//------------------------------//
// Chapter 45: The Suzerain of Sin 
// Story: When the Everfree Burns 
// by SpiritDutch 
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Fleetfoot was not the fastest of the Wonderbolts. That dignity went to their leader Spitfire, who everypony agreed was one of the most skilled fliers of the decade. Still, Fleet was a quick pony, a member of an elite squadron and a tier above most pegasi.
But still, Fleetfoot could not hope to catch Astral Nacre in the air. The beastly alicorn was freakishly fast, moving with a fluid grace in the black skies, her bone wings spread merely in the gesture of flight.  Fleet's chance of intercepting Astral ended once she stopped hovering.


"Well... Damn." Fleetfoot cursed into the wind. She tried tracking Astral's movements but the alicorn was just a shadow in the dark of the night. "I lost her."
It wasn't all bad. If Astral Nacre was gone, then the remnants of the Cloudsdale task force could retreat uncontested.

From the back of her mind, the etherial voice of Rain Gnash came. 'On your left, Fleet. Two airships, westbound.'

"Huh?" Fleetfoot looked to her left. The airships were above her and rising, silhouetted against the moon. "One looks like a picket skiff. The other's too bulky to be a warship. Is that the airship that was leaving from the Canterlot skydock?"


'Possibly. It doesn't matter now.' Gnash said.

"I guess I should be happy Astral Nacre got away." Fleetfoot said.  She glanced towards Canterlot. "I don't know if I'm committed enough to go looking for her in earnest."


‘i’m scared too, Fleetfoot, but this isn’t something we can run away from.’

“Easy for you to say.” Fleetfoot huffed, but Gnash spoke true. The only possible way to undo their shared curse would lie with Astral.



When Fleetfoot looked back at the pair of airships, she was blinded by a swell of yellow light that shot off the side of the smaller of the two. The spell sailed off towards the horizon, exploding in a brilliant column of flame in the air.

“Woah! That wasn’t Astral Nacre. That was solar magic!” Fleetfoot gnawed her lip. “What the hell could do that?”

‘i’d say Twilight Velvet had a try at creating a second alicorn. Perhaps she rebuilt Celestia’


“W- Wait, are you serious?”

‘It's just a jest, but I ache to think that we live in time where such questions can even be asked.’

“That’s not funny at all, Admiral. Your gallows humor really isn't helping things.” Fleetfoot took a shaky breath. Her terror was building, not just from the prospect of facing Astral, but of unknown things that presented equal danger. “I'm not gunna kvetch about the state of the world, because gods willing I can help it."

‘You want to fix the world? That is selfless, Fleet, but let’s focus on getting our own crap in order first, huh?’


“Yes ma’am, Admiral Ma’am.” Fleetfoot steered herself towards the airships, which seemed to be gaining altitude quite quickly.

Once more, a bolt of magical light arced into the night sky, its nearby detonation bathing Fleetfoot with hot air. No sooner had she recovered from the buffets of the shockwave than another magical inferno consumed the air directly in front of her.  Fleetfoot squealed and rolled, tumbling through the superheated air. She snapped her wings open again, and found that her tail and mane has been singed to within inches of her skin.

"What the hell is going on over there?!" Fleet yelped.

'A battle.'

“Well I'm guessing that's where Astral is. But if this keeps up I’ll be an unrecognizable pile of goo long before we reach her. ” Fleetfoot banked hard, swinging around behind the airships. She’d closed to within a hundred meters of the more sleek military skiff, and she could barely see the outline of two ponies each time the deck was illuminated by the unknown spellcaster.


‘Oh... oh my...  Astral Nacre is there, yes. I can almost hear her thoughts.’ Gnash said sedately. ‘She’s out of control, manic, consumed with hunger.’

"Stay with me, Admiral." Fleet whispered. She didn't want Gnash going silent and leaving her alone.

Rain Gnash's presence in the link receded, and a spike of fear flooded Fleetfoot's mind. 'There's a problem. She is battling a very dangerous pony.'

“Who?” Fleetfoot hesitated, bleeding off speed in case Gnash ordered her away. “What is is?”

'Fleet, I would not blame you for calling this off. The possibility of death has grown much stronger.' Gnash's voice was low and reluctant. 'I think it's the Traitor. Fleet, be careful. We might end up even worse than we are if we run afoul of the likes of her.'








“i won’t let equestria die.” Celestia whispered into the ground.

“Is that a yes or a no?” Ancepanox asked flatly. 
The dark alicorn wasn't sure if she cared what Celestia's answer was.

Celestia took another long moment to speak. She continued to stare into space expressionlessly. “That will be up to you. The idea of Equestria...  If you agree to preserve it, you can everything of me."

“Wait, are you serious?” Ancepanox scoffed. “You don't get to make qualifications like that. Yes or no. That's all I'll permit you to say. Will you die for us?"

Celestia blinked.

"Gah! Are you so proud?" Ancepanox huffed. "You abandoned Equestria! Why would you want me to save it now?"

“It's complicated."

“You're off your rocker." Ancepanox said. "Are you playing dumb with me Celestia? Why did you forsake Equestria, if you cared about it and wanted to pass it on to Twilight?"

“Does there have to be an answer? Sometimes we do silly things, and make mistakes.” Celestia cracked a sad smile. “I thought I was losing you. I decided saving you was more important than Equestria, and I still think that. You can be the one to save Equestria."

“Quit woolgathering.” Ancepanox growled. "All the efforts and aspirations you placed on Twilight Sparkle wasn't meant for me, Ancepanox."


“I have never been one to raise false idols, sister. I know who I'm talking to.” Celestia said.
She turned her back on Ancepanox and trotted to the edge of the magical shield around them.  She placed her head against it. Agana's shadow shades had not stopped moaning and attacking for a single second of their arguing, and even then were beating themselves fecklessly against the shield,  clumped up to three bodies thick where it met the obsidian ground.
Being so close, Celestia could feel what Ancepanox had been talking about. She felt the dead soul of the shades, of the tortured they had endured to become what they were. Celestia wondered if she would end up the same way.
"Ancepanox, I will die. I don't want Equestria to die with me. Please. It's my last wish."

"How depressing. You go from swearing to save Twilight to begging to save Equestria." Ancepanox snickered.

Celestia smiled. "Because it's the only thing in doubt anymore."

“Lovely.” Anceapnox felt a rare joy at the circuitous complement. "Celestia, if you're going to bother putting in effort, now the time to do it. I'm going to fight to save this dream."
The dark alicorn stretched her legs and flapped her wings, limbering up for the imminent battle. 

Celestia wasn't sure if she was getting what she wanted, but at least the arguing had ended. It was time for action. Twilight Sparkle's dream would be purged of Agana's influence.
High above her, the Sun floated, still dodging nimbly around Agana's miasma. Celestia could still feel her mother's pressure, unclear but forceful, desirous of a goal Celestia could not grasp. Things could still go wrong if the Sun continued to be fickle.
Am I doing the right thing, Celestia wondered.
But her mother Sun did not answer.

"Yes, sister." Celestia said. "I am ready for them."








The dreaming form of Twilight Sparkle felt a sudden pang in her heart. Immediately, she found it more difficult to stay upright.
Something was happening. The mind is malleable, and thought Agana's psychic attacks stung deeply, the dream could absorb the abuse. This was something different though.

"Ah. Is it happening?" Twilight asked herself.  Her manifestation wavered at the edges.
Yes, she was going to forget. That was the consensus of both Anceapnox and Celestia, even if they did not realize it. Both of them knew Twilight Sparkle would have to be reset, so to speak.  If Twilight remembered her actions during the night, of becoming Forlorn Spark, of the hidden secrets of gods, it would only take one bad mood for travesties of the nightmare to be repeated.
When next that dreamer awoke, she would be Twilight Sparkle, nothing more and nothing less.

But faced with this, the dreamer began to feel bitterness and dread. Ancepanox got to live with her memories. The cursed ponies, Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash, would get to grow and learn from what they'd experienced. On Forlorn Spark, devolved into Twilight Sparkle, would get knocked back to zero. Nay, less than zero. To forget...  Wasn't that a kind of death? Everything between the present and the last intact memory would wither and rot. 
Twilight thought about the things she had seen, both waking and dreaming. All of that was going to go away, for the comfort and desires of other ponies.


"No. No. What I've seen and felt, those are mine. You won't take them away from me." She whispered. "I don't want to go! It's not my time yet!"
Twilight clenched her jaw. Yes, on some level she still embodied the perfect selfishness of Forlorn Spark, and she was not content with the fate she was being dealt. She would find a way to claw back from the death imposed on her somehow. It would take months or years, but Twilight Sparkle swore to remember, even if it left her cursed with knowledge no mortal should have.

She looked up, and a vision passed over her.  A moment before, there had been only void and obsidian chunks. Now, she saw the Tower of the Bard crumbling in reverse. The mighty and infinite edifice was torn to shreds, cracking and splintering all down its length, but its profile was undeniably that of a tower; A fleeting vision, but it spoke of a promise.
The Tower had broken before, and it would again. That was what the Tower did. Yes, the dream could come back to life. Unity could come back to life. 

"I will come back to this place, and reclaim my life." Twilight promised defiantly. Her dreaming form was fraying at the edges. "You will all pay." The visage of Twilight Sparkle dissolved into glimmering light before fading into the background of the dream.



This went unnoticed, for battle had commenced.
Ancepanox dispelled her shield spell, and the shadow shades fell upon the two alicorns with feral viciousness. The shades formed a mound of teeming, writhing darkness, covering Ancepanox and Celestia completely.
The ranks of the mad shadows were sliced by gouts of solar fire and arcs of blue electricity. Shades were torn apart by the energies and dissolving into mist, but more came, descending from above or clawing up from below. The alicorns cast spell after spell, and the limitless stream of shades were beaten away.

Celestia moved with careful sluggishness that could almost be mistaken for patience, but one could tell that the sun princess was trying to hide her power through a mask of detached composure. Every time she banished another shade from the dream with her magic, her violet eyes turned on Ancepanox.

But Ancepanox was lost in the heat of battle, passion for violence overcoming her senses. She abandoned use of her magic and, like a starved beast, took to tangling with the shades hoof to hoof, or rather mouth to mouth, as it was her fanged maw that ripped through the shadowy necks of the ghostly thralls. All discretion was forgotten in her desire to reach Agana; It was a reminder to Celestia of who she was dealing with.

"AGANA!" Ancepanox howled into the void. "Come out and face us! Let's fight, for the fate of these dreamers!"








‘TWILIGHT! TWILIGHT!’  Dash was screaming in her head, desperate to be heard.  Nopony answered her inward cries.
“Oh buck oh buck oh buck!"


“Hee hee hee hee hee hee.” Rarity’s laughter was whisper quiet, but sounded like a roll of thunder to the panicked Rainbow Dash. “That look of fear on your face is so delightful, Mis Dash. I don't care who is in that body, because the screams and pain is all the same.”  She brushed her mane away from her face, and Dash could not help but be chilled by the depths of the mad darkness looking down at her. “I'm going to kill all of you.”


“Now Mis Rarity, I’m sure we can talk this out, right?” Dark forced a nervous laugh, as she backed further away from the nightmare unicorn. “I mean, I didn’t talk to you that much but I really do think we can be friends here.”

“Oh little Mis Dash. Even in your own body you were uncomfortable. The Dark form does not fit you. Or are you always like that?” Rarity chuckled, drawing up to her full height. She was as tall as Ancepanox and her lustrous mane filled the air around her more fully than any but an alicorn’s wings could have. Her horn gleamed in the moonlight, so sharp Dash would have said it could poke a hole in the sky.
“But we can make a deal, Rainbow Dash. If you don't want to share the fate of Ancepanox, Twilight, and Applejack, then you may run.” Rarity grinned, showing her flesh-eater’s fangs. “Let me beat you unconscious, so you wake up back in your own body. Then you fly far away. I beat that alicorn's body back into dust, so no magic or ritual could ever bring it back." She levitated a chunk of stone and brandished it menacingly. "That last part is going to happen regardless. The only question is if you will feel it or not.

Dash gulped. "That's pretty harsh."
She had to admit, she wanted to flee. Getting stuck into the fight had never worked well for her: Invariably she was beat and needed help from her more capable allies.  As Apple Bloom had warned her, she didn't need to stick her neck out for Twilight. 
"Rarity...   You'll let me go?" She whispered. "How about...  No."
Rainbow Dash was no going let a friend down. Ancpeanox had trusted her. If Dash wavered, she'd be condemning the only chance to return to undo the curse and return to normal.
"I've stood up to monsters before. If I'm going to reclaim my soul, I'll start here, by resisting you!" 

“You're so cute. I think...  I think I'll keep you as a pet!” Rarity smirked.
The dark unicorn jumped forward, smashing downwards with the chunk of stone. Dash jumped out of the way with a sweep of her wings.
"I know who you are, Rainbow Dash!" Rarity stalked Dash across the throne room. "Cloud Creshe, Dash! I was just a filly when it happened, playing outside when the sky was lit up with rainbows. For weeks, the Nightmare faithful of Ponyville like my parents wondered if it was a sign, if old magics were coming back to life. We didn't eat, we didn't sleep, convinced that any moment Equestria would explode into darkness and violence."

Dash paled. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Friend of a friend, a chain of whispers, and we learned the truth: A little filly was responsible for the Rainboom that destroyed Cloud Creshe. We were shocked, maybe a bit disappointed, but most of all we were amused. A pony as cursed as you was destined to find her way to the Dark eventually." Rarity cackled. "You're so filled with guilt and pain I can taste it!"


Dash couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The terrible catastrophe that had caused so much agony and grief for the ponies of Cloudsdale and the worst and yet most defining moment of her life, was regarded as a missed opportunity by Rarity et al.

"Oh don't give my that look. My parent's generation didn't want a pony like you anyway!  You outsiders, you profligates, un unfitting worshipers of the Dark. Strangers and outsiders are hardly even ponies, they say." Rarity began picking up pebbles with her magic and flicking it at Dash. They plinked off the blue steel armor.  "I couldn't feel more differently. We need you ponies. You didn't grow up knowing the Dark, but the seeds are there in your heart, ready to be accepted. Rainbow Dash, you have nothing to be ashamed of! Your soul is not in need of reclamation, only nurturing! Submit to the Dark, Rainbow Dash. Our promised day at hoof."

"I...  I've heard all this before." Rainbow Dash said. "I had a friend just like you. She believed in accepting inner evil too. But unlike you, she believed in her own strength! She didn't need a cucked ideology of servitude!"

"WHAT!" Rarity screeched.

"I know what I've done. I've been trying to make amends for Cloud Creshe for years. You can't drudge up the past and make me feel any more guilty than I already am." Rainbow smirked. "I know and accept my self-loathing. You're powerless over me!"

"So what!" Rarity snarled. "I'll still beat you to mash!" Flashing her teeth, Rarity dissolved into shadow and reapeared over the sleeping body of Twilight Sparkle. "Or I'll just do her."


“Get away from her!” Dash raised a hoof for a punch.

Rarity slowly obliged, smirk never leaving her face. “Come now, Mis Dash, do the math. You have vulnerable targets to defend from an opponent who far outclasses you. Last chance. Leave that body now, before its brutal death shocks your consciousness unrecoverably. For now, Ancepanox’s demise is all I seek. Wait for you turn.”

“You’re all talk.” Dash spat.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a black fog rolling in from the entrance of the throne room. It was like the strange magical fog that Rarity had exuded when she'd re-transformed into her nightmare form.


If Rarity noticed the strange black fog, she didn't say it. “Run or fight, Mis Dash!”

“How about you stop telling me what to do, eh? If you were gunna do something, you'd have done it!” Dash went from serious to teasing.  A wild gamble of a plan was taking shape in her imagination.

Rising to the challenge, Rarity cast a bolt of dark magic at Dash that missed.


“How do you know this is what your god would want?” Dash taunted again, buying time.

“Idiot, this isn’t about obeying god, this is about becoming god!” Rarity could help herself but retort. She stepped around Twilight and advanced on Dash again.  “Nightmare Moon is dead, and Ancepanox and I are simply names in the hat. But the stupid mare keeps getting herself involved with other things, regressing on the climb to divinity. She actually pretends to care about other ponies! Hah ha hah! I don’t deceive myself, or anypony else. It is my single-minded goal now, to win.”

“If you kill Ancepanox, the thing that was raping our minds, Agana, will win. She’ll make you into off-brand dogfood in ten seconds flat.” Dash countered. “You can’t win, so what you’re doing is just being a whiny foal. You could be helping us, and instead you’re being destructive.”

“Destructive is what nightmares DO!”  Rarity screamed. “Rarity was a pious mare once, toiling to advance the Dark Lady’s power over this world! But that came to nothing! The dark gods passed her over for Twilight Sparkle!” Rarity pointed accusingly at Twilight’s body.  “I’ll pile all your corpses before the image of the Dark Lady, and in her sight, devour you! No ancient and decrepit god could resist me then.”

"Did you just say 'Image of the Dark Lady' ?" Dash kept out of Rarity's reach.  There was a slight crunch, as both of them were walking over the fractured rubble of what had been the Nightmare altar.
Dash's brow furrowed, her thoughts clicking together. "It was you. You were the pony that made the altar."


“Yes we did!" Rarity struck a proud pose. "All those idiotic old-timers were proved wrong! Rarity made a link directly to the cosmos. We heard the twinkling of the stars and the creek of the night sky. If that idiotic bug Chrysalis hadn't stolen it, I would have been god by now!" She fell silent for a moment. "But a lady can be adaptable when she needs to be. I started another before Twilight Sparkle came to town. It's very pretty, yet inert. When you interlopers are dead, I shall ignite it!"

Dash smirked. She'd drawn out the exact nugget of information she'd needed.  "You must have ben pretty sneaky, to be able to put the altar so close to Chrysalis and the old one."

"The Faithful know many ways around this castle. Besides the bug never left the throne room." Rarity laughed scornfully. She paused. "Wait...  How did you know?!"

“Yeah…  So if I’m getting this right, you’re pretty keen on this altar.” Dash nodded. “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m about, uh, ten hooves closer to the door than you.”

“What are you on about?” Rarity snarled.

“Oh I’m just observing that, you know, hypothetically, if we raced to the ‘prototype’ altar, I’d get there with enough time to smash it to bits. Especially if you stay and kill Twilight or Applejack.” Dash mimicked Rarity’s earlier arrogant pose. “I’m just saying.”

Rarity glowered. “You don’t know where it is!”

Dash winked. “It’s where the fog’s coming from.”


Rarity gasped in surprise. Dash grinned: Her guess had proved correct.

“Kill all the ponies you want, and it won’t mean crap if you can’t cash in on it!” Dash laughed.  “Catch me, if you can!”
Dash spun around and ran out of the throne room, disappearing into the thick black fog.

Rarity trembled in furious anger, torn between executing the sleeping ponies and chasing after the mare. “I’ll slaughter you like a lamb, Rainbow Dash.” She had trouble forming words as furious anger frothed up from her throat. She clutched her tapestry and started the chase. “BLOOD for the Dark Lady! I’ll SLAUGHTER you!”









Battle, slaughter, destruction.  Ripple Wreath knew that his fight was just one among dozens of concurrent conflicts; Hate and rage bloomed in the dark of the Eternal Night.  It would keep building and building, consuming more and more, until the climax.
'I can feel Ancepanox's battle. She is beating you.'  Ripple Wreath stared up at Agana. The bound alicorn wasn't slinging spells yet, but the dance of magic around her curling twin horns betrayed that she was ready at a moment's notice.

“You weak-willed scut, have you lost the heart to face me already?” Agana’s incessant taunting fanned the flames of Wreath’s own anger. “It’s not as if you can top the bratty fit you had before. Ha!  Pitiable, insolent earth pony.”

“I am...  restraining myself.” The wolf’s lips curled into a wicked, teethy smile. “I must know, before I destroy you, how you came to be what you are. I ask because I am new to this, you know. I want to know the pitfalls to avoid.”


“Sniveling runt.” Agana growled, pushing herself as far forward as she could, pulling her bindings taunt. “Come closer. And I will tell you a secret.” 

“I needed to be closer to kill you anyway.” The nightmarish wolf languidly got up and stretched. As it approached, the Plundering Creeper vines coating the cavern floor retreated away from him, parting and making a bare spot around him. He stopped at the base of Agana’s column, but this time he was almost level with her stomach. “How did you come to be this way?"

"I was born this way." Agana pronounced proudly.

"What do I have to look forward to in this new life?”

“Pain. If you are strong, you will be the one to cause it in others. If not, others will arouse it in you. You will have to be vigilant, for any who would seek to take everything away from you. And you will, in turn, take everything from them, including their very life and soul.” Agana looked down at him. “But I shall last forever! There is no end to the Deava.”

“Is that your justification for your actions?”

“I am the Suzerain of Sin. I am the daughter of she who is the Dark, the greatest of the great ones, the most venerable of the elder alicorns. I predate fifty generations of your ancestors. I don’t have to justify myself to anyone, least of all you.” Agana’s alien eyes roamed over the infant nightmare facing her down. 

“Yes, it’s a dog eat dog world.” Wreath had but to sweep his paw, claws extended, to sever the vines wound around and through Agana’s right hindleg. 
The vines snapped like taunt twine, fraying and spilling black ichor onto the dank cavern floor. With a high-pitched shriek and the creak of twisting bark, the vines pulled away from the leg, thickening the tangles around the other limbs. No longer supported by the Plundering Creeper, the leg swung limply by the alicorn’s fanned tail.


Agana stared in disbelief, at the ragged wolf who carefully licked the black sap off his claw and at her leg. Where once there had been the vines, there was a band off warped skin and the hole where the binding had threaded through. Her psychic battle in the dreamscape was entirely forgotten, as she experimented with moving the freed limb.
It was several more seconds before her blood began to seep from the ancient wound. It was the most consuming of blacks, existing more as the outline and suggestion of substance, as it ran down her leg to her hoof in beading rivulets. It dripped to the floor, and when Wreath tried to catch it with his tongue it dissipated in midair, forming a noxious mist.

"You... You are able to cut me free." Agana squawked. Her instinct to fight back was completely overwhelmed by existential confusion. "You runt. Haven't you been listening? The Dark Lady lay me here, and I shall stay until Celestia is killed!" She kicked at Wreath with the freed leg, batting him backwards a step.



“Oh come off it. I am doing you a favor!” Wreath bared his teeth. "Wouldn't you feel better once you're down from there? maybe you can start to work through your problems!"

"Stop! Go away!" Agana's horns sparked to life. A dart of magic struck Wreath in the head, and though he looked momentarily dazed, he was unharmed. "Die already!"

"Psychic attack will wash off me. There's no room in my head for you when it's so full of HATE." Wreath laughed, a deep but fluctuating laugh. He was losing his composure again. 
He noticed that the rock column to which Agana had been bound was perforated, and it was from within that mighty collumn that the plundering creeper sprouted its vines and thorns.  There was a hole behind where her leg had been bound, and the vines there pushed and retracted repeatedly, like a curling fern, trying to find a grip. 
"What will you do when you are free, oh Suzerain of Sin?  There is a whole world above. Wouldn't you like to see it?"

Wreath recreated the damage on the vines of Agana's other hindleg, slashing at it with his paw. A inaudible squeal filled the air, and the leg came free of the vines. 
Agana slid down the column a ways, held by her outstretched forelegs. Her great wings were pulled up at the joints where they were tied, making them look like a third pair of legs sprouting from behind her shoulders and reaching above her crested head. Her hind hooves touched together for the first time in a thousand years, but she did nothing but gawk, a look of absolute confusion marring her avian face.

"Why do you persist! It is not the will of the Dark Lady!" Agana said


“Not going to fight?” Wreath watched the vines congregate at the last two bindings, doubling the thickness of the floral fetters. “Do you know what your problem is? You are too proud.  If you had given me or my progenitor even the smallest amount of respect, as kin, this would not have been needed.”

Agana pulled her eyes away from her bleeding wounds and looked to Weath.

“You've been here in one place so long its driven you batty. Well, perhaps alicorns are different than mortals, and this just how you are.” Wreath schooled, his snarling voice as dripping with condescension as his carnivorous maw was with ichor and drool.  “I for one, have had my fill of fun here. Let's be rid of you, and go on to the next thing.”


Suddenly the peacock alicorn lurched, throwing herself forward, struggling against the binding on her forehooves and wings. Wreath stepped back, uncertain as to what the alicorn was trying to accomplish.

“The Dark Lady never errs! Yet…   Why, why, why?! Why am I chained here? What is the purpose of all of this?!” Agana sputtered, thrashing and trying to get her hooves free. ”Why am I made to suffer?!”

”You did this to yourself.” Wreath said.

”All my life, serving a mother I never met, living only with the memories she planted inside me. You say true! I have lived in the same position for almost a thousand years. How mad I have been to accept the condition!” Agana stopped struggling for a moment. ”Is there something else out there for me?”

”You’re a fat bird living in a small cage, singing your heart out for nobody at all.”

”I’m strong of mind, unparalleled. I was made to be protected, yet my guards fall to pieces against you.” The peacock alicorn resumed her struggles against the vines, straining with all her might to escape. She planted her liberated hindlegs against the rock and pushed, and one by one the vines snapped under the tension, letting her get a little farther from the column. ”I need to get out, I need to get out!”

“Yes, you do, you should.” Wreath agreed.

“It’s as you said, as you lamented. It is my time to evolve past this nativity. I have to get out, to reach forth.” Agana said yearningly. “I have to get out!”

“It is amusing to see you try nonetheless.” Wreath sneered. ”Good luck, honestly. How gratifying is it to help another creature fight against circumstance! You to me, me to you.”

“Such a fantastic change, that I am proud to have been a part of. But can I change? Can I leave?” Agana asked, her melodic voice warbling in exhaustion, or keen and thirsty power. “This body can not protect me, so what right does it have to imprison me? Hmm… Hmm…  Ah!”

Wreath detected a change in the huge alicorn. Her fitful panic changed to an odd calmness.

Agana's big eyes swivled down to him. “I have just thought of the answer. I know how to leave. I am a creature of the mind. For from the realm of life, there is always a last metamorphosis to undertake.”



Her spiral horns lit up with brilliant magic. But gradually, the magenta energy turned more and more to red. Her strange eyes rolled back and her beak fell open.
Revulsed by the magic she was drawing to her, the black vines released Agana with incredible quickness. With a wet schick, her binding slithered out of her hooves and wings, letting her drop to the cavern floor. She did nothing to advert her crash, and her landing sent enormous tremors throughout the mountain. The magic around her horns faded, and her majestic wings draped over her like a funerary veil.

"What the-  What kind of suicide was that?" Wreath hacked dust from his lungs. He crept forward warily.

But Agana was not quite dead. 
"I made a mistake. I was trying to reach out to her, but hit something deep below instead." In equestrian, she spoke. Not the melodious voice from her mind, but a shrill voice of sound and speech, bespoken from her beak.
She rose again, but there was no light in her eyes, only an abyssal darkness as existed in Wreath's eyes.
“Wherefor has my mother gone? So far into the minds and dreams of this earth, that it escapes our confined intelligence. Out there, she thrives in the infinite black, tickled by the stellar lights and nebulous clouds. A power, a naissance, more grand than can be imagined.”

"Are you going to die?" Wreath asked.

Agana trembled on her thin, atrophied legs, staggering forward until she was over Wreath. She reached out with a forehoof and laid it on his shoulder, 
“I must live, no matter what. What will our deeds matter if we are dead, and can not bear witness to the Dark Lady? The time will come when we will be lovingly embraced in her bosom. I reach up... I reach up...   How can I get higher?”

Wreath was getting bored of Agana. She was more than a match for a pony, but not a Nightmare. He'd exercised most of his violent rage on the statues. Putting down Agana would be a victory lap.

But there was a sound from behind Agana. A slippery creaking, mixed with a deep deep whisper that whistled like a windblown wail.
‘azz DEAVA drda mkeonye. CELESTIAAN vha shmha…   mess’heh morque astie.’

Wreath didn’t see the vines anymore, nor the rock column from which they coiled. It had never been a rock column. No, what had spoken revealed its true face.
A writhing horror too terrible to describe loomed over him and Agana both, observing them both with agitated curiosity. The hundreds of black vines that snaked over the entire statue garden had their origin at protrusions all over it’s bloated trunk, and the ichor that seeped out of the severed creepers was the same that oozed from its hundred murmuring mouths. It’s rippling and unblinking eyes betrayed that it was of the same issue as Agana herself: The Dark Lady had crafted a living weapon to keep the peacock alicorn in place. The Plundering Creeper wanted its prisoner back, dead or alive.

A thick, thorn-studded tangle of vines crashed down on Wreath and Agana. Snarling, Wreath tore himself away from the thrashing vine, then leaped back in to chomp it in half. But more and more vines surged out of the shadows, and though Wreath could bite and slash with abandon, the plant ichor and thorns were burning his nose and tearing his mouth.








Ancepanox felt a twitch in the dreamscape. Something significant was happening. The dark alicorn retreated from the battle with the shadow shades and cast her magic barrier again, waiting to find out what was happening.

Celestia noticed the other alicorn retreat, and galloped to her.  "What are you doing?" She shouted through the barrier shield. "The battle is not yet won!"

Anxepanox was slowly recovering from her violence-fueled fugue, but still breathing heavy, still having trouble focussing. "Agana and Ripple Wreath...  Something's going on. I can't tell..."

Celestia glanced back to the cloud of shadow shades, drawing closer. "Sister, are you going to let me in your shield?"

"Give it a second." Ancpeanox said.



All at once, everything in the dream was bathed in a sinister and murky light. Celestia looked up into the sky, and saw the dark blight chasing her sun had come to a stop at the peak of the sky.
The circular patch of dark began to crack apart, a thin seam bisecting it growing into a chasmous maw stained red. It yawned open wider until it seemed to curl inside out, and it’s malignant tendrils thinned and pulled to each side. It bit, and the hole of its throat turned this way and that, and Celestia realized that what she was looking at was looking back at her: An eye, like that of Agana, possessing a broad, fluctuating pupil.

The shades stopped coming, and in their place there came a terrible din. The rubble of the Tower, falling endlessly through the emptiness, froze in place. Down from the eye descended the dreaming manifestation of the peacock alicorn herself. She was upright, hindlegs crossed over each other and wings and forelegs outstretched, as if she was still chained up in the Vaci Arcanum. Vines flowed out from her crested mane and fanned tail and trailed behind her, rippling surreally like Celestia’s mane.


Ancepanox dispelled her barrier. “Ah! Finally. We were wondering when you'd show up. Now get down here so I can repay you for insulting me. I'll rip your spine out!"

“Yes, I am here, Mooneater.” Agana alighted on one of the chunks of the fractured Tower, the vines billowing around her both in a nonexistent wind. “I have realized what true freedom is, and therefore I have come here to seek it. In the waking world, I have just died.” She cast her gaze upwards to the dark eye above. ”But that world was never meant for me. I am an alicorn made for dreams, and only through the Dreamscape can I find my true liberation, my true path to the Dark Lady.”

Ancepanox teleported closer.  Twilight Sparkle, surrounded by a glimmering veil of blue magic, lay at Agana's hooves: The little pony was looking less and less like a nightmare by the minute, and more like her old self.

Agana leaned over and tenderly ran a hoof through Twilight's fur.  "This dream...   It's something miraculous. Fully formed, it will reach out up to heaven. It is a dangerous weapon in the hooves of a mortal, is it not, Celestia?"

"You were the one who broke it, not I!" Celestia said accusingly.

"Did I? At the time I didn't care much about it. I was more concerned about getting to you." Agana took long strides to the edge of her platform. "I thought killing you was the key to my freedom. If I must compete with you to mount this Tower and reach heaven, that may still be true."

Ancepanox's brow furrowed. She looked back at Celestia. "What is she talking about?"

“What are you asking ME for? She is the one who tried to kill us, your friends, and that progeny of yours.” Celestia’s eye widened in horror. “But...   If Agana's body is dead, did your progeny do it? Sister, there's a chance-”

“Stop calling me your sister already!” Ancepanox glared. “Yes, Ripple Wreath is alive. He's gone mad, feral. Hell, I've gone mad! All of us transform when we encounter the Dark, especially when it gives us resurrection."

“Calm yourself, restrain your passion.” Celestia urged. “Or Agana will destroy you.”

“Is this really the time to lecture me?!” Ancepanox spat.


“Tak! Are you actually going to fight amongst yourselves when I am literally here, a visible and obvious threat?” Agana’s beak clacked amusedly. Standing on her two back hooves, even hunched over, she was more than twice the size of Ancepanox. Perhaps it was that her pure mental presence manifested her larger within the dream. “How astounding, really. Why have you not had it out yet? Both of you desire nothing more than the destruction of the other.”

“SHUT UP! I want nothing more than to destroy YOU, Agana!” Ancepanox flapped her wings and made a great leap up to the higher chunk of Tower. Agana backed out of the smaller creature's range. "Celestia's judgement will come in time. You hurt Wreath, and you hurt Twilight. Now I'm going to hurt you."


“My poor, dear Mooneater, has everypony done you wrong? What did this one do to you?” Agana pulled Twilight Sparkle up by her tail. “I still offer to be your friend. There's so much we could accomplish together. You, me, and this dreamer..." Agana's melodic voice dipped into contemplative whispers. "Let's not be coy. I see right through you. I know what you were and what you've become, even if Celestia doesn't. 

“Step away from Twilight! I was here first.” Celestia hopped up beside Ancepanox.

"Wait your turn to rant!" Ancepanox nipped at the other alicorn.


Up above them the blot of darkness, the mere lid of the eye now stared longingly down upon the all. In a manner, the strange corrupted eye was a perverse parody of the moon, illuminating the dream with its eerie and unholy light. Agana was radiant under that odd murky light, as dominant in Twilight's dream as she had been her own realm.

The Sun, no longer being chased, re-assumed a position just above the horizon. Celestia looked to her sun, wondering if she was going to receive any instruction or memory. Alas nothing. The sun was inert, but watchful. 
"Sister, you can have your chance with her, after I talk." Celestia said. "Agana and I have a complicated history, and there may be alternatives to fighting now that she is here."

“Complicated history is one way to put it. You betrayed me." Agana flared her wings out. "It serves me right for collaborating with a Celestiaan."

"You knew what you were getting into. It was you who betrayed me. You sold yourself as Anima Astral Nacre's equal, where you were anything but. Our brief collaboration was never going to free you, nor did it give me my answers." Celestia said, letting contemptuous condescension creep into her voice.   "Let Twilight Sparkle go, and we will spare you.”

“Ha ha, no.” Agana laughed melodiously.

"Yeah, don't talk for me." Ancepanox barked at Celestia, then to Agana. "Because we're not sparing you."

“I am not approaching empty-hooved. We can negotiate. Was your body destroyed? Mine was not. I am not powerful enough to return to my body, but you hypothetically could. If you wish to return to life, liberated and in a pleasing form, it would be possible.” Celestia and Agana stared into each other’s eyes. “That, in exchange for Twilight Sparkle's life.”

Agana looked Celestia up and down. “Celestia, you blessed little fool, I have no desire to take your body, or any others. My concern lies below and above.”


‘Get out of my way already, princess." Ancepanox interrupted.

“Twilight, some realities, even when speaking the truth, were not meant to be known. This truth, it is about you and I, and her. About why you hate me. About all of it, the very core of my sins. They are things nopony was even meant to know.” Celestia slowly turned to Ancepanox. “Agana have collaborated in the past, in bygone years when I had no plans or ambitions. I learned all I could from her, before moving on, which she was quite incensed by clearly."

Ancepanox's tail flicked impatiently, her eyes darting between Celestia and Agana. “I get that Alicorns aren't supposed to have dreams. When you two collaborated, it created Celestia's dream, didn't it."

Celestia hesitated."Yes and no-"

Agana interrupted with a fluctuating laugh. "More no than yes."

"We retraced steps, mostly. We both had a progenitor to follow and uncover, and past secrets to interpret." Celestia struggled to explain, mournfully looking over the broken tower.
"I'll readily admit, I had not the wits to create.   My ancient precursor, Celestia the First, built the dreams that have defined my life. She was the first one to shape the wild powers of the sun into a sentient form, give it a formative dream, and a voice. Then, at the end of her life, she synthesized the other dream, of the end to alicorns and accession of mortals."

"A dream she created with the aid of the Dark Lady, and which could only ever be puzzled into by collaborating with me!" Agana said. "This Celestia never created anything unique, never had an original thought. The path she trod was ordained from the moment she was created."

"As if I need reminder from you! I'm glad I left you to rot! I went and lived a life of luxury while you enjoyed all the pleasures of a dank cave!" Celestia shot back. "You know what I"m doing here, right now? Surpassing my predecessors! Not even Celestia the First could escape our Sun's call forever, but I have. I welcome you to follow your leader, and kill yourself."

"The Dark Lady is up in heaven waiting for me-"

"Anima Astral Nacre lies mouldering under the Everfree Castle for all you know! Nopony knows where she went." Celestia laughed mockingly. "I hope Celestia the First buried her alive, if only so there is a poetic symmetry when I destroy you."


"Old ideologies, petty old strife. It never changes with you alicorns." Ancepanox scoffed and shook her head.

"If you had such a problem with ponies retreading the past, perhaps I should have pointed out when you were doing it." Celestia said.

Ancepanox ran her snake-like tongue over her canines, once again weighing the option of turning on Celestia then and there. "You really have trouble keeping me happy, princess."

"You overestimate yourself. You think you are more powerful than Agana or I. It is not so true as you believe." Celestia said. "Forlorn Spark, yes, for she was apotheosized. You, Ancepanox, are still mortal."

Agana laughed melodiously. "But perhaps not as mortal as you believe, Celestiaan."


"Doesn't matter what I am or not. You'll change your tune when I tear this bird in half, Celestia." Ancepanox shouted, irate. If Agana kept gabbing, she would end up revealing what had really happened to Nightmare Moon, and why Ancepanox now wore her visage. Ancepanox wanted to save that revelation for later, on her own terms. "So, I most graciously ask that you shut your mouth and put 'em up. I'd like the fight for Twilight Sparkle's fate decided NOW."

As Ancepanox was getting ready to charge at Agana, Celestia placed herself between the two dark alicorns.
"Sister wait. I'm trying to tell you-"

"Trying to tell me about your centuries of failures! I'm TIRED of it, Celestia. I don't care who you worked with or who you slept with, or ANY of it. You telling me isn't doing me a service. It's just you getting it off your chest." Ancpeanox was frothing mad. "I'm not the pony for it! I know who and what you are! You're a dead princess, the descendant of a dead princess. Your a weak and puerile copy of something that was great and beautiful."
Ancepanox spit on the floor. "Buck you Celestia. THIS. ISN'T. ABOUT. YOU. I don't want to hear your sobs stories about what you're trying to atone for. Atone my ass!"


Celestia stood there for a moment, nibbling on her bottom lip. "Sister, I... I'm doing the best-"

"Geeze. I don't know how many different ways I can say it. I don't care." Ancepanox sighed.
So, stepping past the white alicorn, Ancepanox walked into Agana's shadow. "We doing this?"

Agana cocked her head to the side, her strange eyes focussing on the smaller creature. "Little nightmare... I would like nothing more."







"Sunset! Sunset!" Entanglement Theory shouted herself hoarse, but there was no response. Sunset Shimmer was no longer on the airship. "Shoot! She wasn't kidding." The little unicorn lashed the wheel in place. "Then... I have to do this myself."

Entanglement Theory rushed down the thin stairs into the cargo compartment. Without a steady hoof on the wheel, the ship rocked from side to side violently in the winds, but so far it was staying on course.  She moved to the front compartment, where the strange bronze and glass machines were sitting, restful but ready to be used.

Out of the corner of her eye, past the rim of her glasses, she saw false visions of endless skies filled with debris and bodies, like an ocean after a shipwreck. Horrible happenings in the parallel worlds…  Blessed eyes saw such awful things. She forced herself to ignore it: Giving any attention to the visions would give them strength.

"Move everything into the right configuration!" She yelled up into the cabin, and heard the steps of the experiment ponies moving at her command.
It was with a mix of dread and purpose that Entanglement went from machine to machine, quickly checking that they were as she’d left them.
"But no batteries or capacitors..." She rubbed her chin, cursing the rotten luck of losing the last wagon at the skydock gatehouse, and the pony who'd destroyed them. "But there should be enough tolerance built into the system. Hopefully."

Increasingly nervous, Entanglement Theory rushed back up to the top deck.  Above her, the airship's balloons were getting more and more misshapen, a result of the decreasing air pressure at the extreme altitudes they were reaching. The experiment ponies were moving everything into the correct position, fearless in the face of the terrifying winds.

"Well..." Entanglement Theory muttered. "That leaves just one thing." She ducked back into the cargo hold, descending into the bottom cargo compartment. One of the devices there contained the lynchpin of the whole system, an intricate golden horseshoe.
Entanglement pressed her cheek against the glass bulb containing the horseshoe. It was slightly warm to the touch. “The royal regalia of a dead empress. It’d be worth a substantial amount back home.” She lingered to admire the golden horseshoe. She had to admit, she felt a draw to the former princess of the land she was in. Whenever Sunset had talked about Celestia she’d always felt a certain longing, as if she was meant to know the sun princess. “Maybe in another life…”


Shaking her head clear of the distracting thoughts, Entanglement Theory rushed up to the top deck. It was time to get started.

"Sunset! Where's Sunset!" She yelled to the experiment ponies.

One of the ponies, the yellow unicorn stallion, began pointing urgently upwards. High, high above them, in the endless clear skies above the clouds, a fantastic lightshow was burning bright. Waves of vibrant energy shot off in all directions from the raging battle.
Entanglement pulled her telescope from her saddlebag and trained it upwards, to spy what was happening. Hanging in the moon's light, a dark speck that could only be the scout airship that had been following them earlier. A flash of yellow magic confirmed that Sunset was there.

“There’s no way we can rise to that altitude with the apparatus weighing us down.” Entanglement Theory gnawed her lip as she ran over some mental math of their buoyancy in the air.  Sunset had ordered her to finish the Sequence no matter what. There would be no second chance. "I don't know if the magic can reach that far." Entanglement muttered. She threw the binoculars aside. "No matter. We do this now!"


The drones followed loyally behind her as she prepared everything for the last great step. The wind had already blown the tarp off the rock slab they'd set at the bow of the airship, so she went about collecting the rest of the tools from below decks.
She gathered her notes and reference papers and nailed them to the deck so they would not blow away, but the wind was too fierce, ripping them to shreds.

“Not like I needed them anyway.” The outworlder said sourly.

It was with a sense of gravity that Entanglement shrugged off her saddlebag and pulled it open.  The only book she really needed was there.
Elements of Harmony: Volume IV of VI, Kindness and Cooperation the leather clad cover declared. Entanglement Theory ran a hoof along the spine, a little habit she’d formed to reassure herself everything was still real.  She could envision it’s every page by memory from endless hours pouring over the words for a way to reverse the curse that had severed her sight from the real world. Or at least, the real world of that dimension.

There were some things mortals were just not meant to know. Just as unprepared explorers into the deep blue sea risked being crushed by pressure and devoured by creatures, so did the  explorers of the cosmos need the sequence, to protect themselves against the denizens of the infinite abyss above their heads.
For five painstaking years, Entanglement Theory and Sunset Shimmer had worked to recreate the work in Elements of Harmony, from a mix of Sunset's memories and inference. Only very recently had the two mares come into a copy, and so launched into their campaign into Equestria.

And still, after years of research, planning, and preparations, one misstep had cost Entanglement dearly.
She wiped her brow, very careful not to disturb her glasses less the visions come again.  Even the briefest glimpse into the eyes of the incomprehensible things betwixt words had cost her terribly. It could have been worse, but sometimes Entanglement Theory wondered how she could ever live with what had been done to her. Thus she had to go back home, and search for a cure.


"I hope its worth it."
Entanglement Theory pulled the book open.

This volume, Sunset claimed, was unlike the other two she'd seen, Volumes I and II, because it had a title page. Yes, the contents were very much the same: Mystic patterns of interwoven circles, geometric shapes, mind-bending runes that hinted at long-dead concepts and shapes.  But that first page, possibly the most valuable and provocative of them all.


The Elements of Harmony

And below that, with the second name scratched through but still legible,

Clover the Clever

and 

Celestia of Celestiaan


The most powerful and intelligent mares in the world, come together to tear down god and discover his secrets. A thousand years ago, and now.









Ancepanox made a charging bound at Agana, her black wings catching the air as she swooped forward, aiming her horn for Agana's heart.  Agana  curled her wings around in front of herself, and Ancepanox collided with them, moving them only a little more than if they were steel.
Ancepanox yanked her horn back, but was briefly tangled in the vines covering Agana's wings. Agana swept her wings to the side again, tossing Ancepanox away like a toy at the end of a string. 


"The Dark Lady guides my hooves." Agana crossed her forelegs, throwing her head back arrogantly.  "The Dark Lady tested me, let me suffer, but I am stronger than ever for it!" She summoned her magenta magic and let it dance along her body in a flashy display of power. “No battle before this one was truly worthy of me.”

"After I through with you, I'll pass along your praises to her." Ancepanox growled, jumping to her hooves. She ran to Agana's side, casting bolts of magic and trying to score a hit against the peacock alicorn's head, but Agana pivoted in place, letting her wings block the spells. "Gah, you're made of tough stuff!"

Ancepanox tried to nip at Agana's legs, hoping to get under the invulnerable wings. She sunk her fangs in the atrophied ankle, only for it to dissolve away into ash. Agana danced backwards, where her leg reconstituted itself.
"You're not powerful enough. There is no getting around that-"

Ancepanox catch Agana talking, but the magic beam she cast glanced off the peacock alicorn's abdomen.  Ancepanox felt her blood boil. Her visions turned red. "All you alicorns...   Insufferable narcissists! I'll put your insides as outsides and your outsides as your insides."

"You are such a treat. This immortal life is cold and empty without the meaning you create for yourself. What will you do when I've ascended, Celestia has faded, and all your friends have melded into the earth underhoof?"  Agana asked, laughing.  "Little alicorn, little alicorn, what meaning will existance have for you? When life is grey for you, will you try to end it?"

"Shut up!" Ancepanox growled. She cast another bolt of magic that glanced off Agana's horn and dissipated into the void. "Bucking alicorn...  Coward! You should have stuck around in your body and enjoyed the feeling of Wreath eating your guts."

"You would enjoy the taste of my guts, wouldn't you." Agana chuckled.



But before Anceapnox renewed her attack, a voice from behind.
“Twilight, do you hate me?”
Celestia looked like she had been crying. Her voice dripped with desperation. "I didn't pretend to be a paragon... I was a ruler of mortals. I never had anything better than a mortals morality. Do you hate me for that? Twilight..."

Ancepanox grit her teeth. She glanced at Agana, who was looking too smug to deign counter-attacking. Reluctantly, the black alicorn turned back at Celestia. "Didn't I forgive you once already?"

"You didn't mean it." Celestia mumbled.

That was very true. Ancepanox rubbed her eyes. Her heart burned with embarrassment at how little she could do to Agana. 
“Princess, I don't know if even Twilight Sparkle thought of you as some unreachable paragon. She didn't surrender to you. She strived to you."

Celestia stared sullenly.

"Yeah, that was gibberish." Ancepanox admitted. She didn't really want to engage with Celestia, but she couldn't help herself. "If Twilight had know you were dabbling with Dark Magic, why would she have cared? You KNOW it was your secrecy, not your magical trespasses, that drove Twilight away from you. There was no reason for her to be disappointed. So what if you dabbled in Dark magic, killed innocents, and played buddy to psychopathic monsters?” Ancepanox lazily shook her head. "Were you doing what you thought was right?"

Celestia pained. “I...   I don't know. I hope so."

Ancepanox jumped up. “Then Twilight would have too! So quit moping!”  She circled around to Agana’s side. “I'll forgive you, earnestly, if you help me fight Agana. What do you say? will you stop tripping over your feelings every five seconds?”

Agana snickered. “Oh Ancepanox, I am in love with you. You cut through the melodrama. And Celestia, for shame, that it took you this long.” She kneeled down and picked up Twilight Sparkle again, slinging the pony over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Will it be two against one? About time."

Celestia hesitated before getting up. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it? "If my sun is willing, I should be able to stop Agana from manipulating this dream at whim."

"You weren't doing that all along?" Ancepanox arched a brow, a little irritated.

“I'm sorry, I...  Ahem, I must ask her first.” Celestia lifted her eyes to her mother sun.
The Sun loomed as ever, shining, observant. It did not immediately reply to Celestia's implied question.
What is the right thing, Celestia asked herself, for both Twilight and Equestria. Celestia knew the Sun still cared to carry forward the dream of Equestria.
The Sun's light wavered.
The Sun would give its power without reservation. It reminded Celestia of its suggestion though, that she would be best served by killing them all.
"Um..." Celestia averted her eyes. She couldn't stomach her mother sun's cold bloodthirstiness. "It can be done."

Ancepanox detected Celestia's sudden nervousness but wrote it off.  "Hear that Agana? You have to play by our rules now."

"No, we play by Twilight Sparkle's rules." Agana curled a hoof under Twilight's sleeping dream-form and cradled her.

Celestia squared her stance and braced herself. She nodded to Ancepanox.



Like they’d done against the shades, Celestia and Ancepanox attacked simultaneously with magic. Lances of gold and indigo energy met at the hulking semi-equine body of the peacock alicorn. With a confident smirk, Agana let herself be pierced by the searing bolts. With a blinding burst, her form dissolved into sparks and ash, and Twilight Sparkle with her.

“Well, it was never going to be easy...  But at least she could stay bucking still.” Ancepanox swore, throwing up a small shield to block the cloud of ash. “I can tell, this is going to frustrating."

"Prescient." Celestia remarked.



The nebulous mass of dark magic in the sky above them, shaped as a great eye, blinked, and the murky light it cast wavered.

The frozen chunks of Tower quivered. To an unknown song they began to tremble and move, reversing their fall, floating upwards slowly with intermittent jerks.

"Hey hey hey, Celestia you told me the Sun could mitigate her!" Ancepanox shouted.

"It is." Celestia said grimly.


"But the Tower, it's reassembling." Ancepanox muttered. "It broke one, it'll break again...  Twilight?"

Celestia remained silent.



One piece at a time, the Tower of the Bard came back together. To infinity above and below it stretched once more, a monument to infinite ambition that refused to stay destroyed.
The chunk Celestia and Ancepanox stood on rotated and sunk into place in the side of the great tower. Quick hoofwork ensured they were not crushed, but they were marooned in one of a million-million narrow tiers of obsidian-black stone.

“Look what's happened. The Tower reaches up, aimed, poised. It languishes no longer."  Agana’s squawking laughs filled the void, echoing down to the Celestiaan. “Come and meet me. You know where."


"On the left!" Celestia cried out.

A cloud of shadow shades billowed out from below, screaming and moaning.  Anceapnox had too little time to brace and was thrown back by their head-first impacts, pressed against the black stone as they tried to tear at her dreaming form.
Celestia's eye lit up, as a surge of twisting flame spew forth, evaporating the throng of shades. Ancepanox kicked the remaining few away and blasted them with her own magic.

"That should be the last." Ancepanox dusted herself off. She gave a short laugh. "Celestia, you miserable crow, you have been holding back."

Celestia let the light fade from her eyes. To be connected to the Sun again filled her with indescribable satisfaction. Yes, she felt how a sun princess should feel. She had to bite back her eager laughter so she could speak normally. "Are you hurt?"

"Nope. You singed me, but I heal very quickly here." Ancepanox said, not noticing the change in Celestia. "Now, how the hell do we get to the top of this tower?! I'm gunna twist Agana's head off.” Ancepanox spread her wings, but she hesitated. She wasn't sure if she could fly even in the dream. "Celestia, is the Tower the same as before it fractured?"


"I don't know." Celestia felt the cold wind of the abyssal void around them pick up. Her sun was behind them, on the opposite side of the Tower. The infinite spire cast a cold shadowy silhouette in the mire around it.  "Ancepanox, before we launch back into this, I must ask you frankly...  Are you letting the Dark consume you?"

“I thought you told me that'd already happened? What would it matter anyway, since I don't put stock in the whole ideological side of it. Material reality matters to me, not 'natural law', not 'mythology', and certainly not 'authority'."

Celestia looked like she was going to say something, but she wisely stayed silent.

Ancepanox grinned.  “You have extensive experience in dreams, don't you. There's probably a million little details and tricks to this realm you learn through the centuries. Not bad for an alicorn. You're not even supposed to be in here.” Ancepanox said. “I'm torn, actually, by my desire to know what you know. If I weren't so wary of you, I'd want to study under you again."

Celestia bowed her head. “The power dynamic between us has changed too much for that."

"That is has."


Ancepanox was going to say more when something floated into her vision from behind the curve of the tower.   A deformed and horrendously bloated purple unicorn with a dozen legs protruding from unnatural angles, and a head maligned by a cluster of eyes and a devilishly grinning mouth. It had Twilight Sparkle’s voice.
“Hello Celestia! And the Nightmare! This is an unexpected pleasure to be sure.”

Ancepanox stared at the mass of flesh as it approached them. "Yuck.  Some things my friends said about the Tower makes more sense now."

"Indeed that is a Manifestation of sin. Why it yet resides here confounds me." Celestia frowned. "It could be that Twilight Sparkle has yet again begun along an accursed path..."

“Hello to y'all.” The dreamdweller chuckled. “Can't keep a good sin down, nor the sinner. Did you really think you were changing her forever, Princess Celestia?”

“I like this thing. Why ever would you try to get rid of it?” Ancepanox glanced at Celestia.

“Because the sins in question empower Dark, like the Nightmare, like Agana, and....  others.” Celestia cleared her throat, avoiding Ancepanox's glare. "Never mind. Clearly its destruction was transitory."

“It wasn’t a very memorable destruction.” The malformed thing shrugged with it’s multitude of legs. It turned to Ancepanox. “You, though, much more memorable. You broke the Tower the first time, when it was still your dream. You were trying to shake off the curse, but that didn't work."


"Well I mean, the 'curse' is was just the fulfillment of the Dream. If I broke- Wait, if I broke the Tower...  " Ancepanox paused, putting together several, disparate threads of information.
"The Dream, the Tower, the apotheosis and Forlorn Spark. You... you don't have any incentive to lie, do you? No, I'm sure you don't."
She fell into ponderous silence. There was something oddly serene to the way she felt. She knew what had happened. There was no mystery to the fate of Twilight Sparkle anymore.
"So, Celestia was right. Huh.  I was the one that rejected the Tower. ... I think I understand why I gave up my name and past so easily. I never wanted it to begin with.  But a pony NEEDS a name, NEEDS a dream. What is a nameless, dreamless thing? What is a mortal stripped of half its mortality?"

The Manifestation roiled gleefully. "Some call them Stars."

Ancepanox slumped back. "What could have been? What would I have been if I'd leaned into my course, rather than pull away and tear myself in two, literally?"

The ghastly manifestation watched Ancepanox, and she stared back.  Despite the mishapen things devilishly playful smiles, its eyes contained an inferno of seething emotion. The dark alicorn was unsettlingly reminded of the premonitions she'd seen in Celestia's eyes as the night had set, for she saw Twilight Sparkle preforming cruel acts. The vision showed her conducting a slaughter of any and all, delighted and euphoric for the pure exercise of power. So hateful for all that stood before her, greedy for displays of bloodshed, glutenous for its coppery sprays, acting with a profane passion, yet doting with her movements, self-assured in the extreme, but always wanting more.
The first time she'd seen those premonitions, Ancepanox had been terrified. Not so much anymore.

"Is that my future, or hers?" Ancepanox wondered, scratching her chin. "Hmm..."
The manifestation's reappearance was not coincidence. A turning point was nigh. Ancepanox would get a choice, weather the destructive future would become reality or not. Or so she speculated.


"Sister, push that thing aside." Celestia interrupted, barely covered distain in her voice. "We work to defeat Agana so that we may erase the sin of the past."

"And make new sins." Ancepanox nodded exaggeratedly.

"Do you wish to go to the top of the Tower?" The manifestation asked, it’s cluster of eyes blinked in an uneven sequence. 

"If that's where Agana is."

“Oh yes. She is trying, in vain, to cheat for the impending confrontation. She knows she needs this dream to reach out to higher powers but fumbles in ignorance.” The manifestation did a full body nod. “But I’m afraid that the means of getting up there is different from the last time.”

“No surprise. Thinking ill thoughts is not so difficult with the Suzerain of Sin about.” Celestia scowled. She rolled her shoulders, somewhat self-assured for the first time since the night fell.  “Will you tell us how or is it going to be a riddle?”

“I will take you there.” The manifestation snickered.

Ancepanox stomped her hoof into the ground in annoyance. “Yeah? And what bulls-”
She disappeared into a cloud of ash as Agana had.

“Have fun with her.” The manifestation retorted to the empty air. It looked to Celestia. "You're very strong together. Which one of you will get tired and betray the other? I can see you're considering it."

"Send me up. She can't survive alone." Celestia demanded harshly.

The manifestation chuckled. "In time. First I want you to dwell on your follies, and the deep conceit trying to use this dream to reach heaven.  Is this hell or purgatory? Will your imminent suffering cleanse you, or destroy you?"









Dash galloped with reckless haste through the maze of hallways that was the Everfree Castle. Jumping over piles of rubble and around rusting piles of armor she went, not slowing down for anything.  She hunted for where the choking black fog around her was thickest, and so find the nightmare altar Rarity was building.


A jet of indigo magic shot over her head, hitting the ceiling and sending chips of dirty marble in every direction.  “I will snip you free of this mortal coil.”  Rarity spoke with an air cold emptiness, and she sent a second deadly shot Dash’s direction. “Nay, belay that, I’ll squash you into paste!” The screamed, casting a third shot.
Dash rounded a corner just in time, and the magical bolts tore a hole in the wall.

“Bucking magic is completely unfair.” Dash lamented, scrambling over a fallen pillar. “At least she can’t teleport.” Then she remembered how easily Rarity slipped in and out of shadows. "Oh... oh no."

Dash emerged into a voluminous library, which provided plenty of cover in the form of overturned bookshelves and piles of books, shrouded in obscuring black fog. However Dash had somehow found her way onto the second floor, and had arrived on a balcony where the only thing nearby that could hide her from a spell was the thin wood banister.

"Ah geeze." Dash experimentally flapped her borrowed body's wings, prancing in place. She tried to see a way down but the cursed black fog was too thick.


“Don’t move.” Rarity said as she turned the corner onto the balcony. “If I shoot and miss your heart it would be regretful. For you, that is.” Her gaze darkened. “Actually, please do move. I want to see you quiver and quake as your life drains away.”

“For a tailor you are awfully murderous. Does it come up a lot in your work? Do you knit murder dresses?” Dash backed up to the edge of the balcony but continued to provoke the infuriated nightmare unicorn. “You know I was a mercenary for a while, and only the complete psychopaths were as gung-ho about killing as you are. Even evil ponies have a use for life and mercy.”

“My new employment is in the service of the great Dark. I will happen to be looking fabulous meanwhile.” Rarity grinned, advancing confidently. “Mis Dash, you will have the pleasure of being my first sacrifice.”


“Nope.” Dash leaned over to smash her hoof through the banister, sending a cloud of splinters into Rarity’s face.  Rarity screamed and reflexively released her charged spell, but uncontrolled as it was it hit Dash with blunt force rather than piercing power.
Dash was smacked into the air by the spell. Feeling the wind rushing over her, she reflexively spread the wings of the black alicorn. But they were too damaged, and Dash fell down into the rolling black fog of the library.









With a whip-like crack, Ancepanox reappeared at the top of the tower. Agana was therewaiting for her.
The Peacock alicorn stood at the center of the circular tower’s flat roof, her upright stature casting a long shadow. The vines from her tail billowed around her waist and hindlegs like a dress, and the vines in her crest cascaded upwards towards the baneful eye watching the dreamscape from above.

“My psychic powers far outstrip both your and Celestia’s. I can bring this dream and it’s dreamer to heel.” Agana proclaimed, unsmiling in stark contrast to her usual mania. “You can try to face me, but you will fail. Leave now, Mooneater, and you may yet be able to save yourself.”

“Why does nopony want to use my new name?” Ancepanox growled. “Why do you have to contrive a silly title for somepony? Suzerain of Sin, or the Twisted Sinner? It’s pointless dramatization.”

“Names are transient, inspecific. The titles we bestow on each other are honors, icons of accomplishment, unique and immutable.” Agana expounded. “Alicorns have a craving for flair, don’t we Mooneater?”

“And what the hell are you even calling me that for? I can’t recall eating any moons recently.”

“So you say, even as you traipse about wearing the skin of your greatest victim.” Agana paced back and forth, her musculature rippling as it coped with the unnatural upright pasture. She looked into Ancepanox’s eyes. “Does Celestia know what you did?”

Ancepanox let her contemptuous stare do the talking.

“She doesn’t know. That is utterly high-lerious.” Agana hissed. “You have committed an act more despicably terrible than she could ever dream, and yet she still dares to blame herself over petty mortals. Gods, how stupid is she, to not wonder how it was that you came to look like that. What exquisite torture it will be when she finally realises how you have desecrated her sister’s body.”

“Where is Twilight?” Ancepanox demanded.

“Oh, that one is right here.” Agana’s cloak of vines parted for a moment to reveal Twilight tangled in it’s midst, before she was hidden again. “She will be fine there for now.”

Ancepanox sucked in her bottom lip, stewing in anger and uncertainty. Something didn't add up. "Why did the Tower rebuild itself."

"Power. Ideology. Force. You ponies have a backwords understandings." Agana smirked. “How do sentient creatures decide their actions? A moral standard, a worldview, and an ideological standard...  And I ask you, can a dream embody that too? Can it act, based on its ideological framework?"
She swept a hoof to the side, then up.  "We are atop the mountain, under the eyes of strange stars. We are aboard the cannon, loaded and pointed towards Heaven. We are here because we will it, but also because the Tower wills it."

Ancepanox, though she wanted to dispute and argue, had to agree. "Are you ideological, Agana?"

"Of course I am. I have tried to explain my worldview to you, and to show you how my actions flow out of the premises I draw from what I witness. Celestia is ideological too, as you know all too well." Agana said. "But you are not. You may have a worldview but you are not acting rationally through it. You're a bit..."

"Unhinged?" Ancepanox asked.

"Pathologic." Agana laughed and nodded. "Both Celestia and I thought that meant you could be swayed to our side. I see the folly in that though. You killed Myriadess because she attempted to force her worldview on you.  That's when I began to suspect that you DO have a view of your own, that you're willing to defend to the death."

"Do I now?" Ancpeanox arched a brow. "I hadn't realized. You're making sense though. When Celestia tried to foist her empire on me, I was filled with a real, visceral disgust I couldn't explain. I didn't think it was ideological."

"You and I have this opportunity , while Celestia is not here, to explore what you believe. The dream has given us this chance." Agana said. "Last time I told you I would regret letting you live. That has proved false. That was also when I offered you an alliance, which you scorned. Let us try to hit closer at truth this time. Yes, this time, this time I want to offer you my help."


"What?" Ancpeanox asked flatly.

"Think of it as a puzzle, Mooneater." Agana kneeled and leaned forward, coming eye to eye with the moon alicorn. "You may ask me as many questions as you want in the time before Celestia arrives. You will then realize the central pillar of your's, and this dream's, ideology. That knowledge will set you free."

Ancepanox, teeth grinding, wanted nothing more than to attack. She couldn't deny that she had questions, and by benefit of her heritage Agana could have some insight. The gibberish about ideologies couldn't interest her less  "I don't trust you."

"You are not learning anything from me. You are learning from yourself, by the choice of question you decide to ask." Agana cackled.

Ancepanox saw silent for a long moment. "Here's a question for ya. What fact would I have to find out about this dream to get you to buck off?"


Agana stood up and strode to the edge of the tower. She waved downward, into the infinite abyss into which the impossible structure reached.  "You would have to discover, by means of this elenctic method, where the bottom of this Tower lies."

Ancepanox snort-laughed. "Wait, are you serious?" She grew more serious, rubbing an eye.  "Do you mean the Tower of the Bard in real life, or this one in Twilight's dream?"

"That is part of the truth." Agana crossed her arms and shrugged. "Your time dwindles. When the Celestiaan arrives, time is up for us."



Ancepanox followed Agana's pacing with her eyes, formulating her first question.
"How did Twilight and I become separated?"

"Celestia thinks you were once whole. I do not. I believe you were always two distinct dreamers with one dream." Agana said.

Anceapnox sighed. "I guess you didn't say your answers would be oracular or truthful. Fine then." She tapped her hoof. "Okay, question two. Did I destroy the Tower at any point?"

"No. Only Gods destroy the Tower, and only mortals rebuild it." Agana cawed.

"Interesting. Did Celestia ever destroy it?"

"No. It was before her time."

Ancpeanox closed her eyes, working through the puzzle. "I don't like how you can read my mind. It makes me uncomfortable, angry....  I think more than anything, that's what pushed me to kill Myriadess." She mumbled. "I didn't like that she held that power over me too."

"Many mortals feel that way about authority."

"For some reason I thought I could be above that kind of self-conscious impulse. I served faithfully under Celestia for a decade. But back then, there was no dispute that she was superior to me." Ancepanox allowed herself a smile.  "Or was she?"

"She was not." Agana answered.


Ancepanox snorted in amusement. "Sins flourish in the dreamscape...  I remember you telling me that. The sins of ponykind build and compound in their mind..." Ancepanox rubbed her chin. "Was it sin that built the Tower of the Bard?"

"Without sin there would be no dreamscape."

"Did sin build the dreaming Everfree throne room, that Nightmare Moon and I shared our nights in?"

"I didn't stutter did I."

Ancepanox frowned. "Did sin build the original Tower of the Bard?"

Agana cracked a smile. "Was the original Tower in a dream?"

"Hey, answering questions with questions isn't really answering." Ancepanox protested. "I'm not going to keep playing your game if you jerk me around."

Agana kept on smiling, that odd smile creatures with beaks do. "The Tower of the Bard was the common goal and aspiration of many creatures, working together."


Ancepanox was getting closer to the answers, but it did not please her. "Does Celestia know where the bottom of the Tower is?"

"She sent ponies to find it. They failed."

Ancepanox cupped her chin with her hooves, deep in thought. "Hmm...  Is it a place alicorn's can't go? Don't answer that yet, I'm just musing."
In the etherial breeze of the dream, Ancepanox watched the peacock alicorn's feathers and trailing vines sway. It was calming.  "I saw your vines around Myriadess. She didn't know why they were there."

"Neither do I." Agana chuckled. "I never knew her except by reputation. She is but a distant cousin. Her destruction is meaningless to me. Why do you bring her up again?"

"She talked a lot about cycles, and repeating patterns." Ancepanox said. "Is the Tower cyclical?"

"Viewed from the top, yes." Agana joked.

"But does it loop in time?" Ancepanox demanded.

Agana laughed guiltily. "It might be the only thing that does. Myriadess wouldn't have know that. She was mostly ignorant of the dreamscape."



"But still I saw your vines around her. The same force that bound you, bound her." Ancpeanox became grave. "The Dark Lady. Yes, I'm sure of it. She was reaching out somehow!" She licked her teeth, thinking. "I saw Myriadess's manifestation in  the 'Deeper Dreamscape', the place between dreams.  She was linked to me, and me to her, but no others. So how did those vines reach her?" Ancepanox posed. "Agana, is there something even more esoteric than that 'Deeper Dreamscape'? "

Agana nodded. "I haven't been coy about it."


Ancepanox stood up, nodding upwards. Up above the alicorns, the dark miasmic chasm in the sky in the shape of an eye swirled noxiously, quivering and darting as it watched all below it.
"I don't know how it happened, and I don't know how it's possible, but this place is real. This is more than a dream. This... this Tower is real. Or was real."

"And?" Agana goaded.

"The Tower is linked to the esoteric thing: Heaven, the cosmos, the Deeper Dreamscape, the skies above us now, and the skies above me in the real world...  All the same place, the same deep dark realm. It's a place of dreams, stars...  and monsters." Ancepanox said slowly. "How to explain this...  That cosmos has many consorts, but only one husband. The cosmos shines down most truly on the Dreamscape. It's right there! So close we can touch it, just like you said!  Wow...  Is it watching us? I can see why you long for it."

"And?" Agana was getting giddy.

Ancpeanox let out a restrained sigh. "I don't know the rest. At the bottom of this tower is the world as it once was, or perhaps how it will be. I think all mortalkind's dreams are there, including mine. Maybe."

"You're so close, Mooneater." Agana said. "You know what to ask next."



"I think I do." Ancpeanox nodded. She stood at her full height. "What should I say at your eulogy, once I kill you?"

Far from being surprised by Ancepanox's renewed aggression, Agana hissed in muted disappointment. "Really? There is a whole universe above us, whose smallest slice far and away dwarfs the very limits of our imagination! The cosmos, Mooneater! Let us pilgrimage to the Dark Lady and rampage across the stars in her name. Just ask the last question! Discover the meaning of your dreams."

"In truth, I don't know the last question to ask. I don't care." Ancepanox rolled her hoof gesturally. "This whole exercise reeks. I just don't care! I just want to fight you! Like you told me last time, Agana, it's good and right to indulge my base sins: To destroy, dominate, and subsume. That's my narrative. That's my dream."


“We were so close, Mooneater. Your existance could have meaning. Fighting me is folly.” Agana strode back to the center of the tower. Her veil of vines flagged and waved behind her like a second pair of wings. “If you persist, I must warn you, there is no rock holding me down now.”

“Then take my head and call me fool.” Ancepanox called up her magic, and the pulsing black and purple magic gathered at her horn. A swirl of dark energy formed around her outstretched hoof, spinning faster and weaving itself into shape, until it coalesced into the silver sabre she had used in the massacre of Glori Sabonord’s Army. She swung the sabre experimentally, and it’s flawless edge whistled as it sliced the thick air.  “I told you not to toy with me. Give me your worst. Have at you, sinner!”