//------------------------------// // The Will Of The World // Story: The Olden World // by Czar_Yoshi //------------------------------// When Starlight's vision reformed, her body was being jostled. Far from the last two gray visions where she seemed unable to interact with the world at all, in this one, the world was determined to interact with her. "Hold the cart steady!" a mare's voice frantically called. "It's hard to bandage their wounds like this, and you're making some of them worse!" "Do your best," another, older mare called from ahead, voice strained and panting. "I'm going as fast as I can! The more we tarry, the fewer we'll be able to get to the triage center!" Starlight sat up. Ash was falling all around her in a soft, endless curtain, pelting against her from the speed at which she was moving yet barely feeling like anything at all. She was on the back of a wide, flat cart, sharing it with more than half a dozen sarosians: most were injured, some quite badly, and one was trying to tend to the others, presumably the one who had spoken. Big and muscular, she used her hooves and wingtips with surprising dexterity, finishing a split around another pony's wing and then sitting back and wiping her brow. She didn't look in perfect condition, either. "Heads up, swerving!" The cart lurched again, barely enough time for the medic mare to catch some of the others and keep them from rolling around. Starlight looked up and out, seeing a pit or crater they had barely managed to avoid... This landscape was rough and pockmarked beneath its thin coating of ash, like a flat field that had suffered hundred of thousands of explosions throughout the ages. Something ruinous had happened here. It was also passing unnaturally quickly. Starlight looked up front to see the cart being pulled by a single mare... A mare who was running at several times the speed she had ever seen a pony run before. Her flurrying legs were braced by some kind of metal with glowing lines, though it looked ineffective as armor... Were those enhancements, bolstering her and increasing her swiftness and endurance? "Do you think there will even be more to come back for by the time we finish this run?" the medic mare asked, ears falling. "The enemy has practically infinite reinforcements. We've only done two trips, and they were already..." "It isn't over until it's over," the runner panted. "The objective is to retreat, not to hold. Starlight knows everything is on her shoulders now, and that we can neither follow her nor wait for her. We did our part, and now we'll see to it that as many survive to see the future as possible!" "I just hope she can do it," the medic murmured. "What if we run home and never hear from her again, and just have to go back to our old lives, living as normal?" "Don't talk like that," the runner scolded. "If what she said is true-" "Look alive, chatterboxes!" an injured pony cried. "They're on our tail!" The medic's pupils constricted, and her jaw fell in surprise. "Wuh-oh." Suddenly, Starlight was grabbed. The beefy medic was holding her, aiming her behind the cart and at the sky like a launcher. "Hey!" Starlight struggled, but the medic neither heard her nor noticed. "Put me down!" What was happening? She had previously been like a ghost in these visions, but now it was like she was experiencing it from a perspective... Shapes appeared through the falling ash, black and buzzing and closing in swiftly. The medic pointed her right at them, and Starlight recognized them instantly: more empty sarosian shells, hostile and snarling. KA-CHUNK! Something happened, and Starlight's perspective fired a blast at the shells that exploded into a mass of crackling energy, snaring and coursing through the pursuers and sending several crashing to the ground. "Yeah! Got some!" the medic cheered, reloading and firing another blast. Starlight's eyes widened in confusion. Was she experiencing this as a weapon? "Good work!" The cart lurched again as the mare pulling it took evasive action, putting on another burst of speed. The shells surged closer, and the mare holding Starlight spun, flooring one with a giant punch and unloading her weapon point-blank into another's face. A third grabbed onto the railing, rocking the cart and baring its teeth and snarling, exposing a long, forked tongue. One of the injured ponies pulled themselves to their hooves and swung a sword at it, severing it and knocking it away. "How many more are there!?" the mare called from the front, her voice more ragged already. She must have been pacing herself before, even at her incredible speed... Starlight could hear her faltering. "I think we got them?" the medic mare called back hopefully. "I don't see any-" With a dull flash, the cart they were riding on disappeared in a giant puff of ash. Multiple ponies screamed in surprise and pain as they hit the ground and rolled. "No!" the runner cried, skidding about instantly and dashing back to the ponies who had fallen, helping the medic up first. "Not the cart..." the medic whispered, eyes shaking. She looked to the other ponies. "But the bandages are still here. That means the triage center is still..." "We're done for," one of the injured ponies whispered. "Hardly." The runner was panting and ragged, leg braces flickering, but she took a stance. "If this is where we make a last stand, this is where we'll do it. With me?" The medic grabbed Starlight again and slung her over her shoulder, nodding in determination. "With you." They both faced the way they had come, shoulder to shoulder, and a few of the less-injured passengers got to their hooves to join them. A black static started building in Starlight's ears. This vision was about to end. And then, roaring out of the falling ash, it came, a wall of expanding, calamitous blackness, engulfing the world like it consumed reality itself. Starlight couldn't even tell if it was happening within the vision or was a part of the construct that created the vision in the first place, but it came, and she was bowled over, caught up and absorbed and drowning in the absence of light, floating and rising and gasping until... Starlight's vision returned, a black covering draining away from her eyes like dark tears. She could see color again. Whether it was only in this memory or for good, she was no longer moon glassed. "Another vision..." she heard herself mutter without really intending it. She looked up. There was a brazier before her, surrounded by crystal, crackling with beautiful orange flames. Right. Since this was a memory, and not the present, she would only remember the conversation her past self had held with the flame. Whatever new questions she might have gathered since then, she would be unable to ask. "Starlight?" Maple asked, standing right beside her. "Are you alright?" Starlight rubbed her face. "I just..." She swallowed, looking up to the Flame of Honesty ahead. "Right. Let's bring the other me back." Right... Glimmer was still in Maple's cutie mark at this point. Starlight thought frantically, trying to remember as much as she could about why she had been here: her memories weren't just sitting there in her head for her to recollect at any time, she was living through them like they were today. She, Valey, Maple and Nyala had taken the Arc Manta, she recalled, with three Kinmari scientists, though she didn't see Nyala or the scientists down here in the flame room. It was just herself, Maple and Valey... She still had the artifice, too, and they were here to bring back Glimmer and press her for answers on the gray futures. And that was all the context she had time to remember. We meet at last, the orange flame said in her mind. I have heard much about you from my siblings in the north. But first, you came here for a reason. "Glimmer," Starlight said. "We're here to get her back. We want to ask her questions, and Maple shouldn't have to carry her around in her cutie mark anymore." ...If you are sure. Sleep. "Oh my," Maple breathed, suddenly covering her mouth and yawning. "All of a sudden, I'm feeling so sleepy..." "Ironflanks?" Valey raised an eyebrow. Starlight glanced up. "You can't hear the tree, but it's telling you to sleep." "Right... Mmm..." Maple didn't look like she had any strength to resist, laying down and curling up against the brazier. Within seconds, she was breathing softly. Starlight waited for a moment, and nothing happened. "Is it supposed to be doing something?" Valey asked, standing carefully at attention. I can only provide the means for you to reconstitute your other, the flame replied. Finding the direction is a task that falls to you alone. Starlight nodded. She had no idea what that meant, but apparently her past self did...? Nightmare Module emulation mode is unable to be activated, her Nightmare Module voice said, responding to something that went through her mind. "I don't need it to be," Starlight replied. "I just need to know how to bring her back. She told me she did it for me after I disappeared using the harmony extractor in Ironridge. So whatever weird knowledge you have on how to do that, I need it." Access denied. "Unless," Starlight replied, not missing a beat. Internally, she frowned. What? Eylista administrator access level granted, her Nightmare Module voice coolly replied. Loading schematics for Transitional Emotion Trinity Research Automata version 4.0... Her horn charged with a spell she had never felt before. There was no energy in it, only... information? If something physical could be turned into an idea, and that idea into a spell, only it was a perfect representation rather than an approximation and that made it unimaginably huge, except that thoughts still weren't physical so it took up no space at all even though it was gigantic... that was the only way she could describe it. An orange field of telekinesis appeared, seemingly generated by the tree around her. It lifted Maple, holding her gently, and set her in the crystal brazier, the flames intensifying around her as their orange color started to mix with sparkling midnight blue. Now, the tree instructed. Starlight touched her horn to the frame, and her spell discharged, the flame itself changing in reaction to her. It shimmered, twisted, warped and wrapped around in on itself, shrinking until it rose along predefined curves rather than the natural, flowing movements of fire. Those curves bent around themselves more still, until the fire in the pedestal seemed to be coming from Maple herself, yet was tiny, sculpted into the size of a filly like Starlight... and suddenly, its surface began to freeze solid, melding into lilac fur. As Starlight stared, Glimmer took form, like an outside shell of a filly spreading slowly over a core of shimmering, ethereal flames. Her head formed last, her eyes still burning with harmonic flame behind them... and then they took shape too, and she landed on Maple on the empty brazier. The flame was gone, though already the platform was glowing with embers of orange as it re-summoned itself as well. "Unnngh..." Glimmer stirred, coming to. "Looks like we're in business," Valey announced, marching up alongside Starlight and flexing her wings. "...Think we might need to give her time to wake up, though?" Glimmer groggily rubbed her eyes, pupils dilating and focusing as the harmonic flame came back to life around her. "I'm still alive?" she groaned, staring blearily around, eyes settling on Starlight. "You... brought me back..." "Sure did." Valey stretched menacingly. "Thanks for saving our butts, by the way. But we've got a few questions about these gray visions Starlight keeps having that you're apparently connected to." Glimmer gave her one look and lit her horn. "Sorry about this," she apologized... and before anyone could react, she was gone in a burst of teleportation. "Hey!" Valey barked, charging out of the room. "Bananas, get back here!" Starlight's coat bristled in surprise, though if Glimmer was anything like her, she supposed the reaction was understandable. Maple was here, though, and she didn't run off and leave her on her own. It seems we find ourselves alone, truth-seeker, the Tree of Harmony said. I can feel much in your mind that is not at ease. Unfortunately, you are in the wrong place for that. Starlight's eyes widened, and she turned back to the flame, now crackling gently around Maple. "The wrong place? What do you mean?" I am Honesty, not Love or Kindness. My role in the grand order of the world is different. The truth is a weapon used by those who love harmony to illuminate the darkness and expose wrongs that have been hidden, tear down tyrants who rule by lies and level the obstacles that prevent some from living fairly in the world. It is an equalizer, a grounding for the righteous, a sword by which hidden wrongs may be brought to justice. It is a sign of commitment, something that can be shared between flawed mortals as a sign of trust. And it takes the form of the world around it. When the world is dark and ugly, so will be the truth, and yet when it shines, the truth is all the more beautiful to behold. This is not a place of comfort, Starlight Glimmer. It is a place of anathema to confusion and an altar to seeing clearly in the light. I am a flame that burns away the fog hiding what you do not understand in your life. Starlight's legs shook, but she stood solid. "So why isn't that the answer to my mind not being at ease? The whole reason we came here was for answers. Can you tell me about my visions? And what was that mural I saw on the way down? Or the vision of the office ponies at the top floor?" The flame shimmered. Because in your case, the truth will only show you just how hard your path really is. "At least I'll know where it is so I can walk it." Starlight swallowed. "Please help me. I just saw another vision. Please tell me what they are and what they have to do with Glimmer..." The truth may not be what you wish to hear, the flame replied. Starlight could feel its hesitancy like a wave in the air, and her heart sped up in response. After a speech like that, why would an incarnation of honesty hold back and warn her about the truth? "Not knowing isn't what I want either," Starlight replied. "So it sounds like I don't have any good options, do I?" ...Very well. The true answer is that I do not know. Starlight's ears folded. She hadn't been expecting that. I can see your thoughts. I can see the ponies you have seen, and none of them look familiar, much less the landscape they are living in. As with all of my siblings, however, my vision extends everywhere the lifestream of this world is uninterrupted. Since the creation of the world, we have been watching over everyone in it, from the goddesses like Garsheeva and Celestia to the smallest of infants who live yet still in their mothers' wombs. And yet none of what you have seen is known to us. Starlight stared. "Glimmer says it's the future, though. So you wouldn't have seen it if it was the future?" The flame danced and flickered, rising around Maple in a protective embrace. We have been led to believe much the same by your lookalike. However, her thoughts are more guarded than yours, and we cannot reach into her head. Whatever she has truly seen is known only to her. "...Oh." Starlight stared at the floor. Just more confirmation those scenes were of something yet to come... but if the ponies in her vision weren't recognizable to the flames either, that meant they couldn't be born yet. Maybe those visions took place farther in the future than she thought. That is certainly a possibility, the flame replied. With a start, Starlight realized she must have been thinking exactly the same thing as her past self. She would always be herself, she supposed, no matter what happened... "So..." Starlight swallowed. "The things I saw on the way down here. What were those ponies in a building that looked like this one?" That was a memory of our creation, as was the mural you are thinking about as well. Many thousands of years ago, the last world of ponies, Indus, was abandoned. But the ponies of Indus were so advanced, they took hold of powers designed only for gods, and created a new world for themselves to live in. The world they created is the one we are in now, and they created it as a living creature that could govern itself, a world with no need for gods. They chose this because Indus was dying, and as it died, it was being ravaged by a battle between the very titans who had sworn themselves as its gods in the ages prior. Their power was immeasurable, far beyond the shadows wielded by the immortals of today. Starlight's ears folded. "So these crystal palaces are designed to look like the place where you were made?" They are echoes of our genesis. The ponies who created us poured their souls into our making, and we took on life as a result of their hopes for the future. All of us will always carry memories of that place, where we were born inside a machine and used that machine's power to inject ourselves as the backbone of a newly created world. Starlight's vision flickered, and suddenly instead of crystal, the walls around her were made of metal and screens. It almost reminded her of the place she had seen in the moon glass, where she took Lyn in the memory amalgamation and found a room at the end of the gondola where Valey was hidden as well. Ghosts of equine forms moved around the room, and then the illusion was gone. "A machine," Starlight said. "Like Aegis?" It could be comparable. Aegis is also technology built by the old civilization of Indus. They were so advanced, they could use technology to approximate the roles of gods. However, they were not one and the same. Starlight nodded, listening. So far, there was nothing so life-changing about what she was hearing... In fact, it reminded her of talking to the Grandbell flame, having all her questions answered seriously and without being mysterious like Glimmer. Back when she had been here for real, she had probably enjoyed this. "So why were the gods fighting?" Starlight asked. "Aegis and the other one?" I do not know. Much of the knowledge of Indus is lost to us. It has no connection to our lifestream, and falls outside the boundaries of what we can see. Our creators likely intended this, wishing that the new world they created could be free of whatever follies drove theirs to ruin. And, for a great length of time, it worked. This world's first millennia were filled with peace and harmony, and the ponies worshipped the land, and we watched over them as our creators had wished. If time could pass without the world aging, perhaps it could have lasted forever. "But it didn't." Starlight looked at the floor. "Nothing good lasts forever. You probably don't like how messed-up the world is either, right now." It is at epochs like these when I am grateful to be a machine. We incarnations of harmony are not creatures the way you perceive us. We were born within a machine, and constructs we remain. It is the only way for us to handle the absolute, one-dimensional demands of the concepts we embody. Were my desire for truth to be imparted to a pony, with all the complexities and fallibilities of their mortal body and soul, I would simultaneously destroy myself with grief over the state of the world, and overturn it entirely in my quest to fulfill my destiny. As I am now, I am Honesty, isolated and pure. I can exist in a balance with the other elements that comprise the world's soul, and together we make up the facets of a system that has endured for thousands of years. "Sounds familiar," Starlight forcefully sighed. "I've ran away from place after place because it just wasn't good enough. I wish I could make myself live with what I have and not feel bad about it when I lose things because I stop fighting." Yes. You would. Starlight blinked. "What?" Sometimes, there are ponies who have special talents in our virtues themselves, the flame continued. A pony who manifests a cutie mark in Honesty, for instance. As all naturally-occurring cutie marks come from the lifestream, and the lifestream is us, this happens when we desire a more powerful presence in the world. The weight of our calling would be impossible for mortal shoulders to bear forever, yet ponies who are specially attuned to us can call on us for brief instants when their hearts beat as one. They wield the weight of our power for mere seconds, and can do much of the work we wish to accomplish ourselves, yet without having to assume the heavy mantle of becoming us forever. Through this partnership of mortals and machines, we can achieve the same work as a real god, watching over our world and keeping it right. "But you said things have been getting worse," Starlight replied. "That it was good for a few thousand years, and then it wasn't." That is because there are fewer of us than there once were. Starlight took a step back in shock. "What!?" The flame shimmered regretfully. Originally, we were nine. Hope. Love. Knowledge. Generosity. Honesty. Laughter. Kindness. Loyalty. The Spark. Nine shards of the world's soul, split so that we might embody our virtues purely, existing as a network of siblings rather than a singular being. On our own, we would be fallible, yet together, with all of us present as one, we are Harmony. And yet, two of our flames have gone quiet. "Which ones?" Starlight whispered. Generosity, the flame began. Their crystal palace in the southwest was damaged terribly by a mortal experiment mere years ago, and is no longer a suitable conduit for their power. Now they exist in a nebulous state of limbo, connected to the rest of us yet with no place to truly manifest. In fact, I could summon them here right now. "Really?" Starlight felt her heart in her chest, wondering what that possibly could have been. The Equestrian southwest... That was about as far away from anywhere she had traveled as it was possible to go. If her past self thought the same, the flame didn't answer. Instead, sparks of purple briefly rose through its orange flames... and a small lump of beautiful, purple crystal about the size of a chunk of moon glass materialized, held out before her. Generosity sends a gift, Honesty said. You have been taking on much stress as a result of your artifice. This is crystallized Generosity, the emotion in physical form. It can contain cutie marks much like moon glass, only give and take them willingly rather than seize them by jealous force. You can use this to free yourself of that mark's burden without throwing it away forever. Generosity thinks you will appreciate this. Starlight took it. "Wow... really?" She still had that in her saddlebags, holding her artifice safely. Now she knew where she got it from, she supposed. "What about the other flame?" Starlight asked, her past self's thoughts clearly elsewhere. The flame was quiet for a moment. This is where even I question if the truth is the right thing for your path. "Please tell me," Starlight whispered. "I need to know. I'm tired of not knowing and not being told, everyone who knows saying I can't handle it. I'm strong. I can handle the truth." ...The other flame is Hope. You have heard legends of the Immortal Dream. It is this flame embodied, the power to grant any wish so long as it is wished by another. Hope is represented by the lifestream, and its will manifests in the world as cutie marks, the mechanism by which it grants those wishes. When a pony has a dream, Hope can respond. Starlight looked up. "Does this have anything to do with why cutie marks are so rare in the north?" No. The lifestream still exists, even without the guidance of its master, just as how the aspects of reality the rest of us govern would still exist independent of our control. The phenomenon of scarcity occurs because the Aldenfold disrupts the lifestream, isolating some of us and weakening our connection to each other. In the north, this is simply a consequence of that. "How do cutie marks appear in the first place?" Starlight asked. "Does the lifestream make them? Do you just sit here and listen to ponies and what they want, and decide for yourself that someone deserves a mark, or...?" You are wondering why Sunburst would gain one when it caused so much harm to you. "Well, maybe," Starlight admitted, scuffing the ground. Part of this is because we cannot see every aspect of the future. While we can make calculations, simulations and predictions, no knowledge of what is to come is set in stone until it has already passed. The other part is that without its master, the lifestream is merely an autonomous recycling system. When a pony dies, their cutie mark returns to the ether flow rather than passing away with them, and the lifestream will return it to the surface whenever there is another pony who will take up that dream. This is why it is called the Immortal Dream... because the wishes it grants never die with their bearers. For some dreams, it may take hundreds of years, but the lifestream finds them a new bearer who is ready to take up their purpose, and they are born anew. Huh. Starlight remembered a conversation about Shinespark's cutie mark being unusually powerful, and matching the historical function of a mark from one of Meltdown's predecessors, modified into its form by Garsheeva and her artifice. Maybe hers really was that same mark, and it had been recycled, too. "So what happened to the flame?" Starlight pressed, her past thoughts definitely disconnected by now from her present ones. The Immortal Dream was taken by an alicorn named Luna. You have learned of her story as well throughout your travels. Eventually, her sister sealed her on the moon, the Immortal Dream along with her. The moon is separate from the lifestream, and our vision does not extend to the things that happen there. However, for reasons we cannot know, the Immortal Dream returned one day, just over eight years ago, encased in a meteor and accompanied by thousands of souls attached to cutie marks Luna had used it to create. Look inside yourself. There is another name that the Immortal Dream is known by, and you will find you already know it. Starlight's eyes grew huge, her thoughts and her predecessor's once again flowing in sync. The purpose of the meteor had been to contain the Immortal Dream itself? Then the writing on it... "Eylista," she whispered. Yes. The Immortal Dream is also known as Eylista, its name in ancient times when there were still ponies in Indus. The meteor fragmented, and the piece bearing Eylista landed in the Aldenfold, a place where the lifestream is broken and we cannot see. We cannot know what took place there, that night when it landed. However, days later, a stallion came down from the mountains with a filly who must have been near that meteor when it struck. The essence of the Immortal Dream had fused with her. Starlight, Eylista is you. Starlight stared. The will of my sibling, Hope, no longer exists in their palace to the far south. It is now yours. Eylista is a power no normal pony could handle, yet your body is so abnormal, even we cannot see the truth of how it works. It is possible Eylista changed you into a host that could physically contain it. However, there is one thing we can see for certain: you have an ordinary soul. To you, the Immortal Dream is like a cutie mark that has yet to manifest, your calling and not your soul. You are an ordinary filly, Starlight Glimmer, with the wants and wishes of a mortal yet the drive and will of the world. Starlight shook, unable to fully process this. Every time she wondered if her talent was stubbornness or determination... This is not a situation to envy. I have told you about myself and our siblings, how we are machines and not people, designed to contain and act upon our purposes in a just, balanced and harmonic manner. But that is not you. You have all the complexities and desires of a filly entering her teens, and long for friendship and parents and someone to look up to. You are merely a pony... and yet your special purpose in life is to hold the world's determination, a hope for the future big enough to encompass all worlds and all creatures within them. Acceptance of things that should not be is toxic to your very being, even though it is the way things are that mortals must learn to live with this. And thanks to your unusually harmonic body and the incredible power of your perseverance, you have been to the ends of the world in a quest for perfection you will never find. Starlight, the truth about you is that you will never be happy until the whole world is the way that the nine of us were created to keep it. Starlight stared. "Never...?" And you will try to bring this about, sometimes, when you lean into your determination and make the world closer to what you wish it. Other times, your desires for your own future will win out, and you will force yourself into complacency, ignoring the things that you see wrong with the world and trying to live the life of a mortal. But on your own, even if you were to fully unlock the potential of the Immortal Dream and your harmonic body, you would only be the will to seek that change in the world, and true harmony is required to bring it about. You would go back and forth between seeking a better world and accepting the one that exists, forever, and you would never cease for as long as you were alive. I am sorry. This is your fate. Starlight shuddered. "No... But I just want to be normal..." A wish that will burn at you all the more fiercely when your destiny is determination. And yet, the Immortal Dream can only grant the wishes of others. It was not intended for a tyrant, and so it cannot grant wishes of your own. In some lives, this could serve to better the world and everything in it, but for you, who lacks the basic necessities all ponies deserve to live? It is nothing but a curse. "How do I change it?" Starlight felt like she was going to cry. There is only one way, and that is to finish your dream. Unlock Eylista and wield it as your cutie mark by earning it like a normal cutie mark, and then use its power to fix the world and erase the wrongs that have plagued it. Only then will you be satisfied and able to rest at ease, as will the rest of us who yearn for such a world too. But we have been awaiting it for thousands of years, and only growing further from our goal. Our mechanical immunity to the trials of mortal life keeps us sane. To do this, you would have to fight everything, the course of the world and history and entropy and fate. And you on your own are merely the determination to keep a wish in mind, not the harmonic power to write it into reality. Without true harmony, you can only fight for your wishes with your own power, as considerable as it may be. And that will only lead you down the road you have walked countless times before. "But..." Starlight sniffed. "But can't I get rid of it? If that's true, if it's like a cutie mark, aren't there ways to-" If you made it manifest, yes, you could attempt to sever it from your body. But you are Eylista, not merely a wielder of it like the ponies we sometimes empower. You cannot flee from the determination it gives you. Even if you cast it aside, you would only find yourself less powerful in your unending struggle. So that was it, then. Now Starlight saw why she had erased her memories at the crystal palace. It wasn't just a cutie mark on her friend that had started all her troubles... it was her own, and she hadn't even gotten it yet. A dumb meteor strike was telling her who she had to be, and even though she was still blank, there was nothing at all she could do about it. She saw all of her future laid out before her, the back-and-forth between acceptance and determination, her burst of strength that got her on her hooves after Maple left and sent her back into the mountains just one more swing on that cosmic pendulum. She would make it through the mountains, and she would reunite with her friends, and she would settle down and try to live, and it wouldn't be good enough, and before she knew it she would be back to this once again, forever and ever, because she was a little filly, not someone who could change the entire world. What you need is Harmony, the flame continued. You are Hope, a small shard of a greater whole. If you want to see a world you can look at and truly be satisfied with, you will have to make it, but you cannot make it alone. You need others. You need ponies who know intimately what goodness is, who can sing as one with you and restore the world to the way it was once meant to be, counteract its slow death and make it as beautiful as it was when it was created. And I and all our siblings desire this too, and will do whatever we can to aid you. "I already have friends," Starlight whispered. "Can they help?" Your friends are strengthened by luck, fate and circumstance. Many of them are powerful, and some, we have walked alongside and empowered so they could make a difference in the world. However, they are also like you, groundless and lacking a strong foundation in the world. They carry this burden because they have to, not because they asked for it, and they travel together because they use each other for support. They are strong, but they are the same, and Harmony is about difference. Starlight listened, and it continued. True Harmony is born between ponies of all walks of life, both those who are desperate and understand what ponies need, and those who have had plenty and want for little, and have the extra strength to carry their friends who do not have enough on their own. It comes when ponies reach out to each other from across generations of war, or between lifestyles so different they might not even recognize each other as equine. Because the world is vast, and you cannot embody it without understanding that vastness... Your friends are like you, and they can know and share much of your pain. But to save the world, they will not be enough. You cannot wield the power to grant wishes to others and use it justly and rightly when you look at them and wonder why you are meeting their needs, yet there is no one to do the same for you. "And the other flames just thought I'd be happier not knowing this," Starlight murmured. "Didn't they?" Yes. And I think you would be too. But it would be a temporary happiness, and I am Honesty. I can no more easily lie to you than you could have lived happily in Riverfall. Starlight glared at the ground. "I just want to be happy and be normal and not have a bunch of stuff to worry about! Why is that so much to ask!?" Pure circumstance. Nothing more or less. As I said, this is not the way we were designed to be. "That's not fair..." Starlight gritted her teeth. "It's not fair! Why can't I just be normal!? Why do I have to have a cutie mark I haven't even earned yet that does the opposite of what I need and keeps me from ever getting that!? How am I supposed to live like this? I wish I could just go on thinking maybe it'll all be alright next time, but now you say it never will be..." Not until you can wield Harmony more fully and make for yourself the world we all desire. Starlight sniffed, burying her head on the ground and hiding it beneath her hooves. "But who knows when that will be? You say I need different friends, so I'll have to settle down and grow up and make some, but you also say I'll never be able to do that because I'll just run away again." I never said it was an enviable situation. In fact, you likely have one of the hardest burdens a mortal can carry. But you also have one of the few tools in the world that is meant to overcome it. Starlight, you must find your Harmony. Working alone, you will have no balance and stability, and could easily take the world too far in the wrong direction. You must remember that what you are already striving for is the right direction: before you can fix the world, you need to find peace, and you need to make more friends. Your desire for a better life and your realization of that life will have to go hoof in hoof. By living your life and making more friends, you will only increase your ability to bring about the future you desire. The closer you get, the more power you will have to get even closer, no matter how hard the first steps might be. "But this still just involves doing the same things I was already doing," Starlight cried against the floor. "Only now you're telling me it's an even bigger and dumber job than I thought in the first place! And I already thought it was impossible!" I am sorry. If you truly desire it... you always do have the means to hide from the truth for a little while longer. Starlight stirred. She felt a lifting sensation in her body, like the memory was coming to an end. Why hadn't she asked more about Indus, or Aegis and Glimmer? Why hadn't she asked about the black sword? There were so many questions she still had unanswered, and yet... now she knew what she had been hiding from. She was the Immortal Dream, and could unlock it somehow as a cutie mark. It was her destiny to be dissatisfied with everything wrong with the world, pained by the places where someone needed to do something to make it better. There was no happily ever after where she could outrun all that, not one that didn't involve fixing the entire world... and she knew better than anyone just how large it could be. Starlight was rising, felt like she was surrounded by bubbling water, a light gleaming in the distance above. She wanted to stay that way forever, rising and waking up instead of having to face the world after she had awoken. She wanted to go home, to find a place she could be happy and hide there until the clouds had passed and she could laugh again. But she just didn't have a place like that at all. So what did she do? She could press on, into the mountains and across them, take up her sword and continue her fight and crusade for what she felt was right, and keep drawing on her boundless determination for strength just like she was now, how she had gotten up from the devastation of losing her friends and Maple as well. Or, she could take the harder road, going back to Sires Hollow and trying to live on her own without family, a struggle of doing nothing day by day. She would have Fluffy, and Fishy. With her magic back, she could probably get down the mountains much more easily than climbing up them. Starlight didn't want to choose. Her heart hurt, but she swam for the surface, holding onto lucidity and letting the bubbling water wash her tears away. It was too late for denial; she knew she wasn't using that Nightmare Module again. She knew her destiny, and just had to find a way to live with it. Maybe going back to Sires Hollow was the right call for the truly long term. Maybe if she found what the flame told her she would need, she could see her friends again and actually live happily together. They had their impossible war to fight, and she had hers... and hers was living. She wouldn't do that immediately, though. She had been holding back for too long, and with everything she felt now, so many emotions that she was shocked into calmness, she needed to let it out. She needed to punch something that could take it. And luckily for her, she was about to be surrounded by mountains that would nicely do the job. Starlight broke the surface with a gasp, and was back in the waking world. The blue, starry mist was still there, hovering above the forest and the crater. She could see in color again, though it was still night and there wasn't much to see. In fact, the only thing of note was a scorched, battered feline face standing a short distance away, waiting for her to do something. "Starlight," High Prince Gazelle rasped, looking wrecked and utterly pathetic. "Please give me back my sister."