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// Chapter 66: That which was Forseen 
// Story: The Life of Penumbra Heartbreak 
// by Unwhole Hole 
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Within the void of thought, there was nothing but silence and infinite noise. Eternity Gaze saw every explosion, heard every scream, understood every aspect of fear and pain in the battle outside- -and in this moment of clarity, those of the battles of the distant past as well of those in the farthest future. She smiled, because they were always the same. The end result was always different, and in that difference it was always the same. The world was endlessly in flux, and in that vortex of chaos, unchanging. 
No living thing was meant to understand these paradoxes. Yet for one agonizing moment, Eternity did. Only one through kept her sanity from slipping away. 
The genetic-locked door to her eternal prison slid open with a hiss. A pony entered the room, walking slowly and with a severe limp. Something was dragging at her side. A metal ax.
What was left of Eternity’s once beautiful body turned its blind eyes toward the interloper. They were blind, and yet Eternity could never stop seeing.
“Right on time,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you.” 
The pony paused. When she spoke, her voice was harsh and unpleasant- -yet bore a distinctly familiar chill. “Surely you never saw this coming.”
“No. I definitely did.”
“And you did nothing to stop it?”
“Stop it?” Eternity laughed. The interloper shuddered from the pain of being so close to a powerful telepathic source. “STOP it? I CAUSED it! I’ve been orchestrating it. Slowly. Taking my time. Failing when I need to fail, failing when I need to succeed...because there isn’t really free will, is there? There can’t be. Not when everything is linked in endless causality. But you wouldn’t know that. You can’t see. Consider yourself so very lucky.” 
“Then why not just end it now? We don’t have to be enemies. We can work together.”
Eternity’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the rub, isn’t it? Because it has to be a certain way. It has to go right, or things won’t happen. We’ve grown too far from canon to be stable, but things still have to go a certain way. We’re bound by causality. The future creates the past. More to the point, open your eyes. Look at me.”
The pony did. The shape before her was pitiful. 
“Pitiful. You’re thinking the word ‘pitiful’. Do you pity me?”
“In a sense. But that will not stop me from doing what must be done.”
Eternity laughed again, growing increasingly manic. “You have no idea, do you? What I am, what I once was, what I WILL be? Or, rather, what I will cease to be...” She blinked. Or tried to. Even that had become agonizingly difficult for her. “I once had so many beautiful sisters. But we sacrificed it all to gain a power ponies were not meant to wield. They were so lucky...they were driven insane. But they left me behind. All alone. Tell me, Phoenix. Why am I still sane? Why won’t my mind let me be free?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Not to you, no. Not yet. But it will. Because you’ll have to make a  choice. I am what ambition leads to, the risk you face. Maybe you will avoid my fate. Maybe not. I know the answer, but I won’t tell you. I think it would destroy you.”
“But then what was the reason?”
Eternity blinked. “So you do care.”
“Perhaps I do.”
Eternity smiled her last smile. “Because I knew this moment would come. I knew that you would be here for me. That you would come to save me. I’ve never stopped seeing this moment. It’s the only thing that let me make it this far.” 
“How sad.”
“Sad? No. I think it’s a happy thing.”
“Then you are a fool.”
The pony shifted her weight, lifting the ax. Eternity stared at the silver blade, and could not contain her limitless joy. 
“Sombra will rise to challenge the Wingless Goddess,” she said, barely in a whisper.
“Again,” replied her counterpart, “that does not matter in the slightest.”
Eternity smiled, finally understanding that it was true.