Shadow Play

The freezing wind gnawed at Testing as he struggled through the frozen wastes. How had it happened? What had happened?

The frozen world hung in a limbo of death and decay. When the world was at its lowest, entropy continued its malignant work further. Gales of immense size swept across the world, and bodies froze in the open in whatever pose they last held. Statues of death - monuments to mortality carved of flesh and ice.

The sky was frozen, the stars hanging still in a persistent vigil over the lost world. In that world were two, or were there three? Each time Testing blinked or looked away the number changed, whether growing or waning. Always it seemed, though, that there were at least two. Two that marched through the gloom and death towards their end.

And then there was one.

Frozen in the waste that was the world, Testing couldn't help but watch as the lone figure turned away from where it walked to return to what it had left. What had it left? What was there?

All the while, even above the howling of the wind and the baleful screams of those clamoring for either their salvation or a faster death, was the crackle. Testing had thought it the sound of something going past, but as he listened, he found it something far stranger than the trudging steps of a passerby. It was the sta-

Testing startled awake, Puppershy's silhouette in the dark room the only thing he could see. "Zzzjwuht?" Testing slurred incoherently as he came to his senses. His heart pounded and his breathing was already rapid, as if he had just been running.

"You were thrashing about." Puppershy whispered to him in the black gloom. "I though you might be having a nightmare."

"I... was I?" Testing couldn't remember what he had just dreamed... or if he even had. All he could really recall was going to bed at a horrid hour after getting out of the club. Looking over at the small clock on the nightstand, he could see that it was still a horrid hour, if not an even worse one.

"Are you alright?" Puppershy pressed, scooting up closer to him. Testing nodded slowly after a moment.

"Yeah... I don't even remember if there was a nightmare or any dream." He confessed, nestling in closer to Puppershy. She was so warm, it was lovely just being together in the bed. "It's alright, go back to sleep." He hushed, rolling slightly to pat at Puppershy's shoulder.

The mare sighed and wedged herself closer to Testing, letting herself drift back to sleep. Testing simply lay there and thought back on that empty space that was what might've been a dream. All he could sense was the absence of a space of time. As if something had happened but had been taken away. It was strange to be sure.

Testing sighed and let himself melt back into the the reality of the bed, rolling over slightly to wrap an arm around Puppershy. He smiled contentedly, feeling the warmth of the mare and the gentle, steady breaths that left her. THIS was real. Cress had his mares, and now... now Testing had a mare.

It was no secret in the group who was more attracted to who. Testing and Puppershy were certainly the first pair to be easily spotted, and then came Sultry Rose and Stellar Afterglow - who's affections were harder to see with how they chose to show it. The relationship they all shared was by no means mutually exclusive, a particular benefit to Gunther, but it did mean that certain intimacy felt more... intimate when with certain others.

Testing smiled, leaning against his mare, thinking pleasant thoughts in hopes that they'd carry him off to a wonderfully placid dream. Perhaps one with Puppershy? Or maybe one where he fully reconciled with Cress?

The small hollow sheltered Testing from the gales above. The fire had long since died out, but its embers were better than the frozen rocks around him. The hollow held room for little else beyond him and the dying fire, but even so felt... emptied. As if it had held so much more and yet was now vacated to so little.

Testing clambered up the edge of the depression in the ground and looked out towards the icy fields beyond. The world was still, no sign of wind or howling that had been there but moments before in Testing's mind. The dunes of snow now lay unmoving, save for the tracks of the continued march.

He saw them, just beyond the ridge of the largest snowbank, moving ever onwards. Before them was a field covered in snow like everyplace else the world held. This field, though, had ridges and protrusions without natural explanation. A once tall building just barely peaked above the snowy dunes, its pinnacle crusted in snow and ice.

He had once seen this place, Testing thought. It had been different, with a gleaming castle to one side. There had been life and love and happiness. There had been sorrow and darkness too, but they had been transient. The world had changed since then, and now the opposite was true.

The frozen world chilled both body and soul, and Testing feared it. The foreboding sense that had plagued him tasted pure here. It was at home. It was the consequence after the incident had passed, and it now had the sharpness of reality. A world of terror and death built on the bones of the fallen and the promise of those yet fallen.

Glancing towards the horizon, all that lay beyond was the wayward stars that hung motionless, broken into hemispheres by the galaxy's edge. And then there, just above that band of milky stars, were the two dea-

The blaring sound of the morning alarm going off broke Testing into the realm of the living. This time he was drenched in sweat, and worse yet, he knew why. Eyes fixed at the ceiling, he stared beyond the walls and grime, a creeping dread that hadn't been real until then filling him.

Each time he had had this feeling, that originally indescribable twinge in his gut, it was the reaction of his soul to an action that had yet to happen. The reaction to that... that frozen waste beyond. The land where snow covered all, and life -though immensely rare - was somehow so drastically cheapened.

The worst part wasn't knowing that two ponies he had met at random had been tied to that dark feeling. The prospect of those two being tied to it changed little in the long run or even the short term. No, the true pain was that it had been felt in the faintest traces from those who shared a bed with him. Each of his closest friends had a tinge of the forewarning of dread to them. But beyond them, and the innumerable other ponies and otherwise he had passed who stank to varying degrees of the same smell and tasted of the selfsame flavor, there was one that frightened him so. One who's existence seemed so much more tied to the feeling.

Testing had ignored it at the time as he had many mixed feelings to negotiate at the time, but reflection on the past had brought the taste he sensed in Red Tape out in the flavors of the past. Through it all, one pony was a beacon of that feeling, who's memory in Testing's mind was even more tainted by that ominous feeling that crept ever closer to Testing and all he held dear.

What part in this was there for such a pony? Why did that pony have to emanate the dread that he now knew to be the fear from a future unrealized?

Beyond that, what might he even be able to do to stop it?

If visions came and certain ponies were more heavily implicated in the entire fear of futures unmade, was it warning that might allow him to affect the ending and avoid the action that would cause the fear in future, or was it the inevitable that Testing was gazing into - the immutable destiny of the world? Was he able to stop the danger, or was he hastening it? Was he able to help, or would he only be able to hurt?

All he knew was that he could only try to touch the lives of the two that stank the most of it that were close to him. A firm resolution filled his soul even as he rolled out of bed.

Two souls to save. But how much time? How long until there was no more hope left? Perhaps his efforts were already vain. Even so, destiny, the biggest prick of them all, had crossed the wrong stallion if it wanted a smooth progression of events. This stallion had a rebellious streak a country mile wide. If destiny wanted to impose some sovereign hand, it would have to strap Testing down until he died; and even then Testing would haunt its ass until it regretted crossing him!

The future was cold and dark, but the present was warm and bright. Warm and bright... no better time to make hay then.