And at the end of the world ...
Author's Note
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Well ... this got really dark, really quick.
And at the end of the world ...
“Starlight!” The Alicorn and Drake cried out, reaching out to her …
“NO! It’s a trap, a trick!” Starlight Glimmer raged, embarrassment and fury giving her the strength to use her scroll again, to fling them all away from her past and the pain of watching her best friend abandon her. “I WON’T LET YOUR LIES SWAY ME!”
The irresistible pull of the magic claimed all three of them, and flung them forwards through time again, this time further and farther than any of the other jumps.
And high above the clouds, a miracle, a Sonic Rainboom, appeared in a glorious blast of colour, sweeping the clouds away, even as a young and heartbroken filly swore she would find a way to make sure Cutie Marks would never take away something precious to her, and the timeline shifted again
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“No.”
The assembled Ponies blinked, their broad smiles fading slowly in shock, their banners and placards, meticulously hoof-painted, began to droop when the limbs that held them aloft began to go limp, and foals within the crowd began to cry, soft, hiccupping whimpers.
“B-but your Majesty, we’re sor-.”
“Were you sorry when the mobs came for Princess Luna and Princess Celestia, mindlessly believing the filth that the papers were spewing about abuses of power and their ‘true’ natures, and drove them to suicide?” Twilight Sparkle boomed in a cold voice that matched the stony expression she wore, her voice magically amplified to reach the back of the crowd, Ponies who had marched across the tainted, despoiled land of Equestria to her castle. The last Ponies in Equestria, if not the whole world. “Were you sorry when more ‘Revolutionaries’ hijacked the Northern Line and planted a sonic bomb in the heart of the Crystal Empire where Cadence and Shining Armor were celebrating their daughter’s crystaling, and got to watch as their daughter, as well as most of the Crystal Ponies, were shattered into dust for the crime of having an Alicorn as their leader?”
Apart from the sobbing of the foals, and the awkward coughing and shuffling of hooves, not a voice rose in protest or apology, and tens of thousands of eyes refused to meet the Princess’s furious glare.
“When your new ‘Glorious Leader’ refused to honour her promises, and the supposed age of shared wealth and freedom from the ‘shackles’ of your Cutie Marks never showed up, where were your apologies then?” The Princess of Magic raged, her mane and tail, rippling with an ethereal wind and glowing even under the dim light of the sun, obscured behind a thick cloud of toxic smog. “Where was your contrition when my fellow Element Bearers were hunted down like animals, dragged from their homes and forced to suffer drawn-out, horrific executions for the ‘crime’ of standing against the ‘Equality Movement’?”
“But your Majesty, that was fifty years ago!” A Mare somewhere near the front row called out in a voice tinged with grief and outrage. Time and the ravages of the revolution had done Diamond Tiara few favours, as the deep lines, filthy coat and bitter expression she wore attested.
“Yes. Fifty years. Fifty years of watching my fellow Ponies tear through the land, recklessly chewing through our natural resources, going to war with abandon against our neighbours for petty, pointless reasons, oppressing anyone who refused to bow to the Equality Enforcers and fighting each other viciously for the dwindling amounts of farmable land and drinkable water as this world sickened and died under your hooves.” The Princess roared back, point a hoof to the sky, where in the distance, acidic rain continued to fall in ever-greater quantities as the factories, once promised to bring wealth and comfort to all, now ran on automated machines that forced hundreds of thousands out of jobs and left the poor-houses overflowing, continued to pump toxins and smoke into the air to the point the Pegasi could not fly for fear of the corrosive fumes that now made up Equestria’s clouds would eat away at their feathers and hooves. “You toppled the Gryphons’ aeries to the ground and crushed their nests. You burned out the Changeling Hives and filled the Minotaurs’ labyrinths with poisons. The last of the Diamond Dog Miners died yesterday from starvation because there are no more gems left to mine, so their overseers refused to give them any food. Even the Dragons have given up in despair and have begun throwing themselves into the ocean rather than live on in this world of poison and death you have created with your own hooves.”
“BUT WE’RE GOING TO DIE! There’s nowhere left for us to go, and the Leader won’t allow us into her bunkers!” Another Pony screamed, pointing to the dark spire to the north, where once proud Canterlot had stood, where once humble Ponyville had nestled up against the Everfree Forest, and the growing darkness of the acid rain that slowly, heartlessly began to sweep closer towards the Ponies and the Castle. “You have to save us, YOU’RE A PRINCESS! It’s your job, your duty!”
“My duty is to safeguard magic and friendship. I shall fulfil the first … and there’s none amongst you now that qualify for the second.” Twilight Sparkle, last surviving Alicorn, replied after several moments of silence, her words sweeping over the crowd like a dark cloud of their own. “Now, it seems the rest of the world has finally caught up to my way of thinking. And I wouldn’t worry too much about those bunkers your Glorious Leader was so proud of.”
“Wh-why?” Another Pony shouted, and Twilight permitted herself a tight smile that made the first few rows of Ponies, numbering hundreds at least, take a collective step back.
“Because Starlight Glimmer always did love to skim profits off of her pet projects, which meant her toadies had to make do with substandard equipment and supplies. The acid rain melted their way through the protective layers of the bunkers a few hours ago.” The thin smile turned into a cold, brutal display of teeth bared in pyrrhic victory. “At long last, Starlight Glimmer is finally one with her fellow ponies … as part of a toxic, acidic sludge. Rather fitting, if you ask me. Now, leave my castle. I have no wish to spend the last few minutes I have on the face of Equestria looking at those who have brought about the end of recorded history.”
Ignoring the growing hubbub behind her, the wailing, the screams, the urges to violence and ‘justice’, Twilight Sparkle walked calmly back into her castle, her horn flickering with power … and what magic still remained in Equestria answered, a glimmering bubble of purple energy popping into existence around the Crystal Tower the Tree of Harmony had once granted her, before the recklessness of Starlight Glimmer’s ambitions had resulted in the death of the great tree, and the slow decay of magic across the world.
In time, the world would heal, and a new tree would be born. Time that the nations of the world no longer had.
On and on the barrier came, pushing Ponies backwards, heedless of the harm it caused as limbs were snapped like dry twigs, bodies bruised and twisted unnaturally and Ponies were crushed and smothered under the weight of their fellow refugees as a good five miles all around her castle was cleared all sentient life, leaving behind the animals and plants, and the earth shook mightily, knocking those still on their hooves to the ground.
With a horrific groan, the earth split, rising up and up, clods of dirt falling and bouncing off the inner surface of the barrier-shield as, impossibly, the Castle of the Last Princess rose into the air, taking with it the last pure earth on the continent, the last acres of green grass and untouched forest, straight up into the sky.
The barrier sizzled as it punched into the toxic black-green clouds … and pushed on through.
For several glorious moments, the Ponies below were bathed in the glorious gold of a summer sun as the Castle of the Last Princess disappeared from their world, pushing aside the toxic clouds and allowing the dying sun to shine down on them before the black-green smog rushed back across the void, greedily denying the assembled Ponies the glimpse of what they had lost, what for most of them had been their first real taste of sunlight.
“It’s your fault!” As withered as her comrade, Silver Spoon picked up a rock from the edge of the crater where the castle had once stood and dashed it against Diamond Tiara’s head, making the battered old Pony stagger to the side and push several other Ponies. “You told me I had to help you find where Applejack was! She might have let us in if we hadn’t been leading that search-party!”
“Whorse!” Diamond Tiara shouted back, tackling her ‘friend’ and sending the two old Mares tumbling down the sides of the sloping wall of shattered bodies, locked together in hatred and recrimination as all around the crater, more Ponies turned on each other, laying fault at one-another’s hooves, an outpouring of despair and impotent rage that washed down the crowd as brother turned on brother, and child rose up against parent, a frenzied, spiteful last moment of grief and denial as thousands of Ponies raged against the fate they had made for themselves, while the sky broke open with sizzling drops of acidic rain, the world itself weeping at the last, pitiful actions of sentient life on its surface.
Above the clouds, however …
Leaning against a pillar, Twilight Sparkle sobbed in despair and heartache. It hurt! Oh, how it hurt! Every droplet of acid on the skin, every time hoof or tooth broke skin, every shattered bone, every wrenched joint, she felt it all as the desperate souls below instinctively reached out, trying to rekindle the mystical connection between Pony and Alicorn … and she denied them.
Despite her words, maybe some of those Ponies could have been saved. Maybe a few hundred, even … but how could she have extracted them without the rest of the mob tearing them apart in outrage and jealousy? How could she have fed them, or kept them from using their magic, over the centuries while the world tried to heal itself?
The Castle would only soar above the clouds, pristine white clouds, for a few hundred years, the best outcome Twilight could achieve with Magic slowly withdrawing into the core of the planet to await the seeding of a new Tree of Harmony, a process she had calculated would take approximately three hundred and seventy-two years and eighty-nine days, give or take a few hours. If she did nothing but move the Sun and Moon and keep the Castle floating, the Castle would have enough power left within it to slowly back to the surface when the new Tree of Harmony had the strength to support a world capable of life, the living crystal of her home would make contact with the earth and mystically relink with the reborn Tree of Harmony, and the balance would be restored.
But the world’s nations would have to die to achieve that balance. Fools who had willingly aided and abetted Starlight Glimmer’s mad ambitions, either out of belief in her wretched ideals or out of a desire to exploit her insanity to make their own nations or races ascendant in the aftermath of it all had built fortresses deep underground, tapping into the withered Ley-Lines to power their hold-outs, and even now, the pulses of her Castle leaving the surface of the world, the severing of the mystical castle from the very earth were triggering spells she had cast decades ago when the inevitable fate of the world had been made clear to Twilight Sparkle.
Pulses that would ‘encourage’ the Ley-Lines around the planet to withdraw within into the core in seconds, rather than decades, leaving the surface of the planet devoid of all magic. There would be no time for the survivors to try to reverse the process, no hope for them to cling on as parasitic enclaves as toxic as the world they had created.
Celestia and Cadence would have been horrified at the cold ruthlessness of it. Luna and Shining Armor would have understood the necessity, even if they would have grieved at the loss of life. The fellow Element Bearers would likely have never forgiven her for the calculated brutality she had employed or her final, harsh rebukes to the last survivors of the world. And her poor Niece Flurry Heart would never have understood …
Perhaps the shattering of the Crystal Ponies had been a mercy, after all. Connected to the magic of love as they were, they could not have survived the loss of the Crystal Heart or the absence of magic from the world. A brief moment of despair and confusion before the end, rather than the drawn-out agony of the panicked frenzy of the survivors below as they realized their ambitions and plans would all come to nothing.
Staggering for a few steps, Twilight moved further away from her source of agony and waited, eyes full of tears as she felt the last flickers of desperation, the last wisps of life, faded away, leaving her free of the phantom sensations of agony even as her heart clenched with pain.
Her work was not yet done. Magic alone could not restore Equuis, no, it needed life to make it all worthwhile, sentient life. New races would arise after the toxins had faded, the corrosive rain stopped falling and the factories had rusted away into dust, eventually, hundreds of years after the new Tree of Harmony has emerged and began to purify the world around it and the return of magic would raise the most worthy life-forms to the beginnings of sentience, but Twilight intended to assist and accelerate that process.
Deeper, deeper into the Castle, the last Alicorn walked steadily, conserving her magic and using hooves and wings to open doors into the heart of the castle. It took several minutes, even with her long limbs and Alicorn strength, but finally Twilight stood at the pulsing heart of her castle. Once, the Crystal Map had stood there, along with seven thrones. Now, a shimmering pillar of crystal, it’s core glowing with a pulsing, ever-shifting rainbow of power, connected floor to ceiling, and around it curled a sinuous purple dragon, his scales scarred by sword and spell and bolt, protecting the greatest treasure of them all.
Life.
In cocoons made from her studies on Changeling biology, newborns slumbered in suspension, Ponies and Gryphons, Minotaurs and Diamond Dogs and more races still floated, gently recovered in the final days before the world’s end occurred from parents too sick or too filled with despair to keep them, the nature of the pods ensuring that whatever toxins the children had absorbed from their parents and their environments would be purged from their systems over time.
A handful of Changeling survivors clung to the walls and ceiling, bowing deeply as she approached, a burly Soldier-Caste bold enough to fly down and offer a shoulder for Twilight to lean on, which she took gratefully, as she checked the pods, using magical arts given to her freely by the last of the Changeling Queens to push her love into the pods, and into the small green orbs which held the future of the Changelings that were nestled between the pods, and finally into the Changelings themselves.
Spike’s large emerald-green eyes watched her with sad understanding as she trailed a hoof over the shallow grooves just above his shoulder-blades, where his wings had been torn out by a violent pro-Pony mob decades ago when the Equality Revolution had turned from a troublesome movement into a violent uprising, a half-dozen eggs of various colours held in the protective hollow between his fore-limbs and throat, the last untainted Dragon eggs in existence.
“It will be enough.” Twilight said loudly in a clear voice, even as her heart wailed that it had to be, the Crystal Castle finally settling into the long orbital path with a low groan and shudder. “Here, we shall endure. And in time, our descendants shall return to the surface, and with the lessons we all shall impart to them in the time between then and now, the horrors we have witnessed, the atrocities we have fought against will never be repeated.”
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Hidden from view by the magic of the Time-Jumping spell, Twilight and Spike held each other silently, eyes glittering with unshed tears, while Starlight Glimmer stared at the growing puddle of melted flesh and softening bone that had once been her followers, both spellcasters surrounded by bubbles of magical defences that flickered and spluttered under the unending assault of the acidic rain.
The Time-Jumping Spell that had brought them all to this point would take them away shortly, and already all three could feel the tingle as the magic spell began to grow in power again, pulling on them insistently to take them back to the timeline they were supposed to be in.
“Starlight, you have to stop this!” Twilight finally managed to say, her voice broken with grief as the prickle of the magic grew stronger, more insistent. “Look at what you’ll cause! All this death, all this suffering!”
“It’s not too late!” Spike added, reaching out a claw to the embittered Unicorn, who stared at the nightmare before her with empty, unseeing eyes. “We can stop this now, before more lives are lost.”
For several heartbeats, Starlight said nothing, before turning to the two and smiled, a dead, empty smile.
“You’re right.” Starlight said … and cast her time-jumping spell on Twilight Sparkle and Spike. “We can save lives if we stop this right now.”
Twilight and Spike had only seconds to scream in horror as the strain of casting the spell caused her protective spells to fail, the acidic rain immediately eating into the Starlight’s hide before the spell grabbed the heroic pair one last time, and flung them back into their own time.
“I’m sorry, Sunburst.” Starlight thought to herself, focusing past the pain to imagine the face of her one and only friend, falling to the ruined earth with a sad smile on her face, her horn flickering with one last spell. “I guess I finally understand why you didn’t want to be my friend”.
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“Sunburst?” The orange-coated Unicorn looked up from his tomes with a startled expression, an expression that only became more startled as he saw the famous Princess Twilight standing at the entrance to his room, tears streaming from her eyes. “A-are you Sunburst?”
“Y-yes, your Majesty? Wh-what is the prob-!” The would-be magician’s stuttered speech stopped short as the Princess lunged forwards and embraced him, sobbing brokenly, followed shortly by a small purple drake whose own tears burned down the Unicorn’s hide.
“We h-have terrible news. About yuh-your friend, Starlight Glimmer.” The Princess managed to force out after a short while, unable to look Sunburst in the eye.
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Down the hallway, a cloaked figure leaned against the wall, sighing softly under her breath as she listened in on the conversation, the outrage in the Stallion’s voice giving way to shock, and then grief as the tale of how Starlight Glimmer had died.
Hobbling away, the figure kept her head down, ignoring the curious looks of the other scribes and studious Ponies, although a few caught glimpses of pock-marked, hairless hide when the hem of her cloak lifted enough to expose her hooves and fetlocks.
“Goodbye … and thank-you.” Starlight whispered to where two Ponies and a Dragon mourned her loss, the only time anypony had ever done so, and cast her time-jumping spell.
There were worlds upon worlds where evil thrived, where Ponies and other creatures lived under the thrall of cruel tyrants and heartless monsters. Worlds that had sprung into being because of her self-indulgent madness, her foolishness, her choices.
And maybe, just maybe, when she had fixed them all and restored hope to those darkened worlds … she might come back to this one, and finally find the strength to forgive herself, and accept the offer that Twilight and Spike had given her.
