The Brightest Shine

by Cozy Mark IV

Epilogue

The Brightest Shine

Written and read by Cozy Mark IV & Jan. McNeville

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-made work of prose. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the property of Hasbro. Please support the official release

Epilogue

The palace was dark, shadows lurking in the corners and making even a slow trot treacherous on the uneven floor. They said the king could see in the darkness as in daylight, but the conditions of the palace were no longer foremost on the page's mind as he made for the royal chambers bearing the message.

They were coming!

Throughout all the death and deceit, through all the purges and torture they had kept their distance, but now that the king had seized the moon, they could ignore him no longer.

It had started with yet another round up, ponies being put into chains, but this time, they were made to walk in endless circles about the palace, weaving through a complex pattern etched with strange runes set in the crystal pavement. All those forced into the march felt their strength being used to guide some powerful flow of energy, and the entire palace hummed with power, though to what end they could not at first discern. Only as the eclipse began, blocking nearly half of the sun did they finally understand.

Sombra had seized the moon and was holding it in front of the sun, somehow tracking it wherever it flitted across the sky. Several times those in chains had felt an enormously powerful force try to break their hold, wrenching at their bodies in the process, but the efforts had been for not. The king's grip had held.

Now, as the slaves continued their endless circles, a huge ring of dust was growing around the moon, fanning ever outward as dust and rock was pulled from the surface and sent into orbit around it, blocking out more and more of the suns rays. The last several days had already been colder than any could remember in the month of May, and nearly every Ep in the city, himself included, had been praying that the Princesses of the southern utopia would save them from the king's madness.

He hadn't counted on being the one who had to deliver the bad news to the king.

As he rounded a final corner, two distant voices became audible from the closed door of the kings chambers.

“You can't keep doing this! If the sun doesn't shine the crops won't grow and we'll all starve!”

A deep and ominous laugh interrupted the first, frightened voice.
“You know better than most how little that will soon matter. In a few weeks the north will be a frozen wasteland, and the southerners will have run out of firewood and be burning their food to heat their homes!
You predicted I couldn't hold the moon with my slaves.” he heard the king spit, “None of you fools even knew of the Lagrangian points! The Princesses can not understand how I can hold the moon against their will and gravity at once; I know that I need only fight them to win.”

The second voice sounded even more scared now,
“You've underestimated them! They're pure of heart! They can stop you!”

The king's evil laugh made the page's skin crawl as he eased up to the door, peeking through a crack, only to see the king standing alone in the spartan room...
“Just as you are? When was the last time your brother and sister slept in an unlocked place?” his voice hissed as the king jabbed a hoof down to the royal dungeons. “And besides... even if I cannot coerce them, there is always the other way...”

As the page watched in alarm, the king slowly removed a shoe and placed his hoof back on the floor while the other voice gasped as though in pain. A cold blue light spread from the king's hoof, rapidly radiating out into the walls and down the corridor the page hid in, his hair standing on end as the crystal walls themselves seemed to howl out mournfully in some ancient tongue.

“It won't work! They won't fall for your trick!”

The pages eyes went wide as he realized the voice was coming from the king himself! His green eyes had turned to a normal white color as the voice spoke, but the change was short lived.

The king's eyes flashed green again as he chuckled,
“While Celestia may not have, it seems you have too much faith in Princess Luna. Wresting her moon from her seems to have shaken her confidence, and she was only too happy to accept the enchanted blue crystal armor the kind smith crafted for her.”

The kings eyes flickered between green and white as he laughed and the other voice cried,
“NO! Luna has ruled over an entire country for decades! She's no fool, and she won't be tricked into serving you!”

This only made the king laugh harder, a sickly smile settling on his features,
“Oh really? How many 'ponies' know the real reason for all this? Those fools still think I'm trying to shade out the world so my armies can take it over. They assume that if they lose, they need only submit to the Great King Sombra, and he will restore the light.”

The page was actively turning to run back down the corridor when a last glance back showed the room to be suddenly empty. He whipped around and just about collided with the huge gray and black stallion towering over him.

“You have seen how the call of the crystal can wear a pony down, eating into their sanity as it twists their reason and motives to match its own.”

The page's eyes were wide in terror as he realized the barehoofed king wasn't speaking to him...

Bare hoofed?

A quick glance down showed the cold blue light flickering outward from his hooves like a run away fire spreading from four small sparks, and in seconds, the entire corridor was ablaze in blue light, the howling of the crystal deafening in his mind. As all thoughts beyond terror flitted away, the king looked directly at the page and asked simply;
“What do you want?”

As he fumbled for an answer, the page found his mind filling with a cold, inexplicable anger. The two ponies stood still in the corridor for several seconds as the blue light danced and flickered around them, but when the page finally raised his head to answer, there was no longer any fear in his eyes. The king smiled as the lowly Ep page stood, all four hooves planted on the howling blue crystal and looked straight into his eyes.

“What. Do. You. Want?” Sombra asked.

The answer that came was delivered with all the conviction of a true zealot.

“I want... The night... To last... Forever!”

Author's Note:

And now it finally becomes clear; why would a seasoned ruler with decades of experience suddenly lose her mind and fall off the deep end, pursuing a goal that would destroy everything, kill all her subjects and reduce equestria to a frozen wasteland? Because it was never her idea in the first place.

Sombra Song - a different performance of the song that inspired this story.

'A tale of one shadow' - a wonderful animation by Nastasia Solitude that bridges the gap between this chapter and the last.

'The Fall of the Crystal Empire' - a brilliant animation by 'Silly Filly Studios' that chronicles the effects of the armor on Luna, and how it didn't work out quite the way the king had hoped.

Comments

[blank check]

Comment posted by Razzle Dazzle deleted at 11:59pm on the 25th of August, 2014

What was this? Did I delete it or did you?

[Tallinu]

Very interesting end to this story. I like how it ties in with Nightmare Moon!

And thanks for the link to the Silly Filly Studios video, I hadn't seen that one (they've done such amazing work, although some of the words were too hard to hear).

[Cozy Mark IV]

5249335 That's a very rational, dispassionate, twenty first century way of thinking.

If you look back throughout history, farmers are almost always on the lower rungs of society, below the military: growing food is back-breakingly hard, dirty work and food is the only outcome. As soon as society invents a warrior with weapons who can take food, well, what do they need farmers for anymore? For a very long time, wars were waged by staying in houses of the occupied territory and eating their food. That's why the soviet 'scorched earth' plan of burning their own country to the ground as they retreated worked so well. The conquerors of the time had never considered what their soldiers would live on if they couldn't loot the occupied territories, and without modern supply lines of food, well, lets just say it didn't go well.
It's a mean, hard truth of how people work and think, but its true. The attitudes pictured are all too realistic, and that's why it stings a bit to read it, but stay with us, you know the story ends well, with equality for all. See Nyx's Family for some of the source inspiration.

[Cozy Mark IV]

5312180
This story takes place during the events of Hearths Warming Eve, and the events we know are taking place just as the story says far to the south. The Unicorn Kingdom is cold, yes, but Pie's equipment shows its not experiencing the cryogenic cold our heroes are.
It may be obscure, but check screen shots from any episode with the Crystal Empire: It's warm enough for trees to grow, but as far as the eye can see, the only trees are those purpose planted by the ponies. Ever wonder what happened to the anchent forests that should be growing there? Well, now you know where they went.
Because this is a canon compatible story, we already know the broad tale of how it ends, but we've already seen there's more going on than the legend records, and we still have to find out what's causing this cold in the first place! The old line that it was the windigos has been shown for the false asumption it is. The windigos never had anything to do with this, they were just mindless animals driven south by the freezing temperatures just as everypony else was.

The show takes place. We know what comes next. The real question we should be asking is why the stories of our adventurers are only now coming to light...

[Walabio]

The Darkness is a good example that something can be dangerous without malice:

It killed Ungulus without any malice. It was barely aware that life exists on Equus. When it ended up in the body of a pony, it learned hate because ponies know hate.

We now know what happened to the original artificial sun, but Equestria should have these in its arsenal. These are literal nuclear weapons.

[BirdsBooksBrownies]

Great work, there were several times when I had to snuggle deeper into my blankets because the cold you described was almost palpable. I was a little thrown off by the romantic antics about half way through, but in the end it was worth the cheese. All in all, a satisfying and interesting take on the Hearth's Warming tale.

[Cozy Mark IV]

10080411
Glad you liked it, it's still the story I'm most proud of even years later. I wanted to do a story that ripped the rug out from under the reader's assumption that the windigos were the root cause and the big bad. That sort of thing happens all the time in real world problem solving, but you almost never see it in a story.

[BirdsBooksBrownies]

10080842
You have every right to be proud. And I definitely agree that there was more going on than the Hearth's Warming pageant gave us.

That being said there were a few typos scattered throughout your story, and I still feel that the chapter about midway through where we get a lot of backstory with copious amounts of cheesey romance and shipping kind of came out of left field so to speak. If I had one suggestion, it would be to add more chapters to help slow the pacing of the romantic antics, and the best romance fictions are slow gradual things. Then again, near death experiences and the apparent ending of the world would be a rather powerful motivator, so perhaps looking at it that way does make it easier to swallow, perhaps add a paragraph or so where the burgeoning couples wonder or even fight over whether the love is genuine or just a matter of convenience or panic.