Act 3 Chapter 78 : Last Night
"There were always things out there waiting to kill us in the dark. What kept them from coming for us was one simple reality: what's inside the minds of intelligent beings is always scarier than even the most vicious predator's teeth. The darker things beyond this realm know that no matter what evils they can conjure, if they provoke our imaginations, it will be they who suffer in the end."
- Princess Luna, On Dreaming.
It was the dress that did it.
Ruby Blue could probably have chosen any dress in the world, but she chose that one: the one she died in, diving face-first off the roof of one of the swankiest hotels in Detrot. The royal red number with the flank-high slit up the side was calculated to brighten a lover’s evening, but I couldn’t really appreciate it given the circumstances.
I’d only known Ruby through her diary and her sister’s descriptions of her. She looked almost exactly like Lily, though there were a few small differences. Her cutie-mark was back in its untarnished state: three diamonds hanging from stems. She was looking at me with that same sad smile that Lily gave me from time to time when she knew I was about to do something self-destructive.
I sank onto a pile of rubble, my head in my hooves as the emotional weight of several days constantly suffering seemed to land squarely on my shoulders. I’d just killed a pony with my own two hooves and there his corpse was, standing there wearing the illusory skin of a mare I’d only met after she died. To be clear, killing was no longer an unfamiliar sensation, but knowing that made the moment even worse. Terrible as it might sound, there was some part of me that liked Diamond Wishes.
My body ached, either from tension or from all the abuse. It felt as though my shoulders were made of lead and my neck was one big ball of disgruntled muscles heavily considering a general strike. Sitting there with my face buried in the sleeves of my dusty trenchcoat, I tried to take solace in the notion that, whatever happened, I was likely to get to rest at some point sooner, rather than later.
There was a clip-clop of hooves moving around me, but I ignored it. Ruby was going to do as Ruby did. She couldn’t exactly get any more dead and if she wanted to rip my spine out, I wasn’t feeling much like stopping her.
“You forgot to put this back on before you brought the roof down,” Ruby said, softly, patting my shoulder. Her voice was light and gentle, like she was trying to comfort a frightened, injured bird she’d found in her garden plot.
Something thin dropped over my shoulders and, for an instant, I thought she’d just slipped a garotte wire around my throat. It was a passing thought, though. I raised my head a little and looked down to find the Emblem of Harmony resting on my chest.
I tried to find some words. I really did. All I managed was a sort of choked gasp with a question mark on the end.
“It’s really me, Hardy,” Ruby murmured, settling down beside me on an adjacent pile of shattered concrete. “I know we’ve never ‘met’ before, but you read my diary. I like to think I’m a good enough writer to put a lot of myself in those pages.”
Coughing fitfully into my elbow, I lay back on the uncomfortable heap, staring up at the blackened sky over Starlight Tower. After a few seconds, Ruby’s pretty, pale blue face crept into my peripheral vision. I turned my chin a little to find her peering at me, resting one hoof under her muzzle and with an interested expression.
“You know, you’re cute, in a kind of ‘dragged behind a cart during rush hour’ sort of way,” she added, after a few seconds.
It was such a ridiculous statement and so wildly out of place that it made me smile. I wasn’t in control of the smile; it just sort of happened.
“Thanks,” I muttered, my voice hoarse and thready. “You’re cute, too, in a kind of ‘fell off a rooftop’ sort of way.”
Ruby flipped a hoof through her bright red mane, the toetip passing right through the hair as though it weren’t there, which it wasn’t, because she was dead. The simple illusion over the dead body of a stallion who’d just tried to kill me was small comfort. Such thoughts weren’t helping my emotional condition, much, and I didn’t have Sweet Shine there to kick me sane.
“I do miss my body, a little,” she opined. “I spent a lot of time shaking cherry trees on the farm to get this flank. It seemed a bit of a waste to drop it off a building, but saving the world and my sister was worth it, don’t you think?”
“You tell me. Have we saved the world?” I asked, unable to fully disguise a bit of hopefulness in my voice.
Ruby Blue sighed, reaching out to touch my foreleg. I had to force myself not to draw away from her and she seemed to realize it, stopping before her toe actually rested on my knee.
“No. Not by a long shot.”
“But...the armor—” I started.
She waved me to silence with a flick of her perfectly ringletted tail. “I’m so sorry, Hardy, but the sun and moon aren’t moving until all the magic is expelled from that big’ol nasty shield up there. We could wait, but it’d probably be a few years. Everypony on Equis would be dead by then.”
I sat up, cautiously, and reached out to brush a hoof up Ruby’s side. She stood still, letting me feel my way through the illusion. My toe brushed against the base of the severed horn jutting from the old body and I shuddered, yanking my leg back.
“So...so what then?” I asked, tears burning at the edges of my eyes. “Y-you somehow...somehow set all of this in motion, right? You brought me here? Y-you knew I’d die so m-many—”
Ruby poked me on the end of the nose. “Hardy, you brought yourself here.”
“That’s not better! Do you have any idea how much—”
“—you suffered?” She huffed, trotting in a little circle then settling down on her stomach across from me, giving me a level glare. “Were you about to say ‘how much you suffered’? If we’re going to pull those particular receipts, I’m dead. The permanent kind.”
I put a hoof over my eyes. “You and lots of other people. Sweet Celestia, so many...”
Her expression softened and she gathered her hooves under her chest, flicking one ear so the tiny jeweled earrings hanging from it rang musically against one another. I couldn’t quite put out of my mind that it was an illusion, but I appreciated the attention to detail.
“If it’s any comfort, Hardy, I didn’t make you do anything. You could have lain down and let the world die anytime. Lots of ponies probably would have.”
“You stuck clues in my path,” I muttered, disconsolately.
“You’re the one who put them together,” she replied, tapping the side of her head. “I was half out of my mind most of the time after I snatched the Helm of Nightmare Moon and when I wasn’t, I was coming down from the worst sort of brain-twisting high you can imagine. Nightmare could see the paths, but I don’t think she knew what any of it meant. She’s very intelligent, but...not very smart, if that makes any sense.”
I gave her a despondent grin and tried to get up, stumbling a moment before catching myself. “It does. I’ve met her, remember?”
“I remember.” The dead mare pushed a rock in a little circle, looking into the middle distance as though lost in thought. “She was so confident she could take you, but you were one of two ponies in Equestria Nightmare Moon couldn’t predict and that scared the fur off her. The other was Diamond Wishes. I think he was a sort of blind spot for her, but she spent whole evenings trying to dig through your personal history for some clue as to why your future was such a mess. She just couldn’t understand.”
“That’s why she said she tried to take my body,” I said.
“Honestly, she should have known that wouldn’t work.” Ruby giggled, pushing herself up and lightly kicking one of the broken pieces of the roof so it skittered off into the dark. “I sure did. You’re the most boneheaded pony in Equestria except maybe Sweet Shine.”
“I think I’m happy to take second place, there. Sweets jumped into a dragon’s mouth not two hours ago. I’m going to give her a piece of my mind for that if...” I trailed off.
Ruby let out a sad sigh. “If you live through what’s coming?”
I slowly nodded, then something occurred to me. “I don’t guess you have any spoilers as to whether or not that’s likely, do you?”
“No,” she replied, sadly, plucking at one fetlock as though she weren’t quite used to it being there. “Everything after today is always a blur. Still, you have no idea how good it is to finally meet you.” She fidgeted fitfully with the edge of her dress, seeming for the first time unsure of herself. “I don’t know how I pictured this going for either of us. Seeing future events isn’t like...actually watching them so much as remembering them. Memory always misses things.”
I blew a breath out of the corner of my muzzle. “I’ve heard something like that. Nightmare Moon likes to pretend she has a handle on things, but whatever magic she actually does is more like math without all the x’s and y’s filled in.”
“That sounds right. I saw the paths, but I didn’t know where most of them led. I’m a bit in the dark about how I did what I did, too, but...I’ve had some guiding hooves on my shoulders.”
I squinted at her, frowning. “I’ve had a little ‘guardian angel’ showing up through the last few months. Goes by the name of Juniper Shores. He’s been my intermittently guiding hoof, frustrating as he can be.”
Ruby tilted her head to one side. “W-wait. Do you mean your old partner? That Juniper?”
“That’ll be him.”
“But...but Juniper is dead. I wrote that thing about him in my diary so you’d believe I actually could see things that were important. I know he’s dead. He has to be. I saw it. It was horrible. There was nothing left.”
“Yeah, well, as many of us have recently demonstrated, death is a slightly impermanent state, isn’t it?”
“You cheated with your heart and that beastly necromancer stuck my soul in my horn. I saw Juniper die. There wasn’t enough to put in a cherry picking bucket,” she insisted, trotting over to the remains of the drinks cabinet, pulling out a bottle of something expensive whose neck was shattered but whose contents were still in there, and taking a deep swig. She made a face. “Ugh, I can’t taste anything? Really? I go to all the trouble to get a body back and the dead stallion’s tongue has to be the part that stops working right away?”
“Speaking of that, how...how are you here?” I asked, waving a hoof up and down in an attempt to encompass the body she was wearing. “Did you—”
Ruby took another sip, then made a face and spat it out. “Ugh. Can’t even digest anymore. Yuck. Anyway, are you asking about the mechanics of snatching a dead body? Because I am not a necromancer. I knew this would work, but I don’t know how it works. Maybe it’s because he was wearing the armor of Nightmare Moon when he died. Maybe it’s just Necromancy 101. You stabbed him. He died. I felt a vacancy and moved in. I think I’m alive because of the magic in the armor. It’s the magic of possession. Once it’s gone, so am I.”
“A...and you’re fine with that?”
She gave me an even stare. “Hardy, I can’t get more ‘fine’ with that. I set a lot of plates spinning, half of which seem like they just existed as contingencies in case somepony did something completely out of left field and half of which are broken. I don’t even know why I did some of those things. I’m a farm filly, like my sister. I could accessorize you all day long, but I didn’t sign up to be an oracle for powers from beyond. When I came to Detrot, nobody told me I’d finish my days lying in an alleyway. I deserve a break almost as much as you do. Whatever comes next, I don’t want to be a disembodied horn or a...” She looked down at herself. “—or a dead murderer.”
“I guess I can respect that,” I said, after a moment’s consideration. “I’ve got a relative who is stuck in a state not dissimilar to yours and he’s mostly getting through it by grumbling, drinking, smoking, and scaring the pants off people. What about your sister?”
Ruby’s ears flattened against the sides of her head and she hugged the broken bottle like it might have some comfort left in it. “Lily...I knew she’d come. Which timeline are we on? Did you and she sleep together, or are you with the cute blond colt? Or are you sleeping with the scary pegasus with sharp teeth?”
I blinked at her like a fish who’d suddenly found the tasty worm in their mouth had a hook attached.
“I did not even consider for a second that Swift was an option. She’s my partner—”
“So was Juniper. Didn’t stop you there, did it?”
“He and I never had sex!”
Ruby gave me a skeptical look. “Huh. He came out of your apartment in the morning dozens of times with bed-head, a dreamy expression, and a lot of your mane hairs on his jacket...and you weren’t sleeping together?”
My nose involuntarily wrinkled as a whole bunch of entirely unwelcome and untimely images started darting through my brain at high speed. “No, we didn’t, and Swift and I didn’t and I’m not with Lily or Scarlet except they—”
“Oh, you’re not with either of them?” she squeaked, her voice rising with a note of panic.
“I didn’t say that!”
She wiped her forehead with the back of one fetlock. “Phew. I’m so glad. The timeline where you come here with nobody to live for is really awful.”
I held up my hooves and tried to regain some semblance of control over my spinning thoughts. “Hold on, hold on! Give me a second here! Timeline? You...you don’t know what timeline we’re in?”
Ruby pointed toward the dark sky overhead. “Hardy, half the time when I saw this moment, it was raining. What part of ‘not an oracle’ didn’t make sense? I’ve only put together general outlines of what’s going on. There were other forces pushing me along.” She looked down for a moment and shuddered. “I can’t...feel them now, though. I don’t think they’re with us here. We...we might actually be alone.”
“What exactly were these forces?” I asked, nodding in her direction. “Diamond Wishes called the thing in the basement a ‘god’, but he also said that didn’t mean anything. You got any thoughts on that?”
She was quiet for a long moment, then drew in a slow breath of the warm air, holding out the broken whiskey bottle. I took it, sniffed the contents, then took a quick sip. It was some pretty stiff stuff.
“I’ve got some thoughts, sure,” she said, finally. “I don’t think you’ll like them.”
I rolled my eyes. “When was the last time that mattered? Go on. Hit me.”
“I’ll remember you said that. Alright, Hardy. Have you ever asked yourself what a god...is?”
I gave her a non-committal shrug. “Religion was never really my bag. Plenty of people think Celestia is a god, but there are too many pictures of her with her face buried in a cake for me to put much stock in that. Likewise with Luna. I’ve met Twilight Sparkle and if she’s a god, I’m a lettuce and tomato sandwich on rye with extra pickles.”
“No, no, no. I don’t mean the religious idea of a god. I mean what a god...actually...is. In practical terms.”
I started to reply, then let my mouth fall shut.
It was a good question and one that, considering the circumstances, deserved a good answer. Most ponies are, blessedly, never forced to consider whether or not there are things greater than they are in the universe: we know for sure there are things that could eat us like popcorn. It leads to a certain comfortable acceptance of the existence of things like monsters and horrors from beyond. That being said, I’d never really taken the time to think on exactly what a god might actually be.
Were they made of bone and skin? Surely some of them must be. Were they intelligent? Maybe, maybe not. Did they care about the existence of lesser intelligences, or were we not important enough to squish and thus, largely ignored? Could I, in good conscience, say I knew anything at all about gods?
“I...I guess the best I could say with any certainty is ‘they make things’,” I murmured, but that still felt inadequate. “Honestly, if I had to say one thing about gods and had any hope of being even a little bit right, that’s it. Gods make things. I don’t know if one particular god or several created our universe, but I imagine there are things out there that are far enough beyond ponykind that we would call them gods. I’ve met a few on this little adventure. Mostly nasty.”
Ruby giggled and tipped her head. “Oh, you’re definitely my sister’s type. Smart and scruffy. Bet you remind her of the farm.” I felt my cheeks flush for some reason and let the brim of my hat dip over my face as she continued, “Still, you’re right. Gods make things. Some might even say we’re gods in our own small ways. I certainly felt powerful when I rang my hammer on my anvil and turned out a piece that would guarantee any mare or stallion was the talk of the town.”
“Diamond Wishes was saying something like this,” I said, thoughtfully. “So, what’s down there is...an intelligence that’s...what? An order of magnitude beyond us? Something that creates worlds? How am I meant to fight that?”
“I don’t think you are. Think about what it does. What is the one thread that’s followed you since King Cosmo and your first death?”
I put my hooves over my eyes and tried to focus. Thinking coherently—what with all that’d happened in recent weeks—was like trying to wade through a thick pudding while wearing weights on my hooves. Still, I’d been building the puzzle for weeks. The final pieces were right in front of me.
What was it King Cosmo said, right before he died?
‘It...grants...’
“Wishes!” I exclaimed, dropping my forelegs. “It was the wishes!”
Ruby lowered a foreleg over her body and the illusion around her chest momentarily pulled away, revealing Nightmare’s breastplate. “Exactly. The thing down there actually brought the magic of wishes to Equestria...from...somewhere else.”
“But where? Where did it come from? Another dimension?”
She let the illusion wend around her again, leaving her red dress whole. “I don’t think so. You know, there’s something funny about the Bay of Detrot, right?”
“Luna’s Moon, do you want me to start making a list of all the ‘funny’ things there are about Detrot?”
Her cheeks burned bright red and she let out a soft groan. “Right, sorry. I actually meant about Detrot’s geology. Jewels are kinda my ‘thing’, so I had to study the local ranges surrounding the Bay of Unity. Do you know the Bay is...wrong?”
I involuntarily looked off into the distance, trying to sight the statues of Celestia and Luna that normally towered above that part of the city skyline. Of course, there was nothing to see.
“Wrong how?”
Puffing out her lips, Ruby thought for a minute, then looked down and drew a little circle in the dirt. “Okay, so...this is Detrot, right?” She drew a second, smaller circle intersecting the ‘Detrot’ circle. “This is the Bay of Unity. It’s where it is because at some point way back in history, something hit the planet Equis. It hit going very fast.”
“Hit from...where?” I asked.
Ruby raised a hoof and pointed straight up. “Space. Outer space. Probably from a distance so far we can hardly imagine it.”
A joke about little green stallions sprang right to the tip of my tongue and I almost started to tell it, but then a memory tickled my thoughts. It was a distant, echoing sense of something significant. Where had I last heard of something crashing to Equis from outer space?
I hadn’t made anything of it at the time, but then, it was such a goofy notion that it didn’t warrant much interest. Still, it was there, one disconnected clue hunting for another to give it meaning.
The moment was over a month ago, when I’d just met Limerence for the first time and the sun still shone in the sky. I was a nobody, then, and didn’t realize the blessing such total lack of status afforded me. Limerence, Taxi, Swift, and myself had made our way to the Museum of Natural History, before we found the body of Professor Fizzle.
I’d almost crapped myself walking in on a waxwork of a griffin tribal with a weapon upraised. In the room across from the statue, there was a display about Pre-Classical Equestria. It illustrated a theory which indicated that a meteor or something similar crashed into our world many, many centuries ago and caused the emergence of the wendigos. Those creatures drove equine immigration across our planet until the founding of Equestria.
It’s a tale every foal learns at their parent’s knee and is repeated every Hearth’s Warming Eve in song, verse, and theater.
What if it wasn’t a meteor that landed in ancient Equestria?
“Ruby, are you telling me this...thing...whatever it was...landed on this planet millennia ago?” I inquired, angling my chin sideways to look at her out of one eye. “Say, during the founding of our country?”
“The timeline fits,” she answered, softly, continuing to draw on her little diagram in the dirt. “Here, look.”
“You’re going to have to keep explaining using small words, here. I know less than nothing about geology.”
“I can do that,” she chuckled, then added a couple of v-shaped marks on either side of the Bay. “Okay, so based on local geology and the topography of the surrounding area, whatever it was hit at an angle hard enough to cause an upwards explosion of stone big enough to create the bay. Then, it deflected off the harder substrata and...well, it skipped. I can’t do all the math in my head, but if what hit was small and as close as makes-no-difference to indestructible, then once it shed most of its energy it could have landed somewhere.”
I wet my suddenly dry lips and quickly added a dotted line off down the length of the valley.
“What’s out that way?”
“Just the Wilds,” she replied, quietly.
“And...the house. The Family’s home.”
Ruby frowned at the picture, then drew an ‘x’ at the end of my dotted line. “Diamond Wishes’s home? I only saw the barest glimpses of it in most timelines, but...that’s a bad place.”
“That’s not the half of it. It’s built above an old mine, a mine with an ancient shield pylon in the bottom of it. It’s magic or maybe technology beyond anything in Equestria. Been there at least ten centuries. Probably longer.”
Settling on her tail, she nodded at the spot on our little map. “Then...that fits with everything else, doesn’t it?”
“Except one thing.” I chewed on my lip, then tapped the ‘X’ that marked the position of the former Family home. “There was a key. The Family found a key to get into the pylon. We stole it and used it to get into one of the pylons built based on their blueprints here in Detrot. Why would whoever locked that pylon send along a way to open it if they wanted whatever was inside to be locked away forever?”
Ruby cocked her head, letting her ringlet-mane fall across her face. “Maybe they didn’t. We don’t lock all prisoners away until they die, do we? Sometimes ponies just need to be rehabilitated, right?”
I breathed a low sigh. “Based on what I saw in that pylon, I can’t imagine what they think ‘rehabilitation’ looks like. So, someone...somewhere...locked this intelligence away and dropped it on a planet with life on it hoping it would eventually be unlocked and released?”
Stepping back from the diagram, Ruby ran a hoof down the seam of her brilliantly red dress to flatten it and nodded towards the stairs leading to the basement. “Hardy, I think we’re just guessing at this point. It’s also not going to change what we have to do, is it?”
Tugging on my coat’s lapels, I adjusted my head lamp and held a leg out for her to lead the way. “Not really, no. Today, we either kill it or it kills us. What about that wish? I don’t suppose we could just wish this thing out of existence.”
Ruby touched her dress over her chest which let out a soft clank as her hoof met the armor and shook her head, sadly. “I can’t make the wish. I tried the second I was entirely in control of myself.”
“Because...?” I prompted.
The illusion over her front right hoof peeled away, revealing the bloody, dusty, disheveled fetlock of Diamond Wishes.
“I’m pretty sure that requires a living pony,” she replied, allowing the illusion to slip back into place. “I can sense...something...trying to take control of my body, but it’s having trouble with the dead flesh. I feel sort of like a puppet with strings that are too long for the puppeteer.”
“Then...I have to put the armor on, again,” I murmured.
“And I can’t take it off,” she reminded. “Not yet. Whatever else I’ve seen, I know you and I aren’t finished with each other. We have to go downstairs. We have to face this together.”
I raised one eyebrow at her. “Did you get a preview somewhere along the line as to what happens after I fight Diamond Wishes?”
Ruby looked pensively toward the hole where the hidden door had been. “No. No, I didn’t. I tried. Really, I did. There’s nothing after the fight. Either the world really is about to end or...or we win. We win and everything is so different nopony could possibly recognize it.”
Reaching out, I cautiously, then with more confidence put a hoof around her. I could feel Diamond Wishes's bony body beneath the illusion, but Ruby still put her cheek on my shoulder and, for an instant so short it could have been pure imagination, I felt warmth.
“If we get through this, I promise I’ll make sure everyone knows your name,” I whispered in her ear.
“Just make sure my family is taken care of,” she answered, hugging me tightly. I felt something wet soak into my chest and realized it was blood, but there was nothing to be done. Hugging a corpse isn’t necessarily going to be neat. “Dad will hate being the center of attention, but the farm wasn’t doing great the last couple seasons,” Ruby continued. “The frost will ruin this year’s crop and the farm is everything to Lily. If they’re all okay then I’ll consider us even.”
“We’re far from even, but I guess I’ll have to wait until I die to pay you back the rest. First round on the other side is on me. There’s a loudmouth griffin who’ll be buying seconds.”
“And I’ll get the third,” she giggled before letting go to step away. “Come on, Hard Boiled. Lets go make a wish.”
----
The ‘secret door’ had been concealing just another empty, undecorated, badly lit stairwell much like the one I’d taken to get up to Diamond Wishes’s apartments.
It occurred to me as I set my first hoof on it that I was probably headed for my own burial beneath the waves. It wasn’t the first time, but the notion that nopony would ever really know the circumstances of my death was sort of disturbing. That was followed with the realization that I didn’t know what day it was. I wasn’t even sure which month. It’d been late spring when Ruby’s body was discovered.
Truth be, out of all the people who’d miss me, it was Mags who my thoughts turned towards in that moment as we climbed down into the dark.
That poor little griffin went through more in her few short years of life than most ponies go through in their entire lives. I’d taken up a vow with the Nursemaid’s Guild to look after her, whatever that actually entailed. Being as there weren’t many griffins left and I was still theoretically the ‘High Justice’, raising her was likely to be complicated. I’d hoped to have Sykes around to give me the skinny on exactly what my duties involved so as to avoid a griffin warband chasing me down to claim my head for some perceived slight against the child-rearing rules of the Tokan and Hitlan.
Thinking of Sykes made my eyes burn for an instant, but I quickly wiped away the tears between steps; either I’d have time to mourn or I’d soon be seeing him. Sykes, Don Tome, and many others were waiting for me.
Ruby was leading the way, her tail swishing nervously like a filly ready for her first dance at prom. She kept opening her muzzle as though to say something or hesitating on the steps for an instant just long enough that I almost ran into her, but then she’d trot on ahead to make up the distance. Ten dusty, uninhabited floors down, I decided I’d had enough of it.
“This is the last chance either of us are likely to get, so what do you want to ask me?” I asked, settling down on the step just above the nearest landing.
She stopped, leaning against the guard rail and crossing her front legs coquettishly.
“It’s...I guess it’s not that important. You never did answer me about my sister. Are you and she together?”
“We’re in something,” I answered, giving her a bit of a helpless shrug. “I don’t know what it is, yet. Me and Scarlet are in something, too. I don’t know what’s romantic and what is just needing some equine comfort. I know if I’m alive and it’s a sunny day tomorrow, I’m going to see about going out to your farm to meet your parents...and I’m going to take Scarlet with me. I want to help him take his first steps when—”
“Oh...oh no,” she whispered, putting both hooves over her muzzle. “This is...this is one of those timelines where he gets hurt, isn’t it?”
“He’s alive. His tail and back legs are...they’re hurt,” I trailed off for a moment, the memory of Scarlet’s injury momentarily stealing my words. Jolting back to reality, I quickly added, “But, there’s a pony who thinks that she can fix him. That’s what matters. Honestly, I don’t know where it would go if we were to actually get together. I’m a walking disaster area.”
Ruby reached out and grabbed my cheek, cupping it in her hoof. “Hard Boiled, I can’t think of anyone who would save the entire world just so their kinda coltfriend could get new legs and their maybe-sorta fillyfriend could see her parents again. You chased the people who killed me for months, until here you stand, right here, right now. Walking disaster or not, you’re a good pony.“
I tried to think of a quick retort for deflection, but nothing came to mind. The tears were back, too, which didn’t help. I started to speak when a hiccup caught me halfway to my first word.
Ruby let my muzzle go and exhaled. “I’d give you another hug, but...I don’t think you want to get covered in what’s all over me just now. Walking is making Mister Diamond bleed more. I really hope I don’t have to be in this body when he starts to get stiff.”
I looked up at the red trail of hoofprints that’d followed our descent.
“D-doesn’t that hur-hurt?” I swallowed, wiping my nose on the only clean edge of my sleeve.
Raising her leg, she watched as a drip of liquid fell out of the illusion and landed on the floor in front of her. “No. I’m glad it doesn’t, but I’ve mostly avoided screaming my tail off because Nightmare Moon took me on a grand tour of all the worst dreams a little filly ever had while we were stuck together. Every time I got fussy with her when she wanted control of my body, she’d just scare the fur off me. It...got a little old after a while and I learned to ignore the worst of her attempts. She’s intelligent—”
“—but not very creative,” I finished.
“Exactly.”
I gently tapped the spot on her chest where the armor lay. “Can you feel her in there?”
“She’s here, but I believe she’s in some sort of magical holding pattern,” Ruby answered, tracing a circle on her breastplate. “I think she’s waiting on the wish, but it’s like she can’t hear me. I had a neighbor-colt who got like that when we both hit puberty and would work the fields together. Granted, I’m pretty sure he was just trying to peek under my tail.”
A chortle snuck out and I found that Ruby Blue had somehow managed to make me smile, again.
“You’re making jokes now?”
“Oh, I wasn’t even the popular one,” she went on, with a mischievous grin. “Pretty sure my sister had half the colts and fillies in Dodge Junction trying to go for a roll in her hay. Not that she so much as gave most of them the time of day. If only they’d met me when I was working for the Vivarium, they might have known what they were missing out on.”
I let out an involuntary blast of laughter then slapped my hoof over my face for a second before adding, “Ruby, please. I’m freaked out enough as it is without you making me feel better. When I find a pony dead behind a dumpster, I don’t expect to later get a conversation with them.”
“I’m not going to stop trying to make you feel better, Hardy,” she murmured, shuffling a hoof through her dress until she found a kerchief with D.W’s initials in one corner. It had only a little blood on it, so she held it out. “I know I might regret asking this, but I doubt I have long to regret things. Why’d you keep going at my case after it got you killed that first time? King Cosmo was dead. The Vivarium was more or less safe. Why stick with it?”
I took the folded white cloth and wiped my cheeks and forehead with it. It came away dusty and covered in stains.
“Back then, it never really occurred to me to quit,” I answered, draping the kerchief over the bannister of the stairwell. “Someone was willing to murder me. If I’d walked away, sure, I might have lived longer, but I’d have had to live with the damn mystery. You know how awful a mystery is?”
“I’m afraid I was a fantasy and romance kinda mare, but I take your meaning. Is that the only reason?”
“From a practical standpoint, there was also the knowledge that someone killed me. It puts a bit of a damper on precinct bowling nights if you’re constantly looking over your shoulder for someone to take another shot. I’d also broken about twenty laws by then, any one of which was likely to send me to jail for a long time.”
Ruby leaned sideways to look at my cutie-mark. “You sure you didn’t do it because it was the right thing to do?”
I peered back at the golden scales on my thigh and sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask about those. Yeah, it was the right thing to do, but if I walk away from injustice it feels like I’ve been tased in the ass. I like to rationalize my actions at the end of the day because I don’t care for ‘destiny’ being the thing that makes me want to find out who killed an innocent mare.”
She tilted her chin to one side, her expression confused, “So, you’ve got a talent that literally makes you do good things for people, but you can’t accept any praise for the things you do because doing that means taking credit for something destiny supposedly is forcing on you, right? You stomp on your own ego or make sure your best friend is on-hoof to do it for you so you can...what? Preserve the idea that you have free will? Why does it matter so much why you do these things?”
I hung my head and started down the steps again, unwilling to meet her piercing gaze. “I know my brain is wet spaghetti, but...dammit, if I’m at least choosing to suffer then I’m not some sort of victim. Is this really the time to be rooting around in my head?”
“Sorry,” she apologized, then added, “This is the first conversation I’ve had since I died and you’re a stallion I can guarantee with one hundred percent certainty is a good person.” She gave me a saucy grin. “You can bet I’d have given you my card back when I was working the Vivarium.”
“I’d have been tempted to take it. Tell me about that, would you? Why a brothel?”
Ruby brushed one leg through the opposite fetlock and smiled. “Probably because it was the last place anyone who knew me would expect. I wasn’t really in my right mind at the time. When I was sane, Nightmare would tuck herself away somewhere to brood and try to sort out the future. I’ve always tried to make the best of things and there were quite a few sweethearts there. It also gave me time to parse what I could pull from her and...whatever else happened to be invading my mind at the time. No corner of the world is so quiet as a brothel just after bar time.”
“These...powers that ‘be’ were fiddling with you, too, huh?”
She clenched her teeth and made a sour face as we continued our descent, side by side, into the depths. “Maybe. Maybe I was just that crazy. Sometimes I’d get shreds of the future. Pieces. Urgent urges to run across town for a sandwich so somepony else would be late to work some morning. Midnight needs to go pee off a rooftop in the Heights. Once I even tossed a week’s wages at a random hobo on the street. All strange things to nudge the world this way or that. Sometimes I was in control, sometimes not.”
I sucked a breath. “Then...even you don’t have all the pieces.”
“I doubt anypony born in the last thousand years does. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this...thing...will feel talkative. I think...I think we’re almost there.”
I leaned over the railing of the stairs and looked down, but couldn’t make out anything with only the narrow beam of my light.
“What makes you say that?”
“You...you remember that feeling of being tugged on like a puppet I mentioned a minute ago?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“It’s getting stronger.”
Without a word, I reached into my pocket, retrieving my gun from where I’d secreted it and flicked it open, tipping out the burned crystals into my hoof until only one remained before clicking the barrels over until the remaining shot was in the chamber. I’d no idea if the Crusader would help, but short of bringing along a dragon with bazookas strapped to its head there weren’t likely to be many firepower options that could outclass it. Firing mouth-style wasn’t easy, but the Crusader didn’t require much accuracy, either. I just hoped it wouldn’t blast some kind of residue all over my muzzle like firing standard rounds tended to.
Stealth was out of the question; our hooves echoed quite badly on the steps. Still, whatever was below wasn’t likely the sort of thing you could sneak up on. Worse, I was starting to feel odd as well; there was a gentle pressure behind my eyes. The sensation was similar to the presence of Nightmare Moon’s construct in my thoughts, though where she was like an insistent toddler, the force pressing in on my mind was more like walking through a deep tunnel far beneath an ocean. A sense of rank hostility to life itself began to fill the air, making each breath a challenge.
I poked my head out around what turned out to be the final set of stairs and found myself faced with a pair of metal doors set in the wall that looked fresh off the set of one of Swift’s science fiction shows. A thin panel beside it had a gemstone set at about head height with the words ‘ocular scan’ just above.
Dropping my gun into one hoof, I pointed at the panel.
“Diamond Wishes told me this was here. You need to look into that thing. I’m glad you’re along, by the way. I know you’ve been along for a while, but...coming down here alone would have been hard.”
“Because it’s nice to have one last good conversation before we both probably go to whatever the afterlife has in store?” Ruby asked, trotting around and inspecting the panel.
“Yes,” I replied, giving her a weak smile. “It also saved me having to dig an eyeball out of that stallion’s head with a spoon.”
“Oh. I can see how company is more appealing.” She stopped, then shook her head as she set a hoof on the double doors and pressed her forehead against them. “Heavens. Hardy, I’m frightened. How is that possible? I’m dead. This body is dead. I spent weeks inside my own worst nightmares and a bunch of magic is the only thing keeping me from passing out of this world...and yet I am frightened.”
I turned and sat against the doors, looking up at her. Her beautifully styled mane fell across her face, but didn’t disguise the trembling in her shoulders.
“What are you scared of?” I asked.
“That’s...that’s a dumb question, but also a really smart one. Just think about it. Whatever is on the other side of this wall can scare dead ponies. Your partner, Juniper...he’s dead. You say he’s trying to help you? Something out there is helping him, but I’d bet he’s also frightened.”
“Yeah, that sounds right. The last time we talked, he sounded pretty scared.”
“Then the thing on the other side of this wall scares dead ponies. It scares entities so powerful they can raise those who’ve died. Whatever this is, it’s worth being scared of.”
I rolled my eyes back to look up at the door. “So there might be something in there that’s worse than death?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“And even whatever constitutes ‘the authorities’ in the universe don’t know what happens next?”
“Seems that way.”
Rolling upright, I took a few steps back and held out my hoof. She took it, and we stood, side by side, facing the door. I looked over at Ruby, the mare who’d died to bring me to that moment, and felt my lips quirk on one side. Her eyes glistened with illusionary tears as she stood there with her chin stuck out, trying to look brave.
“You ready?” I asked.
Ruby whistled a melancholy three note tune and bent down to look into the eye scanner. It let out a cheerful chirp and the doors slid open.
“I guess we have to go kill a god,” she whispered.
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SUPER hyped for the next chapter, and this sets everything up SO WELL and I love Ruby. She deserves better. Hope she doesn't end up being Diamond Wishes' corpse forever, that'd be awful.
Bruuuh i cant wait for the next chapter
Erugh another cliffhanger Chessie you tease
Jokes aside, I am beyond hyped. It's weird to think that only a few weeks ago I binge-read all the way from Act 1, Chapter 1, to Act 3, Chapter 75, and yet I feel as though I've been rooting around this mystery for far longer.
I don't know what's left in store, only that we've got some eldritch abomination to slay, but I'm hoping for what could amount to a "happy-ish" ending.
Im starting to get the feeling of Dr Who, Vanderdeckens Children, with teh measurements and hints and variations, and how the Monoliths work.
Or Discworld, Pyramids.
you motherfucker let us see that god thang. it was cool to see ruby be a character and interact with hardy as opposed to being a plot device that sometimes got too sentient
Fuck yes.
Chessie even your 'plot-exposition-where-nobody-even-dies' chapters are riveting.
I eagerly await the finale.
I'm wearing out the edge of my seat with this one. I hope the next chapter isn't too far away.
A chapter dedicated to walking down a stairway? Is the next chapter going to be them walking down a long hallway? Or maybe we'll see what the others are up to? Are you trying to reach 1.5 million words?
I'm kidding of course, we've waited eight years, what's a little longer.
10498713
I know, I know...I had to introduce Ruby so what happens next has some emotional weight to it. Honestly, didn't expect it to be eight thousand words, but...you guys seem patient sorts.
-Chessie
10498771
Much like when someone asks if you are a god, you say "Yes"...if a dead one walking wants you to listen to their life story, you also say "Yes."
This includes writing for the ghost, rather than ghost writing. :)
"reality; what's inside the minds"
"reality: what's inside the minds"?
"if they provokes our imaginations"
"if they provoke our imaginations"?
10498771
It's worth it. WHOOF!
One day, I will set to reading this entire epic story from beginning to end, probably a chapter per day, and I'll re-live the whole thing and experience it in a way where it's all fresh and alive in my memory. It'll be quite a commitment but well worth it.
Take as much time as you need to walk through the final chapters. You got this
Kind of interesting that there was no mention of Discord here.... We have already confirmed that he is a part of this universe and he is probably the closest thing to a god according to Hardy and Ruby's ruminations. Either way Keep up the great work! This is awesome and I am strapped in for the Finale!
We all tell ourselves we would have so many questions but right now our hero might be wise enough to avoid madness inspiring answers. Funny thing is, he is so deeply and repeatedly shocked, or conditioned, at this point that many answers would not effect him as other ponies would be. Without said past experiences he could not face this being and function while doing so. He has been worked as beaten iron to be a key for the experience or door ahead. Will it be enough? Is the ladybug network transmitting this to others? Is Twilight monitoring the situation and or will Hardy call her to speak to this being? Is all this a relationship issue after all, hence why the being was sent here?
10501080 I love your thoughts on this.
-Chessie
Well this chapter was suprisingly cute and wholesome in a "end of the world sort of sense."
Keep up the good work chessie and I can't wait for the next one.
10503652
I hope to god it's done soon. I'm working on the final chapter, now.
-Chessie
10503655
I can't wait to see how you wrap all of this up! It's been a wild ride so far, and no matter what I want to thank you for all the hard work you've put into it.
I'm reading this chapter and I'm realising all the little hooks and clues and threads that have been woven into this story, and I am really, really impressed. Checkov's gun has nothing on this. I am so interested in seeing what's coming next.
10534431
Heh, yeah. I was thinking of making a list of how much hinted at future events. The list is... staggering, and most do it by múltiple, even dozens of chapters.
10535173
Wow, I don’t even remember making this list. Also, I forgot magic lol. Yours makes sooo much more sense, don’t know what I was thinking.
10534981
It really is.
10535492
There's something to be said for the kind of Honesty that Hardy provides, that sort of determination to make things Right. There's a dependability there that is at the core of a truly honest person (or pony in this case). I think that the whole 'I can never tell a lie' version of honesty is a very superficial thing to focus on in the grand scheme of things and personally, if it ever does come down to it, I think harmony has bigger things to worry about at the moment than whether Hardy has dotted every i and crossed every t all his life.
Welp, I’m finally caught up. Hopefully the next chapter is out soon, because I’m itching at the bit to see a God.
but uh, take your time Chessie.
Yo, Ive been out of the fandom for sometime, but I always kept up with this series. I'm really proud of everything you've done. I started reading this series back when I was just 14... I turn 21 in a week, which is crazy to think about, but I hope you have a good holiday Chessie honestly. Thanks for the good read through the years, and here is to a strong finish to 2020!
10557249
Oh god...That hit me right in the 'I'm old now'.
-Chessie
Amazing read I can’t wait for more.
10570385
One more chapter. One more. Plus epilogue. I'mma have that done ASAP.
10535492
10544169
Actually given the show finale I believe a case can be made for a new set of "Elements of Harmony" for every generation. And the core concept itself seems to change as the world needs. The Pillars before the M6 all represented different virtues, so in the new time that Detrot takes place in a new set of 6 would be needed too.
I mean, we do have Hardy as Justice here. Everyone else? Much less clear.
Swift Shine is...'need'. But what's the concept behind that? Neccesity? Obligation? Duty? It's a bit nebulous.
Swift and Limerence would surely be their own things too, but they've not got enough time in the spotlight to really spell things out.
Loyalty? Optimism? Swift makes friends easily and believes in the good of others, but that isn't a simple one-word category.
Wisdom? Love? Limerence is smart, but he loved his family dearly despite his prior anti-socialness. It's even more unclear there, since he also came in later than the others.
Juniper would be "Truth", but...he's dead...
And the sixth? Heck, Scarlet could be 'sex' for all I know.
It's odd, Chessie. Normally, having so much exposition and revelation and worldbuilding be dumped on a reader as it has in these few chapters, especially regarding the metaphysical as Ruby talks of - I expect it to feel...rushed. Forced, perhaps. It doesn't, not entirely. But I guess it does help what the 'mystery' is still going. Even the girl who started it all doesn't have many more answers when she finally does get to speak.
It's just piling on more weight for the ending though. I can only hope its all satisfactory by the end.
10646279
The elements of harmony doesn't have to be six elements
You don't need 6 ponies
Celestia (was Luna included?) Was the one before the 6.
Though I do love the thought of one of the elements being sex.
...
I dont think the elements or pillars have to have one word descriptors as long as it's a core ... aspect
10646279
...
I need to get my hooves on season 9