The Last Sunset

by River Road

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Other, Tragedy, Adventure, Sunset Shimmer
Length: 9118

I went into exile, on my own terms, to come back and take what I deserve. When I came back, there was nothing left to take.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I don’t know if anypony will ever read it, or if there is anypony left who could ever read it. Some might see it as a way to keep my sanity in this place, but that implies that I have any sanity left to lose. I’m not so sure about that right now. I’m not sure about anything anymore.

My name is Sunset Shimmer, and I am the Princess of Equestria.

Cover art put together by Amber Spark, who writes a way better Sunset Shimmer AU than me. Now go read her Wavelength series.

Written for FOME's "Imposing Sovereigns" Contest.

Published 2017-03-20 01:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2017-03-20 01:00:01 UTC

Journal

Day 3

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I don’t know if anypony will ever read it, or if there is anypony left who could ever read it. Some might see it as a way to keep my sanity in this place, but that implies that I have any sanity left to lose. I’m not so sure about that right now. I’m not sure about anything anymore.

My name is Sunset Shimmer, and I am the Princess of Equestria. Or the Queen, or President… titles are meaningless if there’s nobody left to hold them over. I guess I’ll go with Princess, because that was always my goal in life. A small victory in a world where there seems nothing left to win.

Maybe there are still ponies out there. Griffons, minotaurs, donkeys, anyone. Maybe I’m not just writing this just for myself so I have a report of my own slow descent into madness. More madness.

Still tired. Exhausted. Headache. Pain, so much pain, burning all over my left side. Gonna explain later… just a short

~~~~~

I’m back, I guess. Still in pain. Still a monster. Still alone. The voices have gone quiet, but I can feel them watching over my shoulder. “My” shoulder… Nothing on this body is mine anymore. I’m not an alicorn, or a princess or anything but

~~~~~

Sorry, sorry. Had a small breakdown there. Not that there’s anybody here to care about that, except for the voices.

My story. Right. Might as well write it down. Nowhere to go, but at least I still know where I came from.

My name is Sunset Shimmer. Did I already say that? Whatever. I used to be Princess Celestia’s personal student, if that’s still worth anything. Celestia is gone like everypony else. Dead probably, like everypony else. It’s the only explanation for… right, should probably keep some structure in this.

I used to be her personal student. Learned magic from her. Politics. Etiquette. Philosophy. I’d say I wasn’t a good student but that’s a lie. I want to say she wasn’t a good teacher, but that’s probably a lie, too. I wanted to study things that she wouldn’t teach me. She had her reasons. I had mine. Whether any of them were good reasons is meaningless now.

I grew dissatisfied. We grew distant, me and her both. Being an orphan, I guess I kind of hoped she would be my mother, not just a teacher. Detached from it all, I can see how stupid that really was. We were “her little ponies”, she said that all the time. She wasn’t just a benevolent ruler, I think she considered herself a mother figure to every pony in Equestria and beyond. Someone like that can’t be the mother of a single pony. She tried, but like many relationships not forged in blood, it became less and less. At the end she was a teacher and I was a student. Too little for me, still too much for her. She got busier towards the end… I think she was preparing for something, preparing Equestria for something. Tried to prepare me for it, too, maybe.

I grew impatient. I had power, potential. We both knew that, but maybe the potential she saw was a different kind than what I saw. I started feeling like she was holding me back, denying me what I deserved. The mirror seemed to prove me right. She said… well, she didn’t say anything. I had to find out for myself, in secret. She didn’t like that when she found out. Me neither. We argued, she kicked me out… I decided that if I left, it would be on my terms. The mirror was also a portal to another world, one completely different from Equestria.

Thirty moons in a world without any magic whatsoever. Well, not any personal magic. The technology in that world… But that’s unimportant, I don’t think there’s any way left back to that world anyway.

The mirror saved my life. I wasn’t here when it happened. I don’t know what happened, exactly. I call it the Cataclysm. Magic, all magic, was destroyed. Canterlot is nothing but a crater in the mountainside. How the mirror survived, I don’t know. When I came to, it was broken. Maybe it already was broken before I returned to it. The spell was in the frame, I think, maybe the glass was just a conduit.

Right. Whether the glass was important or not, I don’t think it was what turned me into… this. After thirty moons in the other world I decided to return. Find a way to grab the power I was due. The cataclysm had already happened.

Using a magic mirror from one world practically devoid of magic into another world practically devoid of magic… not a good idea. Don’t do it, kids.

I didn’t know about that, of course. The cataclysm I mean. The moment everything was aligned and I touched the portal, I was pulled through, my passage powered by the only magic readily available: my own. If I wasn’t as powerful as I was, I don’t think I would’ve survived.

Not to say that it was the only magic. The travel between worlds is blurred, seemed to take much longer than it should, though that might just have been the excruciating pain. I remember feeling more kinds of magic than there were the first time, though. Time magic. Dimensional magic, a different kind. Harmony magic, fate magic, I think at least. All of it incredibly strong and powerful, and all of it ripping at me, ripping me apart and then ripping me back together.

When I woke up, in front of the broken mirror, in the place where Canterlot used to be, I wasn’t the unicorn I should be. I wasn’t the alicorn I wanted to be. I was pain, fire, rage. I was comfort, light, calm. One on my left and one on my right, and each one with a voice in my head. Well, just raw emotions on the first day. I stumbled around in a daze of rage, grief and understanding. Not understanding of my situation, or what had happened. Just… understanding. Acceptance of nothing in particular.

The second day the voices appeared. Just simple words, sometimes broken sentences. Blurred flashes of memory that definitely didn’t belong to me. Sometimes an hour or two of silence, long enough for me to think. Long enough for my own thoughts and the burning pain to drive me into madness. I managed to pull myself together long enough to cast a mirror spell on a flat surface, see what I look like.

I’m a monster. Like that Two-Face character in the human comics, only worse. I’m literally divided into two parts. My left half looks like some hellspawn, a demon, and I’m not talking metaphors here. I have a large leather wing, black leather on the top but blood red on the underside, ragged with some actual holes in it. My fur is red in a way that it looks like I don’t actually have fur, just burned skin all over, though admittedly it’s one solid color and doesn’t actually look like a real burn wound. I don’t think I could handle that. My mane and tail look like literal fire, even the way they move does. My ears are a bit slimmer and bigger, and ragged too. I have a vampire fang, because of course I do, and my eye is a blue pupil in a black void. My cutie mark looks almost normal, but completely red.

As if to balance it out, my cutie mark on the other side is completely yellow. My body on that side looks almost normal, really, aside from maybe the light glow around it and the stripe of red across my eye and half of my nose. My mane is kind of wavy but looks almost normal, too. Not so my wings and horns. They’re both glowing bright yellow, bright enough to look like they are actually made of nothing but a soothing, calming light. I haven’t been able to prove that they’re not.

The worst is the pain, though. The whole left side of my body feels like it is on fire, all the time. Like I’m burning alive and there is nothing that can put out the fire, not even dipping into a pool of water I came across. The fact that my other half has this constant calming, soothing sensation like it’s covered in a perpetual healing spell doesn’t help. It only makes the pain worse by comparison. And the really scary part is, while the pain isn’t getting any less, I think I’m already starting to get used to it.

…Anyway, I managed to get down the mountain and into the territory of Everfree Forest the second day. The geographical cockroach of Equestria. Nopony likes it, most are unreasonably scared of it, there’s no way to get rid of it, literally. The Cataclysm made a valiant effort, but the heart of the forest survived. A few acres of dying plant life with small animals and insects something over a mile away from some old castle ruins. I don’t know how much longer it would survive on its own, but I’ll do whatever I can to keep it alive. The forest might be the last life on Equus, but even if it isn’t I need it as much as it needs me. I need food and water and the forest is the only place I’ve found so far that has that. Well, not the water, but food.

Getting tired again. Gonna write more tomorrow.

~~~~~

Day 4

Good morning. And yes, literally morning. I guess I might as well try to explain that today, as much as I pieced everything together.

From what I understand, whatever happened during the cataclysm completely destroyed magic. It must have been some kind of chain reaction, because it targeted literally any kind of magic on Equus as far as I can tell.

That’s not to say that the rules of magic are gone, or the possibility to use it. Just that there wasn’t anything left to use it with. Not a drop of mana, or whatever you want to call it. Anything that could’ve produced more magic also became useless in the process. You’d need at least a spark to create more magic. Even a completely drained unicorn could just pull that out of the air, literally, but there was just no spark left anywhere. I have magic, because I have that spark (pretty much all the mirror left me with, it felt like), and as terrible as this body is it has one heck of a magic potential and the magic production that comes with it. I might be the most powerful magic user in the world by default now, but I probably am even if there were others.

I assume that nine out of ten ponies died within hours of that, if not all of them. Maybe they even died instantly… I don’t think there have been any studies about what would happen to a magical creature if their magic got completely stripped of them, or if there was they sure as hell weren’t publicized. For ponies, I’d guess that they would lose their cutie marks and most of their energy. They’d just turn into lethargic shells with barely the energy to do any hard work and none of the drive. Collective Cutie Mark Failure Syndrome too, probably. They just starved or died of exhaustion, a bunch of them probably killed themselves right there or died in accidents. Not to mention all the pegasi that were in the air at the time. Wherever Cloudsdale was at the time, the area below is one big graveyard now.

I don’t know about the other races. Griffins probably didn’t fare much better. Minotaurs must’ve lost most of their strength in an instant, I don’t know how they’d handle that. Probably not well. Donkeys might’ve taken it the best, but it’s not like there were a whole lot of them left. Maybe there’s a couple small donkey communities still alive somewhere at the edges of Equestria or in other countries, but likely not any anywhere near. Maybe they all died, too.

Cows and goats and races like that are probably extinct by now, too. If I remember right, they were at a stage of evolution where they were sentient, but the sentience was magically assisted. That would mean they would turn back into animals. On that note, other animals would’ve turned into animals, too. From their former level of intelligence to the one common in the human world. You know, driven only by instinct. And if the remains of Everfree Forest are any indication, only the small animals had any chance of surviving.

Moving on, the reason I need this patch of Forest so much is that every other part of Equestria is dead, at least as far as I could see from the Canterhorn. It’s one big wasteland, with dust storms blowing through. It’s the apocalypse just as you would imagine it, only more boring. Mountains are still there, or course. Rivers and streams are mostly as they were, except for the ones that came from magical springs. The water is devoid of magic, but clean and perfectly drinkable when it’s not sullied by a dust storm. I think some settlements held up rather well, though I suspect the big cities are mostly in ruins by now. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and all that.

The moon and sun worried me for a bit, because a spell confirmed that if Celestia is still alive somehow, her connection to the heavenly bodies isn’t. Whatever other faults she had though, her control of them was so impeccable that they seem to still be in a steady gravitational orbit around Equus. Without magic, apparently the need to help them across the horizon fell away too, with physics taking over completely.

I cast some anchoring spells anyway. They’ll only prevent minor variations in their orbit, but if something happens it will start with those minor variations and spiral out of control from there. It probably won’t even be necessary, but it’s nice to have a bit of additional safety.

I have to focus on stabilizing the Everfree for now, keep it alive, build myself a refuge and maybe look for some fruit. I should try to gather seeds for a vegetable garden. I am some twisted kind of alicorn now, so I should have earth pony magic too, right?

~~~~~

Day 5

You probably still wonder why I’m writing this. Or where I got this journal from. Well, it’s actually mine. The sun on the cover is what my cutie mark used to look like. I took it with me to the other world and as little as I can clearly remember from my first day here, at least I had the clarity of mind to drag my saddlebags along. At least I think it was me…

~~~~~

The voices are getting clearer. Like they’re their own ponies. Both sound kind of like me, except not really. One is always angry, ranting and raving, how I should be glad Celestia and everypony else are gone, how I’m finally the undisputed ruler. The other one is more subdued, calmer and somewhat more coherent, telling me that everything is fine and that I will find a way to fix this, make this the Equestria I remember again. The raving one is bad enough, but I think hearing the other one freaks me out even more. Even when I pretend not to hear the uncertainty in what it says.

Why am I writing all this? All this, even this? Do I really want others to know about the voices in my head, want them to think I’m insane?

Yes. I suppose I do. If somepony out there is still alive, I don’t care what they think about me. I just want to see someone, someone alive, someone I can talk with.

The voices both told me I can talk to them. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear them.

…They told me they can see what I write.

~~~~~

Day 6

I’ve started to make copies of this journal. Copies that will update themselves as I write in the original. The hardest part was actually getting decent-looking books from just leaves and tree bark, and removing the first part of the book from the spell, the part from before I left Equestria. I’d still like to keep that private, and it wouldn’t be much help to anyone anyway.

Once I’m ready to start exploring, I will leave the copies in safe places. Maybe somepony will find them. If you do, please let me know. Write something into the last pages and I will see it in my book. Give me some kind of life sign. Let me know that I’m not alone, that I’m not just doing all this for myself, that there’s actually still any meaning to my life and I’m not

~~~~~

Sorry. Just… ignore that last part, okay? Okay.

~~~~~

Day 9

I’ve started talking to the voices.

It just… happened. I was working and I started talking to myself and myself answered and after a while we had a conversation going. I tried to stop myself the moment I realized it, the first few times, but after a while I just didn’t care anymore. They don’t really feel like they’re just a part of my own mind. Maybe I’m just trying to rationalize and grasping at straws to tell myself that I’m not crazy.

The calm voice has gotten a little more outspoken and the angry voice has calmed down somewhat. Maybe it ran out of things to rant about. Well, I know it did, but maybe it finally realized it was just repeating itself. Maybe they just needed a while to really stabilize, if they actually are more than just a psychosis. I’ll see where it goes.

They just told me that they are “she”, not an “it”, and they would like me to refer to them as such. One of the rare times they actually agree on something. They don’t like to talk to each other, and if they do it’s usually just insults from one side and passive aggressiveness from the other side, at best.

Speaking of, it seems to be a matter of pride to both of them that they’re not associated with one another. Any time I call them out on actually agreeing on something, no matter how minor or obvious, they start arguing and insulting each other just out of principle. I can already feel another headache coming on.

~~~~~

Day 11

I told them that if they insist that they are female, they might as well give me some names to tell them. They came up with Nightmare and Daydream. I told them that it’s incredibly cliché and that I’ll just continue to call them the voices in my head until they can come up with something decent.

Otherwise, business as usual. The forest is already starting to look better at its center. It might have survived for now without magic, but it wasn’t doing well… the plants just couldn’t evolve that fast, aside from maybe the most not-magically resilient weeds.

I live in a cave now. I tried building myself a hut, but I’m neither an architect nor a worker or handimare. Besides, it’s probably best I didn’t cut down any of the trees that managed to survive so far. Not just out of practicality, it would feel… mean. Like killing a war veteran for the forty Bits in their purse. Maybe that’s the earth pony magic talking. The cave I settled in is dry and comfortable and full of gold and gems. Belonged to a dragon, apparently, but to my luck it seems that the dragon wasn’t inside when it died. That would’ve been awkward to clean out.

~~~~~

Day 15

I think I’m at the point now where I can start exploring and not be worried that half the Forest is dead when I come back. I’d like to build some kind of magic engine to provide at least the center of the Forest with a steady flow of magic, but I don’t even know where to start.

Anyway, tomorrow I will start on my first exploration. Nothing much, probably not even a full day. I think there was at least one settlement near the original borders of the Everfree. I’ll go there, take a look, maybe try out the wings on the way. Not much left to crash into except the ground.

Either way, once I arrive at the settlement tomorrow I’ll start writing down some observations and stuff. Maybe there’s still useful stuff left. If it was an earth pony village, the buildings should be pretty sturdy even without magic.

~~~~~

Day 16

~~rbwd~~
~~lthy~~
~~riy~~
~~pkpe~~
~~ppjc~~

~~…twlt~~

~~~~~

Day 17

I… I don’t know what happened.

I felt… weird the closer I got to that settlement. Like something was there. Some kind of dread… or two different kinds of dread, actually. The voices didn’t say anything anymore, but they felt… tense?

Halfway into the village I… blacked out? I have flashes of memory. Burning, mindless rage. Flinging spells around at buildings, mostly random but at some buildings in particular. Rampaging around the town until I saw something. Then one building. Or… a tree? And suddenly grief. Just as deep and primal as the anger a moment earlier. Sobbing, crying, despair… I think I called someone’s name?

I blacked out for half a day and a whole night after that. Woke up feeling crusty and sore and just icky all around, like I’d cried in my pillow all night. I actually did have a pillow in my hooves, a generic purple one.

The place I passed out was actually a tree. A house, built into a tree. A dead tree, at least by the time I got there, but it was still standing structurally sound.

It’s more than that, too. I think it’s a library. A small town library, sure, so there’s very little that’s of use to me personally, but I still cast as many preservation spells on it as I could remember. Someday I will have a place to put all these books, not just the cave I’m living in at the moment, and then I’ll come back and transport them all to my castle–

Ahem… A-anyway, I found a map of Equestria that I’ll take with me. Gonna make copies of that. Now I can track my progress in exploring, even if some of the landmarks probably don’t exist anymore. Like that biggest ball of yarn in Equestria.

…On second thought, I think I’ll go looking for a better map. I think I saw a Town Hall somewhere.

For my own sake and yours, I will mention the mortal remains of ponies in homes and in the streets just this once, and then never again.

~~~~~

The voices just said that they decided on names. Dusk and Dawn, respectively (Dusk being the angry one, of course, and Dawn the calm, soothing one). I have to admit, those are pretty much perfect names for them, and I hate admitting that because it’s another step towards acknowledging my own insanity.

Day 22

Went out on another exploration. It’s… boring so far. Found some useful stuff, some interesting stuff, but nothing that’s both useful and interesting, at least long term. I could write pages of how I’m slowly getting the forest back to life, how I actually managed to set up a vegetable garden and a fruit tree orchard at the current edge of the forest – mostly apple trees, because I like apples and there were a ton of seeds in that one barn in Ponyville (the first settlement), how I started and stopped discussing philosophy with Dusk and Dawn because their views on that topic are both radical and predictable, how I found some books on useful subjects in Dodge Junction and how I tried to learn carpentry from a book and completely failed at it…

But I think I’ll just skim over that stuff. It’s nothing that would help you and I don’t want to run out of space in the journal when something really important happens. I’m keeping a separate journal for the more mundane stuff, and if you want to read it you’ll have to come here and tell me yourself.

…please? Anypony?

~~~~~

Day 28

Exploration to Appleoosa today. Didn’t find anything of worth except some more mostly apple-based recipes. I may suck at carpentry, but I’m actually a pretty kickass cook. Or at least I will be with some more practice, I think. And once I got better cooking equipment than the makeshift stove made from a rock I use so far.

Speaking of things I’m good at, I’m getting pretty good at flying. Landing, not so much. It’s more like crashing but stopping myself with telekinesis at the last moment.

Oh yeah, and my garden and orchard are actually growing like crazy. Turns out my earth pony magic is strong stuff, and those plants are soaking it up like plants in a desert. Which I guess they kind of were. Either way, I actually got to harvest the first carrots. And even the apple trees should have their first fruits in two or three months.

Note to self: check the farming books and figure out where the heck carrots hide their seeds.

~~~~~

Day 40

I decided to try and do a long expedition, which means being gone more than 24 hours. The time I blacked out for a whole day doesn’t count.

Anyway, it’s obvious by now that the small settlements are either dead or deserted. So that leaves me two options. Either try one of the big cities at the coast, or try just heading in one direction and looking for a possible new settlement.

I’ll sleep on it tonight.

~~~~~

Day 41

I decided that the big cities will have bigger libraries, but since I don’t have anywhere to put books yet (or a good way to transport them) that’s just like going into a candy store without money. So instead of heading west or east towards the coast, I started heading straight north.

Dust storms aside, it’s kind of beautiful to just fly around across the empty landscape. Everything really is dead, even the few groves of trees that are still standing don’t look like they’d recover even with my help.

One way or another, nothing interesting happened until noon. I’ll make another rest for the night and one more at noon tomorrow. If I find nothing by then, I’ll turn around and start heading back.

~~~~~

Day 42

Well, paint me black and call me Nightmare Moon, I definitely didn’t expect this.

There’s a whole city in the far north that definitely wasn’t there when I left Equestria. Like, a whole metropolis made entirely of crystal, with a giant crystal… well, I suppose it’s a castle but it looks more like the Eiffel Tower. You know, like a pointy, blocky popsicle on four legs?

I was getting really excited seeing that, but wherever it came from, it seems that anypony that came along with it is dead now. The whole place was snowed in and frozen over. I saw some ponies literally frozen in place. Lots of ponies, actually.

Still, even in a better climate, I’m not sure they would’ve survived. They actually had their cutie marks, so I can only assume that the city… appeared, after the cataclysm. But the poses they were frozen in all just looked depressed, like they’d completely lost their will to live. They might’ve managed a couple months, but eventually they would’ve just died off, I think.

I found a library. Maybe I’ll be able to find out what happened here.

~~~~~

All the books are completely out of order, like somepony tried to intentionally make it hard to find anything. Buck my life, and whoever was in charge of this library.

~~~~~

Day 43

Well, it took way longer than I have the patience for, but I somehow managed. Turns out this city is called the Crystal Empire, and used to be pretty important to Equestria. Then a mad unicorn king took over with dark magic and the whole place went to Tartarus. Maybe even literally, seeing how this Crystal Empire was definitely not around when I was a student.

I guess it makes sense though. If they were actually banished to another dimension, or a pocket dimension, or to outside of time, the cataclysm didn’t affect them any more than it did me. And if that King Sombra was petty enough to drag a whole city along, then he probably also placed a curse on them to make them as depressed as they were before they died. Or something.

…which means I’m walking through the location of the first genocide in Equestrian history. Yikes.

I explored the castle and more of the city after that. Cast some scanning spells and thank providence that I did. At the top of the spire of the castle was the Crystal Heart, an artifact mentioned in some of the books, and apparently incredible powerful.

Well, it’s actually dormant right now, since it draws its powers from the love and hope of the ponies around it, and there's not exactly many ponies left to power it. But it’s still an invaluable artifact with an immense amount of power still stored inside it. Nopony here seems to need it anymore, so I’m taking it along.

Flying around some more with a scanning spell, I found another artifact. It’s not mentioned in any of the books and it was actually buried in the snow a good ways outside of the borders of the Empire, so I only found it by sheer luck. It looks kind of like a unicorn horn, but not quite right… dark grey fading into red. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere in a picture, but I don’t want to look through all those books again for a hunch. I wrapped it up in cloth and sealing spells and I’m going to take it along as well. Just because I’m desperate for any reminder of the past, I’m not going to be completely irresponsible.

~~~~~

Day 44

It’s a good thing I was careful, because the moment I got back to the forest I felt the sealing spells around the horn giving off alarms. I quickly made a magic containment circle at the entrance to my cave and dropped the horn in the middle before allowing the sealing spells to slowly unravel.

I was rewarded with a cloud of black smoke with eyes and deep, villainous laughter. I’m not making this up, it actually sounded ~~like a cheesy villain from a Saturday Morning Cartoon~~ how you would imagine a cheesy villain in an adventure book to sound. I let whatever it was spread and grow just far enough to realize that it was trapped in the spell circle, then started to cast several binding spells to force it back down into a less ridiculous form.

At this point I should probably mention that my unicorn magic has turned out to be just as bipolar as the rest of my body. Half of it looks like golden light magic, the other half like dark red fire magic. Always, no matter what kind of spell I cast. Sometimes the ratio varies depending on the kind and the intent of the spell, but there’s always some of both in it.

The reason I mention it is because those binding spells were symbolized by golden and red chains (I have a flair for the dramatic, alright?) and the cloud howled in pain the moment the golden chains came in contact with it. Like they were burning it, or worse.

It took me several minutes of trial and error ~~and arguing with Dawn~~ before I could remove her magic from the spell completely. Apparently it took long enough for the cloud to get the impression that I was trying to establish myself as the alpha mare, and that I wasn’t playing games. Whatever it was thinking, once the chains had been reduced to only the red half it easily shrunk down from the black cloud into a black unicorn stallion about my size. The horn it had come from was prominently displayed on its head, above a set of green tinted eyes showing green pupils with a red tint. He had no cutie mark as far as I could tell, but fangs… smaller fangs than my own, by the way, just putting that out there.

There really was no mistaking him though, after where I’d just come from. This was the former King of the Crystal Empire, Sombra. He snarled at me for a bit, but wasn’t very talkative. Seeing how I had him secured and he couldn’t do anything, though, I didn’t mind waiting to have my questions answered. Maybe he just needed a bit to get used to the situation. Or get used to speech again.

…like the voices in my head. Maybe this wasn’t my best idea after all.

~~~~~

Day 45

Sombra doesn’t seem very eager to talk, so I decided to just ignore him and focus on studying the Crystal Heart instead. He’ll come around, and if the Heart helps me figure out how to build magic engines, I can hook the first one up to his containment spells to keep him there indefinitely. I give him one meal a day, which isn’t all that much less than what I eat while I’m here. Fruits and vegetables take time to grow, even with earth pony magic.

Dawn says that’s mean. Dusk says I should just kill him and have one problem less. I’d like to have two problems less, and none of them is Sombra.

~~~~~

Day 51

I have to give it to him, Sombra has some impressive self-control. But eventually he grew bored, or he realized that I am not going to let him out until he talks.

As I suspected, he was banished to somewhere outside of time, though apparently he dragged the whole Crystal Empire along himself. He’s actually proud of that, and I have to begrudgingly admit that it is impressive. Either way, they reappeared after the Cataclysm.

That’s… pretty much all he could tell me about that, though. Apparently he is not a ‘real’ unicorn but actually an Umbrum, a race of shadow creatures that was sealed away below the Empire long long ago. When he was banished he was also forced into his shadow form, the black cloud I saw, and when he returned the void of magic ripped his own magic away almost instantly. Apparently Umbra need a certain amount of latent magic to keep up those forms (also, light/harmony magic hurts them, as if I hadn’t already figured that out). He barely managed to pull back into the only still completely physical part of himself, his horn, and lay dormant and unable to do anything for some time, maybe a year. Then I came, picked him up, and took him to maybe the only place on Equus with a normal amount of latent magic in the air, due to my presence and all my work to restore the forest.

He told me some more stuff, like how his mission is to release the Umbra that were sealed away, the rest of his kind. I told him that if they were really sealed away here on Equus and not banished like him, then they were all wiped out along with the rest of all magic. He didn’t take it well, though surprisingly a lot better than I thought. No raging and screaming, his face just kinda went blank and he collapsed.

Umbra, huh… I always thought that was just a breezie tale that parents use to keep their foals behaving, and maybe to give their irrational fears a face that can then be dispelled. I think every foal was scared of the Umbrum under the bed at some point in their lives. And wasn’t a popular location in many foals’ stories always a crystal castle?

I wonder if I’ll come across other supposed myths like that. Heh, maybe tomorrow I’ll meet Nightmare Moon.

~~~~~

Day 56

Sombra wanted to talk today. He looked… different? His eyes look like those of a normal pony now and even his horn is straightened out and fully grey. I suppose he does come from a race of shapeshifters.

He told me that with the Umbra gone, he has no more reason to conquer and terrorize. Seems kind of fishy to me, a complete heel-turn like that. Still it’s not like I can just keep him in his little box (circle) forever, and I don’t think I’ll get a better deal. I’ll keep some small binding spells on him for now and keep my eyes open. On the off chance that he is actually sincere, it’s better than having him stew and sit there until he changes his mind again.

He seemed very interested in the magic engine I built. It’s just a prototype and a lot less efficient than the artifact it's based on, but it’s basically a Crystal Heart that doesn’t hurt him. And with all the gold and gems I got in my cave, I could build hundreds of them.

Now that I don’t have him to worry about, I can go on explorations again. Maybe he’ll really behave. Maybe he’ll steal the magic engine and leave. Either way, he’s not my problem anymore, and I doubt he’d burn down my whole forest just for some petty revenge and a quick death.

So that makes me and the Crystal Empire, including Sombra, both survivors of the Cataclysm. One is a miracle, two is a lucky coincidence…

One more and it’s a pattern. I’m praying to Harmony that I’m not a coincidence.

~~~~~

Day 59

Manehattan is… not as grand as it probably should be. I think it was hit by a storm from the sea, or maybe several. Half of the city is destroyed, much of the rest seems less than structurally sound (I already said, I’m not an architect). I flew over the city for a full day calling out for survivors, but nopony answered. The library was built close to the sea to attract tourists. Now it is very close to the sea. Some might call it ‘mostly submerged’. I spent a minute of silence mourning all the books, then took to the sky again to keep looking. Nothing. I’m not sure if I really expected different.

Left a copy of the journal on the torch of Lady Harmony. Seemed as good a place as any.

~~~~~

Day 100

More expeditions, more cities and towns, more nothing. Sombra has actually become a productive member of the household. Cavehold. Whatever.

He’s not a carpenter either. He offered to grow a crystal castle, but I decided to pass. I’m not sure how well a crystal castle would really fit into the landscape. I guess it might help to attract survivors, but if they’re not drawn to the forest then a castle probably wouldn’t do anything either.

And really, it sounds kind of like an eyesore.

He did use his powers to expand our cave, though, and make some crystal floors and furniture instead of the usual dusty rock. They’re surprisingly comfortable. And he even made one room as a library.

In return, at his request, I made him (and myself) some clothes. Through a polymorph spell, I mean; I’m not a seamstress either. Just like the crystal chairs, they are surprisingly comfortable too.

His are mostly different suits and tuxedos. I didn’t tell him, but he looks like a butler. Almost accidentally called him Jeeves yesterday.

I also told him about Dusk and Dawn at some point. No sense keeping it from him. He was surprisingly understanding, and even had some conversations with them. Mostly with Dusk, though.

Oh yeah, the apple trees had their first fruit. And it was the first harvest, which means that it’s not a lot, apparently. Enough, but not a lot. Still, tonight I’m making an apple pie with this recipe in my collection.

~~~~~

Day 138

I found someone!

I came across him entirely by chance, in the middle of the wasteland as I was flying over it back from Trottingham. I approached cautiously, of course, but after the initial shock he was actually delighted to see me. I made us some tea (I grow mint and a few other tea ingredients in the garden, now) and we had a nice conversation.

His name is Tirek, and he is a frail old centaur. Apparently he survived the Cataclysm on account of having already been stripped of all his magic when it happened. He didn’t want to say how exactly that happened, but I can understand how that would probably something personal. I’m sure he’ll open up sooner or later, if he is half as desperate for company as I was.

Something about him seems off, but I can’t put my hoof on it. I feel like I shouldn’t trust him and be on my guard, but he’s a survivor! Even if he used to be a villain, so was Sombra. Besides, he’s a frail old stick of a creature without a spark of magic, what’s the worst he

~~~~~

Tirek is dead.

I only woke up a couple minutes ago, with a pounding headache. Apparently while I was focused on writing the last entry, Tirek snuck up on me to bash my head in with the biggest rock he could find. Then he picked me up and opened his mouth wide to start draining my magic. Like, literally sucking it up. He did that for about two seconds before I grabbed him by the neck, threw him several feet and hit him with a massive blast of fire magic before he could even hit the ground.

How I know all that? Dusk showed me the memories. She’s the one who acted while I was unconscious, who killed Tirek and probably saved all our lives in the process. The memory also shows how Dawn tried to talk her out of it… but it’s obvious that it was more of a token effort, without any conviction.

I thanked Dusk. I think she misunderstood my comment that she “did good”, because she apparently took offense to that and went to mope in some corner of my mind. It kind of seemed like just a token effort as well, though.

Dawn retreated to another corner the moment she saw Tirek’s charred corpse, and hasn’t said anything since. I should probably make sure that they’re

I just noticed my hoof. My left hoof. It’s a pale orange. Reflection spell, I need a mirror!

Four hooves. Two feathered wings. Normal eyes, normal mane, normal horn. The only thing that hasn’t changed are my cutie marks, still one red and one yellow. And…

By the stars, the pain is gone. No more feeling like I’m burning up. An incredible pain that I’ve had for so long I wasn’t even aware of it anymore for the last few months. It’s gone, completely gone!

~~~~~

Day 139

Sorry for cutting off like that. I just… you can’t imagine what it’s like. I whooped and hollered and flew tricks and felt like a million Bits. I don’t think I got the grin off of my face from back then until now. I even hugged Sombra, what am I saying, I glomped him. It took him four tries to get a somewhat coherent explanation from me.

I put a new day on this entry because I’m pretty sure it’s past midnight by now. I don’t think I could sleep even if I wanted to. I’m sitting out in my orchard right now, staring up at the night sky and working to turn that grin into a somewhat normal smile. Because Sombra said it’s starting to make him uncomfortable and because quite frankly my face started to hurt an hour ago. That’s how euphoric I was. Am.

Something is rustling nearby. I’d say it was just one of the critters in the forest, except it came from the branches of a tree and it sounded kind of big. Maybe a squirrel? Or a bat? Do I even have any bats on my arc? There sure aren’t any in my cave.

Gah! I went to look and suddenly something huge dropped down right in front of me. It’s giant bat! Except it’s a pony. A bat-pony. I would call it a thestral, except I’m pretty sure that thestrals aren’t supposed to have long, slender horns. Aside from that it all fits, though. Blue-black coloration, fluffy, tufty, kinda cute ears, golden eyes that glow in the dark, leathery bat wings…

She just hissed at me! Like, literally. She hissed and then turned her attention to the tree behind me to… snatch up an apple with her tongue and suck it dry. From a tree across. That was actually kind of awesome. Focus Sunset, don’t think about how long it has been since you… y’know…

She just spit the remains of the apple right in my face. And it’s not helping!

While I try to reign in my libido, the mare hissed again and flew away. I’m not sure what to think about that. I’ll stay up tomorrow night and see if she shows up again.

Oh yeah, Dusk and Dawn got over their funk at some point. They seem a little… less extreme? They’re actually talking to each other, and I mean real talking, not arguing. I’m still myself, though apparently they could change that if I wanted. Dusk even agreed to let Dawn ‘soothe’ her so being in her form doesn’t cause me pain anymore. Despite how yesterday went, things might actually be looking up.

~~~~~

Day 140

I did meet her again. She hissed at me, snagged an apple with that tongue ~~(oh stars, that tongue!)~~ and spit applesauce in my face before flying off. I think her mind might not be all there. What did humans call it in their fiction… going feral?

Sombra told me that I look kind of tense and frustrated. I told him that I’m just tired. He offered to watch for the mare tonight. I offered to do things to him that might be tangentially related to my mood.

He was cowed, and kind of impressed with the creativity of modern swearing. He asked me to teach him sometime. I responded with another impromptu lesson.

~~~~~

Day 141

I’m not stupid. She obviously likes apples, so for tonight I picked the biggest and juiciest apple I could find and when we met again I held it up for her as an offer.

She wrapped her tongue around the apple, inches from my face, right against my hoof, and I most certainly did not… almost… right there… especially when she spit the remains in my face and flew off.

Hnnnngh.

I thought that was it for the night and that I would need weeks to gain her trust. But when I got back to the cave I heard a rustle behind me and when I turned my head she was standing there, completely calm, looking at me with big eyes and her head slightly tilted and looking absolutely adorable. She still didn’t speak, but she followed me all the way to my room and curled up at the foot of my bed, kind of like a dog.

When I woke up she was still there, already awake and watching me curiously. I took her to the pantry and offered her another apple, which she eagerly devoured, this time completely. After that she went back to my room and curled up on my bed to sleep again.

It might take some time, but I’ll do my best to help her get her mind back. For now though, I have to admit that she’s the coolest pet I could wish for, maybe even better than the phoenix I always wanted as a filly.

She hissed at Sombra the first time she met him and he ran away from her. He wouldn’t tell me what exactly that was about, just that she reminded him of somepony from his past, the one who banished him. I thought he said that was Celestia… maybe he just has a complex about being easily intimidated by alicorns.

…hey!

~~~~~

Day 144

The mare seemed to be getting more and more aware of her surroundings over the last days, like she started to recognize things, though she still didn’t speak. Until tonight. I was skydiving as a human with wings, along with Dusk, Dawn, and another human with wings (someone from the school I spent those two and a half years in the other world at, I think), when the mare suddenly appeared next to us, out of thin air. It freaked me out so much that I woke up, to the sight of the mare watching me with her horn glowing softly. I have no idea what happened, but I think she just beat out phoenixes for the spot of best pet ever.

~~~~~

Day 145

Luna appeared in my dream again. That’s her name, Luna. She can still barely say a couple words, but she can manipulate my dreams to show me her life story, everything she remembers. I can’t believe Princess Celestia used to have a sister.

~~~~~

Day 149

Luna can talk outside of my dreams now. I won’t repeat her whole life story here, but apparently she was banished during the Cataclysm as well, to the moon. It seems that while the connection of moon and sun to Equus was cut, the moon itself was far enough away that she was unaffected until the day the seal broke naturally and she returned to Equestria.

Luna said she was banished because she went mad, the kind of madness powerful unicorns can get that’s not just a mental affliction but an actual magical curse. In her case it was a dark entity that possessed her and made her take the guise of Nightmare Moon, threatening to plunge Equestria into darkness. But the madness of being the last survivor in a dead world swallowed that other madness with time, until nothing was left and her mind just turned off.

It also turned out that Luna is “Mother Night”, the creator of the thestrals from their legends. That’s probably why she turned herself into one when she turned feral.

She also managed to make up with Sombra. They were both suspicious of each other, for various reasons, but in the end they agreed that old grudges were rather meaningless in this world, all things considered. At least once I vouched for Sombra.

~~~~~

Day 170

After the last entry it was more or less life as usual again. I stopped exploring and focused on building more and better magic engines with Luna and Sombra, tending to and slowly expanding the forest, and generally enjoying life as much as we could.

As it turns out, while her sister was a mare of the people Luna was and is a mare of the arts, including the more practical arts up to carpentry. She already built us all new and simply incredible beds (though she still sometimes sleeps in my bed; ~~Oh stars, that tongue!~~), herself several instruments that she can all play wonderfully, and even a guitar for me. Yes, I can play guitar; nowhere as good as her, obviously, but I’m decent enough.

She still eats lots of apples. Old habits die hard, I guess. At least now she apologizes after spitting applesauce in my face.

~~~~~

Day 182

This is the last entry.

Something is happening. Something big. Ever since finding Luna near my own home, I constantly kept up various scanning spells. And now they picked up on something, the same kind of magic I felt when I was dragged through the mirror. Temporal magic, and a huge amount of it.

For some reason Sombra and Luna can’t feel more than a general magic surge from the direction, but they believed me right away. Sombra drew back into his horn and I picked him up along with the journal and some essentials, and then we made our way towards the surge.

I’m writing this as we fly, and I don’t have much time. The magic engines we built might take centuries to fully heal this world, but they will eventually. Even when the last one breaks, the oasis of magic and life we made will remain and slowly spread to do the same. If you find one of the journals, there is a map that will lead you to this safe haven. It’s all I can do for you now.

I can see it in the distance. Another artifact, a half-buried crystal table that I know wasn’t there before. Two ponies and another creature on it, hard to make out through the dust storm surrounding the whole scene. One of them lights her horn.

Another surge! Impossible to miss, even visible now from where we are. A glance to Luna and we both nod. Dusk and Dawn are with me, too. I assume that Sombra would agree to the plan as well, if he could right now. The crystal table is already going dormant again, the portal is closing, but my magic reaches out and grabs it, forces it to stay open. Wherever it leads, we will follow. To the root of this problem, or to a better world, to somewhere where ponies are alive and can’t be counted on your hooves.

We’re getting closer now, cutting through the dust storm as I struggle to pour out magic and keep the portal open. When we fly through, I don’t think the link to the other journals will still work. These are my last words. If you are out there, survive. Live. Find others and continue our work, bring this world back to life. Because if everything else dies, friendship and hope don’t. And where there is friendship and hope, there is always a spark of magic.

We’re at the portal now. This is my goodb