The Night is Passing

by Cynewulf


XLVII. Twilight II: ChildBodyBride

TWILIGHT SPARKLE






Twilight Sparkle’s head hurt terribly. This was, in fact, the very first sensation she had upon waking. It is hard to deny that one is awake when it feels as if thumbscews were being enthusiastically drilled through one’s eyes.


She groaned softly and tried to get back on her hooves. She also finally opened her eyes.


And found Celestia. Sitting at a table. Sipping tea. She didn’t notice the strange red-orange sky or the spires of the empty city or the terraces or the mountains or any of it. She saw only the table set for two and Celestia, watching something out of her vision, something over the horizon. There was a tea cup in her magic. Twilight found herself focused on that part and didn’t know why. Perhaps because her whole world had, well, stopped.


There she was.


It is a very hard thing, figuring out what to say first to someone you haven’t seen in years. Even under the most amiable and ideal of circumstances, distance can make rapport difficult.  But add in disaster? Motives that could only be guessed at?


What did she say?


Twilight was frozen. Absolutely frozen. She had come so far. Celestia was just… just there. No doors to open, no ruins to navigate, nothing to fight. Just… Celestia. Being there. Staring off into the sky. Drinking tea. It might as well have been another weekend breakfast with her teacher.


Celestia hadn’t noticed her, and Twilight had the strangest thought. What if it had all been a dream? Was something like that possible? She had memories… but didn’t you always have memories that came with the dream? Weren’t you always convinced that what it presented was the truth?


Twilight wanted to call out. But she didn’t.


Celestia did it for her. “It is good to see you again, my faithful student.” Twilight stared at her. Celestia had not turned her head at all, and continued on without looking down where Twilight lay. “Though, I confess, my feelings are… mixed.”


“Celestia,” Twilight breathed the name as if simply saying it took all of her will.


“That is my name, little Spark.” And then Celestia turned to look at her and she smiled. Twilight’s heart leapt into her throat.


“You’re… this is really you. This is real.”


“It is really me, yes, but I would hesitate to call this real. Not because it isn’t real, because in a very, ah, real sense, it is. But because it would not fit into your… definition of real… Twilight? Oh dear, I had hoped you would be recovered, please stay still.”


Twilight had fallen and lay there, staring up at her. She felt… well. She felt everything.


“It’s you.”


“It is.” Celestia was carrying her now.


Twilight closed her eyes. “I made it.”


“You have, more or less.”


Twilight fainted.













The second time that Twilight awoke, she was sitting in a chair with a comfortable, warm blanket around her. She smelled tea and flowers… jasmine, in the air? She opened her eyes.


Celestia was there, and smiled at her.


“Hello again.”


Twilight stared.


“Oh, stars. It wasn’t a weird dream.”


“No, it wasn’t. You’ve made it… and tried to move in this environment long before you were ready. Your… ah, confusion masked your intent from me at first. But you seem to be doing a little better. You don’t seem as pale.”


“I feel a little more like myself,” Twilight said softly. “Where am I? Celestia, I’ve looked… I’ve looked everywhere for you. Tartarus, hells, I’ve seen so much… I’ve done so much… I’m…” It felt like her throat simply closed. She tried to say more but couldn’t. She just shook her head.


And she felt Celestia’s gentle touch as the Sun Triumphant gently stroked her foreleg. “Twilight, you have come such a long way. I am so, so very glad that it was you who came in after me. I am also horrified by what I know you have endured.”


Twilight found tears at the corners of her eyes, unbidden and unwanted. “I wasn’t sure… I hoped you would be here for me to find. I hoped and hoped, but I never knew… I didn’t know if you had died or didn’t care anymore or… or…” she swallowed. “I have to know everything. But right now… You’re here. You’re alive. I’m with you. May I…” she coughed and shook her head. “May I touch you? Just to be sure?”


Celestia nodded. She set the teacup she had been suspending down and held out her hoof. Twilight stared at it. A dozen memories of her teacher’s touch filled her, each more dear than the last. Celestia bending down to help her up from a fall. Celestia stroking her mane when she cried after she had nightmares on her first night staying at the castle. Celestia hugging her when she returned from an academic visit to Zebrahara that had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Celestia, Celestia.


Twilight touched her hoof as if it were a holy artifact, and it was.


“You’re real,” she said, unsure of how she felt about it. Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed worked.


“What has happened, Twilight? Your thoughts are confused, or else I would see for myself just by looking at you.” Celestia grimaced. She did not draw her hoof away. “I admit, I do not expect it to be pleasant. I will answer your questions… but first, what of you? My sister? What of my little ponies?”


How do you tell someone that the world fell apart because they were not there to save it? Or worse, how do you tell someone who may very well be in the process of saving it that their absence left everything they loved half-ruined?


“It’s been…” Twilight worked her mouth a moment.


“Bad.”


“Yes,” Twilight said. “It’s been bad.”


“Tell me. Please. Do not spare me. I must know.”


Twilight swallowed. “I’m not sure where to begin, Princess--”


“No titles, no teachers, no students. Let us both be simply mares here, Twilight, for you have seen the shores of eternity and you deserve that.”


“I… Yes. Thank you. I think. Um…” And her mind was blank. Perfect. She had tried rehearsing what she would say to Celestia a thousand times. A few of those times, she had confessed her weird undying love, yes, but most of those recitations had been fairly serious. She had thought of what to say first. None of those introductions began with “Um.”


But Twilight tried her best. She started with the Zebraharan Mad God and reminded Celestia of the troubles before. She told about the long night, when the sun had refused to rise--or was kept from rising--and only with great effort had Luna raised it. How blight had touched crops already vulnerable and undergrown from the erratic light. How the magic of Equestria had grown strange. The spirit of the country soured, ponies began to fear and mistrust one another, Luna grew desperate, everything broke. The center didn’t even begin to hold. Everywhere, an already agitated and unstable world showed just how unstable it had been underneath the veneer of peace.


How none of it made sense--how do peace-loving, smiling ponies become raiders? Especially as fast as it occurred. Twilight told her in shaking voice about the fall of Manehattan… the fire pits… the glassy stares from high apartments. She told her about bandits and raiders and Ponyville’s desecration. She related with an ever softer and more agonized voice her own journey westwards, hoping but not knowing if half of her closest circle of friends were even alive for months.


She stopped at Vanhoover.


“Do I have to tell you everything?” she asked, and her voice was the most miserable in the world.


Celestia paused.


“No.”


Twilight told her anyhow. “When we… escaped and took the Alicorn, they started firing at us. There was an old cannon they had set up to guard the docks. I don’t know where they found it but they did. It was just at the edge of my range, and I knew the Grays wouldn’t be able to handle it and it could hit us if we let it--”


“Shh. You’re rambling. Slower, Twilight.”


Twilight took a deep breath. Another. “I hit the cannon and crew with arcane fire, hoping they would scatter and we could use the time to get away. I had been using magic less and less, and I  was losing my… touch,” she admitted, feeling smaller than a fly. “So I thought it would be too weak to do much, but suddenly I was back to my old self and the blast was larger than I had expected.”


“How much larger?” Celestia asked. Her tone had not changed.


“I blew it up. I blew… I lit the powder. They had barrels of the stuff like…” She shook her head. “I didn’t know. I guess I knew it was possible, I just didn’t think they would store so much of it in one place. We haven’t used old-style cannons in so long I had forgotten about powder storage… It went up and the explosion caught the rest of the docks on fire.”


Celestia stared at her. Twilight wanted to die.


“We couldn’t stop. The boat was already on its way. And then… and then in Jannah, I just... “


“Twilight, you don’t have to--”


“It was awful, but am I any better? I killed those guards, the zebras… the Black Hoof soldiers. They died and I made them die.”


Celestia was very quiet. It felt like there was silence for an hour, yet it could not have been that way, could it? Twilight wasn’t sure anymore when it came to time. Or, well, really anything that her senses tried to convince her of. More and more, it was obvious to her that she was not meant to be this close to… well, whatever it was that lay just beyond. She was just a pony, a small pony, not even a terribly strong one. Yes, she could do magic. She could be brave, when she had to be--but that wasn’t what she was talking about. She was no Starswirl, fiddling with time and space and metaphysical mystery. She was just Twilight Sparkle, and she missed her library. You didn’t see a lot of blood in libraries. Nobody starved to death or froze to death or cried much in libraries, and when they did cry, it was either a really good book or a very, very difficult subject. And those were fixable problems, easy problems for one like Twilight Sparkle, who understood both books and studying, who had been a student most of her life. And here, Celestia was just… at ease? No, but in her element. She was made for such a world as this, Twilight was learning. She had never felt so far away from her teacher.


And all at once, she realized that she had never felt so far away from Luna. What did they have now? She didn’t want to blame Luna for Spike, but a part of her did. It was a petty Twilight that blamed Luna. It was the part of Twilight that wanted to kick viciously at anything in her way, the one that insisted that you paid like for like. But put that aside, and then what? She was a unicorn. Just a unicorn. She would live somewhere between seventy and a hundred years and then die. She would grow old. Her body would change. Luna would live forever, unchanged to Twilight’s eye, young and supple. But it was more than that.


Celestia was staring at her. Waiting. Her eyes caught Twilight’s and bored into them as if Celestia were saying, Speak and say, for I know it already.


“We’re just ants,” Twilight said at last. “Aren’t we?”


Celestia drew back with a look of absolute confusion. “What?”


“We’re just… We’re ephemeral. Wisps. Barely worth noticing.” She looked down at the table. She looked up at Celestia with dull eyes. “And you--both of you--just… hang around out of pity for us useless, stupid, rotting mortals. When I die you’ll have finished blinking. Luna won’t even notice. You’re so… you’re so…”


“Twilight.”


But Twilight continued. “I’m so stupid. I never saw it. Luna was just humoring me. I was so lonely and desperate and she was bending over backwards, fooling me into thinking… but that has to be it.” Twilight laughed. It sounded more like a bark. “Like you play pretend with a foal. That’s what we are. You’re the only grownups, aren’t you?”


“Twilight!”


Twilight stopped and looked at her. “Yes?” she asked, miserably.


“What, in the name of every star and song, is the meaning of all of this?” Celestia’s voice was stern. It was a mother’s voice. But her face was not hard. Her countenance was all concern and shock. “A… foal? Do you truly think so low of yourself? Of your friends and loved ones?”


“I’m not supposed to be here,” Twilight said. “I’m so clever, so very clever. Deny it. But I’m so stupid, because I thought I was ready to just pick everything up and go find you. I wasn’t meant to be here. I’m so small,” she added, feeling just that way.


Celestia opened her mouth as if to dispell this, but then closed it. She looked at Twilight hard, and Twilight shrank under her searching gaze. Celestia did not look angry. No, she looked disturbed, and somehow that was worse.


“Stay here,” said Celestia at last. She rose and walked towards the screen Twilight had provided.


Twilight watched her for a moment, and then looked down.


She’ll see right through me, Twilight thought. And it was very probable that she would. She would see all of Twilight’s insecurities here, like Luna felt emotions in the dream, or how truth simply tumbled out of one’s mouth in song in the Well.


So much of what we think, we think only because we are assured that our thoughts are secret. Ponies have hearts more open than most things in the eternal sea, but they, like all creatures who reason and love, are separate and distinct. Imagine a walled off Garden. That is what a pony is--that is what a griffon or a zebra is. Inside, there is growing and intention and potentiality and water and green and life. And on the outside, too, also life. But the Garden is a garden because it is cut off. Without the wall, it would only be another section of a great forest, an undifferentiated verdance. The walls that make it distinct protect it from becoming something else. But they make it difficult to peer inside. If you do not have the key (if there is even a door!) than you will have to climb sheer wall to taste of the beauty of the Garden.


Twilight felt as if the walls of her spirit were full of holes, and it was not a good thing. Every good and sordid thought, just oozing out.


Celestia returned. She laid a cup of tea in front of a bemused Twilight, who mumbled a sad little “thanks” and stared at it. Celestia took a seat. She had made more tea. Of course she had. Celestia and tea were practically synonyms. Twilight blinked at her cup. Had Celestia really drank this much tea? Yes, yes she had. All the time. It was weird.


“You still don’t appreciate a fine tea as you should, Twilight,” Celestia admonished. It was as if Twilight’s outburst had never happened.


“I like it,” Twilight said, dumbfounded.


“Hm.” Celestia sipped and sighed. “Twilight, do you know why I started drinking tea?”


“I never asked,” came the dull and slightly humiliated response of Twilight, who was beginning to realize that Celestia had not forgotten at all, but that she was about to lecture.


But Celestia didn’t lecture. “I started drinking tea because it was calming. It smells nice, and it happens to taste nice, and overall, it was a better choice than sipping mead out of a canteen all day.” She paused. “You know, Luna did that for awhile. I told her it was rather improprietous to be drinking while the sun was up. I believe she told me that the sun was stupid and that, furthermore, it made travelling with a walking scroll bearable. I think I took offense.”


Twilight snorted. “A walking scroll?”


“I was a bit carried away at the time, yes. Drink, Twilight. Close your eyes.”


Twilight did so reluctantly, and found that after a few moments, she did in fact feel better. Which was, of course, ridiculous.


“Ants,” mused Celestia. “Curious that you would choose such a creature. You know, I happen to like ants. From afar, of course.”


“Why?”


“Industrious creatures,” Celestia said softly. “Building! What a wonderful thing it is to build, to create. Water and hoof destroy, and the ant rebuilds greater and sturdier than before. A bit bellicose, yes, but altogether marvelous. But you know, I think you do both them and yourself a disservice. Ponies and ants are rather different. Ants build, but they do not sing. I find the distinction important. Might I make an observation?”


“I… Yes.”


“Do you think that you are a mote in the eye of Rainbow Dash?”


Twilight blinked. “No? Oh. I get it. I can’t fly, but she can. She can go where I can’t in ways I can’t. I think this is… different. Isn’t it?”


“And there we are. You treat me as a god, and now you question my analogies. I am glad to see that you have returned, Twilight.”


Twilight sipped on her tea. It helped. It also kept her from looking around, which was for the best. Her surroundings made her uncomfortable, though she knew not why. “I hadn’t gone anywhere, Princess.”


“Ah ah, Princess? Celestia will do, Twilight. I shall be Princess only if you are Little Spark.” She giggled. Giggling, Twilight had to admit, was a rather un-godlike thing to do.


“I still feel… small,” Twilight said.


“As you should. You are, I have to say, rather small. Especially in the light of eternity. Your mistake was in thinking that I am not the same. I admit, I was a bit distressed. Others have said that sort of thing before, either accusingly or in adoration, and I was disturbed by both. I had not expected you to say such things. But I did not expect you to be the one who followed me either. No, Twilight, you are not a foal. You’ve grown into a fine young mare. I have never thought of you or any other pony as… ants. Or any of what you said. Ephemeral? Perhaps, I have thought that at times, but only in the depths of my grief, and always with a sardonic edge. If anything, I have often felt that the main difference between myself and the ponies I have known was that many of them found purpose. Telos, as the old pegasi used to say. They found meaning and purpose and embraced it fully and were remade and I? Well. We alicorns have one great gift and I have not opened mine.”


“Gift?” Twilight furrowed her brow. “What gift?”


“Life. To create life. Not simply in giving birth, though we can. Some of us,” she added, and looked away. “But we may trade our lives and the world gains a new race.”


“Luna mentioned… Thaumus. And Aurora.”


Celestia was still looking off towards the sun and the city. She let herself smile sadly. “Yes. My brother Thuams and my sister Aurora. Did she tell you that you resemble him?”


“Thaumus? Yes,” Twilight said.


“She is quite right. But you are not him. You are yourself. I have known many ponies, it is true. But that does not mean you are not prized or noticed or remembered.” Celestia turned back and rested her head on a hoof. “You and my sister.”


Twilight flushed and looked down again. She sipped her tea, hoping that if she were silent long enough the question would go away. It didn’t. “Yes,” she said.


“Don’t be shy, Twilight. Tell me.”


“Is… I mean, is it really important?”


“Very. But I know what you’re getting at--besides simply avoiding the subject. Time is--”


“Soft?”


“Yes, I assume you’ve spoken with Kyrie on that, then. This is but a fraction of a second in the world you and I know.  We have all the time we wish, though we might wish for more than we truly want. Are you two… happy?” She looked at Twilight with pleading eyes. “I do hope so.”


“We…” Twilight didn’t know what to say.


“I actually suspected your preference early on. I remember being very, very glad that the present was different from the past. In much of our wanderings, Luna’s… well, it was not that it was unaccepted so much as…” Celestia waved a hoof. “It was not the sort of behavior of a mare who married, if you follow me.”


Twilight grimaced. “From my reading, I think I know what you’re saying.”


“So I was glad she had come into this world. I thought, perhaps, she might find a little measure of peace in that. I hoped you two might become friends. It seems you did more--and I can’t say that I’m displeased.”


“We aren’t as…” Twilight groaned. “Celestia, Luna and I don’t know what we have, or if we… okay. I can’t say we don’t have something. But… I left Spike behind and she said that he would be okay. Spike is dead,” she said, and her voice came out strangled. She coughed. “He’s dead.”


Celestia sat back.


They stared at one another.


“Twilight,” Celestia said at last, “I think you and I need to go on a walk.”












The empty city at the edge of the world was not like Jannah. Where the First City had been immaculate and preserved, the Last City was on the edge of a ruin. And yet, even in its dilapidated state, there was a charm in it. Jannah had seemed sterile, but the Last City felt like a story.


Many stories, in fact, all piled one upon the other miles thick. Twilight could feel them whispering at her from every stone.


They had not said a thing since leaving. To be honest, Twilight wasn’t even sure how they’d arrived here. Sight was… complicated. She would look at things and see them and her mind would simply refuse to accept them. She looked at a rock and her mind refused to admit there was a rock. She sipped tea and could not believe in it. So she saw but it was not terribly comfortable. And yet she liked the City.


The sun was hiding behind the rocky crags, but it never seemed to move. Was it dusk or dawn? Twilight would decide on one, only for her perception to change only moments later.


“So Spike is fallen.”


Twilight looked back to Celestia, whose face was a mask.


“Yes. Luna told me that he saved a lot of ponies. He was fighting.”


“Little Spike become a knight of the Moon,” Celestia said, and it sounded bitter. “I am so tired of losing friends.”


“I’m sorry,” Twilight said, uselessly.


“Don’t be. It is not your fault--you brought the news but you did not kill him. I am sorry, however, that you must bear it. If I am grieved, I can only imagine your pain.”


“I haven’t dealt with it,” Twilight said. “At all. I’m just trying to make it so that one day, when this is over or at least quieter, I can deal with it. If that’s something you can even do. I don’t know. I keep forgetting. Like I don’t want to accept it, like if I just forget long enough it won’t have happened.”


Celestia nodded. “Do you blame my sister?”


Twilight shook her head. “I did, at first. I threw her out of my dream.”


She watched Celestia’s eyebrows raise. “Truly? That is a feat.”


“I didn’t mean to,” Twilight said. “It just sort of happened. But I don’t think I really do. There’s a part of me that blames her.”


“And the rest of you?”


“The rest of me doesn’t like that part,” Twilight said. “Luna didn’t want Spike to die. Spike was her friend. She was distraught, and I was so mad at her… When she came back, she felt so lost.”


“Luna has suffered much, Twilight. I was more restrained when we were still wandering adventurers, but she was always an open door and a bleeding heart. She was soft and the world ravaged that softness. Savaged it. Time wore her down far quicker than it wore me. But it claims us both.”


They were quiet again. They walked in the never-changing dawn (dusk?).


“I promised I would answer your questions,” Celestia said presently.


Twilight swallowed. “I’m afraid of the answers.”


“Good. That is wise of you, Twilight. A few questions, and then we will return. I’ll tell you everything.”



*


“What is this place?” Twilight asked.


“The Last City. I do not know where it entered in, but its origin is you, Twilight. You made this city.”


“How did I do that? Why don’t I remember making it?”


“Your mind and body struggle in Eternity. They cannot comprehend it in its raw form, and so you constructed several metaphors in which to inhabit. So now we are in a city that never dies but is always on the edge of change.”


*


“Twilight, are you afraid of death?”


“I think I’m afraid of everything.”


“Wise, but not healthy. You were not meant to fear everything, I think.”


*


“Do you love my sister, Twilight?”


“I think so. I’ve never been in love before--or if I have been, no one told me that it was love.”


“But you know how you feel.”


“Do I? I’m sorry, Princ--Celestia. I don’t mean to be evasive… But I really don’t understand what I feel at all.”


“The most basic reactions, then.”


Twilight sighed. “Luna. She wants to take care of me. I want to help her not be lonely. We like the same things. Sometimes I think about kissing her and it makes me feel warm. We’ve had fun exploring dreams. Luna always made time for me and she treated Spike like an equal.” A pause.


“But do you love her, do you think? What is your inclination? The thing you wish to speak, not the thoughts in your head.”


“I want to love her,” Twilight said.



*



“Did you read my letters?”


“Yes! I read them before I got to the water. I don’t understand all of it, but I understand enough. I was glad you didn’t write about Jannah again.”


“I cannot even begin to describe how sorry I am that you have been there, Twilight. Nor how proud I am of you that you have endured it.”


Twilight felt small. “I didn’t, I don’t think. It did things to me. I saw things and heard things. I felt like I was losing control of myself. Becoming another pony, somepony who wasn’t Twilight Sparkle.”


“As do all who linger in those cursed streets.”


“What do you feel like?”


“I cannot say. I am sorry. I know how to say it, so it is not that knowing is beyond you. I am ashamed to say, Twilight. Furthermore, it is perhaps best you not know all things.”


*



“Can you read my emotions here? Luna can do so in dreams.”


“To an extent. Thoughts. Memories.”


“I was afraid of that.”


“I know you are. Have I asked after the things which frighten you?”


“No. Not all of them.”


“I may, soon enough.”



*






Sitting again at the table. How had they come there? Twilight struggled to remember.


“Who do you say that I am, Twilight?”


She blinked at Celestia, who she only now realized sat across from her. Another blink, and she was no longer sitting. Celestia reclined on a long ornate couch--it was ancient, and yet the metal shone as if it were newly made. Twilight stood awkwardly in the sunlight.


“Um… run that by me one more time?”


“Who do you say that I am?” Celestia’s voice was slightly less warm than before. It had become regal, imperious. Commanding. Something about it made Twilight shiver and she swallowed.


“Celestia, Princess of Equestria, who drives the Sun,” she said by rote. “My teacher and mentor,” she added.


“Who do you say that I am?”


Twilight frowned. “But I just did.”


“Who do you say that I am?”


“I don’t understand. You’re the princess. You are the one who controls the sun. You’re my teacher and mentor. You’re like a mother to me.”


Twilight was the one reclining in the couch. She could not read Celestia. She looked around, suddenly feeling exposed. What was going on?


“This place is fluid, Twilight. Your emotions change it. Your stamina changes it. As you grow weary so it grows weary.” Celestia slid into view out of the air itself, dressed in strange clothing. She looked more like a dancer than a Princess.


“Classical era. Sunspears of Dalmatia,” Twilight murmured to herself.


“Do not be alarmed, no matter what you see. Alright? I have let go of you entirely. Walk on your own two feet, and do not be worried by a dream. Do you think of me as a mother, Twilight?”


“I… I don’t know.”


“The truth.”


“Yes.” Twilight bit her lip. Again, she felt small.


“Let me tell you a story, then, as I might tell a foal,” Celestia said in a low, husky voice, and then she sang--and Twilight realized with a start that it was the same way she herself had sung in the Well in Jannah.


“In the beginning there was the water and the song, and everything was good. In the beginning the Alicorns sang, and everything was good. In the beginning, I was born second to last and in my infancy I knew many things and many secrets. In the beginning, I waited for my sister to be born.


“What is the greatest enemy? Death. What is the marshal of death upon the field? Decay? But what sits in the throne of Death’s ego? Despair. Despair is the sickness unto death. If it is so for living beings like you and I, then it is true for living worlds such as this one.


“In the beginning, Luna was born weeping, and the darkness shrouded the sky. In the beginning, we were troubled, but the darkness passed and was locked away by our singing. In the beginning, I held Luna and knew the beginning was over.”


Celestia danced--Twilight recognized the dance. The Sunspears had been a small tribe who had worshipped Celestia as the Avatar of the Victorious Sun, during the early days of her reign. They had lived in Equestria and dedicated their songs and dances to her. Celestia danced their funeral march.


“Luna did not create the Hideous Strength, but it followed her. Luna did not create Despair, but it clings to her. Luna did not mean to let it in, but she was young and her heart ached.


“How does a thief enter a house? A thief comes in through the door. A thief comes in through the window. A thief burrows underneath the house and comes up.


“The shadow opened a door in Jannah and it was shut, the Song be sung. The Shadow wormed into the hearts of mortals and went undetected, the song be sung. The Shadow touched Luna ever so lightly and she threw it off, but worked according to its purpose, the Song be sung.”


Celestia stopped and walked up to Twilight.


“Why a Sunspear?”


“Because I like them,” Twilight said with a small voice.


“Truth?”


“Yes. I… I realized I liked… I…” Twilight swallowed. She closed her eyes, so she wouldn’t have to look Celestia in the face. “When I finally realized that I liked mares, it was when I was studying the Sunspears. I thought the zebra mares were beautiful. I wanted to dance with them. I almost forgot about it.”


Celestia nodded and sat. There were books all around them, constantly turning. Wine appeared, and Celestia drank from a horn. Twilight did not drink.


“You make a puppet of me, but I do not mind. Your mind is as overactive as I remember,” Celestia said with a wry grin. “Now, the Shadow--the Hideous Strength--the Destroyer--they are all the same. The thing which tried to break into the world at Jannah also has touched many others. It has been working all along, picking up steam. Imagine a small stone.”


And there was one, between them. Celestia chuckled and threw it with her magic.


“It will land on a mountain. That one. It will begin to roll down the face.”


And it did. Though the mountain was far off, Twilight could see the tiny rock’s progress.


“Now, watch as it grows larger. It picks up residual dirt. It moves other rocks. One rock becomes a great mass movement. Do you understand?”


“It’s gotten stronger with time?”


“Yes. When it first entered the world, Despair was weak--just as Discord would have been in a world of perfect order. There was no sadness at all. So it broke something. It planted deep in my sister’s heart a seed of itself. That was its first outpost in our world, but everything but that tiny seed was thrown out by the mere sound of our singing.”


“But it came back,” Twilight said.


There was a bed. Twilight lay on the right side and Celestia on the left, facing each other.


“I’m sorry!” Twilight flushed. “I don’t know how to--”


“Peace, faithful student,” Celestia said. She gave Twilight a warm little smile. “After what I have been through these months, there is little you can do to make me uncomfortable. Besides, why would you apologize for such a lovely bed.”


“It’s yours,” grumbled Twilight. “I remembered it from when I used to take magic tutorials in your drawing room. I saw your bed through the door.”


“And you thought to yourself, being only a foal, that it was perhaps the fluffiest bed in all of creation?”


Twilight smiled, embarrassed but… happy. “So I exaggerated a bit. You can’t tell me it isn’t nice.”


“Why? Have you and Luna been trying it out?”


“Oh, stars,” Twilight groaned. “Please don’t. That’s awful even to think about.”


“Hm. It is, isn’t it? Delightfully so.”


They were in Celestia’s drawing room. A young Twilight Sparkle struggled to manipulate a set of juggler’s balls with her telekinesis without destroying them with raw force. Celestia spoke encouragingly to the little filly while Twilight watched. She leaned against the wall.


“I’ve been piecing it together, I think. May I take over your story?” Twilight asked.


Celestia smiled blissfully at young Twilight. “Good! Good! I can certainly tell that you’ve been practicing, Little Spark.”


“Alright,” Twilight said, feeling an affirmation in the air as Celestia stayed in character. Was it her, or did everything seem to be getting more and more unstable?


“So Despair. The Shadow. The Hideous Strength. I guess…. I guess its like Discord, right? Or like one of the Primal Elementals. It’s an embodiment. It gained strength. It wanted to… get in. To do what? From the name, if it works like the Primals, I assume it merely wants to spread Despair, to revel in it. No real end game. But you talked about Death. Perhaps… No. Can you kill a world?”


Celestia took the balls from a beaming filly and and selected a new test. Twilight knew these drills. Next would come the--


“And now, your least favorite, I’m afraid.” Celestia chuckled and little Twilight groaned. “You’ll be able to do it easily one day, Twilight. I promise. It’s very important that you keep trying. Now…” She placed what looked like a lamp in front of the filly. “Channel magic into the matrix and keep trying until you feel like you just can’t.”


“Endurance,” the Twilight leaning on the wall whispered.


“Endurance is key!” Celestia said, wagging a hoof. Little Twilight nodded and began channeling magic into the lamp. A green flame popped up. Twilight shook her head ruefully, watching her young self with puffed up cheeks and a determined expression. The trick wasn’t to blow as hard as you could. You have to pace yourself if you’re running a long way.


Twilight continued softly. “Well, regardless… so it can effect ponies. I’m not clear on how… I know it can touch their dreams. Is that how? Maybe it starts there and it seeps into their mind? Does it work like a normal physical infection, or more like a magical malady? I have no idea and I’m not sure it would even be possible to do tests if doing tests wouldn’t be kind of basically evil.” She sighed. “But it can do that, I’ve figured that out. It’s been doing that for a long time--that’s how it got the magi of Jannah to ‘open the door’ for it squeeze in. But Kyrie used almost all of her power to shut that door, and you and Luna and maybe some others applied another layer of seals over hers just in case. So you locked the door.”


The scene changed again.


Twilight and Celestia standing side by side on the prow of a mighty ship of oak. The Charity, an Equestrian vessel headed for the East. Celestia goes to the now independent colony of Prance to meet its new President. She had brought Twilight to learn a bit about the world, but mostly so that she could show the wonders of the City of Lights to a fresh young mind who would love them.


Twilight had been barely an adolescent. She saw herself beside Celestia, and saw the way the younger Twilight looked at her teacher. The ship moved with each wave, and she was unafraid.


Twilight stepped into the place of her younger self.


“Yes,” Celestia said. “We locked the door.”


“I’m… I’m starting to lose track of what’s going on,” Twilight said.


“I know. But you need to experience the malleability of the image you’ve created to sustain yourself here. Think of it is practice.”


“Practice for what?” Twilight asked, looking over the endless sea.


“Practice for later.”


They were in Prance, walking in the city after nightfall. Celestia had lowered the sun in a great square to much applause, and now she and Twilight strolled through the lighted streets. Young Twilight smelled--


“Coffee. I remember this shop,” Twilight said. “Why am I seeing these things?”


“Because I am here and you remember me,” Celestia said.


“So you locked the door,” Twilight began again. “And everyone thought that was the end of it.”


“Yes, but as you’ve discovered, we were mistaken.”


Twilight walked to the right of her younger self who ogled everything. Including her teacher. “Was… It’s strange,” she said, swerving out of the way of a question that revealed to much of her own thoughts, “I mean, looking at yourself when you were younger, not being them. Seeing yourself without a mirror.”


“Yes, it is, isn’t it? I’ve done it before. So has Luna. What we saw when we were here was much different.”


“So you both came here?”


“Yes. This was where I was given command of the Sun and Luna was given dominion over the Moon. We were both given a trial and pulled apart to undergo it alone. I do not know what she saw--we were both unable to tell each other. I cannot tell you.”


“This certainly feels a little like a trial,” Twilight grumbled.


“Oh? Do you not enjoy my company?” Celestia asked with a smile.


Twilight shook her head, flushing. “No! I do! I… I just meant that this is really strange.”


“I know what you meant. But let us return to the task at hand. Yes, we were mistaken. I was always suspicious. After all, it had gained power before, might it not again? But I assumed that it had been sealed in place by our work. Imagine… if the world is a flat plane, and the Shadow existed beneath it and we above and on. So it broke through and we sealed the hole, but in sealing the hole we caught the Hideous Strength with… ah, glue, I suppose. Holding it fast to the bore in Jannah, partially in and mostly out.”


“But you were wrong?”


Celestia nodded. Young Twilight asked her a question and she answered her with a beautiful voice that made Twilight’s heart catch in her throat. She didn’t want to be in this memory. It was a precious one--


The scene changed. Celestia was in an elevated box, watching the tournament. Celestia’s School had one every year. This was Twilight’s first attempt. Non-lethal, low powered duels with strict rules, all in an environment which constantly sapped their energy.


“The quick--” Celestia murmured, her voice warm and husky--gods above was it ever not? Every time she spoke Twilight wanted to melt.


“--And the dead!” Twilight shouted. Her opponent--it was Comet, wasn’t it? She hadn’t seen him in years!--laughed and conjured something. Twilight didn’t need to dodge. She simply dispelled his glyph and walked towards him.


She felt no sapping on her will. She had overcome such petty things.


“Where did Luna learn war? Has she told you?” Celestia asked.


“No,” Twilight replied, and she picked up Comet and threw him around in the air. He squealed. A younger Twilight would have snickered, but only after he was back on his hooves. She shook him a bit and then laid him down. The colt surrendered to her, though he was unharmed.


“She may yet tell you,” Celestia said. “I hope so. She has not shared her tale with anyone.”


“So the Shadow grew,” Twilight pressed.


“Yes, the Shadow grew, and it entered our World again. It had never really been far away, always lurking just on the outside. It is the embodiment of despair as we Alicorns were the embodiment of life. It cannot leave. Instead of another grand invasion, it attacked everywhere at once. A thousand tiny daggers in the verdant world--a thousand tiny tragedies. And it learned. It learned how ponies worked, Twilight. It watched and it experimented and it pushed and pulled and soon it had twisted them into war.”


“So… all of what happened--”


The crowd roared. Another opponent. This one was… oh. Moondancer. She nervously shuffled in as Twilight left the floor. She waved at Twilight, and Twilight smiled at her encouragingly. It was odd, looking down on all of the fillies and colts she had gone to school with. It was also odd knowing that if she were going to participate in this memory she would have to hold herself back.


“No, I know what you are about to say.” Celestia’s voice boomed over the crowd. Moondancer produced a flash of light to distract her foe and then began to call up arcane ropes to pin the colt who danced out of the way of each one. He was another laugher--it had been fun, hadn’t it? Celestia had made it as harmless as possible. “No, it didn’t make those things happen. Tell me, if the day is hot, and a overheated pony becomes irritable, and that irritation combines with a longstanding dislike of his neighbor, and it becomes hatred, and he does his neighbor violence… do you blame the Sun? Or do you blame the pony?”


“So ponies still chose to go to war. They did everything, but the Shadow… pushed them? Just slightly? Just enough?”


“You are close. Remember that it itself is despair, Twilight,” Celestia said.


The scene changed.


They sat at the table again. Celestia was sipping tea. Again. The ancient sun burned in the distance, still too large.


“So it inhabits or corrupts or does whatever it does, and the despair is what pushes ponies to do what they do?”


“Yes, that is closer.”


“But that doesn’t explain how quickly everything fell apart when you left. Despair, paranoia, anxiety, anger… all that stuff, it makes sense--but over a longer period. Not in a year.”


Celestia sighed. “That is because it switched tactics on us again. If a door is shut… do you remember what I wrote?”


“A window,” Twilight said. “What is the window?”


Celestia gestured around herself. “The Shores. It could establish a foothold in a place that was neither here nor there.”


“But… but you said the singing drove it off,” Twilight protested, furrowing her brow.


“Because it was weak. But it set a great trap within a trap. In the south, the Mad God. In the East, the wars of Griffon Unification. In the west, disease and a renewal of the range wars between the surviving city states. In the north, the mitou begin to stir. You weren’t aware of it because I kept it from you, but in Equestria, I began first to notice the spike in violent crime long before I felt the tell-tale hint of darkness in the wind. It was building strength, but it was more than that. It was laying the groundwork. Did you know that if you turn the temperature slowly enough on a frog, it will not notice until it is dying that you have been burning it all along?”


Twilight shivered. “I did know that. That’s grisly, Celestia.”


“Yes, yes it is. That is how it thinks, you know. I’ve felt enough of its thoughts to know that.” Celestia grimaced. “That is what it did with us. But I finally noticed and I felt it coming from the West. So I left. My sabbatical was also a real vacation--it’s been a few centuries since I had one, you know,” she added, with a smile. Twilight tried to smile back because it was a beautiful smile. Everything about her was beautiful. “I had also hoped to give Luna a chance to make a deeper impression, and I had hoped also to work out some of my ideas for the future. I also hoped I could convince you two to start writing each other more frequently, and that Luna might make a friend.” She chuckled. “But those things were diversions. The closer I got to Jannah, the more sure I was that something was wrong.”


“And when you got to Jannah?” Twilight asked weakly. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard the rain coming down on Jannah’s streets. She looked out towards the Last City, but there was no rain.


“I found the wards were more or less… the same. Weakened, yes, but with reflection I realize that the Shadow barely touched them. Compared to what it could have done? It merely prodded. You’ve read my letters, so you are already aware of what came next.”


“Sort of,” Twilight said slowly. She sucked on the inside of her cheek a moment, forming her questions.


“I think I know what you’ll ask,” Celestia said and leaned in. “But go on.”


“Why didn’t you, ah, call for back up? Or try to get a message to your sister in the Dream? You write, saying that you knew it was probably a trap… but then why trigger it?”


“Simply put, the trap was already triggered,” Celestia said. “The thing had been eating away at me all along, working beneath my rather natural fears and worries, concealing its influence until… until it was too late,” she finished, and she looked down at Twilight. “I felt it eating away at me. I even stopped for a time to do a full diagnostic of myself with magic. You know how long that can take.”


Twilight nodded. “You mentioned that it was useful, so I learned how to do it. You can probably do it way faster than I could, Princess.”


“I can,” Celestia said. “But it is still rather dull. But when I crossed into Jannah it was waiting. It knew me too well. It knew how to hide inside of my heart and mind. If I brought it into the dream, I would contaminate Luna and perhaps many, many others. If I tried to send any sort of magical message, the results would be similar. I was infected. I was unclean.”


“What about a normal message? Would contact have been enough?” Twilight asked. Strangely, not for a moment did she think of the danger to herself.


“I carried it anywhere I went. And, to forestall some variation on your questions, I felt my time was short. That it was getting stronger. I felt like it might break through.”


“Was it going to?” Twilight asked.


“Yes,” came the reply.


Twilight rested her head in her hooves and closed her eyes. She still felt the heat of the not-sun on her coat, and despite knowing it was not real, she still found it comforting. A paradoxical anchor--not real, yet it kept her feeling grounded.


What did she do with this? What was the solution? She had found Celestia, only to find that her problems were… well, bigger. She had expected danger. She hadn’t expected myths and miracles. Slowly, she massaged her temples.


“Confounded? My little Spark?” Celestia asked, and chuckled softly.


Twilight smiled, but did not open her eyes. “A little bit, Princess,” she said. “You haven’t called me that since I was a foal.”


“I always loved that name.”


“May I ask you a question?”


“Of course.”


“Is this you, you? Or since this is my dream or metaphor, is this you as I want or perceive you to be?”


“Oh! Now that is a clever question. Well done, Twilight. The answer is that it is very complicated.”


“Thanks,” Twilight said, but she still smiled. “So you are Celestia, right?”


“Yes.”


“And you’re along for the ride here, just like I might be in Luna’s dreams or yours.”


“You have the idea, somewhat. Think of it more this way: I am indeed here, the Celestia you know. But I can only exist here within the confines of the Celestia you have created. Hm. Ah, yes. Think of it like this: Your whole life, you are putting ponies together. They are sending you letters from far away, and you must piece those letters into a narrative or picture of that pony. Could you do it? You certainly could try, and you would no doubt be close. That is how you know me, and most every other pony. So I am myself, but I live within a smaller me that you created.” Celestia blinked a few times and then chuckled. "If I were not so boneweary, I would be much more amused at how, ah, regal this simulacra of me wishes to be. It really is quite embarrassing."


“Okay.” Twilight opened her eyes again. She wasn't sure what to make of any of that. “You just… You haven’t said anything about… you know. You see it, don’t you?”


“Yes.”


“Do we have to talk about it?”


“We should. But not just this moment.”


She felt her stomach twist in knots. “I have no idea what’s going on, do I? I mean, I know some of it. The basic story. But I don't know what's been going on here and that's the important part, isn't it so I know nothing.”


“Very little.” Sip.


“Shadows and plots and… I’m not sure what to do anymore. I planned to find you. I didn’t really plan beyond that. I’m not sure what even comes after that. I expected that finding you would be enough.”


“And were shocked to find that it was not,” Celestia finished. Twilight looked at her. She smirked and made a little toasting motion with her tea cup. “Who do you say that I am?”


“Celestia.”


“Yes, and you think that means all-powerful, and you find that I am not. I have never lied to you about that. Truth be told, I simply grew very weary of having to constantly remind ponies. I used to make mistakes just to show those around me I was not infallible, but inevitably they would blame themselves. It seemed cruel to continue.”


“I never…” Twilight paused. “Okay, maybe I did. But I didn’t think of you as infallible per se. I just…”


“Never imagined that I might not be, yes. But now you are learning. You’ve been learning all along. My bookworm has become a warrior, of sorts. And an archmage, of sorts.” Twilight gave a little snort, and Celestia leaned in. “You do not think so? What you’ve seen? The knowledge is written into your subconscious. You will be the greatest mage of all time. You were already going to be the best in ages, you know. I never exaggerated your skill.”



The scene changed. Celestia’s bed, Twilight lying on her back. Celestia snaking in from the side, over her, blocking out the reddish glow of the ancient not-sun. Twilight felt hot and far too comfortable. Her heart hammered in her chest. Her legs shook.


“Your voice is beautiful,” she said, stupidly.


Celestia was above her, looking down. Her face seemed almost to flicker, as if two realities tried to inhabit the same space. One face was… was… Twilight was ashamed. She felt dirty. Awful. One face looked at her with a look that was both desire and maternal warmth. The other shifted. Concern. Dismay. Sadness. Twilight looked fearfully for disgust--knotted brows and squinted eyes, the way Celestia’s face readied itself for an angry exchange. But there was none of that.


“Thank you,” Celestia said softly. She practically purred. Twilight shivered.


The world was ending, and she was just building fantasies in a strange nowhere place while Canterlot was no doubt burning. Every single pony that had believed in her, waited on her, fought at her side, every one of them she was betraying. This was what Twilight Sparkle had come to the end of the world to do. Play out her most sordid desires.


Twilight hated herself.


The scene did not change.  She willed it to change, and it would not.


“I can’t make this go away,” she said hoarsely. Celestia gazed down at her. Her face kept changing--the false face of warm desire and the true one of concern. And horror, she added to herself.


“I know you can’t. It is alright, Twilight. Your heart is troubled.”


“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” she whispered. “Celestia, please tell me what to do. I’m done. I’m at the end of my rope. It’s all so… broken. Spike is dead and maybe my friends will die and I don’t even know if Canterlot is still there. Equestria is just... “


Celestia leaned down. Twilight’s heart soared. Her stomach twisted in knots. She took a deep breath and her back arced. She was both expectant and afraid.


Celestia kissed her forehead and made a soft “shush” noise. “Stay calm, Twilight, remember where you are. All is not lost.”


“But you know now,” Twilight said. “You can see the...t-the docks, can’t you? And in Jannah? And my dreams and you…”


“Yes. You’re practically hemmoraghing memory,” Celestia admitted. She pulled back slowly. “Who do you say I am?”


“Celestia.” And suddenly she felt a tug on her heart and her mouth opened of its own accord as it had in the Well. “Mother. Teacher. Lover.”


Celestia hummed. “It took you long enough to respond correctly. I have been trying to realign your psychic energies this whole time, you know. You are in quite a lot of distress. But I also wanted to ask. The first I suspected, and was secretly pleased by; the second I was with honor; the third I took me by surprise, but I begin to understand it.”


“I’m sorry,” Twilight whispered.


“Why should you be?” Celestia asked.


And Twilight wasn’t sure what to say. “But… But it’s so…”


“Natural,” Celestia murmured. She turned away. “You’ve tortured yourself a long time.” It wasn’t a question. “You never let it slip. Or perhaps you did, and I was simply blind to your feeling.” She sighed.


The scene, finally--blessedly--changed.


A cliff edge. The red dying sun hung overhead and below roaring waves. Behind her the Last City sprawled on and on. The cliff was covered in clover that quickly became roses, then became clover again.


Twilight took a steadying breath.


“What do I do now? What do we do now?”


Celestia was looking over the edge of the cliff. She hummed a tune that Twilight did not know for a moment. Luna does that too, Twilight thought.


“Well. If the world’s turning stops, the fox faces the hounds,” Celestia said and spun to gaze back at Twilight.


“What?”


“I have been here, Twilight, for a long, long time. For you, it has been months--a year and half? Two years? I’m shaky on the chronology. But it matters not. I have experienced it as decades. I am a bit… shaky.” She cleared her throat. “I have been in a long duel with the Shadow. I cannot stop it completely when it moves, but I can make every blow glancing--it raises and army and I cripple the Hideous Strength’s control over it. It tried to form monsters but I disrupted its work and they were finished with a flap over their mouths and noses that prevented them from breathing in most cases. They also boiled alive in sunlight, ironically.”


Twilight shuddered. “That’s horrible.”


“Yes. Yes it is. My duel has been a horrible one, Twilight. I cannot see all that the Shadow does, but I can see enough. But the dance cannot go on forever. I am growing weary. It wrested the sun from my grip and now that power is between us.”


“So Luna was working against someone.”


“Yes. Both of us, actually. I am not its match, but it cannot focus too much on me… it has things to do, and so it is spread too thin. But that will change.”


She pointed towards the Last City. Twilight turned, and saw smoke trailing from great fires. An army had taken the walls. Strange beings fought in the streets and before the gates, clad in armor.


“Its army may soon be destroyed.”


“And then it won’t be able to use it,” Twilight said. For once, she was starting to feel hope. “So it’ll lose all that influence, all those little holes into our world, right?”


“Yes,” Celestia said with a smile like heaven. “Yes, it will.” The smile slid off her face. “And then it will have much less to focus on.”


And like that, Twilight sat heavily in the clover. “It’ll attack you.”


“It already is. But it shall have enough of itself free of entanglement to finish me off. And when I am gone? Then it will have eliminated the greatest anchor. It’s gambit will have paid off. The plan was so simple, Twilight.


“If Celestia is gone, it causes anxiety, and that anxiety masked the first movements that the Destroyer made to begin its great concert of death. It had already touched a few key individuals, and those ponies were its pioneers. They paid and bullied and plotted, and the Hideous Strength made every thing that needed to happen come to pass. The right fires were started. The right ponies lived and the right ponies died. The right ponies got the right ideas. Do you understand?”


Twilight nodded grimly. It occurred to her suddenly that Axiom had been more right than he realized, all that time ago in Vanhoover.


“If I were gone, I would not be able to exert my influence to curb those plans. But, removing me was more than simply removing Equestria’s security blanket,” she said, with little warmth. She bared her teeth. “Because the Shadow knows that Luna knows little about it--she was too disoriented in the Beginning. But I know. I remembered. I was born waiting for it to come, I think.”


“So nopony would put the pieces together and discover it… you couldn’t counter it… It left Luna in charge because it thought she would be weak and maybe even start rumors about Nightmare Moon by her mere presence. If it wins out there, then it can deal with you whenever it wants to. If it loses out there, then it can focus on you and it still wins because it's gotten one of the biggest obstacles out of the way. And you can't simply leave because if you aren't here keeping it occupied it just... uses all of that energy on the world and wins. It wins in every direction...” Twilight said. She covered her eyes. “Okay. So you’re in stalemate.”


“Exactly.”


Twilight pushed everything from her mind but Celestia, the Shadow, herself, and the city.


“Then we have to be quick. We have to find a way to either power you up or keep the Shadow stuck wasting its resources. No, nix that. It’s already overextended, but that’s not good enough. Maintaining that doesn’t help. You have to beat it. Destroying its armies won’t work. It’ll make another, am I right?” Celestia nodded. She seemed to be waiting. It reminded Twilight of when they played chess.


And just like that, they were. Celestia moved her pawn forward. Twilight took it mindlessly with a rook. “We can’t defeat the Shadow in the physical world, then. We must do it here, where it first made its outpost. But how? If you don’t have enough power to destroy it…” she grimaced. Celestia took the rook--Twilight had fallen into her trap. “I really can’t help you, can I?” she said, feeling her heart sink. Useless in the end. All of it for nothing. Of course it was.


“I do have a plan,” Celestia said as Twilight aimlessly moved one of her pawns forward. “And it involves you. I have it formulated already. I was busy while you were unconscious. The problem is that it is… taxing.”


“Taxing?” Twilight asked.


“For you, it will be.” Celestia sidestepped Twilight and threatened her king. “Dangerous. I… The thing itself must be destroyed. It cannot be simply locked away again. It will continue to grow in strength until such a time as it has laid another perfect trap, and that one we shall not escape. We must kill it here and now, or do our best to do so. It has been a parasite on the Earth for far too long already.”


Twilight nodded. “Quickshot’s Theory. Every battle after the first is exponentially more risky. The enemy knows you, the enemy can manage your knowledge of them, and most importantly, chance. Every engagement is a recipe for disaster, so you strike once and you strike as hard as possible and you minimize both contact and risk.”


“Exactly. We must silence the Hideous Strength before its shadow encompasses the world. And you will help me do this, Twilight Sparkle. Checkmate.”


“But… but how?”


And Celestia--beautiful, proud, holy--smiled down at her as she gingerly knocked Twilight’s king over. “If I am under blockade, than you are going to be my blockade runner, my faithful student.” She leaned in and Twilight felt a sudden electric thrill in the air. “You are going to make some house calls. And together? Why, Twilight, we’re going to make a metaphorical bomb and shove it down the throat of Death.”