Fall
It happened.
It had finally happened.
Equestria lay in ruins. Around Celestia. Around her sister, Luna. And around it, their subjects lay in ruins of their own.
It tore Celestia’s heart apart to see the land like this. Gray. Ash falling from the sky. Complete and utter silence.
Her sister, next to her, an expression of absolute horror on her face. Tears forming vivid, highlighted lines on her face where the dust had been cleared away by the salty water.
And, originating just a few miles away from where Ponyville used to be, a crater. A crater of incomprehensible proportions; miles upon miles across, dozens of miles deep.
And above that, a cloud. It resembled a tree or mushroom, and it was dozens of miles high. There were twenty-two smaller smoke rings surrounding it, Celestia counted.
But the worst part? What it all meant.
Equestria was gone. It didn’t exist any longer. Celestia and Luna were the only residents left. All of their subjects were gone. Disintegrated. Absolutely annihilated.
And the rest of the world. They wouldn’t see the sun for weeks. Months, even. This had happened before, albeit on a much smaller scale, and even those had blocked out the sun for a day or two. But this... The rest of the world would suffer. Crops would die. Winter would take hold prematurely. And no pegasi remained that could fix it.
Celestia’s vision clouded. Tears obscured it as best as they possibly could.
“L-... Luna. Do you realize... what you’ve done?”
“Sister... I-”
“DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!? DO YOU REALIZE IT!?”
There was a wet pitter-patter as Celestia’s tears flowed freely.
“I-... I’m sorry, sister!”
“They’re gone, Luna! GONE! SAYING ‘SORRY’ WILL NOT BRING THEM ALL BACK TO LIFE! Saying that you’re ‘sorry’ will not restore our beautiful country!” Celestia emphasized the last word by stamping on the ground with her hoof, stirring up a wake of dust.
“I know that, sister! I didn’t mean to! I... I couldn’t have meant to...”
“You lost control. Admit it right now. You lost your goddessdamned control.”
“Please sister, don’t swear like tha-”
“Do not call me your sister. No sister of mine could have ever done this.”
Luna shrank away from Celestia’s tirade. “Please, sister! You don’t mean that!”
“Oh, but I do, Luna. Millions. That’s how many. Millions of ponies. Dead. All of them. In one single instant, gone. And who is to be held accountable? Oh, that’s right, my incompetent SISTER. I am ashamed to share blood with you. I am ashamed to admit that I even know you,” Celestia hissed.
Luna sobbed uncontrollably, inconsolable as her sister disowned her. “Celestia, please! We only have each other now! You can’t do this to me!”
“Look what you did to our country! Our people! MILLIONS, LUNA! YOU KILLED THEM ALL!”
“And the titans wouldn’t have!? Is that what you’re saying? That we stood a chance!?”
Celestia stopped in her tracks and reflected upon what had brought this about...
---------
“Twilight, whatever is the commotion? And why have you teleported your friends here as well? This is my day court, you know.”
Twilight’s voice shook as she answered. “P-princess Celestia, something is happening! I was taking Cerberus back to Tartarus-”
Celestia cut her off. “What!? What was Cerberus doing away from Tartarus?”
Twilight resumed her explanation. “I don’t know! I was taking him back, and when we crested the final hill, I saw... things coming out of it! There were monsters everywhere! I teleported back to Ponyville, gathered my friends, and here we are. We need your help! We don’t know what’s happening! Ponyville is in danger!”
Celestia arose from her throne as her horn started to glow, and she vanished in a flash of light. She reappeared in a completely dark room; Luna’s bedroom.
“Sister, you must wake up at once. The seal we placed on Tartarus has failed. The demons and monsters sealed away are escaping!”
Luna wiped her eyes blearily, but donned her royal raiments quickly. They both teleported back out to the court where Twilight and her friends were trying to console a bawling Fluttershy. They stepped past them and out of the court, and gazed out upon their land. In the direction of Ponyville, several smoke columns were drifting lazily through the sky, giving evidence to the chaos below them. Explosions could be seen from Celestia and Luna’s vantage point. It was dozens of miles away, but it was evident that Ponyville was under attack.
Celestia turned around and started to walk back inside. She started barking orders to her guards at once. “You! Get General Himmock immediately. You have permission to use force if necessary. Tell him we have what could be the most important war Equestria has fought in four thousand years on our hooves here.”
The guard nodded fiercely. “Yes, your majesty!” And he took off at a gallop. Celestia quickly processed more thoughts. “You, contact the post office and inform them that they must send evacuation notices to the mayors of all towns and cities within a one-hundred mile radius of Ponyville. If refugees have nowhere to go, we have room here in Canterlot.” As the guard obeyed the command and left, Celestia thought about what else she normally did in wartime. “Let’s see, let’s see...”
Suddenly the floor started shaking and a deep rumble filled the air. Luna’s voice drifted in from outside. “Tia, get out here now. We need to do something!”
Celestia galloped outside and gasped at what she saw. Where the mountain that stood over Tartarus once was was a massive hand. It dug its fingers deep into the earth and started hauling hard. A massive head appeared shortly thereafter, trees and boulders sliding off of the top of it. It opened its mouth and roared, the sound hitting them seconds later. It sounded angry beyond comprehension, and nearly deafened the two princesses. It shattered several windows in the castle around them and they could hear the retorts of shattering windows from the city far beneath them.
Celestia and Luna looked on it in horror. “Good goddess... a titan,” Celestia breathed. Luna sweated profusely. “C-can our military handle something like that, Tia?”
Celestia bit her lip fiercely. “No. They can’t. It’s just too big... we haven’t fought them in four thousand years. I didn’t think a titan would emerge this quickly.”
Luna shivered slightly as she gazed upon the behemoth slowly pulling itself out of the ground. “Which one is that? I think it’s... Hyperion?”
Celestia shook her head. “No, that’s... oh my goddess. That’s Cronus.” Luna whipped her head around. “What!? But he’s the leader! He’s the strongest and the biggest, and, and-”
Celestia pushed her hoof against Luna’s lips. “Now is not the time to panic, little sister, now is the time for action. Come, we must plan strategies for how we are going to deal with this.” Celestia stood and began to walk away.
“B-but what about Ponyville? Are you saying that you’re just going to abandon it? What will happen to it!?” Luna screeched from her sitting position, unable to tear her eyes away from Cronus. Celestia stood still.
“...Luna... I’m sorry, but there’s no hope for Ponyville at this rate. There are already too many monsters that have escaped, and with Cronus soon to be upon it... there’s no hope, Luna. Just let them be. We cannot save them without endangering the lives of countless others.”
Celestia started to walk inside again, but was interrupted once more by Luna. “So they’re just collateral damage? Is that it? The ‘trojan horse’, if you will, only they won’t be dealing any actual damage? No, they’re just the guinea pigs! The sacrifices! Why would you do that!?”
“Because we cannot save them, Luna! If we had known this was going to happen, then maybe we could have mounted a proper defense, but there’s nothing to be done at this point! With Cronus there!? We cannot save them!”
Celestia felt the light slowly dimming around her, as if the color was being sucked out of the world. She turned around quickly to see that Luna’s horn was sucking it all in, absorbing entirely too much energy. “That’s where you’re wrong, sister. There is something to be done. We can do something!”
Celestia spoke quickly. “Luna, this is madness! Stop that at once! As your older sister and thereby your elder, I command thee to stop at once!”
Luna glared daggers at Celestia even as she gathered power from the air around her. “No, Tia! I won’t let them die! We are in this together, you are not the only one that gets to make decisions!”
Celestia’s heart skipped a beat. “Luna, don’t be a fool! Stop at once! STOP!”
Luna ignored her and continued charging the energy. Lightning bolts started to crackle in the air around her, her horn almost too bright to look at. In the distance, Cronus slowly turned his gargantuan head towards them, seeing the bright light that Luna was creating. Cracks started spreading through the ground around them, and fissures began to open up in the streets of Canterlot while the ground began to rumble as it had before when Cronus was first emerging.
“Don’t do this, Luna! You’ll destroy us all! STOP!” Celestia dove at her sister.
“No Tia, don’t touch me while I’m doing thi-!”
ZHOOOOOT!
The energy instantly released itself all at once. Celestia watched in horror as the beam of light narrowed in on the entrance to Tartarus.
“TWILIGHT! RUN!” Celestia managed to scream as she threw herself in front of her bewildered sister, before a miniature sun blossomed in the middle of her country, her beautiful, beautiful country.
The air around her instantly warmed to over ten-thousand degrees Fahrenheit for less than a fraction of a second. All of the air was then sucked away, towards the epicenter of the blast. Twilight and her friends were dead, completely disintegrated before Twilight had time to process Celestia’s warning. By now, nearly everypony within a hundred miles was dead. Celestia and her sister were in agony. Just because they were immortal did not mean they could not feel pain.
The earthquake hit first. It wasn’t a rumble caused by the blast. It was an earthquake caused by the blast. The ground quaked and buckled beneath Luna and Celestia before either had time to think, mile wide fissures instantly opening up as a result of pure concussive force, tectonic plates being forced apart far more quickly than was natural.
The shockwave hit next. Luna and Celestia were sent flying by the returning air, Celestia desperately clinging on to one of the last living beings in Equestria. They were both nearly deafened by the sound of the blast and would have been completely deafened if not for their immortal bodies. They could not suffer injuries after all, yet pain was still an active feature. Why? Celestia wondered as she and Luna flew mile after mile through the blazing sky.
They crashed into the ground, hard, both of them rolling several hundred feet in the dust and rock before they slowed to a stop. They lay there for several minutes like that, together, both sobbing uncontrollably in part due to the traumatic experience and in part due to the fact that every living pony they had ever known was now gone.
Celestia stood up first. She gazed at her surroundings. Or lack thereof. There was nothing. The mountain that Canterlot had been built on was gone. Whether it had disintegrated from the heat or had been blown away by the shockwave, Celestia was uncertain. She wasn’t even certain how two immortals could survive such a cataclysmic event. Sure, the obvious answer was ‘they’re immortal’, but... destruction on such a grand and catastrophic scale... it just didn’t seem possible.
Luna slowly stood up after Celestia. She stood next to her sister for a time, gazing upon the fireball that consumed their kingdom before she plopped down in the dirt. Celestia sat down next to her and watched all that once was fade from existence.
It happened.
It had finally happened.
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Interesting story. Too bad it says completed. I would have like to have seen a little more. Maybe they try to fix things with time travel or it turns out to be a prophetic dream that twilight and friends must stop. However I did enjoy it, so thanks for the job well done.
970712
I was thinking about that, actually. I'm not sure if I wanted to continue it, or if it would drag on as anything other than a one-shot. I'll get a few more reviews from friends and people like you before I make any big decisions though.
Maybe they have to try and find new subjects from the other lands.
Hell breaks loose. Luna panics. Celestia is pissed.
That's even less actual content than "My little Dashy" and yet I could not stop reading.
How did you do that? Are you a wizard?
I wonder if "dark" would be more appropriate than "Tragedy".
971086
i.imgur.com/3io5G.jpg
971086
Just kidding. Actually, I'm uncertain. I didn't think it would even get this many views, much less favorites, so I'm pretty stoked about that. It makes me happy to see that people are enjoying my story. I'll be sure to write more in the future, and I MIGHT even continue this one. I'm uncertain as of yet, but ideas are presenting themselves.
I rather liked it, but I would suggest not italicizing so much of your story. Anyways, thanks for the interesting read!
972048
Well I would suggest making... your... text... less green! HA!
Just kidding. Fixed it now, is it a smooth transition?
972163 Well, it's certainly less of a strain on the eyes. There was just so much of it, lol. And yes, with the break and set-up line before it, it transitions fairly well, IMHO.
Pretty interesting read there!
Good story anyway!
Is this all, though? It kinda feels like a prologue; like this is the set up for a grand story of retribution and recovery, sorting out the failed gate of Tartarus before starting over from ashes...
Maybe that's just me though
976950
I let a few people read it before posting, and you're the third one here who has suggested continuing it. I'm seriously considering it, honestly. I've had a few ideas floating throughout my head that I've been considering. I'll probably end up writing another chapter or two.
977072
Excellent!
Can't wait to see the path you take this!