The small lamp hanging from the ceiling swung back and forward, as the powerful steps above them shook the ground to its very core. They were all huddled up in front of a modest fire, enthralled by the dancing, care free flames. Someone lowered a hoof on her shoulder and whispered in her ear:
“Hey, it’s going to be okay, alright?”
She didn’t even care who that pony was, as it was the token of affection she needed. The ponies in front of her were all scared, hungry, tired and probably on the edge: their instincts as a prey species had woken up, and ears and eyes were constantly darting about the room, and above, every time a powerful step quaked the very ground they were standing under. There was about thirty of them in front of her: five she knew already, the other were complete strangers to her, but it wasn’t a problem to her. So many were still lost, and so many were already gone beyond her or anyone’s reach. But it wasn’t time to brood over the losses, not in front of her subjects, it was the time of taking the reins and keep the boat afloat, as long as you could possibly get it.
She rose up, eliciting glances and nervous gazes, and even some quiet gasps of surprise: everyone was so absorbed in his or her pain that even the smallest distraction in their deaf, mute little world of brooding was enough to startle them greatly. She looked at the mass of terrified, nervous ponies in front of her, her subjects, her responsibility, and their Princess was not going to let them down. She pressed forward, and stopped in front of the flickering fire, her unyielding determination radiating and making everyone in the small, cramped room seemingly obvious about everything apart from her very words:
“Loyal subjects, I know you all are scared and worried about your family and friends, but I ask to stay vigil, sharp, and hear my words properly, because what I am about to say to you, ‘tis the truth most unpleasant.
A lot of you were in their beds when the disaster happened, just yesterday, yet it seem so far away. You have been torn out of your homes by the Royal Guard, and shoved into small underground rooms that you can’t get out of. I know this is a painful and difficult situation, but everything was done with your well being in mind, and nothing less. Nopony here knows what just happened, and that must be the most unnerving injustice of all; before all this happened, my sister was accustomed to keep her subjects blissfully ignorant about a lot of things, a way of governing I found justified for the betterment of the nation. Yet now, it is no longer so, and it’s my solemn duty to say what I’m going to say, guilt ridden and ashamed. Because, my subjects, this is all our fault, mine and mine sister’s-“
She was interrupted by a big, nervous looking stallion that darted up and yelled stuttering:
“Enough with this! Where is Princess Celestia? We want to talk to her!”
Something in her eyes was put down, for just a moment, and the fiery flames that reflected in her pupils seemed to dim for a moment, but she lowered her gaze to stare at the blaze and answered slowly.
“Our sister… Your princess of sun… is no longer with us. Princess Celestia is dead.”
Loud gasps were heard, followed by a deafening silence. Some ponies were starting to sob and sniffle, and that was the majority; but here and there, there were some eyeing her with suspicion and anger, something she had taken into account.
“I know it’s a lot to take in, but you need to calm down and-“
“It was you, isn’t it!?!” A mare with pinpricked eyes and a manic smile got up and pointed a hoof at her “And now you’re going to kill us too”
Voices full of despair and malice started to rise up and filled the room with a cacophony of badly directed hatred:
“I knew she couldn’t be trusted!”
“We would have been better off with her petrified!”
“You, it’s all your fault!”
“We want Princess Celestia back!”
“There’s no way you could have killed her! Tell us where she is!”
“Why you had to live?!”
The flames were calmed down as an ominous shadow built up from behind her, and crept on the walls. The sounds were muffled by an oppressive presence that no one could see but anyone could feel weighing on their very souls like pure lead. Her unwieldy, powerful gaze slowly was brought up to their eye levels, and all the yells and screams were silenced. Every pony in the room held his breath waiting for words to come out of her lips. And out they came, hard and unmovable like stone:
“Enough. It wasn’t me who killed my sister. I know you all doubt about me, about my redemption, and I can’t blame for that. You had your princess, your loving sun. I’m just a nuisance, right? But tell, what I could have possibly gained from all of this? My sister is dead, the kingdom is in shambles, my subjects are dying by the thousands, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Even the celestial bodies are out of my grasp.”
At the end of sentence, loud gasps and whispers could be throughout the room, as the full realization of a misdirected and despair driven outburst grasped many of those who had stood up and accused her of treachery, murder, conspiracy or worse. Fear and terror had blinded them, and many slumped back on the ground to look at the wearily dancing flames.
“However, not all hope is lost. Out there you won’t find the gentle caress of the sun or the understating embrace of the moon, just a never ending dusk that won’t ever go away; that is, unless we do something about it! Celestia is… no longer here, and so the world has been put on “standby”, for someone to claim her role of Regent of Sun.”
A beautiful looking mare who had been silent until that moment, huddling up with a small foal, whispered something in her ear. rose up and walked up to her, with a determined expression in her eyes: the alicorn could see that she terror had been subsided by a sheer will to make things better:
“Princess, I understand this dreadful situation it’s a fruit of vacancy of power, but why when you were… exiled, this didn’t happen?”
She smiled at the smart rebuttal and answered quickly:
“It’s simple: I wasn’t dead, my power over the moon was simply borrowed by Celestia for a thousand years. Now that she’s gone, her law of regency is permanently lost, and until someone with the same skills and destiny is found, the world will not allow the celestial bodies to be commanded, even by me.”
The mare seemed unsatisfied with the answer, and pressed forward with another issue:
“The world? What does that even mean, with all due respect…”
Again, a legitimate doubt she had to quell, lest she wanted to maintain the feeble looking speck of trust she had gained with her show of sincerity.
“Akasha, the root of the world. I take it you didn’t read much Starswirl, miss…”
She seemed surprised to be asked her name, but she answered nonetheless.
“Rarity, your highness.”
The alicorn frowned lightly; to think she could forget the face and the name of one of her saviours, unbecoming to say the least.
“I’m quite sorry to have forgot the name of the Elements, Rarity. Also, you can drop the titles, I’m no longer the Princess of the Moon. The root of the world, Akasha, is the will of everything that has ever, or will, exists. It is the will of ponykind, of the griffons, of the wyverns, of everything that lives and everything that doesn’t. It seems rather poetic, but in reality, it is just the collective changes that our unconscious minds cause on the cape of magic that the planet is submerged in. As you probably know, everything is affected by magic, even rocks and plants can change the course of thamaturgic energy, yet they cannot actively redirect it as they want, it’s a mechanical process. Akasha is just the unconscious desires and natural disturbances that change all the magic in this world. Usually, it is content with maintaining the status quo, but when great disturbances appear, it feels the need to freeze everything until a solution is found, and that is something we can’t change.”
This explanation seemed to take out a bit of determination out of the mare’s eyes, but she vigorously shook her head, like she wanted to shake off bad, lazy thoughts about waiting for starving and sickly death, and asked with more vigor:
“Surely that must be something we can do!”
She smiled warmly at her resolve, and her display of decisiveness seemingly made some of the ponies who up till then had apathetically watched the walls in silence interested in their fate again:
“Yes, there is something we can do. However, it won’t be easy nor simple. I ask all of you to place my trust in me, not because I am an alicorn, or a princess. I ask you to trust me because I care for all of you deeply, and centuries of experience will greatly aid us in what it’s to come. What we will face will test our mettle and our hearts to the fullest, and it will be for many of us, the first taste of hardship you ever faced. Yet, I won’t be lying when I say this: I think that each and everyone of you, and all the ponies still out there have the strength necessary to face this, together or alone. Some may stray, some may falter, but in the end, we will come out on top. And if we fail on the road to salvation, we will no one to blame but ourselves, and that is the greatest achievement life can give.”
As the massive claw swept forward, the air whistled and screamed for the sheer force that this piece of meat was able to transmit to the body unfortunate enough to cross its path: it was Shining Armor’s supreme skill that allowed him and the two guards who were with him to dodge it with a well placed telekinetic push: the razor sharp nails, as big as his entire body, fell into the hard stone rubble of the would be Castle of Canterlot. The claw was stuck in the stone, and they weren’t going to take any chances. Shining Armor teleported himself on the head, at least the part of the body that actually had a mouth on it, grabbed what seemed to be its neck with a firm grip of telekinesis, and twisted it repeatedly, while the other two guards held the other arm in place with thaumaturgic binds. The creature shrieked and fell limply on the ground, shaking it like an earthquake and making their ears tingle with pain. One of the beast was slain. Yet, as the three looked over the perimeter of wood bards, stone blocks and repulsive magic, they saw an entire army of the same beasts roaming wildly in the entire plain in front of Canterlot, which fortunately was almost completely devoid of civilization. Yet, just four hundred meters above and ten kilometers in front of them laid the almost completely destroyed Canterlot, still hanging desperately from the cliff of the Lone Mountain. The once illustrious and magnificent was now a collection of run down buildings, straight up ruins and bonfires that were needed to see clearly in the thick darkness of the constant twilight. There was a way inside the city, the flat side of the mountain where there were roads and railroads leading up to the city walls: the Royal Guard had to destroy them, to avoid the risk of getting what was left of the city swarmed by titanic monsters.
They were so unnerving and weird to look at: they had a grey, smooth skin with no fur, and walked on two short, stubby legs, while relying on two strong, clawed arms to balance themselves. There was no difference in the material that composed the majority of their body and the nails, it seemed like they were just a smooth hulking piece of grey matter. The head was big and rotund, with no eyes, nose, or ears to speak, just a gigantic mouth that opened to eat everything living that managed to fall within their grasp. What was strange is how fast and agile they were despite the fact that they seemed to have no visible way of feeling anything around them.
That, and the fact that they stood over 15 meters tall. How this one had managed to sneak inside the city perimeter, Shining Armor didn’t know, but he was going to find it out. He stood on the still strong perimeter, kept alive by magic, thanks to the major unicorn population left in the city. Behind him, there were more than two thousand survivors, scared and really nervous. The food was enough for at least two month, but what then? Maybe they could just lure one monster at a time near the walls and kill it easily, until they could move safely in the plains. But the it looked like the sun wasn’t coming out any time soon, and neither the moon, and he had to account for the worst case scenario: they had several scientists, maybe they could devise a way to magically grow crops in this dim, orangey light that permeated everything and made him sick to the heart. But before that, he needed to meet up with Princess Luna: after what happened there was much need-
A noise perked his ears up, as he and his guards looked down at the road that led into the city, now a mess cluttered with stone and gigantic crevices torn up by powerful telekinetic magic. There’s no way a creature that big would have been able to climb all the way up there, but they stood alert and carefully moved near the edge to see what caused the noise.
They saw four familiar figures climbing their way up on a big chunk of rock that stood right over a crevice that separated the road from the small clearing in front of the city doors. They all jumped on the other side safely and started to look around carefully. When one of them saw Shining Armor looking at them from the walls, he waved at them, smiled, and gestured them to come down.
“Sir, should we call for backups?” Asked one of the unicorn guards.
Shining Armor waved them back and answered without even looking at the stallion. “No, there’s no need to. Actually, this might be the stroke of luck we needed. Follow me.”
He teleported down, and so did the guards, right in front of the imposing, biped creatures. One of them, the only that didn’t have an helmet on its head, smiled at the Captain of the Guard and offered him a fist, which the stallion bumped happily with his hoof.
“Clef, goddesses, I am so happy to see you! Where were you?” Shining Armor asked, elated beyond words that he managed to recover such a capable team of warriors.
Clef kept his sardonic smile, gave the stallion a pat on the shoulder and knelt down to face him eye level.
“Shiny, you wouldn’t believe what happened to us after…. Well, you know… Celestia and all…”
The mention of her princess darkened Shining’s expression a bit, but he was still ecstatic to see a friendly face, finally.
“You’ll tell me everything after we get you to safety” Said the stallion, and gestured them to follow him.
“Yeah sure. Just wondering, you three all the ones around here?” Clef asked curiously.
“Yes, the remaining guards are busy protecting the survivors and helping with the shelters. But now that you’re here, we can finally go on the offensive with these monsters” Answered Armor, and smiled back at the human.
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Answered Clef, and gestured with his head his comrades to follow them
Shining Armor turned back to show them the entrance, only to hear two deafening booms, and see his two fellow guards drop to the ground with a thud and a hole spewing forth blood in both their heads.
He turned around again, only to feel another loud noise that stunned him, and a striking and horrible sensation of pain striking him into his stomach.
He looked down to see a giant, gaping wound that had just formed a crimson stain on his pristine white coat. In front of him stood Clef, with his strange weapon drawn, still smoking from the shots, and that sardonic smile still adorning his face.
The stallion staggered and felt his hindlegs swimming into the void: he had walked up to the cliff near the walls, and was now clinging with his forelegs on the edge, just barely keeping himself alive. The wound on his stomach was sending waves after waves of pure, unbearable pain that made every second of clinging a living hell. He only managed to utter a few words.
“How… I had...kinetic field”
“Oh, that? Nothing that can’t be resolved with a good ol’ dose of 148, or Telekill Alloy. Punch right through you pesky psychics. You know, back on Earth, my favorite movie wasn’t something cerebral or even for adult. It was The Lion King, a flick for children. You know, there was this one scene-“
He knelt down to the struggling Shining Armor, and grabbed his forehooves in his hands.
“When the bad guy is holding the protagonist over a fiery pit, full of flames and embers, and reveals him the most shocking revelation of the entire story-“
He neared the stallion’s face, and he could feel his gentle breath caressing his left ear as he whispered those words:
“I killed Celestia.”