Celestia awoke to somepony’s hoof resting on her temple.
Her eyes fluttered open, but she didn’t move right away. Instead, she allowed her gaze to focus on the pony in question… Lotus Leaf, looking half-asleep, her mane disheveled and stringy. Her face looked as young as Celestia had ever seen her, but her mane seemed to be poorly kept and missing in a few places. Her body was covered in scars and indentations, as though her bones weren’t sturdy enough to keep her flesh taut around her.
Around them, it was hard to make out the room in detail with the lighting as dim as it was. Dust danced all about, and the walls of the once pristine room had become flecked with spindly cracks and a heavy coating of dirt and decay. Anything metallic had rusted over, and the air smelt of mold and rot.
“Hi, Celestia,” Lotus Leaf said, her voice soft and quiet. “Sorry. I din’t mean to wake ya.”
Celestia exhaled, shaking her head. “No. No, not your fault, Lotus.”
“She’s up, Codex.” Lotus called out, and the stallion soon came shuffling into the room. He was in the same sorry state as Lotus, heavy bags under bloodshot, cloudy eyes, with much of his mane and tail gone.
Both ponies looked exhausted, and horribly, horribly malnourished. Without thinking, Celestia outstretched a wing, pulling both of them close and wrapping her neck around them. Lotus let out a surprised little ‘eep!’ sound, while Codex seemed to have been anticipating such from the way Celestia had been looking at both of them.
For several moments they remained that way in silence, before Celestia gently released her wing from around them, a small and forced smile on her face.
“S-should drink somethin’, Princess…” Lotus murmured out, and her wing outstretched to gently place a glass of murky, brackish water on the end-table before Celestia. “Sorry it’s, er… like that…”
Celestia shook her head. “Not your fault. We’re running out of time, aren’t we?”
“Twiley’s off-line for good, we think.” Codex said, nodding his head slowly. “Most of the lights and heating, too. Not even enough power to turn ‘em on. If it weren’t for bat-ears over there, we probably wouldn’t even be able to get around.”
Lotus managed a shaky smile. “Doin’ all the heavy-liftin’, as usual.”
"Are we...have we been decaying faster?" Celestia breathed out. It certainly felt like it.
Codex nodded. "I think our orbit is. We've been getting closer to the Tear every go-around. And I think it messes with, well. More than just magic. Gravity, and as a result time."
"I...I see." Celestia bit her lip, looking out the frost-lined window.
"We recalibrated our wake-up time, so… we’re gonna have to fire the Harmony Cannon basically right away. Then, uh. That’ll be that for our loop. Back into the, er. The Blender, for the three of us.”
Celestia winced. “W-what do you mean?”
She already suspected she knew precisely what he meant, but she was still praying to be wrong.
She wasn’t. Codex ground over his explanation with weariness and effort, unable to meet Celestia’s eyes. “Well, er. Normally Twiley takes care of that for us. Hauls us in when our bodies reach the end, and, er. Reconstitutes us. This time, uh…”
“It’ll be fast, Celestia.” Lotus promised. “We’ve got some tranquilizers, put ye right under. We’ll do you first, and then… I dunno. Nose-goes for the honours between me and birdbrain.”
Celestia was speechless, as the scene played out before her in visceral detail. As far as she could remember, the… specifics, of their embryonic longevity had always been unspoken. Something that had been handled in the void of unconsciousness, while they ‘slept’ in stasis.
But that wasn’t what was happening at all. And without the vessel’s AI to do the dirty work…
“I’m sorry, Celestia.” Lotus whispered out, resting a hoof on Celestia’s shoulder. “It… it wasn’t ‘sposed to go on this long…”
“I want it to end….”
The statement had no purpose. It simply hung over the filthy, dusty air to the benefit of no-one hearing it. Celestia wasn’t even sure why she’d said it, besides for her own benefit.
The process of re-awakening their new bodies was considerably expedited, compared to the last few times.
Besides, of course, the most recent one in her memory—though that already felt more like a particularly vivid nightmare than anything she had actually endured.
Her limbs felt weary and sore. She stumbled many a time as they made their way down the centrifuge. Its rhythmic spinning had slowed, which meant the effects of gravity were weakened significantly. They had to be careful as they travelled onwards, since each step carried risk of sending the lot of them careening down the hall, no doubt to sustain an impact their weakened and decayed forms could scarcely handle.
“What loop is this?” Celestia asked, as they travelled on.
“I, uh.” Codex exhaled heavily. “With Twiley down, it’s hard to know for sure. There were.. A dozen or so notches on your bed, Celly. Carved in with a scalpel, and I just added number twelve today. I can’t tell you for certain, but…it’s probably been a long time, back home.”
“Wonder if they’re even thinkin’ ‘bout us anymore,” Lotus said, letting out a smug little snort. “Probably not. I can’t even watch the same show for longer than five seasons, myself.”
“I can guarantee you that Princess Twilight hasn’t forgotten,” Celestia replied instantly. “So there’s at least one pony down there who is still thinking of us.”
“Yeah… I hope so,” Codex said. "I'm more worried about them then they probably should be us."
“Well, I don’t rightly care if they forgot us or not," came Lotus’ cold reply. “Ain’t up here doin’ this for the clout and the social security.”
“Uh huh. We’ll see who’s sayin’ that when they make a monument for us all, back home,” Codex said with a snorting laugh. “You’ll be the first pony signing autographs, mango-muncher.”
“Aw, kiss my poorly cloned flank, birdbrain.”
“Mm. Do invite me to the wedding, you two,” Celestia butted in, letting out a gentle chuckle of her own. They were coming up to the airlock now… which meant their surviving time on this particular loop was swiftly approaching its termination. Idly, she wondered if four hours was a new record for the shortest alicorn lifespan to date.
Routine occurred. Their spacewalk to the Elemental Node was uneventful, and Codex was considerably efficient in his lining-up of the Harmony Cannon.
Using it nearly detached Celestia’s horn, though.
And then, on their return journey, after Lotus had miscalculated her trajectory a little too dramatically, Celestia turned just in time to watch the bat pony’s left wing strike the metal conduit, and disconnect cleanly from her side.
It happened horrifically quickly. Celestia was unable to hold back a scream.
“Lotus!”
The bat pony’s surprised and horrified screaming quickly overrode their shared comms. The wing, wrenched cleanly from its socket, sailed in spiralling pirouettes into deep space, while the bat pony herself lost her grip on the conduit and began to drift away from it herself. Air rushed out of her suit rapidly, as the pressure seal failed to lock around a limb that was no longer there. Thick, chunky orbs of blood floated from out of her suit and into the void.
Meanwhile, Codex was attempting to gather some information as to what happened, but his urgently asked questions were more or less relegated to the same droning frequency as the heavy blankets of static upon their local transmissions, with Lotus’s terrified and pained cries instead at the forefront.
Celestia kicked off the conduit and wrapped the oxygen cable around her right hoof, while her left extended to grab onto Lotus, before she drifted too far and allowed the rest of her suit to continue depressurizing.
“Try and calm your breathing…” Celestia said immediately. “We’re getting you inside.”
“Leave me!” Lotus screamed back. “Just buckin’ leave me! We hardly have enough power for all three of us anyways!”
Celestia ignored her. She hooked a hoof around the strap of Lotus’s spacesuit, and then gave her oxygen cable a gentle but firm tug, pulling both of them towards the airlock.
“….in Tartarus is…!” Codex’s panicking voice rode along the waves of static and distortion. Surely he had seen the event from within the ship, or at the very least its aftermath. He was waiting at the airlock by time the two of them arrived, opening it manually from the inside so that Celestia scarcely needed to even alter their trajectory before the two of them collided inside.
Once they were inside the ship, the full extent of the damage to Lotus’s wing was clear. It was…gone. The frail and poorly reproduced bone had simply split from the impact that, under normal circumstances, would hardly have even fazed the young mare. It wasn’t mend-able… it wasn’t even there. Only a jagged, knife-like protrusion of bone jutting out of the bloody red wing-socket remained.
“What in Tartarus?! ” Codex was saying, as soon as they got the suit off. “E-easy, Lotus. I’m gonna get you some tranqs…”
“Screw the tranqs!” Lotus howled back. “Carry my broken ass to the Blender and end this bucking loop!”
“Y-y-you sure? Lotus…”
“Yes! Buckin’ look at me, dipshit!” Lotus spat out some thick, chunky blood that looked more like flesh taken liquid form.
Codex looked helplessly to Celestia, who found herself rooted in place in sheer horror at the grotesque sight before her.
And then, her mind caught up. The reason didn’t matter...Lotus was in pain, and this entire damned loop was cursed from the start anyways. The sooner they ended it, the sooner they could try and close the tear once again… After all, it was only a matter of time before Celestia and Codex’s bodies fell into the same state of rapid decay as Lotus’s.
“Gods above. Gods above this is…” Codex was beginning to hyperventilate, but even in his panic he helped Celestia lift Lotus.
The poor thestral lost two more limbs along the way. First, her forehoof, which had been held in Codex’s grip. Her other wing followed. They simply...disconnected, from her crippled form, sloshing messily onto the floor. The bat pony herself… did not react, and when Celestia looked at her she saw that her eyes had glazed over, empty, white, and dead.
There wasn’t an evil being on Equestria worthy of such horror, Celestia thought. To see it of one she was quickly coming to see as a close-friend…
Codex was weeping openly, and it was difficult to see where they were going in the pitch-black corridors of the ship. The dust that hung over everything was strong enough that every hoofstep sent a blizzard of it swirling about. The grime lining the walls and ceiling and floors had turned the pristine white of the ship to an ancient, all-encompassing rot, making every hallway and room look the same.
Finally, they reached the Embryo Room. Celestia was carrying Lotus fully now, while Codex trod behind her, eyes wet and reddened and breathing heavy and strained, with both of Lotus’s detached limbs underneath a wing.
They loaded Lotus into a machine in the corner of the immense, cavern like room. A large, metal box, that might as well have been a casket. Designed to turn the kind, sweet, quirky bat pony mare into little else but a messy slurry.
Neither of them watched, but the sounds were horrific enough.
Then, it was Celestia’s turn.
“I’ll knock you out, first…” Codex said. His voice… it didn’t even sound like the same stallion, now. It was like a ghost was piloting his body and speaking with his voice. “Everything’s already programmed in. When it’s my turn, all I have to do is hit the nice green button and hop in.”
Celestia wanted to say so much. She wanted to offer some sort of comfort, or assurance, or promise…
She offered her withers instead, for the tranquilizer injection. Her last thought, before her mind went black, was the horrible whirring of the reconstitution machine.
Celestia awoke to Lotus Leaf’s hoof upon her temple.
It seemed like just a moment ago when she had been here before. It was hard to believe that it had actually been four years once again.
“Hello, Lotus Leaf,” Celestia said, before she had opened her eyes.
“Hi, Celestia.” Lotus’s voice was strained, as though she had been weeping. As she looked into the bat pony’s face, Celestia realized with a sinking heart that she had been. Her eyes were reddened and puffy, and she wiped a little trail of snot with a hoof and forced a smile as she looked at Celestia.
It took a moment for Celestia to realize why Lotus had been crying, but when the realization struck her she felt her own eyes watering ever-so-slightly.
This was the first loop in which Lotus hadn’t called in Codex.
They sat in silence for several moments. Celestia wordlessly rose out of the bed, sitting down next to Lotus and nuzzling her snout against the young bat pony.
“He… he did it on purpose. The damned idiot.” She choked out. “B-before we ‘slept’. He reprogrammed his pod.”
Celestia nodded slowly. “Not enough power. Not for all three of us.”
“The computer woulda picked one of us to wake. Between me and him,” Lotus murmured. “Like… like before.”
Celestia winced. She thought of the living quarters, when she had investigated them earlier. Nearly half-a-dozen beds. A strange amount, for only three ponies.
But there hadn’t been ‘only three ponies’, had there?
She couldn’t even remember their names. How many years ago had that been? How many decades?
“...It woulda picked him.” Lotus whispered out, sobbing soundlessly into Celestia’s wing. “It woulda picked him, Princess. Not me.”
Celestia held Lotus tight in her wings, saying nothing for some time, and simply letting the bat pony’s emotions run their course.
“We need to end this, Lotus,” she said eventually. How many more loops would they last? How long, until neither of them awoke again? Their time had been running out since they had started, and it had been too late for as long as Celestia could recall. “It’s time for us to... rest.”
Shakily, Lotus detached herself from Celestia, once more rubbing her snout with her hoof, a weary and forced smile forming on her lips. “Right. But how? We can’t just leave the Chaos Tear… without us, it’ll just start widening again…”
“I know. And I’m not… proposing we leave.”
“Then what? Where would we go?”
“The Tear,” Celestia said. “I think we both know that the tear will outlive our life support by a significant margin, at this rate.”
“Yeah…” Lotus exhaled heavily. “So we’re doomed one way or another. Is what you’re saying.”
“That depends on what you define as ‘doomed,”’ Celestia said, resting a wing onto Lotus’s back. “We won’t be returning to Equestria, yes. But if we succeed, we will be saving it. Saving the known universe as we know it. Fulfilling out mission, for the survival of everypony back home. That doesn’t seem ‘doomed’, to me.”
Lotus gave a single nod. “When ye put it like that. I guess so. So what were ya thinkin’?”
“Well. We’ve been prodding the Tear with the Elements from afar for some time, yes? From a safe distance, whilst ensuring we stayed fat enough out of its gravity well?”
“That’s right. Slow and steady progress, with each loop. That’s the intent.”
“But each loop has been getting worse here, at the rate that the ship’s reserves are decaying, it will outpace our own survival,” Celestia continued. “What if we were to find some way of firing the Harmony Cannon much closer? Would that not cause a significant amount more damage to the Tear than our attempts to close it from afar?”
“I mean… I would assume that much. It’s…a bit of a shot in the dark, though, when its Chaos Magic we’re talking about. I’d say it’d have… a fifty fifty chance? Of either doin’ a featherful of damage, or doin’ none at all. And I don’t think I have to tell you what flying through that Chaos Tear is going to do to us.”
“Atomize, yes?”
“If we’re lucky.” Lotus sighed. “I really don’t know what it’ll do to us, to be honest. It’s…Chaos Magic. It can really do anything, right? I dunno. I’m not a mage, I’m a physician. There’s no healing magic, just healing science. And that Tear? It ain’t got anythin’ to do with science.”
“Yes, well. With that uncertainty considered, we come to the subject of getting me within firing range of the Tear whilst still keeping you safe to continue on.”
Lotus blinked. “What?”
“Well. Dear, I can’t ask you to accompany me on this suicide mission.”
“Well, I swore to take care of you through thick and thin. So if this what you want to do, then we’re gonna do it. Together.”
“Lotus. If it is possible that one of us can be spared from this, then we must make that effort.”
“For what?” Lotus flapped her wings irritably, the movement stirring a torrent of dust throughout the ice-cold room. “So I can just die by myself in a few weeks? Watch myself crumble apart? Wake up one day, all alone? Why would I want that, Celestia?”
“Because when the Tear closes, there is a chance that help may be sent our way.”
Lotus laughed. "I think Equestria is gonna be too worried saving themselves from extinction to worry about saving Lotus Leaf, the random bat pony in the middle of nowhere. And anyways... I’ll still die. We weren’t built to last.” Lotus practically growled it out, but there was a strange sort of acceptance even in her grimly spoken words. “Besides... if they don't come, then I’m gonna be… back in the loop. Twiley ain't gonna know that we finished our job. She's gonna keep bringing me back, just to die again and again. And that sounds like...Tartarus."
Celestia winced. “I’m… I’m sorry it came to this.”
“If I could make the decision again… go back, with what I know now of the mission…” Lotus’s eyes travelled around the infirmary room, where she’d been a hundred times. Where they’d probably had the same conversation already, at least several times. “I’d keep my promise. I trust that what we did mattered. If it bought a single day for those back home, it mattered.”
She turned away from Celestia, to rifle with something on a medical counter behind her. After a moment she turned again, a videotape in her mouth. “We got a transmission from home, while we were…under.” She offered it to Celestia. “It...might be from decades ago, and the signals just reachin' us now. But somepony there…was still thinking about us. Still appreciates us. We don’t…really have a way of watching it without power. I can try and get that up. But… at least we know that we’re not forgotten.”
“Twilight wouldn’t.”
Lotus smiled, though it was a tired, old looking affair. Celestia would had said it looked older than the mare herself, though that was a difficult metric to define. “Maybe it’d be better for her if she did.”
“That’s her decision to make,” Celestia said. She heard her voice waver, and felt the tears down her face before she’d known she was crying them. “Are you… Do you truly wish to do this with me, Lotus?"
Lotus’s reply was non-verbal. She extended a hoof to Celestia. She stared at it for a few moments before realizing the bat pony was seeking the ancient comradely acknowledgment of a hoofbump.
Celestia returned it, which managed to wrench a smirk out of Lotus.
“So… We should have a bit more time this time around,” Lotus said. Her smirk was exceptionally short-lived—already, she looked about ready to cry as she thought back to her last loop and her fallen companion. “We shouldn’t have a repeat of…last loop. Thanks, by the way. For being quick about that.”
Celestia bit her lip. She'd been really hoping Lotus wouldn't have retained the memory. “I’m sorry it happened at all. You feel better now, though?”
Lotus gave her left wing a testing flap.“New body, new me. This wing feels useless, though, I think it probably is. Buck me…it’s probably…” She winced, and found herself unable to articulate the thought fully.
It was probably Codex’s. Celestia’s mind filled in the gaps.
Shakily, Celestia rose. No better than any of the previous times. Always a little bit worse. The dust her hooves kicked up nearly choked her, and a glance into the darkened hall that was the rest of the ship showed her that it was not doing any better. Her throat was parched and dry and begging for water, and judging by Lotus’s own voice she knew the bat pony was in the same state.
“Water?” Celestia asked.
“It’s, uh. Ain’t gonna sugarcoat things, it’s buckin’ gross, Princess.” Lotus offered her a glass of brownish-grey water. “Should, uh…help, I guess. But I can’t stomach it.”
Celestia decided to pass, herself. Weary as she was, she wasn’t planning on extending this loop any longer than she had to.
They left the infirmary, and ventured back into the halls again. Celestia’s horn ached when she tried to cast, and so Lotus led the way with perked ears and the occasional staccato click of her tongue. Echolocation. The fourth tribe’s own special trait. Celestia kept pace with her by the sound of her hoof-beats, and her own ingrained muscle memory of walking through the featureless halls of the vessel for a hundred years or more.
Their destination was the common area. The same destination as it had been, during that one loop a dozen loops ago. When it had all began to fall apart. There, they could look out across the stars and the expanse of space, and Celestia could try to convince herself that it was beautiful, in some way.
“Alright…” Lotus began when they had arrived, and were both seated at the window, trying to see through the thick layer of frost that lined it. The Tear was off their starboard side, considerably close owing to how late they’d been awoken. Long gone were the weeks spent preparing, no time even for the most daring and risky decision anypony aboard the vessel had ever made. “Tear looks… less than a day out. I’d estimate the ETA as… nine hours?”
“Is the equipment in an operable condition?”
“Will be, when I throw the breaker in the bridge. Provided it doesn’t short the whole damn system,” Lotus said. “I’ve never…actually piloted the ship before, but I read the manual, and I did the test flights back home. For, uh. Initial orbital insertion procedures, mind you, not what we’re attempting. But… what is flinging yourself headlong into a fatal magical black hole but another creative form of orbit?”
“Your confidence is staggering.” Celestia deadpanned.
“Thank you, thank you. More than just a pretty face.” Lotus smirked. She pointed a hoof towards the conduit connecting the Elemental Node, which was just coming into view as the centrifuge spun. “Bigger problem for power is gonna be if the airlock over there doesn’t work. They have emergency back-up battery coils, but it’s a snowflake’s chance in Tartarus they have enough juice to run.”
“Mm. And I suppose we cannot split electrical power between the bridge and the airlocks?”
“No, I don’t think so. We’re really running on electrical fumes as is. Scraping the battery acid off the sides of the barrel. Licking the bottom of the chip bag for one last hit. Need I continue?”
“I understand our situation Lotus, thank you.”
“Just makin’ sure. We’ll have to get you in position, and I’ll… solo ship control from the bridge. The thrusters themselves are all mechanical, so I’m not too worried about those. I just need the console on while I aim our heading, and then once they’re activated, that’ll be that.”
Celestia’s next question felt…considerably juvenile. She was almost reluctant to ask it, but she very much doubted Lotus would’ve had it in her to judge. Gently, she removed the videotape she still had tucked beneath a wing. “Do we have enough energy on reserve for… one final word from home?”
Lotus cracked a smile midway between weary and excited. “I think we can manage that.”
They had to kill the power for the entire satellite to run one CRT monitor.
“I, uh... I imagine if Codex was still here, he could’ve...” Lotus sunk her head into her hooves for a moment. “He was the tech guy. I’m just... Gods...”
“Lotus, dear...” Celestia took her under a wing. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not, Celly. It’s really not.”
No. It wasn’t. “Well. One way or another... It’s almost over. If you’re still sure about this.”
“I am. Just...” She took a few shaky breaths, steeling her panicking nerves with obvious effort. “Okay. I’m fine. It’s fine.”
Before any further self-doubt and panic could overtake her, Lotus flicked the CRT monitor to life and shoved the tape into the receptacle.
The transmission from Equestria was... Hardly discernible at first. Just a torrent of static, and distortion, as the semi-functional radio-arrays struggled to receive and convert it into something legible for the ship’s crew. Shapes formed from static, in the vague outline of ponies or structures, but nothing could be interpreted with any degree of accuracy. The monitor itself was probably to blame as much as the transmission, Celestia figured, given how long the old equipment had been lying here, bathing in the dust of the ship’s endlessly deceased crew.
Through the storm of static, though, Twilight’s voice was like a lighthouse to a ship.
“H-hey, guys. The, uh... It’s been a few loops now, where we haven’t received... Anything, from any of you. Just the pings of the proximity beacon letting us know you’re still in orbit, but no equine contact besides.
“We figure we know why. Power outages, and failing systems. I’m... Sorry. It wasn’t supposed to...Well. I know you’ve probably had that conversation with yourselves a thousand times. It wasn’t supposed to go on this long.
“I don’t even know if anypony is there receiving. We’ve been detecting gradual decreases in the Tear’s integrity. Which means somepony is still trying to close it. But... At this rate, we’re not going to make it. We spent it all... All we had, to get you all there. You were the one success, out of countless failures. The last big big of magic most of us saw, and that was...so long ago, now. We’d spent all our hope on this mission, and now the time is running out that we can reliably claim there’s... Hope for success.
“And the hardest thing for me to admit... And the thing I don’t want to, but I don’t want to remain silent about, either... Is that I’m giving up.
“Celestia... When we started this, I swore I wouldn’t bring you back. Wake you up. I wouldn’t, until the you that’s hearing this had succeeded on her mission. Otherwise, it would’ve felt like... Well, like we’d just copied you. Put that copy on a doomed mission in space, and then forgotten about her. I didn’t want to do that, nor did I want to risk the uncertainties of having two of the same alicorn alive at the same time. Even if one was a clone. Even if one wasn’t even on the same planet. But the truth is... We were always doomed to be apart. You can’t keep a cloned body alive for long. Even if we would’ve gotten you home... We wouldn’t have been able to save you. The ship’s computer would’ve shut down the reconstituter... And you would have... Slept.
“And... In case the ship runs out of power before that is even an option afforded to us... I wanted to make sure you knew the truth. Because I love you, Celestia. I am eternally grateful to the crew of the project, however many are still with you. And... I want you to know that Equestria has survived because of your efforts to keep the Tear closed.
“Even if that survival ends soon. It... I guess it inevitably would have. I guess you can only stem the tide for so long. And... It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, and held you in my hooves, and been able to look at you with my eyes instead of through the lens of a camera...
“I just wanted you to know, that for all the—”
There was likely more to the tape. But at that moment it clicked off, as the ship’s AI killed the incoming transmission three years ago. Not important enough to continue wasting their limited energy recording.
Another tape, for the pile of messages from home.
“Y’know...” Lotus sighed, flicking off the television as it devolved to static. “For what it’s worth... I think we did a good thing, Celestia.”
Celestia continued to stare at the blackness of the monitor. She did not immediately reply.
“I’m one of a hundred of myselves,” she breathed out. As if the realization had just now struck her. “And the... The ‘real me’... Is back home.”
“I guess so. But how real can she be if you’re the one saving the world, while she sleeps on her fat flank?”
Celestia was silent.
“Celly... Listen. The real me...” Lotus stretched out her wings. “Died knowing that this mission was for the good of Equestria. The real me is the one talking to you, because I haven’t changed that goal. I still feel it, as strongly in my mind as ever before. The two... The two things... They aren’t mutually exclusive, y’know.”
“Aren’t they?”
“My only friend died so that the real me could keep living.” Lotus flexed that left wing of hers. Of Codex’s. “We’re just... A collection of flesh and organs, arranged a certain way. That’s all. There’s nothing more to it than that.”
Celestia did not agree. But she did not wish to spend the remainder of her life... If it could be characterized as such, arguing with the only one left who was able to hear her do so.
It loomed before them once again, in all its destructive power. This time, Lotus had vowed to take control of things from the bridge, while Celestia had carried out the spacewalk herself. She exited out into empty space once more, kicking off from the airlock with confidence and letting momentum carry her across the gulf between the two ship sections.
She lit her horn to slow herself before she collided with the other airlock, and then shifted her telekinesis to the airlock’s handle and began to wrench it open. Her hooves joined the effort, and with a little effort the heavy metal door swung open.
She shot one last look behind her, at the rest of the ship. Then, she turned and entered the Elemental Node, closing and sealing the airlock behind her.
“I’m in, Lotus.”
“Alrighty. Hold onto somethin’, I’m firin’ the retros,” Lotus replied. “Once, to get us lined up. Then, we’ll go give that damned chaos tear the boop of its lifetime.”
Celestia smiled, making her way through the claustrophobic corridor, back towards the Harmony Cannon. The window was dominated by empty space, with the Chaos Tear a good distance to Celestia’s nine-o-clock.
“Ready, Lotus.”
The ship suddenly gave a mighty rumble, as the thrusters flared to life. In front of her, the view from the window began to shift, as the ship moved into position, roughly and laboriously. The whole thing was shaking, shuddering… it felt to Celestia like the ship itself was crumbling apart right then and there.
Yet eventually, it ceased. Lotus extinguished the thrusters now that they were in position. The Chaos Tear was directly before her, sparking and crackling and seeming to beckon her forwards with its tantalizing light-show.
“How’s that lookin’, Celly?”
“Looking to be as good as we’re going to get it.”
“Alrighty. Y’sure about this, eh? Not too late to turn us back around.”
Celestia did not immediately answer. She looked on, at the Tear. No smaller than it had been, the last time she had been here. Or the time before. Or any of the other attempts, across the endless loop of attempts, as slowly their power, hope, and bodies crumbled away…
“Bring us forwards, Lotus.”
“Y’got it, Celly. Firin’ main thrusters!”
Another shudder, and this time it did not immediately cease. Celestia could feel herself being pushed back ever-so-slightly as they rumbled on forwards, and sure enough her rump soon collided with the wall of the node behind her.
Directly ahead, the Tear loomed larger and larger. Celestia felt a tug in her chest, of worry and terror and a firm understanding that this was likely it.
An eternity, ceased.
That was okay, though. She’d rather that, then continue dragging herself through an eternity of Tartarus.
On the console in front of her, the Elements of Harmony had begun to pulsate and glow. Not together, but instead in a wondrous, rhythmic sequence. Loyalty flashed into kindness, into generosity, into honesty, into laughter. Again and again, brighter and brighter, as the Tear before her grew to flood the entire window. Spindly tendrils of electrical energy stretching out, reaching towards the ship, towards Celestia herself. She could feel them starting to coil around the solar panels outside, cracking through them with ease and starting to pull the ship towards the snarling maw of the Tear.
“Lotus?” Celestia asked aloud. From her headset, crackling static, and nothing more.
The only light now was the glowing of the Elements on the control panel of the Harmony Cannon. Celestia breathed in deeply, and her horn lit. She levitated out the Elements, each and every one, and then she started back towards the airlock.
It opened to a brilliant flare of light as the vessel slipped closer and closer to the Tear. Celestia hooked a hoof around one of the hoofholds snaking their way around the Elemental Node. The movement of the ship offered some resistance, but she was able to climb up towards the gnarled metal of the wrecked solar panel. Before her, the Tear was everything. It was the only thing before her now.
Gripping the Elements tightly in her telekinesis, Celestia detached her oxygen line and kicked off the solar panel, directly towards the pulsating gash in space threatening to consume everything. Her horn lit as she began to cast the small spell she’d cast so many loops before. So many times before, back in Equestria. Back home. Back when she’d been… herself.
Behind her, the vessel had begun to break up. The sheer force of the Chaos Magic Tear was too much for the flimsy, beaten-down, ancient thing to endure. It was grabbed by the gravity around them, stretched out, vivisected before the cosmos in complete silence. In complete void. The solar panels snapped, the few lights in the control room flickered, and extinguished. The lengthy conduit connecting the two sections of the ship severed, and the spinning centrifuge went hurling away into deep space.
She lit her horn, holding the Elements tightly. She turned to face the Tear, looking larger and larger, pulling her in along with the last bits of Harmony Magic still alive in the universe.
The Elements exploded, and it felt like flesh.
She touched it, and that’s how it responded.
It made a horrid squelching sound when she prodded it, and Celestia instantly recoiled, a cavernous sloshing of barely-viscous liquid nearly driving her deaf as she fell backwards again.
She was encased within an embryonic structure, and when she pushed her hoof against it…
It pushed back.
And nothing further happened.
She tried again. She pushed harder, and still…
Nothing.
She tried again. Nothing.
Her heart was racing, panic setting in rapidly. She tried to look beyond the fleshy substance encasing her, and when she did, she saw…
Nothing.
The vessel was gone. Lotus was gone. The cavernous room that had first birthed her into this Tartarus was gone.
She was nowhere.
And here, beyond the veil of the Chaos Tear, there was nothing.
Was this a mercy? Some way of saving her, from the forces of destruction within the tear? A protection, from some far worse fate? Was it a punishment? A last little trick of the tail from the dead chaos god who had caused this mess to begin with?
Perhaps it meant nothing at all. Perhaps it was for nopony to really say or know.
She tried closing her eyes, and she found the darkness indistinguishable from the nothing.
Her beating heart calmed, slowly and laboriously. Actions, and consequences. She had thrust herself headlong into the throes of chaos, and she had known it might be the death of her. She had known it might not be, which had seemed even worse. And still, she had done it. Actions, consequences. Problems, and sacrifices. Life, and death. Life again. Death again. Forever. As it had been from the beginning, and as it would be forevermore. Hadn't that been what she had been created for?
Perhaps, she thought, she could sleep. She had an eternity to do so, now. It was all she had ever wanted, since she had first come into this world. Since she had kept on coming into it, again and again, to experience a life a little worse each time.
Perhaps, she thought, she might one day awake to something more than the forever of nothing at all.
Perhaps…
Well. She supposed there was no more to do, besides wait for a little while. She could keep the eternity of nothing beyond the Tear safe, so that the universe did not have to burden itself with it any longer.
And so, she waited.
And somewhere, outside of the nothing, the universe carried on.