Only Time Will Tell
Based on the song by George DesRoches
And so it was... the birds would sing, the cars drove by the parks on their paved roads, the wind blew carelessly through the trees, and nobody felt like anything was truly wrong.
Occasionally, somebody would suffer a loss, something would go awry. Still, we were all ignorant; we were blind to what was coming.
The creature slowly began to move. Its entire body was overwhelmed with pain, though it still pushed itself to move. After a few moments, it opened its eyes. The ground was solid and grey, covered with charred wood and ashes. Looking down, the creature saw small, white legs, ending in hooves. As it moved, the creature began to feel its muscles stretching, loosening, and becoming less sore.
When it finally finished standing for the first time, it took in the landscape. A small, blue mass was struggling to stand nearby. When it was half way to its hooves, the creature noticed it was a pony; a young filly. The creature stumbled toward the pony and extended a hoof of its own to help. They locked eyes for a moment, and a flicker of understanding flashed through their minds that they were the same.
We are… linked… Sister.
Together, they looked around the room they were in. A light wind blew through the fragmented remains of a warehouse’s wooden skeleton, raising small clouds of ash as it went. The two ponies huddled together against the chill of the wind.
Somewhere, a single, loud crack of an unknown source permeated the stark silence, and the sisters felt the true coldness of the world crash in around them, unaided by the wind. This world was finally, truly dead. The two ponies huddled together against the cold were all that remained.
In the midst of the room, there was a small area, seemingly untouched by the destruction that the rest of the world had suffered.
In this small space of floor, there were a few small, rectangular cartridges next to a larger metal device. A body was laying face-down on the floor, unmoving.
The metal device clicked and whirred, startling the ponies, before playing the voice of a man thick with sadness, anger, and regret.
Nobody predicted the wars, the famine, the disease, the economic collapse.
Religious zealots wandered the streets with their cardboard signs and their soapboxes, and the talk shows were flooded with various ways to say "I told you so,"
But amidst the pointed fingers, nobody truly saw it coming; the end of the human race, the end of civilisation as we know it.
The white pony felt another small tear fall from her muzzle to the floor, knowing her sister was doing the same. In a world of corruption, fear, and chaos, one man had truly shown regret at what humans, as a race, had done.
Almost subconsciously, the two ponies lifted their heads to the sky, horns glowing with power previously unknown to them, and the man’s body slowly lifted into the air. His clothes were cleaned of the dust and ashes covering his body, and he began to fade from the world, being immediately replaced by five multicoloured spheres with differing runes inscribed into each.
Harmony. The word reverberated through their minds.
‘S… Sister…’ The throat movements were unnatural to the white pony, and she took a moment to compose herself before speaking again.
‘We… we must…’ she never finished her sentence, the smaller, blue pony lifting a hoof and smiling through her tears. She knew what they had to do. They had to rebuild. They had to restart.
The white pony extended her horn to the sky, and let her magic flow free, raising the sun above the horizon for the first and last time. The New World had begun.
It got me thinking: what's next? Not for us; we deserve whatever's coming to us, but for the Earth? Who would take our mantle as the ones who ruled the planet?
Who would fill our shoes and walk the paths we walked? Learn right from wrong; learn communication; set up their own empires; their own cities; their own world?
The thought baffles me at times that we could truly end, but there will always come a day when you see the ones you loved for the last time, and just like the leaves on the trees change, our world will die.
We can fight it, we can ignore it, but the fact remains, our time will end. Will it be today? Will it be tomorrow? Who knows? Only time will tell...
Celestia looked out over the field by her and her sister’s home. There was grass, flowers, and a few trees, but there was still a long way to go.
She and Luna had immediately taken to repairing the damage done to the world so long ago. It had been an entire century since their world began, though it felt so much longer.
The first step to repair was to return life to the land, and life needed warmth, and warmth came with the sun. Too much of the sun, or too little, would mean death, and Luna had used her own magic to raise the moon at an even interval, thereby creating Day and Night.
Combining their magic, the two celestial sisters had made a spark, and life took root everywhere it could. For every pony born into the new world, a star would blink into life in Luna’s night sky, and the two sisters were happy.
As time went along, more life was borne of their joined magic, until eventually it became self-sustaining. The ponies bred, the plants made seeds, and other animals seemed to appear of their own accord in collectives of trees known as “Forests”.
Reports came of sentient beings in other lands, and trade routes were set up with them. Soon, the land was filled with life, commerce, and, for a time, all was well.
By the time of the Eighth Age, a fragment of a memory began to stir. Some ponies were becoming disruptive to the point of violence. Before the end of the Age, civil war had broken out. Nopony knew what had started the war, but rumours included everything from murder to a simple disagreement over how many bits a cherry should cost. Something was causing the ponies to become violent, and the princesses didn’t like it.
‘Such a pretty sight,’ Luna began one evening, looking out from her balcony to the burning skyline where a nearby town had been razed. ‘It’s beautiful, in a tragic way…’
‘Do not say such things, Luna. We must fix this before it is too late. What is it, though? Is it what the… hu-man spoke of on those metal disks so long ago?’
‘Chaos,’ Luna replied simply.
‘Anarchy,’ agreed Celestia.
‘Confusion…’ Luna muttered, thinking hard of ways to fix it.
‘Discord,’ called out a deep voice from the shadows, laughing loudly when the two sisters gasped.
The day the sun went out was the day it all ended. We had poisoned our planet, and blocked out the very thing which kept us alive.
Crops died, people withered, and eventually populations collapsed in on themselves. The ones who are left are still fighting, no longer for game but for survival…
Still, it's only a matter of time. Our days are numbered, our time is up.
Celestia touched down on the stone floor in the Chamber of the Sun, pink mane dropping a moment after her body. From their castle in the Everfree Forest, the two sisters ruled Equestria, though now the land seemed to rule itself, unaided by their alicorn magic.
‘His cursed clouds cover almost the entire sky! Without my sun, I cannot access the power I normally have!’
‘I know, sister. My moon has been blocked, also. He almost seems to be picking our strengths… and breaking them.’
‘I have seen the same thing happening to our subjects. They’re being turned to slaves, sometimes mindless, otherwise turned dull grey and evil… but why? Why is he doing such things?’
‘Why, my dear Celestia, it’s because it makes me laugh, and laughing feels good, you know? I enjoy laughter. And I have a fantastic sense of humour. I'm hilarious.’
‘What? Show yourself!’
The familiar, deep laugh reverberated throughout the Chamber of the Sun. A shadow appeared on the stone wall near the princesses, despite there being no distinguishable light source in the sky.
‘Why are you spreading such… such chaos across our land?’
‘Your land? Hah! Why, Celestia, the land belongs to nobody -- or pony – alone! The land belongs to any who live on it, and as for the chaos? Well, chaos is perfection! Many ponies spend their lives in vain attempts to become perfect, but what they don’t realise is that perfection is unattainable to petty mortals such as themselves. By spreading what you so call “Chaos,” I’m sharing perfection with the world.’
‘No, you are not! Perfection may not be easy to achieve, but it’s certainly not chaos! Ponies are dying, Discord!’
‘Dying? Hardly. Have you seen any death?’
‘That’s not the point-’
‘That’s exactly the point! I’m only having a little fun, here. Nopony’s dying; that’s not really my style. I simply want to have my fun and move on.’
‘Maybe you should move on now before we make you!’
‘We? But, Celestia, your sister hasn’t said a word yet.’
‘Luna…?’ Celestia whispered to her sister.
The light blue pony stood in a trance, transfixed on the shadow on the wall.
‘Well, if you insist on coming to me, I will tell you where to find me,’ the voice of Discord spoke, before slipping into a limerick.
‘If you wish to restore ‘order’, you must return to where
your world first began; that place of despair.
But you must be strong, and you must be fast,
Use body and soul, of races now passed.’
The room once again resonated with a low laugh, and the shadow on the wall jumped up into the third dimension before leaping through a window.
Thunder cracked overhead and the pink clouds above began to rain a brown liquid… chocolate milk?
‘Sister? Luna, answer me!’ Celestia’s voice carried a panicked tone, causing Luna to break her trance. A small amount of luminescence was missing from her eyes as she spoke.
‘I apologise, sister. I do not know what just happened… I couldn’t look away from… that shadow. He… he had control of me, but chose to do nothing. What happened?’
‘He told a riddle… something about how we must be fast… and we must return to... Luna, we must depart at once. Every minute he becomes stronger, we must defeat him before he becomes too powerful.’
‘But how? Where?’
‘I… We leave at once for the Ruins of Equus.’
‘But we have not been to the Ruins for centuries!’
‘Precisely, sister. Discord must be there. The Ruins are where we were born; where our new world began. He is waiting for us there.’
Celestia looked into Luna’s eyes, though the gaze was not returned.
Not a word was spoken on the trip to the Ruins of Equus. The sisters looked out over their land, taking in the destruction, and mentally turned their sadness to anger at Discord. They would need all their strength to fight a powerful foe such as this, and if that meant succumbing to their rage, so be it.
I give the next race our blessing. I speak for all of us left, the ones who had seen the final days, who are living it, "Godspeed". You deserve it.
I pray that you won't make the same mistakes we did. We killed ourselves off with greed, desire, pride, vanity, and destroyed the empires we had fought for so long to create.
In the end, the human condition was our downfall, and I hope against hope that you won't befall to your own.
Take good care of this Earth; It did us well, and if you take care of it, it'll take care of you. I only wish we had seen that sooner...goodbye...
Luna stumbled, being caught under her sister’s wing before landing on the floor of their castle in the Everfree.
‘Sister, you must rest!’ Celestia insisted. Discord had gotten a lucky strike in against her during their fight, and ultimately they had lost. Celestia was determined to think they would have won without that strike, but in her heart she knew that even their combined power was nothing to Discord’s own.
‘No… come… on…’
‘Luna, if we go back there and fight, you could be hurt, and if that happened, I would never forgive myself. Today we rest, tomorrow we fight.’
‘Tia, please! Every moment we use “recovering” is a moment he uses to take over more of Equestria!’
‘I know.’ A tear formed in her eye as she whispered, ‘but that’s a risk I must take for you. Ponies may fight, ponies may die, but without you, it would be so much worse. We must dedicate this time to recovering and figuring out the riddle he’s given us.’
She thought back to the fight, where Discord had thrown them off by saying they misunderstood him. In the moment that Luna had been distracted, his magic had struck her to the ground, forcing Celestia to gather her up and retreat.
Must be strong and must be fast, she thought, Use body and soul of races now passed… wait! Races now past? The spheres! Maybe… just maybe…
‘I will return,’ she said to Luna before beginning the descent into the bowels of their castle. The Stones of Harmony had been placed below for safekeeping; the final relic of the last race of Equestria… or “Earth” as he had defined the land.
The door opened in the oldest chamber of the castle, the room filling with unnatural light as five stones glowed from the depths.
Only one among the old race of 'humans' was able to resist the corruption of Chaos. Perhaps whatever is left of his spirit will be enough to banish Chaos once and for all from our new world... please give us the strength to rid ourselves of Discord’s reign.
She levitated the relics to herself, lightly touching one of them with a hoof before shutting the door and ascending the stairs, spheres floating behind her..
Please give us strength…
The two sisters flew together across the burning Earth, spheres in tow. Luna insisted she was prepared to go in against Discord again, but Celestia was still worried.
The sisters flew over a hill and the Ruins of Equus came into view. Pink clouds hung in the sky, spewing chocolate rain onto infertile ground. The ground’s very colour had been changed to bright, unnatural colours. The ruins themselves had remained intact and Discord had erected a throne amongst them. The ancient draconequus was sitting on the throne, one leg over the other; an inside-out umbrella lazily held in one clawed hand.
‘So the great sisters return! Would you care for a drink, Celestia? Something to eat? A game of Go Fish?’ Even as he said this, the clouds rumbled and a salmon fell from the sky, smacking Celestia across the face unexpectedly. She stumbled a landing, dazed, and placed the colourful spheres on the ground behind her, then turned to face her opponent who was busy rolling on the ground with laughter.
‘Ahah! Oh, I crack myself up!!’
‘Enough! Your days of tyranny are over, Discord! We’re here to return the land to what it once was.’
‘And you think I’m doing anything different? Well, if I must say so myself, I believe I’m doing a marvellous job of returning the land to the Chaos that once blessed it.’
Luna spoke up from Celestia’s side. ‘This world is no place for the likes of you, Discord! Leave now, or we’ll be forced to-’
‘To what, dear Luna? To rule with an iron hoof the ponies who are free under my reign? To steal form the world the laughter it oh so needs?’
‘Laughter?’ Celestia scoffed. ‘Look around you, Discord! Do you think anypony’s laughing? You’re causing more harm than-’
‘More ham? If you insist!’ he inserted, not allowing Celestia to finish her sentence. Lumps of meat began to rain from the sky, landing all around them as Discord started laughing once again.
‘ENOUGH!’ Celestia bellowed, using the Royal Voice and pointing her horn at Discord. ‘YOU WILL LEAVE THIS LAND, OR YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR CRIMES.’
Discord finally hesitated, pause caused by, if nothing else, the sheer volume of her voice. His eternal grin turned to a scowl. ‘Well, you’re no fun. I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.’ He took to the air and looked down on the sisters from above.
Celestia lifted the orbs from the ground with her magic and Luna looked on, transfixed. The relics glowed as she poured her power into them. Discord watched for a few seconds before charging with incredible speed, knocking one of the glowing spheres from the air with a fist as he went, and finally striking Luna where she stood, causing her to tumble backwards. As fast as he had dived, he was back up in the sky, watching from above.
Celestia let go of her magic and rushed to Luna’s side, stooping down to pick her up before the orbs even hit the ground.
‘I’m fine, Sister,’ Luna insisted, standing up unaided. ‘It was a lucky shot. It will not happen again.’ She prepared to launch into the sky after Discord, but was stopped by a hoof in front of her torso.
‘Sister, you cannot simply rush in like this. He wants to separate us.’
Luna bared her teeth at the ancient monster in the sky. ‘What do you propose?’
‘I propose you do something other than attack while I figure out how to use these… things! If these orbs are powerful enough to defeat Discord, I do not want you being caught in the crossfire.’
Luna opened her mouth to retaliate, but after a half-second of standing with her mouth open, she conceded, ‘yes, Sister. Can I help?’
‘No, Luna. Please just be safe… I couldn’t bear to see you hurt.’
Luna shared a quick glance with her sister before they broke apart and returned to the battle.
‘What is it, sisters? A new stratagem? Come along, then. Give me your all…’
He lowered down nearer the ground, hovering a few yards from the sisters. Luna locked eyes with him while Celestia continued pouring magic into the stones.
Discord charged again at Luna before feinting and propelling himself toward Celestia. Before Luna could do more than call out for her sister, Discord was upon her, breaking the magic holding the stones and causing them to fall.
They seemed to fall in slow motion to Luna. She was forced to watch every moment as though it was a lifetime. The Lord of Chaos bared claws concealed in his paw, cutting down Celestia’s side before hitting her.
The first stone landed with a dull thud.
Blood sprayed into the air as Celestia went down. Discord began again with his terrible, cruel laughter.
The second and third stones hit the ground, immediately followed by two more thumps.
The princess of the sun lay on the ground below Discord as he grinned, mercilessly landing and walking toward her. The final two stones hit the ground, and Luna remained in place, unable to move. Discord spoke the final words Luna would ever hear from him.
‘I never go for the direct approach, you know. I prefer to have fun with ponies… turning their world’s upside-down, making chaos… I’ve never liked killing.
‘But you two… you sisters have caused more trouble than I can stand. The reason I never go for the direct approach is that it can get… messy.’
Luna watched from the sidelines as Discord casually eyed his claws. She began to feel a change within herself… a burning sensation in her gut… an instinct brewing within her… the need to protect? Love? No… no, this was much more powerful than love…
Rage.
Pure, unbridled rage. Rage at what Discord had done to the world and its inhabitants. Rage at what he was threatening to do to her sister. Rage at the stones for not working for her sister, and rage at herself for not being able to move.
Not able to move… must… break free…
Must…
Let myself…
Free…
The world stopped. Discord froze above Celestia, who had given up and was lying in the mud with tears on her cheeks. Luna walked through this frozen world, feeling the rage of the world focusing into one point: her. She directed her magic to the stone orbs embedded in the ground and focused her magic on them, knowing they were full almost before she began.
Discord slowly turned to face Luna as the world returned to life. Celestia opened an eye to see her sister and gasped. Luna ignored it. She had one mission: to eliminate the chaos ravaging their world and their subjects.
‘TOGETHER, SISTER,’ she bellowed. Celestia felt the pain in her ribs recede as she was filled with new energy. Taking to the air, she flew to Luna’s side and added her magic to the stones.
The instant her magic coincided with that of Luna and the stones, the world disappeared in a flash of white. The small runes carved into each stone produced a different colour and combined in a singular point. A sixth stone appeared, glowing brighter than the others. The sisters focused their magic, together, on this sixth stone, and knew everything would be better. The stones responded on their own, directing the full power of the sun and the moon onto the spirit of chaos.
All he could do was scream. More pain than he ever thought possible was passing through him, dragging on and on, lasting forever, until finally he felt no more. The greatest danger the New and Old worlds had ever faced was finally entombed in stone.
Luna fell, unconscious. When she awoke, she would have no memory of what had happened there that day, except that they had won.
What's next to come? Only Time Will Tell...
Celestia stood on the balcony of her and her sister’s castle in the Everfree. She simply stood and took in the scenery of her radiant sun shining down on verdant fields and forestland. In the distance, ponies played together, finally free of the disharmony that had plagued the world for millennia.
‘It is a beautiful day, is it not, Sister?’ Celestia asked Luna, who was standing just behind.
‘Of course…’
‘The world has yet to repair itself again, though I believe we can do it.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Luna wasn’t looking out upon the landscape. She was looking at the floor beneath her, deep in thought… memories were coming back to her, slowly. Memories of a great and terrible battle… and of a great and terrible monster.
She raised her head to see her sister basking in the sunlight. By the time her night came, all would be silent… the world would sleep and she would rule over nothing.
‘Everything will be just fine, Sister.’
The monster in her mind raised its head to reveal its eyes… eyes that pierced the soul with images of the moon, and she knew. She knew this was the creature of nightmares. Nightmare Moon.
End Transmission...
[Author's Note] War. War never changes.
