//------------------------------// // Epilogue // Story: A Place for Pinkie // by Chinchillax //------------------------------// We stared at the edge for a while before resuming our teleportation, it took us a while to find the next edge. It too, happened to be a one hundred and twenty degree angle. We calculated the width and teleported six times, reaching an edge each time and finding ourselves back where we had started. We had not found a wall at the end of the multiverse. We had not found an end to infinity. We had simply found the largest universe ever. A perfect hexagonal prism floating like a massive ship in the cosmic ocean. We mourned that we had not found it, as the possibility of reaching the edge of existence itself had been a great comfort to us. To have that snatched away was painful, and a great portion of our number chose to reincarnate after the discovery. Those of us that remained pondered more deeply on that first question when we had first confronted it: What was on the other side of that wall? What was inside the hexagonal prism that was 10^463652 number of universes tall? --- Galaxia started her journey back to the nearest gathering of them. The entity known as Hope was a combination of quadrillions of souls linked throughout the multiverse. They shared all thoughts, all ideas, everything was known to them. Someday Galaxia would break her own reincarnation cycle and become a part of them—that is, if the memories of the souls from her universe were acceptable. It had been thousands of years since Galaxia had last spoken with Hope. The ideal King or Queen would only speak with Hope for the first few years of creation and then not talk with the entity again until the end of their universe. But Galaxia needed guidance far more often than that and this was too important to leave as a mystery. It had nearly killed her. She made her way to Hope’s domain, using the teleportation relay through millions of universes looking for the network of souls. As she neared the gathering, she changed her form back into an alicorn, giving Hope an example of the worlds she had been building. “Galaxia… it is nice to see you,” said Hope as she entered their domain. They did not await her reply before the mass of souls converged on her and examined her memories, picking apart all the data and letting it percolate throughout all members of Hope scattered across the multiverse. As Hope withdrew, they took the strange atom along with them. “Do you understand how this got to Equestria?” they asked. “N— No,” she said. They always asked questions they knew she didn’t know the answer to yet. But she knew from experience that the questions they asked always led to answers. “You carefully planned out every aspect of your universe before you started it. When is the only time you have sought out extra matter outside of your own universe?” Galaxia pondered that for a while. “The only thing I can think of is that sun in Equestria. I set up the rules for suns to work much differently than the way I wanted Equestria to behave and so I needed to grab a sun from a separate place that didn’t follow my rules.” “Precisely.” She stood there, trying to chew on that information before giving up. “I don’t follow, Hope.” They hovered the thing that used to be Nightmare Moon between them and Galaxia. “You stole it’s home and its purpose. It came down to Equestria and despised what Celestia was doing with its former body so much that it possessed Luna and turned her into Nightmare Moon.” “What do you mean, its home?” “Suns sometimes have a guiding force, Galaxia.” “That still doesn’t explain what it is.” “What do you think it is?” Galaxia stared at the thing. “Well… suns combine element one, Hydrogen, into all the other elements. But we’ve never gotten a sun to manufacture an element beyond element one hundred thousand before. However, this looks like it surpassed all previous limitations and had one trillion hydrogen atoms combine to form a single atom. How did you surpass that limit, Hope?” “We did not. This… Trillion, as we call it in this form, was not created or manufactured by us. In fact, in order to find more we have to filter through dozens of universes worth of suns, and even then we may only find one or two.” “If it’s so rare, why do you search for it?” “What is the purpose of other large elements we have given you Galaxia?” She paused, thinking it over. “Higher elements demonstrate a tiny amount of sapience the higher the atomic number. With element ten thousand used to guide plants and the highest fusible element—element one hundred thousand—used for animals.” The amalgam of souls before her moved ever so slightly, as if they were nodding a head they didn’t have in order to encourage her to proceed. “I don’t understand. We already have souls for fully sapient creatures. It’s like this element is some strange imitation of soul.” “It’s no imitation, Galaxia.” She watched in fascination as Hope held the Trillion aloft, covering it in some strange spell. Elements fused around it, intertwining and connecting seamlessly in a way that Galaxia couldn’t understand how they were arranging themselves. When Hope stopped, all that remained was a single navy blue glowing orb. It looked just like a… Soul.