3. To See The Sun Far Above...

Three weeks. That was how long the sun was obscured from sight, and how long Eriwen had been wandering the ruins of Southern Equestria. More patches of pristine land had been located, and she had steadily been mapping them out mentally to return to later. However, with the sun’s absence, it wouldn’t be long before plants began to wither and die. There were already signs of what little grass remained starting to shrivel away.

Eriwen’s hooves ached, but she kept walking Northbound. As she walked, she saw towns and villages half-destroyed, with bleached skeletons just the same as the last. Signs once vibrant and full of character were worn away, blasted to pieces or bleached away as though they’d been there for centuries.

Eriwen did her best to ignore the crippling horror growing in her chest each day she awoke to find her nightmare unending. She had to focus on her newfound goal; reach Canterlot, and find out what happened. Ruined roads led her to the Northern fields of Equestria, where the capital of Canterlot was said to be seated on a mountain summit high above the rest of the country. She had heard tales of the great seat of pony power, but had never been there herself. If it weren’t for the destruction of the land, she wouldn’t have the chance to. Truly it was a bittersweet sort of thing, but the crimson Queen tried her best to keep her glass half full, and not empty…

The world was not dark. The sun still moved, but it hid like a coward from the world below. The clouds, Eriwen realized halfway through the fourth week, were not natural. Perhaps the world itself wept with its great loss, or something else was at play… Even so, the sun could not nurture the land by day and the stars could not guide the way by night. Eriwen relied entirely on her horn and magic, which was a problem when food was so rare to come by as she wandered further and further from her home. Well… her hive wasn’t really her home any longer, she supposed. She needed a new home, but her desire for closure kept her from staying in one place for too long. No doubt the Sun Goddess or some other bureaucratic pony would know what happened and what was wrong with the sun, right?

That is, if they remained in Canterlot. It seemed as though Central Equestria was indeed the epicenter as ‘oases’ (Eriwen had thought it an obvious term for the pristine patches of land) became smaller and rarer the closer she trekked. She worried that if Equestria’s capital was too close, that nobody would have survived, and her journey would be for nothing. It was worth a shot, at least… right?