LEGEND OF THE GODDESSES
The goddesses, says a voice, a painfully mundane and ordinary adult male voice. A story that maybe isn't told enough. I… well, I've come to realize we've forgotten what they really went through. It's become harder for us to place ourselves in their hooves, know what I mean? But… maybe it's time for that to change. There are places in the past that I've discovered, where you can really see what was inside the goddesses' hearts.
The goddesses, says another voice, rasping and echoing, rumbling like a force of nature older than the earth itself. Things came together so perfectly for them. In fact, I think you'll find that things always come together perfectly. I've spent a thousand lifetimes studying this story, immersing myself in it…
Let me take you there, both voices say together.
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Sea of Stars, 333 years ago
Song Li walked across the surface of the night sky. Her vaguely equine form was encased in a suit of armor that hid almost every detail of her appearance and made not a whisper of sound as she walked.
From behind her mask, she stared into the vortex. It led to a world that was completely alien to her: solid earth, green trees, a sky with a gorgeous golden sun that hid the stars and turned the sky a pale blue. She was apprehensive, but certain that this was where she had to go.
"So… where are you going, exactly?" she heard someone ask her.
"Someplace I might be needed," Song Li replied softly. "Or, if fate is willing, maybe even… wanted."
And with that, she stepped through the portal.
Mooneye Lagoon, 735 years ago
The tiny frame of a gangly adolescent okapi squeezed through a fresh crack in the tan stone wall of the cave. She heaved and coughed, her breathing ragged, but she wore a savage grin: she was finally free.
Young Kopé ignored the sight of the lush tropical paradise that was her home, even though it was particularly beautiful tonight under the full moon. She staggered as quickly as she could toward the gently flowing waterfall that fed the lagoon.
She placed her face under the falls, and water touched her lips for the first time in weeks. She prepared herself to lose her mind in the ecstasy of drinking her fill, but she reminded herself of something more important.
Kopé turned her head toward the bright blue animal who was unconscious on her back. "Ngala," she whispered, brushing the creature and cradling it in one of her front hooves. "Water, Ngala. Wake up." She placed the feathery creature under the waterfall. In a few seconds, it was wide awake and hopped up onto Kopé's head, stretching its neck out toward the waterfall to drink voraciously.
Satisfied, Kopé continued drinking, water pouring into her empty stomach. She was so blissful that she failed to notice the white-blue light that had begun to bathe the lagoon, light that was growing and expanding within the inside of her heart.
Clovenshire, 1,003 years ago
Princess Celestia furiously paced back and forth on the stone streets of Clovenshire, Equestria's capitol city. Highly agitated from the cold and the dark that had lasted for several weeks, she snorted and tossed her head, trying to get her flowing pink mane out of her eyes.
"Look," she said coldly. "I know that Princess Luna is your friend. I understand that you want to protect her. That's admirable… or something. But the pony you're protecting now, it's not Princess Luna anymore! She's a twisted and insane… thing… who's going to destroy the world if she's not stopped soon. And I'm the only one who can stop her. So…"
She picked up the pony she was addressing, a pale turquoise pegasus, in her two front hooves and slammed her against the wall of a building with enough force to crack the stone. "TELL ME WHERE SHE IS, SNOWDROP!" Celestia bellowed in a reverberating voice, her enraged eyes glowing yellow. "Or I swear, the pain and suffering you will endure will be the greatest and most memorable accomplishment of my life."
Clovenshire, 1,012 years ago
Two impossibly elderly and feeble ponies with wings and horns, one pink and one blue, doddered across the colorful and shifting landscape of the chaotic realm of Equestria. They arrived at the heavy black iron gates of what had once been the castle of Clovenshire, now an immense spiky black tower with red light coming out of each window.
"Here we are," Celestia croaked. She tapped the gates with her horn, and they creaked open. They crept in, slowly, well aware that they were out in the open.
"Prepare yourself," Celestia said. Luna nodded and opened her saddlebag; the six Elements of Harmony flew out of the bag and began orbiting at different speeds around both of the sisters.
The center of the orbit was not one sister or the other, but the spot directly between the two of them. Well aware of this, they briefly bared their teeth, snarling at each other, but continued purposefully toward the castle.
There was a clap of thunder, a sheet of lightning that cast light of red-and-blue plaid over the scenery. From high above them and greatly amplified, the two old mares heard a dark chuckle.
"Oh," said the voice with mild derision, "now that's not going to be any fun at all."
There was a loud crack. Celestia flinched, then noticed that her mane was now slowly floating around her as it had when she was young… in fact, she and Luna were young, as upright and vibrant as they had been the day they had discovered the Elements.
"Luna," Discord whispered in her ear.
Luna gasped and turned her head, briefly catching a glimpse of Discord before he vanished, then reappeared with his face shoved into Celestia's, caressing her chin with his eagle talon.
"Celessssstia," he drawled, savoring her name and the physical contact. He disappeared again, and his voice boomed from high above.
"Do you two like games?"
Whispering Desert, 1,077 years ago
Kolassa awakened, realizing that the crushing weight of her own body had caused her to black out briefly. Her eyes closed, she mentally examined herself, relieved to discover that she was at least still shaped like an ordinary earth pony mare.
She opened her eyes and glanced at the three ancient sandstone pyramids behind her, the same three pyramids that made up her cutie mark. The pyramids had inspired a sense of awe in her the first time she saw them. Now she wanted to get as far away from them as possible.
She looked away from the pyramids, and spotted her: the giant white bird, cockily walking away through the sand, clumsy on her large talons. The bird was about fifty feet tall with a wingspan at least thrice that number. To Kolassa, those statistics now seemed puny and fragile.
She placed her hooves on the sand and groaned as she began to heave herself up into a standing position. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that the very fact that she was alive was impossible, never mind the idea that she could stand, but truthfully she knew that what she had been through made perfect sense. She stretched and moaned, briefly eyeing her hooves and pondering the fact that they were made out of sand.
Overcome by curiosity, she glanced back at the pyramids again, just to see how tall they were compared to her when she was standing. She was a bit comforted to see that the pyramids were taller. "Right," she muttered to herself. She began to stride purposefully away from the pyramids in pursuit of her enemy, the white bird, her every step shaking the ground.
The bird turned around and craned her neck up at Kolassa, her toothy beak gaping in disbelief. "No," she breathed. "No! How is that even possible?" She then screamed in surprise as something appeared in front of her face: a single huge red eye above a broad, grinning mouth full of sharp teeth.
"Haven't you figured it out yet?" the one-eyed creature said smugly. "This is Kolassa's universe. The rest of us just live here."
Ribbondale, 1,382 years ago
"NO!" Luna screamed, collapsing to the floor of the barn. She clawed at the dirt floor with her hooves. "Cousin? Cousin, where are you? No… no… NO!"
She hung her head and sobbed. "Oh, cousin," she choked out. "Why? Why would you do that?" The tears that fell from her eyes into the dirt were silvery and glowed like the light of the moon, or like the silver aura that surrounded Luna at all times.
"And what did I just do to you?" she whispered.
Luna looked around the barn desperately, and spotted something that made her blood run cold: the shadow of a pony on the barn's wall, with nopony there to cast it.
"Luna?" the shadow said uncertainly.
"Lara?" Luna gasped.
The shadow spread out its wings and held up its hooves, examining itself. "What… what happened to me?" it whispered. Its eyes, huge red disks, turned toward Luna. "What did you do to me, Luna?"
"I… I don't know…" Luna admitted fearfully. "Lara… cousin… I don't…"
"What have you done, cousin? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"
The shadow opened its jaws, a mouth filled with glimmering, tiny white teeth like needles. With a ghastly scream, the shadow leapt off the wall and shot straight toward Luna.
Crags of Okeanos, 2,118 years ago
The young, pale green seapony screeched in agony. The powerful ocean currents found in these deep-sea canyons and tunnels had blown her straight into the path of a volcanic vent. Her skin blistered and tore; her hooves and her powerful tail had already been disintegrated down to the bone.
The words of her father echoed in her mind. "You're going to be something very special, Soledad. I've always known that."
She slammed her eyelids together tightly, but the fluid in her eyes had already begun to boil. "I'm sorry, Daddy," she said silently.
Three seconds after she came into the path of the column of unearthly heat, Princess Soledad was reduced to a blackened skeleton.
Tartaros, 99,946 years ago
Discord inhaled deeply, then proceeded to walk down the slope of the lightless, earthy cavern. He stumbled a bit on his mismatched legs; as much as he enjoyed it, he was still not at all used to the asymmetry of his new body.
"Mother?" he called into the blackness. "Mother, look at me."
The enormous dark shape deep within the cavern turned toward him.
"Look, Mother," he said, spreading his arms out and grinning broadly. "I'm Discord now!" He wiggled his fingers, and images of stars and planets swirled around behind him dramatically. "We don't have to confine ourselves to their reality anymore! Reality is whatever I say it is!"
He wrung his paw and talon together nervously, gazing up at the dark shape hopefully. "Things can change for us now, Mother, you see? We can leave. We can accomplish things together, like you said." He held up his paw triumphantly. "For I am now the purest embodiment of chaos!"
The thing in the blackness responded with a furious scream. Tendrils of smoke raced toward Discord too fast for him to prepare himself, followed closely by the gigantic shadowy thing itself.
In his crippling terror, all Discord could manage to say was "Ohhhhh no."
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But these are just some of the highlights, the first voice says to you.
A few defining moments… catalysts of where it all began… the ancient voice says, mostly to itself.
Sure, there's a lot of pain, but if you dig a little deeper there's a lot of joy too. Each goddess stands for a different thing, has a different secret hidden in her heart… and I love each one of them in a different way.
Moments of strength… moments of weakness… a life examined, especially that of a goddess, holds many hidden truths.
But really, when you get down to the true emotions each of us feels, we're all the same. You know? So, um…
There is much that remains to be seen. I intend to reexamine the tale one last time.
Shall we continue? the voices say in unison.
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Author's Notes
Disclaimer: Recognizable My Little Pony characters and locations are the property of Hasbro… and among this story's world-spanning scope and cast of thousands, recognizable characters and locations number maybe five apiece, just as a heads-up. Snowdrop is the property of Silly Filly Studios, used without permission but hopefully with the utmost respect. Please don't hate me.
Welcome to Legend of the Goddesses, dear reader. This is a companion piece to my long-running story Romance and the Fate of Equestria. This is a story meant to detail the pasts of that story's version of Celestia, Luna, Discord, and numerous OCs who, after 68 chapters and over 145,000 words, haven't even appeared in Romance yet.
Now, the stories are designed in such a way that they can be enjoyed no matter which you read first, or how far you've gotten into Romance before you start Legend, or even if you only read one or the other. Either way, both stories are sure to be full of surprises.
Romance was started at the very end of season 2, so I've largely disregarded everything that's happened on the show since then. For example, in Romance it becomes clear pretty quickly that there is no Crystal Empire… therefore, I saw no problem with completely removing King Sombra from this timeline. However, that's not to say later elements are completely ignored… one particular scene in this story does owe its existence to the Comic-Con season 4 preview. I think you know which scene in the preview I'm talking about.
EDIT: It is now a month after publication, the day of the backstory-heavy Season 4 premiere. The story is currently on Chapter 15, but I'd like to point out that I actually planned out all the way to the end long before now. I just want you to keep that in mind as you read, now that the story is even more obsolete than it was before. Thanks!
I'm telling you all of this now instead of then because I believe that this story requires total and complete immersion, and therefore, starting right now, there will be no Author's Notes in the entire story. If you know me, you'll appreciate that. Heh heh. Enjoy it.
Here we go then… take this journey with me, dear reader. Let us proceed.