With my hooves planted in a pile of ash from my once strong house, I start to get those voices in my head again. The ones of my sister Metal Wing. My father Strong Will. And my Mother Sprouting Flower. All of them whisper in my acute ears in quiet bouts of words I can't completely understand, with cold wind blowing in my fur from the door leading to my old street where I used to roam.

Feeling tears begin to form in my eyes, I do what I always do to fight off the fits of madness and anger and sadness all rolled into one emotionally unstable ball. I begin like usual.

"I shouldn't be alive, in fact I am not truly alive anymore. Not little old Shaded Sun who used to stray away from the common rabble. Not the one who was so caring for life, the one who saw point in it. It should be somepony who has a lover, and parents, and children. Ones who still fight death for a purpose. Not me... Not me!" I yell at the burnt wood and tiles on the floor, as if they would grow mouths and agree with everything she just said.

With no such luck to have company of her own, even if it were a piece of wood, she trotted through the hallway. Ducking under the larger fallen beams to get farther into my old abode.

The air smells like death, but this is no surprise to me. It always does. Even after it had killed 95% of the ponies, it still smelled like its thirst for death had not been even remotely quenched.

Thats what happened, the nightmare that she was still waiting to wake up from.

Breaking through more timber with her limber Pegasus legs, she reached her goal and prize. The thing she had sought for since the outbreak of disease and agony that had spread like wildfire around the Empire, killing half the population in under 6 months, fear had enveloped the ponies everywhere. But I forgot this temporarily as I grinned for what felt like the first time since everypony died.

Sitting in the middle of the living room on the stone overhang over the fireplace with somehow still unused wood, stood my Sister's Cooper. Her doll she used to give me when I was upset, after she grew too old for it. Cooper was a linen velvet colored violet, with beady pink eyes and a straw tail. My sister Metal Wing had been 8 years older than me and I know she passed away in the hospital. Her name was on the list still printing names non-stop at the hospital on a machine that was lucky not to have emotions.

Her parents had committed suicide by jumping off one of Canterlots many humongous buildings, back when they still stood tall. Now they had tumbled over, blocking streets and crushing buildings. Making her birth place seem more like an empty maze made of stone than the place of joy it had been not a year ago.

It had been a year and a half from the claimed 'first victim', but I was too smart to buy it. They just wanted somepony to point a hoof at to calm us down that the number was so few. Bucking mistake, underestimating it out of fear. Stupid, stupid, stupid. That's all ponies had been when it had afflicted half the population with only a couple of deaths.

The irony of it all was that more deaths were cause by rioting ponies with the disease than the actual disease, out of pure jealousy for the lucky few to have been passed over by it. There had never been an official name for it, but I didn't care. Names don't matter anymore.

Stepping back into the street with my Cooper doll in the back pocket of my old cloth backpack, I cringed. You never got used to seeing it, never. The dead ponies scattered in the street, in odd angles of pain before their untimely death in the streets. Being left there by officials who were already coughing up blood, and kissing their already affected family members foreheads with tears in their eyes.

This would've been considered creepy for the old Shaded Sun to think like, but this one wasn't like her anymore. Changed to adapt to a climate of despair and loneliness. Old me had color in her cheeks and had been quite beautiful, with a flowing blue mane and Midnight purple coat. With eyes like Amethyst stones dipped in silver, I had been happy. With life and knowing one day my crush Fruit Loop, the corky and funny Stallion from Algebra class, would ask me on a date.

That didn't happen. Here's what did, school shut down, the Princesses noble attempts at the use of the brain of the ponies and focus on the task of quarantine. But the three Princesses had been ignored, and riots continued. Scientists claimed it was uncurrable, and any medicine known by pony kind had been utterly useless against the mystery disease that had claimed so many. Taken so much. But still lust for more.

But the new me was different. I had dark circles under my eyes, I never smiled like I used to. I dragged my hooves on the ground. My mane is in knots because of the lack of bathing in a month. I had been a Freshmen in high school at the school down in the city below the Capitol, named Ginger Snap. But names don't matter anymore.

Finally using my wings, I flew above the bodies and slowly flew over the many ponies below decaying or with dried blood on their faces and bodies. Looking around, I realized that the new me would've loved this weather. What with the warm breeze, and fall making the leaves fall on the ground in beautiful patterns. And the way the sun glinted as it set below the mountains in the farther reaches of Equestria. But new me didn't care.

Flying higher to move over a fallen stone column that had been an old hotel, the Maneton by the look of it. Very prestigious she had heard, very nice and relaxing to live in. Not that anything lived there anymore.

Landing on the other side of the peaceful giant of stone, feeling the stone beneath my hooves, I give a sigh of relief. The air down here is less in stench then the fumes that rise into the air.

Looking around with sharp eyes, looking for anything to help me. I spot a mare with fresh blood pouring out of her mouth laying face down facing my direction with her mouth open that mimicked one of desperation. But obviously no help had come for her. Luckily, that was the only dead body in this area. Even though the blood looked new enough for the mare to have passed but a week ago.

"Nothing, again. This is bad, I want to stay longer but supplies are running scarce here since I came." I mutter to myself under my breath to my new friend Cooper.

I had come here looking for my parents, because of my staying with relatives in Ginger Snap I had not seen my parents since I left for school. That was 4 years ago. But all I found after I flew to the entrance doors to Canterlot from the train tracks, were either dying or dead ponies trying to make their way down the endless tracks on their own 4 hooves, maybe trying to gallop from death.

In the train station the only train there had been tipped over, idiots. All of them. They had all wanted to crowd on the train, so what do they do? Push it over out of selfish wants to survive the disease that was already inside of them. Logic is impeccable for these folk.

Ignoring the mare in front of me, I stepped over her and trotted forwards down the street with pursed lips as I continue to find bodies. Either suicide victims from buildings, or ones that had run into the streets to find help. But I was just glad that I didnt know where the Medical Center was, so I wouldn't have to loot it.

That's where everypony had gone after being contracted with the disease, lining up to die in the slight hope they would make it through it. But there had not been a recorded survivor of the sickness. Once you got it you were toast, simple as that. How I survived I still don't know. Why I waited so long to come here, I do not know that either. The only thing I know is that I'm the last one standing alive with my sanity still in tact.

In my old town, I had helped my grandmare pass, along with her grandstallion. They had both contracted it, from something or other. That's where I had first seen the symptoms. And I could honestly say death would've been a blessing after they had gone through the stages of pain.

Off the bat, constant nose bleeds. Never stopping, never ceasing. Then it starts experimenting other places after your nose dies and you can't smell because of dried blood lining everything in your nose, clogging the pores. After that, you might bleed from your eyes, or your nose, or mouth, or you might even start to leak out in the posterior area.

Slow too, took you about a month of pain to finally be spared from any more.

I wasn't sure if I was immune, but I never got a single symptom. But others in town had tried to kill me because of thinking I had hoarded medicine from my wealthy family members. But when I denied this, Fruit Loop had come up and tried to strangle me with a look of madness and regret in his eyes, but no sign of the humor or love he had in his eyes for me before. But bucking him off of me, I flew up into the sky and made a beeline for Canterlot.

Traveling had taken a month, and it had been ok when she arrived in the city. A rare few were still seeming invincible and immune, until one by one they got nosebleeds too.

For the first time I had seen somepony die in the middle of the street, I had flown over and sang a lullaby through the sounds of my bawling and sniffling. A lullaby my mother had sung to me when I had dreams about mean men taking Coopy, or monsters in the closet.

"Now you'll lay me down to sleep,

Pray The Lord your soul to keep,

But your heart is safe with me,

If I die before I wake,

I'm sorry darling, for every mistake,

Ive ever made.

I could sing you the most beautiful song you've ever heard,

You could sing along, my little hummingbird,

But you don't need to sing,

I don't need to play It'll be alright,

I just want you to fall asleep tonight.

When you told me you were scared,

I was well aware,

That your heart came unprepared,

You left it under lock and key,

I swear, my dear, that your key is safe with me,

Please believe.

I could sing you the most beautiful song you've ever heard,

You could sing along, my little hummingbird,

But you don't need to sing,

I don't need to play It'll be alright,

I just want you to fall asleep tonight.

This is your lullaby, little hummingbird."

After all these years, she remembered every line her pitch perfect mother sang flawlessly. I missed her. But the small colt that was dying in her hooves couldn't even be 5 years old yet. He deserved better, buck EVERYPONY deserved better. But I can't tell which is more a curse at the moment, a slow agonizing death, or a long painless physically, but dying of the pain in your heart.

Realizing I had been humming my mother's song and standing in the middle of the street, I sighed and wished there were ponies there so I could feel embarrassment. Emotions are probably the thing most abused during my walks, seeing everything that happened and knowing that I was some how the unluckiest one out of them all.

Trotting through the ruins of civilization, I feel so insignificant and depressed I think about actually doing what I've been thinking of doing. Suicide would be painless to the feelings I get walking through every street or every civilized area, the bike rising in your throat and the nausea that makes your thoughts swim like trout up a stream. Or how trout used to swim up the stream. Thats right, not even the animals survived. Everything, gone. But I couldn't kill myself, I had to keep fighting so hope remained. I don't care how much I wanted to, I had to fight through this. Just hoping things will be the same.

But part of me, probably the logical part of my brain, says that nothing will be the same. Never again will it be the same. No longer will I write to my parents from boarding high school, never again will I sit next to Fruit Loop in Algebra class, and never again will I feel a lick of happiness. The only thing I can hope for is the last option on that list to be scratched out.

Looking in a store window, I see a dead cash register pony with his hoofs in the air and a bullet planted in a circle of dried blood that had been there for awhile. He had died from a robbery on the store, with the assailant using a gun to take any witnesses out. Probably a desperate pony with or without the disease. Anyhow, the store ha been fully looted and nothing remained but the dead pony.

Moving on from this pretty picture, I arrived at the intersection to travel up to the castle of the Princesses. Now that she was thinking of it, Shaded Sun wondered what had happened to the Princesses after their failure at calming down the riots and panicking civilians. They were probably alive, what with their Alicorn magic and practically being immortal, they couldn't die. But one look at the castle said that nopony had lived there in months, and had even been ransacked. Windows were smashed, she could see this from a distance. But that was the only physical damage to the magnificent structure of spiraling stone.

Barely noticing myself, my hoofs began to move for me. Forming steps with her hooves and gradually moving me up the path to the entrance doors to the castle. When my goal was reached, I shoved my hoof outward and pushed in the doors with a resounding clap of Booms that resounded down the hallway. With shadows dancing on the wall and shredded pieces of wood being strewn about on the floor ominously with blood on them.

Old her would've skimped out from the creepy scenery as well, but never again. Death no longer had any sort of power over her now that she didn't fear it. Even would go so far as to welcome it and ask where in Tartarus it's been for so long without including her.

Stepping inside and steadily trotting down the halls, she swerves through pale curtains and past windows of beautiful arrays of different colors to form pictures of events. Such as 6 ponies standing united and pouring light out of their bodies at a strange figure of randomness, with a dragon head and different animal parts making up the body.

Deciding it was a myth, or Tall-Tale, she moved on to where there was a sealed compartment with strange markings on the front.

"Most curious, what is this? I haven't seen legible writing in years, what's this part mean?" Pointing a hoof, for her imaginary friend to know where to look, at a small sentence wrote by a pen dipped in pure good by the looks of it,

"What is the meaning of death?"

Is scribed in a white marking above a handle to put your hoof in. I had never been in such an odd situation in all my years of traveling, but the voices in my head became restless once again. Becoming more intense, I shook my head to rid myself of them and looked at the label again, thinking long and hard before putting my hoof in the slot and announced in a clear voice.

"Death, is the cross over where the pains of life do not exist. But is also where happiness exists in only memories." I spoke to the label, pouring out my hearts philosophy to a label.

I half expected another label to pop up saying, 'You just took orders from an in-animate object. Pushover.' But to my surprise this didn't happen. Instead, the black doors made a mechanical sound then split apart to reveal an elevator with silver plating and a green orb coming out of the top.

Finally excited for something since the deaths of everypony I had ever loved, I hastily stepped in the elevator. Looking over, I saw only one glowing red button with a film of dust on it. Blowing off the dust with a swift gale of wind from my wings, I pressed the button with my hoof without hesitation, hoping maybe there was a refuge center somewhere, or maybe this was the way out of her nightmare and that I would awake in my cotton bed to go to high school.

This is when green gas poured into the chamber, and made my eyes roll into the back of my head as I slumped to the silver plated floor.