“May Flower,” I say, in a new voice, my own in timbre and yet entirely different in tone, “run home to your parents. And apologize to your brother.”
She stops and stares for a moment, but my new voice brooks no delay. She scurries off.
It’s a beautiful day. My mental checklist is memorized. My schedule is tight, but I’ve rehearsed every step. I’ll need almost every pony in Ponyville, and they’ll help gladly, because they’ll take one look at me and see that I know what I’m doing and why.
This is what I was born to do. Curtains up.
I hold my head up and my chin in. There’s a spring in my step as I head for Town Hall, halting every pony I meet and ordering them to assemble there. Some stop to argue, some to laugh, but I look in their eyes and they forget what they were going to say. I smile, and point with my horn in the direction they are to go, and they go.
Celestia should see me now.
Outside Town Hall, I speak to the crowd assembled in the square: “My dear ponies. A wise pony once said that you should live each moment of your life as if you would be forced to re-live it again and again, for all eternity.” They scratch their heads and stare.
“How horrible it would be,” I say, “to live through an endless cycle of panic and terror, braying at the sky over and over. So let us not panic.” My voice sings, clear and untroubled. Some ponies listen to my words; some listen to my voice. They relax their worry-stretched necks and slow their restless milling.
“How horrible it would be,” I say, “to spend an eternity in blissful ignorance of your fate, always denied the chance to face it with dignity. And how terrible for me, to watch. So I will not lie to you.”
I turn and point my nose at the star. “That bright light in the sky is a rock, smaller than the moon but bigger than a mountain, and it is falling on us. Celestia and Luna gave their lives to turn it aside, but it didn’t turn."
A chorus of babbling voices arises, but I raise my hoof, and they are stilled.
“We can’t save ourselves,” I tell them, “but we will try to save some small part of Equestria. Grass. Moss. Trees. So that someday, someone will come out of the oceans and crawl over that moss and eat that grass under the shade of those trees.”
Some ponies flick their ears and wrinkle their noses in confusion, but I know to move on rather than try to explain. “If you would spend your last minutes to help me build a world for someone, someday far away, who will never dream that you existed, stay. If not, go in peace.”
Below me, a hundred manes toss, two hundred ears flick back and forth, a hundred final decisions are made.
Before the spell is broken and the babbling begins anew, I order, “Farmers and earth ponies, meet Applejack on the porch of the dry goods store. Pegasi, see Rainbow, over there, in the middle of the town square. Unicorns, come to me. Fillies and colts, Pinkie Pie over there by the fountain has something for you to do. And you, Mr. Bags,” I add, catching the eye of a stout, dappled earth pony with streaks of gray peeking out from under his top hat. “Unlock the vault. I need every safe deposit box in the bank emptied. Bring them to me here. We’re going to fill them with treasure.”
Ponies begin moving in different directions, spilling out from the town square as if a giant had just emptied a box of brightly-colored marbles over it. Some leave. Most do not. They bump and eddy around each other but eventually coalesce into four different swarms descending on four different ponies. I keep an eye on each group, checking Old Time’s pocket-watch each time I see their hooves halt and their heads and ears raise attentively. We’re right on schedule. I turn to instruct my unicorns. A herd of unicorns, I remember, is called a “blessing”.
A stream of earth ponies rolls wheelbarrows and carts from the door of the dry goods store to dump their contents at my feet: burlap bags of corn, beans, and grass and carrot seeds.
The bank staff ponies work quickly, forming a line and passing safety deposit boxes up from the vault to drop them onto the dirt in front of me. A clerk grasps the handle of one in her mouth and swings it upside down, grinning; hundreds of bits scatter and roll across the hard-packed dirt. I set my unicorns to work filling the empty boxes with a new kind of treasure: bright platinum flax seeds, silver grains of wheat, polished golden kernels of corn.
No; not treasure—treasure is worth nothing until someone finds it. I will save these tiny ones, my littlest Equestrians, even if their quiet lives inspire no thoughts more complex than brief disorientation in an ant that had found its path clear the day before. I don’t need them to remember or pity me. I just need them to live.
Life. I’ve saved lives before. I never thought I’d have to save Life itself. If we fail, the universe will still have an abundance of seconds, but be empty of moments.
“Let’s get dirty!” I hear Pinkie say in the distance, followed by a high-pitched cheer.
The unicorns mix the different kinds of seeds thoroughly in each box. When the boxes are full, they close and lock them. Those of us who know any kind of drying, freezing, locking, sealing, or protective spell bind them more tightly shut against the years to come. I estimate the locked steel boxes by themselves will last ten years in water, up to thousands on dry land, before they rust away and spill their huddled refugees out onto a world more hospitable than ours is about to become.
More earth ponies come back from their farms with bushel baskets full of grains, fruits, and seeds of every type. Big Mac comes pulling the same wagon I have huddled under so many times, brimming with an improbable number of baskets full of apple seeds. He comes to a stop before me and hesitates before passing them down.
“Take good care of ‘em,” he says. I take a basket of his seeds down from the wagon. He peers over my shoulder, trembling with masculine concern and helplessness, as I tuck them gently into place in a row of open boxes, nestled among walnuts and pea-pods. It's not what I wanted, yet I can’t help but smile.
Here come the fillies and colts, with little red wagons, boxes, and bags full of dirt. Fine, rich soil from the fields. Hard clay from the town square. Sandy dirt from the school’s playground. Oozy smelly mud from the bog (by special request). Each ounce has billions of bacteria. If they have an earthworm cocoon or a cicada larva hidden inside, so much the better. Others come bringing leaves torn from weeds, with beetle and butterfly eggs glued to their underside. We dump any jewelry and gold coins still hiding in the corners of safety deposit boxes onto the ground, and pack them to the rim with dirt or leaves. “Not both,” I tell them. “Keep the eggs clean.”
The ants will have to fend for themselves. Their queens are buried too deep, too well-protected for my foragers.
I reach out and gently grasp a cockroach as it scuttles for the darkness under my hoof. I lift it back into its box and shut the lid.
“Eeugh!” Applejack groans as she passes, pushing an empty cart back to the store. “Twilight, don’t save them things!”
“They’re hardy,” I say firmly. “And they’re important. That’s what all the books were for, Applejack. Seeing the big picture, knowing the importance of the biggest things and the smallest—that’s my job. It’s what princesses do.” I flash her a smile, a little wider than a proper princess should. “At least, when our friends remind us to.”
“Got those books you asked for,” Spike says on my left, groaning under the weight of a stack of them. A heavy load for Spike, but still pathetically few. I spent a dozen cycles just choosing which to save.
“Oh, thank goodness, Spike. You don’t—you know how much they mean to me.” We stack them inside rubberized mailbags that I’ve brought for that purpose, and I pull the drawstrings tight and then cast a sealing spell, making the bags waterproof and airtight.
“Now, please, Spike, put them in the bank vault,” I tell him. More for my ease of mind than any good they’ll do, I suppose. My initial plans had ponies trucking cartloads in from the library. But a princess must look after the living, and the yet-to-live, not the dead.
He raises an eyebrow, and I answer his question before he can ask it: “The bags are to protect them from the banker, not from the elements.” That’s not a complete explanation, but it’s all he’s going to get.
I try to stay focused, but can’t help but watch over my shoulder as Big Mac wraps his forelegs around Fluttershy and begins to cry. She strokes his mane and hushes him, then gently but firmly tells him that it’s time for her to go.
Soon the last of the pegasi have taken off, in all different directions, each bearing an enchanted metal box full of the magic of life. The remaining boxes have gone back down into the vault, tucked into bed for their long sleep, cradled in the rows of drawers lining each wall.
I hear the crash of the bank vault’s doors. I told Money Bags that there’s only half an hour’s air in there, and that it’s important to keep the interior dry, but he always shuts himself inside anyway.
I hope he doesn’t damage the books. It’s a very small vault.
My unicorns stand with their heads down and their sides heaving, sweat on their brows, spent with spellcasting. My power, too, is spent. No more turning back. I stand up and look at the star.
The star is very bright now. I bear it no enmity. It's a piteous thing, falling alone through the emptiness of space, rushing blindly toward its own oblivion. I ponder again: Would it have been a mercy to let my ponies finish like the comet, in ignorant bliss?
I look around me and see them standing side by side, muzzles and flanks brushing each other. Some look at the star; some look at each other. Most are crying. Big Mac breathes in and out heavily, raising his head high and taking it all in, the way I've often seen him do at the end of a good day's work.
No, I decide, with certainty this time.
“Will it hurt?” Sweetie Belle asks me as she huddles against her sister.
I long to tell her it won't, but I don't want, after all this, to end on a lie.
“Only for a moment,” I say finally.
I also weep. It’s fitting to cry for my people. But I will not look away. I will stand with my head high and watch it come. In this moment, I am a Princess of Equestria.
Wow.
Twilight, you're the bravest fictional character I've ever seen.
Great story.
3883960: Gak.
You are a bastard you know. Anyone else and I would have abandoned this story long ago. Only you could make me watch Equestria die.
3885532
Bad Horse knows how to work the feels, it seems.
I think this will end one of three ways.
One: The "Happy" ending, where Celestia and Luna show up and reveal it was all a big test to see how Twilight would deal with the end of the world.
Twilight is un-amused.
Two: The Mass Effect Purple Ending. We see the (much) later inhabitants of the world, as they begin to start settling into permanent settlements, finding Twilight's bank vault. The food there is instrumental to founding civilization, but the knowledge of the old ponies is destroyed callously, as they don't understand it. Life goes on, but the Twilight and the ponies are forgotten utterly.
Okay, that only bears a passing resemblance to the purple ending.
Three: It all comes to naught. The vault is compromised and nothing survives it.
3885212
Interesting. But in a realm ruled by the laws of Magic, mathematics and physics are meaningless theorys. Twilight managed to create a frog/orange that was a living breathing animal. The amount of energy to fuse atoms and create new matter from energy itself is literally the power of the Big Bang. a supposedly impossible feat that supercedes even physical law. Compared to that, altering the rotation of a planetary body is child's play.
My theory for all magic users is that in order to prevent true catastrophes, they respect the laws in place or far more likely, my second theory is that magic exists in all things, including the planets and stars themselves, and to move them. One connects their own magic to that other source and forms a symbiotic bond. Not so much controlling as merely guiding and directing it's flow. Of course if that's true, then there is no guarantee that Twilight could in fact create this kind of bond. Especially when she has already broken the laws of nature and her mind is as fractured as it is. Which still leaves one possible option. She may be able to preform the same type of magic symbiosis as Cadence and Chrysalis by aborbing magic from willing life forms in order to build her reserves ever so slightly higher with each trip back in time. If what she said about her past and future forms alone merging. Then I believe that her extra magic can be brought back with her.
3885212 while science could not eplain it, some pseudo science and metalogic can.
it is likely their poers are elemental in a sense. they expend minimal energy to move their celestial bodies. instead of using brute force, as it would take thousand of unicorns to do, they use their magics natural connection to maintain the cycle of night and day. celestia doing it alone could be explained as extra effort I suppose.
my best example of this is none other than discord. I always thought his powers came less from being insanely powerful, which he is, and more from what his powers are. just as a dragon can expel far more powerful flames than anything a unicorn magic can conjure, discord is able to create chaotic affects with the most minimal energy expended. of course that also limits him. he is incapable of healing himself of a disease for example.
3885212
#4 is fun--Luna and Celestia keep the world from being tidally locked--but I've always liked #3 best, myself. If we hadn't seen a globe in the show, I would be cheerfully assuming a full Discworld cosmology.
Hm. Hold on, now...
Four alicorn princesses, four elephants holding up the world. Is the Equestrian Disc held up by what are the actual true bodies of the princesses? Is Celestia's true incarnation the one that has to lift its foot in order to let the sun pass? Is the world really, literally supported on the backs of Friendship and Love?
I'm impressed, actually.
I'm desperate for more, but frankly I wonder if it wouldn't be better served to end here and now. With the world.
Good writing, though.
Ooooooouuuuuuuuuch. Man, I felt that one.
Well, Twilight certainly chose a path I hadn't thought of. Personally, if the impact is enough to rupture the crust or melt bedrock, I don't think those safe boxes would survive--but reinforced with Twilight's magic, they just might. I certainly hope they do.
I simultaneously hate and love stories like these. Love, because they can be so powerful; hate, because they're so gut wrenching, and everyone dies. I think it's the helplessness of it all too; you want to stop them from dying, but you can't. No matter what you do, it's the end. It goes against the basic philosophy of most stories out there, which is that there's always something you can do. It basically grabs and forces you to stare into the inevitability of death. Well, death with no afterlife, since having everyone go together to some sort of heaven or great beyond would completely undo the impact of the story. Not that I wouldn't mind a happy ending
With the number of chapters you posted at once yesterday, I thought you had finished writing it all, and were just dealing the rest of it out. But now I get the sense you're posting as you write. Either way, I'm looking forward to the end (which I'm guessing is the next chapter).
3875240 3883850 3884010 3884174 Hmm.
Energy needed to knock the moon out of the sky and onto Earth: 10 billion to 10 trillion megatons of TNT
Energy of the asteroid that made the Chicxulub crater and killed the dinosaurs: 100 million megatons. Not quite enough.
Eneryg to blow up the moon: More. About 1000 times that.
BUT, energy to shatter the moon enough that pieces fall to Earth: Significantly less.
I'm going to make some revisions, to try to prevent people from screaming about the ending. But you'll probably scream anyway.
There's no "ergo" there. If I wrote a fanfic where Celestia banished NMM to the moon, people would complain and say "But NMM can just move the moon and rescue herself!"
3886943 Given the comment above the one I'm now responding to, I believe I see what you are trying to get at. But as for the example you're using as an analogy, "move the moon and rescue herself" doesn't even make sense to me. How would an ability to move the moon imply an ability to escape whatever prison the moon itself had become?
3887377 My understanding is that the moon was the prison just by its distance; the distance from there back home was too great for her to travel.
3886934
Fair enough
... Where's Discord? You'd think he'd be very much against an extinction level event. Just think how boring it'd be for a hundred+ years.
3882081 And yet your supposed rationale is based entirely on your unwillingness to accept that Celestia and Luna can move the Sun and Moon in spite of everything else physically impossible that goes on in their world.
Either they have magic or they don't. You really seem to be missing the notion that this is a MAGICAL world. Their Sun and Moon need not even be anywhere close to the size of ours. Their stars could be little more than tiny magical lights. Their entire universe could consist entirely of their world in a microcosm.
In the absence of any relevant information, assuming that they CANNOT possibly move their Sun and Moon is completely irrational given the number of impossible things which demonstrably exist.
If they do not have magic, virtually nothing about the world in the show could function any longer.
No flight, no weather manipulation, no dragons, no phoenixes, no teleports, no changelings, no Discord...
And no sophisticated civilization. Ponies could build nothing complex with their hooves.
3886943 Ahem, a small amount of reason: When Celestia used the Elements, they sealed NMM's power for 1,000 years, so while sealed she could do nothing.
Very simple.
You know, the way Discord was sealed? And couldn't use his powers until the spell broke? Like that.
Be more thoughtful.
3888016 My point is that you're making that up. It doesn't say that in the show. You're adding it in yourself, to patch over the things the author left out. Yet you're unwilling to give me the same courtesy.
3885840 He continues to forget a little something from the first 30 seconds of the first episode of the show: IN THE MAGICAL WORLD OF EQUESTRIA.
It's a MAGICAL WORLD. It doesn't play by our rules.
Sheesh, next he'll be complaining about the One Ring.
He really needs to learn the difference between real-world plausibility and basic fictional world continuity. A fictional world only needs to be internally consistent and plausible within the rules set for it.
If the world has rules which allow the Sun and Moon to be moved by magic, guess what... THEY MOVE BY MAGIC.
3885212
Again, YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO USE OUR WORLD TO EXPLAIN A MAGICAL WORLD.
Discworld would eat you alive!
Let's say this: Equestria's Sun and moon are both only about 1000 miles in diameter and the Sun gives off light because it's powered by magical unobtanium. If that is how the world is written, then IT WORKS.
If the Sun keep changing in size and composition randomly with no explanation in the narrative, however, THEN the writing doesn't make sense.
In fiction, INTERNAL CONSISTENCY is all that matters. With your rigid mode of thought, I'd imagine you can't possibly enjoy any stories of magic... since NONE of them are remotely plausible by the physics of our world.
3888036 that is basically what i try to say. a fictional world needs to have its own internal rules, the amount they play by our world's rules depending on how much is included from the get go. albeit the rules of equistria can still be interpreted considering pinkie pie has a tendency to break them on a whim. and with fanfiction that can vary even more.
for example one could have it that, in their story or head canon, that pegasi have hollow bones. I interpret that since their flight is in part magic based, they can have solid bones yet still achieve flight.
another is that someone might have it that unicorns can only use magic solely related to their cutie marks. others, and perhaps more accurately, could have it that a unicorn can learn a large variety of magic, but their true power is limited to their special talents and a lot of powerful magic is beyond them. that seems to be the most accurate since largely Rarity's cutie mark magic manifests in her near effortless use of a gem finding spell. yet she is capable of levitating and manipulating dozens of objects at once. and has more than once showed she can use other magic.
though i find it hard to have an interpretation of equistria where a meteor is either a major problem or even possible. he wanted to write a story where equistria is totally doomed, and it has the feels, but ultimately the fact this is Equistria mars it.
have seen it more than once though. it just seems some stories just don't work in a mlp fanfic.
salute
3888139 Stop being rude. You're one comment away from being blocked.
3888180 Even with bones made of styrofoam, pegasi could never achieve flight with those puny wings. Magic is the ONLY method by which they can fly. And NOTHING but magic can explain RD managing to create a Sonic Rainboom.
There's another problem with the rationale Bad Horse is applying: Twilight in this story creates a time loop. Now, if one could get enough energy together, one COULD possibly move our Sun. HOWEVER, given what we know of physics now, creating a time loop is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE. Even in theories which allow for time travel into the past, the energy required is so vast, it's essentially equal to the SUM ENERGY CONTENT OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. I rather think that'd be enough energy for Twi to move a regular Sun-like star and their little planet out of harms way, or simply flick the asteroid out of the system like we would a gnat from our arm.
To complain about one thing seemingly highly impossible while including something preposterously impossible is extraordinarily hypocritical.
3887641 I don't see how that reconciles with her being a face painted on the moon.
3888347 dude, what is your problem? Bad Horse wants to tell a specific story. That story necessitates certain facts to be true. the story does not need to justify those facts; the additional scope would probably be a bitch to pace out, or be a whole steaming pile of exposition.
Just let the Bad Horse flow through you.
3889022 I always assumed Luna was imprisooned in the moon/became the moon. I mean, the surface of the moon changed shape. That implies a lot more going on than just sending Luna to the surface.
3889144 3889022 I think you're right--the face in the moon should imply something beyond "to the moon!" I'm confused by too much fanon and Luna gifs.
I love the story so far, though I wonder how long you plan it to be?
3888347 Why the hell do you read? You are way too bloody stuck in reality to be reading fiction.
3889215 hmm, true. Luna being locked away or otherwise rendered inert does eliminate the possibility of her being Moonstuck, among other things.
3889215
In the opening narration of Friendship is Magic it says the younger sister was banished in the moon.
I've always taken that to mean Luna was in some kind of suspended animation - which is why she was still NMM even after a thousand year time out.
3889782
Suspended animation (asleep) is exactly what I think too. Because if you believe a lot of fanon/gifs/pics/stories it would go like this...
Luna (lonely) > turns into NMM > banished > turns back into normal Luna on the moon > lonely (again) but for 1000 years which is just cruel > 1000 years is up and turns into NMM again > Elements turn her back to Luna and she suffers mental scars for the rest of her very long life (which is just cruel).
Meh. Rather cliche, don't you think? 'We're going to die, but in the infinitesimally unlikely chance that someone, or something might come after our departure, let's try and preserve the world for them.'
I don't believe that alien life exists.
I don't believe in Darwinian Evolution.
I don't believe in posterity for posterity's sake.
I do believe that they're all about to die though, so in the end, I'm indifferent. I did like the mental gymnastics of the first three chapters though; that stuff was great.
Great stuff as always, Bad Horse, looking forward to the next thing you write.
Fucking goddamn. I remember that blog post.
Wait, does that mean that the bit in The Last Unicorn where they're coming out of the sea is religious symbolism?
I guess all those unicorns really are a blessing to Twiley. She wouldn't be able to get shit done without them.
A herd of Raritys truly would be a blessing. Everything they merely touched would look FUCKING FABULOUS!!! Time to get metro.
Ok, now that I've finished the story, I can say it's like looking dropping a flare into a well that's so deep you can't see it when it hits the bottom, but you definitely hear it.
Dying together with your kin is only slightly better than being stuck in a time loop that you're not even aware of because a pretty purple alicorn princess doesn't want you to die, thinking she's doing you a frigging favour.
Dying is better than having to snog with something purple that shows you awkward affection rather than something that tastes like butter and gives shy and awkward affection (ie none).
*flips table*
Hope?! HOPE?! WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST READ?! THERE IS NO ROOM FOR HOPE IN A WORLD SO BLEAK.
This little bit of hope and heroism in my grimdark has caused far more gonadal shrinkage than the arctic wastes of Canada ever did. My dear dear Bad Horse, you have sickened me greatly today, so much so that I must go to the vomitorium to purge myself hard (and so I may eat a Peanut Buster Parfait. Why is Dairy Queen so far away? Bleach should be a topping...)
You, good sir, are no longer a literary monster. You are simply a literary.
I will be protesting any form of happy story from you in the near future in the most amusing ways I find possible. Just a heads up.
You know, you would probably be right at home in the Warhammer 40,000 universe ^_^
3885832
I love that Discworld idea.
Just stumbled across this on YT. I truly believe - with all of my heart - that I just found THE background music for this impossibly powerful story.
3891093
wat
5438094 it means that he doesn't believe in evolution, the theory that has everything come from a starting point, a small amoeba/organism and it grows from there
Oh... oh wow. This is all kinds of perfect.
And this here is pure beauty.
Thanks for a brilliant story.
Beautiful story, well done.
Pretty good story (although Fluttermac? Really?) silly ending.
There are bacteria who have remained moreorless unchanged for a couple billion years, meaning they ignored multiple mass extinctions. To actually eliminate all life, you'd have to physically destroy the planet.
On the other hand, the seeds she saves assumes that the planet will not particularly change. It isn't just about oxygen or water, but how much oxygen or water. For example, there have been many periods in Earth's history where a contemporary animal would have died of oxygen poisoning. There is nothing special about the current atmosphere that guarantees it will last, or return if disrupted.
She hasn't really done much for the odds of any complicated forms of life by putting them in a steel box.
Meteors are just God's way of saying multi-cellular life was a mistake.
Her saving the books was a sweet touch, though. Probably because it was so transparently selfish and purposeless. The pegasi flying as far as they can from the blast with their burdens feels likewise. If, Applejack, on her own initiative, saved apple seeds, or Fluttershy saved insect eggs, it would have had a similar feel, I think.
As it is, they all spent their last minutes on a tasker, and that's just sad.
7262744
You're right that, if Equestria is Earth-like, she wouldn't have to do anything to prevent bacteria (and archaea, especially if they have ocean vents) from going extinct, and none of the things I described would have much chance of success. I wish I'd thought of something more scientifically accurate, but I didn't, and I can live with that. I think the story is still worth telling.