Rarity hit the floor as her coughing fit took a turn for the worse. Her lungs felt like fire, and her eyes streamed with tears.
Not all of the tears were from the green gas.
She failed to suppress a heavy sob that drew in even more of the noxious gas, causing another great series of coughs that made her feel more and more faint. The physical pain was considerable, but the jagged feelings of her crushed heart wracked her still more greatly. “I trusted you,” she half-moaned through her dry and cracking lips. “What about your poor wife—”
Somewhere in the horrible cacophony surrounding her, Rarity heard a pony cackle with unholy mirth. It was tinny and distorted, but it made her bristle.
She would know that laugh anywhere.
Once more, images of dead and dying ponies replayed through her head. This time, though, they turned hard eyes full of judgment on her even as the light drained out of them. The tightness in Rarity’s chest magnified as the unrelenting tide of memories crashed down on her again, and again, and again.
“No,” she mouthed, forcing her eyes back open. Though they stung and watered, she looked from side to side, trying to catch sight of anypony else from the group, or any clues to where the green-eyed stallion might be lurking in the gas.
Suddenly, a shape passed in front of her. It was dark and uncertain down below, but it had a kind of glimmering brightness at the top. Acting on desperation and instinct, Rarity raised a hoof and grabbed at the figure, clutching a hoofful of their cloak’s thick fabric. Then she pulled with all of her adrenaline-fueled might, bringing the acutely surprised face of a lilac-colored unicorn with a glowing horn and a sphere of magical light encircling her head down into view.
Rarity met the unicorn’s wide blue eyes, and briefly noted their tall, purplish-blue, aqua-streaked mane. She didn’t recognize the unicorn. So she made a snap decision, bringing her other forehoof up into the pony’s jaw as hard as she could, pushing up off her hind legs to add even more weight to the blow.
The pony lurched backwards, their hornglow went out, and the glimmering bubble that had encircled their head vanished. They immediately started coughing and choking, just as so many others were. But Rarity maintained her grip on the pony’s cloak and punched them again, drawing a thick stream of bloody spittle from their mouth.
Rarity’s foreleg ached even more than the rest of her body from delivering the heavy blows, so she gritted her teeth and launched horn-first into a headbutt. She saw stars; her grip faltered; her muscles screamed at her for air.
She dropped to her knees, weeping openly at the disaster unfolding around her, as well as the apparent futility of striking the pony she’d waylaid. But mere paces away, that very pony—who was also hacking and struggling under the effects of the oppressive green toxin—reached into her cloak and drew out some kind of long, strange tube.
She raised it high. There was a flash. Then the gas began to stream out of the room, and into the tube.
Rarity’s pulse continued hammering as she craned her neck on instinct, gasping for the sweetening air around her. Other ponies gasped as well, creating a loud and awful din of a different sort. After several huge breaths, the fog within her mind grew clearer—but the aching heaviness of her muscles seemed to grow immeasurably worse.
Still her tears flowed.
“Why, why, why did you turn off the bubbles?! I’m kinda in the middle of something here!”
Rarity’s breath caught. Out of the clearing haze emerged the traitor himself. Though she’d never seen him without his cloak, she knew him in an instant by the way he moved. It was as if his every muscle had been wound so tightly that the slightest touch might send him leaping for somepony’s throat. At last she could see that he had a coat of brownish-orange, and a mane that was dark-brown and curly. He was disheveled, and spattered with red, but it was the sheer ferocity in his hard green eyes and gritted teeth that made Rarity shiver.
The pony holding the tube aloft rubbed at her bloodied muzzle with her free hoof. “Well, Cheese, you can thank your little friend here for ruining my concentration. Maybe thank her real quick with your knife so we can get this show on the road?”
He turned and looked at Rarity with eyes that were hard as stone.
Then he threw his head back, laughing.
“Isn’t she—Starlight, didn’t I tell you she was magnificent?! Look how well she sold it! She dragged the ponies you wanted revenge on out of their hidey-hole! She set us up to grab the Hellshard with practically no notice! I mean, I know we had to scramble when the whole ‘Alicorn and dragon’ thing popped up, but look how much she managed to get done in practically no time! And even now—choked half to death, confused as can be, and fighting a head full of demons—she’s still trying to do the right thing. Isn’t that so, ‘darling?!’”
“Your wife,” Rarity croaked, her voice deep, scratchy, and horrendously unladylike.
“Ah. Well. I suppose there’s that, isn’t there.” He turned to Starlight with an expression that seemed almost contrite. “I know you’re itching to get on with phase two, but let’s face it: we couldn’t have pulled this off without her. She at least deserves an explanation.”
“Make it fast,” Starlight said, continuing to rub her muzzle as she put the tube away. Then she turned to a few ponies who still had intact livery, and who were forming up around her; evidently Starlight had been supplying more than just herself and Cheese with bubbles of air. “Drag the unicorns over to me so we can get the feeder process started. Finish off the rest. Blueblood, get back on your hooves! Start reeling in the Guardian, but make sure it doesn’t interfere!”
Cheese trotted up to Rarity, then plopped down on his haunches and lowered his head to her level. Rarity fought revulsion at having his blood-flecked face so close to her own, but feared what he might do if she tried to pull away. His tongue flicked across his lips, and his brows knit in what appeared to be contemplation.
“I didn’t lie about everything,” he said, looking at his hooves. “I lied about a lot, though. Our setup at the Archive was a big risk… but I knew you’d stopped trusting me by that point, and I figured it’d only get worse if I gave you enough time to think everything through. I mean, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have made that joke about Sweetie Drops… who, by the way, was almost a bigger risk. If she’d talked, this whole thing would’ve gone poof. But I had faith that I got her just close enough to death’s door to keep her quiet for a good, long time… oh, and believe me: if I didn’t want you to find her alive, you wouldn’t have. But I just knew that Limestone would go wild for the story of you saving her! Others, too. They sure do like to think that they’re heroes!”
“Whoa, got her attention,” Blueblood said from behind them. Tension crept into his voice as he raised his hooves toward the portal again. “Starlight, the Guardian’s comin’ in fast, and she is really, really peeved!”
“But… but…” Rarity’s head swam with shocking revelation after shocking revelation. Yet one still lay shrouded in mystery: “Your wife? The… the vision I saw of her?”
“Yeah…” He took a breath. “I told you that I lost my family at Ponyville, and that was mostly true; the only other one who made it was my sourpuss-sister-in-law Limestone, who opted to stay home and tend the rock farm.” He took another, longer, much more ragged breath. “The truth is, I really did lose my wife that day—except she didn’t end up in Tartarus, and I… I didn’t… quite… lose all of her. And I never could let go of what was left.”
Rarity’s jaw worked open as she processed the horror he’d laid out before her.
“A dead mare came into the house,” Diamond Tiara had told them…
Rarity battled to keep her stomach from voiding itself, and forced her eyes back up to meet Cheese’s. His nightmarish countenance was almost physically painful to behold, given the spattering of blood and thick sweat that matted his coat. And yet, as Rarity’s gaze lingered on the corners of his tense, bloodshot eyes, she spotted something that she’d not yet seen from him before—or perhaps only in vague hints.
It was vulnerability.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said quietly, turning his eyes downward again. “Not even Starlight truly understands me.” He chuckled, though the sound was bitter. “She just puts up with me ’cause she needs a lot of work done, and I put up with her ’cause she’s a lot more open to the way I like to do things than the Resistance was.” He shrugged, and shook his head. “She’s pretty naive, though; naive enough to try to strike a deal with Filthy Rich to build the Underground Sun using two of her best and brightest. I never thought it’d end in partnership between her and the Resistance—my money was always on Limestone and Twilight double-crossing her and defecting. And when they did, I was only too happy to help sniff out his backer, and put Starlight in direct touch with Blueblood.”
“But… but what about the sixth Element?” Rarity asked, still sounding husky.
He gave her a half-smile. “I wasn’t lying when I said that Celestia dropped the Elements, or that—from what I’ve read—they need some kind of spark to activate them. But I did lie about how many she had with her. I only saw five, not six.”
“B… But, the Nightmare—”
“Is still gonna die.” His features slowly twisted into a deep, cruel-looking grin. “And it’s still gonna be real soon. See, if there’s one thing that nature abhors, it’s a vacuum… so when some of Blueblood’s ‘supplementary reading’ turned up an all-too-real legend about the biggest and nastiest vacuum that the world’s ever seen, I thought it’d be fun to get one of my own. He’s been called a ‘living weapon,’ ’cause the more he eats, the more his sanity gives way to greater hunger. That is, unless you channel what he sucks in elsewhere…” He turned back toward Starlight, shouting: “Yo, GlimGlam, what gives? I thought you would’ve grabbed him by now!”
Starlight grunted with annoyance but kept her focus on weaving a spell that was directed at the portal. “Dammit—don’t let the Guardian through yet, Blueblood! I just have to work through this interference…” And Blueblood stood stock-still next to Starlight, with his forehooves upraised toward the portal, and an expression of tense, sweat-beading concentration on his face.
“Please don’t do this,” Rarity rasped at Cheese. “You gave me… hope…” She choked up, and her eyes welled with tears once more.
“I know, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry it was all just a bad joke in the end.” He patted her shoulder with a bloodstained hoof. She tried to recoil, but he clutched her in a grip like iron. “Then again, the biggest problem with humor in general is that it’s subjective. It doesn’t matter if I’m laughing, if I’m trying to make somepony else laugh—or even smile—and it isn’t working.” He dropped his voice to the faintest of whispers. “And the only way I’d solve that problem is if nopony else was left...”
A loud crackle and bang heralded the resolution of a teleport spell. Rarity’s eyes flicked toward Starlight, who was bending to open a pony-sized, rusted, wrought-iron cage that had recently been in Tartarus. Next to her, Blueblood was grunting as he kept his shaking forehooves pointed at the portal—and Rarity could see the Guardian’s silhouette pressed close against it from the other side.
Rarity glanced at the cage itself, and felt revulsion at the hunched and desperately emaciated figure within. “What… is that?!” she asked.
Cheese followed her gaze, then smiled and gestured with a hoof. “That would be our little vacuum cleaner.”
“He’s an entity of extreme power who’s older than Equestria, not a vacuum cleaner,” Starlight retorted.
Rarity let her eyes linger on the creature. She recognized it as some kind of centaur, though it looked weak and twisted. It offered minimal resistance as Starlight pulled it bodily from the cage and clasped a long, silvery shackle around its neck.
“Maybe you read about him in some of those books we put in front of ya to make this all look on the level. Or did you miss those ones?” Cheese giggled. “Lady Rarity, say hello to Lord Tirek. Or what’s left of him, anyway.”
The creature turned his sallow eyes toward Cheese. He raised his lip in a sneer, but then was jerked back toward Starlight by the shackle.
“All right, Twilight,” said Starlight. “Time to see how much your power’s grown since you abandoned me.” She pointed at Twilight’s prone figure with a forehoof—and Rarity realized that it also bore a shackle that was connected to the one on Tirek’s neck. Starlight shook the chain, and Tirek opened his mouth. A purple essence flowed up out of the now-screaming form of Twilight, through Tirek’s mouth, into the chain around his neck, and up into Starlight’s body.
There was a thick shout from elsewhere in the room. Rarity turned her head to see Redheart backed against a wall a few dozen paces away, unsteady but snarling at the pair of liveried stallions who approached her. Behind her, on the floor, unconscious, was—
“Rainbow Dash,” Rarity said. She turned her eyes back on Cheese, and raised her hooves to his shoulders. “Please, Mr. Cheese… whatever you’ve done, whatever this Starlight has promised you… we still have the five Elements. We can find the other one and use them! Please, do not let it end this way!”
He turned wide eyes on her hooves, but then composed himself and snickered. “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t. I just need a few more things to happen first…”
Directly in front of the portal, Blueblood kept his hooves upraised and quivering, and began shouting in an alien tongue that might just as easily be nonsense as language.
“I do have a little bit of bad news for you, though…”
A little further away, Redheart bellowed again.
“Things are definitely going to get worse before they get better.”
Rainbow Dash felt pressure. So much pressure. Hammering in her head, burning in her lungs, pounding on her chest…
There was—it was an actual pounding, she realized groggily. Her eyes eased open, and she saw the wide-eyed, fast-talking, hard-breathing face of Redheart looking down on her.
She blinked.
Redheart was terrified.
A huge kick of adrenaline shot through Dash, and she hopped up from the floor with a great burst from her wings. She whirled about, finding a wall on one side, a room full of fallen ponies on another, and two guards rushing—
Rainbow Dash reacted. Faster than thought, she hurled herself forehooves-first into the stallion closest to Redheart. She didn’t know why she was slugging one of their allies in the gut again and again, but she figured that if Redheart looked like that, she’d hit first and ask questions later.
She heard the other guard draw a sharp breath behind her. Dash leapt to the side, flared her wings, and used the momentum to spin her hind leg around in a powerful kick. There was a resounding crack as it connected with the pony’s skull.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” called a voice from across the room. “Hey Rain-bone-head! Remember what I said about the next time I had to do this?!”
Rainbow Dash whirled, looking for the pony—
Then a knife hit her square in the chest, punching through a seam in her armor.
She dropped.
Dash’s vision swam with pain and sudden weakness. She gasped for breath, just as she had when the gas struck. This time, though, it came even harder. And wetter. And…
He got… my lung? She couldn’t say it, though. Not as she lay there on the ground, not as Redheart moved into her vision, saying… something. The pain grew worse as Redheart hoofed at Dash’s chest armor, but Dash kept her eyes fixed on Redheart’s muzzle. She was mouthing something. Dash watched, as if she were half in a dream, trying to make out what it could be.
Don’t—
Don’t leave me?
Redheart’s hooves scrabbled over Dash’s face, drawing her focus to the tears streaming down from her eyes. And Dash raised a hoof to touch Redheart’s cheek as well, but felt a pang of regret as it left a stain of bloody crimson on the clean white of her coat.
“Run,” Dash gurgled.
Redheart protested. Vigorously. Dash could see it, though she couldn’t make sense of the words.
“Lost,” she managed, sighing and coughing blood. It was the only word her lips could form, but it barely covered any of her sorrow at having been conned into fighting the Mistress for the benefit of a bunch of evil, crazy ponies. She wanted the chance to see Scootaloo grow up, and to figure out whatever had started going on with Redheart after saving her from Wind Rider. The comfort Dash felt at knowing Scootaloo was out of immediate danger wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the fact that Redheart, Rarity, and all the other brave and decent ponies with them seemed likely to die.
Unless…
There was one option left. It was desperate, and stupid, and it relied on the good graces of Nightmare Moon herself—which were few and far between. But even if it didn’t work, it still struck Dash that the Mistress’ wrath might not be much worse than what the newcomers were doing anyway; fresh memories of their dissolving allies, and the purple unicorn screaming in agony, steeled her resolve. Still, tears welled in her eyes as she reached down into her armor, working around the knife to find the heavy ring of keys stored safely within.
Dash held the keys up. Redheart’s eyes went even wider. Then her muzzle made it clear that she was shouting “NO!” as she grappled Dash’s hooves.
“I love you,” Dash mouthed, closing her eyes, and throwing the keys.
Sassy groaned. She was on the floor again, her head rang, and her mouth tasted like blood. But she was alive. The last thing she remembered clearly was seeing the attacker standing over her suddenly lose the glowing bubble around his head and become wracked with the effects of the green gas.
She pushed herself up off the ground with as much haste as she could muster… which wasn’t very much, given how her muscles still screamed in protest from the lack of oxygen she’d endured just minutes before. But it was fast enough to let her see a couple things that happened all together very, very quickly.
A guard came at her with an upraised sword.
A large and heavy set of keys hit the floor with a great clatter and racket.
A lilac-colored unicorn standing near the portal, with a strange centaur-creature chained from his neck to her forehoof, screamed.
Then behind them all, the portal twisted, and a huge, dingy yellow figure shot through, trailing an unfathomable streak of pink-orange-plaid energy behind it.
“Rainbow Dash, what have you done?!” shouted the Guardian.