Chapter Forty: Pinkie at the Gates of Dawn
The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Chapter Forty – Pinkie at the Gates of Dawn
Special thanks to Vimbert, theworstwriter, and Warden for editing
Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art
“Whew! Wasn't that exciting?” Pinkie Pie grinned as she and Harmony walked down the far flanking edge of pews while the congregation dissipated slowly throughout the lengths of the chapel. “I especially liked the part where he shouted and stuff!”
The last pony glared icily at her. “Do you think you could be just a tad bit more specific than that?”
“Though, in all honesty, he's given cooler sermons. You should hear him on his better days. Like, the last time I visited home—four months ago—he gave this really riveting speech on 'suffering and damnation.' And then the winter before that, I remember him giving this one great sermon about 'death and suffering'... or no, wait, maybe that was 'death and damnation.' Ah! Hehe—Of course! The sermon before the sermon before this one was about 'sin and death and damnation' while the one after that was just about 'death,' though he did add in a little speech about 'prosperity.'”
“Prosperity?”
“Y’know, in the absence of deathhhhhh. Heeheehee—It's so awesome! Just like listening to one of Dashie's heavy metal albums!”
“But, Miss Pie, this isn't the recital of some music record.” Harmony glanced forlornly at the many gray shapes of ponies shuffling out the doors to the chapel in muttering conversation. “This is a weekly service performed by a cleric who is the sole source of spiritual guidance to the ponies of your hometown!” She squinted nervously, planting her green beret back onto her head. “Does Bishop Breathstar seriously have nothing to say to the congregation but sermons on 'doom and gloom?'”
“Pffft! Didn't you hear me, Har-Har? Today was 'death' and 'sin,' before that was just 'death' with a touch of 'prosperity,' before that was 'sin and death and damnation'...”
“Yeah, I get it. But don't you see my point? Gultophine is the Goddess of life and rainbows and... and...” Harmony blinked. “I can't believe I'm even having this conversation.”
“Yeah, a good sermon will stun you like that.”
“That's just it, Miss Pie. I know it's hardly my place, but it didn't at all seem very... well... 'good' to me.”
“That reminds me of something that Bishop Breathstar once said to me before I left for Ponyville. Ahem... 'Remember, my child, hearing something good can feel bad when you're willing yourself to be ignorant.'” She blinked her blue eyes, then scrunched her face. “I wonder if that's why I always feel funny when Rarity compliments me on my dress size.”
“Uh huh...” Harmony numbly murmured, staring off towards the far side of the chapel where a sandy-colored young unicorn was levitating metal ladles over the many lit candles flanking the organ, extinguishing the flames one by one. “Say, Miss Pie, could you excuse me?”
“Why? Did you break Nebula's wind? Teeheehee!”
“Sure, whatever.” Harmony saw where the unicorn was standing, judged that it was well within thirty meters from her anchor—much less forty—and wandered over with a gentle shuffle of hooves. “Ahem. So, that was an... interesting sermon.”
“Hmm?” Deacon Dawnhoof glanced over from snuffing out the candles. He gently smiled. “Oh, yes, well... when Bishop Breathstar delivers, he delivers. I've never served under a more aptly-voiced priest than my mentor here in Dredgemane. He may have the energy of Goddess Gultophine, but he has the poignancy and literary skills of Celestia herself.”
“Uhhh...” Harmony winced through the trailing exhaust of that suggestion. “Sure. Listen... uhm... if I may be so bold, I couldn't help but notice some interesting things about this place...”
“Oh! I know you!” Dawnhoof's chestnut eyes briefly lit up. “You're the pegasus who Haymane hired to track down the Royal Grand Biv!”
“Er... Yeah. Word gets around town fairly quickly, doesn't it?”
“Some ponies say that it's on account of the thin canyons and all.” Dawnhoof pointed out the nearby window. His brown horn shimmered as he extinguished the last of the candles, lowered the ladle over the edge of the organ, and shuffled humbly to a stop before the last pony. “The acoustics afford easy listening to any uttered word.” He smirked slightly. “Of course, that's merely a plebeian excuse for the rather sinful indulgence of gossip, but nopony is perfect, especially in Dredgemane.”
“As Bishop Breathstar was apt to remind us,” Harmony said in a lingering breath, her eyes floating limply over the tall lengths of the granite interior. “For two ear-splitting hours.”
Dawnhoof winced slightly, his hooves stirring. “Yes, my teacher is... renowned for his passion. It's written in the Chronicles: 'A boisterous servant is a blessed servant.'”
“Funny thing about scripture.” Harmony pointed. “For opening his entire sermon with a reference to Chapter Two of the Chronicles, he really didn't refer to it much after that.”
“My... uhm... my teacher has the good habit of paraphrasing the teachings of the Gultophine Saints. I've practiced putting together sermons myself. I'm all too often relying on direct quotations, as I am afraid of misconstruing the words of the Saints, and I do believe that makes me a great deal more stiff in my delivery than Breathstar is.”
“Somehow I bet you're not giving yourself enough credit,” Harmony said. “Excessive humility never made anyone the worst writer.”
“Heh, if you insist, Miss...”
“'Harmony.'” The pegasus glanced up at the monochromatic stained glass window. “I noticed that—well, to be frank—Gultophine is colorless here.”
“An astute observation, Miss Harmony,” Dawnhoof said with a nod. “But, as you may have heard in the good Bishop's sermon, the world was once whole and harmonious in a grand and indefinable one-ness before the Sundering of Consus split everything into chaos and color and distraction. It is often healthy to meditate on the simplicity of what Gultophine had so diligently struggled to restore upon the aftermath of her father's perishing. A life replete with prismatic distractions can shake us loose from the straight and narrow stream of her glorious path.”
“Yeah, I guess I'll buy that,” Harmony murmured, but as she stared further at the dull panes of the stained glass window, standing closer to it now than ever before, the future scavenger in her took notice of many tiny hash-marks against the translucent surface. It was quite obvious to the last pony that the window was not originally built colorless, but rather that the rainbow hues had sometime in the past been chiseled away to a dull shade. She made no mention of it, but instead gazed Dawnhoof's way with a smirk. “And you? What do you buy?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I know you're a priest-in-training and all that jazz, but you're a Dredgemaner all the same.” She shuffled towards him and smirked. “'All things that breathe are siblings of Gultophine, under any law or life.'”
“Chapter Five, Verse Twelve,” Dawnhoof remarked with a proud nod. “You are quite remarkably gifted in the knowledge of the Chronicles...”
“What, for a Canterlotlian?” Harmony winked. “Not all science freaks are—y'know—science freaks, despite what some ponies who may or may not be residents of Dredgemane might say.”
“I... see...” Dawnhoof nodded with a squinting gaze tossed over the turquoise-vested pegasus' shoulder. “I have noticed you in the presence of Pinkamena Pie. No doubt you have encountered Quarrington Pie of the City Council and his many staunch opinions on outsiders.”
“You ever slept in somepony's farmhouse while feeling like an unwanted tumor?”
“I cannot say that I have, Miss Harmony.”
“It's an easy uncomfortableness to experience, especially in this town.” She sighed and glanced with a sincere squint in Dawnhoof's direction. “Seriously, Deacon, don't you think that the ponies of Dredgemane are miserable enough as it is without Breathstar having to kick them all in the ribs like—well—like a dead horse?”
The young cleric blushed at the audacity of Harmony's words. “Erhm... I find that to be a rather colorful analogy. Though, my only contention would be with its hyperbolic nature.”
“Hyperbolic? Deacon Dawnhoof, these ponies of Dredgemane slave their days away trying to live up to Mayor Haymane's work ethic. Then, on their one morning of respite, they come here and get their ears filled to the brim with... well... brimstone.”
“Breathstar's congregation is quite well acquainted with his methodology.”
“Yeah, I can kinda see that. I think they're too used to it, if you ask me.”
“I struggle to see the argument that you are attempting to make, Miss Harmony.”
“It shouldn't even have to be an argument. Deacon, as a learned student in the Chronicles, surely you must agree that Gultophine's Spirit is indicative of life, of the love of life, and of the proliferation of the love of life.”
“And it most certainly is, Miss Harmony. Those equine spirits who are instilled with the Spirit of Gultophine know this well. It is Breathstar's task as this city's spiritual leader to remind them of the consequences of falling outside of the glory that Gultophine breathed into this landscape starting so very long ago.”
“You don't get out of the chapel much, do you?”
“Erhm...” Dawnhoof nervously shifted where he stood. “I am... quick to volunteer in escorting Breathstar to various places, and I am the official crier for the announcements of chapel services all throughout the streets of Dredgemane...”
“You've seen the exhaustion on ponies' faces, haven't you? You've seen how this place still looks and feels like the Grave of Consus. I imagine you've visited Stonehaven and learned of the young foals dying there and the mindless mares and stallions 'retired' there who wish that they were dead.” Harmony's face hung in a sad sigh. “Don't you think Dredgemaners are reminded enough of the misery that exists beyond Gultophine's glory?”
“I... I cannot speak for what everypony feels, Miss Harmony. But I can speak for what they all need. Gultophine is indeed a Goddess of prosperity and strength in the face of endless desolation, otherwise she would be a patron of death instead of life.”
“Then why are the sermons so centered upon death?”
Dawnhoof's chestnut eyes had fallen into a far corner of the chapel. His voice was suddenly in a different tone, a much more honest and somber tone. “Because death is far more real to the children of Epona here than life. To attempt relating to the latter would only confuse them...”
Harmony raised an eyebrow at that. She couldn't rebuke that last statement for some reason; something sympathetic had lodged a lump in her throat.
Dawnhoof filled the silence for once. With a gentle smile, he glanced Harmony's way. “You are quite a weaver of logic and intelligent speech, Miss Harmony. Perhaps that is the talent that won you favor in the eyes of the Canterlotlian Court.”
“Me? Smart? Pffft... if I was smart, why would I be stuck with Miss Pie?”
“Heheheh...”
“What about you?” Harmony pointed. “What cutie mark do you have hidden under that brown rug you call a robe? I can't imagine a pony with a steeple on his flank.”
“Oh... Ahem...” His sandy cheeks briefly flushed at the inquisition. “For once, you show a lack of knowledge, Miss Harmony. Anypony who knows a thing or two about the Gultophine Order can testify that cutie marks are removed upon the path to being ordained.”
“They are?” Harmony blinked.
“It is anything but a pleasant experience, physically speaking. But what kind of priests would we be if we weren't reminded of the impermanence of flesh in its attachment to the Spirit of Gultophine?”
“Well, then, what was your talent before you decided to snuff out candles and orate chapel schedules for a living?” Harmony smirked. “And don't tell me that's confidential. Priests can't be that boring.”
“I...” Dawnhoof took a deep breath, his face adrift in thought. “I was once a metallurgist in Whinniepeg.”
“Oh yeah? No kidding.”
“It was hardly an exciting lifestyle. I wandered across plots of land and used my horn to find strange minerals for local ponies to harness into jewelcrafting. I did it for money, but I had no family to support. When I found my calling, I joined the order, and since then the Spirit of Gultophine has blessedly filled what I discovered to be a great void in my life. I do hope you understand, what was once a talent to me is now merely one method among a plethora of means I have to bring glory to my beloved Alicorn.”
“I'm glad that you found your niche in the end,” Harmony said with a nod. With an exhale, she said, “I for one know what it means to realize that... a single talent isn't all there is to life.”
“Maybe you too could join the order.”
“And give up amazingly sinful stuff like chocolate? No thank you.”
“Heh heh heh... Your humor is subtle enough for the walls of this place of worship, I'm inclined to think.”
“Humor, huh? Well, I know one pony who'd be crazy to hear that,” Harmony muttered. A paper airplane suddenly flitted past her vision.
“Hear what? Did Har-Har make a funny? Huh? Did she?”
“Miss Pie, how are you this fine morning?” Dawnhoof briefly bowed. “That is... a remarkable outfit you have chosen to grace us with today.”
“Yeah, if it wouldn't sag on Har-Har, I'd have her wear it instead. It'd make her attempts at flirting a lot more entertaining.”
Harmony suddenly made a face. “My attempts at what?”
“Hey Har-Har, what color is Deacon Hubba-Hubba's eyes?”
“What does that have to do with—?” Thud. “Dang you, Miss Pie!” She snarled and tugged her vest back down over her outstretched wings. “You ever played the organ with your face before?”
“Wuh oh! Hey Deacon, can I make a confession?”
“Miss Pie, you know that I do not yet have the authority to grant—”
“I once ate an entire package of cream cheese when I visited Twilight Sparkle's parents' house.” Pinkie leaned in with a wink and a whisper. “But I still didn't end up as stuck up as Har-Har here. Heeheehee!”
Harmony face-hoofed with a groan.
“Erhm...” The cleric-in-training squinted. “I beg your pardon?”
“Hey, you missed some candles.” The last pony pointed across the chapel.
“Oh! So I did!” Dawnhoof levitated the ladle back up and all-too-quickly made leave of that particular spot of the cathedral. “It was a pleasant conversation, and also stimulating. If you would excuse me, fellow sisters.” He shuffled off.
“Heeheehee! Did you hear that?” Pinkie cooed in Harmony's direction. “You just stimulated a priest!”
“I did no such thing.”
“Heeeee-HeeHeeHee!”
Harmony frowned heavily. “What?!”
“You sooooooo look like a sunburned monarch butterfly right now!”
“That's it.” Harmony trotted angrily towards the chapel exit. “We're going home.”
“No we're not.”
Harmony skidded to a stop and blinked over her shoulders. “We're not?”
“Nope. It's off to Marble Cake's to deliver more baked goods! Or have you suddenly stopped being my Canterlotlian Observer slash astronomer slash Royal Grand Biv hunter slash humorless stick in the mud?”
“I... uh...” Harmony narrowed her gaze on Pinkie Pie's black suit and top hat. “I sort of thought that the day of Gultophine's Summons was a day of rest from labors and stuff.”
“Hah! Wouldn't that be a laugh, even for me! Hehehe—You must be getting this confused with some other obscure religion. Now come with me! We've got doughnuts to evangelize!”
Perhaps the reason why I stayed in that town for so long, attached to Pinkie, is because I wanted to be a part of something. For so many decades, I've held the legacy of ponydom up on my shoulders and my shoulders alone. It was a refreshing sensation to, for once, not be the only member of my own species. All of Dredgemane, for as miserable as the city felt, was carrying the load of Equestrian existence with me. From Pinkie to Inkessa to Quarrington to Vimbert to Dawnhoof to Mayor Haymane himself: we were all one collective, and I was quietly and secretly excited to have been a member of that order.
That has to be why I did what I did: why I donned the monicker of the “Canterlotlian Clerk,” this time to act as an agent that promised to bring down the Royal Grand Biv and bring back order to that blissful slice of civilization. I wanted to feel as though I was doing something helpful for ponykind, something that didn't serve a purpose no more concrete than a mournful eulogy for all the things I could never before lend a hoof to.
But as the days slugged by—gray, torchlit, incomprehensibly morose days—the essence of who and what I was bled through the walls of time to once again engulf me. The end of ponies has been and shall always be centered upon me, and being alive and kicking in the trenches of Dredgemane didn't make me any less of the pariah I was immutably destined to be since birth.
I only had to decide if my state of being there was a weakness or an asset.
Licking her lips, Harmony concentrated on the task at hoof. With the expert precision of a Wasteland engineer, the last pony finished slicing the second of two holes in the opposite sides of her winter wrap-up vest. Satisfied with her job, she placed a carving knife down onto the edge of a kitchen counter and slid her naked torso up through the turquoise article. Her wings easily slid through the two openings she had just cut into the fabric of the material. She flexed the copper appendages with a breath of relief, though it wouldn't last long.
Just then, Pinkie Pie bounced across the lengths of the bakery and unloaded the last of several teetering white boxes of baked goods onto Harmony's Entropan spine. Doughnuts, muffins, cookies, rings of taffy, and cupcakes filled the packages to the brim. The copper pegasus wobbled briefly under the towering array upon her shoulders, but straightened her stance in time to throw a plastic smile Marble Cake's way. Pinkie's rotund aunt grinned proudly at the two, murmured something to her niece, and patted the earth pony atop her fluffy head. After a brief giggle, Pinkie whistled at her “Canterlotlian” assistant and bounced merrily out of the steaming kitchen. A sighing Harmony followed on lurching limbs.
Through the streets of Dredgemane, the two trotted like a two-pony parade. The many faces of equine laborers were just as deadpan and unemotional after Gultophine's Summons as they appeared before. Harmony breathlessly glanced across the many stumbling souls as she too joined in the agonized lurch that had come to embody the entrenched city's animation.
Breathstar and Dawnhoof had spoken of Gultophine forging a river of life from the point of the Sundering. Looking around the pallid, smoky lengths of the Alicorn's namely refuge, Harmony couldn't help but see a prison. The one bright thing—the single shade of excitement and glory in the dreadful cesspool of that place—was the bouncing figure of Pinkie Pie ahead of her. The pegasus bakery slave helplessly followed the earth pony, for she finally understood that she had no choice.
Pinkie Pie giggled and resumed telling a joke before the bushy beard of the towering Mr. Irontail. The hulking blacksmith was sweeping away the last mound of debris from the front of his shop, but he seemed hardly perturbed at the sight of Harmony standing behind the earth pony. As soon as Pinkie and the last pony had arrived, Irontail had proudly displayed a shredded piece of the Royal Grand Biv's rainbow cloak. The blacksmith called it a “souvenir,” and judging from his smile and booming enthusiasm, he was most certain it would drive further business in the future, even beyond Gultophine's Harvest.
While the old stallion and Pinkie chatted onwards, Harmony stood off to the side, leaning against the part of the blacksmith's shop that was still in one piece. She had the impossibly heavy tower of desserts standing next to her, giving her a moment's respite. With dull eyes, she scanned a mundane urbanscape. The cobblestone acreage of Dredgemane's spacious town square hummed with the collective bass of hundreds of clopping hooves. Aside from the chirping sound of Pinkie Pie beside her, Harmony could make out no signs of life from the crowded intersection beyond. There were no conversations, no laughter, no tittering, no voices whatsoever. The same quiet solemnity that had ushered the congregation out of Breathstar's cathedral hung over the mute manes of so many equine souls, so that Harmony could at last ascertain what gave the machine of Dredgemane lifestyle its perpetual motion.
She was about to distract herself with the obligatory absorption of Pinkie's conversation beside her, when a very haunting melody suddenly stabbed her ears. Her heart pulsed with sudden rapidity, as if an alarm was going off inside the gondola of her airship. However, this was not the cabin of the Harmony, no matter how much it suddenly felt like it was. The last pony flashed her gaze across the courtyard of central Dredgemane and spotted four ponies standing beneath a street sign, their bodies obscured into ghostly shades across the dismal mists, and they were performing a melancholic movement with four separate antique violins.
The scavenger from the future immediately recognized the tune. It was none other than 'Suites for a Princess,' more specifically the first section. She had heard this instrumental countless times, but never in this pathetically morose and mournful tone. The wailing pitch of the strings was a wilted thing, like the features of the four ponies, for Harmony then realized that they were way past their pasture years. Long, moth-eaten gray beards fluttered from their features like moss. Their eyes were jaded, like rock chiseled loose of all its shine, like so many a fog-coated sheet of stone in that gray graveyard of a town.
Even when Dredgemaners wanted to express themselves, their art form was a eulogy reserved for the detached or the dying. These stallions obviously knew that their years would be over soon, and they expressed their woes in ways the other Dredgemaners couldn't, and it filled the air with a ghastly howl like so many spirits of those who perished in identical ennui before them.
Harmony exhaled long and hard, her copper features drooping as her body slid halfway down the storefront in a slump that mimicked those around her. Soon, the bubbly pitch in Pinkie's voice was drowned out, and it didn't even take a thunderous sermon to fill the pegasus' ears with that sudden underwater deafness.
I heard Octavia's strings. Even then, in the depths of a world turned into myth by the permanent flames of the Cataclysm, my muse had followed me. For Octavia has always been simply that: my muse, my one inspiration to keep living my lonesome life in the wastes with the belief that there once existed ponies who would find my courageous existence beyond extinction something of value.
What could the ponies of Dredgemane possibly appreciate? Music to them was a eulogy to a funeral that they had to plan for years in advance of its patron soul dying. To party or to laugh or to smile would be a sin unto death, so the only chance in life they could have to enjoy a respite would be right upon the eve of that same life being extinguished.
I have never been too proud of myself over the last twenty-five years. You should know that. It has never, ever filled my soul with joy to know that I am the last pony and I have spent my life scavenging from the graves and homes of all the equine spirits who have gone before me. My one way of excusing myself for my necessary sins of existence was to dream of what life was like in Equestria before the Cataclysm.
Naturally, I had lived out some of those civilized years, but they were brief and subjectively trite memories at best. I was a foal when disaster struck; I never got the chance to grow up and really know ponies for who and what they were. So, in my lonely mind's eye, I saw ponies as happy and magically enchanted souls. While trotting through the streets of dead Equestria, I closed my eyes and saw, instead, sunlit streets with giggling children and chatting mares and sturdy stallions working hoof-in-hoof to maintain the beauty of some bright, glistening world that was forever lost to me.
And then I went to Dredgemane, and I saw a piece of Equestria that was not bright and glistening. I saw ponies who were better off dead, who would have been freed from a life of ritualistic imprisonment if their mortality was to run out. I was mane-deep in the grave of Consus, the site of the first death Equestria had ever witnessed, and I realized first-hoof that what gave birth to the First Age also spawned a fountaining cascade of endless, identical deaths, spread out across the backs of mortal equine like a scythe singing its way atop a field of wheat.
My bright and glistening dream didn't die the first moment I saw the gray ravines of Dredgemane. After all, you should know that my spirit is far too strong for that. Instead, my dream crashed and burned the very instant I perceived that there was not only one Dredgemane, but that there were many, and there always have been. Equestrian history was full of countless, innumerable Dredgemanes, of wars fought for paltry reasons, of famines that stripped ponydom of their hope and felicity, of diseases and plagues and pestilences that made life just as miserable for ponies in the past as it is for creatures of the future Wasteland. When the Cataclysm occurred, it wasn't some horribly incomprehensible event of annihilation that Equestria never saw coming. As a matter of fact, it was the embodiment of every horrible thing that had ever happened in Equestria ever, all rolled into one.
Octavia's beautiful music used to be—for me—an audio time capsule, a dip into a glorious world that was without marring imperfections. Dredgemane taught me that was not the case. If I had known what I know now about ponydom, I wonder if I would ever have built the rainbow signal to begin with. I used to think that I was the only equine soul missing the pulsating spirit of enchantment in her heart. I used to think that I was the only pony whose life was painted by the colors of misery. I was wrong, for Dredgemaners appeared dreamless to me. I found nothing that a rainbow signal could possibly have elicited from their slumber, for by sleeping they were all merely practicing for death. If nothing else, I imagined the Cataclysm merely put them out of their misery.
I wondered if that was the Cataclysm's divine purpose for all of Equestria.
Pinkie Pie galloped in circles before the front steps of a school building submerged in a crooked corner of looming stone. She excitedly charaded a mesmerizing fight with the Royal Grand Biv, using her top hat to symbolize a smoke bomb and her flailing coattails to represent dual fans of colored knives. Her pink mane bounced with her bobbing motions, and her blue eyes were practically electric.
Several teenage students in simple brown garb marveled at her tale, congregating around an opened box of half-eaten cookies. Harmony recognized many of them from the curfew-defying party that Pinkie had thrown the evening previous. The youngsters murmured in awe as Pinkie's tale took off on a magnificent new tangent, and when she charaded a pair of outstretched wings, they collectively giggled and winked Harmony's way.
The time traveler rolled her eyes, leaning against a bench and craning her neck towards the twisting lengths of the urban trenches beyond. The violin strings were faint now, like the rattle of dying songbirds from the far end of an abandoned tunnel. She wondered what it would feel like to be foaled, to be raised, to be civilized, and then to be buried in this town. Harmony may have been the last pony, but at least she had the luxury of seeing many fantastic—albeit decrepit sights.
To live and to die as a Dredgemaner, however, carried with it a new and paralyzing horror for the last pony. The copper pegasus didn't even want to comprehend that sort of existence. Even Spike, with his three centuries of self-imposed imprisonment within the suffocating rock of the Canterlotlian Mountains, had lived a rosy life by comparison. Harmony pondered then that—perhaps—every equine soul was the end of ponies, in that they were the end and beginning of themselves, a pitifully abbreviated snapshot of all that they could ever be but could never afford to be.
As Pinkie's tale further enraptured the young teenagers, Harmony watched as their faces lit up. She realized that she knew the exact time and day when all of the light in those youngsters' eyes would be snuffed out forever. The last pony didn’t know if she felt sad or relieved anymore.
Later that day, when Pinkie Pie and Harmony trotted out of the massive, stone-reinforced structure of the Dredgemane Public Library, the pegasus glanced over to see two clerics-in-training standing at the street corner. Squinting her eyes, the last pony made out the image of Deacon Dawnhoof. The young unicorn was in the process of levitating a white rectangular banner against the gray face of a supply warehouse. His companion raised a series of sharp stakes and magically drilled them into place so that the banner could remain stretched before the passing gaze of Dredgemane citizens.
As Pinkie and Harmony trotted by, the last pegasus craned her neck to read the banner. The words shone forth boldly: “Gultophine's Harvest – Prepare to Bring Your Chosen Possessions to the Bonfires in Town Square”.
Blinking, Harmony flashed a glance over her shoulder. Many equine faces saw the banner's reminder. Hardly a single Dredgemaner registered anything that could have resembled a positive or negative emotion. One way or another, they trotted towards the inevitable crucible waiting for them. It was just as unavoidable an event as the Cataclysm.
Ice Song coughed, his blue face turning bluer as he wheezed for a clear breath. Pinkie Pie raised a glass of water and gently tilted it for the young colt to take a deep sip. When he was finished, he breathed a bit easier and murmured his thanks. Pinkie Pie giggled and allowed Ice Song to settle his infirmed body deeper into the crook of her forelimbs as she hoofed the empty glass to a smiling Nurse Angel Cake.
Inside the Immolatia Ward, a bustling circle of excited young foals watched as Pinkie set forth creating the latest of many paper airplanes on the edge of the hospital bed. With expert hooves she creased the sheet of medical charts at appropriate angles, all the while murmuring to Ice Song and the others a bubbly dissertation on proper aeronautics. Once the latest winged invention was finished, she passed it to Ice Song with a bright grin. The tiny, shivering pony picked the aircraft up lightly and flung it off the bed... so that it crashed pathetically into the monochromatic tile floor. The surrounding young fillies and colts giggled while Ice Song wilted shamefully. Pinkie Pie merely pinched his shoulder, winked, and guided his hooves as she helped him make a new aircraft.
Harmony stood, watching this from the side. She sighed and gave a deadpan glance in Inkessa's direction. The gray nurse glanced back, rolled her eyes, and smiled helplessly while shuffling through a clipboard of daily examination notes.
The last pegasus glanced back at the scene, only to have her vision interrupted by the bright sight of a gold-coated little filly hobbling up to her. It was Suntrot, and the ailing child had something in her mouth. Curious, Harmony reached down and grasped the offering in two hooves. Before her blinking amber eyes was a rather adorable sketch of a copper-winged figure dancing in the sunlight along with a golden sprite at least a third her size.
Harmony gulped and smiled nervously down at the little filly, only to see that she had disappeared. Suddenly, there was a gentle, feather-soft weight against the time traveler's hind legs. She glanced back to see Suntrot lovingly nuzzling her lower limbs with a contented smile, an expression that was briefly interrupted by a cough or two before the tiny filly resumed the joyful embrace.
The last pony sweated nervously. Before any warm blood could rise to the surface of her coat, she wrenched her eyes away from the sweet sight in time for a paper airplane to slam between her eyes. She winced with a grunt, being further assaulted by a flurry of giggles as Pinkie Pie proudly patted the shoulder of a blushing Ice Song. With a hoof outstretched, the blue colt stifled a cough and smiled demurely.
In the flickering lantern-light of the Stonehaven third floor beneath the Immolatia Ward, Suntrot's drawing took on a brighter tone. Harmony studied the rays of amber light shining down from a golden orb crayoned into the white sky of the paper sheet. She exhaled somberly before folding the sketch and pocketing it away into her turquoise vest. Even with the best of intentions, Suntrot's gift wouldn't allow the last pony to bring sunlight back to the future Wasteland.
The last pony glanced up and resumed staring through the wide stretch of glass before her. On the other side, surrounded by the catatonic and shuffling patients of Stonehaven, Pinkie Pie sat at a white table with white chairs in the center of the white room guarded by orderlies in white fatigues. Across the table from her, a lethargic patient flipped through the pages of an invisible book. Pinkie Pie had her chin propped up on a pair of hooves. She was grinning nonstop—a perpetual smile, but a subtle one. With sudden softness, Pinkie reached over and gently tapped the surface of the table before the purple-maned patient.
The emaciated equine glanced over, blinking. Pinkie Pie grinned and motioned towards herself, her blue eyes highlighting the empty air between the patient's hooves. The pony blinked at the invisible pages, then back at Pinkie. With sluggish, reluctant speed, the purple-maned mare held the nonexistent article over towards Harmony's anchor. Pinkie reached her hooves out. She “grabbed” the invisible book. With suddenly studious, squinting eyes she stared at the wordless nothing in front of her. She tilted her hooves to the left, to the right, then finally flipped the book upside down before letting loose a melodramatic gasp before slapping the book shut and blushing like a beet. She fanned herself, then winked slyly at the mare... as if from girlfriend to girlfriend.
It was then that something... crazy happened. The patient smiled. She may have even giggled once or twice. Harmony watched as Pinkie shared the grin. The candy-colored mare next reached up to her head, removed her top hat, and impossibly dug her hoof elbow-deep into the contents of the black article. Dragging her hoof back out, she “magically” produced a brand new invisible book. With a cooing expression, she flipped the “pages” before the mare, then slid the phantom pamphlet the patient's way.
The purple-maned pony picked it up, opened the unseen literature, and proceeded to delve into this new material with a deep and rosy-cheeked smile. In the meantime, Pinkie's eyes wandered sideways and broke another invisible thing: a wall of glass. Beyond that, Harmony practically jolted from the mare's stare, and she almost shivered when Pinkie winked at the end of the visual exchange. She wasn't entirely sure who belonged on which side anymore.
Pinkie raised a hoof to her smiling face and hissed: “Shhhh!” With a melodramatically stealthy crawl, she proceeded into the hollow of a dark, dark building. A spacious meeting room lingered under dimly-lit lanterns above. The collective shadows of the place almost reminded Harmony of the candlelit recesses of the Pie Family Farmhouse. When she gazed into the lengths of the room, she suddenly understood why that was.
Quarrington Pie sat quiet and still at the center of a grand wooden table along with five other ponies. Together, the six elders faced a thick series of benches populated by dozens upon dozens of city representatives. The Council of Dredgemane was in session, and ponies from every walk of life—from traders to blacksmiths to store owners to miners to deliverers to farmers—were gathered together, listening intently as one proclamation after another was formally read to the densely seated crowd.
As the latest in several boring speeches about city ordinance was monotonously broadcasted over the heads of those in attendance, Pinkie Pie snuck her way down the rows of seats, dipping her hooves into the towering boxes atop Harmony's backside and hoofing out samples of dessert to the bored-stiff audience members. A low murmur drifted through the thick of the crowd, briefly parting the dark opaqueness of the place with a twinge of excitement.
This ended swiftly, of course, upon the precipice of one Council Member's raspy cough. Pinkie shot up with a gasp. Quarrington was glaring at his daughter from his lofty seat at the table. All it took was a sharp twitch of his eyebrow, and Pinkamena Diane Pie backed away with a nervous giggle, nudging Harmony so that she followed suit.
As the two mares trotted swiftly out of the Council Chamber, Harmony lingered long enough to give the six elders one last look. Quarrington's golden eyes were affixed to some invisible sphere beyond the black shadows of the floor, as if his soul was in another place... as if it hadn't ever entered his chair to begin with.
Here's something you should know, though I'd be amazed if you did. When a pony dies, is it only because the body is consumed? Does there come a point in any equine's life when she or he becomes ready for death, when she or he gives up, when she or he is ever so properly defeated in the grand competition that is life?
I still believe that life is a competition. Even after Dredgemane, I believe that. There are things that I have been taught—things which I forever credit Rainbow Dash for—that even the most morose of feelings cannot drown out.
Dredgemaners had it within themselves to be more than they were. They lived in a very dismal world—yes—but what legitimate reason was there for them to curtail their own lives by tossing away all joy, all color, all hope for relief beyond the regimental restraint of perpetual labor?
At some point, something had to have happened. Something imposed a self-deprecating order that paralyzed Dredgemane when so many other towns—like Ponyville—were positively dancing. Was it Bishop Breathstar? Was it Mayor Haymane? Was it Sladeburn or the demands of the quarry? What was it that took Pinkie Pie's home town and made it not only live up to its name, but plunge itself so deep beyond it that it had to believe that there was no such thing as a sunrise, that there was a reason for scraping away the rainbow paint from the stained glass windows of Gultophine's cathedral?
This town was to be the Alicorn of Life's refuge, a symbol of victory and triumph in the wake of what destroyed Consus and made Epona flee to the stars. We ponies have all been the product of love, independent of the slings and arrows of misery. But in Dredgemane, nopony was capable of perceiving what I did, perhaps because I was a blissfully ignorant outsider. To think that an apocalyptic Wasteland is the source of my bliss tickles me in a place that I don't particularly like.
What was it that made Dredgemane tick, in that it refused to tick? The village's model citizens were those who moved like a river of molasses down the cobblestone streets with rocks in tow. The only ponies who came close to being happy were those who had gone mad—like Brevis—or had gone to the bottle—just like...
Pinkie Pie suddenly stopped in her tracks and held a hoof aside to force Harmony into identically putting on the brakes. Not even a millisecond later, two brawling drunks slammed through a table in front of them, filling the air with splinters and bottlecaps. Pinkie giggled with a helpless shrug, stepped over the two snarling stallions, and frolicked her way across the saloon until she was shuffling a white box of chocolate-colored pretzels towards the establishment's bartender. She and the tall stallion carried on a pleasant conversation while a shivering Harmony glanced around and yet again bore forlorn witness to the chaotic place.
The hazy air of the saloon quivered from random coughs and retching noises. As the last of many random fights rolled its way into a stack of chairs across the room, Harmony's eyes roamed from tables of half-conscious drinkers to clusters of laughing, rosy-cheeked equines to a grand stage where a scarlet-maned Pepper Plots led a coordinatedly raunchy dance above a line of mesmerized patrons. For one stabbing second, the fancily garbed mare made eye contact with the time traveler and punctuated the connection with a suggestive wink.
Harmony instantly winced, adjusting the brim of her green beret in a futile effort to hide behind the tiny article. With a sigh, she glanced her way once more towards the bar counter—only to see that her anchor was gone. With a brief jump in her heart rate, she flashed her gaze around until she heard a cheering whoop from the stage. With a groan, she finally gazed up and witnessed Pinkie Pie joining Pepper in an energetic can-can. The scarlet mare laughed with sudden flightiness as she joined herself with Pinkie, shoulder-to-shoulder. The two ponies continued the leg-lifting romp to a sudden roar of hysterical laughter from the saloon. Pinkie giggled and tossed her black top hat merrily into the air.
Sighing, Harmony gazed back to the bar counter. She caught an orange shade in her peripheral and swiftly glanced over. Vimbert returned the glance briefly. He cast his blue eyes towards the stage, and immediately rolled them, choosing instead to focus all of his energies into swallowing the contents of a silver flask in his hoof.
Harmony stared solidly at the shattered contours of the unicorn's curiously hollow horn... at least until Pinkie's top hat came down, fatefully landing over the copper pegasus' face and blocking out her vision.
The two mares marched out of the saloon and into the thinning streets of Dredgemane. Afternoon was falling, but Harmony could hardly tell from the endless gray of the misty skies peeking through the canyon above. It was a strangely familiar feeling, like drifting in an airship and waiting for a stormfront to measure the time.
Harmony took a bold step towards the center of town, assuming that the next leg of their delivery would be somewhere beyond the courthouse. She blinked in surprise when Pinkie suddenly tugged on her amber-streaked tail. Stopping to glance back at her anchor, Harmony witnessed the mare shaking her head and pointing a hoof... straight up.
The copper pegasus followed the gesture. She suddenly made out a winding set of stone steps snaking up the steep granite face of the canyon wall. A roughly hewn path had been chiseled out years ago, and it led directly to the surface of the plateau that hovered above the sunken city.
Pinkie grinned wide, motioned with her mane, and galloped toward the sharply ascending stairs. Harmony took a deep breath, shrugged, and reluctantly followed her.
The grand plateau that surrounded the Grave of Consus was flatter than anything Harmony had seen in her entire blistering life. All occasions that the time traveler previously had to glance at the pale gray horizon were interrupted by conversations with Inkessa or Pinkie. That afternoon, trailing a bouncing, top-hatted mare under the milky overcast, she finally paid the landscape some deep attention. She had no doubt that the various dots along the thin gray line stretching in all directions were several kilometers away. Next to nothing obscured the sight of a distant farmhouse, watchtower, or dying tree. She momentarily mourned the lack of such gorgeous clarity in the future, a time when snow and ash would dominate all vision and make a soul wish that she was blind.
Pinkie trotted gaily forward for the better part of an hour. Harmony was worried, until she saw the dome-like shape of a structure dead ahead of them, with a column of billowing smoke rising high above the distant construction as if signaling some delightfully hidden purpose.
While marching towards this faraway sight, the two ponies passed by a smelly oasis. A bog had suddenly appeared in their path. Harmony remembered spotting such inexplicable marshes from her view atop Mayor Haymane's balcony, but seeing one up close was a startling thing. The flatness of the landscape risked an unexpected plunge into the bubbling pond of mud; it had come upon the two so suddenly.
As the two trotted by, a deep bass rumble emanated through the stony plateau. Harmony realized that the dull noise was coming from deep within the muddy waters that they were strolling past. She trotted sideways to stare closely at the bog, squinting her eyes to make sense out of the errant bubbles in the brown surface.
Pinkie Pie suddenly tugged on her. The last pony looked at the mare, and the candy-colored pony slowly shook her head. She trotted onwards with greater momentum, and Harmony was helpless to do anything other than keep up the pace. She glanced back over her tower of white bakery boxes, and for a brief second, she thought she spotted a hulk of scaled flesh appearing and disappearing beneath the currents. Then everything was just as placidly muddy as before.
I had briefly imagined that ponies were the only creatures in Dredgemane. I was wrong, of course. I think it's always been a selective sin of my species to assume that Equestria was a land that held resources only for... Equestrians.
A few sordid memories from my foalhood stick out, regarding cities full of monkeys, ogres, and other unsightly organisms that had once lived outside the boundaries of Princess Celestia's glorious kingdom.
As a matter of fact, a township founded by goblins in the shadow of Griffon Mount came into being shortly before the Cataclysm hit. I remember this now as I write because I recall a horrible cyclone having ravaged the base of the mountain. A goblin colony was nearly rendered to dust from tornadic chaos. To this day, I still don't know how so many of those creatures were spared at the last second. The goblin cities of Petra wouldn't exist as bright pearls in the Wasteland if it wasn't for such miraculous circumstances.
But I do know this, Dredgemane was a place of darkness and misery. It was a bitterly ironic thing, then, that the one hub of peace that broke the dismal clouds of that pony town... didn't owe itself to ponies at all.
“The rams are intrigued by the outer voice's inquisition, but the rams must also maintain the noble truth that to question something is to invent the very need to understand it.”
Harmony sat on her haunches. Across from her, three white and wooly individuals sat in meditative poses upon a triad of velvety cushions. Behind them, an igloo of stacked rocks framed a dozen more spiral-horned creatures who were mutually operating a makeshift forge, complete with a furnace, a pump, several anvils, and an array of blacksmithing equipment. Before the future scavenger's amber eyes, a commune of mountain rams produced the latest of priceless ironcrafting.
“I only asked what you thought of the Dredgemaners who live below you,” the last pony remarked. Beside her, Pinkie crunched her way through a bag of chocolate candy bites. A box of bright pink taffy rested between the guests and the three meditative speakers. “You seem to be hard workers, just like them.”
“The rams' labors are merely a passive exercise through which the rams expend the energy binding them to their mortal frames.” This time, it was another of the three individuals who had spoken. As he and his companions spoke, they barely opened their eyes. They held an identically serene pose between the three of them as the cold winds of the plateau blew tufts of their white hair against their spiraling horns. “The true labor to come is in transcendence beyond the rams themselves. The outer voice's curiosity carries a humility that is indicative of hunger for enlightenment.”
“'Outer... voice...'?” Harmony blinked, then flashed her anchor a helpless glance.
Pinkie gulped a chocolate bite down and pointed with a smile. “He means you or me, or just anypony.”
“Ah.”
One of the three murmured further, “Have you come to meditate with the rams?”
“And by 'the rams,' he means the rams.”
“Uh, yeah, Miss Pie, I gathered.” Harmony cleared her voice and smiled quaintly the three horned creatures' way. “No, I haven't come to meditate. I'm a... guest on behalf of Pinkamena here. We were doing our deliveries, and I can't help but notice that you're the first souls I've seen who aren't stepping to Bishop Breathstar's beat.”
“There are no souls, for there is only one soul, and the rams are but an extension of it, as are all voices—inner and outer.” The three carried the conversation randomly between them as the forges burned and billowed brightly behind their horns. “The oneness was, is, and shall forever be. The rams flock to the superficial imprint of the oneness, where the many began and split the voice into that which is here and that which is not here. Through careful meditation upon the imprint, the rams realize that they too are but the same blemish that they were spoken into being upon the canvas of this grand obscurity. To realize that the rams are one with the imprint is to leave the imprint behind, and seek the inner voice beyond transcendence.”
“So, if I understand you right...” Harmony leaned forward with genuine interest, squinting. “You guys came to the Grave of Consus to meditate on what it means to your search for inner enlightenment.” She blinked. “Funny: you and the Dredgemaners value the same thing, but your way of looking upon it involves a lot less frowns, I take it.”
“The rams comprehend the outer voice's logic, but the rams fail to find what is 'funny' about it.”
“Heeheehee! Well, who can blame you boneheads?” Pinkie giggled. “Har-Har wouldn't know how to telegraph a joke if it came up and rammed her, if you pardon the pun.”
“The rams fail to comprehend the outer voice's pun.”
Harmony frowned at Pinkie, then returned a placid gaze towards the three. “Don't mind her. The closest Miss Pie has ever come to meditating is in mastering the art of paper airplanes...” Her voice trailed off as she spotted a sudden project being undertaken in the “hut” of stacked rocks behind the three's shoulders.
Several deadpan rams were pulling at a pair of copper cranks, raising two metal needles into the sky above the commune. The twin stalks stretched high, piercing the darkening overcast. A deep hum filled the plateau. Harmony squinted to see a generator being rotated at the base of the twin metal stalks. The air briefly filled with static electricity, and in a sudden jolt of thunder a lightning bolt was summoned from the thick of the clouds. Currents of bright blue energy shimmered down the twin stalks and billowed into a black chamber of rusted metal. The dark sarcophagus lit up from the inside like a hot-blue stove, and then shimmered with a hissing puff of sneeze. The rams minding the machine slapped a lever; the twin stalks retracted loudly. One ram wearing protective gear walked up to the black chamber while another opened the lid. With a pair of forceps, the ram reached into the sarcophagus and produced a tiny sphere of sparkling energy.
“Thunder pearls...” Harmony murmured. The scavenger from the future hopelessly smiled, a subtly drunken thing. “You guys are making enchanted thunder pearls! That's—like—the most valuable of Equestrian ramcrafting! Do you have any idea what one of those things are worth?”
“The rams commend the outer voice's knowledge, but fail to grasp her enthusiasm. The elements of this obscurity are just as superficial as the obscurity itself. To harness the elements is to allow the rams to understand the triviality of the imprint, as the elements are imprints in and of themselves.”
“Yeah, but...” The time traveler lurched in mid-speech. She gulped. “They... they will be valuable, some day, in the future.”
“There is no future. There is only now. The rams are both forever and never. Time is an imprint within the obscurity, and without it there is no meaning to the word.”
“Yeah, well, time hurts, okay?”
“The rams postulate that the outer voice has a grasp of the outer voice's imprint.”
“Heh, you may be right.” Harmony leaned back with a smirk. “I gotta ask, though...” She briefly flashed Pinkie a look and glanced fixedly once more at the trio before them. “If you guys are so heck-bent on meditation and transcendence and whatnot, why are all of you on Marble Cake's delivery route?”
A smile suddenly floated like a ghost between the three of them.
“The answer should be simple enough for the outer voice. The rams appreciate taffy.”
That night, the door to the Pie family farmhouse kicked open. Pinkamena Diane Pie danced in, calling loudly towards the far reaches of the candlelit interior. She flung her top hat onto the branch of a coat-rack and moontrotted over towards the dinner table, where Blinkaphine was sketching her millionth landscape since the time traveler arrived there. Pinkie murmured something into the light gray mare's ear, nuzzled her gently, and spun about—only to have a stumpy alligator leap up and clamp its jaws over the candy-colored pony's gasping face. She giggled into Gummy's drooling maw and scampered her way happily into the kitchen to fetch some reptile treats.
Harmony slowly stumbled in, removing her green beret with a dwindling sigh. Another day in the depths of the past, and the hauntingly familiar array of flickering candles only reminded the copper pegasus that nothing was different. After forty-eight hours spent in the past, she actually screamed for a change in scenery. The grayness of the Grave of Consus was burned into her retinae, and the ringing tone of Pinkie's voice simultaneously did a number on her ear drums. She could hardly tell who was an anchor to who anymore.
Standing blissfully alone for a space in time, Pinkie gazed at Blinkaphine, at the unsightly “rocket ship” that formed the catatonic mare's cutie mark, then at the wooden opaqueness of the ceiling above them both... and what inevitably twinkled beyond.
With careful movements, Harmony clasped the crayon in her teeth and steered a constellation branch across the sea of specks that she had just sketched onto the latest sheet of paper. Spitting the pen out for a breath, she glanced up to compare the night's sky to her roughly illustrated mouthwork.
With each white sheet that Harmony covered, the sphere of lights dancing above grew more and more familiar, like long lost siblings to the last pony's quivering eyes. After several hours of mapping the cosmos, patterns began emerging, like re-reading a journal of Princess Celestia for the hundredth time since she scavenged the holy tome. The stars were like words written on an obsidian canvas, and the pegasus struggled to see where the phrases split apart—or else where they tripped over each other.
She may not have gotten a grasp of the Onyx Eclipse yet, but she was beginning to understand the forest within which such an elusive creature was roaming, even if Harmony barely had a means of permanently preserving the map with which she was making her observations.
One thing at a time, just like fixing a scooter. Harmony's breaths were calm things for once, because she realized that as important as this astronomical task was, she was suddenly at a race with her daily self to accomplish some other goal, even if she didn't quite know what that other goal was. However, like a forest full of starblazing trees, she suspected that everything would become clear remarkably soon. She just didn't know if she could map this other project with the same skill that kept her perched upon that nightlit rooftop.
After loading up with the latest of Marble Cake's batches, Harmony limpingly followed Pinkie Pie, the latter of whom was dressed rather anticlimactically like a safari hunter in a white shirt and khaki shorts—as she strolled out through the northwest side of town, where a rising slope in granite bled up out of the deep trenches and wound its way towards a flat highway of crushed gravel stretching westward, upon which several phalanxes of wagon-trailing Dredgemaners trudged and marched.
Harmony glanced from side to side—studying the soot-stained faces of the many citizens lethargically sharing the same path as she and Pinkie. The ponies here looked more consistently dismal and depressed than in any other part of the sunken town. Gazing ahead, she saw why, as a plume of endless smoke rose from a great wound in the stony plateau, its dull black clouds matching the lifeless and lightless faces of those equine bodies stumbling beside her.
After ascending the last crest in the gravel rise, Harmony watched as she and Pinkie stumbled upon the precipice of a great hellish pit. The Dredgemane Quarry was a monumentally huge thing, stretching two and a half kilometers across at its highest point. Dipping down low beneath the top layer of the stony plateau, the landscape resembled an inverse beehive that cyclonically ate into the bosom of the world. Hundreds upon thousands of hard-working ponies dotted the multi-layered highways of rock-dragging wagons like a bed of dully clothed ants. Deep black pits were splattered across the innermost circle of the cylindrical plunge, marking the location of several mineshaft entrances that unbelievably dug even deeper into the planet—beyond view of the naked eye.
Harmony breathlessly gazed into the vacuum of hot air that swirled before the mouth of the giant pit. Even for a pegasus, the sheer height of the drop was alarming. She marveled that there was no manner of safety rails or protective barriers to keep the countless droves of earth ponies from plunging to a horrible death. She glanced over her shoulder towards the plateau's edge and spotted one of three huge foundries—built out of iron—with gigantic brick smokestacks that vomited soot and ash forever into the gray soup of the sky. Twin rivers of laboring ponies marched in opposite directions to and fro, half of them leaving the factories in a shuffling gait, the other half filling up the empty shifts with no greater enthusiasm. Their faces were like gravestones, or lifeless cogs in a grand machine that Dredgemane refused to shut off, if even for one minute.
At the sound of an angry bark, Harmony glanced to her left. Standing atop a wooden podium was the dark brown image of Overseer Sladeburn. The black-garbed stallion was engaged in a heated dispute with several red-faced engineers and architects. They shouted and argued over several topographical maps and subterranean blueprints while the traffic of living laborers surged by undaunted beneath them. All the while, the thick soot of industry billowed through the air and rained ash down like so many a blighted day in the Wastelands.
One speck of dust fell on the last pony's vested shoulder. The lone soul from the future picked the dark flake off her shoulder and paused to hold it before her in one hoof. The way in which the speck had singled her out from the surging crowd struck her curiously. She wondered briefly if the desolation of the Cataclysm had followed her all the way there, but Harmony knew better than to hope for such a fanciful thing. The Wasteland was becoming more and more—with each passing Dredgemane day—the heartless appendix to an even more bitter legacy. The quarry was just like the Grave of Consus; it was a second grave. Its mouth opened wide to swallow the bodies of so many ponies as it also swallowed the colors of so many dying dreams that the last pony once held in admiration.
A chirping sound lit the air, like a drop of sugar in a grand bowl of acid. Harmony glanced up to see Pinkie's bright blue eyes. The mare smiled like it was everypony's foalday at once, and motioned with her bright mane as she boldly and happily marched straight down into that hellish abyss, going somewhere that for once paralyzed the nerves within the Entropan frame of the future scavenger, for deep within the innermost bowels of that quarry there stretched an array of dark mineshaft entrances, and every single one of them looked like a serpent's gaping mouth beyond a sea of white stones.
Harmony shuddered. She clung to a metal handle against the side of the rattling elevator car as they dropped down, down, down an impermeable esophagus of rock. Several fissures in the deep stony flesh of the world blurred past her. Like a frightened foal, Harmony clenched her eyes shut during brief intervals, her nose becoming reacquainted with soot-stained scents that she hadn't been graced with since she was too young to bend her wings. Memories of voices, sights, and faces flickered across the blackness of her limbs. They all drew a grand mosaic that melted together to form the glistening glare of a ghostly noon day, and dipping into view was the loving face of a sunset-colored pegasus, and in her ruby eyes there reflected an orange shape that was surprised to see itself, and as soon as those two orange hooves rose towards the mare, a melodic voice entreated her from beyond the white stone...
Something was slapped heavily over the time traveler's head. Scootaloo opened her eyes and was once more Harmony. She glanced up to see a hard hat resting over her cranium. The last pony looked across the rattling descent of the elevator to spot Pinkie Pie—smiling—as she planted a hard hat onto her own fluffy mane and lit the bright light in the center of it. She pointed at the electrified illumination with a giggle and picked up a pile of white boxes that was resting on the elevator floor.
In the meantime, Harmony nervously glanced at the other bodies inside the falling car. Half a dozen miners shared the plunge with them. Their bodies were like black clouds that contrasted sharply with the bright yellow hats atop their craniums. Dazed eyes gazed beyond the blurring bowels of the earth just outside the wire-frame mesh of the elevator car. Harmony marveled how souls forced to work under the skin of the earth could lose their center of gravity, and yet these ponies looked ready to fall into a million screaming pieces at any second, even though it would be a nightmarishly mute thing.
With a hiss of hydraulics: the elevator car came to a lurching stop. The pony miners all jolted up to their hooves in sudden, mechanical movement. The gates rattled open, and they filed out into a gigantic cavern echoing with the roar of drills, hammers, pickaxes, and slurring pony breaths. A torchlit haze wafted throughout the subterranean hovel, like fuming breath pouring through a sleeping dragon's trachea.
Pinkie Pie sauntered out with a humming voice. She stopped suddenly, realizing that she was alone. Gazing back, she gave Harmony a sharp smirk, complimented with an angelic wink as she reached a hoof into the car for her.
With foalish skittishness, the last pony gulped, nodded, and slowly shuffled out upon gripping Pinkie's hoof. Sticking close to the candy-colored pony's flank, the pegasus walked with her down the claustrophobic alleyway filled to the brim with wandering workers and flickering lights. Together, both mares trudged deep into the meat of Dredgemane progress, their bodies vibrating along with the meter-less tune of endless and death-defying enterprise.
I didn't want to be there, and yet I needed to be. Perhaps Pinkie Pie knew that, or perhaps she didn't. All that mattered is that I knew for once what I wasn't comfortable with. After years of staring the Wasteland in the face, I was in a place that I didn't want anything to do with, because I was no longer facing my own end. I was staring at my parents' demise.
This was the sort of infernal place that took them from me. This was the same damnable labyrinth of hazards that poisoned them, that filled their lungs with so much infernite that they couldn't see me reach my fourth winter. I hated this place and every other place like it. I hated it for what it took from me, several years before the Cataclysm would come to take even more from me than I could even pretend to angst about.
I have seen some horrible things in my lifetime, but all of those traumatizing experiences in the Wasteland were manageable precisely because they were unpredictable. All of my life—both young and old—I've had one horrible thing define me, a thing that made me an orphan long before I could ever disguise myself in Princess Entropa's skin. Twenty-five years into the past, flung into the gaping Grave of Consus, drowning in the helpless souls of Dredgemane, and plunged hundreds upon hundreds of meters down into solid rock... I was forced to face what I have always truly feared, what has always brought out the best and worst in me, what has categorized all of the lifeless and starved aspects of my struggling battle through this escapade I call life.
I was forced to face you.
The winding intestines of the mines were like a subterranean copy of the serpentine streets of Dredgemane. The only difference was that the ponies here didn't pretend to not be miserable. In grunting breaths and pained expressions, they fought for dominance against the jagged marble and rock, stabbing their way into the pliable walls with innumerable tools of earth pony design. Soot-swimming workers worked in circles to hack away at outcroppings of rock, their pickaxes slicing serratedly through the cacophonous air of metallic ringing.
Randomly, workers would shout across the claustrophobic spaces to one another, asking workhooves to toss them the appropriate tool for the next task at hoof. Mining cars roared up and down rusted metal tracks, delivering wave after wave of metal instruments to meet the necessary demand. The stuffy air roared with deathly electricity as several Dredgemaners joined together to drive a large power drill into one stretch of seemingly impenetrable wall.
As fountains of hot, steaming water spurted from the machine's hydraulics, Harmony and Pinkie carefully shuffled aside, making their way further into the winding throat of beaten rock. Random lanterns and torches illuminated the craggy hallways of stone for them as they descended deeper and deeper on some inexplicable mission to hoof out doughnuts to a suffocated populace.
Harmony breathed shallowly, squinting along the beam of light emanating from her hard hat. She saw through her bobbing vision a hazy cloud of faces, some glancing at her, some staring into the rock beyond their hammering tools. Every pair of eyes was something painful, like she was navigating a sea of Celestial Civil War torture victims. This was not just some random mine sunken deep in the bowels of Equestria; this was a Lunar Imperialist Inquisition chamber. Stumbling around her were the victims of war, awaiting the chance to be gutted for their sins of being alive in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The time traveler winced at a passing thought as she struggled to follow the pink shade bouncing along the fringes of her peripheral vision. This was an age before the apocalypse, and all she could see was pain. It was always and forever the “wrong time”.
I have always felt a certain disassociation when I time-travel. I know that I am a soul from the future, and I know that I do not belong in the warm depths of the past to which I descend. What's more, I feel like an entirely different creature than the ponies that I visit. This was obviously the case when I stumbled upon the Apple Family, when I decided to reveal to Applejack's Granny Smith the nature to which I was different from her.
But was I better than her? Was I better—a more “special” pony than any of those miners of Dredgemane for that matter? Walking amongst them, I knew that—with one flick of my wings—I could fly away from my anchor and disappear from that cold pit in the belly of the earth forever. I had something that all of those ritualistically enslaved souls couldn't comprehend, not even Pinkie. It was more than Entropan skin that acted as a barrier between me and them. I was separated from those souls by decades... by a veritable age of relation. What obligation did I have to care about a single one of them?
That's a good question to ask myself even now. It's very likely a question that you have been attempting to formulate for me all this time. I can't imagine that you've been very pleased so far to just stand by and watch me and Spike perform this experiment with very little regards to how you would feel about the subject.
What do I owe those souls I visited in the past? I don't just mean Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Applejack, Cheerilee, or all the other familiar souls I've yet to haunt. What do I owe all of ponydom? What do I owe Princess Celestia or Princess Luna? What do I owe every army that has ever shed blood in the name of peace? What do I owe every Equestrian soul that has performed innumerable sins since the Sundering of Consus?
It is so very easy to be the end of ponies. It doesn't exactly feel comfortable to be the essence of them.
Yes, I felt special. I felt alive, magical even. It briefly distracted me from the trepidation of being in a mine full of possible pockets of infernite. As I walked past each worker, as I gazed at them in the throes of exhausting labor, I pondered what they thought of me, of what they must have imagined when they saw me.
Did anypony know who I was?—I mean who I really was? Could they have possibly imagined that I was not just any ordinary pegasus from Equestria, but I was in fact a time traveler from the future, that I was a relic that they didn't yet know their ill-fated world was going to leave behind, that I was inevitably going to be the last shred of evidence that their entire species would show for the fact that it ever once existed on this blighted planet which Epona so long ago sculpted without so much as a second thought?
Did they know that this one lone pegasus, this one orphan soul strung like a marionette in the midst of their dismal stage, was actually the last pony, the last hope Equestria would ever have to see the Sun and Moon once again?
Of course they didn't know, because I didn't even know. Was I their hope? I certainly didn't feel like it. If anything, I was a curse, a sign that no matter how miserable their lives of labor and darkness were, things could only get worse.
I did not belong there. I was a blemish upon the realm of Dredgemane, far more poisonous than any errant pocket of untapped infernite. I brought with myself a horror that nopony should have been allowed to comprehend. There was nothing that I could have salvaged from the depths of that place. There were no stars there, no constellations. All that I needed I was just starting to scrape from the rooftop of the Pie Family's farmhouse. Nopony needed me to be there. Equestria didn't need me to be there.
But Pinkie needed me to be there, and maybe I needed myself to be there too. If nothing else, the visit was beginning to chip away at my numb Entropan skin like so many pickaxes against the rocky womb of that place. I needed to know exactly who it was I've been making these time jumps for. I needed to know who I was capable of eulogizing, but far too helpless to bring salvation to.
I needed to know what they knew; I needed to suffer as they did.
In a juncture of commingling tunnels, several Dredgemaners sat in groups, catching their breaths from their long searches for arcanium. They drank from mugs of water being carried about on trays by underground suppliers. It was here that Pinkie Pie had been leading Harmony, where she finally stopped to pass out the desserts that they had carried all the way down from Marble Cake's bakery a perceptual light-year above where the two were now currently buried.
Harmony stood beside an abandoned mine cart, leaning against the rusted body of the vehicle with shuddering copper limbs. Her gaze flittered from face to weathered face, studying with pitiable attention the degree to which the workstallions were aged and weakened by the sunken claws of time. Beards bespeckled with ash and manes drenched in soot sat in a dizzying array of zombified silence before her. If Dredgemane had one unforbidden art, it was the mimicking of gravestones well ahead of the ponies' last breaths.
A strangely heavenly thing suddenly pierced the hellish basement. Harmony swiveled her lit helmet about to spot Pinkie Pie standing... in the center of a halo of chuckling faces. She giggled and resumed telling one iconic joke after another, to which she summoned several smiling faces from the dirtied workers standing immediately around her.
Harmony watched as the candy-colored caterer proceeded to spread this impermanent but very real warmth. As she scampered down the rows of workers enjoying a brief respite, she passed out treats and was passed back grins, chuckles, smirks, and thankful expressions. Every now and then the daughter of Quarrington Pie paused to engage in one blissful conversation after another, filling the otherwise mute corridor with a rolling cadence of excited murmurs and relieved laughter.
The last pony's brow furrowed as she witnessed this. Something curious bubbled up to the surface of her chest as she watched Pinkie Pie do her rounds. She wasn't entirely sure what to label this new feeling that trailed after the heels of her infinitely annoying anchor, but it was something alarmingly close to “pride.”
Those were not ponies before me. They were all individual Cataclysms, each and every one of them. Every soul was a different crisis, a different life with different pains and with different aspirations and with different anxieties. It has always been that way. If I could somehow bond with the creatures of the Wasteland, I'm sure I could rediscover that it's the same way now.
There was never just one Cataclysm, far from it. Every soul in Equestria was an island in a grand archipelago of completely unrelateable experiences. I could look at a single face of a single miner in a single spot of the cavern, and that one pony in a thousand held shut an inexplicably huge book of untellable memories, fears, joys, and agonies. It's amazing that my species—a race of disastrously intelligent beings—could have lived for so many grandiose Ages with such impermeable boundaries flung up between each other.
Even in my youth, I bore witness to this. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were creatures of untellable secrets, as were the families their siblings belonged to, and the clans that they hailed from, and the nations that they dwelled in.
History has forever been a heterogenous thing, of so many completely random and unlike souls flung together like gravel in a rattling glass jar to make up the cornucopia we liked to call “civilization.” Not all of us could have been mountain rams; there was never a single “one-ness” of ponydom. Or else, if there was, it was in a time before Consus fell and produced reality as we know it within the wounded grave of his passing.
What hope had I to bring glory to an entire race of Equestrians who lived as disconnectedly amongst each other as I was when I visited them? Bringing the Sun and Moon to the former land of the whole of ponydom would mean nothing if there was no merit to that “whole” from the get-go.
Epona bless Spike for being such an optimistic dreamer, but the Wasteland could not benefit from a silver bullet. As a matter of fact, it deserved no silver bullet. The everlasting wounds of this world have always been things that no Goddess could salvage, that no stretch of time could possibly make sense of, and that no time traveler could certainly ever dream of sewing back together.
Then, if even my ardent stargazing couldn't bring about a solution to the pain that I witnessed on a regular basis, why was I still mapping the sky of a dead world? Why was I searching for the Onyx Eclipse like it was somehow the nameless and bodiless architect of all that the Cataclysm had ever brought about?
Why was I still in Dredgemane? The truth, I feel, is pitifully ironic, and I suddenly felt it could only be paraphrased from the bottom of a silver flask of alcohol. After all, why was anypony still in Dredgemane?
The light was blinding when the elevator reached the top of the shaft. In squinting fashion, the last pony stumbled towards the final mouth of the mine. A pink shadow hopped alongside her, and soon the two were stumbling up the spiraling path leading towards the top of the cyclonic quarry. Hundreds upon hundreds of laboring ponies filled the air around their ascent with the clamoring of rocks and metal tools as the populace of Dredgemane sought to drag arcanium, the fruits of mining, back to the surface of the plateau.
“'You gotta stand up tall, learn to face your fears.'”
Harmony blinked. She glanced aside at her brightly-coated anchor. “I beg your pardon?”
“Something my grandma used to say to me.” The earthy pony paused to fluff her hat-messied mane and winked the pegasus' way. “'You'll see that they can't hurt you, just laugh to make them disappear.'”
“Make what disappear?”
“Your fears, ya silly filly! Heeheehee!”
“Oh,” Harmony grumbled and continued climbing the ascending spiral. “But of course.”
“It helps me in my life when things get scary. I tell it to my friends and it helps them too! My grandma was a wise mare, ya see.”
“And I'm guessing you want to toss her advice my way now.”
“Nah.”
Harmony raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“What, you jealous?”
“Hardly. Just confused.”
“Something down there in the mines gave you the willies, Har-Har! For a moment there, I was kinda worried about you. I wanted to give you Granny Pie's advice, but then I realized—well—you hate laughing. How could you giggle at the ghosties?!”
“I don't hate laughing,” Harmony said, her gait slumping with a momentary sigh. “I just don't see the point in it.”
“That's right! There is no point in laughing! But ponies are creatures who do it naturally!” Pinkie Pie bounced backwards in front of Harmony, smiling at her. “Why do you think the Goddesses would give us something pointless if we weren't meant to enjoy it?”
“The Goddesses also gave us a redundant organ attached to our pancreas.” Harmony gave a bitter smirk. “I happen to remember many a pony who's done anything but enjoy having that little useless joy removed from their bodies upon inflammation.”
“Yeah, but you can't do standup with a redundant organ, now can you? 'Why did the redundant organ cross the road?' See? It doesn't have the same ring to it.”
Harmony groaned.
“Oh! I know! Lemme try this: Ahem... 'What is the deal with redundant organ food?'”
“That's quite enough...”
“'Two redundant organs walk into a bar—'”
“Miss Pie—Stop while you're ahead, though for somepony to call that 'ahead' would mean that there's a lot of empty alcohol bottles around.”
“Oooh! And that would lead to a rotten pancreas!”
“You mean the 'liver,' but whatever.”
“Just what is it that you have against laughter? Did a clown run over your pet turtle when you were a kid or something?”
“Miss Pie, when I was a kid, I already knew how awful this world was and what little could possibly be done to change it!”
“Why would you wanna change the world?” Pinkie Pie asked with a raised eyebrow. She trotted alongside Harmony once more, the cloudy sunlight glinting off her khaki shirt and shorts. “I dunno about you, but I would much rather care for the ponies who live in it.”
“Same difference. Take all of these hard workers around us, for instance.” Harmony pointed towards the hustle and bustle of Dredgemane laborers clambering about the two's ascent. “Here, they're doing really tiring and painful stuff—the same tiring and painful stuff that they've likely tackled the entirety of their lives—and they can't stop, because how else are they going to get paid to support their families in a town that barely sees the sunrise?”
“I always figured that was where the likes of me came in! When I got my cutie mark, I realized that what everypony needs is a good party!”
“Miss Pie, a party might make a very small amount of these ponies feel good for a very small amount of time... but it won't change their lives, not like your life was very obviously changed.”
“Hehehe! All it takes is a gentle push!”
“To what end? Only two Dredgemaners in the whole of this pea-soup city dare to go against the flow, to smile when everypony else is too busy groaning. You and Brevis are in a league of your own, Miss Pie. Every other citizen who hears your words or witnesses your smile: they can't become you. And even if they could, would that really help them? The world isn't exactly sunshine and gumdrops. The one thing Dredgemane is guilty of is being lucid.”
“The miners down below seemed really happy to see us.”
“And how long will that happiness last? Until their shift is over? Or just their break? Miss Pie, you can taint the mouths of the world with your sweet flavor, but soon every bitter throat's gotta swallow and gear up for the next breath. You could be Gultophine's gift to ponies, for all we know, but you're still only one pony. Even if you were the last pony...” She exhaled and stared off into the sea of gray rock surging by their canter. “...you can only be so much.”
“I think I've figured out why you don't like laughing, Har-Har.”
“Oh yeah? Enlighten me.”
“A joke is best enjoyed when you're not alone.” Pinkie smiled pleasantly, albeit gently. “Why does Auntie Pinkie get the feeling that you've long been a party of one?”
Harmony avoided the mare's gaze. In a few cold blinks, she saw the dead interior of her powered-down airship. A frustrated brown pegasus was lying restless in a hammock while staring across the cabin at a limp bag of bones. Rather than allow a flaring hole in her soul to welcome Pinkie's inquisition in, she bitterly blew out, “I'm not one of your precious kids at Stonehaven, Miss Pie. So don't pretend to be my 'Auntie.' Besides, I'm sure I'm a few months older than you at least.”
“Heehee! But I love my kids! You should hear one of my bedtime stories when I read to them!”
“I was there the other night—”
“No, I mean really listen in! I don't mean being a wallflower and looking at the clock to see if it's time for stargazing or not! Heehee! I bet somewhere beneath that stuffy shell, there's a kid just waiting to be amazed at the pretty little things of life once again! I've seen you talking to Suntrot! I think you've got her giggle somewhere in your chest. Or maybe even Ice Song's smile, Gultophine bless his soul!”
“Oh yeah?” Harmony droned. “And what of Clyde's voice?”
Pinkie didn't respond.
Harmony's Entropan heart skipped a beat. She glanced over. For the first five ensuing seconds of silence, she couldn't even see Pinkie Pie's expression from that angle. There was a bitter exhaust of pride coming out the end of Harmony's last utterance, but upon the precipice of discovering what Pinkie's lips gave out—assuming it was anything but the usual grin—she was suddenly too afraid to find out. It was a fear that rivaled the skittishness that paralyzed her earlier in the mines.
Thankfully, a voice was shouting in their direction as the two rounded up the last few meters of the spiral path rising up from the bottom of the quarry. “But somepony saw them go down here! Please, Overseer, on behalf of Mayor Haymane, allow me to send a messenger after them!”
“Did you not hear me the first time, you dolt?! Nopony gets through without a thorough check! I run a tight ship down here! I can't allow for any flexibility in the comings and goings of laborers! The progress of Dredgemane depends on it!”
“For crying out loud—I have no time! The Royal Grand Biv has been spotted and—”
“The Royal Grand Biv?!” Pinkie Pie joyfully rediscovered a hollering strength. Harmony was quietly relieved, and she hated herself for it.
“There you are!” A familiar young guard from two days ago jumped down from the platform where an irate Sladeburn was standing and glaring. “The Biv's vandalized the water tower to the east side of town!”
“Where is it now—?!” Harmony began to ask but was viciously shoved to the side by a pink hoof.
“What did she do to the water tower?!” Pinkie Pie leaned in with pointed blue eyes.
The guard shook nervously. “Uhm... She or he or it dumped a bunch of soap into the tower. The thing is a sudsy, bubbly mess of rainbow color!”
“Heeheehee! Well, she most certainly cleaned house this time! Haha! Get it?!” Pinkie Pie doubled over, clutching her tummy through a cascade of furious laughter.
Harmony groaned, rolled her eyes, and gazed at the guard once more. “Did anypony witness where the Biv went?”
“From what I understand, they're still chasing that creep!” The guard straightened his rattling black helmet and breathlessly exclaimed, “Four separate bands of militia have circled the cretin around the Eastern Shopping District—”
“Miss Pie!” Harmony spun and exclaimed, “Any idea what street that is?”
“Heehee... Hmmmm-hahaha... Ahem.” She wiped a tear away and stilled her smiling lips in time to exclaim, “Yeah, that's Geode Street. I used to go there all the time as a filly to toss sarsaparilla bottles at a brick wall. That was before I fluffed my hair out, you see.”
“Good. Then you're telling me what the street looks like.” Harmony suddenly grabbed Pinkie's shoulders from behind. “We're not wasting a single breath, this time.”
“You want I should fetch a bunch of sarsaparilla bottles for ammo?—Eeep!” The candy-colored mare let loose a shriek as Harmony spread her broad copper wings and carried the two of them away from the quarry, over several gasping heads, and towards the steep arteries of Dredgemane beyond. “Weeee! This is just like that one time in that adventure book with the pony and the things that do stuff!”
The guard galloped back to Dredgemane on his lonesome while Overseer Sladeburn sighed and returned to a clipboard documenting that week's mined resources. “I hope to Elektra that Haymane knows what he's doing.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Don't worry! I know what I'm doing!” Harmony shouted against the whipping wind.
“Who said I was worried?!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, glancing down past her dangling hooves at the yawning beds of hard rock blanketed with bone-shattering buildings below. “I never get airsick until after my head starts to leak!” Just then, a river of blood spurted out of the mare's nose. She sniffed and twitched her nostrils. “Ah, there we go. Okay... Time to be worried.”
“What's the matter, Miss Pie?” Harmony braved a smirk as she slowly descended towards the east end of town. Her green beret threatened to blow off her skull at any second. “All you need to do is laugh at your trepidation and it will fly away, or some crap like that, right?”
“It's one thing to giggle at the ghosties... But I've never tried chortling at—URP—the gag reflex.” Pinkie's face turned grave as a breath of bile lurched out of her pained lips.
“Don't fret! We're almost there! That is Geode Street below us, right?” Harmony pointed towards a long stretch of concrete shops. A colorful figure was running halfway across the island of two-story rooftops. Filling the cobblestone sea of the streets below, hundreds of armored militia pony rattled about and surrounded the vandal's every avenue of escape. “Looks like we're joining the party just in time!”
“I... erm...” Pinkie's face imploded in a worrisome pout.
“What's the matter?! I thought you liked parties!”
“If I didn't know better, I'd say she sees us, Har-Har!” Pinkie pointed a bright hoof towards where the figure had paused, its ruby goggles glinting skyward.
“Pffft!” The foalish Scootaloo inside Harmony's skin raspberried. “What's the worst it could do to us from here?! It's not like the Royal Grand Biv is resourceful enough to pack anti-air weapons—”
With an explosion, a puff of rainbow smoke erupted below. Propelled along the streams of screaming fireworks, a missile of prismatic flames soared straight up towards the two.
“Friggin' A!” Harmony wheezed and spiraled around, barely avoiding the barreling rocket. The projectile soared up past her and exploded far too close for comfort. The sheer force of the blast's proximity slammed into Harmony from behind. In a breathless grunt, she lurched forward and dropped two things: the green beret... and Pinkie Pie.
“Aaaaaiiiieeee!” Pinkie flailed, her bright tail hairs billowing as she cannonballed towards the stony city below with a force that could shatter elephants.
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No! You've posted it too soon! I wasn't ready yet! Just a few more days was all I needed.
Holy crap, I just reloaded my page and my unread chapter count suddenly tripled. O.o
"Pinkie gazed at Blinkaphine, at the unsightly “rocket ship” that formed the catatonic mare's cutie mark" Don't you mean Harmony? Pinkie went to the kitchen, after all.
It's probably been revealed in a later chapter, but I think the Biv is Blinkaphine.