The Pantheon Thins
A pony story by Joseph Raszagal
Dedicated to more vodka and a man who wrote only sad and scary songs...
~ ~ ~
“Will you loose the flowers
Hold on to the vase
Will you wipe all those teardrops
Away from your face
I can't help thinking
As I close the door
I have done all of this
Many times before
The bone must go
The wish can stay
The kiss don't know
What the lips will say
Forget I've hurt you
Put stones in your bed
And remember to never
Mind instead”
- "The Part That You Throw Away" by The Bartender Troubadour
~ ~ ~
The creaking of an old pair of double doors announced the arrival of the night's last customer. The barkeep, a ruddy-looking unicorn stallion with a gunmetal gray coat and an even grayer mane, looked up from the dirty glass that he'd been wiping clean. His magical aura, dark to the point of being nearly black, faded as he set what was arguably the busywork of his trade aside. From under the brim of his ripped and beaten fedora, his blue eyes gleamed.
He grinned.
“Princess Celestia,” he greeted, his deep voice more gravelly than a rock quarry, “to what do I owe this great pleasure? I don't believe the Broken Shoe has ever known your patronage before.”
To Celestia's credit, she managed a neutral smile. Her nose, however, wrinkled in recoil to the aged smell of cigarettes and whiskey permeating the old tavern.
“You summoned me in the middle of the night, Tom,” she answered not-so-politely as she approached the bar, “which, may I remind you, is something that only a privileged few have either the courage or the audacity to do. So, you tell me. Why am I here?”
Tom shrugged and levitated two clean glasses and an unmarked bottle onto the bar.
“Can't I ask an old friend out for a drink without there being an ulterior motive?”
With a strained expression, the alabaster alicorn narrowed her eyes and said, “Not when your old friend co-rules an entire nation.”
“And what if I told you that you work too hard and that a stiff drink would do you well every now and again?”
Narrowing her eyes further, Celestia retorted, “I would be forced to hurry the conversation along and remind you that we have not been friends for a very long time.”
Still smiling, the old stallion uncorked the bottle. The cork shot into the air and bounced off of a slowly spinning ceiling fan, sending a wobble throughout the blades and releasing a light shower of dust.
“I see,” he chuckled, ignoring the edge in the monarch's voice. “Then I suppose I won't tell you that. It's been some time since we last caught up and I'd hate for things to go down that route, especially so quickly. At least hear me out before storming off, eh?”
Ready to turn and leave at that very moment, Celestia's magenta gaze fell upon the golden liquor that filled the pair of glasses, shimmering brightly like the fiery surface of her sun.
Her voice hitched in her throat.
“S-sunshine?” she stammered in disbelief.
“As far as I'm aware, the very last bottle in the land,” Tom confirmed. “It's been well over four centuries, but I can still remember the day you gave it to me.”
Wide-eyed, the alicorn shook her head and whispered, “You kept it?”
“It was a gift. I cherish gifts.”
Celestia's hammering heart threatened to burst straight through her chest.
“You cherish nothing,” she spat, glaring daggers. “You destroy what others cherish.”
“Do I now?” Tom inquired, his tone intentionally incredulous.
The Princess stamped a hoof. An angry storm was brewing within her.
Raising an eyebrow, the barkeep let out a mirthful laugh and added, “Calm down, I didn't drag you from your bed and castle just to mock you. Do you really think I would ask to see you just so I could tempt fate and salt old wounds?”
“You didn't ask to see me, you demanded to.”
“True, I did, but the question still remains. Would I do so without good reason?”
With a sigh, Celestia wrapped her magic around the glass offered to her and levitated it to her lips.
After a sip, she closed her eyes and answered, “No.”
Tom smiled and replaced the jettisoned cork with another, resealing the bottle.
“Brewed from the flames of the sun itself,” he commented after a moment of pregnant silence. “They say the art has been all but lost to the world. Too bad, nothing else so much as holds a candle to it. Moonshine came close, I suppose, but it's been even longer since I've seen a jar of that.”
Celestia took another quiet drink, her flowing tail flicking anxiously from left to right.
“Is it true what they say?” Tom queried as he enjoyed his first sip, regarding her softly. “That you can feel it when a batch is being made? I never bothered to ask back then and always just assumed~
“Yes,” Celestia curtly interrupted.
Unphased by the interjection, Tom prodded further and asked, “Does it hurt?”
The ivory alicorn locked eyes with her old acquaintance, scrutinizing the windows into his soul for any signs of foul play. She wanted to find it there, the telltale glimmer of mischief that would allow her to ignore the intricacies of social interaction and simply walk away without saying another word.
But it wasn't there.
All that she could see were the tired, compassionate eyes of a pony far older than he had any right to be.
“Yes,” she said, thinking back to a time when tradition demanded that bits of her magnificent orb be torn and scooped out, mashed into a pulp, seasoned, and fermented.
Nodding again, the gray stallion remarked, “Then I suppose it's for the best that the brewmasters never passed on their secrets. I'd hate to see you hurt.”
Celestia's glass shattered into a thousand pieces as it hit the wall opposite of them, the pristine whiteness of her face having somehow gone whiter.
“I have all the power necessary,” she stated as a quiet, subdued fury took hold of her and turned her blood to ice, “to end you. While I never would, it would be wise of you to keep in mind that it is still well within my ability. Taunt me at your own risk, Wraith.”
The barkeep heaved a heavy sigh.
“Threats, Celestia? Really?”
Lashing out violently with her telekinesis, the Princess answered by way of wrapping her magical aura around Tom's throat and wrenching him from his place behind the bar. Hoisted high up into the air, his Cutie Mark came into view, a broken clock face devoid of its second, minute, and hour hands. Strangely serene, Tom offered no resistance or struggle and simply dangled limply in Celestia's telekinetic grip.
The two locked eyes again, and just as suddenly as it had come, the wild rage commanding the Princess winked out like a candle's wick in the wind.
Even while hanging at her mercy in the air, his lungs starved as he was slowly strangled, the only thing that the stallion's deep blues held for her was compassion.
“Why?” she pondered wearily, a plethora of unearthed emotions only fueling her confusion. “Why are you doing this?”
Gently, the gray unicorn was floated back down and released.
Concentrating and calming herself forcibly, Celestia swallowed the lump in her throat and said, “I apologize. I... I lost control.”
“Don't worry about it,” he replied, seemingly unaffected by the attack as he produced another glass and filled it for her. “Besides, I wouldn't have blamed you.”
The Princess stared at the old stallion, her bitterness and resentment mixing with a deep sorrow somewhere along the way.
Something was wrong, in every sense of the word.
“Why have you summoned me, Tom?”
“Because it's time.”
Tilting her head, a puzzled Celestia huffed in exacerbation and asked, “Time for what?”
“My time,” Tom answered, completely unfettered.
Celestia took in a sharp breath as the color that had begun to return to her face drained away once more.
“You're... relinquishing your mantle?”
“I've lived long enough, haven't I?” the barkeep laughed.
The laugh was a hollow one, forced as if in reply to the punchline of a cruel joke that only he had heard.
“I'm tired, Celestia,” he said, letting the words hang in the silence for a moment. “I've ferried enough souls across the ethereal river. I've whistled my way past enough graveyards. It's time for Death to hang up his hat and guide himself to the other side for once.”
Immediately, six shameful words sprang to the monarch's mind.
Though she tried to resist, a horrified Celestia suddenly felt herself say, “I could deny you that right.”
For the first time since the Princess had entered the dilapidated building, Tom's expression fell to one of genuine pain.
“I know you could,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Cruelty through kindness, I think they call it.”
“Well?”
“You won't.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“You just won't.”
“Again, what makes you say that?”
“Isn't it obvious, Celestia? For Faust's sake, it's right there in the word. Cruelty demands that you be cruel. You've been forced to make some harsh decisions in the past, a few that have clearly eaten at you for the last thousand or so years, but one thing that you're not now and have never been… is cruel.”
The stallion punctuated the end of his statement with another drink.
“If anything, I'd say you're kind to a fault. Far too kind for this undeserving world.”
Another stretch of awkward silence passed over the weathered room.
“So, you summoned me to have your mortality restored?” Celestia eventually questioned, her wings bristling.
“No, I summoned you to see if we could bury the hatchet before I go. Preferably not in anypony's back.”
“And have your mortality restored,” she half-laughed.
With a snort, the barkeep sighed and stated, “You and I both know that if that were all I were after, I could have sidestepped you entirely. It's well within Luna's power to strip me of the godhood that you granted me. Cadance too, though I'll admit, I wouldn't actually have the heart to ask that of her. She's still a tad too young to carry a burden that big. You can't unring a bell, after all. She'd probably hate herself; consider herself a murderer.”
“And you think Luna wouldn't?”
“I don't know, are you implying that ten centuries, give or take, still constitutes as young? She's a grown mare, Celestia. You're gonna have to accept that one of these days.”
Wordlessly, Celestia relented and shook her head.
After waiting a few seconds, enjoying the sharp taste of alcohol still on his tongue, Tom faced the Goddess of the Sun and said, “I can't apologize for what I did. It was Star Swirl's time. I had to take him. But... I can apologize for what losing him did to you.”
“YOU COULD HAVE LET HIM LIVE!” she thundered vehemently, her voice rising to new heights.
“Oh, of course, it's all so simple!” Tom shot back, startling the Princess and instantly deflating her righteous fury. “If only I hadn't forced him to die!”
Taken aback, Celestia struggled and ultimately failed to come up with a rebuttal.
“You're not a foal, Celestia, so stop acting like one. Do you think I ever once enjoyed my work? Ever? It's a sad story, sure, but it always ends the same. There are no favorites in life. We can't go around picking and choosing who gets to stay and who has to leave. There are lines that even gods aren't meant to cross and that's one of them.”
The alabaster alicorn floundered silently under the glare leveled upon her, sharp enough to slice through steel and stone.
“What would your subjects think of you? Your lost love returns while the loved ones of countless others remain dead and gone? What would Star Swirl think of you? You know the answer to that question, Celestia. It might hurt, but it's the right answer. Selfishness is a dark luxury that the omnipotent can't partake in. We're too powerful. We're too wise. Were we to think of only ourselves, the suffering already present in the world that we preside over would be magnified tenfold.”
“I would never~
But Celestia's protest was cut off as the barkeep slammed his hooves down on the worm-eaten counter separating them and said, “Liar.”
Their eyes met for a moment, magenta and blue, as denial squared off against truth.
“I was there when you offered him a place at your side until the end of time,” Tom spoke, quiet but as firm and unflinching as a length of iron, “so don't just sit there and lie to my face. Star Swirl declined the Cartographer's mantle because had no regrets. He lived his life to the fullest and didn't nurture the cowardly idea of lasting forever the way... some of us have. The way I did. He was bigger than that, he didn't need to keep going. When he reached the end of his road, he was proud of the distance he'd gone.”
With an unreadable expression, Tom tilted his glass from side to side and watched as the liquor inside whirlpooled.
He took a sip and exhaled through his nose, relishing the light burn that flooded his nostrils.
“I know losing him destroyed you, Celestia, but there was nothing that could be done. All it took for Luna was a little bit of jealousy. I wasn't about to let you pursue greed, even if it was in the name of love. I care about you too much to let you fall from grace.”
Gritting her teeth, the Princess turned her head and tried in vain to hold back her tears.
Again, she failed.
“I wish you would hate me,” she wept as she broke down completely.
Placing a hoof on her shoulder, Tom simply shook his head.
“I can't do that,” he insisted as he lifted his glass. “You were my mentor then and you're my mentor now. When everypony else abandoned me, the cursed foal with the black magic, you took me in and taught me; you raised me as though I were your own. I'll always love you, with all of my heart and soul.”
“I don't deserve it! I spent centuries hating you with every fiber of my being!”
“And those centuries could never compare to the two dozen years that came before them.”
With reddening eyes, Celestia hid her face between her forelegs and veiled herself behind in her wings.
“How?” she sobbed, shivering uncontrollably. “How can you do this to me, Tom? How can you ask me to forgive you, then once forgiven, ask me to kill you?”
Soothing her as best he could with his rocky voice, the stallion said softly, “I'm sorry.”
“It isn't fair!”
“No, it's certainly not.”
“IT ISN'T FAIR!”
The steady electric hum and periodic wobble of the ceiling fan accented the monarch's continued sobbing. From behind the wall of feathers she had fortified between herself and the rest of the world, she quaked, her regal poise forgotten in the depth and weight of the moment. For the length of time it took Tom to finish two more glasses of the impossible liquor, the Princess remained inconsolable.
As the barkeep motioned for the bottle and went to fill his glass a third time, a sudden golden glow captured his attention. Brilliant and blinding, Celestia's horn filled the rustic room with light for a moment. Then, just as quickly as the flash had appeared, it faded.
The deed had been done.
Smiling, Tom released a contented sigh as he felt an ancient weight lift from his shoulders.
“Thank you,” he said, bowing his head respectfully. “I know this can't be easy.”
Celestia remained silent.
Closing his eyes, the charcoal stallion's horn lit up as though surrounded by shadows. The dark magic surrounded his hat, removed it, and gently placed it off to the side. No longer concealed, a prominent slice running through his left ear appeared; an old wound from a war long forgotten.
“The pantheon's thinned over the years,” he commented nostalgically. “How long has it been since you last knighted somepony and inducted them?”
“Centuries,” answered the Princess, her voice nearly a whisper.
“Who was the last?”
A tense pause.
With a soft whinny, Celestia answered, “You.”
The barkeep flinched at the words, seemingly stung by them as he slowly trotted his way around the bar. Suddenly overcome with a heavy weight in his limbs, he cast a curious glance over towards the Princess before finally allowing himself to be pulled down to the ground. Completely unashamed by the fact that it appeared his deathbed would be a dirty tavern's even dirtier floor, Tom craned his neck and motioned for Celestia to join him.
After taking a moment to levitate aside her golden regalia, thus rendering herself as naked and natural as the dying stallion, she did just that. Draping an alabaster wing across his back like a blanket, the monarch laid herself down beside him.
“Tom?” asked Celestia, probing the silence.
Cocking an eyebrow, he replied, “Yes?”
“What have you been waiting for?”
Tom's eyebrow climbed a bit higher.
“Beg pardon?” he inquired.
Celestia's brow furrowed in frustration as she considered her question.
“I noticed it... a long, long time ago. Both in your actions and in the symbolism behind your Cutie Mark. The stallion with the broken clock on his flank, always waiting patiently for a mysterious something that just never seemed to come. And... well, I just don't understand. After all of these years and all that you've seen, why do you want to die now? Did you finally find what you've been waiting for?”
Grinning, the barkeep chuckled sleepily, “Yes. Yes I did.”
“If it isn't too personal a thing to ask,” she began, stammering slightly, “what was it? What were you waiting for?”
Stifling another chuckle, Tom looked up at his ageless mentor and said, “Your smile.”
The ivory alicorn's eyes widened as she quickly turned and found a nearby wall suddenly very interesting, her cheeks turning a bashful shade of pink.
“I'm going to be honest with you, Celestia, I have no idea how to go about properly explaining my Cutie Mark. Perhaps fate had another idea for me, something else for me to wait for. Not that it matters, of course; I could have easily defied fate for you. No, all I've wanted after all these years, after all of this time... is to see you smile again. And not that fake one you wear every day as you go about your royal duties, shaking hooves with court nobles and foreign ambassadors only interesting in currying your political favor. I mean a real smile.”
The barkeep gave a stunning example, grinning wide from ear to ear.
“Luckily for me, mortality wasn't an issue at the time, was it?” he continued, his eyelids heavy and his pulse slowing, “All I really needed to do was wait. So I did. Then along came your first apprentice in over one hundred years.”
“Twilight Sparkle,” the goddess breathed.
“You've squired quite a few apprentices over the past millennium, haven't you? Far too many for an old jackass like me to count. Still, despite how many of us there were, and there were a lot, it was always so clear and obvious to everypony watching that tutoring your understudies was more a labor of love to you than it was anything else. When you and I parted ways... on the sour terms that we did, I was afraid that you would close yourself off completely. It took you long enough, but I'm glad to see that I was still proven wrong in the end. You took Twilight Sparkle under your wing and treated her as though she shared your blood. You became a mother again. Heh, admittedly, it wasn't quite what I had in mind; I was going to try and find a fitting stallion or mare to fill that hole in your heart with, but hey, if motherhood does the trick just as well as partnership then why in the bloody Hell not?”
Somewhere between embarrassment, indignation, and humor, the alicorn blushed and said, “That's putting it all rather bluntly.”
“Maybe so, but the point remains... you smiled again.”
Closing her eyes, Celestia cracked a small smile and admitted, “I suppose I did.”
Sadly, with the situation and environment as they were, the monarch's fond memory rapidly soured.
Celestia's smile rolled over. Her stomach followed suit.
“As long as we're asking questions,” Tom segued, his head laid down across his forelegs, “I have one that's been biting at the back of my mind for some time now. Care to indulge my curiosity, Princess?”
Pulling the breaks on her wistful train of thought, Celestia nodded and gave the gray stallion her full attention.
Igniting his horn, Tom reached out with his shadowy magic and floated the unmarked bottle that they had shared over for the Princess to see.
“Sunshine,” Tom inquired, his eyes still closed. “If making what's inside this little bottle really does hurt you, then why did you still make it for me?”
Grasping the bottle with her own magic, Celestia set it down a few inches in front of them and said, “It's a piece of my sun, a piece of me. The tradition of brewing it originally stems from my own personal tradition of brewing a bottle to share with my students. I wanted to share it with you.”
“Even though it hurt?”
“Even though it hurt.”
Letting out a long yawn, Tom smiled contentedly and lifted his head to nuzzle against his teacher's neck.
“That means a lot to me,” he stated mid-nuzzle. “Perhaps more than you yourself know.”
Straining himself to keep them open, the stallion's blue eyes strayed towards a nearby window and took notice of the steadily rising sun.
Amidst their various arguments and apologies, the two ponies had burned the midnight oil dry. Dawn was approaching.
“They always asked me if it would hurt in the end,” Tom chuckled as he laid his head back down and closed his eyes. “Death, I mean. And, well... I was never able to tell them. Sometimes I would tell them that it wouldn't, just to give them some peace of mind, but I never really knew. But now? It doesn't hurt at all. If anything, it feels... quiet. Calming. Tranquil even. However, I've always been a realist at heart, so you'll have to forgive me if I find it a little hard to believe that a nice, soothing death is something that very many others in the great beyond can claim to have enjoyed.”
The Princess felt the moisture swell in her eyes just seconds before it began steaming down her face. Squeezing the barkeep tighter with her wing, she vowed, “Anesthetic magic. It's the least that I can do.”
“Well, let the record state that while it's a bit ironic, it's still very much appreciated.”
The sun climbed higher in the sky, Luna acting in her absent sister's stead. Streams of light penetrated the darkness of the dusty building through windows and cracks in the boards where the wood had been warped by age.
“Any second now and I'll be just another lump of meat to shove in the dirt,” Tom laughed sleepily, joy ringing in his gravelly voice despite the dark sentiments. “Dust in the eternal wind and all that jazz. But do you know what? I don't care. You're with me now, you've forgiven me, and we shared a few good drinks before I went. All in all, I'd say that today's my lucky day.”
Celestia took in a pained and quaking breath, but otherwise remained silent, taking great care not to interrupt what she knew would be some of the last words her old friend would ever speak.
“Just promise me one thing, Celestia. Your current apprentice? Twilight Sparkle? She's already something of a bright star and I doubt that she'll be stopping with the heroics any time soon. As just about all of your students have, she's going to rise to the occasion one of these days. She'll seek to prove herself to you and join the others in the pantheon. Not out of a desire for wealth or power, I'm sure. You're too shrewd and selective for that to happen, you always pick out the good seeds. The world's greatest gardener, you, just with ponies instead of plants.”
Realizing that he was rambling, the ruddy barkeep smirked and used the last ounce of his strength to thump himself on the forehead with a hoof.
“Oh, no, I suspect she'll want to join up out of a desire to do for you, and for Equestria as a whole, all that she can. Plain and simple. All I'm asking here... is that you protect her. Don't let her become what I did. She's too pure. Too good. There are so many more parts to play in this wide and wild world of ours. So many. Pick for her a forgiving one, one that won't force her to sacrifice her morality and break her spirit. Alright?”
With a grin, he added, “'Cause if there's one thing less fun than dying, it's being Death.”
“And if she insists?” Celestia found herself asking, tears still flowing freely.
“Then she's stubborn and tough as nails,” the barkeep said with a toothy grin, “just like I thought she was.”
Letting out one last sigh, Tom leaned his weight into the alicorn's side. The Princess, in return, rested her head along the stallion's shaggy, gray back.
“I wonder if I'll see the others... Do you remember the old gang, Celestia? I'll bet Johnny's still wearing all black, the sad sod. If I see the bunch of bastards I'll be sure to send 'em your best wishes, alright?”
With a strong quiver in her voice, Celestia quietly replied, “Thank you.”
“Thank you too... Mother. For everything and more.”
With those words said, the old stallion went still and silent. As is common among most, there was no climactic noise of thunder or strange slowing down of time when Tom's heart finally stopped and he shuffled off his mortal coil. He simply laid there, motionless, and grew cold. The pony passersby outside, however, did hear a sound afterward. From somewhere inside an old, beaten bar, a miserable sobbing resounded throughout the day. Princess Luna was summoned and in Princess Luna's wings did Celestia continue to sob for another two days.
The pantheon thins.
