An Alternate History

Sky Light stood in the doorway of his modest village hut, and stared up at the sky, dumbfounded... Barely a teen at some 12 years old. He wasn't sure what he was seeing was real. It was barely dawn, yet the night sky was alight with what could only be described as... colours.

There had been a sound, a great resounding crack, as if the world itself had been struck by lightning everywhere at once. Many had roused from their homes, groggy, to find the Fae that normally filled the land had dissipated. Their essence seeming to fall apart.

He stood there, having watched Oelander, one of the fae he knew, turn to face him before simply fading into nothing, the soft green that had once been his glow melting away to join the swirling essence in the sky.

Something was wrong. The world had, according to his mother, been ruled by the Fae for centuries... millennia perhaps. For them to simply vanish. What was happening?

His brother appeared with his mother as he watched. Embrace had raised the pair alone, their father having been a 'passing vagabond' according to her, leaving her to raise Sky and Bright alone.

Bright was the same age as Sky, yet stood a head taller. Brilliant white blue fur standing out in the strange pseudo day. "We have to find out what's happening to the Fae... what that noise was, we..." Bright started, before Embrace's soft hand landed on his shoulder. "Relax Lance, the Fae work in mysterious ways, I am sure this is all according to their plans. Go back to sleep, I will see what has happened." She said, calm, relaxed... even in this, the strangest thing Sky had ever seen, their mother kept her cool.

Bright frowned, brow dipped as he looked to the stars for a moment, before sighing and turning to look upon their mother. "Please, let me come with you, I don't want to miss out... and there could be danger." he said, earning a smile from their mother. "I have survived this long, I will be fine." She said.

Bright Lance sighed, and nodded, turning to return to the house while Sky Light stared up still, the young pegasi resisting the urge to take flight and see how high the colours flew. The quiet murmur of their village being the only sound that disturbed the dawn for them.

The simple wooden door to their cottage opened behind him, followed by a heavy thud. he jumped at that and spun, just as his mother gasped. Bright had collapsed, crumpled on the floor just inside the doorway to the house, shaking. "Bright!" Called Embrace, spinning and running towards her fainted son, before an incredible heat overtook the air, wind whipping and stirring as it flowed in, and towards Bright Lance.

She got close, barely a meter away before she stopped, holding an arm up. The colours in the air had changed, the brightest hues, the whites, the brilliant oranges, and yellows flowing down, and converging on Bright, causing hot, burning air to burst from him, flowing away as if from a great fire, too hot to get close to.

Brights still idle body had become a silhouette of white, burning bright like the sun itself as the furniture around him. The door, their modest couch, the thatched roof of the house, all burst into flames, their home cast into the fire. "Go get a pail from the well!" Embrace called pointing towards the village square as she paced, panic taking her as she watched her son's body be taken by the fire, unable to make out for the light.

Sky nodded and turned, panic overtaking him as he turned and sprinted off towards the square to fetch water. Something was happening, bright was in his prime, strong, sturdy... how could he simply faint.

"Moon and Star, Space and Night, Thy guidance choose thee..." a voice whispered in Sky's ear. He dismissed it, the sound of the voices mixed, like a crowd of whispers, echoing away from the sound of wind and his thundering heart in his chest. He barely turned a corner away from his home as he felt something strike, like a wall, a pressure.

His entire body squeezed on all fronts be something immense, something beyond his words to understand. "Dark night and magic unbound, seek thee a vessel." the voice repeated. He was stuck, his muscles would not move, his body refusing to obey him as momentum carried him to the floor, collapsing as his bother had.

He was dead, he'd been struck by an arrow or... a falling rock had hit his head or something. He was so cold, everything so cold. Yet thoughts continued, he could feel the world around him still. But that pressure, that pressure persisted, crushing him.

"Worthy we find thee, be at peace and embrace us" the voices whispered, mixed in his mind with the unmistakable sound of his brother, of Bright Lance, screaming in pain. A feral, anguished, agony-filled scream, beset with wails of panic and fear from his sweet mother.

He had to rise, to get the water from the well, to help. "Rest, you will stand yet." the voices said, stronger, louder. Sky closed his eyes, desperately trying to will his body to move. he had to help, he had to... to. Pain. Pain struck, everywhere, all at once. As if his body were cast into the most brutal of chills, tossed unclothed into the most brutal of colds.

He cried out as his brother did, pain overtaking every sense he had. It was all he felt, all he knew. His world was one of agony as he passed out.

Embrace sat on her knees, tears streaming down her face as she watched the burning embers of her home shift in the heat of the fire passed. Bright had been in that, she couldn't save him.

A few villagers were behind her, trying to figure out how to crack the great shell of black ice, hard as stone that had formed around Sky. In a moment, her world had collapsed. One minute, she stewed breakfast for the two sons she loved above all else, then the Fae had vanished, her sons had passed away, and her home had burned down.

The ruins were cold, ashen, and empty. Grapevine, her sainted neighbor had strewn a blanket around her shoulder, and sat beside her, as if she could possibly console such a tragic loss. The sky had returned now, the soft blue of morning reminding her of her own Sky... the one she had lost.

"I spoke to the town chaplain... and he has no answers, the fae are gone, something changed last night that we don't know. A few others in the village passed out but. Nothing like your sons. I don't know what to say." Grapevine said, the soft purple pony doing her best to take Embraces mind off things. There was nothing she could say that would.

It was some hours later when the embers finally settled, that a call came. The ruins had shifted and a figure had crawled from them. Embrace had let hope blossom in her heart as she crawled from grapes home where she sat in her misery. Somehow she had hoped that Bright had somehow survived, yet as she stepped free and looked to the rubble.

Bright was not who she saw. Ashen, dirty from having crawled from the wreckage of her home, there stood a stallion. twice her height, fur a pure, brilliant white like the sun above. Flowing mane of greens, pinks, yellows... soft eyes, muscled and strong. He was unlike another she'd ever seen. Not discounting the horn that sprouted from his head, a long, pointed implement, ringed with a soft inner light. She'd never seen anything like it, nobody in the village had.

Onlookers who had been passing by stood around, huddled up in fear or confusion as the hulking figure looked around, confused. Eventually, his piercing purple eyes fixed on Embrace, whose breath caught in her throat. He spoke, a single croaked word, deep and powerful voice carrying it into her ears. "Mother...?"

Some hours later, Embrace sat on one of the benches in the town square, silent, mind refusing to work. Her sons were... alive? In a sense? Both were changed, and both stood by the town well in barely sufficient loincloths, their old rags of clothes having not even close to fit them now.

The villagers were wary, afraid of them. They quietly spoke to one and other about their experience. Where once stood Bright Lance and Sky Light, stood two other stallions like none other the world had seen.

They knew things, things they did not before the event this morning. Bright had said he had woke to the word... "Solaris." and the small spear that had once adorned him as a mark, had been replaced by a brilliant orange sun. So he had taken it as his name, much like Sky had.

He hadn't earned his mark yet, but after this, he had grown a moon, and the... what would they be? Spirits? Demons? She did not know. But they had called him Lunaris, and so he had taken that to his name also.

Solaris sighed, he had reached his hand into the well to take a drink, and the water had boiled around him, likewise, his brother had frozen a chunk around his hand, and had needed to chip it away on the stones of the well itself. The pair had become pariahs.

Privy to different experiences but, changed irreparably so. The two knew what they had confirmed to each other, and had not told another soul yet. The Fae were gone.

Their king had tried to seal their magic to this world, and in the process, overwhelmed the ley lines that connected his people, rending their souls that bound them to this world, like an entire race of waterskins, filled to burst, all at once. Each time one had burst, the others had bore the burden of the power they left behind, making yet more overwhelmed, and a chain reaction had, inevitably... wiped out the race in a single evening. Their king being the last to fall, causing the great crack that had woke ponykind from its slumber.

"We need to reveal what happened to them, the people need to know what has happened." Lunaris said, idly trying to pick bits of ice from his hand as he spoke in a hushed tone, his eyes had changed, slits like a feline, and he had grown fangs.

A strange change that Solaris had not undergone in like. "No, our new form is already too alien to them all, you can see how they're looking at us, it's making me uneasy. If we tell them that too there will be panic. We can't just announce the entire ruling class has been obliterated, they might blame us, we'd be stoned and hung." he said, and Lunaris found himself nodding.

It was too dangerous right now, perhaps in the future. "Besides we should..." he started, turning to look at their mother. Embrace hadn't spoken since the two had awakened, changed. She simply sat there, staring at the floor, hands clasped in her lap, wordless.

Lunaris stepped over and rested a hand on his mothers' shoulder, squatting to look her in the eyes. She did not meet his, she stared through him, at the floor still. "it's me, it's Sky, I'm okay. Bright and I are okay, we just... grew up really really fast. We can rebuild the house now, especially with how strong we are now. It's going to be alright." he consoled, to no reaction.

She just sat, shallow breaths and unblinking, dry eyes. Lunaris sighed, pain blossoming in his heart as he stood again, releasing his grip on his mothers' shoulder to find a handprint of cool frost had formed, and she had not even reacted to it. That worried him, he hoped she would recover but... there seemed to be no guarantee.

Solaris had wandered off, perhaps to try speaking to the others in the village, to calm folk and remind them that they were still, just ponies. If something new in this world. Wielders of what the Fae had commanded.

These two held Magic in their horns. The land was changing, the world was. The empire of the Fae, gone in a night, and the reigns of history would now be in the grip, of the ponies.