Minutes that feel like hours drift by as the gondola crosses the river in silence save for the rhythmic swish of Charon's oar. The fog becomes so dense Trixie can't see Charon at the helm and can barely make out the outline of the mare sitting across from her, but she becomes keenly aware of the wooden bench beneath her haunches as it jerks to a halt.
Charon pokes his face back through the fog, stares at them with unseeing eyes, and announces, "We're here."
The mare cautiously probes the fog beyond the boat with her hoof. Finding solid ground, she steps off.
Trixie hesitantly follows, hears Charon push off with his oar, and glances back to see the fog engulfing him once more.
"Well, here we are," the mare says and shrinks when Trixie's violet eyes meet her emerald ones. "I guess I should be going." As she starts walking off in the opposite direction, she says over her shoulder, "It was nice meeting you."
"Wait," Trixie calls after her with a hint of anxiety. "Where are you going?"
The mare turns to her with an optimistic smile, cocks her head, and says, "To be honest, I'm not really sure, but I'll know once I've walked a ways. The fog eventually subsides to reveal the realm best suited to your actions in life, and once you turn your back on them, the fog and the river Styx vanish as if they were never there. At least, that's what the accounts I've read have said. It might be different for you, since you're not dead and all."
"All right," Trixie says, biting her lip as the notion that she's deep in enemy territory sinks in. Imagining unspeakable amalgamations of bloodshot eyes, razor-sharp beaks, and cupped tentacles—the likes of which amateur conjurers sometimes bring into the world by accident only to find that they're resistant to conventional magic and easily agitated—waiting to ambush her just outside her field of view, she stalls for time, "I hope you find your family."
"Oh, I'm sure I will," the mare says. The fog leaving her perception of Trixie's anxiety unhindered, she adds, "I'm sure you'll find your lover, too, so don't worry about it, all right?"
"I'm not worried," Trixie lies, more to convince herself than anything.
"You're a worse liar than I am," the mare says. Rolling her eyes, smiling impishly, and grabbing Trixie's hoof, she drags her into the fog and says, "Come on. If it makes you feel any better, you can walk with me for awhile."
Though she's right in front of her, Trixie loses sight of her before long. Soon after, she feels the mare's grip slacken. Her heartbeat growing erratic, she asks, "Are you still there?"
When the mare doesn't answer, Trixie breaks into a gallop. She wants to call the mare's name, but she never asked what it was. Sweat trickles from her pores and immediately evaporates, but it's not from exertion—the air has become unbearably hot and dry. The ground beneath her hooves goes from smooth and solid to broken and sandy, reducing her pace to an unsteady canter. Wisps of fog trail after her as she emerges into a sun-bleached wasteland and slows to a trot. A scattering of blackened, skeletal trees indicates that it may have once been a forest and implies that the cloudless sky and baking sun have remained constant ever since. The only shade is an incalculable distance away in the path of a sandstorm that appears to be encroaching without making any tangible progress. She gets the feeling the endless plain never sees night.
Glancing back, she sees that the fog and the river are nowhere to be found. In their place is an erect slab of rock, one of many, not all of which are standing, that suddenly come into focus in the distance all around her.
Wispy, immaterial chains bind a bat-pony stallion to the slab. His intestines sag out of his picked-open belly as an ethereal vulture strips the muscle from his ribs, staining the white sand with his blood.
Managing to suppress a grimace but not her stomach's attempt to wring itself out like a wet towel, she kicks sand over its steaming contents and approaches slowly and cautiously in an effort to not disturb the vulture.
Nevertheless, the vulture twists its transparent head around to look at her with hollow eyes at an angle that'd break its spine if it had one and emits a squawk that makes her cringe and fold back her ears. Pushing off the stallion and taking more of his entrails with it, it launches into the sky with a gust of wind disproportionate to the size of its wings.
Trixie steps closer to examine the stallion.
Like all the bat ponies she's ever met, the stallion's mane and tail are midnight blue and his coat is charcoal. His cutie mark is a fishing net. The stallion rolls his head in her direction and opens his yellow cat eyes to stare at her. He must see something he likes, for after a moment, he grins, revealing the short white fangs that betray his carnivorous tendencies.
Trixie takes an instinctive step back and arranges her hooves in a defensive stance. Upon realizing how pointless doing so is given his current state, she relaxes but keeps her distance.
The stallion frowns, strains against his bonds, and pleads, "Please, don't go. I was grinning because I heard your beating heart."
"You realized I was fresh meat, in other words."
"Well, yes, but that's hardly the point. Your heart beats because you're not dead, which means you're in this god-forsaken realm of your own free will and you can help me escape."
"First of all, I'm not here of my own free will—this is the first place I ended up after leaving the river Styx. Second, why should I help you?"
His grin returning, the stallion says, "You're not the first to come to Hades before your time. If you count the hundred I spent swimming with the sea ponies, I've been here for a thousand years—ever since I died in support of Luna's rebellion—and despite having spent that entire time chained to this damned rock with that same vulture returning every day—not that there's any difference between day and night—to tear open my gut and pick at my entrails, I've overheard enough conversations between gods, demons, and other spirits to know how this place works. Leave me here, and you'll die and spend the rest of eternity in the Fields of Punishment. Help me reunite with my family in the Asphodel Meadows, and I'll get you that much closer to whatever you're after so you can live long enough to redeem yourself of whatever actions brought you here. In fact, freeing me could be your first step in that direction."
"You certainly talk a lot for somepony whose intestines are baking in the sun," Trixie observes.
The stallion breaks into unpleasant, barking laughter despite the pain that manifests on his face in response.
"Stop that," Trixie orders.
His laughter subsiding, the stallion explains, "What you see is an enchantment. It puts forth the illusion of grievous injury and causes me all the pain the real injury would, but it's no more real than that infernal vulture. Spirits can't be harmed by conventional means, so this is the alternative with which the gods came up."
"In that case, dispelling it should be a simple matter," Trixie concludes. Closing her eyes to concentrate, she lights her horn, scans the magical field around her for the trappings of illusion magic, latches onto the enchantment, and unwinds it like a ball of yarn. She opens her eyes to find that his belly is intact and his bindings are gone, leaving him face down in the sand.
Presumably, somewhere in the blinding sky, the vulture has ceased to exist.
The stallion groans and pulls himself to his hooves.
Trixie surprises herself by giggling, for she'd thought all the mirth had left her when Fiddlesticks died.
When the stallion fixes her with a slitted-eyed glare, she bristles, but he cracks a smile, lunges at her, closing the distance with the slightest flick of his leathery wings before she can erect a ward or counter with a spell, nearly knocks her off balance with a bear hug, and says, "Whoever you are, thank you! From the bottom of my cold, dead heart, thank you! I'd long since grown accustomed to the pain, but having it all just vanish after a thousand years may just be the greatest thing I've ever felt. Thank you so, so much!"
Lacking the presence of mind to pry him off with her magic, Trixie rasps, "You're... welcome. Could you... let go of me now... please?"
"Sorry," the stallion says, releasing her and coughing awkwardly. After a moment, he fans out his wings, takes to the sky, and circles around overhead, shouting, "Wee! I can't even remember the last time I felt the wind beneath my wings! By Luna, it's wonderful!"
"Hey, I thought you were going to help me!" Trixie calls up to him.
Sighing, the stallion circles toward the ground, alights next to her on a boulder, climbs to the top, points a hoof toward the sandstorm on the horizon, and says, "That way."
Trixie could have sworn the sandstorm was on the other horizon. Looking around, she notes with dismay that it's on every horizon. Fortunately, it still doesn't seem to have made any progress. Turning to him, she says, "We have to go through the sandstorm; is that what you're telling me?"
"Aye," the stallion confirms, leaping off the boulder, setting off toward the horizon, and smiling to himself as she grumbles and trails after him. "Unlike mine, your fate isn't set in stone yet—ha, no pun intended—which means you can visit any realm you want so long as you know where it is. Strictly speaking, the realms don't have set geographical locations. Like the fog over the river Styx, the sandstorm of the Fields of Punishment is a barrier to turn around prisoners, mostly crafty unicorns, who get loose and try to escape, but since I'm your honored guest, the rules don't apply."
"How are we already here?" Trixie asks, staring up at the insurmountable, seemingly impenetrable wall of wind-whipped sand that sneaked up in front of her while she was focusing on his explanation.
The stallion looks at her like one would a foal who just asked why staring at the sun is a bad idea and says, "Like time, space is relative, especially in Hades. We'd never have reached the sandstorm had we not been trying to. It'd have just receded further into the distance, revealing more and more barren landscape."
At his expectant look, Trixie clenches her eyes and presses into the barrier, feeling it assault the skin beneath her coat like a thousand biting insects and clamping her hat and cloak in place with her magic. When the pain subsides, so does the unbearable heat. The sweat in her coat makes the crisp air that much cooler.
The stallion pats her shoulder and says, "You can open your eyes now."
When Trixie opens her eyes, the sight takes her breath away. A brilliant blue sky full of fluffy white clouds stretches overhead to the horizon, where it mingles with a long line of snowcapped mountains. Glancing back, she sees the same panoramic mountain range but no sign of the sandstorm from which they emerged or even the sand that should logically be scattered over the ground. Mossy boulders, clumps of trees, and shallow bodies of water break up the surrounding plain of overgrown grass. Save for the lack of flowers and the thin layer of frost that covers everything in sight—including, to her surprise, her cloak—it looks just like Equestria. Her eyes sting, but she refuses to cry; there's a time and a place for homesickness.
"Look!" the stallion exclaims, pointing at something just outside her field of view. "It's Lethe!"
Trixie traces his hoof, but all she sees is a rushing, winding river. Watching it spill over its reedy banks to fill the air around it with a rolling mist, she swears it wasn't there a minute ago.
The stallion gallops toward the river—presumably to quench an unimaginable thirst, given that he's probably forgotten what rain is over the course of his stay in the Fields of Punishment.
Assuming Lethe is one of the ponies who are barely visible on the opposite riverbank, Trixie gallops after him but stumbles to a halt just before the edge and looks on in choked horror when he jumps in, for the murky blue-gray water washes the color from his mane and coat like dye as he swims across, rendering him completely monochrome by the time he pulls himself ashore on the other side.
She teleports across in a flash of pink magic to avoid the water, moves alongside the stallion, and asks, "Are you all right? What happened?"
The stallion slows to a stop and lazily turns his head to look at her with eyes as gray and unseeing as Charon's. His blank expression tells her all she needs to know: as far as he's aware, she's a total stranger. He trudges on to join his kindred spirits, who pay him no mind as they mill about without passion or purpose.
Alone on the bank of the river Lethe, Trixie feels her legs go limp and drop her to her knees, for a terrible thought has chosen that moment to surface in her mind: if she finds Fiddlesticks in the Asphodel Meadows, Fiddlesticks will look at her with those same cold, vacant eyes before passing her by like a merchant would to a beggar in the streets of Canterlot.
Under the weight of the realization, she lists to the side before collapsing into the damp grass. Pulling her limbs against herself, she cries herself to sleep. The rushing river drowns out her body-racking sobs.
***
Trixie awoke without an inkling as to how long she'd been unconscious to the feeling of scorching stone beneath her belly. She opened her eyes to find herself lying on the edge of a plateau with her head hanging over a lake of glowing, gurgling magma far below. Gasping a lungful of the sulfurous volcanic air, she backpedaled away from the edge. She coughed and panted to no avail and rolled onto her back to face the ceiling and distribute the heat. When her shock faded, she resigned to the burning in her lungs. Though it wasn't killing her, she didn't expect it to.
The Tartaric Prince of Pacts would have that honor. He'd have it as many times as he liked, relishing every tortured scream, every plea for the merciful death he couldn't give her if he wanted to.
Trixie was Tartarus's newest denizen. No matter how many times she died, it would never be permanent, but with each regeneration, a little more of her would come back wrong. This time, it affected her magic. She could feel it in her heart and mind, but she cast a simple spell just to confirm her theory. She couldn't keep it manifested for more than a second, but sure enough, what was once illusory fire was now as real as the magma on the level below her. Her cutie mark would be the last thing to go, replaced with an inky black glyph to signify her complete assimilation into the ranks of his demons.
She wondered if her being a unicorn would make her a Tartaric Princess and if such a thing existed or whether she'd lose her horn at some point. She could ask Clovecus, but he might take it as a suggestion and make her his bride. Even if she was into stallions, the very idea would make her sick. The only reason she didn't throw up was that, just like it'd left her without her hat and cloak, her first regeneration had failed to recreate the breakfast she'd had at the tavern with Fiddlesticks.
She'd never see Fiddlesticks again, but even if she did, it wouldn't matter; she was tainted, and Fiddlesticks would never let a half-demon into her heart.
She'd faced her circumstances with detachment and stoicism, but her latest revelation filled her with grief she could neither express nor understand. If she cried, the heat would only burn away her tears, but she had no reason to cry. They'd only met the other day, only spent a scant few hours together talking and drinking the night away and putting on a performance that unleashed the fires of Tartarus on Fillydelphia the next morning. As was often the case, though, her emotions, which ran deeper than conscious awareness, wouldn't listen to reason, and tears blurred her violet eyes before evaporating on their way down her cheeks.
When her tear ducts finally realized the futility of their circumstances and ceased, she felt none of the catharsis crying in private usually brought her. Instead, she felt only numbness. Not even the heat affected her anymore.
Her fate was set in stone—all she could do was wait. She rolled onto her side, rested her head against the floor, and closed her eyes.
She couldn't imagine what was taking Clovecus so long. She'd have thought he'd be waiting to greet her the moment she woke up, yet neither he nor his demons were anywhere to be found. The only explanation she could think of was that he was messing with her, leaving her alone long enough that a seed of hope would have time to take root in her heart before coming in to yank it out. She'd fallen for his tricks once, but it wouldn't happen again. She wouldn't hope, for as long as she acknowledged the bleakness of her situation, she'd be able to endure it. Fate, however, had other plans.
A familiar voice, quavering with exhaustion but gushing with hope, called out across the cavern, "Is that you, Trixie?"
Trixie raised her head, brushed her mane out of her eyes, gazed across the plateau at the hazy form of an indistinct yellow pony with a cobalt mane, and called back, "Who goes there, Fiddlesticks?"
After a moment, she slumped back to the floor, turned to face the wall, and heaved a weary sigh. She knew what was happening, and while she was shocked and enraged that Clovecus would stoop so low, the best she could do was ignore him. "No, that can't be. The monster's just playing with my head."
"Trixie!" the voice persisted, sounding so tearful and joyful and so much like the mare who set her heart aflutter that she couldn't help wondering if the impossible had happened, if there was cause to hope after all. "It's me, Fiddlesticks! I came to rescue you!"
Trixie rolled to her belly, brought her forelegs under herself, and cast a bleary-eyed look in the pony's direction in time to get tackled onto her back. "Ah, Fiddlesticks!" She gazed down at the messy cobalt mane of the pony wrapped snugly around her as if afraid she'd disappear. "It's really you, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it's me," Fiddlesticks said. Her hat had fallen off and landed nearby, and her mane tickled Trixie's neck as she pulled herself up to affectionately nuzzle Trixie's cheek, feeling the warmth of Trixie's blush against her snout.
Most ponies only wore clothes on special occasions. That she only took off her green v-neck shirt to sleep made her especially sensitive, and every follicle of her bare coat resonated with the touch of the mare with whom she was entangled. Being an earth pony, she'd spent most of her life with a very grounded world view, but she got the unshakable sense that the effect the intimate contact had on her went far deeper than the physical.
Here, in the fiery outskirts of the spirit world, their souls had mingled, awakening something that had been securely locked away in her unconscious since she met Trixie in that tavern, at which point it'd started rattling its shackles by rolling around in its sleep. She still didn't know what it was, but that didn't bother her, for on an intuitive level, she knew what it meant. She'd be at a loss if somepony asked her to put it into words, but she finally knew why she'd felt so compelled to come looking for Trixie. She finally understood that she'd been looking for Trixie all her life. Smiling her adorable smile, she made no effort to hide her blush; she didn't need to, for the look in Trixie's eyes told her that whether she knew it or not, Trixie felt the same. "I'd thought I'd lost you, but when I went to Madame Pinkie Pie and she told me you were here—"
"You came looking for me, you followed me into the depths of Tartarus, and you found me. Fiddlesticks, I..." Trixie wanted to say so many things, and that the words completely eluded her now of all times hurt. "I don't know what to say."
"Then don't say anything. The demons are gone, so we can worry about getting out of here later." Fiddlesticks laid her head over Trixie's shoulder and tucked her forelegs around Trixie's sides. "Right now, just let me hold you... You can call me Fiddles if you like."
Trixie wrapped her forelegs around Fiddlestick's back and gazed at the ceiling high above. The last time she'd held somepony was when she said goodbye to her parents and left home to start her life on the road, but that had been nothing like this. Nopony had ever held her like this. Wondering if the same could be said for Fiddlesticks, Trixie held her tighter.
Fiddlesticks broke the embrace first. She brought her forelegs under herself, slid down between Trixie's thighs, and pressed her ear against Trixie's chest.
Her blush returning, Trixie propped herself up on her forelegs to look at her and asked in a rare moment of nervousness, "Ah, Fiddlesticks, do you really think now is the best time?"
Fiddlesticks gave her a puzzled look before realization dawned on her. Her blush at the insinuation deepened at the implication that Trixie would be open to the idea if not for their present circumstances. "I was just checking your pulse. You know, making sure you're really alive. Nothing else."
Noting that Fiddlesticks had made no effort to move out from between her hind legs, Trixie draped her forelegs around Fiddlesticks's neck and whispered, "Believe me, Fiddles. If my heart wasn't beating before, it is now."
Fiddlesticks leaned in to kiss her, part of her mind protesting that their circumstances hadn't changed, that they were still lying on a ledge over a lake of magma in the depths of Tartarus, but not until the frantic clicking of claws against stone became audible over her pounding heart did she consider it a valid argument. Groaning, she rose to her hooves just before their lips met, positioned herself between her and the tunnel, and warned, "Stay behind me."
Trixie rolled over and asked with a hint of disappointment, "What's wrong?"
Cerberus bounded into the chamber and turned to continue down the ramp. His left head spotting Fiddlesticks, he dug his claws into the floor, skidded to a stop, turned, and advanced on her.
"Take one more step," Fiddlesticks growled, dropping into a defensive stance, realizing how slim her chances of survival were, and neglecting to care in the slightest. She hadn't come this far to turn tail and run from an overgrown bulldog of all things. "I dare you."
Cerberus took another step, bared his three sets of teeth, and snarled. Saliva dripped from his jaws and sizzled on the stone.
Fiddlesticks stomped forward to close the distance, craned her neck to meet his eyes, and jabbed his chest with her hoof. "I'm not afraid of you, mutt, and I'm not leaving without Trixie, so unless you want things to get uglier than your mugs, you'll back the buck off!"
Cerberus looked taken aback, flopped back on his haunches, and stared at her with a furrowed brow on each of his naturally furrowed, saggy faces. He looked to Trixie, who tried to shrink deeper into the floor despite already lying flat on her belly, and turned around to talk amongst himself, occasionally glancing back at them over his shoulders. Finally, he turned toward the tunnel, laid flat against the floor, looked expectantly at Fiddlesticks with his right head, and woofed.
Fiddlesticks stared for a moment before shooting Trixie a questioning look.
"I think... he's offering us a ride," Trixie said, hardly believing her eyes.
Fiddlesticks looked back at Cerberus, whose heads bobbed in confirmation. "All right, then," she said uneasily, climbed onto his back, unslung her case, tied the strap around the spikes on his central head's collar, and held on. Awkwardly, she added, "Uh, thanks."
That one mare's unshakable determination could bring the guardian of Hades himself to his knees was unthinkable, but not only had Trixie seen it happen, that determination had stemmed from a desire to protect her, to rescue her, to be with her. In that moment, she finally admitted to herself that Fiddlesticks was the mare with whom she wanted to spend her life.
She didn't want to worry Fiddlesticks by breaking into tears, but the torrent of emotion had to escape somehow, so when she climbed on behind her, keeping her balance wasn't the only reason she pressed her chest against Fiddlesticks's back and wrapped her forelegs around Fiddlesticks's belly.
Cerberus stood and set off toward the tunnel.
Fiddlesticks lifted a hoof from her makeshift reigns to brush her bangs aside. Her eyes widened. She cried in panic, "I forgot my hat!"
Cerberus ignored her and kept walking.
Biting her lip, Fiddlesticks turned to where her hat had fallen earlier, but it was gone. Seeing its white brim appearing in her peripheral vision, Trixie's head resting against her shoulder, the smile on Trixie's face, and the pink aura fading from Trixie's horn, she smiled back, touched her nose to Trixie's, and said tenderly, "Thanks, Trixie."
***
Trixie's eyes snap open, her mind consumed with a single thought: if ponies who drink from the river Lethe forget their identities and Fiddlesticks is one of those ponies, Trixie will just have to remind her. She rises to her hooves, turns to face the rushing, breaking river, and shouts through the mist, "Reveal yourself, Lethe! The Great and Powerful Trixie demands an audience!"
Thunderheads billow in from the horizon to blot out the sun and douse the world with chilling rain, just like the day Fiddlesticks was buried. The howling sky hurls spears of lightning to scorch the earth, and a slender unicorn shrouded in the waters of the river Lethe plants her hooves on the riverbank and pulls herself ashore, her glowing, burning eyes never leaving Trixie's.
Trixie respects a dramatic entrance at least as much as the lost souls who scramble away in primal terror like her and Fiddlesticks's audience did the day the Tartaric Prince of Pacts came to claim her in the middle of Fillydelphia, but something else captivates her attention such that she can neither express her approval nor do much of anything else until a bolt of icy water lances toward her chest from Lethe's horn and jolts her from her reverie. She ducks and rolls, but the bolt grazes her shoulder, stripping the color from her coat and cloak like a splash of paint thinner as her hat tumbles to the ground nearby. Whatever her realization was a moment ago, it's gone now.
Seeing another take flight toward her exposed belly, she ignites her grooved azure horn like a torch and wreathes herself in licking flames before pulling herself to her hooves. The bolt splashes against her shield and evaporates like an ice cube on a stove top, but her shield wavers long enough for another bolt to skim her neck, staggering her and blurring her memory of who she's fighting and why. All she knows is that she's being attacked, but she's no stranger to defending herself, and without loftier concerns clouding her judgment, she deftly weaves out of the firing line of yet another bolt, conjures a volley of inextinguishable hellfire, and sends it streaking toward Lethe.
Lethe recoils, losing control of her spell and screeching as the fireballs boil away patches of her shroud to reveal her stark-gray coat, which is left untouched, making Trixie wonder just how far out of her league picking a fight with a god is. The film of murky water regenerates to shroud her once again but not before the sight causes Trixie to draw a realization from a half-forgotten memory: the pony Trixie is fighting isn't Lethe anymore than the lost souls peaking out from behind distant boulders to watch the showdown are the ponies they were in life. Like them, Lethe is under the influence of an illusion enchantment.
Trixie sensed the illusion when her eyes first connected with Lethe's, which burn like the ethereal vulture from the Fields of Punishment. With the realization that it's directly connected to the waters of the river Lethe comes a tactical plan for forcing Lethe's surrender, but she forgets it when her carelessness grants Lethe a direct hit to her head, sending her sprawling to the ground with an anguished cry. She managed to clench her eyes, but the colors still bleed from her face, vision, and magic. Another bolt impacts with her chest, and she forgets everything else.
All that's left is her primal instinct, her fight or flight response, and without her ego to keep it in check, it's telling her to fight, fight for all she's worth. Fortunately, the demonic magic she uses to call forth the fires of Tartarus requires no careful casting. Emotion governs it, so the animal rage that consumes her mind and makes her enfeebled heart race a mile a minute manifests in a pillar of fire that dissipates Lethe's attacks and pierces the heavens. While her rage-fueled inferno cuts through the tidal wave Lethe calls forth from the river like a hot knife through butter and has all the power necessary to banish Lethe to the rivers of magma flowing through Tartarus, the crushing pain in her chest makes her concentration waver.
Her heart beats faster and faster, trying in vain to keep pace with her magnifying rage until it abruptly stops. The inferno twists into nothingness, and she crumbles to the ground in a smoking, panting, colorless heap.
Lethe approaches her and offers a cascading hoof.
Trixie opens her eyes to glance up at her and the thunderheads rolling through the distant sky. If she could see herself, she'd see two things in her eyes. First, she'd see a few scattered flecks of violet, the last vestiges of her identity given physical expression. Second, she'd see a spark of recognition morph into murderous intent.
Lethe narrows her formerly expressionless eyes and prepares a final spell, but it won't manifest. She tries again, but the same thing happens. Something is blocking her magic.
That something is Trixie.
Lethe stumbles over herself as she backs away, never daring to take her eyes off Trixie's.
Trixie pulls her hooves under herself and stands with unnerving patience even as the distance between herself and her quarry steadily increases, for she knows there's nowhere Lethe can run. She's made sure of that.
Now, neither her thoughts nor her emotions cloud her senses. The tranquil void her animal rage left in its wake is filled with something no enchantment can take from her: the determination of a mare to whom neither the natural order nor the gods themselves are sufficient obstacles to keep her from her lover.
With her newfound focus, she draws on a more primal magic than anything she could conjure herself: the magic that keeps the realm of Hades itself from rupturing like a popped balloon and diffusing into the oblivion in which it, like all other realities, resides. She doesn't take nearly enough magic to destabilize the realm or endanger the ponies therein, though; she barely mars the surface, but the shavings she does collect are of such potency that her eyes shine more brilliantly and blindingly than Lethe's. Terminating the rain and lightning, she tears open colossal rifts in the pitch-black sky.
The sickening orange light that bleeds through and bathes the land in an apocalyptic glow doesn't come from the sun, though. It comes from the reservoir of superheated magma in the deepest depths of Tartarus from which the Tartaric Princes draw their power but which even they dare not approach directly. The light grows brighter and solidifies into a viscous liquid. That liquid is lava, and it falls to the earth in great fiery drops that splash on impact, wilting nearby vegetation, dissolving boulders, trapping the lost souls who can't die but have nowhere to run, burning away Lethe's shroud, and cleansing the river from which it restores itself.
Trixie witnesses the destruction she's unleashed across the land, hears the screams of the helpless ponies she's roasted alive, and even senses the distant cackling of the Tartaric Princes. She pays none of these things any mind. All she knows is that she's done what's necessary to overcome the latest obstacle in her quest, for while the river has been cleansed, Lethe's enchantment still grips her, rendering her as thoughtless and emotionless as a natural disaster.
Upon seeing that the threat has been neutralized, though, she allows the rifts in the sky to mend themselves, but not before having reduced the Asphodel Meadows a blasted, volcanic wasteland not unlike the shore of the river Styx. Even the once-snowcapped mountains bear the scars of her siege, which rendered them indistinguishable from a giant diamond dog's mandible.
As the clouds scatter and the sky returns to normalcy, she approaches Lethe's charred and battered form and sees that it's barely clinging to life. Gods, it seems, aren't as immortal as they like ponies to believe. That won't do.
Lethe will die, but not today, not while she still has a purpose to serve.
Trixie remelts the igneous rock encasing Lethe, ignores Lethe's tortured screams, draws her up into the air, and begins reshaping Lethe's mangled body and smoothing Lethe's boiled flesh. What's too badly damaged or utterly annihilated, she simply replaces. The process takes more out of her than she expects, far more than conjuring the firestorm, for that was a simple matter of connecting one place to another, but she manages it and lays her down beside the river, which was barely a trickle while Lethe was trapped in the ground but has not only been restored to its former glory but retains its crystal clarity.
Lethe looks naked without the shroud of murky water veiling her monochrome eyes, mane, tail, coat, and glyph cutie mark, which is the only feature that sets her apart from the myriad other lost souls who are still trapped in the ground but whose screaming has ceased since the rock cooled. She watches her warily, but if she can speak, she doesn't.
Knowing what to do as instinctively as the heart knows to beat or white blood cells know to root out infections, Trixie closes her violet-flecked eyes and reaches into Lethe's mind, where she finds the enchantment as deeply entrenched as a weed and rips it out just as mercilessly, absorbing it in the form of raw magical energy while Lethe shrieks in unfathomable pain. In so doing, she unravels the periphery enchantments on herself and everypony else who was influenced by the tainted waters of the river Lethe. Regaining self-awareness only to find themselves immobilized by stone, the ponies start their screaming anew, but Trixie is once again deaf to their cries, for all the magic she's absorbed is trying to tear her newly restored mind apart. Without an outlet, the damage will be irreversible.
She has no idea what that outlet might be, but if she's going to lose her mind, she's at least going to have some answers first. Cracking open her vibrant violet eyes, she meets the amber eyes of the unicorn mare pulling herself to her hooves where Lethe lay a moment ago and asks, "What happened to you, Lethe?"
Lethe opens her mouth to answer, but before she can utter a sound, Trixie uses her telepathy to scan her memories like a textbook.
Lethe's entire life flashes before Trixie's eyes like a ream of black-and-white film streaming past a projector at double speed, and her memories have a definite beginning and end. The end is when one of the other gods—a muscle-bound, curly-haired pegasus-pony stallion wielding lightning from atop a cloud and seen only in silhouette—cursed her for some ill-defined transgression, twisting her into the goddess of oblivion.
The beginning is when she emerged from the collective consciousness as a separate entity, taking a portion of its power in accordance with her original domain—the peace of mind achieved only in death.
Color and motion return to the world as Trixie emerges from the flashback. She realizes that magic isn't the metaphorical fire Prometheus stole from Zeus, as Star Swirl the Bearded hypothesized, but the last scrap of power the gods didn't steal from their pony creators.
As if thousands of years hadn't just sauntered past, Lethe answers, "I'm afraid I don't know. I've been unconscious for such a long time, and my memories are still trickling back to me."
Trixie ignores her, for she's discerned the answer to a far more profound question and her spirit is still bursting at the seams with magic. She clenches her eyes, and with her newfound knowledge, reaches out to the frayed hem of the fabric of reality. Instead of pulling at the loose strings like she did before, she weaves them back together with fresh thread, expelling all her excess magic to terraform the blasted landscape into the beautiful spring-time meadow its name implies.
From her extra-dimensional vantage point, she sees into the minds of the myriad ponies present as they come to their senses, pull themselves to their hooves, and scatter like colorful ants in search of their long-forgotten relatives. Wanting to give something back to make up for snaring their immortal spirits in cooling lava, she searches their memories for every variety of flower they've ever seen, concentrates, and delights at their surprise as plants sprout up and bloom across the landscape, filling the Asphodel Meadows with a rainbow of dazzling colors as far away as the mountains on the infinite horizon.
Though the landscape is still too monotonous for her taste, the more radical changes she wishes to implement, such as carving gorges and erecting waterfalls, meet unconscious resistance from the spirits who've lived there for centuries and whose innate magic fuels her renovations. Given time, she could surely appeal to their conscious minds and sway them to her will once they realize how much power they collectively possess.
Lethe's words pull her back to her body before she can attempt to open lines for telepathic communication, "Nevertheless, I really can't thank you enough for everything you've done. If there's anything I can do to repay you, please, don't hesitate to ask."
Trixie feels the weight of the exertion on her immortal form and startles at how close she came to overextending herself. She's no changeling queen, and had she succeeded, the myriad voices in her head may well have driven her to madness. She would need to be more careful in the future; she would need somepony to keep her grounded. Gazing blearily at the earth beneath her azure hooves and talking to herself more than Lethe, she mumbles, "I need to find Fiddlesticks."
Scrunching her amber eyes in concentration and staring at nothing in particular, Lethe says, "I don't recall anypony by the name of Fiddlesticks entering my realm or drinking from my river, but you might ask the spirit whose fare you paid earlier. I think she's around here somewhere."
Trixie raises her head in confusion, having assumed Lethe would have no recollection of what happened while under the effects of the curse, much less knowledge of what happened outside the Asphodel Meadows. Before she can consider the implications, she notices Lethe's baby-blue coat and braided custard-yellow mane. The impression of an innocent, carefree filly and the complete lack of evidence of the cataclysmic battle they just fought unnerves her. She turns to walk away under the auspices of searching the crowd for the bespectacled mare with the pretty emerald eyes, saying, "Thank you."
"Wait!" Lethe calls, her eyes widening with sudden realization. She canters after her before Trixie can disappear into the crowd, and stops awkwardly when Trixie turns to face her with a bemused expression. Avoiding Trixie's questioning eyes, she asks, "Did you two happen to get a good look at Charon when he took you across the river Styx?"
"We did," Trixie says. "Why?"
Biting her lip, Lethe meets Trixie's eyes and asks, "Was he... gray?"
"Yes," Trixie says, arching an eyebrow.
"Oh, dear," Lethe says, breaks eye contact to stare at her hooves, and paces back and forth beside her river.
Trixie watches her with mounting confusion. Finally, she asks, "Why?"
Lethe stops, looks up as if noticing her for the first time, and explains, "While he's always ferried souls across the river Styx, he used to have colors, an identity. From what you're telling me, he's lost both, and it's all my fault."
She sidles up to Trixie and continues in a hushed voice as if afraid somepony might hear, "He and I had an affair once, but another god—I can't remember his name for the life of me—didn't like that, so he cursed me and my river. We haven't seen or even thought of each other in more than a thousand years."
Tears welling in her eyes, she flings her forelegs around Trixie's neck and sobs into Trixie's mane, her touch as cool as a spring breeze.
Trixie already knew the story, at least for the most part, but Lethe seems to be remembering it for the first time. In retrospect, she can't help feeling a fleeting sense of camaraderie. They've both been scorned by the gods; the only difference is that one of them is a god. Awkwardly, she reaches up to stroke Lethe's neck with her foreleg.
Lethe seems to appreciate the gesture, for her voice grows less wispy as she presses on, "Up until now, I never knew what became of him, but I know now he must have been forced to drink like everypony else. You may have saved me, but there's no way of knowing if your magic extended beyond the Asphodel Meadows. I'm not supposed to leave, but I have to go to him. He needs me; these ponies don't. They have each other, and you have Fiddlesticks. Go to her, and may Fortuna's blessing be with both of you."
Trixie wonders how she's supposed to go anywhere with her draped around her like a second cloak.
Before Trixie can verbalize as much, Lethe pulls her head back to meet Trixie's eyes and says, "Wait a minute. There's something else, something more recent, a pillar of fire, a terrible flood, an unnatural storm the likes of which only a Tartaric Prince could summon, and at the center of it all—"
Her eyes widening with recognition, she gasps, stumbles backward, trips, falls on her haunches, scrambles away until she's cresting her river's bank and obscured by its spray, and points a hoof at Trixie. Her voice cracking, she accuses, "You tried to kill me!"
Her face expressionless and her voice unnervingly devoid of emotion, Trixie explains, "I wasn't in control of myself. Neither were you. We fought like animals because that's what we were."
Lethe takes a deep breath. The misted water of her river visibly relaxes her, but the wariness doesn't leave her words. "Well, your heart was in the right place, and you did bring me back from the brink of death. I'm still grateful for that. Ultimately, it's not for me to decide, but Hades will know what to do with you."
She pulls her hooves under herself. Gesturing to her river, she says, "We'll never reunite with our lovers if we stand around talking for all eternity, but please, before you go, quench your thirst from my river. You cleansed it yourself, so you know it's safe to drink, and I think its effects will do you good."
She vanishes in a burst of teleportation magic, leaving Trixie alone beside the river save for the myriad colorful ponies running and playing in the distance, the rushing water drowning out their laughter. A faint scent of ozone lingers on the crisp air.
Trixie approaches the river, watches the crystal-clear water sparkle in the bright afternoon sun, which casts rippling shadows on the rocks and sediment lining the riverbed, lowers her head until the water dampens the fur on her snout, and drinks deeply.
When she raises her head, she sees the Asphodel Meadows and its inhabitants through eyes untainted by the stress, anger, and worry she's accumulated throughout her journey, which fall away like the water dripping from her chin. One feeling remains, and that's her longing to see Fiddlesticks again, but despite having no way of knowing how much farther she has to go, she has the inexplicable sense that everything is going to turn out all right.
She turns away from the river, scans the crowd for the mare she met at the start of her journey, spots the mare's clipped ear, and approaches.
When Trixie catches her eyes, the mare smiles, waves, excuses herself from the older white-coated mare and stallion with which she's speaking, meets her halfway, and pulls her into a tight hug.
"I thought living ponies unnerved you," Trixie remarks, returning the hug instinctively but pulling away when she sees the mare's relatives watching them.
"Yeah, well, that was then; this is now. Even before I drank from the river Lethe, my memories were a little foggy—death will do that to you—but once you lifted the curse, I realized how silly being afraid of you was when I'd spent my entire life reading about heroes like you," the mare says, poking Trixie's chest to emphasize the last word.
Trixie blushes at the accusation. "I'm not a hero by any account; I'm just a mare who's too stubborn to let go."
The mare grins and counters, "That's exactly the sort of thing that makes you a hero—you barely recognize your virtues in the shadow of your faults. I bet you don't even realize how lucky Fiddlesticks is to have a mare like you, but if I told you, you'd probably just tell me I've got it backwards, that you're lucky to have a mare like her."
Trixie remembers how different a mare she'd been no more than a year before she and Fiddlesticks met and wonders how her life might have been different if she'd never been humiliated in Ponyville, but a suspicious realization cuts her musings short. She states, "I never told you her name."
"You didn't need to, Trixie the Great and Powerful. You two made a life out of going from town to town acting out your story. By the time you came to Canterlot, your reputation had preceded you and I knew I had to see your show. Nopony else to whom I talked believed your story, but I did. I took notes, contacted Pinkie and the others to help me fill in the gaps, and even got a copy into the Canterlot Archives."
"I don't know what to say," Trixie says, meaning it in the best possible way. She starts walking to ease the tension in her legs. Seeing that the mare isn't following her, she casts her an inviting glance and asks, "Won't you walk with me?"
The mare smiles, trots to catch up before matching Trixie's leisurely pace, and asks, "Well, why don't you tell me where your journey's taken you so far? I'd love to have another story for my repertoire, and I might even be able to give you some pointers as to where to go next."
As they walk along the riverbank, Trixie tells her story, omitting select details like the part where she caught herself checking her out or opened fissures in the sky to rain the fires of Tartarus down on the Asphodel Meadows.
Having listened in silent interest from start to finish, the mare finally speaks, "I guess I was wrong—you're not a hero."
"Fiddlesticks was the hero," Trixie comments.
"You're the anti-hero," the mare observes. "You balance each other out."
Trixie smiles. She can't afford to care what ponies think of her quest, but having sympathizers can only be a benefit.
"Besides Tartarus, the only place you haven't checked is the Elysian Fields, but be warned: the gates only open for ponies who've achieved great things in life or died in battle for a noble cause."
"Do you suppose lifting the curse from Lethe and all the ponies under her river's influence is achievement enough?" Trixie asks, smiling wryly.
"It just may be, at that," the mare says, mimicking Trixie's expression. "On the other hoof, Lethe said she was being punished. If Hades sides with whomever her punisher was, you may find yourself right back in Tartarus."
Trixie stops in her tracks, the prospect of waiting that much longer to be reunited with Fiddlesticks eating at her resolve far more than the prospect of facing the Tartaric Prince of Pacts, his legion of demons, and probably Cerberus all over again without Fiddlesticks's help. Last time, she gave up without a fight because she thought she had nothing left for which to live. If there's a next time, no matter how many times they kill her, she knows she'll never lose the connection that kept her going even as her identity puddled around her like stripped paint.
She smiles to herself, for she's come a long way since the start of her journey and seen many things, among them a goddess brought to the brink of death by her hooves. She wonders what would have happened if she finished the job. Knowing she'll find out sooner or later and any interference from Hades will only expedite the inevitable, she says, "If he has something to say, he'll find me, and if he tries to keep me from Fiddlesticks, he'll regret it."
"I'll support you," the mare says after awhile, seeming to understand Trixie's implication. "We all will."
"That's all I'm asking," Trixie says, knowing that's all she'll need.
***
Wading through the sea of tall grass and sprigs of poppy, lavender, and hollyhock, Trixie ducks under branches of almond and clove blossoms and passes blindly through the fog permeating the peak of the mountain range. Whether the flowers on the far side of the mountain are the result of her magic expanding beyond the Asphodel Meadows or have been there all along is unclear. Descending through the fog, she's just recovered her breath from the seemingly insurmountable climb when the unparalleled beauty of the vista that greets her steals it away.
Golden sunlight bathes the lush hills and valleys, sparkles in the streams, shines off the forest's dense canopy, and mottles the well-traveled trails, the widest of which stretches straight from the foot of the mountain to the towering gate of an infinite wall of living tree trunks. The wall prohibits the unwelcome from entering, but its leafy bows scarcely obscure the view from her mountainside vantage point to the far side, where blissful ponies frolic through the grassy clearings, rest together beneath the shady groves or atop the pastel-painted clouds, and exchange mugs of cider and stories of battles long past.
The only other pony on Trixie's side of the wall is wearing a hat that obscures her face and mane, cradling something wooden in her hooves, and sitting upright on a mossy boulder surrounded with a red-and-white scattering of snowdrop, red daisy, and fly agaric. Her coat looks to be a shade of yellow, but Trixie, never one to let hope make a fool of her, assumes it to be a trick of the light.
Concluding that the pony must be a goddess charged with keeping the gate to the Elysian Fields, Trixie approaches her. Her mind is too preoccupied drawing battle plans and scouting escape routes in case things go sour to pay much attention to her, but as she gets closer, she can't help recognizing certain features—an elegant lock of cobalt mane, a fiddle with a missing string. Finally, a treble-clef cutie mark comes into focus, proving the pony's identity as surely as her shirt and bandanna would were they anywhere to be found.
"Fiddlesticks!" Trixie cries, the thorns of the blue roses crossing her path barely scratching her as she gallops past hanging stalks of lily of the valley.
Heaving a weary sigh, Fiddlesticks ceases the sad, sweet melody she'd been playing but doesn't look up. Her Marish lilt lends her words a lyrical quality as she muses, "Oh, Trixie, how I wish that were you, and how I wish your voice would cease to haunt me day and night. Can't you see it isn't fair, isn't right?"
"It is me, Fiddlesticks!" Trixie pleads, getting close enough to see the tears streaking Fiddlesticks's cheeks. "Look, I've come to rescue you!"
Fiddlesticks raises her head, her forlorn eyes filling with recognition, surprise, and finally glee as she sees her racing down the trail. Propping her fiddle up against the boulder, she gallops forward to meet her, frilled petals of ambrosia and tall clusters of phlox seeming to sprout out of nowhere to tickle her exposed legs as she passes, crying, "Trixie!"
Trixie may have collided with her had they not practiced this routine countless times since they first reunited in Tartarus. Since they had, she waits for the right moment, lights her horn, and lifts them both in her magic. They twirl through the air as their youthful bodies meet. Their fore and hind legs intertwine, and so do their lips. Self-levitation being a taxing feat even for her, especially after the battle she's just fought, she lays herself down with Fiddlesticks on top of her in the shade of a patch of amaranth long before they break their kiss.
Fiddlesticks lays her head across Trixie's chest, content just to soak up Trixie's warmth. Their hats having fallen in the nearby grass, her mane falls loosely around her neck and cascades over Trixie's. Had either been paying attention to anything but each other, they'd have seen jasmine flowers that had long lain dormant blooming all around them.
"Fiddles..." Trixie whispers, stroking Fiddlesticks's bare back with her foreleg and sending shivers down Fiddlesticks's spine.
"Yes, Trixie?" Fiddlesticks asks serenely, nuzzling her head into Trixie's neck in lieu of meeting Trixie's eyes.
With her magic, Trixie pulls her up her chest, the friction of their bare coats drawing a delightful gasp from Fiddlesticks, and whispers in Fiddlesticks's ear, "You're naked, love."
Fiddlesticks gives her a blank look for a brief moment before a devilish little grin alights on her features and she whispers conspiratorially, "We'll have to do something about that, won't we?"
She hooks her hooves beneath Trixie's withers, rolls onto her back so Trixie lays sprawled atop her and Trixie's cloak shrouds them both, shifts beneath her to free her thighs to wrap around Trixie's haunches, pecks Trixie's lips, and says, "That's better, don't you think?"
"We're together," Trixie says, gazing into Fiddlesticks's glittering sapphire eyes. Fiddlesticks's mane flows over the ground around her as if it were water, and her lemon-yellow coat glows in the fading sunlight. "That's what matters."
"I wasn't expecting you for another five decades, to be honest," Fiddlesticks admits, "but even then, I'd wait an eternity. What happened?"
Trixie doesn't answer immediately. For a brief moment, she considers forgetting her promise to the old gods and her plans to return to the mortal plane in lieu of spending eternity with her in a place where death can never part them again. As she meets Fiddlesticks's expectant eyes, though, she realizes she could never abandon such a monumental cause after sacrificing so much and coming so far. If she did, she wouldn't be the mare Fiddlesticks loved, for which Fiddlesticks would wait an eternity. She asks, "Have I ever told you how much I love you?"
Before Fiddlesticks can come up with a sufficiently sarcastic remark, Trixie tucks her forelegs under Fiddlesticks's head and seals Fiddlesticks's lips in a deep, passionate kiss.
Her eyes easing shut, Fiddlesticks melts in Trixie's embrace as if they were two halves of a whole that'd been kept apart for centuries.
Trixie wonders what sex is like in the afterlife. Her telepathy has allowed them to share a mind in the past, but she imagines it's even more spiritually and emotionally intimate. That suits her just fine, but despite her insatiable appetite for Fiddlesticks's lips, the impulse to make love to her right then and there in the grass and flowers outside the Elysian Fields, and the knowledge that Fiddlesticks wants her to as much as she wants to, she breaks for air when she realizes how long she's gone without it. Finding that she doesn't feel out of breath, she wonders if she may have drank too deeply from the stress-relieving waters of the restored river Lethe. If she did, worrying about it is the last thing on her mind.
When she feels she's allowed herself enough time to catch her breath, though, she decides the first thing on her mind can wait until she's given her a proper explanation and regales her with an uncensored, unabridged account of everything that's happened since Fiddlesticks's funeral.
When Trixie finishes, Fiddlesticks, who's rolled onto her side and lain her head in the grass but still clings to her for warmth, caresses Trixie's back and says, "You've had a rough day."
Trixie, who fully expected Fiddlesticks to be disappointed but sees only sympathy in Fiddlesticks's eyes, breathes a sigh of relief.
Fiddlesticks nuzzles Trixie's cheek as if she's read Trixie's thoughts and says, "Trixie, love, I can't express how much your willingness to risk both body and spirit to be with me touches my heart. Had you succeeded, though, the gods would have taken your violating the natural order as an excuse to imprison you in Tartarus, and they're more methodical than you think—you know I'd try, but I don't know if I'd be able to save you."
"You're not saying I shouldn't have come," Trixie says, not intending it as a question, rhetorical or otherwise.
"I'm not," Fiddlesticks confirms. "Like I told you all those years ago, If I couldn't save you, I'd join you in a heartbeat. My heart may no longer beat, but that promise still applies—so long as I'm with you, I don't care where I spend eternity. That's why I haven't entered the Elysian Fields: if you couldn't join me, it wouldn't be paradise, and if you could, I'd want to share the moment with you."
Remembering Fiddlesticks's implication, Trixie asks, "What do you mean, 'had I succeeded?' You said yourself that our being together is all that matters."
"You've succeeded in finding me, but you can't take me back to Equestria. To leave Hades, our spirits need vessels. You cremated my body, but even if you hadn't, you'd still be too late. Hermes said the time frame for returning a spirit to its body is twenty-four hours; I've been here much longer than that, and though you haven't, I can't feel your heartbeat."
Trixie presses her hoof to her chest but feels nothing. Her eyes filling with panic, she raises her hoof to her neck. Her voice trembling, already knowing the answer, she asks, "What are you saying, Fiddles?"
"I'm sorry, Trixie," Fiddlesticks says, pulling her back into a hug, "Hermes was playing a crooked game with you. His victory was never in doubt."
Her panic giving way to understanding and finally a wry smile, Trixie says, "He may think he's won, and he may be right, but he's not the only one. You once put your soul on the line to save me from the Tartaric Prince of Pacts, knowing that even if you lost, we'd still be together. For the chance to see your beautiful smile, to feel your lips against mine, and to hold you close to me..."
She trails off, holds Fiddlesticks as if afraid she'll disappear, and kisses her as if they've never kissed before. Fiddlesticks's teary-eyed smile almost setting her stopped heart to beating again, she finishes, "...Death is a small price to pay."
Meanwhile, an earth-pony stallion who definitely wasn't there a second ago makes his presence known by breaking into blubbering sobs. His piercing scarlet eyes dampen the blue-gray fur on his cheeks, and roses as black as his cutie mark twist up from where his tears splash the ground. When they stop to look at him, he seems surprised they can see him and says, "Please, don't let me interrupt. I have a message for Trixie, but I can see you're busy. I'll come back later."
Before he can turn to leave, Trixie says, "Wait a minute, I recognize you. You were on the shore of the river Styx... You're Hades, aren't you?"
Tossing his head so his feathered white bangs fall away from his eyes, Hades meets her gaze. Despite the streaks on his cheeks where tears traveled moments before, he manages a stoic expression and confirms, "I am."
Trixie reluctantly pulls away from Fiddlesticks, rises to her hooves, and takes a step toward him. Locating her hat on the ground and levitating it to her head to disguise the excess magic she's absorbing, which is causing a nigh-imperceptible drop in the ambient temperature, she demands, "Why have you come, then, to imprison me in Tartarus again for liberating the bat pony from the Fields of Punishment and Lethe from oblivion? If so, I'd suggest you reconsider; while I couldn't fight you last time you took Fiddlesticks away from me, I can now."
"I don't decide who goes to Tartarus."
"What do you mean?" Fiddlesticks asks, having picked up her hat, pushed it onto her head at a slight angle, and taken up a safe position just behind and to the left of Trixie.
Turning his attention to her, Hades explains, "Like I told your friend when we met on the shore of the river Styx, I'm but a humble curator. I don't even decide who lives and who dies—that's Hermes's jurisdiction. All I do is make sure ponies get where they need to go, and their actions in life decide that. I've never seen the entrance to Tartarus or the ponies who walk through it. It's not part of Equestria, and it's not part of Hades."
"Why have you come, then?" Trixie repeats, having let the venom in her voice disperse with her magic. Though she soon dismisses it, knowing she can't afford to second-guess herself, the suspicion that he's not her enemy, that he may even be in a similar boat to her and Lethe, worms its way into her head.
Hades smiles a smile that would have returned the warmth to the air had her dispersed magic not already done so and says, "I'm here to offer you a choice. When you first set hoof in my realm, you were destined for the Fields of Punishment, but regardless of the lengths to which you may have gone had things turned out differently, in dying in battle with Lethe in an effort to restore the identities of the ponies of the Asphodel Meadows and reunite with Fiddlesticks, you proved your worthiness to join her in the Elysian Fields."
Trixie, against all odds, is at a loss for words.
Fiddlesticks comes to Trixie's rescue the best way she knows—by tackling her to the ground in a hug, inadvertently knocking the wind out of her, and gushing, "Oh, Trixie, that's wonderful!"
"Alternatively," Hades says, his eyes wrinkled with mirth, "you could opt to be reincarnated."
Trixie feels she doesn't really have a choice, but Fiddlesticks's joyful countenance fills her with conflicting thoughts. Blushing, she asks, "What do you think, Fiddles, should we spend the rest of eternity together in paradise or be reincarnated in alien bodies, perhaps a thousand miles apart, meet, fall in love, and live out our lives together all over again?"
"You make it sound so romantic," Fiddlesticks purrs, nuzzling Trixie's snout and wrapping herself around her so Trixie, who's always been shy about displaying the full extent of her affection in front of others, be they friends, relatives, strangers, or gods, can't squirm away.
"You're not the first to have such ambitions," Hades admits, eying a sprig of hollyhock that wasn't there last time he visited, "but you are the first in whose abilities I have full confidence, for while drinking from the river Lethe to erase one's memories of one's previous life used to be customary for spirits wishing to reincarnate, you've rendered that custom irrelevant—whether you're reincarnated as ants or antelopes, whether you have to travel a thousand miles to reunite or ten thousand, you'll never lose sight of that goal, for it will have been with you from the moment you were born."
Gazing into Fiddlesticks's sapphire eyes, Trixie brushes a lock of cobalt mane illuminated by the light of a new moon behind Fiddlesticks's ear. Her voice strained to the breaking point under the weight of a truth that would have been better left forgotten, she says, "Even if we stayed, paradise would only be a fleeting distraction. I made a promise before I died, and I could never consider myself deserving of your affection if I didn't stand by my word."
Her eyes brimming with tears—whether they're of joy, sorrow, or a mixture of both is unclear—Fiddlesticks nestles her head in Trixie's neck and says, "Well, as an old and dear friend of ours once said, 'You just do what you've gotta do.'"
Hades sighs, shakes his head, and says gravely, "If that is what you feel you must do, Trixie, may Fortuna's blessing be with you."
"No, Hades," Trixie says, fighting back tears of her own as the realization that she and Fiddlesticks may not feel each other's embrace for decades sinks in, draping one hoof over Fiddlesticks's withers, cradling Fiddlesticks's head with the other, and getting a distinct sense of deja vu as the forest, ground, and sky fall away like cardboard props to leave them alone in the ever-present void backstage of everywhere, "may it be with you."