Mother and Child

by AlicornPriest

Chapter 8: Answers

Chapter 8 – Answers

I am not I.

You are not you.

Somewhere, in a distant river,

we are floating.

In that river, you are you

and I am I

and we are happy,

happier than we've ever been

here, and now.

But here we are,

pretending,

and the world is not ending

or beginning

but dying

or dead.

I don't know which.

~ssw.poetry.hc/freeverse/?user=trisk333/theriver

"Is that...?" The filly hanging off the wall fluttered her eyes, that small movement clearly taxing her. Once they were fully open, however, a huge smile broke across her face. "Pinkie Pie! You're not Sombra! How did you get in here?"

"How did you, Coming Dawn?" Pinkie asked. "Is it the same way Starswirl and Sombra and Noble Blood are alive?"

At the mention of those names, Coming Dawn slumped down, the chains on her hooves rattling. "Yes. They are immortal because... because I am immortal. We wanted to tell you, Silver Wish and I."

The realization hit Pinkie like a lightning bolt. Two immortal sisters, with cutie marks based on the sun and moon. "You're... you're Princess Celestia."

She shrugged. "That name doesn't mean anything to me. As for Coming Dawn..." She looked away, towards one wall. "That name doesn't seem to fit for me anymore either. For me, the Dawn will never come again. My sun has long since fallen. 'Sunfall' seems more appropriate, now."

"Don't say that!" Pinkie cried out. "I'm here to get you out!" Pinkie recalled the hairpin and began to work on Sunfall's chains. "I'll get you out, and then we'll find wherever Luna--err, Silver Wish--is, and then we'll--"

"She's dead!" Sunfall sobbed and wailed, struggling against her chains. "They took her immortality, and she died with my father and mother and brother and everypony else I've ever known and loved, and the only ponies I have left are those... those monsters!"

Pinkie slowed down, her mane seeming to deflate as she took in what Coming Dawn was saying. "I... I'm sorry. I really didn't know."

Sunfall looked at Pinkie, smiling despite herself. "No, it's all right. I remember, so long ago. You left in the afternoon, when everything seemed to be going all right. It wasn't until that evening that... that everything went wrong." She nodded with her head towards the door, as a gesture towards Sombra and the Great Triumvirate. "I take it this isn't the home you were expecting?"

"No! It's all wrong! You're supposed to be the Princess of Equestria--you and Silver Wish! Sombra--well, Sombra's a long story, and Starswirl--okay, his is even longer, but you're supposed to be in charge! And earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns all live in friendship together, and the Elements of Harmony, and... and..." Pinkie rubbed her eyes with one hoof. "My friends... I have no idea where they are in this world. For all I know, they could be dead, too."

"It's okay." The final clasp snapped open, and Sunfall fell to the ground, only to immediately jump up and smother Pinkie in a big hug. "You'll be home sooner than you think, and then you'll be able to see your friends again."

"I don't know." Pinkie pulled out the Child from her bag; it was glowing faintly red, like a warm feeling between the two of them. "If I'm going to go back home, I need to know what happened after I left, and why I can't get back to my timeline."

"I can help you with that first one." Suddenly, they heard a rattling and a echo-y, magical sound. From Sunfall's reaction, it was clear what was happening. "He's... he's here! What are we going to do?"

"Don't worry! I've got a plan."

***

A few seconds later, the door swung open, and Sombra stamped into the small dungeon. The lights were off, but he hardly needed them: his eyes glowed bright through the mist and darkness enveloping him. He looked to the back and saw, not Sunfall, but Pinkie hanging from the chains on the wall. His temper flared, and his magic responded in kind. "You! Where is the child?"

"Long gone!" Pinkie gave a wink. "She slipped behind you when you came in!"

He turned around and noticed the door now shut behind him. He growled, but instead of racing out, he sighed and swung back to look at Pinkie once more. "Feh. I've had my fun with that brat. She'll most likely be caught by my soldiers anyway. You, on the other hand..." Here Sombra grinned, each tooth a wicked fang. "You are much more interesting."

Pinkie gulped despite herself. "Little old me?" she asked.

"Indeed. You've demonstrated a persistence and ingenuity I rarely see from ponies of your kind. But I'm curious..." He leaned forward and sniffed her. "You're not a crystal pony. Are you a unicorn half-breed, come to kill me? If so, your attempt at assassination has been very strange so far."

"No, I'm not here to kill you, and I'm not a half-breed! Well, technically great-great-great-grandpappy Molasses was a unicorn, but--"

"Ah!" Sombra's eyes lit up, and he stood back proudly. "The baking name in your family gives it away. You are Pinkie Pie, are you not?"

"Always a pleasure to meet a fan?" Pinkie replied uncertainly.

"I am a fan, quite. In fact, I feel I should thank you. You were a key player in the pony I've become today."

"...Is it something I can take back?"

"Ahahaha!" Sombra laughed uproariously. It was horrible, and it filled the whole chamber. "No, Pinkie, not unless you can travel back in time. Starswirl and Noble Blood have a lot to say about you. In particular, Noble Blood tells a story about you all the time. Apparently, when you visited, he says you told him a story about a unicorn and her friends who stood in Cloudsdale on their own four hooves. Magic, so you said, that could mimic a pegasus' cloudswalking."

"I... did tell that story, yes."

"It was that story that convinced Noble Blood that unicorns were superior to all other kinds of ponies. He'd already believed it, of course, and the immortality helped it along, but that really cemented it down. Now that they were obsolete, he expelled all earth ponies and pegasi from the unicorn kingdom, and where do you suppose they went?"

"To... to the Crystal Emp--"

"To the Crystal Empire!" Sombra laughed again. "That tripled my nation's population overnight. They bred and intermingled, until all were crystal in the frozen kingdom. And when I seized control, that meant triple the slaves, and triple the fighting force when Noble Blood and Starswirl the Immortal came knocking. Without that upswell, my kingdom would have surely been defeated--instead, I ground the war to an eventual stalemate."

Pinkie felt her skin grow clammy. Had she really caused all of this? All because she'd been a little too eager to share stories of her adventures with Starswirl?

Sombra saw the look in Pinkie's eyes and chuckled. "To be honest, I don't know how much of that was really caused by you, or how much Noble Blood and his pet sorcerer were going to do anyway. But hay, I got immortality out of the deal, so I call it a win in my book!"

"I'd try to talk you out of it, but I don't know if you even have a heart in there," Pinkie spat at him, really, truly mad.

"Talk me out of what? An endless lifetime of pleasures, an eternal empire, my Dark Paradise? If I get all of this at the cost of my heart, it was a trade well made."

"In my timeline, you were defeated. You'll be defeated here as well!" Pinkie said.

"By whom? For what reason? We reached a balance a long time ago. The crystal ponies stay in their place, the unicorns work and experiment, and Noble Blood and the Wizard leave me to my fun." Sombra grinned. "This may not be the same world as yours, but ponies are happy. Even the crystal ponies, in their way. I won, Pinkie Pie, a long, long time ago."

"Hope and joy will always win," Pinkie said, "but you're just too blind to see it." She leaned forward, the chains around her hooves clinking, and she waved in front of herself. "Sunfall, now!"

Sombra turned to look where Pinkie was gesturing. "Hrrm?!" At that moment, Pinkie slipped her hoof out of its clamp and thumped Sombra soundly on the forehead. He went down like a sack of flour.

Moments later, the door creaked open, and Sunfall peeked inside. "Is it safe now?"

"Yep! He fell for the double-distraction like a champ." She stuck out her tongue and proceeded to release herself from the chains (which, of course, had been unlocked the whole time). "Funny, he didn't seem to question why I was in your chains."

"Huh." Sunfall watched quietly as Pinkie hefted Sombra onto her back and proceeded to lock him into Sunfall's chains. On a whim, she said, "Oh, Pinkie."

"Hmm?"

"I... didn't hear everything Sombra told you, but I heard when he was telling you about... what happened."

"...Oh. Right." Pinkie kept working on chaining up Sombra, but her heart clearly wasn't as into it.

"Pinkie, I said I didn't blame you, remember?" Sunfall said. "What you told Noble Blood, and what he did because of that... he was going to do it anyway. He already believed in the superiority of unicorns over the other races. The most you did was accelerate his plans."

"But..." Pinkie said, thinking out loud, "if there's anything I've learned in all this time travel craziness, it's that small things can have a huge impact on the future!"

"Right, but big things have a much bigger impact," Sunfall replied. "Princess Platinum escaping from her room to visit our family was what leaked our secret of immortality to Noble Blood. Compared to what you did, that was a much bigger issue."

"That never happened in the original timeline," Pinkie said. She finished chaining up Sombra and clapped her hooves clean. "He's not breaking out of that for a while! Let's get out of here. While we're going, can you tell me what happened after I left?"

"Yes." They opened the door to the dungeon and began to leave. Behind them, Sombra was just starting to recover; as the door closed, they could just hear him thrashing against his chains.

***

“Most of the story, you already know," Sunset began. "Princess Platinum escaped to our home, but we were found by Noble Blood and allowed to stay in the castle. Little did we know this was all a trap. That night, while we were sleeping, Noble Blood kidnapped Silver Wish and spirited her away to Starswirl’s laboratory in the tower above. He demanded Starswirl find a way to somehow transfer Silver Wish’s immortality from her to him. To his credit, Starswirl tried his best to do it without harming her, but... he partly succeeded, and partly failed. After a long night of torment, he managed to removed Silver Wish’s immortality--but it went into himself, rather than Noble Blood.

“Noble Blood was furious. He was ready to come for me next, but--I don’t know whether to call this good or bad--Starswirl realized the mysteries of immortality in that moment. He understood it so perfectly that he could copy that immortality to whomever he wished, without losing it himself. After granting it to Noble Blood, he tried to copy it to Silver Wish, but... it was like something had been torn out of her. Once removed, she could never be immortal again.

“She was never the same pony after that. The proud, quiet dreamer turned into a pony barely clinging on to life. To her credit, she lived for a very long time; but in contrast to my millennia of life, she might as well have died that night in Starswirl’s lab.

“The rest you heard from Sombra. I can only tell it from my side. After Noble Blood gained immortality, he became a ruthless tyrant, eventually casting out the pegasi and earth ponies for being ‘inferior races.’ We wandered for a long time until we found what seemed to us to be heaven: a perfect crystal kingdom, ruled by the Princesses of Heart. Living in the Crystal Kingdom, I thought for sure that my suffering had ended. Even though my coat never crystallized like the others, I thought we had found a new home. For centuries, I was happy there.

“...But in contrast to my millennia of life, that part of my life was like a drop in the bucket. And that stretch of time ended with Sombra.

“Nopony expected him to take power the way he did. He grew like a thundercloud; by the time we heard the rumbling, he was already disgorging lightning. I was one of the few who never became a slave--at least, not while he reigned alone. I lived in the capital and did what I do best: try to spark a rebellion. We never succeeded, of course. My fellow rebels were captured and killed, until eventually it was me and me alone in our little hideout.

“Then the war came, like the past invading the future. I can’t speak to that much, nor can I tell you much about the Unicorn Civil War that was happening at the same time in Noble Blood’s kingdom. Rumors said an entire generation of female unicorns had died senselessly battling one another, and their leader--a mare with a strange, ancient name, Alice I think--had been killed trying to assassinate Noble Blood and Starswirl. In any case, the war went nowhere, just life upon life lost in the carnage, until the three rulers decided to call a truce. Sombra’s dark magic made him powerful, but not immortal; in exchange for immortality, he would form a peace treaty and join with the Unicorn Kingdom to create the Great Triumvirate.

“There was one last part to the peace treaty. I’d been able to hide from Sombra for his entire reign, but just months after Noble Blood and Starswirl stepped into the Crystal Empire, they were able to find and capture me. They gave me to Sombra to be his plaything, the perfect subject for any torture--impossible to kill, regenerates any damage, never runs out of screams.”

Here, Sunfall paused. “Pinkie? If anypony offers you immortality... don’t take it. Forever is too long for ponies to experience. I’ve lived through centuries of normal life, centuries of paradise, and centuries of torment. And all I can say, looking back, is... I’m very tired. I’m so tired, Pinkie, and everything is gray.”