The darkness was almost palpable, ever just beyond reach.

It whorled and flew with the vicious rain, broken only by the flashes of lightning and fading shouts of thunder. The night had wrapped itself in a storm, blanketing the land below in brisk dampness. A yellowy, fiery light banished darkness around it, its source vaguely visible through the rain.

The traveller saw this as he mounted at hill, black cloak flowing in the wrathful wind. Though he did not need shelter from this storm-- he could easily shrug off the beating it gave him-- it was preferable.

Hooves sinking deep into the mud and making a wet squelch as he dragged them out again, the traveller set the homely light in his sight.

Bitter wind met the stagnant air as the door flew open, rain splattering on the wooden floor around the traveller’s hooves. Inside was a tavern of sorts-- a long, high table with many stools and emptied tankards; a few tired souls murmuring on cushions by the kindly, yellowish fire.

What sound there was ceased with his entry. Paying little regard to the heavy silence, the traveller slid over to the bar with a surprising grace. Looking through the shadows of his cloak to the yellowish mare behind the bar, he said, “Do you have any rooms?”

The mare cringed slightly behind her mane of pink-- not her pink, the traveller reflected--but returned his iron gaze. “You look tired, Mister...?”

He drew in a long breath, the quiet growing in weight. “Bronze.”

“Mister Bronze. Why don’t you leave your cloak by the fire there, and go right on up to the first room on the left.” she finished, pulling a key from underneath the bar and sliding it across.

Bronze nodded, accepting the key with a greyish hoof. As he stalked by the fire, his cloak floated off in an alabaster glow and lay itself in the warmth. Before anypony could get a good look at him, he was up the stairs.

The sun was barely over the horizon when the bartender and owner of the tavern padded into the main room, for a moment wondering where the animals had gone. Like every day, she hardened her heart in the face of a thousand miserable memories and set about with a cloth and brush.

On the bar itself lay thirty bits and the key to Bronze’s room. For a moment, she worried for his fate, but was distracted by the entry of a stranger in a ragged, dirt-colored cloak.

The Beasts had it out for me now, it seemed. I had long ago sheathed my family sword in favor of a crystal shard I had torn from the Beasts of Stalliongrad; the shard was sharper and more suited to magical combat.

With a wet crack like ground meat and breaking branches, I decapitated one of the horrendous lion-like creatures. I leapt back to dodge the strike of the second Beast, letting the momentum of the shard carry it deep into the Beast’s shoulder. It sounded like I was striking a bag of wet sand, and was just as hard to pull out.

Crimson stained the shrubs and dirt below as I twisted the shard, driving it upward to meet the cut I’d made before. I cut the bone at the joint with a dry snap, cleaving the leg from the body. It nearly managed to catch me with a bite, but I managed to shove the shard down his throat and end its miserable life.

The icy blue crystal looked a grim purplish-red in the afternoon light, stained in blood and hunks of meat still clinging to it. I cleaned it in the grass nearby and sheathed it, making haste for Detrot-- though Commander Scrolls hadn’t sent any messages in a year, I did not doubt that her city was still standing. Those walls were stronger than any magic a Beast could conjure.

It had been a long time since I had seen an intact Wayfarer’s Shrine. Most had fallen apart naturally; few ponies worshipped the Faith and its harsh gods. A handful remained, each one a place of quiet peace. In theory.

Once upon a time, travellers could offer food or coin to the idols in hopes of a safe trip. Nowadays, a safe trip outside a city was unheard of, if not impossible. Despite that, I approached the wooden building with a prayer on my lips.

The inside of the doorless room was bare aside from an alcove-- the ‘house’ of the idol. The idol was a stone carefully, delicately sculpted into a tree. A shrine Gurok, The Stone Tree. He was the patron of Nature, and the most worshipped of the Old Gods.

I left a few coins in the alcove. The ‘Goddesses’ of Equestria were no more; but the Faith remained.

The dark was empty that night; the sky a purplish-black canvas specked with light. There was a gaping abyss in the center of that sky where the Moon should be, glaring down at the world with an accusing hatred.

Ten years of looking up and not seeing it tended to erode the strangeness, but the memories attached would never burn away. Even if Luna returned and claimed the throne, it would be an empty crown. Her ‘noble’ sacrifice kept Princess Celestia from dying, but in exchange? Princess Luna was turned to stone and the ‘hero’ Twilight hightailed it into the archives.

The throne was left empty, and Celestia even now remains in stasis, presumably suffering. That choice led the nobility into a desperate grab for the Throne in a bloody war- the War of Roses.

So many innocents died. Equestria was reduced to nation-states that crumbled into solitary cities against an ever-darkening world. Then came the Beasts and the Crystals, which purged most of the remaining population.

I shuddered, trying to shake off the darker thoughts.

Author's Note

Chapter 2, yay! This chapter was read over by Paxtofettel and JeffCvt.
Things are moving along slowly, but I will finish this story. I promise.

~Nharctic
EDIT: Phrasing of a sentence or two changed.