LEGEND OF THE GODDESSES
northern polar cap, 1,027 years ago
It was midnight in the arctic circle. As it was also midsummer, the sun was shining high in the sky, reflecting blindingly of the solid white sheet of ice that covered the ocean. The ice stretched from horizon to horizon, dotted with little holes every few hundred feet which revealed the churning black water of the ocean underneath.
Sand blew across the surface of the ice, and shaped itself into the mountainous form of Lady Kolassa. Her legs were spread wide, trying to distribute her weight, but the ice nevertheless started cracking under her massive hooves.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," she muttered to herself.
She disappeared again, and the cloud of sand that made up her being slipped underneath the water. Her body reformed, and she swam until she found one of the holes in the ice. She stuck the tip of her snout through it, then broke through altogether, heaving her upper body out of the water. Though the ice was damaged by her entrance from below, it could hold her weight while half of her body was submerged.
"So…" she continued. "Let's see what this is all about."
Deep beneath the ocean, Queen Soledad swam north, straight as an arrow and in a steadily upward direction. She was flanked by a dozen armored seapony soldiers armed with tridents. As she neared the ceiling of ice, she saw the dangling lower half of Kolassa, her legs and tail flowing in the current. "What in the world…?" she demanded.
She swam straight up and also found a little round hole. She burst out of it, followed by her dozen guards, who all flopped up onto the ice, looking comical and helpless. Soledad alone managed to keep her balance, looking upright and elegant and seemingly undisturbed at the sight of the Titaness looming over her.
"Well, hello," Kolassa said with interest, leaning closer and squinting at the seaponies, trying to see them clearly. "Who might you be?"
Soledad's furious glare scanned the ice for other signs of life. "I am…" she began, before her muscles started twitching involuntarily. She took a moment to notice the oddness of the sensation, then abruptly screamed. "YAARGGH! The light! The sun!"
Her body started sizzling and emitting steam, and she hissed like a cornered animal, raising her hooves to the sky.
Promptly, an orb of water rose out of the sea and floated above her head, churning and foaming white so the sun could not shine through it, shading her. She curled herself up into a fetal position, then raised her eyes and looked in surprise at the hovering bit of water and at the bright midnight sun shining on the scene.
"Well!" she commented. "I learned two things about myself. I didn't know direct sunlight had that effect on me… and I didn't know I could do that." She pointed to the cloud hovering up above, gesturing wildly at it, making it churn even more violently.
Kolassa tilted her head. "Are you the queen of the seaponies?"
"I am," she said. "I'm Queen Soledad. But I'm afraid I don't recognize you."
"They call me Lady Kolassa," she replied. "I'm a goddess, and I keep watch over the Whispering Desert. I've had this new life for about fifty years now, so I'd say it's going pretty well."
Soledad smirked viciously. "Fifty years? Give it another thousand. You'll start to get bored, trust me. Bored… and depressed."
Four skinny black tendrils dropped from the sky and touched down on the ice, extending endlessly. They began to thicken and shorten, until it was apparent that they were four hooved legs composed of shadow.
Annihilara's body grew out of the four legs, her wings, tail, and head blossoming out, following by her red eyes and gnashing teeth, and finally her scythe cutie mark, causing her to flinch. She looked around with interest.
"So…" she said. "Can anypony explain what's going on here? All I know is that for the past few months, I've had this itchy, twitchy feeling that eventually told me I had to be in this place, at this very moment, for some reason."
The front half of her body grew enormous and bulky, while her hindquarters remained exactly the same. Her enormous head made eye contact with Kolassa. "Lady Kolassa," she said. "Titaness of the Whispering Desert."
Her body formed into the shape of an eel, complete with fins, but her face the same as ever. She slithered through the air and examined Soledad, the expressionless face giving a thorough inspection to the perpetually angry one.
"And Soledad, vampire queen of the seaponies," she said. "How interesting. You know what this means, don't you? This is a meeting of goddesses."
"Huh… I guess it is," Kolassa realized. "And what sort of goddess are you, friend?"
"I'm Annihilara," she said, reforming into her usual pony shape. She chuckled bitterly. "No title, no 'of' anything, just Annihilara."
"So now that we're here, what do we do?" said Soledad.
"You learn," said a low-pitched female voice. "You learn and you shape your future—your own and the world's."
Beads of light appeared from all around, gathering together and forming into the shape of a twenty-foot-tall silver macrauchenia draped in white lace.
Something jumped out of a hole in the ice, spun through the air, and landed elegantly in another hole—a sleek white beluga whale. After it vanished, something else jumped out of a nearby hole and also started making progress toward the assembled goddesses—a fuzzy white baby seal with big brown eyes. It slid across the ice and slipped back into another hole.
A few seconds later, a narwhal burst through the ice and skidded toward them. Its outline blurred and it transformed into a walrus, which gamboled along until it was only a few yards away, then turned into a massive polar bear, which stood on its hind legs and grinned at Soledad.
A group of giant white fleas came hopping in from every direction, gathering up into a swarm, which all turned to face Soledad. The dust-covered form of Carto floated alongside Soledad as if she had been there the entire time.
A rust-red reptilian beast with two heads and a quill-covered back dropped out of the sky and landed on Kolassa's head, skidding down her face and settling on her snout. "Hey, kiddo," Kane said casually.
Soledad seethed and bared her fangs. "Old Gods!" she hissed. "Will you never stop tormenting me? You assured me twice that your kind would be gone forever! And now, a thousand years later, you return! What is this? What do you take me for?"
"Yeah, not to nitpick," said Kolassa, crossing her eyes to get a good look at Kane and Boll, "but I thought when you disappeared fifty years ago, that meant you had retired… and I took that to mean you would never come back to the real world."
"Hmmm, yes," said Annihilara, extending her neck toward Stellaris. "My cousins said something similar about you, about how you put them in control of the sun and the moon and then disappeared… three hundred and sixty years ago. They wouldn't be too thrilled to hear that you're still around, I hope you realize." She addressed Kolassa and Soledad. "If it makes you feel better, not a creature in the world has seen the Old Gods subsequent to the events you described."
"How are you so certain of that?" Kolassa demanded.
"The dead," said Annihilara. "I know everything they know. And, well, there are new 'dead' every instant, so I know pretty much everything. Takes me a few minutes to find the right memories sometimes, but it's all there."
"Peace, goddesses," said Stellaris. "This is our final excursion to the mortal plane. I welcome you, young ones, to the final stage of our retirement project: the first Gathering of the Goddesses."
Shifter, now a tiny penguin, sang a little fanfare. "Bum-ba-da-bum!"
"…Thank you," Stellaris said dryly, chuckling. "These Gatherings shall happen, not in any natural cycle, but when they need to happen. You, and any other divine beings who may arise in the future, will all be compelled to go to the place specified by the magic, at the time specified by the magic. The location will change… usually someplace isolated, but always someplace new. We just want to keep in interesting for you, you see. And there, you and your fellow goddesses will discuss and plan.
"Each Gathering will contain a large purpose and a small one; in this instance, the large purpose is for you to learn about the Gathering, what it represents, and what it shall mean in the future. This has been done. The smaller purpose is for my fellow Old Gods to say their final goodbyes to you."
The fleas that made up Hukwurm changed into big red ticks and advanced on Soledad; she backed away, her shady cloud of water following her. Her guards readied their weapons, but she lifted a hoof to stop them.
"Don't be idiots," she said. "I can take a hit better than any of you. Don't throw your lives away."
"I… have nothing to say to you," Hukwurm said expressionlessly. "You were a mistake. I chose you because I didn't want to think about the alternative. I was wrong." The ticks scuttled away.
Shifter, now a massive wooly mammoth, wrapped her trunk around Soledad's shoulders. "Don't listen to him," she chirped. "Sometimes, I do wish we'd gone with my idea, but there's no sense in regretting the past." She became a shaggy white yeti, which grasped Soledad's hoof in its hands. "And I can see that maybe you're ready to stop sleepwalking, that you're finally ready to make a difference. Is that true? Like… at all?"
"Maybe," Soledad said flatly. "But I don't make promises anymore."
Shifter changed once again into the young version of Soledad, and gave the real Soledad a gentle, loving hug. "Then I promise you're ready," she said. "I believe in you."
"Thank you," Soledad whispered.
Carto's eyeless gaze was fixed firmly on Soledad, but she said nothing.
Kane and Boll clasped their hands behind their back. "So, what do you think?" said Kane.
"Um… this will be good," Kolassa said uncertainly. "It's nice to know that I have peers, and a way to influence things on a global scale, not to lord myself over anypony, but to play a part in making everything better and doing what needs to be done worldwide, not just in my little region. And perhaps, as my fellow goddesses have been around substantially longer than I have, I can consult them as to how to best handle my divinity… though I have a sneaking suspicion I'm actually dealing it with it better than they ever have."
Kane and Boll nodded in unison, looking quite impressed. "You know…" Kane muttered. "You're not the daughter or the goddess we would have asked for… but we're very, very proud of you. Maybe you've changed us. I mean, that's what a child is supposed to do to a parent, am I right?"
Boll burst into tears, bringing his seven-fingered claw to his face to muffle his sobs.
"I mean, don't get me wrong, we're still the embodiment of evil and destructive unnecessary conflict," Kane said jovially, "but, heh, it doesn't affect you anymore. We're leaving this world now, and we're not coming back."
"I'm pretty sure you said that fifty years ago," Kolassa said suspiciously.
"And it was true fifty years ago," Kane said simply. "This isn't a real visit to the world, this is just goodbye." He chuckled. "Hey, now we have a reason to be called the 'Old' Gods. 'Cause there's a new generation out there! BAM!"
"But after we go… there will be one Old God remaining," Boll said solemnly.
"Yeah," Kane said darkly. "The Beast. You know about him? Thirteen million years ago, the Beast became impossible to control, impossible to reason with. So we Old Gods, we cut him into pieces and spread the pieces out as far and wide as we could. And in those millions of years, all the pieces have become fossilized… but he's still very much alive. And he'll try to put himself together. I don't know how much chance he actually has of doing it, but we want you to remember that he's out there and keep your eyes open for any sign of him. Does that sound like something you can do?"
"Yes, Father," said Kolassa.
Kane sniffled. "All right then."
They hopped off of her nose and landed on the ice next to Hukwurm. A few feet away, Stellaris examined Annihilara closely.
"Yyyyyyes?" Annihilara said with unease.
Stellaris continued staring for a few moments before speaking. "You were not planned as a part of this. You gained your divinity by chance, not at the behest of any Old God. And yet you were called here. And so you are… here. Perhaps this was… fated."
Annihilara shrugged. "Sure."
"Your cousins Celestia and Luna near the ends of their lives," Stellaris continued. "I thought that the divine spark would find them by now, but it has not. Perhaps when they pass, stewardship of the sun and moon might fall to you… yes, this must happen. I name you their heir."
"Fine," Annihilara said dispassionately. "Yeah, that's… fine."
Stellaris stepped away, gazing out at the entire assembly.
Carto floated over to Annihilara, circling around her. "My dryeaming eye syees that your cyousins will jyoin the ryanks of this Gyathering," she whispered, so only Annihilara could hear. "You nyeed nyot be alyone."
"I don't know about that," Annihilara whispered back. "I've always been alone."
"There is no nyeed," Carto reiterated.
"…Okay," Annihilara sighed.
Carto floated to Stellaris, hovering at her side. "Come then, my brethren," said Stellaris. "Goddesses… thank you. Now we shall go."
Kane and Boll joined Stellaris. Hukwurm followed, as a group of sea-green prawns, as did Shifter, a white snake covered in fur, sidewinding to the small patch of ice where the Old Gods were clumped together. Shifter then changed into a naked, pale-skinned human woman with long black hair, hunched over to protect herself from the cold as well as protect her modesty.
In a single immense pillar of rainbow sparkles, all of the goddesses vanished together. The pillar withdrew into the sky. The three goddesses stared up at the place where the pillar was disappearing.
"They are so not gone forever," Soledad sneered.
"No," Kolassa agreed. "Not by a long shot."
Annihilara merely shrugged, having nothing to add.