Echoes.

I heard their muffled cries. The distant gunfire. The sounds of buildings crumbling.

Then I began to remember. Stallions. Mares. Foals.

A tail rotor cleaving a pony in half – a filly’s screams as her mother’s corpse crushed her beneath – Holly wailing her brother’s name …

Then the balefire. The balefire echoed through the caverns of my consciousness – searing into my mind scattered glimpses of blood and death.

I opened my mouth to scream, Holly’s voice joining me – before hers fell away from mine … fading into the furthest corners of my thoughts and I awoke.

But I didn’t. I shuddered and convulsed, my eyes closed, unable to open – the feeling of falling, of sinking into eternity dragging me ever closer to madness.

My fall slowed, and I felt my coat brush against the snow. Then nothing.

I opened my eyes and the world around me shimmered with a silvery, rippling luster. In the distance I saw evanescent pony-shaped silhouettes bobbing across the stark landscape. They cantered upon the shimmering, amorphous snow that billowed across their hooves beneath the pale, dead sky …

I was dead. So were those ponies. Dead in some kind of purgatory waiting for a light to take us through the clouds.

I lay there, waiting.

Waiting for the Everafter to come. The Everafter I was told that awaited everyone when they died – where my dad was, and Dew Drops, and all my friends were.

But it … it didn’t.

My eyes widened. They gazed into the distance and saw the familiar skeletons of burned out buildings rise up around me. Ponies walked among them – trotting up staircases that were no longer there, gazing through shattered, melted windows, and sitting around tables that had been incinerated in the spellfire that annihilated them all.

It … wasn’t the Everafter. That sinking feeling engulfed my heart once more.

‘This isn’t the Everafter. This isn’t the Everafter.’

'Hell – the Underworld – Tartarus – no.'

No …

Worse.

Poneva.

I reclined into a defeated stillness, staring into the shimmering, ashen skies, unable to think, unable to find words to voice the hopelessness and sorrow in my heart. A hollow breeze whispered through my wilted ears, caressing them with its chilling breath.

Carried with it were whispering voices that stumbled – lost and confused through my thoughts. They were the voices of the dead – souls of ponies that I had seen torn away from the world firsthoof.

What sort of terrible fate was it to die and be forgotten, when all who could have remembered had died with you?

Not even bones. No one even knew they were gone.

Maybe not even they knew that they were dead.

They were just numbers. Numbers that General Spitfire couldn’t even quantify.

We were alone. I was alone. Alone in that forsaken place, with those forsaken souls. It must've been the most terrible feeling to be … forgotten. I was dead. So were my friends – and my mother would never know how we died.

I’d never see her – or my stable again. I was just a lost soul, just like Holly. Through her eyes I’d seen things that could never be unseen.

Through her eyes I learned what it truly felt to despair … what it truly meant to be left behind ... and now I was wallowing in it. I felt the urge to wander as my soul searched for a place to belong.

I wanted my mother. I wanted to go home.

Helpless and stranded, I lay curled up among the shimmering drifts – cold, weary … hollow …

Candy Cane was dead. My friends were dead. We were all dead. And now my stable was going to die with me. I lay there and waited … waited for eternity to come.

A hopeless grin stretched across my lips as I stared off into the pale, dead skies.

When I was alive in the wasteland, I felt trapped in a nightmare. But even in death I still couldn’t leave. I was still trapped inside that unforgiving, frozen world – that fucking wasteland, - that nightmare ... and I was never going to wake up.

I let my head roll across the silvery concrete and closed my eyes, numb.

I was going to be trapped there.

Forever.

I rasped a grim chuckle. It really was a nightmare I was never going to escape.

Just like Holly.

Something shifted in the lifeless air. Slowly at first, I felt the universe ebb and flow. The shimmering, ghostly world around me shifted and parted, and a familiar presence filled the void around me.

My eyes fluttered open. A filly with pink hair was standing over me. I saw the long scar that ran down her cheek like a tear that was never gling to dry out. Then, I knew …

It was her.

“Holly?” I whispered.

A weak smile creased upon her pale lips. She reached out with a small forehoof, and laid it upon mine. The wisps of silver that shivered around us settled like a calming storm. I felt warmer. I felt … safe.

I sat up upon my haunches as she held my hoof.

“Where … are we?” I whispered.

But I already knew.

Her glowing, pale face darkened.

She asked softly, her voice echoing through my thoughts, “Where do you think we are?”

“Poneva?”

Holly looked away.

“Yes,” she whispered.

My ears drooped as I hung my head, hopelessly.

“I knew this wasn’t the Everafter …” I let out a humorless chuckle. “Why did I even ask?”

Holly closed her eyes. “If we were in the Everafter, everyone would be here,” the filly intoned, staring quietly into the snow. “My mom … my dad …” Her eyelids fluttered open. “… your dad …”

I let out a long, drawn out breath that didn’t turn to fog.

“And … your brother,” I whispered.

She closed her eyes. Her words chilled the lifeless air that hung over us.

“He’s still here.”

I pursed my lips. “Why?”

“He’s looking for me …” Holly hugged her small forelegs around one of mine. “I’m … scared,” she told me, her voice trembling.

Emerald spellfire flashed before my eyes.

I remembered the black candlewax. The flesh sloughing off his skull. The tendrils of darkness plunging into my soul.

I closed my eyes. In the distance I heard the echoing sobs of some weeping, trapped soul.

“I … I am too,” I whispered.

I heard the filly sniffle.

“What happened to him?”

Holly stilled, closing her eyes and curling up next to me, the warmth of her presence dwindling.

“It changed him.”

“… it?”

Holly choked up, nodding her head as she began to tremble against me. I opened my mouth to say more but froze at the horror in her contorted expression. As I listened to her quiet sobs, I forced myself to look away; there was something about seeing a child so … afraid, that ripped me apart from the inside out.

Holly looked up at me with her wide, terrified eyes. “Sometimes, I don’t know …” she whispered, “Sometimes, I don’t know if it’s really him …

“I try to hide from both.”

I gulped.

“Both?”

She nodded, slowly, staring at her hooves.

“He tried to take you,” Holly began, prodding my side with a hoof. “He tried to take you so he could find me.” She looked away, gazing off into the shimmering distance. “He won’t stop until he does.

“He needs a body … he thinks I’m still alive. He thinks I’m at Stormpeak, and he wants to go there. But he needs a body, first.”

It all made sense to me. The last thing he ever said to her was that he would never leave her. But I knew, and she knew that she was lost forever.

Even if Stormpeak survived, Snowy would never find her, no matter where he looked.

“I can’t go too far from here … and I’m running out of places to hide, Mister Dawn.” She looked at her hooves. “Everybody is.”

Holly looked over her shoulder, her ears perked as she heard something I did not.

But I felt it. It swept through me … across that lifeless world … rippling across the shimmering snow like a droplet of water plunging into a stagnant pond.

And everything caught in its wake was stripped of its silvery sheen. All around us, the wind, the whispering voices, and the wandering souls froze in an instant.

“Everybody?” I whispered in the deafening silence. “Or just … us?”

Holly cast her gaze off into the distance, watching the shimmering skies gray like an aging mane.

“Everybody.”

“Snowy … he wasn’t the only one who tried to take me,” I told her. I remembered as those frenzied, forsakened souls tore each other apart, fighting frantically for the scraps that were my mortal vessel.

I could still feel their cold, dead hooves clawing at my flesh.

“They need bodies, just like Snowy,” Holly said, “Otherwise they won’t be able to run away.” She shook her head as she touched a hoof to her shimmering, ghostly chest. “We can’t run too far from this place.

“Not like this.”

I gulped.

And the concrete began to fracture beneath our hooves.

I looked down and my eyes widened.

A strange … blackness bled from the cracks, devouring the shimmering light around us. I stared at them and watched as they began to spread like black, bleeding capillaries across the earth.

“R-run away from what?”

Holly’s ears perked as she took a furtive look behind her once more.

In the distance, something exhaled a raspy breath.

“Him.”

There was a disgusting crack – the sound of a skull being split open.

Then something dribbled onto my chin. It was frigid and thick. It soaked deep into my coat, like a stain that refused to wash away.

I touched my hoof to my muzzle and a shallow breath escaped my lips.

My hoof was smeared black.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

I felt it pattering against my underbelly from below … sticking to my coat like thick … melted ... candlewax. I whimpered as I forced myself to look downward – and a droplet of black fluid sailed past my muzzle.

My eyes followed it skyward … and I watched as teardrops of darkness fell into the sky. Each drop coalesced into a vast, black ocean that drowned the world in darkness … a darkness colder than death itself as it slowly engulfed the ruined skyscrapers in the distance …

… block by block, street by street, stone by stone …

… soul by soul …

It washed them away, swallowing them up as they disappeared beneath the hungry tides.

I stared down at my coat … my matted coat dripped with living, frigid darkness. It trickled up my legs, up my chest – leaving trails of black as it slithered up my neck and –

“H-Holly – w-what’s happening!?” I screamed, springing to my hooves.

She looked up at me numbly as lines of liquid darkness trailed across her graying coat.

The filly tugged at my sleeve, wearily.

“He’s … he’s here …”

I heard it again … a raspy breath hissed among the pitter patter of the black rain. Far off in the distance, I heard a mare call out my name.

“Red!”

My ears perked as I strained to hear her over the thickening rainfall that drenched me black.

“Red, where are you!?” Candy Cane cried.

I froze. Every part of my being froze. My eyes darted across the twilit earth, not even caring as the rippling black sludge swam around my fetlocks.

She was out there, somewhere, beyond where my eyes could see.

I couldn't save her in life.

Even in death, she was still so far away.

“RED DAWN!”

“CANE!” I tore a hoof from the living darkness that coagulated around my right hoof, and threw it in front of me – but Holly stopped me in my tracks.

“NO!” she screamed, her voice resounding through my shuddering thoughts. I shook them away, and kicked off my hooves – but everywhere I turned, the filly stood before me in defiance.

“Let me go!” I snarled.

But she wouldn’t let me pass.

I stood there as my eyes searched frantically for a red coat, a candy cane mane – someone’s gray eyes in the dimming twilight. But with every second that passed, the black ocean in the distance swept its tidal waves of darkness ever closer, drowning everything I laid my eyes upon.

Then I saw her. There she was, standing in a clearing in the distance as an immense riptide of living darkness loomed over her. Her face darkened beneath its shadow.

“Cane – CANE!” I struggled to move - to lift my hooves - to hurl myself forward and gallop toward her. But the black sludge coagulated around my hooves.

I couldn’t move.

I watched helplessly as the billowing tidal wave of darkness swept over her and swallowed her whole.

“NOOO!” I screamed.

“THAT'S NOT HER, RED DAWN!” Holly’s voice shrieked into both my ears.

“THAT’S NOT HER!”

“How do you know!?” But Holly didn't answer. All she did was stare past me, mouth agape and with wide, dilated eyes. I threw my gaze over my shoulder and found out why.

'Celestia ... no ...

Everywhere I looked – from every direction the black ocean swelled toward us.

Again I tried to lift a hoof and run, but something yanked me back down.

I was rooted to the ground.

I gasped and gagged as viscous, black tentacles curled around me - slithering up my legs, my chest … my throat … tightening, constricting, suffocating ... I could feel their freezing touch inside of me as the the black sludge melted into my flesh ... as their tendrils wormed their way towards my pounding heart.

“H-Holly!” I choked, holding my trembling hooves to my face as tendrils of living darkness curled around them before my very eyes.

But the filly didn’t answer me.

She stared blankly into the darkening skies, her body slick with black candlewax from hoof to throat. Trails of darkness slithered up her muzzle, tracing long black tears across her once alabaster cheeks.

“HOLLY!”

The filly’s eyes met mine.

“Run.”

She blinked – and my flesh sloughed away as the balefire took me once more.

My eyes flew open – I screamed, and ran my back against a wall.

My breaths –my breaths – frantic and wheezing through my lips in jets of hissing mist reminded me that I was ... still alive. I could feel my hooves crunch through rime and debris. I could feel my heart drumming inside my chest.

I could feel the cold, unforgiving wasteland air gnaw at my flesh.

And beneath the blizzard that howled outside, I heard something hiss in the darkness.

‘Him ...’

I flinched – scrambled to my hinds and stumbled into a corner, my heart leaping inside my chest with every heaving breath I wheezed. I lifted a trembling foreleg, guiding my PipBuck’s light across the charred, snow-swept halls as my pulse hammered inside my temples.

‘Where is it? Where is it –‘

The air shifted around me. My heart skipped a beat.

A gravelly, sinister voice whispered from every direction:

“Run …”

Adrenaline exploded through my veins.

I did as Holly told me. I did as the darkness told me. I ran, and it didn’t matter where I ran to.

‘Anywhere but here.’

I screamed – and hurled one hoof after another as I galloped into the darkness.

With every hoof that crunched through the debris beneath me, I realized that I was alone. The blast shadows were gone. They were nowhere to be seen – gone without a trace.

I remembered the black tidal wave – the immense red mass on my EFS.

The one that took Candy Cane’s life.

The blast shadows were afraid. And Goddesses, so was I. It was coming for me. For all of us.

I just couldn’t see it. But it could see me. Hooves galloped after me, but everywhere my ears perked I could hear its hoofsteps crashing against the charred concrete. Behind me. In front of me. To my left and to my right.

It laughed at me – mocked me, its cackles erupting everywhere from the darkness that rippled, swelled, and closed in around me.

Beneath its sinister laughter, I heard her voice.

Candy Cane called out to me – nowhere to be seen, her voice tinged with a serpentine whisper, “Red Dawn … where are you?”

I kept galloping. I didn’t look back.

“Red … help me ...” Candy Cane cried, “Help me, please … Hahahahaha …”

It wasn’t her. Goddesses, I knew it wasn’t her as their voices slowly coalesced and their insidious, diabolical laughter echoed ceaselessly through my thoughts.

It only made me scream and pump my legs harder. Corners and halls flashed across my eyes as I tore the snow-swept floors apart with every hoof I hurled in front of me.

I ran knowing there was nowhere to go. ‘Anywhere but here.’

I didn't even notice as my right forehoof caught a stump of rebar.

Clarity left the building before I could scream.

Stars exploded in my eyes as I hurtled headfirst into cold concrete and complete blackness stole away my senses.

The darkness around me cackled with glee – a sick, twisted laugh – amused. Amused at the sight of my pathetic, futile struggle as I kicked and flailed myself across the floor on my back with every screaming buck of my legs.

My PipBuck’s screen flickered.

It was then that my light began to die.

“No – no, NO!” I begged, sobbing until I ran my back into a dead-end. Now there was nowhere to go. Nowhere but there.

I bucked my legs, backing myself into a corner – trapped – doomed as the charred, ruined walls flashed around me.

I tried to blink away the stars in my eyes. But it didn’t matter. None of it did.

Static washed over my PipBuck’s screen. My eyes darted to its screen – and for the briefest of seconds, a face with blazing emerald eyes stared back.

A shriek erupted from my throat.

My PipBuck flickered to black.

“NO! DON’T DO THIS TO ME!” I wailed, trapped in utter, complete darkness. I shook my right forehoof in vain, slamming it against the floor, then the wall then –

I felt the air shift in front of my face. ‘No.’

“No – no – no …” I whimpered as I clenched my eyes closed and huddled against in the corner. “Please … not again …”

I waited for the broken icy teeth. I waited for the cold dead hooves.

I waited for a fate worse than death.

But nothing came.

I felt my shallow breaths against my legs as I sat there, curled up into a ball in some dark, rime-encrusted corner. An eternity passed as I sat there, waiting for the worst: never ready to die, but helpless to stop it.

My light flickered back on. The PipBuck around my leg illuminated my face and casted my shadow against the wall next to me.

I beamed it across the room. Nothing. Empty. The room was empty.

I stared at the bare, blackened walls until my head stopped spinning. I found that I was holding my breath, and I let out a trembling sigh, running a quaking hoof through my grizzled mane.

“Fuck … fuck …” I murmured as I tried to get it through my damned head that I was alone. And yet not a single sliver of relief fluttered inside my chest.

I closed my eyes and gasped for air, trying to catch my breath. Maybe it had its fun and it was going to fuck off now. I wanted to believe that. Goddesses, I wanted to fucking believe that. Maybe it was gone.

Maybe it was gone. I looked around me. The hollow darkness stilled … quiet.

It was gone.

I shifted my gaze to my left and saw my shadow. I counted its ears, then its horn. Same as mine. I gulped, and let out a trembling sigh, running my hooves through my mane once more as a rivulet of sweat trickled down my muzzle. Turning away, I leaned forward and buried my head in my hooves, shivering beneath my barding.

But in my peripherals, my shadow remained upright.

I blinked, lifting my head from my hooves. And yet the shadow did not match my posture.

My sweat froze upon my face.

The shadow turned its head towards me. I screamed.

It exploded outward and into me in a cloud of living, shrieking darkness.

Reflex clenched my eyes closed as nothingness consumed me.