//------------------------------// // Chapter T3: Bargaining // Story: [Redacted] // by McPoodle //------------------------------// [Redacted] - Chapter T3: Bargaining - Today Twilight found herself and her bubble located in the exact center of Ponyville. A blink of an eye earlier, she could have sworn she was still at the outskirts. With an inaudible sigh, she started picking her way through the deserted village. The growling sounds could still be heard, but whatever was making them was moving in such a way as to avoid being seen. From his vantage point on Twilight’s back, Spike stood up and looked around in all directions. “You know,” he told her, “all this talk of ‘planet killers’ reminds me of the Battle of Pelican Fields.” “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that battle, Spike,” the unicorn answered with uncertainty. With the way her memory was playing tricks on her, it was entirely possible that she had written an entire dissertation on the battle and just forgotten it now. “Oh, I’m not surprised,” he told her with an air of superiority. “It happened far before the dawn of pony history. Pelican Fields is where the Dragon Elders turned back the madness of the Black King.” “Th...the Black King?” asked Twilight in sudden fear. Her only knowledge of the infamous figure came from a stained glass window in Canterlot Palace, the oldest existing glasswork in all of Equestria. She knew that the Black King, before the madness, had been the only individual to ever unite all of the races in the world under his rule. Dragons and serpents, constellations and spirits, griffons and minotaurs, diamond dogs and wolves, the deer and all of the other hooved beings, had submitted themselves to his wisdom. And particularly the Black King’s own race, the most fractious creatures of all: the alicorns. The most precious thing in the world to the Black King was his wife, the White Queen. But she suffered from a fatal disease, and as she was gasping out her last moments of life, the jealous alicorns keep him from her bedside, in hopes of taking over the government when he gave in to grief. The Black King did not give in to grief. Instead he gave in to madness. He drained all of the magic from his fellow alicorns, and used this to power an infernal device, a device designed to send every living being on the planet to the same place his beloved bride had gone. “The dragons in those days were the master race of the planet,” Spike continued. “Their heads touched the clouds, and there were no creatures that did not fear them. But they did not know unity, until they met the Black King. They invested him with the power to rule over them all. When the Black King went mad, when he made himself the Enemy of Life, his daughters had the chance to do the right thing, but they failed.” The dragon spoke this last sentence with utter contempt, causing Twilight’s eyes to narrow. The Black King’s daughters were Celestia and Luna, and they were little more than fillies at the time, still in mourning for their mother. As for the “right thing to do”...well that particular act goes by the name of “patricide,” and Twilight didn’t think she wanted somepony capable of doing that as her monarch, so she was quite happy to know that they were incapable of doing it. “This left the dragons with a choice,” said Spike. “They had the power to protect themselves, to survive the cataclysm with their strength intact as the lone species left in Draconia. But instead they made the worst decision in their entire history. They sacrificed their power by pouring it into the Black King until he overloaded. “When the battle ended, the dragons lost their chance to easily rule the planet, and Pelican Fields looked exactly like this--nothing living could ever set foot upon it again.” “Oh, and it looks like we have visitors!” Spike announced happily. “What are those things?” Twilight asked Spike, peering desperately through the cloud of kicked-up dust at the creatures shambling towards them. “Zomponies,” whispered Spike. Twilight looked over with shock at the dragon on her back then faced forward. The creatures were now emerging from the gloom, twisted parodies of the citizens of Ponyville. They were all a grayish-green in color, and Twilight was horrified to notice that all of them had parts missing. Some were missing an eye, others a leg, but none of them showed any signs of being in pain, despite the obvious bite marks. The leader of the pack, the pony who had once been Lily, opened her mouth and attempted to say something, but it just came out as a sort of strangled gurgle. “What will you do?” asked Spike. In Twilight Sparkle’s ears, his voice sounded less of desperation and more of arrogance. The unicorn tried to back away, but suddenly found herself against a wall, a wall that she could have sworn was not there a minute ago. The Lily-zompony reached out a leg. Instead of a hoof, it presented a broken-off and sharpened bone, which it used to draw blood on Twilight’s side before she had a chance to get away. Twilight tried to run, but almost immediately collapsed in utter exhaustion. Sadly, this was no longer a surprise to her. She had finally figured out why she had been growing increasingly weaker: radiation poisoning, caused by the length of time she had slept in that tent before putting up any kind of defense. The creatures were now surrounding her on all sides, scraping at her with their hooves. Lily fastened her jaws around Twilight’s hindleg, causing her to cry out in pain. The desperate mare kicked out feebly, causing Lily to fall onto the pavement. The instant she landed, she dryly broke into about a dozen pieces. “It’s not fair!” Twilight cried out to the sky. Lily’s place as the chief of Twilight’s feasters was taken by zompony Rarity. “It’s not fair!!!” From the sky erupted the sound of riotous laughter at Twilight’s fate, a laugh from the voice of Princess Celestia herself.