Harmony: The Rise and Fall of Classical and Modern Equestria

Harmony: The Rise and Fall of Classical and Modern Equestria

Chapter VI

The Scourge of the Earth – Part II: Aeonus

~/~|~~

Ivory are the founts that stalk,

The halls of those that fall.

Before the bell, before the hour,

That tolls their final call.

To lands that, erelong, are not,

No more their forebear’s walls.

In crystal glade and deepest shade,

Where slain the Sun’s free will.

And so the Six again shall sit,

In the heart of Eriatus ‘til.

Where flamed, where shamed, where lay defamed,

There fall the last of the Hypaethral.

~/~|~~

She turned to face him then, dewy eyes lit up by the light of moonbeams.

“Do you really think so? That they’re up there, watching over us?”

Somewhere deep inside, arenaceous time was shifting.

“Of course.”

And so too the inanimate stars overhead offered not their guidance.

“Where else could they be...”

That Senescence, in all the captivating strains of its manifest horror, might at last consume them all.

~/~|~~

Where now Eternity?

Princess Celestia, as one beset by the agonies of resurrection, lifted her gaze up from out the Shadow—ivory head risen as the Godhead rising—and where fell the light of the Sun upon her burned pretension. Her face, like the face of all noble Equidae, blazed with the innate glory of its form. In that vast panorama, inlaid with the waves of magenta seas, there was beheld—by those fit to comprehend the grandeur of its estimation—the great Truth Indubitable: that equinity, perforce, must equate with divinity. And so it was that, momently, in observance of the incontrovertible truth, much that would be seen to inspire, and much that would command the hearts of mortal equids sloughed off the stygian nightmare of her witherling cheeks, falling away from her in a threnody of failing ash.

The sun was setting on the first day.

The First Day of Reckoning.

Golden bands of that descendent orb’s light fell over the mountain citadel in broad swathes, laving the ancient fortress—appropriated home of the Ponies of the Earth—in melancholy splendour. The alien architecture of Cadytum took on an ever more surreal aspect as the light of day waned away: edificial shadows springing up where, in rightful observance of the Old Laws of the Universe, no shadows ought to have been found. The conical spires and pendentive domes, aided by the agency of a recreant Sun, cast their unearthly silhouettes down upon the quailing earth.

It could well be the last day.

Her plans, contrived as they were by the light of a fitful inspiration, were already in motion. Even now, Lord Icarus, at her peremptory behest, marshalled the remnants of the once mighty armies of the Ponies of the Earth, in preparation for a pre-emptive, final assault. To that end, in preparation for the coming conflict, a portion of her noble mind had she sequestered away, and within it swirled the enochian incantations of a grand spell of destruction, one that glowed upon the pages of her soul and would channel the obliterative, all-consuming fire of her righteous fury into a force of controllable emanation.

But Celestia, for all her power and the sweeping grandiosity of her deific bluster, remained as one ill at ease. If the Fell Canidae of the East March did the unthinkable, and chose to attack during the night—a decision that would force them to strike before the absolute entirety of their number could be assembled—Celestia feared the end, not for herself but for the life of her Chosen.

For the Dream.

Her Dream. Her beautiful Dream. The Ponies of the Earth were that Dream. Were to become that Dream. They had so much potential. To see it all brought to an end so prematurely, so unrealised, would be a tragedy beyond imagination.

A tragedy of her own making.

For Celestia knew that if she should fail in her duty, madness and decay were all that awaited the realm. All that awaited her. Come what may, heedless of her relative invulnerability, she would share in the ultimate fate of the Ponies of the Earth.

So it Was.

And so it would forever Be.

Away in the distance, a flock of white birds was taking to the wing. They flew low around the xenospires of Cadytum, rising up from the heart of the mountain like otherworldly stalks of auburn gold, screeching their clamorous valediction to the crenellations that had sheltered them. Life there, lived under the protective aegis of the Ponies of the Earth and their newfound Princess, had been good to them. But now, the ever westering sun and the sea itself were calling them home.

The white auricles of Celestia, upon receipt of the cries of seabirds, swivelled towards the source. Her majestic wings—stirred into motion by the pelagic cacophony—slowly unfurled from their old station at her sides: feathered limbs reflexively stretching out to almost half their impressive length. Deep down, in her heart of hearts, a traitorous part of her—one that heeded not the solemnity of her asseverations—yet longed to join those avians: to fly away and never return, leaving the troubles of mortals far behind her. It was the same part of her that would stand no more against the coming Darkness, that would, in perfidy as yet unwrought upon the earth, see fit to flee the reach of the ever encroaching Shadow, lest she herself fall under its taint. A part of her that longed to once again walk under an unfettered Sun and, in the madness of self-imposed solitude, dream those dreams that could never be.

A part of her that longed to return to a palace by the sea.

Celestia sighed, reminiscent. That distant, palatial locus was no mere dream, no figment of an age-old imagination. Indeed, it and it alone had borne witness to that of her first contact with civilisation: a contact the very momentous nature of which would fundamentally alter the mind that was made to be immutable. If she had known at the time the very marked significance of the site, she might well have taken better note of its location. For she alone had walked, witless as a newborn foal birthed upon white shores of Aenid, among the forgotten halls of the lost Eriatum: greatest and most powerful of all equine races.

She had, in her gloried Awakening, stumbled upon lost Eriatus itself.

She’d not ventured into the city proper. The architecture of the vestibulate palace alone was enough to intimidate her. Newly birthed, as an ivory incarnation of a then fragile dawn, such works as those wrought by the mightiest and most ancient of Equidae were enough to render her timorous. The graven faces and granitic hooves, held out against her in muted warning, had all the aspect of a threatening menace: one that was encapsulated sorcerously within the colossi that stood guard over the gates of mighty Eriatus. Stood before the stone eyes of the Western Bale[¹], Celestia, in her infancy, had not the heart to enter.

But she never forgot. And she never forgave.

It was a decision that would haunt her forever.

All the secrets, all the knowledge, all the power of the lost Eriatum. In that moment—a moment lived among the very first of her Awakening—it had all been hers for the taking. She’d needed to but reach out her hoof and take it. If only she had known. If only she had understood what it was that she, in her cowardice, had so carelessly thrown away. For theirs was the model upon which the Dream had been founded. Theirs was the race from which the Ponies of the Earth were come. Theirs was the civilisation, theirs was the knowledge, theirs were the shoulders upon which the Ponies of the Earth stood tall. The legacy of the lost Eriatum lived on as the fire in her little pony’s veins: a fire that had in turn been passed to her. It was their spirit that set her Chosen apart, that animated them in pursuance of a greater end than that of merest subsistence.

It was their spirit that had lit the flame of Love in her dispassionate heart.

And where burned the fires of love, so too blazed the funeral pyres of Madness and Hatred.

She would return. Of that there could be no doubt. She would find her way back again. The gloried realm of the lost Eriatum could not remain forever lost. She would rediscover their ancient resting place and uncover their long forgotten secrets, even if it took her another ten thousand years of ceaseless, aimless wandering to do it. Celestia, to that of her incalculable sorrow, knew that she could afford to wait.

Even if there were found no others that could.

~/~|~~

The dawn coloured colt galloped down the broad, winding alleyway, hooves thundering on the cobblestones, in hot pursuit of the filly several lengths ahead of him. She skipped and bounced off of stone steps and kerbs as she ran, flicking her golden tail at his nose teasingly if he got too close, rounding corners suddenly and sharply, always managing to stay just one step ahead. She laughed as she weaved her way expertly around market stalls and in between the legs of their slow, witless patrons: always moving, never slowing, not once coming into contact with any of them or their personal effects.

He, however, was not so fluid in his pursuit. He bumped into stalls and bowled over innocent market-goers—larger than he had any right to be at his age—upsetting apple carts and sending poultry scattering in explosive flurries of white feathers. She moved through the crowd like a fish through water and he flailed after her like a fledgling seabird, flapping and bouncing comically off the sea of equinity, leaving in his wake a forest of upraised, shaking forehooves and harsh voices.

She was too fast. Too agile. He was losing her. Gritting his teeth, he called upon the aid of his superior strength, putting on a burst of extra speed, the muscles in his tired limbs crying out in protest. She responded by slipping deftly into a side alley, her tail slapping against his muzzle as he skidded past the opening, too slow to turn into it behind her.

“Oh for the love of Tellurus...”

Grunting with effort, he wheeled sluggishly around, giving up on the pretence of a legitimate pursuit and cantering slowly after her into the tall, narrow alleyway.

“All right!” he called out to her in between pants. “All right! You win! Again...” he added with a sigh, looking down and idling a hoof against the cobblestones.

Turning gracefully on a bit, she grinned at him from afar, her teeth fairly glinting in the dim light.

“You’re too slow, big brother!” she exclaimed excitedly, prancing on the spot. “You couldn’t outrun a magic carp in a puddle!”

“Hey!” he started indignantly, breaking into a lazy half-gallop to defend his honour. Turning with a giggle, she bounded off once again in the opposite direction, heading towards the light at the end of the roofless tunnel.

The shadows around them peeled away as they neared their point of egress: black shades ceasing to exist entirely as they burst out—as the alate through storm clouds to the sun swept Aether-world above—into the very heart of Equaem. Here the city Was. And here her beauty was most profound. It effected, in ecumenical measure—and with panoramic gestures—a joy and awestruck wonderment within the hearts of its occasional visitors and daily inhabitants alike.

For within the great amphitheatrical hollow so perforated, the bulk of the city lay slumbering. Like a glacial cirque wrought not from the heartless ice and snow of “Ederim Septentrionalis,” but from the gorgeous efflorescence and gently flowing waters of lost Eriatus, the mythical City of Dreams upon which Equaem—which, for all its splendour, remained an ultimately pale imitation of—had been modelled.

The city was in full bloom. Across the emerald swards contained therein, there roamed the Ponies of the Earth, both young and old, rejoicing together in the splendour of Life, set so fragrantly, so abundantly all about them. The young colt, animated by the spirit so imparted, bounded eagerly after the elusive filly, chasing her under the kaleidoscopic shadows of bursting pergolas and over the earthen redolence of freshly cut lawns: the invigorating scent of the blossoms blooming all around him putting a skip in his step and granting new life to that of his tired limbs.

The fundaments of Equaem were old. Very old. The red brick of her grand vaults and libraries bore more than just the weight of the clambering ivy. For it was a city built upon the memory of those that came before them. One built upon the august foundations of a former municipality: a forgotten metropolis erected by the exiled Eriatum in an age past, in memory of their former home, in the years immediately prior to their downfall. Or so it was believed. Little was known for certain. Stood, as one indicted, before the Last Arbiter of Truth, even Celestia herself, with all her supernal might and the wisdom of the ages at her command, could do little but confess her ignorance.

For not even She knew what ultimate fate had befallen the lost Eriatum.

To the young, it mattered little. It was not theirs to dwell on such things. Leave it to the Grey-manes to pore over dusty old tomes and wonder at the fate of those that came before them. Leave it to them to stand idle in wizard’s towers as the world passed them by, gazing off glassy-eyed into the unfathomable aether, seeking to penetrate the depths of space and forgotten time.

Life was here now, for the living, and the young were wont to live it.

But youth—O glorious Youth, by Beauty loved and Age condemned—was soon to depart from him forever.

~/~|~~

Icarus Andohven, Son of Ithdaed, newly appointed Field Marshal of Ederim, Grand Master of the Order of the Lost Eriatum, Master General of the Armies of the Ponies of the Earth, strode purposefully down the ranks of Celestia’s Chosen, assembled as they were in the open air of the citadel’s central courtyard. Following close behind him came two of Celestia’s heavily armoured personal honour guard, assigned to his service, bearing aloft the hopes and the dreams of the Nascent Dawn. His own aureate barding shone brilliantly in the fading bands of evening sunlight: refractive beams issuing forth in blinding arcs where they weren’t swallowed up by the oblivion-folds of his sable cloak. The golden wings on his ornate champron served to distinguish him, as if somehow his majestic height and bearing, contained so gloriously within that full plate of armour—armour wrought from the mystical forges of ancient Eriatus itself—were to fail in that task.

The intricately embossed full plate, as beautiful as it was impenetrable, had been a gift from Celestia, to safeguard the future of her most beloved son. As an artefact of curiosity alone, the ancient barding was priceless beyond measure. As an article of war, however, it was even more valuable. For its creators were not known for crafting anything other than the most resplendent, the most endurant, the most masterful of works. Where she had found such a treasure of antiquity, Celestia would not say. It was not his place to question her.

It was not a gift that she had bestowed upon him lightly.

Celestia had at last named him.

Her Own. Her Champion.

Champion-Protector of the Nascent Dawn; a pony reborn as the Right Hoof of Celestia herself.

Overhead, the ivory banners of that nascent dawn—emblazoned with a stylised orange and yellow sunburst—and the banners of the Ponies of the Earth—a white equid stood rampant upon a field of brilliant crimson, in the fashion of the heraldry of the lost Eriatum—flew together. The west wind blew through them, animating them with a defiant spirit, set against the malice of Eurus.

He would not fail her. And so too would the blood of his people not err in their service.

So too would the Ponies of the Earth endure.

As he walked, petals from the newly wilting blossoms of the courtyard fell in slow flurries down upon the heads of those therein assembled: falling as a sad reminder of all that had been lost. Eyes were cast downward as memories of brighter days, borne upon the melancholy streams of failing Life, pervaded the hearts of those mortal ponies who had lost so much. Their friends, slain; their homes, destroyed; their families, slaughtered. Even now, under the protective spell of Celestia’s aegis, the flames of Hope guttered in their breasts. Their enemy was relentless. Repelled, they would only return. Evaded, they would surely pick up the trail.

Defeated, they would give rise to Another.

Proceeding down the line, Icarus beheld the pall of despair enshrouding the last of his people. He exchanged light touches and words of fellowship and honour with those he knew that served under him, bolstering their resolve with stiff nods and precision salutes. Upon encountering those that he did not know—the fresh recruits pressed into service and the older stallions coaxed, perforce, out of retirement—he deigned to stop and greet each and every one, asking of them their name and examining them with a critical eye honed over years of military service. As was so often the case in dire predicaments such as the one facing him and his people, many of those assembled had either seen too much of war or too little.

Celestia, in her wisdom, had bidden him select only those who could stand and fight and die with honour, for they would need the spirit of Valour on their side if they were to find victory amongst the ashes.

If they were to find victory.

For all his faith in the manifest destiny of his people, Icarus knew what it was to be afraid. Knew what it was to fear the coming Fall. Much of the Immortal Princess’ designs had been made known to him, and he took heart in the knowledge that one such as her walked by their side.

Coming to the end of the line, Icarus came to a stop in front of the last pony standing there, finding himself having to look up for the first time. The red stallion stood before him was among the more impressive specimens of extant ponykind, standing a full head taller than even he did.  The equine giant was entirely clad in heavy crimson plate armour, and his massive champron—now held respectfully in the crook of his foreleg—was crowned by a matching pair of white minotaur horns. His enormous warhammer, “Minatory”, was mounted on his broad back.

The pony, like Icarus, had an unusual name.

Though he was known to many simply as “Minotaurim’s Bane”, his real name—the name given to him by his father—was Aeonus.

His former dwelling place—the outlying settlement of Irondale, established before the coming of the hordes of Darkness— had been located to the southeast of Cadytum, beyond the reach of the mountains, and had fallen at roughly the same time as Equaem did. It had been subjected, over a period of weeks, to an ever escalating series of raids: raids perpetrated upon it by ruthless tauriforms, back when they were a more common sight upon the fields of Ederim. The leadership of the settlement, having presided over the loss of the majority of their crops and foodstuffs, as well as having borne witness to the many violent deaths attributed to the agency of their enemy, decided that, as the state of ponydom collapsed all around them, ongoing habitation of the settlement had become an untenable proposition. Stakes were pulled up and provisions were made ready—the ponies of Irondale taking with them only what they needed to get them to the nearby mountain pass and through it to the relative safety of Cadytum.

The treacherous Minotaurim, however, having had anticipated such an action, moved to attack the caravan as it was departing, catching the ponies of Irondale completely off guard. It was then, in that moment, that Aeonus, on the cusp of adulthood himself and already larger and broader than his father and the other stallions in the village, earned his epithets.

Striding purposefully through the ranks of his scattering brethren, as unarmed and unarmoured as the day he was born, Aeonus, making straight for the leader of the party of marauders, faced his enemy: an almost nine-foot albino monster that wielded a massive ebon warhammer, one that could crush the skull of a pony in a single blow. Shrugging off deadly projectiles that were hurled in his direction—projectiles that could well have killed a lesser equine if they found their mark—Aeonus, as one possessed, with the added handicap of a throwing axe now embedded in his shoulder, squared off against the legendary chieftain of the largest nearby minotaur clan in single combat and vanquishing him using only the hooves the merciless gods had given to him.

Having observed this veritable battle of Titans, along with the subsequent downfall of their mighty chieftain, the White Thane of Tor himself, the remainder of the tauriforms fled the wrath of Aeonus, taking with them the harrowing tales of a Red Terror. The attack on the caravan had been routed. But it was already too late. The damage was done. The caravan had been destroyed and all those that had sought refuge within it had been slaughtered. There were now only a hoof full of survivors left. Aeonus, in his fallen father’s stead, taking with him the head and the hammer of the mighty chieftain he had slain, led the last of his people through the mountain pass and onward to Cadytum. He was hailed as a hero upon his arrival and went on to become a legend in his own right.

For amongst ponykind and Minotaurim alike, Aeonus was a living legend. He was a savant when it came to the fighting of tauriforms, and he’d personally killed a great many of them in the course of his military career—an otherwise illustrious career tarnished by scandal and acts of insubordination—becoming, to the vehement distaste of many, something of a collector when it came to the question of the corneous protuberances the Sons of the Minotaurim invariably possessed. But the pride of his collection—the white horns of his maiden and foremost victim—he wore into battle, forever to inspire fear in the hearts of those who would raise arms against that of his own and that of his kin.

He was a pony of the old order, one possessed of a stature to match that of even his most august antecedents. His belief in his divine mission—to one day bring an end to last of the accursed Minotaurim—was unshakeable and a force to be feared. But for the colour of his bloodlust and force of his hatred, he might have caught Celestia’s eye, as his foalhood friend Icarus ultimately did. The two had arrived in Cadytum at the roughly same time, give or take several weeks, and had bonded together over their shared grievances. They had trained together, fought together and rose through the ranks together, though Aeonus, bereft of the influence of a well-connected father, as well as burdened by the weight of his murderous convictions, had never quite risen to the lofty heights that the now Field Marshal of Ederim standing before him did.

As Icarus stepped up to him, Aeonus bowed down his mighty head.

“My lord,” he intoned in an imposing baritone, holding a foreleg respectfully across his chest.

“Would that it were, ‘Bane of the Minotaurim’,” began Icarus, returning the bow and favouring his old friend with a sad smile, “that together we rode against your favoured enemy.”

“That day will come,” Aeonus responded, lifting his head to reveal the fire in his eyes. “And when it does, I shall leave no tauriform yet standing in Ederim left wanting my favour.”

“Alas, then, that that day is not yet upon us.” Lifting an armoured forehoof up to rest upon Aeonus’ plated shoulder, Icarus looked into the eyes of his foalhood friend. “Will Minatory fall upon the heads of those that have no claim to her?”

Aeonus drew himself up taller, working his powerful jaw as he gazed down upon Icarus with steely eyes. “No, my lord. She will not. I would not sully her honour with the blood of mongrels, nor will I stand idle while they yet think to challenge us. This is not her battle, my lord, but ours. Know that, before the day is done, before the last canid lies trampled before us, the hooves that bear me will have drunk their fill.”

“For honour, then. For glory. For a nascent dawn.”

“For a nascent dawn,” Aeonus echoed.

But for a moment, Icarus thought he saw the beginnings of a derisive smile, one that ghosted across the lips of his oldest and dearest friend.

~/~|~~

He had a beautiful voice.

“Honour Us...”

And through it swept the wind through the trees and water over stone.

“...And so in turn shall We honour you.”

There was only blinding light.

~/~|~~

Fifteen hundred warriors.

Icarus furiously splashed his face with cold water, water taken from the filigreed basin in his opulent bedchamber. He splashed himself in the manner of one trying to shock one’s self, upon awakening, into forgetting, if only for a fleeting, precious moment, the nightmares that plagued them. As he gazed down upon his inverted image, droplets of falling water tore concentric gashes in the reflective surface, rendering the chiselled symmetry of his face into a vision of fluidic chaos.

It was no use. There was no escaping it. The facts, as onerous as they were to bear and as much as he might like to erase them from memory, would suffer no ablution.

They were all that was left. His predecessors, even in times of peace would have commanded an army of eight thousand battle ready ponies—six thousand at the very least[²]. In their severe state of depredation, their canid enemy would now outnumber them at least ten to one.

Celestia save us.

Icarus, turning away from the ornate basin, walked slowly across the length of the room, heading towards the balcony, intending to partake of the evening air and observe the colour of the night. The palatial suite he now resided in was yet another fringe benefit of Celestia’s favour. He’d been reluctant to accept his new lodgings, preferring, in such times of existential peril, the military austerity of his old chamber. But Celestia, for all her compassion and forbearance had, on this occasion and in consideration of this one seemingly inconsequential point, remained intransigent. Bold as he was, Icarus had neither the heart nor the will remaining to question her motives.

The suite was beautiful. Of that there could be no doubt. Gilded folding screens, inlaid with the golden visions of a civilisation lost, partitioned the open rooms and offered some semblance of privacy where it was needed. Lacquered bureaux and commodes were proliferated throughout the interior, set alongside upholstered canapés and ornamental “chaise longues”. Rich tapestries and banners hung in great profusion off the stone walls, and elaborately framed looking-glasses stood together in groups of three, reflecting one another’s light and forms.

For all the beauty of the many and varied appointments, there was something not quite right, something subtly but undeniably off. For a start, the proportions were all wrong. Everything was too big, too long, as if all the furniture had been designed for a race of extremely tall and slender beings. Designs and devices, found woven and printed and graven throughout the extent of the domicile, were entirely foreign when beheld by the eyes of analytic ponykind. Many of the creatures, landscapes and situations depicted simply didn’t make sense, as if they were crafted from the chaotic visions of an insane dream world: a world that cared nothing for the law of nature and accepted not the conventions of established science.

Disregarding the peculiarity of the interior furnishings, the unnatural stillness of the air and the inexplicable warping of his reflection in the mirrors, perhaps the thing that disturbed Icarus the most was the notable absence of dust and the complete lack of any outward appearances of decay. How long had the halls of Cadytum stood abandoned before the Ponies of the Earth first came to them? Quite possibly thousands of years. And yet, it was as if the original owners had never left. Everything was clean and immaculate, spotlessly perfect, and remained so bereft of the hoof of equine intervention.

Remained so even in spite of it.

Once, in his youth, during the course of his training, Icarus had been thrown back against an ornamental weapon stand, shattering it with the force of his weight. The next day, as he walked past the place where it had stood, he had been startled to find that it once again stood where it always had, as unmarked and untouched as the day he had first laid eyes upon it.

He’d later experimented on other items scattered throughout the empty halls and uninhabited rooms, scratching woodworks and tearing small gashes in tapestries: deliberately damaging them in order to observe the long-term effects. Whether it took a single night or a week of moonrises, or, in some rare cases—dependent on the severity and extent of the damage—an entire lunar cycle, all objects invariably reverted back to their original, pristine state.

Icarus had the notion that if his people were to vanish tomorrow, becoming, as if by some great spell of extirpative destruction, completely extinct, all traces of them would shortly thereafter disappear, and, but for their crumbling, transient works without the temporal ambit of the fortress, it would be as if the Ponies of the Earth had never existed in the first place.

They were not supposed to be there.

No-one was. The citadel was a monument to another age, a place where the usual flow of time succumbed to the temporal paroxysms of mad gods. There was a strange force at work there, one that emanated out from within the blackened heart of the mountain and conspired against the once indomitable spirit of his people, corrupting their hearts with the weight of its malevolent presence.

Attaining the extremity of the suite, Icarus stepped out onto the balcony, taking in a deep draught of the cool evening air. Where elemental water had failed him, the unbridled aether would provide.

In the end, it didn’t matter. The secrets of the mountain were not his to uncover. He now had but one task entrusted to his care: to ride out with the full force of his house and meet the Scourge of the Earth head on. The plan, as Icarus understood it, was to draw them away from Cadytum and halt their advance long enough to buy Celestia the time she needed: time enough to complete her inscrutably Arcane works.

As for the future, the mares and fillies would of course remain behind, along with the colts and elder stallions. Even if he and all those who rode out with him ultimately perished before the might of the canid legions, Celestia, eternal as the rising sun, would endure. She would—after having unleashed her power upon whatever remained of their enemy without fear of greater repercussions—return to Cadytum to watch over the last of his people and ensure that their deaths would not be in vain.

Ensure that the Dream did not die with them.

Icarus believed in the Dream. Believed in Her. And so in faith he found peace with his fate.

That in falling, the light of his life should at the last be added to the first light of a Nascent Dawn.

~/~|~~

For honour. For glory.

For a nascent dawn.

Those four words had pained him more than any he had ever known.

Aeonus, retrieving his helm from its stand, lifted it up high, slowly bringing it down to rest upon the contour of his head and neck. As he put his forehooves back onto the ground, the Red Terror in the mirror stared back at him, white horns aflame in the dancing firelight.

How had it come to this? Had his oldest friend really fallen so far? On the morrow, they would ride to war together, and it was likely that they went to their deaths. There was a time when noble Icarus would have died for honour, when he would have given up his life in defence of his people alone.

And now he would die only for Her.

Aeonus’ jaw tensed. Icarus, despite his faults, was like a brother to him. The two of them had come of age together in these very halls. Aeonus remembered his own horror upon discovering what fate had befallen the High Prelate, along with a full third of the former ruling council’s members.  Their blood was on Celestia’s hooves.

How could Icarus serve the one who had murdered his own father?

Aeonus shook his head. He would never understand. Were he in Icarus’ place, he would think of nothing save vengeance.

For vengeance was all they had left.

It wasn’t right. There had to be another way. There was no—

Aeonus froze.

Thus occupied with his thoughts, the Bane of the Minotaurim had failed to perceive that which should have been immediately apparent to him. Perhaps it was that, accustomed—as all ponies who lived there were—to the strange warping of his own reflection in the mirrors of the citadel, he had failed to discern, in the context of a waking reality, the horrifying image that now laid waste to his nervous system.

For the Red Terror in the mirror was not alone.