From light, Radiant Hope entered into darkness. After teleporting down from the exhibit, she had reappeared in the main hall, with its gleaming, lucent brightness. She had then taken the stairs down and found her way toward the restricted portion of the ship. Hope had decided not to use her teleportation spell any further, both to save the vital energy she would need and to give Starlight and Stirring more time to get everypony off the ship. So, she made the long trek entirely by hoof.
And, at each level, there was a little less light. First came the long corridors and winding staircases that made up the hotel area. When Hope had begun, there were still ponies in those rooms, albeit asleep. But Starlight must have come through while she was making her way down a staircase, because suddenly all the rooms were left wide-open and empty.
Hope had a pretty good idea of how Starlight had achieved that. It was fortunate that she had just barely missed it, or else she would have lost her cutie mark, too. And this was the moment in all of Hope’s life that she needed her cutie mark the most.
Now, the corridors and the stairways were deserted. The lobbies, scattered here and there, remained well-lit, but the corridors themselves were less so. Walking the distance in the gradually decreasing light, Hope was surrounded by silence. Other than her own footsteps and her own breathing — which was, Hope observed, becoming noticeably heavier — the only sounds came from the slight creaking of the wood as the ship floated upon its watery rest. Here, Hope could easily believe all the tall tales of the ghosts that filled the brochures in the lobbies. The fur on the back of her neck was standing on end.
Perhaps, Hope thought for a fleeing moment, there are worse things on this ship than the Umbrum.
Finally, she came to a large metal door which some employee or other must have left open in the bid to evacuate. Above the door was a sign that said, “Restricted access.” This was the way.
As Hope entered, there seemed to be only darkness in front of her. There was light still, but it was all the light from the corridor that she had just left. And it was not much. With every step she took, it seemed to decrease exponentially. It would not be long before Hope would be in total darkness.
There was a sound of dripping coming from somewhere. Hope had no hope of telling where it was. She speculated that she was on a catwalk of some kind, but it was impossible to be sure. The darkness was closing in, and she had just enough light left to make out the next few steps.
And then, darkness was complete. Radiant Hope knew that, from here on out, there was no more light. As much as she hated to burn up the energy, the light would have to come from her alone. She would have to use her horn which, at least, would require only a small energy output.
With her own light to guide her, Hope continued onward. Her steps, however, became closer together and less certain. Out of the corners of her eyes, the darkness seemed to take palpable form. She turned her head swiftly several times, expecting the Umbrum, or something else. Each time, the darkness retreated before the blue light, revealing nothing but old pipes and bolts.
Hope reflected that a rich, deep blue did not make for the best color of magic in such situations. For, wherever she pointed it, it bathed everything in that direction in an ethereal, mist-like glow, the kind of glow which made even the most mundane things seem spectral and ominous The type of glow one would expect to see just before the manifestation of an apparition.
The pathways, the suffocating narrow hallways, led downward. Ever downward. Occasionally, there were some stairs. Not that many, certainly not enough to satisfy a demanding Umbric resident, but enough to pose a hazard. Hope had nearly lost her footing several times when the floor dropped out from under her, and only managed to avoid serious injury by regaining herself at the last possible moment.
Other than these and the occasional ridges that signified a new hatchway was being entered, the pathways were straight, even, and down. Hope stopped for a moment and tried to listen. She believed she was below the waterline, but she really could not be sure. She could no longer hear the sound of water lapping against the hull. It was like being sealed in shut.
Hope felt that, Umbrum or no, she could die down here and nopony would ever find her.
“Well, Sombra, at least I still have you,” Hope said as she touched the pouch by her shoulder and the horn within it. “Let’s get this over with. Together.”
She half-expected a response, the sound of Sombra’s voice in the air or the image of him reflected in some discarded sheet metal. But nothing came. Hope had barely even been able to feel the pulse of his dark energy since setting hoof on the ship. Now, she could not feel it at all.
Once again, even he had abandoned her. As the spaces she traveled became more and more constricted, Radiant Hope understood that she was now truly alone.
Finally, however, this claustrophobic pathway opened up onto a large, incredible space. It was so unexpected that, behind and beneath all these narrow confines, such a space still existed. It even made Hope gasp in surprise and awe. Hope stopped for a moment as her eyes tried to take everything in. She knew she should keep moving, but even now, she was still wowed by the grandeur of it all.
And this room had grandeur. It reminded Hope of the main hall far above. Or maybe a dark parody of that hall. Once, it had surely been the main hall’s equal, if not its better. The room was two stories, and the one Hope was on was the second, which consisted mostly of wide corridors and balconies arranged in a square formation beneath sweeping colonnades, providing an excellent view of the lower level below.
The lower level itself was accessed by means of a magnificent staircase, the largest and most finely-wrought Hope had seen in any part of the ship. She was standing before it now. There were two sets of stairs and a wide platform mid-way down separating them from each other. There was enough space for maybe ten ponies to walk down side by side. And the wood, like all the rest a gorgeous mahogany, was carved into the most wondrous shapes; charming flowers and long-lobed leaves wrapped themselves around the bodies of proud animals, none of which seemed to find such entangling objectionable. A kind of exquisite harmony governed the whole, which was remarkable to see. It was truly beautiful
Or, it would have been beautiful, if it all did not seem so ominous in the blue light. The leaves and flowers did not like the pleasing plants one finds in a garden, but the mysterious produce of some alien world. The animals, no longer serene, seemed to dance warlike in the blue haze, twisting and writhing to break free of their leafy snares. There was a fierceness to the whole, a sense of struggle and strife quite inimical to their carvers’ original purpose. Hope averted her eyes. There was no longer any harmony to be found here.
Finally, on the lower level was a pool. A massive square pool, paneled. Its length and width took up a full third of the lower level’s area. And it was deep. It must have gone down for at least three or four more stories. It had been painted a pearly white and, even after many years of disuse, the paint was still somewhat lucent, giving Hope a sense of how the whole pool must have shimmered and shined in it prime, when it had been illuminated by chandelier above. What a sight it must have been in the days when it was filled to the brim with water, sloshing this way and that during the turbulent ocean crossings.
But the pool was empty now, drained entirely of water save for the tiniest layer of moisture at the very bottom. And the bottom was sagging down, too. It was as though the slightest touch would cause the whole of it to give out and come crashing down into the unknown depths which must surely lay beneath.
Around the pool was marble tile that had surely once glistened as brightly as the woods and bronzes in the main hall, but which had now become so covered with soot as to have no gleam at all. At the far end of the lower level were the changing rooms. Or the broken remnants of changing rooms. These were too much in the distance for Hope to make much of them out, but what she saw of them, of the absent doors and faded walls, was enough to send a chill down her spine.
It was magnificent. There was no possible argument there. But it was obvious that nopony had come down here in a very long time. Everywhere Hope turned, there was dirt, dust, and debris. Nothing shined. Hope’s light barely reflected off of anything. And where it did, it only revealed more scars of abandonment. The old chandelier and the lamps which dotted the walls and banisters could provide no light even if called up. Not only was the floor of the pool on the verge of collapse, but all four walls seemed ready to cave in upon themselves at a moment’s notice. Hope was not so sure that the walkways of the upper floor had been sound enough to support her weight for very long. And all the wood carvings, worn away with age, seemed more like half-living phantoms than the majestic creatures they had once been. The glory was long gone. All that remained was a kind of reminder of what once had been. In short, a ruin.
Except it was not wholly like looking at a ruin. Hope had seen ruins before. Some pile of stones or some half-collapsed tower might make a pleasant spot for an afternoon lunch. Most ponies could look at them, sit on them, explore them all day and never consider the many lives and many deaths that had gone on inside them. They were too worn away for that. At best they conjured up romantic notions of knights, giants, and dragons, as they had for Hope when she was younger.
Looking at this room was not like that. For all of its ruinous quality, the room also seemed to be preserved in some way, as though a pony could expect to see all the old guests come out of the dressing rooms and dive straight into the pool. Years of neglect had not shaken the feeling that this was a space to be occupied and an occupied space. It was at once ravaged by time and frozen in time, as though everypony had just stepped out and would be back shortly.
And yet, the ample evidence of disrepair and decay made it abundantly clear that nopony would be coming back. There was nopony left to come back. The room would be left waiting like this forever, its faded grandeur a testament not to the ponies who had constructed it or who had used it, but to a very special, bleak kind of loneliness, the loneliness of the hopelessly abandoned.
It was a loneliness Hope knew well. Maybe it was this that made not only the neck-hair but the hair on every inch of her body stand on end.
“Oh, this is such a ghastly place!” came a small voice behind her.
Hope let out a scream and jolted herself around, nearly sending herself for a tumble down the staircase. Her scream was met by another, louder and more blood-curdling. Hope saw that, directly behind where she had been standing, there was a figure, huddling down, bathed in an eerie purple light. She tried to steady herself, even as her whole body shook. She did not know what the dark mass was, but as she slowly approached, she could feel the room giving off a palpable aura of dread.
She shined her light in the direction of the mysterious form.
“Oh, please don’t startle me like that, dear girl,” it said.
Hope was still uncertain, but she began to feel relief. As she got closer, leaning in just enough that, by the two lights together, she could just make out Dr. Fie.
“What are you doing here, doctor?” she said as she helped him to his hooves. Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“I came after you,” Dr. Fie said, anxiously rubbing his hooves together. “Though I suppose if I knew where you’d end up, I might have had second thoughts. This is supposed to be the most haunted place on this entire Celestia-forsaken barge.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s amazing what you can learn from perusing a pamphlet while trying to convince the night clerk that you’re an important government functionary dealing with a deadly mass threat.”
“Okay, doctor,” Hope said. “But what I meant before was, why did you come after me?”
“Give me a moment, dear child,” Dr. Fie said as he closed his eyes and put a hoof to his chest. “I need to collect myself. This place taxes the nerves of even the most stout-hearted of ponies. Those of us who would not think of flinching at mortal danger, who would look it in the face and, with a gleam in our eye, let out a hearty laugh, can still be shaken when it comes to facing things unseen and unseeable. When the supernatural comes into play, it changes the equation for even the most fearless of ponies.”
“Tell me about it,” Hope said, looking around. “I’ve always been afraid of ghosts.”
“Seriously, dear girl?” Dr. Fie said in disbelief.
“What?” Hope responded, indignant despite herself. “You just said that you were afraid.”
“I said no such thing! But it can only be expected that a pony such as I, who am used to facing dangers of a more this-worldly nature, should feel some unease when upon the threshold of the next. But you, you’ve stood alongside Sombra. You’ve lived with the Umbrum. No mere ghost should worry you!”
Hope eyed the rest of the room nervously. “What can I say? I’ve never been comfortable with death.”
“No pony ever is, Hope. No pony ever is.”
“But Dr. Fie, why are you here now? Didn’t you do everything I asked?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then you shouldn’t be here. The Umbrum are waiting for me not too far up ahead.”
“Down below, actually.”
“What?”
Dr. Fie pointed his hoof at the swimming pool. “The boiler room is directly below the pool. That’s why the pool sags so much. The boilers originally held it up, but they took them out when they docked the ship at Las Pegasus. And the pool has been one stage away from collapse ever since. It is truly astounding what you can learn from a pamphlet these days. I would not be surprised if they replaced books completely soon. Someday in the near future, Hope, we shall have nothing but pamphlet libraries.”
“Uh-huh,” Hope responded.
Then, Dr. Fie let out a squeak of fear and, instinctively, latched onto Hope’s shoulders. He shivered behind her, trying to make himself look small.
“What are you doing?” Hope asked, more alarmed for what Dr. Fie might have seen than upset by his behavior.
“Oh, excuse me, dear girl,” Dr. Fie said, letting go of her and standing up straight again. “I could have sworn I saw an apparition taking shape in one of the dressing rooms just now. It’s supposed to be a portal to the other side, you know.”
“The other side of what?”
“Don’t be simple, girl. The other side. The great unknown. ‘That undiscovered country from whose bourn no pony returns.’ The afterlife.”
“Oh.”
Dr. Fie peered nervously over Hope’s shoulder. “Well, it seems to have gone now. Must have had some other place to be. Purgatory is probably quite lovely this time of year.”
Hope looked at the changing rooms. She saw no apparitions. But if there were ever a place for them to appear....
“I think I’ll be grateful when I finally reach the Umbrum,” she said.
“So,” Dr. Fie said, his voice now incredibly solemn, “you say you don’t like death. And yet you’re still just going to charge straight into it.”
“Oh, doctor!” Hope said. “Did you come all this way just to try and talk me out of facing the Umbrum again?”
“Assuredly not! What I came down here to do was talk you out of throwing away your life.”
Hope shook her head. She couldn’t help pitying Dr. Fie. “I’ve made my mind up. You know that. You know you can’t change it.”
“But what I don’t know is why!” Dr. Fie said, his voice rising to a high pitch that echoed through the vast emptiness of the pool room. “Why do you have to do this? You have your whole life ahead of you!”
“My life is behind me,” Hope said. “I’ve already lived a thousand years. I don’t think I’m going to live another thousand.”
“So what? What does it matter, dear girl? You barely aged those thousand years. You have a long, natural lifespan to look forward to.”
“After a thousand years, it doesn’t seem so long.”
“But it’s long enough. You told your friend out there that he should live with whatever time he has left. Dear child, I’m telling you that you should do the same!”
Hope shook her head again, more vigorously this time. “It’s different with me.”
Dr. Fie grabbed her by the shoulders. “Different? Different how? You mean, because of everything you did? I told you, Hope, hang everything you did! It doesn’t matter anymore! You can’t change it and you can’t fix it. So how can you throw your life away over it? You only have now, Hope. You can only make the right decisions now and you can only be the pony you want to be in the present. Don’t throw that opportunity away.”
“That pony died a thousand years ago,” Hope answered. “I’m just a ghost. I’m as much a ghost as any spirit that haunts these halls.”
Dr. Fie’s face became increasingly contorted with worry and sorrow. “No, you are not, Hope! You are not a ghost! You are a being of light! You are light! I know you don’t see it in yourself, but I see it in you! Please, Hope! This world has too little light. It doesn’t need to have less.”
Hope’s brows rose. “Light? All I feel inside is darkness.”
Dr. Fie shook his head feverishly. “Do you think that they’re ever separate in this life? I know there’s darkness inside of you. There’s darkness inside of me, too. More than my fair share, probably. There’s darkness inside all of us. But you have what I don’t have. You have the light that can transform that darkness. You did that for Sombra—”
“I failed to do that for Sombra.”
“You didn’t fail. He failed you. I don’t know why he did, but you did all you could. And there’s still so much you can do. If not for Sombra, then for other ponies. For me....”
Hope pulled away from Dr. Fie’s hooves. “Doctor, this is the only thing I can do. Even if I have any light left in me, what am I supposed to do? I’ve lost my home, I’ve lost my family, I’ve lost Sombra, and I’m going to lose Starlight and lose you too. So, what’s it matter?”
“Lose me? You won’t lose me,” Dr. Fie said. “I’d never desert you!”
Hope gave him a look that was kind, gentle, and yet asked, ‘Oh, really?’
“You forget how well I know you, doctor,” she said.
“Fine, but if you won’t believe me, then Starlight—”
“Before I came down here, the last thing Starlight said to me was that she had just been using me and was glad that I was going to die. She said she didn’t care about me now that I had finished being useful to her.”
“Starlight’s under a lot of strain, dear girl. You can’t go by what she said in the heat of the moment.”
“But she was right. All my life, everypony I’ve cared about has never really cared about me. Sombra was the only one, maybe, and even he just used me in the end.”
Dr. Fie spoke with uncharacteristic hesitancy, “Hope, I know I’ve used you in the past—”
Hope tried to sound reassuring. “I’m not upset about that, doctor, I’m really not. It was fun. But we both know your only interest in me is in what I can do for you. I accept that that is just who you are. You don’t have friends. You just take advantage of ponies.”
Dr. Fie looked down at the pool. He shook a little, rubbing his hooves together. Not anxiously, but very slowly. It was evidence of an emotion Hope had never seen in him before; shame.
Hope caressed his face with her hoof. She smiled at him. “Please, doctor, cheer up. I can’t stand to see you like this. Please, just leave the Umbrum to me and get yourself to safety. Then you can go back to Seaddle. Go back to your warm study, to your glorious views of the sun and moon, to your birdwatching, and to your large comfortable armchair. You can go back to your vintage wine and your imported chocolates. And you can have things easy again. It will be just like you never left. It will be exactly the same.”
“No, it won’t!” Dr. Fie boomed. “Don’t you see, Hope? Nothing will be the same without you! None of that, none of that is worth anything without you! I used to think that was all that mattered in life. The finer things, and getting as much of them as possible. But they’re nothing without someone there to share them with.”
“You don’t share them with me. You make me eat the chocolates you bought at the corner store.”
“Don’t twist my words, girl! You know what I mean! I was so lonely and pitiful before you arrived. And the worst thing was that I didn’t even realize how pitiful I truly was. But now I do, and I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t have anyone else to share things with. I never have and I never will!”
“You’ll find somepony else.”
“Not like you, Hope,” Dr. Fie said. His whole body was shaking now. He tried to steady himself, but to no avail. “Not like you. Never like you. Nopony will ever have your light. I don’t care if Twilight Sparkle herself decides to abdicate and become my secretary, she won’t be you.”
Finally, steadying himself, he said, much more quietly, much more softly. “Hope, it’s probably no surprise to you that I never had children. But, knowing you, even for so brief a span, I feel like…. I know about what you’ve done. You know I do. But do you know what I feel when I look at you? I feel pride for the pony that you are. Not the pony who masterminded the Siege, not the pony who wanted to release those foul creatures down there, but the pony you are today. Looking at you, I feel like I know what it must be like to have a daughter.”
Hope felt tears starting to trickle down her muzzle. She quickly wiped them away. “Please, doctor, let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”
Hope looked at Dr. Fie. Something was strange about him, something was different. He was acting as he never had before, not even in deepest fear for his life. For the first time that she had ever know, Dr. Fiddly Fie was crying.
“You don’t believe me!” he sobbed.
“Doctor….”
“No, you don’t believe me!”
“It doesn’t matter. I appreciate what you’re trying to do.”
“But you don’t believe me! Just say it!”
“Doctor, just calm down. You’re not yourself.”
Dr. Fie refused to calm down. His sobbing only became worse. And then, Dr. Fie looked Radiant Hope straight in the eye, blue-grey eye meeting blue eye.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Hope was taken by surprise. The apology sounded sincere. And apologizing sincerely was one thing which she was certain Dr. Fiddly Fie would never do.
“Sorry? For what?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for every lie I’ve ever told. I’m sorry for everypony I’ve ever taken advantage of, and there is no shortage of those. I’m sorry for every act of cowardice and every misdeed. For the first time in my whole wretched life, I’m sorry for all of it. I’m sorry for every time I lied to you, dear girl. I’m sorry for every time I took advantage of you, Hope, every time I acted like you were just a prop to be used and not a pony who’s been through Tartarus. I’m sorry because it means that I’m being completely sincere with somepony for the first time in my whole life and you don’t believe me now! No matter what I say, no matter how true it is, you will never believe a word of it. It's my fault and I'm sorry, because now you’ll never believe me when I tell you this; I love you, dear girl.”
Hope and Dr. Fie stood there, in the dim glow of blue and purple, in absolute silence. Hope felt a few tears gliding down the contours of her face. Dr. Fie, for his part, had never stopped crying.
Hope leaned in and kissed the doctor on the cheek.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I’ve spent so much of my life, over a thousand years, feeling sorry for myself because I never had a real family. And I’m just realizing, now too late, that I have.”
An enormous smile broke over Dr. Fie’s pain-wizened features. “Does that mean you’re not going to go through with this suicide mission, dear girl?”
“I have to,” Hope said, her voice stern and determined. “It’s the only way.”
“But maybe there’s another way,” Dr. Fie said hysterically, reaching for the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’ve got the spell right here! Maybe together, we could figure out a way to use it from a distance, so that nopony gets hurt!”
“That’s not going to work,” Hope said sadly. “I memorized the spell thoroughly. It requires that the mage be directly at the center of the blast. It’s just like you always say, doctor, ‘No action at a distance.’”
“I wish I had never even heard that accursed phrase,” Dr. Fie said. “But, Hope, you can’t do this. You said you’d never add to that total of yours. That 1,036….”
“I’m not.”
“But you’re willing to blow up the Umbrum? I know that they’re fiends and they deserve it, but can you really do that? Will the light inside of you really let you do that?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Dr. Fie was pleading now. “But you’ve come so far! That light that’s inside of you, it could have been snuffed out at the Siege. But it wasn’t. It’s because of who you are. You’re a healer, Hope! That was what you were born for. Not to be a princess or an empress, not a monster or a slayer of monsters. You are a healer! And a healer is sworn to do no harm! I don’t want you to have to break that vow.”
“Some things are worth breaking your vows for,” Hope said calmly. “If it means protecting ponies, then I will have to face the Umbrum. I have to stop them, whatever it takes.”
“Why, Hope? Why? Why not let the princesses do it? Why not let Twilight and her friends do it? They’ll all probably be here any minute!”
“The Umbrum will have their guard up against the princesses. They won’t have their guard up around me.”
Dr. Fie looked like he was about to collapse from emotion. “But you could do so much good for pony-kind.”
“I know,” Hope answered. “And I choose to do it here. All that I could do doesn’t mean anything if I don’t make this right. Otherwise, I’ll just go on, hurting from the same wounds, hurting more ponies than I help. But I can change it all tonight.”
“But what about your light, Hope> Hope, you’re light!”
Hope took a good long look at Dr. Fie as she gathered her words in her mind. “Maybe I have light. Maybe I am light. But like you yourself said, there’s also darkness. And I have to face my darkness. I have to overcome it. That’s more important than just going on with the kind of life I’ve been living.”
Dr. Fie’s sad eyes said it all. He knew he could never convince her to change her mind. He knew she was going to do this no matter what he said. And he knew too that he wasn’t ready to give up, that he wanted to fight on, to argue until the end of the universe to keep her from going down there. But he also knew that he could only do those things if he could find the words to keep going.
And, for once in his life, Dr. Fiddly Fie was completely out of words.
“Goodbye, doctor, and thank you for everything,” Radiant Hope said. “Please, try to find some sort of peace in your life. Wherever I am, that much will at least make me happy.”
Dr. Fie watched her go, helplessly. He tried to speak. He could only say one word, “Hope….”
Over and over again, as she left, he said, “Hope….” Low, very low, but he was sure she heard.
It did not matter, because she was soon gone, having disappeared down another dark and dreary passageway.
Dr. Fie looked up to the ceiling, trying to peer through it to the heavens above. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. This has left me without hope, utterly without hope. Whatever am I to do now?”
He looked down to the pool. Then he looked from side to side. No ghosts, though they no longer seemed to hold the power over his imagination that they had until now. He stepped to the edge of the pool, near a rickety old ladder, and looked down at the bottom, several stories below. It was almost completely submerged in darkness, but the film of water was barely visible, reflecting ever-so-slightly the purple light of his horn.
“Oh, well, I guess there’s nothing for it but this,” Dr. Fie said.
A large crowd stood on the pier, forming a rather irregular semi-circle. Two ponies stood in the middle of the semi-circle and above them, like stars in the sky, floated a massive collection of cutie marks.
“You know, you’re going to have to give those back,” Stirring Words said.
“I know,” Starlight Glimmer responded. “I just wanted to take a moment to admire my handiwork.”
With a nod, Starlight released all the cutie marks and they returned to their respective ponies. Most of the ponies, however, continued to remain in a stupor.
“What did I tell you?” Starlight said. “Tourists!”
Stirring nodded. Hesitantly, he approached Starlight. Together, they leaned with their backs against the railings on the pier.
“Do you think Hope will be able to stop the Umbrum?” Stirring asked.
“We can only wait and see,” Starlight responded, her face losing its smug grin. “We can only hope for Hope.”
“I didn’t see the doctor come down,” Stirring said. “He said he was going to come down right after he talked to you.”
“Oh, he’s out there somewhere,” Starlight said. “He would never stay on that floating deathtrap a moment longer than he had to. Saving his own life has always been his first priority.”
Stirring looked down at his hooves. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. It was all in the heat of the moment.”
“It’s all forgiven,” Starlight responded. “We all say things we come to regret.”
“I shouldn’t have said those things to you,” Stirring said. “I just… for a while, I just thought that you had lost it completely. I’m sorry about that. You came through in the end. You got all those ponies off this boat.”
“I did do quite nicely, didn’t I?” Starlight said. The smug smile returned.
“I guess what I’m saying is, can we forget it ever happened and just move on?”
“Of course, Stirring,” Starlight said, her smile turning genuinely warm. “What would I do without my first lieutenant?”
Stirring smiled back. “I’m so glad we—”
Then he noticed something under Starlight’s right foreleg. “What’s that?” he asked.
Starlight realized that her posture had given her away. “Oh, that? It’s nothing,” she said as she tried to turn her body to hide it.
Stirring trotted over to Starlight’s other side, to where he could see the thing more clearly. It was a scroll.
“That’s the spell, isn’t it?” Stirring said, his voice growing cold.
“Nothing to worry about, Stirring,” Starlight responded. “This is Hope’s spell. I guess I was still carrying it around without realizing it.”
“No, it’s not,” Stirring said. “I saw you put that spell down inside. I’m pretty sure you didn’t pick it back up. That’s a different spell.”
“Don’t be silly!”
“That’s the spell!”
“Okay, maybe it is,” Starlight said, showing no signs of losing her cool. “I just happened to run across it while we were leaving and I grabbed it. That’s all.”
Stirring eyed her suspiciously. “We didn’t just leave. I was ready to leave. But you stayed behind, doing Celestia-knows-what. You were still looking for the spell, weren’t you?”
Starlight grinned in amusement. “I can honestly say, Stirring, that I wasn’t looking for it. At least not directly.”
“I am sick of these lies!” Stirring complained.
The amusement disappeared from Starlight’s face. All her smugness was gone. In its place was genuine worry.
“Stirring, this isn’t what you think!” Starlight said. “Don’t get angry about this!”
“Don’t get angry about what?” Stirring asked, increasingly angry. “Don’t get angry about the fact that you continued to look for the spell even after I told you how you were letting your vendetta cloud your judgment? How, even when the lives of innocent ponies were at stake, you still put that spell and your revenge against Twilight Sparkle first? Is that what I shouldn’t be angry about?”
“Stirring, please let me explain myself,” Starlight said. “It wasn’t like that at all!”
Stirring shook his head and waved his hoof dismissively. “You know what, I don’t care. I don’t care what you do with that spell. Use it against Twilight Sparkle or don’t. I don’t care. I’m done caring.”
“Stirring, listen!”
“No, not anymore. I will never again believe a single one of your lies. I’m through. I’m through with you, Starlight. I only wanted to help other ponies discover the joys of Equality. I’m not here to wage war on Twilight Sparkle. And, if that’s all you want to do, I’m not here for you.”
Starlight reached out a hoof to stop Stirring, but he knocked it away.
“I’m getting out of here, Starlight,” he said. “Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can still get that job at the Daily North Equestria. Because I’m pretty sure the Seaddle Daily Stablegraph will never take me back after what I did for you! You know, there’s a pony in there who’s giving up her life for you. Do you even care about that, Starlight?”
“Of course, I—”
“You’ve sacrificed everypony and everything just to get your revenge. Well, you won’t sacrifice me. No wonder all your friends leave you. With the way you are, that’s how it’s always going to be.”
“Stirring!” Starlight Glimmer called out. But it was too late. Stirring Words was walking away.
“Stirring, come back! Stirring, halt!” It was no use. Stirring just kept going faster each time his name was called.
“I order you to halt!” He did not halt. He just kept going.
“Fine!” Starlight bellowed. “You were always a poor lieutenant, anyway! Only a pony with an incredibly small brain would turn his back on me!”
Insults did not work either. Starlight knew there was one last weapon in her arsenal. One thing which should do the trick if anything could. Because however devoted an Equalist as Stirring might be, there was still a part of him which remained proud of his cutie-mark granted aptitude. It was the part he never wanted to face up to having. It was the part Starlight would target.
“No wonder you couldn’t write without my help!”
This would have done it if it could be done. It should have done it. But it didn’t. Nothing stopped Stirring Words. The last Starlight saw of him was when he turned around a bend in the street. He was gone. Another friend lost.
“This always happens,” Starlight muttered. “This always happens to me.”
Starlight’s horn began to glow. The scroll worked itself free from her foreleg and floated in front of her. Her mouth was half-way between a smile and a sneer.
“Oh, what you’ve cost me....” she said. “My last friend has left me because of you. Still, I can’t blame you too much. I let Stirring have too much individuality. I should have taken him up on his offer to have his cutie mark voluntarily re-removed. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been so free-thinking. But you’re going to help me fix everything. You’re going to help me make sure Twilight Sparkle feels the same pain I feel.”
Starlight kissed the unfurled scroll. As she did so, she got a clearer eye of its contents.
“Hmm,” she said. “This spell isn’t going to work in its current form. It’s going to need a bit of rewriting first.”
Starlight felt a chill in the night air. A cold wind whipped strands of her well-styled mane into her face. She could not help but shiver.
But Starlight shook it off. She rolled up the scroll and returned it to its place between her foreleg and her chest.
“Speaking of Twilight, she should be here any moment,” she said. “I’m not ready to spring this on her just yet. I’ll need a little more time.”
As quickly as she could, Starlight pushed her way through the crowded semi-circle and onto the streets beyond. Taking one final look back at the ship, Starlight let out a sigh.
“I’m sorry, Hope,” she whispered.
Would Radiant Hope have to face the Umbrum all alone?
Read on.