A city of burning people screamed into my ears.

I was falling. Falling into a swirling chasm of hellish agony. For them there was no end. Again and again they died all around me.

I could feel their pain – their torment as their tortured souls washed over me … my entire being sinking deeper into an abyss not even they could escape. Flashes of emerald light illuminated the abyss in time with their screams like lightning before thunder.

Every time their shrill cries for help – for mercy – for death reached a ghastly crescendo, spellfire flashed in my eyes and I saw their melting, skeletal faces and charred bodies whirl past.

But one voice – one voice cried out louder than the hell that burned around me.

I opened my watery eyes, and emerald light parted the darkness for the briefest of glimpses.

A husk of a stallion, his hind legs nothing but charred, smoking stumps, scraped towards me.

Then darkness.

I felt his cold, dead hooves curl around my muzzle.

There was another flash. His melting candlewax maw tore open before my eyes as he howled into my face.

“I’M SORRY!” he screamed.

I tried to open my mouth, tried to speak, tried to peel his hooves off my muzzle as darkness swept back over me.

But as I wrapped my hooves around his, his flesh wrapped around mine, engulfing me in rippling black sludge. He was melting into me – his hungry, liquefied coat slithering across me. Its chilling tendrils wormed their way across my cheek, leaving streaks of dripping black paint that trickled heavily down my face … over my widening eyes … into my gasping mouth.

My bloodshot eyes darted to the hooves around my muzzle and screamed – but my voice was lost amidst the cyclone of nightmarish carrion that whirled around me. His melting, skeletal face inched ever closer to mine as his bubbling flesh trickled down my chest, thickening and engulfing my shivering brown hide with a layer of frigid darkness.

Emerald light painted his blackened, charred skull before me.

“I’LL NEVER LEAVE HER!”

His distended, dripping maw opened, as if to swallow me whole – a breath away from my face.

“You hear me …” he hissed into my ear as the emerald light died away. Droplets of melting flesh splattered upon my cheek.

“I’ll never leave her again ...”

Never. Leave. Again. For a single fleeting moment, my muscles loosened.

“C … Candy Cane?”

That was all he needed.

His writhing tendrils wrenched my mouth open.

With a deafening shriek, he plunged into me.

My eyes rolled into their sockets - and a film of black paint poured over them and darkness stole away my sight. Frigid black candle wax washed over me … my entire body … inside me … swimming through my innards, tearing me apart from the inside out -

- pushing away the soul within.

“NO!” cried out a mare’s voice. A skeletal pony dove towards me, ruined forelegs outstretched. “LEAVE HIM ALONE!”

Hooves tore through the amorphous black sludge that slithered across my flesh. She tugged, and peeled, and dug, the stallion’s defiant, yet agonizing screams drowning out my own as she ripped him apart.

As she ripped me apart.

“GET OUT! THIS ONE IS MINE!” howled another voice, and another pair of dead hooves and broken jaws stabbed into me.

They weren’t the only ones.

More came. More dead souls came to devour my flesh.

Hundreds of dead hooves careened into me in a frenzy of flailing limbs and snapping maws. No longer could I hear the candlewax stallion’s voice as they shredded him to pieces, tore him out of me and hurled him into the night – only for another black soul to take his place ...

Only for that to be wrenched away too.

The screaming. The ripping. The tearing. They reached through my flesh, vying for the soul underneath, trying to tear it out – snatch it away – rip it from my chest. Rows upon rows of chilling, broken teeth sunk into my shoulders, and my throat, and my sides.

My flesh survived – but with every chilling blow, my soul grew colder, as if I was being dragged, screaming into a body of icy, black water. I watched as the light of the surface grew farther and farther away. I could do nothing but watch helplessly … numbly … distantly as they dragged my soul from the warmth of my drowning body.

I could feel them filling the void my soul left behind.

Slowly, sanity, consciousness, and even death itself became nothing but distant streetlights along a pitch black road. Streetlights that grew dimmer and farther with every part of me they tore away.

Beneath the shrieking hurricane of billowing shadows, the very things that made me equine – the very things that made me Red Dawn were being wrenched away from my shaking hooves. I felt emptier, and emptier, and emptier as they devoured everything until nothing but faint shreds of my soul, my conscious, screaming soul remained.

I remembered.

I remembered my promises. My convictions. The people I had to save. I remembered …

I tried to remember …

Tried … fought to remember as the darkness threatened to swallow up the sinking raft that was my soul. I thrashed against the tides of darkness, not willing to give in even as their black waters began to fill my near empty vessel.

I wasn’t willing to give up what little I had left. For all that I had left were my promises. The words that I had said to the people I loved. But the shadows showed no mercy. They were indiscriminate. They took, and as they took, the more I forgot.

The more I forgot who I was.

I heard his voice again. The candlewax stallion returned, flailing and slashing through the billowing cloud of apparitions in a whirlwind of screaming agony.

“HOLLY!”

An icy jolt speared through me, and I felt his presence slither inside my vessel once more.

Drowning.

Drowning. I was drowning. But my body began to float to the surface … as someone else.

The light began to fade from my eyes.

I began to forget. Names. Places. Memories.

Even people. People I remembered I loved. 'I couldn’t … I can’t … forget ...

'Me …'

In an instant, there was a flash.

From the darkness came an emerald light so bright that it washed the darkness away. With it came a filly’s tormented voice, the same voice that had screamed – begged Candy Cane and I to stay with the only word she needed to say:

“NOOO!”

And in that instant, I remembered.

I remembered the emerald spellfire.

It burned away the black candlewax that threatened to devour me whole, and with it, the shadows that danced around me.

Then it began to burn away …

'… me.'

It shot through my veins and through every nerve ending in my body. Engulfing me. Cooking my flesh. Boiling my blood. Burning me from the inside and out, consuming me – ripping me away from the world I had grown to hate.

My veins, my arteries, my eyes - they ruptured and popped as the fluids within boiled over. My flesh sloughed off my bones, and my bones became dust.

In mere milliseconds, I was incinerated.

And then nothing.

The echoing cries of a thousand dying ponies rang through my ears.

In a flash, the darkness gave way to light, and my eyes opened to a doomed, burning world.

I ... remembered ...

I was running.

Or at least as fast as my little legs could take me. Ponies towered over me. They were nothing but a screaming rainbow of blurs as they galloped past me in the fiery twilight – too many to count – too many galloping in the same direction. One wrong step was all it took – as one mare learned when she tripped over the icy curb and disappeared beneath a hundred unforgiving hooves.

But no one cared.

Not even when the shells that shrieked down from the burning, suffocated skies detonated into the masses. There was a deafening crash, then a muffled crack as I was thrown off my little hooves. I felt something warm run down my face as the unrecognizable remains of ponies plastered my ivory coat with gory crimson.

Through dark, blurry tunnels I stared into a sky of fire and ice. Great winged shapes, whirring red-eyed drones, and laser spitting war machines clashed behind curtains of blackened snowfall. With every fiery explosion that painted their cruel shadows against the clouds, I knew someone had died.

More flesh to stoke the flames.

It was hell. It had to be. In the bloody snow I lay, watching as the city around me burned. All around me ponies were dying. And running. And dying. I wanted to wake up, to leave.

I wanted to run away.

I willed my limbs to move – but they weren’t mine. I cried out for help, but a filly screamed for her mother instead.

No one came.

The asphalt convulsed beneath me as muffled hooves pounded past in the ringing of my bleeding ears. I could hear faintly, amid the shelling, and the screaming, and the crashing, a stallion shouting someone’s name.

“HOLLY!”

Eyelids fluttering, my ears perked and my head turned instinctively in the direction of his voice. I recognized him instantly. I knew him. I knew his name. Snowy. Snowy … my brother.

He was my … 'no.'

I didn't have a brother. And yet his voice alone was enough to dull the pain that coursed through my veins.

“HOLLY, WHERE ARE YOU!” Snowy screamed.

Closer.

I searched frantically through the frenzy of hooves and screaming ponies, tufts of my pink mane dashing across my face in the blurry tunnels of my eyes.

A shadow swept over me.

My eyes widened, then clenched closed.

Hooves drove me into the asphalt. There was a disgusting crack. Then agony. I felt bones break. I felt my fragile little bones break. Liquid fire erupted through my veins, and a horrifying shriek ripped a bleeding gash down my lower lip.

The suffering was mutual. It crashed against the shores of my consciousness as viciously as it did upon hers, and my silent, tormented cries joined her shrill, keening screams.

No one cared.

Beneath their hooves, a filly screamed for her mother.

But no one came.

A mare galloped past me. I saw her eyes meet mine for the briefest of moments - and she kept running, her screams of terror barely audible over the other countless, doomed souls. And I was one of them. I gagged – sick to my stomach – shrieking at my right hind leg – broken and twisted – shattered bone spearing through my bloodied flesh.

Again, my anguished grimace darkened beneath someone’s shadow. I didn’t even have a chance to scream. I didn’t even have time to close my eyes.

I wanted to close them so bad. I couldn’t watch. I wanted to get up and run. But at the same time, I was helpless and innocent. I wanted to lay there and cry, to cry for my mother, for my father –

For ponies I had never seen in my life. And yet they were as real and familiar as Stable 91’s whitewashed halls.

I was scared.

She was too.

I shielded my face and screamed.

Teeth bit into my mane. Within seconds, I was airborne – and tucked against someone’s chest. I howled for my mother until my eyes opened and I realized my forelegs were wrapped around a stallion’s neck, his coat an alabaster white – just like mine.

I looked up and saw his face - and knew exactly who he was.

“Holly, are you okay?!” Snowy glanced down at me, a wiry foreleg hugging me protectively against his chest.

I buried my head in his brown mane as if to escape the carnage erupting around me. But I couldn’t. Every step he took sent a river of lava through my broken leg and my quivering body.

“Little sis! Talk to me! Please!” he begged. I only squeezed him tighter, trying to hug the agony away. Trying to hug the world away. My shoulders rocked with sobs as I clung to him as if he was going to let me go and I was going to tumble away from him into the abyss. But he never did. “I’m sorry …” I heard him say, his voice trembling.

“Where’d you go?” her voice - my voice – our voices whimpered in unison.

“I lost you in the crowd.” I felt his muscles tense as he hugged me closer. He spoke to me softly, his voice reassuring me even as shells screamed overhead and exploded across the street.

“I’m sorry.” The burning world around me seemed to fade away as I squeezed him as tight as I could and listened as his voice spoke louder than everyone’s screams. “Holly, I’ll never leave you again,” he promised me, his words echoing through my mind a thousand times over.

I believed him.

“I’ll never leave you again.”

I nodded furiously, tears pouring down my cheeks.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

For a moment, we stood against the tide of fleeing ponies. They parted around us like a river parting around a stone. Unmovable. Inseparable.

I closed my eyes, and the pain, and the city, and the war – it all seemed to fade away as Snowy cradled me in his hooves. Then someone’s coat brushed against my leg. Glass shattered all around me … and I saw only fire … blood … and death.

I screamed.

Terror flashed across Snowy' face as his eyes widened at my mangled, useless limb.

Holly blinked away our tears. I blinked away her memories. I stared into Snowy’s eyes and saw my distant face in his reflection, my brown coat dripping black and my lips curled, screaming in horror. Hooves raked against chalkboard.

I watched as Snowy’s flesh sloughed off his bones like melting, black candlewax.

Like. Black. Candlewax.

Holly blinked once more, and the windows to his soul, the same eyes that had stared into my mine, rippled with anguish. It was his fault. Her leg ... my leg ... it hurt him more than it hurt me.

“Gods … I’m sorry … I’m – I’m getting you out of here!” Snowy swore, his hooves stomping into the asphalt. He galloped forward – knocking aside ponies in his path.

“What about Mama … what about Papa!?” I gasped, my leg jolting with agony every time Snowy pounded one hoof into the road after the other.

But the only answer I got was another artillery shell that showered us in debris and red mist.

Mama. Papa.

Disjointed memories of ponies I didn’t know seethed past me as I remembered the parents I never had.

“Snowy … what about Mama and Papa –“

“They didn’t make it!” he snapped, ramming aside a pony too slow to veer out of his path.

Hot tears washed away the pain in my leg as something else shattered inside of me.

“They … they didn’t?” I croaked, sick to my stomach. My eyes fluttered … I could feel the darkness begin to take me. Not because of my maimed hind leg. But because I remembered.

I remembered my father levitating me through the air, my hoof brushing at his yellow and white mane with every giggling twirl. I hovered before his muzzle, and he smiled, gently nuzzling my nose with his. I muttered wistfully when he set me down on my four hooves and threw on his saddlebags. He brushed down his scrubs and told me, softly, that he was working overtime again. He said he’d see me again tomorrow … tomorrow.

I remembered my mother reading me a story at my bedside. I remembered my favorite story –Daring-Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone. She hoofed her reading glasses and hugged me close as I listened to her, sinking my head into my pillow and losing myself in the fantasy world of Daring-Do. She pressed the covers closed and I whined, wanting to listen some more. 'Tomorrow,' she said, kissing me on the forehead and saying goodnight. She flicked the lights off, and took one last glance at me … smiling one last time before gently closing the door.

I went to bed that night waiting for tomorrow to come.

That day was tomorrow.

I heard a gurgling retch as Snowy galloped past a stallion whose gory hooves fought to keep his innards from spilling out of his chest.

“MAMA!” he screamed. “PAPA!”

They were never going to come for him.

Neither were Holly’s.

They were gone. Her parents … my parents … they were gone. My breaths came out as hopeless, shallow gasps, my entire world coming apart at the seams. I was sobbing now. Tears welled out of my eyes as I whimpered and wept.

In the distance, Snowy’s muffled voice struggled to be heard..

“Holly,” he began, through clenched teeth. “We’re going to make it! You’re going to make it!” Snowy’s eyes met mine, tears trailing down his grimy cheeks. I felt his foreleg hug me closer to his chest.

“I won’t lose you too,” he sobbed, his voice shaking. “Not again.”

What legs I had that weren’t broken tightened around Snowy’s chest. I buried my muzzle in his mane and wailed my bleeding heart out.

But my voice died away as an immense, winged shadow shrieked over us.

Upon wings of steel and billowing thunderclouds, an aircraft armed with racks of missile batteries and autocannons strafed over the masses of fleeing ponies. The thundering sounds of roaring cloudship engines drowned out even the pounding in my chest.

It turned on its axis, its pair of screaming rotors tilting so that its nose aimed down the street to my right. The frenzied rainbow stampede, undaunted and driven by the mindless instinct to survive, galloped beneath the cloudship’s shadow even as the building behind it to our left exploded in a plume of ash and cinders.

Snowy swung his head over his shoulder and screamed something to me, something about my ears –

And above us, the cloudship unleashed hell.

There came a whirring hum, then a wailing shriek. In an epileptic lightshow of thundering gunfire and hissing missile volleys, the world around me flashed white. I screamed my throat raw in deafened silence.

On the other side of the street, a tank exploded, leaving behind a mass of twisted, burning metal. Black, equine shapes fled for cover only to be blown apart in blurry splashes of gore and dismembered limbs as the cloudship’s nose-mounted autocannon ripped them to pieces.

I felt fire upon my cheek.

The blistering touch of a spent shell casing the size of my foreleg rolled down Snowy’s back and grazed the side of my face.

Time was slow and cruel.

My flesh curled and cooked – cooking before my very eyes. The smell of burning hide - my burning hide wafted into my nostrils. Snowy's gait faltered as he cringed at his smoldering flesh. But the agonized scream that left my lips was a whip that lashed him onward – faster.

Faster!

I felt his leg tighten around me.

He wasn't going to stop for anything.

Blinded with stinging tears that wouldn’t seem to stop falling, there was another flash and a dying metallic shriek as the cloudship, now behind us, erupted with hellfire. The equine silhouettes upon the ceilings above us cheered - then turned their weapons down to the herd.

I watched as they opened fire.

Ponies dropped left and right. Mares and stallions and even foals were crushed beneath the stampede as bullets stitched across their chests – clipped their legs – cratered their skulls. I watched as a filly about my age disappeared beneath her mother’s lifeless corpse.

I’d remember that.

I’d remember the despair in her eyes as a hoof came down to crush her skull. And her ribs. And whatever was left. She disappeared beneath the tide of rainbowed pelts and I realized that I was still screaming.

It was a massacre.

I looked up and two stories above us and a zebra rose up upon his hindlegs. His striped, black and white mane bobbed with his head as he shouldered his rifle and took aim.

There was a fiery glimmer in his scope.

I knew he wouldn’t miss.

But a winged, armored shape plowed into him and swept him off and into the street. There was a sickening crunch as the black-armored pegasus smashed him into the asphalt in front of us in a shower of bloody snow. The pegasus reached out with a gory hoof – and my brother turned the other way.

But even the pony’s servomotors whined as Snowy tried plowing past her.

“She your daughter?” a mare’s voice crackled through her helmet, her foreleg firm and unmoving against Snowy’s shoulder. She fixed her helmet's orange eyes upon me and my broken leg.

In the reflection of her bloodied, angular visor I saw myself … I saw Holly. I saw her once white, blood-caked face and disheveled pink mane. I saw the vicious gash that had ripped across her lip and the long, teardrop like burn that streamed down her cheek – like a tear that would never dry out. I saw the eyes of a filly, her innocence lost, and her own eyes unable to believe that the pony that was staring back at her was … her.

I knew that feeling all too well.

I turned away and buried my muzzle in Snowy’s mane, whimpering softly.

“Sister,” he said.

The mare threw her head over her shoulder and ducked as an artillery shell leveled a building nearby. She touched a hoof to the side of her helmet, her head bobbing as she shouted into her radio.

“Center peel – cover us!”

I looked up into the fiery sky and the winged silhouettes of armored pegasi engaged the zebras upon the rooftops. They traded tracers and streams of magical energy as bodies tumbled down the roofs and spun out of the sky.

The pegasus looked at me, and then at my brother.

“Get to the evac point!” she ordered, a palpable trembling in her voice. She pointed her leg down the street. “We’re getting you ponies outta here!”

I watched as scores of pegasi touched down onto the asphalt and corralled the fleeing ponies, herding them to safety even as the zebras continued their merciless onslaught. But for a short moment, the gunfire paused and everyone turned their eyes to the ember sky as immense, black shadows darkened the earth below.

From the fiery ashen clouds burst a pair of twin-rotored cloudships that screamed over us, escorting another pair of cloud-trailing transports. They landed in the center of an intersection at the far end of the street, debris and discarded refuse swirling around them. Their cabin doors slid open and pegasi streamed out, taking positions upon the rooftops or ducking behind overturned autowagons around the perimeter.

With open hooves, they gathered as many ponies as they could.

It was almost too good to be true. I almost believed that we all weren’t going to die.

But I knew better. That world felt so real – and I was living it through another pony’s eyes. But not too long ago I stared through the eyes of another dead pony and saw the balefire end her and everything she loved.

Realization dawned upon me. I never knew my father. I never had a brother. My mother wasn't an earth pony - she never wore glasses either. And I've never read a single Daring-Do book in my entire life.

It was no memory orb. It was someone’s living, breathing memory. And I was living it through her eyes. As her. I looked up and saw around me Poneva city – a city at war.

And the Great War ended 200 years ago.

If only I didn’t know how it was going to end.

If only I didn’t know that that pony was already dead.

Crack! Gunfire kicked up gravel against my face and the armored pegasus threw herself in front of us, bullets pinging against her armor.

“Go, go!” she screamed, before the twin-linked energy casters upon her shoulders unleashed a blazing arc of violet lightning. Across the street, from a second floor ceiling, a smoking corpse tumbled to the asphalt.

I felt my insides churn. Not from the sight of the zebra’s mangled corpse – but from a sinister, undulating mechanical drone that violated … penetrated my senses. Everyone on the street heard it. Felt it quaking through their bones.

It was the resounding, overwhelming sound of a voice roaring over the groan of churning machinery.

Then there was a great crash. Everyone turned to look.

A store to our right collapsed around a lurching, treaded war machine. Its hull was striped black and white, and covered with ungodly, blood red glyphs that glowed hellishly in the smoke. A pair of tusk-like missile batteries jutted out of its turret – the barrel of its main gun exuding a fiery, ember glow.

In its destructive wake followed three smaller tanks and dozens of zebras who promised us only blood and fire.

Leading them forward, the gargantuan war machine plowed through the debris, the smoking length of its immense battle cannon revolving slowly towards us. The amalgamation of equine sapience and cold steel roared – its spine-tingling psionic impulses howling for blood inside my paper thin skull.

The pegasus mare took a step back, her crackling energy casters hesitating at the unholy monstrosity.

“Gods …” The mare shoved Snowy onward just as the tank’s runes gleamed with hellfire. “Get outta here – now!”

My brother turned and ran.

And the road behind us exploded.

The shockwave threw us off our hooves.

I felt Snowy’s legs curl reflexively around me as we tumbled helplessly down the street like ragdolls. The air was punched out of my lungs as we slammed into the asphalt. Hard. Snowy took most of the impact, but my vision swam as I crashed headfirst and into the road in a heap.

I stared numbly into the fiery, amber skies as gray snowflakes collected upon my face – the tank’s psionic death horns howling distantly in my dwindling consciousness. Tracers and laser bolts streaked over us as buildings within the blast zone moaned and collapsed in their death throes. I cried out as I rolled over onto my side, my mangled hind leg scraping against the rubble.

Then I saw her.

Frantic radio chatter spewed out from the pegasus’ cratered helmet, impaled through and through with a talon of shredded rebar. I listened distantly as a mare shouted into the comms and my senses slowly faded back into horrifying clarity.

“… KRRFT – zebra armor – engage, ENGAGE -"

Twin shadows darkened my face as two of the flying barges’ escorts broke formation and hurtled towards the zebra battle tank. But a stallion’s voice broke the static.

"Belay that order! Whiskey Hotel – Cloud Lima, stay in formation!”

The steel monstrosity’s death horn screamed into my thoughts. My vision blurred, and the muffled, alien chants of marching zebras began to fill my ears. In my daze, I tried to sit up, but ducked as autocannon rounds shrieked over me and blew apart anyone that rose to their hooves.

“Sir we’ve got stragglers -”

“FUCK’EM, THEY’RE ALREADY DEAD! GET THIS SKY-TANK IN THE AIR!”

'Goddesses … no ...'

The mare screamed into the comms. “FUCK YOU, SUNSPOT! WILD FLOWER, COVER THEM! NOPONY GETS LEFT BEHIND!”

“KRRFFT – 10-4, Lightning Dust. Nopony gets left behind.”

With their autocannons thundering and missile batteries shrieking, they strafed the zebra infantry that advanced ever closer. One of the smaller tanks blew apart – and another became engulfed in smoke, stopping in its tracks – immobilized. Dismembered limbs and debris shot skyward as the cloudships screamed past, plotting another attack vector.

For seconds, nothing moved beneath the red and black cloud.

But my stomach began to churn – and in the back of my mind, I witnessed fleeting visions of a bloodied zebra – equine shadows dancing over his mutilated flesh –

And a cacophony of ungodly psionic screams coalesced inside my skull.

Through the plumes of rising smoke their glyph-inscribed war machine lurched forward – undaunted – its hull smoking and sloughing off its ruined frame. Behind it, through the hellish glow of its blood-red glyphs, more billowing black shapes marched through the dust and burning embers.

I laid my head back down helplessly, whimpering softly as I stared at the pegasus mare’s lifeless eyes through her shattered faceplate. My breaths came out as shallow, frantic gasps as I felt her blood pooling around me. Still warm.

I moaned, fighting for the strength to sit up. I turned, and saw my brother. Snowy was lying on his back, his chest heaving for air – a hoof curled around a length of rebar that pinned him to the road. Panting through bloody teeth, I watched, helplessly, as his eyes darted back and forth, spiraling into shock.

Sobs erupted from my lips. “Snowy!” I wailed, tears cutting streams down my grimy cheeks.

I turned and saw the zebras and their war machines rumbling toward us, chanting in their chilling, alien language. Their dark war hymns echoed in my thoughts, staining them red with the death and destruction all around me. I looked around me and saw dead ponies. Charred ponies. Perforated ponies. Dismembered ponies. Even colts, fillies – foals. Just like me. And the more I stared, the more I hated.

The more I hated them. The more I hated the stripes on their coats. They killed my parents. Destroyed my home. They did that. Those striped monsters did that. And they were going to murder me like they murdered everyone else.

“Snowy – Snowy, they’re coming!” I shrieked into his deaf ears. Their engines roared even closer. I could imagine them crushing both of us beneath the treads of their tanks. I could hear my flesh squelching. My bones crunching. I imagined them laughing as Snowy’s skull popped underneath their treads like a melon.

No. They were going to kill my big brother – the only family I had left. No. No! I slapped at his face furiously with a trembling forehoof, crying out his name through a river of burning tears. Zebras rallied among the ash, and cinders, and slaughtered ponies.

They’d be upon us in minutes.

“Snowy!” I cried, pressing my nose against his and staring desperately into his unresponsive eyes. “THEY’RE COMING!” I reached out with a hoof and touched his face, my shrill cries crashing through his disoriented state like a sledgehammer to glass.

“THEY’RE GOING TO KILL US!”

Something shattered behind the glassy windows of Snowy’s eyes. His pupils constricted. He blinked, and I felt his wiry muscles tense explosively under me.

“SNOWY!”

My voice wrenched him away from the precipice.

Snowy roared with grim defiance and tore himself free with a violent squelch. He swept me up in his hooves, and the world blurred past my teary eyes once more.

We leapt into the fray, joining whatever stragglers were left. Down the street behind us, the barrels of the striped tanks pierced through the curtain of smoke.

They opened fire.

Snowy galloped through the hail of screaming tracers, howling his throat raw even as ponies faltered and came apart around us. I watched as pegasi dove down from the sky and carried the lucky ones to safety.

But the zebras were cruelly intent on making sure no one made it out of there alive. One pegasus dove down toward us, his legs outstretched – but the zebras arced their tracers skyward to our would-be savior and he exploded in a cloud of bloody feathers and scrap metal.

Snowy only hugged me tighter.

Then I heard the roar of cloud engines as a pair of cloudships shrieked towards us.

The two light tanks replied with a barrage of shrieking autocannon rounds, punctuated by the whoosh of a gale-force wind. With a deafening thunderclap, one of the cloudships erupted in flames – the monstrous battle tank’s left missile battery smoking. Through its smoking death throes, the cloudship’s partner shrieked past, and engulfed the zebras in an inferno of vengeful, bone-jarring missile volleys. Within seconds, the formation was engulfed in smoke and fire, the acrid stench of cooked flesh and petrochemicals wafting downwind.

They did it. The zebras were dead.

The world seemed to slow around me as the blood drained from my face and my eyes widened with horror.

Howling, psionic death horns echoed through my ears and my mind. Through the fire, it roared even louder – the tank’s inequine, steel sapience only driven to rage as it screamed in blood curdling agony.

'Impossible.' The massive, striped war machine, its crimson glyphs blazing like hellfire from its melted, ruined hull, crushed the other tanks’ burning skeletons beneath its treads as the spellbound demon within roared with fiery vengeance.

As the last cloudship accelerated into the sky, the twisted, melting wreckage of its wingman rained down upon us – us, the stragglers who survived. Only a hoofful of us were all that was left.

Almost shoulder to shoulder we galloped, for our lives – and Snowy, for my life.

The air suddenly felt a thousand degrees hotter. I looked up and choked, an inferno reflecting against my watery eyes. As if by instinct alone, Snowy hurled himself away just in time for the pony next to us to disappear beneath the cloudship’s fiery tail section.

A mare, screaming for her life, shoved us out of her way as she bolted past us. But the falling sky screamed louder. She almost made it across the street. Almost.

She didn't even have a chance to cry out before she was cleaved in half by a whirling metal rotor.

I swallowed the bile in my throat.

“GODS!” Snowy cursed, her gory halves tumbling past us.

She was close. But we made it farther.

But what we saw made my jaw drop with despair. I watched helplessly as one of the cloudships ascended to the sky.

“No … Gods, no …” Snowy murmured, galloping as fast as his legs could take him.

They were going to leave us behind.

I waited for the other cloudship to take off. But it didn’t. My heart leaped when I realized that the other one was waiting for us – but no one but the remaining pegasi scrambled inside. No Ponevan but us entered the perimeter.

We were all that was left.

Armored pegasus ponies galloped over and rushed Snowy and I to the cloudship’s open cabin doors. 'We made it,' I thought, 'Goddesses, we made it.'

Snowy held me up to the cabin door, and I gazed inside. Packed shoulder to shoulder were dozens of terrified, huddled ponies who gazed back, numbly. A helmetless, turquoise pony with empathetic amber eyes reached out with a hoof to take me.

But an armored form pushed her aside, and a pegasus with captain’s bars stamped onto his segmented chest plate stood before me and blocked my view into the inside.

He shook his head and I saw in the reflection of his orange visor the fury in Snowy’s eyes.

“We’re over capacity,” he shouted, barely audible over the cloudship’s engine. “The ship can't take anymore!”

My mind went numb. I played his words over and over again in my head. My thundering heart faltered for a second as his words shattered all the hope inside of me.

“What!?” Snowy snapped, pulling me back reflexively. “No – no! You can’t just leave us behind!”

The pegasus stood even straighter, addressing Snowy as if I wasn’t even there. As if wedidn’t even matter to him.

“This sky-tank can just barely make it into the sky," the Captain growled, "No. I can’t let anymore onboard.”

"He's got a filly for fuck-sake, Captain!" the turquoise pony cried out.

He reared his head at her, his eyes glaring through his angular visor.

"This is the last time, Lightning Dust! You’re out of line, Lieutenant!"

Lightning Dust's growled.

"And you're out of your mind if you think I'm going to let you leave these ponies behind!"

The armored pony's servomotors whined as he shoved the mare against the hull.

"I. Will," he growled.

I broke down into tears as the striped doom that awaited us fired a shell into the sky trying to strike down the circling cloudship.

Snowy cradled me against his chest, and screamed, “You … you son of a bitch! YOU SON OF A BITCH! You’ll kill us!”

"You're a selfish, heartless little fuck, Sunspot," Lightning Dust hissed.

Captain Sunspot threw his head back and gave her a bitter chuckle, yanking off his helmet. "I'm hearing this from a Wonderbolts Academy washout that nearly killed the Ministry Mares while showing off!" He wrenched her to her hooves and stared gunfire into her eyes.

Lightning Dust opened her mouth but he cut her off, jabbing her in the chest with a hoof. "Saving these dead ponies won't change shit, Lightning Dust. Anybody still down here or without a pair of wings is already dead!" he growled, swinging a hoof at us.

Snowy’s leg trembled uncontrollably around me as he drowned in rage.

"Let me remind you that the only reason why you're here is because Rainbow Dash thought she'd give a selfish, heartless little fuck like you a second chance."

A bomb went off inside of her. "GO TO HELL, SUNSPOT!" she spat. "I've changed – and I'd rather die than leave these ponies to those fucking stripes!"

He shoved her off the sky tank, his energy casters crackling agreeably. "I'm happy to oblige you,” he snarled as she scrambled to her hooves.

A mare’s voice crackled over Lightning Dust’s radio.

Everyone’s eyes turned to the sky.“KRRFT – I CAN’T OVERLOAD ITS GLYPHS IN A SINGLE RUN!” The cloudship shrieked overhead, and we watched it rocket toward the immense war machine.

“Just keep it busy, we’re loading up the last of the civvies,” Lightning Dust shouted.

Captain Sunspot clenched his jaw. “I thought I –“

“Negative – it’ll be on you soon … I-I NEED TO ENGAGE MY TILTROTORS! I’ll empty my missile batteries!”

Lightning Dust’s blood drained from her face as the cloudship slowed to a sluggish hover.

The tank’s right missile battery hissed.

“NO!” Lightning Dust howled.

We watched in horror as the cloudship spun out of an expanding cloud of fire.

Radio chatter screamed over the comms.

“SNBRRRRTT – BLEW OFF MY FUCKING WING!”

Lightning Dust stomped a hoof into the rubble, cursing frantically. We all turned to watch as the remaining cloudship tipped precariously to one side, smoke trailing from its ruined hull.

“Hotel Whiskey – do you copy!?” Lightning Dust begged.

“I’M LOSING HER!” a mare screamed over the comms.

Everyone took a step back and watched as the zebra war machine’s engine revved hungrily, its howling, psionic death horns roaring for blood.

Its battle cannon began revolving to face us.

“We need to take off - NOW!” the captain shouted as the rest of the pegasi scrambled inside.

“YOU CAN’T!” Snowy cried, and hurled himself forward.

But someone tackled us into the ground. Knocked from his protective hooves, I tumbled away and stars exploded in my eyes as I careened into the broken asphalt. Snowy howled his voice hoarse, bucking and screaming, pinned to the dirt by an armored pegasus.

The pony struggled to keep him down as he thrashed and flailed against his servomotors like a trapped animal. He swung his helmeted head over his shoulder.

“Captain, we’re running out of time!” the pegasus screamed, the battle tank’s damaged turret screeching lividly in our direction. But circling around from behind, the injured cloudship banked precariously to the earth.

“Wild Flower! You need to break off, now!” Lightning Dust screamed into the comms as the smoking cloudship plummeted out of the sky toward the striped war machine.

The mare’s voice hissed over the radio one last time. “NEGATIVE. I’M NOT LETTING THAT STRIPE THROUGH!” There was a pause, static crackling across the comms as the cloudship spiraled out of the sky. “I’m sorry, Lightning Dust. Don’t leave anypony behind. Wild Flower – out.”

“NO!” Lightning Dust cried.

Wild Flower and her cloudship, missile batteries flashing with everything she had left, collided nose-first with the tank’s turret. One second the hulking monstrosity was there. And the next, it was not.

Its glyphs burned as bright as a star going supernova.

Then its hull caved in.

The magically-enchanted ordnance within exploded, and with a deafening psionic screech, the hulking metal abomination and its aberrant sapience were rent apart from existence.

An immense, bone-jarring explosion engulfed the entire intersection, leveling every single one of the buildings around it.

Its psionic screams faded away, sinking into hell, as an earthshaking shockwave rippled across the shattering asphalt.

The captain shouted as he punched a dent into the cloudship’s hull, “GET THIS SKY-TANK IN THE AIR, GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!”

Gusts of water vapor surged past my broken form as the cloudship’s engines saturated the air with billowing mist.

“NO!” Snowy cried as my bloodied mane whipped violently against my face in the roaring turbulence.

I turned my gaze helplessly to Lightning Dust – and she just stared off into smoking crater across the street.

“No …” I heard her say, faintly. “No. No!” She dived inside the cabin and careened into the captain, curling her hooves around his shoulders and yanking him to face her nose to nose. “We’re not leaving anypony behind!”

“Stand down, lieutenant, or I’ll –”

“Wild Flower died for these ponies!” She turned to the wailing filly whose mangled legs were splayed out across the asphalt. “Fuck your orders!” Lightning Dust screamed, shoving him aside.

As the pegasus that pinned Holly’s brother to the asphalt unfurled his wings and flew into the cabin, already several yards above us, Lightning Dust unfurled hers. Her hooves crunched heavily into the snow next to me.

Lightning Dust lifted me gently, careful not to hurt my broken leg.

I saw Snowy rise to his hooves. His eyes widened and he rushed towards us, reaching out to me with a hoof. But Lightning Dust shook her head, his hoof a breath away from my cheek.

Her eyes turned to me, to Snowy, and back.

“I can only take one,” she said softly.

Snowy stood there with a distant, shell-shocked look in eyes. It must’ve been the blood loss. He came to, blinking away tears as his trembling hoof touched my cheek.

He clenched his teeth, and shook his head vigorously, tears pouring down his pale face. He craned his neck downward as Lightning Dust cradled me in her hooves. I reached out with a trembling hoof and he slowly curled his hoof around mine.

“Holly …” he began, slowly. “I love you, okay?”

I stared at him, numbly, my mouth moving but not a single word escaping my lips. I stared into his eyes, my entire body shaking. Holly’s voice was nothing but a distant whisper.

“I-I … I love you too.”

Snowy squeezed my hoof with his. “I’ll never leave you. I’ll always be here with Mom and Dad – I’ll …” He sobbed, staring down his bloody chest. “I’ll never leave you,” Snowy told me as Lightning Dust unfurled her wings.

“I’ll never leave you!” he cried.

We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. But an eternity was not enough. I opened my mouth, but found that I could not speak. I closed my eyes and trembled.

‘This can’t be happening.’

It was just a dream … a nightmare. Everyone has nightmares … but we always wake up from them. Always.

I was going to wake up, too.

But my eyes opened, and Snowy was still there. I was still in Lightning Dust’s hooves.

And the sky-tank was still gaining altitude.

I held out my hoof … and our hooves touched.

I didn’t want to let go.

I opened my mouth to tell him that I believed him. To tell him that I’d miss him. That I wished he could come with us. That I never wanted to lose him. Not him too.

Not again.

But Lightning Dust spoke instead.

“She’ll be safe at Stormpeak,” Lightning Dust promised, flapping her wings and lifting us into the air.

I watched as distance pulled our hooves apart. My hoof hung before my face, reaching out to curl around Snowy’s – already yards away – not wanting to let go even as we grew farther apart.

Snowy stared up into the fiery skies, his eyes never leaving mine, and mine never leaving his.

My breaths came and went as shallow gasps, as Snowy became smaller and smaller until he was nothing but a distant silhouette drowning in the shadows of a dying city.

Lightning Dust stepped through the sky tank’s cabin door, and another soldier swung it closed. It slammed shut. But my eyes couldn’t leave its steel frame.

Among the fearful whispering of the ponies huddled around us, and the rumbling of the cloudship’s hull, I didn’t feel safe. I glanced frantically at the windows, knowing that Snowy was still down there – and I was up there – and even around all those ponies, I was still alone.

Alone.

Everyone inside whispered of ponies who didn’t made it. Of ponies who they watched get cut down. Of ponies who simply disappeared into the crowd.

I froze, my eyes widening to saucers. My jaw began to tremble. My shoulders began to quake. I felt Holly’s overarching consciousness ripple and boil.

I left my brother behind.

“I’ll never leave you …” I whispered, tears welling up in my eyes. Holly’s presence drowned out mine. I floundered helplessly beneath her violent hurricane of anguish – drowning in her despair – drowning in her agony.

“Insubordination! I wouldn’t expect anything less from an Academy washout!” Captain Sunspot screamed as hot tears streams down my cheeks. “I’ll have you court-martialed for this!”

Sunspot would’ve let my brother die. But it was I who left him behind.

Snowy was going to die alone down there … all alone, watching the fiery skies as our cloudship rocketed away. He was going to die. Alone.

Just like me.

“Snowy … don’t go… please don’t leave me,” I whimpered distantly, cupping my ears with my hooves, trying to drown out the bickering pegasi with Snowy’s name. I relived the last twenty minutes of my life.

I stared out the window and into Snowy’s inexorable, unrelenting eyes, wishing that he was really there. There with me.

"I saved her life, Sunspot!” Lightning Dust screamed over my trembling voice. “We came here to save ponies, not kill them!”

My heart began beating faster than I could breathe. I felt like was going to melt through my skin, every inch of me wanting to fling that door open and hurl myself out and into the clouds.

I whimpered, shaking my head furiously as Lightning Dust’s armored leg remained wrapped around my chest. I wriggled and begged for Lightning Dust to put me down, begged her to let me go. I batted my hooves against her armor and sobbed Snowy’s name in despair, begging for him to come back – telling the frigid hull the words I should’ve said to him before Lightning Dust flew me away.

“I’ll never leave you … I’ll never … never …”

But I did. And I knew. I knew that if the zebras didn’t get him, the balefire would. Poneva was doomed. Everyone still down there was doomed. The Enclave survived the balefire … and so would the ponies above the clouds. Captain Sunspot was right … everyone that was left … everyone still down there without a pair of wings was already dead.

And I left Snowy behind.

I lifted my hooves from my ears, unable to drown out Sunspot’s grating words. But then I heard them. Voices. The two pegasi weren’t the only voices that were scraping at the insides of my ears.

My ears perked as Lightning Dust’s radio wailed with static.

“KRFFT - gone! Cloudsdale – dear Celestia! Cloudsdale’s gone! It’s – SNRRBBRRRTTT –”

I lowered my gaze to the transmitter beneath Lightning Dust’s collar.

The cabin went silent.

“Manehatten’s gone dark, their comms are down, repeat, their – SNBBRRRRTTTT”

The ponies inside murmured with growing alarm.

“They’re gone! SNBRRT – Impossible! The entire city, i-it’s – SNBRRRRRTT – Fillydelphia too, son of a … they couldn’t have - KRFFT - Stop this! This is an open channel! Everyone cease and – dear God … there’s something in the sky. I-it’s … it’s - SNBRRTTT– confirm? Zed Bravo confirmed! Repeat, Zed Bravo – SNBRRR –”

“Shut that fucking thing off!” Sunspot screamed, and Lightning Dust clawed at her collar.

The cabin trembled with a terrified, nightmarish silence.

Lightning Dust turned and found that everyone was staring at her.

“What … what was that?” someone asked, shakily. Lightning Dust stared, her mouth agape but without answers to give. Harnesses were shrugged off. Hooves clopped against the steel floor.

Another pony came forward.

“What the hell is going on?” a unicorn mare demanded, approaching us. “What happened in Fillydelphia?”

“Fillydelphia? I-I have family over there!”

Everyone undid their flight harnesses and crowded around us, demanding answers Lightning Dust couldn’t – or didn’t want to give.

“What happened to Manehatten? What are they talking about?! My grandma’s living in Manehatten!”

Lightning Dust squeezed me tightly, her eyes darting to Sunspot, the crowd, and back.

“You!” as mare shouted, stumbling towards him. He looked startled, taking a step back, his flank bumping into the sky-tank’s hull. “What’s going on? You’ve gotta know!” When he didn’t answer, she came closer – too close.

Sunspot snapped to and shoved her away.

“Stay back!” he screamed unevenly. “Everypony stay seated, and we’ll get to Stormpeak in one piece!”

“Screw Stormpeak – I need to get back home!”

Ponies scrambled towards the cockpit.

“Everypony, please!” Lightning Dust shouted over them as Sunspot and the pegasi darted in front of them.

A stallion shook Lightning Dust by the shoulders. “What’s going on!?” he demanded.

But a mare shoved him away and begged, “Let us out of here!”

“I need to go home!”

And among the crowd, beneath their screaming voices, someone whispered the truth.

… balefire ...

The cabin went quiet.

A mare’s voice broke the silence.

“N-no - NO! It can’t be! It just can’t!”

Balefire.

All hell broke loose. The screaming ponies hurled themselves at the pegasi, trying to force themselves into the cockpit. Blood spurted into the air as the armored soldiers bucked them aside and ponies wrestled them to the floor.

One mare curled her hooves around Lightning Dust’s shoulders. “What about my foals!? My husband!? What happened to Manehatten!?”

“I-I don’t know, I don’t know!” Lightning Dust stammered, before a pegasus tackled the mare to the floor.

“Get these civvies in line!” Sunspot shouted, and the pegasi inside the cabin fell upon them.

Screams echoed out from every direction. Ponies were flung across the cabin or hurled to the floor in blurs of tangled limbs. Ponies cried out for their families, their husbands and their wives and their foals –

And I cried out for the brother I left behind. I buried my muzzle into Lightning Dust’s amber mane and screamed and screamed Snowy’s name as someone tried to curl a hoof around her neck. She spun around and bucked the pony in the face with an audible crack. Lightning Dust pushed me against the window as she unfurled her wings and shielded me from their battering limbs.

She grunted through clenched teeth as a hoof connected with her unprotected head, knocking away her earpiece.

Then I heard the familiar, whirring shriek of a charging energy weapon. Through Lightning Dust’s turquoise feathers, I watched a pegasus buck a pony off of her, level her weapons, and take aim.

Her energy casters glowed as bright as a star, and –

“STOP, NOW!” the captain’s voice shrieked into our eardrums through his helmet’s amplified loudspeakers.

Everyone stilled.

Seconds passed by in silence, my face pressed against the window as I listened to the shrill ringing in my ears and felt Lightning Dust’s frantic breaths against the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes and whimpered and sobbed, wallowing in the grim silence that hung over us.

I closed my eyes … and heard as the faint, suffocated cries of a hundred thousand weeping voices whispered into my thoughts in passing like a chilling winter breeze.

My eyelids fluttered open.

And I saw the sky ignite with fire.

In a heartbeat, the dark, ashen clouds that curtained off the land beyond Poneva’s borders were wiped out in an instant. Through the blazing, emerald skies – for the briefest of moments – there was a brilliant pink flash - and with it, came a tide of unfathomable sorrow that washed over me – us – as Holly and I gazed out into the distance with empty eyes…

I watched with an inexplicable hollowness inside me as the distant lands beyond Poneva were swallowed up in balefire. Far north of the burning city below, an immense, verdant mushroom cloud loomed over the earth.

Ponies trotted slowly to the windows – speechless. They must’ve felt it too. The despair. The sorrow - a collective anguish that washed away our resolve. Our eyes widened with horror as the radioactive cloud swelled unstoppably into the stratosphere.

'Goddesses.' I watched as hundreds of thousands of ponies died in an instant.

“… not them too,” I heard Lightning Dust murmur, sweat pouring down her brow. Her voice trembled uncontrollably as she whispered the names of ponies I didn’t know. “Ardor – Sunset … no … no – not them too – oh God … oh my God …” Her hoof loosened around me, the verdant spellfire reflecting in the fading light of her eyes. “They’re gone. They’re all gone …”

Her radio crackled to life as we gazed out of the windows with distant, empty eyes.

“- SNBRRRT - detected balefire detonations across Equestria and the world,” a mare said to us over the comms, her voice grim yet resolute. “The stripes flipped the switch. So did we.”

I felt several dozen eyes upon the back of my skull. Someone collapsed to the floor. Another let out a violent sob. Others shook their heads in denial. Some began to weep. The rest stared at their hooves, unable to speak, the emerald mushroom cloud in the distance nothing but the final nail in their loved ones’ coffins.

All around us, the world was being washed away with balefire.

Through the comms, the mare spoke flatly, her voice hoarse and faltering through the static. “Cloudsdale was the first, then Manehatten, Fillydelphia, Canterlot … we’re just now getting reports of a confirmed balefire detonation in the Crystal Empire,” she said, her voice trembling.

“I won’t lie to you ponies; it’s impossible to quantify the absolute number of Equestrian casualties.”

Her words shook me to the core.

“There are simply too many.”

I felt Lightning Dust hug me tight. I wrapped my legs around her and sobbed.

She bowed her head, her breaths shallow against my coat.

“It’s over…” I heard Sunspot murmur, pulling off his helmet and letting it tumble to the floor.

The voice on the radio spoke over our subdued cries. “SNBRRT – no – not for us. Not for the pegasi. All wings, Operation Skyline is a go. Fly home, and stay the course. Stay. The course. We will carry on. Whatever gods are out there, I pray that they help us all.

“General Spitfire, out.”

I closed my eyes and listened as everyone inside murmured and wept. I listened to Lightning Dust’s trembling breaths, her tears trickling down her cheeks and into my mane. The mare shuffled on her hooves, and both of us stared outside the window with tears in our eyes.

Against the backdrop of a hellish, emerald sky, I saw hundreds, if not thousands of black dots rising from the burning city below.

Swarms of autonomous zebra drones zipped across the skies, and great-winged serpents abandoned the battlefield. Meanwhile, pegasus cloudships, gaining altitude faster than our sluggish sky-tank could, accelerated into the clouds as we lagged behind the growing swarm of fleeing pegasi.

But there was one. There was one black shape that flew against the rest.

It left an acrid black trail in its wake as it streaked across the sky, faster than some. Faster than us.

I watched in horror as it careened into the heart of Poneva city.

Then there was a green flash.

It shined through the windows and illuminated the inside of the cabin for the briefest of seconds with blinding, hellish light.

And colossal tidal waves of emerald spellfire swelled across the earth.

It consumed city block after city block – mile after mile – washing away skyscrapers like twigs in a hurricane of emerald annihilation.

And I knew, and Holly knew, that her brother was gone.

I touched a hoof against the glass. Hot tears that refracted the cruel light in my eyes slaved down my agonized grimace.

“Snowy …” I whimpered weakly. “No … Snowy! SNOWY! SNOWY!"

Lightning Dust held me tight as I batted my hooves against her armor and cried.

“LET ME GO! LET ME GO!”

“He’s gone!” Lightning Dust screamed. “Celestia … Luna …” she choked on her words, casting her gaze to her hooves. “Cadence…” Lightning Dust once again stared off into the emerald skies. “They’re all gone …”

I turned and peered outside the window pawing at the glass, and saw an immense, titanic mushroom cloud of infernal spellfire plume up and into the sky.

At its farthest reach, its radioactive crescendo arced several leagues into the atmosphere.

And with it, a roiling shockwave traveling faster than the balefire itself, obliterated clouds in its wake.

My heart skipped a beat.

'Goddesses. No.'

Cloudships stuttered, banked, and plummeted out of the sky. The comms exploded. Hundreds of doomed ponies shrieked in unison as their hapless coffins of metal tumbled into the path of the unstoppable spellfire scourge.

My ears popped.

And I knew we were all going to die.

It was then that every pony began to scream.

The ship rumbled and screeched, its machinery shrieking in its shuddering death throes, threatening to tear itself apart. The lights inside turned red, and I felt the cloudship tip forward.

This was how the entire world ended.

The sky-tank tumbled end over end, and I slipped from Lightning Dust’s hooves as we fell out of the sky.

Gravity wrenched us apart.

“NOOO!”

Lightning Dust threw her hooves in front of her to catch me, her eyes widening –

But gravity hurled her away. She didn’t even have a chance to scream.

Lightning Dust slammed violently into the hull - and her head whiplashed forward with a disgusting snap.

I watched numbly as gravity tossed her lifeless body across the cabin.

She was gone too. I closed my eyes as the world spun around me. In a rainbowed daze of colored hides and armored limbs, ponies hurtled away left and right. Necks snapped. Limbs broke. Flesh squelched. I caught my forelegs onto a rail and held on for my life, screaming Snowy’s name –

Then I heard a voice whisper into my ears.

I closed my eyes and listened as the waters of our shared consciousness settled into quiet placidity.

“I’ll never leave you.”

I believed him.

“Snowy …” I whispered among everyone’s screams as a tear streamed down my cheek.

And the cloudship’s hull was rent asunder.

The shrieking of shredding metal and the grounding of rock into gravel and dust – the screams of ponies as they were flung from the disintegrating wreckage – the sickening crunches of flesh and bone as ponies were mulched beneath -

It was over as fast as it had begun.

Slowly … my breaths came out as shallow, gurgling gasps as I stared into the emerald sky. I tried to raise a foreleg and found that I had none. I peered down my gory chest: a long strip of hull halved my body from my chest down. I laid my head against the ruined earth in silent anguish.

“Sno … wy ...” I rasped, weakly.

There was a flash of light, and for a split second, my shadow danced across the cloudship’s ruined hull.

I felt the most intense heat against my cheek. There wasn’t even enough time to scream.

The pain was indescribable; it stripped away the weight of my useless flesh as my mind recoiled in hellish agony for the briefest of nanoseconds.

And it was gone.

It was all gone.

But I continued to stare … to stare at the hellish, emerald skies even as the balefire’s path of annihilation swelled miles beyond what I could see. I found myself lying upon a flattened piece of wreckage, staring at the spike of steel that had only moments earlier split me in half.

I was alone.

So I screamed. I screamed for my mother, for my father – for my brother.

No one came.

I screamed until I could scream no longer … until my hope dwindled and died away and I waited in silence, reclining into hollow tranquility. I waited, and waited, and waited. Waited until the emerald skies turned gray, and the radioactive glow dissipated into nothingness.

Snow began to fall. The wind began to blow.

Then the night and its eternal darkness swallowed up the land.

Slowly, the wreckage, my unmarked grave, was buried beneath the wintry snowfall. The ashen drifts buried us, whatever was left. But there was nothing left. Nothing left but the ruined, empty buildings that collapsed beneath their weight. Skeletal skyscrapers that had survived what everyone didn’t crumbled back to the earth.

The frozen earth seemed almost at peace. But I wasn’t. There was an indescribable emptiness inside me. So I wandered … searching for my parents… for my brother … for Snowy.

I crawled through the rubble. Found my way through the empty, wind-swept streets. Sighed among the quiet, hollow ponies that wandered with me.

But even shadowed by the seemingly unending polar twilight, the world seemed to get darker - and darker, and darker as I wandered.

Puddles and tendrils of darkness rippled and coalesced across the snow like black oil floating to the surface, disturbing the dead.

I saw ponies sink into the darkness.

I saw the darkness swallow entire ponies whole.

And as I retreated to the place where I died, I heard a voice among the howling blizzard.

The same chilling, insidious voice that had taken Candy Cane’s life.

“I’ll never leave you again.”

Footnote: Level 6
XP: 1250/3450877

Author's Notes:

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