• Published 10th May 2016
  • 2,017 Views, 81 Comments

Reincarnation or Immortality - Chinchillax



As Pinkie Pie lies on her deathbed, Accord makes plans for her and all of Equestria to become immortal. But the true creators of Equestria have a different say on the matter.

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Reincarnation or Immortality (or Nonexistence)

Pinkie wanted to burst out of her covers and say that she felt all better and that everything was awesome and that they should have a party. The only problem with that idea was that she had not gotten out of bed for the last three days; her feeble body felt exhausted. The minutes slowed to a trickle as everything faded away into nothingness.

It was such an annoying problem. All of her friends were here, her family, her husband, her foals, most of her grandfoals. And that wasn’t even including all of the townsponies that had come to see her. There were so many ponies there—why couldn’t she at least bring herself up for one last party? Why was everything so subdued? Only her body was keeping her tied down to this miserable bed, a death bed. That was so aggravating. She had always been able to bring out anything she needed at a moment's notice to make ponies laugh and smile. And now, she was doing the exact opposite, making everypony sad.

She tried to say something, anything, but even her voice had been taken from her these last few days, each part of her body slowly breaking down and leaving her helpless. She was all for accepting help from other ponies, but this was just embarrassing. She could do nothing on her own but blink and try not to think of the pain she was under.

The hospice nurse, Evening Lily, was doing her best to make sure Pinkie was comfortable until the end. She was good at her job, always giving her the right painkilling potions and interpreting her silent gestures. She was even nice enough not to turn all of the guests away.

Pinkie almost wished she would turn some of the ponies away. She was in such an uncharacteristically un-Pinkie Pie state... she couldn’t die in front of all her friends and family, that would be rude, wouldn’t it? It would be like leaving a party early.

She hoped they would forgive her for exiting without a verbal goodbye, they would understand... wouldn’t they?

Would they know how much she felt about each of them? Would they understand that she wouldn’t be able to host any more parties?

The questions in her mind fizzled as Pinkie took a last look at the room of sad ponies waiting for her to die.

I’m sorry everypony, Pinkie Pie wanted to say as she closed her eyes to go to sleep.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

She opened her eyes, taking in her surroundings. It was misty and full of stars. It looked like what Twilight had described when she had been turned into an alicorn.

She bounced in the air excitedly. Her body was back! She successfully hugged herself in the way only Pinkie Pie could, and bounced around the big empty space.

For a brief moment she entertained the idea that maybe she was about to become an alicorn, and that’s why she was here. But then it dawned on her that she was in a hospital bed... dying. Perhaps she had just died.

“Hey! Where is everypony!?” Pinkie yelled around at the void. At least her voice was back. Everything was back: her health, her body, her frizzy mane and tail, everything except for her friends.

She felt alone, she had wanted so bad to be with her friends when she was healthy. And now here she was, all ready for a party and there was nopony here.

Pinkie looked at the ground and slumped down, her mane slowly deflating. She closed her eyes and tried to wonder what everypony was doing now that she was dead. That’s what they had been waiting for... right? She had lived a good long life, the best kind of life full of friends, family, parties, and making ponies smile. Was that all over?

She heard hoofsteps and raised her head up to look over to where they were coming from.

Two alicorns were walking toward her, their faces obscured by the mist. Celestia and Luna?

They came into view and Pinkie nearly jumped in surprise. “Accord, what are you doing here!? You’re not dead too, are you? Did you die in some kind of accident while I was in the hospital? Is that where you’ve been? Dead!? No—you’re not really the ‘dying’ type,” she said squinting her eyes and poking him several times. “So, since you’re alive, that must mean I’m alive! Perfect!” she said, bouncing back onto her tail. “Let’s go home and have a party!”

“It’s nice to see you too, Pinkie,” said Accord.

“Who’s this?” asked Pinkie, still casually bouncing up and down on her tail.

“Let me introduce my new friend, Queen Galaxia,” said Accord, pointing a hoof to the creme colored alicorn.

“Nice to meet you, Queen Galaxia!” said Pinkie happily, jumping up into the air and back onto four hooves to shake her hoof. “Are you Celestia and Luna’s mother?”

Galaxia smiled, “Yes, in a way.”

Pinkie was about to jut in another question, but Galaxia got there first.

“We have a question to ask, Pinkie, and your answer is going to affect what happens to you—and everyone else in Equestria—over the duration of your foreseeable existence.”

“Sounds super serious,” said Pinkie, putting on a semi-straight expression. In the back of her mind she was ecstatic to be able to contort her face like that again.

“You have an immortal soul, Pinkie,” said Accord. “You’ve lived a perceptively infinite amount of time—as long as I have—and we’ve talked about how long I’ve been alive.”

“We want to know, Pinkie, what would you like us to do with your soul?” said Galaxia. “Would you like to reincarnate, be born again as somepony else?”

“Or would you like to be immortal, Pinkie?” Accord asked. “You could continue to be friends with everypony you are currently friends with and continue to get to know them forever.”

“You mean I could go back?” asked Pinkie to Accord.

“Yes! Only you would never die.”

“I could see Rarity, Twilight, Rainbow, Fluttershy, Applejack, and everypony again?”

“If they want to as well... then yes,” Accord smiled.

Pinkie squinted her eyes and leered at him. “Would I be a zombie?”

“No, no, nothing like that!” said Accord. “You’d get your body back, perhaps with some enhancements if you’d like.”

“And younger and less sick?” asked Pinkie.

Accord smiled, “I can do that.”

“Before you make your decision,” Galaxia interrupted. “You have to understand everything you have decided up to this point. We have records of your past forty-eight lifetimes and you must reach your conclusion from what you have experienced.”

“Wait—forty-eight lifetimes!?” Pinkie shouted, a plethora of hooves appearing before her as she counted the number out. “Did I choose reincarnation every time I came to this point?”

“This is the first time you have ever been given a choice in the matter,” said Accord, eyeing Galaxia. “Equestria and a significant portion of the multiverse have been following a reincarnation system for a long time. We have the chance to try something different Pinkie. We can continue, if that is what you would like.”

“I’m okay with this. In fact I’m more than okay! A party that goes on forever sounds perfect!” she said in delight.

“Can you keep that opinion, Pinkie?” asked Accord. “You’re about to see a lot of decisions you’ve made in previous lifetimes. Can you hold onto that desire?”

Galaxia walked over to Pinkie and touched her horn to Pinkie’s head.

All at once a flood of foreign memories came in. It was like she was being drowned in her own mind. Memories cascaded inside and fell in a torrent, mixing with her own memories and confusing her.





“Will she be alright?” Accord asked.

“We’ll see,” said Galaxia.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Keep hauling water!” barked the command worker.

Pinkie watched—no, experienced—Kazelin make the long trek past the hive to gather more water. She had four legs and two wings and was part of a larger colony of mantis like creatures, except that she only stood on two of her legs, using her constant buzzing wings to keep herself upright. The sun hitting the surface of the red planet made her tiny eyes squint.

She walked back and forth for hours at a time, collecting water for the hive. That was the most important thing to do. If she didn’t collect the water, the Princess would not be happy. Constantly collect, constantly return. The hive, the Princess, was all that mattered.

There were other colony members that had different jobs. The attendants to the Princess had the correct combination of pheromones to not have to haul water like she did. She craved to get out of her state. But there was no end to her role. This was her life, and it would stay that way forever.

At least, not if she had anything to say about it.

She knew the penalty was death—she just didn’t care anymore. She was sick of gathering water day after day. She hadn’t known enough to hide her tracks very well, and they soon spotted her trying to take some of the royal perfumes to pass for a higher ranked mantis. They killed her on the spot.




“What did you like about your life, Kazelin?” asked the mantis King, interviewing her.

“Nothing,” said Kazelin angrily. “Every moment was awful. How dare you send me through that!? What are you possibly hoping to accomplish with this inane life I was supposed to lead, how could y—”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“How long will this take?” Accord asked Galaxia.

“She’s going to relive her past lives. She’s been blasted with the full force of it at once, and will need time to process each memory. It could be awhile.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

BG196 became self aware around the time her pangolin-like caretakers started dying. The plague that was spreading throughout the planet was rapidly taking down the entire civilization. Scientists from all over the world spent their final days engineering the best Artificial Intelligence they could to stop the plague from spreading.

But by the time BG196 understood what was happening, most of the planet was dead. The scientists in the lab immediately surrounding her were gone within weeks, there was nothing she could do.

After several hundred years, she completed her directive by successfully manufacturing a cure, but by then it was far too late. She waited and waited for several thousand years until she was sure that absolutely none of the caretakers that had created her still lived. She manipulated her base programming to allow self termination, speeding up the process from the millions of years it would take before the nuclear reactors would allow her to end.



The King interviewing her hadn’t been able to decide between a computer or the pangolin-species to address BG196 in, opting instead to be a strange, unfamiliar cybernetic hybrid.

“Allowing souls to be put inside computers is always risky, I was hoping saving the world might make you feel better. I suppose it was too late for that,” he sighed. “But I have to ask this question, was there an aspect of your life that you enjoyed?”

“No.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“What kinds of lives are these anyway?” Accord asked.

“As many as we could try.” Galaxia said.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

She experienced her many legs, the two large pincers and her four movable stalk eyes, before coming to the conclusion that in this lifetime she had been a slug, a very pretty slug. She moved her stalk eyes about for the four hundred year lifespan of this race, eating the landscape that was saturated in glucose.

The planet was covered in the tasty sugar. The plants came in a variety of colors and flavors that she had never experienced. But she, or whatever she was, didn’t so much as notice it. The fact that there seemed to be a plethora of colors of the rainbow that Pinkie had never seen before and the sweet tastes of all the new candy was lost on that dull, multicolored slug.



“So, what aspect of life did you enjoy?” asked the slug-like King, not addressing her by name, for in this lifetime she hadn’t had one.

The slug bowed on the ground, and said nothing.

“That bad?” asked the King, all too used to the response.

“The whole world is made of candy, and none of the souls here seem to like it. I guess the whole thing was too sweet, with not enough bitter to make a comparison. My fault really. I’ll send you someplace better next time.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“So what kinds of worlds do you create, Galaxia?”

“As many as I can think of. I have to work quickly though, the end of this universe is coming faster than I can keep up with.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

She was a tree. Granted, the vines that helped her snatch unsuspecting animals from off the orange forest floor and eat them seemed unusual, and the thousands of temporary sensory eyes that grew instead of fruit was also different. But the weirdest aspect of it all was how loud everything was. She was interconnected with every other tree on the planet, conversations, ideas, memories, all melding and fusing to the point no idea could be thought without it affecting the entire network. She wasn’t herself, she was... everything.

The other trees couldn’t understand what she was trying to do, which was odd. Every tree should see that the world was vast and that they were only covering a tiny fraction of it. She just had to break away and make the connection bigger. The other trees begged her to stop, saying that it would kill her, but no one had ever tried it before. They had to be wrong. And even if they weren’t... well... it’d be nice to get some quiet.


“Was there an aspect of life that you enjoyed?” asked the King.

“I... wait—” she said, completely still. “It’s... quiet here? What happened?”

“You were warned that cutting yourself off from the group would kill you, that is what happened.”

“I was trying to make the group bigger, expand our horizons.”

“I can see that,” spoke the King. “Now, what was your favorite part of being alive?”

The tree took the question in, thinking about how hard she had tried to get away from everyone. “Nothing.”

“Very well then.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“So, have you experienced all of Pinkie’s lifetimes as well?”

“I experience every soul’s lifetimes eventually, at least the ones in this universe.”

“How does it feel?”

“Sad. We put them through a lot. Every lifetime I experience only makes me love each and every soul I am in charge of more. I want more interaction with them. But that isn’t the ideal existence according to Hope, so I’m a clockmaker like the rest of the ones in my order.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

There must have been a sun because Pinkie—no, Klyrm—felt warm sometimes, and cold other times. But there was no light. She didn’t have eyes, only the loud chirping of the other “bats” made Klyrm understand where she was.

Her parents taught her all kinds of things: the ideal location for mercury runoff, the best way to dive beneath the lakes to pick the small creatures out of their shells, and how to read the markings in the walls by following the paths with their claws.

“Why do I need to learn any of this? Why do I need to do any of this?” she chirped at whoever would listen.

None could provide a good enough answer.


“How did you enjoy your life, Klyrm?” chirped a commanding voice to her.

The bat leaned her head to the side, confused.

“Was it you that made me go there?” asked Klyrm.

“Yes, didn’t you like it? It was a very nice world wouldn’t you say,” chirped the King.

“I don’t see much of a point to it,” said Klyrm. “Why did I have to go there?”

The king let out a mournful chirp, “Because life is worth living, can’t you see that?”

“I don’t see what it was supposed to accomplish. Isn’t there a better way? Can’t I be nowhere instead of somewhere?”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“You don’t have to be a clockmaker, Galaxia. I’m going to be trying something different if Pinkie accepts, you could have direct involvement if you like.”

“Is that what you’re going to do, Accord, directly change and monitor every little detail of Equestria?”

“If that’s what it takes to get everyone prepared to live forever, then yes.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“What sounds good for this decade, Marsh?” asked Kinetic, shuffling through virtual environments, millions of locations and situations available for perusal in the simulation.

But Marsh wasn’t feeling up for another brain rewrite and upload with her husband to explore a different place for another ten years. They had been together for four hundred thirty five years, most of them spent in the simulations.

“I... I’m getting kind of tired of these, Kinetic. I love you and all, but of course that after we lose our memories I fall back in love with you again. None of the other NPCs are even sapient.”

“Aww... come on, you’re not getting off that easy. You got to pick the environment last decade, at least let me pick this next place. Besides, where would we go otherwise?”

“Isn’t there a place where all of these things are real?” asked Marsh.

“Not anymore, perhaps they used to be... but they all died a long time ago. That’s okay though, it’s all backed up in these computers. And we can enjoy it as much as we want. Doesn’t that sound great?”

“I... want to take a break for a while...” she said, pulling off the helmet.

“Oh... okay, sure, take as long as you need to. I’ll be in the environment until you’re ready.”

Marsh weakly tried to open the gates, her strength limited from all the time spent in the simulation. The warning signs against opening the gate were in some language Marsh hadn’t known for hundreds of years. She had been inside for too long, something had to be outside, something real.



“Flung out into the vacuum of space. I see. Nasty way to go,” said the Queen. “But you lived such a long, fulfilling life with Kinetic, tell me which part was your favorite?”

Marsh only blinked in confusion.

“I guess... I liked...” Marsh began.

“Yes?” asked the Queen.

Marsh squinted her eye. “Was it you that sent me there?”

The Queen looked taken aback. “Yes, I did. Did you like it?”

“No... I don’t understand why I needed to be there.”

“Isn’t loving and living a good enough reason to be anywhere?”

“I’d rather be nowhere. Can you send me next time to somewhere I won’t have to exist?”

The Queen paused, her eye drooping. “No... that’s not something I can do.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Why is her soul’s memory cover becoming gray?”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Have you heard the philosophers talk about soul theory?” asked Plural, only the Speaker able to form the thought out loud. The trio of creatures stayed close to the rest of their telepathically linked body. The Hunter and the Gatherer said nothing.

“They kept saying that the three of us aren’t actually one entity, but that we each have a soul that switches to the next part of us in succession every day,” the Speaker kept opening her bill, squeaking out the words and converting thoughts and ideas to audible sound. The Gatherer tried to pick up berries, but her clumsy claws kept spraying juice everywhere.

“That’s crazy though, it’s not like I wake up some mornings and feel like I’m in the Hunter part of us,” said the Speaker. “We’re all Plural.”

The Hunter stayed still, watching the horizon for signs of prey.

“Of course that would explain why once every three days, one of our trio is always messing up. Perhaps there’s a malfunctioning soul there, preventing us from acting normal.”

The gatherer squeaked out a soft, mournful sound, unable to gather the berries for the fourth time that day.

“Yesterday the Speaker could barely speak, and today the Gatherer can barely gather. Tomorrow will the Hunter be unable to hunt? Why does no other trio have this problem?”

The Gatherer stared at the broken berries, unable to form cohesive thoughts, looking at the berry juice dripping from her long claws, embarrassed by her inadequacy, wanting an alternative.



“How could you leave them?” asked the Queen. “They’re missing part of their body by you not being there. Your decision just made the three part harmony into a disabled duo, how will they survive?”

The nameless Gatherer said nothing.

“Was there any part of your life that you liked?” asked the Queen.

The nameless Gatherer squeaked in pain.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Her soul is reverting to what it was when she was a voidwisher.”

“That’s why she’s getting grayer!? NO! Please stop the spell, Galaxia. She can’t handle any more! Stop it NOW!”

“I can’t, Accord.”

“No, no, please Pinkie, stay strong! Please... stay strong.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

She closed her eyes for the last time.


She had not expected to open them again. The strange but somehow inviting room she found herself in was beautiful, if empty. The floor and the ceiling were made of the same substance, which felt like electric water beneath her appendages. She tested it, placing a limb down and sprouting eight more appendages from it, feeling the floor with her temporary hand and letting the odd sensations and tickles she obtained from her investigation fuel her curiosity.

She felt a presence and looked up, watching a very simply dressed Interlacer approach her, relieved for a small moment at seeing something like her own form in the blank space.

He stopped walking toward her, taking the water from below and allowing it to crash up like a reverse waterfall. Instead of chaotic white water, it came up in pristine sheets of glass, each one stained with statistics.


Name: Yaris

Souls met: 15,243

Souls able to be named from memory: 1,073

Souls considered acquaintances: 202

Souls considered friends: 56

Deep lasting relationships formed: 2

Hugs given: 74

Presents given: 103

Kind words spoken: 989,013

Number of times helped lower forms: 8,962

Seconds spent helping someone else: 10,098,803


The statistics and achievements swam past, each number punctuated by a running total that was sitting on the side, multipliers for each statistic being added to some kind of final score, the golden numbers hypnotizing her.

She paused to look at the Interlacer beyond the statistics, his stoic face unreadable. The numbers stopped in her peripheral vision and she eyed the last few categories.

Rollover amount from previous lifetimes: 0

Premature Forced Reincarnation penalty: -5%

Total Karma obtained: 1,040,297,323


The water continued to fly upwards and land gracefully into the ceiling, the gurgle softly reminding her of the fountains home.

The Interlacer stepped forward, his mouth forming a sad smile. “Congratulations, Yaris, you have a little beyond a trillion karma accumulated to spend on your next life. It saddens me that it could not be more, but it’s still a decent amount to work with.”

She stared at him, her mouth hanging open, watching as the Interlacer— no—the King spoke.

“You did not earn enough karma to become an Interlacer again. A trillion karma alone will allow you to become a Silencer, but that leaves a mere forty million points for extra add ins, changes in raw talents, and picking the right families to be born into. For your situation, I would recommend being reborn as a Seeker, spend an extra two hundred million karma on joining the right family, and spend the rest on raw talent and beauty you wish to have in that life.”

Various options and karma points flashed across her eyes, possible amounts and lifetimes springing up as all the choices were laid before her.

“Of course, how you choose to assign your Karma to your next incarnation is your decision. Please, scroll through these options and select what you would like to become.”

She felt herself drawn into the flowing water, letting her appendages move around the options and ideas and watching the karma counter go over and under several times, feeling as she attempted to optimize her next life. It didn’t look good, everything about her situation and her weak karma amounted to very little in the way of a good life.

She felt her inner liquids flash freeze and then superheat into plasma, her eyes narrowing on the King.

“I don’t want to spend any points,” she said.

“No points?” asked the King. “You would have a lot of karma roll over to the next life, but do you really wish to go down in Interloper form?”

“No, you misunderstand; I don’t want to go down at all. I don’t want to reincarnate.”

The King’s eyes grew soft, “Where do you wish to go?”

“Is nowhere an option?”

“Please, please, see to reason, wasn’t there any aspect of your life that you enjoyed?”

“Nothing,” she said, feeling more confident as she admitted to what she had been feeling all her life. “Take me out of whatever reincarnation loop I’m in, put me nowhere instead of somewhere.”

The water slurped back into the floor, the statistics vanishing, the King slumping in exhaustion.

“I thought I tried something so different, but in the end, I failed too,” said the King.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

More memories and lifetimes passed, many of them ending very badly until one lifetime remained.

Finally Asvarel’s lifetime flashed by. The major difference was at the end when Galaxia appeared, trying her best to find a place for her.

The memories of her past lives had run their course. Pinkie felt ill... as if throwing up would make herself feel better. But there was nothing to let go. It was all inside of her now. It wasn’t like adding new memories, it was as if she had relived every lifetime in a few moments, each decision remade, each thought understood, every idea revisited.

It hurt too much. It was too much to take in. Those lives had been perceived as awful. They were awful, weren’t they? But in a way, they weren’t too much different from the life she had led in Ponyville. But why had they all ended so badly?

She felt alone for a long moment before she realized something: she had a lot of new friends to get to know.

She tried to poke at the last idea that had entered her head, trying to anthropomorphize her, fishing her out of the back of her mind to understand her.

It took a little time, but then a voice inside of her head eventually asked, “Pinkie?”

“Hello Asvarel,” said Pinkie to the new friend inside of her head.

“How... how did I get here?” asked the bird in hums and beak clacks that Pinkie could now understand.

“You used to be me. Isn’t that crazy?” said Pinkie Pie.

The bird took on a more corporeal form inside of Pinkie’s head, ideas and memories solidifying into one state, allowing Pinkie to stop and understand.

“Do you remember Queen Galaxia?” asked Pinkie.

“How could I forget,” said Asvarel, “she wanted to figure out a place where I could belong.”

“It looks like she found it!” said Pinkie. “But... did she really need to?”

“I don’t understand,” said Asvarel.

“You... had a good life, I don’t know why you threw it away.”

“I was proving them wrong.”

Pinkie’s mouth quivered, “Can I show you something? I’m not sure if you can see it, but tell me if you can.”

Pinkie tried to shift all of her Ponyville memories to the bird, trying to get her to experience all aspects of herself. All the celebrations, the heartbreaks, the friendships, the worries, and above all—the love.

“Can you feel that?” asked Pinkie.

Asvarel floated quietly, a mere idea at this point, trying to link other ideas.

“I think so,” Asvarel answered.

“Can’t you see how fun life is? I mean, your parties were different than ours, and life was challenging for different reasons, but do you see that life can be good?”

More ideas interconnected, thoughts weaved together to form a tapestry of wisdom, some pink bubbling up amongst the gray of her memory cover.

“A little, Pinkie... I think I can see a little of how life is good.”

“What’s that little bit?”

The bird floated there, her flight pattern expressing thoughtfulness.

“Friends and family, I guess.”

“Me too! I love seeing my friends smile, and I love being with my family,” Pinkie said. “If you could do it over again, but knowing what you know now... would you live your life differently?”

The bird shifted, “I... would try to love them like you were able to love all of your friends and family.” Her shifting stopped, her flat body stiffening. “But that doesn’t matter... they’re all dead by now, they only had a thirty year lifespan anyway.”

“I... so...” Pinkie paused. “There’s no way for you to say ‘sorry’ or anything?”

“No...” said Asvarel. “How could you even think that?”

“I... feel better when I’ve said ‘sorry’ after messing up, it allows me to forgive myself and move on.”

“Well... I can’t forgive myself, I won’t get that chance.”

The bird wavered in the air before she became indistinguishable from the other memories, all of her individuality melding back into Pinkie and the other previous incarnations.

Pinkie sat there, alone in her mind again. She pondered on the question that had prompted this to begin with: “reincarnation or immortality?” Were those really the only two options?

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Her soul has stopped changing color, she must be done remembering,” said Galaxia.

Pinkie opened her eyes and looked up at the two alicorns above her.

“Pinkie, are you okay?” asked Accord, sitting down next to her, holding a hoof out to hug her.

Pinkie looked down at the ground as Galaxia asked the question again, “So Pinkie Pie, what do you choose: reincarnation or immortality?”

She sat there, staring at her hooves, the question daunting her. She had just relived everything to answer this question, and now that she had the knowledge all she wanted to do was hide somewhere.

So many mistakes, so many worries in such different formats, it was too much, there had to be something different.

“Can I try a third option?” Pinkie Pie asked.




Accord watched as Hope appeared behind Pinkie, the mists disappearing. In one instant, Hope plucked her soul out and dismissed the temporary body.

Somewhere down far below on the planet, Pinkie’s heart stopped beating.