Author's Notes:

Prequel of sorts to Ember.

Fallout: Equestria - Rolling Bones
Winter’s Heart

Rancor struggled to breathe past his caved in chest and punctured lungs. Pain wasn't something to which he was accustomed, and it clouded his thoughts, demanding his attention. He’d suffered through it before, but nothing like this. Never had he endured the indignity of broken bones, much less internal injuries. Every thought scattered as it formed.

His body convulsed, coughing and hacking and spraying red across the pristine white ground. It took a conscious effort to stop his magic from attempting to heal the wounds. Rancor realized he was dying and it would have been a waste to try holding it off. That didn't make it a pleasant experience, and the dark chuckle that followed didn't help.

His body clung desperately to life as his lungs slowly filled with blood, unwilling to simply let go. Finally, after an agonizing hour, his heart gave out.

The ancient horse died.

Rancor rose from the broken corpse, identical to the corpse, save his lack of opacity. With each step he lost definition until his form was little more than an indistinct shadow. He watched dispassionately as the ice white fur of his former body lost its glossy sheen and faded back to its natural auburn. The horse had not been his choice, but triplets were such a rare occurrence that they could not be passed up.

Removed from the physical body, and the inconvenience of pain, Rancor was finally able to think clearly. Memories hidden by pain poured forth. The cave. Those last six ponies. Final victory a hair’s breadth away. A flash of magic. Pain…

Rancor snorted. It had happened too fast. His sisters…

Looking around for the first time, he took in his surroundings. Snow and ice coated the world in white. That was good. A line of broken trees and a furrow dug into the dirt showed the direction of his deadly flight. The trees themselves he didn't recognize. In his experience they had broad flat leaves, not long thick needles. His sisters absence worried him; they’d never been apart before. He would need to find them.

First though, a new body. Perhaps something with a horn this time.

Siblings were easiest, the closer in age the better. Firsts were good if their siblings surpassed them, otherwise the second was ripe for the picking. Hatred grew in every heart, though; all it required was a little coaxing to blossom in full.

The elk had been a second, his older sister chosen to lead the herd. It had been an entertaining three years.

Rancor walked through the village's smoldering remains, savoring the elk’s powerful form and admiring the destruction. The sobbing voice in the back of his mind redoubled at the sight of his parents. It wouldn't last long, a decade or so at most.

It was time to find his sisters.

Discord. That overgrown foal.

In Her absence the daemon had followed him and his, turning the land of ponies into his own personal playground. The only constant was Chaos. Still, the ponies preserved, scrounging out what life they could. That life was lived in a perpetual state of fear. Discord never pushed them too far, however. Though there were times when food was scarce, he would never allow them to starve.

The ponies fear was so complete that it drowned out what hatred they could muster. He was forced to single out his prey and devour them part and parcel to sustain himself. It had required… changes and the first few had not been pleasant. Now, though, an appreciation had been developed.

None could challenge the daemon; without his sisters, Rancor would be as a fly against a spider. So he hid, masking himself as best he could, and if Discord knew of his presence he showed no interest.

His sisters had yet to surface. He’d never been apart from them for so long. It was troubling. But leaving was not an option while Discord reigned. Any attempt would find him back where he’d started.

As such, their arrival was a blessing. He recognized them immediately. Her magic burned brightly from within them. Rancor watched eagerly as they confronted Discord.

They did not fight, much to Rancor’s surprise. Instead, the white one got him talking and, while he was distracted, they played their trump card. A single blast of Her magic and the great and powerful Discord was locked away in a stone prison.

Rancor fled, then, the bitter taste of fear curdling his tongue.

They were gone. Of them he could find no trace.

Alone.

He hid in the only land which the others avoided.

They’d had no idea! How long had he skulked in the shadows, certain that a single step into the light would be his end? Then she comes along and corrupts the younger in a mere decade! Aemula.

The ponies had proven themselves beyond ignorant, paving the way for their own subjugation. And yet, Rancor watched as another kindred was laid low. First, his sisters and himself, then Discord, now Aemula. All defeated at the very height of their power. Each losing in a single stroke once the ponies set against them.

Thought was required.

Rancor released a breath. It fell as ice blue shards to the white coated ground. He stood still amid the swirling snow, hazel brown fur shifting with the wind. Twelve branching spires of tanned bone crowned his head in a grand display between spade shaped ears. Every rib and bone stood out in stark relief against his thick hide. His thin muzzle stretched far longer than any pony’s. Eyes the color of ice stared east as a wolf’s grin tugged at his lips.

The sun in the blue sky burned brightly. Waves of heat rolling over all of Equis. It could do nothing to warm the mountain’s summit where he stood. All its cascading rays of light were rebuffed, reflected and refracted off the drifting snow. Winds blew in from the south, heated by the great Palomino Desert. They rushed over the range in a dry heat that parched the throat and burned the eye, only to become as winter’s cool breath against Rancor’s side.

The snow, so plentiful about the summit, stretched no further beyond. The mountain range stretched for miles, many spires reaching far higher to touch the cloud stuff, but no other held a single flake of the cold white fluff.

The elk waited, it would not be long now.

Crunching snow announced the arrival of another. The elk didn’t bother turning his gaze from the distant spire and the barely visible white city hanging from its side. He recognized the feel of the other’s magic even after so many millennium. It could only be described as the flavor of death, black and full of a universal malice.

“It is almost disheartening isn’t it, Rancor?” asked the new arrival, white puffs of air rising from his over-long mouth as he spoke.

Rancor’s ear twitched toward the oddly accented voice. Even with its millions of ponies, zebras, and other races spread across Equis, even with the millenniums that have passed since the beginning, there had never been another creature with that voice.

Eyes naturally followed ears. He lacked a muzzle, though his elongated skull and lower jaw nearly equaled his body in length. Yellow eyes and a pink nose, both small, were mounted at the very front of his skull. Red tassels dangled from gold earrings that pierced the long conical ears at the back of his head. A small tuft of black hair that could barely be called a mane sprouted from between the same. Dark blue, nearly purple, fur over a cyan underbelly failed to hide the thick bulges of muscle just beneath it. He wore a golden choker with hoof length tabs that flared about his shoulders, chest, and back. Similar gold bands wrapped about his upper arms just above his elbows.

Though his forelimbs ended in powerful fingers that sunk into the white snow, his hind legs were tipped with short nailed paws. His most distinguishing feature was the tail tipped with a black taloned hand that grasped idly at the empty air as it jerked and swung.

At length, Rancor shook his head, saying, “You are a foal, Iago.”

“Watch your tongue, or I will remove you of its burden.”

Long canines flashed as Rancor’s smile widened, and a shiver ran through his coat– though not from the cold. “Mmmm. Perhaps my perspective is unique, but all of this,” his hoof swung wide to encompass the world on display, “and all that is about to come to pass, all of it, was inevitable. Had the griffins not been beaten into submission things would have been different. These ponies, however, and the zebras as well, they are ruled by their fear, and fear turns so easily into hatred. Yes, Iago, this was written in Kismet’s tomes long ago, sparse though the details may have been.”

Iago chuckled. “That does not make you any less of a frightened foal.”

“You believe my scarcity these last few centuries found its root in fear, trepidation of my families past defeat? Hardly, though there maybe some truth there, in that I learned a valuable lesson. Our mistake was in our greed, pushing and gorging ourselves when we should have simply allowed nature to take its course. We gave them an enemy to unite against. Now, there are none save themselves. Oh, I nudged them here and there, I’m sure you did as well, but I did not exert myself, instead simply reveling in the potential of it all: glorious.”

“Reveling in the potential.” Iago sneered. “You may wrap it up in all the fancy words you like, that won’t change the meaning. You are a whipped dog, Rancor. Even now, mere minutes away, and you claim a single mountain top. You could coat the whole of this region in ice and there would be nothing to stop you, yet you cower in fear of being taken to task. And what then will you do after? All your hoarded potential will be wiped away, and you will be left with nothing.”

“You believe this is the end? It is not. Oh, I will loose much, for a time. What follows, dear Iago, what follows you could not begin to imagine. You wish to know the truth of these creatures? You wish to see just how far they can fall? Dear Iago, if that is what you wish I would pay close attention for the next few centuries. These creatures who stand tall and proud will fall far indeed. They will fall, but they will survive. They will survive amid the ash and blood of their sins, and even the purest will leave an ocean of corpses in their wake.

“No, Iago, this is not the end, it is nothing more than a new beginning.”

The snow continued to swirl in the silence that fell.

“I have been search for you.”

“I know.”

“Your sisters made entertaining playthings.”

Rancor shrugged.

Iago frowned at the others apathy, his clawed tail reaching to scratch at his long chin. Slowly, a smile crept along his lips, pulling back to reveal rows of sharp, dagger like teeth. “I was growing bored of this repetitious war. They spent their ingenuity ages ago. A few more centuries can’t hurt,” the last was said mostly to himself. Iago’s eyes brightened when white streaks began to fill the sky. “Ah, I see the fireworks are beginning.”

Both watched as the first blinding flash of green light burned away the clouds that once formed the pegasus metropolis of Cloudsdayle. Jade flames reflected in their eyes as the initial explosion stopped, pausing for breath before the balefire, burning hotter than Sun, pulled itself back to become a pillar of fire, smoke, and ash. Another emerald blossom followed from the ground, Manehattan, ‘the city of lights and legends’, little more than a candle burning away at sight’s edge.

A pink bubble burst to life around the white zit of Canterlot. Scant seconds later a legion of missiles streaked for its tall, alabaster towers. The explosions looked nothing so much as moths flying too close to a fire. Mere moments after the first missile detonated against the shield Iago’s mouth parted in a hungry smile. A single word fell from his open maw before tendrils of black magic wrapped around his body, and he vanished.

“Derreter.”

Rancor ignored the departure. Iago mattered little to him. Far more important were the obelisks that dotted Equestria. In the seconds following Cloudsdayle’s utter destruction an energy unlike anything ever seen before poured from those spires. Tsunamis of white raged to block out Sun and sky. A half darkness coated the world as far as he could see, and his smile grew.

More blossoms of green fire struck, many flying wide and missing their targets by miles. Despite that saving grace, no pony was safe. Clouds burnt away only to return with bellies full to bursting. The dam broke. The rain that fell carried a far worse fate than the quick, painless death of those struck by the blasts.

Rancor turned west, facing the city not a league away by the shore below. He continued to smile as scorching water cascaded down his coat. He imagined the ponies below running in fear and terror. Many made it to the Stables before the first bomb fell. It mattered little, all would open in time and they would follow him into his glorious future.

Rancor strode through the empty streets of Las Pegasus. The white falling from the sky was hot to the touch until it reached his coat. This would only last a short time, however. Soon enough the true white would come to blanket his city.

He felt them, cowering in herds and strings. Hatred mingled deliciously with the waves of fear and desperation.

Patience. Patience was the lesson he’d learned.

When the ash stopped, and the rain began to cool, the ponies finally left their makeshift shelters and stepped out into a world they hardly recognized.

Then the snows came.

As ready as they had been for the bombs, the cold caught them unprepared. Streets became impassable as buildings were buried beneath the frozen water. Their supplies began to wane, too cold to grow or scavenge.

It was then that Rancor came to them. In their desperation, they followed.

In their folly, they found a savior.

In their ignorance, he taught them hatred.