The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Forty-Three: How Pink Was My Valley

The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Forty-Three – How Pink Was My Valley

Special thanks to Vimbert, theworstwriter, and Warden for editing

Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art

“I think maybe we're going about it all the wrong way!” Pinkie chirped as she strolled across the kitchen of the Pie Family residence. She opened a roasting oven, clamped her teeth over a mouth-guard, and safely pulled a hot tray of blueberry muffins out from the humming appliance. She placed the metal sheet onto a nearby counter, spat the mouth-guard out, and grinned at the pegasus standing across from her. “Instead of trying to chase down the Royal Grand Biv, we should figure out a way to make her come to us!”

“Lemme guess...” Harmony raised an unenthused eyebrow from where she was leaning against a dimly-lit doorframe. A thin forest of lit candles danced between the time traveler and her bubbly anchor. “You'd suggest we lure the Biv with muffins?”

“Well, she sure isn't a biscuit-eater! I'll bet you my front left knee!” She frowned briefly. “All that limb's good for is scaring me when it gets pinchy. Say, ya think I could get some swell wheels like Haymane if I donated my knee to the elderly?”

“It's probably the only part of your body you can donate without tossing in a lifetime subscription of insulin.”

“Huh?”

Harmony sighed and leaned forward. “Let's face it, Miss Pie. The Mayor is right; the Royal Grand Biv has been doing nothing but baiting us.” She heard a rustling of paper sheets from beyond the kitchen. Harmony craned her neck to see Blinkaphine at the dining table in the next room, silently working on her next dull landscape. “It's almost as if the vandal knows where we're going to be at all times and then purposefully draws us into a calamitous chase.” Harmony glanced back at Pinkie. “All this time, we've been doing things predictably, and it falls right into the Biv's hooves. Just short of building a rifle and shooting the punk's head off, I don't know how to outhink the fiend.”

“'We've been doing things predictably,' huh?” Pinkie Pie suddenly beamed. “Then perhaps the key to winning a golden trophy in Biv-snatching is to be random!”

“Feh.” Harmony folded her front hooves and tossed an amber-streaked lock over her neck in an indignant fashion. “And just what would be random enough to work in this case? I suppose we and the rest of the militia could just sit down at a campfire and pretend to ignore the Biv until it hops down from the rooftops to join us in eating marshmallows. Then what? Would we smack it over the head with a club?”

“Hmmmmmm...” Pinkie sighed dreamily. “Erm... I'm sorry. Heehee! All I got from that last part was 'marshmallows.'”

“Has anypony ever told you that you've got the attention span of a tubeworm?”

“Has anypony ever told me what, now?”

“Ugh...”

“Why can't we just talk to the Royal Grand Biv?” Pinkie Pie smiled as she slid a fresh batch of muffins into the oven and reset the timer. “If there's anything I've learned from hanging out with my friends in Ponyville, it's that there's no situation so horrible that you can't settle through a chat, a parley, or a party! I like to call it the 'CPP Maneuver.' Hehe! Kind of sounds like something you'd do with a battleship... a battleship of friendship.”

“Have you ever been surrounded by blood-thirsty harpies who want nothing more than to rip you to shreds and hang your entrails as trophies across their hideout?”

“Uhm... No.” Pinkie said, blushing above rows of muffins. “Why? Should I have? Is that what all the young fillies are into these days?”

“Let's just say, Miss Pie, that as noble as negotiation may appear to be, it is hardly a perfect solution to everything.” Harmony took a deep breath and paced across the candle-lit kitchen. “The Biv has made it more than obvious that she or he only wants to wreak chaos. That's not a pony whose ego can afford surrendering to any amount of reason, no matter how eloquently dictated. No, there is no chatting with the rainbow-colored rogue of Dredgemane. Neither would a parley or a party work on an equine who will go so far as to deface both the statue of Gultophine and a cathedral built in the goddess' name. You cannot ask for honor from something that is honorless.”

“Well, maybe it's not honor that Biv wants!” Pinkie bounced. “Maybe... Hehehe—Yes! Maybe the Biv wants something that all the other Dredgemaners have always wanted, only they can never ask for it as colorfully as the Biv does!”

“Yeah...?” Harmony squinted curiously the candy-colored pony's way. “And what's that?”

“Isn't it obvious?” Pinkie winked, lifted one of the freshly baked muffin to her jaw, and took a bite. “Mmmmf...Something to smile about!” She suddenly exhaled in a hissing breath. “Whew, that's hot!”

“Miss Pie...” Harmony sighed. She was thinking aloud when she numbly said, “If Dredgemaners are that heck-bent on smiling, then why don't we have dozens if not hundreds of Bivs running around?”

Just then, there was a loud rumbling through the floorboards above the two ponies. At first, it sounded unearthly—like a dragon's roar. Soon, the shotgun synapses in Harmony's brain outpaced her beating heart, and she reasoned it was anything but a beastly snarl. Much rather, it was the disgruntled voice of Quarrington Edward Pie. Pinkie Pie's father came bounding thunderously down the stairs and tossed himself like a sandy-coated grenade into the dim depths of the kitchen.

“Pinkamena Diane Pie, I asked you a question, young lady!”

“Sorry, Daddy. Could you repeat what you said? Heeheehee—uhm—the house was kind of sort of in the way.”

“And I'd tear it all down to its very foundations if I had to! Especially over what I just learned!” The stallion's gray sideburns bristled like the serrated flanks of a murderous porcupine as he glared hard into his daughter's pastel-colored skull. “I just got done talking to your mother. Is it true, Pinkamena?! Did you open one of the bedroom windows early this morning?!”

“Erm... Eheh...” She smiled nervously as she bent back at an awkward angle from beneath her father's leering frown. “I just may have a teeeeeensy bit. I was serving Mommy oatmeal in bed! Y’know, the kind that I like to sprinkle with cinnamon! But it was so awfully hard for anypony to spoon through the bowl in the dark, much less Mommy. So, I gave the shutters an itty-bitty little crack—”

“Confound it, girl!” Quarrington howled. The muffins rattled in their tray. The entire metal sheet threatened to shake off the edge of the counter from the warbling noise being launched from the elder's muzzle. “How many times have I told you?! So long as you are in this house, under this roof, and with your mother suffering daily like she has been for years, you are not—under any circumstances whatsoever—to let in any light from the outside world!”

“Come on, Daddy! Don't be such a sack of saddle sores! And Mommy's not suffering so much as we're around to give her company! Heeheehee! A little bit of light never hurt anypony!”

“You insidious delinquent!” The stallion sneered, his face jerking forward. Pinkie Pie fell on her haunches with a surprised yelp as he practically spat down at her. “This isn't some inane Ponyvillean fundraiser that you are catering! Nor is this some flamboyant reception for Princess Celestia that you're playing hostess too! This is your mother's home! It is her one and only haven of healing, comfort, and solace! At this rate, it may very likely become her final resting place! Disturbing her rest or exposing her to the elements in any fashion whatsoever will only act as a deterrence to her well-being and ease! How many times have we been through this, child?!”

“But I didn't open all the windows! What's the harm in letting a little sunshine in? I know not to overdo it when it comes to Mommy—”

“You know nothing!” Quarrington's frown could cut trees in half, including the flimsy branches that Pinkie's namesake held onto. “Your spontaneous and immature actions may be excused under the watch of your Aunt and Uncle, but they will not be tolerated here! Pinkamena, when years ago you left for Ponyville, I gave you my blessing because I believed that someplace in Equestria could finally provide the niche for your outlandish behavior. But now I see that you've let your soul fester in that silly town for far too long! You've clearly forgotten what it means to be a Dredgemaner, to be mindful, to show respect!”

“Daddy, I—”

“Silence!” he barked, his blood pressure sending his limbs through fitful convulsions. “I swear on my Town Square cobblestone, you will pay this house, your mother, and your family respect for the rest of your visit here, or I have the very mind to cut it short!”

Pinkie Pie blinked her blue eyes. The mare's face was blank, but bright—as if she had just taken a cannonshell to the cerebellum. Even Harmony winced, weathering the daughter's nerves in a sudden curtain of sympathy. Harmony was about to trot over towards Pinkie's side when Quarrington was suddenly leering before her face.

“And you!” The stallion snarled with an embroiled temper. “Always waving your Canterlotlian flag of modernist balderdash! Plaguing this house with your silly bureaucratic tasks! Constantly making unbearable hoof-noises on the rooftop of our very own home!” His golden eyes narrowed on her like twin suns burning. “If you have finished all that you came here to accomplish, then do us all a favor and leave! And take all of your higher-than-thou scientific mumbo jumbo and choke Princess Celestia with it, for all I care! Bah!”

Quarrington stormed off towards his study, filling the already humid hallways of the house with his grumbling sighs. A numb pegasus and a frazzled earth pony stood in the deafening silence of his departure.

“I... Uh...” Harmony gulped. “If I'm going to actually capture the Biv, something tells me I'd better do it tonight.”

“Uh huh...” Pinkie brushed herself off. “You have a point. My dad's angry at you, Mayor Haymane is losing his patience with you, and it's only a matter of time before the Biv does something really super crazy destructive and forces Breathstar or Sladeburn to demand both of our heads on a platter.” She suffered a short, deflated sigh. Half a second later, Pinkie smiled brightly while offering a baked treat before Harmony's eyes. “How about a muffin?!”

Harmony merely squinted at her. She waved a hoof while shaking her head. As Pinkie bounced merrily across the kitchen to check on the second batch of muffins, the time traveler strafed around the corner of the nearby doorframe and looked towards where Quarrington had stormed off. There was no sign of him, but instead the time traveler once again spotted the dining table where a lone Blinkaphine sat. Harmony narrowed her vision even harder. Through the gently dancing candlelight, she once more made out the empty seat besides the white-white pony... and the great halo of dust that blanketed the perpetually vacant spot in that shadowed house.

---

“Why... uhm...” Inkessa paused in the middle of folding white bedsheets. Her dull eyes gazed at Harmony from beneath the shadow of her nurse's cap. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Because Pinkie Pie always finds a way to either change the subject or pretend like I've never even mentioned his name.” The last pony gazed across the Immolatia Ward, watching as Zecora and Angel Cake examined sick foal after sick foal in the gray haze of the Stonehaven afternoon. Pinkie Pie darted in and around them, randomly quipping a joke that brought a smile to the children being checked upon, chasing their nervous shivers away. “And you know as well as I do that there's no chance in heck of getting a word out of Blinkaphine.” The time traveler gulped and added in a morose tone, “Or your dad, for that matter.”

Inkessa let loose a lethargic breath. She moved to the next sheet and folded it with a mechanical grace that was disassociated from the distant look in her violet eyes. “I don't see what good it will do for you to know about the matter. Why would Princess Celestia be interested in such a thing?”

“Inkessa...” Harmony leaned forward and murmured in a gentle breath. “How long have I been Pinkie's guest? Your family's guest?” She swallowed and managed a gentle smile. “Don't you think that, for better or for worse, we've moved beyond formalities? I want to know because... because I need to understand. I promise you,” she said in a genuinely honest breath, “This has absolutely nothing to do with any official business on behalf of the Court.”

Inkie folded her way through two more bedsheets in silence. Finally, she paused, and managed the courage to speak. “Clyde was in our family for no more than five months,” she said, “But none of us have ever forgotten him, though it may sometimes seem as if we have. Even my little sister—for all that she appears to be numb to in this world—remembers him as fondly as you or I could remember the last time either of us laughed at something merry.”

Harmony winked. “I'll take your word for it.”

That was enough to produce a weak smile across the nurse's lips. Pinkie's older sister regained a solemn breath and continued, “Clyde's legacy is something of joy and sorrow all rolled into one. It all started nearly twenty years ago, when Pinkamena got her cutie mark. Did she ever tell you about that, Harmony?”

Harmony folded her upper arms and leaned against a bulletin board plastered with foalish sketches. “Would you mind telling me yourself?” She smiled gently. “I want to understand what you understand, Inkessa.”

“Well, if you insist...” The nurse murmured on. “Our household wasn't always as dark and dismal as what you've seen during your entire visit. We used to leave the windows wide open. We used to let the light in... used to let a gorgeous breeze waft straight through the dining room. That's when Blinkie started drawing, y'know. She'd gaze out the windows and see so many things that inspired her. The sheer budget of all the crayons we've bought her since is astronomical.”

Inkessa dryly chuckled. As she came down the crest of that last breath, her smile melted into something serene, however melancholic.

“Like I said, it all started with Pinkamena and her cutie mark. When she was a tiny filly, she was just like the rest of us, in that she was just like all the other Dredgemaners. Every day for her and us was just another statistical hash mark in a schedule regimented around the harvesting of rocks. There was no room for smiles, laughter, partying, or all of the other ecstatic things that mark my sister's clownish antics today.”

The gray mare paused. Her hooves folded over the basket of linens as she leaned forward with sudden warmth to her expression.

“But then, one night, my sister saw something, Pinkamena was a witness to an amazingly joyous phenomenon, something in the darkness of the endless plateau of rock that spoke to her, that taught her how to smile when so many other ponies of Dredgemane were blind and ignorant in the comfort of Consus' cemetery shadows. Pinkie wasn't exactly capable of explaining this boundless joy to us, but that didn't stop her from sharing it. She wanted everypony to smile forever with the same well of energy that empowered her to do just that.”

Inkie leaned back and fiddled numbly with the half-folded bedsheets while Pinkie's giggles intermingled with the foals' chorus beyond.

“For the better part of a year, Pinkie's discovery was a blessing that illuminated the lives of everyone in this little family of hours. She showed us what a 'party' was. She taught us all to dance—heehee—even our father. As a matter of fact, Daddy's life was so positively changed that he produced several new suggestions to the City Council during that time in his life. Almost magically, Dredgemane's legislature enacted several bold laws that extended curfew, allowed leisure time following Gultophine's Summons, and even inspired the local mine workers to unionize.”

“Sounds like I visited two decades too late,” Harmony said with a smirk.

Inkessa chuckled breathily. “Perhaps. You should have seen us. We were like an entirely different family then: a smiling family, a warm family. I love Mommy and Daddy to bits, but sometimes it's hard to make out their expressions in such darkness as there is today, even though I know the purpose of it all. But—dear Gultophine—those years were, without a doubt, the best time in my life. It was a time when I woke up with a song in my heart instead of a sigh, when the Goddess of Life was more real to me than any sermon of Breathstar could persuade. In those days, I wore color. Mommy baked sweets. And Blinkaphine... my younger sister actually talked.” Inkessa stared suddenly into a great distance, and the smile in her gray features loosely peeled off.

Harmony gulped somberly. “What... what changed...?”

Inkessa took a brave breath. “That joy—that happiness that came out of pure darkness—was positively infectious. As it affected every iota of my life, it inspired every part of Mommy's and Daddy's. And... well...” Inkessa flung forth a sly grin, then returned to graceful deadpan. “Before long, me and Pinkamena and Blinkaphine had a little sibling along the way. Usually, where Dredgemaners are concerned, having a fourth child so late in a family's age is disconcerting. But none of us could have been any happier. It was like... It was like every horizon had a brilliant sunrise for us that year. Dredgemane was just as gloomy and miserable-looking then as it is now, but we didn't notice. The same light that Pinkamena saw alone in the darkness had illuminated the path into our future. We all thought we could smile forever...”

Inkessa gazed across the ward, her violet eyes falling across the gently stirring bodies of the young and infected children. The slumbering invalids filled the lengths of the sterile room of haunting giggles, their pale bodies gleaming like white stones.

“When my mother went into labor, it was a matter of fateful timing. That very same day that she gave birth to our baby brother Clyde, the miners at the quarry had unwittingly pierced a cluster of petrified infernite. Hundreds of workers were immediately infected, and several of them overflowed from the triage that had been set up by paramedics on site...”

“Dear Epona,” Harmony murmured with a sickening expression. “You don't mean to say that...?”

Inkessa somberly nodded. “Many of the infernite victims were in the same hospital that my mother gave birth in. You must understand, Harmony, that Immolatia is still a relatively new and misunderstood condition, which is why we're relying so much on Zecora's assistance right here and now to help find a possible remedy to it. As few ponies in the Equestrian medical field can explain the condition now, even fewer were capable of recognizing it twenty years ago, much less its severely contagious qualities immediately following exposure to raw infernite.” She gulped hard. “Right after Clyde's foaling, both my mother and my baby brother were naturally vulnerable to such a rare and debilitating infection. Within days, we knew something was wrong... with both of them.”

Harmony listened quietly.

Inkessa went on. “For the first two months, both Mother and Clyde were quarantined. It was the most unglamorous and depressing conditions you could possibly imagine. They shared crowded hospital wards with dozens upon dozens of slowly dying Dredgemaners. Father's life turned upside down; he fought tooth and hoof with the Council to relocate Mommy and our little brother to a completely different location. The Council wouldn't agree with him, as Immolatia was still new and frightening and they all had the safety of Dredgemane to uphold. When more months passed, Mayor Haymane 'made it up' to my father by allowing him to bring his wife and child back home, rather than leave them both to slowly rot away in a place like here, Stonehaven.”

The mare folded one sheet after another in a slow weaving of icy limbs. Her gray coat matched the lifeless pale hue of her nurse's gown.

“Clyde put up a fight. He may never have been capable of moving much, or making any sort of sound that extended beyond a cough or a sputtering groan, but we could all see the strength in his eyes. His was like Daddy's, bright and gold... until the jaundice took over. I could hardly even recognize him by the time that he... that he...” Inkessa took a deep breath. “Mother was older and stronger, of course, but she was nonetheless infected. Ever since Clyde passed, she's been bed-ridden. According to all of the so-called 'modern texts of medicine,' a mare of her age has another five years to outlast the effects of Immolatia at best. Foals like Clyde... foals like these precious children here: their bodies aren't strong enough to battle the residue that has been spread to their lungs.”

“This all happened—what—twenty years ago?”

“Dear Elektra alive, has it been that long?” Inkessa's breath was a hollow thing. She swallowed her frailty back down before saying, “It seems like only yesterday when I could wake up to a beam of sunlight coming in through my window. It was less than a year ago when father started his 'no windows open' rule, on account of an article he misread from one of the many medical journals that I brought home from the library. He thinks that the effects of Immolatia are quickened by exposure to direct sunlight. While that's somewhat true, he's taken it to a great extreme. It's not as pathetic as you might think. In a way, it's a sign that part of him still cares for this family beyond the lengths he is otherwise willing to openly express.”

“But, Inkessa, surely he can't believe—”

“Can't believe what? That mother might get better again because of his 'solution?' That this family could have what it once joyously had—however abysmally short it was?” Inkessa's violet eyes lethargically blinked. “We are Dredgemaners through and through. We were born unto death, and we will all render to death what it's due. What Pinkamena brought us, however fantastic, was but a vacation from what the rest of this town's residents deal with on a regular basis. Perhaps it made us ever so briefly selfish to have forgotten the way in which we were bred to be. Whatever the case, nothing promises to bring back the light that was once as common as dust in our household. Mother stopped walking, Father stopped dancing, Blinkaphine stopped talking, and I? I stopped believing in things and began studying them. After all that I've told you, could you possibly blame me for wanting to become a nurse? For wanting to make sure that never again would a hospital render unto another pony the same chaos and incompetence that was so rudely flung upon my mother?”

“And what of Pinkie Pie?”

“Pinkamena...” Inkessa's eyes floated over towards where the mare giggled and gave little foals pony-rides between Zecora and Nurse Angel Cake. “Pinkamena is the only exception. She was the one who saw the light first and foremost, and because of that, she was the one and only pony who decided to keep smiling forever, no matter what happened. But where she was once an inspiration to us before Clyde, she was only a piercing thorn afterwards. Nowhere is this more evident than with Daddy. Believe what you want from the rumors of Dredgemane; it was father's insistence, and not the result of some bizarre calamity, that landed Pinkamena in the laps of Aunt and Uncle Cake far away in Ponyville. I love my sister to death, but this family can only take so many doses of her. She means well... but twenty years ago she transformed into something beyond a simple Dredgemaner. My sister had become an idea, a very sweet and happy idea, but ideas quickly become jaded in a household that no longer has the light to show the brilliance in things.”

“I think I can understand that now.” Harmony nodded. “Forgive me if I sound cold, but I've always seen Miss Pie's enthusiasm as blindness.”

“And you would be right, to a fault.” Inkie managed a weak smile. “It takes courage to be blind to what so many other ponies believe in. The light that Pinkamena saw that one night so many years ago: it takes a unique vision to not lose sight of it, a vision that nopony else in Dredgemane can share. That's the sort of blindness that Pinkamena has. It's more selective than ignorant, or so I've always believed.”

“Still, she's got to see reality for all of its dark shades at some point or another.” Harmony gulped. “I mean... does Miss Pie ever bother to visit her brother's grave?”

“There is none.”

“I beg your pardon?” Harmony blinked.

Inkessa slowly shook her head. “Clyde doesn't have a grave. Nopony in Dredgemane does. We're all cremated upon death. It's tradition.”

“And...” Harmony gazed forlornly across the many young heads of the Immolatia Ward. “...all of these children?”

“If they don't have parents to return to—and most of them don't—then they go to the same place that all who came and went before them did.” Inkessa brushed aside a lock of gray hair. “We Dredgemaners are all ashes and cobblestones in the Grave of Consus. The only thing that ever gave us purpose is Gultophine's Spirit...”

“And Pinkamena's spirit...?” Harmony remarked. “If I may be so bold.”

Inkessa said nothing to that.

Harmony leaned forward and spoke in a hushed tone. “Inkessa, has it ever occurred to you that the reason Pinkamena is so happy all of the time is that she's chosen to be? A pony's choice means a lot in this existence. It once meant a lot to you and your family...”

“Suffering changes things, Harmony.” Inkessa said in a dull tone. “I don't know if you can understand that—”

“I can,” the last pony curtly replied. “Life has always been suffering. It was suffering long before you came into this world, and it remained suffering long after Clyde was snatched from it. Your goofy sister has managed to live apart from the bleakness, whereas your father evidently gave in to it. I cannot even pretend to understand Blinkaphine's situation, but you? You have so much promise, Inkessa. You are so intelligent and so gifted—Why must you remain in this city? Why must you let a place defined by suffering also define you?”

“And what would it benefit anypony if I was to leave for a dream position in a city such as yours, such as Canterlot?” Inkessa whispered with a frown, keeping her voice drowned out from the ears of the young foals. “These children need all the help that they can get. You know that. Why would you suddenly suggest that there's a reason for me to leave Dredgemane?”

“Because I realize now that nopony else will have the chance to tell you the truth, that not a single one of these little kids is Clyde, or ever will be him. Inkessa, you're young yet. Dredgemane doesn't have to swallow you like it has your father, mother, and little sister. You may still be able to find your smile, though I doubt it will be here with these kids, with these foals whose lives were doomed from the start, regardless of what destiny you've painted for yourself in this town.”

Inkessa took a deep breath. “You're right, Harmony. There is suffering in this world.” Her gaze slowly morphed into a frown that positively stabbed the time traveler across the silent space between them. “So long as there are ponies like you—and like Haymane or Sladeburn—who think with your heads and not with your hearts, there shall always be suffering. I'm inclined to think that you should use your intelligence to drown out what's left of Dredgemane's imagination and just execute the Royal Grand Biv already. But I grant you no authority in telling me what I should or should not do.”

“Inkessa, I didn't mean anything bad by—”

“Just who does, Harmony? Our town is all about 'progress' after all, though far be it from 'providence,' hmm?” The nurse stood up with a grunting sigh. Regaining her serene demeanor, she nevertheless stared past the pegasus as she sauntered off with the basket of linens balanced on her flank. “If you would excuse me, I have my duties to perform. Some of us never run out of them.”

Harmony motioned with her hooves, teetering on the precipice of a rebuttal, but ultimately gave up with an exasperated sigh. She ran a hoof over her face as she moaned into the numbing quiet of that corner of the room.

“Way to frickin' go, Scootaloo, ya gabbin' little glue stick...”

---

“I have utilized every possible herbal remedy,” Zecora murmured in a forlorn voice that echoed against the bricklaid walls of the sanitarium. “Alas, the children haven't gotten any more healthy.”

“She's used cures for all sorts of respiratory ailments and infections from bronchitis to acute pneumonia,” Nurse Angel Cake added in a worrisome voice. She, Harmony, and the tireless zebra stood in a somber huddle outside the door to the Immolatia Ward. Their hushed voices were like infant breaths against the black-and-white tile of the claustrophobic hallway. “Ever since we've written Zecora and planned for this visit, we established a list of various medicinal concoctions which Zecora could provide the materials for.”

“For each recipe, a potion was made. And to each child, a sample I gave.” The zebra adjusted the lengths of her gray robe and sighed like the shadow that Dredgemane had transformed her into being. “Now I've reached the bottom of the list, and not a single patient has improved like we wished.”

“What's missing, then?” Harmony inquired, gazing into the room full of tiny, ailing ponies. “Is it a matter of lacking resources? Do we need more ingredients than what was delivered by Vimbert the other day?”

“It is not a matter of short supply. Our solution merely evades the mind's eye.” Zecora shook her head sadly. “I fear that Immolatia's only solution remains beyond the realm of intuition.”

“Could... uh...” Harmony took a deep breath and scratched one front hoof with another. “Could one of you run the basic facts of Immolatia by me one more time?” The orphan of time knew fully well the horrifying results of infernite poisoning, but she was always in the dark as to its fundamental nature. “I'm as advanced in medical prowess as a teenage pony knows how to slap together a fast food daisy sandwich.”

“Infernite is far more than random sediment found in mined rock,” Nurse Angel Cake explained. “It is nothing other than the petrified and enchanted remains of Alicorn blood spilled from the chaos wars so long ago. Because of its unearthly properties, the material tends to gravitate and coalesce around nodes of arcanium, which is the most precious resource of the Dredgemane mines. Like many flamestones condensed by the geological pressures of time, infernite almost magically resonates with an energy that is detrimental to any organic matter that comes into direct contact with it. This isn't a problem for ponies who might be lifting or hauling around solid chunks of the material. However, when infernite is broken up—it stands the risk of filling the air like a fine powder. When infernite is inhaled into the lungs like dust, it clings to the respiratory organs of a living equine and coalesces once more into a solid. At such a point, it becomes impossible to separate the congealed clumps of infernite from the natural lung structure. Even precise surgical extraction cannot separate what's natural from what's unnatural anymore. Eventually, the infected pony's body becomes inflamed as the essence of the infernite is transferred into all bodily organs through regular respiration. For most adult equines, it takes several decades to end a life. For children—who are still in the developmental stages—death is swifter and far more painful.”

“Since surgery is not a viable option, many have turned towards medicinal concoctions,” Zecora said. “By endeavoring to go an herbal route, I had hoped to clean the infernite from the inside out. But every attempt to cure Immolatia from within has only brought us back to where I came in. The metal filaments in the lungs of the foals remain in them like blistering hot coals. I'm inclined to believe that not even magic can prevent them from facing a fate so tragic.”

“Then if it's not surgery and it's not a medicine, then it's gotta be something else that can get that crap out of those kids,” Harmony murmured. “Obviously you've done your best, Miss Zecora, but surely that doesn't mean all hope is lost—Right?”

“Zecora's reputation precedes herself,” Angel Cake remarked with a bitter smile. “I doubt there's any other shaman in the Zebrahara with her level of expertise. I doubt there's anypony in all of Equestria with her gift in medicinal cures, period.”

“Although I may have come up short, perhaps we can all benefit from your report,” Zecora said, smiling at the pegasus.

The last pony made a face. “My report?”

Zecora blinked. “Tell me if I am incorrect, but a clerk of Canterlot, you are, I suspect.”

“I... I think you misunderstand the purpose of my being here, Miss Zecora...” Harmony nervously chuckled.

“It is certainly a good question.” Nurse Angel Cake suddenly squinted at the time traveler. “I could have sworn you were here to... to either watch over Pinkamena Pie or chase down the Royal Grand Biv. Which of those two, I'm no longer certain. Just why are you here, Miss Harmony?”

“I...” Harmony suddenly shivered through her Entropan limbs. “I'm here because...” She gazed beyond the doorframe and into the room. There were so many dying foals, just like there were so many white stones and so many lonely years lived atop a scooter. “I-I want to help.” She gulped and gazed into the shadows with a murmur. “Still, wanting to help and being able to help are two completely different animals...”

A striped limb gently rested on the pegasus' shoulder. A smiling Zecora uttered, “In a town full of so many somber stallions and mares, it is a pleasant thing to see a soul who cares. Do not fret for that which is beyond your control, for we are all united in our glorious yet challenging goal.”

“If anything, Zecora's potions have settled the foals' nerves quite a bit,” Angel Cake said with a gentle smile. “If only she had visited here several months sooner. She would have made...” The nurse stammered briefly, but eventually uttered, “She would have made things far more peaceful for those who have most recently passed.”

“How... uhm...” Harmony chewed on a copper lip. “Just how do you know when it is finally a patient's time?”

“Immolatia is different with everypony, but the results at the end are quite similar. First, a child's breath forms a distinct wheeze—almost like a shrill whistling sound at the end of each exhale. Then, numbness creeps over the body as the infernite eliminates the last bastion of the immune system and begins to spread into every nerve and muscle. What happens next is as unpredictable as it is unpleasant. Some ponies go into horrible convulsions. Others suffer sudden and startling blindness. Then others—the ones who are most fortunate—go into a deep coma, a sleep from which they will never return. In those cases, Immolatia finally ends them while they are unconscious.”

Harmony held a deep lump in her throat. She was quite sadly aware of that last description. “What about the jaundice that forms around the patient's eyes and orifices?”

“That happens much earlier, during the intermediary stages.”

“I see.” Harmony nodded. “Are... uhm... are any foals in this ward past the intermediary stages?”

Angel Cake and Zecora exchanged numb glances. It was the zebra who finally spoke, “As you may obviously see, young Ice Song is the most afflicted pony.” The three mares glanced into the room towards where Pinkie Pie cuddled with the little blue colt in question. “I have given him the most medicine to assist in the fight, but it would be a miracle of the Shadows if he makes it past the night.”

“The Shadows?” Harmony chose to repeat.

“This town may be in honor of Gultophine's blessing, but zebras pray to spirits of a different dressing. By the Goddess or the Shadows, we all entreat that Ice Song may be spared by Immolatia's defeat.”

Harmony stammered forth a pitiful “Amen.”

Just then, there was a tiny pitter-patter of hooves. A golden hue lit the shadows of the hallway stretching beyond the ward. Harmony glanced down and saw none other than Suntrot in the doorway.

“What are you all talking about?” the golden foal with the bright cutie mark managed through a wheezing breath. “Why don't you come back inside? Auntie Pinkie Pie is gonna tell us all about the time she and her friends went to meet a scary, sleeping dragon!”

“A scary, sleeping dragon—surely you jest!” Zecora balked. “There is nothing frightening about a beast with snores instead of flame in its chest!”

Suntrot giggled, coughed, and managed to squeak forth: “Come inside and listen! Then you'll think different!” She tilted her head up and positively brightened at the sight of the copper pegasus. “Hi there, Miss Harmony!” Another cough. “Have you ever faced a sleeping dragon before?”

“No...” Harmony managed in a voice that was softer than she had meant it. “But I've met one that's put me to sleep from time to time.” She added with an even softer smile.

“Heeheehee... You're so random, Miss Harmony...”

The time traveler raised an eyebrow at that.

“Suntrot—Elektra alive, little one!” Inkessa suddenly sashayed out and nudged the little golden foal back into the depths of the ward. “Don't run off like that! Especially when you should be in bed with the way you've been feeling...”

“Awww! But Nurse Inkie, they're gonna miss the story!”

“They're having an important conversation—Nurse stuff.” Inkessa briefly glanced up and her violet optics locked emotionlessly with Harmony's. “Nothing for you to be concerned about...” She walked off with the limping child.

Harmony gazed beyond with a flaring of her nostrils. There was a glisten to the extremities of Suntrot's molting coat... like the reflective surface of a scooter that didn't know that it was about to be abandoned for so many gray and lifeless years beyond the Cataclysm.

---

What have you meant to me throughout all these years? I thought I was the last pony, but I've always had you to fall back on. In my darkest dreams and in my most painful sobs, you were there to embrace me, to fold your limbs around me with far thicker muscles than the darkest of shadows could afford.

I suppose I can say with perfect honesty that I believed in you. In some ways, I even worshipped you. Inkessa and the rest of the Dredgemaners exalted Goddess Gultophine. Zecora believed in the Shadows. But you—I always had you to believe in. Come to think of it, I hardly had a choice. Is a faith of obligation a true faith? Does it even matter?

I know that you would have it no other way. You are forever and ever, and yet with all of the universe's beginnings and endings at your disposal, you've never ceased being selfish... not even for one infinitesimal blink in time. You must have me, as you had to have every other pony that's ever existed in the great annals of time. Could you have spared me? Could you have left me alone instead of consuming me with obsidian jaws? Was I enough that my soul and my soul alone would somehow finally satiate your bottomless hunger?

I'm inclined now to think that all this time you were just waiting for me. The Cataclysm was the main course, but I was your dessert tray. You waited for Spike to send me back into the meaty and succulent past via Green Flame, and into that delicious abyss you followed me so that you could consume all of these poor and helpless bodies once again with renewed ferocity. Every anchor I tied myself to, every soul I communicated with, every little foal that limped across my way: they were appetizers to your infinite feast. I'd hate myself for being an accessory to your feeding if only I knew that nopony in the past had a chance of avoiding you, whether or not I was in the picture.

I have done so many terrible and regretful things in my life, but your presence brings with it a bizarre solace. So long as you're around, I know that there are things worse than me. I know that there is a force in this existence that is more wretched and more pitiful than myself. I know that when I am finally gone from this world, it will truly be a black and dismal place that is left behind, because you'll be all that's left and the last thing you'll want is to finish this noble quest that Spike and I have started.

Who knows, maybe resurrecting the Sun and Moon will be the ultimate insult to you, for as long as there are no ponies left to wander this world, the heavenly bodies will be things that even you can't consume. They will stab you in all the ways that will make you cringe and skitter in desperate search for the shadows that no longer exist. You will not be able to escape anything, not even yourself. That almost makes this whole pageantry of time travel friggin' worth it, for it will make you feel what I've felt, what I've been, and what you've made me out to be.

---

Pinkie Pie beamed as a hard hat danced a golden beam of light ahead of her bouncing skull. “And Goddess Gultophine said, 'I don't know! I sent two boats and a hot air balloon after you!'”

Several miners laughed between bites of fresh doughnuts deep in the hollow of the earth that echoed with dozens upon dozens of hammers and power tools.

“That was cute. Tacky, but cute.”

“You're a real hoot, Pinkamena. I haven't got a clue why Quarrington kicked you out so many years ago.”

“He didn't kick her out, numskull! She went out of town to work for Marble Cake's brother-in-law!”

“That fat mare? I thought she ate all her siblings!”

“Then why's Quarrington still around?! Hahaha!”

“Hey hey hey nowwwww...” Pinkie Pie giggled while strolling between the stallions with an emptying tray of doughnuts balanced on her flank. “No making fun of my Auntie Marble Cake!”

“Awwwww...”

“Hahaha—We didn't mean nothing bad by it...”

“Not without making fun of her cactus garden first!” Pinkie mischievously blurted, summoning the laughter of many smoke-stained miners surrounding her. Her voice echoed brightly across the dark lengths of the twisting mine. “Did you know that she had the desert plants shipped all the way here from Appleloosa? I tell you, that was the last time she made that mistake! It took Auntie months to rid the kitchen of horned toad eggs!”

Several of the stallions spontaneously spat out whatever bits of doughnuts they were presently chewing on and wiped their lips with shuddering forelimbs.

“Yeesh! She's kidding, right?”

“Haha! Don't you see? She's always kidding! That's why I love the little scamp.”

“Sure could use more of ya down here during the graveyard shift, Pinkamena. Never mind the doughnuts...”

“Yeah, but I don't taste nearly as nice with sprinkles!” Pinkie winked and giggled.

The stallions all laughed in a merry circle. Several meters away from them, Harmony stood with her upper limbs folded. She leaned back against a harmless outcropping of rock and sighed, the light from her helmet bowing across the rails of a local mine cart track. After nearly an hour into that day's visit of the subterranean workplace, the last pony was just starting to get a firm grasp of her nerves. This blistering corridor of echoes and sweat wasn't necessarily a container of past memories, but a quaint capsule of brand new ones, and all she could summon the strength to do was stand back and watch the unthinkable unfold.

Pinkie wandered from cluster to cluster of workers, her grin and giggles eliciting like-minded expressions from those who—just a few naked seconds previous—were entangled in an all-encompassing struggle with their power tools. Even the oldest and most emaciated of Dredgemaners managed a smile in the wake of her coming and going. It never ceased to intrigue Harmony the lengths to which Pinkie could brighten the lives of ponies in the most destitute of locations. However, the time traveler was forever at a loss to be enthused by it herself.

With each spark that flew from the chisels of the miners... with each flake of rock that snowed through the claustrophobic air, Harmony saw through it all and envisioned the faces of dozens of dying foals. They were nothing less than a classroom full of blinking eyes, drawn over with the veil of time. Dredgemane was more than a somber relic of the past; it was a snapshot of all the suffering that the Cataclysm had brought, of all the suffering that the last pony wasn't allowed to witness, for she was blissfully cursed with having experienced it all from the shadow of a plummeting arcane vault within the destruction of Cloudsdale.

What did Scootaloo know of equine suffering? What did she know of all of the burning lives turned to ash when the end of Equestria came to consume them? She had always envisioned a grander portrait of what horrified her youthful vision: that all ponies in the Cataclysm tasted death in an inexplicable blink when their essences were all reduced to petrified dust. She never before considered that a blink in life meant an eon of agony in death, when the crumbling synapses of a departing soul attempted to make sense out of all the senseless pain. There was no such thing as a mercy killing, Harmony deduced. The Cataclysm was a cruel sadist of abstract proportions, and the last pony was a fool to have ever perceived it as an instantaneous calamity.

Groaning, Harmony wrenched her gaze away from Pinkie and her cloud of pathetically impermanent levity. She stared with mild interest into a nearby chunk of rock. The future scavenger inside that Entropan body immediately identified at least half-a-dozen different kinds of minerals in one blink. If this was the Grave of Consus into which the Dredgemaners were mining, then the last pony figured that there was a huge commonality between the subterranean rock before her and the pale dust of moon stones she had become acquainted with in the future. It made a great deal of sense that there'd be so much infernite deep in the flesh of the gray plateau that surrounded Pinkie's hometown. The essence of a dead god was literally absorbed into the earth all around the time traveler. With a flippant thought, she pondered over what delightful samples she might find if she were to visit this site via an airship twenty-five years from then.

There were far easier ways to extract arcanium from rock, the time traveler knew. She almost pitied the heavily laboring workers all around her, for she knew that a simple rig of runestones and the utilization of unicorn horns could accomplish what they were all trying to do in barely one quarter of the time. In fact, it was orange flame—an easily acquirable substance in the future—that could in one blink extract the more valuable and enchanted minerals from the rock. Harmony wondered what would happen if Spike was able to send more than just her soul-self back through time. If she had even a fraction of her future tools available to her, she could have done more work in a solid hour than these ponies must have accomplished in the last month alone. She almost smirked at contemplating how fast that might have made Overseer Sladeburn's head spin—

There was an explosion.

The entire body of the mine shook, snapping Harmony from the roots of her thought just as violently as the many surrounding Dredgemaners were thrown back from their varied tasks. She braced herself against a rumbling chunk of rock and breathlessly stared across the quivering interior as several equine shadows trembled and cried under the eerie dance of swaying lanternlight.

Pinkie Pie had collapsed in a sea of crumbled doughnuts. By the time she lurched to her shaking hooves, the once-smiling stallions that had gathered around her had begun galloping in opposite directions, shouting and barking heart-stopping exclamations as they sought to bolster the framework of that shuddering tunnel with a plethora of emergency tools and support beams.

Another muffled explosion rumbled in the deep.

Something shook through the foundation of the labyrinth from below. Several more shouts echoed to and fro. An abandoned mine cart rolled by on its lonesome and rattled violently off track. Several clumps of dust and debris showered dozens of glistening hard hats as Harmony stumbled into the center of the madness, gazing every which way for a plausible explanation.

An overseer ran by, flanked by a pair of pale-faced associates. Harmony yelped his way: “Hey! What was it? Has there been a collapse?”

“Two levels below!” The lead pony howled as he blazed by, haloed by flickering lanterns. “There were at least one hundred workers down there! They must have struck deep!”

The last pony exclaimed, “Struck deep into what?”

“What do you think?” The overseer paused at a junction of tunnels and shouted loud and clear. “Everypony to the shafts! Follow the routes that were designated to you! We're clearing out! Let's move it!”

Harmony breathlessly lurched. She spun and glanced down a shuddering corridor in the direction from which the young overseer had just galloped. Before a long and dark tunnel, the mine had shrunk to form a tight frame bolstered by wooden beams. Several frazzled ponies were limping in desperation from the deep, deep passageway beyond. Yet, as they did so, grand fissures formed in the foundation of the frame. The exit to that deep corridor was about to collapse at any second.

With amber eyes flaring, the time traveler did the unthinkable. She flapped her wings and flung herself forward. Just as the frame began to bowl and crackle, she flew her body up against it and braced the side of the chiseled “doorway” with her Entropan spine. She somehow thought that the heroic gesture would require effort, but she fit the sundering cranny like a perfectly shaped peg. The avatar of the Goddess of Time was suddenly just as solid as any other chunk of rock in that swaying place. What was more, Harmony was able to maintain her posture as if she was merely leaning up against the rockface. She judged that any passerby wouldn't have a clue that she was actually the one thing keeping that corridor from crumbling in on itself and sealing so many souls off..

“ComeonComeonComeon...” She hissed and trembled, attempting to remain as still and unassuming as possible while so many ponies helplessly floundered around her. “Let it be worth it, Epona. Let it be—Yes!”

Harmony hissed through grinning teeth, for her actions had paid off. She counted three, five, seven ponies stumbling up through the corridor where otherwise—if it hadn't been for her—the passageway would have been blocked off. All of the ponies stared ahead, their eyes nearly blinded by thick black soot that lent misery to their hacking lungs as they lurched towards the distant lanternlight of the evacuation route.

“Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie slid to a stop beside her. The mare's hard hat wobbled as she stammered, “W-we can't stay here!”

“Yeah, you think?!” Harmony grunted.

“All of the workers are leaving for a reason! A horribly awful pocket of infernite may have been caught up in that explosion beneath us! If we don't make like a tree and leaf, we'll all get infected too!”

“There're still ponies trapped down there!” Harmony managed to point with one Entropan limb. Loose dust from the flimsily supported frame littered her helmet from above. She made no mention of it. “See? Lots of them are still coming!”

“I know!” Pinkie Pie gasped. “I'll go get the overseer and maybe we can send down a rescue team!” She made to bounce away towards the lit end of the mine—

“No!” Harmony grasped her anchor's shoulder. She held the bright mare in place. The last pony gulped, shuddered, and stared forlornly down the tunnel as she said: “You were right the first time! There's too big a risk of infernite poisoning!”

“But—”

“Will you just friggin' listen?!” Harmony growled. “We gotta stay here! You have a loud voice, Miss Pie! Let the ponies know that this passageway hasn't collapsed yet! Show them the way to get to safety!”

Pinkie Pie for once didn't waste a second with a felicitous rebuttal. She cupped two hooves over her pink lips and howled down the infinite tunnel of shadows. “Hey, everypony! This way! Follow my voice to sunshine and smiles!”

“A little less melodramatic, perhaps?” Harmony hissed, sweating as the mine once more shook and rumbled above and beneath them.

Several more soot-stained stallions stumbled past the two. The ponies gazed breathlessly at the two mares like they were angels from above. One adult pony was being dragged to the surface by his upper limbs. He was sobbing like a foal, for his lower limbs had somehow been reduced to hoofless stubs. The minecart track glistened in his bright blood.

Harmony's amber eyes flared at the sight. She immediately winced as Pinkie's voice thundered over the cacophonous collapse around and beyond them. “Come this way! Quickly, everypony! We're evacuating!”

The frame quivered and shuddered further above Harmony's shoulders. She and she alone glanced up to see several fresh fissures forming in the crumbling structure. Swallowing a dry gulp, she looked past Pinkie's bright shape and barked at a pair of stumbling workers. “How many more are down there?!”

“It's hard to say!” A stallion coughed and wheezed. He hung off the shoulder of his companion while bracing a mangled forelimb. “It's the midday shift!” He winced, sputtered. “There could be dozens... d-dozens...”

Harmony's face blanched in horror. She squinted with quivering eyes down the deep shadows lingering beyond her and Pinkie. The tunnel stretched like the esophagus of a grand serpent. The phantom sobs of a lonely orange foal bled through her ears, but they were all too quickly replaced by a real and far more haunting noise, that of hundreds of screaming and panicked voices echoing up from the grand depths of that infernal hole. The voices pleaded for help, pleaded for Gultophine, pleaded for their mothers. Several limp shadows lurched from the deep cavern. The shapes of maimed and half-butchered equines were struggling to climb the rest of the distance to freedom.

“What are you two doing?!” The young overseer rushed up to the last pony's peripheral and howled at the mares. “It's over for them! Get a move on, already! The longer you linger here, the sooner you'll risk exposure to infernite!”

“We can't just leave so many ponies behind!” Pinkie Pie shouted, panting. “There are more coming! We c-can see them!”

“Any remaining survivors who were in it that deep could only have been infected! For the good of yourselves and the rest of us—Move your dang flanks!” The overseer ran back towards the light. “Last call! To the shafts! Everypony, let's go!”

“Har-Har?” Pinkie Pie gulped. “Did you hear him? Wh-what should we do?”

The last pony stared. Everything was rumbling all around her. The arcane vault was an unbreakable bottle in a grand sea of suffering. The stars would last forever, and yet she could only stare at their bodies, could only listen to their agonized screams as the soot-stained faces came into bleeding focus. Cloudsdale had followed her there, and she was as powerless in Entropa's skin as she was in a dead foal's.

“Har-Har?”

The frame started to buckle. The world burned with deep infernal chaos. Rainbow Dash was nowhere to be seen. The miners crawled and crawled on broken limbs, beckoning her, praying to the last pony.

Harmony sneered. She grasped Pinkie Pie with two front hooves and very courageously lied. “Look out! The frame's collapsing!” She flung the two of them towards the light, dislodging her invulnerable self from the mouth of the corridor. The dark tunnel swallowed the limping shadows in permanent oblivion. A wall of rock had fallen where the two mares once stood. All that lingered beyond was a muffled chorus of agonized screams, forever sealed off in the bottomless grave of Consus.

Harmony trembled, her glazed eyes locked to the bloodied rails of the minecart track. She was only residually aware of Pinkie Pie helping her up to her hooves and shouting something into her ears. Soon, her vision was following the bouncing image of a pink shadow all the way past the rattling lanterns and into the cluster of workers rushing up to fill the rusted elevators of the mineshafts. The rumbling of the dead world persisted like the endless rain of moon meteorites. This time, Harmony didn't have the bitter blessing of being alone with her shivers.

---

The elevator doors opened with a metallic ring. Burning sunlight blinded the last pony's vision. Harmony shaded her amber eyes and limped out alongside a mare whose bright coat was stained with black ash. No less than ten paces, she slowed her trot to an icy crawl. Her face wretched in unfathomable horror as she found herself stumbling upon a solid sea of suffering.

Across the gray bosom that formed the bottom of the Dredgemane quarry, the quivering bodies of injured miners were arrayed in a geometric pattern. Canvas mats had been laid about with hauntingly practiced precision, and dozens upon dozens of anguished souls bled into the soft contours of them. An impromptu triage had arranged the victims of the mine collapse in layers of progressively worse conditions long before Harmony and Pinkie had even ascended to the surface.

The last pony could barely turn her head, because no matter how far her eyes scanned left or right, all she saw were more and more bodies. There were countless droves of injured ponies, some with deep gashes carved into their torsos, others with their limb-joints hanging at obtuse angles, countless more clutching crimson fountains that enveloped their skulls and gaping mouths.

The air was filled to the brim with agonized moans, punctuated at every other blood-curdling interval with a ghostly scream or shriek. Voices pleaded for spirits that were twice as dead as they were about to become. Gultophine's name floated over the bodies as if her wings had brought the exiled Goddess back in the midst of that misery. The cyclonic hollow of the grand quarry allowed no echo to escape the ears of both survivors and rescue workers alike.

Paramedics in white garb sauntered emotionlessly through the fields of the dying, working in tandem to lay more bodies down across the canvas mats that hadn't yet been filled. A pair of volunteers bumped into Harmony, so that she stumbled into Pinkie and clutched the mare's torso as she looked after them. The volunteers carried a gurney atop which a limp body rested beneath a black tarp. A dangling tail of soot-stained hair fluttered in the infernal breaths of the suffering as the gurney was carried over to a taped-off area where several more slumped shapes rested under a sea of black sheets.

“Har-Har...” Pinkie squeaked from a million miles away. “Y-you're hurting me.”

Harmony winced and stopped clutching her anchor so hard. “I'm sorry, Pinkie...” She gulped and gazed limply over the bodies, bodies, bodies. “I'm just... so, so sorry,” the last pony murmured.

She heard anguished, high-pitched cries. Her gaze tilted up. At the brim of the smoking quarry high above, a thick line of fillies and mares were being held back by a darkly armored militia. The wives and daughters of several maimed workers sobbed and called out for their indistinguishable loved ones far below. Beyond them, a line of laboring Dredgemaners trudged from factory to factory as if no holocaust had transpired whatsoever.

There was a vicious tug to Harmony's turquoise vest. She gasped and glanced down to see a bloody stub stabbing at her torso. The meaty limb belonged to a quivering stallion who's eyes had been torn loose along with the flesh from his brow. “Snkkkt... J-Just a drop... Just a drop of w-water, I b-beg you.” He hissed through rivulets of crimson that ran down into his hissing lips as he fell back into a moaning slump. “Ohhhhhhhh Gultophine, forgive meeeee... Have m-mercy... Aaaughhh!”

Harmony was speechless. A paramedic rushed up and brushed her aside like an errant gnat before tending to the tortured stallion's convulsing body. The last pony stumbled backwards and gazed down at where a red stain had drenched her Winter-Wrap Up vest. Before she could even register that sight, her ears were pricked by a distant, chanting voice.

Glancing across the bed of moaning bodies, she spotted Bishop Breathstar marching icily down the aisles like he was in the middle of a rowdy congregation. His pale white horn shimmered as he levitated a scroll of Gultophine's Chronicles before him and muttered a passing prayer towards each dying body like he was emotionlessly inspecting tray after tray of tenderized meat. He sauntered straight past her, perhaps not even seeing the copper pegasus... perhaps not caring.

Harmony heard yet another chanting voice. It had half the strength of Breathstar's, but twice the emotion. She gazed aside and her vision fluttered down onto the soft contours of Dawnhoof's form. The young Deacon had barely started his rounds, and already he was kneeling beside a dying miner's body, grasping his limb with a pair of soft hooves as he murmured words of mixed scripture and encouragement. Halfway through the intimate session, his chestnut eyes rose across the landscape, stumbled over so many jagged, crimson sights, and fell fatefully upon the last pony's gaze. What was shared between the two was blank and placid, until his half of the union blurred with tears. The priest in training swiftly and professionally dried himself with a blinking of his lids. He stumbled on towards the next soul in the shuddering sea beneath him.

The time traveler's breath left her through pursing lips. She no longer knew where her anchor was. She hardly cared. It would be a blessing to leave this place in a green scream. Before she could contemplate the unthinkable, a dark shadow nearly ran her over. She stumbled back and blinked at the sight of Overseer Sladeburn trotting side-by-side with a clerk through the casualties of his industry.

“How many have been lost?” the stallion in black working gear murmured.

“We're guessing over one hundred and twenty,” his assistant remarked, pausing between canvas beds of shivering bodies to glance at a clipboard before him. “It's... It's far less than last time.”

“I see. Be sure to note that for my report to Haymane.” Sladeburn gazed with squinting eyes towards the mouths of the mineshafts. “What of the day's extraction?”

“The arcanium was safely dragged to the surface before the volunteers brought the survivors up.”

“Good. Make a tally. I want to know an estimate of the profit loss by sundown.”

Sladeburn marched off in a cloud of dust past Harmony. The last pony gazed through him with numb amber eyes. The horrified screams behind her wings drowned in a deep bass hum...

---

The roar in her ears persisted as she sat at the edge of the Immolatia Ward that evening, slumped in a chair and staring at the remaining soot on her hooves like so much Wasteland ash. None of the snowflakes from the future spoke to the last pony, or ever screamed of the many meat-strings and memories ripped from their owners. The Cataclysm was a horror of indescribable volume, and Scootaloo had never truly tasted of it. She was a fool to have ever thought she understood it, until now.

She realized—deeply entrenched in the gray gasps of Stonehaven—that she wasn't looking at the finer details like the future scavenger she had always pictured herself as being. She was looking for colors, looking for a prismatic beam of light in the middle of the great darkness. A deep pit formed in the last pony's stomach as Harmony realized she had only ever built the rainbow signal for herself, and upon the crest of such heart-splitting epiphany, she was helpless to respond to it. To acknowledge the hues of joy was to make this moment real, and she wasn't yet ready to buckle under the weight of it all.

She wasn't even ready for Suntrot when the little filly strolled up, bathing that darklit edge of the ward in a golden light of her own.

“Miss Harmony?”

“Hmm...?” The last pony gazed up. The Ward had quieted down. The giggles had subsided into muted breaths as Nurse Angel Cake, Zecora, and Inkessa tucked several yawning foals into their beds at the conclusion of the bleeding day. “Oh... Hey there, kid...” Visitation hours were long over, but that night—of all nights—Harmony and Pinkie hadn't been turned away. The pink anchor in question sat in Ice Song's bed, clutching the shivering young colt to her as she lovingly and quietly stroked the tiny pony's threadbare mane. “I... Uhm...” Harmony exhaled weakly into the quiet shadows of the children's sterile home. “I'm sorry if I haven't been up to chatting that much today...”

“It's okay,” Suntrot said with a gentle, innocent smile. “I have to go to bed soon. But I didn't want to go to sleep without saying hello to you.”

“I see.” The last pony gulped. “Uhm... 'Hello.' How's that?”

“Heeheehee... I like your voice, Miss Harmony.” The filly briefly coughed. “I bet if you sang, you'd sound like those rock ballads Auntie Pinkie Pie sometimes likes to share with us.”

Harmony's lips painfully curved for the briefest of moments. “I doubt it, kid.”

“Oh?”

“Let's just say there're worse things in this world than bitter medicine. Face it, squirt. Your voice is three times more sweet than both mine and Auntie Pinkie Pie's combined.”

“Heeheehee...” Suntrot stammered, then broke into a series of wheezing coughs.

Harmony was stabbed to hear a haunting pitch in the foal's shuddering exhales, like a shrill whistle was lodged deep in her infernite-stained lungs. A pit of sorrow re-blossomed back in her Entropan gut from earlier. She struggled to look in the foal's general direction.

“There's commotion all over t-town...” Suntrot hissed, wiped a painful tear dry, and braved a solid breath as she gazed up at the “Canterlotlian visitor.” “Did something bad happen at the mines today, Miss Harmony?”

“It's uh...” Harmony gulped. Her copper ears flicked, but still they couldn't shake loose the screams. “It's n-nothing for you to be concerned with, kid.” She smiled down at the little filly and was only half-surprised to see the girl shivering. “What's the matter? You cold?”

“I-I can't stop it...” The filly nervously chuckled, her hooves clattering against the tile floor of the ward. “The blankets help, but I can't seem to get t-toasty enough these nights.” She gulped, her sunken eyes staring off beyond the walls of Stonehaven. “My parents used to have this wonderful f-fireplace where we lived. I dream of it sometimes...”

Harmony blinked. She gazed up at an incoming, gray shadow. Inkessa stopped in her tracks upon making eye contact. There was no longer any malice in the nurse's pale expression. She waited upon the precipice of Harmony's next words before the last pony was even aware that she was saying them.

“Hey kiddo...” Harmony murmured and smiled down at Suntrot. “Why don't you stick around with me tonight?” She added in a soft breath. “I'll keep you warm...”

“You will?” Suntrot quietly beamed.

Harmony reached down and motioned with a single hoof. Suntrot gingerly grasped her limb, and when she did so the child felt as light as a moth-eaten leaf. The time traveler effortlessly lifted the foal into her lap and wrapped her copper limbs around her.

“Th-thank you, Miss Harmony...” The child sighed against the pegasus' turquoise vest, as if the blood stain wasn't ever there to begin with. “I feel better already.”

“Yeah...” The last pony held the dying past dearly as it trembled in her embrace. “No problem, kiddo.”

Harmony's face scrunched up. She sniffled, and then she clenched her amber eyes shut to lock the tears in. She murmured a mute prayer of thanks, for the child's convulsions were just what she needed in order to camouflage her own. They melted together into the dark stretch of night.

“No problem whatsoever....”

---

I hate you.

I hate you so very much. I hate you with the burning passion of all of my infernal, lonely days of suffering thrown together into one heaping crucible where I seek to burn your putrid effigy.

I hate you. I abhor you. I curse every loveless, lifeless, light-starving square centimeter of you. Upon your forehead, I plant all of my despair. In the meat of your heart, I stab all of my fears. Into your gut, I poison you with all of my broken dreams.

You are the predator who knows no sleep. You are the mindless, thoughtless, and soulless virus that festers in all the sacred places lost to us because you stole each and every one of them. There is no tome large enough to chronicle your bloody parade, to measure the infinitely deep pit you are filling with all of yesterday's corpses and none of tomorrow's roses.

You have taken more from me than my parents. You have devoured more than my sunny days of childhood. You have evacuated me of all hope and enchantment. You have stripped the world around me of all magic, so that I must navigate the ashes from your wake in a sterile cocoon of loneliness in a futile attempt to contemplate the desolation left by your genocidal whimsy.

There is nothing in this world that hasn't been touched by you, that hasn't been petrified by your leeching claws. You are the gardener of annihilation, the sower of pestilence and misery.

Life is nothing but an accidental appendix to you. Every breath is a startled scream as we've only ever sprouted up in a fitful spasm before floating back down to your freezing embrace. You are the only reason we've ever contemplated light, because illumination is merely a freakish accident that flounders beyond the rancid penumbra of your absolute opaqueness.

You must revel in what you are. There can only be a thrill that courses through your shadowy veins. What creature devours as much as you do, snuffs out as many lights as you do, swallows as many hopes and dreams as you do—and somehow doesn't feel a sense of pride and elation in being the abridgment of all that's ever been or ever tried to be?

You have existed all this time just to spite me. It is me that you've always wanted after the grand tragic history of the universe has run its course. I can boldly claim this only because I am the last Equestrian soul left to claim anything. Monsters of the Wasteland do not know you like I know you. They may occasionally be allies of you, but they've never been nemeses to you. They cannot afford the high seat of infamy that you have so egotistically planted beneath me. You must think of me as your trophy, a final and fitful morsel to struggle her shrieking way down your throat.

I will not give you the pleasure. You will not enjoy me. When you taste of my meat and when you finally eat from my heart, it will taste bitter in your mouth. It will make you regret that you ever decided to end it all by ending me. When all is finally gone, you will be full of all ponydom, but you will forever hunger for something that you never knew you would crave for.

Because once you will have consumed me, it will be you who is alone. It will be you who is the last of your kind, as you have only ever been a singular accident, the omnipresent problem made divine in the shell of your own fitful self-awareness. You will find that you'll be just as empty after devouring me as you were when you first ever ate of Consus.

When that darkest of days finally comes, I hope that you choke.

---

The shadows of Dredgemane night bathed the fourth floor ward of Stonehaven like the inside of a sepulcher. From where Harmony sat with the slumbering body of Suntrot in her embrace, she watched listlessly as Angel Cake shuffled from bed to bed, closely checking on the sleeping foals. To the last pony's immediate right, Inkessa squatted on a stool before a nurse's station, filling out the latest weekly report on the children's condition. In the far corner, Zecora sat beside a bulletin board full of juvenile sketches, pouring her blue eyes over mounds of scrolls in a desperate attempt to think up new and more promising elixirs for the infirmed equines of that place.

The room was gravely silent; a cough would sound like thunder between those walls. Regardless, the invalid children slept with immeasurable peace, filling the otherwise noisy place with eerie serenity.

Beyond the penumbra of Inkessa's lone lantern light, Pinkie Pie reclined in bed with the fitful body of Ice Song in her grasp. The mare's usually bright face was strangely blank, like a pink shadow encased in a suddenly silken frame. She stroked the bony curves in the colt's tiny neck, weathering his every random shiver with loving limbs. Then, out from the kiss of shadows, Pinkie's forehead began convulsing a centimeter above her right eye. A gasp escaped her lips, and she stared with wide sapphires across the dark-lit hovel towards where her sister sat. The expression on the earth pony's face was catastrophic, as if something infinitely worse than a collapsing mine was about to transpire.

“Oh, blessed Gultophine, spare us...” Inkessa exhaled in a sad breath.

“H-huh?” Harmony remarked.

Inkessa flashed her a wilted stare while shuffling up from her station. “Pinkamena's right eyebrow is quivering.”

“Yeah, so?” Harmony squinted after her. “What does... that... mean...?” The last pony's voice muted itself as she watched Inkessa, Angel Cake, and even a lone zebra shuffling up towards the bed in a somber circle.

Pinkie stared at them all, her blue eyes curving inward. The pink pony's nostrils flared as she summoned a deep breath, swallowed her way through a bitter cloud, and gently lowered her chin to nuzzle the mane of the colt in her lap. “Ice Song?” The candy-colored mare smiled ever so gently. “Are you awake, sweetie?”

“Mmmff... Nnngh... Auntie P-Pinkie Pie... ?” The shivering foal hissed at an odd angle towards the far shadows of the room. “Are y-you there... ?”

“I'm here, sweetie,” Pinkie Pie sing-songed as her sister and fellow cohorts huddled around his soft, shuddering breaths. “Auntie Pinkie Pie hasn't left you for a second. Tell us... how do you feel?”

“I feel... I f-feel...” The blue-haired colt wheezed. He opened his eyes to the dim lantern light, and when he did they were glazed orbs, like marbles deeply set in an azure glacier. “Auntie Pinkie Pie?”

“Shhh... It's okay. I'm right here.”

“Why...” He gulped. The little pony's shivers doubled, tripled. “Wh-why can't I see you?”

“But I can see you. We are both here, Ice Song.”

“We're all here, Ice Song,” Inkessa's voice joined in. Hers and the other fillies' breaths formed a warm halo around him. “Me, Angel Cake, Zecora, Miss Harmony... We're all here. You're not alone, darling.”

“I... I-I can't see any of you...” His blue lips quivered in time with his shakes. “I can't see anything.” His shivers briefly paused. A paleness washed over his already frozen features. “I'm... I-I... It's like I'm cr-crawling somewhere b-but I can't feel my hoofsies...” A sharp breath flew into him. He weathered the jolting impact in his lungs, the last strong thing he was capable of doing. “Oh Auntie Pinkie...” A tear trickled down his face, stained with jaundice. “Wh-where am I crawling to?”

“Shhh... Ice Song...”

“I'm sc-scared. I-I'm so scared, Auntie. There is nothing there. Th-where is n-nothing...”

“You have nothing to be afraid of, Ice Song,” Pinie suddenly said, cuddling his shivering skull into the crook of her neck, drowning the last vestiges of him in her warmth. “Do you remember the words of my Grandma? Do you remember what I used to sing to you whenever I visited?”

“You... y-you sang...” His tear-stained face glistened in the faint touch of a dim lantern beyond. He leaned slowly away from it in icy free-fall. “You s-s-sang...”

“Giggle at the ghosties,” Pinkie Pie chirped with a voice as bright as the sun. “That's what I tell myself to do, and it always helps. Whenever I am scared, whenever I feel alone in the dark, I know that the best way to deal with what frightens me is to laugh at it.”

“L-laugh... Auntie P-P-Pinkie Pie...?”

“Heeheehee... Mmmhmmm...” She nuzzled him and murmured lovingly into his ear. “You are a brave, brave stallion, Ice Song. So handsome and strong. The shadows don't even know who they're dealing with. If you laugh at them, they will disappear. It's that easy! Besides... heeheehee... wh-what pony doesn't like a good laugh?”

Ice Song's blanching face fought through several heaving breaths at the end of Pinkie's utterance. He was suddenly deaf to the sniffling sounds that came from Nurse Angel and Inkessa as both tearing mares leaned into each other. Zecora stared with a deadpan expression tempered by years of wisdom. The zebra glanced over her cloaked shoulder to look at Harmony across the way.

The last pony stared from the shadows. Her limbs clung tighter to the warm fossil that was Suntrot in her embrace. Nopony else noticed, but Ice Song's jaded eyes had pierced the shadows of the room to find her.

“It's... th-that easy...?” The little foal sputtered.

“Yes, darling.” Pinkie Pie cuddled and rocked him gently. Her breath was a candied whisper in the bitter frost of the night. “It always has been, and it always will be. Life is a party, Ice Song. So laugh. Laugh at what scares you. Show the shadows who is the boss.”

“Boss... of th-the p-party...” Ice Song murmured. The edge of his pale lips twitched. “Streamers. So m-much cake and fr-frosting...” The twitching increased. A pair of copper shadows billowed briefly in his irises, and then the twitching transformed into a porcelain smile as he cackled at them. “Hahah... ha... ha...” The smile froze as his body froze. Ice Song's skull tilted towards the earth as his torso deflated into the hollow of Pinkie's embrace.

Angel Cake shuddered. Inkessa sniffled and held her associate closely. Zecora somberly hung her head and trotted over to murmur something into Pinkie's ears.

In a room full of bodies, only Harmony was alone. She festered in a frozen abyss that cocooned her, for the last pony saw something at the climax of Ice Song's life that nopony else was capable of seeing. The colt was not laughing at death when he was taken.

He was laughing at her.

Comments

[Axan Zenith]

Oh, Christ, skirts. That was horrifying.

[Race9000]

I am attempting to read all existing 52 chapters of this story in one day. What have I gotten my self into?

[AWsome Sawse]

Something about the fact that Ice Song, in his dying moments, had no idea whatsoever that he was being used to toy with Harmony... It just absolutely terrifies me. As far as he knew, his eyes were just settling into a random spot on his irrelevant field of vision. It makes you think if the possibilities, you know?

[DigitalCore]

'Sojourn'.
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.

[BlueNinja]

a battleship of friendship.”

Personally I'd rather have the Jager of Friendship. They stand up to kaiju better.

in this little family of hours.

*ours

[arachnidsGrip]

2591349 Y8y Princess 8ride reference.

~Vriska Serket