Tales from Everfree City

by LoyalLiar

15.5-3

XVS - III

Enter, The Reanimatrix

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

I have seen a city yawn, through the windows of a ship with wings. Out of a sea of colorless water, possessed of tides and waves and yet reflective like a mirror to show the stars above, there juts a spire of rock that strikes me perhaps most as a savage critique of the mountain upon which I built my Canterlot. This stone was dark gray, striped with raw gold—for why would anypony expend the energy to extract the veins of something so base for so much effort, when at every moment mere existence was on the line?—and a half-mile or so above the coast, it split in two. Less like a crag or a canyon in a great rock, and more like a tree trunk, these two shafts of stone twisted around each other as they rose above the ocean of stars, before one terminated in a single spire, and the other two points like the forked tongue of a serpent. Nestled, or perhaps strung like faerie lights betwixt the shafts of the mountain was a city built of the scraps of a dozen civilizations, almost all of which were surely possessed of great magic before their fall. Now, I could hardly have hoped to pick them apart, even were I to stand far closer than the windows of the Flying Dutchmare. There was wood mingling with stone mingling with metal—as though anypony would sincerely use metal as a core building material—intermixed with bone and leather, and then materials stranger and more alien still than I can yet name. But some being—somepony, I should say, for I have no doubt who was responsible—had forced them into a semblance of cohesive order, aligned side-by-side like soldiers in formation along streets that curved and looped around and in the air between the mountain spires. Up and up this 'fictitious' Canterlot climbed, until between the stone serpent tongues at its top, a gargantuan palace of gleaming white marble and what appeared to be enormous geodes of amethyst nestled—its grand balcony jutting off the side of the mountain to hang in the open air (and putting my own aspirations for my 'real' Canterlot to shame in the process). Overhead, the sun—though I might perhaps liken it more to a very large but dim lantern, given how little it seemed to be lighting the city—hung utterly still. Then, as I watched, it lurched forward fifteen degrees in the night sky, before stopping again in place like the ticking of a clock hand.

"Morty?" asked a familiar—and yet sharply edged—voice, behind me as I stared out the window. I recognized it as belonging to Celestia, despite its edge. But the mare I turned to behold was certainly not any Celestia I knew. This pony was a harsher white than my beloved mentor, a small bit taller, though these differences did not strike me at first, occupied as I was by her literal mane and tail of flames, and her mouth full of razor-sharp fangs, and her slitted eyes. She wore armor of brass or bronze, glowing so hot that I was surprised it wasn't fully white, yet it seemed not to be burning her. "Stars, it's been a long time since I've gotten to talk to you. Er… to one of you."

I could not help but wear my shock on my face, and this Celestia before me grinned (drawing more attention to her fangs) in response. "I see you haven't seen this look for me before. Go on; enjoy my beauty for a moment. I know you have an eye for it, at least in the mirror."

"I was going to lead with: what happened to you? But Celestia—that is, my Celestia—wouldn't talk about herself that way, so now I feel like I need to ask what happened to you differently."

"I am your Celestia," said the creature in front of me, stepping forward. The floor of the Dutchmare hissed beneath the armor on her hoof. "Or, at least, one future Celestia of yours. But I remember being your Celestia. They call me Daybreaker. But you can just call me Celestia, like the old days."

I arched a brow. "The big evil me said something about that name; is that a nickname to disambiguate you from other Celestias here like 'His Excellence', or a name for this… shape? Form?"

That earned a chuckle. "There are quite a few Daybreakers, as you saw at a distance on the deck. We're a form we—Celestia's—take when we shrug off our shackles and self-imposed limits. Also more prone to getting into trouble with magic. And, I'm ashamed to say, a fair number of us are either mad with power or so consumed with rage that I and the others have to put them down. Not as many as Nightmare Moons—sister's equivalent—but close. His Excellence helps a few of us sustain our reality, and in exchange we help keep the peace in Canterlot. He told me you were from my past, but I don't remember you ever telling me about coming here. When is this for you? How old are you?"

"I would think it was obvious from looking at me."

This Daybreaker-Celestia broke out into a laughing fit that, at least, seemed warmer than His Excellence's reaction had been. "That long ago?"

"When are you from?"

"My world ended something like nineteen hundred years ahead of you," Daybreaker explained. "Twice, if I'm being honest. First in fire, then in trying to undo the burning."

I glanced pointedly at her mane. "I find it hard to believe any future of the Celestia I know would burn the world down."

"Not my fire." Celestia—this Daybreaker—frowned wistfully as she walked up to sit beside the window with me. She was very warm, even without touching me, and I found the sensation distinctively unpleasant. The sensation of proximity to Tartaran hellfire came to mind. "Nuclear fire."

"Nuclear? I don't know that word."

"Pray you never learn it, though knowing you, you eventually will." The fiery Celestia extended a wing, and then hesitated, and then folded it back at her side. I must admit that in the strange environment, I was feeling somewhat uncomfortable, but I would not have rejected an embrace from Celestia—even this strange possible future of her—had she wrapped it all the way. It was her own hesitance that stopped the limb. "I missed you, Morty."

I found myself with an uncomfortable question at the forefront of my mind, and in the curse of a wizard, I couldn't let it sit. "Did I die?"

That earned a huff. "My Morty betrayed me…" Then another wince, a pang of shame. Daybreaker was silent for a passing moment, staring out at this un-Canterlot with me. "I've been trying to put that part of me away, but like you, it refuses to die. It isn't fair to say that. My sister factually betrayed me, twice, and the second time I became this. My Morty disagreed with my position, but he didn't fight me. Just… expressed his disappointment in me, and left. I have to imagine he knew he couldn't beat me face on, and he was hoping I'd come to my senses with time. We never got to find out. Took a student in north-frozen-nowhere."

"What, like, Neighvgorod?"

"My world wasn't even shaped the same as the one you left behind. After a war you wouldn't understand, Krenn ripped Stalliongrad—er, River Rock, as you know it—and lumped onto the side of the Crystal Union. Connected most of the rest of the old Compact Lands to Dioda. On its northern peninsula, some wizards loyal to my sister after her first betrayal built a… bizarre crypto-necro-supremacist commune."

"What?"

"Don't worry about it. It's one thing to encourage curiosity for your real world, but in all likelihood, 'Supremacy' won't even be a political philosophy in your future. How are you? This must have been an adventure, even by your standards. And I know His Excellence isn't exactly a comforting presence even when he's playing nice."

The question, gentle as it was, was the first that I really felt like I was back with the teacher I knew, and when I looked up at her, she was smiling down at me. Admittedly, she did so from even higher than Celestia usually did, and her mouth was full of fangs, but in such foreign country, one takes what small comforts one can get.

"I'm not completely sure how to answer that," I told her. "Somehow well? Terrified? Lost?" I took a long breath, the way Wintershimmer taught me, and looked back out the window. "It's bad form for a wizard, but will you forgive me for thinking out loud?"

"There's nothing to forgive," Daybreaker answered.

I nodded. "I've been around magic since I was a little foal. Sometimes crazy, wild rough edges of it, too. Fey. Tartarus. I'm not that afraid of dying in part because I know exactly what happens afterwards. Even picking the big fight with Wintershimmer, where there was a risk he'd do something bad afterwards, I at least knew what the risks were. But this… I don't understand any of this. Not as much as I need to."

"It's a lot to take in," the flaming alicorn agreed. "Fortunately, you don't have to."

"But I do," I told her. "I'm going to go back and have to talk to Hourglass, and—"

"Hourglass already knows," Daybreaker interrupted me, and I detected more than a bit of His Excellence's scorn for the name mirrored in her voice. "Someday, you're going to bring us Starlight Glimmer. And when you do… Just remember, there's more than one way to get what you need out of it."

"What?"

Daybreaker sighed, and in the furrowing of her brow, the familiar presence of Celestia disappeared. Though she said "Consider it a kindness that I don't answer that question, Morty. You don't want to know," I had the unavoidable sinking feeling in my gut that I was being lied to.

Perhaps, more than anything else, it was the fact that I had read her that told me this mare was not anywhere near the Celestia I knew. Daybreaker, it seemed, had traded all subtlety and gentleness for power.

"What do I need to do to get home?" I asked her. "I think I'd like to get there as soon as I can."

"Just wait, unfortunately. His Excellence may be a few hours, and I doubt anypony else can help you."

"Because they aren't strong enough? Or they don't know enough?"

Daybreaker shrugged. "Probably the latter, mostly. Apart from being an instance of Mortal Coil, and therefore obnoxiously immortal—"

"What?"

Daybreaker's eyes widened, and then she barked out a laugh much less restrained than any I had heard from Celestia. "Right, you don't know your own masterpiece yet. My, how the tables turn. Now I get to be as awful and cryptic as you always were. How did you put it…? 'It's less immortality, and more a natural law of the universe. Gravity pulls down, time marches on, and Mortal Coil is alive.' You might be able to violate it with magic, in the moment, for a few minutes. But you can't break it forever."

I could only raise a brow. "That sounds like an ostentatious way to describe something as simple as lichdom or something similar."

"Oh, if only. I've watched you—well, other yous; His Excellence, certainly—just shrug off having their souls dispersed. It doesn't translate to power, per se; at least in my time, you were mostly famous for losing battles, but doing it slowly enough to make a difference. Even His Excellence isn't that mighty, in terms of raw power. But then, amongst us gods, brute strength tends not to decide disagreements."

I felt myself wince when Daybreaker had no qualms at the label of 'god', though neither she nor I addressed the word or my reaction to it.

"His Excellence 'knows' more than us, but not in the academic sense. Time magic is one of his special talents, because he's eaten the souls of so many Starlight Glimmers."

Where before I had winced, at that revelation, my eye was fully twitching. "I beg your pardon?"

"I don't know how it works," Daybreaker continued. "But when a soul is dispersed, you get little fragments."

"Like Wintershimmer?" I pressed.

"The one in your head? I believe so." Daybreaker frowned. "Is he in there?"

"He didn't make the trip with me. He's in a mirror back home."

"Ah. I'm sure he and Solemn Vow are having a delightful time worrying over you, then." When I swallowed nervously, Daybreaker grinned and further unsettled me with "Do you think I knew back then? Or that I only found out later?" Then, after a glance out the window, she gestured with a wing to the door. "Walk with me while we talk, at least." And as I followed, she proceeded on with her point. "His Excellence knows how to pick apart which bits of souls are which; which ones are personality, or memory, or relevantly, which ones are the deceased's special talent."

"That's horrifying."

"It's practical," Daybreaker countered, pushing open the doors to the dining room with her magic. "He did explain why dispersing them is a mercy, right? At that point, if it's going to happen anyway, why not make use of what's left? It's… how did he put it? 'Using all the parts of the buffalo?'"

"I think that just makes it worse. Buffalo are a sapient species!"

"I didn't understand the metaphor," Daybreaker admitted. "But I thought since you're Morty too, maybe it would have meant something to you. The point is, it's not hurting anypony who wouldn't be dead anyway. And if he didn't do it, we wouldn't have Canterlot as a safe haven out here in the middle of nowhere."

"It's defeating the entire point of calling yourself a wizard!" I protested.

"Don't be so medieval."

"Medieval?"

Another heavy sigh. "In a few hundred years, that's how historians will refer to your time period. Then, in a few hundred more, it will take on another meaning: archaic, backwards, socially crude. Cruel, even. Believe me, you'll be in for a lot less pain even in your immediate future if you let that idea die."

Daybreaker led me out onto the deck of the Dutchmare, where the two alicorns (Nightmare Moons?) standing guard both glared at us harshly with their slitted eyes. I hadn't thought the ship was especially close docking when we were in the dining room, but in the scant few moments we traversed the ship's cabin hallway, I found us hovering beside the enormous balcony of this Canterlot. There was no gangplank; given His Excellence seemed to have surrounded himself exclusively with alicorns (and mares at that—had he not been so dismissive of the idea of romance, I might have made something of that) and levitating golems, it seemed I was the odd pony out in having an issue with this.

Daybreaker didn't actually ask my permission before lighting up her horn and moving us onto the ground—I noted that, like his Excellence, her movement prompted a strange sense of foreshortening and compression, rather than the usual pop-and-flash-of-vertigo from the teleportation I was used to. Still, I was glad to have my hooves on solid ground, even if (as I strongly suspected) the solid ground in question was not necessarily anchored to much of anything below the water.

"Since this has been so much to take in," said Daybreaker, "why don't we try and relax for a bit while His Excellence is preparing for you." Without explaining exactly what she had in mind, Daybreaker led me on a fairly long walk across the grand balcony, and then through a gatehouse and down into a web of rope bridges and roads carved from the mountainside that made up this settlement. Though the narrow paths and long drops occasionally gave me some cause for concern, most of my attention was held rapt by the ponies we passed. I recognized only a few of them, and then only passingly: a beardless Star Swirl; somepony who resembled the famous portrait of King Amethyst, and one much rarer specimen: a pegasus—or at least a former specimen of one, in the form of Commander Typhoon, possessed of fangs and bat-wings very much like Luna's creations of necromancy in her Night Guard. These few I recognized were certainly the rarest of examples, however; most were ponies I could not have even guessed to name. And, rather unlike the multiple Daybreakers and Nightmare Moons I met above on the ship, most were unique. I think the only duplicate I beheld were several copies of a purple unicorn—or sometimes alicorn—mare who rather resembled Archmage Diadem in how she carried herself and how she cut her mane.

More interesting than whether I recognized these other lost souls was how they looked at us. Daybreaker reliably earned sneers of scorn and derision, though they were mixed with healthy fear as ponies moved out of our path to avoid her—often squeezing themselves uncomfortably into mountain cliff walls for the sake of creating that space. Oft have I seen such expressions on the faces of ponies being oppressed by a tyrannical guard, and it did not take much of a leap of imagination to consider that the Daybreakers and the Nightmare Moons filled a similar role—for, indeed, why else would one bother to separate such physically and magically imposing specimens from the general population of this 'Nowhere'?

That reaction stated, looks of spite often faded to shock or confusion when I met the ponies' gazes. Again, knowing that His Excellence was in the habit of killing and harvesting 'us' personally, I was not surprised by the reaction, and that I'm certain the resemblance between us was obvious even as my relatively more minor silhouette did not hurt either. Still, even in the Everfree City I knew, I didn't turn heads like this; and for the welcome thought of fame, I still found the prospect uncomfortable on the whole.

Finally, we emerged on another little alcove carved into the far side of the mountain from where we had docked, where I beheld a modest little lake (or perhaps a grandiose pond) wrapped in cultivated greenery and a winding cobblestone trail that seemed altogether too normal to belong in so strange a world. Ponies milled about the side of the lake, some with fishing poles or easels and brushes, or little bags that tricked me into a sense of further normalcy just a moment (though in truth, they were full of berries being fed to bats, rather than bread or peas for ducks). There, Daybreaker led me to one of the benches, sat down next to it (quite reasonably, given it was sized for a conventional pony's body), and patted the seat with a wing. "Are you much for fish, Morty? The fish here in Nowhere are a little odd, but we've got Codn't and Trin and Pretty Good, Actually—"

"You lost me on the last name."

"Oh," Day chuckled. "Do you know what a 'Crappie' is?"

"Fish are meat," I answered.

"No, they're… ah, right you don't know that whales are mammals yet." Daybreaker shrugged. "Oh well; we can just sit and talk, or…"

Her thought was cut off when a mare's voice called out rather lackadaisically "Day, is that you?"

I was struck by how quietly she spoke as she approached, and by how quietly she moved. She was a conventionally-sized pony, with a coat of pale pink, a mane of charcoal gray, and lest I bury the lede, rather the better part of the muscle on the left side of her neck visible due to the absence of skin or coat to cover it. Rather unlike the hole on the back of my neck, with its transparent coating of enchanted quicksilver, the muscle beneath her wound was dry—one might even call it arid—and quite visibly dead. She smiled, and I felt as if somepony had walked across my grave. "Who's that with you?" she continued her stage-whispered, hoarse questions. Most notably, though, I noted that she was wearing my jacket—or, at the very least, a jacket of the Order of Unhesitating Force; on reflection, it seemed tailored to her, and the gold epaulette on her left shoulder holding the lapels together by a dangling gold cord.

"Rose!" for every iota of subtlety in the other mare's approach and words, Daybreaker's exclamation was the mirror opposite. It was certainly an enthusiastic outcry, though it came across neither as warm and welcoming, nor spiteful or furious. It was certainly warm in the most literal of senses, but otherwise it was best described as a very loud greeting toward… perhaps a business colleague? "I've got an old friend here."

This 'Rose' finally got close enough to get a good look at me—and while her expression was already not an especially joyous one, it would be fair to say her reaction to my presence was one of fury. Her horn lit, and out of her copy of our jacket, she drew a sort of strange metal-and-wooden L-shaped instrument, rather like an over-designed carpenter's triangle, but with a small curved section at the inside of the corner, instead of a full hypotenuse. The longer side of the two arms she pointed in my direction, and declared "You have the audacity to survive?"

Daybreaker stepped fully between us, extending her wings, and from that, I gather what was pointed in my direction may have been a weapon. "Not him, Rose."

"It's Rosa," hissed, well, Rosa, through gritted teeth. "And if it's not our Morty, why call him an old friend?" Then, stepping quite close to Daybreaker's chest (being understandably not remotely tall enough to look her in the eye), Rosa pressed "Why is he even alive? Doesn't His Excellence hunt himself for sport?"

From behind Daybreaker, I couldn't see her expression, but I could very nearly hear it in the exasperation in her voice. "It is him, but not the one you knew. This one's earlier, from before he met you. His world isn't even dead yet; he just… well, His Excellence didn't tell me exactly how he got here, but we're going to send him back. He'll be the one you meet, but a lot of others too. Now put that thing away."

Rosa sighed. "Not like it could kill him anyway," and stowed the… weapon?... beneath her jacket. Daybreaker stepped aside, and Rosa extended a rather clammy pink hoof. "Rosa Maledicta, the Queen of Bones. Or, as you probably respect more, the Pale Master. When are you from, Morty? After the Wingbardian secession? The sacking of Jezeragrad?"

"I… don't know those names," I told her honestly, looking to Daybreaker for advice.

"He's older than that," said Daybreaker, cryptically.

Rosa furrowed her brow. "What, like… the Nimbusian war?"

Daybreaker grinned a toothy grin. I got the distinct sense she was enjoying not being more helpful. "Try older."

"I do know that name at least," I offered. "Nimbus, from Dioda, right? The pegasus sky-city." I glanced up to Daybreaker. "Where Iron Rain is from?"

Daybreaker chuckled. "Nimbusia is different than Nimbus, but you aren't wrong to draw the connection."

Rosa scowled, drawing rather a great deal of attention away from what was objectively a very beautiful face and toward the clear indication the body underneath it was undead. "How old are you?"

I considered the question for a moment, and then answered with the best frame of reference I knew how. "I'm pursuing the hoof of Queen Platinum III. I just got over having a fight with Star Swirl the Bearded. And… I'm only mostly guessing from the name of the city we're currently in, but I'm currently building Canterlot."

Rosa sat down where she stood, and the grass beneath her made a rather unsettling sound. "You rat bastard," she whispered, only just barely audibly.

"Did I… lie to you about my age?"

Rosa frowned. "You certainly let everyone believe it wasn't that old. But I suppose it explains you having the audacity to walk into Magehold thinking you could actually persuade anyone there with your 'harmonist necromantic utopia' nonsense."

"Magehold?" I asked.

"You'll recall I mentioned a 'crypto-necro-supremacist commune'?" Daybreaker supplied.

Rosa was, for all her quiet tone, less inclined to beat about the proverbial bush. "In north Griffonia, there's a wizard's fortress. Necromancers, and other immortal mages, gather there where there aren't gods—" (she glared briefly at Daybreaker) "—and politicians trying to impede your studies or protest about your methods. I left Equestria when my studies weren't appreciated at Day's—sorry, Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns." I fear my ink and quill cannot do justice to the disdain her voice. "A few years before the Great War, enough mages predicted a coming political catastrophe that we called a Conclave to elect a leader for the wartime, to direct our undead armies and protect our interests. And, if I'm being very honest, to supply the Council of Bones and the Court of Blood with fresh mortal bodies and souls. The problem is, every wizard with enough standing to have a vote voted for themselves. All except one smug Equestrian bastard who all the lesser wizards tried to kill, and all the better ones wanted to, but knew better than to waste their efforts because he was—and I quote Archmage Swiftcarrion here—'too immortal to be worth the effort'. Grogar was the only one who thought it was worth the attempt… and to be fair, we all thought you were dead when he was done, until you walked back in the next morning of the conclave. Wish I could have killed the goat myself."

"Who did I vote for?" I asked.

Rosa placed a hoof on her own chest. "An Equestrian prodigy you thought you could turn around to… well, if not harmony, at least not thinking the entire world needed to be exterminated." Then, dryly glancing up to Daybreaker, she added "Do I get to tell him how that went, Day?"

"He might well be able to guess from what I told him," said Daybreaker. "I doubt it could do much harm when our world is already dead."

"Fun," answered Rosa, decidedly without amusement. "You taught me for a while, I suspect less because you cared about me getting better at necromancy and more because it was an excuse to try and sway me that Equestria wasn't as bad as I thought. And you never really got through to me on her behalf, but I didn't mind you yourself. But when Luna broke Equestria into a civil war with Day, and Chrysalis attacked while the country was in-fighting, you decided you needed to step away from me and go home. I told myself I didn't care less, because I still didn't buy into the whole 'friendship' thing… And then you went and fought Chrysalis. Something about… getting vengeance for an old friend."

"And I died fighting the changeling queen?" I asked.

It was Daybreaker who answered before Rosa could. "Luna assumed you were still loyal to me—as much as she ever needed an excuse to hate you—and saw an opportunity to defeat both enemies at once. The weapons I mentioned before?" Daybreaker nodded solemnly. "Rainbow Dash dropped the bomb into the middle of your duel. I don't know if anything less could have kept you down; I never learned how your magic worked. But that was the end."

"No," said Rosa. "It was the beginning." Her magic lit up a pale glow, and she produced a shard of glass about a hoof length long from the opposite breast of her jacket from the strange metal angle weapon. "You won, Morty. You convinced me I'd had a friend. Just the one; I still think Equestria—and especially this parody of it—are repulsive. But—"

"Ah," said Daybreaker, with a frown. "Rose, could you keep him company for a few minutes? I need to slip away to the mare's room."

It was such a jarring interruption that it took me fully out of the grim story I was receiving. Rosa, however, didn't seem especially surprised. "Go on; nopony's going to start something with a Morty anyway." There was a flash of fire, Daybreaker disappeared, and Rosa looked to me with far more determination in her glassy dead eyes than she had at any prior moment in the conversation.

"I'm glad you taught me that trick. For whichever futures of you have to deal with a Daybreaker, she's a lot stronger than Celestia, but she's even more inept at illusion."

"You… made her need to relieve herself?"

Rosa nodded. "Ledgermain's Law of Illusion. A pony has a lot more than just five senses to fool. Or did you mean using my horn for telekinesis to disguise casting another spell? Either way, keep up; we only have a few moments, and when she pops back, and I'm going to carry on like we were just talking about my history—so be ready for that and play along, alright?"

I nodded hesitantly. "Why the misdirection?"

"I'm with the resistance against His Excellence. Day doesn't know; again, easy to fool with illusions if you're brave enough to try. How did you actually get here? And what are you trying to accomplish?"

I frowned, and swallowed. "I admit I don't like His Excellence much, but why should I trust you?"

Rosa sighed. "If 'the only good necromancer' needs me to spell out why His Excellence needs to die, we're beyond saving. Look, you're the self-proclaimed hero; I wanted to wipe out all life on Earth for the sake of some peace and quiet. I would understand if you don't trust me; I'm a stranger. But you're smart enough to have your own opinion without playing he-said, she-said between a bunch of impossible wizards from outside time. Alright? Trust Hourglass, if you don't trust me."

"Alright," I said, after a moment's thought—really, I only needed to refamiliarize myself with the constant gut-uneasiness His Excellence had instilled in me. That, and I didn't see any harm in the truth; it didn't actually have anything to do with whatever was going on in this impossible place. "Honestly, this was a stupid accident. Hourglass gave me this book, The Princess In Yellow. She didn't give me the key to unlock the cover, though. Eventually, I had the thought that I could use Eratrotsthenes' Method to investigate the book without needing to open it, so I cast that."

"And that brought you here, because the book is attuned to magic from here…" That seemed like a larger jump of logic to me than Rosa's tone implied. "Why was it so important to get into the book?"

"I'm…" I hesitated for a solid few moments, before I finally decided reticence wasn't doing me any good. "I only just learned to read, and I've been struggling with picking it up quickly. Diadem told me it would take years, if not decades, before I'm able to get through anything as dense as the Tourmaline Grimoire. But I can't wait, because I have the Scourge of Kings, and I need to read so I can work out a solution from Wintershimmer's notes."

"You… of course you did. Trust Mortal Coil to look at The Princess in Yellow and think 'oh, sure, this is basically the same as See Spot Gallop.' Incredible. Honestly, even for you, this is breaking new ground."

"What's See Spot Gallop?"

The sound of Rosa's hoof meeting her brow disturbed some of the bats being fed by the ponies in the distance. Desperate to push the subject on, she asked "Do you know why His Excellence is bothering to send you back?"

"I guess one future version of me brings Hourglass here, and His Excellence wants to fight her."

"And he told you that?" Rosa asked. "Isn't he worried you just won't bring her?"

I shook my head. "He said because it's an enormously important choice, there'll be a version of me that does no matter what."

"And he thinks he can beat Hourglass in an honest fight?"

I shrugged. "I mean… I beat Wintershimmer."

"Morty, I know that must seem terribly important in the time you're from, but a Wintershimmer hardly compares to Hourglass." Rosa glanced nervously around the shores of the pond, and then shook her head. "Okay; so we need to prepare for you to come back with Hourglass? I think that's valuable information. Thank you for trusting me. And here." Rosa offered me the shard of glass, and a moment later, the angle weapon followed suit. "Take those with you when you go; they honestly aren't much good here, but they're very useful in a real world."

"What are they?"

"The glass is from your gravesite. The fire turned the dirt there into this. I keep thinking it's stupidly sentimental to hold onto it here, and it seemed only fair to give it to you."

"And the weapon?"

"Ah, right. This is an Equestrian Model 1001 Filly Government."

"A what?"

Rosa sighed. "It's a gun. A… metal tube you put alchemical firepowder and a metal projectile into. The force of the explosion shoots the metal out with about as much force as when you rip a tree trunk out of the ground and swing it like a club—but on a surface area about half-an-inch in diameter. It's only a little bit less efficient than your 'Razor' spell, but anypony could use the thing. It's got 7 shots, and I don't carry around spares." She briefly demonstrated pulling back the little armature on the back, how to operate the 'triggering arm' that I assumed she shortened as a sort of slang, and finally, how to enable a safety to keep it from going off unintentionally. "I'm sure you'll find a use for it. Just tuck it into your soul sack; that should carry with you, however he sends you home."

"My what?" I asked.

Rosa grit her teeth, lit her horn harder, and I felt a chill on the back of my neck—altogether familiar and altogether unsettling. However, instead of killing me, she opened a hole in space in front of me. "You taught me this, Morty, so at the very least, you'll be able to figure out how to get things out eventually, if you don't already know." Then, tucking away the 'gun' and the shard of my gravesoil-turned-glass, she grinned. "Actually… one more thing. Something I didn't learn from you, for a change." She gritted her teeth (causing the hole in her neck to flex worryingly) and a ball of crackling magic formed on the tip of her horn. Without warning, it shot over to me.

"What did you—"

Nouns. The Subjunctive Mood. The Em-Dash. Parenthetical Clauses. Footnotes.

"—just cast—"

The Oxfjord Comma. Dangling Participles. Consonant Digraphs. La mort de l'auteurius.

"—on me?"

The tragic hero. The unreliable narrator. Circular foreshadowing. Trochaic Octameter. Zeugma.

"Before I left Canterlot, I was top of my class in Equiish literature. I just gave you a crash course. If you do any writing, you'll be at risk of writing in my voice, at least until you start to develop your own. And you might occasionally be tempted to make a reference to a work that hasn't been written yet, or only exists in an alternate timeline you'll never see. But this way, at least you got what you wanted out of this whole mess."

"You have a spell to transfer that much knowledge?"

"Not… exactly. We don't have time to explain that one." She glanced over my shoulder and again adopted a more indifferent, if not hostile, posture. "So yeah; despite all your misgivings about lichdom being 'messy' and 'just a stepping stone to respectable immortality', it's worked out well enough for me."

I felt Daybreaker's heat stride up from behind me, even as I came up with my best answer for the comment. "It's very odd to be presented with an argument for a position I'm supposed to hold some day in the future. But seeing as I haven't even bothered going that far yet, it's hard for me to claim I have some special knowledge of what the step afterward should be." Then I turned. "Welcome back, Daybreaker."

"Thank you," she said, wrapping a nearly scalding wing across my back. "His Excellence is ready for you."

"Already?" I asked. "Well… Rosa, it was certainly interesting to meet you."

"Good to see you again," Rosa answered. "I hope we don't meet again in the future, though."

And then, in another burst of flame, she was gone. Or, rather, we were.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

We appeared in the center of a cylindrical chamber of stone, obviously somewhere within the mountain, surrounded by galleries of statues that I assumed were iron golems—cast, I had to assume, given how utterly black the shiny metal was. Not one showed a sign of rust, but some had cracks which were highlighted by veins of gold, not unlike the mountain this Canterlot was built upon. I can only assume they were golems, because not one moved, but also because lacking any visible faces, they would otherwise represent a great deal of effort to have created and maintained so many statues of nopony.

The room had no visible door, and though it was lit in a sort of ambient color I could no more describe to you than you could describe the distinction between red and green to a diamond dog, it had no visible light sources either. It would be honest to say whatever I was seeing, it didn't behave properly like light; rather than glinting off the metal golem bodies, it rolled over them like seafoam in the surf. But whatever it was, whatever color it took, it did illuminate the room.

Daybreaker, standing beside me, waited for me to take in the space before she explained "There isn't a door, if that's what you're looking for. You can only teleport into this room."

"A security defense against earth ponies and pegasi?" I asked. "It'd be pretty easy to teleport in here."

"Quite the contrary. It's very dangerous," Daybreaker began. "Because there isn't time here, the 'safe' teleportation you're used to—where you condition the act of teleportation on checking the destination has open space—that doesn't work. You have to use the dangerous kind, where if you get it wrong and wind up overlapping solid rock, you die horribly. We're underneath the mountain now; I won't tell you exactly where, but there's hundreds of yards of solid rock in every direction. Even if somepony knew this place was under the mountain somewhere, if they didn't know exactly how to find it, it would be suicide to guess."

"Oh," I observed. "So that's why you and His Excellence use that space-folding spell to move around instead of normal teleportation?"

Daybreaker nodded. "Exactly. This is His Excellence's vault."

"He has a treasure hoard of iron golems?" I questioned.

A chuckle. "No, they're another security measure." She raised her right forehoof, and then stomped on the ground. I felt a violent shudder—at first, I thought she had the foreleg strength to cause an earthquake—and then the floor we were standing on began to sink down into the floor. "His Excellence keeps his store of liquid reality here, amongst other things. Magical trinkets that leak through along with their owners when worlds end." Dryly, Daybreaker began to recite them. "Mismatched Elements of Harmony—not that they'd do anything here if you had the full set, without the tree. Mirror-portals to other worlds that don't work. Procellarum and Excalipurr and whatever other named toys you can think of—sometimes a couple of copies of each. An Idol of Boreas…"

"Hold on—Excali-purr?" I asked. "Like a cat? That's not the name—"

"You built Canterlot, Morty. Do you really think the other parts of those stories can't wind up coming true?"

"Right…" I glanced away from Daybreaker as the darkening walls began to have a light of their own: something like quicksilver but luminescent flowed and throbbed in lines within the black walls, like veins except that they only forked at merged at right angles, perfectly rectilinearly aligned to the descending platform we occupied. "Is that reality?" I asked

"I don't know," Daybreaker answered. "We in His Excellence's inner circle are permitted to know about this place, but even we don't get to know how it works. All I know is you can only teleport into that first room, and you have to ride the elevator and walk the rest of the way."

"Is it a long walk?" I asked. "I thought we needed to kill a lot more time before I could go home."

That question earned me a dry and fiery chuckle that sent a chill down my neck. "I should apologize for lying to you then, Morty. Did you have a fun chat with Rose?"

"It's Rosa, right?" I asked back. "But yes; she told me about the future—well, hers, anyway, and—"

Daybreaker leaned down until her fanged mouth was inches from my ear, and I felt her scorching breath on its fur when she said "Don't presume you can lie back to me, Morty. I know she told you about the insurgents. I know she's one of them." Then Daybreaker pulled her head back and looked down at me from a very close position, where I had to crane my neck up to meet her gaze. It wasn't a very subtle display of power… but then, it didn't need to be. "I know that stupid little illusion spell. Do you think this body really has such basic bodily needs? Not to mention you taught it to me first."

I took a step back in fear, and Daybreaker let out a full-on laugh. "Please. You don't need to be afraid of me, Morty. Everything His Excellence told you is still true. You're going home unharmed. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not even going to hurt Rosa… yet."

Let me tell you, whatever unfortunate soul eventually reads this: I've spoken a great deal about the fear of the unknown, the fear of insignificance, or its flip side, the fear of far too great of significance. All those paled in the face of what I felt in that moment—the wrongness that eclipsed all the other false truths and dissonant whispers I learned from my trip below the bounds of time: that there is even a possibility, even the remotest shred of a moment of a chance, that Celestia could become that thing I was speaking to. This is the thought I want to get rid of. Without it, I doubt I can sleep—even awake, I can still see Daybreaker's fanged grin, like the burning imprint of the sun when one looks up too swiftly in summer, seared into my gaze. If Celestia can become that, then what hope does real good have in the world?

I welcome whatever reprieve from that memory Hourglass will give me soon, and if she proves unable to, I will carve the thoughts from my mind and my soul myself.

Daybreaker, unaware or thrilled by my horror I dare not guess, pressed on. "I've suspected for some time Rose was with them, but you provided a tidy way for me to confirm my suspicion. We didn't have any other reason to go to the lake, and I had no other reason to leave you alone with her."

"What are you going to do?"

The response from Daybreaker this time was less revelrous in a successful deception, dryer, and more wistful—akin to a harsh white wine if not midday in desert sands. "For now, nothing. I like Rose. She's all I have left from my world." The word 'my' hung in my mind even as the alicorn continued. "She learned necromancy in wartime; all the practice of raising a million dead griffons, but none of the theory of how to really twist at one soul. She's no threat to His Excellence, or to me. So I'll keep her little secret. And one day, she'll cross a line and get His Excellence's attention. It will be a sad day for me… but then, our friends are so temporary. You know that—or well, I suppose you will. Just remember when you come back: I feel exactly the same way about you."

Punctuating that thought, the platform ground to a sudden halt. A moment later, on one wall of the tight black tube with its quicksilver veins, the black rock seemed to dissolve away in units of perfect cubes, revealing a long sleek all-silver hallway. Glass tubes channeled the liquid reality along the ceiling overhead. Eyes—flesh eyes—opened from the metallic surfaces of the walls to watch us. I hesitated to walk. Daybreaker nudged me along with her wing. There was no implication that she would tolerate hesitance. I walked.

The path was short, and it led to an obsidian door—not just the color, but truly glassy black stone, polished to a mirror's surface. Engraved and filigreed into its surface was a perfect seven pointed ritual circle. My talent mark—or something very, very close to it. As we approached, it peeled apart into seven wedges, revealing an oculory aperture that offered ingress to a final chamber.

I would best describe it as a hemispherical wine cellar: a massive dome of stone lined in alcoves into which glass receptacles of reality were sunk. I could only guess at the imaginary eons I beheld in the room. Many were attached to some sort of flexible transparent glass… 'tentacles' that hung from an apparatus mounted to the center of the ceiling, consisting of an armillary sphere encased in a glass sphere, rather like Angel if he were four strides wide. The 'tentacles' pumped reality into—or out of—the apparatus, and a single golden limb like a scorpion stinger dangled straight down from the center of the elaborate configuration. I like it to a scorpion stinger because the machine ended in an enormous needle, or funnel, or something of the like, which I observed had already been inserted into His Excellence's neck as we entered.

The stallion looked far less beautiful and far more monstrous in that moment than the 'ideal self' I had met earlier; the glow of radiant quicksilver reality in his veins was visible through his skin and coat, tracing all his major veins visibly even through his pale coat. His eyes glowed a solid blue—the same color of the room. And the edges of his person were somehow fuzzy, as if he had become gaseous while still retaining his shape and form. It was hard to say exactly where his body ended and the room began. When he spoke, it was with a distinct echo, but an echo in different voices than his own, as if a stallion's choir were echoing his words in a decrescendoing mezzo-piano a moment later.

"You are tardy as usual, Daybreaker. I'm growing impatient with it," he observed. Then, before his echo had settled and she had a chance to reply, he gestured to the floor before him. There, actually looking down for the first time properly in the room, my eyes settled on an exceptionally complex ritual circle. It was a fourth-order glyph—the sort normally used only for experimentation rather than practical magic—written in powdered diamond. Between each of the seven points were runes in a language I did not understand, in an ink that was not merely black, but that actively consumed light from the surrounding air. I could go on, but I fear it would only serve to encourage curiosity into things better left in the realm of imagination.

His Excellence waited a moment, then tapped his hoof. "Into the middle, colt. I don't have all day, and you don't want to be here longer than you must."

"Do you need me to do anything for the spell?" I asked as I stepped forward nervously.

He shook his head. "Just stay still and try not to interfere with me. This should be painless, though it may be momentarily nauseating. I will give you a warning to brace yourself, so that you do not disturb the runes with any bodily emissions." Then he lit his horn—silver-white this time—and I felt reality itself begin to shake.

There is little more to say, I think, of my adventures in Neverland, except this one thing: that as I settled on my favor for the resistance against His Excellence and Daybreaker and their ilk, I decided to do one more act, however small, in Rosa and her anonymous friends' favor: when His Excellence gave me the warning that I should be ready for nausea, I reached out with my magic, snatched a wine-bottle of reality, and pulled it tight against my chest.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

When I returned to the land of the living, I found myself in my bed, Vow and Hourglass standing over me, and Angel hovering nearby.

"Oh, thank the stars he's awake!" announced Angel. Then my golem swooped forward, hovering over my supine form. "What on earth possessed you to try something so dangerous with an unknown magical book?"

I suspect it wasn't Angel's voice, but rather the process of coming home, that prompted me to announce "Well… it worked. I think. Do you have a book I can try reading on?"

"This was about reading?!" Angel demanded, hovering closer.

Hourglass put a hoof on his outer halo. "Easy, Angel. Actually, the two of you should probably step away. There's some things you're probably happier not thinking about that Morty and I need to talk over. Gale will be here in half-an-hour or so to ask Morty for a favor, so it would be great if you could get a midnight snack together for her."

Angel turned in place. "Her Majesty? It's the middle of the night!"

Vow couldn't resist letting out a chuckle, and I felt myself blush.

"What?" Angel asked, apparently noticing. Vow ushered him out of the room, only adding "For the record, this was profoundly stupid, Morty. It working out doesn't change that."

"Before we continue: is Wintershimmer still in your head, or have you finished those mirrors yet?"

I'm here, Wintershimmer told me in my mind. It was quite the revelation how welcome I found that voice.

"I have the mirrors working, but it's not as if he's stuck in them. They're just a way for him to talk to Vow, or Celestia, or maybe even Star Swirl again, without me having to hold onto their souls."

"Ah, I see," said Hourglass—that is, Starlight, as she'd asked me to call her, though the experience I just went through reinforced the more dramatic name much more strongly in my mind. I wasn't sure whether she knew something I didn't about the future, or if she just hadn't bothered to fully understand the mirrors. "Well, Wintershimmer—I don't expect you'd listen to me if I asked you to leave, but I also know since you're in his head, but didn't go with the rest of his soul when he cast the spell, you don't actually remember any of this separately from him. So when I get rid of the memories, you won't hold onto it either. So you can stay; just don't distract Morty, please. Now… Morty, have a fun trip?"

"I don't think I can think of anything I would describe as less 'fun'. I'd much rather give Wintershimmer 'best-two-out-of-three' on our duel."

Starlight let out a small chuckle. Then, lighting her horn, she peeled back my comforter and bedsheets.

"Hey—"

"I just want the bottle," Starlight insisted, and to my momentary surprise, she produced the stolen wine bottle full of reality I had stolen. I confess to surprise because I wasn't sure whether or not it would have made the trip back with me. However, rather than stowing the bottle away on her person, she walked over to one of the posts of my bed, twisted it, and revealed a secret compartment. "One of Vow's secrets; not that you'll remember it momentarily."

"Is he right?" I asked her, as she stowed away the secret compartment. "That I bring you to His Excellence?"

"After a sense," she said. "And yes, he's right, even though I'm here, there's a risk it goes wrong. Someday, you'll be ready to hold that kind of paradox in your head, but try not to worry about it right now."

"When I'm nineteen-hundred?" I asked.

"Ah. Spoilers." Then, with a smile, Starlight turned back to me and produced from thin air a tome I have not seen, but whose title I could clearly read: Tales from Everfree City. "I need you to write down what you just went through in here, and then I should be able to get out of your mane for… well, at least for as long as this story I'm holding goes. Deal?"

She set the book down on a writing desk in the bedroom and supplied a quill. And thus, I set pen to ink.

Comments

[Noobblue]

Fascinating arc. I'm... violently curious for how it will shape Morty, and change how he approaches the rest of the story.

[Farenth Vega]

The timeline implications and lore dumping here is staggering... but I still find giving Morty a fucking gun the funniest thing. Fun references, cool new character, insane implications, all around super fun. The mind wipe keeps things fairly grounded while still opening the door to a lot of wild stuff when he accidentally pull that out of his soul one day. Looking forward to more!

[Sweetblue]

That should be fun thing to pop out when experimenting with the magic. I am quite certain more than one timelines end very quickly after its discovery. Or since he is necromancer and all, gun safety culture being formed before actual invention of the things.

[Star_Shade]

Spoiler request: Please, Please have Morty defeat Grogar in the past/future with the gun he got. That would be absolutely incredible.