The Twilight Lands

by tryingmybest1111

Rating: teen
Tags: Fluttershy, Adventure, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Sad
Length: 9448

Fluttershy has lost Twilight and goes on a long quest through a strange land to bring her friend back. But are her efforts all in vain?

The entire world has become frozen at dusk as the sun refuses to set. The towns and cities of the ponies lie in ruins, sprouting with vegetation and brimming with evil entities.

Fluttershy travels through this bizarre world alone, on a quest to save Twilight, who has died from a cause unknown. Along her way, she will make a new friend and overcome many challenges within the twilight lands. Her struggles will be great, but will all of her efforts be for nothing?

Published 2018-05-17 14:50:07 UTC
Last updated 2018-10-06 02:12:47 UTC

1: Denial

Fluttershy squinted in the evening light.

Well, it would be both a lie and the truth to call it the evening. The sun hung at an awkward position in the horizon, plunging the world into an eternal state of twilight. Forever was the sky stained purple and red with the beginnings of a night that refused to set upon the earth, enrapturing even the heavens above with the same melancholy that had swallowed up the rest of the world.

The only trees which still lived in the forest were evergreens and pine trees, the others long turned into twisted fingers of rotted wood. Precious few animals scampered about, most of their kind rendered dead by the sun’s impaired movement. The only thing not utterly alien about the landscape which Fluttershy walked through were the clouds above. Even through the half-end of the world, they still hung there as constant as ever, puffy reminders of a saner era.

She drew the cloak around her tighter as if to hide from something. Both paranoia and coldness were her reasons for wrapping the garment about her; what few rays of sunlight managed to reach through the sky and touch her brought no warmth, but only a pathetic memory of the heat of summertime. And there was reason enough to hide her face, one never knew what abominations lurked just beyond the trail’s path, to drag her into the woods and devour her.

Her hair bobbed as she walked, streaks of grey showing through the pink. There was much stress to be found in this new world and like every other pony, the struggle to survive had hit her hard. Regret struck her heart suddenly as she remembered the things she had to do for survival. Instinctually, she reached a hoof up to caress the crossbow at her side.

It was a hard thing, hewn from wood and interlaced with metal machinery. Beside it on her side was a quiver of bolts, waiting to be fired. She mostly used the device for hunting, yet there was much cause for self defense in these lands which were once so homely to her.

The Everfree forest. The name shot through her mind as an ember of a memory, a memory of a better world that she wished to return to. A world ruled by Celestia and filled with her friends, a world where things weren’t so scary and the days weren’t so dark and filled with mystery. Even if she was a timid thing in that place as well, she at least knew the way the old world had worked. This world was a far...stranger place.

And here, night never fell, nor did day ever come.

She put her thoughts aside and focused on the path ahead. Through the gaps in the trees which lined the winding stone path reaching into the depths of the forest, she could see vast expanses of foliage through which no indication of civilization made itself known. A strange, stunted animal scampered in front of her and she overlooked it with a passing curiosity.

The creature bore two heads and six eyes, its body faintly resembling that of a squirrel. No skin hung from its bones and a hazy aura of animating energy surrounded the skeletal animal. Creatures such as this had become the bane of her existence, foul, hungry things that raided her stores of food while she slept and pestered her on her travels. Its teeth gnashed together suddenly and she reached for her crossbow, but before she could load a bolt the creature dashed off into the woods. A sigh of relief that she wouldn’t have to kill escaped her lips and she continued on her travels.

**********

She looked to the twilight skies and remembered every detail of the purple alicorn; the color of her mane, the warmth of her smile, her gentleness and yet her sternness that shone underneath. She remembered everything Twilight had ever been to her, every word the alicorn had ever spoken to her. And as she remembered, a fire blossomed in her heart and her motivation grew tenfold.

She looked to the object in her saddlebags; a glowing blue crystal that brimmed with magical energies. It was the stone of resurrection, a sacred artifact that would revive any pony that the bearer wished to be revived, when it was placed into its receptacle within the depths of a forgotten castle. She took it out and overlooked it with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes. With this device, this crystal, she could bring her friend back to life and make many more memories with her. Fluttershy almost began to sob from happiness at the opportunity which the artifact granted her and put it back into her saddlebags.

With that, she drew a worn journal from her bags. Flipping through the pages, she surveyed a series of crinkled maps and torn pieces of parchment, ensuring that she was headed along the right path to her destination. Her eyes flickered over the words of an old fairy tale in the middle of the book and she read through the tales of the friendly stone giant that would come to ponies in their hour of need. Smiling, she closed the journal.

The wind pushed her mane around and she took in a breath as she looked around her. The orange light of dusk showed through the branches of the trees and dead leaves blew about, some becoming tangled within her mane. Long grasses blew in the fields below the hill she sat on, tangled weeds growing throughout their midsts. The clouds above were thin and wispy like strands of hair that stirred around in the surrealistic heavens above.

Fluttershy could not decide what it was about the scenery around her that gave her so much hope that her friend could be revived. Perhaps it was the way the wind blew, as if to represent the force of change that she wished to enact. Perhaps it was the way the leaves fell to the ground, completing their own cycle of life, just as she was to change that cycle. Perhaps it was the way the sun refused to set, to represent how Twilight’s fate was frozen on the brink of death, with only Fluttershy to bring her back.

She reached out to these things and many more in her surroundings as she tried to grasp the feelings twisting deep within her heart. When the scenery faded away and all that was left was the insides of her soul, within the recesses of her mind, she felt nothing but hope and a strong force of denial screaming that her friend was not truly dead, that she could never die as long as Fluttershy herself was there to care about her. Standing up in the light of the dusk, she proceeded down a stone path that led to the bottom of the hill and continued her journey into the pits of the evening that would not cease.

**********

Long after she had reclined on the hilltop, Fluttershy stood before a massive stone tower. Its bricks had long been cracked and faded into the same palette of grey, the banners which hung from them weathered and torn by the wind. Leafy vines snaked their way through the hallways of the tower, occasionally bursting from the side in a display of green that broke the monotony of the tower’s greyness. A tree sprouted from the top of the tower as a vegetative crown of sorts, its branches swaying in a gentle, evening breeze.

Surrounding the tower was a graveyard and a chill worked its way down Fluttershy’s spine as she beheld it. Long, worn stones bearing the names of dead ponies sprouted from the ground. On many of them were emblazoned faces as silent and as still as the graves they were carved on. None of the eyes in the faces bore pupils and Fluttershy shook her head, trying to vanquish the eerie feeling that the eyes were staring into her.

The tower was the same tower her mother had spoken of when she was a filly. It was a house where a friend to all ponies lived; a last resort for desperate ponies when there was nobody else to help them out with something extremely important. As she regarded the tower, it felt less like a house and more like a fortress, she thought. Regardless, here it was in the exact location that her books had said it would be.

Fluttershy looked to the entrance before stepping into the quiet, beckoning structure. The underbrush of the forest ended abruptly at the entrance of the castle, giving way to the smooth stone of the entrance. The entrance itself consisted of a portal of stone bricks, beyond which was a hallway that faded off into blackness, the truth of its depths unknowable to Fluttershy. From an upper window hung a faded flag bearing an icon that she suddenly recognized as Twilight’s cutie mark. Blinking, she realized that the flag was just a random mish-mash of colors.

She shivered again as she noticed a large skull mounted over the entrance, its jaw opened to reveal lines of rotted teeth. In distant days, she would have turned around and fled in the face of such a grim reminder of death. Now however, it was an icon of fear to be tolerated as she proceeded forwards on her grim journey. Remembering the crystal in her saddlebag and the direness of her journey, she drew a lantern from her side and lit it, then proceeded into the recesses of the tower.

**********

Long fingers of lantern-light crept along the darkened walls of the tower to illuminate her surroundings. There were no paintings or other items of decorations along the inner sides of the tower, but merely the same sea of grey bricks that adorned its exterior. An occasional spurt of green lichen showed through the edges of the bricks to provide a little bit of color, but beyond that all was grey and silent and dead inside the tower.

A dank wind blew from somewhere deep within the structure, deeper than she had walked so far. She shivered and her mane stood on end. Drawing the crossbow from her side, she clung closely to the device, as if it alone could save her from all the unknowable dangers of the world. With the weapon pointed forwards, she proceeded into the depths, hoping that her memory was as clear as it needed to be.

Finally she came to a stone stairwell that led to the lowest point of the tower. Along its sides were hung skulls and other bones that formed a chain of macabre decorations. Many of them bore long, crooked unicorn horns. The eye sockets of the skulls affixed her with an eternal, restless gaze that she could not escape from and she trembled in fear before them for a moment before forcing herself to march down the stairs.

The stairs gave her a fearful march under the gaze of rows of dead ponies, but she conquered even that on her quest. She looked about as she stepped from the last step. The stairs had led to a large, mostly empty chamber. Several rays of golden dusk-light peered through a barred window, coming to rest on a stone golem. The figure had two legs and two arms and had once stood upright. Its face was a squarish thing set with two blue gems for eyes. On its torso were carved squiggly symbols long forgotten to time.

She approached the stone statue and jumped as its head swiveled to face her.

Then it spoke to her in a voice as ancient and gravely as the stones of its composition. “Why have you come?”

“I...I…” she struggled to speak through her fear. Gathering her wits, she pushed out a sentence. “I need your help to get to Canterlot.”

“My help?” The stone golem clambered to its feet and scratched itself for a moment with a massive stone hand. “For what?”

“Well, it’s not so easy to get to Canterlot these days,” said Fluttershy. “After all, it’s guarded by a skeleton army.”

“What do you seek in...Canterlot?” asked the golem.

“I need to save my friend. And Canterlot is the only place where I can use, well use this.” said Fluttershy, drawing the crystal from her bag to show the golem. It suddenly snatched it from her hand and curiously surveyed it for a moment. After several seconds, it gave her the crystal back. “A gem of resurrection. How dire are things in this age, for you to need such a tool? And why do you seek me instead of your pony friends?” asked the golem.

“Every since I was a filly, I heard stories about you.” rapidly explained Fluttershy. “Stories about how you rested in this very tower, to help out ponies in their time of need.”

“Where are your friends to help you?” asked the golem.

Fluttershy lowered her head and a few tears fell from her eyes. “They’re...gone.”

The golem looked towards the mare beneath it and nodded solemnly. “Then I will help you fight the skeletons to save your friend.”

Fluttershy uttered a quick thanks. “By the way, what’s your name, if you have one?”

The golem stretched its arms out above its head and yawned. “I am Glory, the golem helper of the little ponies.”

2: Anger

Fluttershy let loose a bolt from her crossbow.

To her relief, it pierced the spine of the skeleton advancing towards her. The magically animated lump of bones fell to the ground, to be trampled by a shambling horde of its brethren. Her hooves fumbled to load another bolt into the device. Doing so, she fired again to destroy yet another skeleton.

Her breaths were coming quicker to her now. Her face was twisted into a mask of rage that she had never felt before as she cut down the advancing hordes of the undead. Beside her, Glory swept his stone arms to and fro, destroying clumps of skeletons with each blow.

Her heart exploded with excitement and then she wondered why she enjoyed the act so much. Shouldn’t she, as the element of kindness, despise this act of killing? A thousand justifications came to her and she put them aside as she sniped another skeleton through the skull.

The horde was advancing at a quicker pace than she could have ever imagined. Ever since she had acquired Glory as a companion, the skeletons had assaulted the two in numbers she had never imagined possible. Entire graveyards of skeletons had molested the two as they journeyed from the Everfree forest and now that they were well on their way to Canterlot, the skeletal hordes had become a massive threat to her quest.

Canterlot. The name shone in her mind like a beacon of hope. Within Canterlot was the portal between this world and the next that was fabled to be able to retrieve a single soul, if a stone of resurrection was used with the intent to retrieve that specific soul.

But before she could access that magical device, she had to fight an entire army first.

Their white, glistening numbers streamed like an avalanche of bone across the bridge which Fluttershy was desperate to cross. Their forms glowed with pulses of magical energy that created a bonfire of unholy light wherever they clumped up into groups. She silenced the tumult in her mind as she fired again and again, her body growing weary from the process of aiming, firing and reloading the crossbow at her side. Glory’s blows were growing slowly slower, each one somewhat less powerful as he threw himself into groups of skeletons and devastated all that challenged him.

She surveyed the carnage that surrounded her. All around were scattered the skulls of unicorns, their gnarled, boney horns cracked, chipped and broken into shreds. Torn banners from the skeletal army were present as well. Most of them had been rendered into illegible chunks of cloth by Glory’s blows, but some of them still possessed the same symbol that reminded Fluttershy so much of Twilight’s cutie mark.

Fluttershy then looked to the giant, his stone back to her. Without him, she realized, this task would have been forsaken long ago. She looked in her saddlebags to the dull glow of the magical crystal within and though she didn’t have a moment to spare from the skeleton slaughter, she smiled inwardly. Memories of her and Twilight filled her mind and her passion to fight blossomed anew. She knew that as long as she fought, as long as she remained angry and determined, then Twilight still had a chance at living once more.

Fluttershy paused as the waves of skeletons seemed to have let up for a moment and all was still. She took advantage of the fleeting moment of peace to survey her surroundings. A bridge stretching over a chasm so deep that the bottom melted away into blackness was before her, covered in shattered bones. On its sides and railings were many orange pumpkins flickering with purple candlelight. Their knife-carved faces were a mixture of leering smiles and brooding frowns. On her side of the bridge was the forest the two had just emerged from. Past the edge of the bridge stretched the road that would take them to Canterlot.

A skeleton riding across the bridge on a unicycle suddenly entered her view. It wore a conductor’s hat tilted at an angle atop its head and tooted on a long golden trumpet. The sheer oddity of the unicycler caught her gaze and as she stared at it, an object shot from the end of the trumpet and whizzed over her ears. She jumped to the side and fired a bolt at the blowgunner, whiffing the shot.

Her teeth mashed together. Focusing her gaze, she prepared to fire. Before she could get another shot off, a sudden force struck her from behind. She was thrown to the ground with a meaty thump that knocked the breath out of her.

The skeletal bird’s talons began to dig into her side, sending waves of fire through her body. She shrieked and smacked the bones of the beast and several of them flew away, but it still continued to rend her flesh. Her hooves pounded uselessly against the ribcage of the undead beast.

I can’t fight it.

Fluttershy’s rage grew....

I can’t…

Fight back...

And then exploded. She sent the skull of the bird rocketing away with a titanic kick.

The bleeding pegasus rolled over and spat out a mouthful of shattered bone, thankfully not her own. As she lay on the ground and panted, masses of bone flew overhead, flung from the destruction which Glory had wrought against the skeletons.

After several moments, there was silence. She continued to lay on the ground, putting a foreleg over her eyes and sighing deeply. The pain was beginning to dig deeper into her body from her wounds and deeper than that was the emotional pain that twisted its way into her mind. It was the pain of having been forced to kill, even against beasts as surreal and evil as the skeleton army. It was the pain of physical and emotional weakness in the face of the death of her friend.

The only thing which lifted that burden from her mind and allowed her to breathe were her thoughts of being with Twilight once more. It was her anger, her white-hot rage that would allow her to save her friend. She tried so hard to suppress her thoughts of sympathy towards the broken skeletons around her. Despite her strongest efforts, a strand of empathy worked its way through her mind and she shuddered at the scope of the skeletal holocaust around her, sending a brief prayer of thanks that there was no meat on the bones of the skeletons to make the scene even more ghastly.

She began the process of clambering to her hooves. Before she could summon the strength to stand, a rough hand helped her up..

She softly gave thanks to Glory. “Of course, little one.” Glory put his index finger and thumb to his chin in a thoughtful gesture. “Now, from where did this threat emerge?”

Fluttershy looked up to his head, which eclipsed the setting sun. Her words caught in her throat as she beheld the giant. Streams of sunlight gushed from behind his head in a halo. His gem-eyes sparkled as they caught the light. The sensation of looking at him felt to Fluttershy like beholding an old statue in a museum of a time long past.

Words finally filled her mouth. “They...well, everypony turned into them.”

“Was it a magical disease of some sort? An evil sorcerer’s spell?” inquired Glory.

Fluttershy shook her head. “No, the cause is unknown, even to me. Ponies and everything else began to…” She struggled to find an adjective to describe the horror which had befallen Equestria. “Wither. Everything which didn’t die turned into an evil skeleton.”

A rumbling came from within Glory’s stone body. Fluttershy realized it was a sigh soon after. “Why was I not activated sooner?”

“You couldn’t have done anything,” said Fluttershy. “It came so quickly that nopony had time to react.”

Glory nodded in understanding and then pointed to the sky. “As for the sun?”

Fluttershy looked to the ground. “I...don’t know. Perhaps Celestia herself…” She fought to maintain her composure. “Maybe she died.”

“It is a tragedy.” muttered Glory in a low voice.

“Tragedy?...” Fluttershy shut her eyes shut and tried to hold back the flood. Tried and failed, as it was. “TRAGEDY?”

It felt as if a lightbulb had been shattered inside her head. “Do you really think you can talk about ‘tragedy’ when you’ve never experienced something like this before?” Her mane hung about her in flattened strands as she spoke, her lips curling up to reveal her teeth. Her brow was so furrowed in anger that she could barely see through her narrowed eyes.

Glory stood motionless and watched the little pony before him writhe in fits of anger. Before long she simmered down and panted, out of breath from her ranting.

She muttered an apology to Glory and turned away from him. He uttered no words but simply turned around and began to stare at the sun with his arms crossed.

His moment of contemplation was broken by footsteps that shook the ground. Both Glory and Fluttershy looked around themselves frantically as the mysterious approached and at once it came into the clearing.

The gargantuan skeleton was not a pathetic, yellowed ruin like the other ones that had assaulted them along the bridge. Its bones were white, some of them still running red with gore. In its hand was a sword almost as long as its body and many times longer than either Fluttershy or Glory. A golden crown sat atop its head and Fluttershy gasped when she saw its shield. The icon upon it looked too similar to Twilight’s cutie mark to possibly be anything but the mare’s mark. She raised her crossbow to fire. A single bolt struck the shield in its exact center and shattered against the hardened wood therein.

It grinned at them, not that it could do anything else. Fluttershy braced for a counterattack that never came.

Sheathing its sword for a moment, it waved its massive skeletal fingers at her, waggling them for the sake of the greeting. Then without speaking, it pointed a white, bony finger at Glory and beckoned him to come forwards with a twitch of its index finger. Glory lowered his head and marched forwards to face the beast with solemnity infecting his every step and gesture as he approached the towering entity. As he approached, the skeletal king unsheathed its sword and pointed it towards Glory.

Fluttershy took a moment to begin treating her injuries with bandages from her bag. When she had wrapped the first wound, the king finally spoke to Glory in a booming voice. “My old enemy...here at last, to die.”

“My old enemy, the king of death.” Glory pounded his stone chest. “I will destroy you here, now and forever.”

Fluttershy remembered the words from the fairy tale in a moment of spontaneous recollection. No matter where Glory went, the king of death would appear to hinder him on whatever quest he was on to help the ponies of Equestria. The king of death did not restrict himself to a single form; if it was a story of a dragon and a princess, he would be the dragon. If it was a story of a colt and a giant, he would be the giant.

So it was fitting in Fluttershy’s nightmare of skeletons that the king of death would appear to Glory as a skeletal king.

She also remembered that when Glory arose to fight in his eternal duel with the king of death, the protagonist would often be left to his or her own devices for the rest of the story to reveal some theme or motif about their true self, stripped of the protection which the giant provided. More often than not however, Glory would return to help the hero with some final task, though not in every tale.

Resigning herself to her fate, Fluttershy trudged across the bridge as the fight raged on behind her.

3: Depression

The piddling snowflakes which fell from a grey sky had begun to grow into piles of snow.

Fluttershy trudged through them as she approached the city of Canterlot. Around her were towering, ancient structures of stone. The buildings were designed from the architecture of a dozen ages and consisted of towering fingers of cathedral spires and below them, the relatively tiny buildings of the Equestria commonfolk, where they had once lived out their day to day lives. Street lamps stood empty and barren, the glass of their containers shattered and the candles within melted to the ends of their wicks.

Around her, a nascent blizzard was beginning to make itself known. Snowflakes streamed from the cloudy skies above and landed all about her; on her eyelashes, her wings, her muzzle. She stuck her tongue out playfully to catch one, only to spit out the ashy fleck. Even the rays of the perpetual dusk were mostly failing to grasp the ground and if the light was poor before, it offered nearly nothing to her now. Were it not for the lantern by her side, she would have been forced to stumble about in pitch blackness through the road leading into the old city.

She remembered how busy this city once was and grimaced in the face of the silent, cold atmosphere that had now seeped into everything around her. Nowhere to be seen were the haughty ponies of the nobility, nor the colts and fillies that used to play about under watchful eyes within the streets. All was still and empty, barren and hollow and many more adjectives besides.

Lining the streets, like the stagecoaches of old, were skeletons. Those ponies who hadn’t reanimated into violent skeletal monsters had simply withered and died, their bones stacked into huge clumps that littered the streets. They had been shattered and broken by some great force unknown to her and she shuddered to imagine what could have caused the damage she saw on the old bones.

As she trotted up to the entrance gate, she saw a pony. Through the folds of the long, draping cloaks it wore about itself, she couldn’t quite tell if the figure was a stallion or a mare. Even the pony’s mane was hidden by a large ten-gallon hat. Its back was to her and she took a moment to observe and learn as much as she could about the mysterious stranger.

On its side were saddlebags brimming with some kind of sparkling mineral. A gun holster bearing an incredibly large revolver hung from its side. Fluttershy felt a brief tinge of revulsion when she imagined the devastating effect the bullets of such a weapon would have on a pony. Looking at the shattered bones around her, she wondered for a moment if she already knew the answers to her dark questions.

Fluttershy called out to the figure and it did not turn around to greet her. She raised her voice slightly and at once, the pony whipped around.

A bubble of apprehension heaved in her chest once she saw that the pony’s face was hidden by a pair of goggles and a bandana. Regardless of its hidden identity, the pony began to trot towards her. She wondered if she could raise the crossbow at her side quick enough to get a shot off if it came to that, then felt disgusted at her automatic predisposition towards violence.

The pony silently raised a hoof in greeting. She returned the gesture and the two ponies stared the other down for a moment.

Then the pony suddenly spoke. “Cold weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

Fluttershy smiled. “Oh goodness, yes it is.”

“Heh, such a warm smile. Almost…” The figure pulled down its bandana to reveal a face with no skin or muscle, but only bone. “Warms my old bones.” It then produced a sound that may have been laughter.

“Uh...um…” Fluttershy struggled to speak.

“‘Uhm’ what? Are you scared of me?” The skeleton popped its goggles off to reveal two hollowed eye-sockets.

‘Well, skeletons are spooky. And scary.” said Fluttershy, shivering from a sudden gust that had drifted in from seemingly nowhere.

“Heh.” The skeleton spoke the syllable, not bringing itself to actually laugh. “So what brings you to the old city?”

The wind sharply blew around them with a ghostly whistle, knocking Fluttershy from her train of thought. She clambered back on and continued to speak. “Um…I’m...here to see a friend.” The answer sounded satisfactory to her without giving too much of her quest away.

“Oh my, you’re injured.” abruptly commented the skeleton.

Fluttershy suddenly felt self-conscious about the bandages on her sides. Before she could respond, the skeleton raised a hoof and began to gently prod her bandaged skin. She tolerated the strange action for a moment before her discomfort grew too high.

“Ok- that’s enough.” She shoved the skeleton’s hoof away and to her surprise, it popped off and landed on the ground with a dull clatter.

The skeleton shook its head and laughed. “You won’t get very far in the old city with injuries like those. But I’ll be your escort.”

“No, I’m fine. And, um, I-I need to get going.” said Fluttershy, pushing the skeleton aside and quickly trotting away.

As she trotted, the skeleton called out to her again in a shrill rasp. “I need something from you!”

She pushed her trot into a slow gallop, her injuries a constant thorn in her side as she ran. She could hear the dull hoof-clops of the skeleton behind her as it ran to catch up with her. Pushing herself into an even greater speed, she cleared the gates of Canterlot.

**********

In a moment, she grasped why the skeleton had called it the ‘old city’.

The buildings themselves appeared to have aged immensely as if they themselves had been withered by the same catastrophe that had decimated their population. Long cracks ran through the walls and windows of the city’s structures, Everywhere were the ruins of the quaint domestic life that had once been lived by the citizens of the city; tables still held moldy food and drinks, the stalls of artisans still stocked with items. It was merely the ponies themselves that were totally missing from the city.

Her ears strained to hear anything from within the cobweb alley-ways and empty streets that confronted her. They heard no sound save for the slow, steady trotting of the skeletal gunslinger that had made up its mind to stalk her. She hoped beyond hope that there was a pony somewhere to help her, but she still did not know if anypony besides herself had managed to survive the withering of Equestria.

She trotted down the street and allowed herself room to breathe. There seemed to be no threats here for once, besides of course her stalker. The city was free of bones to her relief, in contrast to the chaos that lay outside. She turned to the building nearest to her and began to size it up. It was a cafe, its paint worn like some antique artifact in a carnival sideshow. Tables had been arranged out front, bearing their own plants with brittle, dead leaves.

A pile of clothing sat in one of the chairs. As she peered at it curiously, she found it to be an aristocratic ball gown. It was quite frayed and wrinkled, with large clumps of dust gathered within the seams of the silken blue dress.

Rarity. The name bursted into Fluttershy’s mind. It was the exact kind of thing that the mare would have made. In fact, the dress positively reeked of her, from the intricacy of its design, to the bob of purple hair that bursted from the top.

Fluttershy trotted up to the inert gown, hoping something beyond hope. She reached a trembling hoof forwards and gently prodded the back of the garment.
To her amazement, the clothes began to shift as the pony within turned around to face her.

“Rari-” The words caught in her throat once she saw the face of the pony. It didn’t have the white fur of her friend, but bore a dull, grey color. Its hues were contrasted by a pair of sparkling yellow eyes that sat beneath a chipped horn. Within the face were deep lines and wrinkles of age.

“Rare what?” The mare’s voice had a gravely, withered edge to it. “It’s certainly rare to see another pony around.”

Fluttershy reeled for a moment in her shock at finding another survivor. Then she remembered her stalker. “Um, I don’t know who you are, but there’s a very strange skeleton followi-”

The mare threw her head back and let out a laugh so soft it was barely audible. Fluttershy took a step back and the mare locked eyes with her. A sharp tongue flickered between her lips, then she opened her mouth and began to loudly warble.

Fluttershy looked about her in panic. What horrors within the city would be stirred by the strange song of the insane old mare before her? As she continued to sing, her voice increased in power until the windows of the old city began to shake. At once, she shut her mouth to cease the cacophony.

Fluttershy waited for the mare to do something else, but she merely sunk back in her chair and continued to stare into nothingness. That oddity having run its course, the pegasus then turned to the cafe itself with a note of curiosity. Surprisingly, the windows of the old building weren’t quite empty; she could see a grimy light making its way known as a soft glow in the window panes. With nowhere else to go inside of the former capital of Equestria, she strode past the freak that lurked outside, to probe the inside.

**********

The scene that greeted her was as dismal as she had expected. A few moldy barstools had been pulled up to a counter, behind which resided a rack of dusty wine bottles and glasses. They took all shapes and sizes; triangles, regular cylinders of wine, trapezoids, rhombuses and many others, some of which she didn’t quite recognize.

More important than such trivialities to her were the ponies who resided at the bar. They were an odd, ancient crowd. Their skin was pulled so tightly over their bones that they looked like skeletons at some bizarre festival where the goal was to dress like ponies. Moth-eaten clothing adorned them and several wore hats and other accessories of the nobility that had once resided within the old city. None of them looked up or did anything to acknowledge her as she strode in, save for the bartender, himself barely more than a skeleton.

The old stallion had no mane to speak of save for a few grey whiskers. Fluttershy was taken aback when she saw how far the pony had withered; if it weren’t for the two bloodshot eyes that cautiously watched her, she would have thought him already long dead.

At once, he began to speak in a voice with little more power than a whisper. “You are not withered. How odd.”

Fluttershy suddenly thought of how vividly her coat shone compared to the half-dead ponies in attendance at the bar. Though her hair was greyed, enough pink had worked its way in to allow her to retain some semblance of her youth. She ran her hoof through it with a tremble of trepidation.

“No, I suppose I’m not.” The bartender and her locked eyes in a weird moment where neither spoke. Then she took a seat.

He slowly cocked an eyebrow at her. “How is that?”

She looked at her hoof and her eyes trailed their way up her leg. “I don’t know. But I’m on a very important mission and-”

Something overcame her and she turned around. Through the window of the bar she could see the gunslinger staring at her with the hollow pits where his eyes had once resided. She shivered and returned to face the bartender.

“...a mission. Well, would you like a drink?” His words came slowly and what little inflection that they possessed was forced.

“Um, well, I don’t drink.” she muttered meekly.

“Heh.” The bartender grasped a bottle from the top shelf and then seized a glass. He put the two together and with a swift movement removed the lid from the bottle. “The only drink around here is...misery.”

Fluttershy watched as a trickle of dust poured from the bottle into the glass. Then the bartender collapsed on the ground.

She leapt to her hooves. “Are you okay?”

Dashing behind the counter, she tried to help the stallion to his hooves. Even as she grabbed at his body, his skin sloughed off to reveal dry bones underneath. There was no blood or gore present within his body, but merely bones that had been covered by a thin layer of dead skin.

She held the layers of dead skin in her hooves and thought of a snake shedding its skin. Pushing back her fear, she looked to the other bar patrons. Their skin was peeling off in long layers like the wrappings of a present being removed. They fell from their stools one by one, their dust-filled glasses falling to the ground and shattering. From outside came a tremendous howl as the wind began to blow with a ferocity she had never seen before, then all was still.

“Confused?”

Fluttershy whipped around to face the gunslinger. She looked about herself for an exit, only to find that he was standing before the only one in the building.

“Why are you following me?” She tried to put some force behind the words, but they were as meek and timid as anything she had ever said.

“I don’t want to hurt you, truth be told.” As he spoke, the remains of the bar patrons suddenly erupted into black flame.

They sprang from their bar stools with a start and the gunslinger drew his revolver. Before the first one approached him, his gun let out a tremendous crack, tendrils of smoke creeping from the barrel. With two more booms from the firearm, the skeletons in the bar had been blown into chunks of bone. He drew several bullets from his saddlebags and reloaded, then turned towards her.

Fluttershy cowered in her corner, quite unsure of what to do. She thought of raising her crossbow to strike the stranger down, but her curiosity was overtaking her. “Why do you follow me?”

“I need you to talk to someone for me.” plainly stated the gunslinger.

“Um…” Fluttershy pawed the ground and turned her head to the side.

He continued to rasp at her in his ghastly voice. “We just aren’t on good terms is all. Anyways, here’s his address.” He drew a letter from his side. “Follow up if you care to. Or don’t.”

“Tall about wha-” Before her question was answered, the skeleton dropped the letter on the bar and quickly made his exit.

Stowing it away in her saddlebags, she took out her journal and rooted through it for a moment. Nowhere was there mention of the exact location of the fountain of life, to her dismay.

With nothing particularly better to do, Fluttershy opened the letter and read its contents, noticing that the address inside was within Canterlot. She trotted out the door and continued on her quest.

4: Bargaining

The address within the letter had brought Fluttershy to the gates of a tower on the outskirts of the central Equestrian castle itself.

She was unsure if the age of its stone was due to the same effect that had devastated the rest of the city, or if the structure itself was simply old. Rusted bars covered the windows and outside, statues of prancing ponies flaked with rust. Some had been ripped from their bases and lay strewn in pools of murky water.

Her steps as she approached the entrance to the castle were fearful and uncertain. As she walked, she would lose her footing, only to quickly find it again. After a brief moment of this awkward stumbling, she was finally at the entrance.

An oppressively large wooden door was before her. She fruitlessly searched its face for a knocker and finding none, she gave it several sharp taps with her hoof. Silently, the door swung open.

Before her was a wall of utter darkness. The floor was covered in dust and she couldn’t tell if her hooves fell upon wood or stone as she walked in. The entire area was filled with the scent of smoke, as if entire boxes of matches had been kindled and then extinguished. After a weak call of greeting went unanswered, she stepped into the room. With a menacing thud, the door slammed shut behind her.

Her hoof became stuck for a moment and she yanked it out. She looked it over and paused for a moment in confusion. Strands of Equestrian dollars were wrapped around her leg. Quickly looking over the room, she saw that the dust was not dust at all, but the tattered remains of paper money.

She breathed out in amazement as she surveyed the rest of the atrium. Everywhere around her were towering treasures of gold; statues, golden coins, crowns that sparkled with rare and ancient jewels. Then her heart skipped a beat as she finally grasped the danger she was in.

Even as she approached the door to make her exit, it was blocked by a gnarled claw.

“I, um, well, I need to lea-” Suddenly, her awkward plea for mercy was silenced as the claw rapidly moved to cover her lips.

Her bones themselves shook as a rumbling voice filled her entire body. “I...am most displeased.” Some of her tension vanished, to be replaced by perplexion. Though she didn’t reply, the dragon still spoke. “Your kind is vanishing.”

“Well, yes and um-” She tried to look into the dragon’s face, only to have her head forced to the ground by the gigantic claws.

“It was not long ago that your industries would provide me with goods of all kinds. Golden trinkets, the products of mining and of conquest. Swords, crowns to satisfy my lust.” Fluttershy trembled as the dragon leaned in closer. “But your race had to go and die off to this, this skeletal plague.”

The dragon deeply inhaled. “What...good...are...bones, I ask you.” It spat the words with such fury that flames flickered from its mouth and kindled tapestries upon the wall.

Fluttershy’s eyes hurt for a moment as they adjusted to the new light. The first thing she noticed was that the claw holding her belonged to a hand shimmering with green scales.

Her eyes finally turned upwards to face the dragon. The beast was larger than she could have even imagined, its mass filling most of the room. Its age was one of the first things she noticed; its scales were chipped and worn, a sizeable hole showing within the flank of the dragon, underneath which hung wrinkled folds of flesh. Its green eyes burned with a mix of fury and intrigue.

“W-what do you want from me?” She sighed in relief that she was able to finish a complete sentence.

The dragon’s raspy laughing filled the chamber. “We want the same thing, truly. But I am too old and greedy to accomplish my goal.”

Fluttershy tilted her head in confusion as best as she could in the grasp of the dragon. “Um, may I ask your name, mister dragon sir?”

The eyes transfixed her and she fought to keep her face free of fear. “Isn’t it obvious, Fluttershy?”

“Oh...Spike, I..I…” Tears welled in Fluttershy’s eyes. “I…”

The claw covered her lips once more. “Now, give me what you have. Stop reminding me of back then.”

Before she was permitted to speak again, a gnarled claw sliced open her bags and the contents within poured across the ground.

The contents of her quiver fell as well, bolts rolling across the floor. The tattered remains of the journal fluttered about in the dull silence, ancient words vanishing forever in that moment. However, she was ignorant to these things; all that concerned both her and the dragon was the crystal which rolled across the floor.

In the throws of Spike’s greed, Fluttershy was tossed across the room like a ragdoll. Her limp form impacted a wall, sending a bolt of pain through her leg. After a moment of lying on the ground and whimpering, she clambered to her hooves, her leg quaking as it tried to support the weight of her body. She wondered if the bone was broken or if it was a mere fracture.

And then she saw it. It was rolling towards her; Twilight’s savior and Spike’s object of desire. She made a crazed, half-insane leap atop the crystal and wrapped her body around it.

Its energies soothed her for a moment and she was calmed for a second by the gentle pulsations of the gem before the beast caught up with her.

Once again her body was molested by Spike’s worn and crooked claw. She was lifted in the air and brought before the angered face of the dragon, still clutching the gemstone to her side.

His eyes burned with the spark of a question, but Fluttershy made herself heard first. “I want to bring her back.”

Spike shut his eyes and opened them again, only for his eyes to shut again. His face twisted and steam blew from his nostrils, his lips curling into a tight grimace.

“The greed…burns.” He massaged his massive head with his hand, rolling his shoulders and shuddering. “Wha-what do you mean, bring her back? Can you save...save…”

“Spike, you have to fight it.” soothed Fluttershy. “Yes, I can bring her back. Just try to push it out.”

She breathed deeply before speaking. “Her life depends on it.” Spike opened his eyes and Fluttershy saw nothing in them of either greed or sympathy to her cause. In her ignorance, hope blossomed for a brief moment.

A moment all too brief and fleeting.

His claw reached upwards and began to pry her legs apart to reach the gem that they held. Try as she might, her strength couldn’t possibly counter that of the dragon’s.

She lay on her back in the palm of his outstretched hand, her hind legs askew. Her forelegs still clutched the gem. She stared silently into Spike’s eyes as one foreleg was lifted upwards and with a twitch of his wrist, the other one sprang free and finally Spike grasped the gem.

Fluttershy tumbled to the ground and another burst of pain sprang from her leg. Her eyes followed the sparkles of the gem and the weight of her failure hit her like an iron chariot. A sob escaped her lips as she looked desperately towards the crystal.

She shakily climbed to her legs and her wings spread out behind her, her head hanging low. She closed her eyes and took a moment to compose herself, then lifted her head to the triumphant dragon, her face a blank mask that occasionally cracked with grief; the roll of a tear down her cheek, the curling of her lips in agony and sorrow. Uncertain of what to do next, she looked back towards the exit.

And there he stood, the mysterious skeletal gunslinger.

His revolver already drawn, the light and sound of his opening shot filled the chamber and Fluttershy’s ears rang in the cacophony.

Sparks flared from Spike’s scales and he roared, turning in confusion towards Fluttershy. His voice filled the chamber as he cried out. “Fluttershy, what-”

His words were silenced as another shot pounded against his scales. Finally turning to his true adversary, he lunged forwards with his arm to crush the gunslinger, who nimbly dodged and an entire wall of the chamber was ripped to pieces of hewn stone and mangled lumber.

The gunslinger fired another shot towards Spike’s neck. Once again the shot sparked off of his scales and the dragon roared, this time fire emerging from his mouth. Fluttershy shut her eyes as the heat washed over her, drying the tears on her face.

After the searing flame had passed over her, she sat up and observed the damage. The chamber was now awash in fire, contrasting with the rays of moonlight and flakes of snow that drifted in from the world outside. The tranquility of the scene moved her for a brief second before she crashed back into reality.

She searched for the gunslinger and found him quickly, his bones charred black from the flames. His revolver was still in working order and the tip of the barrel exploded with light again.

The roar that followed was so great that Fluttershy clutched her ears from the pain and let out a small, dismal howl of her own. She shut her eyes and sobbed from the overwhelming, sudden pain in a moment of panic. She was distracted from her pain as a strange liquid drenched her forelegs. Fearing that she had been wounded, she forced her eyes open and pawed the substance.

Blood, she realized. She was soaked in the dragon’s blood. Her vomit joined the pool of liquid at her hooves and she began to sob.

Her eyes tentatively opened to behold Spike’s slumped form, blood gushing from the hole in his flank. His claws twitched feebly and she saw the gem lying forgotten on the floor. The gunslinger walked towards it and swiped it from the ground in an instant, holding it in his fleshless mouth.

“Please…” The words barely made their way from her mouth. She pathetically raised a trembling leg towards the Gunslinger. She gathered inner strength to project her voice across the room. “I just want to…”

To her surprise, the gunslinger trotted over towards her, precious gemstone in tow. His raspy voice penetrated her ears once again. “You seem so sad. So...what’s the word I’m looking for?”

Once he had gotten suitably close to her, she sprang into action. Rolling to the foreleg that still remained intact, she lunged off of it towards the gunslinger. Grasping his skull in her legs, she unleashed a furious series of blows against his bones, cracking several of them. Once he had been subdued, she snatched up the gem. Looking into the depths of the stone, she smiled and thought of Twilight for a second.

Then her attention was focused downwards. They looked at each other for a brief moment, fleshy eyes to silent eyesockets. Then, Fluttershy spoke. “I’m sorry I had to hurt you.” She thought for a second and spoke once more. “Who were you, anyways?”

“You know me.” The skeleton began to glow and Fluttershy threw herself from it.

An aura of energy surrounded the pile of bones on the floor. Fluttershy’s eyes darted to Spike’s corpse as a stream of bright energy began to flow from it to the skeleton.

The gunslinger’s raspy voice filled her ears. “When I defeated the skeleton king, I took his form. As I do with all suitably large things that I banish from this earth.”

Fluttershy furrowed her brow. “What are you?”

By now, muscles had grown over the form of the skeleton, and skin sprouted from its bones, to soon become studded with scales. “There is killing and there is banishing. To kill is to slay a lesser beast with no soul, but to banish is to take the life of a being with a soul.”

It paused as a tongue began to form in its mouth and then continued. “Even if that soul has grown old and greedy. And when I banish a soul, its form is given to me.”

“Glory?” Fluttershy said the name as a question, to see if she had put the pieces together well enough.

“Yes,” said the dragon before her. He was fully formed now, as small in stature as Spike was in Fluttershy’s more distant memories. His scales and eyes were as grey as the snow that poured in from above.

She thought of a response, but before it could pass her lips, she shuddered and grew lightheaded. Fluttershy tried to process the scene before her and failed. It was as if she was reading a book of her actions from a place far away and her ears rung with a hollow sound that quickly grew in pitch and intensity. The blood on the floor shone so brightly now it was seemingly blinding her.

Spike was dead.

That fact ripped into her heart far harder than any other pain had ever hurt her before. When Twilight had passed, that pain left a long and deep scar inside of her that she could not heal.

The rending of another scar like it threatened to destroy her.

She felt her mind quake and wail under the unrelenting brutality of that fact, her pulse quickening. Her world was a tornado now, of vibrant light, sound, energy and many things besides.

A voice floated towards her through the haze of panic enveloping her. “I’m sorry for this, but I need you to focus.”

Suddenly, her mind cleared. Her breathing slowed and the facts of her surroundings returned to her slowly. No longer was the smell of blood or the light coming from it overwhelming; it lay before her now as a still pool that neither traumatized nor enticed her senses. Spike’s hulking corpse had lost its terror and was as inert to her now as the shattered cinderblocks that lay upon the floor.

She calmly looked up to face Glory. He gave her a soft smile that raised no emotion from her. “A simple spell to erase your emotions for the moment being.”

Clasping a draconic hand on her shoulder, he pointed his claw to the side. Following it, Fluttershy laid her eyes upon a stone fountain, unnoticed by her in the tumult of the earlier battle. It was as ornate as anything in Camelot was; a piece of stone artwork adorned with colorless images of flowers and trees, as well as ponies leaping for joy.

In its stone lay an indentation and for a moment Fluttershy was curious, then she looked to the gemstone at her side.

“Is that the fountain of reincarnation? I...” Her sentence lay halfway formed in her mouth. Even through the mind-numbing effects of the spell, a snake of hope wriggled through and she stood speechless.

“Yes.” replied Glory. “But the path forwards is not as easy as you would think. To raise one from the dead, one must be put down.”

“Oh.” said Fluttershy. She felt as if she should be shocked, but the spell lingered and her response was accordingly blunted. “Didn’t Spike do that already?”

“That was my plan,” said Glory. He took a long breath before he spoke again. “But contrary to my expectations, he was far too greedy and powerful for you alone to kill, so I was forced to absorb his essence.”

“Does that mean...I…” Fluttershy gave her response with a blank stare of realization.

“No,” said Glory with a kind voice. “I will.”