Steam filled the chamber, clouding the arch-priest's vision. It was a spacious room they were all in, arched overhead with stone pillars in the corners of the room. Nothing could be seen, however, through the thick clouds of opaque steam tinted red by the torches and braziers in the cavern.
And, with a breath of his divine wind, the steam cleared in swirls to either side. He could see clearly now. He was in a walkway between two crowds of kneeling, intoning ponies all facing the opposite end of the room. To his left, moaning masses. To his right, moaning masses. Behind him, nothing but the past. In front of him, nothing but the future.
In front of him, the Goddess, bathed in beautiful red light from holy flame.
As he slowly trotted to the beat of the drums in all four corners, his cape fluttering with every step and his headdress bobbing up and down, his sole attention was focused on the beautiful, terrible form carved out of stone.
It was unlike anything in Equestria. As tall as the entire cavern, it was upright on two legs, and had four arms splayed out, molding into the rock behind it. One hand held a massive, jagged sword. Another hand held a decapitated giant by the hair of its head. The third hand held a bowl full of the sands of time. The final hand was empty, but its fingers were all crossed in the sigil of satisfaction for her groaning worshippers.
The statue was naked, save for the jewelry that adorned its neck and arms and fingers. The jewelry was made from pony vertebrae studded with blood-red rubies and green emeralds, and they were strung together with thin, tough sinew.
But her face...oh, how he adored his Goddess's face! Her full lips were parted to reveal only a few of her many angled fangs. Her forehead, nose, and cheeks were covered by a smooth steel mask that perfectly reflected the tinted firelight and rounded out the hollow eyes accented by the mask. In the depths of her dark eyes were two flickering flames. And her skull was spidering out in tendrils that molded into the back of the wall.
Others might have called her visage horrible. Nightmarish. Devilish, carnal, the emblem of absolute horror. But to the arch-priest, who now stood at the foot of the statue gazing into the face of the one true goddess, he had other words.
Terrible.
Beautiful.
Perfect.
The arch-priest began to chant in a tongue unknown to even the other worshippers. He was invoking the blessings of his Mother, sanctifying the sacrifice she was about to receive. He did not miss a single word in his prayer. It had to be perfect, as She was.
"Mother Faust," he smoothly spoke when he finished. His voice was as deep and rich as black oil. "Behold thy servants!"
From doors hidden by the steam in the cavern, twenty ponies painted bony white, bruise-blue, and blood red marched to the upraised dais on which the statue of the Mother stood. Each of them had the same burning look in their eyes and the same creases on their forehead as they were filled by the presence of the Mother. They stood in pairs of two all along the dais.
Once the acolytes had taken their places around the statue, the arch-priest tossed aside his light black cloak imperiously. He was once one of them, standing in anticipation of the upcoming sacrifice. Once, he was even one of the worshippers behind him, groaning in a formless conglomerate of refuse and waste.
But he had ascended. That was what his Mother had expected of him, after all. The sands of time, spilling from her bowl, churned in his favor. Faust was the Goddess of change, ascendency, and the rise of purity. She was the one who had given him his power. For that, he would be forever grateful. No longer was he one of the vile, licentious crowd. Now he was recognized, and loved.
Without her, as a foal, he had never known recognition. But when he had been inducted into the Light of Earth and participated in one of the sacrifices for the first time, it was then that he first felt a spark of ecstacy. And ever since, he had proven his undoubting devotion to his Mother.
"Mother Faust," he said to the mighty effigy, and his voice rose from his oily vibrato into a loving, more natural chant. "Hear our plea this day. As promised by the First Priest Grogar, creator of all mighty beasts and founder of the Light of Earth, we shall offer a tribute to thee. For thou hast created Grogar, and ponies as well, and have lovingly kept watch over us all this time, for the intent of coming to live amongst us. Once a moon, we honor thy promise of change by giving one of thy creations back to thee.
"Grogar hast declared to us from the beginning that there wast two pretenders, Celestia and Luna, who claimed to be thy firstborn and to move the sun and moon. This is a lie, O Faust. For they were struck down by Lord Grogar, and the sun and moon still move a thousand years later. For that, we shame the false princesses! And their royal family, claiming to know the true secrets of harmony!"
Ten of the chief acolytes procured crude straw effigies of the ancient princesses Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Twilight, Starlight Glimmer, and the mares called Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie.
"Thou dost rule over many things, O Faust, and among them are the fantastical and wondrous beings known as humans! One day they shall come to us as our peacekeepers and saviors, with thee at the helm! But these...liars!" The arch-priest was legitimately angry now. "These deceivers dared to say that they had met humans before! Conversed with those godly species! Fallen in love with them! Faust, thou knowest these things are false! Until the day comes when they shall enter our world, we shall say these were blasphemers of the highest order! And not only that! They dared to alone know the secrets of harmony! To think that mighty Grogar was a fool for his enterprises! And to ignore the pleas of help from the peoples they ruled over, never interfering when they should! Thou, Faust, are better than that! So these were deceivers from the beginning!
"To Tartarus with their spirits! Thrust them down to hell, to rot with the dead, O Faust. Condemn them for their false ideologies and their evil notions!"
The other acolyte in the pair ignited the straw body with his horn. All ten grotesque figures began to burn and smolder at the same time. The entranced worshippers watching moaned their disgust for the false prophets a thousand years ago, watching in anticipation as the bodies smoldered and flickered and melted in the consuming fires.
Finally, the bodies were dropped to the ground, where they continued to blaze until they went out. It didn't matter anymore. They were simply...forgotten.
As they should be.
"O Faust," the arch-priest began again. The worshippers fell silent as the drums in the back sped up by a few beats. "Behold thy sacrifice!"
Above the silence, an echoing scream entered the cavern as two high priests painted black dragged a mare by her muzzle and flank into the underground chamber. She was thrashing about, wailing, trying her best to resist her fated doom. Still she was dragged, however, to the dais, no matter how hard she flailed her body.
The arch-priest clicked his tongue. Two chains lowered from the ceiling upon his command. The mare adorned with flowers and gems was cuffed to these chains with her front forelegs.
"Please," she begged as she was being chained. She was quite beautiful, the arch-priest noted. A simple earth pony, but light blue in color and with a complexion of a Goddess herself. Her sapphire, almond-shaped eyes held pleading in them. Her mane was long and the most beautiful shade of pink he could imagine. How soft it must also feel!
"Please what?" the arch-priest dryly responded. He wasn't supposed to converse with the sacrifices--he didn't even know her name--but he owed this much to a specimen like her. "Release you? Don't bother asking."
"I...I can't...m-move...What did I...d-do?!"
"What did you do?" he whispered to his sacrifice. "I can give no specific reason. You are simply...the best in this world. Faust deserves you."
"I don't...I don't want to die," she breathed. "I don't want to die! Celestia, help me, I beg of you! Set me free! I c-"
She was cut off by one of the black acolytes striking her across the back of the skull with a shod hoof, and she went momentarily limp.
"You dare to invoke the pretender's name in this sacred place?" the acolyte demanded.
"Peace," the arch-priest said with a raised hoof, and the acolyte held his tongue.
The beautiful sacrifice shut her weepy eyes and bowed her head. The arch-priest saw it as acquiescence to his higher power. The familiar feeling of ecstasy returned.
"To offer her to thee this day is thy beloved prophetess," the arch-priest intoned, and he meant his reverence. The prophetess was once a pony by the mere secular name of Custard Cream, but had been reborn into a prophetess with a name resembling that of the mighty humans.
She was now named Thalia.
"Hear her speak the tongue of the gods, O Faust."
The sacrifice hyperventilated anew. She knew what was going to happen. Death hung upon every moment.
From between the legs of the statue, appearing out of thin air, came the prophetess. Borne upon a stretcher carried by thin and bony foals and fillies alike, the prophetess's presence alone was enough to send every pony in the room kneeling.
Her headdress was the ancient skull of Celestia herself, cruelly augmented with two bison horns to either side of her jutting unicorn horn. She was in sweeping scarlet robes that draped off her body and crossed over each other in a fashion that would impress the greatest of dressmakers anywhere. Her old wrinkled skin was pale yellow. Her eyes were red.
Most notably, she didn't have any limbs. She had only stumps where they were supposed to be.
The foals and fillies carrying her stretcher moved brusquely. They were new to this, after all. They didn't have the same level of solemnity that he had. The children stopped right in front of the sacrificial mare.
The mare stared with complete fear into the bony eye sockets of her dead Goddess, and the eye sockets contained therein stared back with utter hatred.
Thalia bowed her ancient head, and the tip of Celestia's horn grazed the sacrifice's chest.
"Balin jalado korda torwer," she intoned, grazing the tip of her horn in a circle almost affectionately. Her cracked voice was hoarse; she was very, very old. "Al gorda soka Grogar dralamer. Dralamer, Faust...soka sacrifaku."
Thalia's bloodshot eyes rose to the terrible Goddess towering above them.
"Faust...hu...man...Faust...huuumaaaan…"
Thalia returned her attention to the quivering body. "Hu...man...existafes...poh-nee...tularoo lalo…"
With a lunge, she buried Celestia's horn into the victim's chest. She screamed as Thalia moved her neck and dug a circle into her flesh, carving out a gaping hole in her body. Blood ran afresh down her chest, painting her beautiful blue body an unwholesome red.
Finally, using her magic, Thalia pulled out the quivering, dripping, gooey, stringy heart of her victim.
But she was still alive! Thalia was using her forbidden magicks to keep the blood in her body beating. A red aura encapsulated her wound, preventing her from dying.
The limbless Thalia lifted the twisting heart above her head to display it to the worshippers in the red cavern. "Alah goraksha baka!"
The crowd cheered its excitement. They knew what was coming next.
"Oh, Celestia!" gasped the mare, panting for every breath. Tears were running down her face like waterfalls and pooling at her chin. "Agh! This hurts! Oh, Celestia! Oh! P-please!"
The arch-priest gave a negligent flick of his hoof. "Raise the chains."
The acolytes nearest the legs of the statue reached behind her calves and turned on two switches. The long chains holding the mare's arms to the side straightened, quivered, and finally, shortened. As they were pulled up into the ceiling, so was the poor mare. As she rose high up into the air, her arms stretched to their limit, the arch-priest gazed up at her.
She was no willing sacrifice, of course. But she was worthy anyway. It was strange, how life worked that way.
Thalia, from behind her skull headdress, was straining. With her magic focused around the living organ above her head and on the wound keeping the victim alive, she still had to use her magic for one last part of the rite. The most awe-inspiring and fanatical part of the whole ceremony.
The arch-priest dropped to his knees. "O Faust," he began once more. Time to weave the lie in their doctrine. "If this victim above thy head is acceptable to thee, show thyself in thy true and terrible form! Guide her to thy hot embrace, should she be deemed worthy! I summon thee, Faust, to us!"
And now it was Thalia's turn to trick.
The stone statue was unmoving. Still as grand and powerful as ever.
Then her head jostled.
The masses beholding her gasped.
The statue gradually came to life. Her head was the first to move. She tilted it from side to side before letting out a guttural moan.
The mare right above her crown of bone thrashed and flailed more wildly. Terror like none before had seized grip of her heart. It began to beat furiously in the magical aura of Thalia.
"Pleeeeeeeeease! Celestia! Please, hear me! Take me into your kingdom! I don't want to go to hell! I don't want to go to hell!"
The arch-priest relished her pleas. Both the Light of Earth and the Celestia worshippers believed their other goddesses were false. He had nothing to fear from a false goddess. She, however, was fearing both. What did that tell him about whose god was real?
The statue tilted her head upward, taking in the pony above her head, her fiery eyes flashing and flickering before stone eyelids closed over them.
Her fanged mouth opened with a hellish hiss. Smoke rose from her gaping lips. Boiling, bubbling lava was in her mouth, filled to the brim.
The drums were going faster than ever, faster than her heartbeat in Thalia's grip.
The chains began to lower.
The sacrifice screamed. And screamed.
Thalia was chanting furiously as the heart in her magical aura pounded and pounded, threatening to burst. A thin screech sounded above the chanting of the priestess and the pounding of the drums.
The sacrifice's hooves touched the tip of the lava in Faust's mouth.
Flame instantly coursed across her body, engulfing her in molten rock as she was dipped lower and lower into the foul liquid. Her hooves. Her chest. Her shoulders. And her neck.
Thalia actually began to laugh as the screams finally stopped.
The chains rose from the mouth of the goddess. The mare hanging from them had disappeared. The only sign she had existed was the melted flesh still stuck to the cuffs, from the end of her hooves.
The living heart in Thalia's magic grip was still pulsing, however. It had also swollen from the size of an apple to that of a grotesque grapefruit, and was approaching the size of a watermelon.
"Fudja ropa! Fudja ropa! Fudja ropa!" Thalia bellowed in the tongue of the gods.
"Come out! Come out! Come out!" the arch-priest echoed in the ponish language.
The heart continued to beat and tremble. Its flesh had grown thin. A floating shape was hanging inside it, easy for all to see in the red light and steam in the cavern.
"Born of magic and born of flesh!" the arch-priest declared. "Come out and face the world you were meant to be born into!"
Thalia roared. The heart began to steam as it split open down the middle. The statue had reverted to its original position and had fallen silent once more. Her spell on the statue was broken to focus on getting what was inside the heart out into the world.
Finally, the oversized heart peeled away and slapped soundly to the stone floor in two steaming halves. It sounded like someone had dropped rotting vegetables. The thing in its depths was suspended by Thalia's magic.
A frail fetus was wailing weakly, throwing her limp limbs around. She was covered in blood, her eyes closed, her mane caked with the red life-liquid.
An acolyte quickly procured a wet towel and began to wipe the blood from the newborn filly. Thalia's magic grasp on the filly released.
"Take the child," the arch-priest ordered. "Cleanse her and put her to sleep. I have a feeling she will be a grand addition to our ranks."
The acolyte bowed beneath him and trotted off with the filly in tow. It was an honor to take care of the fresh-born. Only the Light of Earth possessed the knowledge to summon children from their mothers very heart.
It would be the most holy way to enter the world. Not through a slimy, goopy sex channel. But instead, to be born from the heart, and nurtured specially...It was new and improved. And approved by the Goddess.
New and improved. Like he was selling children on TV. Attention: New and improved! Filly-tested, Goddess-approved! The arch-priest had half a mind to snort. It was almost ridiculous.
As Thalia and the arch-priest bowed before the worshippers, the arch-priest wondered if there would ever be an end to the cycle. For over a hundred years, the Light of Earth had performed sacrifice after sacrifice to Faust, and Faust had not appeared. What was he doing wrong?
The worshippers began to disperse. Thalia's child-bearers turned around. And the arch-priest was presently left alone in the massive chamber. He hadn't moved for whatever reason.
The only sound in the chamber was the crackling of flames from the braziers and torches. The only movement was from the shadows.
The arch-priest had to reason with himself then. If he wanted to ask Faust a question, why not ask her?
He had offered ritualistic prayers before, of course. But never before had he thought to offer a prayer that was not scripted to appease the masses. To think...would Faust accept his prayer of clarification? Would she be angry with him for going off book, so to speak?
Only way to find out was to try.
He gazed up at the awful four-armed statue. Now that it wasn't obscured by steam and the glazed ecstasy in his eyes, he saw the statue in a more detrimental light.
"Oh, Faust," he intoned. Not pleadingly, but in despair, and even a hint of anger. "Where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?"
He removed his headdress to get a better view at the only known representation of his Goddess. He was only forty years old, which meant his chiseled features were not disgraced by age. "For a thousand years, we have pleaded our cause to thee. And yet thou hast not replied! Have we done something to displease thee? Are our rituals not enough to satisfy? Is our devotion not clear? We have shown thee! Why dost thou lie recluse?"
The statue did not move.
"I grow weary of the smoke and mirrors! We fool the worshippers with Thalia's tricks, make them believe thou dost come to life every moon on the sacrifice! Shew thyself! I beg of thee!"
The statue did not move.
The arch-priest bowed his head. "But if not...tell me what I must do to gain a witness of thee!"
Still, the statue did not move.
The arch-priest considered it for a while more, then turned his attention away from the statue. It was secular, as was gold and riches. He had to look inward.
"Is…" He almost dared not consider it. "Is our cause...false?" He shook his head furiously. "No! Of course not! I know thou dost exist! And thou knowest we exist as well! For how canst thou create us and not be aware? But what else can it be? Needest thou a truer way to express my love?"
He felt a pressure in his chest. It was alien, unfamiliar. The arch-priest didn't know what to make of it. Was it the devil Celestia? Was it the Goddess Faust?
"O Faust! All I desire is to express my devotion the way thou hast intended! If it was wrong before, I must know! My heart is wracked with torment on this matter!"
He felt a jolt all of a sudden that dropped him to his knees. His veins were quickened with bloodflow. It was enough to make him tremble. He even gasped.
The thought came to him. It wasn't his own! Someone else had implanted it into his head.
And the thought was this:
Study the teachings of Twilight Sparkle, and you'll know if your doctrine is true or not. Ask me then, and you will get your sign.
The arch-priest weakly rose his head. That voice… it wasn't from the mouth of the statue. And it wasn't harsh or grating. It was motherly, and stern at the worst.
"F-Faust?" he croaked.
There was no reply.
"But Faust! The words of Twilight are those of heretics! They have been long forgotten!"
There was an urge in his mind: seek it out. She must have left a preserved copy somewhere.
The arch-priest couldn't bring the strength to stand. He was too in shock to rise. Faust had spoken for the first time in a thousand years. To him. About Twilight Sparkle!
"I…" he began. Then he bowed, and his robe disconnected from his back. "Yes, O Faust."
