• Published 22nd Sep 2016
  • 2,122 Views, 28 Comments

Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell - scifipony



"Was it Satisfying Anyway?" Sunset Shimmer, while still Celestia's personal student, learns there's some places you don't want to go, but love will make you do strange things. That and time paradoxes and magic storms.

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Lessons Half-Learned

"What just happened?" Brandywine exclaimed once we left the in-between, the both of us steaming with a dusting of frost.

We stood in a field of big pan-like leaves that shivered in a hot noontime breeze. I turned until I could see Central's gray "Big House" and the adobe red tile-roofed "suburbs" surrounding it. One second, one mile? "You traveled."

"I've never gone from thought to destination in— In seconds!"

I flung the frost from our coats with my magic. If one could say we started in the east when we had gone to Central, we were now south of the settlement. An immature squash popped beneath my hoof and I jumped back.

Brandywine laughed nervously and said, "For the first time in like forever, it wasn't like running uphill. It was like pushing against a brick wall and falling through. What did I do right?"

I stepped in front of him and looked him in the eye. "So, you would help other ponies against all odds before helping find your father?"

"He can take care of himself." He nodded and looked away.

"Right answer," I said, reaching forward to nuzzle him as the heroine in any romance story might to show her colt-friend he had done the right thing. His fur felt soft against mine.

He stepped back flushing. "Sunset! What was that for?"

"For proving that you are noble somewhere deep in that teenage male blockhead of yours. After Princess Celestia had beaten me, when she had then returned my freedom in hope that I might join her to help Equestria, she demonstrated to me that her goal was to protect ponies, all ponies. That doesn't mean she is perfect. She is a bit of a tyrant, but she often helps way more than she hurts. I saw that in her heart; I see it in yours. So, where next?"

"I guess I should say thank you." He still blushed, but began scraping a hoof back and forth in the dark soil. "Twilight Sparkle's gate, or the influence of her magic certainly messed stuff up. The rules I expected Father to encounter have changed. If the princess' power here is nullified, I think Father can handle himself." He looked down.

I blew air through my lips. "Honesty is noble, too. When a mare pays you a compliment, the right answer is 'thank you.' She's probably right."

He started to chuckle. He didn't say thank you, though.

I prompted, "What's the plan?"

"Cerberus is to the south. My father's pardon might convince Cerberus to let him through the gate. However, we really need to return you to Twilight's Tartarus gate so you can go home."

I shook my head. "I don't need sparkle pony's gate. I have you. We've proven I can travel with you."

"And if that fails when I leave? I really don't understand my special talent. It's wonky. I wouldn't make that decision."

"I'm Celestia's protégé. You understand now the ordeal she went through to choose me. What's the worst that could happen?"

"You get eaten by a monster."

"Well, there is that. But I can take care of myself, especially with that nifty spell you taught me. You know, Force."

"Which we need to practice some more."

My heart beat faster and I smiled. What? He said, we! Him and I. Together. "So if Celestia is miffed, she lets me stew here for awhile. In maximum restraint? She's not a disciplinarian. That means Central and I can wrap Lavender Lather around a spindle. And that's before I've explained who I really am."

"If she believes you."

I stared.

"You are determined."

"I am. And that looks like south." I pointed. Squinting, I could see the ring of mountains converging in a dark smudge. As we began walking through what became a field of cabbage, I asked, "And what's a cerberus?"

He looked over his shoulder. His amber eyes glittered. "Not a pony for reading the classics, eh?"

"Um—"

"History either?"

"STEM curriculum. You know: Science, thaumaturgy, engineering, and mathematics. And when I'm not studying, mostly trying to make inconcrete numbers make concrete sense, I read trashy romances."

"The trashier the better?" He snorted and looked forward. We were now on a road. I noticed his face had colored.

With a sing-song voice, I said, "Some-pony reads them too-oo!"

He sputtered.

"For research, no doubt. Or pointers—"

Something loud—and distant—sounded a long wailing shriek. A shocked sweat cooled on my hide as we both froze and looked east. In the haze, I could see a mote of tan against the gray backdrop of cloud shrouded mountains. It resolved into a shambling thing with short back limbs and massive forelimbs, and a green mop-like head with what looked like rolled horns that made it look like it wore a pompadour.

Brandywine breathed. "That... that's an arimaspi."

"I hope Lavender Lather takes my advice and leads her ponies to safety."

By unspoken consent, we fast trotted south despite the heat. I said, "Now might be a good time to travel to see a cerberus."

"I'm trying!"

Getting caught in the open didn't feel right, and I doubted all of Celestia's nightmares were as tall and easy to see. We went as fast as we could as Brandywine's efforts to travel proved wonky and fruitless as ever.

An hour later, huffing and puffing, lathered with sweat, my tongue sticking to my palate, we trotted under the cover of a forest of not-exactly-trees. While they towered to a sickly yellow-green canopy above, whirls of thread-like tassels or streamers of ribbons substituted for leaves and moved in the breeze with a wet sound reminiscent of a burbling brook. Depending on the type of tree, the outside varied from ribbed to pebbly, ranging from soot-color to silver. Whether it was a thorny shrub or a straight and commanding lodge-pole pine giant, the bark sagged like the skin of an obese animal.

I tapped one young willowy tree, expecting it to whip elastically about. Instead, it moved the width of my hoof and stopped, momentarily rock-like. Close-up, it smelled fetid, something like the fancy cheese Celestia sometimes tried to get me to taste.

"Sunset, over here."

I trotted toward his voice over the often crackly ground. Past a veil of brush, I found him drinking from a stream, the sound of which was masked by the trees. "Thank Celestia!" I cried and bent my neck to drink.

The cool water tasted cheesy, too. I didn't care.

Something made a soft crack. I brought my head around, spraying droplets of water that sparkled in the dappled light. A sound like cicada wings buzzed around behind me, but I lost its source as a I turned in the trees. "What?"

"Living creatures inhabited Tartarus before Celestia came here."

I shuddered. "Winged things—? Is this the world the breezies come from?"

"Father told me the chitter are kinda donut-shaped with legs and more than one head, and metallic-colored beetle wings. Animals, best anypony can tell."

"Why's that?"

"Not a lot of naturalists sentenced to Tartarus."

"Right."

"They bite."

"Oh, wonderful. Tartarussian chiggers."

We finished drinking in peace. As we walked from the brook, a short greenish ribbon leaf presented itself on a twig. Instinct took over and I bit. The ribbon turned crispy, like a cookie or cereal. I spat and kept spitting. It tasted like garlic and halitosis, and stale moldy cheese.

Brandywine chuckled. "It is edible. Mostly protein, like eggs."

"And disgusting."

He pointed along the brook. "It'll eventually take us to the lake we need to circle. Cerberus eats the branches and leaves of various kibble plants. I suppose they dominated the landscape once."

"But not anymore? She chopped down the forests to constrain the creature's food source, to keep this cerberus from roaming?"

He shrugged and I looked behind at a passing buzz. The forest was full of "bird" calls and "insect" buzzes, besides the swish of the wind. Thankfully all kept their distance. Answering my unvoiced question, he said, "Cerberus is a critter. He looks like a big black dog, emphasis on big."

Oh. Okay. Something named Cerberus. That made sense. "But shaped like a donut?"

"Well, he's so fat and muscular, you can't tell, or at least you'd not want to get close enough to try."

"Teeth but no wings. How big?"

"Bigger than you can lift."

I harrumphed. There was nothing I'd wanted to lift that I'd failed to lift, not that I'd tried to find my limits. Acting a muscle-head earth pony had never appealed to me.

Critters buzzed and slithered through the strange forest. I kept glancing about, my heart jumping now and again, as we journeyed through the crispy landscape. My being on edge made me hear something before Brandywine.

He pointed excitedly toward a cross-stream and a bright clearing ahead, but I shushed him; I put a hoof to his mouth and pointed.

His ears perked. His brow wrinkled as he lead us, wadding quietly through the faster stream to tangled brambles that served as a blind looking out at—

At first all I saw was a maintained dirt road with wagon ruts. It ran north-south on the opposite bank of what was now obviously a small river. I heard a clatter, almost wooden and musical like a marimba, very distinct from the crunch and thunk of treeish growths in the kibble forest. Celestia had a grove of giant bamboo in the royal gardens. In wind storms, it tonked and clanked like this. If a sound could be enormous, it was. As was this approaching wooden sound.

Something enormous and otherworldly strode around the bend. The dog-like creature, skeletal, bigger than a two story building, was composed completely of Equestrian logs, branches, and sticks. Leaves, still attached, fluttered at the ankles of its paws, along its tail, and the ruff of its neck. They created eyebrows and eyelashes around eyes composed of a greenish glow visible in the afternoon sun.

Predator, I thought. Not a dog.

A wolf.

It stopped about ten yards beyond our hideout. It lifted its muzzle in the air, sniffing with a nose barely implied by the stick structure of its head. It turned its head and looked around and past us.

It paused. Despite the sweltering heat, I shivered. I stopped breathing. I felt my heart pounding and heard the blood rushing in my ears.

The creature raised its head and howled.

After a few moments, it continued clattering on its way.

I breathed, "That was a timberwolf!"

"The timberwolf," he whispered, awed, though it was out of range.

I remembered. "The one that defeated Celestia?"

"Probably."

As we swam and walked through the mud of the slow river to the opposite bank, I nervously said, "It must be a little stronger than me if it defeated Celestia."

On the road, Brandywine shook himself out beside me and said, "You do realize that you almost won against Princess Celestia because she let you?"

I bristled—and I think my reaction was visible—but it started me thinking as we trotted south. He wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right, either.

I said, "Total power doesn't translate to ability. At the time, my ability to cast illusions outclassed the princess completely. She couldn't see me. She was always wrong where she thought I was, and she could not discern her own reality—and she's told me this—meaning that I could get her to stumble into obstacles. Learning to think in words has made it much more difficult for me to come close to being as good an illusionist as I was."

He stopped us, listened, then motioned ahead. Quietly, he said, "Yes, but at any time she could have cast Force and ended the fight."

"She did do something. She found me and caught me up in her magic, but couldn't stop me from doing magic."

He chuckled. "When I can simply flick your horn to distract you?"

"She shook me a lot and spun me around. I was angry, furious; I was fighting for my ponies! I was certain she had hurt them badly at the time. I was focused."

"You seemed focused in Central's market facing off my mother."

He'd flicked my horn, forcing me to threaten Pear Brandy with my hooves. What was different? Right! "It takes words to worry. Images—"

"—keep you focused... because you need to conceive failure to worry?"

I grinned as we watched something with two heads scuttle lizard-like to the river bank. When it was obvious something else hadn't flushed it from cover, I said, "Couldn't have said it better."

He eyed the twisted Tartarussian excuse for an iguana as we passed and said, "We need to find a place to practice your spell."

I nodded, then realized something. "At any one point in time ponies aren't just power and abilities. We are our goals, intentions, and fears. Combine all that and you get possible actions in any one moment. We're a different pony every interval between decisions. For while my goals empowered me and Celestia's inhibited her, I could win. Look, I could just spin and buck you into the river—"

"Thanks!"

"But I'm not doing that to anypony, especially a friend. Her goal was more lofty than mine. In the end, I cracked."

Did I really say that?

I cracked.

I shuddered and felt my ears flop forward. I lowered my head. I had cracked. What were these hot tears streaming down my cheeks?

I'd read enough stories about the hero who in the final moment failed because she saw the evil in her methods. Lacy "The Knife" Goring in Fate's Lessons Half-Learned came to mind. "I was twisting off Celestia's wings and pulling out her feathers!" I wailed.

"Sunset, please!" he hissed.

"I don't like hurting ponies. All she wanted was to make me surrender. In the end, I couldn't do what was necessary to win. She smothered me. I could have done worse to her, but I just... couldn't."

I found Brandywine leaning into me, warm, gently pushing me into motion as my thoughts kept twining and tangling, jungle-like and wild. Perhaps it was my wordy present-self reshaping the image recollections of my inarticulate past-self and it wasn't true. Lost or cracked, did it make a difference?

What was true: Celestia won.

And she had made sure I won, too.

I was such a foal! Intuition derided me with the thought that this too was also a lesson half-learned.

I found myself in a small clearing fully surrounded by kibble trees with a dim recollection of crunching over crackly bark and shouldering aside branches. I matched my body so that I leaned flush into Brandywine's, cheek to flank, and didn't care that it was just too warm to do that. Comfort had multiple levels. "You are sweeter than I deserve."

Gently, he said, "I thought the Queen of Cliffside didn't cry."

I sniffed loudly. "Problem is, I'm not her any more. Celestia tamed her. She made Sunset Shimmer in her place."

"The student? The protégé? Oh, I'm pretty sure you created that yourself. But—" He broke contact and moved so his amber eyes looked into mine. He grinned. "Sunset Shimmer, the student, needs to practice casting Force."

I felt like a rung-out wash rag. In fact, I felt like something substantial had fallen away, like a broken necklace dropped during the day and only noticed getting ready for bed. Lost. No chance of finding that again. I wasn't sure I was sad. Or that I missed the whatever-it-was. Or that I cared. I answered with a tentative grin, "Sure. I can do that."

After a bit of review and a demonstration, I cast Force easily, warping my raw magic into a glowing green cylinder, and with a minimum of power so I didn't drain myself. Aim was a bugaboo, though.

His jaw dropped. "That curved to the right almost 45 degrees! I didn't know you could do that!"

I hadn't either. It was like trying to keep marbles from rolling off a table with one short leg. I kept at it. More often than not I scorched a kibble tree, rather than blasting the branch I aimed at. I just couldn't figure it out, but decided to settle for close. Considering how erratic I was, Brandywine didn't dare get in the line of fire to help me figure out what I didn't understand.

As we crept cautiously to the road, he whispered, "It took me months to get it right."

"Curving bolts, scorches, and all?"

"Well..."

"I'm sure I'll get it to work when I really need it."

"When you need to focus, Sunset? You know," he said as we trotted down the empty road, "I think you will."