Yet the bloodbells chime
I do not notice them
I shall not notice them
Yet the bloodbells chime
Yet the bloodbells chime
Yet the bloodbells chime
Yet the bloodbells chime

A basin dissolved in motion, where the stillness ruptured, and the darkened power lines emerged from the abyss in a veiny undergrowth of pale might, and the Ape sat, silent in the chair like a shadow cast against the scene. Broadest shoulders faced away, a profile half-lit, obscured at the half point, and hands moved slow, intentional pull back on his legs, kneading the unseen into the fabric form. The Sound.

An imperceptible low rhythm, the pulse, known, acquainted, baseline filled with tension, rising and rising louder and louder, expanding like a conductor outward, pressing down on all things with a harshness, a heavy heart, a heavy heart, trmbeled at the frozen, watchful and a pause, a hovering. And. Crack.

A single clap of his meeting haired hands, a thunderous valley split the air and everything disappeared.

Total all-encompassing Darkness.

I lie back in the grass and dream of how it once was
The rubbish-strewn streets of Canterlot
Ripe-rising smell of gutters and rain
The fillies abandoned
Recalls the colt in the pool
Pools of saliva coruscates below shifting

The green of the grass and the blue of the sky
Are immense and terrifying
Everything seems so close
So very very close

Silence snapped in the temple of the strum which broke the stream replaced by the growl of the earth as dust rained down in bursts from the arches of the temple. Twilight stumbled backwards, clutching at her chest, heaving, quickly the tremors grew and spread like a fever, the pillars groaned and toppled slowly and smashing into glorious debris.

A flutter before her and saw the swarm of dragonflies, butterflies and mayflies, wings catching and the blister of light which bounced off to the collapsing temple, swarming in chaotic bursts of frequencies, spinning all around her face, hooves, a motion of counterpoint to the giving way of the structure.

But, she didn’t want to leave. She couldn’t, want to. This place was Celestia.But the shaking persisted, and the cracking persisted, and the groaning of the weight above her forced her to move and run, hooves galloping across the colden floors, dashing through the falling debris. Out. Out. Out.

She spilled out into the open air, and stopped against the exterior wall, the unraveling of the material lands, turning and shaking to look out to the cliffs and the valley she ventured through, terrified, in awe as the distance between them was rapidly narrowing. .

The peaks stretching towards itself, bending like molten iron drawn to a magnet, the rocks groaned, screamed in a painful screeching of grinding and the rising, tearing the land in reverse. Epicenter of cracks where spidered out from nowhere, all the fissures deep and wide and their maws lodging, the splitting open to reveal the curtains below, black.

An oozing out into concentrated spots, a leeching, a spreading darkness, force at play and pulling at the fabric threads, and the cliffs neered closer with a violent speed, at points the ground rose up, pushed up from the force, titling and shuddering as dirt and sand leveled into a single plane.

Then came convergence.

The meeting of cliffs and the shattering, throwing Twilight to her knees as the temple buckled behind her, massive chunks fell and splintered and split, disintegrating under the force, she crawled forever, shaking as her hooves tried to abalone against the smooth surface of the stones, trying to find safety amongst the cacophony.

The blackness surging, the perpetual black second, where the glints collide and the veins snaking across this new plane of existence, churning and restless and alive came the ascent into obsidian levels. Squint your eyes to see clearly, blur reality to make it real.

The cliffs were now fused into one jagged mass, and they surged upward, impossibly fast, dragging the land below with it. Twilight clung to the edge of the temple as wind tore at her face, a twinkle of magic sprung from her horn, her mane whipping wildly. The fog returned suddenly, clouds pressing through her, into her lungs, cold and suffocating as the land rose higher and higher, disappearing into the white void above.

The pressure mounted, deafening, overwhelming, until Twilight felt the last remnants of the temple collapse behind her, fragmentation falling behind, in silence she remained alone, clinging to an impossibly gravtional pull. Every passing moment. Stray from common lines.

Rose and rose and rose and rising, mist which consumed everything in a dilation, the sound of wind screening past her ears, weight at all angles of clarity. Ascending with the boil.

And it stuttered into a final climb, the great heaving of stone settling in a sigh of exhaustion made, the purple disoriented stillness in still, pressed flat against the surface of the platform that reminded, cracks widen and the pieces of basin which fell away into a void, their slow descent into nothingness, opposites, the end of something, the beginning of something.

Everything slowed, blurred and uneven until nothing cloaked the atmospheric conditions.

Striking coil for a moment as all oxygen fled, and everything held its breath, no air came, a shuddering, a narrow pinprick gaze and then, crash.

A sound like glass shattering, loud enough to fracture thought itself, echoed across the allness. Twilight clutched her ears, cerebral as she fell sideways and the noise ricocheted, multiplied, folding inwards, sharpness splintered into a muffled hum of a dense silent lecture. All limit lines.

Ears throbbing in suppression effect, an ache in her skull which uncurled from the base of her hooves, the shaking had ceased, and the land was steady. Complex. She breathed the cold, bit her lip, stood unsteady but upright, a wobble. And beyond above stretched a sky of black, what was once so oppressive now glittered in white bleeding, stars flicking in and out of existence, sharp and distant. Hvining sidereal stars fall in thuds.

She turned her gaze down again and she traced the plane that stretched windless ahead, but it wasn't endless, a horizon of block at the far-off edge where a barrier erected, curled inward, bending back down. Something new. Something final.

A departure as she stepped forward, the temple but a shadow, another memory where the air shifted of a presence, a squint out into the distance, where the black sky where the stars seemed to blink, a movement it was recognized, a shape which was descending slowly and steadily from the above.

Its form came out from the instruct backdrop, a cube.

A perfect cube of obsidian black, so smooth, where the precise edges gleamed faintly against the void, rotating slowly around as it descended downwards, lowering itself, immeasurable and intimate, filled the vision of memory at a distance.

The Kaaba.

Tauta grapho humin, Hina.

Hovered along, a hypnotic rotation like a wheel, bent at the presence of time, every moment It got closer, bridging the distance with an unearthly calmness.

Finally, it stopped.

It floated just above the plane, its surface almost brushing the ashen ground, no sound accompanying its direct arrival. Twilight stared, frozen, the air mellowed but felt heavy, a tension inside.

The Kaaba hung there, unmoving, an anchor.

A silence heavy and dense. She approached.

Compelled by the presence of radiation, a welcoming hostile beyondness. Something. I am the last of all the field that fell.

Ingen, Ingenting, ingen, Ingenting

En ta arche

Yesu, yesu, yesu

Author's Note