Fall of Empire

by Sixes_And_Sevens

All the Rage

Perhaps it was somewhat ironic that the explosion of concentrated fury was what snapped Sweetie out of her enraged trance. Well, perhaps ‘ironic’ wasn't quite the word. Something more along the lines of ‘a particularly cruel prank played by the universe’ might be apt. As her eyes cleared from the red haze that had blinded them, they went wide in shock at the pandemonium that was unfolding around her.

A placid sea of milky white, unnerving to watch, had been ripped away to reveal the fury that it had always been disguising. For years, now, the citizens of the Empire had been living under the iron hoof of their mad king, forced to obey his commands, forced out of their homes, their lives, their minds…

And now they were free. And they were pissed.

It is one thing to have a city filled with soldiers, but quite another to have one full of armed rebels. Quite apart from anything else, the rebels tend to be much louder.

Sombra was many things, but he was no coward. “Reassemble!” he roared. “Back in formation, or suffer my wrath!”

A boot flew out of the crowd and smacked the dark king in the head. “Graaaagh!” he howled. His eyes lit with octarine and his horn glowed with a ruby-red jet of flame. Spires of dark rock began to split the grey crystal. Then, a second boot smacked him right in the horn, and the rocks fell to smithereens in a way that seemed to be half-crumble, half-explosion.

Sombra wasn’t a fool, either. As soon as he had regained his wits, he hightailed it back off the balcony and into the relative safety of the halls. Sweetie Belle had no such ability. Thus far, nopony had paid her any mind, but at any moment that could change. “Hey! She’s not crystal!”

Damn it. A mare lunged for her throat, but Sweetie pulled back, going into a gallop, heading deeper into the sea of furious crystal ponies. At least not all of them were attempting to attack her, specifically. That wasn’t why she ran, of course. You don’t run because you have a plan. You run because you’re scared.

---

You ran away because you were scared. The voice is red and coppery and thin and angled, all bloody scratches and cuts.

“Shut up,” the Doctor muttered, not raising his head. He had already seen the room. He didn’t want to look again.

When you looked into the Vortex, what did you see, Doctor? What did you see? The question was punctuated by a shower of sparks. They burned briefly on the Doctor’s coat, just long enough to make him wince before they faded into nothingness.

“You know what I saw,” he replied.

Yes.

The Doctor breathed in slowly, struggling to remain calm. It felt as though he was breathing mustard. Not the gas. The condiment. Thick, yellow, slimy, like pus tainted with sharp spasms of fear. The darkness of the room did absolutely nothing to help. This time, it was his own TARDIS console room, the one he’d had before crash-landing in Ponyville. The coral cast strange shadows on the grimy walls, the metal now oddly resembling the outside casing of a Dalek. The mood lighting was even lower than normal, barely reaching the level of a candelabrum. “Why are you asking me?” he gagged, barely forcing out the words. “You know. You… saw…”

A low, sadistic chuckle rose up from the center of the room. Against his will, the Time Lord’s head was pushed up, his muscles being gently pulled like polymer clay in the hands of a careful crafter. It was a gentle touch, but something about it suggested that at any moment his head could be crushed into a blob just as easily. He stared solemnly at the thing that occupied the center of the room.

The console was ripped asunder, loose wires sparking, buttons and lights hanging off every which way. In the middle of it, where the time rotor should have been, where it ought to have been by all rights, was a monstrous mechanical… thing. Even as the Doctor watched, it seemed to flicker and warp before his very eyes. Now, it was the Master’s paradox machine. Now, the Mind Probe. Now, a Dalek. At length, however, it seemed to settle on being a colossal robotic head shaped roughly like a stallion’s face. Silver and white-painted metal made up the bulk of the monstrosity. A tangle of sparking wires was visible in its mouth, and a cultivated selection of oily cogs made up its mane. A pair of red LED sights burned into the Doctor’s own watering brown eyes. “Yes. I saw what you saw,” it agreed. It’s voice was the rumble of engines and the click of cogs. “I always have, and I always will. Because—”

“Because you are me, and I am you, blah, blah, blah,” the Doctor sneered. “I bet you even chose a white coat to remind me of the Watcher. Ooh, I am the Spirit of Doctors yet to come! This is getting tiresome.me, Railyard! Get to the point, already!”

“That is not my name.”

“I don't care.”

“You know my name.”

“You’re worse than old Chesterfield, you know that?”

The Valeyard sneered. “Perhaps it's about time I reminded you of that day, when you were eight. A child still. How many millennia has it been since that day, Doctor? How long since you gazed into the untempered schism?”

“Don't you dare. Don't you dare!”

The massive mouth shuddered open and distended. Inside it… nothing. An eternity of nothing. And then…

What is it to be? Will you be inspired? Go mad? Or will you just… run away?

The Doctor opened his mouth, but no words came out. A thin string of drool hung from the side of his mouth, and his lips were flecked with froth and spittle. He gagged on nothing, unable to control his own breathing as his eyes were drawn inexorably toward the center of the nothing. All the sound and fury of the universe shone through the rift in reality. The entire vortex streamed through his head.

And in the center of it all, he saw the same thing that he had seen all those years ago, the sight that had driven him for century upon century. His eyes rolled back in his head, revealing milky white shot through with blood vessels like red lightning.

And the Doctor screamed.

---

Celestia stared in bewilderment at the tableau below. The army of Equestria had broken rank, some attacking the empire while others had fallen to infighting and settling scores among themselves. The Night Guard had fallen into chaos more than her own Solar Guard, but neither side was the elite, disciplined fighting force that they had been even an hour, even ten minutes, even five minutes earlier. That would be dealt with momentarily. For now, she had a far more vital goal in mind.

“Luna!” she called, her voice hollow in the frigid gale that blasted her wings and buffeted her barrel. “Sister, whither art thou?”

There was no reply. “LUNA!” Celestia shrieked desperately. “SISTER! WHERE ARE YOU?”

A familiar scream rose from below, and the already alabaster princess, whiter still in the cold and snow, somehow managed to turn even paler. Had any other ponies been present and staring directly at the princess, they would have gone blind from the light reflecting off of Celestia’s body— it was reflected, surely, not even Celestia could glow like that— as surely as they would have if they had stared right at the sun.

She dropped, like a stone to begin with, but soon she recovered enough from the shock to turn her fall into falcon-like dive. Her mane, all pink and yellow, streamed out behind her like a trail of fire and fury as she screamed downward, precipitation steaming off her coat as her eyes stung with the wind in her face. She had to find Luna. She had to save her sister. That was more important than anything else.

For the very briefest of moments, her vision flashed red. In the next moment, it was gone, and Celestia dismissed the thought instantly. She was too preoccupied even to notice that the cold white crystals striking her face were no longer made of ice…

---

Sweetie ran, panicked, through the crowd. Occasionally, one of the warriors turned to attack her, but on the whole the majority of attacks were directed toward other members of the mob. Somehow that was, in turns, more comforting and more unsettling. Certainly, the lack of attacks toward her personally was more than welcome, but the directionless rage, undiluted by its lack of purpose, was unnerving. In the corner of her eye, she saw a mare blindly thrusting a bent sword against a crystal wall, swearing and screaming fit to turn the turn the rock around her black and cratered with the heat of her fury.

She turned her head and saw a colt, no more than fourteen, beating his head against the wall. His helmet was cracking down the center, and the stone had been colored red with more than anger.

Fighting back rising bile, Sweetie tucked down her head and hurried forward, hooves clattering rapidly over cold crystal ground, refusing to look around her, dodging blindly the misplaced swings from the rage-mad armored ponies around her and she could feel the hot, angry breaths and painful pants and shrieks of those around her and she could smell the sharp cold smell of snow and taste in the air the copper stench of war.

Cold. Hard. She blinked. Her legs were still kicking feebly, but she wasn’t moving. There was something sitting on her chest and she could smell something all at once unique and mundane. The smell of blood is like the color of water; those who have experienced it all have different descriptions of the sensation, though those who have never observed the phenomena have many, many more. Further, in order to really have a deep view of the experience, one generally requires an unhealthily large amount of the substance.

Slowly, the filly tried to lift her head from the floor, but a green hoof shoved her back down roughly. Flecks of gravel scraped against her cheek and eyelid, and she bit her tongue. With her one good eye, she stared in horror at her attacker. The armor, dark and Stygian, replete with a gem that was the color of a brick being hurled at furious speeds, that was familiar. The face, green and shiny and feminine, that was familiar also. It was the unexpected juxtaposition of the two that brought Sweetie up short. “Jade?”

The former advisor sneered down at her. “You. You and your friend. You cost me everything!” she barked. “I thought I had reached the very bottom, the deepest pit of Tartarus, and you two came along with picks and spades.”

Slowly, her gaze never leaving Sweetie's eyes, she pressed a hoof down onto the young mare’s foreleg. Sweetie whimpered, a thin trickle of blood escaping her mouth, and a sadistic grin spread over the older mare’s face. “I’m going to kill you first,” she crooned. “I don’t hate you as much as the others, see. I’ll be quicker with you. The Doctor next, a little slower. Everypony in the square, one by one. Each time, a little. Bit. Slower. And after that? After his army is gone, I’m gonna take down him. I think that’s poetic, right? More ponies he got to, the more ponies I kill. More ponies I kill, slower I go when I take his head off. But you? You get to go first. Like I said, I’ll be quick.” A hoof caressed Sweetie’s cheek. “Well. Relatively quick.”

She smiled then. It was not a nice smile, but neither was it a wholly cruel one. There was something in it that rung false with Sweetie, a certain vapidness in the older mare’s expression.

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Don’t I?” Jade asked, and now the unicorn could hear it, could just detect the faint tremble in her voice. “I think I do. Do you know what I’ve lost? Do you know what I’ve become? I betrayed my friends! They’re all gone. All gone, now.” Her force lessened for a moment, then came back just as firmly. “I want to, I need to do this,” she half-snarled.

“No, you don’t. Jade, think. This isn’t like you. I’ve only known you since earlier tonight, but you said yourself that you were sick of war! You’re not a fighter, Jade, you’re a diplomat!”

The red in the crystal dimmed and flickered a variety of colors. Sweetie could almost swear that she heard it hiss like hot metal in cold water. Before she could be certain, though, Jade was gone. In an instant, green face had been replaced with a tan hoof.

Sweetie Belle peeled her face from the grey crystal ground. The Doctor stood over her in the manner of an avenging angel, his face stony and furious. She scrambled to her hooves. “Doctor! We need to go, I think I know—”

She cut off abruptly as the Time Lord turned to face her. He wasn’t staring at her, per se, but rather through her, as though she were as ephemeral as a whistled tune. His face was a grotesque mask of pain and rage, his eyes dilated and bloodshot, his lips twitching and flecked with spittle, like the mouth of a mad dog. Around his neck, the collar that had led him to this place still remained. It glowed like a red sun, like a supernova, like a dying planet. And the Doctor opened his mouth and he roared.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

A boot flew out of the crowd and smacked the dark king in the head.

I know this is going to get much worse and probably quite bloody, but a boot to the head is always funny.

Then, a second boot smacked him right in the horn, and the rocks fell to smithereens in a way that seemed to be half-crumble, half-explosion.

And one more for Jenny and the wimp.

Oh dear. Happy fun boot time is over. Now we have a few gods gone mad to worry about. Forget burning juice, Sweetie may have managed to melt an empire...