Then.

Three and a half thousand years before the dawn of the Anno Harmonia.

Icy-blue eyes opened, their first sight a view of a white sky and a blizzard swirling about a lonely mountain top covered in crisp, virgin snow.

For a moment, the eyes simply watched the storm as it whirled and thundered, entranced by the pattern of snow as it swirled about the sky, passing between and about the mountains.

Then the eyes blinked. A single hoof planted itself on the ground, pushing upward, the other three slowly placing themselves as well to support a grey body as it stood. Grey wings flared outwards, stretching like the wings of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.

A grey horn jutting from a narrow, long skull sparked, as though testing its ability to even do so. The eyes blinked once again, adjusting themselves to the sights around them.

The mountains were tall, craggy things, like teeth sprouting from the ground. The owner of the eyes could not have guessed that others called them Dragon’s Teeth… and yet the owner of those eyes knew it, as surely as she knew her own name. For a moment, how she knew (for she was a ‘she’, she knew that much) was a source of curiosity.

An inheritance? A memory passed on?

There was no consciousness of what and how much she knew exactly. She pondered it for a long moment: everything she was, everything she was destined to be, existed within her mind, but it was like looking at a vast library that you had all to yourself; knowing that you could read any book you wanted and yet not knowing where to start. And yet even as she thought this, a single word came to her consciousness.

Celestia, she thought.

She turned her head frantically for a moment, as though expecting a figure (tall, alabaster, hair shimmering with rainbows) to be standing behind her.

Yet she was alone on the mountainside. Celestia was not there. Nor was -

Luna, she thought now, frowning as the image of a dark blue mare flashed through her mind. She looked around, again almost expecting her to be there, and yet she, too, was absent. They were both absent. Both of her… of her…

Sisters, she thought, the word coming to her in a flash, my sisters.

No, they were more than that – they were the reason she existed, the sole purpose for which she was born. Two sisters to guard, to watch, to keep safe and to keep on the path. She, the third, their sentinel, to make sure that they adhered to the plan.

What path? she thought, a brief confusion flashing through her mind. What plan?

My mother’s path, her own mind answered her at once. My mother’s plan.

This, too, was a knowledge waiting in closed books, tangible, yet just out of reach of the conscious mind. And yet she ignored the confusion, the swirling mass of thoughts and other thoughts, and focused her mind on a single question.

Where are they? she wondered. There was no physical sign of anything – no being here to explain how she had awakened, no mother to guide her, no sisters.

And yet she could feel them – distant now, and travelling further. Weak, as well, or weaker than they should be by rights.

Dormant?

No… young.

Not yet full grown, she thought, realisation sweeping over her. Born young to live a childhood and be granted a life of their own, memories and hopes and dreams…

There was a brief pang of something. Regret? Loneliness?

They’re not like me. She frowned. I… I am grown, grown to watch them. I… I am…

‘You are Galatea.’

“I am Galatea,” she repeated aloud, and suddenly felt a rush of energy. No, not merely energy – it was more like…

Purpose.

‘Thou art the bastion of rationality. Where chaos rules, thou shalt preach order. Where the plan goes astray, it is thine place to correct it.’

She remembered the words, as they seared their way into her heart once again, never to leave her. A certainty filled her, a sense of the absolute, the defined. Her eyes widened, and she smiled broadly.

“I am Galatea,” she said again, the words now tinged by this same purpose and joy.

Then she laughed, a laugh of pure elation and a rush of exhilaration, the sense of rightness filling her like water. The pages of the books in her mind were flung open, their contents laid bare for her, and she had a sudden, joyous sense of knowing.

Still laughing, she spread her wings wide.

“I am Galatea!” she said once more, and this time she shouted it to the heavens, even as her wings flapped once and carried her into the swirling skies.

Now.

Equestria-Imperator.

Adlaborn burned, and the worst part about it was that Galatea had done nothing to stop it.

Upon the mountainside she stood – the Dragon’s Tooth where she had awoken so many years ago. The vast mountain range had not changed, and yet it was alone in that. So many things had changed in the vastness of time that it scarce seemed like the same world she had awoken to. Even the snow seemed greyer, colder, more like ashes than any true weather of the world.

She had let it burn. She had let years of atrocity stand, because it could be explained, or considered an allowed-for deviation. But now she was faced with an undeniable fact.

This was not what was intended, she thought, closing her eyes and trying to push the memory of the smell of burning from her mind.

But what was intended? Could she even remember after so long? Had she ever known, really known?

The plan is compromised, Galatea had thought, standing among the ruins of Adlaborn, where Sint Erklass and his kind had perished. And so I must correct it.

And yet doubt crept upon her for the first time in an age. Perhaps even for the first time since she had opened her eyes upon this mountainside and declared her name to the empty sky. She had let so much slide in her solitary guardianship, some feeling making her confident that she was not needed. And yet this was different, and she had known it was for months. Only she had been too late.

Yet though Galatea’s doubts festered within her mind, her own thoughts brooked no argument from her, as stiff and unyielding as the mountain itself. She knew, she knew, what her purpose was, what was meant to happen now.

My purpose is to ensure the plan does not deviate, her thoughts reminded her sternly.

But what was the plan? Such a nebulous concept it was – less a thing with rules and writs, more a feeling, something written into her very being, an essence of understanding deeper than thought or rationality. The very atoms of her body, the core of her spirit, burned with that purpose, and it always had, but like faith, it demanded she act almost without conscious understanding.

“Where chaos rules, I shall preach order,” she whispered, for perhaps the thousandth time, the millionth, the billionth. Her mantra, her prayer. “Where the plan goes astray, it is mine place to correct it.”

That is the sole reason for which I was born. Every action I take and do not take, no matter the feelings of others in the matter, is done with that purpose in mind.

Some would have called it lonely. Others fruitless. To spend an eternity watching only two mares, while all creation passed by and did as it pleased. To spend generations of lesser lives, thousands of what a pony would call a lifetime, all in service or keeping two individuals on a path so nebulous that anything from becoming rulers of a nation to one of them being corrupted and banished to the moon of all things…

… some would have called her insane.

And yet Galatea did not care what others would call her. Why would she? Why could she? She was not held to their standards, but to a higher calling, a purpose all of their lives lacked. She did not fear the judgement of others, nor the scorn of their eyes and their hearts. Her fears were reserved for one thing alone, one terror that alone matched the terrors of all other beings, one existential dread that consumed her in the depths of night.

This was not what was intended. It is deviant. It is wrong.

To act, then? No, more than that – to fight, if that was what was called for. For in destroying Sint Erklass, Celestia had proved one thing: she had the resolve and the resources to make a battle of it. There was no way she would simply lay down and accept judgement. No way anypony – anybeing – that had started upon such a road would turn aside without violence.

I should have done this years ago, Galatea thought. And now… now there is so little time, so little chance of…

No. She could not think of failure, her truest terror, the plague of her subconscious. She could not dare to think of it. Like all doubt, uproot it before it could fester, burn it from the mind. There was only her purpose, and within that remit she knew exactly what she had to do.

And so I will do what I must. I will act in accordance with the plan.

To act, after millennia of silence, lifetimes of being hidden, felt almost strange, and yet she feared it not. For to act even when that brought risk was better than to remain silent and risk her greatest fear becoming true.

Her wings flared open, her course set, and doubt was cast aside. Once more she took to the skies.

Nothing will stand in my way.

Author's Notes:

Galatea, meet everyone. Everyone, meet TCB Galatea. She’s not long for this world, relatively speaking, but there’s a lot to pack in and not much time to do it (again, relatively speaking).

Been toying with writing TCB Galatea’s story for a good long while, and given the Reduxverse now being a thing... well, now seemed as good a time as any to start writing this “proper” so to speak 🙂

As a general note, these chapters will be split into “then” and “now portions. The “then” portions are true for “both” Galateas, while the “now” is true only of TCB-Galatea.