The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Everdaring

        “Scootaloo, are you feeling alright?”

        “Hmm? What?”

        “I was asking if you were feeling alr—”

        “Oh! Oh, yeah. Ahem. I'm just fine, Fluttershy,” Scootaloo murmured as she fought brief dizziness and squatted on folded hooves before the fireplace of the caretaker's cottage living room. Outside, the world grew dimmer and dimmer beneath the cascading hush of the rainstorm's silk screen. “Why are you asking?”

        “You looked a little dizzy as you were coming out of the washroom.”

        “Oh—Pffft. It's nothing.” The foal waved with a smirk. “I'm just not used to being inside.” She took a breath, winced, and jerkingly added, “Inside of such a long rainstorm, I mean! It's almost like the weather fliers are dumping an entire friggin' ocean on top of us.”

        “I was beginning to think that it was quite the deluge myself.” Fluttershy nodded. “The last time I... erhm... remember the other pegasi arranging such a surprisingly intense thunderstorm was a little over a year ago when Twilight Sparkle first came to Ponyville.”

        “Hey, I think I remember Apple Bloom telling me about that one.” Scootaloo managed a tiny smirk. “Something to do with Applejack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, and a tree stuck inside a tree.”

        “Uhmm... Perhaps you're right. In all honesty, the finer details are rather lost to me.”

        “Could you imagine a tree standing inside a tree? That'd be like—I dunno—'tree squared' or something.”

        “I wouldn't want to be that tree.”

        Scootaloo smirked and gazed towards the flickering orange tongues within the fireplace. “A storm like this could wash away all of the dirt and grime from Ponyville.”

        “I wasn't aware that Ponyville had much dirt and grime. I thought the mayor had done a decent job of keeping it clean.”

        “Believe me,” Scootaloo murmured into the death of shadows before her. “There're filthy places in this town.”

        “Oh... Uhm... Okay...” Fluttershy fidgeted.

        Scootaloo fidgeted. A chunk of firewood sizzled brightly before her, splitting and collapsing into hot white clumps of ash, like brittle charcoal, or two ivory stones. “Fluttershy?”

        “Yes, Scootaloo?”

        “You don't think the rainstorm would wash away the memorial, do you?”

        “Hmmm?” The caretaker's blue eyes blinked. Then she raised her eyebrows. “Oh, do you mean the site at Everclear?”

        Scootaloo slowly nodded, her pink mane facing the yellow pegasus.

        “I highly doubt it,” Fluttershy said. With a gentle smile she spoke, “That place was built to stand the test of time. It is a site that's dedicated towards the preservation of memories, as well as the honor that's forever connected to them. Nopony in their right mind would let such a location fall to ruin just because of a day or two's inclement weather.”

        “Is that what a memorial is, then, Fluttershy?”

        “Hmm?”

        Scootaloo gulped. “Something that lasts forever...?”

        The answer that followed was cold enough to snuff out the flames, but somehow the filly wasn't disheartened. The entire time, her violet eyes were locked onto the ashes.

        “Nothing lasts forever, Scootaloo. But so long as everypony is committed to a memory, the treasures that make life special will last as long as we do. Could we ever ask for more?”

        Scootaloo exhaled hard. “Yeah. We could ask for more.” She propped her chin down onto her hooves. “But I think most of us know better.”

        “I've always believed that the key to happiness is to give more than to ask.”

        “Does this have something to do with the element of 'Kindness' which you believe so much in?”

        “I was going to say that it's the reason why I volunteer at the Memorial, Scootaloo.”

        “But if nothing lasts forever, what's the point?”

        “Because kindness is like a memory. If we sit and do nothing, all that is good and honorable about us will fade away. So, as you can see, Scootaloo, forever is always 'now.' If we just work on what's before us 'now,' in faith and in kindness, then—indeed—what point is there in fretting about the end of all things?”

        Scootaloo took a deep breath. For the life of her, the flightless pegasus couldn't summon an answer, because...

        ...she was too busy staring at Dinky's writhing form. The petite unicorn's eyes glowed a bright ivory that rivaled the pulsating madness centered inside her quivering horn. She was being laid down on a plush green seat located towards the far end of the living room. A series of wooden steps stretched behind her, and with ghostly quiet creaks a shade of orange was wafting hazily down.

        The last pony hissed and clenched her eyes shut. Rubbing a hoof over her copper face, Harmony blinked and refocused in time to see a shivering gray pegasus wrapping a blanket over the unicorn's body, struggling to hold the foal's convulsing limbs still.

        “Mmmnghh... Alabaster rivers meandering!” Dinky rambled madly, hissing through clenched teeth as her brow furrowed like it was being fed through a vice. “Rotating blades upon the score! I cannot... c-cannot touch the one iris in alicornia, alertedly!”

        “My poor poor Muffin,” Derpy shuddered, tears forming in her offset yellow eyes as she nuzzled the girl's mane, risking blindness from the unicorn's white hot horn. “What is she tr-tr-tr-tr-trying to tell us?”

        “I don't believe she even knows what she's trying to tell us, Miss Hooves,” Fluttershy said in a forlorn breath as she rushed back and forth across the cottage. Her mane danced like a billowing pink flag as she scooped several herbs from a multitude of jars and poured a medicinal quaff out of the combined ingredients. “She's suffering from aphasia.”

        “What's aph-ph-ph-ph... What's aphas-s-s-s-s—?”

        “It means that she cannot properly process her words into decipherable speech,” Fluttershy said in a pitying grimace as she concentrated on the mixture in front of her. “Right now, her mind is scrambling with the force of several hundreds—if not thousands—of leylines converging on her cranium. Her horn has become a receptacle for countless magical auras, from this world and beyond. Nopony's mind is built to handle the sheer amount of information that is coursing through her.”

        “And this is all because a space baby was shot into her?” Derpy asked with a quivering look of horror.

        “Miss Harmony and I were taking care of a dying Capricorn. The creature was with child, and with its dying breath the mother discharged the essence of its infant in the form of energy. Dinky's horn was the only thing within range that the late Capricorn sensed was capable of housing magic. Ohhhhh...” Fluttershy slumped in the middle of her medicine gathering and hung her pink head. Wells of tears formed in her eyes as she shuddered to say, “It's all my fault! I was so preoccupied with caring for that poor suffering creature! I completely forgot that you and your daughter would be coming so early this morning! And now, because I was weak and narrow-minded, Dinky is going to... She's going to—”

        “Miss Fluttershy,” Harmony suddenly spoke as she planted two strong forelimbs on the yellow pegasus' shoulder. “Just work on what's before us now. Finish making the medicine that Dinky needs. Let's all approach these issues one at a time—“

        “One at a time?” Derpy gasped. “My poor Muffin is dying!”

        “Miss Hooves, your kid is not dying—”

        “But earlier! Outside the manger! Miss Fluttershy said—!”

        “I'm sure we all know what Miss Fluttershy said!” Harmony growled, reeling on her haunches as if she was piloting the center of a hurricane laced with a unicorn's anguished cries. Fighting the brief dizziness, she stared into the foal's glow and said, “But one thing at a time, alright? You want us to fix this, then let us fix this—Nebula dang it!—Just let me think!”

        The cottage rang with the rattling concussion of Harmony's shouting voice. Derpy shivered. Fluttershy silently finished the broth. All the while, Dinky's moans filled the rustic place with a deep undercurrent of agony.

        Harmony exhaled strongly through her nostrils. She dug two copper hooves through the length of her amber-streaked mane until her anguished breath was finished and she mechanically groaned, “Okay. Okay... Okay, so here we've got a unicorn with a giant cosmic fish-goat baby thingy trapped inside her horn. Yes, that sucks, but if it got into her, then it can get out of her. This is Equestria, land of an Alicorn Princess who raises the Sun by the mere whim of her hooves. Not a single one of us can swing a dead cat without running into something magical of some sort or another in this land. So—nopony panic! There's gotta be a solution to this, through sheer statistical probability if nothing else what-so-friggin'-ever.”

        “The medicine's ready,” Fluttershy quietly said.

        Harmony nodded. “Good. Give it to the kid.”

        Derpy shuffled aside as Fluttershy rushed forward on sliding hooves, squatting directly in front of the green bed upon which the unicorn twitched and stirred. “Okay, Dinky. Listen to your babysitter, Fluttershy.” She held out a sloshing wooden dish of soupy liquid. “This will help you to—”

        “Nnnngh! Avian glass eye! The splitting black stare, sky slicing!” Dinky shrieked, her horn flickering hot white bursts of plasma across the room. “Hncnkkt—Punish the flock, meteorologically!”

        Fluttershy jumped, nearly dropping the rattling dish as she simultaneously fought to contain her tears. After a stifled whimper, she flashed a desperate look at the mailpony. “If you would hold her down...”

        Derpy nodded. With two motherly limbs, she steadied Dinky's shoulders while Fluttershy leaned in and poured a liberal amount of the herb-laden juice down the unicorn's mouth. Dinky's muttering lips paused long enough for her to swallow two or three gulps of the broth. Then, with a painful grimace, the foal coughed and sputtered, but ultimately squirmed with slightly less violent spasms.

        “That's enough for now,” Fluttershy exhaled in a soft, melodic voice. She stood up and planted the half-empty jar onto a nearby stool. “It should ease some of the pain that she's experiencing in her head right now.”

        “Ease her p-p-p-p-pain?” Derpy stammered. “Miss Fluttershy, we gotta get my Muffin healed!”

        “There is no tool nor remedy in my cottage that can do that, Miss Hooves—”

        “Then we need to take her somewhere else so she can get better!”

        “I know, but there's no—”

        “She's suffering and I hate to see her suffer!”

        “Listen!” Harmony growled with her hooves raised. An errant beam of plasma danced across the cottage, glinting in the copper pegasus' amber eyes. She squinted and dodged her head to avoid the glare from Dinky's horn. “Fluttershy has a point. This is out of our hooves.” She breather, her voice descending to a calmer tone. “Thank you, by the way, for the medicine. She's looking better already.”

        “I can only hope—”

        “But she's st-st-st-st-still squirming and—”

        “Now...” Harmony's voice once more consumed the volume of the room. She spoke slowly and steadily over the distant moans of the glowing foal. “We've got a town full of ponies just a brisk trot away who might be able to help us. A unicorn, perhaps? How about Twilight Sparkle? I hear she's the friggin' star pupil to a Goddess, is she not? Right there, beyond the hill, is Ponyville's and Princess Celestia's chief apprentice in the magic arts. Sounds like the best expert on freaky-glowy horns, in my book.”

        “B-but Miss Harmony!” Fluttershy exclaimed. “I don't think—”

        “But that's just one smart pony in an entire town!” Derpy interjected. “Why can't we fly my Muffin to Cloudsdale? I know there are hundreds of doctors and medical experts in the City Council at any given time of day!”

        “That's not going to—” Fluttershy squeaked to say something.

        “I've got a better idea!” Harmony pointed with a hoof. “We're all pegasi. Between the three of us—” Her amber eyes were stabbed once more with a random beam of plasma from Dinky's horn. Growling, she shifted where she stood and continued speaking, “We can fly Dinky all the way to Canterlot in a blink! It doesn't take a Court's Clerk like me to tell you that there's no better place in all of Equestria to solve a magical crisis!”

        “Please! If you both would just—!”

        “No way!” Derpy gasped. “I fly routes to Canterlot regularly! Even at m-m-m-m-mailpony speeds, it takes over an hour to get there!”

        “Then we go into Ponyville and find a pegasus faster than the three of us combined and have her take Dinky to proper care!” Harmony shivered upon the sudden, blood-rushing thought. “Do I even need to say her name?”

        “And just how do we know that Canterlot can give proper care? I'm telling you, we should take my Muffin to Cloudsdale!”

        “Fat lot of good Cloudsdale will do! They've already let a friggin' Capricorn die in a manger! You think they're gonna lend a hoof to help your kid anymore?”

        “No more than those bur... those b-b-b-b-burea... those dumb-heads in Canterlot—!”

        “Ladies!”

        Derpy and Harmony both jolted. With one and a half pairs of twitching eyes, they glanced Fluttershy's way. She blushed immediately under their gaze. After a brave gulp, she spoke up:

        “There is no solution to Dinky's problem that any magical ponies in Ponyville, Cloudsdale, or Canterlot can find!” She stirred pensively. “At least, not in time. And the last thing that Dinky can afford right now is time.”

        “And what makes you say this, Miss Fluttershy?” Harmony asked with a narrow gaze.

        Fluttershy nervously squirmed. “Because I already know the solution.”

        “What? What is it?” Derpy rushed over on twitching wings and grasped Fluttershy's shoulders. She stared desperately towards either side of the animal tamer's yellow ears. “Tell me how to save my Muffin, please!”

        “Miss Hooves, your child's problem isn't a simple enchantment or affliction that can be undone with the mere application of a spell.” Fluttershy's gaze shifted towards Harmony. “Twilight Sparkle is a very gifted pony, and there are many like her in Canterlot. Furthermore, yes, there are many doctors in Cloudsdale well-versed in Equestrian medicine. However, even the most powerful Equestrian practitioner in magic or smartest surgeon in the land can't remove this creature from Dinky's horn. We're talking about the cosmic essence of a creature that has been inserted into the same junction of leylines to which Dinky's magical horn has been fused since birth. The nature of a Capricorn's soul is unearthly; not even Princess Celestia herself is properly equipped to handle any heavenly body other than the sun and moon.”

        Harmony immediately balked at that with a knee-jerk cackle: “C'mon! Our Princess is practically a goddess amongst ponies! There's absolutely nothing that she can't do!”

        “If that is true, then why would she need the Elements of Harmony to defeat Nightmare Moon, or the changing seasons to balance out the amount of sunlight she's allowed to bestow a given day?”

        Harmony opened her mouth to respond, stumbled at the tip of her tongue, rubbed her skull with a thinking-hoof, then eventually remarked, “Still, Celestia's old enough, wise enough, and magical enough to deal with one little foal and a possessed horn, don't you think, Miss Fluttershy?”

        “Our faith in the Princess is righteous, and I do not condemn your suggestions in any way. But what if we spend the time and effort to bring Dinky before her Majesty and it turns out that we are wrong to have assumed that the child's life would be saved thusly?”

        “So what if the world ends?” Harmony randomly spat. She winced rightfully at herself, cleared her throat, and added, “What if anything happens that we can't predict? So? That's life! Taking Dinky to the Princess of the Sun is the best bet here!”

        “I would agree with you.” Fluttershy firmly nodded and even more firmly stated, “Except that—as I said before—I already know the solution here, and it isn't Princess Celestia.”

        Derpy leaned in, shuddering in desperation. “Then if it's not the Princess' place to help Dinky, whose is?”

        “Mmhhhm...” Fluttershy wilted slightly. “Uhmm... Mother Nature's.”

        “M-M-M-Mother Nature?”

        Fluttershy gulped and gazed forlornly at the twitching foal on the green seat. “There are natural essences—instincts and forces—that have been at work in this world long before Faustmare's caravan or the rest of Equestrian civilization has ever been competent enough to chronicle them. True, the Alicorn Sisters were the ones to give nature its energy, its animation, and its law. Nowhere in Equestria is this self-sufficient drive more evident than in Everfree, and it was towards Everfree that the Capricorn was initially headed with the purpose towards foaling its infant. However, due to unforeseen cosmic circumstances, the creature could not reach its destination. Ironically, the same natural instinct that would have allowed the late mother to give birth was what made her deposit her offspring into Dinky's horn.”

        “Miss Fluttershy...” Harmony trotted a few meters forward, squinting at the caretaker. “Are you talking about those caves of mana-crystals that are hidden somewhere in the forest?” She blinked her amber eyes. “Do you think that, in its death throes, the Capricorn mistook the magical essence of Dinky's horn for those rocks?”

        “Mana crystals?” Derpy remarked, jittery. “What are you two talking abo—?”

        “It was only following nature's way!” Fluttershy exclaimed in a defensive tone. “It did not mean to do Dinky any harm! The poor creature had spent days lying in the forest, starved of stardust, and the closest thing it ever came to that could remotely be enchanted with its infant was Derpy's child!”

        “So what are you saying?” Harmony made a sick face and shrugged with her hooves. “The Capricorn thought that Miss Hooves' kid here was a friggin' cave of mana crystals?”

        “What I'm saying is that nature is still at work here!” Fluttershy exclaimed fitfully. “The same impulse that drove the energy into Dinky's horn could still drive the energy into the mana crystals that the Capricorn was searching for to begin with! Don't you see, Miss Harmony? Mother Nature has had a solution to this; it always has! If we take Dinky to Cloudsdale, Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle, or even Princess Celestia, they will ultimately come to the same solution, and we will have wasted valuable time, during which Dinky will have suffered horrible brain damage or... or... mmm—even worse...”

        “Miss Fluttershy,” Harmony said with a sigh, running a tired hoof over her face as Dinky moaned in the background. “You told me yourself that those caves of mana crystals were deep in Everfree, so deep that a thorough search couldn't find them in time to save the Capricorn.” She helplessly frowned into the cottage air. “What makes you think we can find those stupid caves any faster to help—” In absurdly proper timing, Harmony's amber eyes were once more stabbed with an errant beam of bright plasma. “Nnnngh! Could somepony—I dunno—put a sock over her horn or something?”

        Derpy frowned towards the ceiling and roof. “I do not think my Muffin c-c-c-c-can help it, Mister Squirrel.”

        “Okay, first off—I apologize.” Harmony once more struggled to dodge the shimmering beam. She snarled: “Secondly, it's high friggin' time you and I had a discussion about my lack of a bushy tail and other questionable appendages.”

        “Wait!” Fluttershy gasped.

        Derpy and Harmony froze in the midst of glaring at each other. Fluttershy brushed past them, grasping Dinky and slowly, gently pivoted her head. The little foal murmured and stirred under the movement, but all the while the same tiny beam of bright plasma that had randomly blinded the time traveler was persistently aiming at the same wall of the cottage, regardless of what angle the unicorn's cranium was being tilted.

        “Do you both see that?” Fluttershy stammered.

        “Uhhh... Yeah.” Harmony numbly nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

        “Even I see that!” Derpy uttered.

        “The life essence inside her horn is being drawn towards something,” Fluttershy thought out loud in a cool murmur. She blinked her blue eyes as her vision trailed the errant beam of plasma. “I can only guess that there is something outside the cottage that is a potential receptacle for the Capricorn infant, something greater than Dinky's bone structure.”

        “Like another unicorn?” Derpy breathed.

        “Mana-crystals...” Harmony exclaimed. In a dry voice, she flashed a glance over her shoulder and pointed towards the randomly lit side of the cottage. “Miss Fluttershy, what—roughly—is beyond that wall?”

        “That's the northwest side of the cottage. And beyond that, where the beam of light is pointing, is Everfree.”

        “And those caves that you were talking about, Miss Fluttershy?” Derpy excitedly panted. “With the cr-cr-cr-crystals that can save my Muffin?”

        “Whoah-Whoah-Whoah-Whoah!” Harmony raised her hooves and frowned. “Nopony said that the crystals would save Dinky!”

        “But Miss Fluttershy here just said that Mother Nature—”

        “I don't care if she was talking about Father Winter, Uncle Solstice, or Aunt Menopause! Miss Fluttershy, we've got boatloads of unicorns from here to Stalliongrad who can examine Dinky before it's noon and give an expert opinion—”

        “Miss Harmony...” Fluttershy trotted around and gazed up at the time traveler with an earnest expression. “I am Ponyville's Chief Animal Tamer, the longest and most dedicated observer to the sights and sounds of the Everfree Forest. and I am telling you... that the only way to rid Dinky of the Capricorn's essence is to go about it naturally, by bringing her to the mana-crystal caves so that Mother Nature can run its course! To attempt any other solution is noble, but dangerous, for we would be risking Dinky's life when there already is a solution, and if I may be so bold as to say it—her horn is already pointing the way.”

        “But—”

        “As a matter of fact, since the cosmic life-form inside Dinky's horn is attracted to a magical receptacle inside the Everfree Forest, any attempt we make to take her elsewhere—like to Cloudsdale, Canterlot, or even Ponyville—may be potentially fatal!”

        “Why, Miss Fluttershy?” Derpy breathily asked.

        “So long as we know where the essence inside of her horn is wishing to go, taking it in a direction opposite to that would drive the life-form deeper into Dinky's nervous system. The leylines that Dinky's magical bone is fused to would bottle up and crush her senses with it! The only healthy move we should make is to bring Dinky towards the mana battery that the Capricorn infant seeks. That way, Miss Hooves' child will ultimately suffer less!”

        “Then what are we waiting for?” Derpy glanced over at the “Canterlotlian Clerk.” “Every second we waste here only m-m-m-m-makes the situation worse!”

        “This... This is nuts!” Harmony squeaked like the disbelieving foal she suddenly was again. Her eyes twitched in a beam of plasma, dotting the windows briefly with rainwater before they flickered back to the bright haze of a deathly clear morning. She fought a dizzy spell, gasped, and exhaled, “Just the afternoon before yesterday, Miss Fluttershy, you could barely even stand to look at the depths of Everfree! And now you're suggesting that we march straight in there with a foal being possessed by a cosmic migraine in hopes that somewhere and somehow we'll stumble upon caves allegedly filled with mana-crystals—that nopony has ever seen, mind you—and then just expect for the magical curse to undo itself?!”

        “What matters is that it is a firm and solid direction to a singular and ample solution, Miss Harmony,” Fluttershy said. “I know that I have my weaknesses, and I know that I am helpless to save Dinky in any other fashion. But I also know things, deep and complex things about animals. This is my knowledge to possess simply by the sheer experience that I have accumulated throughout the years. I do not suggest this course of action out of pride or to protect some silly ego. All I ask is that you trust me, Miss Harmony. I most certainly do not blame you for feeling hesitant. Captain Redgale surely would not believe in my strengths in this matter. But... But I had come to hope that... that you would believe in me by now, Miss Harmony, and that you would know that my idea is the best and only way to save Miss Hooves' precious child, before it is too late.”

        Harmony stared at Fluttershy, her mouth agape. She blinked her amber eyes hard and ran a hoof over her face. Temporarily blinded, she saw a field of white stones, and soft yellow hooves landing in the springy grass suspended between them. The last pony forced her eyes brightly open again, only to see a breathless wall-eyed pegasus occupying the whole of her vision.

        “Miss Harmony, please, I will do anything for my child! Whatever it takes to gget this thing out of her! My life, my health, my job, I'll gladly consider it all f-f-f-or... for-f-f-f-f-f... for”

        “'Forfeit',” the scavenger from the future grunted, then blinked from the sight of the gray pegasus to the distant caretaker. She shuddered from their combined gaze. “And now why is everypony looking at me?”

        “Uhm...” Fluttershy bit her lip and scratched the floor with her hoof. “Because... you're a Clerk of the Canterlotlian Court. Technically and legally that means that you have the royal authority to hold sway over this decision—”

        The last pony blinked and turned cross-eyed. Her next breath came out in a cackle: “Oh you've got to be friggin' kidding me!” Frowning, she shoved a pointing hoof the spasmatic foal's way. “I did not come here to play guardian angel or grim reaper over a child's life! I came here to observe Ponyville's Animal Tamer and hopefully learn more about the forest for Princess Celestia! This is totally not what I signed up for!”

        “Nevertheless, Miss Harmony...” Fluttershy trotted across the room just as Derpy was on the verge of a breakdown. She lovingly nuzzled the pegasus' neck and shouldered her quivering, muted sobs as she gazed with soft blue eyes towards the last pony. “It is your authority that determines what happens next. I... We will understand if you must fall back upon protocol. I too must do the same when it comes to answering to Captain Redgale and the Cloudsdalian Commission. But there is a life on the line here: Dinky's life. I implore you to think of not just the right thing to do, but the kind thing to do... for the child and for her mother.”

        Harmony opened her mouth to speak... but faltered. With a savage groan, she fell back to her haunches and ran two hooves over clenched eyes. Dinky's distant moans melted into a hum, so that she was once again piloting the Harmony over the dead Wastelands to the roar of a solitary boiler at her rear. The cemetery of the future was an easy place for the scavenger to live out a lonely misery, with nopony's suffering to care about but her own.

        Dinky would die. Derpy would die. Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle, Ponyville, and the green vistas of Everfree, in all of its mystery and all of its transcendent self-sustaining wonder, would likewise succumb to the deadly and all-consuming flames of the Cataclysm. It would just be a matter of months, and everything would be the simple and monochromatic gloom that the last pony had learned to sleep to.

        This was the past. To these wounded pegasi, it was a stark naked reality. To the time traveler, it was also real, but a good portion of it was also a dream, a fantasy afforded her through the numbing distance of two and a half burnt, charred decades. With a single wave of green flames, Harmony could easily “wake up” from it all. The wilting Fluttershy, the sobbing Derpy, and the moaning child would equally return to the lifeless, pointless corpses that they would forever be—for all that the last pony could or couldn't possibly care.

        After all, the last pony wasn't there, not really. Neither was she lying in front of a warm fireplace, under a cascade of rippling rainwater that kissed the windows along with so many other pathetically worthless memories that danced like refracted ghosts beyond a foal's eyes that had long, long lost their violet youth and joy. There were no warm bodies, no hugging forelimbs. There were only white rocks and white names and white wings etched into a dead field of soot before the hellish mouth to a mine shaft. There was only barren stone before life, and there would only be another stone obelisk after death. Once the last pony had breathed her last breath, the only living memorial to the legacy of Equestria would be gone. Restoring the sun and moon would mean nothing to a future without spirit, without honor.

        The only thing eternal, at least to Harmony, was that voice, that melodic voice that the dragon tooth in the Everbriar grave had reminded her of. It sounded like something else that was priceless, that sang with more immutable strength than the threads of time, cradling the last pony more warmly than any hammock or fireplace could. Everytime Harmony tried to feel it, to touch it, the orange shadow started hobbling down the creaking wooden steps and the lingering green seat beyond—

        Harmony's eyes reopened, twitching, and—instead of a yellow shade—Dinky was lying on the emerald seat. The little foal stirred, ached, and cried. Misty tears turned to steam as her glowing eyes strobed in opposite rhythm with her pulsating horn. She murmured pointless and unintelligible things, like the worthless and unheard lyrics to a melodic lullaby quoted by a sobbing little foal in a deep mooncrater of the Wastelands, surrounded by monsters, starved of all nourishment and love forevermore.

        All of life was a dream, Harmony suddenly pondered, including the monochromatic absurdities of the future. She briefly wondered if a phantom from beyond, wearing the skin of yet another unnamed goddess, might happen to crawl back on otherworldly-colored flames to visit her and Spike in the ruins of Ponyville. Would she want such a suspended pariah to turn her world of death into a happy ending, even if it was just a dream, and if the only way to wake up was to turn to ashes by a wave of Goddess-forsaken fire?

        “Miss Harmony...” Once again, the melodic voice cradled her, cherished her, stabbed her. “We must have a decision, and we must have it soon.” Fluttershy gulped. “For Dinky's sake.”

        Harmony wanted to wake up, to become Scootaloo once more. She wanted to tear the damnable wooden steps in front of her apart, fashion an impossible airship out of it, drag it through a curtain of green flames, and outfly an Ursa Major just for the sake of returning to her comfortably simple hammock once again. But, as she had to remind herself, this was not her past, at least it was not hers to live. This past was a warm reality to the deep and forever lost well of history, and she was the nightmare, dangling amongst the confused souls before her, dressed to look like a copper-coated lure, a false savior.

        The last pony could not save these souls, and yet she could: a bitterly brief salvation. She shouldn't have been thinking so hard about this. She shouldn't have been debating the situation; she shouldn't have even been considering it. Harmony should have dragged both ponies and the child out of there, taken them to Twilight Sparkle, grabbed the attention of Princess Celestia, confessed every detail about the end of the world, and gotten what she needed before returning in a green belch to the future with no intention of returning.

        In one fatal swoop, she and Spike would have crossed the gap of the dead future's mystery, achieved audience with the Princess of the Sun, discovered the curse that doomed the world, and finally brought an end to an eternity of ash and snow. And as for Dinky... as for one pathetically insignificant half-wing of an egghead pony in the quietest town of Equestria... as for one expendable and tiny soul balanced against the legacy of an entire race, an entire kingdom, an entire Fourth Age gone to ruin....

        The last pony huffed and puffed. “Okay, here's the plan....”

        Harmony fought an interminable groan as she hurriedly marched with iron hooves towards the edge of the Everfree Forest. The morning Sun glistened haplessly onto the flanks of Fluttershy and Derpy Hooves as they followed her in a breathless canter. Dinky was nestled in one of the pouches of the mailpony's saddlebag. The child's pitiful moans echoed against the thickening sea of green-hazed tree trunks that lit up with her horned aura.

        “I'm the strongest pony here. Trust me; don't ask. I'll take point and look out for any hazards along the way. Miss Fluttershy, you're the animal expert. We'll need your expertise when encountering any nasty creatures that might sneak up on us and... uh... show us exactly how nasty they are.”

        “Yes, Miss Harmony. I shall do my best.”

        “If the random light shining from Dinky's horn is leading the way to the nearest cave of mana-crystals, then we're going to have to use her as a compass, so to speak. Once we've gotten a fix, we'll fly high and triangulate a position towards which we can take wing—”

        “I... uhm... I wouldn't advise that.”

        Harmony blinked widely. “Why not?”

        Fluttershy winced. “The essence of the Capricorn is only showing us the direction towards the nearest cluster of mana-crystals because Dinky's horn has intercepted a terrestrial leyline, among other signals. If... uhm.. if we take to the sky, we risk flying outside of the range of that one mana-stream. We could lose the horn's focus on the cave's location... maybe even permanently.”

        “Then what?”

        “Assuming Dinky's horn fails to relocate the mana receptacle that it's currently locked onto in Everfree, the Capricorn infant will take a fatally long period of time to rediscover the mana crystals, or it may never find the receptacle again whatsoever. Then Dinky's mind will surely collapse.”

        “Fan-friggin'-tastic,” Harmony hissed. “Fine. Looks like we're doing this the hard way. Miss Hooves?”

        “Yes?”

        “Obviously your daughter's... uhhh... 'horn-light' is the key here. Why don't you make it your job to keep your eyes on where it's shining so that we can—” Harmony stopped in mid-speech. She took a glance back, took one good look at the mailpony's not-so-good optics, and glanced forward. “Scratch that. Just keep close to your kid while Fluttershy and I examine the beacon and judge where we need to go.”

        “Is there anything else I should do?” The gray mare shivered. “You two are d-d-d-d-doing so much for my Muffin, and I want to help the best way I can.”

        “Just try not to fly through any schoolhouse windows on the way to the cave.”

        “Miss Harmony...” Fluttershy quietly chided, blinking with brief dizziness.

        “Fluttershy...” Harmony looked at her. “I need you to tell me something.” She leaned forward, then murmured, “In the best case scenario, what can we expect when or if we get Dinky to a cave full of the mana crystals?”

        “The life force of the infant that the Capricorn Mother shot into Dinky's horn would exit the foal's bone structure via the same level of discharge. The mana-crystals would absorb the energy, after which the life essence would sustain itself, coalesce, and then effortlessly materialize in the physical form of the Capricorn offspring, thus finishing the cosmic foaling process.”

        “And my Muffin?” Derpy whimpered with soft, lopsided eyes.

        Fluttershy gulped with a sad expression. She teetered momentarily on four hooves, then breathed, then said, “If and only if we're swift enough, there will hopefully be little to no brain damage.... Mmm... If it is—as Miss Harmony puts it—the 'best case scenario'.”

        “L-lightning!” Dinky murmured, wincing, hissing under glowing eyes as she reeled in the gray pegasus' saddlebag. “A mountain of irony! The dead palace has plunged!”

        Derpy's face instantly wretched. She tried to nuzzle the foal in her midst, but shuddered and nearly fell on collapsing hooves. Fluttershy quickly padded over and supported the sniffling mother's weight with her silk-soft frame.

        Harmony paused in mid-trot, her mind stabbed with sudden numbness. The edges of her projected soul-self tingled with green fuming embers and dissipated. She shook the bizarre sensation off, gulped, and murmured in a low voice over her shoulder. “Miss Fluttershy... Are you saying that... That when all of this is said and done, then we... we could have a brand new Capricorn materialized before us? Like... in the flesh?”

        “Hopefully... Indeed so...” The caretaker managed to say while gently embracing Derpy. She glanced over with calm, sleepy eyes. “The infant may actually be healthy enough to ween itself off the crystals in the caves before taking to the heavens several months from now. But, again, we must be swift.”

        The last few words were lost to the time traveler, for once again the shades of the Forest's edge were melting, blending, frothing into a blacker-than-black sea of thorns, in the middle of which—strung up by brambles and fate—were two corpses: Fluttershy's and a capricorn's. There was suddenly a third corpse gazing at the first two, far more guilty and far more infernal than a million ages' worth of Ursa Majors combined.

        “Oh Spike...” Harmony hissed under her breath. With twitching eyes, she faced forward, throttled by a new and frightening numbness. “Please, for once, send me someplace that doesn't burn.” And she marched straight into the thickening darkness like a weed, dragging her hapless anchor along with her.