Deus Ex Equis

Princess Twilight's legs dangled loose beside her in the weightless void through which her body, gaze, and thoughts all drifted in solidarity. Within the endless abyss of black nothing, Celestia's Pride hung by imperceptible strings in the distance, its stream of photons draped across her and bouncing off her coat in violet hues. The world spun beneath her hooves, a colossal marble of bright greens, blues, and whites. Twilight's eyes turned to her only companion in the void. Her jaw actuated and words slid from her mouth, floating out from between her lips and painting the distant galaxies with shades of contemplation.

"What's the point?"

Spike spun in place from his seat among the ether, turning to face her. "It's the sharp part at the end," he said, his words splintering and scattering into glittering clouds, catching the light of quasars long-since dead and bouncing their dying rays throughout the universe. The shredded light came back in shards, splattering against Twilight's back and bathing her in despondency.

The floating mare blinked, a bubble of saltwater forming on her vision globes. "Is that all?" squeaked the princess, her voice fading without echo, sounding alien even to her. Her eyes shuttered. "I had always thought there was another."

The colorful orb below the both of them spun at mind-boggling speeds, yet to them it seemed as a slug on flypaper. Through the cosmic space it twirled, making five full revolutions around its center of mass before Spike spoke a response. A twinkle appeared on the ball's surface and Twilight's eyes reopened as he posed the question, "Do you want there to be?"

Five shining dots sparked to life on the planet below, and Twilight's gaze was drawn to them. The shimmering spots of varied color pierced her eyes with their light, and she snapped them shut. "I think I should," she whimpered. Blood seeped from betwixt her lids as she pointed her muzzle at Spike. "Do you?"

Spike's ocular emeralds swiveled, raking trails of green blaze on the world before him. The light dove into his eyes as well, and yet he did not even twitch. The sparkles flickered and danced, swirling and gyrating in a photonic tango. For a split second, one of the lights shone brighter than the others. A smile seemed to come to him slowly. It was a sad smile, just the same. "I do," came his whisper. A fire rose up inside of him, warming his heart and converting it to cinders, burning through his scales and into the vacuum beyond the pressurized container he once was.

Princess Twilight could feel the heat of her number-one assistant's combustion beside her. Her tears mixed with her blood, the whirling mixture rolling up her forehead and to her horn. The mixing fluids slid into the grooves in her horn and formed a bubble at the bony tip. A radiant eyeball took shape from the liquids, its iris a shifting spectrum, a chameleon in the throes of seizure. She rotated her new eye toward where Spike had been, but found that he had sublimated entirely. In the darkness and quietude, she wept.

The Spike Nebula surrounded the planet in a matter of five years, shrouding it from the sun and bringing about an age of ice. Glaciers spread across the land and sea, crushing all in their path, and yet the five fires still burned as brightly as ever. Her rainbow eye watched as the planetary revolutions sped by, its tears forming clinging saltwater coatings and clouding her sight. The lights never faded. The lights never dimmed.

Her horn pulsed with a magical aura in shades of raspberry, searing off her eyeball with a sizzling hiss that nopony else could hear. She would have no more need of it. Her wings extended, bones and muscles creaking, unused to motion after so much disuse. She bit her tongue at the blades of agony cutting through her as she made the first flapping motion, yet she persisted. The blood ran over her feathers and was flung off little by little with each movement, surrounding her with a field of crimson droplets. The field soon turned to a trail before her nose as she pumped her wings, swimming through the solar wind and decelerating. Hours passed as she steadily deorbited, falling back toward her homeworld in tortured silence.

At long-awaited last, on the other side of the planet, her muzzle nailed the atmosphere. The intense compression set the air itself ablaze. Her wings tore off, tumbling and burning in her wake. Through the blinding orange, her ruined eyes watched the world turn beneath her limp, charring hooves. The surface's approach was a retarded snail.

She impacted the glacier, turning it into an explosion. The fiery blast circled the spheroid, banishing the ice and coating the world in waves of epiphany. Decades passed. From the tundra wasteland sprang forth new growth, a land of green and brown taking hold over the white once again. Flowers fought their way up, wrapping their leaves around the golden sunlight and photosynthesizing its warmth into sugar and love. Five ponies made pilgrimage across the new world, gathering at the site of the Twilight Impact, its crater an Elysian field of beauty and pollen.

Twilight disassociated herself from the point of impact, gazing at the fresh meadow with equally-fresh eye orbs, her body restored anew. The pilgrim ponies clustered around her, their voices an acapella orchestra of friendship. They smiled at the return of their best friend, and she smiled back. Princess Twilight embraced them, her once-closed hooves and wings now open. Jets of love magic spewed out between the tangle of fur and flesh, bathing the sky in pink and turning the clouds to stylized hearts.

The nebulous shroud of Spike condensed and pooled at the edge of the atmosphere, swarming into a funnel-form vortex. The swirling cone shot down into a bolt of acid-green lightning, striking a boulder and carving a little, purple dragon from it. Spike stepped from the molten wad of stone and put a clawed hand on Twilight's shoulder, giving her a smile. His voice echoed off distant hillsides as he told her softly, "Don't ever let anyone tell you you deserve that."

"Never," Twilight said. The alicorn leaned down, laying a kiss upon his scorching forehead. The seven once-divided and now-reunited turned in synchronicity. Together, they marched, setting off across the world of Equestria reborn. The shining spires of Canterlot loomed ahead, their eternal towers of pale marble awaiting them with patience. Everything would be as cake, forever more.

Fin.

870 views