The Great Divorce, Part One [Alicorn Pre-History]
Author's Note
Just like Missing Pages I will have an author's note to give some (if any) other context is needed for the stories in here, and to act as a title card. Though, these pieces all have some flavor beyond 'anthology' and each always has some king of an adventure to it, so there won't be the usual note of separate genres here.
No content for The Great Divorce has any spoilers, per se, but since these shorts are omake-like in standing as pieces that enrich and explore threads from main stories, the particular stories that feature lore similar to this one are:
- Favorable Alignment (only for vague names of characters and places mentioned in the background)
- The Encore of Clover the Clever (character appearances; this is essentially the 'origin story' for a lot of that content, but there's no need to read both unless you want to)
- Antumbra (some characters reappear and are mentioned again in there)
- Doomsday Begins Here (same deal with Favorable Alignment and Antumbra)
The Great Divorce, Part One [Alicorn Pre-History]
When the world was still young and the great crystal roots of Harmonia still were seen wrapping around the world, the Alicorns were fewer and among the planet's only life. Ponies crossed no plains and foraged in no forests, for no ponies tread the world and their ancestors were still unrefined in the arcane, looked to herds for safety, and hardly bigger than dogs. Horns more akin to nubs were the most revered things in the hearts of these creatures, and the Alicorns looked over these creatures sparingly, with patience to see if they might grow into something proud beyond curious, runty little animals with more than stubby wings, promise, and potential. And that potential for more — for languages, art, and advancements like those of the Alicorns — shone like the gleam developing in the coats of the northernmost would-be ponies.
Like the ancestors of ponies, other mortal creatures had yet to grow. Those that would be griffons, dragons, changelings, bovines, and other creatures flocked Harmonia's young world with the dawning equines, and they too were only outlines of what they would become and how their magics would unfold. With them were all other creatures that had grown on Harmonia's world, all things big and small, for primordial serpents and their many beastly kin shared the world that was always growing, and no soul was spared of being predator or prey.
Harmonia herself took the greatest pride in her flourishing planet, and as all world trees do, her mystic insight into the future of her world and the visions brought from such knowings ran deeper than all mortal marvel for her titanic roots across their lands and under their sea. Such was the only true unity on her planet, for before there was any final sense of maturity and identity in mortal creatures, the very span of the roots of their World Tree before motions of the planet buried, wrapped, formed, and folded atop them was the only shared sight for any creature.
In this old age, there were no Northern Lights to shine majestically in the roots, for there was no Empire, and no Heart to make them. Forests were few, so there were hardly dappled shadows from leaves. Every land knew different nights, different days, and different everything, but no matter how fickle the moon and sun whirled about the world, sunlight, and starlight would always find the roots at some point, somewhere, and all could look upon the beauty. As prehistory marched on, some of the mortal's first stories would tell only of Harmonia's roots. Draconic ancestors knew that no lava could melt them, sea creatures told of how no wave could budge them, and those that would be buffalo told of how no stampede could break them.
From the ancestors of the mortal equine, zebra would tell of the dreams sleeping in its shadow gave, sea ponies would sing of its beauty, and flutter ponies told of how the roots winding through their land were something their cousins, the pegasus, could catch no sight of from their earliest cloud cities. Donkeys recalled how the roots spanned so far none could follow.
From the place from which she sprouted strong and unmoving, Harmonia was just as awed by those who sprang from her creation as they were with her. Even when the emotion of her creatures came from a place of ignorance, her power of foresight did nothing to cloud Harmonia's vast enjoyment. To see the beginning of the life stories of her creatures as they were fostered a steady, quiet excitement in her for when their evolution would bring a plethora of species borne from unity as the stories of her were. Then, there would be sirens in the sea, mules in the prairies, and kirin in the mountains.
Harmonia took no shape in this time and saw the development of her world from between the brief periods when she woke, and from her roots was fed the information of the present, while in the crystalline core of her trunk, past the ripening Fruit of Magic, flashes of future-knowings danced beautifully in her being. Harmonia was a being above beings that could feel no loneliness, want no company, experience no hunger, and while she was plentiful in all things a World Tree must have — magic, knowings, peculiar fruit, power, and ancient dreams -—she had none to bestow upon some of her most important gifts: prophecies. Around her were only mere mortals on her continents that split into new ones every time she woke! Mortals lacked language, time, and anything that could be of use to her!
Such omens bubbling up in Harmonia sprouted from impatience nagging enough that she nearly wished to shake her branches to rid herself of the feeling, preferring her usual cool, dreamy serenity of heart. Her impatience was not born from loneliness, but her wants. She who saw the world with the past, present, and future as layered and with multiplicity did not desire her need for manifestation and speaking to be fulfilled for conversation and company. A thought like that was nearly petty to a being above trivialities and with a cosmic pedigree. She was granted a life along tangibility and the metaphysical, and as expected from any World Tree, from her roots and her labors came the planet which all lived upon, and with its growth side-realms built-in magic were birthed and waiting to be unlocked by any being worthy to call them and claim them. The idea that she needed to speak to a creature out of a feeling she could only interpret as whiny from the mortal echoes of it that feed her roots. Harmonia did not drift through space for eons, building her planet sprouting from her for just as long, to have the same feeling that a tree's cupule did when it fell from the boughs and was squashed into the mud by a hoof.
What she needed was a creature who would have the capacity for understanding her prophecy as they were now, a chance to fill it and the good sense to live long enough that it might serve a purpose or be passed on. Without even her knowings, Harmonia could spend a few decades finding sensible reasons for why a mortal would never suffice for her needs and such a list would be finely crafted, too.
To list, to order, and to organize were all qualities at which Harmonia could claim to be within her vast arsenal of skill and ability. Before she would ever let loose a prophecy, action, or allow herself anything beyond her crystalline self, she was to take in all possibilities and consider any facet of her plans, words, and actions. A fine Tree like herself was as naturally endowed with all but total omniscience from the moment of her creation, and while she was nigh-omnipresent with her magic and roots, she was not wholly omnipotent in any capacity, as no being and nothing were. For all her great ability, whether it was to create, to see and know beyond, and to live as long as her planet, Harmonia was rooted. Her manifestation capabilities were limited to the grove where she resided, and there her physical presence and much of her metaphysical presence were tethered in a meeting place of the two states.
Luckily, Harmonia's world was not so new, so primitive, or so barren that she was without immortals. Native to her frontier planet, beyond any known civilizations of the stars, were a modest amount of Alicorns. Born to her world were those who held their own awe of the beings still to evolve, and those were the first Alicorns of the budding planet, most of whom were of the mountains and volcanoes. They kept to themselves, for the most part, and phased in and out of the forming mountains that they guarded as their homes. The Alicorns would grow over the many ages to include about a dozen or so as the two couples brought more foals with magma-flowing manes, stone-flecked coats, and a variety of features boldly showcasing their natures.
Each of the mountain Alicorns were as varied as the peak terrains to those who only gave the briefest looks to them, neglecting their familial resemblance. Such was rooted in them as much as their real variance: the temperaments and hearts of each could be no similar to one another than a pebble was the eruption of a volcano. Despite this, the elders would still descend from their ranges and lava domes to observe the progress of civilization. To griffons, they gifted the right stones for spears; to minotaurs, they showed them ash-enriched soil; and for the kirin, they served as a muse unlike any other, and drew many an odd creature and ghost into the woods around their peaks, sparing many a mortal.
This gaggle of wide-spread Alicorns had yet to flourish into their full potential but still were the most breathtaking beings in the world. Theirs was the first language spoken, their homes crafted from magic and mountain were the first castle-like places, and their food was plentiful, having been sown into the rich soil around what mortals could only fear as fire-mountains greater than the meager flames they were just learning to spark.
It wasn't long before many of the earliest mortal legends were filled with this strange family, with their odd muzzles, magic to tremble before, and baffling ways of living. It was like the only thing the tall, sweeping Alicorns had in common with the mortals were the marks that marked both their flanks in time and the magic everything possessed.
The mountain Alicorns upon Harmonia's world were the first to widely be held with a vital reverence that would pave the way for how Alicorns would become understood, worshiped, and lived with long into the future, past when Alicorns would come to rule then-future mortals, but long after the Age of Alicorns would begin and Collapse. What other Alicorn were they to see? The World-Tilters and the other two Wayward Sisters had yet to fall upon the planet, the Prince of Spirits had yet to live, the ocean prince Alicorn was a colt who had yet to rise to godhood and pull the Shifting Isles up from the sea, and the blue mare of the north had yet to cut out her heart and pluck out her eyes.
Mountain Alicorns were friends, however enigmatic, and their acts to mortals were more than the first legends. They offered acts of friendship to those who could not understand them, enacting fully-aware demonstrations of charity. Mortal creatures relished in this, knowing from what was passed down that no matter how the Alicorns might seem, these were the great beings that were friends with their grandparents, their grandparents before them, and even further generations back. Even when their arguments with one another shook the mountains and it was within their powers to blow the tops of them off as much as they were capable of healing the sick, it would always be Alicorns who were preferable to deal with among immortals.
Draconequui were not going to neglect to find Harmonia's world forever, and a small pack of them were gleeful to discover her frontier planet. They readily took part in terrorizing the variety of unseen creatures with their pranks and powers. Crops were transformed, minds warped, and many of the first huts were given legs. The world of mortals was now turned upside down, and they found themselves under attack by beings as everlasting as the Alicorns and a great affinity for eating everything in the rubbish heap.
There were times when the upheaval of the draconequui was too much, and mortals were overwhelmed before they could summon aid, with only those below the water's surface being spared the calamity. With their Alicorns living in the distant mountains, and equally capable of residing within the mountains themselves, the only hope to summon rescues when mortal abilities faltered was through the sky.
Griffon ancestors swooped from their aeries on the lesser peaks to scream their panic. Bovine thundered across the ground, wanting to loosen stones to crush draconequui and use their dances to summon the mountain gods. Kirin rushed to their dragon kin for aid, shrewdly wishing to buy their fang and claw with trinkets and wealth, if only for the curses twisting the enchantments of their forests into places of despair, only to learn that they would have no dealing with the egg-thieves and magical might of the draconequui. The immortals stirred fear in those whose array of magical abilities had deemed them protectors. Giraffes and zebra found their weapons useless against draconequus transformations and their medicine feeble in the shadow of the sicknesses they could bring.
In their lands, ponies and horses scrambled to the prehistoric temples they constructed in their camps and villages, looking upon the paintings of Alicorns who often brought them such gifts and they considered their friends. They fought for any chance to light their signal fires so that their smoke might drift up to the mountains, and neither mortal magic, feather, utter-flutter, or the skills of the other races could do more than dent at the power of their tormentors. Trick upon trick was cast on the ponies who went to lit the fire, and unnatural changes befell every piece in the process: kindling, pony, and the will to do so at all.
With no signals across the world, the few mountain Alicorns not dwelling within their god-worlds and mountain hearts rose from their labyrinthine halls of stone, only to find the very pests of chaos that their patriarch had warned them of. The great Alicorn stallion Canterhorn was the eldest under the earth of all the mountain gods. He knew tales of the creatures, and stood tall as the spire that took after him — for that was the way of the Alicorns and their mountains — and saw how the few of his family and friends were challenged by the draconequui. It was through the others of his kind and their dominion and connection to the earth's very bones that he felt their panic. When he found his dear wife and the few who were present on the mortal plain beleaguered and bullied back into merging with their mountains, he urged them to stay there. Closed in, they may be, but there the draconequui could not match the stubbornness and ability of an occupied mountain.
With his fury set in stone, his loved ones upon his mind, and righteous anger within his heart, Canterhorn traversed all places with fury, teaching whatever draconequui he could what the magic of a spurned god and father tasted like. He passed plains and hinterland, driven only by his mind's eye until he found the most enchanted forest in the world. He needn't even see the astonishing peculiarities of the place to know that it was so, for in his travels he had flown above the reach of mortals and seen where all the roots of the world led. Here, a forest so sprawling and dense it all but quivered with venom for the draconequui, tangibly yearning to pick them to their bones — something the creatures hadn't been able to do to this sacred place.
He foraged past a great density of magical animals and plants intent to erase all evidence of his trespassing. Though he did not need such a thing, Canterhorn's inability to get rest nagged at him. This forest was truly forever free, and it did not slumber! At night it was teeming with all that was unseen, ready to claw at him, snag him from the forest's floor, and the crystalline roots of the world shook the moss from them with the harshest quakes, sending all manner of creatures zipping past him in the lightless place, biting at him and stinging him in the gloom.
Who dares intrude upon my forest?
Who dares violate my heart?
What foulness have you brought?
Why do you trespass upon the most sacred grounds on Havenfell?
How is it you plan to bring harm to my young planet?
Canterhorn could not have understood that Harmonia's sight was vaster than anything he would ever know, not then. He was in a place without even the stars to guide him, and his family was in peril. In all the dealings he would later have the spirit, he would never understand why she thundered such questions at him — not because she used such a force to shake her forest more than before, or because she spoke with no voice, but because no proof against her omniscience existed to him, or to any who would tell him; the very one who would ever know of blind spots in Harmonia's vision during his time was one Wayward Sister who still had yet to fall from the sky.
All that Canterhorn could know was Harmonia with no prophet, but the first of her many omens quivering in every leaf in what would become known as the Everfree.
The Great Divorce, Part Three [Alicorn Pre-History]
Author's Note
Just gonna get this out of the way: if I mentioned at any point this would be in three parts, that was an oops. Expect at least four.
The Great Divorce, Part Three [Alicorn Pre-History]
Such was a fitting name for Harmonia to give the times. Draconequui were new, and while their magic was devastating, not all of them acted out or brutality. Canterhorn knew that many still acted out of foul glee, just glad to stir up chaos upon another planet. The words of Harmonia Everfree were testament enough of that. None of this was in Canterhorn's favor since a draconequus acting to indulge in pure amusement would still do so at the cost of him, and his capture would do the world no favor.
Other Alicorns were nothing to be startled by. He was starting to see those outside his clan more frequently. Every few thousand years he would encounter the ocean god, and hear some small amount of news about what transpired in his travels and below the ocean's surface. To interact at such a level was sparse to mortal equines, who still thought their great-grandparents were comparable to Alicorns in lifespan awe. Canterhorn knew that Alicorns were hardly in possession of the same ache that prompted mortals to be so unbearably suffocating in many of their desires for social contact.
When it came to having to take an adventure all alone, this was something to admire. What few supplies were needed, Canterhorn could gather or make as he wished. He needn't be burdened by a soul.
None that were alive, at least.
Before the draconequui, the most fearsome bane to the planet were ghosts. Since the first death upon the planet, souls had amounted without rest. There was no way to erase them or destroy them, and mortals' painstakingly slow process had been a great contributing factor to their booms. Every prey-creature hunted, a predator who was trapped, all sick who had perished, enemies that were slain, lovers lost... any and every death was only the signal of another ghost.
The most that could be done was to ward them into the wilds. Gathering in greater numbers kept enough mortal creatures from being picked on by the teasing deceased or harmed by the malicious poltergeists. A whole variety of ghosts could be encountered, and no matter how educated a pony became on them, there were always so many more kinds. Each was driven by so many different motives, and their hauntings were often debilitating to those who knew only to defend a village and adhere to burial rites in hopes of hobbling how those no longer in their lives could so easily infest and rule them.
Even Canterhorn found them to be a nuisance. A phantom intent on possessing him would be hard-pressed to succeed, but when he was traveling, vulnerable, or dreaming of the family he longed to free? Then he was susceptible to millions of spirits within the range of his camps in the strange places he saw.
Would the soul of a departed mountain goat try and guide him off the edge to grisly injury? Could the soul of a pony dragged from her herd before they could even speak, slain in the night, and roaming about mad with the passing of time and evolution of her kind seek to brutalize him as she had been? Might he wake to the glassy sight of a kirin crushed during the building of a temple, half his skull gaping and opaque for what was once within show his bones gleaming in the moonlight? When he took one wrong turn in what was a forest desirably silent, would he find it was hauntingly so because of the presence of the pale, convulsing half-form of a minotaur calf partially bitten by cragodiles ages ago, only for it to be crying and jibbering still?
All were not uncommon to witness deep past the small borders of settlements that could be protected. One had to abandon the hard weapons of spears and spiked pits when managing creatures that could be harmed by none. Magic itself was only just enough to even interact with ghosts, and the few that had any real ability over them bore specialized marks and magic to magic.
Since he knew not how long his adventure would last, Canterhorn could not risk a mortal liability by bringing one with him. Any choice would have an opportunity cost exceeding any benefits. No flight means he would have to monitor them on the ground all the time. No overt magic would make him do all skilled work. More specialized skills, like the influence of the earthbound ponies, would give him perks he did not require, like potent herbs and superior, speedy harvests. In the end, any companion of his would still know death.
To stand alone as he was now, would be better than any company at all.
But by every ghost upon the planet, he would trade any possibility of mortal assistance in any world if it meant he could see his wife, if only for a sunrise.
...
Canterhorn found the first Alicorn when his skull was struck by a pulse of light. From the earth, he had been gathering anything that could be gleaned from the path ahead. As mountains had roots to the earth, it was only inevitable Canterhorn did. Any that would ever call themselves geomancers would owe their magic, their marks, and arguably their souls to the First Geomancer himself.
He had been sneaking about for a number of decades in search of Harmonia's Alicorns. His longing for his loved ones mounted, but his journey was new in the span of what it could be. Canterhorn had strayed far from the roots of Harmonia and into the uncountable territories that no mortals knew.
While he had yet to cross oceans, his efforts brought him to ragged coastlines that soared into the sky and snapped at it with the look of fangs. Here, mosses were plentiful, seaweeds choked stony gums, and the breath of goats grew thin at this level. Minotaur fought with cave creatures for shelter from the cutting, salty waves.
And that was where a pulse of light struck the back of Canterhorn's head, about where his ear neared his horn. A rough cry escaped him, as the force of the magic had robbed him of wind.
Before he hit the ground, pain flared throughout him, dots of shadow drizzled across his vision, and from behind him, a glorious golden light raced up like a predator. It was no sunlight, but if the sun could have offspring, this had to be the sun's own spawn who charged at him from behind in a way that made light enlarge his shadow.
As the halo burst out from behind him, the black of his shadow was what caught him.
...
He awoke with an ache in his head like a buffalo stampede and dank air against his coat. The smell and taste of salt rubbed its way into the back of Canterhorn's throat with each breath. Cave scenery was limited to the stalagmites and stalactites and a single equine shape leaping from each in the semi-dark hole.
And truly, the place was only semi-dark, and not because of any small distance between the opening and the stony place where Canterhorn found himself. Only the scent of the ocean shore and the light of the sky managed to trickle here. Had his horn not hurt with his head, and his mind been sound with no sense of injury, he would have immediately tried to illuminate the figure.
Alighting among the stones was the form of an Alicorn who was young and slim, as far as Canterhorn could see. Wings stretched with their motions and spears only slightly less crude than those of mortals were held tight in the grip of her yellowy magic.
When she glowed — for Canterhorn knew by her light that she was a filly and the source of his attacker's light — her whole form was in possession of a halo-like no light he could place. She had a way of moving that told him she spent much time here, something reinforced by the sight of kelp and washed-up sea plants in shell bowls for when she hungered. He caught sight of how her yellow mane and tail spilled out in waves of wind-teased plaits and that her coat was orchid purple, something that did not belong here.
Alicorns held a natural disposition that could allow them to train and harness a swiftness and patterns of movement for their kinds alone, just as many creatures could move in such ways for their kind and their kind only, whether it be the stalking of big cats or the distinct lumber of a dragon.
There was fine proof of that fitness in the young mare.
He called out to her, knowing she was aware he was awake.
The young mare tried to hide behind a pillar of stone, her golden glow pouring out from either side and the meandering souls of drowned mortals expected to gather in such a place drifting closer to where she darted. Wingtips poked out to sweep up fallen spears.
Canterhorn chuckled, seeing that, unlike Harmonia who spoke every language in her knowings, this little Alicorn was unfamiliar with his language, and possibly any at all. So, he spoke with caring, letting words that peppered previous mortal languages. He could only try and see if she knew of one, or at the very least would take to one if she recognized what he was trying to do. Whatever Alicorns lived among the distant stars in Harmonia's reckoning were not any Canterhorn knew, nor was their language anything he would speak.
He just needed her to recognize something, and the sooner the better. Few places were safe from draconequui now, and he had avoided their menace for so long. He didn't know how long this young mare had been here, or if she had company at some point, but eventually a sound caught his attention.
The little mare had gasped behind her rock, a sound that rang throughout the cave and above the sounds of ghosts. He had offered her a word — or something he knew as one. It came from a time when even the languages of today were not yet born, and the rudimentary beginnings of mortal words were just stretching.
He had called her friend, and she knew it. She had heard him and understood him — and, he thought, no doubt from somepony else too. Considering her location and habits thus far, she likely hadn't even heard anything from a pony. Spears no doubt came from encounters with feral beasts who didn't take so kindly to do anything but eat her and ghosts had their whispers. Maybe Alicorns were unlikely to find themselves lonely and lived beyond a mortal's dream life, but that did not mean a century of loneliness was anything less than what it sounded like. He certainly couldn't imagine that this adolescent took her isolation so kindly.
She settled right in front of him after a burst of movement.
Canterhorn caught sight of the deep golden yellow of her mane — a dark and lively hue that put any flaxen shade to shame — and how it spilled down to her withers like ocean waves. Muddy gray paste rimmed her dark blue eyes in order to ward off the sun. Nicks from unfortunate encounters with the seaside cliffs covered the young one's body as dapples would.
The mark already upon her flank was a glistening golden apple and a sprig of olive, the very tree that grew in the land of his dear wife, Helena. It was the minotaurs who idolized their protector goddess that would bring her baskets from their harvests to her mountain expansive villas, where she would accept the offerings from her most adoring subjects.
Canterhorn needed no other sign that this Alicorn was one of hope and peace, and had to hold back budding tears.
Tilting her head to the side, the young one finally pointed to herself, and with a careful tone said only one thing: Elysium.
...
Elysium was a young warrior and fast friend. As Canterhorn allowed himself to remain under the glowing teen's supervision, he learned that they had to be. No translating spell was there to make up for their awkwardness, and such refined and precise magics had yet to emerge. Instead, living by the seaside shelter was how the two Alicorns learned to place their trust in one other. Neither was prey to a blind sense of misplaced friendliness, instead, they showed each other through the hard work of kelp gathering and other chores that there was companionship to be found.
The day was reserved more for rest than roaming, and the dawn and dusk were Elysium's most active hours. They became Canterhorn's too. Elysium showed him how she survived for years, diving for her food, harvesting cliff plants, and spearing fish to mix with the tide pools in hopes of them becoming something fertile over the years where she could grow food. Her golden glow lit her world constantly, concentrated in a halo about her head. In the day, this was glaring and drew the attention of many souls. The risk of draconequui only mounted with the sun to accent her light. The day held none of the stars Elysium used to read her world, nor was the daytime sky anything to provide a sense of comfort.
She came from the stars, only to be discarded on Harmonia's young Havenfell. They brought her solace and were the first art she knew. The day was a lid that made the world an improper jar; night showed her beauty and truth.
Together, they worked side by side and with great patience learned the languages of one another. Elysium's foreign one, which she alone spoke on this planet, was not even known to her in full. She was a teenage mare, left to survive on a frontier planet for centuries. It would come to mean to her what the first horseshoes of infants that mothers gilded in the ages to come would mean to them.
Only when they could trust one another, in the careful ways of Alicorns, did the two gather what supplies they could and leave the rocky seaside behind them. Elysium spoke of the many more ghosts that encroached on what was once the closest she could claim to a home. Canterhorn told her that they still had one more Alicorn to find and that Harmonia had whispered to him from where the slimmest fiber of one of her world-circling roots broke up through the earth.
It was then that the young Alicorn and her friend readied a great contraption from Elysium's mind's eye: the first boat of the world. The prow and body were carved from magic-melded driftwood and the sails were fashioned from the peculiar combination of nets and fiber Elysium knew how to make, producing a sheet. The rudder and oars for when pure magic alone could not guide them into the unknown world.
Then, they sailed west.
...
With spear and the mature magic of the geomancer's magic, the duo fought their way across the wild ocean and the sea of ghosts within it, bubbling up like the foam. Below the surface, the sole god with domain over the watery world and its vast territory had managed to avoid the brunt of the draconequui, who were rambunctious and terrifying, but often lazy with their conduct and magic. This spared seaponies, sirens, and other such creatures of the full extent of struggles known to those who had no such shelters on the surface world.
They found no Alicorn in the savannah, only zebra, giraffe, boar, camel, and other animal tribes unknown to them. At first, the non-predator sapients showed the Alicorns nothing but fear. All they had come to expect from over the Barren Sea and eastward were terrible draconequui, brutish griffons from their vast island in the middle of the passage, and the rocs they worshipped. They pleaded and threatened the two newcomers out of fear, shunning them like the ghosts driven from their villages and oases, proclaiming that they wanted no harm from the strange creatures.
Elysium and Canterhorn were filled with sorrow knowing these creatures were once trusting, but there was no Alicorn here. They left for other lands, passing through a fractured land inhabited by elephants, the pony-filled coastal lands of what would be Andalusia in the ages to come, the snowy peninsula of the yeti, skirted the titanic taiga of the bears, and all the dragons of the western lands. Their magic grew as sharp as their knowledge of the fraction of the lands of this vast continent they were able to see.
The many species of this continent were divisive and prone to war over the many biomes that shifted as violently as the most primitive alliances in the dawning, draconequus-tormented lands to the west. It was as though Harmonia herself had slapped the continent with her roots, carving the vales and canyons with her movements before declaring, "This land shall be a hotbed of ethnic conflict for eras to come!"
Canterhorn now knew why the mountain Alicorns he knew to live in this part of the world was either explosive types or tranquil and solitary. Mortals' turmoil was so prevalent a conflict here, and their vain and brutal squabbles were wastes of the young art of warcraft, for war had already existed as long as life had.
Only when Canterhorn and Elysium came to the land where they felt most weary did they get another sign. Harmonia's roots hummed in the earth, the distinct and enchanting melody relieving the Alicorns of one step of their adventure.
Delighted, they set up their first camp in this land. Plunging valleys with rings of mist and dense trees amazed the two, as did the rushing rivers of yellow and brown. Bears and birds gave the two a wide berth, and a sense of peace finally settled over the Alicorns knowing that they had reached the land that had attracted little attention from passing chaos immortals. Their only company would not even be other creatures, like the bears bearing black rings around their eyes.
For miles, the only true company was the hanging tombs from the cliffsides of the valleys and gorges. Their ghosts bothered Elysium little, and she took pleasure in having tranquility in these forests, knowing there was a wild sanctuary. Seeing the natives would be a matter of choice instead of any company forcing their presence, be they living or dead. Would there be ponies in this land, or were mountain structures a sign of monkeys or dragons? Such fine tombs meant that the elders of the land were well taken care of, even in death, and that the natives were skilled — both key signs of a rich culture.
While she slept peacefully, Canterhorn worked his magic and communed with the mountains. They had magic expected from all-natural things, but any Alicorns were distant and dormant due to draconequui. His entrance to their land would be noted no more than a moth entering one of the cliff tombs would be by the residents there. His sorrow at the chance to see any like-magicked Alicorns aside, be it for comradery or assistance, Canterhorn was able to learn much from the mountains.
The climate of this land was varied, and the workings of his geomancy fed to him that ahead were arid and subtropical lands different from the highland Canterhorn and Elysium found themselves in. Draconequui had brought some of their influence, but the unknown natives were well protected by something that gave chaos-bringers mixed feelings: dragons, which were plentiful in this land. The two reactions draconequui had to dragons were to attempt courtship or aggression from any curmudgeonly dragon that retaliated against the pests. There was no in-between.
This did not stop the evidence of conflict from seeding itself in the valley. Rumbles returned with the magic echo of numerous graves and alterations to the land, the wisdom gained from magic-making things clear to Canterhorn. War was fought on this land, not just among the natives lost and arranged under the terrain, but from invading forces. Where these invasions came from was either by land, sea, or any other means the land could not offer to Canterhorn.
It was no wonder that such land could be fought over; diversity and plenty gave cause to mortals' feuds rather than mending them. Without the judgment of that which could be independent and above them, too many of them would only feed the conflicts of one another into sagas long enough to be called history.
These mountains had temples and farms perched proudly in them, signs that the mortals were not all lost to themselves. The former was clear sign immortals were present somewhere... perhaps the Alicorn needed to complete the era of ghosts.
...
The natives were varied and peculiar creatures. All of them were equine hybrids, with the other elements of their bloodlines intriguing the two Alicorns immensely. No such creatures like these existed in the lands they had come from. Alicorns unknown to Canterhorn and Elysium had obviously courted a dragon here and there in a previous time. It would have to be the smaller wingless variety, as anything else was impossible, deadly, instinctively unattractive, and unwelcome. The creatures were short and slinky, at least compared to the Alicorns. In a way, they had come into their own as a unique equine once-removed, acting as an individual species than a mere hybrid.
Very few had wings and those that did always bore a curiously mismatched pair. All had twin horns growing from their foreheads, the latter of which was often scaly. Each had notable prongs and varying girths. Some of the males looked like they could lock their larger tines and wrestle brutally, while others' horns were too slender and delicate in appearance, thinner than even the horn of the slimmest unicorn's horn.
Like the rings of mist clinging to the mountains of the creatures' lands, upon their horns were shining rings. The hues for each were not the earthy colored variety of the main part, instead, these stripes appeared much like the metals dragon greed was sparked by. Gold, silver, brass, copper, and other colors elegantly crowned the appendages. The luster of these stripes made their magical auras into a marvel, as intriguing as a foal's first sight of a rainbow. It was clear that without these beautiful light shows, there would be little to enchant about their aura, which did not have the vast and unique range of colors that ponies and Alicorns had.
The natives eagerly questioned the Alicorns before welcoming them, as it had been much time since they had known one who offered them generosity and any form of friendliness without boons or wants to be fulfilled in return. Before they admitted to the presence of an Alicorn among them, the creatures told the Alicorns more of their woes.
The natives called themselves the qilin, though their dialects varied, and they lived on the vast territory sensed by Canterhorn and also had many extensive clans that removed themselves from the mainland, moving across the sea. That kind, which the numerous qilin saw infrequently, lived upon the biggest islands of a vast archipelago, claiming the sun favored them. The qilin had yet to hate the mainlanders so bitterly, as the mainlanders had yet to hate those that had not yet called themselves the kirin, for this was still a primitive age.
Over half these scaly, stately beings were impacted with notable inborn sterility that made them treasure their eggs with the greatest reverence. The draconequui who regarded them with such deeply varying emotions had exploited this, placing curses of barrenness upon many more of the qilin and mocking them for their state. Fertile qilin had little ability to consort from the ponies and horses from which they were descended. This left them isolated and left to the whims of the few draconequui who did not regard them with overt cruelty or the wingless dragons of land. These dragons were equally weary of the struggles and plights of the chaos-makers who interfered with their simplest desires for tranquility, hoarding, and family.
The most pony-like of the bunch were always rather unfortunate, as the brunt of any biological disadvantages were heaviest in their kind, and their pleas were especially strong to the two Alicorns. Barrenness was especially strong upon them, as were lower magic and physical weakness. Seeing their fellow qilin be cursed with what was naturally correlated with the most pony-like broke the hearts of this qilin strain. They felt none should have to be inflicted with such struggles.
While pony-like dragon hybrid strains could prove disadvantaged if infertile and early in hybridization, the few winged qilin were regarded with suspicion tinged in their community. Every qilin strain with wings, regardless of clan or other features, could only come from a draconequus and dragon, or a draconic strain qilin long since hatched and separated from their more equine relatives. Their magic distinctly bore traits of the chaos-bringers they were descended from. The others regarded them warily and distantly, dismissing them all with the name longma to brand their Otherness.
The magic of the qilin was dazzling to behold, coming from a combination of their fire breath, scales, and the twin horns so like antlers. Qilin with deer ancestors had some of the most marvelous horns of all. The sheer array of creatures that could be mixed into the lineage of these hybrids was astounding: deer, naiad equines, and dryad equines. Even the petite variations of aquatic dragons had taken favor to qilin, allowing qilin strains not already benefiting from amphibiousness lent by naiad heritage to enjoy a whole life under the water.
The diversity of the qilin races alone was touching, and their attempt to draw the barest familial connections with one another brought memories of Canterhorn's own family to him, stirring his sympathies. Pockets of survival and stubbornness had arisen in the chaos-tainted world, and the qilin was the most exemplary of this. But what creatures should have to live in a ruined age if it could be helped? The putrid equality of suffering under the draconequui was terrible enough.
A line of qilin whose horns were striped dominantly with jade had established themselves as the leaders. Their clan was spread thin across the inter-fighting territories, but enough were still present to consult with the Alicorn duo regarding their quest. Their leader was a stallion — something that would later be scorned by the qilin — who said he was to be called Yongle by two Alicorns.
Most peculiar about the qilin to Elysium and Canterhorn was how this mortal species would not name themselves once and true, but often rename themselves. Though they often had haunches capable of marks, no qilin had any like ponies or Alicorns did. Those that did have any hatched with a peculiar, faint one of two dappled hemispheres circling one another in an infinite cycle. All the colors varied, though that mark was always constant, just as long as a pony strain qilin haunch was not covered with scales.
No other name of his mattered, Yongle had told the two, but the name he gave himself to represent what he wanted to restore to his land.
Yongle had every need to be ambitious, and the ruthlessness in his draconic slit eyes was enough for the Alicorns to know no wrong could come from assisting the qilin, so as long as Yongle led his kind and let that part of him show.
Elysium and Canterhorn gathered in Yongle's half-made ghost of a fortress city. Qilin adored the moon's pale magic, letting them hide and find themselves through meditation. To shun that was to be unknown. Under the stars, they planned long into the night that preserved them for chaos-bringers.
Yongle told them he knew of the Alicorn they sought. The sun-fearing island qilin who was so peculiar in how they had begun to deviate from the qilin's traditions housed the young soul. To reach this Alicorn, they would have to journey to these islands.
Except that the island qilin had crossed the sea by magicking themselves across, swimming, and crossing the last of a long land bridge some draconequui had tempted them across, taunting the qilin to follow the stretch of rock and see if it was endless.
All that was gone now and no shouts crossed the sea. Even the serpents that were seen as tricky aunts and uncles by the qilin refused to listen to them. The naiads they shared blood with and had once been so close to left them for the sea ponies and the sirens when chaos fractured the world. He explained this predicament of all being together and cut off from so many others like them.
This was how Yongle came to know of Elysium's boats.
...
With the might of young Elysium, the first imitation of what would once be a navy was built. Elysium's ability to assemble many stronger, larger, and longer rafts capable of supporting whole troops of qilin. Each one was a product of her own labor, all while the qilin watched in awe, knowing that time was of the essence, or otherwise, they would ask the young immortal how she devised such a thing — and how it could work.
Weapons and supplies were readied, as were Canterhorn's promise to defend the mainland qilin left behind and lead them while Yongle and Elysium sailed away to the so-called Islands of the Sun.
On the way, Yongle and Elyisum's prowess in battle and the fighting spirit of the other qilin were bared to the sea serpents and abominations that threatened them. The latter were a creature unlike any horror Elysium had known: masses of contorted flesh and fur, multiple mouths with terrifyingly varied teeth, hideous huge stingers, mandibles capable of ripping ponies in half, numerous heads incapable of being identified beyond that, dozens of unusable wings ruined by salt, floundering snake-like bodies, and random protruding fins.
The bulging eyes reflected nothing but aggression and torment, and were usually studded across the body in positions that could only be painful — but thankfully easy targets — and were all pony-sized. Each was colored with the yellowed, red-pupil arrangement all draconequui had. None had any magic except to charge, struggle, attack, and swim.
These beasts look like glorified, scaled tumors if those tumors had drunk all the malice of mortal-kind at their best.
Yongle met the bellows of each such frightening mass by revealing his curling fangs with a snarl, the beard, and two flowing whiskers he had flowing half as furiously as Elysium's ethereal halo burned.
He would yank each spear from them with his own cloven hooves, licking the blood of the beasts off, much to Elysium's repulsion. The 'whorls of fire' or intricate patterns growing over his scales would glow with the fire he would breathe over each spear before stabbing the dying beasts once again.
After many victories, Yongle and his comrades would paint their scales with intricate, early pictographs Elysium had no meaning for — and refused to let any add them to her own coat. Yongle rocked their barge of a 'raft' by laughing heartily upon his back, the blood sigils on his snake-like belly facing the sky. Her distant attitude amused him in ways neither could understand of each other.
It was on their third day of sailing and fighting that Elysium learned the abomination monsters-of-monsters that the qilin fought were the inevitable result when any draconequus mated with a pony, or a pony with a chaos-monster: a parasitic entity that was not birthed so much as it devoured the unlucky female of either species from the womb outward, bursting out as an inevitable terror that was the wretched spawn, consuming nothing intelligently and beyond all reason. The beasts were impervious to magic, and the draconequus heritage lent an unfortunate long life to that which could only be brought down in the most physically violent fashion.
Given long enough, these brutal entities might come to bypass enough of their suffering to something temporarily manageable. Those with draconequus fathers had some perverse insult of 'luck' and would sometimes begin to shadow a draconequus needily with whatever half-mind they had remaining.
It was only in the shadow of the draconequus sire and with the touch of his magic that they would offer a deimatic inverse, shifting into a gooey appearance a fraction of their size, eager to please and follow that which brought them such suffering.
The only description had for the beasts she could manage was 'smoozy'.
...
The islands where the qilin claimed the sun lived were foggy and defended by storms unlike any Elysium's coast had known. She dreaded all the weather of this half of the world and was the only one upon all the barges who had any ability with flying through any gale close to this. Worse still was how she was the only one who could convince drowned souls not to drag her friends-in-arms below the surface to their deaths.
The sun-qilin had little difference in their motley of appearances, except for the manes and tails of the qilin that were so often pin-straight had been pulled away from their faces and cut short. The winds were terrible upon this shore and the salt of the air was familiar but unwanted.
The sight of the moon-qilin upon the barges unseen before made these rival qilin light their horns in startled retaliation, smoke curling from their muzzles and snouts enviously. Their hoarding instinct had already been set off.
Elysium put herself between the two massive groups. Her horn's light intensified her constant halo and her wings flaring with the imperious air generations of mortal emperors would try to attain. As soon as she did so, every sun-qilin bowed low without warning.
...
Too many of the island-dwelling moon-qilin nearly choked on their fish in the market at the sight of another Alicorn. Their chatter was incessant and more cheerful than the hostility the sun-qilin were greeted with. Few pointed and those were usually foals. Mares pointed with their eyes, cradling their eggs too quietly for Elysium's liking. Mortals were rarely sneaky for any good reason. The silence was the Alicorns' nature, or so she had learned in the company of her friend. Alicorns did not need to be stimulated by the constant chatter and odd yearnings that drove nearly all mortal creatures to one another in droves. She enjoyed friendship, but there was something completely Other and desperate in the craving of these mortals.
Upon every gateway, door, and banner was not just the bloody red orb of a painted sun but the fiery red image of a dozen creatures. Be it the image of a fish, dragon, qilin, dragon, pony, or even an Alicorn's image, the red creature was too prominent and purposeful. Even the direction that it pointed with claw, wing, or direction of the paintings' gaze was a sign unknown to Elysium.
She looked up to the snow-capped mountain looming over the fishing village, where the paths and gateways disappeared into the forests.
The Alicorn must live there, but why? The solitude was good, Elysium was certain of that in a way she knew was more than just the Alicorn need for that wondrous way of life. But why have the other Alicorn in such a barren state? Would this Alicorn burn everything? Was that why they were depicted with fire? Was she supposed to work with an Alicorn as overblown as the suns shown in each art piece here? Would this Alicorn be little more than an inflated fool, hot-headed and juvenile in how they thought of their own goodness?
Perhaps the forests could bring some reprieve. The sun-qilin having little to say about them was welcoming enough. Elysium found that where mortals flocked to the least were often among the most magical, sanctifying places — the kind that called deeply to those like Canterhorn and her.
...
The forests were the horror of the island. Too many souls were forsaken and weeping called to them from the path the sun-qilin were petrified to stray from when they ventured here at all. Those who still tried to study the ways of gods and ghosts barely fended those twisted from despair away from the party. The sun-qilin who guided them begged by their twin horns and the power of their ancestors — the dragons and the mountains so revered — to have the Alicorns do more to aid the spirits that were tormenting them.
Canterhorn was quick to intimidate the ghosts haunting their party, though his magic was not as tuned to the spirits and warding against them as Elysium's was. She was a star of aura in the dark canopy with magic unseen to the qilin of the sun and moon. She heard the calls of those spirits lost in a dark that brought anything but peace to her. They had accusations to the living, calls of wanting to return, and the weight of secrets burdening them all. These ghosts cried out for something that mortal society had to offer: their lives to have ended with more than drifting, for the wrong to get their due, and the good to get their rewards.
From Canterhorn, Elysium had learned that Alicorns had their ways of discussing disagreements and the nature of problems in ways that ended not with raids and the primal resorts of mortals. They had no art of war or forms of the council like the Alicorns. Even the Alicorns admitted that they merely cast their wishes and spoke to one another from experience and their wants, all their opinions weighed similarly. There was no way such a system could endure, and certainly not as time went on and called for greater reasoning. None were able to speak that much more highly than another, and all decisions were rooted in the opinion of many than an expert assessment.
Even the dead wanted their due, and they never stopped crying out for anything to relieve them from their torture or for righteous actions to befall others. Of the ghosts, Elysium longed to stop and speak with everyone, if only they had the time. Was this what the unknown Alicorn endured? The cries of these spirits?
And in all her eternity that followed, she wished that these forests would have never gotten worse.
It was only in the land of the sun that the darkest shadows could be found below all that false light. Every horrible of that irony would weigh upon her with each face of a wandering wraith she saw.
Would this other Alicorn struggle with solutions for ghosts as she had?
