Shattered Worlds

by Midnightshadow

Millennia of Sky

The
CONVERSION
►Bureau

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Shattered Worlds
Millennia of Sky
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An MLP:FiM Fanfiction by Midnight Shadow

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Aching pumps, shuddering with every cycle, finally ground to a halt. The noise wasn't defeaning, but the sheer presence of tonnes of specialized machinery failing at distinct point after distinct point was palpable. In the deserted complex, lights flickered as whirring dynamos spun down and sought to distribute suddenly-excess load across failsafes which hadn't ever been used.

Somewhere, in an empty control room, a single red light lit up. Then another, and another, and another. Flash after flash lit up the confined space in a sea of red and amber. Finally, the control system let it be known that the worst of all possible occurences had taken place. Outside the confines, on high fences ringed by miles of curled razor-wire, warnings lights lit up and began to spin as deep mournful sirens wailed.

Deep below, on a pedestal of rock, lay a chest. At first glance it was quite a simple chest, nothing ornate. It was obviously made for one purpose - to keep whatever was inside it on the inside. It was a whitish-grey, though the tubes leading from it were filled with a deep red liquid. The same warm, sticky liquid pooled around the pedestal, dripping from the tubes where the seals were failing. The distant, now-silent pumps had been attached to these tubes, and had been responsible for siphoning off the red liquid, and spiriting it away to where it was measured out, processed, managed and supplied to the few, specialized places that had a need of it.

Now, of course, the pumps were silent, and the red liquid was building up. It was small, at first. The drips became a steady stream, and they in turn became spurts, and soon to rivulets of red. The pool beneath the chest - never small - grew and grew until it formed a large puddle and then, charitably, a small lake. Pressure built up behind the tubes, and could not be denied. Inevitably, the latches popped. The seal broke, and the lid of the chest burst open. Outwards poured a sticky, red stream. It steamed, like hot breath on a winter's morning, but the heat did not dissipate.

For a while, there was silence. The lid remained open, though the torrent had subsided. Slowly, however, the lid raised. Millimeter by millimeter, centimetre by centimeter, until it was clear that something inside was growing, pushing the lid further and further up. Weight shifted, until the box fell from the pedestal, disgorging it's contents into the red puddle. The box fell, the impetus of it's fall arrested by the sizeable puddle, splashing away, to leave a shapeless mass of flesh and bone writhing.

The mass moved. It squirmed, it wriggled, it shook. Most of all, it grew. It was an odd lump of flesh; two ear-like protuberances, matted and swollen from being submerged in the red liquid, two wildly-staring orbs that looked like eyes, two large cavernous nostrils, and all of this attached to an elongated skull-like frame, over which was stretched white fur, tipped with a long, pearly-white horn.

As the mass grew, it changed, it firmed out. It solidified. A neck, first extending like some macabre scaffolding, then filling out with sinew, muscle and skin, draped from the back of the head. A chest appeared, a backbone, legs, a tail. Inside this grisly spectre of modern art, specks of flesh blossomed into being like fungus. Almost as an afterthought, a plump, roughly spherical organ began to beat in a regular rhythym. It was a heart. When the lungs and vocal chords were both reformed, the creature screamed.

It screamed long, it screamed loud, and it screamed painfully. The scream itself, born of an aeon of darkness, loss, loneliness and torture, hurt in ways which were barely describable, even to the creature itself, which had withstood an eternity of oblivion. Even as flesh regrew, even as wings sprouted feathers, even as every outward sign of injury melted away like morning mist, the creature screamed.

Celestia, last princess of Equestria, ruling goddess of the day, regent of the sun, though she barely remembered her own name, got to her hooves, and screamed. She spread her wings, stretched out her head, and screamed.

And she screamed.

And she screamed.

And she screamed.

She looked up, and saw a box, only larger than before. Boxes. She would stand no more boxes. She would bear no more cages. She would suffer no more chains. Her primal scream of pain and loss thundered through the air between here and the rock, and the rock melted under the assault. With a single great flap of her wings, she rose upwards. Caring not for mere mass and matter between her and the open sky, she pummeled her way upwards.

Rock, metal, earth - none of it would stand between her and her goal. Moments later, her great white wings slammed their way up through the ground, to emerge into burning bright sunlight and blue skies.

For a singular moment, a single moment of peace, she was free. Then euphoria gave way to anger, and anger became rage. She had been sequestered away in darkness and eternal pain, cut off from her children, denied her liberty and denied even the simple dignity of her own body. It had been an outrage, a travesty, and an insult beyond measure.

She had only one need, retribution. All her rage, all her pain, it all demanded an answer.

Feathers burning with the heat of a thousand suns, Celestia forged through the skies on wings of flame to descend upon her enemies, mankind, who had sought to strike her down.

***

The Custodian stretched as he stood up. Breathing deeply, he seated his yen and finally allowed his eyes to open. All things within balance, he told himself. Lifting an aged staff into his hands, the man smiled softly to nothing in particular, and strode from his simple wooden dwelling.

His tasks were close at hand, as they always were. Oracle knew best where he would need to be.

"Little One," he called out, "tell me of your problems."

Sweet Blossom looked up, pouting. "It's this dumb weather tower, it won't listen to me!"

The Custodian chuckled to himself, "are you sure you have the right words?"

"I do! I know I do!"

"Sing them to me, then!" The Custodian laughed, good naturedly, as Sweet Blossom sang a few bars of her favourite nursery-rhymes.

"Rain, rain, go away, come again another day!" Sweet Blossom looked up, but the clouds still resolutely swirled, promising water from the sky. She tried again. "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man's snoring!" Nothing. Not a drop, either.

"Hmm, oh my, yes. Come then, weather tower, away with you now." The Custodian beat his staff against the ground twice, and waited as, grudgingly, the vast crystal monolith sank into the ground.

Sweet Blossom's muzzle fell open. "Where did it go?"

"Back into the Earth, dear Sweet Blossom, where all things must go in the end, even you and I. But look! A fresh weather tower springs forth, even now." The Custodian pointed, and what first appeared to be a tiny little hillock, soon burst into an open mound, from which the sharp protrusion of a crystal weather-tower could be seen. In moments, the diminutive spike had blossomed into a full-blown edifice, towering above both man and pony alike.

"Now try, my dear Sweet Blossom. Sing to it with your heart, and it shall answer. The weather will always be thus for you ponies."

"Well, alright then." Sweet Blossom closed her eyes, and sang again. "We're all going on a summer holiday!" As she opened her eyes, a wide smile filled her muzzle. The grey, forboding clouds fled, leaving nothing but the sun behind. "Yay! You did it!"

The Custodian shook his head, tousling the mane of the little pony. "No, my dear, you did it. I shall be off now, but call again if you need me." He bowed, then straightened and turned around, Oracle nudging him towards his next task for the day. He smiled inwardly as the pony behind him began singing to herself. He heard the ground sigh as it parted beneath her plough, and the seeds rejoice at their new home as she planted her crop. It was a simple affair - carrots, onions, potatoes - but she did it with such relish and gusto.

Suddenly, The Custodian found himself stopping. He turned his head to the side as he felt a presence before him. Oracle couldn't see it properly, which was very odd, but could feel it's effects. As his steps slowed, he realized he could feel it, too. Heat, warmth.

"Hello?" he called. He blinked, he could feel the heat now, it was like a massive bonfire. "Is anyone there?"

"Human," hissed a voice. The malice and anger in such a voice startled him.

"I... madame? Forgive me, I know not who you are."

"You do not know me, human? You do not recall the goddess you imprisoned, the deity you trapped, deep within the earth, in the endless dark?"

The Custodian stumbled, shocked. He leaned against his staff, and then fell back onto his backside. "I do remember," he said, "They called you Celestia."

"They call me, human! Call! Do you not see what is plainly in front of your face?" The voice was haughty, angry, spitting mad.

Sadly, The Custodian shook his head. "Madame, I am blind."

There was a moment of silence, and then the heat dissipated, almost at once. "What?"

"I am blind, your highness. I have little need of sight, but I regret to inform you this body is blind."

"You... are blind? I would have my rage dashed against a blind cripple?" The voice grew harsh and angry again. "Fetch me another of your kind, cripple. I would have them see me before I end their miserable existence!"

The Custodian stood up and dusted himself off, reaching a hand inside his robes. Gently, he took out four objects. They had been given to him a long time ago, and he had thought that he would never see their use. Smiling softly and indulgently to himself, he caressed the strange devices as he placed them at the hooves of the interloper. "Your Highness, I can fetch no others. There are no others. I am the last."

"The... last?"

"The last human. Before you, kneels the last of mankind." The Custodian dropped to one knee. "And my life is yours, but I beg of you nothing but one final request - hear me out."

There was a snort, but the voice echoed through his ears, "Go on."

The Custodian touched the first object. "This is a diamond, from Equestria. Shaped through our tools, it is nevertheless Equestrian through and through. It is the repository of thirty billion souls, ten billion of which exist without any backups. We give you this, the most precious thing we have, ourselves, for you to do with as you please."

There was an outraged silence, then Celestia spoke. "Thirty... billion?"

"Within this crystal, run circuits powered by sunlight, computation and storage rolled into one. Enough exists in this one crystal for a thousand earths, and each one populated by the data-ghost of a human. They... live as in a dream, your Highness. And at your will, they will cease to be. Crush them beneath your hooves, as is your right."

"Crush? But..."

"Long ago, you were wronged. They have decided that this is to be their penance. A life for a life. We know not how far the devastation reached in your world, but it is likely to be far. We give a fair trade."

"Enough! To talk so easily of slaughter! What else have you, human?"

"Two flasks, one of potion, one of poison. Should you not wish to end my life by your own hooves, I may end it for you. If I take the poison, it will eat me away, and I shall turn to ash."

"You would..?" The voice sounded horrified.

"I understand that... you may not understand the weight of lives in the gem. So my life, the life of the last of humans, is yours to do with as you please."

"And the final object?"

The Custodian lifted the small, round object carefully. "A pearl unlike any other. Millennia ago, terrible weapons burned a world. Where these weapons touched, matter collapsed into nothing. In the blink of an eye, the field these weapons produced ceased to exist, but that brief moment was enough. Total collapse of the signature waveform followed, annihilating all matter everywhere within that mode of existence. This pearl contains all that is left of the gateway between here and there. We... could not open it again, but we could protect it. It is now yours. I await your decision, your Highness.

The Custodian bowed his head, listening only to the hoof-beats of the pony as she stomped back and forth. Finally, she spoke again. "What happened?"

"Your Highness," The Custodian replied hesitantly, "A thousand years passed, or more, since you were imprisoned. We... grew. We flourished, and we did it with your children. Your children... became our children. And our children outgrew their cradle." The Custodian pointed skywards, where he could feel another source of heat. "Do you see that cloud? It looks so very, very far away?"

"I do."

"At the centre of that cloud lies a star, drained of many heavier elements. Surrounding it is a swarm of smart-matter, rocks that can think. Our children dismantled the inner solar system, prising apart the planets for raw materials. They devoured the outer rings, the gas giants, and the rockier planets. But... they kept the Earth. They sent it all the way out here, to the Oort cloud, the very edge of the system, with a new, artificial sun to warm it, whilst they populated the inner spaces. Out there, in that cloud, lives a society a billion, billion times larger than that which lies spread out upon the face of this planet. They are what humanity became, but they are not human. With me dies what used to be the race which wronged you."

The Custodian heard the pony turn, and heard her wings flutter. She sighed. "I sought to burn you, and your world... but I cannot."

"This world... we gave it to your children a long time ago. Only I remain, servant to their needs. With your freedom, planned by Mankind's children once they were beyond your reach, I serve no purpose. For three hundred years, I have walked the green fields and dark forests of this Earth. Now, all ten thousand of my alternate selves have breathed their last, as we have shared words."

"What?!"

"I am... truly the last. Everything they were, I now am. Ten thousand mornings..." The Custodian was silent. "I saw through their eyes, and this planet is beautiful. Now, it is yours. From pole to pole stretches an endless expanse of life, a world holding six billion ponies, tens of millions of griffon, millions of diamond dogs, an unknown number of dragons, and enough terran-based life to support them all for a million millennia."

A hoof pushed a vial forwards. "Drink, then, and accept your fate."

Trembling, The Custodian lifted the proffered vial, unstoppered it, and drank. As he fell over and felt sleep claiming him, he was grateful atleast that his end would not be painful.

***

The ground beneath his feet was grassy, and wet. Custodian blinked. Slowly, shapes began to form. Those shapes resolved themselves into blades of grass. It took him a moment to work out what he was seeing. Then it struck him, he was seeing.

"Are you going to lie there all day?" asked a regal voice.

Custodian looked up to see a huge pony, much larger than he remembered from his other bodies. She was large, white, with a horn and wings. Gingerly, he got to his feet. "I... must apologize. I had not thought to be doing much walking, once I was dead."

"Well we all have to die sometime, but that's no reason to take it lying down. Come with me."

"As you wish, your Highness." Custodian got to his feet, and began plodding after the large mare.

What seemed like several hours later, Celestia grew tired of waiting for him, and she grabbed him in her teeth and hauled him onto her back. Moments later, and the creature had sprung into the air.

Custodian gasped as the ground fell away, to reveal an expanse of empty greenery. There weren't many trees or bushes, and there seemed to be no birds or animals. Looking up, he couldn't spot the sun. It made sense, he guessed, that there would be no sun in the land of the dead. He hadn't really expected to travel through the land of the dead with Celestia, though. He hadn't really expected to travel through it at all.

As they travelled, he thought he heard hoofbeats, thunderous staccato impacts of countless ponies, but he could see none of them. When they landed at an abandoned, broken-down city built into a mountain, the feeling of hooves and motion surrounded him even heavier, but still there was nothing he could see. He kept spotting movement out of the corner of his eyes, but he chalked that up to not having had sight before entry into this strange netherworld.

Dutifully, he trotted after the alicorn, through door after door, until they reached an empty throne room. Countless stained-glass friezes surrounded what was an otherwise unremarkable, run-down room. He could tell, though, that it had once been opulent beyond belief. The carpet was bare, if whole. The thrones were intact, even the curtains held the promise of gloss. Celestia stood to one side, and gestured. From somewhere up above, a perfect golden shaft of sunlight spilled down into the room, illuminating a single spot before two thrones - one golden, the other a dark royal blue..

"This is now your last task, human. Walk into the light."

"And... I will die?"

"Walk into the circle of light, and the last human shall be no more."

"Then, may I just ask that with this one deed, you forgive us." Custodian steeled himself, and stepped forwards.

As the light hit him, he had expected it to burn. It didn't. It felt warm, comfortable even. In moments, he found himself standing in the middle of the light, on all fours. He hadn't really noticed the conversion, but as he thought about it, he realized he was no longer humanoform. He was shaped like a pony. He seemed to have, in fact, the body of a pony, perfect in every way. He could twitch his ears, swish his tail, and his nostrils flared wide with barely a thought.

"Celestia?" he asked, "I... thought you said I was going to die?"

"Well you will," the alicorn replied airily, "eventually. I didn't say it would be today."

"But... but..." the surprised ex-human turned around and around, finally turning back to see Celestia had walked right up to the edge of the shaft of sunlight. She leaned closer.

"Gotcha."

***

The pearl was tiny, and yet it contained within it everything that millions of ponies and their world had become.

The hoof that came down upon it was vast, but nowhere as near as vast as the infinities barely constrained inside the relatively mundane-looking jewel.

The pearl split open, and from it poured forth the universe. A roiling mass of energy swirled chaotically around the shattered remains of the rock-like object for a brief moment, before swelling and growing, exploding outwards in a soundless, ceaseless mesh. Where it passed, the ground stretched and swelled. Rocks became mountains, puddles became oceans, trees became forests and bushes became savannah. As the animals passed through, they shook themselves as if having woken from slumber, and then they looked around with new eyes, and a new understanding.

And where the ponies passed, they changed beyond measure. Their coats became brighter, their eyes sparkled, their manes shone. For some, marks appeared on their flanks, for others, they sprouted wings, or horns. And all through this tempest of change, one creature stood firm and tall, and when the rupture turned in upon itself and sealed the human world away, Celestia threw back her head, and sang.

Two worlds, one a dream that was not a dream, another the waking expanse of the before and after, burst into colour and light, and billions upon billions of hooves converged upon their goddess as the sun rose once more.

There would be day, and there would be night. There would be the sun, and there would be the moon. On her chest hung a jewel, the promise of thirty billion futures, and at her hooves stretched her people.

She would need to heal, but she had time.

They all had time.

They had millennia, and they had their sky.

Comments

[Midnightshadow]

And so ends Shattered Worlds.

I'm not, still, sure it is perfect. I am not, still, sure I am happy.

But it is done.

[Cloudhammer]

Well, sad to see this finally end. Enjoyed the turns you took and the roads your characters led us down. Hope to see more from you in the future, and more King of Diamonds, of course

[Noble Cause]

It is done. And it is wonderfully, terribly, beautiful.

Bravo, Midnight. You have touched me in a way I'd not thought possible. You wonder why I respect and admire and look up to you as a friend, a confidant and a writer. This is why.

Thank you. That's all I can truly say, is thank you.

[shutaro]

"They millennia, and they had their sky."

[Dafaddah]

Beautifully done, Middy! Positively mythic, and a very satisfying close to your story cycle.

Dafaddah

[Midnightshadow]

1635100
yeah yeah, laff it up. Somehow managed to drop an entire word. dammit.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Redemption. Grimdark made light. On the shoulders of mankind, the angel beats the devil by technical knockout.

That said, they could've at least had the decency to open the box themselves instead of just letting blood pressure do all the work. Ah well. Good end.

[Chatoyance]

This was very poetic, and had many good scenes, such as the reformation of Celestia.

I have to say I had a few problems with it, though, if I may speak of them.

One, is a logic problem - it seems to me that such an advanced post-humanity would have been easily able to scan the entire earth, and discover where (if they did not know) Celestia's Treasure Chest was buried. Because they clearly feared her, from the statement that they made themselves 'out of her reach', I seems unlikely that they would just leave her chamber to disintegrate like that. I think I would expect them to have made it more secure, properly kept, and developed a controlled release system that would let her out at a time of their choosing. Her exploding out because of a build up of blood in the clogged pipes seems either utterly cruel, or incredibly careless of humanity in that light.

The other problem I had was the very ending. I felt unsure what had actually occurred. My best guess is that the pearl represented the essence of destroyed Equestria, and that Celestia somehow opened it, and spilled that essence onto the earth... or sucked the earth into a pocket dimension where she set about remaking Equestria. Or that she dumped magic on the world, enough to grant the existence of unicorns and pegasai after so long. It simply wasn't completely clear to me what you intended. The poetry got in the way for me a bit, and the sequence felt vague and undefined for me.

It was all very beautiful, and I enjoyed the chapter, I just found myself lost at the end, and I felt the issue of her release to be dramatic but difficult to reconcile.

I really hate being critical, despite you telling me that it is what you want. But... these issues kind of bothered me.

Please forgive me for taking so long to read and comment on your final chapters here. I've... been having my own issues to deal with, including being very ill. I'm better now.

Anyway, I have greatly enjoyed Shattered Worlds, and I thank you for writing it.

[Midnightshadow]

1756447
I actually think I need to re-write it when I can get my head around it. I'll let you know when/if I do, because it just plain didn't come out quite right. There's a lot left unsaid; sometimes that works, this time I don't think it did.

[Sotha]

So, Celestia is the... Queen of Diamonds!

And Luna is... one of the 'dreaming' ponies?

[Coda]

1756447

I had interpreted it as the Barrier itself, collapsed and frozen; when broken, it unfroze, expanding at incredible speed to engulf the planet, fulfilling its original plan in a matter of moments.

[Sharp Logic]

I loved your story, how you went straight with the whole premise of Equestria (well, its inhabitants and physical features at least) being really destroyed and Celestia being really trapped and incommunicable in the box then going insane. But I agree with others that the last chapter has some deficiencies in that a super-advanced post-human/post-pony civilization wouldn't really have been unable to know where the box was. I think some minor changes could fix that while allowing you to keep most of it unchanged, so here are a few suggestions. I hope you appreciate them and if you find them useful even use them.

What I think would work would be for you to add a conversation between Celestia and the Oracle in between she "Gotcha!"'ing him and her releasing of the Equestrian reality over Old Earth. He could weep in thanks for her kindness and forgiveness of humanity's sins and then reveal that her release wasn't really an escape, telling her to please accompany him back to the factory. Upon entering it she's stunned to discover that it wasn't really a factory, and there isn't really any box and most definitely no blood splashed all around the floor, but only the charred remains of some kind of medical biorecovery chamber. The newly ponified Oracle then tells her that, let's say, 700 years ago, when humanity finally changed, they decided to release her, but found that after centuries of madness her mind had gone blank, that while her head was alive she was catatonic and, due to her thaumaturgic nature, there was nothing they could do at the time, but that they persisted in studying the nature of thaumaturgy, the little they had access to due to her blood, and everything they could about her neural pathways, until about 300 years ago they finally figured a way to restore her mind, but that even by using the most advanced nano-thaumaturgic technology they could devise it'd be an unknown number of decades before it finished battling its way through all the magic energy fighting against them, and that it'd at best restore her mind to its previous state of madness, that any further healing would have to come from her own nature. Sad for this, but still feeling responsible, they set the process forward, moving Earth away, placing her head into the restoration chamber, setting the machinery to also reconstruct her body, and instructing it to release her once brain activity was detected. Thus what she saw when released, the whole scene of she being a decapitated head in the ground within a factory that stopped due to malfunction, was actually an hallucination, the last one before her thaumaturgic nature began healing her mind, and that the only aspect of it that actually happened was her flying out in flames. Then the story proceeds as before.

With this I think the only minor change you'd have to make would be for the Oracle to not be surprised by encountering Celestia, but remaining calm and composed, since he was most certainly warned by the restoration lab's computers that brain activity had been finally detected and Celestia was being released.

By the way I'd love a few more developments around the new "elements". What I think was missing was an early chapter (or chapters), set in the period of humanity's utter cruelty towards each other and towards ponies, showing those using these as cannon fodder in their wars. It'd make for some very sad scenes of ponies being psychologically broken and turned into weapons, fighting and killing humans and each other. It could even include experiments with unicorns and pegasus created exclusively for military use and being sacrificed once the war was over. This could show those six powerful human-haters working together in manipulating the different country powers as a perverted way of bringing back those two pony species and thus advancing their plans of forcefully replacing humanity. Their final failure would be for them to discover, when finally reaching the point of releasing Celestia from her box for her to destroy the few remaining humans, of her catatonism, thus starting the chain of events leading to the above results.

Finally an appendix could be added showing Old Earth, now New Equestria's core world, 10,000 years after its conversion, friends with the Galactic civilization and wholly integrated with it, and within it a fully healed Celestia in her New Canterlot castle, surround by hundreds of the Galaxy's top thaumaturges, both post-post-humans and post-AIs, all working into the final touches of the most difficult techno-spell ever made, an ultimate form of time magic able to cross not only time but dimensions, barriers and physical domains, in a last attempt to recover all Old Equestria living forms from the few instants right before its destruction. The scene changes to a smiling Celestia, tears in her eyes, being greeted by a stunned Luna asking "Sister?" and a very confused Twilight Sparkle asking "Princess?"

What do you think?

Too bad I'm not good at writing actual fiction or I'd try doing these myself.

[Midnightshadow]

2675164
Thanks for your long, long comment. I don't know if I can do it justice, but I have read it all. For the most part, I agree with it.

I wrote these stories as a collection of one-of narratives that share a common theme and setting, albeit as snap-shots of the world throughout its evolution and eventual apotheosis. Originally I wrote only the first one, but the world held so much potential that just one wasn't quite enough. I think I'm done with them now, though, but you never know.

Regarding the last story, I have to agree. It needs rewriting and fleshing out, specifically the middle. I do intend it to be scenes from the end of one world and the birth of another, but that about-face is too neat and simple.

With Celestia's eventual, inexorable escape, it's not supposed to be that she overcame her captors and finally defeated her enemies, it's literally that they have moved on. Earth as it was is completely gone, with humanity extinct, having moved on to post-post-post humanity leaving only Oracle and the fleshy pieces of it that still look humanoid wandering the Earth behind.

And that's the key, behind. She didn't escape because they let her out, she didn't escape because she was especially clever or resourceful, she escaped because they had ceased caring almost a thousand years before, and had moved far, far beyond her reach. Oracle is surprised because it was intentional that she would escape, and intentional that it would be unstoppable (by being intentionally forgotten) - the faction that wanted her out (the six 'elements') made sure her escape was as inevitable as the extinction of mankind due to the singularity.

I never answered the question of what happened to Equestria, and I'm not sure I want to, even to myself. It is implied that something survived, and with Equestria being a realm of magic, then it may be enough, with or without my input.

See, the final irony is that Mankind really did go extinct, and by it's own hand. And the Earth really was inherited by the Equestrians, swallowed up and removed from the cosmos of Mundis Mundi. The final 'triumph' (if you can call it that) of Celestia was just... postponed, for a millennium. She spent her own thousand years in exile, and now is called once more to rule over a new world that she only dimly remembers. But she's a goddess, I think she'll cope.

One of the themes is the futility of life, but ultimately the fact that life will out, as I like to say. The whole point of life is not the destination (which was shown to be the same, ultimately, than the other incarnations of these tales) but the journey, and the capacity of those on that journey to accept the way things are without falling into apathy, and to meet that challenge head-on, even Celestia.

[Sharp Logic]

2675319 "... she escaped because they had ceased caring almost a thousand years before, and had moved far, far beyond her reach."

Could it be we had two faction, one that cared and another that didn't? Because the 30 billion souls who tied themselves to a single, destructible chip, as well as whoever moved the Earth, set up the Oracle program, the other 3 objects etc., all seem to have cared enough to do all of this, and it seems strange they'd leave just her release to chance. In fact it seems to point to a whole lot of caring. So while I can see the point you were making it doesn't fit well with these aspects of the story.

The uncaring moving on of everything is a potent story solution though, and it'd be quite interesting to read, but I think it would be better told if she achieved release when the factory broke down to find, well, nothing, not even the possibility of revenge, or at least nothing she could began understanding on her own. All alone, in a field of gray matter, left behind with only her magic to keep her company, and perhaps an opportunity, the same one offered to any new sentient being found by chance floating around, to leave her past in the past and join the singularity as one digitized mind among others. (EDIT: Bonus points if she emerges as Nightmare Sun, only for that to be in vain.) It'd be in a way the ultimate nihilistic solution, but also one opening new possibilities.

In any case I'm curious how you'd solve the dichotomy.

[Midnightshadow]

2675926
Essentially, there were two major factions. To understand where they came from, you have to go back to the beginning.

The first group wanted to exploit - they essentially owned the planet, ran the planet, and exploited the people living on the planet. They wanted to control Equestria because they wanted to continue to control the population. Absolute power corrupts, and this faction had near enough absolute power.

The second group wanted what Equestria offered, but more to the point wanted to get out from under the thumb of the first group.

When Equestria fell, those who (for whatever reason) wanted to profit, did the best they could to take control of the new resources - Celestia's blood and the ponies that came with it. Those who (for whatever goal they originally had in mind) saw the wanton extermination of a world by choice and the subjugation and slavery of an entire race as undesirable, set out to right that wrong.

"Shattered Worlds", then, is a play between those who wish to cement their power with total control over not just the population of Earth, but the stranded population of Equestria, in the process making both less than they should be, and those who would see Celestia and Equestria restored because the alternative - not matter how much of a boon to mankind - is just inhumane.

I don't know if I really managed to show it, but the world after the destruction of Equestria is put on an inexorably upward path which isn't just good versus evil, and in fact becomes one of turn-about fortunes as the masters of Earth become, eventually, servants of the ponies as mankind seeks whatever strange destiny lies ahead in the civilization that blooms around Sol, built by its technological children.

In the end, the planet is left to the ponies because mankind (or what mankind has become) fears Celestia utterly. That's one of the reasons (other than it simply getting in the way) that they move the Earth out, far out, past the orbit of Pluto. Those who would see her imprisoned forever have power, even in this post-future, and it became a simple waiting game for those who would see her released to set up things as to allow the systems keeping her in chains to degrade and, one day, fail. They know she is a goddess, they want her to escape, and they also fear her wrath - so they leave themselves the insurance of a gravity well and space-time between her and them.

There are a few more stories there, others are welcome to write them, and I may pen a few, but for now, I'm pretty much done.

[Sharp Logic]

2676208 That makes it all much clearer, thanks! And if I ever start writing fanfiction I think this one of yours would be one of the most interesting to dwell into. Kudos!

[Bronzer]

I'm pretty sure the surviving humans would kill all the ponies without hesitation, on sight. Probably while laughing. Scourge and Purge.

Even if they were created from Celestia's blood by another group, they would just be cut down and their creators would be hunted and wiped out by a very pissed off humanity.

[Midnightshadow]

4671738
Indeed, it is quite an elegant, modest proposal.