//------------------------------//
// Listen 
// Story: Ruler of Everything 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

“Hey,” Cloudchaser said. “Do you guys ever feel like you’re being watched?”
“Not until you brought it up,” Flitter said, glancing around skittishly.
“Guys, we’re invisible ghost-things that haven’t been born yet,” Thunderlane said. “What could be watching us?”
Flitter looked over her shoulder. “Uh. Them?”
Thunderlane and Cloudchaser turned. “Flit… those are statues,” Cloudchaser said flatly. “Y’know. The things famous for being inanimate objects?”
“They’re statues I don’t remember flying past…” Thunderlane said, frowning.
“I’m pretty sure those were the statues in that hallway we passed before,” Flitter said, a note of fear in her voice.
“Don’t be dumb, statues don’t move,” Cloudchaser said, floating closer to the pair. “Like I said, there’s literally a figure of speech about how still these things are. Weird design, though. What’s with the faces? It looks like they’re wild --”
The lights flickered, and suddenly the statues were inches away from Cloudchaser’s suddenly very pale face. “-- animals.”
There was a pause. Then Flitter and Thunderlane raced down the hall. Cloudchaser, being a rather more lateral thinker, flew up through the ceiling and out on the next floor. “Follow me!” she bellowed. “You idiots! What do you have wings for if you’re not going to use them?”
She chanced a glance back, sticking her head through the floor to look around. Her sister, Thunderlane, and both statues were gone. She felt a pit form in her stomach. “Aw, man. I got a bad feeling about this,” she muttered, flying back into the corridor below and zipping off in the direction she’d last seen Flitter and Thunderlane flying. 





Apple Bloom stumbled on the stairs. Rumble caught her around the barrel and steadied her. “You alright?” he asked.
She nodded, blinking rapidly. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, Ah’m alright. Jus’ took a funny turn, is all. Felt like… Well, it felt like th’ tower shifted.”
Rumble furrowed his brow. “Dinky?” he asked.
“Well, not as extreme as all that,” Bloom said. “More like… Ah dunno, like you think there’s gonna be another step at the top of the stairs, but there ain’t nothin there.”
“You think it’s another trick?”
Apple Bloom sucked in air through her teeth. “Dunno. But we can’t stop.”
Rumble sighed. “Yeah. True. Just keep your eyes peeled, I guess.”
“Ain’t gotta tell me twice.”
They continued down the stairs, glancing around warily, until they eventually came to a landing. On that landing was a massive set of double doors. Both Apple Bloom and Rumble took a step toward it, then stopped, looking at one another.
“I’ll open it, you be ready to pull me back?” Rumble asked.
“Sounds like a plan.” Bloom stepped back and planted her hooves. “Go for it.”
Rumble bit down on one of the handles and pulled it open slowly, bracing for whatever might be on the other side. There was a long silence. “Looks like a hallway,” Bloom noted.
“...Could still be a trick,” Rumble said.
“You fly through, Ah’ll grab yer tail.”
Rumble nodded, pushing one door all the way open against a wall before taking to the air. Apple Bloom grabbed his tail in her teeth and let him fly out into the hallway beyond, holding him like a kite.
He looked around and landed on the ground. “Seems safe enough…” he muttered, stomping a few times.
Then something came around the corner. Rumble screamed. Apple Bloom screamed, voice muffled by the tail. Four other voices also screamed. There was a long silence.
“Uh… hey, Bloom?” Scootaloo asked. “What are you doing with Rumble’s tail?”
Apple Bloom quickly spit it out, wiping the hairs from her tongue. “Jus’... bein’ cautious.”
“Uh. Okay?”
Rumble nodded at Shining Armor and Trixie. “Where’d you pick them up?”
Shining relayed once more an abridged summary of their escape from the magic-draining room and how they had all arrived on this floor. The others kept a weather eye out, looking up and down the hall for dangers.
“So… you broke some kinda magic field that keeps folk from reachin’ this floor?” Bloom asked, rubbing her chin. “Must be what Ah felt comin’ down th’ stairs. Guess this is where we wanna be, then.”
“We’re where we want to be, but not with who we want to be with,” Scootaloo said.
Trixie scowled. “Hey!”
“She just means we’re two Crusaders short,” Rumble said. “We’re glad to have you on our team as well.”
“Oh.” Trixie preened slightly, her dignity restored. “Well, that’s different, Trixie supposes.”
There was a sudden clamor from downstairs and everypony froze, staring down into the dimly-lit stairwell as far as they could, before the steps curved out of sight. “Do you think that’s them?” Shining hissed.
“Maybe,” Rumble muttered. “Or maybe it’s some new horror that’s going to try and eat us all.”
Dinky tilted her head thoughtfully. “Could be both.”
They all looked down the stairs, watching and waiting intently. Finally, two figures rounded the corner, one tall, one short. When the pair saw who was waiting at the landing, they broke into smiles and into a run. Button grabbed Dinky in a tight hug, while Sweetie practically tackled Rumble to the ground, both chattering excitedly about the things they’d faced on their way up.
Trixie and Shining both grinned as the Crusaders reunited at last.





“You know,” Celestia said. “When Ditzy came to visit us this morning, I was prepared to accept that this day could go a lot of different ways.” She attempted to shake her head, crumbling a little more of the rock around her. “I will admit that this was not on the list.”
Discord opened their mouth, paused, and admitted, “Okay, I was going to say that I totally saw this coming, but honestly? No.”
“So… how do we get out of here?” Twilight asked.
All of the imprisoned immortals (and Big Mac) had awoken with their faces sticking out of the stone. The rest of their bodies, on the other hoof? Not so much.
Discord grunted. “Hold on. If I can figure out where my fingers are, I should be able to snap us out of it.”
“At least the Valeyard and the Nightmare are gone,” Sunset noted, glancing around as much as she could. “Uh. The big golden rift is new.”
There was a distant but distinct sound of snapping talons, and the entire side of the coffin slid out like a drawer, releasing the imprisoned creatures. Discord stretched. “Ahhh, much better,” they said.
“Um,” said Twilight. “You want to try this again?”
“Hm?” Discord glanced around. Mac’s head had been supplanted onto Celestia’s body. Sunset and Luna had switched faces. Cadance’s pink face was stuck on Twilight’s short body, Twilight was blushing hard enough to almost match the color of the muscular farmhorse body to which her head had become attached, and Celestia gangled over everypony else, trying to keep track of Discord’s various mismatched limbs.
Discord themself glanced down at their own pink hooves and frowned. “A-huh. Celestia, could you possibly…”
The princess looked at the draconequus’s paw, frowning. After a couple failed attempts, she finally managed to snap her fingers. In a flash, everypony’s head was back where it belonged.
“That’s a relief,” Luna grumbled. “We had forgotten how unpleasant it was to be short.”
“Excuse me?” Sunset said, scowling. “I’m a perfectly normal pony height. Just because you’ve got legs like beanpoles…”
“Ignore her,” Celestia said, shaking the pins and needles out of her hooves. “She’s developed something of a Neighpoleon complex over the years.”
Cadance looked around the room. “Well, it seems like we’re out of the frying pan,” she noted. “But how long until we’re into the fire?”
Discord grinned nastily. “Oh, Cady. Didn’t you notice? I’ve got my powers back. No more cantrips for me, thank you very much. The Nightmare won’t know what hit it.”
Mac frowned. “Uh. Reckon we’re still missin’ somepony, y’all.”
Luna tilted her head and did a quick count. “Nay, fair Mac, you are mistaken. Four alicorns, two draconocci, one earth pony.”
“But zero Time Lords,” Mac said. “Look.”
They all did. The petrified form of the Doctor lay atop the tomb, eyes shut. “Not a problem,” Discord said with a confidence they didn’t really feel. “I’ll have him out of there in a jiffy.”
They snapped their fingers. Nothing happened. They tried again and again, clicking fingers on paw and talon alike, but the Doctor remained immobile. At last, the chaos god threw their hands in the air. “Alright, fine, be that way,” they grumbled. “At least you’re less likely to get into trouble in there.”
Celestia’s mouth was a grim line. “I saw them in there. We all did, didn’t we? Before we escaped?”
Several subdued head nods were the sole response. Celestia shut her eyes and chuckled bitterly. “For a moment -- just a moment -- I thought that the Doctor had come to our rescue once again. What was I thinking? They can’t even let themself be saved.”
Luna reached out a hoof but hesitated at the last moment. Celestia shook her head. “What was I thinking?” she murmured.
After a long pause, her eyes snapped open. “Right. Battle stations, everypony, let’s move.”
She started herding the others around the room. Quietly, Luna wondered whether the Doctor had taught Celestia more than they had ever intended to…





None of them knew how long they had been walking. Time lacked meaning here. It was reflected back and forth across realities into infinity. All of them were starting to blur together now, enough to start distorting even Applejack’s sense of reality. Once or twice they had stumbled on a mirror that looked perfect -- up until Pinkie grinned at herself and they saw her reflection’s many sharp teeth.
Applejack chose to take the fact that the mirrors were getting closer to the truth as a good sign -- surely that meant they were approaching the truth. But at the same time, it was all making her head start to spin. She wasn’t sure that she could discern such fine differences. And then the other Applejacks started disappearing. It wasn’t an occasional thing. For five, ten, fifteen mirrors in a row, she simply wasn’t there.
“The other Applejacks,” she murmured. “Th’ ones that Nightmare killed getting to me…”
Spike put a claw on her shoulder. “You gonna be okay?”
Applejack pursed her lips. “Eventually, yep. Right now, though… let’s just keep goin’. We’re gettin’ close. Ah can tell.”
There were ever more branching paths. Applejack didn’t even stop to think about them. She just walked, Pinkie and Spike trailing behind her, nervously watching until she found it. The center of the maze. It was a fairly large intersection with paths that branched off from it every which way. Most of the mirrors didn’t face directly in on the area, merely lining the many angled paths that led to the theoretical infinity of possible reflections that comprised this place. Only three faced the center. Two were in constant flux, shifting through different images. The third was stable, a perfect reflection. 
Applejack pointed at the mirror that depicted a shifting array of orange fillies. “Past.”
She pointed at the other fluctuating mirror, which was also shifting into a variety of more worn and wrinkled Applejacks. “Future.”
With a big grin, she pointed at the final reflection. “Present. Let’s go, y’all.”
Spike studied the future mirror. “Huh,” he said. “I sure get big.”
Pinkie bounced over to join him. “Hee! Look at how crazy my mane gets!” she said happily. Then she paused. “Huh. Where’d Applejack go?”
“Hm?” Applejack glanced back. Sure enough, she wasn’t in the mirror. “Huh. Well, Ah s’pose Ah can’t exactly expect to be around as long as ol’ Spike, can Ah?”
Pinkie nibbled her lower lip. “Well… no… but… I’m still there.”
“Oh. Well, congrats, Ah guess, on yer longevity?”
“... You’ve been gone for awhile, Jackie.”
Applejack frowned. “... Seems yer tryin’ to tell me somethin’, Pinkie.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Spike said hastily. “Maybe Pinkie turns into a chaos goddess or something and gets to live forever.”
Applejack could taste the lie in the air. Frowning, she trotted over to sit in front of the future mirror. Her image flickered like a ghost as the timeline bounced back and forth. She was hardly there compared to the other two. The oldest version she could see of herself seemed barely more than a decade older than she was now.
“Oh,” said Applejack quietly. “Ah see.”
Beside her in the mirror, she could see Pinkie’s lined face twist as the mare cringed. “Maybe… maybe it’s wrong?” she asked tentatively.
Applejack shook her head. “It ain’t. It’s tellin’ th’ truth.”
“...I’m sorry,” Spike said.
Applejack nodded. “Well. Ah got plenty of time left, yet. Who knows? Maybe th’ future can change. Maybe it ain’t set in stone. Tartarus! If it can’t be changed, ‘least it says we all make it through this one alive, don’t it?”
“Y- yeah,” Pinkie said slowly. “That’s true…”
Applejack scowled and turned from the mirror. “Can’t put too much stock in that kinda thing,” she said firmly, walking away. “Th’ future ain’t certain. Th’ past ain’t clear. Only thing you can ever know fer sure…”
She turned back toward the others, facing away from the third mirror. “... is th’ here an’ now.”
She reeled back and bucked for all she was worth. The world vibrated like a gong, sending all three staggering as the hall of mirrors shattered around them





The Doctor awoke slowly. Fitz had stopped playing guitar at some point and was now resting against a tree, eyes shut. He wasn’t asleep -- the Doctor could tell that just by the speed of his breathing. But he seemed to be at peace. The Doctor rose and stretched. He felt… he felt pretty good, actually. Or, no. He felt the absence of the terrible, bone-crushing dread that had been weighing on him for centuries. And really, it wasn’t even that so much as it was the pressure relieving slightly.
But for a starving man, a slice of bread is a feast. The Doctor rolled over and rose to his hooves. Fitz cracked open an eye. “Morning,” he said.
“Possibly,” the Doctor said.
Fitz made the face he always did when the Doctor had jumped several sentences ahead in the conversation, or possibly jumped the rails entirely. “Come again?”
“Possibly it’s morning. Could be afternoon, evening, midnight.”
Fitz glanced around. The world was bright and colorful. “Nice weather for midnight.”
“Not really. I find they’re better by moonlight. Of course, there’s not much chance of that in here. Nor sunlight for that matter.”
Fitz struggled to arrange his face into a convincing facsimile of intelligent comprehension. He failed miserably.
The Doctor gestured up at the sky. “Do you notice something missing, Fitz?”
Fitz glanced up. “Um. It’s blue. Got clouds. Looks pretty… sky-like. No birds, I s’pose.”
“The sun, Fitz. There’s no sun.”
“Hm?” Fitz glanced around. “Oh. You meant the obvious answer. Well, yeah, no sun, lots of light, only one conclusion really.”
“Mmm,” the Doctor agreed. “Yeah.”
Fitz waited expectantly. The Doctor merely studied the clouds a moment longer. “Right then. We’d best be off.”
“Oh,” said Fitz. “Off where?”
The Doctor looked at him, surprised. “To the edges of the simulation, of course.”
“Simulation,” Fitz repeated.
The Doctor tilted his head. “Are you feeling alright, Fitz? You seemed fine with the concept a moment ago.”
“Oh yeah. Yeah. Simulation. That’s er, that’s what they call a virtual reality?”
The Doctor nodded.
Fitz chewed this over. “Am… I a part of the simulation?”
“Welllll…” the Doctor said. “Yeah, basically. Only trouble is, we have to work out which level of the simulation you’re on.”
“Eh?”
The Doctor sat down and started to count off. “The Dark Tower and the Death Zone was definitely a simulation. The ruins of Gallifrey were a simulation inside that, and this might be a third level down or possibly a reset of the ruins simulation. So you’re either a second- or third- layer simulation, probably, unless you exist independently of the rest of this particular realm, in which case you’re either a first- or fourth-layer.”
Fitz considered this. “God, my head hurts.” He fished around in his jacket and pulled out a cigarette and lighter. He clicked it a couple times before successfully lighting up. “‘M not even going to ask how I did that with hooves,” he said. “What you’re saying is… this is like that thing the Faction did? With the clones? And every copy got a little less like me, right, until Father Kreiner came out the other side.”
The Doctor smiled. “Well done, Fitz.”
“I was right?”
“No. You were wrong in practically every particular.”
“Oh.”
“But you didn’t try to kill me as soon as I said you were a simulation, so I think we can assume that you’re probably not here as an agent, witting or otherwise, of the Nightmare.”
“Oh.” Fitz considered this. “Good. Should we carry on with business as usual, then?”
“How do you mean?”
Fitz shrugged. “We start wandering around waiting for some great horrible thing to try and eat us.”
The Doctor grinned. “Why mess with a winning formula? Allons-y!”





Cloudchaser floated down the hallway, consumed by nerves. If those statues could see them in their timeless forms, what else could they do? Those teeth they’d had were needle-sharp, and from the looks on their faces, the pegasus statues had been eager to use them. “Flitter?” she called, trying to keep the fear from her voice and failing miserably. “Thunderlane?”
No response. Cloudchaser glanced around the hall. No doubt the statues could hear her, too. Oh, Celestia -- what if her sister and Thunderlane were dead? Could they die? Could a statue kill? She didn’t doubt for a moment that the answer to the second question was a resounding ‘yes’, but the first was still very much up in the air. It was the only thing giving her any shred of hope about the situation, too -- if those two idiots were anything less than immortal, they were dead, no question. Survival instincts of a toothpick, the pair of them.
Her irritation couldn’t fully mask her mounting dread. It wasn’t just that her friends -- her family -- might already be dead. It wasn’t just that that would mean that she would be alone in this terrible, timeless state, locked away from everypony else by time itself. It was that her memories were fading. Without them there to remind her, how long would it be before she forgot Thunderlane? How long would it be before she forgot her own twin sister? How long would it be before she couldn’t remember who she herself was?
This was enough to make her throw caution to the winds. “FLITTER!” she screamed. “THUNDERLANE! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?”
There was a long and terrible silence. Then, out of the darkness, a faint voice called.
“Cloudchaser?”
Cloudchaser’s heart no longer beat in any meaningful way, but it stopped nonetheless. Then she zipped forward. “Flitter! Oh, thank Celestia you’re alright!”
“Cloudchaser? Where are you?”
“I’m coming, Flit! I’m coming!”
Out of the darkness, a smudge of lilac, a hint of mint, and a big magenta bow. Cloudchaser spread her hooves wide to tackle her sister in midair.
She went right through her and out the other side, zooming down the corridor for several more seconds before realizing that something was wrong.
“Cloudchaser?” Flitter glanced around, her eyes skimming right over her sister. “Where are you?”
Cloudchaser blinked several times. Flitter had aged -- become physically solid once more. Had the statues done that somehow?
Flitter’s shoulders slumped. “Must’ve been my imagination,” she said sadly.
Cloudchaser took a moment to regain her cool before floating over to her sister. It wouldn’t do to come back weeping and frantic. She had an image to maintain. Once she had calmed down enough, she moved through Flitter. “‘Sup,” she said.
Flitter jumped what must have been six feet in the air. “Cloudchaser?” she asked as soon as she’d gotten her breath back.
“You were expecting maybe Shirley MacMane?”
“... You know, you’re not half as funny as you think you are.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“...You do?”
“Sure. I’m twice as funny.”
Flitter rolled her eyes. “And eight times as humble. Alright. Let’s get back to the others.”
“...Others? As in, more than Thunderlane?”
“Wait and see.”
Cloudchaser could get no more out of her sister as they flew through the corridors. Eventually, they came upon three figures sitting on the floor, one in the center with the other two draped on his sides, weeping. Thunderlane, for it was he who was in the middle, was himself struggling to keep from breaking down in tears.
“Jeez,” said Cloudchaser, zipping over to talk in Thunderlane’s head. “What happened?”
“I’m a sympathetic crier,” he muttered back.
“Yeah, no shit. But like -- I don’t even know where to start. How are you alive again? Where did the statues go? Why are Fluttershy and Ditzy crying?”
“Well --” Thunderlane began.
“Snf. Cloudchaser? Is that you?” Ditzy whispered, her voice hoarse.
Cloudchaser glanced around. Her body was intersecting with all three of the pegasi in the pile. She hadn’t really noticed. “Uh… yeah.”
“Well. It’s like this. We got turned into horrible monsters that fed on potential futures, killing creatures by sending them back in time to let them live out their lives.”
“Okay.”
“When we touched Thunderlane and Flitter, as they hadn’t actually been born yet and theoretically, never would be, we managed to cancel one another out.”
“Cool.”
“And we’re crying because --” Ditzy stopped, choked up. “We -- we --”
“We would have killed the-e-e-em!” Fluttershy bawled. “I was, I was so hungry, and they were so young, they would have lasted so long…”
“They met Dinky and Scootaloo,” Thunderlane said quietly.
Cloudchaser’s heart stopped. “But… they’re alright?”
“No thanks to us,” Ditzy said miserably, tucking her wings around herself in a tight hug. “I -- I knew she was my daughter, but I didn’t care. I was empty. I was so, so empty…” She trailed off, her eyes hollow and dark.
“So, um,” Cloudchaser said. She was really not cut out for this kind of situation. “I… look, not to seem insensitive or anything, but the longer I stay like this the more of my memories I lose, so is there another way I can get back to reality or whatever this place is?”
There was a long pause. “Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy said with finality. “She’s still trapped. We’ll lead you to her, and then…” she trailed off.
“And then we’re going to tear the Nightmare apart, gear by gear,” Ditzy said. Her voice was soft, but the rage behind it was as cold and bleak as the outer reaches of space. She pushed herself up and made her way down the hall, not looking to see if the others would follow.





The return of Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Spike had been an unexpected event, but certainly not an unwelcome one. Big Macintosh and Twilight galloped to embrace their lost siblings, and all of them were embraced in turn by Pinkie Pie.
Celestia stamped the floor to attract everypony’s attention. “Applejack. Pinkie Pie. Spike,” she said shortly. “Welcome back. May I suggest that you start running? Macintosh, that goes for you as well, I fear.”
Applejack frowned. “Er, come again?”
Twilight looked at her. “We’re going to fight the Nightmare,” she said simply. “You don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”
“Uh,” Spike said. “Hey. Huge magic-breathing dragon, here? I can --”
“Spike,” Cadance said. “You’re hard to kill, but not that hard to kill. If you try to fight at our side, I can almost guarantee that you’ll die. I can’t -- I won’t have that on my conscience.”
“Keep the others safe,” Sunset said, her face stoic.
“Excuse me?” Applejack said frowning. A quick glare from Twilight made her zip her lip.
Spike took a step back and rubbed his forehead. “...Alright,” he said quietly. He looked down at Twilight. “If you die, I’ll never speak to you again,” he said firmly.
She gave a weak chuckle. “Understood.”
Spike glanced around the room. “That goes for all of you,” he said warningly, wagging a finger at all of them. “Stay safe. Please.”
“Dying, dear Spike, is the very last thing we shall do,” Luna said wryly.
Spike threw up his claws. “Don’t say shit like that! Now it’s gonna happen! Forget it, I’m stay--”
Discord snapped their talons. Spike and all three earth ponies vanished in puffs of smoke that smelled like spaghetti sauce. Discord stared sadly at the empty spaces where they had stood before lowering their hand. “Right. Let’s get set up,” they muttered, turning away quickly.
After a pause, the others set to work in silence, preparing their ambush.




“I’m telling you, there are more important matters than finding the Doctor’s whelp,” the Valeyard grumbled.
“She is the key to everything,” the Nightmare said in response, walking at his side. “She holds the last piece of the power. Without it, I am incomplete -- worse, I am unstable. The power of a dying star lies within me, but if I use it overmuch it will rip through me and destroy only the merest fraction of what I aim to.”
The Valeyard thought something quite rude about the Nightmare’s stability at even the best of times. “Yes, but we have her, at least in a sense. We may not be able to drain the power out of her, but she’s in our world, and there’s no escape, not for her.”
The Nightmare mulled this over. “There may be something in what you say,” it admitted begrudgingly.
“Of course there is. Now, will you let me depart to take what is mine? Once I supplant the Doctor in reality, I can destroy the resistance in Ponyville, tear down the barriers that constrain our great vision of the cosmos, eating them alive from the inside out.”
The Interface had no tongue to speak of. Nevertheless, the Valeyard could swear that the machine licked its lips at his words. Time to go for the kill. “Perhaps,” he said, “the opportunity might even arrive for me to drain the girl of her power on the other side of the divide -- she is asleep, defenseless. It would take but a few moments, and then the power you seek would be obliged to return to its home.”
“...Very well,” the Nightmare said. “I doubt I would need your help here any further. You would be of little use in apprehending the escaped prisoners, and everything else has fallen under my control.” It opened the door to the tomb and barely blocked a scorching ray of arcane might. Face darkened with ash, it looked in astonishment as the six gods glared at their former jailors.
The Valeyard glowered. “You know, you really set yourself up for this.”
Then, all fell to sound and fury.