Ozymandias

Most would have expected Inkjet's sleep to be filled with nightmarish visions and grim, twisted reflections of the reality he already lived within. But this was far from the case.

Reality was already a living hell for him, so there was no reason to torment himself with visions of a place that he already inhabited. Instead, his sleep worked to carry him far away from his troubles, back to a time when things had been easier and everything had been better.

He was suddenly back, back in his old room with the cream and crimson walls, the plush carpet pressing against his hooves as dozens of posters leered down at him, some with pictures of various things he had taken an interest in, and others with the keen scribbles of an enraptured fool.

Who knows how many nights he had spent toiling away within this room, desperately attempting to commit his ideas to paper, and then those ideas to books via the use of his typewriter.

Being a writer was both a gift and a curse; on the one hoof there was the fact that he got to bring his creative vision to life for the world to enjoy, but on the other hoof there was the fact that some nights his head felt like it was going to tear itself apart.

Writer's turmoil he liked to call it, being so overcome with ideas that you start to trip over them and never manage to get a single one finished.

Now he had the opposite problem. Everyone was dead, everyone he had ever cared about, everyone he had walked past in the street. He did not know of anyone besides him that had survived, and sitting here in his old room an overwhelming sense of sadness overtook him.

Some argue that writers write to be remembered, for someone to care about them after they were lain to rest in the hallowed earth. Ink had never written to be remembered, he had used a pen name so nobody would even care for his passing.

Ink had written so that people could enjoy his work, so even as everything seemed to fall apart around him, he could manage to bring joy to as many ponies as possible.

Now his reasons for writing didn't matter. The old mare that ran the fish and chip shop, a fish and chip shop he had walked for almost an hour to visit, she was dead. Maybe she had been reunited with her husband, maybe not.

He thought back to all the people he had ever cared for, that old lady and her chips, the reverend of the local church, the two fillies that he sometimes saw roaming far from home.

All gone. All crumbled to dust under the cruel, biting blade of the grim reaper.

Well, if he was going to find purpose, it was not going to be sitting in his dreams thinking about death. He climbed to his hooves and suddenly the whole house seemed to fall apart around him, crumbling away to nothing just like everything he had cared about.

Suddenly he was in a forest, the cold air of a winter night bitterly biting through his coat. This wasn't just a dream, ponies didn't feel in their dreams, he was lucid and just as alert as ever.

His breath rolled out in thick clouds before him, wafting up into the sky before breaking apart and fading away in the silver light of a full moon.

He knew these woods. He recognised the trees, the churned up earth beneath his hooves. This was his forest, well, he didn't own it. A nice farmer had owned it, but Ink had made it his.

It was his hooves that had paced through this forest thousands of times. It was the trees that had come to know him as he went for another of his walks, it was the soft earth and blue sky that had tried to sooth him as he desperately attempted to rid his mind of the ideas that blazed through them.

Even now, he could feel the stress trying to escape him. He begin to crunch his way over the thick carpet of dead leaves, his hooves as sure as ever and yet, this was not his forest.

Ink didn't know what it was that was off with the forest, but he had walked through it more then anyone and there was most certainly something off about it. The trees creaked the same, the earth still felt the same beneath his hooves…

It was like when you're looking for something, and you know it is somewhere, but your brain just hasn't clicked yet. And then you see the object that was in your vision the whole time, and suddenly you feel like the biggest idiot.

When his brain clicked, it wasn't a feeling of being an idiot that washed over him, much more a profound sense of dread. The forest was the same, the air, earth and lighting was the same.

It was the sky. It was the earth shattering realization that the night sky was blank. There were no stars, there was nothing, just a ceaseless, endless gaping void that went on forever and….

No. No. It couldn't be. There had to be stars. The sun still had to be a thing in the least as that was where the moon got its light from. For all these stars to… to wink out, they would have to have done so millions of years ago, and in order of how close they were to the earth. That wasn't possible.

Just a minute ago he had seen them twinkling from out of his window however, and even if this was a dream, it still seemed to follow all the other rules of the un-

Everything went black. But not the kind of black that most ponies think of, the kind of black where you were not able to see a single foot in front of your face because there was simply no light.

The sun had been the very last star to go out, and it must have happened just as he arrived for the stream of light to end now.

Around him, the darkness covered him like a cloak, a choking, constricting cloak that forced a loud scream from his lips, or at least it would have been loud if it had made any sound at all.

Suddenly, he truly was alone in the universe. He could still feel the freezing earth beneath his hooves, the insidious cold slowly creeping its way through his body, desperately trying to choke the remaining life from out of him.

After a few moments of almost being crushed by the weight of the darkness around him, he let his body give out, collapsing to the cold earth with a soft sob as he tried his best to curl tightly into a ball. His own body provided him no comfort and the horror he felt from being trapped in the dark only seemed to intensify as time did its terrible dance, dragging on forever.

His lungs were heaving in a panic and he was barely managing to keep himself together. It felt like his mind was going to shatter, like he was going to let out a scream that just wouldn't stop.

The world returned to normal. Everything was covered in a thin layer of frost or ice and an insidious cold was once again trying to creep its way into his bones.

It was no longer the forest he had once been in either, he was atop a hill, and beneath him was the hell scape of a city that he was currently sleeping in, back in the real world.

So much life, so many lives, all snuffed out in an instant. Thinking about it made the empty filling inside of him swell up, threatening to consume him. It was a feeling he had dealt with many times before, and he was not going to let the feeling drag him down. He needed to keep moving, he could not let anything slow him down or stop him.

The city spanned out before him, and seeing it from the top of a hill that did not actually exist gave him a weird perspective. It looked broken and out of focus.

There was a movement next to him, a sound that made his ears perk up as he turned towards the source of the sound.

A princess that he knew all too well slowly stepped from out of the shadows, seeming to actually form out of them. Midnight blue fur and a mane that looked like it was cut from the night sky itself.

“I’m sorry,” The princess whispered, so quite it could have merely been mistaken for the wind. Normally he would have been shocked to stand before a Princess, but she was just another corpse now. He knew she couldn’t be real, he had seen the ruins of Canterlot and not even a God could have escaped such horrors.

“You’re dead. Leave me be, Princess,” He hissed, malice burning in his voice. He felt hollow, he felt empty, and he certainly did not feel like dealing with any of this nonsense.

“I know. We… We really…” Luna paused, seeming to be seeking for words, and he turned to face her. The princesses voice sounded like an empty echo, and Princess Luna herself looked like a hologram, little more then a faded projection onto film that was rapidly running out.

“We are sorry that you are alone. No pony deserves to live in such a situation.”

Inkjet blinked, if he could have, he would have punched the Goddess right then and there. But he couldn’t. All he had to hold him together was his morals, and punching a Goddess in the face wasn’t something that he was prepared to do.

“There’s a stone, in the old castle that even now resides within the Everfree. I have no right to ask this of you, Subject. But if… The stone will help set things right.”

She looked through her hoof, which was fading before her “That’s… That’s the last of it… That… Sister.”

And then like a breeze through the trees, the Goddess was gone.

He awoke, the breeze still hugging him, a cold sweat had spread across his fur and body and everything felt numb, but he dragged himself to his hooves and looked out on the city before him.

Why.

No more. He didn’t want this. He was the last survivor of his species, he didn’t want this responsibility. He didn’t want this responsibility, he just wanted to rest.

“Come on, hold it together. For me. That might really have been Luna, the Goddess has asked you for help.”

“You don’t get to ask things of me, you’re dead. Normally the dead are quite and yet they’re finding ways to beg for my help regardless. I just want to rest, I just want to die, and yet...”

He peered down off the side of the building at the ground below, the vertigo, the fear, all of them coming rushing up at once. “I don’t think I have the strength for that. I thought suicide was a cowardly act, so why is it so hard?”

“Inkjet!” The voice in his head yelled, “You think that any of those ponies got the same choice you did? You think that they wanted to die? You can’t just give up!”

He sighed, reaching a hoof up to rub at his eyes as he tried not to look at the figure that was judging him. “And you really think I asked for all of this? You think I wanted to survive? I don’t… Why do I have to be the one…”

“Life isn’t fair Inkjet. It’s harsh, it kicks you down and laughs, but it’s getting back up and seeing the good things that makes it all worth it.”

The stallion felt a laugh rattle from his chest “That’s such a dumb fucking line. Fuck you, I’m not taking advice from a ghost. I’m going to… I’m going to go see if I can find some food. I’m really hungry.”

The ghost knew better then to push the issue further, wisely leaving him be as he stormed down the building.

-

Finding food was easy. Cold beans were far from the best meal, but they helped fill a whole in his belly. The cans were rusted and the labels gone, but the food within was still good.

Good being relative when it came to eating them cold however. Even here, his nightmares would not leave him alone. The day passed, the night came again, and he found a hill to rest on as the night sky closed in.

Inkjet found himself a nice grassy hill to lie out upon, the cold grass pressing into his back. All the plants were sill alive, the only friends he had in the whole world. The ghostly voice in his head came back to taunt him, but he did not care, he simply stared out into the inky blackness of the night.

There were no stars, only the moon shone mockingly down at him. As he stared into the blackness, a deep fear overtook him. Everything was still falling apart, even now everything was going wrong.

“Do you see? Without the Goddesses, there’s no sun or moon, once their power fails, you’ll finally get your wish.”

He listened to the voice for once, he drank in its words as he stared out into the seemingly endless horror of a starless space. There was no bright lights to look up into. There was nothing to bring him hope, nothing to comfort him through the night.

The stars going missing might have seemed like a minor thing, but no matter what they had always been there, and without them there was nothing.

Inkjet realised that in a few days he was going to die. Fear clutched at his chest, sinking deep inside of him.

But, fear is what motivates them. Inkjet might have seemed like a selfish, careless pony, but most ponies put into his shoes would have simply shattered, their minds breaking apart and vanishing into nothingness just like the stars above.

He felt broken, he felt hollow, but he knew now that the Goddess had indeed imparted upon him her last wish, and he needed to find that stone.