The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Forty-Six: The Pinkamenally Destructive Pie/Dumptruck Chronicles

        “Immolatia is a pollution, a metallurgical blight, and so far a solution has evaded modern medicine's sight. Even in my desert land where sand blows amok, no zebra can extract infernite with any better luck. I had hoped against hope that my remedies would suffice to clean the foals' lungs like a furnace melts ice. Alas, there is no quaff, you see, that can alleviate the children of their misery. Even a precise, surgical incision won't ease their lungs of their infernal condition. If infernite was not this difficult to remove, the three of us would be sharing a fate less crude. Alas, all of my medicinal practices were for naught, and a Dredgemane imprisonment for myself I have wrought.”

        “You did your super-duper best, Zecchy,” Pinkie Pie said, leaning over with her cloak's hood down to nuzzle the striped mare. “Nopony deserves to have been treated like you were, especially after all that you've done!” She pouted with glossy blue eyes. “It makes me feel crazy-sad that twice in our friendship something I've done has caused you to be called a crazy witch.”

        “Your mistakes, Pinkamena, have been long forgiven, or else to your home town I would never have been driven.” Zecora gently smiled. “Your compassion for those children is infectious, and helping them is still the first thing on my check list.” The zebra sighed and frowned towards the shadowed corners of the barren hut. “I only wished the land of your family was populated with far greater chivalry.”

        “I just don't get why Haymane and his buddies wanna squeeze out any opportunity Stonehaven has to see some good changes for once!”

        “It's not about opportunity or changes, Miss Pie,” Harmony murmured. The cloaked time traveler stared cautiously out a crack in the wooden window of the hut. She scanned the front lawn of the Sanitarium for equine figures, saw none, and swiveled to face the other two souls with a courageous expression. “It's all about power. So long as Breathstar feels like he has a hoofhold over his congregation and so long as Overseer Sladeburn controls every squeaky wheel of the quarry operation, they're not going to let any outside influence come in and try to fix a problem that they won't admit exists, for to let somepony do something positive would threaten the same misery that lends their complex social machine its perpetual fuel.”

        Zecora and Pinkie Pie exchanged blinking glances. When they looked back at Harmony, the zebra spoke, “And what of Haymane, the city's mayor? Surely he is as much a pivotal player.”

        Harmony took a deep breath, her amber eyes dulling in a brief haze of sympathy. “Haymane is in love with power too, but it's a different kind of power, a strength that weighs complacency with misery, both of which can be terribly addictive crutches in a life tempered by deep, deep sadness.” The last pony gulped and in a somber voice added, “I understand his reasons, for I have leaned on those same crutches for far too long myself.”

        “But not anymore, right?!” Pinkie Pie bounced across the room with joyous blue eyes. “You're onto a plan to get rid of the infernite poisoning once and for all! Isn't that what you said?! Huh?!”

        “Once more I hate to dampen your excitement,” Zecora murmured. “But Immolatia is a permanent predicament. Miss Harmony, what makes you so absolutely sure that what all medical science has missed, you can somehow cure?”

        “Answer me this, oh monochromatic queen of sexy rhymes...” Harmony strolled across the hut, squinting at the two mares before her. “In Equestria's history of medicinal recipes, in the Zebrahara's tradition of herbal enchantments, and even in all of Dredgemane's sad legacy of willful neglect...” She paused and smiled drunkenly. “...Did anypony ever think of trying something stupid?”

        Zecora blinked curiously at that. Pinkie Pie leaned in with a whisper. “Do you suppose that's why she brought me here?”

        “You said it yourself, Zecora.” Harmony motioned towards the general direction of Stonehaven beyond the opaque walls of the hut. “Immolatia is a metallurgical problem, which is why traditional medicine can't seem to cut it. If I recall what Nurse Angel Cake said to me yesterday morning, the condition is nothing more than clumps of infernite solidifying within an equine's set of lungs. So, tell me, if it is a metallurgical problem, has anypony in the history of science ever considered treating it like a metallurgical problem?!”

        “Do you mean that instead of scalpels and stitches, we should be employing dynamite switches?”

        “Miss Pie.” Harmony stomped her hoof on the ground and motioned towards her pink anchor. “Toss me one of Blinkaphine's sheets of paper, and a pen if you would...”

        Pinkie reached deep beneath her cloak and rummaged through a saddlebag of things that Harmony had insisted they bring. Having arrived minutes ago at the barren hut of Zecora's imprisonment, the two ponies had practically smuggled a mountain of random tools with them from the Pie Family's residence.

        “Scratch one last paper airplane...” Pinkie Pie smiled and passed the sheet and pen over to the pegasus. “...And tack on one brand new constellation!”

        “It isn't stars I'm sketching this time, girl.” Harmony shuffled over towards a table and laid the sheet down. She fumbled briefly with the drawing instrument, grumbling. “Ugh... my kingdom for a hoof-brace.”

        “What was that?”

        “Nothing.” Harmony clamped her teeth over the end of the pen and wrote across the white sheet with her mouth. “Diff widd onweef tagge un segondfff...”

        “Your pegasus friend is quick on her hooves,” Zecora murmured to the candy-colored mare. “Though I am somewhat confused by her random moves.”

        “You and me both, sister! Heehee! Now if only I could get her to laugh like I do!”

        “Why, Pinkamena, even to this day you manage to surprise me!” The zebra's teeth showed through a warm grin. “To think that there's a creature in the world whom you haven't converted so easily!”

        “Mmmfff-Mmmff-Mmmf!”

        “What was that, Har-Har? Not all of us speak 'Mumble,' not when sober at least. Heeheehee!”

        “Ptooie!” Harmony wiped her chin with a forelimb and held the sheet out proudly in front of herself. “Well, I've got something that even the illiterate can appreciate.” She trotted over and squatted down next to the two equines, laying the sheet down onto the ground. “Ladies and pinker ladies, I present you the end of infernite.”

        “It...” Zecora squinted her eyes at the illustration. “It... erhm...”

        “It looks like a vacuum cleaner!” Pinkie Pie spat.

        “Keep thinking that, Miss Pie. In the meantime, Miss Zecora, let me explain it to you.”

        Harmony pointed at a charcoal-black “blueprint” depicting a metal contraption of elongated proportions. A slender, copper neck connected a bulbous, translucent jar on the heavy half of the machine to a cone-shaped spout rigged with tiny, rocky shapes on the tiny end. In the middle of the device, closer to the heavy side with the jar, the machine housed a crankshaft rigged with a pull-string and a trigger. Beside these moveable parts was a deep hollow chamber within which a spherical object was contained.

        “Great, billowing Shadow spirit!” Zecora grimaced. “You envisioned all this in under a minute?!”

        “If you will allow me to explain...” Harmony smirked and gestured towards the whole of the illustration. “This thing's not exactly brand new. It's really just an inverted redesign of something I had built once before. Something called...” The future scavenger took a deep breath and smiled in a serene breath of pride. “Something called a 'lightning gun.' Only, where that old device served its purpose in discharging energy, this one will accomplish the task of absorbing matter into it. It sucks whereas my original design blew...” The last pony blinked, then rubbed a hoof through her mane hair while blushing. “Uhm... Ehhh... if you take my meaning literally and not figuratively. Ahem.”

        “It is an intricate design, no doubt. But how will this cleanse a lung's clout?”

        “Will you stop thinking about interior organs for once, ya talking newspaper?!” Harmony fluffed the mare's mohawk and all-but-shoved the blueprints into Zecora's twitching face. “Look closely! This...” She pointed at the translucent jar on the heavy end. “...is a sealed container that will house a substance known as orange flame. This...” She pointed at the spherical object inside the hollow chamber next to the trigger and draw-string. “...is the energy core for housing what powers the machine up. Finally, this...” She gestured towards the long copper nozzle until it ended at the conical spout with rocky bolts. “...is the channel through which infernite can be drawn and deposited into a compartment with disposable cartridges.”

        “So it's like a vacuum cleaner!” Pinkie Pie beamed.

        Harmony opened her mouth to argue, sighed, and eventually muttered, “Yes, like a vacuum cleaner. Sure, why not?”

        “I like vacuum cleaners. Sometimes I chase Gummy around with one until he starts making little messes on the floor. Then I chase him around with a mop.”

        “What are these shapes, pray tell...” Zecora pointed towards the rocky dots along the spout. “...that adorn the neck in a circular spell?”

        “Those, my good friendly shaman, are runestones,” Harmony said in a breath.

        “Orange flame, energy cores, and runestones?” Zecora balked. “Miss Harmony, exactly how far has your mind flown?!”

        “Hear me out...” Harmony stood back up and paced frenzied circles across the hut, all the while excitedly rambling, “With the combination of all three of those things, a machine like what I have in mind could hone in on a petrified metal of enchantment and dredge it from just about any substance imaginable! In this case, the thing is tailor-made to suck the infernite out of an equine's body without damaging any of the vital organs. The orange flames are for attracting the metals. The energy core controls the dispersal of the flame. Finally, the runestones magically channel the extracted infernite from the specific target into a metallic repository!”

        “Whew!” Pinkie Pie whistled. “Fancy this sexy machina!”

        Harmony stuck a tongue out. “Don't even go there.”

        “What do you mean by a specific target?” Zecora blinked at Harmony. “You wish to have a foal placed at the end of it?”

        “If I can build this thing...” Harmony sat on her haunches and spread her forearms out as if saying grace before a bountiful dinner table. “If I can slap this together just right, then we'll have a device that can filter a pony's lungs with a modicum of orange flame. The clusters of infernite will naturally be drawn towards the machine by means of the focused enchantment of runestones. So long as the energy source is regulated gently by the pony wielding the machine, the metal filaments will dissolve, travel up the lungs, exit the body, and leave the patient utterly devoid of Immolatia.”

        “Wow, Har-Har, you fuzzhead!” Pinkie Pie grinned wide. “When did you become such a gearhead?”

        “Miss Pie, the only reason my cutie mark is an infinity symbol surrounded by solar flares is because having a toaster oven on my butt would be really lame, no matter how stupidly honest that would be.”

        “The nature of this machine's construction only magnifies our current situation.” Zecora gulped and glanced up at the other two, but mostly focused on Harmony. “No matter how enthusiastic our creed, we hardly have the materials that we need.”

        “Don't we?” Harmony gestured beyond the walls of that claustrophobic prison. “Miss Zecora, did you miss that dreary placed called Dredgemane just outside your door? Y'know, the place that forced you into indentured servitude at Stonehaven for the better part of a month? I don't know if you or Miss Pie have noticed, but there are a heck of a lot of rocks just lying around everywhere. I'm sure we can all live up to this place's name and dredge up all that we need in the name of providence.”

        “This is a noble thing that you wish to accomplish for the foals. I seriously doubt, though, that Mayor Haymane will approve of your goals.”

        “Miss Zecora, the ponies of this town have danced to Mayor Haymane's empty melodies for far too long, and what progress has been made? I mean, what true progress?” Harmony gulped and pointed proudly at the blueprint. “This is more than just a crazy idea in the shape of some whacky vacuum cleaner. This is the key to a jailed dream that nopony in Dredgemane realizes they can revel in. More than a Canterlotlian Clerk or a stargazer, I am an engineer, and a true engineer knows progress when she sees it. We're about to make history in this Gultophine-forsaken town, and I mean that with every breath put into the friggin' words, or else may Nebula strike me dead.”

        “Nnngh!” Pinkie Pie flinched, froze in place, glanced at the far corners of the ceiling, then sighed in a relaxed slump. “Whew. She must be wearing headphones today.”

        Zecora rolled her blue eyes, let loose an exhausted breath, and glanced at Harmony. “Unless these resources you wish to steal, perhaps you should start with a monetary appeal.”

        “I'd ask you to repeat that, Miss Zecora, if only I knew that you wouldn't further complicate the paraphrase with yet another rhyme.”

        “I think she means that before we get the nuts and bolts, we need the clams and bucks!” Pinkie Pie said.

        Harmony merely glared at her.

        “Bits, ya silly filly! Bits!” Her pink anchor winked. “I've visited my home town enough times to know that they never give away anything for free, unless it's pretzels, but Pepper stows them all away just for me.”

        The last pony leaned forward with a smirk. “Tell me, Miss Pie, is she the only pony stowing stuff away for you?”

        Ms. Marble Cake nearly spat into her cake mix. “Your allowance?!” She paused in stirring a large bowl atop a random table in her cramped bakery and glanced down at the bright mare. “I thought you were happy enough with just the jelly beans, child!”

        “Pffft—Oh please, Auntie Marble Cake!” Pinkie Pie not-so-slyly smirked while leaning against a metal sink. Behind her, droves of ponies slaved away at their baking tasks. “As much as I've enjoyed being your liberal repository for licorice throughout the years...” Pinkie Pie orated in the spirit of a Canterlotlian Clerk. “... it's high time I came to collect on a far more proper reward for all of my years of dutiful service!”

        “Did your sister Inkessa put you up to this?” The obese pony glared suspiciously. “You're using far too many big words for this to be your idea.”

        “Erm...” Pinkie Pie blushed beneath her bright coat and adjusted the gray cloak she was wearing. She glanced back at an identically garbed shadow waiting at the back of the bakery and stammered, “It's just that... that... I-I was finally thinking of going into college! Heehee—Yes!” She turned around with a frazzled smile. “'Ponyville University for Dumb-Dumbs Wanting to Become Smart-Smarts!' And to cover tuition, well, I need a boost of bits to get me in through the door! A bits-boost, if you get my brift... er... drift! Heeheehe!”

        “Funny...” Marble Cake squinted past the fluffy-maned mare, spotting the shady equine figure at the back of the bakery. “...You never had collegiate aspirations before.”

        Pinkie Pie's face stretched to encompass the whole of her aunt's vision once more. “That was before I got to know my good friend Twilight and realized that being a egghead means more than trying to headbutt chickens.”

        The cloaked figure groaned in the distance.

        Pinkie Pie cleared her throat and tilted her head up with a haughty gesture. “Verily, I am ready to be an egghead myself, and maybe I too will be writing Princess Celestia letters on the magic of friendship, just as soon as I can teach Gummy how to magically burp paper scrolls halfway across Equestria.”

        “Darling, if any college has a scholarship befitting the likes of you, then I'm sure in the end you could afford to teach your baby alligator to perform open heart surgery.” Marble Cake smiled rosily and nodded. “As a matter of fact, I have been saving up a little something for you. Years ago, I made an agreement with Quarrington, your father, and since then it has stacked up to a small fortune that I think you will find—”

        “Sounds great, Auntie! I'll take it!”

        “Now Pinkamena, I need to clarify something. This was only a meager backup fund for the event that you—”

        “Is it enough bits to afford me a random bunch of metal surplus materials?

        “Uhhhh... M-maybe...?”

        “Heeheehee! Then I'll take it!” Pinkie Pie bounded away.

        “Wait! Stop right this instant!”

        The bright mare froze in her gait, nervously shuddering as the distant, cloaked figure likewise stirred.

        Marble Cake smiled. “Don't you wanna know where the money is, first?”

        “Oh. Yes. Eheheh...” Pinkie Pie numbly sweated. “I suppose patience is one of the things they'll be teaching me at Smarts-Smarts Academy.”

        “There're at least two hundred and fifty bits inside a metal box, located atop the fourth shelf in the large wooden dresser next to my cactus garden.”

        “Cool beans! Say, which cactus garden? Is it the one with the coffee stains all over it?”

        “Uhhh...” The rotund pony suddenly frowned. “Since when was coffee spilled on my cacti—?”

        “Oh Auntiiiiiiieeeee...” Pinkie Pie explosively hugged the large pony in the center of the bakery. A hiccuping wave of happy sobs wracked her body in melodramatic fashion as she nuzzled, nuzzled, nuzzled her bosom. “You've made me so h-h-happy! Every day that I sleep my way through socialism class, I'll be dreaming of youuuuu...”

        “Don't you mean 'sociology class?'”

        “Uh huh. Okaythanksbye!” Pinkie Pie stopped sobbing in a blink and bounded towards the bakery owner's office.

        Ms. Marble Cake took a deep breath and returned to her cake mix. Halfway through stirring, she stopped in a slump. “Wait. Do colleges accept ponies without diplomas these days?” She glanced over her shoulder, but both cloaked figures were gone.

        “Even after the bits have been acquired, there's still the matter of the metals desired.” Zecora pointed at the long neck of the machine in the blueprints. “Even if you built it on your own, you'll need more than coins alone.”

        “Pinkie Pie?” Harmony glanced across the hut at her anchor. “Do you know any merchants in the commercial district who sell used refrigerator parts?”

        “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...”

        “Yeah, wild stab in the dark.” Harmony winced and scanned the dusty ceiling with amber eyes. “We need to speak to somepony with access to lots of raw metal. There's no way in heck we can waltz up to Sladeburn or any of his lackeys, or else the only metal I have to look forward to is in the shape of jail bars.” The last pony took a deep breath. “There's gotta be some soul in Dredgemane willing to give us a huge break in spite of what the Council's done.”

        “I don't know about a huge break!” Pinkie suddenly brightened. “But I know somepony with a big beard!”

        Zecora made a face.

        Harmony sighed. “Yeah... okay...”

        Mister Irontail paused in operating the pump to his shop's sparkling furnace. He turned and glared over his bushy facial hair. “You? Do you know how much trouble I could get in for so much as talking to you?”

        “Yeah, that's why I brought her here.” Harmony lowered her hood and motioned towards her anchor. “She's my buffer.”

        “Hiya, Mister Irontail!” Pinkie bounced. “Pop open a cap and swallow two of me with a glass of water!”

        “I wish I could say I was in the mood today, Pinkamena, but even Princess Entropa couldn't have timed this week with even worse luck!” Mister Irontail pointed with a red hot poker towards the rubble still strewn across the front of his decimated shop. “I'm still having to clean up after this mess, a disaster compounded two times in a row on account of a debacle that you instigated!” He pointed the hot, sharp object into the nape of a pegasus gulping neck. “Now Gultophine's Harvest is just around the corner, and I'm hardly in the position to cash in on the traffic to immediately follow it! So much of my equipment is busted; I barely have the means to meet the demand for new tools and ironcraft after the bonfires are over and done with!”

        “Oh, don't get all grumpy in your goatee!” Pinkie Pie smirked and produced a metal box from beneath her cloak. She flipped the lid open and displayed two hundred and fifty sparkling bits. “Cuz we have all the payment that you could possibly need, and it's not even Gultophine's Harvest yet!”

        “Just let us buy some raw metal supplies off of you,” Harmony said in a droning voice. “I promise: just one purchase and we'll be out of your hair.” She lingered on the edge of her tongue, glancing all over the contours of his thick black beard. “Literally...”

        “Hah! So you'll do what?! Build another ballista to aim at my storefront?! No thanks, ya Canterlotlian Klutz!” Irontail barked and sputtered. He shuffled his immense girth back towards the hissing furnace. “Why don't you be useful next time and rain down destruction on the front of the saloon for a change! Goddess knows why, but they seem to be way more insured than I am these days!”

        “This is hopeless...” Harmony grumbled and trotted towards the dilapidated entrance, hoisting the cloak's hood back over her head. “Come on, Pinkie Pie. Let's go, I dunno, rob a train or something. I seriously doubt it's any worse a crime than our being here now. The less ponies going to Appleloosa, the better.”

        “Hmmmmmph...” Pinkie Pie briefly pouted, her cheeks turning red. Suddenly, she gasped, and raised a hoof to the top of her skull. “Hey... Hey hey hey—What do we have here?!” Her limb dug deep into the fuzz of her pink mane and came out grasping a colorful dagger plucked from the cobblestone of Town Square days ago. “A rainbow-colored knife? If I didn't know better, I think this was dropped by the—”

        “—the Royal Grand Biv?!” Irontail nearly dropped his poker into the furnace from gasping so wildly. “You mean—you actually managed to grab one of that masked pony's amazing, fabulously sculpted blades?”

        “Pfft—You mean this thing?! I have hoof sharpeners that are far less boring than this butter knife! Really, I should just waltz straight out to the nearest garbage wagon and chuck the thing—”

        “No!” Irontail tripped over himself and then shuffled into place, nervously staring at the prismatically glinting thing. “Heavens no, child. Do you know what incredible craftponyship that souvenir is?”

        “Souvenir? Heeheehee—You mean like that scrap of the Biv's robe that you happily picked up from the first time Har-Har did the terrrrrrrrible thing of smashing in through your window while battling the vandal?”

        “Uhhh...”

        “You're right, Mister Irontail. This thing can only remind you of how much bad luck you've had. I should do what stuffy Bishop Breathstar wants and get rid of the distraction right away—!”

        “Say... Uhm... About th-those raw metals that you need...” The bushy-bearded stallion smiled nervously, shaking. His eyes were locked on the dagger the entire time. “H-how about I give you a discount? One hundred and eighty bits, and I'll give you enough plates to build a wagon to ram through a bank wall, for all I care!”

        Harmony marched up with a creased brow. “One hundred and fifty bits, and you throw in two hammers and a chisel.”

        “Two hammers?!” Irontail made a face. “I may be desperate, but I'm not stupid!”

        Harmony reached a hoof out to her anchor. “Miss Pie, would you mind?”

        “Not at all, Har-Har.” Pinkie lent the dagger to her.

        The copper pegasus raised the sharp object to the rear of her gaping mouth. “Augh... Ah-Ah... I have this annoying... aghh... stalk of hay stuck between two molars back here...”

        “Fine!” Irontail hissed, stretching two hooves forward in a begging motion. “It's a deal! I'll throw in a third hammer if you just stop breathing on it!”

        “And just what manner of jar is that?” Zecora pointed at the illustrated container towards the heavy end of the machine's blueprint. “Could Dredgemane provide such at the drop of a hat?”

        “Now there's a good question.” Harmony sat back with her flank against the hut's wall. “I've built a lot of crazy things in my day, but I'm no expert at forging glass.”

        “Out of all the really boring jobs a pony can find in Dredgemane...” Pinkie gulped. “Glass making isn't really one of them. Lots of ponies around here do a better job of breaking glass.”

        “Besides, forging glass takes time.” Harmony took a deep breath. “And I don't exactly have a lot of that.”

        “Why not, Har-Har?”

        “Because...” The time traveler paused, testing her blinking eyes for signs of green color. There wasn't any... for now. She ended up saying, “Because the longer this undertaking goes on, the more damage Immolatia could do to those poor kids.”

        “Then perhaps the best way to beat the clock,” Zecora said, “Is to find a place that has glass jars in stock.”

        “But where in Equestria are we going to find an empty bottle large enough for the likes of this machine?” Harmony muttered.

        Pinkie Pie cleared her throat. The other two mares looked her way. She grinned in return before teetering back and forth playfully, mocking a heavy throated hiccup.

        Harmony blinked, then rolled her eyes. “Alas, where everypony knows your mane...”

        The bartender planted a gigantic dumbbell-shaped glass of thick purple liquor atop the counter with a clank. “Finely Imported Late Third Age Griffonese Wine! There are no more than two hundred other samples of this in the known world of liquor markets.”

        “Yeah, uh huh, that's great.” Harmony glanced over her cloaked shoulder at the rest of the cacophonous saloon and leaned against the counter while holding up a pile of gold coins. “We've got eighty bits. Just give us the bottle already.”

        “Hah!” The mustached bartender practically barked at the two blinking mares. “You're funny, lady. Eighty bits might get you the bottle cap, but you'd better have brought the entire royal fortune of Canterlot if you so much as want to get a sip of this stuff!”

        “Nnngh...” Harmony ran a hoof over her face and slumped even further forward. “I can't believe I'm saying this, but... ahem... humor me.” Her amber eyes narrowed. “How much for the entire thing?”

        “Six hundred bits, without question.”

        “Six hundred—Snkkt—For a bottle of friggin'' Griffonese grape juice?!”

        “Yeah!” Pinkie Pie practiced her own frown. “And I bet it tastes just like Mon-Mon too!”

        “Miss Pie, I've got this...”

        “You've got nothing!” The bartender frowned, cradling the big bulbous bottle as if they might reach over and grab it at any second. “I don't know what stunt you fillies are trying to pull here, but this place isn't some festering hole-in-the-wall the likes of Breathstar and Haymane are making it out to be! This may not be Trottingham, but we've got class in this saloon! And this extremely rare, finely imported wine is not to be wasted on youths off the street experimenting in a one night stand!”

        Harmony squinted. “Just what the hay are you on about?”

        “Come on, now...” The stallion's lips smirked beneath his mustache. “Two young ladies, coming to a place like this, dressed identically with linen to hide your faces from the town, in such a blasted hurry to get some juice and rush out the door?” He winked and leaned forward. “Eighty bits will get you three tall bottles of Appleloosan Whiskey, not to mention a room upstairs.”

        “A room for what?” Harmony exclaimed.

        The bartender groaned with a rolling of his eyes. He whispered before the perked ears of Harmony and Pinkie Pie.

        The copper pegasus recoiled. “What?!” Her amber eyes blinked in opposite directions. “No! Goddess, no! What's wrong with you?!”

        “'Fillyfooling?'” Pinkie Pie blinked, then giggled. “Hehehe! What's that? It sounds like fun!”

        “No it does not!” Harmony growled at Pinkie Pie. She turned once more to the bartender and waved her front hooves. “Look, just forget about the alcohol. All that my friend and I need is a large smooth bottle for—”

        The bartender raised his eyebrows.

        “Y'know what? Screw you!” Harmony barked loud enough for the whole saloon to glance at her and Pinkie Pie. “When the world ends, I hope a friggin' moonrock lands on you when you're in the outhouse!”

        “Pssst! Hey! Har-Har...” Pinkie Pie suddenly clasped onto the trudging pegasus' cloak.

        “Come on, Miss Pie,” Harmony snarled as she marched angrily towards the saloon doors. “Let's go ask for ingredients in a prison full of criminals where we won't be harassed.”

        “Stop fretting over sour grapes and hold on a sec!”

        “Miss Pie, I can't even fret over griffon grapes. There's no hope in this bar.”

        “Pffft—Flippin' duh!” Pinkie Pie grinned. “You think I ever once visited this place because I liked the bar?”

        Harmony leaned her head curiously to the side. “Just what are you thinking of right now?”

        “I'd tell you, sugah, but it'd make you blush.” Pepper Plots smirked and flung the fluffy ends of a pink boa around her neck. The fancily colored mare sat on a stool with her back against an abandoned piano at the edge of the saloon. “For example, just what was it that reduced you to rags? Did a bunch of marines gather around in a circle and...” She wagged her eyebrows. “...give you a court martial?”

        “I swear to Epona.” Harmony sighed and folded her forearms as she leaned against a poker table. “Everypony in the Fourth Age needs a cold bath.”

        “Your Canterlotlian friends speaks in riddles, P.D.P.” Pepper winked at the time traveler's anchor. “I bet she's a real tongue twister. Mmmmhmmmhmmm...”

        “Say Pepper, what's a 'filly-fooler?'”

        “Ahem.” Harmony glared Pinkie's way. “Miss Pie, if you wouldn't mind...”

        “Oh! Right!” Pinkie Pie bounced. “Har-Har and I really, really need this big bottle of Griffonese joy juice, but we don't have the bits to afford it.”

        “Why, Pinkamena!” Pepper Plots looked half as shocked as she was amused. “I'm almost proud of you! For a pony who never got a license to pull a wagon, you're sure quick to fall off it!”

        “She doesn't want to drink the stuff. Neither of us want to drink the stuff,” Harmony explained. “We just want the bottle.”

        “And just what will happen to the Griffonese Wine?” Pepper squinted suspiciously at the pegasus. “You're gonna trot your way to Breathstar's cathedral and let his chestnut-eyed young squire baptize you in it?”

        “Lady, what are you on about?” Thud. Harmony's cloak stretched towards the ceiling of the saloon. In a frenzy, she flung her wings back down and frowned at her anchor. “Miss Pie! Neither the time nor the place!”

        “Heeheeheehee!” Pinkie's giggles were joined with Pepper's cackling voice. “I'm so sorry, Har-Har! It was just the perfect set-up that time! I promise I won't do it again...”

        “Nnngh...” Harmony rubbed a hoof over her cloaked face and glared tiredly in the exotic dancer's direction. “Look, the way I see it, you owe us.”

        “Do I, now, sugah?”

        “Not once did I mention to the Mayor a word about the little Anarchist Anonymous Club you've got formed in this place's cellar.” Harmony took a breath and leaned forward, glaring. “And believe me, while being interrogated, insulted, and banished before an entire Council Hall of angry Dredgemaners, I had many an opportunity to. Thanks to me, you and your friend Brevis can keep doing what or who you're doing in this charming little vodka-hole you call a home.”

        “Two things, darling.” The saucily dressed pony raised a hoof. “One—Brevis is hardly a friend. He's more like a philosopher poet whom I happen to cross paths with from time to time.”

        “Uh huh. See this? This is me nodding my head and humoring you.”

        “Charming. And for another—the most that I could ever possibly owe you is a swift kick in the saddle, Miss Harmony. I don't know what sordid crusade you may think you're on as of right now, but—banished or not—you spent the entirety of your stay in this town trying to track down this city's one symbol of hope, the Royal Grand Biv, and that strikes me far closer to home than you can even possibly imagine, Canterlotlian.”

        Next, Pepper Plots stood up, straightened her dress, and sashayed over to the pink mare's side.

        “But P.D.P. here... I owe her. I always have.” She raised a hoof and tilted the chin of the earth pony up so that they could share a happy smile. “For too many years that this mare is willing to count sober, Pinkamena has been around to remind me that not all innocence is lost from the world. And if she wants this favor taken care of, then I'd feel like an absolute sinner to let her down. Heh—it doesn't take one of Breathstar's sermons to convince me of that!”

        “You're such a sweetheart, Pepper!” Pinkie Pie hummed happily.

        “It's good to know that parts of me still have their flavor.” Pepper winked and glanced at Harmony. “You want the bottle that the Griffonese Wine is in? Well, alright, I'll get it for you. But I'd rather get my corset tangled with the wheels of Mayor Haymane himself than let such fine ambrosia go to waste!”

        “So... Uh... Wh-what are you going to do, pray tell?” Harmony gulped. “You're going to... drink it all yourself?”

        “Heh—Being alone with a bottle may be a sullen Canterlotlian's idea of how to spend the weekend, but not this mare's!” Pepper smirked saucily and pointed towards a tall stallion fatefully marching in through the saloon doors just then. “If there's anything my life has taught me, it's to make art out of spoils. Why spend an entire fortune on a bottle of imported wine when you can spend somepony else's fortune?”

        “I don't get you.”

        “With that attitude, you won't get anything at all, princess.” Pepper craned her neck and called out to the patron who just entered. “Yooohooo! Nick-Nack-Paddy-Whack!”

        Harmony and Pinkie Pie slowly turned to glance towards the far end of the place.

        Upstairs, a railed balcony stretched across the height of the saloon. Beyond a door obscured by a curtain of thick, rattling beads, a red-painted room echoed with an array of giggles from two tittering voices. The playful snickering was randomly interrupted by a stallion's drunken hiccup as the pair of whispers doubled in inebriated whimsy.

        No more than ten minutes in, a mare's hoof stuck out through the beads and kicked a large, empty, dumbbell shaped bottle to a rattling stop on the outside balcony. The limb retracted back into the room of hiccups and guffaws. In the meantime, Harmony and Pinkie Pie shuffled their way up to the edge of the doorframe. The time traveler knelt down, picked up the heavy glass container, and smiled victoriously at her anchor. Without a second to waste, she bounded down the balcony and towards the stairs leading to the saloon's first floor.

        Pinkie Pie, however, lingered there. In a numb gaze, she trotted towards the curtain of beads and squinted into the giggling obscurity beyond with rosy cheeks.

        After a shuffling of hooves, a sighing Harmony waltzed back, latched onto Pinkie's fluffy tail with her teeth, and dragged the cloaked anchor away with a frightened yelp.

        
        “You may be able to acquire a container for this machine,” Zecora said. “But orange flame, in this desolate land, I have hardly seen!”

        “Let me worry about the orange flame,” Harmony grumbled from across the hut as she squinted dazedly at her illustration. “I have to get everything else together before I can so much as attempt to track that stuff down.”

        “But for a substance that is such a rarity, would it not be prudent to make it the priority?”

        “I said I'll get to it!” Harmony exclaimed. “Just keep your stripes on! Right now, I'm worried about the runestones. It looks like we'll have the metals and the container in the bag, but this machine isn't going to work without minerals for runecrafting...”

        “Your insistence on runestones has thoroughly intrigued me,” Zecora remarked, squinting her blue eyes at the pegasus. “Have you taken a page out of Lunar Imperialist History?”

        “As a matter of fact, I have.”

        “Quite fascinating, for a pegasus from Canterlot. Runeforging has become a taboo there, has it not?”

        “Yeah, well, it's one thing to learn from the history books,” Harmony said. “It's another to get obsessed with some unnecessarily superstitious principal because of reading them one too many times. I swear, Miss Zecora, I'm not some crazy psycho pony who's out to reinstate the rule of Nightmare Moon by crafting runestone weaponry. I just need a way to get a machine enchanted so that I can regulate it by a trigger word to drag infernite out of sick equines.”

        “Your sensibility of mind is refreshing.” Zecora nodded with a smile. “But one part of your head is sadly missing.”

        “Erm...” Harmony blinked confusedly.

        “A horn, ya copper quack!” Pinkie's hooves clasped onto the pegasus' skull from behind. “Hehehe! I may not be Twilight Sparkle, but even I know that you can't enchant stuff without a unicorn horn!”

        The last pony glanced fitfully down at her naked forelimbs. “Er... Right.” She gulped. “Stupid me, I guess. I was kind of hoping to find the rocks before I dealt with that.”

        “There is no reason to feel like a dunce. Perhaps you can deal with both at once.”

        “How do you mean?”

        “Go find a pony with a horn in their head who can also grab stones that we need from a rock bed.”

        “Oh! Oh!” Pinkie Pie bounced merrily. “How about Bert? He's a janitor! He should know all about grabbing rocks!”

        “Are you for real?” Harmony gave her a blanching look. “Just because Vimbert takes to drink doesn't mean he takes to dumb. That unicorn's seen me get my flank banished in front of the whole Council. He's not about to risk whatever could possibly be valuable in his so-called life to help me do something so audacious without telling Haymane.” She sighed deeply. “Besides, if he had the horn to do any magic with anymore, I seriously doubt he'd be a janitor in the first place.”

        “Then another unicorn we must find who's willing to be both helpful and kind.”

        “There are few unicorns in Dredgemane as it is, and I doubt just any random pony in town is going to help an exiled pegasus with this machine.”

        “Are you certain there is none who can assist you with this infernite gun?” Zecora craned her neck to the side while thinking aloud. “It has to be a unicorn with a metallurgic sense who is not afraid to keep these things in confidence.”

        “Yeah!” Pinkie Pie added with a bounce. “Somepony with Rarity's skill who'll do the Pinkie Pie Swear!”

        Harmony blinked. Her copper features blushed suddenly as she rolled her eyes and smirked at the two mares. “I think I know someone saintly enough...”

        “Uhm... M-Miss Pie?” Deacon Dawnhoof stumbled over the rocky shoals of a landfill bordering the west edge of the Dredgemane trenches. The bowl-haired stallion nervously struggled in his brown robe to not slip on the beds of shifting gravel beneath the howling winds of that place. “I know that you must be awfully distraught over the circumstances that transpired yesterday, what with the horrible mine collapse that you witnessed just before having your close companion banished from Dredgemane...”

        “Yeah! Don't you miss her already?!”

        “Huh? Uhm... Sure, I suppose, b-but that's beside the point!” His soft voice attempted to raise itself above the volume of the dusty breeze. “You said that you needed counsel in a spiritual matter! While it is my function to lend you wisdom and advice in a time of need while I learn to be a better counselor in my order, I cannot help but feel a bit... p-put off by the unorthodox location you have chosen for us to partake in such verbal exchange!”

        “Heeheehee! Listen to you, ya handsome devil! You're like if Fluttershy secretly had an infant brother who was rescued by monks off a battlefield! No wonder Har-Har has a crush on you!”

        “I don't have a crush on anypony!” The copper pegasus came out from the shadows behind Dawnhoof.

        “Oh my goodness!” Dawnhoof spun and stared at her with a hoof over his heart. “How long have you been following us?”

        “Long enough to formulate a new murder for Miss Pie over there.”

        “Heeheehee! Uh ohhhhhhh!”

        Harmony rolled her eyes and gazed at the young priest-in-training. “Don't worry. I'll wait until the blood has dried off my hooves before I confess it to you.”

        “Not a joke, Har-Har, but an incredible simulation!”

        “Miss Pie, will you let us talk?”

        “T-talk?” Dawnhoof gulped and pointed a shaking hoof at the pegasus. “But the Good Bishop Breathstar said that you were b-banished from town for assisting the Royal Grand Biv!”

        “I hate to give you the proverbial slap in the horn, buddy, but the only thing good about Bishop Breathstar is that he hasn't yet taken to randomly shackling innocent Dredgemaners in their sleep! Your wise and boisterous leader of the faith is also a leader of the forlorn. He preaches to the children of Gultophine—equines sculpted in the image of the Alicorn Goddess' spirit of life—and tries to convince them that they should adopt the image of misery, of a machine that he and Haymane and Sladeburn have cranked this entire pathetic town into becoming! And don't pretend after all of these years of studying under his tutelage, of crying announcements into the streets for abominable mutations of Gultophine's Harvest, that you haven't seen the lack of grace in Bishop's methodology... or the lack of life.”

        “Miss Harmony, you strike me as a very courageous soul.” He gazed at her with something more akin to a wince than a frown. “And yet right now I can't help but feel overcome by the same spiteful and vehement arrogance that has angered the Good Bishop and the entire City Council so terribly.”

        “Am I spiteful and arrogant?” Harmony smirked crookedly as her black bangs danced in the dusty breeze. “Heh, sure. But I have the good grace not to force an entire congregation of ponies to think in the same manner that I do just so I can have my way. Even right here, right now, I could care less if you think I'm a good pegasus or not. What Pinkie Pie and I brought you here for was to help make a new machine, one that isn't an infernal oven of lost souls like Dredgemane, a place that spits out so many ashes of loved ones that they rain down and only perpetuate the circle of death. I want to spread the spirit of Gultophine, Deacon Dawnhoof. I want to spread life. In a City that is named as Gultophine's refuge, isn't that more or less the appropriate thing to do?”

        “You say that you wish to spread life...” Dawnhoof narrowed his vision on her. “Is this the same excuse that you used when you assisted the zebra outsider with her heretical experiments on the Stonehaven children?”

        “'The decay of life is a necessary tragedy,'” Harmony quoted. “'Ignorance within the decay of life is an unnecessary crime.'”

        The chestnut eyed stallion exhaled and glanced off into the distance of the landfill. “Chronicles of Gultophine, Chapter Three. Yet again, your versatility impresses me, Miss Harmony, but I still wish to ascertain your point.”

        “The point is that the greatest heresy in this town is not committed by those who point hooves of blame but by those who refuse to lend hooves of assistance.” Harmony's amber eyes narrowed. “Haymane, Breathstar, and the entire Council have had decades to do something more than just give those Stonehaven kids a place to fester and die. They know it in their heads that there exists the possibility of methods that may heal the equines suffering from Immolatia. However, Haymane and his cohorts don't have it in their hearts to do something about it, for they've grown within their souls a black pit so large and ravenous that it's a lot easier to just feign ignorance than to ever attempt bridging the horrible gaps that exist within themselves. Instead, they're comfortable with just extending this pathetic abyss into the rest of Dredgemane until it swallows up all spirits, including the Spirit of Gultophine.”

        “You still wish me to believe that you are not attempting to make your own congregation out of me like Breathstar does to Dredgemane?”

        “What I wish for you to believe, Deacon, is that I'm on a mission of healing,” Harmony said with a gentle smile that stood firmly against the breeze. “It's the same mission that you're on, a highly painful and improbable mission—but it still draws us on a path, a separate path from the straight and narrow dogma that Breathstar's tongue has built out of bellows and brimstone. Dawnhoof, I saw you yesterday. I saw you aiding the suffering miners, one by one, with grace reserved for royalty, while Breathstar flippantly trounced past them like he was navigating a field of weeds. You too are on this same mission that I am, and if you help me and Miss Pie here—I promise—you will be helping the Spirit of Gultophine in ways this city has not had the grace to experience in years, for you will be blessing lives instead of branding heretics! Now, which of those two actions can be touched upon more in the Chronicles, you think?”

        Dawnhoof sighed long and hard, his straight-edged mane blowing in the breeze. He gulped and stared off towards the misty clouds beyond the Grave of Consus. “I should just report you. You have been banished by the Council of Dredgemane, and I have been summoned here by means of deceit into a verbal barrage of propaganda. Even Bishop Breathstar himself would exempt this conversation from the priestly code of confidence, for the social implications of entertaining your malformed philosophy are heinous to say the least.”

        Harmony smirked. “Then why aren't you presently scampering away with your robe hiked up like a good monk?”

        “Pssst!” Pinkie Pie leaned in. “Because he likes the streak in your mane!” A rock was expertly kicked into her skull. “Owie!” She rubbed her head and pouted.

        Harmony lowered her hoof, gulped, and nervously smiled the Deacon's way. “Erm... eheh... 'Hail Gultophine.'”

        “'And she blesses you,'” he ritualistically uttered with a nod of his bowl-cut mane. “Nnnngh... What...” He hissed and clenched his chestnut eyes briefly shut before quietly murmuring, “What is it that you need of my priestly talents, Miss Harmony?”

        “Nothing.”

        His eyes flickered back open. “Nothing?”

        “Absolutely nothing!” Harmony trotted over, placed a hoof on his shoulder, and gestured with another forelimb towards the rocky expanse around him. “However... I could do with a few stones, if you don't mind.”

        “Just how many rocks, exactly?” Dawnhoof murmured as he strolled along with Harmony and Pinkie Pie through an immense, gravel-filled ditch beneath the howling winds.

        “I'm not all that concerned about quantity,” the last pony shouted above the whipping air. “I'm mostly interested in the composition!” She pointed towards a soft bed of crunched rocks and natural debris. “This is the Grave of Consus! When thousands of years ago, his body was interred amongst the stars by the Great Goddess during the Eponal Exodus, much of what made up the moon—”

        “—remained here in a residual degree!” Dawnhoof nodded, squinting against random waves of blown dust. “Like you, I am quite well-versed, Miss Harmony! Dredgemane, as a center of commerce, would not exist without the essence of the deceased god residing in enchanted pockets of the land into which Sladeburn's mines currently dig!”

        “What I need, is the oldest and most essential samples of this mineral enchantment!” Harmony stood in front of him and exclaimed. “Whatever dust remains of the bones of Consus, I need you to find it. I'm not talking about flamestones, rubies, gems, or any of that overvalued crap—er...” She blushed in front of the Deacon. “—stuff. Ahem, I just need you to find raw, ancient, petrified bone matter. You know as well as I do that the remains are all around us. Only, the earth ponies who populate this town can't tell the difference between the different types of rocks with their natural senses. That's where your supernatural skills come in.”

        “Miss Harmony, I gave up being a metallurgist unicorn in Whinniepeg years ago, and since I joined the order I have never looked back!” Dawnhoof gulped nervously. “My skills have been honed in the art of harnessing Gultophine's Spirit, and rightfully so. However, I fear that your faith in my magnetic abilities of the past is greatly misguided.”

        “Look, I'm a pegasus of many qualities, and a spiritual expert sure isn't one of them. But I know a talented pony when I see one.” She smiled at him. “You have it in you to do this thing for us. I mean—that's what Gultophine's Spirit is all about, right? She instills in all of us a strength, a talent, a means by which we all seek progress down the stream of life that she's granted all of ponydom!”

        “Have you not witnessed this thirst for progress in the actions of Bishop Breathstar and his order?”

        “I've witnessed a great deal of strength and authority in Breathstar, but very little room for change. A static philosophy is hardly conducive to progress, don't you think? I mean, sure, there's nothing wrong with being conservative, but for crying out loud—”

        “Say, Har-Har, I hate to be a stick in the mane...” Pinkie Pie shuffled up and poked the pegasus playfully in the cloaked flank. “But didn't you two already have the philosophical chat? Either make with the rocks or make out, girl! Heehee!”

        Harmony gulped and glanced sideways at Dawnhoof. “Would you mind making—?”

        “—with the rocks, got it.” The robed unicorn stood before a soft bed of collapsed stone. He took a deep breath. “I... still feel as if I'm taking a wild stab in the dark.”

        “Just think back to the days before you joined the order,” Harmony said, standing next to him. Her voice was suddenly at just the right tone and volume to reach his ears through the whipping winds. “I'm not asking you to focus on all the parts of your life that you felt needed to be changed, I'm asking you to remember a talent—another talent that Gultophine blessed you with before you decided to bless others in her name.”

        “It's not that...” Dawnhoof made a face as his muscles tensed while he aimed his horn forward against the dusty breeze. “I... I have almost forgotten how to distinguish the composition of the rocks...”

        “Don't think so literally. You've got the talent inside you. Just...” Harmony gnawed on her lip, fumbled, but eventually let forth, “Just think of the moon.”

        “The m-moon...?”

        “Because that's what we're searching for here, after all,” the future scavenger said in a warm breath. “We're looking for moonrocks, or the next best thing to it. Consus once lived in this land, long before it became a grave, and it was a blessed thing, just as the moon has been a blessed thing... a somber reminder to all ponies of all that has been lost, and yet all that has been given to us since.”

        “Given... to us...” Dawnhoof murmured. His eyes closed calmly shut and his facial muscles relaxed. “B-by the grace of Gultophine...”

        A blue aura lit the landfill. Harmony and Pinkie Pie stepped back as the Deacon's horn began shimmering in a sapphiric glow. The wind shifted, forming cyclonic patterns as a supernatural breeze took over. The two mares glanced about them in mixed curiosity and apprehension. Finally, Pinkie Pie murmured something in a chirping fashion and tugged on Harmony's cloak. The last pony turned to witness streams of blue-filtered dust rising up from the ground beneath them. They shuffled backwards on nervous hooves as several more columns of glowing sediment hovered thickly into the air.

        Soon, a billowing web of interconnected dirt limbs coalesced against the wind in front of a straining Dawnhoof. The unicorn gritted his teeth as his horn fluctuated with a brighter hue. The limbs melted into each other and formed one, two, four, half a dozen clumps of ash-white dust. The raw clusters of stone sparkled with brilliance that magnified the otherwise gray and lifeless sunlight settling upon the plateau, as if the edge of a lunar eclipse was hovering just between the three equines.

        Harmony was engrossed in the sight, but at the first sign of Dawnhoof's horn starting to dim, she snapped out of it. With a shrill whistle, she likewise shook Pinkie Pie from her awestruck stupor. The candy-colored mare reached into her cloak and grabbed a canvas bag, lowering it beneath the six clumps of Consus' ancient dust just in time to catch them... for Dawnhoof had released his magical telekinesis and was slumping with a groan. Swiftly, Harmony glided over and braced him. The young Deacon shook his head and stood up, leaning against her.

        “Now I truly remember why I joined the order...” he muttered as his eyes fluttered open. “I think it was to escape a life of migraines, much less sin.”

        She smirked at him. “All this time, I could have sworn it was for the free haircuts.”

        He smiled back at her.

        “Woohoo! Check it out, Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie suddenly said, waving the bag with a grin. “We got just what you need for your ancient art of magical runeforging!”

        “Ancient art of what?” Dawnhoof wildly blinked.

        “Uhhhhhhhhhh—Duhhhhh—Ancient Art of Hygiene!” Harmony flew over into Pinkie Pie and sternly stared the mare down. “Miss Pie! Shame on you! You should have taken care of that before we traveled all this way here!”

        “Taken care of what?—Ackies!” The pink pony was yanked the pegasus' way.

        Harmony practically galloped over the nearest crest in the landfill, hoisting her anchor in tow. “Gotta go, Deacon! Emergency girl stuff! Nothing for a male... a celibate male like you to be concerned with! Thanks for the rocks! I'll fill you in on the most awesome and altruistic mission of healing and stuff later! Bye!”

        Deacon Dawnhoof was left alone with the wind and his blinks. “Hmmm... The day I become a Grand Bishop, I wonder if I should begin a mission in Canterlot...”

        “Once we've gotten the raw metals, the glass container, and the material for runestones...” Harmony thought aloud as she paced across the hut. “...Then it'll be up to me to build the machine. I'm a crazy awesome engineer, right? So how hard can it be?”

        “It should be a smooth undertaking, unless the orange flame you are forsaking.”

        “Nnngh—I know! I know, Miss Zecora! Let's just stop worrying about the orange flame for once!”

        Zecora raised an eyebrow. “For what reason do you delay? You'll only cause your own dismay.”

        “I assure you, I won't!” The time traveler ran a hoof through her amber-streaked bangs and let out a hard sigh, staring off into a worried cloud of thought. “Just trust me. I'll deal with the orange flame when I get to it.”

        “Once we've all bric-a-bracced the bric-a-brac, what then?” Pinkie Pie blinked. “Do we bring it all here and use the hammers Irontail gave us to slap the stuff together?”

        “Miss Pie, have you ever actually worked in a blacksmith's shop?”

        “One winter I worked at Wal-Mare and had a customer throw a hammer at me.”

        Harmony briefly face-hoofed, then murmured, “I need far more tools than I can count to put this machine together. The walls and wooden table of this desolate hut aren't going to cut it. Unless Zecora's hiding an anvil or a forge in that snazzy mane of hers, we need to find an appropriate facility.”

        “Oooh! What about one of the many factories beside the quarry?”

        “And risk Overseer Sladeburn spotting me? I kind of like having my wings attached to my body, thank you very much.”

        “The factories are always full of pony workers! Maybe we can sneak in!”

        “And do what? Would we borrow one of the many metal processing stations for an incalculable number of hours and hope that none of the hundreds of Dredgemaners figure out just who I am and who's helping me? Face it, Miss Pie. The construction of this thing is gonna take half-a-day at least. We can't afford to do it anywhere inside the City, or at the quarry for that matter.”

        “Then perhaps someplace outside is where your tools reside,” Zecora said with a wise grin. “On my way to Pinkamena's place of birth, I found there were more than ponies who shared this earth.”

        “Oh no, Zecchy! You didn't go by the bogs, did you?!” Pinkie Pie gulped with a pale expression. “You could have been gobbled whole by the—!”

        Harmony raised a hoof up. “I think she means something less freaky, Miss Pie.” The last pony smirked the zebra's way. “Am I right, Zecora?”

        “To them, you will only be an outer voice. Still, asking for their help would be the best choice.”

        “The rams recognize the outer voice, for it is the same imprint that seeks transcendence as much as it did the other day.”

        “Uh huh. Love ya too,” Harmony murmured as she and Pinkie Pie stood before the trio of meditating mountain rams. Several canvas bags covering raw metals, hammers, runestones, and a glass jar rested between their cloaked flanks as the last pony entreated the line of calmly posed figures. “Look, I came back because I needed a desperate favor,” she murmured, staring past them at the igloo of stones smoking from ironworks billowing inside. “I promise you, it isn't a selfish thing! All of you have some really nifty blacksmithing equipment, and I need to use it to craft this machine of mine so that I can keep several young foals from dying!”

        “What is a single life within the obscurity?” The rams spoke one after another in turn. “It is neither long nor short. It is but a blemish, defined by the dust that coalesces and then scatters like parentheses to a trite and superficial word. The outer voice must not lament the passing of such blemishes, for a brief experience upon the imprint of this obscurity is far more liberating than a long spell spent under the weight of a blemish's suffering.”

        “Oh dear Epona, not them too...” Harmony groaned.

        “Has all of Equestria gone emo?” Pinkie Pie blinked aside at the pegasus. “I think I should start my own religion: Pientology. The more ponies I convert into becoming Auntie Pinkie Pie, the better.”

        “Look...” Harmony gestured with her hooves clasped together as she spoke to the rams. “Miss Pie and I respect your opinion on consciousness and subjectivity—”

        “Three times a day they'd have to bow east and face Sugarcube Corner! Heehehee—”

        Harmony whacked one of Pinkie's ankles with her hoof and continued. “We understand your beliefs and stuff, but this seriously has nothing to do with transcendence or inner voices or outer voices or what have you!”

        “The outer voice's desperation reflects the obscurity in the outer voice's blemish. The outer voice must not trust the light of the obscurity, for anything filtered through the obscurity is as much a product of as it is an addition to it.”

        “For crying out loud, this isn't about getting to know one's connection to a grander consciousness!” Harmony practically sneered. “This is all about helping foals who've been neglected ten times over by a hopeless town! I have a chance here to extend their lives! The longer they live, the greater a chance they'll... uh... have to achieve transcendence on their own! Y-Yeah! Wouldn't you like that?”

        “The rams neither desire nor refuse transcendence for all blemishes. Transcendence is a natural occurrence that supersedes the obscurity, perceivable only to the enlightened. The inner voice speaks to all blemishes the same. The duration spent within obscurity up until the threshhold of transcendence depends on the inner voice, not on the duration. All blemishes fall into place, whether enlightened or deceased.”

        “Once in their lifetime,” Pinkie Pie chirped while grinning, “They'd have to make a pilgrimage to Marble Cake's bakery and throw doughnuts at the cacti—Mmmppf!”

        Harmony had her hoof planted in Pinkie's mouth. She frowned in the rams' direction. “Fine—Fine! Forget about all living things that suffer and die before their time in this ohhhhhh so superficial obscurity. What's the harm in just letting me use some of your blacksmith tools?”

        “The tools of the ram are for meditative purposes, to ascertain the nature of the obscurity's elemental trivialities while attempting to achieve perfect clarity of the inner voice.”

        “So does that mean you will or won't let me use the stuff?” Harmony narrowed her amber eyes. “It'll only be for an afternoon.”

        “If the outer voice seeks something other than transcendence, the tools will be of no use, and it would be a waste to lend them.”

        Harmony sighed long and hard. “Dang it, why couldn't a commune of flying squirrels have set up shop here instead?”

        “Mmmmf—Ptooie!” Pinkie Pie dislodged the copper pegasus' hoof from her mouth and grinned the rams' way. “Come onnnn! Pleeeeeease? Can't you let Har-Har go a'clangin' in your magical hut of stone wonders just this one time?”

        “The rams are at a loss to find an enlightened argument in the outer voice.”

        Pinkie raised her cloak and revealed a white box full of bright pink candy. “We've got taffy!”

        The three rams blinked all in one accord. Without a moment's hesitation, they collectively murmured, “The rams agree to the outer voice's request.”

        Harmony did a double-take.

        “Woohoo!” Pinkie slid the box over to them across the gray stone plateau. “What are you waiting for, Har-Har? Get your engie-binge on!”

        Harmony stared at her pink anchor.

        “Heehee—What?!”

        “I don't know. I guess I'm just waiting for a halo to appear.”

        “Pffft! Silly Har-Har. It isn’t Halo Season until December.”

        In the gray mists of the Grave of Consus, with calm and meditative rams by her side, the last pony guided several sheets of hot black metal over an anvil. Sliding the handle of a hammer into a ramcrafted brace over her hoof, she raised the tool high above her mane and slammed the bludgeon repeatedly over the molten edges of the raw material. The air reverberated with dull, majestic rings. As the bending strip of metal started to cool, Harmony glanced over at one of her assistants and nodded. The ram obediently operated a large pump, fueling the fires of the nearby furnace so that they burned hotter against the exposed edges of the structure being molded under the pegasus' grasp.

        From directly outside the igloo of stones, Pinkie Pie sat back on her haunches. She playfully wiggled and tapped her lower hooves together as her head tilted up to witness the rising column of smoke billowing from the rocky structure. She exhaled in a breath of foalish wonderment and smiled, randomly cheering on Harmony with a gasping breath and a pumping of her upper forelimb in the air. A few white shapes entered her peripheral vision. She smiled aside to see several rams sitting beside her, as if they were all penitently joining the pink pony in some new form of meditation. She motioned to them, and a few rams happily shared the pink taffy. Munching as one species of hooves, the rams and the pony alike watched with silent enthusiasm as Harmony continued with her project.

        The time traveler squinted her amber eyes while a pair of dark black goggles slid down over her face. She reveled in the familiar sensation, grinning as sparks reflected off the borrowed lenses. A pair of rams opened a bright hot oven in front of her, giving the pony room to reach into the chamber with a long pair of glistening forceps. She pulled free a long stalk of slender black tubing which had been forcibly bent under the searing heat. With a firm march of copper hooves, she carried this sliver of metal over to a water trough and lowered it in.

        Bright white steam filled the recesses of the stone hut. Harmony tilted her head away from the billowing froth. As several bubbles rose to the surface of the boiling basin, she raised a hoof to her head and pulled the goggles free. She watched with naked ambers as the metal piece cooled, and after several minutes she pulled the object up via the forceps for closer inspection.

        The last pony grinned with satisfaction and carried the piece to a flat granite table cluttered with many other, differently-shaped components, forming the complex building blocks of a magnificent skeleton begging to come to life.

        Harmony sat at a workbench built out of stone pieces cemented together. A flat iron surface stretched beneath an assortment of ivory filaments as the last pony bent over and—with quiet, professional precision—chiseled delicately away at the stones that Dawnhoof had so effortlessly collected earlier that day. Her amber eyes squinted in her work, so that she was blind to all peripheral activity of the rams' hut. For all she cared, this wasn't a smoldering dot on the bosom of a gray granite continent. This was, for all intents and purposes, the storage compartment of her airship, and the last pony was diligently working on yet another project on her lonesome.

        Then a ram shuffled up. His horns gently brushed the pegasus' mane hair. She glanced up briefly to see him offer her a mug of water. Harmony smiled, nodded, and took the cup. After a gentle sip, she gulped and hunched herself over once again. She chiseled and clawed and filed away with the use of two braced-tools, carving the six stones into intricate words of the Lunar Tongue. Barely two months prior to the Cataclysm, and the art of runecrafting had been secretly resurrected.

        Pinkie Pie passed Harmony a tiny metal crossbeam; the copper pegasus took it in two hooves. Leaning back on her haunches in the center of the stone hut's floor, Harmony propped the elongated part of a developing metal device between her lower hooves. Sweating from the heat of the rams' nearby forge, she fit the crossbeam into place and aligned the screw-holes carved into the separate metal structures. Then, with her mouth, she reached over to a tray of screws sitting atop a nearby workbench. Picking up several of the screws between her teeth, she leaned back and expertly planted each metal object into a respective hole.

        With a gasp, Pinkie Pie punctually reached for a screwdriver attached to a forked handle. Under Harmony's direction, the earth pony raised the screwdriver to the first of many screws. She grabbed one of the forked handles while Harmony gripped another. In tandem, the two ponies spun the handles clockwise between them, tightening the screws one by one. Mirrored smiles were proudly shared during the mechanical process.

        Harmony stood before a granite table, atop which the partially constructed apparatus stretched beneath the eyes of many rams standing in a circle. Harmony spoke and gestured before the rams, moving the machine briefly about in her hooves and showing where on the heavy end of the device the large glass jar would go. She then raised a hoof for emphasis and pointed at a hollow chamber near the unfinished trigger and crank-shaft compartments of the device. She made a pleading motion before the rams, her hooves held together.

        The horned figures murmured amongst each other, most of them shaking their heads in disagreement. Harmony pleaded and pleaded, gesturing once more towards the empty chamber before charading invisible lightning bolts over her amber-streaked mane. Once more, the rams were hesitant.

        Then Pinkie Pie galloped back in, humming a joyous tune. She unfurled her cloak once again to reveal—not one—but two new boxes of bright pink taffy. She grinned wide. Immediately, the rams all nodded in agreement. Harmony's wings fluttered as she performed a foalish cheer in the air of the stone hut.

        Two rams cranked at opposite ends of a pair of valves. Outside the hut, twin needles of thick copper rose high into the mists of the air. Another ram trotted up to a generator and switched it on with a dance of sparks. Deep static kissed the wind as the two stalks stabbed the gray atmosphere overhead.

        Harmony and Pinkie Pie stood together several paces away, squinting up at the two lightning rods. As the generator hummed louder and louder, the clouds high above boiled, turning dark and ominous. Several tiny white sparks flickered and flashed across the heavens. Pinkie Pie gasped, and with wide eyes she suddenly clung to the copper pegasus. Harmony merely smirked and smirked and—

        The world exploded. The two ponies flinched while the rams stood still as statues. Thunder rolled across the Grave of Consus as a bright blue bolt of electrical fury surged down from the zenith and screamed into the twin metal stalks burning in front of them.

Had I learned to be happy? Had I finally learned to take the many black shades of your mosaic of desolate obscurity and shred it to ribbons so I could see the bright colors you had been constantly hiding behind the curtain all my life?

        Nopony transcends you so easily. I didn't care what the rams thought or believed in. I didn't care how easy or how hard Bishops like Breathstar might have painted the issue. True transcendence takes a lifetime. And if I was starting to pierce the veil then and there, I would not yet achieve perfect clarity. I would not yet be able to laugh at you.

        But I was no longer afraid of you. Being an engineer—in this age or in the one before it—has meant reacquainting myself with a purpose, with a drive, with a singular galloping path towards progress.

        For the only true progress that anypony makes is that which upholds life, which worships life, which values life above the many frightening shadows that seek to undermine it. True progress means working, blossoming, and reveling within the horrible abyss of you, and in spite of you.

        There is nothing quite as frighteningly dangerous as trying to live. You were successful for so many years, for you had almost succeeded in making me forget that. But Pinkie Pie had taught me differently. She reminded me that venturing to smile forever was infinitely more rewarding than giving up all hope before the absurdity of attempting such a thing.

        We attempted it there, together, before the fringes of a dead god's grave. If Gultophine was our witness, Dredgemane would have a shot at such rapturous absurdity too.

        “Here is the source of energy that the outer voice requests,” a ram murmured calmly. He marched from the lowering pair of metal stalks while holding a sparkling sphere before Harmony in a pair of forceps. “May its elemental triviality be as much a reminder of the imprint as it is an aid to the blemish.”

        “Amen to that,” Harmony murmured, taking the forceps in two gentle hooves and raising the beautiful, puerile thunderpearl up to her amber eyes. The time traveler exhaled, her voice rising to join the haunting mists of crackling thunder overhead. “Well, if you aren't just the cutest thing?” She smirked hopelessly. “Epona knows, in two and a half decades, some flying squirrel may confuse you for a nut.” The last pony's eyes narrowed. “Of course the rams never bundled up their belongings, Bruce. They had nothing to hide.”

        In a brave breath, Harmony dropped the naked thunderpearl into the small of her hoof and barely jolted from the tiny spark that ran through her body.

        “And neither have I.”

        With several clanking strikes of her hammer, the last pony finished riveting the trigger compartment to the metal device. She placed the tool and brace down and took a step back from the granite workbench. The device stretched before her in its cold, industrial glory. A heavy black rig housed a glistening thunderpearl at its core. Beneath this was a lower lattice built to house the large glass container. A wooden handle dangled from a string attached to the crankshaft along the top of the machine. Opposite of the thunderpearl from this part was a brass trigger that was wired to the electrified chamber itself. Traveling like a frozen elephant's trunk from the chamber was a slender stalk of metal, at the end of which a conical spout rested, flanked all along its circumference with five identical ivory runestones.

        “Fillies and gentlecolts, we have ourselves a vacuum cleaner of healing,” Harmony droned with mixed pride.

        “We should name it something!” Pinkie Pie was suddenly leaning over her shoulder. “Y'know, for luck!”

        “Well, sure, if it makes you feel better.”

        “I vote for 'Alex!'”

        “Yeah, that's—” Harmony blinked and gave the filly a queer look.

        “The rams commend the outer voice on a task finished with as much diligence as swiftness,” one of the horned figures remarked from the shadows of the stone hut. “Though the rams cannot fathom the function of the device within the obscurity, the rams expect the blemish of the outer voice to dissolve upon conceptualizing the construction of the device in reverse.”

        “Yeah, maybe I'll write a journal entry to do just that for myself.”

        “You write a journal?!” Pinkie positively gasped.

        “Er... Maybe?”

        “Oooh! Oooh! Would you let me read it someday, Har-Har?”

        The last pony gave a wincing expression. “I... don't think you'd want to do that...”

        “What? There's nothing wrong with devoting twenty pages to Deacon Dawnhunk!”

        Harmony glared. Before she could respond—

        “The rams cannot help but observe an emptiness within the elemental composition of the device.”

        “Wh-what do you mean?” Harmony glanced over.

        The nearest woolly figure was pointing at the empty jar. “The outer voice appears to have not finished the whole of the meditative exercise...”

        “Oh yeah.” The last pony gulped.

        “There's no holding back now, Har-Har. If Zecora was here, she'd slap you across the face and bust out a mad rhyme about it.”

        “I know, I know...” Harmony picked the jar up in one hoof and snatched a canvas bag with the other. “Considering how wise Zecora is, she knows just as much as I do that this is gonna be the hardest part of all.”

        “Oh?” Pinkie Pie leaned her fuzzy head to the side. “And why's that?”

        Harmony slid the jar into the canvas bag and glanced forlornly at her anchor. “Because there's only one way in all of Equestria to acquire orange flame in its natural element, and it ain't pretty.” She began carrying the bulging bag out of the stone hut. “Come along, Miss Pie. We're headed to one of the bogs beyond the farmland.”

        “The bogs?” The candy-colored anchor made a face. “Since when could random marshes give off orange flame?”

        “It's not the bogs themselves. It's what's inside the bogs.”