Epilogue: desolation
Princess Celestia had been taking her day court when the shockwave hit Canterlot. The armour on the bodies of the royal guards clattered, the ink pot by her throne likewise overturning to spill its black contents across the arm of the throne. Instantly the alabaster alicorns magic spread outwards to hold any object that might potentially fall or be damaged. After a few tense seconds the shaking of the room stopped and Celestia cautiously released the grip on her magic.
The princess looked around for a few moments to survey for damage. Finding none she turned her gaze upon the nobles before her. Many showed fear, a perfectly understandable reaction to the sudden occurrence. A few however held themselves together a little better, doing their best to calm those other ponies they had brought with them to the court.
“I am afraid that this court must be adjourned. I feel other situations now require my dire attention” she explained to them, bowing her head slightly forwards. The nobles did so in kind to her, much to Celestias own surprise many of them looked pleased at the new information. Rising to her hooves the diarch tapped her back hooves once each to revive the feeling in them before trotting out.
Once in the hallway Celestia was left alone with her thoughts. She was no stranger to explosions and quakes, a good many of them caused by the various assaulters on Canterlot. But this felt rather different somehow. Taking a quick gander around to make sure that she was not being watched the princess ducked quickly into one of the side doors to the watchtowers.
Despite the general assumptions of the ponies of Canterlot the tallest towers in the palace were not reserved for the princess’s chambers. At the utmost peaks there were viewing and messaging platforms, monitoring Equestria for any news that the Princess’s might need to know as soon as possible. Princess was greeted by a buzz of activity in the room she entered. Ponies were running back and forth, exchanging notes between each other. A machine in the corner of the room clicked, feeding out a roll of paper with a needle waving wildly across it.
“Is it an earthquake?” One asked loudly. The addressee shook his head.
“No, too weak and not deep enough. Surface disturbance” the Pegasus answered, his wings fluffing outwards in tension. Celestia looked at the group before stepping forwards.
“That tremor we felt, where did it come from?” She asked them. One of the earth ponies turned and bowed for a brief moment before turning back to the machine he was working on. That was good Celestia thought, her little ponies were more dedicated to their work than showing respect that border lined upon being worship.
“The geo-crystals planted around the kingdom indicate that the shockwave came from the south” he answered, the needle swaying again “At least 8.1 on the scale, whatever created it was devastatingly powerful”. Celestia mulled over this new information. The only place she could think of to the south that could potentially be the origin point of such a shockwave. But the site was beyond the Forest of Leota, could it be?
Her thoughts were interrupted as Spitfire, captain of the Wonderbolts, slid in from an open balcony. Finally gaining some traction upon the wooden floor the Pegasus stopped in from on the Princess. She was panting heavily, her usual spiked back mane hanging heavy with sweat.
“Princess Celestia” she gasped, sucking in a lungful of air “A cloud has been seen on the southern horizon, like when controlled magical detonations are used, but it’s so much larger, at least sixty four kilometres high. The force of something that big….it would devastate hundreds of kilometres” Spitfire said, trying to hold back a slight whimper of apprehension.
Celestia froze. She had only once seen the effect of an explosion of such magnitude, and that was the remains of the world of the precursors.
“Show me, now” the alicorn asked. Her usual maternal demeanour was gone from her voice, replaced instead by the stern control of a ruler. Several of the ponies fell silent until Spitfire guided her ruler over to one of the telescopes mounted upon the railings of the tower. Celestia quickly grasped one in her magic, orienting it in the direction that Spitfire flew as a marker.
Pressing her eye to the eyepiece of the scope, the princess observed the effects of devastation. The mushroom cloud rose high above, its cap red with the still existent fireball that had risen into the air, carrying dust in its wake. Surely those pollutants would reach Canterlot in time. It would have to wait though, contamination with debris and such would be a secondary worry.
“Captain Spitfire” Celestia asked “Has there been any reports coming from the installation SBD? Any news of, breakouts?” she asked the Wonderbolts member. Before a reply could be given to the ruler a sharp clicking began to emanate from one corner of the room, all eyes turning to look at it.
A telegraph key, somewhat dusty from disuse, had begun tapping erratically. Celestia’s eye turned to read the notice below it.
S.B.D
“That….that’s incredible” an azure unicorn gasped, his horn ablaze with his magic. With each tap of the key his horn pulsed slightly.
“Whoever’s at the other end has bypassed the other key entirely, it must be damaged. He’s using magic to send the message directly...but the message makes no sense at all”
“And what IS that message?” Celestia asked the colt. He squinted for a moment in concentration before his eyes widened again.
“It’s just the same thing, over and over again……it’s still alive”
Foot Note groaned as he rolled over a dune that had been haphazardly created in the carnage, his magic grasp on the cable that had once been connected to the telegraph key faltering. He gasped in pain, the ash now in the air burning his lungs like a thousand tiny shards of glass. With some effort he managed to look up at the sky above.
He was barely forty feet from the main crater, having fallen into a secondary crater created by falling debris, and the mushroom cloud stretched far above him, obscuring the sky in darkness. He remembered feeling the quake the egg….no, bomb, had generated. The ground being forced into the air in great ridges, glowing embers cloying to them. How many had been incinerated in the blast wave that had been generated? And how many more would sicken once this fallout reached the town and cities? Perhaps the mountains might block some of it he hoped.
He tried to remember how he had gotten from detonating the weapon to the miraculously survived communication equipment. He remembered being directly in front of it, crushing the casing with his magic to detonate the warhead in lieu of its long since degraded ignition chemicals. Surely at that distance he should have been vaporised? Come to that fact, what had he even been messaging to Canterlot? It eluded him.
The lack of information told him more than actually remembering probably would have.
“I’m only alive, because you wanted me to be, aren’t I?” he asked his god. He heard the footfalls, only two legs but heavy, as the tall shadow was cast across the wall of the crater. Groaning, Foot pulled himself upwards, the glassed sand under him cracking whilst several patches of his fur began falling out. With some additional effort he turned to face the deity had unleashed.
It had always been manipulating him. It had known that it would be able to survive the weapon from its age with its new capabilities. And now it was free.
And very, much, alive.
Its body, once skeletal, was now filled out. Blood once more flowed through its veins, the thin muscles well defined under supple pale skin. The hole that had been torn in its front was now healed, though the shirt that had once covered its midsection now flapped freely in the wind still blowing. Thin lips twitched at the corner, the eyes now set in moist sockets surrounded by dark circles. The once matted and greasy hair was now clean, flicking like some obscene mockery of Celestia’s mane.
The pit had been opened, and now the Human was free. And this was his reward for opening its cage, for detonating an explosive to herald its arrival. His reward was to live, until the radiation killed him at least. The remnants of the mind that had once been Foot Note was torn out at that point, replaced with a fanatical acolyte to its new master. Adoration, love and lust, to serve the human was his only will and whim. Tears fell from the eyes that were rapidly being consumed by cataracts.
“Dear god” he wept. The human tilted its head as its decay spread, now uninhibited, behind it like the tail of a comet, ash rising into the air to become none existent. Its mouth slid open, lips withdrawing from pink gums and ivory teeth.
“DO I LOOK LIKE I CARE WHAT GOD THINKS?”
Words of perfect equestrian flowed from its throat, under toned with the accent of a long gone race ready to assert its place once again. And with that it turned away, its gaze set in the direction of the Macintosh Hills.
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i cant wait for more
Oh hey you actually made the timeline,thanks.
This was a neat story. I'm looking forward to more.
fuck that was epic
You are an Amazing Person. I DEMAND MORE!
"YOU FOOL! HE'S ALREADY DEAD!"
-paraphrased from the Statement of Randolph Carter.
Loved it. I could just see an entire series of Lovecraftian stories about the elder races (humans) in ponyland. It needs more love(craft) and its own group. Sadly I have no inspiration these days to write.
4900578 no. It is over.
It ended with the human called millennium by the ponies truly awakening thanks to the detonation of the old nuke stored in the S.B.D.
No more is needed unless the author deems it so.
4900537 I promised, didn't I?
4900664 There's always the future
4900672 I believe you mean S.B.D. And it's fine if people ask me for more, it helps me ignore my jobless state.
This is playing in my head right now.
4900578 Maybe if you're a good boy/girl/hobbes.
4900764 Hah, thanks. The intial version was much more beffiting this music, with the human floating out of the crater.
4900763 i know that feel brah...
and sorry, most authors i have seen write stories like this just get pissed that people want more when they have ended something the way they wanted. i assumed you where the same. if you want to write more then you can be sure as the sun rises that i will read it.
4900791 With any luck then you might comment on my test chapters. If enough people like it, you'll get to see a genuine eldritch horror fully animated in equestria.
Thanks for finishing the story, it was a great read. Really loved the 'Humans are Cthulhu' vibe.
4901454 Glad to know you like it. I may continue with this vibe, though it shall be more lovecraft lite.
Best human-is-eldritch-abomination story I ever read.
64 km cloud? Fuck, that's 50 MT right there...
Here's what it would look like from over 100 miles away
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Tsar_photo11.jpg
4902690 Yup, it was in the same range as the Tsar bomba.
Ia! Ia! Human syha'h!
Nice to see that this finally managed to be completed after so long, it deserved it. The only real major issue I can comment on is that it seems too short, I was expecting a longer game plan, but with real life stoof that may not have been possible or doable.
It does give and interesting edge to the end though, I am wondering what will occur - well, Mass Pony Extinction of course but what else?- after it finished.
Ah well, we can always appreciate a holocaust of madness which is to come.
4903889 Well, if people ask VEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERY nicely, I may post a sequel.
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIFF SEQUEL PLS
4906870 Another work of mine is just being submitted to tide you over.
Totally in love.
4908333 Please, no, we musn't!
Will you post the link to the sequel when it's out on this story?
4909938 Watching me would be simpler. For the time being I'm trying to decide what to do with Shadowveil
4909038
But I must have you my dear...
4909957 i am, but just in case i don't see it when you do release it
4909971 I'm in a relationship. Besides, my teeth don't make for soft kisses
4909975 Fair enough
is there a sequel coming or?
5200780 Potentially
When I read this story and ESPECIALLY this chapter all I could think were these two scenes and the dialogue within them! The dialogue in both scenes especially the second or even the first video would be beautiful if you included another epilogue chapter where HE speaks the lines to either one or all the Princesses!
Also please when will the sequel comeout if there is one anyway?!?!?!?! If you don't mind sharing the information that is.......
This story was just......perfect! It was well written, well detailed and it was just right! Please make more!
Also where was Lyra in this story? We only saw mention of her ancestor, so where was she?
5317811 I used the Lyra icon to represent her ancestor because he fulfilled the 'identical ancestor' trope. Her role might appear small here, but as you will see in story two, she holds a lot of gravity.
5317791 You flatter me sir....ma'am?
5317788 There will be a one shot in a few weeks to whet your appetites, but the actual sequel has no set release date.
This story unsettled me greatly. You have a talent for depicting the uncanny.
5447779 Comes from viewing it firsthand
still hoping for sequel
5483327 Patience child
-This comment turned out a lot more negative-sounding than I meant it to be and I wanted to apologize for that up front.-
First off:
I liked it. I think you set it up very well and I applaud you for tackling this quite difficult and fickle genre.
It's a fine and very enjoyable effort and I wished I had stumbled upon it sooner.
In the end you chose the Alien-formula over the Lovecraftian; you revealed the monster, its origins, intentions - you made it imaginable and to a degree even relatable.
Was that a conscious choice at the time? If so, why did you decide against the other approach? Was there a certain effect you were going for?
The references to pop-culture are a thing I'm still uncertain whether I liked. For one, they made me think of other stories while I was reading yours. They disrupted immersion by their very presence and I had to remind myself to think about the story and not search for familiar phrases or concepts - worst offender being by far the Mass Effect one. Spaceships and magnetic weaponry really don't fit in too well.
On the other hand, they were well-chosen. All were things that added to the mood, all made me feel uncomfortable, small and vulnerable.
Next point: I mean it without insult, but I find it somewhat unoriginal and sterile conceptually. This story is a fine exercise in the genre, combines its elements well and makes use of fitting tropes, but I left with the feeling that the fundamental ideas had not been touched upon and explored.
Then again, not a necessity by any means.
Characters. They felt flat at times, and especially in dialogues as I found their respective diction a tad too similar and inconsistent.
But they were not the focus of the story, now were they?
Lastly, a question: What is to you, as the writer, your favourite part or aspect of the story?
What are you proudest of?
5317788 Thats funny, now that you point that out I can see the similarity of the Halo 4 baddie to this human. Nice catch.
5509752 Thanks but what I was really hoping for would have been Millenium using the speeches made by the Didact in both videos with suitable and nescessary modifications to parts of it in order to speak to the princess(es) and impress on them the severity of his freedom and power.
5509495 The 'Alien' choice was a conscious one. Really,without revealing something about it I felt that this antagonist could have easily been seen as not a human at all, and I really wanted people to make that connection from the get go. Still, it's an enigma to the ponies, and should I continue the series it shall be shown a little more from the POV of ponies who had nothing to do with the research team, to restore the 'mythos'.
The pop culture references were supposed to represent how many of us play out scenarios in our heads, or wish we could reply to someone in a certain way. It's his fractured mind TRYING to communicate with them, though I admit it was a mixed attempt.
I will agree that the story is not exactly an original one, and a fair number of writers before and since have done much better jobs of this sort of work. On a similar note, the characters personalities. This was really me just being a bad writer on the whole, though I did hope that some people might reach the conclusion these fellows have been down there a LONG time, even without a mind warping ancient you lose a little of your personable skills.
My favourite part? That's a hard one. Honestly I couldn't say, I just enjoy the work. Thanks for this, it's been both fun and informing.
5511304 A swift reply. How delightful.
Sounds good. Having the reader know more than the characters can be used to such great tension and effect. There's been moments when I wanted to scream into the book's pages what I knew and they did not - to no avail.
Especially in this kind of horror I believe that to be a powerful technique; to underline the futility of resisting what is beyond your ability to resist.
Oh damn, I completely missed that meaning. I thought it was a purely meta-level thing.
His mental fingerprint etched into their minds as he crushes them under the weight of his mere thoughts projected at them.
Holy mackerel, that is so awesome.
Perhaps you could lampshade things like that in some kind of way in the future - not spell it out to the reader, but bring to his attention that there's a little puzzle that he holds the last few pieces to. Little gems like that are just too precious to go to waste.
Well, thank you for your enlightening reply, and do not worry about being a good or a bad writer. As Stephen King said it, his biggest mistake was to believe that style and language were even near as important as the story itself - and you've got that last part down, that much is clear.
5516976 I always make the effort to make prompt reply's to those who take the time to talk to me