“Alright, two ciders, on the rocks,” said Fallen Fortune as he lowered the large, frothy tankards onto the table.
The inn was nearly deserted, which was not surprising, given that dawn was only now breaking out from behind the horizon. The innkeeper had just begun to ready his wares for the day’s business when Hope and Fortune had walked in.
When Fortune suggested a drink, he had meant immediately. But Hope had refused to leave her charge’s bedside until morning’s light, when one of the mayor’s assistants arrived to relieve her. That did little to spark conversation. The two of them had passed most of the night in silence. Which was probably for the best, as each needed a few hours of quiet to process what they had just been through.
But now, here they were, in more encouraging surroundings. The innkeeper had disappeared into his storeroom, leaving Radiant Hope and Fallen Fortune alone.
Hope felt a certain unease. She was now alone with the one pony who had consistently demonstrated a grudge toward her since she had arrived in Whinnysburg.
But Fortune seemed nothing but friendly. “Would you believe he demanded three bits for each cider?" he said as he joined her at the table. "I told him that this particular vintage was only worth one at most. Then he raised the price to five bits. So, I’m out ten bits. But what can you do? Coin is for spending, after all.”
Hope looked at the cider in front of her. Leaning in, she sniffed it cautiously. Then she gave Fortune a knowing look.
“Are you just doing this to get me drunk?” she asked.
Fortune shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying. But if you don’t want it, that means more for me.”
Hope nudged the tankard in Fortune’s direction. He happily took a swig of it.
“What were you even doing there tonight?” Hope asked.
“I was going to kill you,” Fortune responded nonchalantly.
Hope was aghast. “You were going to… kill me?”
"Don't worry," Fortune said. "I'm over it now."
“I never had to worry about anypony trying to kill me before,” Hope said. “And now I’ve survived two attempts on my life in one night!”
“Two attempts at the exact same moment,” Fortune added.
Hope considered. “You know, it’s actually kind of exhilarating.”
“Come to think of it, it kind of is,” Fortune said. “I don’t remember the last time I’ve felt so alive! Either escaping death does that for you, or this stuff is really fast-acting.”
He took another swig of cider.
“But why would you want to kill me?” Hope asked. “I’ve never done anything to you!”
Fortune slammed the tankard onto the table. “Never done anything to me? Never done anything to me? How about ruining my life? Things were good for me before you came along! Then you gallop in like the white knight and everypony starts going to you for healing! My business goes to tatters, as does my reputation in this community! And you’ve never done anything to me?”
“I was just trying to help,” Hope said. “All I wanted to do was cure ponies. Maybe if you focused on that too instead of coming up with all your fake potions, ponies would respect you more.”
“Fake is such a loaded word. Can’t we just call them deceptively inauthentic?”
Hope rolled her eyes. “Fine. If you would focus on real medicine and not on your ‘deceptively inauthentic’ potions, you would have a better reputation and better business. It was sort of your own fault that you lost everypony's trust. If it hadn’t been me, some other healer would have come along eventually.”
Hope was prepared for an argument. It surprised her, then, when Fortune did not offer one. Instead, he was silent.
After a moment, he nodded his head. “I suppose you’re right. You know, when I came to this town, I did want to heal ponies. You may find that hard to believe, but I really did.”
“What happened?”
“Well, you know how the story goes. I was a hot-shot young alchemist, fresh from my studies with the great masters. I was considered something of a prodigy. Why, my last master even said that I was already one of the greatest alchemists he had ever met. Of course, during that very conversation, he also begged me to protect him from his tea-pot, which he was convinced was plotting revenge because he had written it out of his will, so….”
To Hope’s blank look, Fortune said, “As part of his alchemical work, he had been working with and ingesting mercury for ten years. I think it finally caught up with him.”
“Oh, that's so sad.”
“I’ll say! I’ll tell you how bad it got. He actually forgot to write that teapot out of his will or to write me in. I was the one who cared for him in his declining years, but that ceramic crook got everything!”
“I’m sorry to hear that….” Hope said, not sure what else to say. After a few moments, she blurted out, “I used to talk to fairies!”
Fortune just stared at her.
“I used to talk to fairies that only I could see,” Hope said, “so treating a teapot like it’s a living thing doesn’t seem so…. Never mind….”
“As I was saying,” Fortune continued. “I was young and cocky, so of course I believed all that high praise my master bestowed upon me in his mercury-induced ranting. So I set out to make a life for myself as a master alchemist…. But seriously, fairies?”
“Fairies, pixies, sprites, the odd puca or two, but those obviously don’t come out too often.”
“Obviously….” Fortune said.
“But what happened?” Hope said. “If you came to town to do good, how did you become….”
“A charlatan?”
Hope gave a cautious smile. “Yeah, that.”
Fortune sighed. “I quickly learned that being one of the world’s greatest alchemists didn’t mean a whole lot. All those years of study, of grappling with the theory behind it, all completely useless when curing real ailments. On most occasions, my cures simply didn’t work. Every so often, though, they made the recipient even more ill. All the opinions and the formulas of those learned alchemists, it turns out, weren’t worth the paper they were written on. I was the town laughing-stock before I knew it.”
“I’m sorry that you had to go through that. It must have been hard for you.”
“It was. Alchemy was, and still is, my only talent. I have never been particularly good at anything else. Here, look at this.”
Fortune lifted up his robe and pointed to his flank.
“Yeah, that would only work if I had gotten drunk,” Hope said.
“No, not my flank! My cutie mark! Look at it!”
Hope glanced at Fallen Fortune’s cutie mark. It was a large heap of golden coins.
“I thought this was for alchemy,” he said. “I thought it meant I would complete the great work of the alchemists, that I would be the one to turn base metals into gold. So, with my reputation shot, I retired to the seclusion of my study, and spent most of ten years trying to find that great secret that has so eluded all alchemists for centuries; the philosopher’s stone.”
“Philosopher’s stone?” Hope asked. During her brief studies with the Royal Sisters, she had come across mention of the philosopher’s stone, but had never found out much about it. Had she stayed, perhaps the Princesses would have explained more about it.
But Radiant Hope currently did not have much trust in the Princesses’ range of knowledge.
Fortune’s eyes lit up, becoming greedy, even ravenous. “Just think of it! Eternal life, endless wealth, the ability of a pegasus or earth pony to wield magic like a unicorn, all from one little red stone!”
But, suddenly, he became more reserved. Fortune glanced at Hope’s own cutie mark. “But then, I suspect you already know all about that, don’t you?”
Something about how he said it made Hope uneasy.
Fortune leaned forward, invading Hope’s personal space. “But I must be boring you. Tell me about yourself. What is your life story? How did you get that cutie mark?”
Hope was becoming very uncomfortable. “Um… um…. But you didn’t tell me…. You went into seclusion. But you came back out. How did that happen?”
Fortune leaned back into his chair. “Ah, yes. That was the plague’s doing. As you know, the doctors were the first to go. The town became desperate for anypony who could be a healer, or at least act like one. They started coming to my house in droves and begging me to help them. Now, after all these years of derision, I was not much inclined to do anything for them. That is, until I saw how much they were willing to pay for it.”
“I see,” Hope said.
“The funny thing is, my cutie mark had told me my talent was in creating wealth,” Fortune said. “I just never expected it to be by duping other ponies out of theirs. But then, even that collapsed around me in the end. Oh, my parents must have had a taste for self-fulfilling prophecy. Why else name a foal ‘Fallen Fortune'?”
“Try growing up with a name like ‘Radiant Hope’,” Hope said. “I hate my name.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t doom you to failure, like mine does.”
“Names don’t doom us to failure. But just try living up to a name like mine. I have never felt particularly ‘radiant,’ no more so than any other crystal pony, and it has been very hard to be hopeful ever since….”
Hope broke off. She looked down, toward the table but not at it. She was becoming lost in her own head.
“Ever since the plague, you mean?” Fortune asked.
When Hope answered, her voice was small and distant. “Ever since, I betrayed him….”
Fortune’s face lit up with curiosity. “Betrayed who now?”
Hope suddenly returned to herself. With a sly smile, she said, “Shouldn’t you know already? Didn’t you say you have a magic mirror? One that shows you everything that happens in Equestria?”
Fortune shook his head. “I do have a mirror, and supposedly it’s magic, but I’ve never had much proof of that. But who is this him you speak of?”
Fortune once more leaned in close. Hope nervously pulled back.
“Come on, I told you my tragic tale,” said the alchemist. “You should tell me yours. It’s only polite.”
He had a point there. Fortune had confided in Hope. Not that it was a revelation that needed to be kept strictly secret, but it must have been hard for him to admit to it. The least she could do, Hope figured, was to respond in kind.
Hope took a deep breath and spoke. “What I told the mayor the other day was true. The Crystal Empire is gone.”
Fortune’s face filled with genuine shock. Hope could not recall seeing him so completely stunned before.
“The Crystal Empire? Gone?” he said. “When? Who? How?”
“The who is me,” Hope continued. “Me, and a friend of mine. He was my friend, though I don’t think he’d consider me much of a friend after what I did.”
“What did you do?” Fortune asked, literally on the edge of his seat. “It must have been utterly terrible for him to turn against you.”
“It was,” Hope said. “I betrayed him.”
“Ah, so this is the infamous him.”
“Infamous, yes. Or at least, that’s how future generations will remember it if I don’t fix things. You see, Sombra was a friend of mine.”
“Sombra?”
“King Sombra was what he called himself in the end, after he had killed Princess Amore and taken control of the Crystal Empire.”
Fortune’s eyes grew wider than seemed possible. “Princess Amore is dead? How?”
Hope looked down sadly. “Sombra was trying to do something with the Crystal Heart. I don’t know what. But she confronted him and he used his magic power to turn her to stone. Then, when I tried to heal her, he shattered her. I don’t even know where that power came from. He was never very good at magic, not like me.”
Fortune bit his lower lip – or what passed for a lip on a pony. Hope could tell that there was something he had to say. Yet he remained silent. She waited.
Finally, he said, “Your magic, maybe. But he might have been skilled at a very different type of magic.”
Hope tilted her head. “A different type of magic?”
Fallen Fortune quickly waved his hoof. “Just speculation, just speculation. Go on.”
“Sombra had always been alone,” Hope said. “Ever since they found him in the frozen wastes beyond the Crystal Empire. I had always been alone ever since I lost my parents. But then we found each other and we weren’t alone anymore. But then something started to happen to him.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know what it was. But every year, as the Empire began to celebrate the Crystal Faire, Sombra would get very sick. Every year he got sicker. Until, one year, I couldn’t bear to watch him suffer like that and I… I… healed him.”
Fortune's eyes were aflame with understanding. “And that is how you became a healer.”
“That is how I earned my cutie mark,” Hope said.
For a moment, Hope could trace what seemed like disappointment in Fortune’s features. Disappointment he seemed quick to hide when he noticed her noticing it.
"I see.... I see...." he said. "But do go on.... You were saying?"
“But Sombra… I don’t know….” Hope said. “One day, he just… disappeared…. We could find no trace of him. And then, he just reappeared. But he was different. He had power. He kept talking about finding his people and how we could rule the Crystal Empire together and get revenge on all the ponies that had hurt us our whole lives.”
“And you said ‘yes’?” Fortune asked.
Hope recoiled. "How... how could I?" she asked quietly.
Fortune just looked at her. His expression was somewhere between knowing and amused.
“I... I mean," Hope said, “I had just gotten into the Royal Academy. I was taking the first steps toward becoming a princess. I could have become a princess, or more than a princess, right then and there. But I didn’t want it like that!”
“It is a tempting offer,” Fortune said. “I’m not sure that there is anypony who wouldn’t consider it, even if just for a second or two.”
Hope shook her head. “I didn’t need to consider it. I knew it was wrong. I knew that Sombra was consumed by anger and bitterness, by….”
“Rage,” Fortune suggested. Then he bit his lip again.
Hope nodded. “Rage. He had such rage inside of him. I knew that. I saw it when he destroyed Princess Amore. And I ran.”
“Sensible,” responded Fallen Fortune.
Hope could not hide her disgust. “How can you say that? Don’t you see? He was so full of rage and pain that he could not think straight. He did not know what he was doing. I should have helped him. I should have stayed and helped him overcome that pain, that rage. I’m supposed to be a healer, but I never realized that he had never healed from the pain we had endured as foals. I healed, but he never did. I should have helped him heal. Instead, I ran!”
“Hope,” Fortune said, trying to be gentle. “I can see that you care deeply for this Sombra, but did you ever consider that he was more than just broken? Maybe he was… evil….”
“No!” Hope said, her voice suddenly filled with anger. “The Sombra I know is a good pony. He would never do what he did if he were in his right mind!”
“I know you want to believe that. And maybe it’s true. Maybe it isn’t. But, whatever his reasons, he made his choices. You can’t bear the blame for them, Hope.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I did next,” Hope said sharply.
Fortune sighed. “Fine, what happened next?”
“I went to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. I begged them for help, I pleaded with them to cure Sombra. And they, they….”
“I can guess what they did.”
“They banished him… for a thousand years….”
"That’s good, right?”
Hope glared at Fortune. She noticed him shiver a little.
“I mean, the Crystal Empire was freed,” he said, “and Sombra wasn’t destroyed.”
“The Crystal Empire wasn’t freed,” Hope said darkly.
“What do you mean?”
“Sombra never forgave me,” Hope said. “He never forgave me for betraying him. And just to punish me, he cast a spell. More like a curse, actually. He cursed the Crystal Empire to vanish with him, to spend a thousand years in oblivion. He did that to hurt me.”
“I take it that it worked.”
Hope shook her head swiftly. “It doesn’t matter. All the ponies of the Crystal Empire are going to endure a thousand years of suffering… because of me…. Because I was too blind to see when a friend needed help.”
Hope could tell that Fortune did not agree.
“Hope, I hate to be the one to say this, but maybe Sombra is not the friend you think he is. It is not uncommon for friends to upset each other, and then naturally one wants to get even. But this is not just getting even."
Fortune paused, but not, it seemed, to gather his thoughts. Rather, he appeared reticent to speak further. And yet, he did.
"Hope, this is an act of hate. It is an act of pure hatred. Whatever Sombra once felt for you, I think he feels quite differently now.”
“And maybe he should,” Hope responded. “I gave up on him so completely, maybe he should give up on me completely too.”
“Hope, listen to yourself! You did not give up on your friend. You tried to help him. You went to the Royal Sisters because you thought they could help.”
“Did I?”
“What do you mean?”
Hope turned her head to avoid Fallen Fortune’s eyes. Sorrow and shame competed for control of her features.
“Do you know what I felt when I saw Sombra shatter Princess Amore? It was like, all the love I had for him...."
Hope clapped her hooves together, and the sound reverberated throughout the inn.
"Gone, just like that. Just gone. Nothing left. I was empty inside, like this huge part of me had been torn out. But I didn’t feel anything for him. No pity, no compassion, no love. Nothing. He let me go. That was an act of love. But I didn’t feel anything. It was only after I had escaped the Crystal Empire that my feelings for him came back. But I didn’t feel anything when he needed me to love him the most. If you want to call what Sombra did hateful, say the same about me. Because leaving him there, that was an act of hate.”
“I don’t believe that,” Fortune said. “You felt what any pony would. You did what any pony would.”
“I should have done better,” Hope said. “He needed me to do better. He may hate me now, but I know that is because I did it to him first. For a moment, I stopped loving him. Had I just loved him when he needed it, he never would have been driven to do what he did. And if I can find him or his people, if I can make things right, I know he’ll be able to overcome his pain.”
“You do have a lot of faith in him, don’t you?” Fortune asked.
Hope nodded.
Fortune was silent, deep in thought. “I don't think you're misnamed. If anything, 'hope' isn't a strong enough word for what you have.”
Hope was rather hurt. She had thought that, after opening up like this, the least Fortune could do was focus on something other than her name. “Let's not get started on this again...."
“I wouldn't dream of it,” Fortune said. “But is there nothing else? Nothing to do with your cutie mark, perhaps?”
Hope cast a suspicious sideways glance at Fortune, whose own expression suggested a little too much interest. “What is it with you and my cutie mark?”
“You really don’t know the meaning of your own cutie mark?”
“It’s a symbol for health. What about it?”
Fallen Fortune's hearty laugh indicated that he found Hope adorably naïve. “That cutie mark isn’t just a symbol of health. It’s the symbol of the first alchemist, the only one who ever successfully created the philosopher’s stone. Surely, you must know.”
“Nope, never heard that one.”
“He walked the earth when the world was young, long before there was an Equestria. He was ancient when the Neighyptians were just taking their first steps toward civilization. And they say he was more than mortal.”
Hope was amused, but not convinced. “And you mock me for believing in fairies.”
Fortune let out an exasperated grunt. “Fine, don’t believe me. But can your healing powers be a coincidence? The stone can heal all ailments, you know."
Then his face took on a sort of frenzied glow, both ridiculous and terrifying. "Suddenly, it occurs to me.... Maybe, if we work together, we could do it. We could do what no other alchemist since the first has done. We could create the stone!”
Hope felt quite taken aback. This was not the type of uncomfortable proposition she thought she’d have to reject. “Yeah, no…. I’m no alchemist. I have no clue how to do any of that and, like you said, everypony else has failed. And I can heal ponies fine as it is.”
The refusal only seemed to double Fortune’s resolve. He leaned in, far, far too close. “But between that cutie mark and you becoming a princess–”
“Listen,” Hope said, being as firm as she could be. “Sombra assumed it was my destiny to be a princess ever since I saw it in the Crystal Heart. So did I, once. But I now know that I can never be a princess. If destiny can’t convince me otherwise, your little story certainly won’t.”
“What do you mean, you’re not going to become a princess?” Fortune asked. “Wasn’t it your dream?”
“Do you think I can really become a princess, after I’ve let so many ponies down?” Hope asked, her voice suggesting grief. “You have to be a good pony to be a princess, don’t you?”
Fallen Fortune fell back in his chair, as though all the air had gone out of him. He just sat there like that, almost dead to the world.
Until, finally, he recovered. Fortune gave Hope his best attempt at a reassuring smile. He was out of practice, but he thought that he managed it reasonably well. “Listen, Radiant Hope. I may not be a good pony, but I like to believe that they exist. And I don’t think I’ve ever met a pony as good as you. Just look at what you’ve done for this town. You kept fighting, trying to save every life, even when it seemed impossible.”
“And we saw how that turned out. I failed.”
Fortune shook his head. “You didn’t fail. Now we know what we’re up against, because of you. The lives that were lost, just like those in the Crystal Empire, are not your fault. You did the best you could. And your best is far better than that of any other pony I’ve known.”
Hope was silent for quite a while. When she spoke, she asked “Do you think Celestia and Luna are good ponies?”
“What?”
“I mean, Celestia and Luna are good ponies, aren’t they? They wouldn’t ever do anything to cause harm, would they?” Hope’s words became increasingly desperate the more she spoke.
“I don’t know. I’ve never met them. You know them better than I do.”
Hope sighed. “I thought I did. Now, I’m not so sure. Why did they let this go on? Why did they not do anything to help these ponies?”
“I suppose they either couldn’t or didn’t want to.”
Hope growled a little. “You know, maybe I don’t want to be a princess after all. If it means having a fancy title, but not being able to help ponies, I don’t want it. If it means not wanting to help ponies, I don’t want it. Why did they have to banish Sombra? Why couldn’t they save him? I’d do anything to save him! When they have so much more power than I do, why couldn’t they?”
Fallen Fortune shrugged. “I don’t know, Hope. I’m sure they have their reasons.”
“Sure they do,” Hope said quietly. “And they keep them to themselves.”
“Please don’t say things like that, Hope,” Fallen Fortune said. “I can say things like that about other ponies, since I’m already so far gone. But you, I’d hate for you to end up like I have. You still have so much light in you. I’d hate for you to lose that.”
“Light? What use is light if I can’t save the ponies I care about?” Hope said. “Didn’t you notice that… that… that monster was made up of light? He was nothing but light, and yet he was evil. He told me so himself.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“We crystal ponies think we are so special because of the light we reflect. But look at that… that thing! It didn’t just reflect light. It was light!”
“Evil often takes the form of light. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“But that magic you used to stop it. That wasn’t light, and yet it vanquished evil. It was darkness and yet it was used for….”
Memories flashed through Hope’s mind. Memories of Sombra. She could see him now, standing before her as he did in the twilight of Amore’s reign. Hope looked into his eyes. Then she thought back to the previous night and pictured the figure of Fallen Fortune standing above her. She looked into his eyes and saw the same thing.
“Your eyes… when you were using that magic….” Hope stuttered out. “Your eyes… looked just like Sombra’s. They looked like Sombra’s after he unlocked his power. Your power… is his power….”
“The power you saw, that is not my power,” Fallen Fortune said. “That is dark magic. And it is not good.”
“But, you did a good thing with it. Maybe Sombra intended to do good things with his, too.”
Fortune’s voice grew stern. “I was coming to kill you. Don’t you forget that. It was only because I was coming to kill you that I was able to use that magic.”
“But you saved me instead. Maybe we could use it to save the rest of this town.”
“Saving you was a happy accident. You won’t be doing the town any favors by turning to dark magic.”
Fallen Fortune could see in Hope’s face that she did not understand. He shook his head.
“Hope,” he said, “dark magic is evil. Do you know how I know? Because, to use it, you must feel true rage.”
“What’s wrong with that? We should be angry at what these monsters are doing to the ponies of this town.”
Fallen Fortune’s face suddenly became solemn. He looked as though he had aged by decades in an instant. The change caught Hope by surprise.
“No, Hope, this is not anger. This is rage. The same rage your Sombra felt, and maybe still feels. It nearly consumed me last night. Do you know why I didn’t kill you?”
“You were distracted by my cutie mark.”
“Yes, at first. But do you know why I didn’t kill you after?”
Hope shook her head.
Fortune lifted his. “I may be many things, Hope. I may be a charlatan and I may be conniving. And I certainly don’t care that much for other ponies. I’ve endangered them so often that I’ve become rather blasé toward their well-being. But I’ve never meant another pony harm. I’ve never actually meant to really harm another pony. Not until last night. I really wanted to harm you, and to harm you because you had done the good that I had never been able to do. That was rage, and it was very nearly that which is beyond rage, from which there is no coming back. Had I fallen into that, there would have been no hope for me.”
“Why didn’t you go through with it, if you were so rage-controlled?” There was a hint of skepticism in Hope’s voice.
“Because,” Fortune answered, “at that moment, freed temporarily from the power of rage, I felt what it was doing to me. It felt like a part of myself – like my soul, if you want to use the term – was about to be ripped from me. And that was something I could not stand to lose.”
“But….” Hope said slowly. “What about the ponies we could save?”
“No, Hope,” Fallen Fortune said. “I am done with dark magic. I want to be as far from that wretched experience as I possibly can be. It may be purely selfish, I admit, but I would not use it even to save all of Equestria. Nopony should have to give up something so precious as their very self to save another.”
“I would do that,” Hope said. “I would give up all that I have, all that I am, if it meant Sombra could be saved.”
“You should rethink that,” Fortune said. “Even gaining Sombra is not worth losing yourself. Remember that, Radiant Hope.”
The two sat in silence for what felt like ages. Finally, without a word, Radiant Hope stood up and went to her room. She did not even bother to walk up the stairs. She merely teleported, leaving Fallen Fortune to finish his two ciders, by now nearly empty, alone.
As Radiant Hope reappeared in her room, she considered what Fallen Fortune had said. Maybe he had a point.
But then again, she thought, do I even have a soul?
Would Radiant Hope take Fallen Fortune's words to heart?
Read on.