Equii's 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 truly real. It was barely dawn, yet the night sky was alight with what could only be described as... colours. Endless, boundless colours, as if a tray of paints had been thrown across a watery canvas.

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, patrolling, corralling, enforcing their law… 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. Why did they vanish? Who was causing this… What was happening?

His brother emerged from within his 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 light of a not quite 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 seemed so composed.

Bright Lance 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. It was no surprise to hear it for Sky Light. His brother had been training in the spear and blade with some of the guards. He’d always wanted to help. "I have survived this long, I will be fine." She said softly, comforting his concerns in the way only a mother could.

He sighed, nodded, and turned to return to the house while Sky Light stared up still, He knew the both of them were fighting to resist 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.

Bright Light turned away from his brother and mother, there was a pause in the air, as if all of life held its breath, frozen for an instant before there was a resounding, meaty thud. He jumped at the sound and spun, just as his mother gasped. There was a body on the floor where… where... Bright had collapsed, crumpled on the floor as if the life had simply left him, he twitched, shaking lightly, soundless, unable to breathe. "Bright!" Called their mother, turning to reach for her fainted son, before an incredible heat filled the air, wind whipping and stirring cloth and hair as it flowed into their home, and towards Bright Lance.

She got close, barely a meter away before she stopped to hold an arm up to protect herself. The heat flowing in a moment ago had changed, now cascading out from Brights barely moving body.The colours in the air had shifted too, the brightest hues, the whites, the brilliant oranges, and yellows flowing down from the sky, flowing through the door and converging on Bright. It looked as if colour collided with him and burned, searing the air about them.

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, casting their home into an inferno. "Water! Go get water!” Embrace called, pointing towards the village square as she shifted from side to side, pushed back by the heat, fighting her urge to dive in to save her smoldering son. Panic took her as she watched his body be taken by the fire, unable to make out his features for the light surrounding him.

Sky ran out, 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 die or faint like that?

"Moon and Star, Space and Night, Thy guidance choose thee..." a cacophony whispered in Sky's ear. He ignored it, the sound of the voices were mixed, like a crowd of whispers, echoing away in 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 his chest, like a wall, a pressure that took him from all angles.

His entire body squeezed on all sides by something immense, something he couldn’t see, but could only feel. "Dark night and magic unbound, seek thee a vessel." the voices repeated. He was stuck, his muscles would not move, his body refusing to obey him as momentum carried him to the floor, collapsing like his Bright Lance had a moment ago.

He was dead, he'd been struck by an arrow or... a falling rock had hit his head or something. That had to be it. Did death take this long? Were the empty voices the last thing he would hear? He was so cold, everything was so cold. Yet even as he swore his life ended. He continued to think, 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 snow and ice.

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 eternal, endless agony until he eventually 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 that had now passed. Bright had been in that, she couldn't save him.

A few villagers were around her, trying to figure out how to crack the great shell of black ice, hard as stone that had formed around Sky, her other son. 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. It was a numbness that took her, not a vast wave of hate or pain but simply, nothing.

The ruins of her life were cold, ashen, and empty. Grapevine, her sainted neighbor had strewn a blanket around her shoulders, 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 gone, everything she’d known.

It was some hours later when the embers finally settled to dust and smoke, that a call came. She’d been moved to her neighbors living room, away from the wreck she couldn’t help but stare at but now… The ruins had shifted and a figure had crawled from them. Embrace had let hope blossom in her heart as she crawled from Grapevines home where she had 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, body muscular and strong. He was unlike any 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 another 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.

Sky hadn't earned his mark yet. Unlike Bright, villagers told that Sky had simply frozen over in an orb of ice colder than anything imaginable, only to emerge as it shattered like a butterfly from a cocoon.Despite not having a mark before , he had grown a moon sigil, and the... what would they be? Spirits? Demons? Neither of them knew. But they had called him Lunaris, and so he had taken that to his name also.

Solaris, as some internal force had compelled him to call himself, sighed. He had reached his hand into the well to take a drink, and the water 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, somehow, what they had confirmed to each other, and had not told another soul yet. The Fae were gone .Not just the ones in the village… all of them.

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. They’d quietly asked the other on this theory that had simply emerged, as if an inserted memory into their minds. They had the same notion, the same knowledge of the event. An event they had not seen, or known to be possible, yet now knew with certainty.

"We need to tell everyone what happened to them, 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, small ones, but there none the less.

A strange change that Solaris had not undergone in like. "We don’t even know what -we- are. You can see how they're looking at us, like we’re monsters. If we tell them that too they’ll all panic and string us up. We can't just announce that an entire race has been obliterated, they might blame us." he said, and Lunaris found himself agreeing, despite how much he didn’t like it.

It was the advent of a dangerous time, perhaps in the future they could be more honest. "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 ground. "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 ar. It's all 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... that frosty handprint didn’t bode well.

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 them. Even if they were something new in this world. Wielders of what the Fae had commanded.

These two held Magic in their horns. The land was changing, the whole 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.