Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"I Need Help!"

The return journey looked to be considerably longer than the two miles flown by a rainbow crow.

We'd been teleported to the least accessible southeastern restraint zone. That left us to navigate a maze of unmaintained access roads, all full of potholes and broken paving stones, often having to push through bramble-choked paths to the scratched and bleeding detriment of my hide when my magic proved insufficient. Lord Tirek let me blaze the way silently but, despite my growing frustration with him, I cordially held thorny branches for him to pass.

The early afternoon clouds building around Geyser Mountain gradually grew thicker, mammiform, gray, foreboding, and almost black. It could have been dusk, except for a sliver of blue I caught to the south, now and again, between trees or as we walked far enough beyond this or that mountain top.

That smell of impending rain made me look up. My mouth dropped open. The Canterlot Inquisition weatherpony had called it virga: streaks of rain falling from a cloud that evaporate before hitting the ground.

Unfortunately, the mass blue-grey streaks overhead weren't evaporating.

The cloud burst instantly drenched us.

"Ugh!" I cried, my mane plastered across my eyes. Coughing water I'd breathed in, half-drowned, I released a sapling which hit Tirek like an angry teacher's switch.

"Ow!" he yelled. "You cur!"

The torrent sundered me to my knees by shear weight of water, followed by an almost simultaneous lighting strike on the closest horned peak. The rain for the next few minutes battered the leaves and dirt path, accompanied by peals of thunder.

The rain grew gradually lighter. I decided I could get away without an apology and proceeded, holding branches aside. I heard the patter of his hooves following. When we approached a meadow, I glanced back to see a satisfying raised red welt across Lord Tirek's left gray-furred cheek.

Served him right for trusting me.

My soaked uniform khaki shirt stuck to me as if glued and showed I'd grown the muscles I'd never had as a youth. Chthony's chthonic ink hadn't washed out, though. The dye stained me black all the way past my cutie mark. The soaked notes in my pocket were a total loss.

Trotting ahead, I said, gesturing with my nose, "That's the main east south road. See it? Between the trees at the edge of the meadow?"

"Sweet Celestia!"

"Are you trying to be ironic?" It was a mile away.

He didn't answer.

A half-hour found us stopped beyond the southern side of a bridge crossing a rift filled with a raging stream, overlooking an S-curved road that descended to the Cerberus Gate. I could see neither the huts nor the little Big House. I saw a cyan earth pony mare struggling to pull a darkly weathered pine wagon loaded with...

Whatever— She didn't see us and disappeared beyond view.

It had become dark beyond the clouds. We'd taken so long to get back that the sun had finally set. I murmured, "She's not here."

Lord Tirek asked, "Who's not here?"

I mentally kicked myself. "That mare was Sweet Onion, a mare who can make anypony cry." She had once caused entire villages to grow depressed enough to migrate so that her guild underlings could plunder the land. "If the timid thing is still here, they're all here."

Certainly, Sunset Shimmer would have stirred the pot had she arrived with Brandywine. She would have brought news of the emptying restraint zones and pointed out the dangers of being a small group of ponies alone where an aggressor with a chip on his or her shoulder could easily lurk and plan an ambush.

As we were doing.

Except that I had no plan. Standing in a miserable steamy drizzle didn't help me think of one, either.

Lord Tirek stiffened. "I sense powerful magic."

Cued, I flicked away the drops hanging on my ears and swiveled them around. I heard hoof falls. Distant, ponderous ones. Measured. Heavy. Not clattery at all. Easily missed at first and echoing faintly as they closed.

Then I recognized hooves striking the wet wood of the bridge. I turned.

I gasped and froze—and found myself trembling as an improbable glowing sight passed from my spooked horse brain into my consciousness. My mouth dropped open.

Chthony flew at me...

Wait. No.

A bright yellow aura shimmered around the Chthon. Suspended half a pony-length in the air, he peddled his webbed antelope legs and writhed his tentacles as the whites of his eye grew larger. He croaked, "Brownie!"

A more terrifying sight followed him.

A yellow unicorn filly advanced slowly, carefully placing each hoof as she stepped off the bridge. Her aura enveloped her like a bonfire, issuing from every follicle and pore—not just from her horn—like flames that pulsed and fluttered as they burnt in an ethereal wind. The same wind caused her red-streaked yellow mane and tail to wave in an imitation of fire. So much magic streamed outward that it beamed from her mouth and her turquoise eyes, turning them white. Her magic swarmed with swirling sparkles. A shrill ringing accompanied her like the sound you hear in the aftermath of listening to very loud music.

The apparition saw me. Whimpering, she cried, "Please!" She breathed in heavy terrifying puffs like she existed on the cusp between life and death. "I need help!"

I saw this.

I heard this.

But my eyes had already gone wide. My heart raced and the roaring of my blood in my ears swamped all sound. I stopped breathing. Shaking, I backed, one step, two, ready to leap away—

I bumped into something soft but unyielding. A claw clamped onto the fleshy part of my withers, grabbing and pushing back as I reflexively shied, rotating away. I gasped, unable to yell, forced to stay on four hooves, forced to glance over the precipice I'd been prevented from diving off of.

Shadowed jagged rocks lay tens of pony-lengths below.

Lord Tirek shook me, then shook me harder until he—and what I had almost done—became more real than my fear. I began to breathe. As I pushed my panic down, he whispered, "Stupid equine! It's only a unicorn. Show some courage. It's the 'she' you've been waiting for."

Yes...

Yes, it was...

...Sunset Shimmer.

Think.

I was trapped in a pretzel of time. The exigencies the future, already cemented in the past, forced this very moment. As a pony of information, it occurred to me that if there was any free will in my situation it was in what information that escaped from our encounters today to the ponies of the past. The more I avoided the meeting, the more catastrophic the next encounter might be for all of us. Sunset Shimmer's alicorn-like powers might be thanks to time compensating for its increasing pretzelization! All Tyrannus Tempus required naught of insignificant me other than I relay one simple message with my dying breath while using my talent.

I took a deep breath, then another longer one. I shook my head to clear it.

I wanted to live. I saw flaxen Crinkle Paper in my mind. I had a part to play and wanted to be the hero in the drama.

Hero...? That probably wasn't going to happen.

My heart raced, but at least my brain had checked back into the hotel (though not my queasy stomach). I looked at the ill-fated filly and realized she'd been speaking. "...help. I need to— pacify this monster. I have to get back to him. Can you do something?"

I glanced back at Tirek who'd retreated into the shadows of his cassock. To her I answered, "Sure."

To him I hissed, "She is the one. Behave yourself." To emphasize the command, I kicked his fore-hoof before stepping to meet my destiny.

Sunset moaned. "Thank Celestia!"

I reached out with my magic, unwilling to touch her directly. She rotated Chthony safely and deftly out of the way, and incidentally to the edge of the cliff where she could have instantly "pacified" him. Rolling downhill would likely snap his legs if not break his every bone. In that she didn't see her opportunity, she wasn't evil and remarkably like her mentor.

I felt an exciting electrical tingle as I projected my aura of Levitation into hers. I could sense her unlimited magical potential and overwhelming determination. I touched her cheek remotely and said, "I can surely help you, Sunset Shimmer. All you need to do is follow me down this road—"

I continued to speak even as her fire-bright eyes acquired that patented glazed-over look. While I finished my instructions to follow the path down to and to deal with Cerberus, she reached up and tapped my horn.

No, she tapped the ring. It clicked. She said in a distant voice, "Oh. It's transparent now."

She walked on past, porting squirming Chthony over her shoulder. My throat closed up and I choked on an odd emotion.

Celestia had said, "Too bad you did not see how useful it could have been to encourage others achieve their dreams."

I saw Crinkle Paper in my mind, wearing her work khakis, shaking her head in disgust. Tears rolled down my cheeks. In Sunset Shimmer's future, I would again coerce her one more time—yet, were I to have caught any pony doing to Crinkle Paper what I had just done to Sunset Shimmer I would have throttled him.

Celestia had said, "Think long on your crimes and what you could have done better. One day maybe you can yet be of service to Equestria."

I had thought about it. I had forgotten about it.

"I am evil." I said it out loud—the better for me to hear my confession that way.

Lord Tirek put a companionable claw on my withers. "In equine terms that goes without saying, White Stockings." I sensed a bit of awe. "What is the plan?"

I took a deep breath. I had tangled myself up in magic beyond comprehension so terrible that it had broken time. I saw the horrible pony I could be, had been, and would be in Sunset Shimmer's future. My past. And our present.

What choices did I have?

"Squeeze past her," I replied. "Try not be be seen. Can you make that amulet turn transparent and stop working like you did my ring?"

"I can. I will."

"Good pony!"

"Don't push it, White Stockings," he said, but with the barest of laughs. He clopped ahead and squirmed by the slow marching yellow filly, putting his goat hooves to good use on the narrow path, then slunk silently out of view. I did not trust him, but did trust him to do this.

Ahead into the crucible.