//------------------------------// // "And in the end..." // Story: The G4-5 Boundary // by ShinigamiDad //------------------------------// Celestia stood unsteadily and blinked in the flat light, turning a circle, looking for some landmark on the featureless gray plain of the Waiting Room. A dark shape caught her eye, and she walked slowly towards it. Luna rolled from her side, sat up and watched her sister move closer as her eyes fought to find their focus. She waved a hoof: “Come this way, Celestia!” The snow-white alicorn nodded and increased her pace, nearly stumbling over Twilight’s prone form. She jerked to a stop: “Twilight! I didn’t see you there!” Twilight rolled to her back for a moment before flopping left, and hauling herself to her hooves with a groan: “Well, that answers one question, anyway…” Luna fanned her wings, stood and walked toward the other two Princesses: “What question is that, Twilight?” She pointed off to her right: “Whether I’d be sent to Tartarus immediately, or stop here first…” “As for the first question, I assumed the answer was ‘no.’ I was rather unsure as to the second part, myself.” The three alicorns turned around as one as Reaper approached them from behind. Three low sofas appeared before them; Reaper gestured for the mares to sit. Twilight reclined and eyed Reaper warily: “Why, ‘no?’ I’m pretty sure I’ve earned a spot next to Grey Thorn.” The air filled with the scent of burnt flesh and blood for a moment; Reaper waved his hoof to dissipate the odors, and smiled: “For one, no creature has ever been sent to the very bottom of Tartarus since Grey Thorn, so the odds on you being the next were vanishingly small.” He sat on the bench next to the downcast alicorn: “And second, though you certainly did tarnish your legacy late in life—” He glanced from face to face to face and raised an eyebrow: “—you all did, to some degree—that was clearly weighed against the millennia of good you performed, often quite selflessly, for this world.” Celestia shook her head: “Again, the question we have all wondered: weighed by whom?” Reaper shrugged: “Same answer I gave you thousands of years ago: I don’t know. I know there is some force, some field, some energy, some consciousness, some something, but I still have only the vaguest sense of its outlines. Maybe after another eon…” Luna cocked her head to one side: “Perhaps we three will learn the answer before you!” Reaper chuckled: “That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest! I can’t cross that Last Horizon, so I don’t really know what fate or the Cosmos or whatever has in store for you, or for anypony.” Celestia furrowed her brow: “And you never will? Sitting in this place, it suddenly all feels so, well, eternal!” Reaper nodded: “I never will. It is my fate, and those of my peers, to endure until the Cosmos itself grinds to a halt, and Entropy reduces everything to a perfect zero.” Twilight shook her head: “And then what?” Reaper smiled sadly: “Still the same old question, even after thousands of years, Twilight?” “Yes. Even we ‘Immortals’ are now dead, and it still doesn’t make sense!” Reaper stood and pointed his sword to the distant, unknowable boundary just beyond sight: “Time to go see if your answers are there.” Twilight sighed and rose from the couch: “Just like the Pit…” Reaper chuckled: “You’re dark, even for this place, Princess! I can assure you what lies beyond is not the oblivion of the Pit, otherwise this place would not exist. Even Tartarus is not the Pit.” Luna left her couch and held out a hoof to Celestia: “Come sister, let us end this journey together, the light and the dark united for all time.” Celestia took her sister’s sliver-shod hoof and rose, tall and elegant, clad with gold ornaments, shimmering mane drifting once again in an unseen breeze. The two strode purposely toward the unseen terminus, with Twilight and Reaper trailing. The four approached the Horizon, and suddenly the shattered shell of the Void appeared to their left; Twilight shied away slightly, and Celestia glanced at her, then raised an eyebrow: “This looks like it just appeared here, not thousands of years ago.” Reaper nodded: “There’s no decay here, no rust, no heat, no oxygen. It’s the perfect place of preservation.” Luna cocked her head: “Do you still ponder it, study it?” “I think I figured out all I ever was going to long ago. Now it’s simply my silent, inanimate companion—like an ugly sculpture you can’t get rid of.” “Can you not force it beyond the Horizon”? “No. Nothing tangible or solid can go past. What lies beyond is purely a realm of essence, of energy, of spirit, however you choose to define that.” Celestia nodded: “And have any creatures tried to pass back from beyond?” “Not that I know of. As you cross that threshold, you simply cease to exist in this plane—no flash, no ‘pop’, no trace. You are simply no longer here.” Celestia took a deep breath and turned to Luna: “Come then, sister—let us take that final step together!” Luna smiled and turned to Reaper: “You will remember, always, yes?” “Until Entropy closes in at last.” She turned to Twilight: “I hope you find the peace that has long eluded you, Twilight—that you find your answers at last.” Celestia nodded: “You have both our love, Twilight, and you—” She bowed slightly to Reaper: “our eternal thanks for your stewardship. Best of luck in whatever new world follows this one!” Reaper bowed as the Sisters turned away: “Again, ladies, it’s been an honor.” Twilight closed her eyes as her voice fell to a whisper: “Goodbye…I’m sorry…” Celestia paused for a moment and glanced back over her shoulder with a sad smile: “I am, too. Farewell, my student…” With that the two alicorns took a final step forward and vanished. Twilight sat down next to the ruined Void and wept softly. Reaper sat next to her and listened to Twilight’s anguish for several long minutes. Eventually Twilight’s distress lessened and she raised her head: “I guess I have to go too, now…” “As do all things that live and breathe, in the end.” Twilight rose to her hooves and turned to face the featureless, unbounded space before her. She chewed her lip: “Tell me the truth—you pulled some strings, didn’t you? I should have been sent to Tartarus, by all rights.” Reaper chuckled: “I ‘pulled some strings’ exactly once, long, long ago, Twilight. And to this day, I still don’t really know what happened, or who/what intervened.” “Okay, but you weigh-in when somepony ‘of interest’ passes on, and…” “And I had no comment to make to whomever when I reaped you. You paid a terrible price for your misdeeds millennia ago, and I know the scars that left have lingered to this day. I don’t think Tartarus would have any value, either as punishment or as place of reflection. You’ve punished yourself for years, and in your case, self-reflection will likely be best-served wherever the Cosmos sends you next.” Twilight frowned: “So you held your tongue.” “Yes.” Twilight sighed: “Thank you—for everything.” Reaper bowed slightly, drew his sword and pointed to the left of the wrecked Void: “I will genuinely miss the three of you, Princess, and I look forward to seeing your echoes in the world to come.” Twilight took a half step forward, paused, raised her wings slightly from her body and looked back over her shoulder: “You really think there will be any trace, so immensely far in the future, on a world drained of magic?” “Yes—you three possessed such potent, world-spanning magic, that I’m sure it has left a mark that will endure.” Twilight smiled: “For good and bad…” She stepped beyond infinity, and ceased to be. Reaper chuckled as he sheathed Death’s Token: “Always with the last word…” Reaper phased in at the head of Luna’s low, marble couch, drew his blade and slowly regarded the three bodies before him. His horn glowed faintly and sputtered fitfully as he brought the flat of his shimmering crimson sword down lightly on the head of each reclining alicorn, as though he was anointing them. The glow of his blade and horn died out, and he turned to face the east. He stepped around the end of Celestia’s final resting place and took a seat on its edge, watching the distant horizon, framed by dead trees and the broken spire of a distant building. A faint glow began to build, bands of pale pink and blue streaking low, tattered, cotton-white clouds with blushes of color. As the minutes passed, a thin, silver crescent rose above the spreading light, accompanied minutes later by a single, bright, glittering star, below and to the right of the moon’s horn. Reaper watched as the two now-pale celestial bodies rose above the breaking dawn, golden light washing across the glen. He stood, straightened his cloak, nodded, then turned away from the east, faced south, and walked briskly away, never looking back as the sunrise touched the three, still bodies at last. Fin