As Daylight Dies
By Craine
Synopsis: Where they acknowledged singing birds, I acknowledged a distraction. Where they stood in the frontier of night’s end, I stood in the perfect shroud. Where they heard warm words of inspiration and promises of new beginnings, I heard nothing but half-truths and falsehoods.
Where they saw an infallible goddess, I saw a target.
The Summer Sun Celebration.
It was pretty straightforward, actually. When all the formalities and pleasantries were shed away, it was just like any other day. Princess Celestia rose the sun. Just as she’d lower it hours from then. Nothing special. Not special to me. Not usually.
Yes, it was the first event I had the pleasure—or displeasure, considering Nightmare Moon—of witnessing when Twilight and I first arrived in Ponyville. Yes it was an event I’d grown to appreciate for the invigoration it brought every year.
That, or the free food.
But this time, as I stand stock still on the roof of City Hall, as I watch eager ponies below listen to Celestia’s hollow speech, I’d come to appreciate everything that concealed my presence.
Where they acknowledged singing birds, I acknowledged a distraction. Where they stood in the frontier of night’s end, I stood in the perfect shroud. Where they heard warm words of inspiration and promises of new beginnings, I heard nothing but half-truths and falsehoods.
Where they saw an infallible goddess, I saw a target.
With my breath even, my aim true, I lean forward and allow myself to fall. I made no sound, as she’d have heard me. I made no move, as she’d have seen me. I buried the private reservations I had for this task, as she’d have surely, surely sensed me.
Finally I fall upon her. I felt her shock as her shoulders went rigid. I could hear her terror as she gasped aloud. Or perhaps it was a typical reaction, having cold steel forced through the back of one’s neck.
I’d stopped caring about the difference years ago.
Her neck snaps taut for the quickest of moments, but becomes mush immediately, like putty in my claws. She falls… and I fall with her. I anticipate the impact of her body meeting soft grassy soil. I anticipate the silence that killed the singing, laughter, and cheers. I lay upon her, my eyes closed, my body relaxed, and my thoughts hollow and dry.
As I opened my eyes, I withdraw my knife, ignoring the wet removal with well-practiced ease. My claw gently fell over her open eyes, completely rolled back and hazed with a disembodied terror I would never grow to accept.
Then I stood. Slowly. Carefully. My blood beats wildly through my veins but I ignore it. I ignore it as expertly as I ignore the shrieks and cries now grating into my ears. I stare upon the mare below. Cold. Still.
Dead.
It seemed the royal guards caught wind of it too. They bellowed a war cry I thought incapable of pony-kind, and I stood still and unfazed. I closed my eyes again, anticipating the flashes of white fur, gold armor converging upon me. But the sharp strike to my head, which stung as thick as sharpened ice?
That’s how I ended up here in a crusty dank cell. Chained by my ankles, wrists, and neck. Bound to my knees against this moldy stained wall. Glaring into the misty darkness through my swollen eyes. I couldn’t tell how long I’d been there, rotting away, feeling my own body eat itself to survive.
To be frank, I didn’t care.
And the reason I didn’t care opened the rusty double doors before me. My eyes seal shut at the light, like the very sight of it would finish where my starvation left off. A deep, long-forgotten part of me—the part that wished for normalcy, for a life as a simple #1 assistant, for an answer to how I became a part of this—wanted that light to kill me.
It didn’t.
And instead of harsh cold voices declaring my death before a crowd of bloodthirsty ponies, I received a gentle hoof against my cheek. I shouldn’t have been relieved, really, but I was. With eyes still closed, I spoke for the first time since I was thrown into that cesspool.
“It’s done…”
My voice grates against even my own ears, like grinding boulders, my throat thick and dry from mal-hydration. I hear nothing in return. And when I open my eyes to meet the ones I knew were there, I wished I’d kept them closed.
She smiled at me. She was… proud of me. I could see it. It should have been a wonderful thing, but it wasn’t. Instead of smiling, I only frowned. Instead of relaxing my worn muscles, I only shook. Instead of bowing before my new god, I didn’t budge.
My mission was accomplished. Princess Celestia lay buried beneath the soil and the mare before me, Twilight Sparkle—the catalyst of a new age—took her place.
Still she smiled. And suddenly, it became all too clear.
As I remembered conspiratorial thoughts whispered to me, the training and molding that crack my very bones, the promises of something better from a well-deserved death, I realized I’d done exactly what I was meant to. Then, as I stared into a smile that would haunt Equestria for eons to come…
I realized I’d made a terrible mistake.
——-
‘Slowly we watch
The degradation
Of a civilization
The rise and fall
Of all we are
Stands before us’
“As Daylight Dies”