//------------------------------//
// Incandescence 
// Story: Speak Not Of The End Of The World 
// by Shaslan 
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Laotyn was the only one on duty when at last the emissary came. After the news spread — like wildfire, as all news on the Taelo did — no one wanted to be in the observation pods any more. No one wanted to be close to a creature with whom even communicating hurt. No one wanted to befriend the monsters. 

No one but Laotyn. 

Not that he ever spoke with them. Not anymore. He would have no more lives on his conscience. 

He had attempted to tell the Council of Elders. To warn them, to ask them not to hurt any more ponies. Two princesses and his best friend — was that not enough?

If he had been on the Council, he would have argued for a longer journey. Better to travel a little further, a few more generations, than doom another species. The only other species in all the galaxy. 

But the Council did not agree, and they did not want his warnings. They already knew what talking to the ponies did, and they wanted to do more of it, not less. After Celestia’s attack…well, better to wipe out the ponies from afar than wait till the terraformer teams landed. 

So while Laotyn’s colleagues fled, delegates from the Council moved into their chambers. They used the receptors not to watch for danger or to scout ahead, as they had been intended. They used them as weapons of war. Used them to kill. 

They cut swathes through the pony population. Thrusting memories into the wide-open minds of dreamers, letting whatever aspect of communication radiation that disagreed with pony bodies do its work, and then they sat back to watch the dead count rise. 

And Laotyn could not even warn anyone — not without breaking the promise he had made to Cherry. Not without dooming another innocent. 

So he stayed silent, and eventually, the Council recalled their subordinates. The work was done. All they had to do now was wait.  

And Laotyn sat alone in his pod, watching the friends of his friend mourn her. Watching her world die. 

So when, at last, the emissary came, Laotyn did not raise the alarm. He did not call for the Elders, as he once would have done. He looked into the cabin of the rocket, and he saw Cherry’s partner, the only one, instead of the six he would have had himself, if he had chosen parenthood and Merging. 

He saw the pony with the yellow wings and the green eyes that had reflected the candleflame on their date. He saw her aiming carefully at the weakest point on the ship, the barely-healed suture where Celestia had blasted her way in.

Perhaps this was what was needed. The only way forward. Perhaps this was, in a way, justice. After all, it was nothing much really. Nothing but the ghost of a world, a dead world, going away. A dead people going away, where they had been fated to go generations before. Going Home. 

He saw exactly what would happen, and he pulsed a wistful cornflower blue. He saw the pony Cherry had loved, and he did what he had gotten so good at. 

He stayed silent.