The way was dark and cold. It lay beneath the land, Rainbow discovered. A hollow in the pitted surface of the earth, its mouth gaping as if to howl at the still stars above. Firefly, more eager than ever, crawled ahead of Rainbow, though the only awareness they had of each other was the sound of their shuffling and the occasional tickle of Rainbow’s nose by her companion’s tail. At times they had to slink along by their bellies, and at others they slid on stone as slick as ice.
After what seemed an eternity, they found themselves blinking as they rose to meet sunlight. Disoriented, Rainbow Dash realized that they had somehow reoriented so that they were passing upwards instead of down—or, perhaps, they had never changed at all, but the world had changed around them. With a rush, the two pegasi scrambled out of the hole.
Blinking and shielding their faces from the sudden change in lighting, they waited until their eyes adjusted before taking stock. Disappointingly, Rainbow realized that they had not seen the sun so much as an incredibly bright spotlight, mounted on what looked to be an enormous metal crane and pointed down at the ground where they were. The earth was strewn with trash so thickly that Rainbow seriously considered whether the entire world was made of it. Heaps of junk in metal and some tough, resinous substance clustered around them. Jars, loose bits of glass, and films of clear material shifted under their hooves. Above them, the sky was much as it had been on the other side—filled with unblinking stars and a bright moon. This time, though, rolling black clouds filled the horizon in one direction, and Rainbow’s ears perked to catch the sound of ocean waves.
Flying up to the top of one of the nearby mounds, they gazed about to find that they were on some vast shore, a sandy beach stretching for miles in either direction. Behind them, enormous buildings the likes of which they had never seen stood gutted and silent, steel girders exposed through crumbled and decaying walls. A road ran along the beach, black and pitted, strewn with more trash. The ocean tossed against the mounds, back and forth in a continuous roil of motion, and the storm clouds above the sea shuddered with distant flashes of light that became dull rumbles of thunder seconds later.
“What… is all this?” Rainbow asked after a moment, her mouth working feebly.
“From here on in, I’m as clueless as you are, Dash.”
Frowning down at the trash underfoot, Rainbow discovered that there were a few objects scattered here and there that resembled pages. Pushing a decaying piece of cardboard aside, she gently pulled up a glossy magazine, the cover mostly obscured. There was a unicorn on it—or something very much like one. She had a mane like Rainbow’s, and her face and body structure were overall similar, but her upraised hoof was cloven like a goat’s. Even her horn was strange, for it lacked a spiral and instead curved slightly, a smooth length that jutted from her forehead, and she wore a coat of spotted fur like a leopard’s.
Firefly tugged at her shoulder, pointing. Enormous signs faced the road, and in the flickering electric lights of one was a family of similar creatures, a slim mare and filly with a stallion. The dark-coated male had a familiar spiraled horn, but all three of them had strange long tails like lions, with long hair at the ends. Their cloven hooves were bare, and the husband and daughter’s fetlocks were shaggy and unshorn. All of them wore clothing, too. Staring along the length of the road, they saw other signs. Where they bore a pony at all, it was of one of these unicorns.
The wind howled. It carried in it the promise of snow and cold—a winter that would never end.
“Where’s that servant…?” Rainbow muttered, shivering.
“I think he vanished. We may be on our…” Firefly’s ears twitched. She turned her head left, alert. Rainbow frowned, cocking an ear to listen. A curious whine grew, and then deepened into a roar. Sharing a glance, the two of them leapt into cover behind a huge frame of twisted metal. More whines built up behind it, and they watched as the source of the first noise came into view.
A garishly red-painted vehicle flew down the highway, its heavy rubber tires bouncing as it encountered pits. The driver of the thing must have been mad, for the vehicle careened wildly as it navigated the thickly strewn street, running over whatever it could and barely missing what it could not. As it came closer, Rainbow stared, for it seemed to have no driver at all—it was too compact for any normal pony, certainly, with a shaped body that gave it an equinomorphic appearance. Almost as if someone had gone and made some weird cross of a motorized vehicle and a pony, with tires in place of legs. The other sounds resolved into more shapes. They were equally garishly painted monstrosities, two on the ground and two more flying on what looked like jets of fire, racing after the fleeing red one.
One of the blue ground vehicles leapt forward, ramping off a broken piece of road to cut the red one off, but rather than merely stop, the red one spun and skid so that it rammed its heavy side into the blue car. There was a thunderous crash and the blue vehicle flew up, its side crumpled in. Still, this was enough of a delay that the other three vehicles caught up. The remaining pursuer on the ground took higher ground and leveled headlights down at the red one, while the two aerial machines circled, presenting long tubes.
The red vehicle gave an angry-sounding rumble, almost like a snort, and rotated its tires down to rise on them as if they were hooves, lifting its equine head defiantly.
“End of line for you, Crimson Charger,” a droning voice announced from the sky. “Better hope there’s a heaven for circuit boards.”
“Bite me!” Crimson Charger shouted back in a voice that was at once powerful and yet oddly feminine.
Rainbow Dash and Firefly exchanged another glance.
“Get involved?” Firefly asked.
Rainbow kicked off the ground. “Already moving, slowpoke.”
Rising up like a streak of lightning, Rainbow Dash spun and put all of her weight into a massive buck, aimed squarely at one of the jets holding the airborne machine in place. With a massive shriek it snapped away, only held in place by a thin strut and a ribbed cable. The machine’s other jets roared, overcompensating, and the whole thing spun off, trailing smoke, until it crashed into a nearby building and erupted in a gout of flame. Firefly acted even more aggressively, reaching for the camera on top of the device and tearing it clean off, trailing wires that sparked. The now-headless craft gave a sputter and fell with a heavy thud.
“What—!” The blue ground vehicle spun, turning long tubes up, but the pegasi were already moving. Fire spouted from it in loud barks, and Rainbow heard something small and fast whiz by her.
One of the tiny things struck the junk pile under her and hot shards of metal pierced her belly. Holding in a gasp of pain, she kept flying even as her coat stained with red. Almost as soon as it began, though, it was over. The red pony-like machine leapt from its position and landed with devastating effect, smashing the front of the aggressor vehicle. With heavy blows of its tire-hooves, it smashed the rest of it up until the blue vehicle lay still.
“Rainbow!” Firefly darted to her side, supporting her as they descended to the ground. Rainbow winced, trying not to move as Firefly laid her on her side. It stung, certainly, but she had been injured enough times in flying mishaps to know an injury could be a lot worse than it felt.
“How bad is it?” she asked, craning her neck around for a look.
Firefly shoved her head back down, examining her. “I don’t think any of these have gone deep. Shards of metal and that weird waxy resin stuff. Damn it—I should have been the one to go out there. We can’t risk you going nuts because some crazy contraption ‘killed’ you here.”
Rainbow shook her head. “I’m not abandoning you.”
“This is bigger than you or…” Firefly sighed. “Nevermind. Why do I bother? Your head is as thick as mine is.”
“Darned right.” Rainbow muttered. She lifted her head again as a shadow fell over them. The strange pony-machine gazed down at them with its shiny eyes, a light falling over them.
“She’s hurt,” Crimson said in her deep, scratchy voice. A note of wonder crept in. “Real, live unicorns… I never thought I’d see that again.”
Firefly bristled, but didn’t correct Crimson on her choice of nomenclature. “Is there anything like a medicine kit around here?”
“There is… a reasonably functional medical facility. I can take her there.” Crimson turned around, rotating her hooves back into tires and lowering her back end.
Firefly quirked her eyebrows.
Crimson turned her head. “It’s fine. I’ll drive carefully.”
Sighing, Firefly helped Rainbow to stand and moved her onto the flat, red-painted back. Rainbow felt as though she could have moved on her own, but she didn’t complain—one good twist and she could tear the shrapnel through something important. The last thing I want to do is experiment with the Deeper Dream’s laws on injury, thank you very much.
With a more gentle rumble, Crimson Charger started down the road again. She took care to avoid the pits in the road, and found a good clip once they moved beyond the junk piles. They were moving along surprisingly fast—almost as fast as some of the more average pegasi. The dead moonlit landscape around them flowed by to either side, vanishing into gray hills in one direction and more of the tall, empty buildings.
“So, uh…” Rainbow said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what exactly are you?”
“Never seen a Model-1186 before?” Crimson asked, keeping her gaze on the road ahead. “I guess we were pretty new towards the end there.”
Rainbow blinked. “Sure. Right. But do you have, like… a brain plugged in somewhere?”
“Me? Just a processing core.” Crimson chuckled.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about Them, do you?” Firefly asked.
“Them who?”
“You know… Them.” Firefly wriggled her hooves. “Eerie, shadowy interlopers in time and space.”
“Can’t say that I do. You might try asking the Oracle.”
Firefly tapped her hoof against Crimson’s back, frowning. “Where can we find it?”
“Where we’re going,” Crimson said. “Look ahead.”
Rainbow craned her neck around. She beheld a city which, once upon a time, may have been beautiful. Great walls encircled a number of tall buildings in something like stone, but that Rainbow Dash suspected was clearly not. All of it was severely corroded and pitted, trailing streaks of black like dried blood until the whole thing was stained and a bleak grey and muddy brown. A shattered glass dome capped it, the jagged edges reaching for the sky.
“Ever visit?” Crimson asked in a wistful tone. “Used to be lovely back in the day. Controlled climate. Fully automated defense grid. Great places for a robot to hang out. Me and the girls thought it’d last a lot longer.”
“What… what happened to it?” Rainbow asked.
Crimson slowed, turning her head to glance at them before facing forward again and picking up speed. “You two definitely need to talk to the Oracle. I’m starting to get the feeling I’m in over my circuits—never did see many winged unicorns, come to think of it.” She paused. “Particularly not ones without horns or weird tails.”
Firefly flicked her tail, turning to examine it. “Hmph. So… if you don’t mind me asking, why were those other machines after you?”
Crimson charger snorted with a rumble of exhaust. “Politics, I guess you could say. I think it’s stupid, but there’s been groups banding up all over the countryside recently. They view anyone who doesn’t join up as a potential threat.” She rode in silence for a moment. “The ones you met are particularly aggressive. I almost think someone might be behind that—maybe I’ll have a few questions for the Oracle myself.”
Rainbow looked up at Firefly, quirking a brow, pitching her voice low. “Just what kind of weird dream is this?”
Firefly shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m finding it hard to care all that much about what goes on here—seems like a distraction from our purpose.”
“Have you noticed there don’t seem to be any Lost?”
Firefly eyed the area around them as they passed. “Yeah. I’ve been looking, but there hasn’t been anything since we arrived. Crimson and the others seem to be… well, part of the world.”
“That undead queen did tell us to come down here, though.” Rainbow frowned. “Do you think she misled us?”
Firefly shook her head. “I think we’ll find our answers here.” She pushed Rainbow’s head down. “Get some rest, Dashie.”
They rode in silence from that point on, passing up a ramp and into a gaping tunnel mouth. In front of the tunnel reared the statue of a powerful unicorn stallion, a forehoof pointing towards the sky in what seemed to Rainbow Dash a vague approximation of someone pointing the way into the future. Crimson Charger’s headlights revealed more billboards. What few lights survived were only enough to provide a dim, eerie sort of illumination, filling the place with a mess of conflicting shadows that teased more than they revealed. Every so often a skittering thing of metal vanished out of sight, fleeing from Crimson’s presence just as the light touched them.
Rather than leave the tunnel and go into the open, crumbling city, Crimson turned them down another, smaller tunnel, where glowing green crosses burned softly in the walls. She mounted the stairs carefully and ducked her head under a doorway, with broken glass crunching under her tires. Vaguely, Rainbow discerned that they were in a hospital of some sort—something about the smooth antiseptic white surfaces put that impression in mind. Ponyville’s hospital had used greens extensively, but these strange ancient unicorns seemed to have preferred another hue.
Though it was a tight squeeze, Crimson managed to narrow her profile enough to take them through a small hallway to a circular room lined with strange pods, each one fronted with a glass lid. Most of them were broken, but two seemed reasonably intact, with blinking lights on the side.
Crimson lowered her back. “Just slide into one of those. I’ll turn it on,” she said, her voice box rumbling.
Firefly nodded, helping to lever Rainbow in. After a bit of cautious wriggling they found grooves for her to slot her legs into—the one for her tail proved unnecessary. Crimson reached past them with a little metal limb that extended from her torso and touched a control. The lid slid down over Rainbow Dash, clasps held her legs and body immobile, and she yelped as a burst of cold air hit her, then a line of red light passed over her entire body. Tiny arms articulated out from the device, and Rainbow watched in horrified fascination as they went to work. A spray numbed her belly, and then fine-tooled hands removed the little pieces of shrapnel and started cleaning up the interior of the gashes. Another set sewed the cuts shut, then another sprayer laid a layer of foam over that. It sat for a minute, then was washed off by yet another hand, leaving only a thin line of scars she could barely see through her blue coat.
If it weren’t for the fact that I’m going to wake up without a scratch on me, that might have been very helpful.
With a gentle hiss, the lid lifted and the clasps released. Tenderly, she touched her belly, then worked her torso—a little sore, perhaps, but she felt fine.
Crimson eyed the blinking lights for a moment. “You’re good to go; no organ damage.”
“Great!” Rainbow hopped out, hovering beside her.
Crimson stared. Rainbow had no idea a machine could look startled before that moment. “How are you… flying like that? How can you hover while barely moving those tiny wings?”
“Long story,” Firefly said. “We should get to this Oracle.”
“Right…” Crimson shook her head, carefully reversing the way she came. “She’s not far. This way.”
“Is she in the hospital?” Rainbow asked as she followed along.
“Sort of. The hospital is part of a larger complex within the walls.” Crimson stopped at the foyer, then took another route. It was a very short trip—Firefly and Rainbow Dash hovered to avoid broken glass on the floor as they passed from the white of the hospital to a dark gray and black walkway. Below, a low pall of smoke hung over broken pipes and exposed, sparking wires. A little centipede-like machine fiddled with an open fuse box.
Crimson rolled to a stop ahead, and the pegasi landed next to her. The room here was filled with glass screens mounted in black boxes, including one enormous pane that stood over a desk of blinking lights and push buttons. There were other, smaller desks, but they had exposed and missing parts that suggested cannibalization. With what could only be described as hesitation, Crimson lowered one of her articulated metal arms and pressed a large, shiny red button.
White static filled the monitors, one by one, spiraling in until the large one flickered and lit up as well, shining white light down onto the group. Behind the monitors, in what had seemed empty space, rows of towers lit up. Each pillar had a great many cylinders of frosted glass encircling them, each connected by a mess of cables and wires. Some were dark, broken and empty, but most of them lit with an eerie blue glow that was more than a little reminiscent of the undead queen’s fires.
One at a time, the static faded to show unicorns. Mares, stallions, even foals, they clustered around, seeming to jump from one monitor to the other to watch. The great central screen was the last to fade in, and when it did they found themselves looking at an elegant mare with a pale blue coat, her mane and tail an electric blue that reminded Rainbow more than a little of Vinyl Scratch’s, though hers was long and brushed rather than wild.
The Oracle stared down at them, her eyes flickering first from Crimson, to Firefly, to Rainbow, and then back to Crimson. “Charger. Crimson Charger,” she said, her voice seeming to come from all around, issuing forth from speakers mounted around the observation platform. “Have you come with more questions? What are these… people you have brought with you?”
“Oracle.” Crimson Charger bent her upper body. “They saved me from attack earlier. The rainbow one—uhm, just realize I don’t know your names.”
“Rainbow Dash.”
“Firefly.”
“Right. Rainbow Dash here—”
“Strange name. What is she, a new model robot?” a stallion’s voice interrupted.
“I like her tail,” a filly giggled, pressing closer to one of the screens. “It must take you forever to dye it right.”
Rainbow snorted. “All natural, thank you.”
“How are they flying like—”
“Enough.” Oracle stamped a hoof. “Crimson Charger; continue.”
Crimson chuffed exhaust. “Right. As I was saying, Rainbow Dash here even got injured during the fight. I took her to get patched up and brought them here. They had questions I couldn’t answer, and I felt I owed them.”
The Oracle put her forehooves together, gazing down at them with a stern mask. “Do you two come from the Eastern Coalition? Perhaps some sort of genetic experiment gone terribly wrong?”
“Hey!” Rainbow said. “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds rude!”
“Down, girl,” Firefly hissed. She raised her voice. “We don’t come from anywhere around here. I am Lost, and Rainbow Dash here is my dreamer.”
Silence greeted them. Crimson Charger tilted her head, but remained silent as well.
Firefly flew closer to the center screen. “You know what we’re talking about, don’t you? About Them, about how the world changes out from under you.”
The Oracle’s eyes narrowed. “I suspect that if we printed out what I know and what you know, your tiny notecard would be lost among a mountain of paper.”
Dash burst up, excited, but held her tongue. Something about the way she said that… “What happened to your world? It… it didn’t happen the same way it did to us, did it?”
“Tiny changes, accumulating over thousands of years to reach an unrecognizable result?” The Oracle lifted a brow. “No.”
“How did it happen, then?” Firefly asked.
“With a bang,” Crimson Charger said quietly.
“Succinct,” the Oracle agreed. “It hardly captures the fullness of the problem, of course. I’d say it ended with hubris.”
A chill ran down Rainbow Dash’s spine. “You knew about Them, didn’t you? Even before it all ended, before you sank into the Dream.”
“Oh, very nicely intuited, Miss Rainbow Dash,” the posh stallion from earlier said. “We didn’t call them—ahem—Them by that name, though.”
Rainbow gaped for a moment, staring at the tiny screen.
“Such a colorful term, really.” The stallion peered through, flicking his long tail avidly. “Which one of you fine mares came up with it?”
Firefly lifted her hoof. “I popularized it. It was… a sort of epithet among the other Lost. When you said Them, everypony knew what you meant.”
The filly giggled, peering at them through the tangles of her blond mane. “‘Everypony?’ Wow, that is just—adorable! Do you say ‘anypony’ as well? How about ‘somepony?’”
“So, wait…” asked Rainbow. She turned around to look at the monitors crowding about. “None of you are Lost?”
“Not as you might define it,” the Oracle said. “As you may have surmised, we had a very different relationship with the Entelecheia than you did.”
Rainbow blinked. “The entela-what now?”
“En-tel-uh-kay-uh,” the filly said. “It means realization, actuality as opposed to potentiality.”
“I am equally confused.”
The Oracle waved a hoof. “The Entelecheia, or Them if you prefer, are something akin to an editing staff. The universe is filled with transcription errors, and it is Their purpose to correct them. The notion of being fully realized as opposed to being potentially realized is a complicated one that would take all day to explain. Think of it as not unlike the difference between being able to see a thing done and being able to perform an act, only on a metaphysical label. One merely touches, the other alters.”
“So.” Firefly sat down. “Where did it all go wrong? I’m assuming there’s a point where that happened, because somehow I don’t think you all chose this existence willingly.”
The Oracle eyed her for a moment, then shifted in her seat to rise. “Others have come here before from higher up, seeking answers. Why should I take the time? I have a vast swath of territory to administer to, and, while some of us may feel the desire to be idle and entertain their curiosity—” she shot a glare towards the other monitors “—this world, though it may be a dream, is real enough to be threatening.”
“Because we can end it,” Firefly said. “We can end the whole thing.”
“So confidently spoken for one who ought to be a pale shadow clinging to the dust.”
“I didn’t merely hear it from the Lost, I heard it from Them. I’ve heard your Entelecheia whispering in the dark corners of time and space. They’re confused, disoriented, and They say more than They mean to.”
The Oracle turned her nose up, glaring down at Firefly. “And what have you heard, little one?”
“That the Book can be rewritten, that ponies such as myself can be reincorporated, that the world doesn’t need to run to Their needs.” Firefly lifted her head to stare back at the Oracle. “All we need to do is insert someone real into Their world.”
“And you, Rainbow Dash,” the Oracle said as she turned her head to Rainbow, “are willing to risk this, even knowing Their power to unmake your very being?”
Rainbow nodded. “I’ve made my peace with it. They hurt me, They changed my life and the lives of the ponies I’m closest to.” She looked into the Oracle’s eyes and kept them. “I can’t stand by and let everyone everywhere keep suffering the way that they are.”
A voice in the crowd snorted. “Suffering is the default state of existence.”
“Yeah, well, that didn’t stop you all from building machines to heal injuries, did—”
The Oracle held up her hoof. “Peace, Rainbow Dash. You, too, back there.” She lowered it and shook her head. “I wanted to assess how serious you were about this endeavor. I see now that you are committed, regardless of the consequences.”
She trotted away from her chair, and the viewpoint followed her, watching as her horn lit up at the tip with a spark. There was a rumbling from up above, and then one of the frosted glass tubes lowered into the center of the room. Images appeared around it, flybys of pristine countryside marked by dramatic mountain vistas and deep, rich waters. One flew over what Rainbow guessed to be the city they had passed through, for she could see a gleaming white citadel in the distance, surmounted by a dome that contained its own clouds.
“This was our world, before the end,” the Oracle said. “The unicorn race lived in happiness and prosperity. After thousands of years of strife and struggle, we had achieved what appeared to be an everlasting peace.” Images of the strange pre-Equestrian unicorns appeared, their horns lighting as they walked. “The key to this was new magic, which could pull objects seemingly out of nowhere at all. The most skilled became venerated artisans, and we created new mechanical servants such as Crimson Charger and her ilk to relieve us of the burden of labor in constructing our new society.”
Crimson shifted on her tires. She had the look of someone who wanted to stay well out of this conversation, moving to a corner.
Rainbow watched the images go by, frowning up at the Oracle. “Objects out of nothing? The Entele—uhm. Them?”
“Precisely. This all was made possible by the efforts of a few unicorns. There was myself and certain of my colleagues around the world, but all of our efforts would have been for naught if not for the input provided by Hawa.”
An image appeared in front of them, revealing a slender, pretty young unicorn mare. What really caught Rainbow’s attention, though, was the color of her mane and tufted tail—a smooth progression of prismatic color from pale red to bright blue. It wasn’t rigidly segmented like her own hair, but Rainbow still tugged her own tail forward to compare the hues.
Firefly, her own eyes widening, looked to Rainbow Dash and then up to the Oracle. “You aren’t helping us out of simple conviction, are you…?”
The Oracle smiled. “Mmm, well, I wasn’t lying when I said I needed to see how convicted you are. As for what it means, I haven’t the faintest idea. Perhaps you can tell me, if you succeed.”
“What did Hawa do?” Rainbow Dash asked. Her throat felt dry. She tried to get a better look at the mare’s eye color—her coat was a soft green, but her eyes were hard to discern.
“She told us about the Entelecheia.” The Oracle flipped through images—a lecture hall filled with unicorns, a lab filled with equipment Twilight would be envious of, Hawa pulling blocks of iron out of thin air. “She taught us how to contact Them, how to seek their aid in meeting our needs. I developed the coded signals that would allow complex requests to be sent. My other colleagues—Dantalion, Marcosius, Astaroth, Belial, others—devised spells and new commands, increasing our control and repertoire of choices.”
“I think I see where this is going,” Firefly muttered. “Hubris, huh?”
“Distressingly correct,” the stallion said and sighed. “It started small, of course.”
The filly scrunched her face up. “Then it got big.” She put her hooves together and blew them apart with a little puff of air.
The Oracle added new images. Piles of discards mounting in the cities. “Problems of overproduction were the first issue. Then we started asking the Entelecheia to remove them. As our control over Them increased, so too did our grasp. We moved from being able to create and destroy objects to altering them. Oh, no one was very good at it at first, but how long did it take us to progress from altering atomic particles to affecting small objects?” A animation played of an apple being turned into a kitten.
“How long did it take us to move from that to affecting other unicorns?”
Rainbow swallowed.
“And, then, how long until the world itself came under our grasp?”
The silence held for a moment.
“As it turned out… not long. Not long at all. But, nor did we really have a chance to appreciate it. One night, when I was running around trying to glue the world back together and rebottle the monstrosity I had helped to create, it all ended. My instruments were ringing like mad—something truly terrible had happened. The planet was off course. Somehow, someone had tried to tinker with it, and we were careening towards the sun, entirely off-orbit. Then, in my next blink, it was over.” The Oracle stamped a hoof. “Just gone.”
Firefly perked her ears. “They—I mean, the Entelecheia—didn’t appear and take you down?”
The Oracle shook her head. “No. One moment we were alive, the next we were cast away. The entire world, started over from scratch.” She glanced off at nothing in particular. “We’ve heard from your Lost about how the world has changed. I finally understood what had happened—the Entelecheia took from our world a small portion of people and shaped them, changing them into different species and erasing their memories. You may even know some of them.”
New images were projected into the air. There was a gray-haired unicorn stallion with a goat-like beard and a cocky grin. Two fillies played with Hawa, one with soft pink hair and the other as dark as night.
“But…” Rainbow looked down at herself. “What about the Elements? The Elements of Harmony…”
A wan smile crossed the Oracle’s lips. “Do you not see? Our world was regulated by strict physical laws. Even our ‘magic’ was a thing of direct and certain purpose.” She gestured around her. “Even if it were not for the Entelecheia, we would have inevitably have discovered another new power to exploit. In time, machines such as Crimson Charger may have become more intelligent than any unaided unicorn—we would have had to upgrade ourselves as well or be relegated to obsolescence.”
Her gaze fell across the monitors. The unicorns therein turned uncertain, shuffling their hooves. “It wouldn’t have been so bad, if we had been given the chance to plan it better,” the filly said quietly. “We deal with what we are dealt.”
“That we do.” The Oracle fixed her gaze on her guests once more. “Your world is different. It is held in tension between vast forces which are governed not solely by physical law, but by metaphysical dictates which are stronger still.” She moved the image of the two fillies forward, their happy faces unwitting. “Your magic, expressed through these two, regulates the very orbit of the celestial bodies. Friendship and harmony maintain the stability of your existence, and whenever pressure for change builds that is permitted—” the image of the grey-maned stallion shifted forward. Firefly’s lip curled “—and then the potential for excess in chaos and disaster is countered by the stalwart might of the forces responsible for maintaining it.”
“So…” Rainbow frowned. “These Entele-whatsits are responsible not only for your world ending, but for Discord, the princesses Celestia and Luna—”
“Princesses?” the Oracle asked with a note of surprise, and then smiled. “Mm. They would like that. It is always nice to know one’s children have moved up in the world. Pity poor Dantalion, though—a prankster he may have been, but that’s a far cry from a monster.”
Rainbow stared.
Firefly coughed. “That can’t be all, though. Every day—and every hour of the day—the Entelecheia are making changes.” She waved her hoof in a circle. “The world is in daily flux. How can it possibly be stable between these tensions as you claim?”
“I do not know. I am sorry—I see very far, and I have learned much, but I do not know everything.” She looked around at the others again, taking in the command center. “As for us? Well, perhaps to you this world seems real, until you realize that in it nothing grows. Oh, things die, and then they linger. Best just to destroy them and hope they no longer have the sense to realize anything has been done to them at that point.” She sighed, then, and weight seemed to catch up with her—though Rainbow Dash was beginning to suspect that the image projected had little to do with her present reality. “We’ve done what we can to survive here ever since.”
Rainbow Dash and Firefly remained silent for a time, quietly absorbing what they had been told. Finally, Firefly shook herself and step forward. “If you’ve contacted Them, you must know where the Door is.”
“I am sorry. I do not.”
“But there should be signs—”
“I know. I have tried. The Entelecheia did not affect our world as it did yours.” The Oracle lifted her head, looking at the two of them. “It’s not within my power, but it is within yours.”
Rainbow flicked her tail, glancing around. “What do you mean?”
“You can go where we cannot. There is a yet deeper layer to this outer world.”
Rainbow gagged. “Oh, no. How much further do we have to go?”
The Oracle quirked her head. “I confess that I may be wrong, but I dare say it will be the furthest you need to go. You see…” She brought up the image again. Her face had a kind, innocent cast to it that reminded Rainbow Dash of Fluttershy—someone who only wanted the best for everyone she met. “Hawa didn’t exist. Oh, she had a record and a family who claimed they knew her, but once I started working with the Entelecheia I was able to see the holes in her story. She knew nothing of our world when she first appeared on my doorstep.”
The Oracle rose up to her full height. “Go to her world, Rainbow Dash and Firefly. Find out where it all began.” She held out a hoof, her eyes softening. “I beg you—we beg you to save us, before we lose what little we have left.”
* * *
The landscape rolled away on either side as they sped along. Crimson Charger, no longer having to worry about Rainbow Dash’s condition, raced along at her full clip. She wasn’t as fast as either Rainbow Dash nor Firefly could be, but the two of them still had to work to keep up. Riding on her was out of the question—her body bounced and jolted heavily with every rock and pitfall under her tires.
Rainbow Dash looked over at Firefly, the wind of their passage whipping her hair. The storm from earlier was closer now, and it threatened the dead landscape with its terrible intensity. Thunder was a nearly continuous rolling rumble in the distance. “Firefly? Do you think we might be in over our heads?”
“Yes,” she said, keeping her eyes forward. “Doesn’t change anything, though.”
“Yeah…” Rainbow sighed. “I know. I’m worried that what we’re doing… it’s not so different from what this Hawa tried to do.”
“We want to end it, Rainbow. Close the Book.”
“Will it stop somepony from doing it again, though? What if some unicorn right now figures out a way to control Them like the Oracle back there did?”
Firefly shook her head. “We can’t worry about what might happen. What’s in front of us is the task of saving our world—all of our worlds—from further alteration. The Entelecheia, whatever they are, need to stop.”
Rainbow sighed again, but nodded. She looked down to Crimson Charger, whose unreadable face conveyed nothing. Rainbow dipped lower. “Hey, are you all right?”
“I am fine,” she answered. “We’re almost to the place the Oracle directed me to take you to. The Entelechy Research Center.”
The flat terrain gave way to foothills, then to low peaks. Crimson Charger followed a valley road as it led higher. Another decaying building like the city they had left behind clung to the stone. It had possessed a spire, once upon a time, but now there was only a stump above it and a pile of rubble in the valley below, jutting out of a toxic lake. The doors were bolted shut, but Crimson Charger simply lifted her foretires and slammed against the barricade, blowing through the gray stone-like stuff as if it were so much cake frosting.
Rainbow tried not to let herself get distracted. I could spend years wandering this world, discovering everything it has to offer… I may not be Twilight Sparkle with a fascination for all knowledge, but this is a whole new world. Right now, though, I have work to do. She did pause a few times, looking at displays of strange objects under glass—blobs of unidentifiable goo or solids or bottles of liquids that looked like molten gold. The labels were incomprehensible to her, but she guessed that they were early experiments. Things pulled from the ether that had never existed, materials that were never found in nature. You know, come to think of it, how come they all spoke Equestrian? Food for thought.
Finally, they came to rest in a circular room lined with strange instruments. Great orbs studded with glass on long booms, parabolic dishes, antennae, and more that Rainbow Dash couldn’t put a hoof on. A hole had been torn in the ceiling, revealing the moon and the clouds that were racing to cover it. At the bottom, another hole gaped up them.
Firefly darted down and stood on the edge, peeking her head in. “Sure seems like the other one. A deep dark hole to oblivion.”
Rainbow hovered near Crimson Charger, frowning at her. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I… fine. I’ll be fine, just…” Crimson turned her head to look at Rainbow Dash. “If it’s all right, could you… could you try to save me, too, and the other robots? I know we’re just machines, but…”
Rainbow knocked her hard chest with a hoof. “You bet. If it’s in my power, it’s done.”
“That’s all I can ask.” She looked away. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Ready to go, Firefly?”
Firefly shook her head. “No. But, here I go anyway.” She hopped up and slid down into the tunnel, buzzing her wings to slow her fall. After one last look at Crimson Charger, Rainbow dove in after her.
* * *
As before, the way was dark and lonely. This time, the passage was perfectly straight, or so close as to make no difference. Looking up, Rainbow could even see the moon they had left behind after what seemed a mile or more of falling—the hole made it a tiny white pinprick, a lone star in a sea of perfect darkness.
Below them, a new point of light formed, and it grew. There was nothing like exiting out a tunnel—instead, it was as if the world grew up around them, while above the moon hung huge and full. Falling through nothing, Rainbow Dash reached out and took Firefly’s hoof. Below them, an ocean ran in all directions. There wasn’t so much a horizon as there was a vanishing line. Beneath the water, they could see shapes, or suggestions of them, each one gleaming with reflected moonlight. Ships, towers, and castles. Cities, great spires like the ones of the world they had left behind. Pyramids, obelisks like the desert world. Some were as large as the earth and others were larger still.
Rainbow Dash soon ran out of names. Even trying to count the myriad shapes below would have taken all of her remaining life and more. She couldn’t have glimpsed even the smallest portion if she had tried.
“The stars,” Firefly whispered. “It’s just… this. There’s no sky, no ocean, no horizon. It’s all bits of world.”
Rainbow looked up. Unblinking stars, just as they had seen before, glittered down at them. “I don’t understand. How can this be a place someone is from?”
Firefly stared out at the world around them. “Time is meaningless without space. Without matter and energy to give it reason, there is no arrow of history.”
“Please explain it in a way somepony who isn’t Twilight Sparkle can understand.”
“This is the beginning, Rainbow Dash, but it’s also the end,” Firefly said, and then shook her head. “No, I’m sorry… this is the mind’s conception of the beginning. This is the beginning of all things as perceived by the collective conception of everypony, everyone, and everything that has ever or will ever think. The beginning contains the end because all things that ever will be are encompassed in that moment of creation.”
Firefly pointed her hoof below. “We aren’t looking at things, Rainbow Dash. These are… they’re the templates of things that are to come and have come before. I bet if we dived into that ocean we would find more, layers and layers of it, down until there’s nothing left… and then we would vanish as well.”
“How… how do you know all this?” Rainbow asked, staring at her companion.
“Because, in a way… I’m part of it.” Firefly pursed her lips. “When They cast me into outer darkness, the only thing that remained was my mind. A collection of memories and traits held together by a purpose. I’m borrowing from everything around me to keep it that way, enough that… that I have some perception of it all. I process and synthesize it through my own experiences, but I am a part of this world and it is a part of me.”
Her eyes filled with tears, sparkling above them as the two of them fell. “Don’t you see, Dashie? We’re all one deep down. You and me and everyone.”
Rainbow continued to stare at her. To say she didn’t know how to take this would have been an understatement. “I… okay, I’ll admit that I don’t understand. I’m trying, honestly, and it’s like…” Rainbow scrunched her face up. “We’re like all of these things. We existed when the world started, together, and we’ll end up here, together?”
“Meh, close enough.” Firefly laughed.
“How can Hawa be from here, though? This isn’t exactly the kind of place for someone to grow up!”
Firefly gave Rainbow Dash a long, lingering look, then shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“But… what about our task? I don’t understand how this… how this all…” Rainbow turned her head up. The moon shone above them, serene as ever. “Firefly… what’s the one thing that we’ve seen, totally unchanged, in every world, including our own?”
Firefly looked up. “Well. Look at that. Staring us right in the face the whole time.” With that, she began to laugh again, loud and long. She took Rainbow’s hooves and danced with her across the sky. Caught up in her infectious cheer, Rainbow danced with her, her face breaking into a grin.
“The Door is on the Moon, the Door is on the Moon!” They were singing completely out of key, but neither of them cared. “We’ve come all this way, fought through terrible dangers you see, just so we can say, that the Moon is where we want to be! Hey, you don’t need to be a loon, say, to see that the Door is on the Moon!”
They giggled for a while before laying back so that they could watch the great orb. Eventually, Firefly said, “Of course, there’s the question of where on it. I’ve been there before, you know.”
Rainbow turned her head to look at her. “I… vaguely remember that? I think I was out of Ponyville at the time. Fluttershy said that Rarity had been kidnapped and turned into something like Nightmare Moon.” Rainbow grinned. “Scootaloo told me that she got to beat up a moon monster.”
Firefly giggled. “Yeah, she did.” She rubbed her chin. “There’s a really creepy palace up there. It’s a bit like Celestia’s throne room, only it looks out over the moon. I’d have to imagine it’s not a place where the moon critters are…” She tilted her head. “Then again, they didn’t really seem all that synced up to life on the earth. It’s possible that they just don’t register to the Entelecheia for the most part.”
“Could Hawa be a moon creature?”
“No idea.” Firefly shrugged. “Only way to know is to find out. Somehow, though, I doubt it.”
Rainbow frowned, considering their options. “Would Princess Luna know?”
“I don’t think so. From the sounds of it, They set her and Celestia up as some sort of patch to keep the planet stable. Even her time spent on the moon’s surface wasn’t really on it so much as, uhm… splashed over it. In it.” Firefly made a sour face. “Whatever.”
“You guys went all over the light side of the moon, though, didn’t you?”
Firefly nodded. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Well, that just leaves one part.” Rainbow nodded to herself. “The dark side of the moon. That sounds like a band.”
“It does,” Firefly agreed. She narrowed her eyes. “Now, how do we get you up there… it took Princess Luna, Princess Celestia, and a team of ponies with a magic rope to get it close enough for me to fly to in any reasonable span of time.”
Rainbow snorted. “That? That’s the easy part. We already know who can get me to the moon.”
“Oh?” Firefly asked. “Who’s that?”
“Twilight Sparkle and her marvelous definitely-not-summoning-my-friend-Cadance-to-brainwash-you long-range portal spell.”
Firefly laughed. “Oh, Rainbow, I could kiss you!”
“Hey, now. I’ve already got a special somepony, thank you very much.” Rainbow glanced at Firefly. “Though we do look remarkably alike, so I guess a sisterly hug may be in order.”
Grinning, Firefly caught Rainbow about the middle and crushed her against her chest, knocking all of the wind out of her. “Oh, you. Well… guess that means it’s time to wake up!”
“Yeah, I—” Rainbow jerked her head up. “Wait, you better not be planning to—”
A cast iron skillet filled Rainbow Dash’s vision.
* * *
“Gonna… kill that mare…” Rainbow growled groggily. She squirmed in her tangled blankets, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Behind her, the great, heavy form of Big Macintosh stirred, but did not awake. Fella had a big day, after all. Hovering so as to make very little noise, Rainbow Dash wobbled through the air towards the door. She managed to bump against Big Mac’s dresser in the dark anyway, but shook her head and moved on. The window would have creaked even louder, she knew.
Moving with more strength and confidence, she glided towards the stairs and then down. Planting her hooves on the bottom, she inched towards the door and started to push it open.
A lamp snapped on, flooding the hallway with light. Rainbow froze.
Sitting in a chair by the window, Applejack tapped a solid bat on the floor. She tilted her hat up. “Well. Look what we’ve got here.”
“Applejack!” Rainbow hissed, glancing upstairs. She kept her voice low. “Uh… you know… I can explain everything.”
“I’m sure you can. Why don’t you start, then?”
“Big Macintosh and I made up. We’re boyfriend and girlfriend now.” Rainbow grinned awkwardly. The thought still twisted in her weirdly, though at the same time a burst of giddiness shot through her.
“Seems I remember hearing somethin’ odd earlier. Sounded a bit like a bird, actually.”
Rainbow’s ears might as well have caught fire right then.
Applejack leaned back, looking at her intently. “Never again, you understand? You gotta let him go… you let him go gentle.” She paused. “Well, unless he starts it. We clear?”
“Crystal.”
She nodded. “All right, then. Headin’ home?”
“Y-yeah…” Rainbow glanced to the door. “Hey, uhm… Applejack? Tell Big Mac I care.”
Applejack quirked an eyebrow. “Didn’ leave a note?” She hefted her bat.
“Whoa, whoa!” Rainbow waved her hooves. “It’s not like that! I… I have to go right now. It’s incredibly important. I… I want you to tell him that I really do care, and that I’ll see him soon. Scootaloo, too.”
Applejack frowned. “Rainbow… is there somethin’ you ain’ tellin’ me?”
“Yes.” Rainbow nodded. “There is. I need you to trust me, though.”
With a sigh, Applejack flipped her hat down over her eyes and lay back in the chair, curling up to sleep. “All right. I’m countin’ on you, Rainbow Dash. You do right by them.”
“I will.” I’ll do right by everybody. “I swear.”
* * *
Rainbow, hovering, peered down at Twilight Sparkle, who slumbered with a book nestled between her forehooves. She stuffed a hoof into her mouth and prodded at her with her rear leg. Twilight continued to snooze contentedly.
“Oh, come on.” Rainbow rolled her eyes and grabbed the book. She yanked, and Twilight’s grip tightened so hard and fast that Rainbow was hauled out of the air, landing on her back on the floor. Shaking her head, she growled and grabbed the sheets, then tucked and rolled with them. Twilight flopped out onto her back with a cute little “Eep!” and tried to leap to her feet, only to plummet off the side of the alcove her bed occupied.
Sighing, Rainbow flapped down to join her and helped her to stand. “Twilight? How many hooves am I holding up?” She lifted a foreleg.
“Three? I’m going with three.” Twilight shook her head. “Rainbow… it’s, like… really late.”
“I know. I need your help.” Rainbow steadied her. “You’re the only one who can help me.”
“I… Wha…?” Twilight sighed. “All right, all right, just… give me a minute to collect myself.”
Rainbow glanced towards the door to the lower library. “Do you drink coffee?”
“What? No, I drink tea, you know that.”
“Right, of course,” Rainbow said as she took the stairs.
When she returned, Twilight had turned a couple lights and and was looking more awake, if with dark circles under her eyes. Rainbow put down a tray and poured the tea as she had seen Berry do, with a little twitch of her hooves to keep it from spilling any drops when she lifted the pot.
“Thanks, Dash.” Twilight sipped at the tea, drinking it down with hardly a concern for the heat of it. When she put it down, she looked fresher—whether from the caffeine or just from renewed attention was unclear, but Rainbow didn’t really care at that point. “So, uh… what’s this thing you need that can’t wait until morning?”
Rainbow took a deep breath. She let it out slowly. “All right… Twilight, I’m going to ask you do something strange—it’s a spell, and one you’ve performed before, but it’s going to be a very odd request. You might not like the idea, and it’s going to demand a lot from you. I promise you that it’s for a good cause and that if there was any other way for me to do this, any way at all for me to do what needs to be done, I would do it.”
Twilight opened her mouth, but Rainbow touched her lips. “No,” Rainbow said and shook her head. “I can’t explain. When I ask you to do it, I need you to do it immediately. If you ask questions, if you stop to think about it, if you hesitate more than the tiniest but, it would be really bad.
“Please.” Rainbow swallowed, trying not to glance out the window, where the moon hung with a dark crescent. “I will get down on all four knees and beg if I have to. I have never asked anything this important in my life, and I would be shocked if I ever do again. Please.”
Opening and closing her mouth again, Twilight looked into Rainbow’s eyes for a long time before nodding. “All right. You have to promise to explain to me afterwards, though.”
“Done. Are you ready?”
Twilight moved to stand in the middle of the room. She lit her horn up, casting blue light across the dark room.
“Ready,” she said, her voice trembling a little. I don’t blame her, my face must be a nightmare.
Rainbow took a few more deep breaths, her eyes flickering to the shadows nearby.
“Okay… okay…” She shut her eyes, then opened them. “Twilight Sparkle. Use your portal spell to send me to the moon!”
“Wha—”
“Dark side of the moon right now! Go, go, go!”
To Twilight’s credit, she didn’t hesitate for more than a fraction of a second. Even as Rainbow shouted at her, the spell went off. She didn’t hesitate, and neither did They.
Hurricane force winds filled the room, screaming as they shredded books and shelving to dust. Black shapes oozed out of the crevices, and Their voices screamed in Rainbow Dash’s mind. As at the town square before, she found it incredibly difficult to move, her legs sluggish and unresponsive. Twilight screamed in fright, and how she kept the spell from falling apart Rainbow never knew. Indeed, if anything, her focus intensified, some part of her realizing she was under threat even if she didn’t understand the source. Ahead of Rainbow Dash, the air split apart into a circle of light, and through it she saw a black landscape dotted with craters beneath a sky filled with bright stars.
The Entelecheia crowded around Rainbow Dash, their claws crawling up her sides, digging into her bones.
We see you now, Rainbow Dash.
You evade us no longer.
We are here. We have come for you.
Pain ripped through Rainbow Dash. It was as if she was being slowly peeled apart, one atom at a time, and she could feel every tiny tear. Mind-numbing, mind-rending. Her vision swam, spots appearing in her gaze.
To defy us is to upset the balance of the universe. You have seen far. You know now how the world would end if not for us.
You threaten everything. If you continue, it will unmake the world. This cannot be permitted, it cannot be borne.
Submit now. Find peace in your life, guard the world against the dangers that threaten it. Spare it from yourself.
Submit.
Straining to move her legs, Rainbow called to mind Big Macintosh’s face. She called Twilight’s forward, Fluttershy’s, Applejack’s, even Rarity’s and Pinkie’s. She recalled Crimson Charger, the Oracle, the little odd unicorn filly and stallion. She breathed again the cold air of the desert tomb and beheld the queen of the dead and her legions. She remembered Vinyl Scratch, so bright and beautiful as she cast her spite at Them. Finally, she pulled Scootaloo and Firefly into her vision. All of them she held before her.
It is impossible to resist us. It is given to us to repair the world. You shall not—
Rainbow Dash threw her head back and screamed. “No!”
She slammed a hoof into the floorboard ahead of her, splintering the wood.
“No and never!”
Screaming, Rainbow Dash tugged another hoof forward, planting it on lunar soil.
“You, and… your time… are… over!”
With a final surge, she leapt.
It seemed as if she flew forever, her hooves outstretched as she passed fragment-by-fragment through the portal. With a final tearing sensation, she landed on the other side, flopping on to dark lunar dust and choking as it puffed up around her.
The portal was filled with a high, keening wail that echoed even as the spell vanished into a thin line. When it closed, all Rainbow Dash could hear was silence.
“How’s it feel… to be helpless…?” she asked, then rolled over onto her back with a groan. Above her and to one side, she could see the earth, a dark marble lit only by the self-luminescent side of the moon. Gentle silver clouds scudded slowly over its surface.
“Hey guys,” she whispered. “I’m here. I’m… I’m safe. I just need to… get up and take that last step. You hang on down there. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
With a heave, she got back to her feet. The stiffness faded as she started trotting, and then she spread her wings and lifted off the surface. Orienting away from the world on the horizon, she started deeper into the dark side of the moon. It was oddly liberating—the moon’s pull on her was so much lighter than the earth below. “One day, perhaps, you can come back to enjoy that, too, now, where is… ah.”
Her needle in the haystack lay directly in front of her. It wasn’t really hard to miss—it stood in the middle of a perfectly smooth plain, a round mass of unlit stone that stretched to the far horizon. The Door stood in its precise center. Landing before it, Rainbow wondered if perhaps this, too, had been constructed by some unknown entity. Three white pillars pierced the rock with no sign of mortar or joining or anything else. Inscribed within it with unnaturally precise geometry, a hole stared up at her, its interior whiter than snow.
Taking one last look at the stars above, Rainbow closed her eyes.
“Goodbye, everyone.”
Rainbow Dash took a step, then vanished from the world.
* * * * * * *