Left Behind: Sunny Disposition

by The Psychopath

Only One Immortal is Present

The buildings continued to burn despite nothing being left to catch fire. The ponies engulfed in the flames had emerged, infused with fire that cracked skin and bone. Their very beings had been consumed by the burning light that shone intensely above, turning them into little more than snarling beasts that burned everything they touched.

Solar Flare looked at her work with satisfaction and gazed upon the survivors of her wrath that consumed her very body. Her body pulsed as the magma within her flew through the exposed veins of her flesh. The survivors trembled in her presence while the sun in the sky expanded throughout its entirety as if celebrating the return of its master.

Solar Flare grinned, exposing the sharpened obsidian dripping with magma serving as teeth. "Oh yes, I missed you, too. Did you miss me during these few years that I was away?" she coo'd at the celestial body. She pointed a hoof at the terrified mayor. "Where are the 'heroes' that imprisoned me? I would have their heads and those of their family and hometowns." The veins along her body glowed intensely when she noticed the mayor staring at her blankly. "I asked you a question!" Her hoof started to glow white and a heat haze formed around it from the heat.

"I don't understand a thing you're saying!" the mayor stammered.

The alicorn raised a brow and looked at the crowd, causing them all to scream in terror. Solar Flare grit her teeth together, causing sparks to fly everywhere. "Just my luck. I reform outside of Equestria," the mare grumbled angrily as she took the surroundings in. She looked back up at the sun and smiled, letting eddies of lava spill from beneath her sharp, blackened teeth and burn the ground.

---

The survivors were surprised to see her lie down on the ground and close her eyes while the sun itself started to calm down and return to its smaller size and gentle white light.

"What is this thing?!" a mare screamed in horror. Her face was soaked with tears, both from the smoke irritating them and seeing her city and loved ones burn.

"This creature turned the Peanuts into burned monstrosities!" a stallion said angrily. "They're there!"

A once elderly mare and stallion stomped through the seemingly eternally burning ruins. Their eyes and mouth had been hollowed out, leaving a bright yellow light filling in the empty spaces. Their faces were trapped in a permanent rictus as the flames ravaged and charred their bodies to apparently no painful effect. Their bodies appeared similar to Solar Flare's, although most had simple, glowing red patterns along their blackened bodies. It was like they had been transformed into something else. Something Equestria was never meant to see. Several of the older pony survivors' muscles clenched upon seeing the display.

"it has...two wings...and a horn," an elderly mare with the right side of her face burned said. "Is...is she that supposing goddess from the north?"

"Goddess?" a stallion repeated quizzically.

"I heard that there was a pony with wings and a horn that suddenly appeared up north..." She patted the side of her face and flinched in pain. "I haven't heard much else than that, but I know that they're called alicorns and were considered goddesses in the past."

The mayor looked at the flaming monstrosity before him and furrowed his brow. "I would call those baseless rumors, but seeing that thing?" He grumbled. "I'm inclined to believe you."

The alicorn stomped before them. "I will return," she growled.

The ponies audibly gulped as she took off. They thought themselves safe, but flames grew around them, trapping them within the confines of a small patch of forest and the city.

---

"I should cover myself with a cloaking spell. I don't want to deal with those traitors and monsters," Solar Flare grumbled to herself. The sun glowed brightly, as though it had been reinvigorated by the return of its master, but that wasn't very conducive to stealth. "Calm yourself," the alicorn told it. "You risk my life."

The sun acquiesced almost instantly, returning to its calm state and left the newly reborn alicorn to gaze at the lands around her place of rebirth. A grimace burst from her charred skin, letting droplets of magma to seep through before it healed itself.

"That's...odd. I left Canterlot behind, but I should be able to see the mountain, from here," Solar mumbled to herself. "I have things to recover there. She should be more than willing to let me into my old home."

Calling upon the sun's memory, Solar Flare was guided through Equestria, although the alicorn felt great discomfort at the sights. The land was misshapen. The cities and villages she knew had vanished. There were statues of her and Luna that used to be placed everywhere, and now there was no trace of them. In fact, there was no trace of anything anywhere, really. Solar furrowed her brows, cracking the surface of her body and letting droplets of magma slip out.

When a series of immense glass towers started coming into view, Solar Flare knew that something was very, very off. "I told you to guide me to Canterlot, not this...what even are these? They built all of this in a few years?" The alicorn looked to the sun. "Well?" She paused while the memories of her star flooded into her. The images were wild and burnt, but they got the point across. Solar Flare felt her fury starting to build up again.

Rather than wait or destroy everything, she dashed towards the closest tower and shorn clean through the glass and steel keeping it up. Pipes that had melted along with the glass and steel let out all the steam and condensation they held. Several griffins were fatally charred and the rest several burned as the sudden wave of extreme heat burned through everything in a wave. Chairs and desks had been turned to ash and slag. Was it a business? Solar Flare didn't care.

She grabbed the nearest griffin crawling away by his left wing and pulled his burnt face close to hers. "What is this place? Where is Canterlot?"

"Wha--"

The alicorn shook him violently. "The mountain! There was a mountain here!"

"Who-Wha--"

He was casually thrown aside and through a weakened wall, leaving Solar Flare to stomp towards the opposite of the building and glare downwards. Since when was there a city of griffins in Equestria? There were visitors, but they never came here of their own volition. She wiped her muzzle with the tip of a feather and peered into the distance. The ground and position of the glass buildings were odd. The alicorn was too enraged to think clearly, but if her castle was destroyed, then there was a chance that the storage below was still intact. It had been built very very deep into the mountain, after all.

The mare pressed a hoof to the windows and watched them melt instantly, leaving an immense, gaping hole that she let herself fall through. It wasn't as 'casual' for the city and its inhabitants when they witnessed a living mass of molten rock fall down vertically and both instantly melt any material it almost came into with and turn to ash any living thing that got too close.

With a loud 'thump', the pony had reached the bottom of the city and left behind a pool of boiling mud and rock behind. Solar Flare knew that her powers would destroy everything if she let them be, so she did her best to keep them under control. Her secret was wide enough and had enough residual magic coming off it that she would at least know which direction to go towards if she missed it somehow, and if she felt nothing? Her face cracked into a sinister rictus.

The wind was suddenly pushed out of the alicorn's lungs when she suddenly found herself in a small opening and hitting a sturdy object. There wasn't much space, however, so the alicorn bounced against the rocky cavern walls from the surprise impact. The light coming off of her was the only true illumination the caverns had seen in millennia.

"Too early..." Solar grumbled as she rubbed her head. "Should have at least a few..." Her eyes widened when she saw what she stumbled upon.

Silently, she climbed along the rock wall and jumped into a gaping hole leading into the castle. It was her castle. Her old castle. Solar looked around silently, ignoring the crunching her hooves produced on the dirt and parchment fragments scattered about the floor. Everything had become decrepit, but more importantly.

"Why is Canterlot underground?" she murmured. Panic started filling her. "They couldn't have. Not her. Not another!"

The alicorn bolted through the castle, noticing the deathly silence that followed her everywhere she went. She bolted towards her old room, gasping for breath. There was nothing left except a rotting bed in tatters and a vanity mirror shattered on the ground. Well, from what she could tell. The room had long since caved in from the pressure outside. The magma within Solar Flare spiked in brightness and the air around her started heating up, producing a haze.

"They take my beloved sister away from me, and my own daughter?!" the alicorn bellowed at the top of her voice.

She felt a chill along her spine from something wandering the halls. Taking her leave, she was met with a transparent mass of writhing shapes floating in front of her. She could barely make out any defining traits, but on occasion, a stretched-out face with no eyes would surface briefly and the moaning the entity produced would grow louder.

The mare snorted. "Some kind of amalgam of treacherous souls," she mocked. "Are we meant to have some kind of battle where you torment me with my past? Am I meant to end myself?" Solar Flare cackled. She looked to her right hoof and focused. A crimson-red spark ran along it briefly. "A perfect moment to test this new magic on a subject..." She looked up at the mass and raised a brow. "Undead is still technically living."

Her whole body coursed with reddish magic, turning her magma pure red. She leaped at the mass and swiped at it with her hooves. In response, it unleashed an ear-splitting howl that almost deafened her, but now the red was spreading throughout the mass that gradually became visible whilst floating, immobile, in the dirty air.

Solar Flare looked at herself and frowned as the magic dissolved and she recovered her normal colors. "Red and black...fantastic... It's still incomplete, even after all those years of research." The alicorn hummed to herself. "I can barely channel any of it. With some luck, I'll be able to use my whole body as a channel for it." She looked over her shoulder towards the mass. It was changing thanks to the magic.

Solar Flare continued through the halls, disturbed by the state of decay. She found herself at the entrance that had caved in and stared at what was once the entrance. Everything filled with the light of her sun, the floors and walls immaculate and clean. Guards everywhere, guests commenting on the work of her gardeners. The alicorn clenched her forehead. The memories brought about a sickly pain. She fought through the feeling as best she could and sighed in relief when it finally went away.

The mare scanned the room, lamenting the state it was in then noticed the entrance to her secret was open. Did they find it?! She hopped down and analyzed everything she could. The dust and dirt had only recently been disturbed, and there were signs of large hoof prints around it. Perhaps the culprits were still around. She dove down the abyss and slammed hard enough into the ground that the walls shook in response. Solar Flare noticed that everything here was changed as well. The entry shaft went deeper into the mountain than it used to, and the entrance to her archives was far bigger as well. Flanking the entrance were two immense statues. The mare wasn't sure what they were exactly and chose to ignore them until the heads turned instantly to look at her. Brandishing spears, they moved from their pedestals and aimed at the alicorn in an attempt to stab.

She put up a shield in front of her that did little to stem the momentum that crashed into it and launched her all the way back to the bottom of the shaft.

"I never made those!" Solar Flare shouted in surprise.

Furious, she charged at them, her wing tips dragging along the ground. A trail of widening rivers of lava followed the alicorn until she skid to a halt. With a flick of her wings, the rivers erupted forward and engulfed both statues. With Solar's magic, the lava hardened almost instantly, but the statues were trying to free themselves regardless.

"Tenacious little constructs, aren't you?" Her horn started glowing. "But not tenacious enough."

A small sun came off the tip of the alicorn's horn like a bubble. It floated gently in the air and stopped between both struggling statues. Its surfaces waved and boiled until it burst open and dozens of beams of light shot out all at once. The statues had been cut to pieces and were no longer moving.

"Bleugh." The alicorn leaned towards one of the statues and raised a brow. "Interesting. I don't recognize this magic."

The archives seemed more or less intact, but there was no light. Solar Flare remedied that with her own magic, illuminating the entirety of the chamber. It was entirely clean, much to her shock, but her magma simmered. There was a foreign magic she didn't recognize in immense quantities lingering around, and they weren't related to the statues. That said, they were old, but Solar Flare couldn't figure out how long ago. Regardless, they were still strong enough that the remnants couldn't have been more than a year old.

"Whoever was here didn't destroy anything, and I don't see anything stolen..." Solar Flare rubbed her chin with a wing. She flew up above one of the bookshelves and shoved her hooves and horn into the wall. The stones shifted around her body, locked in, then pulled away with the alicorn let out just a drop of her own magic, revealing a room hidden within an already hidden location. "Ha ha, they didn't find it," she mused.

Her magic had already illuminated this room. Glass orbs floated silently in the air, awaiting somepony to relieve them of their charge. Their occupants reflected off the uneven and somewhat sharp floor and walls made from glass. Fortunately, they couldn't harm Solar Flare, but the mare still noticed black spots of dried blood dotted sparingly around.

"Did she finish my research?" the mare wondered.

Solar Flare used her magic to bring one of the orbs to her and went rummaging through the parchments until her hoof hit something solid. She pulled it out eagerly and smiled widely when she saw the cover. On the brown, peeling cover was written 'Monster Tracking' with a silver inlay. The alicorn pulled the book open gently with a hoof and started going through the pages until she found a footnote holding one of the pages open. With age it had flattened and broken apart, but its dregs were present enough in the pages that they garnered the readers' attention. At the top of the page were written in big letters: Locations of Vesuvius Vulcans. An asterisk next to it had been added by far worse hoof writing, and said author's name was in the middle of the page.

The alicorn dragged a hoof across the page melancholically. She turned it and the following pages until her eyes fell upon a page that had the distinctive scrunching and ink dirtying caused by tears.

"To my dear mother. I find myself wishing I could have done something for you, to alleviate your pain, but you are gone now. Even though I know your heart was consumed by grief and fury, and you harmed all those ponies because of it, I still love you. So, I decided to finish your research into finding a gigantis vesuvius vulcan, that I may cast a spell on it to make it slumber.

They're much like you: A force of nature, but they don't intend to do harm. They simply exist, and really, how could anypony truly harm either of you?"

The rest of the page was illegible save for a few letters, then a single line at the bottom that had mostly been spared was filled in by its reader.

"I wish I could have met Aunt Luna. Now I'm all alone."

Solar Flare's heart clamped in her chest, but she pushed on. Those words were going to haunt her for a long time to come, at least until she found her daughter...so why did it feel like she was gone forever. The mare pushed her paranoia away and turned the page.

There it was. The location of a gigantis vesuvius vulcan. She would finally get her revenge on all those traitors, and all she had to do was wake it up and nothing more. Solar Flare held the book in her magic as she looked around. Her actual artifacts would serve her better in pony than if they remained here. She shrunk them down and hid them within her mane, at least until she returned to the village. Looking back at her archives, the alicorn could feel something engulfing her heart with grief, but she couldn't figure out why.

The older 'artifacts' weren't of any use to her. If somepony had taken them, it didn't matter. She didn't even notice the melted doors when she left. Instead, she returned to the amalgam of angry souls and smiled when she saw her work completed.

"It worked! Amazing!" she cheered.

"I serve the Queen of the Sun with all my souls," a voice responded.

Author's Note:

Those of you who know of my oldest works might recognize the Vesuvius Vulcans. Those who don't? Well, you'll find out :>

Comments

[Batpony46]

Soler flares back on this will be interesting I can't wait to see what happens next

[valexto]

Woo, nicely done! Can't wait to see what's going to happen next. The reunion between Nightmare Moon and Solar Flare will be intense

[Donttouchmysqueenus]

Great to see another chapter of this as always.

[Thranx]

I wonder when will she realise the Mare on the Moon is not there anymore.

"Bleugh." The alicorn leaned towards one of the statues and raised a brow. "Interesting. I don't recognize this magic."

That's interesting. How can she not recognise her sister's magic? Are Luna's and Nightmare Moon's magic are not the same? Either that or she has already forgotten how Luna's magic felt like. After all, 10,000 years is a long time to remember anything.

[The Psychopath]

11462668
Well, first, the statues weren't animated by Nightmare Moon. They were animated by the group the false alicorn was part of.

And then, recall the Nightmare Moon doesn't look like she used to millennia ago and that she's now broiling with the combined magic of several moons. That, and she was fused to her own satellite for so long that its powers are essentially just her, now. It would be difficult for Solar Flare, who thinks only a few years passed, to recognize the magic.

[Thranx]

11462673
Ah, that makes sense.

[Black--Soul]

The destruction of the fake Alicorn released Celestia original soul?

[tsaukpaetra]

Ah, the sun isn't telling her a critical fact, because she hasn't thought to ask the right questions...