The Tallmare (being reworked)

by hus

Finale part2: a city of distant memory

Twilight still felt the darkness and the throbbing headache spazzing through her as she waited for death to take her or, by some miracle, to live. Her eyes were clenched shut but she felt like she was being dragged through the sky, yet, there was no feeling of clouds in her mane or the rising altitude. That, or the air pressure seemed to shift abnormally from deep underwater levels of pressure to high altitude levels. The heat also seemed inconsistent, from feeling flashes of icy cold to volcanic hot and then to lukewarm. She didn’t know what was happening or where she was going, but she felt uncertainty and fear. The headache soon stopped as well as the constant shift in air pressure and temperature. She slowly opened her eyes and was greeted with a sunset. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the light of Celestia’s sun as she opened them a tiny bit and then closed them before opening them and repeating for what felt like ten minutes. Her eyes took in the steep shoreline that she stared in front of and looked down at the small hill she was lying on. Honestly, it was quite the scenic view for the suffering mare: a tall cliff that faced the ocean with a large beach of sand underneath. But Twilight wondered, where was she? And why wasn’t the sun moving down? She got back onto all fours and looked around the picturesque valley around her when her eyes stumbled upon a city she didn’t recognize. The city looked like one giant art piece. The skyscrapers weren’t like the ones in Manehattan but rather, were twisted cylinders that had their large windows spiraling upwards and other buildings looked mushroom-shaped with the domes on top being connected by garden bridges. In Twilight’s eyes, this city looked utopian but had unrecognizable architecture. The flag of it was strange, it was the head of a mare with her eyeballs falling out with two bundles of flowers growing out of her mouth.

She then decided to step down a bit from the cliff and noticed a highway entering the city. She decided to follow it and noticed that despite it looking somewhat close to modern in its design, there were no cars on it. Instead, wagons and travelers were walking about it. It was narrow as well, not meant for the smoke-belching vehicles that the current Equestria had. It appeared that the use of concrete at this point in Pre-Equestrian history was much more different than its modern usage. While the development of motorized vehicles in Twilight’s time led to large cement paved roads, this civilization on the other hand had already had it and used it for the construction of old-fashioned roads. As Twilight continued to saunter into the atypical city she noticed how the streets reminded her of Manehattan a bit, but there was a difference. Architecturally, the buildings were not blocks nor were they triangles or any shape that would be considered flat or linear, rather, they were curved with bent twisted metal pillars holding their entrance roofs high with the rest of the building twisting up into the sky as if the builders had sloppily built upwards. The inconsistent layout plans, the metal that made up the buildings, as well as the rooms twisted around several windows that were just randomly scattered about. She could even see, on one of the windows, that the metal melted onto the glass probably due to some builders sloppy metal working. The advertisements were different as well, but she couldn’t tell if they were advertisements at all. Each of them had that same creepy head of a mare with flowers sprouting out of her eyes and mouth, the very same head that was on the flag. As she looked at both of them closely, she heard this echoing in her ear. It was a voice- but whose?

“Praise be our martyr who has blessed our sacred dirt. May the inferior tribes be looked upon with shame. May our lady of the bloodied garden shine upon us-”

Twilight looked at the sign with a cringe as she started to realize the voice was reading the words to her. The cult-like vibes of these words were all over the same posters that littered the streets. She could tell this because every time she would flick her eyes to a different one the same voice repeated it back to her. Then she noticed a different one next to the ones previously read. It had a black background like the other ones but this time it illustrated one of the main buildings she had seen.

“The Tower of Our Blessed Lady stands tall amongst our city, blessed is her skull amongst the many tapestries of our kin. For many of our kind that thrive in this city offer tribute to the Lady of the Flowers. Henceforth we name our city after this blessed tower. Thus this city is known as Babel.”

Twilight’s eyes slowly focused back onto the tower with awe. She could now start to hear the haunting melody of an organ playing at the very top of the tower. The choir of speaking an incomprehensible language joined with the haunting symphony. The sound of the organ’s notes was long and dragged out and so were the vocals of the ponies that sang from high above on the tower.

As she continued to listen with strange wonderment her scenery changed. She was now looking up at the clouds and the music was now coming behind her. Her head slowly turned back to see a temple with a giant ornate golden pedestal sitting in the middle. Around the temple laid murals depicting the horrors of tribal warfare and cannibalism. As she continued looking at them she started to realize the murals must have been portraying the so-called inferior tribes in a negative light. The others seemed to focus on the familiar-looking mare picking up flowers into a small basket, it was the same mare on the flag but alive and well. Each mural of the mare depicted her with innocence, ritualistic piety, and serenity. The final ones depicted her death on a battlefield with flowers subtly growing out of her eyes. The soldiers surrounding her were all consumed by unnatural roots that jumped out of the earth and ate and tore at their limbs. The very last one showed her first followers offering the so-called enemy her head and slitting their throats with mournful tears in their eyes. When Twilight’s eyes focused back on the shrine she noticed the same offerings repeated. The blood of the recently captured was being mopped up by a stallion in priestly robes as pilgrims muttered mournful prayers to the skull. The horrified eyes of the captured stared back into Twilight’s. There was a form of fear that Twilight felt as she stared into those eyes. She saw confusion, fear, and hopelessness in the dead filly's eyes. They killed her without remorse, they killed her because of the blind hate that consumed their mind.

She turned away from the sacrifice to look back at the city but noticed she wasn't entirely alone. There was a mare with a long braided mane and moss-green coat, She had a plain business suit on and was looking at what Twilight assumed was a list of pilgrims who were visiting. She looked unremarkable yet Twilight felt as if there was something familiar about her, the only thing Twilight could note about her was that she was quite a tall mare.

As she and the mare stared into the sunset s sudden flash of green, purple, blue, and yellow filled the sky. As Twilight slowly opened her eyes again she heard Luna's archaic accent whisper out a single thing, Aurora Borealis. That was what was indeed happening in the sky, Twilight hadn't seen one before-hoof but now she was. The lights danced around the city and seemed to swirl around the city. They looked as if they were right above the towers and almost looked like they were going to brush against the skyscraper’s metal surface.

Twilight Then saw in the center of the lights a glowing orb. As she continued to look at the orb she realized there was an alicorn inside of it. The alicorn then flew down and the lights followed with her. As the lights followed the mysterious alicorn skyscrapers got chewed up as the lights consumed them, Twilight could see the steel being melted off the buildings and could hear screams echoing from the other strange buildings. The prayers behind her soon turned more desperate as the lights swept closer. The mare in a business suit was now sobbing as the glowing alicorn bolted towards them. Twilight now saw the alicorn’s face, its hair was web gray and its eyes were sunken to the point where Twilight could only see the pupils.

The lights enveloped The tower and Twilight with the rest of the long-since-dead ponies. Pain beyond her imagination screamed through her body as she felt the light burning her body away. She couldn't scream, she couldn't cry, all she could do was stare into the lights.

Then the pain stopped, she was in darkness yet again. She felt like there was nothing beneath her hooves yet she was still standing. Far in front of her was the same mare in the business suit, wearing the skull that was in the shrine. Twilight ran towards the stranger with tears running down her face as other strangers walked out of the darkness. She didn't know why but she kneeled before the stranger as she sobbed. The screams of the others, the ponies of the city filled the void as she continued to cry. There was a ringing in her eyes and a headache in her horn as the stranger approached closer. The screams and cries then suddenly sounded like they had moved in front of her before it was quiet again.

She looked back up at the Tallmare as its lack of face looked down at her with what she guessed was pity. She let out a horse laugh as she shakily lifted herself and slammed her hoof into the entity's barrel. “just..Fucking..Give me Spike back! Just…give him back you stupid dead city!”