The Writhing

The air was cold. Perhaps it wasn’t the air itself that was cold. It was the breeze; or maybe the weight of the air that was cold. The city moved below, a living breathing monstrosity as always, but it felt slower somehow, more pacified than it should. Twilight watched as the merchants sold their goods, ponies bustled about the streets, and the day went on.

No matter how hard she looked, everything appeared normal and yet she couldn’t shake the sensation that something was wrong. Twilight wasn’t one to discount her gut feelings, at least not in a long time. She’d only been the sole princess of Equestria for twenty years or so, and her feelings had saved her time and time again. This time would be no different.

And still… She shook her head, glancing down at the perfectly normal city. All the boxes were checked. Good old Donut Joe was setting up for his brunch crowd, she could see the city guard on their routine patrols, and even the park was properly full of joyful foals. She blinked.

The foals had no future.

Twilight sighed, looking back at her room. It was full of memories of her journeys. Pictures of her friends, family, mentors, and even a few of her enemies. All reminders of where she’d been. The pictures didn’t settle her unease, oddly they made her feel even more on edge.

She closed her eyes and listened. There was a thrum from the city; a heartbeat. It was fine, it was healthy and beating strong. There were birds, carriages, hawkers, machinery, the shouting of foals and the other simple sounds of the city. And yet, there was a strange silence. A low and quiet tearing sound that she couldn’t place, but didn’t belong. Something so strangely silent and serene as to simply not be.

The foals had no future.

Twilight gave up on her ears, instead focusing on her hooves to feel the earth through the castle’s heavy stone construction. There was the normal thundering feeling of a thousand hooves, a slamming door, trees growing in the garden, crystals slowly growing in the caverns beneath Canterlot, and the normal, if unsettling, constant moaning of decay. She shuddered, finally noticing something that was really and truly wrong.

The ground itself, the very foundation of creation, was no longer breathing. The usual ebb and flow of magic from within the world was deathly still just under the crystal mines. Slowly, she opened her eyes as a horrified realization hit her. Their world had died, and the foals had no future.

An ice like calm descended over her as she unconsciously switched to a well practiced breathing exercise. Her analytical mind ignored her sudden burst of emotions as vision after vision assaulted her. Without the magic of the world, without its life, ponies had about five years or so before they started to falter. Crops would die first, the situation appearing as a blight. Soon enough nothing at all would grow, not even ponies.

Those with the least amount of magic would die first. The children, the infirm, the elderly. Then the regular ponies would go, the ones that toiled in the background to make the world work. The magical beasts and monsters would follow, and last would be the very spirits and guardians of Equestria. Beings like her friends, herself and Discord.

There was nothing to be done. No magic great enough, no power supreme that could intervene. The source of Magic itself had died. Harmony would keep them alive for a while, but even Harmony fed off the world’s magic. Perhaps they could seek shelter on Luna’s moon for a few years, but ultimately there would be no escape.

The visions stopped as suddenly as they began, leaving Twilight exhausted as she stumbled to her bed, collapsed into it, and then desperately called for Spike.

“Spike!”

She stared, open eyed at the wall of her luxurious room, wondering what the ethical choice would be. Would she tell them, all her little ponies? Would she wait it out quietly and pretend that nothing was wrong? Could she sacrifice her life or her magic to somehow buy them even a moment of time? Worries and ideas ran through her, wracking her with one simple and overpowering sensation.

Dread. It crept up her spine, and climbed down her four hooves, chilling her to the bone. Her stomach sank, the pit eating into her. Fear comes from the gut, and even as an immortal princess she felt it rise like a disgusting warmth. Twilight swallowed her quickly rising bile. Suddenly, she was far from immortal. If anything, she and all her ponies were the last dying gasp of life. They unknowingly clung to the remnants of the corpse of creation, a wellspring that had already run out. She’d never considered the possibility of the world itself simply dying. That potentiality had been literally unthinkable. More disturbingly, there had been no warning signs, at least none that she’d noticed.

With a loud clunk, the door opened.

And yet, here it was. The end of the world, come and gone.

Spike’s voice was full of concern. “Twilight? What’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer at first. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, she simply couldn’t. Stoically analyzing the reality of a truly existential end was still taking all of her energy.

Spike stepped forward, his claws dragging heavily across the stone with loud scrapes. He’d grown bigger over the years, but was still her devoted assistant. As a magical beast, and a guardian of Equestria, perhaps he’d last almost as long as her. Perhaps even longer.

“Spike… Can you cancel all my appointments for the week?”

Spike paused, confusion teasing into his answer. “Of course… but… why?”

Twilight shuddered, her wings fluttering in the now unearthly still air. What she wanted to do was wallow in despair, crying in her bed for everything that had been and would be lost. All the books that would disappear. All the stories that no one would hear. The most pitiful were all the foals with no future. Instead she turned to look at Spike, her face stone cold in determination, or perhaps denial. Maybe, just maybe somepony else knew of a solution.

“I need you to contact all of my friends and students, Celestia, Luna, Discord, Lord Ember, Lord Thorax, and anybeing else of note. Even our enemies.”

Spike looked alarmed. “Our… enemies?”

Twilight nodded. “At least the mostly rational ones. Or the powerful ones, even if they aren’t particularly sane. Not the three in the garden, I don’t think they’d help. If none else can, we’ll try them later. If you know of some way to conjure up Sombra, now is the time.”

Spike squinted suspiciously at Twilight. “What’s going on?”

Twilight frowned, unsure of how to continue. “It’s complicated… Ask them to come so I can explain it. For our friends, express how vitally important this is. Explain that I’ve canceled everything to focus on this problem. For our enemies, offer them whatever they like if they can solve my problem.”

Spike snorted. “Uhh… Half of them want to enslave Equestria, and the other half want to eat it.”

Twilight shuddered, but her answer was quick. She’d already thought this through. “Then beg them to attend and tell them that I will personally capitulate to their demands to the best of my abilities if they have the solution to my problem. Offer them diplomatic protection while they are here on this business, and include my seal.”

Spike balked. “You’ll capitulate to being eaten? And give them diplomatic protection? Snipping Scissors is a wanted murderer! Thanoscopy has at least two of the pillars’ souls trapped in jars and would love to add yours. King Dremora has tried to take over Equestria three times. Three times!” He held up three fingers to emphasize. “These guys are our enemies because they are monsters, Twilight. Just in case you’ve forgotten.”

She nodded. “I remember. Still, please send the messages. I need everyp… Everybeing to work together on this.”

Spike folded his arms, and glared at her. “Okay. Fine. I’ll do it. But first, you are going to tell me what is going on.”

Twilight sighed. “This is a state secret until the conference, Spike. Do not include this in your letters, or any other correspondence.” She glared at him. “With anybeing.”

He squinted. “Sure.”

“This morning, while watching the town, I noticed that… there was no future.”

“What?”

She slowly looked at him, boring into his eyes with her own. “Exactly that. The future ends. I was confused, so I looked deeper. That’s when I discovered that it’s over. The world has already ended, and we’re merely surviving on the momentum of our existing magical inertia.” Twilight licked her dry lips. “But that won’t last much longer.”

Spike blinked, confused.

“Ponies have about five years until the crops start to die. After that, the weakest ponies will die. By about eight years, it will just be… the girls, Discord, Celestia, Luna, and myself. Possibly Cadence and Flurry. Maybe you. And after that, we just… exist until we die. It might be another year, might be hundreds. How long the few of us can hold out doesn’t matter.” Twilight rested her head, glancing about the room nervously. “Because everything else will be gone.”

The air was too cold, and yet perfect. Too still. She now knew why, but the unease hadn’t left her. It likely wouldn’t until she accepted her fate. She didn’t have to. She had enough magic left that she and Starlight could potentially go back in time far enough to when the world was alive and maybe fix this. Perhaps she could go back, collect magic from when the world was alive and bring it forward as a stopgap measure.

Twilight’s stomach churned. What if there was nothing they could do? How many times would she watch the world die before she gave up? What if she was contaminated somehow, and carried some impossible magical disease back with her that caused the world to die in a self starting paradoxical loop?

Spike scratched his head. “Are you sure about this? Maybe you should… you know… get yourself checked in case you’re crazy. Maybe check with Celestia and Luna to see if they agree with you? This could be somepony messing with you. Like I said, our enemies aren’t very nice.”

Twilight slowly looked up, a spark of hope forming in her chest, and a small smile alighting her lips. Spike was right. She could be going mad. In fact, it was far more likely that one lone alicorn was having a mental breakdown than the world simply dying. She didn’t even logically understand the concept of the world dying. It was more of a primal knowledge on her part, some inner part of her being was confident that was what was happening. Why should she trust something that not only she didn’t understand, but was seemingly nonsensical?

The world couldn’t die. It wasn’t a creature, not like them. It didn’t eat or have children. It couldn’t be possible.

Deciding to follow Spike’s plan, Twilight hoped and begged any power that was listening for her to simply be mad.

After a week of magical physicals and wasted time, she was confident that she wasn’t.

The air was quieter and colder still. Not to any instruments, nor by any measurement, but it was. She could feel it. Twilight nibbled at her forearm, an unfortunate tick she’d recently developed. The conference had gone well enough. It had been a month since the morning that she realized, three weeks since she’d decided to not waste any more time on the hope of being mad, and one week from the conference.

She’d been surprised at how many creatures attended. Even most of her enemies had been surprisingly civil. Some of the weaker ones had thought it a strange joke, or perhaps a scheme. The stronger ones had already known by then, likely peering into the abyss like herself once they received her letters. Even the usually egotistical and manic King Dremora had somberly listened to her speech. He’d been one of the ones to already know.

Discord had surprised her most of all. He claimed to know exactly what had happened. According to Discord, the world lived at the behest of fickle gods of creation, and they’d simply grown bored of this particular creation and moved on to something else. Without their attention and energy, everything would die. He looked particularly guilty, so Twilight had asked him what he felt guilty over.

He’d claimed to partially be at fault. He said that he felt their gaze begin to waver when he’d done the whole “Grogar thing” and ultimately gotten the terrible trio turned to stone. Twilight paused as well, contemplating the possibility that she’d been the reason. She’d imprisoned a filly, choosing the fate of Equestria over one tiny psycopath. She doubted the gods would care about the fate of Chrysalis or Tirek, but little Cozy, as evil as she was, had still been a foal.

The foals have no future.

Perhaps if she freed Cozy, the gods would return? Discord had laughed, and suggested she try it. If only for his amusement.

It was three days ago now that Cozy had been returned to the statue gardens. The little filly led a particularly nasty revolt against Twilight, turning everyone against her once again. The only reason she’d failed was Discord. Right at the end he’d popped in and shouted “No Dice! You get Iced!” and dropped Cozy into a gigantic tub of ice cream. That had distracted the ponies long enough for Fluttershy to prove that Twilight was in fact the real Twilight, and Cozy hadn’t switched bodies with her, magical powers or not. Then Rarity and Spike had managed to return Twilight’s magic from Cozy’s little hoof anklet, after apologizing profusely for their unwitting part in the fiasco.

Twilight hadn’t even been fazed by the betrayals. She expected them when she released the insanely dangerous filly. She’d have let Cozy win if it meant everypony else could live. Even a horrible life serving Queen Cozy Glow was better than the still and silent death that was coming.

The others knew that the end was looming, but they couldn’t feel it like she could. They still trusted her to fix it. They still had hope.

Twilight shivered, the magic welling up in her horn disgusting her. She was nothing but a parasite. An insect crawling around a corpse, just looking to survive another day. In a strange moment of empathy, she wondered if this was what Chrysalis felt like. Of course, there were no other corpses for her and her ponies to jump to. Neither Harmony nor Discord could help, the end had in some way always been part of the plan.

It had never been meant to last forever. She’d just assumed it would last much longer than this. Every moment was now empty of meaning. The sun rose, the moon fell, and most ponies went about their daily life completely unaware of the futility of their actions. Twilight was going back to court, and running Equestria again, but things had imperceptibly slowed down.

Her enemies, now aware of the end, had slowed down as well. She wouldn’t have the strength, or the will to fight back if they hadn’t. Some of her friends had taken the timeline like a challenge. Rainbow and Applejack had officially gotten married. Rarity had expanded her boutique to other countries. Pinky and Cheese had started their own party emporium. Fluttershy spent more and more time in Discord’s dimension, supposedly consoling him. Starlight and Sunburst were still frantically looking for a solution, but Twilight knew it would be no use. Magic existed within the rules of the world.

The world was dead.

Magic as they understood it could not bring itself back, and even if they managed it would be some horrendous undead thing. Twilight had started to explain, but decided to leave them with their hope instead. Celestia and Luna could feel it as well. This was the inevitable end, and nothing could stop it.

Twilight stared blankly, barely blinking, until it was time for court again. She didn’t sleep anymore. She simply experienced the growing nonexistent chill with her wings, measured the immeasurable stillness with her hooves, and watched the foals play with a still heart.

The foals had no future.