A God themself shan’t be granted courtesy for a mistake. A God makes no mistake.

***

The Strategium was a glorified meeting room. Its most distinctive qualities included a massive table and enormous windows. Too much luxury for a military installation or meeting room. Made of a milky white crystal, the grand table occupied most of the center of the room. A golden finish framed it with images of cheerful, playful ponies. Like cutouts from a golden sheet. The tall windows, held by golden frames, showed a cloudless starry sky despite the facility being underground. They made up most of the walls and gave the room a mystical atmosphere. A glorious candelabra with hundreds of magical orbs provided light hanging from the arched ceiling.

The floor had more marble and raised like the tiered seatings of a theater, surrounding the table with a comfortable walking space. The attendance occupied all seats. The taller, mainline battlehorns sat in the back. Ten centuriones, the immediate commanders of the soldiers, all had attended and sat together in a group of grim and serious mares. They waited for the meeting to start. They were not the only ones with the prodigious size of the battlehorns, though. Many of them had taken duties outside of combat, such as the Domina Medica. And the Magus Praector, responsible for training the young ones and ensuring the adults remained sharp. Not to mention Matriarch Legatus Radiance herself.

Battlehorns could become members of the auxiliary forces for a series of reasons. Because they suffered injuries which their medicine couldn’t compensate for, or because of their calling. After all, even if battlehorns were soldiers, there was more than fighting to maintaining an army and Harmony understood that. The more normal ponies couldn’t become a battlehorn, though. They wouldn’t survive the training or the magical and pharmacological treatment necessary. They still served proudly, though, as their larger sisters needed support and usually only trusted their family.

Why, Cherry Flameheart, the last Matriarch Legatus of the Flamehearts, started as a cook.

In the front were the shorter commanders of the Auxilia Alae, the auxiliary forces made of pegasi and earth ponies. They tended to behave more like normal ponies, often giggly and carefree when not on duty. The ones before Celestia kept silent and waited as patiently as their larger sisters. A collection of differently sized silver and purple shades, mares, and stallions. All wore the white toga or the striped variations showing their position. One of the battlehorns stood watch by the door and closed it behind Celestia and Radiance.

They hailed Celestia and their matriarch with an echoing but restrained ‘ave’. As protocol dictated, Celestia sat herself on the golden, white, and purple throne, waiting for her across the table from the door. Radiance stopped next to Celestia, at her throne’s side. Because of protocols. They were important to the battlehorns and their disciplined minds. Those ponies too restrained themselves, focusing on their commander instead of Celestia. Thankfully. It diminished the effect of the wave of warm magic washing over her. She should get used to it again before long, but in the meantime, she welcomed the reprieve.

Radiance directed a dry stare to a mare sitting at a podium raised next to and above the table. After a quick nod, the latter closed her eyes and lit her horn with blue magic. Opening her eyes again, silver light poured out of them. Magic in motion filled the room with a breeze and the tabletop convulsed with endless lights as the high-rises in downtown Manehattan grew from it. The tallest buildings reached several hooves above the table and filled with the magical lights coming from the windows. Streets made squares and brimmed with light and movement as ponies pulled carts or trotted along the walkways. A party happened at one of the many plazas and music sounded distant, coming from the map.

The windows in the room blurred with motion and images formed, as though the room now found itself on one of the city’s countless and busy streets. Even at night, ponies trotted in every direction. A happy yellow earth pony pulled his cart toward the windows to disappear and reappear on the opposite windows. Pegasi flew overhead and chatting ponies sounded through the windows with their excited voices muffled and distant. And perhaps even more impressively, an airship flew in the distance, lit by its own lights. Its stylish triangular wings held the magical induction engines which kept it airborne, lazily crossing the sky above the city.

Celestia spared the ponies a moment so the mares could absorb the surrounding view, and the impossibly tall buildings the windows showed. Only the cartographus remained fully focused on the map. Trained from a young age, the unicorn tapped into the powerful magic of the astral bodies. She used their privileged position to anchor a powerful scrying spell. Controlling the table and imprinting on it exactly what the Moon saw was the easiest part of the process.

“The scouts did not lie.” One of the great mares mumbled amid the hushed comments from her peers.

“Of course, they did not.” Matriarch Radiance immediately regained control of the situation and their collective attention. “This is Manehattan, thousands of years after we secluded ourselves to sleep. We expected the world to have changed, thus I see no reason for astonishment.”

With those words, she turned her hind to the table to look at Celestia as all the eyes fell on the alicorn. Save for the cartographus. She still sat at her podium, minding the map, shifting her gaze to different parts. As though she corrected minute details on the spell beneath it.

‘Somehow, the Harpy returned.’ Celestia almost told them. Chocolate Velvet would have loved to see her saying that. Instead, she held her eyes to the white and gold of the marble floor, and her lips pursed. The alicorn cleansed her mind of distractions, such as the memory of her beloved consort and champion.

She didn’t doubt their loyalty for a second. But things had become so complex and so outside of the sphere of the mundane Celestia might lose them if she was not careful. Perhaps abridging the information for the time being was a good idea? Avoiding unnecessary details until they become necessary?

The mares kept staring at her, waiting for her to say something already, but Celestia needed to organize her thoughts. She hadn’t had the time to prepare a briefing. What did they already know? Their vault had been sealed during a peaceful period after the start of the reconstruction efforts. Countless of their cousins from other legions perished through the grueling battles and the remaining ones had been relieved of duty. The Gray Dames were out long enough to know that they had adapted well and lived happy, fulfilling lives.

They saw the world recovering not only from the devastation of war, but from the Holy Griffon Empire’s abuse. They witnessed the Diamond Dogs crawling back from the crippling loss of life. The hippogriffs overcoming the hatred and distrust against griffons. The warring between the mighty dragons, suddenly without a leader. They saw King Grover become king of the griffons and saw the mostly successful consolidation of his rule. The fragile peace Celestia settled with Empress Geneviere after Emperor Grigor’s death too. They knew of the northerner griffons’ duty of guarding Griffonia from the Frozen North. What they didn’t know, and neither did Celestia at the time, was that Grigor’s goddess, the Harpy, was real. Or at least that she had not been destroyed, as Celestia believed.

The alicorn sighed. That was as good as any subject to start their conversation, and the beginning was the best place to start. She frowned and could see the worry her expression put on the faces of those powerful mares.

“Heralds of the present often make fun of me. My enemies seem to return from the past after not being dealt with accordingly. They neglect the fact that I have learned that not all enemies deserve destruction. That not everything happens within the lifetime of a pony. However, this one time, they would be right. Worse, this enemy returned by means completely out of my understanding and my power to control. What I will tell you now may take some time for you to fully grasp, given the severity and the complexity of the situation. These are things I have only discussed with my sister and with the Archmage. So, lend me your patience and I will unfold before you the nature of Creation itself and the origin of a war older than time.”

With a grim stare from Celestia, the cartographus extinguished the magic emanating from her horn. Celestia had to restrain herself. There were no words which could properly describe the feeling of her already powerful magic almost flying out of her control. The recent influx of sheer magical force almost led her to overpower and corrupt the spells and enchantments in the room. Fortunately, her mind was quicker still than it already was, and restraint came easy, timely, and spontaneous. In fact, Celestia felt completely recovered from her ordeal at Griffonstone and at the facility entrance.

But those too were distractions. The windows darkened at her command and sprinkles of light manifested as the map formed Equestria as seen from impossibly high above. A rugged and mostly flat land mass hanging in the Aether. The mighty sun and the beautiful moon replaced the candelabra and, again, she let the mares look around and reorient themselves for a couple of seconds.

“The world we call Equestria has existed several times before.” Getting confused stares under the sun’s light, Celestia kept explaining after she delivered the initial kick. “Our entire universe exists to maintain Harmony. Every time it is threatened with extinction, a magical singularity annihilates all and returns time to the moment of creation.”

The room and the images darkened. A disconcerting hole in the sky formed where the sun and moon shone an instant ago. A crown of incandescent dust surrounded and bended around it, spiraling into it with a dull rumbling sound resonating into their bones. Celestia could see in the reflections on their eyes. They recognized it at some subconscious level, which only the soul itself remembered. It was always interesting to see.

“I don’t understand.” One of the pegasus mares on the younger side of the present ponies frowned under the faded light, looking at Celestia. “How can it save something from being extinguished by annihilating it?”

Decorum kept the others from voicing their agreement to the younger mare’s question. Celestia gave them some more time to process what she had told them before continuing. “Luna and I have called it the Black Sun. Swallowing light and magic instead of showering the world with it. I have studied it all my life, and I still do not fully understand it. I know, however, that it exists as a fail-safe.”

“The extreme density of magical flux causes bizarre effects upon the magical components of reality. Space and time decouple and cease to have any meaningful significance. The magical singularity connects a single point of origin, when Creation started, with all the endings that have ever happened. Causality is not entirely shattered.”

“It stores information, memories seared into the souls of every creature and the magic of every object in existence.” Celestia frowned, thinking for a second before putting her understanding into words. “It is the gestalt consciousness of Harmony looking at itself through the collective experience of all things. Trying to understand what happened and how to correct it.”

“The result was cycles of creation and annihilation, repeating themselves. Seeking for the answer to how to sustain itself indefinitely. The details are less important. It is sufficient for you to understand that the very first and the present cycles are special.”

Equestria, represented in the tabletop map, became a lifeless wasteland covered in a terrible magical storm. It showed no thunder or lightning, only violent winds. Clouds so energetic they shone upon the land, and raindrops exploded with uncontrolled elemental magic. No sun or moon occupied the primeval skies, only mad colors of chaos hovered above the board. Rocks freed themselves of the mass and floated above and undid themselves or crashed back to the land as though gravity remembered what it was supposed to do.

“As the universe first came into existence and Harmony was born, it created a being with…” Celestia paused for a second, trying to find the right words. “A being with the proper magical authority so it could start life on the planet. It was necessary because Harmony is magic, and magic cannot act on its own. It needs a moving force. I don’t fully understand the processes which created it, but it was the fruit of Harmony’s need to perpetuate itself. It was ‘survival’ in its purest, and not necessarily smartest, form.”

“It was an immensely powerful being with the power of Creation itself and filled with passions and eagerness. It started life by creating the griffons. She made a valley for them and called it the Stormy Eyrie.” Celestia spoke as the tabletop changed. A valley grew out of it. A circle of mountains with a river and a forest cradled the largest mountain in the middle and plains surrounded by a mountain chain.

“As they grew, the magic of Harmony reacted to them. She created them with the necessity for specific sustenance, which they would only find in the flesh of other animals. She made them so in an elegant maneuver to send Creation spiraling away in the direction she wanted.”

“Echoes of her creation, Harmony created ponies with a special domain over nature. They moved across the world, shedding their magic and bringing life to the lifeless husk of a world beyond the mountains of the Stormy Eyrie. Plant life blossomed, insects followed and then complex animals. The world stabilized as ponies went where the world needed magic and, in their wake, followed the magic of Harmony. Life. A perfect paradise for her litter. A world which catered to their needs.”

As she spoke, the table shifted. The valley shrunk, and the table showed soft hills, which became delightful meadows as ponies arrived and mingled there. They walked in herds and grazed on the new grass surrounded by small animals and birds. Playful little ponies running and flying around, simply living their simple lives.

“But griffons and ponies are different.” Celestia frowned. “Harmony created ponies with purpose and their minds were in kind. Harmony made them with the goal of fulfilling the world’s needs, which strived to fulfill the needs of griffons. A feedback cycle set in motion by the Harpy’s will.”

“Understand that Harmony is not intelligent. It reacts, so it took what existed and made ponies so they would fulfill their role. From body, to magic, to the very functioning of our minds which grew around the Animus Imperative. In the present times, we perceive the Animus Imperative as our calling. Our talents, our Destiny. Our cutie marks. It is the reason braver ponies will be born in times of war and farmers will during famines. We are the Living Harmony, reacting to changes in the world. We are a semi-intelligent magical force, seeking to balance itself. It became a gargantuan magical machine as we became more and more complex. A system which was used to drive our minds and became a fac-simile of free will. It emerged from the growing complexity and the network of emotions and instincts it is.”

“Griffons were different. The entire architecture of their minds differs from ours because of that. At its core, it is all the Harpy’s vision, and Luna could explain it better, but I’ll do my best. Lacking purpose, griffons derive their sense of drive from suffering. If they lack something, they will seek it and their body rewards them for achieving it. Without social polish, an uncivilized hungry griffon will seek food and stop at nothing to get it. The problem began when griffons, tired of all the creatures they could torture for food, turned to ponies.”

“Ponies, in the very first cycle of Creation, were helpless creatures. Innocent and extremely powerful, they carried Harmony itself down to the world. Their minds functioned much as that of griffons, driven by emotions, but with a directive they must follow instead of free will.” Celestia explained, frowning at the moving images on the table. “One could infer there is no true free will, but that is besides the point. What mattered were the experienced emotions. It is still what matters.”

“Upon meeting griffons, ponies tried making friends as it was what they did among themselves. All other creatures in the world, including predators, enjoyed their company. They reciprocated their attempts at friendship. But griffons had no restraint, with no instinct to maintain Harmony. Remember, griffons possessed the closest thing to free will. No instruction inside their minds told them ponies were to be left alone. Unlike other creatures, ‘subordinate’ to ponies in the magical hierarchy.”

“And ponies… They cried when hurt. Instead of fighting when threatened, they cowered and fled. Griffons immediately recognized them as prey and became addicted to the immense amounts of magic in their flesh. They hunted ponies in the immediate areas of the Stormy Eyrie and extinguished them, causing nature to whither. The dying throes of nature summoned more ponies to the area, and griffons hunted them too.”

Celestia paused for a second. “Perhaps it would be better to say that they slaughtered them.”

Groups of griffons on the table descended upon a herd of ponies who barely fought back. They threw themselves to the ground and covered their faces. Those who tried to flee enticed the griffons to chase, and griffons were faster, stronger, and larger, both running or flying. “It was as though she intended for easy and harmless prey for her children to master the art of murder.”

“Where other animals would avoid the dangerous areas, ponies had no choice. Not even the notion of choice. In the beginning, they didn’t know to flee, and as they learned, fleeing only enticed the griffons further. Fighting back didn’t help, as they lacked the instincts to defend themselves. But as ponies met traumatic ends, their souls carried with them all the fear and sorrow. All the pain and the and the anger of the oppressed.”

“It turned to resentment. The simple minds of ponies, which understood little more than the rhythms of day after night, the bonds between mates and friends, urged for protection. Their souls, imprinted with terror and sorrow returned to the Pool of Souls and Harmony responded to their urges.”

Eyes around the room focused even more on the table as it showed a blue pegasus mare birthing a white, horned pegasus. “My first memory of existences ago is of killing griffons. I was born into the world with little instruction other than an instinct to protect my pony herd. There were four of us and we used all the power Harmony granted us to hunt and kill griffons whenever they hunted pony herds.”

Celestia stopped for a second before she spoke again with a sigh. “Please, understand. There was little intention behind it all. It was magic reacting to mindless emotions. We had no true intelligence. Perhaps the Harpy was the only intelligent creature in the world, and she failed to control it properly. Or maybe it was what she wanted, and the situation escaped her control. I am not sure.”

“But, as griffons became wary, we hunted them down and I am grateful my memories are old, sparse in the details. We were creatures fueled by resentment, fear, and hatred, but we learned. It became easy. We became skilled griffon hunters. All we wanted was for griffons to stop hurting us, but they didn’t, and we understood no measure, much less compassion and spared no one. At some point, it became a crusade to reach the Harpy. We raided nesting grounds and exterminated them. The adults, the lame. The cubs and the elderly. Every single one of them.”

“When the griffons fled back to the Stormy Eyrie, we summoned all the creatures to help us end them. Nature rebelled and followed us. There I killed the Harpy. The overwhelming loss of life on both sides caused souls to find their way back to the source, carrying their magic with them. Her immense magical powers, once disembodied, returned to the Pool of Souls, and caused the process of the Black Sun to trigger. It undid existence, but when Creation started anew, I was the one responsible for starting life. I assumed she was dead, but then again… I was barely more intelligent than a bundle of confused emotions and instincts.”

Celestia stopped for a second and let them breathe. They shared a few concerned stares and murmured quietly to one another as the table returned to its flat, usual self. “For the following cycles, what happened was a painstaking process of trying to make the world function as it was supposed to. I gained insight with every failed cycle, and my sisters joined. We became rational beings, as four parts of a whole. And in the fourth cycle, we achieved success. Ponies were resilient, intelligent, capable of reproducing, and herds were strong in unity. We set them out on the world, and they took the Magic of Harmony to the Chaos-stricken world and brought Harmony to it.”

“Until the previous cycle, I believed we were still in the fourth cycle. This is the seventeenth cycle, because through means I don’t understand, the Harpy has caused every cycle to fail, summoning the Black Sun. Forcing us to start all over and nearly repeat our lives over and over for all the previous cycles.”

“The details are not important. All that matters is that in the present cycle, I have learned of her interference earlier. I believe the Griffon Empire, which was exclusive to this cycle, may have been an attempt on her part to destroy me. If she garnered enough support among the griffons, she could use their faith as a weapon against me. Obviously, she failed, but she remained hidden until recently when I examined one of her spells.”

“Evidence points to several issues within the griffon society. She may have engineered them to garner support among the griffon population and turn them against my rule after the empire has failed. She may be plotting to rebuild the empire as we speak.”

“Remember. I have erased from historical records the existence of the Griffon Empire and many other things. I needed it to craft a believable lie. You should know that the version of history I have used to fill the gaps belongs to the previous cycle. The sixteenth.” Celestia frowned, raising her eyes to look at the gathered mares. “Until the present cycle, I could not remember my past lives. Again, details are not important, but I and Luna took over the sun and the moon in an event far less traumatic than the one you know of. In the previous cycle, the Republic never existed, and the populace never recognized the Alicorn Goddesses. There was no war, and Discord never attempted to destroy Equestria. Battlehorns never existed, and history was more forgiving of creatures. The echoes of memories from past lives eased creatures into believing my lies. If you must interact with creatures outside, their version of history is not to be challenged. It may cause them extreme anguish if they believe, and it may have rippling effects which may trigger a Black Sun event.”

It should scare her that she could talk so openly to those mares on the matter of lies and tampering with history. But she supposed gods require no excuses. She continued since they would listen.

“Through events which are not relevant, know that alicorns you would recognize as the goddesses of your time have been born into bodies of flesh and bones. Like me and Luna.” A minute effort formed copies of Twilight and Cadance for the surrounding ponies to see upon the table.

“She is the spitting image of Matriarch Grimoire!” Someone commented in the back, and only after a series of shocked comments Celestia continued.

“They are Mi Amore Cadenza and Twilight Sparkle. I have good reasons to believe they are both in this city with several friends and they must be located with all the celerity possible. But we must be careful. Ponies will recognize them as figures of authority and are likely to protect them in any situation.”

One of the unicorn mares approached the table as it showed the image of the two alicorns. She frowned at the image of the two smiling ponies. Celestia almost hoofed at her own face when she noticed she couldn’t help but picture the two as happy, smiling ponies. Fortunately, none of the present mares seemed to mind that.

“I believe our scouts can infiltrate the city.” The mare said as she approached the table and examined the couple of princesses. Farseer Fellbane, every bit the battlehorn as the others, but with a blueish highlight on her purple mane and a perpetual frowny stare. She commanded the centuria formed by their scouting teams who, by necessity of their job, also handled all the cloak and dagger skullduggery on behalf of their sisters. Battlehorns were not known for their subtlety. Except for Farseer’s legionaries.

She had lost her left eye in a battle far in the past and it had been replaced by one of the many overly aggressive magical talismans employed by the battlehorns. A silver frame had been grafted into her skull and it held a purple crystal, hiding a complex magical machine behind it. It required Farseer’s magic to work and would kill a normal pony but fit a battlehorn with barely the inconvenience of a hat. Typical of Battlehorns and their mentality. If she lost her eye and it couldn’t be grown back, she wanted something which would perform better. And the legion’s doctors and artisans delivered.

“Show us the city in its entirety, cartographus.” Farseer turned back to the map as it raised from the table, scanning the image of the massive city. Even with the magical contraption in her face, Farseer still had a fresher visage than her sisters. Bangs of her mane fell in front of her eyes, and she shook them away, grinning. “Foal’s play.”

“Wait.” Somepony in the middle of the congregation called as she too approached the magical scrying table. “Things are seldom so easy.”

She was a tall unicorn mare. Although not as bulky as the soldiers of her family, her coat and mane had the right colors for a Fellbane. Her horn and a bang of her silver-specked mane poked from under the hood of her red, gold-rimmed cloak as she limped on her left leg. It had been replaced by an arcane contraption that mostly imitated a pony leg like golden bone and sinew.

Domina Ferraria Hammer Fellbane. There used to be a running joke that the Ordo Ferrarius worried more about the Leaf Plate armors worn by the battlehorns than about the ponies wearing them. Hammer was one of those who other battlehorns used for evidence that the saying was not a joke. At least that was the impression she wanted others to have. Family was everything under Celestia for them.

“Our Armamentarium is filled with ancient weaponry. While I do not doubt the trueness of solar steel, we ought to proceed with caution. Although I am convinced of the capacity of my ferrarii to tend to our weapons and armor as much as that good old magic is still a force to be reckoned with, times have changed. I see a vessel which soars through the air as though Harmony has graced it with the magic of pegasi. I wish to understand the magic behind this and I can only imagine what advances in the fields of thaumatology happened since our time.”

For an instant, Celestia shuddered at the thought of what they could do with modern magic and arcane technology. One thing was certain: she could harness it to fight the Harpy.

“I believe not enough time has passed that hitting creatures with sharp metal sticks no longer works. Or that the underworld has stopped accepting Bits for information. This time we even speak the same language…” Farseer showed a coy smile.

Celestia interrupted before a discussion might arise. She raised a hoof and spoke with the authority she knew she had among those ponies. Both were correct. It was up to Celestia to reign in their efforts in the right direction. And old habits returned frighteningly fast indeed.

“We shall do both. First, Hammer is correct. There is new weaponry you should understand before setting out. Prudence is advisable. However, time is limited. Both of you remain with me. Domina Ferraria, I will tend to your concerns. Farseer, I will provide some insight into how to infiltrate the city, deal with the local law enforcement, and details about your targets. There is more we must mind too, and I would like you to stay too, Radiance. The others have already heard enough.”

With that, the legion’s Matriarch legatus clopped her hoof on the floor twice. “This meeting is over. Bring your subordinates up to speed and reign in any overzealous or overexcited upstarts. You know the deal, make it happen. And be prepared, you may be needed sooner than you expect.”

Author's Note

Chronologically, the next chapter would be chapter 43 of Piece of Parchment. But this story will continue to follow Celestia as she prepares while Twilight and Cadance try to escape Manehattan and Gilda continues on her journey to Griffindell.