The Night is Passing

by Cynewulf


XLIV. Celestia II: Perfector


 
CELESTIA

I am weary beyond words. My last written record was barely legible scrawl. But a stay in Canna has fortified me. Not removed my fears or the source of my boneweariness, no, but it has definitely left me feeling physically better.

 
Canna is really rather lovely. It was simply a curiosity when the world was young; for there was no shadow of turning, and so it was redundant. A place that felt calming and safe, in a world that new only its own eager beginning? But the time when such a place would be sorely needed would come. Alas, Canna swiftly becomes the only oasis in a world that darkens.

 
Jannah was unpleasant. I will write no more of it here, for I do not wish to think on that tainted place. The well is as I remember it. The tableland itself is how I remember it—but High Jannah is not as it once was, even so. For it is frozen and unchanged, not alive. But Kyrie was there, and we spoke at length. I left a message behind, just in case.

 
More and more, I fear that I am walking into a trap. If so, then I do not see much alternative. I have come too far and wasted too much time. Complacency or wishful thinking or both have not accounted for the Hideous Strength. I feel it stronger and stronger, screaming and babbling right beneath the faint trailing whispered song, even fainter than that echo. But it grows, doesn’t it? Here in Canna it is silent, but it will soon worm its way even into this sanctuary.

 
I must stop it. I must seal the Hideous Strength.

 
When Jannah fell, Kyrie gave her life—in more ways than one—to trap the great destroyer. She traded all that she loved and held dear, a whole city, to mend the wound that pride and seething discontent had torn in the side of Creation. What shall be asked of me? If my sister’s sufferings at her birth were a single dimension, than Kyrie’s encounter was in two, and mine? Mine shall be in three, I fear. I cannot fathom what the cost may be, yet even as I write that I have suspicions as to what this road will lead me to.

 
So why write? To clear my thoughts? To exhaust them? Yes. But also because I must plan ahead. If my fears are warranted, and I cannot turn back… then these missives will be my only testament to those that follow. For if I do not return, others must follow. I dare not risk sending for aid—for work must be done. Another will only increase the Hideous Strength’s catch, and we shall both be harmed with nothing new gained. But this vice, I think, will only close once. In Jannah, I strengthened the seal as best I could, and found that even still It is only able to stretch out the thinnest tendril of its strength. And yet I feel it! How can I feel the Shadow so heavily here when it cannot come through another way?

 
When my sister was born, the Shadow—the Hideous Strength, the Screaming Void, the Destroyer—It came into this world as it did all others. Luna was touched by it at her weakest, at her very conception, but she did not bring it forth. For I think more and more that it was always in the fabric of things, a necessary part of Existence. The world is alive, in its own way. The shadow thrived off of the Great Sin of Jannah, and we thought it was simply a matter of opening doors.

 
But what if it was not? What if the door could be eased open—or perhaps, another image!—what if it could be kept barely open whilst another opened a window? The burning jealousy of the mages woke it, but could not anything similar, going on and on? It eased into their minds. Could it not do the same? One at a time, to corrupt the world of ponies. To whisper in their darkest moments. To slip into their dreams and twist them into nightmares. And like that, I see it.  The plan is laid out as if on a chessboard.

 
It did not corrupt so much as it tempted. The mages of Jannah were not abominations or puppets but simply evil ponies who did a vile thing in service of their own dark lusts. But when it truly reached forth and touched them, they became conduits for the Hideous Strength. One by one, their natural jealousies turned into a drive… that drive turned into obsession… obsession into audacity… audacity into hubris. Hubris into final folly and from there to…

 
By the stars above, what if it has played the longest game of all?
 
 
 
 

 



 
TWILIGHT


Twilight had already told them.

 
How could anyone describe the journey adequately? The city they left behind nameless, and they saw other ruins along the paved road. Some Twilight recognized dimly by their architecture, most she found only alien and meaningless. But she had no speculation. She had little curiosity. Twilight in fact said almost nothing. There were no comments on the growing mountains in the distance, like an ocean of knives. There was no conversation about the journey, or about Kyrie’s past. Pinkie sang no walking song and there was little in the way of wind.

 
Her lips were sealed but her eyes were not. Her mind still moved quickly, and she thought this a curse. For she saw how her companions feared for her. Their helpless vigil on the road only weighed on her already heavy heart. Silently, they took turns walking beside her, watching her, supporting her as they could. When they stopped the evening after, they gave her food and gently encouraged her to eat. She did eat, mechanically, staring into the flickering flame. Not paper this time. Tall, once swaying grass. There was more grass here. Applejack and Tradewinds had gathered enough to make a small mound, and when that had smoked too much, Pinkie had produced some of the paper she had saved. It was pretty, she had admitted sheepishly, and Applejack had given her a small, sad smile. Twilight used her magic to get the fire going, but it was a pathetic sort of thing.

 
Vaguely, she thought to herself that they were at the very least not in danger of starvation. There was grass forever in all directions. She had enough of herself intact to feel a little disgusted at the thought—ponies ate flowers, yes, but grass was base fare. Unless it was August grass. That kind was at least less flavorless. But it took a lot to keep a pony strong, and on the whole not very efficient.
 
Applejack grimaced at something in her pack.

 
“You know, we used to eat grass as a staple,” she said to nopony in particular. Everypony stopped and looked up at her. Twilight felt a vague sense of embarrassment, but it was just that: vague and powerless. She continued. “Ancient ponies were better suited for it. But we’ve always been magic, and as we learned how to make better foods, that magic changed our bodies over thousands of years.”

 
“Wonder if it tasted any better then,” Pinkie said. She spoke carefully. Twilight noticed. She had the decency to feel sorrow. But mostly she felt tired and numb.

 
“Probably,” Twilight said with little enthusiasm. “Or, more likely, we didn’t care because it was all we had really ever eaten. If you have no idea of cake, and all you have is stale crackers, it doesn’t occur to you that stale crackers are unpleasant because you have only stale crackers to form a concept of taste with.” She cleared her throat. “How are we on rations?”

 
“Decent,” Applejack grunted. A pause, and Twilight almost timed the sigh perfectly. “Alright, so they ain’t that decent. We’ve got some hardtack and a few apples which we probably need to get to eatin’ pretty soon, like tomorrow. Some roasted barley. That’ll be a nice treat, I suspect, but we don’t have much when you account for everypony here.”

 
Adding an extra companion had put some strain on their resources. Kyrie looked crestfallen, and Twilight wished that she had anything to say that would lift the frail alicorn’s spirits. But she didn’t, really. The Twilight of three days ago? She might have. Almost certainly would have.

 
“Aw, don’t look so glum!” Pinkie said, and Twilight was grateful for her. Her pinkest and most ebullient friend nudged Kyrie and grinned her characteristic grin.

 
“I am sorry that I have burdened you, my friends,” Kyrie said quietly.

 
Tradewinds shrugged. “Nyet. Is nothing. We survive.” She spat off to the side. “To have companions is valuable.”
 

“Right as rain there, Trades. We’ll be fine, sugarcube. Twilight’s talk of grass has got me thinking, and we can probably stretch our rations out with it on the way. It’ll taste pretty awful, but when you live off the land, you take what you can get. Your company more than makes up for the trouble.”
 

And Applejack offered her a warm, reassuring smile, and Kyrie smiled back.
 

Twilight watched all of this and in her heart she began to tremble.
 

Who was the Apostate? Twilight was. The Twilight who had thrown this away, the warmth of the fire and friendship, the comraderie of her fellow living beings. The cold calculations she had made had saved so few. The hard edge she had acquired had done nothing. She was no steel-eyed bringer of death, nor a solemn judge. She was no gunslinger or duelist. The Apostate feared those she did not know and used or ignored those who did.
 

The Element of Magic. She had not thought about it in some time. What was it? A manifestation. But of what? Now that, really, was the question, wasn’t it?
 
Who are you, Twilight Sparkle? Whose friends are so far away? Twilight did not know anymore. Once she could have answered with the utmost confidence. She was Celestia’s pupil. She was a librarian. She was a unicorn gifted in magic. She was the Element of Magic. She was a friend.
 

What was she now? She had offered no words of comfort, and the moment was past. But still, even when her friend—her sorrowful, worried friend—was right in front of her, Twilight could give no comfort. She could not extend shelter and say to anypony to come in from the rain.
 

She was in mourning. But was that enough? Was it enough to mourn, and then shirk her fellows?
 
 
 
 
 

 
Twilight wandered in the darkness alone.  In the distance she saw nothing. No sea of mountains, no ruins, no highway to the edges of all maps. She saw only the inky black, only nothing. She stared into the void. It stared back.
 

Her hooves carried her she knew not how far. Her aching legs made it seem like a vast distance but in truth she was probably still within earshot of her sleeping companions.
 
Ponies have sharp hearing. Often, griffons or the other races of Earth often misjudged the alertness of these colorful, smiling folk. For a pony has thousands of years of reflexes honed to run at the slightest hint of lethal danger, and in the right mood, her magic naturally aided her. A pony whose magic had sprung up within them could hear a twig snap at two hundred meters with the wind blowing and through chatter.
 

So it was that Twilight knew somepony had followed her. She did not turn to suggest they return; she had not the energy to speak. Or, rather, she did not have the heart to do so. Speaking to anypony seemed an unbearable proposition. So instead, she walked on and on and on through the tall grass. A light breeze made it sway, and her brushed her sides even as the soft sighing song of the swaying touched her ears like a caress.


Twilight stumbled, but caught herself. Suppressing a frustrated growl, she stopped and lit a small wisp of light and sent it before her to light the way, revealing the slightly broken ground ahead. On an afterthought, she made another and sent it behind her. Her tagalong would also be in the dark. Twilight had no wish to encourage any of her companions to follow her, but she would also not have them injuring themselves doing so, even if only minorly.


Eventually, Twilight came to a large stone jutting out from the great plain. She stopped before it and considered it.


Darkness, especially of the kind that night brings, does strange things to the eyes and the mind alike. In the formless void, we think we see things that are not there, and do not see the things that are right in front of us. We see the face of a stranger and think, perhaps, it is a friend, and hail them accordingly. Above all, the night is given over to fancy and the ephemeral even as it suffocates movement and sight. Paradox was the name of the game. It was much like Luna, really, Twilight thought as she gazed at the stone. The night and the monolith alike were similar to the Princess who sat on the Onyx throne in High Canterlot. The night was soft and threatening--Luna was a lover and a warrior both. She was like a fawn, shying away. Yet also like a saber in a griffon marauder’s clawed hands. Like the stone, she stood alone and without another and yet like the stone she was unbowed by the wind and perhaps the rain, if it came, and untouched by its proximity to the edge of the map. Ascertainable, but only with difficulty, with effort. Like treasure, buried in a field. Like a pearl, sought from the ocean depths.


Twilight sat before the stone. It seemed as good a place to stop wandering as any other place did. With nowhere to go and no clue how to get there, any port in a storm was fine. The companion who tailed her did not approach yet.


Seeing what I’ll do, Twilight thought, but did not care overmuch. She had no plans to do anything. She simply wanted to be away, with no place in particular pulling her. Why go west? Why go after Celestia, who left? What could she do in the end, to stop the tide or put the world back together? Twilight felt unsure that she had ever known Celestia. In a small, dark corner of her heart, she was not sure that she knew anyone at all, including herself.


“Kind of eerie, isn’t it?” Pinkie asked from the darkness behind her.


“In a way,” Twilight answered, her voice low.


“All alone out here, and with it so dark… I think it’s pretty eerie. But it’s not so bad, I guess. It kind of made me think of when we were in the Everfree. Wow, that seems like forever ago!”


“You have not changed a bit since.”


“Silly, I’ve changed lots.” Pinkie stepped into the light. Twilight summoned another wisp and she moved to sit against the stone, looking out at the plains.


“Funny you should say that,” Twilight said. “I was just thinking about that. Not changing so much as having less data to measure the change in the first place.”


“Lost me there, smartypants.”


Pinkie smiled. Pinkie’s smiling was, perhaps, one of the greatest mysteries of Twilight’s life. “How do you smile, Pinkie?” she asked, impulse taking her. “How do you do it? Even after everything. After all of the darkness and the madness and the evil and now Spike and how? How can anypony--anything at all!--ever smile?”


“Does it bother you?” Pinkie asked. Her smile shrunk to a lopsided and sad sort of thing, but it would not quit the field.


“Yes,” Twilight said, feeling honest. “Yes, it does. I am not sure why. Maybe it’s a lot of reasons all mixed together. I am not exactly in a good position to be examining my own emotional state, Pinkie.” She paused. “Or, really, anypony’s emotional state, if we’re going to be honest.”


“Why?”


“Because it is so out of proportion with reality. Bad things happen, sad things happen, and you just… you smile about it! It made so much more sense to me in the Everfree, when we were trying to find the Elements… it made sense! But it is one thing to smile and laugh at your fears when they were foolish all along. That’s easy. But we’ve seen too much to smile anymore, Pinkie. Or we should have! It seems wrong. It seems terrible, or callous. Like a lie!”


“Why is it a lie?”


“You can’t do the Socart’s method on me, Pinkie.”


“Never heard of ‘em!”


“He’s… it doesn’t matter. You’ll just ‘why’ me into a corner. It is useful to help one think through problems, but it doesn’t give any answers.”


“Well, would you like me to try and answer?”


“Yes.”


Pinkie strode further into Twilight’s little cone of light and touched the stone with something like reverence. “Maud would love this thing,” she said softly. “She’s crazy ‘bout rocks.”


“I forgot you had sisters,” Twilight said, ashamed.


“It’s alright. I know I don’t talk about them much. I didn’t like the rock farm, even if I loved my family. Besides, I’ve always tried to live in the here and now.”


Twilight looked away. That was an easy, tired answer. The “here” and the “now” were subject to sudden and awful change. They were in constant flux, and anything built on them was a house on sinking sand.


“I’m thinking about what to say,” Pinkie continued, quietly. “I know what Maud would do, but I’m not Maudie. I know what Limestone would do--she’d be all fired up. Applejack might be all serious and folksy and all apple-wise but I’m not really her, even though I grew up on a farm too. Rarity would tell you about having a stiff upper lip or something really neat and refined but also sort of cool. Fluttershy would just hug you and say nice things. What do Pinkies do?”


“You’ve done about half of that before.”


“Yes, but you’re kinda-sorta right about one thing: this isn’t like when I laughed at the ghosties in Everfree. That? That was kinda scary but I could tell right away that it was a lame joke.”


“Pinkie sense?” Twilight asked with a cracked smile.


“Nah. I didn’t need any Pinkie sense for that one, really. I’m a prankster--the prankster, whatever Dashie thinks. I can tell a con a mile off! Uh, usually. Kinda. Anyway.”


Twilight, despite herself, let her smile die slowly. It felt… well, there was really no avoiding it. It felt nice.


“I think memories are important. This rock reminds me of things, you know. It reminds me of my sisters and parents and the old rock farm. It’s a quarry, it's not really a farm, but we called it a farm so whatever. But I think that a few good memories is the best education a pony can get, O Sparkly One. I think there are few things as good or beautiful or… or wholesome, there a big word! Wholesome as a fragment of a memory that was really, really just good, and not just in a super fun way but... “ Pinkie paused. Twilight watched her face now, listening closely. Watching closely. Pinkie’s face twisted into something so alien that Twilight was almost shocked out of her silence.


Pinkie continued on, like Achilles Hoof, Twilight might have thought if all thoughts weren’t pressed from her by the strength in Pinkie’s voice.


“A single good memory, espeically of childhood, can keep a pony from doing the worst things, Twilight. I don’t mean stealing or being mean. Because a few of those, and he can’t look at ponies crying and laugh anymore, because he’ll know deep down that once, even if only just once, he was good and kind and happy. He loved others and they loved him too. I hope that I make lots of good memories like that for ponies because so often they’re all we have.


“When I’m scared, I think of Granny Pie. When I’m sad, I think about you and all the girls. When I don’t want to get up in the morning because everything is so awful, or because I can’t… I don’t think I can handle it, I think about the time we first used the Elements, and I think to myself… ‘Pinkie, you were good and honest then!’ and I know that when something happens once, it can happen again.


“I think sometimes about how there are ponies in the world that don’t… that don’t care if others exist or not, but I know I can never, ever be that way. I can’t just wander off. Because I know, somewhere in me, that those ponies exist and that they are the same as me, but different, each one a different smile and I love their smiles. Smiles, memories... “ Pinkie sniffled. “My parents are probably dead, Twilight. Maudie was in Canterlot to study and our parents told her to stay, that everything would be fine. I don’t know what happened to my other sisters. I haven’t had any word, and there was never enough of a… a window to go down and check. Other little villages survived, didn’t they? The farms around ours might have, too! But… But I don’t think so. I hope so. I have faith in my parents and the whole big dumb silly world, but I really don’t think they’re alive anymore.”


“Pinkie…”


“Twilight, I don’t know if it matters if we go find Princess Celestia or not. I never did, you know. Finding her won’t bring my parents back, or Limestone or Marble if they… if they… you can’t bring them back. Celestia isn’t like that, she can’t do that. But I know that we have to try to find her anyway. It’s important. She can do something, can’t she? If she can’t get rid of all the bad ponies, then she can rebuild everything. And if she can’t rebuild everything, then she can try, and if she can’t try, then none of that matters because she’s a pony, just like you… and me… and my sisters, and…”


“Pinkie, we don’t even know if she’ll be there, wherever the orb is leading us. Or if she’ll even be alive. If that shadow,” she said, and shuddered. “If that thing could make Jannah like it was, then it could have destroyed her. This all could be futile.”


“Well, we won’t ever know until we get there, will we? But Twilight, I don’t need to know that. I just need to know that you’ll go. Because whenever I don’t think we’re gonna make it, or whenever I’m really scared, more than I was in the Everfree, I think about how we all came together, and we were brave and honest and we were really good in a capital G kind of way, you know? And I think that faith is the only thing we have, that we’ll be that again, that one day… that maybe today will be the day, or tomorrow, or maybe never but we have to try. Because Celestia was right to let you stay with us. I think about how you had faith in Celestia, but you had faith in us. In… in ponies, and how they could be together and…”


“Pinkie, I’ll go. I promise.”


Pinkie embraced her. “Twilight, I believe in you. I should have been telling you that all along. I thought you knew… we all believe in you. We always have, even when you were different. We always will. That’s…” she sniffled and squeezed Twilight tighter, as if she wanted to pull her from the night itself. “That’s what it means. You don’t… you don’t stop believing in something like friendship or love because somepony hurt you or left or died. You believe despite that because…”


“Because it’s important,” Twilight supplied softly. “It’s very important.”










CELESTIA



This is my final letter.


To whomever follows after me: I am not well. I am sick and sick at heart. I may be walking into a trap. Doing what I am about to do may doom this world, or it may yet save it. I have lived long and done many things. I have been to this place before a sea of mountains, before the Walls of Dawn and Dusk, which hide the seas of eternity from mortal eyes that would burn at the sight. I heard the primordial Song from which all good things spring, and I stared down the greatest of all evils in Jannah. I saw the dark empire of Sombra and I sealed Discord himself in stone. I have overthrown godkings and raised nations. I have slain dragons, ponies, griffons, zebras, wraiths, demons of a dozen stripes. I have done so many things.


But I am afraid, despite all of this. Because what I saw from a distance I shall now see face to face, and no martial skill will save me where I am going.


I do not know who will read this letter. I hope that somepony does, for the Shadow, that Hideous Strength, has me in its vice. I cannot go back, not without buying it valuable time. I cannot send word for that would open myself to its enhanced power. I can only go myself to it. I go and I pray that my sister or some other comes after I have vanished from this world and together we might do what can be done, if anything at all can be done.


Who will that be? Luna? I hope so. Iridia? Perhaps. Kyrie? I long for my sister’s freedom, but she is her own jailor. Twilight? Oh, that is foolish. But if it is Twilight, if all has gone horribly, horribly wrong, then I want to say something to you:


Twilight, I love you dearly. You are beautiful, brave, kind, wise beyond your limited years, and always learning. You have done so much and you will do so much more. You learn from your mistakes as well as you can, and I am so, so proud of you. If my failures have brought you here than nothing I say will ever erase the burden of my debt to you. I know that no matter what doubt or darkness assails you that in the end you will overcome it. I know that you will hold your friends close and that you will love your fellow ponies with all of the love that I tried to instill in you for them, in my own ways. Before you enter, I want you to know that no matter what, I am always proud of you. You were my most precious student. You have been my friend. If you cross this boundary, you shall be without reservation my equal. Truly, you shall have bested me, for I came here by force, by power beyond yours. But you? You shall come here by your great heart alone, and that is the greatest of all things. May your faith never waiver.


To Luna, if you come: Sister, I wronged you. But I have always loved you, from the moment you burst forth weeping from the water. No, even before that, when I knew you would come to me. I failed you, and though you have forgiven me, I have failed again to give you a family in so many ways. Please know that I love you and have always wished for your happiness, even as I failed to secure it. Nothing was your fault this time, little moon. It was I who was foolish, manipulated without knowing I was being pulled upon.


To Kyrie: You saved all of Creation and have paid the price. Your name will be blessed by every particle that remains of our ruined universe if we fail.


Iridia: Sister, pride separated us. Your daughter has become a wonderful mare, and if you survive, you must go to her. She loves you. I love you, even as I did upon the tableland.



Stars, Song, aid me. Take this from me! But you cannot. I’m sorry for everything. Please, come soon. Do not tarry, but count the cost of entering. It is almost accomplished.








TWILIGHT



Twilight had left the long road begirt with ruins behind. The highway was a memory. Her friends at her side were silent. She was silent. The air was still. She stood in a field of roses that stretched on for miles.

There was nothing to say in a place like this. Before them, on the other side of the last bridge, was the end of the world. The rolling hills and plains had given way to mountains. No, no that wasn’t right. The mountains didn’t rise, they jutted. They tore up from deeper place like trees, or like…

Twilight had no words. It simply defied words. The mountains were impossibly high. They continued on past the clouds that lazed by, and kept going. She couldn’t see the ends of them, the peaks obscured by the limit of her mortal vision. They were the apotheosis of all mountains, the first mountains, she was sure of it. Sharp as knives, ready to pierce the heavens and make divinity scream.

Her eyes wandered down them like timid climbers, and came to rest on the wall.

It was a tiny enclosure beside the roots of the mountain’s sheer inclines. The walls were of brick that looked like it had just been set. Twilight looked at it, and her heart stopped. This was it. The final steps. All of their searching…

Applejack, at her side, doffed her hat and gaped.
Twilight took a step forward, then another. Her legs began to move of their own accord, as if it were not Twilight that took these steps, but the gate ahead that had hooks in her legs, working them. She could hear Applejack and the other behind her, but they might as well have been miles away. This was it. This was the end. The Well was ahead.

Her long quest, through Sarnath and Ulthar and Jannah was over. Luna had sent her West to find her sister, and now…

“Celestia,” Twilight whispered, and she was gone, running. Her mane was pulled back by the wind. She kept to the path that cut through the roses, and they were red blurs in her vision, unimportant. The mountains faded from her mind. No, there was something else to pay attention to now, something dear. Something close.

Twilight stood before the gate into the enclosure, her friends forgotten. She could hear them yelling, but she cared not.
There are things that no pony could hope to endure for very long: the cold of deepest winter, the despair of darkest night, and the call of things beyond her ken in every way. The whisper in her ear, Come and look, come inside and see! Everything will make sense when you do. Everything that you've ever wanted to know is just beyond.

“Let me in,” she whispered, and then bit her lip. Her breathing was harsh in her own ears, the loudest sound. Her eyes raced over the ageless wooden door, looking for a handle or a lock. How long had it been here? Since forever? Since the beginning? She didn’t know.

She found an iron lock, and despaired.

The iron resisted her magic. She took it in her hooves, holding it up. She stared futilely inside of it.

“No no no no no no no,” she muttered, turning it over and over. She formed her lockpicking key of magic and forced it in, but it began to fall apart as she worked. She poured more magic onto it, cursing iron in all of its forms as she had so many times before. The only thing that resisted her magic! Here, of all places! How dare it be?

Raw force made a way. The lock shattered, and the door shook with the discharge of unshaped and uncontrolled magic. Twilight shuddered as tiny purple discharges arced on her coat. But she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.

“Let me in!” she cried, beat the door with a hoof. It didn’t occur to her to pull it open with her magic. Nothing occurred to her but the Well, the water, the Song from the beginning of the world waiting. It was like Jannah all over again, diving into the heart of creation and she wanted it so badly.

“Twilight! Twilight, come back!”

“I made it!” Twilight cried, laughing. “I made it! I made it and no one can ever stop me! I’m coming, Celestia! I’m coming and we can go back! It's all going to make sense!”

“Twilight! Aw, dammit, Pinkie, help me grab her. This place ain’t good at all. It’s all a trap.” Applejack, doubting Applejack, who turned away from every uncertain thing! Applejack who understood nothing! Applejack who could never understand her and the circles of knowledge and lore that Twilight walked!

Twilight felt hooves begin to pull her away from the door and she lost it. She flailed, hooves striking something soft. She heard Pinkie cry out.

“Twilight, stop it! Stop it right now, you hear me? Gods, Pinkie?” Applejack growled. “Pinkie? Aw, Luna… Ya hurt her, Twi!”

Twilight stared holes in the door. “Celestia. The Garden. The dreams.”

“This place… it ain’t right. We ain’t supposed to be here. It ain’t meant for—”

Twilight began to scream. She had walked for months, over two continents. She had watched ponies die and killed them and cried and walked thousands and thousands of steps. She might never see Ponyville again. All she had was Luna’s quest to find her sister. She had that, and she had the whisperings in her dreams. Her suspicions about was and what could be, with force or time.

“—Twi! Twi, please, stop it. Oh, Luna, this place…”

Twilight’s vision blurred. The roses around her seemed to grow, and the mountains seemed to shrink. It was all swimming before her eyes. Applejack was still talking. Twilight flailed, and she thought that Applejack’s hat hit the ground but she didn’t care.

“Aw, hell, go! Go, I jus’ wanna go home. We ain’t supposed to be here! I’m a pony, not a god!”

Twilight was free. She laughed happily, madly, and bounded off. The door opened. Inside, there was a quiet, still orchard with little paths. In the center was a well. Just as Luna had told her would be, the Well at the end of the world.

Twilight passed through the opening and into the orchard. The journey was complete.

The door shut behind her and then she woke up.










Twilight awoke in a cold sweat. She did not sit up or shout--these things are rare even with the worst dreams. She only lay staring at the early morning light, up into a cloudless purple sky, with ice in her stomach and worry snaking through her heart.


She said nothing of her dream to her companions. They moved on.


Kyrie said that she knew where the golden path that Twilight’s artifact showed them led, but she would not say where. Usually, Twilight would have insisted, but even as her horrible numbness receded slightly, none of her eagerness for knowledge returned. She had a feeling she would know for herself soon enough.


At any rate, ahead of them the mountains grew and grew. Twilight thought at times they did so far too quickly. Unnaturally, even, as if her every step were truly a hundred such steps. But Kyrie said that time and distance were soft here, that things were not as they seemed. The world tapers at the end, she would say, and then grow even more quiet, if that were possible.


They all were quiet. As they had since Twilight had passed the news of Spike’s death to them, her companions continued their quiet unspoken vigil around her, but she felt their presences more now and took comfort in their closeness. But they never talked. There really wasn’t anything left to say, was there? They had said it all, or almost said it all.


They stopped when it grew dark. Twilight felt impatient, but also weary, and so she made no complaints. The mountains were huge, now. She was beginning to think that they might go up into the sky forever, and that the jagged points she could only barely make out may not be the tops at all, but simply the mountains beyond, an impossible sea of mountains… but that was weariness talking. Nothing was infinite.








The next day, they came to the foothills.


Oddly, despite the difficulty in traversing this new terrain, it was comforting to be off the long highway and the strange ruins. They were not ominous so much as they were sad, like all broken things are. And the change in pace did her heart well, she realized, for she had less energy to dwell on her circumstances. On Spike.


She cried around midday, she knew not for how long. They stopped and let her do so. Pinkie hugged and Applejack stroked her mane. Tradewinds stood beside her, looking confused and uncomfortable and worried. Kyrie stood further away, concerned and unsure from a distance. Applejack whispered soothing things to her, telling her that they were almost there, that she would rest soon. That they would see all their friends again. It would be alright. Everything was going to be alright. Twilight wanted to believe her. She tried to believe her.








Exhaustion is a funny thing. One loses track of time and space when exhausted. Twilight was experiencing this in the foothills as they grew more and more rugged. They all were, really. Kyrie perhaps suffered the most, physically, for her body was frail from her long exile. Tradewinds never faltered, at least not where the others could see. It was she who found berries on a wild bush nestled between the crags and the unexpected windfall brightened the mood considerably. Even Twilight smiled, and Pinkie seemed to enjoy that fact more than any food.


More and more, Twilight had reason to doubt that she would survive until the end. A pony could only walk so far. Ahead, the mountains were always… growing.










Twilight stood and for the first time in a long time, she felt naked wonder.


Before them was a bridge. It had not been there when she and her companions had laid down for the night, but when they had risen with the sun, they had found the hills cut off and yielded to a great plain and a raging river deep in a fathomless chasm. A great bridge of steel bridged this gap, and it was worn as if by a thousand years of neglect. It was filled with rivets and cables, built by means beyond her knowledge, paved like the highway. And on the other side… Twilight could not tell. It was so far away, but the fields beyond looked red.


“This is it,” Kyrie told her as she sat down in shock. “Today is the day, Twilight Sparkle.”


“What happened? This doesn’t make any sense.”


Kyrie shared with her a mirthless smile. “Here, Twilight, one must not hold too tightly to what should and must be--the world tapers at the ends. Once we cross this bridge--the Last Bridge--than we shall be in… well, we shall be there. And beyond is what you seek. The Garden, atop a hill, in fields of roses. There is but one path. We will walk it with you, but only you should go up to the top.”


Twilight felt… no, this was not wonder or amazement. This was fear. Raw, animal fear. Her ears pinned themselves back to her head. “I’m suddenly… apprehensive.”


“As you should be. Reality is harsh to the hooves of shadows,” Kyrie said with a grim face.


“Mighty impressive,” Applejack said from closer to the bridge. “No idea on Gaia’s green earth where the dern thing’s come from, but I’ll take it. Everything here is weird, ain’t it?”


“Yup!” Pinkie chirped from beside her.


Tradewinds, behind Twilight, was muttering to herself in the north tongue. Twilight turned to her.


“Unnatural things,” Tradewinds said, her eyes wide and fearful.


Twilight nodded, but Kyrie turned. “Not so. Say not that this is unnatural--there is more to reality than what you have seen or know. There are things yet that would astound the philosophies of Equestria or the West, things the Griffons and Zebras do not know. Come, you will not be harmed. It is not safe, but it is not evil.”


With these words, she took a deep breath and strode forth. Twilight and Tradewinds shared a glance. Glad that I’m not alone feeling like this, Twilight thought, and then the two friends followed her together, side by side.


On the bridge, the little band found themselves feeling lighter, bolder, even more frightened and yet at the same time unafraid. They talked more than they had in a long time. Twilight even chuckled a few times, and Pinkie was in top form, singing along the cracked pavement on the Last Bridge. Applejack and Tradewinds traded stories of their homelands, trying to impress each other with stories of their feats of strength. Applebucking and flight training, rodeos and shooting drills, races and, well, races. With laughter, they found themselves at loggerheads and asked Kyrie to judge. Twilight said little, but she smiled all the same, feeling surrounded by friends who drew her into their conversations and jokes, giving little invitations. They all said the same thing--We love you, I love you, you are my friend.


It was as Kyrie had said. The bridge ended and they found a dirt path surrounded as far as the eye could see on either side by roses. And now the mountains were huge and very close, seemingly jutting from the ground as if they were trees and had sprouted overnight. And before them, a tiny island in the center of the red sea, was a hill of verdant green.


Twilight felt more afraid of that hill than she had of anything in her life.


What was she going to do? What would she say? If Celestia were… were dead, what would they do? Where would they go? Go back? She couldn’t go back.


Except she could, and she knew she could. She would go back. Because she loved those she left behind, and never returning was what the Apostate would do. Twilight would go back.


More terrible was the thought that Celestia would be waiting there for her. That she might finally have the answers to her repeated questions--why? Over and over again. The idea of a long sought answer is beyond intoxicating. It is also, after a long enough time, enough to make the heart stop in absolute terror. To know. To finally get in. They stopped at the head of the path, and Twilight felt her heart in her throat. She turned to face them all, her friends.


Applejack, loyal and strong, brave and true. Pinkie, joyous and enduring, the light in dark places. Tradewinds, courageous in every fire and storm, who would move the worlds to save her friends. Kyrie, who had suffered enough. And she realized, as she had always known, that she loved them all.


She choked, and tried to stave off the tears, but they came anyway. She felt like she was going away forever. It was irrational, where would she go? She wasn’t dying. But she felt like she was. She felt like she would never see any of them ever again, and she couldn’t bear it.


“Twi?” Applejack’s voice was low. So kind. So dependable. It made Twilight cry harder.


“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m okay. I’m okay okay okay… I’m… I’m going to be fine,” she lied. She sat down.


“What’s wrong?” Tradewinds asked, wings flared, ready to fight or die or rescue in any cause.


“Twilight Sparkle?” Kyrie, who would not lose her too, not yet.


Pinkie was there, touching her shoulder. “Twilight? Hey, what is it?”


“I… I want to say something,” she choked out, struggling. She took a deep breath, then another. another. “Just… I want to say something before we go and see what’s there.”


She pulled out the orb from her saddlebag, the one Luna had given her what felt like years ago, and she pointed it towards the hill. It glowed golden. The path glowed golden as well. She swallowed, and put the orb away.


“This is it,” she said. “This… this is… I don’t where this is.”


“It is the Garden,” Kyrie said shortly.


“Yeah, you said,” Twilight choked on a laugh. “Girls, we’ve… we’ve come so far. Together. We’ve been together. I never would have made it here without you, all of you. You’ve been here for me over and over again, and you’ve never… none of you ever abandoned me. Rarity and Rainbow and Fluttershy went on a crazy journey of their own just because they believed me. You came all this way… went through that awful city and saw all that we saw, because you believed in me… and I don’t know how… I don’t know how to thank you for that.”


Applejack doffed her hat and, inexplicably, put it on Twilight’s head. It was a bit askew, her horn keeping it from being as secure as it sat on Applejack’s head. They both laughed as best they could through tears, for Applejack had joined her. “You don’t got a thing to apologize or thank me for, Twi. You’re my friend, you’re practically my sister, and I love ya. We all do, don’t we girls?”


“Always!” Pinkie said, and hugged her.


“I am yours until they consign me to the snow,” Tradewinds said solemnly, her eyes watering, but no tears falling.


“It has been an honor to have met and known you, Twilight,” Kyrie said quietly.


“I feel like I’m going away. Do I have to go up alone, Kyrie?”


“Yes. I think you must. Only one could enter this place at a time, at least when I knew it last. I… I do not know why, only that it was so,” she said.


Twilight nodded hesitantly. “I’m coming back,” she said, without much force. “But I just… I wanted to thank you, and say that I love all of you, and that no matter what, I wanted to remember this moment before I go up there and find whatever it is I find. Because more than anything, I’ve had you all the way, and it’s… it’s been enough for me, whether Celestia…” she coughed, and shuddered. “Whether alive or dead, whatever I find, it’s been enough. You were enough. Applejack. Pinkie. Tradewinds. Even you, Kyrie. I’m coming back, and when I do… when I do, we’re going to take you to see Canterlot and Ponyville, and Sweet Apple Acres and my library, when their tidied up a bit.”


“Right, ‘tidied up’,” Applejack said, trying to laugh and failing through a sob.


“Will you all wait for me?” Twilight asked, feeling like a child. “When I go up? I don’t want to. But I need to, for me and for everypony. I’m so very tired.” Her heart was full of sorrow to the point of death, but she did not say this, for she felt so very warm. There are moments when one feels, fleetingly, that it might not be the worst thing to simply die, that there are good and beautiful things that can defeat even death, the last enemy. This moment was one of those moments, one of those things.


“Always,” Applejack said, firm as the earth.


“I guess, but don’t be too long! It’ll be so boooooring,” Pinkie said and tried to keep her smile strong, and Twilight saw her struggle and knew now that it was a struggle. A good one.


“I would go with you into Garden. Are you sure, nachal’nik?” she said with an attempt at a smirk, despite the joke falling flat. “It… it means… boss. Please do not go alone,” she pleaded.


Twilight wanted to never go up. “I can’t. If that’s how it works…”


“I will wait for you, then. I will stand watch forever if that is what it takes,” Tradewinds said.


“It won’t take forever,” Applejack said.


“You will return, I think,” Kyrie said with a smile.


And with that, they turned to the hilll and made their final walk.


Every step felt as if another weight had been laid on her back. The siege of Canterlot, the Crystal Empire. The Mad God and his followers. The dead in Vanhoover harbor. The burned corpses of Manehattan. The lost and the frightened, the ill and the blind, the loved and the unloved, the quick and the dead.


All at once, as she neared the last hill before the End of the World, Twilight realized what everything meant. All of her journeying, her fighting, her crying, her… everything she had done, it wall leading up to this.


Does any single thing that walks or crawls on earth, or that flies above it truly know what it is to bear the whole world’s weight upon mortal shoulders? Twilight had saved the world, in her way, but never had she had the time to dwell. It had always been the heat of struggle, the thrill of victory or escape or the warmth of companionship but this was…

Well, no, it was the same, wasn’t it? Here were her friends, and she almost thought that Rarity and Rainbow and Fluttershy were there among them, walking beside her. Loyal Rainbow. Beautiful and graceful Rarity. Kind Fluttershy.


“May you live a thousand years,” she said. Why did she feel like she was about to die? What was on that hill? What was this Garden?


The path led up the hill. At the base, there was a small wooden door with no wall. It was a simple affair that would have been well at home in Ponyville. It was, in short, a bit impossible. She blinked.


“What’s… what’s this?” she asked Kyrie. “Why a door? Why no fence or wall beside it? It’s… it’s kind of pointless, isn’t it? Why does it… oh, stars. I knew it looked like one from Ponyville but I know this gate. It’s… it’s the… it’s my library door.” Twilight Sparkle thought she had been afraid before, but now she was terrified. What did it mean? She looked down and realized that her legs were shaking.


“I see no such door,” the alicorn said quietly. “I see two columns along the way, like the ones that housed the shrine of the Well in Jannah.”


“It’s the door to Sugarcube Corner,” Pinkie said. “I think it’s… lost. Why is it here?”


“My… my farm. It’s the front gate at Sweet Apple Acres,” Applejack insisted, breathless.


“It has welcome mat in front of home in Petrahoof,” Tradewinds said quietly.


“The world’s edge--or the edge for you, Twilight--is…” Kyrie struggled to find words, but Twilight had an idea.


“Soft.” She took a deep breath. “It doesn’t work the same way. If the rest of the world, the middle, is hard and solid, then here things are misty and soft and pliable. It makes sense in a sort of fairy tale kind of way, doesn’t it?” She laughed, but there was no mirth. There was, perhaps, just the tiniest touch of madness in it.


“Twilight, I don’t feel like…” Applejack couldn’t finish.


“I have to go,” Twilight said. “This is it. This is where we were headed all along. This is the Last Door, just like this is the Last Hill and the bridge was the Last Bridge. Fitting, isn’t it?” She cleared her throat. “I’ll be back. I swear it.” She stepped towards the door, then turned and looked back at their faces, stricken and worried. “I’ll come back. Wait for me, would you? Pray, if you want. Think of me always, if you can. I’ll… I’ll be back. Please don’t come in after me. Kyrie, it’s dangerous if more than one comes, right?”


“Yes,” Kyrie said, hesitantly. “I believe so. That is… those were the rules of this place.”


“Make sure you stay here, all of you. Please. Don’t come in. Wait for me. Trust me,” she added, with a rather lame attempt at a smirk. “Since when does Twilight Sparkle fail?”


“I’m assumin’ you don’t want a list or nothin’,” Applejack said and swallowed. She didn’t smile.


“Probably not, no,” Twilight admitted.


She turned, and swallowed. The door--that damnable door!--beckoned. She stepped forward and opened it.


And beyond was just the path up, where it turned into dirt steps dug into the hill. She mounted them, and looked back and saw her friends watching her, but none of them came.Good. Be safe, please, she thought and then turned back.


There were flowers, she noted for perhaps the first time. On either side of her, simple flowers. Wild flowers. A rose bush. It seemed not to be all that planned.


The higher she got, the more dense the plantlife became, but it never got in her way. Twilight saw every sort of flower in its own place, but no obvious beds. Garden, yes, but nothing made by ponies. She found herself wondering if this place had been made with Earth pony magic, but when she examined the fast beating heart in her breast and the oppressive air, the feeling of something very present, she decided that was impossible. No ponies could have made this place. They wouldn’t have been able to bear it.


Twilight saw everything. Every beautiful flower, every bush, every blade of grass. She saw them and felt that every other flower she had seen in her life was only a shadow and that these were the truth. Her hooves, though shod with horseshoes, felt unprotected. Even through the dull and hard hoof wall she felt. This was impossible, and yet every step became more and more like agony. The air itself felt heavy, like a thing to be carried. This was not exaggeration or emotion. The air was actually weighing on her. She feared suddenly that if she were touch one of the flowers, or if some petal or falling leaf were to touch her it might crush her. She was a shadow in a land of full, physical, real things.


“What is this place?” she whispered to herself, and her voice sounded thin and weak, as if she had said it from far away. She tried again. “Hello? Hello?” But even raising her voice barely worked.


More steps. Her breathing had grown more labored than before. The Garden grew denser and yet more lovely than before. Further up. Further in. She looked back once more, and saw her friends far, far behind her. Had she climbed that far? Reality was soft. She shook her head.


And suddenly there were no steps. She crossed over into paradise. This was wild growth without chaos, measured but not by mortal hooves or pony magic. This was harmony made real. Before her she found amaranth, and magnolia beyond it, and still beyond she thought she saw apple trees and… everything was so bright, as if the sun itself were different. Twilight took a step…


And heard paper rustling so loudly in her ear that she jumped. Only now did she realize how silent everything had been. All but her was still, not like the stillness of Jannah. The stillness of Jannah was a cruel joke, a pale imitation, a hateful mockery of this place.


Twilight looked down, and saw a an envelope. Her heart stopped. On the front it said, in Celestia’s beautiful hoofwriting: To The One Who Comes After. And trembling she bent down to make sure her eyes did not lie, and found a page beneath it, and that both were on top of a notebook.


The page said only: Take these to the pool in the middle of the Garden. Read the letter. The other letters are in the book. Good luck.


Twilight did not say anything or do anything or even think anything for what seemed like years. She simply stared. And then one by one, she collected these most holy relics, all touched by the lost Celestia, and she held them before her as through paradise she made her solitary way.