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Chapter 1: Back in Ponyville2,425 words
Chapter 2: Initial Recoveries2,498 words
Chapter 3: Library Research2,895 words
Chapter 4: Her Sense of Beauty2,979 words
Chapter 5: It's a Dirty Job2,892 words
Chapter 6: Diamonds and Butterflies4,157 words
Chapter 7: Cupcakes and Culpability5,354 words
Chapter 8: A Matter of Perspective5,938 words
Chapter 9: Nightmares and Awakenings8,075 words
Chapter 10: The Moon's Comfort5,364 words
Chapter 11: The Errors of the Past7,160 words
Chapter 12: A Robust Universe5,106 words
Chapter 13: A New Day5,976 words
Chapter 14: The Shadows of the Past4,225 words

Chapter 14: The Shadows of the Past

The caverns that cut beneath the Crystal Mountains were cold, and inhospitable to most organic life. But they were neither entirely lightless -- nor empty.

Light emanated from the outcroppings of crystal that jutted from the cave walls. It was a wan, cold, pale blue light; barely enough by which to see, which must have been generated by some effect ultimately powered by the Earth-currents, carried through the veins of crystal that snaked through the hills, giving these mountains their name. The light flickered slowly, waxing and waning in time to a some slow subterranean pulsation.

The light flared brighter as the Pony entered a chamber. She was a very powerful and skilled mage, and she was quite familiar with these caverns: she had first read about them decades ago, when she had been a filly first studying at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns; she had first seen them a decade ago, when she had been scouting this area before building her Utopia. For her, it was a trivial feat to slightly-amplify that glow, the better to light her way.

Now -- a fugitive -- she passed through them on the way to another exit she knew, many dozens of miles away, far enough that she might continue on unseen by Pegasi patrols. Her plan was to reach another town, where she might change her appearance, assume another identity, and disappear into the secret ways known to the Equalists and Levellers.

By now, Starlight Glimmer knew, she was a marked mare. She had interferered with Equestria's newest Princess, and Celestia's chosen Champions. In doing so, she had not only threatened to upset Celestia's plans, but had technically-violated some of the laws of the criminal code, including the ones forbidding assault, unlawful detention and warlockry.

As a leader of the revolutionary vanguard, Starlight Glimmer of course did not take Celestia's laws seriously. They were absurd and archaic laws, meant to prop up the Old Regime; Starlight's purposes lay above and beyond any considerations of ordinary morality. But, of course, Celestia would use those laws as her excuse to crush Starlight. The rebel Unicorn could expect nothing less from the Sun Tyrant.

Celestia would, obviously, not yield to Starlight's revolutionary logic. Celestia had, after all, emerged triumphant -- her Champions had destroyed Starlight's life and dreams. Celestia would expect Starlight to yield to her -- to throw herself upon the Royal Mercy, beg forgiveness for her supposed "crimes."

Celestia would probably grant such mercy, at that. Well did the immortal master manipulator understand the political utility of being seen to be merciful. Starlight's submission would politically-neutralize her dangerous ideas and discredit her cause. No revolutionaries would ever trust her again, and if she did rebel again, Celestia could always punish her more harshly.

"I play a long game," Celestia had once told her. "And I play to win."

And Celestia had won.

In the person of her loyal vassal, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Celestia had won everything.

And she herself, Starlight Glimmer, had lost everything.

Her town. Her followers. Her friends. Her dream.

She had even lost -- but as the image of his handsome white face, framed in its bluish-white mane, rose before her mind's eye, she stopped in her tracks, hung her head, and stood helplessly-shivering with the intensity of the emotions wracking her soul. Starlight Glimmer squeezed her eyes tight shut, and hot tears of pain and loss and red raw hate rolled down her muzzle, and fell to the cold stone floor.

In her over four decades of life, she had made many friends; she had taken a few lovers. Starlight Glimmer was charismatic and attractive. Ponies often liked her on first meeting. Some loved her.

But it meant little. For she always lost her friends. Inevitably, a point of disagreement would arise; some difference grow between her and them. And her friendships would be broken, torn apart by dissimilarity.

She had been betrothed, twice. Each time it had ended in anger and tears, her former fiancés becoming hateful and hostile toward her. Each time she had been left alone, heartbroken, scarcely understanding how such passionate love could turn to such extreme loathing.

Despairing of Friendship and Love in the wider world, she had created her own community, where she thought such sentiments would be more universal. All in Our Town had been friends. All in Our Town had loved one another. That was how she thought things had worked. That had been her dream.

Twilight Sparkle had shattered her dream. Worse, the Princess had proved her dream false. If the Equal Ponies had really been her friends, they would not have turned on her so easily. If they had all loved her, they would have forgiven her the necessary deception of retaining her own Cutie Mark. If he in particular had loved her, he would not have ...

Starlight Glimmer stopped and squeezed her eyes tight shut, trying not to see anything, not to feel anything. Moisture rolled down her cheeks, to follow the streaks that earlier tears had left on her hide. Try as she might, she could not make her reality go away, her life go away, even when it hurt so very much.

Not for the first time, she considered the obvious escape.

It would be easy to slay herself. She had powerful magics that, properly turned on herself, would accomplish the feat. Not to mention her telekinesis, and the fact that one thing these caverns beneath the Crystal Mountains were well supplied with were sharp shards of crystal. She had failed, decisively and completely. What real purpose was there in her continued life?

Indeed, it would be easy to die by mischance, given what she was doing, and the fact that she was alone. A single mis-step, a broken or even badly-sprained leg, and she might never leave this labyrinth alive. She had cached food and water along her path -- a long-planned escape route, laid down against just such an eventuality as that which had transpired -- she had even blazed her trail with marks at key intersections. But without careful attention to her progress, she might become lost, and wander hopelessly until thirst claimed her.

She was not, in fact, trying to kill herself. She was instead bending her every effort toward staying alive. Why did she bother? Her dream was dead. Why did she wish to outlive its destruction?

Because death was the ultimate failure. Because if she died here, Twilight Sparkle would win.

For her, Friendship had failed. Love had failed. All there was left to sustain her was her basic instinct to survive, and her Hate.. In Starlight Glimmer's world, right now, the lights of Love had long since died out, and all that remained for her was Hatred; her only remaining purpose was Revenge.

Revenge against Twilight Sparkle.

Hatred and the desire for revenge sustained her as she went down endless corridors of crystal, formed from the living rock by processes obscure even to Equestrian geology, fractally spun out into shapes lovely and wondrous beyond compare. Their beauty had left her breathless on earlier occasions, when she had walked this way before, but now she had no eye for such aesthetic delights. There was no room in her soul, at this moment, for anything which did not serve her Hate.

She did have a vague sort of notion that, once Twilight Sparkle was defeated, she might in some way again attempt to achieve her dream. Somewhere else, with new Ponies, perhaps ones she might have the chance to influence from childhood or even birth? She knew now that her dream was difficult, that it might take more than one lifetime to achieve. If only she had chosen to -- but she had thought that being mother to a whole village required that she not be mother to any Pony in particular. She had no heir.

But any goal of rebuilding was vague and uncertain, compared to the absolutely clear goal of her hatred for Twilight Sparkle. And in any case, rebuilding her dream would be pointless in a world with Twilight Sparkle still in it; Twilight would simply come and kick over whatever new sand-castle Starlight Glimmer constructed. Starlight first had to dispose of the menace, defeat the predator who sought to destroy her herd. This was only logical.

But how? Twilight Sparkle was terrifyingly powerful; in a direct duel, she could not be at all certain of victory. Even if she ambushed her -- Twilight was an Alicorn, and Starlight's readings had revealed to her that Alicorns were immensely tenacious of life, incredibly difficult to kill. If she had an Alicorn-Bane -- but such weapons were exceedingly rare, difficult for anypony not commanding the resources of at least a city-state to manufacture, and were far from guaranteed to kill; all the enchantment and mortal sacrifice necessary to make one simply gave its wielder a chance of doing fatal or at least lasting harm to an Alicorn.

She might instead attack Twilight's friends, or even family. This would, however, not solve the problem even if she succeeded -- the real threat came not from such lesser Ponies, but from Twilight Sparkle herself. Besides which, Twilight's friends were by repute themselves skilled and dangerous champions, far from easy to slay or capture. And once she struck at one of them, the others would be on their guard. What point would there be in striking down one of Twilight's companions, only to face the others fully-roused? Doing this would be to lose the whole chess-game, for the sake of taking a single piece therein. No -- there must be a better plan.

Engaged in these ruminations, she barely at first noticed that she had reached the great central chamber that was one of the main wonders of these deep caves -- a cavern bigger than the main Cathedral of Canterlot, glittering both from its own internal magelight and the augmentation of Starlight's magic. It was like a gigantic geode, though the processes involved in its formation had been considerably more complex than those of any normal geode.

She knew this cavern well; many of the longer systems of crevices led to the chamber, radiating from the colossal crystal in a fractal system of spokes. It was as if, at some point, some energy had focused within the great geode, accumulating from some external source and then erupting within it in some maner which split the rock all around it for dozens of miles, in some sort of tremendous internal explosion, one which had somehow managed to elegantly split rather than shatter the crystals.

Which was exactly what had happened -- though Starlight Glimmer knew it not -- a thousand years ago, and in another worldline. The energy which had powered this explosion had been nothing more or less than the detonation of a Negation Bolt, the ultimate weapon of the Cosmic Concepts, in the bombardment of the Paradise which had come from an ancient union of advanced science and antediluvian sorcery.

The crystals were attuned to the very structure of spacetime, and had fractured in resonance with the cracks propagating through the continuum. Here, our Universe itself had been riven, and along the fracture lines Planck-width linear wormholes -- string singularities -- had been opened. Slowly, very slowly -- for the wormstrings were exceedingly narrow -- energy from our Universe had seeped through, in accordance with thermodynamic principles, from our bright warm young world into another continuum; one which was terribly dark and chill and old.

There, even these tiny amounts of energy blazed like a beacon in a void where the last stars had gone out, fallen together into super-massive black holes, and the last terrestrial spheres huddled around these black holes like freezing campers around guttering fires, waked to minimal output by the grudging sacrifice of small amounts of matter into their accretion disks. Here dwelt the masters of this undead Universe, the rulers of a graveyard that stretched out countless quadrillions of light-years, the energy of its expansion long since spent, but its mass now dispersed so widely that the gravity which might have recondensed it died away in whimpers of quantum fluctuation. A Universe without light, without life, without hope -- but in which something still, after a fashion, moved and thought.

The realm of the Night Shadows.

At the center of the crystal labyrinth, the string singularities met and fused. Here and there, cracks had opened a bit wider, as bits of our Universe fell away into the endless night of theirs, particles screaming in anguish as they were consumed by the vast Nothing on the other side, falling to their false entropic maximum of ceaseless torment. Here and there, the cracks became windows. Not yet really gates, for all but the least of the unlife of the Shadow Universe, for they were still too small, and our own Universe pressed on all sides to try to close them in a self-healing tropism that it had inherited from its long lineage of evolutionarily successful ancestors -- but windows.

And through these windows peered the Night Shadows.

One group of Night Shadows in particular watched the progress of Starlight Glimmer. They were no ordinary Shadows -- they were the local nodes of Great Shadows, which is to say that they were roughly the Night Shadow equivalent of Alicorns. They watched, and amongst themselves held converse. Around them squirmed numerous smaller entities, Lesser and Least Shadows, who were their spawn and servitors, enjoying a precarious and dangerous status from their masters' patronage.

The social unit which they formed was something alien equally to Equine or Human culture, for which we may be profoundly grateful. It was a high part of their local hierarchy, the at once terrifyingly-anarchic and stultifyingly rigid system of government which oppresses the Night Shadows, and whose oppression they welcome with the ardor that we would embrace the most just and wise rule of liberty, as they would despise any attempt at what we might term fairness or freedom -- but it was not a governmental commission. It was a voluntary assocation, yet it was not a club or group of friends, for the Night Shadows have no friends, merely enemies to whom they hold varying degrees of despite and hatred. And, though the members of this group were related by ties of kinship, it was in no wise a clan or family.

Call it a Conclave.

Likewise, when we say that they held converse, we do not mean that they communicated by presenting concepts to each other for mutual rational and emotional examination. That is entirely too benign an interpretation of their actions. It is more accurate to say that they powered geases against each other, each attempting to enslave the other through force of will, and restrained only by the countervailing force of will of their intended victims. From long mutual familiarity and force of habit, none of them really expected to be able to overcome the other, yet the contest was no less in deadly earnest for this, and had one of them shown an atypical weakness, the others would have pounced on and devoured its mind.

Such was the nature of society among the Night Shadows.

One of the ... leaders, in our terms ... of this Conclave was an entity who would have appeared to our minds as a vast complex tower of dark crystals, from the angles of which blinked many hateful yellow eyes. We may term it "male," though that does not adequately represent the full and loathsome nature of his role in the umbral systems of reproduction. His dominion was over crystalline formation, and he and his minions had already figured prominently in the history of the Ponies, though they did not yet know it. His name would be incomprehensible to us, but Crimson Quartz called him "Skleros" in the Codex of Shades, and we shall here do the same.

He addressed, or attacked, the others, with the following imperative, translated as best as possible into Earthly modes of communication.

"Weakened ... hate-filled ... vulnerable. Make ... Nightmare!"

Another entity -- this one a mass of sickly-sweet-smelling and cold fog, in which yellow-green eyes repellantly twinkled like the stars of a monstrous Universe, answered the first one. This one was ... female, would be the closest analogue in mammalian terms ... and she was of the same spawning as Skleros. One might, thus, call her his "sister," and be not entirely inaccurate. In the Codex of Shades, Crimson Quartz had called her "Skloia," and so shall we.

"No!" said Skloia. "Foolish! .... forfeit ... greater opportunity!"

Skleros made a threatening vibration at his sister's impertinence, and fixed the gaze of almost all his eyes upon her -- he of course kept some watching the rest of his perimeter, lest this merely be a ploy to distract him, enabling another of the Conclave to attack him unawares. "Explain ... quickly!"

"Nightmare ... noticed ... Ponies ... put down," pointed out Skloia, in a voice that hissed as sweet as the kiss of death. "They know ... Luna ... alert. Free ... Starlight Glimmer ... our goals achieve!"

"How?" asked Skleros, interested enough to put some force into the compulsion.

"Timewarp ... she knows," Skloia said. "Revenge ... Twilight Sparkle. Starlight Glimmer ... power enough... tempted ...Tempus Fugue."

Comprehension dawned upon Skleros. "If ... that," he glittered, "widen ... cracks ... into ... prey-verse."

"Exactly," purred Skloia, wafting forth to ooze around her brother, emitting complex puffs of acids and bases upon his crystalline surface, in a manner meant to be seductive. "Better ... indirect ... than direct attack."

Skleros reflexively encysted the chemical emissions and grew encysted geodes from them. He pulsed, pushing his annoying sister away. But his gleamings were anticipatory.

He directed numerous of his eyes and much of his attention on another Shadow.

"Raknon," he said to a thing which had the form of a webwork of glistening fibers, anchored somehow obscurely out of one's view, no matter where one might look. "Opinion?"

Raknon's many eyes glared at Skleros from the nodes of the network. "Future-vibrations ... opening ... admittance ... prey," it admitted. "Success!" Raknon was oriented differently in spacetime; to it spatial motion and sensing were strangely constrained, but viewing its own past and future worldlines relatively easy. It had much in common in this, and only this, regard, with a certain very-pink party Pony, though it did not particularly like parties, and most Ponies would have gone mad in contemplation of what made it smile.

"Hmmm ..." Skleros rumbled. "Approved! Skloia ... your plan ... your sacrifice." He roiled her fog with resonant vibrations, demonstrating the damage he could do her if she did not concede to her brother's demand.

Skloia hissed hatefully at Skleros. "Bully! ... Coward ..."

Skleros increased the intensity of the resonance, making Skloia's eyes tremble in her fog.

"Enough! ..." cried Skloia, her communications strained. "Yielding!"

Skleros hummed in satisfaction at his victory.

Skloia glared at Skleros in resentment and suddenly condensed tendrils of her substance. The tendrils whipped, seemingly right at Skleros.

The dark-crystalline Shadow stood impassively. He knew this to be a bluff.

Her tendrils whipped around at another angle and snapped up two of the Least Shadows of Skloia's own spawning. The two Least Shadows had occupied what they imagined to be a safe position, out of the direct gaze of their dam's eyes. They had not understood the ubiquity of the Great Shadow's perceptions. They may have realized it in the last moments of their existence.

Skloia smashed her own spawn together, rupturing their forms and absorbing their essence into a funnel which she formed for the purpose. Two more tendrils shot through the singularity, grasping and immobilizing the Pony who stood on the other side.

... Starlight Glimmer screamed in terror as the tentacles came from nowhere to wrap around and through her, one securing her barrel and the other her head. She was caught in an incredbily strong grip, one holding both her body and soul. For a moment her perceptions were bilocal -- she could see around her the glittering crystal cavern, and another place, a realm of darkness in which she could somehow impossibly see, and what she saw were indescribable inequine horrors ... things that could not and should not and must not be ...

... and a third tendril emerged from the portal and entered her in some obscure and obscene manner, forcing its way through her defenses and touching her vilely in the most intimate parts of her mind. She tried to shriek and struggle at this hideous contact, but she could not emit any further sounds, could not move a muscle, for she was completely under the control of this thing, this monster, this ...

... Skloia ... purred a voice into her soul, and then the third tendril pulsed and erupted with some substance which spurted into every recess of her, filling her, and changing her in some impossible and terrifying manner. ... Mistress ... rule you ... forevermore ...

And within herself, Starlight sobbed at the reality of this touch which was transformation, or violation, or some horrible mingling of both such as could not exist in any sane world. She felt her mind buckling even as a strange and unclean power surged through her ...

She could see an eye, yellow and hateful and mocking, pass down the tendril into the back of her own self. It looked at her from within, and winked. And, as the last of her sanity began to disintegrate, she heard the voice again.

No escape ... it said to her. Sane ... SLEEP.

And with that, Starlight's tortured mind began to slip into blackness, but not before she heard the last command.

... FORGET ...

The darkness claimed her.

After a time, Starlight Glimmer awoke.

I must have fallen asleep in here, she thought in some confusion, contemplating the beauty of these crystals. She stretched herself, worked her mouth experimentally. I guess I needed some sleep, she mused. I feel all right now ... not confused or tired any more. I guess I really needed that sleep.

She still mourned the loss of her followers, still hated Twilight Sparkle. But she felt much better now. She understood that her followers were lost, that business of her life was closed, and the new business of her life would be the destruction of Twilight Sparkle. It all made sense now, it was all clear, and all she needed to do now was begin the sequence of actions which would most efficiently and logically destroy Twilight Sparkle.

I've always been efficient and logical, she thought to herself. So I have a pretty good chance of success. She felt optimistic, almost happy about the new purpose of her life. After I destroy her, she thought, I can rebuild my dream somewhere else. But destroying her is the first order of business.

She cast her gaze about for the place she had blazed her trail. There it was -- a pattern of grooves that she had cut into one of the crystals near an apeture. She knew that beyond it she had cached more supplies; food and water to sustain her on the next part of her journey. Just another way station on the path that would lead to her triumph.

A new strength sustained her, a new confidence fulfilled her, as she walked out of the great geode into the twisting tunnels. She had still been defeated, but it had been only one battle she had lost. The course of her war, the war she fought against the harsh reality of the Cutie-Mark-based caste system, was as yet undecided.

I was wasting my time in Our Town, she realized. Those Ponies were weak ... mundane ... whining little foals who needed my guidance constantly. I will still destroy Twilight for what she did -- she destroyed my dream after all -- but perhaps this temporary defeat will lead me to greater future triumphs.

After all, she remembered. I am not limited to the Spell of Sameness. That is an important magic for building my new society, yes, but it is only one derivation of all that I learned from the secret journals of Star-Swirl the Bearded. There are far more potent spells in there, magics that can twist the fundamental structure of spacetime, even crack the Universe wide open! She laughed throatily, though she was not sure just why she might want to crack the Universe wide open.

The sleep had done her good. She had a vague memory of unquiet dreams, dreams of darkness and shadows, crystals and vapors and hateful yellow eyes, and of a most strange and revolting intimacy, but already these nightmares were fading, dissipating in the light of her conscious reasoning. She forgot, and forgot it most happily.

Today will be a new day, Starlight Glimmer told herself. Tommorow a newer day still. That which does not destroy me makes me stronger, and I feel stronger now than ever before!

I shall wrap myelf in cloaks of concealment, and unseen I shall move through Celestia's Realm, and there organize my attack. And when I emerge at last from the shadows, when I confront Twilight Sparkle again -- this time, I shall triumph. I shall destroy Twilight and everything she values. And she shall not be able to stop me!

So, cheered by her hopes of revenge, Starlight Glimmer continued on through the crystal labyrinth, striding toward her destiny ...

... while in the back of Starlight's self, a single yellow-green eye blinked, and back in the Shadow Universe, Skloia drank in the delicious wonders of the Universe that was to be her feast.

END.

Author's Note:

Let me introduce you to Starlight Glimmer --- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.

Fair Game wasn't born in this worldline. Given the nature of Starlight Glimmer's powers, that does not mean that he is "forever inaccessible to her observation," in the terms of Sweetie Finemare's lament. Unfortunately.

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