Chapter 1 - Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
Chapter 1 – Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
Celestia’s sun glistened across the ocean as it set. An orange glow was casted upon our little camp and both my Mommy and Daddy sat by the edge of the water. This was our haven away from Chaos where the water was crystal and the clouds were as white as fleece. We were miles away from Ponvyille, from Canterlot and the smog of Manehattan. It was clear and tranquil here, wherever ‘here’ was. Some ponies called it Glow Beach due to the white sand reflecting the light of the sun.
‘My little Lucent!’ Mommy called.
I trotted up behind her, my foal legs getting stuck in the sand every now and again. We were ponies of high-class before Discord was around. Maybe that sounds snobby but whatever. I was educated in the art of magic in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, mainly bending the light around me to create illusions or singularities. Lucent, the colt of light.
Mommy embraced me in her forelegs and stroked my champagne-colored mane. We placed our hooves together and she pulled me to her chest once again. The moon was coming up behind us and soon we were bathed in its silver light. Our white coats glowing in it all like diamonds. Daddy had been sitting there in deep thought. His fetlocks had been tattered in our long journey from Gallapolopolis and his pale yellow hooves were chipped and cracked.
‘We need a fire,’ Mrs. Cake said from the center of camp.
The three of us wandered back, Mommy carrying me on her back. A group of ponies sat in a circle around a pile of logs. I hopped down and touched a log with the tip of my horn. Shutting my eyes, I concentrated on images of the sun and quickly stepped back as the first spark ignited a great flame. Ponies gasped in awe while Mommy nuzzled my mane.
With the flame flickering a mesmerizing dance, Mrs. Cake slaved over the flame to cook our supper of boiled grass broth. I was the only foal in the camp, most of the others stayed back in Gallapolopolis. Mommy and Daddy were the leaders of this expedition for freedom though. I argued against it at first but in the end I was just a young colt with no say in any decision. It wasn’t so bad now, it was chaos-free.
There weren’t many of us. Mrs. Cake left Mr. Cake with their children, Heartstrings left Bon Bon and others like Nurse Redheart, Caramel and Twilight Sky joined to seek out their peaceful freedom. There were a few more ponies. I just don’t know their names.
Mommy followed me into our canvas tent and quickly left as she tucked me in. The quilt covered my tiny body. It was hoof-stitched by Mommy and it was my best friend. I named him Quilty for convenience. Sometimes I used Quilty as a cape but Mommy didn’t want me ruining him so I only did it when she wasn’t looking.
‘I’m scared,’ Mommy said. Her voice came out in a raspy whisper.
‘We all are.’ That was Daddy.
‘Discord will find us eventually and when that happens...’ Mommy drew in a ragged breath. ‘Lucent…’
‘That’s why we’ve been teaching him how to bend the light around him to become invisible to the naked eye,’ Daddy said.
‘What if he can’t perform it under pressure? What if he refuses?’
‘Then we’ll do it and we’ll make sure Discord won’t find him.’
Quilty was wrapped tightly around me and we both hugged each other. My stomach churned with tsunamis and my entire body quivered like a withered rose in the wind. Daddy stepped in with a bowl of boiled grass broth and placed it next to my muzzle. It smelt like nature itself, burning in a fire.
‘How do you know Diccuscord is coming?’ I asked.
Daddy tensed and sprawled out next to me, a thick forearm wrapped around me. There was a brief moment of silence as Mommy entered with wet eyes.
‘Well?’ I pressed as my voice squeaked.
Both Mommy and Daddy hugged me and Mommy started to cry. Eventually the emotion proved to be too much and I couldn’t stop the flow of tears that came to my large eyes. Then I froze as the first scream filled the silver night. The canvas tent quivered and Mommy gasped in fright. Daddy quickly pressed his horn to mine and Mommy did the same. I felt nothing but they both tightened their grasp.
I could see the long, menacing silhouette of a mix of animals. I could see claws, a paw and odd-looking legs and horns. Nothing matched. The silhouette circled around in the sky above the tent and then darted to the ground. Through the canvas flaps of the tent I could see zebras spreading the campfire to other tents. Discord hovered at the top, surveying the campsite.
Mommy stood up and ran outside the tent, screaming and bawling. Daddy rushed after her, trying to pull her inside.
‘Stop it!’ yelled Mommy. ‘Stop it!’
‘NO!’ Daddy yelled after her.
Quilty hugged me so tightly that I felt as if I was about to suffocate. Everything was happening so fast and everything was so loud that I couldn’t think straight. Before I knew it there was a loud bang and Daddy fell to the ground first. I gasped and covered my mouth with my forehooves. Mommy yelled again, crying and nuzzling Daddy. Then her ivory eyes connected with my own and quickly she mouthed ‘I love you’ before falling over on her side next to Daddy.
Something should have clicked within me, I should have started screaming and bawling just like Mommy did… but nothing came to me. I simply watched with wide, fearful eyes while the zebras set to work. Discord cackled and cackled while circling the flames that engulfed the camp. I felt the canvas tent fall over onto me and I held my breath and lied still with no intention of ever breathing or moving again.
I waited. The seconds turned into minutes and the flames died down into dark ashes. Then the minutes turned into hours while the zebras laughed at their work, Discord had vanished. Eventually the zebras left but I continued to lie there. Cramps had plagued my four legs and my neck grew stiff. Finally, the tears came in sporadic, violent, shuddering sobs.
Fighting my way out of the canvas entanglement I gave a long wail that drifted off with the wind. As I stood up on all fours, my legs aching and shivering as if it were winter I saw a group of zebras turning around. They looked confused, one looked scared. I gave another cry which seemed distant as it echoed within the pitch dark. The moon was hidden behind a thick cloud of cotton candy.
The zebras turned to look at each other. Why hadn’t they shot me yet? I ran towards them before falling head over hooves and sobbed into the dirt. The zebras galloped away while giving quick glances back. Why were they so scared of a little foal? I sat back on my haunches, watching them kick up the dust from their hooves as they galloped away. They disappeared into the dark. I cursed them.
My horn twinkled with a pale yellow light, the ivory color of my eyes. The light around me shimmered and dissipated into tiny, glimmering stars. I was invisible. It was the invisibility spell I learnt in Celestia’s School and what my parents had been trying to get me to perfect. They used it on me.
I galloped back towards camp and found my parents. Mrs. Cake was by the fire, her eyes shut and body legs pulled in close and Nurse Redheart’s head was sticking out from underneath a tent. At least they looked peaceful. Mommy and Daddy touched hooves and their eyes were staring straight into each others’. Their eyes were glassy and lifeless, much like an old doll left in the attic to be caked in dust.
‘No…’ I whispered.
I pulled their forelegs over my body and shut my eyes. Daddy’s foreleg was like a tree log but I left it alone. I’d rather be crushed to death then live the rest of my young life as an orphan in a broken world ruled by chaos. Then I cursed the Elements of Harmony and the Princesses for failing to stop Discord. My horn sparked with light and after saying goodnight to both my parents I fell asleep.
* * *
‘Oh Celestia…’The voice of a mare woke me.
‘So he has spread this far.’ That was a stallion.
I opened my eyes and the sunlight drew over my eyes like golden curtains. Like most ponies, they would have been blinded, but after working with the magic of light since you were only a newborn foal you grew used to it. My entire body felt stiff and Daddy’s foreleg was taking its toll on my rib cage as it pulsed with aching bones. Discord’s cotton candy cloud storm was creeping in the sky from Ponyville and I grimaced.
A cream colored mare that was smaller than the average adult pony but still bigger than a filly was standing by the remains of the campfire. Her cinnamon drifting with the sea breeze, the smell of cinnamon filled my nostrils and my body felt calm and collected. I yawned. The mare’s deep green eyes widened and she turned around to face me. She gasped.
The stallion next to her was a large one with muscles that bulged slightly on his brown coat. His mane was a brassy color that gave off a slight sheen and his intelligent eyes were a beautiful hazel. A scar ran down the right side of his muzzle and he approached cautiously while the mare rushed forward, quickly removing my parents’ forelegs from my flattened body.
‘Elven Spices, don’t,’ said the stallion. ‘You can’t trust anypony anymore.’
She quickly pulled me close and then stared into my eyes deeply. Meanwhile electrifying surges of pain shot up through my chest. I winced. She noticed, her eyes drooping. The mare pulled out herbs from her saddlebag and crushed them in her hooves before hand-feeding the leaves to me. Immediately the pain stopped and I felt tired, very tired.
‘Brass Tacks, he’s just a foal. Silver-Lined would have done it. Especially Daybreak,’ the mare supposedly named Elven Spices shot back.
The stallion, Brass Tacks, shrugged. ‘Whatever, just remember Silver-Lined got captured for doing exactly what you’re doing.’
Elven Spices placed me on Brass Tacks’ back and nuzzled me. I gave one last glance towards the scorched camp and vowed that Discord was going to pay at the hooves of a little foal.
Breaking through the foliage that concealed the forest that lined the beach’s edge were ponies of different sizes of color, like nymphs of the forest being awakened after their slumber. A particular pony broke through the bunch, rushing towards me with speed that could only match the light itself.
‘His name is Lucent,’ Elven Spices called out to everypony.
A stallion with a coat of butter and a two-colored mane of an intense orange and yellow that flickered like flames had immediately took an inkling to me. Swiftly he nuzzled me and placed me on his back and checked to make sure I was fine. Elven Spices looked at me with wide eyes full of wonder like those of a foal to a telescope on a majestic night.
‘Your mane… it’s sparkling like diamonds,’ she whispered.
I gave a weak smile. It meant nothing to me. The sheen in my mane was normal in the sunlight and you really had to stare at my mane hard to actually notice anything.
‘Oh yeah, now I see it.’ Brass observed.
Daybreak sat with me by the shore. The way the light refracted from the surface in a series of colorful prisms beamed onto the sand, amplifying the glow even more. Fantasy and mystics, that’s what this beach was full of. I turned around every now and again to see Brass Tacks and a bunch of other stallions dig holes, graves. A couple of the mares had started making headstones out of stacked pebbles with a décor of sea shells encircling it all.
‘A graveyard?’ I asked my voice hoarse and soft.
‘Glow Beach has always been something of fiction. Glowing, gleaming and beaming a blithe of air. It seems… nice.’ He turned to me. ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through this, Lucent.’
Turning around once more I saw my parents being lowered into the sand. One hole large enough to fit the both of them in. I sprinted forward, falling over on my face halfway but getting up and pushing forward as the sand stuck to the tear trails down my muzzle. I stopped on the side, sand from my hooves sprinkling down below into the hole upon Mommy’s forelegs.
They looked so peaceful, as if in an eternal slumber of tranquility and harmony. I smiled at the thought as the tears came. Finally, I felt something. I actually felt something, a gaping hole in my stomach with a jagged edge. A gaping hole where everything had been ripped out of me and replaced with a dissonance that echoed my emptiness and loneliness. The tears came easy, from disconcerting chokes to flowing, long sobs and sniffles.
A butter-colored hoof pulled me into a chest as smooth as stone and embraced me. Nuzzling me, I looked up at the mesmerizing oceans in Daybreak’s eyes. The hole began to fill with sand, each grain sparkling stars as they fell into the darkness upon the white coats of both a mare and stallion, hooves touching, eyes shut and mouths softly parted, giving an everlasting breath. My parents were gone from Equestria, but forever stayed the shining suns in the universe of my beating heart.
Daybreak insisted we sit by the shore again but I couldn’t budge from my spot by the edge of the grave. This particular patch glowed brighter than the rest and I touched my horn against it. Then, a flash of white light, two shining outlines of spectral figures waved at me with their forehooves and soon the air around me twinkled and shimmered. Another white flash and everything was silent.
Everypony stared in jaw-dropping awe.
‘Magic,’ I whispered brokenly. ‘You can’t explain that.’
I staggered by Daybreak’s side and he wrapped a strong hoof around me. He was bigger than the average stallion, but still smaller than Brass Tacks and the other buff stallions. His build was athletic and sturdy. I crawled into a ball against him and rested against his stomach. He stroked my mane, commenting on its glow and then sighed deeply as the heavy atmosphere proved too much for anypony.
‘Everypony in Trotten loves coming to Glow Beach in the mornings and afternoon. It’s a daily ritual for us. It renews you, rejuvenates and inspires. It’s simply magic. Nopony can explain that,” he said.
‘What’s Trotten?’ I asked quietly.
‘Trotten is a town beyond the forest, nestled in an evergreen valley with a flowing river. It’s our town,’ he replied.
Elven Spices trotted over to us and sat with us.
‘Daybreak.’ She nodded. ‘Lucent.’ She added with a meaningful tone.
‘He’s fine,’ Daybreak said as I nodded.
‘You’re a brave one, sweetness,’ she said.
‘What’s Trotten like?’ I asked.
‘Small, cozy and friendly. We have a lovely inn where some ponies live, a park just as majestic as this beach and a tight-knit community that all believe in the same cause,’ Elven Spices said.
‘We’ve been planning a revolution,’ Daybreak began but Elven Spices shot him a look and he motioned with his a hoof locking his muzzle tight.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Where ponies come together to express their beliefs in harmony,’ Elven Spices replied.
‘Where we come together to take down Discord and restore harmony across Equestria,’ Daybreak added.
My heart skipped a beat. Ah, good, my heart was still there. ‘R- Really?’
‘Daybreak stop it,’ Elven Spices warned.
‘We’ll talk more about it back in Trotten.’ Daybreak stood up, tossing me softly onto his back.
The three of us walked into the forest, Brass Tacks trailing behind.
It took me a while to realize we were following a distinct dirt trail marked with rocks and little wooden sculptures. Finally we reached a hill and climbed it. The sun beamed upon us as we broke out from underneath the shadows and I stared up at the sky. Blue, clean and clear. What if Discord found this place too? How could he have not noticed?
We reached the top of the hill and before us were evergreen fields that lasted as far as the eye could see, as far as the horizon. Below us was a valley where colorful wooden buildings dotted the center. Lilac, pale yellows, sky blues and pasty greens were the colors of the buildings below. A river sneaked through the establishment and ended at a pond by the base of the hill. It came from a waterfall that fell into the valley. A half-completed wall had been built around the tiny perimeter and a sense of security lingered in the crisp air.
Daybreak dashed down the hill with balance and speed like a pegasus. Elven Spices skipped down with Brass Tacks following after her like newlyweds. Dashing along the river, over the bridge and through town was like watching a rainbow fly by you in a flash. The deep blue of the river, the shiny green of the grass, the blotches of light colors from the town buildings and the garden full of different flora.
‘Amazing,’ I gasped.
We entered the inn, greeted by shouts, clopping and the clatter of mugs which slowly died down as we moved up the creaky wooden steps. It all flew by so fast that I found myself in a bed with Quilty in my forelegs. Daybreak was by the window, watching everything.
‘Sorry,’ he quickly said, turning around. ‘I thought you needed a rest.’
‘I did.’ I smiled.
