Senescence

by Kavidun

First published 29th of March, 2017

Ivyshine is the last mortal pony left in a corrupt space system of immortals. She is seen a celebrity. This is her story, and the stories she tells.

For the sake of maintaining a T rating, any scenes of sex will be toned down. Any time this occurs, a parallel chapter will be uploaded in a side fic for those of you who'd prefer clop.

Ivyshine is the last mortal pony left. and she is seen a celebrity. With Equestria gone and culture redeveloped, she is one of the few that remembers how things came to be this way, and what the world used to be like.

This is her story, and the stories she tells. Parables of morality, stories of the old world, answers to how things got to be this way, this is the story of her knowledge.

But this is also the story of a pegasus stallion named Duskdawn, the one who caused immortality in the first place, his ex-student Daring Do, and the terrible secrets of an ancient pony civilization that caused these events to unleash in the first place.

This is the story of past, present, and future.

This is the story of her senescence.

Starship Prologue

My name is Ivyshine, and I'm the last mortal pony left. I live in a hospital bed, and I'm kinda a celebrity. I've lived a thousand years, but I'm coming to an end. I'm finally dying.

Mortality is a strange concept to wrap your head around. What comes after death? Fuck knows. There's certainly no god, or heaven. Or if there is, he lives outside of what we know of the universe. Any old pony tales about immortality stemmed from the stories of the alicorns. Many ponies doubt the alicorns ever lived. They did, I saw them. But then they died. Just like everypony would, death is the natural order of life.

But death isn't a thing anymore. At least, not in the way you'd know it. There's suffering, oh god, there's suffering. Take the mare in the bed next to me. Her name's Evangelic, and she's the only one besides me and... him... that can remember what Equestria was like. And she has the curse of immortality. For my age, I've done pretty well. I still have all my organs. My blood is untainted. But she is trapped. If she wasn't locked to life, she would have died a hundred years ago. Her blood was drained years ago, and her only fluid now is a thin, watery substance that fuels her. She's bedridden, and can barely move. She has to speak with a telepathic collar... Her life is hell. She despises me, and I don't blame her. I can escape any time. She's trapped.

Being the last mortal pony comes with fame. Ponies come from all over the universe to see me, to see my face and hear my stories. The hospital wing tried to move me into my own separate bay, but I adamantly refused. I am not a museum piece, I am a pony. If people want to hear my stories, so be it. Of course, Evangelic can't stand to hear it. She gets visitors too, but much, much rarer than me. She wishes she could tell her stories of the old world. But my clock is ticking. Ponies want to talk to me first, they'd have all of eternity to talk to her once I died.

Ever since immortality became the norm, some ponies have tried to kill themselves, some out of desperation, some out of curiosity, some out of experimentation. Take... his... hunter. The one tracking him down. His name's Neutron. A scientist by name and a scientist by nature, he wanted to investigate immortality. He shot himself into a star, to see if he would survive. A week later, a ball of iron floated out, with intense amounts of energy pulsing from it. The ball of iron was put in a signal reader and, well, it was Neutron. His colleagues built him a mech suit, and now he's pioneering the development of cybernetic ponies. Evangelic was offered the first test run. She declined. She said it would spit in the face of the two sisters to take away the pony forms we have in their image.

I should stop dancing around who I'm referring to by pronoun only. His name is Duskdawn. He's the oldest immortal, and he's the one that caused immortality to begin with. At first, he was worshipped. Called a hero for making it so ponies never have to die. But then... ponies never had to die. Overcrowding became rampant. Life on Equestria became hell. War broke out between those two were immortal and those who were not. The mortals lost, obviously. And the old planet was sealed off, launched into a blackhole, as punishment for what they had done.

In the beginning of the new, it was just myself, Duskdawn, and Evangelic. Those two fucked a *lot* to repopulate. Myself? I'm not attracted to scruffy pegasi that try to force immortality on me, thank you very much. But in my sleep one night, Duskdawn tranquilised me and harvested my eggs. Grew ponies with some scientific, artificial method that I'm not intellectual enough to comment on. I still have that scar. It's my only lasting injury, and I despise him for it.

And since everypony besides me is a direct decendent of Duskdawn, everypony besides me is immortal. A thousand years later, the population is at several million spread amongst various stations and planets, and there's no sign of slowing down any time soon. Considering culture had to be re-established, Duskdawn abused the opportunity to make incest, rape and promiscuity the norm. At first he justified it by saying the population needed to grow, but once the culture began it was very difficult to stop. Most ponies nowadays just accept it.

So why is he being tracked down? He was forced to run. One day, about a hundred years ago, he and Evangelic had a fight. She thought he was becoming a dictator, called him evil for his crimes against ponykind, and confronted and questioned his decision to seal away the old world. He beat her into oblivion. He's half the reason she's bedridden. Before falling into a coma for fifty years, her final action was to release the archive of information they had stored on the old world.

Suddenly everypony knew about the Equestria of before, of the beauty, of the peace, of the kindness, of the love. Of the princess of friendship, and the sisters of the sun and moon. And ponies were not happy about the deception.

October 16th 404. I remember the date clearly. Duskdawn's ship was blown up by a rebel group of over a thousand angry ponies. Of course, he survived. He's an immortal. He flew off into space, and he hasn't been seen since. Many ponies want him to be brought to some form of justice for his crimes. Some say he should be launched into Equestria. That's where we throw a lot of our most evil criminals. God only knows what life is like down there after being abandoned for so long by us. Others say he should be publicly tortured for all eternity, but the issue with that is the fact he'd inevitably escape. I myself? I feel we should leave him alone. I think being distant from his own sick idea of paradise is punishment enough.

So as I was saying, I'm finally dying. I have cancer, inoperable. An undramatic way to die after so long, for sure, but I love it. It feels so perfectly fitting to die in such a real, mortal way as my own cells turning against me. And as such, I decided to record my story for future reference. For anyone who wished to visit me, and hear me speak, these are my stories, these are my musings.

Before I die, I hope to have told you how immortality came to be. I hope to tell you the truth, and the beauty, of my old home, Equestria. I hope to tell you the story of my life, and of my death. I hope to tell you what death feels like, and I hope to tell you what mortality truly is.

This is the story of my senescence.

Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean

Evangelic's life was hell. From dawn to dusk, the remnents of Duskdawn's attack would always haunt her, both physically and mentally. She would never talk again without that collar, she would never walk again without the cybernetics that would take away, to her, the final "pure" pony body. Of course, even by her own definition she isn't pure. She's an immortal.

She glances over at Ivyshine, and her mind fills with anger. There she is, talking to three fillies. Telling her some old parable, she expected. Everyone loved Ivyshine, everyone loved to hear from the last pony who will die. Why is her future death so fucking worshipped, anyway, she thought? You wouldn't praise the inventor of the toaster ten years before he invented it, or the future fastest flier when she's born. So why her, why now? Why does she get so much more credit than Evangelic, whom had, by her viewpoint, had much more of an impact on the universe?

Of course, a deep part of Evangelic knew she was being selfish. She knew Ivyshine wasn't choosing to be mortal just to spite her. She made herself immune to immortality to save herself from the very fate Evangelic now suffers. But that doesn't stop her from feeling jealous.

The blue mare closes her eyes, and focuses her hearing to listen to Ivyshine's words. Oh boy, it's this story again. "The Parable of the Forgotten Sailor" is what that green fuck called it. None of her stories were as true as they should've been, and Ivyshine knew it. She loved being a storyteller, and always had a habit of... exaggerating. Calling them all true stories with a moral, when they're as real as a Daring Do novel.

As Evangelic remembered events, Fluttershy... "the Forgotten Sailor"... got stranded on a desert island on a cruise, and her friends assumed she was just being quiet not answering their calls. And as soon as they realised she was missing, Rainbow Dash went and found her. She was totally fine, just a little confused and shaken up. Evangelic was there, she was the singer for the cruise, assigned by the princesses herself to sing for the princess of friendship and her friends. So of course, she was there. And so was Ivyshine, as one of the other passengers. Twilight had insisted on allowing civilians on the cruise, for some reason. She was never one for exclusivity.

But as Ivyshine remembered events, "the Forgotten Sailor" fucking died. She was so quiet that her friends forgot to check up on her at all, and by the time she was found she was a skeleton. And Evangelic thought that changing such a story about the elements of harmony just for the moral of "don't be afraid to assert yourself and talk, and be important" was disrespectful to their memory. After all, the only element left to contest the story was The Student. Her name on Equestria was Starlight Glimmer, but she abandoned that name in honour of her lost friends. She's the current bearer of the elements, and she is in hiding on an asteroid near the black hole. Anyone that tries to go near her would be too close to the event horizon. Nopony knows why she doesn't get sucked it, but it's theorised it's due to the elements' protection. Nopony knows why she's there, either. Some theorise she wants her old friends back, somehow.

Evangelic does not like Ivyshine. And as the fillies leave, she closes her eyes and goes back to practicing lucid dreaming. She dreams of a world of happiness, she dreams of a world where she can die. She dreams of sitting in Sugarcube Corner, she dreams of being with her friends. She dreams of the old Duskdawn, before immortality. And she dreams of having a heart attack and dying, right there, and being cried over, loved, missed, but dead. She sleeps peacefully with these dreams, and with the ability to simulate and imagine her state of death. She dreamed hope that she would finally be dead. That tonight would be the night she finally drifted off into the abyss, and never wake up. Maybe it was finally over for her.

And then morning came. Ivyshine was surrounded by three more fillies, telling The Parable of the Forgotten Sailor again. And Evangelic would have sobbed had her body allowed her to. She was trapped in her body, and she was dying inside a body that could not die.