Brisk Bronco came furtively down the crag, a shambling gaunt Pony with tortured eyes. He moved in a series of quick dashes using panels of dark air for concealment, running behind each passing shadow, at times crawling with his head low to the ground. Arriving at the final low outcrop of rock, he halted and peered across the plain.
Far away rose low hills, blurring into the sky, which was mottled and sallow like poor milk glass. The intervening plains stretched like rotten velvet, black-green and wrinkled, streaked with ocher and rust. A fountain of liquid rock jetted high in the air, branched out into black coral. In the middle distance a family of gray objects evolved with a sense of purposeful destiny: spheres melted into pyramids, became domes, tufts of white spires, sky-piercing poles; then, as a final tour de force, tesseracts.
Brisk Bronco cared nothing for this; he needed food, and out on the plain were plants. They grew on the ground, or sometimes on a floating lump of water, or surrounding a core of hard, black gas. There were dank black flaps of leaf, clumps of haggard thorn, pale green bulbs, stalks with leaves and contorted flowers. There were no recognizable species, and the Pony had no way of knowing if the leaves and tendrils he had eaten yesterday would poison him today.
He tested the surface of the plain with a hoof. The glassy surface (though it likewise seemed a construction of red and gray-green pyramids) accepted his weight, then suddenly sucked at his leg. In a frenzy he tore himself free, jumped back, squatted on the temporarily solid rock.
Hunger rasped at his stomach. He must eat. He contemplated the plain. Not too far away a pair of Monsters played—sliding, diving, dancing, striking flamboyant poses. Should they approach, he would try to kill one of them. They at least vaguely resembled Ponies, and so should make a good meal. He knew, though, that they might just as easily try to eat him if they had the opportunity.
He waited. A long time? A short time? I might have been either; duration had neither quantitative nor qualitative reality. The sun and moon had vanished, and there was no standard cycle or recurrence. “Time” was a word blank of meaning.
Matters had not always been so. Brisk Bronco retained a few tattered recollections of the old days, before system and logic had been rendered obsolete. Ponies had dominated the world by virtue of a single assumption; that an effect could be traced to a cause, itself the effect of a previous cause.
Then came the terrible hour when the iron clad rules of the world failed, and from that moment all the ordered tensions of cause-and-effect dissolved. Logic, observation and knowledge proved useless in the age of unreason. From the teeming masses of beings who once had inhabited the land, only a few survived—the mad. They were now the Monsters, lords of their era, their discords so exactly equivalent to the vagaries of the land as to constitute a peculiar, wild wisdom. Or perhaps the disorganized matter of the world, loose from the old organization, was peculiarly sensitive to psycho-kinesis.
A handful of the sane, Ponies like Brisk Bronco, managed to exist, but only through a delicate set of circumstances. They were the ones most strongly charged with the old causal dynamic. It persisted sufficiently to control the metabolism of their bodies and prevent them from becoming Monsters, but could extend no further. They were fast dying out, for sanity provided no leverage against the environment. Sometimes their own minds sputtered and jangled, and they would go raving and leaping out across the plain, until they finally foundered in a pool of black iron, or blundered into a vacuum pocket, to bat around like a fly in a bottle.
These Ponies, survivors from the age of reason, now numbered very few. Brisk Bronco lived with four others. Two of these were old and soon would die. Brisk Bronco likewise would die unless he found food.
Out on the plain, one of the Monsters, Loco-in-the-Coco, sat down, caught a handful of air, a globe of blue liquid, a rock, kneaded them together, pulled the mixture like taffy, gave it a great heave. It uncoiled from his claws like rope. Seeing this, Brisk Bronco crouched low. There was no telling what devilry would occur to the creature. He and all the rest of them—unpredictable!
They were moving toward him; had they seen him? He flattened himself against the sullen yellow rock.
The two Monsters paused not far away. He could hear their sounds and crouched, sick from conflicting pangs of hunger and fear.
Loco-in-the-Coco sank to his haunches, then rolled flat on his back, flailing his limbs upward at random, addressing the sky in a series of musical cries, sibilants, guttural groans. It was a personal language he had only now improvised, but Fruit Cake understood him well.
“A vision!” cried Loco. “I see past the sky. I see knots, spinning circles. They tighten into hard points; they will never come undone.”
Fruit Cake perched on a pyramid, glanced over her shoulder at the mottled sky.
“An intuition,” chanted Loco, “a picture out of the other time. It is hard, merciless, inflexible.”
Fruit Cake poised on the pyramid, dove through the glassy surface, swam under Loco Coco, lay flat beside him.
“Observe the relict on the hillside. In his blood is the whole of the old race—the narrow Ponies with minds like cracks. He has exuded the intuition. Clumsy thing—a blunderer,” said Loco.
“They are all dead, all of them,” said Fruit Cake. “Although three or four remain.” (When past, present and future are no more than ideas left over from another era, like boats on a dry lake—then the completion of a process can never be defined.)
Loco said, “This is the vision. I see the Ponies swarming the Earth, then whisking off to nowhere, like gnats in the wind. This is behind us.”
The Monsters lay quiet, considering the vision.
A rock, or perhaps a meteor, fell from the sky, struck into the surface of the pond. It left a circular hole which slowly closed. From another part of the pool a gout of fluid splashed into the air, floated away.
Loco spoke, “Again—the intuition comes strong! There will be lights in the sky.”
The fever died in him. He hooked a claw into the air, hoist himself upright.
Fruit Cake lay quiet. Slugs, ants, flies, beetles were crawling on her, boring, breeding. Loco knew Fruit Cake could arise, shake off the insects, stride off. But Fruit Cake seemed to prefer passivity. That was well enough. He could produce another Fruit Cake should he choose, or a dozen of her. Sometimes the world swarmed with Monsters, all sorts, all colors, tall as steeples, short and squat as flower-pots. Sometimes they hid quietly in deep caves, and sometimes the tentative substance of Earth would shift, and perhaps one, perhaps thirty of them would be shut in the subterranean cocoon, and all would sit gravely waiting, until such time as the ground would open and they could peer blinking and pallid out into the light.
“I feel a lack,” said Loco-in-the-Coco. “I will eat the Pony.” He set forth, and sheer chance brought him near to the ledge of yellow rock. Brisk Bronco sprang to his hooves in panic.
Loco-in-the-Coco tried to communicate so that Brisk Bronco might pause while Loco ate. But Brisk had no grasp for the many-valued overtones of Loco’s voice. He seized a rock between his front hooves, hurled it at Loco. The rock puffed into a cloud of dust, blew back into the Pony’s face.
Loco moved closer, extended several long arms. Brisk bucked with his hind legs. His hooves went out from under him, and he slid out onto the plain. Loco ambled complacently behind him. Brisk began to crawl away. Loco moved off to the right—one direction was as good as another. He collided with Fruit Cake, and began to eat Fruit Cake instead of the Pony. Brisk Bronco hesitated; then approached, and joining Loco, pushed chunks of nuts and candied fruit into his mouth.
Loco said to the Pony, “I was about to communicate an intuition to her whom we dine upon. I will speak to you.”
Brisk Bronco could not understand Loco-in-the-Coco’s personal language. He ate as rapidly as possible.
Loco spoke on, “There will be lights in the sky. The great lights.”
Brisk rose to his feet and, warily watching Loco, seized Fruit Cake’s leg with his jaws, began to pull her toward the hill. Loco watched with quizzical unconcern.
It was hard work for the spindly Pony. Sometimes Fruit Cake floated; sometimes she wafted off on the air; sometimes she adhered to the terrain. At last she sank into a knob of granite which froze around her. Brisk Bronco tried to jerk Fruit Cake loose, and then to pry her up with a stick, without success.
He ran back and forth in an agony of indecision. Fruit Cake began to collapse, wither, like a jellyfish on hot sand. The Pony abandoned the hulk. Too late, too late! Food going to waste! The world was a hideous place of frustration!
Temporarily Brisk Bronco's belly was full. He started back up the crag, but then spied flying creatures, and he hid behind a colorful beetle.
Cautiously, he peered over the rusted hood, and he saw they were approaching and would pass nearby. For a hopeful moment he thought they were Ponies like himself, although of the winged type. What had they once been called? He pondered for a few moments, until the word came to him. Pegasus, he thought. He had not seen any of those in a long time. As distance decreased, though, he saw that these two were quite large, and in addition to wings they each had a very long and sharp-looking horn. They must be Monsters.
The two banked toward him. They’d seen him. Brisk tensed his hindquarters, getting ready to sprint, but his situation was dire. The direction he faced was seldom the direction the varying frictions of the ground allowed him to move, which made fleeing danger problematic—even when the source of danger was unable to fly. And when they could?
The two Monsters landed in front of him, trapping him with his back against the beetle. The larger of the two was an off-white, tinged with just a hint of pink, and its mane and tail were colored entirely soft pink. The other was colored deep indigo blue, while its mane and tail were a softer shade of cerulean. Both of them seemed almost as emaciated and haggard as himself, their hair disheveled and their coats stained with mud.
The larger one spoke, in a strong but feminine voice, and language that he could understand. She said, “Well met, stranger! I am Celestia, and my sister by my side is Luna.” Then they waited expectantly for his response.
His eyes darted left and right, seeking a way out. Then he licked his lips and answered tentatively, “I hight Brisk Bronco.”
The white giant questioned him further. “Brisk Bronco, knowest thou any other Ponies who survive hereabout?”
Wide-eyed, fearful, he shook his head. He had no reason to betray the others to these Monsters.
She asked next, “Hast thou seen any sign of the Draconequus?” Seeing his blank response, she prompted further. “Apep, Discord, the Serpent That Never Dies. He is the author of our world’s misery.”
Confused, he merely shook his head again.
She pressed on. “My sister and I have found a powerful magical weapon, and we seek Apep that we may vanquish him and restore reason to the land.”
The dark one nudged her sister and said, “Celestia, dost thou not see this stallion is terrorized? He wilt provide no aid.”
“Monsters. . .” Brisk muttered, and he made a break. His hooves scrabbled at the ground, sending him forward to almost collide with the white creature. Both of them jumped out of the way as he made an escape.
They watched him go, and Celestia lowered her head and sighed. “Monsters. . .” she repeated. “E’en now, ponies still see us as such.”
“And so we are, as we have always been,” Luna responded coolly. “Monsters created to fight other Monsters. Let us focus our minds upon our mission, and waste no more time dreaming of anything more than that.”
They took to the air, and continued their quest.