//------------------------------// // The Mountain // Story: The Ash // by Raging Mouse //------------------------------// Chapter One: The Mountain Spike was content. He had the treehouse all to himself, which was why he’d made a nest in one of the basement closets with a stack of comics and a bowl of rhinestones. He’d finished the day’s chores in very little time, in part due to experience giving his actions a polished efficiency, but mostly because Twilight was out with her friends and therefore not researching – apparently synonymous with making a mess for Spike to inevitably clean up. He had a comic open on his lap and was turning pages with one hand, letting the claws on the other idly dig around among the rhinestones until it was time to pick one and throw it above his head so he could catch it with his mouth. He was quite proficient at it: only three out of four attempts ended up on the floor. So did this one, but it didn’t bother him. He leaned back a bit and fished around among the dust for it, not taking his gaze away from the open comic. He found it and rammed it in his mouth, chewing happily. He was just about to turn the page when he heard, muffled through the ceiling of the closet, the front door of the library being thrown fully open with great force. Numerous hoofbeats made the roof shudder, and specks of dust fell between the planking. Bandits? Looters? The Golden Herds of Queen Changhiz, come to raze Ponyville? Spike had stood up and was gazing anxiously upwards while his comic-influenced imagination raced. “Spike! Spiiike!” He gasped. That was Twilight! She was their captive! In danger! He’d rescue her, and Rarity would be— “Spike, where are you! I need to write a letter!” Queen Changhiz wanted Twilight to write to Princess Celestia? Spike’s mind whirled, even as he scrambled up the basement stairs to answer the call. Dear Princess Celestia, I have conquered Ponyville and am holding the population hostage. They will scattered among my herds unless... He had reached the top of the stairs, and his grip on reality was strengthened when he only saw Twilight’s five closest friends. They were milling about uncertainly, and Twilight herself was evidently not among them. He called: “Uh, Twilight? Where are you?” “Up by the telescope! Could you tell me what time it is from the clock in my bedroom before coming here?” Spike nodded, mainly to himself. He ran to the scribe’s lectern and picked up an inkwell, two quills and a couple pages of parchment. Then he ran up the stairs to the bedroom and peered at the clock, trying to make out its hands in the darkness of the room. “The time’s, uh, about three quarters to midnight!” Twilight’s objection was rapid and loud. “Don’t be silly, dawn was just a couple hours ago! You mean three quarters to noon!” Spike did feel silly. Of course he meant that: if it would’ve been that much past his bedtime then outside should be pitch black. In the darkness of the bedroom, he looked at the window. He looked at how the curtains weren’t drawn shut. He looked at the inky blackness that occupied his point of view out of said window and felt his confusion grow. He knew it had been well before noon when he’d settled down with his comics, and he’d only paged through four of the slim ones before being interrupted. It shouldn’t -it couldn’t- have taken the entire day and most of the evening as well. He ran up to the observatory deck while voicing his complaint. “Twilight, what’s going on? Why is it nighttime?” Twilight had turned towards the stairs at the sound of his approaching voice and was able to look him in the eye as his head rose above floor level. “It’s not nighttime. It’s very much still in the middle of the day.” All around the observatory deck, stars glittered in an otherwise pitch-black sky, mocking her words. She turned back towards the telescope and pressed her eye against the eyepiece. “Be ready to write, Spike. I need to observe this.” Spike heard hoofsteps from the stairs; Twilight’s friends were ascending to the observatory deck. He ignored them for the moment. “Is it a storm from the Everfree?” Twilight merely shook her head slightly, not enough even to momentarily prevent her from gazing through the telescope. When she spoke, Spike recognized her dictating tone. “Dear Princess Celestia.” “About -um, let’s see, we ran around in panic for about five minutes, and then ran here in seven minutes, so, um -wait. Are you writing this down? Start again please!” Spike nodded and let the parchment he was holding simply fall to the floor, revealing the next one in the stack he was carrying. He nodded to Twilight to continue. “At or around one hour before noon today, about a quarter ago as I dictate this, Ponyville was thrown into darkness. The sun isn’t visible in the sky! Neither is the moon, for that matter. Stars are easily seen though. Oh my, it’s actually quite pretty. I’ve never seen so many before!” Twilight was silent for a moment, lost in adoration of the sky uncontested by sun or moon. Then she shook herself. “Focus Twilight! Um, Erase the last three sentences please. Continue with: As I can see the stars, I have ruled out the possibility of an exceptionally thick cover of clouds. I can only speculate that something is blocking the sun as seen from Ponyville.” Twilight’s friends listened intently behind the scribbling baby dragon. They didn’t raise any questions as there was a pause in Twilight’s monologue. Twilight turned the telescope slightly back and forth by manipulating wheels set into its frame. “I am currently testing my hypothesis, trying to spot the object through my telescope. The air is very clear, and I’ve easily located several stars I can use to calibrate with, but apart from what appears to be a very faint, reddish circle resembling a halo of some kind I cannot spot anything where I’d expect the sun to be. Um, I mean, where the sun was, approximately, when I saw it last.” She paused for a bit. “Were the halo the result of an object occluding the sun’s glare, then I’d expect to see a sharp inner edge, but it’s uniformly hazy. Whatever it is. If it’s even there! This makes no sense!” She started twisting several wheels set on the telescope. The only effect apparent to her friends was that different sections of the telescope’s body would collapse or unfold slowly, and Twilight’s increasingly frustrated grimace indicated that her efforts had little to no desired result. She shook her head and made a visible effort to calm herself before resuming to gaze through the eyepiece. “Pardon my outburst, Princess. The excitement is a bit too much. I- I currently have too little reliable data to form a valid hypothesis. I will log the time as I make further entries to this letter. Spike, fetch the chronometer. Wind it up and calibrate it from my bedroom clock.” Silence descended, except for some faint metallic groans emanating from the telescope as Twilight manipulated it. Not even Pinkie Pie, otherwise guaranteed to fill any available room in the sonic landscape, was doing more than waiting for Twilight to speak again. Thus it was with the air of someone who was reluctantly causing a disturbance that Applejack spoke a few minutes later: “Twilight?” “Yes, Applejack?” Twilight’s tone was neutral, though she didn’t turn away from the telescope. “Um, is Princess Celestia all right?” This did cause Twilight to turn and stare at the farm pony. “Of course she is. Why wouldn’t she be all right?” Applejack looked down at the deck’s floorboards and shuffled her right front hoof. “Well she is the Raiser of the Sun. The sun is hers, after all. And the sun isn’t... there... anymore.” Twilight stared with wide eyes at Applejack without uttering a sound. The farmer stopped shuffling with her hoof and raised her head to gaze back at her with a mixture of embarrassment and fear. After a moment, Twilight averted her gaze and turned back to the telescope. Applejack noted the librarian was now chewing her lower lip, and her ears were slowly folding backwards. The silence had become claustrophobic. The tension started to wear on Fluttershy, so she looked away from Twilight and the telescope. She sat down and gazed at the floor of the deck, looking on with disinterest as the shadows from the balustrade moved across it. She blinked and frowned. Then she traced the shadows to their point of origin. Then she lifted her gaze further, trying to see. If something cast shadows, then what was casting light? They were well above the level of most Ponyville houses, after all. When she spotted it, she gave an involuntary squeal and unfurled her wings. This caused Rarity to turn and look at her, and follow her gaze. “What is it, Fluttershy? What are you whaahAA! Twilight, look!” Not only Twilight, but Spike and all the other ponies were now staring towards the horizon at about right angles from where Twilight had pointed her telescope. There, an impossibly bright pin-prick of light was slowly ascending. Twilight yelled excitedly. “Spike, log the time and dictate! Fluttershy has spotted a very strong light-source on the horizon! It is very pale compared to the sun, but I estimate it would outshine the moon if both were in the sky at this moment. It appears to be travelling up and to the left, relative to my point of view, and my best guess at a point of origin would be Mount Canterl—” Twilight stopped abruptly. She ran back to her telescope and pulled on a lever. Then she put her front hooves to the side of the thickest tube and pushed. The telescope swivelled slowly, gears complaining, Twilight letting it come to a stop when it pointed in the approximate direction of the new light. She pressed her eye to the eyepiece, and her hooves flew to the controls, fine-tuning the telescope’s aim and shortening it considerably. When she found her target, she let out an involuntary yelp and yanked her face away. Her friends could see a bright beam of light being projected out of the eyepiece and onto her face. Her right eye was firmly closed and a tear was forming at the edge of the eyelid. She let out a frustrated growl, almost closed her left eye as well and then moved it cautiously against the eyepiece. “It’s so bright, but... Yes, it’s you isn’t it, Princess? It is you. It is!” There was happy cheering from her five friends. “I can barely stand to look at you through my telescope. You must be glowing so brightly that you would be impossible to look at even with unaided eyes if I were to stand right next to you! What are you doing? You are flying so high!” While Twilight observed and dictated she was rotating two wheels on the telescope, making it follow the light. Both wheels squeaked audibly, once per respective revolution, creating a rhythm. Twilight removed her left eye from the eyepiece and turned her head to her friends. Her right eye was now half-opened, though it seemed slightly unfocused and was weeping freely. “Dash, how high would you say that is?” Rainbow Dash’s blue coat appeared much paler in the gloom. She folded her front hooves and regarded the light thoughtfully. “Very high. I’ve never flown that high.” She frowned, her envy quite apparent. Twilight raised an eyebrow at her. “Why not?” “I’d faint long before I ever got that high. It’s so very cold -so cold even a pegasus would freeze- and no matter how much you breathe you never get any air. I’ve heard stories about a pegasus who flew too close to the sun, out of curiosity. He didn’t wake up before he hit the ground. We can crash from pretty far up, but that kind of altitude? While not controlling your descent at all?” Dash winced. Twilight nodded at her and turned back towards the light. “Spike, log the time. I am continuing my observations unaided for the moment. It seems you are flying up to where your sun was last, but how is that possible? Isn’t it so incredibly remote?” As if Celestia had heard her, the pinpoint of light transformed into a thin line for a fraction of a second before again becoming a bright point, but transported over a quite large part of the sky in less than the blink of an eye. Twilight’s eyes twitched as she followed it to its destination, as did the rest of the ponies. What happened next caused the assembled ponies to exhale together in a disbelieving groan from their slack-jawed mouths. From the streets below could be heard shouts of alarm; it seemed most of Ponyville had by now spotted the heavenly spectacle and was watching with mounting fear. The faint circle of red light that Twilight had spotted, but doubted the existence of, was now quite evident, and no longer the sedate fog that Twilight had observed. It was sending out dull red streamers of ember glow that curled like smoke, majestically slow at this distance, before separating from the ring and fading away. Despite Celestia’s dazzling star now being right next to the ring, there was apparently no surface to it that could reflect light. Instead, the edge closest to the brilliant glare of the equine deity was being lost in her glare. But in the middle of the ring, as if through a hole, something had appeared. A spike of matter was emerging, and considering the distance the spike had to be immense. Celestia’s light shone upon one side, and the reflected light showed it had a roughness that made the ponies think of distant mountaintops. The side of the rocky protrusion that did not receive light from Celestia was still illuminated, but by a much more hellish glare from the circle of deep red fire in the dark sky. This second illumination didn’t dissipate as expected, lingering far beyond where mere reflections should have ceased, and fading much slower. It was as if the rocky mass was being heated to a dull glow in the proximity of that fiery loop. The spectacle appeared sedate from this distance, but appearances were deceiving. A small, still operable part of Twilight’s brain reasoned this, while the rest of her conscious thoughts were stunned into inertness. As if to confirm her thoughts, most of what had already exited the ring of apparent fire broke off. The freed chunk seemed to sail out from the circle -and still more rocky mass was pushing out behind it- and gain speed. It was losing altitude as well. Twilight and her friends didn’t comprehend the significance of this. They stared unceasingly at the impossible spectacle near the ring. The bright dot that was Celestia was moving around, illuminating the mass from several directions as time passed, but there seemed to be a darkness beyond the edges of the fire that her glare just couldn’t penetrate. The chunk that had broken free was receding, falling, faster and faster, but as it distanced itself from the ring, the light reflected from it by Celestia faded. It fell into darkness, out of sight and mind, while above it another, larger and fatter, piece broke free and repeated the process. This continued for some minutes, with many additional pieces breaking off and sailing down. Then, suddenly, the sky was lit by a new radiance, in bands of green, blue, purple and pale pink. The bands wavered and flickered, but overall held a constant form. Celestia seemed to gaze down from the skies, outlined by an aurora. The image’s lips parted and it spoke, somehow penetrating consciousness without having to deal with ears or distance. “My little ponies, seek open areas immediately! A very great quake will strike you shortly, and I fear not all of your dwellings will hold!” The apparition disappeared while wails of fear echoed from the streets below the treehouse. Up in the sky it seemed the ring of fire had spewed forth all of the mass it had. One last chunk emerged, its end much more blunt than the spiky front had been, and broke in two. The pin-point of light that was Celestia floated in place for a moment before darting in towards the very last piece of mass, briefly disappearing behind it and reappearing on the other side. Then her star elongated into a line once more, but this time the line was much longer. It touched Mount Canterlot, somewhere near Canterlot Castle. In the next moment full daylight erupted. Instead of bringing relief, what the daylight revealed caused most ponies, including the six friends standing on the observatory deck of the treehouse, to scream in terror. The sun now shone exactly where there had been a fiery hole in the sky. Below it, entire mountains of rock were slowly falling towards the surface of Equestria, as if an attempt had been made to build a tower all the way to that incandescent disc, but some force had now caused it to collapse. An immense cloud of dust and fire was apparent on the horizon, where the first chunk had already impacted. On the ground in the distance, racing out from under this cloud, could be seen a shock wave in the very rock itself, no doubt the first of several, originating from that remote impact point. Where the shock wave passed, boulders flew from mountains as their entire faces crumbled. Twilight didn’t waste time thinking.