Upon the frozen bluff, a pony stood, pondering, as if waiting for something.
The bluff he stood upon was not within Equestrian borders. The pony snorted derisively. If it had been, maybe the whole fiasco could have been avoided. Nevertheless, it was not, and all actions, once done, could not be revoked.
He shivered. "A seven-pony team should be sufficient," his boss had told him. "Just get in, stop those blundering fools, get out, and you'll be all set."
He snorted again. As if. The pony glanced over his shoulder, examining the frozen remains of a building. It could have stood there for eons, and nopony would have known. The only clues that it was of any import were the bodies lying around its base and the fact that the exposed bits hadn't been covered in snow. Well, some of them, anyway. Another few days and all the evidence would be out of sight and out of mind. Pointless.
He shivered.
"You stay behind, Cold Blade," his last teammate had said, just before he went to his doom. "We'll need some backup if something happens, and I'm sure you can handle the lot after we've weakened them."
Backup. Backup after the enemy is dead, you have nothing to die for, your teammates have died, and you're freezing to death.
He looked down, observing the frigid waters beneath him, then let his gaze stray back to the building's remains. He could almost remember the flash of intensity that had claimed his teammates.
"Blade, we have evidence that these radicals have got this notion in their heads that if they neutralize the Sun with this strange building of theirs, Nightmare Moon will return and reward them with riches and power. We don't think their invention will do anything but cool down a sizeable part of land with a magical blast, but that's enough to put ponies at risk, and we're not willing to take that risk. So, we're putting you on a team to deal with the situation."
He snorted again.
"Cool down? That doesn't sound so bad," he had commented.
Not if the land was so cold that the team had needed warm suits to begin with.
He turned to the ruined building again. It had been a majestic spire when they had arrived, which had seemed to glisten with the frigid beauty of the area. Ruined beauty? He chuckled ruefully. In order to save the lives of many ponies, he and his teammates had gone to their deaths. Out of all of them, only he would do so knowing they had succeeded. Small consolation.
He suddenly tried to summon the essence of the snow, as if doing so would somehow make the snow bring his friends back. Nothing moved, and then suddenly a vibration shook the bluff. Nothing. Merely his magic. What to do, what to do. Backup. Back up? There was nowhere to back up into. Forward off the bluff, a suicidal move with the same end result. Back up down the bluff. How funny that sounded. Was the cold affecting his head already? Back up down the bluff, and eventually into an eternal sleep.
He stiffened. How could the tower have imploded and exploded at the same time? It had seemed that way to him. A flash of intensity, perhaps, in general, but specifically a flash of light, a ripple of magic, and then a simultaneous superpositioning of the walls, as the structure seemed to implode through the inner walls and explode through the outer walls. There were no pairs of walls. Perhaps the structure had vibrated itself to pieces through magic? Nonsense. Magic was impressive, and could be manipulated in various ways, but nopony had yet proven that magic could directly cause oscillation. How ironic. A guardspony with all the evidence to win a scientific award, but with none of the ability to bring it to civilization alive.
He experimented a little with his idea of the phenomenon. "Dull Blade, Dull Blade, run away. You could never do math anyway." He snorted. As if. His early classmates had somehow picked up the idea that he was dull, as he had rarely worked with magic mathematically. There! His intuitive grasp on magic had always served him better in the long run. He raised his horn, pointing it skyward, and then imagined, instead of the waves themselves, a dynamic system of air and winds as he cast a plane of magic into the air. Then, with a burst of willpower, he forced the winds to turn about in such a pattern that he suddenly found himself weaving wind into wind through and around other winds. In this system, he continually built the pattern and spread it to a localized level, and then, as he heard the air start to thrum, released the winds and shielded himself with a simple magic buffer. He saw the wind ripple the clouds from the center of the system, and then winced as an enormous CRACK split the air.
CRACK.
Twilight Sparkle turned to the next page in her book, her ears ringing. "What kind of pony would bother a reading pony, other than Pinkie Pie?" Suddenly Pinkie Pie appeared in the window. "Hi Twilight! What you just heard was a magical oscillation!" Then, she was gone and was standing by another pony. Oh dear.
Suddenly, he laughed. That action was so pointless. Messing around with magic in a situation like this. His laugh echoed in the silence, and he was surprised at how bitter it sounded. What was he waiting for anyway? Death? It wasn't like it was anything to look forward to, but he supposed now that there weren't any alternatives - he could try to die, and die; wait here, and die; or try not to die, and die. And then suddenly his action made sense - a last attempt at some beauty, some coherent sense of peace, before he faded. Who would remember me?
As if responding to his thought, the bluff shattered, with a wailing sound. The water rushed up to him. So be it.
Everything seemed blue, but quickly fading. He saw a snowflake burst of light, and then everything went black.
Author's Note
Okay that took forever to write, but hey! First story done!
Also if you're wondering why his warm suit isn't saving him, it was damaged in the explosion/implosion.
