Author's Note

This story is the next in the Chicken Goddess continuum. This takes place before Void Fishing chronologically. Once there are more stories featuring Chicken Goddess up, I will post a timeline which will be updated periodically.

Also sorry for the delay in making/releasing this. I'm programming a video game engine, doing art, recording music, and dealing with school at the same time. I'll try to get the next fic out to you sooner.

Salvation

Alone

A story of hope, a story of loss, and in a handful of dust I will show you fear

********

Three days searching. Three days running. Three days alone.

Alone.

Chicken wanted to say it was something she’d never felt, but she was too used to it. Even when surrounded by other ponies, they just didn’t understand. She was isolated in thought, isolated in every way that mattered. She could smile, she could laugh, but even that did only so much to integrate herself into society.

Alone.

Chicken Goddess, the one who ran. She was the one who stood, petrified as if by a cockatrice, unable to do anything. She wasn’t a healer, she wasn’t a helper, she was a destroyer. She must’ve been the equivalent to Death himself, broken away from anything real and with a touch which only killed. It all started with her, and it would end with her, too.

Alone.

When even Gods died, she couldn’t. She was scared, no, terrified, of what would happen if she lost hope entirely. Would the end be quiet? Would it be painless? Would she arrive in wherever the damned go when everything else ceased, or would she simply float in the nothingness, forever cursed to endure even when there was no longer anything to endure. Was there even a point?

Alone. So alone.

Three days and already everyone was panicking. Screams in the streets, city-wide lockdowns, martial law. The sun had set one day, three days before, and hadn’t returned. The moon hadn’t set. It was as if the world stood still, and everyone was running around in a still world where not even the air moved.

There probably wouldn’t even be a funeral.

All Chicken could do was stand there, frozen, three days ago. She was the first to fall still, and everything else followed. Once upon a time, Chicken wondered how an alicorn might die. She saw how Luna had eaten as a normal pony, how she had breathed like a normal pony, how she slept the same way any pony would. What, then, raised an alicorn above all else, something akin to a God? What could kill God?

They were no gods. In that moment, Luna was nothing but a pony the same as every other.

Broken.

Beaten.

Dead.

She followed her sister’s fine example and died.

There was no blood. Chicken knew, she was there. She saw Luna, still, wings shorn off and cauterized, hanging from a noose. Unable to breathe. Unable to move. Unable to scream. Unwilling to live. There was no God there, no overpowering presence of a ruler. All there was, was a friend who had lived too long, and who had lost too much.

Chicken Goddess had cut her down, tried to resuscitate her, but Chicken didn’t know how. She got the best doctors, but they couldn’t do anything. After that, nopony dared touch the body, as if it were cursed. None could bear witness to the tragedy. Everyone turned their eyes away and looked to the moon hanging ominously over the sky, unmoving. And Chicken?

Chicken ran.

Alone, Chicken ran from it all. She was lost in fear, sadness, and her own personal Hell.

She was the same. She was always the same. Chicken looked at herself, just as she had done so many times before, and she saw the same thing every time. Orange fur. Purple mane. Violet eyes. Short horn. Small wings. She even had the same unchanged body as she did so long ago.

It was the body of an eternal 11 year-old. It was unchanging. It was eternal.

Immortality was a concept forever out of reach, for not even alicorns were eternal. They could die, they could end. Nothing was unending.

For the first time in a long time, Chicken entertained the thought of just drifting away into nothingness; of just dying and leaving the world to its fate. She couldn’t, though. She was too scared that she would just wake back up and it would all be for nothing.

She’d died once, she was sure of it, but she didn’t die. She just woke back up, as if it had never happened. Luna had said nothing happened, but Luna had lied to Chicken about so much that Chicken knew something happened. Chicken hadn’t been allowed to enter her own room for a week, and there was the stench of blood in that hall for even longer. There was a disfigured mass carted out of the castle that same day under a red sheet. Luna had forced Chicken to leave.

Now Chicken was totally and utterly alone.

“Stop following me,” a voice called out. It was painfully familiar, and it felt like a needle through her chest.

There had been murmurs of a group worshipping a beast for years. From various rumors, Luna had deduced that it was likely Discord who had gained a following ever since he had disappeared, but all of her attempts to find him had failed. Chicken had no desire to speak to him, and thus never made an attempt to look.

“Please…” Chicken whispered. “I have nothing left…”

Three days ago, the world ended. Luna died, the public learned Celestia was gone, and Chicken Goddess walked outside to see a changed world. It was a world she didn’t want to see. It was a world where everything was confusing, and there were unfamiliar faces staining the streets which had once held memories of cheer and love. Chicken needed to find something, anything familiar that she could cling to.

“Stay away from me!” the voice screamed.

She had looked for the Beast God who looked like Discord. The one who would save the world. The one who was looked towards as the salvation of ponykind, ever since the rulers of the land had disappeared from the public eye and the state of Equestria began to decline. Chicken looked and looked for three days, but every time she thought she found him, he would disappear.

“Discord,” she said. He looked just like he did so long ago. He had the same body, the same skin, as if he had never aged. He was wearing something, a bracelet, on his right wrist. It had gemstones, what looked like obsidian, set into an image of a black sun. It was almost mocking.

“No! I refuse to talk to you!” he yelled. “I refuse to talk to a monster!”

“What…? Discord…” Chicken said.

“You killed them! It’s your fault they’re gone!”

He grabbed her by the neck, strangling her. Chicken couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think. She was too terrified to even move. She stared into his eyes, yellow and red, burning like cigarettes and equally as caustic. It hurt so much.

“Chaaa-!” she gasped. It was more of a wheeze; strangled.

“Why won’t you die!?” he screamed into her face. “I killed you once and you came back, like a cockroach which refused to die! You aren’t supposed to be alive! You’re a monster, a creature which doesn’t deserve life!”

Chicken’s vision was swimming. Discord’s face was blurry, and there was black encroaching on her vision. With some measure of morbid curiosity, Chicken’s eyes glued to Discord’s slowly raising arm, and she watched as it fell in slow motion towards her. It entered her chest, an almost freeing feeling, and her body felt so cold. She was shivering. She couldn’t see.

...Monster…

A second later, Chicken opened her eyes. It was like an out of body experience. She was sitting, staring at her own limp body from ten feet away. There was blood running down Discord’s arm as it exited her chest, a look of utter rage on his face. He turned and looked towards where she was watching from, still gripping her dead body, and his sneer deepened.

“You disgust me,” he said.

“I disgust myself,” she replied.

Discord lifted her body and threw it at the ground, hard enough to crack the clay road below them. Nopony was watching, they were alone. If anyone did see it, they’d probably have run away long before, and none would have even believed the story of a beast killing an unknown alicorn.

“Don’t follow me,” Discord ordered. “I never want to see you again. You’re an abomination.”

Then he snapped his fingers and disappeared, there was blood on the ground, and a broken pile of what was once her body.

In that moment, she wished that she hadn’t woken up.

Instead, she heaved all of the nothing that was in her stomach and collapsed, crying.

She was a monster.

She wanted to die.

She looked up, and when she looked around, she saw a world which had passed her. She saw a morning where her shadow stretched behind her, and an evening where her shadow rose to meet her, and from under a rock she crawled into a world which hadn’t known her. She saw the corpses of buildings, changed and rebuilt into monoliths of commerce, revolutions of economics and technology, and it scared her. She saw populations of ponies who she never knew existed, and who never knew she existed, and it scared her. The world she saw scared her.

In only a handful of dust, she knew fear.

********

Three more days. The world was growing colder and each day the moon seemed closer.

Chicken had died seven times.

Chicken had come back seven times.

Chicken had known despair for a lifetime.

She sat there, staring blankly at the brick wall of a building from her chair, a bench in the middle of a busy street. The world seemed to be pulling itself together despite all of the atrocity that had happened. It was as if everyone forgot that anything had happened and the moon wasn’t a permanent fixture in the sky.

It didn’t make sense how ponies could just ignore everything. It was like they couldn’t see what was really happening, as if they were plastic and something was moving them around like puppets. It was as if they were fake, like illusions following some predefined role.

They were all fake. They smiled and laughed and lived as if there was nothing wrong.

Just like how Luna was fake, how everyone was fake.

Reality forced them into their roles, fate guided them along, and they had no clue of anything. The farce of autonomy was disgusting. They couldn’t even realize they would die if nothing happened, and Chicken welcomed the moment the world froze over and left those plastic mannequins sculptures for whatever cruel creature Fate was.

If they couldn’t be bothered to see the world as it was, they didn’t deserve the world they had.

So she sat there, doing nothing, hoping that when she froze to death she would fall asleep for the last time.

She got the occasional odd stare, but only a couple ponies lingered for more than a moment. Those that lingered turned and moved on quickly enough anyways. She was a freak, or she was a child, or she was the trash by the side of the road nopony wanted to touch. She was something which existed outside of what reality wanted, and therefore she was inconsequential to the continued movement of every Fake continuing their day.

She was a monster, she knew.

The very fact that she existed proved that reality was falling apart, piece by piece, letting something as atrocious as herself exist.

It was disgusting.

She sat there for hours. She never grew hungry and she never grew tired. She simply sat there, alone. She was so alone, and she was so scared, but she didn’t move.

Then, out of nowhere, came a voice. It was deep, and it flowed like a river of nails, scratching painfully but somehow kind as much as it was harsh.

“Are you okay, kid?” the voice asked.

He was a stallion, black fur and grey mane. He looked meticulous, utterly different from what his voice sounded like. His grey hair was combed neatly, not a hair out of place, and his black fur shone like polished stone, as if he was a statue of some historic figure standing high above everyone else, imposing and worshipped. His blue eyes were chiseled from sapphires, bright and beautiful. He couldn’t have been more than thirty years old.

“...” Chicken looked away, silent. He would leave soon enough.

“You know, ignoring me just makes me want to help you more. You lost or something?”

Chicken didn’t move, simply sat there, unnaturally still.

“If you don’t talk, I’ll have to get child services involved,” he said. “I can’t in good conscience leave a kid on the street.”

“...Go away.”

“No-can-do,” he said. “So you’re either going to tell me why you’re here all alone, or I’ll find some other way to make sure you’re safe.”

A laugh bubbled up in Chicken’s throat. It was an utterly ridiculous notion.

“I can’t die,” Chicken said. “I’ll be fine. Now go away, I’m an alicorn, can’t you see? I order you to leave.”

“So you are an alicorn,” he said, as if just noticing. “Huh, didn’t know there were more of you. Doesn’t change anything, though. I can’t ignore someone sitting alone looking so sad.”

Chicken looked at him, saw his smile and white teeth. It looked too real, he was too real. Chicken hated it. She just wanted him to leave.

“Go away, now,” she repeated. “If you do not, I cannot ensure your continued safety.”

She was a monster. She couldn’t feel remorse, so why would she care if he died before his time? Why would she care if she was the one to kill him, so that he would leave her alone?

“I’m not leaving, you know. I know that look. I looked the same for a few days after my mom died.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through…” Chicken said.

“I know enough from looking at your face,” the stallion replied. “Look, just tell me what’s wrong, maybe I can help. Maybe I can find your family, or I can help you find a place to stay so you’re not out here in the cold.”

“I’m older than I look,” Chicken said.

“Oh? And how old is that?”

“It’s not polite to ask a lady her age,” she replied. “But I’m old enough. Older than you, at least.”

“What, did you take the elixir of youth or something?” the stallion sniggered.

“Might as well have,” Chicken said. “Are you done yet?”

“Not even close,” he said.

Chicken sighed.

“So what’s your name?” he asked. “Mine is Charcoal Roads.”

“...Chicken,” Chicken replied.

“Chicken? That’s an interesting name,” Charcoal said.

“It’s the one that fits me best.”

“So, what, do you cluck like a chicken, then?” Charcoal asked.

She gave a quick laugh, then sobered. “No, not quite that literal. It’s not that important anyways, the world is going to end soon enough and there’s no point in discussing this further.”

“...Yeah,” Charcoal said. “Maybe it’s going to end, or maybe some miracle will save us, but if it’s going to end then that’s all the more reason to get your troubles off your chest and be happy. When it ends, you won’t be able to smile anymore, so you need to be able to smile now.”

Chicken remained silent, just listening.

“Listen, life is worth living, even if that life is short. If you’re as old as you say you are, then you should realize that there is so much to live for. Spend time with your family, or your friends. Ponies do care about you.”

“I have no family or friends,” Chicken said. “I’m a monster. Monsters don’t deserve happiness.”

“Then I’ll be your family. I’ll be your friend.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why not?” Charcoal asked. “Listen, I can talk to child services and adopt you. It’ll be that easy, I promise.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Do you have identification which says otherwise? I can always have the child services check the public databases for your information and that would solve it pretty quick,” Charcoal said. At her confused look, he explained, “When a pony is born, their info is recorded in a file which is occasionally modified to reflect the development of the pony.”

“I’ve never heard of a… public database.”

“If you’re a kid, then I’ll be happy to adopt you. I’ve always wanted a kid, you know.”

“You’d do something like that for me? ...For a monster?” Chicken asked.

“Quit with the ‘monster’ thing, you’re not a monster,” Charcoal said.

“But I--”

“No!” he emphasized. “You’re not. Don’t call yourself that or the first thing I do when I get the papers through is ground you.”

“Fiiiiiine~” Chicken moaned. “Wait, what? I never agreed to--”

“Well let’s go!” Charcoal said, grabbing Chicken and pulling her with him.

“Does this count as rape?” Chicken asked, “Because I feel very violated right now!”

“Come on, you’re fine!” Charcoal said.

“Argh, this is going to be impossible, isn’t it?” Chicken asked rhetorically. “Ouch, watch the hair Step Führer!”

“Step Fruher?” he asked.

“Please don’t butcher your own name,” Chicken said. “Your pronunciation is horrible!”

“If it’s my name I gotta at least know why it’s my name,” the stallion said.

Because he was an asshole. Because he was stubborn. Because he threatened to ground her. Because he wouldn’t leave her alone. Because he deserved to have a name he couldn’t pronounce. Because he had the gall to try forcing her to do something.

...Because he was more real than anyone else.

Because he was there to make her smile. Because he didn’t leave when everyone else did. Because he wanted to be her friend. Because he wanted to be her family. Because he deserved a name which set him apart from the rest of them, those mindless fakes which didn’t care, didn’t live.

“...Because you’re an annoying Step Führer, that’s why.”

“Pffft,” he blew through his nose. “That’s a horrible reason. At least give me a good reason~”

“That’s what you get for causing me trouble!”

“Fine, fine, let’s just get this stuff done. I have to finish moving into my new restaurant, anyways.”

“What, you cook? That’s so girly!” Chicken laughed.

“Yeah, I cook! I’ll have you know I’m a great chef, you better believe it,” he said. There was a pause, where he let go of her and let her walk by his side instead of dragging behind. Then he blushed slightly, a little embarrassed, and asked, “...So how old are you really…? Not to be rude, but I gotta know for the paperwork.”

“I’m… eleven,” She said.

“Okay, just checking,” he said. “You certainly seem a decent bit older, but you definitely look really young. Saying you were older than me, though… that was pretty good.”

“Hnn…” Chicken mumbled. “Well let’s get going, old man!”

They smiled briefly and kept walking, spirits raised and ready to meet the future.

And when they arrived at the city hall, Step Führer and Chicken opened the door to a new life. One of hope, of promise, and of a brighter future. The next morning, the sun rose for the first time in seven days. The tension lingering over the world ceased. Everyone moved on to the next day.

What a beautiful day it was.

********