Equestria. A seemingly magical land that had been populated by magical equines who had trumpeted the ideals of friendship, kinship and kindness.
There were earth ponies, with their strength and resilience, pegasi with their flight and ability to control the weather and unicorns with their magic. The three groups had worked together under the rule of two benevolent alicorns, who were a mix of all three races at once. Together these groups had done the impossible, they had tamed the weather, they had tamed the earth, they had even managed to tame the sun and the moon, celestial bodies that had towered well above the world and provided it with warmth and light.
Using their nearly unstoppable nature they had raised great cities of towering stone, bright lights blocking out the night, meaning that the ponies never needed to stop even for the dark of night. In the span of a few hundred years they had done things that would seem impossible.
By far the largest and grandest of their great cities was called Canterlot, a city with buildings that towered even higher then normal, some that did not even need to use the strength of stone to hold them up, instead using steel and glass that allowed the ponies working high above to peer down onto the ponies milling down below, rushing around the streets to keep the great heart of industry running.
It must have seemed like they were unstoppable, like their industry and their science could overcome anything. Once the city had filled with noise and light, and now?
Silence. There was no beating from the heart of industry, there were no ponies peering down on the streets below, their great stone towers had come crumbling down, now only a few rusted skeletons and rotting stone wrecks daring to tower over the city below.
There were no signs of life any more, only the ruins of the city serving as a memento mori that ponies had ever been a thing in the first place
Something had happened, something that had managed to bring the heart of that industry thudding to a stop, gears grinding and shrieking as they stopped suddenly. In the course of a few days the whole city had crumbled like it had never even existed in the first place.
The city was not totally dead however. Life clung to it like a disease, a single lone figure making its way through the city, keeping the city from its final slumber. They were wearing nothing but a thick brown cloak that looked like it had been roughly and crudely sewn together. Their light purple hooves clopped their way across the cobblestone street, the sound echoing through the city and disturbing the ghosts that haunted there.
Something seemed to catch the attention of the pony, who came to a stop before the wreck of one of the buildings, one with a metal skeleton that towered high into the sky. Once upon a time this colossal ruin had been dressed in scales of glass and flesh of plasterboard. Now the scales were gone, and what little flesh remained was crumbling away into dust. Once upon a time it had been filled with noise and life.
No more.
A sound echoed through the empty city, a sound that once would have been blocked out by the deafening noise that filled the city. Now, the sound of a camera shutter closing cut through the silence.
The pony stood still for a few moments, making sure that the camera had actually taken the photo in question. For some reason, the wreck of this building had caught their attention over all the others. Maybe it was something to do with the shards of glass littering the ground beneath the building, waiting to be blown or washed away, but as of yet somehow undisturbed.
They littered the ground beneath the building, shimmering against the dull light of the sun that was trying desperately to punch through the thick layer of cloud that lay above. After several moments of staring at these shimmering shards, the pony decided to head inside.
Above him, the rusted wreck certainly did not seem safe, doing nothing to block out the bitter, almost harrowing wind that rattled through the steel structure.
Within, the building was as expected. There was a large circular desk in the middle of the building where at one point a receptionist might have sat. It had been made out of laminate wood, which was now crumbling.
No More.
The elevator had come crashing down to the ground floor, crumpling and warping with the force that it had impacted with. He wondered, just briefly, what might have caused this as normally elevators were extremely safe, having seven thick metal cords that could each hold the weight of the fully loaded elevator.
It did not matter now however, the work pony who had built it was long dead, and so was anypony else that might have suffered as a result of it failing. He trotted his way passed the desk and up to the first of the staircases, beginning to climb his way up it.
This building had once been an engineering marvel, the glass could stand up to a surprising amount of force and kept the building well lit while keeping in warmth. Now the glass was gone, the wind having no trouble in the slightest in blowing through the building like it was not even there.
His steps were sure, the wind causing his cloak to flap around his fragile frame, sapping the warmth from out of his body and making his spirit feel drained. But he pushed on, not letting the wind slow him in the slightest as he made it up to the first floor.
Of course they had not built the whole building out of glass, that would likely end very badly for everyone involved, and on the second floor there were the first of hundreds of offices, filled with crumbling plasterboard that failed to stop all the wind, but certainly helped.
The door to the first office was hanging off its hinges, and after stepping inside he was greeted with rows of cubicles, within which hundreds of ponies had toiled away their lives. They were all rotting their way into the ground now, exposing the space inside.
His hooves clopped softly as he moved down the central row of the office space, looking at the cubicles as he passed them. Each one was a peak into the life of the pony that had lived there, some were filled with useless trinkets, plastic cactuses or destroyed photos of family.
Each one also contained a typewriter, most of which were ruined beyond any hope of repair, while others seemed to be just about working. He picked one out from a stall that contained a cracked photo of someone’s prized pooch. Briefly, he wondered if the pooch might have been able to escape the cataclysm, making its way into the wild where it could happily live out the rest of its days.
But, such things were likely fabrications of his mind. He stepped back out of the stall, then marched his way down the remainder of the office, navigating down the twisting mass of halls until he found himself at the door to the employee bathroom.
Within, there was of course no glass windows, the door giving a soft creak of protest before allowing him inside. Surprisingly, the tiles were all still white and fairly sterile. There was a set of sinks and yet more cubicles, this time containing cubicles.
He would have commented more on it, but it was just a boring every day restroom, no different from those offered to the public. The mirrors within were still intact, and he was able to see that he did indeed look like shit. The days had not been kind to him, his own almost orange eyes staring back at him, heavy bags having long since set underneath them.
Mentally, he was shattered. His mind should have given up and his body should have followed a long time ago, but at this point he was numb, running on fumes to get him the last few feet to the finish line.
In the mirror he spotted a gray pile of dust set against one of the stalls, almost gritty looking in texture. Next to the pile of ash was a shattered mug, and on the other side a still whole bottle of wine.
Now, he was not much of a drinker, but right now he really felt like he could use one to help his creative urges. Alcohol was a terrible muse, he knew that, but right now he did not care, and it was not like there was anyone around that could judge him.
He picked up the bottle of wine, setting down the typewriter next to him and slotting the paper into place. The ink cartridge did not seem to have dried up which was good, and the wine did not seem to have soured, which was better.
The stallion nursed the bottle of wine, only half a bottle remained and by the time he was done, that was down to a fourth. With a minor buzz working through his body, he pulled the typewriter over and begin to type, the clatter of the stamps impacting the paper and of the inner mechanisms working filled the empty stall as his hooves danced their way from key to key.
It really had been too long, and he did not know how many hours he lost in that stall, buried deep within the world he had built in an attempt to escape the one he lived in. By the time he was done, he had several dozen pages, his hooves were sore, the ink cartage was running low, and his belly was rumbling something fierce.
After gently removing the paper and placing it down next to the sink, he looked over that gritty pile of ash with a soft sigh, glancing at the dark green bottle of wine that he had just been drinking from. The brand was still as bright as ever “Sunmaker” it declared boldly, with a stylised picture of the sun and half a dozen ponies working in a vineyard.
It had been so long since he had seen the sun. With a sigh, he emptied the remainder of the bottle onto that pile of ash, washing it away and sending it along the dozens of spaces between the tiles, like tiny rivers of blood as they rushed towards a drain in the floor, taking most of the dust with them.
No more.
He placed the empty bottle down on the sink, then tried to tuck the typewriter away under his cloak. It was bulky, heavy, and he was pretty sure that carrying it like this was bad for the mechanisms inside, but he did not care.
Once more he was on the move again, this time at a much slower pace then before, much more akin to a slow amble then a walk. As he climbed higher and higher up the steel tower, the wind seeming to become more and more fierce, threatening to blow him off the edge of the building and send him splattering across the city floor below.
The concrete was cold under his hooves, the stone pillars providing very little protection from the cold wind. One minute he was on the ground floor of the building, and the next he was suddenly on the roof, looking down on the dead city below. The wind up here was howling, whistling around him as it blew across the cold stone of the roof.
At one point their had been bushes in containers on the roof, an attempt to add some semblance of normality to the building.
Those bushes were now spilling out of those containers, flowing like water down the side of the tub, before starting to make their way across the gravel floor.
From up here, he was able to see the whole city spread out beneath him, hundreds of buildings, thousands of homes. All empty and abandoned. Night was starting to close in now, and as such the air around him was starting to darken, limiting his vision.
He stepped up to the lip of the building, staring down at the cobblestone street hundreds of miles below.
A lump formed in his throat, a deep fear formed in his chest, and he brushed all of that aside. This was it for him, he was going to throw himself to the city street below, dash himself all over the cold stone and die pretty much instantly, becoming nothing more then a red smear on a dead city.
His heart was frantically beating in his chest at this point, pumping adrenaline around his body in order to activate his fight or flight responses, evolved over millions of years to try and save him from danger. There was no saving him from this however.
Everyone he cared about was gone, everything he had ever worked for destroyed. There was no point to carrying on any more, he might as well get the dying part over and done with. His heart begin to beat faster, becoming erratic as it suddenly felt like the whole world was collapsing in atop him.
It was like a deep, hollow feeling set deep into his chest, one that he had felt before. It suddenly felt like his chest was trying to collapse in on its self as he lost control of his breathing. A panic attack. He was wondering when this was going to happen.
Gathering all his remaining strength, the pony stepped towards the edge of the building, preparing to throw himself off it.
“Ink, stop it.”
A voice cut through the howling, sapping wind, reaching his ears clear as day. He did not bother turning to see the source of the voice. He knew who it was.
“You can’t stop me, you’re not real,” Inkjet spat bitterly.
“Maybe so, but you can stop you, and that’s something you should really consider doing right now,” The voice spoke, cutting through the deafening wind like it was nothing.
“I’m doing this. It’s over, I’m spent. I’m done, I’m tired and I want this nightmare to be over,”
“Just stop, listen to me for a moment! It doesn’t matter if I’m real, or just a hallucination caused by your brain freaking out, I need you to listen to me just for a minute, then you can throw yourself off the building if you want, and I won’t stop you.”
Ink stared down at the city below him. A minute could not hurt. Slowly, he stepped away from the edge of the building, still facing away from the voice as he sat down.
“You have one minute,” He declared simply.
“Look, if you do this, it achieves nothing. You’re just going to be throwing your life away,” The voice said.
“Everyone I care abut is already dead. There’s no point to anything any more,” He said, hoof scraping at the ground softly.
“And you’re not. Look, the worst that can come of you staying alive is you end up dying, in which case you get what you want. But there might be others. There might be other ponies that could really use your help, if you survived, others might have.”
Ink stared down at the floor. Why did he listen. He should have thrown himself off the building before the voice had chance to start speaking sense.
“I’m just… I can’t do this. I can’t take any of this,” Ink croaked, the first hints of a tear starting to form in his eyes.
“I know. I know it’s rough. But you’ve already been through the worst part, now you just need to keep moving.”
His tears splattered onto the smooth gray concrete, instantly soaking into it and vanishing as he let out a soft, raspy wheeze, before turning towards the source of the voice.
But there was nobody there.
The soft sobbing of a mad stallion echoed its way from the top of the building, eventually fading into silence as he phased into the sweet release of sleep, coiled tightly within that cloak as the relentless wind hounded him. Two words spilled from his lips, clear as day over the terrible noise.
“No more.”
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.