Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened as she looked into the sky. Five was not sure what she was feeling; perhaps awe, or fear, or even confusion, although Five was mostly sure that Rainbow Dash understood what the two holes in the sky meant.
They had just arrived to the surface through one of the personnel transports that permeated the six hundred foot wide umbilical that stretched at an oblique angle seventy miles below the surface to the mining colony below. They now stood with the massive junction behind them, amidst the endless automatic refining and processing facilities that took the endless stream of raw materials from deep within Equetsria’s crust, converting it into industrial product. Rainbow Dash had initially been astonished to realize that they had been underground- -deep underground- -in the mining colony’s hospital. She had then been amazed by the size of the pipeline that linked the upper world to the lower. Then, finally, her eyes fell on the locations where the sun and moon had once sat.
“Where’s- -where did the sun go?” she asked. “Or…the moon?” she turned to Five, expecting an answer.
“They are gone,” said Five, shrugging.
“Gone?! How do you lose the sun? Is Celestia slipping or what?”
“She’s dead.”
Rainbow Dash’s face froze comically, and Five once again watched as Rainbow Dash’s soul was just a little bit more damaged. “No,” she said, standing firmly on the concrete ground of the mining colony’s upper block. “Hay, no,” she said. “Celestia’s an alicorn. She’s older than dirt- -she can’t die.”
“Nopony can escape death. Alicorns are durable, not immortal.”
“Wait- -you mean sompeony killed her? Killed Celestia?”
“She is a bit thick, isn’t she?” said Gell.
“No,” said Five. “It is a cultural thing. Celestia was like their Thebe. They thought she was a god.”
“She was a god,” said Rainbow Dash, angrily. “I mean, goddess. She can’t die! And who is Thebe?”
“Celestia died of old age,” said Five.
“But she’s an alicorn,” said Rainbow Dash, exasperated. “They don’t age!”
“No, in a normal sense, anyway,” said Five. “Perhaps ‘age’ is an incorrect description. More truthfully, her power waned.”
“Waned?”
“Yes. In all honesty, in reviewing her historically, I think she saw it coming long before it happened. She knew she was dying. That is why she created the Hybrid Princess- -you’re Twilight Sparkle. Or, perhaps, the sun and moon simply declined without their sibling intact.” That was a theory Five had toyed with, but that was not widely accepted. In her mind, the long-dead Finality Core had a stabilizing effect on the sun and moon, maintaining them throughout the ages, even in its long dormancy. The sun and moon, after all, were not meant to be eternal- -they were only meant to power the Finality Core for a brief moment, and then to be consumed with the world they orbited.
“So she just…”
“Ended. That was late in Two’s time, so…about one hundred twenty years after your ‘death’.”
“And Luna?”
“The moon cannot exist without the sun.” Saying it, Five suddenly became unusually conscious of the black stain that surrounded her cutie mark. “I am not lying, Rainbow Dash. As of right now, only one alicorn lives. That alicorn is Thebe.”
Five stepped past Rainbow Dash, and Philomena took flight, leaving her location on Gell’s horn and flying to Five. The air was cool, and there was a stiff but not excessive breeze.
“Who is Thebe?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“Nopony knows,” said Gell. “She just sort of…showed up. Maye thirty years after the other alicorns were gone, she just appeared.”
“That’s not what I mean,” sighed Rainbow Dash.
“She is the eternal ruler of Equestria,” said Five. “That is all which is known. Aside from the fact that her magical ability makes Celestia appear as a unicorn foal.”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes lit up. “Hey…Twilight once traveled back in time with magic- -or she said she did, at least. Do you think this Thebe could send me back?”
“Nopony speaks to Thebe,” said Five. “Nopony sees her. Thebe has little interst in this world. So no. Aside from that, history already records you as having died. You cannot possibly return.” She stared directly into Rainbow Dash’s eyes. “Accept that now. If you fail to, it will consume you. Do not allow it to.”
“And knowing that everything I ever loved is gone won’t?” She sighed and looked up at the sky. “You know…I really loved the sun. Taking naps on a warm sunny day, it was like nothing else in all Equestria. Now I guess I’ll never see the sun again.”
“I never have seen it,” said Five.
“What?”
“I have never seen the sun. I will never feel solar warmth upon my face. Nor will I know a moonlit night.”
“Didn’t know you were such a romantic,” said Gell, smiling wryly.
“You know that I am not. I do not care that I will never see these things. However, think of me as an exception. There are many ponies, like you, who will never experience those things.”
“Oh,” said Rainbow Dash. “I’m…I’m sorry.”
“Never apologize to me. There is no need to.” Five herself looked to the sky, pausing for a moment. “I am actually rather surprised, you know.”
“That I just jumped through time, or that I’m taking this so well?”
“No. You are taking this far more poorly than I would. No. I am surpised that we are outside, and your feet are on the ground.”
Rainbow Dash looked down at her legs, and then back at her wings, as though she had somehow forgotten that she had them.
“Oh,” she said, smiling with sadness in her eyes. “Yeah.”
Five spread her own wings and, with a degree of effort to overcome the weight of her saddlebags, lifted herself off the ground. “Come, Rainbow Dash. Fly with me.”
Rainbow Dash looked up and smiled, this time with far less sadness. She spread her wings, getting used to the medically reconstructed muscles and titanium struts that had been used to rebuild her bones. Then, with rocket-like speed, she flew into the air. The rainbow-colored wake alone nearly knocked Five out of the air, and Rainbow Dash did not stop until she was out of sight above them- -where she performed a slow loop.
“If there’s going to be flying involved,” said Gell. “I’m going back to bed. No wings and all.” She stamped her hoof on the ground and a pentagram appeared around her.
“Gell, please use the door,” said Five.
“No way. A real demon always takes the window.” She smiled widely. “Or we come up from the drainpipe and grab you when you’re on the can.”
The ground beneath her dematerialized momentarily, allowing her to fall through to the other side. It sealed rapidly, leaving an unsightly burnt pentagram onto the ground. Five sighed- -pentagram transport into and out of the Pocket was not necessarily bad for it, but could cause bizarre reconfigurations in the building structure that Five was not entirely sure how to fix.
Rainbow Dash descended from the air, swooping past Five, looping, and hovering above her. She was smiling broadly and laughing.
“Oh wow,” she said. “I really needed that. And these legs- -they’re perfect!” she waved around her robotic foreleg. “I mean, look at me, I’m a cyborg.” She giggled. “I mean, this is so cool.”
“Glad you think so,” said Five, joining Rainbow Dash. Above them, Philomena was circling, waiting for their departure. “I believe you will find that the modern age is actually not unpleasant. You may even grow to like it.”
Five spread her wings and glided across the refinery. Rainbow Dash followed, as did Philomena.
Rainbow dash looked around. “Um, where is you demon friend?”
“She is not my friend,” snapped Five. “And she is…well…hm. Explaining the idea of a reinforced long-term dimensional bubble may be beyond you at the moment. You will see it eventually.”
“Okay…” Rainbow Dash looked down at Five. “You fly like a bus.”
“My equipment is heavy. That, and I am better at agility flying than speed.”
“Well, we’ll never get anywhere unless you hurry up.” She paused. “Um, hey. Where are we going?”
“Elsewhere.”
Rainbow Dash seemed annoyed, and was about to continue to pester Five, when her eyes were suddenly attracted to the white-light rim that produced Equestria’s horizon. Five followed Rainbow Dash’s gaze, and, to her surprise, was actually equally amazed.
Rising from the edge of the horizon were hundreds of streaks of light, souring across the dark sky in slow arcs. They rapidly cut off, but Five could already see that the trails were simply gas expelled by vehicles. They were rockets- -thousands of them, pouring from where she knew the ocean to be.
At first she thought that she was seeing a missile strike, and was prepared to brace for the white-light of a neutron bomb to consumer her flesh and eyes, but the rockets flew incorrectly to be ICBMs. They were too big, their course too uneven and stable. Five quickly reached into one of her bags and produced a set of digital binoculars. She looked through them at the shaky images, trying to examine the rockets. From what she could see, they were not of any kind of architecture that she was aware of.
So she hovered with Rainbow Dash for a moment, their necks slowly craning as the glowing specks that were the rockets passed the grand dome of the firmament- -and poured through the black holes to the beyond.
“What…what’s happening?” asked Rainbow Dash, nervously.
“An exodus,” said Five. “Which is not at all good.”