Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"Thank You, Fluttershy."

Cerberus bayed triphonically. The excruciatingly loud sound bounced off the edge of the world where pyritic rock made a thin veneer over the end of one reality and the beginning of the other. Stone that looked like the lower part of a hill or a mountain instead thrust out of a flat surface, a surface which smeared and swirled like watercolors applied wet to a painting.

The gate appeared to be transparent. But, as we galloped after Cerberus who thundered ahead of us, having found the scent he desired, it still looked like a wall. The gate looked painted on, like a trompe d'oeil.

Cerberus hit the gate like an accelerating locomotive. His body jerked as if he had forced himself through something vaguely substantial, like stiff draperies. Literally at the heels of his rear paws, I nonetheless cringed as I leapt forward and turned my head aside so that if I hit something solid, at least I wouldn't smash my muzzle.

It felt exactly as when Celestia had pushed me through the quicksilver surface of her fiery Tartarus gate. Since I massed way less than Cerberus, the drag of the transition changed the arc of my leap. I quickly lifted my forequarters to compensate, but I came down hard on the bridge. At my velocity, the dark-veined white marble surface proved slicker than ice. I danced to keep upright, to get traction, but failing that I braced myself and went skidding along, flexing my muscles to keep from spinning.

Lord Tirek, with more goat-like hooves, kept going, but noticed my misstep and turned. "Come on. We must keep pace."

I slid to a stop, puffing and trying to catch my breath from the sprint. "Seriously? We're never going to catch him."

"If he has to open the gate—"

"He did."

"At the other end of the tunnel, you stupid weak-minded—"

"There is only one Cerberus Gate, Lord Tirek."

"It's called The Gates, plural, of Tartarus."

"Regardless. Why would Princess Celestia need two, anyway?"

Lord Tirek's eyes became lidded. He turned toward freedom, eyeing the spiral bridge and the squat black behemoth dog. Cerberus had already traveled far enough along the bridge that it was tilted 180°, causing him to rush ahead upside down from our perspective. I trotted up behind the centaur and, without further word, he trotted fast enough to stay ahead of me.

I had wrecked Sunset Shimmer's life. Worse than that, I would never see Crinkle Paper again. Yeah, I could just turn around and head back to Tartarus, but I wasn't doing that. I simply wasn't. Even if they caught me and Celestia threw me back into Tartarus, how could Crinkle Paper ever forgive me for all that I'd done, the least of which was not including her in the escape?

Why hadn't I listened to Princess Celestia's advice?

Why?

Princess Celestia, whether inadvertently or intentionally, had given me a life that had become genuinely good, which, despite being in a cruel land and serving others, was more rewarding than I could have ever asked for. And still, I hadn't understood, really understood.

Why?

I was evil.

I silently thanked Lord Tirek for maintaining the lead. It saved what little shred of dignity I had left as I trotted along, head down, tears streaming down my cheeks, struggling not to sob aloud.

Eventually, my emotions wrung me dry. My eyes stopped burning and I paid attention to more than following the lead pony in the train. Morning sunshine streamed up from the sky directly below the bridge.

I whickered in surprise, stopped, and peered over the edge.

I'd been overcome for fifteen minutes, max. This made no sense, but as I looked down I had zero doubt that I saw the sun, Celestia's sun. Scudding fluffy pegasus clouds drifted lazily as they tumbled across a cerulean sky. The marble felt cold as I kneeled and shook my head at the sight.

"Fifteen minutes?"

Lord Tirek said, "While you were overcome by your inferior pony emotions, Cerberus escaped into Equestria. It's been twenty minutes." When I didn't look at him, for some silly reason hiding what had to have been obviously bloodshot eyes, he said, "Look back the way we came."

I did.

The spiral path continued back down the tunnel. Were we in the real world, standing on a mountain like, for example, Palisades Park in Canterlot looking down the precipice at the Ponyville plain, you would see drifting clouds casting deep shadows across the landscape. What I saw from my current perspective wasn't clouds, though. Far behind us, at what I judged was just inside the Cerberus Gate, lay a bridge veiled in the midnight blue of a moonlit sky under prismatic wisps of thin cirrus clouds. In between I saw gradations of passing time, color, light, and weather—dawn, sunrise, morning…

"Time? Again, time? This thing is a path between yesterday and tomorrow?" From outside I'd seen only now. Inside, the bridge had swapped distance for time and become a frozen river of when.

"I do not know what you are blathering about White Stockings, however, if we do not start moving, the whole day ahead of us may have passed. I do not want to be found by any authorities who might investigate Cerberus' appearance in—"

"Ponyville!" I jumped up and looked forward. Indeed, the steeply angled morning light below changed ahead of us to a harsher noon angle. Beyond that, afternoon.

My brain began to hurt, not only because of the pretzeled nature of what my eyes told me and how my brain interpreted the madness, but because I tried to calculate how fast we needed to go to get to the end before nightfall.

Thinking in numbers had started to sting again.

What would happen if we walked back toward Tartarus? Ow.

I shook my head and said, "We'd better get moving!"

"Yes, I agree."

After traveling an even-dozen spirals—after the bridge had straightened out into a tongue of marble that transitioned into what looked like sandstone—day had progressed to late afternoon. The very end wasn't so much the terminus of a subway tunnel as it was a fissure in the rock. Vertically stacked plates of brown and red-streaked rock precariously formed a triangular passageway. I imagined the great weight of rock overhead and nervously trotted the final hundred pony-lengths through a half-dark that smelled like a musty tomb.

No unseen barrier stopped Lord Tirek. (I'd let him go first.)

We walked out into dazzling sunshine. Shading my eyes with a hoof didn't help. The gritty stone surface beneath our hooves looked unworked. Our steps echoed off the rocky hill ahead. Four quick pony-lengths plunged us into a shadow from where I could see the hill of sandstone before us was only one wall of an enormous sinkhole. The passage to Tartarus was a mound in a roughly conical depression. To the north, a peak lay a few miles beyond. Nearer was a rim dotted with windblown arid oak, scraggly thorn bushes, and clumps of dusty juniper.

It was hot. And it stunk. To alls sides, rainwater pooled in stagnant blue-green pools, crusted with white minerals.

It had been a long day; I felt exhausted, physically and emotionally. Nevertheless, we had to escape this last place in which somepony might trap us. I said, "It's about an hour to sunset."

Lord Tirek pointed a claw at a series of terraces. I nodded. I took off my canteen, which was still strapped on, and emptied the contents in big gulps. I didn't feel generous. As I slung it back on, I felt the incarceration amulet and on impulse I flicked it up to look at it.

The click my hoof made sounded both metallic and glassy. The artifact looked barely transparent now; more silvery. If I understood the centaur correctly, it fed on my magic and would eventually restore itself. My horn ring would do the same.

Lord Tirek leaped the stagnant water. I crinkled my nose as I splattered through the noisome fluid. He forged ahead, his hooves faintly clattering like castanets as he picked his way. Unlike a goat, he had an unwieldy second torso. He had to lean back before jumping, pulling back his top forelegs to flail with both them and his tail to keep balance. Overall, in the climb, I judged myself more nimble.

Along the way, the arid land proved surprisingly bountiful. Little bushes of leaves that smelled aromatic like caraway and occasional tufts of grass proved tempting. As we went, I stripped branches with my teeth and tongue or bent my neck down to wrestle out a clump of exotic desert hay that clung strongly to the dusty cracks in in the rock. I chewed as we went, and gradually felt better. I did my best not to dwell on decisions I could not unmake or the ones I had had no choice but to make.

At least I didn't feel sixty years old. Belly happy, I felt reinvigorated. I felt like I should have felt at the end of my teenage years had I lived like an earth pony using his muscles instead as being a slug of uninspired unicorn flesh.

Okay. —of lazy unicorn flesh.

We scrabbled the last pony-length over a jumble of rocks and entered a scrub forest of oak surrounded by red-barked stunted evergreen trees and thorny silvery-green shrubs. The vegetation combined to block the view of the westering sun but for dapples of sunlight that played into our eyes as the wind buffeted the plants. To our right, an array of boulders resisted the encroaching flora, but looked easier to thread through than the forest would be. All along the rim, it appeared to be the only clear path to the lowlands to the south.

I pointed with my nose, but Lord Tirek put out his claw to stop me from passing him. He hissed, "I sense something powerful near by."

"An object or a pony?" I knew he considered both objects and ponies things.

"Equestrian magic—a pony. Could Sunset Shimmer have returned to hunt you for your crimes against her?"

I wasn't going to clarify that she had returned many years in the past, after which she had faded from the news. Since Princess Luna's return, she may as well have not existed in our universe, and from what I had known of her subsequent self-abuse, which I had fostered, she might have actually died. "Extremely unlikely."

The centaur folded his legs beside a boulder and pressed an ear to it. He stood almost instantly. "Something massive this way comes. Take cover."

We rushed into the trees and knelt. We could still see, and probably could be seen, but as the sun continued toward setting, dancing shadows and thin leafy trunks camouflaged us well.

I heard large rocks being shoved aside and clacking like monster billiard balls. Heavy, rhythmic thumping noises gave me a premonition we were about to have some very bad luck. Thunderous barks announced my worst expectation. I whispered, "Cerberus."

Lord Tirek glared at me to remain quiet.

Another group of barks— Closer this time.

I saw a flitting shadow. I looked above as a low flying pegasus glided by. The yellow mare flew slow enough that her extremely long flowing pink mane and tail waved gracefully in her wake. She looked... perfect. She was possibly the most beautiful mare I'd ever seen. Her nicely proportioned legs and wings were the right amount of long and lithe with a face and musculature that looked sculpted as if imagined rather than merely crudely born. Breathtaking blue eyes flashed in the late sun as she braked at the rim, turned to face Cerberus, and hovered expectantly. She used the minimum energy necessary to maintain position, her wings flapping leisurely up and down. She was a delicate golden hyacinth flower supported by the lightest of breezes.

I'd ensured I met models during my time in Canterlot and Manehatten. I judged modeling agents and fashion photographers were falling upon each other fighting to sign her to a contract.

Lord Tirek shoved me to break the enchantment and pointed. Not far downhill I saw ball floating and bobbing. It looked like a yellow foal's rubber ball with a blue stripe. A purple aura suspended it ten pony-lengths in the air. I could see the aura because the sun had fallen far enough that the ball was passing in and out of the late afternoon shadows.

A unicorn.

Cerberus came bounding up behind the ball. He lunged and caught the ball with his rightmost head, then tossed it dozens of pony-lengths in the air, droplets of drool sparkling and flying. The unicorn caught it, shook it, and levitated it toward the yellow pegasus.

"Twilight," the pegasus said, "I think maybe we're here."

Twilight?

Twilight Sparkle?

My heart seized up. The Twilight Sparkle!? Princess Celestia's second protégé? The mare who conquered Nightmare Moon? The bearer of the Element of Magic of the Elements of Harmony?

No, no, no. This was not good.

But it made sense. I had no doubt it had been foal Twilight Sparkle who'd blasted through time to allow Sunset Shimmer to travel to Tartarus. This was the other bookend of the curse upon time the foal had perpetrated.

That implied that the yellow pegasus was another bearer of an Element of Harmony. Her name escaped me. These ponies were the powerful magic Lord Tirek sensed. Whatever crimes Lord Tirek had perpetrated to make Celestia commit him to Tartarus, the one thing intuition told me at this very moment was that the centaur could pull the magic out of powerful objects and powerful ponies.

Would I add to my crimes by letting a monster stab at the heart of pony civilization, at the one pony who Celestia had groomed to save Equestria when she did not have the power to do so herself?

I did not want to put ideas in his mind so I settled on whispering, "Let me handle this, if we need to." I touched him to emphasize my point as he seemed intent on the ponies' approach.

He flinched away, fortunately quietly. A faint breeze rustled leaves and clicked shrubby branches together, but even so. He glared. "You will not touch me, even with magic," he breathed barely audibly. Implied: he thoroughly understood my talent.

"Obey me," I returned, despite a scary yellow-irised glare from motes of black.

Cerberus climbed to the ridge, tongues out, panting. The yellow pegasus waved a hoof and he sat smartly. She flew behind his heads and alighted at the, well— W of his necks; the action alone should have caused the beast to go berserk and attack. Instead, she lay there and reached forward with her hooves and wings to scratch the creature behind various ears. "Such a good good boy. Who's a good boy? Who's a goooood boy?"

Cerberus whined and actually smiled in a doggy way, the tips of his tongues rolling upward almost touching his noses. He even scratched the air, so much like a real dog that I suspected that Princess Celestia had enchanted him, to enhance his dogginess.

A purple unicorn with a dark purple magenta-striped mane and tail jumped atop a nearby flat rock illuminated by the sun. She judged wrongly and scrambled the rest of the distance, then had a problem balancing and waved a fore and the opposite rear hoof as her tail spun, vocalizing, "Whoah, whoah!" She precipitously laid down and sighed loudly. She said, "Thank you, Fluttershy. I couldn't have done it alone."

One had a cutie mark consisting of pink butterflies, the other a doubled composite of two six-pointed stars that reputably signified great power. Following her magical mishap, a very powerful Starlight Glimmer had burnt only a doubled four-pointed star in the fur of her forehead. My bodyguard, Fletching, had told me the theory about cutie mark stars. For added significance, Twilight's main double-star was accompanied by an orbit of five extra little white six-pointers.

Fluttershy looked down from her perch, beaming. "It was a pleasure and I think all my animals will be just fine if I hurry home when we're done. I have never seen a three-headed dog. That I could help you only made it better!"

"You're too sweet, and I am completely exhausted. At least, when we get Cerberus back to Tartarus, it'll guarantee no epic pony war or disaster will come this Tuesday morning. Future-Twilight will become a figment of my imagination."

"Um. Twilight— Are you sure it isn't a figment now? Spike's been complaining about your lack of sleep."

"Cerberus proves it, I think."

"Oh, such a good doggie!" she cooed in a paroxysm of scritchies. "Okay, Twilight, if you really think so."

A wind shift brought me the smell of sweaty ponies, that latex scent of Cerberus, and that of creosote from the native trees. Lord Tirek shifted uncomfortably. His tense attentive body language made my imagined scenarios too real. In my mind, I urged the ponies to send Cerberus away already and to quickly leave.

Twilight Sparkle was in no hurry. "I'm just glad we found the cause of the time disturbance soon enough to protect Equestria. He's barely been loose an afternoon. This could have been way worse, especially had he become hungry."

In a low pet-lover voice, Fluttershy said, "But he knew better, didn't he?"

"There's that, but the princess is going to have to pay to fix Strawberry Shortcake's house where he gnawed on the roof finials."

They both tittered like the young twenty-somethings they were.

Oblivious.

Twilight took a deep breath. "Raising public safety awareness wasn't a waste, either." She stood and raised a hoof over the rim to point. "Okay, Cerberus, time to go home."

One drooling head looked at the unicorn, two looked toward the gate. He gave the barest of resistant whines.

The yellow pegasus cooed and began massaging his neck again. She lifted into the air, languidly flowing on the breeze to within inches of teeth that from any of three heads could have made a quick snack of her. "You've had your fun day and a really good walk but you know it's time to go home."

The beast seemed to understand, wagging a tail that could demolish buildings. He whined again, lowering his heads submissively before laying down stubbornly.

Fluttershy gave a little tinkling laugh. "I think we are going to have to take him to his door."

Twilight glanced down the path we'd just navigated. She hung her head as her horn lit. The ball rose. The last bit of sun left her as if on cue to emphasize her exhaustion.

"Twilight. I'll take him. Um, visiting Tartarus is a bit scary. You do think it's safe down there?"

The unicorn smiled, lowering herself to the rock. "Of course it is. His collar is the gate key. It would take days for anypony to figure out how to operate the gate lock without Cerberus to let them through. It's perfectly safe."

"Cerberus!" Fluttershy said. "Up boy!"

He was up so quickly, stones exploded outward. Twilight fended them off with her magic and some came bouncing into the brush near our hiding place. The dog barked, and when the pegasus gestured and flew below the rim, he jumped after her, his tail a-whir.

Twilight Sparkle sighed loudly. As she folded her legs below her, she said, "Nice warm rock. Nice little Rainbow Dash nap." She rested her head on her forelegs and shut her eyes. "Perfectly safe. Just want to forget this day."

The forgotten ball fell, bounced, and rolled into a bush halfway between us and her.

Lord Tirek stood.

I hissed and shook my head.

He whispered back, "The ball."

I didn't trust him and crept behind him. While I had to concentrate hard not to step on a stick or gravel, his stealth seemed nonchalant and instinctual. Why could we not have walked the other way? The bush had little serrated elm-like leaves and plenty of thorns. He stood beside it and the ball below it.

I snorted my annoyance quietly and cast Levitation. A stab of pain shot through my forehead. I couldn't make the ball more than sway, let alone lift it. I took a deep breath and glared at the centaur.

He shrugged.

I was going to have to talk to him about removing the ring completely. With a slight sigh, I maneuvered to the side of the shrub concentrating hard on silence. Positioned on my stomach, I reached out a hoof under the branches—

Against the still bright blue sky, I saw an on-rushing shadow. His right rear hoof, I think.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Is this story based off of this one?

[scifipony]

If you mean one particular episode, it definitely dovetails with it.