Adagio for the Setting Sun
All Rainbow could sense was the dull, muffled roar of the windigoes stampeding somewhere... high above. She shifted... squirmed... moved. Yaerfaerda streaked in the far distance: the only sign that she was actually moving. After several interminable seconds, Rainbow became aware of multiple voices—coughing, sputtering, wheezing voices.
Rainbow opened her muzzle to speak. Her mouth immediately filled with dust and flakes of soil. She coughed, collapsing on her chest. After a few moments, she felt a strong tug to her side. The unmistakable hoof of Remna lifted Rainbow on all fours, and that was how she knew that there was still enough room in the cellar to stand.
As the tense moment wore on, specks of light materialized. First, Rainbow spotted Flynn's glowing horn... then Kelly's. Soon, Kepler and Ariel were lighting flares. Four glinting slivers reflected the sudden illumination; Rainbow Dash recognized them as Echo's and Nicole's eyes. As Rainbow's eyes adjusted, she recognized the huddled shapes of the Herald... along with Bard's family.
Five colorful shapes hovered at Rainbow's side. Rainbow flung her close friends a look. After searching every spectre's face, her eyes rested nervously on Fluttershy.
Fluttershy stared back. She bore a weak albeit reassuring smile.
Rainbow exhaled sharply. She turned around completely, searching for the once-entrance to the cellar.
At last, she spotted a collapsed mound of tightly compact rocks and soil. What's more, there were two figures residing next to it. One limp and wheezing. The other one standing up... breathing calmly...
"It's my fault," a deep voice drawled. "My own dayum fault that it ever came to this."
Blue gasped and galloped forward. However, it wasn't to Bard's side that the elder rushed. Blue knelt next to Tim's haggard figure. Marie soon joined the two, inspecting Tim's fresh wounds. Tim merely grunted and waved the two off.
Meanwhile...
"Somepony like me... a stallion who's been travellin' around for so long should know a lick of sense. Tim and Blue? They dun rightly know how to live outside their own flankholes. Doesn't surprise me none that they're the same idiots they've always been. But me? I should have realized how impossible it would have been to conduct any sort of civilized, sensible business with the likes of them."
Wildcard finally crossed the distance of the half-collapsed cellar. He rested a metal talon on his partner's shoulder. Bard waved him off, then proceeded to limp forward, pacing across the claustrophobic interior while windigoes shrieked outside.
"Things would have been different... everythang would have been a whole heck of a lot different if y'all had known the truth from day one. Instead, I swallowed the truth up... just like I swallowed up my own pain. I felt that my troubles were my troubles... my own burden to bear. No sense in lettin' the entire family deal with it, right? Well..." Bard exhaled hard, nostrils flaring. "All I ever did was just abandon thangs to fester. I left the worst ponies imaginable in charge... and it's poisoned this entire farm with ignorance. It's only a matter of time before somethin' terrible happens to somepony else I love. Hell, for all I know, it probably already has. So... I know it's a long time comin'... but here y'all have it. The honest-to-Goddess truth."
All eyes were on Bard as he pivoted about in the dim light, speaking in an earnest, gruff voice.
"Years ago—longer than any y'all can rightly remember..." His gaze swept over his foster siblings in particular. "...I fell in lurve with a mare who came here, hailin' from Frostknife. Her name was Amber. She was an angel... my angel. I made her laugh and forget her regrets. She made my heart sing... and I tried my damnedest to put it to guitar. I always failed, of course, but she didn't paid no mind. She was in lurve with the musician in our heart. Together, our breaths made sweet symphonies in a land with no sunsets.
"This love of ours was beautiful. Sublime. Innocent. But Blue didn't care for it one bit. Amber was an outsider to the farm. As far as the old stallion was concerned, she was worse than filth: a 'corrupt piece of society' or some hogwash. I told him of several dark places where he could stick his prejudices. Naturally, this made him mighty cross... but he kept that anger bottled up until he was ready to use it like a weapon.
"One summer, Amber became pregnant. While Blue surely pulled his remainin' hair out over this, for Amber and me it was somethin' to rejoice over. I had always been wantin' to start a family, and Amber was all for it. We set out to build a homestead just west of this here ranch. There was plenty of fertile land for raisin' livestock. Nothin' in this world was gonna stop us. Nothin' but Blue, that is.
"The old fool badgered and hounded us at every turn. Kept makin' up stories about how we was bringin' ruin to the farm... experimentin' with new-fangled fungal-growin' methods that would ruin the agricultural around here. It was all nonsense, of course. At first, most ponies on these lands saw right through him. But the 'family' was still small then, and he didn't have many young'n's that he could brainwash. Tim got adopted around that time, but he was too young to channel Blue's anger. That would change somethin' awful in the years to come. But back then? Amber and I were able to get away with our dream. Or... at least... we started it.
"Melody, my adorable little daughter, was born. She was the tender song of our lives. We cherished her... and wanted the best for her. That's why when Amber insisted that we innoculate her by takin' her for a visit to the doctors offices in Frostknife, I didn't argue one bit. I knew that medical resources were heaps better inland. So I loaded up a wagon... Amber bundled up lil' Melody... and away we went.
"We made it about thirty miles west when the unthinkable happened. While campin' in the uphill regions of the neighborin' prefecture, we got exposed to the Dusk Virus. Even to this day, I ain't entirely sure how we contracted the dayum strain. Coulda been a swarm of mosquitoes... or it could have been a bacteria that got into our canteen. Whatever the case, Amber and I started showin' symptoms. I knew even from the years of bein' a little colt that Dusk Virus is mighty deadly, and exposure to sunlight only makes the body deteriorate faster. So—seein' as we had barely made it one fifth of the way to Frostknife anyhow—I made us go back home to check in with the local physician. It would be the first of many mistakes that still haunt me to this day.
"It took nearly a week for our doctor to arrive on the farm. All the time, Amber and I suffered coughin' fits—nearly suffocatin'. I would have been fine enough on my own, but seein' Amber suffer was torture. Thankfully, Melody wasn't showin' any signs of the virus... which only confused me instead of bringin' me any solace. At last, the doctor showed up and we asked him a million questions. He had good and bad news for us. The good news was that infants at Melody's age weren't susceptible to Dusk Virus, so our little song was gonna come out alright. The bad news was that for adults who contract Dusk Virus... a violent and deterioratin' death is absolutely certain... unless a highly expensive and hard-to-concoct cure is provided.
"The reality before us wasn't a pretty one. Yes, Amber and I could get cured. But seein' as Dusk Virus was somethin' that only plagued a statistically small group of unlucky souls in the Twilight Lands, it'd be several months to several years before either of us could receive the medicine we needed... which were months and years that we couldn't afford to live. There was only one way to last long enough to receive the cure... and that was to suspend ourselves in one of those mystical Frosted Chambers that the servants of Verlaxion watched over.
"There so happened to be such a chamber in the Twilight Lands—the only of its kind for hundreds of miles. It was small... easily dwarfed by the Chambers in Frostknife. But they had room for us. All we needed was the right amount of bits. I paid our way in by sellin' our homestead and everythang we owned. I figured the past wasn't necessary so long as it meant Amber and I could live to look after our young'n.
"But sometimes the miracle yer given ain't as miraculous as you want it to be. My bits weren't worth a whole heck of a lot in the long run—it could only afford us tandem Chambers that ran off the same power supply. This meant that when the time came for us to be cured, we had to wait until we both could be cleansed of the virus. In other words, we'd both be waiting in there for a long time... even longer than it took to cure a single one of us.
"Normally, this wouldn't be a problem... except for one thang. Melody wasn't diseased. While we were bein' suspended in wait for a cure... a cure that could take years to be delivered... our little darlin' song would remain outside... growin' up... livin' life... without us.
"This tore me up mighty fierce. If it weren't for the torture the virus was doin' to my lungs, I swear I'd have been sobbin' up a storm every day. Amber—Goddess love her—reassured me with her faith and her smile. 'We'll be with our Little Melody in the future,' she said. 'In the end, there wont' be any sunsets for us.' I know she was sufferin' just as badly inside—both in body and in spirit—but at least she had the strength to lift me up. And I realized that she was right. We both had to be strong... strong enough so we could make it through the process and come back to be the parents our little girl needed before it was too late.
"So, I had faith. Maybe a mite bit too much faith. After all, I was leavin' Melody in the capable hooves of Blue and the family he was fosterin'. I had thought—foolishly—that all of the nasty thangs we had been through would have been enough to change his heart. But I was wrong... and I lost everythang because of it.
"As soon as Amber and I were put into stasis, we was both out of the picture—as far as Blue was concerned. Suddenly Melody, the song of our lives, was just a little experiment for Blue to shape and mold as he saw fit. While he was in charge of her, the stallion put the poor little darlin' to work... far earlier than she ever should have. The ol' bastard worked her to death. Literally. Melody was workin' the fields one night when she got pneumonia and died. Poor lil' thang wasn't even five... and Amber and I hadn't seen her live and laugh and sing past the age of ten months.
"Apparently there was still a sliver of self-consciousness in Blue's shell of a body, for he regretted what happened to Melody somethin' awful. Too bad he was still an idiotic piece of shit. I'm sure—in his head—he reasons what he did as tryin' to preserve somethin' about my family. But what he chose to do was nothin' short of selfishness and gross negligence. To this day, I ain't sure how he pulled it off. Maybe he knew someone special in the upper echelons of Verlaxion's monks... or perhaps he persuaded the Prefecture's Magistrate to pull some strings. But... the moment a cure for Dusk Virus became available on the market... a single cure... he bought it right off... and he used it on me.
"He used it on me... and only me. To that end, he revived both me and Amber... 'cuz we couldn't be revived from that chamber separately. Didn't matter much to Blue. He saved his first adopted son. And Amber? My angel from the west? The last light of beauty from the settin' Sun...?"
Bard's words cut off.
Rainbow watched in somber silence. Rarity and Fluttershy covered their muzzles while Applejack, Pinkie, and Twilight hung their heads.
Bard had his eyes closed. He took a deep breath. "He murdered her," the Desperado grunted. "Plain and simple. In savin' me... he spelled her death out in granite. Ain't no way he didn't know this would happen. Ain't enough that he worked Melody to death... but he had to drive the stake through my heart by takin' my Amber as well." Sniffling, he continued. "I was cured, yes... but only to live a fresh new Hell of Blue's makin'. And yet..." He raised his head, glaring daggers across the earthen room as he spat: "The ol' bastard still defended himself! Tryin' to twist his actions into somethin' pathetically 'heroic.' As if somehow all of the loss was okay... just because his 'beloved son' could still draw breath." He clenched his teeth. "Ain't it a big flippin' surprise that I went mad and desecrated the grave of the one mare Blue ever truly loved?"
Blue squinted across the dim interior. Marie bit her lip while Tim wheezed and panted... his bloody brow furrowed. Up above, the shrieks of the windigoes grew more and more distant.
"Am I proud for what I did? No. It was ugly... petty... and downright senseless. What's more, Blue's used it for years and years on end to paint me as the villain here. And that sort of a thang has had its effects on Tim... Marie... and the rest of y'all. I'm mighty sorry for that... but not half as sorry as I am for not takin' the whole lot of y'all away from this farm when I had the chance." Hooves scuffling, Bard turned around to gaze at the other foster siblings. "Nicole... Ray... Mike... James... Kelly..." He gulped. "I can't rightly imagine how y'all thought of me after all these years. But if I had only told you the truth when I was too angry to do anythang else but run off like a true Desperado... then maybe y'all wouldn't be livin' under such a dark cloud. Years and years... and all he's done is spread his filthy prejudice and lies... makin' you love him unquestionably... all the while hatin' on the rest of the world in spite of its beauty. And for what?"
Swiveling about, Blue pointed an angry hoof at the old stallion.
"There stands the very model of bitterness... with ignorance as its foundation and pain as its support. Ain't nothin' but filth stored inside. And the thicker you build the walls, the more the mess just sits and rots... until there ain't nothin' left for livin'... just fearin' and regrettin'." Bard took a deep breath. "Blue, I'm mighty sorry that yer wife died the way she did... but it dun make anythang that you did any less shitty. You can raise all the adopted children you want and pretend to be makin' a difference in this world, but so long as they're livin' in yer paranoid little bubble, then you're just as shameless as the wretched old fart who took my family away."
"I never meant for any of it to happen, boy," Blue wheezed, his eyes glossy. "It was all a mistake."
"There are only two mistakes in this room," Bard grumbled. "But at least I've got truth to give. You? What is there left for you to do but die?"
Blue clenched his teeth hard.
The hushed stampede grew less and less loud. Twilight Sparkle had her gaze trained on the ceiling.
Rainbow glanced aside.
"They're passing..." Twilight turned towards Rainbow with a hopeful smile. "I... I think they're actually passing over!"
Rainbow exhaled. She looked back at Bard.
"I didn't come here to drag these old ghosts of the past out of hidin'," Bard said. "But, nevertheless, I'm here... and ghosts never really die. Especially the ones that you lurve more than... l-life itself." The stallion briefly choked up. "I left this farm. It was only a matter of time. If y'all value life in any capacity whatsoever, you'll leave too. Maybe... maybe by finally hearin' the truth, you'll know t'ain't no time like the present. This place is cancer... and it'll eat away at you way harder than it ever has at Blue. That... is a dayum guarantee..." At the end of his last exhalation, he leaned against a crumbled wall of soil... as if having run a marathon.
Within the next minute, a lone figure crossed the length of the room. Nicole trotted up to her older brother. She rested a hoof on Bard's shoulder.. then hugged him softly with both her forelimbs and wings. Bard wrapped a strong limb around her, burying his face in her shoulder.
"Mmmmmm..." Fluttershy squeaked. She rubbed her cheeks dry and smiled. "It was rough getting here... but it's really sweet, don't you think?"
Rainbow Dash, in the meantime, was staring at Bard's other foster siblings. The ponies and griffons stood in place, their heads hung and their eyes glued to the floor of the cellar. "Maybe," the pegasus murmured. "Maybe not..."
Stats
Page generated in 0.062 seconds
Total duration
997 users online
2,364,653 hits today, 2,139,894 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Mwap.
You can lead a horse to water...
...but you can't make him drink.
Well, that's it, I guess. The whole truth laid bare. But It's up to them to decide their alignment right now.
Edit: moving my thoughts over to the next chapter, since it got published so soon after this one. Man, it's nice to have regular updates again.
Damn...
I just had the strangest feeling of déjà vu...
*Bard
Bet it felt good to get that off your chest, huh?
Hmm... So neither Bard nor Amber where there when Melody died? They were in stasis. So, who was there when it happened? Blue? Just Blue, and no one else?
Out of curiosity did anypony else at the farm actually see a body? Or did Blue just conjure up a story of the filly dying of exposure, claimed he'd buried her, and never actually produced proof one way or another? I mean, I know Rarity sensed the location of a grave, but not what was actually in said grave, if anything.
OK so to me Blue actually comes off less like someone who was intentionally malicious, and more like a completely selfish asshole who deep down only really thought about what he wanted; and uses the adoption of the foals to make himself feel better about it.
Well, if you didnt hate Blue before...
That . . . true or not, is a line some miles past any chance of mercy. I don't think I'd have stopped at desecrating a grave. I mean, I'd like to think I believe in the right to life, but . . . Hell Hath No Fury.
Bard. Unless Bard is secretly Josho.
I knew Blue was a rotten old sonbitch, but damn.
The truth comes out, like it always does.
7367421
*think
No, fear is the cornerstone of this mentality, not a result of it. Fear is what feeds ignorance, fear is what causes pain. Fear is what kills everything, mind, heart and most of all imagination, leading people to believe that the world can't be better, that people can't be better than they currently are. That hatred and mistrust are the way to go, always, and that no one else can be better than them because they are no longer able to truly imagine anyone greater and better than them. And I know that mentality. Hah, this setting was cleverly chosen.
Wow fuck Blue! I hope a Windego straggler lands on his ass and shatters it.
And now it's all out in the air. Nicole's on their side, but will anyone else be?
I think you meant Bard here.
7368562
This, too.
Truth can be painful. But it will eventually heal all wounds.
Very intense chapter, yes. Still.
I actually guessed that Bard might've been in stasis (what with the "when you were the older brother" line), but didn't connect it to the Frosted Chambers.
Good job, me. Very observant.
But yeah, finally the whole truth is out, and quite a truth it is. Now to try and get out of the cellar…
7367646 why dig a fake grave but leave it unmarked?
Well then... I hated Blue with a passion before this chapter, but now I see that hatred is a little too kind for him. Bard's true past is pretty damned heartwrenching, and that's putting it lightly. Hopefully Blue can just die horribly, even though that's a merciful fate for him.
~SolidFire
Blue is just a shell after his wife died. Get it? Shell? hehehehhehe
7411446 ha
Well last chapters prediction was very wrong. Let no one say I cheat by looking ahead!
Well, that was quite the reveal. I'm surprised that Blue isn't labeled a murderer by his family and community. To kill a child from negligence, and then even Bards wife... that's. That's just evil in the purest sense.
Sounds like an Equestria Girls shipfic.
And up until now, I thought that my guess a few chapters back had been crazy.
SHELL? Where?!
... Oh.
8238324
Wow. I dunno what Blue’s defense for what he did will be, but I couldn’t care less. How in the world has Bard not killed Blue yet? He legit killed his wife and daughter.
Hot damn. Who ordered a so story on the Board Express?
Dayum. Well, now we know.
Oof, that was....hard...
7367658
My thoughts as well