//------------------------------// // Not Light, But Darkness Visible // Story: The Light of Despair // by Gordon Pasha //------------------------------// Midnight. Wood Chip’s room was filled with light. Orbs of light floated over his bed, dashing to and fro in strange, zig-zag patterns. Their mazy movements made it seem as though there were not twenty orbs, but a thousand. It may have been the blackest darkness outside, but inside, it was practically day. “Where is she?” said one orb to another. “She will come,” said the other, the largest orb of all. “She will come.” “Perhaps she has grown wise,” said a third. “She will not come.” “Grow wise? She will not?” said the large orb. “Remember, she is a pony.” There was a hiss of laughter from the many assembled orbs. Then, they all seemed to talk at once, such that an observer could not say which was speaking when. “Perhaps she is afraid, then. Perhaps she fears for her life, and will not come.” “No, she shall come. She has not been afraid before.” “Perhaps now she finally knows she cannot defeat us.” “She has known that already. She shall come.” “We were set to drain all the energy out of so many, many more than we ever had. But she said she would come, so we abandoned them, abandoned them for one foal.” “The prize is larger.” “What do you mean?” “What our brother means is that she possesses such great power, such great life force, such great…. What do these ponies say it is?” “A soul?” “Yes. Imagine drawing that energy from her.” “But she shall die before she lets us have it.” “That is why we shall make her a deal. We shall say that we shall let them all live in exchange for her. If she lets us feed off her, than we shall drain out her energy. And then drain out the energy of all the rest.” “But we would have to lie. Our kind does not lie.” “Ah, yes. That is so. Perhaps we shall just take her energy by force, then. Her power, great for ponies, is weak and useless compared to ours. She shall not be able to stop us.” “Where is she?” “She is coming.” “She will not come.” “She shall.” “We should finish off the foal. She will not come.” “She shall.” “She should be here, then. She is not here.” “Yes, I am.” All the orbs began to flicker and whirl. There, at the door to Wood Chip’s room, was Radiant Hope. She stood in the darkness of the hovel and did not step into their light. “Where were you?” the largest orb demanded. “Where was little lost Hope?” Hope stepped forward. As she came into the light, her eyes were revealed, green eyes with red pupils. A purple mist seeped from them and floated upward toward the ceiling. The same purple mist was emanating from Hope’s horn. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I was practicing.” The orbs were all aflutter. “Look at her eyes!” “She knows the magic! I thought you said she could not use the magic!” “Only the fool alchemist could. And he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t teach her.” “It cannot be. It cannot be our–” A bubbling, sludgy beam tore across the room, into the largest orb. The orb careened around the four corners, barely managing to avoid any of the walls before coming to rest just above the floor. It smashed and crashed into the other orbs as it made its violent circuit. It looked as though Hope was playing marbles or billiards rather than battling malevolent spirits. The orbs quickly recovered. They darted all around Hope. Some of them began to assume the forms of fiery ponies. Hope was undaunted. She kept blasting and blasting. She even eschewed beams in favor of waves, incapacitating several fire-creatures at once. Radiant Hope felt she had finally lived up to part of her name. She felt the power radiating from her. She had never felt such power before. Everypony had told her that her healing power was great, but it felt like nothing compared to this. Was this how Sombra had felt when his power was unlocked? If so, how could anypony blame him for what he had done? It would be so easy to go overboard. The power felt so good…. Fallen Fortune shook his head. He opened his eyes and put his hoof to his temples. “Ooooh….” he moaned. The headache was intense. What did I just do? Fallen Fortune sat in a stupor in his chair for what felt like an eternity, unable to even think clearly. That’s it! I have to give up cider! Or at least find a less-potent variety. As he leaned back in his chair, convalescing, Fortune’s eyes stared blankly forward, toward the bookcase. Something about it seemed... wrong. Something was not right. If only Fortune could tell what it was. But he could barely even see straight. Then the mental fog began to clear. Fortune’s eyes began to focus. They focused in upon the books. But the books did not keep his attention. No, it was the large empty space where a book had once been. A very particular book. Fortune sat up straight. The book! The black book! It’s gone! Things quickly came back to Fallen Fortune. Images flew threw his mind. They were jumbled images, but even in his current mental state, he could piece together enough of them to begin to comprehend what had happened. There were two tankards on the floor. One, empty and on its side, had been Fortune’s. The other, still full and set neatly down, was Hope’s. Fortune lifted it up. He pulled back the metal lid and sniffed the contents. Water. Just water. “Hope!” he called out. “Hope, are you still here?” No answer. Fortune jumped to his hooves. He staggered toward the double-doors. He had to find out if Hope was still in the house. If she was not, he had a very bad suspicion as to what had happened and where she might be. Before he could even reach the threshold, however, Fortune fell to the ground. He had tripped. Fortune landed in front of his desk, just barely managing to avoid hitting his head against the edge. As Fortune lifted himself up, he saw it. The black book. It was on the desk. It was open. Open to the very page Fortune had read from the night he had gone to destroy Radiant Hope. It was open to the very spell. Fortune felt his heart sink. “No!” he said, trying in vain to reassure himself. “She couldn’t…. She doesn’t understand the language…. Unless….” A dark memory came upon Fallen Fortune. “I taught it to her….” He pounded his hoof on the desk. Maybe Hope isn’t lost yet. Maybe, if I can just get the mayor…. Maybe, if we can just find her…. Fortune tried to make a dash for the doors. But he fell down again, in the exact same spot. “What keeps tripping me up?” he said in frustration. Fortune looked to his legs. There was his mixing bowl, overturned. There too was the vial that Hope had put next to it the other day. And then, there were the red hoof-prints beside it, leading toward the doorway. It was not hard to figure it out. Hope, in her haste to put the book down and leave, must have knocked both the vial and the mixing bowl off of the table. Judging from the hoof-prints, she had gotten covered in the liquids as their containers fell to the floor. That’s another few months of work down the drain, Fortune thought. Why does she keep doing this to me? But self-pity would have to wait. Fortune had to hurry. Carefully picking himself up, so as to avoid the bowl and vial, Fortune once more made for the doors. The orbs darted. The orbs swarmed. Hope fired at one after another. But they were beginning to learn her patterns and adapt to them. They even seemed to laugh as they swerved past her beams. “Little forlorn Hope thought she could play a trick on us!” half of them said in semichorus. “Foolishly persistent to the end.” “Now all ponies shall pay for her little tricks,” answered the other half. “Starting with this worthless foal.” Hope gritted her teeth. "No," she snarled. She felt the anger rising within her. She had thought she would have stopped them by now, but it was harder than she had expected. And if she did not succeed soon, those monsters would hurt Wood Chip. Then they would hurt everypony else. As the anger climbed within her, Hope felt something strange. Her power was growing. She felt it surging upward like a fire, almost like the fires she was fighting. She did not even have to think about what to do next. It came easily. Hope launched another beam, larger and darker than before. It was like a black hole, pulling the orbs and fire-creatures toward it. They tried, but they could not escape. The black bolt carried them along as it tore apart the wall of the hovel. Like a meteor, it came down somewhere in the distance. Smoke rose from the spot. There was a scream. “What’s going on?” a frightened Wood Chip called out. Hope looked to him, the innocent filly cowering in his bed. He looked at her, the mare he had come to know so well, the mare he had come to trust. There she stood, with eyes monstrously green and red, eyes spewing forth purple smoke, eyes filled with hate. Where those reassuring smiles had been, there was now nothing but a menacing sneer. Her once-beautiful face had been contorted into something unnatural. Wood Chip broke into tears. Hope’s first instinct was to comfort him. She briefly approached, but it only caused him to cry more heavily. From the other room, Hope heard the carpenter jump out of his bed. In a moment, he would be here, and she would have to explain herself, assuming he would even listen. Hope knew that she did not have the luxury of dealing with this. Not now. She was gone in a flash. “Wake up! Wake up!” Fallen Fortune said as he pounded on the door of a house not particularly large, but still suggesting refinement and stateliness. The door opened. “What is the meaning of this, and at this late hour?” said the equally-refined and stately pony on the other side. Fallen Fortune pushed him aside and galloped past. He knew he should have looked to make sure he had not knocked the pony down, but he did not. If that meant he was still a bad pony, so be it. This was too important, and time was running out. Fortune was fortunate, for Oriflamme was just descending the staircase as he rushed in, her attire suggesting she had just been woken from sleep. “Fortune?” she said in anger. “What do you think could possibly give you the right to barge into my home like this so late at–” “It’s Hope!” Fortune cried out. “She’s in trouble! You have to come with me!” The remaining orbs formed themselves into fiery-ponies. They all still lay on the ground, as though stunned and dazed, almost lifeless, if that were possible. Slowly, some of them began to rise. But it was difficult; they flickered dimly. Most of them, though, just lay there, unmoving, undarting. There was a blue flash. Hope was standing over them. “Like I said earlier, it ends tonight.” Her horn began to glow. One of the fire-creatures, the largest, managed to get up and take to the air, though it seemingly could only rise a little off the ground. “What do you think to accomplish, little Hopeless?” it said. “I’m putting a stop to you so that you can’t hurt anypony ever again,” Hope said. It laughed. Or rather, it tried to. But what came out was more of a wheezing sound, like when a dying fire is smothered in a blanket. “You may have harmed us,” it said. “But you know not the power of that magic you are using. You shall never be able to stop us!” Its words seemed to inspire its fellows. They all rose into the air, soaring higher and higher until they seemed to fill the sky with flame. They hoped, perhaps, to scare Hope. Hope smirked. “You want to bet on that?” Fallen Fortune saw the flames rise into the sky. “What in Equestria is that?” Oriflamme said as she galloped beside him. The other ponies – for several had heard the commotion and, seeing the mayor running in a panic, had decided to follow – gasped and shrieked. “That would be the plague,” Fortune said. Oriflamme struggled to speak, and not only because she was not used to galloping at such a pace. “Hope… Hope was right? There really are fire-demons?” “I was right, too,” Fortune said. “Don’t flatter yourself,” Oriflamme responded. Her voice was distant, and her eyes were held entirely by the flames, which had now positioned themselves into the formation of a diamond. “This way!” Fortune said as he pointed toward the small alley he knew would lead them to Hope. Oriflamme took flight. “I’ll try to cut them off from the air!” “No, don’t engage them!” Fortune said. “There’s nothing you can do. It’ll only cause you harm!” “Then why did you get me out of bed in the first place?” “For Hope. I’m going to need somepony to help me talk her out of it.” “Talk her out of what?” The giant diamond formed in from of her. Hope’s smirk widened. “Is that the best you’ve got?” she asked derisively. “You shall see the best we have,” said all the flames together. “You shall regret being our enemy.” “Doubt it.” The sound of a loud explosion blasted Hope’s ears. But there had been no explosion, not yet. It was merely the twenty flaming creatures, all screaming in unison some ancient, unknown battle-cry. Hope braced herself. All at once, the diamond lunged toward her, getting smaller and smaller as the fire-creatures joined shoulder to shoulder. Now, they were like a giant, flaming spear hurling toward one little crystal pony. Hope thought about everything they had done to this town. She thought of all who had died because of them. She thought of all the ponies she could not save. She thought of Wood Chip. And then she thought of Sombra. Hope felt something surging through her, something she had never experienced before tonight. She felt rage. And with rage came power. Great, great power. Hope’s face took on a look of absolute, blind hatred. Her horn glowed almost black. She fired a very large beam. The beam met the spear. And nothing happened. Or so it seemed. Everything, the beam, the flaming creatures, was frozen in place. It was as though the battle had been paused. This had been Hope’s intention. The flaming creatures tried to struggle, tried to move, but they could not. They were trapped. Hope smirked wickedly, raising her brows. “What was that you were saying?” “So you trapped us with another trick!” the largest creature said. “All you have is tricks! You cannot destroy us! You do not have the mastery of dark power needed!” Hope tilted her head, causing the beam, and the creatures in it, to tremble from side to side. The creatures let out a crackling moan. “Maybe not,” Hope said. “But it isn’t my only source of power, remember. I wonder what would happen if a pony were to, say, combine the healing power of the light with the destructive power of the darkness.” “Hope, no!” Hope turned her head just enough to see the speaker without losing her hold on the beam. There was Fallen Fortune. He looked tired and out of breath. He must have gone as fast as he could to get here. But now, he just stood there. He stood there, motionless, watching her. What was that look on his face? Horror? Fear? Disappointment? Sorrow? All of the above, perhaps. Behind him, a large crowd was forming. It looked as though everypony of the town was there. Hope then noticed the mayor, Oriflamme, hovering in the air above them, her eyes wide with disbelief. Wisely, she was keeping a safe distance. “Hope, don’t do this!” Fallen Fortune called out. “That’s enough, Fortune!” Hope shot back. “Just because you didn’t have the courage to do what has to be done, it doesn’t mean I’m going to let them hurt any more ponies!” “I know you think that this will save Wood Chip, that this will save the town. Maybe it will. But the cost, Hope, the cost….” “What cost? I feel great!” “No, you don’t! Hope, this isn’t you! This anger, this rage, giving in to it…. That’s not the pony you are! Can’t you feel it, Hope? Can’t you feel that… that sense of identity being torn out of you?” “I haven’t known who I am in a while. Why should this make any difference?” “Fine. But try to feel it! Can’t you feel it? Hope, if not your identity, what about your soul? Can’t you feel the darkness ripping into that?” Hope kept her vicious smirk, silently reproving Fortune for such naivety. Then the smirk was gone, replaced by uncertainty. The black beam began to falter. The fury started to disappear from Hope’s face. “I… I feel it… maybe….” she said. “I don’t know….” Then, however, that resolve came back into her eyes. Hope looked up at the flaming creatures. “But I’ve failed everypony! I’ve failed the Crystal Empire! I’ve failed this town! I’ve failed Sombra! I can’t let myself fail again! I can let any more ponies get hurt because of me! I have to end this!” Fortune forced himself to stand taller, be firmer. “But can you, Hope? You don’t want to hurt any more ponies. But look at them, those flame-demons. I don’t know what they are, but they are ponies. Or, they’re something at least like a pony. They may be evil, but they aren’t without feelings. Can you really hurt them?” The beam began to falter more. Even from this distance, Fortune thought he could see tears forming in Hope’s eyes. “Are you going to help me talk sense into her?” he shouted to the mayor. Oriflamme just looked on. “I don’t know,” she said. “If it saves the town, maybe she should do it.” “I should do it, if it saves the town,” Hope said quietly. “No, Hope!” Fortune said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but dark magic only leaves suffering in its wake! You may save this town, save a few lives. But you mark my words! If you give into this, more ponies are going to suffer than if you didn’t! I don’t know how, I don’t know when, and I don’t know where, but it will happen! I’ve seen it happen!” The beam began to dissipate. The creatures began to loosen themselves. “But… but… I don’t know how to save everypony,” Hope said. “You can’t, Hope!” Fortune responded. “Nopony can! That’s just the way things are! Don’t do this to yourself because of it! Don’t give up your soul to them, to this rage! If you do, then we’ll lose more light than if we had lost a thousand other ponies.” “Oh, forget about her light,” Oriflamme said. “If it saves my town, I want her to do it! Do it, Hope!” “Not helping!” Fortune scolded. The beam intensified a little. “No,” Hope said. “I need to do this. I just want to save everypony.” Fortune realized that he was losing her. He could not afford to let himself lose her. He approached. “Hope, we can still save them,” he said softly. “No, we can’t! Not unless I do this!” “There has to be another way! Let me go back to my books! I’ll find something eventually!” “And what is she supposed to do until then?” Oriflamme said. “Just hold them in place? She’ll get a cramp or something eventually, and then we’ll all be dead!” “Still not helping!” Fortune responded. “We haven’t found anything else,” Hope said. “We’ve looked and looked. There is nothing else.” “There has to be something! There always has to be another way, Hope! We’ll think of something else! Maybe you could imprison them! In a tree, or a cave, or underground, or in swine or cattle! Just use the power to imprison them! Nothing else!” “They could still break free!” Hope said. “I wouldn’t be saving anypony then, because they’d just come back and kill them all!” Fortune had nearly reached her. “We don’t know that, Hope! We can’t! The only thing any of us can do is the best with what we know! That might help ponies, it might hurt them, but it’s all we’ve got!” “That’s not good enough!” Hope said. Once more, the beam intensified. The flaming creatures began to writhe in agony. Fortune was directly beside Hope now. “What do you plan to do to them?” “I’m going to combine my healing magic with the dark magic,” Hope said. “If I understand what you translated correctly, dark magic mixed with other forms of magic produces a reverse effect to what those forms of magic normally would do. My healing magic might not have worked, but….” “Draining magic could,” Fortune said, the cold realization coming upon him. “You’re going to drain their energy into you.” “It’s the only way.” “Oh, so just like that, you’re going to kill them?” “I’m going to stop them!” “You’re going to kill them, Hope! Is that who you are, a killer? Is that the Radiant Hope who devoted her life to healing ponies? Is that the Radiant Hope who remained loyal to her friend even after everypony else said he was evil, said he was a monster? What makes them so different from Sombra, Hope? What makes them so different?” The beam disappeared. The creatures were free. Hope looked to Fallen Fortune. Her eyes were filled with tears. The darkness in them was beginning to fade. “How could you say that to me?” she said. “How could you even compare them to Sombra?” “You know it’s true,” Fortune said. “In your heart, you know that you can’t say there is much difference. If you want to have so much faith in Sombra, if you want to believe he isn’t evil, how can you just decide that you can judge these creatures?” “I can’t,” Hope said, her voice a whisper. “I know I can’t. Not without giving up on Sombra.” Hope lowered her head and wiped her eyes. Fortune put his hoof on her shoulder and smiled. “I knew you’d make the right decision,” he said. Then Hope saw, out of the corner of her eye, a flicker of light. She swiftly turned her head. The flaming creatures had reformed into their giant spear formation. Like the embers of an inferno, they were darting down toward Hope and Fortune. There was no time to teleport. Hope pushed Fortune out of their path. She took the entire blow herself. Hope went flying back. She cascaded down into the dirt. The impact released a massive cloud of dust. As it settled, the crystal pony lay, seemingly unconscious, in the middle of a large hole. A sickening, sinister hiss and then a crackling cackle filled the night air. The creatures were laughing. One by one, they turned on Fortune and the townsponies. Fortune quickly took steps backward, trying to put distance between himself and the creatures of fire. So too did the crowd of townsfolk. But it did not matter. The creatures were easily covering the distance. If they had not attacked yet, it was only because they were enjoying watching their prey panic. As she tried to fly to a safer distance, Oriflamme called out to Fortune, “Didn’t think this one through, now did you?” “Maybe there was a small miscalculation on my part,” Fortune said. “But if you would just have helped me talk sense into Hope, we could have found a more constructive solution.” There was one pony who did not believe that a more constructive solution was possible. As Radiant Hope lay in the hole, she could hear the screams of the frightened townsfolk and the evil laughter of the flaming creatures. Once more, she thought of all the harm they had done, all that she should have been able to prevent. And the rage returned. The flaming creatures had caught up with the townsfolk and were now hovering over them like a cresting wave. Even Oriflamme found herself forced to the ground by the incoming flames. The crackling laughter became deafening. The wave swooped down. And then it halted. Just before it was about to douse the townsfolk in flame, it came to a complete halt. The creatures let out shrieks of pain as they were jerked back into the night. A large, black beam enveloped them. “This ends now,” Radiant Hope said. She concentrated. It was hard to summon her healing powers. The rage seemed to be overpowering them. But she focused. Hope focused on everything that had gone wrong in her life, all that she had lost, all that had been lost because of her. But most of all, she focused on Sombra. Blue streaks shot through the black beam. The creatures let out a mighty howl, a howl like the crack of lightning and the scream of the winds. They began to shiver. They began to writhe. They began to wither. “Hope, no!” Fortune called out. But it was too late. The beam devoured the creatures. As it returned to Hope’s horn, their flames submerged within it, quenched by its smothering embrace. Soon, all that was left was the darkness. The blue-black beam retracted into Hope’s horn. Then, with mighty force, it launched outward again, shooting deep into the sky. Like a massive firework, it exploded there with a powerful boom and was seen no more. There was silence. Slowly, the townsfolk began to recover themselves. As though in a daze, Oriflamme approached Fallen Fortune. “Still think she should have spared those monsters?” the mayor asked, when she could speak again. “Didn’t you hear that?” Fallen Fortune asked. “When she destroyed them? When she killed them? What did you hear?” The mayor was dismissive. “I heard them screaming. And serves them right, too! Nothing else. What do you think you heard?” “It sounded like the earth itself let out a moan. I thought I felt it groan and shake beneath my hooves,” Fortune responded. In the distance, a pony approached. Her steps were slow and shaky. She seemed barely able to stand. As the townsfolk recognized their savior, they began to pound the ground with their hooves; a hero’s welcome. All of them except for Fallen Fortune. Radiant Hope did not seem to notice. She did not even look at any of them. The only gaze she returned was that of Fallen Fortune. “Fortune, Fortune, what have I done?” she said. Radiant Hope collapsed into Fallen Fortune’s hooves. What had happened to Radiant Hope? Read on.