I was once the best organiser in Ponyville. I knew how to make the flowcharts, the project goals and breakdowns, build the working teams and assign the right ponies to get the job done.
My name was Sparkler. Amethyst Sparkler Star. I was a pony with dreams and goals and ambitions.
What am I now?
A pebble rattles at the other end of the alley and my head jerks upright. Nothing is there. Nothing visible. But then they never are, are they? Not until it’s too late.
Regardless, I rise and begin to creep away. I’ve been here four hours at least, drifting in and out of sleep. Far too long to stay in one place. My hooves make no noise on the stone tiles of the road. Once white marble, now a rusty red. All the rain in the world couldn’t wash away the horror these streets have seen, the guilt they carry.
I had a little sister once. Her name was Dinky Doo, and she was everything good about my life. I remember being with her. The way she’d lean her head against my shoulder, like she trusted me. Her yellow mane was so painfully soft.
The pony I am now has no sister. No name. No home and no future. I’m just an animal. A collection of instincts and raw, bleeding emotion — most of it pure fear.
I hear a scream, far off in the distance. It climbs loud and long, piercing the night, until it is abruptly cut off. I narrow my eyes. That’s Darkling, that kill. He hates noise.
I trot down a deserted thoroughfare where market stalls might once have been, once. A skull watches me go with empty eye sockets, the magic limiter welded onto its horn still rusting in place. The sight of it makes me conscious of the weight on my own forehead. I can barely remember how it felt to do magic.
There are no lights, no fires in the empty hearths. Anypony stupid enough to make a light doesn’t live long here. Those who survive long enough to eke out a living among the rats and the dregs of this once beautiful self are smart enough to know the Hunters hate light.
I turn off before I hit the market square. That’s Old Reaper’s territory, and even more than Darkling and Blackmare, I don’t want to tangle with Old Reaper. I pick my way over ruined debris and rust-red stains, my eyes scanning every crevice, every patch of shadow for a dark shape that’s just a little too solid.
The place once called Fillydelphia bears no resemblance to its former self — just as I bear none to the mare that was Sparkler.
The great wall rises in the distance before me. I shouldn’t get too close. That’s where they dump the newbies, and I’ve had my fill of tear-filled eyes and terrified questions. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I never try to keep anypony alive. It never works out.
I skirt the edges of a huge crater, hollowed out of the raw stone, down to the bedrock beneath the city. The stone still has a molten look to it. Everything turned to slag, melting towards the lowest point where a few ashy bones might still lie.
“Morning, Princess Celestia,” I smile thinly, offering a salute to the mare who once taught Sparkler. Who tried to save Fillydelphia and everypony inside it.
She doesn’t respond. She never does.
By the time midmorning rolls around I’m rooting through one of the smaller municipal dumps. It’s been…Faust only knows how many years it’s been since the Hunters showed themselves on ground zero. Most of the stuff in the city is rotted away to nothing and the stores were picked clean eons ago, but sometimes you luck out and find a sealed can somepony threw away. It’s worth a try, anyway. Even after all this time, I struggle to make myself eat bone stew. I’m not what I once was, but I’m inwardly a little proud of the fact that it still disgusts me.
I’m making as little noise as possible, even now when the sun is at its zenith. The Hunters prefer darkness, but they’ll wake up sometimes and wander even in daylight. And prey has been scarce the last few days. The shipment must be late coming in. They might be hungry enough to come looking for even scrawny old meat like mine.
“Hey!”
The word cuts through the silence like a whip, and I’m already running even before I register that it was a voice and not a wordless snarl.
Not a Hunter.
But I don’t slow down. In the Dark City the only thing that can match the danger of a Hunter is the fresh meat that is loud and careless enough to attract a Hunter’s attention.
“Wait!” the voice howls, and I register that it’s a mare.
I’ve not spoken to anypony since that little colt that got dumped in here a few winter’s ago. Sassafrass, his name was. He was young enough to break through even my armour.
What are they doing sending foals in? I’d demanded, and he’d sniffed hard.
I don’t know, Miss, but my Daddy said he couldn’t stop ‘em.
A lie, of course. Anyone picked for Princess Luna’s lottery can have a substitute sign the correct forms. Of course, that necessitates having somepony willing to die for you. And poor Sassafrass had no one.
Your Daddy’s a piece of shit, I’d told him, and he wept.
I tried my best with that one, I really did. But he was too young, and Blackmare got him on his third week in here.
I’m not going through that again. I pump my legs harder.
“Sparkler, where are you?” she shouts, and all of a sudden my legs stop working.
My chin collides with the ground hard enough to send the noise of it reverberating through the entire neighbourhood. Shit. What if one of them heard?
Hoofbeats behind me, loud and careless as a kid playing the xylophone. “Do you know her? Have you seen her?”
I groan and stagger back upright. No breaks, at least. I spent one summer holed up in a basement, nursing a broken pastern. It was almost healed when Darkling broke the wall open and I had to run for almost three hours on my broken bone before he lost interest and wandered off.
The mare skids into my field of vision at last, and all thoughts of flight vanish entirely from my mind.
I just stare.
She is tall. Skinny — willowy, I might say, if I were being kinder. Her fur is a duller shade of purple-grey, but her mane is the colour of sunrise in spring. Her eyes are as yellow as summer.
As though she has kicked me, I stumble. I fall to my knees, right there in the street. She walks towards me, and as she moves, I finally see it. The confirmation I was both desperate for and terrified of.
A bow and arrow. Nocked and ready for shooting.
How — how can this be possible?
She’s too old. She’s far too old. Dinky is a foal. She’s twelve. Thirteen. And this mare, with the magic limiter bolted in place on her horn, just visible between the soft waves of her mane — you can tell they’re new when they still look freshly shampooed — this mare is an adult.
“Do you know anypony named Sparkler?” she repeats, standing over me. “Or Amethyst Star? She’s sort of the same colour as me, but with a pinker mane. Gemstone cutie mark.”
Something twists inside me at that. I can feel her eyes on my flank. On the raw mass of scar tissue that clots the place where my individuality once was. My magic. I roll slightly onto my left side, concealing the other cutie mark from her. If this is her, somehow, then…better that she not know me, right? Better that she believes I’m one of the nameless dead littering this place.
I’m not proud of what I’ve become.
“I don’t,” I rasp, my voice hoarse with disuse. Aside from my occasional greetings to Princess Celestia’s corpse, when was the last time I spoke to anypony? Usually I’m better than this at avoiding the fresh meat.
“Hang on,” says Dinky, eyes moving from my ravaged side to the brown matted lump that was my tail. I freeze. Surely there is no purple still visible there?
But more importantly than that, than anything, how do I get her out of here? The wall is unscalable. When Princess Luna figured out she couldn’t beat the Hunters, she did at least a solid job of containing them and providing them with amusement.
But I cannot let my little sister be a part of it.
I thought Sparkler was dead, but here she is, rising back out of the empty puddle of instinct and fear that I am, reasserting her will. Dinky needs to live.
“Your eyes,” she’s saying, staring into them, but I barely hear her. My head reeling with the escape plans I gave up on years ago.
The sea, maybe. Fillydelphia was a harbour before the event. I’ve seen more ponies than I can count setting sail on rafts made from broken tables and carts, and Blackmare pulls them all down. Every one. She likes to sleep in the sea on hot days.
But if I can distracther, if her attention is on me, maybe Dinky will have a chance.
“Sparkler?” says Dinky, and one of my eyes twitches.
Names are one of the many things I surrendered in order to survive. I had believed she was another.
“Is it…is it you?” Dinky looks like she’s about to cry, and despite my impatience with new prey and their weak whimpering, my heart goes out to her. It feels the pain just as she does, when I’d thought it was immune to that now.
“No,” I say automatically. She won’t leave unless she’s sure I’m dead. “I don’t know who that is.”
She’s still staring. Surely I ought to be unrecognisable. Years of scarring and starving have taken their toll, and I’ve walked past enough shattered mirrors to be certain that I bear no resemblance to the healthy young mare who was tricked by her aunt so long ago.
But Dinky doesn’t believe me. I can see it on her face just as clearly as I could when she was twelve and she told me that no, she definitely hadn’t read my diary, and no, she definitely wasn’t the reason why my secret crush Lily Valley had been receiving anonymous love notes signed with the pseudonym Purple Gem.
“I need to get moving,” she says. “You look like…like someone who’s survived a long time here. Would you mind showing me the way?”
“To where?” I whisper, my mouth still dry. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’ve finally gone mad. I’ve cracked up and Dinky here is the result.
“The market square,” she says. “I have to be there at dawn on Sunday. I’ve been here…five days? So it ought to be Saturday today, I think.”
I can’t find the words to answer. Five days? Five? My baby sister has been here, in the Dark City, within touching distance, for five days, and she’s somehow survived? If things had gone differently — if she’d — if the Hunters — I would never have known she was here at all.
Not unless I found her before she rotted.
She starts moving. “Come on,” she says firmly. “We’ve got to make it to the market square before dawn.”
And though I want to tell her that nopony goes there — that it’s Old Reaper’s den — my legs are moving of their own accord, and I’m drifting along in her wake.
Dinky is twitchy. Nervous. Peering down every passage and into every doorway, jumping at the slightest sound.
“I wish I had my bow,” she says regretfully, and I stare. The Hunters want prey, not fighters. Anyone who raises any sort of improvised weapon against them is the first to die.
She doesn’t mention my name again, and I don’t speak at all. I’m still too shaken. The world I’ve built for myself here in the Dark City’s wreckage is a very fragile one, and she has rocked it to its core. I have rules. No friends, no stopping, no hesitation. Those rules are my foundation. They’ve kept me operational, or close to it.
But Dinky’s presence is breaking them all. I’m stopping, I’m hesitating. I can barely think. My sister. I never thought I’d see her again.
We hole up for the night in an abandoned dress shop. I let Dinky choose where to stop. I’m passive. Silent. Reduced back to my usual self. Animalistic. Frightened.
“I have some beans left over,” she offers, and she produces a can. Shiny and silver. Like something from another world.
“They let you bring those in?” The question is pulled from me almost unwillingly.
“They give you a month’s worth of rations,” she answers, gesturing to the saddlebags she wears. “They’re a lot more…civilised about it now. They let you have a week in this spa hotel just outside the wall, relax yourself as much as you can. Open bar and everything. One last big hurrah.”
I don’t want to be the one to tell her that’s not kindness. That’s fattening up the Hunters’ next meal.
“How have you survived?” she whispers, as the light fades. “After eleven years, I was so sure…”
“I’m not her,” I snap, and I bury my face in the can of beans. Slurping down the first meal I’ve had in two months that wasn’t a weed growing in between cracked paving slabs. But the words are still ringing in my ears. Eleven years.
“It’s me,” she says helplessly, watching me eat like a feral dog. “You can trust me.”
I can’t trust anypony. They all die in the end.
My stomach twists at the thought. No. Not her. I’ll save her, no matter what it costs me.
She opens her mouth again and I clap my hoof over it, trying not to let it hurt when she flinches at my filth. “Shh,” I hiss. “They’ll be awake now.”
We wait in silence for the hours to pass.
An hour before dawn Dinky rises to her hooves. “We need to move.”
“Not till noon,” I breathe, my voice as quiet as it can possibly be.
“Now,” she insists. “I have a plan.”
And then, despite all my instincts and my experience, I get up. I have a plan, she said, eyes shining, grinning wide enough to show the gap in her front teeth. We’re gonna wait till Miss Cheerilee leaves for the night, then we’re gonna break into her drawer. We change the C to an A, and boom! Momma will never know I messed up.
How can I refuse?
With aching slowness, we pick our way through the gloom-laden streets, flitting from one shadow to the next. The moon is still high and bright, and I hate its silver light. We’re getting closer and closer to Old Reaper’s hunting grounds. Blackmare and Darkling are roamers, but Old Reaper is different. He’s the strongest of them all, the one who slew Celestia, but he’s a creature of habit. He likes the city centre best, and that’s exactly where we’re headed.
But Dinky seems to move through another world, another life. One where life is easy, and the rules of the universe are harmony and fairness. No tentacles reach out for her. No shadow-blades formed of otherworldly flesh appear from nowhere to slit her throat. No glowing white eyes look down on her. We walk, suspended in her bubble of safety, through the city. Untouched and alone.
How strange, I think as I trail behind her, that she’s as tall as me now.
She whispers to me, once or twice. Things like, “Do you remember when I got my cutie mark?” or “Do you remember your birthday party, when I made you the banana cake?”
I don’t answer, except to shush her. She’s trying to reach somepony who died a long time ago.
I realise don’t even know what her plan is. I’ve been so shaken by her appearance that I’m just following her. Right into the maw of the beast. Into the lair of Old Reaper himself. I open my mouth to suggest we turn back, that we find something to build her a raft — but then I close it again.
Who’s to say any of this is real at all? I’m probably in some dark corner somewhere, in the grips of a fever. Or suspended over Darkling’s mouth, about to be swallowed whole. In a minute I’ll come back to myself. Until then, why not enjoy the ride? If my dying mind has constructed a fantasy where I somehow escape with Dinky, that she turns up here with a master plan to save us both, then I might as well sit back and enjoy it.
That’s why I’m not surprised at all when we reach the market square just as the first rosy hints of dawn are creeping over the horizon — without even a hint of Old Reaper’s presence. This is a dream, not a nightmare. One final gift from Princess Luna before I die.
Dinky paces in place, turning tight circles in front of me, staring anxiously up at the sky. “Where is she?” she mutters. “Dawn on Sunday. It’s time.”
I just chuckle vacantly. I have no idea what day it is. What year it is.
Dinky seems unreasonably afraid. Doesn’t she know that we won’t be hurt here in the dream? It’s waking up we have to worry about. When a shadow flits overhead we both tilt our heads back to see what it is — Hunters can’t fly — and Dinky sobs in relief. Only I am not surprised. Dinky is living in a story, and those in stories are always blessed.
It's a pegasus, silhouetted against the pale pink light, descending from the sky like an angel. I smile. A pegasus with unclipped wings. The masters of this nightmare world clip wings and weld limiters onto horns. Without fail.
But when she lands, I cannot help the gasp that comes from my lips. This pony wouldn’t appear in any dream of mine. We were civil to each other, we both loved the same pony — but my sister’s mother never quite got over my resemblance to my father.
Yet here she is. Derpy Muffins, in my dream. She has aged so much I almost wonder if it is a dream. Surely Dinky and her mother would look the same in my dream. But Derpy’s yellow hair is streaked with grey, and there are new lines around her eyes and mouth that don’t look like they were created by laughter alone.
“You’re here?” I ask her, drifting closer. Everything feels so unreal. “Why didn’t they clip you?”
Derpy smiles silently, and Dinky gives me a proud grin. “They only do that for ponies coming into the hunt. And Momma’s number wasn’t drawn. Only mine.”
And then relief washes through me. Of course Derpy wouldn’t leave Dinky to this terrible fate. Of course she came to save her.
Dinky will live.
Turning her head, Derpy glances significantly at the mailcart behind her.
Dinky takes the hint and piles in. “Come on, Sparkler.”
For the first time, it hits me. Like a freight train, the weight of it cannons into me. They want me to go with them. I was so wrapped up in the heady relief of Dinky’s safety — the knowledge that she won’t be forced to become what I have become — that it never even occurred to me.
But I realise, just as rapidly, that I can’t accept that offer. I step back, shaking my head. “I…can’t.”
I’m not meant for the world out there. Not any more.
“Get in, Sparkler,” Dinky hisses. “We don’t have long. They’ll come soon.”
She’s right, I realise. They will. My old foes. My dark reflections. Dogging my steps as surely as my shadow.
Oh, Celestia, Dinky cannot be here when they arrive.
“Get out of here,” I say, fear squeezing my heart tight in its grasp. “You have to go now.”
“Why aren’t you getting in?”
“I’ve…I’m part of the Hunt, Dinky. I can’t go.” Everyone knows what it means when your ticket is drawn. You’re sent to the Dark City for whatever remains of your life. It’s a miracle that mine has been as long as this.
Impatiently, Dinky gestures to the limiter on her own horn. “So am I. And I’m not staying.”
No. Of course not. Dinky doesn’t belong down here, in this messy world of bloodshed and gloom. She belongs in my memory, on sunny days and spooky Nightmare Nights, safe and unsullied.
But I’m not myself any more. I can’t go back.
There’s a low rattling sound, and I shudder. Old Reaper. It’s him. “Dinky, please,” I say. “I can draw him away and you can still make it.” I turn to Derpy, addressing her directly. “Get her out of here.”
Derpy’s golden eyes are wide with fright and her wings are flared. But she isn’t moving.
“Get in!” Dinky cries again, too loud.
Old Reaper rattles again, low and chitinous.
“I can’t go with you.” My words are desperate. Pleading with her to understand. “I’ve — I’ve been here too long. I don’t belong out there.”
“Who cares how long you’ve been in here?” Dinky spits. “You’re still alive. You stayed that way for a reason.”
I’ve often thought that. There have been moments when I’ve come very, very close to death. Blackmare once had me pinned in a dead-end street with nowhere to go. She saw me, I know she did. Her tentacles roiled and she even formed the scimitar from her foreleg. But then, out of nowhere, she…lost interest. She put her leg back to normal, and just wandered away. I was left standing there, reeking of my own terror, wondering what just happened.
“So I could find you!” Dinky finishes triumphantly. She holds out an imperious hoof to me. Demanding I get into the cart with her.
Old Reaper’s hooves are audibly scraping on the stone now. He’s almost here.
All I want is to save her. Why won’t she let me do it?
I’m hesitating, on the border between flight and some sort of doomed attack on Old Reaper to distract him, when Derpy fixes me with a single golden eyeball. The other one stares off at the roof over my head. It might have been funny once, when I was an idiot teenager with a crueller sense of humour than I now possess. It isn’t funny any more.
“How do you think Dinky got in?” she demands in that incongruously low voice, sweet and forceful all at once. “It wasn’t because there was nopony willing to take her place.”
I look at her face, at the fierceness and the love for my sister that I can see there. And I realise that she’s right. Dinky is loved. More loved than I ever have been by anyone. And yet she’s here still.
She’s here because she came for me.
Old Reaper’s tentacles are expanding behind them, blossoming like a flower as he prepares to attack. I stumble forward, reaching for my sister’s outstretched hoof. For deliverance. For hope.
Derpy’s wings snap down, cracking the air. Old Reaper lashes out, and Dinky’s hoof latches onto mine. With a rush of wind the cart leaps up, and I think I’m too late. They’re going without me. But Dinky never wavers. She holds on tight, and I’m dragged up by my forehoof, my ribs colliding painfully with the cartwheel. Old Reaper’s oily black limbs almost touch the lowest hanging hairs of my tail.
And then we are airborne, Dinky hauling me into the cart, using hooves and teeth to drag at my mane and my limbs till I’m securely in behind her. Derpy is labouring up ahead, her breath coming hard and the cart dragging her down from behind, but we’re still rising.
I know I have made the most selfish of decisions. I have saddled Dinky with a sister too broken to function in the real world. I have left the Hunt without prey. And without sufficient prey it’s only a matter of time till the Hunters get tired of their empty wasteland city and breach the walls. Equestria lies beyond them, green and defenceless, and already as Derpy climbs I can see the first rolling fields. A sight I never thought I would see again.
I always thought that my sister was the one who was unconditionally loved — by her mother, by me — but as I look into her yellow eyes I realise I was wrong.
There is unconditional love for me, here, in this broken family. There’s enough for me too.
