Twilight Sparkle had roughly five seconds left to live.
She stared at the glowing red numerals as the concept of mortality was forcefully injected into her thoughts, cold, dark tendrils of panic writhing their way onto the floor of her brain as she was made to contemplate the fact that in a few moments, her conscious awareness would be forcefully terminated, and she would cease to exist.
Along with every other pony in the city.
Mortality is a concept that many a pony struggles with in their lifetime. Most elect to avoid it or ignore it, unable to reconcile their own existence with the inevitability of non-existence. There exist many personifications of the concept of death throughout history; attempts to rationalise or realise some sort of conceivable being to rail against.
Griffons visualise it as an otherworldly, ethereal many-headed snake, perpetually earthbound and waiting to snatch any unsuspecting griffon that strayed too low. Zebras view it as a zebra-esque creature with no skin, blackened bones in place of stripes, sneaking into encampments to snatch them away. Ancient pony cultures typically adopted the archetypical Earth Pony image of a skeletal horse accompanied by a floating scythe, come to harvest the dead and dying like wheat.
In more modern times, the being most closely associated with death was the Princess of the Night, Luna, given the connection between darkness and death. If there was any actual connection there, though, she certainly wasn’t telling.
Some rare ponies however, come to accept death, dedicating their life to their own pursuits, aware and comfortable in the fact that they had a limited amount of time in which to experience the miracle which we call ‘life.’
Four seconds.
Of course, there is an extremely rare subset of ponies, rare beyond reason, who take a different path. Ponies to whom the concept of death is viewed not as an inevitability, but an obstacle, a mere annoyance to be swept aside. Some would perceive such a view to be arrogance of the highest order, to sweep death itself aside into the dark of oblivion. Death is the one true certainty of the world, pervasive and unchanging.
But then again, that never stopped the Princesses for living over a thousand years, an age that normal ponies consider completely unattainable. Twilight herself had once wondered how Celestia and Luna had managed such a feat of longevity, living ten times longer than even the oldest living non-alicorn. While her subjects withered with age and were turned to dust, they stood unchanged, as regal and as powerful as the day they first set hoof upon the world.
Three seconds.
It wasn’t enough time. She couldn’t stop it. She didn’t want to die, but then no rational, healthy pony really wants to end their life, to step into the Reaper’s waiting embrace and the void of oblivion. Anger welled deep inside her, wailing against the injustice. Why? Why her? She didn’t deserve to die, surely!
“No,” she whispered.
Two seconds.
“I am not going to die here!”
Solutions half-formed in her brain, each dismissed in turn as her analytical mind found the inevitable problems with each and tore them apart. Her earlier attack had left her energy reserves near-depleted, and the Powerstone mounted atop her horn was entirely empty. She couldn’t teleport far enough to be outside of the range of the blast; it was more than likely that it would take out most of Mount Canter with it. All of her solutions required magic, and she didn’t have any magic left.
She looked around, assessing everything in sight for its potential magical capability. Her teammates she dismissed immediately as useless, she doubted they knew the spells required to assist her in a group cast, let alone the energy reserves to pull it off. The bomb she similarly dismissed, she didn’t even know what a ‘Thaumonuclear Implosion Assembly’ was, let alone how to pull enough energy from it to escape in the second-and-a-bit she had left.
There was nothing left in the room beyond broken masonwork and a giant hammer.
A hammer that, now that she was actually paying attention, was heavily enchanted. She didn’t have enough time to fully unravel the full set of enchantments on the weapon, but it stood to reason that at least one of the enchantments was probably Powerstone, or something equivalent enough that supplied thaumic energy in the same way, especially considering the raw power the former-princess Twilight displayed.
Of course, if she was wrong, the hammer would be useless and she wouldn’t have enough time to find something else.
One second.
Her horn ignited, wrapping the hammer in a lavender glow. Simultaneously, she shot a simple directive into her mind.
‘Get us out of here’
The hammer glowed as it dumped its stored energy into the request, a primitive search-and-execute spell running through Twilight’s capabilities before eventually settling on one that had been recently acquired that fit the parameters.
A silver-white event horizon slammed closed as the spell executed, enveloping the entirety of Team Fifteen as Twilight punched a hole into the void.
A fraction of a second later, the device initiated.
------
RF?
Twilight yelped as the spell’s request lanced into her head, the space around her warping to a near-obscene degree as the spell executed, holding a bubble of existence in place against the oblivion of the Void. Her horn itched almost uncontrollably as the seemingly unbounded energy of the nothing-dimension beyond the bubble’s event horizon seeped through, bathing them in the thaumic shadow of a tangible oblivion.
“Great. So this is what death is like,” Lyra groaned, her hooves flailing ineffectually as she attempted to gain purchase on nothingness, seemingly oblivious to Twilight’s extreme discomfort. “Floating in a white bubble with you wankers for the rest of eternity. Could be worse.”
“You’re not dead,” Twilight corrected, her voice strained from the effort of keeping the spell in check.
“Then where are we?”
“Somewhere. I don’t know exactly. I think this is the spell your Luna used when she escaped from my homeworld.”
“Looks about right,” Walleye said as she drifted past. “Nice save, rookie.”
“Still not talking to you, nag.”
“Oh buck up, filly.”
“Walleye, really not the best idea right now,” Lyra warned.
RF?
Twilight yelped as the request repeated, threatening her already-tenuous hold over the spell.
“Are you okay?” Lyra asked
“The spell keeps asking me something. R-F, whatever that means… I just want to go home…”
Confirm 1x45EFBA4C-Slateform?
“Take me home!” she shrieked.
The spell grounded, the reflective inner surface of the bubble’s event horizon falling away, unceremoniously depositing the five floating ponies inside a cramped dormitory room at the Canterlot Royal Academy with a series of pained thumps.
“‘For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble?’” Lyra asked incredulously as she pulled herself to her hooves, echoing Walleye’s words from moments earlier. “That’s the best you could come up with?”
“Buck Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Twilight said, shaking the detritus of the spell from her mind. “Those are Sundance’s last words to Buck before they go out to face the Bullivians. I remember seeing it as a filly.”
“Well, what do you know,” Walleye remarked, surprised. “Common ground. Here I thought you were just another Insider, but it turns out you can fight, and you have good taste in films!”
“I never said I liked it.”
“So, what, suddenly she’s in your good books because she’s seen some flick and vaporised another Sparkle?” Lyra asked, flippantly. “So much for that ‘I hate all Insiders’ rhetoric.”
The hammer twitched slightly in Twilight’s magic as she was reminded of her split-second murder of her doppelganger.
“Or is it because she helped you level an entire city?” Lyra continued, turning to Twilight. “Nice work, by the way. You’re off to a fantastic start. Only two days in and already taking out entire cities.”
The hammer twitched again, more violently.
“I never said I liked her,” Walleye said. “But I’ll admit, she’s proven herself.”
“Proven myself a killer, you mean,” Twilight whispered.
“Well… yes.”
“You thoughtless, greedy, manipulative cow,” Twilight hissed, punctuating each word with a slight twitch of the hammer. “You just killed an entire city, I just killed an entire city. I helped you kill an entire city of innocent ponies! What have you done to me?”
“They deserved it,” Walleye replied, simply and calmly. “I would kill a million Insiders for what that tyrant did to Lunatic. Fair price, I say!”
“You… monster…” Twilight whispered. “They’re still ponies! Living, breathing, with hopes, dreams, ambitions!”
“Well, not any more…” Lyra quipped off-hoofedly.
“No, now they’re all dead because of this mare’s massive superiority complex!”
“You’re not going to convince me that they didn’t get what they deserve,” Walleye said.
“Oh, so all Insiders are worthless scum, then? What about me? Where do I factor into your campaign of hate and bigotry, Derpy?”
“Do not call me that,” Walleye growled, her wings fluttering in irritation.
“Or what?” Twilight threatened. “Need I remind you that you’re stuck here? It’s not like you can go running back to your Outsider friends like the spoiled foal you are and have them get you your bottle…”
Walleye threw herself at Twilight, wings flared and mouth open in a cry of animalistic fury. She didn’t get far, a lavender glow enveloping her and sapping her momentum mere hooflengths from Twilight’s face.
“You have already turned me into a mass-murderer today,” Twilight stated, applying pressure to Walleye’s neck with the field. “Give me a reason I shouldn’t add another single, measly death to that count.”
“Twilight, stop,” Lyra said, cautiously holding a hoof out towards the hysterical unicorn.
“Why are you defending her?” Twilight hissed.
“Just pointing out that you might want to put her down before you get hurt…”
“Is that a threat?”
“Bloody… no,” Lyra said, rubbing her face with a hoof. “There are three ponies here, excluding you and me. Wallie here is all trussed up, and Pinkie’s unconscious, where is number three?”
Twilight reacted a split-second too late, turning her head only to see a cyan hoof as it connected with her muzzle, a solid crack echoing through the room as she was sent flying into a wall, dust and powder from the destroyed masonry flooding the room.
“ENOUGH!” Twilight screamed, swinging the still-levitating hammer around in a wide arc, slamming into the side of Rainboom’s head with enough force to propel her bodily through the outer wall of the building and clear into the air outside.
She groaned as she pulled herself clear of the wall, gingerly walking towards the jagged hole she had just created. Screams echoed up from the paths below as ponies ran from the falling stonework, guards scrambling towards the building and helping the injured away from the area, while others took the opportunity to gawk and point at her as she stood in the hole, hammer floating at her side.
A dull thundercrack in the distance pulled her attention upwards, a thin chromatic contrail trailing from the pegasus she had just violently evicted, a luminous ring of color bracketing the trail close to the earth. As she watched, it looped upwards into the sky, gaining altitude before pulling back and aiming back towards Twilight.
“Not a smart move, Rainboom,” she remarked, pulling the hammer up, a wry smirk pulling at her lips.
“Could say the same about you,” Lyra said. “For somepony who seems to abhor murder, you seem to be awfully eager to indulge yourself.”
“She made me a murderer!” Twilight shouted, pointing at Walleye. “She did this to me!”
“She must be a stealth alicorn too, then, because I’m pretty sure that hammer that’s about to smack miss supersonic rainbow missile in the face is floating.”
“Rainboom kicked me in the face.”
“Because you were choking me,” Walleye croaked, rubbing her throat.
“Because you turned me into a mass-murderer!”
“Well, I suppose it’s all good then,” Lyra sneered. “You’ve already killed so many ponies already, what’s two more deaths going to change…”
“Stop!”
“No, go ahead. I’m genuinely curious now. You bash Rainboom’s head in, snap Walleye’s neck, then what? Are you going to kill all the Guards that are coming to stop you? Because as it is, that’s what comes next.”
“STOP IT!”
“Or what? Are you going to kill me too? Great solution. Walleye might be a single-minded soldier with a superiority complex, and Rainboom is loyal to a fault, but you, little unicorn, need to step back and think for a moment. You’re a bloody Sparkle. Act like one.”
Twilight stared, speechless.
“Or you could kill us, let Pinkie die, and render Derp-face’s prejudices against Insiders perfectly justified.”
“I…” Twilight breathed, unable to articulate her tumultuous thoughts.
The door exploded, Royal Guard flooding into the room. Twilight caught the barest glimpse of a blue-maned, purple-armored unicorn guard running towards her, horn ignited, before the world went dark.
You’re a bloody Sparkle. Act like one.
I think she already is, Lyra. Have you SEEN what kind of mental breakdowns Sparkles have when under massive amounts of stress?
Perfectly justified? After all this? Twilight has actual reason to hate her straight out, Self Fulfilling prophecies are not justified in the least.
All she did was create her own sort of hatred, pick and choose what she liked and disliked, and basically let it go through.
I have always found fictional worlds in which magic exists the denial of any possibility of an afterlife particularly bemusing. When all other laws of reason are cast aside for the story, the internal intense dislike of an eternal soul refuses to be discarded.
I have often wondered, and frequently found it to be the case, if many such people are terrified of immortality.
Walleye is a psychopath, willing to murder countless innocents for revenge on one.
I shall terminate this useless being. *Walleye ceases to exist instantly* This is the efficiency and precision of a true god...
6089915 Why not, it means an awful lot of them would be going to hell, or someplace similar. I find the idea of eternal torture pretty terrifying too.
They've turned poor Twilight into everything she hates. Those bastards.
6089943 That's an interesting perspective. The eternal hell concept is one of the most peculiar. As is the soul itself. My particular religion has studied the issue deeply and come to the conclusion that the soul as described in the Christian Bible, at least, is NOT automatically immortal. From visions described in Revelations and other books, it seems that those judged 'good' are given eternal paradise, while those judged evil are completely destroyed in the lake of fire at the End Times, including the Devil himself. This is termed the 'second death' and quite clearly implies complete obliteration. But while they are dead in the 'first death', they are 'in the grave' and 'know nothing'.
Solomon wrestled with the concept of souls in Ecclesiastes, and the Apostle Paul addressed it himself in several of his letters. Solomon's conclusion was that all mortal flesh, animal and human alike, died the same way and only the Lord could raise up a man again from death. There was no implicit immortal soul, but God could grant one in a new form that was immortal. Paul gave a summary stating The flawed mortal body will be replaced by a better one capable of living forever: 1 Corinthians 15:54 "So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."
It's very strange to consider, since it means our dead consciousness would be reconstructed and stuck in a new and totally different body. Oh, and in Revelations it also seems to indicate all the memories of bad things will be erased... For many, that's simply too weird. They'd have identity issues forever and no one would want to listen to them for eternity wailing about not knowing if they were really themselves anymore.
Now, if this means the new body CAN'T die or is simply able to live forever unless the person does something crazy like jumping into a black hole, I dunno!
And then we get into what the heck are angels and what could God be composed of... it just gets crazy! So, I tend to reserve opinion and say that the potential to be immortal is certainly more promising than bleak oblivion for the entire universe, which rather renders everything in existence utterly pointless and leaving us with Solomon's declaration of such a pointless existence, which was in essence, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"
Or in the modern philosophy, screw whoever and whatever you want as often as you want because there are no rules other than physics ones, and the universe don't care if yer pounding a pony!
In any case, I'm going to send Walleye to one of the universes with eternal hell, because she's a bitch.
This story sounded quite interesting from the description. The first few chapters seemed like they were building up to quite an amusing tale. Then the story narrative went full Derpy. This story makes literally zero sense. If non-Outsiders have zero value, why not just annihilate all the Insider worlds? They clearly have extremely easy to produce and use weapons and ways to even drop entire worlds into the Void. If they do have some reason for not killing everyone what the heck are they doing?
6089847
The obvious escalation of her current line of thought would be to destroy the world so the problem no longer exists. Yeah, sounds like her alright.
she is acting like a sparkle. ablit in a massive cutie mark failure syndrome whatsits death spiral.
6089915
I'm not sure whats confusing. A setting having magic does not itself imply the existence of a soul or afterlife, nor does it imply a method to detect either. Settings with magic can relegate the soul and the afterlife to the subjects of belief systems instead of study just as well as the real world can.
And no, a lot of people who don't believe in a soul or afterlife don't do so because they detest the idea of an eternal soul, but because there is no substantiated evidence of either, and thus there is no reason to believe they exist. Personally, I'd love to be immortal, so long as I can still die to non-aging causes. I wouldn't want to find myself trapped at the bottom of the ocean, or drifting aimlessly in space, or any other horrible fates, without being able to die at all.
Another 'YAY IT'S BACK!' post.
The irrational Walleye and the cynical Lyra aren't making Twilight's stress management any easier. They're likely aware that Sparkles tend to freak out under stress, and even with their experience they're failing to be more than themselves.
As for Walleye's hatred, I think Insiders may have killed her instance of Dinky.
6089915
The existence of magic in a particular setting doesn't necessarily imply the existence of an afterlife or some sort of soul, and even if there is evidence in-setting that the soul does exist, it doesn't necessarily diminish the existential terror if there is no manner of communication or transport between the hereafter and the living world.
6090280
I'm not quite sure how to respond to this. I've never explicitly stated that Insiders have zero value to Outsiders (I have established that Walleye thinks of Insiders as fundamentally valueless, but that's one Outsider among millions), and even if they were, why would they jump immediately to the genocidal 'kill-em-all' option? It's not like western countries go out of their way to exterminate backwater stone-age tribes in Africa because they have no value to us.
6090611
They sure seemed freaked to an almost homicidal level when an Insider got to them which certainly would not be the case if some random person from 'stone-age tribes in Africa' showed up in a western town.
As for the valueless part unless it is assumed that those in charge are completely brain dead having Walleye be on a team that has regular contact with Insiders certainly points to her way of thinking being the norm.
We know that they have what amounts to thermonuclear weapons and talked about cleanly detaching worlds so clearly killing thousands, millions, or billions isn't an issue to them.
Given point one, personal from point 2, and the weapons and knowledge in point 3, committing realitycide doesn't seem out of the question at all.
6090646
They freaked out because a) they operate primarily using stealth and secrecy, and that secrecy had just been compromised, and b) something like that had never happened before, to the degree that they were reasonable sure it couldn't happen.
To continue the stone-aged tribesman example, it would be like someone crawling out of the wheel-well of an F22 after it's been on a sortie over Africa. First comes the panic because holy crap unidentified civilian on the base and holy crap how did they do that?.
Walleye's team doesn't have regular contact with Insiders. 15's main operational goals are hunting down and retrieving rogue Outsiders, reconnaissance, and SAR. In fact, very few teams have actual contact with Insiders, beyond the occasional tip-of-your-hat on the street, owing to their MO of stealth and secrecy.
Calling those in charge 'brain-dead' because Walleye spouts a bit of (essentially) racist rhetoric is a bit disingenuous. She's never before now acted on what she says, and is demonstrably capable of following orders.
I'm of the view that although life extension is something that medical science should be striving for, true immortality is not something that a mortal mind can actually cope with. Oh, for sure, for the first few hundred or thousand years it would be wonderful, but after you'd seen, heard & done everything there is to see, hear & do, all new experiences would just be old experiences, rearranged, & you'd want to move on at the very least to see if there is anything to move on to.
This then raises the thorny issue though of Death being acknowledged as something that must happen, rather than as something that just does, & at what point must an individual be allowed to choose to end their existence, as such a thing would be tantamount to suicide.
Walleye is a bitch. Gives us our Derpy back.
6090560
Actually I think there was mention of Walleye's daughter being killed by insiders a few chapters back, granted that's not a guarantee it was Dinky but it is something at least.
6090557 No no, I was taking note of the oddity of the CERTAINTY these characters have that souls cannot exist when they routinely do things that are impossible with a form of energy/power that defies logic.
They just seem chronically depressed.
6093862
Stuff like magic doesn't defy logic in the view of the characters inside stories with magic like this; magic is well known and studied, and is no more mysterious than electricity in the real world.
This is of course talking about fiction with magic systems that do not directly involve the soul, like Harry Potter, where the soul is something you can damage with magic with obvious effects.
6089915 Just because magic is part of a setting doesn't mean that it throws all rules overboard. On the contrary, a good representation of magic will not only introduce new opportunities, but also new limitations.
Just because magic is impossible in our reality does not mean it's existence in a fictional reality makes everything possible. I have seen many stories where magic is just a form of extended science with new laws and limitations to guide it.
Thus the existence of magic and the existence of an afterlife are not really connected in any meaningful way.
6094952 I think you're all missing my point, but never mind. It can be tough to look at concepts from a totally outward and 5th dimensional viewpoint when trapped in the illusion of time.
Lyra's nickname for Walleye
Aw, but I wanted to see Twilight go on a murderous rampage in a bout of madness, then come back and realize what she did, go insane, and start wandering the Multiverse.
Haha, no, fuck that shit. Adolf Derpler there just killed millions of men, women and children out of a petty grudge. She deserves to die. I mean, seriously, what the bleeding fuck?
‘Get us out of here!’
7067435
It is defined that they were basically all about as morally reprehensible as ol' Adolf himself. I mean, if somebody dropped a bomb onto a house where a bunch of SS are living, who's the bad guy in that situation? I dunno.
The bomb was overkill, though. I would've just executed that Sparkle and let the world sort itself out.
Hits me in the feels for Sparkler here… Damn.
Walleye is kinda a mass murdering psychopath.