Harmony: The Rise and Fall of Classical and Modern Equestria

Harmony: The Rise and Fall of Classical and Modern Equestria

Chapter V

The Scourge of the Earth - Part I: Reckoning

~/~|~~

On wings of the Ephemera,

The Lepidopteron descends.

Upon a dream oft chanced,

Of an Immortal light.

O’er the trembling swards,

That sweep for a bow.

Ere the Aether wrought hooves,

Of Zephyrus gallop through.

That trembling, that guttering flame,

Of Mortal life.

~/~|~~

The great aestival bulk shifted, sonorous, turning as upon the wheel of Seasons, succumbing at last to the Fall.

“Would that it were not so...”

~/~|~~

On tattered pinions wrought from shadow and dust, there winged through the barren halls of Cadytum a singular creature. In its frantic fluttering there was beheld, by eyes attuned to the despairing nature of its fevered undulations, the very heart of the Mortal condition. For with every endeavouring flurry, every febrile beat of its wings in pursuance of a Life everlasting, there was shed more of the essence which constituted its essential, ephemeral being.

Through the ever attingent columns of Light and Darkness—a world of alternating contrast wrought swirlingly upon stone by sunbeams come to die—it winnowed its way through the fragile Dream. Spiralling and spinning and banking and twirling on wings that were ill-fashioned to sustain its temporal elevation, therein forever to lie—or indeed fleetingly—in its fundamental thesis of form, the bane of the Arch-Oneirist, lain dreaming beneath the sands of Narzus.

It was already burning.

And the closer it got to the great Light Eternal, the faster it burned.

~/~|~~

Celestia did not turn to look as the doors to her throne room were flung open. She did not so much as flinch as the gilt panels smashed, with mighty crash and clangour, against the unyielding stone of the walls that housed them. She stood, unblinking, motionless save for the occasional flutter of errant strands of her mane, gently ministered to by the fingers of a light breeze, gazing out of a tall and broad window at the shimmering blade that was the western horizon.

She already knew who it was. Why they had come.

Striding once more down the length of her illustrious throne room, there came noble Icarus, Foremost among her Chosen, accompanied by a cohort of his stalwart and valiant fellows.

They bore grave news.

While the utter destruction of the forest that had once girdled their mountain home in had unsettled and perturbed them, resistant as they were—at their existential peril—to change, it had nonetheless afforded them opportunities that they scarcely could have dreamt of before. With the Shadow driven back, the immediate threat neutralised, the Ponies of the Earth were finally able to send out advance scouts, to investigate and report back on the state of the realm. The news, as expected, had been almost universally dire. As previously thought, there were no known free cities left standing, and those that were still intact, namely great Equaem to the south—and to a lesser extent fair Guivarium in the west—were all occupied by the forces of Darkness.

Judging by the number of scouts that had returned compared to the number that were originally sent out, it could be reasonably surmised that the enemy, despite their assumed to be heavy losses, yet had free reign over the Plains of Edere, beyond and surrounding the alien waste that in turn now encircled the mountain. To the north, the River Maerir, born from the gap between the Horns of Tellurus—two perpendicular mountain ranges, the southmost end of the southern range where Cadytum was located—flowed red with blood. Those few scouts that had returned, more frequently than not, bore the fresh scars and bloody emblems of a narrow escape, and spoke of their individual ordeals with no small amount of dread and terror.

For in the prosecution of their reconnaissance orders, many of them had borne witness to the frightening degree of organisation with which their enemy now seemed to be imbued. The purging of the woodlands, while having destroyed the immediate enemies of the Ponies of the Earth that dwelt within them, had not eliminated the greater threat entirely. Without the forest, many creatures of Darkness had endured the great conflagration. Chief among them were those that roamed the open plains, sowing the seeds of desolation in their wake. They had been loath to enter the forest in the first place, content to remain behind and slay those that ventured out from within its shadowed depths, thus evading the consumptive flames that might otherwise have claimed them.

In recent times, however, the extent to which those same marauders had been able to utilise their talents for death and destruction had been on the decline. With scarcely enough able-bodied ponies left to man[¹] the walls and see to the ailing defences of the citadel, let alone push out from within it in force, there was found in their current state of attrition a dearth of equine victims such as never had been experienced before. Of alternative sources of comparable prey, the immediate world was found to be wanting. All of the outlying settlements and formerly secret, concealed villages had long since been uncovered and razed to the ground. There were no ponies left for the slaughter.

The Scourge of the Earth took no prisoners.

Beyond the shadowed veil of the forest, their enemy, thus deprived of their favoured sport, had grown increasingly restless. Fell Canidae, self-styled “Scourge of the Earth,” distinct from their bipedal coevals in their quadrupedity and enhanced savagery, comprised both the “leadership”—so-called—and the vast bulk of the enemy’s number. Truly they were a force unto themselves. Without the ebon ambit of the fallen cities of ponydom, wherein dwelt darker masters, they answered to no-one. They swept across the Plains of Edere like a tidal wave of blood and rampant Death, eradicating all who thought to stand before them. They themselves were the lesser offshoot of a fearsome, legendary race, long lost and presumed to be extinct. A people at home only on the rolling plains and open dales of Ederim[²], hunters and warriors to the last pup.

Of their “society,” it could be said that He that was strongest was King. He that was King lorded over a court of open air and grassy knolls, of sweeping plains and twisting rivers. Like the Ponies of the Earth, a love of all things natural presided within their hearts. But where those same Equidae had been tainted by the corruptive touch of civilisation, rent unto the void by the claw of Ur-Artificaem itself, the Fell Canidae of the East March had remained aloof, spurning the apostatising embrace of modernity.

Had remained pure.

For they lived only for the thrill of battle. Lived only for the Hunt. For the crushing of their enemies, their ever weakening prey between the tributary arch of their powerful jaws. Desirous of a final end to the accursed ungulates that would see fit to contain them, that would, in their illimitable audacity, seek to tip off its fulcrum the very balance that would otherwise have sustained them into perpetuity: the eternal balance between Predator and Prey.

For if the Ponies of the Earth were to prevail and prosper, spreading like a cancer of erudition across the realm, their cities and castles—distending like inimical tumours from which more corruptive poison could only flow—would disfigure, in sorrowful measure, the pristine aspect of the world. It was perceived, in the warped fundaments of the Equid nature—knowledge gleaned from the susurrant Dark—that from this course they would suffer no dissuasion.

No dissuasion save one.

Remaining unchecked and unchallenged, the ambit of their civilising influence would spread, and the last of that which was wild, the last of that which was pure, the last of that which was untamed and untainted would be lost. And no more then would the Fell Canidae roam freely across the plains of Ederim, to be awed and feared by all. Such could not be countenanced. Charged, as they were, by virtue of their distant birthright with the preservation of the Natural Order of the world, they alone would put an end to the madness. They alone could.

The Ponies of the Earth would fall before their storm.

In the formulation of their annihilative designs upon the mountain citadel, last stronghold of the hated Ponies of the Earth, there had hitherto existed a singularly insurmountable barrier, one that had confounded them at every turn. A flaw in whose ubiquity there was found an interminable prohibition; a thorn in their collective paw that would suffer no extraction.

The forest.

Its still, claustrophobic interior had held no appeal for them. Without the guiding wind upon their backs and across their muzzles—a map of scents gifted to their nostrils by connivant Eurus—the Scourge of the Earth were scarcely worth the name. Squatting like a brooding giant around the roots of the mountain, the ancient woodlands had long warded off interlopers such as they. It alone had stayed their advance.

And now it was gone.

With the shadow veil lifted—arboreal flood-gates finally opened—hungry eyes inevitably turned toward the mountain, greatest and most salient of its range. The disparate packs and warring clans came at last together, united in deadly purpose: their collective eye fixed on but one prize.

They were coming.

~/~|~~

Flowers.

His hoof delicately traced over the soft contours of a climbing rose’s corolla, trembling petals yielding to his touch. He caressed its erubescent folds as he might caress the cheek of a virgin lover.

She’d always loved flowers.

So did all who dwelt within the fair garden city of Equaem. It was impossible for all but the most obdurate, the most jaded, the truly lost and the fallen to walk amongst the fleeting, ephemeral beauty of her efflorescence and not be moved. Fragile blossoms, bedewed with the tears of a tremulous morn, quivered long upon their stems ere wilting under the weight of the coming Shadow. Parti-coloured petals rained down upon the heads of mortal ponies that walked within the city limits, as if scattered by the hooves of the fabled Pegasi themselves, twirling high above, laughing and cavorting and dallying with the Zephyrus. Long garden beds and curving terraces sang and blushed and glowed with a Life perennial. Water plants with vibrant blooms drifted down slow moving rivulets, passing under cracked stone bridges swathed in creeping verdure.

She loved Life.

A lone pony trotted slowly down a vista of vine-laden arches, petals floating and twirling indolently down upon his head in muted kaleidoscopic flurries, nestling themselves in his mane. The sound of running water, wrought from the statuary amphorae of decorative fountains, tinkled and burbled tranquilly in his ears. To his either side, bronze equine simulacrums flanked his passage, rampant and of noble bearing: venerable ponies of the past haunting his every step.

Always watching. Always judging.

But she was here, where he was not. Where he would never be.

He could hear her giggling.

Looking down, he saw a trail of tiny hoof prints inlaid in the soft earth. Placing a hoof over one such ghostly impression, he was struck by the relative size of his hoof in comparison to her own. The difference was too great. It was wrong. Something was wrong.

“...Hello?”

His voice sounded alien to him. It was too... deep. Too old. Like his father’s. Up ahead, a tiny figure darted in and out between the arches, the distant echo of a familiar, happy laughter lingering in his ears. Picking up speed, he cantered after the elusive phantasm, ducking under pendent vines and the disapproving gazes of his statued forebears. The world around him, heedless of the forenoon, was dark and grey. Everything seemed to have lost saturation, as though in her joyful wake colour itself saw fit to drain from the world, bleeding away with her passage.

“Where are you going? Wait, I— please! Wait!”

Up ahead, there was sudden flare of light.

She screamed.

He ran.

~/~|~~

Wreathed in the dawn aureole of Celestia’s mana, the wooden carving spun slowly end over end. It was a small figurine fashioned in the likeness of one of their canid enemies: a sleek and deadly form. Trapped in the stable orbit of her influence, the Wolf-head could but leer impotently, inanimately at her once per vertical rotation.

Fell are those that roam the earth.

Her ancient eyes betrayed no emotion. The object meant nothing to her. It was a relic. A vestige of that which would not endure. She offered no reaction as it burst violently into flame, falling away moments later as dwindling ash.

Fell am I that would end them.

Turning away once again from the ashen winds of Consequence, she returned to traversing the well-worn route up and down the length of her throne room, hoof falls echoing in the growing dark. She’d dismissed Icarus and his companions some hours earlier, and had, as was her wont, been furiously pacing non-stop ever since. Possessed, such as she was, of wings, one might reasonably have thought her to be above such restless perambulations. But to Celestia at least, walking was a comfort. Physical exertions such as these, practiced ceaselessly over the long millennia, become second nature, and when she walked, much that clamoured and much that troubled her noble mind was cast into silence by the familiar rhythm of her pistoning limbs—her undying constitutional—affording her the mental clarity to concentrate on the matter at hoof, upon the transitory moment that so often eluded her.

It had been a long, wearying discourse, one fraught with fear and trepidation. Celestia had done what she could to assuage their many and grievous concerns, commanding them at length to leave her to her ruminations. In truth, she was almost insulted by the air of exigency they bore. Did they truly doubt her ability to defend her people?

Did she?

She’d underestimated her enemy. Of that there could be no doubt. Her belief in the present Shadow’s decapitation, by way of her peremptory, ultimately regrettable actions, had proven naive. The rabble she’d burnt out of the forest were as fallen chaff when compared to their successors, now united, by her Hoof, in pursuance of her little pony’s ruin.

The fangs of ophidious Conceit had long fallen upon her.

And where fell their mark grew Shadow.

It was true, she had the power. She’d always had that power. That these whelps, these “Fell Canidae of the East March” thought to stand against the Ponies of the Earth, thought to stand against Her? Well, that was reason enough to destroy them.

And destroy them she surely could.

But at what cost? If her rash reaction against the Arbour Judicature’s treachery had taught her anything, it was that power such as hers must be tempered, lest she alone live to regret the consequences. If she so desired, she could wipe them out, blast them off the face of Ederim. But in the wake of such an unprecedented intervention, the world as it once was would be no more. It would be a wound that would never close; a scar that could never truly heal. Unlike the relatively fallow waste of her own making, life as she knew it would not return to lands subjected to the full force of her supernal fury.

If the Fell Canidae attacked the mountain en masse, utilising the entirety of their number as all evidence suggested that they would, Celestia knew that she could not adequately defend her Chosen without bringing down Cadytum with her. In their prodigious enumeration there was found an enemy that could not be so easily swept from the board. If they reached the citadel, they would, by virtue of sheer numbers alone, overwhelm and violently intermingle with the last remaining defenders and force her hoof. Her power, existing in an age before controlled, studied magic, while unrivalled in terms of sheer output, lacked immediate precision. In pursuance of their ultimate destruction, she would bring ruin not only to the Scions of Wolvendom, but to the last of her Chosen as well.

They could not be allowed to reach the mountain.

As mighty as she was, Celestia could not simply fly out and rend whole legions of Canidae unto ash where they stood. She needed time and prepared surroundings to conjure a grand spell of destruction with the necessary safeguards in place, such as was needed.

And of the needed time, there was found little.

With the way at last opened to them, their enemy would not long tarry upon the bloodied Plains of Edere. By all accounts, the Scourge of the Earth were preparing to launch a final assault within days, if not hours. In the direst of instances, stood before the gaping maw of abyssal foes heretofore undreamt of—her own Immortal life by some spectacular circumstance imperilled—it was within her power to precipitate the Arcane works that swirled intemperately throughout her being, but to do so was to tempt the wrath of an already unstable invocation. Any semblance of precision would be lost within a swirling vortex of obliterative forces. The resultant devastation wrought upon the earth would be beyond imagining.

It was a desolation that she could not countenance.

Princess Celestia, Goddess-Protector of the Ponies of the Earth, drew herself up tall, the light of a grand inspiration flaring in her eyes. On the edges of her peripheral vision, ivory and crimson banners were flapping portentously in the evening breeze. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the Mortal veil, the horns of the lost Eriatum were sounding.

To destroy the Fell host that closed in all around them, while simultaneously sparing her Chosen from the flame? It was an impossible feat. Such was her burden. And yet, in the conveyance of its onerous weight, she would not falter. Would not flag. Would remain defiant in the face of Darkness until the very end.

The Ponies of the Earth would not suffer themselves to stand idle whilst a storm of Death bore down upon them. Would not meekly exit this world in the hope of a peaceful admittance to the next. Led by Celestia, they would do the last thing that their enemy would expect, the last thing that they would be prepared for.

Ride out to meet them head on.