LEGEND OF THE GODDESSES
Campus Cuda, 2,114 years ago
The wizened king of the seaponies was curled up in his bed. His royal headdress was set down in the corner of the room, revealing his short and slick black mane. His monstrous daughter floated at his bedside, staring him down with what looked like hate and anger.
Her voice indicated otherwise. "Daddy… you can't… not today. I don't want you to go."
King Nimo slowly turned to her. "Soledad…" he whispered.
Soledad brought a leathery hoof to her glowing eyes, yellow within red within purple. "I can't cry," she commented. "I can't even pretend to… but please, Daddy… don't go."
The king extended his own hoof, and Soledad grabbed it between both of hers.
"I am on my deathbed as we speak," he muttered. "The matter is not open to discussion. The important thing to speak of now is that, within the hour, you will be the queen."
Soledad hung her head. "No… no, Daddy, I don't want to talk about that."
"You listen to me, Soledad," Nimo growled. "You must listen. Many kings and queens can afford to make mistakes, for the kingdom only suffers their repercussions as long as that particular sovereign draws breath… but this is not the case now."
"What are you talking about?" Soledad said nervously.
"Do you truly not know? Soledad… did you think I would not notice? In the past four years, you have not slept, nor eaten. You do not draw breath. Don't you see? You died that day in the Crags of Okeanos. Surely this means that you will never die. Today, the seapony kingdom will have a new queen… and that new queen will remain on the throne forever."
Soledad stared, her thoughts impossible to read through her perpetual glare.
"Promise me something, Soledad," Nimo whispered, his voice already beginning to fade. "Promise you will spend every second of eternity trying to become a better queen. No matter how good you get, always strive for still more perfection, more goodness for your people and country."
"I promise," she said quietly. "I will, Daddy."
He nodded. "Now… put on my headdress."
Soledad turned around, then swam over and picked up the elaborate headdress off the floor. She examined it for a moment; the long orange horns, the shorter red teeth, the yellow-gold lining.
When she looked up from the crown, she saw her father leaning against the headboard of his bed, his slanted yellow eyes vacant and glassy. He was dead.
Solemnly, Soledad swam back to his bed and gently nuzzled the dark green fur on her father's lined face. She gently set his head down on his pillow, and pulled his bedcovers up over his face.
She attempted to put on the headdress, but found she couldn't pull it over the prominent, purple armored plates on her skull. She snarled and roared in frustration, ripping the metal crown off of her head and banging it against the wall several times before trying again, pulling with all her strength to get it to fit. Eventually, she managed, and she tentatively pulled her hooves away to see if the headdress would stay on. After a few seconds, she nodded, confident that it would.
She exited her father's room and glanced at the two seapony guards posted outside.
"He's gone," she told them softly. "If you need me, I'll… I'll be around."
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Maol Straume rummaged through dented gold coins and goblets in the white coral treasure vault of Campus Cuda's castle.
The spiky-haired golden seapony, now a grown stallion, dropped a few plates and knives into a tiny burlap bag, then held up a miniature golden crown.
"Badass," he commented, popping the tiny trinket atop his head. He turned around, freezing in surprise at the sight of Soledad floating at the entrance to the room.
"Maol," she gasped. "You're… you're stealing from me."
His muddy gray-brown eyes, hidden behind their heavy black lids, surveyed her, noting the headdress she was wearing. "Uh… huh. Has your father died?"
"Just now, yes," she whispered.
"Hmm, my condolences."
"Thank you, are you stealing from me?" she snapped back in a single breath.
"Well… yes," he said, shrugging, adjusting the crown on his head.
"But…" Soledad stammered. "Why? How long have you been doing this?"
"Soledad," Maol Straume said patiently, "look at me and look at you. You can't tell me you ever thought I had anything on my mind besides getting closer to the throne." He jangled his sack.
Soledad gaped. "You're…"
"Come on, why else does somepony bed with the princess?" said Maol flippantly. "Especially one that looks like you."
"Jolly was right," Soledad said in a strained voice. "She was right about you all along. I never should have…"
"Come on," he said, putting a hoof on her shoulder. "Just accept things the way they are, you and me. 'Cause you gotta know it's never going to get any better for—"
He was dead before he finished his sentence. Soledad had swung her whiplike tail in his direction, and one of the four long spikes at its side had pierced the side of his throat.
She tugged, her tail spike still embedded in his neck, whipping him around. She finally managed to tug her tail away, taking his throat out of his body along with it.
Blood started seeping out of the wound, a cloud of it floating up toward the ceiling. Soledad stared at it, and she began breathing for the first time in years, her breath ragged and eager as she produced a pair of fangs she didn't know she had.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
"Guard!"
A seapony soldier turned his head, wincing at Soledad's face approaching him rapidly.
"Erm, yes?" he said nervously.
"Could you do me a favor and dispose of Maol's corpse?" She plopped his emaciated body, pale and drained of all blood, into the guard's arms.
"WAUGH!" the guard shrieked.
"Yeah, I know, it's not pretty," she muttered. "He was stealing from the castle vaults… so I dealt with him."
"Of course," the guard said nervously. "I will… find a place to dispose of him…"
"Now, hold on a minute, it's true," Soledad said, stopping him from leaving. "He was stealing from me. He's probably been doing it for years."
"Very well."
"Now, see, I get the feeling you still don't believe me," Soledad snapped. "I swear to you, I'm telling the truth. Please… it's not like this is a secret mission. If anypony asks, just tell them Maol was caught in the act of high treason, I killed him for it, and I asked you to give him a shameful burial. Nothing but the truth. Please believe me."
The guard hung his head. "I do. I apologize."
"It's okay. Just… get it done."
"Yes, Queen Soledad. Right away."
Soledad winced at his use of her new title. "Good. Um… well, when you're done with that, everypony will probably be looking for me too. Tell them I'm hitting the Crags again."
She started swimming away. The soldier gaped. "But, my queen…"
Soledad turned her head, smirking cruelly. "What? You know that used to be my favorite place. I got tired of it after I died there, sure, but come on… I'm not going to die again…"
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Soledad swam through the twisting caverns, her burning eyes the only light source in this otherworldly place.
"I can't be the queen," she mumbled. "I mean, I can, but I shouldn't. Every second of eternity, yeah, that'll turn me into a worthy ruler… in about fifty thousand years."
"Well, hey," said several identical voices at once. "I fail to see how that's a problem. What's fifty thousand years when you've got eons to continue being a good ruler?"
Soledad blinked and stared in the direction of the voice. In a circular cave in the cavern wall, an enormous swarm of dark brown isopods sat and stared at her.
"…Huh," she remarked. "Bunch of isopods talking to me?" She sighed. "I had a feeling I'd gone a bit nuts when I drank all the blood from Maol Straume's corpse, but now I know I've lost my mind completely…"
"You don't like isopods?" said the creatures. "How do you feel about trilobites?"
They began jumping out of the cave, easily a hundred of them. As they plummeted toward the sea floor, each one transformed into a tiny blue-green trilobite, which all swarmed together and swam over to Soledad, floating and looking her over. She could only gape.
"Helloooooo!" said a sing-song voice. Soledad turned her head and tried to process what she was looking at; a cormorant, floating in the water alongside her. The crags were far too deep and inaccessible for a bird to possibly survive, yet here it was.
The bird's outline blurred and it turned into a large, iridescent blue angelfish, which beamed at Soledad cheerfully before blurring again, changing into a plump pufferfish.
Soledad glanced between the swarm of trilobites and the ever-changing creature. "You're… you're the Old Gods."
"Indyeed," said an ethereal voice. The decayed, pockmarked, and eyeless face of Carto appeared out of the gloom, her four flippers and tail twitching as if searching for something in the water around her.
"Carto," Soledad breathed.
"Yes, my dyear," said Carto, bowing down. "We have been wyaiting for you to ryeturn to thyis place."
"That's right," said Shifter gleefully, now an eel, coiling herself around Soledad's body. "We hope you like the new body we prepped for you!" She transformed into an otter, which stroked Soledad's face with its front paws. "Ever since we saw your blackened skeleton sitting at the bottom of the Crags, we knew our project was a go!"
"What?" Soledad exclaimed. "What is happening here, exactly?"
"You were chyosen, Pryincess Syoledyad," Carto said solemnly. "To be fyirst in a new pyantheon of gyoddesses. We gyave you immortyality."
Soledad blinked. "First of all—I don't like this, but I'll have to get used to the premise—it's Queen Soledad."
"Ooooh, yes yes yes," said Shifter. Now a hideous sargassum-covered anglerfish, she clapped her fins together in delight. "And we're so proud of you!"
"Second," Soledad interrupted, glancing at Shifter nervously, "I'm no goddess. You didn't make me immortal, you made me undead."
"Eh, there's not as big a difference as you might think," Hukwurm supplied. "Whether your heart is beating or not, living forever is living forever."
Soledad was silent for a moment. "So… why was I chosen?"
"Oh, this is syomething we've been wyorking on for thyousands and thyousands of years," Carto pondered. "We are approaching our ryetirement. We were nyot sure, though, what syort of cryeatures should ryeplace us." One of her flippers snaked over to Soledad and stroked her face. "Then we fyound you… a pryincess. That is how we would make our myark on the wyorld even after we are gyone—a syovereign of a nyation. Your rule of your kyingdom is our lyegacy."
Soledad gritted her teeth. "I'm made to replace you? Is that it? That's why you turned me into… this? Did it ever occur to you to ask whether or not I wanted such a thing?"
"Yes, but you were dead," Hukwurm said dryly.
Soledad felt something sharp poke her in the side. She turned to glare at a great blue marlin, Shifter, which had just jabbed her with its sharp nose. The creature turned into a red striped sailfish, the transformation rather subtle.
"Listen, when you get a couple eons under your belt, you'll be wantin' to retire too," Shifter said, suddenly serious. She changed into a sawfish. "We just wanted to make sure we got something done first… something to keep our spirits alive around here."
"Yeah," Hukwurm agreed. The swarm of trilobites became a much larger swarm of sickly white lobsters, which advanced on Soledad threateningly. "So don't disappoint us," they chorused.
The numerous lobsters that made up Hukwurm disappeared in an immense, fiery pillar of rainbow sparkles. Soledad glanced toward Shifter, but didn't get a good look at what the goddess had turned into this time before she, too, vanished in a similar explosion of color. Soledad turned to Carto nervously.
The dust-covered blind goddess grinned wryly. "The twyins enjoy intyimidation. But do not fyear. You absolutely have the pyower and the pyotential to byecome the thying that your kyingdom nyeeds… and all the tyime in the wyorld."
Soledad shrugged. "I… I appreciate the vote of confidence."
"We would not have chyosen you if we dyid not have cyonfidence," Carto assured her. "The ryetirement of the Old Gyods is not syomething to tyake lightly."
"Retirement…" Soledad muttered. "What does that entail, exactly?"
"Jyust this: we shyall nyever again ryeturn to the wyorld."
"…Huh," Soledad remarked.
"And fear nyot, young Syoledyad: you are the fyirst, but myore gyoddesses shyall ryise up byefore lyong."
Another huge rainbow pillar appeared, and Carto was gone.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Soledad rested on her customary spot on the castle balcony. She produced a parchment, held a fish-bone pen in her teeth, and began to write.
Dearest Jolly,
As you may have heard, my father died today. I am now queen over all the seapony kingdoms. The prospect haunts me.
I know that you and I have drifted apart and not seen each other for a very long time, but I just wanted to say this: You were right. About Maol, about me, about everything. And I am sorry. I want you back. I need you back. Allow me this attempt to rekindle our friendship. I await your response.
With love and utmost respect, Soledad