Great big dramatic teasery reveal. · 4:36pm Apr 2nd, 2017
Really big reveal.
The streets of Canterlot were cold, dark, and deserted. Lights did not shine in the windows, the sky overhead was a black velvet curtain, and the cobblestone streets were slick with rime. Even with the darkness, Flicker could see. Unlike other ponies, Flicker didn’t mind the dark, he did his best work in the dark. The colt walked down empty, deserted streets, looking for signs of life, of light and the warmth that came with it. While the darkness did not bother him, being alone did.
The cold, cold cobblestones made his frogs sting with every step, and fog swirled around his hooves in looping eddies, clinging to his fetlocks, caressing him with an icy, unwelcome touch. Naked, exposed to the elements, alone, Flicker drew in wintry air that burned his nostrils. How long had he been walking? Would he freeze? Where had everypony gone?
What had taken the stars?
The first sign that he was not alone was a distant squeak, a sound that Flicker knew all too well, a sound he hated and despised more than anything else in the whole wide world. The colt’s horn ignited, but the light seemed constrained somehow, dim, as if something was holding it back. Even stranger, it brought attention to the fact that Flicker had somehow been seeing in total darkness. The light around his horn was a globe, a sphere no larger than a foal’s toy ball, and the light simply did not reach beyond a certain point. It was fascinating to observe, but Flicker didn’t have the time to study it.
More squeaks could be heard, and then Flicker saw them, lithe bodies moving through the fog, causing the fog to whirl and ripple. The sound of clawed feed could be heard scrabbling against the rime-encrusted cobblestones, and the ever-present squeaking of rats. Flicker’s head jerked around while he tried to get some idea of what he was facing, the numbers, the combined strength of his enemy.
The sound of hard, hairless tails slapping against cobblestones was like rain on a roof, a distinctive sound, and Ficker stood in the middle of a deserted street, his breath heaving out of his nostrils in great clouds of steam—steam that joined the fog swirling around his hooves.
Tinkling glass. Flicker heard it, somewhere, a window broke, and the sound almost made him jump right out of his skin. He was unarmed, unarmored, he had nothing to defend himself. Where had his wand gone? More importantly, how had he ended up in here, and why was the city of Canterlot abandoned? The empty sky held no twinkles.
Around him, the swarming rodents turned into a sea of vermin that flooded the streets. They came up from below, they came out of emptied houses, they came out of rain gutters, out of drains, and odd winged bat-rats swooped down out of the starless sky. Everything around Flicker was awash with the horror of plague-bearing vermin.
The bodies clumped together, clinging to one another, rising up out of the fog, which now clung to them like a funerary shroud. The swarming vermin coalesced into a menacing figure, puddles of squeaking rats joined other puddles of squeaking rats, and became a writhing, wriggling mass of screeching, squeaking vermin. Flicker, frozen in place, every muscle in his body twitching, every nerve screaming a warning of danger, he watched the dreadful abomination rise before him, gaining mass, form, and shape.
“What are you?” Flicker demanded, his voice defiant even though his body was held in the clutches of terror.
“I am…” There was a long pause as the shadows, fog, and rats all merged into one entity.
Cᴏɴᴛᴀɢɪᴏɴ.
You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?
Of course not. We all saw what was wrought in the tower. Contagion was more than just an entity; it was — and is — an idea.
And so long as even a single creature lives to think it, an idea cannot be destroyed.
Celestia has the sun, Luna the moon, and Contagion the rats.
No, but Flicker's probably still going to try to set it on fire.
That's what you do to contain disease, after all. You sterilize.