> Shine Once More, Before The End
>  by NeverEatTheLemonsAlone
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> Into The Quiet Dark
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Once, my List held many names. Thousands. Millions. Uncountable. Enough names to carpet the walls of crumbling Canterlot, the walls I walk through now, a thousand times over. This List went on for kilometers, stretching down through the vast abyss behind this world and into mine. The List held all names. Every pony, every gryphon, every dragon, every conceivable being...and then one pesky draconequus. The List told me their stories, their lives, their hopes, their hearts. For my crimes before time began, I was tasked by the Celestial Diarchs with a task that was meant to be endless: I was to be the collector of souls, the balance-keeper, one foot in Equus, one foot beyond the veil. And so it was for the span of ages.

Then, so long ago, my List began to grow shorter. First a few names here and there. Balance broken. Then more, and more, as the ebb and flow became a floodtide, names coming to the List faster than I could cross them away. A seemingly-endless tide of souls screaming unto silence. Then, at the end, emptiness, and an end to the sound. Cessation.

Now, the List is blank, and blank it remains. Balance restored. Only a single line of script is written at the top. Just one more, a final name to check off on this dusty world before eternal, ultimate balance is achieved, and my endless task comes to its end. I slide over the hard-baked earth in the faint dawn light, approaching the cliff upon which that name's bearer stands motionless, staring out at the horizon as the sun slowly rises.

"Celestia." I rasp. Only that word. A tense shiver runs through her old, frail body, and her mane and tail waver in an invisible solar wind, as they once did, for the barest moment before returning to limp stillness. She does not turn.

"I knew you would come," she says quietly. 

I shake my head, cumbersome metal mask wagging. "Of course you did. You know that I must. You know that until my work is finished, I am not permitted to rest." I sigh heavily. "All things have a time, and all things' times must come. You know that better than any other."

She stiffens, but otherwise gives no sign of having heard me. She continues staring, the burnt orange of her old magic licking around her gnarled horn as a blazing red sun limps haltingly over the horizon. She closes her eyes, breathing deeply in the hot, dry air. The ruins of a great castle lie scattered about her as she stands at the edge of the mountain, overlooking the endless quiet below.

I press her further, feeling the weight of aeons dragging down upon me. "Please, Celestia. Even I have my time, and I have overstayed it. Just this once, listen to me. This world is devoid. It no longer needs a sun."

Again, silence. This time it lasts far longer. She simply stares, the sun that wavers upon the bloody dawn horizon drawing her attention as those cloudy eyes stare off into something only she can see. 

Finally, her creaky voice responds to me with a question of its own. "Tell me something, Pale One. What do you care for?"

I must admit, it catches me off-guard. Somehow, in all my eternities, I've never been asked that question. No creature has ever bothered; too occupied were they, trying to fight me off, trying to stave away the inevitable. The irony never escaped me: in fighting me, they only brought me sooner. Celestia is the first to ask that of me, and I look inward: what do I care for? Having never been asked, I've not considered it much. I go through the motions of breathing, though my form no longer requires such trivial things as oxygen, and contemplate, keeping my composure.

At length, I give her my answer, the best I am able to conjure on such short notice: "Balance," I speak quietly, my rasp low and soft as it can ever be, "balance above all things. I did not choose what happened to my world, just as I do not choose to come for you time and again. But it is what must be. You are stretched thin, Celestia. You have pushed yourself too far, and you are out of balance."

She draws in a shuddering breath. "I know," she murmurs thickly. "I have lived for far longer than I should. But..." her gaze sweeps again across the ruined, silent world before her, "I cannot let go. There are too many memories here." A hoof lifts, pointing slowly downwards into what was once a fertile plain beyond the mountains. Now, just like all the rest, it is blasted desert, any signs of life long gone. "Too many memories of my student..." Her gaze roams further afield, fading eyesight just catching the crumbling foundations of a town. "Of my friends..." Now her eyesight pulls away, staring at the ground beneath her hooves, and speaking softly, so much so I can barely hear her: "Of my sister."

"Here, now, at the end of all things," she continues, in that same melancholy voice, "I can only think of what was. Not what is, nor what might be, in some far-off corner of Equus, but Equestria as it once was. Equestria in its prime." Her voice grows distant. "So I raise the sun. Every morning, day after endless, barren day. If I continue raising it--if the light falls over the plains beneath Canterlot in the same way for the rest of time, then...someone, something, will remember them. For if I do not, then..." she swallows past the lump in her throat, "...then none will."

"Come with me, Celestia," I reply after a few moments. "You and I both know you are spent. You are tired, Celestia, as tired as I am, and you can't continue this charade anymore." My voice grows hard. "They are gone, Celestia. Raising the sun will never bring them back. It will only prolong your regret."

She whirls on me suddenly, and for a just a fleeting moment, I steal a glimpse at what she once was, what I remember from the olden days. She stands erect, no longer slouching, and her faded eyes flash white with barely-restrained power. Her voice, when she speaks, is deep, threatening, not unlike distant thunder. "You overstep yourself, Pale One," she rumbles with her dragon's voice, mane and tail blazing with phantasmal fire. "Do not presume to lecture me of regret. I have known more in my life than you can imagine."

I stand, seemingly disinterested in her show of power. "Cease your theatrics, Celestia. You know I cannot be swayed with threats. You have tried more times than I can count." I shake my head. "I cannot take you if you refuse to go, Celestia, but..." I motion to the desolate land, "what else is there here for you?"

Her eyes begin to tear up, her body sagging. The power that she showed mere moments ago flees, and she seems even more tired than before. "I..." she speaks in a broken voice, "I...need to remember them..."

I step forward on silent legs, laying my incorporeal hoof upon her shoulder. My illuminated sockets stare into her rheumy eyes. "...I remember them, Celestia." Her head jerks up and a tiny gasp escapes her as I continue. "I remember them all. Every creature that has ever died. It is no small task to collect them, Celestia, and I do not take it lightly. Witnessing the final moments of every life on Equus is not something you simply forget.

For a moment, her mouth works soundlessly, face plastered with an expression torn between fatalistic disbelief and desperate hope. She begins to quake as the tears spill from her eyes, trickling down her face and steaming as they fizzle into the blazingly hot ground. The sun above grows brighter. "You..." she begins haltingly, "you remember them?"

I nod.

"Tell me," she continues, voice suddenly still and calm, like a deep, cold pool, "did she die happy?"

I know without even looking into her heart of whom she speaks. I hesitate, torn between happy lie and the unfiltered truth. That hesitation only lasts a moment; after all these years, if any creature deserves truth, it is this one.

"I could," I slowly begin, "lie to you. I could tell you that she died painlessly, that she died at peace, surrounded by friends and family. I could tell you that her death was a happy one, and that she greeted it with open arms." Her face is overwritten with pure despair as I continue. "But...you deserve better, for all your long years. No, Celestia. I will not lie to you: she died in pain, long before her time. I take no pleasure in any soul's taking, but least of all one such as her's: so vital, so many years still left before her."

"However," I hold up my hoof, stopping her from interrupting before I finish, "there is, perhaps, one thing that may ease your burden, if only a little: she never blamed you, Celestia. Not then, even as she burned away. Not ever."

Her composure cracks. The floodgates break, and her eyes fill, tears flooding down her disbelieving face. She turns away from me, speaking coldly, waveringly: "Leave me, Pale One. I will not go with you. Not here. Not today. Never."

I sigh, shaking my head. I'd thought that perhaps she'd be able to come to terms with the past, to finally move on from her sorrow. "It's been millennia, Celestia. She's been gone for so long that this is not her world any longer."

I'm met with a stone wall of silence. Another sigh. It appears it's time to play my final card, the ace up my sleeve.

"She misses you, Celestia."

A sudden intake of breath, and then a carefully controlled phrase, only barely shaking: "I said leave me."

I continue without missing a beat, overriding her voice. "They all do."

Again, her voice rumbles into the thunderous tone of her power, and her mane and tail begin to quiver. "Leave. Me."

I gesture again at the expanse of barrenness before us, looking down from the cliff face. "This is all just one great guilt, is it not? Guilt that you allowed this to happen. Guilt that you couldn't save them. That you ended them. For what purpose, Celestia? When will all of this come to a close?"

In that instant, I can suddenly feel it: I've pushed her too far. She's reached her limit. The sudden, pulsing waves of power coming off of her ignite the air around me, the oxygen burning away like fire eating through paper. Her mane and tail follow suit, coruscating into maelstroms of blindingly brilliant flames. She rises into the air, a nexus of raw sunlight as she stares thinly down at me through incandescent white-gold eyes. Behind her, the sun follows suit: It blazes past its point on the horizon and begins to bleed from a molten red to the same golden glow, silhouetting the pony before it in a great shadow.

When she speaks this time, her voice no longer comes from her. It resonates through the entire globe, drawn from the sun itself in a display of staggering power. Despite myself, I am impressed: I didn't think she had anywhere remotely near this amount of sunfire left within.

I will burn you away, betrayer.

I sigh. "So, Celestia, you choose this path? To burn yourself out in a final show of might and pride, rebelling against my actions from so long ago they no longer hold any meaning? Fine then. Do as you may. Shine once more, before the end."

Such are the final words I speak before the brilliant rays of light burn pierce into and through me. The mask and cloak burn away, and I cast no shadow, my true form shown into light for the first time since my binding. My translucent pelt does not ripple in the blazing wind, and my wings flutter silently by my side. I am but a phantom, a shadow of what I was before. And yet, my horn still glows with a crown of green magic, keeping this ghost of myself intact through the torrent of light.

Minutes, hours, days; I am unsure how long it lasts, how long Celestia channels the sun's power. The light overtakes her, glowing up her as, weakened from her long years, her mortal body begins to shimmer away into the flames. As she fades, the sun glows ever brighter as she begins to return to it. Through it all, I wait patiently, unmoving. I have waited for this time for aeons uncountable. I can wait for one more sunrise.

Eventually, the light begins to die, bleeding back into the sun as it returns to red, even darker than before. What was Celestia falls in a slump to the ground in front of me, wheezing as the blackened stumps of her wings and horn send tendrils of smoke snaking up into the blazing sky. The shredded skin of her eyelids billows in the hot wind, the eyes long burned away from pure power.

Now comes the time. I lean down close to her shuddering wreck of a body and whisper into her ear: "They miss you, Celestia."

It is a lie.

Her breaths come fitfully and hoarsely, and her voice is near-inaudible, even raspier than mine. It takes her nearly a minute to deliver the single, sweet sentence that I've been waiting for across so many long years, in a tone so hopeless and bitter it gives even me pause:

"Fine then. Let it end, Pale One."

I shake my head. "No more 'Pale One,' Celestia. I have been nameless for longer than time. Here, now, at the end of all things, my duty is done. Just this once...call my by my name."

She breathes in another shuddering breath, one final hiss of burning air to carry with her into darkness, and gasps a single, final phrase: "Terrus. Brother."

I close my ghostly eyes for a moment with a gentle smile. "Depart in peace, Celestia. Sister. Rejoin Luna in cosmic unity." My smile turns melancholy. "Perhaps even she has forgiven me."

A wisp of golden light sparks forth from her battered, broken body and shoots into the sky, and as it disappears, the light on the horizon winks out. The world is shrouded in a darkness broken only by the green glow of my magic. On the faded parchment of my List, the name Celestia disappears, and the paper burns away in green fire, leaving no ashes.

The ghostly transparency of my body flickers, then departs, and for the first time since I was shackled to the List, I feel my hooves once again sink into my Equus. Blasted and barren by the sun it may be, I still feel it pulsing beneath my hooves. So weakly, though. Dying, as now, I am as well. I drag in a real breath once again, and gasp in pain as searing air clogs my lungs. "Who now," I mumble through thick, bloody mucus, "shall ferry me into the beyond?" I am under no delusion. I, the collector of souls, do not leave depart to peaceful oblivion. No; my soul alone shall stay. I, Terrus, lord of the earth, shall remain here until the end of time.

Perhaps...it is better this way.