Harmony: The Rise and Fall of Classical and Modern Equestria

Harmony: The Rise and Fall of Classical and Modern Equestria

Chapter I

A Nascent Dawn

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Harmony.

She’d spent her entire life, such as it was, dedicated to its propagation. Dedicated to the cause. Dedicated to the belief that as individuals, ponies possessed within them the capacity to live and act as a cohesive, harmonious whole.

How wrong she’d been.

Princess Celestia: Regent of the Sun, Ruler of Equestria, Demi-Goddess of the Realm stood alone at a high arched window in her illustrious throne room, looking out over glorious Canterlot. Under her watchful gaze, her little ponies went about their daily business, trotting along the well-worn streets and alleyways, cantering through the markets and arcades, engaging in society and commerce. There was no question they’d prospered under her rule. She’d given them her protection, she’d given them hope for a better future, she’d given them wings: she’d even apportioned—to the greatest of their number, long ago—a measure of her eternal power, albeit to, in some notable instances, disastrous effect, as one such spectacular miscalculation—standing ignominiously out amongst all the other regrets and failures any immortal was doomed to accumulate—would bitterly attest.

Regardless, the undisputed fact remained that under her undying, maternal aegis, ponykind had made the relatively meteoric transition from being a threatened species—predated upon by a multitude of bigger and more belligerent races—to the predominant civilisation in the space of a few short millennia.

Short to her, anyway. Time is a constant, that she accepted, but her perception of it was, nevertheless, fundamentally altered by virtue of superabundance.

What’s a few thousand years when you’re destined to live forever?

How old was she, exactly? That, Celestia did not know, or least she could not actively remember. Her earliest memory was of the seaside—white sand beneath her unshod hooves, bracing sea breeze swirling in her nostrils. She had not come out of it, as some of the earliest known mythology would suggest; she’d just happened to be there when her first memories had been formulated… whatever that meant. Had she been born there? Did she, in her fabled uniquity, even have antecedents? Had she just spontaneously shifted into existence, First among Believers? She could not remember being anything other than what she was now: fully grown and possessed of an inimitable magical power.

Her mane was about the only thing that had changed in all that time. It was pink, once, like the not-so-golden fingers of dawn. Before her ascension. Before her coronation. Before her apotheosis.

Before the need for such pretension.

For ten thousand years she had watched, and she had waited, knowing not for what, adopting a policy of least interference. Until finally, they came.

Ponies.

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Celestia looked up, away from the bustling city streets of Canterlot, stirred from her reverie. She did not see, she did not hear her coming so much as she felt it. In fact, the mare in question so consummately employed stealth to the point where she gave no discernible, no tangible, no measurable token of her existence. And yet, there were some things in this world that she, Celestia, with the very might of the Sun and the wisdom of the ages at her command, had never been able to measure, much less explain or understand.

Her unmistakable presence was one of them.

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She wasn’t sure when she had first noticed them. Truly, no things in this world come into being overnight or without precedent: her enigmatic self being the one possible exception. They looked different, then, she seemed to remember. All greys and browns and tans.  The occasional earthy red, perhaps, but even that was something of a once-in-a-generation event. A quiet, simple, hardy folk, struggling and fighting to survive the primal harshness of a pre-civilised existence.

Of course, there were many that did not survive.

Countless ponies died in those early years, succumbing to the dreaded proto-plagues, to predators as innumerable as they were rapacious and to the vagaries of wild and untamed weather systems, as hopelessly inefficient as they were deleterious. Disaster after unmitigated disaster, massacre after bloody massacre, the stoic Ponies of the Earth endured. Even as entire populations of their beleaguered fellows were wiped from the face of the earth, they never gave up: never stopped striving for a better tomorrow, for themselves and their progeny. Battling on to the bitter end.

Celestia admired that.

Wanted it.

Even though they did look very different then, in that far-flung realm of pre-history—bigger, unshorn and relatively achromatic—there was no escaping the fact that they bore more than a passing, if somewhat diminutive resemblance to her well-proportioned self. Who could they be, then, but the Chosen ones: children of the Divine? Who was She if not destined to provide for them, to shield them from they who would, in their blindness, destroy the race which would ultimately prove to be the source of both her greatest triumphs and most spectacular failures?

How could she not come to their aid?

So it was that She, Celestia, came, perforce, down upon the last and greatest of their settlements, about to fall, besieged as it was on all sides by fell beasts and wicked creatures—boldly ensconced upon a great mountain at the very centre of the world—like an aureate goddess, in gloried theophany, to the awe and wonderment of all. She spoke to them then, in exalted and inspiring tones, in a language that they had no knowledge of but by way of some powerful sorcery understood; on the nature of her and their existence; on matters regarding the safety and contentment of a people, freed from the spectres of poverty, predation, famine and war; on the creation of art, philosophy, and cultural, magical and technological advancement, made possible only by the attainment of said freedom;  of the fundamental tenants to which all ponies must adhere, pursuant to the cause; those of Charity, Compassion, Devotion, Integrity, Optimism and that most ineffable and elusive of traits that resided in varying degrees within them all: Magic; lastly, of her vision of a great and prosperous nation and beyond, incorporating all of the aforementioned—and many more constituent and complimentary—Elements of Harmony, for her and her people.

Their people.

The Ponies of the Earth, heretofore unconquerable—in spirit if not in body—upon seeing this glorious apparition, upon hearing Her noble and assuredly divine words, cast themselves down before Her hooves, pledging fealty to Her, so enraptured were they by Her resplendent majesty: a perfect eidolon of all that they held to be good and fair and beauteous, and all other such words to which they’d previously attached little worth or meaning, such was the bleakness and the despair of their savage, primal world.

Celestia felt a great stirring in her breast, a wetness in her eye and a tremulousness in her heart at seeing the indomitable Ponies of the Earth bowed down before her. So touched was she by their faith in her, so moved was she by their willing acquiescence, that she in turn pledged her silent, though no less commensurate devotion to their cause. It was on that most momentous of days, that would so fundamentally shape the wave of the future, as she walked among her Chosen—her every hoof step falling among their prostrate forms like a white-gold beam of the revelatory sun—that Celestia vowed, come what may, to defend her little ponies to the last.

Even if it should cost her own immortal life.

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Celestia raised her head up high on the arched, marmoreal column of her neck, her fabled auroral mane coruscating and sparkling in the evening sun, unfurling as a pastel rainbow banner born aloft on a stellar wind. Her eyes remained closed and her face radiated calm, even as her heart was rent in two. The slow movement of her lips did little to disturb the form of her sadly serene smile, so softly spoken was her fateful utterance.

“So… you’re finally here. I knew you would come. I’ve been waiting all this time… for you.”

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In seeing to their defence, Celestia knew what had to be done. It was true, the Ponies of the Earth had shown remarkable military discipline in the face of overwhelming odds: an innate capacity for valour and a true willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater whole. And yet, amid so noble a stock, they lacked a singularly great and inspired leader. The various warlords and would-be-kings—despite their best intentions—had kept the populace scattered, unwittingly divided beneath differing banners, all but ensuring the downfall of the many former outlying settlements and city-states. Fiercely independent to a fault, they needed a strong central authority, a leader who could rule undisputed and unchallenged. No mortal pony could ever hope to command the requisite respect and devotion over the course of their short life-span to rule them effectively.

Only an eternal Monarch such as she could.

But the Ponies of the Earth were a proud and stubborn people. Celestia knew that she could not contain their more radical elements with love and tolerance alone. Within their heart of hearts, the embers of sedition smouldered within them all, waiting only to be kindled. They would not tolerate the singular convictions of any one pony foisted upon them, even one so great as her: even one who kept their best interests foremost in her mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Given the nature of her incredible power, they might begrudgingly accept her will at first, but given time, Celestia knew, the firebrands and agitators within their ranks would turn them, as a whole, against her.

Steps had to be taken to ensure this did not come to pass.

So it was that She, Celestia, in further seeking their obeisance, gathered with her all the great spiritual, political and military leaders of the Ponies of the Earth, in the echoing stone hall of the mountain citadel—bedecked as it was with the pomp and pageantry of a proud warrior people—away from the clamouring of the masses, to make them an offer that they could surely not refuse. Either join with her in creating a great and powerful civilisation that would endure all the ages, or turn their back on her and succumb to the fate of all mortal races.

There were few who dissented. Of those that did, fewer still lived long enough to regret their foolishness—of that Celestia made certain, thus effectively decapitating any potential insurrection. It was an unfortunate, though necessary evil. She was a pacifist by nature, benevolent even to a fault, abhorring all forms of bloodshed, but she was also no fool. It was up to her and her alone to make the hard decisions. If a few had to die to save the many, then so be it. Further to that end, in that very first Council of Elders, Celestia drew her immortal blood with theirs, binding them eternally to her. Her golden ichor flowed through their veins: ennobling them, giving them the gifts of long-life and foresight, and further eroding what she saw to be the excesses of their free will.

It was their blood within her veins that would ultimately prove to be her undoing.

Having thus established herself as the predestined ruler of the Ponies of the Earth, she declared, by inaugural royal proclamation, that the mountain citadel that had held out for so long against the rising tides of destruction was to be renamed Cadytum—its original name she either didn’t remember or didn’t care to recall—and was to be the Capital of a great nation, the seat of her power; a golden fount from which the tide of ponydom and the very sun itself would spring.

And so Equestria was born.