How You Live and Die in Equestria

Filthy Rich sighed to himself as he went over the numbers again, marking sheets of them with his pen as he tapped his feet against his desk. Profits were down again. Not gone, he still had more than enough to pay his workers what he’d promised and pay all his taxes, but he wasn’t going to be making as much himself as he would have liked. He had investments to make soon, and he needed capital to do so.

Distracted, he nearly missed when a bit of ash from his cigarette fell from the end, forcing him to quickly grab the ashtray to catch it, lest it fall onto his desk and set some of the valuable papers there alight. His fingers were just as quick as when he’d been a young colt though, wrapping around the cup and quickly placing them under the falling gray snow, before setting the thing down and returning to his notes, wondering if maybe that teleportation research in lab three could be scaled back after tonight’s experiment had proven to be a failure.

In another place, far away and yet very near to that scene, you were looking around. An hour ago you’d been at home, enjoying a nice relaxing evening. Then you’d heard a voice, laughing about something, before everything had gone...just gone. One moment, there was something, the next moment, there was nothing. Not even darkness, just nothingness that made your eyes hurt to try and look into, causing you to close them tightly. Then all at once, a world came crashing back around you. Not the one you had been in though.

When you appeared, laying on the ground, you were shocked to find things around you were different. Not in a small way either. Your home was gone. More than that, your whole town was gone, everything in every direction seemed to have vanished, with you laying on a bit of ground that was somehow warm to the touch, and also just a bit slimy. Pressing your hand against it, you could actually push it down a little, the ground giving, but also squirting more goo over your hand, causing you to groan in disgust.

Around you, there wasn’t anything else. The ground stretched away into the distance, infinitely going towards a horizon that blurred out in your vision, making it impossible to see beyond a certain point. Not that the plain seemed to end, more your eyes just couldn’t seem to focus on anything beyond a few miles in any one direction, forcing you to admit that you were screwed as you stared off into that distance, and then finally rose to your feet.

Screwed or not, you were going to try and find some help. Maybe that voice would get tired of its joke and put you back in your home, after all. Or perhaps, even after pinching yourself and feeling the bite of it, you were still dreaming. Maybe you’d fallen asleep in your chair again, and had watched just a few too many movies before doing so. Those thoughts bolstered you to start moving forward, the ground proving to be more than solid enough to walk on as you made your way in a random direction.

The walk itself seemed to be easier than it should have been. Your every step felt lighter, like you only weighed a fraction of what you should have. A quick test even showed you were jumping far higher than you’d ever done before, a simple hop carrying you almost a dozen yards forward and half that into the air, before you landed with a splat on the ground, which seemed to object to being landed on as it spewed a bit of goop at you.

Shaking yourself clean, you walked onward, your throat becoming dry as your march continued. You weren’t desperate enough to try the slime yet, but it was getting closer all the time your lips drying out with every step. Worse, the landscape around you refused to change, with the world still always being out of your sight, only the long, flat plain to look at, and making it impossible to judge how far you’d come, or even if you were walking in circles.

Then you saw it. On the edge of your vision was a shape. Indistinct and blurry, but still there, and you whooped in excitement over it. Rushing forward, your legs finding reserves of strength you hadn’t even known you’d had, you ran towards the thing, expecting to have to stop at some point as it seemed to be miles, if not tens of miles away. But your steps were so light, and every stride of your run seemed to vault you over those miles, closing the distance quicker than you thought possible.

When you finally reached the object, you were out of breath, falling almost in half as you tried to stay on your feet, breathing in and out in huge gulps of air. Before you was the thing you’d seen, and it was, in a word, massive. The walls of it now filled your horizon, stretching away on either side, and also far away into the sky, vanishing out of your vision, and making your eyes water when you tried to look farther beyond that.

Blinking, rubbing at your eyes to get rid of the stuff, you took in the object. It was a tower, a huge, impossibly large thing, that was larger than any mountain. Worse, it was warm, just like the ground. Not gooey though, just solid, and worst of all, smooth, making it impossible to climb, with you rubbing your hand on it and finding not a single handhold to pull yourself up with and maybe see farther away.

Still investigating, you were surprised when you felt hot. Not exhausted hot like you should have, but more like a middle of August day hot. Sweat began to pour over your skin, and you wiped it away, only to feel very tired. Then snow started. At first just a few flakes, then a lot more, all black and gray bits that seemed to be fiery hot to the touch, forcing you to cover your face with your hands.

Then it got even hotter, with a crackling sound, drawing your eyes skyward despite the burning snow. Above you, far above, but lower than the top of the spire, was a sun. It burned an smoulder, with a few wispy streams of smoke coming out of it at weird angles. It was old and dying, and as it died, it fell towards you, the heat coming off it intense beyond words, and even as you tried to run, you felt everything inside your body start to fail.

First your legs gave out, the soles of your shoes melted into the ground. Before you could do anything about that, you could feel your pores start to pop, like pimples, but because the stuff inside was boiling away, making small patches of bubbling juices on your skin. Finally, as you raised your hands upwards, you could actually watch the skin of your fingers melt away, bone exposed for a moment to your sight, before your eyes popped from the heat, leaving you only the sensation of burning as the last thing you felt.

Filthy Rich’s night was improving, as he went over a sheet of numbers. He’d found a bit more in the R&D budget than he’d expected, and that meant he could transfer some of that to his personal accounts for some emergency funds. So entranced by the numbers and the thoughts of what he could do with them, making them grow, that he missed a small flake from his cigarette fluttering down from the hand holding it, and then hitting the other as it laid on the table.

His response was immediate, as the hot ash burned at his flesh. He smacked it away, noticing a nice red spot under his coat where the ember had actually touched his skin, and making him swear as he walked over to a nearby sink and ran nice, soothing, cold water over the hand. Somewhere, far below his sight, ashes of a former body were washed away with the water, but he didn’t, couldn’t see it, and so he returned to his numbers, wondering why he’d wasted so many bits on that teleportation experiment.