Nurse Redheart felt like she was floating in warm, honey-scented clouds. It was as though all the tension in her body had suddenly left her, and she was totally and truly content with the world for the first time in her life.
Then she felt a presence in her mind -- invasive, tense, cold -- and she rolled away from it. No, no, just let me float a little while longer, oh please oh please…
But the presence would not be denied, and the warm clouds of honey melted in the miserable rain of reality, leaving her lying on a cot in an unused room. A pink pegasus was standing over her, touching both hooves to the nurse’s temples.
“Hello, Nurse,” she said. “Long story short, I’m Romana, I knocked you out for your own safety and stability, and the coma ward was attacked by a powerful alien force which I suspect is responsible for the massive influx of patients there. Oh yes, and your marefriend has been temporarily erased from the timeline, but I ought to be able to recover her once the planet is no longer under immediate existential threat and the TARDIS is reactivated.” She tilted her head. “Questions?”
Redheart shut her eyes. “Yeah. I’ve got a question. Why couldn’t you have just left me knocked out?”
“Somepony needs to keep an eye on the patients while I interrogate the Valeyard and Granny Smith takes care of the babies.”
Nurse Redheart grunted as she rolled off the cot and onto the floor. “The world is ending, you said?”
“Very possibly.”
“I’ll deck you for knocking me out later, then.”
“What about the Hippocratic Oath?”
“What about having the common sense not to knock out the medical professional in charge of the health of all your friends?”
Romana considered this. “Fair enough.”
Redheart sighed as she straightened her cap. “Alright. Back to work, then.” She paused. “Wait. What did you say happened to Tender?”
But Romana had already trotted out the door. Redheart cursed quietly under her breath, invectives against Ponyville, chaos, the universe at large, and especially all Time Lords. Then she straightened up, took a deep breath, and prepared to be professional once again.
The Doctor was aware of a presence at his side. That didn’t mean he had to acknowledge it. As a matter of fact, he had been very successfully ignoring it for the last three minutes.
“Oh, Doctor.”
Well, it was harder to completely ignore the talking. Still, he put up a good show of it. He just had to hold out for long enough for her to give up and walk away.
“Doctor.”
Any minute now, and she’d surely take the hint.
“Doctor, we can have this conversation like reasonable adults, or we can have a very one-sided conversation indeed, wherein the excessive use of the Royal Canterlot Voice can, shall, and frankly ought to be used. I trust that I am understood?”
The Doctor flinched. “Don’t,” he said, and he was rather shocked by how dry and cracked his voice was. “You’ll make it angry.”
“I won’t, Doctor. Not if you look at me.”
He studied the ground for a moment.
“Doctor.” There was an edge to her voice. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it had been there from the start. “I’ll do it. Don’t think for a moment that I won’t.”
He looked up. “Hello, Cadance.”
She didn’t smile at him. That wasn’t unexpected, but it still hurt. He was surprised to find that he could still hurt, though he supposed he shouldn’t have been.
“May I sit with you?” she asked.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
“Fine. I’ll stand.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t do that either.”
There was a pause and some shuffling. When the Doctor glanced up again, it was to find that Cadance had laid herself down on the steps up to the tomb, positioned so that her face was exactly at the Doctor’s eye level. “I trust there are no further objections,” Cadance said.
The Doctor gave her a long, searching look. “Alright,” he said. “What is it?”
Cadance leaned in. “I have a child waiting at home,” she said calmly. “She’s expecting Shining and me back, alive, come the morning.”
“Good for you.”
“Doctor. Are you listening to me? You’ve given up, but do you know what that means for all of us? Do you understand what’s going to happen, on a national scale? Planetary, perhaps? Because I honestly don’t think you do. I hope you don’t, because if you had the slightest inkling of how quickly and utterly this would destroy Gaea, you wouldn’t be acting like this. The Doctor I know --”
“I’m not the Doctor you know, Cadance.” He locked eyes with her. He didn’t look angry, or sad, or even defensive. He just looked dead. “I can’t go on like this. Everyone I care about dies, the monsters always come back, and I just have to keep going, keep getting hurt over and over again and never healing properly. I’m twisted and scarred inside and every time I get close to somepony, it only ends in pain for both of us. This is... this is a kindness.”
Cadance looked away, and the Doctor followed her gaze to where Ditzy sat, bedraggled and sorrowful, next to Celestia. “Does that look like a kindness to you, Doctor?”
He looked back down to the ground. He couldn’t bear to look anywhere else. “She should never have forgiven me,” he said.
“She loves you, Doctor. She still does, and if I’m reading the signs right -- and, may I remind you, I am the expert on that -- she always will. You cutting yourself off from everypony now isn’t going to change that. So, if you think you’re being noble, if you think that you’re being a fucking martyr over here, by making everyone hate you now so that they won’t get hurt when you let them down later…”
She shook her head. “Well, then you’re wrong. We all love you, Doctor. You’re making it kinda difficult right now, but you are worthy of love, and you’re getting it whether you like it or not.”
The Doctor just stared at her for a long moment. She looked back, pleading with her eyes. Slowly, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Cadance. I just… I don't think I can bear that burden any longer.”
“Being loved? Is that truly how you see it, Doctor? As a burden?”
He took a deep, shaky breath in, as though about to respond. In the end, he merely sighed, shook his head, and looked away again.
Cadance’s ears drooped. She rose and studied the Doctor for a long minute. Then she leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I understand,” she said softly. "I don't agree, but... I understand." Then she turned and trotted away.
Twilight and Shining Armor watched her trot back to them, her head hanging low. “No luck, then,” Shining said.
Cadance glanced back at the sad figure on the steps. “No," she said. "He's too far gone for me to help without considerably more time and free reign. I can't even say how much of it's the Nightmare and how much is just... him." She sighed. "We're on our own."
Scootaloo glanced at one of the tapestries as the line of Crusaders walked past it. “Hey, Dinky?”
“Hm.”
“We’ve been walking for a pretty long time.”
“Uh-huh?”
“We’ve been walking in a straight line.”
“So we have.”
“Seems to me like we should’ve run out of tower by now.”
Dinky nodded. “Yeah, it does. Of course, there are certain explanations for why that might be.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The ground might actually be on a slight incline and wind around the tower like a screw. Or it might be like the TARDIS -- bigger on the inside.”
“Huh. Yeah, both of those seem like viable possibilities. But do you know, there’s a third option that I’d like to consider?”
“Do tell,” Dinky said in a voice that suggested she’d rather Scootaloo simply drop dead.
“We might very well be going in circles.”
Dinky stopped. A little bit of rock dust crumbled from the ceiling. Everypony else took a nervous step back. “Well,” said Dinky, turning around. “I haven’t exactly seen any other ways to go, have you?”
“Well, no,” Scootaloo admitted.
Button broke in. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, though! We saw that on the staircase, remember?”
“Hey, yeah, the staircase!” Sweetie said. “We can’t be going in circles, then, or else we would’ve seen the hole in the wall.”
Dinky nodded. “You do have a point, though, Scootaloo. We’re not going to get anywhere like this.”
“Oh,” said Scootaloo. “Am I?”
“Yeah… we need to hurry things on a little more.”
“Dinky,” Rumble said. “You’re making that face again.”
“What face is that?”
“The face that makes my wings fluff out because it’s activated my fight or flight response? The face that makes my mane stand on end? The face that meant we were about to go on one of the most harrowing Crusades of our lives?”
Dinky frowned. “I have a face for all that?”
“Yep.”
“Huh. Okay. Does anypony else have a plan?”
Apple Bloom glanced around. “Sweetie could cast that trackin’ spell of Rarity’s.”
Sweetie Belle shook her head emphatically. “For the last time, we are still running around a lot of solid rock walls, so I really don’t want to use a spell that's basically designed to throw its caster around like a rag doll. Second of all, we’d lose any element of surprise we’ve got when we slammed into everypony else.”
“Well…” Button said. “I mean, our arrival would be pretty surprising.”
“Okay, yeah,” Sweetie admitted. “But it would be equally surprising to us, which sorta defeats the purpose.”
“Hmm.” Button rubbed his chin. “True.”
“What ‘bout that echolocation spell, Sweetie?” Apple Bloom suggested.
Sweetie considered this. “I mean, I still don’t know how to interpret the results super well… but I guess there’s no reason not to try.”
“That’s the spirit,” Scootaloo said.
Sweetie shut her eyes and a wave of sound and light rippled out omnidirectionally, then echoed back. She frowned and tried again. Again. Again.
“Are you getting anything?” Dinky asked.
“Maybe?” Sweetie opened her eyes. “I'm never getting the same results back twice. It’s like the tower is moving. Walls, staircases, everything.”
Rumble tilted his head. “That’s… not outside the realm of possibility…” he said slowly. “Especially given how the tower itself was moving away from us earlier.”
Dinky tilted her head and considered this information. “Do… do you think… that maybe, if the tower was… let’s say, already moving…”
"There's that look again," Rumble muttered.
Apple Bloom closed her eyes. “Can ya do it without bringing the roof down on all our heads?”
Rather than answering, Dinky grinned, her eyes flashing gold as they caught the light. The tower began to tremble.
Applejack lay in Rainbow’s lap, letting her marefriend gently stroke her mane. She focused on the sensation, trying not to think about anything else. Every time she let her mind wander, it came back to the pain. Each death was as sharp as its first sting, but sharper still was the knowledge that she hadn’t really achieved anything.
Rainbow’s hoof stopped moving for a second, and Applejack cracked open an eye to see why. The face of a friend loomed over her. “...Hey,” Pinkie said softly. “How’re you holding up?”
Applejack considered this for a long moment. “Not great.” She eyed Pinkie over. The perky party planner sagged, her mane flat against her head. “Y’all don’t look any better.”
Pinkie Pie slumped. “I don’t feel too good. I guess none of us do, really.”
“Kinda justified, given the circumstances,” Rainbow said.
“It looks kinda grim, yeah,” Applejack agreed. “Ah ain’t sure Ah see a way outta this one, girls.”
“Don’t say that,” Pinkie scolded.
“Yeah, c’mon, AJ,” Dash said. “We’ve gotten out of worse scrapes before. Where there’s a will, there’s --”
“An inheritance,” Pinkie mused.
Rainbow Dash floundered. “Uh. Yeah? That too.” She leaned down close to Applejack. “What’s she talking about?”
Applejack shrugged.
Pinkie pointed at the Doctor. “He’s worried about the Valeyard taking over from him, right? But the more he worries, the more like that mean ol’ snooty pants he becomes! It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we can break him out of that funk, then maybe we can put a kink in the Valeyard’s plans?”
“That… sounds good,” Rainbow said. “Not sure how you got there from ‘where there’s a will,’ but I’m willing to set that aside for now.”
“Question is, how’re we gonna do that?” Applejack asked. “Lookin’ at him, Ah don’t reckon that you could just fire off a party cannon and make everything alright.”
Pinkie’s mane had started to puff up again. “Good question! Um, I dunno yet. But we’ve got a plan, at least, and that’s something!”
“Well… you say plan,” Rainbow said doubtfully.
“Indeedy I doody!” Pinkie said.
“She’s happy,” Applejack muttered. “Let her have this.”
Pinkie paused suddenly and tilted her head. “Twitch-a-twitch-a-twitch?” she muttered.
All three mares looked back at Pinkie’s tail. Indeed, it was twitching of its own volition.
In unison, all of them looked up at the ceiling. A little sprinkle of dust and mortar rained down.
“I was right about the look!” Rumble howled as the Crusaders hoofed it down the corridor.
“Shaddup an’ run!” Apple Bloom shouted back.
The tower was shaking violently, making it difficult for anypony to keep their balance. “How much farther to the stairs?” Scootaloo demanded.
“Nearly there!” Sweetie promised. “Just hold on a little longer!”
Button tumbled to the ground and rolled a few feet. Apple Bloom hauled him back to his hooves and pulled him onward.
“There!” Rumble said, gesturing to the staircase with his head. “Dinky, you can stop now!”
“Right!”
The tower kept shaking. “Dinky?”
“Um…”
“Dinky?”
“I know, I know! I’m doing my best!”
She shut her eyes and breathed deep, in thick, heavy pants. It didn’t work. She wasn’t calming down. Not only that, the more she tried to calm down, the more she thought about the dire consequences of not calming down and only got more worked up. There was a distinct cracking sound.
And then she was holding a hoof. Somepony took both her hooves in theirs and held them tight and gentle. And then there was a song -- beautiful, wordless, and loving. Dinky let out her breath slowly, let the music fill her, calm her. Her breathing steadied, and she realized that the world had stopped shaking. She opened her eyes.
All of her friends stared back at her, save for Sweetie Belle. The unicorn had her eyes shut, and she was singing. “You --” Dinky said. “You can stop now, Sweetie. I think that did it.” She paused. “Thank you,” she added.
Sweetie shut her mouth and opened her eyes, grinning. Rumble let go of Dinky’s hooves. “Thank all of you,” Dinky added, glancing around. “I nearly lost myself there.”
“Hey, no problem,” Apple Bloom said.
“Yeah, friendship is magic, after all,” Scootaloo agreed.
“Guess so,” Dinky agreed.
There was a long pause. “Are you ready to go on?” Button asked.
“Yeah, I think so. Do me a favor, though?”
“Yeah?”
“If I start losing control like that again -- actually, if the ground starts shaking again at all -- just hoofball tackle me, alright? That was far too close for comfort. We can’t afford to rely on my shoddy control of my emotions any longer.”
“Dinky--” Apple Bloom began.
“Promise me.”
“Alright, alright, Ah promise.”
Dinky looked at the others, and they all hastily gave their words as well. She held her gaze a moment longer, then nodded. “Thanks,” she said gruffly, rising to her hooves. “C’mon. Let’s get on with it.”
The others exchanged glances before hurrying after her.
“--rest yer weary head, now, an’ go th’ hell to bed…” Granny crooned over the cribs.
The five babies were fast asleep now, soothed by Granny’s lullaby, which was as calming as it was expletive-laced.
Romana peeked her head around the door. “Iffin you wake them up now,” Granny said softly, “Ah’ll buck you through th’ wall.”
The Time Lady nodded her understanding and beckoned Granny out into the hall. “Good job,” she murmured, closing the door gently.
Granny grinned. “Ah, well. Ah’ve had years of experience, me. How goes it with them fancy spy folk?”
“GUIDE seem to have their investigations under control. Gilda volunteered to hang back and help Redheart with the hospital -- she has some informal first-aid training from the rebellion, and I think Redheart just needs somecreature to talk to so she doesn’t break down completely. Starlight and I are trying to work out a way to stop any further temporal interference, but that’s far more easily said than done, and if I went into any detail, you’d see that it isn’t even particularly easy to say.”
Granny nodded. “So what’s th’ next step?”
“Well…” Romana hemmed and hawed a little. “I suspect that at some point we’ll need to interrogate the Valeyard. Which would, naturally, entail waking him up.”
“Doesn’t sound like a problem.”
“Time Lords are touch telepaths. If I try to shake him awake, he could get inside my mind, whereas you, being a non-Gallifreyan, would have some measure of protection in the short run. Which is why I need your help…”
The Valeyard lay in wait, keeping his breathing carefully controlled and his eyes shut. All he needed was a single touch from Romana, and she would fall directly into his trap. He knew her terrible secret, after all, the thing that she didn’t even know about herself. Romana had long been the host of an ancient Time Lord entity known as Pandora, who would doubtless be a powerful ally to rule over time and space with. He only needed a touch to draw it out.
He felt her proximity well before the door had even opened. “Valeyard,” she said sternly. “We need to talk.”
No, Romana. I have nothing I wish to say to you but goodbye. Just come a little closer. Shake me awake, check my pulse, anything.
“Still asleep, then,” Romana said. “Or faking it. Alright, then. Time for a wakeup call.”
Yes!
He felt a presence hovering over him, felt the currents of air moving out of the way of the hoof as it swung down. Felt it contact.
Wait, this isn’t -- was his final thought before he was forcefully slapped back into the realm of unconsciousness once more.
Romana winced at the sound, which was comparable to someone dropping a brick on a watermelon. The Valeyard’s head lolled. “Well,” Romana said. “If he was faking before, he isn’t now.”
Granny winced and flexed her hoof. “Sorry, there. It’s bin donkey’s years since Ah was this strong. Ain’t used to it.”
Romana sighed. “Well, we’ll just have to come back later, then. Just use a lighter touch, next time, won’t you? I despise him, but we do need him to be relatively un-addled if we’re to find out anything about his plans…”
The Crusaders made their way through the upper levels of the tower, finding little. “Please tell me we aren’t going to have to go up another floor,” Button moaned.
“What, are you getting tired?” Scootaloo asked.
“Uh, yeah? Listen, I’ve got a tech job. Basically my whole day is spent behind a desk desperately trying to figure out where the bug in my programming is. I think I’ve walked more today than I do in a week.”
Scootaloo arched an eyebrow.
“To be fair,” Sweetie said, “we have been walking a really long time.”
“About… six miles, I’d say?” Bloom guessed. “Seven?”
“Yeah, exactly! Thank you. I’d really just like to find the boss so we can battle him and go home and I can take a twelve-hour nap.”
Dinky stopped dead. “You might be about to get your wish,” she muttered. “Look.”
The others all stared. It was the first door they’d seen in this place, just as ornately wrought as the one in the subterranean tunnels. Looking at the decorations themselves, however…
“Is it me,” Button said, “Or are those carvings… shifting?”
Apple Bloom squinted. “...Yeah. If ya tilt yer head like this… it’s some old guy banishin’ a buncha old ladies. But if ya look at it th’ other way…”
“It’s the royal sisters petrifying Discord,” Rumble said. “I don’t know what all this means, but I’d bet good money that this is the door we need.”
“So… do we go in, then?” Apple Bloom asked.
Sweetie Belle cringed. “Er… I don’t think so. There could be anything on the other side of that door.”
“Keyhole,” Dinky said.
“...Uh?” said Button.
“We can peek through the keyhole,” Dinky said, sidling up to the door and squeezing one eye shut tight. “And we see… oh.”
“Oh?” Scootaloo asked.
“They’re all in there. And so’s the Interface. Looks like it’s sitting on some kinda box… sarcophagus, maybe? Everyone looks pretty demoralized. And um…” Dinky trailed off. “I think Applejack’s gotten hurt.”
Apple Bloom all but lunged forward. “She what?!”
Dinky scooted away to let Bloom take a peek. After a moment, the yellow mare drew back, her face ashen.
The others all took their turns at the keyhole before stepping back. “Well…” Rumble said. “Now what?”
“I have a plan,” Dinky said. “I saw something in there that looked very useful in this fight.”
Rumble studied her. Her face wasn’t activating his flight response, which was a good start. “Okay. What do we need to do?”
“Just look confident and follow my lead.”
Apple Bloom pursed her lips. “Gonna need a lil’ more than that to go on, Dinks.”
But it was too late. Dinky had already flung open the doors. “Hey, tin can! Knock, knock!”
All eyes fell on her. Dinky grinned ferally and stepped into the room. The Nightmare stared at her from atop its perch, considering her as though she were an insect it hadn’t yet decided if it wanted to crush. It hadn’t actually fallen off the sarcophagus in surprise, but had merely spun its head around to stare at her. Not an optimal outcome, but Dinky hid her disappointment well.
The others followed her in, all trying to project confidence with varying degrees of success. “If we die, I’m gonna kill you,” Scootaloo growled.
“Well,” said the Nightmare. “This is an unexpected intrusion.” It rose and swooped down from its vaunted position. It landed on the ground, squarely between the Crusaders and their loved ones. Said loved ones were looking on in speechless shock and horror.
“Run!” Spike screamed. “That’s the Nightmare! Don’t just stand there, save yourselves!”
Most of the Crusaders seriously considered this advice, but Dinky stood firm, glaring the machine down. The Nightmare stared back, smirking.
“I had wondered who could possibly be so foolish as to bring a manifestation of the TARDIS itself into the Matrix,” it said silkily. “Just the place I needed it to be. Really, the answer ought to have been obvious. Did you enjoy your trek up here? I set out so many new friends for you to meet.”
Dinky didn’t react. She simply tilted her head a little higher and said, “Let them go, Nightmare. Buzz off before we kick you out.”
Sweetie Belle looked around nervously. She didn’t see much of anything in here that looked especially familiar or useful, apart from their friends and the TARDIS.
The Nightmare laughed, astonished. “You plan to defeat me, now that my power is greater than it has ever been before? Now that I am fueled by almost the entire power of a time ship? You? Pray tell, how did you plan to do it? Coat me in tree sap until I begged for mercy?”
“Not a bad plan,” Dinky said, rubbing her chin. “But I was thinking of something a little more traditional."
She lit her horn, and the six orbs atop the statue near the entrance broke off and floated above her head, orbiting around the Crusaders. Faint lights began to glow from within.
The Nightmare’s eyes widened. “NO!” it hissed.
Dinky grinned as her friends looked up at the spinning orbs in astonishment. “Oh, yes! We’ve faced quite a few challenges to get here, and it’s made me think pretty hard about the bond the six of us share, as friends and Crusaders. Let me tell you about it.”
The Nightmare reared back, its hydraulic limbs screaming, and it fired a bolt of golden energy at the six. It merely fizzled as it reached the border of the spheres' orbit, much to the growing wonder and astonishment of the assembled ponies.
“Button Mash, whose good cheer in the face of adversity won over the Silurians, represents Laughter! Rumble, whose frankness convinced Sweetie Belle to overcome her fears, is Honesty! Sweetie herself, whose shield warded off the Nimons, represents Loyalty! Scootaloo, who traded her feathers to save Apple Bloom, must be Generosity! Apple Bloom, who helped repair that busted robot, is Kindness, and by process of elimination, that makes me Magic! Friendship Beam!”
The Nightmare flinched, turning its head away from the anticipated blast of rainbow-colored friendship power.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then, once it became clear that the nothing-happening was going to continue, the Nightmare turned back to face the Crusaders, painfully slowly. Its mechanical face formed a crude, cruel smile. Dinky looked back and forth between the orbs and the robot, dawning wide-eyed terror spreading over her face.
“Aw, shit,” Apple Bloom whispered, the expression underscored by Button’s whimpering.
The Nightmare let out a deep, growling chuckle. “Oh, dear,” it whistled, steam pouring from its mouth. “Oh, dear, dear. For a second, you almost had it.” With a swipe of the hoof, the six stone orbs were plucked from Dinky’s magic control and soared, one by one, out of the arched windows. “But ‘almost’ isn’t good enough.”
Dinky went pale. “No… that isn’t how this is meant to work…” she said, shaking her head. “No. This can’t happen!”
There was another pitchy whistle-shriek of laughter. “Oh, you pathetic runt. Don’t you realize that you’re in my world now? You play by my rules. And the rules say you lose.”
There was a wave of force that struck the Crusaders like the flat of a giant’s hand, and they all went flying -- right out of the tower. Ditzy screamed. Rarity eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted. Rainbow tried to fly after them, but another wave of force sent her sailing back into the darkness of the tomb. Discord snapped their fingers over and over again, but nothing happened. The whole world shook and rumbled, as though it were trying to make known its objections.
The Doctor said nothing, did nothing. Only the silent tears running down his cheeks let on that he had noticed anything at all.