Millions of years in the future, Celestia and Luna watch over a dying world. Its surface is a cracked, barren wasteland, baked by a dying sun. The ocean is a caustic soup, choked with salt. Few creatures can survive this hellish future, and even their days are limited.
Yet, despite the desolation, there is some good news: Celestia's birthday is coming up, and Luna has a surprise for her...
Special thanks to Themaskedferret, BronyWriter, and Georg for proofreading and editing. Seriously, you guys rock!
Chapters (1)
I quite enjoyed this! It was an interesting idea that ended with a bittersweet note. Without spoiling new readers, I'll say that I approve what direction this took and the implications hinted at throughout the story.
I imagine if I were a few years younger I'd be bawling my eyes out, great story. I wish it didn't have to end the way it did but what can you do?
8088109
There's a whole damn universe out there. This is like staying in your childhood house as it burns down.
8088055
What kind of implications?
8088349 That Equestria is a space faring empire and all the hints at history we didn't get to see.
8088192 Indeed, it's much worse because it's even explained that space travel is possible but they don't fricken leave.
8088397
Maybe they can't leave...
8088412 If that is the case it'd be much better if it's explained in-story.
8088416
Good point.
8088192 Who's to say they didn't and decided to return home to live out the remainder of their near immortal lives.
8088412 That's a part of it but the whole 'The City returned' bit with SpinDizzy suggests that some massive catastrophe occurred in the Greater Universe, given Equis is completely abandoned.
The raiders are a bit of a wrench, in that something is still clearly out there, but it feels like there's subtle hints that the Sisters are all that is left of Ponykind and the rest of their civilization has been longed wiped out.
The Voice, on the other hoof, is the most befuddling part.
That, and I suppose, if a dozen+ Tyrants defeated and captured them, why didn't any ever just, you know, go the guillotine route? Unless their super-healing literally includes their head and body rejoining.
8088412
2 billion years and they figured out long distance space travel, super biological construction, and self replicating/repairing robots but they couldnt figure out how to get two ponies off planet? cmon man, good story with lots of feels but i feel it would have been more powerful if the ponies couldnt get past tier 1 civilization levels and just out lived their time
8088742
8088192
Well i think the point here is that the Alicorns are utterly bound to the solar system itself, Luna to the moon which grows more and more distant and Celestia to dying sun.
And it kind of get a feeling that the ponykind moved to stars and they stayed behind and were forgotten due to universal timescale. The story speaks of descendands of the ponies so it would be safe i think to assume that now in the year 2 billion there might not even be ponies... or anyone who would remember such creatures as ponies. Time is a cruel mistress.
Question is... is this the end of the story?
I'll give a high-five to anyone who can tell me where the name "SpinDizzy" came from.
8088855
I feeling so frigging old. It's a game. I see it on ZX spectrum. Good old days...
8088865
It is? I didn't know that.
8088867
Yeah, and fairly old game. I seen it around 199something but I'm fairly sure that it even older that that.
But you obviously refer to something else?
Et in fine est, et sol non est usque in sempiternum.
8088855
Earth pony, come home!
Damn. That's all I've got to say. Just damn. When done right, I'm a sucker for these kind of stories. And you killed it and did everything right here. Great job.
8088867 I feel like this deserves a tragedy tag
WELL AIN'T THAT STRANGE, SOMEHOW IT'S RAINING INSIDE MY APARTMENT.
Impressive.
8088846
And they could have sent the city on its way, so the record could have survived, but nope, they had to keep them, keep the family photo album in the burning house. What the humans/aliens took is now all that's left.
I don't rightly know what to say. It was interesting, beautiful in a way, and both sad and happy in the end.
Whatever the case, I like it. I think you did a great job with this one.
This is the best Celestia fic I've ever read.
What's a neopony? We know they're scaled, but apart from that...
Well I cried................damn good job my friend this is going in my favorites
8089360
Most likely at some point of their history ponies heavy drabbles in genetic manipulations and either change themselves into new form or create new types of ponies.
8089552
I was more wondering what their appearance and magical specialties were, really, but that's true.
AT LAST CELESTIA, WE WALK TOGETHER.
8088876
Actually, the name, and the city it's named after, is a reference to the works of James Blish. In his book Cities in FlightIt's the colloquail name for the "Dillion-Wagoner Gravitic Polarity Generator".
8088846 Pretty much. Two billion years is enough time for literally anything biologically possible to happen evolution wise. Our own biosphere is less than a billion years old when it comes to multicellular organisms, so just imagine the crazyness in another two billion years. Animals might not even exist anymore -- entirely new kingdoms could form that are able to move around. A sneeze in the present could harbor the ancestors of a future intergalactic civilization, for Pete's sake!
That said, I will admit to some bits of the story not making sense. First, the Moon; why did it drift away? Our own Moon is drifting away, yes, but at such a slow rate that it'll be here long after the sun dies. It is also going to settle into a stable orbit after a few tens of billion years of moving away (well, that is unless the sun consumes the Earth and Moon -- which is more likely than not).
Additionally, the death of the Sun in this seems to be misrepresented a bit. The oceans will boil away and the crust will burn long before it starts to die. The time scale for that was correct, at least. The problem is that the Sun wouldn't be running out of hydrogen at this point -- it would still have billions of years to go. It's just that our Sun will steadily increase in luminosity as it ages, destroying our biosphere long before it dies. It could be explained away by magic, but oh well.
8089773 You could argue that it should have in the Equestrian case here, but Celestia's soothing of it meant that it burned a while longer because of it, although the timescale there is still a bit off, yea.
8089737
I was going to ask if this was an unmarked crossover.
Twilight killed by Sombra's curse - an AU story, maybe?
Not the first "alicorns at the end of the world" story, certainly, but not bad.
Its been a long time since i've read a fanfiction over just a couple thousand words and I haven't cried over a fanfiction since the day I became a Brony say five years ago.
This story made me cry, it was so beautiful, I can't express enough how much I enjoyed this, it kept me hooked from start to finish....
Happy two billionth birthday, my Princess.
I kinda felt like the whole bit with the museum wasn't needed, which could have shortened this into a easier fic to sit and read in one go. Still, it was really good, only "grammar" issues I saw were several times you forgot to add quotations to the beginning of dialogue.
Very well done story. It's been a while since a story here got my tear ducts flowing, but this really got to me. Bittersweet but beautiful.
8090263
Thank you very much, but why do you think the museum scenes were unnecessary?
poor luna. always sacrificing everything for her sister.
But why would a tiny magical sun grow into a giant red giant when it doesn't even use fusion in the first place?
(This is why science and magic don't mix.)
This is one of the best fanfics I've EVER read. I have never cried this way with any other fanfic. I seriously had to set my phine down and stop crying just to continue,this was during the Twilight stained glass window scene, PLUS the Celestia and Elements of Harmony reunite scene just... no words other than it hit me in the feels...
BTW, really descriptive! Really brought me into the story! Probably why i cried so much
I don't think I've ever cried harder at an ending to a fic than I just did. Like, I'm including Snowdrop in this. You, my friend, get the highest ratingpossible for a fic. TWENTY moustaches:
I tried to give more, but apparently it won't load more than that :P
Wow.
You've thrown me into a legitimate mortality crisis...
Have your favourite while I seek help.
8090482 Because maybe Celestia is tied to the solar ball of hydrogen magically and that's why it still runs, and why she has control over it?
Just the scientist in me thinking that Celestia and Luna don't move the celestial bodies, but the planet itself, and without rotation, the planet dies.
I think what makes this hit the hardest is that I had just watched a few documentaries about outer space earlier, and amongst them were topics like stars dying, killing other stars, and becoming other not-star things, as well as what will eventually happen to the moon and our own planet. One part of the series does give me hope, however.
Stars are reborn. In the vastness of space, death begets life begets death begets life, ad infinitum until the eventual heat-death of the universe, and who's to say it ends there and is not the fertile earth in which the seed of another universe will grow? The stardust left behind by the sun that Celestia was once a part of will become things again, whether they make a comet, a planetoid, a world of its own, or perhaps even be the stuff of life on that world-to-be or another. Celestia and her sun will live on, in some form.
They're simply... a little less organized now, atomically speaking.
Awesome story, but I just couldn't help but facepalm at the incompetence of these two somewhat.
You have all this power and technology and yet you didn't leave the planet? Surely a sign could've been noticed?
A planet apocalypse of this magnitude is gradual. No one thought to leave when stuff we're starting to die?
For beings that are about a billion years old, they seem really stupid here... I mean c'mon.
And the bit with the Humans? No communication? Just a fight that ended abruptly? It was a curve ball that flew in my face that made my head snap back.
I love the story, don't get me wrong but there are some elements here that seem like they wouldn't realistically work out.
I also don't like getting teased. So much plot stuff with barely any explanations... I hate it when stories tease me like this... It frustrates my brain something fierce!
Great story in terms of idea and feels.
Everything else needs work.
8/10 only because the idea and the feels bolstered the story up.
And so, in the End, it was known:
Nobody gives a fuck about Spike!
8089360
I assumed they were robots.