//------------------------------// // End of Ponies - Chapter 24.5 - Original Dredgemane Ending // Story: Short Scraps and Explosions // by shortskirtsandexplosions //------------------------------// I did not want to write the Dredgemane arc of End of Ponies. As a matter of fact, I don't remember ever wanting to do so in the first place. It was Pinkie Pie's story, and Pinkie Pie is worst pony. She is. She totally is. Look at yourself in the mirror tonight, long after sunfall, when all of the shadows of your life fall lonesomely around you, and try and tell yourself--just try--that life lasts forever and Pinkie Pie is worth saying anything good about without suffering a nervous twitch to your brain muscles. For those of you who are still subscribed to me after that, keep in mind that I enjoy a good challenge in writing crap. And with Pinkie Pie being the crappiest cream of the crap, I knew I had to deliver in spite of myself. So, I decided that I would write an arc that would do two things: 1. Present a decidedly "un-Pinky" scenario 2. Make the story analyze Harmony instead of Pinkie. As part of that analysis, I thought of approaching all sorts of pretentious subject matter, such as Nietzschean ideas, existentialism, fatalism, and a whole bunch of other boring shiznet. Since Pinkie wasn't a good character to spout out humanistic psuedo-philosophy, I felt the need to have Harmony be the source of the story's thematic thought processes. To do that, I had her writing to the personification of death in her journal entries. But, like all attempts at quasi-awesome fiction, I needed to mix and mingle a bunch more themes in order to add to the orgy sponge of literature. One of those motifs was the idea of "falling," which was spouted a lot by the character of Brevis. The simplistic message was that to embrace death in pure lucidity and come out affirmative, a philosopher had to be mad, and that madness could be represented through "falling." I suppose you could say the piece of the lunatic moon shard carrying Ponymonium to earth was the first symbol of that... blah blah blah... but I knew--MONTHS in advance of even embarking upon the dreaded Pinkie Pie arc--I knew what I wanted to have as the blasted arc's last few lines. And towards the end of that year, after I had gathered attention, pre-readers, and a modicum of fans.... nobody got it. Nobody thought the ending was poignant. If anything, they found it confusing, redundant, and unnecessary. The one single reason I wrote 200,000+ words of Pinkie Pie annoying the utter crap out of the protagonist had fallen flat on its face. Needless to say, I was less than enthused. However, history had proven that listening to my editors had saved the integrity of the fic. So, in good faith, I removed most of the "falling" motif references. I then re-did the ending and forced a "bookends" structure with Scootaloo burying Fluttershy at the beginning of the arc and Fluttershy ripping off an Alan Moore joke before Pinkie Pie's grave to cap off the ending. I've had many people tell me since that the Dredgemane arc is the sparkling diamond of awesome in the rough boredom that is the entirety of End of Ponies. I wish I could share their appreciation for the arc, but the whole thing kind of leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I almost wish I could rewrite the ending back, but, y'know... marsupials are righteous for a reason. The lemur bows. The sunrise was indeed like a song, though Harmony was powerless to hear it. She sat at the dining table of the Pie Family household, clutching her head in two pained hooves, fighting yet another cloud of green flame like a fountain of acid surging through her Entropan frame. If she just stopped fighting, if she just gave in to the currents of reverse-time, she wouldn't be experiencing this agony. Still, she clung tightly to that blistering moment, hugging cohesion with as much fervor as she wished to be embracing a tiny golden filly etched forever into her bleeding memory. A bouncing of hooves awoke her to that wincing moment in time. She opened her eyes to a veritable sea of Blinkaphine's bright and colorful landscapes. A wall-eyed alligator was lying in the center of the table, curling into the crook of its stubby little tail. A bright pink shade was coming to a stop in front of Harmony, lying a tray full of sweets onto the table. “How would you like a cupcake, Har-Har?” Her anchor produced a bright, white smile. In just one blink, the time traveler could sum up the entire legacy of Pinkamena Diane Pie. “You must have built quite an appetite overnight! What, with all of that healing and speech-giving and tossing Alex into a burning pile of bits, but I totally forgive you for that last part! I think I'll get the rams to help me build a new Alex! Alex 2.0! This time, he’ll be backwards-compatible to yellow flame, that way I can roast marshmallows over him while healing ponies in the field! Heeheehee!” “Miss Pie...” Harmony glanced away from the cupcakes. Her copper ears twitched to hear a distant roar. The exultant night of Dredgemane had, as a matter of fact, never ended. Even with the advent of the bright morning, the citizens could still be heard celebrating the burning horizon of tomorrow, regardless of whether or not they knew what it was. They only knew what it wasn't. “Miss Pie, why do you always live in the present? Even now, you act as if... you act as if last night was just like any other night.” “Heeheehee! Isn't that the way it always is, Har-Har?” Pinkie smiled and smiled in jubilant intoxication. “Every day and every night is a blessed thing. All I've ever wanted to do, all Brevis has ever wanted, all the Bivs or Inkie or Blinkie or Mommy or Daddy or Gummy have ever wanted to do is wake up to just how happy and super another day spent alive is.” “Miss Pie...” Harmony fought the flames away to produce a somber face before her anchor. “You cried last night.” “And I laughed and I giggled and I danced—” “You...” The last pony softly reached a hoof across the table of bright drawings and rested it on her companion's limb. She gazed earnestly into her blue eyes. “You cried, Miss Pie. You cried like... like I've never seen anypony cry before, not even myself.” Pinkie Pie stared calmly at Harmony's hoof on hers. Something in the contact ushered a grave silence over her. Deep beneath it all, her smile never ended, though it certainly had become a soft, satin thing. “I...” Harmony bit her lip, tongued the inside of her copper cheek, and said, “I-I'm not going to give you some really depressing speech or something. I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't show sad emotions or what-crap. But... I-I was wondering if you could tell me...” She gulped and gazed painfully at the candy-colored filly. “C-Could you tell me what it felt like?” “Hmmm?” Pinkie's blue eyes blinked curiously. “Could you tell me what it felt like to cry?” “Heeheehee...” Pinkie Pie brought her other hoof up and patted the top of Harmony's limb. “Silly filly, of course you would know what it feels like.” “No.” Harmony shook her head. Her voice was a brief whimper in the blessed morning light that pierced the once-tomb of the Pie Family household. “No, I don't. I've done it so much for so long that I don't know what it feels like anymore. You and Brevis are always preaching about what it means to fall.” She shuddered. “I'm still waiting for my turn, Miss Pie, to transcend by descending, to madly open up the precious pieces of myself and let the doves fly out. It is something that I've yet to experience... and probably never will. But you? You have. So please, tell me. What was it like for you to cry?” She smiled painfully. “Because it must be just like laughing for me.” Pinkie's blue eyes fell back to the furthest recesses of her sockets. She gulped hard and murmured, “Well, Har-Har, I wish I could explain it. What's the reverse of a hiccup? What does it mean to sneeze with your eyes open? What's the sound of one hoof clapping...?” She paused after that last sentence, snorted, and broke into fresh giggles. “Snkkkt-hahaha.” She waved a pink hoof. “I'm... I-I'm sorry. I can't help myself.” Harmony exhaled long and hard. “No...” She smiled gently. “I suppose that you can't, Miss Pie.” “Could I... Uhm...” Pinkie Pie suddenly bit her lip and fidgeted where she stood in front of the table. “Could I ask you something, Har-Har? Though, I guess it really isn't a question. It's... Well...” “What is it?” Harmony leaned back, enjoying a brief spell from the mind-bending emerald flames. “I'm all ears.” “Well...” Pinkie gulped and gazed at her with glistening blue eyes. Her voice was suddenly a placid pond in the middle of the Grave of Consus. “Last night, when you were healing Suntrot...” She winced slightly. “Erm... when you almost lost her.” Another fidgeting, but then she bravely leaned forward. “You said something. You talked to someone.” Harmony stared back. She was silent as stone. “You said 'I friggin' hate you so much'. It... it kind of came out of nowhere, Har-Har. Even now, I can't get it out of my fluffy head...” The last pony looked away. Even if she wanted to clarify the previous night's outburst, she wasn't sure if her suddenly pounding heart would allow her. “You know... Uhm... I-I used to hate him too.” Harmony glanced up at that, her lips pursing. Pinkie Pie looked off into the far corners of the house and smiled bitter-sweetly, as if she was consoling a little foal immediately after chastising him. “But... But th-then I figured that he's... well, that's he's really lonely. He always has been. Lonely: that's all.” She looked up at Harmony, and when she did her eyes were piercing sapphires. “Death is the biggest invitation of all. Every pony receives the telegram, and we all have no choice but to RSVP.” She gently stroked the edges of the time traveler's hoof like a mother rubbing a bruise away. “I... I don't really know what is waiting for each and everyone of us when it is our time to die, where it is that we go, or if we'll ever see the ones we love and make promises to again.” She took a brave breath as she glanced lovingly at the space where Clyde used to sit. In a bold move, she brushed her limb across it and wiped a swath of dust away forever. “But wherever it is that death takes us, whenever he decides to do it...” She tilted her head aside with the softest of smiles. “...I intend to go there partying.” The last pony stared back, exhaling sharply. Scootaloo briefly wondered how she could make a eulogy for a funeral consisting entirely of dancing. “Now...” Pinkie smirked and slid the tray of frosted treats across the table to the copper pegasus. “How about putting some sugar in you, Harmony?” Her teeth glistened at the trail end of that address. “It might not make you laugh, but I promise it'll keep you from frowning.” Harmony's voice squeaked beneath a feather-soft grin. “Yes, Pinkie Pie. I would very much like to have one of your cupcakes.” I write to you not just because you're all I've ever had for a friend all these years. I write to you with faith—no—a hope, that you aren't nearly as cruel as I've envisioned you to be. Somewhere beyond the veil of your obsidian girth are all of my loved ones of the past. Though I've pierced the curtains of time to briefly visit them, it will be after piercing you that I finally join them. Maybe then they will tell me what happened after the fall of Dredgemane. Maybe then, in the warmth of all who've come and gone before me, my spirit will know of the legacy of smiles that filled the grave of that somber town where before there was nothing but shadow and darkness. Days after Harmony vanished from Dredgemane, the naked and bright townsponies were wasting no time. With buckets full of paint and mouths brimming with cheerful conversation, they scaled the glass panes behind the pulpit inside the Cathedral of Gultophine. One plate at a time, they re-stained the wings of the Alicorn Sister of life, returning the rainbow to her majesty. Far away, in the center of Town Square, Nurse Angel Cake smiled brightly and directed a gaggle of young foals as they climbed the wings of an alicorn statue and painted the granite lengths of it with no less an energetic ambition. They splotched their tiny faces and limbs with errant brushstrokes—sometimes by accident, at other times on purpose, accompanied by mischievous giggles, as hour by hour they returned a kaleidoscope of joy and warmth to the lengths of the town. The streets hustled and bustled not with cold clopping sounds, but instead with bright discussion, chortling gossip, and bright afternoon plans of levity and joy. Teenagers scampered down tight alleyways, the former guards having converted anet gun into a ball launcher as they played an outlandish rendition of “keepaway” through the many serpentine trenches and hiding places of the town. At streetsides and bricklaid corners, old bearded ponies communed with youthful equines as the elders taught the next generation how to play beautiful violin music—one string at a time—with an energetic tempo that chased away the melancholic ballads of yesteryear. At the far reaches of town, where the cobblestone met the granite stretches of the plateau, random citizens knelt down low with chisels and proceeded with removing the bricks, piece by piece, along with the names etched on them. One such brick was placed gently on the hearth of the Pie Family household. The name that was on it read “Clyde Sesame Pie”. Stepping back from lowering the scant memorial into place, Quarrington took a deep breath. The brick had a perceivable mahogany richness to it that complemented the cornucopia of colors that filled the light-drenched lengths of that room. Pearl Fleece Pie trotted up and nuzzled Quarrington. With a painful but toasty smile, Quarrington stroked her in return. After sharing a kiss, both parents stared lovingly at the name that had rejoined their home, basking in the warmth of the soul's memory and not in the bitter cold gap of its absence. What Dredgemane gave me was more than just a glimpse at the stars, more than just a way to close the chapter on my memories of Pinkie Pie. Dredgemane showed me what my existence means, for it brims with the essence of all of those ponies, including all of their imperfections, singing and screaming all their hopes and fears. There was no way that the legacy of ponydom could have been solely encompassed by my fitful and subjective little hammock-swaying dreams of the past. For several mesmerizing days, I trotted with them, frowned with them, smiled with them, suffered with them, and ultimately healed with them. Dredgemane has given me so much, and I can only hope—after I'm gone, in both the past and the future—that I have given them back as much as I could, for I will not be able to give all of Equestria the same extent of my blessings, no matter how much I try. Surrounded by a circle of deadpan rams in the center of a stone hut, Mister Irontail waved a complex blueprint. Gesturing toward his own tools, he began describing a magnificent obelisk made out of arcanium and affixed with a glistening jar of orange flame. He grinned long and hard, entreating the inner engineers within each and every one of them. The rams shared glances as they shared a unified voice. They murmured and ambivalently spun chanting circles of discourse upon the nature of Irontail's inquisition. Shuffling up in an obese wobble, Marble Cake suddenly stood at Irontail's bushy-tailed side. With a fluttering of her eyelashes, she not-so-shyly raised a gigantic white box full of bright pink taffy. In one fluid motion, the rams immediately snatched a chuckling Irontail's blueprint and set themselves to work. Deep in the mines of the Dredgemane quarry, a remarkable device had been embedded in the rocky flesh of a lantern-lit tunnel. It was a black obelisk fashioned out of arcanium. Two thunderpearls sparked at the top of its structure, and in the center was a grand fishbowl-shaped container of orange flame. Several miners worked and labored steadily around the device, piercing the earth deeper and deeper for valuable resources. Suddenly, the orange flame burned with a brighter strobe than normal. This triggered the two thunderpearls which immediately sparked life into a pair of rattling bells. At the sound of the shrill alarm, the ponies immediately stopped what they were doing. Infernite was nearby. Under the cries of a monitoring overseer, the workers filed off in an orderly fashion. Every single one of them made it to the elevator long before the deadly dust even breached the walls of the abandoned shaft. Above the quarry, there were no longer shuffling lines of lifeless, soot-stained workers. Where solid trains of ponies once slaved under heavy loads of dredged rock like swarming ants, off-duty laborers chatted and waited for their turn to enter the mines. The air above the wounded land coalesced into an atmosphere of levity, punctuated by random laughs and riveting stories while young teenagers hired by Marble Cake's bakery navigated the steep landscape, offering refreshments to the Dredgemaners in-between their breaks. Atop the scaffold overlooking the continuous industry, several overseers—instead of just one—unanimously directed the current leg of mining operations. As they flipped through the latest spreadsheets of profit earnings, their progress was dwarfed by the legacy of Sladeburn before them, but the casualties had reached an all-time low, in that there was nothing joyously lower than “zero”. Several lanterns were lit brightly, filling the Council chamber with an illumination the likes of which the place had never witnessed in years. A former guard and his little brother shuffled from lantern to lantern, brightening the place even further as a nodding Quarrington mouthed his approval. Turning, bearing a grin, Pinkie's father sauntered over towards the table of fellow Council members. Taking his seat, Quarrington proceeded to carry the topic of the meeting into the latest of the town's many necessities. As the city’s representatives deliberated, they paused and swiveled to face the rest of the building's interior where a large audience of Dredgemaners from all walks of life had gathered. The townsponies asked to share their input, as well as their smiles. It is so daring, so brash, so fitfully frightening to be alive. It means smiling in the face of oblivion. It means galloping at full force when you know that a cliff is waiting for you at the end of of the next bend in the road. It takes a mad euphoria—an insane whimsy to be so courageous when all of the darkness around us begs that we accept defeat. To do anything but roll over is to be absurd, like chasing the rainbow, or performing the “running of the leaves” in July... in a town that has no living trees.. “On your mark, get set, go!” Vedic Dawnhoof shouted, his horn telekinetically firing a confetti cannon at his side. Under an explosive wave of squealing giggles, dozens upon dozens of brightly-coated foals stampeded down the longest trench in Dredgemane, skirting past Town Square, curving around to brush past Marble End. On all sides of them, lining the curbs and street corners of town, happy parents and shouting teenagers cheered and whistled and urged the racing little children on. “Remember!” Dawnhoof chuckled and waved a hoof towards the stampeding herd of healed youth. “It's only a race! 'Competition is the spice of life, so long as it remains a spice'. So it is written in Gultophine's holy Chronicles!” A low, squeaking noise rolled up to the young cleric-in-training's mark-less flank. “G-Good Vedic...?” Dawnhoof spun about. He blinked his chestnut eyes and smiled while murmuring under the roar of cheering citizens. “I wouldn't exactly call myself a 'good vedic', Mayor, sir. But, like everyone, I intend to improve myself.” Haymane smiled gently, gazing in a soft exhale towards the many bright and scampering youngsters filling the streets beyond. “Such is the aim of progress... of true progress. It's remarkable how easily one can forget what's important to him after every piece of his heart has convinced him that it's worth discarding like the ashes of yesterday.” His nostrils flared. “I am tired of living in yesterday...” “Mayor Haymane...?” Vedic Dawnhoof narrowed his eyes curiously. “I was wondering...” Haymane gulped hard and humbly murmured, “If you can help me learn to embrace tomorrow.” He stared up with glistening eyes. “If you could teach me something about... the joy of Gultophine's Spirit, dear Counselor...” The elder's lips curved with something resembling hope. The young unicorn smiled gently. “I would be honored, sir, to learn about joy with you.” Several hoots and whistles lit the air of the saloon as Pepper Plots emerged from behind the stage's velvet curtains, one saucy leg at a time. When she finally came out onto the naked lengths of the platform, she was covered in a burlap recreation of a pale unicorn's priestly robes. She wagged her eyebrows goofily. The room broke into roaring laughter, then into a playful meteor shower of boos and hisses. A mustached bartender briefly worked a piano at the edge of the establishment and rattled a series of high notes to punctuate the sight gag. “Did you handsome boys really think that this was Ravishing Pepper Plot's new summer fashion choice?” She bucked a gartered hoof backwards from under the burlap sack and winked. “Puhhhh-lease! I've been a Biv! I know a thing or two about flair!” She sashayed up to the edge of the stage in a dancing canter as the piano music accompanied her playful hoofsteps before the locked gazes of everypony in the crowd. “An adorable hunk of a stallion who may or may not be called Nicky-Wicky once asked me if I was going to leave for the City of Equestrian Love.” She giggled like a schoolfilly. “You wanna know what I told him? I said, 'Well, sugah, it may be sunny in Fillydelphia...'” With one shrug of her shoulders, the burlap bag unfurled, and she struck a saucy pose in a flamboyant gown laced from top to bottom with all the colors of the spectrum, accentuating enough curves to send several inebriated patrons fainting to the floor with smiles plastered across their drunken faces. In answer to many whistles and cat-calls, Pepper winked a painted eyelash as she stuck a hoof into her scarlet mane. “'...but Dredgemane is the one happening town where the rainbow both begins and ends.'” “That's right, young ones,” a strong voice echoed across the sun-kissed lengths of a concrete schoolyard. Several dozen teenage Dredgemaners sat out in the open with pen and parchment as an orange unicorn paced in front of them. Wearing three prismatic ribbons across the breast pocket of his black jacket—where an alcohol canteen had once rested—Vimbert shuffled to a stop and smirked sharply at them. “Today, we're going to learn about the Siege of Whinniepeg, one of my most favorite topics of the Celestial Civil War.” One filly raised her hand. “Yes, you in the fancy see-through dress.” Giggles lit the air. The filly blushed, her naked coat just as gloriously exposed as all the other young ponies around her. “Ahem, Mister Vimbert, sir—” “That's Professor Vimbert, young lady,” he said, pointing a hoof. His orange face brightened under a shattered horn as he smirked at her. “Don't worry, when you yourself finally go through eight years of doctorate courses, you can try to be as pretentiously awesome and handsome as me. I wish you luck with one of those more than the other.” More chuckles. The filly smiled and nodded. “Very well, Professor Vimbert. Ahem. But could we talk a bit about what just happened here a few weeks ago? I mean, Dredgemane is gonna make history too, right?” Several more teens around her murmured and nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “Mmm... But that's just the thing. The Siege of Whinniepeg was very similar to what happened in this very town. It was a night that tried the souls of ponies—both those swearing allegiance to Luna as well as those fighting for Celestia. Nopony was the same the day after the siege as they were the night before. It's amazing how swiftly a single event can transform an entire city—if not an entire nation, practically overnight.” “B-But didn't most if not all the Lunar Republicans die during the Siege of Whinniepeg?” a teenage colt exclaimed out of turn. “Yeesh, am I or am I not the teacher here?!” Vimbert shrugged. Under a cadence of chuckles, he paced, pointed, and spoke, “And it's 'Lunar Imperialists' from here on out, got it? Ahem. Yes, most of the defenders of Whinniepeg perished. But tell me, oh young and infinitely invincible youths... what pony soul doesn't perish in the end?” He paused and smiled warmly. “Who among them is lucky enough to be present, if even for a burning second, at an infinitesimally righteous and soul-cleansing moment in time, the likes of which history may reenact but can never exactly reproduce the beauty of? Written records exist to remind us of the glories of the past, but they also exist to remind us that...” A happy breath escaped the former janitor's lips. “...That even more glorious nights are to come and surprise us, like the Fall of Dredgemane, a song fit for the ages.” The teenagers murmured and smiled excitedly amongst one another. They leaned forward with sudden anticipation of the lecture about to transpire. “Yes... The Siege of Whinniepeg...” Vimbert leaned back and folded his forelimbs. “It all started with the execution of Starswirl the Bearded, Sorceror of Equestrian Legend, who spouted the famous words...” He stared off into the colorful lengths of Dredgemane, like the prismatic refraction of tomorrow's horizon, and it was a beautiful thing. “'So it is the world began, and so it is the world shall end.'” “Why?! Goodly Brevis will tell you why!” The naked blue mule limped and half-danced his way across a cobblestone expanse at the edge of town. This time, Brevis' rambling words weren't falling on deaf ears. A thick crowd of citizens had gathered before him—even in the middle of their wagon-pulling business—to grace him with curiosity and wonder. He reveled in the faces of the living and breathing audience. “She would not let it end! She smiled and smiled on forever! It was what she only ever tried to do! It was what she was born to do!” He jumped with his one good leg, grabbed a lamppost, spun around the length of it, and hung an upside-down grin full of yellow teeth and silver fillings. “And soon Dredgemane would be born again under the cadence of her giggles, rowing oars of blind and daring faith across the churning rapids of a frothy, frightening tomorrow! It was hope that brought us to such chaotic tributaries, hope that we too might transcend as she had! For she found the rainbow when it was but a speck in a power hungry miscreant's frown! She gave birth to the Royal Grand Biv when the militia planted armor on so many children like funeral veils! She was a mother to all smiles, a harbinger of all happiness, and I am not even fit to wear her horseshoes! Why?! The truth is simple, my good Equestrians!” He dismounted from the lamppost, backflipped, and landed with a slide before tossing a mad grin over his smelly shoulder. “She saw the bright shinies!” I was not the messiah of Dredgemane. Far from it. I was an observer, a chronicler. It is not Gultophine's scripture that I write, but the record of a pony who's too busy bouncing, too busy laughing, too busy enjoying life to slow it down by putting hoof to pen. I might be able to bring the Sun and Moon back to the Wasteland. I will never be lucky enough to bring back Pinkie Pie, like she had brought herself back to Dredgemane so many times on her lonesome, like she had raptured them all faithfully with the mere curve of her lips, rendering them numb and impressionable before an eternity of bright opportunity... and sugar... It was halfway through biting into a cupcake when a shadow stretched over Harmony. She and her anchor glanced up from the dining room table of the farmhouse. Quarrington and Pearl Pie stood side by side, bathed in the light of morning. Their voices were laced with humble breaths as they spoke to the Canterlotlian in Entropan skin. “Miss Harmony, you have... you have been a dear blessing to this household, in ways that we can't even pretend to describe.” “We hardly know where you come from, or what brought you here to begin with. After all that's happened in Dredgemane, there's just as much confusion as there is joy.” “All we know, Miss Harmony, is that we owe you... This entire family owes you so much, and we forever offer our grace and love to you, if it can somehow properly thank you for entering our lives...” The time traveler took a deep breath. She fought a frothing wave of green flame to give the two parents the smile they deserved. “I don't think I can explain myself any more than you can guess...” She winced at her own words, shrugged, and murmured on, “But I'm glad that I somehow did something that helped you smile...” She glanced at her anchor. “Though I think you would have had no problem finding that smile on your own.” “Miss Harmony, I mean this with supreme conviction.” Quarrington shuffled over and rested a hoof on her copper shoulder. “I am dearly sorry for the words I said to you in my anger and blindness. If there is something—anything I can do, as a favor to you or the Court of Canterlot—I wish to do whatever it takes.” “That's quite nice of you, Mister Pie. But I wouldn't worry about it. Seriously—” A pink hoof suddenly kicked Harmony viciously from under the table. “Ow.” The avatar of Princess Entropa hissed through clenched teeth. “What the frig?” She frowned across the table. Pinkie Pie hissed, made a face, and charaded a “telescope” with two hooves stretched above one squinting eye. Harmony blinked. Her amber eyes fell to a series of crayon-dotted constellations lying on a pile of sheets in the corner of the table. A smile slowly crept across her features. “Ahem... Come to think of it...” She glanced up at the two adults. “There is a favor you can do for me. But... be warned, it's a tad bit kaizo.” “'Kaizo?'” Harmony fluttered in mid-air. Squinting through one eye, she held a “frame” before her vision with a pair of perpendicular hooves. “Hmmm... Alright!” She grinned wickedly and lowered herself to the rocky earth. “I think that's about perfect.” “Do you think we've gone too far?” Zecora asked, lowering a pair of dusty chisels in her grasp. “Or does it deserve at least one more star?” “It's the night's sky, Miss Zecora.” Harmony smirked in response. “Let the heavens decide what needs or doesn't need to be added.” She stood before a wide stretch of mountainous stone that rose above the northwestern reaches of the Pie Family's rock fields. With the utilization of a plethora of metal tools and several wooden lattices, Zecora, Pinkie, Inkessa, Blinkaphine, and Quarrington finished chiseling a basic layer of constellation designs across the smooth rock face, using the pegasus' many crayon star charts as one grand blueprint. “Whew...” Inkessa brushed the dust out of her mane as she stood back from the sculpted masterpiece. “Now I know why I really chose a nursing career. I'm not built with traditional Dredgemane mining blood.” “Where will you go now that Stonehaven is being mothballed?” “It isn't being mothballed.” Inkessa slyly smirked. “This town is always going to need a hospital. Besides, Nurse Angel Cake is still going to need my assistance with helping the foals you healed find new homes—the orphans, at least.” “I'm already writing a letter to Rarity back home in Ponyville! Heehee!” Pinkie Pie bounced cheerfully before the fresh granite mural of cosmic proportion. “She's good at all of that awesome foster home stuff!” “Y-Yeah...” Harmony briefly shuddered. “'Awesome...'” “I too intend to stay as long as I'm needed to assist in blooming what Harmony has seeded,” Zecora murmured with a bright smile. “Never before in my life has the laughter of foals endeared me to so many precious souls. Inkessa, with your permission, I wish to help Angel Cake's plan reach fruition.” “We would love to have your wisdom and tenacity at our side, Miss Zecora.” Inkessa smiled. “Hocus pocus or not.” The zebra chuckled, eliciting a giggle from the other fillies surrounding the site. Quarrington suddenly cleared his throat and motioned with a nervous hoof. “Uhm... About the big rock...” “Yes! The question of the Fourth Age!” Harmony spun and gestured at the grand array of dots, swirls, and cosmic bands etched with shallow ease before the wall. “'What to do with the big dumb rock.' Well, the fact of the matter is, it needs a finishing touch... Or in this case, Gultophine's blessing.” Clearing her throat, the copper pegasus turned about. “Dear Vedic...?” Dawnhoof sauntered into the group. “I was beginning to wonder when I would be needed.” He aimed his horn at the illustrations across the great wall. “You simply need me to make it all deeper?” “Yes, handsome,” Pinkie Pie whispered hoarsely as she leaned in. “Har-Har wants you to go deeper—” A copper hoof slapped across the back of her mane. “Owie! Heeheehee! Watch where you swing that hydra hammer of yours!” “The sooner the better, Vedic,” the scavenger from the future muttered through a brief migraine of green flame. “Stole the words right out of my mouth, Miss Harmony.” Dawnhoof tensed his features, concentrated, and channeled a stream of energy straight out his horn. A bright glow filled the many swirling lines and dots of the wall as the unicorn's metallurgical talent bore the shallow lines deeper, etching a permanent star map into the bosom of the granite plateau, forever blemishing the Grave of Consus. Quarrington whistled at the end of the shimmering job. “Well, I find it highly perplexing, but rather striking in its own right.” He smirked towards the young ponies around him. “It'll give us something interesting to look at as we harvest the west fields, at least. Somehow, I doubt that this is the last work of fancy art to dot the walls of Dredgemane these days.” “Do forgive me if I-I forsake such creative endeavors for a day of scriptural study,” a sweating, exhausted unicorn managed to say. He took a deep breath and spoke with a weathered smile. “If only writing a sermon was as strenuous as carving into a mountain, I might never run out of exercise.” “I guess in your case, dear Vedic...” Harmony winked. “...It's the thought that counts.” “I think it looks very pretty,” a voice said, aimed at the cosmic mural. “Why, thank you very much, Blinkaphine,” Harmony said. “Though, I was focusing more on scientific accuracy than aesthetic quality—” She went Ditzy-eyed in mid-sentence. She flashed a look over her shoulder. The quiet filly with a white-white mane was walking away with Inkessa and Zecora in tow. Quarrington smirked, shrugged, and trotted after them. “Hmmm...” Harmony exhaled through gently flaring nostrils. “Naturally a pony with a rocket on her butt would appreciate stars.” “That's something I'm going to have to get used to...” Harmony glanced over at the young unicorn. “What's that?” The Vedic blushed slightly and smirked. “As long as I've been in the order, it's been under the stern gaze of Breathstar. Living in a town that no longer enforces a dress code is going to be a brave new world, not to mention a slightly embarassing one.” He fidgeted slightly, but bravely uttered, “All this time, I've relied on the Spirit of Gultophine to make intuitive judgments about ponies' souls. Now, with everypony's cutie mark exposed... I stand to be distracted. Erm... Wh-What I m-mean to say is, it's so very easy to hold weight in what is or what is not emblazoned across the coats that Gultophine gave us. I never wanted to be clouded by such superficiality.” “Trust me, I know a thing or two about obsessing over cutie marks, and you couldn't be any further from the truth.” She paused, glanced at him for a brief span of seconds, then softly smiled. “If I may be so bold, dear Vedic, I think you have the most spectacular cutie mark in all of Dredgemane.” “I do?” He gave her a crooked glance. He looked briefly at the seared skin of his flank and smirked pathetically back towards her. “Miss Harmony, is Pinkamena aware of your blatant sarcasm?” “No sarcasm at all!” Harmony grinned gently. “What it means to me is that you've lived through flames—self-imposed or not—and you made your destiny for yourself. You are talented beyond compare, Vedic Dawnhoof, because it is a talent that you discovered for yourself, all the while pursuing boundless altruism. That's an inspiration that... that I will certainly take with me wherever I happen to go...” Dawnhoof smiled. He gulped and glanced nervously aside as a part of him came out through his lips in an off-key murmur. “I am... enraptured that you would want to hold a piece of my spirit dear to you, M-Miss Harmony.” The copper pegasus sighed dreamily. Just then, her wings shot up. With an exasperated groan, she rolled her eyes. “Dang it, Miss Pie!” She spun around, snarling. “How many times have I told you to stop—?!” She froze, blinking. Pinkie Pie was twenty meters away, chatting with Zecora and Inkessa. She saw Harmony from afar and waved excitedly before pumping a victorious hoof through the air. Harmony very hideously, very deeply blushed before the priest-in-training. “Uhmmm...” She gnawed on her lip and slowly, stiffly coiled her wings back by her side. “Eh heh... I don't suppose you're ordained enough to hear confessionals, huh?” “In a decade or so...” Dawnhoof very sweetly smiled and nodded. “I'll be here, where Gultophine’s Spirit needs me.” “Yeah... Well... I only know so much about Gultophine's Spirit.” Harmony kicked limply at the earth, bathing it with the ashes of her mind. “I will... I-I will have you in my thoughts, good Vedic,” she murmured in a sullen, cold tone. “Where I will be going.” “As you will be in mine.” He reached over and patted her copper shoulder, leading her away from the mural and towards the Pie family house. “Would you like to join me for a snack and philosophical discussion? Pinkamena spoke something of sampling her 'Supernova Sarsaparilla'.” “Awww Celestia dang it.” “Miss Harmony...” “Ahem. Hail Gultophine.” I am more than the end of ponies. I am more than that which can be determined by beginning and endings, or even by you. I am an amazing, miraculous, and tragically precious phenomenon, like so many other phenomena that pranced across the world on wings and hooves before me. The Cataclysm may have taken lives, but it couldn't touch Life itself. Even if all the written and spoken history of ponydom perishes along with me, the Wastelands cannot undo the fact that there ever once was a ponydom, that there ever once was a reason to smile and bask in the warmth of existence, that there was ever once a need to do something as delightfully mad as this experiment that I began. And it is an experiment that I shall end, if not by Gultophine's Grace, than by my own. The most of what I can afford is the best that I can afford, because I am more than the last pony. I am alive. -End of entry. “For what it's worth...” Pinkie Pie flung a paper airplane and glanced aside. “What was that, Har-Har?” The pegasus sighed, battling the worst of green flaming headaches yet as she sat on the wooden patio of the Pie Family house, looking out over the dead granite plateau. “I just can't stop thinking...” “Pfft... Flippin' duh! Heeheehee!” “Seriously... Everything I've done... Everything we've done...” Harmony winced, gulped, and murmured. “Even after we healed all of those foals, what is the point? They will only die another day. It might come weeks from now. It might come...” The time traveler lisped halfway through the sentence, winced, and daringly uttered, “It might come weeks from now. Every pony must someday die. What does it matter if their life is extended by minutes, months, or millennia?” “Hmmm...” Pinkie Pie reached a hoof over and petted the green scales of a belly-rolling alligator beside her before folding another paper airplane. “Life is a party, and a very short one at that. If we don't enjoy it for what it's worth, Har-Har, then the joke is on us!” She flung the white craft up into the air and followed it with a bright grin. “ I only ever wanted to laugh with life, not at it. Heeheehee...” The time traveler blinked. “It's that simple, huh?” “Hmmm... Who ever said anything about 'simple'?” Harmony stared into the horizon of nothingness. Slowly, she stood up. With her bright anchor watching, the copper pegasus walked away from the house in the center of the field of rocks. Her eyes flickered the brightest emerald yet as she spread her wings, took a few bounding trots, and broke into a sharp flight, climbing high into the misty air over the Grave of Consus. Pinkamena Diane Pie sat alone on the threshhold of her home, watching the departure of her close friend. As she stared, a gasp flew through her candy-colored frame. She glanced down to witness that her tail was twitching, twitching like it had never twitched before. She blinked at the sight, then a slow and warm smile crossed her lips as she gazed up once more at the distant copper speck. “Way to go, Har-Har. Thatta girl.” ~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Harmony flew and flew, ascending through the cloudy Equestrian past, using a brave and immutable frown as her piercing bow. The sparkling green flame in her amber eyes spread across her face in emerald tears, until her vision fused with a sparkling cone of reverse-time forming around the tip of her arrowhead body. She gritted her teeth and flew harder into the timestream, fighting against the laws of Princess Entropa. When she broke through, it was with a chronotonic boom of strobing fury. The burning green flames shot across the lengths of Twilight Sparkle's basement, startling a giant purple dragon so that he nearly dropped the Lunar book in his scaled grasp. “Good grief! Scootaloo, you're finally back, child! How did it go—?” The last pony ignored him. She didn't even decelerate for an instant. In a brilliant brown blur, she soared straight up the length of the cavernous laboratory and veritably smashed through the door leading to the hollow treehouse above. “Scootaloo?!” Spike stammered. The violet pendant around his neck shimmered from the pegasus’ green smoke trail as he stumbled across the laboratory and gazed after her. “Where are you going?!” The aged dragon blinked his slitted eyes, then produced a proud, iron-wrought smile as a deep, fuming chuckle thundered through his bass throat. “Heheheh... so random.” ~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Scootaloo flew. She flew up and out the body of the late Twilight Sparkle's library. She flew high above the branches and the balconies of the structure. She flew high above the rooftops and spires and crumbling buildingtops of Ponyville's ruins. Brown wings flapping in earnest, the last pony flew up through the falling snow of the Wasteland. She pierced the cold mist and the lifeless ash of the deathly gray sky, her scarlet eyes tearing from the frigidly mad climb. She flew and flew until her frail body broke through the clouds, penetrating the heights of the dead planet-sphere faster than any conventional zeppelin or battlecruiser or hovercraft ever could. She soared and she soared and she challenged gravity, angrily and fitfully, until she broke free of the roof of the world. There, in the coldest of cold reaches, bathed in dismal dead twilight, Scootaloo hovered, the lone skeletal pegasus of the Fourth Age. She stared out into an endless world devoid of life, where a froth of stone-gray overcast danced limply beneath a reflective haze of veiled stars. All was nothing but nothing, an infinite expanse of obscurity, mayhem, and abysmal chaos, and yet Scootaloo was a single burning speck floating amidst the frozen cauldron of this unholy universe. She was tinkled pink to realize that it all revolved around her, and yet it didn't. “Heh.” It came out of her at first like a sneeze, but the repetition was venomously deliberate. “Heh heh... Heheheheheh...” Scootaloo's laughter was as endless as her smile, a vaporous and mad exhalation. “It's all so friggin' hilarious.” And her eyes rolled back as her body rolled back. And she fell.