Ponystuck

by confoundtheseponies

Epilogue

A/N: Well, that seems to be that. Which is all very well and good, except it seems that, one way or another; I've been caught short with no narrators to explain what's happening. I myself am up to my neck in paperwork. It seems that quite a number of rather powerful investors have an interest in the Infinite Hotel, and they're not exactly thrilled that I'm mostly responsible for destroying a rather large portion of it. But, I said to them, the Infinite Hotel is, well, infinite, and any finite amount of damage caused to it is ultimately rather meaningless. That's all fine and dandy, they said, but apparently those rampaging ponies actually managed to cause an infinite amount of damage. Well, I said, that's clearly not true because doing an infinite amount of anything is patently impossible. They said they didn't really care if it was possible or impossible; what they were cross about was the fact that it had been done. I am currently in the middle of forming my defence with my loyal circle of mathemagicians, but it does mean I'm rather pressed for time as far as story telling is concerned. Not one to leave an undertaking unfinished, however, I have made some time now, at the end of our tale, just to wrap things up a bit, while my mathemagicians finalise my case.

Now, where were we...?

Oh, that's right, the end.

The infinite, endless light of Skaia drew closer as the Disco Ball of Destiny neared its destination, supported by Silver Heart as she awaited her rapidly approaching death. Well, not quite. Death wasn't the right word for it. The Scratch wouldn't kill her, just... reset her progress, she guessed. She sighed.

"It was fun," she mused. "I wonder if... no, I'm sure it will all work out OK." She had to believe it would. Otherwise this was all for nothing. "I'm sure... I'm sure that everything will be fine, in the end."

"Talking to yourself is a sign of madness, you know," Discord said, as he gently landed on the DBoD and sat down beside a startled Silver. "And I should know." He smiled thinly.

"Golden? What are you doing here!?" Silver cried, her eyes wide. This wasn't right, Golden couldn't be here. If he stayed here he would get reset along with the whole universe. "Don't you... uh, don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Not anymore," Discord said, shrugging. "It's all over, now, so I came to find you. It didn't feel right to just leave you here by yourself." Silver's expression became a mixture of happiness and confusion. Discord sighed. "It's all because of Twilight. Her ultimate technique..." Memories of his final battle played through Discord's mind. He supposed, really, he'd never stood a chance against that kind of attack. "Long story short, I can't do anything anymore. No offensive magic, no Rage powers. No murdering ponies, either. It's all just... disabled, I guess." More accurately, it was expressly forbidden under the terms of a very, very long peace treaty, under pain of eviction from paradox space. He also thought that some kind of weasel had been involved, but it was hard to remember exactly. That wouldn't even have made sense.

"I... I see." Silver thought about this for a while. "Does that mean you're back to normal?"

"No," Discord said. "But... I don't know. I really don't know what I'm good for, any more." He laughed. "I just... I wanted to see you again, before it was too late."

"... Thanks," Silver said, smiling happily. "You should get going, though. There's not long left before the universe is reset." Discord looked up at Skaia, thinking deeply to himself. "... Golden?"

"Reset, you say?" Discord sighed. "... That doesn't sound too bad." He raised a claw to interrupt Silver as she tried to protest. "Don't bother. What else is there? All my plans have failed, I can't do anything about it... and either way I'll never see you again." He lay down on the glistening surface of the DBoD. "At least let me stay with you until the end."

"... OK." Silver Heart nodded, sitting down next to Golden Shine as the two of them talked, and laughed, and waited for the end to come. And that was enough for them.

There was nothing left.

A barren crater, flames slowly dying as the rubble burned away into nothing. An empty crater in a vast, devastated landscape.

A few hours ago, this had been a mountain range at the heart of civilisation. Now, it was nothing. Nothing, except for two ponies. With unknowable grief and helplessness, Celestia collapsed at the side of the crater as she stared into the empty gap where Canterlot had once stood. Luna took a few steps back in surprise.

"Celestia?" She paused. No, that wasn't right. "... Sis?" Her voice trembling, Luna walked over to Celestia.

"It's..." Celestia said quietly, as she struggled to remain calm. It’s all gone. They're... they're all-" Luna threw her hooves around her sister, as Celestia burst into tears. A few moments later, Luna did the same. The previous centuries rushed through her mind in seconds. The years they had lived, in their thousands. The ponies they had met, too numerous to count. The tragedies they had seen, utterly meaningless compared to this. This was the end. It was all over now. "If..." Celestia began whimpering, without breaking away from Luna, "... if I had been stronger..."

"Shut up," Luna snapped quickly. "Don't say that. I... I can't blame you for this. This is just... too much." She closed her eyes to the desolation, her mind running over the eons of tradition and culture that had been lost in the blink of an eye.

"Star Swirl? Luna? Hello? Can you hear me?" Princess Celestia called as she briskly trotted through the halls of the palace as quickly as she could without appearing as undignified as she felt. Honestly, whenever she really needed either of them, they both seemed to disappear in an instant. It was almost enough to make her want to banish them to the moon. Celestia halted with a confused expression, wondering exactly where that oddly specific and worryingly severe punishment had come from. Dismissing it as unimportant, she resumed her hunt, a little more anxiously than before.

Meanwhile, in what would one day become a rather infamous wing of the Canterlot library, Princess Luna was eagerly watching a certain unicorn performing the new spell he'd been working on. A certain unicorn that some ponies would, at the risk of incurring Luna's wrath, hazard that she was rather fond of. Perhaps an adventure in another universe had helped Luna to clear her mind, but in the years that had followed their arrival in Equestria she had taken less and less effort to make it seem like she really didn't want to spend any time with him. And perhaps, by some miracle, he was starting to get that impression himself.

"And so, rewriting the transformation vector and feeding it back into the function as a... um..." Star Swirl the Unshaven faltered a little as he realised Luna really didn't understand him at all. He sighed. "... anyway, this is what happens when you shoot something with it." Without another word, Star Swirl fired a light blue beam of magic at the unsuspecting mouse he had placed on a stool in the centre of the room. Light exploded outwards and filled the room, temporarily blinding Luna. When eventually her sight returned, the mouse had disappeared. In its place was a rather startled and precariously balanced sheep.

"... Did you just turn that mouse into a sheep?" Luna asked Star Swirl, who nodded enthusiastically. "Swirly, I don't mean to be rude, but... isn't there already magic for that?"

"Yes. Well, sort of." Star Swirl walked over to the sheep and helped it off of the stool. "We have transfiguration magic already, but it has very limited applications for living things. We've long been able to turn someone's body into that of a sheep. But this is actually a sheep, rather than a rat with the body of a sheep." Slowly, he levitated the sheep and gently eased it through the window of the library and down to the grounds below. "And of course we already had illusion magic and that sort of thing." He looked back at Luna proudly. "I know you're probably rather unimpressed, but this is a significant step forwards in Alteration magic as a whole." Star Swirl made the face he always made when he felt that Luna wasn't taking him seriously. Luna sighed dramatically, before throwing her hooves around him.

"Swirly. Stop being adorable."

"... I'm not being adorable."

Thunder echoed across the sky as the rain threw itself desperately against the walls of the castle, in a vain attempt to interrupt the events inside. Inside, however, it was almost unnaturally quiet, as a certain unicorn said goodbye.

"Remember when I made that first polymorph spell?" Star Swirl the Bearded asked wearily, his tired face smiling faintly at Luna. "Heh... how long ago was that? I barely had a beard back then, I remember..." Luna smiled weakly, her eyes full of grief. "... Luna, dear, please... please don't cry." She softly punched his shoulder.

"Shut up..." Luna whispered, as she struggled to remain calm. "... shut up, you idiot." The first few tears were finally beginning to roll down her face. "... it's... it's not fair..." Star Swirl smiled at her. "Don't smile like that... like... you've already accepted it..."

"Luna." Star Swirl said, surprisingly firmly, as he took Luna's hoof in his. "I've had centuries to accept that this would happen eventually. Sburb's kept me alive for a long time, but we both knew it wasn't going to last forever." He sighed weakly. "Funny, I had so many opportunities to die in that game... all the way through I thought I was going to die in battle, doing something stupid to save you..." He laughed quietly. "It's selfish of me, but I prefer this ending." He closed his eyes contentedly. "I'm sorry, Luna. But I can't keep on any more."

"Don't apologise, idiot," Luna said sharply, tears now flowing freely down her face. "... just... wait for me, OK? I'll find you, one day." Star Swirl smiled.

"That's a nice thought," he muttered slowly. "Then... until next time... Luna..."

And with that, Star Swirl the Bearded moved on, the storm continued to rage outside, and Luna cried long into the night. And, in many ways, this was the end of an age.

It was in the summer that followed the events of that day, when Celestia sat alone in her throne room, when the doors of the castle were thrown open, and a much unexpected pony strode forwards into the throne room.

"You- you're... you're alive!?" Celestia gasped in surprise, her usually refined manner slipping for a few moments at the sight before her. Comet grinned widely.

"Now, what kind of a greeting is that?" Comet asked, his red cape billowing behind him. "Of course I'm alive. I'm very good at staying alive longer than is probably fair, you know." Behind him, more familiar faces were emerging. Destiny, and Summer, and Ember, and Celestia could only assume the others were also nearby. "We're all alive, and present. Well. All of our session, that is." Celestia's face fell a little.

"So, you don't know where Twilight is?"

"Nope," Comet sighed. "She'll turn up. You and Luna and Star Swirl entered this universe first, anyway. I think it's pretty clear there's a significant difference between the passage of time in this universe and the passage of time outside it." He thought for a moment. "Considering there isn't any time to speak of outside this universe that's not surprising." He shrugged. "Hey, anyway, where's Luna keeping herself these days?" Celestia hesitated.

"She, uh... Luna isn't here right now." Celestia looked away from Comet's quizzical expression. "But, you know, it's good to see you all again. You're free to stay anywhere in the castle, if you wish."

"I should think so, too," Summer said. "After all, we're all Gods, right? Except Star Swirl, that is." Celestia winced a little.

"True. Oh, that reminds me, where is he? I was wanting to ask-" Comet began, cutting off as he was flung into the air, and then knocked back onto the floor by Celestia's Spacey thing. The others immediately drew their weapons, while the few guards scattered around the throne room looked at each other with terrified expressions.

"You're all welcome here," Celestia said, returning her staff to her sylladex. "But please, don't mention Star Swirl again if you can help it." Comet got to his feet slowly.

"Why? What happened?" Comet asked, a little upset that he was the only one who had been attacked.

"... he died," Celestia said quietly. "Old age. There wasn't anything we could do about it."

"And Luna?" Destiny asked. Celestia sighed.

"She's... on the moon." Ember blinked.

"Wait, you mean that actually happened? You banishing Luna to the moon?" Ember asked. Comet kicked him.

"Emmy, don't be an idiot. That was what the Princess Celestia did in our and Twilight's universe, remember? I mean, history has largely forgotten her reasons, but that's no reason to think that Celestia would do that. Right, Celestia?" Comet said hopefully, as Celestia just shook her head and looked away. "... Celestia?"

"It all happened so fast," Celestia said helplessly. "Star Swirl died, and then... and then Luna just started talking to me less and less. And before I realised what was happening, she just..."

"Never mind, I get the picture," Comet said, wishing he hadn't asked. "... well, this is quite the merry situation for us all to barge in on, eh?" No one else seemed to agree. Comet sighed. "I guess all we can do now is wait for Twilight and the others. Maybe they'll be able to sort Luna out?"

And so they waited for Twilight to arrive. The ponies grew settled, and complacent, and in time their distress at the death of Star Swirl and Luna's banishment waned. It was still kind of a big deal, but no longer worth flipping out over. And so things continued.

"Still no Twilight," Diamond mused, as Celestia and Luna returned from their trip to Ponyville. "Except that now we have sweet, innocent, clueless Twilight and friends who seem to have been legitimately raised in this universe rather than imported from the dead husk of the previous one. What do?" She glanced at Summer.

"There are a few explanations," Summer said. "The most obvious one is that this isn't a new universe. This is the universe our session, and Twilight's session, originated from. So Luna's banishment isn't a creepy parallel. It's the same historical event. That means... those girls are going to grow up to play Sburb and save the universe and all that."

"Well. That's a little reassuring, at least," Luna said, still understandably rather shaken by recent events. "Does that mean you guys are also going to appear later on?"

"That's a point," Comet said. "It's a good thing we haven't been making a fuss. The last thing we need is to become worshipped as gods when we haven't even been born yet."

"It also means there's going to be a lot of meteors to come," Destiny pointed out. "Like, an awful lot of them."

"That's fine," Celestia said confidently. "No matter what may come, we'll be ready."

And, as they had guessed, Twilight's group had played the game and moved on, and in the process Ponyville had been destroyed. And so they rebuilt it and named it New Ponyville, and in due time a certain grey earth pony moved to live there. Years passed, and then Comet and his friends also began to play the game, and they too moved on, resulting in much of Canterlot and New Ponyville being destroyed. Cloudsdale was almost entirely torn to shreds, but by and large the population had survived.

But of course, this had only been the beginning.

"Damn it," Comet swore, freezing a meteor in the path of a second, but failing to notice a third meteor that crashed behind him and demolished the town hall. As this continued, Fillydelphia was quickly looking less and less like an actual place where ponies lived. "I distinctly remember we said we were going to be ready. This is not being ready." Freezing another meteor in place just in time, Comet sent it a million years back in time. Hopefully, this area was unpopulated that long ago. If not, then at least no one would complain to him about it. This exercise took rather more out of him than he had anticipated, and he almost collapsed to the ground.

"Are you hurt?" Summer asked, firing her rifle into another meteor and smashing it into tiny pieces.

"You know me," Comet replied. "Just a bit too old for this. I'm out of practice."

"Well, which is it?" Summer asked, destroying yet another meteor. Shaking his head, Comet got to his feet and rushed to Summer's side.

A sudden flash of white light, and then everything went black.

All around the world, the gods of Equestria fought their battles, desperately trying to hold off the meteors. But eventually, as the dust settled, the outcome was clear.

There was nothing left. Opening her eyes, Luna slowly got to her feet. After all this, it would be wrong to just give in to it all. She had to keep moving forwards. But... but now, there was nowhere to go.

"Hey, sis," Celestia sobbed, getting Luna's attention. "We never did find out whether Discord was Golden, or just a native of this universe." It was true, Discord had appeared in the past, but either he had never met them before or he simply had lost his memories. Certainly he was no Heir of Rage any more, although that could have been due to Twilight's attack. Regardless, they had not been able to bring themselves to deal with him more permanently, choosing to keep his statue out of respect as much as anything else.

"I don't know what to think," Luna said quietly. "I don't know what I want to be true, either. It hardly matters now, does it?" Celestia shrugged.

"I guess not." Silence fell. "Hey, Luna, is that-" Before she could finish, she was on her feet and sprinting into the distance. Looking ahead to where she was running, Luna peered into the distance across the endless ocean of sand. The faintest outline of a pony (or a small rock) could barely be seen. She already knew it wasn't a pony. It was impossible for it to be a pony after that devastation. Or, if it was a pony, it was Comet or one of the others. There was no way anyone else could be there. So she found it quite odd that she too was sprinting after her sister towards the distant figure. When she eventually caught up, she couldn't believe it.

"Hey, Celestia, Luna," said the Mage of Time, as she and the rest of her friends stepped out into the remnants of Equestria. "Sorry we took so long, we-" Twilight was cut off, as Celestia and Luna leapt at her, knocking her to the ground and almost crushing her. "Ack! Get off!" They did so, rather begrudgingly, before inflicting similar greetings on the others. "Honestly..." Twilight froze, as she saw Comet and the others approaching from the distance. "Oh. Great."

"Hey now, Sparkles, what's with that reaction?" Comet asked, grinning widely. "You had us worried, you know. Over a thousand years we've been waiting for you lot to show up."

"Then why didn't you just time travel forwards to meet us?" Twilight asked. Comet blinked.

"... damn it." He shook his head. "That's not the point, anyway." He looked down. "It's a shame you only just arrived. We've really let the place go..." Summer kicked him. "... maybe once we could have saved everyone, you know. When we were young and our powers were still just as fresh and powerful as they ever were." He looked over at Celestia and Luna. "Frankly, you two, I'm impressed you have any power left in you after this long."

"It's not like it matters now, is it?" Luna said bitterly. "Don't get me wrong, it's great that we're all together again. But, there's... there's nothing left now." Twilight blinked. She and Fluttershy exchanged glances.

"... but... what about that city behind the ridge?" Fluttershy asked, pointing behind her. Celestia blinked, before leaping into the air, teleporting herself several miles upwards with Luna close behind. She almost dropped back out of the sky when she saw it. Rows of houses, large round roofs, grass - grass, for crying out loud - reaching for a small distance in a little bubble next to a small lake, in the middle of the expanse of sand and dust.

"It's..." Luna began, cutting off as Celestia teleported herself down to the city. Almost collapsing with joy as she realised that it was, in fact, real, she began running along the streets almost at random, desperately searching for any sign of life. As the others caught up to her, she paused for breath. No sign of anyone. Maybe no one lived here after all?

And then, behind her, a small door creaked open, and an old earth pony cautiously stepped out of his home. It was all Celestia could do to stop herself from charging towards him. He took several steps to the dazed group of winged and horned earth ponies, before smiling kindly at Celestia.

"Ah, my, Princess Celestia's come to visit us? I never thought I'd see the day..." he drifted off, as if he was trying to remember something. "You're most welcome to our little town, Princess." He attempted a bow, but decided his back wasn't going to stand for that sort of thing. Turning and hobbling back into his home, Celestia looked around her as other houses began to come to life. She collapsed onto the ground.

"It's... it's OK," she said happily, as the others began exploring the town. "There's... there's still something here, after all that. She looked at Luna, who smiled back at her. "Things will be OK now, won't they?" Luna looked up, at a large statue which seemed to her to be in the centre of this town, which had been untouched by the meteors, and almost fell over in surprise. Discord's statue stood proudly in the centre of the town, but his face seemed different somehow. It was no longer one of shock and fear, but a kind, warm smile. Luna smiled back at her sister.

"Yes, Cel. I think everything's going to be OK now."

A/N: And there you have it. The end. And now, my dear friends, I must leave you. I have a court case to attend. I will leave you to exit the study at your own leisure, but please do make sure that you leave the room as you found it - it is the only room I have not managed to utterly destroy over the course of this tale.

And that was the story of a filly, and her friends, and a game they played together.

"Eurgh..." Blearily, Mild Darkness wiped the sleep from his eyes as he slowly stood up and surveyed his surroundings. He appeared to be in the front room of some kind of shop, judging by the counter and the bell on the door. This wasn't where he remembered falling asleep. He punched himself. Yeah, he was awake. Then... did that mean he had been dreaming? Had it really all been just one huge horrible nightmare? The light music club, the singing, the concerts, the hordes of fans - actually he had quite enjoyed that last part, as his mind powers had seemed to have no effect in that parallel universe - had it all been a dream? Maybe now he was back in Sburb, and about to proceed with the plan. Yes, that must be it. He definitely wasn't dreaming now, that was for sure.

And so he had decided this, when someone cleared their throat behind him. Unease swept through his body, and he slowly turned on the spot, finding himself staring at a young girl with long black hair and bright blue eyes. She was smiling far too innocently for Mild to feel at ease.

"Hello!" She said enthusiastically enough to make Mild wince in pain. "Would you like to buy some mochi?" Mochi? Mild blinked. He couldn't be - no, surely not. Dread filled his heart, as he slowly turned his head to the side. Next to him, standing on one of the chairs which were lined against the wall, stood an incredibly plump white bird with bright pink cheeks and pink feathers at the ends of his wings.

"Oh no," Mild said quietly as the room around him utterly failed to stop existing. "Oh fuck no."