Whipstitch

by Pennington Inkwell


Old Stories

"Penn, are you sure that was a good idea?" Moonstone asked as she settled back into her self-made bed in the fireplace, ignoring Pennington's exasperated sigh. "You know what Whips would do to us if she found out that we told somepony about Spiderstitch..."

"Look, if she finds out, we'll just move to Saddle Arabia." Pennington's words were joking, but his tone was believably serious as he settled in his study's large chair. "You can take the bed upstairs... Just get all of that soot off you, first! And that means a bath..."

"That's your bed, Penn. You need to stop sleeping in that stupid chair..." She muttered.

Pennington let out a long sigh, and Moonstone wondered for the hundredth time why he refused to sleep in the upstairs bedroom. She could see when a pony was lying, but he had always told her the truth about it: that it held bad memories for him. That was all that he had ever told her, though, and she wondered what he meant. She watched the pony as he leaned back, then his ears twitched and he turned around, looking over his shoulder, then upwards. Moonstone's eyes rolled upwards, seeing what Pennington had noticed. A trio of bees stood on the edge of his skylight, the only way for light to enter the room. Pennington was giving them a suspicious glare, despite the fact that the skylight acted as a two-way mirror, meaning that the bees should not have been able to see him.

"Moonstone, you know that I hate bees..." He pointed upwards. "Could you fly up and fry those ones for me?"

"Go to sleep, Penn..."

"But-"

"Go to sleep before the stress opens up your old changeling injuries. It's too late for me to be applying bandages... And don't forget your pills!"

Pennington shot her a glare as he pulled a small pill bottle from his desk drawer and swallowed a pair of capsules without water, but it didn't last against her passive stare, since he knew that she was right. If his stress became to high, his legs would occasionally start bleeding where the changelings had tried to convert him, and she would always be the one who had to apply bandages to stop them. It was a crummy part of her job as his assistant, but Luna had specifically told her to keep a close eye on his well-being. The pills were simply to help with a sleeping disorder.

"Fine... But it's like the bees are her little henchmen..." He muttered, closing his eyes and leaning back in the chair. "I feel like they're going to tell her what we did, somehow..."

Moonstone shook her head disbelievingly, but she couldn't shake the feeling he was right. At the same time, she couldn't help but wonder about that draconequus that had suddenly shown up, seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly asking questions about things that were supposed to be secret to almost all of Equestria, and demanding information about traumatic events from Pennington.

She didn't trust Eclipse Tumult. There were too many secrets, floating around him like little tendrils of darkness. She couldn't see what they were, but he obviously had a lot to hide...










Eclipse shuffled through the manuscript that he'd been given, examining the pages. He could tell easily that there had been many points where Pennington had needed to change between writing by hoof and by magic, apparently exhausting both from time to time.

Even if he was feeling under the weather, this must have been pretty bad if recounting the experience is enough to make him throw up... I can't remember the last time I saw a pony vomit... Eclipse noticed the page numbers in the bottom-left corners, and he wondered at how long the manuscript actually was, seeing as the scrawled letters would, on occasion, grow in size and messiness at moments when Pennington was obviously panicking. Curious, he pulled out the corner of the last page, glancing at the number in the corner. The number "37" was written in and circled, like every other page number had been, but a few short sentences were placed next to it, so hastily written, ink had splattered all around the letters.

It's over...
It's over.
It's over.
I'm safe.
Never again.

Eclipse's eyes widened at the obvious self-assurance, again wondering at what could have shaken the pony so badly, when Pennington had seemed perfectly willing to challenge his own godlike power. He sat down at the base of Discord's statue, glancing over the first few pages and setting them carefully aside, recognizing them as Pennington's seemingly unrelated timber wolf experience. Soon, he found where the storyteller had left off. Just below, Eclipse couldn't help but notice that there was a large sketch in the center of the page, drawing his eye away from the words.









You can feel the bonds of hair tightening around your body, pinning your wings to your side with nearly enough force to stop your breathing altogether. You can feel the hair digging into you like piano cords, and you silently thank Celestia for the fact that you didn't get a strand caught around your throat, or you would already be unconscious or even dead. You struggle to try and free yourself, your hoof inching its way towards the knife that you keep under your wing. As the blade is nearly within your reach, a low hiss wound its way out of the darkness. Your eyes grow wide as a massive creature steps out into sight, and you can't help wondering if you've simply stepped into a nightmare.

The first thing that you see is a slender, sharpened horn, attached to a head shrouded in black hair. A long, sharpened leg, seemingly made out of the hair, stabs into the ground. You can tell that limb is meant for impaling... Impaling you.

Finally, you feel your hoof grasp around the knife, and you tear it through the hair, freeing yourself. Even as you fall to the ground, the creature lets out an unearthly howl, like the braying of a dying horse and an ear-piercing scream, rearing back its head in rage. Even as you watch in abject horror, the hair falls away from the creature's face, confirming the fear that had made your blood run cold:

It's Whipstitch. Twisted, deformed, and distorted beyond all recognition, the monster about to kill you is your best friend. Her eyes have turned completely black, and her teeth have parted to make way for a pair of huge fangs, each easily capable of slitting a throat on their own. The hair beneath your hooves begins to slither back and forth, as if writhing in pain, and begins to grab at your hooves, trying to imprison you again. Before the scream can even fade with the cave's echoes, you've already begun to sprint back in the direction you came from.

With your back to the creature, you can't see it, and have no idea what it's doing. Your heart seems to have clenched itself in your chest as tightly as it can, now a simple, unmoving lump, and your blood has turned to ice. Even as you jump from stone to stone, your normally cool head begins to spin with dizzying fear, and you swear that you can feel her hot breath at the back of your throat. As you leap out of the hole, wishing that your wings weren't bandaged to your body, the daylight seems to wash away the nightmare in the cave, and you return to the world of the living, collapsing on the ground as your heart begins to pound away at your rips, now trying to escape, itself. The sun is setting, and the fresh, cool air outside is sweeter than honey to your senses. You were knocked out longer than you realized, and darkness is setting in again.

I need to block the hole... The thought finally presents itself after several seconds. Nodding to yourself, you turn back to the pile of boulders, fully expecting to be able to fix the prison.

Whipstitch's thickened front leg is already poking through, already widening the gap by pushing aside other stones with the sharpened tip. You can see now that the hair is simply wrapped around her hoof, tapering to a point that could easily impale a pony entirely. You stare for a moment, brain hardly able to compute what you're seeing. As more of the stones fall away, you slowly turn back around, eyes wide and a serene grin of abject horror on your face.

"Nope." You walk forward, shaking your head. "Nope, nope, nope, nope! Nope, nuh-uh, No!"









Eclipse took a moment to stop in his reading. There seemed to be a change in the writing, but he simply needed to try and understand the imagery that he had been presented with.

That certainly sounds like her... But how is it possible? It's been more than a thousand years! He looked up at Discord with a glare, though the statue couldn't reply.

"I blame you for this, you know! If you hadn't decided to interfere with Threadmane and her friends, I bet that Whipstitch wouldn't have inherited anything like this from Fairytrail!" He let out a long sigh, trying to hold back the painful memories of the days when Discord had first taken Equestria under his thumb. Fairytrail had been the only city able to defy him, and Eclipse had even helped them as best he could without his brother knowing, but all of the fighting had made it ground zero for some of the strongest magic Equestria had ever encountered. He'd always known about the plights of the Fairytrail ponies, it was one of the many shameful secrets he kept of his days before he went into total hiding in Everfree. Threadmane, the city's guardian and apparently Whipstitch's ancestor, had even been his friend once...

Shaking the thoughts from his mind, he let out another sigh.

"Well, this thing, whatever it is, seems to be really dangerous... Especially if she really is actually hungry for ponies!" He looked down at the scroll again, paying more attention to the change that had first allowed him to break away from the text to reflect. The first section seemed almost professionally written, as if with magic being used to gently glide the quill across the paper. In the next section, however, the letters were jagged and hastily scribbled down, definitely by a shaking hoof. Eclipse could tell at a glance that Pennington had swapped tenses, from second-person present tense to first-person past tense, as if he were writing in a journal instead of a manuscript. The heavy scratching into the paper and the large blots of ink almost seemed to imply that Pennington had been manic at the time of writing.










Night One

I keep hearing noises... I know that she's following me. Sometimes it's a snapping of a twig or a hissing in the branches above my head, but I know that she's there! The spider is trying to catch me!

SHE WON'T STOP HUNTING ME!!!

Sometimes it's a mess of her hairs hanging from the trees, sometimes I hear her screaming in the distance, like a savage wolf howling at the moon. I know that she's always close, though. Waiting for the moment that I drop my guard (or my sword), she's going to swoop in and kill me. She'll eat me alive. She's been eating almost constantly.

KILL COUNT:
SIX RABBITS, THREE (NON-TIMBER) WOLVES, DON'T KNOW HOW MANY SQUIRRELS.

I don't know if she even eats them all or if she just kills some of them for the glee of it... I don't know which is worse.

Sweet Faust, please let me get out of this alive.

I MUST NOT SLEEP.




Exhausted and about to collapse, you finally stop running as you reach a small glen. You've been running for hours, now, but you still haven't managed to get out of the forest. You sink to the ground, finally relieving your hooves of your weight, and begin to finally think with more than simple, blinding fear.

I must have taken a wrong turn... That's a good thing, though. The last thing that we need would be for me to lead it- HER- back to civilization. You take comfort in the thought that you could be preventing a disaster, but it does nothing to quell the fear that you are lost in the Everfree Forest with this creature hunting you. There was no mistaking that she was after you, the screams and howls of assorted animals being eaten and killed (most likely in that order), had been following behind you, though. Her pace seemed to be slower than yours, which was easily the only reason you're still alive.

A spider doesn't chase down their prey, they set a trap for it and wait. Spiders are patient. Your guard will need to be up at all times... More thoughts fill your mind, doing their best to ensure you stay alive. Okay, Daring... No sleeping. I don't know if she needs to sleep, or how much, but I doubt she's going to stop for anything more than a quick snack before continuing to chase after me. It would be easy for her to kill me in my sleep. Even as you nod to yourself, however, you can feel your eyelids growing heavy. Shaking your head, you rise up again on your aching hooves, a tiny speck of your vitality revived.

"Daring Do, you're in a heap of trouble... And you're going to get out of it, just like you always have." You whisper. But if it comes down to a fight, if you need to make the choice between your life or hers... You know what choice to make.




Night Three

She's right behind me... I know it. I run as hard and as fast as I can, but she's always there... She nearly got me tonight. I stopped to catch my breath, and I accidentally fell asleep standing up. Why is it that after all these years of sleeping in beds and laying down, ponies still can do that? IT NEARLY KILLED ME!

I woke up, and it was pitch black, though my eyes had adjusted enough to give me a faint outline of the trees. Not even Luna's moon could pierce the foliage... And it didn't take me long to figure out what had happened. When I realized I had fallen asleep, I cursed myself for my carelessness...

And there was a hissing from the bushes.

SHE WAS RIGHT THERE!





Your body froze as the sound slipped through the darkness, and you knew that you were as good as dead. In fact, you wished then and there that you could just be stricken dead on the spot. It would surely be less painful than what she would do to you.

Regardless, this isn't the time for waiting on miracles... I'm going to have to make my own. Painstakingly slowly, you reach back and pull your knife from your bag. In your mind, you try to think of what it could possibly do for you. It's a large knife, with a wide blade, typically one that you saved for trips where you would need to be traveling though thick foliage. Many ponies had told you that it was meant to be a combat knife, but you had always brushed off the comment with the fact that it was meant for whatever you choose.

I guess they were right... Well, no use letting her get the advantage of surprise. I'm going to have to start this... Taking a deep breath, you turn to face the source of the hissing.

"I- I know you're there! Come on and face me!" You can barely speak with your throat closing in fear, but you manage to choke out the words. The confidence of the words, no matter how poorly the voice may have conveyed it, gives you courage.

Another hiss came from the bush, and there was a sudden flash of blood-red light, painfully blinding you. You throw up your hoof in surprise, trying to shield your eyes. There is another scream like the one your heard in the cave, and a massive weight suddenly throws you to the ground, pressing down on the hoof holding the knife with near-unbearable force. Laying on your back and fighting blindly for your life, waves of disgustingly hot, sticky breath wash over you, filling your nostrils with the stench of all of her past meals, making you want to retch and scream. As your vision returns, you almost wish that it hadn't.

The force bearing down on your knife-holding hoof is definitely Whipstitch, though not from her hoof or even one of the extra legs that she created entirely from her hair. In her attempt to lunge for your throat, she had caught the knife in her mouth, and is now desperately trying to work her way around it to get at you. Flecks of disgusting spit fly out with her disgusting breath, and droplets of venom drip onto your cheeks from her fangs, already eager to destroy your body from the inside out. The tiny piece of metal was all that had saved your life, and you are still in danger. She is screaming at you as her teeth grind against the metal blade, and the harsh whinny-scream is almost enough to make you panic and lose your grip on the knife. Her face is even more horrifying up close, her black eyes showing no trace of humanity and her feral lunges at you revealing only one goal: to kill and devour you. Instinctively, you know that you need to get out from underneath her before she begins stabbing at you with her other legs, and you tilt the blade to one side while rolling in the other. Her sharpened fangs slide along the blade, pushing her head to the side. As her face reaches the tip, you feel the blade slice through her skin as the force of her attacks drives her forward and slams her head against the ground. The roll carries you between her lengthened legs, but the maneuver proves to be unnecessary as her headbutting the ground leaves her stunned.

You lay there for a moment as the shock of your near-death sets in, and the fact that you were victorious settles like dust after a gust of wind. Slowly, you stand up, your hooves barely supporting you. You stand still for a moment, unsure if you can walk in your current state. A low growl gurgled out from Whipstitch as the effects of the impact already began to fade.

Suddenly, you can run a lot faster, and disappear into the trees, praying that she can't come fully to her senses before you've put some distance between the two of you.





Day Five?

I'm slipping away... So long without sleep.

I can hardly run in a straight line... I can't hold any kind of magical construct together, not even my sword. In this state, she would bite straight through it, anyway.

Whipstitch usually doesn't come back from Everfree for a week. That means two more days of running at most. I already know I can't do it. Every time I stop for breath, I start to fall asleep. All I can do is keep walking, and run when I can. I can't count how many times I've vomited, but I haven't had the chance to eat. Dehydration is setting in, and I'm having dizzy spells that drive me to the ground and coughing fits that stop me in my tracks... My throat is raw, my hooves are in constant pain, and I think that I'm going to die out here... Whipstitch is just making sure that I can't fight back. The wound to her face seems to have convinced her that I'm not to be openly attacked.

A few days ago, I saw a flickering red light, and I started to walk towards it... It looked like a fire, as if somepony else were out here, and I could finally find help... I nearly fell into her trap. I was lucky, since an unfortunate cockatrice decided to try first. She was there, and she stabbed its tail like an hors d'oeuvre and drew it in. I ran from the sound of snapping bones and the tearing of flesh... I broke down and wept as I ran away, the hope of any kind of help has been ripped away from me... I'm either leaving this forest alone or not at all...

Training to be a guard didn't prepare me for this... I guess it's karma, since I didn't take the job...





You stumble over a root protruding from the ground, finally falling in a heap after running for only Luna-knows-how-long. Tiredness sets in, and you take a moment to rest, your spirits broken. No matter how far you seem to run, you can't seem to find your way out of the forest. You're trapped with a creature out of a nightmare following you, waiting for an opportunity to wrap you up and eat you alive, and you've finally lost. This was the first adventure to ever outlast your ability to walk, but you feel as if you can't get up. Whipstitch's hissing begins to come from behind you, and you wonder if you could go just a little farther, as futile as the efforts may be. Just a few more meters, just for the knowledge that you could have done no more as you die.

No... There's no point in continuing the suffering... You think to yourself as you roll onto your back, no longer willing to fight. I can't make it out of here... I've got to learn to admit when I've finally been beaten.

You watch the monster finally emerge and approach you, a smug, toothy grin lighting up her face as she looks down on her victory. You only pray that it will be quick.

Raising her foreleg, she brings her scythe-like appendage into the air, then swings it down into your chest. Your eyes widen with the shock and agonizing pain as flesh and bone give way, and the legs sinks through your chest and into the ground below you. The world almost instantly fades to black, with her twisted, bloody smile being the last thing you see.

In spite of the injury to her mouth, Whipstitch still uses her fangs and pointed legs to disembowel your body, eviscerating you and tearing the meat from your bones. Blood flows out from your veins and down her throat, quenching her thirst, albeit momentarily. The smaller of her eight legs pick away at your carcass, scrounging for every last shred of meat. You are left as only another set of shattered bones and a bloody smear in the Everfree forest.

THIS IS MY NIGHTMARE. EVERY HOUR, SPENT IMAGINING THIS. THIS IS WHY I KEPT WALKING, CONTINUED TO RUN. For the real ending, continue on to page 37...









Eclipse balked at the disgusting ending. Flipping through the few pages between the ending and the "real ending," he found sets of sketches, each one detailing the terrifying spider creature. He looked up at the statue of his brother, contemplating waving the drawings in from of his eyes. Shaking his head, he turned from page to page. The pony was obviously no artist, but the images were still startling.

Finally, he turned to the last page, the true ending to Pennington's story.

"After all, he obviously didn't die..." Eclipse muttered to himself. "Unless the other Pennington decided to kill him off and bring him back to life somehow... Stupidly overused literary device." He took a moment, then shook his head. "Guess I should leave the fourth wall intact, shouldn't I?"

It's too late for that.

Not waiting for the total destruction of the boundary between author and character, Eclipse began to read from the last page.











Whipstitch's hissing begins to come from behind you, and you wonder if you could go just a little farther, as futile as the efforts may be. Just a few more meters, just for the knowledge that you could have done no more as you die.

I'm not going to give up... I'm going to keep going until my body refuses to go any further. Let it never be said that Daring Do died giving up!

You try to rise to your hooves, standing on shaking knees. You take careful steps, making sure not to fall again. You know that if you fall, you won't get up again.

You step through the bushes, refusing to give in to the temptation to lean against the bush and rest again. As you step through, you spot a figure in the semi-darkness. You hesitate for a moment, trying to understand whether or not it was Whipstitch. As you step forward again, the figure becomes clearer, and you can make out a zebra's stripes.

"Is- is it you?" You call out to the figure, remembering the mystic that had greeted you on your way into the forest. "Please! Please! Help me!"





There was a short break in the writing, followed by a note from Pennington.

Will rewrite this as Daring later... Just need to experience the happy ending for myself again. No filters.

Eclipse nodded quietly to himself. Pennington had seemingly wanted to finish the story in the proper tense, but sometimes one's mental well-being had to come first.






Even as I saw Zecora's familiar face, Whipstitch seemed to realize that her patience was about to lose her a meal. I felt a few wisps of hair wrap around my back ankle, tighten their grip, and yank me backwards. As I fell to the ground, I began to desperately scramble forwards towards Zecora, screaming hysterically.

"Zecora, help! Please, she's going to EAT ME!" I shouted, trying to pull myself forward along the ground. Now, when my fate seemed inevitable and I was no longer completely alone, I finally lost complete control of myself, reduced to a quivering pile of pleas for help. I'd been completely destroyed, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Finally, the fear had forced me to cave in and crumble under the pressure.

Zecora didn't waste any time, dropping the basket of herbs she'd collected and running forward, grabbing my hoof and yanking me forward with more strength than I had left in my entire body. She didn't ask any questions as she pulled me to safety, only grunting with the effort.

With another horrendous scream, Whipstitch finally revealed herself in her entirety, leaping from the bushes and staring down this new opponent. Zecora only stared in return, sizing up the creature in front of her.

"I hate to face such a frightening beast, but this night, I shall deny your feast!" She glared as she reached into her saddlebags. Whipstitch gave a feral roar in return, beginning to advance. Without so much as flinching, Zecora threw her hoof downward. Whatever she had been holding created a small explosion, sending a column of flame up into the air between them. Giving her gut-wrenching scream, Whipstitch reared back, obviously as startled by the flames as any other wild animal. As I watched, Zecora smiled and reached into her bag yet again, not even needing to look at what she was doing. Just as the flames were beginning to fall and fade, Zecora took a deep breath and blew on the contents of her hoof, sending a cloud of shimmering green dust into the air.

"A spider you may seem, or perhaps a bad dream, but you need to be wary! For I can be quite scary..." Even as she spoke, the cloud began to move of its own accord, growing and flowing around Whipstitch. Whipstitch hissed at the smoke, obviously trying to understand what was going on.

"To attack my friend was quite a mistake! When angered, I can be quite the snake..." At her word, the cloud formed the image of a gigantic cobra, curled around Whipstitch and poised to attack. glaring at the conjured illusion, Whipstitch stabbed at the creature's body, her leg simply passing through. After a moment of confusion, Whipstitch smiled and looked back at Zecora, taking a confident step forward, her leg barely brushing against the ring formed by the body of the snake.

"What, do you think that I am through? That was only step one, now this is step two!" Stamping her hoof again, another explosion rose up from the ground, this time from beneath where the snake was reared up. The effect that followed was both powerful and shocking. The green dust caught alight, and the cobra burst into flame, the fire traveling down its length and creating a flaming apparition. Whipstitch's black eyes grew wide with fright, and she stumbled backwards, retreating back into the forest. Zecora snickered as Whipstitch disappeared, and the snake slowly burnt itself out.

"Now then, dear Pennington, let's get you inside! You look as if you have almost died!" She offered me a hoof, helping me to stand. Finally having support, I leaned on her shoulder, unable to even hold my own weight. "I believe that I have just the cure... Hot cider and a warm bed will help, for sure!"

Zecora never asked me any questions other than what she needed to know to treat me, and chastised me only lightly for being in Everfree on Nightmare Night. Regardless, I told her everything, if only to simply stop myself from going insane.

TO THE READER: YOU MUST NEVER ENTER THE EVERFREE FOREST ON NIGHTMARE NIGHT, OR FOR THE FOLLOWING WEEK.










Eclipse set the papers down, quietly pondering what he had read. As the moon passed overhead, he thought long and hard. The fact that Whipstitch was already naturally so powerful was shocking, but even more shocking was the fact that she bore such a resemblance to her ancestor, Threadmane. Leaning back and closing his eyes, Eclipse let out a long sigh, remembering ages past. After a few minutes, the silence was broken.

"I thought I'd find you out here!" A familiar voice chimed. As Eclipse opened his eyes, he saw Luna floating down in front of him. She gave him a smile as she landed next to him, sitting down and leaning against the hedge wall opposite him. In spite of her smile, Eclipse knew that she still didn't trust Discord, even in his statue form. "Why is it that every time you go missing, we find you out here?"

"I don't know, why do you think that Celestia used to spend so much time staring at the moon?" He replied. "It's one of the places I can be alone without losing my brother's company..."

Luna's smile immediately dropped as she realized the implication to her own banishment. Eclipse shook his head, trying to banish the sudden sharpness of his attitude.

I'm sorry, Luna. That was kind of mean... I guess I'm still trying to adjust to not being able to see him each night..." He shook his head as memories of Discord manipulating his dreams resurfaced. At one point, he had even managed to turn Eclipse against the two sisters with his slippery tongue.

"No, I understand! It wasn't very long ago that we severed the connection he was using to trick you, after all... Deceiving or not, he's still your brother, and now you don't have any way to talk to him again." She nodded. "How could I not expect you to be hurt?"

Eclipse nodded, picking up the papers again to look at the sketches that Pennington had drawn.

"What's that?" Luna asked, standing up and walking over to him. She sat down at the base of the statue. Eclipse took a moment to look at her, then at Discord's statue, then back at her. She rolled her eyes.

"With you around, I trust that you would tell me if he was up to something..."

Eclipse smiled, then nodded. It had been such a short time since the princesses had taken him in from the Everfree forest, it was easy for him to forget that he was one of the members of their "family" now, which included trust.

"It's one of Pennington's unpublished works: a horror story that he once lived through." He tilted the page for Luna to see the current illustration, from which she recoiled in surprise.

"I've- I've never seen anything like it..."

"Yes, she certainly is unique."

"No, I mean, if Pennington encountered this thing, he should have told me!" Luna looked down in thought, then moved to examine the manuscript, herself. "He's supposed to send me a report on every dangerous creature he meets as part of his studies..." To her surprise, the draconequus held the text at arm's length away from her. With a snap of his fingers, the papers disappeared.

"Eclipse! What was that for?"

"He didn't send this to you with good reason, Luna. He's been sworn to secrecy over this, and he's already broken that oath once by revealing it to me! You can ask him about it yourself, but... It's not just about his experiences. It's a part of somepony's life that he can't just give away willy-nilly..." As he spoke, Luna's indignant expression faded to one of respectful curiosity. She quietly nodded, sitting back again. The two sat in silence for several minutes, each wrapped up in their own thoughts. After several minutes, he broke the silence.

"Luna, do you believe that anyone can be given a second chance?" He asked quietly, voice barely above a whisper.

Luna seemed surprised for a moment, turning to look at him, then looked back up at the night sky. "Well, I certainly got mine, didn't I? It took me a thousand years, but... even Nightmare Moon can be forgiven, I guess... But Eclipse, the last time I checked, Discord wasn't exactly ready to turn over a new leaf-"

"It's not about Discord, it's about me." Eclipse didn't even turn when he spoke. "There was somepony who was my friend a very long time ago... She trusted me, and we were close friends... But then, I accidentally destroyed a life that was precious to her, and she hated me until the day that she died..." He took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears. "It wasn't my fault, Discord tricked me, but... I turned her best friend into a monster. She never forgave me..."

"Now, I feel like I found her again, and it's like she's seeing me for the first time. I can never help the first victim, she's long gone, but... This pony feels like she could be my only chance at making something right after all of these years." He finally turned to look at Luna, the tears having silently broken free and rolling down his cheeks. "Do you think that it's really possible it could be her all over again?"

Luna stopped, staring at him with a mix of curiosity and pity. Slowly, the dark princess put her hooves on his shoulders, then pulled him into a tight hug.

"It's never too late to ask for forgiveness, Eclipse... If there's one thing I know, it's that there's no "due by" date for an apology, just so long as it's sincere..."

The two immortals remained in the embrace for a number of minutes, and once again, Eclipse knew that, when forced to choose between his brother and the two princesses, he had made the right choice.