Our Sun Shines No More
Chapter Two: The Surface

"Do you see it?" Dawn trailed only a hoof's length from my hind legs. We were tightly pressed in between the narrow shaft, which according to the map, would lead us to the surface. We crawled through the suffocating dust for what seemed like an eternity and we didn't stop to catch a breath. We knew that in the end, our hardships would be rewarded.

"Wait, Lucian, do you hear that?"

A siren sounded softly behind us and was barely audible. Nevertheless, I heard the piercing note of the screeching siren. I broke into a cold sweat as I quickened my pace.

"They don't know where we are," I whispered to comfort her. Secretly, however, I only wanted to reassure myself. "Nopony but us know that this passage exists. We'll be free."

We crawled on our bellies to maneuver the maze of tunnels where the jagged spikes from the ceiling scraped our heads and tugged at our manes. It was always nighttime with no moon in these tunnels, but I didn't fear the darkness because I knew that there would eventually be light.

"Lucian," Dawn said with a shaking voice.

"Yea?"

She paused before answering. "I thought you've left me. I can't see anything. I'm scared."

I stopped. Her hoof brushed my hind leg. "Don't worry, I'll always be there for you."

We continued our crawl; all we knew was to place one hoof in front of the other until we reached the mouth of the endless passage. All was quiet, too quiet, other than the sound of our bodies. We continued like this until Dawn broke the silence.

"Lucian?"

"Yea?"

"Do you think we'll find peace?"

"What?" I was confused at the last word. Peace? Nopony had ever asked me about peace. It was taboo to speak about something so fictitious.

"Peace. You know, a life where nopony has to hide anymore. A life where we could have eternal harmony."

"Ponies can dream."

"I want peace for everypony," she paused, "even for the White Stars."

"They don't deserve peace. You know what they've done to our people." I began to stomp my hooves into the ground with greater force. It was because of the White Stars that we were forced into the ashen Depths. "How could you forgive them so easily?"

"Somepony has to rise up and turn away from war. Equestria wasn't always a war scarred nation. I believe that anypony can show the world kindness, otherwise nopony will ever see peace."

"Then let the White Stars apologize first, they..."

"It's always their faults, isn't it?" Her voice was enhanced twofold by the echoes. "We, too, are no better than them if we continue to fight. Tell me, tell me what they did that's so different from what we do. What's so unforgivable?"

Suddenly, I reached a wall where a small sliver of light penetrated the darkness from between two jagged boulders.

Dawn, too, saw this and forgot about her question. "Light! It's real light!"

I clawed at the small hole, desperate to take my first breath of real air and see real light. A storm of dust raged as I pounded the growing hole as it caked our throats with its dryness. The earth rumbled once more, this time not from cannon fire, and the rocks fell aside to reveal the surface world.

The world was grey, colorless, except for the ponies who lay on the battlefield with crimson tears. The scene before me was like of a field of roses in full bloom; splotches of red dominated every hill and valley. The sky was blue, but it more resembled a faded grey. The grass was green, but it was charred black to the roots. Ashes hovered around the air like grey snow. It could have been nighttime and I would still have been able to smell the charred flesh and the stench of death. There were no sounds of life; not even the bravest of animals dared to lift their eyes. This is the world.

"This..." I stammered, "this isn't anything like the pictures in my book." I stared into the thick clouds. The sun shone no more.

"Lucian!" Dawn galloped past me and into the open field. She bolted to the side of a fallen pony who I recognized immediately as one of my commanders. I remembered how his daughter cried on her birthday; she wanted her father. I couldn't bring myself to tell Dawn this.

I rushed over to her, who now rested the stallion's head on her hooves. As I approached the two, my hopes began to fall. His body was mutilated far beyond any hope of repair. A pentagram, the symbol of the White Stars, was etched deeply into his chest. Blood from the gashes ran down both hind legs, which were twisted in odd angles. His forearms were also disfigured with bones tearing through the flesh. The stallion shook violently from shock and his eyes were wild with unimaginable pain, but he still struggled against all odds to hold onto his dear life.

"Help him," Dawn cried to me, "help him!"

What could I do? I panicked. Adrenaline rushed through my veins as I could only imagine unrealistic ways to save him. I stared at my hooves and then collapsed, almost in tears.

"Help him!"

I swallowed my fear and stared at the hundreds of unmoving bodies around us. Here we sat pathetically, unable to save just one of the ponies who died for our safety. "I can't Dawn. I can't do anything."

I saw Dawn bawling over the stallion. She knew that he would die in moments. I heard her sing a lullaby, the same one she sang to me as a foal when I was afraid.

My ears then perked at the sound of metallic hoofsteps from a distance.

"Dawn!" I attempted to pry her from the body. "Somepony's coming."

And sure enough, off in the distance were two ponies in gleaming black armor. A large white star blazed on their chest plates.

"We have to go!"

She would not let go. She continued to sing to the pony, as if it could save him.

"Dawn!" I forced her from the stallion and lifted her to a grassy hill which overlooked the dying pony. I pressed her against my chest and held her tightly to silence her whimpering.

"There!" The larger pony in armor with a deep voice pointed to the fallen stallion.

The smaller one, who I could now see was female, nodded and trotted only inches from our hiding spot. "He still alive?"

"Yea." The ponies spoke in a heavy barbaric accent almost indistinguishable from babbling foals. They carried on their backs spears with onyx tips. Blood and pink matter coated the shafts, but the ponies themselves were spotless. They circled around the stallion like sharks hungry at the scent of suffering. They laughed. They smiled at his inability to even scream out in pain.

The smaller pony stared directly at the stallion. "How would you like to die?"

We were surprised when the stallion was able to sweep the mud around him in search for a weapon. With his arm like a brush, his black blood painted the ground a curse.

"I asked you a question." She rammed the spear through his stomach and began twisting the shaft while laughing. She slid the spear out and plunged it into him again. But this time, the spear didn't rip through him as easily. I turned away, but I still heard the creaking sound of his ribcage slowly being pried apart. There were two snaps, followed by laughter. The stallion convulsed in response and bellowed. His war toned roar echoed through the fields infinitely, loud enough as if he were screaming not only for himself but for all his fallen comrades. I knew that breaking a pony was torture, but I realized that no words can describe breaking a pony's spirit.

She gestured to the other armored stallion and whispered something into his ear. He swiftly brought out a club with a rounded metal head. She greedily snatched the weapon from his hooves and angled it menacingly above the near-dead pony.

"Beg for mercy, filthy mule."

The stallion stared into the clouds. His vivid green eyes still glowed with life and pain. I believed that he wished for death to come and save him.

But she would not let him die just yet. Whenever his eyes began to glaze over, she would jam a syringe into his neck forcing him to remain fully conscious for her extensive mutilation. He would then scream as he was forced to watch whatever remaining life pour out of the gaping fissure in his chest. He was chained to life - a torturous ordeal.

She pulled her foreleg back and swung. The entire massive length of the sterling club struck him centered on his left eye. I heard the splitting of bone, then a small pop. When I saw the stallions face, blood rushed out in torrents from the gouged hole on his face. From his eye socket was half an eye connected to his head by a translucent pink string.

"Pathetic filth." With those words she ferociously made consecutive blows to the bloody mess that was his unrecognizable face. His body twitched at the first few strikes but the sixth, which landed square into his forehead, left his body motionless. His head had been severed from the spine by blunt brutality. Fragments of pink mash floated in the pool of red slush that overflowed from his battered and hollowed skull. There were no more screams, and only the sound that I could hear was that of the bloodthirsty pony's sadistic laughing.

The mare stood above the corpse with icy blue eyes. "Search him," she commanded.

Her partner immediately began to search the contents of the dead pony's saddlepack. "Nothing here, just this." In his hoof was a picture of the birthday girl.

"The filth give birth to even more filth. We'll burn them all." She protruded a match from her saddlepack and struck it against her hoof. Orange flames greedily consumed the stem of the match. She carelessly dropped the match onto the remains of the pony who then ignited with furious red flames. "It's not fun unless he's alive. Let's go."

The armored ponies cantered away from the remains of the father pony. Shattered bones littered the ground; organs had burst from the fire. His face had completely melted away and only his bleached white skull remained of his head. The jaw was still agape and I couldn't stop myself from hearing his silent screams inside my head.

I turned Dawn's away from the face death. She was a fragile spirit too innocent to be tainted by this evil. I gazed to the horizon and saw a castle on the face of a mountain. That was Canterlot. It was where Celestia, dictator of disharmony, resided. And it was where we would finally find our answers.

"Let's go." We trotted, side-by-side as wanderers in an unknown and terrifying world of sorrow. The flames behind us by then had diminished to near nothingness. It longed to consume life to continue burning, but the grass was dead, the air was dead, and everything else in the world was dead. It too vanished into nothingness, existence long forgotten.

The Everfree Desert was a cursed land, but it was also the quickest route to Canterlot. A legend from the grand old library depicted the Everfree as a lush forest where trees and grasses had dominated every crevice and foliage had fallen from treetops like rain. Hundreds, if not a thousand, species of animals had once joyfully frolicked in the mid-afternoon sun. But that tale is no more. Ashes and charred branches are what remain now. They said that an ancient creature, which lived in the heart of the forest, cursed the forest with its dark magic. The forest burned that night, and the green became a faded diseased color of yellow-like-grey. As we entered deeper into the Everfree, this legend became convincingly true. Millions of twisted trees rose from the bronze sand dunes dry and fruitless and roots dug into the earth to ensnare the very land in its grasps. The world soon became a labyrinthine enigma and all that now guided us were the white spiral roofs and pale marble towers in the distance.

"Lucian," Dawn chimed.

"Yes?"

"Can you hear them too?"

I listened to the wilderness, but I only heard the dead air. "Hear who?" I asked, dumbfounded.

"Can you hear them sing?"

"Sing? Dawn, are you alright?" I ruffled her hair affectionately. Maybe she was in shock.

"I've never told you this, Lucian, I've never told anypony this."

"What?"

"I can hear ghosts."

"Ghosts?" I could see that she was serious. "Dawn, I'm not a foal anymore. Ghosts are..."

A large mass fell from above our heads, missing me by no more than a leg's reach. I tilted my head up to the clouds. Far up in the canopy of the trees were bodies which hung eerily with nooses around necks. They were like puppets, strung and played by the trees that were like wrung hands. The bodies swung freely in unison with even the slightest breeze. Sacks covered the faces of all the ponies, but some sacks were bodiless - or maybe the murderers were cruel enough to hang even those that are unborn. These were the bags that were stained red and black at their bases.

"I've never told anypony," Dawn said, clinging to me, "because there were never many ghosts in the Depths. But ever since we broke the surface - the surface, Lucian - they've been everywhere. They talk to me, cry to me, and beg to me to tell their families how much they care - I just can't do it though. It's all too much."

I've never understood unicorn magic, as I'm an earth pony, but what I did understand was that she was in pain. I promised to her that I would never leave her side or bear any burden alone. "I'm here for you, remember?"

She looked at me with her rose eyes.

"Let's go get revenge for those poor spirits then."

"Do you really think we can?" She asked. "I mean, it's only us two."

"I'm sure that two ponies have done crazier things."

She smiled. "To Canterlot."

"To Canterlot."

As I was reaching for her, something cold pierced me from behind I quickly turned to see a icy blue dart stuck in my flank. I turned to Dawn, but she had fallen on the ground and was fast asleep. A split second later, I realized what had just happened. My vision began to blur as I toppled over beside Dawn. I reached for her and I felt her heartbeat - she was still alive. I tried to crawl towards her, but then I felt yet another object strike me. Although all this occurred in only a split second, I remember that the last thing I saw in front of me were white stars, spinning and dancing around me.

I woke up freezing and tired. Somepony had thrown a bucket of water over me. I opened my eyes to face a band of ponies, all wearing armor like the two I've seen before. The room I was similar to the tunnels: dark and dank. A single orange bulb hung above my head and flickered occasionally. I attempted to gallop away, but I soon found this to be a futile attempt - my legs were shackled to the wall behind me. Most importantly, however, Dawn was nowhere to be seen.

A cobalt blue stallion roared at me. "You're going to answer some questions, colt."

"Dawn! Dawn, are you there?"

I was answered back by the back of his hoof. "You're not a soldier, are you? Not one of those other war ponies, too." He raised his hoof once more. His friends behind him began to chant in unison.

"No. I'm not." I quickly interjected before he could speak, "where is she?"

He brought his hoof to this side, but this relief was short lived. He turned and bucked me in the stomach. The ponies cheered at my pain. "Next question, what's your name?"

"My name? You want to know my name?" My cursed name, the one that was placed upon me on birth, has haunted me every day I could remember. "My name is Lucian Sparkle."

A wave of whispers traveled through the crowd. "Sparkle," they all said. The cobalt blue stallion fumbled as he released my restraints and then trotted back, as if in fear.

What happened next shook me to my core. I heard a voice that I hoped would never hear again. It was the voice which I listened to and obeyed as a child. It was the voice of trickery and of a dead pony.

From the back of the room the voice spoke only once and only needed to speak once. "Come to me, my son."