Harmony: The Rise and Fall of Classical and Modern Equestria

Harmony: The Rise and Fall of Classical and Modern Equestria

Chapter IV

Icarus

~/~|~~

The young general stood outside the closed gilt double doors of Her Majesty Princess Celestia’s illustrious throne room, eyeing off the golden reliefs on the panels. Depicted within them was a race of people entirely foreign to him. His father—may the Goddess rest his weary soul—had often speculated upon their nature. “Son,” he would say, draping a foreleg over Icarus’s shoulders to draw him closer, the heavy scent of alcohol lingering on his every breath. “Son, you must never trust anything that’s all neck and no torso.”

Despite the practical impossibility of putting such a prejudice into real, applicable action, Icarus had nonetheless taken his father’s words to heart. He would never again trust anything that was “all neck and no torso,” and over the course of his life and career a number of unfortunately lanky stallions had been on the receiving end of his suspicions as a result.

Icarus ran a hoof idly over a golden panel, marvelling at the intricacy of the workmanship. He’d often wondered who had built this place: why and when they had built it. The grandeur of the citadel, on him of all ponies, was not lost. It was a work of terrible, foreboding beauty, one that could only have been wrought by the hoof of a power beyond his people’s own. It had been completely abandoned when the Ponies of the Earth first found it, left to the invidious ministrations of Dust and Time. Not even the dauntless creatures of the forest had thought to inhabit it. Whether that was because they genuinely feared it or because they couldn’t figure out how to open the outer gates, Icarus did not know.

He’d lived within the castellated walls of the mountain citadel for almost his entire life. His father had brought him to the last stronghold of their people as a colt, after the riverside city his family had long dwelt in—fair Equaem, Jewel of the Southern Plains—was sacked by the ever encroaching horde of Darkness. His mother and sister had been slain during the siege, along with the rest of his extended family. He and his father were all that was left of that illustrious line. And now his father was gone, succumbing at last to chronic alcoholism and the lasting injuries he had sustained during the ill-fated defence of the city. Prior to his ultimate degeneration, he had taught Icarus everything he knew, as his father had taught him, and the young general was eternally grateful. He wouldn’t even be a general were it not for his father’s influence. Yes, he was a cunning strategist and a shrewd tactician, and as good a front-line fighter as any of the ponies that served under him. But he was young, and youth inevitably bred suspicion and mistrust amongst those who were not its objects, regardless of the ability of those who were. He had, to date, fought three legitimate duels to the death—of the illegitimate attempts on his life, there had been several—all against jealous stallions who were his superiors in age only. Of the three, only one had he consummated; to the other two he had extended the hoof of mercy, and they had gone on to serve him and his people well in differing capacities.

Of the third, well... suffice it to say, Commander Othelian had always been noted for the unusual length of his neck.

Summoning his courage, Icarus pushed against the ancient doors, throwing them open to cast his body headlong into the great light beyond.

~/~|~~

Perfection.

She was perfect.

Icarus stood, bloodied and wild-eyed before the one who would uplift him; the saviour of his people. The venerable, the beautiful, the eternal Celestia: Goddess of the Empyrean, Princess elect of the Ponies of the Earth. His sword fell limply from his grasp, clattering on the ancient stone beneath his hooves, bedewed as it was with the blood of the fallen. Those few of his privileged kin still standing around him were similarly enthralled, gazing upon Her with the tears of a tremulous hope in their eyes.

There had been no hope. The war was lost. Their enemy was far too savage, far too numerous. In recent years, it had been all that they could do to hold them off. Their meagre supplies were dwindling and many of their people had already given their life for the cause.

Too many.

As it stood, they no longer had the strength to repel them. No longer had the numbers necessary for any kind of serious counter-offensive. And even if they had, where then would they have struck? Their enemy was a nebulous congregation of incongruous parts, seemingly bereft of any central species or leadership. A tidal mass of Darkness, shifting and twisting around their best efforts to contain it:  the commonality of an irrational hatred of the Ponies of the Earth the only unifying factor at work amongst them. Such was the common wisdom. Icarus, wise beyond his years, had—in his youth and at a time when the situation had not been quite so dire—posited the existence of a greater force at work beyond the veil: a force that organised their otherwise dissimilar and scattered enemy and drove them ever onward. It was an outlandish notion, one that received little acceptance or credence amongst the conservative quasi-leadership of the last stronghold of the Ponies of the Earth, the Council. They believed in the exclusivity of considered strategic thought to which they and their people were the sole objects, and from the relative safety of the mountain citadel they would outlast their enemies, resolving to outwit, outmanoeuvre and ultimately crush the monsters and savages beneath the immense weight of their inscrutable machinations.

Icarus couldn’t help but feel that they, in their obdurate refusal to accept that which was plainly before them, bore sole responsibility for many of the deaths.  Using his nobility as a platform, he’d railed against their myopic stratagems time and time again, and time and time again they’d committed to the same disastrous combat actions, overreaching at every turn, fuelled as they were by the overweening pride and arrogance that so characterised the old way of thinking: an obsolete way of thinking that the overwhelming majority of the Council inveterately subscribed to. In spite of the mounting empirical evidence of their manifest inability to defend their people, it was only the influence of his father and his noble bloodline that ultimately preserved Icarus from the Council’s retribution. By the time he had risen sufficiently through the ranks to prosecute his agenda, it was already far too late. The damage had been done. There was no turning back.

It was over.

All of this—the salvation of his people, his life’s work, his raison d’être—meant nothing to him in that moment. All he could see was Her. The world around him faded away, and the plight of his people was forgotten. His vision tunnelled in upon Her, blinding him to all else that moved and breathed and would have his love.

A falling star had pierced his heart, and Icarus, as he once was, would never rise again.

~/~|~~

Icarus walked slowly among the broken bodies of the fallen, stepping over severed limbs and discarded weapons. It was a freezing cold late autumn morning, still quite dark, and the frost on the grass crunched underhoof, soaking the plates of his armour. Slicing through the chill that would otherwise have numbed his olfactory sense into a state of irrelevance, the acrid scent of smoke and death assaulted his nostrils: so familiar to him now as to almost be of some small comfort to him, were it not for the carnage and the horror that was inevitably associated with it. He’d known many of these ponies; a few of them he would have considered to be close friends. They were all crack troops, some of the finest warriors he had ever had the honour to serve with. And now they were gone. The latest victims in a war that could only end in their ultimate destruction. Many of his enemies, too, were lain dead at his hooves, at a ratio that was at least three to one in the equines’ favour: a testament to the skill and the valour of those that had perished here.

It didn’t matter.

No effort, no matter how valorous, could now avail them. Looking around him, Icarus knew that even if every pony fallen here had slain five or more of their opposing number, they still would have been utterly overwhelmed.

It was hopeless.

Icarus was distracted from his thoughts by the grisly sound of somepony, somebody gurgling nearby. Stepping over several more bodies, he stood, as the apostatising Blade of Fate—the great Adjudicator of Life—over the shattered remnants of one of his once mighty enemies. A minotaur. This was one foe at least that had not fallen quite so easily. Icarus could see the bodies of several of his kin strewn violently about its ruin, ruptured and rent asunder by the fell strokes of the creature’s massive halberd. Though all minotaurs could be fairly said to be thus, this tauriform in particular was an impressive specimen. Now lying supine in defeat, the beast must have stood at at least eight feet tall and weighed the equivalent of several large stallions entirely clad in heavy war plate. It itself was all but unarmoured, wearing only the tribal markings and accoutrements befitting such a savage, along with a lone spiked pauldron and death’s head vambraces: more for effect than any real preservative consideration. One of its impossibly muscular arms was lying severed on the ground nearby, gathering frost, and by the relative positioning of the two objects—the arm and the body it was once so dangerously connected to—Icarus surmised that this minotaur had continued to fight even after it was hewn off.

A mighty foe indeed.

Icarus’ hatred for the creature was tempered only by his admiration of its combat prowess. The Minotaurim were an ancient and prideful people. He’d heard rumours of a great civilisation of them still in existence in the far south, beyond the vast sea that he had visited several times in his early childhood, but those that dwelt nearby were ignorant savages, fit only for the slaughter. Not that that had stopped his people, at different times in the past, from trying to reason with them. All attempts at negotiation thus far had inevitably met with the same, decapitatory conclusions.

Just as this encounter could only end in more death.

Slowly becoming aware of his presence, the minotaur shifted laboriously on the ground, as if trying to get up and carry on the fight. The beast was obviously in great pain, having been pierced and scored by blade steel in a crippling variety of places, and the cold was sapping whatever strength it had left. There had—apart from the loss of an arm and a particularly nasty slash across its muscular neck—been no decisive blow laid upon the creature.

It was a death by a thousand cuts.

Opening its heavy lids and snorting contemptuously, twin gouts of hot steam and misted blood issuing forth from its flaring nostrils, the fallen monstrosity looked up at the heavily armoured Icarus—bigger and more imposing than the majority of the ponies it had slain by far—with a not yet diminished defiance blazing in its red irises. Its mouth moved slowly, fresh blood bubbling up from within the depths of its ruined oesophagus.

It was trying to speak.

Icarus, in no mood for the blasphemous utterances so frequently occasioned by his foes, pressed an armoured forehoof down against its throat. The creature flailed and floundered weakly as he pressed slowly and inexorably down: the light of a life known only in the service of the great Moloch of war slowly fading from its eyes.

Icarus maintained eye contact with the tauriform until the very end. He would not dishonour himself by looking away. Wholly bereft, as by the horrors of war, of the bitter pathos that would once have filled his breast at seeing the indomitable creature below him so defeated, Icarus listened, with little satisfaction, to the sound of bones and cartilage crunching beneath his hoof, to the desperate gasps and liquid gurgling as his foe breathed his painful last.

For this warrior at least, like so many of those fallen around him, the war was finally over

Gazing down upon the creature’s rapidly stiffening corpse, wondering what possible reason it could have for being there so far from home in the first place, Icarus was dimly aware of the fact that somepony was calling his name. Cutting through the mist like a windfish breaching water, a lone mare galloped around and leapt over the bodies of the fallen, hurriedly making her way towards him. She was of a medium build, with a tan coat and black mane, wearing only light armour, with a heavy crossbow slung over her back and a quiver of bolts hanging off her flank.

“Commander!” she hailed him, stopping a few feet away, her breath rising from her muzzle in heated gasps. Lifting off her champron and abandoning it to the frozen earth, she shook her mane out and slowly turned her head from side to side, taking in the extent of the carnage, turning at last to look at him with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

“They’re all gone... aren’t they?” she whispered incredulously.

“Yes,” he replied simply, not looking up from the body of the minotaur he had put a final end to moments before

.

“No! Commander, we— they can’t—” she stammered, wild-eyed, turning away from him and galloping over to a nearby body. Finding that pony to be unquestionably deceased, she ran to another, then another, and then yet another. They were all dead. Every last one. There were no survivors.

It was an ambush.

By that time, more ponies were arriving on the field, picking through the equine detritus and meting out swift death to any non-ponies that were found to still be alive.

Icarus was as oblivious to them as if they never existed in the first place. He was entirely fixated on the fallen form of the minotaur. The creature looked almost serene in death, and were it not for the many and grievous wounds inflicted upon its personage, Icarus might have imagined it to be sleeping peacefully. A single thought echoed again and again through his troubled mind.

Why?

As a familiar, heavy armoured hoof was laid on his shoulder, Icarus thought he might finally know the answer.

~/~|~~

Icarus stood on the seashore, gazing out across the vastness of oceans, watching the waves come in. Except, he wasn’t a colt anymore. And he wasn’t alone.

An aged stallion stepped up beside him, lifting his weary head to take in a deep draught of the invigorating sea breeze. Like Icarus, he was unarmoured and unappointed.

Just a pony.

Nothing less. Nothing more.

“I’m sorry.”

~/~|~~

Icarus swept down the length of the throne room with powerful strides, his long voluminous cloak billowing out behind him. At the far end of the room, illumined by a great shaft of aureate sunlight, there was Celestia—incandescent as the distant Stars—sat upon her golden throne, ageless and immutable as the Firmament above. Her eyes were closed and her face radiated the serenity and calm befitting only an Immortal. She was entirely motionless, as one transfixed by the cold hoof of Death, and Icarus might have fancied her to be deceased were it not for the fixed rigidity of her upright pose.

If he could have been said to have a weakness, it was Icarus’ love of beauty that would have inevitably been cited. Over the tumultuous course of his short life, he’d admired, won the affections of and lain with many mares, all of them beautiful. He of course, by virtue of his not unremarkable physique and station, had had his pick of them, and knew a thing or two about sheer physical beauty.

At least he thought he had, before he met Her.

On the day of their meeting, his perception of beauty and the relative comeliness of mortal mares had undergone a radical alteration. That which he had once thought fair, now to him seemed plain. That which he had once thought exquisite, now merely seemed adequate. He yet sought the company of those lesser mares for the cold, lonely nights that were all too common an occurrence upon that mountainous clime, but he no longer beheld in them his earthly salvation. No longer thought to ride on lover’s wings up into the highest reaches of the Heavens. His heart had been stolen away from him forever, as had the very blood that ran through his veins.

He had eyes only for Her.

In the vastness of her pulchritude, truly she was without earthly parallel. Even the most vainglorious of mortal mares was as a peasant before her infinite majesty. Within the unfathomable depths of her canted eyes, there shone the light of Creation, and her elongated horn, like a blunted spike of helical pearl, seemed to forever reach—borne high upon the marmoreal column of her neck—for the Heavens. Her flowing mane, an eoan pink manifestation of the morn, eternally dawned upon the white empire of her body, and where fell her golden-shod hooves, there walked the incomparable Sun, high portent of the coming morrow.

Of these many and manifold pleasures, none alone—or indeed in blessed conjunction—could be said to have captured the captious heart of Icarus. It was in her one other feature, that most beauteous, that most magnificent of the divine endowments with which Celestia was so profusely imbued, that he found, into the abyss of abject idolatry, his ultimate precipitation.

Her wings.

~/~|~~

In the echoing stone hall of the mountain citadel, Icarus stood at the front of the crowd of ponies that had gathered to hear Her speak, alongside several elder councillors. Celestia herself stood upon a raised dais, addressing the host assembled before her.

Of the veracity of the sentiments she so eloquently expressed, there could be little doubt. Without her aid, they were lost. Every pony in the room, mortal and immortal, knew this to be true. The great Alicorn that would have their allegiance was the only thing that could now save them from their ultimate fate: the fate of all mortal races.

And yet, in the face of this fundamental, unequivocal truth, there were yet those who dissented.

For not only did she offer them the salvation of their people, she also offered them a portion of her very essence. She would bind them to her, and in so doing, ennoble them: that they might better aid her in the creation of a great and powerful nation that would endure all the ages.

To the more cynical of those therein assembled, this was deemed too high of a price, too great of a risk. A vocal minority of them raised voice in objection to that effect. Celestia, for her part, ignored them, knowing that the heart of the crowd was won. Sweeping her discerning gaze across the ranks of her Chosen, her eyes finally stopped on one stallion at the front of the crowd that, by virtue of his height and bearing, commanded her attention.

He was the one.

Their eyes met.

And where lain her gaze was Infinity.

Icarus, like all the works of mortals, like all the lives of his people inevitably must, crumbled before the eternal will of Celestia.

Thenceforth, he knew, as She did, what had to be done.

To his left, an elder stallion broke ranks, stepping forward to confront Celestia. He railed against her with a familiar savagery, a snarling vehemence that left Icarus cold. “What have we left to us,” he screamed at her, “but the honest name and memory of our people, untainted by your sorcerous emendations. Hearken to me, Brothers, and know that there is no supernatural extension that might now avail us. Quit our house, God-ling, and leave a doomed people to die with honour.”

There was a minor outcry of support for the stallion’s sentiments, several more ponies stepping forward in defiance, but the vast majority of those assembled in the great hall remained still and deathly silent.

Celestia, in the face of such provocation, simply closed her eyes and turned her face away.

Tilting his head back, mouth closing upon its hilt, Icarus drew his sword.

~/~|~~

Stopping in front of the raised dais upon which her throne was situated, Icarus fell down onto one foreknee, bowing low before her, the sable folds of his cloak pooling around his hooves.

“Your Highness,” he stated grandly, “I have been summoned.”

“Arise, Icarus,” came Her response, mellifluous voice echoing with the deceptive Ecstasies of Ages, “and look upon They who would have your love.”

Icarus, with tremulous heart and limb, arose, his gaze yet fixed upon the floor. A golden-shod hoof, glimmering with Her glory, was extended to him.

“Honour Us,” she said, “and so in turn shall We honour you.”

Icarus, trembling but without hesitation, took her slender ivory foreleg into his own and kissed her hoof reverently.

Celestia—elegantly, effortlessly extracting her hoof from his hold—arose from her golden throne, standing tall upon her raised dais, ivory coat set ashimmer in the swath of aureate light that streamed down on her from a window high above: the theophanous glare of her presence washing over and suffusing him like warming rays of the evening sun.

“Grieved were We, to learn of your father’s passing. We mourn him, and honour him thus for his sacrifice for his people.”

Despite the gentle warmth projected by her body, her words chilled Icarus to the bone.

“Know, Icarus, that death need not be his ultimate end. He yet lives on—as all mortals must—in you, his progeny. You honour him, as you honour all your antecedents.” A golden-shod hoof was again extended, situating itself under Icarus’ chin. “Look upon Us, Icarus, for We would have your favour.”

Icarus, like the reckless colt before him might once have looked, looked up into the eye of the Sun.

And there was only blinding light.

~/~|~~

Dead.

They were all dead.

Every last one of them to a pony.

He’d killed them. Slain them all where they stood, where they thought to bid defiance to the Nascent Dawn.

Now they need never think again.

One of them, the pony who had stepped out of line in the first place—the ringleader, the High Prelate of the Council, the grand Heresiarch himself—lay gasping on the ground before Icarus, cirque of high-office lying shattered at his side. Reaching up, the aged stallion hooked his forelegs around Icarus’ neck, drawing him down unto his earthly ruin to murmur weakly into his ear. Stubble on the elder stallion’s sadly unkempt muzzle scratched against Icarus’s cheek, and his breath was gravid with the promise of approaching death. Icarus couldn’t make out what he was saying. It didn’t matter.

He wouldn’t remember any of it anyway.

The dying stallion heaved and shuddered, his hold on Icarus, on fragile life itself failing him. Falling back from him at last, the venerable leader came to death, a single tear rolling slowly down his still, silent cheek.

He wouldn’t remember.

What he would always remember, however, now until the end of days, was the heavy scent of alcohol, forever to linger on the memory of his last breath.