Gone
One thousand years. One thousand years had elapsed since the Goddess of the Night and Moon had attempted to overthrow her sister and take full control of the land of Equestria. One thousand years of pain, loneliness, coldness, and solitude to consider her actions. Actions which had they succeeded would have upset the balance of the very planet itself for in Princess Luna's anger, hate, and bitterness she had also attempted to bring nighttime eternal. Now with a millennium behind her she would use the power of the very stars themselves to free herself. She, she thought to herself, would make amends with her elder sibling and seek no more to do harm and do all she could to make up for what she had previously done. She had a millennium of time to catch up on.
As the stars aligned the princess of the night regal and fair stood on the rocky surface of her celestial body. She powered her horn and with their power surrounded herself with energy breaking free of steel bonds and moving as swift as lightning made her way down to the planet's surface. A surface whose feel and warmth seemed so far distant as to be merely a story in the aged alicorn's mind. To feel the earth beneath her once more, to walk upon the grass and feel the sweet scent of spring and flower...To even feel the warmth of the sun once more and be no more confined to the dark side of her moon. She could hardly wait.
Luna Princess of the night landed. She looked around and saw that indeed it was daylight. The start of a new morning. She heard no sounds save for birds chirping. She looked around and saw grass and fell upon it and lay feeling the morning dew from the blades of grass and reveling in the fresh moving air. She rolled upon the damp grass and began to laugh and cry. Laughter from joy supreme and cry because of what could have been had she not given in to her hate. As she lay she breathed a sigh of relief and arose and with a burst of magic dried her mane and coat. Yet something was amiss.
She had on her way down seen buildings of some type and as she walked she saw a sign "Ponyville" Luna read to herself. "A hamlet or village of sorts," she thought to herself. She was indeed concerned as for most of her imprisonment she had at least been able to view dreams of her subjects to a limited extent but that had suddenly changed some few years back for what reason she knew not. She thought perhaps her sister had found out and found a way to block her access. Luna thought it expedient to view what little of the dreams she could if for no other reason than to ensure her speech patterns were kept up to date and gain some type of knowledge regarding the changing world as limited as it might be. Though it was still early morning hours should there not be ponies about readying themselves for the day? She moved past the sign and into town.
There was a stillness most disturbing and she perked her ears. She heard the wind blow and rustle nearby trees but not a sound save for birds or the occasional squirrel. The grass she noticed was deeply overgrown and the buildings themselves while still standing looked as though they were abandoned with ivy climbing over some of them. Windows cracked or broken in some of the other buildings. Something is very, very wrong" Luna said aloud. "Where are all the ponies? Why is no one here to greet us? Surely Tia would have been able to know concerning my coming and prepared herself for battle or an armed force of some sort yet I see no one nor hear any either. Has she caused this town to be abandoned to create some type of a trap for me?" Luna did not know the answers to these questions...But she was going to find out.
She followed the path she was on to what looked like a Town hall. The doors were open and not barred. She entered and looked around no pony to be seen. She moved and looked at the rooms and saw no pony. She came to a door "Mayor Mare's Office" She read aloud. "Hmmm. This could be useful. Perhaps there are documents that could help answer what is going on." She thought to herself. She found the door locked for whatever reason as it would not budge. Using her earthpony strength she kicked the door which landed with a loud crash.
The air smelled musty and full of mold and death. Luna used her magic to open a window to let air in and as she did so her eyes fell upon a desk with the same name as above the doorframe outside. Sitting in the chair next was what had once been said Mayor now only a skeleton her flesh and sinews having long since decayed. Luna's heart began to beat fast and she rushed from the room using her magic the lift the door and reseal the room leaving the window in the office alone. A cold sweat broke out upon her brow and she raced out of the building and sat beneath a stray tree. "What on equis has happened here?" She thought to herself. She had a growing sense of worry and anxiety given what she had just seen of the leader of the community and the state of decay the rest of the town seemed to be in.
She took a half hour to gather her thoughts. She had not gazed upon death in over 1000 years and was not as accustomed to it as she had once been and certainly not in finding it in such a state. "Why was that door locked? What caused the Mayor's death?" Luna thought to herself. "Was the Mayor hiding from something or someone or was she protecting other ponies from herself? Some combination of the two?" Luna's mind was racing through each thing she could think of and what she knew. What she knew of the modern world was quite small as she simply knew that major technological advancements had occurred and that the manner of speaking had altered. Luna had only been able to catch the briefest of glimpses into the minds of her subjects and only barely enough to glean certain things to help her. She suddenly began to suspect that whatever or whoever had blocked her off some few years back was not magical in nature.
She left the area around town hall behind making a mental map of its location to come back to look for documents when she had worked up the nerve. As she walked about she saw that in general all the buildings appeared to have been locked either from the outside or the inside and as she forced entry into various locations she found similar things...Ponies dead. Young, old, entire groups of ponies friends, or family purely she could not tell. The story was the same at a local boutique a pair of unicorns one older and one very young clasped around one another in an embrace dresses, thread, needles, and mannequins knocked over. Remnants of attempts at making fire were left behind and the stores of food were depleted. Luna was putting together a hypothesis of what had occurred and she did not like the conclusion. Ponies dead with no one to bury them and only animals left over with buildings locked from within and without...This seemed to her mind to be a plague of some sort as there was no evidence of a military siege nor yet attempts to make forced entry into most of the homes even prior to her own attempts.
Luna had seen plague in her time prior to her imprisonment. The general mode was to seal the area off and airdrop supplies via pegasi of the royal guard for things like vinegar for cleaning, food, ale, and whatever other supplies local areas might need. Locals were prevented from either entering or leaving and all pegasai who might have attempted to leave were rounded up under magical domes which could only be opened by a court mage. Sometimes communities pulled through and sometimes they did not. In cases they did not the bodies and even buildings were often burned. There were however some distinct differences here.
"There is no evidence of supplies having been dropped that I can see though perhaps they simply gave up or used the crates to make fire for cooking and warmth. This settlement clearly did not make it through whatever had befallen it, yet there is no evidence of attempts to burn either the bodies or buildings nor yet any attempt to block off off the area at all." Luna said aloud to herself. Whatever caused this must have hit very, very hard and very, very fast. Either she had not gone far enough to find physical evidence of a blockade of the area or worse whatever had hit the town might have hit other areas too quickly for a government response to be properly organized. Neither conclusion was very comforting.
Luna walked through the center of the town which when it was still in its heyday must have been quite the peaceful and enjoyable place to live. She saw a large oak tree with a door and with windows. She found the door locked from within but again made use of her superior strength to force her entry. She found the building again smelled of death and was stale but unusually not filled with mold. "It must have been completely sealed off to contain whatever was inside from getting out or anything from getting in" Luna thought to herself and sure enough she found evidence of spellcraft which appeared to be permit for the escape of nothing save air only. The spells she found kept the inside very, very dry and warm but their power was beginning to wane and allowed for the air to be purified anew in some form or fashion she did not understand.
She made her way up the stairs and found a bedroom in the library and to her great dismay found a basket with an infant drake whose body was mummified from its exposure to such conditions its skin well preserved but the life of it long since past. "What befell you young one?" Luna thought to herself. She walked to the bed and found copious notes filled with entries regarding results and experiments but no breakthroughs. They mentioned a lab in the basement.
Luna made her way down and with a bit of searching, she found the entry to said Lab "Whatever a Lab is...Though it sounds like something akin to an apothecary shop or a place for alchemy" Luna thought to herself. She opened the door and walked down the steps finding the same environmental conditions as the rest of the library warm and very, very dry. "Could this have been done to preserve the notes and research" She wondered aloud to herself knowing that Ponyville seemed to have very damp weather and the papers if they had been exposed might have suffered mold damage and been of no use. She made her way to the bottom of the stairs and using her horn lit a series of glowing balls of magic and had them fly around the room to illuminate the area.
There were pieces of glassware similar to what one might find in an alchemist's kit obviously for use in mixing and making solutions. A strange rectangular object made of metal whose function Luna could only guess though she thought it might be some type of computer that she had heard mentioned. There were scattered papers with furious scribbles made as if in anger at trying to find some solution to whatever problem was being investigated. Another table was filled with strange stationary objects with what looked like a spyglass with round twisting dials to allow it to move in and out and a strange rectangular glass slide placed underneath the viewing piece. Luna was growing more and more confused and more and more concerned.
She made her way to another portion of the room and there at a desk was a mummified lavender unicorn along with a unicorn with flame-red and orange fur and mane. Both long since passed and their remains kept preserved. She found a journal and flipped through it mentions of a disease, imposed quarantines, and names of Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. She flipped through to the last entry some questions being answered and others raised as she read the last entry:
March 15th, 995
It's been ten months since this bacteria came. Ten months and nearly 70 percent of all ponies are gone with more on the way out. This disease seems to affect all intelligent species whether Griffons, Ponies, Zebras, Minatours, or any other. The Princess had sent me and Sunset Shimmer, a student of hers before I came into the picture, to Ponyville for our own safety and to see if we could find a cure. Sunset and I have tried and tried but haven't been able to find anything. Ponies are giving up as the bodies pile up. We're running low on food and water. We can't get out but we can't let our research samples out either nor anypony else in. Friendship is sustaining our spirits but the disease is killing us off one by one. Sunset and I agreed that we would impose artificial spell conditions to create an environment that would best preserve our research and ourselves should the need arise for future research needs. I had Spike send the princess a note about this and she agreed with the conditions. Both I, Sunset, and Spike have contracted this disease and as such cannot let ourselves out. What's going to happen to the Princess? My BBBFF? Princess Cadance? Mom or Dad?
That's all there was save for some evidence that suggested there might have been tears at some point on the page some of the paper looking as though it had dried after having been wet. Luna's questions were being answered but she did not like the answers and she most certainly did not care that her suspicions were being proven at least partially right and far more than she had ever thought. "What manner of a disease kills only intelligent life?! What manner of disease can kill 70 percent of the entire population of entire nations!?" Luna found herself screaming internally. She thought of her sister and her worry began to rise normally being alicorns diseases and wounds bothered them but little if at all being both immortal and connected as they were to their heavenly bodies. Yet Luna knew her sister must be alive or else the sun would not have arisen.
Luna closed her eyes tears streaming down as she thought how much of a horror it was to her personally to come out of a thousand years of isolation only to find herself still isolated. Would she find anyone or anything other than simple animals outside the walls of this library? She did not know, but she was going to find out. She did not know what this "bacteria" disease was nor the meaning of the name but clearly whatever this "bacteria" disease had been it had very quickly and likely had hit many areas all at once preventing a proper government response. Luna left the lab and made her way back outside recharging the spells within and closing the door to the library shut and sealing it anew with additional spells cast to preserve the interior.
She pushed off and made her way to the countryside homes of farmers. The same things were found. Pieces of paper with information mentioning this bacteria disease also called heavens wrath. The papers appeared to be made for general use of the public at large as some type of a information medium as she found information related to many things whether government, weather, festivities, and the disease. Some of these papers had been kept and purposely preserved and though their pages were somewhat discolored Luna began to get a better and better picture of what had happened.
Some 5 years prior an asteroid or meteor, a modern name for fire from heaven, had struck into the land. It brought this bacteria disease with it and it had spread in some way she did not understand through the air and through the magic itself. It seemed the more that magic was used to try and combat it the more it fed the disease and caused it to spread. The initial impact had apparently spread the disease to all corners of Equestria and surrounding lands and before anypony knew what they were dealing with nations and states in and around Equestria were combating the plague with ponies and others dying so fast that there was no time to bury them and thus governments advised all to seal themselves within their homes or wherever they could be found as every government based agency was so heavily damaged from the initial outbreak it took all they had just to keep a rudimentary form of government going.
There were mentions of her sister and strange black-and-white portraits in the papers detailing the appearance of the town and her sister. She did not know what manner of artist had created such things but was greatly impressed yet at the same time greatly disturbed "Never in my life nor that of my sister's did we ever face a threat like this." Thought Luna to herself. Any plagues she had known could be contained to some extent and prevented yet this "bacteria" disease or heavens wrath appeared to have struck so hard and so fast as to depopulate entire regions in such a short span of time that just keeping a stable social structure together was nearly impossible let alone trade from caravans or correspondence between areas save for the papers she was finding in peoples homes which appeared to have been delivered in a way she did not know nor understand.
Luna took to the skies around midday determined to find the answer and find her sister. With a great breath of air, she began to attempt the royal canterlot voice enhanced by as much magic as she could bring to bear with a series of sound amplification spells she had once used in order to convey orders in the midst of combat. This canterlot voice would be very, very loud and would be heard from all over. She spied a large city on a mountain and based on the buildings suspected that would have been the center of government. She let loose her voice.
"TIA IF YOU CAN HEAR ME PLEASE COME TO PONYVILLE! I AM BACK FROM IMPRISONMENT! MEET ME AT THE TOWN HALL IN PONYVILLE! I'M SORRY TIA! I'M SO, SO SORRY!"
The message finished and Princess Luna's voice hoarse from the great effort and her magic fairly well drained flew back to the town hall near the front doors. Unbeknownst to her her message had found its way to her sister's keen ear and a tear had gone down the former sun sovereign's eye "Oh Luna" Celestia thought. The former monarch took to the air from her new home in the countryside to meet her sister.
Celestia landed finding her long-lost sister lying upon the grass with tears running down her eyes. "Luna" Celestia spoke softly but loudly enough as she walked and approached her little sister. "Tia?!" Luna spoke with a trembling voice. "It's me Luna. It's really me" Celestia replied as they ran to one another and embraced. The rivalry of former eras forgotten. There stood Celestia bringer of the day and Luna wrath of the moon. The former was devoid of regalia or status symbols the latter still covered somewhat in moon dust. "There will be much to talk of" Celestia thought to herself knowing the story that would unfold for her sister would break her heart yet at the very least neither needed to be alone anymore.