• Published 2nd Sep 2012
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Harmony Theory - Sharaloth



Rainbow Dash awakens in a strange land and must discover why, and how to return home.

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Chapter 35: Waking the Apocalypse

The first instance of an Element’s Activated power I ever encountered was perhaps the most important day of my life. This was not when I found the Elements, nor was it when I gained my wings. These are important events, surely, but they could not have happened without a single incident that served as the genesis for the events that would lead me to both places.

Like many ponies, the most important day in my life was the day I got my cutie mark. The same day each of my best friends gained their own cutie marks. On that day Rainbow Dash performed the Sonic Rainboom, a feat so unheard of as to be mere legend. That explosion of light, sound and magic played an integral role in each of us finding our Talents, and thus bound all of us together, entwining our fates.

The absolute imperative of that moment was driven home to me by my protege Starlight Glimmer many years ago, when she tapped into the Elements to power a time-travel spell that allowed her to prevent the Sonic Rainboom from happening. The ensuing succession of catastrophically broken timelines I encountered showed without a doubt that our world only exists because of Dash’s actions. And it is because of the Elements that it happened.

No doubt the timing of this incident is surprising. Yes, I am saying that the Sonic Rainboom is an Activated ability of the Element of Loyalty, at least as Dash and other Bearers can perform it. Furthermore, I am saying that Rainbow Dash called upon this power years before she’d even heard of the Elements, let alone borne one long enough to use its powers.

How is this possible? The answer is actually fairly straightforward. The Elements transcend time and space, and as part of a Harmony Event they bond with their bearers in a way that also transcends time and space. This astonishing fact shall be explored more in a later section, but for now suffice it to say that Rainbow Dash always has been and always will be a bearer of her Element. We all have. We all are. We all will be.

Which begs the inevitable, paradoxical question: did we choose to take up the Elements because we were already connected to them, or were we already connected to them because we chose to take up the Elements? This ‘chicken-or-egg’ circularity is not helpful, of course, but it points towards the true question that plagues me: did we ever even have a choice? Or have our destinies always been controlled by the ineffable desires of the Elements, if indeed they have desires at all? There is an answer, I am sure, but it lies beyond conventional understanding in the moment of a Harmony Event.

-From the fourth section of Harmony Theory by Twilight Sparkle

Chapter Thirty-Five: Waking The Apocalypse

Nightmare Umbra stood high above the surface on a platform of ashes and fire, and watched the wave of sound and color devour the world. It came from the south, rolling over everything and anything it encountered in its ever-expanding circle. It appeared as a rippling wall of black and red to the ponies no doubt panicking from the mere sight of it. She could see beyond that facade, though, her immortal eyes picking out the shimmering rainbow that was the true force of the shockwave.

It hit the Everstorm before it reached her and, impossibly, blew through the Storm like it wasn’t there. A moment later and Umbra was chagrined at her own shocked reaction. Of course the Everstorm didn’t stop it. Nothing in the universe could stand up to the power of the Elements of Harmony. The whole length of the eternal barrier lit up with prismatic light, and then the wavefront was moving on, swallowing the Kingdom as it had the Republics. Her body writhed with swarming worms just beneath the surface of her skin, testament to her agitation.

What has she done? Twinkle Shine’s voice called out in her mind, barely a whisper amongst a million screams, but heard clearly all the same.

“Rainbow Dash Has Woken The Apocalypse,” Umbra replied, unaccustomed fear making her voice shake. She mastered herself, smothering the terror with a surge of black rage and cold hate. “Thus Begins The End Of All Things.” Then she lifted her wings and steeled her will as the sonic rainboom crashed through her.

She spun and tumbled, her horn blazing with black fire as she fought to hold her cloud of ash and bone together. The energy of the rainboom crackled in her bones, flooding her veins with light and lightning. Somewhere, deep inside, she felt the part of her she hated most respond to the power with a joyous shout. She muffled that cry even as she gave voice to one of her own: a scream of defiance and rage backed with the force of her dark magic. Her power cascaded through the rainboom, wrenching her and her army free from its grip.

She floated amongst the drifting ashes of her army, silently recovering from the effort it had taken to escape. She took stock of her forces, and found that her efforts had been effective in shielding the bulk of them. Even so, she had lost a fifth of the ghouls she had left the Solar Capital with, their ashes streaming back to rejoin with her now that they lacked an anchor. It wasn’t a devastating loss, but it still stung, and it would slow her march to dominance.

No matter. She would make do. She commanded her army to organize itself again, and soon she was once more riding a cloud towards the Stile Islands. There could be no more delays. It was time to strike.

The archipelago spread out before her, dominated by a range of mountains that cradled idyllic valleys and deep forests. From her vantage point she could see the bases of both the Kingdom and Republics forces, as well as all their navy and troop deployments. She smiled, cold and cruel. The fools were still arrayed to fight each other! She had ensured they knew she was coming, made it clear what her destination would be. Yet each ignored their true enemy to snarl and shake their spears at the other. It wasn’t unexpected, merely disappointing.

Her cloud began spreading out as it neared the islands. Tendrils of ash speared towards the ships of both sides, with thicker columns moving for the heavily protected bases. She spread her wings and moved for the largest of the islands, and the no-pony’s-land between the two sides.

She was nearly there when the first signs of resistance came, the hesitation likely a result of confusion from the passing of the rainboom. Anti-air fire exploded all around her, sending flesh-rending flak through her body. She grinned at the sensation, her tissues knitting back together so fast that pieces of shrapnel were still moving through her as the wounds they created closed behind them.

“Pathetic,” she said, her voice carrying clearly to the crews manning the guns. She let them continue firing for half a minute, soaking up the damage and picking out all the most accurate crews. Then she reared back and let out a scream that scoured the exposed face of the mountains like a thousand years of erosion. Behind the stunning force of her cry she sent Ashfire. It struck in lances of obsidian force, enveloping the ten best of the AA guns and turning them into pillars of black immolation.

People died. Some were too slow in abandoning their post. Some foolishly tried to put out the black flames, and got too close. Some were just unlucky. She felt each death as they became a part of her, their ashes flowing across land and sky to join her body, their voices adding to the chorus within her.

The anti-air guns fell silent. She sneered.

A roar preceded a trio of heavy, reptilian bodies falling on her from above. Dragons, from the Republics according to their armor. Bigger than Griffins, stronger and tougher than all but the most Talented of ponies, but far rarer and more precious than the gemstones they ate, Dragons were rarely put into combat unless their power could make a difference. They wouldn’t make that difference here, of course, but she was pleased they were making the effort.

These Dragons were winged, and they had used that advantage to get above her while she was dealing with the AA guns. They hit with practiced precision, one landing directly on her while the other two let loose jets of Dragonfire on her wings. Her feathers melted under the magical heat, bones exploding as her marrow boiled. The claws of the Dragon that hit her severed her spine in three places, with one actually cleaving through her skull and shearing half her head away.

She did not fall. She didn’t even dip in the air from the added weight. She twisted her head completely around to look into the eyes of the brave Dragon. Terror filled those eyes as the damage he’d done vanished in heartbeats. She could have struck out at him then, sliced him in half with a laser or bathed him in Ashfire. She didn’t, though. She didn’t have to do anything. Her blood was on his claws, and he was too busy staring at her rapidly regenerating face to wipe it off.

He jerked and let out a basso scream of agony as her blood found its way through his thick scales and began twisting and tearing its way through him. He fell to the side, plummeting the remaining distance to the ground and impacting with a hard crunch. The pain of her infestation was so great he did not even notice how the fall had broken one of his wings. With increasing desperation he snapped at his legs, trying to gnaw off his limbs before the tendrils of her blood reached his torso.

She turned her gaze away from the fallen Dragon, looking instead to his circling companions who were watching her with wide, fearful eyes. “You Cannot Win,” she whispered to them. “I Am The Tide Of War Itself. But Come, Let Us See If The Courage Of Dragons Has Survived You Becoming Coddled Slaves Of The Ponies.”

Anger burned in their eyes, but her ears caught the crackle of a Republics radio speaking in their ears. With a roar of frustration, both Dragons peeled away and began flying towards their base, swooping low to scoop up their fallen, writhing comrade as they went. She supposed they could save his life if they moved fast enough. Ashfire gathered along her horn to ensure they wouldn’t make it.

Let them go, Twinkle Shine urged. Umbra paused, considering it. She had no particular need to destroy them immediately, but she had no reason to let them live through an encounter with her either. Casually dismissing the threat Dragons pose will set the right tone. Besides, look at how they’re scrambling to get distance. They know they could be killed with ease, and they’re wondering why they haven’t been blasted out of the sky yet. These Dragons won’t be telling heroic stories about how they escaped the great Nightmare Umbra, they’ll be whispering in fear about how they hit as hard as they could and it did nothing.

Umbra stared after the fleeing Dragons for a moment, then turned away. Twinkle Shine’s arguments were sound. She would let them live, for now.

She drifted to the earth, and the moment her hoof touched ground she let loose a blast of magic that tore the dirt up for half a mile in every direction. Soldiers were tossed into the air, trenches collapsed and bunker walls cracked and fell. She waited five minutes, unmoving. The pause allowed the few bravest souls to take their shots at her while the rest fled or saw to the injured. Once she was convinced they’d recovered from the shock of her arrival, she lit her horn and sent a pillar of Ashfire high enough that it could be seen anywhere on the islands.

The Rainboom had blown every cloud to wisps, but the moisture wasn’t gone, just scattered. She took command of the water and air with an effort of her immortal will, and at her direction a storm began to form. Ashsprites bled from her pillar of dark power, scuttling into the newly formed clouds and strengthening them even further with a twisted version of old pegasus magic. They would ensure her storm only grew even as she turned her attention to other things. Namely, the gathered militaries of two great nations.

Celestia, Luna, please let it work this time, Twinkle Shine sent out her silent prayer.

Nightmare Umbra had no prayers to offer. The Alicorns would not answer her, and the one being she would deign to call god was the one she wished to destroy most of all.

“It Is Time,” she said, sending her voice to every corner of the islands, inside the fortified bunkers and on the bridges of the ships. In the sky, beneath the swirling clouds, her image appeared, glaring into the terror-filled hearts of every creature that could see it. ““For Long Now You Have Stared At Each Other Over The Barrels Of Your Guns. For Long Now You Have Waited In Torturous Anticipation For The War You All Knew Was Inevitable. In Your Hearts You Wished For It To Begin At Last. Rejoice, For I Have Come To Answer Those Secret Prayers.

“Are You Prepared? Have You Said Goodbye To Your Families? Have You Made Your Peace With The Distant Sun And Uncaring Moon? I Think Not, For I Hear Your Cries For Deliverance Even Now. Plead As You Will, You Shall Receive No Answer From Them, And No Mercy From Me.

“Now Let Loose Your War-Cries, For War Has Found You! A War Like None Of You Have Ever Imagined. A War To End Your Pathetic Races And Bring The World To Its Rightful Dominion. Cry Out In Joy. Cry Out In Fear. Cry Out In Pain. All Your Screams Will Be A Hymn To My Glory, And They Will Resound Eternal Within Me.

“I Am Nightmare Umbra! I Am The Destroyer Of Worlds! At Long Last, I Shall Finish What I Began So Many Centuries Ago! At Long Last I Shall Crush The Nations Of The World Beneath My Hooves! At Long Last I Shall End The Legacy Of Celestia And Luna! At Long Last… It Is Time.”

The pillar of Ashfire burst with an ear-splitting roar of thunder. In that moment her cloud of ash touched down in every place it had been aimed at, and from it her legions sprang forth. The air was filled with the sound of explosions, gunfire, and screaming. In the center of it all Nightmare Umbra stood. She didn’t join in the fighting. No, that would be counter-productive. She merely had to be present and visible, a symbol and an anchor for the fear and anger of both sides. Unable to stop herself, she glanced towards the south, to where the rainboom had originated. It might be her time, finally, but she knew it wouldn’t last.

The Elements were fully in play now, and everyone’s time might be about to run out.

***

Star Fall did not wake so much as slowly come to the realization that she was already awake. Gaining lucidity was like trying to catch a firefly. It tantalized her with its light, and darted away as soon as she flung herself close. Still, catch that elusive lightning bug she did, as the chemical numbness keeping her unaware lost its grip on her brain. Her final journey to consciousness was aided by a jarring, constant beeping and the whirrs and ticks of medical machinery at work. The first thing she took note of was how her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. The sensation was so incongruous to her otherwise pleasant emptiness that it kickstarted her mind into trying to identify the source of the disparity.

The answer, when it came, was simple and comforting. She was in the fading grip of a powerful opiate, and from the hospital sounds around her she could surmise that this opiate was medically administered morphine. On the one hoof, this was a good thing. A hospital meant she was in the care of professionals, and that she could be reasonably certain whatever injuries she’d sustained weren’t going to kill her. On the other hoof… on the other hoof… oh dear.

She wrenched her eyes open, her heart struggling against the drugs to match the sudden panic in her thoughts. The white room blurred around her, but she didn’t try to focus on it. Instead all her attention was on her left foreleg. It lay on top of the blankets, swaddled in bandages that did nothing to disguise how it ended far sooner than it should have.

Her head fell back on her pillow, and she embraced the medicated feeling of disconnection from her body. She needed that distance, it kept her from screaming until her lungs gave out.

“Hey, Fall,” Astrid said from somewhere close by. “You’re awake again.”

Star Fall looked around her bed, but she couldn’t see her friend anywhere. Her eyes swept back and forth across the room several times before a ludicrous thought struck her, and she looked straight up. Someone had installed a mounting up there instead of the standard drop ceiling and then bolted a mattress to it. There, lounging on the ceiling, was her protector. Astrid gave her a little wave, and Star Fall let out a strangled giggle. “Is this real or is this the drugs?” she husked out.

“First time you’ve been coherent enough to ask that question,” Astrid said. “I’ll take that as a good sign. It’s real. You want some water?”

“Goddess, yes,” Star Fall replied. Astrid maneuvered herself to ground level using a series of handlebars attached to the walls. She got a cup and a straw, filled it with cold water and offered it to Star Fall. A few sips later, the dry mouth feeling was beginning to abate and she felt more able to think through the fog in her brain. One thought rose above the others and made itself known with a desperate urgency that demanded immediate action. “Hey, Astrid?” The Griffin looked to her attentively. “How do you go to the washroom if you’re upside-down?”

Astrid snickered. “Not telling, Fall. But it is indescribably awkward.”

Star Fall lay back and nodded, accepting this answer in all its wisdom. It took some time, and another glass of water, before her mind was ordered enough to ask a question that wasn’t going to be embarrassing. “How long?”

“Five days,” Astrid replied. “You haven’t been out the whole time, but you haven’t really been all there, you know? Between the pain and the drugs and the fever.” She set the water down on a small table next to the bed, then let herself drop back up to the ceiling mattress. “You had a nasty infection. Apparently it had started before you used healing magic, and the magic just made it worse. You got through it, but it was rough going for a while there.”

Star Fall absorbed that news with a flare of annoyance. Half the point of using her healing spellsheet had been to prevent just such an infection. “We’re still in the nightlands?”

“Yeah, the RIA’s being nice to us. Got this whole wing of the hospital sealed off and swarming with agents whose first priority is to protect you. A team of doctors and nurses on call twenty-four seven, too.”

“That sounds like… a lot.”

“Some shit’s gone down since you’ve been out, Fall.” Astrid’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Star Fall took a deep breath and concentrated on her memory. There were flashes of what she assumed was her time under fever. Confused and disjointed images and sounds. Emotions without context, mostly fear. She moved past those, filing them away to be analyzed and brought to coherence at a later date. Instead she searched for her last clear memory, which was of lying in a garden reading a book. “We were in the jungle, outside of the place where we killed Cash,” she said. “Something was wrong with the sky, I don’t know what.”

“That was Rainbow Dash,” Astrid said. “She and Charisma had a big old super-fight. Dash won, the asskicker is dead. We all celebrated.” The look in her eye said there was definitely more to say, but that she also did not want to say it.

Star Fall wasn’t going to let that stand. “Spit it out.”

“Fall–”

“Something went wrong,” Star Fall interrupted her. “More than a stupid infection. Tell me.”

“Cash…” She clattered her beak, a myriad of emotions crossing her face before she settled on a cold, professional rage. “He’s not dead.”

“You pulled his heart out of his chest,” Star Fall said, recalling the scene with a joyful clarity. “How could he not be dead?”

“Good question. I say we ask Dash, when and if we ever catch up to her.”

“Explain, Astrid. Give me the sequence of events.”

Astrid sighed. “Dash won her fight with Charisma, but she was spooked by something. Maybe having to kill for the first time, you know how that is. Anyway, she went in to check Cash’s body, and five minutes later she walks out wearing that fucking necklace, and he’s right beside her.”

“Celestia’s light,” Star Fall whispered. “He turned her. Like… like he tried to do before, only this time he succeeded. He must have tricked us somehow, made us think he was dead. An illusion? A transformation spell of some kind? Maybe… maybe some kind of hidden life magic? I mean, it’s just myth and fantasy, but it’s not like it’d be the first legend to show up as real recently.”

Astrid shook her head. “He still looked pretty bad. Had his guts practically hanging out. Whatever he did, I think we can rule out illusion. He gave me a nasty look, too, the kind I’d give to someone who killed me, but I didn’t stick around to find out what he wanted to say. I grabbed you and dropped off the face of the earth.”

Star Fall gave her friend a smile of thanks. “The others?”

“Yeah, bad news and good news there. The good news is, nobody’s dead and everybody who needed a doctor is just a couple doors down the hall. They all made it out. Turns out Cash wasn’t all that interested in revenge.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“The bad news is that whatever Cash did to get Dash on his side, he did it to the other superponies too. Applejack and the new girl, Fluttershy, left with him, wearing shiny new jewelry.”

It was fortunate that Star Fall still had a lot of morphine in her system, otherwise she was sure the impact of this revelation would be severely detrimental to her health. Instead, she was able to take in the information and formulate the best possible response. “Oh fuck, that’s not good.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Another thought occurred to Star Fall. “The book. Astrid, when you grabbed me, did you get the book too?”

Astrid snorted. “Who do you think I am, Fall.” She pointed one talon down at the bedside table. It took Star Fall a long few seconds to recognize the leather-bound volume that rested beside her half-finished water glass. “Of course I grabbed the book.”

Star Fall lurched over, taking hold of the book and dragging it onto the bed with her, spilling her water on the floor in the process. “Harmony Theory,” she read out loud. “Thank Celestia. Astrid, this is the key to everything, I just know it.”

“Yeah, now we just have to live long enough for you to use it,” Astrid said with a sigh.

Star Fall paused in the process of opening the book to look for an index. “That sounds like there’s more bad news.”

“Nothing much, just the end of the world,” Astrid said with a wry, mirthless smile. “Umbra attacked the Stile Islands.”

Star Fall tensed, a surge of complex pain and anger overwhelming the chemical calm. She suddenly felt nauseous, and didn’t have the control to hold it back. She flopped over the side of the bed, and it was only Astrid’s superb reflexes that managed to get a garbage can under her before she vomited up a stomach full of bile and acid. She hung her head for a long few minutes, retching twice more as the room spun around her. Finally, when her head and stomach had settled back into the floating disconnectedness of a morphine buzz, she took a deep breath and looked to her guardian. “That’s a hell of a thing to tell a sick girl.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t want you to get blindsided with it later,” Astrid replied with a half-hearted shrug. “There’s more, but I’ll let Gamma explain all that crap when she inevitably shows up to browbeat us for failing our mission.”

Star Fall took another deep breath, mentally fumbling through the exercises that would help her still-fuzzy thoughts return to full capacity. It was frustrating trying to regain control of herself, every time she thought she was making progress it slipped away again. “Astrid, I need you to get the doctors. I want them to stop giving me painkillers.”

“That’s not a good idea, Fall.”

“I need to think clearly, Astrid. I’ve got a book I need to read that was written by a pony infamous for hiding important information in rambling tangents and dropping high-level math on her readers out of nowhere. I need to be able to remember things. The drugs are distracting.”

“They take you off meds and you’re going to be plenty distracted,” Astrid said. “I hear phantom limb is a real bitch.”

“Huh.” Star Fall contemplated that for a moment, then bobbed her head in acquiescence. “Good point. Still, I need to be on something that won’t make me sleepy or stupid.”

“I’ll talk to them.”

“Thank you. And could you get me some more water?” Her recently emptied stomach gave a low growl. “Oh! And some food? And note paper? And colored pens and highlighters if they have them!”

Astrid smiled at her. “Only for you, Fall.” She climbed down again, then hooked her claws into a quartet of heavy weights and made her slow, plodding way out the door.

Star Fall lay back and looked at the book next to her. Then she flipped open the cover. Her thoughts were still fuzzy and she didn’t know how much she’d retain, but she had to get started. She had a lot of reading to do.

***

The doctors, it turned out, had already been weaning her off of the morphine, and were happy to accelerate the process once she made her wishes known. They did, however, warn her in no uncertain terms that she had suffered serious trauma, and shouldn’t be contemplating getting out of bed for at least another week. She took this advice under consideration and politely declined. She didn’t have time for convalescence; she needed to be out saving the world!

She spent some time contemplating her body while she could still feel the weightless distance of morphine in every motion. She was hurt, yes, and badly so. Even with her limited medical knowledge she knew she would need weeks before she was up to any sort of strenuous activity, and even then there would be months of adapting to the loss of a hoof. The knowledge was frustrating, she needed to be back in action now. If only she had the remarkable recuperative powers of Rainbow Dash.

That thought sparked another one, which in turn led to another, a process that continued for a surprisingly short amount of time before she arrived at an audacious solution to her problem. She closed her eyes and focused on her magic. It was there, a pool of crimson power, ready to move as her will directed it. She thought back to when Rainbow Dash was healing from her own injuries at an incredible pace. She’d taken a look at Dash’s aura then, and seen how her natural magic had interacted with the healing array Star Fall had put together for her. While she couldn’t ever hope to equal Dash’s raw, explosive power, her Talent allowed her a fine control over her magic that none could match. She could use that control to emulate other pegasus Talents, like Cloudwalking, so there was no logical reason she shouldn’t be able to similarly copy Dash’s enhanced healing.

She set to work testing her theory. Her power stirred to life at the call of her will, reacting with an eager thrum. She sent it spinning through her body, sparking along her nerves and thrumming in her veins. The reaction began as a few tingles spread over her body that quickly grew to an itching that was just on the edge of being painful. She persevered, tweaking the flow and form of her magic, trying to find the same pattern she had seen within the ancient pegasus. Then, with a suddenness that made her gasp, her magic fell into a smooth, steady rhythm that pulsed through her body in counterpoint to the beating of her heart.

She relaxed into the bed, the painful itch gone. A vibrant thrill was left in its wake, the sense of strength and potential that she had only felt once before, in the Deep Power. She contemplated what had just happened. It had been like gears that had been grinding against each other had suddenly clicked into place and begun to turn freely. The flow of magic was so easy now, she barely had to concentrate on it at all. With a little practice, it wouldn’t even take that much effort. She wondered if she would even be able to keep it going while she slept.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a group of ponies coming up the hall. Agent Gamma, flanked by four RIA guards, strode down the hospital corridor like she expected doors to open and crowds to get out of her way through mere fact of her presence. When she reached Star Fall’s door, she turned to regard her escort with a cool gaze. “I was promised privacy when speaking to the Princess,” she said with a tone that made it clear that she considered any argument irrelevant.

Those are our orders, Ma’am,” one of her guards replied with a slight tilt of his head and a faint smile on his lips. The way he kept his cool in the face of Gamma’s overbearing attitude instantly made Star Fall like him, which, she decided, probably also meant he was a Changeling and she should be very wary of her emotions in his presence.

Gamma didn’t respond, instead stepping into Star Fall’s room and shutting the door behind her. Her horn lit with the deep blue of her magic and she cast a spell to muffle sounds outside the room, making Star Fall’s ears pop at the change in pressure. She waited for another moment, allowing the spell to settle before she pulled a chair up to Star Fall’s bedside and sat down. Then she leaned forward, resting her hooves on the bed and locked her intense eyes on Star Fall’s. “What went wrong?”

Star Fall held back a grim smile. Right to business, then. “Do you want the full list of screw-ups, or just the most important ones?”

“Yes, let’s discuss the most important failure.”

“Cash got away,” Star Fall said. There was more that she could have added, but she felt those three little words encapsulated everything.

“Perhaps next time you should be more thorough in ensuring his demise.”

“Astrid pulled his heart out, he looked pretty dead to me,” Star Fall said. Then she sighed. “I didn’t anticipate how resilient he would be. Knowing what we do about contact with the Elements… I didn’t consider the possibilities, and I should have.”

Gamma quirked her eyebrow. “No excuses?”

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of those,” Star Fall replied. “But you’ve already thought of all of them. You’re not here to have me explain why I screwed up, or have me enumerate all the things I could have done better. No, I imagine this part of the conversation is about feeling me out to determine if my recent brush with mortality and very personal loss has impacted my ability to function as an Agent of the Crown.” Her ears flattened and her eyes narrowed. “I don’t need this, Gamma.”

Gamma slowly leaned back into her chair. If Star Fall had hit a nerve, her expression revealed nothing. “You are right, of course. I have no right to question your abilities, Your Highness, not any more. You are no longer an Agent of the Crown. You are the Crown.”

Star Fall stared at the spymaster. It was true. If she wasn’t declared a traitor for her connections to Twinkle Shine, then she was due to be Queen once Regal had his coronation. As Astrid had once so aptly put it, she was the boss of Gamma now.

She contemplated this for a long moment, holding Gamma’s gaze the entire time. Then she scoffed. “Yeah, right. I’m not going to take the first easy out you throw me, Gamma. I’m not just Princess Fallen Star, I am also Agent Star Fall, and I have never been more committed.”

“Fair enough.” Gamma didn’t smile, but there was a telltale twitch at the side of her mouth that told Star Fall that she wanted to. “In that case, Agent Fall, perhaps we should discuss the situation as it stands currently.”

Star Fall relaxed a bit, sure she’d passed Gamma’s test. “Astrid mentioned Umbra’s attack on the Stile Islands. What else has gone wrong?”

“A great deal, with the Destroyer acting as a force multiplier on our problems. First and most pressing for you and I is that the Republics Senate is preparing for a vote on whether or not to declare war on the Solar Kingdom.”

Star Fall let out a pained groan. “With Umbra on their doorstep? What are they thinking? Do they want her getting stronger?”

“They are thinking that the Kingdom has turned the Shadowed Alicorn loose on them, just as Twinkle Shine had planned to do.” Gamma sighed, a small crease forming between her eyebrows. “Rumors are running rampant. With the accuracy of some of them, I can only surmise that someone who was present at the Crown Summit has been speaking out of turn.”

Star Fall grimaced as a sick thought occurred to her. “We can’t discount that the one spreading those rumors could be the Professor herself.”

Gamma tilted her head in acknowledgement, a flicker of anger crossing her features. “No. We cannot.”

“I don’t understand it,” Star Fall said, shaking her head. “The Professor was always one of the loudest voices for peace in the room. But she is Umbra. I’ve seen it. Everything she’s done has been part of a long, long game. A game where we don’t know the rules or the goal. A game that’s reaching its conclusion.”

“Regardless,” Gamma said, cutting off Star Fall’s depressing line of thought. “If Twinkle Shine is behind the information leak, so be it. They have a rather more concrete reason for them to vote for war in what happened to Hoofprint.”

Star Fall frowned at that. “Why? What happened?”

“It was practically levelled,” Gamma replied. Star Fall flicked her ears to clear them, not sure she’d heard that correctly. “Agent Dash’s battle with Charisma apparently called on forces beyond what we predicted. She was not only a match for Agent Dash physically, she also was able to…” She paused, lips pursed, and Star Fall came to the jarring realization that Gamma was at a loss for words.

“Was it like what she did to Astrid?” Star Fall asked.

“More destructive,” Gamma replied. “Their fight has been compared to two gods vying for supremacy. I am not one for such hyperbole, but… There are pictures of the fight and its aftermath. Reels of film, too. Like you, I have witnessed the power of the Destroyer first-hoof, and what I saw in those images carried an uncomfortable familiarity. When I imagine what divine wrath looks like, it bears a striking similarity to what happened in Hoofprint.”

Star Fall was silent for a moment as she absorbed this. “They’re blaming Dash,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but Gamma nodded. “She’s a Knight of the Sun, and she destroyed a Republics city. Celestia’s day, they probably think the war’s already begun.”

“Our own position here is hanging on the outcome of the vote,” Gamma said. “If they declare war, then we are going to be prisoners.”

“And thus unable to act.” Star Fall spent a moment being angry at the possibility, then set herself to thinking of the possible answers to the problem. It only took her a few seconds before she remembered who else was in the room and turned a sly gaze on Gamma. “What’s the plan to stop that?”

“There are three,” she replied. “The first, best plan involves you making political inroads with a group of ponies who will see you as the epitome of everything they hate about the Solar Kingdom.”

Star Fall let out a small laugh. “Sure, sounds easy enough. Just in case, though, what are the other two?”

“The second plan is that we defect.” Gamma didn’t bother to hide her disdain for the idea. “We provide information on the Kingdom in exchange for reasonable autonomy and authority in solving the various global crises we are faced with.”

Star Fall shook her head, incredulous. “If that’s plan B, I’m really gonna hate plan C, won’t I?”

“The third option is to escape,” Gamma continued. “We wait until you and Spike can travel. Then we convince Rarity and Pinkie Pie to aid us, using them to neutralize the RIA forces. We make a run for the Everstorm and hope there’s a world left to save when we get to the other side.”

“Thus cutting ourselves off from any hope of help from the Republics, and virtually guaranteeing war.” Star Fall slumped in her bed. She went to tap her hooves together in thought, only to be painfully reminded that she now lacked one of the major requirements for the gesture. She bit back on a yelp, staring at her bandaged stump. A wave of despair rolled through her guts. “I don’t know if I can afford to divide my attention like this, Gamma. I should be focusing on stopping Cash, or reading Harmony Theory, or even trying to find some way to get leverage against Umbra. If I’m playing politics too…” She shook her head, blinking away frustrated tears. “It’s too much. I’m trying to save the world, Gamma. This is too much for me to carry.”

“Perhaps.” Gamma paused for a moment, then reached out and laid a hoof on Star Fall’s foreleg. It was as personal a gesture as Star Fall had ever seen the spymaster give. “Do not underestimate yourself. You are no stranger to difficult times and titanic tasks. At a young age you left your home and everyone you knew to enter the world of nobles, a world that resisted your very presence. You, a pegasus, mastered magic and forged a place for yourself as one of the most versatile and powerful spellcasters in the Kingdom. While accomplishing this astonishing feat you also went through Secret Service training, becoming one of my most valuable assets. You braved the Everstorm time and time again. You faced the Destroyer herself three times, and even after you knew the awful truth about her and the Professor, you did not break. You took a beating and mutilation at the hooves of Charisma, and still confronted Max Cash. None of this leads me to believe you are being given more than you can handle. You are a student of Twinkle Shine, an Agent of the Secret Service, a princess of a nation and a friend of legends. This may be a heavy burden that has been placed on you, but your entire life has been preparing you for it. I think you will find that the weight is manageable.”

Star Fall hung on every word. She knew the speech and the physical contact was calculated, but she didn’t care. She let the words sink in, let her pride swell at the list of her accomplishments. It didn’t change the enormity of her task, but it did make her feel better about it, and right then that was all that mattered. Besides, everything Gamma said was true. She’d stood up to the Shadowed Alicorn herself, how bad could a bunch of money-obsessed politicians be?

She favored Gamma with a small smile, and was surprised to see it returned. “Okay. I’m good now. I guess I’ll have to brush up on the movers and shakers in the Senate. Do you think you could convince Director Straff to let us peek at his dossiers on them?”

Gamma sat back again, giving a pleased lift to her eyebrows. “I’m working on that. He is fully on our side in preventing any war vote from passing, but still unwilling to break the necessary rules or fully trust me. With, it is fair to say, good reason.”

“Get me what you can,” Star Fall said, already spinning a few rough ideas out in the back of her mind.

“I shall. Now, we have other matters to discuss. How is your translation of Harmony Theory progressing?”

Star Fall shuddered. “I’ve only just started, but already it’s been… interesting.” She took the book and flipped it open. The smooth loops and strokes of the writing inside indicated that it was entirely horn-written, not created with a printing press. She supposed it could have been copied using a spell, but something told her that every word inside was meticulously and personally copied from the original by Twilight Sparkle herself. Either way, there was no difficulty in deciphering the cursive. Twilight’s style was clear and precise, meant to be read and understood. The problems came with the complex sentence structure and esoteric vocabulary. Unlike The Magic of Friendship, which was meant for a wide audience and thus took pains to explain difficult terminology and concepts, Harmony Theory was a personal affair, meant only to be seen by a select few, so some level of familiarity was assumed. She hadn’t included as many meandering stories in this book, though, which was a big help in getting to the important information.

Star Fall explained all this to Gamma, showing her a few key passages early in the book. She especially pointed out a warning at the end of the preface that felt particularly ominous. “‘The Magic of Harmony may not be magic as we know it at all,’” she translated for the Spymaster. “‘Worse yet, it may not have anything to do with Harmony, either.’ Emphasis on that word ‘Harmony’. It’s written as a proper noun, differently from how she uses it elsewhere in the book. She meant it as more than the concept you or I know, but she doesn’t explain. It was a message that her intended audience would get, but we just don’t have the context for. She does things like this several times in just the first section of the book.”

“Fascinating,” Gamma said. “But what relevance does it have to containing and controlling the Elements?”

Star Fall shrugged. “For all I know, it’s the key to the whole thing. Look, from what I’ve read so far, the Elements were a mystery even to the Goddesses. Twilight Sparkle clearly discovered a lot about their nature, but it’s going to take me some time to get through it. If I could see the notes the others have taken so far instead of doing it all from scratch, this could go a lot faster.”

There was a long pause as Gamma silently regarded her. “I’m afraid there aren’t any ‘others’, Agent Fall.”

Star Fall frowned at that. “Do you mean I’m the only one studying this book right now?”

“That is correct.”

“What? Why?” The bindings on Star Fall’s wings creaked as she tried to flutter them in agitation. “I was out for five days! I assumed there’d be a dozen copies of the book out there by now, being studied by the best scholars in the Republics! Hell, tell them it’s a lost work of Twilight Sparkle and you’d have to fend off the academics with a stick!”

“We tried that,” Gamma said. “It did not work.”

Star Fall paused at the annoyance in the spymaster’s voice. “How did it not work?”

“Duplication is impossible,” Gamma said. “Photographs are corrupted, print arrangements are garbled, horn and mouth-written copies are unintelligible, even tracery fails. We tried having someone read it aloud into a recording device, and the playback is just a rather disturbing series of screeches and clicks. It seems that when Twilight Sparkle wants there to be only four copies of her book, then there are only four copies. We are fortunate as it is to have the one.”

Star Fall absorbed this information with both awe and frustration. The kind of spell that would be able to do something like that was well beyond her. She couldn’t even imagine where to begin. In better times, she’d want to study its limits and devise ways of tricking it and testing it for loopholes. It would be a fascinating object of study. Yet here and now it made her task all the more difficult. “Then… why am I the one with it?”

“Because you are in the best position to do something with the knowledge it contains.” Gamma stood. “I will, of course, be waiting for a report on what you discover in its pages.”

“Of course.” Star Fall tapped her hoof on the open page of the book. “I need to talk to Spike. He’s the best resource I have to collaborate with.”

“I’ll ask that he be brought here. He’s currently being shuttled around with Rarity and Pinkie Pie. The assumption being that Cash will come for them and the Element of Laughter next.”

“I’ll want to talk to them too. And the others who went south with us as well. I’ve skimmed a few chapters ahead, and there’s something I want to test.”

Gamma quirked her eyebrow. “And you are not sharing what this test is for. Why?”

“There’s… a possibility of skewing the results,” Star Fall said.

“Fair enough. I expect a full accounting of it once those results are in.”

“You’ll know as soon as I do,” Star Fall promised.

Gamma strode to the door, raising a hoof to knock. Before she did, though, she cast an appraising look back at the bed-bound pegasus. “Your color has improved,” she said. “Even during the course of our conversation I’ve seen an improvement in your condition. Are you aware of this?”

Star Fall grinned, feeling the magic circulating through her. She’d practically forgotten about it, but now that she was looking she could feel the strength and energy already returning to her body. The last effects of the drugs were practically gone as well, and she barely felt any pain except when she’d tapped the end of her stump. “I was not. Thank you for noticing.”

“Well, keep it up, Agent Fall. The sooner you get to work on the Senate, the better.”

“How long until the vote?”

Gamma gave her a thin-lipped smile. “There we have caught a lucky break. As both Republics and Kingdom military efforts are currently focused on repelling the Destroyer, there has been no need for urgency. This has allowed the wheels of democratic bureaucracy to turn with their characteristic sluggishness.” She let out a derisive snort. “They’re still arguing over which city gets to host. When they finally make up their minds on a date, I will ensure that you are made aware.”

“Thank you Gamma,” Star Fall said. “For everything.”

“I trust my faith is well placed, Agent Fall,” Gamma said, knocking on the door. “And… good luck, Your Highness.”

***

Rainbow Dash leaned against the window, her forehead pressed to the cool glass. The view the expensive hotel suite offered was a wide one, and from her lofty vantage her eyes tracked the sheets of rain as they swept through the near-deserted streets like they intended to scour every sign of light and life out of the city. The sky above was a leaden gray, almost as dark as night. Those stormclouds boiled and writhed in tortured animation, laden to bursting with water that they were all too happy to disgorge on Virgo City. Curtains of heavy, fat rain turned the whole world into a shadow-play out of some impressionist nightmare: vehicles and ponies reduced to mere suggestions of shape and motion against a backdrop of buildings looming like uncaring colossi of concrete and steel.

Dash watched the storm with a weatherpony’s eye, but her attention was only partly out of professional interest. When Dash built a storm it was quick and colorful, with just the right amount of rain to water the fields and just the right amount of wind and lightning to make it interesting. This was an ugly thing, with no excitement in its brutal march across the landscape. No self-respecting weatherpony would have built a storm with that much rain. It was inefficient, wasteful, and, worst of all, dangerous. Rain like this not only swamped those directly under the clouds but also could cause flash floods miles and miles away, sweeping unsuspecting ponies up and drowning them.

Dash was also drawn to watch the storm out of the sick, creeping fear that came with the knowledge of who had caused it. She’d spoken to a few of the long line of people evacuating the city as they had come in, and they had informed her that Nightmare Umbra had birthed the tempest in her attack on the Stile Islands. The unnatural storm had spiralled out from there, pounding the coastal towns and cities with wave after wave of inundation. In truth, Dash hadn’t needed to be told. She recognized Umbra’s work the moment she’d felt the wind ruffling her feathers and seen the clouds on the horizon. She remembered keenly her first encounter with a storm like this, and hadn’t been able to fully put it from her mind since.

Mostly, though, she watched the storm so she wouldn’t have to look at her friends.

Not that staring out the window was much of a solution for that. She could still see them in the reflections on the glass. Applejack and Fluttershy sat together on the couch, talking quietly. Occasionally one of them would look in Dash’s direction, making it clear who the subject of their discussion was. Fluttershy’s eyes were full of confused hurt and sad sympathy. Every glance from her was like a knife in Dash’s gut, sawing at her innards and leaving her bleeding with grief. She preferred Applejack’s angry glare. Anger she understood and could deal with; she deserved it. Sympathy was beyond her.

“We can’t leave her like that,” Fluttershy said, her voice finally rising high enough to be heard clearly over the rain pounding on the window.

“She don’t deserve it,” Applejack snapped. “She don’t deserve none of it, after what she’s done.” They both spoke Lunar, and whether it was because or in spite of Cash’s advice that they all familiarize themselves with the language, Dash couldn’t have said.

“She’s our friend, Applejack, and she’s miserable!” Fluttershy replied, her wings twitching slightly in indignation. “We should at least hear her out!”

“I don’t need to hear nothin’ from that traitor,” Applejack said with a snort. “Get her to reverse whatever she’s done to us, and then we can talk. No promises, though.”

Fluttershy was silent for a long moment. When she did speak again it was with the low, rough tone she sometimes adopted when she finally decided to show some spine. “I’m going to talk to her.”

“Fluttershy…”

“No! She’s my friend and I owe her the chance to explain herself.” With that she got up and walked towards where Dash stood staring out at the grey world. Applejack sighed and got up as well, grumbling as she stomped to her room and slammed the door shut. Fluttershy jumped a little at the sound of the door, but then took a deep breath to steel her nerves. It took three tries before she was able to actually get any words out, and Dash took the time to mentally prepare herself for whatever her oldest friend might say. In the end, it was only one word: “Why?”

Dash shuddered, pulling her head from the window and looking at Fluttershy. “Simple answer is: he got me,” she said. Then she turned around and slumped back, her wings splayed out against the glass. “Applejack’s told you about what’s going on, right?”

Fluttershy sat down facing her and nodded. “Yes. She, um, she told me about a lot, I mean. I think she’s not telling me everything, though. Because, maybe, it would upset me? But I’ve heard about you two having adventures in the future, and how we’re all supposed to be, um, dead. But I still don’t understand. Why did you… do what you did to that mare? Applejack said she was bad, and she was… disappointed, but she didn’t seem angry at you for doing it. But then you and Max… and now she hates you and she doesn’t want me talking to you! I don’t understand and I can’t be sure if Applejack’s telling me the truth or trying to protect me!”

Fluttershy’s eyes glistened with tears, and Dash felt that knife get shoved another inch deeper. “The mare I killed, her name was Charisma,” she said, trying to keep her own voice level. “She was… complicated. She thought she was a monster, she sure as hell acted like one. That’s why AJ wasn’t angry. We knew from the beginning that one of us might have to stop her for good. But as bad as she was, Cash is a whole lot worse.”

“Applejack said that, but Max has only been nice to me.”

Dash shuddered at the thought of Fluttershy spending any time with Max Cash, but they’d been travelling together for a week now, there was no way they would have been able to prevent all contact. “Wait, why are you calling him ‘Max’?”

“He asked me to. He said he wants to be my friend.”

Dash shook her head slowly. “He’s not a good pony, Fluttershy.”

“I know that,” she replied quietly. “Even I can tell he’s… wrong. But maybe he’s like that because he doesn’t have any friends.”

“He did have friends, though,” Dash said. Names rose in her mind like ghosts from a scarlet hell. James Bay. Conrad Sherman. “He killed them all.”

Fluttershy cringed at that. “I… I don’t know. I can’t imagine anyone being that evil.” Dash opened her mouth to explain how evil Cash could be, but Fluttershy held up a hoof to stop her. “We can talk about that later. Right now I want to hear about Charisma. Who she was, and why you…” She winced. “Killed her.”

Dash pried her eyes away from Fluttershy’s. Their bond through the Element of Loyalty meant that she now knew the dead mare better than anyone else. Even Trail Blazer didn’t understand Charisma as intimately as Dash did. On top of that, every time she thought about the dead enforcer she remembered the feeling of her spine crumbling under her hoof, and the final thoughts that, it was clear, had been a warning she hadn’t heeded. “She…” A lifetime’s worth of words tangled into a knot in her throat, choking her. “She was…” Her heart pounded and her eyes burned. She could still feel the twisted urgings of the mare’s Talent echoing in her head like it had been her own. How was she supposed to explain that kind of madness to Fluttershy? Maybe Twilight could have found the words for it, but they were beyond Dash. “I just had to,” she finally said, hanging her head and refusing to meet Fluttershy’s gaze. “There wasn’t any other choice.”

“There’s always another way.”

The quiet words had been spoken with ironclad conviction. Dash remembered when she had said the exact same thing, and felt a surge of inexplicable anger rush through her. “No there isn’t!” she snapped. “She worked real fucking hard to make sure of that!”

Fluttershy cringed, curling up on herself and hiding her eyes behind her long, pink mane. Dash’s anger melted to bitter self-rebuke as she saw her friend’s fear, and she took a deep breath in an effort to slow the blood pounding in her veins. “I tried, Fluttershy. Don’t you think I tried?”

She peeked one eye out from the curtain of her hair. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Dash felt that cold knife slide a little deeper, and a part of her wondered how deep it could go before it hit her heart. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to be here.”

“Then why am I?” Dash was brought up short by the question, unsure what her friend was asking. Fortunately, Fluttershy decided to expand. “Applejack said that Max brought us into the future by, um, killing someone for our Elements.” She shifted a bit and touched a hoof to the pink butterfly that hung around her neck. Dash couldn’t help but touch her own Element. The gem felt as hot as lightning and cold as deepest winter. She never wanted to take it off and couldn’t wait to be rid of it. “She hates him. I think you hate him too.”

“More than anything else, ever,” she replied.

“Then why? Why are we with him? Why can’t we leave? Every time we try, we just end up coming back. Applejack said that it’s your fault, and I think she’s right. What did you do to us?”

“It… it was the only thing I could do!” Dash said, though even to her the protest sounded weak.

“The only thing you could do?” Fluttershy shook her head. “You had no other choice, right? Just like with Charisma.”

“Yeah! If I hadn’t… if I hadn’t then…”

“Then what, Rainbow Dash?” The visible slivers of Fluttershy’s kind eyes flashed with anger. “What would have happened? Why did you do this?”

“I don’t know!” Dash cried, anger and shame burning in her guts. Cash’s words echoed in her thoughts: ‘I wonder, will anyone be safe?’ It had been a chance she couldn’t take, yet she couldn’t help but think she should have anyway. “Something bad! Something really, really… bad.”

“Something bad,” Fluttershy repeated, and Dash was shocked to hear the mockery in her voice. She got up, though she still kept her mane draped over her face. “I want to understand. I want to know why you’ve changed so much. Why you… why you think you had to do these things. I’m trying to give you a chance, Rainbow Dash, but it’s up to you to take it. When you decide to tell me, I’ll be here to listen. Until then...” She gave an aristocratic sniff that reminded Dash of Rarity and turned away. “I guess until then maybe Applejack was right. Maybe you don’t deserve any sympathy. Maybe you really are a traitor.”

Dash took the word like a blow. She couldn’t even draw breath to respond as Fluttershy trotted up to Applejack’s room and knocked politely before letting herself in. Dash stared at that door for what felt like an hour before she finally was able to move. When she did it was only to turn around and press her head once again up against the window.

Her heart pounded, pumping blood that felt one step away from boiling. She tried to slow its pulse, but it refused her every effort. Her chest hurt, aching with a pain she hadn’t thought she’d ever have to feel. Fluttershy, her oldest and best friend, calling her a traitor? She wanted to deny it, to scream her innocence until any doubt of her loyalty was erased. Yet… here they were, following meekly along with the greatest monster she’d ever known, all thanks to her.

She screamed, smashing her hooves into the glass. It shattered with a single blow, jagged shards dropping to the thankfully empty street below, lost in the storm before they had gone two stories. Wind and rain burst into the room, soaking her immediately. She didn’t shy back from the deluge, her teeth bared in a snarl of rage and defiance as the storm lashed her. She screamed into the gale, calling for Umbra to show herself. She’d take facing the Destroyer over hearing the words of her oldest friend over and over in her thoughts.

Umbra did not oblige, and Rainbow Dash could not sustain her fury indefinitely. Finally, she fell back from the broken window, her head drooping almost to the level of her hooves. She made at first for her room, but paused before she reached its door. Instead her eyes went to another room attached to the suite, one claimed by Max Cash. A new spark lit her anger once again and she changed direction to confront the undead unicorn.

She burst through the door without knocking, slamming it behind her as soon as she was inside. The room could have served as a dining room or a small conference room, whichever the business-tycoon clientele wished of it. Cash had taken it in lieu of a bedroom because he apparently didn’t have to sleep anymore.

He had removed the jacket of the suit he’d taken to wearing and folded it over the back of his chair. This revealed the heavy bandages that were wrapped around his body, concealing the hole in his gut and the wounds he’d received in his battle at the ancient temple. He hadn’t healed even slightly from those injuries, nor had he shown any signs of decay. He was left suspended somewhere between life and death. He had no heart to beat, but his body refused to stop moving.

He looked up at her as she entered, a bemused smile on his face as he continued talking into a phone at his ear. “Yeah, no need to get the police involved. It was just an accident and nobody was injured. We’d just like a replacement window ASAP. Of course I’ll cover the cost. Cherry, have I ever not payed my bills? That’s right, there’s a nice bonus in it for you, too, if you can get it all done before we drown. Be expecting you, ta-ta!” He hung up the receiver with a flourish. “So! Did you get that out of your system, or is this going to be an ongoing thing? I only ask because most of my accounts have been frozen by now, and when I planned this part I didn’t really factor ‘replacement windows’ into the budget.”

“Listen up, buster,” Dash snarled, ignoring him. “It’s time you answered some questions.”

He blinked at her demand, as if surprised, then shrugged. “Sure, go right ahead. What do you want to know?”

Dash was momentarily taken aback by how casually he offered to spill his secrets, but she pressed forward. “What’s all this about, huh? Getting the Elements, kidnapping me and my friends, killing all those people, why are you doing any of this? What’s your plan?”

“You really want to know?”

Dash hesitated. Calumn’s long-ago command to her still cried out in the back of her mind: don’t let Cash talk. It was as good advice now as it was then, even if she never seemed to be able to act on it. Yet now that she was trapped with him, had trapped her friends with him, it only made sense to find out what it was all for. “Yeah, I want to know! Why else would I ask?” She tried to inject all the disdain she was capable of into her voice, unsure of her success.

“Wonderful!” Cash leaned forward and rubbed his hooves together in glee. “I can’t tell you all how excited I am. I never imagined I’d get to meet any of you, much less go on a cross-continent adventure! Oh, if only Rarity and Pinkie Pie were here!”

“I’m glad they aren’t,” Dash snorted. “Hell, I don’t want to be here. So why don’t you cut to the chase, huh?” She slapped a hoof on the conference table to emphasize her impatience.

“Well, my plan’s been a little upset for awhile now –thank you for that, by the way– but there are a few basic steps I’ve figured out. First we have to deal with this whole ‘Umbra attack’ business. I’ll admit, I wasn’t prepared for her to just launch a full-frontal offensive on the combined armies of the world. Hell, I was hoping she would stay out of it all entirely. It’s thrown my whole timetable out of whack. Now I’ve got to wait until my loyal captain gets a crew together willing to slip through the chaos and get us north of the Storm. I imagine by the time we’re done with that, it’ll be a race to the Crystal Kingdom against Lady Star and her racially diverse team of misfits and heroes. I’m expecting some sort of confrontation along the way. Maybe a dramatic reveal or two. I’m sure it’ll be very exciting, I can hardly wait to find out what happens.”

She gave him a level glare. She wanted to lunge across the table and destroy him, but she couldn’t. Every time she tried her body simply wouldn’t respond. She couldn’t even blame him for it, this she’d done to herself. “And when we get there?”

He grinned at her, and she could feel her flesh crawl at the look. She tried not to drop her gaze or shrink back, but her wings drooped and her hoof shook for a moment nonetheless. “Well, to put it simply, I want you three, plus Rarity and Pinkie Pie, obviously, to use the Elements of Harmony.”

She stared at him for a long moment, her hoof going to the ruby gem at her chest. “For what?”

He shrugged. “Whatever you like. Defeat Umbra, remove the Storm, unite the world, make bread land butter-side-up. I don’t really care.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

He winked at her. “Whatever I like.” At the look she gave him he giggled. “Oh, don’t give me that! It’s a win-win-win for everyone! You remember the spiel, don’t you?” He leaned even closer, until their muzzles were scant inches apart, and she had to force herself not to lurch away in disgust. His mad grin filled her view, and she had a strange sense that the room was expanding around her, the walls vanishing into infinite distance. She couldn’t look away from him. Couldn’t even blink. “Remember? Hot and cold running adulation? It’s all still on the table. I’m offering you a blank cheque. Whatever you want, to the limits of your imagination. All you have to do, the only thing I want from you, is for you to reach out and take it.”

Dash swallowed hard, fighting the dizzy sense of the world falling away and flipping over on itself. “And what if what I want is you facing justice for what you’ve done?” she demanded.

Cash’s answering smile was coldly amused. “Go right ahead,” he said, and it sounded like a challenge. “It’s probably the only way that’s going to happen.”

“What…” Fluttershy said from the door. Cash looked over, freeing Dash. She spun and had to catch herself to keep from falling to a sudden wave of disorientation. She’d been so focused on Cash that she hadn’t noticed the door opening, despite the wind and rain still ravaging the main room of the suite, and had no idea how long Fluttershy had been standing there. Cash quickly donned his suit jacket, clumsily buttoning it up as fast as he could, then gestured for Fluttershy to come in and close the door against the wind howling through the broken window. She obliged, gently shutting the door and continuing with her question. “What if we don’t want anything? Can we… not?”

Cash’s smile turned warm, but clearly patronizing. “I’m sorry, my dear, but you really don’t have a choice there. This is going to happen, whether you want it to or not. The best thing you can do is think of something you want and let the Elements sort it all out.”

“But you can’t!” Dash said, looking back to Cash. “Rarity and Pinkie aren’t here, and they aren’t dumb enough to come within a mile of us. And you don’t have the Elements of Laughter or Magic, either! How are you going to make the Elements work without them?”

Cash shrugged. “Those are all setbacks, I’ll admit. But not insurmountable ones. In fact, I’ve got a plan to get Pinkie and Rarity right where I need them. All I need is a box and some postage stamps. As to the Element of Magic… well, why are you so sure I don’t have it?”

“I saw it get smashed in the Everstorm,” Dash said. “Even if that was a fake or something, there’s no way you’d let it out of your sight. When you were searched in the jungle they didn’t find it, so that means you don’t have it.”

“Okay, that’s all true,” he said. “And, personally, I’m still amazed that you managed to make it into the Eye of the Everstorm at all. I didn’t think it was even possible. I’ve got to give Lady Star her due, she’s one heck of a spellcaster.” He laughed, the sound coarse and grating in Dash’s ears.

“If you didn’t think it was possible, how did you expect to get the Element of Magic?” Dash said, partly to cut off that laugh and partly because she wanted to know the answer.

He gave her a sly look, and she felt like she could see something moving behind his eyes, like she was looking into a dark hole where a beast paced in hungry patience. “An excellent question. Think about it for a while, I’m sure something will come to you.”

“What do you want?” Fluttershy asked, her quiet voice catching their attention immediately. She didn’t pull back or flinch as their eyes went to her, she just continued to give Cash a steady, calm gaze. “You said we could have whatever we want, and that you’d get what you want, but you didn’t say what that is. Could you, um, could you explain it to us?” Dash looked back to Cash. She wanted to know as well. He was already some kind of immortal undead abomination, what other horror did he have his sights set on?

He regarded her for a long moment with an expression of disquieting fondness, then slouched back into his chair. “Well, there’s a question for the ages. What do I want? Why, I simply want to exist.”

Dash’s face screwed up in confusion at that. “What? Don’t you… like, already exist? I mean, you’re here, right?”

He waggled a hoof back and forth. “Yes and no. I do exist, in a sense. I exist the same way that the billions of other hapless souls inhabiting this world do. But I don’t exist in the same way you two do. What I’m looking to do is change that. I want a kind of permanency that simply being in the here-and-now can’t afford. I could explain it better if I still had my book, but I guess it’s Lady Star’s to decipher for now. For now, let’s just say that only those who’ve used the Elements really, truly exist. Anything less can and will be wiped away at the whim of the Bearers.”

“We would never do something like that!” Fluttershy protested. Dash couldn’t agree, she found the thought of removing Cash from existence to be a wonderful one.

“Oh, you might not want to, but it’s just one of those things you have no control over.” Cash laughed. “Which I guess might be a new feeling for you. Ah, well, welcome to my world.”

“Wait,” Dash said. “If all you want is to use the Elements, haven’t you already done that?”

“By ‘use’ I mean the whole shebang. I mean all six together as one. I mean the rainbow of light. I mean, in the words of Twilight Sparkle, a Harmony Event.” His eyes went distant, the ever-present smile on his lips becoming whimsical and trembling. “Everything I’ve done up to now has been nothing… nothing compared to that one moment of pure power. At the center of the collapsing universe, there will be no limits to what can be accomplished. No horizons to set the bounds of vision. Everything and anything could happen. Absolute possibility.”

“I don’t understand,” Fluttershy said. “You think the Elements can do anything?”

“Yeah,” Dash added. “The Elements are powerful, but not that strong.”

He chuckled, his eyes focusing on them once more. “Sorry, girls, but that’s what Twilight discovered about them, and everything I’ve seen so far points to her being exactly right. You don’t have to believe me, though. You just have to play your part, and the rest will just… sort itself out.”

“Ok, if you think so,” Fluttershy said, though she sounded far from convinced. “It’s just, once you use the Elements, then what? You might just want us to use them, but I don’t think that’s all you want.”

“True, but all that is unimportant. Initiating a Harmony Event is goal number one, and if it gets accomplished than this whole thing was worthwhile. I won’t worry about the ‘what next’ part until I get there.” He leaned forward again, resting his chin on a hoof. “So, that’s what I want. Get to the Crystal Kingdom, then use the Elements. That’s the whole plan.” He grinned. “Now that doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”

Dash didn’t believe that for a second. “Well… it’s not gonna work out for you. Star and the others aren’t going to let you get away with what you’ve done. And even if you do make it all the way, it’s still not gonna work. You might think you can get the Elements to do anything you want, but no matter what you did to them they’re still the Elements of Harmony.”

He gave her another dark chuckle. “Are they? Are they really? I suppose we’ll find out.”

***

The pink party pony glared at her opponent, the concentration of a true competitor glowing in her blue eyes. “So, it’s come down to this,” she said, projecting a mountain of confidence with every word. “You and me. Mano a Pinkie.” Across the green field, the opposition readied for the final strike that would decide everything. The wreckage of their previous battles littered the space around them, a wasteland of plastic pieces, colorful cardboard and fake money. “One for the ages. Winner-take-all. The final countdown. The–” With a resounding ‘pok!’ the small plastic ball bounced on her side of the table and right by her. “Hey! I wasn’t ready!”

Trail Blazer shrugged. “You snooze, you lose.”

Pinkie Pie let out an animalistic growl, narrowing her eyes at her opponent. “You win this round.” She mimed throwing down her ping-pong paddle and jumping on it in frustration. A moment later she bounced onto the table, and in an instant her entire demeanor changed as she went from wild anger to grinning from ear to ear. “You’re good at this game! Want a rematch?”

“Only if we get to play beer pong,” he replied with an eager glint in his eyes.

“Ooh! I’ve never played that one before!” Pinkie said, but her smirk and the sly look in her eyes said differently.

Blaze matched her grin. “You get the cups, I’ll grab the booze.” In a flash both were gone, Blaze scrambling out the door and Pinkie moving so fast she left a literal pony-shaped cloud of dust in her wake.

“She knows what beer pong is?” Astrid asked, watching the two depart from across the room.

They’d been installed in what was supposed to be a recreational room for on-break hospital staff, but when Spike, Pinkie and Rarity had arrived it’d been given to them because its position in the building meant it didn’t have any windows they could be seen through. With Astrid and Trail Blazer joining them, Pinkie had immediately begun cajoling them into trying out every leisure activity the room boasted. With Spike claiming injury, Astrid stuck on the ceiling, and Rarity busy with a project of her own, that had left Blaze, who had taken to the whirlwind of board games and tablesports with casual gusto.

“If it’s a party game, Pinkie knows it,” Rarity replied. “Though, considering that beer wasn’t that common a drink in our time, I’m wondering if that particular game might have changed in the last thousand years?” She gave a questioning glance to Spike.

He shrugged. “I haven’t been to a party where they would play that kind of game in a long, long time.”

“High society has its downsides,” Astrid said, snickering.

“What was the last party you went to?” Rarity asked, looking back to her stitching and ignoring the return of Pinkie and Blaze, who quickly began setting up their game and hashing out the rules. “Before the one after Star’s engagement, I mean.”

“Gosh, it must have been five, ten years ago?” Spike shook his head, a millennium of life making it impossible to pin down the passage of a few paltry years. “The last time I had pieces I wanted to sell. There was a gallery in Joli’s Spiral that practically begged me to show them there. When I agreed they threw a party for every noble and wealthy citizen who could make it.”

“Seven years,” Astrid said. “I was there. With Fall.”

“Oh yeah!” Spike smiled, remembering. “It was the first time I’d met her. She was so excited you could see it taking all her mental effort not to zip around the gallery like a sugared up hummingbird.”

“If you thought she was crazy then, you should have seen her the day before,” Astrid said, laughing. “When she heard she was gonna meet you she went ballistic, grabbing every book that she could that even mentioned you and reading them all nonstop. She wrote out these lists of questions she wanted to ask you, and then kept scratching them out because they were ‘too simple’ or ‘too childish’. I practically had to sit on her to get her to stay in bed. I don’t think she slept a wink anyway.”

“The next year she was living with me,” Spike said, fond nostalgia thick in his voice. “What are the odds she asked every single one of those questions in her first month?”

Astrid snorted. “No bet. I’m glad I wasn’t around, or the constant noise would have driven me nuts.”

“You didn’t go with her?” Rarity asked. “I understood you two were practically inseparable.”

Astrid’s face fell. “That’s…”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Rarity was quick to assure her.

Astrid shook her head with a look of self-contempt. “No, I’m good. Not gonna wuss out just to save my feelings. While Fall was living with Spike and learning about magic and history and junk, I was in the Steelwing Aerie, nesting.”

Rarity drew in a slow breath, taking a moment to think through what she’d been told before speaking. “By ‘nesting’, darling, do you mean…?”

Astrid sighed, rolling her eyes. “Yes, Rarity, I mean ‘trying to have babies’.” She kept her features composed in an expression of bored nonchalance, but Spike could see through the mask as if it were made of clear glass. “I was paired with this big moron named Roan. He was a Bloodtalon, but he’d been sweet on me ever since I beat him up during joint exercises when we were six. It wasn’t where I wanted to be, really, but it was fun, you know?” Sadness moved across her eyes, sparkling in the unshed tears that gathered there until she blinked them all away. “Didn’t work out, though.”

“What happened?” Rarity asked.

“None of my eggs were viable,” Astrid replied. “I’d been too close to Fall for too long. Her magic got into me a bit, and it was interfering in the spells the Royals use to help Griffin hatchlings survive. They figured I needed to be away from her for a full year before I could try again. By that point, though, Fall was coming home soon and I’d be damned if I was going to leave her to some new guardian who didn’t even know her. So I gave up on the whole thing and went back to doing what I do best.”

“I’m so sorry, Astrid,” Rarity said. “I can’t hope to understand what that must have been like for you.”

“I don’t need sympathy, Rarity,” Astrid said, and while there was some heat in her voice it wasn’t directed at the unicorn. “I need to be able to walk around on the goddess-damned floor.”

“Well, I’ll be done with this by tomorrow,” Rarity replied, indicating the thick fabric being carefully stitched together by her. “I can’t promise it will be the height of style, sadly, but it will certainly hold the weights necessary to, ah, keep you grounded, as it were.”

“However it looks, it’ll be better than those.” Astrid indicated the heavy weights she’d been using to get around since they’d returned to civilization.

“Oh, very much so!” Rarity said, laughing. “In addition to much improved looks, this should be comfortable, as well. Though I daresay it will take some getting used to.”

“I’ve trained with heavy armor before,” Astrid said.

“I’m sure, but this won’t be like that,” Rarity replied. “You see, as you will be pushing up with all your weight, this outfit will be pulling down with half again as much. With the peculiar manner of your, ah, indisposition, it will feel like wearing something more than twice your weight, while to every scale you will appear as if you weighed half as much as you do. Then there is the fact that your mass has not changed, so despite your halved weight, your momentum will act as if you were two and a half times your normal size.”

Astrid frowned at her. “While I think I understood all that, I’m gonna ask you to dumb it down for me anyway, just in case.”

“Essentially, darling, you will have to learn to move as if you were a particularly heavy sort of balloon. You will not take corners as you expect, and while it will be fairly easy to start moving, you may find it rather more difficult to stop.”

“On the plus side, if you tackle someone it’ll hit like a truck,” Spike said brightly. Astrid made a pleased noise and nodded in thoughtful approval.

Spike was about to broach a new strand of conversation when there was a knock at the door and Director Straff entered. He looked around the room, noting with a quirked eyebrow the game of beer pong that was just heating up between Pinkie Pie and Trail Blazer, before turning his attention squarely towards Spike. “Master Spike, if you would come with me. Her Highness, Princess Fallen Star, has said she’s ready to see you.”

Spike felt a chill go up his back, making his spines quiver. Rarity, clearly sensing his trepidation, set down her sewing and stepped over to give him a hug. “I don’t want to do this,” he whispered to her. “She deserves to know, but I’m afraid this will just hurt her more.”

“Perhaps it will,” Rarity said. “I know I’m not shy about avoiding bad news to spare my own feelings. Yet Star Fall is in a position where her decisions can change the fate of nations. If she is to make those the best decisions she can, she will need to know everything, even if it is unpleasant.”

“Even if it could end our friendship?”

“Is what you must tell her really so bad?” she asked, her voice a breath in his ear.

“Pretty bad,” he murmured back. “Twilight made some big mistakes. Some of them… some have come back to burn Star directly. I kept them a secret, so it’s my fault too.”

“Well, I suppose you will just have to live with it, then.” Rarity nuzzled him and pulled away. “You’re a big Dragon. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”

He gave her a sheepish smile, then levered himself up from where he was sitting and limped over to Straff. His braced leg protested at the movement, but settled down within a few strides. “Let’s go.”

They walked in silence for a while, a quartet of guards keeping a respectful distance from both of them. Finally, in the elevator ride up to the floor Star Fall’s room was on, Straff spoke. “The city has been chosen for the vote,” he said. “Gemini City will host the full Senate in six days.”

“That’s a long time to wait when Umbra’s on your doorstep,” Spike replied.

Straff made a low noise of agreement. “Fortunately, the Gray Mare seems content to batter our entrenched positions in the Stile Islands with merely invincible forces, rather than scouring them bare herself. It’s a losing battle, but our most dire estimates say we still have a fortnight before we’d be forced to commit reserve forces. It’s given us plenty of time to regroup and reinforce.”

“And it’s probably exactly what she wants you doing.”

“No doubt,” Straff said, inclining his horn. “Her… statement... at the opening of hostilities shows that she wants a challenge. She wants us to throw everything we have at her in a futile gesture of defiance.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know what to believe when it comes to her,” Straff said, giving Spike a pointed look. “Her true nature, it seems, has been carefully hidden from us for a long, long time.”

Spike took this in silence as the elevator opened and they continued their walk to Star Fall’s room. As they got to the door they paused, and Spike looked to Straff. “Will you be listening in?”

“Would you believe me if I were to say no?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. But if you do listen in, be sure of who you’ve got in the room with you. I’m going to be talking about things that have… real heavy implications. If it gets out, even a little, it could… well, it could make achieving any lasting peace in the world all but impossible.”

“I see,” he said, a small crease forming between his brows as he thought. “You are aware, Master Spike, that if the vote does not go… well, you may be the only one of your friends able to walk away free.”

“I won’t abandon my friends, Director.”

“I did not mean to suggest that. I only meant to remind you that your status allows you certain privileges that will not, cannot be afforded to the others.” Spike narrowed his eyes at the Director, who schooled his features to placid blankness. “Perhaps it is something you should think on, when you have the time. For now, though, the Princess is waiting.”

“Right,” Spike said, filing the comment away for later. Then he pushed everything else out of his mind, and entered Star Fall’s room. As Spike stepped through the door his heart filled with trepidation at what he would have to do. The dark look in Star Fall’s eyes as they met his only made everything worse.

She broke the gaze to look him over, and he did the same to her. He knew what she would see. He was healing well, a testament to both the quality of his care and the innate physical prowess that came with being a Dragon. His wounded leg was wrapped in steel bands that made it stiff and clumsy, but he could at least walk on it. His mouth itched terribly where Charisma had pierced it, but the stitches were out and his tongue was curling properly again. The various other stab wounds might as well have not happened for all they bothered him anymore. No, his body was nearly well, but his heart had wounds that could never heal, and he was about to pull them open once again.

“You’re looking good, Star,” he said, and meant it. Like him, one of her legs was wrapped in a brace, though hers was mostly plastic. Her wings were free, though, and they flexed slowly open and closed as she regarded him, working out the stiffness of being bound for a week. The most striking injury was the missing hoof. Fortunately, he had more than enough control to avoid staring.

On the other hand, her coat had a healthy shine to it, and as she sat in her bed waiting for him she looked strong and energetic. After he’d heard what had happened to her, he had imagined her lying there in terrible pain, weak and melancholy. The fact that she looked so well made him both glad and suspicious. He could feel magic at work, though it didn’t feel like a healing spell. “What…” he began, then realized he didn’t know how to ask tactfully. A moment of thought was all he needed to decide tact wasn’t necessary here. “What are you doing?”

“Copying Dash,” she replied. He smiled at her, but it was a kindness she did not return. Instead she gestured towards the furniture in the room. “Grab a seat, Spike. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

He didn’t see any chair that could reasonably accommodate his bulk, so he slowly lowered himself to the floor, stretching out his banded leg and coiling his tail around to provide some support for the knee. The cool tile actually felt good for now, so he relaxed into it, hoping it wouldn’t grow uncomfortable too quickly. She stared at him for a long moment, and from the haunted look that passed behind her eyes he knew she was dreading this conversation as much as he was. More, perhaps, since she had no idea what he was about to tell her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She tilted her head quizzically. “About what happened to you.”

She reflexively looked down to her stump. She stared at it for a long moment before speaking. “I’ll live. I’ll keep going. For as long as I can. For as long as I have to. But that might not be very long if we don’t hurry up and save the world. I didn’t want to do this, but I have to. I can’t wait any longer, Spike. I need to know. Tell me about Umbra. Tell me everything.”

Spike sat down, and did as he was asked.

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