Twilight Sparkle liked to think she was a rational pony. All her life she had found her answers through concentrated study of unknown phenomena, utilizing the scientific method to demonstrate that there was a consistent, mundane explanation or lack thereof for anything she could turn her mind to.
She had never thought that her mind itself would be co-opted by the horrifying creature that sat in front of her cage, chortling to itself as it gleefully typed out the doom of an entire world on a small sheet of paper.
Dreams, stories, creative power... all of it was just too much for Twilight dwell on. Her own mentor, the pony she thought of all others who would never betray her, never send her into a situation that she or her friends couldn’t overcome, had actively misguided her for years. Her victory over Nightmare Moon was a minor quibble, a small upset in its grand scheme. And Twilight had wandered right into the dark force’s trap, all because Celestia had carefully hidden the truth from her. It was almost as though she had been working with the Nightmare all along, if inadvertently.
What hurt Twilight the most wasn’t that Celestia hadn’t told her everything; it was that she would never tell Twilight everything. She had kept the knowledge of other worlds and the creative power of the Elements away from her best pupil. And now, utterly beaten by her own emotional frailty and the inescapable hugeness of the truth, Twilight couldn’t even get worked up over the fact that Nightmare Moon—or the thing that called itself Nightmare Moon—was going to use her to destroy everything she loved. She tried to be angry, but felt only cold and numb. She tried to be fearful, but felt only dull and ambivalent. Everything felt so far away: the love of her friends, family, and mentor. Celestia especially so. She had put Twilight in this situation with her lack of trust, and now it was time to reap the whirlwind. Twilight didn’t know if she felt more betrayed or insulted.
She imagined she’d have a lot of time to stew over that while the Nightmare kept her here.
“Are you Nightmare Moon? Or something else?” she asked.
The crude, warped version of herself stopped typing and looked over its shoulder. Twilight cringed at its snaggle-toothed grin and empty black eyes.
“What a strange question,” it said. “Whatever do you mean by ‘something else’ or ‘Nightmare Moon?’ Can I not be both?”
“That’s a bit of an easy way out,” Twilight grumbled.
“The simplest truths are the hardest ones to accept,” Nightmare-Twilight burbled as thick black ooze dribbled out between its teeth. “I am Nightmare Moon because I was part of her. At the same time I am more than Nightmare Moon, because now I am part of you, too. And I am Nightterror Nebula, Darkmoon Destroyer, Anarchy Apollo, and whatever other silliness you ponies labeled me with in any number of iterations of this world. I am the Nemesis.”
It stood up and seemed to grow a little larger, taking up more of Twilight’s vision though it never moved closer. It loomed over her with nothing but its own sheer malice, the emptiness taking on a life of its own and wrapping around Twilight’s mind like a vice, squeezing all life and light from the universe. It kept growing until it seemed to fill all of reality and Twilight’s little box was the only sane place left in existence. When it spoke, the noise came from all around.
“I am everything, Twilight. And soon I will be you and you will be me, and there will be nothing that we cannot do together.”
“I bet you told Luna the same thing,” Twilight snapped against the hungry darkness that nibbled at the bars of her cage, “and we stopped you then.”
“Ah, but then I did not have you,” the Nightmare said, grinning as it retracted to its original size, “and what use are the Elements when Magic will not bind them together? You’ve already given up. Save your anger for Celestia when she tries to imprison you again. We’ll have so much fun getting our revenge.”
Twilight’s ears perked at the mention of the Elements. Maybe her friends would—! But the hope was crushed by an immediate and overwhelming despair as she realized the Nightmare was right. Even if her friends all came together, they still didn’t have her. She was stuck in a cage in the middle of nowhere in her own head. And what had Magic done but led her to this horrible fate? She couldn’t even trust her own Element, so why would the others be any use?
You let this happen, she hissed at herself. You knew the Nightmare was inside and you ignored it. For what? You’re the Element of Magic and you practically gave yourself into this thing’s hooves! What good are you?
Nothing answered her. She was all alone now.
Twilight slumped. “It’s not like it matters what happens to Celestia,” she whispered. “This is all her fault, anyway.”
“That’s the spirit,” the Nightmare purred. “Isn’t it strange, Twilight, how the ones you trust the most are always the ones with the most to hide? The more love you heap on a pony, the more frightened they become. Frightened of pain, of disappointment, and death. Celestia feared you, Twilight. She feared your power and she feared her love for you would blind her to what she thought she had to do. Just as she once feared and loved another little pony she took under her wing and whispered littles lies to. Poor Luna made it almost too easy for me.”
The Nightmare pressed its face against the bars of the cage, warping its already distorted features. “And just as I knew it would, fear overcame love all over again. Trust me, Twilight. You’re better off this way. At least now things will never be uncertain for you again. I tell no lies; I simply do what I was always meant to.”
Twilight sighed, dropping onto her stomach and burying her face in her hooves. “Dusk is still alive,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure if she was saying that to keep what dwindling hope there was alive, or to try and speed everything to its doom so she could be done with mysteries and betrayal.
The Nightmare nodded sagely. “Yes, but it will be a trifling thing to kill him. Just like Celestia, just like your own magic, he betrayed you, selfishly seeking what he wanted without thinking of the consequences. Besides, why even think of such things when I’ve already won? We’ve already reached the climax of this tale, Twilight, and now we have but to witness the falling action before the resolution.”
It grinned viciously and sent a crawling tentacle into the cage, wrapping around her mane and pulling her up by the hairs. She cried out and reflexively tried to pull the disgusting appendage away—it was cold as ice and its grip was like iron. But her hooves stuck fast to it as it yanked her to the cage’s bars and mashed her face against them. The Nightmare leaned against the cage, touching her shoulder through the bars like they were old friends watching a movie.
“Watch,” it said, materializing a window with its hoof. Beyond it, Twilight could see Dusk Shine and his friends gaping up at Nightterror Nebula.
Twilight’s heart fell into her stomach as she saw the power of the Nightmare in Dusk’s world. The relentless clacking of the typewriter beat on her ears.
“Watch as everything falls.”
And so with a sad sigh, Twilight did nothing but watch, and everything fell.
---------------
Dusk Shine stumbled away from the dark alicorn. He tried to think of what to do or how to fight, but everywhere he turned he just found Nightterror’s sneering face, already victorious. Feelings of utter hopelessness and despair crashed on him over and over in waves as the alicorn’s chest rose and fell.
“Solaris!” he called out, but his mentor just stood there, pupils shrunk to pinpricks and wings quivering half-unfurled, caught between fight or flight. Dusk felt another bitter stab of misery as he saw the once proud alicorn suddenly so frail and frightful, not even reacting to his student’s peril.
Nightterror took a step forward and everypony else took a step back.
“Well, this is disappointing. No grand speeches, Solaris? No great burst of magical power? Where is the mighty Prince I dueled so long ago? Where is the bright shining immortal who swore to protect this world with his life?”
“You were destroyed,” Solaris hissed, his mane kicking up in a solar wind he conjured from millions of miles away, his horn glowing with righteous fury. “You were expunged! Never to make your mark on this world again!”
“Expunged, yes!” crowed Nightterror. “But far from destroyed! Oh, my little ponies, I have such a secret to share with all of you!”
He laughed and his mane swirled overhead, becoming a tornado of stars and galaxies that all burned with the distant light of cold malevolence. Nightterror advanced on them all, forcing them back as a carpet of darkness expanded out from his hooves, threatening to swallow them whole. Shadowy tendrils dripping black ooze sprang out of the oncoming abyss, whipping around and smashing through the ancient stone pillars and walls of the castle like a hoof through wet paper. Wherever the darkness went, nothing was left behind. Colors smeared eerily into each other and rock melted without heat; moss shriveled and died. The very fabric of the world melted down wherever the Nightmare strode. Dusk’s eye twitched and his horn began to scream again. There was something horribly wrong with those scars in the skin of the world, something that ate up magic and life and left a terrible, absolute nothingness.
“I am not the Nightterror you remember. I am much more than a simple villain in an amateurish morality play. Within me exists every dark thought that has ever been!”
Nightterror’s form shifted with oily smoothness, changing with every step. His legs grew more slender and his neck less stocky, his snout shrinking within the confines of his helmet. His baleful red eyes shifted to a deep, alluring aquamarine. Dusk fell onto his haunches in disbelief as things began to fall into place and Nightterror completed his transformation.
“Nightmare Moon!” purred the now very female alicorn as she strutted back and forth, tossing her mane imperiously. “Nightterror Nebula!” she barked as she shifted back into her demonic male counterpart. “And an infinity of dark and terrible things besides! I am all of them and more, and now that I am here your world has come to the end of its utility.”
“The Elements!” Dusk screamed. “We have to use them, now!”
“Go on then,” Nightterror murmured, grinning placidly. “Try your little deus ex machina. It will make no difference.”
Dusk scrunched his eyes shut, pinning his ears back against his head as he tried to summon the Element of Magic, calling out to the others to give him strength and hope. It wasn’t like casting a spell, more like feeling it, and Dusk gritted his teeth as he waited for the resulting explosion of joy and confidence that came from his friends.
But nothing happened.
Dusk opened his eyes and ears and the world was in chaos again, and Nightterror still had that look of smug superiority. He closed his eyes and tried again.
Nothing. There’s nothing there. It’s not just not working, it’s just gone!
“No!” he screamed, turning to look his friends in the eye.
“Applejack! Elusive! Rainbow, Berry, Butterscotch, listen to me!” he shouted, running up to Elusive and giving him a good hard smack across the cheek. “The Elements! Call them! Summon them now!”
“I... I can’t!” Elusive gasped, clutching his head with his hooves. “I can’t feel them anymore, Dusk! It’s not working!”
“That’s impossible!” Dusk moaned as he looked at the hopeless expressions on the others’ faces.
“But... but they have to work!” Dusk shouted, trying to cow the impossibility of the situation with sheer willpower. “They’re the only thing left that we can—”
“The only thing? Oh, no,” said Nightterror. “The only thing left for you all to do is die.” He aimed his horn at them all, and it began to glow with devious intent. He was interrupted by Solaris crashing bodily into him and sending him through the wall of the castle with a blast of golden light.
“You will not lay a hoof on any of my ponies!” Solaris roared, his mane and tail exploding into violent flaming tempests as he spread his wings. “We have defeated you once before, creature, and we will do so aga—”
A solid lance of darkness crashed into his chest and lifted the alicorn clear off his hooves, sending him tumbling end over end until he smashed into another pillar, wiping out the lower section.
“Solaris!” Dusk cried out, rushing to his teacher’s side. Another burst of golden light, dimmer than the one that came before, exploded out as Solaris struggled to his hooves, magically pushing Dusk back to the side of his friends.
“Stay back!” Solaris shouted, and the sound of his voice was like a wall breaking in two, forcing Dusk to hold his ground. His friends, still frozen with horror at their sheer ineffectiveness, could only watch as Nightterror stepped back through the hole in the wall he had just crashed through. His armor wasn’t even scratched.
“Ha ha! There is the Solaris I used to know! Or is it the Solaris I only dreamed of? It’s so hard to get it all in order after all the Solarises and Celestias and what-have-yous I’ve gone through to get here.”
Solaris snorted, attempting to summon another burst of power. But Dusk saw the tempestuous gouts of flame that were his mane and tail were lesser in intensity now, sputtering more than roaring and...
And less colorful?
Dusk recoiled. Somehow the yellows and reds were muted and dull, and the once pure white of his coat was grey as if covered in soot. The alicorn swayed on his hooves, nearly imperceptible to the naked eye, but it made the Nightmare smirk.
“I will have no more of your lies, thing of evil!” Solaris spat. “Crawl back to the dark pit you came from!” Flames as bright as the Sun surrounded Solaris in a gleaming shield, turning the stone beneath him red hot. Dusk raised a hoof to shield his eyes from the extreme glare, feeling his mane sizzle.
“Dusk!” Solaris shouted over the bellowing conflagration. “Get down!”
The wall of fire coalesced into a writhing vortex that lunged at Nightterror, enveloping the dark alicorn in a massive firestorm that swam over his body and consumed him completely. The noise and heat and confusion was so intense that Dusk and his friends dived behind a fallen pillar, shielding their heads and ears as they cowered in the shadows from the blistering heat that consumed the great hall.
“The light of the Sun burns away all falsehood!” Solaris’ voice thundered. “Let it consume you like the speck of dust that you are!”
Dusk pressed his face against the stone as far as it would go, hiding from the blinding light and blistering heat that filled every crevice of the great hall. On and on the noise and confusion crashed against his ears, seemingly interminable. Dusk felt a scratchy pain in his throat, and realized he was screaming but couldn’t hear himself over the raging inferno.
Then came deafening a silence.
Dusk slowly opened his eyes and prized his hooves away from his head, peering over the smoldering, ash-cloaked remains of the pillar.
There stood Solaris, panting heavily as his mane and tail fluttered weakly, sputtering errant gouts of flame and light as they drooped against his back and withers. The Prince looked worn and drawn, somehow smaller and thinner than Dusk remembered. His eyes were unfocused and downcast.
Before him stood Nightterror, his cloak of darkness untouched and his armor not even singed.
“Impossible,” Solaris rasped, struggling to stay upright. “So weak... How can this be?”
“All is as it was written,” said Nightterror, “and we must play our parts to the letter.” He turned to look at Dusk once more. “Dusk knows. Don’t you, Dusk? Tell them what I told you. Tell them the true insignificance of your meager lives.”
“No,” Dusk whispered, shaking his head. “No, it’s not true! It can’t be true! You’re just Nightterror Nebula and we beat you before and we will again!”
“Paltry efforts to stave the inevitable,” Nightterror intoned, spreading his wings and expanding his starry mane until it almost engulfed the width of the hall. “But where is my former host? Cowering in darkness until I find him there, shivering and alone like the day he let me in before? Come out, Prince Artemis! Let me show my mastery over you and your brother like the story demands! Or are you just—”
Dusk and his friends fell backwards once again as a massive stone, dislodged from the ceiling, crashed down atop Nightterror’s head and pummeled him into the ground. This was followed by a veritable avalanche of masonry and ancient rock, directed straight onto the spot Nightterror had been standing. Once again the old hall erupted with the sharp crack of rock smashing apart rock and powerful granite driving into the ground. A tidal wave of dust exploded outward and smothered the other ponies as they took shelter behind wings, hooves, or even each other.
Atop the pile of still falling wreckage Prince Artemis landed, his jaw set and his eyes ablaze with righteous fury. White light cascaded from his horn and seeped into the cracks between the rocks. They vanished, and then the muffled thud of an explosion reached Dusk’s ears, and the pile of boulders shifted slightly.
“Fear not, Solaris!” Artemis said, leaping to his brother’s aid. “I am here!”
“Not a moment too soon, brother,” Solaris coughed, clearing the dust with one wing.
Artemis turned back to face the pile of rock Nightterror was buried under. “We will prevail this night or I am no Prince! Dusk Shine, take your friends and find shelter! We will deal with this creature!”
“I’m standing right here, you know.”
Nightterror perched atop the pile of rocks, smirking. Even Artemis recoiled this time as the monstrous alicorn showed not even a single scratch. The darkness spread once again, consuming the rock as it leeched away color and life from the very fabric of time and space.
“Monster!” Artemis shouted, spreading his wings. “I do not know how you were resurrected, but this was the last time! You will not plague me anymore!” He launched off with his wings, preparing another spell as he tucked his hooves in for a tackle, accelerating to near supersonic speed in the space of a breath.
Dusk saw everything: the feathers fluttering in the Prince’s majestic wings, the long trail of starry mist that Artemis left in his wake. He saw the Prince’s eyes glowing with power as his horn prepared to unleash the wrath of the void on the dark creature who stood calmly, even happily in the face of Artemis’ wrath.
Dusk had no time to cry out, unable to even blink before the carpet of darkness at Nightterror’s hooves shifted, undulated, rose to meet the Prince mid-flight. He watched as a bulge of shadow twisted in on itself, growing narrower, sharper. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Solaris’s mouth begin to open in a wordless cry.
Far away, Dusk heard the sound of a nail being driven into something soft, along with the sound of something coarse and primal filling the air. It was a rough, hoarse sound like a pony in great pain, unable to fully articulate their agony in words.
Dusk realized it was the sound of Solaris screaming.
Artemis, stopped dead in the air, gurgled wordlessly as he looked down at the spear of shadow driven through his chestplate and thrust gruesomely out between his shoulder blades, stained by thick red ichor.
“There is no magic or matter you can throw at me that has not already been turned against you,” Nightterror whispered. Dusk staggered back onto Elusive, who dropped limply onto his haunches.
Nightterror drove the spear a little further in, making Artemis twitch horribly as his wings flapped behind him. His hooves gripped the spike in his chest, desperately trying to lever himself off it. His horn sputtered and sparked, the magic seeming to drain right out the moment he was about to cast a spell. Nightterror shook his head. “A thousand years you dreamed a dream of immortality... but I am the author of this world, now. The one who dreamed your story has given herself to me, and you are the first piece of her mind that will fall. Appropriate.”
Artemis’ flailing gradually stopped. From the hole made by the protruding spike something that wasn’t blood was already starting to dribble and slither with dreadful, destructive intent: something black and oozing that burned Artemis wherever it went. The spike bent in on itself, becoming a tentacle that wrapped around Artemis and hurled him callously against a wall where he slumped with his hooves over his gory wound. Solaris was at his side in an instant, shrouding Artemis’ body in a golden glow as he tried to close the wound, but all his magic couldn’t halt the slow progress of the decaying blackness.
Nightterror looked up at the sky, where the Moon hovered patiently beyond the clouds. “It is time to end this little distraction. This world’s destiny was never yours to control, my little ponies.” He turned his gaze back to Dusk. “Still tongue-tied, Dusk? Then I will tell them.”
“It’s a lie,” Dusk whimpered. “It’s a lie!”
“Oh,” said Nightterror, mocking him with a tone of false sympathy, “so you do understand. Yes, it is all a lie. A shade. A shadow. You see little ponies, everything that you have done up to this point was a matter of obligation. You are the pale reflections of a far greater heritage. Everything you know, everything you remember, your entire world: nothing but one mare’s broken dream.”
Artemis gurgled under Solaris and began twitching horribly.
“Brother!” Solaris cried, picking Artemis up in his hooves as the darkness seemed to crawl through Artemis’ body, cracking him apart from the inside out. Deep crevices split open in the alicorn’s body, but instead of blood only a smoky, ashen substance spilled out of him. Dusk and his friends recoiled in horror, watching the Prince die bit by bit no matter how Solaris cried or covered his brother’s body in his mournful golden magic. The Nightmare raised a rock with one of its tendrils and studied it, turning it over and over.
“What you fail to understand is the utter depth of your helplessness. You are nothing except what she wanted you to be... and now that authority is mine. And I say: You are nothing.”
The rock crumbled into a fine dust that scattered over the floor. Before its remains hit the ground, the corruption ravaging Artemis reached up and over his face, turning it a pale, corpse-like grey before his body collapsed into a cascade of still sizzling embers and smoke. His wings went last. Dusk found something strangely, mortifyingly pretty about the way Artemis’ loose feathers managed to drift a few feet before catching alight and burning to dust. Where Artemis once was, there was now nothing but a pile of ash.
Solaris didn’t move a muscle, staring blankly at his hooves while his brother’s remains slipped through them like sand. Dusk and the others would not or could not move, gaping at the macabre sight.
The Nightmare chuckled. “I always love the look on your face when you see the first one die, Prince. Sometimes you’re a Princess, and sometimes you’re a king, but it never fails to amuse me every time I make you—all of you—understand that there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
Solaris’ hooves began to tremble.
“Don’t worry. This will be the last time you will suffer so. A dream has no more lasting effect on the world, no more memory of itself than an animal passing through the wood. When I am done here, her mind will be mine, and the Sun will die its true, final death.” The Nightmare turned to Dusk and his friends. “Unless, of course, they want to watch this time. But I’d much rather they run now and die later. I want to make this last obliteration something special.”
“That’s enough!” Rainbow Blitz shouted, rising into the air and shaking his hoof at Nightterror. Tears of helpless rage streamed down his cheeks, and Dusk saw his teeth clenched so hard he thought they’d crack. “You—You’re a liar! A monster! You’re not going to hurt any more ponies, you got that?! We’re stopping you here and now!”
“Dusk Shine,” said Solaris, his voice flat. He still stared at his shaking hooves. “Take your friends and go.”
“No!” Rainbow almost screamed. “This... this thing, it—! Solaris, he—!”
“NO!”
Solaris’ voice was like a solid wall of force rebounding off what remained of the castle’s walls. The pop of compressed air made Dusk’s ears twitch.
Shaking with rage or sorrow, Solaris rose to his hooves. “I know not of what this monstrosity speaks. But I know he is too powerful for you. You must go, and quickly. I’m sorry, my little ponies. It seems you are our last hope once more.”
None of them dared answer while the Nightmare stood patiently nearby. Dusk saw him smirking under his helmet. His horn crackled as magical energy coursed and forked through the air above him.
“Yes, run, my little ponies. Run over the ground that does not exist, and breathe the air that never once graced your lips. Revel in your non-existence for a little while longer and wonder if what you do really matters.”
The Nightmare didn’t even flinch as a bolt of energy from Solaris’ horn crashed into a shield that formed around him in an instant. Entropic bolts made of something that made Dusk’s eyes hurt to look at jumped from the shield back to Solaris’ horn, sending him crashing back into the wall. This time he did not get back up
“No!” Dusk shouted, but his cry was a whisper, a harmless thing that bounced right off the merciless abyss. He leaped to his teacher’s aid, but a lightning bolt crashed into the ground in front of him, forcing him back. Nightterror reared up onto his hind hooves.
“Watch, little ponies. Watch and believe that you never truly were.”
The Nightmare’s mane swirled up and out once again. Black lightning streaked from the miasmic cloud that formed around his head. One by one, the lights in his mane winked out, every star and every galaxy and every distant nebula vanishing from existence. He looked up to the night sky and grinned victoriously, showing off his fangs. In spite of the horror of the situation, Dusk felt compelled, even forced to follow the monster’s gaze. What he saw made his blood run cold and his legs shake uncontrollably. Somewhere behind him, he was fairly certain one of his friends screamed, but there seemed to be a monolithic silence that overcame him as shock dulled every one of his senses and dull resignation washed over him.
In the sky, the stars died.
They started almost painfully slow, disappearing one by one to the point where Dusk almost didn’t notice at first. But the macabre vanishing act sped up, faster and faster, until a wave of darkness welled up and engulfed the whole sky. The stars were swept up into the void, not blanketed, not put out, just gone. Out the window, Dusk saw the world around him begin to vanish into darkness as the last lights that Artemis once communed with completed their journey into oblivion. Dusk’s sanity very nearly folded in on itself as he felt faint, swaying on his hooves and then collapsing onto his stomach. Every shred of his being cried out against the perversion of nature, desperately trying to reassert normality, but he knew what was happening was terribly, horribly real and it was happening whether he wished it or not.
A massive noise, not quite music and not quite voice and not quite even a sound but more of a proclamation crashed into them immediately after: a loud, blaring note that vibrated down through Dusk’s bones to his very soul. Strange, ugly cracks appeared above them, around them, underneath them; cracks that peered into a grey, dimly lit abyss. A high pitched whine echoed in his ears as he felt himself starting to swoon, and he imagined the sound was all of Equestria screaming as darkness fell.
In less than a minute, it was done. A choking darkness fell over the land that smothered sight and sound, save for the muffled sobbing of Butterscotch, somewhere behind Dusk’s left shoulder. There was also a strange, low rumbling that rose and fell in volume, growing into a gurgling, heavy cackle.
The Nightmare was laughing.
Dusk saw his—no, it couldn’t be a pony anymore, not after seeing that—its eyes glowing red in the dark as it laughed and laughed and laughed, throwing its head back.
“VANISH! VANISH LIKE THE SHADOWS YOU ARE! DO YOU SEE NOW, YOU PATHETIC THINGS? DO YOU FINALLY COMPREHEND YOUR PURPOSE? YOU ARE NOTHING BUT CREEPERS AND CRAWLERS IN THE FESTERING TATTERED SHEET OF LIFE STREWN THIN OVER THE DEEPS WHERE BIDS THEIR HOLLOW WHIMSIES TO COME AND JOIN THEM! AND HERE MEWLING, AND GNAWING ON THE UNDERBELLY OF TRUTH DO YOU CLING TO THE DREAMS OF THE DREAMERS AND THE SHADOWS OF THE LIGHTS ABOVE! THIS DARKNESS IS BUT THE BLANKET OF TRUTH TO SMOTHER THE BRIGHTEST FLAMING LIE OF THIS ENTIRE UNIVERSE!”
Dusk shook his head. Something in him, some struggling, small, mewling pocket of life refused to bend or break. The Nightmare’s words, so callous and pompous and overbearing, were almost too much on top of everything else. Like a pointless bit of salt to rub into an already festering wound.
Dusk stood back up.
“FOR SOON HER MIND WILL BE JOINED WITH MINE, AND BY YOUR UNMAKING WILL HER TRUE GREATNESS BE MADE! SEE HOW FRAGILE YOU ARE, TO PERISH IN THE UNDERTOW OF HER FIRST WAKING BREATH!”
Dusk was thrown back down again as something solid knocked him down again, pressing him into the cold stone floor. A great weight settled onto his chest and a sharp pain erupted in his horn. It was immense. The pain ratcheted up to a screeching, horrible agony, a scream of utter defiance against the wrongness of whatever was touching him. Every current of magic still left in him cried out in utter terror as the spark of life was assaulted by living, breathing annihilation.
The stump of his horn glowed bright in the darkness, illuminating the Nightmare as it pressed an armored hoof against his chest. The red eyes beneath its helmet were wide with an almost exultant expectation, like a supplicant about to receive the ultimate blessing from their deity. Ribbons of purple light erupted from Dusk’s horn and slashed into the Nightmare as Dusk cried out in pain and fear and rage.
“And now you will see,” it said, “you will see your world collapse around you, and you will crack and moan and beg for death. I will enjoy breaking you. You must suffer now, Dusk, so that she may suffer, and only when you have let go of everything can I kill you.”
The Nightmare reared back as white hooves curled around its neck and golden lightning smashed into its chest. The grand hall was illuminated by the fury of Prince Solaris as he wrestled the Nightmare away from Dusk, sending spell after spell crashing into the billowing, unstable form of the shadowy monster. The two alicorns were almost completely consumed by the cascading explosions of light that emanated from the magical clash.
“No,” Solaris growled into its ear. “Equestria... will always... endure!”
“A bold effort, mighty Prince,” hissed the Nightmare, its front hooves kicking the air as it thrashed back and forth with the Prince hanging gamely on, “but futile as always!”
The shadow tentacles curled back from Dusk and streaked over the Nightmare’s shoulder, stabbing into Solaris’ shoulders and back. They seemed to grow and expand once they pierced the Prince’s skin, driving deeper and deeper, ripping him apart from the inside out. Solaris’ magic expended one last mighty effort, slowing their progress towards his heart, his face coated with grime and blood and set in grim determination. Every last bit of the immortal alicorn’s will went towards holding the Nightmare, savoring every last second before he fell.
“Dusk,” Solaris gasped through the pain and fear, “my faithful student! You and your friends are all that can save us! You must run now! Run as fast and far as you can! Make the Elements work!”
Dusk shook his head, unable to stand, unable to think. Everything was happening so fast. Equestria was dead, Artemis was dead, Solaris was dying, and he had to find some way... some way to help.
But there’s nothing to do, is there? he thought to himself. Not when my life was never really mine.
The Prince’s horn glowed even brighter than before. Dusk could see his dying struggles perfectly clearly, now. Lines of light appeared in what was left of the ground beneath them, forming a familiar pattern that circled around them all. Dusk’s horn shimmered in response, and he understood. A quick headcount saw almost all of his friends within range of the sigil, all of them frozen with fear or shock as they watched their ruler die right in front of them. Dusk looked to the side and saw Bubble Berry shivering on his hooves just outside the circle. He lunged and grabbed Bubble around the middle, dragging him back in so roughly they both fell. Dusk looked up and locked eyes with Solaris as the sigil completed its formation and began to glow.
In one moment, student and teacher shared a lifetime. Solaris said something, but Dusk couldn’t hear it as a bright light overcame everything and took them all far, far away.
------------------
The Nightmare clopped its hooves as the window shrank into a dot that disappeared with a tiny blip sound.
“Bravo! Bravo!” it said, leaning back against the cage and leering at Twilight. “Ah, it’s those climactic moments you can never get back that I love the most. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“You killed them,” Twilight whispered, staring blankly at the space where Dusk’s world had once been. “Both of them... You murdered them!”
“We killed them, Twilight. As Celestia has died to you, Solaris has died to Dusk. It seems horrible now, but this is the only way! The only way to wake up from your self-imposed delusions and free your true power! Have I not already shown you so much, just like I showed Luna when we were Nightmare Moon?”
Twilight covered her face with her hooves. “You’re nothing like Nightmare Moon! She never killed anypony!”
The Nightmare grinned its oozing, baleful grin and stood up. “No? Did you not see the fires burning, the screams in the city as I cast down Celestia’s tower of lies? I must admit, this form is somewhat melodramatic. Personally, I thought the scratched out cutie mark was a fine touch. Would you really prefer something more...”
The Nightmare’s voice dropped to a low, rolling purr as the black ooze slithered out of its throat and every other orifice and dribbled down to coat its entire body. It paced around the cage as the slime bubbled and hissed, ballooning outward around the Nightmare, filling out its limbs and arcing out over its back to create two grotesque, dripping wings, and a horn jutted from the creature’s head. Each step it took brought another rush of ooze until it was nearly three times Twilight’s size, and then the oily coat smoothed out and solidified until a featureless black alicorn stood before Twilight. With a sigh of cosmic wind an ethereal mane and tail billowed out as two aquamarine eyes split open the beast’s face, along with a maw that pulled itself open amidst snapping and tearing of the black tar around its jaws.
“... Familiar?” asked Nightmare Moon as she turned back to leer at Twilight. “I must admit, this is one of my favorite projections. I have always envied the alicorns for their perfection of form.” She tilted her head and lifted a hoof to her snout, smiling coyly behind it. “I have sensed the same covetousness in you. The image of Celestia is burned into your mind like a brand, or rather a scar.”
Twilight slumped against the bars of the cage, tears of helpless rage streaming down her cheeks.“You don’t know the first thing about Celestia.”
But I don’t either. And it cost me everything and now my own magic is eating me from the inside out.
A smarmy grin creased Nightmare’s face.“Denial, Twilight? I thought we worked through that already.”
Twilight put her hooves over her head, rocking back and forth. The Princesses were dead to her, she knew that. But it hurt, it hurt to really accept it, to rip out that part of her heart and cast it away. But some small part of her, the part that remembered downy feathers and lullabies a thousand years old still didn’t want to. It nibbled and nagged her like a worm in her heart, making so many empty promises that everything would go back to normal if she just gave up to Celestia again. Everywhere she turned she had to give something up: herself, her trust, her sanity. She just wanted to curl up in her cage and hide from it all, from the confusion and horror.
“No,” she whispered. “No no no no no. Celestia lied. Everypony lied. You’re lying too.”
“Am I? Little Twilight, I can sense your confusion. That cage is blinding you to yourself, feeding you delusions of better days. I will not be stymied by something as pathetic as false hope.”
Nightmare Moon raised her head and sent a great stream of dark magic shooting up, cleaving the infinitely high ceiling in two.
“Instead of seeing how Celestia lies to you, let us look and see how you lie to yourself.”
------------
Twilight couldn’t differentiate between herself and Magic. It swallowed her whole, consuming every thought, every action, every fiber of her being. She was more radiant than ten thousand suns, all of them burning as bright as they could be. She was more powerful than any alicorn could hope to be, because they lived in the world while Twilight was the world. She turned her head gently to the right and saw everything the northern horizon had to offer, the Crystal Empire and everything beyond it stretching out before her, places ponies would never see and never know. She glanced to the left and saw the infinitude of stars and galaxies and comets and planets beyond the reach of Celestia’s light, stretching beyond even Luna’s imagination in their myriad forms.
Everywhere around her were lights, lights, lights! She took a breath and felt the world come into her and then go out again, and every light quivered in anticipation of what she would do next. She was Magic. She was the lifeblood of the world. She was every small part brought together and made whole.
This is me, Twilight realized. This is what’s inside me. What Celestia knew I could be... and tried to keep me from becoming.
She blinked, and her whole essence flickered uncertainly.
It’s incredible. And fearful.
She lifted her head and saw a Sun standing in front of her, paling in comparison to the sheer magnificence of her own brightness. Between the solar flares, she saw another figure: snow white and tragically beautiful. Celestia was calling out to her across universes, trying to bring her back down to earth.
“Twilight!” Celestia shouted, tears streaming from her eyes as she stood against the awesome power bleeding off of her former student. “Please! I know you’re still in there! You must hear me! You must retake control!”
Twilight heard herself scoff. “Go back to being your pet?”
Celestia shook her head. “My student.”
“A student is supposed to learn from her teacher!” Twilight screeched, uncontrolled and wildly loud. She almost stopped just to make sure that was her own voice and not some madmare’s. “Why wouldn’t you just help me?”
Celestia’s lips drew into a tight line. “I was,” she began, but Twilight cut her off.
“Mocking every last time you held me under your wing and told me everything would be all right,” she whispered.
Celestia’s gaze wavered. “Twilight, everything I’ve ever done is to protect you. If I had known the true nature of what was happening, I would have done anything to save you from it! But it was... it was too late, and I-”
“Tried to wipe my slate clean, just like you did with Morningtide,” Twilight growled. She lifted a hoof and a ball of magical fire rolled over its surface. Twilight found herself wondering how much it would hurt Celestia if she threw it in her face right now. “You used him to find your sister because you were weak and wanted to end her punishment early! You destroyed him when you found out your weakness opened a door to something awful! Then you locked the door and threw away the key and hoped nopony would dig up your dirty little secret.” She coughed and hacked and wheezed, and something wet and thick and black dropped onto the floor. “Weak. Tyrant. That’s what you always were. A tyrant.”
Celestia stomped her hoof, her eyes wide and desperate, so wide Twilight thought they looked funny on her face. “A tyrant does not take in a child who would have destroyed herself otherwise, does not guide her every day of her life! A tyrant does not listen to a child’s lectures even if they make no sense because they just want to make you feel loved! A tyrant does not give you purpose and hope and friendship, does not love you so much her heart breaks every time she thinks of you!”
The ball of fire rested on the tip of Twilight’s hoof now. She bounced it on her hoof, playing with it in the way a cat toyed with a ball of yarn. “No. They just take away your toys when they decide you’ve had enough playtime.” Her eyes burned. She felt them sizzling in her own sockets from the sheer power eating her up inside. “They just withhold and deny and try to make you fear what they fear and learn only what they know. You said no answers would save me, Celestia? Well what do you have now that the truth is out?”
Celestia gulped down her next words and closed her eyes. “I could only tell you what I could,” she said. “Only what would drive you away from this terrible fate.”
Twilight let the ball of fire sit still as she peered at Celestia. “And I found it anyway, because you taught me to think too well. Luna had it better than you, you know.” She smirked, and something dark and ichorous leaked out of one corner of her mouth. “At least she tried.”
“Don’t bring her into this!” Celestia shouted, and for the first time she sounded a little angry. Twilight found a sick sense of satisfaction about that. “What she did to you was unforgivable! Our... our hoof was forced, and... and there was no other way! We had to keep you away from all this at any cost, because I knew this would happen!”
Twilight snorted. “That’s just it,” she muttered. “You knew. You knew all along and you were afraid and weak. There was always a way out before, wasn’t there? Always a contingency or a siphon. Nightmare Moon was the first.”
Twilight’s hoof jerked up to her forehead as she pretended to swoon, her movements stiff and erratic. “Oh, if only that nasty Nightmare hadn’t come between us! How generous of the Elements to give me a thousand more years to ignore her and let somepony else take care of it!”
Celestia shook her head. Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes. “Stop this,” she whispered. “Stop using her to get to me.”
Twilight swung her hoof out again and it hovered in the air like a line was tethering it. “And Morningtide! Poor Morningtide! If only he hadn’t gone and nearly got himself swallowed by Nightmares when I reneged on my punishment like a lazy parent! Good thing that memory spell worked like a charm!” She stood on her hooves and spun in place, her movements morbidly stiff. “And now we come full circle! Little Twilight was going to be your perfect pet project. No mistakes. No misspoken words. Everything controlled and structured and ordered just the way you liked it. Just a perfect little unicorn in a perfect little castle with a perfect, perfect-”
“ENOUGH!” Celestia cried out, but her voice cracked halfway through. “This isn’t you, Twilight! The Nightmare has you and you must fight it! The Twilight I know wouldn’t speak like this! She wouldn’t be so cruel and petty!”
Twilight slumped to the ground. Slowly, deliberately, her eyes came up again. “The Celestia I know would have found a better way,” she whispered in a husky, dry tone.
Celestia didn’t answer, her mouth working ineffectually. “I tried,” she whimpered, and at last a gleaming tear slid down her cheek. “I tried, Twilight. Please understand. If anything of you is left in there, I’m sorry.”
“An apology,” Twilight rasped, “is not an answer.”
Twilight turned around, seeing all her friends standing before her. They shone like little suns, each the color of their Elements. Rainbow’s vivacious red, pulsing in waves like a frantically beating heart. Rarity’s elegant purple, Applejack’s steady orange, Fluttershy’s quiet yellow, and Pinkie’s electric blue. They all stared at her, open-mouthed, eyes glistening with... tears?
They’re afraid of me, of how strong and wonderful I’ve become. Just like Celestia.
“Twilight!” Rarity called into the maelstrom. “Twilight, stop this, please!”
“It’s too much, Twilight! Shut it down!” Applejack cried alongside her.
Twilight shook her head and disintegrated a swathe of the floor, leaving a massive molten scar in the rock and dirt. They all wanted her to stop. Even now, when they stood on the cusp of truth, they were just like Celestia. Stop. Cease. Don’t learn. Don’t grow.
But they’re all still here, she thought. They came all this way with me.
The idea gave her strength, but something came out of the depths of her mind and scoffed at it.
But they’re infused with the power of the Elements like me. Are they really with me? Or are they just following a call? My call? Magic’s call? How much of me is Magic, and how much of them is their love for me and not the demands of their Elements?
She turned back to Celestia and narrowed her eyes. The immortal alicorn took a fearful step back.
She was scared of me too. And she tried to fix me. Control me. Will my friends do the same?
“Twilight!” Celestia called out. “Listen to your friends!”
Twilight didn’t reply. Or maybe she couldn’t. Maybe Magic just didn’t feel like talking to her. Maybe the Nightmare wouldn’t let her. Either way, she didn’t care what Celestia had to say. This was Celestia’s mistake, and Twilight had to find a way to fix it, with or without their help.
She turned back to her friends.
“Applejack,” she asked, her voice thundering, “do you still trust me?”
Applejack’s jaw worked up and down, trying to find an answer. Wondering. Thinking. Hesitating. The farmpony’s orange aura wavered, and Twilight felt a white-hot pang of rage shoot through her.
Applejack’s lower lip quivered. “I... you know I do, sugar—”
“DON’T YOU DARE CALL ME THAT! DISHONEST! DISHONEST!”
Twilight’s broken horn shot a bolt of pure magic down at Applejack’s hooves. It exploded and sent her sprawling back into Pinkie’s grasp. Fluttershy shrieked and ducked behind Rainbow Dash. Rarity stood still with her mouth agape.
Afraid. All of them afraid of me.
Twilight recoiled, momentarily stung by her own ferocity.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” she whispered. “I didn’t...”
She shook her head, trying to remember who she was and what she was doing. One moment she was here, the next she was all over the world. She felt pulled apart in a hundred different directions, wanting to destroy, create, burn, soothe, and run all at once. Above everything else she wanted to be free, to lose herself in the flow of magic and never have to worry again. She needed focus. She needed direction.
She turned to the window and remembered a dream she’d had once, a long time ago. Something terrible was coming after her, and she’d had to run... she remembered a spell a Prince taught her for just such an occasion.
Sparks flew from her horn and struck the ground, drawing a pattern in the stone that sizzled and melted wherever she stepped.
She saw Celestia’s eyes widen. “No, wait! Twilight, don’t go!”
The teleportation sigil completed itself just as Celestia flew forward, heedless of the magical tempest that scored long burning lines on her body. Twilight saw Luna appear in front of her, horn burning bright, and Celestia broke the sigil’s circle. Twilight saw her face contorted in an expression of anguish and desperation right before everything faded to white and she was taken far, far away.
She woke up near Ponyville.
----------------
When Dusk could see again, he couldn’t tell where he was at first. The sky overhead was slate grey and tumultuous with strange shapes and patterns in place of clouds, swirling like oil in water. The matte surface stretched over every horizon, smudging the line where earth and sky met. Dusk felt sick and strange, like the feeling he had when he ran a fever. He couldn’t see properly in the strange half light, and the very ground beneath his hooves was uncertain.
Color was nonexistent. The grass, the flowers, the road, even his own coat was a dull, washed out grey. The trees were black, almost flat against the monochrome sky, their leaves more like eerie blankets than thick, healthy foliage.
Dusk took a sniff of the air and smelled nothing.
“Where are we?” Bubble asked in an awed whisper.
Dusk looked around and saw a sign. One mile to Ponyville.
“Home,” he said. His voice was hollow and cracked. He didn’t know why, but he almost burst out laughing. Of course they’d end up right outside home. Of course it would be the first thing they saw. Probably just what the Nightmare intended.
Solaris is dead.
Not far off was their town, smothered by the same dark shadows that covered everything in sight. The dull greys and sharp blacks and whites of the town mocked everything that it had once been. No sound reached them save for the low whistle of a constantly blowing wind.
Rainbow said what they were all thinking. “Where are all the ponies?”
Solaris is dead.
In silence, they walked under the tumultuous grey sky. It was light enough that it seemed like the Sun should have risen, or at the very least something should be in the sky that explained how they could see. But everything seemed to provide its own light, lit in perfectly even shades and casting long shadows at random angles.
“Nothing looks right,” Dusk muttered, and looked down at the ground. The grass was brittle and cracked like glass under his hooves. “Guys, we should go. We should go to Canterlot. That’s where the Elements are kept. Maybe... maybe me or Elusive can open the door, and—”
“Dusk,” Applejack hissed through gritted teeth, his face shadowed by his Stetson. “That’s Ponyville right there. That’s home. Silent as the grave an’ just as empty. I’m not goin’ nowhere until we know what happened.”
Dusk felt a spike of rage he didn’t know he was capable of. “You heard what Solaris said!” he snapped, squeezing his eyes shut. “Get the Elements! Make them work! They’re all we have to go on and the longer we wait the more time the Nightmare has to...” He waved a hoof at the desolate landscape. “Has to...”
Do what? What did happen here?
He let his hoof drop. That one outburst threatened to break open everything piling up in his mind. Everything the Nightmare said, everything he saw in the castle, and the creeping horror of this lifeless diorama of the Equestria he remembered all pressed against the thin veneer of command he still had in front of his friends. He looked over the remains of Ponyville with a trembling lip, wiping burning tears out of his eyes.
“We can’t stop. We shouldn’t stop. We gotta go,” he muttered miserably.
Solaris is dead.
For a long time there was nothing but the wind.
“Muh family’s around here somewhere,” Applejack said at last, and Dusk let out a sigh that was more a defeated yelp as he sank to his knees. Elusive pawed fitfully at the ground, biting his lip as he looked at the distant tip of Carousel Boutique.
“I hope my animals are okay,” Butterscotch mumbled, sounding guilty for even speaking. Rainbow and Bubble said nothing, just staring ahead with blank, despondent gazes. Bubble was mumbling something under his breath, and Dusk caught the words ‘cake’ and ‘party,’ and knew he had lost.
“We’ll find them,” he whispered, and knew he was lying to everypony. “And the Elements. The Elements will fix this. They will.”
Rainbow took a sharp breath. “They didn’t work, Dusk—”
“Buck not working!” Dusk snapped back. “If we’re gonna go in, then we go.” He left the ‘don’t blame me for what we find’ he was going to add unspoken as he trudged on.
Ponyville’s streets were empty, save for the lonely wind that brushed at their manes. There was the smell of burning embers on the air. Ashes blew into their faces during an especially strong gust. Not a single pony could be seen.
“No sign of a fire,” Applejack muttered, letting the ashes wash over his hoof. “Buildings are untouched. Trees too. So where...”
“Don’t think about it,” Dusk said in an empty whisper. “We just... we just need to find everypony. They’re here, somewhere. They’re here.”
He shuffled more than walked into Ponyville.
They wandered empty streets, knocked on doors that didn’t answer, and peeked in lightless windows. They called out into air that answered only with chilling wind, and got ash caught in their throats when they did. It swirled around them all over town, and the more of it Dusk saw the more icy and nauseous his stomach became. Malicious thoughts floated through his brain like cold little knives, tearing him up and laughing like the Nightmare as they did.
Don’t do that to yourself, Dusk. It can’t really be true. This can’t all be so fragile. So unreal. The Nightmare was lying.
But the ash kept blowing where ponies used to walk, and Dusk simply shut down every thought as they went further in, focused purely on finding something familiar and whole. Something with color. Soon they came to the Ponyville Library, still standing tall and quiet yet just as devoid of color as the rest of town. Dusk didn’t remember meaning to come here, but the aching hope that welled up in his chest made him wish he hadn’t.
Hope needs a little tenderizing before it can be crushed.
He stared up at the Library door like it was the gate of Tartarus, and started to shake. He wagged his head back and forth, faster and faster until his mane whipped over his face.
“No,” he said, walking up to the door and putting his hoof on it. “No.”
Couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t. Mustn’t. Nothing in there that I need to see. Not going to. Won’t give it the satisfaction.
Butterscotch cleared his throat. “Spines might be—”
“No.” Dusk sat down on the welcome mat and put his head on his hooves. “Nope.”
Applejack looked into another gust of ashes and spat on the ground. “Buck this!” he shouted. “I’m goin’ to Sweet Apple Acres. They need me more’n the blasted Elements do!”
Dusk leaped to his hooves. “Applejack, that’s not a good idea.”
Applejack whirled on him. “Not a good idea?! How about chasin’ after a dream an’ gettin’ everypony killed, huh?! If we’re talkin’ about bad ideas I’d say that ranks pretty darn high!”
“I didn’t do this!” Dusk snapped. “The Nightmare is reponsible for all of this, Applejack! I know you’re angry. I know you’re upset! You think I’m not?! I just watched a pony who meant more to me than anything get torn apart from the inside out!”
“Don’t tell me how I oughta be feelin’ right now, Dusk! You don’t know nothin’! If it weren’t for you an’ that stupid dream of yours, none of this would’ve happened!”
The others watched out of the corners of Dusk’s eyes, uncertain, afraid.
“If you shut up and listen for one second, you’d know that the Elements are our last chance! We can fix all this if you just come with us right now!”
Dusk barely noticed as Bubble wandered off on his own, mumbling about cake.
Applejack’s orange face was red from all the shouting. Apple red, really. Ha ha.
“No!” the farmpony shouted. “This is all your fault! I wanted ta’ say somethin’ earlier, but I trusted you, Dusk! An’ now I see what a mistake that was!”
“I didn’t do any of this!” Dusk shrieked at the top of his lungs, eyes closed from the sheer force of his shout. Before he could stop himself, a zap of magical energy shot from his horn and struck Applejack dead in the chest, making him stagger back. Dusk recoiled.
“Applejack,” he whimpered as he saw the farmpony go down, wheezing as he clutched his chest. “I didn’t mean to... I didn’t mean...”
An orange hoof flew through the air faster than he could react. The side of Dusk’s face suddenly flared up in pain before going numb and prickly. Then came the ground.
Applejack seethed over him. “I’m through listenin’ ta’ the colt who brought all this here.” He turned to the others who looked at him in varying degrees of anger, shock, and fear. “Our world ain’t a lie, you hear?!” Applejack raged, flinging his words at everypony and nopony. “It just ain’t! This isn’t happenin’! No Nightmare could touch the whole world like this with a flick of their tail! It just doesn’t happen! I’ll prove it! I’ll find my family, an’ then we’ll fix all this an’ everything will go right back to normal!”
Elusive sounded on the verge of tears. “Applejack-”
“EVERYTHING!” Applejack raged, breathing so hard he couldn’t talk straight. “Everything will... everything...”
Dusk heard hooves take off at a gallop, Rainbow try half-heartedly to stop him.
Then came the wind. Nopony dared move for a long time. Dusk stayed on the ground.
Elusive broke first, rushing off towards his shop while screaming Silver Bell’s name at the top of his lungs. Butterscotch went next, mumbling about wanting to see his animals, needing to make sure.
Then came Rainbow’s rough hooves yanking him up, and his magenta eyes filling Dusk’s vision.
“Well?” Rainbow asked.
Dusk’s gaze dropped.
Rainbow shook him viciously. “Everypony’s gone, Dusk! Our friends are splitting! What’s really happening here? How did the Nightmare do this?! Say something!”
Dusk shook his head. “Elements,” he mumbled. “Solaris is dead. No Sun, no Moon, no sky. No Ponyville. Elements, Rainbow. We have to get the Elements.”
“And that’ll fix everything,” Rainbow almost growled, “right? Doesn’t matter what the Nightmare did, the Elements will beat him again, right?”
Dusk shrugged. “I guess,” he mumbled. “I thought finding her would fix everything, Rainbow. I really did. She and everypony else. Maybe we can get their Elements, I don’t know. She was the reason this happened and the reason I’m still alive, you know.” He sighed. “If I save her, maybe I can save everypony.” Rainbow threw him away and yelled at the not-sky.
“She? She? Everypony’s probably dead and you can’t stop thinking about your dream mare?! You... you idiot! You stupid selfish moron! We don’t have any answers about her, so forget about them! Equestria is dying right now! We need a plan! Is it the Elements or not?”
Dusk nodded. Then he shook his head. “Er, no. Yes. It’s the Elements or not.”
Rainbow stared at him for a while.
Off in the distance they heard Elusive scream. A wordless sound of pain coming to them on the wind, trailing off, and rising again.
“I’m going to see if anypony’s still here,” Rainbow muttered. “Round up the guys again. I can cover ground better than anypony.”
Another cry from Elusive, high and unsteady.
“And Lucy sounds like he needs a minute,” Rainbow added lamely.
Dusk nodded. Rainbow took off into the sky, but he stopped before going too far and waved his hooves in front of his face, as if he couldn’t trust what he was seeing. Then he zipped off behind the short skyline and was gone.
Dusk leaned against the library door and pressed his ear against the wood, but he knew he wouldn’t hear anything inside.
In the meantime, he just listened to the wind mingling with Elusive’s inconsolable wailing.
In time, Rainbow came back first.
“Nopony,” he gasped. “There’s nopony anywhere. The sky’s all wrong up there, it’s like... like it’s right in front of me but I can’t get to it! No matter how fast I went I couldn’t go anywhere too far from Ponyville.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dusk.
“I mean there’s these weird borders or something all over the place! Spots where, I dunno, space and junk just doesn’t work right! Hayseeds, Dusk, I can’t even see the ground in places! I can’t see Equestria!”
“It’s dark,” said Dusk.
“No,” said Rainbow, “it’s not there.”
Elusive had gone quiet. Rainbow zipped down Ponyville’s main boulevard and brought him back, disheveled and puffy-eyed, a Cutie Mark Crusader cloak lying limp over his back. Next came Butterscotch, and Dusk took heart when he saw the yellow pegasus flying alongside Rainbow under his own power, but the haunted look in his eyes and the way he never once met the gaze of the others put a damper on his hope.
“And the others?” Dusk asked. “Applejack? Bubble Berry?”
Rainbow shook his head. “I looked everywhere, Dusk. Sugarcube Corner, all the old hangouts, Sweet Apple Acres...” He hung his head and shivered. “Dusk, the trees there are all bare. I couldn’t find Applejack or Bubble. Town’s silent as the... uh. I couldn’t find them.”
Elusive scratched at the ground. “Did you find any other-”
“No more than what you did, Lucy,” Rainbow stared stiffly ahead. “No more than what you did.”
Dusk watched another gust of ash blow by. “We can’t make the Elements work without them,” he muttered. “But even if we don’t find them we have to try.”
“Shouldn’t we at least try to find them before we go?” Butterscotch whispered. He wasn’t crying, but somehow that worried Dusk more than anything else. “We should try to find them I think. Just one last look.”
“On the way,” Dusk agreed. “We’ll head for the train station. If the trains still work, that’s our best bet to get to Canterlot quickly.”
None of them disagreed, but none of them were in a state to disagree. Dusk tried to be upset now, tried to be awestruck and fearful or even just plain sad that six friends were now only four in the space of a few hours—or was it even that long? How long had it been since the stars and sun stopped lighting the sky?—but he found nothing but a dull, listless emptiness, a numbness of the spirit. A terrible resignation like an apple just waiting to fall and rot on the ground below or a pony waiting for their death.
Harmony had died in the time it took him to blink, the moment the Nightmare declared their entire world a lie and set about cracking its foundations to pieces.
He wondered about that, about the implications as they wandered the streets of a dead Ponyville, beelining for the train station. Was his dream mare responsible, or just a victim like him? Was this all a dream of hers, a story she concocted to make herself feel better? Was any of this really worth doing since none of it was real?
But if it wasn’t real, why did it all hurt so much?
He had heard the Nightmare’s words. He saw the effects of the Nightmare’s rewriting of his world. But he still couldn’t quite believe it. Something was missing, or actively being hidden from him. The answers had to lie with the Elements. With her.
He remembered her face, wracked with corruption and twisted by sorrow. She was the only thing he could think of that made him feel alive anymore.
I haven’t given up on you, he thought, staring up at the vast, alien sky. I hope you don’t give up on me either.
His thoughts consumed him on the long walk to the train station, so it surprised him when the back of his head suddenly exploded with pain and stars burst in the back of his eyes. It surprised him even more when his legs simply gave out and he collapsed to the ground, finding his face in the dirt for the second time that day.
--------
When Dusk woke up, he found his limbs still slack and unresponsive. And his head hurt something awful. Not like it did when his horn acted up, but the way it did when he fell or bumped it against a hard surface. He tried to move and found his limbs not just limp but restrained. His eyes slowly came into focus, and then they started hurting when the light hit them.
Light?
It was everywhere, shining down at him, almost loud in its brightness. Dozens of light bulbs and candles and even a few nightlights lit up the small square room he found himself in, illuminating an almost grotesquely saccharine menagerie of puppets, dolls, and stuffed animals. They lined the room and crowded the dressers, peered up at him from the table stretched out in front of him. Teddy bears and ducks and tigers, even a sack of flour with a face painted on, grinning and smiling and pouting from all angles, daring him to have a single unhappy thought. All of them wore party hats. Cakes and danishes and flans and every sweet pastry dish imaginable filled up the spaces the animals and random objects didn’t, making for an eyesore of bright colors and festive decorations.
And on one nearby stool, there was a little pile of ash with a party hat laying on top.
Elusive, Rainbow Blitz and Butterscotch were all similarly trussed up, evenly spaced down the length of the table. They hadn’t awoken yet. Dusk saw an ugly blotch of dry, pasty black running down the side of Rainbow’s face.
That’s blood. Sweet Solaris above, that’s blood.
A bright, smiling pink face filled his vision.
“Hi, Dusk!” squeaked Bubble. Dusk recoiled with a shout. Bubble’s mane was flat, and his eyes were red and puffy from crying. He was still crying even now. The tears ran endlessly in fat rivers down his dimpled cheeks, leaking into his creaky, wobbling grin.
“Bubble,” Dusk muttered thickly. His tongue felt like a cotton wad. “What... what’s going on?”
“That’s obvious, silly!” Bubble said, and giggled so hard his whole body tremored. He leaned in close enough that Dusk saw the glare of a dozen lightbulbs reflected in his teeth.
“We’re going to have a party!”
Dusk sputtered. “A party?”
“Yep! A super duper fun party where everypony’s invited! I sent out so many invitations but nopony showed up! Even you guys looked like you were leaving town and we couldn’t have that, could we? Not when there’s such a fun party to go to!” Bubble twitched violently. “I’m glad I got you to come, unlike those other meany-head ponies. It’s like they’re trying to avoid us or something!” He hopped away and put a shaking hoof over the pile of ash wearing the party hat, patting the empty air. “Gummy’s still here, though. She’s just tired from all the partying we’ve been doing recently.”
Nausea crept through Dusk's gut. “Bubble, listen to me. We don’t have time for a party. The Nightmare could catch up any second! We have to get out of here and get to Canterlot! The Elements are the only thing left we can use!”
“What’s that?” Bubble asked, his eye twitching. “You want some cake? It took me all night to make these!”
Dusk saw one of the cakes crumble when Bubble touched it. “Bubble, listen to me! We can’t have a party now! We have to fix everything!”
“That’s silly, Dusk!” chirped Bubble, pouring tea for a still unconscious Rainbow Blitz. “There’s nothing to fix! Everything’s fine here in Ponyville! Totally fine! Except I noticed something strange today. When I was walking through Ponyville this afternoon, not a single pony was laughing or smiling or even putting a little spring in their step. I tried my hardest, I really did. I sang and told jokes and then I just sort of sat down and laughed as hard as I could, hoping somepony would join in. But they were all just sort of dull and washed out and really weren’t paying attention to me at all. They just... just sort of sat there, like little lumps on a log. Like Gummy is now.” He glanced at the pile of ash. “It really bummed me out, Dusk.” He looked back at Dusk, letting the tea overflow out of Rainbow’s cup and onto the table mat. “It really, really did.”
Dusk gulped. “I... I can see that, Bubble. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for this—”
“You know what’s funny, Dusk?” Bubble asked, his voice wavering. “I had a nightmare like this once. Way back when I was still on the rock farm. The day I got my cutie mark in fact, so it was more like a daymare!”
He slammed the teapot down so hard it shattered. Elusive stirred and began to come to, looking blearily around as Bubble advanced on Dusk. “The day I got my cutie mark was the day I got biggest fear too! It didn’t come true that day. But it stuck with me just like my cutie mark! You know what that fear is, Dusk?”
Dusk shook his head, praying that his friends woke up. Maybe they could talk some sense into him. “No, Bubble, I don’t.”
Bubble spread his hooves happily, throwing confetti all around. “I was scared my parents wouldn’t smile! When they walked through that door and looked around at all my decorations, I knew what happened next would define me forever and ever and ever and ever and ever! And when it looked like they wouldn’t smile, a big old chunk of ice fell right into my stomach, and I was sicker than I ever had been before or since. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. They all smiled, and laughed, and everything was alright.”
Bubble shook violently again. His voice dropped to a pathetic whisper. “Everything’s alright, isn’t it Dusk? Isn’t it? I have a big party and everypony’s here—except Applejack, but he’s just busy bucking—and now we all get to have fun and you get to smile you have to smile, Dusk!”
Bubble’s wretched, tear-filled eyes stared up into Dusk’s, and deep behind them Dusk saw the leering, grinning face of the Nightmare. Dusk’s teeth ground together as his eyes cast around the room for something, anything to help him escape. Elusive finally found his senses and stirred in his bonds.
“I... what? What’s this? Bubble Berry, what’s happening? Dusk?”
Bubble ignored him as he got closer to Dusk.
“Dusk? Buddy? Come on, smile for me, will you? All Bubble needs is a smile, smile, smile! Fills my heart up with sunshine sunshine!” His lower lip began to tremble. “Please? Dusk? Just one little smile.”
Dusk shook his head. “Bubble, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I let this happen. The Nightmare’s done something to us, to you! You have to fight it now, Bubble! Even when things were bleakest you were always trying to make us smile! You were always giving us hope!”
Bubble shrugged and looked away again. “I couldn’t find anypony Dusk. Not even the little twins. Little Pound and Pumpkin. They always laughed in their sleep, you know? Every time I went to bed, I’d hear one of them giggle or snort or say my name.”
Dusk winced and squeezed his eyes shut. Now, at last, his own tears were on the verge of flowing. “Bubble, I’m sorry—”
“But there was nothing today! I peeked inside their room and they weren’t making a sound. They didn’t even like their little rubber chicken anymore.” Bubble smiled and wiped his eyes, but the tears kept coming. “But that’s okay,” he gasped, “it’s okay. It’s all okay now, because we’re here. All my friends. You guys will never leave me. You proved that, a long time ago. You remember? When I freaked out about my birthday and you guys were there to snap me out of it?”
Dusk’s eyes shot open, and at last some tears began to fall. “Yes!” he said with a smile. A spark of impossible, zealous hope started to bloom in his chest. “Yes, Bubble! I remember! I remember that! Elusive, you remember, right?”
Elusive, still lost and confused and aching over his own losses, could only shrug helplessly. Dusk nodded fervently. “Yes! Bubble, you have to remember that too! You-You remember how happy it made you? How happy and wonderful things were that day?”
Bubble smiled back, clasping his hooves over his chest. “Oh, there’s a smile! Thanks, Dusk! Yeah, I remember how happy it made me!” He walked over to a stuffed tiger and patted its head. “But then I look outside,” he whispered, staring at one of the windows, which had been boarded over. His voice suddenly dropped to a dull, level monotone. “I look outside and there’s no color or happiness or smiles out there, Dusk, nowhere at all. Not even my Bubble Sense can tell me where there’s a single smile or pony or anything happening apart from us. Applejack’s already gone, I can feel it. He’s not coming back. Not coming here, where everything is well-lit and smiles and color. Well, it’s colorful if you squint really hard, but I guess we can do without. As long as we’re all together, Dusk, everything is fine. You taught me that. So I decided the only way things will stay good is if we’re together. And we’re going to be together, Dusk. Happy and partying and smiling.”
Dusk felt the hope in his chest vanish in a puff of smoke as Bubble turned back with a dull, listless expression on his face, tears still springing angrily from the corners of his eyes.
“Keep smiling, Dusk,” he whispered hoarsely. “It’ll make me sad if you stop smiling.”