When I was young—and I mean really young, like before my balls dropped—I used to watch a shitload of horror movies. Because of that, I had long grown this idea in my head that death was a really horrible, terrible thing, usually ending with someone getting disemboweled or burnt alive or hacked to pieces by a machete. Then, as I grew older and became way more cynical, and I realized that death was inevitable, I adapted to the fatalism by simply not thinking about it. The end of my life became a neutral concept for me, something as easily forgettable as oxygen. Death was something that lacked substance, and my existence paled and dwindled from the resulting lethargy that such a philosophy entailed. All that mattered was living in the moment—from beer to beer, from class to class—with the shutter flash of headlights and porn flicks in between.
In Tartarus, I learned what it meant to be a murderer, a victim, and a survivor all at once. I'd seen horrors that would change the lives of scholars. And yet, as I marched up the steps alongside Kelly and Applejack with Fluttershy in my arms, and as I witnessed the glowing door to freedom in my reach, I saw an entirely new lease on life waiting before me, but that life no longer had substance to it. It no longer had color. It no longer had hope. It no longer had—
“Lyra...” Applejack's voice whimpered as she limped up the last bunch of steps. She slumped against the glowing door-frame as Kelly collapsed beside her. “Oh Lyra...” She ran her good hoof over her tear-stained face. Her lips quivered as she gazed at the rest of us. “Celestia help us. What are we gonna tell Bon Bon?”
“We'll tell her the truth,” Kelly said as I placed Fluttershy down beside her. “Just like we'll tell all our friends about Ace and Dr. Whooves...”
“And Cloud Kicker and Thunderlane and C-Carrot Top...” Applejack stifled a sob as she hugged herself. “Heaven help us. It's such a dang waste...”
“Applejack...” Kelly reached over with one good hand and squeezed the pony's shoulder. “There'll be time to grieve. But right now, we need to get this door open.”
“You were always better at it than myself, Kelly.”
“I'd love to, but my hand's busted—”
“I got it,” I said firmly. I was already kneeling before the circular mechanism, turning the apparatus with my fingers and activating the tumblers one by one. “Shouldn't take long. After all, I've seen this shit done a dozen times...” My voice lingered, as did my eyes, falling to the floor as a cold shudder ran through me.
Kelly gulped. “Shawn.” When she spoke, her voice was shaking. “I know this isn't easy for you. It's... not like the other t-times. You don't have to pretend—”
“Shhh!” I hissed, frowning. “I just need to get this damn door open before the teleportation field shuts down.”
A tear ran down Kelly's face. “Shawn,” she murmured.
“Look, do you want out of here or not?!” I snarled. As I said that, a loud roar echoed from down below. The hellscape lit up briefly with a red glow and was dim again. I fumbled briefly, frowned harder, and slammed my fist across the apparatus.
The last tumbler slid in place, and the door flew open. A glimmering cylinder of magical light appeared before us beyond the circular frame.
“Land's sakes,” Applejack murmured, sniffling in spite of herself. “Never thought it'd look so pretty up close.”
“Yeah, well, no time to waste,” I said, though my voice sounded like it was a million miles away from myself. I continued speaking, as if conversing with a moronic stranger stuck at the bottom of a mile-deep poop chute. “This is what all the fight's been for.”
“Shawn—”
“Ladies and ponies first,” I grumbled. I gave Kelly a glare that not even Mike Tyson could stand against.
She nodded. Leaning against Applejack's side, she hobbled with her partner into the glowing chamber of light.
“Fluttershy?” Applejack nervously called from behind her shoulder. “We're headed home, darlin'! Ya hear?”
“Home...” Fluttershy stirred, wincing from all her burns. “Don't... w-want to go alone,” she murmured in her painful delirium.
“You won't be, sugarcube,” Applejack said with a tearful grin. She looked weakly my way. “Reckon you should hand the filly over to us.”
“Way ahead of you,” I said in a low voice. I scooped Fluttershy up. Just as I crawled over to pass her into Kelly's and Applejack's embrace, I felt her nuzzling against me and whimpering.
“Please don't...”
“Let go, Fluttershy,” I grunted. “We gotta get you through the door—”
“Please, Sam,” she shuddered. A stream of tears formed underneath her eyelashes. “Everything deserves to live, including you. Don't... D-don't do it...”
I felt her trembling form, soft and frail and ever so fucking real against my beating chest. How many years had I sat in the shadows of the crap that I had made of my life? It was so easy to call it all “misery,” when in fact it was all just a veil to something I wasn't man enough to feel until that very bleeding moment. It kissed me with the subtlety of a bullet to the goddamn spine, numbing me, reinventing me, so that I too felt like I could teleport miles away in a single sob.
I may not have known the substance of life or death, but I knew the substance of myself. Or, at least, I knew what needed to be done in order to discover it. Because once that substance was gone, what would there have been left to treasure or piss away? I realized that the rest of my life, however boringly long or horrifically short, wouldn't be much to write about if I didn't do something crazy. I mean, why the fuck not? It's the crazy people who stood the test of time, making their mark in history. The reason for that could have been—possibly, maybe—that their craziness was equal to their happiness, but they were just too childishly facetious to share that secret with the world.
After days and days of killing monsters and running with ponies, I was starting to fell really, really childish. It was pretty damn liberating, in some fruity, psychotic way.
It felt like a million years later, but I finally handed Fluttershy over to Kelly and Applejack. She stirred in their grasp as they laid her down beside themselves in the magical glow.
“Okay, Shawn. Hop in before it's—” Kelly began, but could hardly finish. Her eyes widened as she saw my hand flying over to the door's console outside. “Shawn...?”
“Don't give me that look,” I muttered. With a turn of the tumblers, the circular door to the exit rolled shut. “It makes me flaccid.”
“What in tarnation?!” Applejack gasped.
“Shawn!” Kelly flew up to the grated bars of the door and peered through them. “What in the hell?! Open the door and get in here!”
“That's gonna be a little hard to do in a few seconds,” I said as I locked the frame in place.
“But... But...?!” Kelly looked like she was going to burst a blood vessel.
“He's goin' back...” Applejack murmured, her eyes locked with mine. “Ain't ya, Shawn? Yer goin' back for her...”
“Well, she very well can't go back for herself, now can she?”
“Shawn!” Kelly hissed, her face long and pained as she gripped the bars of the door-frame. “Lyra did what she did for a reason! If she's not burned to ashes by now, she will be soon! Don't ruin her sacrifice by doing something stupid! You're supposed to be free!”
“Yeah, well.” I unsheathed my sword and marched towards the edge of the stairs. “Guess I left the coupon at home.”
“Dammit, Shawn!” Kelly growled. “It's fucking suicide! What do you have to prove?! You won't survive!”
I gazed back at her. That voice was once again a distant, haunting thing. “Surviving isn't everything,” it said. I then frowned and pointed an angry finger. “Now get the fuck out of here before I reach in and cut your other leg open!”
Kelly blinked. Slowly, she smiled, a very pretty and tear-stained thing. “You always were a crazy douchebag, Shawn.”
“And you were always a sexy one. Take care of that ass of yours.” I pivoted my gaze and nodded. “Applejack...”
“Reckon I should look after my flank too?”
I smiled. “At least let your family do it when you get back to them.”
She almost guffawed. Almost. Her green eyes were warm and sincere as she clung to Fluttershy. “I'll tell everypony I know about you, Shawn. You are rightly the craziest of humans.”
“Let Lyra do it,” I said.
They said nothing, or at least if they tried to, they were too encumbered by a bright strobe of light as the chamber flashed all around them. Kelly's sexy lips were moving. Perhaps she was shouting. I didn't know. I suspected that I might never know. In a blink, they were all gone. The light in the chamber died, and all that remained was their three collars rattling to a stop.
Next, the world spun, for I was running like a mother fucking steam engine down the stairs. When that wasn't fast enough, I leapt and bounded down the stone steps. When I still wasn't satisfied, I gripped my sword like an airfoil and planted my boots down the stone frame of the stairs, gliding down with a shower of sparks.
The world grew hotter, redder. I was descending into the hell that my partner's heavenly sacrificed had created. The sounds of Babellyon's roars grew more and more pronounced. I listened with mixed hope and horror for a gentler voice beyond him, and I felt my heart leap upon such high-pitched tones. Lyra was shrieking, screaming. She was alive or dying or possibly both. I never wanted to hug and kill something so hard in all my life. I felt like I could belch fire and piss bullets. If I wanted to charge through the core of the world, I very doubt gravity would have given me any shit about it.
The stairs ended and my sprint began. I zoomed, blurred, rocketed over the plateau, past burning debris, searing scorch marks, and settling ashes. The green effluence of Lyra's magic littered the underworld battlefield. The only way such a one-sided fight could have lasted so long was if she wasn't fighting, but rather was teleporting around as much as her horn could allow her.
When I came upon the horrific scene, my fears were confirmed and negated all at once. Lyra was still in one piece, but that was hardly a positive statement. She limped about, trying in vain to perform another teleport, when Babellyon's blade flew towards her. It landed several feet away, but the sheer force and heat of the vaporous tool sent her reeling. She rolled over onto the ground, twitching and groaning. Soot and burnt fur blemished her figure in several places. Her tears evaporated over her quivering face as Babellyon—fueled by anger and frustration—loomed above her with the weapon ready to cleave her body in two.
It was around that time that two bolts flew into the incubus' flaming shoulders. Babellyon roared in more annoyance than pain. He stumbled back with the sword, looking every which way, until—
“Hey! Handsome!”
He turned and gawked at me.
I marched towards him with the crossbow in one hand and my sword in the other. “Get the fuck away from my little pony!” I shouted with an iron frown.
“You have returned?!” Babellyon's fanged teeth grinned wide. He aimed his blade at me. “Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps we've not molded our experiments into the perfect soldiers—”
My sword swam across his ankle.
“Aaaugh!” he stumbled back, leaking blood and sulphur.
“Yeah, you just keep talking, shitfuck!” I hissed.
He didn't talk. Instead—“Rrrrrgh!”—he flung his sword at me at full force.
Normally, this would have called for rolling or dodging or pissing myself out of range of his swing. Instead I held my damn ground and parried with my sword gripped in two hands. I gritted my teeth and struggled against his weapon's pressure with every twitching muscle in my body. Babellyon's glowing eyes blinked in brief surprise. I imagined to myself that it was fear. Why not? He had every reason to be afraid. The proverbial Steve Buscemi of my subconscious had just crapped out a Clint Eastwood.
“Haaaugh!” I shoved against the eighteen foot demon with a burst of strength, smacked his sword twice, and slashed across his exposed wrist. He cried in pain as I shoved him back with a third swing against his knee. “Aaaah! Your mother—!”
Then, his foot slammed across my chest.
I flew. I literally sailed, then toppled, and ultimately landed next to my partner's quivering body. Wincing, I hoisted myself up with my sword. My armor was steaming all over from the demon's heat. I looked at the pony, panting.
“Lyra? Lyra, get up if you can! Run away, I got this—”
“Burn!”
I felt the world around me lighting up with crimson hellfire. Spinning, I saw an explosive sphere flying towards me. I jumped up and swung my sword towards the cavern's ceiling. My blade made hard contact with the flaming sphere. I felt like my forearms would shatter from the impact, but it was still well-timed. I barely managed to deflect the bomb, sending it sailing into what remained of the metal mesas beyond the plateau.
The abysmal explosion sent shards of metal and rust raining everywhere while Babellyon charged at full force, his wings trailing fire. He dragged his blade across the floor, showering sparks, and flung its vaporous end at me.
I ducked low, rolled across the ground, and knelt with an upwards slash to meet his chest.
He merely hovered to a stop and gripped the end of my blade with his bare palm.
I blinked. “Well, shit—”
Babellyon lurched his neck forward and vomited a plume of flame at me.
I barely dodged to the side, sweating profusely. With a growl, I released the grip on my sword. As it hung in his grasp, I shifted my eight and slammed my foot against the hilt in a high kick.
The blade sliced across his palm and embedded into his shoulder. “Aaaugh!”
I leapt up, grabbed onto the hilt, and used my weight to pull it out of his body. As I fell, I unholstered my crossbow and shot a web of bolts—the very last of my ammo—all across his chest.
He reeled from the sea of metal quills forming across his belly. Bleeding smoke and blood, he stomped down at me. I rolled to the side. He stomped again, and I dodged once more. Upon the third attempt, he managed to pin me to the floor. I hissed in pain as I felt his burning heel melting through my armor. Sneering, I slashed and hacked and whacked at his leg with my sword—until he gripped my neck with a bare fist.
“A noble fight...” Babellyon hissed, lifted me up, and flung me across the plateau. “For a plebeian warrior...”
I was airborne for the better part of three seconds. I landed hard, rolling to my side, wincing as a deep pain resonated in my chest.
The ground shook as he stomped towards my limp form, dragging his burning blade. “The point of this whole exercise was to harden you mortals into the new army of Tartarus,” he muttered. “A force infinitely more competent than the helleons of the last age. Under Sisyphus' hand, mankind and equines will usher the end of the multi-verse in a thousand years from now...”
I sputtered and hissed at him. “A little late for exposition, don't you think, dickstain?” I suddenly wheezed, for his entire weight was being pressed into my chest.
Babellyon leered as he grind his heel into my sternum. “Don't you see?! Whatever hope you cling to is folly! Whatever god you worship is dead!”
“Nuh uh...” I smiled bloodily. I weakly raised my sword. “Isaiah Thomas is still alive, bitch.”
He smacked my sword away and spat demon bile all around me. “What futile whimsy is it that keeps you smiling into the face of agony?!” His eyes narrowed as he opened his mouth wide and vomited a fresh bomb into his palm. “Never the matter, mortal.” He held the glowing sphere high in his hand as he grinned down at me. “For my pleasure, I think I will burn those lungs of yours to a crisp. Then let's hear you laugh, human. Let's hear your insolent chuckles when you're—”
Right as he said this, a green bolt of energy flew in out of nowhere. It sailed straight into his bomb, flashed brightly from inside, and set the demonic explosive off. This probably wouldn't have been a big deal for Babellyon if he wasn't holding the motherfucking thing in his hand. As it so happened—
“Aaaaaaugh!”
The incubus squirmed and stumbled in a pure cloud of sulphur. The plateau was awash with steaming blood. I crawled away before the acidic fluid before it could get to me. Soon, I was standing with my sword. I flashed a breathless look to my side.
Lyra's eyes were glowing, as was her horn. The brightness dimmed, and soon she slumped back to the floor with a groan, her limbs twitching all over.
I looked back at the sulphuric cloud as it started to clear. Babellyon was no longer standing. He was kneeling, clutching what was left of his... right side. Not only was his hand blown off, but his arm was missing along with a good chuck of his torso. A huge gash constantly spilled ash into the air of the labyrinth as he squirmed in pure agony.
“Nnnngh-Damnable ponies! Save me, oh Dark Lord! I beg you!”
“Pssst...”
He gazed up, his eyes reduced to jaded orbs.
I stood before him with my sword held high. After an emphatic clearing of the throat, I uttered, “'Hardy har har.'” Then I brought the blade down.
Babellyon stopped staring at me. It may have had something to do with the fact that his eyes were now dangling on either side of his shoulders. The sword had cleaved its way down into his chest, ripping everything else above it in half, including the ribbons it had made of his cranium. Whatever spirit had imbued the demon barely clung on as his corpse fell over, twitching and spasming in its own juices.
I stepped back, panting, seeing my own reflection in the blood, and it looked hella-tight. “Whew. He lived like ass and he smelled like ass.” Next thing I heard was the clattering of my sword as I dropped it, punctuating every bruise and burn in my body. Nevertheless, nothing stopped me from rushing over—limping over—to the frail unicorn lying several feet away. “Lyra...?”
“Nnngh...” She stirred fitfully.
“Lyra. Speak to me—” I knelt by her side. My hand touched her coat. “Are you hurt anywhere—”
“Nngh—Aaah!” She shrieked and jolted away from me. “No! No! Augh!”
“Lyra!”
“Don't! Please—!”
“Lyra, it's okay!” I strangled her, only I didn't. I was holding her close, hugging her, clutching her to my chest and freezing her bucking limbs in place. “It's okay! It's me!”
“Sh-Shawn?”
“It's me, Lyra.”
“Oh Shawn...” She whimpered.
“It's okay. You're going to be okay.”
“But... But...” She stammered, hiccuped. Tears were forming in her eyes. “But Kelly and the others—”
“They're safe. She and Applejack and Fluttershy are headed home.”
“Babellyon... Babellyon's—”
“He's dead. The Boss battle’s over. Switch to Disc Two. We won.”
“You...” She tilted her head up, her eyes quivering. I saw my face reflected like prisms in her moist eyes, and I was only residually weirded out to see a gentle smile across it. “You c-came back for me?”
“Yeah. Crazy, huh?”
“But...” She shivered all over, sniffled, and whimpered, “B-but you could have gone home. You could have freed yourself...”
I opened my mouth to speak, but hesitated. The coldness of that place and the smell of Babellyon's corpse became a distant memory. All I felt was Lyra's warm limbs in my embrace. She was frail, naïve, but ever so tenderly alive. I was reminded of a strange soul that had pounced on me, yelled at me, and wept against me. Life, for all of its bizarre fuckups, is worth trudging through so long as you know something or someone admires you for giving it a try.
“I think... someone has freed me already, Lyra,” I said.
She blinked. Her eyes clenched shut as she shook and quivered. “I... I-I don't know what to say...”
“Shhh. Then don't,” I said. I held her to my chest, cradling her in the abyss of worlds. “Don't talk. Don't think. And above all, don't worry.” I rocked her gently, stroking her shaved head. “I'm not going to leave you. Not again.”
“Oh Shawn...” She sobbed openly, unashamedly, her tears bathing away the ashes Babellyon had made on my armor. “It's just so horrible down here. I can't take it. I can't anymore...”
“It's alright.” I smiled, a very strange sensation. “You don't have to. We're gonna find a way out. We're going to get you home, Lyra. We're going to get you to Bon Bon. Just you wait and see.”
“I miss her so m-much,” she stammered, and then the rest was just unintelligible poetry. I absorbed her infantile sobs. I didn't seem to mind anymore. Suddenly, the stupidest things were worth enduring, so long as it accomplished the impossible, like warming the heart of the underworld. I had no doubt right then and there that we'd make it home in one piece. Like a good soldier, I held Lyra tightly and wrung the very same doubt out through her tears.
The silly thing about misery, I suppose, is that it's easy to forget that it has a second purpose. As we grow old and jaded—as years and wars and stock markets take their toll on us—the joys of life aren't destroyed. They're merely hidden, like some poor lazy bastard sweeping candy sweets under a worn leather doormat. It's taken me a long time and a lot of weird circumstances, but I think I know the truth now. A way to find happiness is to just lift up the carpet from time to time and reacquaint ourselves with the treasures we left there in the past.
I don't know much about these silly talking ponies, but I figure they never took the dark turn that humans did. In the grand history of all things that whinny, they kept happiness right in front of them at all times. Maybe Sisyphus thought to destroy both species when he introduced them to each other across the dimensional burp of the cosmos. Who's to know if his grand, demonic plan will backfire, but I know this for sure: it took a great deal of hell to introduce me to heaven. Maybe Tartarus was needing soldiers with this crazy-ass exercise. Regardless of what Sisyphus thinks he's getting, I suspect that it's only going end with a very happy multi-verse in a thousand years.
I can't rightly remember exactly how long I sat there with Lyra. Hugging was kind of a new thing for me, and I left my stopwatch at home along with my sanity. I didn't miss either of them, though. Somehow, Lyra's smile was totally worth pissing away a ticket to freedom.
“I suppose we'd better get moving,” Lyra eventually said. Her sobs had finally left her, giving way to a more solid, sane breath. “There's still half an army somewhere in this chamber, and they're bound to find another way to this plateau in due time.”
“Jee,” I muttered as I wiped the demon blood off my sword and sheathed it. “More trolls and orcs. Why am I feeling hungry all of the sudden?”
“Heeheehee...” Lyra smiled warmly. She was donning the last of the silver bits of armor that had fallen off of her when she first teleported. “So, what are you going to do with...” She motioned towards my right arm. “Well, you know...?”
“Hmm? Oh, this thing?” I rotated the pony collar that was hanging on my right bicep. “I dunno. I can't very well toss it, or else I'll get zapped as soon as I walk away.”
“Should I... uhm... should I put it on again or something?”
“I came back to save you because you're special,” I grunted. “Not an idiot.”
Again, she giggled, a very soft sound. “Well, I guess it looks okay on you.” She suddenly smirked. “Where I come from, ponies would call something like that a 'friendship hooflet.'”
“Where I come from, we call it something else just as fruity, but a little less stupid.”
“Heehee... But I think it looks good on you.”
I took a breath. I shrugged. “Guess it feels good on me too...”
She nodded. “Uhm, Shawn?”
“Yeah, what?”
She motioned at me with her hoof.
I raised an eyebrow. I sighed and knelt down before her. “What is it?”
She suddenly lifted up and nuzzled me—her cheek against mine.
I blinked awkwardly. As she stood back on all fours, I asked, “What was that all about?”
“Thank you for coming back for me,” she said. “It... it really means a lot, especially to think of what you've given up.”
“Mmmf...” I shrugged as I stood up. “It's either this or back to Detroit.”
“Really?” She trotted forward. “It's as simple as that?”
I walked along with her as we scaled a cliff-face beyond the plateau. “Do I really have to put it in words?”
“No,” she shook her head. “No, Shawn, I suppose you don't have to.”
“Good...”
“But, while you're here... uhm...”
“What?”
“I don't suppose I could learn more about you?”
“Heh. Like what's worth knowing about me?”
She gazed up at me. “Anything. Everything. Because for as long as I'm blessed to be alive, I'd like to know all about the reason why.”
“Is that all I am now? A 'reason?'”
“Well?” She smiled. “Care to prove otherwise?”
I shrugged. “I'm just a guy who slacks his way through college and buys the occasional beer...”
“And likes to look at Kelly.”
“And wouldn't mind pouring that beer all over Kelly and licking it off.”
Lyra giggled childishly.
I raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. “Heh. Wow. I thought that'd be a little too low brow for... erm... your horn.”
“I think you're afraid to try me.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mmmhmmm.”
“Well,” I began. “This one summer in Minneapolis, I spent the night with these really two hot sisters before they went to join a convent the next day.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Did you three spend the evening telling ghost stories?”
“Yeah, see?” I pointed. “That's exactly why I knew this wouldn't work.”
Lyra hung her head. “I'm sorry...”
“Hey! Don't be sorry. You were born to be adoracute. It's in your blood, along with eating hay and swatting flies with your tail.”
“Maybe we should try things differently...”
I glanced at her. “How about you try telling me one of your anecdotes?”
“One of mine?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“Well, this one time, I sat on a bench...”