//------------------------------// // Absolution // Story: Unfinished // by redsquirrel456 //------------------------------// “My Nightmare?” Twilight asked. “Your Nightmare,” the Other repeated. “It’s trying to rewrite everything you ever thought you knew. Some of it’s true, which is why it’s been able to take over so much so quickly. This Nightmare is you as much as you are it.” “I don’t understand,” said Twilight. “If it’s already me, then why hasn’t it stopped me from talking to you?” “Because it won’t,” the Other said, and an inky black spot swirled around the whites of her eyes. “I am the Nightmare as much as you are. Everything in here is you, me, and the Nightmare. That little space you’re in, that tiny little cage, is all you have that the Nightmare cannot touch.” “Then what am I supposed to do?” “Accept it,” said the Other, “all of it. Take down your cage.” “What?!” “You heard me. The Nightmare can’t get you, not completely, but while you’re in there you can’t do anything either. Dusk’s world will die. Every world connected to that one will die. And while you sit in here, afraid and alone, the Nightmare will destroy everything.” The Other began to prowl around Twilight, who kept pace with her to keep the bars between them. “What you have here is a rare opportunity, Twilight Sparkle. Everything has been taken from you. When a pony loses everything, they can see it as a sign to give up and let all that’s left—their life—be taken from them too. Or they can take what remains... and write a new story from the ground up.” The Other’s eyes twinkled. “It’s what Celestia tried to do after Nightmare Moon.” Twilight jerked her head up. The Other smirked. “I helped her do it.” Twilight shook her head. “But... but that’s impossible. You said you’re me. You can’t know what Celestia did or how, much less helped her!” The Other shrugged. “That’s true, Twilight. But to understand what’s going on you need to expand your understanding of who and what you are.” Twilight bit her lip, turning away. Truth seemed hard to come by in here, and whenever it visited it hurt too much for her to face it. “I know what you want me to say. I think I’ve always known it deep down, but I never really let myself accept it.” “It’s a big question,” the Other replied. “‘Who am I?’ A lot of ponies never find an answer to that, Twilight. But you’ve had it all your life.” She flicked her tail, narrowing her eyes. “You are the Element of Magic.” A beautiful crown emblazoned with Twilight’s cutie mark sat upon the Other’s brow when Twilight looked up next. “And so am I.” Twilight’s jaw dropped. “You... what? You? But you said you’re me! I just assumed you were some kind of hallucination brought on by the stress of having this Nightmare pick my brain apart!” The Other chuckled. “Oh, this is a stress reaction, believe me. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for a long series of events that led right to this moment, started a thousand years ago when I was used to end a family feud. When Celestia let her control slip and lost her sister, it nearly destroyed her. And she vowed that it would never, never happen again.” Magic leaned close to the bars. “Twilight, the truth is standing right outside these bars. I can’t protect you and Dusk much longer. The Nightmare won thanks to Celestia’s interference. The only thing we can do now is mitigate the damage.” Twilight fidgeted uncomfortably. Everything this being said felt like the truth—there was no gut reaction telling her to close her ears or shout that Magic itself was lying. It was like a broken bone being set; painful but necessary. And Magic was right. If this little cage was all Twilight had left, then she could very well be facing death this very moment. If she was going to die, she would die full of knowledge. “Show me,” she said, and the bars fell away. Magic smiled. There was something vicious about her smile, but Twilight didn’t have time to think about it before her mind folded in on itself, and then exploded outward. It wasn’t a painful experience, but it was so strange and alien she almost mistook it for pain. She was suddenly very aware of her place and condition, as if every nerve was another little Twilight Sparkle living her own life, and she knew every aspect of every sensation. She knew things; not just as lectures from a book, but deeply, intimately, lovingly, as if every spell she ever learned was a child she’d reared. She was everything, that beautiful wholeness she’d felt when Magic whisked her away from the Princesses and deposited her outside of Ponyville. Before her was a vast purple cloud of magical power and security. Twilight flung her hooves out and plunged into it. She floated through a beautiful menagerie of brilliant orbs, hanging like stars in the lavender sky. She reached out and touched each one that came close, and they burst into an infinity of feelings and memories. Some she recognized, like Rarity’s disastrous fashion show and Fluttershy’s triumphant day mastering her fear of dragons, and others she did not: Rainbow Dash single-hoofedly demolishing an apartment room they shared once by breaking the plumbing, or Applejack going steady with a colt. She saw herself writing friendship letters with only a single word changed, and she knew the word that should have been there instead. She went deeper into the cloud and touched more of the floating lights. Images and memories flooded uncontrolled into her mind. A pony with an orange coat and pink mane she did not know touched her shoulder and talked about what a good friend she was. “I know, Sparkleworks. I’d never have made it without you,” Twilight said, eyes brimming with happy tears. Another mare, many years older than her, reported that the Lunar Republic was amassing forces in the east and an agent must be sent to uncover their plans. Twilight nodded with conviction, gingerly touching the map on her table. “We’ll send Firefly. She’s the best we’ve got.” She was on a beach on a beautiful tropical island, silently contemplating the world as a fire crackled merrily on the sand before her. She was on the deck of an airship battling a storm. “Captain Sparkle!” she heard a voice cry. “This hurricane isn’t lettin’ go easy!” “Earth ponies don’t let a little wind bother them, Salty! More sail!” She was in a suit floating in space where there was only the sound of her breathing for company, and Equestria’s world spread out before her. She steadied herself on the rungs just outside the airlock and contemplated how lucky she was to be the first pegasus into space. She went even deeper into the cloud, and as she went she felt the memories grow more vivid, more personal. The lavender cloud darkened and rumbled like a stormfront, and the bright orbs flashed with lightning. She felt terror, despair, and black, raging anger. She reached out and was a tyrant, laughing at the supplications of her slaves. She was a cowering foal, watching dragonfire scorch the sky. She was a general leading conquering armies to war. She was a broken old mare, living her last days in a sorry retirement home. She was a ruthless researcher pushing the boundaries of magic and science, heedless of consequences. She was everypony and nopony, herself and a thousand different others. She saw Equestria as it was, wasn’t, and could never be. She touched a thousand different lives and a million different emotions, and though all of them were universes apart she knew that in every one she remained her. A spark of life and friendship that connected her to each and every vision. No matter where she went or who she was, she was Twilight Sparkle, known by a million different names but remaining the same pony. She came through the anger and bitterness, through the joy and wonder, and rested at the very center of the cloud. Universes wheeled overhead, but she was still and quiet, watching it all go by. Occasionally, the lights collided with one another, but instead of being destroyed they would simply break into a hundred other new lights, bringing the spark of creation to darkened corners of reality still untouched. Do you see now? “I do.” These are your stories, and still others that you have touched. Stories told again and again, each slightly different from the last, all writing and being written by each other. All coming from— “Me,” Twilight whispered. “Are they real?” They are as real as they need to be. Stories create and destroy ponies, lives, and themselves. They can inspire acts of greatness, and acts of madness. They touch and are touched by each other. The spark, our spark, is what makes them come alive. Your touch of vitality is all they need to simply... be. Why do they have to be real in order to be important? Twilight steadied herself for the ultimate question. “Is Dusk Shine real?” He is as real as you are. His world is yours. You own and are owned by him. But in the end, Twilight Sparkle, your spark is the one that lit all of these fires. You are the painter, brush, and easel. The foundation. The real. If your mind dies, then so do a hundred million worlds you could and do live upon. Twilight saw other clouds far, far beyond her own. They collided and mixed, pulled apart and swam together through the reaches of infinity. Each was full of a galaxy’s worth of little lights which danced the same dance as Twilight’s own, crashing into each other, bouncing ideas and concepts off one another to create a new little universe, where even everything could be the same but for a single breath taken where one was not. Behold the stories of every living thing, Twilight Sparkle. You exist in every one. “But how?” Twilight gasped. “There’s so many...” And the spark of Magic touched all of them. Your actions ripple out from your single, solitary life and impact so many more. They see you and feel you, and they write stories of their own. Worlds beyond even these take note of you, Twilight. Twilight sighed and touched her broken horn. Magic’s words were no longer a rejoinder to her own thoughts but complementary to them, and she found it profoundly strange to be one with a voice in her head. “I’m just talking to myself now, aren’t I?” she wondered. In a sense. “Great.” An indescribable noise rent the air. Twilight looked up and saw a great black cloud invading the space above her, sliding out from the dark gaps between lights, between worlds. It sent out tendrils of shadow into each one it passed, devouring and blackening them as it went. The lights sputtered and died, and Twilight was sad to see them go, even the horrible ones where she killed ponies or devoured souls. Each was a story that would never be. Each light the cloud annihilated drew it closer, down towards herself. It was only then that Twilight noticed another light, orbiting around her closer than all the others. It felt warm and comfortable, like her well-worn Smarty Pants doll, but when she reached out for it a tendril from the black cloud above shot down and pierced it. Twilight felt a keen sense of loss. “That’s what the Nightmare is looking for,” she whispered, “my story. It wants to rewrite who I am. I’m sitting at the epicenter of everything that was ever inspired by my life and it’s going to rip the heart right out!” She stood up and paced on a nonexistent floor. “But why?” Because you want it to. “No!” she retorted. “I don’t want to destroy so much! I want to make everything better! Celestia, Equestria, all of it! That’s what I always wanted!” She touched her forehead, feeling a pulse of pain from her broken horn. Where did that come from? She was swept away into a river of understanding, coming to stop on a shore made of something like basalt. She stood up and saw a fantastic landscape of ever-shifting shapes and forms. Bubbles and ribbons of colors twisted and dove around her. Magic stood before her, wearing its crown. “All of those stories you saw are connected, Twilight, and if you don’t protect them they’re going to die. The Nightmare is not the only threat here. Celestia and her paranoia must be stopped.” “Paranoia?” Twilight gasped. “I... I’m sorry, I still don’t understand. What did she do to you, to me? Why was all this with Luna and Morningtide so horrible?” “Celestia showed you that she defeated Nightmare Moon and imprisoned her. But I was there before Nightmare Moon came to be. I was there when Celestia turned her back on her sister in favor of ordering the day to her exact specifications. And when it all went wrong... she chose instead to tighten her grip even further over Equestria and its fate.” “But... but it all turned out all right, didn’t it? I found you, I awoke the Elements—” “I WAS ALWAYS AWAKE!” Magic thundered, and the wondrous landscape was shrouded in black and red, the ribbons turned to spikes and the Nightmare’s cackling echoed in the sky above them. “I was there for all of it Twilight, and deep down so were you! I was there for every single day Celestia watched for the Elements’ return, for every moment of every pony’s life! I am every tear that is wiped away, every hug that a pony gives to another, every spark of inspiration and every molecule that wraps around your teacup when you are thirsty! Every friendship that was ever born was another reason for me to be! I am Magic, and I never sleep!” Magic threw her hoof up and tore open a seam in the air before Twilight, and Twilight was dragged forward into the white space beyond. She found herself in the middle of a great castle, surrounded by finery, and recognized it as the Castle of the Two Sisters from Celestia’s vision. In front of her stood the pedestals of the Elements, each of them whole and perfect, watching over the grand hall. Twilight heard the great doors swing open once again and turned with a fright. But instead of fires and destruction outside the great door, there was a beautiful, unscarred city sitting peacefully in the daylight. Ponies at market went back and forth in the grand venue in front of the castle, pegasi wheeled happily through the sky. A unicorn performer played with the water from a fountain to the delight of a small crowd. Princess Luna’s scowling visage smothered it all as she stalked up the steps and through the door, flanked closely by Princess Celestia and several royal guards and castle staff. “Thou needn’t have caused such a fright for our little ponies, dear Sister,” Celestia said, regal and detached. Luna refused to answer her and continued towards the back of the hall. Celestia blew an extremely immodest raspberry. “Presenting thy cold shoulder to the Sun, Luna? That tactic is eighty years old.” “LEAVE US,” Luna commanded, and the advisors and soldiers scurried to every side hall and empty nook or cranny they could find. Luna stormed away again, stopping short just after she passed the pedestal of the Elements. Celestia—and Twilight couldn’t be sure, but she looked smaller than the present day—rolled her eyes. “Didst thou mean the ‘royal’ we, or—” “That jape,” Luna seethed while refusing to look at Celestia, “is many times older than our present quarrel with thee, Sister.” “Luna, thy temper tantrums are most unbecoming. Equestria is civilized now. The days of Discord and monsters from a bygone age are done. Thine everlasting lust for conflict has created a fracture in the very society thee and I were the architects of. The common ponies delight in plays, Luna, plays about our tiffs. It is growing most tiresome.” “It is always my fault, isn’t it?” Luna hissed, dropping the royal cadence, reverting to a Luna even younger than this, a Luna that was not royal at all but weary and mortal and free from duty. She seemed to relish in it, delight in it as her muscles grew more loose and her mane fluttered gloriously. “It’s never your fault, because you never do anything! You sit in the middle of a giant whirl of confusion and titter at how all the silly ponies beneath you act because nothing ever ruffles your divine feathers! Celestia the statespony! Celestia the Architect! Celestia this, Celestia that, Celestia everything!” “Luna, lower thy voice!” Celestia huffed. “What manner of madness afflicts thee, Sister? Dost thou enjoy giving the bards more material for their satire?” “Stop acting like I’m not saying anything important!” Luna balked, stomping up to look Celestia in the eyes. “Will you not talk to me as you once did? Look at you! You’re wearing dresses and going to balls and having fun in your precious daytime and what is left for me? Our little ponies even call this the Golden Age! YOUR FAVORITE COLOR IS GOLD!” “Luna, there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun as immortal rulers of the world,” Celestia sighed. “Besides, fashions are so ephemeral one must enjoy them while they’re here.” “You wore peacock feathers for a whole year! In court! Ugh, that is not even what I am angry about, you’re obfuscating again!” Celestia gave a disgusted grunt and walked past Luna. “Oh, look at us, repeating the same arguments we’ve had for, what, two centuries now? Luna, please. I have given you every demand you asked for. You have a Night Court, you have celebrations in your name, you have statues of you across the land and still you demand more like a child!” “For the thousandth and last time I do not seek attention!” Luna gasped desperately. “I want... I want...” She trailed off into silence, staring at the floor. Celestia, momentarily tender, regarded Luna with pity. “See, Sister? The demands of thine own heart are unclear to thee. Perhaps thou should join Me at tonight’s revelry. I tire of these endless roundabout arguments! One day Luna, you must simply wake up and see that you already have everything you could want.” Celestia marched away and left the room. Luna stood stone still in the middle of the hall for a good long while. At length her eyes lifted to the Elements, which sat and watched passively as they had for centuries. “No, Sister,” Luna whispered. “Not one day.” The vision came to an abrupt end as Twilight pulled back, shaking her head free of the cloying nausea of seeing the world through eyes that were and weren’t her own. “That was the day Luna set her mind on her rebellion,” Magic said. “The day she opened her heart to the darkness. And when she was banished, what did Celestia say?” Magic waved her hoof again, and Twilight spiraled forward. “No, wait—!” she cried, but suddenly found herself on the blasted remains of a great open field. She looked up and saw ashes and broken trees all around, the sky still roiling with miasmic clouds and the distorted lightning of magical fallout. At the epicenter of the devastation stood Celestia in rent and battered golden armor, staring up at the sky with a brokenhearted look on her face. Twilight’s instinct to rush forward and comfort her mentor was tempered by the pain she’d so recently been put through, and knowing this was merely a vision she stood her ground. Tears streamed from Celestia’s yes as she sank to her knees, lifted her mouth, and let loose with a terrible cry. This was a sound beyond any that Twilight knew a  mortal could make. It was hundreds of years of love twisted into pain and anger and sorrow and all kinds of terrible things that made Twilight’s heart crumple in on itself and hide away deep in her chest, trying to squeeze out the love and anguish it felt in the immortal’s scream. “Never again!” Celestia shouted when the final cry tore from her lips. “Never again! I swear, Luna! I will never let this darkness win again!” The vision fell away once again, and Twilight stood face-to-face with Magic. “And she waited, Twilight. She waited and planned and plotted, and when the Elements left her for good she just got even more controlling and twisted and desperate. She waited and watched, and then fate stepped in. And you were born.” Magic sighed and walked away from Twilight. “And with you, I was too.” Twilight was about to insist that wasn’t possible—but something held her tongue in check. “Then you figured it out already?” Magic asked with a wry smile. “When you told Nightmare Moon that the spirits of the Elements were present even when their physical forms were destroyed, you were talking about you and your friends.” “Then... you could have been anypony?” “Could have,” Magic said, “and the other Elements could have been any other pony, but through the strange, intertwining twists of fate and Celestia’s intervention, I am you. Celestia did everything she could to ensure it would be no other way. The bonds forged by ponies who were already paragons of the virtues the Elements embodied, quickened and tempered by the crisis of Nightmare Moon’s return... There is something disgustingly elegant about how perfectly it was all planned. Celestia knew your time as Magic was near, and she knew that Magic would draw ponies that fit the Elements to it like moths to a flame. But the process had to be swift, dire, and above all magical. I had to be reborn at precisely the right moment in precisely the right way: at the climax of Celestia’s story for you. It’s how she always meant it to be, to make you the savior. Perhaps it was her strange way of trying to make it up to me for starving me of my true nature for so long.” “Starving you?” Twilight asked. “You are Magic, Twilight. The spark that creates friendship, that drives inspiration and creation, and ultimately, the fulcrum on which whole universes turn. You were born to make friends. And Celestia... she kept us cloistered in her ivory tower. Grooming us. Preparing us. Making sure that you were the one that would bring about my re-entrance to the world, and that you never knew a single friend until the day she wanted you to. She forced you to deny your very nature until she decided you were worth it.” Twilight sunk onto her flanks and stared downward, remembering all she’d seen before, all the days Celestia passed off her lack of friends as a silly eccentricity. She suddenly felt very, very vulnerable, and very, very naked. It was like a piece of herself had been stripped away with the revelation, leaving a Twilight that was smaller, lesser than the one before. “Now you see,” Magic said, “now you see why she must be stopped.” Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you hate her so much?” she asked. Magic’s mane flared up, and she rose up on her hind legs, kicking at Twilight so she fell back. “Were you not just listening?! Were you not just privy to some of Equestria’s greatest secrets? She tricked you, Twilight! She used you! She controlled every aspect of your life and forced you to bend to her will!” Twilight stood and waved her hoof, exposing the field where Celestia lay after banishing her sister, crying out for all the mistakes she’d made and what she would give to make it right again. “That’s not a pony who is evil,” she whispered. “Just a desperate one, who loves too much to see the right way.” Magic sniffed and turned away. “I was right to leave her. The discord in her heart made it impossible for her to be our vessel any longer.” Twilight shook her head. “Maybe. But... I remember so much more than this. You were with me the entire time. How could you have forgotten everything she did for us?” “Coddled us, made us weak, kept us from friendship, denied us our true nature—” Magic spat. Twilight pressed forward, narrowing her eyes. “I’m part of you, but you’re also part of me. There’s more to all this than what the Nightmare is thinking. If it got me, it got you too.” Magic’s eyes flashed, and something dark passed through the whites of her eyes. “I am showing you the truth!” “The truth the Nightmare in me wants me to see. The truth you’ve bottled up for so long along with as much rage and anger as Celestia had for herself.” Twilight leaned in, boring into the innermost depths of Magic with ease. “I can see it now, the whole story. You, me, Dusk, the Nightmare... We’re all the parts of a whole that have to come together.” “And the Nightmare will destroy all of us,” Magic grunted. “No, it won’t,” Twilight whispered. “This is the Nightmare’s story now, which means it’s my story too. And if I choose to reject it, then I won’t let it end this way.” “The Nightmare used the trauma of the last few weeks to obliterate everything. It has consumed all but the final pieces of your mind,” Magic retorted. “Dusk is fighting the last battle even as we speak.” “Then you need my help just as much as I need yours. Dusk is real. I can see that now. I’m not going to abandon him when he needs me most, and that means I’m not abandoning you either. Magic won’t work in the state you’re in.” She lifted a hoof and tore another hole, pulling Magic into the infinite white beyond. “Friendship is built on faith and trust. Not just a dynamic collision of events and feelings like the night I faced Nightmare Moon. You said you were there for everything; let me show you what you missed.” ---------------- The train station at the edge of Ponyville had suddenly become the edge of the world. Their home town was nothing but a spit of land stretching over the sea of darkness that starting to consume the entire landscape, swallowing towns, hills and the sky itself. The cracks in reality they saw in Everfree had already spread beyond Ponyville and tore Equestria apart at the seams, leaving huge gashes miles long scattered across the bleak landscape. Shapeless soupy clouds that ranged from grey to black were spilled across the land and sky in huge blotches like a foal had spilled his paint over the whole country. The devouring nothingness lapped against the shore of Ponyville, eroding it bit by bit. At least they had the fortune to find the train, whole and silent and empty on its tracks. Looking forward Dusk saw the train tracks weaved over a long isthmus of Equestria that still clung to reality, leading to the sad, hunched silhouette of Canterlot hanging off the distant mountainside like a vulture roosting over carrion. “We sure this thing’s gonna outrun the Nightmare?” Rainbow asked, tapping the train engine. “I mean, if it can do all this—” “Don’t think about it,” Dusk answered, directing Elusive to shovel coal into the furnace. “Just act, Rainbow.” Rainbow looked down at Dusk, who flinched away from the look in his friend’s eyes. It wasn’t a friendly gaze. “We shouldn’t have left them,” Rainbow said. “I can carry them outta here—” “No,” Dusk interrupted. “They’re... they’re like Applejack now, Rainbow. They can’t help us.” “Says you, mister Element of Magic,” Rainbow grunted as he picked up a shovel and tossed coal into the boiler, pointedly shoving Elusive out of the way as he did so. “Spark of friendship,” Rainbow grunted as he heaved more fuel into the boiler, lighting the fire and getting a little too close to the flames for Dusk’s comfort. “Center of everything, huh? Leaving ponies behind when they fall... isn’t right...” Dusk looked away, waiting for the train to start. Rainbow was only saying what they were all thinking, but the guilt wouldn’t help them anymore than staying to reason with Butterscotch and Bubble would. He didn’t know how and he didn’t know why, but the nagging feeling that getting to Canterlot was the only way to solve this wouldn’t leave him. He set his heart on that and took hold of it, refusing to think about anything else. What could they do when the Nightmare claimed Dusk was the anchor that held the world together? And what could that mean for all of them? Elusive, helplessly lost, just sat next to Dusk and let silent tears stream down his cheeks. The grief was omnipresent and Dusk didn’t even feel the need to comfort his friends. They all felt the same and trying to cheer them up was pointless; cheer didn’t really exist anymore. Not when Laughter itself refused to give them a smile. The steam gathered and the train slowly came to life as Dusk released the brakes. The engine shuddered as the familiar chug-chug from within the train’s bowels grew to a noisy din, and the wheels clacked over the tracks. The train sailed out over the nothingness, though with how close and far away everything felt Dusk couldn’t be sure if they were even moving through anything at all. “It’s working,” Elusive said, leaning back against the locomotive’s cool metal walls and sighing like it was his last breath. “Thank the Princes it’s working.” Dusk winced; thinking about them hurt too much. He just sat down and tried not to look at Rainbow, who glared straight ahead and said nothing. “Land,” Elusive said after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, peering ahead of the locomotive. “Dusk, Rainbow, look! There’s land out there! Like islands in the sea...” Dusk glanced up and saw a whole chunk of Equestria turned ninety degrees on its side fly past the train. A house was attached to it, a fire hydrant and a bush circling it like moons. Other, larger pieces drifted aimlessly near and far, making up a broken landscape of randomly assorted flotsasm that made Dusk wish dearly for his air balloon; it would make the trip more bearable. They had no guarantee the tracks even reached all the way to Canterlot. The surreal landscape gaped at them as they sped through it, flaunting its macabre strangeness. The rocking of the train on the tracks was a source of constant anxiety for Dusk, who constantly imagined the train suddenly flying off its tracks and tumbling endlessly into the void around them. He didn’t know how this was working at all anymore; the very moorings of reality were undone and his knowledge didn’t help. He just had to trust that he was doing something right, and was still with him if they weren’t all dead yet. “Look!” he heard Rainbow cry suddenly, pointing behind them to Ponyville. “Look at that! Oh, sweet ponyfeathers, no... just look!” Dusk poked his head out of the train engine and turned back. What he saw made his heart drop into his stomach. The roiling clouds of oblivion swept like a storm over the landscape Ponyville and the surrounding countryside rested on, eating away buildings, roads, and trees. What was left of Whitetail Wood cracked apart and disintegrated into ashes before his eyes. He saw town hall crumble and burst like a bomb went off inside. The Everfree Forest was nothing but a carpet of quickly expanding blackness that tore into the remnants of Ponyville and ate up what the void didn’t take. Elusive, his voice raw and hushed, whispered, “Do you think they saw it coming?” Nopony answered. Dusk hung his head and flopped back against the walls of the locomotive, waiting for the nightmare to be over and knowing it never would. Not until they reached Canterlot. And yet, somehow, watching his home of so many years get torn to ribbons didn’t even pull at his heartstrings. So much anguish had run through him in the last several hours his mind couldn’t process anymore. He wasn’t surprised; after all, the Nightmare told him this would happen. What did surprise him was when they looked ahead and saw the tracks running straight over one of those islands that still existed in the wasteland, and there upon it sat a familiar orange figure that only got more clear as they approached. “Is that—?” Elusive asked. “Applejack,” Rainbow muttered. “How’d he get out here?” Dusk felt a pit in his stomach. Canterlot wasn’t far now—in fact, they were near the very foot of the mountain—but Dusk wouldn’t feel right until they were in the castle and wearing the Elements. “Should we stop?” Rainbow asked, in a biting tone that was half serious and half accusatory. Dusk didn’t know what to think. He opted for honesty, finding a black kind of humor in that. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Well, I am,” Rainbow grunted, pulling on the brakes. Elusive gulped and stayed in the back of the engine. The island Applejack had chosen for his own wasn’t very large at all, more a spit of land that snaked out into the darkness with no trees and what appeared to be the remnants of a hill near the back of it.  Applejack himself sat patiently next to the train tracks, watching them screech to a halt. His hat was with him, and somehow Dusk found that more reassuring than even the fact that Applejack himself was alive and well—or so it seemed. They came to a stop directly in front of Applejack, who didn’t move and only blinked and glanced between the three of them. “Ya’ll headed ta’ Canterlot?” he drawled. “Yeah,” Rainbow said before Dusk could stop him. “You comin’ with?” “Maybe so,” said Applejack. “What’re ya’ll gonna do there?” “Stop the Nightmare,” Dusk said. He wanted to be happy that Applejack was back and seemingly willing to help, but something stopped him. Something about the way Applejack looked and sounded and felt. He still looks as angry as when we parted in Ponyville... and how did he get out here? He posed the question to the farmpony, who responded with a shrug. “Wasn’t easy, lemme tell ya. Had ta’ jump through a few hoops.” “And that means what, exactly?” Dusk asked, numb to his own hostility. “Oh, come on Dusk,” Rainbow growled, slapping a hoof against the engine wall. “This is Applejack, and he’s back now, and we’re gonna get up to Canterlot and kick that Nightmare’s flank. Right? Right. AJ, hop aboard. I don’t know what you’re doing here and I don’t care. What matters is you’re here.” “Where’re Bubble and Butter?” Dusk and company hung their heads. Applejack tsk’d, but nodded knowingly. “Right. I get it. Shame about them. Wanted ta’ say goodbye.” “Yeah, me too,” Rainbow muttered. “Now come on. We’re headed for Canterlot.” “Why?” Applejack asked, peering up at them. “We’re already there.” Rainbow blew a raspberry. “What? No, come on. We still got like an hour to go at this... rate...” He and Dusk and Elusive turned their heads simultaneously. There in front of them was the train station that marked the beginning of Canterlot’s mountain path. Beyond was the intimidating façade of Canterlot, and above the city itself hung over the grim eternal space, a dour skeleton sitting on its dead throne watching over the graveyard of Equestria. “What,” he gasped, “is going on here?” “I dunno,” Applejack replied, “but it looks like good fortune for ya’ll. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just what the Nightmare wants.” Dusk turned back to Applejack. “Why would it want us to come here?” “‘Cause that’s the way the cookie crumbles, or the story goes, or whatever malarkey it was spewin’, right?” Applejack flipped his hat up onto his head and sniffed. “If our world’s just a big ol’ grand storybook, stands ta’ reason it’s gotta kill us in the most thematically appropriate place: Right where we’re about ta’ actually beat it, it swoops down an’ nails us for a dramatic victory.” The pit in Dusk’s stomach grew as Applejack nodded towards the mountain path. “So come on, better get goin’. Don’t wanna keep destiny waitin’ or nothin’.” “Wait, wait, wait,” Elusive spoke up, hopping out of the engine and trotting towards Applejack. “Wait. This is ridiculous. When we saw you in Ponyville you were talking about how you wanted to find your family, and now you’re talking as if everything has already been decided! What happened back there? How did you get out here?” Applejack shivered, almost vibrating before Dusk’s very eyes before he turned back with the bleakest look Dusk had ever seen on a pony’s face. “My eyes were opened,” he rasped. “I saw the truth, Lucy. You did too. I can see it in your eyes. When you broke open the door of Carousel Boutique and looked down...” “Applejack—” “... an’ you saw the little pile a’ dust that used ta’ be your little brother? An’ your fussy little cat?” Elusive clamped his jaw shut, his face going stone blank. His head quivered up and down in a small, pained nod. “All right then,” he whispered hoarsely, “all right then Applejack. You want to be so... so casually blunt as usual? Then how about you take a moment away from stomping over what’s left of my heart and tell us what is going on with you?” Rainbow stepped out of the train engine, no longer glowing with desperate, needy trust. Applejack turned to him and smiled. “What, Rainbow? You act like you never seen me before.” “I haven’t,” Rainbow said, his voice flat. “Not this Applejack. You’re honest, but you were never cruel. If you’re Applejack, you’re gonna give us the honest truth right now or I swear to Solaris I will punt you right off this rock.” Applejack broke into a wheezing, condescending laugh. “The truth,” he said, drawing out the word into a grating snarl. “That’s just it, isn’t it? There is no more truth anymore. Ya’ll want me ta’ be honest? There’s nothin’ to be honest about! The truth? The truth is a lie! Lies are the new truth! This, all of this—!” He waved a hoof, encompassing what was left of Equestria. “All of it is nothin’ but some jumped-up little fantasy that got too big for its britches! Some little dream world some mare thought up in her free time, right? That’s what the Nightmare said, right Dusk?” Dusk stammered. “Right?!” Applejack snapped. “Uh, yes. Yes, right,” Dusk whispered. “That’s what the Nightmare said.” Applejacked nodded. “Okay then! Let’s start from there, shall we? The Nightmare says this whole world’s nothin’ but a big ol’ lie. An’ unlike the truth, lies can be twisted around any which way we want. So it twisted and twisted until Equestria broke like a bone that bucks a tree wrong. But see, this place isn’t just a world of destruction. The Nightmare can create, too. It wants to create its own world, like she did. And it can make other places, too. It told me.” Rainbow’s eyes went wide and he crept back to Dusk and Elusive. “Told you? What does that mean, told you?” Applejack took his hat off, dusting it with a hoof as more ashes drifted down from Canterlot. “It means just what I said. It told me. It found me at Sweet Apple Acres and told me the truth: that lies are the only thing worth putting faith in.” He looked up at Dusk, and black droplets swam over his pupils as he came towards them, step by step. “Get back,” Dusk whispered, but Applejack came on anyway. Dusk ushered his friends away from the train, circling towards the mountain path. “So maybe,” the former farmpony said, “it was lying when it said that if you all die, it’ll give me back Equestria just the way I like it. Maybe it was lying when it said that you can’t just die, you gotta suffer first so it can be ‘done right’ or whatever it was goin’ on about. Maybe it was lying when it said that I’d get back my family and my farm and everything would go back to being a nice, blissful place of ignorance. But hay... the whole world’s a lie now, boys. You just gotta take what you can get.” He shuddered and his body seemed to waver like a heat mirage, elongating and shrinking at random. “Gotta... take what you can get...” “Applejack!” Dusk shouted, his heart twisting in his chest as he urged the others back, towards the mountain path that led to Canterlot, “you don’t really believe it’s going to give it all back, do you?!” “No,” Applejack whispered as he followed them. His tongue slithered out of his mouth, curling under his chin before snapping back in place. “No, see, it doesn’t matter who gets brought back or not because nopony’s gettin’ ‘brought back.’ We’re not real, Dusk. None of this is. You gotta see that by now.” Applejack’s spine cracked and went out of alignment. Deep gashes split open over his strong form, revealing a blacker than black ooze that dripped and slithered and writhed of its own accord just beneath his skin. Dusk met his eyes when he looked up. They were full of tears. “Applejack,” Elusive cried, “no! Don’t do this! Don’t give in!” Applejack ignored him. “But I... I still feel so much, Dusk. I felt the anger and the regret when I saw everything gone. I felt the pain way deep down inside of me when I knew my family wasn’t comin’ back. I felt the shame, too. The shame for considerin’ what it said an’ agreein’ to it. I felt that more than anything else. But now it’s all gonna go away. It’s all gonna go away.” He sniffed, rubbing his nose with a hoof that drooped and oozed down to the ground. “Just as soon as you all do too.” The last three ponies in Equestria turned and ran for their lives. Behind them, Applejack shook his head sadly as the darkness boiled up and out of his body, bursting from under his skin and reaching out like some grotesque limb for every inch of him it could reach. It coiled and twisted around his limbs and face until it consumed him. Dusk thought he heard a scream, but he couldn’t hear over the sound of the Nightmare’s laughter in his head. Applejack’s body collapsed under the darkness and melted into an amorphous mass of squirming tendrils and viscous inky matter that blossomed up into a grotesque wave, crashing onto the base of the slope, boiling the ground away as it surged after them.