The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Slaughterpink Five

        “Eeep!” Pinkie Pie squirmed in Harmony's grasp as the last pony flung the two of them to the street. The air of Dredgemane's Town Square sang with metal madness. The Royal Grand Biv flung its rainbow colored cloak-blades down at the two ponies. Harmony gnashed her teeth and rolled from side-to-side with her anchor in tow. After each subsequent dodge, the figure's weapons spat sparks across the cobblestone.

        “I hate sharp pointy things!” Pinkie squeaked and clung all the tighter to Harmony. “Ihatethem! Ihatethem! Ihatethem!”

        Harmony hissed, exhaling through her anchor's candy-colored forelimbs. “Miss Pie... Hckkt... You're choking me...” Her grimacing face reflected off the Biv's ruby goggles as the fan of prismatic blades soared towards her skull. “Will you friggin' let go?!” She side-bucked a shrieking Pinkie towards the fountain.

        The two ponies split apart just milliseconds before the figure's cape embedded into the cobblestone between them. Harmony kipped up to her hooves, climbed up the metal-laced cape in a blink, and jumped off with a front limb slamming across the Biv's mask. The phantom vandal stumbled back from the impact. As Harmony vigorously charged it, the figure sheathed its blades and lowered its masked muzzle. It caught the full brunt of the time traveler's charge and flung her over its flank.

        Harmony yelped, spun in the air, and slammed through a wooden cart beside the Gultophine statue. In her place, over two dozen Dredgemane guards rushed up and aimed a flurry of pikes the Biv's way. With acrobatic finesse, the rainbow-cloaked miscreant dodged the young militia ponies' stabs, grasped the lengths of two separate spears with the crooks of its limbs, and flung the yelping owners into each other. Several guards collapsed over the two, their armor-rattled cries echoing across the starlit canyons of Dredgemane.

        Harmony stood up from a sea of wooden splinters. Hissing, she glared over and watched a new pair of guards rush up to the Biv's side, armed with net guns. Just as the stallions were about to launch the contraptions, the figure unsheathed its blades once more and deflected the cannons away with a rain of sparks. Before the burning embers could so much as touch the cobblestone, the lightning-quick figure hoisted two guards by their breastplates and flung them violently into a crowd of reinforcements. More iron-clad Dredgemaners stormed up, surrounding the Biv. The vandal glared at them through glinting goggles and once more raised its “wings” of multicolored blades—

        —which Harmony's Entropan hoof suddenly sailed through, sundering the sharp fans to rainbow dust. The crowd of recovering guards gasped at the “Canterlotlian Agent's” hoofwork as she stood in the shadow of the stumbling Biv and smirked. “Hah! You're not so tough without your cloak's teeth, now are you?”

        A blast of gunpowder emanated from deep within the Royal Grand Biv's robes. A cluster of bright ribbon flew towards Harmony's face and wrapped tightly around her muzzle.

        “Mmmff—Mmmmff!” Harmony's amber eyes crossed as she struggled with frustrated hooves to yank the bindings off her mouth. “Mmmfff!

        Two guards took the moment to dive at the Biv. The figure backflipped mightily into the air, dodging them and sailing over the sea of swiveling heads. With unearthly finesse, the vandal landed in front of a closed blacksmith shop, spun around, and broke into a fierce gallop—

        “Rrrrghhh!” A muzzle-bound pegasus flew into the Biv's side, bull-tackling it through the front face of the building.

        Navigating a sea of shards, both figures tumbled into the darkened blacksmith's shop. There was a brief but weighted scuffle, with both Harmony and the cloaked pony exchanging vicious blows. Finally, the Biv kicked the time traveler off. Harmony stumbled backwards into an extinguished furnace. With a muted snarl, she forced her Entropan hooves once more to her lips and finally wrenched the rainbow ribbons off her snout. “Nnngh!” She glared across the blanketing shadows of the first floor interior. “Show yourself, ya fruity bucket of vomit!”

        Just then, blacksmith shop exploded with light. Harmony winced, squinting to see a familiar, bushy-bearded stallion marching down a flight of steps with a trembling mare carrying a lantern by his side.

        “What in Elektra's mane?!” Mister Irontail snarled under the brim of a nightcap. He shook the rusted end of a firepoker in Harmony's direction. “Explain yourself, girl, or I'll add another wound to your Zebraharan battle scars!”

        Harmony straightened her green beret and panted. “The Royal Grand Biv is here! Did you see where it went?!” Irontail's wife shrieked, because four rainbow-colored limbs were suddenly ensnaring the last pony's body from behind, lifting her back so that she teetered on two hooves. “Oh buck me with a lightning gun!” Harmony snarled and flew herself backwards, slamming both her and her tangling foe through several clattering rows of iron tools. “Aaaaugh!” The two of them finally collapsed through the door to the blacksmith's shop—

        —and back out onto the cobblestone of Town Square. Harmony and the Biv slammed through a wooden fence and crashed against a water trough, spilling muddied liquid all over the street. The sounds of gasping guards and rattling armor lit the misty night air. While the Biv ran away, Harmony fell with a splash. Wincing, she glanced up to see the bottoms of the Biv's scampering hooves.

        In a sharp breath, Harmony jolted onto four hooves to gallop after her. Her limbs slipped over the wet cobblestone. She growled and cursed under her breath as she scuffled absurdly in place for a few seconds before ultimately diving straight for the Biv's dangling tail hairs. Her teeth clamped over the fibers and she yanked her neck back... only to find her entire weight falling down on her haunches.

        “Ooof!” Harmony exhaled into the tail. She blinked, and realized that the tail had not only detached from the escaping Biv's figure, but it wasn't even a tail at all. As a matter of fact, judging from the lit fuse that was sparkling on the other side of it—

        An explosion of spectral sediment went off in the time traveler's face. She and several guards around her coughed and sputtered as a rainbow-colored cloud filled the immediate space of the Dredgemane street. Harmony stumbled forward, blinking through a fresh stain of soot covering her twitching, copper features. As soon as she opened her eyes—

        A paper airplane hit her on the nose.

        “Ow! Sonuva—!” Harmony shook her snout and snarled towards a pink shape. “Seriously, Miss Pie?! Now of all times?!”

        Pinkie innocently shrugged amidst a sea of stumbling guards. “I had to do something while you were gone!”

        “Pinkie, it was—like—sixty seconds!”

        “Did the Biv get away?”

        “You tell me!”

        “Oooh!” Pinkie pointed up towards the rooftops. “Lookie!”

        Harmony spun; her amber eyes twitched. As the rainbow smoke cleared, the unmistakable shadow of the Royal Grand Biv could be seen galloping up towards a row of closed market stands and scaling the wooden shingles above them.

        “Yeah, okay, time to take this to a new level!” Harmony growled while hoisting her turquoise vest up to expose her wings—

        “Eeep!”

        “Oh my Goddess!”

        “Gultophine have mercy!”

        Harmony blinked, pausing in mid-strip. She glanced over towards the source of the outcries and saw a trio of female onlookers standing in the doorway to an apartment in their nightgowns. They recoiled in absolute terror upon the sight of the pegasus.

        “What's wrong?!” the last pony barked.

        “Ma'am! You're... You're indecent!” one of the guards explained, shading his eyes with a hoof.

        “Oh you gotta be freaking kidding me!”

        “But Bishop Breathstar says—”

        “Close your friggin' eyes then, hot shot!” Harmony flung the vest off her copper torso. She stood in just her black trunks and beret, flexing both wings. “Miss Pie!”

        “Yes, Har Har?” Pinkie suddenly gasped as her half-naked companion hoisted her skyward. “Eeeeeeeek!” The two soared towards the rooftops of the canyon-weaving buildings in pursuit of the colorful figure.

        The Royal Grand Biv scaled market stand after market stand, its hooves clopping thunderously over the wooden cubicles. It approached a solid line of two-story stone buildings and leaped high. Multicolored comet-tails surged vibrantly after the figure's cloak as it sliced through the night's air. In a breath, it landed silently on a plate of rusted metal roofing and galloped eastward through the lengths of town.

        No less than five seconds later, a quartet of copper hooves slammed down onto the same metal plane. Harmony dropped Pinkie beside her and sped into a full canter.

        “Weeeeee!” Pinkie Pie giggled and bounced leisurely through the heated pursuit. “Let's do that again! That was fun!”

        “This is not the time for fun!” Harmony gnashed through her teeth, keeping the distant shade of the Biv in the center of her bobbing vision. “We gotta catch this freak!”

        “Rainbow Dash never takes me for pegasus rides! Even when I keep asking her!”

        “Miss Pie...”

        “She keeps telling me I'll fall and land on my head! Silly filly! I would just bounce right back up, like when I was foaled!”

        “Miss Pie, where does this street lead?”

        “Hmmmm...” Pinkie squinted ahead as the two galloped within two roofs' lengths of the fleeing Biv. “Soon it's gonna branch into two trenches. The Biv could go either left or right. I'm gonna guess left—because all genius ponies are southhooves. Heehee!”

        “You've got a good shouting voice!” Harmony panted as she and Pinkie leaped to the next rooftop and continued chasing. “As soon as I pounce the creep, you raise heck and try to alert the guards to where we are!”

        “I've got a better idea, Har Har! Why don't you just fly ahead and tackle her like you did earlier and I'll come around from the other side and grab her hooves?”

        “No!” Harmony hissed and plowed her way through a curtain of chimney smoke. She coughed, sputtered, then shouted to her anchor. “We can't split up! I... uh... I need you here with me!”

        “Pffft! Whatever for?” The party mare's blue eyes briefly sparkled. “Have you come to love me that much already?”

        “Knock it off! I need you to tell me the street layout, that's all!”

        “Suuuuuure, whatever you say, Queen Random! Hee hee hee!”

        “Grrr—Stop calling me that—”

        “Look!” Pinkie pointed with her fluffy head.

        Harmony blinked in time to see the Biv leaping left, clasping the length of a lamppost in its upper limbs, swiveling twice, and flinging itself toward a wooden array of densely stacked apartment complexes across the street from where the two were presently galloping.

        “Cooooool!” Pinkie nearly drooled. “Isn't it amazing what ponies these days can do? Of course, if Twilight was here, she'd just scream 'Horse Tranquilizers—'”

        “Across the street!” Harmony grasped Pinkie's mane hair in her teeth. “Mmmmf—Now!” She flung the breathless pink anchor—twirling—into the naked air above the trench of Dredgemane. In a swooping dive, the last pony flew underneath Pinkie, caught her weight, and sailed the two of them murderously towards the Royal Grand Biv just as the figure was climbing up an apartment's window balcony.

        “Woooohoo!” Pinkie's voice wound its way to a climax as all three bodies converged as one in the cacophonous night. “This is the best—”

        The ponies slammed hard into the Biv. All three went crashing through the window...

        ...and straight into the candlelit apartment with a spray of glass. An elder stallion gasped and fell out of his chair with the book he was reading. Harmony, Pinkie, and the Royal Grand Biv went tumbling across the floor of the debris-littered living room.

        “—night ever!” Pinkie was the first to jump up. “Yeah! Thank you for flying Har-Har airlines! Heeheehee!”

        “Nnngh!” Harmony grunted as the Biv was suddenly pouncing its full weight atop her. “You're not helping...”

        “Ooops, sorry. Uhm...” Pinkie looked all around the room for a blunt object, but eventually settled for the hapless Dredgemaner's book. She picked the thick tome up and read it upside down. “suiS tsbd?” The mare shrugged. “Guess it'll have to do.” A concussive thunder lit the air. The Biv's goggles rattled as its skull was violently slammed from behind with the book. “Hey there, Biv!” Pinkie grinned wide. “I'm a big fan!”

        Harmony took the moment to shove the cloaked figure off of her. She kicked up to her feet and wrapped her upper limbs around the vandal's mane, struggling to wrestle the miscreant to the ground. “Give up, darn you! In the name of Canterlot—Augh!” She shrieked as the Biv murderously flung the two of them into a bookcase. Scrolls and heavily-bound encyclopedias rained down on them. Harmony growled and vengefully dragged the Biv across the room with Entropan limbs. The shivering elder stallion shrieked and rolled aside as the pegasus flung the weight of the Biv into a rattling dish cabinet, repeatedly slamming the goggled stranger's face into shattering plates and dinnerware. “Don't... Make... Me... Enjoy... This!”

        “Go for the sleeper hold, Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie marched up, book in tow. “It always works for Chris Jericolt!”

        “Dang it, Pinkie, get back—” Too late: the Royal Grand Biv blindly kicked its rear hooves up, bucking Pinkie Pie clear across the apartment.

        “Whoahhhh!” Pinkie flew through a shattering doorframe and landed deep inside a dimly-lit bedroom. The frightened shriek of an old mare emanated from within. “Sorry, lady! Hey, that's a pretty bridle!” A slapping noise, and Pinkie's body ragdolled back just as viciously as she had flown in, this time plowing through the lower limbs of the two wrestling ponies.

        “Gaah!” Harmony grunted. She and her adversary pratfalled. In the heat of the tumble, the Biv tried galloping away. Harmony dove and clasped—snarling—onto the figure's coattails, holding on for dear life.

        “What are you Goddess-forsaken rabble-rousers doing in my home?!” The stallion finally stammered. In punctuation, a glare was thrown the pegasus' way. “And why are you naked?”

        “You want us out?!” The last pony viciously snarled. “Okay! Haaugh!” With a violent flap of her wings, she propelled herself and the Biv straight up—

        —and slammed through the roof. In a rain of wood and brick, the two landed, sprawling chaotically across the apartment's starlit rooftop. Harmony was the first to stir to life, her vision dancing through green tongues of flame under copper eyelids. Shaking the dust and soot off of her, she stumbled to her hooves and marched towards the prone figure of the Biv, lying numbly like a wilted flower of rainbow petals.

        “Face it. Your nights of painting clockfaces and tainting holy fountains are over. I'm not your average pony, bucko. You may be swift and clever, but I can outlast you in ways you can never know. As far as the two of us are concerned, you're just a one-trick-pony.”

        Suddenly, the Biv shot up on its haunches and flung a quartet of lit explosives at the last pony's hooves.

        Harmony blinked. “Okay, make that two-trick—”

        Fountains of colorful confetti streamers blew up in the pegasus' face. Harmony stumbled back, instinctively shielding herself with a pair of outstretched wings. Through the thick cloud of streamers, a pair of hooves reached towards Harmony's wings and strapped a rainbow-colored noose around the ends of her feathers. The last pony saw it and gasped, but she was too late to fling her appendages back. Tightening the noose, the Biv bound the pegasus' wings tightly together and stood across the roof at the end of a sudden lasso, tugging hard at the end of it.

        A brief smirk lit Harmony's copper lips. With a grunt, she flung both of her bound wings back. The Biv's goggles nearly flew off into the night's sky as the cloaked figure was flung towards her by sheer Entropan strength. Harmony ducked the figure's hurled body and kicked her legs up in time to buck the airborne vandal into a smoking chimney behind her. The Biv pinballed off it and crumpled loosely to the ground, struggling to get up.

        Harmony fought to pull her wings apart. With a loud snap, the Entropan appendages broke the lasso's hold apart. She twirled around, ground her hooves into the rooftop, and galloped with cosmic speed towards the sight of the vulnerable figure. “Time to finish this—”

        No sooner was this uttered than Pinkie Pie's upper torso popped up from the fresh hole in the ceiling. “Whew! What a doozie!” She grinned wide, inexplicably blocking the galloping path of the pegasus' legs. “What are you made of, Har-Har? Arcanium?-Aaaackies!”

        The last pony yelped as she plowed into Pinkie Pie. The two collapsed like dominos, ultimately rolling their way towards the edge of the apartment rooftop. The brick ledge lining the structure shattered instantly, and Harmony plummeted over the side. With a breathless grunt, she flung a hoof up and clasped onto the edge of the building. Panting, she glanced down to see her lower body dangling three whole stories above a rotting pile of rubbish inside an abandoned garbage wagon. “Oh, well that's cute.”

        With one swift flap of her wings, Harmony shot herself up and hovered above the rooftop. Squinting, she saw the Royal Grand Biv galloping away towards the far end of the apartment building. She prepared to give chase in full flight.

        “Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie's voice suddenly shrieked.

        The last pony stopped in mid-air, blinking. She spun around to see that her anchor had been thrown over the roof's edge as well, and was presently hanging from the side of the building, her limbs dangling high above the garbage wagon.

        “I don't think gravity likes me very much tonight!” Pinkie struggled to say as her hooves began slipping.

        “Celestia, give me patience!” Harmony hissed and flew down to the building's edge. She grasped Pinkie's hooves with her own. “I got you. Just be calm and—

        “Oooooh!” Pinkie Pie cooed out of nowhere, her blue eyes sparkling. “Pretty fireworks!”

        “Miss Pie, will you friggin' pay attention to the situation?! There are no fireworks!”

        “Erm...” Pinkie bit her lip. “If you insist.” Her eyes reflected a bright glowing stream of light.

        “Huh?” Harmony glanced over her shoulder. For the last few milliseconds that afforded the time traveler comprehension, she saw the distant image of the Royal Grand Biv firing a sparkling red rocket straight at the two of them. “Awwwww dragon turds.”

        The projectile exploded directly over their manes, assaulting them with a flowery burst of rainbow-colored chaos. The sheer force of the fireworks sent the pair of equines sprawling into each other and over the side of the building. The two mares plummeted—screaming like shrill comets—down all three stories and into the exploding sea of garbage beneath them.

        Later that night, the door to the Pie Family's farmhouse creaked slowly open. Standing side-by-side in the penumbra of the eerie candlelight were two ponies splotched from head to toe with slime, mud, scraps, litter, and slop. The air was filled with the buzzing of random flies as Harmony glared amber daggers into the dark spaces ahead of her. Her pink companion snuck her multiple, blinking glances complemented by a nervous titter every now and then.

        Harmony was as dull and emotionless as stone. She removed the beret from her crown and turned it upside down above the edge of the farmhouse's front porch. An extraordinary volume of refuse poured out in a green fountain of sludge. With a long, anguished sigh, the copper pegasus stepped inside. Pinkie Pie shuffled guiltily behind her, stifling a foalish hum in the back of her blushing throat.

        Seated in the foyer of the farmhouse, Quarrington Edward Pie flipped through an issue of Equestria Daily. His bored gold eyes scanned down the page of the Politics section. After a few seconds, his brow furrowed. His nostrils flared. He began sniffing the air offensively, raising an eyebrow as he slowly turned around and flung a deadpan look over his shoulder.

        Pinkie Pie smiled, her pink mane crowned with a brown banana peel for a tiara. She waved at her father and motioned to herself and Harmony. “We just ran into the Royal Grand Biv!”

        Quarrington stared. After a delayed flutter of his eyelids, he nodded. “I imagine that you did.” The bored stallion straightened the newspaper with a firm slap and returned to his article. “There's fresh coal under the stairs, Pinkamena.”

        “Thanks, Daddy.” Pinkie spun and winked at Harmony. “He means so that our bath will be warm.”

        “Really?” Harmony droned unemotionally. “I was kinda hoping to be burned at the stake tonight.”

        “Heehee! Are you loco in the coco?!” Pinkie Pie smiled and blew a swarm of flies away through the corner of her bright lips. “How can you attend Gultophine's Summons tomorrow morning at the chapel if you're burned to a crisp?!”

        Harmony squinted. “I'm attending Gultophine's Summons tomorrow morning?”

        “You have to! It's Dredgemane tradition! The whole family's going! Well, almost the whole family...”

        “Miss Pie, I...” Harmony groaned and stared down at her slime-coated body. “I'm... not exactly what you would call a religious pony.”

        “Well, you are most certainly a smelly pony! So I'll get a bath started for us!” Pinkie Pie bounced her way across the candle-lit dining room, passing a table littered all over with dozens of Blinkaphine's freshly drawn landscapes. “Besides, you're gonna need a lot of prayer if you want any better luck catching the Biv tomorrow than you had tonight!”

        “Tonight's screw-up had nothing to do with prayer.” Harmony gritted her teeth hard enough to form fractures in the Entropan enamel. “Unless, of course, Gultophine left you on fire at your parent's doorsteps and rang the bell.”

        “Heehee! There's hope for you yet, Har-Har!” Pinkie lifted a banana peel off her head and dropped it on the floor in a wet splat. A petite, wall-eyed alligator scampered up out of nowhere, sniffed the peel once, and gobbled it in one breath. “After a good bath, we can both sleep away our misfortunes and greet the morning with a smile!”

        “Uhhh... yeah...” A grimacing Harmony stared after the scampering Gummy... at least until something Pinkie had just said forced her to give the coal-dragging mare a double-take. “Wait, what do you mean we?”

        “So I needed to borrow a gyrocopter from the pegasi at Skybreak Point in order to fly myself up into the clouds and see what Rainbow Dash and her grumpy friend Gilda were up to. And the pilot I talked to said 'Well, I'm not done lubricating the tail rotors!' And I said, 'That's okay, will just any oil do?' But then he said, 'Nah, that's too expensive; I just use oatmeal!' And then I said, 'Oatmeal?! Are you crazy?!'”

        “Pinkie...” Harmony grumbled, stirring stiffly under the covers. “Isn't there a guest room where I could be sleeping, or something?”

        “Nope!” Pinkie Pie smiled. The two mares were lying—bunched up—shoulder to shoulder in an impossibly small twin bed surrounded by the pink walls of the earth pony's second story room. “Unless you wanna sleep in the bathtub! But that whole room's icky-smelling from all the gunk we washed off us! Bleachk!”

        “I think I'd rather take my chances.” The last pony groaned into her cramped side of the bed.

        “Besides, it gets cold here on the plateau! We Dredgemaners have long learned how to stay warm when the bitter kiss of night falls!”

        “In what way, as if I wanted to know?”

        “Here, I'll bend my upper body this way and you move your hoofsies that way—”

        “Uhhh... What are you doing?”

        “I'm showing you how to—”

        “No! Goddess, no! No spooning!”

        “Heehee—What's the big dealio, filly-o?”

        “I'm not cuddling with you, Miss Pie! Not for warmth! Not for comfort! Not for all tea in Chyneigh!”

        “You don't want those pretty copper feathers of yours to get all mottled and fall off! You should have seen what happened to Dashie that one night she slept in late before Winter-Wrap Up three years ago! I swear, she looked like a cave bat who hadn't eaten for a week!”

        “Miss Pie...”

        “Of course, she knew that I hated bats in my face, so she spent the next week stalking me all across Ponyville and jumping out at from behind vending machines! Boy, did she scare me something fierce! Not even hiccups could contain me!”

        “Miss Pie...”

        “By the way, do you have a problem with bed-wetting?”

        “No, Miss Pie, I am most certainly not incontinent.”

        “Erm... I didn't mean to ask if you were...”

        “H-huh?” Harmony blinked, then made a horrified expression. “Oh, Goddess! Don't even pretend to insinuate that you have the tendency to—”

        “Don't worry. Hehe! I gave up the habit of drinking three bottles of Sarsaparilla before bed years ago. You see, my sister always wanted to be a nurse, so she constantly had these medical books lying around, and that's how I learned about kidney stones. Of course, I thought they would be just like any other rocks that we harvest around the fields, so I had this bright idea of growing up to start my own kidney stone farm, and drinking bottles of sarsaparilla everyday was my first step towards starting my new enterprise.”

        “Miss Pie, I think the right hemisphere of your brain should be declared a lethal weapon.”

        “That was the whole point! Kidney stones are brittle and shatter on impact. So, I figured that if I fashioned them into arrowheads, then they could be used to drive away the hydras next time those nasty monsters charged the farms from their bogs to the north.”

        “Look...” The time traveler was at a loss to feign exhaustion with her Entropan body, but she wasn't about to let the night carry on so noisily. She propped herself up with a hoof and frowned down at the duvet-covered filly. “All I want to do is just rest and relax in utter silence. We had an entire day of rampant absurdity, during which you had and exploited every opportunity that came upon you to fill my skull with new and cosmic definitions of the word 'migraine.' Tomorrow, you will once again have a chance to naively exercise such blindly sadistic energies upon my equine soul all you want. But for right now, while your family is asleep, while night is upon us, while every pony in Dredgemane is as silent and distant as the Exiled Goddesses themselves, is it too much to ask for you to be still, tranquil, and above all quiet?!”

        Pinkie jolted upon the voluminous exhalation of that last word. She blinked her blue eyes upon the precipice of a glassy pout.

        Harmony shoved it out of sight as she likewise shoved her body aside, pointing her spine towards Pinkie as she fluffed her pillow and practically slammed the side of her copper head into it with a frown. She projected an insomniac glare into the clown-lamp-lit recesses of the pink bedroom.

        Something very queer proceeded over the next ten seconds. Harmony blinked, wondering if she had somehow gotten detached from her anchor and ended up back in Spike's cave. She realized that what she had asked for had miraculously been delivered: the world had grown silent for ten blissful seconds. The last pony suddenly remembered what her mind's voice sounded like, and it brought her comfort like a long-lost lover's nuzzling embrace. It took the pegasus no longer than the tenth second to breathe this peace in, for as soon as the eleventh second hit:

        “Kidney stone arrowheads couldn't pierce hydra flesh, could they? I don't know what I was thinking.”

        “Princess Celestia on a pogo-stick.” Harmony groaned. “The world doesn't end quickly enough.”

        “Now there's an image I wouldn't mind seeing!”

        “Which one?”

        “Erm... The one that's slightly cuter than the other.”

        “Pinkie...” Harmony turned over and squinted at the pink pony. “Let me ask you something.”

        “If you want more of the blanket, Har-Har, I think we should play 'Rocks, Papers, Saddles' for it.”

        “Do you expect to live forever?”

        “Not as much as I forever live to expect!” Pinkie Pie giggled foalishly.

        “We live in a very cold, dark, frightening universe,” the last pony said. “Horrible things happen to ponies everywhere and all the time. How in the face of all that can somepony like you afford to smile all of the time?”

        “Very easily! Here, I'll show you!” Pinkie reached across the covers and planted a hoof against each of Harmony's copper dimples. The last pony's lips stretched limply in the pink mare's grip, replete with a pair of deadpan eyes. “See? Heeheehee! Tell me, did the 'horrible things' of the universe stop that from happening?”

        “Dey wuden stoff meh frumff gibbieeg yuuf uh concuthion eiffer.”

        “What was that, Har-Har?” Pinkie retrieved her hooves.

        “Ptooie! Ahem, did you ever hear about the Goldtrot Dynasty?”

        “Oooh, is this some joke that ends in the punchline 'And that's why you always blood test your coltfriend?'”

        “The Goldtrot Dynasty ended in the middle of the Celestial Civil War,” Harmony spoke, summoning knowledge from lonely hours of reading historical records in the cabin of her airship. “The last family was run by a matronly duchess named Yellowfleece who took a stance of isolationism when the Lunar Empire rose up against the Celestial Union. Yellowfleece governed a province populated by no less than five thousand earth pony citizens. When the army of the Lunar Empire surrounded the capital city of the Goldtrot territory, Yellowfleece's subjects were starved with a sanction imposed upon them by Nightmare Moon's generals. The Lunar Empire was trying to force the province's ponies to join their cause against Princess Celestia. Yellowfleece refused, and forced her kingdom to become a neutral state. Decades passed, and without contact with merchants in the outside world, the province suffered a terrible famine and drought. While Yellowfleece maintained that everything was peachie-keen in the world, her subjects were experiencing very real misery. Eventually, they rose up against her and murdered the last duchess of the Goldtrot Dynasty in her very own throneroom.”

        “This is the worst bedtime story I've ever been told.”

        “Pinkie...” Harmony exhaled firmly. “The Goldtrot Family Dynasty—an aristocratic lineage that had existed since the mid-Second Age—died out because their last noble representative refused to believe that there was a truly horrible and miserable situation surrounding her kingdom. Written records document that she spent the last few years of her life having parties, enjoying luxuries, and entertaining a small band of exiled nobles who had taken refuge in her palace. She never opened her eyes to the reality of having to deal with the Lunar Empire, and in pitifully bitter irony it was at the hooves of her very own ponies that Yellowfleece eventually died.”

        “Perhaps her fault was throwing the wrong kind of parties.”

        “Her fault was thinking everything was all happy-go-lucky when it really wasn't! She lived during the time of the Celestial Civil War, a period in Neo-Equestrian History that saw nearly as many deaths as the Chaos Wars themselves. The entire race of unicorns almost went extinct during a period of four decades alone.”

        “So, what, are unicorns about to kill each other in Dredgemane? Unless Bishop Breathstar and Bert the Janitor decide to go dueling with crossbows, I don't think we have anything to worry about.”

        “Pinkie!” Harmony hissed sharply, her face contorting in pain and worry. “This town is miserable! Even you can't be blind to it! There are children dying in one side of the hospital while a hooffull of their parents linger in mindless existence on the other side! Infernite sickness haunts hundreds if not thousands of workers who have spent generations hammering their way into the quarry up north! When ponies aren't shuffling about in their day-to-day labors with absolute gloom etched into their faces, they're either drowning themselves in drink at the saloon or breaking curfew just to experiment with impulsive madness! Bums roam the streets, rambling forth absurdities. The mayor himself is a morose soul whose spiritual wounds mirror the length of flesh torn from his life!”

        “That's so not true!” Pinkie frowned. “There's only one bum! And he rocks!”

        “Open your eyes!” the last pony exclaimed. “This town needs more than cookies, smiles, and jokes! It needs a cure to what ails it!” A sigh came out through her nostrils. “Just like those kids you love so much...”

        “But you can tell when you've made a foal happy or not, Har Har.” Pinkie grinned warmly. “It's a lot harder to tell what an entire town wants. I mean, I'm no Haymane. Could you say the same? Hmm?”

        Harmony looked melancholy, her amber eyes reflecting something gray from beyond the opaque lengths of that room. “Is it so bad that I would want—with all my heart—to stop so many ponies from suffering?”

        “Heeheehee!”

        Harmony frowned. “What's so Luna-darned funny now?”

        “Just you, Har-Har. For a girl who can't get a joke, you sure make me giggle a lot.”

        “I don't get it...”

        “Of course you wouldn't. Hehehe...” Pinkie squirmed into her pillow, her lips a sideways crescent moon before Harmony's vision. “First, you go on and on about stargazing. Then, you pretend to my sister that you're following me to make a report to Princess Celestia. Next, you sign yourself up for chasing down the Royal Grand Biv. And now you wanna stop all the suffering in the world?”

        “I didn't exactly say that, now did I?”

        “You didn't have to, silly filly!” Pinkie stuck her tongue out. “Every time you finally open enough to say something serious, you get closer and closer to what's locked inside that stuffy head of yours. It's a painfully cute thing, like watching Applejack's grandmother limp across the room and struggle to yank a window open on a hot day. I don't know about you, but I'm riveted just waiting to see your hooves touch the window pane.”

        Harmony suddenly grew limp. Her limbs instinctively curled towards herself beneath the covers as she gulped down a lump in her throat and murmured towards the bright shade before her. “What am I looking for, Pinkie Pie?” She could just have well been talking to a purple shade with green crests. “What am I still doing here?”

        “If I didn't know better, I'd say you're here to get a good night's sleep so we can all be wide awake when we attend Bishop Breathstar's sermon for Gultophine's Summons tomorrow morning!”

        The last pony rolled her amber eyes. “Do you expect me to think that you—of all ponies—has it somewhere in you to fall asleep? Like—'go unconscious' asleep?”

        “Pffft! I'm a living creature like you, aren't I?” Pinkie grinned. “Still, if you would rather talk, I'm all ears! I think it's absolutely rude to suddenly go snoozing on a slumber party buddy—Because that's what this is, y’know! It may be last-minute and boring, but it's still a slumber party! And there's no better slumber party than one spent talking about all the things that are meaningful to us and—Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...”

        Harmony raised an eyebrow.

        Pinkie Pie was suddenly drooling, her eyelids sealed like smooth concrete as her snoring body slowly rose and fell beneath the covers. “Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....”

        Harmony blinked a few times. She glanced toward the far end of the room and stirred her limbs. With gentle, stealthy grace, the scavenger from the future slid out of the bed and padded to a standstill on the floor. Alone and undaunted, Pinkamena Diane Pie slept like a rock. Her snores filled the childish bedroom like the vibrating engine to a Griffon hovercraft.

        “Short of death or a coma, it actually makes her look graceful,” the last pony droned.

        Finally freed from the insanity, she shuffled away from her anchor, opened the door, and hobbled out into the dimly lit hallway of the Pie family residence. Pinkie was left alone, sleeping placidly. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. In a rush of hoofsteps, Harmony suddenly charged back in and viciously kicked Pinkie's bed with a grunt.

        “Snortttt-Zzzzz-Mmmfmmm-Hmmm-Zzzzzz...” Pinkie Pie briefly stirred, then fell into slumber once more.

        “Whew. Just checking on the 'death or coma' part.” A slightly frazzled pegasus let forth a breath of relief and sauntered back out of the room.

        Harmony stepped out of the front door of the candle-lit farmhouse. The night was bitterly cold, so that a thin cloud of mist wafted out of the quivering pegasus' lips. She reveled in it.

        Standing alone—a copper speck against the eternal grayness of the stone plateau—the last pony slumped against the southern wall to the farmhouse and stared out upon a wasteland that reminded her of home. However, there was no ash or snow to blanket this landscape like she was used to. In bizarre fashion, the untouched rock only made the desolation of the Grave of Consus that much more noticeable. Harmony briefly wondered if she would suffer a nervous collapse if the white powder that blanketed Equestria after the Cataclysm was to suddenly vanish. The refuse of the moon and all of her dead species was a horrible thing, yet it all worked to obscure the horror of the landscape that she flew over time and time again.

        The last pony had lived a long life enclosed by walls of misery. It was quite possible that she had grown accustomed to that pain, that she had come to respect it more than any other element in her existence. Pinkie Pie clung to joy and humor like they were second and third skins. Was Harmony any less guilty of playing favoritism to an all-encompassing emotion? She pondered what would happen if Pinkie was to somehow time-travel forward into the Wastelands, with Scootaloo as her anchor. Would Pinkie be floundering as much as Harmony was to make sense out of the time period? Would Pinkie's optimistic convictions be enough to sustain her, to fend off the waves of pain that the flurrying blizzards and stormfronts would have tossed her way? Or would she give in to a brand new madness—something Scootaloo had long learned to inhale and exhale—and would Pinkie then fall like she had never fallen into something deep and dark before?

        These were all distractions, Harmony thought to herself. Everything she had encountered since the first chronotonic dive towards Pinkie—much less the second—had been an interminable cascade of one distraction after another. It only then dawned upon her that she had briefly set hoof upon the holy ground of Ponyville, for the swift way in which Pinkamena had dragged her from place to place within the span of twelve hours had forced Harmony to forget that she was ever anywhere but in a land of mysterious, blurring lights.

        Yes, Harmony had been encumbered with nothing but distractions, but distractions from what? The last pony's soul-self burned from the inside out, not so much from the fact that every action that she had attempted seriously during the time jump had been impeded, but that she had actually felt her pride hurt when Pinkie Pie ever so simplistically hypothesized—from one blanketed mare to another—that Harmony hadn't even come to a point of confessing—much less understanding—what she was there in the past to do. What was most infernal about the situation was that Pinkie Pie was right.

        “The clown becomes a cleric,” Harmony mused aloud, “And the scavenger is once more a scamp.” With a sigh, she tilted her head towards the sky.

        However, she found her new edge... or else an old one. The perpetual overcast of the Dredgemane sky had dissipated, and in a miraculous canvas of pinpricks there stretched countless blinking stars above. A dimming quarter moon hung towards the edge of the cosmos, and aside from an errant wisp or two of gray mist, the constellations were crystal clear.

        Harmony inhaled the suddenly delightful chill of thick night. Ponies were suffering in the present, burning in the Cataclysm, and forever dead in the future. Suddenly, all that existed—all that mattered—was a glittering and perfect “now,” illuminated by lights that were older than time, lights that sung history a poetic eulogy ahead of its funeral. One pony and one pony alone might have the power to rebroadcast such a poem to a starved Wasteland. Something that was so sadly impossible was once again a bitter feasibility, and Harmony knew just what to do with bitter things.

        “Be a scavenger,” she murmured to herself with a curve to her lips. “Scrape loose the stars.”

        The wheels in her head turned faster than any Dredgemane wagon. With sudden purpose, Harmony turned around and trotted back into the house. Once inside, she made a bee-line for the dining table, where she knew that she would definitely find at least one sheet of drawing paper... and any number of colored crayons.

        I wonder if you can appreciate beauty. I wonder if you can see what is so precious about being a single vulnerable thing engulfed in a grand immensity of incomprehensible mystery. After all, nothing is mysterious to you. What would you know of inspiration? What is there for you to map, to chart, to illustrate, or to make sense of?

        Being in the past—being in Dredgemane—felt like being at the bottom of a deep, deep well of blackness. For a brief moment, I stared up and I could see stars. It's a moment like that, in all of its heartstopping potency, that reminds me that I'm not simply dreaming when I time-travel. Life itself is a dream, an infinitely small drop of happenstance in the grand sea of the universe. When opportunity presents itself for a pony like me to hold anchor to the essence from which I've been born—be it stardust or Cataclysmic ash—then I rediscover something. I grasp once more onto the lever of a great machine, bigger than the Harmony, bigger than myself, bigger than the sum of all things I'll ever do or accidentally bring into being.

        To think that the constellations that I saw then—a relic of the past—could be the same lasting hoofprint I have to leave upon an eternal Wasteland future...

        It is not excitement that I feel. It's something much closer to fear, and yet not the same. Fear strengthens us, yes—but it doesn't motivate us forward. Progress takes something far darker than fear, far stronger than the divine motivations that Haymane and Breathstar evidently fed the hard-working populace of Dredgemane.

        True progress takes faith—not the sort of faith that involves bending knees and folded hooves, but a faith that ensures that the goal of my labors will come into fruition, even if I do not know the goal at the start of the exercise.

        As a time traveler, I've had the immutability of time to ensure that an effect answered any of my causes. As a future scavenger—as the last pony—I don't have the same assurance. Equestria's future may have been a solid thing, but mine still isn't. With each brave (or stupid) leap I've taken into the past, I've grown more and more attached to the idea that anything I do will come around to a solution at some point or another. Can I really apply this addicting philosophy to the life I have left to live once my and Spike's experiment is done?

        That's a new and unfathomable courage, at least to me. As the last pony, I only lived in the day-to-day moment. As a time traveler, I lived warm moments for the sake of the past. As something more than either of those, I'm going to have to learn to live for the future, even though I will not see the entirety of that land of a new Sun and Moon.

        I'm starting to understand now that such a lifestyle is what every pony that's ever lived had set for them. A horrible Cataclysm is all that's stood in the way of me affording to live like such brave, lonely souls. If someday I'm to be as courageous as them, then maybe I'll have something to be proud of, for I'll have then lived my life through three spectrums: reverse-time, instant-time, and forward-time.

        Maybe that's what destiny has intended for me to become in the long run. I'm not just the end of ponies, I'm the encompassing of them.

        It had been a long, long time since Harmony ever sketched anything by mouth. With the timeless grace of a creative foal, the last pony clenched yet another crayon in her teeth and pockmarked a white sheet of paper with speck after colored speck, drafting a rough approximation of yet another grand constellation looming above her. She paused after mapping a set of stars and took a look at her mouthwork. Three sheets of paper were lying side by side, conjoining to form a triangular array of interconnected dots.

        With a deep breath, Harmony removed the crayon from her mouth and gazed up from where the pegasus leisurely sat—hooves folded—atop the roof of the Pie family farmhouse. An invisible outline sectioned off the center of the night sky overhead. The last pony's amber eyes dilated, and she took in the enormity of the entire celestial canvas once more, reminding herself just how incredibly small of a chunk she had cut from the glittering assortment above.

        “Like capturing the entire ocean in a spoon,” she groaned to herself.

        Nevertheless, there was a steely determination to her limbs, so that not a single centimeter of her Entropan self shivered even in the most brutal chill of the Dredgemane night. No less than two hours into the improbable act of charting the sky, the last pony digested the sheer size of her task and decided to start over from the beginning. She had ventured back into the house to get twice as many sheets of paper from what Blinkaphine had left behind. With a new plan, Harmony decided to map only the bright stars, the ones that stood out intensely from the rest. Once she had set upon this new order of mapping, she found that the shapes and arrangements of constellations came forth to her almost naturally.

        It helped that the orange foal locked away inside Harmony once again remembered a fateful field trip to Whinniepeg near the eve of the Cataclysm. Twilight Sparkle had acted as lead chaperone, assisted by the likes of Ms. Cheerilee, a handsome unicorn stallion, and some mare from out of town. The trip was lively, and the sights of the old unicorn city turned out to be remarkably exciting. Scootaloo and her closest friends had bathed in the excitement of the moment. Aside from a brief, freakish turn of events—Harmony's mind shuddered over memories of dark tree trunks in the bitter mist of night—the weekend excursion was ultimately a rewarding experience: both jubilant and informative. As Harmony concentrated on the foalhood memory, a few golden facts of astronomy shimmered to her, so that she tenaciously scavenged from the dim recesses of her mind the shapes of Orion, Canis Major and Minor, Sagittarius, and the broad, sweeing bands of Epona's Galactic Exodus.

        The forest of stars blinked into solidarity across her paper as her memories coalesced in her head. Soon, she had a very rough but very real sketch of the cosmos on the rooftop before her. Making sense out of the time-forsaken sky, however, was an entirely different matter.

        “Onyxxxx Eclipssssse,” she slurred aloud, “Come out and plaaaaaay.”

        The last pony sighed. After so many hours of seriously looking at the stars for the first time since the Cataclysm ripped them away, she could only depend on the whimsy of her imagination to provide a visual clue to the words she had heard spilled through the lips of a possessed unicorn foal. The things Dinky had said burned into her mind across the green flaming walls of time, and she would rather be cursed than to discount what the universal ether had spoken to her. She was, however, at a loss to prove the validity of those words.

        The constellations that she was drawing forth appeared completely and utterly normal. If there was a “dead keyhole” through which some “Onyx Eclipse” would make itself manifest, she couldn't tell yet from her sketches. When she looked directly up, all she saw was a solid blanket of stars. It could just as well have been a brick ceiling.

        “Maybe that's all the Onyx Eclipse is,” Harmony muttered to herself. “A cosmic attic.”

        “Looks more like a baby ducky with a crown on its head to me,” Pinkie Pie said.

        Harmony nodded. “If you look at it upside down, I suppose you could say that—Gah!” The last pony jumped in place and scrambled with her hooves to keep the pockmarked sheets from fluttering away. “M-Miss Pie?”

        “No, not a 'Miss Pie.' A 'baby ducky!'”

        “Not that!” Harmony blinked incredulously over her shoulder. “How the heck did you get up here—” She gnashed her teeth, shook her head, and instead uttered: “Never mind that, why aren't you sleeping right now?”

        “Meh.” Pinkie shrugged her candy-colored shoulders. “I got bored.”

        Harmony blinked at that. “O-kaaaaay... Uhm...”

        “Are you planning to buy real estate on the moon?” Pinkie Pie grinned and bounced over to Harmony's side. “Cuz with Princess Luna back in Equestria, I'm sure the rates have gone up. You might want to jump on it while you still have the chance!”

        “I'm stargazing, remember?”

        “Was it all that it was cracked up to be?” Pinkie Pie hummed and squatted down on folded limbs beside the copper pegasus. “The last time I ever tried stargazing, I got dizzy and threw up an entire day's worth of funnel cakes! And that's when they finally threw me out of the planetarium.”

        “Miss Pie...” Harmony seethed, shuddered, then exhaled in a slump. There was no point in sharing. There was no point in sharing. There was no point. “So far, I'm not finding what I'm looking for,” she ultimately said, giving up. “But, then again, I just started mapping things out. I shouldn't get ahead of myself...”

        “You mean you shouldn't count your eggs before they've hatched!”

        “Miss Pie, I know that I may already strike you as an incredibly irascible pegasus, but if there's anything you need to know about keeping me in a good temper, it's that I don't take kindly to poultry analogies.”

        “If you ask me, it looks like you've got some skill there in dot-making,” Pinkie Pie said, staring over Harmony's black mane. “Uhm... dot-dotting? Dot-dottery? Dotaliciousoso?”

        “I have something of a skill in map-making,” Harmony said, stifling a smirk that swam back through twenty-five years of gray stormclouds. “Being a flier and all, I have to keep a solid image in my head of the landscape I'm soaring over, or else I'll get lost.” She gazed up at the heavens and breathed inward. “I imagine keeping track of the stars is the same thing, but only in reverse... more or less.”

        “I've always wondered what it's like to be a pegasus!” Pinkie Pie sing-songed. “Of course, Dashie never lets me in on it. She keeps pretending that a pegasus' lifestyle is something completely beyond a 'boring earth pony' such as myself. But I can't help it! I have so many questions that I wanna have answered!”

        Harmony briefly felt generous. “Like what kind of questions?”

        “Like: when you're up in the clouds and you have to go to the bathroom, do you have to shout 'Geronimo' through a bullhorn?”

        Harmony was no longer generous. “I think Dashie is right about a lot of things.”

        “Pffft! Come on, Har-Har! Don't be more of a brittle-bridler than you already are!”

        “I can't help it!” She groaned and gazed once more towards the night's sky. “No matter what I do lately, I just keep getting... getting...”

        “Milk?”

        “Frustrated,” Harmony said, momentarily glaring. “I keep getting frustrated, Miss Pie.”

        “It doesn't take a brain squeegie to figure that out, Har-Har! Maybe I can help you!”

        “Or maybe you can give me rabies. What's your point?”

        “Well, do you know what you're looking for in them twinkle-twinkles?” Pinkie smiled and pointed towards the cosmos. “It's not like the Court has sent you to discover the stars, right? I'm pretty sure Equestrian civilization first noticed the night sky—like—decades ago!”

        “It's not that easy to—” Harmony paused to blink obtusely at Pinkie's last words, then shook her head and continued. “It's not that easy to explain.” She shuddered inwardly, pondering over how to describe the Onyx Eclipse to herself, much less to Pinkie Pie. “The Science Commission of Canterlot Court has... a reason to hypothesize... th-that...” She chewed on the edge of her lip. Then she remembered just who she was talking to and suddenly decided to run with it. “...that there may be an astronomical phenomenon that suggests the approach of a cosmic anomaly, the tell-tale signs of which can only be found in a sudden and inexplicable change in the regularity of the galactic constellations surrounding our planet.”

        “Cooooool.” Pinkie hummed with her blue eyes sparkling. “Any chance you may be able to de-Twilight-Sparklefy that entire sentence and explain it in ways that can be spelled out in alphabet soup?”

        A slumping Harmony let loose a groan that sounded like a beached whale. “Why do I even bother?”

        “Are you trying to say that the Court of Canterlot thinks that something is headed towards Equestria from beyond the stars?”

        “Uh, yes? Maybe? I dunno...” Harmony muttered into the crooks of her forelimbs, hardly sounding like a refined agent of Princess Celestia. “I was speculating that I would see a break in the stars, some sort of gap that may be forming in the normally solid line of constellations.”

        “Hmmm... Like a big hole being punched through the sky?”

        “Sure, why not?”

        Pinkie Pie scratched her bright chin, gazing up at the many twinkling specks with a tense look that could only be equated with “deep thought.” “Well, I dunno much about how Epona's sparkly mane hair dotted the universe with stars and all, but I've always imagined that the stars surround us like a swarm of tadpoles surrounds Gummy when he takes a swim in the pond outside of Rarity's Carousel Boutique. When time's up and he needs to stop swimming, I reach in and grab him—and I notice that all of the tadpoles bunch up right where my hooves dip down to touch him.”

        “What are you getting at exactly with this wonderfully colorful analogy, Miss Pie?”

        “Heeheehee...” She smiled brightly. “Only, if I was something headed towards Equestria from beyond the stars, I don't think I'd be making a hole in the night's sky. I think those stars would be bunching up around my hooves, kind of like those tadpoles when I reach into the pond to grab Gummy!”

        Harmony's brow creased. She slowly tilted her gaze back up towards the stars, and the many thick and supremely bright clusters of constellations suddenly and eerily stood out before her.

        Pinkie Pie leaned in and whispered hoarsely: “Pssst... Don't tell anypony, but sometimes I let Gummy eat the tadpoles. There're just so many of them, and Rarity hates frogs. If Fluttershy knew, she'd cry a new river in Ponyville, and then we'd have even more tadpoles to deal with!”

        “Yes, I... I read you loud and clear...” Harmony murmured from a million kilometers away, and yet atop the same roof.

        “Wow! Suddenly I'm hungry for popcorn!” Pinkie bounced towards the edge of the roof. “Y'know what I haven't had in a long time? Frozen popcorn drenched in chocolate milk! I bet Gummy would love that! Hehehe—Wee!” And she disappeared off the edge of the roof like a pink comet.

        The last pony was left staring up at the night's sky, confounded by a sudden new brilliance that stabbed down at her retinae at any number of possible angles. She felt like a fish at the surface to a lake, and a falcon could soar down at any time through the surface of stardust to end her... to end all ponies. She only had to see where the waters frothed from the grand avian entrance.

        “This is going to take several more nights to capture,” she muttered aloud to the air. With a forlorn glance, she regarded the flimsy state of the crayoned papers on the roof beneath her. “But it'll only take a few measly years after the Cataclysm to render all of these sketches to dust.” The scavenger from the future sighed. “There's got to be a way to preserve these drawings long enough for me to extract them twenty-five years from now.”

        “A family safe?” Inkessa raised an eyebrow as she strolled across the house with a tray of steamy broth balanced on her flank. “We've never had a reason to possess one. Dredgemane is a town with many problems, but burglary is hardly at the top of the list.”

         The next morning, Harmony was strolling after Pinkie's sister as the gray mare lowered the hot breakfast down onto the various places of the dining table. Quarrington and Blinkaphine were already seated. Pinkie's humming voice could be heard upstairs in the candle-lit domain.

        “Well, is there any place inside this house that's well fortified?” Harmony asked. “A place that could outlast—I dunno—a storm or an earthquake, even?”

        “I could have sworn you were following my daughter Pinkamena around for the sole purpose of a Canterlotlian report,” Quarrington's raspy voice muttered while Inkessa poured him a bowl of broth. He raised a gray eyebrow suspiciously in Harmony's direction. “Now, you're speaking about safes, storms, and earthquakes. If you're performing an experiment that involves the structural integrity of this farm, I would very much wish to know about it.”

        “Miss Harmony is a soul from Canterlot, father,” Inkie calmly said with a placating smile. She leaned over and poured a bowl for Blinkaphine. The white-maned young mare said nothing, sitting as still as a statue. “One cannot blame her for having a scientific curiosity about... anything.”

        “This house has no tolerance for scientific curiosity or scientific anything else, for that matter,” Quarrington said in a dull, dry voice as he briefly grasped a spice shaker in his teeth, sprinkled a pinch of the tiny minerals into his broth, and placed the item back down. “Our farm, just like all of Dredgemane, runs on the progress of Gultophine's indomitable spirit, not on the weak and feeble minds of mortal pony philosophers. You, ma'am, are our guest, so long as you're bound by whatever obligations Ponyville has attached you to our Pinkamena. However, I won't have you bringing none of your newfangled Canterlotlian hocus pocus to my dinner table.”

        “Don't worry, Mister Pie,” Harmony droned. “I'll do my best not to hurt your family with... science.” She cleared her throat and smiled nervously. “And thanks, but no thanks; I'm not all that hungry.”

        “Nonsense.” Quarrington's immutable deadpan was briefly punctured by the slightest hint of a stubborn frown. “You followed my daughter doing Marble Cake's bidding all day, yesterday. Anypony who insists that didn't build her an appetite is quite frankly not of this earth.”

        Harmony momentarily blushed. “Erm...”

        “Have a seat. I wouldn't be a proper Dredgemaner if I didn't extend sincere hospitality.” Quarrington's words were warm, but the tongue that flicked them forth was colder than a metal flagpole in winter.

        Harmony's Entropan limbs shivered. She made her way towards a chair and was about to sit down when a sudden jolt startled her more than any exploding airship engine. It took Harmony a few seconds to register that Blinkaphine had actually moved. With a swift jerk, her hoof had blocked Harmony from sitting down next to her. Despite the vicious gesture, Blinkie's head didn't so much as tilt up.

        “Uhm... I-I don't get it,” the last pony stammered. “Did I do something wrong?”

        “You were about to,” Inkie calmly said. “Don't sit there.”

        “Why not? Bad luck?”

        “It's Clyde's seat,” Inkie said, pouring her own bowl. Nothing more was added to that blunt statement.

        Harmony raised an eyebrow. She glanced down once more. Blinkie sat still, staring straight ahead of her while one hoof protectively clamped onto the back of a chair in front of a square section of the dining table covered permanently in dust. The last pony blinked her eyes, and she recalled another eating table in another dreamlike visit in another part of the Equestrian past... and a red stallion who was gently ushering her elsewhere.

        “Clyde?” she nevertheless repeated. It was a stupid thing. If the dining room wasn't silent already, it most certainly was then. Quarrington drowned any further grumblings by occupying himself with his helping of the soup. Inkessa had sat down and was already taking liberal sips. Even Blinkie was beginning to fiddle with her breakfast.

        Harmony slowly, slowly sat down. She stared deep into the surface of the broth that Inkie had just poured for her. The candle-lit surfaces of the murky mixture colored her reflection brown, so that she thought she was staring out through a looking glass that showed an airship pilot dipping into mushroom stew during a stormfront. On either side of the watery miasma, the last pony felt alone.

        Perhaps it was beautiful timing—or pitiful timing—that Pinkie Pie bounded down the stairs with a sing-songy breath that very instant. “Wooo! Hehehe! Good to see the whole family up! Mom's awake. Can I bring her some soup now?”

        “Eat something yourself first,” Quarrington muttered between sips. “It's high time you put something in your belly that wasn't layered with frosting.”

        “Awwwww daddy, you're so you.” Pinkie Pie winked. “But how can you keep track of what I'm eating when I'm so far away in Ponyville all the time?”

        “I shudder to think, child.”

        “Heeheehee. Ooooh!” Pinkie leaned in and squinted at the table of steamy bowls. “Is that your trademark gravel-spiced vegetable surprise?”

        “Mmmhmmm.” Inkie smiled gently. “Thought I'd make it since we had such lovely company joining us for Gultophine's Summons this morning.” She nodded her dark-gray mane in Harmony's direction. “Breathstar's sermons are always best taken on a full stomach. We can better digest the words he shoves down our throats.”

        Quarrington grunted.

        “Uhm, about the service this morning.” Harmony bit her lip nervously, still ignoring her meal. “I'm not sure if I'm the best pony to—”

        “Save it for confessionals!” Pinkie Pie slapped the pegasus on the back and leaped into her seat besides Inkie. “Hey Sis!” She smiled over at the still pony. “Hey Blinkie!” She smiled next at the empty seat. “Hey Clyde!” She rubbed her hooves together and proceeded to pour herself a bowl. “So, what were you all talking about before I hopped in?”

        “Absolutely nothing,” Quarrington said. “I would very much like to meditate before we go in to hear Bishop Breathstar's wise platitudes.”

        “With all due respect, father,” Inkie spoke, “Harmony was asking a pointed question about the farm, and it would be rude to not answer her.” Inkie glanced over with a soft smile. “As a matter of fact, we have a fairly sturdy cellar where we store some of our older rocks over the years. What the Court of Canterlot would find of interest in it is beyond me. Are you doing a geological survey while you follow Pinkie around?”

        “Astronomical, actually.”

        “Mmmph...” Quarrington grumbled as he finished his soup. “What point is there in mapping the stars when all of the world's troubles are right here—in Equestria—where we can deal with them before our eyes? That's the trouble with you Canterlotlians; your heads are constantly stuck in the heavens—both literally and metaphorically—though the heavens belong only to the Holy Alicorn Sisters, not to mortal ponydom.”

        Harmony calmly weathered that, cleared her throat, and spoke across the way to Inkessa. “Nevertheless, permitting that the Court of Canterlot and Dredgemane agree on the matter, Celestia may be sending agents like myself to do research here in the future.”

        “Woohoo!” Pinkie bullhorned across the table. “That would be fantastic! We could have a royal unicorn slumber party!”

        “After I'm dead and buried, perhaps,” Quarrington grumbled.

        “I don't necessarily mean on the farm, but around the Grave of Consus in general.” Harmony glanced aside while speaking. Her eyes fell upon Blinkie's part of the table. The young mare was removing the vegetable bits out of her broth and slowly laying them down around the bowl so that they made a geometrically perfect square frame. Harmony remembered that she was saying something and belatedly finished with “If that turns out to be the case, I would require a... a safe place around town to store notes that could be reacquired months, years, or even decades from now.”

        “The manner in which you Canterlotlian agents keep things organized is astounding,” Inkie said, leaning her chin to her hoof as she gazed across the table at Harmony. “That's why I've always been so interested in pursuing a medical field in the Equestrian Capital. If there's any hope for new cures to horrible diseases, the answer's to be found in the shadow of Princess Celestia's palace—nowhere else.”

        “Any particular disease you have on the agenda?” Harmony asked, then immediately wished that she hadn't. The silence that suddenly permeated the dinner table even closed Pinkie's mouth for a good half a minute.

        Quarrington finished the last of his soup in silent repose. Inkessa lethargically picked at her bowl. Pinkie hummed at random intervals while trying to entertain herself with the sloshing volume of soup before her. Blinkie was the only one eating regularly, though she still sat in a petrified frame, as if mirroring a ghostly shadow in the empty space beside her.

        Harmony exhaled and leaned towards her bowl to take her first sip. She wondered that if it was this hard to digest anything at a Dredgemane dinner table, how better would she manage in a Gultophine chapel?

        Half an hour later, Harmony strolled limply out of Pinkie Pie's bedroom. She was garbed yet again in the freshly-washed but familiarly pathetic turquoise vest and black trunks. Lingering in the hallway, she grasped a green beret in one hoof. The image of Pinkie's vicious blue eyes in the saloon light stabbed the time traveler's mind, quickening her heartbeat. With a deep groan, she slapped the infernal article back onto her head and prepared for another day's unpredictability.

        Just then, A voice roared up through the stairwell on gravelly octaves: “Pinkamena Diane Pie! Are you dressed yet for Summons?!”

        Harmony responded for Pinkie. “I think she's just about ready, Mister Pie! One second!” The last pony squinted down the hallway and shuffled cautiously towards the cracked bedroom door to an infinite blackness. From within, Pinkie and Mrs. Pie were whispering:

        “But you admire that character so much. Why would you endeavor to chase the Royal Grand Biv down and deliver him to Haymane's clutches?”

        “Because it's my one and only chance to get close to such an awesome and mysterious pony! Still, you should see how Har-Har makes her moves! Running side-by-side with her in chase of the Biv is like being in the Running of the Leaves, only with more explosions!”

        “Oh darling...” There were a series of hacking coughs. “I do hope you aren't going to hurt yourself! Especially all because of some pegasus from Canterlot...”

        “Har-Har's no ordinary pegasus. She's like the walking, talking, interrobang of pegasi!”

        “But you just met her, darling.”

        “I think she's just about to meet herself too!”

        “Why, whatever do you mean by that?”

        “Heeheeheeheeheee!”

        “Oh. Oh, but of course, dear.” There were more coughs, then a wheezing sound. “I know you're onto something when your eyes light up like that.”

        “Speaking of light, how long is Daddy going to—?”

        “Just like I said last time, Pinkamena. As long as it takes.”

        “It's taken a long time as it is, Mommy. When even Inkie won't talk about it, I know something's icky.”

        “Most of the precious things in life take a long time to happen. Hmmm... Like you, for instance.”

        “Well, good things come to those who wait... to party!”

        “Heh heh heh...” A heavy cough. “Perhaps so. Perhaps so, dear.”

        “Mmmmm-muah! I'll say a prayer to Gultophine for you!”

        “So long as you're not too busy asking for that chicken-suit like you always are.”

        “Hey! Chicken-suits are in this year! Just don't tell Har-Har!”

        “Why not?”

        “It's a long story. See ya!” Pinkie was suddenly out in the hallway. “Say, what's an 'interrobang' anyways?”

        “I have no idea what you're talking about,” Harmony replied.

        “Heeheehee.” Pinkie winked. “Sure ya don't, Har-Har. Ready to go to chapel?”

        “Uhm...” Harmony blinked, staring Pinkie Pie up and down. “Are you... Are you seriously going out in that?”

        The candy-colored pony posed in a white vest, black coat with matching coattails, and a black top-hat with a purple band that matched her bow tie. “Why wouldn't I? There isn't a verse in the Gultophine Chronicles that states that Summons shouldn't be a magical experience, am I right?”

        Harmony squinted, then turned around with a shuffle of hooves. “Whatever. It's your father's shame to deal with, not mine.”

        “Heehee! Cheer up or throw up, Har-Har! It's just a normal morning stroll with the family into Dredgemane! This is your chance to relax and calmly meditate and all that other cool, serene stuff!”

        “I ask you this! What profits a race of corpses to suppress the liberating will of madness for yet another day spent lumbering inside the sarcophagus of a dead god?!” Brevis shouted from his perch atop a lamppost as several streams of ponies trudged somberly into the stony recesses of a grand cathedral below him. “You are told to shun all of the dazzling colors of this world, as if to indulge in them is an immediate avarice that summons the plagues of misery and immorality! Oh you poor, poor herd!” The cloaked mule pointed towards the cold surface of the cathedral with a dangling hoof. “It is they who invented misery and immorality when they set upon a campaign throughout the world to find misery and immorality!”

        Harmony glanced up at the cackling bum of a mule, her eyebrow arched like a sharp dagger. She looked back at the Pie family. Quarrington trotted proud and tall, dressed from mane to tail in a finely pressed suit. Inkessa and Blinkaphine were garbed in plain brown gowns, with the younger sister staring blankly at the cobblestone ground passing by. Only Pinkie was prancing along in a joyous gait, her blue eyes darting about excitedly from under the brim of her top hat. Every other member of the earth pony's family—and every single one of the hundreds upon hundreds of surging Dredgemaners—were silent as the rocks that were harvested from that bitter, pale earth. Nopony made a sudden move; nopony said a single word. As the deep bass hum of organ music wafted out of the cathedral's tall oaken doors to greet the shuffling crowds, the insane mule continued his ramblings, his echoing voice dancing over the heads of far too many Dredgemane souls who had the noble restraint to not respond to him. Brevis may just have well been the only breathing creature in those deep, foggy trenches.

        “What is 'faith'? All too terribly often, it is a crutch, a far simpler and safer alternative to the madness that is 'will!' But 'faith' itself was once 'will,' until the rippling waters of the herd tempered it into something that fit like an old winter's coat while we good Equestrians have all too fatefully plunged mane-first into a brand new blistering summer of discovery! There is no need to suffocate here! Epona and her daughters cast off the fetters of yesterday's tranquility and flung themselves naked into the grand abyss instead of tap-dancing cowardly around their father's grave in an infinite conga line! BraHaHa! Alas, goodly Brevis wants to know: what will it take for us to make our mad exodus?! When will a new 'will' marry 'faith' once more, forming a union created not in the crowded darkness of the herd but in the dazzling kaleidoscope that lingers beyond the veil of our convenient habits? I would so want to see the photographs taken from that honeymoon-to-be! BraHa!”

        “Uhm...” Harmony's ears twitched as she murmured aside to the top-hatted Pinkie. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

        “That my daddy sounds like Renee Auberjoneigh?

        Harmony rolled her amber eyes and pointed towards the dangling Brevis several paces away. “We're not even inside the chapel and already we're receiving a sermon.”

        “Oh, pfft. That's just Brevis. Nopony here listens to him.”

        “Yeah, I gathered that.” Harmony squinted. “But do you hear him, Miss Pie?”

        “'Hearing' and 'listening' aren't the same thing. There's a difference, isn't there, Har-Har?”

        “That's too deep, especially for you.”

        “It was?” Pinkie blinked. She raised a hoof to her voice box. “Mi-Mi-Mi-Mi-Miiiiii... Nope! No Flutterguy Effect! Besides, silly filly, poison joke is half-a-continent away in the Everfree Forest!”

        “What in Epona's name are you talking about?”

        “She saw the bright shinies!”

        “Heeeeey!” Pinkie waved back to Brevis over the crowd. “Yes, she sure did!”

        “BraHa! I'm here all week!”

        “Everypony knows that, Brevis! Heeheehee!”

        Several Dredgemaners shifted uncomfortably in their gait. Harmony found herself among them. As the Pie family approached the grand stone entrance of the chapel, the last pony became aware of a calm and collected voice reaching out towards the crowd of faithfully attending equines. She recognized the sound precisely because it sounded opposite to the highly vicious tone with which it was confronting a mass of tipsy patrons inside the dismal saloon the day before. Glancing up, Harmony made out the image of Bishop Breathstar standing in a shiny white robe beside the chapel entrance. He bowed his horned head and shook hooves with random members of the herd—including Quarrington—as each respective citizen trotted by. To Harmony's lukewarm delight, the priestly unicorn's eyes lit up at the sight of her, and she was firmly addressed:

        “Ah, if it isn't our visiting pegasus from Canterlot. Mayor Haymane has told me all about you.”

        “Oh really?”

        “I heard that you were assigned the rather arduous task of tracking down the Royal Grand Biv.”

        “Oh... really... ?”

        “It is a most noble goal, and though you apparently had a setback last night, I have no doubt, child, that Gultophine's spirit will empower you even further on your next attempt to bring that disturber of the peace to justice.”

        “You mean we get to chase after the Biv again?!” Pinkie Pie leaned over Harmony's turquoise vest and beamed. “That's so cool!” Harmony groaned beneath her.

        Bishop Breathstar glanced over at Pinkie. His bright eyes briefly twitched, but he maintained a placid smile. “Quarrington's lovely daughter, what an... intriguing outfit you have chosen to wear to my service this morning.”

        “Hiya, Padre! How're the kids? Oh, wait, that's right. Uhm—Oh! Read any good magazines lately?”

        Harmony gave the mare a buck. Pinkie fell in a gasping slump between Inkessa and Blinkaphine. Quarrington merely rolled his eyes and marched on through the doors like he was childless.

        “Ahem.” Harmony stood evenly before Bishop Breathstar's grace. “I didn't realize that you and the Mayor conferred so quickly about the happenings of this town.”

        “We are both allies in Gultophine's spirit, Haymane and I. He and his Council supervise the town's functions while my order and I watch over Dredgemane's souls.”

        As he spoke, Harmony became aware of a humble, petite figure standing off to the side. She glanced over to once again spot Deacon Dawnhoof. The young unicorn stood in his usual brown frock while his horn remained lowered in reverence before the sound of his superior's voice. There was a deep solemnity that reached beyond the stallion's drooping expression. Harmony was just about to visually map it, when Breathstar's tone once more lured her eyes his way.

        “The two of us are thrilled as much as we are blessed to have your pegasus tenacity here in our time of great need. You are truly a blessing from Gultophine, child. I have every faith that the Biv will face retribution sooner than later.”

        Harmony tilted her head to the side as she educatedly said, “I recall from my readings of Gultophine's Chronicles that 'diversity yields unimaginable riches.'” She motioned towards the distant figure of the cackling mule perched above the swarming crowd. “Is that why you tolerate that moron spitting out all sorts of random stuff over the heads of your congregation while they show up?”

        Breathstar took a deep, calming breath. His smile was laced with invisible iron bulkheads, like the rusted plates that seared the buildings to the canyon walls of that place. “The mule of whom you speak is merely a lost soul whose stubborness has refused him a chance to retire peacefully within the confines of Stonehaven like the Dredgemane Council would wish for him.”

        “Stonehaven, huh?” Harmony practiced a tactful smile as she said, “I'm guessing a lot of ponies 'retire' there.”

        Breathstar remained unhindered, as did his smile. “Aside from progress, the ponies of Dredgemane desire peace. In the struggle that is life, it was peace that Gultophine ultimately maintained through her glory. The poor souls who must live in Stonehaven are fighting the last battles of a war that plagues us all. Listen closely to my words in this morning's sermon, child. Maybe then it will become clear to you why tragedies persist in a world that still owes its gift of animation to the long lost alicorn of life.”

        “I... uh... l-look forward to it,” Harmony said with a grin. As she shuffled past the two clerics and into the chapel alongside Pinkie, that grin fell to the ground like a shattering champagne glass. “Like I look forward to pinkeye.”

        “Oooh!” The mare in a top hat bounced. “I had that once!”

        “Yeah, I bet you did.”

        “Don't be so sour, Miss Harmony,” Inkessa said over her shoulder with a soft smile. She had to speak up over the glaring organ music that throttled through the granite archways of the spacious cathedral. “Brush your cynicism aside for an hour or two. I think you'll find Gultophine's Summons philosophically enriching. I know I do.”

        “Inkessa, correct me if I'm wrong, but you work in the medical field,” Harmony droned. “You have to get philosophical at some point or another.”

        “What? And agents to Princess Celestia—a living goddess—cannot afford to be?” Inkie stifled a chuckle. “Come along. I'll show you where our family always sits.”

        “My seat is the part of the pew that smells permanently like peppermint!” Pinkie squealed.

        Harmony's smile was bitter. “At least that way, Gultophine can always sniff you out from the crowd, huh?”

        Beyond the pulpit, an enormous array of stained glass windows stretched across the height of the cathedral's altar. The gray-filtered light of the Dredgemane morning breached the edge of the canyon and was further refracted through the many translucent plates that formed the monochromatic image of a gorgeous alicorn goddess with wings outstretched.

        Harmony stared at the broad visage of Gultophine curiously from where she sat while a thickening crowd of hundreds upon hundreds of Dredgemaners settled down in the pews around her. She distracted herself by studying the curiously colorless nature of the stained glass windows which were just as gray and unimaginative as the dull granite of the town square statue which the Biv had allegedly vandalized the previous morning.

        Gultophine was—among many things—the patron Goddess of the Rainbow, but the last pony wouldn't have been able to tell from the sights of the enormous chapel's interior. The same gray miasma that filled the cobblestone streets of Dredgemane had poured identically into the granite contours of the grand chapel. If Harmony blinked, she wouldn't have been able to discern if she was inside or outside. The somber organ music did very little to dissuade this dismal perception.

        As the body heat between the bleakly garbed masses thickened around her, Harmony shifted uncomfortably, once more assailed with the unsettling sensation of being crowded by countless droves of undeniably living souls. The timid scavenger from the future glanced left and right, seeing beyond the straight-faced expressions of the Pie clan, spotting many dozens of families with very similar visages, sitting straight and proper as they awaited the punctuation of their plain and gray existences.

        From the cabin of the Harmony, the last pony had dreamed of being in a position like this, of sharing an audience with so many living souls whose warmth and life drowned out the cold of the Wasteland. Only, instead of the effluent shade of a cello-playing pony, there lingered a wooden pulpit before her, and as the organ music dwindled to a dying hum, it was Bishop Breathstar—and not Octavia—marching up to the epicenter of so many gazing eyes.

        Harmony took a deep breath and tried to relax. Half of a dream realized was better than no dream whatsoever, or so she tried to convince herself. At the sound of giggling, she glanced aside to see Pinkie Pie lowering her hat and smirking the copper pegasus' way.

        “Watch his eyes. They're gonna look like lightning bolts beneath a white steeple, I swear to Epona.”

        Harmony squinted. “What the heck does that mean?”

        “Shhh!” Quarrington hissed.

        A great hush was just then wafting over the already still crowd. Harmony nervously yanked the green beret off her black mane and stared politely forward as Bishop Breathstar rose to the pulpit. He stood tall and majestic, his smile just as placid and graceful as when he greeted the “Canterlotlian Agent” at the mouth to the cathedral. With glittering telekinesis, he raised a scroll of holy text and lowered it to the pedestal in front of him.

        “Today's sermon is a divine reflection of the second chapter of Gultophine's Chronicles,” he said in a gentle and calming voice that trickled across the lengths of the silent congregation like a babbling brook.

        Harmony took a deep breath and leaned back into the contours of the pew. In an imaginative flicker of airship lanternlight, she searched through her mind to recollect her personal perusal of the holy texts. For a brief moment, she actually looked forward to a priestly pony's recitation of the poetically poignant material. Suddenly, this seemed to be a halfway rewarding experience; the last pony eagerly awaited the sermon inside the chapel of Gultophine, the Goddess of Life.

        Breathstar cleared his throat. He smiled. He stared out at the crowd. He promptly slammed his hoof over the wooden edge of the pulpit as his eyes lit up like a pair of exploding runestones. “Death!” he shouted.

        Harmony blinked.

        “Death is what awaits each and everyone of you sinful, wandering souls who pollute the river of animation that Gultophine has so dutifully forged in the ashes of her suffering father! Woe to those among you who are here not by faith, not by love, but by fear and cowardice for your eternal soul! For it is not the weaklings of this mortal coil that are awarded passage beyond the prismatic barrier that Gultophine's spirit guards as an inssuferable sentry! No, only the strong and unwavering equines who shun the paltry frivolities of this superficial world will see the glory of our most gracious alicorn! All the rest of you—you phantoms of false promises and broken dreams—death and suffering awaits, for if you are not in the blessed presence of Gultophine's life, you are utterly drowning in the bleak absence of it! Oh yes, I have seen it! As I see it now! Death becomes so many of you!”

        Bishop Breathstar's words were an array of vomitous barks strung together in a thunderous gunshot that pelted the ears and skulls of every pony in attendance. The pews veritably rattled with his voice as he boomed mercilessly from his lofty pulpit.

        “You go about your lives, clinging to your routine, in the false assumption that you are perfectly safe, when your perpetual proclivities to laughter, to drink, to lechery, to dance, to all things juvenile and inane in this short and exceedingly trivial romp on the physical plane bind you to the very cursed essence that has likewise shackled the blind and ignorant heretics of Equestria outside of Gultophine's glory since the very day that Consus was Sundered, when all that was once good and singular in the universe became many, colorful, and confusing! Even now, as I speak to you my heavy-hearted words of warning, many of you are already trapped in the infernal jaws of your ignorant attachments to that which would have you turn away from what makes you good ponies, good Dredgemaners, good Equestrians! Your eyes should be aimed at the one monolithic nub of purpose, the great and glorious soul of our Goddess Gultophine, without whom you are drowning, you are struggling, you are hopeless and purposeless and dying! Each and every one of you are, unless you seek retribution now—or else remain starving foals in the horrifying abyss that is the absence of Gultophine's divine love!”

        Harmony remained frozen in place, but her amber eyes had become sharp daggers digging brightly into the very meat of her Entropan brain. She slowly swiveled her head to the left. Quarrington, Inkessa, and Blinkaphine stood still as stone, their deadpan faces calmly receiving every stabbing sentence that bulleted out of Breathstar's roaring mouth. Harmony slowly swiveled her head to the right. Beyond Pinkie's bright figure, row after row after row of countless Dredgemaners stared with identical emotionlessness, peacefully receiving this blitzkrieg of brimstone like they would weather a gentle cool breeze through their manes. The gloss in their eyes was just as dull and colorless as the oddly muted colors of Gultophine in the stained glass window behind Bishop's furiously trembling figure.

        In the echoing epicenter of that heart-stopping cacophony, Harmony once more felt like the last pony, except for a different reason for which she was helpless to ascertain.

        “Let me tell you what is in store for you in the grave that you are all digging for yourselves! Ponies unblessed by Gultophine are like prisoners of war, their eyes gouged out, who are then corralled into a cemetery and forced to stumble amidst the stones of their ancestors, who were elder ponies consumed quickly by death due to the same ignorance that affords their children such darkness and agony! When our Goddess forged the river of life through the endless night of existence, she allowed all ponies brave enough to swim in the channel and follow her to an ocean of warmth! But that is a very thin and narrow channel, my children! And it is so very easy to linger on the shores of it, clinging to the paltry shoals that each of you is foolish enough to think is worth a speck of merit in the continentally large mosaic of eternity that Epona herself has stretched before our bleak existence!”

        As Breathstar roared on for minutes, an hour, two hours—not for one single moment losing the tempered severity in his tongue—Harmony slumped deeper and deeper into her seat, drowned not so much by the depths of his infernal words but moreso by the fact that no other pony was wilting in the same manner that she was. She glanced aside at Pinkie and was further stabbed to see her bouncing in her seat, glancing back at the copper pegasus, and winking with a stifled giggle.

        Fighting down a deep-throated groan, Harmony brought a limb to her face and hid her eyes in an interminable facehoof for the rest of the blaring sermon...