I’ll find him.
That’s what I’ve told myself to keep myself going, to force myself to carry on through this lifeless corpse of a kingdom, to ignore my wounds and however many infections are probably doing their best to break me even as I keep walking.
I’ll find him.
I’m not even sure where I am right now. Everywhere looks the same since the blast, just a bunch of burnt out husks that used to be homes and bodies littering the streets. I guess it could be Manehatten, some of the buildings look big enough at least but I never went there so how would I even know?
I’ve got to rest for a bit before I can carry on, I’ve ignored my burning hooves long enough but I swear to Celestia if I have to walk much longer without a break my legs are going to fall off.
There’s a bench here. I’m not exactly sure how this stayed standing but what the hay I’m not going to complain. It literally feels like my pain is washing away when I sit down these days but it’ll come back, no doubt about that. When I catch the bastard who did all this I’ll pay him back tenfold for every bit of pain he’s inflicted on everypony, I’ll avenge every life he crushed and show him why we were Celestia’s first line of defence.
I’ll find him.
I’m sure it isn’t healthy to make murder your goal in life but then again it also isn’t healthy for some psycho to utterly destroy everything you held dear to you and leave you to wander the remains until you drop dead, is it?
The tears are trying to leak out again and yet again I hold them back. I don’t even know why I bother anymore with trying to hide how I’m feeling it’s not like there’s anypony left to judge me in this dead world.
Well except for one.
I’ll find him.
The pain has faded enough that I can walk again and good thing too because for every second I wait the monster gets further away.
I’ve taken to calling him that recently; The Monster. I know it isn’t true, this isn’t Discord or Chrysalis or some other evil creature that has this sort of destruction in its’ nature, this is no Beast of Tartarus that escaped on to our land and not some natural disaster with no one to blame.
Yet still, I feel like I have to call him The Monster.
It’s better than accepting that one pony could honestly wish for this.
***********
I’ve found a clue for the first time in my long journey across this wasteland. For so long I’ve just been wandering, no plan other than praying I run into The Monster and then if somehow all the stars align praying I have enough strength left to put him down.
After so long of that even this tiny clue is like a blessing from Celestia herself.
Granted I don’t think I’d normally be so happy to find a note written in somepony’s blood. Please Celestia let that at least be his own blood and not somepony elses. It was stuck to the remains of a wagon, looks like he ditched it and didn’t take anything.
Maybe he’s too weak to even carry his own possessions? Good. It’ll make it easier for me.
I took the note and carried on past the wagon, most of the stuff in it was junk anyway.
I’ve done it, I’ve finally done it!
Anyone who finds this you may thank me as your saviour, I have survived the fall of Equestria and now I shall search for my fellow ponies, those who were worthy enough to survive and I will lead us to a new way of life, safe from the pestilence and evil that threatened our land, I have defeated it.
Reading that almost makes me physically ill. Can he honestly believe it? Is he lying to himself or is he so deluded that he actually believes he is a saviour?
Doesn’t matter. He’s a monster, a demon and I’m going to kill him.
I’m carrying on down this path. I’ve been walking south, I think, from Manehatten for... I dunno, a week? Things are starting to look slightly familiar again, I must be getting back to the part of Equestria where I used to live before all this.
There’s two bodies up ahead. I can feel a fresh stab of grief in my heart at their position, it seems that these two had been clinging to each other when it all ended. That’s yet another small comfort that was robbed from me...
It was a nasty storm order for the time of year, usually we only saw storms this bad later into winter, somepony must have screwed up at the weather factory again. I yelped as I got a mild zap from one of the smaller, harder to control clouds again.
“You okay?” I smiled at the sound of her voice. They say every cloud has a silver lining, well for me it was very true; the only upside to these awful storm clouds was that the weather team tended to recruit any Pegasi looking for a little extra on the side.
“Yeah I’m fine.” My hoof really was only slightly singed anyway but it gave me an excuse.
“Hey Thunderlane, cover my station!” I didn’t give him time to actually answer me and just flew off to the nearest calm cloud to plop down with my wall eyed friend.
“Do you want me to wrap it?” As much as I loved her as a friend, I didn’t exactly trust Ditzy as a nurse.
“Nah, this storm’s almost ready anyways, I’ll do it when I get home.” I stretched my wings out and relaxed onto the cloud more, if I hadn’t wanted to talk with Ditzy I probably would have dozed off.
I hated that job anyway, Ditzy had the right idea to be her own boss and work the mail. Okay so maybe it wasn’t the right idea for those of us who actually wanted to get their mail but she always worked so hard.
Still, eventually I had more than enough motivation to never quit that job for any reason.
“I hope so, I don’t want my little muffin to be scared.” Ditzy said, looking down at Ponyville with concern.
“I know what you mean.” I whispered, a smile on my face as I thought of my own little filly waiting at home.
“She’s adjusting to it then?” Ditzy asked. She looked proud of me and she’d even made both her eyes focus.
“Yeah. Not like she needed to be convinced, you should have seen her face when I told her. She’s worth any sacrifice.”
“Even if you can’t follow your dreams anymore?”
That still hurt. Looking around at this expanse of dead trees, scorched earth and perpetually black skies, I really have to wonder if any dreams are still alive anymore. Celestia knows we could use something.
But I told her what I knew was the truth.
“Even if I have to give up everything I aspired to I’ll always provide for her, and if that means I can’t follow my own dreams then that’s fine. Because you see Ditzy, I’m sure you can understand; dreams are what we want our lives to be, we dream of better because we think we’re missing something that could make it perfect. If I can truthfully say to myself that I’ve made her happy... well who needs dreams when my life is perfect?”
These memories of better times hurt more than any cut or illness but they’re a necessary pain. In this desolate land where hopes could very well come to die en masse, it’s all too appealing to just give in, lie down my head and wait for the world to bury me along with everything else.
But no.
I won’t.
Because I have purpose.
One last thing to do, one final job before I’ll let myself fade. I’ll earn my rest.
I’ll destroy The Monster that ruined this land.
************
How dare he.
He has no right to be in this place, to infect something so pure with the blackness of his heart and remind us all of the worst our world could offer.
Of course, I know that this is no holy land or ancient shrine.
But I’ll be damned if I’ll ever forgive him for setting foot in my home after everything he’s done.
Ponyville had never looked so grim. This was not the chaotic madness of Discords’ invasion and it wasn’t the parasprite rampage that we could just build up again; the scent of death was in the very air, buildings and corpses both little more than skeletons.
Except for one.
There he was right in the centre: it was like he’d been waiting but he hadn’t seen me yet, he was stacking what looked like a pile of bricks and mortar into a pile and barely seemed to even notice where he was. The smile on his face was that of a mad stallion, a shattered mind that refused to comprehend where it was.
I couldn’t help myself. I charged.
He didn’t turn quickly enough to stop me flinging myself on him, pinning his hooves above his head before he even had a chance to defend himself. He opened his mouth to say something but I never did find out what pathetic lie or plea he planned to spin, I was more interested in knocking out every single one of his teeth and sinking my hoof into that evil face of his, his eyes took several blows before they caved in on themselves, blood spewing from the sockets while he roared in pain.
That only made me angrier, what right did he have to complain of pain, to wish for it to stop when he himself had brought unimaginable pain to so many? He had none. His face was little more than mush by the time I finished pounding down on it with all the strength I could put into my forelegs. His mane had been mostly blue when I started my assault but now it matched the scarlet that had previously only formed the tips of his spiked hair, soaked from the copious amounts of blood and brain matter leaking from a thoroughly shattered skull.
I fell back onto my haunches. It had been too quick. There had been pain, oh dear Celestia yes, but I had ended it before I truly let him suffer.
It’s funny really; I convinced myself that I didn’t have to hold up to any ideal anymore, that I could become a rabid beast for all anypony would ever know or care and that certainly this monster who had destroyed our very way of life would suffer at my hooves.
But no. Maybe once upon a time I would have believed those thoughts. But not anymore, not after everything I went through; this monster had destroyed my life, but the important thing I would hold to wasn’t that my life or the lives of my friends was over but that it had happened.
And while I thought about that, it was only then, in that instant, that I realised that maybe I had been worthy. Who knows, maybe it was just at that moment or maybe it had always been true.
But for the first time I truly felt like I had earned my Element.
Now for one last show.
Somepony once said something about the end of the world. I don’t have time for these things but with the company I once kept it’d be hard not to pick up a thing or two. This supposedly genius pony said “the world shall end, not with a bang, but with a whimper”.
Time to prove him wrong.
I extended my wings for the very first time since everything had ended. I forced myself for however long I had slogged through this relic of a once great kingdom to use my hooves, I would need all the strength of my wings to pull this off.
I kicked off for the last time and shot toward that dark, cloudy sky like a bullet.
In truth I had no guarantee that anypony would even be alive to see this. But if there was even the slimmest chance, the merest sliver of hope that somepony else had survived, they’d have one hell of a rallying call to come together when I was finished.
I could feel the mach cone forming around me. Just a bit more...
“Really!? You really mean it!”
No, not now.
“Of course I mean it. I would never lie about this to you.”
You’ll see her soon, keep focused for now you stupid filly.
I flattened myself as much as I possibly could, for the first time this truly felt impossible.
“I love you Rainbow Dash.”
That did it. Those five words, spoken from the mouth of my daughter, were all that I needed, the final push.
Forget the world, existence itself seemed to go on break as I broke through the sound barrier for the last time: I heard the deafening blast that always accompanied a Sonic Rainboom but I barely registered it.
Exhaustion finally took over, my wings failed me for the first and last time in my life.
I fell. As I plummeted I passed through the great ring, a spectrum of colour that had blasted a hole right through that black sky. I could actually see sunlight through it.
“I’ll really be your daughter!”
“Daughter, sister, I don’t think it really matters Scoots. What’s important to me is that I’ll always look after you, I just hope I’ll be the family you deserve.”
“You’re better than anypony could deserve Rainbow Dash!”
“Not possible Squirt. You deserve the best that the world can offer.”
I was growing closer to the ground now. Ponyville was coming back into focus and, if I was getting my angles right, I knew exactly where I was going to end up crashing.
Fitting I suppose. Guess even death has a sense of nostalgia.
I was content. One more time crashing through Twilight’s roof (although I’m pretty sure this was going to hurt a lot more than the other times) and I’d be free from this world.
I’d see Scoots and my friends again.
Maybe this world will carry on without us or maybe it will be forgotten and swept away. What I know is that whatever waits after death, it won’t stop me.
Death, Life. Put anything in my way, it won’t stop me. My friends, my family; I’ll fight anything to always be by their side.
Because in the end, I have finally proven, to myself if nothing else.
That I am Loyalty.
Author's Note
My grammar tends to suffer due to ADD and Dyslexia, if it has affected the writing here I apologise.
