T Chapter 8-A lesson in History
The spring goddess was happily walking through the meadows near Olympus doing her favourite, and some would say her only, pastime, picking flowers. Many were surprised that Persephone continued to do so even after being kidnapped by Hades and made his queen; but the now queen of the underworld smiled Hades' realm was not so bad, there was flowers to pick and gemstones for Hades to shower her with, and she needed only to stay there for four months a year, which really was not so bad. Anyways she had been picking flowers almost every day of her life and only once had anything bad happened. What was the chances that something would happen? Both Hades and her mother Demeter were very protective of her and none in their right mind would anger either of them; not to mention that Persephone had brought Athena along to pick flowers, or in Athena's case to study and document flowers, and Athena was more than capable of protecting her. So even if Persephone was incapable of self-defence, what could go wrong?
Persephone heard the rustle of grass behind her "Athena is that you?"
There was no response "Athena?"
She heard the grass rustle again, except closer
She got up and turned around "Athena this isn't funny..." Persephone found herself face to face with a creature she had never seen in her long life, a creature of nightmare about which she had only heard the faintest whispers. It was an abomination; it looked like someone had taken the part from a hundred different creatures and smashed them together into one terrible monster. It was a draconequus, a creature of chaos that inhabited the dreaded Chaotic Lands
"I think you will do nicely" It said
"What?" Persephone asked fearfully
"You will do nicely. Your blood of Ichor is clean and pure, and with it we will raise the true king of Equestria from his stone tomb"
Persephone was wide eyed in shock. The discussion of Ichor, the blood of the gods, was highly tabooed on Olympus due to its connection to injury and possibly death
"Your life and immortality will be forfeit for the greatest of causes; to raise from stone the king of the draconequi and the king of this world, Discord. Come weak goddess; through this you will serve a greater purpose than you could ever have served on your own." Persephone felt herself being wrapped in a strange force that could be nothing but magic, she suddenly recovered from the paralysis of shock when she realized what was happening to her, again, and she did the only thing she could; she screamed
Athena had been studying a strange blue flower with very strange magical properties when she heard it.
A scream. But not just any scream. A scream that she had only ever heard once before. A scream that cut deep into her immortal soul. The scream of the helpless Persephone
"Persephone, what is it?" the Olympian screamed at the top of her voice. Hearing no response Athena ran towards the origin of the scream
Athena came to the place that the scream had come from; she knew this was the right place for two reasons: first, there was a small pile of wild-flowers on the ground and Persephone never dropped flowers on the ground, and second, the entire area was saturated with a strange type of magic. Athena knew that Persephone was in peril but she could see little she could do to help her, tracking was not Athena's sphere of influence it was Artemis's. But Artemis had left Olympus shortly after the last meeting to hunt dangerous monsters; so there was nothing Athena could do.
Unless. The use of Equestrian magic was strictly forbidden in Olympus. This was due to the fact that it meant that any god or goddess, or at least the ones that had taken the form of unicorns, could use spells to do essentially anything. This directly opposes the Olympian ideology of every god or goddess having one or more very specific 'spheres of control' (area's or specializations that they have large amounts of power in); however Athena had taken it on herself to learn as much as she could about the unicorn magic (she was the goddess of skill and knowledge after all) including spells to detect, and possibly follow, the magic use of others. Athena was morally torn about the whole situation she had to choose between saving a friend who couldn't save herself and following the laws of the Gods.
Well Athena had always strongly believed in the philosophy of 'end before the means'. Athena was surprised when her horn lit up with a silver-grey glow, Ever since she had taken this form she couldn't help wondering what colour her magic was, and cast her first spell.
She was surprised to find that the strange magic had left a very obvious trail leading straight towards the Chaotic Lands. She broke into a gallop following the trail that leads to Persephone.
Father, mother and daughter were sitting around in the main room of Iris's cloud-house. To the extent of Rainbow's knowledge it was the only cloud-house in the city of Olympus; however this house, unlike all the cloud-houses Rainbow had ever seen, was not in the sky but was rather was built on the ground. The idea of a grounded cloud-house was slightly absurd, but when Rainbow had asked about it Iris had said that Olympus had laws against building in the sky.
Rainbow had given her parents a quick synopsis of her entire life up to this point. Taking two hours (two hours is pretty quick to explain twenty odd years) to go through every important event in her life: from her earliest memories, to her acceptance to flight camp, to her sonic rainboom (which resulted in her cutie mark, the destruction of much of the camp, the injury of about a dozen pegasi and Rainbow's expulsion from the camp), then her move to Ponyville, followed by Nightmare Moon and the Elements of Harmony and about all of the adventures she had gone on with her new found friends (including the changeling invasion and King Sombra and the Crystal Empire even though those events were considered top secret by the Princesses)
"Rainbow I also have a story for you." Ouranos said "It is the story of this world and all the others"
"In the beginning there was nothing, and this nothing was called Chaos. But nothing simply cannot exist; nothing is the most unstable thing, or lack of anything, possible. So out of Chaos came two entities, Tartarus and Yggdrasil, the World Tree, known as the father and the mother to the primordial generation of gods. A generation that included Chronos, time; myself, sky; Gaea, earth; Nyx, night; Aether, light; along with hundreds of others whom I do not know the names of.
Quickly the others of the primordial generation dispersed finding worlds that suited their tastes. Most found worlds in Yggdrasil but some found worlds deep in Tartarus"
"Wait, I thought you said that Tartarus and Yggdrasil were people but now you are talking about them as if they're places. Which are they?"
"They're both. They are the personification of places"
"What?"
"They are places but they have physical and psychological characteristics of people"
"Oh, so you mean they are the ponyfication of places, that makes sense" The response from Rainbow incited a chuckle from Iris and a grimace from Ouranos
"Anyways, on with the story
However there were five children who did not go exploring: Time, Sky, Earth, Night and Light. We stayed at the place where the roots of Yggdrasil met the shallowest pits of Tartarus, a place at the centre of the world. While we were the only ones that stayed able to communicate with both our parents; we were unable to find any suitable worlds in the area and therefore had no real home
Tartarus saw this and was saddened by it. So he came to us and gave Gaea a powerful artifact. It was a short knife that was sharper than anything. With the power of the knife we were able to create a world that fit our desires completely, a world that had been called many names, a world that we called ..."
"Let me guess. Was it Equestria?"
"No it was not Equestria, it was never know as Equestria, this world was called Earth"
"What an absurd name for a world, anyways wasn't Earth one of the proposed names for Equestria"
"It is not so absurd if you know that the term earth is in fact named after Earth, and the proposal of naming Equestria Earth is little more than a coincidence due to the meaning of the term earth"
"Hmm"
"Well anyways, the creation of Earth caused many more deities to appear Erebus, darkness; Hemera, day, Pontus, the sea and many various nymphs, the spirits of nature and natural things such as trees, rivers and mountains. But along with the deities appeared monsters such as the Cyclops and the Hekatonkheires, or the hundred handed ones, who were imprisoned in a near world of Tartarus that is commonly called the pits of Tartarus
I married Gaea and we had twelve children together. Who were known as the first generation of titans"
"Wait, you just married her?"
"No I didn't. We were together for one hundred years before me married"
"Oh"
"As I was saying. All the Titans were happy; Well all but one. Cronus the youngest of the titans was unreasonably ambitious; he was obsessed with the idea of being king.
"Chronos as in Time?"
"No Chronos and Cronus are two very different characters; Chronos is wise while Cronus was belligerent. It would be tragic for someone to mix them up"
"Heh, I guess it would"
"So, one day myself and Gaea had a fight, I forget what it was about but it was fairly important, and Gaea went to Cronus with a proposition. He would be the king of the titans if he took the knife, the same knife that had been used to cut Earth out of the world tree, and castrate me. Unfortunately the little brat got caught up in the blood-lust and ended up dicing me into hundreds of pieces"
Rainbow was horrified. Not only from the content of the story but also from the matter-of-fact tone that her father was telling it in. "That's horrible"
"It was not much fun" Ouranos answered without emotion
"How can you talk like that?"
"It was a long time ago. You have to learn how to forgive others for the wrongs they have bestowed upon you; otherwise hate will destroy you. And holding emotion due to past events will only hinder your path into the future"
"I think I understand"
Iris now spoke up "The titans ruled the Earth for hundreds of years. In which a young titan named Prometheus, a second generation titan, created the first sapient race in the image of the gods, the humans. The humans, who were bipedal and omnivorous, lived happily under the rule of Cronus in what was called the golden age. However Cronus was to be overthrown by his children just as he had overthrown Ouranos. Cronus knew this so he swallowed his children, known as the first generation of the Olympic gods, as they came out, Hades, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter and Hestia were swallowed however Cronus's wife Rhea switched Zeus for a rock and had the young god raised elsewhere.
"Was it the same Zeus that tried to kill me in the hall of the Olympians?"
"Yes it was. And Poseidon, Hera and Demeter are also Olympians, although Demeter didn't say much when you were there.
When Zeus had grown to adulthood he went to his father and tricked Cronus to regurgitate his siblings. The six immediately started to amass forces against the titans, they had children and their children had children giving them the second and third generations of gods. They also freed the Cyclops and the hundred handed ones who pledged to fight with the gods. Then came the first true war, the Titanomachy. The gods and their monster allies defeated the titans, Zeus then took the knife, which Cronus had changed into the form of a scythe, and did to Cronus as had been done to Ouranos and cast the pieces into the pits of Tartarus.
After the war the three first generation gods each took a part of the world, Zeus took the sky, Poseidon took the ocean and Hades was left with the underworld and the pits of Tartarus. Zeus then formed the Olympians. Twelve of the most important gods and goddesses, except Hades who was not invited, who come together to discuss affairs. There was originally going to be six gods and six goddesses but Hestia gave up her place to Dionysus so she could tend the hearth-fire of Olympus
Prometheus, who had helped the gods during the Titanomachy, however was unhappy with the Olympians who treated the humans as slaves or animals. He convinced the gods that the humans would do them more good if they were able to build their own self-governed civilizations that could worship the gods than if they were merely the gods workers. So the gods let the humans go free, however they did not give the humans the tools of civilization so humanity started to slowly die out. Prometheus begged the gods to give the humans what they needed for survival but was denied. So he stole from the gods what the humans needed (fire, language, mathematics, architecture, science, philosophy et cetera) and gave them to humanity
When Zeus found out he sentenced Prometheus to eternal torture for his crimes. Then Zeus went down to the humans planing to destroy them but changed his mind when he saw that the humans had erected a shrine to him and were worshipping him, and not only that he felt that the worship was actually giving him strength.
From that point on the Gods started to compete for the favour of the mortals. When mortals went to war the gods choose favourites and when the gods went to war the mortals followed. This continued for millenia. However as the humans developed their science and explained more of their world they had less and less use for the gods of Olympus but the gods continued to try and gain favour. As the humans stopped worshipping the gods, the gods lost power; the gods had become so used to the worship that they had become all but dependent on it. But still the gods followed the humans into war; then the humans developed a weapon that surpassed all mortal weapons, a weapon of mass destruction. With this weapon the humans settled into an uneasy peace where the possibility of war terrified all of their nations who knew that the next war might well be humanities last
Then nearly two hundred years ago war suddenly broke out without any logical reason. It was not a war I was part of due to the fact that I had started my quest to rebuild your father. But it was a terrible war, within the first week millions were dead on Earth, however it was not nearly as bad as it could be because inexplicably the weapons of mass destruction were never used by any nation. And as usual the gods of Olympus all chose sides to support.
However several months into the war the fighting stopped, as suddenly as it had started, with a strange armistice. Then the unbelievable happened; humanity declared war on the gods. For the first several years or so the gods defeated everything that was sent at them; however the humans learned quick and adopted a new and brutal stratagem. First, they wiped out the nymphs; they burnt down all the forests, they poisoned all the fresh water sources, they lulled the cloud and breeze nymphs with music only to murder them, they used small machines to find and kill all the ocean nymphs; within several years all the nymphs were either dead or dying."
"How could they just kill them like that?"
"You have to realize that the humans are deeply afraid of anything that they don't understand"
"So are ponies, we didn't understand Zecora so we were afraid of her. However we would never had gone to the extent of to kill her"
"Human instincts vary greatly from ponies, humans are omnivorous which means they kill and eat meat along with eating vegetation. Because they are hunters, they have a very different reaction to a possible threat. They would attack where ponies would hide"
"But there are historical accounts of groups of ponies that ate meat"
Iris looked greatly surprised by this "Really?"
"Yes"
"Well, how do you think that these ponies would have responded to this Zecora?"
"They would have probably killed her"
"My point exactly
Then they killed everything they considered a monster, which included several intelligent races, like the centaurs, half human and half equine, and the satyrs, half human and half goat.
And then they kidnapped every minor god or goddess that they could and studied them to develop weapons that could be used against Olympus.
And then they sealed every gateway that lead to another world and would allow the gods escape.
And then they attacked, fighting their way to Olympus and surrounding it, readying their weapons for it's destruction.
Just when all was lost, Poseidon told us of one gateway that had not been blocked by the humans. One gateway that the humans didn't even know about, the gateway to Equestria. However, we had no way to get to that gateway; we were surrounded. And even if we did get past the humans, the gateway was in one of the deepest places in the ocean. So we were even more discouraged.
In the end there was only one idea left. It was an utterly insane idea, but it was our only hope. We used all the magical energy that was stored in Olympus in one last attempt to save ourselves and managed to teleport the entire Mount Olympus and every god or goddess on earth to Equestria. After the teleport we found that it had caused a very strange side effect, it had turned all the gods and goddesses of Olympus into ponies. Personally it was a very small price to pay for survival, but most of Olympus was horrified. That was about 137 years ago"
"Has anything happened since then?"
"No, the only thing of significance that has been done since then was that a small group of gods and goddesses found this side of the gateway to Earth and sealed it so none of the humans could get through. Well the only thing of significance that has happened so far ..."
"What?"
"Oh, just a feeling I'm getting"