Aftermath (Part A)
The centaur sat outside the Golden Oaks library, holding a cup of tea. Across from the centaur were a couple of individuals. First, there was an earth pony, painted orange, who was eating a muffin. Next, there was the current resident of the library-house, who was holding her own cup of tea. Then, there was the mare’s sister, who wasn’t really doing much of anything at the moment. Finally, a dragon who matched the centaur in size sat next to him.
The reason they were outside the library and not sitting inside it was the centaur himself; though he was smaller than he had been not too long ago, he was still far too big to fit through the door. The centaur wasn’t complaining, though. The weather was lovely and the grass was soft.
“Not that I’m complaining — everypony got their magic back — but what did you actually do to Tirek?” the princess of the group asked. “I sort of missed it.”
The centaur took a sip of his tea. “Funny story,” the centaur said in a Canterlot accent that didn’t actually belong to Tirek, his six eyes looking down at Twilight, “I just had a really shitty day, and when I got your letter, I got a little mad.”
Sparkle burst out of the portal screaming bloody murder. And as anypony who heard that sound would tell you, there was nothing more terrifying than an enraged dark goddess. Still screaming, she spotted the massive centaur and launched herself at him, fangs bared and mouth frothing.
She leapt and tackled the behemoth’s leg. Her fangs sank into his flesh, causing Tirek to howl in pain. Using her magic, she grabbed the limb that was reaching down to swat her off and pulled, practically folding Tirek in a direction his spine was not meant to twist.
The centaur fell, and as he did, she gave him an extra shove and completely flipped him over, pinning him to the ground with raw telekinetic fury. She climbed on top of him and tore into his neck and ripped out his trachea. Then, she ripped into his ribcage and tore out his heart. The moment the still-beating organ was removed, she took a massive bite out of it.
“I knocked him over after catching him unaware, and then pulled out his soul.”
Gurgling in agony, the mutilated centaur had the joy of spending his last ten seconds of consciousness being ripped out of his own body. She spared him no pain; normally, she’d scoop out a soul with the delicacy one might use to lift wet tissue paper, but here, she pulled with the same slow might that one would use to rip someone else’s arm off.
“After that, it was just a simple matter of releasing the trapped magic. If you don’t know how to properly integrate the fragments of a soul together, the stolen magic just kind of sits there. Open it up, and the fragments fly back to the rest of the soul that they came from.”
Like two magical drills, a pair of tendrils of Sparkle’s magic bored their way into the Centaur’s soul. The moment they were deep enough, they solidified into finger-like protrusions of energy and pulled in opposite directions. Tirek’s soul cracked much like an egg, releasing the gooey mess that was countless ponies’ magics.
The fire-like lights of the soul fragments wooshed back to where they belonged, but Sparkle didn’t care about them, not even the extra-bright fragment of her sister’s soul. No, her attention was still wholly on the soul in front of her. Donning a savage, bloody grin, Sparkle pressed the fragments of Tirek’s now deflated soul back together again and stitched them up. Then she opened up her jaw wide, wider than it ever should have gone, and devoured his soul.
But she didn’t let his soul drop into her stomach. Oh no, she used her magic to shove it to the side, into that same pocket of her being that had imprisoned her parents before she’d ascended, the same pocket that kept him trapped while letting him see the world through her eyes.
“Tirek. You hurt my sister, so I’m going to make you suffer.”
“After that, I had his body to deal with. I thought I’d take it, since it was just going to rot away otherwise. So I hopped inside,” Sparkle said with Tirek’s mouth. “Since his body is already built for handling such huge amounts of magic, it didn’t react badly to my presence.”
“Unlike the time with that dragon,” Thorn added.
“Exactly. Well, actually, I think the reason it didn’t shift into my form was because I already had part of Tirek’s soul fused to my own before I even ascended. This...” she motioned to Tirek’s slightly modified body, “is what a divine centaur looks like. It’s just as much me as that body is.”
The specter animating her old body waved its hoof.
“Yes, well, it’s creepy, Sparkle,” Twilight replied, taking a sip of her tea after she spoke. Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Creepier than you usually are. You're wearing the body of the person that just attacked me.”
Sparkle’s newly acquired hand stroked her newly acquired beard. “Well, I have a sizable bit of my Tirek’s memories, his soul interface, his magic, his soul weapon, your Tirek’s body, and the rest of Tirek’s memories that I plan to integrate later. Save for his personality, which I plan to chew on later, I basically am Tirek.”
Twilight groaned. “Not helping, Sparkle.” She took another calming sip of her tea. “So, what were Cobalt and Thorn up to? They arrived a few minutes after you did.”
“We were checking for more bells of Tambelon,” Cobalt replied. “We just got finished dealing with our version and wanted to make sure Canterlot wasn’t about to be wiped off the face of the map. Don’t worry; Canterlot’s 100% free of demonic bells.” He nibbled on the muffin again. “Not sure about any other cities, but none of us have felt anything like an approaching demon horde slaughtering everypony in their path.”
“Well, Grogar did say he knew me, so I’m guessing this is another one of those things that will play out differently because of my time traveling,” Sparkle-in-Tirek replied. “We really should try to map out the differences in our histories. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that though we thought our two timelines were the same, they’ve since diverged both before and after the initial split.”
“Wait, back up. Bells of Tambelon? Grogar? Demon horde?! What the buck are you two talking about?”
This time, Thorn answered. “The bells of Tambelon were a pair of magical bells that appear in a tower, lure people in, grants one who rings the main one power while corrupting their mind, and then when the main bell is rung again, they suck the entire city and all its inhabitants into the deepest pits of Tartarus, beyond where even the Tartarian Guard dares to tread.”
Sparkle continued. “In our case, some idiot had the bright idea of moving the bell into the middle of upper Canterlot. When the bell rang for the first time, Grogar appeared and possessed the stallion’s body. From what I’d read, I’d thought he was just a goat hopped up on the power of the bell. Turns out he’s actually a demon and summoned up a couple dozen of his demon buddies. Cobalt and I happened to be literally right there when the invasion started, and we were able to contain it. Thorn popped in a little bit later and destroyed the bell for good.”
“A little cursefire did the trick.”
“A little?” Sparkle asked with an arched eyebrow. “You used a massive portion of our magical reserves. Even with what I got from Tirek just now, we’re still running low. Just how much curse fire did you need?”
“A little for the bell. The rest was for the horde,” Thorn replied, shrugging. “Besides, it’s Tartarus. It’s not like a little fire’s going to hurt it.”
Meanwhile, in Sparkle’s timeline...
The Tartarian guard rushed up to the two exhausted princesses, who were on their way back to the castle. “Your Highnesses,” the pony in black armor shouted, “Tartarus is on fire!”
Luna looked at him with bored, tired eyes. “Tartarus is always on fire, soldier. It’s built inside a magically-hyperactive volcanic region.”
“No, you don’t understand! Even the fire is on fire! Unquenchable green flames that eat our magic and try to attack us! Everything is burning!”
“If you say so, Thorn,” Sparkle replied.
Meanwhile, Twilight looked away, caught by the sudden realization that perhaps her own adventures looked really strange from the outside. The existential surrealness of their lives caught the light goddess off guard. “Ohh dear...”
Turning back to her sister, she straightened out her facial expression. Then Twilight asked, “Well, since you’re here, do you want to hang out for a while? I’m sure my friends wouldn’t mind you stopping by.”
Sparkle shook Tirek’s head and started picking his body up off the ground while ordering the specter to do the same with her own. “Nah. I need to do something with this body — it’s getting some strange looks from the townsponies,” she replied, flourishing her hand to indicate the ponies who were staring at them from a distance. Said ponies, realizing they had been spotted, blushed and tried to look as if they hadn’t just been staring at them. “I’m going to head on home.”
“I think I’ll join you later, Sparks,” Cobalt said. “The fruit’s nice and fresh out here, and I’ve been meaning to pick up some apples for myself. Plus, I feel like I haven’t had any real dirt under my hooves for a long time now.” He turned to the hostess of this little gathering. “Thank you for the muffin, Ms. Twilight.”
“My pleasure.”
Thorn also got up, moved by that silent social declaration that their tea party was over. “Is Spike here? I haven’t hung out with my bro in ages.”
“He should be at Rarity’s right now,” Twilight answered. “You, ah... aren’t still obsessed with Rarity, right?”
Thorn chuckled. “No. I’ve mellowed. Plus, I’m now interested in Mina, actually. She’s this cute, pink dragoness I met in Fillydelphia.”
Twilight chuckled. “You’ll have to tell us about her sometime.”
Thorn, already turning his back, waved her off with only a single laugh. “Whatever. See you later.”
Twilight turned back to her dark sister. “Now, you aren’t planning on leaving without a hug, are you?”
“You want to hug me in this body?” Sparkle asked, motioning to her centaur-ness.
“I want to hug you in whatever body you’re in,” Twilight replied. “Unless that body happens to be a spider or a snake. Eww...”
Sparkle smirked. “And what about one of those slime creatures that live deep in the Everfree? What if I were one of those?”
“Maybe. Slime isn’t as bad as snakes.”
“Well, since I am neither slimy, snakish, or spiderish, awkward sibling hug?”
“No. Heartfelt sibling hug.” Twilight leaped up and put her forelegs around the large centaur that contained her sister. “I love you, Sparkle. Never forget that.”
“Love you too, sis.” The two then separated. With a dramatic bow, Sparkle-in-Tirek opened a portal to the afterlife. She and her specter-controlled real body disappeared into the portal.
Sparkle stepped out of the afterlife and into her own world a few hours later, once more in her own body and once more transformed into a mortal form. For a moment, she wondered why she even bothered with this timeline anymore — there were only two ponies she really cared about here that couldn't follow her anywhere she went. Then, she pushed the depressing thought aside.
It didn’t stay aside for long, however; her frustrations were being unusually hard to suppress. Sparkle’s mind dredged up memories of Celestia — both Celestias, in fact. She thought of her sister, dutifully following in Celestia’s hoofsteps, and she thought of herself, unintentionally standing as a symbol of the things Celestia opposed. Her lips curled into a frown, then a snarl, as her mind refused to go in a more pleasant direction.
But Sparkle trudged forwards, towards the princesses’ castle anyways. The last rays of sunlight had vanished quickly some time ago. Now, Sparkle found herself weaving through the gathering crowds of ponies, many of whom were bearing candles or sticks of incense. At an intersection, she turned to make a little detour past the temple her parents and brother had occasionally taken her to as a filly; there, mourning ponies were gathered to pray for the dead. Their singing crescendoed as she passed, though because of her own twisted magic, she couldn’t hear the magical music that she knew they were hearing.
She continued walking without stopping. Never before had she paid much attention to the aftereffects of death; as a necromancer, she saw death as a state of being, not a tragedy, and as Death, she found that she could no longer empathize with them at all. What irked her was that it was an Alicovitite temple, a temple dedicated to the sun and the moon; they should have been praying to her as she was the one who held their late loved ones’ souls in her gasp.
Once she’d gotten to the castle, it hadn’t taken her long to find where Luna was: Luna’s tower, preparing for the evening’s dream patrol, which was sure to be a hectic one all things considered. With a little magic aiding her, Sparkle made her way to Luna without being impeded by the castle guards or staff.
Death knocked on the Night’s door. “Yes?” the faint voice on the other side asked.
“You told me earlier that you wanted to talk to me.” Sparkle said back. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything, Lady Nightbringer.”
The door opened magically, revealing Luna without her regalia. Luna looked down on Sparkle, who was currently in the form of a pegasus. However, Sparkle’s eyes were more than enough to tell Luna just who was at her door. “Death. Or should I say, Sparkle.”
Sparkle stiffened. The transformation spell on her shattered abruptly, and as she shifted back, she fell into a defensive stance. Luna knew her secret now. Any second now, Luna was going to... to...
But whatever Sparkle was imagining — or failing to imagine, as it was — Luna did something else. The lunar princess snorted softly and turned her back to the incarnation of mortal demise. “Do relax, Sparkle, and do come in.”
Sparkle blinked. She stepped forwards, though without dropping her guard, and entered the small office, closing the door behind her. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t, not for certain. You just confirmed it, just now,” Luna replied, the ghost of a smile dancing across her lips. She made her way to her desk and pulled out the simple wooden chair. With a hoof, she motioned to an identical chair nearby. Sparkle sat. “That certainly answers a few of my questions but raises a few more. Though I suspect that I already know the answer to those questions as well. Let me guess, reincarnation?”
Sparkle’s silence was telling.
“I see. And let me guess once more, you know of my sister’s... reaction to that particular branch of magic?”
“Yes.”
Luna opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out a mint. She popped it into her mouth. “If you’re worried about me telling her, you needn’t be. It would be hypocritical of me; grief, I fear, brings out the strangest aspects of otherwise strong ponies. It is a hole punched through both the mind and the heart, and a feeling I know well.” For an instant, her features hardened into a mild glare before they quickly softened back. “Plus, Tartarus is more on fire than usual-” Sparkle looked away sheepishly, “-and not a place I want to send our unsung heroine.”
Sparkle’s frown had faded. Now, the emotions going through her swirled into a muddy brown, leaving her face neutral for lack of a better expression. “If you just wanted me here to confirm your theories about me, then I’m not staying.”
“Nay, I asked to speak with you back at the school because it seemed that you knew what was going on and were interested in saving lives. You could have left the city to perish, and yet you didn’t, much to my surprise. My request was nothing more than a pragmatic impulse; I wanted your help before you would no longer give it. It was your use of my old title that made me connect the dots; you yourself were the last one to call me that, back at the Gala two years ago,” Luna replied.
“I go to pains to hide who I am, and it’s a simple phrase that does my secret in,” Sparkle sighed. She shook her head. “So, what do you want to know that isn’t about me?”
The two quickly fell into a discussion about the Bells of Tambelon, about how it was a trap and a harvesting tool used by the demons imprisoned in the deepest depths of Tartarus. That then turned into a conversation about general threats and defense. “It strikes me as odd,” Luna remarked, “that the incarnation of death would promote long lives and good health.”
“I’ll get everypony’s souls eventually,” Sparkle replied. “It doesn’t matter how long you live beforehoof; you may as well get the most out of your life.”
“Ah. That makes sense,” Luna said. “Well, that about answers all of my questions. Except... why were you at the school in the first place?”
“I wanted to be a teacher again,” Sparkle replied lightheartedly. “Full time, hopefully. Between DADA and my apprentice, I’ve really grown to love teaching. But since I’m teaching neither, I’m technically unemployed. Unless you count making deals and grave robbing, but I don’t.”
“Well, that is perhaps the least nefarious reason I could have imagined. Maybe when the school is reopened.” Luna’s eyes glanced at the clock. “Dear Faust, look at the time! I meant to be patrolling the dreamscape an hour ago!”
Taking that as her cue to leave, Sparkle stood up from the chair. Her bony wings flexed at her side, adjusting to no longer being squished by the sides of the wooden seat, while her vine-like tail stretched and flexed as well. “I’ll see myself out then.”
“Death, wait.”
“Hm?”
“The life of a goddess is one of suffering. Celestia and I have suffered greatly, as you too will suffer. But, unlike you and I, who take our comfort wherever we can, finding joy even in darkness, Celestia seeks to bring the light wherever she can to make the world better. If you two butt heads again — as your different philosophies inevitably will cause you to do — try not to take it personally.”
Sparkle’s mild frown returned. “No promises, Luna. Some things are best left to the dark.”
If one were to describe the situation in the castle, one could describe it like this: imagine a wound. It has been stitched shut and bandaged while the painkillers are just starting to kick in. But, by no means is the wound healed; instead, it leaves you weak, tired, and immobile. That was the castle; the initial disaster had ended, the panicking crowds had been dispersed, the cleanup duties had been delegated, and everypony had had a moment to stop and breathe. They were now in the slowest part of the recovery effort, and the weight of what had just happened was finally sinking in.
Luna trudged down the halls, a stack of papers, a quill, and an inkwell floating in her magical grasp. She knew the castle well enough now that she could work while she walked and not run into any walls or get lost.
“You met with her last night, didn’t you?”
Luna looked up and to the side, spotting her sister walking towards her. “I did. I asked her to come.”
“And?”
“I learned little of consequence but confirmed many of my assumptions and theories. I have already drafted a proposal based on her observations on how to deal with a situation like this should the need ever arise, however unlikely that may be.” She pulled out a sheet of paper from her stack and passed it to Celestia.
Celestia quickly skimmed it. “Good. But this was not quite what I was curious about.”
“She is rational, pragmatic, and a quick thinker,” Luna replied, understanding her sister’s intended question. “She is a bit like me, I think.”
“No offense, but that does little to ease my worries,” Celestia replied.
“Some taken,” Luna replied. “I would caution you, though. I told her this, and I will tell you. I think you two are too different to ever truly get along when it matters. You should just leave her to her work.”
The corners of Celestia’s mouth turned downward ever so slightly, while the crease in her brow deepened. “I cannot not protect the lives of my ponies.”
Luna looked at her sister for a silent moment. Then, as she turned to continue on her way, Luna said, “Admirable, but that is ultimately an empty promise, ‘Tia. Everypony dies, even us, at the end of all things.”
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... Not... a bad place to 'end' on, I suppose, though it saddens me to hear you've lost your... well let's say drive rather than interest in the fandom. Still, thank you for the wonderful stories, the time, and the effort. If I see your book out,I'll be certain to purchase it.
7518854 He's not dead, he's taking an extended hiatus, until he gets his mojo back.
Yeah new chapter
Even if the fire fades, may your cinders never dim and suitable kindling someday be found
good chapter
We'll be here when you come back :)
That is true, everything will die, even gods. Death will be the one to lock the door to the universe and throw the key away.
A satisfying and well rounded chapter. If you leave it here there will be no damage to the overall story done (but I'm still gonna follow it, just in case). Best of luck to you.
7519095 "You lived what everyone gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less."
I've always loved that quote.
You have provided countless hours of entertainment for me and many others. You opened my eyes to the idea of a good darkness, and have made me think many times. Thank you for writing such an awesome story, and while I will eagerly await your return, I appreciate what you have already done, and understand if you choose not to come back.
That sounds pretty close to what the nazis called "Substance N": Chlorine Trifluoride ClF3
Watch this for reference:
7518943 Well, if we're talking about fading fires maybe he could borrow some from Tartarus? I hear they have a hot sale on (almost) everlasting fire going on.
Excellent! I shall await your return!
Fucking hilarious.
I have always loved this story, one of my favorite fanfiction, and I have just been getting Into some of your other works. Keep us updated and I wish you the best of luck in getting published.
7519095 "Welp, universe is now dead, time for an eternal vacation for the entirity of the afterlife, minus hell for a while."
This is a great story and i hope there will be updates, take the time what you needs.
I really wait a certainly moment: Celestia Vs Death/Sparkle final confrontation.You can give your bets.
7523415
Your name barely fits your profile picture, and neither of those fit your tone. If you're going to use a cool name like that, at least compliment it with some matching attire and method of speech.
Well. More reading for me!
I only just realised this: the story dies (or goes on hiatus, or whatever) in the middle of a fucking chapter. The author can do whatever they wants, but if there's one place I don't want a story to stop at is in the middle of a damn chapter, even if said chapter is in two parts. That is so frustrating.
Ah well, no use complaining. It's happened, it might return in the future. That said, it has been two years...
Still, I'll be waiting.
9124358
Here it is, almost four years after your comment was posted, nearly six years since the last update.
Still a good read, but an update is a pipe dream.
But who said there was anything wrong with dreaming?