Merge - Yet Another Ponies on Earth Story

“Don’t do it! You’re only sixteen, kid!”

Marcus wouldn’t listen to the cries from below as he stood on the edge of Canterlot. His snazzy (if not slightly damaged) coat flapped in the wind and his hands were starting to hurt from holding on to the railing. One false move, or even simply releasing his grip, and he’d surely plummet to certain death.

Behind him, at a more than respectable distance, was a small group of worried onlookers, human and pony alike. A human police officer and a pony guard stood at the front, shouting meaningless drivel.

It was all useless. Humans kept causing each other misery and pain. There was no hope for mankind, Marcus had considered years ago. And then the ponies came. Somehow, despite a rough start, the ponies had managed to do the one thing humanity still couldn’t. Somehow, they got along. They had an army, but they never fought wars against other ponies. They… fought dragons and stuff.

“Don’t be an idiot, kid! Step away from the railing!”

It sickened Marcus to the core, and having lost all hope in the future of mankind, he had decided to escape from his pathetic reality. Purely as a statement, he’d do it right there in the pony capitol, considering they were what pushed him over the proverbial edge.

“Officer,” Marcus heard a beautiful female voice behind him say, “May I?”

He heard the soft clip-clop of a pony princess’s boots on the tile, approaching slowly.

“No… stay away from me and let me do this, please…”

“Marcus Carlsberg?” the princess called out. Without looking, Marcus identified the voice as the younger princess, Luna.

“Don’t… I’ll do it! I’ll jump!”

“I most sincerely doubt that, Marcus Carlsberg,” Luna softly insisted. Marcus found, to his surprise, that he could not release his hold on the railing. “Why don’t you just climb back down and sit with me?”

It was hardly a question at all. Something in Marcus’ mind worked against him, possibly the same thing that made him grip the railing. He looked back to find the Night Princess sitting right there, her forelegs extended in invitation, her wings slowly extending to hide the audience, and her nebula-like hair ever drifting in a strange cosmic breeze.

Marcus could swear the sky was darkening as he slowly acquiesced to Luna’s request. He slowly walked – nearly crawled – his way to the princess and collapsed into her embrace. Her wings folded around him, and all went black.

A momentary feeling of weightlessness overtook the human, less to his surprise than he expected. When he opened his eyes, the princess and he were in a strange, almost non-descript place, the only things that could serve as any sort of description being utterly unrecognizable stars and an omnipresent fog that completely obscured the floor, assuming there was one.

“Hush, child,” the Night Princess spoke. “Be at ease, and tell me what ails you.”

“Where are we?” Marcus asked.

“This is the Celestial Plane, child. It… ostensibly belongs to my dear sister, as the name implies, but only for a minor technicality.”

Marcus found himself oddly accepting of the answer and carefully leaned his head against Luna’s breast.

“So… you and your sister… you’re basically gods, aren’t you?”

“That is what most of our little ponies call us.”

“Then what are you?”

Luna remained silent for what seemed like a few minutes. “Basically gods, I would think.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction?”

“We cannot fault our little ponies for calling us gods. We are, after all, virtually immortal and wield incredible power, each of us…”

Marcus considered the Princess’ answer, listening to her heartbeat.

“This isn’t even your true form, isn’t it?”

Luna was taken aback by the sudden question. “I... how did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” Marcus softly smiled. “What are you, really?”

Luna considered her answer for a few more minutes. “I am Luna the Night Mare, guardian of the dream fields, former Element Bearer. I am tens of millennia old and even so older still for this equine form is but one.”

“What’s the other?” Marcus asked with genuine interest and a shine in his eyes that you wouldn’t expect from someone who had tried to throw himself over the edge just under ten minutes ago.

Luna raised a single eyebrow and shrugged. She stood up, leaving Marcus sitting on the metaphysical floor, and switched to her Nightmare Moon guise in a quick flash. The transformed mare of darkness looked down upon the human, expecting nothing but fear.

Instead, she only found wonderment, followed shortly by a tiny bit of disappointment.

“That’s not it, isn’t it?” Marcus insisted.

“The true forms of my sister and… would break you,” Luna warned.

Tears started to form in Marcus’ eyes as he gazed upon the Nightmare’s imposing form. “I must see it. If it kills me, let it be so… but I must see.”

Luna closed her eyes and pondered the request. “Very well. If this kills you, let it be your own fault.”

The Celestial Plane seemed to rumble, despite Marcus’ full awareness that this was supposedly impossible. He blamed his feeble human mind trying to make sense of things and chastised himself for it. Trying to make sense might very well kill him shortly. In front of him, the pony princess shone a bright black and seemed to dissipate, growing ever larger. Within moments what used to be a perfectly ordinary equine had become something that defied all attempts at description. The best Marcus could make of it was some kind of nebula. If it wasn’t several orders of magnitude larger than the bed of fog it might’ve actually mixed, and yet somehow despite its immense size, the lunar cloud somehow fit perfectly into Marcus’ field of view.

A voice that was simultaneously soft and motherly as well as basically loud as a metric ton of fuck spoke out.

Come to us if thou darest.

Marcus scrabbled upright and wiped a single tear from his face. Without hesitation, but with full knowledge and awareness of what he was doing entirely of his own unmolested volition, he strode forth. The cloud was surprisingly warm. Hot, even, and yet somehow freezing cold at the same time. The human basked in it even as his clothes burned away around him in flames of every color but red. As he walked further into the cloud, a shape resolved in front of him that looked not entirely unlike a human Luna, though Marcus couldn’t make out the apparition’s facial features. As the figure spread her arms, Marcus returned the gesture.

Come to us and find meaning in thy life.

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“What do you think they’re doing?” the officer asked the guard.

“Not a clue. Princess Luna has always been something of a mystery to us. Even to the Night Guard, actually.”

“Heads up, I think they’re done!”

Luna slowly folded back her wings, still sitting there on the tiled floor of the terrace. Marcus, surprisingly, was openly weeping on her breast, his face obscured by his arms as he held onto the Princess’ shoulders.

“Rise, my friend,” the Princess spoke as she prepared to stand up. Marcus released his hold on her shoulders, revealing a loving smile. “Will you serve me and my sisters?” she whispered.

“I will… my Goddess,” the youth agreed, saying the word with nothing but the most deeply rooted respect.