Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 34: Birthday

Equestria: Project Horizons
By Somber
Chapter 34: Birthday
"This is the greatest day ever! We need to celebrate your birthday, babies, 'cause you were just born today!"
Once, after Hatches got killed, I'd asked Hymnal about what happened when we died. The question seemed somewhat pertinent at the time. The answer she gave was simple: we went into the recycler and somepony took our place. Finding that answer somewhat less than fulfilling, I pressed on. She attempted some muttered comment about how, when you died, you went to the everafter to be reunited with the princesses and your loved ones. Then she reported me to Mom, and one sore butt later I learned not to harass our stable's duly appointed spiritual leader.
Personally, I was finding being dead not much different than being alive in the ocean. It was black and quiet and I couldn't feel anything. I was just... nowhere. I had a vague sensation of motion, but I couldn't begin to tell you how I was moving or where I was going. I had no limbs to move, no heart beating, no mouth to speak or breathe through.
It was at this moment that I had my epiphany: death is really boring. Mom had taught me about how the living dealt with death, but she'd been somewhat lax on what the dead were supposed to do about...
A tiny pinprick of lavender light far off in the distance came to life, and with it I heard a single soft note and felt a gentle pull towards it. Now, I know that most ponies say not to head towards the light. Those ponies failed to mention that there weren't actually a lot of other options. Considering how many bad choices I'd made in my life, what was one more?
Though, considering how many bad choices I'd made, I looked forward to Celestia punting my sorry ass straight into Hell. I guess I could have fought against the pull, but... I was tired of darkness.
As I moved, I could hear the tone more clearly. It wasn't one constant drone but a single musical note that pulsed with the throb of the light. And... another pulse accompanied the first one. I moved closer still and saw a second light, a soft orange point that sang the other sound. And then a third was born, a cheery pink. Another, majestic purple. Teal. A pair, green and gold. A pair of pink motes pranced and tumbled around each other with a tinkling like laughter while a purple and lavender pair hovered attentively nearby. Each with its own note. Its own music. There were hundreds. Thousands. Millions...
Wow... stars...
They weren't just lights in the sky. Well... they were. But they were other things as well. Like how, when you took a hoof and held it in front of one open eye, you could see both your hoof and whatever the other eye saw. But I didn't know what I was looking at. They were luminous things... Strange and unusual and powerful... some kind, most politely indifferent. Some were the shapes of wheels and eyes and brahmin. Others were strange patterns that twisted and seemed to sing notes of music my mind couldn't understand.
And some were ponies, glowing outlines that frolicked as they sang their music together, their individual notes rising and falling and growing and blending with the notes of the other things that shared this great expanse. They filled the void with song and light and their own strange beauty... their harmony. Other beings flitted among them and spread chaos and discord to stir up new melodies and music they could not create themselves. And I knew that I was home. I could stay here, if I wanted. There was always room for one more. For countless more. And I'd be happy here, I was sure of it. A part of me belonged here.
Except...
I looked back behind me at a round ball orbited by two lights, one pale and beautiful and the other bright and radiant. But the world they revolved around was dark and ominous. What of my friends?
The song turned mournful. There was nothing I could do now. I should stay. There wasn't any place there left for me, nothing that could hold me. But I kept looking down at that distant world. I felt one of those giant luminous shapes move behind me and gently hold me in her hooves. Stay, please... she seemed to beg.
I saw other worlds with other lights. Some orbited distant radiant orbs. Others had dozens of expectant motes above them as they sang down their own melodies. But all these worlds were bright with countless twinkling specks, like glitter or dew. And I watched as one of these luminary beings grew bright, and in a burst of light and song disappeared. The glowing cloud left behind spread, and new lights began to settle on other worlds or birth new luminary beings. Even these things were not eternal.
But in that darkness beyond their light, I felt certain there were things that were.
I looked back at my world. There were so few glimmering lights, and there seemed to be almost a spider's web of shadow draped over the entire world. Some light escaped... but most seemed caught in that dark web covering everything. The light of those orbiting spheres couldn't reach most of the world, try as they might to find some gap in the darkness and shadows.
What the hell had happened? The hooves holding me tightened, and off to the side I heard another note rise. It accompanied a star glowing with a fierce blue-white corona. A pony... no. An alicorn, proud and regal and glorious. He spread his wings wide and sang his note loud and gloriously across the heavens. He drove back those shadows beyond and all things that dwelled within. Such was he that his song drowned out all others as he swelled with pride. I expected the star to eventually stop and take a break, but he didn't. Instead, he grew along with his volume.
It grew to the point where the melody of the those luminary bodies was drowned out. Grew to where it became almost painful. I kept waiting for him to burst as the others had and let something new take his place. The mischievous ones floated about him, trying to trick him and break his onerous note, but he burned them with his scorn. Louder! Louder! It was if he were trying to fill all the universe with the single overwhelming note! He struggled with the strain, the note transforming into a scream.
Then he exploded. It was not a gentle burst of life-giving light. No, this explosion was raw and violent as his scream echoed to the farthest corners of the universe. Then his cloud fell inward; he would not die as the other luminous ones had, would not share his life. His blue glow contracted and darkened. Something that was a star hardened and transformed from light to something dark and base. And still it screamed, tearing at the melody around it. No trick by the spirits could stop it. No song from the others could reach it. And as the song died, the darkness encroached.
Finally, a blue radiance altered its place in the heavens and plunged straight at the screaming mass. It sang its own ominous melody as it plunged in faster and faster towards the sullen ember, one song combating the other as they closed together. The impact and the blast of light filled the skies as the blue luminescence died and the screaming ember shattered. Only a dark and twisted core remained, tumbling through the heavens like a heart of black iron. Its scream rendered pitiful and thin, it flew towards that darkness untouched by the stars.
But by chance a world, green and rife with the tiny specks of ghost light, drifted too near. The twisted remains curved towards it, speeding as they plunged towards the highest snow-capped mountain. The blast shattered the great peak, blasting it apart into flying stone. An immense pillar of cinder and flame shot up, raining down in an ever-widening circle of destruction. More mountains split and shattered, vomiting great torrents of fire and surging floods of magma. The forests transformed into sheets of flame. The seas were poisoned by ash and pieces of the star. The sky was rendered black with clouds. Those fragile motes and their infant songs were snuffed out in an instant.
From the great impact a ring of stone formed, the pieces drawing together to collect the tiny specks of life. Sun and moon orbited the blackened rock. Eons passed before me, and I watched the clouds thin and the first rays of sunlight and moonlight play on the blackened ground. The dead seas lay calm and still, the broken mountains finally silent. Where the dread heart had fallen was a vast bowl filled with black rock. The heart, its spiteful malice sated, slumbered, its hateful note dropping to a whisper. Rain fell, washing out the dust and smoke and filling the bowl with a deep lake of dark water.
Tiny patches of life began to grow beneath the passing sun and moon. The patches became brush and forest. Insects and fish began to populate the world once more, then larger and more complex animals. Mountains rose and fell and the world shifted and changed as life once more flourished. And then those motes of life began to sing their own simple melodies. Their songs became more complex, rising and falling and evolving. Trickster spirits came to mold and meddle and inspire. The songs spread to every corner of the world... save one.
In the dark lake the buried heart stirred. It shrugged, and the mountains broke and the waters drained into the sea. The heart could do nothing but hum its one hateful tone and wait. Life crept innocently into the crater, and soon there was no warning to the rest of the world save for a knot of granite rising like a tombstone in the center. Deep within the earth, the vicious star waited. It could do nothing, its dread power spent.
But then zebras came to it with their songs and their dances. They built their homes and temples and finally a city. Most had no idea what was beneath them... but for some, sleep was troubled as the star droned its hateful tune. And from the pain it caused came inspiration for magic dark and foul. The songs were silenced. The dances stilled. Dark robes were donned, and the temples soon rang with the resonant drone. The ground was torn away, and fragments were forged into terrible weapons. The zebras went out to silence all other songs and to turn all voices to the star's dread tone. It grew strong as others sang its song on its behalf, that hateful noise so like a scream.
And the stars perceived.
With magic and sorcery, the zebras called forth the fallen star and bade it rise. Return to the heavens. Thousands were offered in sacrifice, their screams rising up until the heavens could no longer bear them, and one star plunged down to silence it forever. Like a great flame it fell and shattered the zebra city, and the broken mountains shuddered and collapsed to bury all beneath their rubble. But the dark heart was still not destroyed; it caught the falling star and consumed the luminescent being within. Only two specks escaped... one rising to the sun... the other to the moon.
Time passed, and the buried star waited. Greenery returned. Zebras shunned the valley, calling it cursed, and did not tempt the stars to fall again. Clouds obscured the sun and moon so they could not see its resting place. But soon, new creatures came to the valley: ponies.
The star once more whispered and tempted, ensnaring the heart of a beautiful princess and turning her against her sister... but the sister wisely banished her from the earth and to the moon where the glowing light could leech out her poison and venom till a chance at redemption was possible. Time, though, was forever on the side of something older than the moon itself, and when foolishness and wickedness stirred in the hearts of pony and zebra alike, that thing hummed its hateful note once more. Ponies built their machines and weapons and spells and slew one another in bloody combat. The song was lost to a scream of hate and pain. This time, however, as ponies and zebras died, not all their tiny motes returned above. Many, a small fraction, but still so many, were snared in the spider's web and whisked to the dark heart, there to scream the dark note. Waiting. Tempting another star to fall and be devoured so that the heart could be freed.
And now I looked down at my dim world with a sense of horror and sadness. Was this true? A war between stars and monstrous things from beyond? A fallen star humming madness in the ears of the ponies of Equestria? I wondered if I was crazy; I hoped that I was. That all this was just my brain making its last feeble connections before finally expiring. This couldn't be true! It just couldn't!
It was too big. Too much. Even for me. And the glowing ponies around me agreed in their song.
But that was the point...
Of course it was too big for one pony. For one anything! That was why the single star with its single note had failed. Not even these glowing stars could keep back the darkness alone. It was when they worked together, combining their songs and changing... growing... that they could drive that vast and terrible darkness back. Harmony, not power, was their strength. Life, not destruction, was how they won.
So why didn't they help us? Here their song changed. Why help a world so close to complete failure? How could they spare more luminaries when every last one was needed? Some calmly, perhaps callously, suggested that we clean up the mess ourselves. The help of others would be of little use; what good would it do ponies to be transformed into spires of singing gelatin? But most stars simply had concerns of their own, and those that could help were helping as best they could.
But it wasn't enough. The dead heart of that star continued to hunger for the souls of its own, and its own dread note was beginning to build. It was intolerable... And with each light that spiderweb captured from my world, its song grew...
I had to go back. I couldn't be here while Glory... P-21... all of them were there. Make me a ghoul. A ghost. A monsterpony. Anything! I couldn't sing with the others and leave them down there. I had to do something. Anything. Whatever it took. They mattered more than me!
And the stars' song turned mournful. No parent wanted to lose their child. But I wasn't a child any more. I turned to see that glowing lavender unicorn with a striped purple and red mane, and she smiled. 'Security saves ponies', she seemed to say. Then she leaned down and kissed my brow, and her gentle light became my world.