“Where am I? What is this place?”
“I don’t know. You’ve been dragged here against your will.”
When lights appeared, I figured out I was chained up to a chair, sitting next to a table with a couple of dishes, glasses and a small candle in the center. And in front of me, an old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time.
“Gabby? Is that you?”
“Hello, Rossy.”
Her look was cold... like if she had known I was guilty of a crime. When she directed a sentence towards me, her voice was monotone.
“Why did you call me Rossy?”
“Because that’s your name. And from now on, you will call me Patricia.”
Why does she behave like that?
“Gabby... it’s me, Gilda,” I wanted to reach her claw, she retracted hers. “Don’t you remember me?”
“No. And you must forget my old name.”
“...Why?”
She lowered her head.
“Once you’re here, they take off everything you ever knew. Your emotions, your feelings, your belongings... your old self. Each and every one of us feels lost during the first days, but you find your place eventually.”
I took a look around. Throughout the entire place were tables, similar to ours. All of them had guests, animals and creatures I was unfamiliar with. And all of them were indifferent to our presence.
“...Do you know who they are?”
“Not really. I’m not interested in socializing or making friends with them. However, I can recognize some of their tables.”
She slightly forced her sight, probably to identify the guests around us. Then, she proceeded to point out every table and its members.
“Those are the reptiles, over there are the giant mammals, the monsters around the corner and in the farthest corner... I don’t know exactly, but that’s a nice 27 signboard, I guess.”
“It’s very quiet in here,” I said, uncomfortably and yet calmed. “I can no longer hear that horrible sound.”
“Pain doesn’t exist here, everything is peace and quiescence. No matter how life treated you, rewards come here in huge packages. While you are there you will soon understand your existence like me, you will soon learn it.”
“Still, I have the feeling of not belonging here. Like if I’m punished for not doing something wrong.”
“Tomorrow we’ll speak of this,” she paused for a moment while she took a sip from her glass. Or more correctly, PRETEND to take a sip, the glass was empty. I didn’t reply. “Now, I want to know about Equestria. It’s been ten years since last time. Was I mourned over, Rossy?”
“Mourned, Patricia?” I murmured, then proceeded a little more loudly. “Oh deeply. We buried you in Ponyville, given the final petition you wanted. The most affected were those little fillies you befriended back then. I came to visit you once a month for over nine years. That was before the rapture.”
“Oh, the rapture. I heard of it during my residence here, just today I was notified about the end of that calamity. Come on, speak of it. Remember that beyond the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, I know nothing. But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative philosophy of the day.”
I guess I wanted it to sound more spectacular than what it really was. Which would impress her and maybe pity me, even if I didn’t want her to be sorrowful, which dilutes the event and how it wasn’t spectacular. Far from it.
“You are about to witness the birth of a new world... born from the ashes of another, one of the most impressive moments in the history of life on Equestria. From floods to fires, from cold to darkness, from starvation to fratricide, one punishment after another falls on the planet, that’s precisely the end of our existence.”
For a brief moment, she was her old self. She smiled at me.
“I didn’t know what was coming or whether I cared. How knowledge changed me will change you. To think that I once couldn’t see beyond the veil of my reality, to see those who were left below. My life now has a purpose. I was once a fool.”
“Whatever do you mean?” she asked.
“I was in Ponyville, visiting an old friend - and I was planning to stay there for some time. But, during my stay, we noticed something strange. It turned out that, for days, our naps were interrupted by the constant glow of a strange light in the sky. It wasn’t just us, either; everypony saw it on a basis that was bizarre. It was the only indication we had that life as we knew it was about to change.”
I began after taking another breath, “One day, while every pony was doing their usual activities, the most unexpected change arrived. No one, not even me, was aware that the life on the planet had seconds to exist.”
“How exactly did that happen?”
“A foreign object had struck the planet. The object, millions of tons, crashed into the ocean. It was like, the highest mountain of the world was teared off from the planet and then thrown into it. Near the Equestrian southeast coastline, it disintegrated completely. The water evaporated, annihilating millions of animals instantly. For them, death was pious. The shock wave advanced, and the only ones who managed to get ahead did so by pure luck, taking refuge in caves and burrows. The blast swept the surface of the land, and ponies; along with the forests, burned. The whole region was whipped, scorched and salted.”
“Nature doesn’t differentiate between predator and prey, between young and old, between fathers and sons,” she sounded cold, more thoughtful about everything. “For her, every single individual is the same.”
“Appleloosa disappeared in a matter of seconds, as well as everything located in the south. Ten minutes later, the shock wave dissipated before arriving to the Crystal Empire and Yakyakistan. Those who were out of reach or survived the event weren’t aware of the disaster. Just after the shock wave, suddenly there was a distant roar, the ground beneath our paws and hooves began to tremble. An earthquake, much stronger than any of us had felt or seen, ripped throughout the entire planet. Pegasi and other flying creatures survived, but the others... they didn’t stand a chance. The earthquake knocked all creatures down and cracks opened in the ground, where many of them fell to what was probably their deaths. We didn’t know, but that was the beginning of a series of catastrophes to come. Thankfully, the earthquakes stopped, and we were allowed a breather. However, for the inhabitants from the Dragon Lands, Griffonstone, Yakyakistan, the Crystal Empire and the Changeling Kingdom, the true disaster was just beginning.”
“What happened?”
“I had to came back home to make sure it was ok. At first, the damages were little, and the population was alive. What nopony expected was what followed it. The ocean rose by the violence of the impact, forming walls of water as high as mountains, the waves traveled from the ocean faster than the speed of sound. The gryphons were recovering from the earthquake when the water withdrew and formed a wave that caught them by surprise. The walls of water spread all over the world, no shoreline was safe, even sea monsters were trapped in strong currents and were inevitably brought to death. A few moments of despair and then nothing.”
I paused for a moment, recalling that experience and not sure of how I survived.
“Finally the water was removed. It had enough strength to erode the landscape. New valleys and canyons, all full of dead animals. I barely made it, but that giant wave destroyed Griffonstone, and my species with it. I was the last remaining gryphon on the planet. After the global disaster the surprising thing was not how many have died, but how many have survived. Across the globe, the habitants of Equestria struggled to understand what happened to their world. Earth ponies and pegasi helped each other, to reunite enough food and to carry the wounded ones to a better place.”
“Sucks how life can throw lemons at you and expect you to make lemonade…” she commented. I began again after taking a moment to catch up to where I was at in my memory.
“Shortly after all of that, it began to rain fire from the sky. For hours upon hours, rocks of fire surrounded the globe, the heavens burned with it. Anything that wasn’t flame resistant, burned.”
To make my point across, I chuckled, “Tartarus was complaining for the lack of ice cubes.”
“The vast majority of the rocks were no bigger than a grain of sand, but they were hotter than a fireplace. Suddenly, all flying creatures were trapped in the fire storm that beat some of them to death specks they could barely see. From below, their lifeless bodies rained and landed abruptly on the ground. There were no rules for the Armageddon nor guides for these vulnerable creatures, only our instinct and the only thing it told us was to run. The heat became inevitable, enough for rivers to burn, fires broke out in all regions of the planet consuming the dead and the dying. The planet was carbonized.”
My mind was lost, unable to look her at the eyes.
“Billions of lives were lost in successive waves of disaster. Night fell, a night that several would not wake up to. I travelled around the world and did a research of the consequences. I gave it to Princess Ember, new leader of the world since the four alicorn princesses were nowhere to be seen. The results were disturbing. In a radius of a thousand miles nothing remained with life, at three thousand and hundred miles, only insects and small animals remained. You had to travel five thousand miles of the impact site to find an animal as tall as a pony... alive. And yet, from the ones who made it, very few survived. The survivors inhabited a scorched landscape full of plucked trees and fires that burned for what seemed to be forever.”
I frowned. “In spite of everything I had seen, I couldn’t imagine the panic or chaos shown by the impact. Everypony was under a sensory overload and there was a lot of noise, part of which was unnatural. The more natural sound come from some of the animals shouting in pain, other noises were in fear as they looked for their dead and or dying partners.”
“Must have been rather chaotic,” she spoke after a while. “All life that arises in an austere universe is a miracle, to lose it on a large scale is a catastrophe. Nature can dethrone even the most dominant of all creatures. At least your pain was short, to disappear in only one day should be quick.”
“No, no, no,” I cracked up maniacally and laugh madly. She thought I’d lost my mind and, for a moment, the rest of the guests turned their heads towards our table. “That was only the first day!”
“The first day?”
“You haven’t seen anything yet.”
I continued, trying to recover my calm and serenity. However, it was evident that my mind was now fragile. I grinned like an asylum patient and I choked for a moment on my own spittle.
“Two days after the impact everything burned, fires spread everywhere, no one had a place to retreat, there was nowhere to go! The herds were divided and the animals were confused, many suffocated by inhaling smoke. High levels of oxygen made the fires last longer and burn more. Earth ponies and pegasi were the most affected. It seemed that the unicorns disappeared because we hadn’t seen any after the impact. Three days after the impact the fires diminished leaving a scorched, charred and lugubrious landscape, but the chain reaction provoked by the disaster continued. As one cataclysm diminished another hit hard... and succeeded without allowing a margin of recovery.”
I laughed. “The climate altered by smoke and ash was poisoned, the water that once gave life to the world now brought pain and death. This new rain instantly burned the skin and was powerful enough to dissolve rock. Throughout the world, lethal storms killed mercilessly, giant floods devastated large areas. The rain began to poison the ocean. Ash and rain made the surface into toxic mud, the plankton disappeared and the color for the ocean itself darkened. The debris, smoke from the fires, and soot, accumulated in the atmosphere, the winds scattered them all over the world blocking little by little - the light of the Sun.”
I watched without flinching, only taking the time to blink for what seemed an eternity.
“Seven days after the impact, darkness enveloped the planet. For every creature; it was a creepy experience, even at midday it seemed midnight. Herbivores had the most difficult times, they couldn’t find the plants they depended. The darkness made them all mad, including me. Anything with a brain can go crazy.”
She interrupted for a brief moment. “Would they be smart enough to react to something like that, to remember it, to be permanently affected?”
“Until one moment I, along with Ember, made a discovery. Near Ponyville, to the north, lights appeared. We were glad to observe such beauty, so we did a call. Everypony came next to us and made a trip to the light. When every creature was gathered around the source, our surprise was huge: it was Canterlot, covered in a magic shield. The unicorns managed to survive the cataclysm, along with the princesses. However, it came with a price: they betrayed the other races, they betrayed the other ponies. Protected in their magic fortress, they left us at our luck. The remaining food as well as the drinking water was under their protection and the creatures that tried to defy them were annihilated. I was not sure of their conclusions, but they wanted to remain as the most powerful race of the world.”
“To have what you want succeed is not enough, it’s necessary that others failed.” Rossy commented in a hollow way.
“Exactly, and they returned to their former selves. Egotistic, arrogant, ignorant. The rest of us had to value each other after that... I’m not sure how long the worldwide blindness lasted, but I’m sure months passed before we got our light of hope. Unexpectedly, one day, the sun finally peeked out of the darkness, the image it revealed was not pleasant: a landscape devastated, deformed and desolate. It happened that, as the night lasted, all the vegetation that escaped the fires and the rain wilted in the dark. This led to the extinction of all herbivores in the planet: earth ponies, pegasi, zebras, donkeys, yaks. Only the unicorns remained. Just when we thought the worst passed out, the survivors from around the world faced a new enemy: the cold. Although the sun shone brightly the temperature was glacier, a nuclear winter covered Equestria, it was a cold that none of us had experienced before. I travelled around the world to take a look on everypony, but no race was safe, except the unicorns. I thought for a moment this could be work of the windigos, but they were absent from the sky and the world.”
“Examples, please?”
“In the Changeling Kingdom the landscape was covered with acid snow stained red by the particles. They returned to their black forms, because how could love exist in this new world? One of the females had only two eggs left, they were their only hope for their future and the others were willing to kill her to get them. She never left them and paid the consequences. In the end surviving triumphed over maternal instinct. Their stomachs could be full for a while, but by eating the next generation all they could do was speed up their disappearance, I wanted to stop them, but they didn’t see me, feel me or listen to me. And even if they did, would they care? I was unique among them, but I was also exiled among them. The hunger and the maternal instinct had cost their lives. Diamond Dogs struggled and fought for their territory, but they were not at a high stake competition; for the most harmed race of all: were the dragons.”
A crude smile formed. “They managed to survive the earthquake, the giant waves, the fires, the rain and the darkness. But the cold was too much for them. With snow and ice everywhere, they couldn’t fly, breathe well or exhale fire. The frozen terrain made inaccessible the gems they were used to eat, and that condemned the rest of us for only one reason. Desperation beat them, they replaced the gems... with meat.”
“I can’t imagine how that feels.”
“Only a small amount of our population survived the purge. As always, the unicorns were distant to our suffering. Meanwhile, all of us managed to get ahead with corpses and whatever we could find. But sooner or later those sources of food expired. And let me tell you something: eating a friend’s body, or two, is not pleasant nor tastes good. Again, if you thought that was bad, the dragons had it worse. Unlike us, they needed large amounts of meat to keep them active. The final scourge and the ultimate test of despair was fratricide, the only food left for them was themselves. Probably the most brutal scene I can remember from that horror was Princess Ember chasing a little, purple dragon. He tried to escape, he begged her for mercy and compassion. She gave none.”
I continued after coughing to myself. “Cannibalism drove her to kill her own species to the point of exhaustion. Wounded by one leg, she remained as the last one of her kind. She knew she was too weak to continue walking, but she knew that if she ever fell, she’d never get up again. I got tired of the situation, so I went to Canterlot to protest. The entire world needed food, but the unicorns neglected the cry, as usual. But in this new world where we had to kill or die, our new ruler had a dark end. She collapsed and I brought her to a cave. For a couple of days I gave my best to help her, but it was too late. The last dragon in the world died hungry, sick and alone. Her prideful lineage was then extinct, and was never coming back again.”
With a shaky sigh, I nodded. “It was an odd feeling, but seeing her cold, and lifeless, made me know my time would come sooner or later.”
Pondering how I’d choose my next words, It came as a surprise when my tongue took control, leaving me in despair as she spoke.
“Extinction is much more than the death of something that had a great journey in the past, it’s the death of everything that could have existed in the future. The extinction of a species is much more than its annihilation, is the death of all its legacy because it would have given rise to other species, and those species could have given rise to others and others.”
Shrugging, I leaned back in the chair. “I couldn’t believe the negligence of the unicorns, so I reunited every last survivor possible to prepare for war. Dismayed and outraged, they headed to Canterlot from all directions, united for a cause. The population of the entire planet was split. But although the unicorns were more numerous than we were and thought they could silenced their opponents with a swish of their horns, they seemed to have forgotten history. They thought they were invincible with their shield...”
I clenched my jaw. “It was no match for our anger... Thus most of our forces got through. The unicorns wouldn’t give up though, and counterattacked us. In the end, there were no survivors. Both prey and predators died. I got stabbed in the back and my skull was smashed. Before I passed out, I discovered that there was a winner in this conflict after all: a small rodent. There was a time when they only went out at night and now they left at any time without fear of the light of the Sun. Our old sources of food were ready to take control, the rodents had inherited Equestria.”
I finished my story, in the highest note I could. The environment was silent during a couple of minutes. She finally spoke.
“That was... kind of normal. Not awful by any means, but not amazing neither.”
“What?!” That couldn’t be true. After all I’ve go through, she was indifferent to my suffering and my mental health?!
“You don’t feel anything?”
“No.”
I gasped. “...Why?”
Her response was all to surreal. “You can have enough food to feed the world, yet you refuse to share it with them. Why help? You can’t get profit. And without anypony else, you can rule the globe. The rodents will rewrite history, yet the history will repeat itself. They will commit the same mistakes all of us made and only they will decide to change or stay the same. But even if they know they could change, do they want to? And one day, they will be here with us. And you probably will be as indifferent as me towards their feelings.”
She paused, then continued.
“Perhaps, it’s simply who we are. Every single one of us in this room believed Equestria once was the center of the universe, and every single one of us in this room believed we were the center of Equestria. Each generation came into this world thinking what they can do was right, yet they were mourned by what they did wrong. We ignored what surrounded us and we didn’t realize it until it was late. One day, that sensation left us, our bodies rotted and our belongings changed owners. Yesterday’s actions are all that remain, but our impact is eternal. And that’s assuming I’m not considering the most horrific fact: consider our history, everything we were, our genealogy, our leaders, our past civilizations, our achievements, everything our books say, our inventions, our musical history and so on... will be eradicated and for the cosmos we wouldn’t have been even an idea.”
“Is this supposed to be an act to take care of Equestria?”
“Don’t worry about Equestria. The planet will be here whether we are or not. Equestria has existed for over six hundred million years. Each one of us will be lucky to last a hundred. What I’m trying to say is that if we look at our most innermost desire, we would see that our dreams are not so different, we share a common goal. Everything has a meaning, as modest as it can be.”
“And what is that meaning?”
“We are not the first or the last to exist, we all come from a very distant place, we are hardly an anecdote in time.”
Everything became silent, a little bell ranged above our heads. I was disconcerted about this because I had no idea of what was happening. She calmed me down.
“It’s dinner time”, she said. “Do you want to join me?”
Perhaps it was time for getting used to this place. After all, there was nothing I could lose nor anywhere I could go.
“I’d love to.”