//------------------------------// // 19. Beyond Life and Death // Story: Planet Hell: The Redemption of Harmony // by solocitizen //------------------------------// Planet Hell Solocitizen 19. Beyond Life and Death Present Day Before Thunder Gale lay a pale imitation of a town at the edge of a leafless forest. There were no ponies chattering about or the clippity-clop of hooves on the cobblestone streets, and not a single hologram, lamp, or candle flickered in any of the windows. The lights he had followed through the forest had vanished like will-o’-the-wisps with the retreating of the night. When he cantered up to the window of a cottage at the edge of town, he saw nothing inside other than wooden floors and support beams. He thought of flying, but the sky was low and oppressive, so he thought better of it. “Alright, Breeze, I’m finally here.” Thunder Gale shivered and checked the clock embedded in the decaying trunk of a cherry tree; he still had thirteen minutes left. When he took the first step onto the cobblestone, he put his hoof down in something cold and wet. It stained his coat and fetlocks brown and left a sticky residue. He sniffed his hoof and tested it on his tongue. “Chocolate milk?” Thunder Gale raised an eyebrow. There were entire puddles of the stuff filling in the potholes and dips in the roads leading to and throughout the town. “Hey, Thunder, wait up!” He turned and spotted the blue pegasus galloping up behind him, and a mare with a soft pink mane followed on her tail. At once he assumed, by the sway and color of her mane, that the blue pegasus’s companion was Breeze Heart and dashed up to meet them. Then he got a clearer view of her; she was not. She had the same mane color and wore it in the same style, and even had a face as gentle and soft as Breeze Heart’s that she, too, kept half-hidden behind her mane. But she was cream colored, not pink, and there were butterflies on her flank. “Man, I’m glad we caught up with you,” the blue pegasus said. “It looks you were right about to go charging in there without backup.” Thunder Gale stared at the yellow mare beside her confused. The more he stared, the more he expected to see Breeze, and that frightened him. “What, you didn’t think I’d let you go in there on your own, did you?” The blue pegasus closed her eyes and held a hoof up to her chest. “As amazing as I am, I was completely helpless against Discord on my own the last time he was running amok, but my friends and I were able to handle him together as a team. Yeah, it was pretty epic.” “Who are you?” Thunder Gale pointed right at the yellow mare and kept on her even as she shrunk behind her friend. “Oh.” The blue pegasus pushed her friend out from behind her. “Fluttershy, this is Thunder Gale. Thunder, this is Fluttershy.” “Have we met before?” he asked. “We have, sort of, not like this though,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sorry if this is a bit, um, awkward for you.” “Confusing is more like it,” he said. “And I don’t know why.” The blue pegasus glanced over at his bewildered face, and over to Fluttershy, and then stepped between the two. “Why don’t we go pay Discord a visit and get Breeze Heart back.” Thunder Gale nodded, and cantered up to the street and led them into the town. As they delved deeper into it, his gut twisted over on him. The town, it stirred up nostalgia in him, and for a second as he cut across Manestreet he even recognized some of the stores. He stopped right in front of a grayed out store without a name or sign and turned to his companions and asked, “This place sold Quills and Sofas, didn’t it?” They both looked at him blankly. “Come on, throw me a bone here!” He stomped a hoof. “I’ve been here before, and I’ll prove it. Watch, I know where there’s a bakery. It’s just around this corner!” He galloped off around the intersection of Manestreet and 3rd avenue, but when he got around that corner, right where he knew the bakery would be, there was nothing more a vacant lot. Fluttershy and the blue pegasus cantered up to him a second or two later. “I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s supposed to be a bakery here! It was colorful and it had a name. Something about squares or—damn it! Why can’t I remember what it was called? It was important. Somepony important lived here!” “The bakery you’re thinking of was called Sugarcube Corner and it was never here,” Fluttershy said. “This place isn’t what it seems. Your feelings aren’t wrong, in fact I’d probably be more worried if you hadn’t recognized anything at all.” Thunder Gale sat down and gazed into the vacant lot. “Let’s keep looking, how does that sound? Don’t let him get to you.” Fluttershy put a hoof on his shoulder. “Discord is just trying to play off our insecurities, that’s all.” “Actually, I wasn’t intending to do anything of the kind.” Discord’s voice echoed up the street and swept over them. Just two blocks down the street Discord sat at the head of a long table furnished with a white tablecloth and candles, and plates of food piled onto every inch of free space. Discord himself wasn’t the devil Thunder Gale had anticipated, but instead he wore the gold crown and regalia of an alicorn, and Princess Celestia’s face. His eyes remained yellow and crooked as ever and, despite his latest transformation, he couldn’t hide the malice in his smirk. Thunder Gale just stood there for a time looking on at him. “Breeze, he wasn’t here when we got here, was he?” Thunder whispered to Fluttershy. “I think I would have noticed if he was there before, right? I’m not losing it am I?” From down the block Discord tossed his head to the side and batted those yellow eyes at him. “Why how thoughtless of me, please, pull up a seat.” Discord raised his hoof and revealed a claw at the end of it. He put two talons together, snapped, and on that command the distance between them melted away. “Isn’t that better? Now the three of us can talk like civilized spirits.” There were hay fries, dandelion rolls, sugarcubes, cotton candy swirls, and entire pitcher full of chocolate milk, but all of the food on the table smelled of burning hair and changeling flesh. One dish, a vat of bubbling hot sauce, reeked of blood. Thunder Gale’s knees quivered and he hyperventilated. He felt his body back in the chair turn colder. “Discord, you big jerk!” The blue pegasus leapt into the air and hovered, hooves on her hips. “Let Breeze Heart go and change back to your own stupid mug instead of stealing somepony else’s!” “And what do you plan on doing about it, Rainbow Crash?” “That does it!” She kicked and boxed in the air. “Get off your rump and put them up! You, me, let’s go! Marquess of Queensbury rules!” “As tempting as that sounds I’m far more interested in what the current iteration has to say.” He snapped his claws again, and the blue pegasus vanished in the flash of light. “I’m sorry, but she was so passé.” He turned the entirety of his attention right on Thunder Gale. “Now, have a seat at my table.” He swallowed and tensed up as if to run, but before he acted on it, Fluttershy trotted up next to him with a smile as warm and as gentle as any of Breeze’s, and nudged him forward. He took a deep breath, fell into the calm the Officer Academy disciplined into him, and stepped forward. “I’m not here to fight you, Discord,” he said. “All I want is Breeze. I don’t think I can ever be happy until I know that she’s safe. I’d be content even if she never takes me back, just as long as she’s free. I believe you care about her too, so I’m asking you: please let her go.” As he marched forward to press Discord further, he held up his hoof to stop him and gestured at the chair at the far end. “That’s an order, Thunder Gale,” he said. “Be a good soldier and obey.” “She’s not happy, Discord.” He didn’t know why, but he carried out the order and planted himself down in the chair at the opposite end of the table. “Surely you can see that just as easily as I can.” In truth, Thunder Gale had no plan, other than a vague intuition that somewhere he had the means to turn the situation around. For now, he’d keep Discord talking. His hind hoof tapped against the leg of his chair. “I’ll concede the point that she might not be happy now, but I’ll make her happy in due time. I’m going to rebuild Equestria just the way it was back in the good old days. Speaking of which I have a proposal for you: I want you to live in Ponyville, with myself and Breeze Heart.” He leaned forward and the leather on his throne squealed. “I’ve tried recreating it the best I can but as much as it pains me to admit, it would never be complete without its cast of characters. And my offer from before, it still stands. You can have your father back, and your life in the place exactly as it was, for the mere price of playing along.” Out of the corner of his eyes, Thunder Gale noticed the hot sauce. The swirls forming and breaking across its surface mirrored some of the best moments of his life: the moment his father showed him the map inside his office, the countless times Hill Born and himself goaded Spring into playing tag with them, and his father sitting next to him under the glow of the autumn moon at their villa on Hellas. Thunder Gale furrowed his eyebrows and sat up to stare into the hot-sauce. The longer he did, the more the memory of that endless autumn at their villa sharpened. He could smell the scent of the pines and roasting marshmallows. His father’s voice rang clear and confident, as he told him about philosophy and the pegasus tribe. Then Fluttershy gripped his hoof, and held him until he looked her in the eye. When he glanced back at the vat of hot sauce, the image was gone. That memory, it wasn’t real. Blood wheezed from the vat, not the scent of pines and marshmallows. “You’re going to try to unite the tribes,” Thunder Gale said to Discord, “raise Equestria up from the depths of the ocean, and recreate Ponyville exactly as it was before so you can have things the way they were before? What will you do if they say no? Snap your claws together and make them?” “Why of course, it’d be the only responsible thing to do. It’d be the only way to bring back Harmony.” “Um, Discord, what you’re describing isn’t what we had in Equestria.” Fluttershy, who had remained silent and at Thunder Gale’s side until then, marched up to Discord and drew all eyes and ears on her. “It’s chaos.” Just then, Thunder Gale noticed Urizen’s clock suspended in the mound of cotton candy in front of him. It read 00:06:05 and counted down. For a long time—twenty-five whole seconds—Discord stared vacantly past his table of food, past Thunder Gale, and past the town he had fabricated. “No, I’m reformed,” he said at last. “What we will have is order. One nation. One law. One rule. And one set of values to bind us together. I am the Spirit of Order.” “I think the Emperor said as much himself, right before he plunged the whole galaxy into war.” Thunder Gale looked Discord straight in his yellow eyes. “Why do you think Celestia never went down this path? Why do you think that she, with all her power, never intervened?” “Do not speak her name.” Discord stretched his claws out across the table. The guise of Celestia had deteriorated, but only enough for his horns to sprout from under his rainbow mane. Thunder Gale braced himself and waited as Discord collected his composure and sipped on a cup of tea. After a minute he cleared his throat and asked: “You don’t know, do you?” “Please, this is my realm. Not even the birds fly here if I forbid it.” He took a minute to drain his tea. “But let’s say for the sake of argument that I don’t, what stunning revelation do you have in store for me?” “All those faces you’ve worn.” Thunder Gale withheld a nervous laugh. “The one you’re wearing now—I used to think that you picked them out because you wanted to get inside my head, but you don’t even know do you? You don’t even know who you look like now.” Into the silver of a plate Discord’s yellow eyes glanced, and as soon as he found his own reflection and saw the rainbow mane and golden tiara upon his head he grit his teeth and slammed his knee into the table. “This can’t be right.” His traced the contours of his face, and when he found Celestia’s high cheekbones he stammered. “A-a-a mistake or a trick of the mind’s eye.” “Come on! I barely even know how to fly, let alone how to trick you!” Thunder Gale chuckled and flung out his hooves at the empty city streets. “Does this look like harmony to you? Does this look like the Ponyville you know and love?” All the silverware shuddered. He gripped the edges of the plate and held it up to his face. The sky rumbled and the vat of hot sauce beside Thunder Gale rose to a rolling boil. He did his best to ignore it and the images continually emerging and melting across its surface. “No, this isn’t right.” Discord shook his head and set the silver plate down again. He looked at subdued and silent storefronts, as his eyes flashed open as if seeing them for the first time. Then he pinched them shut and shook his head. “Celestia must have helped you with this. I am Order.” The flow of magic shifted, it didn’t radiate outward as it had when Thunder Gale approached Celestia’s library, but instead it drained from the air and took the heat and the warmth with it. It flowed toward Discord, and he felt it as pins and needles over his body. The sky rumbled and pressed lower, and every fork and empty plate on the table shook as if trying to rise to meet it. “Easy now, let’s all take a deep breath and calm down.” She cantered up to the mid section of the table and leaned between the two. “How about it? One, two, three!” She puffed out her cheeks and held her breath. Discord ignored her. “I know it hurts,” Thunder Gale said. “But sooner or later you’ll have to face the reality.” Discord flexed his arms and they shot and stretched across the table until his claws locked around Thunder Gale’s neck. At that moment every last trace of Celestia vanished from him and at the opposite end of the table stood a beast of many animal parts. His claws dug into his flesh and clamped down on the apple in his neck, but underneath it all, he boiled inside his own skin at Discord’s touch. He flapped his wings and grappled at Discord’s claws, but they gripped him like a vice. He opened his mouth to scream and gasp for air, but he couldn’t. “I know who I am, boy,” Discord said. “Still say I’m the spirit of Chaos? That I’m a tyrant? That I can’t make Breeze happy again?” Thunder Gale’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull, he’d given into thrashing about with all his available limbs. His back leg kicked over the chair next to him, his front sent the plate of cotton candy clattering to the ground, and his wings toppled over his own chair but Discord still held him in place. “Fight back!” “Discord, that’s enough!” Fluttershy flew up between him and Thunder Gale and stared right into his yellow eyes. “Who do you think you are behaving like this? You’re not acting like the Discord I knew, you’re acting like a bully! Knock it off and let them go!” “Or what, you’ll give me The Stare? Please, your powers had no effect on me back then and they will have no effect on me now.” “Oh yeah?” Fluttershy picked up the vat of boiling hot sauce with her hooves and splashed its contents out across his face and into his big, yellow eyes. Discord howled and retracted his arms back to their original length so that he could rake the sauce out of his eyes. Steam rose up from between his claws. Thunder Gale fell from his grasp coughing and gasping for air. He cradled his aching neck, shocked, and in disbelief that he was actually free from that boiling pain. “We should really, probably, go someplace else now.” Fluttershy landed beside him and helped pull him onto his hooves. Discord swiped his eyes clean of the hot sauce and there was murder in them. He never broke contact with Thunder Gale as he climbed up onto the table on all fours and charged across it towards them. His legs bent and twisted at odd angles and propelled him along like a lizard up a wall. The plates full of candy and chocolate milk clattered to the ground in his wake. “Yeah, sounds like a plan.” Thunder Gale backed away from the table. Galloping and splashing they tore down the street and away from the thrashing monster closing on their heels. Thunder Gale turned down 3rd avenue trying to flee by the way they came in, but where once was the intersection onto Manestreet and the road out, there was now a library carved out of an enormous tree. When he looked again the path behind them led not from Discord’s table in an empty street, but to an open square and a conservative wooden bell tower. Somehow, he recognized it as Town Hall. Thunder Gale stopped on the sidewalk while he thought of what to do. “I really do feel awfully bad about splashing that hot sauce all over him.” Fluttershy galloped to his side him. “I know he may seem mean, but he’s not a bad spirit. He’s just making some poor choices in his life right now, that’s all. You don’t think he’ll stay angry for too long, do you?” A voice roared out from deeper in the town, then a great plume of green fire tore above the rooftops. A timer in the tree-house library window read 00:04:37. He still needed to find a way to save Breeze Heart. Thunder Gale felt himself in the chair again. Pain pierced his heart and a chill spread through his chest and limbs. He grasped his chest and nearly toppled over. “I need to think,” he said to Fluttershy. “I need to stop and rest for a second, just long enough to think something up. I’ll be fine if I can get a minute to slow down.” Thunder Gale’s eyes locked on the library. “There!” He pointed to the door, but his hooves quivered from the pain and almost toppled over if Fluttershy hadn’t caught him. She walked him to the door, helped him inside, and eased it shut behind them. She glanced over her shoulder and flinched at another one of Discord’s cries. Each roar was louder and nearer than the last. A shadow passed in front of the windows and Fluttershy tensed, while Thunder continued to stare and catch his breath. The sound of timber beams splitting shook the windows; it came from no more than a block away. Fluttershy raced over to the window, drew the curtains shut, and then back to the door to slide the deadbolt in place. “He’s going to catch us if we stay here, isn’t he?” he asked. “Shush,” she whispered. “Catch your breath.” As he braced the floor and flattened his spine against it, the floorboards creaked down to the foundations. She hurried over to him and checked his forehead, and then his pulse. Her touch brought him back to Breeze, the memory of her scent and their endless mornings together between 6:00 and 7:00 AM, and he flinched. She sighed and hung her head. He winced and strained into a half sitting position, one leg propping himself up. “Listen, I need you to do something for me, okay?” she said. “I want you to leave here while you still have time, and go back to your body. I will talk with Discord.” “No, there’s no telling what he’ll do to you.” Another roar cut Fluttershy off. She waited for a lull in the cries and the sound of crumbling homes. “I know, I’m terribly insignificant compared to Discord,” she said, “But you are still my friend, and if I can spare you from having to throw your life away for me, that’s worth it. And who knows? If I just keep my head high, and do my best, anything can happen. Besides, I wasn’t really asking.” Fluttershy patted Thunder on the side of the cheek, but he caught her hoof before she pulled away. “No, there has to be a way,” he said. “It can’t end like this. When I was in the library, I saw something inside myself, and it said that there’d be a way if I could only get this far.” “Then, what does it say now?” Thunder Gale lay his head back and gripped her hoof like a vice; he worried if he closed his eyes in the amount of pain he was in, it’d whisk him back to his body. As he shut his eyes and listened for the buzz of magic running beneath his skin, Discord’s roaring broke through his focus. He turned his ears down and tried to block out the noise, but each broken window and split timber rang brought him out. Through a haze of red and black, the color of eyelids clenched shut, he groped and found his own body. It pulled to him as a tornado pulls at the grass. All he had to do was relax, surrender, and fall back into himself. At his touch warmth returned to his cold limbs and the part of him sprawled across the floor of the library tingled numb. It beckoned for him to return and a path through the haze cleared before him. Outside the library, Discord’s roaring continued. The shuddering of the floorboards as buildings split were nearer to him now. Fluttershy stroked his hoof, and brought him back to the empty library. For a moment he hung suspended in the riptide back to his body. “What can I do?” He wavered in the current and flexed his wings open. There came a flash of red and blue, green and yellow, purple and orange from within him. When he reached for the source, the end point of it stretched just beyond his reach and lead him onward in the curve of a fractal. The corridor between him and his body filled with the technicolor and the tide dragging him down to his body. Then an idea flashed through him, it lit his bones; he wasn’t sure if the thought was his or if it came from elsewhere in the light. Wait, it said, listen. He shoved against the current and jolted back into the floor. The vacant ceiling and Fluttershy’s bright eyes were there to meet him. “Wait,” he repeated back to Fluttershy. “Listen.” The roaring continued, but between the pauses for breath and the toppling of buildings, a softer sound crept through. A dry sound somewhere between heaving and a wail. Fluttershy angled her ears toward the windows and waited for the shattering of a window to pass. When she caught it, she covered her mouth in surprise. “Is that what I think it is?” Thunder Gale asked. “I think so,” she said. “He’s crying.” No toppling of bricks nor ripping of floorboards followed, and soon even the roaring subsided, but the crying continued. Thunder Gale rolled over onto his hooves and forced himself to stand, pain shot through his chest and shoved him back to the floor. A chill reached over him, starting in the liver and spreading from the inside out. His hooves were aching from the chill and his organs were, one by one, shutting down. A clock embedded in the floor read 00:03:00. A tingling like blood returning to a sleeping limb was flowing down his head and cascading through his spine. Despite the seconds of his life ticking down, he couldn’t help but laugh. “Ready?” He took Fluttershy’s hoof in his again. She nodded. “Okay then, let’s go.” Together they stepped out from the library. The town before them lay in ruins. Bricks and mortar, glass and lumber, they covered the streets and hung to the skeletons of the surviving storefronts like sinew to a carcass. Thunder Gale and Fluttershy maneuvered around the broken glass as they followed the crying down the streets. Slumped against the side of a ruined wall they found Discord, weeping into his own claws. The remains of a sign that read “Sofa and Quills,” lay at his feet. When he looked up from his claws, his eyes were dry and the yellow in them muted. “What do you want?” he said to them. “Come to see me wallow?” “I was, and still am, your friend.” Fluttershy trotted closer to him and let Thunder’s hoof slip out of hers. “Even if, well, we’ve had our disagreements.” “That’s putting it mildly. You're right, I’ve been nothing more than a bully. I haven’t been the same since you left. When I saw Breeze, I—” he motioned to his chest. “I just wanted to have things the way they were. To go home. Is that so wrong?” “I’ve spent my life trying to put my family back together,” Thunder Gale said. “In the end, look what it did to me. It took me this long to realize it, but even if I could go back, I wouldn’t be satisfied. Nothing from my past could.” Discord rolled his head to the side and pressed his palm into his eyes. The sky above trembled as if it might rain, but it never did. A gust rolled through the streets and it carried with it the scent of a forest after a downpour, not chocolate milk. Pain lanced through Thunder Gale’s chest, but light resounded in him, and when he blinked he saw the fractals of a rainbow. That kept him on his hooves, standing, in spite of the pain. It urged him forward to Discord like the current of a stream. “Everypony lost, but the battle is won,” Discord said into his palm. “None of these things that I’ve done will ever bring me any semblance of happiness.” “No, but you could give somepony else the chance at it.” Thunder Gale sat down against the wall beside him and rested his hoof on his shoulder. Another wave of pain bloomed out from his heart and seeped into his organs like fatigue spreaded, and as Thunder Gale braced for it to pass his eyes wandered off into the cobblestone and there he found a clock reading 00:01:02. The pain never left him but in focusing on that current of light in him he found the strength to remain sitting. “I’ve rested so much of my hopes and dreams on her, I fear that if I let her go it could kill me.” Discord lowered his claw and sighed. “But I suppose I will have to answer for myself and face facts sooner or later. I’m warning you two: I have no idea what will happen if I do this.” “I’ll be here with you the whole time.” Fluttershy scooped up his claw and for a moment a smile flickered across his face. “Friends to the end.” “Very well.” He rolled his head over to Thunder Gale. “Prepare yourself. You’ll have to meet her.” “I’m ready, or at least as much as I ever will be.” As Discord raised his lion’s claw to his chest, a humming rose up from beneath the cobblestone. The broken glass and debris scattered across the streets shuddered, and the humming bloomed into a rumble. Fluttershy darted over to Thunder Gale and threw her hooves around his neck. “Find her,” she said to him. “Bring her home.” “I will.” Thunder Gale returned the hug. “And tell that blue pegasus ‘thank you,’ for me if you run into her again.” When at last Discord reached into his chest, the doors that still clung to their frames flung open. The cobblestone beneath Thunder Gale shook and threatened to liquify. From his own chest Discord pulled a white-hot orb. The yellow in his eyes faded entirely as he offered it to Thunder. “Give it here!” Thunder Gale shouted. Discord’s head rolled off to the side and the orb slipped. The orb tumbled, and where it landed the earth split open. Thunder scrambled to his hooves and stooped over the mouth of the fissure. A darkness stared back at him. Fluttershy leapt across the fissure and nestled Discord’s head in her hooves. She only glanced up at Thunder Gale long enough to nod. The ground before him liquified and sloughed off. The rainbow whispered to him again, now. On an impulse he spread his wings and followed the pull of current into the fissure. In seconds his smooth descent broke and head over tail he spun. As he tumbled he caught a glimpse of Discord and Fluttershy embracing each other, and the town above vanished. Through darkness he fell. The dirt and grass and even a clock tumbled past him; it blinked 00:00:00. Then there was nothing. Nothing to anchor himself on, or remind himself that he was falling after he grew numb to the sensation. He didn’t even know if his eyes were opened or closed. Colors from inside himself continued to flash and they were his only guide. In fleeting oily reflections he saw Breeze Heart, not as she was, but as shadows of his own desire. Whenever he was about to reach her, she vanished. The shadows were always just out of his grasp, and her scent always further away and never there with him. He kept his wings tucked in close as if to accelerate his dive and veer for her, and never once did he lose focus on the myriad of colors. He chased an oily reflection of her weeping backside, only for it to vanish, and for a vision of her resting her head on his pillow to appear. She looked at him, giggled, and covered her face with her disheveled mane. He remembered that scene: it was from the morning after their first night in the same bed. Chasing after it only drove it further from him, before it dissolved into tendrils of smoke. “Come back!” he yelled at the fading shadows. “Please come back.” In the next vision, she was in sickbay. She threw her hooves around him and thanked The Princesses that he returned to her safely. It was right after the search parties found him in the desert and brought him back to the ship. In her eyes there was so much love and worry, for him. It vanished on his approach. “I can’t bear the thought of losing you,” her voice said from all around him, “but as much as I want to stay by your side it’s killing me to watch you put yourself through this. Maybe this is something you have to see to the end, but I can’t do it anymore. I’ve waited long enough, and need to go live my own life even if it means that you’re no longer a part of it.” Thunder Gale covered his ears and shut his eyes tight, but the visions kept pouring in. He couldn’t bear to hear it or to see the image that accompanied it and it wouldn’t stop. He crossed the desert, learned to fly, and faced down Discord but the sound of her voice paralyzed him. “Stop it! Go away! I don’t want this!” he said. “Help, somepony—anypony! Help me!” “What’s wrong, Thunder?” “Dad? Is that you?” He opened his eyes but even before he did the face of his father greeted him, and he was just as he remembered when he was a colt. “Of course I’m not mad at you. There’s nothing you can say or do to make me love you any less than with the whole of my heart.” He soared half-crying into the empty shadow of his father. Nopony was there either. “No, I can’t take this any more!” He stomped his hooves and hung his head between his two front legs. They kept his torso up while his hind legs collapsed on something solid. Thunder Gale laid his head out and wept into his hooves. He knew not how long he lay there crying, but after an eternity it came to him again, or rather he found it exactly where he remembered seeing it last, inside him and just behind his eyes: the rainbow and all its colors flickered. “Why is this happening to me? I never wanted this.” Another shadow of Breeze Heart appeared before him, but that time he didn’t chase it. She brought him flowers to eat, but he didn’t make one move toward her. He wiped the tears from his eyes, and looked away. He turned in on himself again and contemplated the rainbow flickering within. “I have do something different.” Thunder Gale closed his eyes again, and listened to the rainbow inside him. “I need to try something else.” The longer he focused on the light, the louder and brighter its flashes were. As unwanted thoughts entered his consciousness, such the lyrics of his favorite song or the desire to feel Breeze Heart’s warmth surrounding him again, he tried to chase them away. When he did he lost touch with the rainbow and had to start again. Instead when such thoughts came again, he let them be and made no attempt to control them, and let them pass. He focused on the light streaming past, until it became his world. “Have you been here the whole time?” “Yes, always.” “Then how come I never noticed?” “The same reason why most don’t until after a very long time: because they don’t look here.” “That inside them all is the source of all magic.” He fell into it, and as he did he fell through the ground beneath him. He didn’t resist and made no attempt to alter his course. The rainbow blossomed, and music in color rushed over him. Lightning as clear as crystal took root over his inner space. There was so much pressure on his forehead then that it felt as if it might split him open. The thought came to him, that if he kept falling into the rainbow, he might lose himself forever. “I’ll see where it takes me.” And so he followed it as he did the wind when he first discovered he could fly, and let it carry him where it may. He followed it one moment to the next, and from one flash of lighting and color to the next. He heard music, but made no attempt to study it or reach for more. Instead it came to him and in time the song from Celestia’s library emerged whole and clear. It was beautiful. At that moment the very fabric of his being unraveled from both inside his mind and across his body. There was no distinction between the two. The self-hate and self-doubt that his past actions had left stained to him melted away. As he unraveled the memories untangled themselves and played before him as an old reel of film, with each experience combining with the last to form a singular motion. The day he found Breeze Heart in the brig, the night he betrayed her, and the day he covered for friend after he broke a vase—though they played before him in ribbons, he experienced them for the first time again. They weren’t just memories, but the events of his life playing out before him for the first time once again. As the most last minutes of his life concluded more emerged from the hurt in his heart and the ache in the sinews of his chest. He saw himself as an earth pony on Arion when the colony was first settled, and died the happy patriarch of a large family. In another he was a mare displaced from her home in Appleloosa after Equestria sank into the ocean, and died abused and friendless in a refugee camp. During another, he was a unicorn who never learned to do magic despite many years dedicated to the study. His eyes opened wide and he gasped. The blue pegasus, her name was Rainbow Dash, and he remembered the entirety of that life. And Breeze Heart, in another life she was Fluttershy. Who he used to be was still alive despite her passing. It was his past and many lifetimes passed between his current experience and Rainbow Dash’s, but in truth she was just as much a part of him as the young colt who took the blame for a broken vase or the stallion who betrayed his lover. The rainbow spilled out from his eyes and lit up the shadows in its myriad of reds, blues, oranges, purples, greens, yellows, violets, and whites. As he wove himself together again the bones in his legs and spine and head expanded as he did. When he gave into the pressure atop his head, his skin peeled back like a lid and out from the socket rose a horn that sparkled in his own light. His mane and tail flowed with the warmth of the cloudless sky and the sun baked seas. It was from his heart that the light radiated to chased away the shadows and warmed his bones, but as he fell it coalesced and swirled up his spine and lit his horn. After a time he landed on a plane flat and empty as white porcelain. It shined, but there were no stars and no sun to illuminate it. When the initial shock of what he had experienced wore off, and the reality of the vast empty plane he gazed out at soaked in, he checked his mane to see if it still billowed and his legs to see if they were still lengthened. His hair had returned to its original, ordinary dark-blue, at no more than regulation length, and he was no more taller. He fell onto the white beneath his hooves and gasped for breath. Did any of that really happen? “Or am I just going crazy?” Thunder Gale asked. He squeezed his eyes shut until patterns bloomed behind them. There came a tug at his forehead in answer to his question, and when he opened his eyes again, a glimmering horn of technicolor light stood out from above and between them. It exerted a pressure on his skull, same as it had when he fell, and down from it coursed a vibration. When he reached out to touch it, his hoof passed through and the technicolor faded. But the pull it exerted on his forehead remained. At once he picked himself up and started walking. The ebb and flow of magic down his head and through his spine steered him hot or cold across the vast plane of white. And when he collapsed from exhaustion, it nudged him forward. During his travels over the plane he came across a unicorn walking in the other direction. He recognized him the moment he spotted him, even though at the time he was only a speck on the horizon. He was none other than Chain Gleaming. “By the Queen and all her Kings, Thunder Gale, is that really you?” Chain Gleaming asked once they were within earshot. “I think so.” He bowed his head. “I’m a bit lost, and more than a bit confused.” “Happy?” Chain Gleaming laughed from his belly. “How can anypony be happy here? Make no mistake that this is a dark and intolerable hell that they’ve condemned us to.” He glanced around at his surroundings and found nothing that would be of any cause for alarm or concern, just the endless white and the horizon. “I don’t see how that relates to anything.” “So, did you ever find what you were looking for?” Chain Gleaming asked. “I—I think so, yes, but I came here in search of somepony too.” “We’re all looking for someone here. Someone or something to get us out of here.” “I think I might see a way. Would you like to come with me? We’ll leave as soon as I’m through here.” “Don’t be so naive!” Chain Gleaming laughed. “Do you think any of us are leaving here? You can’t leave here for the same reason I can’t: you’re looking. If you set conditions to when you will and won’t leave, you’ll never get out of here. That’s how it works! If you’re looking for something, you’ll never find it.” Magic tugged at Thunder Gale’s forehead; it was time to get moving again. He sighed, and continued across the white. “Hey!” Chain Gleaming called to him. “Where do you think you’re going?” He didn’t answer. Further along the way he came across none other than Fancy Tie and Hill Born. Neither had noticed him and so he watched them from afar. “No, don’t you get it!” Hill Born, still dressed in his white laboratory jacket, pulled at the Sigil Tech insignia stitched above his nametag and waved it in Fancy Tie’s face. “I’m a bad pony! We uncovered an Id monster from ancient myth and contaminated it with all our discord until the thing broke loose! It’s gonna kill everypony and everything! And I haven’t even gotten to our experiments on the changelings yet!” “Please, Mr. Born, no matter what you’ve done I owe you an apology.” Fancy Tie hadn’t changed a single hair on his slicked back mane since the palace bombing. He pulled at the tie around his neck with his mouth and got down next to Hill Born’s hooves. “I was a cretin to you, sir, let me at least clean your hooves.” “No, don’t you dare!” Hill Born pushed him and sent him sliding across the porcelain. “I need to sit here and think about what I did. Celestia, I pray that Thunder got my message and found a way to clean up our mess.” “Speaking of messes, I wrongly accused you of breaking a vase in the Imperial Palace,” Fancy Tie said. “I can’t forgive myself unless you let me make it up to you!” “Get away from me!” Hill Born cantered away him. “I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself. Frankly, I don’t deserve any help. Don’t touch me!” That was when Fancy Tie noticed Thunder looking on at them from ten or so feet away. Hill Born took note of the silence, and turned and spotted him too. “Hello,” he said to the two of them. “How long has this been going on?” “You’re insane,” Hill Born said, “There’s no rest for the wicked.” “Why do you think I’ve been searching for you for so long?” Fancy Tie got up and trotted to Hill Born. “I want peace, but I can’t have it until you’ve let me make amends. Forgive me!” “Get away from me!” While they squabbled, Thunder Gale trotted away. After following the faint tide of the magic in his head across the porcelain for ages, and the occasional sound of violins, he saw another dot on the horizon. As he cantered closer it grew in size and definition until many distinct pillars emerged from it, along with a pegasus in the middle. He heard faint sobbing. “Breeze Heart,” he whispered out loud. He galloped closer. She sat inside a ring of metal bars spread so wide apart on the ground that one of his family’s ornithopters could have flown between them. She kept her back to him, her head low, and sobbed into the long shadows cast over her. “Whoever you are, go away,” she said to him once they were close enough to talk. “Okay,” he said. “If you want to be alone, I can accept that.” “Wait, Thunder, is that you?” She lifted her head up, turned around, and for a moment she stopped crying. Her eyes found his legs, then his face. A kaleidoscope of color danced across the porcelain between them. “What happened to you?” “Changelings, Discord, and myself,” he said, “Exactly what I needed to get here. I’m not trying to be cryptic, but I don’t know if I can really explain. Not very well at least.” Breeze Heart cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “Did you come here to rescue me? Is that why you’re here?” “Yeah, it was,” he said. He first sat down, and then lay on his weary legs. It felt good to rest. “So, you’re glowing now.” She stood up and walked over to him, but never crossed the bars encircling her. “Does that have anything to do with this plan of yours?” “It just sorta happened.” He blinked; the pressure on his forehead was coming down stronger now. “I’m not here to rescue you. More than anypony else, I’m the one responsible for all of this. I don’t even know if I can give you an apology for everything I’ve done, and even if I could if I’d want you to accept it.” Breeze Heart chewed on that for a moment. “So, then, why are you here?” “Because I want to be here. For you.” After that she got quiet, and turned her back to him again. She lost herself to contemplation inside her own shadow, and began to weep again. The curve of her spine protruded from her back and rose and fell with each of her sobs. All that time he watched silently. “Listen, Thunder Gale, I’d like to be with you again too.” She wiped her eyes dry as she spoke. “I can’t though. There are things about me that you don’t know about. I was angry and I ran away with Discord. The things I did with him—I don’t deserve to leave after that. This is where I belong now.” Even though she paused long enough to break into sobbing and shivering, he knew she wasn’t done yet, and so he waited for her to calm down enough to continue. “As much as I want to be with you and start living that life we always talked about, I can’t. Not with the way I am now. It won’t work out between us this lifetime. Perhaps we’ll have better luck in the next one, my love. That is, if you’d still be willing to have me then.” “While I was up there, I saw things.” He stood up and lay back down as close as he could to her without crossing the bars of her prison. “I’ve lived and died more times than I care to tell. In some of them I was an Element of Harmony, but during others I was abused, raped, beaten to death, tortured, and impaled. During different ones I even inflicted all that upon others. There is nothing that you can say or do to shock me, or convince me to believe that you deserve anything less than to be free.” “I’d like to believe that, really, I would.” She shook her head. “I want to leave here and go home, but I don’t know if I can.” “I’ll wait here then.” He inched his hoof closer to her, but did not cross the bars. “As long as it will take, for as long as you need, I will wait for you. You’ve meant a lot of things to me over more years than I can count, but through it all you’ve always been my friend. You’ve waited for me for through this stupid mission of mine, so I’ll wait for you now.” She stopped crying after that, but she still didn’t turn to look at him. She flicked her tail, and cradled her chest in her hooves. For a long time she contemplated her own shadow. His legs twitched from inactivity; he didn’t know how long he had been sitting there. Ten minutes or ten days, he wouldn’t have been surprised either way. She wrapped her hoof around on of the bars and leaned against it. “Suppose that I wanted to go with you, what would I have to do?” “I think, maybe, start by taking a closer look at these bars.” Thunder Gale stood up. “There’s nothing between us.” “Okay, I’ll try.” Breeze Heart backed away from the bar and all the way to the other end of her prison. He smiled at her lovingly, and opened his wings and extended a hoof to welcome her across. She whispered something under her breath, eyes closed, and galloped toward him. When she reached the bars of her prison she didn’t stop but instead leapt on spread wings across the divide and into his embrace. She flung her hooves over his neck and buried her face in the warmth of his mane. One flex of his wings and they sailed off the ground speeding away from the white of plane below. He invited her closer, and she rested her head and her chest upon his. Light trailed behind them. In an instant they shot through the land of shadows and past islands of the Discord’s town drifting through the black. He aimed for the sky and braced as he met the cloud cover. Each beat of his wings propelled them towards impossible speeds. The faster and harder he climbed, the more the magic streaming through him rose. It saturated every inch of his body and buzzed in his bones. It slipped out from his coat in tendrils of color, and to keep the rest from pouring out it took the entirety of his concentration. Breeze Heart nuzzled the base of his neck, and he responded by caressing the back of her head with his hoof. At once he felt at home. She smelled divine, just as he remembered. His concentration slipped and out from him boomed the rainboom he’d seen behind his eyes and whispered to him. As it streamed out in bands of blue, red, green, yellow, and purple it chased away the clouds and ushered in the sun. When Thunder Gale glanced down at it he chuckled. He had seen that sight—a ripple of many colored rings in the clouds—plenty of times before as Rainbow Dash. “Hey, Fluttershy, look.” He tapped Breeze Heart on the shoulder and pointed down at the ring. “It’s a sonic rainboom. I told you I could do it.” She squealed in laughter and he joined her. Not for one second did he doubt that the rainbow had left him. Around the time they reached the golden and sun warmed clouds leading to Celestia’s library, the sensation of his body cold, and slumped over in the chair, surged down his horn and into his head. Thunder Gale coughed, and gasped. He clung to Breeze Heart for support and he shivered. “What’s happening?” She looked to him with worried eyes. “Are you okay?” “It’s my body,” he said. “I thought I was dead but I can still feel it. I’m going to have to leave you now if we want to meet up again in the world.” “Okay, I know it sounds crazy but I think I know the way back from here.” “I’ll see you on the other side,” Thunder Gale whispered in her ear. He let his legs go loose and the air rushing past them peel their embrace apart, but he still held onto her two front hooves. She kissed him on the check, and then faded into the light of the sun. He lingered a moment longer to soak in the magic and to let it wash over him before following it all the way back to the chair, and back into through his body.