer, as well as Shining Armor, flinched next to her. Cadance gasped, and the pegasi ruffled their wings like they were itchy while the earth ponies shuffled nervously as they gathered around Twilight, by the opening.

“Oh! It’s prickly!” Rarity complained, shaking her head a couple of times.

“You’ll get used to it!” Naminé’s voice echoed. She sat on an island in the middle of the internal lake. A small stone bridge, too perfect and too smooth to be natural, seemed to have grown to connect the island to the rest of the cave seamlessly. “Come! The night is the best time for this, and we have the festival later. In your honor!”

After exchanging a quick stare with her friends, Twilight took the lead onto the stone bridge. Water so pure surrounded it, her eyes could pierce it all the way to the ragged lakebed. Down there, crystals shone like the moon in a clear night. The limestone above twinkled with the reflecting light, and the little wisps kept chasing each other and casting light in every which way. The air thrummed inside Twilight’s chest, and the chiming of magic filled the air amid their hoof steps on the stone. Rhythmic waves lapped at her hooves and the bridge stirred like a heartbeat. Rarity regained her infatuation with the place, letting her jaw hang while she looked down into the water. The others seemed adequately impressed too, but Cadance strode over the stone like Miss Fleur de Lis on the runway.

At the end of the bridge, the island rose from the depth like the tip of an underwater pillar. A menhir sat in the center, painted green and blue for a meadow and the sky, while also showing the Sun and Moon of Equestria at the top. At another glance, those were Celestia’s and Luna’s cutie marks, and with them were also a large star surrounded by five smaller stars and a heart.

“Subtle.” Shining Armor mumbled only for Cadance to shush him.

“Reminds me of the Tree of Harmony.” Fluttershy added.

“Well, it seems to be intentional… Hum…” Rarity responded. “Let’s call it overt.”

She lacked the reproaching tone that Applejack soon provided. “It’s straight up pandering, is what it is.”

“It is a memento.” Cadence voiced Twilight’s thoughts. “A symbol so that ponies would think of them. I saw it in the cave, back when she painted the sun and the moon on the cave wall to remind ponies of their creators.”

“Was it really Naminé?” Fluttershy gave Twilight a worried frown. “In the story Cadance told us from her dream?”

“Is that like… Possible?” Rainbow added with a worried frown of her own.

“It’s kinda freaky,” Pinkie summed it all better than Twilight ever could.

“We are dealing with powerful magic. Far more powerful than anything we’re used to.” Twilight walked slowly, finally speaking after some thought. “Anything is, I suppose.”

Naminé was waiting for them, sitting before the menhir. She had redone the white paintings over her body like Rarity might have dressed for a social occasion. White lines from her legs to her neck to her horn and to shape white alicorn wings around her eyes. Her smile shone as brightly as the lake while she opened her forelimbs in an unabashedly welcoming gesture.

Naminé sat on the other side of an unlit campfire while Twilight and the others walked closer. The clear light from their hostess’ horn gleamed over the neatly placed logs and piled twigs before a warm light sizzled inside them with a rainbow of sparks. A pleasant flame took hold of the wood and caressed the ponies with warmth in the chill air. Naminé still waited, eyeing the group of ponies with a foalish excitement while they sat themselves on the grass and cotton mats by her fire. River stones ensured it would not touch the comfortable seating, but it seemed terribly unsafe to Twilight’s scrutinizing eyes. More than that, Naminé’s magic parlor trick failed to impress.

Rainbow and Pinkie Pie shared a mixture of confused and bored stares, along with Starlight Glimmer’s and Fluttershy’s curiosity. Rarity and Cadance both grinned like fillies at the fair, drinking in the details such as the paraphernalia of clay pots and a selection of dried herbs next to their host. Applejack and Shining Armor both shared Twilight’s cautious skepticism of it all, and if Spike were there with them, Twilight was sure he would be less than impressed too.

“Don’t worry! I would never hurt anypony! Ponies such as yourselves, least of all.” Naminé, in her enthusiasm, misunderstood Twilight’s indifference for concern. “Just make yourselves comfortable and we’ll begin!”

Twilight claimed a spot for herself on the mats while the others did the same, but she also talked to Naminé, whipping her tail around her hindlegs. “So, ah… What exactly is going to happen?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” their host waved her hoof at them with a dismissing chortle. “It is actually you who are going to tell me that!”

“Quit beating around the bush and tell it to us straight, pardner.” Applejack righted her hat with a piercing stare at Naminé, but Twilight knew she meant it when called their hostess by that word. “We ain’t got time for any fancy dallyin’. We’re on a tight schedule, so spit it out quick.”

Entirely unfazed, Naminé smiled at Applejack and nodded softly before picking one of the little bowls with dust of varied colors and pouring it on the fire. “Ponies come to me looking to know more about themselves.”

“Oh, for pony’s sake!” Rarity and Cadance shushed Applejack at her outburst, even if Naminé barely acknowledged it.

Whatever their host had poured on the fire filled Twilight’s nostrils with a salty smell. Almost like the harbor, without the fish. “We set out to investigate a letter Cadance found and ended up with a griffon emperor that supposedly never existed. The letter mentioned bizarre events regarding the sun, and we figured we could find some evidence with the Changelings. They kept accurate records of the temperature and climate because their spawning process needed it. It was not much, but they had important information.”

“Woo, boy! Did they have information…” Pinkie added in a sarcastic monotone.

“We thought it was about incorrect records. That it was just a silly error. We ended up kicking a hornet’s nest and got ourselves involved in Griffonia’s affairs. Suddenly we were asking Discord about the sun being sick and we learned that something terrible happened to it, and to the world because there is something wrong with ponies. There was an evil griffon emperor and insane ponies taking over the world. The world itself almost ended, and there was a griffon… Goddess?”

“I just… There was a lot of information. Events and creatures that ought to be remembered and honored. A conspiracy to uncover and history to bring to light. Everything seems connected, and I’m not sure how.”

Naminé paid rapt attention to her words and blinked curiously when Twilight refused to elaborate further. Cadance either was not as mindful, or simply had lost her common sense. She didn’t even spare a glance at Twilight before spilling exactly what the other princess was trying to hold.

“Princess Celestia and Princess Luna told us about the creation of the world and our places in it, and how they lied to us all this time. She told us about the multiple cycles of creation and destruction, and about the Cult of the Harpy. Princess Celestia did something so terrible she needed to hide it. What we want was to make other creatures aware of just what happened and bring justice to whoever deserves consequences. To have our places in all this recognized, as is our right.”

Naminé broke her silence with a hum and a calm voice. “I can see all that has happened. It is my talent; the reason Harmony has brought me to existence. But the memories of the souls which I have touched limit my sight. I cannot see before the first ponies left the Green Harbor. I need special souls which can remember the events from before we left. Maybe even past Creation, into the previous cycles.”

“Souls like Twilight’s and Cadance’s?” Applejack deadpanned. “Golly! Ain’t that convenient?”

“Everypony,” Rarity started with an appeasing tone. “Naminé is on our side. That is why we came to her. Even if we disagree on the specifics, all of us agree we need her magic to assist us. No? Our presence here may be dangerous to Naminé and her followers and they are uncomfortable with the griffons. Furthermore, we must also not forget time is of the essence given the international situation that our quest and their involvement have complicated. Not to mention, Princess Celestia is not sitting idle, and Harmony knows what Princess Luna is doing.”

Come to think of it, Harmony knows what Discord is doing and what was that weird message Twilight got from the Windigos’ messenger. She sighed in defeat. “Discord told us to look for you, Naminé. But he told us to be careful. He said we needed to experience, and that knowing things… things you can show us, without the knowledge to understand them, would be dangerous. So, I’m sorry if I seem unfriendly.”

“I understand that perfectly, princess. But I can tell you that the problem is the griffons. I have seen memories of the horrors they wrought upon the world, and of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna dealing with them, and undoing the damage from the biggest evil that has ever existed.”

“The Harpy?” Cadance’s eyes widened. “Princess Celestia told us she destroyed her and, later, her cult.”

“Oh, she is very real, and she is the one pulling the strings. She wants you to go with her little kittens to north Griffonia and I doubt she has good intentions.” Naminé’s otherwise peppy and charming voice changed into revulsion. “I would really recommend you distance yourselves from those griffons. They are not our friends. They are not friends of any other creature but themselves. And even then.”

‘Well, yes, but the idea is to help them with that…’ Twilight told herself with an upset frown. Friendship and all.

“We need them,” the pink alicorn urged. “They are our key to making public all the things Celestia has done wrong. Nopony is going to believe any visions, and the Lion has hard evidence of Celestia’s wrongdoing.”

“A god can do no wrong…” Naminé said, rather sheepishly.

“I could turn that right back at you!” Cadance let her voice grow grim.

Shining Armor winced discreetly, looking at Twilight, and Fluttershy gasped. Rarity and the others did their best not to stare. Through the awkward silence that followed, Twilight restrained herself not to tell Cadance to bring it down a notch, even if she might not be entirely wrong. That was not the way Princess Celestia acted, much less what she had taught them to think about their positions.

Maybe she was naïve, but Twilight didn’t think of her special position in the cosmology of Equestria, the workings of the universe, as much different from her position as a princess. Being a princess was never something to benefit her. Being a goddess, if she was, would not either.

Cadance spoke again with a much smoother and self-conscious tone. “Miss Naminé, this is not the same as ponies coming to you because of the novelty of your power or their curiosity. We must know what happened. I need to understand my place in all this. It can change the way our world works.”

“We should get started then.” Naminé sighed and then smiled. “All I want is to serve.”

“A soul is a piece of Life magic singled out to animate the flesh of a creature, and the only form of individuality they hold is what we call soul memories. Events so significant they caused the creature to create memories so powerful they left an impression in the magical part of their mind. The details are… Well, I’m not sure of anything, but I could never see into the trees of the forest where we were born. I could never see before the goddesses sent us on our way to take over the world. I suspect that with an older soul, which was involved in the events which took place before, I might be able to see.”

Twilight shook her head. “We don’t need to go that far. We just need to see what caused Princess Celestia to lie to everycreature.”

“No.” Cadance cut the air with her hoof. “We need to see everything. This is not just about Princess Celestia. This is also about us understanding what we are.”

“Fine, Cadance,” Twilight sighed. “Fine! Just do your thing, Naminé.”

Naminé grinned and agreed enthusiastically. The mare’s yellow coat and platinum-blonde mane carried an almost ethereal effect. She poured another potful of colorful dust into the fire. The sparkling green gave the flames an emerald hue and softened its brightness. Twilight’s friends glued their eyes to the flames, but she knew a cheap magical trick beneath even Trixie when she saw it. Nevertheless, she let Naminé do her routine, noting the strong salty smells that reached her.

“You will not see it.” Naminé’s cheerful voice turned serious, and her words resonated, popping like the flaming wood.

The crackling of the fire carried every syllable she uttered, and the chiming of her horn evoked a rushing flame claiming the world. Twilight shook her head, but the unicorn’s voice wormed its way inside her ears and her magic filled Twilight’s head with magical formulae. Too fast to examine, too powerful to resist. The vague idea of an illusion spell disappeared just as soon as it formed behind Twilight’s closed eyes. It became a broken dam once Twilight chose to not resist.

Naminé’s voice guided her thoughts and the salty, dry smell from the fire claimed Twilight’s world and filled it with ash and flames. Whatever words the unicorn uttered popped into her head like her own thoughts. “You will experience it. You will be there. Memories will claim your perception and your emotions will scream at you, but you will not be in danger, you will relive the past. Even then, the past is gone. All there is, is you.”

The floor was gone. A rushing river filled Twilight’s ears and dragged her along, flailing and helpless to resist and holding a scream. A star burned before her. It was impossibly loud and impossibly bright, but it did not hurt her. It was gone before she could examine it. Twilight landed with stone under her hooves again. She let go of the scream she was holding, but the thunder drowned it.

Her heart kicked at her chest and throbbed in her ears. It was not thunder she heard; it was her blood rushing inside her. There was no star; she had opened her eyes for the first time, and she didn’t fall, but the stone greeted her hooves like they had just happened upon the world. The shock of the realization gave her pause. Too fast! Twilight stopped her reeling mind and tried organizing her thoughts, taking stock of her surroundings.

A bleak desert of jagged stones spread before her eyes, and the air smelled of ash. Boulders split the land open and undid themselves into black patches of sand with deafening cracks that challenged the booming of thunder in the mightiest storms she had seen. It was not there, though. The sky. Mad colors of every hue claimed its place, but Twilight could not name them before they shifted into another, and another without end in between the dark clouds lit by lightning. Heavy rain plinked at her nose, hot with magic. The garish rain immediately drenched her coat and her mane, sweltering her in the cold, and covered her in magic devoid of purpose. Heavy drops burst at impact and vanished into the Aether with the tingling of magic.

Lightning magic, or at least some component of it, made her horn stuffy and her whole body itchy. She put out her tongue, but that didn’t help against the metallic taste that covered her tongue. It turned into background noise next to the fact that she was alone in a chaotic world. Until she wasn’t anymore, and her friends stood next to her. The mere thought of them had brought them into existence, somehow.

“Whoa! Trippy!” Pinkie Pie giggled along with Fluttershy right next to her. “Like Tree Hugger’s teas.”

As the pink pony spoke, the ground still shifted beneath them. Like a million pebbles accommodating into a bowl. It growled, cracked open, and closed in mere seconds. The group of ponies had to balance themselves on spread hooves and a few complaints.

The farmpony wrung the water out of her mane and adjusted her hat, staring at Twilight like she was to blame for something. Meanwhile, Rarity delicately extracted the water from her mane while summoning an umbrella to cover herself with, as she was missing her garments from moments ago.

Naminé was there too and looked at the horizon with a gaping frown before she turned to Twilight and her friends. “Is everypony alright?”

Her answer took several seconds before it arrived with the others trying to make sense of their surroundings, with not much more success than Twilight. The princess rubbed a hoof at the side of her head. “I suppose this is the beginning. The world just as it was created?”

“I think so.” Naminé looked at the sky and then back at Twilight. “It does look like the world outside of the Green Harbor that I remember. I suppose your souls can give a lot more information than the souls of normal ponies.”

“The spell feels weird, though,” she complained with a pained frown. “We’re not experiencing memories like ourselves… We are detached, watching it. I don’t know what it means.”

“Why does it… uh… Why does it feel like Discord?” Rainbow Dash complained over the rush of rain and broke the awkward silence. Twilight frowned and rubbed her chin. That was an uneducated way of putting it, but she could feel it too. Raw magic, Chaos.

“It’s not ‘Discord’.” Cadance opened her wings, sitting in the rain with her snout up in the air. She closed her eyes and let the rain wash over her. “This is magic in its purest form, lacking purpose. So dense it manifests physically.”

Twilight might be seeing things, and the dark playing tricks with her eyes, but the droplets of rain vanished in between Cadance’s feathers. Never mind that… Twilight just realized she could see when there was no visible source of light. The ground and her friends shone with their own light. The rain, clinging to them, shone with its own light.

“I don’t think this exists in our world,” Starlight Glimmer said, looking at her hoof. “Rather, our time. Not anymore. But it felt like this when I was in the vision Naminé gave me when we first met.”

“This is the world, before we saved it from Chaos and delivered Harmony unto it.” Naminé’s confident words grated at Twilight’s ears like a hammer on glass. She never responded as she saw Cadance walking over to the painted unicorn and ascending with a most regal stare.

Instead of complaining or pointing out to Cadance she was sticking her nose too high up, Twilight noted the lack of rumbling. The ground had become still and silent, as it ought to. She frowned and her eyes moved to one side and the other. Her horn, her feathers, and her hooves were still itching, but she was not the only one that silenced and paid attention to the air. The others quieted their yapping. The air sat still and odorless. Rain no longer poured. Silence reigned. Ponies looked at each other, waiting for something as much as the world itself waited. A heavy cloak of reverence had covered the land.

“Gah! My wings are on fire!” Rainbow Dash again broke the silence, biting at her wing and earning a reproach from Rarity before the unicorn gasped.

“Oh, my gosh! They really are! Twilight! Look at this!”

While saying that they were on fire was a drama-filled exaggeration, it was also not so distant from the truth. Dashie’s wings looked like they were on fire. Her feathers had fluffed up and her wings emanated light. Like an aura. Subtle, but pure light in the shades of the rainbow, easily seen in the dark. And once Twilight saw that, she saw the same in Fluttershy, even if she demurely shuffled her feathers, instead of biting them. Shining Armor’s horn was not behind, nor was Rarity’s or Naminé’s. Although, dignified lady that Rarity was, she refused to hoof at her horn like the other two. Pinkie and Applejack seemed normal, even if their hooves shone and their fidgeting showed the young grass, braving the stone and sand wherever they stood, only to die instants later.

“Oh, my gosh…”

Cadance was literally on fire, if the fire was pink, and it did not consume what it touched. Looking at her hoof, Twilight attested that she, too, looked like she was burning. Her wings itched, and her horn vibrated numbly, like her hooves. Soon it spread to her bones, and it was more pleasant than she imagined. If anything, it gave her warmth and renewed energy like a double dose of coffee.

“What the hay?” Applejack summed up the collective feeling while shaking the numbness out of her hoof and staring at Twilight, then at Naminé.

“Ah… I have no idea!” their guide told them while insistently scratching her horn.

“This is Dainty Mellow’s Fire,” Cadance offered with her higher than thou stare down her dumb snout. Despite her feelings, Twilight’s ears perked up because Cadance was right.

“Oh, my gosh! You’re right! It is Dainty Mellow’s Fire!” the younger princess grinned at her fiery hoof while the stare the others gave them was less enthusiastic.

“Common Equestrian, please!” Rainbow fanned her fiery wings with a frown.

Twilight stood in front of them and showed her hoof. “It’s a magical phenomenon! Certain materials and substances draw magic to them. Here, alicorn.”

“Hum…” Pinkie gave a confused frown, first at her hoof and then at Twilight. “My hoof isn’t an alicorn…”

Cadance chuckled. “Originally, the word had a different meaning, Miss Pie. It was the name of the substance which connected living beings to magic.”

“Correct!” Twilight grinned. “But it’s concentrated on earth pony hooves and bones, pegasus wings and unicorn horns. Apparently, on an alicorn’s entire body, too.”

“We just have more of it,” Cadance added with a shrug. “All ponies have it all over their body. All creatures, really, but it can exist in higher concentrations in certain areas of magical significance.”

“Areas we use for manipulating magic.” Twilight glared at her. “Like hooves, wings, and horns!”

The younger princess cleared her throat, staring back at the various sets of eyes on her. “Now, Dainty Mellow’s Fire is the phenomenon that makes magical objects emit a light of their own, like enchanted swords. There is so much magic focused on them it emits visible light because of the Photothaumatic Effect.”

Her friends’ jaws dropped. Even Candance’s. Twilight didn’t think that it was that impressive knowledge, especially to Cadance, but she could swear the ground seemed slightly brighter. Still, she went on.

“The unusually high coalescence of mana makes this easier to observe in a laboratory. Free mana, as a measure of magical energy, will aggregate and attune to the surrounding mana in motion, which we call magic. The more it collects, the faster it will attune to its specific element until it shifts into a particular magic. Physical manifestations of magic require that it reach attunement into a physical element, such as sunfire. And that is why the sun showers us with physical light coupled with flowing mana. That is why our horns glow when we cast spells.”

“Not to mention that certain materials facilitate its flow, and alicorn is one of them. Gold too. And that is why Royal Guard armor…”

“Twilight!” Applejack cried in shock.

“AJ, this is not that impressive!” she spat back at the interruption.

“Twilight, shut up and look behind you!” Starlight Glimmer screamed at her, pointing desperately.

It seemed odd that the Dainty Mellow’s Fire on her hoof had subsided. She realized the creeping daylight obfuscated it. Twilight turned around and smiled. The mad shades in the sky vanished, replaced with black turning blue while the sun was rising. It was beautiful, but not a reason for all that drama. Then her smile turned into a gasp and her ears fell.

It was not the sun.

It was a great and wondrous creature; unlike anything Twilight had ever seen before. Staring at it was impossible: her eyes stung within the instant she tried. It was a force of nature given flesh rather than a normal creature. It was blazing light, bright as the day made flesh, like the sun had come down from the sky. Its mane was a sprawling flame, like the corona of the sun, pure matter filled with so much raw power it turned to something else Twilight didn’t even know the name of.

A horn shone with pure light condensed into solid form, protruding from its head, but its eyes radiated a fierce energy. Staring at them was like staring at all the light the sun had to shine, condensed into a single instant. It burned to the depths of her soul like Twilight had swallowed incandescent steel.

And it was far away, with such wide wings covering the span of the horizon. The creature was gigantic and majestic, flying overhead with a grace impossible for its magnitude. Wings made of pure brightness, as if the creature carried the day itself beneath them. They flapped, and each time it sounded as though a storm took offense to their existence. Following in its wake, the sky became blue, and covered the land with the day.

Winds blew at hurricane speeds and the ground shook again under a firestorm. Stone cracked and exploded in geysers of boiling mud and vapor while mounds of sparkling crystals erupted from the ground in cracked geodes of magically charged, multicolored crystals. The fire didn’t burn; it filtered into the ground and trees sprouted from the land, growing hundreds of years in mere seconds. Grass spread under their shadow, replacing sand, cracking the stone, greedily taking over the ground and giving it life.

Under the fiery gale in the creature’s wake, ponies trembled, flat against the ground, low as they could to weather the storming wind and the rocking of the ground. As suddenly as it started, it was over. Twilight’s legs trembled, and she still had trouble believing what she had just seen as she raised her head wide eyed. Where there was a lifeless husk of a world, now was a green meadow gated by a lush forest.

Rarity whined, still laying on the ground and hugging herself. “If this is a dream, I would like to wake up now! Pleee-e-e-ease!”

“Is anypony hurt?” Applejack cried while she patted herself down with her hooves and Fluttershy helped Rarity stand.

“We are perfectly safe!” Naminé cried, perhaps trying to convince herself more than anypony else with appeasing gestures and a frantic stare.

It took Twilight longer than she’d like to regain her wits and her breath. The ground caressed her hooves, covered in green grass, but also radiating magic at her. Vibrant Life magic, as though it was trying to heal her. Grass, soft as the most luxurious of mattresses and green as emeralds, swayed in the breeze all around them. A lush meadow with a small lake of fluid mud replaced the dark desert. Storm clouds danced in the sky, and cracked geodes dotted the land. All contained above and inside a clearing guarded by paradoxically new and ancient tall trees. Colorful flowers filled the air with perfume, and tiny insects buzzed everywhere inside their secluded hideout. An entire forest had grown before their eyes. Large, stout trunks with supple green treetops that fused together as though it were a single organism to guard their meadow.

A gust of wind buffeted the princess with the smell of green things and one of the flame shaped leaves slapped Twilight in the face.

“Twilight…” Shining came near her. “What is this? I’m freaking out here!”

“I know about as much as you!” she hoofed the offending green off her face and then, she gasped and pointed at the tree line. “Look!”

The shocked ponies silenced and grouped together. All of them stared at the ominous glow growing behind the trees. Like a fire in the forest, creeping its way towards them and hiding behind the trees. Applejack quietly complained to Naminé she had said they were safe, but Rarity shushed her. Insects buzzed and a bird chirped. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for a potential fire. Shining Armor bravely stepped in front of them and then gasped as loudly as they did when the underbrush ruffled.

A lithe creature of light and flames hopped into the clearing and brought a squeal to the group of ponies. Once the initial fright passed, jaws dropped, and Rainbow Dash exclaimed what everypony was thinking.

“No way!”

Majestic barely began to describe the creature. Tall and graceful, she was as the sovereign pony of Equestria herself with her creamy white coat changed for an alabastrine light like the purest snow under the sun. Instead of a pastel, multicolored mane, woven flames, like spun daylight, danced in the solar wind, eternally locked in a simultaneous dawn, noon and sunset. For an instant, looking into her purple lights for eyes, Twilight thought the creature had seen them, but it never reacted to their presence. They remained bright wells of magic, and yet they held an innocence behind them, like a foal’s or a doe that does not know a wolf.

The ponies, staring at the creature, expecting her to do anything, remained static and tense. It simply stuffed her head back into the bushes and pulled a large bag of weaved plant fiber from it. The handle of an obnoxiously large wooden ladle stuck out from it.

Ponies still watched in stunned silence as the creature dragged her bag across the clearing. It was not larger than a city block in Ponyville, but there was something patently ridiculous about the majestic creature of magic dragging a bag around with such dedication. When the creature arrived at the edge of the pond, she magically grabbed the ladle and started stirring the mud. Sharing a stare with the others, Twilight led them closer. The pond was no larger than a house, and the way the magical beast kept stirring it with her telekinetically held ladle helped the ridiculous scene none.

When ponies looked at her, Naminé again defended herself with a hoof on her chest. “I told you. I’ve never been this far back. This is the first time I’m seeing Princess Celestia like this.”

“She’s not Celestia!” Twilight cried and earned a long, silent stare from her friends and a roll of eyes from Rarity.

“She does look a lot like her, Twilight. If she was made of fire and light because of arcanobabble. Don’t look at me like that, darling. It is true.”

“Ah… What is she doing?” Rainbow drew their attention back to not-Celestia.

While they were talking, the creature placed a sturdy ‘ring-and-clamp’ stand made of shiny gold on the edge of the puddle. Happy it was firm in place, she fixated a glass dripper which also came from inside the bag. The ring held the thin part of the glass container, and the clamp secured it in place. Squinting, she painstakingly set the device to a slow drip of a rainbow substance into the mud. While the glass itself had a symbol, almost like a cutie mark, of a parchment and a feather pen, the fat and viscous drops it liberated each carried a tiny cutie mark inside.

While the dripper was doing its thing, the magical alicorn poured a bag of sugar, recognizable by the pile of twinkling crystal dust drawn on the package. Once it was empty and she had tossed it aside, she produced another from her large bag. This time the symbol on it was of a selection of leaves. The powdered substance of undefined color went fully into the muddy concoction while Twilight and friends watched in silence. After stirring, stirring, and stirring some more, the fiery white alicorn pecked just a smidgeon from the ladle. She made a grimace and put out her tongue at the awful taste of mud, no matter how much sugar and spices one added.

Eventually, she unfurled a large, rolled-up parchment and stared at it with a critical frown. Unable to resist, Twilight walked around to see that it was a cartoonish drawing of all the organs and bones of a pony. And while she was staring at it, the fiery alicorn frowned and tilted her head in thought. Finally, she made a slight correction with a piece of charcoal. Leaving the parchment on the ground, she grabbed a collection of papers and shuffled them around. They held an unintelligible scrawling, but the magical alicorn squinted at them before shoving her head inside the bag. After some rummaging, she produced a vial of shiny stardust that she held in her mouth. Her telekinetic magic popped the cork from the vial, and she tilted her head to pour it on the mud.

“This can’t be real…” Twilight muttered while the alicorn tested the mud’s consistency by pouring it from the ladle.

Before Twilight could accept what she was seeing, the excited alicorn resumed stirring the mud. A bit too excited, because the ladle smashed against the dripper. She made a distressed whinny and magicked the broken device away, but the damage was done: all the cutie marks had spilled over. The alicorn spent several seconds staring at the rainbow-colored mud before she shrugged and resumed stirring with an eager grin.

“This isn’t funny.” Twilight told Naminé with a straight face.

“But I’m not making any of this!” she promptly defended herself again. “I am as curious as you are! I’d pay a million Bits to be asking her questions right now!”

“It is not her fault, Twilight.” Cadance put a leg over Naminé’s shoulder. “This is what we wanted to see. We simply don’t know enough yet to make complete sense of this.”

“I don’t know about that.” Shining pipped in. “It seems perfectly clear to me.”

“No!” Twilight ignored him. “This is what you wanted to see! All I wanted to see was whatever caused Princess Celestia to hide the griffon empire and that mess with the sun! We are wasting time watching unverifiable nonsense that might as well all be Naminé’s imagination feeding us things that she believes!”

Applejack’s scolding at their bickering went ignored when Rainbow Dash pointed and yelled that someone was approaching. The fiery creature never noticed it, at least not at first, but the ponies with Twilight silenced, staring at the approaching being. The only thing that held Twilight in place was that she remembered they were not really there.

Even if she initially did not seem to have noticed, the fiery alicorn let her flaming ears drop and her eyes hardened with a dangerous increase in the glow of her mane. Even as her fiery mane and tail grew brighter and more violent, the creature herself barely acknowledged the griffoness’ presence as she prowled across the opening.

“Just what do you think you are doing?”

Her size alone chilled Twilight’s guts. She was larger than Grigory, bulkier than his soldier friend, and her stormy gray eyes held more malice than the princess had found in his wife. A massive black and white griffoness, squandering anger in her demeaning tone, she stopped by the muddy pond and glared down at it before turning to the fiery alicorn.

“This is hopeless. Your soul is not functioning properly, and you are not intelligent enough. You will cause these creatures only pain and suffering if you can even animate them.” She growled-screeched at the alicorn, but no response came from the alicorn of untethered magic other than a stubborn frown. She held her ladle with her hooves and stirred harder.

“Fine.” The angry griffoness offered a conceited smile. “I will be here, waiting for you to grow some sense.”

The sloshing sounds of the ladle and the eventual popping from the now tutti-frutti bubbles punctuated the omnipresent whispering of the mighty trees after she silenced. The alicorn’s quiet laboring and the griffoness’ conceited, silent smile complemented the ponies’ bewildered confusion.

“What exactly are we seeing?” Fluttershy asked Naminé, walking closer to her among the watching ponies.

“I… I’m not sure. I can’t know for certain how far in the past this vision is, but this looks like our creation. And it makes sense that the princesses are the only ones that could give access to these memories, as ponies didn’t exist yet. But I don’t see anyone that could be Luna, Cadance, or Twilight. Only Celestia and that monster. The whole spell is weird and not working like I expected.”

“Is this… the Harpy?” Cadance walked closer to the griffoness as Naminé confirmed. She was as tall as princess Celestia and so much bulkier. Cadance held her wings up and grimaced at the creature. She looked like she could snap Cadance’s neck like a twig.

“We know Creation happened in cycles, and that the griffons ruled over the first cycle.” Twilight said with a pensive frown. “By the Harpy. Princess Celestia told us this much, even if she was scarce in the details. There was a conflict, and our… let’s call them creators, wrestled Creation away from the griffons’ creators. Although whatever happened may be more complex than we can imagine.”

“Well, I ain’t ever pictured this!” Applejack pointed at the bubbly, rainbow-stained pond. Pinkie snorted and giggled. The others just watched. Not very helpful either.

“I’m sure we are bound to figure this out if we pay attention.” Cadance added with a waving plea for patience.

Just in time too, as the eager alicorn made of light and fire fished a pony from inside the muddy pond. She scooped them up with her obnoxious ladle and a mirthful, childish glee. Twilight and the others crowded around the scene to look at the adult mare, who seemed different, but a pony nonetheless. As the overeager alicorn brushed away the mud, she revealed the pony’s pink coat, a pair of wings, and a messy purple mane. She even had a cute double lightning cutie mark.

When the griffoness walked through them, the ponies backed away with varying levels of fright. To Twilight, it turned into a rightful anger when the griffon monstress shoved the alicorn aside and grabbed the pony by the neck. She was so lethargic she mercifully never even noticed what was happening, but the alicorn’s distress and the griffoness’ dismissal of it infuriated the princess. Rainbow grumbled something too, but the fury in the griffoness’ eyes made Twilight’s back crawl.

She could see it in her eyes, the seething rage. A tense moment passed while Twilight feared the griffoness was going to murder the pony right there. Her eyes hardened with a burning wrath, consuming her, edging her on. Her fingers, crowned with talons as terrible as daggers, pressed on the pony’s neck. They trembled like the battlefield under opposing armies.

After a tense, breathless moment, she let the pony go. Rather than hurting it, the great black and white monster turned to the alicorn, speaking with a derisive tone even as the fury never left her scowling brow. “Well, it seems you are not a complete failure.”

“This thing seems capable of maintaining homeostatic balance, at least. But you will fail, and you could see it, were you sufficiently intelligent.”

Her words went ignored. The alicorn resumed her task of cleaning the pony after making sure she was not hurt. Almost as though she had forgotten the griffoness was there, she busied herself with another pony to scoop up from the pond. And then another. And another. It was a lengthy process, but she picked up all twelve of them, both males and females, in equal numbers and cleaned them. Meanwhile, the griffoness shoved away one of the grazing ponies that had come too close.

Time passed, and Twilight barely noticed it through the lengthy and tense… Minutes? Hours? How long had they been watching the magical alicorn of fire and magic cleaning the ponies under the maleficent stare of the griffoness? Maybe the expectation she might do something vile at any second kept them in rapt attention.

It never happened. The griffoness remained quiet and watchful until the Not-Celestia alicorn herded her ponies along, under the shade of the giant trees. Call it a hunch, but a growing fear grasped Twilight’s gut. Tighter and tighter, with every step they walked on the damp forest floor. The others showed no sign of such apprehension, trying to make sense of it all by talking among themselves instead of Twilight’s thoughtful observation.

The chaotic wasteland, with its sky of mad colors, hazardous magical rain, and unwelcoming emptiness, waited beyond the edge of the forest. Twilight could not know what the others were thinking, but to her, a problem was patently obvious. She was sure the griffoness saw it too, but the not-Celestia alicorn seemed to be none the wiser. And that was important, because the Celestia she knew would be much sharper. Then again, maybe Twilight was misjudging the creature capable of creating ponies out of a pool of mud.

Under Twilight’s apprehensive watch, there she was, the big dumb alicorn urging her little ponies onward out of the island of sanity under the trees. Past the sparse last blades of grass were gray rock, black sand, flashes of unyielding magic rain and desolation. Understandably, the first of the group hesitated even as she gently edged them on.

Twilight’s companions watched in silence while Starlight Glimmer and Naminé both kept shifting their eyes between the unfolding scene and Twilight. Unsecure foals, expecting her to do something about it until Naminé finally voiced her concerns.

“This doesn’t look right,” she grimaced. “Whenever I see this… Every time I’ve seen our ancestors leaving this place, we are much better prepared. When I was here, when I left Green Harbor, we had animals, foaling mares and tools, garments. I don’t understand.”

Starlight Glimmer nodded. Twilight said nothing despite the others expecting her to. She simply watched the ponies taking the first tentative steps into the cracked stone and wet sable sand. Not unlike herself and the two others, Twilight’s remaining friends also seemed apprehensive, done with their chattering and watching in silence. Waiting for something they didn’t know what it was.

When it happened, it came out of nowhere, unannounced, and just as random as the chaos that dominated the landscape. It might as well have been a prank from Discord before Fluttershy, so cruel and capricious it was.

The steady stone shook and fractured like the scales of an awakened dragon. Fissures opened on convulsing rock and the violence threw the jagged black bones of the earth to the sky. The ground broke, and a fissure tore the landscape apart. It happened so fast Twilight barely registered the surprised neighs and shocked whinnies. The smell of a million rotten eggs filled the air and jets of gasses screamed from the fissures. It was probably the incandescent impacts of magical rainfall which caused the explosion. A flashfire scorched the exposed sides of the trees and blazing jets shot from the ground.

They panicked and never found their wits again. Their creator’s desperate brays were powerless before the terror which took them. Instead of running for the safety of the forest, the flames, even if not as destructive or intense, sent them stampeding in the opposite direction. The gut wrenching screams and blood chilling thuds came next as their panic sent them hurling over the ravine, opened by the earthquake.

Twilight and her group of ponies stared dumbfounded at the settling pebbles and fiery streams with the cracked open ground beyond. Other than the shriek of the burning gasses, the prevailing sound was wailing and sobbing while the fiery alicorn paced from one side to the other. Her face of shaped sunlight and flames was not conducive to facial expressions, but Twilight recognized the horror in the purple lights she had for eyes.

Then it was the ruffling feathers and laughter that made the purple alicorn turn back. The giant griffoness hugged her stomach and howled with laughter so hard she lost her breath.

“I knew they would underperform, but I expected a disease. Perhaps a long famine as they failed to infuse the land with the magic of Life. But not even I could have foreseen that they would fail in such a phenomenal way!”

Twilight frowned. Her ears filtered out the indecent guffawing and shocked comments. She reviewed what had happened in her mind’s eyes. Even if they had not made it worse, they simply didn’t know what to do. Maybe she was overthinking, but it was too capricious for pure chance. If there was a point to be made, Fate had delivered it with unmatched bluntness and effectiveness. Too much of a point being made, even if Twilight didn’t know by whom or what. But it delighted the griffoness, and Twilight hated her for it.

Maybe the semblance to Celestia had finally beaten through, but whatever that creature was, her pain hurt Twilight too. And she realized that as her primordial ponies lacked preparation to deal with panic and chaos, neither was their goddess prepared to understand that was not her fault. But that did not stop the griffonness when the mad, twisting colors in the sky vanished and a slithering roar crept through the firmament.

The light was gone and the shimmering wasteland of barely contained magic died as though the very foundations of reality stopped working. The flaming streams of gas dwindled into nothing, and the warm damp of the forest ceased. Cold crept into her legs, like the vanishing magic took it along with the life of the trees. They withered and died as fast as they had grown, like the magic which had reversed. It felt eerily conspicuous.

Ponies gasped, and the griffoness surveyed the sky, guiding Twilight to the gaping maw of twisting light swallowing almost all the firmament. It cast a ghostly, ominous light over the mighty chimeric creature. Time stopped like it did in the nightmare aboard her airship, but Princess Luna never came to rescue Twilight from the fading whispers of a dying world.

Amid confused and shocked comments from her friends and Naminé, Twilight’s attention remained on the alicorn and the griffoness. Creation slowly undid itself as motes of self-destructing matter shone and floated to the sky. Her fingers with terrible talons rose, and she offered her open paw to the alicorn. But what truly grasped Twilight’s attention and made her exhale a gasp was that the pristine white of sunlight that made the alicorn had turned into an undefinable negative light. Her form swallowed the light like the devouring emptiness above and her flaming mane made from the corona of their sun had turned into a harsh energy of unknowable quality akin to the gaping maw of light from the monstrosity in the sky.

Twilight had to remind herself it was all a dream. A vision. Merely a glimpse into the past of an event she had no control over. The best she could do was learn from it.

The others recanted away on shy steps and flat ears while the griffoness’ voice cried above the weeping of ending magic. “Oh my, creating a world is not as easy as you had thought, is it?”

Her commanding tone fit her fearsome obsidian beak, and her gleeful smile mirrored the mirth in her eyes. “Oh, do not look at me like that. You knew it was going to be like this and could not rule over Creation merely because you understand the intricacies of the flesh. You know nothing of the myriad pieces of the mind. It goes deeper than hormones and feedback loops, you naïve fool.”

“Come.” Her smile twisted dangerously as the fiery hoof approached her paw.

But the alicorn stopped.

“Cease this madness,” the griffoness insisted. “Even if there were two of you, you would fail. You are a malfunctioning piece of wanton magic and cannot do anything by yourself. Once again, at the Edge of Creation, you can fix your misbehaving tantrum. Come with me, and I will allow you to return to your place in the sky. I will not even punish you for what you did.”

But the alicorn never laid her hoof on the griffoness’ paw. Each one’s scowl mirrored in the other’s hardened eyes. But the griffoness pulled the corner of her beak and spoke with a threatening hiss.

“I am not asking.”

She received a petulant neigh for response. A sickly red washed over the world when the alicorn flared her wings and the immense monster in the sky responded with a glare of its own. The ground shook again, but this time it broke apart and undid itself in a last explosion of sparks. It dominated Twilight eyes, and her friends screamed along with the griffoness and the world itself.