//------------------------------// // Stormfront // Story: Autumn // by canonkiller //------------------------------// Obsidian gently lay Sunrise down at her father's claws. In his sleep, Spike swept the dragonness closer, up against his chest. Sighing, Obsidian carefully walked away, waiting until he was far enough away to fly. No, he was lying to himslf. He wanted to see how far he could get before Sunrise noticed he was gone and came with him. Once he was beyond the ring of sleeping ponies, he was past return. If she woke up, and got over to him before his claws touched the other side of that invisible barrier... Somepony stirred behind him. There was the unmistakable scuff of claws on dirt, and Obsidian found his breath had decided to stick in the back of his throat. "Hey, where are you planning on going?" The draconequus sighed. A few octaves off to be Sunrise. "I need to set all of this right." "You've done enough." Tigerjay walked up beside him, rearing onto his hind legs to stand level with the bearer of Kha. "You've fought everything against you every step of the way." "Exactly. I can finish this. Once and for all. There'll be no more fighting, ever. Life will go back to the way it was." "Boring and repetetive? Hate to break it to you, but it wasn't that great before." "Worse than it is now?" "Ha ha ha." Tigerjay groaned. "You wouldn't understand, but more than half of us enjoy this excitement! After the initial shock, we came to terms with the lack of material possesion. We're all alive. We're all together." "I guess." Obsidian pouted. Downside to being powerful, he realized: having the stupid things pointed out to you. "If we wanted to give up on this fight, we would have gone to Canterlot or something a long time ago." The Griffon placed a talon on Obsidian's shoulder. "When this war really starts, I'll be on your side." "Thanks, but I don't need help." "Oh, buzz off." Tigerjay laughed, elbowing his superior. "Go prance along on your merry way, and be sure to get me a snowglobe to remember your travels by!" He widened his eyes and blinked innocently, holding his talons under his chin. "And when you get beat up by a cyborg, I'll catch you like you would catch Sunrise~" "H-hey!" Obsidian pounced at the Griffon, shoving him into the dirt. "I'll soak your feathers with so much chocolate rain you'll be sticky for weeks!" "Unfair! Unfair advantage!" He squealed, whimpering like a schoolfilly and struggling to get free. "That is so not allowed!" Obsidian summonded one of the now-common puffy pink clouds, holding it over Tigerjay's head and smiling deviously. "Take it back." "Okay! I'll drop you instead!" Laughing, Obsidian backed up, letting Tigerjay get to his feline-avian feet. Swiping the cloud into a candy-cane patterned cone, he handed it to Tigerjay before floating into the air. "No hard feelings?" The Griffon saluted and watched as a dim flicker of light briefly shone, before the matter inside it vanished and the shine followed suit. "You know, buddy?" He yelled into the empty sky. "You keep living like this, and one day I'll be chronicling your suicide missions instead of the other way around. Stay alive out there!" When no response came, he turned slowly, walking back towards the ring of ponies and up beside his mother. No others had woken up, or even stirred. In the stalking, surprising way that only sleep can come, it swallowed Tigerjay in a deep, welcoming blackness, giving him a few blissful hours of unconciousness before the sun would rise and he would be the new leader of the end of Ponyville. An Alicorn stood silently against the dark mountian. He would have been invisible in the dark if not for the embers blowing from his mane or the dim ring of light around his Mark. Still soundless, he lept up the rocky cliffside, hooves barely touching the stone before kicking off again, his one wing holding healing feathers until they healed, the other folded as well for balance. He stopped again at the peak of the mountain, backlit by the glorious silhoette of the unmarked moon. Lifting one hoof, he locked his jaw. This was not a pleasant task, but the magma was threatening to flow without his control. The lifted hoof slammed into the thick black stone, and a spiderweb of cracks spiralled out around him. Massive chunks of stone fell inwards, swallowed in the seething red haze beginning to show through. Anypony awake in the village below that looked up in that one fractured moment would have seen a great plume of smoke and fire rising from the normally friendly mountian, the black shadow of an Alicorn standing at the peak before rearing up and falling backwards into the liquid flame. And after that, there would be nopony watching, for the houses were covered by cooling lava, and the screams had never broken in the first place. Falling through molten metal, the God felt the bones in his wing remending, the feathers straightening and regaining their heathy scarlet glow. He sighed. The sun would be rising soon, and he had to regain control over this orb of fire slowly, the way he had tamed her in the first place, until she bent to his command and then to the other, with a good chance of not doing so until the sky itself folded under the weight of time. Corona knew that Kha was seeking him, needed him and his power, and was distorting space as he travelled even at this moment, his new, once-mortal form flapping serenely powerful wings through time itself. And Corona took nothing's place. He simply waited. The bird struck out with one clawed foot, catching his Alicorn sister across the cheek and sending her flying backwards, tumbling through the ungravitational plane. "Then... why don't... you... tell... me?" She screeched, holding one hoof against her bleeding face. "Just tell me!" The metal bird simply roared, shooting forwards through the empty space as magic pooled around his head. The resulting red beam lanced through the air, burning a clean, bloodless hole through something's wing and stunning her. Without her wings... He growled, swatting her aside with one tail. "I'm not trying to beat you!" Her hooves kicked out, as if searching for some invisble ground, hoping for leverage. "I don't want to hurt you!" He shot forward again, locking the battered creature in his talon and hovering. He realeased his visegrip, flinging her across the groundless void. His rage deflated, the words seeming to hang in the air like ashes borne on the wind. This is not my home... this is not my home... I don't have a home... I don't have a home...