Mercy
Minutes. Hours. Days.
Really Starlight hadn’t a clue how long she sat on that snowy mountain peak. How long she stared down at her old home. As if time even mattered anymore.
Going back there had been a mistake, she knew it was a mistake, but she did it anyway. And for what? To see ponies die? To see them broken and miserable? To have the very philosophy she created thrown back in her face?
No. She went back for none of those things.
A familiar clank made her ear twitch. She turned right and saw exactly what she expected to see: the lantern and the spectre who owned it. Starlight turned back to the town below.
“I don’t want your job…” she whispered.
“That can’t be helped,” Death replied, equally quiet. “This is your destiny. Lest you would have failed my riddle, and died in that cave without purpose.”
“Find somepony else,” Starlight whispered again.
“There is nopony else. You solved my riddle before death. You possessed the strongest will.”
Starlight slowly turned to Death again.
“Many have tried, and many have failed. Brave Scorpan, The Mighty Boreas, Bahamut, Starswirl the Bearded. But you…”
Starlight turned back to the town, expressionless.
“Even if any of them did solve my riddle, they could’ve never understood the forces at work. Not even Starswirl.”
Starlight said nothing.
Death joined her in silence, reverting back to pony-form, sitting on the mountain peek. There the two spectres sat, wind blowing, but never felt. The lantern sat between them, holding its black flame.
“You resist so adamantly, Starlight,” Death said. “Why? After feverish efforts to establish equality―to create harmony―you deny your destiny?”
Again, Starlight said nothing. She hoped against hope that it annoyed the spirit every bit as much as it annoyed her.
“You’ve seen it as a filly. You’ve seen it growing up. You’ve even seen it in death. Differences lead to pain and heartache. Where there are differences, there is conflict. With conflict, comes hate. Hate begets naught but war. Such is the cycle of life.”
Nevermind his silence. His voice was starting to drive her mad.
“But in death, Starlight, there is only peace. Equality. Harmony.”
Starlight gasped and her hoof jerked back. It had wandered close to the lantern, far too close. She was weak for just those few seconds, and she almost grabbed it.
“Your words are venom…” Starlight hissed, her eyes curtained by her mane.
“Such is truth, unicorn,” Death countered. “Like when you told all those ponies they’d be miserable without you.”
“That was different!” Starlight barked.
“We both know that isn’t true. The moment they saw your mark―saw how different you were―they turned on you. Didn’t they?” She said nothing. “Such. Is. Truth.”
Starlight jerked her wandering hoof from the lantern yet again. And Death didn’t say another word.
He didn't need to, Starlight knew. As little as she wanted to admit it, it was true. She sighed an echoing sigh.
“I know,” Starlight whispered. Death said nothing, but turned his faceless head to her. “I just… I just don’t like that I know.”
“Why?”
“I saw ponies―hardworking ponies―break their backs everyday to please bosses with half their ability. I saw ponies set goals for their future―for their family―and be driven to poverty by ‘important ponies’ who thought so little of them.”
Death remained silent.
“All I thought when I got my cutie mark was, ‘I can stop this’. And I did, until… until they came.”
“Thus, the rat race continued,” Death added.
Starlight paused, then nodded. “Yeah…” She looked back down over her old town. “When ponies die, I… I know there is equality. It’s a path everypony walks, no matter how high the pedestal. There’s only one certainty that everypony knows, no matter how much smarter they believe themselves to be.”
She gave Death a long, sad stare.
He said nothing.
“I don’t want this, Death. I don’t want to spend the rest of forever watching everything I tried to stop in life. I don’t want to see ponies suffer any more.”
She turned back to the town, having grown used to the void of silence that reminded her she was dead.
A black hoof found her shoulder. She turned and saw Death on her other side, sandwiching her between him and the lantern. “Wouldn’t it be kinder, Starlight? Merciful? To take them to peace? To guide them toward the tunnel’s end?”
Starlight looked back up at him, shocked by his gentler tone.
“An end to pain, misery, regret.” Death’s hoof left her shoulder. “All will be free. When all's said and done, when legacies are forged and broken, when the rat race finally ends… all are equal.”
She looked up and saw Death float over the cliff before her, holding the lantern. Offering it.
“Such is death.”
Starlight stared at it. She stared tiredly at the lantern. The souls it must’ve taken, pain it must’ve ended, the peace it must’ve brought. Such a little thing.
Starlight would suffer. She knew that. She feared that. All the faces she’d see―faces she had come to know over the years―would plead. And she would have to deny them. All the ponies who thought she was a monster, all those she’d wronged… She’d have to face them.
She would suffer. But she would get used it. She had to.
The lantern was the key.
It would reunite Sugar Belle with her father. It would bring peace to her town. It would show Twilight Sparkle the error of her ways. It would finally show all of Equestria, the world―no, the cosmos―what she tried to accomplish all along.
She took a deep breath.
The key to equality.
At long last.
Starlight took the lantern from Death.
Ego Sum Aeuqalitas
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Oh wow, I really like the changes you made to this. Much improved from the early version I saw.
"Starlight...?" whispered a pink mare with a raspberry mane. The gray, clothed mare blinked. Nopony, not even those she had wronged, knew who she was when their times came. How could...?
Death shook her head, a ghost of a smile gracing her face.
Yes, Pinkie."
____________________________________________________
This was...a very, very emotional story.
And I loved every single second of it.
Lovely, as always.
I wonder who the Death Starlight talked to used to be.
I liked it and Death was not wrong as death doesn't play favorites to anything that dies.
I walked along the darkened glade, pausing beneath a tree. "Hello?" I called out.
A mare, her coat fray and dark like the background, a blue lantern in her aura, stepped up to me. She looked at be from beneath her hood and disappeared in a swirl of black mist. She almost immediately appear on the other side of the tree.
Wait, I know that mare...
"Starlight Glimmer?" I asked. She froze and glanced at me, before chuckling and tossed off the hood. She smirked at me, her own old wrinkles mirroring mine.
"Answer me this riddle..." She said, placing the lantern between us. "... Twilight Sparkle."
"Because I could not stop for death..."
This story is incredible!
The way you build up Death to be sinister, but then soften him as you show how he is not only merciful but good is honestly brilliant. And drawing parallels between him and Starlight Glimmer is a brilliant move in terms of illustrating how even a well intentioned, and perhaps rightfully intentioned character can seem evil, when while what they offer is different, it does solve so much misery, granted by perhaps introducing a new kind of dysphoria, or perhaps a dystopia, or in the final case of Death, oblivion.
"Wait, where are you going?" She said, having looked up from examining the lantern to see Death slowly floating away from her.
"My job is done." Death said, "It is up to you to continue my work now, Starlight Glimmer."
A small part of her felt like crying, but another part wanted to know.
"Who were you? Before all of this, who were you?"
Death was silent, and Starlight began to think that the spirit wouldn't answer.
"I was like you," they said, "But now I am nothing."
And then, they were gone.
Death glanced at the lantern clasped in her hoof once more, noticing that the shadows that once melted her flesh now danced across it in thin wisps. The lives of a hundred million were made equal by this dark lamp, and now she would help make equal a million more.
Death looked across the world before her.
She had a lot of work to do.
An interesting take on the destiny of Starlight Glimmer. The story was gritty and grotesque but not to the point where simply became a gore fest. There's emotion and turmoil to be found here as well. Overall a tale as dark as they come.
Excellent job
Wow i feel sorry for starlight fir previous actions in her town
This...is genius. I always thought that Starlight's ideal of total equality was admirable, but also that her actions were so extreme to the point that it made her seem like a villain. But seeing someone interpret Starlight's motives as a display of her true destiny - leading the souls of the dead to equality for all of eternity - was actually mind-blowing and thought-provoking.
If she doesn't like ponies dying, she still has pretty good incentive to accept: she could try to break rules.