//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: The Last Pony // by Starry Nebulae //------------------------------// Death. The chain around one’s neck, constantly bearing down upon them. Nothing escapes death. The most magical unicorns have tried to ward it away, to change themselves. Some, the skilled ones, managed to live for a month or two longer before their magic finally crumbled. The greatest scientists had tried to build machines to overcome death. Those, while being more successful than magic, inevitably failed. The Dragons, despite their extraordinarily long lives, decided enough was enough. They had gotten together and, through a combination of runes and their arcane knowledge, had attempted to find a way to the afterlife and stop the cold reality of death. Only Spike had refrained from this, stating that ponies had watched over him since he was but a baby, and he would watch over them. But everyone eventually died. Equestria itself had died. At the moment, Celestia stood atop the monument of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Somehow, it had passed the tests of time. It had survived countless wars and disasters. Ponies decided she deserved it after ushering in a new age, one of knowledge, reason, and friendship. Celestia knew she deserved it, simply for her nature. Even in the end, as Twilight became old and gray, she continued to make the Princess of the Sun proud with her advances in the magic of friendship. She had long since stopped writing friendship letters to Celestia, but they were always able to find time to talk. Being a Princess did have some advantages, Celestia thought with a small smile. But she, too, succumbed to Death’s cold embrace. And now Celestia could only wait until her Sun died, and her along with it. Occasionally she pondered what would happen to it. She vaguely remembered Twilight going on one day about the death of stars. Regretfully, Celestia had only given it polite attention. After all, Twilight had said stars lived millions of years, and at the time, it had seemed impossibly far away. Yet here she was. Alone. Luna had simply disappeared one day, without a trace. Try as she might, she could not feel sad anymore. What was there to be sad about? Death claimed everything, in one way or another. Sometimes in physical ways, sometimes it simply left a void. All that was left of her sadness was a longing for it all to end. For eternal sleep. Nostalgia, on the other hand, remained bittersweet and present. For a period of time after the so called ‘mortal’ races had died out, there existed only three beings. Luna, Discord, and herself became even closer. She and Luna had developed a fondness for playing in the warm ocean waters. Discord, still the very embodiment of Chaos, amused himself by filling the sky with cotton candy clouds, or turning the salty waters of the ocean into sugar water. She pondered briefly upon his love for sweets. Being a god of chaos, one would think that he would occasionally change something to be saltier or more spicy. But no, it was always sweet. Were he still around, she might tease him by saying that even he, Discord, had a bit of order and predictability to him. He would probably respond with saying she had infected him with harmony, then shower her in chocolate rain just to prove his point. But he, too, had gone. Not dead, of course. He had said something before he left, something about true chaos. She couldn't remember, and didn't see how it mattered anymore. He had apparently journeyed to the Starswirl Nebula. Though he would eventually die, both he and Celestia knew it would be long after everything else. He, Celestia, and Luna were a slightly different tier of being; their life wasn’t bound to themselves, but rather to the objects were directly linked to. Celestia would die with her sun. Luna would die with her moon. And Discord would die at the end of time, after everything else had died. After planets turned to floating fields of dust, after stars had faded and black holes had died, after space itself had transformed into a single floating field of effervescent energy, a perfect plane of order, Discord would finally be able to rest. For even he must die. Spreading her wings, she flew over what had once been a proud and mighty Canterlot. All that was left now was ruins. Abandoned, moss covered temples to the everyday life of a pony. Houses like tombstones, all perfectly aligned in rows. And at the center of it all, the mausoleum of her own power. Noble towers shot into the sky, tendrils of ivy snaking down. Bricks which had once been set so perfectly, one was unable to find where one started and stopped, now littered the grounds around it. Overgrown shrubbery and fiery flowers flooded the once neat and trim gardens where Discord had spent his life as a statue at. Ironic, she thought, that the death of the planet her Sun watched over was marked with a brief flourish of life, before it all died with her. After a moment of flying around, she landed among the plants. Or had it been an hour? Time now seemed to flow unceasingly, marked only by the flow of her thoughts. Day and night had become erratic to her. While she still had the power to influence it, she could no longer control it as she once had. Was this due to a fault of her own, or was it simply a part of death? Despite her lack of control, she remained intrinsically bound to it, feeling its every magnificent pulse as time went on in on, and death came closer and closer. She awoke with a gentle start, not even realizing she had been asleep. Her mind was empty, and she gazed upon her sister’s beautiful night sky, fueling her thoughts with inspiration. Light years away, the Starswirl Nebula shone out to her, as if calling her to it. Why was it suddenly visible to her, she pondered. Had she, after all this time, only started truly opening her eyes? It was a beautiful thing, a cloud of hues of blues and reds and violets, staring down at her, beckoning her forth. With a soft shake of her head, she banished the thought to the dark abysses of her mind. Her Sun had warmed her for her life, eternally watching over her and her ponies. If there were one thought that remained anchored in her thoughts, it was that she must be with her Sun for its final moments. If only she had been able to do so for her ponies. It was The Sickness that had inevitably killed them, as it was for all races. At the peak of what was being called the Age of Sparkle, ponies had everything. Not a pony starved, for there was food in abundance, provided by the Earth Ponies. No tornados, blizzards, or disastrous storms had been seen in well over a hundred years, courtesy of the Pegasus Ponies. Unicorns had formed a council, like there was in the old days before Luna and herself controlled the solar bodies. The council was strong enough to stop any threat, whether it be as natural as an Ursa Major or a Dragon, or as magically powerful as Chrysalis or Sombra. Scientists from all races had managed to cure every ailment, and ensured that death was painless. But there it was. Death was still reigning supreme. It was the one thing that ponies had not been able to cure. No matter how much the Princesses had urged their little ponies to leave it, they became obsessed with it. After magic had failed them, they turned to the only thing they had left. One pony, a unicorn from a growing religion called the Order of Sparkle, which believed that Twilight was a god sent to live among ponykind and spread science and technology, proposed a solution. She had said that if magic had failed them, perhaps they ought to turn to robotics. The council, which had more influence over most unicorns than Celestia herself had, agreed instantly. They had developed a substance which gained the popular name of ‘Liquid Eternity’. It was made of nanobots, microscopic robots that could keep a pony alive. Celestia, for the first time since she began her rule, had directly interfered with science. She forbade them to manufacture the product, and warned the council that if they didn’t help her to stop it, she would remove them from power. Ha, they had said, what are you to stop us, Celestia? For decades, we have guided the fate of ponykind. What are you but a sunraiser to us anymore? And you are not even truly needed for that! True to her words, she had removed them all from power, and destroyed the council itself. But it was too late; she could not stop it. It was smuggled away, given in secret to anypony who had not already received it. There was one effect which they had overlooked, considering they believed they were immortal. The nanobots caused sterility in whoever they were injected into, and soon no new ponies were being born. And by the time scientists had found that they were still very much mortal, it was too late. She had to watch as ponykind slowly died out, too smart for its own good. Perhaps if Twilight had still been alive, she could have done something. But both she and Cadence, being only minor Alicorns, were not bound to an ideal or celestial body for their life. It was the Changelings who were the last to go. After the Invasion of Canterlot all those years ago, they had vanished. Occasionally ponies would find a sign of them, an abandoned hive or an account of someone being brainwashed by one, but a Changeling itself was never found. Celestia had actually found the last Changeling only recently. Queen Chrysalis. She had found the Queen lying in the Ponyville Library, which had begun rotting and dying. Chrysalis, too weak to continue hiding due to lack of love, had taken a bold step and went to Ponyville to find a pony to feed off of. Apparently, as Celestia found out in the brief conversation they were able to have, Changelings had never stopped hiding from the other races. They never knew that ponies had long since forgiven them for their assault on Canterlot. Chrysalis had died whimpering that she could have saved her people. Glistening chords of pale moonlight struck down from the star speckled sky, gracing the ground with its soft embrace. She gazed idly as a line of ants marched through a small forest of grass, towards a destination unknown to her. Perhaps they were going to find food, or make war with another settlement of ants, or maybe simply go back to their own colony. Whatever it was that they chose to do, it was of little consequence to her. She was content to let them live their lives as they pleased. Perhaps if you had done the exact opposite, these lands would still be filled with pony life, she thought to herself. Another part of her mind argued back that if she had done that, her subjects would have been worse off. Would a life ruled by one who controls the very life of her subjects be worth living? She argued internally, finding a suitable counter-argument for every argument she made. Yet, she tired of it rather quickly. What was the point? They were all dead. If she could guide herself back on the river of time, she might have a purpose to it all, but as it was, she didn’t. All that was left was waiting for her Sun to die. The pointlessness of it all overwhelmed her more than anything, and she simply sat in the moonlight, staring once again at the bugs that inhabited the forest. For that was the true beauty of death, she realized. In the absence of one life, another would flourish. For everything that dies, more life in a plethora of varieties must take its place. The sentient lifeforms of the world had died out, leaving room for smaller life forms to take hold and thrive. As she looked upon the small creatures, going forth on their daily activities, she realized that life itself was pointless. Everything was predestined to die alone. It didn’t matter how many friends you had or how loved you were, everyone was truly alone when they died. So why did they continue to go about their daily life? Eating, mating, finding joy in the small things of life, what was the point? It was inevitable that they would die; everything does. Everything will eventually die. But it doesn’t matter when something happens. It doesn’t matter who it happens to. The only thing that matters, Celestia realized, is why something happens. The facts were plain, clear, and simple for all to read. The sentient races of the world had died out due to a quest for immortality. That much was clear. She just needed to know why. She got up, shook her coat to get rid of any bugs that may have made it their home, and began to walk in a random direction. Regretfully, the trees were no longer themselves. Not long after the Age of Sparkle had begun, ponies began to conquer the world around themselves. From changing the shapes of entire mountain ranges to bringing life to the deserts. But the forests, the forests were possibly the most changed to Celestia. Natural trees had been removed, after the Council decided them to be inefficient. They had been replaced by vaguely treelike objects, whose leaves were actually solar panels designed to give power to giant transmutation factories which had been created after a shortage of wood arose. Perhaps it was that which had caused the Great Extinction. Perhaps once a race becomes so technologically and scientifically advanced that the only question yet to be solved is death itself, that race will decline into extinction. But one thing began to claw at her mind, and as it took hold, she felt real emotion for the first time in centuries. She felt curiosity’s whispers speaking to her. She had to go to The Lair.