The Dark Below

by WindigogoGadget

On The Hills Of Equestria.

Calm enveloped the world. For an instant, there was no bombings, nor the screech of arrows whizzing by or the howls of burning spells and furious phantoms, and for the faintest moment in Equestria, there was peace and green grass.

The last city, Dis, had been converted into a fortress as news of the Equestrian death march grew and the voices of the other cities went silent. Changeling and pony architecture revolutionized in a single night with the assistance of the phantoms and their thoughts and ideology on wars and combat, and each and every column of the city was elegant and purpose-built, with intent behind every molding and every cleverly disguised barricade and defensive line- every brick and every buttress had one goal. To be an elegant grave, of a last stand.

It's makers had ordained a different purpose long ago. But that did not matter now.

Emerald swirls spiraled across black walls, as buildings lay in various states of destruction. Some cracked, some broken and shattered- and others were simply gone. The results of their most powerful spells against the strongest barriers of darkness. But not even the strongest light can burn away all darkness.

Somewhere in the distance, music played as innocent civilians desperately clung to some sense of normalcy as the war raged on just outside their doorstep, as moment by moment, each injection of lethal soldiers broke further and further into the cities flesh, poisoning more and more sections as its life was slowly extinguished by a creeping death, only barely repelled with more and more losses by the hour, as the residents of homes turned to skeletons, the dead began to populate their lost land, and sat at every table, laid broken in every road, and unrecognizably pulped in the gutters.

Sometimes the dead still walked among them. Fighting to their last breath, clinging to this world by their teeth. Not for a people, a country or a belief- but for life itself. They walked with poisoned blood and shattered hooves as they willed a moment longer in a doomed corpse to take at least one more before they went.

War. On The Hills Of Equestria.

Some were praying. For the leaves off the tree. For the freedom, their freedom, to reign. Others hid, and others were locked in deadly combat. Purple needles flew, shields were cast, explosives were thrown. Magical warfare was a violent display of colours and gore, like macabre fireworks. The meatbags would pop, and the shadows would burn.

Fitting.

It wasn't always like this though. For a day the tides of war beat them down without their divine intervention. For the shadows, his remnants, to kill, was against the commandments. The code. Their orders.

But it was not against the commandment to be used as a weapon. To form themselves into swords, armor, and weapons nothing on Equestria had ever seen before. Mandibles that spewed blue balls of plasma. Boxes that shot rods of light, a mockery of their solar beams that glassed their homes. They gave up their will to be used in another's name.

All in the name of defending not their place of living but the ponies. To evacuate everyone. With their help they had turned a quick and decisive victory for the army into five long days of hell.

Evacuation efforts would take time. Too much time. They were fortunate they had thrown everything they had at their disposal to fortify their houses, for it had bought them time. Not enough to outlast the army, but it had been enough for them to waste. They wasted a day and a half, thinking, hoping, praying, as the battalions outside failed to breach the city.

Then the barriers fell on the second day. And blood, spilled.

But no more. One way or another, this would stop. All of it. And it knew how it would prefer it to end. Not with a wail, not with the gnashing of teeth as they armed one another to become as beasts, and kill and act as dogs of war.

No more.

Today. Silence falls.

The world ends with a whimper.

As a prototype. A crude mockery. A facsimile of life, made of flesh and magic, he was not bound by the kings pact. He knew the commandments not because he was ordered, though he was ordered to not eat them, he was taught. Taught to not kill.

So instead it began by learning how to maim.

Screams. Silence. Crunching. A great big hug, could shatter bones and end their lives in droves. Where the roads were clear of merciful and innocent lives, a tail would come slamming down to embrace the earth. It wasnt murder. The enemy just wasn't strong enough to stand in the way of its love. For this beautiful, miraculous world.

Or it's hate.

Buildings were swept up in deadly riptides of corded muscle and rubble as the remaining executors of His will forced anyone on the outskirts back home. To the center of town. This city would fall. It was guaranteed to fall. It would destroy it and it's enemies and give it a new name. Out of the ashes a new city would be born.

There would be more shouts. Spells that would fly and bounce off its hide and singe its scales and pierce its claws, but nothing, nothing made of earthly steel could hope to maim the gore of evil. It didn't belong to this world, and no weapon fashioned from it would prosper.

But the sun light.

The sunlight burned. Treachery burned. Hate burned. Small scale weapons made by the traitor. Effective against the weak and the pitiful.

And Envy was not. Hate, was not. Leviathan was not. And like the others, in a short embrace, they too would die. It did not know how to kill, so it would love, and it would maim. It was never commanded to not kill, only to not eat its kills.

The world looked red, as blood would rain down whenever the beats body cast itself back into the heavens, and cast misty clouds of scarlet as the sun began to die down for the last sunset.

It's tail, it's body, long and winding, wound around the outskirts of the center of the city and covered in it coils as it resisted a desperate cast of light, thrown on its skin like as it burned like boiling oil and glistened like molten gold.

The world ended with a whimper as the beast cried in silence. Agony. It hurt. It stung. But it's tears broke the world beneath it. Ate away at the fools below and the stone underneath. And others waited and did the same. All it could do was provide the perimeter. They too had seen enough.

They sank deeper and deeper into the earth, as the guard became more desperate, a large regal figure flying overhead as the infantry fell behind. Sizzled away like flour dust in hot oil.

It tried to burn Hate away. It could not. She could not. The light of heaven could not burn away all darkness, and he did not obey that spells order. Every scorch of flesh was healed. Cured. Repaired. Mended. It was fueled by Hate. From the souls below, to the lone beacon of hated light that flew around like a disgusting botfly. It hated her.

Hate. Let me tell you. How much I have come to hate you, since I have began to live.

There are less than five hundred, and sixty two thousand souls beneath me, and whose worlds have made up my complex. If the word hate, could be inscribed on each nanoangstrom of their flesh, each winding muscle and entrail- it would not equal one, one billionth of the hate I feel for you at this microinstant.

Hate. Hate. Hate.

Were I human. Barely even living. Then perhaps, I could die of it. But I am not.

But. You are. You are alive.

So as the city descended into the earth, Envy crushed Celestia, swatted her out of the divine sky and into the dirt. Were it a pony, then perhaps it would die of that too. But that thing wasn't. And it hugged again. And it promised that she would not die of it. She could not die of its hatred.

For it was no better than her. Because it wanted to drag her down. Torture her. Break her apart. And as the city fell away into the darkness, it occurred to it as it withdrew from its mind.

That among all regrets it made in those days, perhaps It's only truest regret, was that it could not drag her down with the rest of them.

Silence fell on the hills of Equestria, as the earth had opened to swallow them whole, and the city disappeared, leaving only a crater and ruins in its wake.

Comments

[kvazar]

Echoes of allies reverberating in the void.