The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Thirty-Six: Beyond Pink and Evil

        The town of Dredgemane was a bitter assortment of gnarled wood and weathered brickwork, being threaded thickly through serpentine trenches of lifeless rock that cast the winding streets-within-streets under perpetual shadow. Even with the sun stretching towards the noon hour beyond the jagged cliffs above, the storefronts and market stands barely received more than a lantern's glow, so that the air of the various alleys and avenues veritably resembled the somber twilight that the last pony was eerily used to. To aid regular citizens with the day-and-night shuffle under this perpetual darkness, several torches were lit across a steady array of tall, black lamps that dotted the twisting and turning corridors which linked the various districts of the town.

        With the exception of one or two junctions of intertwining canyons, it was next to impossible to stand in one place and look straight down an alleyway without a curve in the rock obscuring one's view of what the rest of the sunken town had to offer. Dredgemane was quite literally a brittle assortment of ram-shackled buildings that filled the mildew-strewn pits of what otherwise should have been an abandoned series of ditches dug deep into the lifeless earth.

        Regardless, this excavated hovel in the stony landscape was anything but desolate. Building upon crammed building filled every breathing space of the claustrophobic ravines. Many of them were two stories tall, some three stories with several balconies and acid-etched lattices attaching the rustic constructions to neighborly structures. No square meter of urbanscape was wasted in the steep recesses of this inexplicable metropolis. Where there was room for a wagon, a citizen had set up shop. Where there was an excuse to hold weight, a market vendor or a blacksmith had established themselves.

        There was an elaborate cross-section of history in the architecture of the place. Several of the buildings spoke of Third Age and even Second Age architecture, with many cornerstones hewn out of rock through means of construction that predated the Celestial Civil Wars and even the Neo-Equestrian Era. Some buildings had obviously been expanded throughout the years, with second and third story levels featuring more sophisticated construction methods than the older groundwork.

        There was nothing impermanent about the town's construction; there were no pliable tents, thatched roofs, or wooden paneling indicative of a quaint setting like Ponyville. Everything about Dredgemane was built to last, as if the earth ponies who founded the colony so many centuries ago had anticipated their great-great-grandfoals communing with the same goddess that inspired the construction of the place to begin with. The inexplicable result of this was a town that was sharp, with each corner a brutal juncture of fiercely reinforced metal and stone. Every building looked like an ocean breaker, as if they could pierce straight through the center of the planet if they were to accidentally fall over to the ground.

        As immense and striking as the buildings were that blanketed the claustrophobic narrows of that place, it was a feat in and of itself to distinguish them from the dark gray walls that surrounded everything. There were no colors, nothing bright, nothing that remotely tickled the retinae of a pony's eye that was naturally built to receive the gifts of the sun. If it weren't for the many black torch-bearing lampposts that dotted the winding streets, one might have walked straight into a four-story post office and not have been able tell the difference between its gnarled surfaces and the soot-stained stretch of granite beyond.

        There was a deep haze that permeated the place. If it wasn't smog from the many billowing smokestacks that punctuated the rusted rooftops, it was a cold and foggy mist that practically blackened in the absence of direct sunlight. The streets had been bathed in the shadows of the surrounding plateau for so long and for so many countless centuries, that it was conceptually feasible that they had developed sentience, a chameleon instinct that absorbed every dark hue of the visual spectrum and emulated it under the constant shuffling hooftrots of pale-coated ponies.

        The citizens of Dredgemane were a meandering, granite-eyed, breathless lot of lurching souls, imprisoned in monochromatic threads that sucked the color out of their lives. Colts and stallions in dull brown threads drew rickety wooden wagons across dead cobblestone. Fillies and mares wearing gray gowns carried towering arrays of baskets over their flanks. Droves of workhooves labored in tandem to drag hulking carriages full of rocks from the nearby quarry across town, their grunting voices heaving across the echoing corridors of stone around them. There was little room for smiles; the citizens instead filled the void with sweat, blood, and grit.

        What these earth ponies lacked in flavor, they easily made up for in purpose, so that their hooftrots were no less animated than the hustling/bustling populace of a major city like Fillydelphia or Manehattan. Dredgemaners were evidently creatures of diligence as much as they were victims to conformity, and with each passing herd of citizens that Harmony observed, she became aware more and more of a mutual energy that lent a concealed excitement to their canter. She saw rock farmers making bee-lines for the blacksmiths, traders swiftly setting up shop in the marketplaces, merchants engaging in the fitful first stages of late morning auctions, and several more townsfolk delivering goods from building to building, street to street, canyon to canyon with such regimental speed that allowed them the gift of memorizing the labyrinthine maze of the torchlit place.

        With each subsequent block that Harmony traversed—flank to flank with the trotting shadows of Pinkie and Inkessa—deeper and deeper pits of Dredgemane opened up to her, so that the number of hustling and bustling pony bodies doubled, tripled, even quadrupled. There was soon a roar—immeasurably full of sounds but hauntingly devoid of voices—that filled the suffocating chambers of that pitiable piece of ponydom. Underscoring the perpetual hum of gray-shadowed life was a deeper thunder, a never-ending percussion of dozens upon hundreds upon unseen thousands of hooves clamoring over the same cobblestone that filled the entire blind lengths of the town's streets, so that all of the twisting ends of Dredgemane were linked with each other in one auditory heartbeat that gave the serpentine city its solidarity.

        Harmony was trembling, practically shivering. The last pony quivered and shook the more she was surrounded by these meandering, criss-crossing, swiftly trotting bodies of life. It took every gram of strength in her body to keep her green beret atop her amber-streak mane. Any moment, and she might even shiver her way out of the garish Winter Wrap-Up vest that Pinkie had so absurdly slapped over her wing-bound torso.

        It never occurred to the last pony—amidst her sudden and helpless convulsions—that such a town might have this effect on her. She wasn't bothered by the obvious grimness of the architecture or lighting; the scavenger from the future was more than used to morose landscapes, to everlasting graveyards dotted with the refuse of ponydom. However, all of the dark and horrid sites that the last pony had visited in the future were empty, completely devoid of all life. None of them were populated with living souls, much less this many living souls, and in a claustrophobic vacuum like Dredgemane no less.

        When Scootaloo traveled back in time and became “Harmony” for the Apple Family, she was graced with a quaint house surrounded by the isolation of beautiful apple orchards. When she had gone to visit Fluttershy, most of her hours were either spent inside a lonesome rustic cottage or in the enshrouding folliage of the Everfree Forest. Her ventures into the past were—for the most part—simple and near-lonesome excursions into a world that was far warmer than the future, but almost as empty and unpopulated.

        Dredgemane was different. Dredgemane was Cheerilee's schoolroom multiplied a thousand times, sprinkled with misery and wrapped up in ribbons of shadow and smog. The sounds of all these living ponies surrounded Harmony, deafened her, closed in around her like a rumbling stormfront or a marching phalanx of trolls. The last pony had spent nearly two decades alone in the clouds, with only the sweet tones of Octavia's records through which to filter every dreamy perception she ever had about the populace of ponydom.

        Here she was—stumbling down the echoing cobblestones of a city dug into a stony grave—and a very real and very quivering Equestria was being shoved down her throat in heated, muffled breaths. She could barely stand upright. Not even a blind, naked gallop straight through harpy territory could fill the scavenger with this much fright.

        She had to focus, she needed to focus. Gazing down at her trampling hooves, she attempted to find a semblance of balance in the hazy vision of the cobblestones blurring underneath her. Suddenly, an individual pattern emerged with each passing rock. Harmony squinted her amber eyes and realized that there was a name engraved on each and every cobblestone. They were the names of ponies, fitted with numbers. She soon realized that the Dredgemaners had taken it upon themselves to inscribe not only the names of their citizens on the foundation of their streets, but the dates of their births and deaths as well. The last pony was presently marching over the passing legacy of hundreds upon thousands of deceased equine, and the Cataclysm hadn't even happened yet.

        Harmony was starting to feel faint. With each trip she had taken into the past, her insufferable future became less and less gray. The past should have been a welcome retreat, and yet it packed the same punch—if not a worse one—than the bitter cold that the Wastelands dealt her. Dredgemane was already threatening to slam her skull with dark jaws that swallowed the entire shadows of a foreboding Everfree Forest, with a menacing glare that outshone wave upon wave of beady-eyed trolls. The engraved cobblestones were suddenly bright-faced things, like schoolfoals that watched her every move as she floundered at the front of a phantom classroom in an exiled goddess' skin. Everything that ever once had meaning was pierced by those innocent, curious, and very much dead eyes.

        She didn't want to be there anymore. Once again, the last pony mentally stabbed herself to unearth the reason for why she was there to begin with. A comedic scene danced briefly before her twitching eyes, of a brown scarecrow of a filly attempting to explain to a giant purple dragon that she had to go and visit Pinkie Pie when there were seemingly no fruits to such a daring prospect.

        Was this all about stargazing, or the Onyx Eclipse? What was there to fear in a gaping hole in the heavens when this festering wound in the earth was fitting enough to drown in? Perhaps the Onyx Eclipse—or whatever it was truly named—was simply the cosmic response to every pit of misery ever dug out of the earth in the name of prosperity. History was nothing more than a festering pile of Dredgemanes, of all lifeless shapes and shades that Equestria had ever produced. Perhaps the Cataclysm was merely the answer to some wordless, unintelligible question too frightening for ponydom to courageously spell out.

        Harmony briefly forgot her anchor as she leaned against a tall black lamppost, catching her breath as her wingstwistched under the constricting turquoise fabric of her vest. She shut her eyes and filled her mind meditatively with the strings of Octavia, a habit that she had picked up over countless hours of scavenging the bowels of dead Equestria. Only, this time, she was not envisioning herself seated in a concert hall along with countless heads of living, breathing ponies. In an ironic reversal, she was summoning the sights and sounds of desolation, of a dead world that had secretly become her home over decades of lonely introspection. She wasn't in Dredgemane, she was in the singed and hollowed-out hovels of the Wasteland. She was surrounded by nothing, blanketed in snow, baptized in the ash of calm and predictable death. Octavia's strings flew gently through the air, a lullaby that sang an endless cemetery to sleep, and Scootaloo was its lone and faithful groundskeeper once again.

        Then the dream ended; Pinkie Pie had spoken up. “We're here! Time to buy some lingerie!”

        Harmony's amber eyes flew open. “Say what?” A paper airplane ricocheted off her copper nose. “Dah! Sonuva—”

        “Heeheehee!” Pinkie Pie giggled, her straw hat bobbing on her cotton-candy mane as she lowered her hoof from the expert throw. “Just kidding! But it was worth it to get your eyes to open! It looked for a moment there like you were gonna faint or something. Don't worry: the high altitude does that to everypony who visits this place.”

        “Uhh... ” Harmony adjusted the green beret on her head and watched as the paper airplane glided its way over dozens of citizens' heads and flew off beyond the edges of a twisting alleyway. “You do remember that I'm a pegasus, right?”

        “Not all pegasi are used to thin air, y'know. Take my good friend Fluttershy, for example. I happen to know that it's been a very long time since she last got high.”

        Harmony slowly, slowly swiveled her skull to stare blinklessly at Pinkie Pie.

        The candy-colored earth pony stared back with an immaculate smile.

        Harmony squinted. “Do you even know what comes out of your mouth half of the time?”

        “Uhm, moisture and carbon dioxide?” Pinkie’s teeth glinted. “Sometimes sunflower seeds when I'm visiting Applejack's farm.”

        “Here's a thought: why doesn't somepony tell me why we stopped just now?”

        Pinkie Pie motioned over her shoulder towards a general goods store with a creakily-swinging sign hanging over their manes in the torchlight. “Sis just went inside to grab a few necessities before she goes in for her shift at Stonehaven.”

        “Just what exactly is Stonehaven—a nursing school?”

        “Hey, you ever wonder why stores are always selling 'necessities' but never 'desirables?'” Pinkie Pie adjusted the hem of her colorful shirt of illustrated pineapples, palm trees, and other tropical abominations. “Rarity says that in Trottingham they have places that are famous for selling 'unmentionables.' Have you ever heard of something so silly?”

        “Miss Pie... ”

        “Ahem—'Uh, hi. I came all the way from Canterlot to buy something, but I can't tell you what it is because it's unmentionable. '”

        “Seriously, Miss Pie—”

        “'Hey Mom! Hey dad! I didn't bother wrapping my present up for you! But I thought you needed more of these because, according to Uncle Rubble, the last time you ever used the likes of them was on your honeymoon—whatever that means. '”

        “Has anypony ever told you that you have the social grace of a diseased centipede?”

        “Oooooh!” Pinkie hopped in place, grinning ear to ear. “Har-Har, was that a joke you just said?!”

        “Pfft—No.”

        “Awwww... Because it sounded awfully close to a joke.”

        “Why is it so dang important for you that I experiment in comedy?”

        “Why is it so important for you to do some boring peeping-tom work on the night's sky?”

        “Because I've been charged by Her Majesty to conduct some astronomical research!” Harmony hissed, gazing forlornly at a solid train of soot-smudged workers as they trudged by, dragging wooden wagons full of coal and charcoal. “When was the last time you had Princess Celestia's permission to act so... so... ”

        “Sexy?”

        “Random? —” Harmony's breath was cut short by a bug-eyed double-take. “See?!” She pointed a hoof between the earth pony's crossed blue eyes. “Like that! Where in Epona's name does something like that come from?”

        “What, my face?” Pinkie blinked. “From my mom's womb, silly filly! Though Inkessa tells me all the time that I was a breached foaling. She says I bounced the moment I hit the manger floor. Heeheehee.” A clearing of the throat, and she briefly bore cold, soulless eyes. “Not every town has as much hay as Ponyville.”

        “Erm... You don't say?”

        “It's kind of hard to enjoy a crib made out of gravel. But oh well!” She giggled and bounced in a bright pink circle around the dazed time traveler. “I was never short on rattles as a little kid! Heeheehee!”

        “Slap me for saying so, but... ” Harmony sweated nervously. “... you still are a little kid.”

        “That's what I always say when I try to go down the kiddy waterslide in Lake Oatario, but none of the lifeguards let me. So one night, me and Dashie snuck onto the lakefront after sundown and went down the slide ourselves. It was so fun and totally worth the amoebic dysentery!”

        Harmony was about to say something when a passing series of shadows shouted from behind, “Hey! Pinkamena! You're back!”

        “Wooo! Yeah!” Pinkie leapt up and gripped the side of the black lamppost, hanging off it as she saluted with a loose hoof. “I came to Dredgemane to bake cupcakes and chew the fat, and I'm all out of clichés—well, almost! Heeheehee!”

        Harmony glanced over to see a trio of young stallions, roughly Pinkie's age, glancing over from where they briefly slowed their wagon-drawing gait down the street to glance the earth pony's way. “Does Brevis know you're here?”

        “Celestia, I hope he does! Because I don't even know I'm here! What are the chances I might surprise myself? I get the hiccups waaaaay too easily!”

        Something strange emanated from the splotch of dull ponies amidst the surging gray sea. At first, Harmony thought that they were coughing... perhaps even choking. But then she realized she was hearing something she hadn't witnessed since she and the two Pie sisters first set hoof into the canyon dwelling of Dredgemane. The stallions were laughing.

        “Well, you'd better run into him soon! He's been off his rocker since last night!”

        “You mean more than usual? Heeheehee—What happened last night?”

        “The Biv struck again! Third time in a row this week!”

        Pinkie Pie gasped wide, her eyes like twin blue supernovas. “You don't say?! What was it this time?”

        “The main water supply to the Town Square fountain! But you gotta let Brevis tell you about it! Anypony else wouldn't do it justice!”

        “I'm tingling so much with anticipation I just might hug the wrong end of a stegosaurus!” Pinkie Pie made airplane motor noises as she spun once, twice, and a third time around the lamppost and then stopped with a gasping breath. “Oh hey! About tonight: same time and place?”

        “If you're back in town, Pinkamena, we wouldn't miss it for the world!”

        “How could you miss the world? Just tilt your neck down and spit!”

        “Heheheh—See ya later, Pinkamena!”

        The stallions sauntered off, gathering a few dejected looks from droves of older ponies. No sooner had they departed than two young mares marched up and glanced brightly Pinkie's way. “Pinkamena, we had no idea you were visiting.”

        “Heya girls!” Pinkie Pie hopped down to the cobblestone, tilted her skull, and caught the belated descent of her staw hat falling after her. “How's the laundromat?”

        “Doing fine ever since you last came and cross-promoted us with Ms. Marble Cake's bakery.”

        “Heehee! Isn't it the truth? From the first moment I trotted inside that warehouse full of washing machines, I told myself, 'What this place needs is a freezer full of sarsaparilla and maybe some balloons.' I'm glad your Mommy agreed on one of those two things. Soda and laundry detergent are perfect bedfellows. Either one of them ends with a happy customer breathing out bubbles.”

        “You'd be surprised how many ponies go there just to hang out now because of the refreshments,” one of the mares remarked, balancing a basket full of linens on her dully clothed flank. The air around the lamppost had transformed into a small pocket of alien smiles suspended in a city's infinite shadows. “We know that Bishop Breathstar is against gossiping and whatnot, but it's amazing the sort of things you can hear without trying.”

        The other mare leaned towards Pinkie with bright eyes. “Did you know that Canterlot's own Hoity Toity bought out the supply depot on Slade Street?”

        “Really?” Pinkie beamed. “Dredgemane is getting its own arts and crafts store?”

        Harmony cleared her throat.

        The mares both glanced nervously at the copper equine. “Friend of yours, Pinkamena?”

        “You mean this perfect stranger standing on a street corner and eyeing all of the town's handsome stallions?”

        Harmony did a double-take and instantly frowned. “Excuse me?”

        “Heeheehee—Watch this. Oh dear Elektra!” Pinkie Pie pointed with a mock gasp. “Is that Rudolph Valentintrot?”

        Harmony blinked dazedly into the gray crowd of the town street. “H-huh?” There was a dull thud, and suddenly the turquoise vest on the pegasus' torso had slid up to her shoulders. At first, she didn't know why, until she glanced back and realized that her copper wings were sticking straight up... and Pinkie's hoof was resting from where she had just slapped Harmony in some magical spot mid-flank. “Gah!” She hissed through gnashing teeth, blushed like a beet, and slid her vest back down over coiling wings. “M-Miss Pie!”

        The two mares giggled helplessly, their cheeks burning at the naughty spectacle.

        “Oh Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie rolled her blue eyes back and mocked a fainting spell with an errant hoof to her chin. “How unbecoming of a Canterlotlian lady!”

        “What on earth were you thinking—?” Harmony briefly interrupted her own hyperventilating anger to hiss, “How did you even friggin' do that?”

        “It's an old trick I learned with Dashie. Works every time with you silly pegasi.”

        “I don't believe you.”

        “Oh yeah? Did you hear about the one time a Zebraharan exchange student got lost in the Wonderbolts' locker room after a sweaty day of practice?”

        “Uhh, no, not that I can recall—” Another thud. Harmony's vest hoisted up again. She growled and lowered her wings and shirt once more. “Stop doing that!”

        Pinkie Pie lowered her hoof and hugged her chest, giggling and leaning back against the lamppost. “Control yourself, girl! What would Bishop Breathstar say if his congregation saw you doing that in public?”

        The two mares giggled fitfully. They marched off before they could lose too much oxygen. “You're a hoot as always, Pinkamena. Nice to see you around town. Stay classy.”

        “You know I won't!” The bright earth pony winked. A frowning pegasus was suddenly in her face.

        Harmony glared. “You are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, an immature, uncouth, direspectful piece of—”

        “Shoot, girl!” A bearded, black stallion suddenly shoved Harmony out of the way to grin down at the straw-hatted mare. “Quarrington's problem child, as I live and breathe! How's life treating you in the shadow of Princess Celestia's sparkling palace in the sky?”

        “Just peachy keen, Mister Irontail!” Pinkie smiled. “How's the blacksmithing going? Is it just as black and smithy as usual?”

        “There's never any shortage of rocks, kiddo. You know that about this town.” The soot-covered elder winked, his many muscles tightly compacted under an inky coat made twice as black by the dim shadows around them. He adjusted a grimy apron around his aged haunches and spoke, “But business won't pick up until a few days from now.”

        “Oh right!” Pinkie Pie stood up on her lower hooves and playfully bounced her spine up against the lamppost as she thought aloud. “The boring old bonfire is this week, isn't it?”

        “Boring old what?” Harmony muttered, dusting herself off as she stood back upon all four hooves. “Doesn't this place have enough torches and smoke as it is?”

        “Hah!” The blacksmith boomed, his mighty lungs filtering a heated breath through a dirty-toothed grin as he glanced down at the jittery time traveller. “How like an outsider! Dredgemane must be all misery and grime to a visitor such as you!”

        “No offense, Mister... uhm... Irontail, but isn't it?”

        “Not so long as this bright little ray of sunshine is around!” He reached a dirty hoof and ruffled Pinkie's mane through the straw hat. “I don't know what Quarrington was thinking by letting her gallop off to Ponyville. This town could use a good shot of Pinkamena Diane Pie from time to time!”

        “Heeheehee!” Pinkie grinned. “Just don't forget the alcohol swab before you stick me in!”

        “What's this about alcohol?” Inkie remarked, sauntering finally out of the general goods store with a basket of various goods balanced on her white-coated flank. “Oh hi, Mister Irontail,” she droned with a slightly curved smile. “You ready for Gultophine's Harvest? I'm sure everypony in town will be lining up at your store for the next month asking to have all sorts of stuff re-forged for them.”

        “Gultophine's Harvest?” Harmony remarked with a squinting expression. “That's an ancient tradition that hasn't been practiced since halfway through the Second Age. You mean to say that Dredgemane has its own variant of the ritual?”

        “Wow, get a load of the thinking cap on this gal.” Irontail motioned with his hairy skull. He leaned forward briefly and gave the blinking pegasus a rather uncivil sniff. “If I didn't know better, I'd say you've got the scent of Canterlot all over you, Miss. Not everything has to be explained through a history lesson, y'know. Still, I mean no disrespect. I admire anypony who's given time to Her Majesty's Military.”

        “Huh?” Harmony blinked. With a sudden wince, she adjusted the green beret on her head. “Oh no, you don't understand. This belongs to—”

        “She asked a legitimate question, Mister Irontail,” Inkie interrupted in her monotone voice. She glanced her violet eyes Harmony's way. “Yes, as a matter of fact, Mayor Haymane resurrected the bonfire ritual of Gultophine's Harvest several years ago, before Blinkie was born, when Pinkie and I were just little foals. Every four months, the entire town gathers in the central square to burn things... ”

        “... things that I eventually get to replace.” Irontail smiled devilishly and rubbed two of his front hooves together. “And that's when the bits roll in.”

        “Honestly, Mr. Irontail.” Inkie rolled her eyes and smirked helplessly. “That's totally contrary to the spirit of Gultophine's Harvest.”

        “Yeah!” Pinkie spun fresh circles with an upper and lower hoof wrapped around the lamppost. “Besides, bits can't roll in! Not unless you glue a pencil between two of them and push the thing off a desk!” She grinned. “At least that's the most I ever learned out of rock kindergarten!”

        “Long story short, Harmony,” Inkie spoke to the pegasus. “This town has a long history of respecting and revering the memory of Goddess Gultophine.”

        “'Rock kindergarten'... ”

        “Hmm?”

        “Ahem.” Harmony snapped out of it and stared steadily at Inkie. “I find that very interesting. I think I might actually want to... watch such a bonfire in progress,” the last pony said in a genuinely honest breath.

        “Mmmm... You might want to think twice about that,” the nurse pony sister to Pinkie remarked with a far off, flinching expression.

        Harmony raised an eyebrow at that.

        Irontail's booming voice once more filled the air of the street corner. “So! When will my workers and I be graced with more of your dazzling cupcakes, Pinkamena?”

        “Heeheee—They're never my cupcakes, Mister Irontail! They're all courtesy of Ms. Marble Cake!”

        “But they're extra special when you're in town to make them, kiddo! Don't tell me you'll be holding out on us! That would be a crime!”

        As the conversation carried on beside her, Harmony found her amber eyes wandering over the lengths of the city street. The various caravans of dull colored citizens trudged forth with the same uneventful speed as ever, but several blinking faces were glancing in that direction, their twitching eyes settling on the one bright color—a bizarrely natural color—of a pink earth pony infecting the bowels of Dredgemane. Where there was once a gray miasma of nothing, there briefly but very truly sprouted random comet streaks of white teeth... in the shape of smiles.

        Harmony raised an eyebrow. It suddenly occurred to her that Ponyville was not the only place to be graced with the infamy of a certain “Pinkamena Diane Pie” . While Scootaloo's home town occasionally suffered from and buckled under the burning enthusiasm of that infamy, it was quite possible that another spot in Equestria—a far more blighted spot—occasionally lit up from it.

        “Don't you worry your big bushy beard about cupcakes! Good things come to those who wait!” Pinkie Pie winked as she spun one or two more revolutions around the lamppost. “That's something a friend of mine named Twilight Sparkle taught me! So I dunked her head in a sundae one afternoon at Sugarcube Corner! Have you ever seen a unicorn chase somepony across town with a banana split for a helmet?”

        Inkessa muttered, “Pinkie... I don't think you should be playing on the lamppost like that—”

        “Nonsense!” Pinkie grunted and leaped from the lamppost with a gymnastic leap. “I'm not hurting the torch's feelings any!” A blink, and suddenly her face contorted in a ghastly grimace. “Uh oh.”

        Inkie and Irontail suddenly shared Pinkie's concern. Harmony was utterly confused. She craned her neck for a better look, and noticed that Pinkie's tail was twitching as if with an epileptic seizure.

        “Uhm... Miss Pie? Is something wrong with your—?”

        With a thunderous crash, the entire black metal length of the lamppost fell. The blazing top of it landed in a wagon full of dry hay. The entire thing went up in a flash of smoke, rendering the wooden wheels and spokes to a pile of black ash.

        Pinkie Pie winced, biting her lip. She smiled nervously in the other ponies' direction. “How about we go to Marble Cake's now?”

        “That sounds like a good idea,” Irontail nodded. “I'll pretend I got cursed by a zebra and started spitting fire. Get a move on, kid.”

        “OkaythanksMisterIrontailbyebye!” Pinkie Pie darted off in a bright bolt of candy-streaking panic. Inkie swiftly joined her.

        Harmony nearly blinked in time to miss it. “Hey—Whoah!” She galloped hurriedly after her anchor. “For the love of Celestia, slow down!”

        Irontail stroked his beard and watched the three mares weaving their frenzied way through the winding corridors of Dredgemane. His eyes settled on the copper pegasus taking up the rear. “Hmmm... They keep enlisting ponies younger and younger, don't they?”

        “No... Uhm... I didn't serve in any campaign,” Harmony explained. She stood across from an aproned old mare and gave a deadpan expression in the middle of a cramped, steamy kitchen. “I'm borrowing this hat from Miss Pie's family and—”

        A pink streak soared in from the pegasus' peripheral vision. “There you are! Here, hold these!”

        “Ooomf!” Harmony grunted as she suddenly teetered under the weight of several heavy piles of boxed treats having been planted on her vested spine.

        Pinkie Pie dusted her hooves off and kicked a nearby table, knocking loose a huge basket of doughnuts and bagels that landed atop her expertly poised flank. “Aaaaaand we're ready for the rounds, Ms. Marble Cake!”

        “Excellent, young ladies!” A rather rotund pony with gray-blue hair smiled with bulbous dimples as she stirred a vat of icing along one of the many rows of worktables in the heated room. Half a dozen Dredgemane ponies her age—dressed in identically unassuming garments—worked rapidly on piles of dough and baking mixes behind her, forming a veritable assembly line of the entrepreneur's own design. “Oh, how I wished I had more workhooves your age to help with business around here!” A brief frown. “Then again, it isn't always that we get to deliver locally. So much of the income has been coming from abroad as of late.” The dimples returned, rosily. “But everytime you visit town, Pinkamena, it's like Dredgemane rediscovers its sweet tooth!”

        “Someone should fire the tooth fairy!” Pinkie's blue eyes glinted. “That sweetooth has gotta be dusty and grimy from being lost and found so much! Bleachk!”

        “Miss Pie, I wonder if you're half as random as you are literal,” Harmony wheezed under the weighted bulk of stacked treats on her back. The same Entropan body that battled trolls and an ivory nematoad was suddenly a helpless victim to an inexplicable mountain of dessert items, so that half of her absurdly wondered if it was possible to bake cookies out of dark matter. “I've imagined many a death in my life, but never by baked goods shattering my spine... ”

        “Oh, tough it up, girl!” Marble Cake boomed. Her body housed a living bathtub of a lung cavity. “I would never have gotten as far with my personal business as I did by deflating under a mere stack of cookies! Just pretend that these deliveries are what your basic training prepared you for!”

        “Basic what?” Harmony quivered and wobbled until the brim of her green beret fell over her eyes. She blew it back up to the top of her mane and said, “I mean it! This belongs to Miss Pie's father, who—might I add—is apparently your brother-in-law!”

        “Since he went on a sugar diet, he's been no relative of mine!” The bloated mare was almost convincing with the seriousness of her tone. This all melted as soon as she leaned over to nuzzle Pinkie through her straw hat. “But you'll always be my favorite pink niece! I swear, Gultophine sculpted you to be a walking cotton candy advertisement! You're nothing but good news for business!”

        “Is now a bad time to tell you that I threw up in your cactus garden after running across town to get here?”

        “What was that?”

        “Nothing!” Pinkie Pie grinned innocently, then shoved Harmony, forcing the teetering pegasus to stumble out the back door to Marble Cake's Bakery and Delivery Store. “Come on, Har-Har! Let's do the rounds before the cookies go stale!”

        “Cookies?! You mean these aren't bricks balancing on my butt?”

        “Bricks only wished that they tasted as good!” Pinkie said as they once more emerged unto the misty streets of Dredgemane where her sister was waiting. “Hey Inkie, do cacti stain easily?”

        “Medical school never prepared me for that question. Why do you ask?”

        “Oh, no reason. Say, did you and your fellow students ever have recess at medical school?”

        “Can't say that we did, Sis.”

        “Awwww... No schoolyard games of stethoscope dodgeball?”

        “Heheheh... ” Inkie chuckled, then glanced the last pony's way. “How're you holding up, Harmony?”

        “I'm holding up a lot!” the pegasus wheezed, buckling under the teetering stack of white boxes. “What in Epona's name did Ms. Marble Cake put in these cookies? Iron and lead?”

        “Something that rusts a bit less, I'm sure,” Inkie said as the three trotted—or hobbled—down the street full of hustling and bustling Dredgemaners. “Wow, this brings back memories of when Pinkie first began working for father's siblings. She carried stacks of baked goods twice as high as what you're braving, Harmony. Ponies in town used to call her the 'Leaning Tower of Pinkie.'”

        “Should I bother to ask if I'm being paid for the same job that was thrust upon her?” Harmony managed through a sheen of sweat.

        “Marble Cake never pays me in bits, not like my other Aunt and Uncle in Ponyville,” Pinkie Pie said. “If it's any consolation, you'll have the same share of a lifetime supply of jelly beans!”

        “Oh yeah?” Harmony gulped and lurched onward. “What flavor?”

        “Licorice.”

        “Then I quit.”

        “I'd wait a few hours if I were you!” Pinkie smiled. “If you toss your hat in before we make at least half a dozen deliveries, we might have a riot on our hooves!” She glanced as they passed a street sign pointing towards a distant dead end. “Oh hey, Inkie!”

        “I see it. This is where I bid you both adieu.” Inkie began trotting west down a winding canyon that led towards an even grayer corner of Dredgemane. “Pinkie Pie, try not to set anything else on fire. Harmony, try not to die if she sets something else on fire.”

        “You've been a reassuring spirit of hope until now, Inkessa.”

        “That's the best compliment I've had in days.” The droning nurse curtsied and spun about on her hooves, marching off. “Come visit Stonehaven if you can, Pinkamena. They're bursting at the seams to see you.”

        “Will do, Inky-Winky!” Pinkie Pie bounced merrily down the street with her rattling basket of doughnuts.

        Harmony trudged after her. “Who're 'they?'”

        “An even better question!” Pinkie Pie grinned with sparkling eyes as the two suddenly weaved their way into a bizarrely large, open space. “Who's the Royal Grand Biv?!”

        “The Royal Grand What-now?”

        Pinkie bounced ahead and made her way towards a large concrete fountain in the center of what turned out to be Dredgemane's Town Square. Five conjoining roads morphed into a remarkably wide expanse of cobblestone, so that for once in the grand rocky forest of that town the Sun shone with a modicum of brightness, as could be afforded by the pea-soup overcast above. The fountain had as its centerpiece a grand alicorn effigy, with wings that stretched far wider than any conventional depiction of Princess Celestia. A group of city workers in gray fatigues were clambering all over the fountain as the populace of Dredgemane surged and circled around them. A chunk of stone had been removed from the fountain's side so that a plumber or two could reach the intricate pipework that fed into the granite display.

        “Hey! What's she done now? Huh? Huh?” Pinkie bounced towards the workers, her blue eyes reflecting the gray sunlight three times as brightly. “Has the Biv struck again?”

        “Oh, hello there, Pinkamena.” One of the workers nonchalantly nodded his snout towards her while sweatily fiddling with a mess of pipes. “I see you're back in town. And, yes, the Biv was here sometime last night.”

        “What did she do this time?!” Pinkie beamed, bouncing circles around the fountain. “Did she perfume the statue with lavender? Dump a bunch of fruit in the basin? Leave a monogram in glitter ink?”

        “None of the above,” the worker replied. “But, I daresay, the Biv is getting creative. How he or she got into the water supply is beyond us.”

        “Ooooh! Show me! Come onnnnn! Show me show me show me!” Pinkie leaned forward in emphasis.

        The worker stared back at her, shrugged, and whistled to one of his assistants. With a wrench, he grasped onto one of the pipes and twisted it, letting the water flow into the fountain once more. Harmony and Pinkie watched as every pointed wing of the alicorn statue trickled forth a stream of water that collected in the basin below the prancing figure's hooves. Only, it was not normal water. It was a sudsy display of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. A compound mixture had forced the fountain to spout forth a rainbow collage of color, so that the center of Dredgemane briefly shimmered in a bold display of excitement and vibrance.

        Pinkie Pie instantly giggled. “Ohhhh, that is priceless! How long was the fountain spitting this stuff out before anypony noticed it?”

        The worker chuckled helplessly as he twisted the wrench back and shrugged alongside his fellow workers. “It was halfway through the night at least before one of the militia ponies took notice of it and reported it to Haymane. All morning, my boys and I have been trying to find the source of the tainted water. The Biv hid his or her tracks good. At this rate, we might have to redirect the entire plumbing system until we can find out the source of the colorization.”

        “She's an expert! I'm telling you, she's the cat's meow of practical jokes!” Pinkie Pie almost dropped her basket of doughnuts in her fit of giggling.

        Harmony was still squinting at the statue. Something about it was catching her off guard. As the water pressure was turned off by the workers and the trickling stream of rainbow colored liquid turned into a dwindling drip, she finally realized whom the statue was attempting to depict.

        “Goddess Gultophine... ”

        She remembered what the sign in front of the town entrance had said, of how Dredgemane was 'Gultophine's Refuge.' All of that suddenly made little sense to her. Gultophine was the Goddess of Life; she would forever be credited for animating the many plants and creatures that filled the landscape which Epona and Consus had willed into being. She was the embodiment of warmth, impulse, and spontaneity.

        Harmony had to suddenly wrap her head around the concept that all of those Dredgemaners, in their colorless clothes and their emotionless canter, could ever imagine that they were in fact honoring the essence of their patron Alicorn with their unenthusiastic conformity. Right there, as Harmony stared at the fountain, she once again witnessed the Gultophine that she remembered. As the liquid dried up and the gray plainness of the statue returned, she recalled that the Goddess of Life was also the Goddess of rainbows...

        “She saw the bright shinies!” a voice shouted over the urbanscape in a braying echo.

        Harmony jolted. She glanced every which way across the grimy rooftops. “Huh?”

        “Oh great, not him... ” The one worker fiddling with the pipes groaned.

        “Who's him?”

        “She saw the bright shinies... ” Harmony caught a dark-blue figure leaping off of a Dredgemane balcony in her peripheral. He bounded through a crowd of delivery ponies, flipped agilely over a wagon full of hay, and slid four meters before coming to a ballet spin in front of the statue. “And the brightness shined through her!”

        “It did?!” Pinkie Pie gasped melodramatically as she stared at the hooded figure. “Could she have survived such an experience?”

        “Survived it—Yes!” The cloaked shadow raised a grimy hoof. The smell of backsweat and back alleys wafted off the rambling bum as he shuffled and sashayed through the thick of the working crowd around the fountain. “In fact, she would be more alive than she ever was before! Born unto a new and glorious madness of shining, shining, shining! Until she flew away on candy wings to shine on before all Equestria, spreading the madness like strawberry preserves over a loaf of cinnamon bread! BraHa! Oh, don't the seeds positively stick to her molars? When will she ever plant them?!”

        “Who? Who is she?” Pinkie Pie breathlessly twirled and spun every way alongside him. “Who saw the bright shinies?”

        “That is the mystery of mysteries!” The figure's coattails flapped and flailed as he spun about and pointed his hooves dramatically at the crowd. “Maybe it was them!” He pointed at Harmony. “Maybe it was her!” He pointed at the workers. “Maybe it was their mistresses!” He fell down to his haunches in a weeping voice. “Nopony knows! Nopony but me, the penniless prophet of cackles!” He hoisted his hood down and jumped in Pinkie's face. A blistered and squinty-eyed mule was suddenly bearing down on the candy-colored earth pony. “She was you!”

        “Eeeeeeeep!” Pinkie Pie fell back underneath him—

        “Miss Pie!” Harmony gasped. With a snarling expression, she planted her heavy load of baked goods onto the cobblestone with a thud and prepared to pounce the assaulting bum—

        “Hee hee hee hee haa haa haa!” Pinkie Pie giggled incessantly in the forelimbs of the mule who was presently rubbing the hard edge of a playful hoof into her strawhatted mane. “Ohhhhh how I missed you and your Brevisness, Brevis!”

        Harmony stopped in her tracks, blinking confusedly.

        “Ho ho! So I was missed, then?” “Brevis” grinned through an offensive ensemble of yellow, jagged teeth. His pointed blue ears twitched in the misty air as the mule performed an impossible backflip and perched on the edge of the fountain beside the noticeably bothered workers. “Oh, how I wish the rest of your kin missed goodly Brevis! They are all too busy attempting to lock him up somewhere! My good pony friends, you cannot bar a soul with locks who does not understand the concept of doors, much less a house! For it is you who imprison yourselves with your so-called luxuries!”

        “You belong in Stonehaven, Brevis,” one of the workers droned. “Haymane will have your neck yet.”

        “He may have every centimeter of me!” The mule gave a yellow grin. “If it means him coming out of his clouded office of misery to smell more than mere dust and broken dreams! Let Brevis tell you this, every soul is a deep and dark cave and only a seldom few of us has dared to trot boldly into the bright mouth of it to kiss the shiny madness beyond. It is the same madness that has rocked us since infancy, that has fed us colorful nightmares that we all secretly wish to relive as a semblance of peace from this clear and ever-present mundanity!”

        “Hey Brevis!” Pinkie grinned wide at the sight of him. “I dream in lollipops! What does that mean?”

        “It means that you're still a young mother to the shivering foal that is your future, Pinkie Pie!” The mule forward-dismounted from the fountain and slid to a graceful stop beside the earth pony with a hoof around her shoulder. “It is a foal born from the conception of joy and impulse, destined for all the gloriously exciting and gloriously dangerous things that dwindle in wait beyond the granite walls of every town ever, and as its mother it is your job to lick, lick, lick the child's coat clean so that it can stand for the first time on four legs and know what it means to live.”

        “I just thought it meant I like lollipops!”

        “Sometimes a lollipop is just a lollipop, my friend!” Brevis grinned and raised her chin with a grimy hoof. “Stress not, for we both know the answer. You stopped needing to dream since the bright shinies kissed you, child. Since then, you've been living the dream. Sleep is just a means to remember the dark puddles that you cast off just like you lost your gills, sweet seapony!”

        “Heeheehee!” Pinkie Pie nuzzled the smelly creature and turned to wink Harmony's way. “Brevis, this is Har-Har. Don't bother making her live up to her name. If I can't, I'm sure you don't have a snowflake's chance in a hayloft.”

        “What boasting!” Brevis's eyes lit up like a pair of train engines cutting through the fog. “That must make her a legend amongst ponies! A legendary bore, that is!” He reached a hoof out. “Hello, Har Har, I am known by many names and I have the good fortune of forgetting them all.”

        “Uh huh... ” Harmony nervously reached a hoof out to grasp his. “At least you don't forget your manners—” She suddenly hissed as a loud buzzing sound filled her ears, accompanied by an electric jolt that ricocheted through her Entropan system. She feared for a brief moment that she would see green clouds of smoke enveloping her. She stumbled back on shaky hooves.

        Pinkie Pie stifled a snorting laugh as Brevis suddenly brandished a buzzer wrapped around the end of his appendage. “Oh, I just remembered, my name is 'Hey you, get out of my flower garden; this is no place to sleep. '”

        “Heeheehee!” Pinkie Pie slapped her knee and grinned. “He's taught me everything I know!”

        “Yeah... ” Harmony coughed and shuffled back over to her infernal stack of bakery items. “I didn't catch the first clue.”

        “At least she's sarcastic,” Pinkie said with a shrug and smirked up at Brevis. “Though she can work on the delivery.”

        “You cannot force the joy of madness onto an equine soul, child.” Brevis scuffled backwards, reached stealthily aside, and switched the hats of two stallions deeply engrossed in their plumbing work. “Insanity is a happy science that every soul must embark upon individually, because to be an individual is the finest madness of all, which is why goodly Brevis is happy that you have decided to take showers and eat off of plates instead of emulating him!” He tapped on another worker's shoulder and grabbed his wrench while he looked the other way. Brevis balanced the tool playfully on the tip of his snout while grinning. “There is only room in Equestria for one King of Bums; I have built my throne out of the laughter of all of Dredgemane, which is precisely why my throne is invisible! BraHaHa!”

        The worker glanced for his wrench, blinked, looked at Brevis, frowned, and snatched the metal tool back. “Buck off, Brevis. You're almost as bad as the Biv.”

        “Oooh! Did you see that she struck again?” Pinkie bounced.

        “Ah yes, the Royal Grand Biv!” Brevis spoke with a grin as he suddenly moontrotted over to Harmony's flank and squinted at her. “Has anypony told you about the Royal Grand Biv?”

        “Can't say that I've been told about this character,” Harmony managed while once more bearing the weight of the infernal cookies. She hissed through clenched teeth. “Though, something tells me that I'm about to get an earful.”

        “He is no less than an artist, a spinner of webs that would put every arachnid out of a job! He alights the rooftops of Dredgemane like a phantom. But this is no ordinary phantom! Oh no, my good Equestrians, this is a playful haunt that daringly stabs the air with every color that this town pretends not to know! It is not enough that he exists, but he must plant a lightning bolt in each of our eyeballs, summoning our sights towards the roof of the world to see what might fall next! It is he who falls—Yes—it is he who collapses every other day, in a selfless stunt that reminds us that we too may fall, that falling is another way of rising up and breaking invisible shackles that force us to surrender to the sighs, sighs, and sighs of this town's daily dreamlessness! We all could very gladly, very easily, very adverbily—BraHaHa—be as dangerous and brash as him. But therein lies the tragedy. If we all broke down, broke up, broke the cloudy mirror of this confounded soup, he would be out of a job! Then where would the invasive colors be? I daresay, they would be in our hearts, our brains, our loins! We would cease being ponies and mules; we would become the colors themselves. Maybe then and there we will realize why Epona left this rock of a world; she too had to fall upwards, a very delightfully mad thing.”

        Brevis stopped—not because he was anywhere near remotely finished with his ravings, but because a pair of darkly armored guards were being pointed in the direction of the fountain. The two millitia ponies swiftly galloped that way.

        “You there! Halt!”

        “'You there? '” Brevis blinked. “That is not my name! Or—if it is—it would explain why I've forgotten it, because it is repeated so terribly often! BraHaHa! Zoop!” He leaped upwards with surreal athleticism and bucked the broadside of a lantern, propelling his body towards a second-story balcony which he promptly alighted and ran down the length of, making a glorious exit. “Chase the madness all you like, oh Dredgemaners!” His voice echoed cacophonously across the gnarled houses, houses, houses that he scaled in his distant flight. “The only way you'll ever catch it is if you sit down, breathe, and realize that it is inside yourselves already, just like the Biv did!”

        “Biv did” echoed across the granite walls surrounding the courtyard, until it was drowned out once more by the apathetic crowds of Dredgemane clomping across the sea of cobblestone. The two guards muttered under their breaths and galloped in futility down the street in rapid pursuit of the runaway mule. Harmony and Pinkie were left alone once more... alone in the center of gray and uninteresting life.

        “What exactly is he called again?” Harmony numbly remarked.

        “'Brevis.'”

        “He certainly doesn't live up to that monicker, now does he?”

        “Heeheehee!” Pinkie Pie giggled and trotted down one of the adjoining streets. “Oh Har-Har, you're such a clinic.”

        “I think you mean 'cynic',” Harmony mumbled and strolled after her. “I can't believe your parents ever let you hang out with a homeless cretin like that.”

        “They didn't let me do anything.” Pinkie Pie gently hummed with a happy bounce to her trot. “Which is why I had to sneak out of the farmhouse and gallop into town on my lonesome.”

        “All to hang out with that 'Brevis' character?”

        “Pfft. No. He might think the world revolves around him, but I had a whole new world to spin for myself. Did you know that, by the age of seven, I had never eaten candy, petted a dog, danced to music, played a trombone, smelled flowers, or ridden a barge?”

        “I always thought—” Harmony did a brief double-take at the last description. Once again, she shrugged it off and resumed, “I always thought that a pony's life shouldn't be measured by her indulgences.”

        “But don't you get it?” Pinkie Pie grinned wide. “I once was a pony who thought that life was something boring, where to do stuff—so long as it was different stuff than what you were used to doing—would be a crime!” She lifted her snout up towards the misty air of Dredgemane and bounced proudly. “That is why, from age eight and onwards, I told myself that I would not see the next sun set until I had done something new that day that I had never done before. And I've been living that life ever since!”

        “What changed?” Harmony asked, glancing over with genuine curiosity. “What changed to make you live so experimentally from then on?”

        “Heeheeheee... ” Pinkie's blue eyes rolled around in her head. “'She saw the bright shinies!' Hee hee hee haa haa haa! La la la la laaa... ” She strolled ahead of Harmony like a pink cloud.

        The last pony raised an eyebrow. She wasn't smiling, but she wasn't frowning either. She followed along as Miss Pie led them on the first leg of Marble Cake's delivery rounds. For a brief moment, the infernal stack of baked items had lost their weight atop Harmony's Entropan back. Perhaps it was all in her head that whole time.