//------------------------------//
// Chapter 35: A Rainbow in the Dark 
// Story: To Serve In Hell 
// by CoffeeMinion 
//------------------------------//

Rainbow Dash arced up into the cold night air with heavy beats of her leathery wings. From high above the castle, she could at last see the full extent of Tirek’s damage to it: the wing where the vault tower had stood was now little more than an ocean of obliterated masonry, and the adjoining wing’s outer wall lay sheared-off and cracked in twain beside it.

Dash’s eyes turned toward the beast himself. She gaped at the heavy furrows he carved through the land as he walked, as if he wasn’t quite picking up his gigantic hooves high enough to keep their tips from dragging below. She stared with horror at the livid patterns of blackness that played across his crimson and highly muscled body. And she noted how his silvery-grey mane flowed behind him, billowing on a wind that didn’t seem entirely of the world.

There’s no way I can do this…

She gritted her teeth and flapped harder, desperately hoping that the feeling she’d experienced while fighting Wind Rider would return. She focused on her breathing, and on her flying technique… and on the mire of self-doubt that she’d spent years failing to escape.

Come on, we need to win!

Dash pumped her wings, and reached for the elusive feeling.

She muttered curses at the unnervingly still air.





Rarity trudged across the shattered stonework of the collapsed tower. Thick dust hung heavy in the air, and took on an almost ghostly glow from the light of her horn. She held the Element before her in her magic, and let it guide her deeper into the wreckage.

A faint sound reached her ears. She stopped, perked them up, and fixated on it for a few heartbeats. It was steady enough to capture her attention, yet too indistinct to give her full confidence about its source. “There,” she said, glancing back at Fluttershy before pointing toward a larger pile of rubble. “Do you hear that?”

“I’m sorry,” Fluttershy said, hanging her head. “I’m afraid my hearing isn’t as good as it used to be.”

“It’s alright, dear. Regardless, would you be so kind as to help clear some of that pile away?”

With a grunt, Fluttershy knelt down on her dubiously equine hind legs and reached out with her heavy foreclaws, scooping up a great armful of large, broken stones, then tossing them behind her. She turned and scooped, load after load, until Rarity held up a hoof to stop her.

“Just there… quiet a moment, please.”

Fluttershy nodded at Rarity, and Rarity stepped closer. From below, she heard something like ragged, heavy breathing—almost like stymied laughter. It was incredibly faint, but it was there.

Rarity glanced at the orb still held in her magic. It pulled toward the source of the laughter, and she had to plant her hooves to keep it in place.

“Just a little further, darling. And be careful… I don’t know what condition he might be in.”

“There’s a pony alive in there?!” Fluttershy asked, her misshapen eyes going wider.

“Please…”

“Of course, I’m sorry.” Fluttershy leaned in and started clawing more stones out of the way. Not half a leg-length down, she uncovered a much larger slab resting at an angle. “Rarity, I—”

“Do you think you can pry the slab up from the corner there where it’s resting, without risking it cracking or breaking?”

“I can try.”

Fluttershy moved carefully over to the side of the slab, scrabbling over the ruined stones and trying to maintain purchase with her heavy hind legs. She sunk her claws under the edge of the slab, took a large breath, and heaved upward slowly, almost gingerly. There was a terrible grinding of stone on stone at the opposite end, but soon she’d lifted it high enough for Rarity to get a glimpse underneath it.

She knew exactly whom she’d find there.

Cheese’s body was twisted, bloodied, and broken—almost beyond recognition. His face was a ruin, with one side a mass of horrific lacerations that no longer included an eye. But his muzzle was still pulled tight with a smile. And to the best of Rarity’s ability to tell, he was still laughing.

“Ohmigosh, Rarity, let me go get Doctor Redheart!”

“No, Fluttershy. Not yet. Please, remove the slab fully.”

He fixed his eye on her and smiled even deeper as Fluttershy worked. His lips quirked open and he tried to mouth something, but little sound emerged.

Rarity felt a tug within her magic. She glanced at the orb. It was still trying to get to him.

“Why you?” she whispered.

His breathing grew sharper. It seemed like it was from deeper laughter, but it came much more stilted, likely due to the extent of his injuries.

“I…” he said, eye widening from presumed pain as he forced the word out: “…Win.”

“No you don’t!” Rarity shouted, drawing her hoof back amid a sudden urge to strike him—though she didn’t. “How can you call this a victory in any way when you’ve unleashed an even larger and more dangerous threat upon Equestria than even the Nightmare herself?!”

Cheese blinked, or maybe it would’ve been intended as a wink if he still had a second eye to show the difference. “Told you… I’d kill her…”

“NO! This isn’t better! Can you look at me and honestly say that this is what your wife would’ve wanted?! That this would’ve made her smile, as you said that you cared so much about? Or did you lie to me about that too?!”

“Rarity,” Fluttershy interjected, now finished with the slab. “I know you’re angry, but he’s… so close to death. Please, let me get Redheart. Maybe she can find some way to make him comfortable…”

Rarity turned a glare on Fluttershy and raised a hoof to point out toward Tirek. “After all he’s done, and all the havoc that that creature is likely to wreak upon others, you would honestly still think about this awful pony’s comfort?!”

“I would,” Fluttershy said, standing firmly. “Especially after all that I’ve seen. Sometimes all that you can do is try to bring the dying a little bit more comfort, no matter how much you may want to do more—it’s simply their time. But you can still help them in that way, even when things are at their worst.”

“Should… listen…” Cheese said, drawing their attention back to him. “Could use… deep tissue massage…” His grin pulled tighter again, and his half-choking, half-laughing returned.

Rarity turned her eyes upon the Element again, and felt a chill subsume the anger that had roiled in her heart mere moments before. “Though you’ve bent what must once have been a well-meaning desire in awful and disgusting ways, perhaps there truly is a part of you that would’ve wanted to make your wife smile? Even though you… you were right, the time you told me that she would’ve seen you as a monster.”

She paused, and took a steadying breath. “You are a monster. For not letting your wife’s body rest, and for all the willful destruction you’ve propagated, you deserve the fate you’ve brought upon yourself—and Fluttershy, I will not be told otherwise! But this world…” She hung her head in solemn silence. “This world is an anomaly. Perhaps the Elements know it, just as Zecora did, but perhaps they may yet be willing to give it one more chance, regardless.”

“Do you think…” Fluttershy said slowly. “Maybe he could’ve made her smile? If whatever sense of wrongness in the world wasn’t there?”

Cheese’s features twisted into a frown, bordering on an angry grimace. “I… I couldn’t. She insisted… something was missing. Said…” He squeezed his eye shut. “Wasn’t… my fault…”

Rarity studied the orb, then shook her head. “I can’t understand why the Element of Laughter would be willing to work with your ghastly sense of humor. Perhaps it sees an earnestness in how your path began, or perhaps its willingness somehow stems from your wife herself? But the need at hoof is not about me, or you, or even your wife; it’s about the world she should’ve had. With Nightmare Moon gone, there may yet be a chance to make it whole again, if we can but stop Tirek from devouring it.”

“No.” Cheese’s expression hardened. “This world… me…” He gasped sharply. “Pull… the knife out!”

The words struck Rarity as cruel, if not entirely surprising.

They did, however, raise the specter of a dreadful possibility. Merely envisioning it sent shards of ice jabbing at her stomach. And yet, as Rarity considered how the deaths she’d witnessed might be multiplied beyond reckoning if she could not secure Cheese’s aid, she found herself grappling with the question of how much more she might be willing to give up if it would gain the world’s salvation.

“Fluttershy, dear…” Rarity wetted her lips. “Would you please go see how Sassy is doing for a moment? I need to speak to Cheese privately.”

Fluttershy blinked. “Rarity… if you won’t get Redheart to help him, I will.”

“No, dear… I… I will. I promise. But first, there is something we need to discuss.”

At their hooves, Cheese slowly grinned again. Fluttershy gave Rarity an uncertain glance, but eventually nodded and trudged off.

“So,” he said, eye shining.

“My Element is that of Generosity,” Rarity said. “Perhaps it was ‘generous’ of me to use my connections and persuasiveness to propagate your lies to those you couldn’t reach yourself—those who already knew of your brokenness, your evil… and who’d rightly cast you out. Even now, holding off on fetching help for you is… galling. It sickens me to my core. And yet, if there was ever a pony who deserved their fate, it is you. What you did by deceiving me… deceiving everypony—leading all of us, and my poor, sweet darling to destruction… it’s unforgivable.”

“Sorry,” he said, grinning wider.

“I gave you every chance… trusted everything in the vision of hope that you inspired in me. But now I see that mentioning the loss of he whom I held most dear cannot elicit even the slightest bit of sympathy from you, despite your own wife’s loss. Truly there seem to be no ‘better angels’ left in your nature, to whom I might appeal.”

She paused, and waited for as many heartbeats as she could bear, clinging to the desperate hope that he’d say something—anything—to refute her assessment of him, or to offer any other way to bargain for his aid.

Yet hope was ever-fleeting, and Cheese lay silent.

“But perhaps there are worse angels who may yet hold sway,” Rarity said, shivering. “And it is now to them that I come with an offer: From time to time you have entreated me to… do things… that I could not bring myself to do. But however much I may be unable to abide these things, I think… perhaps… there is one in particular that I would be willing to do, if you’d agree to wield the Element of Laughter with us first.”

He smiled deeper, and turned his head slightly. “I’m all ear.”

“You must wield the Element if I’m to consider this, do you understand? If you renege on this in any way, I will not maintain my end of this bargain!”

“Of course,” he said. “Now… the good part?”

Rarity took a long breath and shuddered as she exhaled. “If it would mean the salvation of all that remains… I would, at last, be willing to get my hooves dirty.”





“I told you to stay back!” Sassy shouted at the knot of armored thestrals trying to press through the half-collapsed entrance to what remained of the castle. One made to advance on her anyway, and she pressed right up against his helmeted face, looming over him with all of her superior height.

“No,” said one of them, moving up toward the front of the group. He was stripped of his armor and had a mop of graying brown mane, as well as a look of pure indignation on his face. “Something terrible has happened to our Mistress; all of us True Children can feel it. I don’t care if you’re her Overseer or just a filly in the wrong place at the wrong time—if you stand in the way of us finding out what that is, you will not end up in one piece!”

“Sergeant Wind Rider,” Sassy said, narrowing her eyes. “I heard from Sergeant Dash that you were recently paying a visit to our dungeons.”

He scoffed. “That traitorous whore stopped me from reporting back about her misappropriation of key medical resources for her little pet pegasus. But she wasn’t very careful… other True Children saw what she was up to, and figured out what she did with me.”

The other guards murmured their assent.

Sassy stood her ground before them, and felt more than ever that the truth was her ally in choosing her words: “The Mistress is dead, Sergeant. The thing that just destroyed the castle is responsible in large part for that. So what do you think we should do about that now? Squabble and fight amongst ourselves, or focus on the true enemy?”

Tears—Sassy was shocked to see actual tears—sprung to the corners of Wind Rider’s eyes as he absorbed her words. He closed his eyes and hung his head for a moment before looking back up at her with an even stronger set to his jaw. “I thought you were a faithful servant, but now all I see is you blocking the most direct way to our Mistress’ remains. It makes me think the only ponies left who I can trust are bats.”

“Look at yourselves.” Sassy sneered at them. “Do you still want to be her slaves, even though she’s gone? Don’t any of you want to aspire to something better than pushing other ponies around in her name?”

“It’s something I can live with doing,” Wind Rider said, baring his fangs. “Maybe starting with you?”

Sassy heard heavy hooffalls behind her. She turned and saw Fluttershy trudging toward them, flexing her talons and jerking her ragged, leathery wings as she moved.

“Is everything all right?” Fluttershy asked. The voice was rumbling and distorted, but it also contained an element of softness.

Wind Rider recoiled, wide-eyed. “What is that?!” Behind him, the rest of his thestrals dropped into defensive crouches.

“My name is—”

“That, you fools, is the Guardian of Tartarus,” Sassy said. “She’s going to help us stop the giant rampaging thing out there that killed your Mistress. That is, unless you’ve got your own plan to deal with him?”

The group of thestrals exchanged glances and quiet comments with each other. Wind Rider joined in their deliberation, casting a number of long looks at Fluttershy in the interim.

At length, he cleared his throat and stepped out from the group again.

“All right, so maybe we’re better off joining forces. Don’t think that makes us friends. And don’t think that we’ve forgotten about Rainbow Dash’s treason, either. You can make up whatever excuses you want about her, but when this is over, I will see her burn for what she’s done.”

“Later is later,” Sassy said, extending a hoof. “Right now we could use a distraction. Get Tirek’s attention turned back toward the castle; I’m not sure what the range is going to be on what we’re planning to use against him.”

Wind Rider narrowed his eyes, but then raised his hoof and shook Sassy’s. “You’re sure that if we lead him back, he won’t just finish what he started here?”

Sassy grimaced. “I suppose if this doesn’t work, we probably won’t live long enough to regret having tried.”





Rainbow Dash’s flight path brought her low across what remained of Ponyville. Ruins jutted up from the ground like tombstones, and she spun and whirled, dancing between them, trying to remember what it had felt like to buzz so low over the town in better days.

It could be like that again, if I can just… just push!

She pulled up, carrying herself higher over the town. Then she banked around and came in for another pass. Her eyes darted between former landmarks as she flew:

City Hall….

Her mind replayed the flaming horror that she’d helped her group of ponies flee.

Scoots’ house…

Her teeth chattered with the fear of what might happen not only to Scootaloo, but to all of Canterlot as well, if she should fail.

Fluttershy’s cabin…

Her heart ached as she dwelled upon the deformed frame of her once-beautiful and ever-supportive friend.

Yet Dash also reflected on the good that had come from those sources of pain. She could at least look Redheart in the eye and say she tried to lead ponies to safety when Ponyville fell, even if she’d failed miserably in the end. She could cling to the joy of at last being able to take Scootaloo out flying again, even if that had to be tempered with the heartbreak of knowing that Scootaloo could be stricken by seizures. And she could even look at Fluttershy’s sacrifices in Tartarus with deep respect, knowing that Scootaloo and others might’ve been lost forever without them.

She reached out in kindness to a mad, half-dead god, because that’s just the kind of pony she is…

Dash clenched her teeth and flapped harder. But then, spotting movement to one side, she turned her head—

A group of thestrals passed her closely before swinging around and dive-bombing Tirek from above. He swatted at them, and Dash’s eyes went wide as she beheld their death-defying audacity—they clearly couldn’t do him any harm, and they had to know that a single lucky claw-strike would squash them to paste. But they kept him busy, and slowed his inexorable march toward Canterlot, if only for a few moments.

Look at them… they don’t stand a chance, but they’re doing their part. They’re distracting him so I…

She swallowed.

I failed Fluttershy and Scootaloo the first time they trusted me.

Dash flapped harder still, concentrating on their images. And there—at last—she felt something. It was ineffably large, though still hidden from view.

I will not fail them again!

Onward she flapped, building more and more speed, pushing past the racing in her heart and threats of exhaustion in her wings. 

Because…

She held the images of Redheart, Scootaloo, and Fluttershy at the forefront of her mind, and watched Ponyville slip past her again in the blink of an eye.

They are…

She rocketed across the distance toward Tirek, and the sheer amount of wind resistance grew so great that she couldn’t resist pressing her eyes shut.

My ponies!

With one last almighty wing beat, Rainbow Dash felt the barrier break loose, and an overwhelming surge of power crashed upon her like a tidal wave, stealing her breath and sending tingling bursts of light shooting through her body. She didn’t need to flap her wings to maintain speed, because she was speed. She could barely maneuver and couldn’t breathe, but could only lose herself in the ineffable sensation of having a huge corona of light streaming all around her, projecting itself out into the world as a massive bow-wave of rainbow-colored force—

The Sonic Rainboom.

Dash passed over Tirek and banked upward. Tears of awe streaked her muzzle as she ascended hooves-first into the sky, her pose like that of a supplicant presenting themselves to the cosmos.

A crawling sensation of heat crept into her wings and forehead. It intensified quickly, and Dash screamed at how it burned. She brought her head around to check her wings, but all she could see was that they were bathed in fields of light that rivaled the brightness of the Rainboom itself.

She panicked, and tried in vain to bat at them, but it didn’t slow her down—she was fully in the clutches of the unrelenting force that she’d awakened.

It was angling her back around, toward the castle…





Rarity saw the flash of light reflect in Cheese’s half-glazed eye. She only had enough time to turn and gape at the astounding burst of rainbow light above Tirek before the sound and wind it generated came in like a hurricane, hurling huge chunks of stone all around, and nearly blowing her off her hooves. Thinking quickly, she lit her horn and put up a shield over herself and Cheese.

He screamed regardless, and his features contorted into the purest expression of horror and fear that his ruined visage could muster—which was considerable.

Rarity’s heart pounded as she studied him and tried to see if he’d been struck before she put up the shield. Considering how greatly he’d already been injured, it was difficult to be sure, but she didn’t see anything obvious.

As the wind died down to manageable levels, she dropped the shield, and gently set her hooves on his shoulders. “Cheese! Cheese, were you hit? Cheese, you must tell me what’s wrong!”

“That’s it!” he screamed hoarsely. “That’s it! I know it is, it’s… it’s…” He looked at Rarity with a gaping mouth. “Do it now. Do it now!”

Rarity flushed at his words. “I… don’t understand…”

He reached up with a bloody forehoof to paw at one of hers. “She always said she'd missed something… oh, what have I done?! Pinkie! Pinkie… I’m so sorry! Limestone… oh…”

Tears flowed freely from his good eye, and he sobbed as hard as his ravaged body would allow.

“Oh Pinkie,” he choked, his lips twisting into a grimace. “Please… please, find my cart at Blueblood’s… promise me you’ll burn it…”

“Cheese… it’s all right…”

“No it isn’t!” he snapped, body quivering with rage. “Don’t you realize?! I could’ve… I… I sold my soul for nothing. For nothing! What I needed… what she needed…”

“Celestia above, that’s it!” shouted Sassy from out of sight.

Fluttershy came tromping up behind Rarity, gazing in wonder at the sky. Then Redheart clambered over the stones next to them, tears streaming from her eyes. “I knew it! I knew she could do it! If anypony had it in them—” Redheart’s voice faltered as she caught sight of Cheese. Her eyes went wide, and her muzzle crinkled. “Oh, Celestia. He’s still alive?!”

With a heavy sigh, Rarity turned back to Cheese. He met her eyes with his one eye, and he continued sobbing.

“We had a deal,” Rarity said.

“I can’t laugh now,” he said. “What kind of monster would I be if I laughed now?”

“You’d be the kind of monster who might save the world regardless.” Rarity frowned at the stone orb still held in her magic. “And it would not be too late to change the deal, either.”

“No. You promised me.” Cheese grimaced at her. “There’s no going back from what I’ve done. If you don’t keep up your end of the deal… I’ll make you wish you had.”

Though she hated everything about the thoughts that his words brought to her mind, Rarity resolved herself to seize the moment. She raised the Element in her magic, brought it over to Cheese’s trembling form, then released it.

It fell down upon him and dissipated into nothingness.

He chuckled bitterly. “Well that was underwhelming.”

Rarity furrowed her brow. “Is it… not working?”

He gave her a bemused expression. “Maybe I should try a joke? How ’bout a new spin on an old classic: why did the chicken cross the road?”

Redheart scoffed. “For real? That’s all you’ve got?”

Cheese held her gaze for a moment before saying: “Because it was hit by a passing cart.”

“Oh my,” Fluttershy said, covering her mouth with her claws. “That’s in very poor taste, don’t you think?”

But Cheese began to snicker. “I know, it’s terrible,” he said, his laughter growing stronger.

His body started glowing.

“Rarity?!” Fluttershy stretched her claws out before her, and Rarity turned, seeing they were wreathed in light.

“It’s happening!” Redheart proclaimed, looking down at the faint glow permeating herself as well.

Rarity raised a hoof. It was glowing, too.

“Whoa, whoa… what’s going on?” Sassy shouted as she came dashing over, also glowing. She froze as she caught sight of Cheese amongst the rubble. “Wait… NO! Rarity, not him! You can’t be serious!”

“Look,” Redheart said, pointing to the sky. “Here she comes!”

Rarity beheld a figure like a speeding comet flying toward them, trailing rainbow light. It passed over them with a boom nearly as loud as before. Only this time, the buffeting wind picked the five of them up—including the broken but visibly re-knitting form of Cheese—and carried them along in its wake. Rarity gasped with shock at the sensation of being pulled up into the sky at rapid speed, and she wasn’t alone.

“What’s it doing, what’s it doing—” shouted Sassy, flailing her hooves.

“It’s bringing us along with her,” Fluttershy added, flapping her wings in vain.

“I get it now!” Redheart shouted, both grinning and weeping. “This is why they love to fly together!”

Rarity struggled to keep her stomach settled as the group soared higher. For his part, she saw Cheese simply continue laughing. He studied the raw wounds on his body that were healing before their eyes, and laughed. He touched a hoof to his head as the blazing light pieced his face back together, even causing a new eye to form out of the brightness.

On they soared. Though at first trailing far behind Rainbow Dash, the five of them soon found themselves flying alongside her. And Rarity noticed—

“Your wings!”

Dash glanced back over her fully restored, fully feathered pegasus wings, giving Rarity a wink. Her face bore a huge grin, and she tapped a hoof to her head. “That’s not all!”

Rarity looked up.

She blinked, slowly taking in the fact that Rainbow Dash had grown a horn as well.

“What the…” Sassy said, clearly noticing it as well.

“Ohmigosh, Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy said, covering her great maw with her talons.

“Of course,” Redheart shouted. “All the pent-up magic that Zecora’s journal talked about… it’s finally found an outlet! A conduit to the world! It should’ve been unleashed years ago, from what she wrote!”

“Alicorns,” Rarity said, drawing everypony’s attention. “The world… some legends say that it creates as many as it needs. It needs you, Sergeant!” She paused, blinking. “Or should I say, Princess!”

“Don’t crown me yet,” Dash said, turning her focus back on the giant beast that they were rapidly approaching. “We’ve still gotta figure out how to actually use the Elements!”

Cheese laughed. The group all turned their eyes on him. He gave them a big grin, followed by a conspiratorial wink at Rarity. “Don’t worry, ladies; I’m sure it’ll all be over soon.”

Rarity felt a thrill of panic, and set her mind in rapid motion. “I… I think… it will be. We’ve come through so many trials to be here, at this moment. We’ve all lost pieces of ourselves along the way. But the Nightmare who brought us together is already defeated, and I find myself grateful for the connections we came to share, even in the darkness.” She smiled at Sassy. “Even with you; though I know we’ve had our differences, I’ve come to know that you have many good qualities as well.” She turned a less certain smile on Cheese. “And even with you. I know better than most that nopony is perfect, and I believe… I don’t believe that it’s too late for any of us. If nothing else, I still find hope in that.”

“She’s right,” Dash said, looking back at Redheart. “It’s never too late to do the right thing. The ponies I’m fighting for taught me that.”

“Rarity taught me that,” Sassy said, blushing.

Redheart winked at Dash. “Scootaloo is gonna be so proud.”

“I’m glad for all the ponies we can save together,” Fluttershy said.

Cheese’s lips tightened as if he wanted to say something, but he stayed silent.

They swooped down close to Tirek. Rarity watched as Rainbow Dash’s eyes began to glow with blazing bright light. Soon Redheart, Fluttershy, and Sassy all had eyes that did the same. She glanced over at Cheese, whose eyes looked… tired. Deathly tired.

“Please… do it for Pinkie,” Rarity said. But then her vision whited out as well, and an all-consuming feeling of power overtook her.

At length, she heard words that she hoped—prayed—would finally come:

“All right. For Pinkie, and the world she should’ve had.”

And then the power burst like a dam, surging over all of them with deafening force. Rarity gasped at the sheer beauty and intensity of it. Her vision cleared long enough to see immense bolts of rainbow light arcing between all six of them, blasting down at Tirek, and lighting up the sky with such profundity that it seemed almost to be a return of sunlight. The sight brought tears to her eyes, and she tried shouting with both joy and triumph, but her mortal voice was overpowered by the thunder all around her.

Rarity watched as Tirek flailed and writhed under the magical onslaught, and started shrinking. The six of them floated lower as he shrank, smaller and smaller, losing muscle mass and even his black, nightmarish markings along with his height.

The surge continued until all six of them had touched down on the ground again, surrounding the once-more-emaciated form of Tirek. He lay breathing raggedly, but was still conscious.

“Please, don’t hurt me!” he said weakly, raising a hand in meager defense.

Light still blazed in all their eyes as they gazed down upon him.

Then, one set of lights flickered.

Cheese blinked, and his eyes looked normal again. Normal, but soon menacing. He strode right up to Tirek, looming down upon the little creature. “What, so we should all hold hooves instead, and smile, and celebrate how everything’s worked out for the best in the end?”

“What’s he doing?” Sassy asked.

“Giving one last punchline,” Cheese said, his expression hardening like stone. “Hey jabroni, tell me: what’s black and white and red all over?”

Tirek blinked, and glanced at the others. “I… I don’t know, what is—”

In a flash, Cheese brought his hoof up, driving a knife through the underside of Tirek’s skull.

“Your face!”

Rarity should have been shocked. She wanted to be shocked. But the feeling that suffused her was… numbness.

Everything had slowed again.

All the ponies roared and shouted protests. Those with horns lit them, seeking to restrain him.

All but Rarity.

He turned his eyes to meet hers, showing nothing but hardness and fatigue in them despite their miraculous healing.

“We had a deal,” he said, his voice cutting through the protests of the others, who were still actively engaged in variations on binding him.

Rarity’s heart hammered. Her stomach churned. Faces of so many fallen friends and loved ones flashed through her mind again, crying for her to save them, blaming her for failing.

One more face sprang up in the darkness of her mind—this one laughing.

The others were dragging Cheese back, away from Tirek.

But unlike in the past, Rarity found herself able to move in this strange, snail-paced version of reality.

Rarity took a step closer to Tirek.

She reached down and pulled the knife free from his head.

Cheese’s lips quirked up into a smile.

Her pulse pounded harder, her blood feeling like fire from the adrenaline shooting through it.

Nopony was paying attention to her.

Nopony but Cheese.

He smiled.

Rarity brought the knife up in her hoof.

He started laughing.

Her stomach sank hard, caving in deep, feeling as though there could be no bottom, not ever again.

His eyes reflected her; the determination, the pain, the knowledge that this abhorrent price was what she had agreed to pay for the life of the world—this, and the integrity of her convictions. For as she breathed her last as a mare with clean hooves, it struck her that in an awful, horrid way, she was even showing him a twisted side of Generosity by giving him something he’d wanted for so long, and that he’d been willing to destroy the world to obtain:

An end to suffering—

His suffering.

And so she slashed the knife up before anypony could react, cutting Cheese’s throat.


END OF BOOK 4: THE PRICE