The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Forty-Four: Cold in Pinkez

The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Forty-Four – Cold in Pinkez

Special thanks to Vimbert, theworstwriter, and Warden for editing

Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art

An hour and a half later, the stars hung over Harmony's head as she sat in a slump just outside the south face of Stonehaven Sanitarium. She did not stare at the constellations that she had traveled back twenty-five years to capture. Instead, Harmony was gazing deeply at the granite earth, the dead trees, the rusted iron gates, the steep canyon walls, all the endless desolation of a land that had decayed well before it's time of slaughter.

There was no basin that could hold that single day's worth of dread, no record that could capture the moans, the sobs, and the death rattles of Dredgemane. The time traveler shuddered, for she realized that it was all but a pin drop in the legacy of the Grave of Consus, of the grand lecherous lengths of history itself.

She briefly glanced down at her turquoise vest. In addition to a now-blackened bloodstain, a few stray strands of golden hair had stuck to her outfit. Harmony recognized them as the molting refuse of Suntrot's mane. In one evening, the last pony had communed with both the dead and the dying. Not even two and a half decades spent piercing the horrors of the Wasteland could have branded her with a fraction of the blemish that she had come to weather that day.

“And so it is the world began, and so it is the world shall end.”

Harmony twitched. She spun about and glanced mutely towards the front end of Stonehaven. Beyond the immense row of granite steps, an orange unicorn could be seen tying straight the last of many boxes atop a rickety wooden supply wagon.

“Alas, the sun has set on Gultophine's Refuge,” Vimbert bitterly slurred with an off-color smirk as he tugged and tested his ropes. “And when Celestia raises the sun again, this will still ever faithfully be Dredgemane.” He exhaled long and hard, leaned against his wagon, and stared limply in the pegasus' direction. “If there's one thing that faith is good at in this life, it's keeping everything the way it is.”

Harmony merely stared at him.

“So you've seen the worst that the mines can spit out. So you've seen what this lovely institute of Haymane's has to offer to the future of poisoned foals.” He reached into a pocket of his black jacket and whipped out a silver flask. “And though you've come from the well-to-do but definitively posh circles of the Canterlotlian Elite, you gotta stand back and ask yourself, 'Is it really such an Epona-forsaken surprise?'” He squinted his blue eyes at her as he slowly unscrewed the cap to his alcoholic vessel. “Before there was Nightmare Moon, there was Discord. Before there was the Celestial Civil War, there were the Chaos Wars. Before there was Snow Ballad or whatever-the-heck the latest victim's name was... there was Consus.” He raised the flask so that its silver body glinted in the burning glare of stars. “Welcome to the Grave of all our yesterdays and tomorrows, for they're all so delightfully identical.”

He took a liberal swig of his vodka. After a groaning exhale, he slumped further against the wooden body of his cart and slurred towards the shadows gathering between him and the time traveler.

“Y'know, I wasn't always a liver-rotting, bitter-tongued, tactless janitor at some Epona-forsaken hole-in-the-wall excuse for a hospital. Heheh...” He grinned wickedly her way, but his eyes were as tired as a dying generation of grave diggers. “This is the part where you hoof the rambling freeloader a modicum of bits and point him in the direction of the nearest drinking hole.” With a stifled belch, Vimbert gazed beyond the granite reaches of Stonehaven and murmured further, “As a matter of fact, I used to be a teacher. A professor, mind you, with shining diplomas earned after graduating from both the University of Fillydelphia and the Manehattan Institute of Fine Learning.” His gaze thinned to match a placid curve to his lips. “I lectured to entire rooms full of hundreds of students, such bright and enthusiastic minds that desired everything golden and glistening in this world yet knowing nothing of its darker, far more tragic fossils.”

The air between them thinned. The world turned colder, though there was no wind. Harmony's gaze fell from the unicorn's orange figure, but her ears were trained towards him the whole time.

“One year, nearly a decade into my illustrious teaching career, I had a seat offered me in the honorary faculty of Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. But do you know what I did?” He swirled the flask in his hoof as his brow furrowed. “I turned it down. And for what? I was young and brash then, and I wanted to travel abroad. I wanted to pass the torch of knowledge and education to the far corners of Equestria, to spread light where there was so much ignorance and ennui. So, I came here, and I partnered with the Dredgemane Academy of Arts and Sciences to offer a study course in Equestrian History. I wasn't alone either; I brought my wife and children with me.”

Harmony glanced up at that. Vimbert saw it, and his smile was a pathetically sadistic thing.

“Oh yes, I had a family: a wife whose eyes glistened like the firmaments of Princess Nebula, and two darling children—fillies—whose everyday laughter turned the canyons of this place into melodic concert halls.” His eyes glazed over as he sought to chase down the whispery threads of his own voice. “They even used to sing to me when I came home from late-night grading. I could have gone for an entire day without eating or sleeping, so long as I had... as I had that to look forward to...”

Silence briefly reigned. Vimbert drowned himself with another swig, cleared his throat, and exhaled the bitter exhaust of the vodka.

“Well.” He grunted. “One day, there was a collapse in the quarry, a tragically horrible event that made what happened today look like a little foal kicking a sand castle over.” He motioned blindly towards the northwest edge of the continent with a waving hoof. “It was barely two years into my residency here, and I wanted to prove to Dredgemane that I was an able-bodied citizen. So, I volunteered for the rescue team. What followed was a week of sights and sounds that I never, ever could have predicted myself fathoming. But, like a good Equestrian... like a good Dredgemaner, I slugged through it. I went the long haul, and I can say without a drop of overinflated pride that I actually did manage to save a hoof-ful of lives that week. When I returned home to the comfort and loving support of my wife, it all suddenly seemed worthwhile.”

He swallowed down something hard. His lower left limb began tapping rhythmically against the wooden wheel of his wagon.

“I started noticing the symptoms in my family barely three weeks after I came back from volunteering at the quarry,” he muttered. “First, it was coughing. Then, it was a numbness in their limbs. Then my darling daughters—in a sight that I can't shake even to this day—were found lying on the floor between their beds, paralyzed, with horrible trails of jaundice lining their mouths. When I called the local doctor and brought him in to make a house call, his first move was to quarantine my entire apartment. What was more, he quarantined myself as well. I was just as confused as I was horrified, and it didn't help things anymore when he finally explained it all to me. You see, I knew residually about the realities of Immolatia, and I realized that it was impossible for members of my family to suddenly suffer the symptoms of it without any prior exposure to infernite. It was then that I learned that they had indeed been exposed to it, and that exposure was me.”

Vimbert pointed at his shattered horn as his eyes took on a bitter hue.

“I didn't get this wonderful keepsake by head-butting every drunken moron who owes me bits downtown. This is the result of what Dredgemane doctors called Interior Alcornia Inflammatory Decay. When a unicorn's system is assailed with a terrible infection, sometimes it is the final recourse of the body to expel the disease through the magical leylines in our nervous systems, hence the decaying horn. As it turns out, I was indeed infected by Infernite after one week of cleaning up at the quarry. The reason why I didn't develop symptoms is because for some pathetic, cosmic joke I was genetically immune to the fatal slings of Immolatia. I was a professor of history and literature, so I never quite possessed the mathematical skills to explain the absurdity of the situation to myself, but I once read in a scientific periodical that the odds of a pony simultaneously being immune and contagious in the wake of Immolatia is one out of one hundred million, and yet I was both of those very things... and my family died because of it, because of me.”

Harmony was silent. She watched as the orange shadow of a pony sauntered over to the front of his cart.

“But, alas, I've been through all the sobs. I've been through all the grief and doubt and self-hate and all that other wonderful fluff.” He pocketed his flask away and began slowly tying himself to the rig of the wagon full of supplies. “The reason I'm telling you all this, Miss Harmony, is so that maybe you can understand why I'm here, in that it's for a different reason than why everypony else is still here. You think that I don't give a flying crap about the children in this hospital where I work? Lady, that can't be further from the truth. I'm the one who has to wheel those poor little saps off to the crematorium when their time comes. Yes, I stayed in Dredgemane. After all these years, after I've lost my family, after I've lost my fortune, after I've lost my teaching career and jaded sense of pride—I'm still here because I have to watch and see. I have to stare as each one of those unlucky infants go up in smoke. I have to witness for myself that this town is as miserably unchanging as I've ever cursed it to be in those dark days when I bathed in the ashes of my family's transient shadows. I used to be a teacher who shared with hundreds of young, yearning students the secrets of the ages, when in fact there's just one secret left that's been evading me, and that's the secret to what makes life so goddess-awfully absurd. You wanna know what the cherry on top is?” He finished with the rigging and smiled crookedly her way like an inverse mule. “It's consumed the last vestiges of my own life to realize that none of it was worth it. But it's too late for all that now. So long as the bar's open, and janitors can still be paid, I can pretend to be okay with it.”

Harmony was no longer looking at him. He was aware of it. So he briefly leaned over from the wagon and whistled. Once he caught her gaze again, he spoke in a final, somber breath.

“Leave, Miss Harmony. Leave Dredgemane before it devours you as it has me. There is no hope for you here. There is no hope for those dying children. And there is most certainly no hope for Canterlot or Celestia or who-the-heck ever to bring light to this corpsecape—be it by books or by bonfires.” Vimbert stared ahead towards the gray heart of town. “Haymane's right to be casting a dark shroud over this place. The best graves are the ones that are kept covered.” With that, the unicorn broke into a lurching canter, and was gone.

Harmony was alone, like she always was, like everypony always was. The distant echoes against the canyon wall didn't break her from this brutally honest spell. Neither did the hooftrots of Pinkie Pie as she suddenly emerged from the granite entrance of Stonehaven, glanced every which way, and finally sauntered over to join the copper pegasus' side.

“Har-Har, I've been looking all over for you. I'm not used to us not being in the same room together; are you alright?”

The last pony was dead silent.

“Inkessa's headed on home. She wanted to speak to you about something, but you weren't around. I told her I'd track you down. In the meantime, Zecora's off in the guest building, trying to fix together another brew. She sent Bert off to gather more stuff from the local pharmacy. Did you see him just now? Huh?”

Harmony gazed numbly towards the thin canyon bleeding away from the dead end of Stonehaven.

Pinkie Pie blinked. She suddenly grinned. “Well, whatever! Bert may be good at delivering stuff, but he sure is slow at it! Maybe you and I can stop by the pharmacy tomorrow after we do another of Marble Cake's rounds.”

“So much cake and frosting...” Harmony muttered at last.

“Hmm? What was that?”

Harmony dully glared the bright mare's way. “Is that all you ever think about? Sweets? Party favors? Gags and jokes and other trivial absurdities?”

“Nuh uh! That isn't true! I also think about puppy dogs and rainbows and Sapphire Shores records and... uhmmm...” Pinkie tapped an errant hoof to her chin, scrunched her face, then smirked. “...this really handsome hunk of a stallion who lives at Sweet Apple Acres. I bet you know the onnnnnne...” She playfully nudged the time traveler's turquoise vest—

—until Harmony batted the mare's limb away. “Nnngh!” She suddenly grumbled. “Why is everything such a friggin' game to you?”

“A game?” Pinkie's eyes twitched. “Who ever heard of 'Pin the Tail on the Everything?'”

“Miss Pie, I'm serious—”

“Pfft! Har-Har, you're always serious!”

“Did this entire day just not even happen?!” Harmony exclaimed. “Were you not there when the mines collapsed and killed dozens of townsponies? Were you not... h-holding him in your limbs when h-he gave his last breath?”

“Who?” Pinkie hummed. “Ice Song?”

“Miss Pie, who else could I possibly be talking about?”

“I know what happened tonight, Har-Har,” Pinkie Pie said in a low voice. Her smile this time was a slow and evolutionary thing. “And I know that it could have been so much worse. That's why I wanted to be there when it happened, like I've always tried to be. In the end, Ice Song knew that he wasn't alone. I'd even say that he was happy when he left us. Heeheehee! You heard the way that he giggled, didn't you?”

Harmony stared at her anchor. Slowly, very slowly, she trotted over until she was face-to-face with her. Her eyes were firm but solid ambers as she opened her lips in a cold exhale. “Pinkie Pie... you cannot live your life through other ponies!”

Harmony's sudden shouts were like gunshots against the granite walls of that place. Pinkie Pie shivered.

The last pony thunderously continued: “All day—all friggin' week—we've been surrounded by death and misery and you have the gall to excuse yourself for what you've done?! Pinkie, you lied to that little child! You stabbed your way into his suffering, confused mind and mixed his thoughts with your overinflated opinion just as he ran out of time to feel anything with the last vestiges of comprehension left to him! Of course Ice Song was alone! We are all alone!” The last pony waved frantically towards the suffocating walls of the entrenched world. “This cosmic... f-fiasco that we call life separates and alienates us! And yet that is exactly what makes us all unique and sacred! How dare you invade the mind of a child and steer it into oblivion like you did?!”

“H-he was j-just scared, Har-Har!” Pinkie gulped and wilted from the pegasus' furious figure. “I-I didn't want his last thoughts to be full of f-fear and dread—”

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe that's what we all have coming to us?! That maybe actually dealing with that is what defines an equine soul when he or she passes beyond?! Well, Ice Song is never going to taste of that epiphany, because you friggin' robbed it of him!”

Pinkie suddenly frowned at her companion. “Okay, now you're just not being fair—”

“Fair?!” Harmony sputtered. “Fair?!” She snarled. “Grow up, you spineless, hare-brained child! At least you've had the chance to! That's another thing Ice Song or Suntrot or the rest of those doomed kids will never have the chance to frickin' do! What's your excuse?! Why won't you grow up and act your age for one measly moment in your life?! Maybe then, 'Auntie Pinkie Pie' will see the world for how hopeless it is and how pathetically stupid you look while tying balloons and confetti to the bleeding corners of it!”

“If life is so horrible to you, Har-Har, then what's the harm in trying to make ponies smile?!”

“Because one pony's ridiculous dream means nothing when it's stacked up against the fossils that history has left behind!” the time traveler barked. She stared into Pinkie's twitching blue pools and a brown shade was staring straight back. “What hope do you have, huh?! What hope does any one pony have in... in dr-dredging up what's left of this doomed world?! What could you possibly do to bring light to such pathetic darkness when all is dead and gone?! What... nnngh... What are you even friggin' doing here?! Don't you know that this pathetic experiment was over before it even started?!”

The air filled with hollow panting. It took the last pony the veritable space of three draconian centuries to realize that the hyperventilating sounds belonged to her own lungs. She coasted down a river of sweat and quivered as the brown shapes disappeared in a blue-eyed blink, and suddenly her anchor was gazing worriedly at her.

“Har-Har? Are you okay?”

The last pony gulped. “I'm alive,” she murmured, then added in an even drier voice: “For what it's worth.”

Pinkie Pie leaned forward and placed a sympathetic hoof on the pegasus' heaving shoulder. “Do you wanna talk about it—?”

An explosion rocked the heart of town. Both ponies gasped with a jolt, the bitter memories of the quarry rocketing up to the quivering nub of each mare's cerebellum. They each flashed a look over the canyon walls and were only partially relieved to see—instead of soot and flame—a plume of prismatic fireworks erupting somewhere beyond town square.

“Oh, whew...” Pinkie Pie let loose a hot breath and giggled. “Hehehehe... The Biv always has the best timing.”

“That's a matter of opinion.” Harmony spat. She coldly trotted off.

“Har-Har?” Pinkie craned her neck after the pegasus. “Where are you going?”

“I'm off to do the one thing that matters anymore in this town.” Harmony frowned and hissed over her shoulder. “Some dreams are more worth killing than others. You don't agree?—Then stay behind. You won't have to hear me ramble on ever again.” She broke into an angry gallop, burning her way through town and challenging the green flames to an immutable race.

She would not win. “H-hey!” Pinkie Pie swiftly bounced after her in a breathless scramble. “Wait up! Slow down, Har-Har! Come on!” The dead end of Stonehaven was a mute sarcophagus in the wake of their awkward departure.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In Downtown Dredgemane, chaos had reached a fever pitch. Beneath a crackling storm of rainbow-colored fireworks, guard ponies ran out from their various homes, furiously slapping on layers of dark armor as they filled the street with a progressively thick militia. The cobblestone sea of names rumbled under their trampling hooves. The clamoring of their armor filled the air while a sky-shattering array of swathing searchlights pierced the starry sky.

Perched high above the town that was being angrily roused from its slumber, the Royal Grand Biv stood atop the City Council Building. The structure's rooftop had been drenched in prismatic paint, and it still leaked from the edge of its metal shingles. With a glint of ruby goggles, the mute miscreant observed the direct result of its hoofwork, then galloped away just as an errant searchlight brushed past its multicolored coattails. Several guardponies barked and hollered from down below. Hooves pointed up high and several net guns fired in futility at the Biv's darting shadow as it hopped from rooftop to rooftop and made its way far from the rampaging defenders of Dredgemane.

Undeterred, the Royal Grand Biv dodged two more blind volleys of net guns and leaped into the misty air. The figure eventually came to a stop in the middle of a long, thin alleyway lined on either side with abandoned market stalls. The shadows here tripled beneath several two-story buildings and the lurching canyon walls above them. The distant hoofsteps of the guards had become a harmless murmur.

The Biv paused as if for a much-needed breath. The masked pony glanced back over its billowing cloak. Nothing but the shapes of several wooden stands lingered behind or beyond it. With a softer gait, the rainbow-colored vandal trotted towards the nearest intersection of thin streets—

“Raaaugh!” Harmony suddenly spun around the corner, swinging a splintery plank of firewood in two forelimbs.

The Royal Grand Biv took the thunderous impact in the skull. Its goggles rattled as it literally backflipped from the bludgeoning. The figure twirled to its hooves and slid to an awkward stop against a wooden market stall.

The last pony tossed the scant remaining shreds of lumber to the cobblestone and marched furiously towards the fiend. A breathless Pinkie Pie slid to a stop behind her. “Whew!” She panted. “It's a breath of fresh air to have a drop on the Biv for once!”

“Unless you have anything useful to contribute, shut your trap,” Harmony grunted without looking. Her amber eyes were burning twin holes in the the Biv's mask from afar. “I'm beyond tired. This scuffle here is going to be our last.”

The Biv did not back away. With a metallic ring, it extended its dual fans of prismatic daggers and charged the last pony. Its violent attack was frozen in place by a mighty, copper hoof pressed against the nape of its cowled neck.

“You think this is a game?” Harmony snarled. If an equine could grow fangs, she'd be the first. “You've caught me on a bad day.” With a menacing roar, she hooked the Biv's neck in the crook of her forward limbs and body-slammed the two of them through a collapsing market stand. Wooden beams shattered and bits of miscellaneous goods rained across the cobblestone. The Biv actually lost a breath, a high-pitched and sputtering thing, as it struggled and finally bucked Harmony off of her.

The last pony hobbled back against a pile of dilapidated wood. She flinched as the Biv swung its serrated cloak at her skull. Harmony reached up and grabbed a length of the rainbow-colored material. She yanked hard, hoisting the Biv's body into an Entropan hoof which she mercilessly flung into the masked pony's quivering gut. The vandal's limbs quivered from the menacing blow.

“Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie called from the shadows. There was a naked, nervous pitch in her otherwise bubbly voice. “The idea is to capture the Biv! Please don't hurt her—!”

“What's wrong?” Harmony hissed as she struggled and wrestled with the masked equine. “Is this not the happy ending that you wanted?!” As soon as that was uttered, the Biv kicked against the cobblestone with a renewed strength. The last pony let loose a muffled roar as the two equines stampeded together across the rows of the empty marketplace. They smashed through several successive wooden stands before sprawling across the alleyway in a spray of splinters.

The Biv could be heard wheezing underneath its mask. It scampered and struggled to break off into a gallop. Harmony hissed, forcing herself into a full-bodied lunge as she grasped onto the figure's coattails with twin hooves. The Biv quite desperately bucked her rear limbs back, incidentally kicking the last pony square in the face. The world briefly danced in a green-flaming blink, and any synapses inside Harmony's angry brain that hadn't snapped did so right then.

“Nnnngh—Raugh!” She flung her wings and bull-tackled the Biv. She slammed the figure skull-first into the brick wall of a two-story building. Amber eyes twitching, she repeatedly slammed the figure's face against the impervious architecture, panting through the fine dust being kicked up between the two. Just when Harmony grasped the Biv's shoulders—this time in two hooves—she sputtered, for the vandal was impacting the small of her throat with the back of its cowled skull.

The Biv bucked her off of its body and spun with a flurry of rainbow-colored daggers. Harmony ducked, spun to the side, grabbed a wooden support beam of a market stand in her teeth, and swung the thing like a club across the Biv's chest. The Biv went teetering backwards into the alleyway where a gasping Pinkie Pie watched in sudden panic.

Harmony was already charging through another collapsing stall. Halfway through her sprint, the Biv unsheathed a bright confetti launcher from beneath its cape. Pinkie Pie saw the cannon and immediately gasped, “Har-Har! Look out—!”

“Haaugh!” Harmony flew at the cretin. The Biv aimed at the time traveler's airborne dive, but was plowed to the ground right when it pulled the trigger. The cannon fired at an awkward angle, and the plume of rainbow colored confetti caught a flinching Pinkie Pie in the chest.

“Ackies!” The mare shrieked as she was propelled far across the alleyway. Pinkie Pie bounced off a wall with a grunt and fell harmlessly into a splattering market wagon full of fruit. From within, she squirmed and struggled, her voice muffled as she was blind to the chaos unfolding beyond.

Harmony and the Biv wrestled and struggled across the cobblestone. The figure whipped out a crossbow and fired a sparkler at the pegasus' skull. Harmony effortlessly dodged the blast, headbutted the Biv, spun, and kicked the weight of the cloaked figure off her so that it flew like a ragdoll against a second-story window. Fissures formed from the jolting vandal's impact. The Biv slumped down to the street. It briefly limped and struggled to trot away... until Harmony flew into it one last time with a merciless hoof to the gut. The Biv lurched, exhaled sputteringly, and slumped down to the ground in a wilting cascade of exhausted pants...

The battle was over, and Harmony knew it. Still, there was no relief to her trembling, Entropan soul-self. There wouldn't be until after she did what she had to do next.

“Don't you get it?!” She angrily straightened her green beret as she trotted over and leered above the cretin. “This was never some friggin' game. You are nothing but an insult to all the ponies who have died today, who have ever died in this miserable town. Gultophine help you, ya creep.” She knelt down and hissed. “Cuz it's high time you owned up to all you've ever done. All of us have to grow up eventually, no matter how painful.” She gripped her teeth over the edge of the figure's tattered cowl and flung it off, fatefully unmasking the Royal Grand Biv. “So grow up—!” Harmony looked down. Her lips froze in an incalculable wretch.

A pair of golden eyes darted nervously away from the last pony's gaze. A gray shadow haunted the crumbled arteries of Dredgemane. As the distant thunder of militia ponies grew ever angrily closer, a mute and trembling Blinkaphine shriveled under Harmony's shadow.

Harmony stumbled backwards, her eyes convulsing, her mouth navigating a forest of unpronounceable words. She listened for her own breath, but all she could hear was Ice Song's rattling laughter. All she could see were the twin copper shadows in the colt's glazed eyes. Haymane's wheels squeaked somewhere beyond the witless whimper of those bleeding seconds, and suddenly everything the Mayor had ever said suffocated her more than any collapsing mineshaft, for it was all so terribly cold. Dredgemane was a frozen reflection of the Wasteland in reverse-time, and the last of the world's colors had died, for she had killed it. Somewhere, a bum mule brayed with simultaneous sorrow and gaiety.

The “Canterlotlian Clerk” had many things to do. She had to bind and shackle this miscreant who was cowering before her. She had to turn the Royal Grand Biv in to the Dredgemane militia. She had to do her duty for an equine civilization which she had long lost her chance to bring structure and order to. The last pony had to do all of these things, but all she could think about was the smile of a golden little foal, and how her grandest accomplishment as a time traveler would only tear that sunny smile to ribbons. As Pinkie Pie's body stirred in the fruit cart behind, and as the guard ponies' hooves stomped ever closer, she finally understood just why her rainbow signal was useless in the future. There was nothing to dredge up from a grave of murdered dreams. The Cataclysm had turned the bodies of all ponies to ash. Harmony never knew what ended their souls, until now.

“Go.”

Blinkaphine jolted. Her silver lips pursed and her golden eyes quivered up towards the copper figure.

“Did you hear me or didn't you?!” Harmony's whisper morphed into a snarl as she flung the mask and goggles down at the ghostly sibling of Pinkie. The last pony's breath was a panting, threadbare thing beneath the echoes of the incoming militia. “They'll be here any second! So take your crap and friggin' go!”

Blinkaphine trembled, clutching the mask to herself. She glanced at Harmony, at the stirring form in the fruitcart, and then up towards the stars. Like a rocket ship, she bolted up from the floor and perched onto the top of a market stall. She flung her cowl back over her face, extended a pair of razor-sharp wings, and glided up towards a rooftop. She clambered, struggled, then galloped majestically away just as the guards arrived at the scene.

“There! The Biv! I see her!”

“She's getting away!”

“Come on! We'll cut her off at Ember Street!”

“Wow, will you take a look at the mess here! Must have been quite the slugfest—”

“We can sight-see later! Move it! Haymane's counting on us!”

Harmony slowly, icily slumped down to her haunches as the waves of furious guards surged past her. She stared with perpetual numbness at the stars glittering beyond the rooftops and cliff-faces of that cemetery city. So engrossed was she in nothingness that she barely noticed when a fruit-stained Pinkie Pie finally climbed her way out of the cart and stumbled wetly to the copper pegasus' side.

“Whew! Boy, was that embarrassing! Heeheehee—Ahem. So, did we get her this time?”

“G-get her...?” Harmony slurred. “No. No, we didn't. She...” She gulped. “It got away. The Royal Grand Biv rides again...” She hung her face defeatedly to the cobblestone, drowning herself in the names of the dead, pondering if they too were laughing at her.

---

Harmony was still staring at the names as she marched in an icy trot through the abandoned trenches of Dredgemane night. Several posters announcing “Gultophine's Harvest” stretched across the granite walls on either side of her. The signs were colorless, unimaginative things, harkening all citizens to burn what was most precious to them. The last pony briefly pondered if the rainbow itself could burn. Would it produce the ash of the Wasteland?

There was suddenly a bouncing pink clown beside the last pony. “Well, even if you did get a little hot-headed towards the end there, I think you've done a fantastic job! Haymane's gotta be nothing more than a King of Grumps to not see how awesomely close you got to capturing the Biv for him on sooooo many occasions! Heeheehee. Y'know, for the longest time, I thought Dredgemane could never afford a sports team. But you and the militia these past few days? Heck, I've not even seen that much excitement at a Wonderbolts show! I am so gonna tell Dashie and AJ and Twi and the others about this entire week! Heeheehee! I bet I could even make a novel out of it!”

Harmony said nothing. She was suddenly thinking about trolls. In all of her years of piercing the twilight with an artificial rainbow, those murderous creatures were all she ever managed to summon. She used to think it was because they only wanted to devour her. But then she was beginning to ponder if they too used to be creatures that dreamed, that they had in the past transformed into the heartless monstrosities that the crucible of time had forged them into being. Perhaps all life in Equestria was evolving to become the perfection that was the trolls' one-ness, their hive mind, something that was brutally structured but singularly beautiful, like Consus before the Sundering. There was something poetic in that essence, a glory that Haymane had to have seen, a magnificence that he had infected the time traveler's mind with, however briefly, until she witnessed her reflection in Blinkaphine's golden eyes and saw something pale, leathery, and colorless that would have chased a future scavenger into hiding.

“What do you think, Har-Har? Could I write a book and somehow not have it shelved in the 'Home and Cooking' section? Though 'home-cooking' would be absolutely hilarious. Heeheehee... 'Do you want fries with your crawlspace? How about some salt on your water heater?’”

“Miss Pie...” Harmony slurred. It was a weak, humble voice. All of the anger had been long hollowed out of her like mulch from a dying tree. “What if you found out that your...” She winced, gulped, and started over. “What would you do if you suddenly found out that you could no longer return to Dredgemane, not like you've always done these last few years of your life.”

“You mean if I did something that was—like—the Noodle Incident to the Ninety-Ninth Power?”

“Err.... Y-yeah, sure.”

“Well, that would make me a very sad pony.” Pinkie's eyes blinked above a dead expression. This was all too fatefully swallowed up by a bright grin. “I guess I would have to write my friends and family a lot, then! I'd get Twilight to lend me her dragon apprentice and together we'd send dozens if not hundreds of pamphlets to Stonehaven, signed by Auntie Pinkie Pie and perfumed with cinnamon! There's simply no good mail like that which smells of muffins! Though, come to think of it, that counts for all the mail in Ponyville. Huh... I wonder why that is...”

“What if... erm... What if you couldn't even do that?” Harmony gazed up finally at her pink anchor. “What if you got completely shut off from your hometown because something horrible happened, something that you couldn't possibly have known about to begin with?” She gulped. “And it wasn't your fault... it wasn't fair?”

“Brrrrr... I shudder to think!”

“Try and think, Miss Pie. For once—Try to imagine the most horrible, most terrible thing that could ever happen to you and try and perceive yourself moving past it.”

“Heeheeheehee...” Pinkie very softly, very warmly chuckled.

Harmony glanced at her with a thin pair of ambers.

Pinkie smiled her way, a very gentle thing. “Silly Har-Har, do you really think I haven't ever done that? Do you think I've not been doing just that all of my life?” She blinked with a mischievous grin flung towards the stars. “Oh wait, that's right! 'I never grew up!' Nya nyaaaa—Hehehehe...”

The last pony gulped painfully. She gave the dismal, gray walls of that town a wilted glance, then turned to look at Pinkie once again. “What is it that brings you back here, Miss Pie? You have Ponyville. Ponyville is warm, happy, and full of colors. Why do you love Dredgemane so much? Is it because you were foaled here?”

“It's very simple, Har-Har.” Pinkie Pie playfully balanced herself on the edge of a street curb as her bright mane glistened from the flickering torchlamps above. “Some places in Equestria, places that the Sun has forgotten, just need to be loved. Just like those poor little squirts at Stonehaven need to be loved.” She hopped onto the sea of cobblestone names and winked the copper pegasus' way. “It's just like how I can't seem to shake you, ya think?”

Harmony stared for many lurching seconds, but all she could see was Pinkie's smile. It was an eternal thing, far deeper than the shadow of Consus. Before she could brave a breath to reply, a flurry of hooves lit up the misty streets ahead of them.

The two mares glanced to see several citizens—elder council members and grimly garbed mares and stallions—hurrying their way towards the Town Square in the center of Dredgemane.

“Hey!” Pinkie Pie bounced. “What's all the commotion?! Is there a parade we don't know about?”

“Far from it, Miss Pie!” A graying pony called back through the night-drenched ravine as he shuffled along. “Your father, Quarrington, has ordered an emergency meeting of the Council, per Haymane's request!”

“Daddy and Mister Grumps?!” Pinkie blinked her blue eyes curiously. “What for?”

“There's been a development! It seems as if we've had an outsider spreading some heretical voodoo through the halls of Stonehaven! Right now, the Council is investigating it!”

“Wait Wait Wait—” Harmony cackled as she marched up and waved a copper hoof. “What the heck is all this about 'voodoo' and 'Stonehaven?'”

“Haven't you heard?! Ol’ Vimbert, the former professor from Fillydelphia—he told the council the whole thing!” The elder pony huffed and puffed in an indignant breath. “Some zebra shaman's been messing with the poor, afflicted children of Dredgemane and the Mayor's grilling her as we speak!”

“No way! B-Bert wouldn't do something like that to Zecchy!” Pinkie suddenly trembled. She gulped and glanced fitfully Harmony's way. “W-would he?”

Harmony's amber eyes narrowed. A color was finally returning to her vision, and all of it crimson. She suddenly snarled in an icy tone, “Where is Haymane?”

---

When Harmony and Pinkie burst through the doors to the City Council, the commotion was deafening. The usually dark and dimly-lit place was electrified in a continuous, heated exchange of growling voices, deep-throated barks, glaring accusations, and angry hoof-pointing.

At least one hundred equine figures were occupying the vibrating lengths of that place, from citizens to elder advisers to industrial representatives to shifty-eyed guards. Many big, important, and infinitely perturbed ponies of Dredgemane were there, including the big three: Bishop Breathstar, Overseer Sladeburn, and Mayor Haymane himself stood flanking the Council Table. Quarrington Pie and his fellow seat members were attempting to bring order to the ear-splitting chaos. Standing in the center of the broad room's shadows, flanked by guards, was an exasperated Vimbert trying his best to get his voice heard. A few paces to his right, flanked by an even thicker piece of the militia, was—

“Zecchy!” Pinkie Pie gasped. She bounded brightly under lanternlight and jumped to embrace the gray-cloaked zebra. “What happened?! Why is everypony looking at you all funny—?”

A glinting of metal lit the air as several polearms and clubs extended from the guards who were standing in front of Zecora. With intimidating glares, they forced Pinkie Pie to stumble back in time for the last pony to rush up and grasp her.

“Okay, just what in the name of Canterlot is going on around here?!” Harmony barked. She flashed angry glares across the guards, the Council, and the Dredgmane Trinity all the same. Finally, her piercing amber eyes burned a hole in Haymane's sandy forehead. “Why are you treating Miss Zecora like a prisoner?!”

“She is not a prisoner, Miss Harmony,” the mayor said in a voice that was disproportionately calmer than the rest of the room. It was difficult to hear the softly-spoken elder as he muttered above the echoing noise of Dredgemane hysteria, “At least until we know more clearly what she has done—”

“She's a menace!” Bishop Breathstar's glaring face positioned itself in front of the mayor as he glared down at the time traveler. His booming voice instantly swallowed the volume of the crowded hovel. “She's a blight of witchcraft upon our children! That zebra is a living vessel of heresy, carrying with her the ignorant and accursed philosophies of the outside world! She knows nothing of Gultophine's spirit nor her wisdom!”

“Will you ponies allow me a chance to say my peace?!” Zecora frowned, standing helplessly behind the guards as if their lances were jail bars. “Then you'll know that I didn't harm those children in the least!”

“You infected them!” Breathstar's ivory horn shook at her like a threatening bayonet. “You tainted their calm and tranquil lives with your voodoo and infernal sorcery!”

“Oh aged unicorn of narrow mind, must you be so terribly blind?” Zecora calmly uttered. “The medicine I gave those poor foals is as natural as our very souls! If that was not the case, I would never have come to this dreadful place!”

“Keep your excuses to yourself, outsider! There is no excuse for witchcraft in this town!”

“They were merely herbal remedies!” Harmony added in a desperate voice. “Half of the stuff came from the pharmacies of this very town! There's nothing ‘hocus pocus’ about it—”

“Then you confess that you were an accomplice to this zebra's incantations at Stonehaven?!” Breathstar hissed at the “Canterlotlian Clerk.”

“Yes! I-I mean, no... I mean, there were no incantations or what-crap! If you would just let us explain—”

“Explain what?!” Breathstar paced through the cloud of commotion and swung his horn high in the dancing shadows of the Council Hall. “That you, a supposed representative of Her Majesty's Court, fully endorsed the utterly invasive and uncalled for manipulation of the Stonehaven Immolatia Ward?!”

“What the heck have you been sniffing, you big robed bucket of wax?!” Harmony barked. “Since when was it a crime to introduce new and harmless treatment to kids needing a big break for once in their infernite-hounded lives?!”

Breathstar reeled backwards as if Harmony had just filled the room with a horrible plague from the sheer notion of that question. “You, child, would dare challenge the sovereignty of Dredgemane medical tradition?! Stonehaven is a sanctum, you ignorant Canterlotlian! It is a place for lost and ill-stricken souls to find peace with the spirit of Gultophine, not to become experiments of inane, alchemic rituals!”

Harmony blinked. She glanced stupidly at Zecora, blankly at Pinkie, then frowned the priestly unicorn's way. “Are you friggin' kidding me?”

But her voice was drowned out as more and more growling exclamations flew over the heads of the many Dredgemaners. Zecora spouted a few things in her tongue. Vimbert cackled and waved a desperate hoof. Citizens and guards and elders clambered from all ends of the Hall while Quarrington sighed and Haymane weathered a pulsating migraine—

“Enough!” It was Overseer Sladeburn's thunderous voice that shattered the chaos of the room into brittle, paralyzed shards. “This is the City Council of Dredgemane, not an Epona-forsaken zoo! I've ignited dynamite charges at the quarry that were quieter and more orderly than this mess! Everypony, if you respect the Mayor and his Council, listen to his words and wait your turn to speak or I'll personally throw you out myself!” The frowning, brown stallion shrugged his shoulders in a huff and nodded his mane in the Mayor's direction. “Haymane, the floor is yours.”

“Thank you, Sladeburn.” The blonde elder said. With a shudder, he pivoted on his wheels and faced the crowd. “It has come to our attention that Dredgemane's most precious of souls—the orphaned and infected foals of Stonehaven's Immolatia Ward—have been the subject of a scientific experiment brought upon them by an outsider.”

“Scientific experiment—?!” Harmony began, but at the combination of Sladeburn's glare and several glinting polearms, the time traveler held her tongue and decided to play witness.

“The details of this... situation are still being unraveled.” Haymane pivoted again and glanced at the Council. “Now that the entire Council has gathered, I bring to your attention our resident Professor Vimbert—”

“Former Professor,” the orange unicorn bitterly grumbled. His blue eyes hung weightedly off the far corners of the dimly-lit Hall as Haymane continued.

“Yes, former Professor. As you may or may not know, dear Council, Vimbert has been employing himself as a workhorse and deliverer for Stonehaven these past several years. His diligence alone has kept the Sanitarium stocked of much needed supplies as of late. It was he who brought the nature of this situation to light, though it would probably be more appropriate if you heard it from his own mouth. Vimbert... ?”

“Thank you, Mister Mayor,” Vimbert droned as he shuffled to face Quarrington and the rest. “As I was trying to say before this infernal excuse for a Council Hall transformed into complete and utter lynch-hungry bedlam...” He shrugged the weight of his jacket on his shoulders and gestured with a hoof. “I was simply on the last leg of a delivery to the downtown warehouses. I stopped by Earthcanter's Pharmacy on Bedrock Street to gather some medical supplies which had been ordered for Stonehaven—ordered by Nurse Angel Cake and not Miss Zecora, might I add.” A deep breath, and he lethargically continued, “When suddenly two of Bishop Breathstuckup's robes—oh, jeez, I'm sorry—Bishop Breathstar's priests-in-training overheard me reading off the supply list. Suddenly they were interrogating me about the nature of my delivery as if this was the Celestial Civil War all over again, and I was being grilled to see if I was a Lunar Imperialist Spy. Well, heck, I've got nothing to hide, right? So I tell them exactly what I had come to get and just what Nurse Angel Cake and Miss Zecora were using it for. Naturally, I must have made the gravest error in the history of Equestria, for suddenly this innocent mare was being accosted as if she had committed a grand plethora of imaginative atrocities—”

“A fine testimony, Mister Vimbert,” Haymane said with a nod. “The matter of the zebra's innocence, however, shall be determined eventually.”

Vimbert shrugged with a rolling of his eyes. Harmony watched as he dug his hooves into the ground and absorbed himself once more in the shadows of that place.

In the meantime, Haymane's wheels squeaked as he presently tilted towards the Council once more. “When questioned intimately, Nurse Angel Cake admitted that she partook in a series of written letters over the past several months, inviting the zebra mare from the fringes of Ponyville to arrive at Dredgemane and offer her medicinal services to the Stonehaven Ward for Immolatia victims.”

“They were more than mere medicinal services!” Breathstar grumbled as he strolled up and audaciously took command of the room's air. “My fellow clerics described the concoctions they discovered first-hoof in extreme detail! They are nothing less than herbal abominations scraped up from the wild, unchecked bosom of the Everfree Forest!” Several citizens' gasps filled the breath of the room as he roared on: “These bizarre and uncanny agents were then promptly fused together via enchantments from the land of the zebras, where nopony practices magic within the blessed knowledge or spirit of Goddess Gultophine!” More frenzied murmurs and shudders. “Then, to add insult to injury,” Breathstar spun and flung a hoof in the shaman's direction, “She proceeded to pour the quaff resulting from this undignified process down the throats of our poor, afflicted youth! Furthermore, this zebra did so without properly consulting the Council, your beloved Mayor, or myself—the counselor of all things spiritual and living in this blessed Refuge!”

“It would do you well to respect that I have a name,” Zecora said with a frown. “It is 'Zecora,' for not all zebras are the same.” She glanced across the Hall from Breathstar to the Council to the crowd beyond. “Friends and ponies alike, please do hear me out, for an assault upon your children is not what this is about! Stonehaven was built to be a place of healing, but the truth is tragically less than appealing! While victims of infernite go there to to be cured, there are not enough resources for that to be assured! Nurses, doctors, and surgeons combined have been operating so far like medics gone blind. The reason for this is remarkably simple, you see. Stonehaven need only broaden its medical library. Herbal remedies of a foreign description could very well solve the foal's affliction. Superstitious fear only holds back a chance to embrace a solution that Stonehaven lacks. If the doctors of Dredgemane forever stick to tradition, the children will only die in constant repetition. The Immolatia Ward needs treatment that's new, and it is for that reason alone that I've sampled my brew.”

“So, if I understand your words correctly...” Breathstar leered at the monochromatic mare as he shuffled across the room. “Though you spun them so colorfully with your shamanistic tongue, young lady...” The Bishop pointed at her once again. “You, a complete and utter outsider to Dredgemane, the Refuge of Gultophine, took it upon yourself to make a solid conclusion about the condition of Stonehaven's health care, and upon making such a conclusion you—all by your lonesome—decided to transplant the Immolatia Ward's current system with your own pharmaceutical procedures, regardless of the impact it would have on the poor children within?”

“Do not insult my intelligence!” Zecora briefly reared her front legs in anger, causing the guards around her to flinch. “I would never act without knowledge of consequence! Not a single broth would I make if I knew it would leave bodies in its wake!”

Breathstar's growling lips only barely hid the shape of a predatory smirk. “Then how is it that I've come to learn that a young colt has died since you arrived at Stonehaven, 'Miss Zecora?'”

The room billowed in shocked gasps and murmuring voices. Zecora exhaled long and hard, her frown hard enough to cut diamonds.

“Nnnngh!” Harmony dashed four steps forward, effortlessly knocking aside a pair of gasping guards with her Entropan wings. “Oh get off it!” She grunted in Breathstar's direction. “You're making an argument of correlation, not causation! Ask Nurse Angel Cake herself! That poor kid had his days numbered ages before Zecora even set hoof in this upside-down town! At least she was doing her darnedest to save the foal, which is the least I can say about you and all of your overinflated pontificating from up high, you egotistical windbag!”

A few mares in the audience positively fainted from the pegasus' audacity before the Bishop. Breathstar barely blinked as he smirked the “Canterlotlian's” way. “Such bold words,” he murmured, “Coming from a pony who's not only been an accomplice to this zebra's outlandish experimentations, but who's failed time and time again to follow the Mayor's humble request and rid Dredgemane of its constant, insufferable thorn, the Royal Grand Biv.”

“Wh-what?!” Harmony did a double-take as several more murmurs alighted the air around her suddenly. “Just what the heck does that have to do with anything?”

“I would say it's a most important matter...” Overseer Sladeburn suddenly stepped forward. “If you do forgive my own interjection, Council.” He nodded his mane in Quarrington's direction, then frowned once more at the time traveler. “Did you or did you not successfully track down the Biv?”

“Isn't it rather obvious?” Harmony raised a copper eyebrow. “The moron keeps getting away—”

“Keeps getting away, or keeps being let loose?” Sladeburn's brow furrowed.

Harmony felt her Entropan heart pounding suddenly. “Uhm...”

“No less than half-a-dozen members of the militia—ponies who happen to be dedicated workers of my quarry as well—have collectively testified that the Royal Grand Biv was spotted leaving the vicinity of your presence no less than two hours ago.” Sladeburn's teeth gnashed briefly in the middle of his speech. “Funny, you always engage in a grand scuffle with that miscreant, falling so terribly short of capturing the cretin and turning him in, only for a grand circumstance to intervene and force his escape at the last second. It's quite the show you've put on for the town, my little pony, quite the distracting show, as a matter of fact. And now—according to Breathstar—you're part of yet another distraction upon the eve of Gultophine's Harvest. You're poisoning the bodies of our young as you've poisoned the diligent souls of our workers with your farce of a crusade to capture the Biv.”

Breathstar's barking matched that of Sladeburn's as he too grilled the pegasus. “Miss Harmony, do you or do you not respect Dredgemane's sovereignty as the Refuge of Goddess Gultophine?”

Harmony blinked back and forth from the leering faces of the Bishop and the Overseer. She glanced down the middle and saw the frail form of Haymane, watching emotionlessly from his wheeled seat beyond the grim shadows of his hulking compatriots.

“Oh no...” She shook her head with a caustic smirk. “Oh heck no. I see what this is.” She briefly glanced at Vimbert, then frowned once more at her interrogators. “I've read the history books, you stuck-up, inconsolable yahoos. You want a kangaroo trial? Have the Council set it up on its own friggin' time. This isn't about some innocent zebra shamanistic screw-up, and every single one of you knows it.”

“Dear child, I asked you a question!” Bishop Breathstar growled. “Do you or do you not respect Dredgemane's sovereignty—?”

“I respect my hoof up your pulpit-hole, you overdressed mountain of parasprites!” Harmony snarled, eliciting many a gasp from the crowd. “You couldn't give a flying fart about all those suffering kids in Stonehaven! Why should it really matter to you that a young colt has died in that sanitarium tonight?” She glared at Breathstar. “Because that's another beloved soul of Gultophine that's departed from this world?” She swiveled her angry gaze towards Sladeburn. “Because it was your dang, persistent industry that poisoned the kid or his parents?” She growled at the entire host of the Council. “No, this is all about power, power that is maintained through the status quo that you've got festering in this town like iron filaments contaminating a dying pony's lungs, power that you now feel threatened on the eve of your inane bastardization of Gultophine's Harvest which is really just your way of hammering another nail into this coffin you call a town.”

“Miss Harmony, that's quite enough—”

“You wanna talk about sovereignty?!” The copper pegasus leaned forward and brandished a wicked grin of her own as she boldly dealt her words like a fan of cards. “What say I write a happy, smiling letter to Princess Celestia detailing how delightfully backwards your health care system is at Stonehaven and then we'll see how the progress of Dredgemane holds itself under the wrath of a real and living Alicorn!”

“The Court of Canterlot has no jurisdiction over this City, Miss Harmony.”

The entire room hushed, the copper pegasus included. Harmony craned her neck along with everypony else at the image of Mayor Haymane. After his words stopped echoing throughout the dimly-lit place, he lifted his tired features and further murmured:

“The Act of Provincial Industry maintained such more than two decades ago,” the Mayor quietly but firmly said. “The article is quite clearly engraved into the records of present day legislature. If you were a real agent of Canterlot, you would immediately know that, but I'm beginning to have my doubts that you're anything that you say you are, child.”

The last pony gulped. She suddenly shivered in the deep shadow of a hundred sets of eyes, leering on either side of her like granite walls to the trenched city. The Mayor navigated that ravine, staring at her with a cold, rock-hard gaze.

“You, a single pony, arrives in this town, and personally elects herself to chase down our ever-elusive source of public defilement. Since then, not only have you failed in this process, but you have turned it into a pageantry that continues to lampoon the very effort to apprehend the Royal Grand Biv from the beginning. Now, I have been immeasurably patient with you, for unlike most public officials I find it important to practice faith, to give such enthusiastic souls like yourself the benefit of a doubt. After all, you bear the Royal Seal of Canterlot. You carry the air of Her Majesty's Service. And yet, you are always challenging Dredgemane's tradition. You talk back to the Bishop and Overseer Sladeburn like they are mere vagabonds of the street. You flap your wings against the flow of my loyal citizens with your selfish, individualistic attitude, as if your perception of this town's struggles are more important than the struggles themselves. Forgive me for answering Bishop Breathstar's inquisition for you, child, but—No, I do not believe you respect Dredgemane's Sovereignty as Gultophine's Refuge. As for Princess Celestia: she could respect it. That is what leads me to think you are far less than what you pretend to be. That is what makes me believe you are not an agent of Canterlot, but rather you are an imposter. I severely even doubt you have anything to do with Pinkamena Pie's supposed 'probation.' Alas, it is with a heavy heart that I must accept you as a worse and far more infernal practical jokester than the Royal Grand Biv.”

A halo of angry and suspicious voices cycloned around Harmony. While for so many days she trembled in the cobblestone streets blanketed with pony souls, she suddenly had renewed strength here. Her shivering ended as she very bravely rebounded from Haymane's words.

“My biggest crime, Mayor, sir, is not being a practical jokester.” She spoke firmly, staring at him with a solid breath. “My fault is taking things way too seriously, like you take things far too seriously. You, Haymane, have been so serious and so hard-edged for so long that you've built this City in your image, and not Gultophine's.” She navigated her way past several more gasps to say in an even louder tone: “The Goddess of Life would not have this town snuffing out all color! The Goddess of Life would not expect ponies to build a bonfire and burn to ashes the few meager things that give them joy!”

“How dare you preach to me what this town needs or doesn't need.” Mayor Haymane frowned venomously at her. “Dredgemane is more than another pointless speck across the body of Equestria! This is the Grave of Consus! We owe it to the Spirit of Gultophine to keep ourselves pressed to the path laid out before us! We cannot afford to distract ourselves with the trivialities of our short and superficial days!”

“Is that what those kids at Stonehaven are?!” Harmony leaned forward and barked over the shoulders of guards. “Trivialities?! Mayor Haymane, I know you've lost your entire family to the Grave of Consus, but that doesn't mean you must make the ponies of this town as miserable and as unlucky as you!”

“Do not bring my family into this!” Haymane suddenly roared, his eyes flaring up like a burning pair of meteors that not even he knew were there all along. “They rest peacefully within the bosom of Goddess Gultophine! They do not deserve to be insulted by the ignorant words of a common charlatan!” His voice was briefly a string of lit dynamite in the echoing hollows of that place. “The Blessed Alicorn's river of life is thin and narrow, for all that surrounds us is death and misery and I have done all I can to steer Dredgemane down the stream of absolute clarity! I will not have you usurp it!”

“Mayor, you're only—”

“I will have none of it!” Haymane growled, but at the final punctuation of his shouting breath his angry body jolted loose from his pedestal. He gasped and floundered briefly, his lower half dangling precariously off the edge of the wooden rig. The room numbly hung in the silence of that awkwardness, penetrated quietly by the random breaths of the red-faced Mayor, until Breathstar's hoofsteps followed the Bishop over towards the elder, where the unicorn telekinetically repositioned the Mayor onto his seat and leaned over to murmur words of encouragement to the aged pony. The priest's words were barely heard, though they were nevertheless answered by the calm utterances of Dredgemane's leader: “Yes. Yes, Bishop. Thank you as always, dear counselor...”

Harmony fumed, submerged in her own bitter cloud. She glanced past the trembling pink shade of her anchor and found a pair of blue eyes fixed her way. Vimbert was staring steadily at the pegasus. The furthest angles of his orange face twisted. It was too exasperated an expression to register “pride.” The tired lengths of his jaded optics could drown a continent, and the time traveler finally understood why.

A clearing throat reacquired the attention of the room. Everypony's eyes lifted up to see Breathstar pacing away from an exhausted and limp Haymane. The Bishop looked decidedly past Harmony as he addressed the gathered crowd:

“On behalf of the good Mayor, I speak to you now. The matter of this Council Meeting was originally to discuss the appropriate response to the zebra's—to Miss Zecora's transgression. It goes without saying that the subject of the proceedings now extends to a certain 'Canterlotlian representative.'” The Bishop briefly gave Harmony a lofty glance before swiveling to face Quarrington and the other elders gathered at Mr. Pie's table. “Council, if you would deliberate on this matter and deliver unto us your most esteemed judgment, then we can deal accordingly with this banal yet hopefully brief disturbance of the peace.”

“Thank you, Counselor,” Quarrington murmured in his ever-raspy voice. Without so much as gracing his pink progeny with a look, he sat down at the table and spoke in a hushed murmur with his fellow Council Members, mirroring the deep and whispery conversations that suddenly bled throughout the crowded, lantern-lit Hall.

Harmony stood still, adjusting the green beret on her mane as she cast a mute glance in Zecora's direction. The shaman quietly mouthed a meditative chant to herself, all the while her neck and face stood straight in an air of bravery, undaunted by the intimidating proceedings that toyed with her rights all around her. The last pony very deeply pitied the monochromatic mare. Harmony at least knew she could disappear from any Dredgemane situation with a burst of green flame. Zecora's future was uncertain, even to the time traveler. The pegasus almost felt like she stayed in the Council Hall simply to find out the zebra's fate, regardless of her own.

“Mesmerizing, is it not?” a dry voice muttered from the side. A dismally sober Vimbert shuffled sideways until his voice entered the vicinity of the last pony's ears. “Over a hundred miners died horrible, bloody deaths in Sladeburn's murder mill today, and the Holy Trinity of Dredgemane sees it fit to train the whip on a zebra and a pegasus.” The former teacher cracked a few bitter joints in his neck and exhaled like a broken punching bag. “After so many years, I'm due for a few extra stripes on my backside too, I imagine.”

“Mr. Vimbert, did you really have to tell Breathstar's minions about the stuff you were acquiring for the Immolatia Ward?”

“Oh! Oh this is rich!” The unicorn tilted his broken horn towards Harmony while smirking painfully. “So this is all my fault?! Like I said before, you deaf waste of wings, I had nothing to hide! It's Zecora and Nurse Dessert Tray at Haymane's Home for Doomed Kids who should have figured out what they were trotting into! So don't be heaving the weighted hilarity of destiny on my shoulders, you walking fecal stain! I've dealt with enough crap in this town to even remotely be shocked by what's happening now!”

“This is all just so stupid,” Harmony groaned. “I wish we could have—I dunno—covered this all up, lied about it, hid the fact that we were helping the same foals that Haymane is too full of himself to ever bother improving the lives of.”

“Believe me, even if I had lied to Breathstar's lackeys about what I was delivering, it's not like it would have made any more of a difference than you did on that little grand stage of yours just now. Congratulations, by the way, hotshot. You just won the 'Haymane Insulter of the Year' award. I hope you enjoy your all-expense-paid trip to the dungeon beneath the Dredgemane Militia Headquarters.”

“Forget about me—What do you mean nothing would have made a difference? Mister Vimbert, if you and Nurse Angel Cake and the rest of us could have just kept mum about the whole thing, then those kids at Stonehaven—”

“—would still be dying horrible deaths at the ravenous claws of Immolatia, yadda-yadda-yadda,” Vimbert groaned and fidgeted a hoof through his black jacket. “Cry me a river, ya incorrigible sap. Face it, what's happening here doesn't change a dang thing. Goddess Epona, I need a drink!”

“Is that your answer to every horrible atrocity in this town?” Harmony frowned. “You drown it all away in that flask of yours? At least when Haymane lost his family, he tried doing something. It may have been stupid and misguided, but he attempted to counteract his loss instead of sulking in it.”

“You wanna learn a thing or two about loss?” Vimbert hissed at her in sudden vehemence. “Let's see how much you miss your teeth, sunshine.”

“Punch me right here in front of everypony, Professor Inebriated,” Harmony hissed back with a venomous glare. “I dare you—”

As soon as Vimbert jolted, a pink mare was suddenly standing breathlessly between the two. “Har-Har! Bert! Please! Haven't enough ponies been hurt very, very badly today?”

Harmony's eyes twitched, surprised by the pulsating desperation in her anchor's blue eyes. Vimbert's reflection in them likewise wilted. The unicorn grumbled to himself and leaned back against a wooden railing as the Council members started to rise from their table.

“A day when Pinkamena Diane Pie refuses me a chance to punch a pony...” He shook his head with a bitter chuckle. “Dear Celestia, I must be sober.”

The last pony gulped and glanced painfully at Pinkie. “Miss Pie, this whole thing is just so—”

“Shhh!” Pinky spun, her bright mane hanging about her with a sudden, somber weight. “Daddy's about to talk...”

The large crowd inside the Hall stirred to a stop as Quarrington marched up and stood beside Haymane, Sladeburn, and Breathstar. He ran a hoof through his gray mane hair, sighed, and spoke with a lethargic yet solid tone:

“It is the decision of the Council that Miss Zecora of the Everfree Forest be spared any severe punishments for her transgression here in Dredgemane.” The crowd broke into tittering voices before again hushing itself for Quarrington to continue. “However, she will be required to remain at Stonehaven for a further stay, during which time she will abide by the statutes of the medical treatment already in place. Over the course of three full weeks, she will be asked to assist Nurse Angel Cake and the other members of the Immolatia Ward staff in treating the young foals as the Stonehaven system has seen fit over the past several decades. At the same time, all of Miss Zecora's herbal contrivances and medicinal ingredients brought here from the Everfree Forest shall be seized by the Dredgemane militia and promptly eradicated. The Council hopes that this will reinforce in her the proper respect for the health care that Dredgemane has ensured such poor and unfortunate victims of Infernite, so that she too will see the benefit of functioning within the Spirit of Gultophine, unblemished by the unnecessary and distracting influences of outside rituals.”

The crowd exchanged glances and hushedly chattered. Several grim faces appeared ever so slightly miffed at the reasonably light verdict. Breathstar seemed disinterested, and Overseer Sladeburn was positively bored. Zecora took a deep breath, looking neither elated nor devastated.

All the while, Pinkie Pie bit her lip, rubbing her two front hooves together in a sudden pensiveness that quietly disturbed the time traveler who was helplessly junctioned to her. Harmony glanced quietly from the mare to the orange unicorn as Vimbert muttered with a crooked grin, “Here's the wind-up, and the pitch...”

“In regards to Miss Harmony, the 'Canterlotlian Agent' whose position in Mayor Haymane's employment has suddenly come into question...” Quarrington regarded his daughter's guest with a pitiable look. “It is the decision of the Council that she not only be stripped of her task of pursuing the Royal Grand Biv and all the authority over the militia granted her thereof, but that she be swiftly and immediately banished from the streets of Dredgemane and the Grave of Consus altogether.”

Pinkie Pie gasped, as if what was just uttered was worse than a death sentence. Her face melted into a liquid pout as she leaned precariously forward on limp limbs.

A far less distraught Harmony raised a copper eyebrow as she listened to Pinkie's father finish his speech.

“If Miss Harmony is witnessed returning to Dredgemane as of tomorrow morning and beyond, it will be the function of the Dredgemane militia to imprison her immediately and without question, barring the intercession of a higher Equestrian authority, which the Council has unanimously agreed is pending a sincere investigation before properly recognizing.” Quarrington glanced over at Haymane. “Mayor, the Council positions into your hooves the task of appropriating a commissioner to replace Miss Harmony as supreme authority over the Dredgemane Militia in its task of arresting the Royal Grand Biv. Do you have a pony in mind, sir?”

“That I do, old friend,” Haymane said, having finally regained the usual calmness in his breath. He glanced over towards a certain Bishop. “Breathstar, if you do believe that you are up to the challenge...”

“I most certainly am, righteous Mayor Haymane.” Breathstar trotted proudly before the Council Hall until he stood above Harmony. “It is with a heavy heart that I now carry this grim yet undeniably important task, as it has been so disastrously managed by she who goes before me.” He narrowed his gaze icily down at the time traveler. “The Council has spoken, and I grant it Gultophine's blessing. On that note, child, I forgive you for your insolent insults. However, I must reinforce goodly Quarrington's proclamations. If you so much as show your face in this town again, may Gultophine have mercy on your soul, because I most certainly will not.” He let his glare simmer on her forehead before pacing regally out before the crowd. “I assure you, my little ponies, that the infernal blight of the Royal Grand Biv shall be brought to an end! Alas, your ever loyal counselor and ear to the Goddess is mournful of the tragic events that have transpired today, and though we will still properly respect the ill-fated miners of the quarry in our own time, it is my place to inform you that Gultophine's Harvest shall transpire uninterrupted in two days as planned. Go to your homes, sleep in peace, and tomorrow we shall begin a new day of progress here in Dredgemane, eternal refuge of the most blessed Alicorn Sister.”

“This meeting of the Council is adjourned,” Quarrington said with a stamping of his hoof against the wooden floorboards. “You may all take the good Counselor's advice.”

The Hall thundered with hoofsteps as the crowd—once again a grim allotment of shadows—dissipated from the lantern-lit hollow of that place. Mayor Haymane wheeled himself away, strolling alongside his towering companion, Breathstar. Overseer Sladeburn brushed past Harmony, bearing an undeniably smug expression. Vimbert cast the pegasus a tired look before starting to shuffle out himself—

Harmony suddenly blocked him with a foreleg. She murmured towards the stallion without looking. “One day, you're going to run out of bottles, and what will become of your search for meaning in this place?”

He swiftly retorted, “One day, you're going to run out of sarcasm, and then you're going to look back on this day and realize that being kicked out of Dredgemane is the best thing that ever happened to you. You don't have to thank me, but it'd be nice to at least pretend that you're lucky. Now if you'll excuse me...” He brushed her hoof aside and shuffled limply past her. “I'm off to cremate the last good thing to come out of this city.”

She numbly watched him go, until a thick wall of darkly-armored guards suddenly loomed in her view. The faces beneath the helmets were terribly young, and even more terribly familiar. Half of her former comrades in Biv-chasing could barely look at her.

“Come along, Miss Harmony. We're... uh... we're your escorts. Let's get this over with.”

“Yeah...” The time traveler sighed and cast a glance across the emptying hollows of the Hall. “I guess it really is over with.”

“No! Just wait!” Pinkie Pie breathlessly hopped through the stumbling guards and slid up to Quarrington's figure. “Daddy, talk to the Council again! There's no need to be a bunch of meanies—!”

“My and the other elders' decision was swift and just, Pinkamena,” the stallion grumbled as he gathered a few things from the table in question. “Believe me, I had to practically intercede on your insipid friend's behalf. She is most fortunate to be forced from this town and nothing more drastic.”

“B-but she didn't deserve to be given the boot! Nopony today deserves to be given the boot! We were only trying to save those poor kids! We never did anything to hurt them! Zecchy sure didn't do anything to hurt them!”

“I don't know what's worse, Pinkamena, the fact that you're defending these backwards souls or that you were just as much an accessory to their heretical experimentation as they were.”

“H-huh?!” Pinkie Pie blinked.

Her father grumbled, still too engrossed with the table, the dust, and the shadows to so much as look at his daughter. “Nurse Angel is not the culprit behind the zebra's arrival here. Neither was Inkessa to blame. You were the one who sent all of those letters to the Everfree Forest. It's a miracle Breathstar isn't casting the blame on you...”

“Then m-maybe he should! I’m those kids' Auntie Pinkie Pie, and I have done everything I can for them! It's only because I wanted others to do the same! Others like Zecchy! Others like Harmony! Even others like you—”

“Enough, child!” Quarrington slammed his hoof down over the edge of the rattling table. He finally turned to face her, and when he did, it was with an enraged flaring of vicious, golden eyes. “I have tolerated your immature whimsy. I have tolerated your persistent delinquency! I have even tolerated the noise, the light, and the absurdity that you have dragged back into your mother's home! But I will not and cannot tolerate your insolence in the face of the Council's decision nor in my proper judgment on Dredgemane's behalf!”

“But the Council is wrong! They're not thinking with their hearts! They're thinking with their skulls—And it's a bunch of numbskulls at best!”

“The Council is Dredgemane!” Quarrington roared, forcing his daughter to flinch back. “It is the foundation upon which the Refuge of Gultophine stands! It is the one thing that's given us strength and integrity while wild and unsavory vagabonds like the Biv have sought to deter what's great and glorious in this Town!”

“But...” Pinkie's lip quivered. “What about what's great and glorious in our home?”

“You don't understand, Pinkamena. You never understood, and you never grew up. I tried to raise you to be a respectful daughter. I tried to inspire you like Inkessa or support you like Blinkaphine, but you would have none of it! You had to be a wildcard, an untameable individual who's too selfish to take responsibility for her own actions! I swear on the blessed wings of Gultophine herself—today is the last day I bend backwards to save your thankless hide from the wrath of Haymane and his City! So do me a favor and grow up or else I'll banish you as well, sending you back to Ponyville with your heathen Aunt and Uncle where you belong!”

“Daddy...” Pinkie gulped. “Just because I was able to move on after Clyde doesn't mean I haven't grown up.”

“Hnngh!” Quarrington slammed one of the chairs over and raised a hoof above her head.

Pinkie flinched away from him with a squeaking noise.

Her father froze there, slowly falling down an icy crest in his lungs that was just as snow-white as his frazzled sideburns. His entire body deflated, so that his hoof fell limply to the floor while he gazed into a deep and painful pit past Pinkie's bright coat. He gulped hard and glanced across the desolate Council Hall. Harmony stared back, her amber eyes suddenly too dull to reflect an unnameable sadness in his gaze.

Without a word, Quarrington steadied his limbs, hoisted his broad-brimmed hat off the table, and shuffled swiftly out of the Hall, his hoofsteps echoing across the wooden floorboards like a young colt's death rattle. Minutes later, when the militia escorted Harmony and Pinkie out of there, it was a quiet and somber thing, befitting a funeral.

Comments

[DigitalCore]

They're all bastards. All of 'em.

[Leftover of Saikano]

And to think I expected Harmony herself to be the Biv, in a future travel to the past.

[Delsabar]

4105360
I've been thinking the exact thing ever since the Biv showed up!

[DarkLightDisciple]

As Leftover of Saikano said, I was also expecting that biv was scootaloo in some sort of paradox with herself after she met pinkie becuase of the amount of punishment biv was taking and the sheer atheleticism that would only be gained by running for your life and just trying to survive. Blinkie must be enough tougher then pinkie to be able to keep going after all that. Also, while I also agree woth digitalcore, sometimes, we must do the opposite of something, to truly do/be that something(cruel to be kind, greedy to be generous, treacherous to be loyal, etc.) But, maybe I'm just a cynical old bastard for thinking that way, and an a-hole for hoping pinkie might her her eyes opened by this(if only a little.)

[Yami Vizzini]

Am I the only one reading Breathstar's lines in Frollo's voice?