Still

by AnOrdinaryWriter

Rating: mature
Tags: Death, Roseluck, Applejack, Lily, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Sparkler, Bon-Bon, Tragedy, Horror, Profanity
Length: 37125

They can't see it. Luckily, it can't see them either—at least, so long as they don't move...

An ordinary day in the bustling Ponyville market is interrupted by a mysterious death that brings all activity to a frightened halt. Closely following this foreboding event is the sudden appearance of a time-travelling Twilight Sparkle, who delivers a warning in the form of two sharp words...

Published 2025-01-10 21:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2025-01-10 21:10:01 UTC

Don't...

Celestia’s morning sun radiated a pleasant and comforting warmth, bathing the small, quaint town of Ponyville in a summery, yellow shade. And yet, Roseluck wished she was still in bed.

Brushing a foreleg across her tired eyes, she continued on toward the main road of Ponyville. She gave the harness strapped around her withers a harder tug, and the wooden wagon it was attached to followed at the resulting increased pace. After a brief glance back to make sure the array of carefully cultivated florals inside maintained the quality her work was known for, she focused once more on the path ahead.

Every so often, she would pass by another pony, either going for an early morning walk or, similarly to her, traveling to get to their early shifts on time. However, for the most part, the roads were vacant. That was one nice thing about the early mornings: the warm, quiet ambience; the stillness of everything. She was very much a social pony and enjoyed the company and noise of others, but even she liked to balance that out with silence and solitude every now and then.

After letting out a wide, drawn-out yawn, she turned onto the next road ahead. Up in the distance, among the other shops and roadside stands in the Ponyville Market, her own flower stand sat, empty and waiting to be decorated with the assortment of flowers she pulled behind her. As she approached her shop, she looked around to see if anyone else had been preparing to open. She was pleased to see that, across the street from her stand, Applejack was setting up a vending wagon, fastening it with open barrels of fresh, bright apples she had no doubt tasted as good as they looked.

Slowing to a stop, Roseluck reached around her back and unclipped the harness, before turning to the orange farm pony across the road. “Morning!”

Applejack paused amid pushing another bucket of apples to load onto the wagon and looked in Roseluck’s direction. She then gave her an acknowledging nod. “Mornin’, Roseluck. Good weekend?”

“Eh,” Roseluck replied, grabbing a vase of bulbs in her mouth and placing it on her hoof. “Wish it was just one day longer.”

“Don’t we all,” the orange pony chuckled, lifting the bucket and topping off the left-most barrel.

Roseluck placed the bulbs on the shelf of her stand above a pre-placed price tag. As she went to get another batch of flowers, she heard a sudden bark in Applejack’s direction. Sending a curious stare her way, she saw the farm pony behind her wagon, rotating her hoof in a beckoning motion.

“C’mon, Winona, let’s get ya up at the front." Applejack rounded her wagon once more, and a small, brown dog with a patch of white fur on its chest followed suit with enthusiastic, leaping steps.

The corners of the flower pony’s lips instantly lifted into a smile. “You brought your dog!”

“Heh, yep,” Applejack said, stroking the dog around its ears. “Figured she’d act as an extra bit of customer incentive.”

“Customer incentive,” Roseluck repeated with a cocked eyebrow. “Usually vendors will offer, y’know, discounts or free samples. I haven’t heard of ‘bringing your dog’ before.”

“Well, ah’m doin’ all of the above today since ah’ve decided to start a fundraiser.”

“Oh? What for?”

Applejack took on a somber look. “Well, maybe you’ve heard, but there was that meteorite that landed in Dodge Junction, destroyed lots of ponies’ homes and what not. So, ah figured ah’d do mah part and donate half of the profits from today’s sales to helping the families who lost something from the collision.”

“Wow, Applejack,” Roseluck said in admiration, “that’s really nice of you.”

The orange earth pony returned an appreciative nod at the compliment and turned to her hyperactive pet. “And ah’m hoping this goofball here—” she gave Winona more head rubs, which she eagerly accepted with the swift wagging of her tail, “—is gonna help me get the sales ah need to make a proper difference.”

Roseluck giggled at the charming sight. “So, what's Winona's role in this unique marketing strategy of yours?”

“Pretty much just to stand here and look cute. That way, when ponies start comin', they'll go, 'Aww, what an adorable dog ya got there,' and ah'll go, 'Thanks—hey, since you're here an' all, care to purchase some of the most delicious apples in all of Equestria?' It's practically foolproof.”

“I see,” Roseluck said with a quirked eyebrow. “And if they say no?”

“Ah ain't worried about that,” Applejack replied, looking over with a sly smile.

Roseluck shook her head with a chuckle. Then, off to the left, she saw Applejack’s little sister, Apple Bloom, slowly trudging her way toward Applejack with a heaping basket of apples on her back. With an exhausted sigh, she dipped the front of her body forward, allowing the basket to slide along her back and onto the grass. “Phew… got the last batch of apples, sis.”

“There ya are,” Applejack said with a slightly raised tone. “What took ya so long?”

“It was heavy!” Apple Bloom retorted with a frown, but upon looking in Roseluck’s direction, her frown faded in favor of a warm smile. “Good mornin’, Roseluck!”

“Good morning, Apple Bloom,” she returned, placing the last of her flowers on the counter of her stand. “No school today?”

“Nope. It’s a ped day!”

Roseluck put on a mock expression of shock. “And your big sister is making you work on your day off?!”

“Ah know, right?”

“Apple Bloom,” Applejack scolded.

The filly rolled her eyes with a giggle. “Ah’m just teasin’, sis. Take a joke every now and then.”

With a sigh, Applejack lifted the basket her little sister had brought, momentarily stumbling in the process. “Oof… you weren’t kiddin’.”

“Told ya’,” Apple Bloom said, before sitting on the grass to give Winona some much deserved affection.

Now that Roseluck was done setting up, she began to wonder where her two coworkers were. She looked in the direction of the Ponyville clock tower, which currently read two to eight. Usually they were here by now, helping her set up early.

Thankfully, after a short scan down either direction of the road, she had an answer for at least one of her coworkers. A little ways away, she spotted her amber maned friend, Lily, approaching the stand, and furrowed her brow at the frazzled condition her friend’s mane was in, as well as the deep bags under her half-shut eyes.

Upon reaching the stand, Lily gave her an acknowledging nod. “Thanks for setting up.”

“Uh-huh,” Roseluck said. “Just saying, you better hope Rarity doesn’t see you like this. We might just end up watching the world end.”

“Ugh,” Lily grumbled, brushing a hoof through her mane like that would magically fix it. “Celestia, I feel like garbage.”

Roseluck shook her head with a disappointment that was half playful, half genuine. “I told you you probably shouldn’t have gone to that party the night before an early shift.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

After another observation of the road, and a glance at the clock tower, the yellow earth pony turned to her friend once more. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Daisy is, would you?”

Lily suddenly went wide-eyed, before smacking a hoof to her brow. “Right—shoot, I was supposed to tell you, she took today off. One of her relatives was killed by the meteorite that was in the news yesterday, so she went to be with her family.”

Roseluck let out a gasp. “Oh no… that’s so sad.”

“Yeah, so it’s just gonna be us two today—probably the next couple days as well.”

Roseluck looked downward in thought. She always hated to hear of somepony she knew experiencing a loss, and it especially stung knowing one of her closest friends had lost a family member to such an unfortunate circumstance, such to the extent that she wished there was something she could do to help...

She then remembered her conversation with Applejack moments earlier. An idea popped into her mind. “Hey Lily? Applejack told me she’s raising funds to help families impacted by the meteorite. You wanna do something similar today? I think it would make Daisy feel good knowing we used our business to help with something her family was affected by.”

A moment passed. Then, Lily looked up at Roseluck with a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be nice.”

“Then it’s settled!” Roseluck exclaimed, excitedly. “But first things first, if we want customers period, you seriously have to do something about that mane.”

Lily sighed and rolled her eyes. “Happen to have a brush I can use?” A brush suddenly hit her in the chest and fell into her instinctively raised hooves. She looked up at Roseluck with a cocked eyebrow. “You just… had that on you?”

“It’s my emergency brush. You never know when you might need one.”

After holding her confused stare for a few more seconds, Lily decided not to question her further, and went about tidying herself up.

In a short amount of time, ponies began to fill the roads, and the once uninterrupted singing of the light morning breeze was drowned out by animated conversation and the bustling of hooves against concrete: the other side of the ambient balance Roseluck loved.

As the morning passed by, her and a freshened-up Lily started to see their typical influx of customers, requesting something simple for home decor, or something meaningful to leave on a gravestone. The gratification they got from their sales was amplified by the donations they received from passersby upon announcing their last-minute fundraiser. They had not quite prepared theirs to the extent Applejack had, but it helped that Ponyville’s citizens were some of the kindest and most sympathetic ponies she knew. She loved Ponyville for that.

The afternoon came, and along with it, the frequency of customers slowed. Line-ups in front of food stands began to stretch further, and outdoor restaurant tables sat ponies of all ages, opting to enjoy a meal before continuing with their day.

“No postal service today?” Roseluck asked her newest potential customer.

“I decided to take the day off,” Derpy said, before lightly ruffling the mane of the filly beside her. “My little Dinky hasn’t been feeling good lately, so I’m taking her to the hospital.”

“Aw, that sucks.” Roseluck looked down at the smaller, similarly colored pony. “Hope you feel better soon.”

Dinky beamed. “Thanks, ma’am!”

“By the way, we’re raising funds to help families impacted by the meteorite that hit Dodge Junction,” Lily chimed in. “Even as little as one or two bits would be greatly appreciated.”

“Ohh, I heard about that. That was terrible what happened, those poor ponies… I don’t have much, but…” Derpy reached around to her saddlebag and searched through it, before dipping her muzzle inside and pulling out two bits between her teeth. “’Ere you ‘o!” She then set them on the table in front of the two vendors.

“That’s more than enough, thank you so much, Derpy,” Roseluck said appreciatively, scooping the two bits into a pouch below the counter.

Derpy then wore a puzzled frown. “It’s weird though… The princesses control the sun and the moon, so... wouldn’t they see a meteorite like that coming and stop it? I mean, unless it just appeared out of thin air, but… meteorites can’t do that.”

“That’s… true, actually,” Roseluck admitted after a moment of rolling the thought around in her head; how could pricesses who kept an eye on space objects never notice a space object getting dangerously close to the planet?

Derpy shrugged. “Eh, the princess can be pretty ditzy at times. I guess I just have a strange feeling about it…” Beside her, a tiny sparkle of light along with a popping sound caught her attention. She looked down to see her daughter swaying lightly with a discomforted moan, her horn producing sparks sporadically. The filly’s head then drooped, her legs buckling under her, but Derpy was quick to react, swinging a wing around her torso and catching her limp form.

“Oh my gosh, is she okay?!” Lily said, alarmed.

“She has a condition with her magic, and it sometimes makes her faint,” Derpy explained with a melancholy tone as her daughter stirred and began to regain her footing. “It started happening again this morning, which is why I was taking her to the hospital, so I should get her there now.”

“Yeah, of course. Talk to you soon, Derpy.”

“Thanks again for the donation!” Roseluck followed up. With a final goodbye wave, Derpy made her way down the market road with Dinky by her side, still supporting her with a wing.

"That was scary..." Lily commented quietly.

"Yeah." As Roseluck watched the two leave, she spotted a familiar purple unicorn passing by beside them. “Hey, Amethyst. Care to leave a bit or two for our fundraiser?”

“No thanks,” the unicorn deadpanned, continuing onward without batting an eye.

“Yeeahh, I figured,” Roseluck muttered under her breath, then turned her attention to her colleague. “So, getting back to our earlier conversation—”

“C’mon, Rosey, leave it alone already!” Lily wined with a roll of her eyes.

“You’re not even gonna tell me how cute he was? You can’t get me all interested and then just drop it like that.”

“He was…” A sigh. “He was average, alright?”

“Ooh, he must have been drop-dead gorgeous! So, what did you two do?”

“…What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you two… y’know…”

“Ugh, that’s none of your business, Rosey!”

“You didn’t deny it!”

“I’m not confirming or denying anything, you nosy... freak.”

“Okay, how about this: you owe it to me for setting up all by myself this morning.”

Lily lifted a hoof up behind her ear. “Sorry, what? Gosh, I can’t seem to hear you over all the noise,” she said, pretending to not be able to hear Roseluck over the sudden fit of barking echoing from across the street.

“I think you can hear me perfectly well.”

“What? Man, I saw your lips move, but I just can’t make out a word you’re saying over… actually, come to think of it—” Lily cast a concerned frown across the street. “Hey Applejack! Is your dog alright?”

“Ah dunno… she just got all agitated outta nowhere,” the farm pony called back over, before sitting and brushing a gentle hoof across Winona’s fur. “Shh, calm down, girl, it’s alright…”

Despite the touch of her owner, Winona hadn’t calmed down in the slightest. In fact, she seemed to get even more agitated, growling aggressively with her eyes trained upward at the sky.

On a hunch, Roseluck followed the pet’s line of sight. After a few seconds of only seeing cyan and whisps of gray from slowly moving clouds, she noticed a dark, moving form that appeared to be growing—approaching, by the look of it. She could not make out the details of it until another few seconds had passed, when the form began to take the shape of a pegasus—one she identified to be Thunderlane, based on what she remembered of his gray coat and silver mane, trimmed in a style she wondered how he ever thought was a good idea. She also knew him as a member of the Wonderbolts, and an impressive one at that, which is why the way he was flying seemed… off.

“Poor Thunderlane. Still can’t get along with animals even when they’re a hundred feet apart,” Lily commented with an amused chuckle. However, Roseluck hadn’t reciprocated, or even acknowledged the words of her friend as, after the shape of Thunderlane got even closer, she discerned that, not only was he approaching fast, but it didn’t look like he had any control of his flight. His wings flailed while his figure spiraled toward the ground, and he didn’t even seem to be attempting to stop himself. That, paired with the frantic barking of Winona, caused a nervous feeling to well up within her stomach.

Once the gray pegasus had come dangerously close to the ground, having not showed any signs of slowing down, Roseluck instinctively prepared to shout him a warning, but did not have time to get a word out as Thunderlane, a spinning ball of feathers, bulleted across the market and dive-bombed straight into the carrot stand neighbouring her and Lily. Thunderlane’s body quickly disappeared underneath a shower of collapsing wood planks, a massive plum of dust expanding from the wreckage.

“Faust’s name!” Roseluck heard Lily say as she stood up from the ground, having ducked from the assumption that it would be their own stand that fell victim to the destructive weapon that was Thunderlane’s body. “You’d think he’d have sobered up by now, what in the world?!”

“Well, he’s lucky it wasn’t ours he crashed into, otherwise the injuries from the crash would be the least of his worries,” Roseluck said, casting a wary look at the wooden panel among the rest of the debris revealing nothing more than two gray hind hooves sticking out from below.

“I dunno if lucky’s the right word, I can’t see Carrot Top taking this very well either.”

As if on cue, they saw the owner of the now unrecognizable pile of wood and carrots marching angrily toward the wreckage, away from a vendor she had been conversing with down the road. “WHAT THE HAY DID YOU DO TO MY FREAKING CARROT STAND?!”

The slowly amassing crowd of ponies who had heard, or seen the destruction quickly stepped aside to clear a path for the storming manifestation of fury, each of them wearing patent ‘oh boy…’ expressions on their faces.

Lily stepped forward to address her. “So, uh… Thunderlane—”

“Yeah, I saw!” Carrot Top interrupted sharply, forcing any words that would have followed back down her throat. “Thunderlane! Surely you can tell the difference between a runway and the love of my freaking life!”

Apple Bloom stared up innocently at her big sister. “Applejack? Is she going to kill him?”

“Yeah, probably,” Applejack replied simply. With the sudden commotion in the market, she had been distracted from Winona, who not only continued to bark wildly, but also hadn’t taken her gaze off the point in the sky Thunderlane had come from.

Once Carrot Top arrived at the ruins that were still emitting flakes of dust, she scanned the remains, as though looking for anything that could possibly be salvageable. Then, with reinvigorated rage, she grabbed hold of the wooden panel covering the entire pegasus and lifted it off him, throwing it to the side. She ignored the sudden gasps of horror emanating from nearby ponies as she stomped back around the panel.

“You better hope the Wonderbolts pay you some good money, because…” She cut herself off almost instantly, backpedalling and collapsing to her haunches with a horrified scream. With that, Roseluck had been given a clear view of what had scared Carrot Top, and the other ponies around.

She wished she hadn’t looked.

Thunderlane’s body was riddled with long, deep red gashes etched deep into his skin like claw marks, gushing blood across his discolored fur and over the pile of wood on which he lay, unmoving. But the most haunting part was his face: eyes unblinking, his final expression one of pure, raw agony…

She was certain his injuries weren’t from the crash.

“H-he’s dead… oh Celestia, he’s dead!” a stammering voice rang out among the jumble of frightened whispers in the area.

“Applejack, what’s goin’ on…?” Apple Bloom said fearfully, her view currently being shielded from the corpse by Applejack’s foreleg.

“Don’t look, Apple Bloom. Ya hear?” Applejack ordered sternly, then faced the ever-growing assembly of ponies who, in response to Carrot Top’s scream, had come and witnessed the horrifying sight. “Okay, listen everypony. We need someone to get to the hospital and tell them what happened here. Understand? And don’t y’all be standin’ around starin’!”

Apple Bloom could only see the reaction of the ponies in the area and imagine what they were seeing, and she didn’t like what her mind was coming up with. Gulping anxiously, her attention was grabbed by the frenetic dog next to her. Winona had not given up her incessant barking, still facing the same spot in the sky.

Although, her gaze had lowered ever so slightly.

Roseluck raised her hoof. “I-I can go.”

“Are you sure…?” Lily muttered.

“Somepony has to.”

“It’s just… I mean, you saw those marks on his body. I’m getting this feeling like… like something did that to him.” She swallowed. “Something alive.”

Roseluck glanced briefly back at the dead body, her view occasionally blocked by the crowd that had begun to disperse. “Look, whatever the case, Applejack’s right. We can’t just—”

The air was suddenly pierced by an ear-splitting crack, like the powerful crash of thunder. What accompanied it was a bright, round flash of purple light in the middle of the road. Roseluck instinctively brought a hoof up to shield her eyes from the sheer brightness of the light and held it there until she saw the resulting shimmer along the edges of her foreleg flicker, and then finally fade back to normal.

When she lowered her hoof, she saw that, in place of the purple glow, a circular region of now blackened cobblestone gave off streams of wavey, dark smoke, and in the center of that region, a purple pony stood there. Upon making her first assumption that it was a pegasus, Roseluck spotted the horn on the pony’s head, ending not at a tip, but at a jagged surface. After examining the pony’s dirty, matted purple fur, and the hectic, deeper purple mane, she pieced together who it was.

Standing there, in the middle of the road, was Twilight Sparkle, only, a very different looking Twilight Sparkle than the one she knew. Aside from the dirty features and broken horn, she almost looked… taller. Older, in fact.

With a heavy blink, Twilight Sparkle’s head jutted upward, her eyes rapidly scanning her surroundings. Roseluck could now see the panicked expression on the alicorn’s face as she almost appeared to be processing what this place was.

With another head rotation, Twilight spotted the body lying in the ruined carrot stand, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. “No... nononono, please tell me I went back far enough!” She spun in the opposite direction, her head facing the clock tower.

The time had just turned 12:30.

In that instant, the alicorn whirled around, took a deep breath and shouted, “DON’T MOVE!!”

The sudden, panic-laced shout from the recognizable voice of the princess brought the multicolored crowd of scattering ponies in the market to an immediate standstill. Just like that, it seemed as though time had frozen, everypony opting not to question a warning that had closely followed Thunderlane’s mysterious death.

“Twilight?” came Applejack’s voice. She took a step toward the alicorn. “Twilight, what’s goin’ on?”

“No no, stop—STOP!” Twilight screamed, pausing Applejack mid-step. “Listen, everypony needs to stay still! If you don’t, you’ll die!”

A blend of bewilderment and fear was plastered on every single pony’s face, several gasps emanating from the grim consequence Twilight had stated.

From down the road, Amethyst approached the scene. “So, what’s going on, now? Another weekly villain come to hand out a couple bruises and dent some buildings?” she scoffed with a monotone voice.

“Look, no, you don’t understand,” Twilight reasoned, a hint of frustration in her distressed tone. “Something bad is coming. I can’t explain what exactly, but I need you all to trust m—STOP, DON’T MOVE!”

Roseluck followed the sudden shift in Twilight’s gaze to the front of an ice cream shop on her left, where a gray colt with a combed back, darker gray mane stood completely still as he had been instructed to do. His brow furrowed nervously. “Why, w-what’s going on…?”

Winona’s gaze had left the sky, now focused just down the road.

As the colt noticed several anxious glances aimed his way, his confusion swelled further. “What...? Is somepony gonna explain what’s going on, or…” No sooner had he begun to demand an answer for the strange looks, than he got his answer once his eyes landed on Carrot Top’s destroyed cart, going wide with horror upon seeing the pony lying on top of it, bloodied and limp.

“Thunder?! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BROTHER?!” he cried, rushing out into the road after the body of his closest sibling.

Twilight’s eyes widened. “NO, DON’T—”

CRRACK!

The colt’s head abruptly lurched back as a deep gash tore across the left side of his face, followed by a slash down his stomach, and a burst of blood from his chest to his shoulder all in such quick succession that no one had even processed it until the boy’s mangled body unceremoniously dropped to the ground like a ragdoll, matching his brother in death.

A nearby stallion let out a horrified scream, stepping away from the young corpse. A sudden, guttural gurgle escaped his throat as his stomach, neck, and chest exploded with similar, gaping wounds all at once, like an invisible cleaver was hacking into his body. Like the colt, he fell backward, dead. The market crowd erupted into a flurry of chaos, screams ringing out as ponies tried to run from whatever had killed the colt and stallion, before lacerations ripped across their bodies, and they too collapsed limply onto the road.

“STOP! EVERYPONY, PLEASE STOP!!” Twilight pleaded, tears streaming down her face. To her utter horror, ponies weren’t listening. The crowd continued to dwindle as bloodied, mutilated ponies dropped left and right, the discordant cacophony of wet gurgles and horrified shrieks drowning out the alicorn's desperate screams as she helplessly watched the ponies she had come to save die in front of her.

CRRACK!

CRRACK!

CRRACK!

CRRACK!

A thunderous boom resonated through the air, and among the sea of bodies now littering the ground, a small fraction of ponies stood, their movements restricted by a transparent, purple aura. From where Roseluck stood, also unable to move, she could see Amethyst across the street to the left of Applejack’s wagon, eyes screwed in absolute concentration as the large, equally colored aura engulfing her horn swelled and burst with bright, erratic sparks.

“Nrrgg… none of you better move… a single damn muscle when I drop this spell…!” the purple unicorn managed to get out, beads of sweat rolling down her brow. Shortly after, she let out a fatigued exhale as the aura around her horn faded like vapor along with those outlining the only surviving ponies left.

Roseluck stood with petrified stillness, her tear-filled eyes sweeping across all the stallions, mares, colts and fillies that, mere seconds earlier, had been alive and well, and were now discolored, unmoving bodies on the red cobblestone road. Her gaze then lifted, going from survivor to survivor as she named them all in her head. Twilight, Carrot Top, Apple Bloom, Applejack, Derpy, Amethyst, Dinky, Bonbon and, to her relief, Lily, who stood before her, facing away and breathing uncontrollably.

“R-Rosey…?” Lily called out, not daring to turn her head were she to follow the same fate as the ponies on the ground.

“…I’m here,” the yellow flower pony reassured. She could see Lily’s leg muscles relax, and a heavy, grateful breath leave her lungs.

In the middle of the road, surrounded by bodies, Twilight Sparkle stood, devastated, the fur on her cheeks matted with tears. “N-no… I was… I was t-too late…”

Still breathing from her prior effort, Amethyst’s eyes moved to the mourning alicorn. “Twilight, now would be a good time to tell us just what the heck is going on!” The words came out shaky, but concise.

Twilight’s fixation on the ponies she had failed was broken by the purple unicorn’s demand for information. At the realization that there were still ponies to save, her posture straightened with renewed determination. “Everypony, listen. The things that are here—those creatures—they can only see things that move. That’s why you have to stay still, or they’ll know where you are.”

“Wait, what creatures? I don’t see any creatures!” Amethyst said.

“Th-they’re invisible, or to us, anyway. The way ponies’ eyes work doesn’t allow us to see them… but I should be able to put a stop to this.” Twilight lowered her head, just barely, toward the saddlebag against her side. “I created a spell that will make them visible to us. By knowing where they are, it will be possible to concentrate a spell on their location and destroy them.”

The alicorn’s broken horn crackled with magic impossible to use to its full potential. Her eyes squinted in focus, attempting to lift the contents within the bag, but she only managed a faint, flickering aura that fizzed out as soon as it appeared. “Come on… you did this with Tempest, just focus…” In that moment, a purple glare flashed in the corner of her eye. Distracted from her efforts, she looked up where she saw it. Her stomach dropped.

Standing across from her was a noticeably shorter and younger version of herself, staring with a pale face at the bodies scattered across the cobblestone road. With a quivering lip, the younger alicorn spoke, “W-w… what happened…?” Her eyes then landed on her nearly mirror self. She did a double take, before her anguished eyes swapped with a glare.

“Twilight, wait. Don’t—” the taller, battered version of Twilight Sparkle began.

“Who are you? What the hay happened here?!” her clone shouted fiercely, taking confrontational steps toward her.

“DON’T MOVE!!” But it was too late. A red streak slashed across her younger self’s neck, then another down her ribs, and a final one through her chest that propelled her onto the ground. A pained wheeze escaped the taller Twilight’s throat as she watched, with petrified eyes, her younger self lying there, convulsing and clinging desperately to life, but failing slowly but surely as blood streamed copiously through the wounds on her body.

“Oh no…” With time running out, she quickly scanned the remaining survivors, before landing on the pony she was searching for. “Bonbon, the creatures are called Wraiths, use whatever you know about them to help everypony get through this ali—”

And then she simply vanished. Like two pieces of film spliced together, the older version of Twilight Sparkle was just gone, erased from existence as though she were never there in the first place. The saddlebag that had hung from her back freely dropped to the ground, its contents clattering within, before being drowned out by a thick silence, interrupted occasionally by the fearful sobs and whimpers of the current survivors.

“What the… w-where did she go?” Amethyst stammered, eyeing the spot now only occupied by Twilight’s saddlebag in disbelief. “Damnit, she was the only one who could help us! Where did she go?!”

“A-Applejack…” Apple Bloom sobbed.

“Ah’m here, Apple Bloom,” her older sister said, unable to hide the terror in her voice no matter how hard she tried for her younger sibling. “Just… just don’t move, like she said, ya understand?”

“Everypony… they’re all… W-Winona…”

“Ah know… Ah know.” She wished she could do more than say comforting words—hold her, cover her eyes from an exposure to death no one should have had to witness at her age—but the last thing she wanted to do was cause her little sister to lose another family member.

“Mommy… are we going to die…?” a trembling Dinky whimpered, wet eyelids screwed shut.

“No, Dinky, we’re not going to die. Mommy’s here to protect you,” Derpy reassured with words she didn’t believe, failing to hide the fear in her voice.

The pit in Roseluck’s stomach grew hollower and hollower as her eyes darted between the ponies that were still alive, watching and listening helplessly. Between the death of the princess of magic, the disappearance of her duplicate who was the only pony who knew what was happening, and the small number of remaining ponies struggling to find sense or hope in the situation they had been thrust into, the cold and despairing feeling in her chest deepened, overwhelming her completely.

“…What are we gonna do…?” Lily whispered bleakly. The yellow flower pony didn’t respond right away. “…Rosey?”

“I don’t know.” That was all she said. It was the only answer she had to give. After all, what could they do when actions meant a swift, brutal death?

“This… this isn’t real… it’s gotta be some sort of bad dream!” Carrot Top mumbled, blinking rapidly, shutting her eyes tighter and tighter each time as though expecting the bodies to disappear when she lifted her eyelids. But after her next blink, what she saw instead, out of the top of her vision, were winged bodies of various colors dropping like rain out of the sky. The crashing of wood and glass, accompanied with the sickening crunches of fractured bones, echoed from a distance, inciting startled cries from various survivors, including Carrot Top herself, who had now begun to hyperventilate. The rooves of nearby restaurants caved inward from pegasi falling much like Thunderlane had, riddled with injuries matching those carved into the bodies on the road.

A red pegasus suddenly struck the ground before Carrot Top, all limbs simultaneously twisting into unnatural positions and spraying blood in every direction, particularly all over the golden earth pony. The last of her composure gone, she shrieked, stumbling backward off her hooves and onto the ground. She realized her mistake immediately. “NonoNONO—” A gash split her head down the middle, violently thrusting her head backward.

“Carrot!” Bonbon cried out, helplessly watching the body of her friend crumple into a heap on the ground among the vast crowd of corpses.

Amethyst, reacting spontaneously, shot a beam of magic that soared across the street and shattered the building window above the dead Carrot Top. “Can’t even tell if I hit it or not… I can’t do anything if I can’t see the damn thing!”

After another few moments of shocked silence, punctuated by the most recent casualty, the purple unicorn decided to take the initiative. “Alright, we… we need to come up with some sort of plan. Something, anything—we can’t let anypony else die.” Remembering the taller Twilight’s last words before vanishing, her eyes shifted leftward in their sockets. “Bonbon, Twilight told you the name of the creatures. She said to use whatever you knew to help us... do you know what these things are?”

After an initial bite of her lip, Bonbon sighed. “Yeah, I do. But, before I explain, I guess I owe everypony an explanation...” She took a breath. “Something you should all know about me is that… I’m not actually ‘Bonbon’. My real name is Sweetie Drops, I’m a special agent for the organization, S.M.I.L.E, working under Princess Celestia. I was stationed in Ponyville to ward off monsters that posed a threat to the civilians of this town.” Her ears wilted guiltily. “I’m sorry for keeping this a secret from you all…”

“If you have information that can help us, you could be Tirek’s secret spy for all I care,” Amethyst said. “What are these creatures, and how do we stop them?”

“Um…” Bonbon shut her eyes, sifting through her memories. “I don’t really know much about them; the agency always treated the Wraiths as an urban myth—”

“But what do you know, Bonbon?”

“F-from what I remember, they’re ancient, celestial entities dating back to the first era. Supposedly, they fell to Equus from the stars at the last synchronized stellar rotation and were then weaponized by some of the most talented wizards of that time using forbidden dark magic. I can’t remember the specifics, but… Wraiths don’t exist in the same plane that we do. They can’t see like ponies can, but they can pick apart movements and identify where things are in relation to them.”

“So… why are they here? And how did Twilight know about this?” Derpy asked.

“That’s the part I can’t figure out. So, the story goes, the Wraiths were banished back to the stars by the same sorcerers that weaponized them, but the next synchronized stellar rotation isn’t supposed to be until decades from now. The only way they could be here, on top of Twilight knowing about it is if…”

“What, are you implying she’s from the future?” Amethyst sarcastically suggested.

Bonbon seemed to take the suggestion seriously. “Well, wouldn’t that make sense with what’s been happening? A taller version of Twilight without a horn comes to warn us of an attack before it even starts, and then when the version of Twilight that looks much closer to the one we know dies, she just… vanishes. In fact, it explains how she knew I was a secret agent, since up until now, the only one outside the agency I ever told was…” The next word caught in her throat, realizing that there was a pony who wasn’t among them—who had never gotten Twilight’s warning. “…L-Lyra…”

Amethyst let out an incredulous exhale. “Look, regardless, what does what you’ve said about these ‘Wraiths’ actually tell us besides what we already know? We can’t move—that’s a given. But we can’t just stand here forever. Eventually, we’re going to need food and water, and even that depends on how long we can stay standing in one place; we need a plan of action!”

“Guys…” came Apple Bloom’s quiet, hoarse voice. “Twilight’s bag is still on the ground. Didn’t she say she had a spell to make us see the monsters?”

The attention of the survivors moved to the lone saddlebag in the middle of the road, which had almost gone forgotten amid the tense turmoil surrounding the group

“You’re right… hold on.” Tongue between her teeth, Amethyst lit her horn, focusing on the bag and willing it to rise from the ground. However, upon her attempt, the aura around her horn simply popped pathetically, and fizzed out into a flurry of minuscule, ember-like particles. A bewildered frown creased her brow. “I can’t…” She tried once more to lift the bag with her horn, and yet again, her magic was reduced to falling purple sparks. “I can’t lift it…”

“What do you mean you can’t lift it?” Lily questioned. “Didn’t you just hold everypony still with your magic?”

“No, I mean I literally can’t use my magic on it, every time I try, it’s like it cancels out.”

“It sounds like a resistance enchantment,” Bonbon informed, her voice rougher than before. “It blocks spells from being cast on an object, I’m guessing Twilight put one on it.”

“But then how are we supposed to…” A light bulb flashed in her head, and she reached her magic out to a broken plank from the wreckage of the carrot stand. Levitating it behind the bag, she began to pull, but as soon as the plank made contact, the aura surrounding it flickered away, and the plank hit the ground with a thud. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“Are you able to lift what’s inside the bag instead?” Roseluck suggested, when she noticed, out the corner of her eye, one half of the market road mysteriously getting darker.

“I don’t know what’s in there. I can’t lift something unless I can see, or at least picture it,” the unicorn reasoned, and then let out a frustrated groan. “Come on, there’s gotta be something… the princesses… maybe I can get a letter to them. Does anypony have some sort of parchment and something to write with?”

Her request was met with the total lack of a response.

“Hello?! Did you all forget how to speak or what?”

“…I don’t think there’d be a point in writing a letter…” Derpy’s trembling voice spoke, her eyes trained upward at the sky.

“What the hell are you talking about? The princesses would be our best bet… at…” she then took notice of how Derpy was not the only one fixated on the sky. In fact, every single survivor, with shared expressions of dread, stared upward in the same direction as though in a trance. The next thing Amethyst saw was, along the ground at a certain point, the luminance of the sun faded gradually into a dark shade. Apprehension slowly welled up within her, but it was when she finally checked to find out what had caught everyone’s attention that a feeling of dread captured her as well.

The once cyan sky was now split into day and night, the sun hanging in the center of its respective half while the moon gradually and ominously crawled up the dark blue, starry canvas behind it, slowing to a stop at the same height as its celestial counterpart. The same thought crossed each pony’s mind: there was one instance where this had happened before, and in such an instance, Celestia and Luna had gone missing. For it to happen again, now…

“You… y-you don’t think…” Lily stuttered, her voice laced with denial.

“It can’t be…” Applejack reciprocated.

But there it was, right above them: the two celestial bodies, sitting idly in the sky, no longer anchored to the magic of the two sisters. Right there in the sky was the evidence for a fact the remaining survivors refused to accept.

That the two most powerful ponies in all of Equestria had too fallen victim to the horrors of this waking nightmare.

Just like that, it was as though a light had been extinguished. Each pony’s gaze remained directed at the sky, trying to will it to be anything other than what it was. Even those who had remained strong for somepony else wilted under the oppressive presence of both the sun and the moon occupying the same space, unmoving as though frozen in time. A thick stench of hopelessness permeated the air, and grew ever stronger as the reality of the situation truly began to set in. If the princesses had not survived, was there truly a chance for any of them?

Applejack snapped out of her fixation when she heard the heavy weeping of her younger sister, looking down to see her tiny body shuddering with visible, heavy sobs. “Apple Bloom, a-ah know you’re mighty scared, but ah need you ta compose yourself…”

“…Big Mac… Granny… Applejack, t-they didn’t get the same warning we did…” Apple Bloom said in broken sentences through violent bursts of tears.

“Now don’t go assumin’ things,” Applejack responded in a voice that tried to be reassuring but came out almost as broken. “there’s no way to be sure they ain’t managin’ just like we are—”

“They have to be dead, Applejack!” the filly retorted, her voice cracking. “They… they couldn’t have known to stay still… a-and if the princesses didn’t make it…” her sobs grew more hysterical. “…Scootaloo… Sweetie Belle—”

“Apple Bloom, listen to me,” Applejack began with as brave a tone as she could muster. “Ah’m here, ya understand? We’re both here, and we’re still together, and ah’m not gonna let anythin’ change that. That’s a promise.”

The passionate vow of Apple Bloom’s older sister sank in, and little by little, the emotional storm wracking her mind settled.

Amethyst watched the interaction between the two siblings, a blank expression on her face. Her eyes then locked onto the saddlebag in the middle of the road. “We have to get that bag.”

The determined statement drew the other ponies away from the foreboding omen above. “But how?” Lily said. “If you’re the only one that can use magic, and the bag’s enchanted…”

“There’s got to be a way,” Amethyst replied firmly. “I might be able to teleport over to the bag and take the contents out from there…”

“That might not be a good idea,” Bonbon pointed out. “Teleportation might be a type of movement they can detect. I know we saw Twilight teleport here earlier, but that might not be indicative of what happens to you. It’s risky.”

“I know, that’s what worries me.” After a moment of deep thought, an idea popped into her head: teleporting one of the bodies on the ground, regardless of being dead, might have been a reliable way to test if it was safe to teleport herself. Determining it was worth a shot, she directed her magic at Carrot Top’s bleeding corpse. The yellow body glowed with pulsing magic, and, with a strenuous grunt, Amethyst cast the spell. The body blinked from its spot, reappearing at a point several inches away—

CRRACK!

Everyone flinched as the corpse burst with three more jagged slices into its chest, hurling into the building behind it with a grotesque flop, and slumping sprawled out against the ground once more.

Amethyst grit her teeth. “Damnit… not taking my chances with that. Okay, come on. Think…”

“Why would you do that…?” Derpy muttered, her tone low and unsettled.

The unicorn’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Obviously to see if teleportation was a safe option, why else?”

“How could you use her dead body like that?”

Her confusion turned to irritation. “You think that I should have, what, risked my own life instead and ended up as a rotting corpse on the ground, losing you the one pony who can realistically do anything in this scenario?”

“I—”

“We need to do what’s necessary to survive! The last thing I’m focused on is treating dead bodies right.”

“She… kind of has a point, Derpy,” Bonbon uncomfortably agreed.

The gray pegasus had her mouth open to respond, but ultimately held her tongue, a look of dismay aimed at her hooves.

Soon after, Amethyst came up with another plan, but as she opened her mouth to say it out loud, she hesitated with an uncertain grimace.

“What’s wrong, Amethyst?” asked Roseluck.

After another momentary delay, the unicorn answered. “I’ve got an idea, but… it’s really risky.” She paused again, as though afraid to propose it.

“What is it?” Bonbon prompted.

A breath in and out. “During my last year at the School for Gifted Unicorns, we were taught a shield spell to block magical and physical attacks, and I still remember how to cast it, so… what I’m hoping is that the shield will protect me while I’m moving.”

Bonbon’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re going to… walk over to the bag?”

“It’s the only way we’re going to get it.”

“Well… not that I’m a fan of the idea, but couldn’t you test it on…” Bonbon cringed, “…o-one of the corpses, first?”

“I’d have to shield and levitate it at the same time, and I can’t cast two types of spells at once,” Amythest explained. “I’ll just have to wing it and hope it doesn’t kill me.”

“Well, then there’s gotta be something else we can do. You said it yourself, you’re our best asset right now.”

A moment of doubt passed over Amethyst, before she spoke with a tightened resolve, “Whatever’s in that bag is our only chance at surviving this. My magic is useless if we don’t go for it. Whether I die now, or we all die later makes no difference.”

“Are you sure about this…?” Lily’s voice this time.

“…No, but… I don’t see any other choice.” There was no other counterargument like part of Amethyst was hoping for; any reason that would make her any less resolute on her decision. With a tremulous inhale, she lit her horn and began to cast the spell from memory. Out of thin air, a geometric sphere made up of transparent, crystalline hexagonal faces encapsulated her from her hooves to inches above her horn, blinking in and out at first but stabilizing soon after. When that was done, the unicorn set her sight on the bag in the middle of the road. Now, all she would need to do is take a step…

That was when anxiety kicked in at full force.

The sphere of magic around her flickered away along with the purple outline on her horn. Amethyst’s eyes sunk slightly, her stomach expanding and contracting faster. “Come on…” She conjured the shield once more. She just had to take the step. The solution to surviving this relied on getting that bag.

Yet, each time she pushed her foreleg to move, it was as though her body was rejecting the request. Her heart drummed harder in her chest, a cold sweat drenching her brow. She just had to take the step. But the longer she stood there, faced with the prospect of it being the last thing she would ever do, the mental barrier keeping her hooves anchored to the ground grew even stronger.

She looked up at the surviving ponies watching her with clenched jaws, expressions of anticipatory apprehension on their faces. Her eyes fell back to the bag. “Just do it… just do it, Amethyst, get over yourself and do it!” Her gaze was caught by a body lying beside the bag, shredded like a slab of fresh meat, its eyes glassy and aimed at nothing. She just had to take the step.

She took another breath in. Let it out. In. Out. Heavier and heavier each time. Her eyes screwed shut. Then, with a shrill scream, she took a step.

CRRACK!

The spherical shield flared with a bright purple shimmer, blinding white sparks exploding outwards in all directions. Gasps escaped the lips of flinching ponies believing the invisible creature had effortlessly torn through the magic shield and killed the pony within. However, as the brilliant light died down, the shield emerged, still intact, three glaring, parallel jagged marks at the point of impact fading to the brightness of the rest of the sphere.

And at the center of it, Amethyst was still alive.

“It… it worked!” Roseluck exclaimed, her tone rich with reinvigorated hope. Her voice prompted the shivering unicorn inside the shield to open her eyes. Once she had, it immediately dawned on her she had been able to open her eyes at all. Not only that, but she didn’t feel any kind of stabbing pain like she had otherwise been expecting, and when she looked down, she confirmed it was not because of adrenaline-induced numbness. Rather, there was not a single scratch on her body.

“I’m okay…! I’m okay!” Amethyst sputtered in pure disbelief, her veins coursing with surreal relief. She was alive. The shield had worked, and, knowing this, determination welled up inside her. She could make it.

Without wasting more time, she took another step forward. The bright light blaring all around her caused her to squint instinctively. She took another step, then another, each strike against the shield piercing her ears with the high-pitched cracks of sparks flying off the shield accompanied by otherworldly screeches, like the distorted scraping of metal against metal.

As she trudged, closer and closer toward the bag, a buildup of strain at the base of her horn started to become noticeable. Amethyst winced, worry sprouting inside her as each impact against the shield quickly brought that strain to a new height, eventually translating into increasing waves of pain that shot through her skull. Soon, the effort needed to maintain the shield had become immense, her magic feeling as though it would give out any second.

The unicorn quickly froze in place with a loud groan. The thunderous cacophony of the shield’s resistance and the supernatural roars echoed through the air one more time before fading along with the glowing cluster of long, thin marks across the entire shield. With a moan of pain, she cut the spell.

“Amethyst, are you okay?!” Roseluck shouted concernedly, her eyes wide with stress.

Amethyst collected herself, sucking in air through grit teeth. “It’s getting harder to keep the shield up. I just need a second before I keep going.”

“You’re doin’ well, sugarcube! Almost halfway there,” Applejack encouraged. Upon checking her progress for herself, Amethyst found that the distance between her and the bag was now only a few feet. It would likely only take five or six more steps to reach it.

“I got this. Okay…” It took longer to conjure the spell this time, the first attempt producing no more than a few pitiful sparks, and the second, albeit successful, requiring a significant deal of exertion through the resurgent aching in her horn. She lifted a foreleg off the ground, and without delay, the relentless assault of the unseeable force pounded against the layer of protection around her. Her hoof remained suspended in the air as the brightness died down, reluctance seizing her briefly, before she brought it down in front of the other.

She fueled her horn with as much energy as she could muster, taking another step, then another, while fighting back against the fierce, violent onslaught of strikes that came with each one. Tears trailed down her face as her head pounded with the unbearable toll of her efforts, which, at one point, had resulted in the shield vanishing for the smallest fraction of a second.

“GAH!” A searing pain exploded in Amethyst’s left foreleg, causing her to stop mid-step. The ensuing burst of adrenaline allowed her to keep the shield up for just a little longer before it fell apart in time to block the final blow.

Her head was already tilted downward, and with two forceful blinks, the moisture blurring her vision cleared to reveal the injury she had sustained. Starting halfway up her foreleg, a narrow, fleshy slit ran down to the edge of her hoof, filling slowly with blood before overflowing and spilling onto the ground below.

“Oh no…” she heard Bonbon gasp.

“I’m okay, I… I don’t think it’s bad,” Amethyst assured jaggedly. While she suffered a moderate amount of bleeding, the wound was in no way fatal. That didn’t change the fact that it hurt like hell, and paired with the burning sensation in her horn, it took much willpower not to fidget from the pain.

“You have to rest,” Lily said. “You’re injured, and you look like you’re pushing your limit!”

Lily’s imploration tempted Amethyst, before she saw how close she was to her goal. She could just barely see over the opening of the saddlebag on the ground. The ticket to her survival was only one step away, and for that reason, she could not wait, lest she be killed by that thing and lose her chance to reach Twilight’s spell.

So, to Lily’s dismay, the unicorn’s horn glowed once more, her face contorted in sheer strain while only producing tiny crackling sparks that drifted to the ground like an ignited fuse for the first few seconds. With a labored roar, the shield finally reappeared, hopping between visible and gone until she could muster whatever magic she had left in her reserves to keep it consistently visible.

Amethyst’s horn screamed in protest, and she felt herself shaking heavily. It was now or never. With a push off her back legs, she lunged forward. The shield radiated blinding light, bellowing from the damage dealt to it. She felt the weight of the shield threatening to give out, but she pushed back with everything she had, withstanding valiantly until all four hooves were grounded. The attacks against the shield ceased, and Amethyst, given this window of opportunity, dropped the spell, allowing the shield to dissipate into speckles of harmless dust.

“I made it…” she sighed with a grin, laughing between exhausted gulps of air. “I made it.”

“Good goin’, sugarcube!” Applejack said, also bearing a smile. Derpy let out a gratified cheer, and others exhaled in alleviation. The overall atmosphere was brimming with higher spirits for the first time since the conflict had begun. Despite everything that had happened, the fact they now faced a chance at putting an end to this nightmare brought a sense of joy where hopelessness once reigned.

As Amethyst wallowed in the success of her endeavor, she recalled the bag for which she had put her life on the line and came back to her senses. Looking down, she could clearly make out the contents inside: a pile of bronze runes, and a face-down piece of lightly wrinkled parchment. The spell.

She felt another small pang of tension. Now was the moment of truth. She summoned her magic, moaning from the returning discomfort, and attempted to lift the parchment. Another elated laugh escaped her lips upon seeing her magic encase it. Although, the aura was faint, and lifting the parchment felt equivalent to what she imagined lifting an ursa minor was like. It was obvious the shield had weakened her magic substantially. She was just hoping she had enough left in the tank to cast Twilight’s spell so she could finally see where that damned creature was.

“Look at her go,” Lily chuckled. “I think we’re gonna be okay, Rosey.”

“I don’t know...” came an odd response from her friend, lacking any of the enthusiasm she had expected.

“Huh?”

“Something’s been bothering me.”

Lily was very confused. “What do you mean?”

Roseluck held a wary look on her face. “Well… if the Twilight who warned us wrote that spell in the future, and our Twilight died, then—”

“Wh… w-what the hell is this…?!” Amethyst suddenly yelled.

“What? What is it?” Bonbon asked

Amethyst was frantically flipping the parchment suspended by her magic over and over again, denial etched on her face. “There’s nothing written on here. I-it’s just a blank piece of paper!”

Derpy cocked an eyebrow. “Wait, I thought Twilight said she wrote a spell to help us.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason why I risked my life to get this!” The unicorn snapped, rummaging through the runes in the bag for any other pieces of parchment, but finding none. “I-I-I don’t… I don’t get it, why would she say she had a spell but then bring back a blank piece of paper?!”

“The spell was never written,” Roseluck spoke up.

Amethyst looked over at the flower pony, brow furrowed. “The hell are you talking about?”

“When our Twilight was killed, it erased her older self’s existence. That parchment likely did have a spell written on it, but when she was erased…” a dispirited pause, “so was her history of writing it.”

Several moments passed with Amethyst’s expression remaining unchanged, as though she hadn’t heard Roseluck. Then, she laughed again. There was no joy in her laughter this time. The aura around the scrap of paper vanished, and it waved gently on its slow path to the ground. “Of course. Of course that’s what happened—I mean, Celestia forbid something go right for once.”

“N-now, let’s not get our knickers in a twist,” Applejack said with hesitance. “Ah’m sure there’s another option—”

“What other option, Applejack?!” Amethyst exploded, glaring daggers at the farm pony. “That spell wasour only option! We can’t go anywhere, any possible help is gone—what else can we do?!”

Applejack’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as she searched for any idea or course of action to respond with. Eventually, though, her lips came together, her eyes dulling as it sunk in that she didn’t have an answer.

This only amplified the emotions within the purple unicorn and, with a face screwed up in fury, she let out a fury-packed scream. The other survivors cringed, a pronounced forlornness circling among them. With all their immediate options expended and the only pony capable of helping them breaking down, any shred of optimism was replaced with the grim outlook that there truly was no solution to this, and that they were destined to die where they were, standing with a motionlessness that would only delay the inevitable.

The last resonations of Amethyst’s scream faded into a deafening silence, and she looked down at the blood-stained road, stewing in a poisonous brew of frustration and fear. Her aimless gaze wandered upward, where she noticed Bonbon staring at her, particularly fixated on the incision-like injury streaking down her foreleg, her face drawn in a fretting expression.

“Do you mind?” Amethyst snarled with a deep growl that made the earth pony blink with sudden awareness, her eyes flicking down to her hooves.

In the corner of her vision, a sequence of spastic flashes drew her attention shortly to the right. Its source was the light purple filly by Derpy’s side, whose horn crackled with sparks like a broken electrical wire. She also appeared dazed, glassy eyes half-lidded as her body began to lean just barely to one side.

As soon as Derpy saw this, her face paled, blood running cold. “Dinky? Dinky, you have to try and stay awake, okay? Please try and stay awake!”

“Oh no,” Roseluck muttered with trepidation, remembering the last time this had happened, and realizing what would follow.

“What’s happening?” Bonbon asked, the urgency from Derpy, as well as Roseluck and Lily alike causing a rise of tension in her gut.

“She’s going to faint!” Lily answered with her ears pressed flat against her face.

“Dinky!” Derpy cried as her daughter, despite fighting her own body for consciousness, began to lose the battle. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, her legs beginning to give out.

Before gravity could pull Dinky to her death, a dim, purple aura encompassed her, keeping her on her hooves while her muscles were inactive.

A shade of red overtook Amethyst’s face as she forced her incredibly weakened magic to hold the filly’s body up. The swirling glow around her horn was barely visible, brightening and dulling repeatedly, and spitting out stray, glittering particles. “I… I can’t hold this for long…!” she grunted. “Derpy, you have… to—nrrgg—wake her up!”

“S-s-she’ll only wake up o-on her own…!” the gray pegasus sputtered, an utter panic-stricken mess while her daughter’s life hung in the balance, one small error away from a swift end.

As hard as the purple unicorn tried, she felt her magic slipping. The aura around Dinky began to die away, and Derpy lost all composure, begging incoherently for her daughter to wake from unconsciousness. It appeared as though that had actually worked when, in a stroke of fortune, the filly’s eyelids finally began to flutter open, ears twitching as she recovered her senses.

The sound of Amethyst’s horn resembled broken static as the illumination around it dissipated, leaving Dinky’s body unsupported. Fortunately, the sudden weight of her body kicked the filly’s mind into complete consciousness, and with a horrified gasp, she promptly locked her legs, balancing her body before its mass could drag her to the ground and cement her demise.

The immediate release of tension among the group was palpable. While everyone else released breaths they hadn’t realized they had been holding, Derpy fell into relieved hysterics, babbling her gratitude for Amethyst while battling the urge to hug her daughter tightly and never let go. Dinky, herself, was heaving tremulously with a vacant gaze as she realized what had happened, and how close she had been to death.

Meanwhile, the filly’s saver held her eyes shut briefly, nerves eased from alleviation. “Thank all that is holy, that was too close…” She winced as her horn throbbed with pain. When she attempted to conjure a very simple illumination spell, her horn did no more than trigger a measly spark from its tip before a numb feeling expanded from its base through her forehead. She quickly cancelled the spell, discerning easily that was not a good sign.

“My magic is spent. I just used up the last of what I had, it’ll be at least an hour before it recovers enough to do anything substantial,” Amethyst informed, then turned to the filly she had protected. “Dinky, I need you to transfer your magic to me.”

Derpy’s sobs silenced. “…What?”

Broken from her near-death stupor, Dinky was stunned by the instruction. “Um… h-how do I do that—”

“Sweetie, wait,” Derpy interrupted, then addressed Amethyst again. “I-I don’t want you taking her magic.”

“The longer we wait around, the more likely it is someone else will die,” the unicorn argued. “I need my magic restored as soon as possible, taking hers would not only do that, but also make my magic more capable.”

“It’s dangerous for a unicorn if they lose their magic, she could be hurt really badly!” the mother countered firmly.

Amethyst’s lips twisted back in a snarl. “You’re really on a roll today, aren’t you? It wasn’t enough telling me earlier I should have gotten myself killed rather than punch a few more holes in an already dead body—”

“I wasn’t—”

“Now, you’re willing to risk everyone’s lives to keep a single pony from getting hurt. I just saved your daughter’s life, in case you forgot. The least you could do is consider yourself indebted.”

“For yer information, Amethyst,” Applejack piped up venomously to her left, “a unicorn losing his or her magic can be irreversible, and at worst, fatal. Ah figured a former student at Celestia’s School fer Gifted Unicorns would’a known that.” At the mention of the loss of magic being potentially lethal, Dinky gasped, a look of fear careening across her face.

Amethyst gave Applejack a sideways glare. “And what would an earth pony like yourself know about magic?”

“Mah friend is the princess of magic, in case ya forgot,” the farm pony replied coolly, “and I won’t tolerate you believin’ that, because you saved Derpy’s kid, she owes you the right to put Dinky in harm’s way!”

“Look, I get you’re trying to get on some moral high horse, but that isn’t going to get us anywhere. We need to think about what’s best, and as for taking Dinky’s magic, ‘can be fatal’ and ‘will be fatal’ are two different things.”

Lily’s jaw dropped in shock. She began with a furious tone, “How can you—”

“Lily,” Roseluck whispered sharply behind her, cutting her off, “don’t antagonize her.”

“Did you hear what she—”

“Just don’t get on her bad side,” the yellow earth pony insisted. “Trust me, I know how she is.”

Amethyst hadn’t caught the conversation between the flower ponies with Applejack having challenged her once more. “So, what do ya suppose you plan on doin’ with her magic? ‘Specially since a minute ago, it seemed like ya didn’t have a plan.”

The unicorn was silent for a moment. “I’ll figure something out.”

“So, lemme get this straight. You’re concerned about waitin’ around too long, but ya got no problem puttin’ a filly’s life in danger for her magic when ya ain’t even got a dang clue what to do with it?”

“What, am I suddenly the bad guy now?!” Amethyst lashed out. “After everything I’ve done, risking my life to get to this bag, using every last ounce of my magic to save you ponies? I’m trying to do what I need to do to protect us.”

“Us, or you?”

The purple unicorn’s next words froze in her mouth as she processed the farm pony’s question, her irritation blending with suspicion. “Wait a minute, what are you trying to say?”

“Well, let’s face it, you put an awful lotta effort into savin’ that filly’s life just to want ta put it on the line seconds later without a second thought.” Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Lemme ask you, did you save her ‘cause you cared, or so you could get what ya needed from her?”

Amethyst’s brow creased. “Why does that matter? Who cares if I saved somepony for the right reason or not? She’s alive!”

“Ah care, especially when you’re usin’ that as justification for tryin’ ta put that same pony’s life in jeopardy!”

“There’s no guaranteethat it’s fatal!” Amethyst growled. “It’s a possibility. My magic is the only hope you all have, and if I need that filly’s magic to strengthen my own and have a higher chance of putting a stop to all of this,” her eyes moved to Dinky, “then that’s a risk worth taking right now!”

Dinky whimpered, scared tears leaking from the edges of her eyes.

“No!” a young voice shouted. It clearly hadn’t come from Dinky, and so Amethyst looked to the only other pony it could have been.

Feeling her stomach tighten momentarily from the sudden attention of everyone else, Apple Bloom steeled her resolve and continued. “Dinky is mah friend! Ah don’t care if it’s just a possibility, ah don’t want her ta risk dyin’ for me, or any of us. Just ‘cause you saved her life doesn’t mean she owes ya hers!” She scowled at Amethyst, before giving her classmate a supportive glance.

“Well said, ‘Bloom,” she heard her big sister say, and felt pride well up inside her chest.

Amethyst’s eyes gradually slid from left to right in their sockets, observing the other survivors. Each pony—aside from Roseluck—either had a glare trained on her or reacted to Apple Bloom’s speech with a murmur of agreement. “So that’s how it is?” she uttered darkly. “You’ll all turn against me because I’m the only one with the proper sense to do what’s logical rather than—”

Boom!

Every single pony simultaneously looked up toward the low, thunderous sound that caused the ground below their hooves to tremble. What followed were screams and equally horrified gasps at what they saw.

Overhead, blocking nearly the entire cyan half of the sky, Cloudsdale drifted rapidly in the direction of Ponyville in a downward trajectory, roaring a deep grumble that shook the air around the survivors. In its wake, a massive streak of thick, black smoke trailed off into an infinite distance. As the giant floating metropolis got closer, more details became clear, such as the running streams of once rainbow liquid along the edges of the city having transformed into an ill, brown color, as well as the raging fires that swallowed nearly all the cloud-built houses and buildings, and finally, what could distinctly be deduced as the catalyst for the havoc wreaked upon the city. The weather factory had been completely reduced to ruins, whatever was left smothered in a vicious inferno that reached the height the building itself once had.

A dark shadow blanketed the market road as Cloudsdale passed over the town in its descent, closer and closer to the ground. To everyone’s fortune, the colossal city continued past Ponyville, sparing the town from collision. However, this did not serve as any substantial consolation to the survivors, who came to realize they would still not be safe from the effects of the impact as the distance between Cloudsdale and the ground shortened to mere meters just shy of the mountain holding Canterlot.

Not soon after, another boom rang out, this time, louder and heavier. The ground beneath the fallen city erupted with a mix of dirt and rock, shooting into the sky with great force. At the center of the uprising of earthy debris, Cloudsdale practically fell apart, the structures of the city collapsing inward on themselves with a blast of gray dust and dissipating cloud.

The light quaking of the ground underneath Ponyville intensified to powerful tremors. Throughout the market, the rattling of glass and shuttering of nearby wood structures could be heard along with the distant bellowing of the crumbling city.

“Rosey?! Rosey, are you—”

Roseluck didn’t hear the rest of Lily’s words over the sudden, shrieking explosion in the distance. In seconds, Cloudsdale was engulfed in a blazing ball of fire, emanating a near solar level of brightness that made the flower pony squeeze her eyes shut. The tremors in the ground escalated even further, and it took a great deal of focus to remain balanced on her hooves.

Once the presence of light through her shut eyelids dimmed, she slowly lifted them. Where she once laid her gaze on a mist of dust around a destroyed Cloudsdale, she now saw an expanding canopy of fire and smoke rising from its charred, unrecognizable remains. She had little time to let the reality of what she had just watched sink in before she noticed trees on the horizon lurching excessively in the direction opposite the explosion, before closer and closer trees replicated the same behavior. Suddenly, leaves on the ground just down the road leapt into the air while restaurant chairs flew onto their sides.

“Brace yourselves!” Roseluck shouted. On cue, the left side of her body was slammed by a heavy gust of hot wind. She quickly shifted her weight off her left hooves and dug her right hooves into the pavement, pushing as hard as she could. She felt her body tilt ever so slightly, and with the ongoing shudders in the ground, she was afraid the pressure of the powerful current would have its way. Thankfully, the wind began to subside before it could successfully push her to her demise, and after transferring her weight once more, she recovered her equilibrium completely.

“Rosey?” the voice of Lily called out, a voice she was instantly reassured to hear.

“Still here,” Roseluck responded, then looked up. “Is everypony else okay?”

As her eyes panned from right to left, she saw immediately that Derpy and her daughter were still standing, as well as Bonbon. Though, she caught something strange about the three of them, namely the dread-filled sorrowful expressions on their faces.

“A-Apple Bloom…?”

The anguished, hitched words of the farm pony made their way to Roseluck’s ears by the time her eyes landed on her, where they then remained glued, shrouded in horror.

Applejack’s face was paralyzed in an expression of distress, her pupils shrunk to dots inside her widened eyes as they stared down at the limp body in front of her—the body of Apple Bloom, mangled and twisted unnaturally, bleeding from grisly gashes marking the entirety of her body, discoloring her yellow fur and pooling onto the ground below.

Applejack shut her eyes and opened them again. The yellow filly remained unmoving on the ground in a rapidly growing red pool. So, she blinked, again and again, her logic clouded by desperate denial. Over and over, she frantically shut her eyes, praying that she would open them and Apple Bloom would be alive—that this was just a delusion being played by her twisted mind.

But her little sister never blinked back.

“A-aa…” Applejack’s breaths grew more and more sporadic until she was full on hyperventilating. Her face contorted, crazed with agony. Then, from the depths of her being, a long and terrible shriek tore from her throat.

“Applejack…” Roseluck uttered, but she could not figure out what to say. Applejack was shaking badly—she had to say something. “I-I’m so sorry—”

“Apple Bloom!!” Applejack’s voice cracked, laced with the rawest form of pain and hysteria. Her breaths were ragged, eyes shaded a deep red as they locked onto her dead sibling. “Ah… ah promised you… a-ah promised—!”

“Applejack, listen to me, this isn’t your fault,” Roseluck said, but her words merely fell on deaf ears as Applejack continued to whimper between frantic sobs, muttering unintelligibly to herself.

“Ah’m s-sorry… ah failed you… m-ma, pa, ah failed you…”

“Applej…” the name caught in Roseluck’s throat when she saw the farm pony’s hoof budge just slightly—an act done seemingly without a care of the potential lethality of such a simple movement. Moreover, the expression Applejack directed toward her little sister had changed. From the layers of anguish and guilt, more features emerged: anger, loathing, and that which scared Roseluck the most. Intent.

She spotted Amethyst out the corner of her eye, still standing. “Amethyst… your magic, quickly…!”

“I can’t…” the unicorn said quietly, a grim, yet static look aimed at the ground.

Roseluck heard the lone sibling breath heavier, almost in a preparatory manner. “Listen, Applejack, whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t—”

Applejack closed her eyes, then threw herself to the ground, toward her sister.

“NO—!!”

CRRACK!

As soon as she heard the otherworldly screech, Roseluck’s eyes screwed shut, blocking out the sight she knew well was coming. She only wished she could block out the crunches of punctured flesh, and the heavy thump of the body hitting the ground. Even after the horrible sounds died away, she didn’t open her eyes, unwilling to face the torn and bloodied body of her friend. However, her mind conjured awful images out of the vivid stains in her memory of the bodies strewn across the road, and the sobs and weeps of the ponies around her, and when she recognized her imagination was no better of an alternative, she inevitably lifted her eyelids and confronted what she wished beyond anything she would not have to see.

Through the blurring of her vision, she could distinctly make out Applejack’s motionless, marred corpse, face down on the ground, one foreleg extending out across the grass while the other was draped over the chest of her younger sister, holding her with no intention of ever letting go.

She immediately regretted looking, but now that she had, she could not pull her eyes away. They were cemented by a sick fascination of the two bodies on the ground, of the two sisters, unseparated even in death.

The irony was cruel, yet poetic. Applejack had promised Apple Bloom that as long as they were together, she would not let anything change that. And, whether out of impulsivity, or out of resolution, she kept that promise.

***

Time had passed, but Roseluck could not initially tell how much as the sun had not moved an inch.

The only evidence that time had even turned in the first place was the clock tower at the end of the market road, which told her it had been nearly an hour since Applejack and Apple Bloom’s demise.

Since then, the environment among the remaining survivors had reached its lowest point—a point of despondency and desolation from which she knew it would never recover. The death of the two Apple sisters had been the straw to cement the acceptance that their survival was merely a sadistic method of torture designed by fate rather than an incredibly fortuitous chance to live.

Not a single word had been spoken by any of the remaining ponies. The only sounds Roseluck heard came from Lily, sniffling silently, and Dinky, weeping softly as she lamented the death of her school friend. Derpy made no noise but had a visibly puffed and reddened face from having cried earlier. Meanwhile, Bonbon looked down dolefully with a hint of tenseness in her features, eyes darting between her hooves and Amethyst.

Amethyst’s facial appearance was hard to read. Her eyes hung dully, brows held in a permanent frown. Though, rather than conveying any specific emotion, she looked… detached. Contemplative. Roseluck could not assign any specific term to the unicorn’s expression, but it worried her. There was something off about it.

Amethyst’s eyes snapped in her direction, and Roseluck promptly looked away.

After another few minutes had passed, the silence began to agitate her. She felt compelled to say something. “Lily…?”

“…Yeah…?”

She realized then she had no clue what to say. “H-how are you holding up?”

There was no response from her friend at first. Since she could not see her face, it was hard to tell if Lily had heard her or not.

“…My legs are starting to hurt, but I’ll be fine, I guess. You?”

“I…” she drew a blank, understanding now how foolish her question had been. Physically, she was okay. Other than that, she was scared. Demoralized. Everything that was happening still didn’t feel real to her. It had all changed so quickly; just a few hours ago, she was happily selling flowers amid a vibrant, energetic town, laughing with her best friend and conversing enthusiastically with customers and passersby alike.

Then, suddenly, Death’s impatient gaze was observing her just inches away, waiting for one wrong move to step in and do its dirty work. Suddenly, hundreds of carefree ponies going about their day without a worry in the world had been reduced to lifeless corpses piled offensively on the ground by the cold and twisted blade of fate.

It all felt like it should have been a nightmare—that her wish to have still been in bed had been fulfilled and she would wake up to reality, get ready for work and head off with her wagon of beautiful flowers, crafted from passionate hours of delicate handiwork.

The continual whirlwind of thoughts tortured Roseluck’s brain, and after all of it, the only response she could conjure was: “…I don’t know.”

The silence returned, remaining uninterrupted this time. She was itching for a distraction from her own mind, from the fear she felt for herself and the ponies around her, from the guilt she felt over Applejack’s death and having not done more to stop it, regardless of the illogicality of her self-reproach.

She just needed to stop and think differently. She was alive, and so were others. That had to mean something. Things could not have been completely hopeless if they had been given a chance to live. In fact, they had gotten that chance because Twilight Sparkle had come back to give them a warning, because she believed there was a chance for them to live through this. The key to their survival was there, they would just have to work harder to find it, bring their heads together to figure out a solution. There was simply no way they could have exhausted all possible ideas. After all, they had magic on their side; it had been an hour, and Amethyst had said her magic would be restored by now. If they were to just put some critical thought into their available options, then—

“This really is it, isn’t it?”

Lily’s words snapped her back to reality, unsettling her with the dark undertone they carried.

“There’s no hope for any of us, is there? The princesses are gone, Cloudsdale is destroyed, everypony around us is dead and now we’re slowly being picked off… is this… i-is this the end…?”

Roseluck heard the young voice of Dinky break out into sobs once more.

“We can’t give up,” she said with optimism that was blatantly forced. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out, we just have to think.”

“Rosey… the world is ending around us. You can see that too, right?” Lily left room for a response, and when one didn’t come, she continued, “What hope could we possibly have in all of this? Maybe… maybe we just need to face the fact that we’re not going to live through this…”

“Cut it out,” Amethyst growled bitterly, which took everyone by surprise. She then looked away from the ground for the first time in an hour, scowling icily at Lily. “Who are you helping with your whole ‘we’re all gonna die, everything’s hopeless’ spiel? Have you actually tried thinking of ways to fix this before deciding the only option is to just give up?”

“As far as I’m concerned, we’ve gone through all our options,” Lily replied faintly, seemingly apathetic toward the unicorn’s targeted harshness. “You said it yourself, didn’t you?”

“No… no, actually, we didn’t go through all our options.” Amethyst’s glare shifted to Derpy, deepening as it did. “It’s just that some ponies would rather be selfish than do what’s right.”

Derpy noticed the hostile gaze aimed at her and adopted a bewildered look. “Selfish…?”

“You want to know what’s interesting?” Amethyst continued. “Applejack and Apple Bloom’s deaths were preventable. If I had Dinky’s magic when I asked for it, I would have been able to save them.” Her lips shaped into a snarl. “Do you have anything you’d like to own up to, Derpy?”

The pegasus made a face like she had been shot, her lip fluttering open but forming no sentence. Her pupils contracted, staring off blankly as she was overcome with guilt.

“H-how dare you!” Lily spoke out in disgust. “You’re suggesting their deaths were her fault?!”

Amethyst’s expression remained unchanged as her eyes fell back on the earth pony. “You’re talking like it’s not true.”

“It isn’t true!” Lily exclaimed adamantly.

“Lily, I told you not to—”

Roseluck’s sentence was immediately shut down, “I don’t care. She can’t get away with saying stuff like that!”

“Saying what? That I was right?” the unicorn snapped back.

“It doesn’t matter! Dinky shouldn’t have to risk her life for any one of us! Applejack and Apple Bloom didn’t want her to do that for them.”

“Yeah and look what happened to them! It’s the same thing that’s going to happen to us if we don’t start doing what’s necessary to get through this!” Amethyst’s frantic eyes began darting from pony to pony. “Oh—but you’d all rather just give up, right? You’d all prefer to put our lives at risk in favor of a single pony because, Celestia forbid, we don’t remain pure? Fine then, if you’re all refusing to take the clear option, then surely one of you must have another idea in mind! Anyone?!”

There was not a peep from any of the other survivors as they all bore nervous downcast looks.

This infuriated the unicorn further. “Nothing? Not one single idea from any of you?!” She leered rightward. “How about you, Roseluck? You haven’t said much this whole time, got anything to share?”

The request seemed to startle the flower pony. She bit her lower lip, and for just a moment, she glanced at Dinky, her mouth moving to speak, but then her eyes wandered downward while she opted to remain mute.

Thankfully, Amethyst didn’t stick on her for long. “Lily? Anything to say that isn’t lamenting how the world is ending and we should just give up?”

Lily pursed her lips, exhaling exasperatedly through her nose. “Look, there’s a chance an opportunity might show up if we just wait a—”

“How about you, Derpy?” the unicorn interrupted abruptly. “Since you evidently don’t have our best interest in mind, you’d best hope you have something helpful to say for once.”

“I… I do have everypony’s best interest in mind!” Derpy insisted, voice shaking as she fought tears from Amethyst’s accusations.

“Then prove it, because either I take Dinky’s magic, or you better have an alternative in that brain of yours that impresses the hell out of me.”

“Y-you’re not taking her magic…”

“By all means, the floor is yours. Let’s hear what you got.”

Derpy’s eyes flitted about. “U-um…” Her eyes then brightened as an idea came to her. “Well, Twilight said she wrote a spell to help us… maybe we can try to write that spell ourselves?”

Amethyst rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, let me just grab some parchment and quickly scribble down something that takes months—even up to years to develop.”

Derpy’s face fell in dejection. “I-I’m sorr—”

But Amethyst wasn’t done. “Way to keep up your streak of dumb ideas, telling me I should have died rather than damage an already dead body, getting Applejack and Apple Bloom killed over a slim chance of death, and then topping it all off with yet another example of the stupid, useless pony you are!”

“LEAVE MY MOMMY ALONE!!” Dinky screamed, her face crumpled in a mix of anger and tears. Amethyst seemed taken aback—startled, almost—by the raw venom in the filly’s outburst, and the sheer hatred Dinky’s narrow eyes bore into her.

Amethyst’s lips twitched lightly, as though looking for words, but her mouth stayed shut. The expression on her face had not changed once since she had first spoken after the hour-long lull, yet there was a noticeable difference in the way she carried herself. Her eyes averted slightly from Dinky’s hostile gaze, remaining that way while she made no sound, leaving only Derpy’s sobs fighting off the silence. However, that didn’t last much longer.

“Bonbon, if I see you stare at my foreleg one more time, I’m going to do something you’re not going to like,” Amethyst warned with an eerie calmness that leaked animosity.

Bonbon blinked sporadically, evading the unicorn’s line of sight with a stuttering breath.

Upon addressing Bonbon’s fixation on her injury, she noticed just how much it was hurting. She groaned, a grimace finally changing her facial expression.

“Celestia, why does it hurt so damn bad?” she hissed, looking down to check her foreleg. Even through her fur, her face visibly paled.

A ghastly, deep purple color traced the long gash, spreading outward and blending into a perfect red that shaded nearly her entire leg. While the entire inflamed area ballooned past the point of normal swelling, the purple skin around the injury itself bulged to the point where it looked as though it would burst any second. It was blistered, with black, vein-like streaks running across it, as though hookworms were burrowing underneath the skin.

It didn’t take a medical degree to understand that this was no ordinary infection. This was something else. Something worse.

“Wh… what…” she muttered, scrunching at the festering welt pushing from her skin, like it had been boiled. “…The hell is happening t… h-how is it already this bad?!” She focused magic into her horn, wincing initially from the flaring soreness, but managing to get a visible aura. However, upon attempting to cast a general healing spell, her horn merely crackled and faded back to normal much like when she had tried to lift Twilight’s bag.

“No no no, that can’t be…” She lit her horn again, directing her magic at a body beside her before raising it several feet into the air. With confirmation that her magic had restored itself, she frustratedly tossed the body to the ground, where it collided with an audible snap. Again, she willed a healing enchantment upon the inflamed area on her leg, and again, her magic fizzled out like a torch extinguished by heavy wind.

“Th-this doesn’t make sense…” she uttered in a faltering tone, before seemingly remembering something and looking up. “Bonbon, you know about these creatures, what happened to my leg when it got me?”

Bonbon went stiff, as though put on the spot. “I-I don’t know.”

The odd delivery of the earth pony’s reply didn’t slip past Amethyst’s attention. “…Yes you do.”

“No, I don’t—I-I swear I don’t,” Bonbon asserted, failing to hide the stress in her demeanor, and unfortunately for her, it was spotted.

Amethyst’s furrowed brows lowered. “You’ve been looking at my leg ever since it was injured. Even right after it happened, you went ‘oh no’ like you knew it meant something bad.”

“I…” Bonbon started, but then sighed, grimacing in resignation.

“Thought so.” The unicorn’s glower intensified. “Now I’m going to ask you one more fucking time: what is happening to my leg? And don’t even try lying.”

Bonbon’s lower lip trembled in hesitation. Every time she opened her mouth, she was seized by an anxiety that forced her lips back together.

“Spit it out!”

With a startled tremor, the earth pony caved. “The creatures’ bodies… they contain some sort of poison—I don’t know if it’s a venom, or an infection, but…” she paused, steeling herself for what she was going to say next. “Injuries from Wraiths are… f-fatal.”

The last word left Bonbon’s mouth, and in that moment, the anger in Amethyst’s face faded, and raw, unadulterated terror progressed its way across her features. With shrunken eyes and a face drained of all blood, her entire body went rigid in cold shock.

“What…?” she stuttered weakly.

Bonbon didn’t say anything more, avoiding the scrutinizing gaze from the unicorn desperately seeking any evidence that the revelation of her impending death was some sort of fabrication.

“I warned you about lying to me…” Amethyst said, her voice wavering.

Bonbon refused to meet Amethyst’s eyes. “It wasn’t a lie.”

There was no sign that the earth pony was bluffing. Amethyst’s lungs suddenly began working overtime. “H-how much time do I have?!” she demanded.

Further overcome by distress, Bonbon closed her eyes. “Um… an-another h-hour, I think…”

“…An hour…?” Amethyst whispered. A laugh escaped her lips. “You… y-you’re telling me now… that I’m going to die in an hour…?”

“I… I thought it would be easier if you didn’t know—”

“Easier?!” Amethyst erupted hysterically, spittle shooting from her mouth. “How the hell does that make anything easier?! Tell me how to stop this fucking infection!”

“There’s no known cure!” Bonbon admitted, her stomach twisting tighter as the worst of the news was pressured out of her—a fact revealing that Amethyst’s fate had been sealed the moment she had been wounded by the invisible entity.

A fact the unicorn refused to accept. “No… I’m not buying it. You know the cure, you’re just not telling me.”

“I really don’t know, I swear!”

“Sure you do,” Amethyst snarled. “You also swore you didn’t know what was happening to my leg, and that was a lie. You’re hiding it from me, aren’t you?” She then stopped, a vicious expression coating her features. “You want me dead, don’t you?”

Bonbon’s eyes widened in shock, “Want you dead…?!”

“That’s it, isn’t it? What is it, you don’t like the way I think? Because I don’t meet your ethical standards, I should be killed? Is that it?”

Bonbon’s lower jaw fluttered, her thought process unable to conjure a response, which Amethyst’s manic mind only took as a confirmation of her suspicions.

“Tell me the truth!”

Tears gathered at the corner of Bonbon’s eyes. “I don’t know a cure!”

“TELL ME!!” Amethyst shrieked, her horn flaring with purple light. A magic aura suddenly materialized around Bonbon, who let loose a terror-stricken scream.

“Amethyst, no!” Lily shouted, earning no more than an ear flick from the unicorn.

Derpy, watching from the sidelines as Bonbon let out fearful, pleading gasps in the confines of the magical hold, felt a fuse light up inside of her, and the bubbling anger she had been holding deep down exploded to the surface. “LET HER GO, RIGHT NOW!”

Amethyst’s crazed eyes snapped over to the pegasus, taking on a sharp coldness on discovering who had spoken. Her horn dimmed, and Bonbon felt her motor functions return to her, a flood of relief evoking a fit of sobs and pants.

Derpy, on the other hand, felt her limbs freeze under the unicorn’s narrow glare, but with the built-up indignation in her gut, her courage returned anew. “You don’t use your magic on her like that!”

“Stay out of this,” Amethyst muttered, her voice hardened and cruel.

Derpy didn’t back down. “No! Y-you have no right to treat her, or anypony else that way!”

“I’ll treat anypony anyway I want. And I’m not going to let you—a waste of space who only knows how to get ponies killed—tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“Shut up!” Derpy yelled. “I won’t let you walk over me anymore. I am not the reason Applejack and Apple Bloom died!”

Amethyst’s jaw clenched tightly. “Yes you are. You’re they reason they died, and you’ll be the reason all of us die, because you can only think of yourself.”

“You’re the one who only thinks of herself!”

At that, Amethyst’s brows rose. She let out a genuine sounding chuckle. “Me? I only think of myself? Is that why I nearly killed myself trying to get Twilight’s bag? Why I saved your daughter’s life? All that compared to you, who can’t give her daughter up to a small chance of death to save all of us?”

“You don’t know that it would save us! You even said you didn’t have a plan for what to do with the magic.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“Yes, it does!” Derpy retorted, nostrils flared. “You say you want to protect us, but you want to put my daughter’s life at risk for something you don’t know will work!”

“It’s better than waiting around and dying anyways,” Amethyst growled, her cheeks flushed with rage.

Derpy shook her head, the unicorn’s aggressive demeanor no longer bringing out any signs of timidity from her. “I don’t think you believe that,” she firmly stated.

Amethyst said nothing in response, her curled lips flattening almost warily.

“You just threatened Bonbon even though she said she didn’t know a cure. For somepony who wants to protect everyone, you have a very odd way of showing it.”

“Derpy…” Amethyst stammered, her muscles twitching.

“You threatened her because she didn’t have what you needed, didn’t you? That’s why you seem to have no problem harming my daughter. You need her magic, and she won’t matter to you anymore once you have it. It’s why you freak out at everypony who doesn’t agree with you or say what you want to hear.”

“Shut up…!”

“You just see all of us as a means to an end. You don’t care about saving us, you care about saving yourself!”

Roseluck was fixed nervously on the growing fire behind Amethyst’s eyes, a welling sense of dread roiling in her stomach. “Derpy, don’t—”

But Derpy could not care enough to hear it. “You’re nothing but a selfish bully who goes against ponies that don’t benefit you! If there’s anypony here that’s useless, it’s you, and if that infection in your leg kills you, you'll be just as useless as you were before!”

Amethyst’s horn fired up. Derpy suddenly glowed with a purple aura, and without warning, her entire body lurched forward, sending her stumbling to regain her balance. She only had time to get out a horrified gasp of realization.

CRRACK!

Roseluck’s desperate hope that her worst fear would not come true shattered, watching with absolute terror as the pegasus’s body erupted with gash after gash, convulsing with each tear that carved itself into her flesh, before dropping to the ground with the heavy thud of loose limbs. Derpy’s final expression of fear and betrayal gradually relaxed into a haunting blankness.

“MOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!” Dinky shrieked hysterically, breaking out into distraught wails as her mother, marred and blood-soaked, lay motionless on the ground in front of her.

“Amethyst… w-what did you…. what did you do?!” Lily stuttered, seized by a petrifying shock as she processed the murder she had witnessed.

Derpy’s killer stared at the winged body on the ground with a morbid apathy, her face vacant apart from a mild frown. Each breath in and out was shaky but rhythmic, her body trembling lightly while she, herself, appeared composed. Despite her features displaying a distinct surprise at her own actions, she showed no signs of regret or remorse for them, completely unperturbed by the mangled corpse or the piercing screams of the filly frantically begging her mother to wake up.

Bonbon heaved gasps of air, interrupted by erratic sobs. “Y-you killed her!” she choked out. “You psychopath! You killed he—” She suddenly felt her body go stiff as a cloak of transparent purple magic surrounded her once more. She cried out, a stark panic shooting through her.

Amethyst’s deranged eyes moved off Derpy’s body and to the scared earth pony. “What is the cure?”

“I told you, I don’t know!” Bonbon shouted emphatically, hyperventilating as she was held in the same magic that had killed another pony moments earlier.

“I don’t believe you,” Amethyst pressed. “You conveniently knew these things could infect ponies, but you don’t know how to stop it? Bullshit. What is the cure?”

“You going to kill me too?” Bonbon asked, her voice quavering.

With no change in the unicorn’s expression, her horn’s luminosity intensified, and Bonbon felt her body unwillingly lean slightly off balance, provoking a terrified whine from her throat.

“Let her go, Amethyst!” Lily demanded loudly, an overwhelming sense of powerlessness swarming in her gut as she watched the torment Bonbon was being put through, incapable of doing anything to stop it.

“Do not test me. I’m the one in control here,” Amethyst asserted. “This is your last chance. What is the cure?”

Realizing that the unicorn would not let her go unless she gave her an answer, Bonbon threw out the first thing that came to mind. “H-healing spell! A highly c-concentrated healing spell can take care of most infections!”

Amethyst raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I already tried that. How do you figure?”

“With powerful enough magic, there’s a chance it will stall it from spreading,” Bonbon reasoned. “There, I gave you what you wanted, now just let go of me, please!”

A bitter look crossed Amethyst, but before she could speak, a gleaming light in the corner of her eye caught her attention. When she looked, she saw Dinky with her moisture-layered eyes squinted in concentration, face screwed up in malice and exertion while her horn pulsed with all the magic she could muster.

Not a second later, a splitting pain erupted through Amethyst's temple while whatever caused it carried enough force to throw her head violently to the side.

CRRACK!

Bonbon immediately felt the grip of magic release her and steadied herself on her hooves. A wave of relief swarmed through her, but she didn’t spare time to recollect herself as ears were stabbed by the supernatural screech that marked an attack by the invisible creature, and her eyes were blinded by the massive purple blast of radiance expanding before her.

The blast began to fade rapidly, revealing the transparent shield underneath launching sparks in every direction, and within, a still alive Amethyst, pouring everything she had into the defensive spell she had managed to conjure just in the nick of time.

The shield dissolved into tiny particles, and Amethyst yelled out, her face contorted in agony. She stared down with wide eyes at the deep slit that reached around her shoulder, flowing with a gush of crimson fluid that streamed down her foreleg. However, her attention was then caught by the warm trickle crawling down the side of her face, and at the same time, over her shoulder, she spotted a sizeable rock on the ground, speckles of scarlet decorating one side.

Her wicked eyes slowly shifted in their sockets until they met Dinky, who cowered under the threatening glare that now bore into her.

“That was a mistake,” Amethyst said calmly. Her next actions betrayed the tone of her words as her horn, followed by Dinky’s body, glowed with a rippling, transparent light.

“Amethyst, no!” Bonbon screamed as Dinky cried out in terror, panicked tears trailing down her cheeks. “She’s a kid! You’re really going to stoop that low?!”

“She tried to kill me,” Amethyst muttered, her trained gaze unbroken.

“You murdered her mom!” the earth pony retorted, her voice cracking with emotion. “Amethyst, please stop! What happened to you?! You used to be kind and considerate—for Celestia’s sake, you volunteered as Ponyville’s lead organizer to help ponies, why are you doing this?! Please, don’t kill her!”

Amethyst had no reaction to Bonbon’s plea, or so it seemed at first. Her lips then pressed together, and she exhaled deeply through her muzzle.

“I’m not going to kill her...” she finally said, cancelling her magic and letting the crying filly free. “...I still need something from her.”

Bonbon’s momentary relief quickly turned to apprehension.

“Dinky,” Amethyst began, “give me... your magic... now.”

The filly whimpered with sudden dread. “N-no...!”

A malicious sneer. “Give it to me, NOW!”

“You killed my mommy! I’m not giving you an-anything!”

Several seconds of silence passed. An icy shadow masked the older unicorn’s features.

“Last... chance.”

Dinky continued to stand her ground, refusing to back down to Amethyst's demands. Meanwhile, Roseluck was focused once more on Amethyst, and noticed that same fire from earlier building behind her eyes again.

So, she acted before Amethyst could. “Dinky, do it.”

Dinky reacted with a gasp, looking to her with confusion and fear, while Bonbon targeted her with a shocked stare of disbelief.

“Rosey!” Lily exclaimed, stunned by what her friend was suggesting. “What—”

“She’ll kill her if she doesn’t!” Roseluck argued solemnly. “She has to.”

“B-but...” Lily’s breath trembled with distress and anger. She looked to the unicorn in desperation. “Amethyst, you can’t do this!”

Amethyst paid her no heed, having not taken her sight off the source of the magic she desired. “What’s it going to be, Dinky?”

The weeping filly looked to the other survivors, but instead of finding reassurance, she was met with despondent expressions of acceptance that Roseluck was right about what needed to be done. The last pony she looked to was the yellow earth pony herself, who wore a grim look that tried to be consoling upon meeting her eyes.

“You have to do what she says, Dinky. I’m sorry...” Roseluck said with disguised urgency.

The filly conceded with a fearful moan. “H-how do I...” her question was interrupted by convulsive sobs.

Amethyst didn’t need to hear the rest. “Just ready your horn like you’re performing any ordinary spell. When you feel the pull of my magic, your natural reaction will be to resist it. Don’t.”

After several more tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, Dinky took a deep, stuttering breath, then grimaced with effort as she transferred energy into her horn, which slowly but surely glowed a bright purple.

Without warning, Amethyst cast her own magic, and a deeper purple aura layered itself over Dinky’s. The filly yelped, feeling the flow of magic that wasn’t her own attempt to infiltrate her reserves. Acting on a programmed instinct, she blocked the flow of energy at the base of her horn, preventing the foreign magic from getting through.

Amethyst winced, and growled in frustration. “I said don’t resist.”

With an uncomfortable murmur, Dinky concentrated on reversing her body’s natural defense mechanism. Much like how she would manipulate any regular spell, she tried to will the blockage her magic had created to dissipate, and after several moments, she felt it begin to loosen. That was enough for Amethyst’s significantly stronger magic to push through. An abrupt yanking sensation surged through her forehead, causing her to scream loudly in pain, before thousands of pins and needles stung her, like the feeling of pinching a nerve, but everywhere on her body at once.

Between the two unicorns, a bright purple line of undulating light stretched from the younger’s horn to the older’s, forming a continuous stream. While Amethyst flinched from her system’s efforts to merge unfamiliar magic with her own, Dinky let out high-pitched whines of pain as she felt her magic not just being removed, but violently ripped from her.

“Stop it! It’s hurting her!” Bonbon cried out, earning no acknowledgement from Amethyst.

Both the protests of Dinky’s body having its magic unwillingly torn away, and the vicious coursing of exterior, controlled magic within her combined to hold her in a persistent world of torture, such to the extent that she was unable to handle it anymore and attempted to block the point of transfusion at the base of her horn once more. However, the presence of magic much stronger than hers would not allow her to do so, and instead, a wave of nausea washed through her as she felt her reserves drain faster, the energy she had discharged to block Amethyst’s magic instead contributing to the faint stream connecting both their horns.

When this happened, Amethyst’s horn glared slightly brighter, then expelled a short array of white sparks which knocked her head back an inch. A pained grunt escaped her lips, carrying a small but distinct trace of fright.

Despite the suffering she experienced, Dinky had been aware enough to catch Amethyst’s reaction to the sudden acceleration of the transfusion. With a vocalization of strain, she charged her horn with magic again. The sickness flooding her body intensified, and the flow of light between their horns picked up speed. Just like before, upon reaching Amethyst’s horn, it bloomed and sparkled uncontrollably, and the unicorn grit her teeth, struggling to stabilize the larger sum of power rushing into her system. “Don’t do that!” she said sharply.

It was now clear to Dinky, with Amethyst’s response to the increased intake of magic, as well as the resulting pressure against her horn, that her body wasn’t capable of absorbing large amounts of energy at once, and this clarity led Dinky to a revelation.

She now had a way to fight back.

However, what she realized upon this discovery was the cost of doing so. She would have to drain the energy in her body entirely, and likely faster than what was safe. The words of Applejack rushed back to her of the dangerous and potentially fatal consequences of losing magic. She felt the swarming, scalding heat in her limbs, and the creeping nausea from the magic she had already lost. If that already carried its own risk of death, there was no question that emptying it all at once to retaliate against the murderer before her bore the strong probability of amplifying that risk to a certainty.

But when her eyes dropped to the ground and saw her mom lying there, cold and motionless, having been heartlessly taken away from her, she was no longer afraid of that probability. A raging fire erupted inside of her and, with a roar of vengeful grief, she pushed all the energy she had left through her horn.

The string of magic between the two unicorns flared, and Amethyst gasped as the heavy concentration of magic hit her horn, thrusting her head off center again. Her horn scattered sparks every which way, the purple aura around it slowly shifting to a red hue.

“Gah! Dinky, stop!” she shouted urgently. Unfortunately for her, the filly did not listen, and the flow of her magic came even faster. Amethyst felt her horn protest with an intense ache, unable to merge the input of magic at the sheer rate Dinky was transferring it. In a panic, she tried to cancel the spell, but the buildup of raw, unprocessed energy crammed into the base of her horn would not allow her to do so. Acting on desperate inclination, she attempted anything her frantic mind could think of—pushing back against Dinky’s magic, stretching the stream of magic between them to break the connection, reaching out and dragging the filly to her death—but the overabundant energy inside her horn acted as a blockage, barricading her own magic from getting through.

Powerless to stop what was happening, her composure evaporated completely. “Dinky, stop! I’m sorry about your mom, okay?! I can bring her back! I-I know the spell, I can bring her back to life! You want to be with her again, don’t you?! DINKY!!”

Dinky heard each of Amethyst’s pleas, intending to take advantage of her young and susceptible mind, and she saw right through them. She was determined to make Amethyst pay for taking her mom away from her, and with a final anguished, arduous scream, she pushed the very last of her magic into the stream. The relentless rush of energy aggravated Amethyst’s horn to a smoldering red that chaotically bursted with showers of bright particles. The emitted light grew brighter and brighter, escalating to a blinding shine.

Suddenly, it exploded with a thunderous crack, expanding into a white flash of plasma that launched Amethyst off her hooves and onto the ground, before dissipating into flickering dust. Stricken with a cold dread, the unicorn rapidly mustered the magic for a shield, only for none to appear when she cast the spell. The reason was quickly revealed when her horn, severed completely from its base, landed on the grass beside her.

CRRACK!

Amethyst’s head ruptured, blood and brain matter projecting from her new featureless face, and jerked to a grotesque angle, dropping to the ground like a stone. Her body jolted several more times as rows of gashes ripped through her chest and stomach, before going completely still.

There was a shared lull between the survivors who had watched the fallen unicorn meet the end karma had planned for her. Unlike every other death, there was no mourning this time, but there was no happiness either, only the unanimous satisfaction that justice had been served.

Bonbon spent little time reflecting on Amethyst’s demise as sudden concern rang through her mind. “Dinky! Dinky are you okay?!” she called, her eyes spinning to the light purple filly, and felt the warmth of relief suffuse her body when she saw that Dinky was still alive and standing. Though, that relief would be short lived, as after her first glance, further observation of Dinky’s appearance implanted her with a seed of rapidly growing horror.

Beneath her charred and smoking horn, Dinky’s eyelids shuttered, covering over half her fading eyes. A river of sweat drenched her brow while her mouth hung open, drawing strained, ragged breaths. Her head began to hang ever so slightly, and her body slanted on quivering legs that threatened to give out any second.

“Dinky? Hey, Dinky!” Bonbon said with a raised voice. To her dismay, Dinky hadn’t seemed to hear her, only responding with a weary moan as the shaking of her legs became more noticeable.

“It’s her condition,” Roseluck said, her tone bleak. “She’s fatigued from losing her magic and that’s triggering it again.” Her eyes fell, a tear trickling down her face. “She’s going to faint no matter what we do.”

The bitter revelation struck Bonbon like a physical blow, terror rushing over her as she now noticed that Dinky was exhibiting the same signs she had displayed earlier before fainting. She subconsciously looked over at Amethyst’s lifeless form, and then back at Dinky, a deeper despair piercing her heart.

“No...” Lily muttered in denial. “No, no, there has to be something we can do! Ameth...” She trailed off, the harsh reality sinking in that there was now no one who could save her. “Dinky! You have to try and stay awake!”

But it was fruitless. Before long, Dinky’s eyes proceeded to roll backward as her head dipped forward. Her muscles slackened, and her supporting limbs gave way underneath her, leaving her to drop into the jaws of death.

The world suddenly slowed for Bonbon. As she watched Dinky’s legs fold, letting her body fall freely, something switched inside her. Whatever concern she had for her own life disappeared in an instant, and a protective urge rose up inside her—the same urge that had motivated her to become a secret agent, setting her life on the line to protect ponies from dangerous threats.

Dinky had been through more than anyone else—endured more hardship than any other survivor—and, despite that, she had been the bravest of them all, risking her life to stop Amethyst from hurting more ponies. Now, fate was going to repay her with a pitiless death.

And Bonbon could not let that happen.

Instincts taking dominion over her judgment, she rushed from her spot, blitzing toward the unicorn filly, who was inches away from collapsing to the red-stained road. She heard the distressed cry of her name from Lily, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered at that moment was saving Dinky, regardless of the cost she knew well would befall her. With a great push from her hooves, she launched herself over Dinky and shielded the smaller body with her own larger frame.

She could almost feel the unearthly, shadowed presence of the creature closing in on her, but she didn’t feel scared. In fact, in an odd way, she was glad to be going out the way she was. She would be able to see Lyra again, and she was certain her best friend would be proud of her.

Roseluck could not bring herself to look as the monster’s bellow cracked through the air, and the crunches of flesh and bone made their way into her ears even while being pressed flatly against her face. She could not bear to see another friend be ripped to shreds before her, and after the horrible noises stopped, her gaze remained on the ground as she silently grieved for the earth pony with a lasting respect for her self-sacrifice.

Lily’s lamenting abruptly went silent, and a choked, high-pitched gasp left her throat. “Oh no...!”

The short sentence instilled a foreboding anxiety within Roseluck's being. When she, against her own inclination, finally looked up, a sick part of her was suddenly glad Bonbon had gone out the way she had.

Because at least that way, she would never have to know she was too late.

...Move

All the marks and crevices etched into the counter of the flower stand had become cemented in her brain. She could close her eyes and create a perfect image in her head, draw it down to the finest details. It wouldn’t have been hard, considering it was the only thing she had stared at for the last few hours.

Or had it been days? She could not tell. Her stomach stung with hunger. Her throat was rough and itching from thirst. Her legs burned from standing in place for an eternity. It had been several hours, that was an easy one. As for how much longer than that, it could have been any amount of time. The ground directly below her had not gotten any darker, and she was sure the other side of the road was still shaded in the shadow of night. Of course, the Ponyville clock tower was just up and to her right—all she had to do was lift her eyes and find out.

But if she did that, she would have to see the bodies, and she could not bring herself to do that. If she did, she would have to face the reality her mind still could not fully come to believe.

Her and Lily were now the only ones left. Everyone else was dead, killed by their reckless decisions, by their clashing ideals, and by their own undoing. Now, whatever chance they had left to survive was gone. There were no princesses with a solution on how to fix everything, no elements of harmony to swoop in and save the day, no unicorn with the magic advantage of casting a spell to help them. Now, there was truly nothing they could do except wait—not until some fortune transcending luck saved them from this hell, but until their bodies could not wait any longer. The question was, how much longer they would be able to wait?

That was when she finally looked at the clock. It was nighttime, half an hour into the next day. This was the part where she would realize she had work in six hours and scramble back home to get a proper rest. It was impossible to tell when her next rest would be, now. It was impossible to tell if she would ever rest again.

Her eyes returned forward, only to sweep over the scene beyond: the sea of slaughtered corpses layering the crimson road, and among them, the survivors who had been given a chance, only to suffer the same fate.

She looked away, anywhere she could so long as it was not at the innumerable degree of death in front of her, and where her sight landed was on the toppled pots of flowers beside her hooves, vases containing weeks upon weeks of hard work and labor for a line of work that no longer served a purpose, for a passion that no longer mattered, a special talent that was meaningless in an ending world.

Roseluck wondered whether things could have gone differently, whether everyone would have come to a solution had they co-operated without letting morality impede their judgement, or whether Amethyst would have discovered a way to protect them had Derpy agreed to let her daughter give up her magic in the first place.

Yet, even after all of it, she held on to the fact that she and Lily were still alive, and with enough persistence, a light would eventually show at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel. She refused to accept that destiny had given them a chance to live just to snuff it out. Their survival had to mean something, and the longer she thought about it, the more everything began to make sense.

It was a game. A sadistic, wicked game manufactured by Death to test them, see if they could structure their pawns tactically, endure each trial of loss, suffering and hopelessness, and finally, outlast Death’s patience for however long it would take until they won. And she had played the game perfectly—only speaking when necessary, withholding her beliefs, remaining on Amethyst’s good side—and she was still here. That simple fact meant it could not have all been for nothing. She was doing everything right, she just had to play the game to the end.

And she was not going to lose. She was going to wait however long it would take until Death was bored, pass each one of its trials until that light at the end of the tunnel showed itself. Roseluck had not been broken yet—not by the fall of the princesses, nor by the destruction of Cloudsdale, nor the loss of her friends, Applejack’s suicide, Bonbon’s futile sacrifice...

She had always been a stubborn pony—easily rattled, perhaps, but resolved. It was the whole reason she had gotten into the flower business, ignoring the pressures from others and even from herself, holding on to the firm belief that her months of patience and passionate dedication had not been a waste. When it mattered, her resolve always trumped her doubts and despondencies, which was why she was not going to give Death the satisfaction of a victory. There was nothing else in its arsenal that would break her.

After all, she still had Lily—

“You still there...?” Lily whispered.

Roseluck’s thoughts were swept away. She looked up at her friend, who still faced the opposite direction. “Yeah,” she replied.

Lily did not give off a sense of reassurance from the response, or any reaction at all, for that matter. It had seemed like a mere checkup to make sure her friend was still alive before entering another extended round of silence. However, the silence did not last long at all.

“It’s just us now, isn’t it,” Lily said, dull and monotone. “We’re the last ones.”

Roseluck was not sure how to respond at first, given she was still processing it as well. “Yeah... looks like it.”

“I mean...” Lily faltered. “I mean in the world. The last two ponies alive.”

A chilling emptiness spread through her chest. That was not what she wanted to hear, yet she could not help but think about it. Could it have been possible that the whole world was afflicted by this, and it had taken out everyone else? That due to a miraculous warning... she and Lily were the only living ponies left?

She pushed the thought out of her head, her mind fixed in firm denial. “We don’t know that yet. There could still be ponies out there, surviving just like we are.”

“Cut it out with the optimism,” Lily said bluntly, catching Roseluck off guard. “Where do you get off being that way? Do you really believe that there are still ponies alive out there?”

“I...” Roseluck desperately wanted to say yes, but even she would not have believed that, and that hurt to admit. “...I-I have to,” she choked out, her throat aching with emotion.

Even though Lily faced away from her, she could tell by the tightening of her jaw she was grimacing. Her chest expanded fully, then gradually contracted. “Rosey...” A pause. “After everything that’s happened... there’s just no way that’s true. And even if it was, would it matter?”

Roseluck did not say anything, knowing what Lily was going to say next and hoping she wouldn’t.

“It’s not like they would be alive much longer anyway,” the pink mare continued. “They’d just be doing what we’re doing now, waiting and waiting for some light at the end of the tunnel that will never come. They’d be just as helpless as we are now.”

“Well, what if that’s what we need to do?” Roseluck began, clinging to the dim, wavering flame of hope she still carried. “What if we just have to keep waiting? What if there is a light at the end of the tunnel we’re just not seeing yet? That’s what you were saying to Amethyst before, wasn’t it? That an opportunity might show up if we wait longer?”

Lily went quiet again, this time for longer. Unease sprouted in Roseluck’s stomach. “Lily?”

“I think I’ve waited long enough.”

She felt herself freeze up. “W-what does that mean...?”

Another gap of space followed her apprehensive question.

Lily sighed shakily. “Rosey, I... l-look, there’ve been times where... where maybe I haven’t been as good of a friend as I could have been... times where I’ve lashed out at you or... taken you for granted—like this morning, making you set up all on your own—and I just...”

A grim frown was creasing Roseluck’s brow as she listened.

“I’m sorry about the times I’ve pushed stuff on you, or been crappy to you, and I want you to know that you really are one of the best friends I could have asked for—”

“Lily, stop,” Roseluck snapped in frustration. “Why are you talking like this?”

“Because I don’t want to wait anymore,” Lily said with finality. “I’ve done enough waiting to realize there’d be no point. This is never going to end. Whether we wait a few more hours or a few more days, it isn’t going to change anything. We’re going to die here.”

“For Celestia’s sake, Lily, you don’t know that!” Roseluck sharply retorted. “Can you quit speaking like everything’s hopeless?!”

Lily simply chuckled bitterly at that. “I’m saying it how I see it. And what I see is, it’s the middle of the night and the sun’s still up, Cloudsdale is on the ground instead of in the sky, and everypony around us is dead. How else am I supposed to speak?”

“Any other way! Like it’s not impossible for us to survive this—like you’re not just giving up!” Roseluck felt hot tears of dolor and frustration tickle her fur. “Damnit, Lily, we can’t give up!”

“Why not?” Lily demanded.

A sense of betrayal snared Roseluck’s heart. “L-Lily, what’s the matter with you?!” She could not fathom the way her friend was talking, the stark contrast between the pony she knew and the pony she was talking to. Could she not see it? The game, the tests, the trials... Her of all ponies should have been able to. She was the optimistic one—the one who would lift her and Daisy up when they were down or break up their ludicrous fits of panic. How could she give up so easily? “We’ve stuck it out this far, haven’t we?” Roseluck continued, her tone desperate. “We can’t just quit now. Maybe it looks like there’s no point, but we won’t know that unless we keep going. We have to try.”

Lily went quiet once more. Roseluck prayed it was a sign her words were getting through to her, disregarding the part of herself deep down that knew better.

“Roseluck,” Lily started with a soft melancholy, “even if, by some miracle, we made it through this alive... what would be left for us?”

The yellow earth pony’s mouth hung open for words that did not come as the question hit her like a sack of bricks.

“Our friends... our families... there’s nopony left. There would be no world for us, no life to live. Even if we somehow made it past this, we would still just be surviving.”

“Lily... you—”

“No, you’re going to say there’s still ponies surviving out there, and I don’t want to hear it.”

“Why would that be so hard to believe?!”

“Open your eyes, Roseluck!” Lily shouted, her tone emphatic and impatient. “Look around you! We were the ones who got the warning and look what happened!”

Lily’s words cut through Roseluck like butter, and for the first time, she truly looked around.

Bit by bit, everything began to hit her. First, it was the bodies of the survivors who had succumbed to the same fate as the rest of the town. Bonbon’s limp form draped over the body of Dinky, Applejack holding her younger sister close even in death, Derpy, Carrot Top, Thunderlane, Rumble, and Twilight, whose reckless decision cost them the pony that knew how to stop what was happening. Then it was the sky, divided into light and dark under the fall of the two most powerful ponies in Equestria, a sign that if the princesses had gone down, their subjects would not be far behind. Next, it was Cloudsdale, nothing more than a colossal mountain of charred, ashen debris at the base of Canterlot. Finally, it was Canterlot itself, which was, from where Roseluck stood, visibly darkened and lifeless with an apparent lack of activity, much like how she was certain Ponyville looked from there.

It was all in front of her, the reality of the matter she had been trying to avoid until now, the desolate and apocalyptic world that had been turned upside down in a mere matter of minutes surrounding the two of them: concrete evidence that backed Lily’s claims. It did not register to Roseluck until her view of the deafeningly quiet, corpse-riddled town became obscured by blur, that she was fully sobbing, warm, despondent tears trailing freely from her resigned eyes.

She realized now it was not just unrealistic to expect that others were still alive out there. It was plain stupid. They themselves had gotten a warning of what was to come before everything had begun, and in the end, the two of them were the only ones left, with no clear survival in sight.

Lily was right. Even if they survived, there would be nothing left for them to live for.

“You see now?” Lily said between weeps of her own. “You see there’s no point in waiting anymore? Even if we made it through this, what would we have?”

Roseluck’s sight stopped on the two Apple siblings, and she remembered Applejack’s vow to her little sister. “W-we’d have each other,” she replied insistently. “We’re still here, together. Doesn’t that matter?”

“Then let’s make sure nothing changes that.”

Roseluck’s eyes separated from the corpses and stared at Lily forebodingly. Lily was also facing the direction of the two sisters.

“I miss seeing your face... I miss your eyes, your mane, the color of your fur...” the pink mare said quietly, her voice forlorn and unsteady, “...and I want them to be the last thing I see.”

“Lily...” She already knew the next words out of her friend’s mouth would be the ones she feared since their conversation had begun, and no matter how much she prepared herself, she would not be ready for them. Because she knew once the words were uttered, Lily would never take them back.

Lily took a deep breath, and they came, “Let’s take a step. Both of us, at the same time. That way we’ll be together, just in a better place.”

“Please think about what you’re saying...” Roseluck’s choked words were instinctual. She knew they would not be persuasive, yet she persisted out of desperation.

“I have thought about it.” Lily’s high-pitched, hoarse words were unyielding. She repressed a sob before continuing, “There’s no home here. Not anymore. And I know you see that too. So, let’s leave. Let’s be together, like you said. Let’s be together where we’ll never be separated. Where we can be with our friends, our families... where we can be with Daisy.”

The mention of the third member of the trio wrenched Roseluck’s heart. Daisy wasn’t here. She had never gotten the warning they had because of the meteorite. The emptiness in Roseluck was suddenly made wider by the realization of the missing link in the trio that would no longer ever be, the pony that completed them as a true family—not out of blood, but by an unbreakable, sisterly bond.

She wanted to believe Daisy had somehow learned to stay still, and was alive somewhere in Dodge Junction, but then Lily’s arguments rang through her mind again. She could not have known, and that made Roseluck feel not just like a link was missing, but like a part of her was missing. And her heart ached badly for that missing part, yearned for a way to get it back...

And Lily had proposed a way. A way to reconcile that link; for them to all be together again.

Out the corner of her eye, she saw a victorious grin begin to stretch across Death’s face.

“...Okay...” Roseluck whimpered. “...We’ll step... both of us... at the same time...”

The sobs from Lily grew heavier, filled with sorrow but also carrying a touch of gratitude. “That’s it. T-that’s what’s best. We’ll be together, e-everything will be better.”

Roseluck closed her eyes, fear and anguish washing over her as the decision she was making hit her full force. Her heart thudded forcefully in her chest, pumping icy cold blood through her veins.

“We’ll g-go on three,” Lily said, fearfully, but prepared. “R-ready?”

“...Yeah...” Roseluck murmured.

“O-okay.” Lily took a deep, stuttering breath, and released it slowly. “One...”

Roseluck’s chest drummed faster, harder. Her breathing quickened, trembling violently. She had solidified her decision. There was no turning back.

“Two...”

Her head was a turmoil of emotions and thoughts. Lily’s words rang through her head, blaring and echoing, telling her they would be together, telling her they would go to a better place, like Applejack and Apple Bloom, bonded not by blood, but by death. She had solidified her decision. There was no turning back.

“Three.”

Lily turned from her spot and faced her best friend. Her lips curled into a joyous smile as her eyes met Roseluck’s for what felt like the first time. Then her smile began to fade. The radiant green eyes she stared into were filled with pain, sorrow, guilt... regret... and as she stared, she suddenly found she could not recall hearing Roseluck move, nor could she discern any indication that the yellow earth pony was in a spot different than she had last seen. In that moment, she was swept with the cold, shattering realization that the eyes she stared into...

...were no longer the eyes of her friend.

CRRACK!

Lily’s stomach split open, and she let out a visceral gurgle. Death looked back at Roseluck with a wicked grin, before rearing its scythe back and swinging again, carving a gash through Lily’s chest, and then slicing a final time across her neck.

Each slash was precise and specific, with time left between each one, ensuring Roseluck would suffer as each one ripped her friend’s body further and further, ensuring she would feel the full brunt of them as though it were her own body enduring each blow of fatal damage. She tried to look away, but Death pried her head back, held her eyelids open and forced her to watch, see the decision she had made, feel the decision she had made.

And she knew she deserved this, witnessing her best friend being taken away from her, the guttural croaks of Lily’s body losing its grip on life rattling her to the core, Lily’s betrayed eyes burning a permanent mark in her mind. She knew she deserved every bit of mental torture it dealt her.

But Lily had been trying to drag her down with her. And Roseluck could not let her do that.

Perhaps it was foolish to believe there was no one else out there. Perhaps it was true there was no world left to live in. But Roseluck did not care. The flame of hope within her waned, but it was still there, and she was determined to keep going until the end. Because if she gave up now, she would never know if there was a light at the end of the tunnel. If she gave up now, she would be wasting the chance fate had gifted her.

If she gave up now, Death would win. And she was not going to let that happen. She was not going to give Death the satisfaction of a victory.

Thus, Lily had given up.

And Roseluck played the game.

Lily’s lifeless body collapsed to the floor, and Roseluck let out a blood-curdling scream.

***

It had been an hour since Roseluck’s shift started. She had never seen so many ponies lined up in front of her shop, yet she had not made a single profit.

Her legs screamed in pain, demanding a rest she could not give them, and her stomach had stopped asking for food kindly, aching and growling for nutrients it had not gotten in just over a day’s time. Most of all, however, she was tired. Not just physically, but emotionally. Her body was worn from sleeplessness and standing and crying and screaming. Her mind was drained from the relentless whelm of anguish, regret, and remorse. Now, she no longer had the energy to yell or shed tears. Rather than experiencing any specific physical symptom or emotion, she was simply just… tired.

Hours upon hours of solitude had begun to weigh on her. The oppressive, dense silence drilled into her ears as it swarmed the environment, packed with ponies as far as her eyes could see, yet with no one to talk to in sight. Without a means to quell her urge for social interaction, she was left without a single break from the cacophony of unstable emotions and thoughts in her head, and with the protests from her legs and her sustenance-deficient body, everything culminated to leave her completely and utterly exhausted.

Exhausted, but not broken.

Even now, surrounded by the corpses of her friends, and as of several hours ago, her closest friend, she never gave up on her will, her stubbornness to pull through and reach the light she was positive was at the end of the tunnel. She would just have to keep going, with whatever strength she had left in her, until…

It came to Roseluck, then, that she physically would not be able to keep this up forever, and the pain she was experiencing made that abundantly clear. Regardless of whether she had it in her mentally to remain standing and push through to the end, the decision would ultimately be left up to her body at a certain point, and in turn, any control she had left over the situation would be deprived of her.

Though, it was not like she had any significant control to begin with. After all, she was pinned to one spot by the looming threat of death, no magic to her name, powerless to do anything beyond watch as everyone around her died one by one. The only control she currently had was over her own life, and eventually, even that would be taken from her.

As she reflected on how helpless she truly was, Lily’s words began to creep back into her brain, telling her that what she was doing was pointless, and that the path she was treading down would inevitably lead to the same destination she was desperate to avoid. She quickly pushed the words out of her head, as she had done each time they had invaded her thoughts in the hours since Lily’s death. It was getting harder to do each time.

If she believed in spirits, she would have assumed Lily was haunting her, whispering the words into her ear to persuade her into taking the step she had said she would, yet never intended to take. Perhaps it was a form of torture enacted from beyond the grave to make her feel as guilty and despaired as possible. Roseluck couldn’t blame her, how could she? She had betrayed her. She could only hope Lily understood why she had, but even if she did, it was not like she would forgive her. The look she had given Roseluck before her death spoke to that. Lily had not seen a friend when she had turned around. She had seen a stranger, a monster.

She had seen Amethyst.

Roseluck squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to believe she was nothing like Amethyst, but could she really say that after what she had done? After she had betrayed Lily…?

The more she dwelled on it, the more she realized she was more like Amethyst than she thought. The only real difference was she had not spoken up when she had sided with Amethyst on her ideals of morality, nor when she had agreed with her plan to take Dinky’s magic. It was not like that reflected any differently on her, though. In fact, she began to doubt whether she wouldn't have followed similar courses of action had she possessed magic like Amethyst…

No… no, she wouldn’t have. Amethyst was a murderer, who had resorted to extremes to get her way. She would never have done that… right?

A hollow dread seeped into Roseluck’s core. She had tricked Lily killing herself, because she had not gotten her way—because Lily had had no desire to keep going and had been trying to get her to adopt the same mindset. She would have never imagined doing something like that to her own friend, no less justifying it, and the fact that she had made her insides churn violently.

The worst part was, she knew if she were somehow given a second chance at that moment, she would have done the same thing again.

A revelation came to Roseluck that perhaps the only difference between her and Amethyst was one of them had displayed her inner monster proudly, while the other had chosen to conceal hers. Regardless of which side of the coin either of them had played, it was ultimately the same coin.

She did not want to believe she was anything like Amethyst… but was she truly any different from her?

Roseluck could not stand being alone with her thoughts any longer. She needed someone to talk to so badly, but despite the large number of ponies in the area, there was no one.

***

The clock had stopped ticking at 12:29.

Roseluck had to give Death props for that one. Not only did she no longer have a track of time, but the clock was stuck on a permanent reminder of when this had all started. Two birds with one stone; she had to admit it was clever, but it was going to take a lot more to break her.

Lily’s words had been coming back to Roseluck more frequently. It was taking an increasing amount of effort for her to shake them out, and a couple times, she had nearly allowed them to win her over. Her mind jumped to the idea that Lily had probably gotten frustrated her attempts to persuade Roseluck from beyond the grave had not worked thus far.

Lily must have hated her...

But she had every right, Roseluck realized. After what she had done, Lily’s animosity was warranted. She was a monster, after all.

Looking for a distraction from her thoughts, Roseluck checked the time again out of habit. It still read 12:29. Remembering the clock was not working anymore, she squinted at the sun out the corner of her eye to make a ballpark estimate, only to remember the sun and moon were no longer piloted by the magic of the princesses. With no other choice, she attempted to work out the time in her head. When she had read the clock while it had still been functional, it had been roughly 12:15. She presumed half an hour had passed since then, so... 12:45 was what she was going with. Though, she was certain her guess was far from accurate, and she knew down the line her guesses were going to be farther and farther off. She then figured she could count the seconds herself, and that way, she would not lose track, and it would help keep her mind off everything happening around her.

So, that was what she did. Starting from her 12:45 guess, she counted each second in her head, focusing on timing each second in a consistent, accurate rhythm with as little a margin of error as she could manage. Part of her wished Vinyl Scratch or Octavia were here; she had heard once musicians were better at counting time accurately since their work involved keeping time with their music.

Suddenly, Roseluck’s breath hitched. Down the road, she spotted the pair of musicians lying among the river of corpses, torn and bloodied. They lay side by side, together, bonded by death.

Roseluck shuddered, closed her eyes, and pulled herself back. 58... 59... 12:47. 1... 2...

One thing she was thankful for was, although her sense of rhythm was not perfect, she had an excellent sense of duration, attributable to her life-long commitment to gardening. If seeds were planted too early, the season would not be hospitable for them. If certain flowers were treated too late, they would begin to wilt. In her line of work, time perception was everything, and it was that inherent skill that had elevated her craft to the high standard keeping new and returning customers flowing day after day.

And now she was using it for... counting. Not for making a profit or satisfying ponies looking for a gorgeous complement to their homes, or gift for their spouses. Instead, it was being used for the purpose it had truly been meant for all her life: substituting a watch.

It had not been much longer than a day and she already missed her job. She missed the smiles it had put on others, the sweet reward of watching her hard work pay off. Moreover, she missed the interaction, with customers and even just passersby, but most of all, with Lily and Daisy. She missed working together, the banter between work hours, the reciprocated joy of their shared passion...

She realized suddenly she had strayed off track of the time again. She attempted to work out where she had left off, but it did not take long for her to merely abandon the effort as she knew there was no point. Her thought process would just keep prying her focus off the task and make her estimates further and further inaccurate.

She missed them. She missed her friends, their company, their warmth. She missed all the ponies who had come up to her shop every day. She missed her family—her mom, dad, sister... her little brother...

Tomorrow was her little brother's little league game. She was supposed to watch him play while visiting her family in Canterlot. She loved watching him play—not because she was a fan of the sport, but because her brother adored it. His enthusiasm toward baseball was much like how she felt toward her craft in gardening. But now... now, she would probably never see him play another game again. She would never get to see that little face of his light up when he was on the field, or see his smile beam whenever he scored a run at home base or celebrated a hard-earned victory with his team.

His smile... she wanted to see it again so badly, but after everything that had happened, she knew it was unlikely she would ever get the opportunity, especially since her family was probably—

Roseluck squeezed the tears out of her eyes, grumbling in irritation. Why did her mind keep jumping to the conclusion that they were dead? There was no way to know that for sure. Lily was wrong, she had to be.

It was all a game. She just had to keep playing.

She just had to keep playing...

***

“You never did tell me more about the guy you met at that party,” Roseluck told Lily, her voice raspy and grating from the progressing consequences of dire thirst. “You do still owe me for setting up on my own yesterday morning. Or... was it the day before...? I don’t know anymore. I guess you wouldn’t tell me now, after what I did to you...”

Lily’s vacant, glassy eyes stared back at her neutrally, her mangled body propped limply against the wall of the flower stand.

“Yeah, I figured,” Roseluck droned. “You probably hate me. I wouldn’t blame you. After what I did, you should hate me.” She sighed, “But you understand why I did what I did, right? Why I had to do it?”

Lily said nothing.

So, Roseluck continued, “You were trying to convince me to give up, and if I didn’t do what I did, you would have kept trying, and eventually you would have persuaded me to go with you, and I couldn’t let you do that. And I want to be able to say I wish I’d never done it—that I didn’t mean to do that to you—but... the truth is, I don’t even know anymore.”

She sniffled, choking back a sob. “I’m trying to hold on. I want to believe that I’m still alive because it was meant to be that way. I want to believe there are still ponies out there, alive and surviving, but... I-I’m starting to think you were right...”

Roseluck chuckled bitterly. “You’ve always had this way of noticing when I was lying. Maybe it was just because you knew me better than most others, but you’ve always had my tell figured out. Heck, you saw through all my rambling about a light at the end of the tunnel even when I managed to fool myself with it.

“So, I bet you can probably tell right now that I’m lying to myself, huh? You’re probably sitting there waiting for me to admit the truth, so I’ll finally stop distracting myself from the fact that I’m...”

Her mind prevented the last word from passing her lips, but it had not needed to be spoken, as the mere thought of the word had concluded her confession. Misery and despair wracked her mind and soul, her body too dehydrated to produce tears, but carrying enough energy to produce dry, coughing sobs. “I’m s-scared. I’m scared of a-admitting that I’m the last pony alive... I’m scared of facing the idea t-that there’s no point in going on... I’m... I’m scared of accepting that I’m going to die. I don’t w-want this to be how it ends... I-It’s not fair! I’m not ready to die!”

Each sob rippled through her chest and up her parched throat, sending waves of pain and discomfort across her body. Each heave of air came with a coughing fit, making the ache in her stomach flare with a hot intensity, and putting pressure on her protesting legs to continue holding her still. The minor lack of balance brought no sense of panic out of Roseluck.

“I should have just listened to you,” she lamented, looking back down at the lifeless body of her friend. “You were right. It’s stupid to expect other ponies to still be alive. I mean, look at me, I’m practically dying of dehydration, my legs feel like they’re going to collapse into dust... if I’m barely getting through this, how can anypony else be...?” She grimaced bleakly, the thought she had been trying to bury within the depths of her subconscious breaking through to the surface. “Maybe... maybe it’s time for me to...”

Roseluck trailed off, her eyes moving off Lily, and then rising slowly to the counter of the stand.

Directly on the other side, Death stood, garbed in its ominous black cloak, which concealed all but its hooves, bare of flesh and skin, and the shadowed bones of its muzzle, peeking out from the void of the drooping hood over its head. Despite the lack of a proper mouth, a grin was discernably defined on the skeletal features of its jaw. Even though Roseluck could not see it, she could still feel Death’s intimidating, challenging gaze boring into her from the darkness inside its raised hood.

Something bizarre then happened. Roseluck sorrow faded at once, her sobs morphing slowly into a genuine sounding chuckle before graduating into a full on fit of laughter that dragged on for another thirty seconds, like she had heard the funniest joke of all time. Afterward, she finally began to relax with elongated, hoarse breaths of fatigue.

“You’re tricky...” she croaked, another short chuckle emitting from her dry throat. “Credit where credit’s due, you almost got me. You almost had me convinced to give up. Guess I’m a harder nut to crack then you thought, huh?”

The cloaked figure said nothing in return.

“So, what’s the strategy?” she asked boldly. “Wait ‘till my patience runs out? Keep implanting doubts into my head until I finally decide I’ve had enough? Maybe you haven’t read my resume: planting flowers, since before I can remember to present. If you knew how much patience went into gardening, you’d know the last thing you want to challenge me to is a waiting game.”

Death simply kept smiling, not breaking eye contact.

Roseluck’s eyebrows rose. “You can smile all you want. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re losing at your own game. Kind of embarrassing too, considering you’re the one with the team advantage. You’ve got Lily helping you, whispering into my ear, trying to get me to follow her, and you still can’t get me to break.”

Death’s expression changed at that claim, no longer smiling and tilting its head to the side as if confused.

After a moment of attempting to decipher what that meant, something suddenly clicked. A series of dots connected themselves in her head, and from that came a tidal sensation of relief, but also confidence.

“Oh...” Roseluck muttered, laughing once more. “I get it now. Everything Lily was saying about there being no point, about there being no world left for us... that wasn’t her saying it. It was you. You made her say all that stuff—you’re the one putting her voice in my head!”

Roseluck closed her eyes, grinning madly. “She was always the optimistic one... of course, it makes sense now. She would never say that stuff! And here I thought she might have been right. Turns out I’m just a dumb-dumb who didn’t realize you were using my friend’s voice!”

She opened her eyes and looked up. Death was gone.

“Ha!” Roseluck guffawed. “Ran away because I caught on to you, huh?! You upset that I figured out your game plan? Scrambling for a new strategy now that you can’t use Lily against me anymore?” Her manic eyes shot to the sky. “Well, you better be thinking long and hard about one if you even want a chance at breaking me! Because it doesn’t matter how many tricks you have up your sleeve, you’re not going to break me anytime soon! You hear me?! YOU WON'T BREAK ME!!”

***

Roseluck looked up at the clock again. Still 12:29.

“Good going Mayor Mare,” she rambled. “Couldn’t even hire a damn maintenance crew for the clock so I could at least have a way to tell the time while I stand here doing diddly-squat!” She continued staring at the clock as though expecting it to suddenly restart and continue ticking, her frown deepening every second it didn’t. “Is it Wednesday? Thursday? Friday? Does it matter? Why am I still standing here? Is there a point? Roseluck, don’t think that way, you stupid idiot, it’s a game, just play the game. Don’t let it win. You’ll see, just play the game.”

Her eyes moved back to the counter but wound up drifting over the bodies again, a mistake she had yet not to make every single time. She let out a growl of exasperation, her face flushing with ever-incrementing anger. Suddenly, the lid popped. “Why couldn’t you all just co-operate?!” she shouted, glaring daggers at each one of the corpses before her. “Dinky, why couldn’t you just have given up your magic when Amethyst asked for it? Derpy, why did you have to keep antagonizing her, couldn’t you see she was going to hurt you if you didn’t stop? And Amethyst... for all that I’ve known about you since we were fillies—about what kind of pony you were, I never thought you would sink as low as murder. If you had just stayed reasonable, we could have worked something out. Lily—”

Roseluck’s gaze landed on the blank look Lily gave her.

“Oh—oh I see, you’re getting a kick out of this, huh? What, because I tricked you into killing yourself, you have the right to take pleasure in my pain?!” Roseluck snapped, but then thought about what she had said. “Never mind...”

Her anger faded, and a deep anguish wrecked her from the inside. “Who am I kidding? You have every right to enjoy it. I’m a monster, after all; I deserve all of this. I’m a terrible pony who did a terrible thing, and I deserve to be alone in this hell filled with the corpses of my friends, because I am a monster, just like Amethyst. If I give up now, I’ll be leaving the hell I deserve to be in, so, I’m not going to give up. There you go, see Lily? There is something left in this world for me. It’s my own personal hell for the terrible, awful pony I am.”

Roseluck’s eyes wandered to the divided sky that had not changed in two... three... some number of days. “Oh hey, that’s symbolic, I’ve even been in the sun this whole time, so now I’m getting sunburnt. I am literally burning in hell. There hasn’t even been a cloudy or rainy day, because apparently the weather factory is so unstable, it exploded and brought all of Cloudsdale to the damn ground! I can’t even have a change in weather, or just something different to look at! Why can’t I have anything? Why?! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?! WHY?!”

The last echoes of her rage faded, and for the next minute, Roseluck remained quiet, huffing with deep rooted fury.

“A mental breakdown doesn’t count as being broken, by the way!”

***

“99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around...” Roseluck paused, then sighed with a downcast look, “...except there’s no one to pass it to, so just put it back on the wall, there’s still 99 bottles of beer on the wall.”

With yet another method of making her experience any less agonizing failing, the lone mare’s eyes scanned her surroundings, looking for any other way to kill time. She had already counted the bodies: 126, not including any birds that had dropped out of the sky, or wild animals and pets. She could not bring herself to continue onto the animals. She had tried counting the petals on her toppled flowers, but that only cemented the reality that her special talent was now useless, by extension, nullifying her purpose in this world. She had counted the stars in the night half of the sky and picked apart every constellation. She had even begun tracing her own, but it soon became a consistent reminder of the death of the princesses, and it hurt her to even look at the sky anymore.

It hurt her to look at anything anymore. She shut her eyes. “...Somepony... say something... please...”

***

Her legs were screaming, shaking uncontrollably and demanding rest.

Her stomach burned, twisting as though shriveling up inside her.

Her throat, mouth and eyes itched violently, baren of any liquid or moisture.

And Roseluck was alone, afraid, and helpless.

There was no need for a clock now, she could tell it would not be long before her body gave out. It took everything she had to remain on her hooves, and every fiber of her being not to give in to the overwhelming temptation to let herself fall and give her legs the break they desperately needed—give her the break she desperately needed, from everything. From the constant torment of her own mind, from Lily’s betrayed words digging into her brain, from the continual sight of the market road and the ponies she knew and cared about lying limp and unrecognizable from one end to the other.

It had been days. Days of withstanding all the pain, fear and torment of her predicament. And nothing had changed. No one had come to help, no signs of other surviving ponies had shown, the sun and moon had not moved, Cloudsdale was still an obliterated mountain of rubble, and Canterlot had remained isolated and lifeless. There was only one thing that had changed.

The flame of hope inside her had officially died out.

Part of her had known it would come to this, but in her ignorance, she could not bring herself to accept it. But now, with her body on its last ropes and the end of the tunnel still nowhere in sight, she no longer cared about winning Death’s game, or the chance of ponies still surviving out there. Whether Death had said it, or Lily had said it made no difference, she had done enough waiting to realize it was true...

There was no point in going on. She was going to die here.

After everything... after all the persistence, the suffering, and the trials... Roseluck finally broke.

“I’m s-sorry, Lily,” she wailed, her voice weak and frail. “You were r-right... everything you said was right and I d-didn’t listen. I’m so s-sorry for what I did. I miss you so much... I should have gone w-with you... I-I should h-have...”

Roseluck’s raw, grief-stricken cries pierced the air as the emotional baggage she harbored within her burst, and all her grief came out at once, for what she had done to Lily, her longing to see Daisy, her failure to save Applejack, Dinky, Derpy, everyone, and finally, her realization that there truly was no hope for survival, that her destiny was merely to watch the world end and serve as the last laugh for Death before taking her life for its own.

This time, there was no fire that lit under her, sparked by a resilient will to prevent Death from claiming its victory. She was done playing. She could not do it anymore. She did not want to do it anymore.

“...I’m so tired...” Roseluck whimpered. “...I don’t want to be alone anymore... i-it’s too hard... I just want to hear your voice again...” Her best friend’s words filled her mind again, but this time she did not resist them. She allowed them to infest her thoughts and sway her, urge her to follow in Lily’s footsteps. And she embraced the words, because she knew now they were right. They had been right from the beginning, but she had been too stupid to see that.

There was a way she could see Lily again, and be together where they would never be separated, where she could see her friends and family again, hear their voices, and their laughter, and their cries, feel their touch, and their warmth. All it would take was one simple step, and she would get to be with them. Just one simple step...

She almost let the doubts creep back into her mind again, but just as swiftly as they had begun to enter, she blocked them out. She knew this was what was best. There was nothing for her in the world anymore, and waiting any longer would only lead her to the same end, with her body only lasting a few more hours before eventually giving out. There was simply no point. Nothing mattered to her anymore except seeing Lily again.

Her sobs went quiet, and she let out a trembling breath of finality. “You won’t have to wait any longer, Lily. We’re going to be together again.”

She was prepared to leave and join Lily, to be together with her, bonded by death—like Applejack and Apple Bloom, like Vinyl Scratch and Octavia. There was no longer any hesitation with her decision, nor any fear of what she was about to do, because she had finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel, and it resided in the world that awaited her beyond.

All it would take was one simple step...

Slowly, her eyes fell to her hooves, and she lifted one of them barely off the ground. It hovered there, frozen, for another few moments, before Roseluck closed her eyes. “I’m coming, Lily... I’m coming.” And then, with a reinvigorated sense of hope, she took a step.

***

Then another. And another.

Instead of the splitting pain of gashes cleaving themselves into her body like she had anticipated, there was no pain, or sudden transportation to the blank void of the afterlife. Instead, she was still in the same place, uninjured.

Alive.

Having not registered it at first, her eyes dropped to the rest of her body, examining herself for any long and thin lacerations like there were on the corpses. When she found none, her head spun about, searching for any sort of gate, entrance, or figure to guide her where her friends and family were waiting for her, but she found none of that. She still stood in the corpse-littered market by her flower stand, the lone survivor of the carnage surrounding her.

She stumbled across the road, overtaken by gasps of surreal disbelief. She was alive. She was moving, yet nothing was killing her. Between gasps, she fell into a violent coughing fit that sent her to the crimson ground, her dry throat searing with shooting needles of pain, and when it was over, she was left wheezing, her lungs protesting the intake of dehumidified air. Suddenly, her mindset narrowed to two primal concerns.

Food, and water.

Acting on their own, her legs propped her body back up and lugged it forward across the street toward Applejack’s wagon, the barrels attached still carrying as little as a dozen apples each, but that was more than enough. Throwing herself over the side of the wagon with an almost feral grunt, Roseluck reached a hoof inside one of the barrels, scooped an apple out and practically shoved it into her open mouth. With the forceful clamp of her teeth, a massive chunk of the fruit landed in her mouth, and she chewed. The explosion of sugary goodness was immediate, overwhelming her to the point of collapsing to her haunches as the juices contained within the chunk of apple sprayed across the insides of her mouth, inciting an audible moan of delight. There was absolutely no doubt they tasted as good as they looked.

She aggressively wolfed down the rest, a clear yellow slobber running down her chin, before tossing the apple core to the ground and reaching up for another one, making it vanish in a matter of seconds, then grabbing another, and another. By the time her basic physiological needs had been taken care of, seven apple cores sat on the ground next to the satisfied earth pony who, despite the discomfort of her stomach, currently felt as though she were in paradise, her moist lips curled into a wide, content smile.

“I won...” Roseluck sputtered, before laughing heartily, and tilting her head up toward the sky. “I BEAT YOU!! YOU HEAR ME?? I BEAT YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!” Her upper body leaned over until she was lying on the ground, sides clutched with laughter. “How does it feel? How does it feel that I was able to outlast you in your own game?! You thought I couldn’t do it, but I’m still here! I’M STILL HERE!!”

For the next minute, she lay there, her eyes squeezed shut while unleashing peals of hysterical laughter, before it dissolved into another burst of coughs—not to the extent of brutality as the last one, but still bad enough to sting. With several large, shaky heaves of breath, she placed her front hooves on the ground to prop herself up, and opened her eyes.

The empty gaze of Apple Bloom stared back into them.

Roseluck’s joyful smile faded entirely, leaving no trace it had ever been there. Horror shrouded her eyes as she stared at the body she only now realized lay directly beside her. Coming down from her thirst-quenched and hunger-satiated high, reality began to slowly crawl back into her conscience. Inching her upper body back onto her haunches, she stood on all—sharply aching—fours, eyes still trained on the lifeless body of the younger sister, as well as that of the older sister, still holding her sibling in her grasp.

“...I’m... still here...” came Roseluck’s hollow whisper.

With a lack of coordination, she stumbled across the road like a toddler that had just learned to walk, stepping over the stray limbs of the bodies below her. In her weakened state, she tripped over them several times, nearly collapsing to the ground. Clumsily but consciously, she made her way past the bodies of the former survivors, first Amethyst, then Derpy, then Bonbon and Dinky, then Carrot Top.

Each corpse she passed tainted her mind with the horrific images of blank faces retaining the ghosts of agonized expressions, bodies torn to shreds and contorted beyond recognition, and eyes vacant and clear, never to move again. Many days ago, seeing them all, up close as she was, would have caused her to kneel over and expel the contents of her stomach. Now, though, in her desensitized frame of mind, there were no feelings of disgust. What she did feel was a deep, ingrained sorrow that wrenched her heart more and more with each corpse she walked by.

Each one of their deaths had been meaningless. Needless. There had been a chance for all of them to live had they just heeded the warning they had been given and waited, before dismissing any chance of survival. Yet, they had refused to see beyond their veil of pessimism and realize the fact they had still been alive meant something.

Roseluck had been the only one to see that. Now, she was the only one left.

Her stumbling hooves brought her from the destroyed carrot stand holding Thunderlane’s body back around to her flower stand. Lily was still there, sat up against the wall of the stand, unmoving, dead by her own will, or rather, lack thereof.

Seeing her body now, despite being forced to look at it for days straight, hit her like Lily had died in front of her all over again. Lily had given up on her own solution of waiting longer, one that would have saved her, in favor of a pointless death. Roseluck remembered back to her futile attempts to convince Lily to stay alive for longer, and as she did, the agony inside her grew stronger. She had tried so hard, but Lily had just refused to listen, sticking to her obtuse view that the only way to be together was to take the easy way out, when, if she had just kept going, the two of them would have survived. Why did she have to give up? Why couldn’t she listen...?

Roseluck collapsed to the ground, dragging herself over to Lily and throwing her forelegs around the corpse. It was freezing to the touch, sticky from the blood that layered her fur, but Roseluck did not care. She pulled the body close to her chest and buried her head in Lily’s shoulder.

“C-come back... p-please...” she begged feebly, her body convulsing with heavy sobs she no longer had to suppress at risk of meeting an immediate death. She so desperately wished she could use Twilight’s spell to go back in time and tell Lily with absolute certainty that all they had to do was wait longer and they would have been together, bonded not by death, but by a link that had bound them together since childhood, through the years they had struggled to upstart their business, and onward during the shared pleasures of watching their teamwork blossom into the reward they had worked so hard for.

But now, the link that had once been incomplete without Daisy no longer existed without Lily, and with it no longer in her life, she felt empty, like there was a gap in her chest where something should have been, like part of her had died when Lily had.

Roseluck had won, but now, she questioned whether it was even worth it. There was no reward here. Her friends and family were gone, and she was completely and utterly alone. Nothing was different. A temptation began to fester inside Roseluck’s conscience, to just sit next to Lily and stay with her forever, wait out the clock and reconcile the link she yearned for, like she had intended to do before discovering she had survived.

...She had survived...

Suddenly, Roseluck lifted herself away from Lily’s cold corpse. Then, after one final moment of mourning for her best friend, she stood from the ground and began walking down the market road.

The realization had almost slipped past her despite having been right before her eyes. She had survived. If that was possible, there was also a chance that other ponies had made it as well. She could not fathom the idea that not one single pony had figured out to stay still and maintained the discipline to wait the game out until the end, regardless of having gotten a warning or not. There had to be someone still out there. She had to believe it.

So, through the immense aching surging up and down her legs, she pushed onward down the road, firmly intent on finding another living pony besides herself. Cautiously stepping over the accumulation of dead ponies who, earlier, had come to investigate Twilight Sparkle’s appearance from the future, she crossed over to the shaded part of the road with no destination and one sole objective in mind.

As she proceeded, her step carrying a sluggish stagger, she suddenly bumped into something headfirst, sending her careening backward. With a shake of her head, she looked to see what had obstructed her path, only to find that there was nothing in front of her. Perplexed, she took slow steps forward, and felt her left hoof bump a rough and unfamiliar surface, but again saw nothing when she shifted her eyes down to where she felt it.

Lifting a hoof to eye-level, she gradually thrusted it forward. Before her leg could extend completely, it stopped abruptly, and she felt the surface again. She tried pushing, and it felt like whatever she was touching gave ever so slightly but returned to its original position when she stopped applying force. Whatever it was, she could interact with it, but not see it, almost like it was invisible...

That was when it clicked. She had been so deluded by the constructs of her mind she had forgotten it was never Death that had been after them. It was the creature; the Wraith as Bonbon had titled it. She felt a moment of fright at this discovery, however, then noticed that the invisible form was not moving at all, and as she ran her hoof along the scaley texture of the surface, she registered how cold it was, like Lily’s dead body.

An icy chill shook her soul. There was never any game. It had always been a sentient creature, one that needed nutrients to survive just like her and any other living being. She had not outlasted Death’s patience, she had simply lasted long enough for the creature to die without the resources it needed to keep going. The creatures were hidden, lethal, and efficient, but they were not durable. Roseluck’s obsession with a made-up game had led her to accidentally take advantage of that.

She had not seen through any kind of veil. She had not discovered the inner workings of any game. She had just been incredibly lucky.

But luck could happen to anyone. After all, the creature’s body felt cold. It had likely been dead for a while, and that meant there had been no need for her to wait as long as she had, which only increased the odds that there were others out there. There had to be, she could feel it.

She approached the side of the road, pawing out to feel for the creature’s body while being mindful of any sharp limbs she knew from Bonbon were poisonous. At one point, her leg had fully extended without touching anything, so she continued down the road, and confirmed she had successfully made her way around the invisible entity when she had not bumped into any unseen blockade after a few seconds.

From there, she trudged along, eyes scanning for any signs of life, but all she was seeing were dead bodies, lying across the road, draped over the sidewalk or leaning against or off restaurant chairs. The only sound breaking the quiet, tranquil ambience was that of Roseluck’s lumbering footsteps clacking against the bloody cobblestone below.

She had once enjoyed the atmospheric balance of silence and aloneness, the early mornings of walking to work when no one was up and being able to bask in the stillness of everything. But now, walking down the empty, lifeless town, surrounded by corpses that had been happily driven, animated ponies not long ago, she could no longer stand being by herself. She had no tolerance left for the absence of conversation, lively bustling of hooves, or even just the sounds of wild animals going about their business. She had to find someone.

But when she reached the town square, she was greeted with the sheer impact the calamitous event had had on the rest of the town. Bodies were everywhere. Some looked as though they had died minding their own business, and others, like they had been running from something in a panicked scramble. However, what each and every single stallion, mare, colt and filly populating the road had in common was their maimed and pale bodies, permeated with gaping wounds that no longer had blood to spill, lying in thick, blackened crimson pools.

Roseluck had been confined to the market for so long and had only been able to imagine the vast scale of the event’s impact. Only now was she truly witnessing it with her very own eyes. Her despaired gaze swept across the corpses, seeing the familiar and expressionless faces of Berry Punch, Time Turner, Lyra Heartstrings, the two fillies, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon lying side by side, the sisters, Rarity and Sweetie Belle piled on the ground, the younger resting on the back of the older, unseparated, like Applejack and Apple Bloom...

“Is anypony there?” Roseluck called out. Her voice reverberated through the air, traveling far enough to reach a pony’s ears if they were in the area. No response came.

With a woeful coo, the lone pony traversed away from the town square. She could not stay there any longer. Navigating down a nearby alley, she saw more of the same pattern of lacerated bodies lining the road. Every few houses on either side of the alley contained shattered windows or caved rooves from pegasi that had been killed while airborne, several winged corpses hanging from window frames and impaled with fragments of glass piercings.

Echoes of Roseluck’s gravelly voice travelled down the alley, tenaciously calling out for any survivors who had been lucky and figured out Death’s game—no, there was no Death, it was the monsters. There had never been a game... With a shake of her head, she kept on, reaching the end of the street and exploring down another alley, where she once more called out, only for it to never reach anything or anyone that could hear it

She walked and walked, through alley after alley, calling out again and again, and going unanswered over and over. Each street she visited was the same thing: bloody corpses, broken houses, and that incessant, unrelenting stillness. She just wanted to hear something other than her own steps, or her own voice—just something other than herself.

More familiar bodies showed as she got to Sugarcube Corner. Cloudchaser, Time Turner, Button Mash, who was sat limp on a bench, head planted on the table beside a handheld console, Pinkie Pie, who lay across the open doorway of the bakery, Rainbow Dash, who was splayed face down with one of her ripped, battered wings outstretched across the road, ridged just enough to unveil the huddled, unmoving orange form underneath...

Yanking her head away from the heartbreaking sight, she moved past the bakery and wandered aimlessly down more roads of the desolate town. Though, with each road she went down, seeing more and more of the ponies she had known for as long as she could remember dead on the ground, her callouts for survivors grew fainter with each one. At one point, they had stopped altogether. It was becoming increasingly clear she would be greeted with nothing more than the mocking repetition of her own voice reflected back at her.

Soon, Roseluck’s legs were moving on autopilot. She found herself moving down another alley, feeling like she had already walked down it a dozen times already, before reaching a bridge at the end of the street and crossing it. From there, she was forging ahead toward a vast, empty plain of grass and fields, Ponyville gradually falling behind her. Her subconscious had a specific destination in mind, moving her hooves for her while she mindlessly allowed it to happen.

Her mind was numb from the mental agony of silence and solitude. She could barely see in front of her through the images burned into her retinas of the whitened, frozen faces of Ponyville’s citizens, the ghosts of their last moments hanging over them—expressions of panic, pain, or even serenity, like nothing had been wrong before their lives had been stripped away without warning... without a warning like the one she had gotten, serving as the only reason she had survived in the first place.

She did not feel any singular emotion, they were all amalgamated into a chaotic frenzy that wreaked havoc on her psyche. She was anguished by the loss of her friends, despaired from her hometown having been drained of any and all life, angry at the former survivors for having wasted their lives, and scared of the possibility of discovering she was all alone.

It was all too much for her to deal with. Even though she had survived the ordeal, the torment had stuck with her. Lily’s words still looped in her head constantly. She was still as broken as she had been during the seemingly endless days standing in one place under the presence of Death.

There was that mistake again. Or... was it a mistake? Was Death truly out of the picture just yet? The Wraiths had been the ones hunting her down, but that did not definitively mean Death had not orchestrated their arrival. After all, the Wraiths could have been another tool in its arsenal, another pawn in its sadistic game to test if she was diligent enough to discover and outlast its only weakness. Ultimately, it did not matter, as she had managed to exploit the creature’s weakness regardless.

Only, she had done so out of pure luck. She had not actually discovered the weakness until afterward. Had Death felt cheated by that? Had it felt her victory had been unearned because it had been accidental? Was that why she was still being tormented, why she still heard the pressuring words of her dead friend ringing through her ears?

Had the game ever actually ended, or was her survival merely the end of one test, and the beginning of a new one, designed with the same purpose, one to make her believe that she was the last living pony, so she would stop searching and concede?

And if so, what did Death still have planned for her...?

Roseluck’s hoof knocked into a tough, cool object, and what followed was a high-pitched scrape that travelled a short distance before fading. The blanket of turbulent emotions lifted instantly, her vision clearing and revealing a heavily dented gold-rimmed metal shield with a sun emblem in the middle. However, the emblem was split into several parts due to the three thin, jagged holes punctured across and straight through the shield.

The yellow pony looked up. Just beyond the shield lay two ponies dead on the pavement: royal guards, as attested only by the gold crest helmets and horseshoes they wore. Their body armor had been torn to shreds, lying in fragments next to their bodies, which were gutted brutally, perforated by wounds shaped identically to the holes through the shield.

The unexpected appearance of royal guards prompted Roseluck to examine her environment further. Below her was a pavement road which connected to a short wooden drawbridge behind her, spanning over a short creek and ending at a path on the other side which trailed down a green mountain she had apparently climbed. Meanwhile, in front of her, the road led to a large yellow gateway the guards had evidently been surveilling, held in place by even larger marble walls that enclosed the colossal towers and spires beyond.

In her dark, reflective stupor, she had managed to make it all the way to Canterlot. She had almost used the fact that it was nighttime to judge how long it must have taken, but then remembered the sun and moon were no longer anchored to the princesses. Though, the severe, stabbing pain in her legs, as she had now come to be aware of upon her return to reality, were enough to tell her it had been a very, very long time.

Roseluck plodded over to the bridge where, beyond the edge of the mountain, she could see Ponyville miles away. The town appeared lonely and gloomy, as though abandoned in spite of having been fully populated only a few days ago. Furthermore, from this new height, off to the right, she could see the full extent of the destruction that had befallen Cloudsdale. Although, there was nothing much to report as it had been entirely reduced to a charred mountain, remnants of the city’s structures no more than pieces of blackened rubble, and brown rivers that used to consist of every color of the rainbow flooding the smoky remains.

As she stared at the city and town, both fallen to the catastrophic event, her subconscious took control of her legs once more, bringing her back to the yellow entrance of Canterlot, past the corpses of the guards which struck her as a bad omen for what she would find upon stepping into the city. With anticipation cementing in her gut, she passed under the raised gate of the entrance, and proceeded onward, muttering a silent plea that she would find someone—anyone—here.

It had only been seconds since stepping within the borders of Canterlot when she saw the corpses. Countless ponies were strewn across the street, gored in the exact same way as all the others, decorating the surface below them with their own blood. Each one was positioned intermittently about, down the sidewalks, in store doorways, or on outdoor seats in a leaning posture, telling a tragic story of regular routines having been precipitously interrupted by an end they could not have possibly predicted. The sights before the lone pony were no more than replicas of the images ingrained in her head of the alleys in Ponyville, yet weighed upon Roseluck with a much heavier sense of foreboding for one daunting reason.

Nearly all the ponies she saw were unicorns, those with the magical capability of protecting themselves from the attacks of the creatures, as Amethyst had done. Canterlot was a unicorn-majority city, if she was going to find any survivors, it was going to be here. Yet, the further she walked, the more ponies she found wielding a horn atop their head, but not even one left alive.

As Roseluck pressed on, the front of her body collided with something, but upon investigation, she saw nothing in front of her. Her heart dropped, already having a feeling what that meant, but still lifted a hoof and stuck it outward. It was halted partway, and the surface it touched was cool and scaley, just like the creature she had discovered in Ponyville.

There was one here too. A creature in Ponyville and a creature in Canterlot. She was certain there had been one in Cloudsdale as well, since all three locations had been attacked at the same time. The pattern clicked in Roseluck’s head: a Wraith in every city and town—a planned, coordinated attack to take out each of them at once, so no time for a counterattack could be devised in time—a widespread game to test each group of citizens across Equestria to see if they could do what it took to survive. So far, Ponyville had lost, Cloudsdale had lost, and Canterlot...

She shook her head. She refused to believe Canterlot had lost—not because of the odds of survival for the city, but because if it had, there would be nothing remaining of the true reason her conscience had brought her here.

Her hooves carried her around the invisible entity, then began to navigate her down a mapped-out path, diverting from the main road of the city and down a side street with restaurants and shops on either side. From there, she weaved down several lefts and rights, passing similar roads, each of them individual homes for a scattered frequency of bloodied corpses. Anxiety latched harder onto her nerves when road after road presented her with no other living ponies, though, she was no longer paying them much heed now that her actual reason for coming to Canterlot was getting closer.

After many more turns, taken at a higher pace even with the beating her legs had endured, she ended up on a residential street, and paused. A gaze down the length of the street showed her that several of the houses populating the neighborhood had collapsed roofs or broken windows with either no visible cause or the torso of a pegasus hanging out.

With gradual footsteps, she carried on down the neighborhood, her eyes sweeping over the homes she passed. On various front lawns, she spotted ponies who had been killed while doing garden work, or children while they had been playing on the grass. She felt a pang in her heart when she noticed, on one of the lawns, a middle-aged mare she was well acquainted with, Missus Amaryllis, kneeled crookedly over the patch of bulbs next to her front doorstep.

Her eyes remained fixed on the body, memories resurfacing of her visits to the mare’s home every week as a filly. Most days had consisted of leisurely discussions over cookies and milk, but on the odd occasion, she had gotten gardening lessons from Missus Amaryllis, which she had opted to provide at one point given Roseluck’s keen interest in her hobbies. It was the whole reason Roseluck had begun to pursue gardening in the first place. She owed her career to the mare.

A career that no longer had a purpose.

With a hitched breath, she pried her eyes away and sped onward, head hanging as she attempted to erase the images and thoughts of the mare from her head. In her distracted state and quickened pace, Roseluck tripped over a red-stained foreleg, which caused her to careen forward and fall onto a patch of grass on the side of the road. With a pained moan, she placed her hooves on the ground to prop herself up.

One of her hooves met a cool metal object, clinking upon impact. She looked over and saw the item was a baseball bat. Her little brother’s baseball bat.

Her eyes shot up, examining the rest of the lawn she was on, before they landed on the house occupying the property. There, they remained fixed as she gradually rose to her hooves. She was here, the spot where her conscience had been guiding her.

Her parents’ house was as she had last seen it: small and quaint, with outer walls that had endured some wear and tear, though were remedied by the baskets of roses lining the front steps and hanging from the porch, a souvenir she had gifted her parents a while ago, not counting the ones she had placed recently to replace those that had not been adequately cared for. Though, on second glance, it appeared as though several more had come to need replacing since her last visit.

With lagging steps, she approached the front of the house, her heart drumming faster in her chest. Through the windows, curtains blocked an inside view of the house, but along the edges, she could not see any light peeking through, and as she got closer, she picked up on how quiet the house was, both factors lending themselves to a radiating sense of vacancy.

Her hooves clacked gently against the wood steps of the front porch as she climbed. The roses on either side were completely dry, clearly having not been watered in over a week. While some had not lost their color, others were beginning to wilt, desperate to be hydrated, yet fighting persistently to stay alive.

Reaching the top of the steps, she saw the front door had been left slightly ajar, revealing nothing but darkness beyond. Her dad had probably forgotten to close it. He was always so forgetful. Now that she thought about it, that was probably the reason the plants outside were dying. She had had to remind him several times to keep them watered regularly.

Standing before the door, her eyes remained trained on it for a couple of seconds, before she raised a hoof to the wood surface. A moment of hesitance overtook her, her heart thudding harder. Then, she pushed, the light whine of the hinges ringing in her ears as the door opened gradually into the entrance of the house. A dim light progressively flooded the entryway, and without wasting more time, Roseluck stepped inside.

“Rose!”

A gasp escaped Roseluck’s lips as the familiar voice graced her ears. Suddenly, a tight, warm grasp wrapped itself around her withers, embracing her with a fondness she had associated with only one pony in her life.

“M-mom...?” Roseluck mumbled, looking down at the pony that held her. It was an earth pony with a coat that was a slightly brighter yellow than her own, and a pink mane done in a bun. She could not see the mare’s eyes as her head was tucked over her shoulder, but she did not need to. She was certain it was her mother.

“Yes, honey. It’s me,” her mother said, lifting her head to her daughter’s line of sight to prove it.

As soon as Roseluck saw those radiant cyan eyes, she immediately leaned in and squeezed her with a deadly grip. “Thank Celestia, you’re still alive...” she cried, a flood of emotion swarming her as relieved tears coursed down her face. Nothing would take this moment of happiness away from her. After all her perseverance, she had finally been rewarded—not just with the discovery of another pony, but with her mother standing before her, in the flesh. Suddenly, all her efforts to play the game perfectly and stick it through the endless days of pain, agony, and torment were worth it for this blissful moment.

After nearly a straight minute, Roseluck finally released her hold on her mother, lips curled into a permanent euphoric smile. “I... I just—I can’t believe you’re... h-how did you survive?!”

“The same way you did,” her mom stated, her voice coming soothingly through a gentle smile, “We stood still, like we were supposed to.”

“We?” Roseluck questioned with a cocked eyebrow, before her attention was caught by the two ponies behind her mom: a light green stallion with a darker green mane, and a peach-colored mare with a dark purple mane. A fit of elated sobs and laughs shook her body. “Dad? Sis? You’re alive too? You... you all survived?!”

Her father adopted a confused expression. “Of course, Rose. Why in Equestria do you think we wouldn’t have?”

“Yeah, Rose. You make it seem like us being alive is hard to believe,” her sister added, looking equally puzzled.

“I-it’s just...” Roseluck stuttered, her brain still attempting to catch up with the fact that it had not just been her mother who had survived, but her father and sister as well, “...t-the bodies on the streets... everypony I’ve seen is dead, and... a-and Missus Amaryllis...”

A look of sympathy crossed her mother’s face, and she lifted a gentle hoof onto her daughter’s shoulder. “Oh, honey... I’m afraid they didn’t get the same warning we did. But it’s okay now. We’re all here, and we’re together, and nothing’s going to change that.”

Roseluck’s hoof rose to meet the one resting on her shoulder. As she felt the softness of her mother’s fur and stared at her relatives, alive and well in front of her, any lingering disbelief evaporated.

She had been right all along. There were still ponies left in the world. There was something left for her even after the world had ended. Her family was alive, and it was the best reward she could have gotten. No longer would she have to wait for a light at the end of the tunnel that seemed out of reach. No longer would she have to be tormented by an endless sea of corpses and bodies. No longer would she have Death’s cold voice in her ear, persuading her to give up on her search for ponies. Because she had found them. She had found the light at the end of the tunnel after everything she had endured, after so, so long.

She saw her father perk up. “Hey, so since we’re all here together, I think this calls for a celebration!”

“Ugh, does that mean we finally get to eat? I’ve been starving!” her sister replied impatiently.

Roseluck’s brow creased into a confused frown. “Eat?”

“We prepared a little meal together for when you got here, so we could all enjoy a reward for making it through this hard time together,” her mother explained, before stepping aside gesturing to the dining table at the other end of the room. Laid neatly across it were an assortment of steaming bowls and vegetable platters, along with plates, glasses and cutlery set up before each of the five chairs around it.

A momentary incredulous look plastered her face, before she realized just how hungry she was. Her mouth watered, a glimmer appearing in her eyes like she had stumbled upon heaps of gold. It all looked so good, especially after days of eating nothing and then chowing through seven apples in a matter of minutes.

“You...” in the midst of her food trance, she caught something in what her mother had said. “...You prepared it for when I got here...?”

“Of course!” her mother replied proudly. “We had faith that you would pull through. My stubborn little Rose wouldn’t let something like this take her down.”

“See, we actually had faith in you, unlike how you had such little faith in us being alive. It’s sad to see how low you think of us,” her sister mocked with a smirk.

“S-sorry...” Roseluck muttered feebly.

Her sister snorted. “I’m just teasing sis. Take a joke every now and then.” She stepped toward Roseluck and planted a hoof on her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here. We all are.”

The feeling of her sister’s hoof brought her an even deeper sense of comfort. She sniffled, and the edges of her lips curled into a smile. “Me too.”

Her sister mimicked the smile, and then leaned toward her ear. “Mind telling them you’re good to eat now? Staring at all that food and not being able to touch any of it has been killing me,” she spoke with a hushed voice.

With a chuckle, Roseluck turned to her parents. “I’ll be good to eat in like half an hour or so—”

“You jerk!” her sister giggled, giving Roseluck a playful push with the hoof on her shoulder. The two proceeded to share a heartfelt laugh, which was followed by their parents joining in. For a short time, the air was filled with joyful chuckles, and Roseluck basked in the moment she and her relatives were currently having together, feeling truly happy for the first time since the horrors had begun.

Once the laughter died down, Roseluck’s request came with no delay. “Alright, I echo sis’ sentiment. After days of standing still, I could really use a bite to eat. I’m starving.”

Her father gestured to the table earnestly. “By all means, make yourselves comfortable!”

All four ponies marched up to the table, Roseluck forgetting about the pain in her legs and approaching her seat with an eager stride. She took the spot at one end of the table, while her mother sat at the other end, and her father and sister sat on the left and right side respectively.

Once everyone was seated and began to scoop food onto their plates, Roseluck noticed the empty chair nearest to her on the right side of the table, a pit forming in her stomach. “Hey, where’s Pitcher? Isn’t he gonna eat with us?”

Her mother looked up from the mashed potatoes she was spooning onto her plate and gave her a sad smile. “Oh—your brother’s in his room. He isn’t feeling very well.”

Roseluck turned her head to the hall by the front door that led to her little brother’s room, before turning back to her mother. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, honey,” her mother assured. “Like you said, standing still for several days straight takes a lot out of you. So, he went to sleep.”

Her eyes fell to her empty plate. “Oh.”

“Speaking of several days,” her sister began, mouth full of roasted asparagus, “it definitely looks like it’s been that long since you’ve done anything about your mane.”

“Huh?” Roseluck said, brushing a hoof through her mane. She cringed upon feeling the accumulation of grease and dried sweat, wild strands of hair sticking outward every which way, which she knew would give Rarity an anxiety attack if she ever saw it.

“You still have that emergency brush of yours? It looks like you could use it right about now,” her sister suggested with a smirk.

“No, I... gave it to Lily,” Roseluck replied with a low tone.

“You mean your girlfriend in Ponyville who does the flower business with you?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” she stated firmly, before her eyes fell shut, a somber shade masking her face. “She probably wouldn’t even consider me a friend anymore.”

“How come?” her sister asked with a puzzled expression, taking another bite of her asparagus.

Roseluck was silent for a moment, then took a shuttered breath. “Lily and I were the last two survivors in Ponyville. She didn’t want to keep going, because she thought there was no one else left in the world besides us. She was trying to convince me to take a step with her so we could die together, and...” She lifted a foreleg to her eye, wiping the moisture from it. “I couldn’t let her do that. I was sure there had to be other ponies left and she was getting in my head, so I... I told her I’d take the step to make her do it, but I never did.”

“Oh, Rose...” her mother said, holding a hoof to her chest. “That must have been so hard for you... But what matters is you made the right choice. We’re all together now because of it.”

Roseluck sighed, slouching in her seat with a pondering gaze aimed at the table. “Yeah...” For a while after that, she sat quietly in her seat while her sibling and parents munched on the variety of foods available.

“Aren’t you going to eat something, Rose?” her father inquired through a mouthful of peas.

Roseluck looked at the assortment of delicious selections in front of her. “No... I...” She glanced at the hallway by the front door again, and then placed her front hooves on the table. “I should go check up on Pitcher.”

“He’s resting, Rose. Stay and eat with us,” her father said sternly, his authoritative voice startling Roseluck and making her descend back into her seat, sitting still again while making no noise.

Her father gestured across the table. “C’mon, we got mashed potatoes, asparagus—there’s pecan pie next to you, you’ve always said that’s your favorite—”

“I’m... not hungry,” Roseluck said.

Her father furrowed his brow puzzledly. “I thought you said you were starving.”

“I...” A pause. “I-I just don’t feel like eating right now...”

“Rose...” her father spoke, more softly. “Don’t fret so much about your friend, alright? From what I understand, you did what you had to do to survive.”

“...I-I did a terrible thing dad...” Roseluck whimpered. “I betrayed my own friend...”

Her sister spoke up this time, “The way it sounded to me was, she already had her mind made up, you just prevented her from making you do the same thing. That isn’t on you, sis. Just because she lost hope doesn’t mean she had a right to take yours away too. Besides, if you listened to her, you wouldn’t be sitting here with us.”

When Roseluck said nothing in return, her sister continued, a smirk painting her face, “And the best perk of that is, you get to see your favorite sister again.”

Even with her despondent mood, she still had it in her to roll her eyes. “You’re my only sister.”

“Which means you can’t deny it.”

A smile returned to Roseluck’s lips, and her red, watery eyes moved to her sister. “I love you, sis...” she turned to everyone else at the table. “I love all of you so much. Just... please don’t ever leave me...”

“We wouldn’t dream of it, honey,” her mother responded sincerely.

Roseluck looked at each of her family members, meeting their reassuring faces, and it dawned on her that she was truly home. The horrors had ended, and, in the presence of the ponies she loved, she felt what she had been fighting for since the horrors had begun: the sense she had been longing for, that everything from that moment forward was going to be okay.

She had won.

“Well... I don’t know about you, but I could definitely go for a slice of pecan pie,” her father said, picking up his plate and holding it out toward her. “Rose, if you don’t mind? The knife’s right next to you.”

Roseluck looked down next to her plate, and sitting next to it was a kitchen knife she had not noticed next to her before. Regardless, she picked it up in her hoof and lifted it over to the pie. As she did, she stopped, and instead brought the blade closer to her eyes. She was taken aback by the sight of the pony in the reflection.

Her normally raspberry colored mane gleamed with oils and perspiration, any of the neat straightness it carried before wiped-out and leaving behind a tangled, disheveled mess. Meanwhile, the fur on her face was grimy, resembling more of an orange hue, yet even through the muck and scattered strings of hair, the deep, caved bags under her reddened eyes displayed a patent history of fear, despair, and utter exhaustion.

She did not recognize the pony in the reflection.

With a blink, she took her eyes off the blade and looked back up at her father. “H-how big of a piece did you...”

Her father had put the plate back down. Suddenly, the smile on his face unnerved her. He gave his head a light shake. “It’s not actually for the pie.”

Roseluck frowned. “What...?”

“Everything will be okay, Rose,” her mother said with an equally unnerving smile. “All you have to do is push the knife up to your throat.”

“M-mom...?” Roseluck shuddered, suddenly sitting alert in her seat. “I don’t... I don’t u-understand...”

Her sister snickered. “I mean, unless you’re gonna be a scaredy-cat and change your mind...”

“Change my mind...?” A mix of perturbation and bewilderment began to course through her nerves. “W-what’s the matter with you guys, why are you all talking like this?”

“We thought that was what you wanted,” her father said, “to die believing your family was alive.”

Just like that, her sense of reassurance vanished. The blood drained from her face. “But y-you are alive...! You’re here—you’re s-sitting in front of me!”

“Honey...” her mother said, head tilted compassionately. “We may be here, but... you couldn’t have possibly convinced yourself we managed to survive when nopony else did.”

Roseluck’s lower lip trembled. She shook her head, anger lighting up inside her. “This isn’t funny!”

“We’re not joking, Roseluck,” her sister said, losing the playful attitude. “You’re the one kidding yourself.”

“Stop it!” Roseluck shouted, her hoof slamming the table with a sharp thud that was, strangely, not accompanied by the clattering of dishware. “I’m looking at you guys! I’m talking to you, I hugged mom!”

“Like your mother said, we are here. But we aren’t together,” her father said sternly.

“Not yet, anyway,” her mother added, once more in that sweet tone. “But we can be. You just have to drag that knife across your throat and allow yourself to be taken to a better place. A place where we’ll never be separated, where we can all be together, bonded by death.”

Roseluck’s breathing grew frantic. “No, no no no no—it’s making you say those things! You are alive, you’re here! We are together!”

Her mother’s smile faded. “Open your eyes, Roseluck.”

And she did...

The imagination was a wonderfully deceptive tool. In many ways, it was its own form of magic, capable of taking one’s perception and transforming it into something so vivid, molding it into something so undeniably tangible it could not possibly be distinguished from reality.

Unfortunately, the imagination could only do so much. All it took was one edge of the curtain to fall for the entire illusion to shatter. Without it, the only thing to face was reality.

And reality had no mercy.

So, there Roseluck sat, before a table holding nothing but a kitchen knife, and the corpses of her mother, father and sister resting idly on the chairs around it.

“No...” Roseluck’s shrunken eyes darted from body to body—between each hollow, pale form in front of her, butchered and layered with thickly coagulated blood. “...No, no—you were... y-you were just... here...! You were JUST HERE!!”

The structures of her mind began to collapse into rubble like the collision of Cloudsdale that had reduced the city to an unrecognizable inferno of debris. A burst of hysteria overtook her, and she scratched erratically at her eyes, trying to ward away the deception she was positive had been inflicted upon her senses. She shut her eyes and opened them, and the bodies were still there. She opened them again, still there. Still there. Still there.

She fell from her seat, hitting the floor with pain that did not phase her, and scrambled back to her hooves. Mindlessly, she stumbled to each chair on weak legs, touching each body that occupied them. Each one was cold and bloated, emitting a foul odor resulting from days of rot that Roseluck could not fathom possible. She had just seen them alive, spoken to them, held them, heard their voices.

“...Don’t do this, please... y-you said you wouldn’t leave me... everything was s-supposed to be okay...”

Rabid mutterings continued to spew from Roseluck’s mouth until she reached the last chair—the unoccupied one. For the third time, she found herself staring toward the hallway by the front door that led to her little brother’s room. This time, no voice spoke up urging her to let him be and stay where she was.

Her subconscious took the wheel again, pulling her forward until she stood in front of the hallway, staring across it with a potent dread that made her legs weaker than they already were. Halfway down lay a door with torn hinges and three long holes punctured straight down the middle. At the complete opposite end, the open doorway it belonged to stood, leading to a slightly brighter room on the other side. Pitcher’s room.

Her legs continued moving on their own, bringing her closer to the doorway as it waited for her, beckoning her forth. Details of the room revealed themselves as she approached. She spotted a shelf holding baseball display cases and gloves, a green alloy bat leaned up against the side of it. Approaching further, she saw posters on the far end walls of baseball players she knew nothing about other than they were popular, which she only knew because of Pitcher's many ramblings about them in the past. She remembered all the times he would excitedly tell her how he aspired to be like them one day, listing off their accomplishments one by one during dinner. It had always gone in one ear and out the other, partially due to her lack of interest in the sport, but mostly from being distracted by how cute it had been watching her little brother fanboy over his idols.

Her memories were interrupted when she saw the window beside the posters shattered, glass dispersed across the carpeting on the floor as though something had broken in.

Her heart began to beat with frantic desperation. Pitcher had to be alive. She could not accept a reality where her little brother was gone too. She stepped over the broken door, her eyes still trained on the carpet. That was when she noticed the dark crimson stains. Closer now, the stains became wider. Wider.

At last, she stepped past the threshold of the doorway leading to the blue-painted room on the other side, decorated with more posters and an assortment of memorabilia such as little league team banners and signed collectibles. But none of that mattered to her as upon entering, the red stains on the carpet gave way to what lay over it.

Roseluck’s legs gave out right then. Her little brother looked peaceful, as though nothing had been wrong in his world before he was suddenly and cruelly taken away. There was no hint of pain or fear in his expression. His last moments had been carefree and hopeful, with the promise of a bright future he would never see, surrounded by dreams and aspirations that no longer meant anything. Fate had betrayed him, but he would never have to know that. He was sleeping now.

The lone mare dragged herself over to the light green corpse of her little brother, crying his name to no avail, searching his faded orange eyes for any sign of life despite the gashes across his tiny body. She then pulled Pitcher’s cold body close to her chest and gripped him tightly, screaming for him to come back, wailing for the final piece of her that had been taken away, the final piece giving her a reason to keep going.

Everything crashed down around her. Daisy... Lily... her parents... her sister... her little brother... she could not bear it. Within her sorrow, anger began to break through. Before she knew what she was doing, she was galloping down the hallway and out the front door, running until she reached the street and collapsing, her head arched to the sky split between day and night.

“GIVE THEM BACK!!” She shouted violently, her voice breaking with desperation. “GIVE THEM BACK TO ME!!”

Anguished, fruitless pleas ripped her throat raw as any of the strength she had maintained until that point vanished, leaving her begging to no one in utter despair. There was no one left. She had survived, yet there was nothing left in the world for her. Her screams began to die down, and she curled onto her side into a ball, whimpering and sobbing hysterically.

“I don’t want to be alone anymore... I don’t want to be alone anymore...”

She wished more than ever that she had just listened to Lily, and taken the step at the same time as her. Lily had been right since the beginning. She had been trying to make her do what was best, and Roseluck had betrayed her. She wished terribly that she could go back and rectify her mistake, return to the past like Twilight had done to warn them about the creatures, but to warn herself not to betray Lily. She wished she could be with them again. She wished she did not have to be alone anymore. She wished...

The knife was still on the table.

Roseluck’s cries faded following her realization. It wasn’t too late to join them. She had the means to do it in the house. All she would have to do was push the knife to her throat and drag it across. She would be able to see everyone again. Her friends, her family... Pitcher... Perhaps she had not made the right decision before, but that did not mean she could not make the right decision now.

Her mind was made up. She would do it. She would leave this hell and be with them again, bonded by death. All it would take was a simple slice of the knife, and time would do the rest of the work. Placing her determined hooves on the ground, she pushed herself to her haunches, blinking the tears out of her eyes and looking upward...

Only to find herself staring directly at a dark figure, standing idly across the road.

After a moment of hesitancy, Roseluck stood up on all four legs, squinting to scrutinize the form. On the neighboring lawn, Death was watching her, its cloak revealing no more of the skeletal figure underneath than it had before. From within the dark, shadowed void of its raised hood, a pale jaw peeked out, drawn in a clearly outlined victorious grin.

Although Roseluck could not see it, she could feel Death’s challenging gaze staring right into her soul.

***

Roseluck walked.

There was no intended direction. There was no destination to reach. She was simply walking, as far as her legs would take her.

Canterlot had long since disappeared behind her. Every which way, a horizon of grassy plains stretched out into a cloudless cyan sky, or a starry purple night. There was no indication of any nearby towns or cities, just an endless landscape leading from the middle of nowhere to even more nowhere.

Her legs coursed with hot lava, shaking with sheer fatigue. Her stomach screamed in hunger and her throat itched with thirst. Her mind was broken and wilted, flickering like a waning candle. Even so, she kept walking, walking, walking, endlessly down an empty world, her will clinging to nothing more than one singular goal, the one that had kept her going after everything she had endured, and everyone she had lost.

Somewhere out there, there was someone who was just as alone as her, someone who had survived and was waiting to be found. She could feel it in her soul, feel whoever it was reaching out to her. As long as she kept walking, they would meet, and then she would not have to be alone anymore.

She could see that cloaked figure in the corner of her eye when she peeked. It had never truly left. It had been watching her since she had left Ponyville, since she had found the lifeless bodies of her parents, sister and little brother. The whole time, it had been watching, waiting for her to fold. She could still see the grin carved into its skull, one of belief that it had won, that it had successfully ripped her psyche into shattered fragments and that it would not be long before she gave up.

After discovering Pitcher’s body, it had been tempting to use the knife sitting on the table to be with him again, to talk to her family once more, and to reconcile the link that had died with Lily and Daisy. But she had seen through the deception before she could commit, discovered Death’s gameplan to fool her with a pretense of hope that her family had survived before taking it all away, so she would feel she no longer had a reason to continue searching for other living ponies.

That had been Death’s mistake. It had left her with nothing left to lose with the belief that what it had had in its arsenal would be enough to make her forfeit. But Roseluck had always been a stubborn pony. It had gotten her through the obstacles in her life, through the trials in the pursuit of her occupation, and through all the tests she had endured up until this point. Now, she did not care what else Death had in its arsenal, because none of it could affect her anymore.

She just kept walking, pushing herself further into the barren expanse ahead. She would not let Death win. She refused to give it the satisfaction of her failure. She knew there was someone else out there, and now Death no longer had any method of hiding that pony from her.

It could stand there smiling all it wanted. It could loop Lily’s words in her ear as many times as it wanted, deafen her mind with her friend’s pleas to join her in a better place where they would be together, bonded by death. None of it would persuade her, though. Because Lily was wrong. She had to be.

Her survival had to mean something. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and if she kept walking, she would find it eventually. It did not matter how long it would take, she would find another pony eventually.

There had to be someone else out there.

...There had to be someone else out there...

Author's Note

I remember when I told myself I was going to get this story out for Halloween. I also remember when I told myself this story was only going to be 10,000 words. Turns out I'm not very good at estimates.

Anyways, feedback's great. I love feedback. So, if you have any, please share. Much of this story was me working on literary devices and techniques I've been criticized for in the past, so feel free to let me know how great or terrible I did.

Ok that's it. Thanks for reading.

Edit: I wrote a blog about the story if anyone's interested.