Song Of The Sunsparrow
Deadline - Monday, August 13th 54 LR
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Prologue: Deadline - Monday, August 13th 54 LR
It's Not Over Till It's Over
Related Soundtracks:
Ambient: #25 - What Have I Done?
Seven alicorns hovered in a circle amidst the ruins of Equestria’s once-great capital. Canterlot’s gleaming spires sat crumbled under their own weight, and the rubble-strewn streets were littered with the bodies of the dead. Barely visible through the rising smoke, the sun sat at it’s zenith above, obscured by an eclipse.
As the alicorns took in the scene below them, the blood-red light of the eclipse cast heavy shadows across their horrified faces. “What have we done?” asked the large white mare of the group, her cyan mane gently drifting in a nonexistent breeze.
“Why didn’t the Gods intervene?” the smaller lavender mare questioned, “They should have stopped this!”
“Because they don’t care,” answered the smaller midnight blue stallion, drifting closer to lay a comforting hoof on her shoulder, “we were all just players in their game from the start. This was never about us, but we were the ones they used to wage their war. From the beginning, they influenced us; made us angry,” he gestured to the white mare, “or ambitious,” he continued with a nod of his head to a brown stallion.
“This wasn’t what I wanted,” commented the large brown stallion in response.
“None of us wanted this,” the large midnight blue mare told him, “but now we have to live with the consequences.
After everything that had happened, it would take a lot to surprise them to any degree, but the midnight blue stallion’s next worked were nothing any of them would have expected. “Maybe we don’t...”
“What do you mean?” the smaller light amber mare asked from where she was huddled with a much younger pale fuchsia filly, “If there’s some way for us to see our parents again, please tell us!”
“We can still change this,” he answered, “but it’ll take all of us together to make it work.”
The others looked at each other, and they could all see the determination in their eyes. “We’ll do it,” the white mare spoke for them all.
“We’ll put our differences aside for the greater good,” added the brown stallion.
“For Equestria!” continued the midnight blue mare.
“For those we’ve lost...” the light amber mare finished, “What must we do?”
“It’s simple,” the midnight blue stallion said, “we have not one, but two alicorns of time. With the power of all of us combined, using the two of us as focusing points, we can reset the universe back to before this started.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this,” the brown stallion commented, “but you have to realize that if this fails—”
“It won’t.”
“But if it does—”
“It won’t.”
The brown stallion bowed his head in concession. “Alright. How are we going to prevent this from just happening again though?”
The midnight blue stallion looked nervous as he answered, “I have to admit, I had considered this spell as a last resort around midway into the war. I have a way of projecting my memories into the next iteration of myself. Hopefully I’ll be able to stop this from ever happening.”
“And if you can’t?”
He shrugged. “We try again. As long as there’s enough of us left at the end of each iteration to power the spell, we can just keep trying until we get it right.”
“Then I will simply have to ensure that you number too few,” boomed a new voice. Seconds later, a perfectly rectangular blade of solid grey mana appeared from the air and sliced the throat of the midnight blue mare before shattering.
The other alicorns watched in a state of shock as the mare grabbed at the ragged hole in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Her gurgling scream was cut off as the blade materialized once again over her head, plunging down and out the bottom of her jaw. The mare fell from the sky with her wings still twitching as her body came to terms with the fact it was dead.
The white mare let out an anguished cry for her lost sister and moved to catch the falling body, only to be blasted back by a shockwave accompanying the appearance of a large, monochrome grey alicorn stallion. “Why!?” she begged of the stallion as he coolly watched the body impact the solid ground far below.
“Because I can not allow you to reverse what I have accomplished. The only true form of order is nothingness, so nothingness is what there must be.” He looked up at the remaining six alicorns, most of whom were now brandishing blades of their own. “If my own daughters must fall for my vision to become reality, then so be it.”
With that final declaration, the battle began. The white mare was the first to strike, unleashing all of her anger at the loss of her sister into a beam of pure magical energy twice the width of any pony. The grey alicorn’s blade was before him in an instant, its flawless magical surface splitting the beam in half to either side of his imposing figure.
Before the residual glow of the attack even had a chance to dissipate, he teleported forward, slashing once to the right. The white mare had no way of dodging before the strike hit, but attempted to back away anyway. The action saved her life, as the grey stallion’s blade was intercepted for a fraction of a second by a light raspberry-hued dagger of mana. In that fraction of a second, the colorless blade of the grey stallion reversed its course to attack from the left, causing it to miss by the width of a hair and leave a shallow line of red along the white mare’s neck.
Angered, he whirled around and launched his blade at the lavender mare who had deprived him of his kill. She closed her eyes and cringed, unused to the fighting. The attack never reached her, as the grey stallion recalled his blade just in time to parry a blow from one of the midnight blue stallion’s twin sabres, the black surface of the sabre cracking slightly from the impact.
The other sabre circled around to attack from from the side while the brown stallion rushed in with his own blade, a broadsword made of deep orange mana surrounding a metal baton. Unable to block the two attacks at once, the grey stallion was forced to teleport away, creating a long pause.
The midnight blue stallion slowly flew over to the brown one and whispered, “Pass the message along; Start charging the spell. If we keep him on the defensive, we should be fine,” his eyes never leaving their enemy.
The grey stallion’s gaze fell upon him as he finished speaking. “It is amusing that you believe I would not hear you if you whispered. I am a God; I hear everything.”
“There’s still six of us, and only one of you. I’m not worried,” the blue stallion told him.
“You should be.” He prepared to launch another attack, prompting the others to tense in anticipation.
The attack never came.
Every pony present looked on in awe as the very fabric of reality seemed to become a slowly drifting black smoke. That smoke swiftly formed a large, solid black mare with a malachite green mane and eyes. This mare bore no wings or horn, but she flew all the same, floating through the air with the smoke giving the illusion of one swimming through water. She gave the grey stallion a predatory grin, her fangs enhancing the effect.
Then she spoke.
If one were asked to guess her character from just her voice alone, the only available answer would be, ‘beautiful but deadly’; an apt description. “I believe perhaps... you should be the worried one.”
“What is the meaning of this?”
“You didn’t think I would just let you murder our daughter and get away with it, did you? Silly boy...” Some of her smoke coalesced into an obsidian staff at her side, a glowing manablade the color of her eyes sprang to life at either end, creating a double-bladed scythe. She looked to the six surviving mares and stallions. “Do as you all see fit. I’m going to have some fun...”
The black mare and the grey stallion disappeared into a whirlwind of smoke and flashes, their strikes too fast for a mortal eye to see. “You heard her,” called the midnight blue stallion to his allies, “concentrate on the spell.” At his words, four streams of magic began to flow into the horns of the brown stallion and himself.
Everything was going as planned. The grey stallion was occupied, the spell was charging. Then the Goddess of Darkness made a mistake. The grey stallion thrust his blade forwards, and the black mare was forced to block it with the pole of her scythe, but she had misjudged the force behind the blow. She was sent flying backwards through the air, her cloak of darkness dispelled as her concentration was broken.
Before she had a chance to recover, the grey stallion was there, his blade pressed to her neck. “How foolish. Nothing can stand against Order. My judgement is absolute.”
“Mother!” the midnight blue stallion yelled, having spotted the new development. She looked to him with fear in her eyes for what was probably the first time in her life. “Run! We’ve almost got the spell charged!”
She complied, vanishing into nothingness while the grey stallion was distracted. He was not happy about that. “That is twice now you false Gods have kept a kill from me. I believe it time for me to catch up.”
It happened so fast, none of them were really sure what he had done. The effect however, was quickly obvious. The light amber mare hit the ground with a burst of red, her little sister still clutched in her forelegs. The lavender mare was the first to react. She tensed in preparation to fly to them, but she was stopped by the midnight blue stallion as he wrapped her in a hug. “Don’t. After we cast the spell, none of this will have happened. She’ll still be alive.” The mare struggled against him, desperate to get to the filly. “We need you if we’re going to fix this. Please.”
She looked up at him, her face stained with tears. “Okay.”
He released her. And she was immediately whisked away. She was held in the air, one of the grey stallion’s forelegs around her midsection, his blade hanging ominously beside her. The blue stallion reached for her, unable to do anything to stop the evil alicorn. The brown stallion placed a hoof on his shoulder, lest he try to save her. “It’s like you said. When we cast the spell, she’ll be fine.”
He looked to to mare, who simply gave him a nod, as though she understood what he had just been told. She closed her eyes and let loose one last burst of energy, pushing the spell to its full charge. Time seemed to slow. The midnight blue stallion could see in perfect clarity as the lavender mare was impaled by the grey alicorn’s blade, her mouth open wide in a silent scream.
Then, there was nothing.
“I’m sorry, Twilight.”
Twilight Sparkle woke with a scream of terror and rolled off of her bed, clutching at some nonexistent wound on her chest. Seconds later, a small dragon burst through the door to her room, eyes wide. “Twilight!” he called as he ran to her side, “are you okay!?”
She remained on the ground, tangled in her bedding with her left hoof on her chest. She raised her other hoof to stop the dragon from crowding her as she caught her breath. “I’m fine, Spike,” She managed to wheeze out, “Just a bad dream.”
“Must’ve been some dream.”
“It was,” she answered, “it seemed so real.”
“Well... Breakfast is ready if you want some.”
“Thank you, Spike. I’m going to need it after that... Let’s just hope the rest of the day is less eventful.”
“I’m pretty sure the only thing this day has in store for us is sorting books...” The dragon mumbled as he exited the room.