Him

by Zytharros

~ I I I ~

III

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I remember everything from that darkness. All of it red. All nine-hundred seventy-three years of it.

Ponies everywhere were dead and dying. The Sun and Moon were erratic. My voice – and at the same time, not – screaming death and vitriol. I reshaped the very planet to my will. My scepter became Discord’s decapitated skull when he tried to seize power over me. There were constant and terrorizing wars with armies and armies of Harmony zombies. Even the last thirty years, where I re-enacted my entire birth-to-ascension timeline repeatedly with these zombies, I was utterly mad. I was a monster stuck in a past that no longer existed. I was an alicorn in a predictable and satiable pattern. Ponyville was pristine. My library was pure. Everything was “as it should be”. Whatever friends I made were ones willing to dress and act to such exacting standards where they were duplicates of my friends.

Yet, they weren’t.

They weren’t happy. Everything was off. Everything was wrong. Nothing was as it was. I was alone in the future, desperate for a friend, yet desiring none.

And what I knew as Equestria had moved on without me.

The land outside Ponyville had developed a democratic system, changed its name, and encaged me in a giant iron dome fortified with powerful magic. I’ve watched your Truman Show, and I can see the parallels in my own life from this era. I began to be nothing more than entertainment, a mockery of destruction and recreation that ponies would watch and bet on. The Elements of Harmony and my friends were nothing more than dishonourable legends and recreations of a crazy mare.

I knew this happened because of my connection with the Sun and Moon, who observed all things on Equis and reported back to me all they saw, regardless of whether I cared.

How glad am I that my friends were resting in their sleep at the time!

How glad am I that the ponies of what was Equestria saw in their wisdom to cage me as I burned out!

How glad am I that the Tree of Harmony still stood tall and strong, which birthed six new Elements to save me. I do not know how these ponies acquired them, nor by what methods they became friends, unlike my own Harmony experience and that of my Princesses. Regardless, it was a glorious moment when they entered the dome, Elements in tow and cleansed me of my Night Mare Moon – Silent Twilight.

The government knew of my history and life. After meeting me for the first time, however, they quickly realized that, for all intents and purposes, I was, in fact, magic. I could have departed the Dome at any time, a fact which I demonstrated by simply forming myself into magic and motioning through the ether surrounding the dome without so much as a breath. I was so preoccupied that I didn’t feel the need to leave.

A religion had also sprung up around me – the Twili, as they called themselves. They kept preaching about how “the Goddess was coming to cleanse us of our sins” and that “the righteousness of Equestria would be reborn in Her image.” When I showed absolute distaste for politics, instead preaching of Harmony with the New Six as my bishops, they called me a heretic and terrorized my followers.

Heh… ridiculous… calling their supposed “goddess” a heretic.

Both of these groups wanted me – the Twili, to rule, and the government, to experiment on. With so much persecution and opposition, I and my followers did the only sensible thing we could think of.

We fled the country.

One of your great thinkers, and the Son of HIM, Jesus Christ, said something along the lines of, “A prophet is welcome everywhere except in his own backyard”. Everywhere there were equines, we were welcomed. Their homes were ours. Their food was ours. They bore no ill will towards me, not like the mocking jabs of those at home. Yet, as we passed along our wisdom of harmony, something would change, as if Harmony itself was a curse.

One time, I tapped into my magic to find out about what was going on. The result saddened me. Apparently, ponies from Equestria were going around and spreading the tale of what I had done to others, saying that it was the “true account of Harmony” and “the cost of following lies.” From that point on, I wanted to meet with the ponies responsible.

There was no luck for almost a year on our westward walk. At the ninth village, I finally, personally heard the rumour mill churning. I had taken on my original unicorn form for a time so I could get a drink. My followers had decided to bed down for the night, but I was not yet tired. When I passed into a bar, I called up a stealth-listen-and-highlight spell to eavesdrop on all the conversations in the bar and illuminate for me the pony or two who were discussing my past. I ordered a daiquiri and sat quietly in the corner of the bar, waiting for the spell to activate.

One-and-a-half daiquiris later, the spell set off. To my surprise, it was in the next booth over. I quickly casted another listening spell, which isolated the conversation from the rest of the bar. As I finished this glass, I heard the whole thing.

To my surprise, the government of Eques… no, Amariquus… was, largely, telling the truth, except for the unnecessary embellishments about the country’s greatness and how they had liberated themselves from the “tyranny of alicorn oppression by way of a great war against our former overlords”. The government clearly had misrepresented what had happened.

So I came clean.

I stood up in front of the entire town the next day. I told my entire life story, everything from how I was born to now. I spoke of the despair I felt as my nine closest friends had gone before me, leaving me alone against the world. That was their so-called war – a fight against a mad pony who was trying to destroy not only herself, but the world. It was a tale that drew many eyes to tears, and even won converts among my most staunch opponents.

In the end, the Elements of Harmony that had saved me remained there as I continued on, never to see them again.

A small village now traveled with me, then a small city, as I countered the lies of Ameriquus. Eventually, I had to select another group of Bearers from among my followers, for the old ones had died back in the village.

But Harmony would not come to me.

I came to the realization that Harmony selected its own, and that I was merely its bishop in a massive game of chess. A new country had inherited Equestria’s legacy, a small country that I actually watched grow around me. On top of that, fewer and fewer assailants from Amariquus tailed me. Those that did would more often than not join my ranks as fact became myth, myth became legend, and legend faded from memory.

With the Harmonious Ones, I circumnavigated the globe.

Then I did so again.

Again.

And again, spreading the message of Harmony virtually unimpeded for thousands of years.

Those that followed me and those that believed increased in number for a long time. However, I began noticing a downward trend in population throughout the world. I attended funerals and births at an equal pace at this point, each birth matching each death practically one day after another, often at the same time. Each one I carried in me as a memory, a treasure buried deep within my heart.

But it was not to last.

Eventually, the numbers dwindled. There was no real explanation for it, at least, at first. On my millionth birthday, I witnessed the death of an entire country by plague. Two hundred years later, just as the population rebuilt, an earthquake struck down a large portion of the Equine populace. Nothing really recovered, and as the atmosphere dwindled, so did the magic holding the world together. The Sun began acting of its own accord, and the moon fled the sky to some distant, unknown destination as gravity and environment utterly collapsed.

I buried the last equine apart from myself on my fifty-millionth birthday, the day the sun also died.

It’s a strange thing to feel a star die, especially one that you’ve had control over for so long. You know the thoughts it feels as it ends. It knows it has had a long life, and that it has no qualms about letting go. It wanted a quick death, not slow and drawn-out like some of its other siblings across space had experienced over the last million years or so. Like Spike, it also asked me to kill it.

This time, I did not hesitate.

I became a wraith that day, a servant of the end of the world. If I could hasten parts of the universe’s collapse, so be it. If I could preserve a precious memory or put to rest a race at the end of its time, I did so. It was a solemn duty, and one I carried out on the last wave of magic for multitudes of millennia. It also allowed me to obtain knowledge I would otherwise had never had access to, and make friends at the end of the universe that I would not have. Although I took the task of being a harbinger of the End, I never once regretted it. I cried. I mourned. I buried more friends in those last trillion years than I ever thought possible, but I treasured it all. The mistake I had made at letting my darkness grow so many billions of years earlier still weighed on my mind as if it had happened yesterday, and I swore it would never happen again. Finally, I coaxed the last star in the universe, an old fart stubbornly holding onto the last wisps of strength it had, to release itself.

And so, exactly one quadrillion years of life after I first took breath, I floated in an empty void as absolute zero began creeping in. I was tired. I was exhausted. I was ready to die.

But I was happy.

The irony I found in that moment, that I had brought about the end of life, history, and time itself, yet remained happy, found its way into my heart. I was no longer Twilight Sparkle, nor was I Silent Twilight.

I was Omega. Bringer of final friendships. Finalizer of life and land. The ultimate conclusion to what was. I was…
It.

I floated there, consumed by darkness and confused with what to do next. I floated for… geez, I don’t know… generations. I lived in my memories, basking in what was and reliving all the glory of the simple things. Friendships. Gatherings. Parties. They were what I remembered most.

At that moment, when I was content, HE came, and HE brought up from within me long-dormant questions.