Not The First

I didn't think.

How could I have known? How could anypony?

I watched her form not five feet away; I watched her marrow, her bones, her muscles and skin and fur. I watched her become... me.

And then she was gone. And I fell.

I tried to fly, but something was wrong. I felt heavier. My wings would not lift.

I landed on something soft, and at first I was grateful. Until I looked down.

"Gaah!"

It was another me. Dozens of other mes. All piled up like child's bricks, like discarded toys. Toys of an uncaring universe.

I scrambled back, back, as far and fast as I could, desperate to make contact with something other than my own decomposing corpse. My hoof made contact with air. I fell.

Not far. The pile of rotting bodies was spread out enough that I slid to the bottom, instead of cracking my head on the ground. Though that would've been more merciful.

I lay there a minute. I didn't want to move. My heart beat against my ribs. My lungs squeezed and squeezed. I could feel slime seeping into my coat and mane.

Slowly, I got to my hooves. I could feel the bile and pus cling to my back as I did. My fur stood so much on end it hurt.

I forced myself to breathe. I could figure this out. I was smart. I was strong. I was a freaking alicorn princess, a physical god, for ponies sakes.

I needed more light.

I tried to light my horn. A simple spell, one I had done almost every night at least once.

It didn't work.

My magic wouldn't work. I was stuck in this place, with a pile of my own dead bodies. And I didn't even have magic.

I began to hyperventilate, and no amount of Cadence's breathing technique would stop it.

I tried to remember what I was doing before.

Ah, yes. Starlight refusing to celebrate Hearthswarming. I had teleported... I only wanted to go a few feet... to cut her off. And then I had ended up... here.

Sweet Celestia.

Did this happen every time I teleported?

How many times had I teleported? It had to be hundreds... maybe more than a thousand times in my life. From the time I was a filly, practicing magic, to just now, for something so trivial I barely thought about it.

When I was a filly.

I forced myself to look at the pile of corpses. The sheer size of it was nauseating, to say nothing of the smell. Graveyards and crematoriums and mortuaries and autopsy rooms... It was all of that, and more, all stacked into one undeniable stench that crawled into my nostrils and punched my brain cells to death. I gagged as I took just one step closer.

It was purple.

A mountain of purple. With bits of pink fur here and there. Red organs in a bloody sea. Some white bones poking through. A lot of rotting blackness.

But mostly purple.

I didn't want to touch them. But I had to know. I had to see.

I started scrambling at the pile, pulling on legs that came off, on skin that peeled away. My own fur was caked in gore soon enough; tears were dripping down my muzzle. I kept going.

I don't know how long it took. Minutes. Hours. A day.

When I was done, almost the entire pile was moved. But I had found one.

A skeleton.

A tiny collection of bleached bones, only the skull larger than my horn. It had its own horn; a tiny stump of ivory jutting from the forehead. I counted keratin layers. She couldn't have been more than eleven years old.

That's when I vomited.

My stomach turned itself over and I puked, chunks of hay and candy scratching their way up my throat along with pints of stinging bile. The stinking gunk splattered over what was left of my filly self, and I vomited again. I kept at it until there was nothing left in my stomach and my muscles ached from dry heaving.

I collapsed after that. My legs were too weak. I didn't care anymore that my face was pressed against puke-soaked bones and rotting flesh. I didn't care.

It was a while before I moved.

I didn't sleep, but I think I dreamed. I dreamed I was home, with my friends, unaware that this place existed. A fantasy.

But every dream ends.

I pushed myself up, still weak. But I moved. Because I was not going to die laying down.

The first thing I did was to move every one of my selves back to the pile. I didn't want to look at that skeleton anymore. The reminder.

That in all the times I'd teleported, all the years I'd lived...

Not one of me ever made it out.

And neither would I.