“Why do you care so much?”
Up until that point, Celestia had been able to ignore the large phoenix perched on her back. Besides questioning her mission when they first set out, Philomena didn't trouble Celestia with her usual foreboding premonitions. Perhaps the bird had been lost in thought, though Celestia didn't care to know what went on in that heartless, calculating mind of hers, and she definitely wasn't going to break the relieving tranquility to find out. So the only sound for the past hour had been the faint clip-clop of her hooves treading across the bleak witch labyrinth, as silent as the grave.
That was the first thing that had struck her. She had expected to find Discord’s labyrinth a cacophony of laughter and yelling, with pranks assaulting her at every turn. In actuality, it looked more like a foal’s abandoned playroom. Empty. Dead. Resigned.
“Discord has ruined the lives of ponies all across Equestria,” Celestia replied. “He must be stopped.”
“But of course,” said Philomena, though her beak did not move. “That is why any alicorn would try to fight him. But you are going alone. Why?”
Celestia’s eyes hardened like steel in her resolve. “I don’t want Luna to get hurt, not when you’ve just contracted with her.”
“But you know it would be wiser to have her along. With your depleted magic, you cannot hope to defeat him alone.”
Celestia tuned out Philomena as her blood boiled like the sun. She knew what the phoenix was trying to do. A mind game she had fallen for so many times in the past. To Philomena, she was nothing more than a puppet to be manipulated. Celestia wanted nothing more than to reach behind her and throttle the life out of that bird, but she knew it would prove futile. She would only be replaced with another of her kind. An infinite race for Celestia to try and fail to kill over the course of her infinite life. It wasn't a game she was interested in playing.
So instead she focused on maneuvering through the winding witch labyrinth. Broken puppets hung limply from the ceiling, ripped wrapping paper peeled off the walls, and several stuffed animals lay abandoned in rivers of chocolate milk. It was a depressing memento of childhood innocence lost, made all the more pitiful by the dim light. Occasionally a garish neon light would flicker to life, but for the most part shadows made their dominion in the derelict labyrinth.
But appearances were deceiving. Celestia knew this corridor was not devoid of life. She warily watched a herd of buffalo ballerinas, his familiars, dance out of the corner of her eye. They would soon alert Discord of her arrival, and her element of surprise would be lost.
Her pace quickened to a trot. The splashes of chocolate milk from sporadically placed puddles grew higher, staining her pure white hooves. A faint purple glow lit her way as the Element of Magic shimmered in her golden aura.
“Perhaps you feel responsibility for his despair?” Philomena suggested.
Celestia softly cursed under her breath. “Do not think so little of him. My rejection would not send him over the edge. He wished for my happiness without realizing what he wanted in return. He wished without understanding, and now he is alone.”
“Just like you, Celestia,” Philomena chimed in.
Celestia maintained a stony silence. She kept her eyes fixated on her only source of light while trying to ignore the lines of swirling blackness covering its pristine surface.
“You are despairing,” Philomena pointed out, gesturing with a wingtip to the miasma coating the amethyst gemstone.
“Then you should be celebrating,” Celestia rebutted coldly. “Soon I will become another draconequus that will plague Equestria. My soul will be an energy farm for you to suck up like a leech.”
Philomena paid no mind to the insult; she was quite blasé about them by now. “You are in denial,” she continued in that apathetic, clinical voice that made Celestia want to carve out her ears. “Even though you are well-aware of the fate that awaits all alicorns, you still illogically believe that you can escape despair.”
“Not indefinitely, but I will persist,” Celestia vowed. “This may not be the end. Discord’s soul may still be recovered. But with or without him, I will defend Luna and defeat Walpurgis Night.”
“Luna is Walpurgis Night,” Philomena tried to explain, just as she had a dozen times before. “Her Element of Loyalty is far too tainted. When it shatters, your wish for her safety will prevent her from becoming a draconequus; rather, she will be reborn from her Grief Seed as a corrupted alicorn who will spread eternal night all across the earth.”
“I refuse to believe that,” Celestia retaliated, stamping her hoof in some cotton candy for emphasis.
“Then you are no better than a draconequus hiding away delusional in its witch labyrinth.”
Suddenly the walls shook, rumbling like a dragon. Fearful, a group of giraffe-legged bunnies hastily packed up their stray toys into huge bubblegum wrappers before jumping into the safety of a jack-in-the-box. Celestia just barely caught a glimpse of blood-red paint dripping from the jack’s eyes before the lid slammed shut.
Philomena looked up. “He is coming.”
Celestia nodded grimly. She took her battle stance, hooves planted firmly on the checkered ground. The alicorn wielded no weapon; her magic alone would suffice. Her eyes narrowed into razor-thin slits. From cotton candy clouds, thunder roared like drummers marching to war.
Was it the floor moving or the walls around her? Either way, Celestia found herself being propelled down a corridor of doors, each opening wide to swallow her whole. Grotesque pictures were drawn in paints or something worse, but they sped by faster than she could process them. She could only focus on a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel, growing larger to encompass her entire vision, until she passed through it to the other side and entered the belly of the beast.
Celestia blinked and found herself in the middle of a nightmarish amusement park. A run-down carousel spun on a rusted axis, creating a screeching wail, as if the horses were screaming in pain. However, their mouths were X’ed out in red crayon, which was smeared across the rest of their faces, save for their gouged out eye sockets. Some of their legs had been torn off by the ballerina buffalo to use as bludgeons for mercilessly beating a stuffed clown. Cotton spilled out of a gash in its terrifying grin. The clown was then left on the side of a track, where a roller coaster car covered in graffiti of black hearts wound around a mangled throne. There the draconequus sat, laughing uproariously at his creation.
Celestia’s heart skipped a beat as he locked eyes with hers. For a second there was nothing but silence, and in that moment Celestia believed she saw a flicker of recognition behind his eyes.
“Celestia, look out!”
She had just enough time to turn and see a gang of giraffe-bunny familiars string heart-tipped arrows in plastic bows, pointed straight at her. Channeling the sun’s energy, she quickly threw up a golden shield to deflect the oncoming fire. Meanwhile, after alerting Celestia, Philomena flew to a safe distance above, content to simply observe.
“Discord, it’s me, Celestia!” she shouted angrily. “Don’t you recognize me? Can’t you hear my voice?”
The mad draconequus showed no response other than conjuring up an arsenal of whipped cream pies to hurl in her face. Celestia countered with a laser beam attack that chopped them into tiny, harmless pieces.
“Stop fighting me, Discord! I know the real you is inside there, waiting to come out! Please, whatever dark force is controlling you, you can fight it!”
Discord hurled a teddy bear, its sharp claws scratching her cheek. Celestia let out a gasp as she pressed a hoof to her face and found it smeared with blood. “Discord, this isn’t you! The Discord I know would never try to hurt me!” she screamed over Discord’s jeering. “You wished for my happiness, didn’t you? Then for Faust’s sake, wake up and come back to me!” She stamped her left hoof, jangling a golden wedding band engraved with the Saddle Arabian royal seal.
She looked up at the draconequus, blurred by a thin veil of tears. “Look, I'm sorry, okay? Philomena was right,” she continued in a more subdued voice. “I came here because it’s personal. And I… I have a lot of regrets. There are things I wish I had said sooner, things I’m scared you’ll never get to hear.”
Though she had dropped to a whisper, her words rang clearly throughout the labyrinth. “I figured out that I don’t want to live in a world without you. I’ve discovered just how lonely it is.”
Celestia weakly smiled as a lone tear rolled down her cheek. “You didn’t need to make a wish, Discord. Even if I was stressed and tired and overworked, you were all I needed to be happy. Maybe… maybe none of this matters to you now, but if this doesn’t get through to you, I don’t know what will.”
Her magenta eyes silently pleaded with his for a response. Perhaps she saw a glimmer of understanding mirrored back, or perhaps it was simply a delusion.
Whatever the case was, the deck of razor-sharp playing cards hurtling toward her was no mirage. With a loud shriek, Celestia formed another golden dome to block the attack.
Pain blossomed in Celestia’s chest like a hand clutching her heart in a death grip. A wounded cry tore from her throat as the reserves of her magic flickered and died. Trembling, she fell to her knees and cradled her dizzy head in her hooves. Electricity fizzled uncomfortably along her horn, now drained of energy. Freed from her levitation spell, the Element of Magic clattered to the floor. It was almost entirely black.
Philomena swooped down from her perch in the rafters. “Now do you believe me?” she asked, hovering over Celestia’s broken, magicless body. “You cannot undo his fate. Now your wish will go unfulfilled, and your sacrifice will be for nothing. You have failed both him and your sister, all because you foolishly sought to salvage a wish that was not yours.”
No, that can't be true! she wanted to cry out, even if it was a lie. But reality was stronger, the weight of the world threatening to crush her into dust under its heel. Discord is gone, she realized, the words echoing inside her empty heart. Luna will fall. There is no way to change my fate.
Her dull, listless eyes rattled hollowly inside her head. So this is all that remains. My marriage was to strengthen Equestria and protect Luna, but it came at the cost of Discord’s happiness. My own overprotectiveness estranged my sister and made her wish for a power that will condemn her. And still I believed myself to be a goddess, thinking I was strong enough to atone for my sins and meddle in a fate that is not mine. I have failed everyone. Is there nothing left but my despair…?
With a soft groan, Celestia willed her aching body to stand. Her legs felt like they were made of putty, but even they could support a husk carved out by grief. A hushed silence fell on the labyrinth as Philomena and even Discord stopped to watch the near-dead alicorn mare weakly stumble forward with her head held high.
“I was a fool,” she whispered as she steadily held Discord’s gaze. “I came here expecting a fairytale where love and courage always win, but if there’s anything that being an alicorn has taught me, it’s that miracles like that aren’t free. I cannot save everyone. I am already too late to save you, even though a part of me wants to fall to my knees and hope it isn’t true.”
She tossed back her shining mane and laughed in a voice filled with heartbreak. “Another part of me wants to go back, to turn and run back to Luna. She is all I have left now. The only thing I have left to love. If I were smart, I would protect her until the very end. But I am a fool, and I cannot save her from herself. You have proven that. My wish was made in vain.”
Her steps were more desperate now, each hoof digging into the ground like a claw trying to drag the rest of her body along. “I am nothing now. I am about to die in despair and become like you. I have lost, lost the day I made the contract.
“And still, I kept hoping. I believed that my hope alone would be enough to save both the ponies I loved from despair. And I suppose that was my greatest fault. The balance of hope and despair is always zero. And I have lost all hope.”
Celestia’s eyes burned with fire. “But I will not give into despair.”
“Celestia, what are you—!" Philomena’s shouting was cut off by a sphere of magic that engulfed her.
Celestia bit down on her tongue, trying not to cry out in pain. “Shut up,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “This ends on my terms.”
She looked up at Discord, now making cotton candy clouds spin around his head. “I don’t know if you can hear me anymore,” she continued, standing at the base of his throne. “It doesn’t really matter anyway. Even if you are lost in delirium, nothing will change the truth.
“As I was coming here, Philomena asked me why I cared so much about your fate. Well, the truth is that I care because I love you. I wasn’t brave enough to tell you then, so I am going to save you now.”
Philomena started banging on the magic forcefield. Celestia turned to face her. "Tell Luna goodbye for me, will you? Or do I need to make another contract for you to grant me that wish?"
The phoenix's wings dropped limply to her sides. The alicorn shook her head. She couldn't hold it against her. A creature who couldn't understand emotion, who believed souls were worth stealing to prolong the life of the universe, who didn't find any significance in honoring a dying pony's request was deserving of only pity, not hatred.
With a sigh, Celestia turned back to Discord. “You wasted your wish on a scared, indecisive filly," she told him. "So with the only power I have left to sacrifice, let me grant your true wish.”
Celestia held the Element of Magic in her hoof. Nearly all of its facets were obscured by the darkness of despair, but a small tip of a point shone with the purple radiance of hope. It was almost unbelievable, to think that that infinitesimal fraction of her soul had the power to blow up the entire labyrinth if it shattered.
She pressed the cold gem to her lips before tossing it high into the air. Then with a powerful flap of her wings, she flew straight up until she was eye level with Discord.
“You didn’t want to be alone,” Celestia said. “That was all you ever wanted. Then you don’t need to worry anymore, Discord. I’ll never leave you again.”
She charged her horn with her last reserves of solar magic. Her eyes followed her Element, still propelled upward towards the heavens, while her heartbeat counted down the seconds. Only when the gem reached the apex of its arch did she let her magic go.
The alicorn watched in awe as a golden beam of magic hurtled across the room like a comet trail. It slashed the air like a blade in its race to meet up with the falling star before it reached the ground. Two halves trying to connect into a shooting star.
Celestia looked into Discord’s eyes. This time, there was no delusion. His eyes were hollow, lost a thousand miles away. Dripping tears fell onto her smile as she watched her magic bridge the distance.
Then the gemstone shattered.