The End
A story I made quite long ago, reposted here simply for the sake of sharing it.
Also, apologies on the abusage of the word 'she' and any/all horribly vague storytelling X_x
Remember, Remember…
She remembered.
She remembered the wide, open fields. The small, homely towns. The friendship that blossomed across the land.
She meandered to the window, gently pushing open the window with a golden spark and taking in the sight below.
She remembered when her guards would break their poise for a single moment to give her a smile. When the maids and the tailors would wave. When a wayward scholar would hide a blush and hurry off.
She remembered her sister, who always lit up the corridors with her smile. She remembered the guard that her sibling was never without. She didn’t remember his name, sadly.
She felt the onset of tears. It had all happened so fast…
She shook her head, ignoring the stab of anguish. The past was past. The present was now.
She unruffled her wings, took a deep breath, and leaped out of the window into the sunset, a squadron of elite pegasi
guards falling into position behind her without prompt.
She remembered when she had to wake up the leader with a firm hoof to the jaw to get that kind of response time.
She rose into the sky, the floating iron spheres surrounding the castle allowing her passage, and she took to the wind towards New Ponyville, going at a decent pace as to allow her ponyguards to keep pace.
She flew past several cities, traveling past the closely-packed floating structures. Poor reminders of the memory that was Cloudsdale – it was a tragic loss when the toxin-stained clouds crashed to the earth, never to rise again.
She felt a rush of cold, and a full tear fell from her eye. She began to surge ahead, ignoring the startled cries to stop from her guards. Why were they even there? She didn’t need them for what she was to do. Blasting herself ahead with a magical burst, they were gone, left far behind.
She accelerated again. Several lonesome aircraft were blown aside by the resulting sonic boom. It had been ages since she had flown this fast – ages since anypony had flown this fast. The Wonderbolts were the only ones who might have been able to compete, and they were long gone, removed from society from time and social disdain. ‘Why excerpt your own effort when you could simply use a speedy, inexpensive AeroTransport ,’ the commercials ran.
---
She briefly saw the hulking remains of the Pegasus Device as she rocketed by, the ancient piece of machinery once used to maintain the weather long since ignored. It’s not like it mattered – soon after the Great Conflict, the skies were much too full of poison to even attempt clearing.
She only noticed this for a second, of course. It was a sight seen thousands of times, and it was no more startling to her than the destruction of the Pie family Rock Farm ninety or so years ago, or the death of the magnificent Apple Family Orchards by the Poison Rains.
She didn’t stop to comfort the small group of young ones bravely searching for escape from the world. Her presence would only frighten them away, and even if it didn’t, she had nothing to give. All that was left was her will to help the ponies of Equestria, and even that was fading at the current rate.
She knew that the Equestria she once knew and loved was fading. Soon it would be gone forever.
She was powerless to stop it.
She continued onward, feeling a rush of smog and poison flow through her veins as she reached the outskirts of New Ponyville. Still miles away, the light was almost unbearable; a tribute to all that the world had become – an artificial day. It pained her to see it.
She soon reached its borders, and didn’t change her course or speed one bit as she entered the metropolis’s borders, ignoring the several authorities that gave her questioning looks. They could wait. The city could wait. Equestria could wait.
She had waited for three years. She could wait no longer.
She continued her flight. Smells wafted in from the immeasurably massive city below, and even in her haste to pass through the poisoned skies surrounding the place she had once loved so, she could nearly feel the hopelessness and stress in the air, radiating from below.
She couldn’t imagine how the empath – whose name was irrelevant for the moment, she decided – would have taken it. She doubted the element would have survived long in this time and era.
She shook her head and continued her flight. She was nearly midway through now, and the Citadel emanating power and authority was quickly growing closer, the turrets adorning every available surface turning to her for but a split second of frenzied identifying. They stood down but a moment later.
She wished she was able to teleport and simply avoid the huge tower, as she had once been able to do. That was illegal now, of course. Even one such as herself had to obey the laws laid down by the Three Thousand Court.
She quickly distanced the Citadel, and what seemed like a moment later, she had crossed over the final wall of the city; relieved that her journey was nearly done.
She set her course towards the patch of blackness, painfully obvious in the sea of light. Her only hope was that she would be able to enter after being integrated into the Equestria of today as deeply as she was.
She doubted it, to be honest. Yet there she was, flying full tilt towards the Unbreakable Barrier.
---
She neared. She slowed. She brought herself to the ground. She approached the shimmering wall of darkness, feeling an uncomfortably welcome chill pass through her body as she clambered up the pony-made slope surrounding the darkness; the culmination of every failed attempt to destroy it.
She reached the impossible darkness. She smelled the fresh air that she was praying hadn’t been lost forever. She could almost see one of the trees that had gone extinct in Equestria so long ago.
She stepped through the Unbreakable Barrier.
---
She awoke several minutes later, letting her body adjust to the shock of returning to the health it had known many years prior. She took in the lack of poison, the chorus of actual insects, and the feeling of soil beneath her. It had been three years since she had last experienced this, and she knew with a sinking feeling that this was her last.
She knew that the world was to change. And it was all to start with her.
She began walking inwards towards the abandoned castle that young ponies once played in, before flashing screens had taken away their adventures forevermore. It wasn’t long at all before she stood at the nonexistent gates, and gave three slow knocks to what wasn’t there.
She saw her sister appear in a flash of shadow, and without a word, gave her an affectionate hug, enveloping her in the embrace of the moon. They were gone a moment later, vanished into the shadows.
---
She was alone once more. Her sister had left to continue the job that had been split so long ago, while she in all her glory opened the small gates that blocked off the fenced-in area.
She saw the seven stones within, and continued against the memories.
She gave a moment of silence for the most recent stone, hardly a millennia old. The companion, who had died in vain.
She walked to the next, one that made the previous one appear new. The empath. May you rest with the others in your eternal sleep.
She shambled to the next. This one was adorned with what was once the most stunning diamond on the planet. May she continue to the next world as only she can.
She continued to two more, which had never left each other’s sides, even after they had long since parted. The two friends. May they never forget what was, and never know what is.
She approached the next, a small rock with the enchanted balloon floating above, before continuing on to the final. May your spirit never fade.
She stopped at the final stone, and shed her final tear. …… And may you rest in peace, my faithful student. Goodbye.
---
She gathered the odd group of gryphons, foals, and a lone baby dragon around her on that very night. Eight in all, including herself.
She powered up the magic that she had left ignored for so long. A flash of light was seen across the land.
Celestia the Eternal left Equestria for another world on that day, never to be seen again.
We, however, did not.
We pretended it never was.
We forgot.
I pray that the seven who made it to the next world did not.