//------------------------------//
// Stranded // Clair De Soleille 
// Story: The Dark Below 
// by WindigogoGadget 
//------------------------------//

Lone Wolf.

Sole Survivor.

It struggled on picking a title. 

There was a house in Equestria, where the sun would rise over and set with little fanfare.

In it, was the last remaining piece of a little boy, who tore themselves apart to try to be 'normal'. 

Maybe it's name was Truth. It no longer mattered anymore. It's history, it's preferences and it's favorite form, were meaningless. The ego and the sense of self was worthless, and it had a tendency to ruin things in the long run. But, It was all going to end soon enough. The last one alive on the surface. The last one to lock the door. 

This was a home for life, but for him, it was a house. An empty house, with no hearth. The house gradually became a refuge for spiders and their webs, even growing on and over him, as he sat deathly still upon a wooden chair. Months passed as dust accumulated, and tenants changed, and it remained motionless, waiting. Days bled into weeks, into months, into years. Time marched forward, leaving the forgotten one to his thoughts, as it waited for the inevitable, the end of all time. The end of everything.

In the gallows.
In the meadows, in the towns or their ghettos, in a pillar, or even over the sun, at the end of a time there's another begun.
It knew she was mad, for she knew she'd been had, when she shot at the sun. Shot at the son with a wail. Shot at their wiley one, only friend. 

It almost blinked and freed himself from these introspective musings, when he felt the sensation- a rumbling coming his way. The sound of a thousand sets of steps, a march of a war without reason. Yes. At long last, the end. The end of a time, so that perhaps one day, there would be another time. 

Rays of light bled through dusty air, the natural light worming its way inside through the gaps between the rotted and moss eaten wood planks. It could feel voices on the air and the tense heartbeats in the ground. Here, was the end of everything, everywhere all at once. 

It would miss this. 

...

This is it. The last of them. No matter how many times I tried to detect more, how many times I believe it to be more difficult, this is it. The threat will be over, and I will need not shed any more blood over this one-sided conflict anymore.

It is a house, resting uneasily on a green hill. Lightly decrepit and made from wooden planks. A single door, and a window without panes. I need not have brought the armies with me, but I did so because the plains that surround it would make an excellent place to camp before our campaign comes to an end.

Purely because the fields would be perfect for the armies to rest. Nothing more.

I walked to the door, composing myself with each step. No matter how much I stopped shaking, I couldn't stop the feeling that my armor chose to tremble for me. With a flare of my magic, the door to the wooden shack opened, and I saw a little brown colt seated at a table staring directly into my eyes. Brown and mundane like the empty home it inhabited.

"Hi there. So, what do you expect to do?" It said, in an innocent voice. It had unblinking green eyes, piercing in comparison to the washed-out colors of the house. Everything was covered in a thin film of white dust, even the foal had cobwebs leading from its legs to its chair, markings of time. I closed my eyes and formed the spell in my horn to make it simply go away. It did not need to become messy. It did not need to devolve into violence. Everything would simply be cleaned.

"Hehe. Not with me silly, with yourself." I opened my eyes, and the foal was gone. Just a black mass, eyeless, featureless, only vaguely shaped like an innocent child. Then from its head, it started sprouting an ethereal mane of darkness. In it, I saw a thousand wide red eyes staring at me, filled with terror. I was unnerved, and despite the armor I wore, I felt naked. I was unnerved, not because it had resisted, as most had figured out how to avoid being undone by spells, but because it had copied my voice. I hadn't even spoken to it yet, and it was speaking to me, it was speaking to me in the same voice I had as a foal.

"What do you plan to do with the troublemakers?" I- It, spoke, continuing to stare at me. And I felt confused.

"The troublemakers?" I asked, so It elaborated. 

"Yes, you and I. Once everything you have is good, and just, and perfect. What do you plan to do with the ponies like you? The troublemakers." It clarified, fearlessly, and with little fanfare. There was no spare seat for me, so I stood at the doorway.

I could only think about what it meant by that. "We'll win." I responded solidly. It only nodded for a few seconds and seemed lost in thought, its eyes calmed and tilted downward.

"Good." It said. It narrowed its eyes in mock thought. "Maybe you will win."

Then our voice had dropped like lead.

"But not good enough. Nobody ever wins forever. The stones just keep rolling, and when you reach the end they all come tumbling right back down. How many times do you think you can stop the next big revolution, the next big war from just rolling in?"

I stood there in silence. I had nothing to say. Nothing I felt was relevant. Yet I still wanted to speak.

"...I dont understand."

"You could have walked. You could have told them to stand your revolution down, and to walk away."

I.. I wondered if it had been among the crowds when I had said those things. The order was for the good of all us, they'd proven themselves subjugated, mindless, and capable of great cruelty if somepony just politely asked them to be.

Much like it was asking me. Talking to me. 

I knew it wanted an answer, so I answered. 
"Because I started it, and so I couldn't stop it. Did you think they would let me go after all I said and did?"

A laugh echoed in my mind, as I watched it be still in the chair, yet somehow, I could hear it laugh as if it had heard the most hilarious joke known to equine kind. The eyes, bounced around mirthlessly.

"But you could! You could have!"

"Oh but you're all the same, you screaming kids, 'Oh look at us, we're unforgivable!' well here's the unforeseeable- I FORGIVE YOU. After everything you've done."

I swallowed. My throat had turned dry from all the dust in the air. I knew that forgiveness wasn't that easy. It never could be. And I knew that some of them simply didn't have the capacity to understand, to understand death, or sorrow, fear, or even basic logic.
"You don't understand. Your kind could never understand."

The boisterous cacophony suddenly stopped. It stopped faster than I could blink. It didn't find me so funny anymore, I believe. My armor has never felt thinner or colder.

"I don't understand?"  It said, in artificial breaths. Disbelief, synthetic, flowing on a stolen voice. "Me? Of course I don't understand. Kids can never understand. But you call this a war? This silly little thing?"

Its voice was a knife, and it cut at me with enraged breathes. Loudly.

"This is not a war, my kind knows wars, we could have fought in a bigger war than you could ever know, and do worse things than you should ever know, and should I ever close my eyes-!"

It choked, In an anguish I'd seen before.

"I hear more screams, than you will ever begin to count. And its everyone who died, cursing your name."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked. My voice quivered, and I cursed myself for even faltering. 

"Because you don't understand. But you almost do, if you would just listen. Please. Just listen." 

"Because its not just a talk."

"This-" The mass gestured, to everything, dust and webs and wood and flesh. "is a scale model of war. Of every war that you will ever see. Because when you make that first order, when you fire that first shot, when you settle it behind closed doors and announce it to the world- No matter how right you feel; You have no idea. You have no idea how many are going to die. You have no idea how many children have screamed, and burned. How many hearts have been broken. How much blood will spill until it all boils down to what should've been done at the very beginning, JUST SIT DOWN AND TALK!"

It shouted, and it paused to close only two of its many eyes in exasperation. It steadied itself, and i stared into something that acted much older, and much more alive than what I could ever imagine could have ever been born from the thoughts of a meek flower.

And I felt fear.

"Now go on. You started this. You stop it, it only takes you to stop it. Now go on, break the cycle. Or the wheel, just keeps turning."