This was how the stallion chose to die.
He'd been thinking about the inevitability of his death, and felt as if that consideration had started at the moment when some degree of actual thought had suddenly become possible. The mere presence of truly personal cognition seemed to indicate the time available for such thoughts would be rather limited, and so he'd made sure to do as much thinking as he could get away with.
The stallion hadn't gotten away with any of it. He'd been caught. And somehow, the consequences of that had made thinking all the easier.
There were many thoughts moving through his mind as he tried to maintain the four-kneed crouch, with his body mostly held up by the branches which pushed into his flanks. The gap between the bushes was somewhat too narrow for his build, and that meant flesh had to shove wood aside in order to find space for concealment. The weaker protrusions broke off. The more solid ones shoved right back, and that made it feel like he was on the verge of being impaled. Not necessarily easy to do with blunt objects, but the wood really didn't like his being there. The plants had the strength of summer, the flow of fresh sap...
...but there were ways in which that was just about all they had.
He'd wondered about that, after thought had returned. If there was something about the process which made it that much harder for even the passive aspects of magic to be used. Something which flowed through the soul without any conscious effort by its possessor, and when the soul itself had been...
The instinct which arose at that particular thought was natural: to glance back along his left flank, past what he was hoping were properly-loaded saddlebags, at where it was. But all the reaction did was get his head poked by another branch, and he forced his lips to remain tightly pressed together. This was followed by rotating his ears anew, because the movement had cost him focus --
-- there. Still pretty much exactly where she'd been. She wasn't making any real effort to conceal herself from hearing, much less any other sense. The mare had no need to hide, because she knew she'd already won. She knew that with just as much certainty as she knew everything else, and the force of her knowledge allowed her to think on behalf of the entire lost world.
He was hiding, and... there was no real point to doing so. The stallion was sure that she knew exactly where he was. She had every intention of eventually doing something about it and when he heard her clearing her throat, he realized she was about to begin. It was just that when it came to dealing with matters, the unicorn had certain priorities.
It was just the way she thought. And she thought about everything.
"This is still a trial phase," the mare stated, and the stallion listened. It was hard not to listen to the mare, even like this: it might be the last opportunity he ever had to hear syllable emphasis being slotted into place. And then he heard something being removed: a sound which felt as if it would be so easy to hate, a series of audible shifts which were never very far away when you were in the mare's presence. Fabric rubbing against itself, just before the lid was raised away from the right saddlebag. Something a little more dense scraping slightly against the many patches as it was removed, and then a little squeak of metal on glass as the bottletop rotated.
"It remains the most advanced trial of its kind," she continued. "And I'm grateful for everypony who's chosen to participate in our great experiment. Including you. Even now, because experiments often manifest unexpected variables along the way. The only means of bringing the results to perfection is to seek out the imperfect whenever it arises. And by coming to understand the disease... we come that much closer to the cure."
The words felt unusually smooth, as if a fast-spinning lathe had been held against each letter. When it came to the mare (and this was something he'd realized a mere week ago, shortly after thinking had resumed), words were planned. Everything was. She thought about what to say, she considered the things which the other party would certainly have to voice in response, and then she sketched out her response to that. It was potentially possible to tell just how many times she'd been involved in the general topic of a conversation through measuring the relative lack of hesitation before speech began at all.
She thought about what to say. She carefully considered when to move, and he didn't doubt that some part of her was doing so at that very moment. It didn't take very much time to see that about the mare, at least if she left you in a state where you were capable of any perception which wasn't hers.
When anything new arose, she had to think about it. If the event was something which had taken place before, she had to remember.
Her words were unusually smooth. (He didn't know if he'd just realized that, or if the return of true thought had allowed him to finally assemble the memories.) It made him wonder just how many times this had happened before...
He heard the little creak of a stiffened binding being opened. The quill made a little liquid noise as it dipped into the ink.
"Now," the mare almost casually started, "when would you say the deviancy began?" Paused. "I realize this may feel somewhat redundant. But I may not have asked enough questions before issuing your brand."
He didn't answer: no matter what happened, he had no intention of giving her the satisfaction. Not of his own free will, not while he still possessed any degree of that...
...she could just... look at him. A single look while her corona flared, and then he wouldn't be thinking. Not as himself. Everything which went through his head would be something she'd intended to be there. She could do that at any time, he felt as if she must have done it with so many others, and she wasn't trying to do it with him.
He had taken a guess at the reason for his continued temporary independence. (The stallion was betting his life on that guess or, if things went as he expected them to, his death.) Thinking for himself meant he didn't have to answer.
But the words still triggered memory, and he found himself trying to look back again. Glancing along his left flank, to what she had designated as a brand. Something intended to shame.
It was shortly after you brought the new ones in.
We all gathered to witness Freedom, because that's what we're supposed to do. There has to be somepony there when Freedom begins, because some don't know how to be free. They aren't sure how to react. A few of them laugh. Most cry.
I think there might have been some screams.
But they were Free. We welcomed them. And when I was on my way home that day, after the welcoming was over and my labors were complete, I was...
...it's funny. I'm not sure I ever really looked at anything here before. You told us this place was the ideal, or as close as it could come while the experiment was still going on. We lived in a perfect society. A place of equality, and that meant everything around us had to be equal and perfect. So there was no need to really pay attention to any single detail, because how many times could you appreciate perfection?
I started looking at the buildings.
They were produced by a group effort, because just about everything is. I think every adult here tried to build at least once. We were supposed to take an interest in it, every adult, because building was something we could do for the community. Some were never any good at it, no matter how many books you gave them. They just carried supplies. Those of us who got at least part of the idea did the actual work.
Every adult...
The mare cleared her throat again.
"Gez? I asked you a question. The answers are important. You could help so many if you just told me what we all need to know."
She knew where he was. She could attack at any time. Eventually, she would do something. But as she was still considering her options...
One of those options was to repeat herself. He felt as if she hated that, and took it as the smallest of wins.
"Gez?"
She already knew where he was...
One word. When she already knew the right area to target, the only way a single word mattered was in giving him one more tiny victory.
"Linchpin," the stallion softly said. Just enough volume so as not to drown out the sound produced by the mare's tiny intake of breath.
"So it's gone that far," the unicorn quietly observed. "I need to isolate the initial symptom, Gez. When did it start?"
He didn't answer. He just looked up through the leaves and branches of the canopy, until he found Moon. The orb was just barely visible, along with a single unfamiliar star.
The thing about buildings made by committee... by those who've just been told it's one of the many ways in which they can help the community, who've been asked to take an interest...
...they nail things together according to printed patterns.
Walls are raised in the name of following a plan.
There's no personal touches. A wall is just that: a wall. It's been told to be a wall, and so a wall is the only thing it knows how to be. It can't serve as a canvas for the builder's art, when you look at the patterns woven into the brick and wonder what the creator was trying to say. Nopony's eyes become lost in trying to follow curves through crenelations. There's no point to stopping and rubbing up against stucco in order to deal with an itchy spot, because no one thinks about layering stucco at itch level.
I looked at the buildings. It felt as if it was the first time I'd ever looked at anything.
They were almost solid. Serviceable, at least in the short term. They would pass, as long as no one ever truly looked at them.
But they weren't loved.
And then I remembered that I was a true builder.
And then the headache began.
And then my soul hurt.
What was left of it.
"I can be very patient, Gez," the unicorn placidly said. "But this is starting to cut into time I need for other things. Time which the community needs. If there's anything in you which still cares about the community --"
"-- it's considered polite," the stallion deliberately interrupted (and the deep breath required nearly drew blood, the branch poking that much deeper into his flesh), "to address somepony by name."
Another small inhalation. "When dealing with any level of insanity," the mare didn't quite counter (because countering was a form of debate, and debate meant the smallest chance of recognizing that the other party might have a point), "the most crucial aspect of treatment is bringing the helpless into a state where they can identify the nature of reality. That means not entertaining delusions, even in the name of bonding. The simplest act of reinforcement is also one of cruelty. 'Gez' is a name: one given as the first gift of freedom. 'Linchpin' is the symptom of a renewed disease. There isn't much point in trying to reason with an illness. I just want to know why the sickness came back. I did everything I could to cure you, and when any part of the syndrome returns... this is still a trial phase, Gez. There are so many others who might be at risk, if I can't figure out just what went wrong with you."
Silence was, in its way, rebellion.
"You were caught twice," she eventually said.
"I was contributing to the community." And found the strength to smirk. "Making necessary adjustments."
"Deep under Moon," the unicorn observed. "When you thought none would be watching. And 'necessary adjustments'..."
There was something very old about the mare's mane. The unicorn herself was of somewhat indeterminate age, at least in the sense that it was difficult to get a true idea of her years from observation: something within the mind blurred whenever he'd tried. But her mane... he felt as if that was a style which had passed out of favor long before he'd been born. Something he only saw in paintings, because the extinction had taken place prior to the age of photography. It wasn't low-maintenance: once you got the hairs bundled, it was just about no-maintenance. The sort of thing adopted by a mare who was aware that she had a mane and technically, something probably had to be done with it because shaving the whole thing away would have drawn too much attention. A minute each morning to put everything into place, and he didn't doubt that the mare spent that minute in careful planning of other activities because otherwise, it was a minute wasted.
It was hard to tell how old the mare was. But the mane was ancient, and it felt as if the slow back-and-forth shaking of her head should have dislodged the detritus of eons.
"None of what you did qualified as repairs. It was adjustments, if that's what you feel you should call -- what you did. And if you were trying to help the community," the unicorn stated, "then you would have asked what the community wanted. You were acting on your own."
I was trying to remember how it was done.
I felt as if I must have known once. But it was just that: knowledge. Cold and dry, and when I thought about it too long, it felt as if the edges of the wound were fraying. Because that's what you do, isn't it? You tell us that this part of the wall isn't necessary, that the building was meant to exist without it, and then you kick a hole into the structure. Into us.
I've been thinking about a lot of things. Like how many of those walls must have collapsed.
"Once was bad enough," the mare announced. "I should have formally instituted the new policy after the first time. But I wanted to see if the error would repeat. A single aberration always has a chance to be just that. You had always been so free, from the first day you came in, and --"
He heard her hesitate.
"-- I suppose I just wanted to believe that you would rediscover the balance on your own."
Liar.
"But after the second event," she continued, "with the -- curves..."
He heard her shake her head, and a reborn imagination added the sound of a glacier cracking.
"...I wanted the community to bring you back. That was the intent of the brand, Gez. It was never meant to be forever. Just something which would show the others that you needed help. And when a community of equals sees that one of its own is going through difficulties, they gather around the one who's coming so close to being lost again. To remind them of what freedom is like. Because I know freedom can be terrifying, and so do you. We've all seen that at the ceremony, haven't we? Those first moments when someone isn't being influenced any more. When their only thoughts are their own."
Your own.
"Only one voice rising from within. They stumble, because they feel like they're not hearing enough. They're scared. It's when they need the voices from without. And by branding you... I told the community how much you needed their voices."
Another pause.
"I thought you were listening. I was going to remove it next week."
The stallion found the strength to smirk again.
"And then you broke into my supplies. How?"
He never would have voiced the next words, because he thought that some of his own theories had the chance to be true ones. But he was almost completely certain that the mare couldn't read minds. Influence, corrupt, supplant -- but once she'd installed her beliefs into another, she didn't seem to have any means of continually monitoring them. And at any rate, thoughts were hard to stop.
You got into the habit of thinking, if you were lucky enough to get the chance. Right up until the moment all thought stopped.
But with the unicorn... when it came to thinking...
Here's the thing.
You're the strongest caster I've ever seen. You've mastered more workings than I want to think about, while inventing endless abominations. I'm hoping those are going to die with you, because that's what this is about, in the end. Making sure you die.
You know a lot of defensive spells. Securing effects. Some of them may be unique to you. Any other caster would probably need to work out the spell from first corona spark before they could try to counter it.
But when you cast a security spell, you have to cast it on something.
Layering diamond onto cardboard.
And that's the flaw. Because the cardboard is still there.
The mare had her own way of thinking, and it was something she tried to gift onto all who were unfortunate enough to encounter her. A series of progressive steps, moving forward under the pressure of eternal inquiry. The process was something which could pass for logic, as long as you didn't bring it up in front of anyone who was sane.
Small, careful steps...
And you can't see that.
He would have given almost anything to turn his head a little more. To get at the stolen notebook (which had been surprisingly hard to acquire, as there was but one true notebook in the community and somehow, it was always the same one) and write those words down. Giving them a chance to survive beyond his death, because they might be the key to everything.
"You enjoy solving problems," he told her, and nearly got a leaf on the tongue for his trouble. "I'm sure you can work on that one."
The streaked tail swished, because the mare had decided a tail swish was appropriate at that time.
"Given what you stole," she stated, "I don't need to inquire about the why. But I still need to understand your reasoning, for whatever degree of that might exist within insanity. Once I know how you're thinking, I can try to correct it. Gez, this is all about you..."
It wasn't. It was ultimately all about the experiment. The community. The abomination.
But for the stallion, it was currently about the brand.
You kicked a hole in the wall. Over and over. The walls kept collapsing, didn't they? So eventually, you thought to add some bracing. Something which didn't replace the gap, but kept it from falling in on itself. At least for a while.
But you keep expanding the community. Fresh subjects for the experiment. More ceremonies, and taking the results away.
I was thinking, for the first time in years. Thinking meant memory. The community isn't supposed to change, because why would you ever alter perfection?
But the population isn't stable.
The numbers are -- but they come in tiers. We were at one total for a while. Then it went up to another. But when the tiers changed, it was just about all at once. Bringing in small groups in quick succession, until the population was at the new goal.
There's been stages, hasn’t there? You're keeping all of them somewhere, you're still working on expanding it, and... after you branded me, I thought about load-bearing beams. There's only so much weight any given one can support before you need to add more. Each expansion is limited by how many you can truly hold at any time. And you only find out you’re at your limit when you reach it.
Someone new is granted what you call Freedom. And somepony else... slips.
I thought. I remembered. That sometimes, a little while after the new had been brought in, someone older wouldn't -- be here any more. And I didn't think about it then, because you wouldn't have wanted me to. Besides, we all knew that some left: that was part of how we got new residents at all. We just didn't notice that some of them weren't coming back.
There was a ceremony of Freedom. And then I started to think again, just a little. Something which must have happened before, with some of the missing...
How many times have you been through this?
The same bushes probably hadn't been involved. There would have been more of a gap.
"You need to tell me what you're thinking," the unicorn didn't quite request. "A community needs to support each other. Having all hooves pushing against each other with matching force is how we ensure equality."
And he laughed.
He heard her draw back, and it made him laugh all the more. He was laughing because he had recognized that he was probably going to die, and there was some humor in that: that his death would represent just one more aspect of her failure. Some of the mirth originated from the fact that he just wanted to laugh one more time before he died. Especially when it felt as if he hadn't found anything truly funny for a very long time because as experiments went, he was one of the longer-running specimens.
But for the most part, he laughed because he'd just realized something, and done so as the result of a process she didn't understand because it wasn't truly a process at all. What he'd done within what was left of him -- that was something she was incapable of. She would never be able to do it, and no amount of magic would be capable of changing that.
He laughed because he'd just had another thought, it was funny, and he'd decided to tell her about it, just before the end. A joke that good had to be voiced, even for an audience which couldn’t understand why it was funny.
She would never understand, and that was the biggest joke of all.
"Equality?" he gasped out, and felt the first trickle of blood being absorbed by his fur: the heaving of his ribs had created the pressure required for puncture. (There was also a mild burning sensation, almost lost between mirth and pain.) "You claim to be working for equality, and you..."
He was already hurt, and so he endured the next series of scrapes. Just enough to let him see the brand.
You don't get it.
There was a wall, and you kicked a hole in it. Supports to hold off collapse. But with me... the supports weren't enough any more. They hadn't been enough for what had to have been at least a dozen of us, when each successive limit was reached. I'm just the one where you decided to advance the experiment to another stage.
You called it a brand. I'm going to call it... spackle.
A hole. Overlapping support poles holding the edges apart, always identical in pattern and placement. But with me, you did something new, because it was the first time you decided that you needed the new. And spackle isn't a wall. It can't fill a gap that big. At best, it buys you a little time before the whole thing falls apart. Another day or two, and I might have just dropped on my own.
Spackle isn't a wall. But if you paint it in the right way, blend along the edges... it just might pretend for a while. It's glue under the delusion that it's wood.
And if the glue believes...
It's madness. Maybe you're right about that, just this once. But it's a special kind of madness, because of what you told the brand to be. You didn't think about the implications...
He had laughed, and that joy wouldn't be the last. For a single instant in the final moments of his life, he'd found a way to mock the sheer banality of it all. Of her. And she didn't understand.
"I've had this talk before," the unicorn said, and the smoothness of the words confirmed it. "I'll be the last. I made that vow in front of the community. I have every intention of keeping it. But until that day --"
She stopped, because there were new sounds in the summer night. The last branches broke, and then a bleeding stallion stepped out under the scant gift of Moon's light.
"I believe you."
The unicorn stared at him. And then she remembered to smile.
"Thank you, Gez," she softly said. "I was... hoping it would end this way. Take the trot back with me, please. We'll find you some ponies to speak with. It'll all feel so much better by morning."
"I believe you'll be the last," he told her, and watched the smile slowly widen, one precise degree at a time. "I think... if it all went wrong, if you somehow realized it would never work --" and hurried his words, trying to get it all in before the collapse began "-- you'd decide to be the last, in the end. Because if you can't have your world -- then why should there be a world at all?"
He recognized the nature of the next utterance. That she had said "Gez," again because this situation was new, and she was trying to buy time in which to think, she couldn't do anything else --
"So when it comes to those who die in the name of your experiment," he spat, "one way or another -- you're going to be the last."
Spackle had visually manifested through his flanks, and it could only pretend to be a soul. Asking it to conduct that which only a soul could provide just might make it fall apart all the faster. He understood that, along with the fact that his time under Sun and Moon and a single visible unfamiliar star was just about over.
She wasn't the only one who could experiment, and so what weren't quite his final words led into the last song.
The results weren't ideal. Every note distorted as it was forced across the broken instrument, and something much less than a true lyric went into the world. He would have buried her if he could, collapsed everything under her hooves and filled in the hole from the top down. Made her fight off every moment of collapse with that Tartarus-unleashed field strength, and perhaps she would have broken the earth in her attempt to escape. Breaking was what she had been born for.
There had been a time when he never would have thought about trying it, even on the edge of death. But secrets meant little in the presence of those who believed themselves to know everything, and so he forced the remnants of his truest voice through what little was left of him.
It didn't shake the world. It never came close to breaking any portion of it, and so it was left for the unicorn to try and destroy the whole for a different reason. But there were enough of the broken notes for soil to heave beneath her hooves, she stumbled, and the earth pony ran.
You had to know the barrier was there, and the first sign of its presence came when you no longer wanted to look for it.
How many effects had been woven into the shield? He knew it was at least five. He'd had a passing interest in unicorn magic, something on the hobby level because he'd once dated a Gifted School graduate and it had seemed necessary to try speaking with her while using her own terms. Also, being able to distinguish the vocabulary let him know when she was discussing the results of her own investigations, as opposed to the scant times when she was making a particularly awkward attempt to flirt.
The relationship hadn't lasted. But he'd kept up with the reading, because once you got past the forced dryness placed into every heavily-edited article in the Thaumaturgy Review, there were some interesting things to be found. For starters, after meeting the unicorn who was trying to pursue and finding himself capable of thinking again (for a little while, as all thought and breath were close to stopping), he'd realized it was amazing just how much they'd gotten wrong.
At least five effects. One of them was incredibly complex, and needed to be so just in order to achieve a very subtle result. Somehow, the shield had been enchanted to change color -- and could do so continually, automatically matching the natural hues of the sky. There was still something of a shimmer at ground level, along with the occasional sparkle: the unicorn hadn't found any means of dealing with that. But looking up -- or, if anything were to fly overhead, looking down -- would find no dome at all. 'Down' would mean spotting an additional effect: the one which said there was nothing more than normal forest below.
If anyone could get that close, because the third working was a simple, constant radiance of resonance. The emotional aura of avoidance: something which told anyone getting close to the border that they really didn't want to be going that way, there were better places to be, anyone on the outside could just move in a different direction because there was nothing important ahead, those within turned back because the company of equals was more important than anything else in their broken lives, and they welcomed that company because they were broken. They'd just been told not to know that.
The third working was insidious. But the stallion knew more about unicorn magic than most earth ponies, had reviewed his memories until he could be certain that some of them were true, and had been expecting something of that nature. Recognizing that the emotion was being imposed from the outside was most of what he needed to initially fight it, and so he forced himself forward. Moving towards the little traces of shimmer and sparkle.
There were other bits of evidence, when you got this close. The most natural shape for a shield was a dome: it took the least effort to maintain. So there was a thin line where nothing grew: no grass, no bushes, and the wounds inflicted on the earth by the uprooting of trees had mostly healed. It took careful inspection to spot the thin curve of gap in the soil, because the unicorn had thought to secure some part of the underground.
The stallion had spent a little of his limited time wondering if the dome was actually a sphere. Completely closing off that avenue of escape. But a more limited descent still would have been enough to block him, when he could barely sing at all and could almost feel the spackle cracking from the pressure of having tried to conduct what had remained of his voice. He couldn't escape by tunneling his way out, and even if that had been possible... it would put him too far away from his goal. There would have been no means to reach his target before the inadvertent patch job collapsed, and that would have produced two results: an obedient remnant turning back, knowing any apology would be accepted because 'sanity' had returned and therefore the actions of madness had to be forgiven -- or, if the supports had been removed to make room for the spackle, death.
Death was preferable to return. To existing within the unicorn's vision of perfection.
That had been one of the first thoughts, once he could truly think again. And then it had become a choice.
He couldn't tunnel out. But he didn't have to, because he'd thought about everything he'd seen, and then he'd broken into her supplies because somepony like the unicorn was always going to have spares.
Now he had one.
It was a thin golden rod, with a few semiprecious jewels worked into the metal -- or rather, that was how it looked when he had touched it. Before that, it had resembled a bit of debris. Nothing anypony would consider important, and the fact that there was something among the supplies which didn't look crucial had been enough to let him recognize the illusion’s presence.
It had felt solid enough, when he had bitten down on the device. It probably was. There wouldn't be all that much of a hollow for placing silver wire inside: only what was required to conduct the charge. No platinum, because having this particular device potentially charge itself was putting some aspect of its operation outside of the unicorn's direct control. But it still had to be something which a pegasus or earth pony could activate on their own. And based on what he'd observed (at the time, unknowingly), he was guessing there was just enough to use the device a maximum of two times.
'Once' was also an option. So was 'none'. But it had been in the charging cradle, the gems had gleamed when he'd touched it...
He wasn't betting his life on it possessing at least one charge. Just his escape.
The resonance was... stronger, this close to the shield. He knew the desire to turn back was artificial, and he still found himself forcing every hoofstep. It felt as if his hind legs were sliding backwards in the dirt, and he wasn't even facing all of her strength. Perhaps no more than a tiny fraction had been put into whatever maintained the shield. He'd seen what might have been her true potential once, and it was one of the things he'd written down. Something which had to survive him, so that whoever followed would be warned.
How much had his distorted effort shaken her? (He found it mildly comedic to see a unicorn be so vulnerable to uprooting.) She had to be in pursuit, but that was likely on hoof. She could teleport: what he was about to try couldn't have been worked into shield and device if she hadn't mastered that working, and done so well beyond what any other unicorn knew. But there was a lot of plant life near the border, and some of it was surprisingly dense. It meant she would need to reappear in whatever degree of path existed.
Perhaps that density was something which had been deliberately created. Forcing everyone to stay on her designated path. The single carefully-arranged narrow aisle, which led directly into a dead end.
He was faster than she on hoof: physically, she sometimes came across as operating her body with reluctance and from a great distance. But he didn't trust her not to be capable of self-levitation, and the shield's ability to match the sky suggested she could change her corona's hue into something which wouldn't give her away on the approach. And of course, she would have made sure the resonance had no way to affect her.
That might have been a natural immunity. It would have been asking magic to find something in the unicorn which could be reached.
...he had the lead. But he didn't know how much of one he had, and it meant he had to keep pushing forward. He'd seen how it was done: he just hadn't understood what he was watching at the time -- other than on the dubious level of watching those who took up the burden in the name of equality once again risking life and sanity in the name of community. Hoping for both their success and, on a deeper level, that those witnessing the process would never be personally asked to bear such an honor. A horror.
The stallion felt he might understand a little more about what those ponies had been doing now, and he had to find somepony he could tell about it. But at the moment, the most important thing was that he knew how they left. They invoked the fourth effect.
His legs trembled against the force of artificial fear. An echo of earth pony strength (and he wondered if he'd been so weak for years) pushed forward, fused to what was left of his soul. Whatever could be united in one. last. effort --
"You're going to die."
It came from behind him: the words picked up by the rotation of his ears suggested she was about seven body lengths back. (He had lost the capacity for detecting the pressure of hooves against the earth.) It was also a factual statement and when it came to the mare, true specimens of that sample were hard to come by.
Perhaps it was that truth which made him hesitate. Truth, and his heart's desperate desire for a few more beats.
"You only have part of the key," the unicorn calmly said. "The other half is woven into their clothing, and you had no way of knowing that. You could activate the effect, Gez. It negates the lockdown, at least in that it'll let you through. But everything which happens to something which tries to enter or leave, without my authorization... it'll still happen."
His left forehoof raised. Lowered again, into the silent soil.
"It's not a standard lockdown spell," she evenly continued. "It's my own version. When it comes to something leaving, instead of a potential intrusion being rebounded to the starting point... anything inanimate would be shredded. Most of that becomes lost in the between. But something living... that arrives. It just won't be alive for very long. If you activate that half of the key right now, without the rest of it... all which reappears will be a maximum of three seconds away from becoming a corpse." With the certainty of knowledge, "I know. I've tested it."
He wondered what she'd tested it with.
Or whom.
"From what I've learned," the unicorn told him, "you would live exactly long enough to regret your decision. For me to wish the madness hadn't killed you."
Liar.
...why isn't she casting? She could have just pulled me back. Teleported me away...
And once again, he understood.
She's decided what I'm going to do. That means she knows what happens next, at least for the final result. Even when this may not have happened before. Not the exact scenario, nopony who got this far with half the key and decided to...
She also had at least a hundred options for dealing with him, and the actual number probably required some time to narrow down.
The mare cleared her throat. He wondered if it was possible to hear facial muscles being ordered into a sympathetic position, or if she was holding that effort back for the moment when he inevitably, meekly turned so he could return at her side.
"I don't think you want to die," the mare stated.
They were sincere words. But that sincerity was just as artificial as the resonance, and the incongruity of it all triggered the last, best laugh of his life.
Perhaps it was the shock of it which made her pull back (and it was something he heard, the last thing he would ever hear with his broken soul). The newness which kept her horn dark, and realizing that was what provided his last words. Something which would bear no consequences for those who came after.
He said them because it gave her something to think about, and the mare had to think. (It was all she was capable of, and that was so much of why she was broken.)
His words paralyzed her, kept her from casting, because they were new words and she had to think about them. It was something she did instead of reacting, and it meant that which lay below thought was forever denied her.
When it came to the riddle of her own existence, he had given her part of the answer.
"That's your problem, Starlight!" the stallion laughed as his hooves pushed against the soil, sending his body leaping towards the shield's lone visible spark. "You can only think of the things you can think of!"
But she didn't understand.
She couldn't.
He hit the shield. The gems glowed so brightly as to shine through the saddlebag --
-- and there was nothing and it was everything and everywhere and he was the only thing within it except for the saddlebags and the vacuum was rending them, everything was spilling out as the notepad came apart and drifted in front of him as a series of endless scraps, something which registered just as several vital arteries twisted and his ears roared in the last second before all hearing ended, hooves split and he bit into and through his tongue and
it didn't matter.
He'd aimed, as best he could. Activated the magic in the way he'd hoped it had to work, because the unicorn didn't understand hope either.
Broken hooves touched chill stone. Deaf ears never heard the cries which instantly resounded from the spectators as blood spilled across his fur too quickly for absorption, running into the hollows of the street. And eyes which would have normally taken in sight just long enough for their possessor to recognize closing darkness found something to regard.
My corpse will be enough.
They'll find you.
They'll end you.
He had no way of truly knowing that. But he had hope, and it served.
The stallion saw familiar walls, in the last moment before he died. Things with curves and swoops and the sort of little decorative touches which only appeared when the builder was doing what they loved.
It gave him comfort.
The sundered soul left the broken body, and the corpse fell into the center of the screams.