The Everlasting Drawback Of Immortality

Celestia suddenly woke up with a start. She looked out of her windows, over the balcony, to the night sky. The moon still adorning the sky like a jewel. Definitely, it was too early for Celestia to wake up from her slumber. She never woke up in the middle of the night for no reason. Her Alicorn powers always let her sleep perfectly through the night as long as there are no disturbances.

So naturally, Celestia was more than a little worried when she looked at the clock and saw that it was 2:34. Something different made her wake up, but what? Her room was like she remembered it. No additional noises were heard. Everything was normal. Maybe she was worried over something? What did happen yesterday?

Aren returned. Discord er… Ravien was told he was sick and went to his home dimension for treatment. Aren said that today was training and then went to sleep on the table. She then levitated him over to his room and tucked him into bed. She had a lovely meal and some conversation with her sister and Chrysalis after that and then she went to bed. There was nothing that should make her wake up at this hour. So why was she wide awake this early in the morning?

“Because I need to talk to you.” Celestia froze. She knew that voice. That deep ominous voice. The voice that told of uncountable years of experience. The voice belonging to the one unquestionably powerful being in existence. She turned around and there she saw the creature that the voice belonged to. There, right beside her bed stood none other than Oran. She instantly felt afraid. What could he want from her?

“Like I said, I just wanted to talk to you.” Celestia calmed down, but only a little. What would he want to talk about? Celestia shuffled nervously on her bed. Could she just answer? He could kill her if she would answer with disrespect. Oran shook his head slowly.

“You do not need to be afraid. Whatever it is that holds your tongue, it is not important.” Celestia now really calmed down. She looked at him uncertain.

“What do you want to talk about?” Such a simple statement, yet so much information laid in it. She just accepted to talk to him. She showed that she respected him. She asked for information from him, and she showed that she was interested in it. Oran didn’t react at first but answered her.

“I travel the worlds to find a world that has enough power to halt my journey. I give them motivation for fighting against me. They know that I will end their existence, and that’s why they all fight me united. The same is said for Equestria. If you fail to stop me, the same thing that happened last time will happen, and you know that.” Celestia gulped and felt a chill run down her spine.

“But, I never end the world truly. I kill every being with extreme pain, but I never let them stay dead. Everything that I kill in the process of the fight that was created by my challenge will be revived after the war. I don’t travel the multiverse just for some lowly joy such as simple killing. So you should know that even when I do what I do that I never plan to end your world in destruction.”

What Oran then did, was something that no one ever in Equestria, except for Aren, thought would be even possible. The deep unknown that was known as Oran the powerful being let out a simple sigh. A show of emotion. A sigh shows that you either are angry, relieved, stressed or in this case, sad. Oran looked so very very sad. His eyes showing sympathy about the thing he wanted to talk about. Celestia picked up on that. She always felt when somepony wanted to talk about something.

“There is more to it, is it not? I don’t think that you just came to me to justify your actions.” She exclaimed, careful not to anger him. Not to sound disrespectful. Oran looked at Celestia with a deep gaze. For a moment there, she thought that she might have offended him.

“You are correct, Celestia. I came here for another reason, but what I explained to you, has something to do with this reason.” He then extended his arm to Celestia. Showing an open palm. After carefully analyzing the situation, Celestia realized that he just wanted her to place her hoof into his palm. “I want to show you something.” Celestia eyed the palm carefully but reluctantly placed her own hoof into it.

Suddenly the two were in Arens’ room. Just like that. Nothing happened, it was just like they were here since the beginning. She looked down at the sleeping face of Aren. He looked so happy. So peaceful. It looked like he had no worries in the world. She looked over to Oran and saw, that in comparison to Aren, he looked troubled and immensely worried. Celestia asked.

“What are we doing here?” Oran looked over to Celestia.

“Aren is not how you think you know him to be. He is different. He hasn’t shown his true self in over 30,000 years. He will show it in the next three days at some point. It is nearly unavoidable.” Celestia pondered about this for a while. Aren wasn’t how she thought of him, but what is so terrible about this that it forces Oran to talk to Celestia about something? Oran looked over to Celestia.

“Tell me Princess of the sun. Do you judge someone based on whom they are or based on what they did?” A simple question, yet a question she never thought about. Judging someone by how they are or what they did? After thinking for a while, it seemed obvious.

“I judge them by what they did. If, for example, some pony thought about stealing treasury from the castle, I can’t judge them because they never did it. I can only do it when they tried to make it happen.” Oran nodded once but asked another thing.

“Then what will you do, if you know that there is absolutely no doubt that this pony will do it and that it will succeed?” This was a hard question. If it was obvious that he would succeed, then she would know beforehoof that she couldn’t punish him. So if, she would act before it happened, the act would never have happened, and she wouldn’t have any right to punish him. It doesn’t matter what she would do, it would be unfair for either side.

Either unfair for getting away with a crime, or getting punished for something that didn’t happen. She looked over to Oran.

“I don’t know what I would decide.” Oran just looked back at Aren.

“Celestia, let me tell you this. There is no possible way to predict the future. The only possibility would be for me to decide that I know the future, but then it is not assured that the future I looked upon is the real one because the universe would change and bend everything to how it would be, when I decided I would know.” Celestia was a little confused by this sentence. “That’s why I don’t do it, but that I don’t do it, doesn’t mean that I can’t make assumptions.”

He looked worried at Celestia. “And my assumption right now is disastrous for your world.” Celestia was now truly worried. If Oran was right, and the future of Equestria looked disastrous, then she needed to do something about it. Oran looked again at Celestia.

“Celestia, I will now take you to Arens’ dream.” He pointed with his index-finger at Aren. “As you see by his current facial expression, he has a very pleasant dream, but be aware. A dream that is for one pleasant may not be pleasant for another one. You will see very disturbing things in his dreams. I want you to know that everything in there will be just a dream and that nothing will happen to the real world.”

Celestia felt nervous. By all the warnings Oran spoke, it was apparent that what she will see in his dreams will not be to her liking, but in the end she agreed, for the sake of Equestria. Suddenly she was flying in the air over Canterlot. Under her was her capital. Her beautiful city, with its’ white walls and its’ majestic decorations. The beautiful Canterlot.

It was bathed in blood, fire, destruction, and corpses. She gagged when she saw the parts of her precious subjects, lying around the floor like they were some destroyed bloody puppets. On the remains of the corpses were the most horrible expressions shown. Dead children, dead soldiers, dead mothers, dead pets, dead wild animals, dead plants. There was no living being to be seen, except the dancing flames that seemed to live their life with utmost joy while burning everything to the ground.

Destroyed streets, crumbled houses and destroyed furniture could be seen from everywhere in the city. Celestia began to cry. She never saw this much horror. The death of all of her subjects on Orans’ last visit was really bad, but this was just terrifying. Everything looked just violently destroyed.

“Do not be overwhelmed. Remember, this is just a dream.” Oran said while standing besides the princess. She looked around again, but couldn’t bring herself to feel nothing for this picture. Even if, this was not real, it still disturbed her on a fundamental level. But one thing seemed off. They were in Arens’ dream, but where was Aren?

“Where is Aren?” She asked Oran, who just turned around to the castle and pointed at it. Again Celestias’ surroundings changed, and she was in the strategy-room in the castle. Everything looked normal, except that there was a meeting. In this room were Luna, Chrysalis, Ravien, Twilight, and the other five Elements Of Harmony. Celestia still didn’t see Aren, and just when she wanted to ask Oran about it, Twilight spoke up.

“What will we do? Can we even do something about him?” She asked, fear showing in her voice. Luna hammered on the table.

“I knew that we shouldn’t have kept him here. I knew he meant nothing, but trouble.” She shouted while hammering her hoof at the table, but then put her hooves to the sides of her head while groaning. “Why does it have to be him? Can’t it be something we can handle? There is no way we can win this!” She slammed another hoof at the table. Chrysalis raised an eyebrow.

“I know that you are afraid of him, but aren’t you a little overreacting? Yes, he is very powerful, but he can’t stand against the three of us and the Elements Of Harmony.” Chrysalis simply explained. Celestia felt that Orans’ gaze fell to the door. He quickly turned to Celestia and spoke fast.

“Whatever happens now, remember that this is a dream and that Aren is still sleeping.” Before she could ask, the door slammed open, and a blood-soaked human with spiky hear entered the room, having his sword leaning over his shoulder. There was one thing that disturbed Celestia deeply about this scene.

It was not the blood. It was not the weapon. It was the deep malicious grin that spread over Arens’ face. He looked like a grinning demon of destruction. He looked as if he could do the worst things imaginable, and would still enjoy it. Everypony in the room went tense, when he looked around while grinning madly. Nothing was heard until Aren started laughing silently. So frightfully silent he chuckled, that it would have been impossible to hear if someone even breathed.

With the passing of time, the chuckle grew louder and louder until he was laughing like a maniac. Suddenly he instantly stopped and looked with extremely wide torn eyes at everypony in the room, his mouth still having the form of the malicious smile, but being nearly entirely open. Like he paused his facial position in the midst of his laughter.

He looked around the room, and his gaze stopped at Chrysalis, who looked afraid. He suddenly ran to her with unreal speed clawed both of his hands into her neck. Pressing together so strong, that the chitin started cracking and Chrysalis started choking. Still having the same expression on his face, he suddenly picked her up and slammed her into the floor with such a force that the whole room shook like there was an earthquake. Chrysalis still barely alive on the floor, let out a bloody cough that sounded like her lungs got squashed.

Suddenly Aren turned her around, so she was lying on her back, and put his hands into her torso. Then he pushed his hands apart, and Chrysalis body was splattered over the entirety of the room. The shower of gore and insides, soaking Aren even more, he started laughing again. Celestia couldn’t believe what she saw. This wasn’t the Aren she knew. This was some dangerous vile creature of pure evil. Suddenly Aren turned around and looked at Ravien with the same insane eyes.

Just when Aren started jumping to him, Celestia was suddenly flying outside of Canterlot again.

“I don’t want you to see the rest of the dream.” Oran simply stated. Celestia was still in total shock. This was not the Aren she knew. It can’t be. He wouldn’t just destroy everything for absolutely no reason in this brutal manner… would he? She looked over to the silent Oran. Too many questions hanging in her mind. Too many answers she wanted to hear. So she asked the one question that would summarize all of her questions.

“What just happened?” She simply asked. Oran turned to her with a sad gaze in his eyes.

“What you just saw, was the real Aren.” He waited some seconds, for the information to be processed. “You need to know the following. Aren is a truly evil being, which does only do good deeds, contradicting isn’t it?” He asked while looking at the confused and shocked face of Celestia. Nonetheless he continued.

“Normally someone would think that evil beings only do evil things, but this is not true. It’s the definition of evil that makes this possible. Someone is evil, when he does not live and think by the rules the majority lives by. If someone from Equestria, would go to a dimension, where it is hospitality to steal someones’ stuff, and the one of Equestria wouldn’t do it, then this one would be considered evil in their eyes.”

“It is a rather extreme thing to say to that since it would only be unpleasant or informal, but unpleasant and informal still fall into the evil box, if you divide every action perfectly into good and evil. You need to know that Aren has a very dark and deep problem. He is like you think of him, yet he isn’t.”

“He has a desire to help everyone. He wants to see the happy children after they got rescued by him. In short, he wants to be a hero, but for that, he needs to suppress his true self. When I first met him, he was guarding over a land of mortals, and protected them from everything that they deemed evil and vile, sounds nice doesn’t it?” He crooked an eyebrow. Celestia didn’t answer.

“It wasn’t. For his protection, he demanded a weekly sacrifice of one living being. He wanted to help the mortals. Wanted to protect them. But he couldn’t suppress himself at that time. He was still how you see him. He needed that sacrifice every week, in order to being able to control his desire for death.”

“I met him, and I saw this. I saw his eternally good heart, which was at the same time eternally evil. He had equally strong desires of protecting and destroying everything. I felt sorry for him. I couldn’t imagine surviving this long with this conflict inside of myself. So I began to take him as an apprentice. Showed him the further ways of magic, and travel. After around 50 years, he was able to invent a whole new kind of spell. The mentality altering spell.”

“With this, he was able to alter his mentality to the point that he wasn’t addicted anymore to any of those two needs. He was neutral. He could finally decide if he wanted to feel good while killing someone or by protecting them. There was no urge anymore to do both. He could decide at any time he wanted.” Oran made a short pause.

“Until, he shared his soul with the Element Of Generosity. It was of course, not the first time he shared his soul. He always does it, when either someone very important for his plans, or someone he cares about dies. This case it was probably the former since the Elements Of Harmony wouldn’t have their overwhelming power anymore if one of the bearers dies. It’s further been proved by Raritys’ presence in his brutal dreams. He realized this and shared it, to not endanger his plan of finally slaying me.”

“You need to know that if you share your soul, your magic suffers under it. It takes a long time to get back to full power. Probably around three years. Until then, he needs to use as less magic as possible, to regenerate faster. This is the reason why he aborted using his 350 omnipresence spells constantly.” Oran sighed.

“It’s a shame that he needs to constantly use up half of his power and concentration to alter his personality. He could maintain the whole spell-combination if he wouldn’t need to maintain his altering spell.” He sighed again and looked deep into Celestias’ eyes.

“Celestia, you need to know that this is no lie, what I will tell you now. If I wouldn’t have made Aren tired yesterday in your room, you all would be dead by now.” Celestia was shocked beyond belief. They all could have died yesterday? Would Oran lie to her? No, this would be unnecessary since he could kill her with a mere thought.

“You need to know that I use my mass-ressurectionspell only on those, which fought against me. I will not use it for deaths of other beings. If Aren goes insane and destroys the entirety of Equus, I won’t resurrect anyone of you. I swore that I will not interfere with affairs of a dimension, which not concerns me. I swore this when I got my godpowers.” Oran sighed again.

“I never broke this. Never, except for yesterday, when I made Aren sleepy. I didn’t want to see the only planet, in hundreds of thousands of years that would be able to finally halt me, getting destroyed because of a white mortal unicorn that was not able to properly dodge a bite. You could trace this back to whomever you want to give the guilt for this.”

“Was it Arens’ fault for splitting his soul? Was it Raritys’ fault for not being able to dodge? Was it Arens’ fault for damaging your wheel? Was it the fault of the elements, because they didn’t want him in their chariot? Was it Lunas’ fault because she didn’t want him in her chariot? Was it your fault for letting him stay in Equestria? Was it Arens’ fault for having this personality in the first place, or was it my fault for not preventing the mortal mare of dying?”

“Was it the fault of the government that the poor man needed to steal the apple because he had no money to buy it? You can never place the guilt on one single being. In the end, it just happens.” Celestia shook her head. All of the information was too overwhelming, but even after all this, there was still one question she wanted to ask.

“Why are you showing, and telling me all this? What can I do about this? I know that I am strong, but I also know that I could not win against Aren in a battle.” Oran sighed once.

“It was more than 10 million years ago, when I last spoke these words. These words, other people use at a daily basis. I never spoke them, because I didn’t need to.” He looked at Celestia. “Yet, I feel the need to say them. Celestia, I need your help.” Celestia was overwhelmed. Why would someone like him need her help?

“I looked at every dream of Aren since he arrived in Equestria. It weren’t many since he rarely sleeps, and when he sleeps, he only does this in his home dimension. I watched, and there was one oddity in every dream of his, which was like this. The oddity was also here in this one. Can you see it?” He asked her. Celestia looked around, but couldn’t see what he meant. Finally, she shook her head.

“In every dream of his in which he slaughtered your planet, I never saw you even once.” She raised an eyebrow. What did this mean? “I never saw you getting slaughtered. I only saw you in his dreams, when he talked or did something else, which was not as brutal. Do you know what this means?” Celestia just shook her head.

“It means he likes you. I don’t know if it is romantic or just friends, but he somehow let you near his soul. Only friends and family are able to get near that. In the hundreds of thousands of years, he and I traveled among the multiverse, only very few beings got close to him. He blocks everyone out because he doesn’t want to get hurt, when they hear what he truly is.” Oran sighed.

“In the end, he is just a lonely kid that doesn’t want to get hurt.” Celestia looked down at her burning city. This sentence reminded her of the time, Aren and Luna argued at the training camp. It seemed funny when she thought about it. Celestia and Luna saw her mortals like children. Aren saw Luna like a child, and Oran saw Aren like a child. Celestia shook her head to get out of nostalgia. This was not needed right now.

“Oran, why do you need my help? Can’t you just alter his desires?” Oran looked conflicted.

“I could, but I also swore to never alter any personality ever. It would just ruin the natural creation of their being. No matter what happens, I will not alter his personality. I would kill him before he would do that. This is what I need you for. You are very close to his heart and soul, like I said I don’t know if it is romantic. So you can get to him and maybe, you can change him. Maybe you are able to change the deep darkness within him to something that can be loved by someone.”

“Let me tell you this, I broke my promise twice, first when I made him tired, and second when I told you this. I won’t do it a third time. Remember that. The future of Equestria, Aren, and of possibly many more dimensions rests on your shoulders. I do not think that you plan to assassinate him in his sleep since you said that you only judge people by their actions, and Aren has not yet done anything wrong to Equestria.”

Celestia felt like an extremely heavy weight was on her being. So much was at stake. Everything on her shoulders. If she would make a mistake, she would doom many worlds to certain destruction. Yet, the task itself does not seem to be this foreign and difficult to her. It seemed like it would be easy for her to accomplish this. Why did this feel so easy, even though so much was at stake?

Suddenly she was back at her room, sitting at her bed as if nothing happened. As if she didn’t do anything. As if she just sat here and everything she just experienced was in her head. She looked around her normal looking room. Suddenly her eyes widened. ‘How much time passed?’ She looked at the clock and the time shocked her to the core. When she woke up, it was 2:34, and right now it was 2:28. The same night, the same date, the same year, the same month.

She activated her magic and scanned the leylines of the magic of the world and stars. It was true. It was the same day, just earlier than she woke up. The shocking revelation was that her body wasn’t older. The body ages if someone time travels. The situation was unreal, but there was only one explanation, which was even more unreal. She hasn’t traveled through time. Time itself was turned back.

Suddenly she saw a single piece of parchment on her bed. It was just laying there as if it was always there to begin with. A single word written on it, yet this word carried her whole task. The whole future of Equestria, Aren and many other worlds. The single word.

“Aren.”