//------------------------------// // Act 3 Chapter 79 : Last Dream // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale // by Chessie //------------------------------//      RiIiIiIiIiIiIiInnng... The phone was ringing.   RiIiIiIiIiIiIiInnng...     I raised my head from the end of the ancient, dusty couch and looked down at the pool of blood around my hooves.  It wasn’t a new pool. I’d been bleeding for a long time.  The enormous hole in my breast where my heart used to be was leaking a more or less continuous dribble which slicked the couch and soaked into the rug.     I swirled a toe in the puddle, watching the little waves of red spread this way and that.  Not being able to hear my own pulse was disturbing, but nothing new.  I hadn’t heard it in decades, all the decades I’d lain on that couch, bleeding out.  When was the last time I’d gotten up to do the dishes?  Considering some of them seemed to be crumbling to dust, probably some while now.     RiIiIiIiIiIiIiInnng... Gathering my resolve, I started to rise from the sofa.  A sound like the ripping of velcro accompanied my movements.  As I lifted myself off, the flesh of my bloated belly stuck to the couch as though it’d been super-glued there and I split like an overcooked vegetable.  A wet, steaming heap of organs splashed out onto my legs. I tried to howl, tried to make the world feel my agony.  There was a comfort in knowing such injuries couldn’t possibly be survived.  Surely, not even my magical heart could fix that quantity of damage, particularly as it seemed suspiciously absent. I’d been shot, of course.  A sniper shot me through the window.  He’d blown off a crime lord’s head, then refocused and put a bullet right through my chest. In the same instant as all these thoughts boiled up alongside the horror of staring down at my own viscera decorating the carpet, I was whole.  It’d never happened. Ridiculous.  Nopony could survive being shot. Just another dream. I slid down off the sofa into the small pond of blood that the carpet was quickly devouring, sucking it up with a soft slurping noise.  At the periphery of my vision,  I caught a half dozen tiny, fanged mouths surrounding the pool, greedily tonguing the rug for my vital fluids.  When I glanced towards them, they’d never been there, never existed. The phone still rang somewhere nearby. My apartment. My home. How long had it been since I’d stood in that gritty little pit, listening to the children screaming outside?  Were they supposed to be screaming?  Howling?  Begging to die with torn little voice-boxes that’d long since lost the power to form words? It was hard to remember.  There were so many memories that tended to escape when a pony wasn’t paying attention.  I hadn’t been paying attention for centuries. RiIiIiIiIiIiIiInnng... ‘Find me.’ The voice wasn’t one I’d heard before.  My own?  No.  A young voice.  The voice of a tiny colt who died in bed, his brother clutching his hoof, listening to his last rattling breath as it escaped.  He’d woken to find himself pumping blood for a much older pony. What was that brave little pony’s name? The phone.  Where was that damn phone?  After a moment tilting my ears this way and that, I realized the ringing seemed to be coming from outside my front door.  I stumbled towards it, my trenchcoat seeming to have been weighed down with boulders.  The answer was outside.  Surely, it was outside. With each step, my hooves burned like they had when I sprinted through the Shield.  How many centuries ago was that?  Or was it hours?  I paused, looking down and watching impassively as dozens of segmented black creatures, each segment with a scintillating green eye atop it, chewed at my forelock with pincered jaws.  The instant my attention was on them, they dropped away, vanishing into the carpet. A moment later, they’d never been. Letting it pass, I continued limping toward the door, wondering at the strangeness of my day.  How many times had I died?  I’d lost count of the number a long time ago. I set a hoof on the doorknob, feeling the old metal creak with age as a thin layer of dust fell around my ears.  The ringing faded into the background as I stepped back and threw the door open.  A billowing wind blew my ears flat and I instinctively shielded my eyes for a moment before carefully lowering my foreleg.     There was no ‘understanding’ what was beyond that door. I took it in and my thoughts refused to unscramble enough to comprehend it, but though it defied my tiny equine brain, I found myself describing the sight much as I would a crime scene.  I could understand crime scenes, for some reason; a crime scene is a place where injustice has occurred and I still knew what that was even though my own name was momentarily escaping me.     Just outside the door, a pair of ponies stood on the steps of an enormous amphitheater.  The first was a rather ragged looking stallion covered in dust, his trenchcoat billowing out behind him as he stared up at something.  His hat lay on the ground behind, having been torn off by the strange winds.  A pair of golden scales shone on each of his flanks, shimmering with their own inner light.     Beside him sat a second pony, frozen in place, soaked from head to hoof in blood and wearing a set of ancient armor which fit him like a glove.  Even at a distance, I could see a unicorn’s horn protruded from the old stallion’s barrel. He had one foreleg around the younger pony’s shoulders, his forehead resting against his companion’s temple as though trying to protect him. I’d no idea who they were; two poor ponies stuck in a spider’s web, perhaps. Beyond them, hovering in the center of the enormous room, there was the spider. My eyes refused to see it, but the hole in my chest where my heart once lay could feel the being’s presence.  I perceived a leaking wound hanging in mid-air, a jellyfish with infinite poisonous legs wrapped around the very foundations of the world, and endless white expanses of stretched skin barely holding back an ocean of rot.  It was a machine whose clicking cogs lubricated themselves with crushed ponies who could not die despite being ground again and again within its mechanism. Worst of all, it was ringing. ‘Answer,’ it murmured. I slammed the door shut and turned to run for the couch, hoping to shut my eyes and find myself waking later to an especially horrible hangover and the safe knowledge that all of what I’d seen was a dream.   Unfortunately, the couch was gone, as was my apartment.   The world seemed to have faded to red.  Beneath my hooves, the carpet had turned crimson and velvety soft.  The ceiling was brightly polished wood of some sort and the walls curved upwards from the floor in all directions, with no hard line between the two.  I peered behind me and found the door had vanished.  Some part of me expected that; why would doors stay in one place when I’d obviously gone insane? “...Ha...rdy?” I turned in a slow circle, wondering who’d said that strange name.  There was nopony with me.  I was alone, in a red velvet room.  It’d sounded like a mare’s voice coming through a particularly rough speaker, but I couldn’t remember any mares in my life.  What sort of sad, pathetic existence must I have lived for there to be no one?  Fortunately, I couldn’t remember it, so it must not have mattered that much. “Har...oiled, you have...listen!  Gale...trying to save your memories before...thing eats...them. ...—armor!  ...have...ake the...mor!” I couldn’t think of precisely what to say to that, so I just kept listening. “—ale put you...one of his...memories.  He was in...box...in King Cosmo’s basemen...for years...should be safe...find...take...the armor...” The voice faded away entirely and I was left shifting uncomfortably from from hoof to hoof, quietly enjoying the way the strange, fluffy carpet squished a little under my weight.  It was a distinct improvement over the carnivorous stuff in my apartment.  Having my flesh torn off endlessly had probably been pretty traumatic, but it’d happened over enough decades that I’d long since ceased to notice when my body was torn apart in grisly fashion except to reflect that there’d surely been a time when that wasn’t what happened. I wondered if the pony with the golden scales on his flanks knew anything about not being torn apart in a grisly fashion.  Eh, probably not.  He’d looked like the sort to whom that kind of thing happened regularly. ‘This is the box where Gale lived for years as a disembodied heart in the basement of King Cosmo’s house,’ I thought, then quickly followed that with, ‘Who are Gale and King Cosmo and why would a heart be disembodied?’ After a few minutes contemplating those questions, the silence in the box started to become a little awkward.  I reached up and touched the hole in my chest, gently sticking the tip of my toe inside of it for a few seconds.  It was a thing to do.   I thought about seeing if I could find my way back to the apartment.  Dying there was usually a simple matter: combustion or my organs coming alive and chewing their way out of me or a beheading while taking a shower.  I’d never died of boredom before that I could think of.  That didn’t mean much, mind you, considering I’d long ago lost track of all the means and methods. When the novelty of touching the ends of my own shattered ribs and dangling ventricles wore off, I started pacing my little prison, gently stroking the walls. Raising my head, I called out, “Mare with the crackly voice?  Are you there?  Are you going to kill me?  I don’t think anyone else ever killed me before!  I don’t fight things killing me if that helps!  I think I used to fight them, but I promise I won’t if you’ll talk to me some more!” For some reason, saying that aloud felt strange. Was it the words?  No, I meant every one of them.  Ah, right.  I hadn’t spoken before.   I knew how, but when had there ever been an occasion to talk?  For most of my existence, my days consisted of lying on a couch until my blood vessels crawled out of my orifices, then I died.  Not a lot of conversational options. There was no immediate reply; just a soft hum coming from somewhere.  I braced myself, readying to feel my anatomy come apart at the seams.  I’d long ago learned that breathing out before the first sensation of complete dissolution kept you from choking too hard before brain activity stopped. After a solid thirty seconds of anticipation, I found myself needing to inhale and not dead.  The hum was growing, but I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from.  It seemed to be coming from all around.  I kept my breath held for another ten seconds, then inhaled sharply and stumbled backwards as the box shook under me.  Gravity tilted to my left and I started to slide sideways before catching myself as a rush of wind almost took me off my hooves.   I looked up and found myself eye-to-metaphorical-eye with something.  The eye had replaced the entire top of the box, or rather, removed it.  I thought about screaming, but what good would that have done? A detached part of me wondered what the tiny shapes hanging in front of the eye were until I gradually recognized one of them. I’d seen it almost every night of my life, after all, though why I thought that I couldn’t say. It was the moon.  The moon was in front of the eye, rendered little more than a speck by distance. I didn’t know you could feel your brain explode. Thankfully, I didn’t have very long to reflect on how odd that was before my headless corpse hit the box’s lining. ---- Alone. They were alone. When last everything turned and the cycle began again, all those who’d been there with them left for new places. And they were alone. ---- “Junior, you are either going to pay attention or I’m going to put fishhooks in your eyelids.” I blinked my eyes open and sat up straight, putting my hooves on my tiny school desk as I wiggled in my seat to show a bit of life. “Sorry, Professor Limerence!” I squeaked. The ancient school house smelled of chalk and the compressed vomit, sweat, and pee of unknown millions of children who’d filed in through the millennia.  Smiling flowers painted on every wall were flecking with age as a gentle rain of rust caught the red light filtering in through the windows.  My desk was the only one, but there were spots worn into the carpet and wood beneath that suggested many thousands of other hooves. Professor Limerence straightened his waistcoat and adjusted his glasses, standing taller as he marched back and forth in front of the ragged chalkboard, a piece of chalk floating along beside him. “Now, then!  When did the universe begin?” he demanded. I stared at him blankly, and he tapped his hoof. “I d-don’t know,” I stammered. “Of course you don’t!  You could have at least done your homework over the last few months, but no, you wander in circles trying to fathom with that tiny mind of yours!” he growled, then did an about face.  “The universe did not begin.  The universe is a fractal system of interconnected planes within which time operates at different rates from planck to planck.  The first moment is also the last!  That being said, this is only one of what are likely many different iterations—” I cautiously raised my hoof. Without looking at me, Professor Limerence huffed, “What?” “Sir, I...I don’t understand.  If nothing begins or ends, why do things happen one after another?” “Ah!  An excellent question, for once,” he replied, swiping a hoof through his golden yellow mane.  “Random interactions of particles can—given there are enough of them—produce intelligence.  Intelligence is a function of physics.  It gives order to the narratives of being.  The grander the intelligence, the less it needs time to comprehend.  There are intelligences which span entire planes, slipping between them like eels beneath the flesh of a drowned body.  Time is a story your species tells itself because it is too small to abide the true chaos of existence.  It was They who told the first stories in this iteration of this universe.  They gifted you tiny things time.” “B-but...who are ‘they’?” I asked, puzzled. Limerence swept his hoof across the ceiling, and the lights went out. His eyes glittered in the dark as he tilted his chin back and pointed upwards.  I looked up, expecting to see only the darkened rafters of the schoolhouse.  The ceiling had vanished, leaving me staring up into a sky glimmering with tiny lights.  I didn’t recognize any of the constellations overhead.  It seemed as though I were looking at a foreign sky. “In least...they give your pathetic little worlds their light,” the Professor growled, a measuring stick levitating along beside him.  “What miniscule order you pull from the universe, they have spawned into your flesh.  It might have been one of the less merciful beings that exist in the between.  Your entire species might have been snuffed out in the primordial ooze by an errant burst of radiation were it not for their interest.” I drew back in my seat as he stalked forward and rapped his measuring stick on my desk. “Now!  Answer quickly!  Wherefrom does magic come?” I cringed as my thoughts scrambled for order.  Where was Sweet Shine?  Shouldn’t she be in detention, too?  We’d probably done whatever thing got us detention together. “I-I don’t know!” I squeaked as he leaned over me, pinning me in my seat.  He was lit only by the starlight, and it reflected in his eyes in an unsettling manner. “Hrmph!”  His hoof came up before I could move and clapped across the side of my head.  My ears momentarily rang, but by the time I’d opened my eyes he’d already spun and stalked back toward the chalkboard.  “It was in the homework, and yet here you sit.  A witless worm, crawling under skies you cannot understand.  It was they who let you tap into the fields of magic!  They who gifted the cell matter of this world with a taste of what lies beyond!” I winced as his measuring stick whipped around, stopping at the end of my nose. “Repeat it!  Tell me how worthless your species is!” I stuttered as something inside me rebelled, but I didn’t fancy being hit again. “W-w-we’re...w-wor-” I couldn’t say it. Why couldn’t I just say it?  It would stop me from hurting. The fiery anger in the professor’s eyes grew into a literal inferno as a boil of superheated flesh spilled down his cheeks, landing on my front hooves.  I tried to yank them back, but they’d already been scalded and I found I couldn’t look away from his burning eyes.  My body seemed frozen in place. “Say it, you pitiful mass of mitochondria!” he barked, spitting something that smoked like acid when it hit my face fur. My lips started to move, but I couldn’t control them.  I couldn’t form the words.  In my heart of hearts, I knew of our value.  Why? I felt a burning ache in my hips and looked down for an instant to see my cutie-mark shimmer.  It was such small magic in the face of the towering rage in the professor’s face, but it was mine. “N-no,” I yelped, then raised my voice, “I-I won’t!” I had only a second to register that his measuring stick had become a massive gleaming broadsword before it slammed sideways into my throat.  My body went suddenly numb as I found myself pinwheeling end over end, seeing starry sky, then floor then sky again.  It took what I hoped was my last few seconds to realize I’d been decapitated. Some seconds later, I was still falling.  My severed head - in total defiance of gravity -  was spinning faster and faster as I sped upwards towards the distant stars.  If I’d still had a stomach, I might have been sick.  Fortunately, throwing up requires an esophagus. Sad then that screaming also takes certain things I was suddenly without. ...RiIiIiIiIiIiIiInnng... ----     They were light and below was life.  History was lost.  History was found. The clock ticked, but it was all the same tick; yes, existence, no, oblivion. ----     “Come on, Sweety.  Lift your head.  You have to keep your strength up.”     I cringed from the gentle touch of a hoof on my face, but forced my sticky eyes open as something comfortably warm was pressed to my lips.  Instinctively, I let the liquid in and almost coughed as my throat constricted.  It was split pea soup.  My mother’s split pea soup.     “M-mom?” I whispered, looking up into her beautiful blue face framed in blushing red ringlets. Was that my mother’s face?  I couldn’t remember.  The fever was making it hard to think. Surely it must be her.  Who else would it be?     “I-I don’t feel so good,” I muttered.     “I wouldn’t think so,” she said, kindly, picking up a damp rag and pressing it against my forehead.  “We’re lucky that thing doesn’t seem to understand the idea of ‘death’ very well or it would have snatched my mind, too.  I did the only thing I could think of.  Or maybe it’s the only thing the armor could think of.”     I cautiously raised my head and found I wasn’t in my room.  My bed was there, Wonderbolts sheets freshly laundered, but the room itself was nowhere I was familiar with.  It looked like some kind of cavern.  Probably a hallucination.     “Mom, where am I?” I asked, plaintively reaching for the soup again.     “Your body is under Detrot, Hardy,” she replied, softly, offering the bowl once more.  I slurped loudly for a second before lying back.  “All of this, though...this is a nightmare.  The armor remembers how to craft dreams even if Nightmare Moon is out of commission.  I was able to use a bit of magic to put your mind in here.  Otherwise, I’m pretty sure that whatever that monster is trying to shove into your head would crack you like an egg dropped by a high flying pegasus.”     “W-who is trying to s-shove something into my head?” I whimpered, touching my temple which felt just as too-hot as the rest of me.  “The...the being,” she murmured.  “It’s not really alive, I don’t think.  Not like us.  It’s trying to change you, but...it has to be careful.  It’s so big inside that I think if it focused entirely you’d just explode.  A bit like trying to pick up a champagne glass with a bulldozer...if the bulldozer was the size of a mountain. Everything you’re seeing is part of a dream.  It’s your own mind making it, but it’s being yanked around by that thing’s mind.  You have to find out what it wants.” I mulled that over for a moment, then looked up with fresh eyes at the mare who was standing at my bedside, a sad expression on her face. “You’re...you’re not my mom, are you?” “It’s me, Hardy.  Ruby.  Here.  This will make you feel better.” Reaching onto the bedside table, she picked up a small, folded piece of cloth and let it unfurl in her hooves.  It was a tiny trenchcoat, just my size.  I’d no idea why, but it felt right that I should have it.  My heart was suddenly filled with an overwhelming urge to wear it.  It looked so comfortable. I carefully raised myself up in the bed and reached for the coat. She pressed it into my hooves and, instead of cloth, I felt cold, hard metal.  Surely, it was just my fever, right?  Wrapping myself in the coat, I stuck my hooves through the leg-holes and exhaled as its weight settled onto my back. The darkness of the cavern started to swell, gathering at the corners of my eyes.  I felt myself starting to lose consciousness, again, as the fever swarmed over my senses.  An ocean of sweat started pouring down my face, spilling over my muzzle in a torrent. In seconds, I began to drown. “Hardy, listen!” Whose voice was that? The only voice that mattered. “Hardy, you have to hold on!  I’ll find you, again!” ---- “Rise and shine, scumbag!  It’s breakfast time!  Not that you’re eating!  You think you deserve a shower, or should I just dunk your head in bleach again?” I jerked awake as a bucket of ice water hit me in the face.  I gasped as the joints in my forelegs seized and I tried to double up only to let out a pitiful squeak as I found my rear hooves chained to the floor and my front hooves to the ceiling with heavy manacles.  Blood rushed to my cheeks, but the intense soreness in my shoulders was only a tiny part of a glittering fog of agony that spread through my entire body. I could even feel fresh cuts on my tongue.  It felt like I’d been chewing glass at some point. I knew if I didn’t say something the pain would start.  She liked hurting me.  It was her ‘thing’. “N-no, Warden!” I choked, trying to work one of my eyes open. Something that felt like a fluffy baseball bat caught me across the cheek, whipping my head sideways.  Four or five already-quite-loose teeth scattered out of my jaw along with a spray of spit and blood.  My head felt like somepony was playing dueling bagpipes in both ears. “I didn’t say you could look at me, worm,” she snarled, then shook herself.  “Yuck.  Got some of ‘you’ on me.  Now, then.  You may open your eyes.” My beaten body didn’t like the request and it took far too long to figure out which muscle group worked my eyelids, but I finally did. The Warden was standing below me, though she’d have been ‘below’ me even if I were on all fours; she was a tiny pegasus by any measure.  Her bright orange fur looked like it’d been shined with wax and the tuft of spiky mane on her head might as well have been laminated.  Her smart, white suit had a few flecks of blood on it.  Why she always wore white when she came to see me was a mystery I’d never thought to ask her about; maybe it just made my blood stand out a little brighter.   My cobbled stone cell was barely the size of a broom closet, the bars of the door less than a body-length in front of me and the frigid wall pressed against my back.   How long was it my home?  I couldn’t be sure.  I’d been there long enough that I’d forgotten my crime.  Knowing me, I probably deserved it, though.  She certainly never spared an opportunity to remind me what a piece of garbage I was. “Well, now, before we start this morning’s session...do you have any questions?” It was a trap, but one I knew well.  She was going to hit me anyway, no matter what I said, but if I refused to step into it she’d find something worse.  Warden Swift was creative like that. “Ma’am...wh-why do you do this?” I asked. Reaching up she casually clipped me across the forehead with the tip of one of her wings.  It was gentle enough that I could still hear, though my long-ago and oft-broken nose started to ache again.  Blood trickled down my upper lip and I quickly shook it off. “Aside from the pleasure of watching you squeal?  I want you to learn,” she replied, trotting over to the tray of freshly cleaned metal tools she kept just out of my peripheral vision. “You gotta know what it’s like to be a prisoner for so long you start to lose things.  Do you remember your mom’s face?” I knew if I didn’t try to think back, she’d know and hit me again. “I...I don’t,” I stammered. Picking up something that hissed at her, she trotted back around in front of me, a cage balanced on her back.  Inside, a multi-legged insect the size of a rat was glaring out at me with malevolent little eyes.  One end of the cage had a door and though I didn’t know precisely what she had in mind, I knew it was unlikely to be pleasant. “Such a tiny thing, isn’t it?” she murmured, picking up the handle on top of the cage in her teeth and setting it in front of me.  “For instance, this beast evolved sometime during your planet’s early Lusitanian period.  Call it roughly forty million of your years ago.” She looked at me expectantly.  I knew what she wanted.  No sense in prolonging it with stubbornness. My throat was suddenly dry, but I managed to croak, “W-what does it do?” “I’m so glad you asked!” she chirped, marching around behind me.  I heard the door of the cage open, and the fiendish thing’s hissing increased.  “It burrows into a living being.  This one killed one of your ancestors, in fact, though you don’t have that luxury.” I tried to shy away from her, but the manacles left me with little to do besides wiggle my tail and try to flex my injured shoulders. “Once inside, it will latch onto the spinal column of the host and every nerve in their body becomes a pain receptor.  The prey can do little but lie about writhing and waiting to die, but that takes what I’m sure an outsider would assume was a blessedly short time.  The rate at which they grow in a food rich environment is impressive.  Even the corpse they leave behind is lethal, impregnated with additional slower growing eggs to catch unwary scavengers.  I suppose there might be some satisfaction for the prey in knowing a predator is soon to face the same fate, but probably not.” I felt a slight pinch in the middle of my back, then tickling legs began to work their way up my spine.  I froze in place, though I’m not sure if I was simply too terrified to move or trying to play dead so it might lose interest.  When there’s a crawling killer on you, the two aren’t much different. “P-please don’t do this,” I begged.  “P-please ...” As though she hadn’t heard me, Warden Swift trotted back around my front, staring up at me with her scintillating diamond eyes.  “Do you know that this miniscule creature stripped entire continents bare of anything larger than a raccoon?  Worse, its whole evolution until it became extinct at the beginning of an ice age was the blink of an eye to Those Above.”  The pinch became a sharp tingle that started to grow in intensity.  It began to feel like somepony was bringing a lit cigar too close to my skin.  I wanted to cry out, but I knew she’d just hit me until my jaw came off, again.  She’d done that a few times already.  Probably hundreds. I tried to think quickly.  She liked having me around to hurt.  Maybe if I asked the right question she’d let me live?  Or let me die.  Or both.  Whichever.  Anything to have that creature off me. Time running out.  I could feel the thing’s pincers digging into my flesh, the creature worming its way deeper.  “Who are T-Those Above?” Warden Swift leaned up into my face and quirked one side of her muzzle, showing off the rows of dangerously sharp teeth she’d occasionally torn my guts out with. “Those who came before,” she snapped, wiping a smear of my blood on her sleeve across her breast, leaving a red streak, “Those who remained behind.  Those who decided that you lower intelligences needed shepherding in their growth.  Those who imprisoned the few wise enough to point out that it was rank, bloody evolution that gave them grace.” Her glittering gaze transfixed me as the insect began ripping at my flesh.  I began to scream, but all the while I stared into the crystalline eyes of Warden Swift.  Deep within those gleaming orbs, I could just make out a flicker of starlight. Pain brought me back.     Blood started to rain onto my rear hooves as the insect shoved its way between my shoulderblades.  My body started to spasm as fresh, interesting new sensations crept their way around the backs of my eyeballs all the way down to the tips of my hooves.  I could feel the air itself brushing through the fur on my neck.  My tongue suddenly felt ten sizes larger than it should have been.     The sense of invasion and violation was profound and the pain began to twist my sensibilities.  One second, I was staring into the wolven face of Warden Swift, her white suit spattered with red as she studied me with that cruel, impassive smile, the next I was...elsewhere.      A black, metal chamber resolved around me made of shrieking walls that berated and blasphemed me.  What I called a body, though not my own, was strapped to an altar in the dark with unbreakable chains.  The demented souls of simple life forms - their miniscule minds cracked by invariable isolation and torture - were my only company.  It only lasted a moment before I was back, but the impression remained.     Warden Swift was still watching me wriggle, helpless against my fate.     “Why do you deserve shepherds?” she asked no one in particular. I certainly wasn’t able to answer.  I’d passed screaming.  Her words penetrated the haze of dribbling insanity that’d gripped my mind as sensations the brain is just not programmed to handle assaulted it, but they found nowhere to lodge.  The torment kept finding fresh layers as I began to feel the blood coursing through my veins as a stream of icy winter water, chilling every organ. “Why do you deserve forgiveness when they afford none upon their own?” My vision was starting to shrink to a tunnel centered on Warden Swift’s face.  She started to back out of my cell.  She was just going to leave me there. I dragged my last vestige of strength out of some dark corner and shouted the only word that came to mind. “W-why?!” She shot me a cold glare and slammed the bars of my cage shut as the first larval insects began to burrow through my stomach, dropping onto the floor with a clatter like falling rain. “Because your world was a lesson.  One learned well.” With that, she stomped off down the long hallway, disappearing from view and leaving me to dangle there.  I’d rather hoped that when the conversation was over, whatever horror I was in would end before the bugs started to eat me more thoroughly.  No such luck. I felt their tiny, nibbling jaws starting to disembowel me some time before my lower half started to detach from my upper body and my legs went blessedly numb.  It wasn’t until the very first skittering claws started their way up my throat that I finally began to fade.  I had time to feel them begin to gently tug at my optic nerves, sending my gaze rolling jerkily about before sensation finally started to break down.     ----     For many nights, I floated. In the dark, I washed back and forth in a warm, midnight ocean, listening to the gentle ‘thump, thump’ of my heartbeat as it set the tide.  The ‘sky’ was moonless and I only paddled from time to time, tasting the coppery, red waters.  The sun never rose, my belly never grumbled, nor did I feel remotely tired.  I simply floated, listening to the waves. It was some time before I noticed I’d bumped against something and raised my head, finding myself staring up at a strange palm tree.  It was twisted into a bit of a curl, glowing gently against the black, starless sky.  The leaves spread out in all directions, but they were somehow partially transparent and within I could see thin, pulsating veins.  I rolled over, my hoof landing on a firm surface.  “You made it!” a voice exclaimed, and then I almost jumped out of my skin as a pair of hooves were thrust under my knees and pulled me upright. I jumped backwards from my assailant, splashing into the waters on the shore of the odd little island.  Now that I got to look at it, the whole thing comprised just enough room for the singular palm and perhaps three ponies to stand without getting into one another’s personal space.  With two of us there it was only cramped. Shaking my trenchcoat out, I found myself suddenly dry, not a bit of liquid clinging to me.     I peered at my new companion, giving her a cautious look out of the corner of one eye.     “Do I know you?” I asked.     The bright red mare wore a hooded cloak that fell across her back, masking most of her body. Her face sank a little at my question and she sighed.  “Still losing things, huh?  I’m sorry it took me so long.  I got stuck in some memory of a planar void where that thing spent a few centuries screaming its head off and had to get out via your fantasies of your first girlfriend.”  The mare smiled, weakly.  “She was cute.  I hope you remember her when this is all done.” I tapped at the ground beneath me.  It was crusty, hard but with a bit of give.  It also stank like a freshly turned grave. “Sheesh,” the mare muttered, poking at the translucent palm tree with one hooftip.  “I try to come up with some sort of nice dream and your brain turns it into this.  What even is this?” “Pretty sure it’s a scab,” I replied, giving the disgusting brown surface a light kick. “I think that’s an ocean of blood and this is a scab.  What does that make you?” “It’s me—” she stopped and then shook her head.  “You really don’t recognize me?” I stepped over beside the veined palm tree, leaning against its trunk as I studied her.  “Nope. You remind me of someone.  I—” A tingle of fear was my only warning before my body locked in place and something resembling a slurry of extreme violence cascaded through my mind; hooks, needles, ripping pelts, and endless, endless blood.  As the vicious pictures poured in, the waves gently lapping at the island began to rise, creeping up to slosh around my hooves.  I clutched my head and sagged onto my stomach, trying not to vomit though I’d floated for so long there was unlikely to be anything in my stomach. “Hardy,” the mare gasped, putting a hoof on my shoulder and bringing my eyes back up towards hers, “G-Gale says he’s going to have to rebuild your short term memory from scratch.  Please, listen to me.  I need to know.  Did the...did that monster tell you why it’s doing all of this?” I shut my eyes, unable to quell an intense shiver that shot up my spine. “I don’t know any Gale, Miss,” I muttered, laying my head on the tree’s soft, fleshy bark. “I just...I just know we d-didn’t deserve s-shepherds.” “Didn’t...didn’t deserve shepherds?  What does that mean?” she asked. I looked up at her and sniffled softly.  “I don’t know.  It’s something...somepony said to me, once.  Somepony angry.  I think it’s important, but I don’t know how.  Miss, what’s happening to me?  I remember hurting so much...” The mare’s breathing hitched and she put a gentle hoof on my head.  “You’re...I don’t know.  Your body is with me.  I’m trying to balance the magics to keep control of this corpse I borrowed and make these dreams, but I think...I think part of your mind is inside that thing.” I rolled my eyes at her.  “You can stop with the riddles any time.  I’m a few episodes behind.  Just assume I’m dumb as a post.” Her frown deepened as she ran her toe down my cheek.  “Tell me about shepherds.  This prisoner said who didn’t deserve shepherds?” I waved a hoof vaguely at the air.  “Us.  All the thinking people?  Maybe even life itself?  I don’t know.  Why does it matter?  What is this island?  Who am I?” Sinking onto her flanks beside me, the mare laid her head on my shoulder.  “I’ll see if I can get enough energy to your heart to fix that before I find you again.  I’m pretty sure that creature knows I’m helping you, but I have some protection.” “Really like your riddles, huh?” I grumbled, trotting away from her and up to my fetlocks in the bloody ocean.  The warm liquid felt good, soothing my aching muscles.  I’d no idea why they were aching, but I was too tired to ask.  “I just want to go back to floating.  It was nice to float.” “When this is all over, you and your partner and your driver are going on a long trip to the sea.  Right now, is there anything else you remember?” I shrugged, running a hoof over my trenchcoat.  Strange, how it felt almost metallic under my touch.  “I don’t know.  Something about...the world being a lesson.” I could feel her intent gaze, though I didn’t want to look at her. “That squares with some of the other bits and pieces I picked up,” she replied, thoughtfully.  “I think maybe it was supposed to learn the importance of other life forms.” I pressed my forehead against the disgusting ground surface.  “Evolution gifted them divinity...or...or something.  Oh skies, why are you making me think about these things?” “Because,” she said, quietly, pointing into the distance.  Far off, I made out a flickering light sitting on the horizon. I shielded my eyes against a non-existent sun, trying to get a better look at the object I had the funniest feeling was approaching, though I couldn’t say why.  “What’s that?” “That’s ‘bad news’.  It found us, again.”  She quickly grabbed my shoulders and pulled me around to face her.  She raised a foreleg, holding something dangling from her hoof.  It was some kind of amulet or medallion in a leather wallet with a silver chain.  “Here.  This should protect you a little bit better.  I’m not going to live much longer anyway, but I’ll do what I can to help patch you up before the magic keeping me together gives out.”  Her ears drooped against her head and she laid her soft cheek against mine.  “It’s...it’s going to have its teeth around you, again, soon.” “I...I don’t know what any of that means,” I mumbled, but took the amulet from her.  The sensation in my hoof changed and it suddenly felt as though something ice-cold had been slipped on over all four of my toes.  “Is...is this something important?”  “I suppose you would see your badge as ‘armor’ wouldn’t you?”  She let out a thin laugh, that was followed by a wet cough into her hoof.  When she pulled the leg from her lips, it was covered in blood. “Are you alright?” I asked, worriedly. Her expression turned grim as she looked out across the crimson seas towards the oncoming light.  “No, but it doesn’t matter.  You have to pay attention to whatever you see and hear when the being comes for you. I don’t think it’s totally sane after however many thousands of years alone, or we wouldn’t have lasted this long.  I’ll try to make sure you can hold onto more the next time.  Hardy...” I cocked my head and touched the badge hanging on my chest.  “Am I Hardy?” She let out a soft breath and nodded. “Oh.  I’m glad I got that cleared up,” I said, turning to the sinister looking light and dropping myself down in the rising waves. My skin started to tingle, then to burn, but still I sat and watched as the blazing ball of fire careened across the ocean toward me.  In a few seconds, the ocean began to boil and my body cracked as waves of heat rolled over me, searing flesh from bone.  Compared to some, it was a merciful death. ...RiIiIiIiIiIiIiInnng... ---- The dice were cast. An ancient shaping—far older than the flames—was found in a dark place where few would willingly venture. The one who dared gathered four who raged against their duty. Together, they went unto darkness and returned with chains for the sky. ---- “Welcome back, cop.  You might make an interesting piece, once I get the muscles off you.” My nose itched.  It wasn’t a pleasant itch, like the sort you can scratch and get a nice little rush of relief.  More the sort where you’ve spent a solid week itching and can feel the top layer of skin starting to peel away.     I wiped at my face, trying to clear my swimming vision.  As things started to cohere, I let out a groan and rolled over, almost falling clear on my tail as I slid down the slick, curved surface of the floor.  I came to a rest in the middle of something that felt very much like a glass bubble.     Instinctively, I grabbed for my gun, but it wasn’t there.  My badge still dangled around my neck and my trenchcoat was where it was supposed to be.  I felt my head, finding my hat missing.     “Who's there?” I asked, carefully getting back to my hooves.     “Oh come on!  You spend months chasing me and don’t recognize an old friend?” The voice was strangely distorted, coming through the glass.  I gave the wall of my odd prison a light tap and it let out a loud *bong* that echoed around the tiny chamber several times.  Scratching my mane, I turned in a slow circle, trying to peer out at my surroundings.  The background was uniformly a dingy, industrial brown and badly distorted by the curvature of the transparent surface. “Can’t say I do,” I replied. A hideously scarred, bright yellow face suddenly swam out of the gloom, inches from mine. “Boo!” I let out a fearful yelp and reared.  My hooves went out from under me and I pitched over onto my back and slid back to the bottommost point in what was feeling increasingly like a giant fishbowl.  The pain in my back returned a quick jolt of adrenaline, though I couldn’t remember exactly why. Flopping onto my side, I looked up and found my tormentor standing there with her hooves on the glass, staring down at me with a manic grin.  Her muzzle was a mass of semi-healed wounds and puckered flesh, lending her a rictus appearance.  One of her eye sockets was empty, but it didn’t stop her gaze from filling me with terror. “Oh, now you recognize me?” she chuckled, leaning a little closer and looking me up and down in a way that I could only describe as lascivious. “The Shining,” I said under my breath. “Perfect!  Perfect, I’m so glad you remember me,” she said, dropping to all fours and starting to walk slowly around the glass bubble.  “What was it the newspapers said about me?  Some artists die for their art, but I kill for it?  Wonderful.  Stripping you to the bone will be a joy, by the way.”     Struggling upright, I braced in two places so I wouldn’t slip again and locked my knees.  “Hrmph.  I thought you were a stallion this whole time.”     “Stallions get so wrapped up in themselves.  You could never believe a mare would do as I have done.  So many dead for the sake of art, and you are soon to join them!”     I gave the glass wall another light tap and winced as the sound clattered back and forth around me.  “What is this thing?”     Her lip twitched into a sneer.  “Do you like it?  It is a tiny piece of your short, dismal little existence whose importance you and your species managed to miss entirely.  It might have given you true control over your world, but instead it was consigned to rot in a forest.  It didn’t just manipulate the weather.  This so-called ‘Weathervane’ had the power to resonate with the very energies that give shape to the universe.”     Rather than replying to that weirdness, I swallowed and poked at the wall a few more times, trying to figure out exactly how she’d gotten me into the chamber.  I finally noticed something that looked like an airlock on one side, but I’d no idea how to open it from the inside and the glass was perfectly smooth.  Considering the amount of noise a light tap seemed to produce, I didn’t want to think about what bucking it might do.     “What happened to your face?” I asked, deciding to try to keep her talking.     The Shining grinned, running a hoof down her cheek so the freshest of the wounds started to weep down her chin.  “My father told me once that a mare is never fully dressed without a smile.  Now I have hundreds of smiles.”  Turning, she sat against the wall of my prison and laid her head back against it.  “It’s going to be entertaining to see how many smiles will fit on your body, Detective.”     I slumped against the wall, sweeping my coat around myself to keep somewhat warm in the slightly chill air.  My body hurt like I’d been worked over a few times.  No telling what she’d done to me while I was asleep. “You’re going to make me ask why, aren’t you?”     The Shining shrugged, putting a hoof to her chest, over her heart.  “There are many reasons.  Do you know, the fire that lights your world is a willing soldier, marching in lockstep with the will of one of these life forms that we were set to observe?  Blind, like you.  Just an officer of the law, whose sense of right and wrong pales into insignificance against the canvas of time. Your agony will be but a moment.  Imagine drifting free for millions of years only to enslave oneself to a single world and a single tiny, temporary will.”     I squinted through the glass at her ruined face.  She wasn’t smiling anymore.  Her expression had turned, if anything, extremely dour.  “You’re nuts, you know that?  I wanted to know why you’ve got me in a glass ball.”     The crazed mare straightened, tossing her black and white braid over one shoulder and snapping her rear hooves together as she gave the resonating chamber a light flick with the tip of her toe.  It turned out somepony hitting the exterior was about fifty times worse than kicking it from the inside.  I slapped my hooves over my ears as my entire body shook like a leaf under a blast of rolling sound that felt as though my very bones were about to rattle loose from their sockets.     When the noise finally abated, I cautiously dropped my hooves from my ears.  There was a tickle in the back of my throat; I coughed and a thin stream of blood hit the wall.  I’d heard loud noises could injure a pony’s lungs, but I’d never thought to have the pleasure of experiencing it firsthoof. Surprisingly, I hadn’t been rendered fully deaf; small favors. “You’re one to talk,” the Shining growled, glaring at me through the glass.  “You pursue and pursue, never realizing the artistry.  It is in pursuit that we find our true selves.  Do we cower?  Hide?  Run?  Or turn and fight?  You’re one of the few predators I’ve ever met whose entire strategy seems to revolve around throwing himself repeatedly at a wall until the wall surrenders out of pity.” “I don’t think you’re capable of pity,” I growled, trying to stuff a hoof into my trenchcoat’s pockets in hopes I’d thought to keep a weapon of some kind.  Strangely, I couldn’t quite get my toe into the pocket; it felt like I was trying to shove my hoof against a smooth surface. “Why should I be?” the Shining retorted, trotting off to pick something up from what I could vaguely make out as a worktable.  She returned a few seconds later, holding up the skull of a pony who couldn’t have been more than a few years old.  “Artists must be merciless!  The screams of a child for its mother are unique amongst the sounds made by the pony throat.  I might be one of the few whose musical collection contains the screams of a child being eaten alive.  Most don’t think to record such things.  Shall I play it for you?”     “I can’t stop you, but I’d rather you didn’t,” I muttered.     “No?  Your loss.  It is sublime.  One of the few pure sounds your species produces.  You wish and wish for solace and an end to pain, but never realize the wicked taint you leave in the world by your wishing until it is purified by agony.  That’s when you discover the truth about a pony. What will you wish for, in the end, I wonder?”     I put my hooves up on the glass wall, unable to think what to say.  “If I ask you not to kill me, that’ll just make you right, won’t it?”     The Shining smirked, patting her bloody smock.  “I’m glad you caught onto that.  You should be used to catch twenty-twos by now.  Even if you succeed in your ultimate goal, there will just be another horror for you to chase and if you fail...when you fail...you’ll die.”     Rolling my eyes, I rested a hoof on the wall, staring into her bright pink eyes. “If there’s one thing I think I’m good at, Miss Shine, it’s dying.  I don’t know how many times I’ve died.  Lost count a while ago.  Dying doesn’t scare me.  Living empty...that scares me.  You sound pretty empty to me.”     Her expression seemed to twitch, the grin fading as she leaned in closer to me. “What would you know about emptiness?” she hissed, and though it was her mouth that moved the sound seemed to reverberate through the resonance chamber, knocking me backwards onto my rear end. I struggled up, trying to meet her burning eyes. “I know I have my duty.  I don’t know who I am, but I remember...”  I hesitated as a wave of shock rolled through me.  I could remember.  Not my name, nor anyone close to me, but...I could remember my duty.  I looked over my shoulder at the pair of shining golden scales on my flank, as though suddenly seeing them for the first time. “What do you remember, fool?” she snarled.  “Your memory is nothing!  Your future is blank!” Shooting her a grin from somewhere that felt like it’d been buried for ages, I pressed my hip against the glass cage. “Read my ass.  I’m a cop.” With that, I reared back and slammed my hooves against the side of the chamber as hard as I could. The sound within was like an explosion going off inside me and I found myself wrenched off my hooves, levitating in the center of the space on what felt like an all-powerful wind.  My limbs distended in seconds, but I felt no pain.  The creature outside who looked so very familiar, yet so very different from whoever it was I remembered, seemed to shatter along with the walls of the Weathervane’s spherical focus. I saw a blast of blood, flowing outwards from somewhere under my neck, but it was no great shock.  For once, I knew what I’d done.  I’d made a choice. I expected darkness, but instead there came light, light which tried to burn me, tried to break me, tried to fry my muscles from my bones, and tried to strip me to my core.  For once— and much to both of our surprise—it failed. ---- The working was ready. The four followers and the one who led prepared themselves. They deserved the power, but more, they deserved the freedom.  Those below would make their own way above or die as probability and natural selection willed it.  It was not their concern, nor soon would it be their duty.  They would rule, as was only right. It was a holy crusade to give order back to the universe and make sure the weak knew their place.  They’d gone unto places no flame was allowed, digging into the very fabric of existence and returning with knowledge buried for eons. They gathered, they shaped, and they worked their will upon the strands of existence. When the moment came, their will was strong and—for an instant—all that which was began to turn on a single spindle: five together, reshaping all of creation. The instant ended. Five were not enough. It was the one thing they were forbidden and—as deluded flies who suddenly find they are not really spiders often do—they found themselves caught in a web. ---- “Ruby!  Ruby, are you here?” I shouted, stumbling through the empty hallways of the High Step Hotel, following a sweet scent on the air. It wasn’t really a hotel.  It’d never been a hotel.  The cushy carpet and flickering lamplight were all an illusion.  There was nothing behind any of the white doors lining the hall.  It was all empty, a dream inside a memory, built to save me from something beyond the reach of equine imagination. Still, I knew my destination.  Ruby’s perfume guided me upwards, sandalwood and roses.  She’d been wearing it when she died all those weeks ago, but it wasn’t the sort of smell a pony forgets.  Considering how many things I’d forgotten, remembered, lost, stitched together, and had ripped out of my living brain in the last few centuries of torment, it felt good to be sure of even something so small as the scent of a mare. I swung down one last hallway, almost tumbling off my hooves as I caught sight of the silver door-knocker on the door at the distant end of the hallway.  Slowing to a trot, I looked over my shoulder, expecting to find a screaming light in close pursuit.  Fortunately, all that was there seemed to be more dream corridors full of doors to nowhere. I could see my own reflection in the polished knob; I looked like a haggard mess who’d spent too many days without proper sleep. Putting a hoof on the penthouse door, I thought about knocking, then realized if she’d set all this up, then Ruby knew I was coming. I tried the knob and the door swung open on the same sumptuous suite I’d found myself in weeks and weeks ago on the day the poor mare was discovered.  Padding in, I inhaled the sweet air of the clean room.  Somepony had left a bottle of wine in an ice bucket beside the door.  I picked it up and tucked it in the crook of my foreleg, then headed for the bedroom. How long had it been since I smelled anything besides my own freshly spilled bodily fluids?  Years?  Centuries?  No idea.  Not that it mattered.  The memories were mercifully muted, like distant screams in thick fog.  There was no telling if that might last, but I decided to enjoy it while I could. “Ruby?” I called out. The voice that came back was unsteady, but clear. “B-back here, Hardy...” I kept heading for the bedroom, pausing long enough to gingerly pick up a pair of fluted glasses from the side bar as I nosed the heavy, wooden door open.  The enormous bed took up half the room.  The blanket was big enough to use for a four pony tent. For a moment, I thought the bed was empty.  Then I spotted a swatch of red hair sticking out from under a pillow and a blue hoof pressing it down.  Ruby let out an irritable moan, burrowing deeper into the covers. Edging around the bed, I set the glasses down on the antique bedside table and sat myself on the edge of the covers. “Ruby?  Are you alright?” I asked. “Dying,” she mumbled from under the cushion. “Is this a fresh kind of dying or the old fashioned variety?” “New to me,” she answered, a bit muffled.  “My last death was pretty much over the second my horn came off.  I don’t remember running off a building, but I remember thinking I’d have to make sure my body was hard to dispose of.  Must have planned it.” I reached up to tug the pillow away from her face.  I had to force myself not to cringe at the sight of her.  The illusion that’d wreathed her face was collapsing and a section of Diamond Wishes’s white, wrinkled cheek was visible through it, stained with drying blood. Ruby’s expression quirked into a not-quite smile as she rested her hoof on my face.  “You know we’re in a dream, right?  We’re still standing in that thing’s chamber while it tries to rip your mind out and eat it?“ “I figured that might be the case,” I replied, stroking her hoof as she lay back in the cushions.  “It wants my body?” She looked me up and down, then snorted under her breath.  “It’s a nice body, but I mostly think it wants you for your brain.  It can’t wear the controls and it takes a living being to make the wish.” I touched my trenchcoat over my shoulder, feeling chilly metal clank on metal. “I’m wearing Nightmare Moon’s armor, aren’t I?” I asked, sprawling on my back on the bed. “Part of it,” she replied, then nodded towards the headboard.  Somehow I’d failed to notice my hat hanging on a peg up there.  I went to reach for it, but she caught my hoof and held it to her chest.  “Wait.  If you put that on—” “Right...that’s the helm.  That’s the last of the magic keeping you here.” She gently released my hoof and lay back again, wiping a streak of red off her chin with the back of her fetlock.  “How much do you remember of what happened over the last couple hours?” “Hours?”  I scoffed, then hesitated and let out a low groan before flopping on my stomach across the blankets.  “I shouldn’t be surprised.  I remember some of it.  Vast tracts of time.  Centuries in pain.  A bit of metaphysical commentary on what I think might be higher life forms.” “Gale tucked a lot of that away.” “You and he talked?  I’m going to spend a month watching any movie he likes if I live through this,” I replied, then stopped and cocked an eyebrow.  “Wait...tucked away?  As in, into places that I’m eventually going to find it?”     “I hope not soon, but eventually,” she answered, sadly, patting my leg.  There seemed to be almost no strength left in her and even the illusion of her face was sunken and hollow.  “I used Nightmare’s magic to help him make these dreams.  He’s the bravest little pony I’ve ever met.  He’ll keep you from losing your mind when the time comes.” “T-that’s...that’s good,” I muttered, then stared off towards the suite’s bathroom, wondering what I could say to the pony whose life and death were so permanently intertwined with my own. “Hardy, I’m not important.  I was never getting off this roller coaster,” Ruby said, giving me a look that left me feeling a tad like a scolded schoolcolt.  “What did you learn?” I ground my cheek up and down against the soft blanket, enjoying the sensation of something comfortable after however long exploring the outer reaches of agony.  Even if I couldn’t properly remember all those moments, the sense of them remained.  How many times had I collapsed and surrendered and begged for mercy?  No way to know. Sadly, it couldn’t last.  I had to have an answer.  That meant remembering.  Remembering hurt. I clutched a hoof to my chest, warding off the phantom sensation of my organs spilling out of my ribcage for the hundredth time.  A prickle of terror started to creep up my neck.  I knew feeling afraid wouldn’t stop me from being hurt again, but it didn’t matter.  The ancient, animal parts of my brain wouldn’t listen to sense or reason.  They wanted to escape the teeth of the predator masticating them over and over again. “Hardy, look at your hat,” Ruby ordered, breaking through my thoughts.  “Who does it remind you of?” I looked up at the dark hat hanging on the headboard and felt something simultaneously fresh and so long lost I thought I might never see it again: love.  Love for whom?  My young partner, who threw herself in front of danger without a thought.  A librarian who fought at my side through Tartarus and back.  My best friend, who’d finally chosen to live despite her pain.  A sweet stallion with an easy smile and adorable eyes and a mare who needed comfort and gave kindness with no expectations even in her worst moments. “I don’t remember their names, but I remember them. The people I love are the reason I’m up to my ears in death,” I replied, sliding off the bed onto the carpet and pacing back and forth. “And you can only help them if you remember,” Ruby added, softly. I gulped and stood up straight, raising my chin.  “Alright.  What I remember is a mess.   Disjointed images.  Some parts don’t make much sense.” “Tell me?  Maybe we can put it together.” Picking up the bottle of wine, I wrenched the cork out and poured two glasses on the night table, quickly downing one for myself before passing the other to Ruby.  She looked at it, ran her tongue over her muzzle, then set the glass aside.  I looked at my glass for a moment, then chucked it over my shoulder; I didn’t hear it shatter and when I glanced back, it’d vanished. “Heh.  Dreams.  I suppose this starts with dreams.  A very, very old dream.  Resentment and dreams.” Ruby looked confused, then contemplative.  “The creature is ancient.  I’ve gotten pretty resentful when Lily stole the last cherry turnover and the time scale you’re talking about makes it sound like whatever it was mad about might have taken on a life of its own.” Settling on my rear, I waved toward the door.  “We’re talking about the kind of resentment only gods can cultivate and it was locked away—here on Equis—for the kinds of crimes only gods can commit.” “What did it do?” she asked.     I tipped my head and said, “I could be wrong, but I think—along with a few agreeable compatriots—it  tried to enslave every higher intelligence in the universe.”     Ruby sputtered, then sat up higher in the bed, sweeping blood off her lip with her fetlock.  “Come again?” “Putting what I managed to gather together, I’d say it failed, but only just,” I held my hooves about an inch apart to demonstrate just how close it’d been.  “Maybe it wasn’t powerful enough, but I think realistically that wasn’t the issue.” “What was?” I shrugged and explained, “There just wasn’t enough fear in gods.” “Because the Web of Dark Wishes runs on fear?” “Exactly.” “And...what about the Armor of Nightmare Moon?” she inquired, nodding at my hat. “Well, that is a little more complicated,” I answered, shaking my head.  “I think the armor was made from a piece of this being; some part of it that it broke off and allowed to be forged to control the new Web of Dark Wishes.  Don’t ask me how.” Ruby scratched at the blood-matted part of her mane.  “How did Nightmare Moon come around, then?  She doesn’t seem to like being under anyone’s control very much.” I chewed on my lip, then said, “She was the method for possession of Luna.  When Princess Celestia locked Luna away in the moon, she sent the armor with her.  The moon is out of the gods’ reach in some fashion.  It had to wait a thousand years until its...minions...were in a position to break the locks sealing Luna in the moon.  Without the armor, it couldn’t control the Web of Dark Wishes.” “Its minions?” Ruby asked. “The stars,” I murmured.  “You remember the beginning of the story of Nightmare Moon’s release?” “Yeah.  I heard it as a child.  The...the stars will aid in her escape,” she whispered.  “Everypony knows that story.  Princess Celestia frees Luna of her possession after the stars help Nightmare escape the moon.  I thought it was some kind of metaphor.” “No.  Funny thing, that.  Think about it.  How many times have you wished upon a star?” Her eyes widened to the size of saucers.  “You’re screwing with me!  Are you telling me—” “The stars give us the power of wishes?  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  What is a god but something that can grant wishes?  What is a prayer but a wish with extra steps?  We’ve been fighting a star.” Collapsing back in the covers, Ruby covered her face with her hooves.  “Gah!  I’ve spent the last few months being chased in circles by this!  It chased me off a roof!”  Dropping her legs, she looked momentarily lost.  “Wait, where does Twilight Sparkle play into this?” I cocked my head.  “What all do you know about her?” Her lips pinched tightly together.  “I’ve...I’ve seen her in some timelines.  She’s a hard pony to pin down.  She’s always associated with Nightmare Moon, somehow.  I know you met her, but there’s some kind of...blanket...over her memory.  Nopony seems to remember her except me and I only get chunks.” “No surprises there,” I grunted, thinking back to the drunk, grumbling princess with her coterie of attendant monsters.  “Well, it wasn’t Princess Celestia who freed Luna.  It was Twilight Sparkle.” Ruby threw up her hooves and flopped sideways on the bed.  “Really?!  Really?  I wondered how that purple goof ended up our ‘secret Princess’!  She’s always been important to my visions, but I never got her whole story.” “When she purged Princess Luna of Nightmare Moon, the same moment purged this little piece of the star’s influence from the armor,” I continued.  “Nightmare became her own piss and vinegar self and she’s not too keen on losing her independence.  She worked against the star as best she could.  She escaped its Equestrian servants with you at the Convent in Supermax.” “So...so what?  It was just bad luck then?” she asked, rubbing her ear.  “I happen to be the pony who goes to investigate the crazy whispering voice at the Convent?” “Maybe.  Or maybe you had help.”  I gave her a meaningful look. “Other...other stars?  Stars who weren’t working for the imprisoned one?” “Might be.” Ruby started to say something, but her ears perked and she held up one hoof.  “Hardy...do you hear  that?” I almost asked, ‘Hear what?’, but before I could a whistling wind swept into the hotel room, making the bed creak and the decorative mirrors dance on the walls. RiIiIiIiIiIiIiInnng...