The world was on fire. Consuming, living, unending fire.
Liz could see it fill the horizon, a thick blanket of smoke and ash and death, thick enough to block out the sky. And all around Liz, creatures were screaming.
The world was deaf, mute, but she could feel them; they were like vibrations traveling up from the soles of her feet to the cap of her skull, a resonating amplifier.
The vision swirled before her, materializing from the nothingness of unconsciousness. The city she had laid eyes on mere hours ago was under siege. But this was not the same dilapidated ruin, withering away to dust. This was the heart of their civilization — a beating heart filled with life, and with towers that loomed skyward, and palaces of marble. A heart that was in its death throes.
Specters resembling phantoms, clouds of dark smoke, tore through the outer walls. Liz could sense the screams of the small pony-like residents, feel the stampede of their hooves, see the fear painted in their eyes as they fled the horrors that had breached their city. So many little lives tried to run from the sight of the specters. So many fell below stampeding hooves in the panic.
And Liz could feel it too, the same sickening dread. It was a boiling, dark pit in her chest. Her stomach roiled and tumbled, and she wanted to be sick. She wanted to cry and scream out in their familiar pain, but nothing could escape her lips. Not even a whimper. She was frozen, forced to live the horror for herself.
But all was not lost. Not yet. A light, brighter than a thousand suns, pierced the heavens, driving the nightmares back. The unknown force stood against the attackers, white hooves planted firm, wings outstretched like impenetrable shields, horn aglow, and mane aflame. Her statue in the city square did her no justice. To Liz, she was all, and more, a god.
Another beam of thermal energy shot from the Goddesse's horn, vaporizing swaths of the invaders. All to bide time for the populace to retreat, to escape the coming wave of death and smoke.
But Liz could see that there was little hope. Though the Goddess’s powers were strong, their enemy was just too numerous. More of the nightmares were pouring in, the walls breached. A writhing, living spectral blanket of darkness coming to consume the light.
From out the sky, another goddess, her coat blue like deep sapphire, flew to the white one’s aid, the energy exploding from her horn barely keeping the hordes back.
The blue one landed, nearly collapsing from exhaustion. Her companion was immediately by her side, the white goddess propping her up with a bloodied hoof.
Though chaos churned all around them, it seemed detached from the strange and powerful beings. An unnatural peace surrounded them. Their manes gently waved weightlessly in the windless air with a life of their own. The white goddess gripped her companion tight, as if clutching onto a solitary liferaft in stormy seas. A glance between them, some knowing look that needed no words — a moment of understanding. Supporting each other now, wrapped in an embrace, they stood before the collapsed city gates. Several more of the citizens and residents shot past them, but the goddesses paid them no attention. The city was already lost.
Liz watched as the two goddesses' horns began to glow, first soft, a nightlight then growing into a raging inferno. The power ripped through them, the very ground underneath Liz’s feet trembling like an earthquake. Across the city, towers collapsed and buildings crumbled with the tremors, but the Goddesses' power only continued to grow in magnitude. It was blinding, a mind-rending explosion of light.
The shadows fought to pierce the shroud of holy light surrounding the two. Liz watched the final exchange, saw as the white goddess looked deep into the blue one’s eyes, tears cutting through the ash and blood painting her face. Three words came across the blue one’s lips, though Liz could not hear them. Then, an explosion of light. Light so bright it overpowered Liz’s senses. Light so bright it was deafening.
And then it was over. And there was darkness.
Liz was left alone, very alone. Alone in a city devoid of anybody. No citizens were fleeing, no invaders advancing, no divine rulers or goddesses. There was nobody. All had vanished.
Liz ran. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her in their dreamlike state. She ran down the alleyways. She ran down the boulevards, some of which had not even been damaged in the attack, glass windows still spotless from being recently washed. And she ran to the gates, but she could not find a single living creature amid the ruin. Everybody was gone.
And as she turned to look upon the shining city, though it now bore her battle scars, a deep sorrow finally spilled over the dam containing it.
Liz cried. She cried as she had never before. The loss permeated the city, the same feeling she felt as she had entered the ruins only hours previously. It was a taint, a stain in the very ground she trod. Only it had been dulled by time.
And so she cried, collapsing behind the city gates as she repeated the final three words on the blue goddess's lips over and over till her head hurt.
“I love you.”
“Liz!”
The cry caused her to leap out of bed. Liz landed in a heap on the cold stone floor. So hard that her helmet clattered off the bedside table, striking her in the head. Liz's vision was immediately filled with stars, and she could feel the sensation of warm blood seeping from her scalp. Her ears rang with the impact, like a dozen bells tolling fervently. But she still heard the call again.
“Elizabeth!” the unmistakable voice screamed, rife with horror in each syllable. It was Astra. And she was far away.
“Astra!” she replied, struggling off the floor, heaving herself up by the bedpost. “Astra, where are you!” In an instant, she was suited up, running for the door while fumbling with the straps of her pack.
Liz burst from the bedroom, helmet clutched tight in her grip. She wiped away the blood trickling over her eyebrows, struggling to see in the dusk. No sconces were lit. All was quiet except for Liz’s ragged breath. Not a soul stirred the dark tomb.
The Commander ran through the corridors, drunkenly stumbling in her disorientated state. She was moving on instinct alone, going wherever her feet pulled her. “Astra!” she cried, weaving through stone-cut halls, receiving no reply.
She rounded the next corner, a bright flash of light suddenly assaulting her vision, followed by her colliding face to face with Astra.
Liz tried to blink the spots in her eye away, dazed by the light. “Astra what happen–”
But Astra violently shoved Liz back. She stumbled, her boots skidding across the cracked stone. Liz was surprised the small woman could have so much force in her.
“Run!” the scientist commanded. Liz's vision had cleared long enough to see the terror before her. Astra’s eyes were wild with primal fear, a large gash bleeding down the side of her face.
Before Liz had the opportunity to open her mouth, the sound of shuffling broke Astra away.
Something was coming.
Something was coming fast.
Astra whipped around, flashing the high-intensity beam of her camera in rapid succession.
Horrible animalistic screeches resonated and echoed from the corridor. Liz’s blood flushed cold as ice as she shielded her eyes from the blinding light, only catching the last glimpse of dark figures shrinking and disappearing into the shadows.
Astra was pushing her back from where she had come, keeping the light of her camera trained down the passage.
“Run! We need to get back to the ship NOW!” Astra was barely functioning, trembling so hard it seemed like she would shake herself apart.
“What’s going on?” Liz pressed frantically. “You’re hurt.”
“It was a lie,” Astra sobbed, swapping the batteries in her camera’s light while backing up. The metal cylinders clattered to the floor, several piercing shrieks following close behind. “It was all a damn lie,” she choked. Astra was limping hard now, favoring her right leg, the other dripping a trail of blood behind them. “It’s all been an illusion, Liz!”
“What has?”
“All of them!” Astra shouted, slamming fresh batteries in her camera. “We need to get back to the ship, get the Orion back to orbit. We can’t stay here.”
“Astra, you’re hurt,” Liz pleaded. “We won’t make it down the mountain in the dark.”
“Then you have to make it back at least. Leave me,” she growled, desperately gritting through the pain.
The words, "That is not an option," never got the chance to make it out Liz's mouth.
“Look out!” Astra screamed, throwing Liz down and bringing the light of her camera to bear. Liz watched as a jet-black creature with twin fangs like daggers was bombarded by thousands of lumens of light. Its blue eyes glowed in the fire before the retinas burned, and the four-legged creature tumbled in mid-air, landing in a heap before skittering into the darkness.
“Get out!” Astra cried hysterically before chasing after the creature with her light. She disappeared into the passage, more terrifying shrieks following each flash of light.
Liz was already back on her feet. She wanted to run after Astra, to stop her friend, yet her feet were going the wrong way. She was sprinting for the main hall and the double doors leading back into the square. The maze-like structure with its winding halls might've had her searching for hours, but Liz could see the entrance just ahead.
She had already thrown her weight against the doors, shifting them with her momentum when she heard the scream. It was human. And it died with a whimper.
Astra.
The moonless sky was dotted with millions of stars, tiny portals of light to other worlds hanging above her. All around her, Liz could hear the shuffling of hooves and something chittering.
She took off across the empty square, the skeleton of the ruined city rising above her, towering tombstones of crumbling stone and masonry. She could never make it back down the treacherous mountain path. Not with whatever horrible nightmares were crawling from the rubble all around her. She swore she could feel them, pressing in around her, descending upon the throbbing beat in her chest that boomed like a drum. There was only one other option.
Her helmet was already clamped down tight, its headlight blinking to life and her heads-up display flickering across her visor. Liz was nearly at the edge of the cliff, and she could feel the pressure of the air currents rising over the mountain, hear the thundering torrent of the waterfall.
The valley stretched out before her as she sprinted faster across the square, the nightmares closing in behind her, teeth chopping at her boots. There was no hesitation as she reached the edge of the ruin and leaped into the open air.
Liz plummeted like a rock, weighed down by her spacesuit. Sixty miles an hour, ninety, one-twenty; the airspeed on her HUD clicked faster and faster. She was buffeted by the air currents, her vision going dark as she began to spin. Her altimeter chirped faster and faster, the valley floor rising to meet her. She couldn’t wait any longer. She had to deploy.
"Inertial dampers!" she screamed.
Fire shot from her space pack, and jets of white-hot exhaust that kicked like a cannon burned in the night sky. The force nearly crushed her chest, and Liz could hear the unmistakable snap of a rib. Thirty miles an hour, fifteen; she was slowing.
The leaves of the trees were singed and quickly burned up as Liz descended through the treetops and touched down softly beside Orion.
Liz collapsed, struggling to breathe through the pain of the broken rib as the jetpack nozzles retracted into her pack. The Orion was right within her reach, but each step was agony. Step by step, she struggled up the embarkation ladder. She punched the airlock panel, the door sliding open with a wheezing hiss.
Liz screamed and howled in agony as she pulled the restraints of the flight chair tight around her.
“Flight Command, prepare for immediate departure to high heliocentric orbit,” she instructed the flight computer through labored breaths. "Emergency priority."
“Unable to comply,” the computer chirped. “All crewmembers must be aboard to initiate launch operations. First Science Officer Astrallis is not aboard at this time.”
“Command Override. Orion Flight Commander, Elizabeth Warren – override authorization Foxtrot–Echo–Alpha–Romeo. Authorize emergency launch.”
“Override authorization functions accessed. Proceeding with emergency launch procedures. Stand by.”
Like a great beast roused from its slumber, the spacecraft came alive around her.
“Powerplant online. Access passage secured. Flight systems enabled, automatic control. Fuel pumps nominal. Prepare for engine ignition.”
“Come on, come on!” Liz cried and screamed at the computer terminal as if the bundle of copper and silicone might hear the urgency in her voice. “Get us off!”
“Systems go for emergency launch. Final authorization require–”
“Yes! Yes! Authorized!” Liz yelled over the whine of the craft.
The engine cluster beneath her ignited spontaneously, the entire ship rattling till it felt like her molars would be shaken from her jaw.
“Authorization match – Commander Warren. Ignition. Automated emergency launch to heliocentric orbit.”
The spacecraft slowly lifted off the ground, her belly exploding with fire and smoke that lit up the night. Liz gripped the sides of her flight chair so tight they went numb. They were airborne, but the ship was accelerating at the pace of a snail.
"Ascending. Ascending," the computer delivered in its monotone.
“Come on! Faster!”
The dark figure of the mountain was rising out one of the cabin’s portholes. Higher and higher, the ship clawed, fighting the planet's gravity. Featureless mountain rock rose with them till the crest of the city ruins came into focus. They shot past the cracked and torn ivory towers, illuminated by the rocket engines with brilliant orange.
Liz knew a few more moments, and the ship would be passing through the bulk of the atmosphere. They would be supersonic, shooting their way to a high orbit as air friction was reduced and the craft gained momentum.
Crack!
Liz was thrown sideways, her helmet striking the side of her flight chair but deadening the blow.
“Collision warning!” the flight computer squawked. “Irregular trajectory. Attempting to correct anomalous flight path.”
The creature had struck them, clinging to the porthole and lashing wildly at the thick window. Its bloodthirsty shrieks could be heard even above the engines and through the porthole.
“Get it off!” Liz pleaded to the flight computer, shrinking back as the black creature slashed at the porthole with its enormous fangs, coating the viewport with thick, slimy saliva.
“Trajectory correction failed,” the computer continued to rattle off.
The sound of rending metal outside assaulted Liz’s ears before she saw the creature rip away the thin metal skin of the craft like a tuna can.
“Flight control failure. Engine control failure. Engine termination imminent,” the flight computer screamed. “Eject! Eject! Eject!”
Liz didn’t think — didn’t even blink. She pulled the striped handle between her legs without hesitation. The nose of the Orion was already dipping toward the horizon.
BANG!
Liz’s world exploded in a split second, but to her, it played out in eternity: the hatch of the flight deck dropping away in a puff of smoke, her flight chair shooting out into the cold nighttime air like a bullet, and a thin trail of smoke in her wake.
Liz tried to scream, but the force of her chair’s rockets had knocked the air from her lungs. The scream died in her throat.
Poof.
Fabric rustled overhead, her freefall strung to a sudden stop. The parachute had filled almost immediately. She hardly noticed the snap of another rib.
Liz gasped for her breath, pleaded for breath to fill her mangled and burning chest as she slowly drifted through the atmosphere. Straining her neck, she scanned the sky for the creature, seeing nothing but stars. Such beautiful, unfamiliar stars.
A sudden burst of orange light lit up the lone mountainside. The Orion met its fiery fate near the peak, exploding in a ball of volatile propellant and debris that rained down upon the foothills.
Liz looked down, pulling against the seat restraints. And her face went ghostly pale.
“No,” she gasped, tugging at the buckle on her chest. “No, no, no…”
The great mountain city, a ruin crawling with mystery and strange inhabitants, was rising quickly from below.
Liz shook and rattled the buckle of her restraints, but it was no use. It was jammed. She was pinned in the chair.
The flight seat slowly descended over the ruins, the cold mountain air causing it to buck and sway. From up above, Liz watched as multitudes of blue orbs lit up the ruins below. They were watching her: waiting.
But there was no stopping her descent into hell. And no matter how much she struggled, how much she screamed, the cries resonating in her cracked helmet, there was no escape. She barely even had time to notice the crumbling tower rising directly below her. And her world flashed to black with a bang.
Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
The words echoed across the barren ethereal plains. They swirled in the nothingness, twisting their way into her head. Liz could hear them all around her. Every last one. Enough of them to fill an entire sea — each asking the same question.
Who am I?
The Commander could feel their sorrow, their pain that had seeped into the very ground upon which they stood. She wanted to help them. All of them. But there was nothing she could do.
Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” she cried, screaming into the void. There was an overbearing presence, a suffocating weight pressing in from every side.
Who am I? The Goddesses know. They can tell us who we are, what we once were. But why did they leave us? Where has everypony gone? Surely they will return. They will return and tell us who we are. The Goddesses will return. Who am I?
Liz’s head felt like it was about to explode. She clutched it, spinning in the nothingness toward oblivion.
“Make them stop,” she pleaded. “God, make them stop.” The infinite walls were closing in all around her, eternity imploding to a singularity. And all she wanted was to help them. To tell them who they were. If only to make them stop.
She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Only a face of agony, and pain, and surrender.
Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
“You’re lucky. You know that?”
Liz blinked in the dim light. Then the pain hit, exploding from everywhere around her. Her chest felt like a dump truck had run her over, and she swore her head was about to split open from the unbearable pressure.
Liz turned and retched, the bile burning in her throat. She could feel her hands bound behind her and that she was sitting in a small alcove. Everything was dark and damp, but she knew she wasn’t alone. Something was waiting for her.
"Who?" she managed.
A single point of light approached out the darkness, a strange voice she did not recognize, but that she could understand. It was speaking English.
“A few more seconds on the ground and the Others would have descended on you like piranhas. That’s the name of the fish, right?" the voice asked. "A piranha? I admit it's hard to read you with such a hard bump to the noggin. I can feel your head practically spinning,” the voice told her, ominous but certainly not threatening. There was almost a hint of pity dripping from his words.
The ball of light was coming into focus as well as a pair of intense eyes. The light was shining from the tip of a spiraling horn — the horn of Pavo. He stepped out the darkness, his emerald eyes sleepy and bloodshot.
“You… It’s you. P-Pavo, right?” Liz, bewildered and dazed, asked.
“You at least picked that up,” he sighed tiredly. “I’m guessing you didn’t understand the bit where I told you and your comrade not to leave the bedroom till sunrise, hmm? No matter the circumstances.”
“Astra,” she choked, tears finally flooding forth. She remembered the single scream. “God, no.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame what happened to her,” Pavo said dryly. “But you shouldn’t blame them, the Others. They wouldn’t know any better. They’re just confused.”
“Confused?" The words burned on her lips. "What were those things?” Liz sobbed, struggling against her restraints to no avail. “Astra– Why do you have me here? How do you know our words?” The questions spilled forth without resistance.
Liz felt the urge to vomit again, but there was nothing left. She could only heave and gasp from the pain enveloping her chest.
“Its probably better if I just show you,” Pavo said, his eyes shimmering in the dim light.
A surge of light sparked from his horn, a ring of emerald fire wrapping around him. Liz watched in mute horror as the fire peeled away Pavo, each and every one of his equine features, leaving only one of the jet-black creatures before her.
“Strange to witness it firsthoof, I take it?” Pavo said through his fangs, his voice calm and serene. He ran a dark hoof pitted with holes over the web-like crest of his mane. “It’s been so long since I’ve returned to my true form, it's strange to me, too.”
Pavo must have noticed the scream caught in Liz’s throat, her eyes wide and full. “That's pretty much what I expected,” he told her. “But I already know much about you, Elizabeth Warren.”
The emerald fire returned, peeling away his monstrous form. Instead, a shaggy ox now stood before her. “I know that you’ve probably already had the dreams, seen the vision,” he said, cocking his head. “We don’t know why, but we all see them from time to time, even though it happened so long ago.”
The visions flashed across Elizabeth’s swirling brain, images of the destruction assaulting her. She could see the two Goddesses holding each other one last time in their end, feel the loss of everything they sought to protect. Remember their bond, their love…
“Sisters–” she breathed.
“Right you are, Elizabeth Warren,” Pavo congratulated her, smiling through the mop of his ox mane. “The visions were strong with you. Sisters they were, but to our kind, something different.”
The fire returned, Pavo now transforming into a large bird-like creature with half the body of a lion. “We used to be enemies of them, the great ones you saw, the Goddesses,” he told her with a gruff squawk. “They always feared what they didn’t understand, as did our kind. For so long, our kind, our leaders, plotted to seize the great city.” Pavo’s hawk-like eyes drooped sullenly. “When the day of the invasion finally came, we walked right through the gates, both fallen like the walls. They were all gone. Every last one of them. Even the Goddesses.”
Pavo paced about Liz, observing her carefully. “I’m not sure what evil attacked them, but from what I’ve seen in those same visions, they vanquished it, along with themselves. Every sentient creature wiped in an instant. All except us.”
“But why?” Liz wondered, still struggling against her bonds. “Why would they do that to their own and themselves?”
Pavo stopped to run a paw across a dark column beside him, wiping the centuries of dust from its surface. It looked like part of a subterranean foundation. They were probably somewhere below the ancient city: in the catacombs?
“I can only imagine such a fate as the ponies of Equestria, and her leaders was a better one, spared from succumbing to the nightmares invading their home. And I guess we have them to thank as well.”
Another transformation and Pavo had returned to his pony-like form. “For a long time, we stayed. Where else were we to go?” he asked, an old pain coated on every word. “It was only when we lost them, did we realize our enemy could have been something more. Maybe something strong enough to fend off the shadows. The mimicry–” he waved a hoof over himself “–it became a memorial. A way to remember those that were lost. A reminder of the cost of our old, foolish ways."
"But that was so long ago," Pavo continued. "So long in fact that the Others have mostly forgotten. They have their primal lapses, such as you saw tonight. But it all fades by morning. And they’re still here, waiting. Believing themselves to actually be ponies. Believing Celestia and Luna will one day return.”
His eyes narrowed, pinned on Liz as if piercing into her. “And then you showed up.” Green fire once again swirled around Pavo, twisting and curling higher and higher. “And they hailed you as the Goddesses, as if a fairy tale had come true right before their eyes.”
Astra strode out of the fire, her short blue hair untouched by the flames. Liz’s heart tried to leap out her throat, and she choked for air.
“The connection,” Pavo said, opening and closing “Astra’s” fingers, " it’s deeply personal. With it, we have their words, their hopes, aspirations. All stored within our form until the line between us and our mimics becomes blurred. You and Astra captured that in the Others today, made the part of them that is pony feel the love that their Goddesses were back.”
Astra, but Pavo, knelt beside her, Elizabeth recoiling in revulsion as her friend reached a gloved hand toward her cheek.
“But you are not Gods,” Astra told her sweetly. “Your kind is mysterious, otherworldly, no doubt. But Gods?”
Astra sighed, placing a firm hand on Liz’s shoulder. “The Others, they will be distraught, but I can’t allow them to see what you really are — false idols. For that would only break them. I hope you know that I do regret this, Elizabeth Warren,” he told her dejectedly. “I want you to know they did not mean to do what they did to her. The dreams can send them into a frenzy.”
“Wait,” Liz gasped, struggling through the tears. “Just, wait. You don’t have to do this,” she told him. “I can go away, far away. Nobody will ever see me again. I promise,” she pleaded.
But Astra only shook her head. “Now, you know I can’t let you do that. The citizens will be troubled in your absence, but they will persevere. Only if it is that they believe the real Goddesses will someday return. Even if we both know that won't happen.”
Hot tears ran down Elizabeth's face, making her eyes red and raw. “Don’t do this,” she begged, but it did little to stray Pavo’s shape-shifted form.
“Don’t worry,” he said, straightening up. “It will be quick. Your friend didn’t even feel it. But I can tell you that she was thinking of you. It’s here.” Astra tapped her chest. “Stored with everything in her final moments, etched into her form. In that final instant, it was you she thought about,” Astra told Elizabeth, as if it would give her the assurance she needed, the strength. “A true friend, she thought of you. A fine leader and perhaps something more. You can go easy knowing this.”
Astra knelt back down, crouching before her. The green fire made its final return, slowly pulling itself over Astra. “Think of her, Liz Warren. Think of Astra.”
And tied to a chair, far, far away from home, in a foreign land not her own, Elizabeth’s final moments were filled with thoughts of Goddesses with wings and horns, and ruined cities, and Astra who had tried to warn her. Warn her of the gaping maw of teeth and fangs opening before her, ready as if to swallow her whole. It enveloped her reality, consuming everything that was Elizabeth Warren, Commander of the Orion, and the one who had tried to find the answer to the question "Who am I?". And the maw devoured the fear and the distant hope that was so far away from everything Liz had been or ever was. And all Liz could hear in that final moment was the pitiful calls of those above, the Others, who had forgotten who they were and the monsters that they hid inside.
Who am I? I don't remember who I am. But they are back. I can feel them among us now. The Goddesses have returned. Who am I?
Who am I?