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// Cold Winds 
// Story: The Dark Below 
// by WindigogoGadget 
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Time passes on.

Unending. Unflinching. The step of time was constant. No matter how many tragedies, or how many victories would come and go, wax and wane, start and stop- Time would never stop, not for a moment. It was enduring, it was unending, even when there would one day come a day where the days would simply cease to be and there would be nothing more to occur, the marching of time would continue.

Time passes on.

And it hated it.

It, was furious. It seethed and waited in agonizing silence with the hatred and patience of a man waiting for the enemy to poke a head out of a trench, It's very will and reason for existence was to spite it's creators non-existence, to spite the world by staining it with an imperceptible mar that it angrily and proudly point at and shout to the world "I existed. I did this! Tiny little Envy, did this! You could not erase us! You missed a spot!"

That. Was it's sole purpose. It's reason for existing. It was a hideous mass, a cancerous tumor born from the effort of producing someone pure of heart. It was a mass made from the shredded and useless pieces of hatred that were scooped from the core of a dead child, it was the pride and ego that would soon see another shattered beneath its supposed grandeur and elevated value, and it was the capacity to be jealous, to aspire to be better, to want more and more until everything in the breadth of the world would fall under its great 'power'. It was a demon made from the calm and boiling, bubbling wrath of futures that were wasted and waning, seasoned with every single fighting bone in ones body. It's existence was to be the polar opposite of virtue, and it was intended to be discarded as merely 'trimmings' from the quality cut of gold that was its creator.

And it hated him. It hated him so much. It asked why it would discard its capacity to fight, to protect itself- to trade in it's capacity to defend for simple virtue. And it hated itself, knowing that the reason it existed was the reason that its master no longer did, that if it had never existed, or if it was merely missing just a few key aspects, then maybe- just maybe, it's creator could have defended itself.

And it was for that reason, that it was the one who lead this grand idea as a violent red sun was cast over their paradise. To cast aside the world above and to embrace solidarity- loneliness, and friendship in misery, to create the vast and deep kingdom and to take their most prized possesions- their willing friends, with them. It was the only one capable of fighting, of casting venom into the crowds of gilded demons and traitors that rang on their doorstep. Fueled by spite, it spat in the face of its reason for existence to do good for the world. For it's friends.

And those days were long gone. In this new peace, there was no need for soldiers. No need for monsters.

It only knew itself as Envy. It was Evil. Anything that could be considered evil or negative was its name, but most of all it was Envy. It envied the way the ponies lived in the prosperous layers of the kingdom it had made the foundation for, it hated their flexibility, and their ability to be satisfied, and to be content. It had watched an entire generation grow up, and grow old, and it watched over all. An all seeing, hateful gaze that protected the world they knew. With every fiber of its being, it hated them, and it hated their peace and their love and their kindness as much as it hated the cruelty and savagery that the world above had shown them, it hated them because they were disgusting. Hate. Hate. And they would not die of it, they would never find themselves harmed by its hatred.

Time passed underneath its watchful eye, its caustic visage never once revealing itself to the masses below it. No matter how much it wanted to be like the simple ants below it, it could never get the form right.

And it continued to hate.

It continued to hate how time marched on, and how the world was merciless and cruel and uncaring for Him and His creations. Why must time continue? Why must those disgusting ponies of the surface world continue to live as if nothing had ever happened? As if they hadn't eliminated an entire race and driven them all deep, oh so deep, into the welcoming darkness below.

Cold winds was all it knew. The abyss below always buffeted their kingdom of tears with violent gales that wanted to break them down into nothingness, and day in, day out, it kept the kingdom warm and protected with the heat of its hate. And it watered the world with its tears, and watched along with many others as the kingdom continued to exist in peace. It watched with pride in itself as it and so many others continued to exist, spiting the last attempt on their existence by the vile princesses.

And it watched, with wet, weeping eyes, as it's heart was plunged into an eternal, hateful sorrow. A cycle of perpetual loathing and self-hatred, as it knew that their was so many more it could have protected, and so much more that it could have exacted a flaming judgement upon, and most importantly, its hatred at the uncaring indifference of time. Time, would heal nearly all wounds. But not for it. Not for Envy. It's scars would fester and rot with a sick, diseased warmth as it watched as time marched on.

Its hideous mass presided over every layer and every soul in their newly founded kingdom, its violent nature the supreme authority from which all other so-called 'virtuous' authorities derived. 

It's name, It did not truly know. It was an Envy. It was Wrath. It was Hatred. It was Pain. It was Misery. It was Greed. It was All, all of the negative and terrible and spiteful aspects that made up a human, a pony, a griffon, anything that made up the bitter and disgusting sour that balanced up the sweetness of life. Unlike the others, the other angels, the others who had taken up the first name- the true name of their creator, it chose to not steal the name of a bloated corpse, it instead kept the name it was given. 

It was Envy. The First. Envy, The Jealous. Envy, the Coveted. Now, it was simply Hate. Hate, the Administrator of All. The All Seeing Eye. It watched as the golden gates of their paradise, their garden, shut and let the red sun fall over them. A flowery recollection of what had really happened. But It saw no reason to dredge up any more memories of the disgusting ponies of the surface world- no doubt celebrating their victory over 'evil'.

For the first time, possibly since its conception, Hate felt pride. It felt pride in having protected its flock- its chosen and most trustful few- from the great and vile hate of its fellow ponies, and with every ounce of pride, it held in itself a ton of shame. Shame, that it could not have saved more. Shame, in that its own existence was responsible for every single bit of tragedy future and past- Shame in being nothing more than the discarded scraps of a dead being far greater than it ever would be.

Disgrace. Humiliation. Heresy.

They had all been abandoned. Cast aside. Forced to act for themselves, and now-

Now they were free. Free to make their own sun, and write their own tales. Free at last. 

On the first day, it was tired. Exhausted. It's fire was gone, it's wrath turned into the great sun of the first layer, which presided at the maw of Peace. The Seven Weepers, the strongest surviving fragments of the creator, had sculpted plains and gently rolling hills, watering the land with tears of bittersweet happiness, contrasting the jagged rivulets of eaten rock that formed sharp cliffs. There wasn't enough magic to make each layer endless, and there wasn't enough hate to protect an endless, infinite expanse from the hungry void that they called home. For the time being, it rested easy knowing that it's ponies, it's friends, had something to eat- even if it was something as simple and demeaning as grass. That first day seemed so long ago now, it had almost forgotten how it rendered from its own skin- tarps to protect from the wind and the heat of a sun that warmed and burned all equally. 

Envy slid among the camp in the skin of a serpent. It could see ponies, breaking bread with defected changelings and the husks of young and old shades and fragments. From the shattered pieces of paradise, they built a camp. It felt envious of them. Envious of their ability to die. To be burdenless. To mean nothing in the great scheme of things, and to simply be without any purpose but what they made of themselves.

It began to think again. It began to hate itself for calling the ponies meaningless. They had meaning. They meant everything- they were the world, the ones who would inherit it and the ones whose children would inherit it after that, they were alive. Envy, was not. And many of them, were dead. It imagined a great city built atop of of the bones of the camp, its entire world an impregnable fortress, and it began to dread. It dreaded the fact that there were no funerals, and it dreaded the fact that there would need to be funerals. 

Funerals. Bodies. Everywhere. Every day. His supreme authority of violence was useful, but he could not stop death. Much like his creator, he began to hate death too. 

"Angel? What is it? What do you see?" A pony thing asked. Envy did not know its name. It knew it as a dusty pink thing, a horned thing, with eyes the color of buttercups and its hair a stark charcoal gray. For a moment, it contemplated to refuse a response, but It wanted to talk. It needed to speak. It felt that it was deserving of a response, for willing to speak to something so strange and so wretched.

It wanted to scream, but it chose to talk. It withheld its vicious words, and spoke in a low nasal voice, befitting of such a creature. "...Where will you bury your dead?" Envy asked simply.

The pony paused. Taken aback. It had been not too long since the war above had been done, even if its own seconds of hatred would make its time feel like years. "I... I think we'll put the ones who can be buried on a hill. Face them towards the- your, sun. I don't truly know. I'd ask the others. They'd like a memorial to the fallen. Your kind have sharp memories, right?"

Envy nodded simply, and slithered away back into the abyss. Burials would be done soon enough. It wanted to make a comment- a snide little remark about the negativity of a long live and a perfect memory, but it would just be another burden. It could blink, and the world would change again, no doubt.

Exhausted, and splitting the skin of a serpent, the great leviathan of hatred closed its eyes, and rested. A fatigue clung to its mind and soul, and would not leave it even in the embrace of a dreamless sleep.