//------------------------------//
// Chapter Forty-Nine: Apinkalypse Now 
// Story: The End of Ponies 
// by shortskirtsandexplosions 
//------------------------------//


The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions


Chapter Forty-Nine – Apinkalypse Now


Special thanks to Vimbert, theworstwriter, and Warden for editing


Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art





        The morning sunrise cooled to lifeless gray sliver as it fell through a tiny slit of a window and swam over Deacon Dawnhoof's bowed head. The young cleric sat on a stool behind a brown table in the middle of a barren chamber built into the bricklaid foundation of the town cathedral. A lone candle dwindled in front of him, revealing a tiny cot in the corner of the room with a single, brown sheet. The bed was untouched, for the Deacon hadn't slept a wink since he had been locked up inside that place several hours ago.

        He took a deep breath, his horn hanging beneath the ceiling in a contemplative slump. As soon as a noise brushed against the entrance to the room, the young unicorn's chestnut eyes fluttered open. He gazed over as a bright beam of light crossed him and then extinguished itself. With a series of loud hoofsteps, a tall white figure shuffled up to a stop and sat across from him.

        Bishop Breathstar's frown was a blunt, sterile thing. The aged stallion adjusted his robes and exhaled a lifeless sigh as he bore his gaze through Dawnhoof's numb figure. “I lent my ear to sinners and wretches from here to Stalliongrad. I have witnessed cowardly stallions sobbing along the warfronts of the Zebraharan Conflict. I have even heard murderers of ponydom confessing their traitorous allegiance to goblin and ogre sects.” His pale nostrils flared. “I have never been so ashamed of an Equestrian soul as I am of you right now.”

        Dawnhoof merely shuddered. His gaze fell to the candle in the middle of the table, growing dimmer and dimmer like his own countenance.

        Breathstar continued, “When I found you, dear child, and when I gathered you into my flock, you were a confused and distraught waif of a pony, clinging to your hollow dreams of fortune and prosperity in the impoverished countryside bordering Whinniepeg. You were so talented, and yet so destitute. You were creative, and yet so creedless. Your mind was clear, and yet your heart was clouded. You desired all of the trivial and superficial things of this world, and you had your own egotistical self positioned in the middle of all of those sad, pathetic dreams. Tell me, child, who was it who freed you from the bondage of your festering trivialities and set you upon the path towards glory in Gultophine's Spirit?”

        Dawnhoof gnawed on his lower lip. His eyes were absorbed in the candlelight.

        Breathstar's eyes flared. “Who was it?!”

        The candle's flame danced from the loud clap of the Grand Bishop's lungs. Dawnhoof's shoulders shuddered. He swallowed and bled forth, “You, good Bishop. It was... y-you who set me on this path...”

        “You had been given a second chance at finding clarity and self-worth in this world. Your life—a short and infinitesimal thing in the legacy of Epona's creation—was finally allowed to blossom and grow. And in retribution, you ally yourself with those who would deface the Refuge of Consus' most faithful Daughter? As thanks for all that has been bestowed upon you, your recourse is to insult the church, insult Dredgemane, and insult me?” Breathstar's brow furrowed as he hissed forth, “The history of Equestria is full of tragedy and bitter betrayal, from the Rise of Discord to the Birth of Nightmare Moon. At least when Luna turned against all that she had promised to protect, it was under the influence of a malevolent spirit that consumed her. But you, child? You do not have a spirit of evil to blame. It pains me to realize that you have committed these sins out of your own choosing. Either you are willfully trying to undermine the power of the Church of Gultophine here, or you have been consumed by a great and blinding madness. Tell me, child, which is it? How must I chronicle the fall of my once-great and ever loyal pupil?”

        Dawnhoof took a deep breath. He tilted his horned head up and bravely uttered, “Good Bishop, we are both clear in our understanding of my inequities. I am more than adequately versed in the clerical tenants, as well as the consequences for breaking them. I know perfectly well the years of trials and penitent rituals ahead of me. I also realize that any chance I have to become a Grand Bishop has been dashed to oblivion by my actions and my actions alone. All of this is a reality that I stand upon the horizon of humbly and faithfully embracing, and I deeply respect your need to reinforce me for the challenges I've yet to face. However, even you must know, Grand Bishop, that to remind me of all of these things is utter redundancy, unless of course you are here for a completely different reason than to admonish this humble unicorn for his countless sins.”

        Breathstar didn't respond. He dammed a furious breath behind a solid, burning frown.

        “Miss Harmony...” Dawnhoof raised an eyebrow. “She has evaded the militia's grasp, hasn't she?” His chestnut eyes turned darker in the dim candlelight of the cold cathedral chamber. “That mysterious, witty, resourceful pegasus has slipped away from Dredgemane's grasp with the same embarrassing ease and finesse that the Royal Grand Biv had so often escaped hers. Finally, after so many hours of silence and apathy, you have taken it upon yourself to come here and visit me... and it isn't on account of appealing to my spirit, is it, Grand Bishop? Miss Harmony is gone, and you want my help... you need my help.” He gulped and his eyes fell nervously from the elder as he added, “As you have always needed it...”

        The older pony's horn glistened sharply in the candle-light as he leaned forward with a growl. “She is an enemy of Haymane, an enemy of Dredgemane, and an enemy to the Spirit of Gultophine... to progress!”

        “Good Bishop, she may be unorthodox and even a heathen...” Dawnhoof's teeth showed as he spoke louder. “But I would be shaming the Spirit of Gultophine if I blinded myself to the blessings she is attempting to bestow upon the lives of those ponies who dwell within our town! Even the Chronicles state, 'Do not judge that which blooms life by how it sows, but by how selflessly it does so.'”

        “Do not twist the words of the Chronicles in my presence, you heretical traitor!” Breathstar's hoof slammed onto the table as he stood up straight, casting a menacing shadow over the young unicorn. “Do you think that I am an imbecile?! I am here to get the truth, you insipid child! You are fully aware of what the machine was that the pegasus menace built, and surely you were told what Harmony and her conspirators were going to do with it! Now, that cretin from Canterlot has sided with the Royal Grand Biv, and if we do not act quickly, she and her infernal ally will sabotage Dredgemane upon the holiest of holy days, Gultophine's Harvest! Would you like to see that, child?! Would you like to see all that is good and righteous in this City of Progress collapse like a house of cards, all because you were too arrogant and naïve to have clung to your true calling when this dastardly pegasus flippantly distracted you into a brand new world of perdition?! Well, is that what you would like to see?!”

        “Gr-Grand, Bishop, I-I...”

        “Answer me!”

        Dawnhoof stared up at him, his chestnut eyes wide and his mouth quivering. He dryly gulped and finally replied, “I... I would like to see the rainbow, Bishop...”

        Breathstar's pale eyebrow raised.

        The young unicorn spoke in rising volume, “I would like to see the moon, and smile, knowing that it is there for a glorious purpose, as each and every one of us is here for a glorious purpose, all courtesy of Goddess Gultophine's grace and blessing in the face of so much darkness and oblivion. I want to embrace the Spirit of our Alicorn Sister for the joy that she has given us, when so much of this universe seeks to snuff out all warmth and love. Miss Harmony may never make a good addition to the order, but I am convinced that she is the best addition to ponydom that I've witnessed in years, for she exalts the preservation and praise of life above all else. Do you not think that such is the essence of what makes us good prophets in the path that Gultophine has flown before us, Grand Bishop? Don't you think that we, like her, should be trying to spread joy as much as we wish to spread structure?”

        The elder unicorn exhaled hard, his eyes squinting. “I think, child, that we should have removed more than just your cutie mark when you joined the order.” With a shuffle of hooves, he icily marched back towards the door to the barren chamber. “Until you are willing to help track down Dredgemane's enemies, until you tell us what you know about the pegasus' plans, until you renounce your paltry admiration of such a sociopathic sinner, you will stay in this room. You will stay here and fester in your own iniquity until the day you die, for all that I am concerned.” He proceeded to exit.

        “Grand Bishop...?”

        Breathstar sighed halfway through opening the door. He stared back with a cold, apathetic glance. “What, child?”

        Dawnhoof said, “A pony has to be alive to die.”

        The elder said nothing to that. With a furious sigh, he exited the chamber and slammed the wooden door shut behind him. The candlelight danced and flickered, but somehow remained lit. The young cleric absorbed himself in it once more, staring deeply and sitting still as a statue. It was as if he was incubating a deep and lonely warmth in the core of his heart.




~*~*~*~*~*~*~





        In the main hall of the Cathedral, an angry Breathstar trotted furiously down the many rows of pews. His robe billowed like a vengeful phantom's ectoplasm as he burned a path towards the church doors and the many aimless militia ponies waiting for him outside—

        “Counselor...?”

        Breathstar froze in his trot. Curiously, he spun around to see a lone, emaciated figure sitting at the altar, his frail hooves propped up on a wooden platform as he gazed up at the tall, colorless image of the Giver of Life in the stained glass windows beyond the pulpit.

        Stifling an exhausted sigh, Breathstar shuffled slowly over towards the lone equine figure. He cleared his throat and put on brave airs. “I apologize for my absence, Mayor. I assure you, I am committed to my duties at hoof. You can fully rely on this city's spiritual leader in our time of great need.”

        “Of that, I have no doubt,” Haymane murmured. His blond visage was clouded by the gray haze of morning light being refracted through the lifeless glass panes above him. “I imagine that today's itinerary shall proceed without any interruption?”

        “You have my promise.” Breathstar smirked. He adjusted his robe, standing tall and proud. “I take yours and the Council's faith in me very seriously. With the authority granted me over the militia, I shall have the Biv and that contemptuous pegasus found in no time—!”

        “That is not the itinerary of which I speak, Counselor,” Haymane slurred. “Gultophine's Harvest. I wish to see that Gultophine's Harvest is not hindered in any way.”

        Breathstar blinked. “Oh. Oh y-yes, but of course, Mayor. Ahem.” He shuffled about and stared down at the leader of Dredgemane, resting a hoof on the small stallion's shoulder. “Today is the holiest of holy occasions in which we exorcise ourselves of the foolish trivialities of this world that we naturally let distract us. I assure you, once the sun has set upon the Grave of Consus, each and every one of your citizens shall remember what it means to be faithful, and all that they will hold dear is the same glory that you and I believe in so much. Dredgemane will once more be set on the straight and narrow path towards progress.”

        “Such a blessed path...” Haymane murmured, his eyes falling one glass panel at a time to settle down upon the pulpit stretching above his lame figure like a wooden monolith. “I have walked it for as long as I can remember. It started nearly forty summers ago, when I was a young colt, hardly older than your gifted yet morally-vexed Dawnhoof.”

        “Yes, and about him, mayor, I'll make sure that he is properly disciplined—”

        Haymane spoke on, undaunted, “I remember this cathedral years before you rose to the top of the order, good Bishop. I remember when the image of Gultophine before us was full of color—of every shade of the rainbow. I remember when I was a young colt and I was attending Summons. It was not something I did in the practice of reverence, but instead something of habit. I was there simply because my family was there. The entire time that the sermon transpired, the bright and shiny window panes stole my attention. They excited me, and yet they blinded me. I spent hours staring at the many different shades when I should have been listening to the words of the Bishop at the time, when I should have been honoring Gultophine's Spirit and not her physicality. And then I grew up, and I had a family, and when they were taken from me so violently, I sobbed in anguish. I cried for Gultophine's grace and I begged for Her clarity, only to realize I was lost to her, for I had never paid attention to her glory before. I had never... truly honored her.”

        “I know, Mayor,” Breathstar gently said. “I was there. I heard your words. Your life needed direction, and I've been happy to have born witness to your faithful path towards conviction and progress...”

        “Conviction and progress...” Haymane murmured. He swallowed dryly. “Good Bishop, I... I have endured enough for progress, have I not? I have... suffered. I have changed. I have... have...”

        “Mayor...?” Breathstar raised an eyebrow.

        The aged stallion sighed, the shadows to his cheekbones showing as he gazed up at the tall, colorless panels of glass once more. “Do you remember the first Gultophine's Harvest that I governed in Dredgemane? My first act was to have the colors removed from this window. I wanted to clear the House of Summons from the same distractions that used to vex me. Then, that very summer, we had the collapse in the upper chambers of the quarry. Sladeburn lost nearly three hundred ponies. I almost thought we had shamed Gultophine's Spirit somehow. Still, the next Harvest, I stripped the color from the statue in Town Square. Sure enough, there were no casualties that year. But then three winters later, there was the outbreak of Immolatia that took so many families. I gave up my house on the farm and moved to the office along the north cliff, so that I could focus more on guiding Dredgemane along the path that Gultophine would have for it...”

        “It was never written in the Chronicles, Mayor, that the Alicorn's path is an easy one.”

        “Don't I know it...” Haymane's nostrils flared slowly, bitterly. “Now, after so many decades and so many of Gultophine's blessings, I am approaching the end of my years, and I know that Her grace will eventually subside, and it will be my time to join Her in the star-strung wake of Epona's Exodus. I want to be as faithful as ever, good Bishop, but here we are on the crest of Gultophine's Harvest, when the bonfires burn bright like Her wings once did when She chased the blight out of the Grave of Consus. And I...” His exhalation was a painful thing. “...I have run out of things that are precious to me.” He swallowed. “I have run out of colors to burn.”

        “You have Dredgemane, Mayor.” Breathstar leaned in and spoke earnestly. “This City we've maintained is a glorious, precious thing. We should be proud for what we've done for the Refuge of Gultophine.”

        “That's just it, Counselor. I love this city more than I love my own life.” Haymane swallowed hard and finally looked up at the unicorn. “Must I burn it too?”









        “Alright! Listen up, you rosy-nosed keg-guzzlers!” one of many guards shouted before the swinging doors to the Dredgemane saloon as they beheld a foggy crowd of inebriated ponies. The gray haze of morning light framed their armored figures as they stood in an intimidating line with their helmets and polearms. “On behalf of Bishop Breathstar and the authority invested in him by both Mayor Haymane and the Dredgemane Council, this establishment must close its doors as scheduled! Those of you with families, return home as swiftly as your hooves can carry you! As for the rest of you, be mindful of where you lie in the street, for this is the day of Gultophine's Harvest and if we have to throw you in jail for upsetting the bonfires, we will!”

        A throng of grumbling, slurring voices returned with sullied enthusiasm.

        “Nnngh...”

        “Tell Breathstar to take a flying buck...”

        “Bonfires? I've got a freakin' furnace in my belly...”

        “I'll go home as soon as the saloon stops spinning...”

        The first of the many guards clapped the edge of his polearm loudly against the tile floor. “This isn't a joke, you vagabonds! You can continue your miserable reverie tomorrow morning. This is the most important Day of Reverence in the Refuge of Gultophine! The rest of Dredgemane is paying respects; the least you can do is be honorable for one measly day in your lives! Be thankful that Haymane hasn't sent us to throw you out of the trenches of this city permanently. Now out with you! All of you!”

        There were more grumbling voices, but in a haggard march, the many dizzy patrons of the place eventually complied. Ponies dragged their unconscious companions up from the floor and swaggered in pairs out the swinging doors of the establishment. Several depressed souls shuffled at a slower pace, their cloudy eyes watching with disinterest as the tile was replaced with granite and their heartless hooves took them to far-away crevices in that sunken grave of a town.

        As the saloon slowly emptied, the guards stood aside, watching and minding every equine soul shuffling past them. The young militia ponies muttered to one another:

        “So, this is it, then? The Harvest hasn't been called off?”

        “Pfft! Of course it hasn't been called off! Gultophine forbid if it ever would! Even last year when Luna had returned from the moon, Haymane had things continued as planned.”

        “I just figured that... well... y'know...”

        “What?”

        “I mean, the Biv is crazier than ever this year, and on top of him we've got that rogue pegasus to track down now.”

        “Yeah. What a shame. You know, I was enjoying working with Miss Harmony over the last few days. We may have had our flanks handed to us by the Biv, but we got so incredibly close to catching him... closer than ever! Seriously, that was the most excitement I had all year!”

        “Heh... Careful what you say. We may be in the militia, but we've still gotta bring something to burn at the bonfires.”

        “Yeah, just how do you burn your memories of working for a pegasus?”

        “Besides, she's done enough to burn all that away herself.”

        “Right—What's up with that? One moment she was working for Canterlot to help Haymane, and then she's trying to sneak some weapon into town?! I don't get it...”

        “It wasn't a weapon.”

        “I heard it was!”

        “No—It was some sort of machine. I saw it with my own eyes.”

        “Yeah? What did it look like?”

        “Well... Uhm... I don't know...”

        “Hah! I knew you were full of it.”

        “I did too see it! It's just... It was hard to describe.”

        “Are you talking about the machine that the pegasus was caught with? I saw it too.”

        “Oh?”

        “Yeah?”

        “It looked like a big black vacuum cleaner with a glass jar full of magic fire and also some sparkling ball of energy stuck inside the metal part of it.”

        “Pffft... Now I know you're just fooling with us.”

        “Honest! That's what it looked like! The thing's the most amazing piece of engineering I've ever seen, even if I can't understand it. I swear, the only reason Sladeburn had it confiscated is to study it for himself... heh...”

        “Dream on. The Council needs that thing as evidence.”

        “So where is it, then?”

        “Where's what?”

        “The machine, you moron.”

        “I said I was there, didn't I? Sladeburn had one of the guards take it to Militia Headquarters.”

        “He did? I was just there to check on the zebra witch doctor—How come I didn't see it?”

        “It's in the far side of the basement hold, though I don't know how long they're going to keep it there. If you ask me, it's a good thing that Sladeburn caught wind of what was going on. Who knows just what that machine could have done to the innocent citizens of this town?”

        “Yeah, pretty freaking scary. And to think that Miss Harmony had a thing to do with it.”

        “I can't imagine what she was planning to do. Was she going to zap ponies to death or something?”

        “Does it matter? Look—I know that a lot of crap has gone down lately, but we gotta do our part, especially today of all days. Gultophine's Harvest is underway, and we can't let things get screwed up again, especially by the Biv.”

        “Right.”

        “Yeah, gotcha.”

        “Hey, maybe when all is said and done, they'll let us burn the machine in the bonfire. That's a distraction I'm a lot happier to get rid of than my subscription to Wonderbolts Yearly.”

        “Hahahaha....”

        “Heheheh... ohhhh... Elektra alive, this is going to be a long day.”

        “Yeah, I know. Frickin' pegasus, I swear...”

        As the guards continued murmuring, the saloon emptied completely. The lights were snuffed out inside the alcohol-stained place. One particular figure in a black jacket lingered at the swinging doors. He paused and glanced over his orange shoulder. A pair of blue eyes narrowed on the young, armored equines. With a flaring of his nostrils, he swung his shattered horn back into the gray haze of the morning before trotting out into the trenches. His hoofsteps...




~*~*~*~*~*~*~





        ...were dull thuds amidst the muffled thunder of so many retreating ponies above the hollow cellar of the saloon. Against a giant wooden barrel inside the lantern-lit basement, a copper pegasus leaned. The last pony pulled the hood to her cloak down, sighed, and gestured with waving hooves.

        “Okay...” Harmony swallowed dryly and bathed the dusty contours of the place with her amber orbs as she thought aloud before four clandestine souls. “I can buy the fact that each and every one of you were the Royal Grand Biv at separate times. I can buy the fact that you all worked in tandem behind my back to pretend that you were really just one masked pony. I can even buy the fact that you all have an insanely complex arsenal of weaponized party-favors at your disposal.” She gulped again, leaned her head forward, and glared. “But what in the ever-holy sack of Alicorn crap possessed you to think that keeping this secret from me during my entire visit here would somehow serve some magnificent purpose? Could one of you ponies at least explain that to me?”

        “Heeheehee! Oh Har-Har...” Pinkie Pie unraveled her rainbow cloak and aired it out across the lengths of the room while Inkessa, Blinkaphine, and Pepper Plots opened a large wooden trunk on the far end of the room, accessing a veritable armory of Biv tools and toys. “No wonder you have such a hard time getting a joke! You have to have it explained to you!”

        “See this face?” Harmony pointed towards a deadpan brow over a deadpan pair of eyes above a deadpan mouth. “This is what 'unamused' looks like.”

        “It's rather simple, really,” Inkessa murmured as she fished through the wooden trunk and dredged forth replacement parts to her battle-torn suit. “I described my sister as an architect, did I not? She's taught us that a practical joke only works when somepony least expects it.”

        “So, is that it, then?” Harmony briefly frowned, folding her forelimbs. “This has all been one vicious prank on yours truly?”
        
        “Oh darling, don't be so full of your sassy self,” Pepper Plots said with a wink as she paused to lean a hoof against her hip and smirked the pegasus' way. “We never meant to say that you were the brunt of the joke. Consider this whole thing like a comedy routine on stage, and you were an important participant in it.”

        Harmony raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?” She stared in an air of obliviousness.

        “See! Even now, you're such a natural, Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie giggled. “Here, I'll show you!” That uttered, she dropped what she was doing, grabbed a canvas bag, and cartwheeled over to the time traveler's side. She grinned wide with bright blue eyes blinking. “'Knock Knock!'”

        Harmony sighed. “Nnng... 'Who's there?'”

        “'Ain't you glad!'”

        “'Ain't you glad who?'”

        “'Ain't you glad he's toothless?!'” That delivered, she flung the canvas bag open and a bright green comet soared out and clamped its drooling jaws over Harmony's snout. A bored pegasus stared point-blank into a tiny green alligator dangling from her face like an emerald elephant's trunk. She pivoted her neck towards the other ponies across the cellar. Gummy's green body fluttered like a funeral veil.

        Inkessa giggled. Pepper Plots cackled. Blinkaphine managed a soft, gray smirk.

        “Hrmmmph...” Harmony muttered into the wet maw of the wall-eyed baby alligator. “I don't get it.”

        “Of course you don't!” Pinkie grinned and yanked her pet off Harmony's soiled face with a wet pop. “You're the queen of straight faces! You're the blank canvas upon which a great and hilarious joke is painted to make so many ponies smile! Before you came to town, Har-Har, the Royal Grand Biv was merely a curiosity! But now, thanks to you, she's a household name that can make so many Dredgemaners giggle and grin when before they could only sigh and cry! You're the biggest crack-up to ever do stand-up in the Grave of Consus and you didn't have to tell a single joke! Heeheehee! Isn't it just hilarious?!”

        “I... guess...?” Harmony rubbed a hoof over the back of her neck and winced towards the corner of her room. “Still, the timing is all... all...”

        “Hmmm? So what if I'm visiting the best family a filly could ever have?!” Pinkie bounced over to her sisters and interrupted their rummaging to nuzzle each in the cheek. “Heeeee—And so what if the most important ritual to Haymane and his bosom bullies is happening today?!” She gave Pepper Plots a high-hoof, placed Gummy down onto a wooden crate, and leaned against one of the cellar's support beams while winking Harmony's way. “So what if the mine is collapsing, children are dying, and the whole world is turning over in the grave? Can you think of a time in life when ponies needed to smile any more?”

        “This... this was all some elaborate plan?” Harmony gulped and glanced across the many ponies' faces. “You invented the Biv to create an atmosphere of chaos... just to somehow bring light to this sunken city?”

        Inkessa smiled and absorbed Harmony's view as she shuffled up and said, “Long ago, Harmony, my sister saw something that nopony else in her family did. It brought joy to our household, a joy that mother and father have just now reawakened to, thanks to you.” She took a shuddering breath, but smiled all the warmer as she continued, “For the better part of a year, our young lives were electrified. When Clyde came and died, it threatened to destroy everything that was warm about our existence. Father was already consumed by the sorrow and pain that fell upon us. But Pinkamena wouldn't let the light of the many colors that enthused us just die out, and neither would Blinkaphine and I. So, after her first fateful trip to Ponyville, she came back with a bagful of party favors. One night, when all of Dredgemane was asleep, we went out into the streets past curfew and vandalized parts of Town Square. We didn't spray-paint or illustrate any obscenities, mind you. We just felt like adding some color to this place. The next morning, Dredgemane was the same, only—for the first time in years—the ponies of this town had something to talk about, something to be excited about. It seemed so right at the time, that the three of us, sisters united in a secret spirit of joy and whimsy, committed ourselves to spreading the colors as best as we could, filling the streets of this town with every hue of the same rainbow phenomenon that Pinkie and Pinkie alone saw one bitter, cold night.”

        “One day, these gorgeous little rapscallions nearly got caught.” Pepper Plots hopped in with a devilish smirk. “On the run from the Dredgemane militia, they snuck into the saloon. I felt so bad for the little shivering darlings that I took it upon myself to lie to the guards and send them along their way. But there was a catch.” She smirked and waggled her painted eyelids. “I wanted in. They had a noble cause, but it needed more flair. It needed an identity to shake loose the suspicion of Haymane's followers, and I was just the pony who knew how to put a theatrical spin on things. So, together, we worked on something that was bigger than just a habitual practical joke. We made something that was daring, something that was cunning, something that was worth royal and grand attention the likes of which not even Canterlot could bestow!”

        “And so the Biv was born!” Pinkie Pie waved her hooves high with a beaming, proud grin. “Pepper Plots, like a good doctor, did the delivery! With the combined earnings of her work here, Inkessa's nurse position at Stonehaven, and whatever I've scrounged up at Sugarcube Corner, we've kept the legend alive!”

        “But... But...” Harmony squinted over towards the trunk full of colorful nick-nacks. “Don't tell me you built all of that stuff by hoof, Miss Pie. You may be a good engineer of comedy, but it takes a real-life engineer to know that you haven't gotten the resources...”

        “Hmmm...” Pinkie Pie sing-songed and stared innocently towards the far reaches of the ceiling. “You ever been to Bon Bon's novelty shop in Ponyville?”

        The time traveler squinted her amber eyes. “I've heard of it, yeah...”

        “Everypony thinks that the place stays open only because of the earnings they get every annual Nightmare Night.” She stuck her tongue out playfully and giggled. “They couldn't be more wrong.”

        “Since when did Bon Bon's shop sell multicolored daggers or goggles or... or...” Harmony stopped in mid-speech. She squinted at the fabric in the hooves of her anchor's accomplices. A deep breath furrowed out through her nostrils as she envisioned a wooden box full of arcanium weave lying in the shadows of an invisible stone hut. “Ramcraft...”

        “It's amazing, isn't it? Just a little bit of taffy goes a long way!” Pinkie Pie twirled over and grabbed a broad sheet of rainbow-colored cloak. “Boy, if I wasn't wearing this the first few nights I donned the Biv's cowl, I would have busted more than a gut after running from the angry guards!”

        “You're lucky is what you are,” Harmony said. “If Sladeburn got the bright idea to equip Breathstar's guards with that stuff, your whole charade would come crashing down in a burning heap.”

        “Well, it's a good thing Sulkburn and Company don't talk to the rams!” Pinkie Pie made a face. “Or eat taffy! Cuz this stuff is crazy cool! Here, I'll demonstrate!”

        She flung the arcanium weave over Gummy like a rainbow blanket, grabbed a wooden chair in two hooves, and mercilessly pummeled the alligator-shaped lump beneath it.

        “Die, die, you evil duckling-muncher! Raaugh!”

        She dropped the chair down and whisked the blanket up to show a blinking, unfazed reptile.

        “Taa-daaa! See? No bruises!” The green alligator emitted a deep hiss and playfully bit its way up the length of the earth pony's body until it clung loosely to her mane hair. “Heeheee! He likes it when I give him a pile driver through the stuff!”

        “Uhh... Yeah, sure.” Harmony gulped. “I guess that explains how you were all safe when I let loose on you.” She stared briefly at Blinkaphine and reveled in a breath of guilt being expelled through her nostrils. “But... Uhm...” She winced. “You didn't really hold back when fighting me, did you?”

        “N-no. We didn't,” Inkessa blushed deeply, shifting nervously where she stood. “At first, I was against the idea of fighting you full-force. But Pinkamena had convinced Blinkaphine, Pepper, and myself that it would be okay. Besides, it wouldn't sell if the Royal Grand Biv didn't give you all she had.”

        “According to P.D.P., you're made of some strong stuff!” Pepper Plots smirked.

        “Yeah... er... well...” Harmony shrugged.

        “Oh, don't be so modest, Har-Har!” Pinkie set Gummy down and smiled at the other ponies. “I told you girls before this all started just how tough she is, and was I wrong?! Huh? Ever since the day I kind of sort of fell a tree through her at Sugarcube Corner, I knew that she was more than meets the eye! Here, watch!” Pinkie Pie grabbed the chair again.

        “Okay, Miss Pie, you made your point—”

        “Have a seat!” Pinkie charged with the wooden furniture in full swing.

        “You made your point—!” Harmony's words were punctuated with a crash of splinters across her skull. As expected, she didn't budge a single centimeter. She sighed as several chips of wood cascaded down her cloaked figure. A bitter smirk washed over her otherwise straight face. “There. Are we done?”

        “Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie Pie dusted her hooves off and stood with a proud grin. “Enough chairs have been sacrificed for the good of heroic ponies everywhere.” She glanced over her shoulder at the others. “That's how Mick Foaly won his first belt, y'know.”

        “Well, it sounds like you girls have had quite the legacy,” Harmony spoke as she began pacing slowly across the dimly-lit cellar. “For what it's worth, I'm sorry for coming to town and screwing it up.”

        “Did you not pay attention, Sugah?” Pepper Plots stifled a chuckle. “We said that your battling the Biv has been a spectacular benefit to our charade.”

        “Though, on behalf of Pinkamena, Blinkaphine, and myself, I apologize for the wall of deceit,” Inkessa said in a guilty murmur. “The fact of the matter is, if we came to you with the truth immediately... well... considering that you claim to be from Canterlot and all...”

        “I would have been in the mindset to... turn you all in,” Harmony said with a wincing hiss. “It pains me to think of it, but—yeah. That's probably what I would have done. All of that has changed, of course, and I thank you for your humble apology. I forgive you, for what it's worth. After all, it's not like I've been the most honest pony either, but none of that is the issue right now.”

        “Then what is?” Pepper remarked.

        “Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but the cat's kind of out of the bag, isn't it?” Harmony looked up. “What you all did to save me from the clutches of Haymane and his militia was brave and all, but by appearing in so many distracting places at once, you've obviously revealed that the Royal Grand Biv is more than one pony.”

        “I dunno! From what I've seen during our coach-ride here, everypony in the street seemed too grumpy and Breathstarrific to have noticed!” Pinkie said with a giggle.

        “They may not notice it immediately, but once Gultophine's Harvest has taken place, they'll start to connect the dots and figure things out! It'll all start with the fact that you, Miss Pie, disappeared at the exact moment that the Biv scooped me out of Haymane's office.”

        Blinkaphine and Inkessa exchanged worried glances. Pinkie cleared her throat. “Yeah, well, all the more reason for us to be on the move right now!”

        “Be on the move?” Harmony's amber eyes narrowed. “Just what do you plan to do, exactly?”

        “You heard Sladeburn, didn't you?!” Pinkie briefly pouted, her eyes becoming sharp, rigid sapphires. “They've got Zecchy locked up in some dark, dank, dismal dungeon of darkness and dankness! We've got to get her out of there!”

        “I agree,” Harmony said with a nod. “And what I think we should do is—”

        “We'll rig up the coach for long distance, and then ride out to Canterlot!” Pinkie grinned wide.

        “Huh?” Harmony's jaw dropped.

        “And then we'll go personally to Princess Celestia and tell her exactly what's going on here!”

        “Huh?!” Harmony's jaw dropped even lower.

        “Y-yes!” Inkessa marched up, nodding fervently. “Who cares about the Act of Provincial Industry? Haymane and the Council shouldn't be allowed to get away with what they're doing to innocent equines here in Dredgemane!”

        “If there's ever a time to put this horse hockey to a stop, it's now!” Pepper spat.

        Blinkie nodded in the corner, her golden eyes round.

        There was a bizarre noise from the far end of the cellar. The four female ponies turned and glanced, blinking. “Har-Har?” Pinkie Pie craned her neck. “What was that just now? Did you...” She briefly brightened. “Did you just laugh?”

        “No,” Harmony sputtered, regaining her voice. “I think I almost vomited.”

        “Awww, poor Har-Har. You're not bulimic, are you?”

        “As delightful as your random tangents are, Miss Pie, let us rewind just a bit.” Harmony took a deep, deep, wheezing inhale befitting a yellow-coated Ponyvillean Animal Tamer. She exhaled with, “Princess Celestia?! Really?! Okay, feel free to pull a Bishop Breathstar and flog me for being a 'heathen' or what-crap, but just what the heck is it with ponies of this Age having a problem and immediately wanting to take it to Princess Celestia?!”

        “Well, I personally know Twilight Sparkle, and that bookworm happens to be buddy-buddy with the Princess, so—”

        “No! Buck that! I seriously wanna know!” Harmony's face was like a twisted, copper fruit. “Everypony I've run into: it's the same thing. You've got trolls attacking the farm?! Call Princess Celestia! There's a foal possessed by a cosmic creature? It's Canterlot or bust! You just stubbed your hoof on a rock? Better call in the Royal Guard! The Wonderbolts canceled their latest airshow?! Let's all raid the palace!”

        “Sugah, just what are you going on about?”

        “J-just listen to me.” Harmony stood before the four of them and gestured with a hoof. “Where I—You see—Where I come from, I have no choice but to look out for myself. If I make a decision that's bad and I end up in a deep well full of my own garbage, it is up to me and me alone to pull myself back out. I have to answer for both my mistakes and my shortcomings. Now, I could go on all day describing how crappy things have gotten in Dredgemane since I got here. I could pin all of the blame on Haymane, or on Sladeburn, or even on the Bivs. Whether they're to blame or I'm to blame doesn't matter. What does matter is that I'm here now, I've got my own four hooves, I've got my own wits about me, and I have so little time to get so much done. Yeah, maybe I could gallop all the way to Princess Celestia, nuzzle her bosom, and weep all of my troubles into her wise ears so that she could take care of everything in a single swoop, but would that really... really solve the problem that this Town has, even if we could do it swiftly enough to save Zecora's striped skin and ours as well? Huh?”

        “Erm...” Pinkie Pie fumbled.

        “That... certainly doesn't sound heroic, at least,” Inkessa added.

        “I'm sorry. You lost me at 'bosom,'” Pepper said.

        “I choose to go with Inkessa's response,” Harmony said. “You're right. It's not heroic. Don't you see what you've accomplished here, girls?” She smiled warmly. “You've taken something that has truly, awesomely made you happy and have turned it into a symbol of joy and color while the town's traditional icon—Goddess Gultophine—has been so pathetically maligned and bastardized by those who think they know what's best for this place. For so long, you four and you four alone have made a difference in this city. You had the power to be a pivotal force then, and you have the power to save the day now. Don't fall back on some cowardly impulse to let a higher force possibly or possibly not save the day when you know what you are all capable of doing yourselves. Goddess Gultophine blessed the Grave of Consus with her Spirit so that the living ponies left behind in her absence would shine forth on their lonesome. Where is that more beautifully exemplified then right here and now between the four of you?”

        “But what else can we do?” Inkessa murmured. “Sure, by being the Biv, we've become a force to be reckoned with. But we maintained the strategy of avoiding direct conflict with the militia on purpose. There're just too many of them. Even with the ramcraft at our disposal, charging in on the guards' headquarters in a brave attempt to free Zecora wouldn't end well. You saw what nearly happened to Blinkaphine! You and the guards almost caught her! In fact, you did catch her!”

        “Don't you see, though?” Pinkie Pie suddenly bounced. “Har-Har knows the truth! And she's on our side, right, Har-Har?!”

        “Of course I'm on your side, Miss Pie—”

        “And she's totally like four Royal Grand Bivs rolled into one! I'd say we five could take the Headquarters!”

        “No, Inkessa's right.”

        “Awwww—But I wanna smash stuff and... stuff!” Pinkie Pie frowned.

        “There's a time and a place for explosions, Miss Pie. Unfortunately, this isn't a party that we're talking about. This is a highly delicate situation that was birthed in providence and—Gultophine willing—will end in providence just the same.”

        “How do you mean?”

        “Do any of us forget what brought us here?” Harmony squinted at each of the ponies. “The machine that I built is a device meant to heal. Miss Pie, you and me and...” She took a deep, somber breath. “...and Deacon Dawnhoof came into town to drain infernite from the lungs of foals. I don't know about you, but I haven't abandoned that goal, at least not in my heart. I want to see justice served in Dredgemane just as much as you do, but we can't go about it with rifles blazing.”

        “So, what, then?” Inkessa remarked. “We negotiate a release for Zecora? Or Dawnhoof, for that matter?”

        “As much as I would love to do that, it's more than obvious that Haymane isn't going to reason with us.” Harmony winced slightly. “Though, I figure it's more accurate to say that his allies, Breathstar and Sladeburn, will have nothing of it.”

        “Then what are you thinking, Har-Har?”

        “I'm thinking...” Harmony smirked. “...that we celebrate Gultophine's Harvest.”

        The four girls all blinked as one. “Huh?”






        

“The headquarters is built out of steel-reinforced concrete, the only building of that sort on this side of town,” Inkessa said while pointing across the street. The five ponies crouched in the shadowed rooftop of a three-story building across from the Militia HQ in question. “But since we're obviously not going to blow our way into the place with dynamite, the structure doesn't matter. What does matter...” She pointed at the cobblestones beneath where several guards were currently pacing in the gray glow of midday. “...is that the basement has been sculpted a solid ten meters deep below the street level. That is where they've got Zecora.”

        “Along with Alex!” Pinkie Pie hissed, eliciting a hiss from a copper pegasus holding a pair of binoculars.

        “For the last time!” Inkessa made a face. “Who's Alex?”

        “They obviously expected someponies to be contemplating something like we are right now,” Harmony murmured as she lowered the binoculars and studied the street with naked eyes. “Whether they're looking forward to the Grand Biv or myself, it doesn't matter. I suggest we give them something they don't expect. Something dazzling and yet invisible at the same time.”

        “I'm still waiting for you to explain how all of this connects to 'celebrating Gultophine's Harvest,'” Pepper Plots muttered from where she stood with crossed hooves besides Blinkaphine.

        “Okay, so maybe we won't be celebrating the bonfires.” Harmony kept low as she glanced back and smirked at the others. “But we could at least give the Dredgemaners something to celebrate.”

        “Hmmm?” Pepper fluttered her painted eyelashes.

        Inkessa leaned in. “Are you implying what I think you're implying?”

        Harmony pointed down a narrow trench towards where one of several piles of flammable wood was being built. “If we move now, while we still can, we can transform the entire ritual into something a lot more... a lot more kaizo than Haymane and Breathstar have planned!”

        “Huh?”

        “'Kaizo'?”

        “'Crazy!' 'Rambunctious!' 'Off-the-wall!' I dunno—A distraction.” Harmony smiled wickedly. “Inkessa, you and Blinkaphine and Pepper will be the Bivs. You'll do your thing, keep the militia's attention, and dazzle the crowd all at once. In the meantime, Miss Pie—er—Pinkie Pie and I will do our part and infiltrate the headquarters on our own.”

        “Why is it always you and Pinkamena?” Inkie Pie asked with a strange face.

        “Pssst!” Pinkie slid up to her sister and hissed, smiling. “Don't ask. It's our gimmick.”

        “We'll bust out Zecora. We'll grab the machine. We'll make our merry way to Stonehaven under the cover of darkness and mayhem. Then we'll do what we set out to accomplish. I swear, those poor children will be cured of Immolatia by sunup tomorrow morning or else Princess Nebula can have my wings back.”

        “Heh... Typical pegasus guile.” Pepper Plots smiled wickedly. “I approve of this mare.”

        “That idea sounds very righteous and all...” Inkessa winced and ran a hoof through her silken gray strands. “But it sounds a tad bit daunting.”

        “It's only natural to be scared, Inkessa...”

        “No, it's not that. I have no problem following through with your plan. I just don't think it's all that feasible, even with three of us donning the Biv's gear at the same time.”

        “She's right, y'know,” Pepper Plots spoke up. Blinkie watched silently as the scarlet-maned pony sashayed across the shadowy rooftop to stand beside the time traveler. “Sabotaging a clock tower or Town Hall or an alicorn fountain statue is rather simple. But botching the entirety of Gultophine's Harvest?”

        “Yes, I know it seems impossible, but we have to figure out a way to—”

        “Sugah, I never did say it was impossible.” Pepper winked. “You should know better than to interrupt a lady. Ahem. What I was gonna suggest is that we seek out some help beyond just the tools and tricks of the Biv. We need some assistance at street-level, and it just so happens that PDP and I are rather fondly acquainted with an expert on the street.”

        “Just who, exactly?” Harmony asked. After a few blinks, she dropped the binoculars from her hooves and grimaced sharply. “Awwww jeez. Seriously?”










        “Seriously!” Brevis cackled upside down from where the blue-coated mule was balancing on his head in the dead-end of a rubble-strewn alleyway. “A chance to help the Royal Grand Biv?! Unless this is a most delicious prank you ladies are pulling, you can very easily count me in! My afternoon has been an unbloomed flower, waiting to provide sweet tangy release to such whimsical honeybees as yourselves—”

        “Right, so are you in or not?!” Harmony growled.

        “Shhh! Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie squeaked and glanced worriedly over her shoulder from where the two squatted on the edge of the side doors to their shadowed stagecoach. Pepper and Inkessa hid inside the vehicle while a blandly disguised Blinkaphine stood nervously at the reins. Beyond the adjoining cobblestone streets, several guards and workers could be heard, unexcitedly milling about while constructing and observing the first of many unlit wooden bonfires. “It's just like Pepper said! We need some help on the street if we're to follow your plan. You remember when her and Brevis' buddies took us on a trip to—ahem—The Inferno of Madness!”

        “Of course, I remember our little redundant romp through the saloon's basement!” Harmony sighed exhaustedly. “I just wish we could get this part here done without all of the unnecessary pomp and philosophical tongue-work.”

        “A poetic notion if I ever did hear one!” Brevis somersaulted down, spun, and laid his stomach upon the cobblestone like a foal on a Saturday morning living room floor. “That is, assuming one is to lick up all the candy-coated excess of a day's sunshine! So tell me...” He propped his yellow-toothed chin up on a pair of hooves. “What are you five glistening stars proposing that goodly Brevis do to assist the Biv?”

        “Well... heeheehee... You see... Uhm...” Pinkie Pie briefly hesitated.

        Harmony boldly stabbed her voice in. “Brevis, they are the Biv. All four of them.”

        Blinkaphine and Inkessa winced. Pepper Plots rolled her eyes.

        Brevis, in the meantime, replied with remarkable speed that literally surprised the copper pegasus. “Well, of course they are! You think I didn't know that?” He grinned and tilted Pinkie Pie's chin up with a dirtied hoof. “At least I knew she was! Such a charming girl who inhales and exhales dreams like the spirit of Nebula! She not only saw the bright shinies—she became them! After that, not once did she stop shimmering across the cosmos of our lives. She transcended the shinies. That is a light I wish to see shine across Dredgemane, and I shall assist in any way possible, for the bonfires are but a dim glow in the penumbra of such imaginative thrill!”

        Pinkie giggled and nuzzled the crook of his forelimb, despite the unkempt smell obviously wafting across the alleyway. “I always figured you would understand, Brevis, ya silly yoke-cracker!”

        “Do not remind me of the fields, dear child. I have many an unresolved feud with several gophers there.”

        “Quite frankly, I'm surprised you weren't the Royal Grand Biv also,” Harmony murmured.

        “BraHa! Perish the thought!” Brevis cackled her way. “My darling lady of the feather, the Biv means many things to me! I admire him! I envy him! I mimic, emulate, and even exalt him! But I, goodly Brevis, could never allow himself to become the Royal Grand Biv, for I would have sacrificed all of my dreams for the sake of a title, and then what would become of all my tomorrows?”

        Brevis forward-flipped, landed on all four legs, and pointed with a cloaked hoof into the body of the stagecoach.

        “Your fellow ladies of the rainbow have invented a persona, yes, but what goodly Brevis admires so much about the Biv is that, unlike Bishop Breathstar, there are no words to the creature! The phantasm is a living phenomenon, a messenger of color! He is to the streets of Dregdemane what an afternoon rainshower is to the lengths of Equestria. We are not preached to; we are merely illuminated by his presence. The Biv gives us a threshold upon which to walk the plank of our own fears and trepidations in want of the excitement that the next blink may bring us, be it full of colors or calamity. We never know, the Biv never knows, and together—or apart—we are explorers of the next screaming second to come, and it is glorious. Alas, I pray that the world ends the soonest that the Biv stops being an impetus and starts being a cure, for then we good Equestrians will have adopted the illusion of a collective illness in our embrace of the Biv, just like the spiritually-afflicted and philosophically-choked seek Gultophine like an anesthetic. She too was once a spectrum of color and imagination and glory. Now, however, she has been reduced to a dull beam of light, a single snap of bright consuming death within the throes of a bonfire.”

        “Great! Yeah. So... uhm...” Harmony raised her copper brow and leaned forward, nodding emphatically and wagging her eyes in want of a certifiable confirmation.

        Pepper buttered her gesture up by speaking from the coach. “Brevis, darling, it would help if your replies were as pungent as your odor, or at least I do believe that is what Miss Canterlot is trying to convey.”

        “Who am I to spoil such a magical moment?” Brevis grinned and dance-stepped over so that he leaned against the stagecoach. “Five ladies, waiting on a mule, and the only thing being exchanged is smiles. BraHA! If I was capable of fathering a child, I'd name my firstborn an amalgamation of all your combined giggles. Ahem—Yes, goodly Brevis is as acquainted with the streets as you courageous urchins are with hygiene, and if it serves the purpose of lending extra years to the lives of those foals whom you are so desperate to save, then I shall enlist the hooves of my impoverished allies in benefiting your cause. Life is a blissfully short adventure, and it would be a shame for those who hunger for discovery to have their juvenile palate starved further by the neglectful guiltmongerers who run this cemetery sepulcher we call a town.”

        “Whew!” Pinkie Pie grinned Harmony's way. “I'm so paying him to be shipped to Ponyville for Rarity's public roast next year!”

        “Praise Princess Entropa that I won't be around for that,” Harmony muttered, then glanced at the mule. “Just about how many Dredgemaners do you think you can... uhm... dredge up?”

        “It depends, oh once-cocooned phantom!” He grinned crazily at her. “What do you need them to do and with what degree of insanity?”









        It was one day, the first in three months, a cold and dreary day out of so many more just like it, when the city of Dredgemane lay silent, and the many shuffling souls entrenched within those granite walls did not work. Instead, they gravitated into clusters like clumps of dust, donning ornamental yet colorless suits and dresses reserved for this occasion and this occasion alone.

        In murmuring droves, families and neighbors and colleagues aplenty shuffled out of the front doors to their homes. They carried with them conversations. They carried with them gossips and rumors. They carried with them all of the collective sighs of three months of labor and twenty-four hours of mourning the loss at the quarry. Most of all, they carried with them—in baskets or in wagons or on the bare balance of their flanks—family heirlooms, books, porcelain figures, portraits, picture frames, albums, and all sorts of heterogeneous nick-nacks. In a solid line, like a funeral procession, the souls of Dredgemane poured out of their homes and surged toward the heart of Town Square, carrying their most valued possessions to be burned.

        The stallions carried many similar items: favorite novels, fishing rods, trophies, and old tools whose antiquity far exceeded their use. The mares dragged along objects of broader variety: fancy hats, illustrated periodicals, works of art, silken hoof-me-downs, photographic compilations, and even age-old letters preserved from days of secondary school. Between the somber hooftrots of their parents, young fillies and colts struggled to catch up, clutching a toy or a stuffed animal desperately to themselves, not understanding why they were bringing such an item out into the open or where they were headed.

        As the crowds gathered more and more thickly under the waning sunlight, several militia ponies—temporarily stripped of their armor—acted as additional workhooves, setting up the bonfires, piling up blocks of wood imported from forests that stretched beyond the granite expanse of the Grave of Consus. They worked with a solemnity that reflected the well-dressed and well-groomed citizens coming to participate in their quarterly sacrifice to the Alicorn Sister of Life and Progress. The hustle and bustle of the ponies setting up the bonfire was positively electric, so that it made the shuffling parade of Gultophine's Harvest participants look frozen by comparison. Dredgemane was a city built through labor and defined by it. To be doing anything but working, if even for a holiday, hardly resembled being alive.

        Amidst the shuffling murmur of hooves, a pair of ponies carried a heavy log and added it to the bonfire in the middle of Town Square. There was a suspicious, disheveled look to these two equines in particular. While they busied themselves with fixing the latest piece of tinder to the wooden array, they paused to glance up towards the rooftops. Unseen from the guards or citizens of the mist-laden afternoon, the blue silhouette of a mule briefly darted across the edge of a three-story building, caught the eyesight of the two ponies, and gave the high sign.

        They nodded back. Something sparkling was shared between them: a smile. It was a bright and surprising thing. To erase any suspicion, they snuffed their enthusiasm in a sharp breath. Returning to a quiet shuffle, they knelt close to the base of the thick stack of bonfire wood and pretended to be shuffling several large beams around, when in fact they were each slipping loose a bright, rainbow-colored cylinder from their cloaks. The words “Bon Bon's Novelty Shop” flickered momentarily before the faint gray sunlight, and were then lost to the shadows of the wooden pile. With stealthy precision, the two allies of Brevis stuck the fireworks deep into the base of the bonfire, and they shuffled back out to resume piling on more innocent planks of wood.

        Several spaces down, in another street of Dredgemane, three more ponies paused in the midst of their labors about a bonfire pile. Upon the signal given by Pinkie Pie from a nearby rooftop, they likewise slid concealed fireworks into the base of the wooden pile before them.

        This was repeated at yet another pile of wood, and another, and another. A good third of the bonfires of Dredgemane were so stealthily rigged with colorful consumables, in accordance with the tactful signals communicated mutely from the lofty edges of the trenches, where so many a dismal citizen refused to tilt their eyes towards, lest they be blinded by the light.

        Through the scattered sunlight, a tiny white object flittered. A paper airplane was presently soaring over the streets of Dredgemane...





~*~*~*~*~*~*~





        ...until it drifted over the head of a young, off-duty guard, balanced on a ladder, who was tasked with changing the wicks of the torchlamps lining the streets of the sunken town. At first sight of the paper craft, the teenage stallion bit his lip, glanced over his shoulder at the passing parade of shuffling equines, and swiftly snatched the plane from the air when nopony was looking. He quietly unfolded the thing, scanned his eyes over the hastily scribbled words thereupon, and stole a quick smile from the whimsy of the air.

        Clearing his throat, he swiftly crumpled the sheet, stuck it in his pocket, and leaned forward on the ladder. With smooth grace, the pony loosened a few colorful sparklers stashed away in a coat sleeve and stuck them halfway down the length of the wick, marking where the flame would burn its way down in a specific space of time. Whistling innocently to himself, he lit the top of the torch's wick, leaned back on the ladder, and planted the frame of the lantern back over the top of the post. Glancing up towards the rooftops, his eyes travelled across the buildings until he found a copper shape. With a momentary blink of surprise, he smiled and gave a tiny, subtle salute.

        From the rooftops, a cloaked pegasus smirked and saluted back. She glanced aside at her pink anchor and motioned towards the rooftops on the far side of the street, below which other workers secretly awaited a similar, non-verbal signal. Pinkie Pie bounced over and tightly clutched the last pony. Eyeing the crowd, Harmony waited for an opportune time. Finally, when no heads were aimed their way, she raised her wings out from the sides of her cloak and took to the air, carrying Pinkie Pie with her towards the next leg of the operation.









        What is the nature of light? What is the essence of that which shines beyond you, like so much twilight that lingers above the ashes of the Wasteland? Is it we who cast the light, or is light something that is given to us? Was it given to Gultophine as well?

        When I built the rainbow signal, I knew that the colors of the spectrum were things that I could only emulate. I could never be the author of them, even though I could very easily be an ally to them in the endless battle against you.

        No, light is something eternal, especially in its multiplicitous shades. The rainbow has always meant hope, and hope was something that was given to ponydom, just as much as Gultophine gave us the magic of the prism, just as much as she gave us life.










        By the fifth time in the last hour that Haymane calmly opened his eyes, they were finally dry. With a deep breath, he finished buttoning up the top of a neatly pressed, dark suit. He sat on the edge of a plain bed in a lone room, gracing his thin and aging visage in a dirtied mirror. The wheeled tripod rested—naked—a half-meter from the bed's wooden frame, its wooden straps dangling loosely. It waited for him, just like this day had been waiting for him—every three months—with a burning hunger that grew more and more ravenous.

        He brought a hoof up and attempted straightening his straw-hard mat of blonde hair. Halfway through the effort, he stopped, as if remembering a hoof of another shade that used to do the task for him, and with far more grace and love than he had come to bestow himself. His nostrils flared as he gazed away from the mirror and towards a wide stretch of mirrors filtering the gray afternoon through a sea of settling dust.

        There was a knock at the door. A servant on the other end of the lofty wooden building was calling for him, announcing the time to depart. Haymane replied with something of a mumble. He glanced to his side and noticed—within the barren lengths of his own bedroom—a lone table with one item on it. It was a picture frame, depicting five ponies. One was himself, a younger image. The other four, he had long robbed himself the grace of looking at. Bravely, he clasped the frame in the crook of his hoof for the first time in years.

        The day had come.

        Sliding the picture frame into the inside of his suit's vest, he slid over to the edge of the bed until he was within reach of the tripod. Wheeling it over with his front limbs, he grunted with the ritualistic effort it took to slide his front half off the bed and—with more or less grace—position his lower half onto the moving platform. It took the better part of ten minutes, but he tightened the leather straps all by himself. Not a day went by when the Mayor refused the labor of his own hooves.




~*~*~*~*~*~*~




        The thick doors to the Cathedral of Gultophine opened wide with a thunderous creak. Breathstar stepped out, and he was a dazzling sight. A white robe of resplendent silver reflected a ghostly sheen against the granite walls of the Grave of Consus around him. His black silken mane framed his rigid features like a melted, obsidian halo. With a deep breath, he focused a telekinetic charge through his horn and straightened the edges of his outfit. Two young priests, far less fantastically garbed, stood at his flanks. They waited on his word, on his movement, on his command.

        With a clearing of his throat, Breathstar stood tall and proud. He set out onto the cobblestone streets of Dredgemane, joining his congregation and urging them forward into a far more fluid gait as his sheer presence alone burned the ritual of Gultophine's Harvest brighter, even before a single bonfire was lit. Halfway through his trot into town, the Grand Bishop paused, casting a forlorn glance over his shoulder—towards the foundation of the stone cathedral.

        A lone window rested at the street level, framing the nearby names of so many cobblestone memorials. A tiny shred of candlelight billowed from inside, illuminating a soul unseen by so many “celebrators” surging past the body of the cathedral. In an obstinate snort, Breathstar tore a bothersome thought from his mind by wrenching his gaze from the window. He faced forward... towards the flames yet to be kindled.




~*~*~*~*~*~*~





        Overseer Sladeburn grumbled. He sat at a workbench inside an iron-reinforced shack bordering the bizarrely empty depths of the Dredgemane Quarry beneath a melting sunset. With a hoof-brace, he wrote several statistical lines of profit loss over a quarterly report journal. He squinted his angry eyes at several arrays of memos and sheets drafted and delivered to him by his fellow administrators over the past two days.

        There was a loud knocking on the doorframe behind him. A servant marched in with a worried expression. Summoning Sladeburn's hard-edged gaze, the smaller pony gestured and pointed at a pocketwatch in his grasp.

        Sladeburn's response was a groan and a rolling of his eyes. Slapping his journal shut, he hopped out of his stool and stomped thunderously over to a coat rack. The extent of his Gultophine's Harvest preparation consisted of throwing a dark-brown suit over his already shadowy figure. Muttering words of a disgruntled nature under his breath, he slapped on a broad-rimmed hat and stormed out of the hut, trying his meager best to put on something slightly resembling a grin as he marched belatedly into town to join in the sacred festivities.









        I built the rainbow signal in the Wasteland because of hope. And it was hope that led me to spread the light throughout the darkness. Hope is what I wanted to give all ponies, even if I knew in my heart that I was the last one. It's because hope is the basic blueprint of a pony's soul—beneath magic and beneath friendship and beneath joy. Hope is what keeps our heart beating in spite of all the darkness, in spite of you.

        I was wrong to think that the Dredgemaners were without hope. It was inside them, shimmering, barely alive but flickering. It only needed to be kindled, and then ever so gloriously harvested.

        The light was and is a royally grand thing. The Bivs and I were about to remind Dredgemaners of what had been robbed from the essence of them. We were about to give them back the light.










        Night had fallen. The stars came out. The night sky was a glittering array of warmth through the splitting clouds. Nopony's eyes tilted up, though. They gathered thickly in circles around the several different bonfires as guard ponies—twice as somber as they—trotted up with lit torches and ignited the blazes. The giant, feather-shaped scars in the earth burned from the inside out with bright, white plumes. Embers and flanks of wood crackled as Gultophine's Harvest went underway, reflecting off the eyes of so many hundreds upon thousands of silently gazing ponies like a conjoined, ivory spark. They stared into the flames like they stared into all of their yesterdays and tomorrows. The heat bathed them, sweated them, and engulfed them. The light did nothing to excite them.

        In the midst of this serpentine blaze that bled through the city, the Town Square of Dredgemane burned the brightest. Where a trio of bright bonfires billowed, a trinity of a different sort had gathered. Mayor Haymane rolled up to the dark shape of Overseer Sladeburn. Flanked by guards and members of the Council, the two leaders of Dredgemane stood tall and proud while their cohort—Bishop Breathstar—ascended a grand wooden scaffold facing the bonfires and the surging sea of ponies beyond the flames. Virtually the entire populace of Dredgemane had shown up—as they always did every three months—and there wasn't a single speck of cobblestone not covered by their patient, quiet limbs. There was not a single name of the dead exposed from beneath the joyless bodies of the dying.

        For a veritable sea brimming with equine souls, not a peep was heard, so that an eerie quiet allowed Breathstar's booming voice to ricochet off the flame-lit, granite walls of that hovel as he finally ascended the top of the scaffold and said, “Faithful children of Goddess Epona and loyal siblings to the Holy Alicorn of Life and Progress, we are gathered here to exorcise ourselves of the damnable distractions of this world that seek to undermine the glory of Goddess Gultophine's spirit. If your hearts are heavy, worry not. If your spirits are exhausted, fret not. For tonight you all shall once again cast off the fetters that have naturally collected around yourselves in this physical plane of inequity and sin. Tomorrow, you shall wake up as new ponies, as fresh spirits freed from the weight of obscurity and remorse, for the straight and narrow path towards progress shall once again be made clear with the effigies of our failures burned to righteous oblivion!”




~*~*~*~*~*~*~




        From across the city, in the bowels of Gultophine's Cathedral, young Deacon Dawnhoof knelt on his haunches before the bed. He murmured a quiet prayer, but was momentarily distracted by a flickering sensation against his eyelids. Ripped from meditation, he gazed out through the thin window lining the barren chamber he was in. The bright white flash of torchlight shimmered through and bathed his figure in a ghostly dance.

        It was not a sight that was foreign to him. The young cleric had seen it many times before, for nearly the past decade. However, this night, sunken in the tomb-like bowels of his own church, buried beneath the memories of the past twenty-four hours, he couldn't revel in the cleansing brightness of that light. It was too synthetic, too plain, too colorless.

        He fought a shuddering breath as he slumped against a far wall and stared into the flickering kaleidoscope, his ears pricking to hear the distant echoes of his superior, Bishop Breathstar. With haunting clarity, the words became more and more distinguishable across streets upon streets of paralyzed, dead-quiet Dredgemaners.




~*~*~*~*~*~*~




        “It is by Gultophine's grace alone that we have a habitat, a garden of progress and peace in the middle of the very land where Consus fell!” Breathstar spoke firmly before the crowd with immeasurable grace. His eyes traveled across every silent face as the fires burned ravenously between him and his congregation. “We owe her not only our lives, but our spirits, our commitments, and our memories—all of which must go through the crucible of her glory, through the other side of which we will emerge either healthy or destitute, as will be determined by our faith to her!”

        As the City Counselor roared overhead, Haymane shifted on his wheeled haunches. He sighed, feeling the weight of a picture frame beneath his coat's jacket. He glanced aside, past Sladeburn, and studied the Council. The longer he stared, the more his eyes squinted, and a bizarre look of curiosity and surprise washed over him.

        Haymane's long-time friend and companion, Quarrington Edward Pie, was nowhere to be seen.




~*~*~*~*~*~*~





        Flanking the far edge of the Town Square, Harmony stood with Pinkie Pie and Brevis as the three other “conspirators” finished donning the masks, capes, goggles, and tools of the Royal Grand Biv. The time traveler glanced over her shoulder in time to see Pepper Plots passing a few flirtatious words to the blue mule, winking, and turning into the Biv in a flash. She saluted the copper pegasus, turned away from the flames, and scampered north along the rooftops. Blinkaphine's golden eyes briefly darted Harmony's way, nervously twitched, and disappeared under a pair of ruby goggles as she too made her flight, heading due west.

        Inkessa, however, was fumbling. She paused in the middle of her outfitting and stirred nervously, her lips quivering as she gazed a forlorn glance west, past Blinkaphine's rainbow shadow and towards the general direction of Stonehaven. As the flickering strobes of the bonfires settled upon her mane in tandem with Breathstar's booming voice, something came over the older daughter of Quarrington, and her violet eyes started to water.

        Immediately, Pinkie Pie bounced over to Inkessa, smiled in her face, and murmured a few humming words of sweetness that Harmony couldn't hear over the Bishop's grandiose speech down below. The time traveler's candy-colored anchor then leaned over and gently nuzzled her sister's neck, saying something to her, followed by a brief melody that drifted from her bright lips, like an Auntie singing a room full of foals to sleep.

        Whatever it was, it was enough to bring a smile to Inkessa's lips. The young nurse trembled, hiccuped past a final smile, and dried her eyes before nodding to her young sister. With a shudder, she slid the cowl of arcanium weave over her face, and became the Biv as solidly as the previous two did. With a courageous leap, she glided off the rooftop and soared eastward.

        Harmony turned to watch, her amber-streaked mane billowing in the figure's breezy departure. For the first time since the time traveler was initially graced with the Biv's sight, a jolt of electricity ripped up her spine, so that she wasn't really standing on a rooftop overlooking Gultophine's Harvest in a City that knew no joy, but rather she was leaning breathlessly against a scooter and watching a rainbow figure spin loopty-loops in the bright blue sky.

        Something inside her melted yet again in so few hours. She felt like collapsing, until a pink anchor bounced up to her side like she had to Inkessa's. Pinkie Pie glanced over, winked, and poked Harmony in the center of her nose while making a face. A giggle lit the air, and naturally it only belonged to Pinkie, though Harmony would have been lying if she didn't feel something—for the first moment since arriving there—that was dangerously close to tittering temptation.









        It is not an easy thing. It never was. I spent months, years, decades minding the rainbow signal that I had built. I fought trolls and monsters and pirates and stormfronts to keep the light alive. After an entire lifetime, was it worth it?

        I know what your answer will be. I deny it before you even utter it with your black tongue, with your hungry and ravenous maw. Nothing is that hopeless, not even for the end of ponies.

        Minding the rainbow signal was definitely worth it, because I had found Spike, and Princess Entropa's shell had found an avatar, and this pony had found Dredgemane.

        Then, one fateful night of falling, Dredgemane would find me.










        One by one, in mechanized, cog-wheel revolutions, the ponies of Dredgemane shuffled up to the bonfires and tossed what was most precious to them into the flames. Deadpan mothers and fathers threw their heirlooms—like their memories—into the consuming sparks. Misty-eyed teenagers and confused children tossed colorful bundles of joy into the everlasting white flame. Old, bearded ponies gave up their violins and submitted to the ashes with a shuddering slump of aged limbs.

        Wearing a dull gray dress, the obese frame of Marble Cake shuffled up to the edge of the crackling embers. She held in two hooves a beloved, potted cactus dredged from her office at the bakery. With a deflating sigh, she closed her eyes, meditated on a prayer, and fitfully tossed the adored plant into the center of the blaze. She sniffled as she waddled off beyond the surging crowd of obedient siblings to Gultophine.

        Approaching the bonfires, being escorted by the intimidating frame of Sladeburn, was Mister Irontail. The flashes of the sparkling flame illuminated the blacksmith pony's fresh bruises. The bearded stallion stood next to his trembling wife. The two of them collectively held an open blanket displaying the two “souvenirs” of the Royal Grand Biv. Irontail navigated a nervous sigh, and upon feeling the urging touch of Sladeburn's thick hoof on his shoulder, the burly pony joined his wife in bravely tossing both articles into the consuming fire, redeeming himself and his spouse in the eyes of the Council. Sladeburn smirked venomously, patted the blacksmith's back, and escorted the shuddering Dredgemaner off to the side.

        Haymane watched the entire proceeding, his eyes consuming the flames that turned brighter and brighter as Dredgemane exorcised itself of all distractions. As the ponies marched through their turns, the weight inside his suit's pocket grew heavier and heavier, as if it would pull his beating heart out and fall bloodily to the cobblestone grave of names, names, names below them all. The Mayor was, naturally, too focused on the moment to possibly register a bright white object floating sharply overhead.




~*~*~*~*~*~*~



        
A paper airplane rose from the heat billowing off the bonfires below, arced towards the roofs, and came coasting to a stop at the northwest corner of Town Square. The airplane was snatched from the air by a rainbow-colored limb. The Royal Grand Biv leaned saucily against a chimney as it unfolded the paper sheet and scanned the instructions written thereupon. The vandal then reached under its razor-sharp cloak and produced a pocketwatch. After studying the time, the figure slid to the edge of the roof, glanced over the crowd, and found a colorful shadow gracing a rooftop clear across the Square.

        The Biv raised a hoof to its ruby goggles and flicked a switch, rotating the lenses of the article in such a way as to catch the glint off the blazing fires below. In such a manner, the Royal Grand Biv flashed a coded message to its partner across Dredgemane. The mute doppelganger from far away strobed something back, and both shadows shared a communal nod across the lengths of the burning town. Squatting in order to avoid the sight of so many ponies down below, the Royal Grand Bivs awaited their time to shine.





~*~*~*~*~*~*~






        “I think they're all ready to dance!” Pinkie Pie's voice chirped as she lowered a pair of binoculars and smirked over at Harmony and Brevis. “Pepper's passed word on to Blinkaphine! That means Inkessa should be getting ready as we speak!”

        “Dang, that was fast,” Harmony exclaimed. “So what now?”

        “You're asking me? You're the one who thought this all up, silly filly! Heeheehee!”

        “Pffft! Yeah, but you're the 'grand architect,' Miss Pie,” the last pony replied with a raspberry noise. “I may be the producer of this stage play, but you're the exemplary director here.”

        “Woohoo! I'm Queen of the World!” Pinkie Pie jubilantly giggled from the edge of the rooftop. She paused and squinted towards the starlight above as she rubbed a hoof across her chin. “Hmmm... Can I just hop up to the position of 'Queen' while Celestia remains a Princess? Do you think that Goddess Epona would mind?”

        “I think the universe deserves to be run by you for a day, Pinkie,” Harmony said, gazing into the burning ritual below the three of them. “That would have the making of a cosmic sugar high the likes of which the constellations would never recover from.”

        “Whatever. You're the star-gazer, not me.” Pinkie Pie juggled the binoculars in her grasp and hummed. “Anywho, so we wait for the bonfires to go 'ker-sparkle,' and then we can go frolicking after Zecchy in superheroic fun-time. It's that simple, huh?”

        “Life is complex, Miss Pie. Only the dreams are simple.” Harmony sighed, sat down, and folded her legs beneath her as she enjoyed the last calm breaths that could be allowed her that night. “This town has forgotten what it means to be simple. All this time, they've confused it with being boring. It's amazing how a life of struggle and misery can make us think that all we deserve to have is boredom, when in fact it's the frightening and surprising things of day-to-day that enrich us to begin with.”

        The blue mule was suddenly laughing, chuckling, practically braying.

        Harmony squinted over towards Brevis, briefly worried that his cackling might alert the townsponies below. “And just what's gotten you so full of titters?”

        “BraHahaHa—Ohhh, you are truly a monarch butterfly, through and through, dear Canterlotlian.” Brevis smirked sideways at her. “It charms me to no end to think that the same soul that speaks your noble words was once just as dull and dreadful as the granite that swallows this town.”

        “If you're still mad at me for trying to stop the Royal Grand Biv for so long, quit while you're ahead. I know now that I was spreading a pestilence through Dredgemane instead of preventing one. Still, it's not like it matters in the long run. I know what I mean to this town when all is said and done, Brevis,” Harmony said firmly, though she fought to avoid his gaze. She gulped hard. “I-I know what I'm the end of.”

        “Mmm... Are we not all the end of things, darling one?” He smiled drunkenly. “Each and every one of us, with our separate and precious masterpieces being woven before us with every gasp—We are tragedies and romances all the same. How it ends is natural. How it persists is sublime. Hmmm...” He rocked back and forth on his haunches. “Ah, yes, goodly Brevis was once a perceiver of the end. Everything he thought or said or did was defined by the parentheses of mortality. Death still awaits me, whether I dance or whether I slither. Only, I am no longer bound by an essence that has been assigned to me. I fell because I chose to, despite the heart-splitting horror of the descent. I reveled in it, for I had chosen it. Now, my providence is no longer defined by what will be chiseled into my cobblestone. Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm...”

        Harmony squinted at him across the flickering bonfire light. “What changed... if I may ask...?”

        “Simply this.” He smirked sideways at her, one eye bulging brighter than the other above a frenzied grin. “I galloped forth upon the burning horizon of life. I saw rainbows. I saw slaughterhouses. I saw gigantic black abysses and fields of green mirth all the same. To each delightful and dreadful thing, to each catastrophe and chorus, I said 'yes.' I said 'yes' and I never stopped saying 'yes,' with each passing day of my life, with each passing moment, for each moment was deliciously the same, the same gasp, the same shock, the same sob, the same laugh—and every single instant was a precipice upon which to discover more of what this island of life was warmly offering me, as well as the many more infinite things that I had yet to discover, and could never discover, but would pursue all the more fervently to comprehend, no matter how impossible, all the while saying, screaming, singing, laughing 'yes, yes, yes, yes!' BraHahaHaha!”

        He spun around, teetered, and rediscovered his seat. A pink shadow along the edge of the rooftop glanced his way and cast a warm giggle of her own, basking in his words in such a knowing manner that Harmony almost envied her.

        “We may be able to get this city to open its eyes, Brevis,” Harmony said. “However, it's another thing altogether to get them to trot a new path with the use of that sight.”

        Brevis' smile was a strangely placid thing as he said, “Alas, the last test is the hardest test. It is a very black and bottomless barrier, laced in chaos and bathed in darkness. But only by falling through will anypony find providence, in that they'll find the path towards it, and it is a path that never ends, just like one can never split the rainbow apart perfectly. Colors are infinite; it is our eyes that fail to see well enough. But that is fine, for we do not prosper off of definition. We blossom by inspiration.” He motioned his hoof towards the streets below like a crazed prophet. “Behold... it begins, the mad fall of Dredgemane.”

        Harmony raised an eyebrow. Glancing across the way at Pinkie Pie, she stirred her stiff limbs out from underneath her and slid over to the edge of the rooftop. She gazed down towards the trio of bright bonfires in the center of Town Square while a pink shadow joined her.




~*~*~*~*~*~*~




        As the last of the many citizens of Dredgemane shuffled past the bonfires, tossing their final treasures into the blazes, Mayor Haymane took a deep, weighted breath. He pulled the picture frame out from his jacket as he wheeled up to the edge of the flickering heat. Gazing with glistening eyes towards the image resting in the crook of his hoof, he saw the photographic souls of his wife, his three children, all surrounding his image, completing him, fulfilling him. He began and ended there, a cyclical shadow in the great gasping abyss of Dredgemane.

        With courage, he took a deep breath, drew the veil over the last bright corners of his soul, and reared his hoof up to toss the twice-dead family into the blazes...

        Then something glinted across their frozen faces, something with color—like their eyes once warmly possessed at the end of his loving breath. Haymane gasped at the sight of the sparkling prism. The Mayor of Dredgemane glanced from the reflection in the picture frame to the center of the burning bonfires before him.

        The rest of the Town Square citizens gasped, squinting and staring with frozen shock towards the depths of the flame. Each bright ember, each hot white tongue of fire, each ivory glint of heat was being replaced with spectral sparkles, rainbow spurts, and prismatic plumes. That night, in the middle of Gultophine's Harvest, the essence of the Patron Alicorn of Rainbows came to life in the Grave of Consus. The bonfires had melted through to the fireworks planted secretly inside the cores of the wooden effigies, and soon the entire trenches—blossoming outward from Town Square through the serpentine ravines—were a cornucopia of dancing and frothing color.

        Haymane's jaw hung agape. Sladeburn lethargically glanced over and did a double-take, the stallion's dark eyes nearly exploding. Standing atop the wooden scaffold in the center of Town Square, Bishop Breathstar was in the middle of taking a dainty sip from a telekinetically floating canteen of water. The priest gazed over at the suddenly frothing array of colors, and the stars of the universe aligned for a perfectly-timed, holy spit take. Breathstar sputtered, wheezed, and nearly pratfalled off the edge of the scaffolding as he leaned forward to give the sight a gawking, incredulous stare.

        The bonfires sputtered and hissed, and then the fireworks inside the hearts of the burning piles exploded in a timely fashion. The colorful plumes of sparkles quadrupled, shooting forth into the shimmering air above Dredgemane, filling the Grave of Consus with prismatic streamers and howling comets of spectral madness. A dazzling constellation of beautiful chaos roared over the cobblestone vistas, bathing every square centimeter of the urbanscape with more color than it had seen in decades, centuries, eons...

        The ponies down below did not flee. The citizens of Dredgemane did not panic. As they saw the same fires that consumed what was most precious to them fill the sky with a pulsating light of many colors, they stood frozen in the Grave of Consus, being pulled upwards as if unified by one singular, mesmerized gaze. The sepulchers of that town lingered upon the brink of a new and unfathomable rapture.

        Up above, on the rooftops...



~*~*~*~*~*~*~




        ...the last pony proudly smiled. Her amber eyes lit up as she glanced aside and roared above the screaming air of the town. “It's time.” Her copper wings shot out.

        “Go forth!” Brevis shouted and cackled ecstatically through the noise, noise, noise. “Go forth and conquer, you beautiful, crazy fillies!”

        “Heeeheee—Yaay!” Pinkie Pie practically pounced onto Harmony's backside and pumped a bright hoof through the air. “Zecchy or bust!”

        “Hang tight!” Harmony sneered as she carried her anchor, galloped over the edge of the rooftop, and glided through the color-stabbed air of the town.

        “Live in the moment! Exalt the moment!” the blue mule howled after them, drowned joyously in the rainbow cacophony exploding everywhere. “Be daring! Be dangerous! But most of all...”




~*~*~*~*~*~*~




        “...be alive!”

        Harmony gritted her teeth as she steered and spiraled and spun her way through the bright flashes of fireworks all around her. Frothing clouds of red and green and blue shimmered across the ceiling of Dredgemane, thundering and boiling. Hidden from the eyes of villagers below—both suspicious and enraptured—the last pony pierced the joyful chaos, threading her way through the prismatic miasma like she would navigate a Wasteland stormfront. Instead of tracking down a dome of moonrock, Harmony coasted her way toward a three-story, steel-reinforced building in a deep trench down below. The Headquarters of the Dredgemane Militia lingered beyond sight.

        “Weeeeee!” Pinkie Pie clung to her with one hoof and flailed the other through the air like an ecstatic cowgirl. “Yeaaaaah! Ride 'em Har-Har! Heeheehee!” Her cheeks exploded from an everlasting grin that glistened in the rainbow splashes of joy all around them. “Best. Night. Everrrrrr!”

        “But Miss Pie!” Harmony snarled as she expertly dodged a bright explosion, twirled around a second, and skirted past a third. “I swear, every night to you is the 'best night ever!'”

        “Heehee! I know!” Pinkie Pie grinned and clung to her winged companion's backside, nuzzling her neck from behind like a trusting foal. “And they are... forever and ever...”

        Something burned inside the last pony, something hotter than the chaotic, dangerous flashes flanking her daredevil flight. She thought of many things. She thought of Spike's eternal lavender flowers. She thought of Bruce's wheezing laugh, of Pitt's bald spot, and of Gilda's ridiculous bomber jacket. Then she thought of a smiling face from beyond the bars of an arcane vault. That smile would have been proud of Scootaloo—the orphan of time realized—for building the rainbow signal, because even though none of the dead ponies saw it, the end of ponies did, and she deserved it. Soon, that smile filled her own lips, and it would have gone on forever... if only the scavenger from the future didn't have a task to accomplish, a zebra to save, and several sickly children to donate that same smile to.

        Harmony held her breath, and her flight became a dive, and her dive became a scream, carrying her and Pinkie, daring to pierce the madness of the night, daring to do the impossible, daring to fall...