The young colt stood in darkness. A dark Overlord had come to his home a year before, killing both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. The Overlord had requested that Luna help him, that she bring her eternal night to Equestria. Upon her refusal, he killed her.
This was the life that the colt knew. One of fear and death ruled by a tyrant who lived in a castle that he had stolen from the benevolent Princess that had lived before him. The colt was hiding in a small, run-down house with his uncle and a couple of ponies who he had gotten to know very well over the past year.
“Inkwell, there isn’t much time.” stated the only mare in the room, a bat pony. Her voice was raspy as if she was choking on some dust. It may have been nice at one point but it had been that raspy voice ever since the colt met her in the collapsed mine. Before that, her voice had been soft and her silver eyes had a brightness to them.
“I know Grey, but we still don’t have the coordinates. One miscalculation and we could come out in the bucking sun.” Inkwell was the colt’s uncle. He was a strong looking stallion, broad enough to look as if he’d worked on a farm his whole life, despite this deceptive appearance, his name was a more accurate way to tell what he did. He started writing fictional stories when he was a little younger than his nephew.
“She’s just saying that we need to hurry, Ink.” the third pony, a frail looking stallion stated. He was the voice of reason in the group, always keeping Inkwell and Grey Cloud in line. His name was Leaf, he wouldn’t let onto the rest, but as far as anypony knew, he used to be a gardener before the world did that whole, “ending” thing.
“I know, sorry Grey.” Inkwell stated, turning to face the boarded up window beside him. He peaked through the cracks and saw a pony that was as big as he was walking the streets. The pony was solid black with no mane or tail, its eyes were a solid glowing purple. The body was covered in cracks and each crack had a dark purple mist seeping out. “They’re here.” he whispered.
“What?” Grey shouted between clenched teeth. This reaction got a swift smack on the back of the head from Inkwell.
“Quiet. We want to survive this, right?” Inkwell growled.
“We’re fine. They can’t hear that well.” Leaf whispered.
The colt sat on the floor during this entire conversation, his muzzle buried between his hooves. He didn’t fully understand the plan that his uncle and the others had come up with. All he really knew was that they intended to leave Equestria. The only place that he knew they could quickly go to was the Frozen North, seeing as they were currently residing in what remained of the city of Vanhoover.
“Come on short stuff,” Inkwell pushed the young colt toward a door in the back of the old house. “I heard that when he first took over, the ponies in the fringe cities had time to build tunnels. Escape routes for when he finally came for them.”
“If they were successful, the ponies here would still be alive.” Grey’s head dropped down and to the right, eyes closing slowly.
The colt tripped over his own hooves when he heard those words. Terror filled his small heart and he couldn’t bring himself to take another step.
“Grey, shut it.” Inkwell’s neck snapped back to glare at the bat pony. “Relax kid, plenty of ponies made it out of here. How else would the word about the tunnels get out.”
The colt knew that his uncle was lying. Nopony made it out of Vanhoover. The few ponies that still had air in their lungs were performing labor to aid the Overlord. The tunnels existed before the Overlord had ever been heard of. The colt did have a couple of years of schooling in before everything happened.
The three adult ponies and the one young colt entered a small door leading to a set of stairs. They quickly made their way down the stairs and found themselves in a long, dark tunnel. There were no light sources anymore, there were a few burned out oil lanterns, but they had been dropped, leaving tiny shards of shattered glass scattered about the dirt floor. These shards were only visible thanks to a dim light emanating from Inkwell’s horn. The light caught them in such a way that they shined a rainbow of colors across the tunnel.
“In the midst of such death and destruction, beauty can be found in the oddest of places.” the unicorn stallion stated, a small smile forming on lips that had nearly forgotten how.
“You can write about it some other time.” Grey stated. “For now, we have to get to the Town Hall.”
“So that’s where it is. You two had neglected to inform me of our destination.” Leaf half laughed.
“Well if you weren’t so quiet, you could have told us that we’d forgotten to tell you.” Grey shook her head, giving the earth pony a playful shove.
The sight made the colt smile. He hadn’t seen anypony acting so playful, so carefree in a year. He’d forgotten what a smile looked like on another pony’s face. Through his countless sleepless nights, he’d only heard conflict between Grey and his uncle, but now they were supposed to be close. The col began to wonder how they were going to go from the Town Hall to the Frozen North.
The four ponies nearly fell into a gallop, anxiously wanting to get to their destination. Inkwell wanted nothing more than for his nephew and his oldest friends to make it to safety. No matter how much he fought Grey Cloud, she was always his best friend and his first friend. Leaf wanted to see a world without such suffering, like what theirs had been before. Grey just wanted a happy life, which for her called for only one thing, as she always told her companions, that one thing however remained nameless even still. The colt’s one wish was for his parents to come back to him, but his was the most farfetched of all of their dreams, but to a colt his age death is a strange concept.
“Stairs… stairs… stairs…” Grey paused her naming of every set of stairs that she saw. “How exactly are we going to tell the stairs we’re looking for apart from the others?”
“They are at the end of the tunnel, it is physically impossible to miss them. You’ll probably need some help finding them though, knowing you.” Inkwell laughed as he nudged the bat pony.
“Okay, just because you suck at drawing maps doesn’t mean I get lost easily.” Grey scrunched up her muzzle and stuck her tongue out at the stallion.
“I’m no cartographer, I’m a novelist.” Inkwell laughed back.
The colt could only assume that they were discussing one of their adventures during their youth. Or as his father used to call them, their misadventures. These ranged from waking an angry hydra to making a magical tornado.
“Looks like we’re there you two.” Leaf intruded in the ponies little pushing game.
“Oh!” Grey laughed as her legs caught the first stair. “I didn’t notice.”
“Exactly. Couldn’t even find the stairs at the end of the tunnel.” Inkwell messed up the mare’s mane with his hoof.
The group walked up the stairs, whispers between Grey and Inkwell could be faintly heard as they reached the main hall of the building. Paintings were done along the walls, probably thanks to some elementary school art project. In the middle of the room, there was a circle of stone that had been set upright to look like a doorway.
“Stand back.” all laughter had left Inkwell’s voice when he spoke those words.
Inkwell shot a small beam of his usual lime green magic at the circle, causing a portal to form inside of it. He waved his companions toward it as he felt the ground shake. It was not a natural shaking, nor was it caused by his magic. It was the warriors of the Overlord.
“Go now!” Inkwell shouted, lifting his nephew from the ground with his levitation magic and tossing him through the portal.
“I’ll hold them off. I won’t let them continue this rampage.” Leaf said calmly before charging outside, throwing all caution aside. He knew that he would not be leaving alive, but he could buy them time enough to get through and close the portal.
“Come on!” Grey shouted, grabbing Inkwell’s black mane in her teeth.
“I can’t. If I go through, the portal will close, I won’t be able to make it all the way through.” Inkwell shook his head and gave the mare a weak smile, the last expression he would ever wear. “I love you.”
Without another word, Grey Cloud was thrust through the portal, leaving the stallion alone. He could still hear the screams of Leaf as his body was being torn to ribbons by the warriors. Inkwell wiped the tears from his eyes, trying his hardest to keep his smile, before turning to face the oncoming swarm of warriors. To his surprise he saw a cloaked pony.
It was a mare, a mare that he was familiar with. She spent her time working for the Overlord’s underling, King Sombra. Her name was Midnight Vim.
“Thank you ever so much for showing me the way. And in case you were wondering, I can follow them by imitating that last spell’s coordinates.” the mare laughed. “Grey Cloud and Mist Valley are the ones who went over right?”
Vim stood in front of the pony, waiting for anything. A verbal response, a scowl, simply turning away. Nothing. The arrogant stallion just stood in front of her with a sad smile.
“No last words?” she asked. “Oh wait, what you said to Grey Cloud. How poetic, and a writer like you just can’t change something like that, can you Inkwell?”
A tightness formed in the unicorn stallion’s chest, causing him to drop to the floor. He struggled to do it, but he kept up his smile until the moment that he died, despite the pain of a heart attack.
Vim craned her neck in a manner as to pop it before casting a spell to reopen the portal. “Blade, get your tail in here.” Vim called for her dragon. “Go through, I want you to make sure that it’s safe.”
“Can do.” the dragon nodded, glancing down at the deceased novelist, almost as if to say, “I’m sorry.” He knew that saying something like that would get him killed though, so he just thought it and hoped that it would be enough.
It was been years, probably at least ten years since that date. Grey couldn’t bear to count the days though, it was too hard. She thought back to Inkwell and what he said to her that day every single morning. Always as she would lay her head on her pillow, “I love you too.”
She’d woken up to find herself in a bright cityscape. Canterlot, pre-destruction. The sun itself was enough to blind her. The constant chatter of the ponies roaming the streets instantly drove her away. All she had time to do was fly to the colt, Mist Valley, and tell him that Inkwell had died saving them.
She hadn’t seen Mist Valley since that day, but always read his books the day of their release. It made her feel close to Inkwell, just like the old days. That is, until the last book, Mist Valley’s Geography of the Everfree Forest. The by line and the dedication crushed her heart. By Princess Twilight Sparkle, in loving memory of Mist Valley, who died saving Equestria.
Grey Cloud had been standing at that mare’s coronation, watching with eager eyes as Twilight made her speech. As she praised her friends for making her the pony that had earned the crown. The bat pony had nopony to live for anymore and it had crossed her mind to end it all on more than one occasion. The one thing that stopped her was Inkwell, who she could always hear in the back of her mind saying those three words. She would live on for him.
The urge to meet the newly crowned Princess was overwhelming though. She wanted to know about Mist Valley. There was something else that needed to be asked though, the last few weeks before her coronation, Grey had no recollection of. She had, in passing, brought this up with some of the ponies that she saw in the local Apple Cider Bar. None of them seemed to recall anything that happened during those weeks. If anypony knew what happened, it would be that alicorn.
It would take some time to travel across Equestria. She lived just outside of Vanhoover, something else to make her feel close to Inkwell. She would have to take a lot of consecutive train rides and a great many suspicious stares. Bat ponies weren’t usually seen outside of their home territory and were usually associated with evil and bad luck. That bad luck thing was something that Grey didn’t feel like she could argue against though, after all, her life was one train wreck after another. Thank Celestia it wasn’t literal.
Grey lifted herself from her bed in the early part of the sunset. It was about as early as she could stand to get up. The pony walked out and grabbed a pair of saddlebags before trotting out her door. The sun was still a bit too bright for her to see very well, but she had to make due, the ticket that she had purchased the night before was for this specific time. Otherwise she would have just skipped it and not gone at all.
She found herself sitting in the back, right hoof side of the train, covered up with a blanket to avoid the stares that she got everywhere that she went. It was almost as if, when a bat pony was not a guard for Princess Luna, then they were surely plotting the imminent demise of civilized society. It wasn’t as if Grey hated Luna or anything ridiculous like that, Luna hadn’t been around while she was back in her home universe. Furthermore, she also wanted to avoid being in public sight. She was more reclusive than even most bat ponies.
“Hey mommy, what’s that?” asked a young filly. Her mane was bright silver and her coat a light sky blue. She had a cutie mark of a flute on her flank.
“That’s a bat pony, dear. Come on, let’s sit up here.” the mare beside the filly stated. The mare was mostly hidden by a seat, but Grey could see a brown coat and a blond mane.
“As per the norm…” Grey muttered as she felt the train take off from the Vanhoover station.
Grey was going to have to ride that train to a station directly below Cloudsdale and then to Canterlot. The capital was a hub for all trains that were going anywhere. The train that she first boarded was going to keep going east until it reached Fillydelphia. She was going to have to wait for two hours for her next train to arrive after disembarking her first train, the second with the sole purpose of taking her to Ponyville. The pony sighed, “This is going to be a long night.”
“Spike!” Twilight shouted. “Spike!” she raised her voice slightly.
“Here!” Spike ran in, stumbling to a halt in front of the lavender colored alicorn.
“Where’s that book on flight that I bought yesterday?” Twilight used her hoof to push her wings down.
“You were reading it in bed last night, weren’t you?” Spike asked, scratching a claw to his head.
“Yes!” Twilight shouted after a slight pause.
“That’s what I thought.” Spike blushed slightly.
“No, I got my wings down. These things don’t feel natural; I can’t make them do anything.” Twilight grumbled. “I picked it up this morning and set it down on the table, but it’s not there anymore.”
Spike laughed quietly to himself, “What all did you do today? Maybe retracing your steps will help.”
“I got up and read the book a little more before setting it down here.” Twilight gestured a hoof toward the table. “Applejack came over and told me that something was wrong with one of her trees, so I grabbed a bunch of books on botanology and dendrology. Turns out some spell ended up causing the tree to become sentient. The whole time that I was trying to fix it, the tree was lecturing me on why plants are better than ponies.”
“That just sounds weird.” Spike whispered, trying to imagine the kind of voice a tree would have.
“No, Pinkie Sense is weird; at least the tree had an explanation. On the topic of Pinkie Sense, there was a Doozey today.”
“Again?”
“Yeah, although I still don’t quite understand what it was. I just kind of nodded and agreed when Pinkie said whatever had happened was a Doozey. After that I had a bite to eat and met up with Fluttershy.”
“Okay…” Spike stated. His mind immediately shifted to Rarity and the thoughts of having a dinner date with her.
Twilight sighed. “After that I came back here because it was starting to get late, but I needed to study great leaders in Equestrian history. I spent the last three hours reading about distant kings that lived among their subjects and experienced day-to-day life with them. Honestly, it sounded kind of how my life is right now. The difference being that the ponies in his kingdom didn’t treat him any differently, which I would love.”
“It should be on the table if you haven’t bothered it then.” Spike stated.
“But it isn’t on the table!” Twilight shouted before freezing. She inhaled deeply and brought her hoof to her chest. As the pony exhaled, she slowly moved her hoof away from her. Cadence’s stress exercise helped a lot. “It wasn’t on the table.” Twilight said in a much calmer tone.
“I’ll look for, you should get some sleep.” Spike said as he started to walk around the library. “You didn’t sleep well last night; I know that because of the fact that every ten minutes you had to shout about your wings. If I had to give an advice on the wings, I’d say loosen up. They seem to be like that when you’re stressed.”
Twilight nodded, silently thanking Spike before walking up the stairs of her home and going to bed. She fell asleep quicker than usual and had a much better night due to her wings being under control. When her mind tensed up, so did her wings.
Spike searched the library for an hour before finding the book that Twilight had been stressing over. The book was sitting on a different table and the only reason that it took Spike an hour to find it was because it was on the other side of the library. He’d made his way from one end to the other. The dragon grabbed the book and held it in his claws as he ran up and put the book on Twilight’s nightstand. All of this before retiring to his own bed.
Grey Cloud was the only pony that was on the Ponyville train at first, but a white unicorn quickly ran onto the train. She carried with her a great deal of luggage and she wore an extravagant hat. Her dark violet mane was finely combed and she had a pair of sunglasses covering her eyes.
“Sunglasses… I’m so stupid…” Grey mumbled, thinking about how they would make the sun a little less excruciating.
“A bat pony? What are you doing out so late… early for your kind?” the pony asked in a very well-mannered voice.
“I have to go to Ponyville. But I need to ask something.” Grey said nervously. She hadn’t done a lot of talking to ponies who were sober enough to be conscious of their surroundings. The pony herself never drank any cider, but she found that she could only bring herself to speak with ponies who were.
“Yes darling?” the mare said so casually that it brought a little ease to Grey’s mind.
“Is there any place in Ponyville that I could acquire… er, purchase some sunglasses. The sun kind of hurts my eyes.”
“I would say so, after all, bat ponies are rarely seen out in the day.” the pony paused before digging through her bag with a blue magical aura. “Here, have these.” the pony offered a pair of sunglasses.
“Th- thank you…” an act of generosity to a complete stranger. It was something that Grey simply couldn’t wrap her head around. Regardless, she slipped the glasses over her eyes and was finally able to see.
“My name is Rarity by the way. It’s nice to meet you, um…” the mare stated, not knowing Grey’s name.
“Grey. Grey Cloud.” Grey stated back; still in a state of awe at the kindness she had been shown.
Rarity turned around and started doing her own thing, sketching something out on a blue piece of paper. She seemed completely drawn into what she was doing.
Grey sat there for a few moments, trying to grasp something in her mind. She knew Rarity from somewhere, she’d seen her before. The only question was where. It hit Grey hard and suddenly, at the coronation. Rarity and four other ponies were with Twilight Sparkle. She spoke to them during her speech, she never said their names, but Grey definitely recognized Rarity.
The only thing left was how to go about it. Was she going to simply ask if she knew Twilight Sparkle or would she have to get Rarity talking first? She was used to only talking to ponies who’d drunken so much cider that they couldn’t even see straight. This was a foreign concept to her considering it had been ten years since she’d spoken to a pony under circumstances like this.
“Yes I know her.” Rarity turned back.
Grey froze up. Had she said her thoughts out loud? “Yeah… um… I was just wondering… what’s she like?”
“Twilight is a dear friend of mine. Her skill with magic is unmatched by anypony that I’ve ever met. Did you know that she was beat an Ursa Minor? Well, more like put it to sleep, but still.”
“N- no.” Grey thought about the Ursa Major that she’d encountered once. The thought almost made her cry. She and Inkwell had woken one once, but they managed to beat it, mostly due to a cliff and the maximum amount of weight that it could hold. As the ground shattered beneath their hooves, she’d picked up Inkwell and they laughed together as they overcame another challenge.
“Oh yes. She put it to sleep and sent it back into the Everfree Forest. She’s quite the bookworm. And she is a truly great friend.” Rarity smiled compassionately.
“I see. I need to speak with her as soon as I can.” Grey stated, looking down at the floor.
“Well, I was going to go and see her tonight anyway, so how about you come with me.”
“That’d be… nice. Thank you.” Grey said quietly, adding in a nod at the end.
“You aren’t used to talking to other ponies are you?” Rarity observed.
“No… not really.”
“We’ll be fixing that shortly.” Rarity smiled, moving back to sit next to Grey.
For the remainder of the ride, Rarity was working on getting Grey to get her whole thought out without pausing. It took the whole trip, but by the end, Rarity felt like Grey had made some good progress.