Rarity’s tears still fell, but she’d mostly gained control of herself. Her gaze never left Rainbow’s sleeping, peaceful face—not even for a moment. She spoke softly. Mournfully.
“Twilight… how long will she be okay like this? How much time do we have?”
Do I look like I know? I’m not a nurse! That was what she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Instead, she tried to soothe the fashionista’s worries. “Hours. Maybe two at most. I’m positive that’ll be enough time for rescue. There’s no way the Princess would abandon three Element holders!” Or that Big Mac would leave me here. He has to be trying to get here, magic or no. He’s probably by the Princess’s side right now.
Rarity didn’t comment on how likely this was, which was probably for the best. Neither of them looked very hopeful.
The whispering was light, but never let them alone. Twilight had begun to tune it out entirely when it erupted into shrill screaming. Their magic faltered, and they almost dropped Rainbow. Whimpering, Twilight motioned for Rarity to let the pegasus down gently and placed hooves over her ears.
Before them in the air, a faint light appeared. As it grew in strength, the screams intensified, then began to fade away. Rarity and Twilight simply stared at it.
When it became blinding, they heard a voice come from inside of it.
“Twi? Twi? Are you in there?”
Big Macintosh.
Her voice came out as a sob. “Yes! Love, yes! I’m right here!”
Celestia spoke from inside the blinding light. “Twilight. I’ve only now figured this out. We don’t have much time. I think I can maintain it just a bit longer. Hurry through.”
A portal, just as she’d longed for. “Princess, Rainbow is badly hurt, and I have her in a stasis spell. I’m… I’m not sure how long it’ll last. She’ll need to come through. Can you maintain the spell through the portal so it doesn’t give out when I’m not there? I’ve been keeping it going through force of will.”
“…Yes. But it will weaken the portal. I’m not sure all of you can come through this time. I’ll open another one,” she finished hurriedly. “Regardless, those who are coming—come!”
Twilight looked at Rarity, who stared back with unbelieving eyes.
“Go. Tell Big Mac I love him, alright?”
“Twilight… you talk as if—“ Twilight cut her off.
“Don’t let those be your last words. I’ll be fine. She needs you. Go.”
Rarity walked over to her, wrapped Twilight in a fierce hug, and caught up Rainbow with her magic. Twilight helped, and together they glided the pegasus towards the open door in the fabric of reality. Gently, they pushed her through and Twilight marveled as she seemed to become a silhouette in the unyielding light and then vanished all together.
Rarity turned to her, hesitating before she entered herself. “Twilight… you have to find her. Fluttershy, I mean. She’s…”
“I will.”
Rarity choked back more words and fled through the portal.
Celestia spoke as the light dimmed. “I’m sorry… this door is about to close. I can open another one, but it will be some time. Is Fluttershy there?” She could hear the Princess speaking to someone else, but it was too faint to make out words. Twilight sighed, glad that Rainbow would be getting a doctor.
“I need to find her.”
Celestia was quiet for a moment.
“Go. Be careful, my faithful student.”
And with that the light contracted in on itself like a dying star and vanished.
The native night of wherever this place was reasserted itself with a vengeance. Twilight blinked, the portal’s light still dying on her retinas. She rubbed her eyes, and started forward.
Ambling forward in the dark, Twilight lost all sense of time. She missed Rarity and Rainbow. To be so close to the light, then have it yanked away again left her numb—to be so close to returning to Macintosh!
Briefly, she considered just… leaving Fluttershy. When Celestia came back, she could just say that the maze ended in a dead end, or that Fluttershy was nowhere to be found. It wouldn’t be so hard to give up… to phrase things just the right way to convince her teacher that the quest was futile.
No! She shook the thought from her mind. She couldn’t leave a friend behind, not even to escape a place like this. Shame filled her—would she have even thought of abandoning one of the others? Oh, Fluttershy…
The hall never seemed to end, and the darkness never seemed to tire behind her. It watched. It was patient.
Before her, lamps came on. They cast their dim light on the ground and illuminated her straight path. Once again she was assailed by the notion that she was being herded. She had visions of Applejack, turning the cow herds to where she wanted them to go, and recognized this for what it was: a trap. She had no choice. She picked up her pace until she was running recklessly.
Ahead, the lights stopped as if the hall itself had ended. The clearing at the end of the path. Oh, Fluttershy, where are you? Stars, I don’t want to be alone. Where are you?
And then, as she barreled through the long causeway, the final light blinked into existence. It was high and bright, and Twilight could now see that the path ended at a sheer cliff face. The fox faces the hounds. She wanted to sob but had no breath.
In the illumination of the last light, she could see this great cliff above her in surprising detail. There was a lift up it, she saw now—a primitive thing of wood and rope, but it would serve her needs. The crest of the heights looked like a strange throne, for spiraling columns adorned it like the arm rests of some god’s seat. Judgment seat, one could call it. In her haste and panic, Twilight thought that she saw a figure looking down, but it was gone in the blink of an eye.
This whispers changed. No longer did they whisper chaotically against one another. Now they came from the blackness behind her as a choir chanting together soft and steady. She could make out no words that she knew.
Whatever it led to was the end of this dreadful game, some last horror—some last breaking.
Fluttershy, I’m sorry.
She’d tried. Fluttershy was lost, Twilight was lost, Rainbow Dash was perhaps lost. The voices grew louder. She shuddered.
“Ai, Discordia! The debt decided! Aii-ii Discordia, the looking glass shattered!”
Twilight arrived at the cliff face and boarded the boxlike lift. It was far more rickety than she’d hoped for, but she had no choice. She sought for the winch to begin hoisting herself up and with her magic she began the climb.
The cries continued.
“Discordia!”
“Ngaxt, Eloi eloi ftaga Nyarlothep cth!”
They were maddening, and she felt her hold on reality slipping. As she got higher, Twilight could see out beyond her hallway. Around her stretched a great and endless plain of similar hallways, contorted and at odd angles to each other. Everywhere wrongness—darkness that moved.
Nyarlotep.
Somehow, in the depths of her heart—the darkest parts where she cowered from fears imagined and real—she knew that this was the name of the master of this place. Nyarlotep was the name of this place’s master, and this was the courtyard in the great House of Nyarlotep. She had walked in the halls of the gods of madness, who she had heard rumor of only in the oldest books of eldritch lore that she’d laughed at. It came back to her. Celestia, and her brother, and the murders in Canterlot.
And at last, with nowhere to go but up, it all made sense.
She didn’t stand chance. Not with the Hunter of the Stars against her. The names for the Crawling Chaos she’d found scrawled in books came back to her.
“The handmaiden! Let her come to the handmaiden of our lord!” the voices cried.
“Oh, Princess,” she breathed miserably. She was so close to the end. Twenty five feet. Twenty. Maybe fifty.
The lift stopped with a jerk, as if something had been jammed in the pulleys. Twilight looked up and realized that she’d overestimated the strength of the cables. Before she could strengthen them with magic, one snapped. The back right corner fell and she fell into it, hitting the rail hard and praying breathless prayers of thanks that it stayed up. She could see the darkness, the watchdog of Nyarlothep, pooling below her. Macintosh and Celestia and the sun seemed so far away. Equestria was eons ago. In the halls of Nyarlotep’s domain, the sun was silent.
“Twilight.”
She stiffened and looked up. Fluttershy was standing at the edge of the cliff, looking down at her with wide eyes.
Twilight had an instant of painful clarity as the voices ceased beneath her.
It was an unspoken and shared revelation. Twilight’s life was in Fluttershy’s hooves, and she knew what was on the pegasus’ mind. Twilight, who had sinned, and Fluttershy, who had been sinned against. Twilight, who had won, and Fluttershy, who had lost. Twilight, who had asked, and Fluttershy, who had given permission.
Part of Twilight wanted to plead, to say that they were friends for Celestia’s sake. But cold reality subdued her hope: Friendship in this place rang hollow, it must. She could say nothing in her own defense. Wrong or right as she had been in the sun, the sun was gone. This was what they were in the dark: the avenger and the cornered. The sun was blind, and friends and loved ones could not see what happened here.
“I loved him, you know.”
Twilight knew she was going to die. Her vision swam with tears. They both knew that Fluttershy would speak and delay before she made her choice. Twilight had no doubt what it would be. Fluttershy, how could I hope to make things right? We were all so foolish. I don’t want to die! Please!
“I just thought you should know. That you should know there’s this hole in me, Twilight. Whether I told you to go ahead and confess your love to him or not.
“Would it bother you? Would you have thought about it, up there in the sun?” Her voice was soft, but it had steel in it. She’d waited a long time to speak.
Twilight had no words. They would only make Fluttershy angry. She had no doubts that the pegasus would make her choice if Twilight spoke even the tiniest word.
“Would you have remembered me, and felt sorry? Would you have thought of me at all?” With every question, she gained volume, and Twilight’s tears fell faster.
“We’re finally face to face! No Rarity to coddle you and tell you it’s alright. No Rainbow Dash to lull me with talk of your loyalty and mine, or lie to me that love passes with no wounds. I would want you to remember me, in the world of light, if we were there. When he kissed you, I would want you to remember that I longed for that sweet kiss. When you enjoyed his hugs. When you shared the embrace of love in the dark, I would want you to feel me there in jealousy and sorrow! When you felt life stir within you, would you have thought of me? Little unicorn foals and little earth pony foals and none of them little yellow pegasi! None of them would look like me! And would you even think about me when you suckled them and kissed their pain away and watched him play with them? Look me in the eye and tell me I wouldn’t be forgotten!”
Fluttershy was panting and Twilight was terrified.
“I… I…” The pegasus seemed lost. Angry and lost. “If you were I and I were you, would you let me go? The other mare? Would you let me go if I were going to share the marriage bed with him and have him?”
Twilight wanted to sob out, “Yes!” but her throat was too dry and nothing came forth.
Suddenly, there was a blinding light and a third voice.
“Twilight? Twilight, are you there? I found you again. Hurry through!” It was Celestia. Her heart leapt within her breast and then her hope died. Fluttershy would make her choice now. There would be a lever on the top, she knew so, and Fluttershy would let her fall to the Darkness below and then tell their friends that there’d been no hope.
They stared at each other with wide eyes.
“Twilight? Do you have Fluttershy? Hello? Hold on, if you’ll give me a moment I think I can get this to let me see you.”
“Twi? Sugarcube?” Big Macintosh. Twilight just knew it would push Fluttershy over the edge.
And then Twilight was wrong.
“We’re right here, Princess,” Fluttershy answered, eyes never leaving Twilight’s. Ignoring the unicorn’s disbelief, she flew down and offered her hooves. Twilight clasped to her, not sure she understood what was happening.
“Fluttershy, darling!” Rarity’s voice. “I was so afraid! Thank everything that you’re well!”
Fluttershy didn’t answer, crying instead. Twilight felt tears roll down her cheeks and felt her tense fury as she hurtled them through the shining portal on the plateau.
Everything, for a moment, was golden and blinding light. She almost cried out, afraid it would steal her sight away forever, but before she could, it was over. Fluttershy and Twilight lay on the floor of her parent’s wrecked living room in each other’s arms. Their friends and Twilight’s family surrounded them, all crying out happily.
But the two who had just escaped sobbed for their own reasons. Twilight was shocked to be alive.
Did Celestia force her hoof? What did she choose? Was she going to...?
And suddenly, she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. She could never know for sure. After all, would Fluttershy really admit that her plan had been to kill Twilight? And whoever was at fault, both mares were wounded. She was alive and in the land of the sun. That was all that mattered. She pulled Fluttershy close and whispered.
“Don’t tell me. I don’t care.”
“I… Twilight?”
“I love you. We’re friends. Period.”
Fluttershy was speechless.
Around them, the others had fallen silent. They knew something had happened, something grave and serious that they could not begin to guess at.
Macintosh was there, calling to her, and she suddenly realized that Fluttershy had paid her back in full. She doubted she would ever be able to live without the pegasus there beside her--carrying the knowledge of her pain into every embrace and look and kiss and rendezvous. The idea of embracing him was now both frightening and the thing she wanted most. Mixed in with the supreme pleasure and supernal comfort was a taste of bitterness. Not enough to spoil the wine of love, but enough to make her pause.
She smiled at him and he came to rest beside her. Fluttershy stared at him like a mare before her god, and then turned away in shame. Twilight didn’t release her. For Twilight, it just didn't matter.
She just wanted to be whole again, wanted them both to be. In her hooves, Fluttershy wept.