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| Fifty years ago [3286] I was a young and foolish stallion of nineteen years. I had been gifted with considerable and precocious magical aptitude, but I was dissatisfied with the pace of my studies at the Crooked Tower. How exactly I fell in with the lich Risen Bones is immaterial, but he promised me both great power and an eternity in which to use it. For this he asked only my aid in pursuing a noble task: to research the abyss as a resource for ponies. We traveled the depths of Equus, first as master and apprentice, and then as friends. | ''The Secret History of the New Princess'' By White Eyes |
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| In 3293, my Master and I came upon the body of a tremendous draconic creature in the abyss, off the former coast of the Southwest of the Isle of Yore. It was like nothing I had ever seen or imagined, with silver scales of some unknown metallic substance. Huge grub-like creatures were slowly consuming it, some of them metamorphosizing in huge gassy cocoons dangling from the canyon walls. While investigating, my Master detected an ancient spirit trapped in the corpse. So powerful was this spirit that I thought it might have been that of the dead monster itself, but with his greater expertise in Necromancy, my Master identified it as the shattered soul of a unicorn. He adjured it to speak to us, and so it did. | I write this, in my exile in Oatwheel, to posterity alone, for, though I wish I could reveal it now, the cost of doing so would undoubtedly be my life. I hope that it might still be relevant and useful to whoever finds it. Perhaps you future ponies find yourselves under the rule of the this alicorn. I hope that my fears about her intentions were unfounded, in which case this document will be a mere curiosity. But if they were not, I hope that you will be able to find some way to use it against her, and regain the freedom that is your right. |
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| The spirit identified itself as the soul of a powerful sorceress of the ancient world, and, indeed, she claimed to be the foremost archmage on Equus at the time of her death. Unfortunately, she explained, she had been devoured by the monster we saw before us, and her soul and been sundered by the monster’s alien digestion. Two fragments of her soul remained in the monster, but two had been carried away by the processes of decay. She offered my Master great power if he would reunite the fragments of her soul. She said her name was Dusty Tomes, which my Master confirmed was the name of an ancient archmage who is supposed to have flourished before the Catastrophe. | Fifty years ago, I was a young and foolish stallion of nineteen years, going by my birth name, Vorpal Pin. Born to an old and respectable family of minor nobility in the Eastern Dusts, I had been gifted with considerable and early magical aptitude, and already graduated from Radiance Magical College in my hometown with high honors. I began graduate studies at the Crooked Tower, but I was dissatisfied with the plodding pace of my work. When the lich Risen Bones passed through the area - I later learned he was following up on the progress of a centuries-old program of eugenics, of which my family and others in my hometown had unwittingly been a part - I was terribly susceptible to his promises of power and meaningful work. We traveled Equus, first as master and apprentice, and then also as friends, working on a great but obscure project involving magical technology. Occasionally, we visited Risen Bones' headquarters on Teardrop Island to resupply, and there I glimpsed the vast scope of his work, but we spent most of our time away from it. |
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| My master was agreeable to helping this mage Dusty, and we made a covenant with the spirit that very day. Part of her story was confirmed when, after a few days of gruesome work, we found a second fragment of the spirit elsewhere and reunited them. I had hoped to speak with the second spirit before the operation, but my Master forbade it. When I questioned this, he demanded I accept a geas of loyalty to him. I was stung by his distrust, but I swore the oath unhesitatingly, and he said little more of it. | One night, when we were camping in the upper abyss, Bones returned to me after his evening meditations terribly distraught. I asked him what the matter was, and he confided in me something which I can never tell another person. He told me that work in which we were engaged was not truly his own -- he had been recruited too, long ago, when he was still living. A vision in a dream, promising immortal power, had drawn him to Teardrop Island. Exploring the place, he encountered a mighty spectral being, who identified herself as the greatest unicorn archmage of her time, Dusty Tomes. The specter said that she sought to take an apprentice to aid in critically important work, and that he was being considered - but not he alone. Dusty had drawn seven other mages to the island, and stipulated that the last one surviving would take his or her place by her side. Bones said that he was at first reluctant to fight the others, but was attacked, and defended himself... and that he found his will to continued existence far surpassing his compunctions about the situation. He prevailed, of course, and began to serve Dusty and her cause. |
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| Dusty led us out of the Abyss, and onto the Isle of Yore, led by some kind of uncanny sense directing her to the other psychic shards. One was deep within the Crystal Forest that is South of the Strongmount; reaching it was safe enough for a lich and a spirit, but perilous for a living unicorn such as myself, but by magic and guile, I survived. At length we arrived at the dried-up corpse of a Trench Horror, which had become the vessel for part of Dusty’s soul; it was again reunited without any attempt at separate communication. In these days, my Master often had long and lonely trances to speak with Dusty alone, but I trusted him. | |
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| The final fragment was on a desolate island Northeast of the Isle of Yore. I do not know how it came to be there, but it was located in a cave in a mountain which Dusty told us was called the Weeping Mountain, for, when the world was wet and green, the country roundabout had numerous springs. We reunited Dusty’s soul, and my Master requested that she honor her bargain with him. Dusty told us that she would, but that she required materials and facilities to give him the power she had offered. We reluctantly accepted the reasonableness of this, and began to follow her instructions. We raised a small crew of skeletons from the abandoned cemetery of an old naval base of some kind, and set them to work dismantling ruins for materials, hewing volcanic basalt from the mountains, and so forth, to build a modest research facility. After a year or so, my Master left, ostensibly to gather up his possessions from his old home in Oatwheel, leaving me alone with Dusty. She had many questions about the development of science and technology in the pre-catastrophic era, a subject with which I was acquainted from my days as an undergraduate in Docktown, and under her direction I spent quite a bit of time unearthing the small library of the commander of the naval base’s house. My Master returned, but with more than the dusty tomes and magical reagents than he had expected. He had brought with him ponies, and they were there against their will. I thought this was really unaccountable; my Master had always been a decent person, and had we not more than a few years ago saved dozens of ponies from Camel slavers in the lowlands? But he said that it was necessary, for the greater good -- Dusty had commanded it. I did not think that this is something the beneficent spirit of a good archmage would command, and said as much. My master was incensed, and I thought perhaps he would put me out to find my own way in the world, but Dusty herself interceded on my behalf. I thought I had made a grave error in judgement and apologized, humbled. But I could not forget the look of horror and sadness in the eyes of the slaves... With the new labor force, the work on the research facility was completed relatively quickly. We refurbished some of the old Equestrian facilities for housing them, and Dusty showed us a spell to conjure sufficient supplies of water for the use of our group. We were able to sustain ourselves with agriculture, though not abundantly. Much of my time was now occupied in helping my Master and Dusty with their research - to what end exactly was not clear, for I was deliberately excluded from the overall planning. As the years dragged on, my Master made more than one trip to the Isle of Yore for slaves. I turned a blind eye, again. Still, I had always insisted on doing a share of the agricultural work with the slaves, and got to know some of them. In 3310, I fell in love with one of the newly-captured ponies. Her name was Spectacular Librarian, and she was young and beautiful, a flower blossoming in the desert... Spec was a pegasus, but with many Earth Pony ancestors. My Master had never broken her spirit, despite the curse he used to tie the slaves to the island. She reciprocated my affections, but I could not live with myself if I took advantage of her captivity, and so I asked my Master to free her, that we might pursue romance as equals. He consented, on the condition - demanded by Dusty, he said - that Spec take a geas of confidentiality about our work on the Island. This was acceptable to her. Between ourselves, we planned to leave and begin a new life together, far from here; my geas forbade me from betraying Risen Bones, but not from going my own way. Spec was freed, and we left that place. We married in the Hayminnow Islands and opened a bookstore there. We had to avoid encountering Spec’s old acquaintances, which pained her, but we knew her return would lead to questions we could not answer. In 3311, Spec became pregnant with our first child. The idea of the child growing up without ever knowing its grandparents was too much for her, and, begrudgingly I agreed that we would return to the Weeping Mountain to seek a narrowing of the terms of the geas, so that we might discreetly meet Spec’s parents after the birth of the child. To my very great surprise, my old Master readily agreed to do this, the only condition being that Spec should foal at the research facility. He seemed positively giddy with excitement for us - you may not believe that a skeleton can be giddy, but through long experience I am able to read his emotions to an extent. We agreed. I returned briefly to Hayminnow to settle business affairs, and rejoined Spec on the Island a few months before her due date. I was, of course, the typical nervous new father, but the birth went smoothly, attended by Risen Bones, who, before he was embraced by undeath, had been an accomplished healer in Eastern Dusts. I do not know why, but his enthusiasm for the pregnancy seemed to evaporate when he saw the new foal. He left shortly after the delivery, silent and brooding. Spec and I were too happy with our beautiful little unicorn filly to pay much notice at the time. We named her Truthful Twinkle, after an ancestor of mine. A few nights later, I was awake, trying to get our daughter to go back to sleep by walking her through the dark halls of the research facility. I... chanced to overhear a conversation between Dusty and my erstwhile Master. Dusty was furious with him for something or other to do with an alicorn foal, which I gathered was supposed to have resulted from my wife’s pregnancy. Dusty commanded Bones to have Spec and I “try again,” and implied some purpose of hers for the foal. Panicking, I roused Spec and we attempted to flee in the night with our daughter. We were caught, and brought back to the mountain. Bones cursed the three of us to remain on the island, like the slaves. And that is what we were... My Master spoke to me privately one evening, saying that Dusty had forced him to treat my family this way; he apologized profusely but insisted there was nothing he could do, as in my absence he had made further deals with the ancient spirit. Things improved a little, as I came to accept my situation. I was allowed off the island from time to time, my wife and foal being the security for my return. I am not sure why, in retrospect, but I allowed myself to fall back into the position of Risen Bones’ apprentice. Perhaps I accepted his explanation that his sharp treatment of me had not been of his own choice. He treated my daughter well, helping to educate her. Spec feigned sterility using an old herbal concoction, and we thereby avoided for a time falling into Dusty’s plans for our next foal. As my geas was for loyalty to Risen Bones and he had admitted that Dusty’s plans in that area did not represent his true will, I was able deceive him on that point. Having regained some of my Master’s trust, I was allowed to understand something of his work with Dusty. We were building a sensitive magical instrument of a scale unprecedented since the days of techno-industrial magical science before the Catastrophe, which would allow us to detect attempts to divine the future anywhere on Equus. It consisted of a central station and many far-flung sensor posts, the installation and maintenance of which fell mainly to me. All these systems had the very curious magical dependency on carts laden with fruit. Neither I nor my Master were privy to the physical principles underlying it, but we agreed that preventing the use of such dangerous magic was at least a good end, even if the means had been highly questionable. The intervening years did much to mend my relationship with my Master, though Spec, understandably, never trusted him. In 3319, despite our efforts, Spec became pregnant again. We were unable to conceal it from Dusty, who manifested to me to offer her congratulations. Our second foal was born in the Summer of 3320. The newborn foal had wings and a horn, and my Master confirmed that she was no mere pegacorn, but a true Alicorn, embodying the powers and characteristics of my unicorn ancestors as well as the pegasi and Earth ponies of my wife’s family. I was prepared for that, but what surprised me was that the foal was born with -- (The paper here is stained with ink and blood.) |
The Secret History of the New Princess
By White Eyes
I write this, in my exile in Oatwheel, to posterity alone, for, though I wish I could reveal it now, the cost of doing so would undoubtedly be my life. I hope that it might still be relevant and useful to whoever finds it. Perhaps you future ponies find yourselves under the rule of the this alicorn. I hope that my fears about her intentions were unfounded, in which case this document will be a mere curiosity. But if they were not, I hope that you will be able to find some way to use it against her, and regain the freedom that is your right.
Fifty years ago, I was a young and foolish stallion of nineteen years, going by my birth name, Vorpal Pin. Born to an old and respectable family of minor nobility in the Eastern Dusts, I had been gifted with considerable and early magical aptitude, and already graduated from Radiance Magical College in my hometown with high honors. I began graduate studies at the Crooked Tower, but I was dissatisfied with the plodding pace of my work. When the lich Risen Bones passed through the area - I later learned he was following up on the progress of a centuries-old program of eugenics, of which my family and others in my hometown had unwittingly been a part - I was terribly susceptible to his promises of power and meaningful work. We traveled Equus, first as master and apprentice, and then also as friends, working on a great but obscure project involving magical technology. Occasionally, we visited Risen Bones' headquarters on Teardrop Island to resupply, and there I glimpsed the vast scope of his work, but we spent most of our time away from it.
One night, when we were camping in the upper abyss, Bones returned to me after his evening meditations terribly distraught. I asked him what the matter was, and he confided in me something which I can never tell another person. He told me that work in which we were engaged was not truly his own -- he had been recruited too, long ago, when he was still living. A vision in a dream, promising immortal power, had drawn him to Teardrop Island. Exploring the place, he encountered a mighty spectral being, who identified herself as the greatest unicorn archmage of her time, Dusty Tomes. The specter said that she sought to take an apprentice to aid in critically important work, and that he was being considered - but not he alone. Dusty had drawn seven other mages to the island, and stipulated that the last one surviving would take his or her place by her side. Bones said that he was at first reluctant to fight the others, but was attacked, and defended himself... and that he found his will to continued existence far surpassing his compunctions about the situation. He prevailed, of course, and began to serve Dusty and her cause.