As the light from the sun shined down, showing three o' clock on the horizon, a strong earth pony stallion wandered down the main road. This large dull-gray Earth Pony stallion pulled a cart full of turnips, he wore a rounded hat on his head and always wore a toothy grin. Though his current station was that of a humble farmer, this pale stallion carried the air of a pony far above his assumed academic prowess.
He stopped near an alleyway and began to set up his stand for the day to sell his labor to the people of Appleloosa.
He was beloved by the townsfolk. They didn't question his abnormal size, standing a whole head taller than the Sheriff or Braeburn. Nor did they question the lack of sweat on his brow, despite a long trek through a blisteringly inhospitable summer desert.
He smiled wide at the ponies who bought of his wares, he spoke in a loud and verbose manner with a complex vernacular befitting a stallion from Canterlot, his words always enticed and enraptured any who'd hear him speak.
Despite his Cutie Mark being a brownish turnip buried in the dirt. His knowledge far exceeded his mark, he'd speak of fate, constellations, the development of the sciences and of magic.
As the days came to their end, he would always find himself sold out of turnips, he'd pack up his foldable stand and put it at the bottom of his empty cart, then set off exactly where he came from with little difference between the days.
The pale stranger showed himself in town as summer started and he had been in this routine for two weeks.
Only once did he ever stop his routine.
He continued his sales, he barked, "Two Bits for a heart of the earth, the finest produce, grown by my own hooves."
A young colt, with a sandy blonde coat and an even lighter mane of the same color, walks up with two bits in his mouth and he places it on the table, "A turnip for my momma please!"
"Of course, I would be happy to oblige. You wouldn't happen to be Shore Starter, would you?"
"How did you know that mister?"
"Such a formal young foal. Please, call me Stone Turnip, or just Stone. All my friends call me Stone and aren't we friends?" Stone smiles widely.
The little colt stamps around excitedly, "I'd love to be friends!"
"Oh, it warms the soul to hear. Truly a remarkable lad. Here's your turnip, tell your mother and father I say good day to them." Stone's wide smile bares his pearly white teeth, that without his gums could blend into his coat.
The foal runs off happily with the turnip in his mouth.
Stone's eyes raise up from under his hat, revealing sharp green pupils, and strands of his beige mane flowing down from his hat. Then his eyes travel to an outdoor seating area connected to a café across the road from him.
Sitting alone at an umbrella covered table, is a newcomer to town. A unicorn with a light magenta coat paired with a freshly brushed light-red mane. This mare was sipping tea and levitating a newspaper in front of her face.
Stone's eyes locked onto the mare, and turned a sign on his stand that says, 'Out For Lunch'.
He approached the mare and began to speak.
"Salutations, if nopony has already, I would like to welcome you to our little town on the frontier. I am a resident vendor of this place, my name is Stone Turnip, an honest turnip farmer with his farm built on the far reaches of town. What is your name, ma'am?"
The mare smiles politely, "Thank you so much! My name is Moon Gleam, I just got here from Canterlot. I did everything I wanted to there, and, well, I just wanted a small place to get away from it all."
Stone then gestures to the chair opposite her across the table, she nods, and Stone takes a seat, the chair groaning with his weight being pressed into it. "Most astute, this place is a wonderful choice for quiet contemplation. I've heard of the foul creatures wondering around the cities of our fair land."
She folds over her newspaper, "Oh, I know I saw the Princess of Friendship fight off some kind of monster, it blew a hole through Canterlot Mountain!"
Stone smiles, "What do you think of the Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle?"
"Well, I've never met her, but I know she is one of the most trustworthy ponies around. She stopped so much from happening. Not just that monster but she stopped those changelings during Shining Armor's wedding, and fought back King Sombra, she's a real hero."
Stone leans forward, "Those are truly righteous acts, but I ask you, an admirer of her work, what drives ponykind to such a thing as friendship?"
Moon Gleam tilts her head, "Well most ponies don't like being alone, I imagine it helps to have somepony to lean on."
Stone nods, "Yes, yes, that is rather true. Ponykind would rather be together and united rather than apart. But what pushes said unity? What drives it?" He grins showing his green eyes. He bellows out, "It is conflict. Conflict drives such unity. We would be fools indeed if the only metric we used for a peaceful society was whether or not we had a Princess of Friendship."
Moon Gleam squints, "We shouldn't go asking for conflict, we should try to avoid it. Whenever there's conflict, big or small, ponies could get hurt."
"Avoid conflict? If we avoid conflict, would Equestria even exist? Our foundations are built on conflict. Let us use this town as an example, the savages threatened our crop. The crop of this town is apples, it is Appleloosa's blood. The Princess of Friendship tried to mitigate the destruction and accidentally negotiated a truce between the ponies here and the bovine cretins on the plain. What would be the natural course, if it was not diverted by petty sentimentality? Blood. Blood would have watered these streets like a pegasus kicking a thunderhead filled to bursting."
Moon Gleam squirmed in her seat looking around at the other ponies to see if they heard what Stone said, but the other ponies just walked past. She nervously looks back at Stone, but his eyes are now glowing under the darkness of his hat. She felt a pit open in her stomach.
"Ponykind is destined for blood. And for war. It is ordained by powers on high, that mortal life will clash against the enemy, or they turn on themselves. Do you truly believe the Hearth's Warming story? It is pure fantasy. The three races of pony did not band together because of the ideals of friendship. No, they saw what lurked around them in the wilds. Lesser creatures that encroached upon our land. Hatred breeds war and war breeds unity." His eyes open wider as the whites of his eyes shift to red, and everything around the two of them stops.
Moon Gleam turns around frantically seeing ponies stopped in the street, then she looks forward and there is no longer a stallion. The Earth Pony was replaced by a pale and bipedal creature, with its clawed hands on the table, in an instant. It looked like one of the friends of Twilight Sparkle. A pale Mobian hedgehog, with black crystal structures on the tips of his quills, scarlet eyes, with those same piercing emerald pupils.
Her misfortune was made manifest with a glance at the being's eyes. Moon Gleam saw Appleloosa on fire, ponies with black crystalline spikes run through their bodies, bleeding like pigs on a spit. She saw everyone in Appleloosa gored by these crystal spires. No living thing was spared the brutality. Then her eyes flicked back to the hedgehog. He reveled in her suffering as her eyes filled with tears and terror.
"I am unity incarnate. I am freedom for the dark. I am the death of light. I am Mephilzo the Void, and this is not an illusion, this is divine providence, the future, my reality. You will be my Noah. You will watch the flood."
"You- You- You- What do you want from me?"
Mephilzo smiled, his teeth sharper than the flesh he disguised himself with, he opened his arms to the side like an impassioned preacher, "I am going to put an end to all things, and I have deemed it fitting to establish a covenant with you, Moon Gleam. I did not choose you out of fate, but on a whim. I want you to lay restless at night knowing that anypony could have sat at this table,"
Mephilzo's arms lazily dropped, and he makes direct eye contact while smiling, "but you sat down today. With this boon I grant, you will be immortal, whether you want to be or not. A lone witness, that no one shall ever believe. A doom-sayer that will be looked upon with reverence and guilt when her wild stories are made true. My only kindness to ponies is that I will allow the stones to remember them. You will be alive long enough to witness those stones turn to sand, and then to dust."
He extends a crystal clawed finger, and it crackles with dark energy, coloring itself in a black gradient from the tip. Moon Gleam can only watch as he presses the point of his claw into the top of her horn. He applies an agonizing and controlled amount of pressure that causes a hairline fracture. This crack evolves to where it splits down the middle, revealing exposed nerves, causing blood to streak down her face. She couldn't cry or scream despite her pain, as the power Mephilzo used had stopped her as well. Moon Gleam felt the exposed nerves in her horn scream out in agony as her open horn filled with a dense and cold fluid. Blackness mixed with the blood as she felt a coldness through her veins like ice shards in her veins. The evil ichor slowly permeated her entire body, she felt it from her brain to her flanks. Then all of it started to congeal and condense, traveling backwards through her veins. It all accumulated in her heart. Her heart felt like it was going to stop, it was clogged and swollen in her chest. The pain started to fade from her chest, but it reappeared under and on her Cutie Mark
It burned like a brand, except the heated end was underneath her own flesh. Her Cutie Mark shifted and changed as this torture had reached its crescendo.
Then it all stops.
She no longer felt the wetness of blood or strange ichor on her face, her horn no longer felt broken, and she was no longer staring at a pale hedgehog but at a pale stallion. She glanced horrified at the skin Mephilzo was wearing, and then looked at her Cutie Mark, what was once a full moon, surrounded by grey clouds, changed into a clockface of the same color, with a mute gray border. This clock had a pony skull at twelve and the minute hand rested just before midnight.
She looked at Stone.
"What did you do to me?"
He smiled wide.
"I said, what did you do to me?!"
He continued to smile, as Mephilzo's green eyes radiated malice under his hat.
"My dear, sweet, Moon Gleam. I believe this conversation is done."
She growled, "This is not over, everypony will know what you are."
"Moon Gleam you've telling me that this entire conversation, and frankly, I haven't the patience to contend with your constant conspiracy."
She looked around and saw ponies looking at her, in what seemed to be annoyance. She looked back at Stone, as he stood up and began to walk toward his wagon. Moon Gleam heard whispers, ponies said she's yelling at the good and upstanding Stone Turnip. A stranger coming into their town to bully one of their own? She was hastily escorted out of Appleloosa, with her suitcases thrown at her at the train station by an agitated mob. She only had enough bits to get to Ponyville, but all the while on the train Moon Gleam told anypony who would listen that the world would end at the hands of a hedgehog. She would proselytize to mares, stallions and even foals, about how he'd do it.
Her original goal in life was to chart the moon and its phases, learn everything she could to maybe one day present her works to Princess Luna, and be her pupil as Twilight is to Celestia. Instead, her life shifted from lofty dreams and goals to a spiral that dragged her down further and further.
For two weeks she prepared food and water in a cave in the Everfree Forest. It was stocked with full canteens, dried fruits, and nuts. When she went to town to stockpile more food, she bitterly argued the price of food with the stall owners in the market. If she had no money to buy food, she'd angrily claim the end was coming. She'd point at Twilight's house, blaming the Mobians she allowed to live here, claiming it's their fault that the world, and everything in it, is going to end.
The ponies with right minds would try their hardest to reason with her, but she was lost. Even the famed hero Sonic the Hedgehog tried to convince her that everything was okay, but she only cursed at him. Then she would retreat into the woods to organize her thoughts.
Moon Gleam did keep up with the news, buying newspapers with an obsessive fervor. On a glance she saw a headline it read, 'Brutal Murder of Young Foal in Appleloosa: Suspect At Large.'
Her eyes were consumed with fear as she stood at the news stand and read the paper. It described little Shore Starter, being mangled, and found in a ditch, miles away from Appleloosa. She magically held the paper and began to hyperventilate while reading the message written in the foal's blood was left at the scene.
The message was.
'Time's up'