Broken Wings, Scattered Dust

Stars Emerge to Light the Ruins

It was just a light at first.  A tiny little pinprick at the bottom of the pond that couldn’t decide what color it wanted to be, and so was all of them yet none.  After the briefest of moments, it started to rise, slowly, and as it did it grew larger, ever larger, so that by the time it breached the surface it had nearly swallowed us into its luminous depths.

The light-sphere stopped growing at that point, but it kept rising.  Water dripped from the underside as it floated upwards, the droplets landing in the pond with nary a splash or ripple.  As one our heads followed it as it wandered up the shrine’s column, still bathing us in iridescant rays, until it reached the top.  There it stopped, quivering, until a deafening howl filled the shrine, one reeking of ages beyond comprehension, sending tremors through everything and a ring of similar light barreling up the shrine’s inner surface, towards the sphere suspended at the shrine’s peak.

We all collectively and audibly inhaled as we realized, as one, that the speeding ring would not soften its blow.

The collision rendered us blind and deaf for what seemed like minutes.  The very air exploded with the raw force of the impact, and the ground itself shuddered violently, but the grass beneath us was blown level in a spiral, and the air rapidly swirled into a vicious tornado, threatening to wrench us from our hooves and throw us to the stars.  Descant stayed steady somehow, but his scales’ edges were blazing with the exact same multihued luminescence.

After a moment, I noticed that everypony inside—including the invisible Whimsy—was glowing, too.  Less brightly than Descant, much less brightly, but for some inexplicable reason I shone brighter than them.  My light was still dimmer than Descant’s, but the more I looked, the more certain I was that the strength of my glow was somewhere in between.  Hopefully nopony else would notice...

Nopony did.  The supercharged sphere, complete with new ring, was rocketing into space, rapidly shrinking to the size of the distant stars, showering us with sparkling dust and glimmering starlight.  None of us so much as breathed to break the silence until long after it disappeared into the night’s crowded sky.

And sure enough, the stars began to move.

Slowly, lazily, they wandered this way and that, bumping into each other, seemingly apologizing before parting ways again.  I knew not how the stars, so distant, so dispersed, moved not only themselves but the light they cast, but never in as many lifetimes would I have believed they could do so.

Within minutes filled with bated breath, a pattern emerged, vortices of light on black, swirling down to blazing, blinding novas where the stars began to converge.  Whimsy’s breathing at my side was audible, if restrained; on the other ends, Smoke and Mirrors were still silent, but the other three were murmuring amongst themselves, their whispers indistinguishable from the cricket song outside.

The dance continued for a length of time I couldn’t distinguish, and a large part of me preferred it that way.   Time melted away as we sat there, watching the stars dance, watching the cosmos itself sway to and fro with the joy of magic.  Each little point of light roamed the night skies with the freedom of a bird and the purpose of none, not so much soaring as waiting for the empyrean wind to fill their sails and nudge them where it will.

And still the stars wandered closer to each other, each adding their own small contribution to the ever growing amalgamation, a monstrous sworl that interrupted the night’s veil with the beauty of endless stars combined.

I could feel them, the travelers of the universe, no longer shining upon us but brutally pummeling us with blinding light, yet when I glanced downwards, our own glows persisted, competing with the starlight until the two completely blotted out everything with a bright, prismatic sheen.  Even Descant, covered in iridescent scales, vanished into the light’s aether, the brilliant void.  I couldn’t see my own two hooves in front of me.

A startled gasp escaped me as a primal force, without warning, grasped me, every last particle of my being caught in an invisible vice that knew no remorse.  It slowly turned its attention upwards, and I rose off the ground, wings folded tightly, the familiar rush of gravity surging through me and then rapidly fading away and leaving the distinct feeling of distorted weight behind.

Panic flooded me.  Was I about to be fired into space?  I could no longer see or hear any of the others.  I couldn’t tell if they were floating, too.  All I knew at that moment was that if I was about to be launched to the furthest stars, I was going to do it with my wings open.

They snapped open almost reflexively, and for the briefest of moments I was ready to take on the world.  But horror widened my eyes as I beheld the cosmic whirlpool that was unmistakeably my  destination.  The colossal splotch now dominated the entire visible patch of sky with its celestial light, though I could only tell because the light reflecting off the shrine’s walls was just a tad dimmer than the vortex.

It suddenly occurred to me that the light we were all staring was the sort of blinding bright that would normally render someone, at the very least, unable to see for hours, yet I could stare right into it with no pain, and from the absence of painful screaming I guessed that the others could do the same.  And that was ignoring the fact that it was still cycling through every color, imaginable or not, faster than I could blink.

And still, I was lifted skyward, inching towards the cosmic tornado, drawn by some magical and relentless force, panic still racing through my veins.  I forced it back, repressing the hot-blooded rush of instinct before it could take hold and allowing that familiar icy sting of a clear mind to take over once more.

I struggled.  Not as much as I wanted to—if Whimsy were too close I’d knock her out cold—but there was no purchase to be had, not even with my wings.  Whatever was lifting me wasn’t doing so with any physical force, so I was completely at its mercy.  Almost.

I could hear nothing, see nothing, and I could no longer feel the presence of the others as I normally could.  My fear of hitting Whimsy vanished.

Power coursed through me as I brought my hooves together and rescinded my bands’ magical inhibitors; white-blue solid lightning blasted, arcing, hissing to life between my hooves.  Two smells filled my nostrils; the misty air that precedes rain and the scorched air that follows lightning.   I swept the crackling arc all around me, but I hit nothing, and if anything happened, I couldn’t tell.

Perhaps it was only seconds, maybe minutes, but I fought blindly, swinging my garrote in every direction I could reach for a while.  I knew it was useless, and my frustration was hitting critical levels, but it was either keep trying, or settle in and let the force finish its job.  Celestia and Luna take me, I would not go down without a fight.  Not unless I knew Whimsy was safe, and right now, I sure as Tartarus didn’t know what horrors she was suffering.

The garrote flickered out of existence just as I brought it over my head, the few leftover sparks dancing in a terrifying likeness of the stars that now spelled my doom.  My hope petered out along with the lightning’s pitiful remnants, and I was left, despite my efforts, completely at the mercy of an unknown magic.

It didn’t seem to care.  The magic finished lifting me to the shrine’s tip, and there I stopped, hovering with both wings tightly folded.  Whatever dread I had was multiplied a thousandfold—it was the exact same thing the shrine had done before firing off the earthborn star.  I still couldn’t see anything around me besides the faintest outlines of the walls, where the light was just a hair brighter than the rest.

“Sis?” My voice came out oddly calm.  “Des?”

No response.  I steeled myself and resigned myself to my end, and the magic was all too happy to oblige.  I found myself blasted into space with cold resignation in my heart, and in some dark, grim corner of myself, I found solace in the fact that my final destination lay amongst the stars.