Chapter 1: Dreams of Fireflies
The night was cold. They were always cold, but this night was particularly frigid.
The stallion walked through an empty expanse of land, hooves sinking into a deep layer of snow that coated the ground. It, much like everything else, was dull and gray. Large, heavy flakes drifted through the air, stained by soot and ash during their fall from the solid curtain of clouds overhead. No wind blew, and the night was eerily silent.
As he walked, his eyes scanned the horizon for anything at all, but found nothing.
He blinked, and when he opened his eyes the air around him was filled with countless drifting motes of light. Each orange spark flew around erratically, engaging in an intricate spiraling dance with the innumerable others.
He reached out with one hoof and touched one of the sparks. Instantly he was overwhelmed by images, emotions, memories. The images made little sense, clouded by powerful waves of fear and pain. Bright light, intense heat, and pressure akin to being his by a train rushed through his body. It was over in an instant, and the snowy wasteland reasserted itself. The spark he'd touched drifted away, continuing its seemingly random movements.
Another sparked brushed against the stallion's coat, and more memories washed over him. This was much the same as the other, the memory of clinging to another pony as that immense wave of heat and pressure tore him apart. He came out of it breathing heavily, limbs quivering from the sheer realism of what he'd seen and felt.
What he saw next truly chilled him. The sparks were no longer dancing randomly through the winter sky. They were swarming, sprialling together into a brilliant mass of light and rushing toward him. He scrambled in the snow, desperately trying to run, but stumbled and fell. The sparks were upon him before he could stand.
If one memory was painful, the combined trauma of all the countless motes of light rushing him at once was indescribable. The agony of countless deaths, some swift and some slow but all unimaginably painful, washed over him like a tidal wave. Images flashed by like a slideshow of suffering, the final moments of all those who had lost their lives when the curtains of flame had wiped Equestria clean.
He lay huddled in the snow, shivering as the sparks rushed him. There seemed to be no end, each of the lights demanding that its last moments of life be felt, be remembered.
The stallion awoke with a start, his breath creating a cloud of steam in the air with each panting breath. His heart hammered in his chest as the dream melted away and he was left with only a vague memory of countless fireflies filling the cold winter night. The chill of the air bit deep as a gust of wind stirred the layer of ash that coated the ground. The stallion huddled deeper into his ragged blankets, trying to hold onto any warmth that remained.
He had no idea what time it was. Little light could penetrate the slate gray cloud curtain overhead. It didn't matter. What good did time do now? He had no appointments to keep, nowhere to be and nopony waiting for him.
Rising carefully, he shook a layer of ash-stained snow off his coat. The dull gray landscape stretched on in every direction, with not a single landmark in sight. His hoofprints from the previous walk were long gone, erased by the relentless wind. He plodded carefully across the treacherous landscape to his wagon. The wood was the same color as the sky and ground, planks missing here and there where they had been taken for firewood.
The stallion pulled a threadbare cloak out of the wagon and draped it around his shoulders, wincing slightly as the rough cloth brushed the stump of his left wing. It was long since healed over, but the scar tissue still ached now and again. He set a battered old hat atop his head, hiding his short black mane. Pale gray eyes stared out from under the fraying brim, grim and determined to reach the end of this wasteland, to find some other survivors somewhere in what remained of the world.
The stallion hitched himself to the harness of his wagon and began to walk. Every foot of distance was a labor. His hooves sank in the ash, and the thick layer piled up in front of the wheels. As he walked, he began to sing. The song was old, had been even when he was a young colt.
The lyrics, of love and loss and pain they spoke, brought fresh tears to his eyes. He blinked them away. Told himself that they were from the wind. His heart was cold, hard like stone. It had to be. The world was no longer kind. The world was harsh and cruel, and any scrap of softness would be a fatal weakness. Though sad, the song at least spoke of a world that was alive. It was a welcome respite from the dead world he walked through. His mind drifted as he sang, and scraps of his life before came swimming out of the fog of time.
He barely remembered his old life. Scarcely recalled the stallion who had, in brighter days, led a band on tours across Equestria. He had thought himself wise, thought that he had seen it all. He had played small clubs in which the air was thick with smoke, where the warm and welcoming crowds had swayed both with the music and the drink. He had played huge stadiums, seen thousands stomping in appreciation that shook the very floor beneath him. Countless mares had thrown themselves at his hooves, and more than a few stallions with them.
For years he'd lived a life of luxury. Those long days had blurred, blended together in a brilliant flurry of indistinct sounds and images. He'd thought it would last forever, that nothing could end the fame and fortune.
Then it all came crashing down.
As he plodded along the road, up to his knees in ash, he came to the one memory he did have of his former life. The one image of those years that remained unbearably vivid. A hotel room, strewn with empty liquor bottles and broken furniture. A pounding ache in his skull that made every sound torture. And amidst the wreckage, a folded note. The indistinct scribble that only a few could understand. The words spelling out, in not so many words, that the band was through. The others were gone, their bags with them, and he was left alone in the scattered refuse of his life. On the back of the note, fittingly enough, was the hotel bill.
A few scant years later, his act cleaned up, he'd tracked down the others. His friends, no, his family. The ones who had seen him through everything, who had done their best to reign in his behaviors, who had been so reluctant to give up on him that they'd stuck by his side through everything he threw at them. He was sitting there, gathering his courage to talk to them, when it had all gone to hell.. A few seconds, dragged out into an eternity, of blinding light and mind-numbing agony. Then darkness.
When he came to, he was alone. The world around him was a twisted, blackened hulk. Ruined buildings reached for the sky like vast skeletal talons. The sky burned with a dull orange light, filtered through dense toxic clouds. As the world died, the first flakes of snow began to fall. Blackened by ash and soot, they lay heavy on the ground. It was then that he began to walk.
He walked until he could walk no longer, walked until sleep finally overtook him and he collapsed in the cold snow. That was the first time he dreamed of the fireflies. There had only been a few in those days. They flitted above the ash, dancing through the gloom. The site filled him with foreboding, an overwhelming sense of dread. He tried to turn, to run away, but his hooves moved forward one step at a time. A single firefly noticed him, the tiny speck of light flickering and darting in his direction. With a delicate grace it landed on his muzzle. The pain was immediate and immense, dwarfing what he had felt when it had happened. He felt the intense heat and pressure, felt every flake of skin as it was charred and incinerated. The stench of burning hair and flesh filled his nostrils.
As abruptly as it had come over him, the vision ended. He stood once more amid the desolation. The fireflies danced their entrancing dance, twisting and spiraling through the endless apocalyptic night. He walked, not knowing what else to do, and gave the sparks of unearthly light a wide berth. Eventually, he awoke, and began walking again. Time became meaningless, day and night blended together in an eternal twilight. He felt no hunger, nor thirst. He felt only one drive: to find others. His loneliness became a flame the drove him ever onward. Along the way, he found a small wagon. The harness, miraculously intact, was strapped to a crumbling corpse. Within were a few scattered items, the dusty remains of some poor pony's life.
A hat, nearly new, the would keep the wind-driven ash and show from his eyes. A cloak, made of heavy wool, to ease the cold that seeped down to his bones. And below them, a scattering of faded photographs on brittle paper. Fragments of another life, he gazed at them for what felt like hours. The longing, the desire to find another in this emptiness, grew all the more painful, but he persevered. Loneliness dug its cruel claws into his heart, and he wondered how long he could manage before he went mad.
Finally, when the pain became unbearable, he hitched himself to the wagon and offered a word of thanks to the remains of the previous owner. His burden borne, he walked. And each time he slept, his dreams were filled with ever growing swarms of fireflies.