"The End is Coming"
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Father Night: Shadows over Equestria

"The End is Coming"

Chapter 1: Fleetwood’s PoV

The cruisers were closing in, and fast, their 260 Horsepower LT1 V-8’s propelling them at speeds approaching 100 Mile an Hour. Their target: Arresting ME, and at all costs. My Corvette Stingray was FLAT OUT, I couldn’t go any faster. How were cars with HALF MY HORSEPOWER and weighing 1,000 pounds more than me even KEEPING UP?

I was about to give up, when my mind lit up with an idea.

Braking hard, I pulled a 180, and raced back toward my pursuers. They all scattered, as they did not want to hurt their brand-new cruisers, and left me free to race off, onto a dirt sideroad.

I was sure that I had left them in the dust, when I noticed one coming up rapidly from behind, blasting its horn to get my attention. As it pulled alongside, I noticed, it wasn’t one of the police ponies that I had seen every time I had been pursued, it was a black alicorn with a blonde mane. He had the strangest white stripes around his eyes, which were clouded with worry as he stared over at me.

“Nice, car, man!” I chuckled, giving him a hoof-up, “You selling it?”

“Fleetwood,” he sighed, “You know this is a dream, just pull over, I need to talk to you.”

Obeying, I parked on the side of the road, near a wood of maple trees, and trotted over to him, his Caprice now stopped behind me, in the likeness of a police traffic stop.

“Well,” I queried, “What do you need?”

“I need to warn-”

“Wait a minute! If this is a dream, then YOU’RE NOT REAL! I DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU!”

I Spread my wings, and flew off, laughing giddily, until, all of a sudden, I was surrounded in a magic aura. The pony began to pull me back toward him with it, and, no matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t get away.

“This is SERIOUS!” he growled, giving me a frustrated look, “Quit acting like a little foal, and LISTEN!”

“Alright,” I grudgingly agreed, “I suppose I could...BUT ONLY FOR A FEW MINUTES, this dream is AWESOME.”

“My name is Dark, I’m earth’s guardian of darkness, and I came here to warn you.” He took a deep breath. “Something dark and evil is coming to your world and you need to be ready, I tell you no more cause A: I would get in trouble and B: It’s funnier this way.” He dropped me and began to fly away. “Say hi to your step dad for me!”

“Okay!” I promised, “I will!” As soon as I got back into my Sting Ray, I found myself awake in my bed.

“DAMN it!” I exclaimed, pounding the nightstand, “That was an AWESOME dream!” I looked over to the other side of the bed, where my dearest Luna would normally lay, but it was empty. When I looked at the clock, I figured out why: It was 8 AM, everypony was already up, and having breakfast. I got up, and began to walk toward the door, but I stopped, and turned around.

As I stared back at where I had previously slept, and the crescent-shaped headboard behind it, I was still surprised that I was now living in the Royal Palace, and was friends with the KING OF EQUESTRIA! A little more spring in my step, I bolted downstairs, and into the small kitchen in this wing of the palace, where I found Celestia, Keeper,Morning and Night sitting at the table, with Luna sitting, facing away from me.

“Uh, Luna?” Morning whispered to her, pointing toward me, “Your husband’s awake....”

She greeted me with a very friendly smile, and a little hug.

“Good morning, Fleet!” she chimed, “You slept really well, didn’t you?”

I had been with her for almost a year now, and I was still surprised at how cheery she was. I wanted to lean over to Night, and say, “Thanks for putting happy pills in her coffee”, but you know I couldn’t do that.

I sat down for our meal, which, for once, Shining Armor was preparing, and remembered what Dark told me.

“Hey, Night,” I told my father-in-law, “I had the WEIRDEST dream last night, you aren’t gonna believe it.”

“Try me.” He said while taking a bite from his sandwich.

“I met this..Zebra, I think...But, he was an Alicorn, and he drove a cop car..Said his name was Dark, or something like that.” Night almost spit out his sandwich.

“Holy shit, what did he say?” Keeper seemed to take notice as well and began listening in.

“I think he said something about a dark force invading..” I shivered at the thought of a vast, evil presence descending upon Equestria, destroying everything we knew and loved. “OH, and he told me to tell you, “hi”.” Night laughed at this.

“Crazy sonova- wait did he tell you what was coming?”

“A dark presence, but I thought it was just a dream!”He shook his head and drank some coffee, more then likely spiked.

“When it’s Dark telling ya when shits going to go down, its going to go down like a fucking waterfall full of razors.”

I just stared down at a bottle of whiskey that was laying on the table, and took a drink. “Well, so much for starting out the day on the right foot....”

“Hey,” Celestia interrupted, “Can’t you feel that some tiny, insignificant character is missing from this scene?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “Where’s Calais?”

A lone, brown Alicorn with black hair hurried around the Palace Library, searching for the right book, clambering up and down the movable ladder that accessed the higher-up shelves of the book cases. At last, he found what he was looking for: A dusty old book, reading, “Predictions and Prophecies”. He had read this book so many times before, in fact, he had WRITTEN IT, hundreds of years ago. He begun the thumb through it, and layed his big, amber eyes on a sketch of a mare’s silhouette carved into the moon, “The Mare in The Moon”.

“And...” he muttered to himself, a dreamy smile on his face, “On the thousandth year of the Summer Sun Celebration, the stars will aid her escape...” He fell over, giggling, and hugged the book tight. “Oh, I LOVE that part! Wait a second...” He was sure that this was the end of the book, but there was another page behind it. “I don’t remember coming across THIS before...”

The page seemed to be writing it’s self, in a cryptic language that Calais could not comprehend, despite being one of the top scholars who ever lived, behind Starswirl The Bearded, how he HATED Starswirl The Bearded. The page was drawing pictures of what seemed to be changelings, swirling around in huge, black stormclouds. Soon, a message he COULD understand, began to appear:

“Lands of peace turn to lands of war, darkness shall devour the immortal light. The end, is coming.”

“Laissez-moi être, esprits démoniaques!” He screamed, throwing the book down. Horrified, he instantly teleported from the library into the kitchen where I was standing, and began to sob at Night’s hooves, his words inaudible over his blubbering.

“Calais! Calm down man! What’s wrong?!”

The brown Alicorn was still crying in French, which NONE OF US could speak. I tried to get his attention, and to help him calm himself, but he wouldn’t listen, so I did the sensible thing: I slapped him, which woke him right up.

“MY BOOK!” he explained, “MY EMPRESS’S BEAUTIFUL BOOK, DEFACED BY MALEVOLENT SPIRITS! LANDS OF PEACE TURN TO LANDS OF WAR, DARKNESS SHALL DEVOUR THE IMMORTAL LIGHT! THE END IS COMING!” His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he fell back onto the kitchen tile, passed out in excitement.

“Well, that was......Strange. Can someone go find that book so I can get a better idea of what we’re dealing with?” Night looked around a moment. “I’ll be in my room.” He teleported out of the kitchen.

After a while of dragging our hooves, as no pony wanted to be the first to come into contact with this thing, it was decided that Keeper and Calais would go, and the rest of us would carry on with our normal day. I remembered I was due to check on the lot, after Snips and Snails had been fired (FINALLY), for not being much use to anyone.

As me and Luna trotted out, through the palace doors, through the garden, to the Royal Guard parking garage, where I frequently stored my car, Calais had gotten a head start in recovering the book. He found it where he had left it, on the middle of the floor in the library, open, upside-down. He immediately decided to correct this, as keeping a book in this position could prove fatal for its quality.

As the French Alicorn picked up the book, and turned it upright, he now found that all of the pages had been covered by the etchings and strange text. When he attempted to close the book, he got a nasty surprise, as writing began to fly off the page, and into his eyes, nose, and mouth.

During this terrible experience, Calais witnessed many things to come, each prophecy bringing him great pain to see. As the last of the scribblings flew off the book, Calais’s eyes changed from their usual amber, to a sinister blood red. He regained his posture, and simply put the book back, as it recovered from the event, and writing began to reappear.

“Calais?” Keeper called, “You find the book yet?”

“Yes,” Calais replied, in a deep, monotone voice, “But, it has proved unhelpful to Father Night. Let us return to said king, and rejoice, knowing that our land is safe.”

Keeper, shocked by the voice change, bolted straight out of the room, and up, toward Night’s bedroom, to tell him the strange occurrence. The prophecy told them that darkness was coming, but the green-and-blue-maned alicorn believed it had already arrived.