When There's Nothing Left

by Nalis Faber

Prologue - A Dark Night

The music was bright in the pub, not quite matching the mood that everypony felt. It was dark outside, hours past sunset. The day had been a gloomy one and many ponies were in the pub, drowning the gloom hanging above their heads in Apple Cider.

This is the way it had been for the past two years. More ponies went. Less ponies came back. There was nothing anypony could do about it. Nothing aside from washing away their memories with cider.

Rocksmash was one of those ponies. He normally worked in the fields, harvesting rocks for use by whatever her highness Princess Celestia wanted them for. Rocksmash was in the pub at this late hour, listening to the ponies and the music. He looked up as he heard somepony walk through the door.

She was beautiful. A lavender unicorn stood there in the doorway, looking around with a cold look, strategically observing the room and everypony in it. She had a longer horn than most unicorns and had a flowing purple tail with a pink stripe in it. Her mane, being the same color as her tail, was cropped and spiky but looked like it could have at one time been as flowing and beautiful as her tail. On her was what looked like black special ops spandex and a saddlebag. She caught his eye and came over to sit next to him.

"Some day huh?" Rocksmash said to the lavender unicorn. She only snorted in reply.

"Yup. I know exactly how ya feel. Everypony comes in here for the same reason. Ain't no sense foolin' ourselves about it," he said, seemingly to himself. "So what's your story? Never seen you in here before."

The unicorn's head snapped up as if she just remembered something. "Bartender!" she called out. An earth pony walked up to where she was sitting. "Two apple ciders please."

"Right away ma'am," the bartender said, scuttling off to get the beverages.

The unicorn turned to look at Rocksmash. "I'll tell you my story," she smiled at him with a hint of sadness in her eyes, "but first you need a drink."

The bartender set the two drinks down in front of the unicorn. She took one with her hoof and slid it over to Rocksmash. She levitated six bits from her saddlebag and gave them to the bartender. Rocksmash smiled at her and took a sip from his cider. After that, everything went black.

~~ -- ~~

Rocksmash awoke to the sound of pounding dubstep. He slowly opened his eyes. Blurred images swam around in his vision. He let out a groan and turned his head as his vision began to clear. Noticing that he was lying on his back, Rocksmash tried to move but realized he was restrained.

"Oh good! You're awake!" Rocksmash heard a voice say.

He lifted his head and let out a gasp. It was that unicorn from the pub, standing there staring at him. This time however, he could clearly see that this was no normal unicorn. Without her special ops attire on, he could see clearly that she had wings as well and was an alicorn!

"Princess Twilight!" Rocksmash blurted out. He couldn't believe the sight before his eyes. He then realized who he was talking to.

"I-I mean... Your majesty." He tried to bow his head the best he could in his horizontal position.

Twilight giggled and walked over to where he was and turned off the radio. "So now you recognize me! It's okay. I was undercover after all," she said, winking to him. "I'm glad you could be here to be part of my latest experiment!" she said enthusiastically while mixing two liquids together.

Rocksmash looked around him. Realization began to dawn on him. "Your Majesty, may I ask... Did you drug me?"

Twilight giggled again. "You're a smart one," she said, almost sarcastically. Rocksmash realized that she must've slipped some sort of drug into his drink when she slid it to him.

"How'd you get me out of there unnoticed?" Rocksmash asked, genuinely curious. Somepony must have noticed Twilight dragging an unconscious pony out of the pub.

"Oh it was a simple perception filter combined with teleportation," said Twilight. "Nopony will even remember that we were there."

As Rocksmash began to wake up, he also started coming to his senses. "Your majesty, what is this experiment?" he asked, beginning to get nervous. As he glanced around him, he saw various boiling liquids, sacks of powder, spell books, and most unnerving of them all, many sharp surgical objects.

Twilight continued to mix various liquids and powders. "I'm working on a new spell, and you're going to be my first pony test subject!" She exclaimed enthusiastically.

Rocksmash's eyes grew really wide. At first, he was excited to be able to help out royalty. Then he realized who he was talking to and his excitement quickly turned into fear. Panic was building up inside of him and he struggled against his restraints. Getting out of there was his first priority.
He was too young to go. He still had a whole life time ahead of him. He-

"Don't worry, I'm not ready to begin yet," Twilight giggled. "There are still some things I have to prepare, and I still have to tell you my story!" Rocksmash wondered how she expected him not to worry with the knowledge he had of what was to certainly happen to him.

"You know," said Twilight, "most ponies don't realize that there is science behind magic." Rocksmash just blinked at her, not understanding where she was going with this.

"I know it sounds silly," she went on, not noticing his bewildered look, "but most everypony thinks that magic is some sort of mysterious thing that unicorns do."

She dumped a large flask full of a green liquid into a large tub. A levitating bag surrounded by a purple aura turned upside down and dumped some sort of white, grainy powder into the tub with the green liquid. Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated. Pointing her head down at the tub, she launched a purple beam of light from her horn. Upon touching the brew in the tub, it snaked across like some sinister electricity and then ended in a massive explosion of green and purple.

Twilight, looking quite pleased with herself, went on, "as I have just demonstrated, there is actually quite a bit of science behind magic. See, everypony has an inborn biological ability of magic, it's not just unicorns. Unicorns just have an organ, our horns, to channel the magic through to actually put it to use."

She took another flask full of a deep blue liquid and mixed it in with a flask full of a pink liquid, boiling over a Bunsen burner. "Magic has chemical and physical properties just like anything else, and it has to obey those physical laws."

Rocksmash wasn't sure where the Princess was going with her little science lecture, and he honestly didn't care about a word she was saying. However, he didn't interrupt her. He wanted some extra time to see if he could at least find a way to escape before the experiment.

Twilight continued, happy to have someone silently listening to her, "through my studies, I have determined that magic is a form of potential energy. I like to compare it to the mitochondria (I'm sure you must have studied it when you were still in school) in all of our cells. Put simply, the mitochondria uses ATP to produce energy that our muscles use. Similarly, I have theorized that there is a similar organelle that produces so called 'magical energy.' This energy can be channeled through our horns to do as we wish it too.. within physical laws of course. This is done in a similar way that we use our muscles to move our legs. I think that this is a fascinating evolutionary advantage that unicorns have over other types of ponies!"

Rocksmash suppressed a groan. He didn't know how much more of the princess's lecturing he could take. He felt like he was being read to from a science textbook. This bothered him almost as much as wondering what the experiment could be. After all, he did fail most of his science classes in school. He had always known he would grow up working in the rock fields, so he didn't think he needed that type of fancy knowledge.

Princess Twilight glared at him, but continued, "that's what this experiment is going to be about. See, non unicorn ponies have all of this 'magical energy' inside of them, never being used, and I plan to see if there is a way that unicorn magic can tap into and react to your magic."

There was a sinister air about the way she said this and she had a twisted grin on her face. Rocksmash felt sick. He had no clue what the princess was talking about, but it didn't sound good. At that moment, another unicorn walked into the lab-like room. He had white fur, a cloud cutie-mark, green eyes, and a spiky, slicked back, blonde mane.

"Twi, I think I've found the area with the highest concentration and my equipment is almost set up. I think we could begin soon," the new unicorn said. Rocksmash was shocked by the incredibly familiar way that this pony addressed a princess.

Twilight smiled at the other unicorn. "Thank you, Nalis. I should be ready soon too." Nalis walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. The princess now turned to look at Rocksmash.

"I believe that means we are running out of time," she said, "so I had better get on with telling you my story." Her eerie smile filled Rocksmash's vision. Suddenly, he was regretting his decision to ever try and make small talk with beautiful unicorns.

Comments

[Nalis Faber]

I am currently working on the next chapter and it should come soon! Sorry about the suspence!

[MilesMaster2006]

Interesting. Not bad so far!

[Rinnaul]

Interesting, definitely. Your language can get a little repetitive, and you could do with some more complex sentences, but it's no major detraction. But you have me curious about what's going on and what Twilight is scheming. I hope there's more to her than the usual grimdark Researcher Twilight, but even that might work well if the rest of the story is unique enough.

Will watch this.

[Nalis Faber]

4054469 Thanks!

[Nalis Faber]

4055062 I appreciate your input. The only way to get better is to listen to the criticism of others! I'm glad I've managed to captivate your curiosity, too!

[ShadowThePony]

(what?)