Oh, why have I been sleeping?
The first thing he heard were the haunting moans and creaks of an old wooden building. They resonated throughout the space, cutting through the surrounding silence and creating an eerie yet comforting soundscape.
Ah, so he wasn't dead.
He was lying down on a mattress haphazardly laid on top of a metal bedframe. It creaked under him as he moved, as if protesting his weight. Mayday might have been the first pony to sleep on it in a long, long time.
Letting out a soft groan, he rubbed his eyes, trying to make sense of where exactly he was. The last he remembered, he'd been mauled by a chimera, but he felt relatively okay...
As he lifted his head, the symphony of the ocean revealed itself. Waves crashing against rugged cliffs, blending into an orchestra of splashing and hissing, relentless and unending.
The ocean? Does that mean I'm at the Fillydelphian shores?
Slowly, carefully, Mayday got up from his resting spot, his hooves meeting the cool wooden floor. He seemed to be in a circular room, illuminated by a single lantern. Its small but persistent flame flickered in the draft, causing shadows to dance on the cold walls.
The smell hit him then, the kind of musty old smell one might encounter in a rarely used basement or attic, or in the storage room of some long forgotten home. This one was a mixture of salt, dampness and aged wood now burnt. It mingled with an aroma of seaweed and brine.
There was a spiral staircase in the middle of the room, practically calling him to ascend it. He paused, thinking it over.
He was definitely in a lighthouse, an old one. Someone must have brought him here. The fact that he was still uninjured probably meant that someone didn't want to cause him harm. His saddlebags had been on him when he'd woken up too, so presumably whoever had brought him here was no thief either.
Calculating the risks in his head, he slowly started on the ascent up the stairs. With each step the sounds of his hooves echoed against the curved walls, creating a strange kind of resonance he'd never experienced before. If someone was here with him, they'd hear him coming a mile away.
The air became cooler the higher up he got, tinged with a hint of aging wood. A chilly breeze came in through the various holes and gaps in the tower's structure, causing him to shiver. The walls felt alive with history, stories of great adventurers, of sailors and fishermares and merchant ships, now crumbling slowly after the great burning.
"Hello...?" Mayday called out softly, surprising himself with the hoarseness of his voice. He hadn't spoken to another creature in ages. He'd long since given up on talking to himself, now only the voices in his head to keep him company.
The lighthouse offered him no response as he climbed up to the highest floor. The place was eeriely silent, only the faint howling wind singing in the eternal night, causing the floorboards to creak in protest. The lantern was broken, might have been even before the burning. This wasn't one of those magic operated lighthouses they had in the bigger cities. Maybe it hadn't been used much even before the apocalypse?
"GOOOOD MORNING!"
Mayday quite literally jumped, his fight or flight response kicking in, heart already working overtime to pump blood into his legs so he could make a run for it and live another day. Wide eyes glanced at whatever it was that was threatening his life this time.
A small mare, apparently.
"Whoops, didn't mean to startle ya!" The mare laughed sheepishly, shaking herself dry and blowing a loose strand of her wet mane from her face.
The mare was a pegasus, a light blue coat framed by a short, pink mane brushed mostly onto one side. Her wings were unusually small, considering she didn't exactly look like a filly despite her stature. He caught a glimpse of her cutie mark, a light yellow sun hidden by fluffy clouds.
"You okay, dude?"
It was then that Mayday realized he'd been startled into a stunned silence, and hadn't said anything for the past few minutes. He shook his head vigorously, as if to clear away the brain fog.
"So... Not okay?"
Mayday cleared his throat. "No! No, I'm... I'm not terrible? You startled me. I called out, but.."
The mare let out a little giggle. "Ooooh. I was having a morning swim! It's super convenient when there's a literal hole in the wall just looking out to the ocean."
Mayday blinked, still slow to connect any dots in his head. He had a sinking feeling that he must have been looking kind of stupid. Then again, social norms didn't really matter much when there wasn't much of a society to enforce them.
"Wait, did you save me from the chimera?"
"Nope!"
After another moment of stunned silence from Mayday, she continued.
"What, you think I could have taken down a chimera? Thanks for the flattery, but no way. It didn't actually want to eat you, you know."
He squinted at her.
"How do you know that?"
A smile. The mare grabbed a worn-down rag from on top of an old mattress to dry off her mane.
"I found you when you were already unconscious. That thing was tearing into your canteen. Must have smelled the water on you."
"Oh." He blurted out, ever the eloquent stallion. Of course. When a giant monster is chasing you, you din't exactly stop to think if it's food or water it's looking for. He got lucky, really embarrassingly lucky.
The mare bumped him with her hip, causing him to flinch. The touch was so strangely warm and non-violent, nothing like he was used to out there in the wasteland.
"Don't beat yourself up over it. You're here, aren't you? What's your name, stranger?"
He hesitated for a moment, before taking a seat on the floor. His hooves were still protesting from the earlier chase. "I'm Mayday." He reached out a hoof for the pegasus to shake. It was met with a small, still slightly damp wing.
"You can call me Zero!"
He gave the small wing a shake, before furrowing his brows. "You said something about a morning swim? That makes no sense. It's all the same now, and..."
Zero settled on the small mattress she probably used as a bed, giving a shrug and an almost sheepish smile. "I've been keeping count. Ever since the big burning thingy! Helps me keep sane, to keep up a routine. And now it's morning, so I went for a swim!"
"...Huh." Mayday mumbled. He kind of hated that something like that, that made no sense to him, seemingly still had a reason he had no counterargument to. It left him defensive, like he was supposed to argue anyway instead of just giving in.
His eyes found Zero's wings, noting once again how small they were compared to her body. They'd still seemed to carry her from the ocean to the lighthouse, considering how suddenly she'd appeared.
Like she'd noticed his stare, Zero gave a resigned sigh and a lighthearted roll of her eyes. "The wings, yeah. Some sort of disability, a change in my genes since birth, blah blah blah. Long story short, I can fly, but it takes a lot of effort. Tires me out, kinda like running."
She sounded like she was used to explaining it to almost everyone she met. Mayday suddenly felt guilty for staring.
"It's okay, It happens."
Mayday blinked. "Wh- How did-"
A giggle. "I'm psychic!"
He huffed softly. He had no clue how to interact with someone like this, all bright and full of jokes and little giggles. It made no sense, this was no time or place for laughs.
"But you know... I do feel like ever since the big burny thing happened..." Zero hesitated, as if wondering whether it sounded stupid or not. "Kinda feels like it's even harder to fly. I can't explain it well for a non-pegasus, but it's... It's like the sky is different? Like, heavier somehow."
Mayday lifted his gaze. "Heavier?" He couldn't help but draw a parallel to how his own senses felt... muddled, ever since the disaster. The way he couldn't hear the earth anymore, couldn't sense the connections between it and the trees and the plants, and the rot consuming all the dead things deep in the ground.
"Yeah. I haven't met any unicorns since this all happened, but I'm kinda curious. I wonder if their magic still works alright, since the sun isn't rising and all."
"Actually, I know." Mayday chimed in, before clearing his throat. "Or I know a little. I ran into a unicorn back in Rainbow Falls. He said his magic felt different. Like it was still there, but he couldn't quite get it to work."
"Huh." Zero hummed, fluttering her wings. "Well, maybe that means the princesses are still alive out there? And they just can't use their magic?"
He gave her a look, not sure what to say. "I wouldn't think like that if I were you. You'll just end up depressed when it's not true. My mom used to say that a pessimist is never disappointed."
Zero snorted. "A pessimist is also a real fucking downer to be around! How are you gonna cope with like, anything like that?"
"Cope? What's there to cope with? Just need to keep going. Keep surviving."
He frowned when Zero only laughed. He'd never felt quite this... easily ridiculed before. It was like she found him childish, even though she was clearly the childish one.
"Alright then, tough guy. Take a seat, mmkay? I'll make you tea."
Author's Note
I'm glad I managed to write a second chapter! I'm not pretending to write the next Fallout Equestria or anything, I'm kinda just doing this to prove I can finish something. If you end up liking this, cool! I'll attach some art I did of Zero later so you can get a feel for her design. Hoping to do Mayday later too!
Nobody remembers quite what happened that night.
One moment there was silence. The next, a deeply distressing hum of empty white noise. Like a ringing in your ear, only it kept getting louder and louder and louder.
Then came the heat.
Burning, scorching heat, the fury of a thousand dragons bathing the world in infernal light. The fires of Tartarus painting the sky in brushstrokes of red and orange.
(Note to self: You're no poet. Cool it with the metaphors in the coming entries.)
From the ashes and the scorched, deformed bodies of ponies less fortunate, it's safe to say that at least half of us didn't see the aftermath. But those of us that did would soon be faced with a different problem.
The sun would never rise again.
Our divine light, our immortal hope, had been extinguished. There was no other explanation. Unless this was the sudden and strangely quiet return of Nightmare Moon, our celestial rulers, our sun and moon, must have met their ends.
Not only that, but my earth pony magic seems to have... changed. I no longer feel the soft hum of the earth whispering its stories to me. The earth feels cold, not alive under my hooves. The few plants I've come across have felt foreign to me, despite being species I very much recognized. Is this simply the fault of the fires purging the earth, or is the magic of the other races acting up as well?
It's been twenty moons or so since then. I've yet to meet a single survivor that didn't perish right before my eyes, starving, sickly or torn to pieces by magical creatures left uncontrolled. I haven't been able to ask. Surely someone else must have survived too.
However, I'm nothing if not a survivalist. I'm determined for ponykind to live on, even in this ash-covered purgatory that Equestria has become. I'll bring us through the end, what few of us are still standing and not driven to an endless cycle of cruelty and distrust. We'll form anew, and live on through the dust and ashes.
Finding a unicorn powerful enough to raise the sun should take priority.
Within the ruins of Fillydelphia wandered a young stallion, exhausted and looking for shelter.
He wasn't much of a fan of the larger cities. The bodies were everywhere, in every imaginable state of decay. Skeletons of fillies lucky enough to have perished when the first flames erupted, never to suffer the grips of starvation or thirst, or the cruelty of another survivor desperate for supplies. Bodies of pegasi and unicorns alike still fresh and rotting, vultures picking at what was left of their starved bodies. Earth ponies perished under ruins of collapsed buildings.
If anyone was left alive in the city, they were wise enough not to make themselves known.
Mayday's hooves ached from his arduous travels.
Every step he got closer to his destination of the ocean he worried it might not be the salvation he hoped it to be. He'd seen lakes and ponds reduced to puddles, fish and plant alike dying or already dead. Who was to say the seas hadn't suffered the same fate? Had they not dried up in the great flames, the endless night had surely killed the plants, and eventually the animals in their wake.
He also knew, however, that hope was necessary for survival. Morale was much greater a threat than most ponies expected it to be. The mind was a fragile, feeble thing. Such could easily be observed from the bodies of families, of lovers clutching each other in death. Many had wanted to go in their own terms.
So here he was, making his way through what once was one of the larger cities in Equestria. If he was fortunate, he might just reach the shore tomorrow. That was assuming nothing went wrong before then, of course.
His ear twitched to the direction of a crack, like a stone being dropped. A small one, just a pebble.
Likely a piece of one of the ruined buildings, and yet he stilled nonetheless. He'd made it this far. He could risk nothing.
Another crack.
Yet another, louder this time. Shit.
Something was coming closer.
His body moved before his mind had any chance to think, rushing ahead with what strength he still had in him. Shards of broken glass and jagged stone cut into his hooves as he dashed through the streets, eyes frantically scanning the ruins of buildings for any opening, anywhere to hide.
But if it's a timberwolf or anything else with a sharp sense of smell, you're fucked. Not that you have any better options.
The cracks seemed to come ever closer. Along with them, a new sound; breathing. Heavy, labored breathing.
He made the mistake of looking back, just for a second.
A chimera.
He could smell its breath from where he was. An assault on the senses, a foul concoction of rotting fish and decaying flesh blended together, left to ferment in the creature's mouth. One inhale made Mayday want to stop to throw up, only there was nothing in his stomach left to purge.
His mind raced, searching for an escape route, a passage, anything to grant him a moment's respite from the relentless chase of the creature. But it was as if the ruins of the city were conspiring against him, not allowing for a single crack or cavern to be seen amongst the rubble. No salvation.
His hooves protested with each step as it became increasingly clear that he would not outrun the beast. The sickening odor came ever closer. He could hear the thing's raspy breath, thought he could feel the snake head reach out its tongue to smell just how divine a bite of fresh flesh would taste.
Summoning every ounce of strength left in his body, Mayday forced his body to push harder, his lungs screaming for air. His vision blurred, his surroundings becoming distorted shapes and twists of color. The shadow of the chimera loomed over him, ever closer, stretching over him as if caught up in a chase of its own.
Slam!
The wind was knocked out of him all at once, with a single swipe of the chimera's tiger paw. His mouth gaped open as he tried to catch a breath, only to be met with that awful stench again, invading his nostrils and burning his neurons.
He passed out.
Author's Note
Well, here's the first chapter! This fic has been on my mind ever since I was like 12 (I'm in my twenties now lol). Let's see if I can stick with it at least for a while!
