//------------------------------// // The Midnight Train Going Anywhere // Story: Don't Stop Believing // by Seer //------------------------------// Twilight bit into the loaf of bread, her eyes rolling back into her head with ecstasy. It cut the inside of her mouth, the crust long hardened into sharpened ridges in the freezing temperatures and ever-present stale air.  It was rapturous.  Things like this were becoming fewer and further between.  It had only been a few days since Twilight had woken up in her castle, finding the world to be a frozen, deserted wasteland.  Well, no, wasteland wasn’t too accurate.  What Twilight had walked into was so much worse than that. It was pristine. It was a world made into a sculpture, with only the Ponyville librarian, imperfect in her stubborn consciousness, left to sully it. It was a world in which every single occupant had simply vanished, leaving Twilight with nothing but time.  Time she had used to scour buildings in Canterlot for the food that remained, anything to quiet her screaming stomach, agonised in the constant state of starvation she’d felt since this had happened. And time she had used to consider a few salient facts.  Everyone in the world had vanished.  She didn’t know how she could fix it.  She didn’t have long to work out how to fix it.  Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna, were dead.  The last point, even just thinking it, made her body convulse. But Twilight forced herself to focus on her bread, focus on eating one of the last fresh things in the entire world, even though it was horrifically stale. It was simple really, each point fed into the next.  There was one pony in the entire world. There was enough canned and preserved foods to last Twilight an entire lifetime.  She estimated she had a couple of months at most.  Because Twilight could eat as much as she wanted, she could drink entire rivers. But Twilight was going to die, relatively soon.  Because the princesses were dead. She knew they must be dead. And not only dead, but completely and utterly destroyed.  And it hadn’t been hard to work out.  Because there were only a few things that could release so much energy as to scour the world clean of every notion of complex life. And one of them was the energy released when you destroy an alicorn.  Not just kill it, but rend its very soul into nothing.  But Twilight was a scholar, she didn’t listen to conjecture, or unfounded hypotheses. She’d need proof to jump to such an assertion, of course.  It was a couple of days in when she found it. Because Twilight had leant down to eat a mouthful of the grass at Canterlot park, near-crazed from hunger in the dulled afternoon light, and instinctively spat the rotten, foul tasting sprouts from her mouth.  She’d pulled back, looking at them in horror, seeing only fresh-looking, green grass. And then she’d looked up, at the weak rays filtering through the grey ceiling atop her. And then back to the grass, and back to the sun, and then to her own shaking, weakened body.  And Twilight had realised then, and there, that her suspicions had been correct. And that her mentor must be dead. And she’d fallen to that foul, rotten, beautiful, vibrant grass. Because her exhaustion and starvation, and the taste of that meadow, and the death of the entire world, and the destruction of her second mother finally made a terrible nothing of sense. Because, stood there as she was, with naught for company but the silent wind Twilight had realised. Because there was something wrong with the sun and moon.  XXX One of Twilight’s favourite places in Canterlot had always been the crystal catacombs. She’d gone there with Rarity. They did something important there. She was sure of it. She looked at the entrance, strangely destroyed in the eerie calm of the perfect world. Rubble blocked the entrance completely.  It must have been?  Twilight punched the rocks and screamed. The memories, or notions of them, didn’t make sense. She felt them so strongly and yet she felt they must be wrong.  Twilight had never liked the catacombs and neither had Rarity. They weren’t aesthetically pleasing, and magic didn’t even properly penetrate down there. It had nothing for either of them. She had no actual memories of coming here, aside from rescuing Cadence. All she had were these persistent odd notions and niggling feelings. So why had it felt so important to come here? She didn’t dream any longer, without the moon, she couldn’t. Sleep only brought flashbacks of times that were completely irrelevant, like that interview with Luna.  And even if there was relevance, the starvation and lack of nurture from the sun made it impossible. The sun was the lifegiver, its magic sustaining the whole ecosystem. Its absence was killing her and every passing second made it less likely she’d ever fix this.   She bit her tongue to stop herself from being sick. In her current state, vomiting was just a waste of energy, and resources, and precious bread. She tried to fight away the stab of panic that was piercing her chest at the knowledge that she was losing her memories. Or they’d been flitted away in whatever blast had glassed the planet and left her as the sole sentinel, and wasn’t that fitting.  Being honest with herself, she could barely remember anything from the last few years. She’d realised it when she’d finally calmed down that first day after discovering that the vast vanishing was far beyond the borders of Ponyville.  The last few years of her life, completely immaterial, scattered thoughts in a void of nothingness. She supposed it was the lack of the moon’s magic. She remembered spare moments, the outcomes of adventures. She remembered her life as a smear of monotony spread out over countless months.  But now she was apparently the only alicorn left in Canterlot, and she remembered nothing about how to govern. She remembered nothing about her duties. It was a miracle she still remembered how to fly. Even if she were to somehow save the world, all those lessons she assumed Celestia had given her on sovereignty were lost to her now.  The Diarchy of Equestria would need to be succeeded by a unicorn with the accident of wings, little more skilled than a town librarian.  Another little problem to solve for her, while the universe sat back and laughed at her. Get rid of Nightmare Moon? Okay.  Get rid of Discord as he hypnotises her friends? Okay?  Get rid of Chrysalis while everyone actively tells her how mistaken she is? Okay?  Get rid of Starlight? Get rid of Tirek?  Okay, she’ll do it. Celestia was meant to be the most powerful thing in the entire world and time and time again, Twilight solved it all and gratefully received the ‘lesson’ it had imparted.  Save the entire world, with only her own mind trapped in a body marching inexorably to death while knowing Celestia and Luna were dead, and having no idea whether Cadence had survived? Do it while not remembering any remotely useful details about herself? Solve the hardest problem ever while knowing the world could never truly be fixed and do it on constantly reducing brainpower?  Okay.  “Did you even ever actually care?! You or Luna?! I fucking hate you!”  Twilight screamed.  Then Twilight was silent.  Twilight had no idea where that had even come from.  Of course she didn’t hate the princess. She wanted to see Celestia.  She wanted to see her family.  She wanted to see Rarity.   She slid down the back of the rock and sobbed, despite knowing what a drain on energy it was. She couldn’t stop herself. She fiddled desperately with her saddlebags, and pulled the one genuine source of comfort from them.  A small photograph of her and her friends, all vanished now. Tucked off to the side, was herself and Rarity. A small alcove they’d formed for themselves almost imperceptibly, unconsciously. When she tried to remember, Twilight thought that a lot of photos of the group of them had that quality. But then, maybe she was misremembering.  And it was in that alcove she’d formed for herself, hidden from the dying sun against rocks that blocked the crystal catacombs she’d never loved, that Twilight dropped the photograph, shocked into uncharacteristic clumsiness.  Something on the other side of the rubble knocked on the rocks.