Silence.
Contemplation.
It sat, coiled and formless behind the pillars of the coliseum, waiting, battling, fretting.
Fear.
Envy, was afraid. It was not the primordial fear of oblivion, of destruction, of being unmade, non-existant. It was a fear that ate away at his bones and drained its mouth dry, one that would spit acid in its eyes until it would cry. It was afraid, fearful of the fate of the few groups it had allowed to go above. Back to the surface.
It had hoped beyond hope that everything would be fine. A sad concept that was, befitting of course the embodiment of all bitter and melancholy. But it was still afraid. The fear clung to its brain like a tumor, generating a stream of terrible ideas.
The worst fates.
It had tried. Tried hard, failed an impossible task, to not worry about the future for a moment. It had tried to focus on the burgeoning town and the acres of farm and wildland, how they meshed and interlinked, a perfect balance between the domestic and the wild.
But nothing it did could ever possibly dream of diverting its attention from its strongest, simplest, and yet most terrifying fear. The fear that something, anything, would go terribly terribly wrong.
So it waited. It waited in its prison of fear for news. And it greeted a messenger with glorious elation and cheer.
"Greetings, my most valued pony. What do you bring word of today? Have we anything to disseminate to the public?" Envy spoke. It was admittedly a reserved and formal tone, but this was the closest it ever got to showing a meager scrap of joy.
It looked the pony up and down. Younger, and unknown, of the younger generation it would believe it to be. Forty or so years would do that. Dime a dozen color scheme, a comforting yellow and a powder blue mane.
"...Afternoon, Father. I bring news. Of the surface." The pony spoke. Yes, a little colt indeed. Not much older than what they had sent out on the surface. The hope they'd reestablish themselves, to see the sun again. Most of that dream fell to the young to uphold.
Envy eyed a mysterious parcel that the pony kept with him. It was a little large, but compared to its titanic breadth it was tiny. What secrets did it contain?
"Speak then. What have you brought in their steads? Gifts? Good news? Please, speak freely."
The pony shifted, and reverently lowered the package. It's contents were divine. Holy. Sacred. An awkward pause began. Indecisiveness bled into the air. "I... bring news. Yes. The surface teams. They came back.."
"That is good, is it not? What more, what more?"
"Yes.. Our outskirts have been overgrown into grassland. It is arid, dry and windy. There is no remnant of us above. Or perhaps, we have exited somewhere completely elsewhere. War brews in Equestria. A schism, something goes on between a Celestia, and a Luna."
"...The sisters War against each other. So the blood fights its own. What else? How. How did you learn of this?"
"...An incident. One of our teams, was accused. They believed us all to be part of the lunar rebellion and attacked. Soldiers dressed in steel and gold used spells and spears as they had attempted to retreat. We all spent no more than a week on the surface."
Pause. Silence.
Fear.
"...I. was tasked with delivering what was recovered afterward. What they recovered. Magic has become more brutal, it would seem. Your suggestion for metal tags was... Not unnecessary."
"I'm sorry. I truly am. These are for you."
Shuffle. Slide. The package passed. It was... It was heavy. Impossibly so, and it felt as though it would burn its skin.
A gentle nip, and it was torn. The contents spilled out like blood. Metal pieces. So many. Too many. Fragments of armor, and twenty one bits of engraved metal, some scorched, some rusty. Smelled of it. Like soot and hot metal and cooked blood. The scent of war without reason.
"You said they all came back." It spoke quietly.
Twenty one tags. Seven groups of four.
"I said all of the squads came back. I never said they came without losses."
Seven survivors, seven groups of one.
But that was fine. This was a paltry loss. Insignificant compared to previous numbers. A huge success! A- A groundbreaking, nay, worldshattering change could be abound. With the sisters at war with each other, they could rise again. They could show up, and slaughter all of them in retaliation, and retake their homeland.
Drip. A fat tear drop fell upon the cold stone.
Envy stared at the truth. It stared at the water that splattered across the masonry. It was not the outcome it had hoped for...
It had prepared for so much, for so long. It had wanted to be proud, to be elated and ecstatic as it had been before. Seven survivors. The fact there were any survivors was reason to celebrate as well, is it not?
Silence.
Silence, broken only by the sound of another tear splashing into the puddle of water that had formed around it as it sat, as it waited.
Envy was speechless. Words were prepared, and it choked on them.
This wasnt worth it. It wasnt worth the lives lost. It was broken. Heartbroken. Broken like a thousand shards of broken glass, razor thin and infesting its chest. Like blunt nails were driven into its core.
Envy wept for the wasted lives, wasted dreams, wasted potential... The wasted effort. And it wept for the hope that was lost.
It wailed.
Twenty-one dead.
It's eyes were awash with tears, and with a tail it pulled the tags close, holding the source of its pain tight to its heart. It held that box like it was filled with gold, and it coiled around the dog-tags as if if could bring any amount of comfort to the dead. For a moment, this box of metal was the world.
Each tag represented a pony. Each tag represented hope. The future. The World. Endless streams of chance and outcome, possibilities to go unwritten and written.
And each tag represented death. The death of something precious, all too precious to not hold closely to its heart.
Emotions bubbled and roiled, and a weight was tied to its heart, those little pieces of steel far heavier than even mountains made of lead, or stars and their cores of iron.
Resentment. Confusion. Anger. Sadness. Misery. Misery.
Pinned and crushed beneath pain and guilt, Envy refused to let go, if it let go, it could believe that none of this had happened, so it would not. Envy was trapped in a time that refused to move on...
Envy was trapped.
Misery. All there was was misery, and Envy, the literal embodiment of all things negative, embraced this. It wallowed in the muck, It wallowed in its self pity, in guilt, in anger, loss- sorrow- mourning, a furious cocktail of shattered emotion.
It could have prevented this. It could've eased its worries by focusing out there, not in here, where it was safe. It could have prepared them better. Prepared them for live combat, instead of repeating critical errors- believing that times change- that forgiveness was possible.
It should have fought against the topic more, told them to never dream of going to surface again. They'd be heartbroken, but alive. If it had done more. There would be more alive.
That damned word, that cursed word. If.
If... The word that drove its heart into an uproar, and its mind into stupid rock. Maddening.
To blame yourself is not wrong, to be sure...
To blame yourself for all those lives taken...
For everything that might have been...
This was nobody's fault.
So it was Envy's fault.
They were all young, naive and full of life. And Envy had been an idiot, a fool. How could he have possibly had faith in children? They were practically children in its eyes. Children don't get told to get lost in the forest just because they want to explore.
Children don't get sent out to be slaughtered. Fattened calf- sent to the mountain for slaughter.
Envy knew the truth. It knew all along, but to say it out loud, to admit to itself that it had failed on a far more personal level, was an impossible choice. It denied the deaths. They weren't real. They didn't die.
Such thoughts sickened the Leviathan to its core, and it held them all tighter.
It was Envy that had condemned those ponies to death... It was Envy who had sent them to be slaughtered.
It was Envy's fault.
Envy howled. It howled and wailed and wept and cried and mourned and screamed in anguish. It was an ugly thing, with no decorum or grace. The thing that would make seasoned colonels and officers merely grimace and drink. Here it was, being an ugly thing in front of one of its fine subjects, and Envy did not care. It didn't even care that it was being seen in such a state. It didn't care that it was revealing its true self. The real Envy.
It was only human. Even if subhuman. Less than that.
The envy was nothing like what it showed the world. This was no calm, uncaring being. This was no emotionless, uncaring deity, nor the embodiment of wrath and divine judgment.
This was a broken thing.
This was envy.
An ugly thing.
It mourned. Three days. Three nights. It did not stop, it went along howling in agony right through the ceremony, where the remains were to be dusted with soil.
Envy would not give up one of their medallions willingly, it would growl and turn away with the package, a wicked dragon hoarding it's gold. It's promise to never let go. Only when the howling stopped, late into the night when the great beast had entered a state of torpor, unresponsive, it's eyes glazed over, did they sneak in and take the tags for their last rites.
The last rites of those poor ponies...
Envy mourned still, but silently. It was angry at itself, it hated itself, it loathed itself. And it did it in silence. It swallowed its grief and let it churn beneath the surface of its skin. It would not grieve the way it wanted to... it could not... But its emotions showed its regret in all other ways.
Envy was a tragic and pitiful sight, and Envy's subjects saw it in all its heartbreaking glory.
Envy wailed when it was alone.
Envy screamed on the top of the coliseum when the subjects were asleep.
Envy cried and cried and cried.
It cried every night until it eventually ran out of tears.
Envy mourned, but not enough.
Envy blamed itself, but not enough.
Envy suffered, but not enough.
Envy...
Envy wished it had died instead of them.
At least then nothing of importance would have been lost.
And it was because of that damned word. That cursed word.
Equestria.