A Cavalcade of Cards

by QueenMoriarty

The Atlantis Complex

I've been through a lot, along with the rest of Equestria. We've seen things that changed our world, felt the kingdom shake as giants walked the land, balked in fear at the titans warring overhead. But we've also marveled at how low the mortality rates were. In the wake of every disaster, I cannot remember seeing even a single new gravestone. We have been incredibly lucky, that those who have risen against us have either been too sadistic or too unconcerned with our affairs to ever kill us. Most ponies don't think about how unlikely it is that they would live to see Tirek chained again, or how lucky they are that Discord prefers dancing puppets to desecrated corpses.

But it still has an effect, even on the ponies who don't realize what this means. Death threats just aren't used. Life insurance is considered a scam if you don't already have a few centuries and twice that many venereal diseases under your belt. And pretty much the only moment where we remember that death can come at any time is in the very thick of one of those events with a zero percent casualty rate.

I can recall one such time, when for all my treatises on the apparent immortality of Equestria and its peoples, that I was afraid that I might die. 'Twas so horrific, I still remember it just as clearly as if it were happening to me at this very moment. Or perhaps it is happening right this second, and I am envisioning it as an event of the distant past in an effort to stop my heart from exploding with fear.

I know what its name is. I know the name it goes by, I know what it is capable of, and what has been done both with it and for it. But in that moment, I do not see the Smooze, that amiable lump of anti-magic that we just kept on inviting to parties no matter how many times it ate our family heirlooms. I see only the Great Wave, towering up, and coming in ineluctably over the trees and green fields.

The air is filled with screaming, and the ground beneath my hooves shakes with the panicked fleeing of my fellow ponies. I see the churning tide of ponies just out of the corner of my eye, but I pay them no heed. I cannot help but stop, cannot stop myself from staring up at the Wave as it sweeps across the land towards me. The sun, which I once considered my god, is lost behind the roiling green tide, and the scintillating beams that pour through it make me feel as though I am no longer in the world I knew. Then I look at where it has come from, and it ceases to be a feeling.

There used to be a place called Ponyville. It was a beautiful little town, where heroes traded stories and blows as casually as you or I might trade glances in a crowded street. I went there once or twice. Everypony does. You have to meet the Elements of Harmony, if only to remind yourself that they aren't gods. Well, Ponyville isn't there anymore. Every brick, every plank, every spark of magic in that precious castle has been torn clean out of its bearings by the Wave. And it is not the only place to suffer so.

The Everfree Forest has been devoured, stripped of every magical tree or unique flora. Las Pegasus has only avoided crushing the city of Applewood beneath the weight of its extravagant decadence by climbing as high as they dare to take it. Scarcely an hour ago, I watched the city of Canterlot crumble and slip from its mooring, tumbling into the maw of the Wave and becoming so much gravel as it passed through that strange digestive system.

I was one of the few ponies foolish enough to try and save the ponies who fell with Canterlot. This, even though I knew that the Wave passed as quickly as a moment, even though I know that it does not kill, and that their magic is lost the moment it touches them. I saved none of them, and then my wings were stained with the slime of this accursed titan. Now I have found my way to the earth that still stands unmarred by the Unenchanted Green, and wait my turn, for I cannot escape.

There is no opposition against this force. The Elements tried, and their magic only sank into its folds and made it surge faster. The princesses do not dare fight it, for they fear that to do so would make them powerless. The Royal Guard may as well have disappeared from Equestria, for all the good that they ever did. But when the Wave has passed, perhaps there shall be relief efforts. Perhaps the other lands will take pity on us, and will seek to help us rather than take advantage of our weakened position.

Ah, yes, I must be remembering. Because I do distinctly remember them never coming, whether for peace or for war. I remember the time it took us to rebuild. I remember that there was nopony save ourselves who appeared to clean up what had been left behind.

It's funny. In an age where we have no fear of death, we measure our cataclysms by the janitor on duty. But after the Great Wave had passed, none would step up to the plate. There was a rumor that Discord had been sighted for a brief moment, before he loudly declared that he was still on vacation and disappeared for another year. But most pointed to even that sad story as a fairy tale, some tiny sliver of some sick perversion of hope that still proved far too false for a post-Wave Equestria.

There was a certain sort of peace to when I stopped running, and let the Wave wash over me. I had never felt so helpless as when that Wave struck me, enveloped me in its warmth and ripped me from my hooves. For what felt like an eternity I floated, trapped and unable to think. Part of me has spent every moment since wishing the Wave had taken me and never let me go, so that I would never need to know the struggles of rebuilding. But there's another part of me that knows I never would have been able to build my own house if the world hadn't ended.

So if you ever meet the Smooze on your travels, tell him thanks from Zephyr Breeze.

Author's Note:

This is the Green Goop. It eats everything you have until there's nothing left but basic farmland. That's basically its only job. The amount of words you can write about it is based entirely on how much you want to talk about directionless destruction that has no politics, probably no conscious motivation, and doesn't even kill anypony.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Thus spake Celestia: "Nope."

gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=49009&type=card

Of course, that rather kills the drama, doesn't it?

In all seriousness, it was pretty obvious which card this was from the get-go, but you portrayed its swath of destruction magnificently.

[Pretentious Narwhal]

Artemis Fowl reference detected?

[QueenMoriarty]

7637505 Tolkien, actually.

[Pretentious Narwhal]

7637506 Wait, what? I could see the one last chapter, but where is this one?

[QueenMoriarty]

7637705 Try googling it. 'atlantis complex tolkien'

[Proginoskes]

Correction: doesn't kill anyone who isn't an artifact or an enchantment. Constructs and golems and Nyxborn are goners.

[Bugsydor]

I felt inordinately proud of myself for figuring out it would be Wave of Vitriol.

I hadn't considered why the Smooze nommed valuables before. The notion that such artifacts would be naturally or artificially infused with magic leads to some interesting world-building ideas.

[PresentPerfect]

Oh geez. XD

[UrsaMajor]

7637506
*squees*
I thought I recognized a bit of the professor's nightmare in there.