I am alive.
That's all I have left.
I was abandoned. There were sirens. Shadows came in batches, swallowing up everything. I only saw something burst through the ground and beyond the skies before it all just.
Stopped.
The sirens have stopped. The sky has stopped falling. The rubble is fixed in place. Everything is as it will probably ever be.
And I am alive.
I have been wondering alone. For three days. I've been haunting the ruins just like the others. Wandering around, skulking around in the dark, hiding when the skies turn black.
I am alive. But the others...
They aren't alive.
I found what was left of Holly Boughs. The flower keeper loved selling blue daisies for the celebration. Not anymore now. I thought they'd been spirited away too. But I found her.
I just wish it wasn't just her cutie mark that was all I could recognize. She's been split in two. I don't know where her front has gone.
The world is full of miracles. And nobody has died in ages. I... I hold onto the hope that she got treatment. That she's alive.
The only comfort is the stone steps beneath me and shattered glass.
Nobody I find is rotted. Their blood remains fresh. Bodies cold, lightless, lifeless, but they do not rot.
I wonder why.
I've seen a few things. Nothing ever like this. I was irrelevant really, just living day by day, being happy, talking to others. Now it's all gone. I know where my favorite restaurant once was. I know where my home was in this sprawl. I know how my daily life is supposed be like.
But it's gone. Scrubbed. Unmade.
It's all dead.
I walk past a gray mare. It still shocks me. Not her. Not anymore. I never knew this pony. No, it shocks me that death is real. That things do die. She died reaching out to a wall. Hooves caked in blood and smeared all over the concrete and stones. Lime painted pink. Scrawls in red ink.
I'm not going to turn her over to see the injury. I can guess if I'm that curious.
I guess she really did paint one last time.
The sky is a broken screen. There's shimmers around the wound those things left. It was hell on earth. Riots broke out as they saw these things just ripping their way through everything.. Then it stopped. And then they went away.
Sometimes when there's weather. When there's a storm. I see them. Stomping in the infinite distance- just the outline behind thunder. Walking lamely away. Further each day.
I hide away when it rains. My home is still intact. I like to hide under the covers and close the blinds and pretend it's another stormy night.
But storms don't eat corpses. I watched the water melt them. Over and over they just dissolve and come back the next day.
The world won't let us rot.
The world won't let us die.
I stay in my home until the food is gone. Then I spend days out there in the ruins looking for more and bringing it back. If I focus on my home. I can just pretend. Pretend everything is fine and that it isn't all over. That there is chance of rescue. That I will see the sun. That...
...
One day the stores will be empty. No more cakes. No more crackers. No more bread or salted cheese, or beer or rye, no more flour or eggs.
One day I think I'll waste away as I wander away looking for more.
I'm scared.
...
I once saw a statue of God. I knew it was on a corner on a street near my home. It's a snake, staring up at the heavens. I walked by it every day as a colt, wondering why it was always staring up. Mom said it was because there was nowhere to go but up.
It was tradition to offer something to the idols. Weapons. Food. Clothing. Dolls. And usually you got something back. I remember getting a chocolate bar in exchange for an empty glass bottle.
But it's gone.
It's not there anymore.
I saw it somewhere else. Near Holly. Poised over her like it was suffering. Weeping. Jaws open in a twisted hiss. At first I thought it was mocking her.
But realized it was mourning her.
I hope I don't see it hovering over me.
Ever.
...
I went to the library.
The librarian was there.
All these years I never knew she was a phantom. But I can tell that it's her. Slumped over as black matter. But somehow I just know.
I gave her a curt nod. And I went through the motions of checking out a few texts. I'm the last one to ever enter these halls.
Paper. Worth more than gold. Infinite potential, empty canvas and ripe for inscription. There was a copy of an old famous painting, one of the first that were ever painted- mounted over a fireplace. The hearth was warm, but the fire was gone. Only embers remained.
The carpet was soft. The library was to learn, and to comfort. It smelled of wood and gentle pine-smoke and old parchment. Everything had been made to be dim, yet the wood they had built it all from remained a rich dark color, and everyone could read clearly.
So that's what i did.
I read.
And I understood, nothing.
We were kept in the dark about this. But it came from below me. So, one of the lower layers had this monster under it. But nothing here could exist without it being made, according to a mixture of legend and history, our Ultimate Evil could only commit evil acts, so it created lesser things to commit good acts. It destroyed a piece of the world to make a new one, and tore pieces of itself that became the sun and the land.
Again. That's legend. And that was from old text published from The Order. Fanatics.
But all evidence points to those things being designed.
Why?
A question for someone who could still care.
There's some text about a baron. I don't care too much on how the angelos were made, it's not important now. I don't see them anywhere anymore.
The remaining texts seem so irrelevant. Novels. Fiction. Theories on spells and science. Nothing that I think can help me.
You'd think after such a catastrophe the serpent would show its face and at least parade around the idea of rebuilding.
But I don't see them anywhere.
I left the library. I walk pass Miss Morrow, with a nod and a gentle wave goodbye.
They do the same. I think.
I am alive.
The world has ended.
But things go on.
And I am alone.