//------------------------------// // Symbalance // Story: Autumn // by canonkiller //------------------------------// A huge chunk of stone fell inwards from the ceiling, bouncing off the thick roof of the castle and plunging into the city. Shards and dust exploded, screams cut short. Discord swallowed the bile in his throat, hoisting Sunrise's limp body into his arms and dashing out of the window. A quick spell to distort the space around him, and he shot straight up through the roof, a golden trail of magic billowing behind him. A sudden tug told him another magical being had clamped onto his spell and was following it. He dared a glance back, seeing a purple blur with a distinct unicornian form. As if she had been among company, other spells hitchhiked on, varying from power matching his to the faint glow of an Earth pony. He surged the power of the spell, the golden trail spreading like spiderwebs, thin but solid, pushing the rock away, weaving through atoms and forcing space in both him and the stone, molecules sliding neatly between each other, until... ...he ran out of rock. Suddenly, he was actually flying, hovering a few meters above the ground. He descended slowly, looking around as dozens of other creatures snapped into reality, the first being Twilight. And for the heck of beans, she looked pissed. "Discord! So many ponies... look how many we lost!" She swung a hoof to the group, a couple hundreds in the place of thousands. Almost completely ignoring her, he scanned the landscape, taking in the twisted colors and odd horizon. Even Twilight stopped yelling as something landed in front of them, a single raised eyebrow showing the annoyance the creature was exuding. "I thought I'd killed you all already. I didn't want to dirty my claws twice." No! Let me go! I love them! He could see the Shard buckling the ground, throwing ponies left and right, Discord arcing into the air. His father's body snapped forward as he changed direction, plowing into him - without pain; the Shard flinched - and shoved him into the ground. "Wake up! Wake up, dammit!" Discord shouted, slamming Obsidian into the ground over and over. Obsidian could see something in his arms, through a blurred, purple sheen. A tail, or something like it, wings, a... dragon? His dragon. The Shard kicked Discord back at the same moment Obsidian seized control. A hesitant hoof brushed the edge of Discord's leg as Obsidian ground the attack to a halt. "O-O-Obsidian?" "Let me..." "What?" "Let me see her..." Discord winced, carefully setting the limp dragonness down onto his son's lap. "I'm sorry..." he muttered, taking a few steps backwards. "There was nothing I could do..." Obsidian had already tuned him out, running his paw over Sunrise's forehead, barely sitting, holding her body as carefully as he could. "My girl..." He muttered, eyes tearing up. "M-my girl..." He looked up, towards his father. "It wasn't s-supposed to be like this..." "I know, but there's nothing-" "There's always something we can do!" Obsidian shouted. "There has to be... there has t-to..." He turned away, watching the landscape the Shard had created. "We will not decay." A pure light seemed to shine from the sky, a tiny ball of faint energy solidifying above the clouds. It slowly brightened, until what would have been a sun, under other circumstances, burned brightly above the destruction. Obsidian stood up abruptly, surveying the few survivors. "I'm so, so sorry..." his voice seemed to echo as the sun grew brighter. "Everything you ever... everything you ever made, or dreamed... I destroyed all of it. I'm so, so sorry... please... let me set this right..." The air around him twisted, a sudden panic breaking out as the ground dissolved into white particles that shimmered in the sunlight. Ponies on the ground found their hooves vanishing in the same manner, and Pegasi fell from the sky as their delicate feathers exploded into prismatic dust. Screams echoed into the dying landscape. Discord met the eyes of his son, and simply smiled as his own body dissolved into the shimmering light. Within minutes, Obsidian was alone, Sunrise's body still wrapped in his arms. "Goodbye, my sweet." He whispered into the void. "I'll meet you again someday. But I'm never gone. I'm never gone." I'm never gone. Sunrise's body dissolved as well. He stood up straight, looked up to the pale white sun, and smiled. The Shard burned into his veins, was well along the path to tearing him apart. He started to shimmer, a different glow than those of the ponies, a burning, colorless light. He felt the Shard screaming in pain, bit back his own cries, saw time rewinding, saw things from everywhere and nowhere, from everyone and no-one, until all he could see was a small town, pastel houses happily sitting along straight roads, a couple of foals playing in the street, a Griffon and a dragonness among them, and an Alicorn. Three Alicorns, two beautiful creatures filled with ancient power. One of them is my mom... The darker one, a navy grace, beside an older creature, of shimmering white... My aunt... Celestia... Luna, my mom... I love you, mom... Time shimmered and changed, suddenly, Ponyville's weather suffered into a raging storm, rain pelting windows, wind blowing shingles off into the distance. The dragonness was sitting in a window, the magnificent tree library, staring out into the distance, crying... she was Magic, she remembered. A claw rubbed over her belly, her own, a bubble underneath looking so full of wonder... Again, this time long in the future, the dragonness much older, scales dull, body long and powerful, sitting on a cliff. He knew that cliff, he had been there... he had seen the view... she looked off into the sky, it was nighttime, he realized, so far in the future... the stars were moving because of her, she was so powerful, tempered by thousands of years... The stars settled into their message, he could feel the magic weakening already... I love you... Obsidian let out a tiny laugh, and gave himself up. His body wove into time itself, separated paths, created new ones, replaced events that already happened... There was a final flash of time; He saw his mother, standing with a relieved air about her, and smiling weakly... His dad was there too, an arm looped around his mother's shoulders... - he smiled, they made up... how much had Discord remembered? How much had he explained?... that was for another moment... Spike massive eye glowed through a window, the room was far too small for his head, let alone the rest of him... In the center of it all. Sunrise, sweating but smiling, holding two little bundles of cloth in her arms as she lay back... A nurse, he hadn't noticed her, spoke up with a smile akin to those of the others, "Twins. A girl and a boy." Obsidian smiled as the last fragments of his being drifted into nothingness. This was it. He was dying. But everyone else, they were living... A tear ran down his face, shimmering over a weak smile. "I love you..." FIN