//------------------------------// // XXXIV. Jannah I: A Prolegomena to Charity / Outremer // Story: The Night is Passing // by Cynewulf //------------------------------// XXXIV. Jannah: A Prolegomena to Charity/Outremer CANTERLOT The attack comes thirty minutes to dawn, but it is not yet dawn. A city sleeps fitfully. It does not wish yet to wake but it will. The air will carry voices and the wind will blow frightfully through the compacted streets. But not yet. It is night even still. High in her chambers Luna lies dreaming. She is asleep but not asleep. Awake yet not awake. She both walks and lies upon her bed unmoving. These things are not exclusive for those who walk between. There is upon the spirit a chill, a fear. Eyes see but are thwarted by darkness, ears hear hoofsteps against unyielding stone but mistake themselves. There is no march but rather a proceeding, the laidback pace of the nightwatchman which rings the bell that all is well this hour of the clock. But they do not call this because the world’s cover is blown and all is not well and not even the pony who walks the streets, torch held high, can live with himself and say it is. Canterlot is not dead, nor is it even dying. It drags. It’s pace is heavy, petty, plodding, mean. But it is alive. Take solace in that. The attack comes before dawn, and it is time. Luna trades one sight for another, but all others must simply be content with blindness, deafness, dumbness, weakness. They sleep and put themselves at the risk of the night and forget after they are grown what a horrible prospect this is. The foals have the right of it. They know that darkness is not their friend and never will be--any pony can be smiled at and talked to, but this is not a pony. It is primordial, darkness. Visible, empty, hungry. It will kill you. It will help others kill you. When ponies in Canterlot sleep they are lambs for the slaughtering. They leave themselves upon to a cornucopia of terror beyond ken. The push into the canal--that’s the hobby of the weak and the simpleminded. Yet darkness is very simpleminded, isn’t it? It only wants to get in. It only wants to do one thing to and with and for you. The attackers shatter the door of House Belle with an explosive that blows them right off of their hinges. Wood shards go everywhere. A passing night staff cleaning mare is caught through the throat by a long jagged wooden stake and dies within seconds, rolling in her own blood and trying to scream that she didn’t do anything, it wasn’t her fault, why is this happening, who will tell the sleeping, who will clean the tables, where is she going? They are not here to be subtle. They are not here to be skilled. They are here to reap. These attackers wear no barding, they have no insignia. They wear heavy hoofblades with serrated edges and on their shoulders they bear repeating rifles with devilish machinery made to kill, mechanics that pull back the bolt and pull the trigger and make the darkness’s work easy as pointing one’s body. The noise wakens most of the house, but few react as they should in order to save themselves. The House staff blink in the darkness. They wipe the sleep from their eyes and a few stumble out of their beds on well-worked legs and turn their honest heads from side to side. They do not know what is coming. The attackers spread out. Many wear white. They do not know why. Or they do but it is purged from their waking minds. They are more ant than pony, they are the limbs of an implacable something. One squad towards the library, another towards the servant’s quarters, one to head off the guard. The first levyponies of House Belle encounter the first wave of invasion. They are not well armed. Scootaloo has put up light defenses--who would attack? And she has so few spread so far. Two Belle ponies die when bullets rip them open and they bleed on the stone. A third comes around the corner with a singleshot pistol in his magic’s grip and he fires once. An attacker spins, a piroutte of blood and vengeance, he goes down. The guard throws the pistol because loading it takes more time and charges because running is death and charging is death and he knows this and he will die with his horseshoes on and he does. Sweetie Belle wakes up first and she spends precious seconds trying to rouse Scootaloo. Head Maid is wide awake. She knows what is happening. She is miles head of any pony she has ever met. There is a shotgun under her pillow because she is hard as steel and she will be damned to an unsung hell if she will let anypony blow her house’s doors down, tramp their filthy hooves around on her pristine floors, hurt even the meanest pest under this sacred roof--she is in the hall and waking servants up. Everypony has heard gunfire. Scootaloo rolls off the bed, stands. Sweetie was not sure, but now she knows what is happening and she is beyond terrified. She is no Rarity. She is only Sweetie Belle and she falls off the bed and she cowers against the wall. Scootaloo has no time to comfort. She tells Sweetie to hide. She leaves through the door, cursing. The air is full of panic and the voices of the damned and the damning. She hurtles herself through the halls to the armory. More gunfire. A maid is shot in the leg and stares at the stump with confusion and looks up to ask what has happened and they erase her from the mortal coil. Her friend behind her panics and flees. The other night guards have gathered. The squad in the servent’s quarters is pinned between two patrols. They have the weapons but the lights are out and the guards know the terrain. Confusion is the art of war and they are painters. They know how to run in the backstreets. These guards were born to be urchins in the alleyways and sleep in the sewers and steal from the passing market carts. They strike in the darkness. The attackers fire randomly. Bullets cut through the air and hit nothing or hit flesh or pierce right through a door sending shards everywhere and peppering a crying colt who has worked there for a week with splinters and he prays clutching a medal of Celestia but she is silent. Scootaloo bursts through to the armory like a storm for she is a storm, she is fire and heat and it is the second coming of Commander Hurricane, his time come round at last. She kicks the armory door down and searches. Some of the servants have followed and she throws things at them. Take them! She tells them to arm themselves and they do because there is no arguing with her. Her hoofblades are gone. She does not know where they are. She does not know that the quartermaster is missing because he has taken them away with him when he fled to his masters. She leads a frightened squad of ponies through the halls. The whole of the House’s levy is awake. They are swarming. There are too many pegasi among them and they cannot maneuver in tight spaces. Several die without a chance to fight. Several are blown out of the sky but not finished off. Scootaloo meets the host in the library among the new shelves, she hurtles a lance as best she can and it grazes one and a cook’s colt fires a rifle beside her ear and he misses widely. Scootaloo throws him into the library, cursing him for taking her hearing, and she follows. The attackers pursue. They do not go up the stairs and they do not find Sweetie Belle cowering. Because she is not cowering, for one. She is weeping openly, her magic like a great fist, and she is coming down the stairs. What has happened? What is this world, where the darkness does not wait but beats down the door and takes you? The fight in the library is furious. The rifle-bearing cook’s boy dies when he trips over his own gun and even in the darkness the attackers can hear and they light him up and he is unrecognizable after a volley. Scootaloo takes his gun and she curses him for not bringing ammunition. She has four shots left. Maybe. She doesn’t know. An attacker comes around the side of her shelf and she hears him. She tackles him and uses the butt of the gun like a club. Head Maid has cleared the servent’s quarters. They did not expect her. None ever have. Sweetie Belle hears something in the library and she follows her ears. Scootaloo hears another pony entering but has no time to investigate or listen because another has found her. She has led them into a maze and they come one by one but she is lithe and they are powerful and this new foe is stronger than she is. But she is faster. Even with weak wings she is faster on the ground. She leaps, he cannot see to dodge, she brings him low and cracks his head against the carpet. One of the attackers clad in white runs right into Sweetie Belle and pins her in his falling. She kicks blindly in the dark. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she flares her magic and the room is filled with startling white light. There are cries of alarm. A gunshot, a curse, a second shot. A bullet clips a shelf beside Sweetie’s head and sprinkles wood shards all over her. She lies flat on the ground. Scootaloo is there, roaring, firing again. Three shots left. She catches an attacker in the shoulder. He falls back, his bullet hits the stone ceiling and ricochets harmlessly. Scootaloo searches for the last attackers. One. Two? She doesn’t know. The Head Maid is on her way. Her shotgun slung on her shoulder, her teeth grinding. She continues on. The Gods could come down and she would blow past them like they were smoke. A rifle peaks out from behind the stairwell that leads to the library’s upper level. Scootaloo fires. The bullet goes wide. The gun retracts. Scootaloo hisses a curse. She pushes Sweetie out of the way, turning her back. There are two attackers. The second comes from her side, illuminated in the lone library’s candle for only a moment before he is on Scootaloo, cutting with his hoofblades, trying to bite with his teeth, his gun forgotten, his mind no longer his own. She kicks back. His blades connect. Sweetie Belle screams. The riflepony steps out into the open and aims. He is knocked back by the roar of Head Maid’s shotgun like the sound of some lonely god’s heartless revolver. He is torn and dead instantly. Scootaloo throws the attacker off. She cannot see. The dark is too overpowering, too covering. Her ears ring. Her body protests. She coat is wet with blood. Head Maid finishes off the last attacker in the keep with a shot to the head and not a shred of mercy. Candles are lit. Sweetie cradles her marshal’s head. Scootaloo groans, and tries to rise but she is restrained. The doctor is called for over and over again. Sweetie Belle weeps over her lover’s ruined face, her eye destroyed by a serrated edge even as Head Maid searches the bodies and finds the weapons stamped with a maker’s seal that will lead her in the morning to the House Dawn’s major suppliers, who has been making guns a long time and does not remember making these guns. He will not remember until Head Maid has applied a hot poker to him that he did in fact make many repeaters for the house but that several were sent elsewhere and he was not told why and she will thank him and be on her way. But that will happen in the morning. In High Canterlot, Luna weaves together scattered friends and knows nothing of the carnage below. She will. She will know in full and they say her rage bore away with it years of the poor messenger’s life. But that is still to come. For now she is weaving dreams together and ensuring that none who walk in Jannah will be alone in the night. JANNAH When you talk about the City, you must do so carefully and with skill. It is hard to describe. The task is impossible. Describing things as they are itself may be, in the end, an impossibility. The philosophers are divided on that, and the jury has been out for some time. But, regardless, mortals try. See its walls, high and strong, “six miles wide and white as purest snow”, or so a poet wrote in Valon before Twilight was born. The walls stretch upwards towards the sky like the world tree, holding the sky up and off the backs of the ponies who grovel in the mud before it. Imagine yourself looking up and seeing a sheer wall that goes up and up forever, or seems to, for the closer one gets to that place the greater it seems. It grows on you. This is usually a joke. No one jokes about Jannah, no pony or griffon, no beast or thing that stalks or flies or swims can do so in this world. When they try, out of their mouths come only the starkest truths told with a wry smile and the taste of arsenic. It’s crenulations were formed before most tribes had heard of the alphabet. When the world was young its walls’ foundations were laid by expert hooves aided with magic that shook the earth. Imagine a city made by the Gods from which to see the world, know the world, and from which they might with leisure make that same world a footstool. There are many maps of Jannah. They are every one of them wrong, not in totality but always crucially. Some fatal flaw prevents each chart from baring its owner to safe havens. Oh, a map will aid you from street to street. You will begin to feel that you know where you are going and the city is revealing itself to you--and it will, won’t it? Yes, you begin to see the sense of it. What brilliant planners, the Ancients were! You will coo over their genius which you suppose you have encapsulated in your imagination, compared to your own, and left feeling that you weren’t so bad after all. But you are wrong. Of course. The maps will fail you. Has the city moved? Did your cartographer fail? Is there even an answer that you would understand? Why ask? Few do, when night falls. They have other concerns. Can cities dream? This one can. TWILIGHT There were a few options for entry. Twilight considered them. Or, at least, she did her best to consider them. Her mind… she felt… Off. That was the best word she could come up with. Which, frankly, was terrible. She was a Scholar, for the love of the Stars! A Scholar with a capital S! Words were her life. She breathed, lived, ate, loved words and the stories they told, the lore that they bore. But she had been sluggish. Ever since waking up, she had been so slow. She strained her eyes in the sun. It helped her feel more concentrated, more stable, to go over what she did in her head. She could keep her thoughts clear. She would not be hazy or confused. She would not be as the Blues were, staring at each other in the hold. That was harsh. They were not exactly blithering idiots. Just… listless. Lost. Abdiel had spoken to them all in hushed tones that morning, as if he was afraid that the city would hear him. Honestly, Twilight had a feeling that he was justified in his fear. The problem of entering the city was an old one. It was kind of astounding, she thought, that everypony struggled and agonized and feared getting here, and never once did they seem to consider how they would actually get in until this point. But Abdiel had chuckled. He said that it was no mystery. Twilight looked down at the water below. It looks peaceful, but somehow it made her uncomfortable. She could not put her hoof on why, so she let the matter go. It was not important. She would not need to think about it much longer. The dock was near. “There are three ways to enter, generally. Yes? Listen carefully, and you will understand why I say what I do.” Twilight chewed mindlessly on her lip. The ship creaked. The engines were off. The Blues paddled, churning the water below as the steamship came closer to… Jannah. After a fashion. “The Gates are barred. No, magic will not work. Explosions also fail, but seeing as how, ah, we have nothing with which to make a boom… yes, well. Going over the walls is one option. Easy for me, difficult for you. Going under the walls is an option. I will explain why this is bad in a moment. Ostyallah is the third and best option if one has a boat. We, my dearest and most beautiful companions, happen to possess such a craft.” The port of Jannah was empty, in that it contained not a single soul that could be seen. Twilight did not like that she felt the need to qualify that thought. It’s waterfront was surprisingly normal. The roofs were a mixture of thatched and slanted ceramic tiles, all of them tapering to sharp points with walls of stucco and wood beneath. All in all, it was foreign but not alien. Twilight frowned at it. The morning mist, yes, how could she forget? He had mentioned that in passing. It rolled through the streets ahead. It laid lightly upon the waters which waited. Sometimes mist rolled through the lower parts of Canterlot, but not often. Many mornings it had lain gently on Ponyville and she had thought it was charming, or soft. Now she thought mostly of fire and smoke. But she knew enough of burning to know that real smoke was darker. This was more like the ghost of a city razed, waiting. The mist obscured, but it did not hide. She saw the orderly streets with their cobblestones, the little trees along the main highway. She saw how every door was closed, every window shuttered, and everything perfectly still. She noticed now that the wind was picking up. The fog did not seem to have noticed. “Climbing the wall is hard for ponies, for obvious reasons. It can be done, but it requires equipment and time that we do not have. Why not dig under the city? I’ve heard that it can be done, but the main reason is similar to why we can’t go through the gate. Stasis. Ah, if this were a normal ruin I could just fly up to the gatehouse, turn the levers, and you, my fine friends, could waltz into our beloved nightmare. But you see, even if I hit that lever, nothing would happen. Even if I cut the ropes.” Applejack whistled from somewhere behind her. “Whoa nelly, gives me the creeps.” Twilight mumbled something like words. Abdiel chuckled hollowly. “Yes, doesn’t it?” “Imagine… yes, anything you wish, but imagine it on a leash. A collar and a chain and a stake in the ground. Now imagine you wish to move the thing that is bound. At first, everything is fine no? Works like a charm. But soon the thing you are holding or pulling will run out of rope and then pow, if you are not careful it snap back into place. Stasis. The Holy City is in stasis. It is changeless. What you change will be undone, slowly at first and more quickly later. Hoofprints fade, doors close, the city resets and it watches. So you dig a hole in the ground? Will take magic to do it, but it will close back behind you and if you do not go fast enough? Well, if you do not go fast enough…. The Holy City is not a pony. It does not make decisions as a pony does. It does not think as you think or as I think. It simply does.” “So,” Tradewinds said. She was at Twilight’s side, her good wing unfolding slightly as if preparing to flee. “Who is going first, da? Because Tradewinds will go but Tradewinds is also very bad at luck and would hate to endanger all by large foul-up. Would be terrible.” “Well, wouldn’t want that,” Applejack muttered. “Please be quiet,” Twilight said firmly. They were. Well, not totally. Pinkie shifted. It would be Pinkie, Twilight was sure. Pinkie would be the only one who would have problem with silence on the edge of hell. She looked behind her and confirmed this. Pinkie’s eyes raced from point to point, frantic, looking. Twilight opened her mouth to say something, but then her friend’s head snapped up and she stared right at Twilight. “I don’t want to go there,” she said. “What?” “I really, really, really think we should definitely not... “ Pinkie paused. She shivered. “Twilight, are you ready?” Twilight shivered too. Gods. Stars, whatever. She wanted to leap onto that dock, but the thought of doing so made her want to crawl below deck. There was no place safe from the creeping dread that danced on her spine its slow funeral shuffle. “Not really.” “Because you really need to be, Twilight. Really, really, really need to be ready. Everypony. I feel…” “Do you feel the past, then? Already?” Abdiel’s voice was soft as velvet. They all looked at him. He did not seem as on edge. If anything he seemed to be, for the first time, completely calm. There was no manic gleam in his eye, no energetic smile. He nodded. “If you have not prepared your hearts, it is a bit too late. I will go first.” They looked at him and then they looked at the dock. It was closer. Imagine a port. Not extravagant, but lively. Prosperous and alive. Colorful signs in a foreign tongue point the way to establishments along the docks, sitting side by side with vast warehouses. One of those buildings, the biggest? The customhouse. Ponies with boring, tiny worlds checking and rechecking every package, enjoying their immense but narrow might like a child god with new playthings. But with a neutral expression, of course. One must remain professional. Sailors, coming off and loading on. Girls from the port, some of ill-repute, mooning or calling, or perhaps just looking at the new wares brought up the river. The streets are surprisingly well kept, for such a place. The docks excluded, of course, but what can one expect? Wood stained by work and toil, a thousand thousand hauls. It all goes up hill, this port. A great central road marked with flags and markers bearing strange alphabets, but there is no need to read them to know what they say. Welcome to Ostyallah, Twilight thought to herself. She could almost see them, the ponies who lived by the water. But of course, she did not see them. She felt like they were there--no, that wasn’t right. Like they should be there, as if they were supposed to be where time had left them but they were obviously misplaced. There, shouldn’t there be… She shook her head. She had to focus on the now. Only a few went ashore, and then the ship left. Abdiel, Applejack, Tradewinds, in that order. Twilight and Pinkie stepped off together. Crossbeam and the Captain saluted them, and then they got the hell out of dodge. Twilight felt no bitterness over this. She hoped they were far away by the time they climbed the hill. She hoped many things. They were on a mission, and still she couldn’t suppress the desire to wander aimlessly like a foal might in some vast museum. This was history itself. The thought sent a thrill through her. Living history! It was such a find! Such a miraculous thing. The feeling faded a bit as they walked until only the word history remained like a drum in the distance. “We have plenty of light, and I think we could breach the city today easily, but I would like to linger here awhile,” Abdiel said when they had assembled at the foot of the highway. “Twilight?” “Yes?” “I’m sure you’ve gathered the reasons that I have acted as I have by now.” She had. “You’ve been here before, obviously. You wanted to come back.” They were not questions. Her tone was flat, but she felt no emotion at all about it. “I’m not sure why. Do you intend to go home?” “I am unsure. I may remain… I may remain,” he finished, as if continuing would be too much. “I have been here twice. This will be my third time. I have heard the first strains of the Calling. Do you know what that is? The Captain knows of it, but I doubt he told you.” “Why?” Applejack asked, butting in. Everypony present looked at her. “Cap’s a good sort. If it was something that could help us, he woulda told us.” “It wouldn’t help you in any practical way. It would sate curiosity, maybe, or be an interesting bit of lore, but knowledge of it is useless for the purposes of prevention. I have not said anything myself for two reasons. The first? Selfishness. I did not wish to be deprived of my journey back to this place. Second?” He sighed. “This will be hard doing, lovely mares. I do not mean hard as in strenuous, though it shall be that. Nor do I mean that it will be simply frightening, for it shall be that.” “You want to stay in the port for today, I’m guessing. Right?” Pinkie asked, cocking her head to the side. “A step ahead, pink one. Yes. There is a… ritual to these things. A correct way to proceed. I do not know if it helps. It probably does not help. But it is comforting, or can be. Ostyallah is a special place. A holy place.” He suddenly chuckled softly, as if to himself alone, as if he had found another world to chuckle in. “I shall fill in gaps for you. This is the last homely place in the west, I heard somepony say. He was a fool, but I understand his feeling. Will you come with me to the customhouse?” As he left, so they followed. He led them down the waterfront. The custom house was in perfect condition. Time had not touched its facade. They entered. Time had not touched anything in this place, as far as Twilight could tell. It wasn’t just the outsides. The custom house was a bit disorganized, full of the outer shell of activity, but there was nopony here to be active. Paper left on desks, packages half open on tables in the back. They followed Abdiel past desks with inkwells that Twilight suspected still had ink. It could have been built only a year ago, this place. Twilight shivered. At last, they came across an empty place. Not artificial, Twilight noted immediately. There was nothing unusual about the spot… and yet Abdiel approached it with something approaching religious awe. “Here it is,” he said quietly. From the saddlebags he had brought--Applejack insisted on carrying most of the weight, but Twilight had still had as much of the load distributed as she could without overburdening any of them--Abdiel produced a few statutes. One looked like a batpony, its wings spread wide. Another looked like… well, Celestia. Twilight stared at that one until the third had been depositied. This one was strange, tall and almost cylindrical, with something at the top she dimly recognized as approximating a face. “Sit,” Abdiel said quietly. They did. “What’s this all about?” Applejack asked. “I don’t mean to intrude, but you’re getting me antsy here.” “I am doing as all the Seekers do. We are not the first to come here looking for something, and we will not be the last.” Abdiel turned and looked at each of them in turn. He spoke, which was a mild way to put it. Or he intoned, which was probably more accurate. “The city will outlast us. It has already outlasted everything else. When the world was so young that the sun itself was young, Jannah’s foundations were set. This was the city at the Edge of the World, though it is not the city at the cusp. It is the First City and it shall be the Last City. You have seen its preservation.” “Scary,” murmured Tradewinds. Twilight couldn’t help but nod. “I will tell you what I know. Perhaps Twilight knows parts of this, but I suspect that it will do you all well to hear it from one who has walked the Last City’s streets.” He cleared his throat. “Jannah shone for four millennia and more, beautiful and transplendent. At its height, the years that held its end and its beginning, it was the home of five million souls. Thousands of years of rulers who were honest, fair, or tried to be and succeeded, ah, as ponies can hope to succeed in such things. Yet with victory we find ourselves sometimes with nothing left to conquer. The cities of the plain bowed without a fight. My people made pilgrimages. The nomads worshipped at the feet of the great tableland at the city’s heart and never touched a single hair on a pony who bore the mark of Eon.” The name sent a jolt through Twilight. She opened her mouth and considered saying something, anything. But she didn’t. Something told her not to mention her dreams. “Mages ruled here, though not alone. They were virtuous and good, born into a bright world that ponies still thought was young. But they did not know that the world was no longer as young as they would have hoped. Creation was growing up, and with it came new things. “One mage, maybe more--we do not know, perhaps it is better not to dwell on the how--discovered a way by which he might see into other places and times. It is hard to describe, yes? Other possibilities. It was enough to drive some ponies mad, but these ponies… ah, they were brave loremasters. They would look infinity in the eyes and dance with her. And so they did. They watched and watched. Perhaps they took notes! Like you, fair and noble apprentice,” he said to Twilight, and smiled. Genuine, that smile, but it still made Twilight frown. “Thanks,” she muttered. “They saw things which no other pony since has seen. Or, at least, has seen and told another soul. And in every place they would find Jannah’s correspondant. That is the word passed down to us, captured in notes and stories. Her copy, her sister. Several planes had no Jannah, no glorious city that moved and lived and breathed, no empire of magic and law. This troubled the loremasters, but they pressed on. Perhaps they thought these places were simply flukes. “From there it grows hard to see. Perhaps they saw Jannah burning, or Jannah turned into a ruin, or Jannah head of a vast and terrible empire, a reign of blood and madness. Perhaps they saw into the country of the Gods, if they live, or the land where the stars repose in the daytime hours.” His speech had changed again. Recitation, Twilight recognized. “Perhaps the saw the end of all flesh and felt the warmth of other suns. But we do know that the last place they found was not Jannah at all.” “What?” Twilight stirred. “You mean it wasn’t recognizable?” “No. It was not Jannah.” “Then what?” Tradewinds asked. “Not new name, but new city?” “They saw the isles of blackest stone, suspended by arts the could not comprehend. They saw Empyrea, and knew that five thousand years of toil had been surpassed in a moment. Nothing they could do by themselves would ever compare to the arcane secrets in Empyrea’s floating libraries. They could not suspend the earth in great islands of black and verdant forests, could not sustain life on them, could not hope to do even half of what they saw without…” He winced. “Cheating. So they saw two roads.” “And they took one,” Applejack said.” “Yes. They chose poorly. They would not be content with the beautiful world they had made. They felt the compulsion to surpass, to overwhelm, to dominate. They wanted to control instead of nurture, and so undid all. Years they spent working on a way to not only see but enter these new places. They tore at the fabric of creation, the Song itself, like foals kick in a tantrum. That is what it was, no? a temper tantrum. They had seen too much.” “What did they do?” Twilight asked, and found that she had been holding her breath. Luna’s information… she had guessed it was something like this, but seeing into other worlds? There were other worlds? Many had theorized, postulated, but to have confirmation? Was this even confirmation? “In the course of experimentation, they turned to blood magic. They used criminals at first. At first. Then orphaned urchin children. Ponies from the street. Hundreds did not seem like that much in such a sea of thinking life. They captured the nomads and batpony pilgrims and drained them of blood and life, used their souls to power great grinding machines which went on and on, and they plunged into the darkness between worlds. And there they found something.” “The shadow,” Twilight said. Luna’s words came back to her now. It was coming together. “In the dark they found darkness had taken shape and spoke. And it was very civil, if unnerving, and they listened. It had its own world, it lied, and they had succeeded! But the one they wanted to breach was still a ways away. But if they would open the crack they had made, he would help them.” “And they did,” Applejack said. “They had not created the crack. They had stumbled blindly into it, but they did created the Bore. The Tear was the result of their great engine’s unholy work, and they were rewarded by being twisted in their moment of triumph into things which cannot be described with words and which should not be described with them. These first monsters, the Fallen, rampaged through the city in the night. They sang, so we think, as they do now. The air was filled with song, and the ponies of Jannah wandered out to meet the song which blanked all thought, all soul from them, and they were destroyed. Devoured. Consumed without thought, without intention, without remorse. Eaten alive as they stood by the thousands. Some were immune or too stubborn or too far away, and only a few of those discovered the danger. Others woke in their beds to a city that had become hell. For the first monsters brought more, and the Shadow which Twilight names reached through the Tear and began to toy with the Song as perhaps he had always wished.” They were all silent for awhile. Abdiel seemed to gather himself. The others sat in a sort of ragged circle around him. Waiting, perhaps, she thought. Simply resting. Was there a waiting that had no one object in mind? Anxiety was the only concept that she could think of that fit the description. Twilight let herself be distracted to fill the gnawing silence. “Abdiel.” Tradewinds broke that silence. “Yes?” “Why does it look so…” Twilight watched her as she screwed up her face, as if struggling. “The words, I am not knowing.” “Preserved?” Twilight supplied. She nodded. “That will do, da. Not the right one, but is good enough.” “The Ward. The last hope,” Abdiel said. “I tell you now what every child on the Veldt knows by heart. Eon, the mother of the city, she sealed it. Like… As one might salt meat, or freeze it to keep it fresh.” Noting their grimaces at the suggestion, he chuckled. “Do you not eat much of it, in the eastern lands? A pity. A shishkabob is not to be refused.” Pinkie made a little noise of disgust. “Uh, gross.” “Agreed, sugar,” Applejack said, smiling. But her voice sounded so flat. “Ah, well, I who have tasted bacon will keep its wonder to myself.” His smile faded. “But, to answer your question, Eon did this. To keep the breach from widening, from changing, she set the whole city apart. It cannot change. Any changes made to it--things moved, broken, on and so forth--it fixes itself. You will not see it happen. It will. The air is still. Or it rains. Rain is good for us. It will keep the fog away.” “Who is Eon?” Twilight asked. “Eon? She was the first.” He paused. “I believe. I am not sure. No one is. It is not exactly possible to ask her.” “Was she killed?” Applejack asked. “No. We do not know what happened. She was seen on the tableland, glowing bright like a second sun. Nopony who lived in this place had time to turn and observe, yes? There was much running to be done by those who knew there was anything to run from.” “So she froze the city to save the world, then. Basically.” Twilight hummed. “Well. That makes sense.” “Makes sense. It is funny that you say this, apprentice of the sun. You will not feel this way when you are inside. About anything.” “What is it like?” Tradewinds asked, gesturing vaguely over there. “Inside.” But Abdiel shook his head. “I do not know how to tell you, and you will see. But I can tell you why I am stopping here. I know it will be your next question. I am stopping for tradition’s sake. Ostyallah is… different. It was the last place touched by Eon’s final scream. It is the place least touched, of the city. This was where the last survivors, some of them my ancestors, fled the doom of all flesh. It is a holy place, for those who seek the city and what is inside. There is much inside. Treasure, memory… some think they will see into the deepest heart of things here. There are many reasons.” “So its kind of a staging area,” Twilight mused. “Yes.” She nodded. “Alright. I’m… I’m fine with that. It’s safe to stay here, I assume? In the custom house?” “Also yes.” “Then we will. I’ll want to go over what we can expect, topographywise, with you. I need to think about how we have the kits organized.” When he nodded, she continued. “AJ, I’ll let you take some of the load off of us, but I need to spread essentials around.” “Sounds like a straight deal to me, Twi.” “Good. I’ll… Um.” She blinked. Her thoughts had spiraled off. Where had they gone? “You feel the city. Do not be dismayed,” Abdiel said quietly. She closed her eyes. “Lay out the packs. I’ll distract myself, then.” “You were the last one,” Cadance was saying. Twilight blinked. She felt… clear. Distinct. Everything was so orderly here, obvious. She blinked again. All at once, it occurred to her how different it felt to be unclouded, unburdened by something outside of herself, something that weighed down on a already weary mind. What was that place going to do to her? “Twilight?” She jumped. “What? Wh--How? Cadance?” Cadance chuckled. They sat in the outer chamber of her suite, the one that led to a balcony overlooking Imperial Center. Cadance sat with a cup of tea floating lazily beside her, and more on a small table. As Twilight continued to stare in bewilderment, she reclined on the couch beneath her. Twilight saw there was one for her. “Come.” She approached and laid on the couch. “Tea?” her sister-in-law asked. “Yeah.” Cadance served it with magic, of course. Gracefully. She had never been without charm. “What were you saying earlier? And before you say it again, if I could make a few observations, questions, whatever.” Cadance nodded, and she plunged right in. “I’m Dreamwalking, and so are you. This is my dream, but it’s not. There’s something… artificial isn’t the word that fits best. But its not inaccurate. I’m assuming that Luna did this. Why? Can you tell me?” “I was saying, Twilight, that you were the last. Yes, Luna made this. She made a structure in the Aether, and we inhabit it.” Cadance sipped her tea. “You know, I can change what sort of tea it is with a thought? Have you ever started with tea and thought to yourself, ‘damn, I really should have tried the green’?” She gave Twilight a lopsided smile. “Dreamwalking is wonderful, really. Aunt Luna did teach me a bit, around the time when I was foalsitting you. But I never dreamwalked much. It takes a far more logical sort of mindset than I usually like to have.” “And you’re, what, illogical?” “Wonderfully irrational,” she said. “Love is not a calculation. Mating, in the animal sense, is very much a calculation. Dominance, pride, territory, a thing that once could conceivably model. Aunt Celestia told me once, in that voice she uses--you know, the one she uses when she says strange, otherworldly things-- that somepony had said ‘Credo quia absurdam.’ which I am told means something along the lines of…” “What language is that?” Twilight couldn’t help but ask. Not getting a chance to grill “Eon” on the particulars of the history she’d seen was still a sore point. “You know how Celestia can be. Saying things in languages nopony’s heard since forever. It means something close to ‘I believe it because it is absurd’. Or impossible.” “That’s ridiculous.” “I said so too. I’ve thought too much and felt too much to be too sure.” She stopped smiling. “Far too much. You were always the certain one, Twilight. Why were you the last? There are good reasons. There are also troubling ones.” Twilight shifted. She sipped her tea, and found that yes, it could be changed between sips. Now that was an interesting experience. “Last of what? Of who? I’m lacking in context.” “Of your companions. I greeted them as they fell into the dreams they inhabit. Explained what Luna has done for you all, and given you some of her last warnings.” “I won’t be seeing her, then, I suppose.” Twilight’s heart sank. Her ears folded against her head without her wishing them to do so. “I had hoped--” “Oh, you shall see her, little ladybug mine,” Cadance said. She snickered. The lighter mood had returned. “Oh, I see you trying to avoid my eyes. You know my magic doesn’t work through eye contact! Remember when you had that crush when you were--” Twilight groaned. “This is ridiculous.” “And I believe it,” Cadance needled. “I thought you were a little too old and a little too shaken up in general to greet you with our little rhyme, but I figured you wouldn’t mind a ribbing.” And she didn’t. Not really. Twilight sighed dramatically, and then smiled. “You remind me a bit of my brother, honestly. You rubbed off on each other--don’t you dare have picked up on his ability to turn what I say into innuendo.” Cadance shrugged. “But, uh, yeah. Where was I? You got a little of him and he got a little of you. The two of you were a good match.” “Thank you. I am glad you let me steal him away,” she said. “I’m sure you’re curious, though. About all of this.” “Yes,” Twilight admitted. “I am. Extremely so, in fact. I have a few guesses, some thoughts, but I’d like clarity over a chance to exercise my reason. Simpler that way.” Cadance rolled onto her back and gestured lazily about them. “Well, here you are. Aunt Luna called this thing the Annex. She said that she’s been wondering if it were possible for a very long time, but never got around to trying it. Too much work, and it needed a reason keeping it alive. Magic works differently when it comes to this sort of thing. It requires intention and emotion, or it won’t come out right. But she had a reason now, and the Annex lives. Imagine it as a sort of… airship, if you will. Moored in the Aether, closed off but not in such a way as to be a prison. Outside is a storm, and inside you can come out from the rain. Or so she told me to say.” “An artificial environment, but a stable one, created from Luna and her… emotions? Soul? Heart?” “Intention, potentialities, yes. Her heart. Language, as you must have come to understand by now, is limited the farther you go into the arcane.” She paused. “She also said to say that, but I honestly forgot the rest of that whole tangent so don’t try to follow it up with me. Save that for her.” Twilight nodded. “And she can visit, as can you. The others?” “All of them can. They are all here, but for the moment it is best to keep to yourself. Luna still needs to triple check all of the connecting parts and such. Make sure it is still stable, or as close as anything in the Aether comes to being stable. For now… just you and me.” “How did you greet the others? Did you travel?” “I did not. I am in all of their various compartments.” She smiled again, this time… differently. “I am everywhere and nowhere, at once, you could say. I am changed, a bit, from when we last saw each other.” “A good change?” She asked and felt immediately stupid. “A change,” Cadance said. “Those who walk in the world between life and death do not come back the same. But! Enough of that. Your other friends are also to have access to the Annex. Rarity, Rainbow, Fluttershy. Applejack’s Soarin’. We tried with Spike but Luna is having trouble accounting for him being a dragon. She’ll figure it out, I’m sure. Rarity’s sister and her two friends also are locked in, though they haven’t arrived yet--ah. One of them has. I’m greeting them now.” “That’s… kind of weird,” Twilight said. Lamely. “Very. I’m calm about it because it’s already happened several times now, but it is very weird. I was convinced it was possible until I was already doing it.” Cadance took another sip. “The next question is, of course, why? I would never say I could fathom all the contents of my aunt’s mind--there are alicorns and there are alicorns. But she did me the favor of offering an explanation. You’ve entered the city, haven’t you?” Twilight shook her head. She took a sip of her own tea, following suit. It was what you did. “Not exactly. The city is connected to a port called Ostyallah. We’re staying the night here before we make our grand entrance in the morning.” She chuckled at herself. “Grand entrance. From the descriptions Abdiel has given and the hints Luna shared, I would rather a stealthy and undetected entrance. Not something I’m going to get, I assume.” “It isn’t something anypony has when it comes to Jannah. Or so I’ve been told. But you’ve noticed the city’s aura already. It has a sort of numbing effect on the mind. You will be lost to it if you aren’t very careful. Luna came up with all of this to stave that off. The Annex. It’s purpose is two-fold. It will take the edge off of the trial… and perhaps keep you sane whilst doing so, while also providing a safe haven from dreaming.” “But… from dreaming? That doesn’t make sense.” “There are always dreams in Jannah. She said you would say something about that not making sense.” Twilight sighed. But the company was alright, and she felt clear now. Steady. They stood before a gate. It was not quite as impossible, not as indomitable as the main gate, but it was still tall. It still cast a shadow over all of them with ease. The doors were open. Abdiel had explained that they were rarely shut in the city’s days of glory--why slow down the great trains of wealth that came without ceasing into such a place? Why indeed, Twilight though. They hesitated at first, but there was no need for a repeat of the docks. Twilight stepped forward, and they entered the city of Jannah. The markets were first. It was as it had been the last day of Jannah’s empire. The stalls where fruit had been sold, where grain had been weighed, where mares had bought fine cloth. They were perfect. They were whole. Entropy had made no inroads here at all. But beyond them, the city was. She could not say it loomed, for it would leave a place in its existence for herself. The city did not loom becuase to loom would be to condescend to acknowledge that she was worth even an iota of notice, even a second of its time. It was all white marble monoliths, high twisting spires that touched the sky. She saw great rails lacing to and fro through the sky not so far above her and she wondered at them. When the great market ended, the city truly began. She could not tell if these were the houses of nobility or commoners, for even though she suspected that the houses on either side of her were merely simple dwellings… the magic she felt radiating from every single stone was overwhelming. It was a warm numb glowing, a background noise, a fuzzy whine. The craftsmanship was perfect. They preferred houses built with simple shapes, sturdy and practical, but to say such a thing about them was almost blasphemous. If magic existed that could assure a rigid perfection at the level of the atom, than it had been used here for the most mundane things. Blue paint adorned the sheer white walls, in strangely happy, blocky designs. The slanting rooves were blue, and she saw that every window was closed. Blue windows. Blue and white, pure and-- They kept walking. It was hard to not to go overboard staring at everything. Something about the craftsponyship, perhaps? Or just the effects of the city’s magic? The malignity that lived within its walls? She had no idea. An hour passed in silence. Except, of course, for the sound of their hooves. Twilight thought she heard a cry in the distance, but every time she searched around her only to find that she alone had heard. Abdiel… hadn’t he mentioned such things? She was sure he head. And so she said nothing. She told none of her companions. And yet she heard the cry again. And again, fainter ,farther. They came to a great portico, with beautiful marble pillars with bases shaped after flowers. The carving was intricate. She thought at first that they were real flowers simply enchanted, but there was simply no way. Such things would have proved to delicate, being pressed together and enchanted this way. These were not flowers but the ideal of flowers, the archetype-- “Twilight? You comin’, hon?” Applejack’s voice was jarring. It was so unmusical, so prosaic. She almost shuddered. “Oh? Yes, sorry.” Twilight scurried to catch up with the others. “Got distracted.” “Don’t,” Abdiel said quietly. “What?” “Get distracted. Don’t get distracted.” They left the pillared walkways behind and continued to a square adorned by a fountain shaped in the form of a pony rampant, holding a great banner. Twilight almost asked who the pony was, or if Abdiel could read an inscription describing the subject, but his sudden pause drew her attention. He grit his teeth. “Look,” he said, and pointed, and Twilight did look. She saw, as well. Cutting through the strange slowness of thought was a sudden sense of dread, for there was a tent behind the flowing waters of the fountain. APPLEJACK She is standing on a great plain, mountains behind and mountains before, but the ones yet to come are distant and the ones she has left behind her are close. They are like the comforting floor of an otherwise foreign house. Something to lean back on, to use as an anchor--something she can point to and say, “This is where I am, this is the boundary of home and here am I” and it mean something. The tall grass is blowing. She hears the wind whistling. She feels the wind in her mane but her mane is not moving. Is that the grass that touches her legs, caressing them lightly, almost lovingly? Or is it her imagination? Is this the good earth? “Seekers? Like you?” Tradewinds asks Abdiel. “Is likely, yes?” “No,” Abdiel is shaking his head, poking at the tent with a frown. “This… Seekers would know better, even those who enter for the first time. This is a mistake.” She has a mission. Rarity is there. Somewhere, here with her, among the flowing and singing grass. Rainbow Dash is here too. They are just out of sight, but she feels their presence. So close to her, with her, ready to face the unknown plains beyond Equestria. A friend in need of solace and medicine--aye, she’ll go a long way for that. To find a flower that grows at the end of the world. Applejack stumbled slightly over a rock--a bit of loose masonry. When she righted herself, she looked and saw that the offending stone seemed untouched, immaculate still. It had been uneffected by her passage. She looked at it with lethargy, and found herself trying to move it. It moved. She blinked. Had it moved? It looked like it had never shifted position at all. “AJ?” Twilight asked. “Now I know what I looked like a moment ago.” Twilight was beside her, looking from AJ to the rock as if trying to figure out what it was that held her friend’s attention. “Sorry.” She runs wild among the great herds that rest anywhere and everywhere. She feels the pulse of the earth beneath her hooves as she knows Rainbow feels the song of the lightning as Rarity must hear the thrum of thaumic miracles. “Is any of this stuff dangerous to us?” Applejack asked, her voice strange in her own ear. “Abdiel, hey? You listenin’, fella?” “Hm? No. This is all long abandoned. I doubt the pony who set it up is alive, actually. If only because they were foolish enough to set up camp here on the street. It’s curious… and I have suspicions. Let me think on it.” She has raced the wind itself and she fights ponies who have never known defeat, eyes like stone and bodies like oaks. She has tasted of the wheat of the gods and drank of their ale. Here she is on the field of battle, wearing barding guilded, padded, formed of leather? Clothe? She has no idea, she cannot care. She is weaving out of the way of a earth-shattering hoof. She is kicking back, a roar of bloodlusting joy escaping her lips. Her hooves connect. She feels bone beneath them, the shock of contact! Another dodge, an arrow that sails through the air. Flashes. Rarity hovering over a pool of water, her eyes lidded but glowing with gold. “We’ll move on,” Abdiel said. “If it is acceptable to you, lavender’s apprentice.” “I have a name,” groused Twilight, but she smirked. “Yeah, let’s go.” They continued. Twilight lying in bed, her face withered, her body withered, drawn taut. Applejack knew she was walking stiffly. She saw things but she knew they were not there. She saw them and said nothing, did not react to what she saw and felt. Yet she shook. She was painfully aware that Twilight had taken her at her word and given her a lion’s share. Usually, this would have pleased Applejack--she was the tough one, the hard one, she was the one who should bear the weight. But all of a sudden she felt trapped. The city was so wide but the streets so narrow. One moment she was on an endless plain--she almost felt she could name it! If she could focus on the visions, she could understand!--and the next moment she was walking among the lowborn of Jannah and their households. Except they were gone. She had to remind herself that. It was strangely hard to remember. She kept expecting for some normal pony to stroll out of each house they passed, whistling in the morning sun. She could not hate it, not yet. It was so green! Houses had little box gardens filled with colorful flowers and herbs she recognized. Thyme, rosemary. She imagined the smell of pie wafting through an open window, passing the sky-blue shutters (open now, allowing her to see a normal home, why wouldn’t it be normal? Shouldn’t it be?). Rainbow Dash with wings and hooves and the sweat of her brow calling the Storm. Roiling clouds and rain coming down in sheets, lightning flashing, a great tempest. Her head ached. Abdiel was saying something. How did he think? Applejack felt like she had walked through a thousand years. She shook her head. No. She was clear-headed. Strong willed. Applejack. She was herself. She wasn’t those pictures. Born in Ponyville, and by the Good Earth she would die in Ponyville or be damned. She repeated such things over and over. The hallucinations seemed less vivid the more she murmured. “Seekers, yes, druzhinnik of the apprentice. I believe there is one nearby, but I am steering clear of him. That is why we are leaving the main road.” “Is this safe?” Twilight asked. “This… forum, I guess you could call it. You and Luna both mentioned that the buildings were less than safe.” Abdiel shrugged slowly. “Nothing is safe here. But it is not enclosed. It will be fine. We have the daylight.” The mist was still present. Applejack was reminded of sheep’s wool on a spool, absurdly. Was it flowing out from the forum begirt with columns? No, it was everywhere, drifting without direction. The forum from the outside was two rows of great etched columns and then a wall, all of it rooved over. Within the walls, past great open doors, there was a vast campus of mixed green and white. Small paths snaked through well-trimmed grass and around cypress trees and neatly trimmed bushes. Near the middle of the great clearing in the urban sprawl there was a small building that looked older, less perfect and trimmed. A shrine of some sort? A long pool of water, walled off in stone, sat beside it. As the others spread out wordlessly, Applejack found herself drawn to the shrine. She was sure it was a shrine. She felt that it must be one. It wasn’t a simple matter of finding the way through. Twilight, in the distance, called out that the door to their left led out into a public bath house. Dead end. She heard Tradewinds trot towards the source of Twilight’s voice, her hooves clopping along the path close enough to catch Applejack’s attention. But it was hard to draw her attention away from the structure that she now stood in front of--it was so homely, so simple compared to the world around it. She poked her head inside, brimming with curiosity. RARITY “So, where do we hit first?” Rainbow asked. “Hit implies a bit more violence involved than would be ideal,” Rarity replied carefully. “But, to answer the question… I believe the first major stop would be Stalliongrad. We’ll pass by Lunangrad on the way, but we won’t stop as long. From there, Manehattan.” She paused. There was a general pause, in fact. Rarity hadn’t meant to dwell on it, but memories came to her unbidden. Manehattan. The things there… the mistakes, or perhaps they were not mistakes. Would things have always been as they were? Was there no stopping the burning of the tenements? “Are you sure?” Fluttershy asked. Rarity glanced across the table at her. Fluttershy did not flinch under her gaze. Rarity couldn’t read what was in her eyes at all. She noted this for later. It wasn’t the time to worry about her friend. Not in front of the Legata. She nodded. And Fluttershy nodded in kind. “What then?” “From Manehattan, we’ll so south, through Fillydelphia, and visit Hollow Shades if possible. That way, we can avoid the mountains.” “Reports suggest that some of that territory is hostile,” the Legata said. The three from Canterlot turned to look at her. She sat upright, her spine straight as a sword. “Possibly,” Rarity stressed. “It is possibly hostile.” “Possibly is as good as decidedly,” countered the Legata, her stone gray eyes flickering towards Rarity. “You must account for it.” “I have,” Rarity said. “You want us to run from maybes?” Rainbow asked, bristling. “No, I don’t. I wished to be sure that possibilities were accounted for.” “It’s fine,” Rarity said. “I was actually going to bring that up, so we might as well discuss it. Yes, Baltimare cut ties with Canterlot on rather bad terms. Fillydelphia… to be honest, we’re not sure of its status. Most of the major rioting during the Long Night was in the south and west, but with how Baltimare more or less… seceded,” she grimaced. “We are likely to be watched. If nothing else. I would hope it would be nothing else.” “You intend to visit the city regardless.” “I do.” Rarity sighed. “Caution is imposrtant, but so is the food we are bringing. I’ve checked and double checked the calculations with the Quartermaster and his staff. We have enough to relieve some of the hardship in those three cities. Obviously, I am saving the lion’s share for Canterlot. For one, it is overburdened and to be blunt it has far more mouths to feed. At the same time, we must prove to the ponies of the outerlying provinces that their Princess, their nation has not forgotten them.” “Will you be bringing it all then?” “The food?” Rarity asked. “That’s stupid,” Rainbow growled. “Of course not. Don’t ask questions just to goad,” she added. Opal and Rainbow glared at each other across the table. Rarity sighed. For her part, she was beginning to tire of this tension. Rainbow had taken an instant dislike to the soldier mare, and Opal had responded in kind. Opal thought of Rainbow as an undisciplined barbarian, a primitive. Rarity would argue with her on most of that, but comparatively Rainbow was lax. But that had more to do with Opal’s rigidity than a fault on Rainbow’s part. She wished they wouldn’t goad each other. “Please,” Fluttershy said. It was quiet. Too quiet. Rainbow swore. “What is even your problem? You know we’re not stupid--” “I have never implied Lady Rarity was and if you were a bit less full of yourself--” “Me? You’re the one who keeps giving everyone the evil eye--” “If you two would--” Fluttershy tried again. No doing. “I have done nothing but my duty, Miss Dash. If you even understand such things--” “What the hell? You don’t know anything about me!” Fluttershy’s wings flared open. She slammed both hooves on the table, disrupting the maps, the charts, even the candles. Rarity caught the candles before they could fall in her magic’s hold, and backed away from the table. Rainbow backed away as well, staring at Fluttershy, who breathed heavily. All of their eyes were wide, even the Legata’s. “If you two are quite finished,” Fluttershy practically hissed. They nodded dumbly. There was a tiny uncharitable pony in Rarity’s head that was pleased to see the Legata cowed. But that voice was in the distance. The rest of her was shocked. She tried to speak--it was what she did. “Fluttershy, I--” “No, I’m not done,” Fluttershy interrupted her. “Firstly, ponies can hear what we say right now. They can hear the two of you girls fighting. This is pointless. Rainbow!” Rainbow backed away, and fell back on her haunches. She raised both her forelegs as if pleading innocence. “Hey, Flutts, I--” “Don’t. Don’t finish that. Rainbow, you are being unreasonable. I know. Don’t explain it, I know. And it’s a stupid, stupid problem to have right now. Okay? It is. I haven’t said anything, but that’s the truth. I am so, so tired of you fighting. All of you. This isn’t the time. It isn’t the place. Especially,” she added, in a lower voice, a slightly more viscious one, “where everypony from here to Manehattan can hear you. Okay?” “O-okay…” “Thank you. And you,” Fluttershy turned her baleful eyes to the Legata, who had regained some of her steel composure. “I know you’re doing this on purpose. You need to live in the present and stop trying to force everypony into the past with you. Dash isn’t a barbarian on the frontier. The world is not the legion, and not everypony you encounter has to be the legion. And you know that. I know you do, and I know you’re doing this on purpose because it makes you feel like you’re right. Dont’,” she said, showing her teeth. If the Legata was about to say something, that stopped her. “And I know you’re going to say that you are just doing your job, but we both know that you could do it and be a lot more cooperative and better natured about it. Do you like being the Iron Bitch?” Opal said nothing. “You had better decide if that is what you want to be,” Fluttershy said. She was shaking. “You had better decide if you want to be alone or not. Because nopony can depend on a pony who won’t stop trying to be something that they aren’t, somepony who can’t do what they need to do. Okay? Okay. I’m done. Mostly.” She looked at Rarity. Most of the fire was gone. “You should have said something,” she finished. Fluttershy, shaking like a leaf, left the tent. They stood there in silence. “We can put this on hold,” Rarity said, shakily. “Legata, I--we will come to your tent tomorrow night. I’ve put together some tentative plans for how to proceed, but I want…” she blinked. Her words were failing her again, as they had before. Surely she was past this. She felt her leg so obviously now. She resisted the urge to hide her scars with a hoof. She could still be Rarity. “I would like you to look at the city maps and help us plan for the worst case,” she finished. Lamely. Unconvincingly. “Yes. I can do this,” Opal said. She looked at each of them in turn. She and Rainbow shared no moment of reconciliation. But they didn’t glare. Neither of them could look at each for more than a moment. “Your friend… Forgive me. It has been a long march. I will retire for the night.” She called in the guards, and they took her stretcher away. Leaving just Rarity. Just Rarity and a very deathly silent Rainbow. What could she say? Fluttershy was right. Rarity didn’t know what this “reason” was, but the whole march from the capitol to Fort Forlorn, these two had bickered. It was why she had limited her contact the last two or three days with the lower level officers. She didn’t need them seeing that. Should she say something? Should she let Rainbow be silent a moment longer? “What do I do?” Rainbow asked. Her voice sounded so different. “I think I fucked up, Rares.” Rarity nodded dumbly. “Fluttershy… she… I mean, I haven’t seen her pissed like that in forever. Like, really forever. And when she gets that bad… oh gods, she’s probably been sitting there between us just…” Rainbow hung her head. And Rarity wasn’t sure what else to do, so she slowly crossed the space between them and wrapped Rainbow up in a tight hug. Was she frustrated with Dash? Yes. But it didn’t matter. She would ask for reasons later. She would try to understand later. Rainbow hugged her back. “Should I go find her?” “I’m not sure.” “I think I should. I… I haven’t... “ “She’s been alone with distressing frequency,” Rarity finished her thought for her. “Go find her. I’ll wait for you in our tent. Don’t worry about waking me up. I want you to tell me what happens, alright?” She shifted her weight and winced. The leg was acting up again. She felt the pain lance through her body. Damn wild magic. Damn it to Tartarus. Rainbow nodded. “I’ll… I guess I’ll be back.” Rarity released her, and Rainbow--head bowed, ears against her skull, walked outside the tent and took to the air. Rarity was alone. Night had fallen early on Fort Forlorn. It was an old fortress, and she had been surprised to find that even Opal knew of it. Or, knew of the places it had replaced. Forlorn was the northernmost point of Equestria, and along the most clear path from the Empire to the southern lands, at the mouth of a mountain pass. Fortress after fortress had been built here. Before the empire, petty warlords and kings built here and were overthrown. After the empire, a lonely mage’s castle and then a failed colony of Equestria, and then finally a fort against the monsters of the north.Over and over and over. Luna’s Rangers operated out of the small fort, as did a regiment of the Lunar Frontier guard. When Rarity had asked after the status and whereabouts of the Army of the North, she had gotten ignorance and resentment. Gone, or stragglers here and there. Of course. How could she have guessed anything else? They had fallen apart after Manehattan. Mass desertion, food shortage, low morale. When the tenements burned, it was as if all at once the dream that was Equestria had been itself burned. She shook her head. That was a foolish thought. Rarity sighed, and walked towards her tent. TWILIGHT She was to be married soon. What was she doing here? She would be late! And after all of the hard work Rarity had put in, arranging and planning! Or Big Mac, would he think she had abandoned him? “This is a lot slower going than I expected,” groused Applejack. “All walking is slow,” Tradewinds grumbled. Twilight chuckled. “I’m sure it must seem so.” A heavy atmosphere. Had she made a mistake? She was so happy. So happy. But Fluttershy… They were below the window, on the steps that led into the house that Twilight had grown up in. Lover and Beloved, locked in an embrace in the night. The stallion would say his goodbyes and be off into the night, back down the hill to where he was staying with one of his groomsponies’ uncle. Twilight trembled with barely contained excitement. “Just a few days! I’d say that I had butterflies in my stomach, but I don’t think it adequately describes this. Big Macintosh simply smiled and nuzzled her. “Eeyup.” “I can’t wait,” she said, kissing him gently under the lamplight before nuzzling back under his chin. “I really can’t. I’m not even sure how I’ll get to sleep tonight.” “I reckon that you’ll find a way. It’s been a long day, Twi. Besides, you girls are gonna need your rest for tomorrow,” he drawled as he stroked her mane with his forehoof. “But I know what ya mean now. I’m right wound up myself…” He smirked. “If I can get over those fine legs of yours and get some sleep, I know you can.” Twilight blushed furiously, swatting at him halfheartedly. They both laughed. They quieted and stood still for a moment, ignoring their surroundings. The night was quiet, and the streets of this part of the residential area were all but abandoned. For all intents and purposes, they were alone here with each other, happy as they could be. Fluttershy’s eyes bored into them. Twilight stumbled. She felt such… it was bitter. It tasted so bitter. What was this? What was this place? They came to something which for all the world reminded Twilight of a great ferris wheel. It was a sort of wheel of platforms, connected to the rails that laced through the sky here and there. She could imagine how it was meant to move. Each platform would be attached to the rail, sending it off to… wherever. It was hard to imagine the scope of the city. How could something be this big? How could a city be so endless? But she saw now how other platforms would be brought back in, collected, and then sent back out. Like a heart, it would move these strange flat monoliths. Rails begirt the sides. Had they carried ponies? It seemed reasonable. They had been walking an hour and it seemed that they had made less progress than she would have liked. She could only imagine what it would be like to traverse such an expanse through crowds. She looked up, shielding her eyes. The sun was moving fast today. Twilight growled to herself softly. Perfect. They needed to make tracks. Abdiel had made it abundantly clear: nopony who wanted to live was on the street when darkness came. After some time, Rarity spoke again. “Twilight, I need to ask you something.” “Yes?” Rarity’s tone put her on the defensive. “It’s about Fluttershy.” Twilight sighed deeply. “Yes?” she repeated, a little defeated. “Why? I need to hear it from you why you made her a bridesmare. You must know how she’s been these last few days.” “I do,” she admitted. “I made a mistake, but I’m not sure there was any really good course of action.” Rarity waited for the rest of her explanation in heavy silence. “I… we all knew that Fluttershy liked Macintosh. You know just as well as I do that how much she liked him was always a mystery. She never discussed it at length with us and we had to pull it out of her bit by bit. Remember, by the time I talked to her about Macintosh and I dating, we all sort of assumed she was moving on.” Rarity nodded, and her expression softened. “Yes, darling. I remember all that. Continue, please.” Twilight knew she was starting to ramble, but she couldn’t help it. So much had built up inside her and she’d had no one to talk to. “I guess I wanted something, and I was willing to fool myself into thinking it was more attainable than it was. I grasped at that straw—that she was getting over him. When he asked me to marry him and I asked all you girls to be bridesmares in turn… I was deluding myself into thinking that she was sad but no longer truly in love. I thought this would be closure. I didn’t want her to be all alone in Ponyville without any of us. She’s my friend...” Twilight faltered, then stopped. Rarity stopped as well and considered this before answering. “I’d say that I wasn’t sure how wise that decision was, Twilight, but I think that’s obvious by now to both of us. But you have a point. Fluttershy at home, these emotions festering with no one like Dash or I to check them…” No, no! No. She shook her head violently. This was all wrong! She hadn’t said those things! She hadn’t had those conversations! She wasn’t getting married! Macintosh didn’t even like mares. “Abdiel,” she said. Her voice shook, just a little. “Yes, Apprentice?” “I… this place.” “Has it begun, then? Do you hear things?” She shivered. “I… nevermind,” she said. How does one say, “Oh, I think I’m having hallucinations about things that never happened!” and not sound insane? It was impossible. She focused on the here and now. She would will it away. Abdiel looked at her for a long moment, and then shrugged. “It was easier to traverse the city in the old days,” he said, turning to Applejack. “I have avoided the main roads. The Lost are greater in number. Some of the Seekers who have not heard the Calling have become more, ah, defensive.” “You mean they’re violent now.” He shrugged. “Yes.” “The Lost? The ones who…” Pinkie’s voice trailed off. She was poking the platforms on the great wheel. Abdiel shrugged again. “The ones who lose themselves, yes.” “What do they… I mean, how do they survive?” Twilight asked, trying to stay engaged, stay here. “The city sustains them, perhaps? I do not know. None of us do. Perhaps they do not survive but are already dead.” He smiled, and it was not a happy smile. “Regardless, let us not be caught by them. We must move on.” Abdiel looked around. “We’ve already lingered here too long.” “Is hard, not to linger,” said Tradewinds. Her voice sounded slower. Was it? Twilight studied her, but her eyes seemed as sharp as always. Her wing was still unready for flight, but otherwise she looked fit and alert. So it’s just me, then. “Yes, it is. I find myself… interested,” Abdiel finished. He looked away. “What is the Calling?” Twilight asked. She had wanted to ask in Ostyallah. Why hadn’t she? He did not answer. Instead, he scanned the rooftops. “We must leave. I begin to feel that I am being watched. Call it, ah, nerves. Of course,” he turned and flashed them all his lopsided smirk. “One is always being watched in Ja--” There was a loud crack, and Abdiel spun. Twilight saw the arc of his blood and his body crumpled in the mist. Twilight stared at him. “Won’t fly again, won’t fly again… What if they’re right? Rares, you gotta let me go! What if they’re right? I gotta know!” The whispering transformed into laughter—discordant and sinister. Rainbow, struggling against Rarity’s hooves and magic, screamed against the void and the mocking. “I’ll fly! You can’t stop me from flying, you fuckers! Just you watch me! Shut up! Don’t you dare laugh, don’t you even dare!” The laughter only intensified. Twilight tried to help, not even sure if Rarity’s fears were warranted. All she knew was that Rainbow was out of control, for now she could feel the voices gnaw at her own mind. Twilight reeled. Applejack roared in her ear. What was she saying? Everything was so dark now. It wasn’t just flashes. She saw herself now in a great labyrinth, dark, lit only by an invisible, ill light. Nothing was wholesome, nothing was hopeful--she was trapped. She would run forever to please a malignant joy. Twilight began hyperventilating. Where were the others? Where the city, where the wheel? Rainbow lay in mist--no, there wasn’t mist here, there was only the dark maze. She bled into the smooth, featureless ebony surface. Twilight stumbled towards her, shaking. “Rainbow? Rainbow? Get up!” “Twilight!” Rarity was bawling. “Rainbow!” “I can’t… I don’t know… I don’t know much about medicine. I can’t do healing magic, I’ll screw it up,” she babbled. There was no seperation. The city was the dream. Only this was real. Rainbow dying on the floor. Rarity bending over her, screaming “Twilight! Please!” She felt something touch her in the darkness and she jumped, lashing out with a hoof. “My wings, my wings!” Rainbow repeated in horrified stupor. Rarity rounded on Twilight. “Hurry up!” She tried. The second one was easier, and the third came out quickly with the dexterity of her magic. Rainbow hadn’t let up, and Rarity snapped at her. She left off of applying pressure to Rainbow’s gushing wounds suddenly and Twilight did her best to keep the bleeding under control. “My wings! My wings! Rarity, oh Celestia, I’m so cold! My wings!” Rarity shook her, voice tinged with madness. “How dare you! You never listen! You just do whatever you want, fly wherever you want! I always give you room, don’t I? You look at me! Don’t you dare close your eyes, Rainbow Dash!” Rainbow looked up, terrified and uncomprehending. Tears streamed from both of her eyes. She tried to speak, but Rarity wouldn’t let her. Twilight tried to pull the unicorn back, but Rarity shoved her off. “Rares? Rares, I’m cold.” “TWILIGHT, GET YOUR ASS UP!” Who was that? Who was screaming? Just the voices in the maze, the tormenting voices, dragging her this way and that, trying to keep her from her friend. There was a loud crack, and Twilight felt pain lance through her shoulder. The maze was gone, all of it was gone. She was falling towards the perfect, preserved cobblestones of Jannah. The mist was everywhere. If anything, there was more of it now, roiling and churning as if it were alive, as if it knew exactly what was happening. What was happening? Twilight tried to stand, and found herself roughly pulled back. “Hurry!” Tradewinds hissed in her ear. “We must withdraw, Twilight!” “R-rainbow…” She tried to reach out. What was happening? Where was Rainbow? Abdiel. Where was Abdiel? He’d fallen. Had he been shot? Who would be shooting? She had missed too much. “Twi! I could really use some magic right now!” Applejack thundered into her vision, dragging a groaning Abdiel with her. She let go of him long enough to speak, and then continued, pulling at his saddlebag straps with her teeth. Twilight called on her magic. It sprang to life, and violet lightning along her horn. The mists seemed to get thicker around her, as if they waited. She could not see any targets, but somehow she knew they were there. She cast her magic out like a net, letting it wash over buildings and streets. They all felt awful, like beautiful food rotten on the inside, it was to her thaumic sense what rancid butter was to her taste. She shuddered, but she found two targets--two ponies on the roof. She arced her lightning at them. “Is that it? You see ‘em?” Applejack asked her, shaking Twilight’s shoulder. Twilight cried out--the pain flared up again. Had she forgotten it already? Applejack jumped. “Aw hell. Let me see it.” “Um, I’m all for checking up on Twilight, but…” Pinkie flitted into Twilight’s vision. “We really, really need to go. That was really loud.” Applejack growled. “Twilight, are we good? Can you like magic somethin’ up?” Twilight sucked air through her clenched teeth. Stars, but her shoulder hurt. She tried to move the foreleg and to her relief found that she could. But it felt a little stiff. Pain, she thought. Nothing more. I got lucky. “I can get a rudimentary sense quickly, yes. There’s nothing in my range.” “How far is that?” “Fifty meters.” Applejack nodded. “That’s good to know. Okay then, lemme patch you up. Abdiel, is he doin’ alright Pinkie?” “Yeah! Abby’s okay!” “That… that is not my name, pink one.” “His ear’s littler, though,” Pinkie said, and then grunted as she helped their guide to his hooves. Twilight watched Abdiel touch his mutilated ear gently. He winced, and traced a shallow wound along his shoulder. “I was… lucky.” He shook his head. “Too distracted. I am ashamed.” “I didn’t notice anything either,” Twilight said softly. She whined as Applejack’s bandage was tightened and then her friend mussed her hair. “Abdiel, were those yer fallen? Twi, keep lookin’. If we have time… Pinkie, can you and Trade go grab their guns? Thankya.” “Yes, those were Fallen, I think…” He sighed, and gestured for them to move out of the middle of the street. Pinkie and Tradewinds had left quickly towards the houses where the gunfire had originated. “Guns with them are very rare. Guns are rare on the Veldt in general, yes? Now, it is not like the forgotten never use their old tools and weapons…” He was quiet. “I should have gone and checked the bodies. There is another possibility, one that came to mind when I saw the tent.” “What?” “Ponies coming here who are not Seekers or Fallen. I would allow that it is, ah, not impossible.” Twilight looked down at her hooves. She had no idea what to think of that. At no point had she even considered the possibility that somepony would be here before her. Did it matter? Who were they? If nothing else, she no longer felt safe. That got a grin--safe. She hadn’t felt safe in a long time. Pinkie and Tradewinds arrived a few moments later. Pinkie carried nothing. Tradewinds carried, strapped to her back, two carbines. They were new--Twilight recognized that right away. Bolt action, well-made, practically worthy of the Lunar Guard. Expensive. “Ammunition?” she asked, hollowly. Something felt wrong. Something was wrong. These weren’t the weapons of scavengers, picking at the carcass that time avoids. “Plenty,” Tradewinds said, and dug through her saddlebags to pull out a clip. She tried to say something around the bullets, presumably something like “Like this,” but Twilight couldn’t make it out before Tradewinds had replaced her prize. “They had harnesses. I could not carry both.” “I’m sorry, Twilight. I…” Pinkie looked away. She smiled. “Uh, it clashed with my mane? No, that’s dumb.” “I wouldn’t want to wear it either, Pinkie.” Twilight said, without thinking about it. Pinkie still didn’t meet her eyes. “Well, Tradewinds, you mind takin’ one? Can you shoot?” “It can be done, da,” the pegasus said with an almost feral grin. “They will be full of holes if they are returning.” “I ain’t much of a shooter. I mean, I can, but I’m better as a brawler. You want it, Abs?” Applejack asked, gesturing with a hoof. They huddled against a house. Abdiel rolled his eyes. “That is not my name.” “Well, Twi ain’t Apprentice either.” Applejack smiled. It was a genuine, warm smile. “Gotta take and give in equal measure, sugar.” “Whatever you say, Yeomare. I will take the rifle.” “Now that’s just a plain dumb name.” Applejack looked to Twilight. “Let’s move then. We need t’ get out of here. Pinkie’s right. That sound’s gonna draw ‘em all out. If they’re are more.” “I have a feeling there will be,” Twilight said. The sun had left quickly. How far had they penetrated into the city? A mile? Two? their early progress had been swifter, but the encounter with the… whoever they were had spooked everypony, even Abdiel. Discussion had been sparse, concise, but useful. They weren’t Fallen. From the description, if they had heard the Calling it was very recently. Tradewinds suggested treasure hunters, which Abdiel conceded was a possibility. Pinkie wondered if it were a half-dozen threats of the world before the fall. Everything from brainwashed minions of discord to changelings to the Mad God. The Mad God. D’Jalin. How long had it been since Twilight had heard that name? When was the last time she had even said his name? She thought back. Luna. Hadn’t they spoken of it? It felt like another world. He had risen from the sands of the north Zebrahara, a blood mage, a fledgeling lich. There had been many like him throughout time, with their mystique and their wild magic--they raged and raged, but few survived for long. But he had been different. D’Jalin had no dreams of power and lost lore. He was not interested in old books for the sake of reading them, or old magic for the sake of knowing it. He did no careful experiments. No, he reveled for the sake of revelry. The dance of blood was his only joy and he worshipped it and himself. Macintosh outlined in the fires of a foreign village, running as fast as he can. Fire everywhere. Above him, a strafing pegasus is blown out of the sky. Macintosh hits a zebra with a skull helm, gore fresh even now on his shining bone armor. They go down together, Mac’s hard hoofblades piercing flesh. His eyes are wide, his breath is ragged, his heart beats like a snare drum, everything is fire everything is ruin the world is a squirming mass of flesh and this is the end of all flesh Luna save him another fighter comes and he destroy them. He sees Fluttershy in her broken form. He wants to go home. He wants to go home but there is no home everything is on fire the world is iron and ash. Twilight shook. The visions returned. No, not now! Not like this! Macintosh hadn’t been in the Zebrahara! None of these were real. Celestia sent two brigades to help the Emperor of all Zebras to quell the “revolt” that was aimless and formless, a sweeping madness of blood and death. It had been a few months before she had left on her sabbatical. And Maciintosh had been fixing plows and carrying cider into town all that time. The brigades had been pulled back a long time ago. It had just been an off-handed comment--one from Pinkie, even--yet the germ of certainty had caught hold in her mind. To Twilight, in her weakness of heart, it felt as if an outside force pressed the knowledge of the mad god upon her. “Does it matter what we pick?” Twilight asked. Abdiel shook his head. “No, not at this point. We need one with many levels.” “Then it’s fine,” Twilight said, and sighed. “Let’s get out of the street.” Abdiel had found a house on the outskirts of a grand park. In any other city, Twilight would have enjoyed it. As it was, she found the pristine purity of the greens and blues beyond the house unnerving. “Keep going,” Abdiel said. “We needed height to be far from the street, Apprentice. Farm mare, when I have found roome you will help me make barricade with our packs. Do not touch anything if you can help it. Pink one, I have a frivolous request.” “Sounds like the best kind!” “Sing, or hum. Humming is good. No words. Just… distract us, yes?” Pinkie hummed a bright tune on command. Twilight found it jarring as the mist rolled in through the front door. The house went by in a flash. She barely had time to notice anything except for empty chairs, an empty table, a painting on a wall, a long reclining couch. They ascended the stairs.  The passage up was small and cramped, forcing them to walk close together. Twilight found that she had almost forgotten how badly her companions and herself smelled for a long time until just this moment. In another world, she might have laughed. The second story passed. The third story was wide open, a sort of studio apartment, perhaps? Abdiel sighed. “I had hoped for something more easily defended,” he said. “Is fine,” grumbled Tradewinds. “Streets give me… ah… chyort. Vypolz,” she grumbled. At least, that was what Twilight heard. Tradewinds was shedding her pack. They all followed suit. The studio apartment was roomy, even comfortable. She saw a bed and moved towards it. Abdiel said nothing to her, so she supposed it was alright. She touched it lightly with a hoof, running her touch along the carefully made blankets. It looked… not quite modern. But not as old as it should have looked. A hundred years, maybe. It was the sort of furniture she would expect from an old mare’s home, not an ancient ruin. Something bothered her. The couch on the first floor… ancient in design. It was made for reclining in a style familiar which the central continent during the classical era. Her mind’s eye returned to the table. Empty? Only devoid of ponies. The earthware on it fit the time period. Didn’t it? Her head hurt. Behind her, Applejack was laying triplines with rope across the stairs. Twilight could hear her. Twilight could hear all of them, moving or not moving. Nopony said much. Suddenly nopony seemed able or willing to talk. It was so dark outside. The twilight had come and gone in only a fraction of its proper time. Twilight considered bringing out the lamp she had taken from the ship. As she reached for it, she felt Abdiel come to stand at her side. “Is light alright?” She asked. Her voice sounded so loud. “Away from the windows,” he answered. “Here, I will take it. Be weary of everything. Do not sleep in the bed. You may lie in it… but do not fall asleep, yes?” Abdiel took the lamp and returned to the center of the room. The fire came to life--she heard that too. As Twilight lingered, staring down at the bed, imagining that once somepony had slept here, she found that her head felt clearer. Her thoughts felt more sturdy, more productive. Her dread was not done away with, but it had diminished. She turned, and found Abdiel watching her. The others were laying out sleeping bags, chatting more animatedly than they had since entering the city. Their eyes met, and he nodded before walking back to her. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Better,” Twilight answered.”Much better. I feel like up until I’ve been half asleep. It’s the mist, right? There isn’t any up here.” “You are correct, Apprentice. The mist saps the will and poisons the mind. I had said as much… but I understand that it is jarring enough to have made you forget.” He sighed and then stretched. Twilight, amused, thought it looked much like how a cat might do it. “You are seeing things.” It was not a question. She wouldn’t lie to him. “Yes.” “I have seen how troubled you look. You know that these things…” “Aren’t real,” she finished. “I figured that out. I saw Applejack’s brother twice--once when he was sent as a soldier to the Zebrahara, and again where he was, uh, marrying me. The first I know is factually inaccurate, and the second… well.” She smiled, knowing it was an awkward smile. “Neither of us would go for that.” Abdiel nodded. “Your friends no doubt have seen things themselves. Well, perhaps not. I believe the farmer has.” “Applejack.” “Hm?” Twilight poked him in the chest with her hoof. “Applejack. Use names.” “Names are precious,” Abdiel said, as if this explained everything. “Whatever. I think you’re right. She looked really out of it earlier. I didn’t think much about it before, but now that my mind is clear…” “Yes. Do not be too alarmed. Know they are not real. Dreams, perhaps? Illusions. I met an old pony who was sure that there were other worlds than these. I laughed at him, but when I come here I wonder about him. Either way, be on your guard.” Twilight nodded. She looked outside, into the mists. “It was a short day. A shame, really. I’d have liked to make more progress.” “Ah, it was a normal day.” When Twilight gave him a questioning look, he continued. “Time is… how you say, soft. It is soft here. Its flow is distorted in Jannah especially, but they say that the closer one is to the edges of Creation, the stranger time is.” Twilight’s mind raced. “So… bare with me here, but how long have we been here?” “A day.” “By outside standards?” He shrugged. “A day? Two, perhaps? No one knows.” Twilight’s heart beat in her chest, she could feel her own pulse race and it drove her crazy. “We… but if we spend a few days inside, it could be weeks out there. Right? Is that possible? It can’t be.” She tried to massage her temples. She turned away completely, staring outside. “Celestia… the longer we’re here, the more the world out there… this… I thought you were just being mysterious about the whole ‘things work differently in Jannah’ thing!” She groaned. Abdiel shushed her. “Apprentice, it would not do for your friends to see you in such distress. It will not be weeks. I promise that we will make good time. We will be stealthy, but I will give you my best. I was overly cautious today after the attack.” Twilight was barely listening. Days. Weeks. How long? Time was relative. Any practioner of the higher magics knew this well. But now Twilight lived it, and she found that the idea was horrifying. How long? If there was no way to calculate it… but there had to be. Anything could be measured. She heard a sound. It was like a whimper. A familiar whimper, a familiar voice. She looked up and saw Rarity. Rarity trembled in an alleyway down the street. Rain had fallen, and she was soaked. It was only dripping now off the roofs, collecting on the unholy pavestones below. She shook, but it was not the rain or the cold that had settled in her bones that caused this. She heard It again, or rather, Them. Thought died; all desire to move or exist vanished. She was a leaf, and the report of the nameless Horror’s passing was like the wind. She looked away, the aura of its wrongness hitting her like a tidal wave. She knew it was there, slithering along like some awful adder in the street. That was the wrong word. There were no words. Wait until it passes, wait until it passes, wait until it passes... “Apprentice! Ah, Twilight, move away from the windows!” Six miles wide its side, all pulsing life and unholy maw, it has no eyes, it has no heart, its only thoughts are to devour. It cannot speak, it cannot kill itself, it has forgotten all but the Noise. It is Noise burrowing into the city. It will undo all light, it will suck the marrow of Creation on the last day. It does not know this. It slithers along the city and its noise-hymn is unbroken. She was entranced by the sight outside. She took a step back regardless. Rarity wanted to look up, towards the great tableland. She wanted to think she was looking for Rainbow. She wanted to be strong. She had to be strong but the world was stronger. She could only squeeze her eyes shut. It was here. It would find her. Rainbow was gone. She would die. Rarity would die. Maybe one day the gates she could not force open would open themselves. These things would crawl out from the sewers and then the world would end. She knew they would find her. She knew they would eat her alive. She knew it they would-- Twilight stumbled. Abdiel was calling to her. “Apprentice,” he hissed, “put these over the windows. Damn it! I should have done this sooner.” Twilight fumbled with her magic and found the bedrolls he was carrying. She put them over the windows and added a spell to keep them still. The moonlight was gone. The street and the Rarity who was not real were gone. Twilight closed her eyes. “The… was that…” “That part was real,” Abdiel said. His voice sounded so muted now. Twilight felt a buzzing, far off in the distance. It was so faint, and yet it grated. She did not want to know what it was.