Alone within the snow-laden forest, the mare lies as still as stone, cradling her only foal.
All around her, everything crumbles to dust: mountains fall, oceans boil, cities burn. In that one moment, their little strand of eternity frays, lonely fragments of dilapidated memories torn away from the fabric of time only to return to the nothingness they once were. Just as it was always meant to, slowly, surely, and serenely, the world begins to forget.
Once upon a time, the ponies’ existence was not so pitiful as it is now. Centuries ago, an era of peace once reigned, born of Equestria's genesis. ‘Twas a fall from grace so grandiose that it pulled all life along with it: a beautifully tragic story, truly.
And funnily enough, it all started with a moment so tragically beautiful that things could only possibly get worse. Chaos fell, order rose, and two strong, benevolent diarchs took vigil over a land nursing wounds inflicted by a fading memory. Those diarchs—night and day, moon and sun, darkness and light—balanced each other. For the longest time, they, alongside all of their little ponies, held clean, unadulterated purity within their hearts. In every sense of the word, everything was perfect.
This is where the mare’s story begins. There is not much to mention about her early years save for her whereabouts in the sands of time—slightly before the ponies were freed—when the her mother gifted her life. There on her family’s tiny farm on the outskirts of Equestria, the mare and her sister, both only fillies at the time, ran wild, drinking up every ounce of freedom their parents gave them. Unfortunately, as is the way of entropy, the two sisters lost their parents and their farm to natural causes and were forced to move on.
It was precisely then that the age of purity began, and the mare and her sister found a home inside the budding city of Everfree: the capital of Equestria, named in homage to the ponies’ newfound freedom from chaos’ grasp.
After having a hoof in the construction of the castle, they and many others found a home in it upon its completion. Ecstatic over their sudden change in luck, the mare and her sister decided to share their joy and kinship with the servants, chefs, and bureaucrats who lived there. The two of them survived like that for some time, simply happy to have a roof over their heads and, more importantly, each other.
Then, like the broken fractals of light pouring down from the stars everlasting, disaster befell them.
As the diarchs molded to the savage life of leadership, moment by moment, the purity within them died. It was a slow and painful process that began shortly after their ascension. The diarch of the day took to the limelight with grace and poise, and was beloved by the ponies. On the other end, the ponies viewed the diarch of the night as mysterious and dangerous, causing them to approach her with trepidation. As a result, she faded into the shadows, invisible in her own little realm of darkness and envy—an adversity only made worse by her counterpart’s growing popularity. The brightest days always have the darkest shadows, as it were.
Naturally, the elder of the two noticed this transition as well. At first, she tried to bridge the growing rift between them by any means available. Expensive gifts, feigned devotees, hollow words of apology… nothing worked. The younger rejected them all, viewing them as tokens of pity and subjugation. Eventually, the elder grew frustrated and ceased her efforts, letting the younger continue wading through her murky river of depression and self-doubt.
Impossibly, time pressed onward, and their emotional rift deepened. After many, many years of this growing animosity and tension, everything came to a head on the first snowfall of the year. Jealousy and icy indifference rubbed each other the wrong way, their friction igniting a raging inferno so immense that not even the heavens above could hope to save the innocents.
That night, high above the rooftops crowned with snow, true colors flared. An aurora of emotions burned so brightly that the whole world couldn’t help but watch in terrified wonder. In that moment of blood, tears, and passion, it started. The battle. The war. The beginning of the end.
The serene forgetting.
Ponies were forced to choose between darkness and light, night and day—an impossible choice, yes, but one that needed to be made. In fact, the mare and her sister’s relationship shattered over this very ultimatum. Her sister decided to follow the day, relying on its radiant warmth for protection and advice. The mare, however, had always enjoyed the cold, unforgiving fierceness of the night, and became one of the few to fight for the darkness.
Those first few nights eked the music of stillness, holy and low. No one spoke of it, but everyone knew of what was to come. The Dawnbreakers—followers of the day—stood guard over Everfree City, welcoming in kinsmen and other allies. The Nightbringers—followers of the night—convened on the frozen outskirts of Equestria in a congress of tacit unanimity: in three days time, they would take back what was rightfully theirs.
See, this was not merely a fight over petty, misguided emotions. No, this was much, much bigger. This was a battle of no regrets. There would be no turning back. Only one victor would stand high over the field of battle, and they would rewrite history in the blood of the fallen. If one wished to live, then one needed to pick the winner. It was that, or die; such was the existence of sapience. The sisters, despite still loving each other, knew this. And so they followed their instincts and walked the paths they were destined to, even though they both walked alone.
In those three days, the Nightbringers—the sinners, the imperfects, the vanquished—rallied, trained, and strategized. They prepared themselves for their attack, so that when the time for their vengeance at last arrived, the bloodlust festering within them would boil over. More than anything, they craved that illusory victory.
And win they did.
They charged the city, taking out all the guardsponies. Despite their smaller numbers, they forced the opposition to retreat to the castle. It was there in the highest tower that the diarchs met once more. Words exchanged, threats issued, tears shed… the younger nearly lost herself in the turbulent sea of emotions.
Almost.
But she didn’t, for she knew she mustn’t succumb to her inner demons, the nightmare living within her that survived off her jealousy. She knew she needed to stay strong. For herself. For her little ponies.
For him.
The same couldn’t be said of the elder of the two, however. She struggled to stay afloat in the immense torrent of negativity, all the while giving sustenance to her own inner demons. It was a vicious cycle; the stronger her nightmare grew, the more the negative emotions suffocated her, feeding the nightmare once again. And so she festered in that murky river of depression—the one that had previously belonged to her counterpart—sinking so deep that she might as well have been sleeping with the fishes down on the riverbed.
After an immense battle that literally tore down the entirety of Everfree City, the younger diarch exiled the Dawnbreakers and their leader to the Frozen North. The Nightbringers, or at least who was left of them, were left with the duty of cleaning up the city’s mortal remains.
Now, the ponies realized that the battle… nay, war, was cutthroat. The consequences were to be numerous. Though it wasn’t until they entered the surrounding forest to deposit the corpses of the deceased that they realized to just what extent. The mere remnants of dark magic—residues of the invidious aggression borne amidst the throes of the siege—emanating from Everfree City had transformed the forest outside of it into an agrarian nightmare house, a factory for chaos, a haven for all things wicked.
Since their fallen city, their former home, was thoroughly uninhabitable, they bid their farewells and took their leave… though not before doing one final thing.
Just as the ponies named Everfree City in homage of what was gained, Everfree Forest was named in homage to what was lost. Fire to embers, embers to ashes, as the saying goes.
All through this short period, the mare quickly became a prominent figure among the ranks of the Nightbringers, holding firm to her leadership position. Having fought valiantly in battle—and, admittedly, having been something of a social pariah herself in a life long past—she was the perfect candidate for the job. Unfortunately, this mental pedestal her kinsmen held her upon distanced her from them, and she quickly became lonely.
Had it not been for him, the mare might’ve fallen victim to her own nightmare.
He was the exact opposite type of stallion that the mare had always imagined she’d fall for. Instead of young, strapping, and rugged, he possessed an intense admiration for the darker magics, sported a long, scraggly beard, and always wore around a hideous cloak and hat.
She fell all the more madly for him because of it.
At first, she admired him from afar—a furtive glance at a military gathering, small smile across the table a celebration feast, a fleeting hello muttered in passing. Nothing too forward, but enough that he got the message and approached her. Because, for all his quirks and eccentricities, he had one thing going for him: his forwardness.
From there, their relationship flourished, despite others’ vehement protests. What the others thought didn’t matter to either of them, though. Their love had no fear or boundaries—only truth.
Months later, after a particularly staggering loss to the opposition in the unexplored northern territories, the mare found no one to blame but herself. She wallowed in her pity, not allowing herself to eat, sleep, or leave her personal chambers for days on end. Many of her fellow Nightbringers silently worried that she was falling victim to her nightmare… and they would have been perfectly right.
Once again, like an apostle of salvation, her beloved came in and swept her off her hooves. Within moments, the nightmare was nothing but a moribund memory, and she was herself once more. That night, he treated her like a true princess, giving her everything she could have ever wanted and more. For that one fleeting moment, she was truly happy.
In that moment of fiery passion, she gave herself to him, fully and completely. On that day, two became one, and they consummated their love.
Another month flew by, and soon afterward passed the day that marked a year since it all began. In that minuscule stint of time, the land was ravaged from the bottom up. Not a single city was left unrazed, and not a single soul was left untainted. By this point, the opposing sides’ strongholds were both nothing more than pathetic little shantytowns. Mass graves littered the landscape, silent places of solace for those of the fallen who were fortunate enough to have found their way back home.
In this Equestria devastated by an apocalyptic war—a sovereign nation that had been the paragon of purity a few short years earlier—happiness was quickly becoming a myth, just as the word “peace” atrophied from disuse.
It became evident to the mare that this was a war of attrition. If they continued on like this, there would simply be no ponies left to live on after the war was over. And as much as the cold, hard, blood-soaked planet deserved a reprieve from the ponies’ eternal abuse, she would not allow that to happen. All of the death, pain, and suffering simply could not have been for naught. Far too much had already been lost for that. She would not surrender. Not now, not ever.
And so she called a conference with her peers, voicing her thoughts to them. Unanimously, they agreed that they needed a new tactic. They needed something to end the war once and for all.
They needed a hero.
After days of brainstorming and no success, the mare’s beloved pitched an idea from left field. He knew of a spell, he explained, that would allow him and a small group of ponies to shapeshift at will, allowing them to infiltrate the enemy base. It would be difficult, possibly even impossible, but he was dead set on trying. And for as much as the mare worried for his safety, she knew it very well might have been their last hope, so she let him go.
Within a week, her beloved had organized a small entourage of warriors with varying skill sets to accompany him in his endeavor. Some were small and sleek, others large and fierce, some with unparalleled talents for nature, flight, and magic. All of them, however, held a dedication to the cause, instilling the mare with some much needed confidence.
The mare was not in this group, however. As much as she wanted to be, if only to protect her beloved, she needed to stay with her ponies.
And so when the day of their departure came, the mare bade her beloved farewell with a kiss—though not before mentioning she had a secret, promising to tell him of it upon his return. Smiling, he returned the kiss, excitement and nervousness coursing through his veins. Then just like that, the group headed out on their journey, hopes for the best and fears for the worst wordlessly shared between them.
Two grueling weeks passed before the mare received any news of their mission. When the remaining half of the party finally did return, they bore tidings of good news. The operation was a success; they had managed to slay the diarch of the day, crippling the opposition. Victory was now within sight.
The mare felt a pang of sadness at the news of the diarch’s demise, but smiled through it all the same. She continued smiling as they told the story of their heroic infiltration of the enemy camp. She even smiled as they told her of how they were discovered, and of the resulting battle. She kept on smiling as she learned of precisely how the diarch fell at the hooves of these mere mortals, lost somewhere between shock and abject terror.
She still smiled even when she learned of her beloved’s death.
Tears flowing freely down her face, hind legs ready to give out beneath her, but still smiling. Always still smiling.
As they explained it, the group had been cornered and on the verge of death. In a last ditch effort, her beloved had called upon his knowledge of dark magic to save them. Using his own magic, he’d infused himself with the arcane streams of energies coursing through the planet itself. Utilizing every last bit of energy he had left, he’d fired a laser-thin beam of pure, raw, unadulterated energy at the diarch. The sheer power flowing through his mortal body had vaporized him and melted away his life energy, and with it, the diarch’s—a life for a life. In the resulting explosion, some of the party were able to escape unnoticed, returning back to the camp with naught but a few scrapes and bruises.
Worse yet, those who hadn’t yet died and hadn’t managed to escape suffered a fate more terrible than death. During the explosion, they still held their disguises, and the planet’s primordial energies rejected them for their deceit. Consequently, their souls were jettisoned from their bodies, taking shape in black, ugly, bug-like exoskeletons. As such, they found themselves blessed with the ability to shapeshift but cursed with the necessity to feed on love—because, in those last few moments, that was what was on the conduit’s mind: his one true love.
Predictably, the war swiftly came to a close from there. Without a leader, the Dawnbreakers were helpless against the Nightbringers’ unrelenting assault; every last one of them perished. From there, once the lands lulled into a temporary cessation of pain and suffering, everything started to reform, at least inasmuch as they could.
Of the several hundred thousand ponies alive during the antebellum, only several thousand ponies remained. With no semblance of trust or kinship left between them, they took their families and spread out across the country, living lives of solitude and self-sustenance.
Throughout all of this time, the mare nearly never left her private quarters. The only time anyone saw her was when she would visit the graves of her sister and her beloved, which had been erected somewhere deep within the Everfree Forest—a place no sane pony dared visit. For the longest time, she continued on like this, lost in the prison of her own mind, and not a soul knew why.
Then she gave birth to her foal.
His foal.
Their foal.
…Those who got the chance said that it was the most hideously deformed foal they’d ever laid their eyes on.
It had one eye permanently sewn shut, and the whole left side of its face looked as though it had been melted off. It’s head was misshapen and much too large for its body, and its tiny, shriveled, boneless legs were far too lame to have supported its body weight. Random splotches of its coat were missing from its barrel, and the brittle fur that remained fell off at the gentlest of touches. It was a sickly, pathetic sight, to be sure.
It might’ve even been considered a blessing that the poor thing was born still.
Some said it happened because of her beloved’s penchant for toying dark magic. Some said the genetic differences between alicorns and unicorns caused the malformations. Some even said it could be attributed to the stresses of wartime. One thing that they all agree on, however, is that what little of her sanity the mare had left had now disappeared entirely.
Seized by rage and sadness, the mare sunk to the floor, sobbing and laughing and screaming all at the same time. She didn’t move from that position for three whole days, and when she arose once more, she was not herself. The tendrils of the nightmare had taken hold, and with a smirk, a new, invidious plan was born.
No race that had birthed so much pain and regret deserved to exist on this planet, mutilating the very ground on which they walked with every single step. The planet had been a verdant and rich visage of nature before the ponies’ arrival, but it was no longer. She would rectify that which they had wronged. She, taking the few that remained hostage, would help this forsaken planet survive and rebuild however she could… no matter what the cost.
She would make the sands of time forget that ponies had ever existed.
She would destroy this world of her devising.
She would kill them all.
On the first snowfall of the year—the very anniversary of the day everything began to fall apart—the mare grabbed hold of her stars and pulled, yanking them out of the sky. One by one, they came hurtling down upon the ponies, leaving craters in the planet’s crust the size of the moon twice over again. The whole world began to crumble down around them—mountains falling, oceans boiling, cities burning—slowly destroying all life that had been, once was, or ever would be.
The mare, completely unfazed, clutched her foal close to her chest, slowly fighting her way through the chaos to the middle of the Everfree. Eventually, she found her way to the graves of the other diarch and her beloved, a small, weak smile playing at the corners of her lips. With a heavy heart, she lay down between them, never to rise again.
There, in that very spot, alone within the snow-laden forest, the mare lies as still as stone, cradling her only foal…
…for now, and for all of eternity.
Author's Note
Pre-read by the inimitable Absolution, inspired by Sara Teasdale's poem "There Will Be Rest", and written for Obs' and EqD's More Most Dangerous Game Contest under the Fallout: Equestria prompt.
Thanks for reading!
