Resonance

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Written by: Oneimare

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Arc 6 – Emergence Chapter 1 – Deus ex draconis

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The Wall, ruined as it might be, accurately marked the borders of Canterlot even after the cataclysm seized the evergaol city. Those capable of challenging the unyielding rebar and concrete would find themselves facing the spectral wardens standing sentinel over the sky itself, letting none out and nothing inside. In the case someone possessed enough ability to breach the cordon of stone, ice and otherworldly malevolence, then a final challenge awaited a to-be-eloper—an impenetrable barrier of magic like no other.

Nonetheless, the entity behind the most strange of Canterlot’s prison bars, that unseen capricious sentry, let the Prophet taste the air untainted by deadly cold. Discord graciously allowed him to meet a strange assortment of creatures gathered in the middle of nowhere to discuss the fate of everything. The Prophet got no chance to savour his transient freedom nor the peculiar company and had to sulk back into his jail with nothing else than a grim prospect to ruminate on. The world marched towards the inevitable and would reach its homestretch worryingly soon… unless he joined forces with the other powerful individuals to prolong the race against time. Chained by Doom’s prophecy to stalk the fell caprine gods’ shadows and haunted by the forgotten lord’s unquenchable hunger, the Prophet couldn’t help but wonder if he had the right to stand amongst the legends, be they heroes of old or sworn enemies of justice and order. What, he, an ultimate scavenger, could offer the league of the most powerful, if his home remained destined to succumb to famine and frost after all his efforts? As a machine at his heart, the Prophet had trust in numbers; even that set aside, they had no tendency to lie—no matter how he interpreted the long lists or the maps, Canterlot had no future other than death. That made horrible sense, as according to the accursed mare’s prediction, those who shared with him the misfortune of struggling in the doomed city would be eventually set free and follow the Prophet no more; and freedom could come in many, sometimes gruesome, ways.

The stallion stood, glaring at the sky that churned with his demise; he let the frigid gusts laden with razor-sharp shards of ice futilely tear at his stolen flesh. His eyes burned, neither from the stinging wind, nor with magic ripped from his victims. Deep inside he knew—pouring more blood or fire into them would change nothing, his fate was sealed; no salvation waited for him at the end of the dark path he had been walking for a while now. The Prophet had challenged his mutilated by the spiteful pegasus destiny and, like all the others before him, failed; couldn’t live up to the name he had chosen for himself. Perhaps, his actions only served to bring to reality the prophecy written in Doom’s unblessed blood, for such was its self-fulfilling nature. At least, he had tried; that thought eased the stallion’s pain, just enough to keep him sane. One more realisation even managed to summon a smirk to the Prophet’s lips—he carried Tirek’s legacy so far away from the cage, in which the old lord had found his final rest, and it would still be lost in a prison.

With death whetting its scythe to claim the last Canterlot survivors’ lives, the frantic need to figure out the way to save them—to extend their misery—demanded the Prophet’s attention no longer; all he could do was alleviate their suffering now and even that allowed leniency. So, the stallion stood, staring at the sky.

A roar split the hollow howls of the despaired winter spirits. It belonged both to the gale of air eagerly fueling flames and to the inferno itself. So not unlike the Sun, the golden light flooded the sky and when the silence—stunned muteness—returned, the radiance didn’t go away. The firmament was obscured no longer, free of the doom it spelt for Canterlot, and welcoming spring to finally walk into the forgotten city.

A fraction broke away from the effulgence and dissented from the clouds—a dragon of pure fire; he alighted not far from the Prophet, banishing ice with his mere presence. Before the stallion had a chance to comprehend the scene, the Ghosts, shadowing his every step, rushed at the newly arrived—swarms of arcanium wasps intent on stinging the transgressor to his death. Rendered glimmering fireflies by the dragon’s radiance, one by one, they returned to the ground—as bubbling puddles.

“Arcanium was the first thing I’ve learnt to melt,” the fire incarnate dryly commented.

The Prophet replied with an unamused observation of his own, “Is burning down all you can do?”

“I’d rather use it to create, but that has to wait until—”

A loud and out-of-tune fanfare interrupted the dragon and Discord materialised by his side in an explosion of confetti; ignoring a heated look from the entity that had just slain a herd of Windigos, the draconequus squinted at the Prophet, rubbing his chin.

“You know,” Discord finally spoke. “Now, when you don’t foolishly try to kill me, there seems to be something familiar about you…”

The stallion answered that statement by giving the Lord of Chaos a look able to contend with the dragon’s withering stare.

“No, it isn’t the dead bodies you assimilated,” Discord obliviously continued. “Poor Smooze, he was so young…”

“What do you want?” the Prophet snapped.

The implications of the Windigos finally letting Canterlot out of their fatal grip demanded his attention, yet the stallion had no illusions about the threat his present company posed.

The dragon rumbled, “I am here only to ensure you will regret doing something stupid.”

“Yes, Spike is my bodyguard with a hot body,” boasted the draconequus, wrapping his arm around the dragon’s shoulders; Spike’s fire-flesh flared up and the lion paw sizzled. Waving the smoking limb in the air to put off small fires, Discord snapped at Spike, “You better get used to me—we share the same office now.” The dragon gave him an unamused stare, but the entropy master had already switched his attention. “The Prophet, wasn’t it? Or should I call you Fixit instead?”

“My name is my business.”

“My friend here can bite your impolite head off.”

Flame forming Spike’s jaw solidified into a metal maw bristling with incandescent teeth; his level tone carried a hint of genuine annoyance. “I can bite your head off, Discord.”

“You aren’t going to like it—my head tastes like madness and grapes,” the draconequus dismissed the warning, focusing on the Prophet once more instead. “Anyhow, Mister Unlucky, have you, by chance, had a run-in with a delightful mare called Fate?”

“Do you know Doom?” Even before Discord replied to him, a nagging suspicion appeared in the back of the Prophet’s mind, furrowing his brow.

“Never met her, nope. Her company is unhealthy,” the chaos potentate denied, confirming the Prophet’s guess. The stallion, however, held back the accusation as Discord added with a worryingly sly grin, “I can make it so as if you have never been blessed by her presence. Though, without a prophecy governing your fate, your life might become a bit chaotic.”

On one hoof, Canterlot and its remaining dwellers no longer seemed to face inevitable peril—unless Discord or Spike would announce the climate change also implied new management. On the other, it couldn’t be so easy to get out of Doom’s snare, could it? The Prophet’s head spun—considering Discord’s, even if not openly admitted, involvement with Fate’s parting gift, accepting the draconequus’ grace might be as wise as jumping from the frypan into the fire.

“Is it a threat?” he bristled; out of habit, rather than conscious choice.

Discord’s lips widely stretched in an ambiguous smile as he reclined in the air with his claws and paw behind his head. “I’d call it a… charity.”

“You are the Lord of Chaos, not Generosity,” the Prophet deadpanned.

“So, you prefer marshmallow unicorns, eh?” Discord leant forward, waggling his eyebrows, then changed the topic without missing a beat. “I have some plans for Canterlot and would rather not have you or your horned and simply divine buddies standing in my way.”

As his fear proved true, the Prophet barked, “Canterlot is my home. Get out of it!” He took a step forward, ignoring that he would very likely face defeat—death—even if he challenged either of his opponents one at a time.

The dragon of fire measured the fearless stallion head to hoof, commenting, bemused by his boldness, “I’ve been here since before they started to fashion ponies out of materials other than meat.”

A piece of tinfoil appeared in Discord’s claws; he folded it into a unicorn and gingerly put the figurine on the ground, marvelling at his craft with limbs clasped together and a goofy smile plastered across his goat muzzle. His expression fell when the Prophet stomped on it.

“And so what?” the equinoid snarled. “I’m not alone—I have got followers and allies.”

The benefits of having the Przedwieczni on his side hadn’t always outweighed the downsides of working with the capricious and testy deities; yet it would be their temper not allowing anyone to put claim on the caprines’ haven.

The Prophet almost jumped as the eagle claws tore reality by his shoulder and Discord’s copy slowly shoved his head and his limb into the hole before asking, “Are you sure about that?”

The ‘original’ draconequus raised his paw in the air, prepared for an infamous gesture, stating flatly, “I can snap my fingers and you are no longer bound by Doom’s hilarious prank, free to sculpt your future. I don’t—the prophecy goes on and, trust me, nobody is going to like it.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody likes you.” Although Discord’s mismatched eyes sparkled with laughter, he spoke with sympathy, “Don’t cry—you won’t be on the losing side. My idea of renovating Canterlot doesn’t imply making it a Chaos Capital of the world. It’s not even going to be me rebuilding it—that wouldn’t be as much fun.”

Vitriol gathered on the tip of the stallion’s tongue, but he swallowed it; free from Doom’s curse, he might have another chance at helping Canterlot. After all, did it really matter if he held Discord’s power in his grasp or not, if it served the cause? Or any power at all? Wasn’t making Canterlot a better place what he wanted, even before the city had undergone a devastating change? Perhaps, Lord Tirek had more influence on him than the Prophet realised; perhaps, the Machine Goddess wasn’t so wrong. And, perhaps, Doom’s curse wasn’t something she did to him, but something he was tricked into doing to himself.

His lungs let out a breath he didn’t realise they held. A crisp snap of fingers followed that sound but it was merely marked something changed rather than it propagated entropy. The Prophet met the draconequus’s crazy eyes and tried not to sound either nervous or frustrated, “What now?”

“Making amends.” Before the equinoid could ask what it meant, Discord shoved a glass jar into his muzzle. The Prophet’s flesh extended to grasp it, but he nearly dropped the jar the next moment—inside it snow swirled in a fashion that couldn’t be mistaken with anything in the world.

“Is it a… Windigo?” He asked, looking at the Lord of Chaos in horror.

Discord shrugged. “Well, I can always give someone very stupid ideas and get a bunch of new ones.” He glanced at Spike, who had been glaring at him since the jar appeared. “But something tells me, nobody is going to thank me for that.” The Lord of Chaos looked back at the Prophet and instructed him, “It’ll help you make friends, trust me. Just don’t break it, open it or, uh”—he shuddered—“put it on a radiator.”

“Rainbow Dash, the war is over. Go home.”

Five hundred years too late and spoken under the influence of another menace to peace, Luna’s words kept echoing in Rainbow’s head, taunting the pegasus with her dream of old—a nightmare that plagued her conscience these days, little different from the alicorn’s plight of insanity.

And the war was over, with only Rainbow Dash stubbornly refusing to accept the sour taste of defeat—the reality of every sacrifice amounting to nothing in the end; a growing stack of coffins with no answer, no justice. No harm would have been done if she dealt with it in a fashion not unlike Soarin’s self-exile, carrying out her no longer necessary service where her antics would bother nobody; though, even the last Wonderbolt ultimately found it in himself to see past his self-delusion. But no, like a rabid dog, Rainbow had to claw at the doors to be let in, and, once inside, she spread her incurable and fatal curse of war. Only two things differed her from a sick frenzied animal—immunity to death from her affliction and… self-awareness. Every time the pegasus led soldiers into the blaze of glory, knowing only she would emerge from the crucible, Rainbow wondered—did she truly wish for the swords to be buried instead of bodies or did she just keep moving the goalposts?

Hours had passed since the meeting promised to soon start another cycle—another list of names, ponies she would condemn to the insatiable fire of war. The moment her hooves touched the snow, they became frozen to it, and her eyes—glued to the camp, watching it peacefully slumber under the polar lights, which danced in the sky to a mournful piping of the ever-raging blizzard.

It had a name, that little cosy town. Rainbow pretended her helmet malfunctioned each time she heard it; the pegasus would feign forgetting it—even though she recalled it from the times before a group of ponies had decided to stop referring to their home as a mere military base.

They called it Ponyville. Expanding districts of Canterlot consumed the lovely hamlet, erased every trace of its existence, for only a few to remember that name; yet Ponyville reemerged from the river of oblivion.

A laugh bubbled in the back of Rainbow’s throat—the despairing giggling of a madmare at the end of her wits. She would follow a dirt path into the streets of Ponyville, with a strident summon drag the ponies away from their warm hearths and into the cold morning to tell them: the frontlines wait for fresh sacrifice, crave for their body and mind; the very same battlefield that had remoulded her into what she swore to end. The worst part—Rainbow’s heartless call wouldn’t go unanswered, for those ponies had soaked in the loyalty she still carried deep in her heart. The virtue now violently rejected the notion of reigniting the long died-out embers with a kindling of innocent blood.

Or, she could…

“...Go home.”

The pegasus used to hypocritically mock the Machine Goddess even before the equinoid with Twilight Sparkle’s echo had transcended the legacy of the legendary unicorn. Old habits rendered Rainbow blind and deaf to fear as crippling as tearing ponies away from their families only to watch them fall on the crimson-stained ice one after another. She dreaded finding out how much of Rainbow Dash remained in this suit and if those scraps had a place they belonged to. Would this haunted armour be able to live once it stopped spilling blood and breaking bones, once no warriors remained for this valkyrie to carry into their last journey?

Her breath quickened like that of a cornered animal—a lone figure groggily stepped into the first rays of the Sun; Glintwine’s burgundy eyes blinked sleep away and presently focused on Rainbow. The mare then unhurriedly headed to shatter the pegasus’ solitude, unknowingly leading herself into the frothing jaws of a mad dog that has no other choice than to propagate its deadly sickness.

There was a first time for everything, even for an act of cowardice; those ponies didn’t need Rainbow anyway—nobody should be ever graced by the war incarnate. Yet as the deafening crepitating of fresh snow marked Glintwine’s approach, the metal angel remained frozen to her place by the curse she could not wish to break—the undying loyalty. Rainbow closed her eyes, enjoying the serenity of the rhythmic hoofsteps before the inescapable fate swept her into the roaring whirlwind of steel, smoke and death—once again.

The sound ceased abruptly and not as close as the pegasus assumed it to come; Rainbow’s eyelids fluttered open, letting her witness Glintwine’s terrified expression as the purple mare hastily backpedalled away from her ‘captain’. Not even half-heartedly wondering if she should be looking in the mirror instead, Rainbow glanced behind her. She studied the newcomer intently, trying to figure out what her reaction should be—a question springing up in her mind disturbingly frequently. Finally, the pegasus concluded, “Not the dragon I’ve expected.”

Something about the amber scales and turquoise eyes of the serpentine visitor stirred in Rainbow a shadow of recognition—a camaraderie she wished had never happened.

“I’ve failed as a pony,” the stranger rumbled in a voice, too, not entirely unfamiliar. “Maybe as a dragon, I’ll do better.”

Surprise widened Rainbow’s rosy eyes—marginally; fatigue, if not profound disappointment, replaced the glint of wonder as quickly as the pegasus tended to fly. “Should have killed you when things weren’t so complicated,” she muttered.

In the vast sea of morality, Sunset Shimmer had found the greyest waters of all and sailed them masterfully. Rainbow couldn’t ever forgive anyone for ashening a whole megalopolis or cremating her comrades alive, nor could she disrespect someone who played a pivotal role in breaking the Crystal Empire’s siege; without that chimaera’s involvement, Canterlot wouldn’t have lasted even remotely as long as it had.

“Is that how you greet an old friend?” The dragoness pouted; Rainbow rolled her eyes—the expression didn’t quite fit the bestial muzzle.

“You could have become a Kirin,” the pegasus wondered aloud, almost regretfully. Spike, even in his ‘state’, had already added too much of a dragon into her life—to Equestria, she would dare to say. “Or do you have nothing equine left in you?”

“My psyche is too stable for having two personalities,” Sunset retorted, smirking; seeing Rainbow’s expression remaining unimpressed, she had to explain, abstaining from self-irony this time, “It’s what Spike has offered me; being picky seemed… unwise.”

Rainbow shook her head, heaving out a tired sigh. “Why am I not surprised it’s his doing? Makes me wonder what stupidity he commits next.”

No stranger to the pegasus’ perpetually sour mood, Sunset still furrowed her brow. Her gaze then shifted to the side, to fall on a place concealed by the preternatural snowstorm, but soon to be unveiled; a can of worms patiently waiting to be opened.

“I came at the wrong time, didn’t I?” she observed in dismay.

“The worst.”

“But don’t you want to finish it?”

The question struck the pegasus no different from Sunset raking her with claws. Against her will, her eyes transfixed the Crystal Empire with a searching stare. The ancient realm hid a gestating war behind the wall of shifting ice; she peered into it, futilely hoping to see something else beyond, but all she could envision was the nightmare of old rising from the grave to flood those white plains with its rotten self, to stain them scarlet and ebony. Or, maybe, it didn’t die—the war that knew no end.

“No.” Rainbow let out a breath she didn’t notice she was holding. “I don’t want to do it anymore—I never wanted this.”

Sunset let the pegasus shudder with resurfaced memories and haunting visions in respectful silence… which soon started to fill up with the faint echoes of blood-curdling screams belonging to ponies burning alive; the call of the battlefield waking up from its slumber chilled even her dragon blood.

“Nobody but monsters wish bloodshed,” Sunset uttered to deafen the cries carried by the cold winds; she then reached with her claws behind her. “But because they are still out there, someone has to pick up the sword and fight.”

Rainbow stared at a literal blade held by the dragon, held out in an offer. Not just any—Valour, forged by Princess Celestia and wielded by Shining Armour; the sword with which the general swore to take off the warlocks’s head, to sever the thread of fate choking thousands. Staring, moon-eyed, at the legendary relic—no matter that it failed to claim Sombra’s abominable life—all she could squeeze from herself was:

“Why me?”

The dragon spared her no answer, not even a look; the slitted turquoise eyes aimed past the gleaming blade and past the mare refusing to accept it. As Rainbow turned her head to follow the dragoness’ gaze, her heart skipped a beat—at some point, Glintwine had returned with seemingly the entirety of Ponyville to watch her exchange with Sunset.

A unicorn weapon would find little use in Rainbow’s hooves, but she had no other choice than to take it and put an end to the war that should have never happened. But what would she tell her soldiers, would she dare to drag them into her nightmare with herself? No, not her soldiers—her people, the ponies depending on her. She reminded herself—nobody forced them; nobody forced her to enlist once, either. And if she were to be given a chance to make a choice again…

Rainbow awkwardly wrapped her hoof around the sword’s hilt and rocketed into the sky, but before she could gain any considerable speed, the heavens erupted with fire.

Author's Note

English isn't my native language; though I try my best and use various tools to aid myself, I'm aware that a result is far from perfect. That said, if you notice anything that you think should be fixed—please let me know.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this story so far.
Stay awesome.