> How Does a God Die?
>  by The Psychopath
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> By Waiting
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Twilight sat down on the mountain where Canterlot Castle once stood. All that was left now were the flattened mountains shifted by years of tectonic shifts and invasions. All that was left of the once magnificent castle were ruins. It had only been a few thousand years but everything was already in this state. She looked around the land, seeing only a few bits of blue grass and trees amongst fields of dead plant life and animals. Only a few luminescent bugs remained that buzzed around the old alicorn. They were all a final gift by Princess Luna before her passing to keep Equestria and the rest of the world alive when Twilight's powers would run out, but it was all for nothing. They weren't hardy enough to replace the sun-starved plant life and, eventually, everything began to die off. The ruins of immense cities dotted the landscape, home to only memories and lost souls. They would soon be devoured by whatever came to them in the afterlife, safe within its maw, if what the minotaurs believed in was true.

The mare sighed and tapped her chest when she felt a coughing fit come on and saw a few more pieces of her lavender-colored body fall to the ground and crumble into dust. Looking up at the sky revealed what Celestia's sun had become: A collapsed black hole crowned by a beautiful ring of orange light. It didn't seem as hungry or voracious as the others ponies had discovered during their trips to the stars, but it was still a black hole. Eventually, it would succumb to its needs and eat Equestria.

Twilight retreated into her own memories, remembering all the friends she lost and gained along the way. Even the deaths of Celestia and Luna were grand memories to Twilight, because ponies remembered them even into the end of their species' years despite having never met them. Her smile flipped, remembering what the present was like. Minotaurs, yak, deer, and even the dragons had all died out. Only a handful of griffins, ponies, and hippogriffs were left, and they were incompatible with each other, so the chances of getting hybrid species were impossible. Even with the blessing of magic, the children barely lasted a month, their genes too incompatible with each other.

Lamenting at her failure, Twilight looked up to see a small ship breaking through the dense atmosphere, igniting the sky briefly with light before it settled down. This small, rounded vessel spewed flames beneath it from four propulsion units as it wandered about aimlessly before flying toward Twilight and landing near her. The alicorn watched the scene unfold calmly as a pony in a vanilla-colored suit stepped out of the door and hopped onto the ground. She looked around, a gun floating next to her and quickly dropped it when she spotted Twilight. Like a long-lost child finding their parents again, the ship captain rushed over to Twilight, tripping over the mountainous terrain in her excitement.

"Princess Twilight!" the mare exclaimed. "I'm so happy I finally found you!"

She cursed to herself as she pried the helmet off of her head and looked at Twilight, her face consumed by joy. It quickly turned to sorrow when she saw what the princess looked like. Through her helmet, the mare could see a vibrantly colored pony overflowing with magic and looking at her warmly but still exuding a sense of strength and intimidation. Instead, what the captain got to see was an elderly alicorn whose body was broken apart like a shattered statue. Her mane and tail were little more than icy-blue flows of slow-moving water that landed gently onto the ground to dissipate. She held her head low but still looked at the captain warmly.

"Wh-what happened to you?!" the mare asked in a panic. "Is there anything I can do?" She gestured to her ship. "There's a medical bay in my ship. Maybe we can use that to--"

Twilight raised a hoof. "It's alright, little pony. I'm just dying." With a loud hiss, the visitor's suit expanded, becoming loose and letting it drop to the ground with a soft 'plop'. Twilight frowned at the state of this mare. Her wine-red coat was buried in many places by cybernetics, their edges displaying signs of burning or deep lacerations. The whole right side of the mare's face was cybernetics, her eye now a glowing orb of amber-yellow, imitating her left eye's color. "How old are you?" Twilight asked.

"I'm seventeen, Your Majesty," the mare said with a bow.

Twilight was horrified. "A pony at your age with such extensive wounds?!" she wheezed. "I have been gone for far too long."

The mare was quick to get up and shake her hooves. "No! No! You couldn't have done anything." She frowned and looked away. "It's just what happens at the tail end of your species' life...Everypony is too old to bear children anymore, and lots of...things needed to be done by me to survive...So...ta da! Robot pony!" she said with a sheepish smile. The mare's smile faded when she noticed Twilight not smiling and cleared her throat. "Sorry...My name is Mertle Pilla, by the way."

Twilight was taken aback. "Odd name for a pony."

"Only so many puns when there's trillions of you," she giggled. "Started adopting other species' ways of naming themselves."

"I see." Twilight paused and looked up at the stars. "I suppose you want my help in halting the decline of your species, or you're afraid to die?"

Mertle shook her head. "No. I know that it's the end of my species. We didn't account for aging and how old we were getting...then there's all the environmental factors and so forth. No. I just wanted to..." She looked at Twilight. "I thought you were immortal."

Twilight giggled weakly. "Immortality is not invincibility. Even Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Flurry, and her daughter knew that. We were all consumed by our own magic." She looked at Mertle with a smile. "I started dying along with my people."

Mertle looked ahead, putting a cybernetic hoof to her mouth in shock. "But...How does a god age?"

"We age by waiting," Twilight said teasingly. "We age by watching everypony around us die and leave us forever. We age by watching the people we cherish evolve and eventually leave us behind to forge their own paths. We age by realizing that we stand on an eternally growing cemetery with us as the Gravedigger."

"We die by waiting behind..." Mertle finished. "I heard of that before."

Twilight giggled. "Yes. It's an old saying, but I made it a few centuries ago when I started feeling myself getting weaker and I was asked the same question by a war-hungry admiral. Shut him up good." Mertle looked at Twilight and broke down crying suddenly. "What's wrong, my little pony?" Twilight asked.

"I don't want my people to die. I didn't even get to know them or their history yet!" Mertle bawled. "I'm going to be all alone!"

Twilight pulled her into a hug. "Oh. My sweet little mare. I know how you feel, to an extent. As I got older I felt more and more isolated from everyone. Those of my generation have all passed, leaving thousands in their stead, but I know that, within you, dwells the magic of friendship that our kind has coveted since its birth." She pushed Mertle away and looked her in the eyes. "And I know you won't ever truly be alone." The alicorn eyed the ship, seeing movement within shy away from her gaze. "You won't have ponykind around you anymore, and such a thing is hard for anypony, but you don't need to worry about being alone. I'm sure you've made yourself a lovely family even now. I, myself, had a dragon as my little brother, you know. He didn't see himself as a pony and always wondered what dragons were like, but that didn't mean he didn't see us as his family."

"I suppose," Mertle sniffed.

"And I'll tell you a secret I've never told anypony else:" Twilight leaned in, pretending that there were others around that could hear them. "As a god, I'm placed in a loop."

Mertle wiped her eyes and looked at Twilight, baffled. "A loop?"

The alicorn nodded, shaking some more pieces off of her crumbling body. "I have seen this scenario play out eight different times, all with different outcomes and sources. One of the worlds was just a tremendously vast array of space with just a bit of night sky. The few stars there were large and colorful, showing us another layer of immense world with different properties and natures."

"I...I wish I had seen that too..." Mertle lamented.

Twilight leaned to the side and became worried. "You don't have your cutie mark yet?"

Mertle shook her head. "No. I never found my purpose, and my parents couldn't help me before they died."

Twilight nodded. "I'm sorry to hear that, but you will. In our history there have been blank flanks in their thirties, always denied their purpose until an individual came by or a stroke of luck occurred, so don't worry. We all find our purpose eventually." She looked into the distance with a content smile. "I'm just seeing it as lucky that I don't die alone this time."

"But..." Mertle stomped the ground. "This isn't right! This isn't fair! You're all that's left of our history! You're the only one who remembers the ponies that came before us." Her anger abated and she was left sobbing. "When you die, all of ponykind dies with you."

Twilight exhaled, feeling her body starting to crumble faster. "It isn't something that can be stopped, I'm afraid, and there will always be historians left behind that will discover our ruins and piece everything together. We did it too." 

Mertle paced about nervously, angrily. She didn't want this to happen, but she couldn't come up with a solution. "I'm sorry, princess. I-I-I can't figure out a way to stop this!"

Twilight outstretched a wing. "Then come here and let us watch the world together. I would rather be in silence with a friend than alone with my memories."

"O...okay."

Mertle did as told and felt Twilight's wing press on her back. In an instant, she could feel the weight of centuries of responsibility and loss pressing down on her and leaned against Twilight's shoulder silently. The world was just as quiet, having no way to sustain life anymore. Now it was just a quiet, comfortable retreat. She looked at Twilight, seeing a serene face, and smiled despite herself.

"Do you think I'll be able to see you again? Maybe...in the next life? In the next loop? I want to see ponies as they grow. I want to see what we were like."

Twilight giggled. "Maybe. Not everypony is in the next loop. I just know that I remember, as do the princesses. There's always something new," Twilight mused. She sighed contentedly and raised her head at the black hole. "Thank you for these few moments. It's been so long since I last talked to somepony. Make sure to live a full life, otherwise you'll regret everything when you finally come to pass."

Twilight's mane and tail died out and her body collapsed into mere chunks. She was gone from the world and left a feather with the last of ponykind. As Mertle looked at the feather, she didn't realize her flanks were glowing. On them was now the image of two large wings wrapped around a gray, weeping pony with closed eyes.

Mertle wanted to see the last of pony kind in a bid to figure out how to live and revive her people. Instead she was left without another hole in her heart and even heavier thoughts, but a voice called out to her from the ship and she smiled. Twilight was right. She still had a family, even if they weren't ponies. She was no god, but at least she could live like a proud pony instead of a pitiable filly who longed for the past. At least, she wouldn't forget it. There was no one left who would be able to remember it otherwise.