//------------------------------// // 30: God meets Death // Story: Imbalanced: Legacy of Light // by Nameless Narrator //------------------------------// It’s time. As I rematerialize at the site of the altar over which the Herald is standing on his spider-like mechanical legs, I look up at the metal-looking platform holding his body, and sigh. It’s so similar to the void here now - freezing, soundless, dim. All energy is being drained from the area, and once there’s nothing left, the rift will spread. At the same time, it’s completely different, because there actually is something to see and feel other than the horrible freezing pain of your body disintegrating. Which is the plan, really. The only thing keeping us from having lost is that Nightmare is toying with everyone again. She could easily close a rift of this magnitude, but the pain of drained alicorns, the desolation all this is causing, everything is bringing her… her amusement. I will show you. After everything you’ve done to me. I will show you amusement. It will either work and end almost everything, or it will end absolutely everything. It all hinges on how far she wants to push this before intervening, and the less time to think I give her, the better. I call upon the power of the souls Mistake gained for me, and the blue glow envelops my body like armor. Blackfire wings burst out of my back, and launch me up into the air. I guess the good old phoenix ones won’t ever come back after everything I did and what I’m about to do. The glow intensifies when I ram into the Herald’s underside without any resistance. After all, it’s a void construct. Whatever little material form it has evaporates as soon as it’s touches my soul-fueled divinity, and I feel my power strain as it fills Herald’s true form, which is basically a mobile rift that needs closing. That’s why just pouring energy its way has been working. Unfortunately for Sunbutt and others, they don’t have even a microscopic fraction of power I possess now. Void used to be the most powerful alicorn with only the select willing few thousand souls which he gathered over millennia. Mine might not be as willing, but they all know what’s at stake, and the numbers I have are incomparable. The fact that they’ll undoubtedly turn on me and rip me apart even if this ends well is just a tiny irrelevant detail. I spin around as I drill upwards through Herald’s body as easily as I would swim through water, and the spin sends out three novas of blue energy which effortlessly rip the Herald apart. A moment later, it evaporates, and there’s only me left under the torn sky, the souls burning around me gently swaying towards the unnatural pull of the rift above. “WHAT ARE YOU?!” Would it be cheesy and cheap if I said “your worst nightmare”? Probably. Or maybe I’m just a struggling worm with ideas way above my station. Anyway, I ignore Nightmare’s scream that is so powerful it pierces the otherwise soundless zone around the rift. Well, here’s where it all ends, hopefully. I’m sorry, Cro. You got it right - we can’t be together, not while Nightmare exists, and getting rid of her without sacrifices, if even getting rid of her at all, is probably impossible. The best I can do is have the sacrifice be myself… ...aaaaand almost two hundred million others. Details, details. I’m sorry I couldn’t have had a final chat with you. I couldn’t risk you talking me out of it. We both know what would have happened if Nightmare got to know about me surviving her genuine attempt at destroying me. We would never have peace. I just wish I was able to say how much I love you, how much I miss you, and how selfishly happy I was when Bucket told me that the other Blazing Light refused your attention at every turn. Or that without the fact that you and Heavy put everything on the line to bring Joy back, to get to me, and to reassure me that even after the atrocities Mistake and I committed you would still want me, I wouldn’t have bothered.  I would have stayed inside my own head, in my pocket dimension until… Great… I overthink everything, and I didn’t even have a boredom contingency plan. Would making Mistake transform into Cromach and walk around all oiled up be creepy? “Yes!” Oh shush. “Then get back to work. You’ve been at this litany for almost a second. Time is the only thing that we don’t have.” Right, right. Well… Goodbye, Cro. Goodbye, Chokey. Goodbye, Heavy. Despite all the crap that has happened since day one, it was worth it. There is only one last thing to do, one final duty to fulfill. With that in mind, I focus my power… ...spread my forelegs... ...let the souls connect my hooves with the edges of the rift... ...and rip it wide open. “OH NO, YOU DON’T!”   She reacts too late. The rift devours the horizon, spreads and spreads over the whole world, and I feel Mistake split away from me again, this time with full knowledge of the final part of my plan. Reality is a strangely malleable thing if one has the right kind of power, and with a simple push of my hooves into the empty air, the rift moves away from Equus and into space. The eye-watering “hole” is still visible, but the ice crystals above the crater are melting, the dimness is gone, and the wind is blowing again. Well, time to head off into space. Good thing that at this point I don’t particularly need to breathe, and after spending time in the void I have more than enough protection against simple cold. Leaving a blue trail behind me, I burn it upwards through the atmosphere.  I hate flying so much. Within seconds, the blueness of the sky is replaced by the black emptiness of space with stars blinking in the distance, and the sun of Equus not too far away, actually. The rift is spreading on its own now, and soon I feel stars grow dimmer, obscured by encroaching blackness that coalesces into what constitutes the physical form of Nightmare. In reality, she’s everywhere, but her avatar helps her focus her power. “YOU CAN’T RUN! THIS IS MY REALITY TO PLAY WITH, AND YOU’RE NOT RUINING IT. YOUR LITTLE PLOY ENDS HERE.” Well yeah, that’s the point. I smirk and allow myself just one more tiny bit of selfishness by using the enormous power I hold to allow myself to speak here. “Should have just left me and Cromach alone, bitch.” “YOUUUUUUUUUUU!” I can feel the walls of reality bend under Nightmare’s focused power set on erasing me from existence. With just a tiny blip, I create a thin void rift around me, like a membrane which simply makes her miss. It won’t work twice, but it doesn’t need to. It takes another soul-fueled push to spread the rift even further. “NO, NO NO NO NO NO NO NONONONONONONO!” “Is there a hint of panic I hear?” I ask and finally, finally I can feel the god push against the rift instead of trying to end me. Now we will see if I made it in time. Moments pass. Void, the alicorn, was right. The power of the soul can achieve greater things than simple divinity. Creation, existence, and destruction. Nightmare is the god of all the basic forces, and within this reality she can control them fully. Souls, though, are an emergent property no one expected. Where exactly is it? Where does it come from? What happens with it after we die? I don’t know. Void didn’t know, he just knew its properties the best. Nightmare doesn’t know. And what’s even worse for her is that the more souls gather to achieve a common goal, the more they become something infinitely larger than just a sum of its parts. Which is why the god of this plane of existence is currently having trouble stopping the rift from spreading against my pull trying to opening it. It does help that the pressure of the void is draining Nightmare and not me. It’s not intelligent or picky, it just sucks. Heh. The rift grows larger, disintegrating a planet in the distance and spreading. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” After a final and completely ineffective push, I can feel Nightmare give up. Her avatar turns around and looks at me. To my surprise, she sighs and facehoofs. “Well done, idiot. If you can’t play, no one can, right?” “Oh boo hoo. Not gonna give destroying me one last try? Or ruining Cromach’s life in front of me, or scrambling Joy’s head again? Stop me whenever you feel like it, because I can keep going for a whiiiiiiile.” “Alright, I may or may not have overdone it a little. What you don’t seem to understand is that your paranoia about me destroying anything just for the fun of it is rather misplaced. In fact, as things stand, I am the hero trying and failing to stop the villain from destroying everything - namely you.” “Sure, tell me who you’re in love with so that I can start ripping them limb from limb in front of you while giving them brain damage on the level that they won’t recognize you anymore.” “Still set on this all love thing, seriously. No, tell me, how would your lovers feel about you putting them and everything else into a reality disintegrating blender?” “I think you missed one important detail,” I breathe out. It worked, she was too busy fighting me for the rift and then whining, “Is that how it feels to get kicked out of the bar after closing time?” I point at the planet under us. Equus is surrounded by blue glimmer, and as far as Nightmare’s avatar has features, I think it furrows its brows. “You think you can keep the planet out of the reach of my power before the void devours everything? Just so that I can’t have fun with your friends and lovers while we’re waiting for the end? Even with all the souls you’re burning to keep me away, you won’t be able to contest my power for long. I can have them live through an eternity of pain within minutes.” “Not the plan, really. Can you get through all the souls who want to protect their planet from you in three… two… one…?” “What do-” The glowing planet blinks and disappears. A moment later it comes back, glow-less. “You do realize that switching your planet with Equus from a different reality doesn’t solve your problem at all, do you? Or did you manage to find one without a version of me, or Harmony, or Discord? Tell me you thought of that, pleeeeease. I don’t think I’d live down being defeated by someone this stupid.” I ponder telling her that I didn’t think of that just to see the facehoof so powerful it might cause a new big bang, but in the end I decide to gloat a little. I think I’ve earned it. As I’m looking down at the planet beginning to crumble and disintegrate as the void rift spreads over it, it also swallows me and Nightmare’s avatar. Not that just devouring the avatar means much, which is why we’re flushing the whole reality down the drain. “Not really. The planet will return after a short while, namely after the void has sucked this reality dry. All matter and energy gone including us. You see, void itself can’t devour the borders of reality, that’s why we have to create the rifts, to ruin the barrier that’s keeping us safe from returning to the boiling sea of uncertainty and potential that’s the void. Otherwise no realities could exist. No, when rifts open, void seeps in, sucks everything out, and then the rift closes and the reality border heals, leaving the plane an empty, dead husk. What happens with those,” I shrug, “No idea. This one will be empty with the exception of one tiny planet in the inky blackness of space. Laws of physics, magic, and divinity will still apply, and eventually new gods might rise up, but they won’t be you. You will be gone, and they will be aliv-” “Hah, got you!” “What?” “You can’t think I actually care about your little plan. I just wanted to have you monologue at me like the villain you are now. Gee gee, I win.” “We’re still dying together,” I remind her. “I gotta take the little victories, I suppose. One of many things I learned after absorbing my brothers. It was a good run. On a rather amusing note, your little happy piece of schizophrenia given life forgot to pack lunch.” “And now you’re not making sense at all.” “Don’t worry, I’ll dumb it down for you, since I don’t have anything better to do anymore. Your little shield of souls didn’t reach high enough, when the planet returns, it won’t have any sun or a moon. Ahhh, reminds me of what would have happened if Luna won. Nightmare Moon, wink wink.” Do I give her the satisfaction of cursing? Because I really didn’t think of that. “Everyone froooooozen into little lollipops.” I just sigh. “Well, Celestia is still alive, the planet core is still working, dwarves are using the heat to power their city. With divinity and magic still accessible, she might be able to create a new sun or something.” “Damn, that would be so much fun to watch even without meddling. You’re such a spoilsport.” The rift closes on its own, leaving us in the indescribable non-place called the void. It seems that it’s finally over. “Well, I hate to leave you alone, but I think I’m ready to call it a day,” I start letting go of the souls around me. “Just some food for thought. Harmony survived here for few billion years and still got back before you finally capped him.” “Well, you sealed him here with hope that he would one day return, a little more sane. The rift you kicked him through wasn’t made to get rid of him completely. The rift the Blades of Balance created was, and it made mincemeat out of him, otherwise you wouldn’t be the one big god you’re now. I doubt there would be someone who would come here completely in person through the right kind of rift and personally be the link to bring you back home. Even I can’t go back on my own, and I know how to travel through this, for lack of a better word, place. It all depends on the type of rift you come here, and the one Herald made was meant to devour everything and not let go.” “What I’m still hearing is that if some creature is foolish enough, they can come here and personally bring me back, right? I mean, I’ve got time, really. You can never be sure what some crazy cultists with the access to a book about this might do..”   “Your divine power is scattered forever here. You can’t focus it anymore, you can’t use it anymore, so stop playing. There isn’t more of you than the body in front of me… although technically in front is the wrong expression too. Even if someone foolish enough brought that back, they couldn’t bring back all of you. You would be mortal. Possibly something like an alicorn, but nothing more.” “Better than drifting here and listening to your blathering, really. Though I’m starting to think that I might have to keep you alive here until someone brings me back even as just an alicorn of something fun. Discord got it right, boredom sucks.” “I really wish even you knew how to get rid of yourself properly. Your memories, Void’s memories, Harmony’s memories, Discord’s memories, and it all led only to this. Oh well, I can only hope that if you ever return, you get immediately eaten by a bear.”  With that, I release the remaining souls, and grunt as the pain of my body disintegrating shoots through me like lightning. It’ll be a painful minute or so, but I doubt Nightmare can keep me alive anymore like she threatened. My semi-Corrupted body is taking its sweet time, but if I had normal flesh I don’t doubt it would be much more agonizing. Mistake will release the souls I gave him once the planet is back, he can’t control them like I can, and then everything will finally be over. This is it. This is the end.  I did it. I’m done. The god is gone, the story is finished, and no matter how badly it hurts, there’s only the final peace in front of me. Death is the final Hope for those whose suffering simply refuses to end. I can finally slee- The nothingness of the void parts, giving shape to something. Something green and crackling enveloped in blue fire. A big bird. Correction - a big catbird. Something grabs me roughly by my shredded barrel, making me open my mouth in a noiseless scream, and then there’s only light.