The Young Alicorn Chronicles: Of Chaos and Spirits

by M1Garand8

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, Princess Luna, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 4134

The mother of Celestia and Luna tells them a story of the origins of spirits and their role in the battle of Chaos and Harmony.

In a time before the founding of Equestria and centuries before the chaotic reign of Discord, a mother tells two young alicorn fillies a tale of the origin of the world, the ponies and the spirits and their role in the battle of Chaos and Harmony.

Standalone side story/prequel to Of Sunshine and Laughter and entry for the January Writing Contest for the World-Building Alliance.

Published 2013-01-22 18:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-01-22 18:10:01 UTC

Bedtime Story

Author’s note: I do not own My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It belongs to Hasbro and Lauren Faust.

The Young Alicorn Chronicles:
Of Chaos and Spirits
By M1Garand8

*1*
Bedtime Story

In a small hut of thatched roof, grey stone and mortar near the center of the quaint little town of Trottingham was a slate-grey unicorn in her late prime, whose off-white mane tied up in a bun, sat at the front of a simmering fire of a hearth.

The hut was cramped. Apart from the three shelves of books, there was the aforementioned hearth, a large pile of hay that served as a King-sized bed and a small dining table for three. The hut also served as the town library for the ponies of Trottingham.

Presently, the unicorn, whose name was Silver Mark, kept her eyes intently on the book which sat on the table in front of her. Every few minutes or so, her eyes would drift to the bright red horizon outside the window where the evening sun was setting.

This went on for several minutes until the horizon changed from its bright red hue to the deep blue of an early evening. No longer able to concentrate on the words, she sighed and shut the book with a flick of her magic. Her daughters have been late returning home.

The clomping of hooves on the dirt floor was cut short by the slamming of the wooden door of the hut and the excited cries of two cloaked young fillies bursting into the now increasingly cramp interior. They were no ordinary fillies – each of them sported a horn and a pair of wings under the cloak. They were a whirlwind of blue-purple and purest white as they dart around their mother in joy.

Celestia and Luna have been the pride of her joy, even if the circumstances of their conception and birth had been a mystery. Silver Mark had never married, nor had she even been courted by a stallion.

She was a quiet mare who kept to herself. Being the daughter of the town headmaster of Blue Shades, Golden Mark, she was decently educated and well-read for her time. However, life as the daughter of a town headmaster was not what she wanted and she left as soon as she came of age and maturity.

The next several years were spent as a wandering town chronicler, staying a few days in a town and recording any major happenings in the duration of her stay and passing them to the town hall for keeping. As an extra, she also wrote letters for the illiterate townsponies, earning bits on the side.

It was a nice and quiet, albeit somewhat tiring life. One Silver Mark was content with until her shock with her pregnancy. It all began with a strange dream. She stood on the surface of the sun as white hot flames licked the air all around her. A sensation of wings wrapping all around her was the only thing she felt before she jolted awake.

Silver Mark had not thought much of the dream until morning sickness came. She thought she was seriously ill at first but a visit to the town physician in Trottingham shocked her out of the notion – it was very positive that she was pregnant and her short stay turned to months after which Celestia, who she named for the sky and the dream, was born.

With a foal to care for, Silver Mark could no longer lead a wandering existence and she settled down in the same town she was stuck in. At first, she continued working as the town chronicler but with the small town growing, the headmaster wanted a library constructed and with her educated status, Silver Mark was the natural choice to run it and she had been the town librarian ever since.

Luna was born two years later, in similar circumstances. Silver Mark stood on the lifeless surface of the moon this time and soon she felt the caress of wings upon her, only with one difference: a low, soft voice echoed around her:

“Please take good care of my daughters.”

Silver Mark took it as a sign from Harmony and vowed to raise the two fillies the best she could.

Presently, the two bouncing fillies were a stark reminder how years had flew by since then and how fast they were growing up, if the subject they were yelling at the top of their voices were any indication.

“Mother! Mother!” Celestia’s eyes and mouth were wide in joy. “Lulu has gotten her cutie mark!”

The younger filly beside the elder was practically bouncing as if a perpetually hyper dog. “I did! I did!” she said.

The frown on Silver Mark’s face and whatever admonishment she had in mind evaporated in an instant. “Let me see, Luna,” she said, her voice still curt. “Celestia, give your sister some room.”

“Yes, mother.” Celestia stepped aside to allow access for Silver Mark to inspect Luna’s flank.

The flank in question was now adorned with a white crescent moon on a splotch of black. Silver Mark tilted her head briefly to get a clearer view before she spoke:

“You two have been to the raising and setting assembly. Again.”

A jolt ran through Celestia and Luna at the non-question. Nothing seemed to escape their mother’s eye, never mind the fact the two sisters had been running to the assembly nearly every day until they were barred, owing to an incident where Celestia got her own cutie mark after she crashed the assembly. They shared a look before Celestia spoke:

“We know we are allowed to the assembly no longer after we disrupted the assembly… but Lulu really wanted her cutie mark after I got mine—” She was cut off with a glare.

“And the two of you stayed past sunset, which I had explicitly forbidden.” Silver’s face was a mask of sternness… until a smile broke out.

She let out a firm sigh. “I am happy that Luna has gotten her cutie mark but,” she raised a hoof, “both of you still took my house rule, which has been in place since Celestia got her cutie mark by crashing the assembly, as a joke.”

Celestia shrank from her mother’s gaze, a sheepish look on her face. “And as such, the two of you are barred from going out for next seven days and are certainly not allowed back in the assembly any longer.”

Two groans filled the cramped interior of the house. The two fillies may look defeated now but Silver Mark knew they would be back to sneaking into the assembly within the week after their grounding. They were truly enamored with the concept raising and setting of the sun and moon.

Luna stepped forward and shot her teary eyes at her mother. “W-what about the celebration for me getting my cutie mark?”

Silver Mark returned her a smile. “That will be after your dinner, Luna. Come.” She turned to the hearth and levitated the pot off the simmering fire as Celestia and Luna casted off their cloaks and sat themselves down at the dining table, eager for their food.

Three bowls flew and set themselves in front of Celestia, Luna and an empty seat. A ladle served soup from the pot. Three breads settling beside the bowls completed the night’s dinner as Silver Mark sat down opposite the two sisters.

The horns of Celestia and Luna lit as they started to tuck in when an admonishing look from their mother stopped in their tracks.

“What should you be saying each time before your meals, my daughters?”

Celestia and Luna let out a silent sigh and clapped their hooves together. “We thank all the earth ponies for their diligence and hard work so that we have the food in front of us.” Two clops of hooves resounded in the hut. The others may look down on the earth ponies and took them for granted but their little family would never do so.

Two horns lit yellow and pale blue as the two sisters dug into their food. Silver Mark ate slowly, letting her daughters finish half their food before she opened up with a question:

“So Luna, how did you get your cutie mark?”

Luna nearly dropped the bread she was chomping on.

“Um… Celestia and I snuck into the assembly and watched the unicorns set the sun and raise the moon…” She chewed on her bread for a moment.

Silver Mark nodded and motioned for Luna to go on.

“The sun set without problems but they seemed to have trouble with the moon…” Luna’s voice turned soft. “I-I felt the moon calling out to me… It wanted to be raised… by me! S-so, I did!”

Silver Mark nearly did a spit-take with her soup. “You did what, Luna?”

“I helped raised the moon!” Luna beamed. “I lit my horn and I connected, connected with the moon!” Her face then turned unsure. “I-it was hard at first… then I felt it move!”

Luna threw up her hooves and the bread dropped out of her levitating grasp. “It was slow at first… then it gained more and more speed and moved into place!”

Silver Mark clucked and levitated the bread into Luna’s bowl of soup.

“When the moon finally stopped moving, I wanted to sleep for a week! However, Tia prodded me and pointed out my cutie mark!” A wide grin broke out on Luna’s face. “I was so happy but so tired… I rested for a while before we snuck back out and galloped as fast as we could back!”

Silver Mark was slack jawed at the end of the recount. A hoof rose and rubbed the bridge of her snout. Her daughter had raised the moon! Not only that, she had done it at barely the age of eight, where a filly or a colt at his or her age could barely lift a book!

Her mind reeled. Staring blankly for a very long moment before snapping out of it, her gaze suddenly rounded on Celestia, who flinched.

“Celestia, on the evening which you had gotten your sun shaped cutie mark, did the sun call out to you as well?”

“I…” Celestia tapped a hoof on her chin nervously. “I-it did as well… However, Luna and I were discovered before I could do anything and we were chased all around the assembly…”

Silver Mark slumped onto her rump. What are your plans, Harmony? First, the foals without a father and now a control of magic and the sun and moon beyond any one pony’s ability… What foals am I exactly raising? A shiver ran through the slate-gray unicorn.

Celestia and Luna traded worried looks as their mother looked increasingly frantic and unnerved. They did not understand why their recount of their brush with the sun and moon had affected her so much.

Continuing trading worried looks, they nibbled on their bread and drank their soup, the tension mounting until it was unbearable.

“M-mother… is everything alright?” Celestia said.

The question seemed to jolt their mother out of whatever reverie she was in. Her wide eyes went here and there before suddenly settling on Celestia. Silver Mark rubbed a hoof on her muzzle, her wild expression returning to normal.

“Your mother is fine… my dear daughter. I am just a little tired.” She motioned with her hoof. “Please, finish your food, Celestia, Luna.”

The two fillies and the mare finished their dinner in silence. Silver Mark rose and levitated the bowls to a wooden wash basin. As their mother washed the bowls, Celestia and Luna busied themselves by grabbing random books of lore out of the shelves.

Soon, they whittled the stack of books down to one, which Luna wanted it to be read to her as a celebration for her cutie mark. When Silver Mark returned, Celestia and Luna were bouncing with the book on Luna’s back, the worry of their mother now at the back of their heads but not forgotten.

Silver Mark levitated the book to her sight. Its cover was thin solid polished wood inlaid with gold on the margins. Silently, she mouthed the title: The Origins of Chaos and Harmony and their Foals. Her pulse began to race. All she had known about Harmony was verbal knowledge passed down from her father and here was a book on the origins of Harmony and… this entity known as Chaos. This was made all the more curious with the lack of an author’s name in the cover and no memory of ever receiving this book.

She gave Luna a curious look and wondered where she had gotten it. “You are sure this is the book you want to be read as the reward for your cutie mark?”

Luna nodded vehemently, a wide grin on her face.

A soft sigh escaped Silver Mark. “Very well, then.” She motioned the fillies to the bed.

The two sisters practically galloped like the young fillies they were and jumped heavily onto the haystack bed, their giggling reverberating throughout the hut. Silver Mark trotted after them and levitated her cushion beside the bed and sat down.

Celestia and Luna looked expectantly at their mother as she flipped through the first pages of the tome to the very beginning. Her eyes ran across the words a few times before she started:

“Eons and eons ago…”

***

There was only Chaos.

A being of most curious proportions, with a body of a snake, the fore limbs of an eagle and a lion, the hind limbs of a goat and a lizard and wings of a bird and bat. He reigned upon a field of uncountable number of enormous rocks and gas floating in the vast nothingness. Millennia upon millennia came and went as the rocks and gas revolved around the entity, crashing into each other and nothing new came out of it.

There was no sun. The was no moon-

Celestia and Luna gasped. Silver Mark continued without missing a beat:

-There was not even our world, as they have yet to be born. Although Chaos seemed tireless, with the spinning rocks and gas going around and around, after hundreds, then thousands of millennia, even he began to tire.

Anger tore at the betrayal of his body and a part eventually split from him. Hurt and transformed by the anger, she was the complete opposite of Chaos, a being of a graceful and slender pony of wings and horn. Growing even angrier, he drove away the new entity, who named herself Harmony and vowed to put Chaos in his place.

The siblings went on their separate ways. Chaos was content to stay in his center of the universe while Harmony vanished into the infinite edges of the field in the void. Inscrutable as she was and with the indifference from a brother who found her unwanted, there was no indication what her plans or her actions were.

Chaos sat on his empty throne as the chaotic swirl of rocks and gas continued their endless motion until one day, he spied great flashes of lights in the infinite edges of the field. Curiosity rose in him and warily, he approached the lights. It was when he was near that he saw it was Harmony’s doing.

From the great pieces of ice and rocks and swath of gas, Harmony had carved out four Great Wanderers and infinitely many more Lesser Wanderers that spread into the great void beyond the edge. We now knew the Great ones as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Chaos was elated at first – with the great crashes of ice and rocks, it was chaotic – perhaps his sister did share his passion for Chaos after all. However, when the wanderers coalesced from the Chaos, Harmony’s plan became apparent – she was to create Harmony out of Chaos.

Furious, Chaos sought to destroy her work and the two siblings immediately came to blows. Although Chaos was more powerful, Harmony was more cunning. The enormous ice and rocks that flew at her were all but absorbed by the four Great Wanderers as if they were nothing and she slowly pushed him back with the dance of the four planets. Eventually, Harmony drove Chaos away and back towards his throne.

In a bid to protect his remaining ground, he spun the rocks and gas faster and faster. That merely played into his sister’s hooves – four more wanderers formed from the Chaos of the swirling rock. In a furious rage, Chaos gathered all the gas and threw it at Harmony in an attempt to smother and crush his sister under its enormous depth but Harmony held.

She took the gas into herself until it lit of its own accord and thus the sun was born-

Celestia beamed at the mention of the sun.

-Invigorated by the energy of the sun, she now stood equal to her brother and took him into a fight. Great flashes of light lit the center of Chaos as the two sibling tossed the remaining rocks and their magic at each other.

In the midst of all the furious blows, Chaos managed to knock Harmony into one of her wanderers, cleaving it in half. Harmony’s reply was fury, she took half of her split wanderer and threw it at her brother, crashing him into his throne and thus ended his reign. Chaos retreated into the vast depths of nothingness.

From the carcass of the shattered throne, Harmony made the last wanderer, The One That Was Still, which was our world while her brother watched with furious eyes. Just as our world was born, Chaos shattered the remaining half of cleaved wandered and hurled a piece with all his might at the new throne of Harmony.

Luna raised a hoof. “Is that why we call our world Harmony, mother?”

“Yes.” Silver Mark continued to read:

His sister saw the attack coming but the force was so great that she only managed to deflect it slightly and it struck with a great glancing blow. Harmony mended the damage and turned the spilled material into the final piece of the now tidy field of wanderers and the sun – the moon.

Luna gasped in joy.

With this final attack, Harmony decided it was enough. She gathered all her remaining energy and shot towards Chaos. Overpowering her brother in an instant, she bounded Chaos and herself to our world and her new throne.

Thoroughly exhausted by their battle, both of them fell into deep slumber upon hitting the world. Chaos sank into the heated depths of the barren world, bound to its center while Harmony spread over the blasted lands, their magic slowly seeping onto the young world.

Millennia upon millennia passed. First, a great rain fell and fell for years, filling out the great seas and oceans we have now seen in the east and west. Then, under Harmony’s gentle influence, life slowly bloomed. Her magic slowly coalesced into the fishes in the seas and oceans and the grasses and trees on the lands.

It was thousands of millennia later when Harmony finally awoke and now saw a vibrant and lively world. Although complex life had now flourished, it also bore the ugly influence of Chaos. Great predators such as the Hydras and Manticores fought and hunted each other while lesser predators like the Cockatrice hunted lesser creatures.

Even the elements of the world were corrupted. The sun and moon spun round and round Harmony own their own, the clouds, the winds and the rains moved, blew and fell on their own. The Chaos brought hardship upon all life on the world.

Harmony was determined to remedy this and in her partial image, she created the three tribes – the strong earth-tied ponies, the winged air-tied pegasi and horned magic-tied unicorns and together, they were each an aspect and the representation of Harmony’s will.

They were sent forth to wrestle the influence of Chaos from his grasp. The earth ponies’ innate tie to the earth allowed them to grow crops out of the chaotic landscape, the pegasi’s innate tie to the sky allowed them to manipulate clouds and thus weather and the unicorns’ magic took control of the sun and moon and ended its chaotic tumble across the skies.

At the same time, Chaos awoke. Although bound to the center of the world, he could sense vast magic of Harmony all over the lands above him. No longer willing to let his sister triumph over him, he also made his move to counter Harmony.

From the elements of the world, he created the spirits. With the vague look of a longer snouted and thinner hooved earth pony and a quality of ethereality, they were a mockery of the image of the three tribes.

The spirits were unlike any life on the world – the ice-tied Windigoes fed on hatred, the earth-tied Dust Devils fed on despair and desperation, the wood-tied Wishers fed on desire, the water-tied Sirens fed on sadness and the wind-tied Rustlers fed on anger.

At his command, they set forth, wreaking havoc upon the three tribes. The Windigoes spread hatred and froze everything with its breath, the Dust Devils spread despair by smothering crops, the Wishers disrupted everything by playing on everypony’s desires, the Sirens spread depression amongst the coastal and delta regions, enticing ponies to give up their lives and the Rustlers drove ponies apart with anger.

There was almost nothing she could as she watched the foals of herself suffer under the foals of her brother until she hit upon an idea – she sacrificed a part of her magic and imbued it amongst the three tribes.

Her magic instilled five core Elements into the three tribes. Kindness, Generosity, Honesty, Loyalty and Laughter were their names and as long as the ponies held true to them, Harmony and they would prevail. It was a success and the five Elements held the spirits at bay.

However, it was also too late. In the meantime, the three tribes had fragmented and the elements merely forced them to band amongst their own tribe. The earth ponies formed the United Lands of Earth Ponies, the pegasi formed the Pegasi Republic and the unicorns formed the Monarchy of Unicornia which all three persisted to this day.

By now, Harmony had tired of the endless conflict between Chaos and herself and she disappeared from the face of the world and into chaotic depths to confront him. Harmony had finally realized that the fighting must stop.

If Chaos and Harmony could rule together, perhaps Order would follow and there would be peace amongst the ponies and the spirits but the anger towards her perceived betrayal of Chaos – born of the moment he tired – was too great for him to listen to reason.

It was not known what had later happened but I fear that the fight between Chaos and Harmony would not cease in the near future. Although the spirits have been quiet for the past centuries, the rift between each tribe grew wider each passing day and one day the spirits shall return and Chaos would reign again…

-- Starswirl the Bearded

Silver Mark closed the back cover of the book. Her face was solemn as she looked on at the two sleeping faces of her daughters. Who is this Starswirl and what exactly is your plan, Harmony? Sending your daughters to the world through me and created in your full image. Gentle snoring answered her question.

The slate-gray mare got on her hooves, her cushion levitated in tow. Trotting back to the dining table, several books of lore wrapped in the white aura of Silver Mark’s magic set themselves onto the table. Flipping the first book open, she would find her answers tonight.

Perhaps she would learn of Harmony’s plan.

Author's Note

Wow, I can’t believe I finished this story in two sittings, on bad eyes no less (I still have double vision right now). So, this is my entry for the January Contest for the World-Building Alliance and it’s my take on the creation myth of the world of Harmony and its current inhabitants, particularly the ponies and the spirits.

You may notice the omission of other races I have listed in the World Building section of my profile but since this is a creation myth written by a pony (Starswirl the Bearded), not all the details there are essentially correct, just like how the Hearth Warming Eve pageant story was full of plotholes and certainly the lack of Saddle Arabians, dragons and the Griffons as they have yet to be encountered at the time.