Author's Notes:

AN: written before the decision to coalesce the three Convergence stories into one, this prologue set the scene for another exciting aspect of Convergence - Bringing the Freeverse (AOA’s take on a “Canonverse”) into the story!

We hope you enjoy this material. ~Jed

Well, not much we can do about that last part... Sigh. So much stuff we never got around to. You guys really did deserve better. ~Fluffy

***

“You just don't get it, do you, Jean-Luc? The trial never ends.”
Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation - “All Good Things”.

***

Celestia's Throne Room, Canterlot Palace, Canterlot. February 7th, Year 3 of the New Diarchy Calendar.

Princess Celestia was not normally one prone to allowing creatures to disrupt her business, save for good cause. Normally, Discord - the recently reformed, self-styled "Lord of Chaos" - was not one who tended to interrupt for good reasons. However, when he burst into the throne room - by the front door no less - she sensed there was something else at play.

Celestia did not claim to know him well. Truth be told, she did not claim to know him at all: they had clashed as enemies many thousands of years ago, during what history had once remembered as the Discordant Ages (oh, such a long time ago), but those times had rarely seen them meet, and even then she had always found the Draconequus... a mystery. Even now, after his reformation, she could not claim to "know" him in any meaningful sense. Nonetheless, the look on his face was one of deadly seriousness, an expression that she was quite unused to seeing on his face.

"Princess Celestia," he said quietly, marching straight up to her, "you and I need to have serious words. Something's amiss that you need to hear about."

Celestia frowned for a moment, considering what he had said. Everything about his expression and his attitude demanded her complete attention - something she was unused to. She frowned for a moment, before ordering her Guards to dismiss the court and then leave her and Discord alone. A few moments later, she found herself sat before the Draconequus, listening to the most horrific story she had ever heard in her entire life.

He spoke of another world, almost identical to this one. In that world, there had been something… Discord was reticent to go into detail, but he described the Celestia of that world as having been "corrupted" by a dark power. In her corruption and darkness, she had allowed an entire world to be all-but destroyed, and worse, had gone to war in a last ditch attempt to annihilate the survivors of the "human race". Somehow, this seemingly hopeless fight for the humans had turned into a brutal and bloody war of attrition that had left scarcely 14 million of their kind alive, and claimed many millions of pony lives.

Worse, though, at least for Celestia on a personal level, was hearing that this alternative version of herself had been responsible for the death of her world's Luna. Celestia had encountered many atrocities - many of them Discord's own work (the smell of fire as the outer limits of Canterlot burned, and she could hear Luna barking orders to her company as the horde charged…), and so much of the horror the Draconequus spoke of, though it sickened her, could not move her exterior beyond a gradually more disgusted expression. Upon hearing that this other Celestia - this Solamina - had slain Luna…

Sister, we have stood together in battle, we have stood together as mad-ponies and demagogues and our own corrupted kin have threatened the safety of our ponies. Losing you was the most horrific experience of my life. How… how can this creature with my face live, knowing what she has done?

Discord was not done, however. Apparently, these "humans" had a great champion, but when he had been sent via their magical means through a portal designed to take him into battle against this Solamina, he had hatched a plan with his alternative self to bring him to this world instead. It had, however, not turned out as well as he had hoped, instead sending this champion to another world, facing yet another Equestria.

"What you have to understand is that that Equestria is different to ours," Discord said. "You, Lulu and even me - in that place, we're all creations of an Alicorn named Faust, and our creation was the result of a very specific - not to say very nasty - conflict between her and her iteration of Tirek."

"Tirek?" Celestia repeated, raising an eyebrow. "I remember him - he was sealed in Tartarus… but in this other world…"

"In this other world, these lives are very different," Discord said darkly. "And he's older and nastier than the version you fought by far. There's a whole different evolutionary process at work - you ever get a biologist on it, he’d probably laugh. Or cry. Or have a sudden hernia. Or all three."

Celestia frowned. "Strange… and you're saying that… that these Equestrias have become involved in a war… that there is another world of humans?"

"Correct," Discord said, snapping a finger. A gold star appeared on Celestia's chest, and she frowned. Discord shrugged. "Sorry, force of habit."

"So," Celestia said slowly. "This human has involved himself in another war… how does this involve this world?"

"Well," Discord said, "much as I hate to say 'destiny'..."

"I don't believe in 'destiny', Discord," Celestia said flatly, scowling at him.

"Well, call it a simpler word for a much more complicated idea," Discord said with a shrug. "There's ties of time and space and other similarly abstract - and really very dull - things that have this world tied to my counterpart's world. When I went to check up on him when this human of his didn't come…" He paused, sighing. "He warned me that those ties might still get us involved in this mess, one way or another. And it's been, what, a thousand years since the Nightmare War? A hundred years before that was the Sombran war, and another three thousand since Mol Cassar? Then of course there was my little 'test'..."

"'Test'?" Celestia repeated. "If you're referring to the Discordant Ages..."

"Specifically the first one," Discord interrupted. "And yes, 'test' is the right word."

"How can you -" Celestia began, outraged, but Discord held up a single digit to stop her.

"Maybe if we survive this nonsense with our respective marbles intact and something vaguely resembling Equestria still standing, I'll tell you why those tests happened," he said testily. "Until then, I'm not my young Faust-born counterpart, and I'm really not in the mood to spend hours arguing with you about who the biggest monster was!" He took a breath, frowning. "I'm not going to apologise for what I did - it made you who you are, and that's more important than you realise."

"Apparently it made this other version of me a monster," Celestia commented.

"No," he said abruptly, "something else did that."

Celestia sighed, accepting that further recriminations would get her nowhere. "What would you have me do?"

"Like I was saying," Discord said. "It's been centuries since this Equestria has faced war of any meaningful scale when compared to the conflicts these other worlds are facing. You've had a thousand years of petty insurrections and border-skirmishes, attacks on Roks and Griffin separatists… maybe the odd coup attempt here and there…”

Celestia sighed as her mind wandered over her history. Discord was right - compared to the horrors of their distant past, the last thousand years had been… relatively peaceful.

“Trust me,” Discord added. “What your last millennia was like is nothing compared to what awaits you out there."

"You want me to build up our army," Celestia said slowly, nodding as the realisation set in.

"I think it might be an idea," Discord replied with a slight smirk. “Those worlds are tied to us - if the Tyrants, either Tyrant, wins… they won't stop where they are. They'll carry on, and on and on until…”

“You have made your point.” Celestia turned away from him, walking up to the window and looking out at Canterlot.

It was so peaceful - Discord was right. It had been so long since there had been true conflict here - there had been colony disputes, border skirmishes, but true, large scale war - war that consumed the economy, war that claimed the flower of generations - was a memory of the distant past to her, all-but-unknown to her ponies. She had honestly wondered if she had entered an age where her ponies would never again know the horrors of such conflict, the trials that the soul endured when pushed to those limits.

You were naive, Gloriana, and naivety is the first thing you must shed, a voice in her head not unlike her long dead mother's speaking. Her mother had often spoken of facing the world as it was, not the world as you would wish it to be.

She had been a wise mare.

"How long have you known me, Discord?" she asked softly after a moment.

"Ooh, as in personally, if we're counting the wars, about eight thousand years, give or take?" Discord replied idly, scratching his chin as he did so. "Why?"

“Because in all that time, you seem to have learned nothing of me,” Celestia said grimly.

Discord raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

"You come to me with a tale of horror and death," Celestia said slowly. "Telling me of a mad Alicorn who brings shame upon this line and throne the likes of which it has not known since Sombra's descent into madness, and another mad Alicorn who shares much with me as well, if not as much as this 'Solamina'." She turned to him, her eyes blazing with an inner determination they had not held for thousands of years. "And you expect me to sit here, waiting for war to come to me?"

Discord raised an eyebrow. "You cannot seriously be thinking what I think you're thinking."

In response, Celestia turned to her throne. Her horn glowed, and the cushion of the great seat slid away, as a long golden glaive rose from beneath the throne. Though it had not been drawn for a thousand years, the weapon was untouched by time, gleaming and resplendent. Carvings of fiery maned ponies crossed the blades and sculpted flames licked the tip of the glaive's spear. This was her blade - the Astra di Irae, the star of war. She had reformed it herself - it had begun as the Regalia di Irae, a sword known as the weapon of kings, but she had reworked the weapon into a glaive, matching her own preferred style. With a clang, the butt of the handle smashed into the floor before her, held upright in her telekinetic grip. She inspected it, nodding slightly at the condition of the weapon.

"I'd comment about the fact that you sit with a sharp phallic object under your plot," Discord said, raising an eyebrow, "but I'm more inclined to comment about how insane the idea of you entering this conflict is. It's a bad idea! It's the bad idea, definite article, capital letters, italicised font!"

As if to illustrate his point, he snapped a claw and a heavy, leather-backed book appeared in his paw, where he turned it to a page showing the words "BAD IDEA" next to a picture of the two of them stood in this room, and showed it to her.

"I would rather be known as the Princess who took a stand when faced with evil than the Princess who cowered when others suffered," Celestia replied, throwing him a glance and ignoring his antics. "The days are gone when I would let others suffer because a war was not my own."

Discord sighed, snapping the book from existence - he knew a lost cause when he fought one, especially with her.

"Should I go warn my counterpart?" he asked tiredly.

"Not yet," Celestia replied with a growing, almost mischievous grin, a mischievous glint in her eye. "I'll probably be sending some ponies with you."

***

First, there was one world. Then there were two. Then, three. And then, without any warning, there were five.

The world has changed: what was once a matter of one war has now become something far greater.

Except…

You already know that this is over. You’re reading this and you know that these are the fragments of a world that will never, ever come to pass.

Tell me.

How does that make you feel…?[/i]