The Sun Eater

by Mannulus

First published 10th of October, 2012

A fantasy/horror semi-epic inspired by the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft and the author's impressive dementia.

In the midst of her dreams, Celestia receives a message from her long-dead father that a terrible, cosmic power threatens Equestria and the entire world. She fails to fully emerge from her subconscious, however, and only a desperate gambit from within her own mind allows her to warn Twilight Sparkle -- and thereby Luna -- of the impending disaster.
Luna hatches a risky plan to rescue Celestia from the hell of her own subconscious, but in order to do so, she will have to descend into the collective subconscious of Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, the other bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and lastly, that of herself -- a place where the black specter of Nightmare Moon still lurks.
Even if they are successful, a dire threat will still loom in the cosmos. A quest that spans aeons and defies the cruel exigencies of time will be necessary to retrieve the only means by which the horror that still haunts the dark reaches of the aether can be stopped, if indeed it can be stopped, at all. This quest will carry the ponies to an ancient, dead city, long dismissed as myth, locked in a state of eternal revelry, but also of eternal death.
In the end, they will be forced to confront their ageless foe, and they will learn whether the magic of friendship is as mighty as they had believed.

Reader beware: "The Sun Eater" goes into some very dark places. It gets dire, hopeless, and violent, and it touches on themes as far-ranging as the futility of existence, depression, suicide, and addiction. It takes cues from some obvious, and on occasion previously-explored questions of the characters' psychology, but it also delves into some relatively new territory. It keeps a sense of humor about itself, but only as much as is necessary to keep it from becoming so bleak as to be unreadable.

Chapter 1: The Sun Eater Returns

A very special thanks to Huussii of Deviantart for allowing me to use the work "MLP - Celestial Nightmare" for this fanfic's cover image.

All characters, location names, etc. are the property of Hasbro. This is, however, an original work of fiction, and all appropriate laws and etiquette apply.

Thanks for reading,
Mannulus

The Sun Eater

Chapter 1

The Sun Eater Returns

“Kaelestia.” It was her name, pronounced in the old way, with a hard “C” and a slight, poetic elongation of the first syllable. She had not heard it thus spoken in aeons.

“Caelestia.” She recognized it now, and the word formed itself properly in her mind, though the hard “C” still remained. Where was she, and where was that voice coming from? Everything was black, but at the same time not, a swirling unreality somehow both substantial and incorporeal, where color, space, and time were as malleable as wet clay. Images flashed momentarily around her on all sides; old thoughts and ideas and imaginings, friends -- some so long-dead she scarce remembered their names, -- her favorite student, her sister, her mother, and finally, her father.

It was his voice.

“Caelestia.”

And it was not. There was another voice somehow buried behind and within that of the ancient alicorn; a whisper, cold and androgynous. Still, she could not resist the urge to answer.

“Pater?”

“Cenasolus revinere.” He came into focus as his words echoed about her. He stood before her, gleaming white. His eyes shone like twin suns, and his mane gleamed gold in the darkness. She strained to focus, but he seemed somehow to slip from reality, even as he became more defined.

In a daze, she realized that she was awakening from a dream. There was pain throughout her entire body. She felt cold, though she was drenched in sweat. Somehow, she rolled off her bed, and forced herself to stand. Where was her strength?

The next few minutes were a blur of moments that she could not perfectly link together.

There was the door to her chamber. She had never noticed how heavy it was before, but neither had she ever had to touch it to open it before; her magic was useless, even her most basic telekinesis. Her mind was too riven for her to focus it.

There was the hallway. It seemed longer than she remembered. Her hooves echoed a slow, uneven rhythm. She stumbled, and as the steel of her horseshoe slid across the stone floor, it cast a shower of sparks onto the wall.

She moved on.

There was a guard. Terrified, he merely backed into a corner, barely managing to stammer out the first syllable of “Princess.”

There were the stairs, and her wing hooked over the banister, which groaned as she leaned against it through her slow descent.

There was the great hall.

There was her sister.

Luna stood aghast at the sight of her kin. There was no crown, no jewelry, and no makeup. Celestia would never allow herself to be seen like this, and yet there she stood in front of Luna and her guards. It was only after the shock subsided that she took notice of Celestia's stilted gait and ragged countenance. Her mane was soaking wet, and clung to her back, neck, and face, strands of it even caught in the corner of her mouth. She swayed as she walked, and seemed to choose each individual step. Luna might have thought her sister was drunk, but for her whole body trembling violently, and for her eyes, wide and aware, though glazed and distant.

“Celestia?” She spoke her sister's name, her voice colored by concern and confusion.

Celestia spoke three tremulous words:

“Luna, non valeo.”

Luna's mind was slow to translate Celestia's words from their long-dead mother tongue, but as she perceived them, she felt the cold caress of a fear that she usually knew only in her blackest dreams.

“Luna, I am not well.”

Celestia's knees buckled, and she listed to her right. Though she tried for a moment to lower herself gently, her strength finally gave way. Her eyes rolled back, and her whole body seemed to go limp. The momentum of her fall rolled upward from her right flank to her head, and it was last to strike the stone floor, emitting a muted, hollow whack.

Luna galloped toward her sister. In moments she stood over the great, iridescent heap of Celestia's body, relieved to see that she stilll breathed, but horrified to see how deep and labored that breathing was. Blood was seeping from a laceration above her right eye. Luna knelt, and instinctively moved to lift her sisters face towards her own. She caught herself, however, and stepped back, nodding quickly at the fallen horse.

"Lift her head," she said to a guard who stood nearby. "Gently."

The guard, a bat pony, gulped at having been selected for such a task, but knelt nonetheless, and wedged a wing under Celestia's head, removing it from the widening pool.

Luna's bones seemed to freeze inside her as she gazed into the red mask that covered half of Celestia's face. Other guards had only now begun to crowd around, but in their horror, none had mustered the presence of mind to take action.

Luna's roar shook centuries-old dust from the ceiling and walls:

“ONE OF YOU FOOLS, CALL THE DOCTOR!!”

* * *

Twilight Sparkle knelt over a pile of open magic textbooks in the basement laboratory of Golden Oaks Library. Her horn was pointed, glimmering and unmoving, at a small, iron sphere which was levitating over a glowing, crystal spire in the center of the room. There was an empty wine bottle beside her on the floor, and a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. It was burned down almost to the filter, but obviously hadn't been ashed for over half its length. Twilight hadn't slept in two days, and it had been more than six hours since she had left this exact spot. Every muscle in her body was either cramped or numb.

“Twilight?” Spike's voice broke the slow, staccato throb of the laboratory's many machines.

“I told you, Spike, I'll be up later tonight. I'll eat then – and rest.” There was a mild edge of irritability in Twilight's voice, and she punctuated the sentence by inhaling deeply from her cigarette. Spike had been hassling her to take a break for the past day and a half, but this experiment represented the culmination of weeks of research into a magical principal that almost nopony had fully understood or mastered in thousands of years.

Smoke escaped from Twilight's mouth and nose as she mumbled, “There hasn't been a need.”

Spike looked confused. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said, reaching up with her hoof to quickly flick the ash away from her cigarette.

“Look, I know you said not to interrupt you, but we got a letter.” Spike tapped her gently on the shoulder with the scroll, careful to let her hear his approaching footsteps, so as not to startle her.

“Put it on my desk. I'll read it later.” Twilight's tone softened as she replied. At least Spike had a decent reason for disturbing her, this time. "And bring me another pack of cigarettes, please."

“Well, just so you know, it's not from Celestia,” he said, as he began to walk back towards the stairs.

“What?” Twilight turned her head slightly, and the sphere began almost imperceptibly to tip. She quickly resumed her position, and the sphere righted itself.

“It has Princess Luna's seal.”

“It's the middle of the day – I think.” Twilight glanced quickly at the clock on the wall; yes, it was about noon. “Why is she even awake? She sleeps until late afternoon, usually. She slept through a battle, for gods' sake. How can she be awake? For that matter, why is she sending me a letter?”

“You want me to open it?”

“Yes," shrugged the unicorn. "Read it to me.”

“Celestia is very ill." Spike read, "Come to Canterlot immediately. Luna.”

The sphere tipped on its axis, and dropped out of the air. Twilight was on her hooves before it had reached the floor. It clanged loudly as its axial momentum rolled it into a corner, where it came to rest. Twilight hoisted Spike onto her back and was up the stairs in seconds.

“Whoa! Hold on! We've got to pack!” Spike had a lock of Twilight's mane wrapped around each forearm, and was holding on for dear life.

“Anything we need, we can get from the castle or my parents' house. We're going -- NOW!”

The front front door gleamed faint purple, and flung open. Twilight was through it in an instant, after which she promptly slammed into Applejack, who had apparently been standing on the doorstep. The two ponies and the dragon tumbled head-over-hooves-over-tails-over-scales into a garish, multicolored heap.

“Tarnation! What in all Hell, Twilight!?” Applejack wrenched her way out of the twisted mass of orange and purple that had formed in the wake of the impact.

“I'm sorry!” said Twilight, who had lost both Spike and her cigarette in the collision.

As quickly as she could, she got to her hooves, her purple cheeks lightening towards pink as she blushed.

“Oh, I'd apologize to Fluttershy, first, if'n I was you.” Applejack nodded towards the flower bed just left of the open door. Fluttershy was laying in it on her back, half-conscious. “You caught her pretty damn good 'cross the snout with that door.”

“Oh, Fluttershy, are you okay!?” Twilight dashed to her friend's side. Her eyes were half-crossed, and she was mumbling something about needing to feed the badgers.

“Fluttershy, can you hear me!?”

“I hear you just fine, Mr. Otter, and I must say your diction has improved noticeably since last we spoke.”

Twilight shoved her hooves under Fluttershy's forelegs, and lifted her to her haunches. Spike was back on his feet, now. Ever the pragmatist, he gave the pegasus a gentle slap on the cheek.

“Snap out of it!”

“Oh, hello, Spike!” The honey-blonde pegasus looked around, obviously a bit confused. “What am I doing at the Library?”

“We were coming to see if Twilight wanted to go get some lunch, remember?” Applejack picked a stray leaf out of Fluttershy's mane, and spat it on the ground.

“Oh, yes, I'd like some lunch, thanks,” Fluttershy responded.

“No, we were already going to lunch, but we were going to see if... Know what? It don't matter.” Applejack turned to Twilight.

“Where were you headed in such a rush, anyway?” she asked.

“I just got a letter from Princess Luna. Celestia is sick. I have to leave for Canterlot, right away!”

“Well, the train is the fastest way, and it don't even get here for another three hours. And incident'ly, you look like you lost a fight with a cider press.” Applejack pointed a hoof at the nearest window, and Twilight turned to see her reflection.

She was a mess. Her eyes were bloodshot and sunken from sleep deprivation, her mane was unkempt and ragged, and there was a tiny drop of blood on her lower lip, owing most likely to her recent impact with Applejack's rock-solid earth pony body. As she took in her own bedraggled visage, her stomach growled loudly.

“I suppose I could stand some food.” She gently licked the blood away from her lip. “And a shower.”

“I don't know when the next shower is,” said Fluttershy, rocking slowly side to side. “Ask one of the other Pegasi; I take care of the animals.”

Applejack pressed a hoof to her face.

“Spike,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.

“Yeah, AJ?” responded the dragon.

“Slap Fluttershy, again.”

* * *

“Okay, so the door is why my face hurts so much?” Fluttershy was still trying to comprehend exactly what had transpired outside the library, earlier.

“On one side, anyway,” said Spike, amused and only mildly ashamed.

The four friends were seated around a table outside of Sugar Cube Corner. After a quick lunch, Spike had suggested they come there for a little something to put some pep back into Twilight. It hadn’t worked.

“I feel awful,” Twilight mumbled.

“I told you to take a break,” said Spike.

“I’m taking a break," she grumbled. "This is a break.”

The unicorn laid her head gently on the table, next to a plate with a half-eaten piece of chocolate cake on it. She stared at her own teeth marks in the icing, and wondered when last she had been to the dentist.

“Not since I moved to Ponyville,” she mumbled.

“What was that?” asked Applejack.

“Nothing,” said Twilight, not lifting her head. “I was thinking about something else.”

Pinkie Pie emerged from the door of the bakery, a plate piled high with chocolate chip cookies clenched in her teeth. She placed it on the table, and immediately snatched up the largest.

“I deshided I’d chake my break sinks you kirls were here,” she said, her mouth still full of cookie. She swallowed, and then looked at Twilight, who had yet to lift her head or even acknowledge Pinkie’s presence.

“Is there something wrong with the cake, Twilight? I can get you something else,” said Pinkie.

“It’s fine, Pinkie,” said Twilight, half smiling and rolling her eyes towards the pink earth pony. “I’m just really, really tired.”

“Too tired for chocolate cake!?” Pinkie was obviously stunned.

“She’s near about too tired for anything,” said Applejack.

There was a strange, high-pitched, chittering sound, and Twilight rolled her eyes towards it. They found, of all things, a parasprite. They followed it until it landed next to her half-eaten cake, and began to sniff at it. It was yellow, cute, and, of course, horrifying, but it was still not enough to prompt Twilight to lift her head.

“Oh, gods, is there another infestation?” groaned the unicorn, still resting her weary head on the table.

“Oh, no,” said Pinkie. “We just get one or two of them around the bakery this time of year. Mrs. Cake showed me a better way to deal with them, though -- if you can catch it while there’s still just one.”

“What’s that?” asked Twilight, still staring at the parasprite, which was slowly opening its vicious, adorable maw.

Suddenly, a huge pink flyswatter slammed down into Twilight’s field of vision, and the parasprite was simply gone from her sight. She jerked upright in surprise.

“Holy mother of Luna, Pinkie!” she barked incredulously.

“I’m sorry. Did I startle you?” asked Pinkie as she peeled the flyswatter up from the table.

There was a pitiful, twittering sound as most of the parasprite pulled away from the table. Pinkie turned the flyswatter around and looked at it briefly. “Got ‘im good,” she said, then turned the flyswatter around for Twilight to see.

The parasprite, now oozing green goo in several places and lacking its left eye and several wings and legs, twitched and peeped in front of Twilight’s face for a couple of seconds. Finally, Pinkie extended the Flyswatter over a nearby waste basket and scraped it against its rim. There was a high-pitched, groaning squeak, which surprised Twilight, for she would not have previously believed that a groan could be intoned as a squeak, and the parasprite slid off the flyswatter’s surface into the basket.

Pinkie calmly put the flyswatter back into whatever pocket dimension in which she stored such things. Applejack and Spike both snickered at Fluttershy, who had her mouth covered with both hooves and her eyes spread wide in disbelief. Twilight looked down at her piece of cake. There was a green, multifaceted eye and a shattered wing lying next to it in a small splotch of green goo.

“Well, I’m not hungry, anymore,” she said. “I’m going to go get ready to go to Canterlot.”

“Oh, you’re going to Canterlot?” asked Pinkie. “What’s up?”

“Princess Luna sent me a letter saying Princess Celestia is sick. She wants me to come to Canterlot right away.”

“Princess Celestia sick, eh?” said Pinkie. “Well in that case, I’m going with you.”

“Pinkie Pie, you don’t have to do that,” said Twilight.

“Sure don’t,” said Pinkie. “I’ll go pack my bags.”

“No, you missed the whole point...” Pinkie Pie had already disappeared inside before Twilight could finish her sentence. She turned her head towards Applejack and Fluttershy.

“You’re coming, too, aren’t you?” she asked flatly.

“Right after we go get Rainbow Dash and Rarity,” said Applejack.

“Fine,” said Twilight, resigned to and secretly thankful for her friends’ involvement.

“I'm gonna run to the boutique and get Rarity,” said Applejack. “Fluttershy, go grab Rainbow Dash. It’s still early enough in the afternoon I doubt she’s out of bed.’

“Come to think of it, I better go let Granny and Big Macintosh know I’ll be gone a few days, and I’ll need to grab a thing or two from home. See y’all in a little bit.” With that, Applejack trotted away towards Carousel Boutique.

“I should go tell one of the earth ponies to feed the animals in case I don't get back by tonight,” said Fluttershy. ”I should probably kiss Angel Bunny bye, too. Oh, and I need to pack a few things... a toothbrush, at least.”

“And I need to clean myself up,” said Twilight. “Come on Spike.”

As Twilight had already paid their bill, they set off towards the Library. After a minute or so, Spike voiced a thought which had been troubling him ever since reading the letter.

“I don't think I've ever heard of Princess Celestia being sick, before.”

“Neither have I; that's why I'm so worried. What's worse, she's sick enough that Princess Luna had to write me in her stead, and it's serious enough that she thinks I should be there.”

“You don't think she's...” Spike's sentence trailed off into nothing.

“NO!" Twilight half shouted, stopping on the spot. Almost by instinct, Spike stopped as well, and Twilight lowered her head to look him straight in the eye.

"No," she said, and this time it was calm. "Don't even think that.”

Spike knew Twilight meant to be reassuring, but he sensed the mingled anger and fear in her voice as she continued. “She's still young. In a way, she's not much older than me, really. There's no way, okay? It's just impossible.”

“Yeah, you're right, Twilight." said Spike gulping slightly. "I'm just worrying about nothing. She's probably got a bad case of horn rash, and just needs you to tend to some of the magic stuff nopony else can do for her.”

“Like what?” Twilight raised her left eyebrow, inquisitively, and resumed her march towards Golden Oaks library, dragon in tow.

“Raising the sun," said Spike. "That is what you've been trying to figure out how to do, isn't it?”

Spike always knew what Twilight was up to, even when she would rather he didn't.

“Well, sort of. Nopony but Celestia or Luna has attempted to control the sun or moon's relationship to this planet – or vice versa, really – in thousands of years. Unicorns used to do it by a concerted effort of the best and brightest of our entire race, but Celestia and Luna were kind enough to assume the responsibility when they were crowned. A long time before that, there were other alicorns who did the same thing.”

“Why'd they stop?” asked Spike.

“I don't know. I read a little about it years ago, and asked Princess Celestia the same question. She said she'd rather not talk about it – that it was so long ago that she couldn't even remember it that well, anymore. In any case, it would take everything I had in me to control the sun or the moon for even a few moments, whereas Celestia and Luna exert constant control with almost no effort or thought whatsoever. I've actually been curious as to how much more magical power Celestia is free to exert now that she's only responsible for the sun, again.”

They were at the Library now, and Twilight opened the door.

“Pack anything you want to take, Spike, and leave a window open for that foul-tempered owl of mine. Oh, and check to make sure I don't fall asleep in the shower.”

* * *

Twilight hadn't fallen asleep in the shower. She couldn't fall asleep on the train, either. She just kept leaning her head against the window, catching glimpses at every curve of Canterlot's growing form in the distance. Her mind was a total blank, a true rarity.

“Darling, you really should rest,” came the voice of an entirely different Rarity. Twilight was startled from her reverie, and momentarily straightened in her seat.

“I, I, I, I.... resting.”

Rainbow Dash, sitting in the seat immediately in front of Twilight, didn't even look up from her book as she spoke.

“Tell me that wasn't supposed to be a sentence.”

Pinkie Pie, sitting next to her, somehow managed to bridge her body over the top of the seat so that her head hung upside down in front of the face of Rarity, who occupied the seat next to Twilight. She turned her head to look at the exhausted purple pony.

“I don't think so, Rainbow Dash. If it was, the subject and verb didn't agree at all. You'd need some form of “to be” to give it a tense and stuff.” At this, Rainbow Dash did pause from her reading, and turned to stare blankly at Pinkie's still-upturned belly. Rarity likewise gazed wordlessly at the earth pony, her head rolling gently to the left in bewilderment.

“I'd expect better from a bookworm like you, Twilight.” Pinkie normalized her posture, and Rainbow Dash shrugged before going back to her book.

“I'm... fine.” Twilight said, but the phrase was distant and directed at nopony in particular, as if meant as much to reassure herself as her friends.

Pinkie immediately returned to her strange posture.

“See, that's better. The way you contracted 'I' and 'am' makes it a logical statement that tells us your current state of being.” She righted herself, then immediately flipped backwards again to say “Also, you're lying.” Then, she was back to her seat, again.

“I agree with Pinkie Pie,” said Rarity. “You are not 'fine.' I can go and sit next to Spike. Why don't you lie down across the seat?”

“That sounds like a fantastic idea!” Spike was slightly more enthusiastic than Rarity's suggestion perhaps warranted, but Rarity nonetheless lifted herself from her seat.

“Okay,” mumbled Twilight, her words now utterly stuperous and undirected. She didn't turn her head from the window, even as Rarity stood and began to step across the aisle, and realizing this, the white unicorn turned to admonish her.

“Twilight," she said sternly, "the point of me moving is for you to lie down.” It was a tone of mixed frustration and concern that Rarity generally reserved for Sweetie Belle.

“I,I,I,.... I'm...” Twilight didn't even finish her sentence before she toppled, already asleep before her face hit the seat cushion.

Rarity Huffed, and turned towards Pinkie Pie.

“I thought that sedative you put in her coffee would never kick in.”

“It takes it a little while, sometimes,” said Pinkie Pie. “Especially if you're wired on sugar, caffeine, and... you know... stuff.”

Applejack peered over the back of Twilight's seat and marveled momentarily at the considerable pool of saliva which had already amassed beneath the unicorn's open mouth.

“Pardon, y'all, but is this, uh... legal?" she asked, skeptically. "You know... druggin' her up without her knowin' and all?”

Pinkie Pie craned her head backwards over the seat, and smiled at Applejack.

“Nopers!” she said happily, and the smile widened to a grin that barely restrained a giggle.

“Yeah, I figured. Guess it's for her own good, though. How far to Canterlot?”

“At least two more hours,” replied Spike.

Fluttershy chimed in from her seat next to Applejack.

“Maybe the rest of us should get some rest, too, if everyone else thinks that's a good idea, I mean.”

The car was soon silent but for the snoring of a baby dragon, the slow, regular breathing of five sleeping ponies, and the occasional, quiet rustle of the turning pages of a book.

* * *

Awareness without knowledge; that was how Twilight Sparkle would have described her state of being, had she been able. It was like being a newborn foal again, but with the developed, inquisitive mind of an adult. Slowly, ideas began to manifest themselves: a concept of self, a concept of others, love, hate, joy, sadness, enmity... and friendship.

With that one idea, she remembered.

“I am Twilight Sparkle," she said. "That is my name.”

It was only now that she became aware of Celestia.

“Yes, you are, and yes, it is.”

As she heard her teacher's words, Twilight's instinct was to look at her; only then did she realize that she could not feel her body, and had no understanding of where she was. At her desire to see the Princess, she simply and suddenly could, but with what eyes she did not know.

“Don't panic, Twilight," said Celestia. "You are in my dream, and I am in yours. For this to happen you must be close. Luna must have sent for you."

The image's lips moved, but their synchronization with Celestia's words was imperfect. Furthermore, Twilight was not certain that all – or any – of those words had actually been spoken, certain though she was that they had been said.

“Why is this happening, Princess?” Twilight heard her voice, though she did not feel herself speak.

“I cast this spell in hopes of contacting Luna,” spoke the image, “but I have not seen her, so I assume she hasn't slept since last night.”

“You cast a spell in your sleep? Every time I think I'm getting good you pull some crazy sh... You pull something like this on me.”

Even in her subconscious, Twilight managed to reign in her language in the presence of her teacher. She was beginning to feel, now, as well as see. Sensations of awe, respect, eagerness, and even love mingled and twisted in her being – the feelings which she most closely associated with the Princess. However, there were also hints of shame, fear, and confusion that laced their way through those larger sensations, born of memories of failure and inadequacy.

“You should be proud that you are able to share this dream with me in this way – I am.” Celestia's blurry, protean image smiled, and Twilight felt her teacher's pride as much as her own. The effigy of the princess seemed to fade, and she spoke again.

“I need you to see something.”

Celestia's faded form grew, and reshaped itself before solidifying into another being entirely. It was an alicorn stallion. He was enormous – the largest equine that Twilight had ever seen. Even though she could not sense her own body for comparison, the sheer physical mass of the winged unicorn before her caused her to perceive him as tremendous. His mane was gold, and his eyes glowed so brightly that if Twilight had seen him with physical eyes, she would have shut them at the sight. His cutie mark was identical to Celestia's.

“This was my father,” came Celestia's disembodied voice, wistful and sad. “His name was Sol.”

Twilight was in awe, and from her teacher she sensed a pang of longing mixed with warmth, keenest at the mention of her father's name. Celestia continued.

“He appeared to me last night in a dream, and gave me a message.”

The titanic alicorn's mouth opened, and words thundered forth with a force that would have deafened Twilight's waking ears:

“Celestia, Cenasolus revinere.” The image of Sol shrank and wavered, becoming once again an image of Celestia, and she spoke.

“If I do not awaken soon – and I may well not – you must give Luna this message. She will know what it means. Now, my faithful student, it's time for you to wake up.”

* * *

“Twilight! Wake your ass up, already!” Spike shook Twilight's shoulder. “How much of that stuff did you give her, Pinkie Pie?”

“The same dose I take when I can't sleep. It's just an old Pie family remedy for colds and insomnia. Granny Pie used to drink it every night.”

“What's in it?” asked Rainbow Dash, as she tucked the book she'd been reading into her saddlebag.

“A shot of peppermint schnapps, a spoonful of honey, a little bit of tryptophan, some codeine, and a powdered Valium, when you can get one.” said Pinkie, matter-of-factly.

“Could you get one?” asked Rainbow Dash, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah,” Pinkie said, nodding once. “Rarity gave it to me.”

“I have a stash,” said Rarity.

Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Fluttershy all stared at the white unicorn with mixed looks of skepticism and disdain.

“Oh, don't even act like any of you are surprised,” she half-snapped. “Spike, is Twilight coming around, yet?”

“I think so. She's mumbling something in Latin. That's normal.”

Twilight sat up on her haunches and screamed something that sounded like “Ray win a ray!”

“Oh, good. You're awake!” Pinkie Pie bounced by happily. “Weeeeeeeeeeeeee're Heeeere!”

Twilight looked around, dazed. She laid back, and stared up at the ceiling, eyes still open.

"Cena... Cena? Ceno? Eat?" Revinere? Come back?"

She barely whispered the words, and after a few moments, she rolled, first onto her side, then onto her hooves, crouching low. At last she lifted herself up, and stood, rocking gently and slowly.

“Let's go to the castle. I need to speak to Princess Luna. Now.”

“Twilight, your eyes are so red. Did you sleep well?” came Fluttershy's gentle voice.

“No.” Twilight stepped forward, and as she did so, her knees buckled. She lay down on her belly, and drew three deep breaths, each one taking several seconds.

"I feel really, really sick," she said.

Nopony spoke. Twilight hoisted herself again to most of her full height, and slowly began to put one hoof in front of the other.

Applejack stepped to her side.

“If you start to go down, I gotcha, sugarcube."

The orange earth mare looked up from the unicorn's drooping head and quivering shoulders, and glared momentarily at Pinkie Pie, then at Rarity, never speaking a word.

Both of them returned awkward grins, though only Pinkie Pie bothered to add a shrug.

“Something terrible is happening," said Twilight. "I don't know everything, but I know it's bad.”

Twilight did not look up as she spoke, but stared still at her hooves, choosing the spot where she would place each step.

“I feel like I have a hangover,” she moaned, shifting her weight carefully to the next hoof.

Pinkie Pie began to dig in her saddle bag.

“I've got an old Pie family remedy for that!” she said.

Everypony turned their heads toward Pinkie in unison.

“NO!”

* * *

Celestia's chamber was empty, but for the two princesses, the elder of whom was unconscious in her bed, the younger seated close by, weary and puffy-eyed, the fur beneath the corners of her eyes stained and crusted with dried tears.

“Princess Luna?” The guard's voice was furtive and even slightly fearful, as well it should have been. Luna hadn't slept in two days, and she had developed a nasty habit of screaming in the face of anypony who entered the room -- other than the castle doctor -- at volumes that were quite literally deafening. Several unsolicited visitors had been telekinetically hurled out the door. More than one had impacted the opposite wall of the hallway, though nopony had sustained any serious injury from such treatment, as yet.

“What is it?” The princess' voice was sharp and short, but exhausted.

“Twilight Sparkle is here to see you.” His voice quivered.

“Let her in.” Luna did not look up.

“She is not alone. She is with...”

“I know who she is with,” said Luna. “I would have been disappointed were she alone. Let them in.”

“Very well,” said the guard, obviously relieved that Luna had not, in fact, been "disappointed."

The door to the chamber glowed and swung open. There stood six ponies, one of whom broke into an unsteady gallop that brought her to Celestia's bedside. Twilight Sparkle half collapsed as she reached the bed, and laid her head and neck over the chest of her ancient mentor.

A clock on the wall, rendered in the shape of a sun, ticked by the moments as the five other ponies stepped up to surround the bed in a semi-circle. Twilight's face washed over with a look of exhausted relief as she felt the rise and fall of her teacher's chest, and heard the slow, staccato rhythm of her heartbeat.

Finally, without raising her head, she spoke. “Cenasolus revinere. What does it mean, Princess Luna?”

Luna's eyes widened. Her mouth quivered.

“Roughly translated, it means...” Her words trailed off as she stood and walked towards the balcony. She gazed directly into the sun which she had for two days had to raise in her sister's stead, her eyes feeling no pain from its brilliance. “ It means... 'the Sun Eater returns.'”

“Now, what in the blue hell does that mean?” It was Applejack, the first other than Twilight to have courage enough to speak.

Luna said nothing for several seconds, then turned from the window.

“There is,” her voice faltered, “a power. I hesitate to call it an evil. It took our father's life, and in a way, our mother's as well. Father gave it a name. He called it Cenasolus.” Luna pronounced the word with a hard “C,” so that it sounded like “Kenasolus.”

“Cenasolus appeared aeons ago. I cannot begin to tell you all how long ago it must have been, but if it provides any perspective, Celestia was still a filly, and I was little more than a toddler. What little I remember is only because we age... differently.'

“In those days, Father raised the sun, mother the moon. I barely recall any of it, except that father grew ill, and was afflicted with horrid... dreams. Many mornings, he would be unable to awaken from them, but on the days when he did, he told us tales of the visions he had seen in the night."

She inhaled slowly, and shut her eyes.

“As I said," she continued, "I remember little of those days, but I remember what he told us of his dreams. He told of how the sun grew dim; of how the moon broke into pieces and crashed into the sea, raising a wave that drowned the world. After the sea receded, the sky grew dark of the sun's dying fire, and all the oceans froze into hard, black ice. Then, even the stars seemed to fade, until there was only blackness. He would wander this cold, darkened world for what seemed ages in his dreams, pointing his horn at the blackness and willing a sun to rise that simply was not there. Sometimes, it would seem to him that centuries had passed before he would awaken. At other times, his dream would seem to last for only seconds, but he would find that he had slept several days. It was as if his mind had lost its hold on time... or perhaps the other way around."

“Is Celestia trapped in dreams like that right now?” asked Twilight, lifting her head from her teacher's chest for the first time. Her eyes showed her horror and fear, but Luna would not lie.

“Dreams are not so simple," said the Princess. "Dreams are a unique creation of the mind -- the very nexus where it meets the heart. They represent each individual's unique hopes, dreams, memories, and fears. Celestia is enough like Father that her dreams may be similar, but to her, you must understand, they are far, far worse -- a unique, perfect, self-inflicted hell, like all nightmares," Luna spoke through gritted teeth, her eyes flashing.

"Nightmare" was not a word she used lightly – ever.

"When will she wake up?" asked Rarity.

"Maybe never," said Luna. "Father found his way out again and again, but..." She swallowed a lump, and it was audible to all present. "Celestia is strong, but Father was..." she smiled, and her eyelids quivered.

"He was magnificent," she said. "He and Mother, both," she continued. "Their eyes gleamed like starlight, moonlight, sunlight, and time, itself. They were the true god and goddess of this world, and older than even I can imagine. Neither Celestia nor I am even sure of how they were born."

“But you still haven't told us why this is happening,” said Twilight, her voice painted with desperation.

“I don't fully understand it, myself. Father said, in his final days, that he had begun to hear in the darkness of his dreams the voice of some entity speaking a language no tongue of this world could speak. He called it the Sun Eater -- Cenasolus -- because he said that it was this entity who ate the sun from the sky in his dreams. He seemed certain of it, though he never said how. Remember that my memories of this are dim. I was only a child.'

“Then, one day, a terrible thing happened. The sun began to change in the sky of the real world, growing larger and redder, as if aging rapidly. It was subtle, but to Mother's eyes it was obvious. When she pointed it out to Celestia and I, we could see it, too. Soon, it became so apparent that even others could tell. Worse yet, the world itself seemed to be afflicted by some strange... plague of time. Everything and everyone began to age more quickly, but it was curiously uneven. A tree might die and rot in seconds while the one next to it merely seemed to grow a bit taller. These peculiarities of entropy were not limited to plant life, either. The old died in droves from no apparent cause, and the young grew old in moments, their minds filled with the memories of lifetimes they had not even truly experienced. Cities fell into ruin around their inhabitants as if abandoned for centuries. There was panic the world over.'

"Father awoke that day, and said that when next he slept, he would never awaken. We were all horrified, but he would tell us no more, except that he hoped that what he meant to do when next mother brought forth the moon would spare us the horrors he had seen in his last dream.'

“I cried a great deal, and Celestia did as well. We all laid down next to Father, and he and mother sang my sister and I a lullaby. I think there must have been some magic in it, because I doubt that a mere song could have given our minds peace at such a time. Whatever the case, we fell asleep, and when we awoke, it was morning. The world was whole again, and father was gone.”

Luna's word's trailed off as she finished this last sentence, but every single pony in the room was listening so intently that not one syllable was lost to an ear.

Luna breathed slowly, and looked out the window into the sun, again, which now hung low on the horizon, painting the landscape with a rich palette of purples, reds, and oranges. She chewed on her jaw for a moment, then continued to speak.

“Mother took responsibility for both sun and moon for several thousand years after that, but her heart was utterly broken. For those few millenia, she grew sicker and more frail. She taught the unicorns to create night and day, and it is my belief that when she was satisfied in their ability to do so, she chose to die.” Luna drew a deep breath, and continued to gaze out of the window, as if concentrating on something in the distance. The sun sank beneath the horizon, and she turned back to the six ponies and the dragon.

“That was ages ago, before even Discord. Celestia and I had to grow older, wiser and stronger, and mother knew that. She held on as long as her heart would allow her, I think, and she left us a future. I bear her no resentment. I cannot imagine what it was like to lose one with whom she had endured so many ages, though I fear I shall soon discover that woe, myself.” Luna looked to her sister's limp, white body.

“Twilight Sparkle, you must tell me how it is that you came to know the name of Cenasolus.”

Chapter 2: A Prelude to Greater Nightmares

Chapter 2

A Prelude to Greater Nightmares

“This is like a bad science fiction novel,” said Rainbow Dash, her mouth half full of hay. “I mean, all we know about this Cenasolus... thing... is that it wants to eat the sun, and that's why Celestia is sick? Really?”

“That's about it," said Twilight. "We really don't know what it is or anything about it except that it has a grievous hunger. It has to consume either a world or the life of a being that is tied to that world's life force. Luna and Celestia's parents were stronger than they are because the universe was more primal and violent back then. Luna believes that Celestia will be consumed much more quickly than their father was, and that Cenasolus will come for her, next.”

Twilight still hadn't slept, and the plate of various grains, oats and flowers that sat before her was hardly touched.

“Well, she's doing a mighty fine job of staying calm, then,” said Applejack, gazing out of an open window at the rising moon.

“You don't think she's worried about herself, too, do you?” asked Fluttershy. “She has enough to worry about with Princess Celestia being sick, and then she has to raise the sun and moon both, too, poor thing.”

“I'm standing behind you." It was a regal voice, and obviously perturbed. "And if you ever call me a 'poor thing,' again, I will eat you.”

Five of the six ponies seated in the royal dining chamber pivoted quickly in their seats. Fluttershy alone did not turn to look at Luna. She merely sank down into her chair like a melting ice cube.

“Fluttershy, she's kidding,” said Pinkie Pie, noticing Fluttershy's mortification and panic. “Isn't she?” She looked at Twilight. There was no response. “Aren't you?” She looked at Luna.

“I'm not sure,” said the night-purple alicorn. Luna walked to the head of the table and sat down heavily in the chair there.

It was too large for her.

Everypony watched her intently as she slumped back, leaning lackadaisically against its back and one of its foreleg rests. Sh ran a hoof down that rest, and sighed, her eyes tired and unfocused. The tightening of her jaw and the quiver it elicited were visible, but her eyes did not well, and she made not the slightest sound.

After a few moments, though Luna did not verbally or by any other visible signal call for service, an earth pony cook with a rolling tray trotted gingerly into the room. His expression was even more uneasy than those of the six mares. He stopped near where Luna sat, and removed a covered dish from the tray. Quickly, he sat it in front of her, and uncovered it, revealing something that caused every one of the six mares to recoil.

It was meat, bloody and raw -- a chunk of it big enough that it must have come from something at least as large as a cow or a deer. They were all shocked, but to their credit, only Rarity fainted, an action which was only partially an act. Spike jumped from his seat and ran to her side. The rest of the ponies all waited to see if Luna would eat what had been sat before her.

She did not; She blooded it. She clenched her teeth around it and sucked. It was audible; The ponies could actually hear her drawing the blood from the flesh.

“Fluttershy,” whispered Pinkie, leaning over, “Never call her a 'poor thing,' again.”

Luna pulled her head up from the plate. “It's not from a pony.”

A drop of blood fell off of Luna's chin. Rainbow Dash gagged a little on a mouthful of hay.

“Did you think her fangs were for show?” Nopony dared ask to whom Luna referred. They all knew. “There remain even now certain disadvantages to my... possession... that are not easily overcome. At first, I had to consume the meat, itself. One day, I will find a way to make even... this... unnecessary. For now, however, that is not our concern.”

The cook put the cover back over the meat, now bloodless and pale, and placed it back on the cart.

“You just let us see that," said Rainbow Dash, having managed to swallow her hay by a substantial exercise of willpower. "That happened, just now. You just drank blood, like a vampire or something." She coughed slightly.

“Tell somepony. See what they do about it.” Luna's voice wasn't even smug. She lifted a napkin telekinetically to her mouth, and wiped the blood away.

The cook returned with another tray, this one loaded with ordinary equine food, and began to set it before Luna. The portions were noticeably larger than they had been for the other ponies, but only in proportion with Luna's own greater size. She began to eat, and something about seeing her consume ordinary food made her guests relax, again.

“Celestia hasn't eaten since she fell asleep,” said Luna, magically lifting an ornate cup of wine to her lips to sip. If we don't find a way to wake her soon, the doctor will have to put her on an I.V.”

“That's all you can think about, ain't it?” Applejack's voice was laced with real concern.

She had, predictably, been the least unsettled by the image of Luna extracting blood from the chunk of once-living muscle tissue. Farm life had shown her many ugly things, and she had learned, in time, to think of even the most brutal and disgusting parts of day-to-day existence as no more or less than life playing itself out as it must.

“Reckon I'd be worried the same about my own kin," she continued, "but you oughtta keep your head up. I don't think Celestia's quite ready to throw in towel... or she don't strike me as the type, leastways."

Luna looked at Applejack without speaking, then returned to her meal.

Rarity, still swooning on the floor, began to come to her senses. Spike fanned her with a napkin as she sat up and began to speak.

“Oh, thank goodness. I had the most dreadful dream. We were having dinner at the castle, which would have been lovely except for the circumstances, and they brought a plate of bloody flesh out for Princess Luna, if you can believe it.” She observed her surroundings, and the reality of the situation dawned on her even as Spike was explaining.

“Oh, I believe it,” said the dragon. “It happened. She sucked the blood out of it.”

Rarity was down again, as if she had taken a hammer to the tip of her horn.

“SPIKE!” Twilight mustered just enough energy for a motherly reproach.

“Well, she was gonna hear it from somepony!” he shot back.

“I'll take care of her, Twilight,” said Fluttershy. She rose and walked to Rarity's side, then nuzzled her gently. Rarity stirred slightly, and opened her eyes a bit.

“Up, pretty girl; let's get you to bed,” said the yellow pegasus. As Rarity came slowly to her hooves, Fluttershy hooked a wing over her body and began to walk her towards the door.

“Fluttershy, your mane is absolutely gorgeous, this evening; are you a natural pink?” she asked, seemingly unaware of her surroundings.

“It's like when she's drunk,” chuckled Fluttershy.

Rarity kissed her on the cheek, and Fluttershy winced and huffed through her nose.

“Yep, just like when she's drunk,” she said, as she guided Rarity carefully out of the room.

“So, Luna, how do we stop Cenasolusususus?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“We don't,” said Luna. She continued eating.

“Father himself couldn't stop this force. Celestia will eventually be consumed by it, as, most likely, will I.”

Twilight shook her head slowly, in a daze.

“I can't let that happen, Princess.” She continued to stare at her untouched food.

“Tell me just how you presume to stop it,” said Luna, her tone edged with reproach and irritability.

There was silence.

“That's what I thought," she said, her voice once again calm. "I'm ready for desert.”

The cook left, and quickly returned with another cart.

"What's the point in watching my figure?" asked the alicorn. "I'll be dead soon, anyway. Two; maybe three hundred years at the most."

“Princess, you can't just give up hope!” Rainbow Dash barely managed to keep herself from slamming her hoof down on the table. She had just seen this mare draw the blood out of a chunk of dead something with her mouth. Now was not the time to be haughty.

“There is no hope to give up. We cannot stop Cenasolus. He... She... It... is not a thing that we can even touch, Rainbow Dash. It is beyond our world, somewhere in the vast reaches of the aether, beyond the sun, the moon, and even the stars. Father tried in vain with his every waking moment to find a means by which to reach and destroy this power. He tried that for what must have been hundreds, if not thousands of years. Nothing availed him. Celestia, if she wakes, will slip in and out of these maddening fugues for the rest of her life. She will last for maybe a few centuries more, and then either by Cenasolus' hunger or my own heartbreak, I will follow her to the grave. Your concern as a species should hereafter be learning how to replace us before Celestia and I are gone.”

“So, that’s it?" Twilight’s voice trembled with anger, fear, and sadness as she spoke. "You just... die?”

Luna's eyes were empty, her words almost a whisper. “I don't know; I suppose I've been dead, before.”

“This is so stupid!” Rainbow Dash shouted. Everypony turned towards her.

“Why did we even come here? We can't stop this thing! We can't fight it! It's like a bad dream, only nopony gets to wake up from it. Princess Celestia doesn't deserve this, and Princess Luna, you don't either! I hate this! I hate everything about it!”
"Rainbow Dash," said Applejack, her voice stern and calm, and she laid a hoof on Rainbow Dash's shoulder.

The Pegasus' eyes were welling up, more with rage than sadness, but she would never let herself cry in front of her friends, if she could help it.

“Princess Luna, when was the last time you slept?” Twilight, who hadn't slept in at least as long, if not longer, completely missed the irony of her question.

“Not since Celestia... first became like this.”

“Well, maybe you should just go to bed. Celestia might be able to speak to you the way she did me.” Twilight reached out and touched Luna's hoof.

“Twilight, I am not going in there until I am certain I can bring her out with me.” Luna's tone made clear her resolve. “Beyond that, there is another complication.”

Twilight stared at Luna, fighting sleep, but curious, all the same.

“Nightmare Moon is a goddess of her namesake, and some part of her remains in my being. She is ever in my dreams, and if I enter Celestia's, she will go with me. In my own dreams she can do no real harm, but in my sister's I cannot be sure how she will manifest herself. Nor can I imagine what she will do, though I am positive she will try to do something.”

“Well, if I go back to sleep,” said Twilight, “won't I end up in Celestia's dreams again?”

“It's hard to say.” Luna clicked her tongue. “It's likely, but you may be able to avoid it if you use a simple defensive spell to create a field of magical interference around yourself. When you told me that you had been drawn into Celestia's dreams, I had your brother cast one around the entire castle to keep the population of the city from being affected. Celestia is essentially a living antenna for Cenasolus, right now. I was afraid every unicorn in the city would be afflicted in some way.

Pinkie's mouth hung open for a moment. “Every unicorn in Canterlot!? That's a lot of unicorns!”

“Yes,” said Luna. “You understand my concern. Shining Armor's wards are very strong, however. Since none of the castle staff sleeps here, they should be fine, and the guard barracks are outside of the spell's radius, so the unicorns among the guards won't be affected either, assuming none of them fall asleep at their posts. I doubt they will let that happen, however, as they are, of course, the best in the country, and I have furthermore warned them of the danger.”

“I'll just go stay at my parents' house, then,” Twilight shrugged. "I'll be outside the field there." Her eyes perked up.
"By the way, where is my brother? I haven't seen him since we got here."

Just then, there was the thunder of hoofbeats in the hall, and the sound of a guard yelling.

“Miss, where are you going in such a rush? Slow down; you'll fall!”

Fluttershy burst in, swatting at the air with her wings to curb her momentum. She skidded across the stone floor, a horseshoe kicking up a single, fiery spark as she came to a halt. Twilight shook her head in an effort to focus her sleep-deprived eyes on the frazzled pegasus. Fluttershy laid her hooves on Twilight's shoulders and all but shouted into fer face.

“There's something wrong with Rarity! I can't wake her up!”

Luna's eyes widened so much that they seemed to bulge in their sockets.

“Oh, shit.”

* * *

Luna got there first, her long alicorn legs carrying her ahead of the ponies. What greeted her was worse than she could have imagined. The white unicorn was writhing and convulsing, half-tangled in the silken gold bed linens. A stream of terrible sounds poured out of her mouth. Some of them were screams, some were words and sentences in a language Luna did not understand, and some of them were anguished gasps and retches. Rarity's eyes were half open, but they showed no evidence of consciousness.

Rainbow Dash arrived next, followed by Applejack, then Pinkie and Fluttershy. Twilight got there last. Spike, who was seated on her back, dove to the floor and ran towards Rarity.

“Don't!” Applejack's voice erupted, and her head shot out like a striking viper. Her teeth clenched around the tip of Spike's tail, which caused him to promptly fall on his rear.

“I know you care about her,” said Applejack, releasing her grip, “but she's liable to run her horn into your guts -- or at least put a hoof into your jawbone.”

Fluttershy half-leapt to Luna's side. “It wasn't this bad when I left her! We have to wake her up!” Her voice was cracking in panic, and her eyes were welling up with tears.

“What is she saying!?” Rainbow Dash shouted over Rarity's terrifying ululations. “Twilight, what language is that!?”

“I don't know!” Twilight glanced desperately toward the Princess. “Luna!?”

“That language does not belong to this world.” Luna's voice cut through the commotion by its very calmness. “I have to get her out of here. Now. Meet me across the drawbridge.”

The writhing unicorn glowed with a deep black-violet light, and lifted off of the bed. She still twisted, wretched and screamed incomprehensibly, even as she floated through the air. The arched window near the bed shimmered purple for the briefest moment, then burst into a thousand shards that spewed outwards into the night. In a moment, Luna had leapt through it, Rarity in tow. Rainbow Dash followed immediately, diving gracefully through the opening from a dead start. Fluttershy, after a moment's hesitation, gingerly hopped up onto the window sill, carefully avoiding the broken bits of glass at its edge.

“Why wouldn't she just open it?” she mumbled in frustration. Then, she disappeared into the night, leaving only a pair of yellow feathers sailing slowly towards the floor.

The other ponies stared at the blackness outside the window for a moment. Then, Pinkie broke the silence.

“WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR!?” She turned and headed down the hallway in an all-out sprint, leaving a cloud of dust in her wake.

The other ponies followed, and caught up to her as she was pushing open one of the massive double doors of the great hall with her head and shoulder. Applejack didn't even slow down, but heaved herself into the air and broadsided the door with her entire body, causing it to swing open. The impact echoed like a sledgehammer in the cavernous hall. Pinkie, suddenly unsupported, fell flat on her face. Applejack recoiled off the door, hitting the floor with her hooves moving. Two bat pony guards wearing armor bearing Luna's crest stood outside the door, and they watched in confusion as two earth ponies and a baby dragon ran past. Twilight, at the rear of the pack, paused briefly, running in place between the two flabbergasted stallions.

“I'msosorryIreallyhopewedidn'tdamageanythingIhavetogo!” With that, she pursued her friends across the drawbridge.

Luna stood over a supine Rarity on the far side of the drawbridge. Fluttershy knelt beside the unicorn, and Rainbow Dash hovered overhead. As the dragon, the two earth ponies, and finally the exhausted unicorn arrived, they were all relieved to see that Rarity was obviously still breathing, though still very clearly unconscious. She was still mumbling things in that bizarre language, but much more quietly, now. More importantly, she had ceased to writhe and convulse, though she still twitched occasionally and seemed to be shivering violently.

“Will she be okay?” Spike asked, his voice fraught with uncertainty.

“No,” said Luna.

* * *

The first thing Rarity noticed as her vision came into focuse was a bookshelf that covered one wall. It was laden with old, well-used textbooks on every subject imaginable. She allowed her eyes to scan the room more thoroughly, and was unsurprised to find it filled with the many trinkets and mementos of a filly's maturation into a mare. After a few seconds, she sat up, and saw what she had expected: Twilight Sparkle lay under a blanket in the floor next to the bed, sound asleep, her head on a throw pillow. There was a full ashtray, an empty wine glass, and two empty cigarette packages laying near her head.

“Twilight?” The purple unicorn stirred a little at the mention of her name, and her eyes opened.

“Oh, thank Celestia you're awake,” she said, looking up at Rarity. “Or thank Luna, really." She sighed, and looked down at the cigarette packages. She lifted one, then the other, and huffed, having found them both empty.

"This is my old bedroom," said Twilight.

"I guessed," said Rarity, nodding at the books.

"Yeah," said Twilight, "Not much of a riddle, was it?"

She dug through the ashtray with the tip of a hoof, and finding one cigarette that she had only smoked half of, lit it, and took a drag.

"I guess I dozed off," she said. "Spike must have covered me up.”

“No, that was me.” Twilight's mother stood in the doorway, and upon seeing her, Twilight quickly removed the cigarette, and levitated it behind her back.
"Spike is asleep on the couch," said the older mare, shaking her head and sighing slightly at Twlight's feeble attempt to maintain her "good little girl" decorum, "and you should go back to sleep, too. It's just now dawn, and you only slept for a few hours.”

“Dawn?” Twilight gave a quick, sharp cough into her foreleg, and cleared her throat. Then, she looked out the window, at the rising sun.

“Rarity, what did you see?” she asked.

Rarity curled into a fetal position, and began to sob. Luna had been right. She was not “okay.”

* * *

“It was a spring day; the most beautiful I could remember in all my life. I was in the town square of Ponyville, and everypony was doing the things they normally do there. My sister Sweetie Belle was there, and so were Applebloom and Scootaloo. I think I was taking them shopping for their first little bit of makeup, or something. I don't remember what we were talking about, but I realized that the world around me was changing. The buildings were growing older, the trees taller, and the ponies were all aging the same way. Sweetie Belle and her friends were growing up right in front of me. Cutie marks even appeared on their rumps, but I don't remember what they were. I was the only thing that did not seem to change.'

“Of course, all this panicked me, and Sweetie Belle noticed. She kept asking me 'Rarity, what's wrong?' Her voice kept changing just a little at a time, as she got taller and older. It kept happening faster and faster, and she just kept asking me 'Rarity, are you okay? Rarity, what's wrong?' She grew into a mare, then grew old and died, still standing on her hooves. Her body rotted away, and left a skeleton standing there. Its jaw just... moved... as if to continue asking me that same questions, 'Rarity, what's wrong?' Soon, all the ponies had become skeletons, and then those crumbled to dust. The buildings all began to fall to pieces, and rotted into nothing around me. The world began to change. The trees grew tall and died, and new trees grew in their place. The streams seemed to twist and change their course, like they were snakes writhing across the ground. Even the ground itself kept sinking and swelling beneath my hooves.'

“That was when I heard a strange voice that seemed to come from the sky. When I looked up to find where it was coming from, I saw that the sun had... swollen. It hadn't stopped, either; it grew very large and red in the sky, and as it did, the voice grew louder, saying things in some language that I couldn't understand. As the sun grew, the trees -- all of them -- began to die away, and the ground became scorched and barren. The water of the streams turned to steam and rose into the sky, and the sky, itself, -- the very blue of it -- was blasted away. All that was left was that great, glowing red ball and the moon and stars, and soon it grew so large that the moon itself was consumed by it. Then, just before it would have swallowed up the whole world, the sun began to shrink, again. All the while the voice continued to speak, and I began to just know what it was saying as if I had always spoken that strange language.'

“As the sun shrank, the voice said many things, like “I am eternity,” and “I endure,” and “I inherit myself.” It just kept saying such things. “I am time. I am entropy. I am the end, and I will be the beginning.” There was no sense of rage or selfishness in it. There was a coldness, though; a lack of feeling that was simply poisonous to the heart.'

“Soon, the sun was like a pinpoint of light in the distance, and not long after that it became a swirling black vortex that pulled the whole world towards itself. Everything was sucked into it, including me, but I didn't die; it didn't even hurt, in fact. But I was surrounded by perfect nothingness, and the sound of the voice had faded, leaving an unbroken, absolute silence. I tried to speak, just to make some kind of sound because the void around me felt so empty and quiet, but I couldn't. As I tried to breath in, I realized there was no air. It was so strange to draw in a breath but to not feel any air move into me or out. I started to panic, thinking I would suffocate, but I realized after a while that I should have passed out by then, and hadn't. So, I tried casting a simple light spell into the darkness, but when I did, my horn ached terribly. And the light, no matter how much I focused it, did not show me anything, as if there was nothing to illuminate for as far as I could cast the beam.'

“After some time, the voice returned. It said, “All is futility. All becomes nothing. Nothing becomes all. All becomes nothing. I am. I am. I am.” I will never forget how empty and hollow and devoid of emotion it was. As it spoke, I began to feel a sense of complete hopelessness; I thought the world had ended. I began to cry. I wanted to sob and scream, but when I tried, nothing came out. It was awful, but just when I thought I would lose my mind, I saw a pinprick of light begin to grow in the darkness.

I watched it grow, unsure of what it might be, until it finally burst into an image of a white alicorn. At first, I thought it was the Princess, but I realized it was a stallion. He had a gold mane and eyes brighter than the sun. He roared like a dragon, and the earth, the sun, the moon, and everything I had seen consumed came pouring out of his mouth. Seeing that, even in such a void, made me realize that he was more enormous than anything I had ever even imagined, before. I floated down onto that new Earth, and after I had landed, I looked upward. The alicorn grew old before my eyes, just as the ponies in Ponyville had, and soon he too had crumbled into nothingness.'

“When I finally looked down from the sky, there was Sweetie Belle – my Sweetie Belle, the right age, the right size, and blank-flanked as she could be. I was back in Ponyville on the very same day. Sweetie Belle asked me once more, 'Rarity, what's wrong?'

“I said 'Nothing,’ and that was when I woke up.”

Chapter 3: Specters of Harmony

Chapter 3

Specters of Harmony

Luna stood alone in her chamber, contemplating Rarity's story. It was the middle of the night, and she had not slept in three days. She was exhausted. Soon, she would either have to make up her mind to enter Celestia's dreams, or she would have to get herself outside the castle and find a place to sleep.

“Cenasolus. Father beat you, somehow. I'm sure of it, but he had to die to do it. What good would it do us to do the same? You would only return one day to consume the future.” She ground her teeth. "I did not endure these aeons, and then crawl out of the Hell of my own heart's corruption to give this world up to nothingness."

“Afraid of a little nothingness, you pitiful girl?” A black face spoke from the mirror.

“I really have to remember to have that mirror taken out of here,” said Luna, inhaling slowly before releasing her breath in a controlled sigh.

Nightmare Moon grinned from the other side of the glass, her face bare of her helmet. Luna was not even facing the mirror, but the dark horse's image faced her, nonetheless. Luna knew because she could feel her eyes.

“Oh, but you know you'd miss me.” The black mare ran the tip of her hoof down her side of the glass, as if admiring its smoothness.

“I don't want you anymore, Nightmare Moon. I never will again. Why do you even bother?”

“For my entertainment,” she replied. "We all need a bit of diversion from time to time, don't we, Princess?"

“So that's what I am to you, now?” Luna spun and locked eyes with the image in the mirror. “Diversion?”

“Precisely.” The black horse seemed almost congenial. “But, who, I must wonder, am I to you?”

“What?” asked Luna, taking a step forward.

“Well...” Nightmare moon lengthened her pause intentionally, then spoke again, her voice once again full of menace. “You made me. You ask me why I'm still here, but the truth of the matter is that you're really asking yourself that singular, nagging question. I'm starting to think you need me, Little Luna.” There was something desirous and predatory in the way Nightmare moon intoned Luna's name, and it made the Princess shudder.

“I do not want you, and I most certainly do not need you.” Luna's muscles tensed as if Nightmare Moon might somehow burst through the glass and physically attack her.

The nightmare horse chuckled. “Or maybe you wish you were me.”

“I've tried that, remember?” Luna allowed a bit of smugness to sneak into her speech. “It didn't end well, in case you don't remember.”

“That's the funny thing,” said Nightmare Moon, edging the statement with a sinister giggle. “You didn't want it to end, at all. As I remember, your return to your current state of being was... forcible. If memory serves, you... I... we resisted to the last.”

“But once you were gone, I was glad of it,” said Luna. “And I still am.”

“Though the question remains," said Nightmare Moon, her words knowing and darkly playful, "why am I still here? Why am I still inside your head if you really want me gone so badly? How is it that you still cannot admit that I am what you wish you were."

Luna sneered. “So, I wish myself to be selfish and cruel?”

“Oh, I wasn't responsible for those characteristics. Those were all yours, my little pony.” Nightmare moon spat out the word “pony,” so that her saliva splattered on the opposite side of the glass, and began to trickle downward.

“Go away,” growled Luna, through clenched teeth.

“Make me,” smiled Nightmare Moon.

“I will,” said Luna. “You say I'm cruel? I will show you cruelty.”

“That’s a good girl. Show me who you really are; the Luna you dare not show anypony else, least of all your fish-belly-white, sanctimonious sister, with her prostitute-grade eyeliner -- which I might add, are all insults that I couldn't imagine if you hadn't imagined them first! Show me the Luna that thinks thossse thingsssss.” Nightmare Moon's sentence trailed off into a hiss.

“I will show you more than that, you wretched bitch!” The force of Luna's statement actually made Nightmare Moon's mirror-bound image recoil momentarily, but she rebounded through a snarl with bared, animalistic fangs as Luna continued to speak. “I'm coming for my sister, and while I'm at it, I think I've come up with a fantastic way to get rid of you -- permanently.”

Nightmare Moon craned her neck forward, and her head actually extended out into the room as if the glass of the mirror simply was not there. The spittle she had earlier deposited upon her side of the glass picked up onto her face and glistened there as she spoke. “Feel free to come in whenever you're ready, you petulant little nag. I'll be waiting.”

The door creaked, and Luna snapped her head towards it, then back to the mirror, which now bore only her own haggard reflection.

“Princess Luna? Oh, you're alone. I thought I heard you talking to somepony.” It was Twilight Sparkle.

Luna looked at the floor, a hint of shame creeping into her expression. “I guess I'm so tired I'm talking to myself. What did you need?”

“I was just wondering if there was anything I could do, or anything else you might have remembered that might help us. Or maybe...”

“If I was ready to try and wake Celestia?” Luna looked back at her reflection, and saw her eyes flash momentarily into the likeness of a snake's. “I believe I may be.” she said.

“Well, how do we do that? If it's anything like what was going on in Rarity's mind, I don't want her in there.”

“You speak as if you think I myself am somehow unconcerned.” Luna's voice bore more venom than she had intended, and Twilight's ears drooped as she took a step back and turned her eyes away from the princess.

"Twilight,” sighed Luna, softening her tone. “It's alright. I know she's like a second mother to you. She talks about you all the time, you know.”

“I spent more time around her than I did my own family for over half my life,” Twilight said, never lifting her eyes from the floor.

“I understand that, but you also should understand that she is my sister and has been since time immemorial. We have mourned legions of friends together, mourned our parents together, and even spilled one another's blood. Through all that, she has remained my closest friend and my sole confidant in all the world. I want to help her as much as you do.'

“I can at least tell you that whatever is going on in her mind is nothing like Rarity's dream. If it were, she could not communicate into the dreams of others. She's merely serving as a conduit for Cenasolus. I think father used this in some way to stop him, last time. He found some way to cut off the flow of whatever entropic magic Cenasolus possesses. That is why he died, and that explains the symbolism of Rarity's dream. I believe that Father allowed himself to be consumed. He... force-fed himself,” here Luna shuddered visibly, “to Cenasolus, in a way, in order to sate its hunger, and put it to rest, for a time. If that's true then he or some remnant of him would still be a part of Cenasolus. That may be why he was able to warn Celestia of his approach.'

“I have to get Celestia out of there. She's just like Father. If we leave her in there long enough for her to get the idea, she'll probably do the same thing. I think, however, that I may have a better... solution."

Here, Luna grinned, and for a moment, Twilight Sparkle saw in her face a glimmer of the same wickedness she remembered in Nightmare Moon's.

“Get all of your friends together by eight o'clock tomorrow morning," said Luna. "I have a job for you.”

* * *

“Your plan is to feed it?” Rainbow Dash's mouth hung open. Twilight had assembled all the ponies in the great hall, just as Luna had asked.

“My plan is to gorge it," said Luna, "maybe even choke it, if we're lucky. At the very least, it won't wake up for aeons, and that might give us long enough to figure out a way to kill it for good.”

The alicorn looked like death. She had denied herself sleep for nearly as long as even she could stand, especially given the mental and emotional stress of those several days.

“What are you going to feed a thing like that?” Pinkie Pie scratched her nose with a hoof. “It's, like, a god of entropy or something.”

“That’s exactly what it is, Pinkie.” Twilight rolled her eyes. "Next you'll be telling me that I'm, like, a unicorn, or something."

"You're not?" asked Pinkie Pie, aghast, and Twilight only sighed in response.

“I have to agree with Pinkie Pie," said Rarity. "I'm a bit confused.” She tried hard to gulp down a lump that had formed in her throat. She remembered what it looked like when Cenasolus “ate.”

“Well,” said Luna, “If this... being... insists on consuming either the life of our world or the life of an alicorn, I say it's obviously much better if it consumes an alicorn. I think that Father, rather than allowing himself to be slowly consumed, fed all of his spirit to Cenasolus at one time, effectively sating his hunger and putting him to sleep for all these aeons. I want to do the same thing again. Only this time, I want to give him an alicorn that hasn't been weakened by centuries of consumption.”

Applejack glared at Luna, angrily. “Now, I know you wouldn't feed that thing your sister,” she said, “so I'm just gonna go ahead and let you know that if you try to play martyr, I'm probbly gonna give you a pair of hooves on the chin.”

Luna smiled. “And I was worried you wouldn't have the moxie for this job.”

“What job?” Fluttershy asked, shakily. She did not like Princess Luna's tone.

“You're all coming into Celestia's dream with me. When Nightmare Moon comes for us -- and she will -- you're going to use the Elements of Harmony to rip all of her remaining essence from my spirit, so that she will manifest in reality as a separate physical being from myself. Then, we're going to force-feed her to Cenasolus in one, huge... serving, if you will.”

“Whoa!" Spike chimed in. "Are you serious? Is that even safe?”

“Not in the least,” replied Luna. “I can easily bring you all into Celestia's dream with me. The only problem is making sure we all fall asleep at precisely the same time.”

Pinkie Pie grinned gleefully.

“I got just what you need for that!”

* * *

Everypony but Pinkie Pie stood in Celestia's chamber, each wearing the talisman of her particular element of Harmony. Luna sat next to Celestia's bed. She turned to address the ponies.

“So, everyone understands that we're going to have to play this by ear, right? I don't have any idea of what it will be like in our collective subconscious, except that Nightmare Moon will be in there with us, somewhere. What she will try to do, I cannot predict.”

Each pony gave an affirmative "Right," or "Mmmhmm," or in the case of Fluttershy, a furtive, fearful squeak -- though it was still affirmative.

“I can assure you of this much, however," Luna continued. "Nightmare moon will try to turn your dreams against you. Whatever you fear, whatever you regret, whatever haunts you in the night; it will be there.'

"Also, there may be one detail I failed to mention." Luna sounded just slightly bashful, and Twilight did not like it.

"What?" asked the little unicorn.

"Nightmare Moon knows everything I know, so she knows exactly what we plan to do."

"I can see where that could make things just a bit more complicated," said Rarity.

“By the way, Twilight, where is Spike?” asked Fluttershy.

“He's at my parents' house. I told them to watch him and make sure he doesn't try to come here. No reason to risk his safety, after all.”

At that moment, Pinkie Pie bucked open the door and backed into the chamber pulling a cart laden with seven frothy tankards of cider.

“The alcohol will make it work even faster,” she explained.

“Pinkie, are you trying to kill me?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Nope, that’s another fanfic!” She smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing!”

Everypony looked around for a moment, slightly confused. Pinkie reached into hammer space and produced a vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's “The Wall,” then dropped it onto a record player in the corner -- a record player which the rest of the ponies were all fairly sure had not been there moments previous. She dropped the needle onto the disc, and after a moment's scratchiness, “Comfortably Numb” began to play.

“Is she always this excited about substance abuse?” asked Luna.

“You think this is excited?” Rarity giggled. “Oh, Darling, you simply must go clubbing with us when this is over.”

Pinkie Pie extended toward Rarity a small bottle balanced on her hoof. Rarity took it in her teeth, and gave it a quick shake. It gave a hollow, sparse rattle.

“How many did you use!?” She said through gritted teeth.

“I balanced the doses according to the constitution of the pony I mixed it for, of course. Not like constitution as in an ability score; more like I just guessed.”

“Well, whose is whose?” asked Fluttershy.

Pinkie Pie blinked and said nothing for several seconds.

“Whoops,” she finally said. “Hold on a second!”

Pinkie produced a pair of bartender's shakers the size of buckets, into which she poured all of the cider, and shook it vigorously. She then redistributed the fluid into the tankards.

“Everypony just grab one. It'll be alright.”

The group did as instructed.

“Now, drink!”

Pinkie Pie turned up her tankard first, followed immediately by Applejack. Rainbow Dash, not to be outdone, immediately began to chug her cider in an effort to finish first. Fluttershy sipped furtively, then shut her eyes tight and began to drink. Rarity knocked it back casually, and Twilight just shrugged and gulped it down at a comfortable pace. Luna sighed, and turned her head back, downing her dose first despite having started drinking last.

“Now, we just wait for it to kick in,” said Pinkie Pie.

Fluttershy, realizing that she was standing next to Rarity, moved to the opposite side of the room to avoid the uncomfortable depredations that tended to accompany the unicorn's use of intoxicants.

“I'll just stand over here,” she said.

Luna, already exhausted, began to sway first.

She crawled onto Celestia's bed and lay next to her sister.

“See you ladies in my nightmares.” She shut her eyes.

“Poor th...” Fluttershy stopped. “Is she asleep?”

Twilight, now beginning to sway slightly herself, shook the alicorn's shoulder.

“She's catatonic.”

“Poor thing,” said Fluttershy, her speech noticeably slurred. “I should lie down.” She went to a couch in the corner and curled herself into a ball.

Twilight stepped unsteadily towards the opposite end of the same couch, and sprawled herself over it.

“It just hit me; I could have just cast a sleep spell on everypo... everypa... every...” Her head flopped over, and she was gone.

Rainbow Dash, swaying quickly through a very small arc, began to speak.

“I bet none of you can outlast me.” She was sinking to the floor in a controlled collapse before she had even finished the sentence. “Never mind.” She laid her head gently on top of her crossed forelegs, and dozed off.

“Well, reckon I'll help myself along.” Applejack reached under her hat and produced a small, opaque flask marked “XXX.” She pulled the cork with her teeth, spat it across the room, and downed the flask's contents.

“Peace out, y'all.” Applejack laid down with her back against the foot of the bed, and tipped her hat down over her eyes.

Rarity and Pinkie Pie stood there, swaying gently, and looked at one another.

“Tolerance is a bitch,” Rarity said. “By the way, have I ever told you that you have the loveliest eyes?”

Pinkie Pie fluttered her eyes at Rarity playfully, and stifled her urge to snicker. “Take another pill, Rarity.”

Rarity twisted open the bottle, dumped a pill onto her hoof, and popped it into her mouth. She chewed it, rather than swallow it whole.

“Now, go lie down somewhere," said the earth mare, "and I'll be along in a minute.”

Rarity complied by finding a comfortable spot on the rug. She raised her head, however, and looked at Pinkie Pie.

“Would you like another, dear?” she asked, shaking the bottle at Pinkie Pie.

“Oh, I'll be alright. I got started a little earlier than the rest of you girls, ” Pinkie Pie said, as she casually sipped another tankard of cider she had somehow produced from thin air.

“Hmm,”smiled Rarity. Then, she laid her head down, and was soon asleep.

Pinkie just took another long pull on the tankard, and stared at the sun-shaped clock on the wall, watching the seconds tick by. Right as the second solo of “Comfortably Numb” started, a smile crept slowly across her face.

“My new personal best,” she said. Then, she hit the floor like a bag of rocks.

“Pussy,” came Applejack's muffled voice from under the brim of her hat.

* * *

Fluttershy didn't know where she was, but she knew she didn't like it. She had awakened, mysteriously, in a forest, with no recollection of how she had come to be there. This forest, however, was not like any forest she had ever seen before. It was utterly and totally dead. There were nothing but dead trees; long-dead and long stripped bare of leaves, bark, and most of their branches. No grass grew, and not the first twitter of a bird could be heard. There was only the wind creaking in the tops of the dead, gray, swaying trees, absent the calming sighs of it moving through their long-fallen leaves.

Not sure of what else to do, she took flight and moved upward to get the lay of the land. It was the most depressing sight she had ever seen. Beneath a gray, cloudy sky, the forest went on to every horizon, perfectly flat and perfectly devoid of any living thing, so far as she could discern. She was afraid, but worse, she was deeply saddened. A forest of this magnitude must have been beautiful in its life, but something had taken that life away from it. She could not help but wonder what.

The answer came in a whisper that seemed to arise from the wind itself.

“He took my future.”

“Who was that?” Fluttershy, still aloft, shot looks to every direction. There was no response.

Afraid, she settled slowly back to the ground. Unsure of what else to do, she picked a direction, and began to walk.

* * *

Pinkie Pie awoke to a sound she had not heard in a long, long time. It was her mother, humming some old song or other. She looked around, and was seized with glee. She was home!

It was her room. It was her bed. Out the window, it was her family's rock farm. She had no idea how she had come to be here, but whatever the case, she could not contain her excitement. She dashed down the stairs, full of expectation of a happy reunion with her family.

“Who are you?” Asked the bespectacled gray pony sitting in a rocker, staring out the window.

Pinkie Pie stopped in her tracks.

“It's me, Pinkie!”

Pinkie's mother just stared at the excited pony in confusion.

“That's just mean,” she said, “I don't have a daughter named Pinkie.”

Pinkie giggled.

“Okay, okay. Pinkamena, then. Better?”

“That's just cruel. Get out of my house, and never come back!” The mare's voice cracked as she yelled her command.

Pinkie laughed again, but there was a hint of nervousness in her voice as she spoke again.

“Okay; that's enough of this game. Where's Daddy?”

“What do you mean, Daddy? Who are you looking for? I've lived here alone for the past ten years, ever since my husband passed away”

“Mom, that's not funny.” Pinkie Pie's ears drooped.

“I'm not your Mother. Both of my daughters live far away, now.” She sounded more sad than irate.

“What do you mean, both? There are three of us!”

“Of course you would know that, since you used my daughter's name.” Now, she sounded angry.

“No, I really don't have any idea, and my name's really Pinkamena! Pinkamena Diane Pie!”

At this, the gray mare rocked back in her chair, and held herself there for a moment. Her eyes widened, and she adjusted her glasses.

“Pinkie never told anypony her middle name, ever” she said. “You can't be. Let me see your cutie mark.”

Pinkie Pie reluctantly turned to the side, and as she did so, the old mare finally rocked forward, again, and began to breathe heavily.

“Oh, my goodness. You really are Pinkamena. I don't believe this! It's impossible!”

“Why don't you believe it? It's me! Pinkie! I grew up in this house. You used to tell me stories and sing me songs every night before I went to bed. You and Granny Pie taught me to sing all those old songs you love!”

Pinkie's mother just shook her head slowly, and stared downward, her tears dropping onto the floor.

“Pinkamena, you can't be here. You're dead.”

* * *

The first thing that Rainbow Dash noticed as she awoke was the last notes of a guitar solo fading out somewhere nearby, though she couldn't quite locate the source of the sound. She recognized them as being from “Comfortably Numb.” Now, another song started, it was “Goodbye Blue Sky”
“Weird,” she thought. “That's not even the next song on the record.”
She was in a bright, white room with lots of cabinets and a tile floor, and she was laying belly-down on a table. She didn't remember how she had come to be here, and she was worried by the fact that she couldn't seem to move her body. She felt exhausted. Amidst this confusion, she smelled something like burning hair and flesh, and felt a searing pain near the base of her left wing. She moaned in agony.

“The hell? She's still awake? She was totally unresponsive like a minute ago! Turn on the gas again, and get me some local anesthetic -- a lot of it; as much as we can safely give her.”

She felt a slight prick near the agonizing ache in her wing, and whimpered at this new pain.

“It's okay, Ms. Dash. It's just a slight problem with the anesthesia, but we'll have you under again in a second. I swear to Celestia you were out cold. This never happens.” A magenta-colored unicorn stallion leaned his head in front of her and awkwardly adjusted a medical gas mask that she only now noticed she was wearing. He was wearing a surgical mask.

“I'm giving you a local anesthetic, too,” he said. “You should be asleep again in a minute, but we have to continue the operation to make sure you don't lose too much blood. You shouldn't feel anything. This stuff works fast. Nothing to panic about.” He disappeared from her view.

Her back and wing began to tingle, and lose feeling, but at least the pain subsided.

“Everypony saw that, right? She was out earlier. We checked! Weird as hell.” It was the same voice.

“Yes, we all saw,” said another voice, this one female. “You followed procedure. Nopony here is liable for anything. Get the cauterizer, and get back to work. She ought to be numb enough, by now.”

The smell of burning flesh intensified, and she felt a splatter of something warm and sticky on her face and side. Only moments later, she heard a loud buzzing sound, and felt herself being pelted along her left side with something grainy, like sand.

As the bizarre sensations continued, Rainbow Dash managed to roll her face sideways in an effort to surmise what was going on, and as she did so, she felt herself beginning to lose consciousness. There was nothing of any consequence in her field of vision but a table. She could see that it was covered in surgical instruments, but in her drugged state, she couldn't quite fully comprehend the significance of that fact.

She felt a series of tugs, and her head rolled a bit under their impetus. She felt the old, familiar pangs of motion sickness, and though they were far more intense than usual, she forced them down inside herself the way she always did. Then, just as suddenly as they began, both the buzzing and the tugging stopped.

Her body felt unbalanced, all of a sudden, as if her right side was somehow heavier than her left. Then, onto the backside of the table, beyond the row of scalpels, pliers, and clamps, a blue pegasus wing flopped down with a thud, causing all the instruments to rock and clink. It smoldered and seeped blood at its stump, and it was molted bare of feathers in several places. Even through the gas mask, she could tell that it smelled like cheese, a tell-tale sign of gangrene and necrosis. Despite the severed appendage's grotesque condition, she recognized it. Rainbow Dash had spent far too long admiring her strong, muscular wings to not know it for one of her own.

She tried to scream, but all that came out was a series of subdued, incoherent syllables.

“Somepony get a bio hazard bag,” she heard a different voice say, and shortly a white female earth pony came and raked her dismembered wing into a big, plastic bag.

She weakly mumbled some more panic-stricken nonsense syllables, but the intervals between them grew longer and longer.

“She's going under,” she vaguely understood as she lost consciousness. “Get started on the other one.”

* * *

Wake up, Baby!

Applejack stirred slowly. Why was it so hot?

“Come on, girl! We gotta get the hell outta here!”

Applejack's eyes opened slowly, and she was stunned to see her mother's red face.

“Momma?” She was even more shocked by the sound of her own voice. Its pitch was far too high.

“Baby, get up!”

Now, she smelled the smoke, and saw the flames that had already begun to consume the house.

Her Mother took her mane in her teeth and dragged her out of bed. She yelped and whinnied, but the big mare paid no attention to Applejack's protest as she dragged her into the hallway. As she was pulled down the hall, Applejack saw her father laying at the other end of the hallway, next to the door to the nursery. A section of the ceiling had collapsed, and lay on his back.

“Daddy!” She felt and heard the hair of her mane ripping as she wrenched her head violently forward, and she was suddenly free of her mother's grasp. She dashed forward, grinding to a halt in front of her father's body. She almost fainted at the sight of the blisters that covered one side of his head, and then there was the smell.

He looked up at her, and roared into her face.

“GET OUT OF THE GODDAMNED HOUSE, YOU FOOL GIRL!”

Something about seeing his daughter's terror must have put strength into his huge, orange body, because he managed to wedge his hooves underneath himself and push upward. He gave a low, rumbling grunt, and began to rise, shedding the burning rafters that had only moments before held him pinned to the floor.

Applejack had always loved her father, but silhouetted in the smoke and flames, covered in burns and blisters, he was, in that moment, the most terrifying sight she had ever seen. She stumbled backwards in terror, and felt again her mother's teeth in her mane, dragging her towards the stairs. Her father backed up to the pile of burning rafters that lay against the nursery door, and tensed every muscle of his body. She heard his shout of rage and the impact of his hooves against the pile, but she did not see it, having already been dragged around the corner.

Her mother spun and threw her twice her own body length towards the stairs, then came behind her, pushing her roughly down them. Applejack lost her footing near the bottom, and tumbled downward, where she ended up laying against the wall with a bloody nose. She started to cry, but her mother, usually tender and careful with her in such circumstances, just wrapped a leg underneath her belly and lifted her to her hooves.

She put a hoof against her daughter's rump and wordlessly shoved her towards the front door, an act she followed by pushing her forward with her chest and shoulders. In moments, Applejack was through the door.

She stumbled onto the front lawn, where she noticed her brother and grandmother standing next to the big, old apple tree that stood beside the house, its branches overhanging the roof. The fire licked greedily at the old tree's branches, and soon, they would succumb to its hunger. She whirled to see her mother, covered in sweat and burns, and coughing fiercely.

“Your daddy went after your little sister. I gotta go help him. Don't none of y'all dare come back in this house, or I'll beat the fur offa your ass, you understand me!?”

Even as she was becoming aware of the fact that this was a dream, even as she was remembering taking the sedative Pinkie had given her, she still could not overcome the terror that those flames had embodied in that very real moment, all those years ago. Her parents had always seemed so kind before, but this once, they were both terrifying – and it was the last time she would ever see either of them alive.

The huge, red mare disappeared back into the inferno, and Applejack, small and weak, stood on that lawn, tears streaming down her face, as she hoped against hope that somehow, some way, this dream would end differently than all the others.

* * *

Rarity awoke in her own bed. She felt a strange sense of disconnection, and she remembered some dream she'd had involving Princess Celestia and some ancient evil or other. Such things were so common in Equestria that she barely took note of it, at all. Her room was so dark that she thought it must still be night, so she rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep. She tossed and turned for awhile, but finally realized she was wide awake, and rolled over to place her hooves on the floor.

It was entirely too dark for her to be this wakeful.

“I must have gone on a bender and closed the shutters so I could sleep late,” she mumbled to herself. She cast a weak light spell, squinting even in its mild, bluish light, and stumbled to the window. When she found it, she forewent telekinesis, and raised it with her hooves. Barely any light came in, muted by some covering that she could not identify until she found its corner and pulled. As the barrier tore away, daylight streamed in, muted by an overcast sky, but still unbearable for her light-starved eyes. She was compelled to squint and cover her eyes with a foreleg. Quickly, she telekinetically closed the shutters.

“Oh, that's right,” she mumbled. “I put tinfoil up on the windows to keep the sun out. Goddamn, I must have gotten really fucked up last night to forget a thing like that.”

She dragged herself back to her bed, and lit an oil lantern she kept near it, bathing the room in a soft, warm glow. Silently, she walked towards her dresser, unsure of exactly what it was she wanted from it. On the way there, she noticed her reflection in her mirror, and paused to consider it. She should have shrieked at the horror she beheld, but she only smiled a calm, slight, and very cold smile.

Her eyes were sunken, and her face was thin and gaunt. She was so skinny and malnourished that she could count her ribs. Her mane was unkempt and greasy, and it clung to the side of her head and the back of her neck everywhere that it was not matted or tangled. Her fur had fallen out in patches all over her sides, and the pink, inflamed skin where it had been was coated with scabs wherever it did not ooze watery, pinkish lymphatic fluid -- symptoms of a long-untreated case of rain rot. Looking down to observe her body directly, she almost lovingly took in the line of swollen, abscessed scars running up the inside of both her forelegs.

If she had been herself, she would have noticed that there was an astonishing amount of drug paraphernalia scattered around the room; needles, surgical tubing, glass pipes, a small mirror on her dresser that was thinly dusted with cocaine, and beside that, several razor blades and a cocktail straw. There were empty pill bottles strewn everywhere, and several partially full ones on the nightstand. Right next to them stood a mostly-empty bottle of gin, half a dozen of its fallen brethren littering the narrow space between the nightstand and the bed, itself. The smells of burnt opium, crack, and marijuana permeated everything around her, mixed with the sickly-sweet aroma of cheap incense.

Suddenly, Rarity felt as if her bones had turned to sand. She felt a wave of nausea and light-headedness overtaking her, and she instinctively knew both what she needed and where it was. She stumbled to her dresser, and opened the top-left drawer. There was heroine inside, pure and white, the finest the money could buy – and her unique talent for finding gemstones kept her in plenty of money. In a shuddering daze, she lit a candle, and prepared a dose as quickly as she could, even going so far as to allow herself the use of a fresh needle, acquired, as always, by telling the pharmacist she was diabetic. By now, her body chemistry was so ruined that she had begun to question whether or not this was, in fact, still a lie.

Oh well, there were drugs for that, too.

"Some fucking crazy dreams I've been having,” she growled, pulling by her gritted teeth a length of surgical tubing tight around her foreleg. “Let's see just how fucked up they can really get.”

* * *

Twilight Sparkle alone woke where she had expected to awaken; at the hooves of Princess Celestia. Twilight, unlike her friends, was immediately aware of why and how she had come to be where she was, and she was happy to see where the dream had deposited her. They were in the Canterlot Castle throne room, and Princess Celestia sat enthroned as Twilight had seen her many times before.

“Princess!”

She hopped up and made to nuzzle the white alicorn, but the Princess pulled sharply away.

“Get away from me, you little wretch,” spoke Celestia, in a tone Twilight could never remember her having used before.

“What?” Twilight's voice trembled slightly as she spoke.

“You heard me.” Venom still soaked Celestia's speech.

Twilight's voice was pleading as she spoke, again.

“I came here to help you!”

“As if I would ever let a pathetic little fool like you help me,” Celestia sneered. “What could a weak, ignorant little buffoon like you ever do for me?”

“But, but I...” Twilight's eyes were beginning to tear up.

“But, but, but, but what?” Celestia turned her chin upwards slightly, and gazed down haughtily at her student. “But I won't fuck everything up, this time? But I'll actually study, this time? But I'll actually put some effort into something this time, instead of half-assing it the way I do everything else? Hmm?” With every one of the Princess' remarks, the throneroom seemed more and more corrupt. The paint peeled from the walls, the tapestries rotted, and the magnificent stained glass windows grew fogged with filth.

Celestia rose from her throne, and loomed over Twilight.

“Princess, I'm sorry,” Twilight begged. “I know I don't always get everything right, but I'm really trying!”

“Yes, always trying, Twilight Sparkle, but never succeeding. How much of my time have I wasted on you, again?”

Twilight tasted the salt of a tear that had reached the corner of her mouth, and stared at the Princess.
"I'm... sorry," she choked out.

Chapter 4: Rays of Hope

Chapter 4

Rays of Hope

Fluttershy felt as if she had been walking for hours. She was thirsty and hungry, but every stream she passed had long ago dried up, and nothing grew here that she could eat – not even grass. Death and emptiness seemed to consume the world around her, and in some strange way, she could feel them creeping into her heart, as well.

The thought had occurred to her, of course, that she might starve here, but for some reason, she found it harder and harder to care. Every time she flew upward, she could see nothing. No landmark stood in any direction; only this endless forest of death. Even if she flew, she could do so for as long as her wings would carry her without seeing anything at all that hinted of escape. She grew increasingly certain that she would die here, and yet she felt no fear; only numbness.

After some time, she heard a sound in the distance. At first, she thought it was the strange voice she had heard before in the wind, but it persisted. It was a hollow, creaking, clacking sound. Desperate for anything that might break this cold monotony, she began to move towards the sound.

After several minutes, she emerged into a clearing, and what she saw there made her feel the first real emotion she had felt in what must have been hours: fear. Beside a dry stream bed, there lay the skeleton of a deer, some fragments of its hide still present, sucked down tightly to its brown-white bones. Its rear left femur was caught in some kind of colossal, rusty trap that reminded Fluttershy of a cruel set of teeth, and which was chained to a tree. The skeleton was struggling to escape the trap as if alive, and it seemed to see her with the empty eye sockets of its skull.

Its jaws moved, as if to cry for help, but no sound came. A pang of pity dug into Fluttershy's heart momentarily, but it was quickly squelched – partially by fear, but more so by indifference. Why should she care about some animal stupid enough to let itself be caught in a trap? Especially a dead one?

She stood there, eying the unsettling scene for several seconds. She felt no pity for the undead animal. It wasn't pretty or cute the way a deer was supposed to be; it was just another abomination in a landscape of abominations. Fluttershy only wanted to be away from it.

“I may end up dead like you, but I doubt I'll need company when I am,” she said.

As Fluttershy turned to leave, she heard the clacking and creaking of the deer's bones grow faster and more frantic. It struck her then that she was the only hope of escape this weird, dead thing had. She stopped, and blew air outward through clenched teeth, frustrated.

“I'm still Fluttershy, aren't I? Goddammit.”

She turned and moved slowly towards the deer-thing in the trap. Much to her surprise, it responded to her approach by growing calmer. Oddly, something about this made her feel genuine pity for the strange creature. As she came close, it stretched out a leg toward her, and a tiny fragment of dried-up hide sloughed off of it. At first, the pegasus shied away from its reach, but realizing that she would have to get closer to do anything, she forced herself to continue her approach, allowing the bony appendage to rub against her side as she stepped towards the trap. She trembled, and had an urge to scream. Instead, she gritted her teeth, and looked towards the skull's empty eye sockets.

“It's okay... baby.” She forced the last word of her sentence. "It doesn't look like it broke your leg... bone... leg bone.” She paused, and raised an eyebrow in thought. “I guess if it had, you'd be loose, wouldn't you?”

Fluttershy looked at the trap. It was enormous. She couldn't imagine for a moment that she would be able to open it.

“I don't even know if I can do anything to help you,” she said.

The skeleton lowered its head to the ground, and grew still, as if resigned to its fate.

Fluttershy felt a pang of pity stab at her heart. How long had it been here? She couldn't even guess. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath.

“I'll try, though.”

The deer lifted its skull, and looked back at the tiny pegasus. The wind picked up for a moment, and whipped through Fluttershy's mane. Then, it died down, again.

Fluttershy forced her forehooves between the trap's rusty jaws, and pushed against them with all her might. The trap's hinges groaned and squeaked, and Fluttershy herself squealed like a teapot as she poured out every ounce of her strength against the merciless resistance. Finally, some of the rust around the old hinges crumbled away, and it opened slightly. The deer skeleton jerked its leg free, and only a moment later, Fluttershy lost her grip. The trap snapped shut on thin air.

The yellow pegasus pony fell backward, huffing and puffing. She shut her eyes, and rolled over onto her side, exhausted. She lay still, and breathed in the chill, dry air.

After a moment, something tickled the side of her face, and she opened her eyes. It was grass; green, living grass.

She dragged herself to her hooves quickly, and looked around. The deer skeleton was standing upright now. Muscles and other organs were growing from around its bare bones, and from the few remaining fragments of its hide, skin was expanding outward to surround and contain them. The grass was growing outward from the deer's hooves, and as the first sprigs of it touched the rusted, ancient trap, it crumbled away as if a hundred years had passed in a few moments . As the chain that bound it to the tree likewise crumbled away up to its roots, the tree itself began to come alive again, sprouting leaves and new bark. From that tree, grass also began to grow, spreading outward. As it touched the trees, each one came alive and renewed itself. The stream bed began to flow with clear, cool water, and Fluttershy, her throat parched from hours of wandering the dead forest, bent her head down and began to drink.

After awhile, she raised her head, and came face to face with a pair of deep brown eyes. They belonged to the deer she had rescued.

“Follow me,” came the voice in the wind, and the deer turned and dashed away through the undergrowth. Fluttershy flew upward, and saw that not only had the forest returned to life, but the land itself had somehow pitched upward into beautiful, low, rolling hills. The deer stood atop the nearest of these, and seemed to beckon to the pegasus.

She flew towards it, and it began to run through the forest, leading her onward. After some time, the forest opened up into a barren, cratered landscape that seem to stretch on to the horizon. Here, the deer stopped, and looked up at Fluttershy.

“From here, you will find your own way.” As these words echoed on the wind, the deer turned, and disappeared into the brush.

As Fluttershy turned back to the lifeless, gray landscape that lay beyond the forest, she felt a weight around her neck. She noticed that somehow, she was wearing the amulet of kindness, and as she became aware of this, a ray of yellow light shout outward from it, and arced over the horizon.

Fluttershy flew towards it without a moment's thought or hesitation. Years later, she would realize that the voice in the wind had been her own, but it was as well that she could not yet perceive that or even guess at what it might have meant. For the moment, all that mattered was that bright, strong beam of yellow light, guiding her towards where she knew her friend must be.

* * *

“Your father never wanted to believe it.”

“I don't believe it.” Pinkie said, her speech subdued and cold.

“You were always back and forth as a filly, Pinkamena,” her mother replied. “You were up one minute and down the next. I wasn't really all that surprised. I was sad, of course, but never surprised.”

“Your father said it must have been an accident, but I knew better. You were always silly, but you were never stupid. Deep down, I think he knew it, too. I think that's what killed him.”

Pinkie's face streamed with tears.

“Pinkamena,” spoke the gray mare. “I don't know if this is a dream or if you're a ghost or what, but as much as I loved you, I can't take this. I saw your body. I saw you buried. I cried right alongside your friends and your father and your sisters. I let you go years ago, and I don't want you here, anymore. Please, go.”

Pinkie hesitated, looking at the old mare as tears continued to run down her pink face. She wanted to hug her mother, but she realized that in doing so she would only intensify the old pony's misery. Finally, she turned and walked slowly out the door. Then, she did the only thing she could think to do: She turned north, toward Ponyville, and began to walk. The sky was overcast, and in the distance, she saw pegasi positioning even more clouds. A gentle rain began to fall, slowly soaking her mane so that it hung low and straight around her head and neck, the way it always did when she was sad.

“Just what I need.” Pinkie sighed deeply, and kept putting one hoof in front of the other.

After the longest few miles she could remember walking in her entire life, Pinkie arrived on the edge of Ponyville. She smiled to see at least this place seemingly so unchanged. Everything looked just as it should be as she moved into the town. Everything, that was, except the ponies. They all moved about glumly in the slow, drizzling rain, looking cold and disinterested in whatever they were doing. Nopony was laughing. Nopony was smiling. The whole town seemed hopeless and lifeless.

In desperation for something familiar, she went straight to Sugar Cube Corner. To her surprise, it had been totally remodeled. Its shape was basically the same as it had always been, but it now lacked its former, whimsical ornamentation. Going inside, she found that it had been converted into a more conventional bakery. Simple loaves of bread and rolls and such filled the racks that had once been covered in cakes, cookies, and other sweets. A beige earth pony mare with a loaf of bread for her cutie mark stood behind the counter.

“Hi. What can I get you?” she asked in a monotone voice.

“I'm looking for the cakes?” Pinkie Pie scanned the lobby, overcome with feelings both of familiarity and estrangement.

“No cakes here. I can make you one special order, but I gotta warn you my cakes aren't much good. I mostly just bake bread.” The mare gestured at her cutie mark.

“No, I mean Mr. and Mrs. Cake,” said Pinkie.

“Oh! You must have been out of town for awhile. I bought this place from them years ago. Nice couple, but Mr. Cake said he didn't want to raise his foals in the same house where that girl killed herself. Or do you not know that story?”

“I... I know it.” Pinkie sighed. “Thanks, anyway.”

Pinkie Pie felt that she had never needed a friend, as desperately as she did at that moment. She stepped out of the door and was greeted by a cross-eyed, gray pegasus.

“Oh, hello, Pinkie Pie,” said Derpy Hooves, stepping past her towards the doorway. “PINKIE PIE!?”

The pegasus spun on her rear hooves, and stared at the pink pony.

“No, no. It's got to be my eyes, again. Lots of pink earth ponies in the world. I'm sorry; you just look like somepony I used to know; somepony I miss. She always made the best muffins.” The pegasus paused, and looked up at the building that had once been Pinkie's home. “And if you were crying, she could make you laugh.”

“Oh, don't worry about it,” Pinkie said. She sniffled, but the rain concealed her tears. “You're on the weather patrol. I know she's probably busy with the rain, but could you maybe tell me where I could find Rainbow Dash?”

Derpy cocked her head to the side.

“Rainbow Dash moved away several years ago.”

“Did she join the Wonderbolts?” asked Pinkie, excitedly.

“No, she gave up on that after a friend of hers... had an accident. It sort of took the heart out of her. She moved back to Cloudsdale and works in a lightning factory, now. I see her from time to time, when I go home to visit.”

“Well, what about Fluttershy? Does she still live over near the Everfree Forest?”

“Nope. She moved too. Nopony really knows where she went. That same friend of Rainbow Dash's... Fluttershy spent a lot of time just sitting at her grave, singing old songs to her. I guess she felt like she had to get away from here or her heart would just... break down.”

“Does Twilight Sparkle still live at the Library?” Pinkie's hopes were becoming fainter and fainter.

“Oh, no. When everypony else started moving away, she went back to Canterlot. She always felt responsible for what happened to Pinkie Pie... That was that friend of theirs, by the way... Goodness you look a lot like her, but Pinkie would be older than you, by a bit, I suppose. Anyway, Twilight said she should have seen Pinkie had a problem; said she felt like a failure as a friend. I guess she just couldn't take living here, anymore.” Derpy sighed, and looked up the street towards the library.

“Applejack? Tell me Sweet Apple Acres is still the way I remember it.”

“After her Granny Smith died and her little sister grew up and moved away, she and her brother decided that Ponyville was just too full of sad memories. They sold the farm to the Flim Flam brothers, and moved to Dodge City to work at the cherry orchard. Nopony around here has heard from them since.”

“How could Ponyville be that full of sad memories!? Why does everypony look so miserable?”

“Ponyville's just a miserable town, I guess. Wasn't always this way. It used to be a happy place. I suppose it just lost its heart, somehow. You have a good day, anyway, though, and try to stay dry.” Derpy turned to head inside.

Pinkie's eyes lit up slightly.

“Wait! What about Rarity?”

* * *

Rainbow Dash awoke in a hospital bed. Slowly, the memory of her previous awakening came back to her. She was laying on her side, and frantically, she turned to try and look at her wings. She felt a horrendous stab of pain, and as her body shifted, she caught sight of the edge of the stump where once her right wing had been.

“AAAAAAAAHHH!!” She roared in a mix of anger and despair, her voice cracking as her head dropped onto the pillow.

Hearing her mournful cry, a white earth pony burst into the room. Rainbow Dash recognized her as Nurse Redheart.

“Are you okay? Do you need morphine?”

“I need my wings back!” Rainbow dash sobbed, watery mucus already beginning to pour out of her nose.

“Oh, sweetie, I know.” Nurse Redheart's face was full of genuine pity, and Rainbow Dash despised nothing more than being pitied. She rolled away from the nurse, an act which produced even more pain and left two bloody spots on the center of the mattress.

“You're an earth pony! How could you know!?” Rainbow Dash hiccuped and winced.

Nurse Redheart's look of pity metamorphosed into one of obvious shame. Of course she couldn't know.

“Well,” said the nurse, gently, “we couldn't let the necrosis spread to the rest of your body. It would have killed you.”

“I wish you would have LET IT!” The crippled pegasus screamed.

“What... the hell... am I, now?” She growled, sucking air through her teeth as she hiccuped her way through the sentence. “I'm not even a pegasus, anymore!”

Rainbow Dash rolled her face into her pillow and bit into it to stifle the scream of rage and anguish that blasted its way outward from between her clenched teeth.

“Sweetie,” said the nurse, stroking Rainbow Dash's mane with her fetlock, “we told you this would be hard when you signed the consent form. I'm going to turn up your morphine drip, and you just go back to sleep. You'll be okay. I promise.”

“I don't remember signing a consent form,” Rainbow Dash said, her eyelids growing heavy. “In fact, I don't even remember being sick or checking into the hospital. The last thing I remember is waking up on the operating table, and then being put to sleep, again.”

“That's probably just mild amnesia from the fever the infection gave you, and maybe a little from the anesthesia. It'll come back to you. If you want to see the form, I can show it to you,” said the nurse.

“I wanna... sleep,” she replied, and as Nurse Redheart walked out of the room, that's exactly what she did.

After awhile, Rainbow Dash awoke for the third time in a haze. It was night, now. The pegasus looked around the room. She was totally alone.

She lay there for awhile, weeping until her pillow was soaking wet beneath her face. She was horribly nauseous, partly from the drugs, but even more from the sickening thought of never being able to fly, again.

“I'd honestly rather be dead,” she whispered into the darkness.

Then, an idea came to her; a terrible, terrible idea.

She got to her hooves, still light-headed and out-of-sorts from the influence of the morphine. She walked towards the door, and heard the drip stand on which the I.V. was mounted fall over as a tube, still jutting out of her foreleg, pulled against it.

“Shit.” She took the tube in her teeth, and pulled it loose, along with several wires attached to her chest. Blood oozed from the hole the tube's removal had opened in her foreleg.

The machine to which the tubes had belonged began to emit a singular, piercing tone, and she heard hoofbeats in the hallway. She tried to move for the door, but she felt a wave of nausea hit her as she did so. She resisted it for a moment, gritting her teeth and breathing in sharply through her nose as the room wavered in and out of focus, but despite her best efforts, she felt a lump begin to rise in her throat. Finally, she vomited onto the floor.

Nurse Redheart and two orderlies burst into the room. There stood Rainbow Dash, knees wobbling and coughing downward into a pool of bile that had gathered around her forehooves.

“Sweetie, there's a bedpan if you feel sick.”

“No,” said Rainbow Dash, her breathing still hassled and uneven. “Not big enough; feel really sick.”

“This is a really bad reaction,” said Nurse Redheart to an orderly. “It may just be from too little oxygen, but go get the anesthesiologist, if he hasn't gone home.'

“And you,” she said to the other orderly, “help me get her to the bathroom. Then, we need to get her on some oxygen.”

The nurse and the orderly positioned themselves to either side of Rainbow Dash. Each hooked a foreleg under one of hers, and used their remaining three to slowly hobble her towards the bathroom. Rainbow Dash felt weak, but it didn't matter.

“What's the worst that could happen?” she whispered. “I die? Ha.”

“You're just having a bad reaction to anesthesia. It happens all the time. You're not going to die.” Nurse Redheart had good ears, apparently.

“Yes, I am,” Rainbow Dash whispered.

They were near the door, now, and Rainbow Dash summoned up what little strength she had to wrench herself free of the other ponies' grasp. Running into the hall, she could hear Nurse Redheart calling out behind her.

“Please, Rainbow. I know you're upset, but hysterics won't solve anything,” the nurse called down the hallway, toward where Rainbow Dash now stood.

The wing-bereft pegasus felt her stomach lurch, then deposited another small pool of bile between her hooves. Its image swayed back and forth, splitting into multiples of itself. She snorted through her nose and shook her head violently. The images consolidated together, and a rancid scent curled her snout.

She lifted her head sharply and scanned the hallway for a stairwell or elevator. There was none to be found. As she turned to go the other direction, she saw that Nurse Redheart, a security guard, and two large orderlies were blocking her path. There was also a doctor approaching from behind them at quick but wary trot.

There was a hypodermic needle clutched in his teeth.

She looked back over her shoulder, and caught a glimpse of something she had overlooked before: There was a window at the end of the hallway.

She ran towards it as fast as her condition would allow, and threw herself into the air. Muscles in her back contracted instinctively in an effort to move wings that were not there, and she growled in pain even before she struck the glass. She fell from the second story and landed in the bushes below the window amidst a shower of glass and speckles of her own blood.

She stood. None of her legs were broken, and for once in her life, her legs were all she needed. She heard several frantic voices coming from the main entrance on the adjacent side of the building.

“Hmph,” she laughed bitterly, wiping blood from her nose. “Just like old times.”

She ripped the hospital gown off her body and broke into a gallop. Mercifully, the rush of oxygen and adrenaline seemed to be clearing her head. After a little less than half an hour at a near all-out sprint, she reached her goal.

“There it is,” thought Rainbow Dash. “Ghastly Gorge.”

The chasm cut through her field of vision, a swath of black across a landscape of dark greens and browns. She'd always known she might die here one day. Now, she intended to.

She didn't give herself time to think or reconsider. However she had come to be as she was now, she had no wish to continue living. She screamed with every ounce of her pent-up rage, and hammered at the earth beneath her hooves with all her might. As the edge of the gorge rushed towards her, she gave a mighty heave and hurled herself aloft.

As she sailed through the sky, she shut her eyes, and made every effort to soak in the feeling of the wind rushing over her face for what she knew would be the last time. It stole the tears away from the corners of her eyes, and new ones sprang up to replace them. Her heart felt a sense of heaviness and dread, but also an eerie sense of calm and satisfaction. Finally, she opened her eyes to see the ground rushing upwards to embrace her with its finality and absolution.

Her forelegs struck first, buckling underneath her so that she went into a wild roll that ended with her laying in a heap, somehow still alive, conscious, and throbbing with tremendous pain throughout her entire body. Laying there, her chest heaving, she tried to understand what had happened. She was bitterly disappointed that the fall hadn't killed her.

Then, she noticed a strange thing: There were no rock walls anywhere around her. Nor was there any river. Haltingly, she came to understand that she wasn't at the bottom of the gorge. She dragged herself to her hooves, and looked around. After a few moments, the reality of the situation became apparent: somehow, she had actually cleared the width of the gorge, and landed on the opposite side, still alive.

In the silence of the night, she sat there on her haunches, staring eyes half open across the gaping, empty void over which she had hurled herself in a maddened death rage. What she had just done was an impossible feat. Even crippled; even broken and with the essence of what she had thought she was torn from her physical body, she had done something that defied even her own imagination. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, leaping to the earth, one droplet at a time, and there, alone in the silence, she let loose a ragged, coarse laugh that filled her mouth with thick, foul-tasting fluid from her belabored lungs.

“I... am… fucking... awesome,” she growled.

She coughed violently, hanging her head in exhaustion. A lacework of saliva, mucus, and blood grew wider and more intricate in the dirt before her eyes with every wet, hacking exhalation. There was no part of her that did not ache. Her legs were on fire. Her lungs felt like they were full of broken glass. Her heart was still pounding, filling her ears with the sound of her own blood pounding through her skull. Her skin was covered in cuts and abrasions from the window she had jumped through and from numerous thorns and brambles she had brushed past in her crazed run through the woods. Most of all, absent of morphine, the two stumps where her wings had been throbbed in agony. She collapsed to her knees.

"Rainbow Motherfucking Dash," she whispered, and she slumped forward, her face pressing into the soil. "Maybe she was more than a pair of wings."

Then, in a shower of blood and feathers that glistened in the light of a strange, fading moon, two perfect new wings burst from Rainbow Dash's bandaged stumps. All her pain faded. All her cuts and scrapes began to close, and Rainbow Dash looked up to see a blue ray of light pointing towards the horizon from the amulet of loyalty that she only now noticed she was still somehow wearing.

* * *

Applejack stood on the porch, shouting into the flames.

“Momma! Daddy!? Come out!!” Her voice was beginning to become strained and hoarse, and she was growing more afraid by the second. The adult mind inside the filly's tiny body seethed at its own helplessness. Why did this dream always come back? Why could she never change anything or do anything differently?

After some time, she heard her adult voice speak, cold and stolid, as it always was when she spoke to herself inside her own mind. “Cause it ain't just a dream, AJ; It's a memory.”

Somehow, she was suddenly standing next to the apple tree where Macintosh and Granny Smith were huddled. She was a full-grown mare again, but the filly she had once been still stood screaming on the porch. The fire had already spread into the branches of the enormous old apple tree, and would ultimately consume it along with the house. She looked up at it, and felt a pang of guilt and sadness.

“This tree'll burn," she said. "Daddy'll come down the stairs with Applebloom tied up in a blanket in his teeth and push me out into the yard. He'll put her down in the grass, and then he'll collapse and die right there. The roof'll cave in, and I'll realize Momma ain't coming out of there. Then, I'll start screaming like a goddamn banshee, and Big Mac'll have to drag me away so's I don't run inside what's left of that ol' house and get my fool little self killed.”

She said these things flatly, with almost no emotion except mild melancholy. “I'll lay across Daddy and cry and scream. Then, Macintosh'll finally pull me away while Granny gets Applebloom.'

“That's the way it's gonna happen because that's the way it did happen. I couldn't do a damned thing about it then, and I sure can't do a damned thing about it now.”

She sighed.

“You know what?” she said, resolutely. “Fuck you, dream. I done been through this a thousand goddamned times, and I ain't never gonna be able to change it 'cause it's already been done. I'm sick of this bullshit. I ain't nothing but a tired-ass orange earth mare who grows apples, for fuck's' sake. Been lying on my goddamn back for years over this shit, and I'm sick of it as all HELL! I don't care if I gotta crawl, I'm getting over this bullshit! I'll roll over and climb the goddamn floor before I'll lie here and die like some weak-ass little PUSSY!! Can't do a goddamn thing about this, and I'm GONE, you hear me!?”

She turned away from the burning home of her childhood, and began to walk. As she did so, an orange ray shot out of the amulet she was wearing, arcing over the horizon.

“Reckon I can do a thing or two about that, though."

She broke into a gallop.

* * *

Rarity was lying on her bed again, staring across the room at the haggard, scarecrow-like pony in the mirror. She was totally numb, consumed with the joy of being utterly disconnected from herself. She watched her reflection only to mock it with the fact that it could not harm her. The syringe hung from her foreleg, seeping blood from around where its needle was still embedded. Surgical tubing hung limply above it. All these things stared at her from inside the mirror across the room.

“I may be ugly,” she smiled, “but I feel beautiful.”

There was a knock at the door of her room. Rarity did not so much as notice it. She was too busy listening instead to the slow, rhythmic sound of her own breathing. After a few moments, the knock sounded again.

“Rarity?” came a bright but muffled voice. The knob rattled as somepony tried to open the locked door.

“Go away,” said Rarity, not even lifting her head.

“She said you'd say that,” came the voice, again.

“I don't want to see anypony,” she replied.

“She said you’d say that, too,” came the the bright, muffled reply.

“And I don't want anypony to see me,” said Rarity.

“And that,” said the voice.

“Go away,” Rarity repeated, this time more firmly.

The voice sounded again. “But it's Pinkie Pie!”

“Now, you're just being an asshole,” Rarity said. “Pinkie's dead. She overdosed on sleeping pills. I should know; I gave them to her. If I'd have known that was what she was going to do...” Rarity's words trailed off.

There was a long pause, then Pinkie's voice came from beyond the door, again. “Do you really believe that?”

This set Rarity to thinking about the bizarre nature of her situation and exactly how she'd gotten there for the first time since her awakening a few hours previous.

“Come to think of it,” said Rarity, “It never did make any sense. Fuck me; you don't make any sense. Pinkie had a very distinctive voice, and whoever you are, you certainly sound like her.”

Rarity rolled over and tossed her head to get her mane out from under it. Locks of the violet mass flopped over and lay limp across her face. She did not bother to move them. She weakly pushed the syringe out of her flesh with her free hoof. The voice on the other side of the door said nothing for over a minute, and Rarity assumed that whoever it was had gone.

“That's not even why it's always bothered me,” she said, talking to herself aloud, as her seclusion had put her in the habit of doing. “Pinkie Pie had no restraint whatsoever, and I would never have given her enough of anything for her to overdose on it; especially not after that incident with the Vicodin. Goddamn, that was funny.”

The voice came from the opposite side of the door once more, rising through an octave as it spoke. “You really are Rarity! My Rarity!” On the other side of the room from where the voice had just been clearly audible through the door, a tinfoil-covered window smashed into pieces. Pinkie Pie rolled inward across the floor, then scrambled to her hooves. Rarity’s only reaction was to squint her eyes at the light that washed inward from the broken window.

“That's why you never buy a bargain bin grappling HooOLY SHIT!!” Pinkie's jaw landed on the floor as she stared at Rarity's ghoulish face and ragged, malnourished body.

Pinkie Pie physically picked her lower jaw up off the floor with her hoof, and forcibly closed her own mouth.

Without sitting up or even raising her head, Rarity cocked a heroine-addled eyebrow at her erstwhile friend. “That's weird. Your mane isn't curly. Also, you're dead.”

Pinkie Pie sighed. “Everypony keeps saying that.”

Rarity licked her lips in an effort to moisten them, but it was largely ineffective, given that her tongue itself had no moisture to offer. She sat up and tried to reach for the bottle of gin on the nightstand. She only succeeded in knocking it to the floor. It did not shatter.

“This is so fucked up. I don't usually hallucinate on horse. That shit must have been laced with acid. Last time I buy from... where did I score that batch, anyway?” She paused for a moment. “And why the fuck would somepony call heroine 'horse,' anyway?”

She shrugged. "Whatever; it shouldn't be making me see things like this."

Pinkie Pie stepped towards the bed. “You’re not seeing things, Rarity. I'm real. I promise.”

“Fuck you,” said Rarity.

Pinkie dropped her head, and her ears drooped. “But I'm your Pinkie,” she said. “For real.”

“My Pinkie? Now, there's a good reason that can't be true. My Pinkie left me, without saying goodbye, or even leaving a goddamned note.” Her voice cracked with bitterness and grief. ”Then, my Fluttershy left me. Then my Twilight, then my Rainbow Dash, then my Applejack!” Rarity's voice grew louder with each name, and she rolled onto her hooves. She stumbled towards the dresser, but stopped halfway, and turned her head towards Pinkie Pie, who had backed several steps away from the seething unicorn.

“And, let me tell you what happened, then. My Sweetie Belle grew up and left, and never so much as writes a letter. My parents disowned me, and moved away out of shame. My Opal got old and died. My business fell apart at the seams, right along with all my dreams and everything I used to believe was mine.”

Rarity swayed for a moment, staring icepicks at Pinkie Pie. Her voice wavered as she spoke, but now her eyes did not glisten with even the faintest indication of tears. She was too dehydrated for her body to produce them.

“And what do I have left? This ugly face in the mirror.”

She turned her head towards the mirror and stumbled towards it. When she reached it, she placed a hoof against it to steady herself.

After several seconds Pinkie Pie's image appeared in the glass next to her own. Rarity paid it no attention for a moment, until she felt the gentle touch of a hoof on the side of her face, pushing it to face the pink pony. Pinkie had something in her teeth that Rarity hadn't seen or used for a long, long, time: an eyeshadow applicator.

Pinkie's face leaned in close to her own. Rarity felt a gentle touch against her half-open eyelids, and the warm breeze of Pinkie's breath on her forehead. She shut her eyes, and made no effort to resist. In a few moments, she felt Pinkie pull away, and opened her eyes. The pink pony was smiling at her through tears.

“Is that better?” asked Pinkie Pie, with a sniffle.

Rarity turned her head towards the mirror. Her whole body was still ragged and disgusting, and her face was still gaunt and drawn tight to her skull. Her eyes, however, were much as she had known them, once, though she could not remember when.

“Pinkie,” asked Rarity,” How did I get like this?”

Pinkie Pie stepped back, and looked around in confusion. “I don't know,” she said. “All I know is that everypony thinks I killed myself, and Ponyville has turned into... well... a shithole.”

Rarity looked around, dazed. “But Ponyville...” She paused for a moment, staring into the mirror image of her own eyes.

At that moment, something --maybe the makeup, maybe Pinkie Pie’s undeniable presence next to her, maybe something inside herself that she didn’t fully understand -- caused a wave of memory to wash over her.

“Nightmare Moon,” she said. “She's responsible for this.”

Rarity's mind began to clear, and her body grew gradually more strong and healthy. As she saw Rarity returning to normal, Pinkie Pie's mane suddenly puffed out into its usual, curly shape, and her eyes hardened as she locked them into those of the white unicorn. “Oh, we are going to kill that bitch.”

“I get her face,” growled Rarity.

Both ponies felt pulled towards the broken window, and as they looked out of it, they saw a pair of light rays, one white and one pink, shooting outwards toward the horizon.

Chapter 5: To Move Heaven and Earth

Chapter 5

To Move Heaven and Earth

Celestia's verbal assault continued, and now she stepped down from her throne and advanced towards the comparatively tiny and cripplingly shamed unicorn.

“Look at little Twilight, the child prodigy. Prodigy who couldn't master basic telekinesis.”

“You always said I had an intuitive grasp of tele...”

“I lied,” Celestia cut short Twilight's shaky defense.

The little unicorn backed slowly away from the princess, and her hoof found empty space where the stairs to the throne terminated at the platform. She fumbled to find the step, but in the grips of the panic brought on by the Princess' slow, menacing approach, she tripped backwards, rolling down the stairs.

Celestia laughed, and as Twilight looked up at her from the bottom of the staircase, the white horse's horn began to glow with a wicked, black light.

“That's enough.” It was Luna's voice. Still lying on her side, Twilight turned her head, and saw Luna standing in the doorway to the throne room.

Celestia's horn ceased to glow, and she lifted her head to take in a full view of this new intruder.

“Twilight, that is not my sister. Get away from her.” As Luna spoke, Twilight Sparkle noticed something she had not seen before: Celestia's eyes were not the right color, and now their pupils narrowed into slits.

The throne room, already rife with seemingly centuries of decrepitude, crumbled into dust, and the thing that was not Celestia faded from white to black, metamorphosing slightly in shape as it did so. It was Nightmare Moon, her helmet absent from her sable face and head. She wore in its place an ornate circlet of fire-blued steel, inset with onyx and sapphires.

“Well, well,” the black horse chuckled. “You made it.”

“It was not particularly difficult,” Luna sneered, “but thank you for the warmup.”

Twilight scrambled to her hooves, and ran to join Luna. Feeling safer alongside the little Alicorn, she took a moment to examine her surroundings. The three of them were standing atop a tower of polished black iron in the middle of a gray, cratered landscape. The throne still remained, but it was black, and wreathed at its top by elegant, weapon-like protrusions, arranged around a central disk so that they darkly parodied the beams of a stylized sun.

The throne room itself was round, its floor being made of carefully set blocks of polished black marble. An ornate iron bannister ringed the tower's roof, and its posts arced upward to meet in a vaulted, skeletal dome woven together in ornate, curvilinear patterns. There were no walls, affording Twilight a view of the surrounding desolation, which itself was barely visible in the all-pervasive darkness that seemed to stretch out forever. The only light came from numerous iron braziers, one at every support post of the dome, and two long lines of them which marked the path from the entrance to the base of the throne. They all glowed with steady, green flames having no apparent physical fuel.

Twilight looked over the edge of the railing, and saw that the tower beneath her was nothing but a single iron column, tapering inward towards its middle to once again expand outward into this platform. It fanned out into rib-like projections that came upward to form the support columns of the dome, so that the throne room itself was mounted inside an ornate, iron cage. The staircase spiraled closely around this column, weaving in amongst the bottom of the cage, so that it never protruded outside the tower's elegant black curvature.

Far below, dimly illuminated by more of the iron braziers, which ringed the stairwell and the tower's base, Twilight saw the gored, burned and dismembered bodies of at least a dozen enormous black unicorn stallions clad in armor of blued steel. Only then did she notice that Luna's fur and feathers appeared out of sorts, that her chest was heaving, and that her horn glistened red with blood. Now, she understood what Luna had meant by "warmup."

“Where are we? Are we on the moon?” asked Twilight.

“Yes,” said Luna, “but also no. This is some kind of dream world that Nightmare Moon has been constructing in my own subconscious.”

“A Nightmare,” the black mare grinned.

“I'm not even sure if this place has a physical manifestation,” said Luna.

“Oh, we're all quite real here, I assure you.” Nightmare Moon's voice deepened with menace as she spoke. “It's the only way I could properly murder you.”

“But what about our bodies back on Earth?” Twilight asked Luna.

Nightmare Moon looked upward through the ornate lacework of iron that formed the dome, “Oh, don't worry; they're still there.”

Twilight looked upward and saw the planet, the sun's glow radiating from around it.

“I don't even know how created such all this,” said Luna, her voice low but determined.

“Oh, I didn't make this place, little Luna." Nightmare Moon slowly grinned. "You did; remember? It's been here all along, as have I.”

Twilight felt her skin crawling all over her body. “Well, where is Celestia? Wasn't she supposed to be here, too?”

Nightmare Moon looked at Twilight. “Small wonder you're so insecure about that squalid little mind of yours; Where do you think she is, you twit?”

Twilight did her best to ignore Nightmare Moon's insults. “She's in the sun, isn't she?”

“Yes," said Luna. "Why do you think she locked the moon into a total eclipse? We can't draw Celestia to ourselves as long as the moon lies in the shadow of the earth."

Twilight almost shouted in Luna's face. “Then move it!”

“I can't,” Luna spoke through gritted teeth, her eyes locked on Nightmare Moon. “I've been trying this whole time. Her will – and her magic – is just as powerful as my own, here. Maybe stronger.”

“Which should make this easy, on account of the fact that I'm also bigger than you!” Nightmare Moon leapt into flight as she finished her sentence, her horn coruscating with blue lightning. Propelled by her black wings, she dove headlong toward the smaller alicorn, head lowered, meaning to plunge the electrified weapon into Luna's chest.

Luna saw the attack coming and rolled hard into Twilight with her shoulder, pushing the little pony aside. Nightmare Moon landed in the spot where they had both been standing, and released the gathered energy in a blast of lightning that blew polished, black stones from the floor, and sent Luna and Twilight sailing.

Twilight hit the floor hard and rolled to a stop near the tower's edge, striking the base of the iron railing with the back of her head. Her vision blurred, but she willed herself to maintain consciousness. She felt Luna laying on top of her for a moment, then felt her spring to her hooves. The world came into focus as she whipped her head left and right, looking frantically for the black goddess of darkness. It dawned on her she should raise a defense, and her horn glowed briefly, projecting a transparent, purple force field that fixed itself in front of her body. She could see neither Nightmare Moon nor Luna.

Scanning her surroundings, she saw the hole in the floor that Nightmare Moon's attack had created. A low, chilling laugh came from within it, and Nightmare Moon slowly rose upward from within it on her black wings. She noticed Twilight immediately.

“A force field?” Nightmare moon grinned once more. "How banal an inelegant, but I suppose it will do."

The enormous mare's horn seemed to suck the light from the space around it, turning blacker than night. Then, Twilight's own shield began to slowly move backwards towards her. She made to move around it, and it grew outward to touch the railing behind her, first on one side, then the next. She was trapped. As the shield continued to close in toward her, Twilight glanced back over the railing, desperate for a way out.

“Go ahead and jump, little pony,” Nightmare Moon whispered just loudly enough for the sound to reach Twilight's ears.

Briefly, the unicorn considered attempting to jump the contracting purple shield, but it was far too close for her to get the necessary running start, and she dared not levitate herself over its top, either. She could do so only slowly, and Nightmare Moon would certainly take the opportunity to blast her into oblivion. She pinned herself against the railing, and racked her brain for a way out of her predicament.

Then, it hit her: Anywhere she could see, she could teleport.

She shut her eyes and disappeared in a flash, meaning to reappear at the base of the tower and make a mad sprint for safety, but when she opened her eyes again, she gasped in horror. Her teleportation spell, completely against her own will, had brought her directly in front of the Nightmare Queen, herself. Nightmare Moon slowly lowered her face to bring her eyes level with Twilight's own. The little unicorn was mesmerized by fear, barely able to think; much less move.

Nightmare Moon's face was so close that Twilight could see the glint of saliva on her ivory fangs, and could even feel and smell her breath. It was a strange aroma, like the scent of spiced wine, but underneath that scent hung a faint note of something like rotten meat mixed with the metallic tang of coagulated blood. It would have been less terrible if Nightmare Moon had struck her in the face or taunted her in some way, but she only continued to grin.

Then, a faint and very tiny pinprick of light began to glow at the tip of the huge alicorn's horn. Twilight could have sworn that her snake-like irises shone blood red for a moment, and as they did so, the tip of Twilight's own horn began to glow with a similar tiny, white pinprick. Nightmare Moon began to slowly, carefully lower her horn, staring upward at its tip, obviously meaning to touch the two tiny sparks together. Twilight's senses returned to her, and she tried to run. Her guts twisted into knots as she realized that no matter how much she tensed her muscles, her body was locked in place by the grip of some dark magic.

As Nightmare Moon leaned her head in closer, Twilight watched the reflection of those two dim lights growing ever closer in her huge, jade-green eyes. The unicorn began to hyperventilate, whimpering with every sudden, fractious breath. As much as she wished she could run away, she wished even more that she only knew what was going to happen when those two tiny points of luminescence met. Two massive tears began to well at the corner of Twilight's eyes. She wanted desperately to shut those tearful, trembling eyes, but she could not, for not even her own eyelids would bend to her will.

Whatever was about to happen, Nightmare Moon was going to make her watch.

Finally, when it seemed that mere moments would bring the two lights in contact with one another, a black-blue-violet streak shot in from the darkness and plowed into the enormous mare from her right flank, sending her sprawling. Luna now stood where Nightmare Moon had been, her heavy breathing casting steam into the chill air that all good sense said shouldn't even exist on the Lunar surface.

“Sorry, but I needed bait,” she said.

Luna's crown had been twisted and half-shattered by the impact, so she quickly reached upward with a hoof and pushed it off of her head.

Twilight found that she could move again, and not a second later she felt a wave of vertigo sweep over her body, already rocking with violent tremors born of sheer terror and adrenaline. She thought for a moment that she might faint, but as she began to fall, she spread out her forelegs to steady herself. Quickly, she gathered the presence of mind to locate the terrible threat still somewhere nearby. Her eyes found it quickly, and her heart fluttered and skipped several beats when she realized that Nightmare Moon was already getting to her hooves.

The black horse slowly turned her head toward Twilight and Luna, revealing a trickle of blood beneath her left nostril, which she wiped clean with a foreleg. “Well, that was just nasty, little Luuunaa.” She punctuated her taunt by launching a bolt of black energy from her horn.

Luna was somehow able to erect a magical shield in the brief moment of the bolt's flight, but it's impact still slid her backwards the length of her own body. The ensuing blast of pressure swept Twilight off her hooves, rolling her once again dangerously close to the tower's edge. She stood quickly, fueled now by raw adrenaline, but the sight she saw filled her with cold dread.

Nightmare Moon was wounded, limping on her right hind leg, but somehow, that made her steady, determined advance toward her smaller counterpart even more terrifying. She launched another bolt, but Luna had time to brace herself against this one. Its impact did not upset her footing this time, but the effort spent in resisting it prevented her from launching a counterattack.

Nightmare Moon continued to move towards Luna, hammering her with shot after shot of dark energy, her psychotic laughter growing more gleeful and animalistic with each impact. Luna was bearing up under the attacks, but it was all she could do.

Twilight levitated three of the heavy marble blocks Nightmare Moon's initial attack had dislodged from the floor, and sent them hurtling towards the mare. Nightmare Moon snapped her head toward the unicorn, and the three blocks glowed for a moment, then simply shattered, their momentum pelting the black horse with tiny pebbles.

Luna used the moments' respite to charge her aggressor. It was a risky move. In physical combat, Nightmare Moon had greater size, strength, and reach.

The black horse whipped her head back to meet Luna's charge, and their horns scraped down one another until their foreheads collided with a dense thwack. Several deep blue beams burst from the tip of Luna's horn, but the Nightmare horse's greater strength had already allowed her to push Luna's head far enough back that every shot went wide and high, two of them cleanly severing long pieces of the woven iron dome, which fell to the floor, clanging loudly.

Nightmare Moon kicked Luna sharply in the chest with her left forehoof, and then whipped her head around to trip her with her horn. Luna's shoulder crashed downward, and she was forced to roll quickly away to avoid being skewered in the throat by Nightmare Moon's horn.

Twilight looked on, racking her brain for any way that she might effectively turn the tide. “Luna, what can I do!?”

Luna couldn't even hear Twilight's question. She was on her hooves again, and had cast a spell that brought the glowing likeness of a sword's blade into being around her horn. It was half again as long as the little alicorn's horn, and she was doing all she could to run it through any part of Nightmare Moon's body. The black horse seemed markedly unthreatened by this, however, evidenced by her continual laughter.

Twilight took a few steps towards the duel, and was rewarded by an almost flippant telekinetic push from Nightmare Moon. It rolled her over backwards, and very nearly sent her over the edge of the tower. As she clambered to her hooves, she looked upward towards the planet, racking her brain for a way to make some kind of meaningful difference in the struggle.

Her heart leapt inside her chest. Without her noticing, five rays of light had at some point converged directly overhead. She knew somehow that it must mean her friends were coming, but Twilight's heart sank as quickly as it had risen.

She knew they would be too late. Her mind continued to race.

“If only there was something I could do to give them more time. If only Celestia was here. If only I could move the goddamned...” Her eyes widened.

“Moon,” she said, and her horn began to glow.

“What, exactly, are you trying, this time, you little fool?” The sable goddess didn't even bother to turn her head. “Give me your best shot. Pour every ounce of energy you have into me. It will bounce off like another one of your cute, little pebbles.”

“She's right!” Luna locked horns with Nightmare Moon, and turned her eyes towards Twilight. “Run if you can! There's nothing you can do alone!”

“Oh, now that's not true at all,” said Nightmare Moon, actually allowing her head to give a little against Luna's, and then thrusting her neck outward to pitch Luna away from her. “She can watch me kill you alone, and then she can die alone. The two of you can rot together.” She stepped toward Luna, who responded to her advance with another thrust of her horn. Nightmare moon deftly parried the attack, and resumed her onslaught. She wasted no more attention on the purple unicorn pony.

The glow around Twilight's horn intensified. It felt as if it was moving backward and digging into her brain, but Twilight continued to focus on the enormous body that floated overhead, dim and silhouetted by the sun beyond it. She began to whimper and wince with every breath, but still she focused. She collapsed to her knees, and looking up with white, glowing eyes, she saw the planet begin to wax at its edge as the moon slowly orbited to bring the sun from behind it. She found that focusing her gaze on the sun's brightening glow helped to channel her magic and eased somewhat the burden on her mind. Whether it was her greater ability to perceive the relationship of the sun, earth, and moon, or whether it might be Celestia herself in some way reaching out across that cosmic gulf to amplify her abilities, she did not know. Whatever the case, she focused with all her mind and heart on the creeping glow that seemed so slowly to intensify at the edge of the dark, mottled orb overhead.

Nightmare Moon paid her no mind, but continued to lay into Luna with her impressive strength. Despite the magical blade still glowing around Luna's horn, her strength was no match for Nightmare Moon's, and a single slip of her hoof gave the big, black horse a deadly opening. Luna was gored once through the shoulder, then again in the flank as she reeled backwards from the first wound.

The sable mare unleashed a bolt of black energy on the smaller alicorn, which struck her full in her folded left wing. Twilight heard the snap of bones breaking, mingled with a scream so loud that it caused the tower itself to vibrate beneath her hooves. Unable to pull her eyes away from her task, she heard rather than saw the motion of Luna's body as it rolled across the stone.

Nightmare Moon walked slowly toward her crumpled foe, favoring her wounded hip and emitting a low, hissing, snicker. Within seconds, she stood over Luna's half-conscious form.

By sheer chance it was just then that Twilight Sparkle first beheld the sun itself, moving around the edge of the planet. It burned her eyes, and she tried to shut them, but as she did, she lost her focus, and within her mind, she felt the moon slipping backwards along the path through which she had been moving it. Given no alternative, she opened her eyes and stared into the sun.

Twilight Sparkle screeched like something from beyond her own blackest dreams at the searing pain. Even Nightmare Moon was startled by this sudden outburst, and Luna, brought back to her senses by the piercing cry, attempted to stand. Her legs buckled, however, and collapsed once more. The wound to her shoulder had separated the joint almost completely. It seemed certain that Nightmare Moon, once her attention was restored fully to the smaller horse, would deliver her death blow. It was however, at that moment, that a sliver of light began to illuminate the stones on the opposite side of the throne room. Seeing this, Nightmare Moon finally realized what was happening.

“You conniving little cunt!”

The mix of rage and fear in her enemy's voice told Twilight that she was found out, but she could not allow her concentration to break, even for a moment. Nightmare Moon turned fully to face Twilight, and the air began to crackle around her horn as she charged it with a tremendous bolt of magical lightning, meaning to snuff out the unicorn's life in a single blast.

It was a disastrous mistake, for she now stood very, very close to a Princess Luna who was not quite wholly incapacitated. Seeing that her opponent's attentions were elsewhere directed, Luna put her good foreleg beneath her, and used it and her undamaged right wing to catapult herself upward. Having heard the sounds of Luna moving, Nightmare Moon glanced back just in time to see the wounded alicorn's horn being buried in her own ribcage, all the way up to the forehead.

"For the sake of argument," said Luna, "what if she was just a conniving little bitch?" Luna drew a ragged breath, and spoke again, through a snarl. "Like me?"

As her lung collapsed, Nightmare Moon made a low, sucking, whinnying sound, and lost control of tremendous charge gathered in her horn, which burst outward in all directions, electrocuting both Luna and herself. Luna, growling with rage and pain, did not remove her horn from the horse's side. Instead, she gritted her teeth, and mustered every ounce of magical energy she could summon up from within herself. The veins of her neck stood out beneath her fur, and she ground her teeth against one another as she focused each and every fiber of her being into one, desperate charge.

Then, she released it.

A violent shock rocked Luna's body as she unleashed the gathered force directly into the demonic goddess' body. There was a crashing roar louder than anything Twilight had ever heard in her entire life, and in that same instant, Nightmare Moon and Luna both hurtled in opposite directions, their acceleration so sudden that they seemed almost to disappear. Stones were thrown from the floor, and a hole was blown outward through the top of the dome. Several of the closest of the iron columns that supported the dome and the floor were either blasted completely apart or so badly warped that the entire throne room shifted perceptibly downward on that side.

Twilight was thrown aloft once more, and this time she flew totally clear of the platform. She fell several stories before she could gather her wits and cast a teleportation spell. She vanished in a shower of purple sparks, and reappeared above the marble floor of the throne room. The inertia of her fall, still present, slammed her onto the floor, flat on her belly. Her ribcage made a hollow crunching sound as she impacted.

She moaned as she slowly levered herself upward, discovering as she did so that her left shoulder had been badly dislocated. It was agonizing to place even the least bit of weight on it. Her ears rang from the blast, and her body ached from the impact. The expansion and contraction of her lungs beneath her fractured ribs and sternum made every breath painful. Her eyes burned from staring into the sun, and her head felt as if it would split in two at her horn from the strain of manipulating such a gargantuan cosmic body.

Somehow, however, she forced herself to gaze once again into the sun's brilliance, and to focus.

* * *

Fluttershy could see her destination, and could even dimly see faint lights glittering intermittently from atop the gleaming black tower towards which she flew. Suddenly, a white light shone from amidst them, and in a perfect circle, moving outwards from it, a ring of dust flew upward from the ground. There was a crash that set her ears ringing, and as the cloud of dust whipped past her, she was rolled over in midair. She tumbled backwards and downwards, struggling to tell up from down. Finally, she managed to right herself, and continued forward. Whatever was going on, she knew she needed to be there – now.

Applejack felt the shockwave of whatever had created the enormous blast she had heard only moments before. She whinnied as it actually picked her forelegs up from the ground, and set her stumbling backwards for a moment. She only let it fuel her adrenaline rush. She could see where the blast had originated, and now she was certain that it had come from where she was headed. Nopony was faster on her hooves than Applejack, and it was time for her to prove it.

Pinkie Pie and Rarity somersaulted backward under the murderous impact of the blast from the strange tower in the distance. They didn't stop to consider what could have caused it. Instead, they got to their hooves, and wordlessly dashed forward.

Rainbow Dash, now flying over the barren moonscape, heard a roar in the distance like some kind of massive explosion. A wave of force buffeted her in the sky, and she fluttered her wings slightly to restabilize herself as it passed. Fear seized her heart, but she beat it down beneath her determination.

“When it comes right down to it, I live for this kinda thing.” She sucked in a deep breath.

“Let's see if these really are my wings.”

Chapter 6: One Battle in Many Hearts

Chapter 6

One Battle in Many Hearts

Luna regained consciousness first. Twilight was still gazing upward in what would have seemed to be a stupor, but for the fact that Luna could sense the moon's continued movement. Only their focus on one another had prevented she and Nightmare Moon from noticing it earlier. She had to admire the little unicorn's heart.

“Her mind must be breaking under the strain,” Luna thought.

She could see Nightmare moon lying at the bottom of the staircase that led up to her black throne. The stairs themselves were shattered and rife with cracks, all extending outward from a deep, central crater that marked where she must have impacted. Between Nightmare Moon and herself, furthermore, there was an even larger crater in the floor, and then a long trench of dislodged, upturned, and shattered stones galled out in a line extending from it to where she lay. It took her a moment, but Luna finally realized that it was where her own body had actually dug into the floor as the force of her attack had driven her downwards and backwards.

She could not lift her body. It felt as if all her legs and both her wings were broken. Every breath she drew was agonizing, and each time she exhaled, there was a thin taste of blood in her breath. This told her that her shattered ribs must have punctured at least one of her lungs.

“At least Nightmare Moon must be in worse shape than me,” she rasped.

It was not so. She realized in despair that her old foe was very slowly bringing herself to her hooves. A wound that would have immediately slain any mortal horse gaped in her left side -- the place where Luna's horn had been when she had unleashed her tremendous attack. Through the massive, ragged hole, Luna could see the fragmented remains of Nightmare Moon's ribcage, and even her still-beating heart. The blood loss was catastrophic, and strands of ragged flesh and intestine hung beneath her midriff like vile streamers, glistening red in the slowly intensifying light of the distant sun. Her dark divinity sustained her, however, even in the face of such bodily devastation.

The black mare turned to face Luna, and both of her right legs, the side against which she had impacted, failed her, causing her to tumble forward down the stairs. A moment after she came to rest, she looked up again, and the mindless rage in her turquoise eyes filled Luna with the utmost terror she had ever experienced.

Nightmare Moon very slowly raised herself once more, and stumbled toward the Princess' ruined body. Luna turned her head to try and fire a spell at her enemy, but she was overcome with despair to discover that her horn had been almost totally shattered by the brutality of her own spell. Only a short, jagged stump now protruded from her forehead, which was itself soaked with blood -- not all of it her foe's. She would never be able to direct magical energy with her horn in this condition. It was all she could do to keep Nightmare Moon from negating Twilight Sparkle's feeble push against the moon.

The Nightmare horse noticed her horror, and understanding that Luna was now utterly helpless to stop her, she let loose a sick, gurgling laugh that ended in her violently vomiting blood onto the floor.
“Well,” she said, licking bloody bile away from her lips, “I'll just deal with you after I tend to my more immediate concern.”

The ghastly horror that had once been a regal queen of the night began her twisted, shuffling movement anew, this time turning towards the helpless purple pony who gazed upward, eyes aglow, at the shifting sun.

“No,” Luna barely whispered, coughing as she did so.

Luna was powerless. She watched as the ghoulish horse-thing slowly approached the little unicorn. Luna did not want to see what Nightmare Moon would do, but could not make herself look away. She tried to shout for Twilight to run away, but all that came out was a series of squeaks and sighs.

“You know,” Nightmare Moon hacked. “She's going to die because you brought her here, and her little friends will never, for the rest of their lives, escape from the eternal miseries I've crafted for them all; I love it.” She began to chuckle, and it morphed into a cough. She cleared her throat, and spat a foamy mixture of mucus and blood onto the floor. "All I have to do is finish you off, and then I can take your place -- forever. Cenasolus can have Celestia, and I can have my eternal night."

As she spoke, still advancing towards Twilight, the light slowly crept across the throne room's floor, casting weird shadows of the strange, ornate dome, but Luna knew that the sun would never emerge in time. She felt a tear form at the corner of her eye, and tried to lift herself once more, but it was no use.

“Why?” Luna whispered.

Nightmare Moon was within reach of Twilight now, and by sheer force of will she raised herself to her full height, looming over Twilight's tiny, oblivious form. Luna did not know what Nightmare Moon would do to the unicorn, but she did know that whatever it was, she not want to see it. Finally, by a painful act of will, she shut her eyes.

And another blast rocked the sky.

Luna's eyes flung open in surprise, and she saw that Nightmare Moon had once more been brought to the floor, and now lay some distance from Twilight Sparkle. A long, wide swath of blood gave testament to the fact that she had slid most of that distance on her ruined side. To the Princess' surprise, a pale blue pegasus with a rainbow mane and tail stood between the unicorn and the downed horse, rolling her head to crack her neck and blinking her eyes with a look of decided discomfort. A long, straight rainbow faded in the distance directly behind her.

“Ouch,” said Rainbow Dash.

Luna sighed deeply in her relief, but her heart still pounded in her chest. Nightmare Moon would be up again soon, and Rainbow Dash alone would stand no chance against her. Suddenly, her ears caught the sound of something below her, faint at first, but growing in volume. It was the sound of hoofbeats on the stairs below. After a few moments, Applejack burst into the the throne room with a customary “Whoa, Nelly!”

Luna began to feel her first moments of hope since regaining consciousness, and even as she did so, she heard wings beating, followed by the click of horseshoes on stone. Fluttershy soon stood beside her.

“Are you okay?” Fluttershy looked her over. “Oh, dear; no, you're not.” the yellow pegasus said softly, stroking Luna's mane.

More hoofbeats came from the stairs, and suddenly Pinkie Pie and Rarity dashed into view.

“We're here to help,” said Pinkie. “Just let us catch our breath!” She dropped her head, huffing and puffing.

“Oh, I don't need a breath,” said Rarity, and a sharp fragment of stone lifted up beside her, glowing pale blue-white with her telekinetic influence.

Luna focused all of her willpower to draw in a breath, and gave a raspy, tremulous shout: “You have to keep her away from Twilight Sparkle, no matter what. She has to finish... She has to finish.” She lay her head back onto the floor and struggled to breath. Luna looked up at Fluttershy, her vision blurring and splitting into multiple images. By some miracle, she managed to retain her consciousness

Nightmare Moon finally stirred.

“I am getting tired of this SHIT!” She levered herself to her full height, and looked around. Her eyes spread open so far they threatened to burst from her skull.

“How can you be here!? Those dreams should have been the closest thing to hell any of you have ever experienced. They were inescapable!”

Rarity strode slowly forward, speaking through gritted teeth, the force of her words slinging spittle onto the polished, black stone floor. “Right on the first point, wrong on the second!”

The unicorn's chosen missile shone brightly for a moment, and flung towards the horse's head. Before it struck home, it glowed black-purple, and crumbled into dust, producing a contemptuous “Hmph” from Nightmare Moon's bleeding lips.

“Proud of yourself, are you?” Rarity's voice was brimming with venom. “That was a decoy, you insufferable BITCH!” Another rock, glowing blue with Rarity's telekinesis and several times larger than the last, flew in from Nightmare Moon's right and smashed into the side of her face, briefly painting the air with a horizontal geyser of blood and teeth.

Nightmare Moon threw her left foreleg out wide to catch herself, but was still taken badly off-balance and obviously dazed. Applejack took full advantage of her loss of equilibrium, running in to hammer at the black alicorn's right flank with both of her rear hooves. Nightmare's pelvis gave out simultaneously a pair of loud, sharp, cracks, and she let out a roar of agony and hatred as her hindquarters collapsed from under her.

“Should I hit her, too?” asked Fluttershy. “I'd really rather not, if I don't have to. She's already really bloody.”

Rainbow Dash looked across the courtyard at her yellow friend, her mouth hanging open.

“Hell yeah, you should hit her! She was trying to kill Twilight!”

“WHAT!?” Fluttershy arced into a yellow-pink streak, and slammed into the black alicorn's right shoulder. In a flash, her forelegs had the much larger equine in a vice-like headlock, and her teeth were dug deeply into an ear, which she wrenched her head in an obvious attempt to remove from Nightmare Moon's skull. The other ponies were so stunned by Fluttershy's maddened assault that they were all compelled to back away from the locus of her violence.

Nightmare Moon somehow found the strength to lift herself on her shattered frame, and bucked forward so violently that her horn scraped stone. Fluttershy was thrown forward, but rolled over in the air. She beat her wings furiously, halting her momentum and reversing her direction to come in at Nightmare Moon for a second attack.

The moments that it took her to realign herself, however, gave Nightmare time enough to take aim and charge a spell at the tip of her horn. Seeing the spell beginning to charge, and totally aware that Fluttershy was beyond reasonable communication, Rainbow Dash zipped in and put her shoulder into the horse's shattered ribcage. The impact caused Nightmare Moon to stumble, but she still managed to release her spell. A bolt of force rippled through the air, visibly warping space as it traveled. It no doubt would have shattered Fluttershy's skull if its aim had been true. As it was, the yellow pegasus caught a glancing blow, and was deflected to the ground. She rolled and then skidded to a stop at Nightmare Moon's hooves, and let out a soft, sere moan.

Rainbow Dash was still reeling from her own impact against the big mare's side, but Nightmare moon had recovered her footing, and recognizing her as the greater threat of the two pegasi, quickly turned and delivered a sharp, quick blast of energy into her chest. It sent Rainbow Dash rolling, and she ended up lying on her side next to Applejack, who responded by sprinting once more into the fray.

“Hang on, Fluttershy,” called the orange pony, prompting a quick glance and a cruel smirk from Nightmare Moon, as she began to unsteadily rear upward on her damaged hind legs.

Rarity, also seeing Fluttershy's predicament, galloped forward meaning to drag her away from the looming mare, but before she or Applejack could even arrive, Nightmare Moon brought both of her forehooves down onto Fluttershy's supine body. There was the distinct crack of one of Fluttershy's wings breaking, and a yowl of agony from the little pegasus.

Applejack quickened her pace, fully intending to knock Nightmare Moon's head off of her shoulders, and Rarity, as she too continued her charge, levitated every fragment of rock within twenty paces into a swirling stone cloud she meant to hurl into Nightmare Moon's body. Rainbow Dash came off of the ground as if from a sprinter's stance, hurling herself forward by both wing and hoof, so that it seemed as if she would impact the enormous mare at almost the same moment as Applejack, despite her late start. Before any of the three could deliver her blow, however, the air was torn asunder by a blood-freezing screech, barely intelligible as Fluttershy's name. It was so terrible to hear that every single combatant froze in her tracks out of pure shock.

The source of the cacophony was a pink blur that ripped toward the black goddess. The impetus behind the assault was such that Nightmare Moon was turned over completely onto her back as Pinkie Pie latched onto her throat with her teeth, crushing her windpipe and ripping into her carotid artery. The resultant exsanguination painted Pinkie's face a little redder with each throb of Nightmare Moon's racing heart.

Applejack shuddered at the sound of Pinkie's teeth sinking into Nightmare Moon's neck, repulsed by its similarity to the sound of biting into an apple. “That's a little more... direct... than the old party cannon,” she mumbled.

Rainbow Dash, now standing beside her, rubbed at a blackened, smoldering patch of fur on her chest, and nodded silently in wide-eyed agreement.

Rarity dropped all of her gathered weapons to the ground, visibly nauseated by the sight.

Nightmare Moon, glassy-eyed and listless, put both of her forehooves against Pinkie's chest and pried her away from her throat. She summoned up her strength, and kicked the berserk earth pony as far away from herself as she could. Pinkie, however, refused to release her death grip, and as she was finally thrown clear, a chunk of black-furred flesh came away with her, still clenched in her teeth.

Unable to fly on her shattered wings, Nightmare Moon levitated her body upward magically, taking her out of reach of Pinkie Pie's dreadful psychosis. As she floated into the air she shoved a hoof into a gaping hole in her throat in an effort to stymie the flow of blood. Her effort was only partially successful, and thin runnels of her blood continued to dribble rhythmically from the ugly wound beneath her hoof..

Pinkie spat onto the ground, producing a vile-looking pool of black hairs, blood, and saliva. A chunk of black-furred hide lay at its center, and noticing this fact, Rarity finally gave in to her nausea.

“Damn, she's hard to kill," said Pinkie through a reddened, dripping, and half-mad grin, as she surveyed the floating horse's ruined form. "Seriously," she continued, licking NIghtmare Moon's blood from her lips, "How much HP does this bitch have?"

“She's a deity,” said Rarity, coughing out the last of the vomit elicited by Pinkie's barbarism. "What do you expect?" She cleared her throat. "And what the hell is 'HP'?"

“Rarity, check Fluttershy!” shouted Applejack. “Dash, get Queen Thundercunt back down here where Pinkie and me can help you finish KILLING her!”

Rarity ran to Fluttershy's side, and was relieved to see that, while teary-eyed and bleeding from several cuts and scrapes, she was still lucid.

“Come on, Fluttershy. Get up. We have to get you away from here.”

Fluttershy was breathing rapidly, sucking air through clenched teeth. “My wing is broken,” she said, “and my leg.” She nodded towards her left hind leg. Rarity saw a sharp fragment of bone was actually protruding through the skin of Fluttershy's wing, and the indicated leg was turned in a direction it was never meant to turn.

Rarity curled her snout in a mixture of empathy and disgust. “Well, that looks excruciating,” she said. Then, as an afterthought, she stroked Fluttershy's side in an effort to calm the pegasus' hyperventilations.

Rarity glanced toward the commotion of the ongoing fight. Applejack and Pinkie Pie were slowly circling below Nightmare Moon like a pair of sharks, while Rainbow Dash zigged and zagged around the levitating alicorn, who continually hurled all manner of lightning, fire, and pure, rippling force at the nimble pegasus.

“I'm sorry about this Fluttershy, but I have to get you away from this.” Rarity Hooked a foreleg under one of Fluttershy's and began to drag her towards where Twilight was still staring upward, eyes agape and glowing intensely. Fluttershy whimpered and moaned as her fractured limbs were dragged across the stone floor.

“Don't worry, Fluttershy. You'll be back to normal when we wake up,” said Rarity, approaching the other unicorn.

“No,” mumbled Twilight, as Rarity placed Fluttershy carefully beside her. “This... This is real.”

Rarity's eyes lit up with mild panic, and she turned to shout at her friends.

“Be careful!" she screamed. "Somehow, this is apparently for keeps!”

“GOOD!” shouted Pinkie, as she leapt upward, her crimson teeth snapping audibly at Nightmare Moon's dangling hooves.

As Rarity moved towards the battle, the collection of sharp rocks she had earlier amassed once again began to swirl around her in space, and more and more sunlight continued to creep across the tower.

Rarity hurled the first of her many stones at Nightmare Moon, and its spearhead-like tip buried itself deep in the huge mare's right thigh. Nightmare Moon yelped in surprise and pain, then spun in place to find the source of this new assault. More rocks were already headed in her direction, and while she managed to disintegrate a few of them, she was still pelted all across her body by at least half a dozen, two of which managed to imbed themselves deeply in her midriff.

She responded by launching a fireball directly towards the unicorn. Rarity turned and made to dodge, but screamed in shock and torment as it caught her in the left flank. The fireball bore enough impetus that it spun Rarity's hindquarters around her forelegs, twisting both of them so sharply that both knees and both shoulders were severely and painfully sprained. She collapsed forward, then went down onto her uninjured side. Groaning through gritted teeth, she looked back to see her flank and thigh. The fur, cutie mark included, was completely burned away, along with much of her skin, and blisters were slowly raising all over the bared hide. Her whole, wrecked flank smouldered like a dying bonfire. Despite her sprained forelegs, she tried to stand, but found that the fireball's impact had broken her hip.

Rainbow Dash, livid at Nightmare Moon's continued abuse of her friends, dove in like a hawk and smashed both of her rear hooves into the alicorn's shoulder. The impact caused Nightmare Moon to lose altitude, and Pinkie Pie saw an opportunity.

“Applejack! Alley oop!” Pinkie Lowered herself to her belly, just below Nightmare Moon's position. Applejack ran forward and used her friend's shoulders as a stepping stone to launch herself toward the black mare, an action which Pinkie assisted by bucking upwards as Applejack leapt.

Applejack struck hard against the alicorn's back, and hooked her forelegs over her black wings. The sudden distraction caused Nightmare Moon to once again lose sight of Rainbow Dash, who delivered a vicious headbutt directly into her exposed belly. All three of the embroiled combatants tumbled to the stone floor, and Pinkie Pie dove into the resulting pile.

A wild, free-wheeling melee burst out on the stone, and somehow, amidst the deadly wrestling match, Nightmare Moon managed to thrust her horn so deeply into Applejack's abdominal cavity that it's tip actually emerged from her back, right beside her spine. Applejack snarled like a wounded wolf, and pushed herself off of the cruel, magical instrument by kicking hard into Nightmare Moon's face and forehead, crashing one hoof into an eye.

Nightmare Moon yelped, and Applejack rolled, cursing, across the tower's roof, coming to a stop on her back. She could feel her own blood beginning to pool around her lower back.

As she sat up to examine her wound, Applejack felt her mutilated abdominal muscles tear even further under the strain. There was a ragged hole half the diameter of her own hoof just below her ribcage. Unable to continue straining, she fell backward, her hat flattening beneath her head, and stared upward.

She could see the sun.

Now came the crackling blast of a lighting bolt, and Applejack craned her neck just in time to see Pinkie Pie hurtling backward through the air, blue arcs of electricity flitting about her body. She sailed upward and crashed into one of the iron supports of the dome, striking it squarely with the small of her back. The impact sounded like a wet towel being dropped on a tile floor. Pinkie Pie toppled downward, and landed on her side. To her credit, she immediately tried to stand and rejoin the fight, but her hind legs would not move. The blow had broken her back.

Rainbow Dash had somehow managed to straddle Nightmare Moon's chest, and was repeatedly pounding her forehooves into the black horse's face with such force that each blow actually caused Nightmare Moon's head to bounce off the stone beneath her. Finally, Nightmare Moon telekinetically withdrew the rock that Rarity had earlier lodged in her thigh, and smashed it into the blue pegasus' left temple, opening a deep gash that quickly painted the side of her blue face with tiny, twisting rivers of red. Rainbow Dash was rocked to the side by this impact, and visibly dazed. Nightmare Moon drew back a hoof, and slammed it into Rainbow's jaw, dismounting the Pegasus from her own body. Then, she slowly managed to bring herself once more to her hooves, and stomped down into the little pony's abdomen, prompting a gagged squeak.

As Rainbow Dash rolled over to cover her injured belly, Nightmare Moon stomped down twice more, shattering both of her wings. Rainbow Dash screamed in agony at each impact, then went silent as she was kicked in the same side of the head that had borne the previous blows.

The big alicorn once again lifted herself skyward, and began to laugh. It was a grotesque, gurgling sound that came less from her mouth than from the bloody hole in her throat. The light seemed to drain out of the space around her horn, and space itself seemed to visibly warp inward toward its tip.

“Now,” she gurgled, “You will all learn...” She stopped short, interrupted by the sound of a hoarse, liquid laugh; Luna's laugh.

“Have you lost your mind, you foolish little nag?” Nightmare moon rasped from beneath the slowly growing orb of energy.

Luna stifled her coughing, wheezing mirth just long enough to say “Look behind you.”

A shudder rocked Nightmare Moon's body, and she turned her head rapidly to see what – to see whom -- she feared might be there.

Indeed she was.

“Really?” asked Celestia, her face and voice soaked with contempt as she slowly beat her wings to hover in midair behind and above the black mare's ragged body. She took a moment to look over Nightmare Moon's many grievous wounds. “They're just six little ponies.”

The glow faded from Twilight Sparkle's eyes. She smiled slightly, and then collapsed to the side as Celestia cut loose a ray of pure, white light that drove Nightmare Moon downward like a meteor.

The Princess slowly descended to stand over the torn, broken body of the black alicorn, maintaining the beam of brilliant energy as she did so. Nightmare Moon struggled beneath its battering, but in her weakened state, she simply could not compete with the raw strength of Celestia's magic.

“Did you ladies bring those pretty necklaces for show, or are you planning to use them?”

Twilight Sparkle's eyes did not open, but the talisman of the element of magic glowed brightly. The ragged bodies of the six ponies lifted into the sky in a rough circle around Nightmare Moon. Then, there was a brilliant flash.

* * *

Celestia awoke first, and she was actually amused by the scene of the six little ponies all asleep around her. She smiled calmly as she noticed the gentle expansion and contraction of her sister's warm body behind her. It reminded her of how Luna had often sneaked into her room to lay beside her when she'd had a bad dream as a filly

Celestia recalled how, in those days so long ago, Luna had told her that she never had a nightmare once she could feel her sister next to her in the night.

Then, she felt the wet, warm, stickiness of Luna's blood.

Her spine tingled, and Celestia rolled over quickly, to find herself face-to-face with Luna, who was slowly beginning to awaken, and had begun to gasp for air. Her horn had split into at least a dozen fragments that lay in a rough approximation of their former shape on the pillow. All of the wounds she had received in the battle were opening back up one by one, and Celestia could actually hear the sounds of her sister's bones breaking beneath her skin.

Luna, now conscious enough to be aware of what was happening, looked at her sister's face in agonized desperation, and spoke. “Send... for help.” Her eyes went wide and wild. “Before they start waking up!”

It was too late. Applejack yelped from beyond the foot of the bed, and another chill ran up Celestia's spine. That sensation catapulted the big mare to her hooves. She looked down, and saw the Earth pony doubled up into a fetal position and clutching her stomach. A gaping wound in her belly and a smaller one in her back were spilling blood onto the rug.

“Just hold on," said Celestia, gently touching Applejack's left temple, "I'll send a guard for the castle doctor!”

She spun on her hind legs, and very nearly fell over as she reared upward to avoid stepping on the thing she'd least expected to see: Nightmare Moon's twisted, barely conscious form, gurgling and wheezing in a swelling, crimson pool created by the wounds she had been dealt in the dream, some of which were still reopening in explosive exsanguinations.

Whatever spell Luna had cast to draw the Nightmare horse into reality along with her, it had worked.

Celestia was so taken aback by the sight that she actually paused for a moment, uncertain of what to do. Finally, she cast a sleep spell to keep Nightmare Moon from adding any more trouble to what was already a lethally urgent situation. The black mare's wounds continued to open and expand, but unlike Luna and Applejack, she did not fully awaken.

Finding this satisfactory, Celestia telekinetically flung open the door, and charged into the hallway. It just so happened, by some accident of fortune, that a patrolling guard rounded a nearby corner.

“Princess Celestia!? You're better!” The cheer in the armored unicorn's voice was bizarrely incongruous with the dire situation, and his eyes went briefly wide in shock as Celestia very nearly galloped down the hallway, stopping in front of him.

“Go get the castle doctor, and bring him back here. And every medic or any unicorn you spot who knows any healing magic at all. We have wounded.”

“I don't,” the guard stammered, but realizing the urgency in the Princess' voice, he cut himself off. “I'm going!”

As he turned to run down the hall, Celestia likewise wheeled on her rear hooves and made for the open door of her chamber. A piercing shriek tore out of that selfsame portal, and Celestia felt her heart fall into her stomach as came into the room.

It was Rarity; awake now, and moaning through gritted teeth, tears slowly forcing themselves out through eyelids squeezed tightly shut, so that small runnels of mascara and eyeliner were flowing down both her cheeks. A huge burn was spreading over her flank, despite the total absence of fire.

Rainbow Dash did not make any vocal noise, but Celestia knew that she was beginning to awaken by the chorus of cracks she heard coming from her wings and by the gash that suddenly split open in the left side of her head. Only a weak moan gave any clue that she had returned to consciousness.

Pinkie Pie was the next to awaken, and she did so with a chorus of “SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!” as a single, sharp snap echoed out from the middle of her back. Not two seconds later, Fluttershy's eyes opened just as a bone in her wing split apart, and ripped through the skin. She cut loose a yowl of pain and surprise.

Celestia knew healing magic, of course, and some of it was quite powerful, but not even she could handle this amount of trauma on her own. That was why she was pleased to hear Twilight's voice.

“Princess...” Her relief was quickly muted by the doubt and fear that echoed in her student's words.

“It's alright, Twilight. Help is on the way. If you're not too badly injured, I need you to...”

“Princess,” Twilight cut her off, real panic entering into her words. “I can't stand. I think I dislocated my... AHHH!” Twilight's scream was accompanied by the sound of a crunch.

Celestia whirled to see Twilight. The unicorn sat upright on the couch next to Fluttershy. Her eyes were open, but she was staring straight ahead and feeling around blindly for the floor with a hoof.

“It's hard... It's hard to breath,” said Twilight, causing Celestia to take note of a single shard of rib protruding from the unicorn's side. “And my eyes hurt -- a lot.”

“Twilight, how long did you stare at the sun?”

“I couldn't focus without...”

“I know; Just lie back down, and don't move. I won't leave you, understand?”

“Okay,” came Twilight's shaky reply, and she slowly lowered herself back onto the couch next to Fluttershy, who winced as Twilight's tail brushed her twisted leg.

“Who's the worst?” Celestia took a quick look around the room and assessed the ponies' conditions, one by one. When she noticed her again, she started instinctively towards Luna, but then realized that her sister could withstand her wounds, severe though they were, much better and longer than any of the mangled ponies.

“Sorry, Luna, but the head wound comes first,” she finally said, stepping toward Rainbow Dash. Then she nodded her head once towards Applejack. “Then the impalement.”

“No hurry,” Luna rasped. “I'm just now getting comfortable.”

“So, this is what it takes to rate ahead of royalty,” sputtered Applejack.

“If the two of you have enough strength to make jokes,” Celestia said, touching the tip of her glowing horn to Rainbow Dash's bleeding temple and holding it there, “then I'm just going to move you both to the bottom of the list.”

Pinkie Pie giggled through a sob. “Princess, you are a grade-A troll.” She sniveled once. “Also, I can't feel two of my legs.”

Chapter 7: Deeper than Bone

Chapter 7

Deeper than Bone

“Are you okay, Twilight?”

Twilight Sparkle recognized her father's voice, but she could not see him. She could see nothing at all, in fact, except the image of the sun still burned into her retinas.

“I'm fine, Daddy, but I still can't see.”

“The doctor said your vision will come back. There's a specialist at the hospital here who knows some really great magic for healing eye damage, but it'll be a few days before you can see.'

“By the way,” he continued, “Princess Celestia said you saved everypony's life.” There was a warm pride in her father's voice.

“Sort of,” she replied, “but everypony saved me, too. So, I think we're all kind of even.”

“She told us that part, too.” This voice belonged to her mother, and she recognized the mare's scent as she caressed her neck with her own.

“Where is everypony, anyway,” asked Twilight. She had been alone in this hospital bed for some time, but absent her vision, she was unsure of exactly how long. “Is everypony... okay?” She had almost asked “alive,” instead, but could not bring herself to say the word.

“Just ask them,” said her father. “They're all here.”

Twilight was mauled with several hugs, one particularly hoofy, insistent one coming much later than the rest. Twilight recognized Pinkie's voice as she “ouched” her way free of the awkward embrace.

“Ms. Pie, please sit still,” said an unfamiliar female voice. “If you move too much, you could damage your spinal cord, again.”

“I know,” said Pinkie, obviously dejected at being in some way confined, presumably to a wheelchair.

“And you, Ms. Apple, have ripped open your stitches – again.”

“Why do I get the feeling,” asked Twilight, “that I should be glad I can't see everypony, right now?”

“Ah, it ain't so bad,” said Applejack, punctuating her sentence with a hacking, gasping cough that was accompanied by the sound of liquid splattering onto the floor. “Whoa! Except that, leastways.”

“Oh, sweet, merciful Luna,” said the strange voice, obviously exasperated. “You're bleeding into your stomach again, Ms Apple. I told you that you should have stayed in bed. Come with me.” There were the sounds of gentle fading hoofbeats in the hallway, followed shortly by the sound of the door opening, and a raspy male voice.

“Wow. That's impressive.”

“Are you going to clean it up,” asked Rarity, totally deadpan, “or paint a picture of it?”

“Well all he'd have to do,” said Spike's voice, “is drop a canvas on it.”

“Touche,`” said Rarity, her words followed by the sound of a mop being dipped in a bucket.

“Glad to hear you're as genteel as ever, Rarity,” said Twilight.

“Hardly,” said the unicorn. “My hip is still broken and my flank is still healing. The doctors say that it will look normal again with the help of a little magic. I must admit, though, the morphine drip they have me on is quite nice.”

“What about Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash?”

“I'm right here,” said Fluttershy. “I'm a little better off than everypony else. Rainbow Dash is in the bed right next to yours, actually. She's asleep, right now”

“Is she going to be okay?” asked Twilight.

“They think so,” said Fluttershy, “but every time the poor thing wakes up, she goes into a panic, for some reason. The nurse said she woke up a few hours ago, but she was so hysterical they had to sedate her again.”

Twilight heard the janitor pony's mop drop into the bucket, and then heard the sound of him opening the door and exiting the room.

Twilight's mother spoke. “Maybe we should leave you girls alone to rest. I'm hungry, anyway.”

“Yeah, let's go see if the food in the cafeteria is any good,” said her father.

“That sounds great to me!” said Pinkie Pie “Somepony wheel me to the elevator!”

“I'll do it,” said Spike. “I'm hungry, too.”

Before anypony could move, there came the sound of the door opening once more.

“Oh, there you are, Ms. Rarity.” It was a different female voice, high and chipper. “It's time for your next round of skin grafts!”

Rarity whimpered loudly.

“Oh, I know it hurts, but you do want your cutie mark to come back, don't you?” said the voice. “Don't worry,” the voice continued, as it faded down the hallway. “With a few spells and a little surgery, you'll never be able to tell...”

Soon, the other ponies and Spike had also left, leaving Twilight alone with Fluttershy and the unconscious Rainbow Dash.

“Fluttershy, try waking Rainbow Dash up again, if you would, please. She might feel better if she saw somepony she knew.”

“Well, alright,” said the pegasus, obviously unsure of herself, as was all-too-often the case.

There were a few moments of silence, then a subdued moan from some distance to Twilight's left.

“Fluttershy?" asked Rainbow Dash's voice. "Where am I?”

“You're in the hospital. Don't move too much. Both your wings are in casts.”

“Wha...? My Wings!?" there was pure panic in the words, but the pegasus' voice calmed as she said, "Oh... Oh, thank Celestia.”

“You're glad your wings are in casts?” Fluttershy asked in confusion.

“Absolutely,” said Rainbow Dash. There was a pause, then a quick “I'll explain later.”

“Hey, Twilight!" Rainbow Dash said happily. "Good to see you!”

Twilight rolled her sightless eyes. “Rub it in, why don't you?”

“Huh?”

“Twilight can't see,” said Fluttershy. “She had to stare at the sun to focus her magic, and it blinded her.”

“Is it gonna be permanent?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“No,” said Twilight, “but I won't be able to see for at least a few days. Oh well, at least I'm not by myself in here.”

“Well,” said Fluttershy, it's good to know you're both awake and okay, but I'm going to go get something to eat; it's almost time for lunch.” Twilight heard her take a few steps. Then, she stopped.

“Oh, are either of you hungry?" she asked. "I can get you something.”

“Nah,” said Rainbow Dash. “Might make me sick, with all the drugs.” But then, her stomach growled so loudly Twilight could actually hear it. “On second thought, just bring me some of whatever looks good.”

“I'd like something sweet,” said Twilight, “if you can wrestle a cupcake away from Pinkie.”

Fluttershy giggled. “I'll try.”

The door opened and shut, and the two ponies were left alone.

“I'll be right back,” said Rainbow Dash, her words followed by the sound of her putting her hooves on the floor. “Whoa! Dizzy!”

“You okay?” Twilight turned her head toward the sound of Rainbow Dash's voice, but then remembered she couldn't see.

“I'm fine,” chuckled the pegasus. “This is so not my first concussion.”

“Where are you going?” asked Twilight, a little unsettled by the idea of being left alone and sightless.

“Bathroom,” replied Rainbow Dash. “Then I'm gonna go find a book to read to you so you don't go into withdrawals.”

* * *

Three days later, six ponies hobbled out of Canterlot Hospital. Magically and medically assisted, they had all healed enough in that short time to be released, but none of them could yet walk normally. Twilight's vision still hadn't fully normalized, so that Spike had to lead her around by a set of short reigns clutched in his claw.

“I've heard of seeing eye dogs,” said Fluttershy, “but never a seeing-eye dragon.”

“Very funny,” said Twilight through teeth clenched around the bit connected to the reigns. Her friends all giggled.

“Well, what do we do now?” asked Spike.

“We go back to the castle, of course,” said Twilight. “I want to see if Princess Luna is okay. She was worse off than anypony, from what I understood.”

“You understood right,” said Pinkie Pie. “I think she broke, like, all of her bones. Seriously; all of 'em!”

“I know,” said Twilight. “I was there when it happened. She saved my life. She almost killed me in the process, but she saved my life.”

Just then, Twilight heard her brother's voice.

“Hey, Twilie! Still can't see?”

“Where is he!?” Twilight squealed, dropping the bit that secured the reign in her mouth.

“I'm right beside you,” he said, and indeed, the voice did come from immediately to her left.

She turned quickly, and noticing the big, white, blue, gold, and purple blur of her armored sibling, she reared up to embrace him with her forelegs. To her misfortune, she misjudged the distance, and would have landed flat on her face if he hadn't stepped forward to catch her.

The impact of Twilight's fractured sternum and ribs against the plated steel of her brother's barding produced a grunt of pain, but she squeezed him tightly, anyway.

“Whoa," he half-laughed. "Take it easy!”

“Where have you been?” she asked in a mildly irritable voice. “I haven't seen you since I got here!”

“I've been working. Do you know how busy Princess Luna was keeping me? And then, just when I see that Princess Celestia is back on her hooves, she brings me even more orders about different sorts of magical wards and such she wants cast and reinforced all over the city. This is my first real break in days.”

“Well, where's Cadance?”

“At the palace, with Mom, Dad, and some of your friends' families, too. All of them that live in Ponyville, anyway.”

“What? How?”

“They got word in Ponyville just yesterday of what happened, and they all came to check on you. When they got off the train and started asking where the hospital was, I had a guard there to greet them, and he told them you were all being released today. Since my shift was ending, I had him let them all know to wait at the castle while I came to get you. Before I even got here, Princess Celestia sent me a message to tell everypony to come straight there, for dinner.”

At this, Rarity almost fainted.

“Dinner with... three princesses.”

“Oh, come on, Rarity. It's not like this is anything new, these days,” said Rainbow Dash.

Rarity turned and looked at Rainbow Dash with panic in her eyes. “No, you don't understand! We're talking about dinner with three princesses, and my family is going to be there!'

She began to hyperventilate. “Put me back in the hospital!”

Rarity turned to run, and Applejack hooked a foreleg around her neck.

“Oh, no you don't. If I'm gonna take my lumps, you're gonna take yours.”

* * *

The six mares and Shining Armor entered the Castle's main hall to considerable fanfare. Mostly, the assembled relatives were just glad to see them all still alive, having been told as much of the story as Celestia had considered acceptable to let them hear.

The strongest and most immediate reaction was that of Sweetie Belle, who ran up and nuzzled Rarity's chest and lower neck. Rarity was momentarily mortified by her sister's display of affection, but when she glanced down and noticed a tiny tear at the corner of the little unicorn's eye, she abandoned all pretenses of propriety and hugged her as tightly as she could.

“Rarity! Are you all better?” Sweetie Belle asked, withdrawing slightly. “Princess Celestia said one of your cutie marks got burned off!”

Rarity winced at the memory. “Well, yes. That happened, Sweetie Belle, but the doctors fixed it with a lot of skin grafts and a few spells.”

“Wow! Looks good as new!” It was Rarity's mother. She had sauntered up beside her and was closely inspecting Rarity's flank.

“Firstly, Mother, it was the other flank. Secondly, yes, it looks normal, but the doctors said the feeling won't fully return to it for a week or two, at least. Half my bum is still pretty numb.”

Realizing what she had just said, Rarity glanced quickly at Princess Celestia, who was obviously amused. Rarity's face reddened, and Pinkie Pie's forthcoming obvservation, “Numb bum! That rhymes!” did not help the situation.

“Yes,” said Rarity. “Yes it does.” She walked slowly to her father, still limping slightly due to her damaged hip, and did her best to play off her accident of gluteal poetry with casual conversation.

The Apple family, also present, moved more slowly, clustering around the orange pony. Applebloom actually leaped into the air and landed across her sister's back, prompting a grunt of discomfort from Applejack, who still had a thick bandage wrapped around her middle.

“Careful there, sis. I've still got a hole in my gut.”

Big Macintosh gestured a hoof at the bandage with a customary “Eeeyup,” but Applebloom simply stared at him.

“You should probably get off AJ's back,” he said, but Applebloom did not move. “Before you tear out her stitches, or something.”

“Oh, sorry!” Applebloom slid to the floor, her movement prompting the hiss of Applejack sucking in a breath through clenched teeth.

“Well, it ain't as bad as that time Big Macintosh lost control of the plow up on Gallows Hill,” said Granny Smith. “Don't go plantin' nowhere meaner'n you are, I always says.”

Big Macintosh stared off into the distance and shuddered. “Eeyup.”

The Cakes were there, foals included, to check on Pinkie Pie. Of course, bringing Pound and Pumpkin along proved to be a mistake, because they effectively prevented either of their parents from being able to hold Pinkie Pie's attention for more than a couple of seconds. They gestured and giggled at Pinkie's stiff, awkward movements in her back brace, and of course Pinkie Pie was more than glad to play along by pretending to be all manner of strange, lumbering creatures.

Twilight, having already spoken to her parents and her brother, spent the bulk of her time conversing with her sister-in-law, who was overjoyed to see her.

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, both being from Cloudsdale, would have been the only ponies without a greeting party if not for the good faith of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Scootaloo of course begged Rainbow Dash for any details of her exploits in the battle, and shortly thereafter, joined Sweetie Belle and Applebloom in hug-mauling Fluttershy, who was well-established as their collective favorite foal-sitter and surrogate big sister. The three girls tormented both pegasi with constant questions about what they had done and how their injuries had come to be. The little orange pegasus was especially interested in Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy's stinted wings, and, of course, in Rainbow Dash's head wound. The whole scene was a tremendous relief to the strained psyches of the six little ponies.

After several minutes, Luna appeared at the top of the stairs. She was covered in bandages, each one as thickly wrapped as the single large one around Applejack's midriff, two of her legs had casts below the knee, And one of them was wrapped all the way up to the hip. Her right wing was more heavily stinted than either Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy's, and her left was wrapped in yet another thick bandage. The fragments of her horn hovered in space in front of her forehead, approximating their former shape as they slowly fused back together under the influence of magics well beyond the ken of even Twilight Sparkle.

It was Cadance who noticed her first. Luna was only a little larger than Cadance, but she was technically the Pink alicorn's aunt. As such, Cadance abruptly dropped her conversation with Twilight, and made tracks up the stairs, meeting Luna more than half-way.

“Aunt Luna! Do you need help getting down the stairs?”

“Cadance, I'll be fine.” She continued slowly making her way down the stairs, each step taking her several seconds to negotiate.

“Are you sure? I can just...”

“Cadance.” Luna said her niece's name sharply, then no more. Cadance shrank back a little.

“Luna,” said Celestia, “Would you please let her help you down the stairs? The table's already set, and I would like to eat before the food gets cold. She's just trying to help.”

“Oh, alright,” said Luna. For all Luna's newfound social graces, Celestia remained, it would seem, the only living being from whom the sapphire purple alicorn would openly accept any sort of command or advice. Even so, when Cadance wedged herself up under Luna's left wing, Luna whispered a quiet and sincere “Thank you.”

“I understand,” Cadance whispered in return. “We all have appearances to keep up, don't we?”

As the group entered the dining room and sat down, Twilight became curious about Luna's condition.

“How are you Princess Luna? I still can't see well enough to tell.”

“Well, I can sleep again, thanks to Celestia and Shining Armor placing some wards around the castle. In fact, I just woke up a few minutes ago.” She said nothing for a moment, then her eyes brightened. “Oh, and since Nightmare Moon was sundered from my soul when she was brought into our world, I don't have to drink blood, anymore!”

Every single pony at the table went dead silent, and Celestia sighed.

“Oh,” said Luna. “You didn't tell everypony, sister?”

“Hadn't gotten around to it; no.”

“Just to clarify," said Luna, "which part? The quasi-vampirism I've been hiding for the last two years, or the fact that there's an evil goddess chained up in our basement?

Luna smirked at the wave of uneasiness that washed outward over the table.

“I hate you, Luna.”

“I love you, Celestia.”

An hour later, the unease from Luna's revelations had subsided in the wake of appropriate explanations and a good meal.

“Now, I'm going to go raise the moon,” said Celestia. “Luna's horn is... temporarily out of service, as you can all see.”

“I can do my own damned job, Celestia,” said Luna, awkwardly rising from the table, and nearly collapsing.

Cadance quickly got up and wedged herself under Luna's wing, again.

“I'll just help you get outside, aunt Luna.”

“Fine,” said Luna, only the barest exasperation evident in her tone of voice.

“Thank you, Cadance,” said Celestia. “Please drag her back inside when she passes out.”

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Celestia.” There were scattered gasps at Luna's vulgarity.

“Luna,” said Celestia, rolling her eyes, “that doesn't make any sense.”

“It does if you're a slut,” said Luna, her voice more playful than venomous, and Cadance's pink face turned crimson red as she helped Luna out the door.

Every single pony at the table was utterly aghast, but the white horse just snickered slightly.

“Trotted right into that one, didn't I?”

“Is it...” Twilight began, furtively. “Is it always like that between you two?”

“Of course it is,” said Celestia, laughing slightly. “She's my best friend.”

“I don't get it,” said Twilight.

“For such a smart pony,” said Shining Armor, “you sure are a dumbass.”

“Never mind,” sighed Twilight. “I get it.”

“Now, if you'll pardon me,” said Celestia, “I'm going to go make sure she doesn't really pass out.” She rose from the table, and followed her sister and niece.

“Well,” said Spike, “when do we go back to Ponyville?”

“I don't think it'll be any time soon, Spike,” said Rainbow Dash. “This isn't over, yet.”

“Aww,” moaned Scootaloo. “I miss seeing you practice tricks every afternoon.”

“Well, squirt,” said Rainbow Dash, “How about I take you to the Wonderbolts show? That'll be even better.”

“Awesome!” Scootaloo jumped up in the air and fluttered her wings violently, holding herself aloft just long enough to wrap her forelegs around Rainbow Dash's torso.

“BROKEN WINGS! BROKEN WINGS!!”

“Oh, sorry,” Scootaloo dropped to the floor,

“S'okay,” said Rainbow Dash, through gritted teeth.

“If y'all ain't comin' home,” said Granny Smith, “I reckon we'll just stay on here and enjoy the city. Ain't harvest or planting season, no way. Farm'll be fine. Macintosh’s got Ms. Cheerilee checking on things for us every day.”

Big Macintosh cleared his throat, but said nothing.

“Aww,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Rarity,” said Macintosh. “Could you push your sister out of her chair?”

“Gladly.”

“Whoa!” Sweetie Belle barely caught herself in time to avoid falling face-first onto the floor.

“Aww, you should be thanking these little fillies, Big Mac,” said Applejack. “It was their...”

Big Macintosh cut her off. “There's parts of that story you don't know, AJ.”

“Well,” said Twilight, “we do need to stay here until Princess Celestia dismisses us. She may want our help, again.”

“You should all come watch the airshow with us,” said Rainbow Dash. “It's a night show; they do one every full moon.” She eased out of her chair. “How often do you get to see a Wonderbolts show at night? It’ll be fun!”

“I'm blind,” said Twilight.

“For most of us,” said Rainbow Dash.

* * *

Celestia and Luna stood outside in the Castle garden, staring upward.

“I know you were helping me move the moon, earlier,” said Luna, slowly lowering herself to the ground. She carefully positioned a cast-clad foreleg in front of her. Once she was comfortable, she spoke again, without looking at her sister's face. “Thank you.”

Celestia lay down next to her sister, but neither made any effort to look at or touch the other.

“I know what your plan was; I asked Twilight.” Celestia looked her sister in the eyes. “You do know that I'm not going to let you feed Nightmare Moon to Cenasolus, right?”

“I had a feeling you would be put off by some of the plan's... moral ambiguities.”

“Luna, she's a part of you.”

“Not anymore,” said Luna, the relief palpable in her words.

Celestia shook her head. “That's not what I meant, and you know it.”

“I'm not sure I know what you meant, at all,” Luna replied, wearily.

There was a silence that lasted at least half a minute, in which Celestia's troubled eyes moved occasionally between the glowing moon and her sister's downcast face. Finally, she asked her a question that had troubled her heart for a millennium.

“Luna... Nightmare Moon... Why does she look so much like mother?”

Luna did not respond.

“I think I already know," said the larger alicorn, "but do you?”

The silence returned, and neither alicorn looked at the other. Luna's eyes glistened slightly in the moonlight, but no tears escaped their corners.

“Mother was a beautiful mare, wasn't she?” She finally said.

“You're beautiful, too, Luna," said Celestia.

Luna said nothing for a long, long time. In the distance, the sounds of the crowd at the Wonderbolts show slowly began to swell. Finally, Luna broke the silence.

“You know... I don't even like most ponies that much.”

Celestia snorted. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

Luna rolled her eyes. “What I mean is... It never bothered me that they weren't up to enjoy the night. I liked having things mostly to myself, and the few of them that were awake were always more interesting to me than the ones that slept, anyway. Day ponies are boring.”

Celestia laughed again. “I picked up on that – I mean your opinion of that – a long time ago.” She smiled. “A long, long time ago.”

“I guess I just...” Luna stopped speaking for several seconds. “I just would have liked for them to have acknowledged me.”

“Well, Luna, I can be your sister, and I can be your friend, but I can't force anypony else... to acknowledge you. It wouldn't be right.”

“I know that. I always did. Something just...” Luna looked down and rolled a pebble beneath the cast of her more mobile forehoof, “swelled... inside me.” She flicked the pebble away. “But that's my problem to deal with; not yours.”

Celestia sighed, and looked into the moon's white glow. “I'll help you 'deal with it' however I can, Luna.”

Luna grunted, and wedged her injured legs beneath her body, levering herself upward. Even as she heard her sister straining to right herself, Celestia did not move to assist her. It was not hatred or contempt; only the observance of a long-standing rule, neither written nor spoken and rarely broken in many thousands of years.

“There's something I need to go and tend to," she said. "You can help me by staying right where you are.”

Luna Stepped into the cold, empty cell where Nightmare Moon lay, chained and still asleep under Celestia's magical influence. The big horse's wounds had been bandaged and mended in accordance with Celestia's orders – orders which Luna had thought ill-advised.

Luna focused under some strain, the fragments of her horn glowed, and the black mare's eyes opened.

“Don't bother trying anything. I had them file off your horn.”

Nightmare moon lifted her head and looked upward. Her horn was indeed gone, but for a slight stump.

“Smart girl,” said Nightmare Moon, half-heartedly.

“Yes, I thought about using it to replace my own, but the idea made me nauseous, so I just had it destroyed.”

"It's just a bit of bone, you silly girl." said Nightmare Moon, softly, her eyes tracing up the staggered, levitating column of Luna's slowly-healing horn. She managed to mix dejection and haughtiness in her expression as she spoke again.

“So, I suppose you've come to do away with me, then?” asked Nightmare Moon, her voice betraying neither fear nor anger.

“I'm afraid I cannot do that,” said Luna. “You are... a part of me, you know... as much as that may sicken you to imagine.”

“Sicken me?” Nightmare Moon chuckled. “I've known that since the beginning. You're the one who could never make peace with it.”

“Fine,” said Luna, “but that doesn't make it any less true.'

“You know,” Luna continued. “I'd love to have you cast into Tartaros where I would never see you again, but that would just be a lie. Everypony would just forget you, like before.” Luna paused. “And I would just pretend to have forgotten you, but the truth is I never could. Never in a million years. Or a billion. Never for my entire life. You'd always be there with me, no matter how much I wanted to be rid of you. That's just a part of my burden, I suppose, and I would be a liar and a fool to believe I could dismiss it.”

“Then you accept me.” There was a note in Nightmare Moon's voice Luna had never heard in it, before, and that note, Luna realized, was relief. The black horse lay down her head, and did not look at Luna again, ever. She seemed validated, somehow.

“Yes, I... I accept you, and I've thought of a place to keep you where I will always be reminded of who and what you are to me; A place where you belong.”

Nightmare Moon smiled, and it was a sad, satisfied smile, accompanied by the slow closing of her slitted, turquoise eyes.

Then the great, black mare spoke the last words she would ever speak on Earth. “Well, let's scare the hell out of all our little ponies, then.”

“Wow!!” Rainbow Dash was easily the most starry-eyed of a starry-eyed crowd.

“Can you believe that?” I bet their wings touched on that last pass!

“I know! It's so awesome!” Scootaloo's voice bore only slightly less enthusiasm than her idol's.

Twilight squinted upward. “I think the dark is helping my eyes a little. I can actually tell what's going on... kind of.”

“Yeah, my wing feels a little better,” said Fluttershy, distractedly. Even though she wasn't much of a flyer, as a pegasus, she couldn't help but feel some sense of awe at the aerobatics she was witnessing, and they kept her eyes glued to the sky.

“RIGHTEOUS!” Rainbow Dash leaped upward at a particularly impressive nosedive recovery on the part of Spitfire, and instinctively tried to flap her wings in her excitement. They jostled their stints, and she grunted in pain.

“Careful, Dashie,” said Pinkie, scarfing down some cotton candy. “Do permanent damage to those babies, and you'll never get up there with them.”

Rainbow Dash settled down slightly, but as she turned her eyes back to the sky, they spread open in amazement.

“LOOK!!” she shouted. "The... the moon."

A wave of gasps and murmurs spread outward through the crowd from where Rainbow Dash stood, and even the Wonderbolts themselves stopped dead in flight, hovering in place to look upward at whatever it was that had so astonished the crowd.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Twilight. She squinted at the glowing orb, doing her best to bring it into focus.

“I think it's exactly what I think you think it is,” said Spike.

Somehow, amidst the spectacle of the airshow, without any single pony in the crowd being totally sure of precisely when it had happened, the Mare in the Moon had reappeared.

Only Luna ever knew what happened that night in the dungeon below Canterlot Castle. She never told a soul; not even her beloved sister. All anypony knew was that she walked out of the depths of that place with her broken body totally restored and whole. The castle guards knew also that when they checked the next morning, Nightmare Moon was simply gone. Every single pony in Equestria knew, furthermore, that that the dark goddess of the night was never seen nor heard from, again, except in the form of that horned silhouette, gazing down eternally from the silver disk that ruled the night sky.

These things they knew, and they knew no more.

When Luna reemerged into the gardens on that night, her sister Celestia was still there, looking up into the moon's pale glow. She turned her head, and Luna saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“You are who I thought... who I hoped you were,” she said.

Luna said nothing.

Chapter 8: Tales Best Left Untold

Chapter 8

Tales Best Left Untold

While the rest of the ponies took their friends' and families' presence as an opportunity to make something of a vacation in Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle took the time to ply her slowly healing eyes on the books of the Canterlot Castle Archives. Her hope was to find any information that might bolster their chances against the morbid threat that stilled loomed somewhere in the cosmos. Effectively, she disappeared for a week, only showing up occasionally to take meals and to allow herself woefully inadequate amounts of sleep. For most ponies, the behavior would have seemed psychotic, but to her friends, Twilight Sparke merely seemed to be getting back to her normal self.

Once she noticed that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy could fly again, albeit clumsily, she solicited their help in perusing some of the higher shelves. Rainbow Dash had been curious to see how many and what sort of books lay within the enormous edifice, which stood in a gigantic, ornate building with a large central tower in the Castle Courtyard. As such, she had dragged Fluttershy out of bed, and the pair now strode towards the huge building.

“Couldn't you have let me sleep a little longer?” Fluttershy moaned.

“Are you kidding? How can you not be excited to see this? Just think of how many books are in there!”

“If it was a zoo," mumbled they yellow mare, "I'd be excited.”

“Yeah, yeah," said Rainbow Dash, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, here we are.”

The pair stood before a massive, golden door which was carved in deep relief with the image, of course, of a book. It was flanked on either side by a pair of royal guards.

“Ah, hello ladies,” said one of the armored unicorns. “Twilight Sparkle told us to expect you. Allow us.”

The two guards pointed their horns at the massive doors in unison, and to the surprise of the pegasi, they did not swing open, but instead slowly slid, recessing into the walls, almost without a sound.

Stepping inside, they discovered a circular hallway running the circumference of the building's center tower, which had many doors leading to different wings dedicated to various subjects. As the door closed behind them, one of the guards shouted something to the effect that Twilight Sparkle would be in the tower.

Rainbow Dash stepped forward and opened a pair of double doors immediately in front of the main entrance. As they swung open, she was dumbstruck with pure awe. Shelves of books ran all the way to the ceiling of what was an impressively tall central chamber with at least a dozen balconies at various levels. Just to the inside of these balconies, three spiral staircases extended up the tower to allow flightless ponies to ascend and descend. Beyond those, there was a central column of staggered, semi-circular bookcases. Rainbow Dash guessed from the width of the external bookcases that it ran at least three layers deep, and it, too was ringed with balconies, also accessible from a single long spiral staircase that ascended its circumference On every level of there were sturdy-looking ladders, attached at each one's base and top to a track that allowed the ladder to move left and right across the face of the bookshelves. There were reading desks everywhere, many of them occupied by unicorn students of Celestia's magic school, and others occupied by what appeared to be aides to important government officials, by lawyers, and also by more casual readers. As if all this wasn't enough, the building extended downward, as well. Looking over the railing, Rainbow Dash realized that what she had seen looking up was only the top third, at most, of the building. The gargantuan bookshelves extended downward into a huge, circular basement that must have been excavated into the very stone of the mountain upon which Canterlot was constructed.

In the middle of all this, on a platform amidst the central bookshelves, accessible through three evenly-spaced walkways that led from three sets of double doors around the tower's circumference, sat Twilight Sparkle. She was seated at a reading desk, books piled high around her. A cloud of thin, bluish smoke hung over her head. Hearing the doors close behind Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, she looked up.

“Oh, good, you're here!” She levitated a burning cigarette to her lips from its resting place in a nearby ashtray, and took a drag.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy looked around, still aghast at the incredible structure.

“Impressive, isn't it?” Twilight Sparkle smiled. “I guess I forget sometimes because of how much time I've spent in here.”

“Twilight, this is amazing,” said Fluttershy. “I didn't know there were this many books in the entire world.”

“There are exactly this many books in the world, Fluttershy,” she said proudly. “If it has ever been known to ponydom, it's in here, somewhere.”

“The only problem,” came a gravelly voice from behind the two pegasi, “is knowing that it was ever known to ponydom in the first place!”

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy turned to see an eldery, white pegasus with a gray mane and round, bifocal spectacles. He was wearing a brown vest, and his cutie mark, small wonder, was a book. There was a cigarette clenched in his teeth, and a pack of Lucky Strikes peaked over his vest pocket.
That explains it, thought Rainbow Dash, glancing at Twilight, who was telekinetically rubbing out her own cigarette in the ashtray.

“I am Tome," said the old pegasus, "head archivist of Canterlot, and it is very nice to meet friends of Twilight Sparkle the Wise!”

“The Wise?” Rainbow Dash looked at Twilight, amused.

“It's an old joke,” said Twilight, rolling her eyes. “I've read more books from this place than any other living pony, even Tome himself. That excludes the princesses, of course. There are rumors that Celestia has read every book in the archives. Luna too, though of course she wouldn’t have read most of them that have been added in the last thousand years, and the archives weren’t even located here, then, for that matter. The rumors are so widespread there has to be some truth to them, though. The only variation is in how many times they've supposedly read each book. The most common lies," she sighed, "are ten for Celestia and three for Luna.”

“How many do you think?” asked Fluttershy.

“It's hard to say," interjected Tome. "Even as old as she is, I honestly doubt Princess Celestia has read every book here, but I know she's read the most of anypony alive, and as a matter of fact, she's written quite a few books, herself – textbooks on various magical subjects, mostly, but a few histories, too. Even so, I couldn't begin to guess at the real number for her or Princess Luna.'

“But for you, Miss Sparkle," he continued, "I can actually give a rough estimate."

Smiling, he turned his head to the side, extended a wing, and carefully slipped his burning cigarette between his two most distal primary feathers, both of which bore small burn marks from frequent use in this fashion, as was common in pegasi who smoked.

Tome's smile broadened to a grin as he spoke again. “By keeping track of all of her checking out and returning, and watching her study, I've estimated that our dear Twilight has read well over eleven thousand books since she first showed up here, all those years ago.”

Rainbow Dash's mouth hung open as she did some quick calculations in her mind. “Twilight, that's over three books a day for like ten years.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” said Twilight, not really understanding the magnitude of the feat to which she was casually admitting.

“Just a hair under one percent of the works represented in our archives,” said Tome, proudly.

“That's INSANE!” shouted Rainbow Dash, prompting a kindly shush from Tome. She lowered her voice as she continued. “For that to be true, there would have to be, like, over a million books, here!”

“One million, two hundred sixty-five thousand, nine hundred eighty-one – exactly,” said Tome. “And some of them have not been read by anypony in centuries. It's a veritable treasure hunt in here. You never know what forgotten bit of knowledge or history you might uncover on any given day. The whole place is enchanted to be fireproof, so even if it's destroyed by an earthquake or an attack or some such, as long as we can dig the books out, we don't lose a single letter of all that precious wisdom. There are and always will be more things to be learned in this archive than in any other one place in all the world.”

“That's why we've got to get to work,” said Twilight, passing Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash each a long list written on a scroll. “These are the sections that I need you to search in, and some ideas of what to be looking for. Any book that seems like it might contain important information you should bring to me. If you get tired of flying around, take a break and read a little in any of them that I haven't gotten around to, yet. We need to know everything we can about dream communication, deities from outside our world, and any theories regarding how we can interact with such things. If we can't even reach this thing, we'll never be able to beat it.”

“I'd be glad to assist you as well, Miss Sparkle,” said Tome. "Is there anything I can get for you or your friends?”

“I need some coffee,” said Fluttershy. “And some aspirin.”

Tome stuck his nose into a pocket inside his vest and produced a small bottle. “I always keep some on me, just in case,” he said through gritted teeth. He shook two pills out onto Fluttershy's hoof, and she immediately swallowed them without water.

“There's a coffee pot with fresh brew in it at my desk,” Tome said, smiling. “If that will be all, I'll fly down to the bottom level and start looking there for books that I think may be useful. Some of the oldest books we have are down there, and I'm the only one who has any clue how to sort through them, anymore.” He turned to leave, then looked back. “Well, myself and Miss. Sparkle, here, of course.” He snatched his cigarette into his teeth, hopped over the railing, and glided downward between the tower's circular balconies, silhouetted in gas lights affixed to the ceilings of each level.

Rainbow Dash heard the doors shut behind her, and turned to see Spike waddling towards her, a paper shopping bag held to his chest.

"Uh oh," he said, looking at the lists tucked under the pegasi's wings. "Once she gives you a list like that, you can kiss the rest of your week goodbye." He placed the bag down on the reading desk, and started to empty it, item by item. In moments, he had produced a can of ground coffee, coffee filters, powdered creamer, and a bag of sugar.

"Tome doesn't keep that coffee pot for himself," said Twilight, totally straight-faced.

Spike reached into the bag once more and produced four packs of Lucky Strikes.

"Those," said Twilight, "are for both of us, though."

* * *

"How did I let y'all talk me into this?" asked Applejack.

She was standing in an evening gown at Canterlot Nouveau, a popular boutique in the City's commercial district. It was the fourth one Rarity had made the earth mare try on.

"Oh, come now, Applejack," said Rarity, who was seated on a small bench in the dressing room area of the store, critiquing Applejack's appearance. "We've already found three nice dresses for you. Try to have a good time with it, like Pinkie Pie."

Pinkie burst from a nearby dressing room with a loud "TA-DA." Her back cracked as she flung her forelegs high above her head, and she quickly dropped back to all fours, her face contorted into a mask of pain.

"FffffffFFFFffffFFFF."

Rarity rolled her head in a small circle. "Yes, we know: 'Fuck.' Your back is still healing, Pinkie. I can decide whether you should be wearing something without the acrobatics."
"M'kay," squeaked Pinkie, a tear forming in the corner of her eye.
Rarity watched her friend's pink face contort, and listened momentarily to her breathing slowly and steadily through her nose before she she finally gave in to pity.
"Here," sighed the white unicorn, digging into an diamond-studded saddlebag that she used for shopping. She came out with a bottle of Demerol. "I swiped at least a year's supply of these from the hospital. It'll take the edge off."

Pinkie clutched bottle in her hooves and turned its cap with her teeth. Rarity gave her the evil eye.

"One," said the unicorn, sternly.

Pinkie grinned, and her cheeks turned a little pinker than usual as she complied with Rarity's order.

Applejack huffed. "Can I take this damn thing off, now?"

"I don't know why you would," said Rarity, obviously pleased with the gown. "If you insist on taking it off, though, at least put it with the others on the cart.'

"And Pinkie, while that painkiller kicks in, please do us all the favor of divesting yourself of that... disaster. I was right. You have no business in brown. Gods help your foals if you marry a brown stallion."

"Rarity," said Applejack. I don't think this is what Celestia meant when she said she'd cover our expenses while we were in town."

Rarity glowered at the orange pony. "She gave us a billing address, and free reign. I will NOT waste this opportunity. Now, go try on the next one."

"Don't understand why she doesn't have to try anything on," mumbled Applejack, as she turned to head back into the fitting room.

"I know what I look good in, silly," said Rarity. "Now hurry, we've only got four hours until the stores close."

Four hours and fifteen minutes later, the trio sat together at a small outdoor cafe, with the sun sinking low behind the Unicorn mountain range in the distance. Rarity and Pinkie looked incredibly pleased with themselves. Applejack just looked relieved.

"That was longer than any day of work I've ever done," said the orange mare. "I can't wait to get back to the castle and rest."

"But we haven't even been to one single club, yet," said Rarity, mouth agape. "You can't rest, yet!"

"Watch me," said Applejack, and whistled for a taxi.

"Well, would you at least be good enough to take our purchases back to our rooms with you?" Rarity gave Applejack her best "pretty-please" face, complete with batting eyes.

"Yeah, I suppose I can do that," smiled Applejack, just as a taxi wagon pulled to a stop nearby. She quickly piled all of their shopping bags into the cab, and was gone.

"She didn't even order anything," said Pinkie.

"She'll get something from the castle kitchen," said Rarity. "Probably something with apples in it."

"Then she'll complain that the apples weren't grown the right way," said Pinkie Pie, smiling.

Rarity chuckled slightly, then levitated her glasses from her saddlebag, and put them on, after which she turned her eyes to a menu that lay on the table before her.

Pinkie did not look at her menu. She looked at Rarity, who was mumbling to herself about how many calories must be in some dish or other.

"Rarity," she finally said.

Rarity magically moved her glasses down on her nose a bit, and looked over them. "Yes, Pinkie?"

"Why did I find you like that?"

Rarity looked bewildered.

"In the dream," said Pinkie Pie.

"Oh." Rarity pushed her glasses back up onto her nose with the tip of her hoof.

"Nopony else ended up together in their dreams like that," said Pinkie Pie. Why did we?"

"I don't know, Pinkie. I guess I just needed some help climbing over myself."

Pinkie Pie didn't respond, and Rarity finally felt the need to break the tension.

"I get scared sometimes, Pinkie." They were not the words she had expected to say.

"Everypony gets scared, Rarity."

"Not like this," said Rarity.

The dam had broken, and the flood was on its way.

"I have come so far in my life to be what I am and to create the things I create. And yet I don't know where I'm supposed to go, or what I'm supposed to do. Sometimes, Pinkie, I feel like I am totally alone, struggling against everything around me just to keep my hooves on the place in the world I've carved out for myself -- and it's such a small place. I worry that everything I've built is going to fall apart around me, and I'm going to be left alone and empty, without the courage to even try to start over."

"Oh," said Pinkie Pie. "That's good... Well, I mean that's not good, but it's okay. See, I was afraid you were in love with me, or something, and that was going to be really awkward because I... uh... Well, you're one of my best friends, and all, but I like boys."

Rarity's cheeks reddened. "Umm... so... do... I."

"So..." said Pinkie. "All those times when you're drunk..."

"That's just when I'm drunk," said Rarity quickly, turning her eyes back her menu. "I'm glad we had this talk."

"Yes," said Pinkie Pie. "We needed to have this talk. This was a good talk."

"I think I'm just going to have a sandwich," said Rarity.

"Me too," said Pinkie Pie. "Sandwiches! Can't get enough of 'em!"

* * *

After two full days camped out in the ponderous library, the three ponies still had yet to discover anything of use.

Fluttershy was sprawled, unconscious and snoring, on an old, ragged couch which Tome had managed to convince the guards to drag in from somewhere, and Rainbow Dash and Twilight were seated on opposite sides of a reading desk, the former asleep with her face on an open book, the latter barely lucid, but still feverishly trying to read and comprehend what lay before her. Spike was curled into a ball on the opposite end of the couch from Fluttershy.

“Ladies? Have you been here all night? It's six-thirty in the morning!”

It was Tome.

Twilight looked up. “I'm sorry. We just... we can't...” Her words trailed off into a monosyllabic vowel that rested somewhere between an “o” and an “a.”

The old pegasus sighed. “It's no bother. It's just that you should get some sleep.”

“Tome, we must have every book in the Archives here that has any bearing at all on the situation, and nothing is helping. Don't you know of anything else?” Twilight's pleading tone drew forth a gentle, sympathetic shake of Tome's head.

“I'm sorry, but I've brought you every single book I know of on every subject you mentioned. There's really only one left that comes to mind, but I keep it under lock and key in the restricted wing. I'm reluctant to let anypony see it. It... does things... to the unprepared.”

Twilight blinked. “The Necronomicon?”

“Why... yes,” said the old pegasus, a little startled.

“I read it yesterday. Twice. The guards here will let me into pretty much anywhere, you know.”

“Oh dear." Tome's voice quivered more than age could account for as he spoke the words, but he sighed, and drew a breath "Was it helpful, at least?” he asked.

“In understanding dream worlds, yes,” Twilight said sluggishly. “In understanding primordial outer deities, yes again. In identifying this particular being, or indicating how to resist it, not at all. It's really starting to look like Celestia and Luna are the only two living beings who know anything at all about Cenasolus.”

“Well, perhaps you should just ask them about this... entity,” said Tome.

“I have. Neither would tell me anything I didn't already know, but I get the sense they know more than they'll say.”

“Princess Celestia always knows more than she will tell,” said Tome, “and for the two years I've known her, Princess Luna has shown similar tendencies. Must be a familial trait.”

“Tell me about it,” said Twilight, laying her head sideways on top of the book she had been reading.

“Twilight... The Necronomicon; you did put it back, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Promise me you will never repeat anything you read in it to anypony. There are, after all, tales best left untold.”

“I promise,” said Twilight, as a question entered her mind.

“Tome?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper.

“Is there something else, Twilight?” returned the old Archivist, raising an eyebrow.

A silence hung in the air for a moment before Twilight spoke. “Have you ever read it?”

“Twice,” he said, then walked towards his desk.

It was then that Pinkie Pie appeared in the doorway, bouncing happily along, as usual.

“Hey, everypony!”

“Shhh!” Tome's shush somehow managed to carry overtones of reprimand, and Pinkie Pie quickly switched to a quick but exaggerated sneaking gait, teetering along on the tips of her hooves. She sidled up next to Twilight, and whispered in her ear.

“It's breakfast time! There are cinnamon rolls!”

“Pinkie, you don't have to whisper. Just don't yell.” Twilight magically lifted her brass lighter to a fresh cigarette, and struck it.

“Oh, well why didn't you say so?” Pinkie gave Tome a mean look, to which he responded with a quiet chuckle.

“We'll be there in awhile, Pinkie,” said Twilight, “as soon as I can wake up Dash and Fluttershy. I just wish we had been able to find at least one book that was really clear on outer deities.”

“Like this one?” Pinkie produced from somewhere a gargantuan book with a heavily worn cover and spine. Its yellowed pages were ragged and tattered at their edges, and a dank, musty scent hung around it. It had been white once, but time had turned its cover a sickly, pale yellow. Pinkie Pie tossed it forward, and it plopped down loudly on the desk, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy both started awake at the sound. Spike merely rolled over, scratched twice at his belly, and continued to snore.

Pinkie grinned at the pegasi.

“Oh, good! You're up!”

Twilight read the cover of the ancient volume aloud. “De Ultima Dei.”

“On the Outtermost Gods,” said Pinkie.

“Pinkie,” said Twilight. “How do you know Latin?”

“The author knows Latin, so I know Latin,” said Pinkie. “That’s how I roll.”

Twilight blinked twice, and puffed on her Lucky Strike. “You know what? Fuck causality. Where did you find this?”

“It was propping up a shaky table next to the reshelving cart,” said the pink earth pony. “I tripped over it on the way in, and it looked like it might be helpful, so..” Her words were interrupted by a crashing sound somewhere amidst the shelves.

“There were... a lot of books... on that table,” said Pinkie Pie, embarrassed.

Tome sighed and moved off towards the source of the noise.

Twilight rapidly flipped through the pages, skimming paragraph after paragraph.

“Can we go get breakfast, now?” asked Pinkie.

“That sounds good to me,” said Fluttershy. “I'm hungry.”

“Just a minute.” Twilight's voice was thick with excitement. “Pinkie, this book is amazing. It's got chapters on every known outer deity, even some that aren't mentioned in the Nec... the other books I've read. Who wrote this!?”

Twilight flipped back over to the title page, levitated her cigarette to an ashtray, and slowly translated the text there aloud.

“De Ultima Dei; On the Outermost Gods... Kaelestia!?”

* * *

Twilight Sparkle did not go to breakfast. She tromped directly into the throne room, making no effort to mute the livid expression that had dominated her aspect for the last several minutes. A burgundy-colored, middle-aged unicorn mare in a fancy morning dress was speaking to the princess. Twilight trotted directly past her, totally ignoring her presence. Celestia showed obvious shock and confusion, the overdressed unicorn disbelief and indignation.

“Excuse me, young lady,” she began, “you cannot simply...”

Twilight wordlessly turned her head towards the unicorn. The pace she had set in getting there had not been kind to her recuperating body. Her breathing was labored, and her teeth were gritted tight from pain in her shoulder. She coughed twice, covering her mouth with a foreleg, which came away with a few small spots of blood-laced mucus and saliva. The older unicorn mare drew back, slightly stunned, and Twilight's horn began to glow. A moment later, the other unicorn's horn vibrated and glowed faintly.

“Leave,” growled Twilight, “Or I will turn you into an earth pony.”

The burgundy mare made no further objection, but turned and cantered gingerly out of the throne room. Celestia's guards were both in a state of alerted confusion. They knew Twilight Sparkle would never intend any harm to the princess, but it was a rare day that anypony came into the throne room behaving this way.

“Well, Twilight,” said Celestia, her face stern and her voiced strained, “you have my attention. Whatever you wanted it for had better be good.”

“What in all the hells of Tartaros is this!?” Twilight levitated the book out of the ornate saddlebag in which she generally carried her reading materials, and let it hover in the air between the Princess and herself.

Celestia inhaled sharply through her nose, then looked at the two confused guards standing at the base of her throne.
“Leave us,” she growled.

Once the guards had dutifully obeyed, she spoke again.

“That, Twilight Sparkle, is one of the few books in the world that I desperately hope you nor anypony else ever reads.”

“Then why did you write it!?” Twilight felt Celestia's irresistible telekinetic grip tear the book from her own, then watched as it shot through the air towards the princess, and was quickly tucked under a wing.

“Because I was young and stupid once, too.”

Twilight recoiled slightly, unsure of how to respond. After a moment, she realized she wasn't meant to.

“Just tell me you didn't actually read this, yet,” said Celestia.

“Well... no,” Twilight half-mumbled, “but I already read the Necronomicon, and I'm fine. Why should I be afraid of something you wrote?”

The Princess released a deep sigh of relief. “Because I'm older than the Necronomicon, and so is much of my knowledge. I thought I had put this somewhere where nopony would ever find it.”

“It was propping up a wobbly table,” said Twilight, completely monotone.

“Yes," said Celestia, plainly. "I put it there. Why do you think that table has a short leg?”

Twilight cocked her head sideways. “You put a book that you're this afraid of anypony reading under a shortened table leg to hide it?”

Celestia shrugged. “It worked for a few thousand years, didn't it?”

“That's an old table,” said Twilight, calming down, now.

“Not as old as the first one. I had to move it when we moved the capital to Canterlot.”

“But why in the Library?” asked the purple unicorn. “That's hardly a place to hide a book.”

“To hide a tree, use a forest. If you can make the tree look inconsequential, all the better. I also hid a mad god of chaos in my sculpture garden, if you remember.”

“Yes, and we all saw how well that turned out,” said Twilight, “Ever consider really hiding these things? You could lock this one away with the restricted books, for instance.”

“Really?” Celestia smirked. “When you started doing your research, – looking specifically, I might add, for information about powerful outer gods -- where did you start?”

Twilight spoke before she could even think. “The restricted... Okay, you got me, but if it's so terrible, why not just destroy it?”

“I've tried," said Celestia, grimly. "Every time I have ever burned it, shredded it, or otherwise attempted to end its existence, I have had, that selfsame night, a dream in which I rewrote it, word for word. The next morning I always awaken to find a new, pristine copy of it lying next to me in bed, swirling with malevolent consciousness.”

“That's... that's a little scary,” Twilight stuttered.

Celestia, looked down at the volume tucked under her wing, and spoke again, half to herself.

“You should see what happens if you try to destroy Luna's book.”

“Princess Luna has a book like this?” asked Twilight.

“If only,” said Celestia, “but that's probably already more than I should have said.'

“Look, Twilight,” she continued, “I understand your being upset that I didn't tell you about this before, but you have to trust that if I felt there was anything in here that would be helpful, I would have simply given you that information, outright. You're letting this situation get the best of you; I have never seen you physically threaten anypony in your entire life, and just look at what you've done to yourself in getting here.”

Twilight realized just then that she was favoring her wounded shoulder, and that the entire leg which it joined to her body was quivering in pain. Embarrassed, she tried to put weight on that hoof, but quickly withdrew it from the floor, growling over a bitten lip. She swayed slightly, and coughed once.

“You see?” asked Celestia, stepping down to stand in front of her student. She touched her horn lightly to the unicorn's afflicted shoulder, and Twilight noticed an immediate lessening of the pain.

“Go see the castle doctor. He isn't busy with Luna anymore, and he's very talented with medical magic.” She paused. “I have to go find that mare you scared off.”

Twilight looked down at the floor, ears drooping.

“Who was she?” she asked.

“Actually, she was a candidate for a teaching position at my school. I'll have to skim over exactly who you are.”

“Sorry,” said Twilight, quietly.

“Don't worry about it,” said Celestia.

“Just go get those wounds seen to, and try to relax.” The Princess paused. “And please, trust me. I haven't invested so much in you without purpose. I'm always on your side,” she said, “even when you do something a little stupid.”

Twilight, still staring at the floor, felt a long, warm neck and shoulder wrap around her own.

“Thanks,” she said.

Chapter 9: Tales Best Forgotten

Chapter 9

Tales Best Forgotten

The next morning, Celestia rose out of bed, and walked to her balcony to raise the sun. Her dreams had been unpleasant these last several nights, but at least now she could awaken from them. As the sun rose into the sky, she became aware of a silhouette in the garden below. It was Fluttershy. The pegasus lay next to the pond, watching a mother duck sleeping with her ducklings tucked in close around her in their nest.

“Fluttershy?” Celestia called out, and the pegasus snapped out of her reverie.

The Princess spread her wings and hopped over the railing of her balcony, then glided down next to the little pony. Fluttershy seemed a little surprised to see the princess devoid of all her royal regalia, and with an obvious case of bedmane.

Celestia bent down and looked at the yellow pegasus. “What are you doing up at dawn? Did you sleep?”

“Yes," said Fluttershy, contorting her lips oddly. "Well, some. That is to say I couldn't sleep very well, so I got up and came out here.”

“Why couldn't you sleep? You aren't having nightmares are you?” There was a touch of concern in Celestia's voice.

“Well, yes, but not like yours, I think. These are different. They're all about the forest I saw when we went into the dream world to find you. I haven't been able to get it off my mind.”

“Tell me about it,” said the princess, Lying down next to the little pony, head erect.

“There's not much to tell, really. It was just a dead forest that seemed to go on forever. Sometimes, I could hear a voice in the wind. Sometimes it was crying, but sometimes it would say things about not having a future.”

“I see,” Celestia sighed. “I actually do see some things like that in my dreams, right now.”

“I guess what bothers me so much is when I think about things like these little ducklings.” She nodded towards the ducks. They were waking up now, and beginning to stretch their wings and waddle about the nest.

“Also, when I think about things like... Well, what if... What if Shining Armor and Cadance had a foal? What if... I...” She stopped for a moment, then continued.

“This world is supposed to go on. It's supposed to repeat itself in a cycle, the same way that you and Princess Luna raise the sun and the moon every morning and evening.” She paused, and bit her lip for a second, searching for what she wanted to say next.

Finally, she spoke again. “You know, when I was a filly, I wasn't a very good flyer, but I did finally learn. Scootaloo – you remember her. Well, She can barely fly at all, yet. She's supposed to learn how, one day, just like I did.”

“I'm sure she will,” said Celestia, trying to sound reassuring.

“Oh, I know she will. She's very determined. Also, she idolizes Rainbow Dash, so you know she wants to be a good flyer. That's not what worries me, though.” Fluttershy gnawed on her lower lip again, a bit longer, this time.

“If we stop Cenasolus, he'll just come back, won't he?”

“Probably,” Celestia said solemnly. “He did once before. I don't think you can ever truly destroy a thing like whatever Cenasolus is.”

“Princess, what has all this been for, then? Those little ducklings there, all those times you raised the sun, all the things that everypony has struggled to learn and overcome since the beginning of the world; what will all that mean if the world is just... consumed, one day? Even if it's long after I'm... gone, it will mean that nothing I or anypony else ever did really meant anything. No one will even be left to remember that we ever lived.” Fluttershy's eyes teared up, and her voice cracked as she spoke.

“Fluttershy,” said the Princess, hooking a wing over the little pony, “not even I can say how long the world will endure, but I can say this much: forever is a long, long time. One day, something -- whether it's the sun burning out in its old age, or even something horrible like Cenasolus – something will bring this world of ours to an end.”

The Princess felt the little pony's muscles tighten under her big, white wing, and Fluttershy buried her face in her neck. Celestia could feel the moisture of Fluttershy's tears soaking into her fur.

“I don't want the world to end, Princess.”

“Nopony does, Fluttershy, but knowing that it will is no reason for you to despair. Your life can still be full of joy and hope. You still have your friends, your family, and your future. You can still laugh, sing, and love whomever you choose, and in a way, it makes those things more wonderful because they are limited by the time you have to enjoy them.”

“But it just makes me feel desperate; like there's so much I have to do.”

“Good,” said Celestia.

“Huh?” Fluttershy looked up at the white horse's face.

“That's one of the best ways to live, as long as you don't let your fear of death rule your actions. Death is not something to hope for or to fear. Do you understand me?”

“I think so,” said Fluttershy, "but does that mean you're ready to die, Princess? Now? Like this?”

“Of course not,” said Celestia, her eyes hardening. “I want to find a way to stop Cenasolus for my own sake and for Luna's and for the sake of the world." The big alicorn drew a deep breath, and her teeth clenched for the briefest moment. "I mean to live, Fluttershy. Just because the world's going to end one day doesn't make it okay for us to just let it happen, and just because our lives are going to end doesn't make it okay for us to just let that happen, either. Never forget that, Fluttershy.”

“I won't,” she said, nestling into Celestia's side, again. After a moment, the little pegasus giggled.

“What's so funny?” Celestia asked her, a hint of a laugh in her own voice.

“This reminds me of cuddling with my mom when I was little,” said Fluttershy.

“You're still little,” said Celestia.

And very quietly, the Princess laughed.

Just a little pony, she thought, like so many I've known, and yet unlike any one of them, exactly. So precious, these, my little ponies..

* * *

Princess Celestia, now properly crowned, groomed, and adorned as befitted her station, stuck her head through the door of Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash's room. They were both still sound asleep. Pinkie Pie had somehow found a way to get herself completely sideways across her bed, and Rainbow Dash lay on her belly, tongue hanging out, snoring loudly. “Have either of you seen Twilight Sparkle?”

Neither pony stirred, and Celestia cleared her throat. There was still no response.

Applejack's voice and hooves echoed up the hallway. “If'n you wanna get those two outta bed this early, you're gonna need some incentive.”

The orange earth pony nudged the door open with her head, and chuckled at the sight. “Hey, Pinkie! We got cinnamon rolls for breakfast again!”

Celestia looked at Applejack, and raised an eyebrow. Turning her head back to the room, she felt her heart skip a beat as she saw the pink earth pony, now fully awake and standing so close she could have kissed her.

“WHOA!” She backpedaled slightly. “Don't ever do that!”

“So, when can I expect those cinnamon rolls to be ready?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“Right after you go get Twilight from the Archives,” said Celestia, “which is where I'm assuming she is, since I already sent for her at her parents' house. She wasn't there, so...”

“Oh, that's definitely where she is,” said Applejack. I saw her and Spike headed in there when I was out for my morning walk.”

“Ah,” said Celestia. “So, how do we get Rainbow Dash up?”

“Got a wonderbolt?” asked Applejack.

“Not on me,” said Celestia.

“Then you're shit outta luck,” said Applejack.

“Well, would you two please let her know, whenever she does finally get up, that since their last show was interrupted, the Wonderbolts rescheduled, and there will be another HOLY SHIT!”

Rainbow Dash was somehow standing right next to Pinkie Pie.

“You called?”

“You girls will be the death of me,” said Celestia. “Now that Luna is feeling better, our personal physician is available for you to all have your wounds checked. He's the best in all of Equestria. I want him to make sure you're all sound enough for physical exertion. Go downstairs and find his office. The guards can tell you where it is.”

“You reckon that doctor could do anything about this hole in my gut? I keep coughing up blood every now and then, and I get a mighty fierce stomach ache every time I eat much at all.”

“Possibly,” said Celestia. “He knows healing spells that most unicorns don't even know exist. Luna has no further need of him, so I've asked him to tend to your various wounds. He's not a god, though. So, whatever he does, take it easy for awhile.”

“Will do,” said Applejack, glad at the thought of the nagging pain in her midriff possibly being extinguished, or at the very least lessened.

“Tell Rarity as well,” said Celestia. “I already sent Fluttershy to him earlier this morning, and Twilight yesterday.”

“I'll get it all sorted out,” said Applejack. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” Celestia said. “Meet me in the war room at noon. Twilight knows where to find it.”

* * *

Twilight Sparkle and Spike had been roaming the archives since dawn. If Twilight had a major flaw, it had always been an excess of curiosity, and the mere suspicion that there was another forbidden book hidden somewhere in this titanic gallery of knowledge was simply too tantalizing for her to resist.

She had tried the lower levels first, thinking that Princess Luna would favor their darkness for hiding such a thing, but it had been to no avail. Next she had searched the upper levels, assuming that Luna might have wanted to tuck it away as near as possible to the moon and stars she so adored. Again, she had been disappointed.

Now, at last, utterly devoid of ideas, she sat at the same reading desk she had occupied for the bulk of the previous week.

“Spike, I'm going crazy,” she said. “I just can't think of anywhere else to look. We couldn't even find it in the restricted areas. Maybe Celestia mentioned it to her, and she moved it. Maybe she didn't even hide it in the Archives.”

“Why do you want to see it so badly?” Spike's question provoked Twilight's first considerations to her own motive in this pursuit.

“I don't know,” she said. “I just... It may sound silly, Spike, but I want to be like them. I know I can't be Princess Celestia or Princess Luna, but I want to understand something about what it's like to be that old and that wise. Does that make sense?”

“Sort of,” said the dragon, “but have you ever considered that there may be a good reason Princess Luna hid it in the first place?”

“Spike, you're not saying anything I haven't thought of...” These words were a lie, and Twilight knew it. “There's just... something in me. There always has been, ever since that first time I saw Princess Celestia raise the sun.” Twilight sighed and looked down at the floor. Her heart stopped cold.

There, under a shortened leg of the very reading desk she had occupied for so many days, indeed at which she had studied countless nights in her youth, for this desk had always been her favorite, was a thick, dark purple book, with black leather binding on its spine and corners. She had seen it a thousand times, at least, but not once had she given it any consideration. To have been placed in such an inauspicious place it must certainly be a book of little consequence or worth, but now, by its coloration alone, she was certain of what she beheld, and it drove her eyelids so wide that they threatened to split at their corners.

She levitated it upward so quickly that the the old desk almost turned over. Spike noticed the imminent disaster, and quickly shoved a book from a nearby shelf under the desk's short leg.

Twilight plopped the purple tome down on the very desk that had served as its camouflage, and read the title: Lethe, a word which she knew from her study of ancient languages meant “forgetfulness.”

“Well, well, well!” Twilight rubbed her hooves together greedily, then telekinetically flopped the book open. Before she could read a single letter, it glowed deep blue-purple for a moment, then slammed shut.

“I wouldn't do that.” It was princess Luna's voice.

Twilight looked up to see her walking towards her from the direction of the door.

“I thought you might come looking for this wicked thing.” The book levitated upward and glided to tuck itself under Luna's wing. “I'm glad I got here in time. You're just the sort of pony that this book would bring to her utmost ruin.” Luna's voice conveyed more amusement than irritation.

“Dammit,” said Twilight. Spike chuckled at the flatness of her expletive.

"I don't know why Celestia didn't hide this thing better."

"Duh; thousand years, new capitol, new archives," Twilight thought.

“Trust me,” said Luna. “If there is one book in all the world you do not want to read, it is this one.”

Twilight sighed, exasperated. “Can you at least tell me what it's about? And maybe, just maybe why I shouldn't read it?”

“Certainly,” said Luna.

“Huh?” Twilight was astonished that Luna would so readily divulge the contents of something she was so desperate to keep her from reading.

“It tells you what happens to us all after we die.” Luna levitated the book to float in front of her face, and turned it over slowly, as if examining it for the first time.

“Wow.” Twilight's voice was saturated with genuine awe. “And you... You wrote this? How?”

“That, Twilight Sparkle,” said Luna, placing the book back under her wing, “I will never tell. Not you. Not Celestia. Not anypony. Ever. Understand?”

“Okay,” said Twilight, disappointed. “But why won't you let me read it? What would be so bad about it?”

“Twilight...” Luna's pause lasted for several seconds. “Even though I wrote this book, I don't really know what it says. I vaguely remember that I penned it in my own blood, but that is all that I can tell you about what lies between its covers. Now, I have read it many times, mind you. Many, in fact, have read it, but in their own lifetimes, none of those unfortunate souls really ever knew what it said, either.'

“It is an unhallowed, accursed thing. Once one has begun to read it, that poor soul is compelled – damned, even -- to finish reading it. Nothing and no one can stop them from reading it through to the last word. If anypony tries to take the book from them or keep it from them in any way, they will pursue it madly until they have it again in their possession. Ponies have murdered their friends and family to retrieve this evil thing. Wars have been fought for it. Lives have been abandoned to ruin in quest of it. I do not want to see you set against your friends as a mortal enemy, and I am sure that is what would happen, because I've seen enough of them to know they would try to save you from it's power. And they. Would. Fail.”

Luna sneered slightly at the book, which still slowly rotated beside her.

“The most dastardly and terrible thing about this... creature, however, is that the reader forgets what they read within moments of finishing it. You learn your soul's ultimate fate, and then you have that knowledge snatched away from you. There is an immediate, powerful compulsion to read it again, but if you do, you of course forget once more what you have read. The greater one's curiosity, the greater the hold this deep, forbidden knowledge exerts over that individual. Ponies have read this book dozens of times, forgetting to eat or drink or even sleep, until finally each of them received the object of their curiosity – absolute, perfect knowledge of death – through the most direct means possible.'

"As I said, I myself have read it, and all that saved me from spending the rest of my life locked in its grip was the fact that I read it so many times that I just stopped giving the least dregs of a shit about what happens to my everlasting soul. I don't even care if I have one, anymore. I will live until I die, and that is enough for me. It took me more lifetimes than you have to live in order to come to that place, Twilight Sparkle, and I would suffer nopony else to walk so dark a path, even if they could survive the journey -- not even my worst enemy, and certainly not a friend."

She smiled at the little unicorn.

Twilight didn't speak, but stared at the ancient book, feeling a chill race down her spine.

“I see I've made my point.” Tucking the book back under her wing, Luna turned to leave, but as she did so, Twilight remembered something Celestia had said.

“Princess Luna, what happens if you try to destroy it?”

“It fights back,” said Luna, not even turning her head.

Chapter 10: A Tale in Defiance of Time

Chapter 10:

A Tale in Defiance of Time

“This is gonna be so cool,” said Rainbow Dash. “We get to see the Canterlot Castle War Room!”

The six ponies were walking down a corridor deep in the bowels of Canterlot Castle. Their wounds had been much relieved by the skill of the castle physician, an old, pale green unicorn with a gray mane and a caduceus for a Cutie Mark, but they all still showed subtle signs of discomfort in their gaits.

“It's just a big room with a table in the middle of it, RD,” said Twilight.

“Well, whatever it is, she wouldn't have called us here without she had something mighty important to tell us,” said Applejack.

“I hope it has better décor than the rest of this dreadful part of the castle,” said Rarity.

“I don't think decorations were the primary concern when they built this, Rarity,” said Twilight. “This part of the castle is supposed to be a shelter for the population if Canterlot comes under attack."

“Didn't do them much good last time,” said Pinkie Pie.

“Yeah, I always wondered how all them changelings surrounded the whole city before anypony noticed,” mumbled Applejack.

“Maybe they turned into a cloud bank, or something.” said Twilight. “Here's the War Room,” she continued, pushing open the door with her head. Behind it lay an empty room with a big table. Behind the table stood Princess Celestia, Shining Armor at her side, fully armored save for his helmet, which lay on the table beside him.

“Well, this is disappointing,” said Rainbow Dash, surveying the bare stone walls.

“Close the door,” said Celestia, a command which Fluttershy promptly executed.

Twilight looked at her brother. “What are you doing here, Shiny?”

“Ask her,” he said, nodding towards the Princess.

“He's going with you to do what I'm about to ask you to do,” said Celestia.

“Oh, fun!” Pinkie Pie hopped up and down. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere you'll probably be sorry I sent you,” said Celestia. Then, she drew a deep breath.

“What I'm about to tell you is known to no living being on Earth but Luna and myself. It concerns a time long, long ago, before the founding of Equestria. Luna and I were still very young then, and our mother had not long been dead. Even Discord had long yet to appear.'

“In those days, there was no such thing as a country the way we think of one, today. There were only city-states. Ponies – and in those days, full-size horses – hadn't localized into one area, and were spread all over the earth. They warred with one another over land, gold, and ancient, magical artifacts long since destroyed or sealed away. There were also many lesser gods, and many of the terrible monsters and demons now sealed away in Tartaros still roamed free. Because of these things, many sought power by which to protect themselves, but there were those who sought it for darker purposes, as well. Not few were they who wished to rule the world in that age so long ago.'

“Luna and I saw many would-be gods and rulers in those days, but to a one they were destroyed by their own ambitions. It was our witness of the catastrophes which inevitably befell them in their greed that taught us never to try and rule by force. We saw war, famine, monsters, dark magic, and all every breed of horror bring one of these would-be rulers after another to his or her ruin. You were all horrified by the Changelings, I'm sure, but the truth is that Chrysalis is just a remnant of that age. Her disposition would not have been considered at all uncommon in those dark times. That being the case, Luna and I chose to withdraw ourselves for a time, until the world was ready to lay down its mad quest for power. It was in this time of self-imposed exile that word reached us of yet another new magic which a king of a distant, foreign land had discovered in his quest for domination.'

“In most circumstances we would have simply ignored the news and let the world continue on in its madness. However, when we learned the nature of this power, we felt the need to intervene. The king's true name, I do not know, for he had forbidden it spoken in his own land. He would only hear himself called “Omnequus Rex,” the King of All Horses, and that was what he sought to be.'

“It was rumored that Omnequus Rex had discovered a means by which he could speak to beings from outside our world; beings out in the distant reaches of the aether, beyond and among the stars. The power these beings granted him was immense, and his empire had already begun to spread as he effortlessly felled all who dared oppose him.

“Luna and I had seen one of these outer beings consume our father, and we knew that no good could ever come of any association with such creatures. Whether it was Cenasolus with whom Omnequus Rex convened for his power, I still do not know. Though to be honest, I highly doubt it. The possibility that there could be only one such thing in the cosmos is so infinitesimal as to be practically nonexistent, and the chances of Omnequus having randomly contacted the same entity that had been responsible for our father's death was equally small. Even so, we knew that we could not allow such a terrible thing to continue.'

“So, we went to him. We traveled to his kingdom and stood before him at his court to beg him to cut off his contact with whatever outer being or divinity he had discovered. We must have looked a sight to those horses. To them, we appeared as mere foals, though we were already many centuries old, but the learned among them immediately recognized us for who and what we were. When we told them our story, many of Omnequus' Rex' advisers begged him to destroy or at the very least seal away something they called the Aethervox. He said nothing in response, and taking this 'Aethervox' to be the means by which he had contacted whatever entity was now granting him his power, I asked to see it. I will never forget what he said:'

“'Behold, Celestia, she who would think herself great to rule the sun, I have entombed forever the soul of a god far mightier than yourself, and in so doing have garnered audience with gods mightier still! Now, by their power, I have become a god, myself!''

“It was then that he showed us what appeared to be a golden heart, clad cruelly in bands of diamond-studded iron. I do not know from whom this heart was rent, and I do not know how he harnessed its power in such a way as to allow him to speak to the distant ones beyond our world. I do know, however, that I felt the faintest glimmer of some terrible presence from the moment he laid his hoof upon it.

“We stood in silence, unsure of what would happen. He stared into that weird, beating heart, and whispered to it in a language I had never heard before. After some time. He ceased to speak to the heart, and looked up. There was fear hidden behind his eyes as he looked into my own, and when he spoke I felt my blood run cold.

“'You should not have come here. He senses you. Do not try to run. It will do you no good.'”

“Luna collapsed beside me, and I began to feel a chill in my body that words cannot fully describe. My legs went slack, and I collapsed as well. I began to lose consciousness, and I thought I would certainly die, but then from somewhere nearby, Omnequus' queen... I do not even remember her name... she galloped in, and kicked the Aethervox to the floor. She was in tears, and she pleaded for our lives.

“What she said is still a haze to me, but as my strength returned, I managed to gather that it was Omnequus' own daughters – her daughters – that had been the cost of his newfound power. He seemed ashamed and saddened when she spoke of this, and I remember clearly just one thing that she said:

“'Will you trade the life of every youth for this power? Will you deny your whole world a future so that you can rule it in the present? Are you that petty? Are you that cold?'”

“There was something in her voice when she said that word, “cold?” It was strange, the way she said it, like an accusation, but also fearful and sad. Whatever it was, it cut him to the bone. His face became downcast, and when he finally spoke again, his voice was weary and thin.

“He told us to go, and having no recourse, we did as he commanded. After we returned to our home, we kept our ears to the wind for news of his empire. Rumors of his power spread farther and farther, and it was widely feared that he would conquer the entire world. Then, without warning, new rumors began to replace those of his conquests. I heard vague stories that the lands of Omnequus Rex had somehow become suddenly barren, cold, and dead, that his armies no longer marched, and that none ventured into his kingdom, for the cold there was too great to endure.

“That was the last the world ever heard of him. After a few thousand years, he was little more than a vague legend – an old faerie tale with many versions and endings and with roots that nopony really remembered, except for Luna and myself. After a few thousand years more, even those tales were so assimilated into others that they were totally unrecognizable. Luna and I were inclined to leave it that way, and so the world forgot Omnequus Rex.”

“I do not remember the name given to Omnequus' city by those who lived in it, for it has been far too long since I called it by any name but that given to it in memory of the terrible cold that consumed it. It is called Frigidus, and it lies deep in the coldest reaches of the Frozen North, beyond the Crystal Mountains. I never dared tell anypony this story before, for fear that some power-hungry fool would attempt to retrieve the Aethervox. Now, I send all of you out to do that very task.”

Celestia ceased to speak, and Twilight Sparkle felt the blood drain out of her face. She swooned momentarily before managing to collect herself.

“Princess Celestia, are you telling me that Frigidus – THE Frigidus – is another one of those things that isn't just a legend?”

“Nothing is ever just a legend, Twilight,” said the Princess.

Celestia produced from behind her a long, narrow tube made of some type of dark brown, figured wood. It had an ornate ebony cap at each end, one of which she removed. Quickly, she withdrew from the tube a large piece of parchment, which she unrolled onto the table.

“It is here,” she said, indicating a jagged mountain range in the northern and easternmost reaches of the Frozen North. “I drew this map from memory... at some point. I don't even remember when, to be honest, but I am certain of its accuracy.”

Pinkie Pie hopped up to the table and looked down at the map. “Granny Pie used to tell me faerie tales about Frigidus. It was supposed to be in the far north, but the stories she told me were all about how rich and happy the place was. She said there was a party there that went on forever, night and day, and never stopped. She even said there were gods that lived there!”

“Those are some of the legends, Pinkie Pie,” said Celestia. “There are many others, and the city is known by many names in many languages. Almost any story about some great, lost civilization has some bit of Frigidus in it.”

Fluttershy positioned herself to get a closer look at the map.

“Princess,” she said, “A lot of the stories I've heard are scary. They talk about things like the place being destroyed by a volcano, or being swallowed up by the earth, or even destroyed by Windigos. Is there any truth to any of those?”

“Fluttershy, all I know is that Fridigus became so cold as to be totally uninhabitable. That may be the source of the stories you've heard involving Windigos. I never went back there myself, so I can't say for certain.”

Rainbow Dash, who had been struggling to contain herself for several minutes, jumped upwards and brought herself to a hover right in front of the Princess. “Frigidus?” Her eyes were sparkling with glee. “You want us to go to Frigidus?”

“Yes,” Celestia said solemnly.

“Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said, but Rainbow Dash cut her off.

“You want us," said the pegasus, her eyes still shining, "to go find a legendary city that most ponies don't even believe exists, and retrieve an ancient artifact of unimaginable power so we can use it to save the world?”

“That's the short version,” said Celestia, blinking several times.

Rainbow Dash grinned ear-to-ear. “This is gonna be FUGGIN' AWESOME!!”

* * *

“She's sending you to Frigidus? That's a real place?”

Granny Smith's tone told Applejack that she did not approve, but Applejack continued packing her saddlebags.

“Well, yeah, Granny; that's what I said.”

“What for?” asked the old, green pony.

“I can't say, but we gotta find something that's real important to stopping that Cenasolus thing I told y'all about.”

“Well, don't s'pose I can argue with her judgment. If she thinks y'all's the best ponies for the job, then by golly, I bet you are.”

“When will you be back?” Applebloom's lips poked out and her eyes watered.

“I don't know, AB, but I promise I'll come home as soon as I can.”

Macintosh, who had been quiet for the bulk of the entire conversation, finally spoke.

“I'm going, too.”

“What?” Applejack was shocked at her brother's announcement.

“You heard me. Ain't no sister of mine going to no faerie tail city fulla who-knows-what and in the middle of goddamn nowhere without me there to watch out for her.”

“Big Mac, I can take care of myself. Besides, Princess Celestia's sending Shining Armor along with us, in case we need some muscle.”

“Muscle!? HA!” Big Macintosh snorted. “Whoever heard of a unicorn with muscle?”

Applejack huffed loudly. “That ain't what I meant; He's going to go along in case we run into any sort of dangerous creatures or spirits or some such, so's he can blast 'em with his magic.”

“Why can't Twilight Sparkle?” asked Applebloom.

“Twilight ain't never practiced much of that kind of magic, that's all. She's great at most things, but she don't know a whole lot of... fightin' magic, I guess you'd call it.”

“Whatever,” said Big Macintosh. “I'm going.”

Applejack stared into her brother's face for a moment, then spoke. “Ain't getting outta here without your big, red ass, am I?”

“EeNope.”

* * *

By noon the next day, the ponies were ready to leave. The two Apples, always early risers, had been just outside the castle gatehouse all morning, making preparations. Big Macintosh actually proved more useful than anticipated, since his impressive strength made him ideal for pulling a large wagon loaded with food, rope, tents, tools, lanterns, and various other odds and ends that were simply too big to fit into the individual ponies' saddlebags. Applejack was just finishing up loading a barrel of apples into the wagon when the rest of the ponies arrived, all their backs slung with saddlebags.

“And you didn't want me to come,” said Big Macintosh smugly.

“Yeah, yeah. I reckon you have your uses,” his sister replied.

“I'll say,” said Spike. “Twilight,” he continued. “Can I ride the wagon?”

“If Big Macintosh doesn't mind hauling you around, that's fine, Spike.”

“Hop on up,” smiled the enormous pony. “You don't even weigh as much as that barrel of apples, and we got the wheels on this thing greased up slicker than a pig at a county fair. I'll never know the difference.”

Spike giggled and clambered up into a small bench seat across the front of the wagon.

“Well, if everypony's ready,” said Shining Armor, “Let's get moving.”

Out of Canterlot, the group turned north, and traveled along the Equestria River Basin for several days. The trip was largely uneventful until they reached the Crystal Mountains, which marked the northern border of the country.

Rainbow Dash, curious to see just how high the mountains went, flew up above the treetops, and looked skyward.

“Wow.” She flew back down and landed amidst her friends.

“Those mountains are insane,” she said. “They've got to be taller than anything I've ever seen before.”

“Well,” said Twilight, “they're on record as the tallest in the country, and they've rarely been climbed by anypony. There's no good reason for it. The only thing on the other side is the Frozen North, and that's just a cold, uninhabitable wasteland. I mean, there are a few settlements and outposts to the west. Then, there's an old legend about a Crystal Empire, but it would have been east of here, in the foothills. Beyond here, it's just supposed to be totally barren. The only thing there is, well... Frigidus... somewhere.”

“And that's exactly where we're going,” said Applejack, ominously.

“Is there any chance at all I can convince you to let me go home?” asked Fluttershy.

“Fluttershy,” Twilight frowned, “We might need the Elements of Harmony for something. You have to come along. Besides, what if we run into an ice dragon or something? We'll need you to talk to it.”

Fluttershy shuddered visibly, but said no more.

* * *

The road through the mountains was old and little-traveled. In places, it was no longer fit to be called a road, at all. As they went, the elevation grew, and the air thinned, so that their course became continually more difficult. Eventually, Applejack was forced to hitch up to the wagon alongside Big Macintosh, and not two days later, Pinkie Pie also harnessed herself to it. Despite her oftentimes frivolous demeanor, Pinkie's strength and athleticism were relatively great by virtue of her being an earth pony, and she enjoyed the chance to put them to use. After some time, Shining Armor took off his heavy plate mail, and also joined the team pulling the wagon.

After a couple of days, the temperature became uncomfortably cold, and as they continued to climb, snow began to fall, so that they were forced to remove the wagon's wheels, allowing it to function as a sled by sitting on two runners that had been installed on the bottom of the axles. It had been Twilight's idea, a fact of which she made a point on several occasions to remind the team pulling it. This finally elicited from Applejack the suggestion that, if she were so proud of her ingenuity, perhaps she should “pull the goddamned thing herself, for awhile.” Thereafter, Twilight ceased all commentary.

Before much longer, the cold became great enough that the ponies all donned the first layer of their cold weather gear, and within a day of having done so, they reached the apex of the road's course through the mountains, which stood in a narrow pass. Rainbow Dash flew up high once more to see if she could discern what lay beyond the range, and when she descended, the look on her face told the others that it was not a pretty sight.

“It's a desert,” she said. “But not like a sandy desert. It's just cold, dead ground.”

“It's tundra,” said Twilight Sparkle. “What you saw was permafrost; ground that stays frozen year-round. Nothing grows on the surface because plants' roots can't penetrate it.”

“Good thing we brought plenty of food,” said Pinkie Pie.

“No kidding,” said Applejack. “We won't be able to find anything fit to eat in a place like that.”

“Well, we have to keep moving, no matter what,” said Shining Armor. “No turning back.”

The ponies all nodded in agreement, and continued onward. The descent offered its own special challenges, such as the sled trying several times to overrun the team pulling it. Each time, Shining Armor was quick to feel its forward slide, and to stall it with telekinesis. Nonetheless, it gave the ponies a scare. After about four more days of travel, the land began to flatten out, and soon the vast, cold expanse of the Frozen North spread out before them.

“Well, where do we go now?” asked Rainbow Dash.

Twilight unfurled the map. “Well, the mountain range where Frigidus is hidden is straight north of here, about two weeks' journey.”

“That's all?” asked Rarity. “How come nopony has been there in so long if it's not any further than that?”

Twilight peaked over the top of the map. “Well, supposedly, the cold and the weather get really brutal when you start to get close. What's more, there's only one way in or out. It's a road leading out of a small town in the foothills of the mountains, and... it may be guarded.”

“Guarded by what?” asked Applejack.

“Well, one of the legends of Frigidus speaks of a guardian that protected the city from intruders. Celestia said there were many powerful magical and mechanical weapons there, a long time ago. It's unlikely that any of them still work, but she said for us to be careful, all the same.”

Fluttershy, shivering a little, moaned at the news.

“Come on, Fluttershy,” said Pinkie Pie, newly unhitched from the sled. “We're all in this together.” She paused for a moment, then her eyes lit up.

“I know! Let's sing a song to pass the time. Ninety nine bottles of cider on the wall, ninety nine bottles of cider!...”

Rarity's head dropped downward. “Oh. Dear. Gods.”

After about two days, several thousand bottles of cider, and a few death threats, the song was abandoned in favor of silence. It was on that same day that the Frozen North chose to reveal why nopony, for tens of thousands of years, had dared come in search of Frigidus.

Chapter 11: Scratches in a Dark Room

Chapter 11

Scratches in a Dark Room

It began as a breeze. In the cold, even the lightest wind was unwelcome, but it was not so much that the ponies could not withstand it. As they continued northward, however, it became less and less mild, until soon their faces went numb under its constant assault.

The ponies donned the second layer of their hooded cold weather gear, and also covered their faces to stave off the icy blast, which seemed to come from every direction but south. There was no rhyme or reason to it. It was as if the air itself set its will against their quest, and drove them back. Still, the ponies marched onward.

In only two more days, the wind had become so intense that it threatened to rip their tents apart. The sun never truly set this far north at this time of year, but it sank low at strange intervals, and the skies waxed and waned in reds and oranges. It was during one such period, when the group had collectively decided to take a rest, that it became apparent no tent would hold against the gale.

“We're going to have to make a dugout,” said Shining Armor.

“We can try,” Applejack half-shouted over the wind, “but the ground's so damned hard I don't know how we'll ever pull it off!”

“I mean Twilight and me!” came the big unicorn's reply.

He and Twilight focused their horns on a spot in the ground, and the earth began to thaw and move, Pitching itself upward into a northward-facing berm that left a large, oval scoop in its shadow. It was just large enough to fit all the ponies comfortably, and the act left both brother and sister more than a little weary. The reward for their efforts was substantial, however; a tiny island of shelter in the vast, gray, frozen plain.

As the ponies settled in, Spike set to building a fire. Applejack lay down and nestled in close to her brother.

“You know,” she said. “We ain't gone camping hardly at all since Momma and Daddy passed away.”

“Nope,” said Big Macintosh.

“Now I remember why,” said his sister.

He laughed. “Eeyup.”

Applejack let the slow crackle of the growing fire warm her face, now absent its woolen shield in the shelter of the dugout. Her face was almost preternaturally orange in the glow of the flames and sky. “Something I been meaning to ask you for a long time, Mac,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“That night the house burned down.” She swallowed a lump that had formed in her throat. “How'd you and Granny get outside? Why were me and Applebloom the last ones out?”

“Oh. Well, Daddy gave me the job of leading Granny out, and I had just been out there a little bit when Momma pushed you out into the yard.”

“So, the house hadn't been burning long?”

“Maybe two minutes.” He sighed and shook his head slightly. “Old house went up like a goddamn box of matchsticks. It was that fresh lacquer Daddy just put on the walls, I wanna say.”

Applejack looked up at her brother. “So you don't know nothing about what went on with Momma and Daddy inside, then?”

“Nope, don't reckon so.”

“Well," she said, "I saw a little bit of it. Wasn't no kinda pretty sight, but I imagine you could guess that.” She looked up into the glow of the low, unsetting sun. “Reckon I could tell you about it if'n you wanted to know.”

“Don't reckon I much want to, AJ," he said, repositioning his legs slightly to make himself more comfortable, "but if it'd make you feel better to tell me, I ain't gonna put a stop to it.”

“Well,” she began, “Part of the roof fell down on Daddy's back, and he was burned pretty bad, already. Not as bad as he was when he finally come out, but bad. I ran over to check on him, and when he saw me, it set him off somehow or other. He threw that shit off himself and went to bucking against the door to the nursery like it was a tree wouldn't turn loose of its apples. You remember afterwards they said that near where they found Momma they found a door looked like it was broke in half and ripped clean off its hinges, somehow? That's why.”

Big Macintosh grinned and chortled. “You'll have to let me be a little bit proud of him for that.”

Applejack laughed. “You think I ain't?”

“Nope, wouldn't expect any less from you.”

“Alright, then, but that ain't what I wanted to talk about,” she replied. “What I wanted to say was that... I'll be damned if Momma and Daddy both didn't scare the hell outta me that night. That's the last memory I've got of either one of 'em; just being scared shitless.”

Big Macintosh sniffed and wiped his nose. It had nothing to do with his sister's recollections, and everything to do with the cold. He hummed and hawed to himself for a moment, staring up into the orange glow of the sky, then looked Applejack straight in the face.

“So, what about it?” he finally asked.

Applejack was momentarily stunned, but then her eyes hardened as she thrust her head in closer to her brother's face and spoke.
“Whaddaya mean, 'What about it!?' It's drove me up the goddamned walls for half my life; that's what about it!”

“But why?” The big, red stallion was totally calm.

“Don't you get it? I don't want to remember Momma and Daddy that way, Big Mac. Look here; I couldn't do nothing about that fire. It took me a long time to understand that, but I got there. Still, that don't make it okay, somehow. By rights, didn't I – Hell, didn't we – deserve a better goodbye than that?”

“Eenope.”

Applejack was stopped cold by her brother's response.

“Don't nopony deserve much of nothing, really.” Big Macintosh yawned, then continued to speak. “You get what you get, whether it's fair or not. You can try to do right by everypony else, but that don't mean life owes you shit.'

“I miss 'em, too, you know,” he continued. “Wish I'da got to said something to 'em there at the end, but looking back, all the things I want to say... Hell I never took time to figure on 'em until it was too late for 'em to be said.”

Applejack squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn't hold in a pair of tears. They dropped to the cold, hard ground, and quickly froze.

“I feel the same way,” she said. “And I feel like it's my own fault I didn't take the time...”

“Bullshit,” Big Macintosh snorted. “Ain't nopony's fault. We were both too busy growin' up to waste our time worrying about that. Hell, you think Applebloom thinks about telling us that sort of shit? Probably not a lick, and we both might freeze to death out here in the middle of this godforsaken hell hole.”

“Hey!” The voices of Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor shot across the small camp in perfect unison.

“Not the dugout; it's fine and dandy,” said the red pony. “This is a totally different conversation.”

“And speaking of Applebloom,” Big Macintosh went on, “How many times have we both scared the shit out of her? How many times has Granny? How many times did Momma and Daddy scare both of us shitless before that night? My guess is you couldn't count the number on all four hooves and every hair in your tail. Sometimes it's just what you need to do to set a young'un straight. Sometimes it's the only way to keep 'em safe. So, forget about it, and go get us some goddamned apples; I'm hungry.”

Applejack leaned over and rested her head against her brother's thick neck. “In a minute,” she said, forlornly.

* * *

After another day's travel, the mountain range the ponies had sought came into view. As it crept over the horizon, the temperature continued to drop, forcing the addition of more layers of cold weather clothing. Finally, in spite of all this insulation, the cold began to produce complaints, beginning first with Rarity, who broke a silence that had lasted the bulk of an entire day with an uncharacteristically vulgar observation.

“Celestia's motherfucking mane, it is colder than a motherfucking pimp's heart in this motherfucking wasteland!”

The other ponies all turned to stare at the unicorn.

“Well, it is,” she said with not the least hint of shame or apology, her face fixed in a look of absolute disgust.

Nopony disputed the statement. The vast, empty waste afforded no shelter from the wind. And they had to reserve the charcoal they'd brought for cooking meals, so that not even breaking to make camp allowed them to truly escape the bitter, terrible climate.

“It's going to get colder,” said Twilight.

“I know,” whined Rarity.

“Just try not to think about it,” said Fluttershy.

“You can always cuddle up with me tonight,” said Spike, arching his eyebrows several times. “I'm full of fire, remember?”

“I'll be fine,” sighed Rarity, and the group continued on.

It had seemed as if a mere two or three days should have brought them to the edge of the mountains, but as the ponies continued to approach, the peaks merely loomed higher and larger on the horizon, so that they began to realize that they were seeing mountains of incredibly prodigious height. Twilight Sparkle confirmed that the Princess had said the mountains would be high, but even she was astonished at their seemingly limitless ability to soar ever more skyward as the ponies moved toward them. Worse, they became more and more terrifying as their outline became clearer. They were jagged and gray, being not in the least snow-capped, and their slopes were phenomenally steep. Finally, some ten days after they had first been sighted, the ponies stood at their foothills, and only a day's travel eastward brought into view a small, ruined town which must surely be the current objective of their trek. As they finally strode into it, they were struck by a peculiar sense of antiquity and uneasiness.

“We're the first ponies here in thousands of years,” said Twilight.

“I know,” said Rainbow Dash. “Isn't it amazing? I wonder if there are ghosts, or ice monsters, or abominable snow horses, or...”

“You sound just a little too excited by those prospects,” Rarity quipped. “Also, you're frightening Fluttershy.” She gestured toward the yellow pegasus, whose knees were clattering more than even the brutal cold could account for.

“I just hope there's wood somewhere,” said Applejack. “It'd be nice to be able to make a real fire, for once.”

“Well,” said Shining Armor, we need to find shelter, anyway. Let's spread out and look. We can meet back here...”

“Wait a minute!” Spike made a time-out signal with his claws.

“Hmm?” Shining Armor responded, inquisitively.

“Now, I don't read as much as Twilight, but I've been through enough horror books to know that right after you split up in a strange, ancient place like this is the part where you start dying.”

“Oh, Spike,” said Pinkie Pie, “Those are just silly stories. What could there be to hurt us in a place like this?”

“Did you hear even one of those things that Rainbow Dash mentioned?” asked the dragon.

“You're being ridiculous,” said Twilight. “There are nine of us here, total, right? We'll split up into groups of three. Will being with at least two ponies make you feel safer, you little scaredy-dragon?”

“Fine, but who do I go with?”

“Me, duh.” Twilight scooped her head under the little dragon, and let him slide down onto her back. “You're still a baby dragon, and you're still my responsibility.”

“Can Rarity come with us?”

“No,” Twilight shook her head. There are three unicorns here, so each group gets one of us. That way, everypony has access to magic, in case they need it.”

“Oh, right,” said Spike, obviously disappointed.

“So, let's see... Every group should get an Earth pony, too, in case we do find some wood, and want to haul it back.”

“I call Big Mac,” said Spike. “You know... in case of monsters.”

“Fine,” said Twilight.

Pinkie Pie skipped over next to Twilight's brother. “Shiny, you like pink ponies, right?”

“Don't get any ideas,” said Shining Armor, bluntly.

Pinkie Smiled. “Only teasing!”

“Aw, ponyfeathers,” said Applejack. “Fluttershy, come with me and Rarity. No way in hell I can handle being stuck alone with her and Dash at the same time, right now... No offense to anypony; I'm just hungry, cold, and a little put-out.”

“Oh, trust me darling, I understand,” said Rarity.

* * *

Big Macintosh listened quietly to Twilight Sparkle's long, rambling assessments of the ruins that he, she, and the dragon passed by in their search. She mentioned many times that it was strange to see them in such good condition, given their age, but it was easy for Big Mac to see why: Everything was stone. Moreover, everything was huge. All the buildings, doorways, and windows seemed far too large. He wondered faintly if this town hadn't been occupied by horses, rather than ponies.

Whoever or whatever had lived here, they had not been poor. The arched doorways and windows showed a great deal of ornate, Florentine carving, and occasionally, they would run across some small alcove where the wind had not been able to blast away all evidence that the buildings had at one time been stuccoed. This would have been a lovely little town in its own time, which made Big Macintosh wonder all the more why it seemed so thoroughly abandoned. If they really were the first ponies to step into it in all these ages, there should have been more to be found here. It was as if its citizens had, at some point, packed up everything they owned, and left.

Twilight entered every house for a cursory inspection, but finding them all empty, she quickly re-emerged. Finally, the trio came to a large house on the town's western outskirts. Stepping into it, they found evidence to suggest there had once been a second floor anchored in the walls, but now the erstwhile home was only an empty, roofless shell that stood higher than the surrounding empty, roofless shells.

“I'm starting to think we won't find anything useful here, at all,” said Twilight, as she emerged from the back door, followed by the red earth pony.

“Why not try looking in that cellar,” asked Spike, tapping on the side of Twilight's neck to get her attention as he pointed to his left.

“Good eyes, Spike.”

The cellar Spike had indicated had no remaining doors, but its stone stairway was still present.

What they found below drew a grunt of mild amazement from the normally stolid Macintosh. It was a pile of strange metal shapes laying against the opposite wall.

“What are those things?” asked Twilight.

“Plowshares,” said Big Macintosh. “Big ones.”

“That means...” Twilight began.

“This place was a farm,” said the red pony. “Makes sense. There's plenty of flat land around here, and the soil looks pretty good, too, excepting it's frozen solid. If only it wasn't so dry and cold, you could grow food easy. Don't guess it was always this way.”

“No; Princess Celestia said this land used to be green. This town must have been where they grew food for the population of Frigidus proper.”

“Well, ain't nopony growing nothing here, now,” said Macintosh. “Dirt's solid as a rock.”

“Yeah,” said Twilight, “Let's keep looking for wood.”

They stepped back into the dimming sunlight, and looked around for the next likely house to inspect.

* * *

Rainbow Dash was sitting on top of a high wall of one of the old, broken-down houses, looking upward at the looming mountain range above her, painted deep orange-red by the never-setting sun. She was getting bored with the emptiness of this old, dead town, and growing more and more curious about what lay in those high, jagged peaks.

“Dashie!” It was Pinkie Pie. “Do you see anything from up there?”

“Nothing really, Pinkie.” She sighed as she turned her gaze back to her more immediate surroundings. “This old town is just... meh. You'd think we could have found at least one or two monsters or ghosts or something. Where's Shining Armor?”

“Over here,” came the unicorn's voice from inside a nearby house. “This one's empty too, it looks like... wait a second. What the hell?”

Rainbow Dash hopped down and flitted her wings to slow her fall, then trotted into the house. Pinkie Pie came close behind.

“You find something?” asked Rainbow Dash, noticing Shining Armor looking at a spot on the wall. He was staring at something in a dim, shadowy corner of the house's large, front room.

“There are some kind of markings. It looks like old letters scratched into the wall. I can't read them. Can either of you?”

Pinkie Pie looked at the markings on the wall. “Nope. Not any language that I know.”

Rainbow Dash likewise inspected the peculiar marks. They were a strange, jagged text, and appeared to have been hastily scratched. “Well,” she said, “I sure don't know what it says. Maybe we should go find Twilight.”

“You fly up and see if you can do that,” said Shining Armor. Pinkie and I will go find the others. Let's all meet back here in this house. It'll be time to make camp, soon, anyway.”

* * *

Rarity saw it first as she rounded a corner, and the sight produced a gasp which quickly brought Fluttershy and Applejack to her sides.

It was the remains of what appeared to have once been a great stone arch. In its day, it would have been taller than Ponyville's town hall, and the several enormous chunks of it which lay at its still-standing bases were covered in ancient, weathered carvings that appeared to have once been of equines, though time and the battering of the wind had left them vague and cryptic as to their meaning. Likewise, any lettering the obvious gateway may once have born was worn too deeply to be apparent. All the same, the three ponies knew this was the gateway to the road they had been searching for.

“Well, at least we know where we're going,” said Rarity. “Though I must say I find the sight a teensy bit foreboding.”

“Rarity, you find a day without a shower foreboding,” said Applejack.

Rarity raised an eyebrow at the orange pony. “And you don't?”

“Well, of course not. We've been on the trail for weeks, and it ain't bothered me a bit. To be honest, I'm kinda impressed you haven't bitched and moaned about it, so far.” There was real, though smug, admiration in Applejack's words.

“Well, actually... I know a few hygiene spells for just this sort of situation. All they require is a bit of soap, shampoo, conditioner...”

“Wait a minute,” Applejack stopped her. “You know a spell that works as a substitute for a shower?”

Rarity was confused.

“Why... yes. You cast the spell, the soap and such are consumed in exactly the same quantities as if you had bathed, and then you're clean. Would you like me to cast it on you? I have plenty of the things I need in my saddlebags.”

Applejack frowned. “Rarity,” she almost launched into a tirade about how ridiculous it was to waste cargo space on something so frivolous, but then she realized how filthy she felt, and how clean Rarity looked by comparison. “Well... uh... actually... you know what? Yeah. But wait until later. This is gonna be weird enough without Fluttershy watching.”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “You know I don't actually have to touch you, right?”

Fluttershy cleared her throat quietly. “Umm, Rarity? I'd... I'd like a shower spell or bath spell or whatever, please. I feel really dirty, and I smell like rancid milk and pickles.”

“I had... noticed,” said Rarity. Her horn glowed for a moment, and there was a slight glow from inside her saddlebag. Fluttershy's body shone briefly, and was clean.

“Wait, that's it?” asked Applejack. “Shit, do it now.”

Rarity gladly obliged, and as Applejack glowed, her mane and tail fluffed outward and curled noticeably.

“Whoops,” said Rarity. “Wrong conditioner.”

Applejack growled quietly in her throat, and Fluttershy giggled.

“Oh, it's just a joke, Applejack,” Rarity laughed. She cast the spell again, and Applejack resumed her normal appearance, though noticeably devoid of grime.

“Thank you kindly. Now, wash everypony else when we see 'em again, so we don't all smell like dead animals.”

“I'm not using up all my supplies on everypony else's account,” said Rarity. “If you all wanted to be clean, you should have brought your own.

“Oh, there you are!” Pinkie Pie's voice startled the three spotless ponies. “What smells like lilac and jasmine with the faintest hints of a mountain spring?”

* * *

The ponies all crowded into the house with the strange lettering, and set up a camp. Though they hadn't found any wood, the high walls did a much better job of keeping the constant wind off of them than the dugouts they had been forced to use for the past several weeks, and a fireplace in the same room with the weird letters helped to amplify and contain their fire so that their little camp was actually quite comfortable. Rarity had been coaxed into magically washing the rest of the ponies, so that the whole situation represented the greatest degree of comfort and hominess the ponies had experienced since leaving Canterlot.

Twilight sat near the strange lettering, a book open on the floor in front of her, and with its help, she was doing her best to decipher the weird inscription. She had been dead silent and perfectly still for over a quarter of an hour, except for an occasional flick of her hoof to ash her cigarette.

“It's not a sentence,” said the purple unicorn. “It's all one word. Give me a little bit longer.'

"How's that stew coming, Spike?”

“It's perfect! Or it would be with a couple of powdered rubies.” He took a deep whiff of the bubbling mixture.

“Yes,” giggled Fluttershy, “and nopony but you would be able to eat it.”

“Exactly,” said Spike, continuing to stir the pot suspended over the fire. “And it would be delicious.”

“It's a name,” came Twilight's voice from across the room. All the ponies turned their heads towards her.

“Shimmershine," she said. "Just an ordinary pony name. No telling how it got here.” Twilight leaned forward, and squinted. “There's something else.”

Rainbow Dash walked over. “More words?”

“No; a picture,” said Twilight. “Look closely.”

Rainbow Dash came to Twilight's side, and mimicked her posture. “Hey, you're right!”

It was faint, but it was there; a crudely drawn earth pony, with a fat, oval body, a stick neck and legs, another oval for the head, and a few squiggly lines for the mane and tail. It had a faint, faint smile drawn on its face, and its lack of a cutie mark indicated that it was probably a foal. The shadow cast by the corner had hidden it earlier, but the fire now made it apparent.

“Some little foal must have drawn this,” said Twilight. She took a couple of seconds to French inhale her cigarette, then added, “thousands of years ago.”

“Why do you think they left?” asked Rarity.

“Probably just got too cold to live here, anymore,” said Shining Armor. “Would you want to live in this?”

“I know I wouldn't,” said Applejack. “And do you think you could grow food here?”

“Nope,” said Big Macintosh.

“Exactly,” said Applejack. “Believe you me; if me and Big Mac can't make an apple tree grow there, – and we damn sure can't make one grow here – then nothing can grow there. Period.”

Big Macintosh nodded.

“Eeyup.”

“That's sad,” said Fluttershy, walking over to examine the drawing. “To have to leave your home that way, I mean.”

Pinkie Pie spoke up. “Yes, but home is where the heart is, Fluttershy, or that's what everypony says, anyway.”

Spike practically yelled, “Soup's on!” and all the ponies went and crowded around the fireplace. All, that is, except one; Fluttershy remained by the sketch on the wall, staring at it silently. In his rush to dish up the soup, Spike knocked a short stick of charcoal out of the fireplace, and it rolled across the floor until it bumped into Fluttershy's hoof, where it lay still.

Fluttershy stared at the drawing through clouds of her own breath that puffed outward rhythmically, and considered the surreal nature of what she was seeing: a child's crude, frivolous self-portrait, thousands of times older than she would ever live to be. She wondered vaguely if Shimmershine had gotten in trouble for drawing on the walls.

She spoke quietly to the smiling image. “Is this all that's left of you, my little pony? Shimmershine? I wonder what your cutie mark turned out to be.”

She bent her head down, and picked up the stick of charcoal by her teeth. Carefully, she retraced the lines of the drawing, so that it stood out as if brand new. She was careful to make it exactly as it had originally been, smile and all. She was tempted to add a cutie mark, but as she stood there thinking about what sort of mark to give the little pony, she finally gave up and let the stick drop to the floor.

“I guess you had to earn that on your own, didn't you?” She wiped the black charcoal off her lips and teeth with the sleeve of her coat, then stepped back to admire her work, returning the smile of the drawing that now stood out strongly in the fire's warm, orange glow.

“Fluttershy?” It was Pinkie Pie. “Aren't you hungry?”

“Coming,” said Fluttershy.

She did not look at the drawing again.

Chapter 12: Monuments to Infinity

Chapter 12

Monuments to Infinity

The next day, or what passed for a day in the Frozen North, the ponies set out on the road beyond the ancient, ruined archway. It was surprisingly easy going. The road was paved with cobblestones, worn smooth and in a surprisingly good state of repair for their age. The mountains on either side showed much evidence of having been altered for the building of this road. In many places, they appeared to have been chipped away by some means, probably magical, so that for all the hours of their ascent, they never had to tackle any extremely difficult slopes. Best of all, the mountains sheltered them from the icy, blasting wind.

In the midst of a long, gentle curve, the road finally began to level out, signaling the apex of the climb. Pinkie Pie hopped excitedly to the front of the group.

“Easy going from here on out!” Then, she ground to a halt. “Or maybe not.”

As the other ponies reached Pinkie's position, they saw what had stalled her gleeful momentum.

“The guardian,” whispered Twilight.

What could only be described as a colossus towered over the pass. It was an alicorn in its form, but obviously made of steel. Everywhere on its body there sprouted gun turrets and the barrels of cannons, and its entire surface, weapons included, was ornately engraved with patterns obviously born of the same art legacy as those few which had remained in the ancient town. It straddled the road, two legs to either side, its head held high and proud. Looking up, the ponies could see that where a unicorn's horn would have been, there sprouted instead a cannon that dwarfed even the dozens that bristled all over the rest of its body. This weapon was so large that even big Macintosh could have stood upright in its bore and still had room to spare overhead. The steel horse's joints were massive gears, its eyes empty, black and hollow. Its wings were ornate, their feathers being blades covered with strange runes that must have once been magical – and perhaps still were. Rust had formed in the joints between the many armor plates that made up its outer shell, but otherwise, the antiquated engine of destruction still gleamed bright.

The group stood silent in the shadow of this giant for some time, until Shining Armor finally spoke.

“It's okay. It's just an old, abandoned machine, like a giant walking tank.”

“I miss my turtle,” said Rainbow Dash.

"He's a tortoise," said Fluttershy.

The group of ponies, uneasy in the shadow of this time-worn monument to the violence of ages long since forgotten, moved on, and passed beneath the machine’s body, each one thankful for its dereliction.

* * *

It came into view suddenly, as they rounded a bend in the last of the great swaths cut through the stone of the titanic, jagged mountain range. Twilight and Shining Armor saw it first, and when they did, they stopped to wait for the other ponies to see it. As each of them did, he or she stopped and stared in silence. The wind whistled softly, sending small clouds of dust flitting amidst the intrepid adventurers, and a sense of mixed relief and awe swept over them. This was, without a doubt, the place they had come to find. In the valley below, ringed on all sides by the lofty, jagged peaks of this ancient, nameless mountain range, there stood a city.

It was pure, enduring majesty; a relic city with a face unchanged by the cruel indifference of time. It spread out for miles, with great, pale blue towers and spires that gleamed with warm purples, reds, and yellows where the sun glinted off their surfaces, as if the whole city was gilded with some strange, translucent metal. At its center, there rose a great spire, taller than all the rest, which shone gloriously in the sun's low, unsleeping light. From where the ponies stood, because of their position high on the mountainside, the city's location so far north, and a strange coincidence of time, they could see the sun, sitting as if it rested upon the eastern peaks, and the moon, likewise resting upon those in the west. Somewhere, between those two great lights, the sovereign, holy charges of Celestia and Luna, they would find the Aethervox.

As the ponies moved down into the valley, they sensed the temperature begin to drop more quickly than ever. Rainbow Dash could not help but comment on the bizarre weather patterns.

“This place is amazing,” she said, “but I still don't see how it can be this cold here and there not be any snow. I guess there are just no ponies to make any.”

Twilight looked at her. “Remember, the weather doesn't work the same here as it does back home.”

“I know,” said the pegasus. “I just guess I was expecting a place that used to be inhabited by ponies to be more like Equestria.”

“Whatever,” said Shining Armor. “Cold or no cold, snow or no snow, this is what we came to find. The sooner we get in there and find the Aethervox, the sooner we can head back to somewhere it's warm. Let's get moving.”

Within a few minutes, they all stood before a ponderous iron gate. The whole wall was intimidating, with literally dozens of tall turrets and ports sprouting cannons like those mounted on the colossal, metal guardian. and with sharp, dagger-like crenelations ringing its top. However, this gate, along with the two towers that rose to either side of it, was especially foreboding. Whatever color it had originally been, the accumulated ice had turned it pale blue-white, and its two sides bore images in deep relief of twin, armored alicorns, rearing high and with starbursts at the tips of their horns, as if they were about to unleash some powerful, destructive spell. Their cutie marks were mobius strips, looped in such a way as to render the symbol of infinity.

Shining Armor stepped up to this enormous portal and examined it.

“Frozen shut. If the mechanism still works, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy might be able to fly up to the tops and find a way down inside to open it. Spike will have to heat it up enough to melt the ice, though.”

“On our way,” said Rainbow Dash, pushing her wings out from under the thick, woolen cape that shielded them from the cold, and giving them a stretch. “I'll take the left tower. Fluttershy, you get the right.”

“Can't we stick together?” Rainbow Dash paid no attention to Fluttershy as she slapped her wings against the icy air and lifted herself upwards.

“Fluttershy, aren't you going,?” asked Twilight.

“Oh, alright... I guess.” She daintily spread her wings and hopped upward, using the momentum to help carry herself aloft.

Within a few seconds, both pegasi had disappeared over the tops of the towers.

“Rarity, we need some firewood,” said Twilight.

“Such a waste,” Rarity sighed, opening up one of her saddlebags to reveal a treasure trove of precious stones.

“Wait,” said Applejack. “All you brought was soap and jewels?”

Rarity turned up her nose defensively. “I also brought my cold weather clothes, didn't I?”

“Soap, jewels, and clothes,” said Applejack. “I ain't even surprised.”

Rarity tossed her mane haughtily and magically dumped a pile of gemstones out onto the ground near where the little dragon was standing. As she did so, Big Macintosh mumbled something about not needing the wagon for awhile, and unhitched himself from it.

Spike crunched down several clawfuls before Twilight cleared her throat, at which he giggled before stepping up to the gate.

“Now, don't touch it,” he said. "It's gonna get really hot.”

Spike cut loose a green flame on the gate, and held it there. Slowly, the ice began to melt away from its surface.

Fluttershy looked across to the other tower, and saw Rainbow Dash wave her towards the opposite corner of the roof on which she herself stood. Turning around, she noticed an opening in that corner. As she looked back, she was somewhat alarmed to see that her friend had disappeared from her sight, but quickly realized that she must have gone down a similar opening on her side.

Approaching it, she realized that there had once been a hatch there, but it was long gone. Only a quartet of hinges, rusty and sealed beneath the ice, remained to mark their existence. Even here, in this cold, time had rotted away the wooden shutters. Peering through the hole, she saw that a staircase led down into the darkened tower, and she reluctantly entered it.

As it spiraled downward, the darkness grew deeper and more oppressive, until she finally saw a faint light coming from what must surely be a doorway at the stairwell's bottom. A few steps further proved true her assumption, and she stepped into the dimly-lit room.

The light she had seen came through a pair of narrow slits that served as windows, and she was very thankful that in their dim light, she could see a large, iron mechanism on the wall closest to the gate itself. She would hopefully not have to go any deeper into this dark, foreboding place.

There was also a strangely-shaped ice formation evident in the corner near the big machine. It was larger than Fluttershy herself, and exceptionally bizarre in its form. For once, her curiosity overcame her fear, and she stepped up and placed her hoof on its cold, smooth surface. She squinted her eyes in the darkness in an effort to examine it, but it was of little use. The room was large, and the windows were far away. Later she would realize that it had probably been for the best that she had not been able to tell what it was on which she had just set her hoof. For had she known, it would likely have sent her into a panic.

Stepping away from the ice, she examined the mechanism. Two large chains that ran from a central hub into iron fittings on the wall. Both were covered in ice, but she could see that it had already begun to melt under the sympathetic heat of Spike's breath on the gate outside.

Fluttershy quickly surmised that the central hub to which the chains were connected was a simple spool onto which they must obviously wind. At first, she was afraid she would be unable to turn it, but she was surprised to find that by some feat of engineering, it was not beyond even her relatively small strength. It took a fairly stout hoof on the several iron posts that protruded from either side, but it gave under her efforts, and the chains began to wind, scraping and grinding as they went.

* * *

As the gate began to open, Spike ceased his fiery persuasions, and stepped back, shivering violently.

“Gimme some gems, Rarity. That ate up all my body heat.”

Despite her disdain for seeing such pretty jewels consumed in such a way, Rarity could bear their destruction more easily than she could the image of Spike shaking like a leaf in the frigid wind.

“Here you are,” she smiled, pushing the bag towards him again, as the gate continued to open.

Spike crunched down several good-sized clawfuls of the jewels, then allowed Rarity to shut the bag and put it back on her side.

Looking up, the six ponies were amazed to see what unfolded before them as the gate swung open. Though aged and frozen, the city's grandeur exceeded that of even Canterlot. Great, ice-blue domes, towers, and spires rose above the buildings, which were themselves faced with great stone stairways and impressive, fluted columns. There were elegant carvings of the same splendid, flowing types they had previously encountered, but here they were preserved beneath the same sheet of ice that covered everything else, thus showing a degree of detail that must have required incredible skill to render. What made this most astonishing was that they were everywhere. The entire city was a magnificent work of art that must have taken centuries to realize.

These carvings were not the only evidence of such mastery, either. All of the buildings' pediments bore lifelike carvings of equines in deep, detailed relief. There were scenes of battle, of discovery, of romance, and of death. Whole narratives played themselves out in a loop around any given structure. It seemed that a careful student could learn this culture's entire history and mythology through examination of their architecture, alone.

Most impressive was the sheer scale of everything they saw. Even the individual stairs of the stairways that led up to most of the building's doors seemed excessively large, and many of the carvings bore equine images that were as large as or larger than a real pony.
Amidst all this, looming to greet them, was a colossal statue of an armored alicorn, his flanks emblazoned with the same infinity symbol that had marked the two alicorns on the gate. He was every bit as large as the war machine had been, and was carved in such minute detail that things like the spiral of his horn and his individual teeth were still apparent, despite the presence of the same thin layer of ice that covered everything else.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, their task complete, flew down and lit beside their friends, and tucked their wings back into their thermal capes. All stood silent, their eyes overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they beheld, their minds grappling with the ages across which these frozen edifices spoke.

“That's so strange,” said Rainbow Dash, the first pony to break out of her awe and speak.

“I know,” said Twilight, “What a weird thing to see a ruin like this in such a state of perfect preservation.”

“No,” said Rainbow Dash, walking forward towards the statue, the rest of the ponies following her. “Well, yeah, that too, but what I mean is the ice. I chalked up the ice on the gate to frozen dew fall, but the humidity here is too low for that, now that I think about it. There's no rain or snow here, and even if there was, ice doesn't form this way, in a perfect, smooth sheet. It's like everything is coated in glass, or something.”

“No, it's ice," said Spike. "It melts."

“I know. It's so weird,” said Rainbow Dash, not even catching the intended facetiousness of Spike's comment. “There should be icicles or uneven spots or something, but everything – everything – is coated with a perfectly even layer. It's like it formed all at once, in an instant, and then never melted or got thicker or anything. It's impossible.”

“I had no idea you had such an academic take on this sort of thing, Rainbow,” said Twilight, amused.

“Hey, I'm good at my job,” said Rainbow Dash, “and my job is weather.”

“Once we find the Aethervox, you can have a little while to look around and see if you can figure something out about it, if you want,” said Shining Armor.

“No," said Rainbow Dash. "It's probably just some weird way things work outside of Equestria. Some kind of weird natural weather pattern, kind of like in the Everfree Forest, maybe.”

“Oh, my holy Sisters of the Great Lights,” Rarity half-whispered. The length of her oath and the fact that she did not scream it made it somehow all the more jarring. “Look.” She nodded across the large, central courtyard where the statue loomed.

Across the square, close to the nearest of the great stone buildings, there stood what at first appeared to be a group of odd-looking ice formations. Fluttershy in particular recognized them as being like the one she had seen in the gatehouse tower, but in the light she quickly realized that they were something far more horrible than mere blocks of ice. Her heart skipped a beat, and she alone remained silent amongst the gasps and curses that surrounded her.

“Ponies,” whispered Pinkie Pie, finally. “Frozen ponies.”

“Nope,” said Big Macintosh, darkly.

Applejack's voice was barely audible as she spoke what they all were coming in unison to realize.

“Frozen horses.”

Chapter 13: The Face of a Forgotten King

Chapter 13

The Face of a Forgotten King

As they moved down the city's broad main street, they saw more and more of the macabre, once-living statues. The horses – earth horses, unicorns, pegasi, stallions and mares, colts and fillies -- were all frozen where they had stood. Most were clad in elaborate garments that seemed suited to some type of festival, and which were totally inappropriate to these icy climes. Laurel wreaths crowned their heads. They were of every color, and had cutie marks, just like ponies. Their faces showed no signs of fear or knowledge of whatever doom had befallen them. It would most likely have been less unsettling if they had. Instead, they seemed mirthful and joyous, as if they had been in the throes of some great celebration. Just as they had for aeons, lovers shared kisses, fathers and mothers knelt to nuzzle their foals, dear friends lifted their cups high in salute of one another, and the old smiled with satisfaction as they looked on the mirth of the young. It seemed that in an instant all had been frozen, along with their entire city. It was completely surreal, a scene to fill the heart with wonder and fear.

The ponies continued onward toward the center of the city, proceeding towards a soaring palace they could see rising over even the tallest of the lesser structures in the distance, its top crowned with a spire that gleamed gold, even through its icy shell. As they walked, the crowds of frozen horses became thicker and thicker, growing first into groups of dozens, then into groups of hundreds, and finally into what must have been many thousands, so that they had to weave themselves amongst the grim, eternal revelry. Not even Pinkie Pie was irreverent enough to touch or disturb these long-dead ancestors of her own diminutive race, and not one pony uttered a word. Only the sound of their horseshoes on the pavement heralded their advance.

At last, their journey brought them to the outer wall of the palace grounds. The gates, which were similar to those of the city's outer wall, though somewhat smaller and more ornate, stood conveniently open. Passage through them seemed impossible nonetheless, since throngs of the frozen horses had been filing into and out of them at the moment of whatever catastrophe had left them in their current state.

Twilight Sparkle exhaled, long and slow, watching her breath dissipate into the cold, cold air. “We're going to have to wiggle our way through," she said, and she shuddered at her own words.

Rarity cringed. “Creepy~.” She trilled the final syllable through gritted teeth.

“Eeyup,” said Big Macintosh.

“I don't like this,” mumbled Fluttershy, slinking backwards, so that her haunches bumped into Rainbow Dash's chest.

“None of us do,” said Shining Armor, “but we came here to do a job.”

“It's okay, Fluttershy,” said Pinkie Pie, trying her best to sound cheerful, and yet somehow failing. “We'll get in there, find that thing, and be out of here in a jiffy. Just shut your eyes, and...”

Fluttershy shook her head rapidly, and began to hyperventilate. “I can't do it. I can't... touch... them.”

Rainbow Dash tapped her on the shoulder. “Just come with me. We can fly over and find a spot to wait for everypony else.” She smiled reassuringly, and Fluttershy began to calm.

“Okay,” she said, and stretched her wings.

The passage through the crowd was cold, claustrophobic, and unnerving, but each pony found paths by which to wedge and push him or herself through. Big Macintosh was of course the most impeded on account of his considerable mass. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, for all their own discomfort, had to stifle laughter at their friends' expressions and behavior as they squeezed themselves out of the frozen crowd.

Spike, who had apparently dismounted from Macintosh' back, arrived first, his small size lending itself to the quick discovery of acceptable passages.

His words confirmed what his expression had already imparted: “That. Was. Gross.”

Rarity arrived soon after, to a chorus of “Eww, eww, eww, eww, eww, eww!”

Applejack came next, merely sighing in relief.

Shining Armor emerged next, followed by his sister. He was only slightly shaken, but Twilight's right eye and the corner of her mouth twitched violently.

Big Macintosh finally managed to find one last parting in the crowd and squeeze himself through it. His countenance betrayed not a hint of emotion.

“Well,” he said “that was cold.”

“Yeah, are you guys gonna do that again?” Pinkie Pie was somehow standing next to Fluttershy.

Rainbow Dash cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “How long have you been there?”

“Since right after you two; I went around.” She pointed across the crowded courtyard to a smaller side gate, also open and mostly devoid of the statuesque traffic that clogged the main entrance.

Applejack smacked a hoof into her own forehead, and huffed, loudly. “At least we ain't doing that again on the way out.”

The ponies now took a moment to survey the courtyard. It apparently had been the center of the festival. There were ice-bound dancers and musicians, and all of the horses here seemed to have been intent on what the entertainers had been doing. Several horses wore garments that hinted at priesthood or some other office of considerable rank. One unfortunate pegasus mare, a dancer by the look of her costume, lay in several grizzly, frozen pieces strewn across the center of the circle, her severed head's face unmarred by agony or horror. She had most likely been in flight when the city was frozen at whatever terrible moment, so long ago. The impact of her fall had shattered her frozen body like glass. She was the only real indication thus far of violence, and it was violence she had not even been alive to experience. All of the ponies stared at her wordlessly for several seconds before Twilight noticed that Fluttershy was beginning to hyperventilate.

“We should get moving,” she said, and nudged Fluttershy with her shoulder so as to divert her attention from the disturbing sight.

As the group moved away from the shattered pegasus and towards the large palace, Twilight thought, It probably doesn't help that it's a pegasus.

The thought prompted her to look back over her shoulder and take one final look at the mangled, frozen mare. She was surprised to see that Rainbow Dash had not moved, but stood stone still, staring downward at something that lay on the ground before her.

“Definitely doesn't help that it's a pegasus,” she mumbled. “You guys go on, We'll be right along. I think this place is getting to some of us.”

Twilight galloped back and stood beside Rainbow Dash. The little pegasus was staring downward at a severed, frozen wing with feathers that were a shade of blue uncomfortably close to her own. She wasn't visibly upset, but she seemed totally unaware of Twilight's presence at her side.

“Rainbow?”

The pegasus did not reply.

“Rainbow Dash.”

No response.

“Are you okay?”

Rainbow Dash nodded slightly. By force of will, she finally tore her eyes away from the frozen wing and looked into Twilight's own. Something behind those pink-purple eyes made Twilight take a step back instinctively, but she was unable to identify quite what it was.

“Let's go,” said Rainbow Dash, her voice devoid of emotion, and she walked off in the direction of the group.

Only a minute's walk brought them to a stairway that led upward into the palace. They paused at its base, all of them reluctant to continue onward.

“Well, I guess we gotta go in there, whether any of us likes it, or not,” Applejack said, as she lifted her hoof onto one of the stone stairs, poignantly aware of how small it seemed.

“I wonder what it's like for Celestia to have to live in a world meant for ponies half her size,” mused Twilight in a detached voice, as she followed her friend.

The rest of the group followed, moving gingerly over the ice-coated stairs. Macintosh and Shining Armor quickly overtook the mares by virtue of their longer legs, so that they reached the top first, where they stood in silence and waited, staring forward at something the others could not see.

As they reached the peak of the stairway, the ponies all realized what it was that had so transfixed the two stallions: The door to the palace stood open, and something inside was casting a dim, golden glow.

“Can I just wait here?” asked Fluttershy, as Shining Armor took a step forward.

The unicorn turned his head towards her.

“Alone?”

Fluttershy followed him immediately, the first pony to do so.

Twilight, her curiosity overcoming her fear, ran ahead of the other ponies and was the first through the door.

“Twilie, wait up! We don't know what's in there!”

Shining Armor's plea went unheeded, until, that is, Twilight actually reached the door, and saw the scene which lay beyond. There, she stopped in her tracks, and surveyed her surroundings as the others all came to crowd around her.

There had been a great feast taking place. Important looking horses were everywhere, along with entertainers of all types. The hall was circular, forming the base of the great, golden spire that towered above, and surprisingly, that spire was totally hollow, so that looking up seemed to draw one's eyes into a deepening black void, though a great spiral of chandeliers that would once have lit it did seem to begin in its lower reaches. The circumference of the hall was hung with great, crimson tapestries, now frozen as solid as the horses themselves. Each one bore an infinity symbol woven in gold, and rendered as a pair of snakes, each one consuming the tail of the other, as in an Ouroboros. Everywhere, there were signs of decadence. Piles of food and even what appeared to be various kinds of narcotics sat frozen solid upon platters all over a huge, semicircular table that ran around three quarters of the hall. There were horses obviously passed out, horses frozen in acts of drug use, and horses surrounded by and even publicly receiving the services of courtesans. It was a scene of bizarre, macabre, debauchery.

As the ponies gathered around Twilight, they expressed varying degrees of amusement, horror, and disgust.

“This must have been one hell of a good time,” said Pinkie Pie.

“I agree,” said Rarity. “At least until they were all frozen solid, that is, but if you have to die, I suppose you could do worse than an instantaneous death while tripping balls and neck deep in chocolate.” She looked at a pale yellow unicorn mare who stood frozen nearby, clad in an elegant ensemble that marked her as probably having been an expensive courtesan. “And you stay fabulous forever.”

“Look,” said Shining Armor, nodding across the hall.

There, frozen like all the others, seated on two thrones, were a pair of alicorns. One was obviously a queen, white like Celestia, but with a solid green mane, thick with curl and pooling with her tail about her seated haunches. Her head hung low and her posture betrayed what appeared to be sadness, even amidst this unrestrained excess and mirth. The other, who was granite gray and had a stark white mane, they all recognized as the same alicorn depicted by the great statue at the gate. He sat high and proud, wings outstretched, gazing upon the source of the dim glow that illuminated the hall: the Aethervox.

The frozen alicorn king had it balanced on his extended right forehoof. It looked exactly as Celestia had described: a golden horse's heart, clad in bands of polished black iron which were themselves ornately engraved and studded with diamonds.

“Well, that's what we came here for, isn't it?” said Shining Armor, taking a deep breath as he stepped into the hall.

“Yes,” said Twilight. “Let's go get it.”

Moving amidst the strange scene filled the ponies with a sense of utmost dread and trepidation. Here the cold seemed greatest, and its intensity grew as they neared the thrones. Ascending the stairs that led to them, they found themselves shivering violently, even in their cold-weather clothing.

“Gods... I don't know how we'll be able to carry it, if it's what's causing this cold,” said Twilight.

She thought briefly that there was a very real risk she would be frozen solid if she laid a hoof on it.

“Ice is technically just a mineral, right?” she thought. “Not as if I've never been turned to stone, before.”

She took a deep breath, and reached up towards the heart. As her hoof neared it, she stopped, astonished by a most unexpected sensation.

“It's... warm?” Twilight's voice was soaked with surprise.

She laid her hoof on it, and at her touch, the golden heart throbbed with an audible thump. Twilight drew back her hoof in surprise, and in doing so, accidentally touched the extended foreleg of the frozen king.

She screamed in pain, jerking her hoof in close to her body, and her brother jumped to her side.

“Are you okay!?”

“I'm okay,” she said. “He's so cold! It felt like a burn!” She grunted and bit her lip, then wrung her hoof for a second before placing it back on the floor. “The cold is coming from him,” she said, nodding sharply at the king, “not the Aethervox!”

“Well, let's just take it, and go,” said Rainbow Dash, moving towards the golden, beating heart.

“Hold on!” Shining Armor extended a hoof out to stop Rainbow Dash. “We don't know what will happen when we move it. It could be what sustains this enchantment. If we remove it, they might all unfreeze!”

“And what?” asked Macintosh. “Start to stink? They're all dead.”

“This is powerful magic, said Shining Armor. They could turn into wraiths or even some kind of zombies or something!” Spike gulped as Shining Armor continued to speak. “At the very least, they might all somehow still be alive, and wonder where we came from, and why we're crashing their party.”

“Twilight, you promised me there was no such thing as zombie ponies,” said the little dragon, reaching up to tug at Twilight's mane.

She replied without even bothering to shake the frightened dragon's claw off of her hair. “One, I said nothing at all about zombie horses. Two, Nightmare Moon, Discord, Changelings, elder gods of entropy, – oh yeah, and the city we're all standing in; those weren't supposed to exist, either. Three, that's a golden, iron-clad, still-living equine heart, which, theoretically, should allow us to communicate with beings that could probably destroy us in ways our senses can't fully comprehend. In short, I've kind of backed off my position on the whole 'undead' thing, Spike.”

“Take it.”

Twilight sighed, then spoke again. “Not until we... Wait, who said that?”

“Take it, I beg of you,” came the same disembodied voice, raspy, weary, quiet, and above all pleading.

The ponies all looked around in alarm, unsure of who or what was speaking.

Shining Armor's horn glowed as he readied a defensive spell. “Who are you? Show yourself!”

“I was known to the world as Omnequus Rex,” came the voice, prompting all eyes to turn towards the king on the throne, whose haughty expression had somehow changed to one of crushing sorrow. As the voice continued, he remained frozen and unmoving, but all of the ponies were certain that he was its source. “But in the days before I took that name, I was called Windigo.”

“Windigo? Do you mean to tell me...” The voice continued before Twilight could finish her sentence.

“Please, take it. Take it from my sight... forever.” The king's sapphire-blue eyes glowed faintly for just a moment, and somehow, through the ice, itself, a huge tear emerged. Steam poured off of it as it rolled down his frozen cheek, but it never reached the floor. Instead, it became a single, tiny icicle which hung beneath his face.

“Please.”

“Al... Alright,” stuttered Twilight, but when she attempted to take the Aethervox, she found that her magic could not levitate it. Something about its very nature canceled even her most basic telekinesis. She gave it a push with her hoof, and found its weight impressive, which was unsurprising, given the fact that, despite its slow throbbing, it was solid gold, and the size of a large horse's heart -- larger even than Princess Celestia's, Twilight had already surmised.

“Big Mac, I can't carry it with magic," said the purple unicorn, "and it's really heavy.”

The big, red pony positioned himself just beside the king's hoof, and winced as his hide came into contact with the frozen alicorn's warmth-stealing corpse.

“Push it off onto my back,” he said. “Spike, hop up there and balance it as best as you can.”

Still afraid of some horror being unleashed by the disturbance of the artifact, Twilight took a deep breath and pushed, grunting loudly. Seeing that the heart remained unmoved, Rainbow Dash flew over and added her own impetus to the task. Slowly, the Aethervox half-slid, half-rolled off the frozen hoof upon which it had sat, unmoving, since time immemorial. Everypony held their breath, looking around in fear and horror, expecting some cataclysm as the iron-bound, golden heart landed heavily on the red stallion's back, prompting him to grunt under its weight.

Nothing happened. The ice did not melt. The horses did not unfreeze. No monster or wraith appeared to seek vengeance. There was only the faint sound of a breath being slowly released, as by one breathing his last. It might have been the wind moving through the open door of the palace, but they all knew better.

They left in silence, shutting both the door of the palace and the mighty gates of the city behind them as they went, for the doors of a tomb, after all, should remain shut. There for all time would that place remain, just as it had been at the moment when the legend of the Windigo was born. It would remain unchanged but for the absence of the Aethervox' light in the great hall, and for the presence of a single icicle, a tear upon the face of a forgotten king.

Chapter 14: To be Only a Part

Chapter 14

To be Only a Part

Weeks later, Princess Celestia stood alone in a crystalline cave, far below Canterlot Castle, staring at the Aethervox. It rested on a small pedestal which had formerly sat in a little-used vestibule of the castle, and had been home to a bust of herself for which she had never particularly cared. The golden heart throbbed rhythmically, emitting a low, gentle thump with each contraction, and its glow reflected and refracted in every imaginable way in the small chamber of this crystal cavern.

“I can't help but wonder from whom this heart was cut,” she said to no one but herself, “and how.”

She stared at it for awhile longer, thinking over the story she had been told of its recovery.

“I suppose the price has been paid for that bloodshed, but I still feel somehow profane in seeking to use a thing born of such darkness.”

“Then leave it to me,” came her sister's voice from behind her. “The dark and the profane are two areas of my utmost expertise, after all.” Luna stepped up beside Celestia and examined the glowing ball of throbbing, golden muscle.

“Oh, no,” Celestia said, shaking her head. “Nopony does anything with this thing until we're sure of how to make it do what we want, even if it takes a thousand years for us to understand how to make that happen.”

“Relax,” said Luna. “I'm only joking, and nopony knows it's here. We can feel free to poke, prod, and experiment to our hearts' content until we figure out the magic words.”

“Magic words?” Celestia raised an eyebrow.

“Still joking,” said Luna, “but we could always try 'please.'”

At this, Celestia snickered. “What time is it, anyway,” she said.

“Four in the afternoon,” Luna replied. “I just woke up.”

Celestia then noticed a faint glow at the tip of Luna's horn, and a steaming cup of coffee levitating near her head.. It moved in front of Luna's face, then tipped upward, allowing her to take a sip.

Celestia sighed. “Sleep well?”

“No,” Luna growled.

Celestia snorted. “We're both going to go insane if we don't figure out how this thing works.”

“Oh, you might,” said Luna, an edge of wicked humor in her voice. “I'm used to nightmares.”

“So,” said Celestia, “what do we try first?”

“Well, Twilight Sparkle said magic didn't affect it, right?”

“Right.” Celestia sucked air through her teeth as she thought. “It must be activated by some mundane means.”

Luna took another sip of coffee. “Seriously... Have you tried talking to it?”

Celestia huffed in exasperation. “Would you just stop suggesting that?” She rolled her eyes and looked at Luna. “What would I even say?”

“I don't know.” Luna crossed her eyes and blabbered like a clown as she continued speaking. “Oh, mysterious Aethervox, heart of a slain god, cast my voice unto the heavens that I may...” The heart began to beat rapidly, glowing noticeably brighter as it did so, and Luna immediately stopped speaking. The Aethervox quickly settled back to its previous state.

Celestia blinked at the glowing artifact.

“Hmm.”

* * *

Applejack and Pinkie Pie were laying in the castle garden, watching the sunset.

“This has been a long, weird trip,” said Applejack.

“You want to go find a bar?” Pinkie Pie's suggestion seemed unusually half-hearted, but not glum.

“Nah.”

“Yeah, me neither. I'm actually enjoying the quiet, for once, as crazy as things have been.”

“I do have a bottle of firewater, though,” said Applejack, reaching under her hat to produce a small bottle of bourbon she had apparently procured at some point earlier in the day.

“How do you keep that up there, anyway?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie, I seen you pull a goddamned cannon out of your ass before, and you're asking me how I hide a bottle of whiskey under my hat?” Applejack turned to Pinkie Pie, who had somehow produced a pair of liquor glasses from out of nowhere. “See what I mean?” She poured some whiskey into each glass, and slipped the bottle back under her hat.

“Point taken,” said Pinkie.

Rarity's voice startled both of the earth ponies. “You know, if the sun hasn't completely set, it's still technically day drinking.”

Applejack and Pinkie turned to see Rarity wearing a yellow, floral-pattern dress with a matching hat.

“That's new,” said Pinkie, as she raised her glass to her lips. She coughed twice as it came away, and cleared her throat.

“Well, I don't get to come to Canterlot every day, you know.” Rarity's voice held its customary, haughty edge. “No reason to miss the opportunity to do some shopping.”

“Long as you don't make me go with you,” said Applejack, sipping her bourbon.

“Darling, you look absolutely ravishing in a nice evening dress, and you know it.” Rarity, batted her eyes and grinned at Applejack as she daintily placed herself on the grass beside her.

Applejack chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I do. Whiskey?” She offered Rarity her glass.

“Oh thank you.” The unicorn took a swig, and her face scrunched up into an expression of pure rancor. “How do you drink this awful stuff?”

Applejack smirked. “I think about shopping.”

The rustling of hooves in the grass turned the trio's eyes rearward, and they saw Twilight and Fluttershy moving to join them.

“Hey, gang!” Twilight's voice sounded more cheerful than it had since before they had first arrived in Canterlot months ago.

“Howdy,” said Applejack. “Where's RD?”

“There's a Wonderbolts derby,” said Fluttershy. “Where do you think she is?”

“On the front row,” said Pinkie Pie.

“Yep,” said Twilight, “and Spike's right beside her. I hope. She said she'd keep him out of trouble, but...”

“Ah-ah,” said Applejack. She drained the last of the whiskey, then removed the bottle once again from her hat. She refilled the glass as she spoke. “If you're gonna worry, do me a favor and go do it somewhere else. This just ain't the time or the place.”

She put the bottle away, and looked at Pinkie Pie. “Ain't it something else? Twi's got the Archives, Rarity's got the boutiques, Fluttershy's got the garden here, and Rainbow Dash is at a Wonderbolts show. You and me better find some way to have a good time, Pinkie, or this whole thing's just a bunch of bad dreams, cold weather, long walks, and dead cities.” She took a sip. “And let's not forget being ripped to shreds and having to be put back together.” She drank again. “That was somethin' special in its own right.”

“Are you not having a good time, Applejack?” Pinkie Pie asked teasingly. “I am.”

“I got to put some hoof into Nightmare Moon, I got a long vacation from the farm, and I seen things ain't nopony else ever seen,” replied the orange pony, taking a sip of her liquor. “I reckon I am having a good time.” She sighed. “But it'll be applebuck season soon, and they'll need me back home.”

“I guess we can all go home whenever we want,” said Twilight. “Princess Celestia and Princess Luna said they'd take care of the situation from here. There's no use in us staying here and worrying ourselves sick.”

“I like Canterlot,” said Fluttershy. “but it's been so long... I'm ready to go home, too. I really miss Angel Bunny and all the other animals. Not to mention all my pony friends, of course.”

“Yeah,” said Twilight. “I miss everypony back home, too.” She smiled.

"Home... It seems so natural to call Ponyville home, now."

Just then, the sun finally sank beneath the horizon. Pinkie Pie jumped up excitedly, and turned around.

“Let's watch Princess Luna raise the moon!”

All the ponies turned, and as if on cue, the moon rose into the sky, Princess Luna silhouetted against its silver form. She must have noticed the group, because she immediately flew in their direction.

“Hey, here she comes!” Pinkie Pie hopped up and down as she heralded the Princess' approach.

Luna dropped in front of the group, and dusted herself off.

“You know, I don't actually have to do it that way. I just like to remind all the little foals that I'm out there. You should see how they run and hide if I go out in the daytime. It's adorable.”

“Well, you are kinda scary when you're mad,” said Pinkie Pie.

“Then don't make me mad.” Luna smiled. “We think we figured out how the Aethervox works.”

“Wow! How did you figure it out so fast?” asked Twilight.

Luna scratched the back of her neck with her forehoof. “Lucky break... Anyway, we've decided that there's no point in putting off the inevitable. We're going to use it tonight.”

“Aw, hell,” said Applejack, draining the last of her whiskey.

“What are you going to do,” asked Twilight.

“We're simply going to try and ask Cenasolus why he, she, or it does the things he, she, or it does. We must know this in order to understand how we can either placate or defeat this being.”

“And if it won't speak to us?” Twilight held her breath.

“We use the Aethervox as a channel through which to unleash every ounce of magical energy we can muster against it. All of Celestia's power, mine, the Elements of Harmony, and the magic of every powerful unicorn in Canterlot. We've already sent for them all.”

“Where is this going to happen?” asked Twilight.

Luna looked around. “Well, here. Right here in Canterlot, I mean; not here, specficially. We considered doing it elsewhere, but we have to think about the whole world, here – not just Canterlot. The caverns beneath the palace are some of the deepest in Equestria. Hopefully, they will shield the planet from whatever... catastrophe... our actions may release.'

“As for all of you, Celestia is waiting in Canterlot Tower. Go get the elements and meet back here as quickly as you can. She and I will lead you to where we have the Aethervox hidden. We mean to get started within the hour.”

“Aw, double hell,” said Applejack, producing once more her bottle of whiskey, and this time taking a pull directly from its spout.

At that moment Rainbow Dash landed amidst the group. She was wearing a Spitfire T-shirt with Spitfire's signature scrawled onto it near the image of her face. Spike was seated on her back, and was holding a tiny figurine of some member of the Wonderbolts. Rainbow Dash was beaming, as was to be expected.

“You guys! It was amazing,” she said. There were a couple of seconds of awkward silence. “Why does everypony look so... nervous?”

* * *

The descent into the crystal caverns took less time than the ponies had expected. Apparently, Celestia had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to have a large, complex system of elevators and bridges installed since the caverns were rediscovered.

Now, every single pony stood in a wide circle around the Aethervox. All were weak-kneed and sweaty, with one notable exception: Applejack's whiskey buzz – if it could indeed still be considered merely a “buzz” -- had her completely relaxed.

In addition to Twilight and her friends, Shining Armor and Cadance were both present, along with half a dozen unicorns of various ages, several of whom had been among Twilight's instructors in her advanced classes.

Princess Celestia stepped into the center of the circle, and began to slowly pace around its inner circumference as she addressed the group.

“We do not know what will happen when speak to this being. Many of you have only just today even been made aware of its existence and of the threat which it poses. After some deliberation, Luna and I have decided that the only right course of action is to confront it directly, as we would any potential foe, in an effort to seek a peaceful solution. Failing that, we mean to unleash upon it all the mightiest magic we have in our arsenal – in other words, all of you. Should that become necessary, hold nothing back.

“We believe that we can reach Cenasolus through the Aethervox because his attentions are already fixed on our world. Under normal circumstances, the Aethervox does not respond to magical stimulation, but we feel that this is most likely because it is redirecting it to a distant point in the cosmos, once occupied by whatever being it was last used to reach. In other words, if you cast your spells at the Aethervox, they should hit Cenasolus, assuming we have successfully managed to contact it, but such measures should not be necessary. It is our belief that we should be able to solve this diplomatically.”

Luna snorted a laugh. “Our belief or your hope? The last time I saw you try diplomacy, you were trying it on me. I seem to recall that it didn't go... swimmingly.”

Several ponies standing in the circle snickered, and Celestia sighed heavily.

“There is a notable difference, here, sister,” said Celestia, cuttingly “in that I have no particular qualms about responding in kind should this enemy attempt to destroy me. With you, circumstances were... muddled. Still, I am confident a bloodless solution can be found.”

“Right, right,” said Luna. “In other words, everypony point your horns at the big, gold heart, focus carefully, and get ready to unleash holy hell.”

Celestia slapped her face with a hoof. “You just can't resist, can you?”

“Can," grinned Luna. "Don't want to.”

Applejack raised a hoof.

“Yes, Applejack,” said Celestia.

“What if you ain't... ya know... got a horn?”

Celestia glanced left and right, and pursed her lips in thought. “You know what? Just watch, and be ready.”

“Can do,” said Applejack.

“Now, Luna,” said Celestia, “would you like to blabber at it like a nincompoop, again, or should I be the one to address the ageless god of entropy?”

Several ponies blinked and cocked their heads in confusion.

“Oh, you get this one, sister,” said Luna. “You love to hear yourself talk.”

Celestia let out a low, irritable huff.

Luna smiled. “You know I love you, right?”

“I know,” said Celestia. “Believe me, I know.” She turned to the Aethervox.

As she spoke, the heart began to throb rapidly and loudly, and to glow more and more brightly. “Oh, mysterious Aethervox, heart of a slain god, cast my voice unto the heavens that I may address the one who seeks the life of this world, by whatever name that power may be known to itself.”

The response was immediate, and everypony there heard it. It was not thunderously loud. It was not demonic or horrifying. It was simply a voice, androgynous and dispassionate. It spoke in the strange language that had marked Rarity's episode in the castle, but somehow, the ponies' minds all perceived the words as if they were spoken in their own tongue.

“Name? I do not understand this word.”

Celestia paused for a moment, and everypony tensed in anticipation of what would happen. Finally, she spoke again.

“A name is what you are called by others.”

“Then should it not be given to me by others, as well?”

“Very well,” said Celestia. “We have called you Cenasolus. It is a word my father created to name you, before you consumed his soul. It means 'Sun Eater.'”
“Then as Cenasolus shall I be known by others, though others I have not known.”

Celestia's voice took on mild confusion as she spoke to the voice emitting from the glowing, throbbing heart. “I don't think I understand you.”

“All that there is becomes me, so that I know only myself. Indeed, I am unsure of what... you... are. That is the word when one speaks to another, is it not? 'You?'”

Celestia's mouth hung slightly open. “Do you mean to tell me that we are the first other beings you have known?”

“Yes,” responded the voice. “All that I consume is in me, but I do not know it or have communion with it, for there is no need to commune with that which is in myself. That is why I consume.”

“But you consumed our father,” said Celestia. “My sister's and mine! He gave himself up to you to save us from your hunger! Surely you must remember him!”

“I remember no other. I remember nothing. I do not distinguish between... others. There is only all that is not me, and all that is me, and all that is not me must become me, so that all may be known to me. As you have said, you yourselves are the first 'others' I have ever known. How is it that you have come to have communion with me in this way?”

“It is...” Celestia paused for several moments. “Through a power that we ourselves do not understand.” She paused again, but the voice did not respond. Finally, she spoke once more.

“Do you mean to tell me, that you have known nothing but yourself for all of time?”

“For all of time and for all of many times before this time.”

“Times before this time? What do you mean?” asked Celestia.

“Many times have I consumed. All becomes me, then I become it, then it becomes me, again. I know nothing else.”

Now, Luna spoke up, “How... many times has this happened?”

“Many more than many.”

“What is the number?” Luna asked insistently.

“There is no number.”

“You have been alone...” Luna paused. “I mean, without others... forever?”

“I have been as I am.”

“Is this why you consume?” asked Celestia.

“As I have said, I consume because I must be one.”

“What can it mean to you to be one," asked Luna, "if there are no others?”

“It is to be me, the one you call Cenasolus.”

Neither Celestia, Luna, nor anypony in the circle could think of a way to respond to this. After several seconds, the voice spoke again, and strangely there seemed to be a tremor in it, as of one resisting the urge to weep.

“But now that I know there are others, I feel... strange.”

Celestia responded, “Strange in what way?”

“I do not know this feeling. I cannot explain it.”

Once again, all in the circle fell silent. After some time, Luna spoke.

“You... are lonely?” asked Luna.

“What is this word?”

“It means what you have said," Celestia replied. "That you know that you are alone."

"And," added Luna, after a moment, "that you do not want to be alone."

“No,” said the voice, and here it paused for a moment before continuing. “I do not want to be alone.”

Twilight Sparkle suddenly spoke. “Well, you're not alone, now. You're here with us, aren't you?”

“I am not there with you. I am where I have always been, within a great gulf born of myself. I do not understand how it is that you have come to speak to me, for within this gulf have I ever been one... I have ever been... alone.”

Fluttershy stepped forward, her jaw slightly agape, and spoke, her words stunningly calm.

“That's horrible.”

“What is this word, 'horrible?'” asked the voice.

“Horrible? Horrible is...” Fluttershy struggled for a way to define the word. “It's horrible to be alone forever. It's horrible to never know anyone or anything but yourself, even if you know exactly who you are. No. That makes it worse, I think, because that would only make you feel more lonely. It's horrible to be lonely. It's horrible to never have a friend.”

There was a long silence. The aethervox continued to glow and thump. Finally, the voice returned, once more.

“What is a 'friend?'”

Twilight Sparkle took off the tiara that bore the element of magic. Then, she stepped forward into the circle.

“A friend is another... with whom you are also one.”

“How is this possible, to be one, and to be another?”

Twilight Sparkle bit her lower lip, then spoke carefully, choosing her words with slow, meticulous consideration. “I don't have an answer for that question, but if you want to find one, I promise I will help you search for it.”

“So will I,” said Pinkie Pie.

“And me,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Me too,” said Rarity.

“I'm right there with you,” said Applejack.

“And I'll help you, too,” said Fluttershy.

“And so will we,” said Celestia, nodding to Luna, who also nodded in agreement.

“All of us will,” said Cadance, gesturing to the circle.

The voice spoke again, this time in a whisper. “Then may all be one if it will be one, but I will be only a part of it.”

The Aethervox glowed brightly, and the heart within the iron bands began to shrink, glowing ever more brightly as it did so. The iron bands, now far too large to confine the heart, fell away from it, and clanged to the ground. Every single pony, even Celestia, was compelled to look away as the light grew more and more intense, flickering and coruscating over the crystalline chamber so that its wild intensity seemed to consume everything in sight. At last there was a great flash, totally absent of heat, and the room went almost totally dark, devoid now of the Aethervox' light.

Several small lights began to glow around the chamber, each one at the tip of some unicorn's horn. Finally, a significantly larger and more powerful one, cast by Princess Celestia, shone outward from the tip of her horn then levitated upward from it, casting a warm glow over the room.

Then, the big, white alicorn saw something that compelled her to use a word she rarely spoke.

“Wow.” It was barely a whisper.

Upon the pedestal, curled up inside one of the iron bands, there lay a tiny, gold-colored earth pony foal. Upset by the light, it began to bawl like any newborn. Celestia stepped up and gently touched the tiny pony's head with the side of her hoof. It seemed to be calmed by her touch, and fell almost immediately to sleep.

Luna stepped forward to stand beside her sister, and examined the foal. There was a hint of awe in her voice as she spoke.

“Is this... Cenasolus?”

“No,” whispered Celestia. “Well, yes, I think," she said more loudly, "but that's a terrible name. I think we should call him something else.”

Fluttershy stepped up to the pedestal where the sleeping foal lay, and gazed at the tiny pony with a mixture of feelings so complicated that she could not even begin to understand them.

“Shimmershine,” she said. “That's a good name for a colt, isn't it?”

Twilight Sparkle joined her in looking at the foal, and placed a hoof on her shoulder.

“I think it is, Fluttershy.” She looked up at Princess Celestia. “Princess?”

“You know,” said the white alicorn, “I think that's perfect.”

Rainbow Dash was next to approach the sleeping infant.

“Why an earth pony?” she asked.

“Why not?” asked Applejack, mildly perturbed.

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Pinkie Pie jumped into the middle of the group, and made a time-out signal with her hooves.

“Okay, everypony, we need somepony to get this kid somewhere safe, soft, and warm, preferably with a bottle, right now.”

“Pinkie Pie, how... strangely appropriate of you,” said Twilight Sparkle. “You're exactly right.”

“Of course I'm right,” said Pinkie Pie. “As long as he's here, we can't have a party!”

* * *

Celestia sat in the castle infirmary, staring at the sleeping foal that Fluttershy had named Shimmershine. He lay in a tiny crib that had been hastily procured from storage. Celestia had meant to give it as a gift to Shining Armor and Cadance, some day. A mobile made in a model of the solar system hung above it, and Celestia was slowly spinning it by way of her telekinesis. When she released it, It began to slowly rotate in the opposite direction, and a music box inside its base played a bittersweet, lilting tune. Celestia recognized it as the same lullaby her parents had sung to her and Luna the night their father had died.

Strange, the things that endured the ages.

In the morning, she would see to finding Shimmershine appropriate adoptive parents who would allow her to keep a close watch on him, but for the time being this was the best, safest place he could be. There was a nurse there as well, an orange unicorn mare who slept nearby on a cot. She was charged with taking care of anything the foal should he cry out in the night, and Celestia had total confidence in her ability. All the same, she couldn't bring herself to leave the room.

A shadow still loomed in her mind and heart.

“There you are,” came Luna's voice. “You're missing a fantastic party. That Pinkie Pie has a real talent for debauchery.”

“Trust me,” chuckled Celestia, turning her head. “I know.”

“What are you doing here?” asked Luna. “The baby will be fine.”

Luna came and sat next to her sister, but Celestia didn't say a word.

“What's troubling you?” Luna finally asked.

Celestia smiled and dropped her head. Her sister could always tell when something weighed heavy on her.

“Luna, the Aethervox was the heart of a murdered god. It could grant anypony the ability to speak to beings of terrible, terrible power...” Celestia's words trailed off.

“And that heart beats inside Shimmershine's tiny chest,” said Luna, affirmatively.

“Exactly,” replied Celestia. “So you've thought of that, too, I see? When did you grow up?”

“Somewhere between trying to kill you, trying to kill myself, having myself try to kill me, and then deciding to not kill myself in return. Weren't you paying attention?”

“Off and on,” whispered Celestia.

“I've thought of many other things, too,” said Luna. “What if he's immortal? What if he somehow remembers who and what he is, one day? What if others find out what he is, and come after him meaning to misuse whatever power he may or may not have?”

Celestia lifted her head. “What if he doesn't remember who or what he is?” she asked. “What if he does have some terrible power, and is unable to control it? What if he speaks into the heavens and calls down upon our world a horror greater even than the thing he once was?”

“What if he grows up to be an ordinary earth pony, and lives happily ever after?” asked Luna.

“Now there,” said Celestia, “is a question I had not even considered.” She looked down at the sleeping colt. A tired little smile spread across her lips, and a tear rolled off her cheek.

Luna wanted to hug her sister; to tell her that everything would be alright. She wanted to lay her face alongside Celestia's, and let her sister feel the tickle of her own fur on her cheek the way she'd so often done when they were fillies.

But they were not fillies, and those days were in a long distant past. They had been that kind of family once, but they were not longer. They could not be again.

“Come with me,” Luna finally said, her voice calm and low. “You're missing the party.”

With that, she turned, and walked through the door, leaving it open behind her.

Celestia took one last look at the sleeping foal.

"Ever after is such a long time," she said.

Then, she stood, and followed her sister out the door, shutting it gently behind her.

finem

Author's Notes:

I hope you enjoyed this alternate take on Equestria.

For a deeper look into this continuity, check out the six one-shots that focus on the mane six of this continuity:

"Well and Good"
"Be Like You"
"What Pinkie Wants"
"Love and Unicorns"
"Let the Wind Lie Still"
"Benzedrine and Broken Dreams."

There is also a Sequel, "Ghosts of Gods," which I consider to be an even better book than this one, though it was rather poorly received.

Whether you delve any deeper into this continuity or any of my other stories, thanks for reading "The Sun Eater."

Mannulus

Author's Notes

Let me begin by just thanking Huussii of Deviantart once more for allowing me to use "Celestial Nightmare" for this fanfic's accompanying image.

Now, on to my notes.

This fanfiction was written over the course of about six months, from February to October of 2012. I wrote this piece for two primary reasons:

1) I wanted to practice for later works to be written in a world and with characters of my own creation.
2) I wanted to see what would happen if I wrote MLP:FiM fanfiction while reading the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft.

I consider both of these goals to have been resoundingly accomplished.

It could be that I never write another piece of MLP fanfiction, and if I do not, it's not because I have anything against the community, or because I am dissatisfied with this piece. On the contrary, without this community, I would not have considered the project worthwhile, and since I am, in fact, so pleased with it, that would have been a terrible thing. I simply wish to focus on original writing projects and on my music.

When writing this work, I did not think of the characters as being physically on-model to the show. Shape-wise, they were as they are seen in the cartoon show, but in my mind, they were seen in a much more painterly style, and were far more realistically shaded and detailed. This allowed me to put some distance between what I was writing and the MLP:FiM that I have come to know and love.

Details like Twilight Sparkle being a chain smoker, Rarity's drug use, etc. were added partly for comedy, but also partly as story elements, and as a natural progression of the darkening of the world. In context, I think they enhance and legitimize the characters beyond their sometimes "kiddy" show personae.

Twilight Sparkle, for instance, seemed like a very thin character in my earliest drafts, but as soon as I added the detail of her being bent over books compulsively flicking at a cigarette, she really came alive for me. It was the same with the adult language. The first draft seemed incredibly sterile up until the point where Luna says "Oh Shit." I could think of nothing else for her to say, so I just said "To hell with it, let's have her cuss; it's just a fanfic." As soon as I made that decision, everything opened up, and I began to darken things by shades until I ended up with the product you have here.

Some will ask why I didn't really augur in for the comedy of some of these things, like having Twilight smoke "Equestrian Spirits," or some such. The short version is that I just felt that if I went that route, I'd just be making what was supposed to be a character element into a joke.

"Hardy har har, Twilight Sparkle's a hipster." We've all heard that joke, and it's just not that funny, anymore.

I'm putting all this in my notes simply to reinforce the fact that, even if something seems really extreme, nothing that any character says or does in this fanfic was added merely for "shits and giggles." I legitimately approached each character's dialogue and decision-making processes from as near a mindset to their own as I could find within myself. As a result, there are moments when a character may do something that seems almost anticlimactic. Sometimes, in real life, that's just what happens, and it was my goal here to create a fantasy-horror version of Equestria that was also a bridge to reality.

I hope you enjoy this work of fiction, and I hope that if I ever do get around to writing my original works, you'll come looking for them as well.

Thanks,

Mannulus