//------------------------------// // Peripeteia // Story: Unfinished // by redsquirrel456 //------------------------------// Twilight raged against the sluggishness of her limbs. Something had struck from the sky and thrown her to the ground, and considering the vast power at her disposal, the thought was downright insulting. Pain surged through her body, and in her anger she blasted everything around her with kinetic force, hoping to get rid of whatever might be coming at her in her moment of weakness. She twitched a limb and forced herself to roll on her belly, noting the cracks in the floor and the concave depression that raised its edges around her ears. When she opened her eyes her vision was distorted by a golden shroud. Her ears rang, but voices swam through the pea-soup that enveloped her head. Is she all right? Will she come back? Can it work? I don’t know, my little ponies. Her vision snapped back into focus. She was still in the Hall of the Elements. The gold shroud was a magical field surrounding her like a fog. It shimmered and twinkled, and when she tried to move her leg through it she felt exhausted and weighed down. The fog held her tight, wrapped around her face like a mask. Another cage. Well, that was easy enough to break. She just had to concentrate. She closed her eyes and prepared a counterspell. It fizzled before it even reached the stump of her horn. “What is this?” she murmured, her lips feeling strangely parched and sticky. Through the fog she saw five shadows standing before her. Five familiar lights glowed around their necks. “No,” she rasped, and reached down to find the strength to fight her way out. “Not again. I won’t be defeated again.” “That Sonic Rainboom brought you down easy enough,” said Rainbow Dash. Her voice was muffled and indistinct through the fog. “You didn’t think we’d just lay down and die, did you?” “You may have broken Twilight,” cut in Rarity, “but the rest of us are far from beaten.” “Twilight might be able to beat us if she tried,” Fluttershy whispered, her voice still somehow so clear through the heavy fog, “but you aren’t Twilight.” “Not by a long shot,” said Pinkie Pie. “But that means we don’t have to feel sorry about kicking your meanie-flank from here to Vanhoover.” “We know what you are now,” said Applejack. “You’re nothin’ but lies. An’ the truth beats a lie every time.” “For all your vast power, it is centered around fear,” said Celestia. “And when the victim of that fear turns to confront it, you have no choice but to give way.” The Nightmare inside Twilight roared its defiance. It almost deafened her to Celestia’s next words. “You are not the true power within Twilight. You will never truly control her. You could only ever make her think you did.” “You don’t know me! I am Twilight Sparkle! You cannot get her back because she is already here!” Celestia’s shadow tilted her head. “If you have already won, you wouldn’t need to tell yourself that.” Twilight’s eye twitched. Celestia’s voice dropped in pitch as her silhouette leaned closer. “She is already fighting back.” Celestia stepped away until she vanished into the fog, letting the other five step forward. “Do what must be done.” --------------------------- Dusk Shine opened his eyes, which surprised him because he didn’t remember closing them. The last thing he saw was the form of the Nightmare, its grinning face rushing at him from the end of the hall, its horn ready to plunge into his skull and rip out his life. But then there had been something, a stumble or a flash or some distracting sound, and he blinked. Then he was here. But here was not anywhere he knew. His hooves didn’t impact any floor when he walked, and yet he walked. His lungs didn’t fill with air when he breathed, and yet he breathed. There were shadows all around, but that implied there used to be light. He felt alone; worse than alone. “Alone” meant he could find another pony to alleviate his loneliness. This place made him feel like the only being in all reality. Perhaps that was truer than he thought. But if this place really was from his dreams, then where was she? He didn’t feel the insistent tug of her presence, begging to be seen. He didn’t see her perfect form standing tantalizingly close. He wasn’t even sure he was still alive. But dead things didn’t wonder if they were dead. He took a step forward, willing to make himself feel it, then another, and then another. He gradually regained the sensation—or rather the idea—that he was walking on solid ground, and ventured further into the darkness. If this is what death is like, he thought to himself, I can’t say I’m sure what the point of living is. Things brushed against his legs in the dark, some hard and some pliable, but he ignored them. All that was important was moving. With nopony and nothing around to give him a point of reference, he was free to decide which way he was going. With that in mind, Dusk decided he was going forward. He touched on things that seemed familiar: a book, an idea, a feeling. He swam through bogs of melancholy and climbed hills of adversity, but when he was done he didn’t feel like he’d gotten any further than when he started. And he was still alone. He knew, intellectually, that the Nightmare had apparently won and his world was now dead, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything besides a hollow resignation. He was at the end of himself, and was only ambivalently curious about his new circumstances. “Where am I?” he asked, and he was surprised to hear his own voice. “Wherever you want to be.” He spun around, gasping. It wasn’t the sound that surprised him, but the quality of it. It was clearer than any silver bell, gentler than the way his mother sang him to sleep. It reminded him of every word he’d never said, the ones that died on his lips and were lost forever. The voice pulled at his spirit and forced him to take notice. She stood there, her back to him. His cutie mark—no, hers—stood out with perfect clarity on her flank, drawing his eye and growing greater in size and importance until he forced them shut, left with a sense of reeling vertigo. It was true. It was all true. He didn’t question if he was seeing things because he knew she was here, as amazing as he’d always dreamed. This wasn’t the monster he’d seen before, but a mare who was composed of everything good and true and right. This time, he knew for certain everything would be all right. He saw her start to turn and shut his eyes again, holding the wonderful snapshot in his mind for as long as he could. Somehow it didn’t seem fair that he should see her face before she could see his. When he opened his eyes she faced him fully, and he was seized with an inexplicable terror and actually turned to run, but she made a soft sound that stopped him dead in his tracks. With fear and trembling he turned back to her, and her smile made his knees go weak. “So,” she said. “Here you are.” “I am,” he rasped, and only then, compared to her wonderful voice, did he notice he sounded weak and frail. It was an old pony’s voice, full of regret and scratchy from too much use. “We’re finally together,” she said in voice as smooth as a whispering stream. He shuddered and sighed longingly. “We met once before, but that was a different time. A different me. Now it’s just us.” “It would be only now,” he answered, “in the middle of this awful place.” “It’s not awful at all,” she said, and he instantly believed her. “It’s the best place we could hope to be, because we’re both finally here and looking at each other.” Her smile grew a little coy and timid. “I was waiting for the story’s lead colt to appear.” “Story?” he asked, and immediately felt very stupid. How dare he ask her silly questions, when she was so perfect she didn’t have time to answer them. “What a story this turned out to be,” he said in a rush of emotion. “The Nightmare’s won and it’s all over. It said I had to give up everything, that my story had to have a bad ending.” “There’s so many stories at work here you can be forgiven for thinking one or two are the only ones that matter. It’s what I thought, too. It’s what the Nightmare wanted us both to think. But it’s wrong. The Nightmare isn’t the only reality that matters.” She raised a hoof and put it against her chest, then reached out. Wherever her hoof went, a glowing line followed. “We’re connected, Dusk. We always have been. Do you really think your story doesn’t matter, even if it’s been ended by the Nightmare? Winning, losing, life, death; none of that is as important as the story itself. And what story really comes to an end?” “But my friends,” Dusk whimpered, “they’re all gone.” She nodded sadly. “I don’t know what happened to them, Dusk. But I do know that the Nightmare was lying when it said they didn’t matter. You and your world have always been alive and important, because you are important to me. A story is only important if the reader believes that it is. And you… well, you’re the most important pony I’ve ever known. You’re my hope. My reflection in the mirror. You tell me how good things are and how good things can be. You’re an aspiration that I can never reach, but that doesn’t mean we don’t touch each other. I believe in you more than I’ve ever believed in anything else.” She drew more lines and pricked the air with her hoof  to create pinpoints of light. With flicks of her hooves, the lines rearranged into a beautiful, seemingly random structure that she held up with one hoof. “There’s not a single story that’s isolated from the others. In some small way, however distant, we’re affecting each other and ourselves. All these stories about you and me are affected by everyone else’s story, too. Strangers, our friends, the Princesses. The Princesses especially. Celestia, Solaris, it doesn’t matter. They’re wrapped up in our tale, and our tale stretches out and touches every one that ever was and will be, even the ones that aren’t about ponies! That’s the power of Magic.” Dusk reached out and took the little sculpture of lights and lines into his hooves, feeling its lightness and delicacy. “Then how’d the Nightmare overwrite my—I mean, your—our story?” “Isolation and fear,” Twilight answered. “It told us the exact opposite of the truth: that we weren’t important, that we were somepony else’s tools. You and me... we’re the most important story that’s ever been told in Equestria. Around us everything else is spinning. Around us every other story watches to see where you and me go.” She reached out and touched the structure, spinning it in place. “In my world Celestia did something terrible, but she didn’t do it because she hated me, or because she was evil. It was because she loved too much. The Nightmare was right in one respect: love can make a pony terribly frightened.” Her horn stump glowed, and the structure split apart as a black fog with silver lining hunted between the lines, snapping them one by one. “Eventide and Morningtide were just like us, Dusk. They had the Element of Magic. They had the power to read between the lines, to see the pages of the big story that everything is written on, and they were Celestia’s attempt to find her sister before the Elements would give her back—and they reached into the place where all the stories were, where the Nightmare had power. It nearly killed them. The Nightmare came so close to coming back instead of Luna. Celestia swore not to make the same mistake again. She hurts every day for Eventide, whose memories she had to steal before the Nightmare took him like it tried to take me.” A purple light flared up beside a white one, and as the black fog circled them both, hungrily, the white smothered the purple. “And when she saw the same happening to me, when she saw my power growing and reaching out to you, she was terrified. If Eventide and Luna could be taken so easily, if her inaction almost let the Nightmare win twice now… she thought she had to do something. Telling me about the Nightmare would make me aware of it. Make me vulnerable. But being vulnerable doesn’t mean you’re helpless. I might have been able to fight it. But Celestia was just so scared of losing another pony she loved And in trying to protect me, she almost lost me. When I was hurt by her, the Nightmare pounced on that breach of trust. And I chose to believe it, because when you hurt that much, you’ll take anything that agrees with you.” Her face drooped, and Dusk’s heart wrenched painfully in his chest. “I let it in. I let it all happen, Dusk. I’m so sorry.” Dusk frowned. “And now… now we’re both going to die? It’s over?” She smiled, and her smile twisted as if she was trying to enjoy an especially sour lemon. “Do you believe it’s over? You’re my hope, Dusk. If you believe it’s over, then what can we do?” Dusk didn’t have an answer. His heart felt foreign and empty. He was a dry, dusty mug sitting on an old, forgotten table, never to be filled again. He realized, deep down, that he’d believed it was over long before he even came here. Musty tears that felt old and unused gathered at the corners of his eyes as he remembered all his friends, who had died or abandoned him one by one. “I failed them,” he whispered. “I failed all of them. I… we might have been able to stop it, if we only realized all this before! If I’d tried harder to find you or you’d tried harder to find me, Magic could’ve done something, but we just played right into that thing’s hooves, and now they… and Solaris…” His voice trailed off into a strangled moan. His hooves reached up and covered his eyes. He curled up and felt himself shriveling like a dying leaf, brittle and old. But then he felt something warm and soft on his fur coat, and his crumbling exterior cracked apart entirely from that gentle touch. He felt her gather up his pieces and pull herself against him, and then he just couldn’t stop himself from letting it out. He ached and moaned and sobbed, but it was like even sorrow itself had left him long ago, no matter how much he squeezed himself to make it come out. He buried his face into a welcoming shoulder and they held each other tight, huddled against the encroaching dark. “But you know something?” she whispered after his whimpering fell silent. “Just because you’re my hope doesn’t mean I can’t encourage you once in awhile, too. The Nightmare tried to make me forget my love for Celestia, for everypony around me. It tried to destroy everything I thought was true about me and my friends. And I believed it. But then Magic came and I remembered the chapters the Nightmare showed me weren’t the only ones in the book.” She pulled back just enough to smile at him, bending her head until their foreheads touched. Were their horns intact, they would cross. “The Nightmare rewrote where my story was going, but it couldn’t destroy what already happened. And something beautiful happened, Dusk: I remembered. I remembered all the times Celestia and my friends loved me and I loved them, and I know they wouldn’t give up on me, even now.” “But my friends are gone,” Dusk sobbed. “No,” said Twilight, shaking her head. “No. They’re never gone. They’re always here in one way or another, just like mine are. Stories never end until we say they do.” She put her hooves on both sides of his face and lifted his head until they looked into each other’s gaze. Dusk didn’t see himself in her eyes. He saw a deep lavender expanse, cloudy and misty and full of comfort and wonder. He fell willingly into it, letting himself be surrounded by her. Inside her were all the feelings he’d ever known, all the thoughts he’d ever wondered about. All the wonder of the stars and the mystery of the night, the brightness of day and all the ethereal, distant things beyond the reach of his eyes existed there and, surrounded by them, he opened his hooves and let her in. He felt sorrow and joy too, and then they mixed together inside him, roaring like dueling waves on an empty beach. He felt it all boil up and up, and there he found what she did, all the love and trust she’d lost. Dusk saw it rise up and fall upon him, forcing its way inside him and making his dry, crackling limbs supple and fluid once more, filling his veins with blood and his brain with thoughts and his eyes with sight. Ponies flashed by him in blurry pictures forever capturing if not the image of something then the feel of it. A rainbow-maned wonder made the sky explode like Rainbow Blitz. A group of friends gathered together in a donut shop. A kindly pegasus mare befriended Chaos itself. He saw it all, and his heart was suddenly filled up with all the joy that she had ever known, more and more until it bubbled up and out in a great overflow. The pain of his friends’ loss was nothing compared to the joy of seeing them again, even if their faces were a bit different, and that paled in comparison to the need to avenge them in the best way he could: by remembering their friendship and using that happiness against the Nightmare. It didn’t hurt, but the sensations were so intense he felt burned and frozen all at once. How could the Nightmare have made him so empty, that she could make him so full again? He came back to life in her hooves, and she was smiling timidly at him. He took a breath like it was his first, and the air—what else could it be but pure, sweet air?—filled his lungs until he thought he would burst. She grinned and her teeth dazzled like stars to him. She blinked and one ear twitched upward. “You felt them, didn’t you? My friends?” He nodded. “They’re your friends too. Their memory never dies. Their story never ends unless we let it, Dusk. They’re here just like I am. Remember that. The Elements will never abandon you.” “It’s that easy?” Dusk said. “I just have to believe they’re here, and I’ll have the strength to fight?” She tilted her head curiously, giving him such a look that he felt belligerent just for asking. “Oh, Dusk,” she sighed, “just believing is the hardest part.” Her breath caught in her throat and she looked up to the sky. “The Nightmare knows we’ve met by now. It’s going to try and pull us apart again.” “I won’t let it,” he said at the same time as her, and they shared a sharp laugh that pierced the dark and made it recoil from them. She touched his face again and he leaned into her hoof. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should’ve been stronger. I don’t know what will happen after this.” “We both should have,” he whispered back. “But you’re right. This is our story. It always was. I’m ready to live again.” She was silent for a while, and they sat there for who knew how long, staring at each other. “I suppose in the end, it wasn’t about stopping the Nightmare,” she said. “It was about stopping myself.” “Don’t,” he said. “We’re going to save each other, now.” “Remember,” she said, “we were always connected before. We just didn’t know it. Now that we do, there’s nothing the Nightmare can do to hurt us.I’ll be with you and you with me, one way or another.” There was a roar of displeasure from somewhere far away. He felt a cold chill run down his spine and the whole world seemed to move around him though he couldn’t see it. Already, she seemed smaller, more distant. His eyes opened wide. “Wait!” he said. “I didn’t ask your name!” He saw her smile miles away. “Oh, I think you can figure it out, Dusk Shine.” He saw her eyes, shining brightly like the two of them had in the dark, and then— --------------------- The Nightmare’s eyes stared directly into Dusk’s own. Dusk stared back dreamy and unfocused. He was hurled back along the length of the corridor, crashing to the ground and spinning until he came to a rough stop against the wall. “You couldn’t have,” the Nightmare rasped. “You couldn’t have. I devoured you alive. How did I feel you within me? How are you still here?” Dusk struggled back to his hooves, wiping a bit of blood from the side of his head. It stung and he reveled in the feeling. For the first time since this all started, he truly felt. He felt alive and exhilarated. He felt real. “I’m not going to explain myself to you,” he hissed through his teeth. “I saw her. I know she’s real. I know what she is now. I know what I am. Most importantly, I know what you are.” The Nightmare lifted a hoof and glared at him, allowing him the space to stand, though for what reason Dusk couldn’t tell. “You’re just fear. Fear is a parasite. The more of the host it takes, the stronger it grows. But I’m not giving anymore, I’m taking. Taking it all back." He put one hoof in front of the other, taking his place once again at the end of the hall. “You’re still there, though, waiting for me to give in. Fear is real, but so am I. Now I’ve accepted you. You’ll always be part of my story but you’re not the author. You never were. I may not be able to kill you completely, but I can sure as hay keep you from hurting anypony ever again!” He bent his head again, and his horn stump glowed like a sliver of moonlight. “What is this?” demanded the Nightmare. “I destroyed her! I destroyed you! You can’t change anything now! You are nothing! You always were!” “Keep telling yourself that,” Dusk said, grinning viciously. The bellowing eldritch abomination from before was gone. In its place, the Nightmare’s silhouette shrank, distorted, and gave ground. Dusk tossed his mane. “I’m nothing? My friends are nothing? This world is nothing? Then come on. Wish me away like you always said you could.” The Nightmare expanded again, roaring balefully. Dusk snorted. “You can’t, can you? You can’t do anything that I don’t let you. Because this is my story. A story is only as powerful as you believe it is!” He shook his head and stamped his hoof. “And I don’t believe in you anymore.” The Nightmare reared up, stretching almost to the ceiling as it flapped its wings and screeched unholy curses at Dusk, trying to blow the little unicorn away with sheer hatred. A boulder was torn loose from the ground and hurled at Dusk, obscuring him from sight as it smashed into the ground. But then it cracked and split open, and there Dusk stood under a gently glowing shield, none the worse for wear. “Your magic means nothing!” the Nightmare spat, sending black ichor flying from its fangs to the floor where it sizzled angrily. “I broke your horn! I killed your friends! I destroyed your world!” Dusk shook his head. “Yes, you did. But you can’t take away my magic, because my magic isn’t in my horn. It’s all of me. It’s my soul. The one thing you can never touch.” He stepped out from the wreckage and strode towards the Nightmare, who hurled invectives as the little unicorn forced it to give ground. “You can’t take my friends, because even if they’re gone their story survives with me and all the ponies they touched! Dead or alive, they left their mark on this world and hundreds beside it! You can’t destroy the truth of their existence, and that’s why I still feel them with me! You can tear apart our bodies, but as long as I believe in my friends they’ll always give me strength.” The Nightmare looked down at a rumbling noise between its hooves. The fragments of the Elements were shaking, lifting into the air. The Nightmare backpedaled, its eyes wide with fathomless fear. “And you may have torn this world apart at the foundations. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back. But I say it lives on, and it always will as long as I hold it close to me, and as long as she holds it close to her. All the stories you say you ended were never under your power. It doesn’t matter if we’re fiction! It doesn’t matter if you say I’m not real! What does it matter if we’re really here as long as we give someone the strength they need to live one more day?!” The fragments ignited with hot, burning light. The Nightmare covered its face with its wing as Dusk pushed it back with every word he spoke. “Magic never dies; we only forget that it was there. And I remember everything now!” Dusk shouted, and his horn stump glowed all the brighter in response. The illumination stretched out like a sword, and if Dusk didn’t blink he thought he could imagine his horn was returned to him. “You’re nothing, Nightmare. Just a tiny editor’s note in a story that was always bigger than you.” The Nightmare reared up and threw a bolt of shadow at Dusk, but it merely burst against his shield. “I will always exist!” it screamed. “You can’t kill me! I am in every story and every world!” “But you’ll never be able to bring them to an end. And who knows? Maybe they will end one day. But I know one thing: that ending will never come from you. This is our Equestria.” -------- “And in our Equestria,” Twilight Sparkle declared, surrounded by streaming ribbons of light as she reared up on the dais to face Nightmare Moon, “we always have—” -------- “—a happy ending!” The fragments of the Elements flew together and the Nightmare reached out with its dark magic. It fizzled like a candle blown out, and the Nightmare twisted in rage and desperation. It lunged forward, trying to smother them with its own body, but they sprang away and shot towards Dusk Shine. Their impact brought no pain. He felt like there was more of himself than before, filling him up until his old skin simply split apart to reveal what was really inside him. He left himself behind and floated up high above the battle, looking down at a picture far below. A small, brave unicorn was painted with vivid golds and purples and whites, almost obscured entirely by the glow, and faced the ugly smear upon the canvas that was the Nightmare, shifting and sliding like oil and making the image around it run together as if it were a smudge of turpentine. The unicorn twisted and spasmed as though in pain, but he was so far beyond that frail body he couldn’t be sure of what he was feeling for all the sensations rushed through him at once. It felt like he was being cradled in her hooves again, and then being thrown to the Magic flowing through her and into him. It entered him, tore him apart and put him back together again, but when it was done he was not himself. He was everything he ever was and ever could be, and everything the Nightmare thought it had destroyed. From his back there came the thunder of wings beating the air, and the unicorn’s head suddenly burned with a light even brighter than the one that surrounded him. It was an impossibly bright and beautiful light like glass caught aflame, and Dusk felt his head burning along with his tiny döppelgänger. A geyser like burning snowflakes burst from his head, and a mountainous horn, stunningly real yet transparent like a sheet of thin satin, erupted from the stump. All around him swirled the fiery snowflakes. The Nightmare retreated from the clanging wings and stomping hooves of the beautiful and brilliant creature that stood before it, scuttling like a cockroach that couldn’t find a shadow to hide in. Dusk laughed wildly, and in him were all the things he’d forgotten, and he burst with all the feelings inside him. His friends surrounded him, laughing as they celebrated their first true victory together. He put a hoof on Rainbow Blitz’s shoulder, telling him there were no secrets between friends, and though he was quite crazy that day the sincerity in his voice made him ache. He saw them smile in unison as they lifted cider mugs to the air and cheered for a farm that would live another day. He hugged Spines, dear little Spines, and told her she was always his number one assistant, wishing that he had told her that every day, every moment, every hour up till now. He saw them arguing in a field of chaos, but even that couldn’t keep them apart, and Harmony mended them as it mended the world. They’d remembered who they were then, and he remembered it all the more clearly now. The stories, the images, the memories; all of them were things the Nightmare had tried to tell him weren’t real, but reality itself didn’t matter to him. All he felt was the wonder of the moment, and the warm spot on his heart that came with every successive memory, every sharp realization. They traveled down his horn and gathered at the point, coalescing into a rainbow menagerie of love and friendship. It snaked out, touching the dying world around him and sewed together the cracks, healing the bruises inflicted by the Nightmare and Dusk’s own lack of faith. The Nightmare reared up and screamed one last time. Dusk couldn’t hear the words before the rainbow leapt up and engulfed it like the sea, swirling around and around in a maelstrom. The sounds of his friends’ voices mingled together in a wonderful symphony, drowning out the horrid screech of the Nightmare as it kicked and bucked against its bindings, turning into one thing and then another in a final bid to escape. Then all at once the world started shaking, as with childlike anticipation. Even as the rainbow constricted the Nightmare ever tighter until its struggles all but ceased, new cracks appeared in the walls and the air. These were not full of darkness, but a pure white light that was almost solid, striking through the musty, brittle shell of Dusk’s thin reality and dragging the carcass back into the sea of Magic from where it came. Dusk turned his head up, listening to the beautiful, awful noise of everything falling apart, and realized the Nightmare had, in fact, spoke the truth. This was the end at last. From worlds away, just down the hall, he heard a faint voice cry out to him in terror and hope. “Run,” she told him. He spread his great wings that weren’t all there, and aimed for the sky. With one quick push he rocketed upwards and his ethereal horn smashed through the stone ceiling. The lavender wings spreading out beside him carried him up faster than he thought, or perhaps the world was just that much smaller with the Nightmare no longer there to sustain it. This place, no matter how victorious Dusk had been, was a Nightmarish world and Harmony would not abide its existence. The Nightmare followed close behind him, flying from the rainbow ribbons that looped around its shadowy form and tried to drag it down into the swirling white vortex that was miles below yet mere feet behind. The Nightmare’s head had only the barest equine semblance now, engulfed by a dark gaping maw that gnawed and gnashed at Dusk’s hooves, trailing after the beautiful thing he had become, yet never able to catch him. They raced past the stars and up into the deepest parts of the sky, and how much further than that Dusk did not know or care. He went faster and higher, and the rainbows caught the Nightmare and bound it tightly piece by piece. The Nightmare stretched its jaws towards Dusk one last time, but a rainbow coiled up and muzzled it tightly before pulling it back down into the waiting whirlpool of creation. It screamed as it fell forever and ever, wailing into oblivion until its last bawling cry became an echo of an echo, and then it faded away to nothing along with everything else. Dusk did not want to see the end and closed his eyes. ---------------- Dust, cracked stone, and falling mortar surrounded Twilight Sparkle, who lay in an unconscious heap in the rubble. The bodies of her friends were scattered corpse-like around her, the jewels on their necks still glowing white-hot but not searing them. Twilight did not see that Celestia was the only one still standing, staring at the scene with a look of vacant, resigned sorrow. She was soon joined by her sister Luna, who stood a fair distance behind and didn’t dare to come closer. Twilight did not see Celestia’s eyes turn up ever so slightly, to a point above and behind her unconscious body, and did not see the shadow fall over her face, marked by a horn and wings yet still remarkably like her own. She did not hear Celestia speak. “I was afraid," said the Princess. "I still am. I think I always will be.” The shadow did not move. “When Luna and I found the Elements, I was so certain we would never be afraid of anything ever again. Our problems grew too big. Too out of focus. I couldn’t see them for what they were. I didn’t want to admit that I, an alicorn, ruler of the Sun itself, could possibly have the worries of the small creatures that scurried around me. I didn’t think my heart could be pricked by the tiny, sharp needles of pride and anger. I thought my heart was too big even for love, and I could just push it away into a little box. I convinced myself I wasn’t part of a bigger story; I believed I was its author.” Luna shifted on her hooves behind Celestia. “I almost lost my sister to darkness forever because of that hubris. I lost the respect of the Elements. And everything… my frailty, my mortality, my faults… they all came rushing back to me. I became terrified of myself and how easily my heart could become the warped, twisted things I’d banished. I grew desperate enough to reach beyond my station again.” The shadow’s wings twitched, and it pranced a moment on its hooves, but Celestia went on, unable to stop herself. “I wanted to prove my contrition by fixing my mistakes. That was when I found you.” The shadow tilted its head. “Or rather, somepony like you. I bade Eventide to reach into the places Magic once shared with me and allowed the Nightmare to learn how it might escape. I vowed, then, that this time I would find Magic’s Bearer and I would do it properly. I would love them, care for them, guide them. I would do everything I did not do for my sister or Eventide. I would be perfect, and so would they.” She smiled down at Twilight, and her ancient face seemed to grow younger and more pitiable, less weighted by long centuries of regret. “And bless you, you really did convince me that everything was all right. In such a short time I came to love you so very, very much. Even Magic must see that now, after all the things I did to hurt it. I love all my little ponies. Especially you, young one, for who are you but the image she sees in the mirror every morning?” The shadow was perfectly still. “But that love bred new fear of losing her, even as I knew she would grow to become more powerful than I. I may be a fool, but I know some things. I know what she will become and what you are now. I know that she will accomplish greatness with or without me, and like any old mother I cried for the places I wouldn’t be able to lead her and mourned for the dark places she would tread without me. I did not tell her what her destiny was because I told myself she wasn’t ready. When the Nightmare came again all I saw was the terrible ending I sought to avoid, not the happy one I should have trusted her to bring us to.” She shut her eyes tight and something bright and wet glittered at their corners. “I wanted to protect her,” she said, not with sorrow nor regret but a self-deprecating bitterness. “I wanted to preserve her from Magic itself if need be, because she reminded me what love really looked like. And now… now we are here.” She looked up at the shadow again and the tears flowed freely. “I can never be sorry enough. I can never do anything to make up for my mistakes, because all that could be done my faithful student has done herself. I could never give back what was lost, because that power was taken from me long ago. She has done everything I hoped to do. And she did it right.” She shuddered, breathing heavily as her composure built up over a millenia cracked apart. The shadow wavered and began to fall apart. Little purple fireflies drifted down to Twilight on the floor as Celestia dropped to her knees and cried. What she cried for nopony watching could say. The fireflies took a little piece of the shadow with them as they detached one by one. First the wings disappeared, then the body started to collapse, but the shadow stayed perfectly still through it all, whether resigned or sad or happy for its fate was impossible to tell. The drifting emberlights swirled into a cloud drawn towards Twilight, settling on her horn stump and gathering like fallen snow. The shadow’s torso disappeared, and then its legs began to go, drifting away in total silence. Through it all Celestia’s tears pooled on the floor, and to Luna it seemed the vanishing shadow and Celestia weren’t so different: each was trying to give of themselves for the sake of another, but Celestia could do no more than cry. Her continued part in the tale would be determined by Twilight herself when she awoke. The shadow was almost completely gone now, and it had settled almost entirely on Twilight’s horn stump, piling up and shaping into something new. With a sound like rustling windchimes the glow faded and Twilight’s horn became whole once more. Her eyes fluttered open. The first thing she was was Celestia pressing herself miserably, reverently, to the floor. Twilight raised one hoof and pulled herself out of the small crater, then dug another into the marble finish and started to crawl on her belly. Luna started, but was stopped immediately by something in her that refused to break the glassy moment. Twilight dragged herself over the floor to Celestia inch by inch, the only noises being Celestia’s muffled sobs, and the little gasps and hitches from Twilight as she found a particularly rough spot to crawl through. She was exhausted. Her eyes were empty and reflective and she seemed only aware of the alicorn breaking herself to pieces in front of her. At last, student reached teacher. Their noses brushed together and both looked up as a moment of understanding passed from one to the other, solemn and grief-stricken, and the longer Luna looked the less she saw any difference between them.