Rarity worked her way down another dank, garbage-choked alley, striving to keep her movements silent as she approached an intersection. Not for the first time, she felt her teeth grinding as she tried to recall what Sassy had told her about the nests of disreputable ponies who gathered amid the Lower City’s warren of crisscrossing avenues. She’d managed to avoid a hoofful of the ruffians thus far, but there had been innumerable sounds or unaccounted-for shadows that she’d jumped at along the way. Overall, the experience had filled her with regret about taking Sassy’s offer to contact the informant by herself.
A faint sound from the intersecting alleyway made her ears flick. Rarity paused and held her breath as she listened. The sound repeated after several moments. It was brief but swishing, like the wind.
Rarity took a slow, careful look around the corner. There, halfway down toward the street, she spotted a figure leaning against a wall. As she watched, it idly tossed a knife upward, then caught it again.
She drew back, then turned her head to check the way she’d come, making sure that nopony was there. Then she took another quick look at the figure, before trying to make out what lay past it. The street beyond looked busy; ponies passed by quickly, none seeming to notice the figure.
Rarity gritted her teeth and tried to recall her route in exacting detail, fearing that she might’ve taken a wrong turn. But despite the pounding of her pulse in her ears, she felt sure that Sassy’s directions remained clear in her mind, and she was certain she’d followed them to the letter.
For a moment she considered bolting through the intersection, trusting in stealth and speed to help her avoid the unknown pony. But as she thought it through, she realized that the pony likely wouldn’t be alone. If they and their friends weren’t bothering the passersby on the street beyond, that might be much safer.
Rarity turned around, beginning to retrace her steps toward the main street she’d come from. But after a few hoofsteps, she heard the swishing sound again. Only this time it was much clearer, and much closer.
“Your money or your life,” a stallion said from right behind her.
Rarity froze. A prickling sensation worked its way down her spine. “V… very well,” she said, slowly reaching into her cloak and unlimbering her coin purse. “Please, the money means nothing to me; just take it and let me be on my way.”
From behind her came a high, familiar cackle. “I swear… one of these days, you need to throw me a curve ball or something, ’cuz you are so predictable!”
She recognized the voice, and the laugh, of the stallion who recently held Sassy’s life in his hooves.
She slowly turned to face him. He was cloaked as always, though dim reflections of starlight glinted off what she could see of his unnerving, white-toothed grin. “I should say the same for you as well, leaping from the darkness like some grotesque jenny-in-the-box at every turn!”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but that’s kinda my schtick. Which segues nicely into the question of what you’re doing out here in no-mare’s land? I mean, you’re not just ‘off the beaten path’; I'm pretty sure this is a path where ponies get beaten, regularly.”
Rarity swallowed. “The Overseer has asked me to assist with business in the Lower City.”
He shook his head. “Oh, but where’s the fun in keeping secrets? I don’t really go in for the Zebrican proverb that ‘there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking it.’ Let me tell you: you wanna find some folks who don’t know how to have fun, zebras are even worse than yaks.”
She furrowed her brow, trying not to let herself be overcome by the memory of Zecora being flung into Tartarus. “The… zebras?”
“Sure. I lived among ’em for a while. I used to wander all over when I was younger, trying to find my place.”
A thought danced through Rarity’s mind. A loose thread presented itself, and she decided to risk pulling on it: “But you did find it eventually, didn’t you? Perhaps with somepony who now lies in Tartarus?”
All at once, his countenance deflated. His head darted to and fro as if watching for something, and his shoulders slumped. “I… yes, my wife,” he said slowly. “I don’t much like to talk about her, though.”
“I’m sorry,” Rarity said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
He chuckled mirthlessly. “Yes you did. It’s all right; I just haven’t talked about her with anypony in a long time. She… was beautiful. Funny too, though most ponies never got to see that side of her. And sad… so very sad.”
“You have my sincerest condolences.”
“The worst thing is, she always had this… feeling. I don’t know how else to say it. But she always said she felt like she’d missed something important; something that would’ve changed her whole life.” He sighed, and his voice hardened. “But whatever it was, it never came. And then, somehow, I found a way to make things worse.”
Rarity’s eyebrows rose.
“We were there,” he said, and Rarity could feel his eyes start to bore through her. “In Ponyville. On the day it all started.” He laughed, but it was hollow and dead. “It was my idea to take her and the fam to the Summer Sun celebration. I thought maybe it’d make her smile.”
A leaden feeling crept into Rarity’s gut. From there it spread through her chest, seemingly trapping her heart in a cold, unyielding mass. “I… I’m so dreadfully—”
“That’s not even the worst of it,” he said, clenching his teeth. “I… I see her sometimes.” All at once he lurched forward, pressing his muzzle close to Rarity’s, teasing her with the moonlit outline of a face creased with smile-lines, yet marred by heavy bags under the eyes. “I know it sounds crazy, but I swear the Nightmare sends me dark, awful visions of her sometimes. Like she just appears, looking so… so…”
He turned away. His shoulders began to shake, perhaps with tears.
Unwanted thoughts intruded into Rarity’s mind: her family screaming, lashes of fire scourging the crowd, Ponyville’s City Hall engulfed in flames. She reached a hoof toward him, though she stopped just shy of making contact. “From time to time, since Ponyville, I also have been prone to… traumatic recollections. Some have been quite vivid indeed.”
His breathing became heavier. “You don’t get it. This isn’t just in my head! It’s real enough that I can touch her for a moment… or hear her screaming out in pain.”
Rarity recoiled, and he chuckled darkly. “Because Tartarus, right? Y’know—” he stuck his tongue out, raised his hooves, and pantomimed flailing about in torment while making gagging sounds.
“That is ghastly,” Rarity said, feeling her gorge rise.
Fortunately, he stopped. “You judge me for laughing now? I’m happy, Lady Rarity. The Alicorn and dragon are the sign that we’ve been waiting for. Now I don’t have to face each day with dread about failing to rescue her; we are making things happen, and quickly too.”
She blinked, as his words evoked a thrill of hope within her. And yet she was curious: “Who’s… we?”
“Just some friends.” He grinned, and held up his knife, causing Rarity to take a step back. “We’re going down to Tartarus. We’re gonna rescue my wife. And while we’re at it, we’re gonna cut the Nightmare’s beating heart right out of her chest. Then won’t her face be red?!”
“Impossible,” Rarity whispered, though her mind seized upon the possibility. “Even if killing the Mistress was possible, I fear you’d need something much more serious than a knife.”
The stallion giggled for a moment, then threw his head back with boisterous laughter. “Exactly! See, I knew that I was working with the right mare!”
“Please, keep quiet,” Rarity said, looking around. “I still must be getting to the sweet sh—”
She regretted the words immediately as she watched his grin deepen. “Oh really,” he said. “You’re kidding! Ol’ Sassafrass sent you to meet her?”
Rarity shivered as she took a deep breath. “I take it that you know this… candy maker?”
He chuckled. “Sure I do. And I bet I know which way your sassy lil’ BFF is sending you, though I bet she doesn’t know just how bad things have gotten around Main and Sixth lately. You better come in from the north unless you want things to go south…” He finished with a giggle.
“Thank you,” Rarity said quietly.
“Not a problem, milady; I’ve got the feeling you and me are gonna get on like a house on fire! But I’ll tell you what… while I’m being helpful, why don’t I help you lose the mook who’s been tailing you for the last couple of blocks? Think about it like a ‘free gift with purchase.’”
“The… what?!”
“Oh yeah, for real. Hey guy!” He turned to face the way Rarity had come from, and then held a hoof up by his mouth. “Yeah, you there! What gives? Didn’t your mama teach you not to stalk defenseless mares in dark alleys?”
A sound from farther down the way made Rarity jump, despite having been warned that it might come. She stared wide-eyed as a large and grumbling shape shuffled out from the embrace of shadows, revealing itself as a heavyset unicorn stallion carrying a large knife in one of his forehooves. His horn began glowing, and his magic took over gripping the knife.
“That’s enough outta both of you,” the newcomer said in a thick voice. “You wanna make it out of here in one piece, you hoof over everything you’ve got. Now.”
“Perhaps we can resolve this amicably,” Rarity whispered.
“Perhaps,” the cloaked stallion said under his breath. She spotted the outline of a grin under his hood, then listened as he put on an egregiously poor Trottingham accent: “I say, good thuggish stallion; did you indeed command us to relinquish ‘everything’ in our possession?”
“Yeah,” the newcomer said. “Right now.”
Rarity gasped as she realized that she’d heard this “joke” before. “Wait, no—”
The cloaked stallion shrugged. “Right-o, guv’na; as y’wish!”
He whipped his hoof around like lightning. The heavy unicorn stumbled backwards, pressing desperate hooves to the knife handle protruding from his throat, before collapsing in a burbling heap.
“Sorry, old chap, that was all I had—aw, nuts!” He turned to Rarity, and dropped his fake accent. “I already did this one, didn’t I? Sorry! I try to be careful about recycling material…”
Rarity’s throat went dry. She rushed toward the fallen unicorn and began tearing long strips off her fine cloak. “No! NO! This is not how we shall do things! I have seen enough of suffering and death, and I will not be party to creating more!”
“I’m sorry, are you trying to save him?” Her companion chuckled, then pointed at the fallen unicorn. “This ain’t one he’s gonna walk off, sweetheart.”
Rarity trembled with rage. “And what would you have me do instead?!”
The stallion knelt down beside her. “Well, you’re kinda stuck with death at this point—but you said you weren’t a fan of suffering and death. So, pull the knife out.”
“But… that would…”
“He’s dead anyway! You leave it in, and what? He gets an extra minute or two to reconsider his life choices?” The stallion leaned closer. “I know you don’t like getting your hooves dirty, but you’re gonna have to if you want to help me bring the Nightmare down and get the prisoners out of Tartarus.” He pointed at the still-moving unicorn. “So right here, right now, what are you going to do?”
Her jaw worked its way open soundlessly as she gazed into the pony’s fearful, desperate eyes. On instinct, her hooves raised toward him, drawn like a lodestone by her own frantic need to offer him aid. But recollections of the cloaked pony’s words about hastening death stopped her, leaving her teetering just on the edge of motionlessness.
She couldn’t choose. Just like she’d failed to choose then, also.
Rarity’s breath grew shallow, like that of the dying unicorn, and her trembling grew difficult to control, as recollections of the sights and sounds of fire and death streamed through her mind in an inexorable torrent. Back then, she’d stood transfixed and unable to flee the burning sepulcher of City Hall until a nameless yellow mare had grabbed her. But as the visions replayed over and over with each heartbeat, gaining intensity every time, the mare never came. It wasn’t until hundreds of thousands of terrified faces screeched out their accusations—of her leading Ponyville to slaughter—that she at last felt a hoof on her shoulder—
“Huh, will ya look at that.”
Rarity startled. The hooded stallion had approached her, and she could almost see the outline of his face in his hood. He gestured toward the fallen pony with his free hoof. “Looks like you went with the ‘suffering and death’ option after all. I take it back; I guess you can surprise me!”
A hot, insistent sensation overtook Rarity’s gut.
She vomited.
The stallion took a few steps away. “Aww, that was too much, wasn’t it? My in-laws always did say I came on a little strong.”
“I… I didn’t want this,” Rarity managed between shaky breaths. She spat, trying to clear the taste of bile from her mouth. “None of this.”
She watched as his head came down to her level, and his eyes locked with hers. “Welcome to Tartarus, sweetheart. None of us wanted this. Only question’s what we’re gonna do about it now that—” He paused, sniffed audibly, then reached into his cloak and produced a tiny metal box. “Breath mint?”
Rarity slapped the box out of his hoof, squeezing her eyes shut. “I've had quite enough of your assistance!”
"Fine, but do us both a favor and start thinking about what you really want, not just what you're comfortable doing to get it."
Eventually, after several moments of heavy but unsteady breaths, she opened her eyes again. The stallion was gone. The knife was gone. Even the breath mints were gone. Only the fallen unicorn remained, and the sight of his body made her shudder.
Rarity looked up, studying the cold moon and the faceless buildings that surrounded her.
“Celestia, forgive me,” she whispered.