I feel that I may now know what Tartarus feels like. It isn’t the burning of flames or the torture of whips and chains for eternity; it is the horror of seeing your failures before you, watching your own flesh and blood suffer even beyond death for your failures.
Kuleco will pay for what he has done here today, as will Rainbow Dash, Atmosphere, anypony who ever knew about the existence of that miserable factory and did nothing with their power to stop it will know every little bit of agony they have inflicted when I inflict it on them as a taste of what I will do to them.
…
But for now that will have to wait... I have a ghost to care for and a madstallion to make pay.
I don’t believe in luck myself but if it exists I will pray to it every night til the end of time for smiling on me today. I would say I’ll pray to Luna for her part but then I already do, and tonight showed me why I should always place my faith in the Princess of the Night.
I don’t know how she knew what was happening but she pretty much saved Scootaloo tonight from a fate even worse than death; I know she can’t see or hear Scootaloo like I can but she knows I am telling the truth, knows that Scootaloo, for better or worse, is still with us in some form.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so close to crying.
I don’t know what to do about Scoots now... what do I tell her? She’ll want answers, not just about tonight, but about her situation in general. Do I tell her what I know? Or do I have the right to withhold it now that I’m risking my life for her? Does that even matter when I’ve already failed to save her once? By Luna what kind of miserable excuse for a father am I?
Well I already know the answer to that don’t I?
I know how horrible of a father I am, one of my daughters dead and now not even that can stop her suffering, as she floats over her own grave after being tortured by a mad pony. Luna’s trying to revive her now but how consciousness works with ghosts is beyond me.
And somehow that wasn’t enough of a failure for me.
Because my other daughter somehow turns out even worse than her dear old Dad; like father, like daughter.
Not hard to say that I wish Rainbow Dash had been more like her mother.