Andromeda's solid, fully materialized hooves clicked deafeningly loudly against the worn stone of the now ancient Canterlot Castle. She knew it was a bad idea, being here. That it would make it even harder to bring Equestria to an end after she spent time wandering its ruins and remembering all that had gone on, all the ponies that had lived there.
But she had to. She had to destroy Sol in order to reset life and give the system a chance to restart. She had to make Sol go supernova.
She'd left it off long enough, she realized. Nopony had been alive or around to care for the statues in so long that they'd degraded badly; a statue of Celestia in the royal gardens had lost its horn, and the gold embossed sun cutie mark was no longer the shining emblem it had been centuries ago. She'd spent so long staring at the weathered, nearly unrecognizable face of her older sister that she was unsure how long it had been since she'd arrived. Not that Sol rose and fell anymore to show her the days.
There had been ponies who'd continued recording after the death of Celestia, when the world had stopped, half immersed in day and half in night. They told of Luna, leaving the sun-baked half to try and help ponies who were cast into eternal night. Of Cadence, trying to uphold love and happiness in her part of the world while ponies suffered in the rising temperatures. Saddle Arabia had been the first Kingdom to fall, their already sweltering climate elevated further by constant sunlight; ponies had died off quickly as water became a commodity and heat sickness grew.
Cadance had kept Equestria as well as she could, all alone and trying to manage Canterlot along with the Crystal Empire inside the Light Realm. She'd died in a rebellion against her crown when her magic could no longer sustain an agreeable temperament in her subjects. The crystal ponies did not last long after overthrowing their Princess, as their economy and morality slowly fell to bits. The ponies who survived the coup moved to the Dark Realm, but ultimately died out as the lack of sunlight degraded their minds.
Luna thrived in her realm of darkness, but her subjects did not. Depression overtook most, and the land was littered with mass graves of those who had committed suicide to escape the eternal night. The loss of her ponies weighed on Luna, and the scribes say that she merely disappeared without a trace, perhaps back to the moon to live in solitude. Though she had looked, Andromeda could not find her younger sister anywhere-- Equestria or otherwise.
She knew that, since everypony was already long gone, all this happening only in the century she'd been elsewhere in the cosmos, there was no use in saving the dead world. It was uninhabitable now by all but the most resilient of plants and insentients. It was a waste of matter that could go into building a new Sol system in its place, rejuvenating this dead space. But it was no simple task, wiping away everything she had loved as a filly.
After wandering the crumbling soil and remnants of Equestria for what could have been days or weeks on end, Andromeda had finally numbed to the idea of destroying her home. Now she floated before Sol, only inches from the surface of the sweltering star. Her dematerialized form shimmered in the light of it, twinkling from horn to tail tip.
One spark of her magic was all it would take to send the star into a system-shattering explosion, but she was frozen solid in the face of her deed. Would she ever see other ponies again? Sure, there were other sentients in the universe, but they were not even close to a pony's form, and she had only watched from afar. If she destroyed Equestria now, she would be all that was left of ponykind-- the only evidence that ponies had ever existed.
But I will carry their legacy with me. Maybe one day, there will be ponies again. And I will never be alone. Her thoughts did nothing to console her. I will not let ponykind be forgotten.
Renewed in her ideals of continuing Equestria again, Andromeda let her magic slowly work its way up her horn. The soft purple glow reached out tentatively, through the fiery aura, to touch the first layer of gas. The surface began to expand, and she let it consume her, for this was her favorite part; watching the explosion happen from the inside. She galloped forward with the expanding gas shell until it reached Equestria and took a deep, settling breath as the flames began to scorch the surface.
A sharp pain on her flank made her turn, and she gasped. Her cutie mark was burning away.
The pain spread as Sol, now in full supernova, engulfed the dead planet within its deathly heat. Her fur was burning away, charring her skin, and the smell of burning flesh made her gag. She retched as the searing pain made its way up her torso to set her mane aflame, the heat reaching her face and beginning to reach bone elsewhere.
In her mind, she was calm. As if a part of her knew this was going to happen. That she was destined to die with Equestria. I am... Dying. I will die, and ponykind will die with me. Everything I am is everything they were, and now it will burn away into nothing. Sitting back on her haunches, she hung her head, body becoming tangible on the third dimension now that her concentration on her magic was waning in death.
The disintegration was almost immediate upon materializing, and she felt no more.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, there was a tug. A voice in the distance.
...dromeda... An... The soft voice wove in and out of her consciousness, and in a fit of desperation, she latched onto it. The sound carried her into a new blackness, unlike that of death. It was not so empty and silent, but rippled with the idea of life.
Sist... up... Willing herself to find the sound, she opened her eyes to the blackness.
It was almost blindingly white. Like a pelt she once knew. Celestia...
Yes, sis... I... you... stria.
Turning her head groggily, mildly surprised that she still had one, Andromeda looked up into the face of her older sister.
Author's Note
There will be a continuation coming soon!
