Maybe, even after the tragedy and hopelessness that was her life, after the millions she brought to an end through fire and storm, just maybe as her soul is crushed and beaten and shaved, she could find that with friends, A soul can't be cut.
-
In the fires of chaos and war, she lost the her first love.
He fought for his ideals, a world without the rampant death and destruction that prevailed. With his body, he saved her life. With her mind, she saved his. He was her inspiration and a source of strength in the dark world. He fell, dying for his dream. A dream that she found hadn’t been realized. When she woke up that fateful morning, with his weapons of war in her house, she felt lost.
Her soul felt torn, beaten and bleeding. As if it was cut, ribbons flayed from it and escaping as tears. It was here she dedicated her craft to life, and kept it to herself. Mankind was not ready.
A soft sound and blood and brain matter, and she lost her brother.
It was through him that she gained wisdom and intelligence, and he was an inspiration to her genius. He too had a hand in saving her life, and with her late uncle, helped save the world from itself. However, the world seemed ungrateful, and took him from her in silent, quick violence. She had not felt her defender quickly take her from the site, shrill sounds of bullets being deflected around her, as she stared at the cooling corpse of her brother.
Her soul felt sliced, bruised, anguished. It was here she dedicated her craft to detection, protection from the unknown and unseen. She kept it to herself. Mankind would never be ready.
In the chaos of sound and heat, a sudden change from night to day by fire, she lost a friend. She lost colleagues. She lost allies. She lost unknown, innocent people dedicated to the cause she dedicated her life to. Her knowledge torn asunder, bodies burning around her, she and her protector survived to retreat into the burning night.
Her soul felt cracked, bleeding, burnt. It was here she dedicated her craft to revenge. And even with her soul rending and cracking, her dreams shattered beyond all hope of repair, she still dared to hope in a plan to bring her dreams to reality.
The atrocities of her revenge would be told for centuries to come. Forever she was labeled a hated terrorist, madman, demon, and many more labels laid upon her by society. She was unseen, undetectable, unkillable, and her revenge was not swift.
Her soul felt the weight of the millions that died by her hands. She bore that weight, truly hoping that her actions could change the world.
-
She stood here, by an unmarked grave, nowhere near looking her many years. Of course, it was raining, heavily, fitting, she realized. She didn’t deserve happiness, or truly any emotion. Her child-like visage was cold, almost unseeing as she looked down upon the grave, the rain matting her hair. In the downpour, her whisper went unheard.
“Would you regret saving me?”
She didn’t delude herself to think that she could ever be forgiven. Laying a pure white, glowing flower, she left her hope there. The hope for a world devoid of the concept of war.
The sea of her broken soul was stained with atrocity and hate.
-
And yet she was stopped. Defeated, she lay on the ground, her body broken, bleeding, and healing before her assailants eyes.
She looked on expressionlessly at the men and women in front of her. A crystal membrane slowly crawled up her legs as she laid unresponsive. Her body was still, the fluid crystal had paralyzed her body far faster than she had imagined.
Maybe mankind’s ingenuity hadn’t died with her family and friends.
She wasn’t dying, because of her mistake. The passage of years had not changed her at all since that fateful night that she had received his weapons. She knew not exhaustion, needed little rest or food.
Her defender was still fighting for her, even now. But even then, she told him to run.
Run and hide. For she had won.
Without question, her defender fled, taking her weapon with him. Her only connection to him and the dreams she carried on her soul.
She ignored the base taunts and jeers, the cheering and celebration among those watching her become sealed in the crystal amber.
It had taken almost a century, leaking technology, committing atrocities, but it had finally paid off. Maybe she could rest, just a little.
For the world had finally looked past it’s shattered self, it’s greed, and united like a bloody, sticky puzzle, if only to turn against her.
As the crystal encroached upon her face, she allowed herself a small smile.
‘Would you be proud of me?’
Her soul rested, and did not heal.
-
A scant 30 years had passed.
The complex in which she was kept, destroyed by a natural cause, the earth itself heaved and swallowed it whole.
Mankind only mourned those who were lost, guarding it, and moved on.
-
Buried deep in the earth, she was found again.
A beast came, bearing two swords. It padded softly, into the cavern far deep under the earth.
It looked upon it’s master, someone it loved beyond all, suspended in crystal.
It sat upon its haunches, it’s glowing eyes growing dim.
It would wait.
-
An age passed. The mankind she believed in miraculously recovered from the ordeal. With time came great accomplishments.
It was unfortunate that the lessons she sought to teach were ignored a scant few centuries later, as the chaos of war and fire once again consumed the land.
It would be mankind’s final mistake. They decided to not heed the untold lesson, and ruined the world with mass destruction on a scale of untold numbers. With the planet’s resources destroyed, those in space withered away or fled, never to come back again.
Mankind would never be seen here again.
A glowing white hope deep in the earth, long covered, slept.
-
Eons passed.
-
The world had changed. The girl dreamed, dreamed of a world with hope and peace, of the light that reflected her name shining upon all.
And in a cavern near the heart of the planet, a beast lay unmoving.
In a cavern hear the soul of a planet, her dreams slowly ended.
-
The recurring sound that haunted her dreams finally brought her out of them.
Moving was impossible. She saw nothing, but a soft blue light at the edge of her vision.
She wasn’t breathing, and did not hear her heart. It did not matter.
She mentally called for her defender, as she always did.
And he did not answer.
And here, she felt broken. Lost for the first time, and truly alone.
She slipped back into a realm of dreams and nightmares.
-
An eon passed and the world went on, as worlds would. Events, both within and without of it’s control passed, and the world changed. Fundamentally new, it embraced a new energy into it, both weakening and strengthening it, it became something new.
And an eon passed, and life went on.
-
On the surface of a ruined planet, in the calm among the cracked, scorched earth, the ground moved.
It was on a tiny scale, but after years, something came up out of the ground, breaking through the heavy rock and obsidian.
A pure, white flower, that seemed to drain the darkness around it, leaving only light.
Leaving only hope.
Slowly, it grew brighter as the world turned. It was a beacon, taking in the energy of the sun within itself as the years passed.
Many centuries passed, the scorched earth was now a pristine green field, filled with flowers of all types. The idyllic landscape somehow matching the massive, pure-white egg that now sat where the flower once was. Emblazoned upon it's surface, an effigy of a sun, a bright yellow against the pale white.
Long altered from it's origin, the energy that made up the planet pooled into the egg, and a resounding crack echoed across the land.
And so, a hope was hatched.
-
The crystal had cracked. The unbreakable material finally relented as a new energy unknown seeped into it, distorting it and irrevocably changing it’s very nature.
Nearby, the guardian stirred but did not wake, as the energy flowed into it as well. It adapted, as it was made to.
And finally, the energy seeped into the girl who slept, who dreamed, and unconciously, she too adapted, as she made herself to.
However, she did not adapt nearly as well.
-
She woke, again, incessant alarms blaring into her head.
Her chest moved. Her eyes opened to see nothing.
She certainly wasn’t breathing air, but she had lost the need for that a long time ago.
And slowly, she moved. She found she was covered in some dust. Shaking her body, she stood on unsteady legs, hitting the rather low ceiling of wherever she was. Her memory was a slight mess, but her need to see activated something.
In her vision, a small green box with the letters ‘NV’ appeared. Yet, nothing else changed.
And the alarm was still blazing.
She crawled forward, for she did not know where else to go. She kept crawling, blindly hitting a wall, and turned crawling along it.
She reached not another wall, but something colder than the ground. Her forearm brushed upon something metallic.
Over the blazing alarm, she heard something else. It sounded far more real than the incessant beeping plaguing her mind. It sounded familiar, yet she couldn’t place it. And yet, she felt.. warm. Safer.
Guarded.
Whatever she brushed upon, however, moved. And then faintly, a light, faint yet brighter than anything she could remember came from somewhere to her right. Slowly it illuminated the dark stone under her, and more importantly what she had ended up reaching.
A long, black piece of metal, in the shape of a leg.
And like that, her memories returned. A blaze of images and sounds, of blood and war and inconsolable loneliness, she remembered.
The metal beast looked down at her, as new as the day she made him. The twin swords he carried as pristine as she remembered.
“Welcome back, mistress.” it intoned. It’s whip-like tail almost wagged, as if it was a puppy. The synthetic voice barely echoing.
The girl lie still, before pulling herself into a sitting position. She smiled, a warm smile even as she opened her eyes, cold and dark as the cavern they were in. Slowly, her hair became luminescent, a soft white glow emanating from it. A halo of light illuminated the cramped cavern, revealing the metallic form of her protector.
I’m back, my friend.
In the dark, the alarm finally cut out, giving her peace.
-
Something fundamental changed. Within the energy that had apparently became a part of this small corner of the universe, something had changed it, writing over the reality.
The egg had hatched, and it changed something. Something that could not be grasped or fathomed. A concept of the world had changed. Day became night, and no moon nor stars were in the skies.
The only light for miles around radiated from that egg. A pale, white warm light shone from the cracks,
The night rolled on, and the sun did not rise.
-
Rock. Rock. Rock, and lava, below her, almost dangerously so. Miles above her was rock, and more rock, and even more rock, but it was through that rock she had to go.
She was either oddly weak, or the rock strong. Her attempt to simply punch through the rock was met with an incredible resistance, and a far too minor hole to be of use.
In her hand she gripped her blade, the metal humming lightly.
The blade moved, cutting a shallow gash into the tough rock. The blade moved again, crossing the gash.
She frowned, she had barely gotten through the rock at all.
Time was on her side, for she had no need to rest, or eat, or drink. The heat from below was enough to sustain her. Even if she was to work on this, it would take forever to reach the surface in this fashion.
She had the time.
-
The egg’s cracks had widened. The light pouring forth was increased, and wherever the light touched, plants grew.
In the stark shadows, something bubbled. An inky darkness, that the light did not touch. Taking on a life of it’s own, it too grew, shadows being of one.purpose, to simply be there for the light.
Light was of nothing without the shadow, and the shadow was nothing without the light.
This everpresent duality would shape the world for many years to come, beginning with the moment of which life returned to the planet.
Which was right about now.
At once, the egg had collapsed, yet the shadows remained, defying logic. The light had flared brilliantly, before collapsing into a small, sleeping form. It had four stubby legs, and fur of an unrealistic shade of pure white. It’s hair and tail were a soft pink, far closer to white than red. At the side of it’s body, a stubby pair of wings, and on the frown of it’s head, a horn. It was a picturesque, almost cartoony version of a horse or pony.
And it shivered, as if cold.
At once, the dark, inky shadows collapsed in onto the creature, covering it.
The sun rose.
-
We will have to dig.
The guardian had nodded. She was silent for a time, having merely laid her hand upon the rock and closing her eyes.
She noticed that so much of her was broken. She had her strength, her speed, that likely would never be taken from her. Her earlier attempts at digging had almost fooled her, but a thorough check and recall had put aside the notion that she had lost any physical strength.
No, the rock was just unnaturally tough.
She reached the edge of her scanning range, and still could not feel the surface. Just rock, lava, and more rock. Not even other caverns or air pockets, which was also weird.
And curious. She would not deny that she was very, very curious.
She reared her fist back, set her feet, and struck, hitting the center of the cut she made earlier. The rock buckled, cratering and breaking, but not beyond her cuts. Essentially, she pounded out something near a foot of the solid rock, leaving a near square indentation. She ran some more calculations, as she readied her blade.
Refinement was the key. In her sight, the date and time disappeared from view. A trick her once brother showed her to work on tasks that would take a while.
And she cut.
-
Years in the future.
The girl and her guardian had worked tirelessly, working their way toward the surface of the world slowly but steadily.
There had been many setbacks, the main one being the lack of air. Without the heat of lava near where she awakened, she could not keep her energy up, and simply running down and up to get a ‘charge’, was impractical.
The most efficient solution ended up to simply change direction and move toward the other lava vents that she could sense. In essence, she would work her way up following one to a volcano. And hopefully, an above-ground volcano, as she had no real wish to tunnel into a sea.
Scenarios played in her head, of how she could have ended up so deep in the earth. Without access to the sky, she nor her guardian could not accurately guess how much time had passed. She did note that at some point, her clothes had wasted away, but it was of no consequence: her only companion was her guardian after all.
The work was tedious, and she wondered how long it would be to breathe air again.
She punched again, and nearly ten feet of solid, dense rock was reduced to rubble.
-
She stood on the frozen plain, where moments ago a great empire forged from crystal and love had dominated. She was quite out of breath, taking in great lungfuls of frosty air. Her tears had frozen on her face, as she sunk down into the snow.
Snow that started to melt.
And behind her was her sister, black as night to stand out against the snow, her face was filled with sorrow. Noticing her sister fall, she could not get a word out as she literally lit alfame, screaming, and crying.
For almost three miles, snow had melted. The darker sister was startled, but not harmed, even as she hopped into the air, alight on two wings.
“Sister...” she said, voice thick. Her horn lit, and she slid her helmet off, releasing her starry mane. Tossing it aside, she walked to her burning sister and embraced her, crying.
They had failed, today. The tyrant king may have been sealed away, but they failed to save the city from his bitter, last act.
But to the white, burning sister, this was a failure of deeper meaning.
For her entire being was simply to hope, to build a world with no suffering, no conflict.
She knew that such a world was impossible. She had to try, and to be fair, she quite succeeded. While conflict was still present, it was not as violent as she knew it could be. Even the mess with the chaos spirit was not nearly as violent as it could have been, for with all his power he merely played jokes, cruel as they were.
But here, they failed. They failed an entire nation, save one small pink filly.
Celestia raged at her failure. It was short-lived, but her anger was then channeled into an even higher form of determination. She felt her sister casting her into sleep, and welcomed it.
She would not fail again. Because deep in her heart, she knew that the price of failure would be blood.
-
Years in the future.
She sat, feeling incomplete for the first time in an age.
She couldn’t even get angry.
The castle was absolutely ruined. Bodies lay before her and around. There was no life here, save herself.
The forest just outside had grown twisted and malevolent from the immense amount of Ether it had simply drank from the recent battle.
It was night, and Celestia was out of tears, as she looked up through the ruined skylight, at the moon.
At her sister.
What had she done?!
-
Years in the future.
A hauntingly familiar, and alien face had been haunting her dreams. Many of them.
A creature of steel, but with a kind gaze as he, yes, the impression certainly felt ‘male’, looked.. down at her? She was short? A sense of safety.
Another similar creature. Two of them, one apparently older than the other. She had a sense of family with them. The smell of burnt eggs, the odd sensation of flight. The comfort of home.
A set of ancient gravestones, and Luna, her sister. She too seemed confused, as they looked upon a cemetery.
A single white flower, glowing as it sat by a grave. The scene faded, the gravestones just dust in the wind.
Celestia swore she saw a single word on all of them.
Patriot.
-
She woke to fire.
Her room was on fire, mainly, her bed was on fire, with her in it.
With a flex of thought, she snuffed it out. Aside from the smoke and burnt linens, it was as if the fire was gone.
Her sister landed on her balcony, looking a little startled.
Celestia noticed in the mirror she had the the same expression.
-
Years in the future (but not many)
It was night at the Crystal Empire when she first felt it. It was her last night there, and she had enjoyed the day’s festivities as the Equestria Games had finally concluded.
Almost a soft, silken caress at the very edge of her senses. She had passed it off as the wind, except it stayed there. Soft and familiar.
Something stirred inside of her, forgotten over the years.
And no matter how she turned, she could not pinpoint the feeling.
She slept uneasily, that night, nightmares of alien creatures snuffed out by her sister’s power.
Yet still lingering even in her dreamless sleep.
-
She tuned it out, even as it steadily grew stronger, she too had to be strong. She had a nation to rule. It was on her mind at night, and the dreams and nightmares faded as she went about her weeks. She spent time with Luna when she could, stayed up late to admire her night.
And from atop of Canterlot, she looked south, at the ancient corrupt Everfree. Beyond it, to the desert beyond the Buffalo plains and the frontier village of Appleloosa. Beyond even that to the even newer frontier village set near the northern tip of the Desolate Jungle.
And she shook her head, gazing upon the land one last time before turning away.
She had peace to keep.
Author's Note
I've literally not written any fiction in an age. Have fun guessing the crossover!
