Solaris System, Equis, Kingdom of Unicornia
1393 CE Celestial Standard Calendar

Celestia awoke to a near-instant deluge of sounds and sensation. Voices, many of them faded or distorted, echoed into her rapidly swiveling ears from every direction in tandem with the sound of dripping – and fully running further in the distance – water. She also felt a stiffness of the limbs that was pervasive and nagging, thirst but no pangs of hunger, yet all that she could see was light.

Light brighter than staring into the sun itself.

Two of the faded voices rose to prominence in Celestia’s ears, or was it in her mind? One was dignified and masculine, the other feminine, musical, and powerful yet wistful all at once. Any perception of time or location for her was currently impossible, unreachable.

“Will they ever be the same again?”

“We can only hope. Your species has always been the most robust in all racial facets, including mastery of bright matter, neural physics, the arcane... It was a reason why equinity, Forerunner, and so many others bowed before you…”

“Once.”

“Indeed… it will require more resources than we can currently must searching for the means to restore their memories in full, and it would be ideal that they not awake to a divided galaxy.”

“Then these cryptums shall safeguard my daughters until the war is over.”

“Sister?”

Luna. Her sister’s voice was the first truly recognizable, tangible thing out of the surreal maelstrom that was currently Celestia’s world.

Two voices again became most distinguishable from the cacophony of whispers, both masculine and one the same as before, the female’s voice having been replaced by that of a rich, wisened male’s.

“Archon, answer me with absolute verity from one warrior to another: do you fear their fanaticism?”

“Fear? No. We hold The Mantle. We purged the galaxy of all life in order to save it from one of the greatest foes it – we – have ever known.”

“Ayah. The sisters read stable as always; shall we be off? Offensive Bias whispers of the enemy utilizing the Alicorns’ long-discarded weaponry for their own.”

“Cellie … Tia! Are you hearing my voice? Please, answer!” Luna urged, from somewhere far closer than the impossibly distant voices of the others.

A new powerful and musical voice appeared, male, even more wistful, and so faded, that it was the last of them that Celestia heard as reality quickly began to overtake the neural maelstrom sparked by her reawakening.

“We can work miracles no longer; create and rule no more. Thus passes the torch of the Mantle. The fight is yours to finish, now.”

“Sister? Can you hear me? Are you secure of your wits?”

“In your quests and trials ahead: may amity and harmony guide you to the reclamation.”

Then it all passed.

Celestia’s response was an unsteady, indiscernible murmuring to Luna as she struggled to shake off the lingering effects of exiting deep magical stasis. Such a stupor would have sufficed to put an Ursa Major awakening from hibernation to shame, were it not for the characteristic regal countenance of the alicorn herself.

As Celestia gathered her bearings, the older alicorn’s brain was in bizarre state of fugue. Like one who had just woken up from a most profound dream, untold vast amounts of interconnected memories and recollections in her mind were rapidly fading into vague oblivion in the neural maelstrom’s wake. So rapid and unimpeded was the process of forgetfulness, that Celestia could scarcely muster enough concentration to produce an answer for her sibling.

The addition of painfully bright light assaulting Celestia’s unadjusted eyes was certainly of no aid.

“Yes…yes I can, Luna,” she answered finally, after a whole thirty seconds of staring at her sister in a daze. Celestia flexed her muscles, undulated her wings, and occasionally fluttered her eyelids open as much as they would allow in the glaring light. “I am whole in body, at least.”

Luna prodded at the ground in a fit of puzzlement, raising an eyebrow. “In body, you state? That much remains obvious. But what of the mind?”

“I…” Celestia delayed her response to take note of her surroundings and demystify the unfolding situation. Her eyes had finally acclimated enough to sufficiently make objects out in the most acute of detail. Luna stood before Celestia with the irregular stone surfaces of a cave or grotto behind, and the light of the sun from the waterfall-shrouded cave exit combining with a dull blue interior glow served to illuminate her form.

She was clearly a fellow alicorn of slightly shorter stature, but whose silver hair, cyan eyes, and beautiful features nevertheless commanded respect and admiration.

“My memory is … I can’t seem to recollect anything … about us. Other than our names, and that we’re family, I know not where to begin, nor how to fully explain. I feel as if my very vocabulary and comprehension itself has been… reduced or regressed. Hmm... ” She looked at her sibling with her eyes suddenly widening. “How do you fare?”

“Much better. My body is whole, and while stiff like your own, thankfully lacks the extra weight from… what we suspect must have been the ample partaking of excess sweets.” Luna rewarded her sister’s subsequent deadpan with a pearlescent grin.

Her grin quickly faded away as she looked over Celestia’s shoulder and finally noticed something else in the cave besides just stone and glowing fungi, as well as just how large the cave truly was.

“Tia, behold! What architectural wonder have my eyes fallen upon? It’s appearance and construction garners recognition … yet my memory refuses to yield. We are the same, in that aspect.”

“Impressive… I do not know what else to say of this…” Celestia replied, eyes widened as she followed her sister’s gaze. The sight before her was certainly less than mundane, from her perspective.

Deeper into the cave was a massive sphere with a metallic sheen. Blue geometric lines were etched this way and that into its surface as it hovered just a few centimeters above the grotto floor, its mass defying gravity effortlessly.

Both sisters’ eyes continued to rove across the object’s contours. It’s design appeared mathematically perfect, and some of the glowing etchings converged on a large, three meter-tall opening towards where the sphere nearly touched the ground. Piercing white light was visible on the inside, as if it were filled with nothing put pure energy.

While Celestia approached it to investigate further, Luna felt an odd stirring in her memory as she continued to gaze upon it from afar.

“Is this… do you suspect this is what we emerged from, Luna? This… machine?”

“Not just machine, Tia… something in me seems to be whispering ‘keep,’ or ‘haven.’ Any more accurate terminology easily eludes my grasp. I…” Luna paused without warning, her eyes going wide as she focused on the supposed entry point into the construct.

Celestia’s eyes widened in turn as Luna began humming a mysterious seven-note melody that resounded about the cave with an ethereal edge to its cadance.

The previously silent machinery in the cave seemed to vibrate gently and glow back in response, systems activating after untold millennia of inactivity and dormancy. The air charged with magic, the machinery repeated Luna’s short melody back to her, and then the metallic sphere subsequently began to collapse and fold in on itself in a display of technology that left the alicorns completely baffled.

The pink mane atop Celestia’s head began to swirl in the air for a few moments from the upswing of magical energy, as did Luna’s before they at last returned to normal.

Within seconds, all that remained of the construct was a neatly-formed metallic platform on the grotto floor roughly a meter in diameter. For the next sixty seconds that followed, the sisters continued to regard the area with wide-eyed awe, before Celestia said, “Well… that just happened.”

“Indeed… I cannot even begin to explain.” Luna rubbed at her mane as she gradually found her words. “Oh! Sister, the sunlight! It beckons to us, shall we venture forth?” A blue hoof gestured towards the sunlit wall of water ahead.

After a moment’s cursory inspection of the now familiar cavern, the older alicorn nodded. “As opposed to peering at the same groupings of rocks in an attempt to divine who exactly we are and where we came from? By all means. I’d rather that then tamper or be around whatever that construct was. However, we should eventually investigate what made you hum like that.”

Luna grinned in spite of herself, being the first to zoom out of the mouth of the cave and set hoof in the sunshine beyond, parting the waterfall that enshrouded the entrance from external view.

As opposed to the ancient machinery that had, up until recently, been active within the cave, what greeted the alicorns as they emerged out into the world and shook the water from their coats was nothing less than unparalleled natural beauty.

The cave entrance was situated in a medium-sized pond fed by the waterfall in what would otherwise have been a hilltop at the foot of a small mountain range, secluded by a small section of woods.

Their position overlooked a sleepy-looking temperate region of rolling pastures, meadows, and much to duo’s interest, plowed fields populated with some form of crops that surrounded a cluster of quaint-looking structures. Low streams of smoke exuded from a couple of chimney tops; the area was obviously inhabited by intelligent beings.

As the sisters set about to investigate just who said beings may actually be, a few of them had already taken notice of the two alicorns, and neither groups’ presence there was a coincidence.

On a distant hill, a group of unicorns garbed in simple brown and green robes made a show of occupying themselves in the task of harvesting vegetables, though they were far from simple farmers, if the glowing armor concealed beneath their robes was any evidence.

“They’ve awoken,” one of them stated simply, not looking up from his basket of cabbages.

A mare nodded as she began pulling a cart full of more cabbages. “We’ll pass along word to the Emperor and his officials. He will be beyond elated.”

“But what of the technology they are leaving behind in the cavern? We must secure it before the locals discover it and think it's a monument constructed by their gods.”

“Worry not,” a third ‘farmer’ dismissed with a wave of his hoof. “The alicorns will take care of it. Looking after the sisters is our task, for the time being.”

“Would it make much difference to let the primitives find the Imperium machines, anyhow? If those two are out and about now, then it already means the world will be changing,” another mare argued.

“We cannot allow cultural contamination of such a scale as that, they haven’t even industrialized yet!”

“If there is one thing we can all agree upon,” the first stallion declared as he tried one of the freshly-harvested vegetables for himself, “new genesongs are activating in every equine lineage that still carries them, as we speak. Regardless of what transpires from here on, or how, the course of history has just been changed.”

Author's Notes:

A small but lore-critical event for things to come.

New update: Chapter one of the rebooted story coming next week!