Chapter 8
 
>You are fucked.
>You are struggling to stay on board the burning airship as it plummets out of the sky, leaving a trail of dark smoke behind it.
>Granite hurries around the sloping deck trying to keep the ship airborne, but it’s hopeless.
>Crimson did a lot of damage.
>The hull is on fire and has huge holes in it from his explosions.
>Almost half of the cords that hold it to the balloon are broken; it’s miraculous that the rest remain intact.
>”HEY!!” Granite is shouting to you over the sound of the rushing wind and fire. “HELP ME!”
>He looks horrified.
“IT’S USELE-“
>Another cord snaps, causing the deck to drop a few feet.
>Granite loses his footing and smashes his head against the floor.
“Shit.”
>You run to the edge of the deck to look back at the hidden hangar in the mountain.
>The opening is high above you now; barely visible in the darkness.
>You see no sign of Applejack.
>”Anon!” a familiar voice calls your name from close by.
“Rainbow Dash?”
>The cyan pegasus flies out of the black sky and lands on the deck beside you.
>”Anon… What… what’s happening?” She pants.
“Rainbow, focus. You need to help us.”
>”Is Applejack with you?”
“No. I’m sorry. I don’t know where she is.”
>”I don’t think I can carry your weight all the way back-“
“It’s not just me.”
>You point to Granite’s unconscious form.
>”Okay. Don’t panic.” Rainbow says. “I’m gonna get Fluttershy. Don’t move.”
>She takes off and flies back towards the mountain.
>As you watch her disappear into the distance, another rope snaps.
>For a moment it looks like the remaining cords will hold for a while longer, but the weight of the hull is too much, and it suddenly breaks away from the balloon completely.
>You are freefalling; holding on for your life as the ship plummets.
>The wind pushes against you, making it hard to keep your grip and not get thrown over the side.
>Not that it matters; there’s no way you could survive the imminent impact.
>The ship turns as it falls and the ground comes into view, coming closer in slow motion.
>You shut your eyes.
 
>The deafening sound of wind suddenly stops, replaced by complete silence.
>There is no crash.
>You feel light-headed and disoriented.
>The wooden floorboards of the ship are gone and you are now lying face down on cold and uneven stone.
>It’s very uncomfortable.
>You push yourself into a sitting position and force your eyes open.
>You are once again in the familiar dark, rocky world from your previous dreams, but it’s different.
>The red sun is back in the sky, casting a dim, warm light over everything.
>The rock beneath your feet has patches of moss and other plant life growing from the cracks.
>The world is a little less… dead.
>The atmosphere is still cold and completely silent, though; there is no sound of birds or crickets or any natural ambience.
>It feels lonely more than anything else.
>You get to your feet and brush some dirt off your pants.
“Hello?”
>…
>And apparently you don’t even have the creepy voice for company this time.
>You briefly consider the possibility that you have died and this is some kind of afterlife.
>You were never much of a believer in an afterlife, but being teleported to a world full of colorful, magic little ponies has opened your mind to such ideas.
>Perhaps all of that was part of the afterlife, too; a car crash was the last thing you remember happening before finding yourself in Equestria.
>Or maybe all of it is a dream, and your in some kind of coma right now.
>The thought makes you cringe. Not just because it would make all of the friendships you’ve built completely meaningless, but because it would be a cliché and disappointing ending to this whole story.
 
>You start to walk.
>The dim, aged sun casts a long shadow in front of you that points your way.
>You let your mind go blank for a while, deciding to process all of the recent events later.
>While walking, you hum a tune that Pinkie Pie taught you on the long journey to Ponyville.
>The song was sort of her personal anthem, a ditty about her making others smile.
>She really believed that her greatest purpose in life was to make others happy, a selfless principle that you admired.
>You remember her singing as you walked.
 
>”It’s true some days are dark and lonely, and maybe you feel sad but Pinkie will be there to show you that it isn’t that bad.”
 
>It made you wish she were actually here to do that.
 
>Something catches your eye and brings you back to reality.
>It’s the unmistakable remains of Fluttershy’s cottage, a depressing, blackened ruin of what it once was.
>It looks worse than how it did when you ran off the night it burned down.
>Not just more burnt, but older. A lot older.
“Fluttershy?”
>You call her name but get no response. You weren’t expecting any response.
>You walk around to the front of the hill it was built on and see the rest of town, in an equally shitty state, in the distance.
>Walking through the streets, you see smashed windows, collapsed roofs, broken walls and fallen trees.
>This place barely resembles the Ponyville you knew, the village full of busy, high-spirited individuals going about their day even in times of fear and hardship.
>Each house looked dark and abandoned, like it hadn’t been lived in for almost a hundred years.
>The thing that stands out above everything else, more than the faded walls of Carousel Boutique and the dead and empty crop fields of Sweet Apple Acres is the tall tree that housed the town library and was Twilight’s place of residence.
>It was still standing, but had been dead for a long time.
>The bare branches reached up into the sky much higher than the surrounding roofs.
>You find yourself drawn to it.
>The windows are all shattered.
>The crunching of glass under your shoes sounds so loud when there’s no other noise but the light breeze through the branches above you.
>You step through Twilight’s front door, as you did on the night you met Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity.
>This time, unfortunately, the house is empty.
“Hello? Twilight? Spike?”
>…
>Yep, empty.
>Books litter the floor.
>Literally none of them were left on the shelves.
>Also on the floor is a broken picture frame.
>You pick it up.
>It’s a photo of the six ponies you’d made your friends; a little cut out image of Spike is taped into the corner.
>Seeing Applejack in the picture instantly reminds you of what happened, hours ago, on the doomed zeppelin.
>If you weren’t… here… you’d be trying to save her.
>Where is here, anyway?
“WHERE AM I?”
 
>“I told you before… this is Equestria.”
>…
>Suddenly you aren’t alone anymore.
>’The voice’ is back, just as emotionless, just as uncaring, just as disturbing.
>And this time you can see him.
>Without the pitch-blackness to mask his form, he comes around the house to stand before you in the doorway.
>The body the voice belongs to.
>A huge fucking horse skeleton draped in torn black cloth, bigger than Celestia and bigger than you.
>He looks like the Grim Reaper, if the Grim Reaper was a horse.
>Also no scythe.
“Am I dead?”
>“No, you are not.”
“And this is… Equestria… but, like, the future.”
>His empty eye sockets are somehow staring into your eyes. He says nothing.
“So…the other things I saw, the sun going out, the end of all life, the eternal blackness, that’s all part of Equestria’s future too?”
>”Yes.”
>He responds with straight, honest answers like a computer. A skeletal, grim-reaper-like, universe computer that would make Iron Will shit his pants.
>You are trembling now.
“All that end of the world stuff… is that for sure? Can I stop it?”
>”The future can always be changed. The things you have seen here are likely, but not certain. However, every world ends eventually. None last forever. This one is overdue.”