//------------------------------//
// Truth: Confrontation 
// Story: Shine Of The Silver Sun 
// by Nameless Narrator 
//------------------------------//

Lit by a duo of flashlights, the gloom of upper Canterlot sewers proved no obstacle for Astray and Cromach swiftly walking through the corridors protected from the stench by a pair of enchanted bandannas. The griffon was holding a rollout map in one of his forelegs along with the flashlight.

"Alright, two more turns and we should be near a barred mine entrance. The shaft should lead us straight to the cavern where you met Black Shield. From there it's straight to the CSFGU cellars."

"Why are you so set on Arcane Hex being behind all this?"

"I'm not, the clues we have are. If I'm wrong then we just cross him off the list and continue. The thing is that I'm not sure you interpreted what happened to Secret Seeker correctly."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"You assumed, and reported, that Seeker tried to teleport away but was too weak to escape after being so heavily wounded, rings or not."

"That is what happened."

"That is what you think happened," Cromach shook his head, "Look, all I have is a theory that might be completely off too, but I went through Connie's report about the train encounter and something felt wrong. During the avalanche, Seeker teleported away after being torn apart by Connie. Granted, the rings helped, but Seeker proved himself to be a capable user of contingency spells who was smart enough to realize his spells whould fire when he'd be near death. He had several of them, both offensive and defensive according to Connie. These spells take a lot of time and energy to recast, but the two days from the avalanche to your fight would be enough for somepony of his skill and power."

"What are you getting to, sir? I really don't know anything about magic."

"Contingency spells aren't hampered by the caster's current state. I think Seeker didn't teleport to the cellar because he was weak and couldn't make it further, but because the spell was set to send him there. My theory is that he wanted to appear right in that particular cellar. I want to take a look at it myself when everypony else failed to spot anything."

Few minutes later, the duo crossed the cavern where Astray destroyed Shield's soul crystal and stood in front of the wall which should open and become the cellar entrance. Cromach stopped and pulled out the insensibility potion from his saddlebag.

Astray couldn't help pondering how his boss was going to talk his way out of things in case of any legal trouble with a giant battleaxe on his back. He didn't ask anything, and when Cromach downed the potion, he followed suit.

"Did the wall open into the cellar or out here?"

"Inside."

"Oookay, let's see if brute force helps."

Cromach rose on his hind legs, propped his forelegs against the clean piece of wall, and with a grunt pushed.

In the next second, he found himself sliding across a worked stone floor of the cellar when the wall swung open like a door with almost no resistance.

Astray came inside, stifling a smirk at the sight of a slightly dizzy griffon attempting to stand back up. When Cromach recovered, he put a talon on his beak, walked over to the main door, and tested the handle which gave in but the door didn't move.

"Locked," he whispered, "Perfect. Now let's have a look around for anything the guards might have missed."

Astray had no idea what to do, but after checking the contents of some crates came to the conclusion that maybe there might be a different wall entrance hidden somewhere. He doubted that something like that would have gone unnoticed by the guards, but anything was possible. While he pushed the crates away from the walls and hit them for a hollow sound or something unusual, he noticed Cromach doing the same, only with heavy ceiling-high shelves. They were empty, though, and it was clearly visible that there was nothing behind them.

The griffon's sudden heavy grunt made Astray turn his head. Cromach was staring at a shelf in the corner with a puzzled expression, then he moved back to the shelf he'd checked previously and wiggled it. The heavy construction moved a little, giving Astray a new insight that Cromach was likely even stonger than Anvil, and the griffon returned to the corner one. That one didn't budge even a little.

"Hmmm..."

"Do you need help, sir?"

"I think we'd only get in each other's way. Just come over here and be ready in case something goes wrong. I'll try to use a little more force."

From side to side, he cracked his neck, took a deep breath, and pushed against the shelf. Blue sparks of lightning ran through his forelegs and barrel before something cracked inside the wall. A heave later, the whole wall swung open along with the shelf and slammed against another wall, this one leading to a dark tunnel.

"Phew," Cromach wiped his brow, "It must have been barred by something," he examined some small latch-like metal construction on the other side of the wall, "Ah hah! You were supposed to lift the shelf a little first. A piece of security that needed a very strong flesh golem to be opened. Even two Royal Guard earthponies wouldn't make the shelves budge. CSFGU staff would have known this was there if it was magically secured, but a mechanism like this being built down here wouldn't have gone unnoticed either. Someone high-up definitely knows this is here, but not normal staff."

"So this was where Seeker wanted to get, right? His laboratory maybe?"

"Possibly, but I'm sure the pony who killed him knew about it as well. Let's go, Astray, and be quiet. Magic might not reveal us, but whoever hid this was smart, and likely not deaf. I must admit, Arcane Hex's high status in the CSFGU ranks isn't making him look more innocent whatsoever."


***


Contradiction picked up the signed photo of Arcane Hex and Secret Seeker again.

"Are we barking up a wrong tree?" she asked, looking around Seeker's apartment filled with bookshelves stacked with regular and some incredibly precious volumes.

"Maybe you are reading too much into the note from Black Shield," commented Anvil, walking around and checking the tops of all pieces of furniture for... well, something.

"She was smart. Being introspective enough and having the brain to confuse a mind control spell cast by a pretty skilled wizard couldn't have been easy. She wanted to say something more with the note, but perhaps she herself didn't know what," Connie sighed, "She wrote 'filly'. Should we be looking for some book about dark rituals requiring the sacrifice of a foal? Maybe some crazy spell needs dark magic, blood, and the power only the rings can provide."

"Books then," Anvil drummed her fingers on a nearby wardrobe, "I'll go check the books written in weird languages."

"Can you read anything other than common?" asked Connie.

"I can read minotaur runes and I can recognize few expressions from old griffon."

"Well, now I feel dumb..." muttered the unicorn and waved her hoof at Anvil, "Shoo, you've got a better shot than me at finding something," when Anvil walked off, Connie sat down on a couch, levitating the overtaxed piece of paper, "She knew what book to look for, I think, or at least a topic. She must have heard something that was said between Seeker and his partner, or that would uncover Seeker's motive. Power is one thing, but power without direction is for madponies. Usually some desire comes before the means to fulfill it. Maybe Seeker had a sick daughter or a sister and he needed the rings to cure a 'filly'?"

She stood up, determined to start checking the contents of the books one by one for some side-notes or comments. 

Connie's idea was close, but it was Anvil who eventually came up with what had to be the correct answer.

"Well hello there," Connie heard Anvil say from the other room, "Contradiction!"

Connie put down the book she'd been currently reading and walked over to the minotaur frantically running around and looking at each shelf from her height. When she noticed the unicorn, she turned to face her with a triumphant smile.

"Have you found something?"

"Do you see anything strange about this," she tapped on a book squeezed among many others on the shelf from above, followed by four more, "this, this, this, and this one?"

Connie examined them. Those were clearly some tomes about death and mysticism, but there was nothing special about them in comparison to the many others. The unicorn shook her head and shrugged.

Anvil smiled, and flipped the book onto its spine, then did the same thing with the others.

"Holy..." Connie's eyes went wide.

"Yep," Anvil crossed her arms on her chest, "Nopony would have noticed unless they checked each book one by one, or looked at them from up here."

Anvil's point was that while the apartment was basically a library and checking book after book would take days, the minotaur could easily see the books from the top where the ones Seeker must have been using before his death had clearly visible bookmarks stuck in them. Connie levitated the five books Anvil discovered onto the nearby table and re-examined their titles.

"Life After Death. Immutability of the Soul. Energy and its Storage. Mandalas and Focusing Rituals. Mundane and Divine," Connie's voice grew distant as her mind rushed to some possible conclusion. She opened each book at the page where its bookmark was and read a term she considered relevant, "Lich. Resurrection. Preservation of soul. Divinity as a source of life - alicorn, phoenix, demon. Soul jar - a phylactery."

"Filly what?" asked Anvil, and things clicked into place in Connie's head.

"A phylactery! That's what Shield meant. Seeker must have not allowed her to read these books so that she wouldn't know what he was up to, but she overheard something, I bet. He and his partner must have been researching methods on how to become a lich."

"That's some kind of chineighese plum, if I recall correctly," Anvil knew a lot, but the knowledge of dark magic Connie had gathered while attempting to make her horn work properly was on a different level.

"That's li-chi. This is a lich, an extremely powerful undead, probably the most powerful kind known to anypony other than undead dragons, and even there it would be a coin toss. They are skeletons who have access to crazy magic because they aren't limited by their physical body. They hide their spiritual essence into an item called a phylactery and cannot be killed unless said item is destroyed. As a trade-off, they can't go too far away from it. They are basically immortal, but the theory isn't a piece of some too obscure information. Liches are often mentioned even among basic overviews of undead. The way to become one is the real secret about them."

"Maybe the other books offer something useful."

Connie skimmed through the other volumes before stopping on the pages of Mundane and Divine.

"He needed the rings for raw power, but that's still magic, and magic dissipates in time. He needed something to fixate it, something immutable, indestructible, eternal. Oooooh shit!" she dropped the book, jumped up from the chair and started walking to the main apartment door.

"What's going on?" Anvil matched Connie's sudden frantic pace.

"The ritual requires the blood of a divine or demonic being... divine... but they already had Cromach's blood and still went after me. Maybe the blood wasn't enough? You know, just a mortal's blood, but infused with Nightmare's power. Divine... alicorns... but the princesses far too powerful unlike us, and we still outnumbered Seeker and Shield. They couldn't have gained alicorn blood. But demonic... a true demon, at least part of one..."

Connie was taking the stairs down two steps at a time. Anvil's blood drained from her face.

"Oh no."

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Connie shot out of the apartment complex and trotted down the street.

"The tests! We served her to him on a silver platter."


***


Cromach opened the steel door leading to a fully fledged laboratory with a clean metal operating table in the middle, two more closed doors, and workbenches and chemistry tables covered with papers full of notes or open books. The place was so expertly lit that everything was clearly visible but no reflections blinded or bothered anypony inside.

Astray opened the door to the left and peeked into a dark room which upon flicking the light switch right next to him on the wall at waist height proved to be a storage room with an open space in the middle cleared of crates or shelves. He resigned himself to several more minutes of shaking heavy objects when he heard a sharp whisper:

"Astray!"

Cromach's hushed voice was so urgent that the satyr immediately returned to the lab and joined the griffon with his earhole pressed against the other door. Amidst some sort of deep chanting, he heard a pained groan followed by whimpering. The fact that he could practically feel the waves of energy emanating from behind the door did little to put him at ease.

Under Cromach's careful push, the door opened, revealing a short hall into a wide open room.

Astray's body moved on its own. He shoved Cromach away and charged forward.

"BUBBLES!"

The demonette was hanging in the air, spread-eagle and limp. Her normally rusty coat with golden blots was covered in brown mess of clotting blood covering her entire body. The gaping wound in her throat slit open was just one of the chapters of a book of horror and misery Astray was now involuntarily reading. All four of her fetlocks sported fatal wounds, and yet the mare had enough strength to open her eyes a fraction as she heard the satyr's feral scream.

Arcane Hex, surrounded by floating cloud of red mist, let out a short burst of red light from his horn, and the cloud of blood covered him before draining into his coat and body and disappearing. In the next instant, Astray's sword stabbed the old wizard's neck clean through.

The satyr saw a blur, and then he hit a wall on the opposite side of the room. Astray was working on raw, undiluted rage and hatred, though, and jumped on his legs instantly. As he reached for the pistol on his belt, his body stopped listening to him and locked up. He tried to force himself to move, but not even the blood still dripping from motionless Bubbles hovering above the floor did enough to make him.

"I may be exhausted after the ritual, young satyr, but you are still nowhere strong enough to take me on," said Hex with complete calm, as if Astray's intrusion meant less than nothing.

Hex, completely focused on Astray, had no chance to hear the soft pawsteps of Cromach running at him from behind on his hind legs, his greataxe held tightly in his talons.

"And how about me?" he said just in time for Hex to be able to face him.

Astray thought Cromach was making a terrible mistake, not striking the mage from behind, but the griffon's plan was better. This way, the mage's neck was completely exposed. After all, a good spellcaster didn't need his ass to cast spells, but even the best definitely needed a head.

A hastily put up magical barrier shattered into yellow glowing shards under Cromach's strike and his swing nearly cleaved Hex in half. The unicorn stumbled backwards into the glowing blue circle. Its glow faded, and Bubbles dropped on the floor like a sack of fleshy potatoes.

What Cromach wasn't expecting was that after the initial force of the blow, Hex completely ignored the wound. Green glow flashed from his horn on which he saw both stolen rings, and resonated with some sort of amulet hanging on Hex's neck. The massive wound Cromach had inflicted with his first blow sealed up, and the unicorn gave the griffon a satisfied smile.

"To be honest, I expected more from you, ambassador."

Cromach moved like lightning, trailing blue sparks behind him, and his axe met yet another golden barrier right before hitting Hex who only took a single step back. The power of the swing left Cromach's battleaxe stuck with its entire blade in the stone floor, and the griffon face to face with Hex's glowing horn.

"HRNG!" the wizard's spell didn't go off as he stumbled.

Astray, locked in the position of a spectator, felt his heart jump when Bubbles, right before Hex could finish charging his spell, moved her head and chomped the unicorn's fetlock off. The fact that she was conscious, not to mention still able to move, was a miracle, but Astray wasn't complaining in the slightest. It had to be some last demonic resilience, because each of her wounds would kill even the strongest pony.

Hex's leg regrew the lost bone, but no flesh. As Cromach grunted in an attempt to free his stuck axe, Astray felt his body responding once again, and finally pulled out the gun. He was pretty sure the quicksilver bullets wouldn't be enough to stop an enemy of this magnitude, but any second he could buy for Cromach was crucial.

The shot went through Hex's neck, and the mage growled. However, when he turned to Astray, the satyr didn't see pain or bother in the unicorn's eyes, only growing annoyance. He felt a pulse and immediately dropped on the floor without even seeing a thing. As he rolled away, he caught a glimpse of the spiderweb of cracks in a solid stone wall that was behind him. It wasn't as brutal as what Connie had done to mount Canterlot, but if that had hit then Astray would now be a two-dimensional wallpaper.

Cromach finally pulled his axe free, but stumbled backwards as the weapon flew into the air. The second of time was enough for Hex to blur, and-

Bubbles saw a leg passing her muzzle, and bit down. She was so weak, so dizzy. She couldn't do much more than move her mouth and even that couldn't even make the bone crack anymore.

-disappear into thin air along with the demonette.

Astray wanted to scream, but before his own could leave his throat, he heard a faint:

"Damn it!"

It sounded as if coming from just outside the room, and the satyr immediately started banging on the walls for another secret exit.

"BUBBLES!" he called out.

"Get off of me, you irritating little pest!" was the furious answer from behind a wall that helped Cromach pinpoint the possible escape route.

"Out of the way, Astray," said Cromach, taking a deep breath, flourishing his axe, and cleaving the solid rock in front of him.

The axe got stuck, then small sparks spread through the rock, and the griffon heaved. In a shower of shattered stones, the wall crumbled into debris and gravel, revealing a mine shaft sloping down.

Astray didn't wait for any orders, pulled the flashlight out of his belt pouch and ran forward. Cromach, hanging his axe back onto the harness on his back, caught up with him few seconds later.


***
 

"She's not answering!" Anvil stopped by Contradiction's side, "Maybe she didn't hear me?"

The unicorn, rubbing her ears still ringing after Anvil's last attempt at screaming Bubbles' name all over the neighborhood, scowled.

"I suppose there might be somepony in lower Canterlot who hasn't heard you yet, but I'm sure the whole upper city now thinks you really love foam," she growed to herself, feeling the anger deep inside her begin to boil, "Let's go inside."

Not waiting for an answer, Connie kicked open the door leading to the lobby of a CSFGU building on top of which Arcane Hex's quarters were located. A bored receptionist mare on today's duty looked upwards only to be faced with Connie's fake, wide smile.

"Show us to where Arcane Hex lives."

"I'll need you to fill me a report or I can send him a message and he'll come down here for you-"

Connie's steel Silver Sun badge buried itself into the receptionist's wooden desk.

"Murder investigation."

"Whose?" the receptionist glared in defiance, although her hoof near the stuck badge was still trembling.

"Not yours, yet."

"Eeep!" the mare's horn glowed in a prepared spell, but the shimmer faded as she suddenly felt a pressure as if a dragon's claws were grasping it. The pressure turned into a guiding pull which the mare either had to oblige and leave her booth, or be turned into an earthpony.

"You can come with us to ensure we don't do anything illegal, but you're doing it NOW!" Connie's rough telekinetic shove made her stumble, "Hex lives on the top of the eastern tower. Lead us there!"

"I'm going, I'm going," the mare whimpered, "Did mister Hex do anything?"

"Let's hope not," hissed Anvil, "or I'll paint this place red."

"What do you-"

"Miss whoever-you-are," Connie interrupted the mare rushing up a long winding staircase, "Nothing would make me happier than being completely wrong about the old guy, but I'm usually right when thinking about the worst possible scenario."

Less than five minutes and many terrified ponies later, the entire CSFGU building was underneath them and Connie was faced with a simple door bearing the School's emblem and a brass plague reading 'Arcane Hex'.

Locked door.

"Mister Hex must be out at the mom-"

"Step aside," said Anvil, taking her mace off of her back, and swinging it at the door.

The weapon stopped and inch away from it and refused to move further. An attempt to kick the door ended the same way. However, when Anvil knocked on it, the unseen barrier let her do so without any issue.

"Now that's a nice enchantment on the door. I wonder..." Connie gritted her teeth, rumbling of stone followed her moment of focus, and the whole door shattered along with the frame and parts of surrounding wall, "Knock knock."

"Mhmhhm?!" the receptionist mare mumbled and fainted on the spot.

"What's that?" Anvil walked inside and pointed at a shimmering blue circle in the middle of the carpeted room. 

"Magic circles are usually for teleportation, a focus for some complex ritual, or the means of restricting access," explained Connie, "Seeing that nothing is inside and we're not dealing with a furious old mage whose experiment we've interrupted yet, my guess is that... GERONIMO!"

Anvil watched as Connie pounced into the circle and disappeared in a blue flash. Not seeing any incinerated remains or even a pile of ash after the unicorn's possible fatal mistake, she followed. A quick bout of blindness and nausea later, Anvil's armored boots creaked against new stone floor.

"No... no no no..." the minotaur's palms curled into fists.

She and Connie were standing in a brightly lit room looking like the back of a butcher's store. Smears of blood covered most of the floor, small strands of torn flesh were lying around, but what hit the minotaur the hardest was a clump of rusty hair near the back of the room.

As her stupor faded, she gripped her mace and realized she was hearing some sort of clanking and grunts from a long way away. There were two ways out of the room, one of them leading into some sort of laboratory and one into what looked like now unpleasantly familiar mine shaft.

"I think we have to split up-" started Connie.

"No, I can hear fighting or something from down there," she pointed towards the mine tunnel.

"Fighting?" Connie tilted her head.

"It could be Bubbles," she said, clearly not convinced. The amount of blood around couldn't have come from a single pony.

Contradiction didn't have the heart to state the obvious, and just rushed off into the tunnel.

Less than a minute of mad galloping later, the mine opened into what Connie knew pretty well - the central shaft of the mine complex. Fresh air and some daylight was coming from above the massive hole piercing the entirety of the mine complex. The spiral of wide ledges with more tunnel mouths on the hole's circumference was the scene of a furious struggle.

Between Anvil, Connie, and the trio of fighters there lay a smaller equine figure, completely motionless. The ground around Bubbles was made darker with yet more blood somehow still dripping from the demonette.

"Go check on Bubbles," whispered Connie. It was clear that the fighters were absorbed in their combat, and she didn't want to lose the element of surprise.

Connie didn't know the details about Cromach's plan. She just knew that he had borrowed Astray for something. What she was certain about was that Cromach wouldn't make the same mistake as with the sewers twice, and that the fact that he was now fighting a unicorn with chopped off chunks of flesh can't have been his first choice. The wizard robes and about half of the flesh on the unicorn's face still present reassured her that the clearly undead enemy was Arcane Hex, and that he had succeeded in the transformation ritual.

Summoning a telekinetic hammer, she hit the shimmering barrier surrounding Hex which flickered and dissipated for a moment. The mage looked her way, and recieved a blow from Cromach's axe which cleaved his barrel and sent shards of chopped ribs flying everywhere. In a flash of green light coming from two glowing rings on Hex's horn, the bones recovered and Cromach was telekinetically flung away.

The momentary distraction was enough for Astray to dart closer and stab his sword into Hex's neck. The effect was much lower than expected, when with a blue flash of light, ice enveloped the entire blade. Astray tried to pull it out, and after a loud crack looked in disbelief at the hilt of his longsword, the only thing remaining from it. Another pulse of power sent the satyr sliding away...

...straight into the central hole.

A scream followed by a hand grasping a piece of broken and twisted railing was the last thing Connie saw before having to make the correct choice. She didn't have time to look over the edge and pull Astray up. Now that Cromach was alone against Hex, the lich was quickly gaining the upper hoof and forcing Cromach to dodge magical projectiles coming from all sides instead of counterattacking.

The next exchange was quick and brutal. Connie needed more power to punch through Hex's ever-strengthening barriers, and the power inside her answered by spawning a thick glowing tentacle which slammed down on the dome. Thin cracks appeared on its surface, but it held. Cromach darted forward, his axe trailing lightning behind it and passing through the shield with only little resistance and cleaving Hex's foreleg clean off. The increasingly irritated skeletal mage took a deep breath and Cromach barely jumped backwards before a cone of fire shot out of Hex's mouth. That was all Hex needed to levitate his foreleg up and make it rejoin his body.

"Connie!" she heard Cromach screaming while jumping up from his back, followed by a quick wave of his foreleg, "Toss THAT!"

He was pointing at some kind of barrel, and Connie understood. Cromach's divine power allowed him to go through Hex's protective shield, but that wasn't all. To survive Connie's insane telekinetic strength, the barrier spell had to be tailored against it. A heavy physical projectile with the strength of her throw behind it should do some serious damage.

A fraction of a second later, the pony-sized barrel was just a blur in the air.

Time seemed to slow down as the barrel floated, but Connie knew it was just her head coping with the relative speed of the fight of Cromach and Hex.

The wizard's eyes locked on the barrel when it burst forward with a small thunderclap.

Cromach, lightning coursing through him, dropped his axe and tackled Hex on the ground, leaving blue shimmer wherever he passed. 

Hex's bony, red-glowing foreleg punched a hole through the griffon's barrel.

Cromach slammed his foreleg down through Hex's ribcage, pushing himself off of the limb impaling him, all that while swiping at Hex's horn with the talons of his other foreleg. 

The horn didn't break with the blow, but it wasn't supposed to. With the pair of scalding hot rings in his talons, Cromach rose on his hind legs and kicked himself backwards, away from Hex.

So, Connie was supposed to be a distraction, not a threat. 

Wait.

Connie's thrown barrel reached still dazed Hex who only saw a threat and reacted instantly to destroy it. He spat out a ball of fire from his mouth right as Connie finally noticed faint red markings on the wooden projectile.

The earth-shattering boom as the fiery spell met a barrel packed tightly with mining explosives swept Connie off of her hooves. The following rumbling of the next floor of the spiral ledge crumbling drowned out Astray's panicked scream as the railing he'd been hanging on to gave out, and he fell. The raised cloud of dust drowned out everything for everyone.

The central shaft spanned most of the height of Canterlot mountain, so Astray knew he'd have a long time to think about his mistakes.


***


Cromach gasped for breath as he pushed himself up from the polished black floor. His panic attack subsided with his first look around, replaced by cold dread of absolute certainty.

He was standing on a wide open square of obsidian tiles. On the sides of the square there were thick pillars separating the inside from the outside which looked like an endless, grey desert. He didn't need to look at the black throne a short distance away to know he was in the Final Sanctuary, the realm of Void, the alicorn of Death.

So this was it. He hadn't been able to escape the explosion in time, but at least he'd managed to take Arcane Hex's rings away from him. Without them, even if the explosion hadn't killed the unicorn as well, the others should be able to finish him.

Walking around accompanied only by his pawsteps and the scratching of claws, Cromach pondered his situation. Was he waiting for some sort of judgement?

"You know... I'm a bastard," he muttered to himself and shook his head, "My last thoughts weren't for Connie. All I could think was 'Blaze, at least I will see you soon'."

Did all souls have to wait this long for their... whatever was going to happen?

Cromach knew that if there was a busy alicorn then it would be Void, but how long was he supposed to wait?

"I must admit I wasn't expecting you here this soon-"

Cromach, hearing the voice from behind-

"DON'T turn around!"

-froze.

The voice wasn't the deep, smooth tone of Void. This voice felt like a normal pony and a somewhat familiar one, only distorted. Cromach knew he knew it, he just couldn't place it. So he simply asked:

"Who are you, and why can't I look at you?"

"It's funny how good you are at asking questions I'm not allowed to answer. You can trust me in that I am your... I am not your enemy."

"That doesn't really mean much when I'm already dead," Cromach sat down, looking between the pillars at the desert outside.

"The dead don't come here, otherwise Void wouldn't ever get a moment of peace."

"Speaking of him, where is he?"

"Gone."

"Okay. You're certainly a fountain of knowledge. When is he coming back?"

"He... isn't. Void is, for all intents and purposes, dead."

"What?!" it took all Cromach's self-control not to turn around, "Why? When? How?"

"I... don't know that much, but remember Harmony's attack during which Blazing died?"

"Yeah. I was so pissed afterwards when I recovered from being completely broken. Why wasn't Void there? Even damn DISCORD came to help and he didn't."

"The price for Discord's help was Void leaving this world forever. Void knew his help wouldn't be as meaningful as that of another god, and agreed. You see, just like Blazing lost Darky and you, Void lost Scream."

"What do you mean?"

"She helped Harmony come to this world."

"SHE CAUSED IT?"

"Her reasoning was to get the god here when we were ready, not when everyone has forgotten and his cult spread far and wide already. She even prepared a way which would be possible to be shut down by you. Had the god returned on its own, nothing would stop it. She prepared a magical means of doing so faster, but those were vulnerable on purpose, and you used the weakness she designed."

So that's why necromancy suddenly jumped in the past year. Void, the protector of souls, was gone. Everyone, even those with fairly little power, just needed the knowledge of dark rituals to now tap into the well of spiritual essence.

"How do you know all this?"

"I was supposed to tell this to somepony else, but I felt like you needed to know. Rules are... well, I promised Void to do what I thought best and that is what I'm doing."

"As much as this helped me understand what happened, I still don't know how this is connected to myself."

"You see, Void had a plan for you as well. Just like Scream manipulated him and all of us before, Void was certain you would somehow at some point come here. I was supposed to show you this."

The air before Cromach wobbled, and three see-through, shimmering figures appeared. A hippogriff and a unicorn were talking to the shifting image of the alicorn of death himself. A sphere of white light was hovering above the hippogriff's head.

"-This indeed is Cromach's soul... or some part of it," said Void.

"Part of it?" asked the hippogriff.

Cromach realized what he was watching. After Blazing's possessed father killed Choking Darkness and him, Straw Basket and Leo Goldhorn discovered remains of Crom's soul preserved by divine power haunting Canterlot castle and asked Void for help.

A spirit preserved in divinity. Cromach's expression turned thoughtful. He barely even listened to Void's following lecture. After all, he lived its content.

"Mortals, with enough help or willpower, can harness divine power, but in the same way they use it it leaves a mark on them. Cromach's power was bestowed on him by Blaze siphoning Nightmare's power directly, who had no real idea what he was doing. Fortunately, the bond between the two was strong enough, and Cromach's desire to save Blaze from Nightmare allowed him to shelter just enough divine power for Blaze not to be destroyed completely. Still, it was a lot for a mortal. It would not have been enough had the Nightmare's host not died before Nightmare could disintegrate both of them. From what they told me, Blaze has recently been helping Cromach use the power inside him. Much like during the incident when Cromach's desire to protect his lover allowed him to safeguard so much power without dying or... becoming something else, I believe the desire still burns within this soul, allowing it to remain in the world of the living. Sadly, right now there remains only a weakening wish and fading will drowning in the boiling sea of Nightmare's divinity."

"I know what he meant," said Cromach, "but that doesn't change anything about my body in the real world being in the middle of a huge explosion and a cave-in. Last thing I saw was the ceiling falling down on me."

"Well, I can't help you with that, but I have one more thing to show you. Void's last wish and my reason for being here. This isn't for you as such, but if there's something that might help then it's this one."

The quiet conversation in front of Cromach disappeared along with the spiritual images of the three equines. What replaced it was a different situation playing out before his eyes.

Void was more akin to a normal unicorn now, thin strands of dark flames draining out of him into the surrounding air. He was watching something that looked like a night sky filled to the brim with stars. One of the flickering dots was surrounded with the black and purple fire of Void's divine power, and seemingly absorbing it.

The core of the spark drowning in the sea of darkness was a mix of pink and orange.

Cromach recalled how others described his spirit when he'd been dead, how it changed based on what divine power had been poured into him in an attempt for resurrection. This soul wasn't changing, meaning it had power of its own which was assimilating Void's.

Alicorns don't die unless their divine power is taken away, purified, or they give it up. Harmony was the one doing the purifying, but if Void had to leave out of despair, pain of loss, and a promise, then he could give his divinity to a suitable successor. 

Somepony who saw death not as something to dread, but as a final place of safety, the end of pain, calmness and peace.

Even if an alicorn's physical form is killed, their body can reform as long as divine power tied to their soul remains untouched.

Did that work for all those with sufficient divinity inside them?

Filled with newfound strength, Cromach was determined to find out. It didn't matter how long it would take. As long as his body held up, he would wait, and he would meet him again.

"I know what Void wanted from me," he said simply, "And I know how to get out of here."

"I am glad to hear that," the voice chuckled, "because I myself have no clue how to kick you out." 

"A simple thank you will never come close to how much what you just did means to me," Cromach stood up and stretched.

"That's what friends are for, Cromach..."

The griffon closed his eyes, and roared.


***


The dust settled, and Connie rushed over to the crumbled rocks. The level of the spiral ledge they were on survived the explosion, but the level above it had completely collapsed on Arcane Hex and Cromach. As she approached the heap, her hair rose up, lifted by static charge in the air.

"Cromach! CROMACH!" she called out.

A white tentacle sprouted from the floor and moved the closest boulder away from the pile, then she heard a muffled groan. Forcing himself to be patient, she started disassembling the cave-in rock by rock until she got to a large, flat one.

Large, flat, sparkling one.

Lifting it with her mind, it slowly slid away, revealing Cromach kneeling on his hind legs while keeping Connie's rock from crushing him with his forelegs. Lightning was coursing through his entire form, and he collapsed when the weight was lifted off of his shoulders. Ignoring the blue sparks all over the griffon, sobbing Connie landed on him and buried her muzzle into the dirty feathers of his neck.

"You're worse... than the... rocks..." he grunted under the loving assault.

Connie's answer was only a tighter hug.

Anvil cursed herself. Over and over and over and over. She kept cursing herself with each bandage she took out of her bag and used to stop Bubbles' neverending bleeding. She should have gone to pull Astray back up immediately, but she couldn't. Not after what she'd seen before Contradiction joined the fight.

Bubbles had still been breathing. With the amount of blood she'd left behind she should normally look like an industrial beer tank, but she was still this fit, small mare who somehow was still alive. Anvil told herself she'd evaluated the situation correctly, that Astray had had the chance to pull himself up or hang there until the end of the fight, but Bubbles had needed any help she could get.

Nopony could have expected that explosion, nopony. And yet she was still hearing the voice in the back of her head calling her an idiot for taking care of somepony who would obviously die in the next second instead of saving whoever could survive and joining the fight. Maybe her presence would have ended the battle before the need for the explosion, but maybe not. So, locked in an internal struggle tearing her apart, she kept bandaging the bleeding wounds of the miraculously still not dead demoness.

"Need... help?" she heard, and her hands started shaking.

Was she hallucinating?

Astray, shoulder slumped and his other hand clutching his ribs, was standing above her and gasping for breath.

"You... you're alive?" Anvil couldn't believe how high-pitched her voice was.

"Asss... try. Not... a... sil...ver kni...fe."

The whisper from the limp mummy she'd been taking care of reassured her that she wasn't in fact going crazy.

"Heh, sorta... wish I... wasn't. Breathing... hurts," the satyr sat down, seeing Cromach and Connie didn't need his help. Possibly a crowbar to pry them apart.

"How?" Anvil was working on autopilot, prodding and poking the battered satyr's torso.

"I caught... the ledge... under this one. It didn't have... that crappy... railings. Very sturdy. Though my ribcage... had a disagreement... with it. Glad you made it... without.. me." 

"I didn't do anything," Anvil fixated Astray's damaged shoulder with multiple layers of bandages, "I was the only one who didn't do anything. Dumb... useless.. cow."

Astray's working hand brushed Anvil's muzzle and pulled her muscular neck a little down. When she looked questioningly at the satyr, he nodded towards Bubbles whose eyes were now closed, but her barrel was slowly going up and down with unconscious breathing.

"You had... the most important... job ever. And you... did great."