Twilight rolled onto her back and waved her legs in the air. "And so we could probe the very beginnings of time itself!"
Celestia coughed gently. "Yes. That's what that spell would do. But how do I put this…"
"I shouldn't be spending my time as reigning princess doing research projects? No? What, then?"
"It won't work because I cast a blanket counterspell on it."
A spasm wracked Twilight. "What? How could you?"
"Privacy. Anypony could come along and cast it and see anything that happened longer ago than about a hundred years."
Relaxation, consideration. "I… see. Did you at least cast it first?"
"Yes. And that is what led me to understand the need for privacy."
Twilight rolled back onto her belly, getting eye contact before asking, "Did you write down what you found? What did you find?"
Celestia hesitated. "Very well. The beginning of time consisted of, more or less, an infinite space saturated with pudding. The bottom half of the pudding thickened and became primordial solids and liquids. The upper half thinned and became primordial air and living things. Well, one primordial living thing."
"Ooh. Did it have a name?"
"It did not at the time. I never bothered to name it, and you are the second pony I have ever told this to. So, no. I simply think of it as the giant tentacle monster that rampaged around and jammed its thousand immense members per square mile into every crevice, crack, hole, or crease in the primordial solids and liquids. This made different places have different qualities. Plains, mountains, seas, and so on. After a long time - by the way, measuring time in this era is difficult because nothing acted like it does now. The era lasted ten seconds, a month, ten thousand years, a quintillion years, or literally infinite time, depending which standard you use.
"Anyway, at the end of that inconsistently defined span of time, the tentacle monster was sluggish, having dispersed half of its primordial life essence into the land and sea. The violence of the act decreased, but the complexity of its motions increased. That was largely because the land had absorbed energy and itself come to life. The tentacle monster had separated life into male and female - what it retained was now male, and the land was now female. And she was an active participant. They flowed together, they… made love."
Twilight guessed, "The first harmony?"
"Exactly. They worked together in joy and creation, until they were very nearly spent. The last detail they created before they subsided into passively receptive primordial ooze was a son."
Twilight put into the pause, "A sun? As in, not the one you raise?"
Celestia blinked, confused, then clarified, "As in, not a daughter."
"Oh."
"This son was much like the father, but was localized to be perhaps a mile wide instead of filling the sky. And he was conscious rather than being a force of nature. I call him the Demiurge. He took his father's role - he made love to his mother's remnants. His will to find something to sate himself into created a bias in his creations which has remained to this day - the higher the magic level of an area, the more birth rates tend to favor fillies over colts."
"It being in the primordial era, I understand magic levels were very high."
"Correct. So the Demiurge made love to the land and part found, part awakened, part conceived, ten thousand or so primordial beings, until the infinite remaining land he had not yet impregnated had had its magic sink too deeply for him to reach. All of the primordials were in this region of the world, within some ten thousand miles, give or take. After him, they were all female, though not as one might recognize them to be so. They were too large to stand upright, many being more of a living ripple in the ground. The sun and moon were born in this generation. Quite a few of the others are now distinct terrestrial geographical features, such as Arris."
"Mount Arris is alive?"
"Yes, but I do not recommend an expedition to awaken her. Anyway, the Demiurge loved all of his primordial daughters, and they loved him. Carnally. And so the primordials bore further daughters, the titans - the star beasts, the Kraken, and so on. Two of the last and least of these were Tiamat and Epona, who much later became mothers of the draconic and equine families, respectively. But not yet.
"And the Demiurge also loved his titanic daughters, and they loved him. Also carnally. Now, one of the older titans, the star beast Capricorn, was impatient. She didn't mind sharing her father with her ten thousand primordial aunts since they were slow and needed his attention once in a thousand years or so, but sharing him with an ever-increasing number of fellow titans was too much. So she focused her magic very hard and had a son instead."
Twilight waited for her to continue, then guessed, "That didn't go well?"
"He was Grogar."
"I take it that his title, 'father of monsters' was literal."
"Yes. He had been created in secret, in a conflict of influences, and for selfish reasons. This poisoned his mind. For a time he took on the duties of tending to the desires of the titans and his father cared for the primordials. But Grogar did not like how he was smaller and weaker than the other titans, let alone his father, so he stole his father's power and reduced him to nothing. Or rather, he made him transform into the plants. These grow well on primordials, for the most part, and have a soporific effect. Everyone else was very naive and assumed that the Demiurge had just worn out like his father had and undergone one last transformation, naturally.
"Unlike the Demiurge, who just liked to make love with his daughters, and found the resulting children to be a happy coincidence, Grogar became very interested in planned breeding, and cultivated unique creatures by combining traits from different mothers among the titans. He built his bell to extract magic from them - it would only take an indetectably small amount from a titan, but enough to allow him to give his next daughter whatever borrowed trait he wished."
"How many titans were there?"
"About a thousand - just a fraction of their parents' generation, the primordials. But the monsters he sired, from the titans and from other monsters, numbered in the millions. This era lasted for almost a hundred thousand years. Grogar selected and combined according to his whim, overriding the desires of the mothers. He often lied about what he wanted so it would appear to be random and he would not be blamed, but this excuse gradually wore thin and the titans lost trust in him even as he continued to be their only source of satisfaction. Monsters often died either because they were malformed or in fights with other monsters. Sometimes, he would arrange such a fight to test so he could select. A very few titans died to monsters, and the monsters responsible were put down by the other titans. Finally, one of the monsters, a unicorn we know as Gusty…"
"Wait. What makes Gusty the Great a monster?"
"She was Epona's eldest daughter, was twenty feet tall, her horn was serrated and razor-sharp, and whenever she went to sleep, her body turned into a similarly-sized warm cyclone that pulsed with a heartbeat. So, she didn't like how Grogar ran things. She gathered a team that managed to take the bell, and she hid it. Grogar, in his fury, went on a rampage, wounding or killing many monsters. But finally, he annoyed Scorpio. She stung him fatally, and that was the end of that."
"Quick question - were there any other males at that point?"
"Not that they knew of, and I could not confirm the existence of any others. Some titans such as Scorpio and Orion gradually transformed to be male, but that took some time - short compared to the preceding era, but slow enough not to be relevant to what happened next."
"How does Discord fit into this? We're getting down to the stage where I'd expect there isn't enough magic lying around to make him."
"Right. One more thing before we get to that. So, now that Grogar wasn't there to interfere, those titans who were already pregnant spent as much magic as they could to make their offspring male. Those whose pregnancies were further along had less magic left over to give to the child, resulting in magic-poor offspring such as the bovines, canids, felines, and many others with even less, who became the animals. Others were earlier along and had more, like Tiamat and Epona. The mothers of these various sons shared them with their daughters, not usually sharing more broadly. And so the offspring became set in kinds, and crossing kinds became harder, to the point that now, say, a pony and a dragon cannot readily conceive a child. In the earlier days it was straightforward, and that is the origin of the kirin, and analogously the hippogriffs, griffons, et cetera. For a time, that contraction was severe and it was even difficult for a unicorn to breed with a pegasus or earth pony. It could be done, but it took more effort. Each kind was one large family, generally with a line of a few central males who were bred on, somewhat as if ants shared the egg-laying duty among the workers. A typical mare would mate with her brother, father, and, if she bore one, her son."
"Now, those primordials who in some way or another resisted the sedative influence of plants had gotten a mite frustrated after being neglected for the entirety of Grogar's reign. Once the population grew sufficiently, there was severe deforestation on Arris, which let her wake up. She lured Tiamat's and Epona's sons into herself. Where she had set up a tiny-for-her, monster-scale pudendum slash oubliette, and raped them to death."
"Mount Arris is a murder-rapist."
"Yes. And her son is Discord."
"I don't think he came out like she intended."
"Yet he came out as she might have predicted, if she were intelligent and not a remnant of primordial lust. By the way, Arris also shared Discord's fathers with Eviorfre, modernly known as Everfree. This bad behavior is why we preserve that forest. It must never, ever be developed."
"Understood."
"Anyway, Discord broke up the hive-like families, and thus created the nuclear family as a consequence. Pair bonding was often strong enough to resist his atomization."
"Pair bonding? What was the gender balance?"
"Still far askew, more like Ponyville than Manehattan. Herding was still ubiquitous, but still, quite a few mares ended up single. This led to two great inventions that really brought about the end of the dawn-of-time era and the beginning of history."
"Oh? What are those?"
"Masturbation and homosexuality."
"Excuse me?"
"In the magic-rich time in the extreme beginning, sex was a motion that wasn't so much pleasurable as it was just the thing that one did without thinking. It was the one focus of all primordial beings and all the muddled action that went before them. They had no other interests, hobbies, skills. The Titans developed some capabilities that weren't solely focused on reproduction, but their lives centered around Grogar's return to satisfy them. The monsters had other things in their lives besides that, but even for them, their libido was tightly coupled to the underlying cosmic principle to generate, to reproduce. They could not imagine satisfying their lust with anything but reproductive sex, and from coming back together. Mating with one's father, son, or grandson was, to them, the only natural outlet.
"The descendants of the monsters were lower in magic and so felt that principle less strongly, to the point that it could be bent or removed in the right circumstances. Once Discord broke the hives, many mares were left alone or with only other mares, for extended periods. Satisfying their libido in other ways separated them further from that principle, which then opened up room for other thoughts, other interests. Art, writing, tools, architecture, agriculture, mathematics. All of these things exploded in the single and paired-mare population first."
"Straight sex made their brains melt?"
"The need for it did. Thanks to the efforts of the first lesbians and masturbators, though, the generative principle has been sufficiently separated from orgasm that abstinence is no longer noticeably helpful. Except for Grogar's immediate children."
Twilight identified that meaningful look. "Such as?"
"Many survive, but most relevantly, Luna and myself. It is no accident that we have never married."
"Your father was Grogar?"
"Yes, and my mother was Gusty. At the time of my conception, his bell held energy from the sun, Simurgh, and Phoenix the star-beast."
Twilight frowned. "Wait. Then why would you need a history-viewing spell to know all of this?"
"She petrified me to hide me from my father, just before he returned to sire Luna. Gusty petrified her immediately after weaning. I do dimly remember my mother, but we certainly never discussed world events, let alone history. Starswirl de-petrified and then raised us some three thousand years later."
Twilight thought. "I can't imagine explaining this to the general populace as literal fact."
"Precisely why I never tried to reveal it. It isn't a moral tale, it doesn't really teach us anything except what actually happened. Moreover, revealing our general knowledge of the subject would correctly imply that we are aware of some very dirty laundry of some very powerful still-extant individuals."
"I can imagine, and thank you for not even telling me those things. Still, some knowledge of that time does persist, or at least knowledge of is consequences…" Twilight's eyes passed over her shelves until she saw what she was thinking of. She levitated it out and opened it. "Yak mythology includes a mountain with a cave that smells like a yak, and where some yak males… er… mount the mountain, and sometimes a baby yak falls down a waterfall from that mountain. Such a yak is always male and always grows up to be a hero."
Celestia nodded. "That would likely be a primordial remnant less violent than Arris."
"And the minotaurs speak of an immortal mother-son monster pair who are also effectively married. Sounds like one of the last children of Grogar. Hmm. Was Somnambula's sphinx a child of Grogar, or a Titan? What about Ahuizotl?"
"Titan and monster, respectively. The titans burned too much magic and have all become mostly dormant. Hence your being able to put the Ursa Minor back to sleep so easily."
"So the magic is going away? There are theor…"
Celestia shook her head; once Twilight had stopped, she said, "Yes, using it in certain ways does, and some leaks away from us. But new magic is also created. Every cutie mark, the elements themselves, these are a continuous growth in the world, and ultimately may lead to far more and better magic than Grogar ever saw. Plants and animals have now grown far past where the primordials live."
Twilight perked up. "Expansion across the infinite plain?"
"Yes. Also, there have most likely been other demiurges, far away. The past-viewing spell only had infinite range at the dawn of time. By the time of the Demiurge, it could only see some hundred thousand miles, and it continued to shrink as it approached the present."
Twilight considered. "Yes, having a universal effect suddenly become local is kind of odd."
"In particular, it appears that Tirek came from another one. I saw him and his brother approaching for thousands of miles before reaching our life-bearing region."
Twilight swallowed. "If our interactions with other islands are like that, we should be quite careful."
"Certainly! But with Tirek came Scorpan. He did not learn goodness here. There was not much of it to be found when Tirek was first imprisoned. Strange, freakish, extremely unattractive? Yes. Bad? Not necessarily."
Twilight nodded. "And we will of course be in a better situation if we grow and expand to them rather than stagnating in place."
"Yes, but far more important than the growth in total energy at the cost of energy per individual, is the growth in quality. The growth in complexity. The magic of the primordial era could create mountains, but it couldn't conceive of any motive beyond orgasm. Ponies can conceive of concepts that the primordials and titans could not, sometimes very simple ideas directly pertaining to their interest, that would have greatly improved their lives."
Twilight giggled. "Such as masturbation and lesbianism?"
"Yes. Even now they struggle with it. I… have from time to time managed to satisfy myself, so long as I imagine my father, or an imaginary brother or son. But it is not easy. And mares? It seems impossible for me to be interested."
Twilight scoffed. "That is hardly unusual. Most ponies are straight, after all."
Celestia nodded in acquiescence. "But I can at least recognize it as possible and if I had the capacity to change myself as the titans do, might so change… if I cared to. But that's the thing - I don't. That need doesn't dominate my life enough for that. So, mostly I am not talking about that one thing they care about. I mostly meant the kinds of things they couldn't be interested in, the things they couldn't care if they missed. Things that have no practical application, things that make life worth examining and living. And so, every pony - nearly every sapient being, and quite a few other animals - can think of things and on account of that even do magic that the primordials could not. You are proof that this new magic, which isn't perpetually bending one's mind towards…"
"Reproductive incest?"
Celestia nodded, "… requiring constant vigilance and abstinence to guard against it, can be as great as the old."
Twilight took a moment to gather up courage, then began, "About that…"