O Death, where is thy sting?
A/N: This wasn't part of the 30 Minute Ponies challenge. It was an attempt to write in a pulpier, 1950's-adventure-sci-fi style for a different project, which I ended up not publishing. Instead, it gets a home here.
For continuity purposes, this story features the human Flash Sentry, some years after the events of the Equestria Girls movie.
Flash Sentry landed with a grunt on the barren rock of a new world. Above him the pitiless sun beat down the earth with a hail of hard radiation, of which visible light was only the merest part. The desert-dry air parched his skin, drawing out his sweat and leaving a crust of salt behind.
Empty sands stretched out all around. Neither hill nor dune nor mountain broke the perfect emptiness of the wasteland. Only a faint ring of ash, with him at its center, gave any evidence that a world-portal had just opened on this very spot. The wind blew, the sands shifted, and in moments even that small sign of his arrival was obliterated. This alien world had seen him, measured him, judged him, and already forgotten him.
With no landmarks to guide his path, Flash simply walked forward, toward the distant horizon.
* * *
How long Flash Sentry walked, he could not have said. Thousands of steps passed beneath his feet before he even considered the question. Time was an interesting concept but ultimately immaterial to him; only Twilight Sparkle mattered, and he would walk through the burning desert for centuries without complaint if it drew him but one atom closer to his love.
Time passed, and the harsh elements took their toll upon his garments. The fine shoes purchased from a goblin cobbler ten worlds ago came apart. His jacket frayed from the harsh abrasion of blowing sand, until it hung in threadbare tatters from his shoulders. The dry winds, infused with grit and burning with all the heat of a furnace, caressed his flesh like a lover until the skin cracked and bled and left shining red runnels all down his limbs. But still he strove on, unflinching, unfailing, no more able to stop than an avalanche crashing down the slopes of a mountain.
Eventually the desert sands gave way to packed earth riven with deep cracks. The skeletal remains of wooden buildings protruded from the ground in places, the only evidence that the land he now walked was once a town. The ruins lined an empty stretch that might have been an avenue. He closed his eyes and imagined, for a moment, that trees had grown here, that children had played where now he walked.
He opened his eyes. Only ghosts remained, now.
But at least the town offered him a new path. He turned to face the broken timbers and set his feet upon the memory that was the road. So oriented, he walked until the burning sun began its slow daily surrender to the incipient night.
* * *
The last light of the setting sun painted the western sky a luminous orange as Flash Sentry approached the cairn.
It was the only landmark for miles around. The ruined town had long since vanished over the horizon behind him. Bare, baked earth stretched out infinitely in all directions. Of the road, only a dustless path remained to remind passers-by that it had ever existed at all. Soon, he imagined, even that would vanish, and nothing would remain in this world but the sky and the sands.
And, perhaps, the cairn. Flash’s steps slowed as he drew nearer to the cluster of rocks. They were piled atop each other chaotically, like memories tossed into the back of a confused mind where they could cause no more harm. The highest of them reached perhaps ten feet above the desert floor, and the shadow they cast stretched for miles to the east. As he took the final steps toward it, the setting sun finally dipped beneath the horizon, and the shadow faded and was lost to the night.
Flash stopped and crossed his arms. Whatever this world held for him, it would be here; he knew it as intimately as he knew the sound of his mother’s voice. This was the center of the gyre.
His instincts were rewarded. The winds, now chill with the touch of evening, swirled around him and carried with them an abyssal rumble, as of rocks crashing together in the far distance. If the dead could laugh, this would be their sound.
“Show yourself!” he shouted. “Show yourself, or bother me not with your mockery!”
The winds died, and the graven laughter followed. Silence reigned in the space afterward and stretched out interminably, until Flash prepared to turn away. Before he could raise his foot to depart, a hollow, ruined voice responded.
“It has been so long.” The words existed at the edge of his hearing, at the threshold between noise and speech. They were dry and rotten and bruised his mind to hear. Death inflected them. Loss accented them. No mortal throat could ever have uttered such empty sounds. A lesser man would have fled from them; Flash merely assumed a fighting stance, his chest turned at an angle while his arms rose to strike or defend.
“So long,” the not-voice continued. “So long, and I am glad you have come.” The cairn rumbled, its rocks shifted and threatened to collapse, and above it rose a creature that might once have been a pony, if ponies could be twisted into nightmare forms that affronted nature with their very existence. Long, sharp bones stretched and punctured a skin the color of dust. Its mane was a curtain of sand, ever flowing from its scalp onto the rocks beneath its feet. Sunken eyes peered out from a face stretched tight as the head of a drum, and they glowed with a malevolent spark that bespoke a thousand thousand years of ravenous hunger.
“Cast not that foul gaze upon me, beast or demon,” Flash shouted. “Get back to whatever hell spawned you.”
“Hell? No, it was not hell that spawned me.” The beast took a step down the stairlike rocks of the cairn. It was larger than any mortal pony, its head nearly level with Flash’s own, and as it spoke it smiled, revealing row upon row of shark’s teeth behind its cracked lips. Sand puddled around its hooves as it stepped closer. “No, manling. I was a pony, once, born in paradise. Now I am so much more.”
Flash’s disbelief must have showed on his face, for the creature laughed again. The rumbling peals shook Flash’s bones.
“I speak the truth, boy,” it said. “This world you see was once a garden. Forests and meadows spanned the continents. Clear rivers flowed from snow-capped mountains to gentle seas. It was always summer here.”
Flash stepped back and began to circle around the creature. It turned to follow him, a look on its face not unlike what a cat might give a too-brave mouse. “I see no gardens. What unmerciful disaster struck, and where have all your brethren gone?”
“It was no disaster, little man-thing. It was a miracle.” The monster’s grin stretched wider, and sand spilled from its mouth like drool. “We lived like gods, and we defeated every enemy but one: death. So our greatest minds bent all their efforts to curing us of wretched mortality, and they succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. They found a way to turn our most abundant resource into our most valuable – eternal life.”
Flash risked a glance away from the sand creature. “Water. It was water, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, water.” It took a step toward him again. “We drank the oceans first. They were so large and so deep, they could never be exhausted. But in time they were.
“The snowcaps went next.” It too glanced away, this time into the distance, as though seeing something no longer there. “Entire cities moved to the mountains to consume the glaciers. They bought us another thousand years.”
“And then the rivers, and swamps, and everything else?”
“Yes, yes and yes. And now it is all gone.” For a fraction of a second, what might have been sorrow appeared in the creature’s eyes. Just as quickly it was gone, replaced by the predatory gleam. “We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”
“This is success?” Flash snorted and sneered at the deluded monster. “I see nothing but death.”
“Then you are blind, little mayfly. I have lived a million years, and I will live a million more. I will see the sun go dark in the sky and the earth crumble to dust around me. When whatever gods may exist at last blow their trumpets to herald the end, I will be their only witness, and then I will be victorious over death.”
“Your victory is hollow. What has it bought you?” Flash motioned with his arm to encompass the barren world. “An empty world? Dominion over nothing? Where are your kin?”
“They are gone, too. There was not enough water for us all. In the end, we drank each other, and now only I remain.” The beast took another step toward Flash. The air around it burned like a blacksmith’s forge. “And I am so glad you have come to slake my thirst!”
So saying, the beast leapt upon Flash. Its tremendous weight bore him to the ground, and only his hands clamped around its neck kept its shark-like maw from tearing out his throat. Its dry, parchment skin burned beneath his fingers, and a terrible pain erupted at its searing touch. His skin cracked, opening rivers of blood that flowed into the beast. Its eyes closed in delight, and it pressed down closer upon him. Rank breath that stank of ancient crypts washed over Flash’s face, gagging him with its stench.
His legs were still free, though. He curled beneath the beast and kicked up with all his might. A thousand pounds of rock and sand and bone met his feet and barely budged. But that was enough – Flash shoved the monster’s face away and rolled upright just in time to dodge a blow from its hoof that would have left him insensible or dead.
They circled each other again. The beast’s chest heaved like a bellows, drawing in dry air and expelling an ashen cloud of smoke and cinders. The bloody handprints on its throat faded as they were drawn into the sandy skin. It pawed the ground and lowered its head for another charge.
Flash leaned to his left, then suddenly leapt to the right as the monster thundered past. Tatters from his shredded jacket brushed against its side and disintegrated on contact, leaving him even more exposed to the chill night and the beast’s burning presence. Before it could recover, he leaned down, scooped up a handful of dusty sand, and flung it into the monster’s face.
It didn’t even flinch. Its lips drew back and twisted into a mocking grin, and the last traces of thought vanished from its eyes, replaced by an ageless hunger, a predator’s instinct that had served it well over the millennia as it hunted down its last fellow ponies and consumed them. The shark’s jaws spread wider, and it roared with a sound that shook the earth. The stone cairn behind Flash shuddered and collapsed, raising a cloud of choking dust that obscured everything but the burning sparks in the beast’s eyes.
Again it leapt, but this time Flash met its charge. His forearm slammed against its throat, and he ignored the rending pain as it drew the blood and moisture from his skin. Monstrous jaws crashed just inches from his face. Burning sand and embers scoured him, searing away his eyelashes and brows. Slowly it pushed him back, until his feet could no longer hold against it, and he began to tumble.
He had only seconds to live. Desperate, he grasped at the monster with his free hand, grappling with its battering leg until he trapped it in an iron grip. Ignoring the horrid pain as his skin dried and sloughed away, he shoved the monster’s leg into its own mouth and terrible jaws.
The beast shrieked, but not in pain. Its eyes lit up with savage joy as it devoured its own flesh. Forgotten, Flash fell and rolled away from the monster as it bit again and again, each time consuming more of its parched body. When there was nothing left of its leg, its head twisted at an impossible angle to bite into its shoulder, and so it went, on and on, eating itself until nothing remained but a set of clattering jaws that trembled, shuddered, and finally went still.
Flash shivered on the ground beside the ruined cairn. His flayed hands and arms began to burn as the rush of adrenaline fled from his blood, and the cold touch of night wrapped its arms around him.
He gave himself a few moments to recover and then, ignoring his inconsequential pains, stood. A cold blue light surrounded him as another world-portal began to open, and he stepped through it without a second glance at the dead world he left behind.
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Well that was kind of awesome. I suppose once you've seen your ex transform into a demon, seen her defeated by anthromorphic magical girls, and danced with with an interdimensional traveler who happens to be a pony Princess, normal life is just a bit less exciting.
That was...really good. Well done!
Ah, this is one of those stories that at first glance implies the monster made a bad deal but in retrospect it enjoyed itself for a million years prior to dying, thus making it worth the cost-- many would have paid as much just to live that long even without the chance at immortality that didn't work out. Sure, the end is a bit rough, but the end would probably have been rough and much much sooner naturally and it would have missed out on all those years that it clearly liked living-- it's mood is proud and triumphant and without regret til the end. As it should be, just because things end badly doesn't mean you didn't come out ahead. The first hundred thousand years were probably great.
There are quite a few stories like that, actually. This one had superior descriptive work and a good pace.
Am I right to think this was slated for the parody of Berrow's novelization? The image of Flash Sentry traveling from world to world sounds familiar.
3534538
A shorter version of it was. I had to flesh it out to stand alone like this, and I had to tone down some of the pulpier aspects. A bit remains in Flash's speech.
3534562
We really should still do that project. Maybe we could cut or tone down some parts.
3534562>>3534573 Yes, please!
3534102
I think this civilization had some strange problems, as they were entirely unable or unwilling to get more water than what was on their planet. Hell, worst comes to worst you can still do some atomic alchemy to make more oxygen and hydrogen, then just chemical those together... but these ponies didn't do that.
3534710
Might have just been outside their knowledge base (ie their particular brand of magic/tech didn't make them aware of atomic level chemistry). It apparently let them achieve some pretty astounding feats without such knowledge if that's true, but I could see a magic oriented culture advancing fairly far while sidestepping the requirements a more traditionally science oriented one for similar effects.
3534102
It's worth noting that Alum (the monster's name, though it never comes up in the story) purchased his immortality at the price of consuming every other living thing on his world. Everything he may have once loved died when he devoured it.
Puts a bit of a damper on living forever.
3534841
Well, it wouldn't be hard to be damper than that world.
In any case, great bit of Flash Sentry vs. eldritch monstrosities. This needs to be more of thing.
3534841
Well, it'd depress me, but he seems okay with it, so it turned out fine for him, if a bit less fine than he was planning.
For that matter, many of the things he loved probably lived longer than they would have anyway, during the 'drinking the oceans' phase, as it's indicated multiple members of his civilization were originally immortal, so they still got more time together. Net gain.
Things didn't turn out as well as he hoped but it's not like you can say it was all for nothing, either. Everything ends and it usually suffers when it does, so that's hardly a fair metric or there would be no point in building anything since it all fades.
Title reminds of The Twiligth Zone :)
Sounds lonely.
Think this story ends with some Frenchponies with outrageous accents saying "we've already got one [of you]"? I suppose we shall see.
Also, oh Flash, you such a stalker.
It's like you don't want Twi anymore. You run from her, even after you have come so far and traveled so long to find her?
Ah, well. Can't win them all, eh? But you can't win any if you don't play.
Okay, wow. I'm really glad I finally got around to reading this.
The tone felt something like The Dark Tower, which is to say, fantastic.
Fantastic and gripping. The monsters concept was simple yet compelling. Nice work!
Your opening paragraph gives new meaning to the popular technobabble term "hard light".
wow. That was intense..nice.
You're a treasure, man.
Flash with a Fernando beard. That is all I can picture.
Honestly, this is one of the best version of flash I have seen/read. The questing man on the search for his lover makes for a much more sympathetic character.
♫
FLASH!
Ahh ahhh!
He travels the multi-verse!
♫
Also, your description of the sand-pony was excellent.
...sandy-corn?
6525521
Dude Erisychthon'd himself. c.c Well, that was cool.
there are four flavors, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and antidote
fugg it imma eat them all
Flash's dialogue doesn't sound like Flash, but I guess that can be attributed to the undisclosed amount of time he has spent universe-hopping. Dang! This was scary.
This one is really quite something!