Through the Well of Pirene

by Ether Echoes

Chapter 23: The Immanent Horizon

Chapter 23: The Immanent Horizon

“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but I have not love, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:2.

Amelia

Death could have been better.

I suppose it wasn’t as bad as I might have thought. No sudden cessation of consciousness, just a clean, quiet feeling of drifting in limitless depths. I had to admit that there was a certain serenity to it. No one would ever find fault in me ever again, and, even if they did, I was well beyond the reach of hurtful words and deeds. It was a clean state, free of pain and unclouded by knowledge. Frankly, the absence of closure bothered me not at all; there was no way I could have borne the shame of seeing those I’d left behind after the things I’d done.

Then again, an endless existence of sensory deprivation was probably about as clear a definition of Hell as I’ve ever heard of. Doomed to drift forever in a cold, lifeless state. I couldn’t twitch a muscle; I didn’t even know if I had muscles left to twitch. It certainly felt as though I was exposed to some eternal vacuum that had radiated away all of my warmth and sense of myself.

Inevitably, though, those fears proved beyond much doubt that I had not perished, for they signalled the reawakening of my mind. Dimly, I recalled becoming inundated in water and struggled to piece together how and why; even that faint recollection throbbed. Hot, piercing fire and cold, crushing water co-mingled with a thin line of agony between them. That, too, soon faded to become but a dimly remembered dream.

Do I even want to remember how I got here? I thought. Isn’t this enough? It obviously hurt, it obviously cost me a great deal, enough that I feel it was a blessing that I never got to say good-bye. Whatever happened before clearly isn’t worth it. It would be so much easier just to let go of these attachments and drift back into oblivion. To fight would be to struggle, and struggling would be a painful, difficult process that likely end up not mattering in the end.

What good would it do to keep bringing these memories back?

And yet…

Foolishly, stupidly, I wormed my way back towards the memory of light. For reasons I will never be able to articulate, I needed to know who I was and what I was about. Sure, it would have been easy to have given up there and let it all end, but something pushed me forward. Something has always pushed me forward. The only way I would ever stop trying, stop being, would be if every option in the universe were stolen away and every conceivable path were closed.

Even then, I’m pretty sure I’d still try.

There, I exulted silently as the first touch of weight and light made itself known. Never had I thought that I would find the sensation of gravity comforting. I tried to stretch and shake off my grogginess, to remember how my limbs worked.

“Child, it is time to get up.”

The words came as out of a deep fog, remote and muffled, and yet the voice was warm and soft. A woman’s voice.

I rolled over on to my belly and blinked away the light. My face buried itself into my pillow, and my earlier courage fled as I tried once again to let myself sink back into oblivion. For some reason I knew that if I woke up, I would have had to face something terrible, something I hated and feared.

The smell of ripening pomegranates lulled me back inexorably. I simply had to know where and who I was; my curiosity would not be denied its satiation.

“The sun is up, and little princesses cannot lie abed for all time.” A hoof removed my head from the pillow, gently but firmly. “Arise, Celestia, and meet the day.”

My eyes opened to blearily behold a scene bathed in golden light through narrow, fluted columns. Vaguely seen trees waved in the morning breeze. Warm hooves pulled me against the chest of the mare who sat in bed with me. Her dark silver coat was adorned with midnight black jewelry, and a crown of the same stuff sat atop her cerulean mane, the tresses of which flowed like liquid, an ocean current all on its own in defiance of the wind.

“Did you have such sweet dreams you were reluctant to leave, dear?” she asked. She shifted a bit to take pressure off her gravid midsection, revealing the extent to which her belly swelled.

I wanted to tell her “no,” that my dreams frightened me, even so dimly remembered as they were, but somehow I knew it wouldn’t matter. It seemed as if this was something I’d been searching for, something I had wanted to hold onto for as long as I could. I wouldn’t spoil its serenity with pointless complaining. “Where is Father?” I asked, my tiny voice still groggy. I needed to know, even though I didn’t know quite why.

“He is out today, dearest, you know that.” She gave a fond sigh. “Overseeing the fields with as much childish enthusiasm as ever; I swear, he sometimes forgets that he is no longer just an earth pony.”

My chest constricted. I felt something awful grip my heart; without knowing how, I knew something terrible was going to happen to him. “No. We have to go get him.”

“It is all right, Celestia.” My mother smoothed my pink mane back. “Your father will be home soon.”

“No, you don’t understand!” I pulled free and leapt to the floor. Still groggy, I wobbled on my hooves before finding my footing then galloped through the open door. “He won’t come back the same!”

“Who won’t come back the same, honey?” my mother asked as I charged into the living room. She looked up from the couch where she’d curled up with her science journals while the television played the news on low.

“Daddy!” I said, my little heart pounding as I ran up to her and put my hooves on her side. “It’s… you have to…” My urgency depleted rapidly as I tried to remember what it is that had me so worried.

“Oh, sweetie,” she scooped me up in her arms and nestled me there. Her hands smoothed my golden mane back and rested on my back. “Daddy’s fine. He’s at work right now, that’s all. Did you have a bad dream, Amy?”

I wanted to tell her “yes,” that I’d had horrible dreams, but they were far away and fading fast. “It’s nothing,” I said, worming into her embrace. “I just want to…” To what? Stay right here? It was so warm and enveloping, but the nagging feeling that I was missing something important kept drawing me back. Feet on the stairs spelled a full end to any such comfort, and I jerked my head up to see a blonde unicorn rush out the door.

“Daphne? Wait!” I cried, squirming free of my mother’s embrace and running after her. “Sis, stop!” The door nearly slammed shut in my face. I flung it open and charged out, momentarily blinded by the cruel sunlight reflecting off a snowfield. I squinted against the glare and plowed through under the watchful gaze of jagged blue mountains after a rising form.

“Sister, wait!” I cried again.

“Luna!”

Luna didn’t go very far, kicking and rising through the air only long enough to nestle on a cloud which immediately turned a sullen black. Her mane hung limp around her head, the stars in it glittering only dully. “They’re gone, Celestia. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

I spread my wings and flew up to join her. Under other circumstances I might have sat beside her, but something about her manner put me off, and I settled for hovering a few yards away. “We didn’t know, Luna,” I said cautiously. “We barely know how the Elements work to begin with. We couldn’t have predicted this.”

“That’s small comfort to the crystal ponies languishing even now in the-stars-only-know-where,” she snapped hotly. Her cloud perch rumbled its agreement. “They counted upon us to free them once their magic failed.”

“It’s not your fault. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

Her feathers bristled like an angry bird’s as she craned her head around to glare at me. “Isn’t it? Which of us wanted to study the Elements, to come in cautiously, to perhaps try another approach? I don’t recall you disregarding concerns in the naive hope that the Elements were a panacea to every monster and dark sorcerer that came our way!”

“And they have been…! So far…” I flew closer. “Luna, please. They will return. For them, it’ll be but the blink of an eye. You and I… well, we haven’t been getting older, have we? We have time to make up for our mistakes. The people back home love us—”

“—Love you.” She knocked my hoof away. “And why shouldn’t they? Perfect Celestia; the Once and Future Princess. Effortlessly charming unicorn nobles, earth pony councils, and pegasus chieftains, the hero who united the realm! What have I ever done but follow along with you and play in your shadow?”

“Luna,” I said, taking a firmer tone, “that’s not true, you—”

She plowed on as if I hadn’t tried to interrupt her. “And the one time I suggest a course of action, I blow up an entire kingdom!” She’d gone well beyond the booming voice that was so useful in uniting fractious pony factions—her final notes echoed across the benuded tundra, off to the snowy caps and back. “Nothing I ever do matters,” she added in a brittle tone.

“That’s not true! Luna, you can’t let this hang over you, it isn’t your fault! Yes, maybe you were rash, but wasn’t I rash for following you? We had no idea what would happen, and we had no reason to believe it would—”

“Spare me your empty forgiveness, Celestia. You can’t give me that. I can’t, either.” She waved a hoof across the empty snow. “Only they can, and they aren’t here.”

That hung in the air between us for a long time.

“I’m going,” she said at last. “I’ll see you back at the castle.” Her wings spread and she soared into the air, fast becoming a dark speck against the grey sky.

I always hated myself for not following after her, for leaving her to her peace, for not noticing that flash of darkness across her gaze.

“Wait!” I cried, racing after her, desperate to change what I already knew was set in stone. “Luna! Luna!”

I splashed into the grey sky and pulled my head out of the stagnant pond it had been thrust into. Hands grabbed hold of my mane and jerked me back up. Trees and a leaf-strewn ground and the fence dividing the school from a nearby park spun in my vision as I struggled to collect my senses.

Jenny Haniver thrust her face into mine. The older girl hadn’t deigned to get her hands dirty, but she lorded over me as if she’d pushed me into the ground herself. “Well? Are you going to apologize?”

“For what?” I asked, trying my best to look dignified while dripping pond scum and being held up by two other kids. “The part where I called you stupid or suggested a horse could outsmart you?”

“Both,” she seethed, “but what I mean is that crap you pulled today. Do you have any idea what you did back there in front of the teacher? The whole class? You made me look like an ass!”

“All I did was show how you got the problem wrong and do it right. It was so you could learn.” I paused. “And then I called you stupid, but only after you made fun of me at recess.”

Her mouth tightened. “Smart aleck little brat; you think I give a damn what you said to your little nerd friends in the sandbox? Do you have any idea how much crap I got? The whole damned school knows a wicked freak made me look stupid. Guess there’s no point in you going to advanced placement anymore, Jen; they’ve got third graders smarter than you. And then you go around flaunting it like you think you owned the whole damned school.”

“I thought you said you didn’t care what I said to my ‘little nerd friends in the sandbox.’”

“I know what I said!” She flared her nostrils, and I felt the others’ grip tighten around me, but, instead of lashing out at me, she put her arms across her chest and breathed through her nose, glaring down at me until her ire had cooled somewhat. “I want you to apologize.”

I was about to shout back at her, but I hesitated. Maybe at first I’d been confused at how angry she’d been—all I’d wanted to do was correct her algebra mistake on the blackboard and show the class how it was done—but after she’d responded so spitefully I couldn’t hold back gloating over the fact that the teacher had praised me and criticized her in front of the entire advanced placement class. Even so, none of the flaunting I’d done merited her continued spite, and especially not getting cornered and shoved into a stinking pool by her friends. I felt indignant at the idea of offering an apology to someone who should be apologizing to—no, thanking me.

Yet, Father had always taught me that it’s better to defuse a situation if at all possible. Getting beat up over something so stupid wouldn’t make me feel any better. Actually, it was like to make me feel worse, by virtue of all the bruises.

“Fine.” I tossed my muddy hair. “I’m sorry, Jenny.”

“Sorry what?” she asked.

My mouth tightened into a line. It took effort to speak again. “I’m sorry I made fun of you.” I hesitated before throwing in, “I guess I could have showed you how to correct the problem in a way less likely to get you made fun of, too.”

That should have been the end of it. I’d eaten my undercooked, undeserved crow, she could see that. She’d gotten to push me around and made me apologize to salve her wounds.

Pride, though, is a cut that heals poorly.

“Come on, Jenny!” one of the girls holding me, Stacey, said. “You aren’t going to let this bug-loving little freak get away with this, are you?”

Crap.

“I think we should make her eat some if she loves them so much. You’ve seen her showing them off, spiders and bugs and snakes and crap.”

“Piss off,” Jenny said dismissively. “It’s over.”

“Yeah?” Stacey asked. “And what happens tomorrow, huh? You don’t think her little friends are going to remind her about how she showed you up? And what about the kids in our grade? You’ve seen this kid operate; she says one thing to one guy and another thing to some girl and then all of a sudden the whole damn school is talking about whatever she wants.”

It wasn’t like that, and I wanted to shout about how it wasn’t, but my eyes were locked on Jenny. I watched the steady transition as her face changed from an irritated satisfaction to an uncertain fugue to unwilling acceptance and then to smug arrogance. “Yeah. I guess I’m going to have to teach you a little lesson of my own, you little freak, so it sticks properly.”

Stacey and the other girl holding me grew excited, starting to bounce. The other one announced “I call hosies on the bugs” and, for just a moment, I felt their arms go slack. Without warning, I ripped free and barreled at Jenny.

My gaze narrowed to a red tunnel as I slammed my hoof into Tirek’s face. He was larger than me, stronger than me, and his magic had grown to overmatch mine, but I didn’t care. The smug look of arrogance melted off his face.

I howled like a banshee as I swung my other fist. Jenny was larger than me, taller than me, stronger than me, but it didn’t matter. She fell back and I fell on top of her, swinging both arms. She raised her fingers to try and scratch at my face.

Tirek’s counterattack cut through my side, but I barely felt it. All the peaceful overtures he’d thrown back into my face, all the ponies he’d drained and left for dead, all that mockery and spite, I threw back into his teeth, breaking bones with every strike as I harried him across the thundering field.

Jenny’s face was swollen and her nose was bleeding, but still I kept at it. She was one face of many, of a principal and counselors who never believed me, and church ladies who called me wicked, or kids who called me freak. Freak, freak, freak, freak, all the damned time.

What’s the point of loving peace when there are monsters in every corner of the world who try to take advantage of you? What use is diplomacy when all it ever seems to do is make you appear weak? What good is taking the higher ground when everypony who cheats and takes an easier option gets ahead of you?

Where’s the value in working hard when you’re judged on who you are and not what you do? What’s authority good for if everyone in authority is an idiot? What’s the point of being smart and gifted when everyone just wants you to shut up and not make waves?

I’ve tried to compromise, but my enemies never give me the chance. Everything from Sombra to school yards to a sword in my gut.

The Sword. I stopped fighting. I was dreaming. It was a really, really intense, vivid dream, but I was dreaming all the same.

I looked up and saw Daphne and Luna looking back at me. Then they turned and began to walk away. In spite of knowing that it was a dream, I felt my guts threaten to tear themselves out through the hole the Sword had made. I held out a hoof or a hand or something I don’t even know out to them and called out, but they never so much as glanced. They didn’t want to look at me.

And why should they.

* * *

Consciousness was a struggle. It was a battle in and of itself. It was as if there were mountains of cotton all around, and fighting only made the sinking faster. The sun pierced my eyelids, and, bit by awful bit, I stirred my protesting body. My cracked, dried lips opened to yawn, only to be brought up short by a fit of hacking and dry retching—how I could feel so dehydrated after pouring healing water over me I have no idea, but I needed to rectify the situation at once. Weakly, I stretched for the blurry double-image of a wooden cup only to realize that it lay firmly grasped in the very hand that sought it.

When I tried to bring it to my lips I found that some of my struggles were due not merely to tiredness, but that the links of my maille constricted painfully around me. Flexing and stretching harder with my growing strength gave rise to a series of tinny pops, more pins coming loose. So freed, I brought the Cup to my lips and tilted it back desperately.

Cool, refreshing water met me. It slopped gracelessly over my face and chest, but I was past caring. I drank and drank until my thirst had been quenched. Mother would have been wroth if she could see me then; I could just picture her dark-silver face scrunching up in distaste. Which immediately begged the question…

Wait, what? Dark silver?

The shock of that more than anything is what woke me fully. I lowered the Cup and stared out across the dry waste outside Mag Mell. Even in my half-delirious state, I knew there was something wrong with thinking of my mother as a several thousand year dead mare, but for the life of me I couldn’t put my finger on it just then. Indeed, it seemed quite reasonable; several thousand years ago my parents had died, leaving me to struggle in a strange new world that I would eventually come to reluctantly rule.

I could remember all of it—well, most of it—perfectly, from the early days digging in the dirt to the adventures on the chaotic high seas with my adoptive parents while waiting for the land to settle, to saving the pony nation from Discord, to slowly piecing its government together, and the long, painfully lonely reign to follow. I read libraries and wrote more books than I can easily remember, and I went to war and made common cause, I suffered puffed-up dignitaries and nobles I didn’t have the heart to deflate. I trained student after student and—

And.

Other memories pounded at my head, pushing aside the long, dry years with a searing immediacy. A little girl stolen from her home and forced into a cruel game, where she learned the hard way that the only path to freedom was over the bodies of others. That certainly explained why I had hands instead of hooves.

Because, after all, I wasn’t really Celestia. I was the crazy, desperate girl who’d wrapped the magic torture device around Celestia’s head that had been directly responsible for killing her parents. I’d shoveled her own pain back at her until she became my own personal weapon of mass destruction. And more.

I felt around my gut. There was a hole in the front of the armor and tunic Maille had given me, and I suspected one would match it on the other side, but the belly between them was whole and unblemished.

I didn’t know how to feel about that.

I clenched my fists and pressed them against my face. For a long, terrible moment, I’d wished the King of Swords had won that battle instead of me. Or, if not, then that I was too far gone even for the Cup.

I’d won both of them with violence, after all. Strange how the more violent of the two probably hadn’t resulted in anything worse than a beating.

That it had been the Cup—the less violent of the two Arcana—that had saved me, though, that was a horrific irony, because I knew what it had cost me to win it. I couldn’t even admit it then, but I knew.

Celestia had been a shining example of everything that was right and good and proper. Maybe she had regrets and weaknesses and challenges, but she’d overcome them with incredible fortitude and strength of character. I could see that then, so very clearly.

Me, though—when life gave me lemons, I smashed the fruit with a hammer and used the juice to blind my enemies so I could beat and rob them. A short, nasty, brutish life.

“What’s the point?” I demanded of her, turning to the mare and trying to find some wisdom in her ancient eyes. She had little enough to give, though; the long fight against the Bridle seemed to have left her tired, and her magenta eyes were dim and uncertain. “Even if I win, what then? What do I have left?”

Nothing, I answered myself, you’ve already burned every bridge and alienated everyone and everything you ever cared about. No one will ever accept you again, and no one should. You can’t force them to love you, and now they’re going to have to stop you.

It was at that point that I realized how truly cornered I had become. In one hand, I held one of the most powerful tools for destruction in several worlds. In the other a great tool for healing. On a finger was a device of protection and knowledge. Monstrous as it was, I still had Celestia, too. I’d sought them all to try and free myself, but in doing so, I’d turned friends into enemies and made more enemies still. I couldn’t go anywhere in the Nine Worlds without attracting massive opposition that would, eventually, wear me down. The Elements of Harmony, Nessus, the Crystal Heart; there were things that could touch me still.

Standing, I dusted myself off and fixed the fit of my gear absently. I stroked at Celestia’s mane; ironic, really, I could close my eyes and imagine that I was feeling my own mane, even though the one in my memory was really hers and I’d stolen those memories as thoroughly as I’d stolen her.

“I’ve fought so hard and come so far, but all I’ve done has only served to hurt those around me. What can I do?” I begged her. “The Sword King was right. I’ve become the monster, damn it. Damn me. I’m just another Sombra at this rate. Even if I can beat all comers, what does that make me?” I shut my eyes and buried my face in her side. I wanted desperately to go back into her mind and lose myself there, to swallow my eight years in her thousands and forget we’d ever been separate, but I knew that wasn’t how it worked.

“There has to be a way out. That’s all I’ve wanted all this time, just a way to get out. But what can I do? I can’t give the Arcana back, the Cup and Wand goblins will kill me. Luna will definitely kill me even if I release you.” I bit back a sob. “I wish Twilight Sparkle could just blast me with the Elements and make it all better, but you have to be possessed of evil for that to work. This is... all me. Just me. Just a horrible little girl...”

Wishing wouldn’t accomplish anything, though. Wishing implied that there was some higher entity which would respond and act to correct matters. If there were any gods, they damned well weren’t listening.

It was all up to me.

“I have to make this right.” I tightened my hand in her glorious mane. “I have to make all of it right.” It had all started out so small. I just wanted to selfishly erase a few mistakes and make my life better as a result, but the evil started back further than that. Seeing thousands of years with my own eyes had awakened to me how truly insignificant my problems had been and how severely my wrecking destiny screwed things up.

“It’s not enough just… just to undo what I did.” I turned my gaze on the Bridle and felt my hands quake. I could feel it slipping around my own muzzle, see what it did to my—no, Celestia’s—father. How it had torn in twain an entire world and brought evil down onto uncounted billions. That was the center of all this.

I pulled the Ring from my finger and let it spin in the air before me. The King of Rings had told me what I needed to know. In the depths of the Ring, the mists of time peeled back before me to an age very unlike my own. The King of Rings had told me what had to be done: true primordial chaos, when little had meaning and all shape and form were subject to whim. Where time runs backwards and sideways as often as forwards.

“The only way out is in,” I whispered. “I have to finish what I started.” Celestia tensed and seemed confused; I didn’t think she could understand me, exactly, but telling her was like telling myself. I had to hear it more than she did.

It was what the Morgwyn had wanted all along. I’d struggled to avoid it, twisting and turning, but it had me trapped. Perhaps it had known all along that it would come to this eventually; that in the end, it wouldn’t be my longing for power, for change, but my drive to keep things the same, to return to what once was, that would lead to this moment.

The Ring told me the rest. It showed me a girl wreathed in power, surrounded by the four points of the Arcana and six colored lights that I knew all too well: the Elements of Harmony. I needed to be crowned in the full might and glory of the Water Bearer, to bridge the gap between the heavens and the earth. The Ring quaked as it struggled to comprehend what followed such a moment, what I proposed to do then. “I can do it. I can change everything. I can use all that power to break the world and remake it whole.”

The Ring practically screamed at me. It struggled to point out how difficult it would be, even with so much power at my fingertips. It put the world at terrible risk; if I lost control, Chaos would be free and all sense and sanity would be buried under a tide of confusion.

Yet, were the worlds not already drenched in blood? How many uncounted billions had to die before things got better, if they ever did, or some conflict tore the earth apart? How long until Twilight and her friends fail to stop some menace and their world and ours were destroyed? Goblin Kings like Xerxes and Nessus could undo the works of more reasoned figures like the Sword and Ring Kings.

All the real good and beauty of the world had fled when the Bridle was fashioned and used to prop one species up above the rest. If ever there was an opportunity to change the world, it was now, and I was the one person in it to have the means to succeed.

Mounting up on Celestia’s back was the most difficult thing I’d ever done, even with my mounting resolve. More difficult than any of the challenges I’d faced fleeing the goblins, more heart-wrenching than Wire’s turning, harder even than the battle I’d fought against the Sword King. I’d sooner have returned to my Earth where I’d fought the King and handed back the Sword in apology.

The purpose of the Water Bearer was to bring grace back into the world, to pour inspiration from on high and revive a dying universe. I would accept that role. I would use that power to wash away the sin wrought by Man that drove away the other kinds so that the world never need have faltered in the first place.

Then, finally, I could wash clean the stain from my own heart.

* * *

They marched in the snow by their thousands. Shadows they seemed, dimly seen through a curtain of ice flurries beneath a sky darkened by an unnatural storm. They cringed against the light of my passage as I winged my way over their heads. My army of darkness.

Their fear radiated up like a great stinking miasma as they beheld the mare of dayfire that was mine to control. They knew her, one and all, for she had been their gaoler, and, as her light touched them, I knew them as well. In my mind it had been my own hard labor which had imprisoned each of these twisted mockeries behind the gates of Tartarus, and now it was my blade which had set them free. From a twisted, goatish mockery of a centaur to sickening clouds of evil fumes to hundred-eyed giants, I had unleashed a terror. Even with the Cup to hand, which magnified the intensity of their emotions and touched every mind below, I knew they followed me for only one reason.

It was that reason which made my stomach churn the most and sent disgust through my bones. They followed me now because they respected me—no, they were in awe of me, because I was the one who had laid low their hated judge and executioner. It was as clear as Celestia’s reflection in their vengeance-hungry eyes, even without magic.

I was the one they had been waiting for all this time, their deliverer from the prison of Order into the time of Chaos.

And still I used it. I bent their awe into dominion willingly and lifted the Sword to lead them forth as their wills became mine. All my misgivings, all of my guilt, and all of my shame weren’t enough to deter me.

“First,” I had proclaimed, and my words had resonated through the Cup to every heart and mind of my dark host, “do not kill. Do not permit any to come to lasting harm. Obey this commandment above all others, even if it conflicts directly with my orders.” I had to wonder how many of them felt a twinge of uncertainty when that order wrote itself into their hearts; they couldn’t have met many dark lords who advocated virtual pacifism.

The command was a paper shield, even so. It didn’t matter that I intended to crush their hopes of an eternal paradise, a return to Chaos, a free pass of butchery, or whatever mad urges they prayed I would fulfill for them. I could draw upon the ancient strategic wisdom of the Sword and lead them with wholly undeserved brilliance. None of it made up for the truly titanic—irony included—risk that I was taking in breaking them free, leashing them, and leading them into battle against the ponies of Equestria.

Yet, with the alternative of facing Luna, Discord, and their armies personally, I could see no alternative. The risk was great, but my visions of the future in the Ring had been crystal clear; if I went alone, it must result in surrender, death, or worse. It didn’t matter for whom—even if I did defeat all comers, there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to finish my task. Not after Luna.

No. I’d already crossed that line once at Xerxes’s throne. Even though I planned to erase everything that had happened today or die trying, every person or pony I came against today was another innocent, as far as I knew. I had been a victim myself once. I wouldn’t make another. Not if I could help it.

Look where that had gotten the world.

Dwelling on the tragedy which had become my life would do no one any good, however, and so it was that we at last emerged from the Unicorn Range and into the vale beneath the great blue spire of Canterlot Mountain. Thick falling snow turned to rivers of slush beneath Celestia’s nightmare passage, and we arced through the air as a beacon, one signalling the way to destruction.

It had been my hope in dumping an early winter on the land to paralyze all traffic to and from Canterlot, be it military reinforcements or unwitting civilians, and I got my wish. As Celestia I well knew how much activity this valley saw in the days leading up to Nightmare Night, but as far as the eye could see the land remained locked under a frosty glaze.

All but one set of stragglers in a lonely train mired in the fresh-fallen drifts.

The wolves got there before me, or the creatures which stood as mockeries of wolves with their ice-rimmed forms. Obeying my command, they fell upon the startled engineers trying to dig the train out and pinned them without harm while baying at the passengers to warn them against venturing forth. One wolf even allowed a particularly stalwart earth pony to beat and shatter his ribs while two others snuck up and slammed him into the side of the engine.

Their struggles died as they witnessed me, however.

They could scarce have missed my approach. Wreathed in Celestia’s flame, I descended from on high with the electrically crackling Sword in one hand and the Bridle in the other. I scanned briefly for any sign of Discord or Luna, but those ponies’ horrified gazes arrested me. They didn’t know who Celestia was, I realized, with her hair ablaze and her eyes pits of sunlight, but their looks of terror weren’t directed at her—every eye had settled on me. Within the cabins I saw tiny foals quivering as they tried to hide behind their parents and mares trying and failing to look brave as they gathered themselves. What few were given to utter, gibbering panic were balanced by those who readied themselves for one last, desperate stand.

I opened my mouth to speak, then stilled myself. For just a moment, I had been about to address them as "my little ponies" and reassure them, just as Celestia had done time and time again in her long career, facing dark lord after evil queen one after the other.

Exactly what would I reassure them of this time, though? Holy cats. Amelia, just who was the dark lord there? Who was marching into Canterlot with an army of monsters at her back beneath the churning storm-beast called from the darkest part of Celestia’s past?

Slowly, the ones screaming began to calm. At first I thought that they had just hollered themselves hoarse, but then I noticed that the others were becoming lethargic as well. Looking into the eyes of a father standing over his colt, I saw the light in them dim ever so faintly. In a sickening instant I realized that I could feel their minds touch the bridle. One-by-one, they succumbed to its seductive lassitude. I could reach out and touch them and rifle through memories far happier than mine, but the one thing I couldn’t do was back off the bridle’s control, not while it stood so near them.

I was deluding myself if I thought that just because I’d ordered my monsters not to harm the ponies, that if I was careful and sure, that if I just did everything right, I could somehow come out of this with a clean conscience. No matter my justifications, no matter whether or not I believed that I was still doing the right thing and choosing the lesser of two evils, I was evil, if only because I brought so much harm into the lives of others. I could blame the Golden Bridle, and it truly was a horrific instrument, but it was just an instrument. I was the one who wielded it.

That is who I’d become. The monsters at my back were in awe of me because I stood for terror and chaos. I was a monster leading monsters, and no amount of dithering would change that fact.

I watched the light leave the brave, the scared, the foolish, and the brilliant eyes of my little ponies and couldn’t turn away. Even as I left, I could still feel their dimmed wits tugging at me through the reins; its power had grown as I had, and I needn’t even touch it anymore to reach through it to another’s mind.

“Fate-stealer,” I thought I heard the Morgwyn whisper, though it was impossible to tell. “Wherever you go, no matter how you twist and turn, in spite of all your good intentions, you destroy everything. Go, go and shatter the destiny of worlds.”

On reflection, I knew it for my own voice speaking to me in the Morgwyn’s, but it didn’t matter. The sentiment was the same. My course remained unchanged. If anything, I knew I had to succeed at all costs, lest everything that had happened be for naught.

The battle, such as it was, began shortly after. Titanspawn ran this way and that at my command, with layered diversions meant to keep the city’s few remaining defenders occupied. South went the goatish centaur to Ponyville to draw Discord’s ire, and north went moon-touched shapeshifters to provoke Luna, and I advanced up the mountain’s slopes towards its summit where I might have a commanding vantage over the entire country. To their continued disposition I gave little thought; perhaps it was reckless, but a large part of me wanted my plan to fail, for some brave pony to sweep away my assault as they always had before. Defeat would offer peace of a sort.

Nearing the mountaintop, I looked down and gave new orders to the monsters at my heels. “Find the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony and bring them and the Elements to me. Prevent anyone from interfering with me at the top unless I order otherwise.”

Thunder rumbled across the darkened horizon as Celestia and I mounted the summit. Angry storm clouds swirled even above the peak, and a thick layer of snow crunched beneath her hooves as she set down. Standing here at the top of their world, it felt as though countless, ineffable eyes were upon me, awaiting the turning of the age.

“All right,” I murmured, “now to send out the challenge.”

The snow flashed into vapor as Celestia spread her wings and lit her horn, sending up a pillar of flame that pierced the sky. “Nessus,” I said, speaking into the Ring, “your Chosen One calls you. Let's settle this matter once and for all. Come peaceably and I will not destroy you. Fail to answer my call, and I will hunt you down to the furthest reaches of the Nine Worlds.”

“I am here, Water Bearer,” came the booming answer, catching even me by surprise as the enormous centaur seemed to melt out of an outcropping of rock. All around the summit, I perceived that others were revealing themselves, twitching aside concealing cloaks that had aided in their goblin magic. A whole forest of hard-eyed, cold-hearted goblin elites. Nessus himself looked like he didn’t even need the backup; even atop Celestia, he towered over me, as vast and barbarically powerful as ever. The gnarled ash staff in his hands could shatter bone even without its divine properties.

Even so, I had to keep myself from smirking. Water Bearer, indeed. Even a monster could take pleasure in small victories. “Keeping abreast of things, were you?” I asked and patted the hilt at my side. “Water Bearer, yes, but you must also know that I’m Cup-winner, Ring-holder, and Sword-wielder as well.”

“It could scarce have escaped my notice. The goblin world is aflame, from the secret tunnels beneath our earth’s ancient cities to Mag Mell and the steadfast keeps of Nifelheim.” He cracked a mirthless smile. “When I saved you over the skies of Mag Mell I wondered if perhaps I’d been in error judging you to be my chosen. I should have trusted in the force of the ancients’ prophecy making, it seems.”

“And up until a few days ago I was much shorter. We all must deal with change, it seems.”

He growled and twisted his hands around the staff. “Had you not defied us, we would have come to this point sooner, with far less in the way of suffering.”

“As if you care about suffering,” I scoffed. “I know you tried to pervert my destiny. That’s why the Ring and the Sword goblins turned against you, and it’s why the Cup King declared neutrality.”

“Don’t I? I could have been far more aggressive in my search for you, Water Bearer. I could have had quite a few failures put to death. My goblins could have torn whole human towns apart and set to torch pony villages.”

“Being a Saturday morning cartoon villain doesn’t make you any less of a monster.” He didn’t ask what that meant, but I supposed it was clear in context. “You had me stolen from my home. You set me up in a sick reality show. I don’t know exactly what you would have done to me if you’d had your way and controlled me all the way to gaining the Bridle. Are you telling me you did everything compassionately? What about the Wand Page Rail and Queen Stylus?”

“Stylus is unharmed. Imprisoned, but unharmed. As for Rail—well, you are quite right. I never claimed to be compassionate,” he chuckled, “and you would be right to name me liar if I didn’t claim to have abused prophecy for my own ends.”

“You’re a bitter, selfish old man. I can smell it from here.” I smirked. “What, let me guess—as a half-breed of pony and human you were rejected by both sides after the original war of the Bridle, and now you want revenge on both bloodlines?”

His eyes blazed quietly, but his voice was even. “Don’t pretend to understand my pain, child. What excuse have you, then? A minor case of rather comfortable kidnapping and you threaten to destabilize the known universe?”

“As if you understood the first thing about what I want!” I snapped. Ouch. That one had hit hard. I took a breath and Celestia danced her hooves under me. “Fair enough, I suppose. Stones and glass houses and all. Your motivations mean a whole lot of nothing to me, though, and I doubt you care much more about mine. What both of us want, what both of us need, is for me to have what it takes to fulfill my destiny.”

“If you’d played along, you’d already have your tools.” He snorted. “I’d have delivered the Elements right into your hands.”

“I’ll have them in due time, don’t you worry. Sure spoiled your plans.”

“Yes,” he agreed, and his smirk more than matched the one I’d worn. “And yet, for all your struggling, here you stand, exactly where you would have been had you done nothing at all.”

At first blush, I might have concurred. Indeed, that very possibility had been gnawing at me for some time. My experiences—perhaps, more accurately, the several thousands of years gained through Celestia—had matured my perspective, even if it hadn’t tempered my passions. “So, what, you could do all of the dirty work for me? You’d wrest the Cup, Ring, and Sword from their respective holders while I sat playing with imaginary friends in a play house? You’d have delivered me to the Bridle, sure, just in time for me to capture Celestia, Luna, or both so you could use them to battle the other Kings of the Arcana. You’d have broken the wills of the Element Bearers.” I paused thoughtfully. “Yes, I would have done nothing and ended up in exactly the same place. But, you know what?” My voice hardened. “I’d rather have committed my own crimes of my own accord than have them committed on my behalf. Maybe I would have been an innocent, but I wouldn’t have been innocent. There’d be blood on my hands for not being smart enough, not being clever enough to figure out that I was being fooled. The only way for me to have avoided being a part of this mess would have been to run away and keep running, and you know what? To hell with that. I’m not going to run away from my problems. Yes, I’ve screwed up, but I’m going to make it right, and I’m not going to scamper off like a little girl to be picked off at your leisure.”

Our eyes met and the air around us crackled. We stood there on the roof of Equestria as our wills rose to meet, coiling up to clash like something alive. The power radiating off him was as strong as it had been when we had first met, perhaps even stronger. However, my own presence and will swelled to meet his in a sharp, thunderous abrasion. We were like two living flames struggling to outblaze one another, and the shadows cast by Celestia’s flame darkened and shivered.

We broke off a moment later, though. Neither of us had what we’d come to gain, after all.

“So we’ve come to this place, by one way or another,” I said, catching my breath. I was pleased to see that he was red-faced from our near-collision, too, with his barrel chest stirring faintly. “I fought my way through the Arcana, gaining them in ways thematic and appropriate to their nature. Cup through passion, Ring through reason—if not necessarily my own—and the Sword through contest. Four artifacts forged by ancient wizards from the lingering power of their world. It stands to reason there’d be a trick to winning the Wand. Everything I’ve done so far has fit a narrative, after all.”

“You’re quite right in that. The Wand is only won through one way; a negotiated settlement. It is the bridge between one and another, a mutual contact between two or more entities.” He planted one end of the Wand into the ground, and white fire rose from its tip. “A contract made on it cannot be broken by either party; the world itself will bend around it.”

“Which makes it a bit of a coup for me that I did all this myself, isn’t it?” I twirled the Ring around my finger. “If we’d done it your way, I’d probably have agreed to just about anything you wanted for the Wand, and there wouldn’t have been anything I could do about it. You could have backed it up with threats if I wasn’t cooperative and waltzed away thereafter, happy as can be, with me unable to do anything to touch you thereafter.”

He barked a laugh. “I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t have just cut you in on the deal from the start. You and I speak the same language.”

If that was meant to get into my skin, well, it was working, but it was nothing I hadn’t already berated myself for. It did remind me to be wary, though; Nessus had the look of a classic centaur, with all the apparent barbarism and brutality that entailed, but I’d be an idiot if I assumed he wasn’t clever. A centaur taught Herakles everything he knew, after all, and Nessus didn’t win the Wand over by flexing slabs of muscle at it. Not to mention, he was certainly older than Celestia and far more ruthless.

“You wouldn’t have gone through all of this trouble to arrange this fork in prophecy if it weren’t for some spectacular gain,” I said. “I overheard some of the conversations in Mag Mell, so I know the other Kings were going to have your head for this. Let’s stop beating around the bush, and get to the meat: what is it you want?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait for the Morgwyn to come scampering along to whisper into your ear and say what it is you want, girl?” Nessus tossed his head back and laughed. “You talk a mean game, I’ll concede, but I know for a fact that you couldn’t—and indeed didn’t—progress this far on your own merit. Where is the Morgwyn, then? Is that titan’s lap dog lurking in the shade, waiting for me to call it out? I will name it and gladly, if you have need of its advice.”

“I’ve transcended the Morgwyn. I do what I do because I have chosen to do it. The Morgwyn wants something, certainly, which I have no intention of giving it.”

“Do you?” He chuckled, a rumbling from deep in his chest. “Then what is it you are doing?”

Erasing history, I thought. “My duty,” I said instead, and it was the absolute truth as I understood it. Perhaps not the whole truth, but that was my prerogative.

“That’ll be scarce possible without the Elements to hand.”

“Which, again, is my problem.” I shrugged. “All of this posturing and I still don’t know what you’re after, o‘ great Goblin King. Out with it, so we can settle this.”

He snorted and stamped a huge hoof, rattling loose stones off the side of the mountain. “What I want? A great many things, girl. I do want vengeance on the pony and human races that scorned me as a child. I want the true immortality as a celestial daemon that was denied me but granted to my brother Chiron and Tethys, our accursed mother. I want one who is dead restored to life so that a crime may be answered and justice delivered by my hooves. I want his victim granted life everlasting. Give me this, child, and I’ll support you as the Water Bearer and finish what the Morgwyn began.”

Restoring the dead to life hadn’t even occurred to me as an option. Of course, it seemed obvious that if I could crack time and space in half, then death probably wasn’t really out of reach either. It was clear he was coming from a place of ancient pain, and perhaps I could sympathize with that somewhat, but let’s face it: he hadn’t earned a damned iota of reparation, and I’d sooner let the Morgwyn eat me than let him strong-arm me into harming others to suit his thirst for vengeance. In my hand, the Sword shifted smoothly into a powerful lance with a long blade.

“Now, see, my patience is running thin, Nessus. As I pointed out earlier, regardless of how I did it, I fomented a rebellion beneath your nose, I burned your keep from the inside out, and I hold three out of the four Arcana without your aid.” I aimed the lance negligently in his direction. “You know, I seem to recall promising not to kill you… but I said nothing about not humiliating you in front of your men and running you through a few times. You’re tough. You look like you can take a bit of punishment.”

To be honest, bargaining wasn’t really one of my talents, either. I tended to wheedle, bluff, and demand more than spin a deal, and even I knew that violent threats more or less signalled the end of diplomatic talks.

Sometimes, though, you just need to put all your cards on the table. Somehow, I knew swearing on the Wand would remain binding regardless of how exalted I became.

“I’m not going to just give you the Wand,” he growled. “Threaten me as you will. If this comes to blows, you will fail in your aims.”

“Yes,” I nodded serenely, “but I’m willing to bet I’m more keen on giving up what I want than you. You see, you’ve been planning on this for millennia, so I know you want it bad. As for me? Well, you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I won’t accept flinging your shattered corpse off this mountain as a consolation prize if I don’t like the deal!” I punctuated my remark with a flash of lightning from the tip of the spear that shattered a stone near his feet, My voice echoed across the empty air. Celestia dug a gouge in the earth with her hoof and snorted menacingly before lowering her horn, which still blazed with sunlight.

If Nessus found it at all impressive, he didn’t react. The hesitation, however, spoke volumes.

I smiled tightly. “You know, in other circumstances, I would find it hilarious that for all your planning you’ve still bitten off more than you can chew. Insult me for relying on the Morgwyn if you will; I don’t mind. I was an idiot to trust it as far as I did, but it brought me here, with the power to destroy you, so I guess I owe it thanks for this at the least.” My smile turned into a sneer. “Let’s face it; you’ve been superseded. You haven’t been relevant to events from day one. So, Nessus, I have no interest in joining your pathetic campaign of vengeance. I neither know nor care about how someone wronged you in the distant past, and, as for the long dead, I’m sure they’re happier far away from you than they ever could be among the living.”

Now it was his turn to darken with anger. His face smoldered like the caldera of an angry volcano, but I didn’t allow him opportunity to respond.

“Rather like me, actually. You want to join your brother? Fine. That’s the least objectionable of your terms, and it gets you out of my hair for the rest of eternity, so tell you what—take it, or die and pray you get to see whoever it is you miss so dearly in the afterlife after I’m through with you.”

Nessus growled and twisted the wood so hard I thought at first that it might break. Once again our eyes and wills met, and for a second it seemed as if I might indeed get my violent, selfish wish to kill him.

Once again, though, he turned aside, defeated.

“Done,” he said, his voice heavy, “and done.”

“Done,” I answered, adding on a strange impulse I couldn’t have explained, “three times done.”

Fire leapt between us in an arc as bright as a carbon lamp. The Wand leapt across it and I caught it in an outstretched hand.

It is literally impossible to describe in human terms how it feels to be master of all four Arcana. Any attempts made pale before it. I’ve experienced being a human with superior senses ever since touching the Golden Bridle and an alicorn with thousands of years behind her, but to say both experiences paled into insignificance against what the Arcana opened up for me was an understatement. I rose from Celestia’s back, supported by nothing but still air, and my senses spread out from the mountaintop. As far as the eye could see—farther, even, since I penetrated the storms and gloom I’d had cast over the land—my senses spread, and farther, to witness events on other worlds.

So, too, could I feel the universe itself turning beneath me. The moment, the event in time I’d been waiting for was near at hand. Strange, really; for all my twisting and turning, I hadn’t managed to avoid Daphne’s fate. Instead, I was running to embrace it. I was just as the Morgwyn had called me: the thief of fate.

Dimly, I could even perceive something beneath the world as it appeared, lying underneath the strata of reality. Chained forms writhing with anticipation, sensing that their moment was coming, too.

It still wasn’t enough power, though. Not enough to threaten the status quo. Perhaps I could sense those alien forces beneath the stratum of the universe but I couldn’t so much as shake their chains. There was still one thing—or, rather, six things—missing.

Bursts of familiar magic reached my ear, and I brought my senses back to the mountainside and turned my gaze down its face. There, a flying purple shape blasted the mountainside with powerful rays. Half a mile above her, the clink of the Elements in her saddlebags still reached my ears.

True to their nature, Celestia’s champions had come and fought through my forces, just as I had known they would.

“Now, how am I going to… ah, of course.” I stretched down and seized hold of the Bridle, but not to touch Celestia’s mind. Instead, I reached through it just as I had back at the train and felt around until I began to fill the minds of the listless soldiers in the charge of the thestral ponies Luna had sent, searching for one person in particular. All the minds the Bridle had touched spread out before me, and I zeroed in on my chosen vessel.

Poor Twilight. She probably wasn’t expecting her reunion with Rainbow Dash to be quite that violent. I watched as the rainbow streak launched directly at her from the side of the mountain and cracked her hard enough that it made me wince even through the Bridle’s dampening.

It didn’t make me proud, but it wouldn’t matter shortly. I was so close.

I ordered Rainbow Dash to bring her up before touching the minds of my chaos creatures, verifying that they’d secured each of the other Bearers. Applejack appeared to be the last holdout, so I had a half dozen mud creatures pounce on her and haul her through the earth itself. I felt even less proud about that, for Celestia’s memories of their triumphs and tribulations stood as bright and clear as if they were my own. Perhaps they’d pull through with a stunning victory again and right this insult if I was lucky.

One by one, my minions threw the Bearers at my feet and the Bridle seized a hold of their minds. Twilight was the last to arrive, and she struggled weakly against the pounding she’d been given. Dull-eyed Rainbow Dash deposited her before me with a graceless thud, and the young princess lifted her head. Her eyes filled with such pain and heartache at seeing her bridled mentor that my own heart broke on the spot.

It wasn’t hard to think of her as my student, as the child I’d raised from nothing to become the heroic princess. She struggled to her feet against the soporific pull of the Golden Bridle’s magic and glared at me with all the remaining force she could muster. Like Celestia before her, the light struggled to remain kindled in her eyes, but she fought on all the same. I’d never felt so proud of her as in that moment, when the odds were truly impossible and she still wouldn’t give in, not with her friends and loved ones on the line.

I stretched my hand down and touched her forehead gently. The wind billowed out our hair and tugged away the few words of protest she managed to croak out.

“I’m so sorry, Twilight Sparkle,” I said quietly. “But that’s not worth anything, I know. I’ve done terrible things and I wish I could take them back… I wish I could let you win. But I can’t. I have to do this. I wish the Elements could blast me and make me be happy again, but I know now that they won’t—can’t—fix me. Sleep now, please. It will be over soon, and you’ll wake up one day never knowing anything had ever been wrong.”

I don’t know what it was that did it. Perhaps it was me, perhaps the delay, perhaps she changed her mind, but one way or another, her knees grew weak, and her eyelids heavy, and she lay down there in the midst of her closest friends and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, the center of a five-pointed star of insensate mares.

Lights rose from her bags to shine in the air. Red, orange, green, blue, pink, and purple. They spun in the air around me and I held out my hands to them beckoningly. Up they rose, dancing around my crown in a tight, fast orbit, six shining stars that had once torn one world into two.

Time stood still.

Far above, the sky had cleared, and the stars were close now. They watched pensively with their gazes turned down to the summit. Uncounted, unseen shapes waited in every corner and crevice of reality.

It was so breathtakingly easy. What had seemed an immeasurably complicated task a moment before now revealed itself to be so simple I should have seen it before. I stretched out my mind and the world parted before me, folding into concentric rings that glowed with the sunlight of five thousand years in a tunnel that stretched for eternity, and yet its end lay within reach of my fingertips. The path lay open before me; a way back to fix all the terrible mistakes that had led to this moment. The horizon lay right at my feet and opened onto a world long gone where I’d be able to put my nightmares to rest at last.

All I had to do was take a step.

Into that frozen, ineffable moment, gasping and sweaty, stained and bruised, a woman fell. Nearly naked, with only a torn red cloak to protect her against the cold, she cut a pathetic figure. Her long black hair lay tousled across her back and sides, and she looked as if she’d nearly scraped the skin clean off her feet and knees. Stumbling, blundering awkwardly, she fell against the stone I’d shattered in my confrontation with Nessus and caught her breath, wheezing and dry heaving.

For just a moment I felt like the child I hadn’t been for so long. “Hey. You’re kind of ruining the moment here.” I couldn’t help but feel a little petulant. I was at the culmination of a mythic destiny I’d taken such care in stealing and there she was, some strange almost-nude woman blundering in like an actor off her cue.

She lifted a hand, still struggling to gather herself in the thin mountain air. “Wait,” she rasped, “just… wait a second. Give me… give me just… a moment… don’t blow anything up.”

I’d never seen her in my life, and yet there was something strangely familiar about her. Automatically, I started to respond tartly that I certainly wasn’t planning on blowing up anything, but I caught myself just as I opened my mouth.

Strange. I didn’t usually feel this flustered around people. Particularly not when filled with incalculable divine might. Reluctantly, against my better judgement, I pulled back enough to regard her more closely.

Still breathless—clearly, this was no Olympian—she struggled to speak again while bent over at the waist. “Please, just… hold on a moment longer. I want…” She wheezed and spat on the stone, then wiped her mouth. “I just want… to talk to you… before you do anything.”

Though I still couldn’t place what was so familiar about her, I hesitated. Nothing about her suggested enormous power, so I didn’t think myself nor my aims were under any threat. This wasn’t some angel or god come to challenge me before I could act, at least not as far as I could tell. Indeed, she seemed to be exactly what she appeared to be: someone who had come a long way through a great many tribulations, all just so she could talk with me at that instant.

Curiosity and cats, what can I say.

“Yeah?” I asked. “What do you want?” So it was a little brusque, but the eloquence I’d summoned up against Nessus seemed to have fled along with my tenuous serenity, both vanishing in the face of this unexplained sense that we’d met in some way before. After watching her wheeze a bit more in trying to respond I rolled my eyes and pushed her down on her rear with a little tendril of force. “Just take a breather before you try to talk. Sweet flaming asteroids, you’re going to hack a lung up at this rate.”

Her shoulders shook as she sat, as much from anxiety as from exhaustion I realized. Her fear rolled off her in waves, but not fear of me I thought. It was something else. Perhaps performance anxiety.

I remembered that Daphne had been like that before public speaking or other stressful situations, but this certainly wasn’t her. Even so, the thought of Daphne brought me tantalizingly closer to that sense.

Finally, licking her dry, chapped lips, she caught her breath. “Amelia, wait. I mean… really wait.” Her eyes fell on Twilight Sparkle and her sleeping friends and widened, then turned huge as she saw Celestia waiting obediently near the edge of the summit, but she swallowed and went on. “You can’t do… this. Whatever you’re doing, you need to stop.”

I was almost disappointed. I’d half-expected something a little more original with all this drama. Perhaps she’d had a message from the gods about how they wanted to challenge me to celestial bowling with the planets for the fate of the world, or something cool like that. “Ah. No.”

Her total lack of force made me wonder if she’d just slink away, crestfallen at my blunt refusal. Instead, she rose to her feet. There was no particular drama in the act, it had more the air of her collecting her thoughts than any kind of statement. I sensed that she had approximately the same level of personal charisma as a sack of flour, with a smidgen more in the way of social skills.

“Yeah, well, uh… I can’t say I wasn’t expecting that,” she admitted, pushing her hair out of her face. “Just… will you listen a minute? I know, you don’t know me, I don’t know you. I shouldn’t even be here. It’s just… I’ve come a really long way and I’ve seen a lot of ponies get hurt over this and I don’t want to believe… I just have to try, okay?” she asked, though I couldn’t have said if it were directed at me or herself. “There’s a lot of things that have gone on. At the very least you deserve to hear our side of it.”

I turned to look at the tunnel, watching as it sparkled beneath the starry universe. “Who is ‘us?’” I asked as I returned my attention to her. “Just where the heck did you come from?”

“Ponyville.” She plucked at her hair awkwardly with a hand. “I don’t normally look like this.” Which certainly explained the fixation with her fingers and the casual way she ignored the way her cloak fell.

“Fetter?”

“Ah… indirectly.” She frowned, looking at me more closely. “You are Amelia, right? I mean, I guess you have the look, but…”

“Yes, that’s my name.” Most of me, anyway. The part that’s doing the driving. “What made you think I wasn’t?”

“It’s just the, well…” she trailed off and gestured at me vaguely.

“What?” I crossed my arms over my chest and, quite by accident, had my answer. Glancing down, I shifted in shock as I realized just how tall I’d become. As I’d spent most of the last several days mounted or delirious, it had been easy to ignore the myriad changes my body had gone through along with my mind, particularly after I confused myself with Celestia so many times. Now, though, I couldn’t help but notice. It was more than just height, though; Maille had correctly predicted my proportions, and the armor and clothing were at their fullest extension. Long, strong limbs, a mane of dirty blond hair, and a feline sort of rangy grace completed the portrait. I had no doubt I’d see a slight slit in my pupils if I looked.

I had been right, earlier; I wasn’t a little girl any longer.

The silence grew thick and I blew out a tense breath. “Yeah. I’ve… been through a lot.”

“Tell me about it,” the cloaked girl muttered dryly. “So how about it? I can’t stop you, I can see that. I don’t think I really stack up to princess-destroying women who hover with, like… lightning and halos and stuff floating around them. You can do what you want, just… would it kill you to talk it over before you leap into anything?”

“I’ve already decided what I’m going to do.” I looked down at a palm, remembering how it had once been so small. “But, no. I don’t think time is really a concern right now. So, fine. Go on.”

“Oh, great,” she said, exhaling a bated breath in relief. “Grand.” She braced herself against the side of the shattered rock. “I almost figured you’d… well, never mind, I guess. So, uh. Right. What I am going to say.”

My face quirked into a frown. “Are you making this up as you go along?”

“No! No!” She waved her hands placatingly. “No, I mean, yes, I’m making up the… words, thing… as I go along, but everything I’ve come to tell you is true.”

“You know, among other things, I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying. That’s kind of a thing I can do.” I tapped the Cup floating in midair beside me.

“But I’m not lying,” she said more confidently. Indeed, if anything, she seemed to cling to my response and grew emboldened. “You have the Ring, too, so you can independently verify anything I say.”

“Fair enough. So let’s start with an easy one.” I tilted my head. “Who are you?”

She took a deep breath as her anxiety spiked. Then she took another for good measure. Whatever gave her nerve nearly failed her then, but she managed to face me and said, “My name is Leit Motif. I was sent here by your sister, Daphne.”

There was a ringing in my ears as I stared at her, frozen stiff. A voice echoed down at me from beside a wagon in the streets of Mag Mell in what seemed an eternity ago. Oh, your sister loved her dearly. The two of them were as sisters. Inseparable. It was like a tripwire going off and setting a forest ablaze with bouncing landmines in my head.

“The unicorn,” I whispered. “Her little friend.” My voice began to rise stridently. “You’re the one she came to see in Equestria when she abandoned me. The sister she chose.”

“Uh,” Leit Motif, the unicorn. took a step back. “Amelia—”

“When did you find out I was here, huh?” I snapped in a voice like thunder. “Were you having a nice little tea party with the real Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends when the word came in that I’d stolen your ruler? Gosh, it must have been hard for Daphne to even remember who I was after all that time together.”

“Wait! Just hold on a minute!” Leit took a few more steps back, half-concealed behind the rock now. The shadows twisted and writhed across the ground.

“How nice of her to send you along! Is she going to be popping in later? Gosh, I sure wouldn’t want to interrupt whatever important business she’s on. Maybe she wants to finish that damned game of hide’n’seek since she did such a piss poor job the first time. What’s she counted to now, about twenty thousand? Her perfect god-damned memory should be able to keep track of our positions, at least.”

A crack appeared on the ground beneath me and I spent my fury at the sky, lashing with fire. “What, am I being unreasonable?” I demanded of the universe. “Yes! I get it! Sure, she was irresponsible and maybe it’s not as bad as I’m making it out to be but I don’t care! Would some closure have been so hard, did you have to tear this away from me, too?”

“Stop!” Leit Motif shouted at the top of her lungs. “Just stop! Please! You have to listen!”

Belatedly, I realized that she’d been shouting for a while now. The grinding of stone on stone and the clap of thunder and lightning had drowned her out almost completely. The earth subsided as I lowered my arms; the five comatose mares hadn’t even twitched, and Celestia did little more than flick her tail. I looked at the former unicorn, who clung desperately to the broken boulder even with the ground steady.

“You can hate me if you want,” she said. “I get it. I never meant to wrong you, but that doesn’t change anything. Just…”

“I don’t hate you,” I lied. I did hate her, though, I really did. I looked at her and knew at last what it was about her that seemed so familiar. It was Daphne’s face, or part of it; as seen through a mirror darkly. That was what had tugged at me. There was more of Daphne in her than had ever been in me. She was closer to my flesh-and-blood sister than I ever would be. It was childish and it was stupid but I hated her for it all the same.

“Don’t hate Daphne, then.” She stood shakily. “That’s the thing. You’re wrong about her… she came here after you. All this way because of you.”

I froze in midair again. “No.”

“The very minute she realized you were missing she went after you. She crossed the Veil and the Everfree and fought her way to my doorstep.”

“So she could…” I couldn’t hold onto the earlier thread of suspicion anymore. Her words rang true, and more, in my heart, I knew she was right. “She just wanted to… I don’t want to hear it.”

“She asked me for help. She wanted to find you. She was desperate to save you.” Leit Motif had found her stride now. I tried to turn away, but she wouldn’t have it, scrambling across the stone to keep ahead of me. “Don’t you see? That’s why I’m here! That’s why Twilight and her friends are here. And why she took Marcus and Naomi with her so they could help her find you! I took her to Twilight for help! We found a goblin, one of the goblins who was supposed to fool you, and she told us all about the Water Bearer and how you were being used! We went into the Everfree after you, but when goblins attacked we found out that Daphne really was the one they’d been aiming for. A ship took us across the sea to the island of Pirene, but we just missed you, so we came all the way back here.

“We gathered the other goblins, Pinion and Maille and Twig and even Kiln, who is really somepony named Marble Stone who was foalnapped just like you were, and we all joined together to come all this way to find you. And you know who led us through the storm and through the fighting on the mountain? Your sister, Daphne. She has an incredible gift and she’s used it to try and save you from all the terrible things that you’ve been going through and it’s breaking her heart to fail over and over again. She wants you back, Amelia. She and the Crusaders, too, little Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle and not-so-little Apple Bloom and even Flash’s sister Wire.” She looked up at me imploringly. “Wire said she was sorry for what she said, that she didn’t understand. There’s so many people out there who love you, Amelia. They know you hurt Celestia and Rainbow Dash, and others still, but you were just a scared kid and even if you weren’t, they know you’ve gone through so much. If it weren’t for the Morgwyn, your sister would be here right now in my place, but it cut her down because it knew she was a threat and I was the only one left who could make it. Lyra and the others have given almost everything to get to this point. Please don’t make it all for nothing.”

Each word might as well have been another stroke of the Sword to my gut, tearing and rending my illusions just as the weapon had opened up my innards. There was no way I could deny her words, no rhetorical dodge I could employ to escape their implication. It was the awful truth I’d been unwilling to face but had known about since the very beginning which had reared its head again and again. It forced me to face the root of the singular driving force which had propelled me to this point.

I loved my sister.

Every time I’d neared the point of admitting that to myself, be it at the Cup banquet or in Celestia’s dreams of Luna and myself or in the false Ponyville before I’d burned it to the ground, I had turned away and buried the feeling under every raw and angry emotion I could muster.

I loved her for every stupid little thing, from the zoning out she’d always done whenever she got lost in thought to her stupid perfect memory with its encyclopedic knowledge of whatever to her real friends who accepted her. Ever since I’d run away from our last argument I’d steadfastly denied I’d ever cared because it seemed like the final straw, that all my attempts to catch her attention were for nothing. Until right now, I could have pretended that I didn’t matter to her at all, I could hate Leit Motif for being the sister she wanted, I could hate Nessus and the goblins for her being the Water Bearer and not me.

It made me realize that I could have had Daphne all along, but I couldn’t face the possibility of rejection again. Maybe I could have had Wire and the Crusaders if I’d been willing to face up to my lies. Maille and the other goblins would have offered me support, and Rainbow Dash could have carried me to safety. Instead of all those wonderful people, though, I’d turned to a sick little monster for comfort because it, at least, accepted me for what I was when no one else ever had.

And then, only then, did I realize how wrong I’d always been.

When it was too late.

I didn’t bother to wipe my tears as I met Leit Motif’s eyes. Still, my voice was clear. “No.”

The other woman didn’t seem to know how to take that. She’d been standing on the tips of her toes, flushed with passion at her words, but she rocked back and looked at me uncertainly. “No? No, what? No, you’re not going to blow the world up…?”

“I wasn’t ever going to blow the world up.” I shook my head. “No, as in… this doesn’t change anything.”

“Wait, what?” Leit Motif gaped. “But… I’m not lying, look and see! It’s all true!”

“I don’t need to. I know you’re telling the truth. I… thank you, I guess. But it doesn’t matter. I still have to go through with what I’m doing.” I looked at the portal again. “Heck… if anything, I’m more convinced than ever.”

Rather than run her mouth off with a new round of objections, Leit Motif pursed her lips and considered me for a moment. After she collected her thoughts, she stepped forward to my side to look through the hole through the world to the grey-tinged skies beyond. “What are you doing with all this power, then?” she asked.

“I’m going to fix it,” I said. “All of it.”

“All of what?”

“This,” I waved my hand over, well, everything. “It needs to be stopped. It needs to be torn out by the root. I’m going to make the Bridle never happen, so humans and ponies and the other races don’t need to fight, not over that at least.”

“That’s… insane,” she said bluntly. “How can you possibly control that sort of thing?”

“I have that power,” I said. “I may not be the real Water Bearer with whatever special gift my sister has, but I can do that at least. She was going to fix the world, you know; the least I can do is help with that.”

“Except that’s what the Morgwyn wants you to do. You aren’t still…?”

“Listening to it?” I shook my head. “No. I’d already stopped, and you… kind of shattered everything else it ever told me. Look,” I said, and pointed at Celestia. “Do you see that thing about her face? I’ve held it. I know what it does, both to the wielder and to the victim. I have lived her life from start to finish because it put me inside her head, and to her and the others? It quiets their brains, makes them forget everything they ever knew and blocks them from forming their own decisions beyond eating and sleeping and even that I can just override. It stole her father and killed her mother. Before that, it destroyed an entire civilization and turned who knows how many people into listless animals.” I paused to let it all sink in. “Tell me, after all that, do you really think I’m doing the wrong thing?”

She frowned. “And what about us?”

“I’ll work it out. I can do that, too. I’m going to save the world, Leit Motif. I’m going to save it and everyone on it, all nine of it.”

Leit Motif sighed and shook her head, making her hair dance about her hips. “Honestly? Yes. I see your point and what you’re trying to do. I even kind of… well, I wouldn’t say admire it, but I see where it’s necessary to act.”

“But you still don’t agree with it?”

Leit chewed her lip. I turned away and stared at the portal. Just as I was gathering up my determination anew, though, she spoke up. “There’s just one thing left that I want to ask.” She reached out and touched my arm. “Amelia… do you hate yourself?”

“What?” I whirled to face her, but my angry, automatic response died in my throat. “I don’t… I mean…” My objections skittered away like water on a hot plate; it was a little hard to deny when I’d spent much of the day contemplating how I’d become the monster to lead all monsters. “I thought I was supposed to be the mind-reader here,” I protested lamely.

Leit gave a slight twitch of her shoulders. “What can I say? If I’d done half the things you’d done, I’d hate myself, too. I’d hate what I’d become. I’d do anything I could to fix it.”

It hadn’t even occurred to characterize the feeling as hatred towards myself before, but now that she had brought it up it was hard to see it as anything but self-loathing. With the bitter fruit of my labors rotting all over the mountain and its surrounding country, to assert otherwise would have been madness. I looked down, taking note of my altered form and the tools I’d wrested from their rightful owners. “Why shouldn’t I? You’re right—you’ve seen half of what I’ve done. There’s worse and more. I wasn’t pushed into it, either. I drove myself here. Oh, yeah, we can blame the Morgwyn and Nessus and whatever all we like, but I have to own up to what I’ve done.”

“And owning up to it means making the problem never happen in the first place, is that it?” Leit Motif nodded. “Yes. I get it. Honestly, that’s why I didn’t really have an answer when you asked if I agreed with what you plan on doing. If you can control it, if you can make it work… yeah, maybe things will be better. I have a lot of trouble believing that you can really preserve the people who came after the split, but I don’t have your powers. So… yeah. Sure. I agree on the face of it.” She pointed towards the shining portal. “But if you step through there, where does this end, Amy? What is your future—well, future past—criteria for making world-altering decisions? You’re trying to correct a terrible crime that was committed, yes, I understand, I sympathize, but are you doing it because it’s really the best course available, or is it because you’re so deeply ashamed of your actions that you can’t bear to live in a world shaped by them?”

She shifted her feet on the stone, obviously tired and sore and in dire need of better protection from the elements, but the light in her eyes belied her anxiety. “I’ve been there before, you know. Maybe I never hurt ponies like you did, but I’ve been in a place where I hated and blamed myself for what I’d become. I pushed away everypony who ever tried to help me and buried myself in work to keep from really examining myself in the mirror. I know what it’s like to think that no one will ever love you again, and that, just maybe, you never deserved that love to begin with. I don’t relate to other ponies well; I dismiss their problems and kind of ignore their feelings and don’t really empathize with them like I feel I should, and I hurt because of that, too.

“I understand that you think that doing this will redeem you, but it honestly seems to me like you’re just digging the hole deeper. You’re hiding from the consequences of your actions and trying to erase the living memory of everyone who might have touched on it. I know what it’s like to do that, too, to live in a dark place where no one can reach you, and feel secure and pretend that it’s the way you’ve always wanted to feel, but that security is just...” She exhaled heavily. “And what happens when the world goes to pot again, Amy? It’s going to, you know. One way or another, some human or somepony or some goblin or griffin or whatever will find some way to screw everything up. Are you just going to hit reset again, and again, and again, trying to find the perfect world?

“When you get right down to it… isn’t that the sort of chaos that the Morgwyn is after? You can never move forward, you’re always moving backward, and time and space have no real meaning. How do you expect to stay sane with no one to really connect to or understand you, particularly when everyone else is living in a limbo?”

The other woman fidgeted with fingers and cloak, seemingly out of things to say. She tried a few false starts before sighing and shaking her head. “I can’t stop you, but, if anything I’m saying makes sense to you, please, think about it.”

I did. I paced back and forth across the narrow cleft of the summit with the stars weighing heavily down upon me from above.

The first instinct was to affirm that she had, indeed, never experienced anything quite like I had. She didn’t have blood on her hooves. She hadn’t lived through Celestia’s memories of the terrible world that followed her parents’ deaths and all the many otherwise preventable disasters and betrayals that followed. I doubted she comprehended in any fashion the level of bloodshed seen on the human side of Earth over those long centuries since the split. What did my desires matter in the face of all of that?

What desires did I even have left at that point? I was no longer a child, not in any sense of the world. I didn’t have a life to look forward to. She was right: I was living in a dark place and I wanted no light to touch me, because I couldn’t bear to see myself.

“How… did you get out of that situation?” I asked, pausing by her.

“If you’d asked me a little earlier? I’d have said your sister did it.” She pulled the cloak more tightly about herself. “I don’t think that’s exactly right, though. She was the catalyst; she moved me out of my safe space, and it was up to me to figure out what to do with my life then. It was… hard. Very hard. I still don’t think I’m ready to face my problems.” She petered out then, lost in thought. In a strange way, I appreciated that; the last thing I wanted or needed just then was someone pushing me.

“I don’t belong in your world, Leit Motif,” I said bitterly. “I don’t belong in mine, either. I don’t have a place to go when this is done.”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t, really. Only I could think up answers to my problems. Up until now, those answers had always been at the behest of others, be it in accord with them or in direct opposition to them. I’d never truly acted of my own accord.

“The one who makes the choice is me,” I murmured aloud, to myself more than anything. No Morgwyn, no Nessus. No Daphne, certainly no Leit. My parents and Celestia couldn’t help me anymore. All of my vast power, the sun-shattering strength I’d cleaved to my side was completely worthless in making the decision for me. It did offer one thing, though.

It allowed me and me alone this moment in time to make a choice, to decide what the shape of the future would be.

The Elements of Harmony began to spin around my forehead as I gathered my will. The four Arcana rose and hummed, vibrating the very fabric of time. Leit Motif flinched back and then covered her face with an arm, retreating back behind the rock as I shone with the light of the sun.

I wouldn’t shirk my responsibilities. I knew what my choice had to be.

The portal in space and time swelled up before me, and I regarded it with silent contemplation. Its rings and worlds pulsed with the fate of ten thousand years, of uncounted destinies I could snuff out in a moment. Stepping through it meant taking charge of it, of becoming the steward of an entire universe to see that it never decayed to the corrupt and base state it was now. It meant freeing myself from one burden to take on the great burden of being the salvation of the human race and many others, and in so doing wash the world clean. It was the task meant for my sister, but I was prepared to take it on myself. All I needed to do was make a choice.

So, I chose.

With inexorable purpose, I reached forth and grasped hold of the fundamental forces and squeezed the gate shut into a hard little knot of reality between my palms.

“Never again,” I whispered in a voice that shook the earth and reverberated through the heavens. “Never again will this power be concentrated into these or any hands. The past will be as it was, the future will be as it will, and it is up to each of us in the present to take responsibility for our actions and the state of the world. If we are to right our wrongs, heal our wounds, cleanse our sins, and reshape our world for the better, we must seize salvation for ourselves rather than have it thrust upon us.

“I choose this life, this world, this time.”

When I released my hands, a shockwave rippled out. Unseen by all, unheard by most, it was felt from the nearest stones of Equestria to the furthest shore of the most distant world. The universe completed its turn, an infinitesimal shift that nevertheless changed it down to its most fundamental level. The titans in their chains heard it and howled as their seals tightened shut. The stars shivered with it and returned to their stately courses.

A new Age had begun. Not in an act of hubris, but in humility, all because one woman had come, naked, alone, and powerless to face the ineffable.

And with the new Age came new laws, and even I was not exempt from them. It began as a subtle tearing, a terrific pressure that started somewhere in my mind and grew almost instantly to become a splitting agony. Immediately, I reached up and cast down the Elements, letting six jewels clink to the ground around me as their power split away from me. Never again would one person hold all that power at once, I had said, and now it was so.

The Arcana quaked around me as they struggled to split, but I held on for now. There was still something I needed to do, and I could feel it coming.

The sense grew in the air. At first it was a faint green spark, and then it was a twinkling star, before it split open and spilled forth verdant mist. Wreathed in the light, a young woman in tattered clothing descended to touch the peak. Translucent at first, with the light shining through her, she became more solid in turns until, standing before me in flesh and blood, Daphne fully realized herself in the world.

There were no words. I couldn’t have said if one or both of us hesitated or not. All I remember was finding my way into her arms and pressing her close in turn. I know I wanted to recoil after that, not because of her but because I didn’t feel I deserved to be welcomed back, but she sensed my fear and clung all the tighter. Shame filled me, because I had to look down at her by a few inches where once I’d been half her size, and I knew that was the mark of my failures, but her eyes held nothing but satisfaction for a longing that had at long last been fulfilled.

“Amy,” she spoke into my ear and squeezed me against herself harder still, “I love you, I love you, I love you. I should have been there, I should have saved you. Oh, Amy…”

I could no longer hold myself together, and I broke down like the little girl I should have been, crying into her hair. I wept for Celestia and Luna, for Wire, for Maille and Rose, for Twig and Rainbow Dash, for Kiln and Twilight Sparkle and my parents and Naomi and Marcus and Leit Motif. I wept for Daphne. “I love you,” I said back, my voice cracking. I said it again, and again, each time less coherently than the last.

But most of all, I wept for me, for all that I’d lost and would never have again.

There was no turning back, now, not for me, not for anyone.

I still believe that forgiveness isn’t enough, but I know now that there is more to it than that. No matter how far we go, no matter what we do, no matter what anyone says, there’s still a road back, there’s still hope, however dim. No one can forgive me, but I can choose to act to redeem myself.

Speaking of which, there remained one task I needed to do.

“Where is the Morgwyn?” I asked her, my voice thick. I was surprised I could speak at all, but determination made the difference. My resolve, if nothing else, had been hardened.

In silent answer, Daphne pulled back slightly and held out her hand. The air split open again and deposited a vine-wrapped black figure, letting it land hard upon the stone. Manacles of shining steel encased the creature’s limbs in geometric patterns, and it was stretched out as if on a rack on an iron pattern, a triangle inscribed within a circle.

Once, it had been a majestic creature, as much smoke and thought as flesh. Now, I saw it for what it was: a stain left behind by the previous universe that had never been properly cleaned up. Beaten and bound, the Morgwyn, the harbinger of the age of destruction, the fulcrum which had moved the world, lay limp and listless in its prison.

Even so, when its devil blue eyes found me,, a tiny spark kindled in them. “B-bairn,” it wheezed, drawing air through its lips. The tail, its barbs broken off and oozing blackness, twitched in its bindings. “The Morgwyn… knew you were… meant for greatness. It knew it from… the moment… you were born.” It rolled its eyes back and tilted its head. “Finish this, then. The Morgwyn knew you would… herald a new Age… even if it was not the one this one desired. Make it… complete.”

I regarded the chaos creature for some time, with one arm still tightly grasped about my sister. She opened her mouth, but then thought better of it and said nothing, leaving me to my thoughts.

“Well?” the Morgwyn rasped. “Will you not finish it?”

“I will,” I responded. “I have to, really. You created me, you know. You made me what I am. You didn’t make me enough, I guess, since I kind of hosed your plans, but I owe it all to you. That makes you my responsibility.”

“Yes.” The Morgwyn nodded. “Then do it. This one… would have it from none other.”

“You seem to be under the impression that I’m going to kill you. Or disperse you, or whatever it takes to make you stop existing.” I took a slow breath and slid away from Daphne gently. Gesturing, I made the Morgwyn’s prison rise up with it to turn and face me directly. “I’m not going to kill you, Morg. I’m going to change you.”

The Morgwyn’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Change?”

“Yes…” I reached forward and ran my fingers through its coarse fur. “You see… all killing you would do is remove you as a threat. I don’t think that’s an appropriate punishment. You brought misery and death and suffering down upon so many people. So, I’m going to change you, to torture you in the most severe way possible.” My face hardened. “You don’t care, do you? It’s not that you’re evil, exactly, it’s that you don’t really feel any empathy for anything that isn’t you. All you’ve ever wanted was to return home, and the universe stood in your way, so you lashed out at it and tried to return it back the way it came.

“So… here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to change you, Morg, so that you feel empathy, so that you can’t escape the consequences of your own actions and the shame and heartache and guilt that comes with it. I’m going to make you solid and real, I’m going to change you into a creature of order like us so that real change, real chaos will be forever beyond you.”

As I spoke, the Morgwyn’s eyes narrowed further, and then as what I was proposing became clear, they widened and filled with what I could only describe as the most acute existential horror ever experienced by any being.

I left it savor that for a moment, and then I hit it with every ounce of power I had.

The four Arcana blazed with might as they engulfed the Morgwyn in a seething cauldron of twisting energy. It rippled and shifted about it, forming into crystals and liquid flows and spirals of arcing fire and lightning. The Morgwyn’s screams echoed up as if from a great distance, of horror if not pain. Gradually, the tenor and pitch of the screams changed as well, becoming higher and more filled with panic as, for the first time in uncounted eons, the Morgwyn felt the real emotions of a living being. Hands and legs pressed out at the bubble, the shadow within changed inexorably into a new shape.

Just as the screams began to die off raggedly and it seemed as if the creature within might perish after all, I pulled the magic back.

There, crouched naked and shivering before me, sat a young woman who could have almost have been my twin. Her blue eyes were wide and her teeth were chattering, her long black hair hung messily down her back and sides, her limbs were shaking. She was in shock. The raw sensation of being a real, concrete part of the world must have been completely overwhelming, a sensory overload of terrific proportions.

Feeling the strain of holding onto the Arcana becoming completely unbearable, I seized her head between my hands and gave my final order. “What you do from now is your own choice, but know this: you may never harm yourself nor permit yourself to be harmed, nor may you bring harm to others. You will live with the responsibility of your actions, just, like, me, and you will act to redeem yourself or you will suffer and wither until you’re nothing but a shell, clinging to a miserable life. That is your punishment.”

With that, I let go. The Arcana, freed of their task and me, shot off as if a rope had been cut and bounced down the mountainside. Without their power holding me up, I stumbled and fell. I felt hands catch me, and blinked through the spots in my eyes to see Daphne and Leit Motif looking down at me in concern.

“Amy,” Daphne murmured, “it’s done. You can let go, now.”

“No,” I said, gently but firmly extricating myself. I stumbled a bit, but managed to regain my feet. “I still have to do something.” I pulled free of their hands and wobbled over to where Celestia waited insensibly. While Leit Motif and Daphne watched, I took the Golden Bridle in hand again.

Its siren call of power and privilege filled me once again. I was amazed I’d never noticed how blatant it was before—how deeply it tugged at you to use it, to become the master of all, how addictive it was to let your will fill another and make them yours. For just a moment, even after all I’d been through, the temptation to leap onto Celestia’s back and start over very nearly seized hold of me again.

This time, though, the sensation of power left a sour taste in my mouth. When I looked at the creatures whose minds I’d touched, all I saw were broken dreams. I tilted Celestia’s head up and pulled the Bridle free, as fast as I dared without ripping skin and hair out with it.

Holding the ancient artifact in my hands, I looked down at it. The gold still glowed as if it had been freshly plucked from a forge, a heatless light that nevertheless warmed my hands with the power that flowed beneath its metal straps. Yet another monstrous thing that was my responsibility. What I should do with it was much less clear, given that there could be no safe place for it, least of all in my hands.

“Amelia,” Leit Motif said, “we should—”

“I think that’s about enough of that,” a deep, booming voice interrupted. I snapped my head up to find Nessus there towering among us. A full half of the boulder I’d split earlier was missing, evidence of his hiding spot using goblin magic.

“Ah, crap,” I muttered, backing up. Daphne grabbed Leit Motif and pulled her away, her eyes intent. They stood over the nearly catatonic Morgwyn, shielding her.

“So. Deceived all along,” the Wand King said, and King he was, with the ash staff held firmly in one hand. He must have seized it as it fell from me earlier. “I suppose that’s the price I paid for putting my trust in the Everfree goblins. As they say in your country, ‘if you want something done, do it yourself.’” Shivers ran up my spine from the vibrations in the rock as he strode forward, a single hoof as heavy as my entire body. He held out a hand, his gaze hard. “You had your chance, girl. Give me the Golden Bridle now and I’ll even forget the insults you paid me. Or, how did you put it… I’ll throw your broken corpse off the side of the mountain. Of course, I get to take it anyway, but it’s your choice little one.”

I glared up at him. “You know, your brother—Chiron, right?—must be real proud of you right now.”

“I never did quite live up to his standards, but that’s all right. He’ll forgive me in time. The Bridle, now.”

I looked at him, then at Daphne and Leit Motif. I glanced over the still-comatose forms of the Bearers and then to Celestia. This was exactly the predicament I’d taken the Bridle and the Arcana for in the first place, being cornered by a power much greater than mine and unable to fight back. If I’d just kept the damned power I’d be the one calling the shots.

But that’s the price of making the right decision, sometimes.

I looked up at Nessus again and lifted the Bridle in one hand, with all the chains balled together in my palm. It looked deceptively small that way. Such a little thing, to be the focus of so much fear and horror.

“One,” I said. I waved my free hand over the Bridle.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“Two.” I waved it again, closer this time.

“Just give me the damned—” he growled and reached down.

“Three!” I clapped my hands together. Rather than the clink of gold, the sound of two hands clapping echoed through the thin air. I lifted my hands, revealing two empty palms.

Nessus looked around. “What? Where did it go? What did you do?”

“I Vanished it,” I said. “Twig taught me that while I was still hanging around in your little Phonyville.”

The huge centaur seethed and took hold of my tunic. He yanked me clean off the ground and snarled directly into my face. “Then Produce it, or I’ll start by turning your sister and her little friends into kelp and finish with this entire country in smoking ruins.”

“First, I’d like to see you try and get past Luna, but second,” I said, and spread my hands with an innocent smile, “Twig never taught me how to bring things back.”

Nessus’s eyes looked as if they were about to pop. He shook with anger, momentarily speechless.

“Oh, and third, thank you.”

He blinked. “What?”

I reached out and seized the Wand in both hands. “For giving me a purpose.”

Our eyes met and locked. It was the contest we’d both wanted earlier, the clash of his will against mine. Ichor leapt in my veins and I yanked free of his grasp.

If he’d been unhindered, he could have crushed me flat with sheer physical strength, but we were locked in a contest of a different sort now, and his limbs no more could have moved than mine could as we settled in. Fire leapt up along the Wand, but we kept it contained between us. It twisted and tried to force its way to one or the other, and we both realized in the same instant that it wasn’t truly certain who its master really was, not after the confusion of the Age shifting and the unresolved bargain.

Once again, the air crackled with force. His face split with concentration as the light from the Wand turned as bright as a flare, casting even the faintest shadow into hard contrast and turning the two of us into a stark black-and-white picture of still struggle. In him lay the strength of ages, a will to conquer and a sly cunning that had kept him alive since ancient times. He brought all his hatred of man and pony to bear, the wrong done him in ancient times raw and bleeding.

It occurred to me then that if we’d faced one another like this earlier, I would have lost. I mustered not only the stubborn will I’d possessed as a child, but the solid certainty over a thousand years ruling a diverse kingdom had honed in Celestia. I knew that if I faltered now, my friends, my loved ones, everything I cherished would fall under this ancient centaur’s hooves. The other Arcana Kings were powerless at the moment, Celestia was a casualty, the Elements were inert without their Bearers, and Luna and Discord would be hard-pressed after the day’s events.

And, yet, even being the thin line between destruction and freedom wasn’t enough, not while I still hated myself for my failures, when I judged myself pathetic, a monster in soul if not in shape.

If it weren’t for my sister standing right there, silently cheering me on, urging me to take hold of this one thing that I could claim as my own triumph.

For her sake—no, for mine, but at her urging—I would be a hero just this once.

Steadily, I pushed the Wand’s fire to its tip. The grace within me swelled and even Nessus’s strength paled before mine as I turned the staff between us.

“I believe… we had a bargain,” I gasped. “Here. Go join your brother, if you can.”

The fire leapt up Nessus’s hands and arms, blazing across his body. He didn’t scream or cry out, but then it was entirely painless. His entire body turned at once an impossibly bright white, tinged in strange shadows, and then it began to separate, little motes blown away in an ethereal wind. I thought I heard the sound of hoofsteps, far off in the distance, racing closer. A shape, tall and clean-shaven, glimpsed for but a moment in the faint line between light and shadow.

When it faded, nothing remained of what had once been the King of Wands but a dark patch on the blue-tinged stone. I fell forward, and this time caught myself on the end of a white staff. Startled, I pulled myself up against it and found that it was, indeed, the Wand, but it had been polished smooth and shrunk to my size, rather than a great trunk of gnarled wood. It felt warm, but not the seductive warmth of the Bridle or the searing heat of all four Arcana at once; it was a steady, comforting warmth, the sheltering flame of civilization, held within its depths.

I had little time to contemplate it, though, for once again we weren’t alone. Arrayed around the mountaintop were goblin soldiers, Ring, Sword, and Wand, alongside Maille and her friends, including one I didn’t recognize but supposed must be Marble Stone. A mint green unicorn lay on a stretcher carried by two others, her eyes glazed but alert. I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw Marcus, bleeding but intact, hurry forward and seize Daphne in a tight hug. Then, as soon as he pulled back, Leit Motif slammed into him. He looked startled, not seeming to know the girl buried against his chest, but a light dawned in his eyes and he wrapped his arms about her tightly as well. When I laid eyes on the goblinized Cutie Mark Crusaders, I felt my heart leap, but not as much as when I saw Wire walking tall beside them.

Marcus, and all the rest, stared at me. None of them seemed to know what to make of me. I stood on the edge and looked back at them. Then one of the Wand goblins who had accompanied Kiln fell to her knees with a great clanking of black armor. “My King!” she shouted. “King of Wands!”

The chant was ragged at first, but, one-by-one, the other Wand goblins followed suit. Few fell to their knees, but one and all they raised their voices. “Wand King! Wand King! King Amelia! King Amelia! A new Age has come!”

Nearby, Twilight and her friends were beginning to stretch, with a forest of pops rising from unused limbs. Celestia lifted her head, her eyes still dull, but her breathing had deepened and it seemed as if she, too, were rising.

All of Equestria was waking from a bad dream, now, I saw. The snow was melting off the ground, the nightmarish chaos creatures were beaten or banished. The terrors of the long night had passed, and a new day awaited birth.

Daphne stepped forward, looking out over the crowd that had gathered on the winding cliffs below. “Amelia…” she trailed off, trying and failing to find a way to start, but her intent was clear enough.

I reached out and took her hand firmly. Our eyes met again, and we were sisters once more. We were nearly equal in height, and perhaps I carried more years now, but that much had not changed. “Yes… I still need you. I need you more than ever. Daph…”

She shook her head and smiled. “It’s all right. I’ll be here for you. I promise… and this time, I won’t fail you.”

I swallowed past a lump in my throat and nodded. We looked back over Equestria and just enjoyed the sensation of being alive together, as if no one else in the world existed just then.

It was a new day in a new era, and there was light on the horizon. A new dawn awaited and, broken, battered, fearful, shameful, lost, confused, and uncertain though we may be, as much as building the future would challenge and try us, we would walk into that sunrise together.

* * * * * * *

Author's Note:

Still one or two more chapters coming!

One and a half years of writing to get to this point. Over 300,000 words. I don't even know what to say anymore! It's something that's eaten up so much of my time and energy that putting this out here is a bit like waking up from a long dream. Kinda like Amelia and Daphne in that, I suppose, and everyone else in their worlds.

Writing Pirene has taught me a great many lessons about fiction, novels, discipline in writing, how to keep momentum going, how to balance narratives and characters... and, of course, it's put me in touch with a lot of people who appreciate my work, which is always nice.

I've been crafting the elements in this scene for so long it's hard to tell which ones are the most important or my favorite bits. Amy Vanishing the Bridle, the Morgwyn's punishment, Daphne's return... Amelia's choice of martyrdom turning her down a still darker path...

I suppose that the most important and meaningful moment in the entire climax is Leit Motif, someone with no power, no destiny of her own, someone who has no inclination to be a hero, who doesn't even believe she has a chance, but she answers her internal doubts and fears and stands up for the sake of others.

That's what Pirene is about, really. It's a story of gods, ancient wars and crimes, and the fate of worlds, but what matters are the decisions that individual people make, whether it was Amelia foolishly grasping at a power that ended up controlling her or a neurotic claims adjuster from Ponyville realizing she had something to live for after all. It's a mythical story about anti-mythical forces.

Which, if you'll notice, is also the theme of MLP: FIM itself to a certain degree. Regular people stepping up to the plate and becoming exalted for it.

But I blather on.

Pirene isn't done yet, though! There's still an epilogue coming, hopefully soon, which will wrap up everyone's experiences and give an idea of where the future lies. Even when the last word of the last page is finished, the story lives on, as all stories should.

Stay tuned.

Comment below! Thank you all for reading this far. Y'all are the best, really. I want to hear from each and every one of you!

Comments

[Nealend86]

Chapter 24? What happened to chapter 23?

[Ether Echoes]

4646082
Typo, fixed.

[Ether Echoes]

1876641
DocImpossible, you posted my very first comment. It took a year and a half so I'm a little late, but have a look:
ft.trillian.im/c8e27c71654ede3829c00105ec56c5dc13de5c1b/6qQs3SwXvtxn6x2hR2QEIg8wtXf0B.jpg

[Celestial Petrichor]

Oh wow. I loved that ending. I loved this whole story, and it was an amazing experience! Thank you!

[metallusionsismagic]

Live by the Wand, die by the Wand. I guess that saying goes for all the kings, really!

[Asheram]

*sighs* The epilogue must be something extraordinary now. The absolute Loathing I have for That Girl is something I long to get rid of.

[TheStratovarian]

A very interesting note to end, but certainly a read. And spirits of a different world indeed. The fallout should be interesting. You have a dead king, a true oracle, and yet, so much is done, but the question remains of crimes to answer for.

[Kichi]

It was very good, congratulations

[Gordon_Freemane]

Well, this was certainly not what I was expecting, and I don't quite mean that in a good way.
I mean, Amelia just goes "Welp I fucked up, imma fix it *poof* done". There's no real weight behind it if you know what I mean.
Not only that, but it kinda sucks how Daphne didn't get her Big Damn Hero moment she so damn well deserves.

[Quite Quiet]

I still want Amelia to suffer more for all this stuff. I agree with 4646225 that unless the epilogue does something special I doubt I'll be all that happy.

Still, I'm happy for you that you went through with this, as unrewarding as it is at times.

[websterhamster]

All right! This was an awesome chapter!

Before I nitpick on grammar (just a few typos really), I'd like to say that this is probably one of the most excellent stories the fandom has ever had. It beats the ever-exalted Past Sins to a pulp, and even rivals stand-alone works such as The Lord of the Rings or the more recent Inheritance Cycle (Actually, this is head-and-shoulders above the Inheritance Cycle). You, sir, could very easily become the next great fiction writer of our time, and I feel very privileged to have been witness to the beginning of your future.

As for the nitpicking, here it is. Just a few things:

Obeying my command, they fell upon the startled engineers trying to dig the train out and pinned them without harm while baying at the passengers to warm them against venturing forth.

Warn. You typed an M by mistake.

It is the bridge between one and another, a mutual contact between two or more entities.”

Should this be "contract"?

but when goblins attacked we found out that Daphne was really was the one they’d been aiming for

There's an extra "was" here.

I have lived her life from start to finish becauses it put me inside her head, and to her and the others?

Yes, becauses we must have the ring, my Preciousssss!!! Because shouldn't be plural... lol

Once again, I'd like to thank you for this fantastic work of fiction. You should definitely enter it for the Goldie Awards next year!

[Herson_]

This chapter was pretty neato

[DJ Discharge]

I only have one response to this story.

I kind of hope you do a sequal to this even if its more slice of life then epic story lol. I just think it would be awesome to see how each character lives out their life after the big adventure.
And now for the complimentary song that seems appropriate for this epic story!

[Ether Echoes]

4646178
4646236
4646373
4646429
Who knows! Maybe one day there'll be a sequel. Thanks~!

4646279
Fixed! Though "contact" was correct. Contracts comes after contact.

4646225
4646251
4646256
I definitely understand your positions, even if I don't agree.
Daphne's big hero moment was the previous chapter, Our Guiding Star. Her coming in to stop Amelia in some fashion would have robbed Amelia of her agency (and Leit of her own chance to shine) and the one chance she had to make right what she did. Indeed, in a large sense, Daphne's arc was finished last chapter, when she fully accepted herself and used her powers to their fullest extent to guide the others to Amelia.

I also don't agree that it was easy or simple (that is, that it had no weight), but that's a matter of personal taste. It met my standards for "moving" as I was writing it and the prereaders I had agreed, but it's not going to suit everyone's taste and there's nothing wrong with that.

I particularly don't agree with the notion that she isn't suffering, though. Just because she isn't being physically punished doesn't mean she isn't acutely suffering, and indeed physical punishment would only make her feel better (and make the result worse) at this point because it feeds into the self-flagellation complex she developed after confronting herself with the fruit of her labors.

I'm disappointed that you didn't like it, but I don't begrudge you your opinion. Thanks for reading this far, I appreciate it.

[FlyingSaucer]

If the epilogue does not include a Leit re-ponification and Marcus ponification, I will be sorely disappointed. Alcohol will be sought.

Great chapter as always!

[Solana]

4646429

I'm supposed to be writing something of a spiritual sequel to it, if Jachra can ever rein me in and make me write it. Unfortunately they lack a golden bridle of their own.

I did promise that I'd start after Pirene was done, so I suppose I am oathbound to deliver now. The only problem is that It's been a year since I've done anything pertaining to fanfiction, and most of the writing ideas I get lately are for independent projects I could actually sell.

But yeah, something is coming,

[Slip Kid]

This.

This.

Just. Freaking. This.

[Solana]

4646225
4646256
4646251

I tend to believe the purpose of any justice system is reformation or prevention. Do any of you honestly believe Amelia will do what she did again? Ignoring of course, the fact that it would be impossible for her to do so, with the new rules. Or is the desire fueled by hatred you're openly unashamed of harboring?

Amelia is honestly a metaphor for the human race, thousands of years ago, when it was Celestia's father being bridled. The species was young, frightened, and absent its elder influence, who had just abandoned it. The bridle is mesmerizing, even to them, but so was the Morgwyn. Both parties remain responsible for their choices, and both parties suffered for it, even if it was not eye-for-an-eye justice.

In the end, how you feel about Amelia, and what you feel should be done with her, says a lot about how you feel towards humanity, and what should be done to them. Do you think a potential millennia of misery and spiritual isolation will suffice as punishment? Or do you want to go that extra mile, and give some leeway to a monster of your own?

4646251

While it might have been nice to see more of the actual fight, she 'did' beat up the Morgwyn on her own. I imagine the intention was to make the audience imagine the scenario, even as Daphne was imagining her own assault into being.

[Asheram]

4646459 In my opinion it's not about suffering, it's about Penance. She Stole her sisters destiny. She Stole a new age of untold potential. She Stole Life, Innocence and Power and I don't think I'm going to be satisfied with this story until she have paid back every scrap.

It's just Not Enough to have the Big Bad approach the doomsday device and then say "Oh bugger it, this was a bad idea. Well folks, I finally realized I was an asshat, no hard feelings, eh?"

[Ether Echoes]

4646565
Oh, if that's your concern, don't worry - her penance is lifelong. And hers is a very long life.

[Quite Quiet]

4646550 I believe it was ~8 chapters ago or so when I first said something about Amelia, and even now that still stays true.

I went and dug it up for you, and I stand by what I said that time 4290112

[Ether Echoes]

4646595
How would it have made you satisfied, I'm curious?

If it's "she should die" then I absolutely cannot agree, from a philosophical standpoint. Nothing she's done calls for death under any rational system of punishment.

[Solana]

4646565

In my opinion it's not about suffering, it's about Penance.

You're kind of implying that one leads to the other. Like throwing her into Tartarus for a good thousand years would somehow fix things. It might satisfy your more primal need for vengeance, but it certainly wouldn't benefit Amelia or any of the nine worlds.

She Stole her sisters destiny. She Stole a new age of untold potential. She Stole Life, Innocence and Power and I don't think I'm going to be satisfied with this story until she have paid back every scrap.

She gave her sister agency. She gave back a new age her sister probably didn't have the cajones to scratch in. One where things can go either way, and that's true potential. It's an age where someone like her can't happen again.

It's just Not Enough to have the Big Bad approach the doomsday device and then say "Oh bugger it, this was a bad idea.

I understand that you're emotional about it, so I don't mean to sound dismissive, BUT, you are drastically underplaying what happened so as to make it seem more ridiculous than it is. I have to wonder, if it were really that ridiculous, would it need the exaggeration?

Well folks, I finally realized I was an asshat, no hard feelings, eh?"

Is basically the opposite of what she said?

[Ether Echoes]

4646622
4646565

Well folks, I finally realized I was an asshat, no hard feelings, eh?"

Is basically the opposite of what she said?

That is true, yes. In fact, she anticipates hard feelings, and has significant personal hard feelings - she is not okay with herself for what has happened.

[Solana]

4646595

I'm not sure what something you said eight chapters ago is relevant to. Can you elaborate on how it vindicates your decision, or explains why Amelia needs to die?

[ShadeTail]

4646550

In the end, how you feel about Amelia, and what you feel should be done with her, says a lot about how you feel towards humanity, and what should be done to them.

OK, no. I'm staying neutral on the rest of your debate, but this particular line is pure unadulterated bullshit. All it says is that they disagree with your opinion about Amelia, full stop.

[Solana]

4646686

In the context of the story, everything Amelia did with the bridle pales in comparison to what the people who came before her did with it.

So, I don't consider it bullshit? If you're going to get pissed off at Amelia for what she did, you need to be pissed off at what those who came before her did.

Otherwise it's absolutely arbitrary and there is no reasoned cause for it.

[Quite Quiet]

4646597 4646648
This might be a bit incoherent because I'm tired and it's late but I'll do my best. And no, I'm not saying she should be executed.

My biggest issue with all this is the Amelia time and time again have proved she can push away things she dislike feeling, losing herself to what she think is the truth no matter what everything around her says. So she's going to make up for what she has done, fine. But can I honestly know for sure that's going to make her understand, or change?

The fact she owed up and did one good thing at the end which makes things better in general only tells me she felt like she wanted to, not that she suddenly listened to her conscience and is going to try and better herself from now.

Maybe I'm just to cynical for this, I don't know.

[Ether Echoes]

4646706
I'd argue this chapter constitutes a sea change in her attitude and approach to life. It's a recognition that she can't just do these sorts of things, and that sometimes, the price is just too high to contemplate.

She didn't just do one good thing, she hewed away from her previous course of destruction. It comes after an avalanche of shame, guilt, and understanding, of trying to understand the lessons of Celestia's long life and the perils of living up to that ideal the wrong way.

Indeed, she addresses that specific complaint, that she refused to confront her own feelings and the truth before and how that's led her again and again into disaster. (I definitely cover this with her in the epilogue.)

[ShadeTail]

4646703

In the context of the story, everything Amelia did with the bridle pales in comparison to what the people came before her did with it.

So what? They look at Amelia's actions and reach a different conclusion than you do, unfettered by your dependence on context and metaphor. They don't have to rely on your personal point of view, and it's perfectly fair for them not to. It's also perfectly arrogant for you to use their different point of view as an excuse to amateur-psychoanalyze them as you did.

[Solana]

4646724

So what? They look at Amelia's actions and reach a different conclusion than you do, unfettered by your dependence on context and metaphor. They don't have to rely on your personal point of view, and it's perfectly fair for them not to.

Are you saying that a judgement shouldn't be dependent on the context of a situation? That's...

I never said "This is my opinion, and if you disagree with it you're wrong." What I actually said was that Amelia represents something more than just herself in this story.

Her actions mirror that of an entire species, and in many ways her personality is the most human in the story. The uncompromising desire on the part of humanity to not only survive, but also flourish, to be free from influence, and to be on top of the game.

It's really no different from me saying "Whether you feel the Greeks should have won the Persian War, or the Persians, it says a lot about how you feel regarding the ideologies they represented."

And also, claiming Amelia needs to suffer as a person for being taken in by the Morgwyn and doing those terrible things, but that humanity didn't need to after being taken in by some god, is a bit like saying someone who kills one person is more guilty than someone who killed ten, because you watched the former in the act, and are more emotionally involved in it.

I'm the last person on this planet to call someone a terrible individual for forming a position based on their feelings, even if I don't feel like that's a strong enough position to act from.

[Quite Quiet]

4646716
That's something I can't accept at face value then. I am excessively mistrusting to those I've seen do wrong, so unless I see significant, continuous and lasting changes for myself I can't rightly accept it. Not expecting to see that far ahead and a problem on extreme personal level either way.

[Ether Echoes]

4646788
I'd argue that's the evidence before you, but it seems we must disagree. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[MD Webster]

That was some experience about that climax.
Here are my few random thoughts:Spoilers!

Stop making it worse Amy!!! Darn it!

I loved my sister.
Every time I’d neared the point of admitting that to myself, be it at the Cup banquet or in Celestia’s dreams of Luna and myself or in the false Ponyville before I’d burned it to the ground, I had turned away and buried the feeling under every raw and angry emotion I could muster.

Loved? I don't like the past tense there!

When I released my hands, a shockwave rippled out. Unseen by all, unheard by most, it was felt from the nearest stones of Equestria to the furthest shore of the most distant world. The universe completed its turn, an infinitesimal shift that nevertheless changed it down to its most fundamental level. The titans in their chains heard it and howled as their seals tightened shut. The stars shivered with it and returned to their stately courses.

Are you Dying?!

The sense grew in the air. At first it was a faint green spark, and then it was a twinkling star, before it split open and spilled forth verdant mist. Wreathed in the light, a young woman in tattered clothing descended to touch the peak. Translucent at first, with the light shining through her, she became more solid in turns until, standing before me in flesh and blood, Daphne fully realized herself in the world.

Oh for pete sakes, just get together!

There were no words. I couldn’t have said if one or both of us hesitated or not. All I remember was finding my way into her arms and pressing her close in turn. I know I wanted to recoil after that, not because of her but because I didn’t feel I deserved to be welcomed back, but she sensed my fear and clung all the tighter. Shame filled me, because I had to look down at her by a few inches where once I’d been half her size, and I knew that was the mark of my failures, but her eyes held nothing but satisfaction for a longing that had at long last been fulfilled.

Oh, thank heavens!

Throughout the latter chapters since Amy took the bridle, I like the way you kept building up the tension that they won't be together and Amelia will die evil. However you built some hope that Amelia will turn to the good side.
Good job.
(P.S. that box thing, I thought of doing that for a long time.)

[Asheram]

4646622
4646631

First of all I have to apologize to the both of you. My words earlier were tainted by frustration and rage, a testament to your skill in writing, Ether Echoes.
Amelia... the very name gives a foul taste in my mouth now, is in my opinion a character which was never likable even from the start. We followed her as she kept making terrible choices, perhaps choices natural for an angry child but as she were written with a near genius level intelligence it is Very easy to forget that she is just that. But all in all it leads me to loathe her in a way that rivals the hatred of Joffrey Baratheon, which is quite a feat.

I suppose the essence of why I feel so frustrated is that I can't sympathize with her; a character so far gone and alien that I barely care what happens to her.
It all ends up with that we have a character whose only (for now) suffering is guilt, but as I can't sympathize with her, that resolution does nothing to me.

You're kind of implying that one leads to the other. Like throwing her into Tartarus for a good thousand years would somehow fix things. It might satisfy your more primal need for vengeance, but it certainly wouldn't benefit Amelia or any of the nine worlds.

Penance is far beyond simple punishment, it's about actively seeking forgiveness by being a better person and through words and deeds. Perhaps it's petty but I want a resolution that honors all those she has wronged and made suffer through out the novel and I don't think a simple apology will do it.

(Edited for godawful grammar)

[jardex22]

Just... wow. That was awesome. It's been a heck of a ride, and you've pulled through! This is probably the best ending I've read in fanfiction. It doesn't even feel like it needs an epilogue. It just feels right leaving them staring at the new dawn before the credits roll. I suppose the epilogue will be the equivalent of a post credits scene.

Now for a bit of analysis and speculation.
First of all, the New Age leaves open a lot of possibilities. All that was revealed was that one being couldn't hold all the power, but beyond that, anything could happen. Equestria and Earth may be reunited, Humans may rediscover Magic, etc. I'm interested on how this affects the Human world because we've seen so little of it since Daphne crossed over. I'm actually curious if everyone will be aware of the end of the Old Age or if it will just be another day to them.

As for Amelia, I'm glad that she neither went through with her plan or totally backed off of it. I can imagine the former would have ended with her waking up in her own bed, figuring the whole thing was a dream (a total cop out ending that would've left a sour taste in my mouth). The later would've ended with a child with all the power, but a heart full of regrets. I don't think she could've lived with herself afterwards. Instead, she decided to change the rules of the game. I wonder what lies in store for her next now that she's the Wand King. She's changed too much to return home, so unless Earth becomes aware of the rest of the worlds, she'll probably become a cold case and another mystery of Everfree State Park.

My mind's a bit foggy, but it seems like Daphne kind of just... disappeared. She was there one chapter, then omnipresent the next. It kind of disappointed me a bit. Now that she's Human again (or at least appears Human), She could go home (for a while). This leaves her with a choice. Stay with Leit Motif, or go back to her own world. I honestly can't see her returning to her world, even for her parents. She's just seen too much to go back. I also wonder what form she'll choose to take. Since she has access to two Wand Bearers, she could easily retake her Equine form if she chooses to do so. Her power is the last thing I wonder about. Now that the rules of the universe have changed, has her ability changed with it? Does it still exist at all?

Leit Motif. I have to say, you wrote your OC pretty well. She obviously has a thing for Marcus and now that the species barrier has been broken, there's nothing holding them back. Again, I wonder if she'll cross over to the Human world just to be with him. It would be ironic if Daphne and Leit ended up switching home worlds in the end.

Marcus and Naomi. Not much to say about them really. They were great companions and characters.

Wire and the CMC. I hope we get to see the reunion between Flash and Wire (I know Flash flew into the storm to save everyone, but I can't remember if he ever came out...). It also seems like the CMC (or at least one of them) is a Wand bearer, so she'll probably serve under King Amelia. Seeing events from their point of view would make a great side story if you ever wanted to write in this universe a bit more.

One thing that occurred to me while typing this comment is that none of the characters (with the possible exception of Marcus) don't seem to want to go back to Earth. Sure, they've mentioned missing their families a few times, but I don't really feel like they're losing anything by staying. Their families will worry for awhile, but they'll recover. Marcus is still the primary suspect in the "kidnapping", but since he's in Equestria, he's safe.
Naomi is learning to transform into a Pony. Marcus is showing interest in airship mechanics (and a certain mare). Daphne will want to stay with Leit. Amelia pretty much has to stay and lead the Wands. Maybe they'll bring their families over with them? Maybe the barrier between the worlds was fixed with the New Age and this whole thought process is irrelevant. Ugh, my head hurts. I'm just not going to read into that any more.

Last of all is the Wand itself (specifically, Amelia's wand). It's a dangerous plot device right now. With it, nearly all physical damage done could be undone. It's a Deus Ex Machina waiting to happen if handled the wrong way. I have faith in your writing abilities though, so I bet you'll handle it well.

Still reading this? Thank you. I can't wait for the end and I'll probably have a couple paragraphs of comments ready by the time you release it.

There's probably more, but that's all I can recall wanting to say right now.

[Gordon_Freemane]

4646459
I guess my issue is that Amelia is already all accepted and stuff, but in my mind she hasn't yet redeemed herself just yet. I dunno, I just didn't really like this chapter as much as the others Can't have it all I guess

[Ether Echoes]

4646935
Mm, she's accepted by Daphne, and Marcus was always overly positive towards her. I promise you, though, she's not universally accepted. That's part of what the epilogue will address.

[Ether Echoes]

4646923
I answer all of those questions in the epilogue. Suffice to say, though, that I don't believe in status quo endings. Things are quiet right now, but that's only because change is just starting to ramp up.

[elmagnifico]

Dear Ether,

Thank you very much for the story. Were it not for certain copyright issues, I'd be honored to have it on a bookshelf. As-is, I think this is pretty much on the pinnacle of pony fiction. This is why I'm in this fandom. Moreso than any other, it attracts good authors and invites them to write. And they do. I'm addicted to stories, and the bronies write the best stories. So once again, thank you, and I'm looking forward to reading the epilogue.

Here's to telling tales.

PS: As an author myself, albeit one with a deeply inferior set of skills, I think you'd want to know about this:

“I’m not going to just give you the Wand,” he growled. “Threaten me as you will. If this comes to blows, you will fail in your aims.”

“Yes,” I nodded serenely, “but I’m willing to bet I’m more keen on giving up what I want than do you.

That last sentence seems almost like it'd be better ending with "than you are" instead of "than do you".

PPS: I almost feel like I ought to object to a few bits of the story, being member of a real-life organization dedicated to bringing grace to the world and then reading a story where such a goal is impossible without magical macguffins would do that, but the objection pales in the face of that ending. So whatever, have a happy reader.

[Ether Echoes]

4647045
That is interesting, because that's not present in my copy.

This is what I see on mine:

“Yes,” I nodded serenely, “but I’m willing to bet I’m more keen on giving up what I want than do you.

[elmagnifico]

4647053

Interesting indeed. Especially since from my end, our two quote boxes look the same.

[Ether Echoes]

4647097
Now see, this is an example of when an author reads her own work so much she misses something totally obvious on a reread.

"than you." is the correction. Fixed!

[thedarksideoftheleaf]

I spent the last week reading this story and I would say it was worth it. It was one of the most astonishing stories I have ever read. What really hit it home for me was that Amelia acts almost exactly like my little sister at the beginning, making the scene where Daphne and Amelia are reunited be so emotional that I cried.
I think I need to go hug her now!

[Sonorus]

Thanks for all the hard effort you put into this. It really shows. I'll be looking forward to the epilogue and any future projects.

[Ether Echoes]

4647154
Matter of taste, really. She definitely wasn't a "good" person, though she used to be innocent and fairly harmless.

4647177

This comment makes it all worth it.

4647181
Great~!

[Doppler Effect]

“I Vanished it”

It's hard to properly express how brilliant this was. It's such an incredibly simple thing, but the moment she did it, all the little bits of set up came rushing back to make it seem like the only way this could have ever ended.

An odd little thing that made the climax more exciting to me is that Amelia independently turning towards a resolution that was arguably "good" before Leit ever made it there made the question of whether Leit could actually persuade her seem more in doubt than if she just had some Saturday morning cartoon villain evil motivation. When she finally listened to Leit's story, agreed she was telling the truth, and said it didn't change her intentions, I felt it was actually still in question whether the story would end with Amelia carrying out some version of her plan. Overall, I thought the whole Leit-Amelia conversation was an excellent cap to both of their character arcs.

As the King of Wands, is there anything stopping Amelia from changing her shape to her original form if she wanted? If the position allows it, could she even return home to her normal life for a couple of years? Not that I'm sure if she even really needs to go through schooling and such at this point, but living with her parents is likely to be emotionally better for her than diving headlong into goblin politics.

[Ether Echoes]

4647317
You definitely got it, exactly as I set it up, on both your first points. Moral ambiguity and moral independence are very important themes here.
That Vanishing moment is a favorite of mine. I prepared for that all the way back in Chapter 4 when Amelia failed to Vanish an apple.

As the King of Wands, is there anything stopping Amelia from changing her shape to her original form if she wanted? If the position allows it, could she even return home to her normal life for a couple of years? Not that I'm sure if she even really needs to go through schooling and such at this point, but living with her parents is likely to be emotionally better for her than diving headlong into goblin politics.

Nothing magically prevents it, no. This will come up in the epilogue. It's important to remember that I did at one point say exactly how the story would end... just not the context surrounding it.

[MoHawgo]

Ah snap! This story has been so fun to follow. I've never spent this long reading a story before, usually I binge read a book and have it done in a day or so. Reading a story that isn't finished is a whole new experience. Waiting for the updates has forced me to savor the story and appreciate each update as it comes.

Congratulations on making it this far. I've loved it. I absolutely loved the part Leit Motif had to play at the end! She has been my favorite character, because she feels so down to earth and real! I loved the dialogue you gave her too. It wasn't anything fancy or eloquent. It was simply what someone would say if they were thrown into her situation.

Once again, congratulations and good luck with the epilogue and whatever you choose to do after the story is done!

[Ether Echoes]

4647368

It wasn't anything fancy or eloquent. It was simply what someone would say if they were thrown into her situation.

Yeah, unlike Daphne and Amelia she hasn't gone high on huffing divine fumes.