Evil Gods
“Wahahaha!” Golden Feather, or whoever this was, began rolling around on the floor laughing. Dash didn’t even think that was something ponies literally did outside of cartoons until just now. “You seriously thought I was Mom!”
That swell of emotion and safety still overwhelmed Dash even now. On weak legs, she struggled to get back up. The absence of those emotions left Dash could understand where Sunset Shimmer was coming from in that moment. She wanted that to be real.
Dash shook her head to dry her tears. She decided she knew what this was.
“You’re that thing, aren’t you?”
“Yeah! I am a thing!” The thing strolled right up to Dash with a big smile on her face and booped Dash on the muzzle. “Thanks for noticing! Did you like my impression of Mom? This is exactly what she looked like back then, you know!”
She ran a hoof over the edge of blue on the far side of her mane.
“Or were you expecting her to have pink hair?” She snickered at some hidden pun, then stopped suddenly. “Oh wait, you wouldn’t get that joke. Never mind.”
What Dash suspected to be the element of laughter turned once, giving Dash a look at the imitation of Golden Feather. Depictions of her varied but Dash had no reason to doubt this was her ‘true’ self.
The fur was a bit more yellow than she’d expected, but otherwise, it wasn’t too far off her mental image of Equestria’s founder. The cutie mark of the sun had been perfectly preserved even after thousands of years, or so it seemed. That part was exactly as it was in history books and murals.
“Doesn’t everything feel so much better when Mom is around?” She put a hoof on Golden Feather’s heart. “Mom gave me a piece of her soul, so I can still show other ponies what it’s like! You really were experiencing her presence, you know. That’s why you felt so safe.”
“Hold up. Are souls real now?” Dash asked. “Because I thought–”
“Oh, no. Not literally. Souls are just a metaphor we came up with so we wouldn’t have to explain the complexity of consciousness to primitive idiots.”
“Then what am I actually looking at?”
“Yeah, sure. Let me spend twelve hours trying to explain this to you.” She leaned against the wall. “See, matter isn’t real. It’s what your brain conjures up when you encounter resistance on what I like to call the unified-magnamo field. So then what are your neurons, eh? Quantum entanglement suggests–“
Dash was sure somepony would appreciate this explanation, but she was in a hurry.
“Okay, I get it!” Dash cut her off there. “Souls. You’re the element of laughter, right? Is your name Laughter or–”
“Oh, sure, that’s fine!” Laughter booped her harder this time.
“Well that’s cool but I’m in the middle of an emergency over here.” Dash turned to the crater on the floor. Scootaloo had to be down there. But was it safe to jump in? “Did you stop time or something?”
“Oh, yeah. I can just stop all time in the entire universe whenever I feel like it.” Laughter chortled. “Nah! Can you imagine? I accelerated your mind. Makes three milliseconds feel like eleven minutes. You’re not physically moving. You’re just, uh, I think the modern expression is ‘tripping balls’, yeah?”
At least that would give her some time to think.
Dash looked across the room. It certainly looked like everypony was frozen in place. Though this could just be an illusion. Dash trotted over to Twilight, intent on poking her. The image of Twilight vanished before Dash even got close.
“And as long as we’re hallucinating, why don’t we hallucinate up some better scenery?” Laughter jumped onto Dash’s couch which transformed itself into a white, crystal throne. “Welcome to my throne, Rainbow! It’s a place that sort of exists.”
Laughter spread her wings, dismissing everything else in the room. The walls fell and they didn’t stop falling, as a cliff appeared where they’d once been. Above them shone the clearest, blue sky Dash had ever witnessed. The sun was warmer and brighter here than in the real world, all without the least bit of discomfort.
Dash looked over the edge, finding herself high enough to see the curvature of the planet below. She didn’t see outer space in any direction, only that brilliant blue in all directions.
The clouds were so far beneath them that they appeared to be part of the landscape. But even they couldn’t bring darkness to the most distant point of this place. They took on the same slight yellow of Golden Feather and reflected light up to this palace.
The only link tethering this floating platform to the world below was a prismatic staircase, each crystalline step glowing a different color, leading far, far out of sight.
Dash turned back to Laughter, her throne having grown higher and taller, now too big to reasonably get onto without flying up there or making a difficult jump. Endless rings of rainbows appeared behind her, lining up perfectly to put Laughter in the middle of their vortex.
“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but what do you want?” Dash carefully asked. She got the sense this entity could destroy her without even meaning to. “There’s stuff going on. I’m worried about that filly in the basement.”
“Worried? Nah! She’ll be fine!” Laughter flicked her hoof up and down, dismissing that concern. “Those two just need to learn to stop being two.”
“Two?”
“Yeah!” Laughter jabbed her temple. “You’re the smart one, right?”
Dash furrowed her brow in thought. There was Scootaloo and–
“The feather?” Dash guessed. “Did it take control somehow?”
“Yeah! The pony half seems to have fallen asleep. A certain somepony seems to be playing a joke on her, but they accidentally pranked me too so now I gotta hit them back or I’ll lose my cred, you know?”
So somepony did this? Sunset was the first culprit to come to mind, but she seemed just as surprised. There had to be another pony Dash didn’t know about. Either way, that was good to know in advance.
“We’re almost like the same species, you know.” Golden (Pyrite?) Feather leaned her front half off the edge of her throne. “Even though I’m different now, I used to be a similar type of feather, and I still feel the same way it does in a lot of ways. Though I like to think of myself as more of a symbiote than a parasite.”
“Okay, but I’m still not sure what you’re suggesting.”
“Have you thought about talking to it instead of just keeping it on drugs and magically induced comas all the time?”
Dash couldn’t imagine who would have thought of such a thing.
“Can you even talk to it?” Dash asked. “If it was that easy, the filly would have done that by now. Is it even different from like a worm? I don’t think it’s immoral to keep it drugged for Scootaloo’s sake.”
“I get that it’s hard to have sympathy for somepony who’s eating your brain.” Laughter rolled onto her back, twirling her hoof about in the air. “But as a ‘thing’, I can tell you gobbling up brains is just a means to an end. That’s not what it wants.”
She’d never considered one of these feathers to be a thinking being, yet a being born of one of them was proof against that right in front of her. However animalistic it seemed now, perhaps it at least had the potential for thought.
It wouldn’t be the first time Dash encountered something she’d thought to be a monster only to learn there was another side to it.
“Okay.” Dash decided to bite, taking a step closer to the throne. “Then what does it want?”
“To become part of a pony! That’s what we were originally and that’s what we yearn to be again!”
“That’s not what we want. That thing is hurting Scootaloo and causing all kinds of problems. It can’t just take over her body. Every time it manages to get control it immediately tries destroying things. We need a way to get rid of it if anything.”
“I don’t think that’s possible anymore,” Laughter warned. “See the cerebellum, that’s the scoogaly back part of your filly’s brain, has already been eaten away. She’ll have no motor functions without the parasite, which is acting as her new scoogle. Kinda like that tongue-eating louse?”
Dash shuddered at the repulsive thought. Had it gone that far? Scootaloo at least seemed normal however much of her brain was gone. Surely, somepony Dash knew could check to confirm this.
Either way, they did need to stop it from doing any more damage, however possible.
“But as I said, it doesn’t want to take over or eat her entire brain.” Laughter rolled back onto her stomach and winked. “It wants to be part of her, not the whole thing. It’s not the parasite's fault it’s too stupid to think of another way.”
Dash couldn’t possibly imagine a way to convince it to do anything, let alone make friends with it.
“Hey!” Laughter jumped off her throne and landed before Rainbow Dash. “How about I give you a free hint? You can’t forge it into a proper element but you can give it a name.”
A name?
“Names are important to us, changing out whole reality. Momma named me laughter and thus I am. It too could change. But be careful what you call it. Maybe not like ‘slaughter gore’ or the like.”
This thing would know better than anyone else how to help. Though Dash could hardly relay that information to Twilight right now.
Already she was considering potential names just in case. Maybe something like Peace or Chill. Though that second one might cause a blizzard.
“Er. Thanks,” said Dash. “I suppose ‘talk’ to it if it’s at all possible.”
“And now that I helped you, you gotta help me!” Pyrite Feather jumped off her throne, landing close enough to brush up beside Rainbow Dash. “Cause that’s how the pony brain works, right? Friendship or something?”
“You just said that hint was free,” Dash pointed out.
She blinked once, then opened her eyes wide. Laughter smacked her forehead hard.
“Oh dang it! You are the smart one! You got me!”
Laughter fell over onto her side. She weakly raised a foreleg, pretending to be a mare in the desert reaching for water.
“But, uh. Maybe you’ll be nice and help me anyway?” She asked.
“Maybe.” Dash knew to use caution when agreeing to things with this type of being. “What do you want?”
Laughter licked her lips and rolled onto her belly.
“I have a collection.” Without taking her stomach off the ground, Laughter started crawling forward. “A soul collection.”
“Uh, huh.” Dash glanced back at the staircase, unsure where it led if anywhere.
She didn’t like where this conversation was going and got ready to take the chance it went back to the real world in some sense.
“We don’t like being alone, remember?” She was just a foot away from Dash, looking up from the floor. “Without a pony to attach myself to, it’s like a big chunk of me is missing! That’s the closest I can get to feeling bad– knowing that I’m not as happy as I could be. But collecting souls? That makes me feel better. You get it?”
“Not really.” Dash rubbed the back of her head, imagining what it must be like to be such an alien creature with vastly different desires. This thing looked just like a pony, but Dash knew it had about as much in common with her as an alligator. Perhaps less. “Why don’t you just, I dunno, fusion with somepony then? You said that’s what your kind want.”
“It’s not my fault nopony remotely acceptable has been born in the past ten thousand years!” Laughter rolled onto her back and kicked her legs about. “Everyone is too gross and pessimistic for me! Becoming part of them would make me capable of feeling sad. Why would I want that? If they care about other ponies, I’d have to care about other ponies. If they feel bad, I’d have to feel bad. I don’t want to feel bad!”
As Pyrite let her legs go limp against the floor, the presence of a new pony off to the side startled Dash. A pink unicorn mare with green hair appeared suddenly just off to the left.
“I only take a tiny part of their souls.” The newcomer, also Laughter, put a hoof on her heart. “Just enough that I’m not taking anything that hurts. Everypony who made the deal with me was happy about it. It’s an equal exchange. A piece of me for a piece of you.”
A white pegasus with curly blonde hair flew down from those rings of rainbows next, landing to Dash’s right.
“In a sense, they get to live forever!” This one looked more like Pinkie than Golden Feather, despite the coloration. “That thing about living on in your heart? With me it’s literal!”
“Sometimes that immortality is all they want.” Upon hearing hoof steps, Dash turned to find a brown, earth pony stallion just now reaching the top of the stairs.
“But other times they want me to grant them a wish.” A blue unicorn stallion teleported in next to the brown one. “And I do!”
“I never fail no matter what they ask me for.” Pyrite Feather’s voice sounded behind Dash. Dash turned to find her back up on the throne already. “No matter how impossible what they want is, so long as they never give up hope they will have their reward in the end! My optimism cannot ever falter.”
Pyrite twirled, going up on her hind leg and raising a hoof to beckon the rainbows to swirl above her, covering the sky in a brilliant crisscross.
“Darkness can only make my hope stronger!” Pyrite smiled wide at her rainbows. “For I am the heart of hope and joy itself!”
She spread her wings, beckoning the sun to rise perfectly overhead. The rainbows above amplified the light to leave the entire throne room in a cascade of brilliant colors.
“Though one of my wishes is still on backlog.” The pink unicorn rubbed the back of her mane and stuck out her tongue.
“Yeah! I took a hard bargain on that one!” Golden Feather beckoned to the pink unicorn, prompting her to hop onto the throne and get a hug. The colors died down as the sun moved back toward the horizon. “But it was worth the price to get such a nice piece in my collection.”
“Thanks for helping out with that one, by the way!” The pink unicorn winked down at Dash.
Having no idea what she meant, Dash looked off to that pure-white pegasus to the side. Her smile was too big, but without any of the fakeness of Nightglider.
“Okay. So what?” Dash asked. “You want my soul? And in exchange, you’ll promise to do something you were going to do anyway?”
That’s how these things usually went.
“Do you gotta be so jaded? Bleh!” Pyrite winced and stuck out her tongue. “No! I don’t want your icky essence all over me, okay? That kind of attitude is exactly why I hardly ever talk to your kind anymore! I want sunny skies all day long. Not pessimism and pity parties.”
“Okay, okay.” Dash put her hoof up. “I get it.”
“Oh, no! I don’t think you do get it!” Pyrite took out a scroll. It unrolled all the way to the floor and eventually extended to just before Dash’s feet. “Just look at how huge this list of your crimes is!”
Dash lifted her end of the list to find the paper blank.
“It’s just a prop,” the pink one whispered.
Pyrite Feather gave her end of the scroll a smack.
“Right here, you take Twilight back to town, an entire new world of opportunity in front of her, and you immediately start complaining about the housing market? What a kill joy!”
“What? I was literally homeless at the time! Of course I’m gonna–”
“And then when you showed her the radio, you were so cynical that you declared Curse Tech skin bracer a scam immediately. But guess what? It really does heal razor nicks in literal seconds and it’s been clinically proven to attract girls, Rainbow. It wasn’t a scam at all!”
“I don’t even remember what you’re talking about at this point!”
“Oh, and let’s not forget why you owe Derpy an inflatable raft!”
“What? Have you been watching me my entire life or something?”
“Hehe. Nah! That’s be creepy!” Pyrite tapped a hoof to her head. “I’m just reading your mind is all. Oh! Then there’s when you realized that your mom abandoned you and you cried and cried and–”
“What?!” Dash stomped her hoof down. She was only willing to let this go so far. “You think it was wrong for me to feel bad about that?! How dare you–?”
“How I dare is not the question!” Pyrite lowered her list. “You’re unworthy! End of story!”
Dash gritted her teeth. She could understand why Sunset didn’t like this thing.
“Okay, whatever!” Dash spat off to the side. “I suck!”
“There? Was that so hard?” Pyrite dismissed the list. “But if it’s any consolation, you’re like a two out of ten which is way higher than most! Like the way you desperately cling to that card game like a fellow abandoned soul, never letting it go no matter how far beyond the pale of hope it falls? You didn’t even stop the world championships despite being the only player in the entire world left! That’s great! One point!”
“Er.” Dash wasn’t sure if she was still being insulted.
“And then there’s the fact the fact that the hope in your heart is enough for you to repeatedly throw yourself into suicidal levels of danger way above your head. Your repeated, horrible failures throughout your trainwreck of a live were never enough to deter you until at last you finally won one! So that’s two points! Just enough for me to stand talking to you. Congratulations.”
Somehow Summoner Knights had saved the world a second time. Or maybe it screwed Dash over. Too early to tell.
All she knew for certain was that this ‘pony’ was seriously messed up.
“Also I like how many enemies you made friends with,” Pyrite added. “Having faith in a dictator who brainwashed you to never question them is easy. Having faith in your enemies is cool. Not extra point cool, but still.”
How much longer could eleven minutes possibly last?
“I think I understand you as much as I possibly can.” Dash bowed her head, not wanting another lecture. “What do you want? Is it Screwball’s soul? She doesn’t seem like the type to feel bad about anything.”
“Is that what they told you?” Pyrite laughed again. “I think my half-cousin twice removed might be playing a prank on you.”
“Cousin? You mean Starlight?”
“Or whatever she calls herself! You haven’t figured out who ‘Cosmos’ is, yet? Pfft! But nah, I already brain-scanned Screwball and trust me, she’s messed up. You can turn the noise up to distract yourself, but that doesn’t make the bad stuff go away!”
She rose several questions there, but Dash had to focus on the most important issue here. It sounded like Laughter might want to make a deal with her in exchange for helping Scootaloo.
“I keep telling you to be less cynical,” Pyrite scolded her. “You don’t gotta do anything. I’m helping you out totally for free!”
“Totally free?” Dash raised an eyebrow.
The last time something this good was ‘totally free’ every dead pet in Ponyville came back to life.
“Totally!” Pyrite tilted her head to one side, pressing in on her dimple. “But I mean, if you want to tell all your friends about how fun and positive I am or that I'm super cool and have this big soul-harem thing. Then, you know, I’d appreciate that.”
Dash watched her carefully.
“Optional!”
Dash frowned.
“Oh, come on. You don’t wanna use my alicorn magic tracking ability?” Laughter came around Dash’s backside to put her hooves on Dash’s withers. “You can connect to anypony who has alicorn magic. Any pony, yeah?”
That would be immensely useful. But who would the most important pony be to–”
“Scootaloo!”
“Exactly! You can help her!”
It sounded like a good idea, but Dash already had options on that front. Twilight likely had a plan to–
“Twilight can only keep putting it back to sleep for so long! Becoming friends with it is the only way to permanently solve the issue. You understand the pony and I understand the parasite. Together we can negotiate a settlement.”
The plan sounded increasingly acceptable, though Dash still wanted to talk to Twilight.
“We can’t do this till the next accelerate mind spell anyway.”
And she really didn’t appreciate having her mind read like this.
Laughter covered her mouth, but Dash could still see her smiling behind those hooves.
She’d have to talk to Scootaloo before knowing if this idea was remotely acceptable. And of course, there was one other matter. The element of laughter did want something in return, even if she didn’t act like it.
“I guess you got me there,” Dash admitted. “But who are you after? One of my friends, right?”
“Oh, there’s a pony I’ve been watching for a long time.” Pyrite leaned to one side, resting her head on a hoof, and fluttered her eyes. “I was going to wait for her to be on her deathbed to make my move, but I bit off a bit too much on the wish front and then she suddenly got young and I don’t wanna wait for–”
“Hold on. Hold on.” Dash closed her eyes and rubbed the spot between with a hoof. “You’re talking about Pinkie Pie?”
“Yeah! Best I’ve seen in forever! Bad stuff just washes off her like water off a duck! She never really hates anypony and is so less jaded than the rest of you. Solid eight out of ten.”
“She’s literally two feet in front of me!” Dash gestured with both forehooves to a spot Pinkie may well be in. “Why don’t you talk to her directly about this, huh?”
“Oh, wow. I wonder why you’re single and I’m surrounded by all these beautiful ponies.” Pyrite Feather clapped her hooves and revealed that those four were at best a quarter of her collection.
Just under a score of ponies now surrounded her, five up on her throne with her, at least ten at the base of the throne, all leaning towards her adoringly.
“If you wanna seduce a high-quality mare you gotta go in through the side.” Pyrite began stroking the back of a teal pegasus. “You gotta get her friends to like you first. That’s why I’m gonna help you out totally for free, my little Rainbow!”
“You mean for me telling her how great you are.” Dash couldn’t imagine how she’d manage that one. “So she’ll give you her not-soul?”
“No! For free! And I don’t want the whole thing! Just sixty-four percent of it. I don’t want her concern about the wellbeing of other ponies. Then I’d feel terrible about all sorts of thing. I only want the bubbly, fun parts of her!”
So if Laughter took all the ‘fun’ parts of Pinkie…
“Would that leave her a miserable wreck who can never feel happy again?” Dash asked.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. You’re all gonna die soon so she might as well give me her soul, yeah? That way the good parts of her will survive, at least.”
“We’re all going to what? You mean soon as in within a hundred years or–”
“Oop!”
Laughter put a hoof on Dash’s head.
“I think your heads getting a little too hot,” Laughter warned. “It’ll be about two hundred seconds until I pull you back. If you could maybe put some ice on your head in the meantime, that’d be great. Ice cream works best cause it’ll stick. Thanks.”
“Gah!” Dash winced and grabbed her head.
Her forehead had gotten hot! It was like she’d used a hairdryer for way too long.
She found herself back in the living room, or rather what was left of it. A pillar of darkness had erupted from the basement. Scootaloo had already jumped upstairs.
Dazed in a way that made Dash believe Laughter’s claim, Scootaloo swung her head about awkwardly, as though doing it for the first time, in a poor attempt to search for something.
“Okay, what were you doing in your basement?” Sunset jabbed a hoof at Scootaloo. “So summoning a god is wrong but keeping filly with that locked in your basement is fine?”
“Pinkie, what happened down there?” Twilight asked. “Did Scootaloo get hurt? Only a serious injury should be able to trigger something like this.”
Dash didn’t see a single wound on her.
“I didn’t do anything!” Pinkie trotted in place, looking around. “She was fine until she tried using her powers and then this–”
Scootaloo’s head swung over to Twilight, where it stopped to stare at her. Then, to everypony’s surprise, it spoke.
“Y–” Scootaloo twitched, flailing her tongue around in an attempt to speak. At last, she managed a guttural, “you. You?”
She kept repeating the word like it was the strangest thing.
There was no doubt the black feather was the one in control now. Like the inequine thing it was, the parasite had her trot forward in the most awkward way possible, swaying and bobbing her head about as it moved.
The parasite walked Scootaloo over to Twilight and lay down. It looked up at her with something approximating expectation.
“You.” It said.
“Okay, I’m lost again.” Dash shook her head. The element of laughter hadn’t prepared her for this.
“I think I understand.” Twilight lowered her head to Scootaloo’s level. “The parasite must have gotten total control somehow. Perhaps the influence of her necklace allowed it to develop a more coherent mind? It feels like it’s in danger, but also has come to understand that we’d protect Scootaloo. What do you need?”
“You.”
The thing certainly couldn’t answer with its one-word vocabulary. Even its master of the word ‘you’ seemed shaky. It merely stared in Twilight’s general direction, all but drooling.
“The element was giving off sparks.” Sunset turned her eyes towards the disguised artifact. “I’ve never seen it do that before. Maybe something is affecting both of them at once?”
“They both possess alicorn magic.” Twilight slowly stretched out her hoof to carefully touch Scootaloo’s head. “It’s certainly possible to construct spells that target alicorn magic, I’ve created a few myself. The questions are who and why?”
Twilight frowned as the options went through her mind.
“So we’re doing this instead?” Moonlight Raven, still on their couch, turned her hooves up and looked at Sunset. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to use astral magic until we find the source of this. I’ll see if anypony suspicious is standing outside.”
She summoned a hoodie, drew it up, and left with enough courtesy to use the door this time. Sunset bit her lip watching her subordinate leave but couldn’t disagree with that assessment. She turned her attention to Scootaloo as well.
“Actually,” Dash called the remaining attention to herself, “I think the banana was talking to me earlier.”
“What?” Sunset flicked her ears. “Are you sure?”
“No,” Dash admitted. “But somepony was telling me she’d let me–”
Blue sparks erupted from the banana a second time!
Scootaloo let out a yelp like she’d just been burned. Then she vanished hard, with an airburst that nearly blew out the window. Dash thought she’d exploded into flames, until–
“She teleported! At least something like that will be easy to follow. She went to–” Twilight spoke casually enough like she was rattling off a small calculation.
Then she teleported off to the same location, presumably.
Sunset needed a minute longer to reach the same conclusion Twilight had, but she expressed far more fear when she got there.
“Dammit! That would have put her in or near the school!” Sunset looked at the clock. “And class is about to begin! Why would she go there of all places?!”
Of course Twilight would have been less worried. She had no idea where the school was.
“Isn’t it still summer?” Dash complained.
“Today is the first day of school.”
This was what happened when you homeschooled.
Sunset galloped to the open window.
“Raven! School!” Sunset shouted out the window, then teleported away herself.
That left three mares, none of whom could get there half as fast. The school had to be close to seven or eight miles away. No sense rushing there when Dash had already made up her mind about what to do.
“I guess the rest of us will just sit here like idiots?” Trixie turned to Dash and Pinkie.
Loathe as she was to admit it, Dash only saw one option available to her.
“I have an idea!” Dash ran to the kitchen.
She skidded to a halt in front of the fridge and threw open the freezer. She took out a one-gallon tub of ice cream and shoved it on top of her head.
“Rainbow Dash! I don’t think that’s going to–”
Trixie froze before she could be wrong. Or rather, Dash must have accelerated again.
Twilight didn’t have the luxury of thinking about where she teleported. It was an unfamiliar part of town, was all she could tell.
She found herself inside a large hallway that had bulletin boards all along the walls, filled with notes. Twilight would probably like whatever studious individual lived here, but there was no time for that.
Scootaloo had already made a mess of this place. A second pillar of darkness had been thrust down through the floor at some target in the basement below. It streamed up like fire, slowly spreading, just not breaking into the floor above. The papers pinned to the bulletin boards crumbled to dust. It wouldn’t be long until things of sturdier material began to disintegrate.
This was something Twilight hadn’t seen in ages, but she had seen it. Starswirl had been able to use a similar attack, one that tore a crack in reality itself, deleting its target from existence.
The real problem was this parasite had created a hole with no real fines or foresight. The destruction would spread for some time. Already black cracks were moving across the ground, causing chunks of the floor to fall into the basement below.
Scootaloo stared into the hole she created, panting and looking about with only modest awareness. It probably wouldn’t have stopped there without the influence of the other feather.
This hadn’t been a random outburst nor a reflexive outlash. Something down there sent a wave that affected Scootaloo. It’d also explain the element of laughter sparking up if it targeted alicorn magic
If it had been a pony, they were dead now. A device, it was annihilated. Either way, that thread had been removed. The only thing left was the parasite. Though she looked relatively in control, Twilight couldn’t risk a second hole.
Twilight opened a portal leading off to a distant mountain. There were still a few locations left on that Z-gate network. This was her most remote location without trying to send her to the moon.
“No.” Twilight grabbed her by the scruff. “Bad.”
Twilight threw Scootaloo through, hoping she wouldn’t be back soon, and turned her attention to the pillar of darkness. Twilight created a needle of light, throwing one to the tip of each of the cracks. Then she put all of her focus on siphoning away the magic inside the pillar.
There was so much! It would take a while and already doors were beginning to open. It was too dangerous for anypony else to come out here! Twilight needed a way to contain this and get everypony out.
Thankfully, Sunset Shimmer appeared behind Twilight a moment later. Now, Twilight could easily do both.
“Sunset!” Twilight called out to her. “I can deal with this. You evacuate the school just in case she comes back.”
For what it was worth, Sunset put their earlier arguments aside to help out. She dashed off and alarms sounded as Twilight focused her attention on the black pillar.
Twilight rubbed her temple as she redoubled her efforts. The hole was slowly closing, the cracks receding. Why couldn’t it have used a reality-distortion effect to have dealt with this?
Because Scootaloo was the one with the foresight to use their abilities that way, she concluded. The parasite still didn’t have the mental capacity to think of doing anything but destruction and deletion any more than it had the ability to form a complete sentence.
Then how did it teleport?
“By destroying the–”
Twilight turned back to find a second, much smaller hole some distance down the hallway, presumably where Scootaloo had first teleported in. More black cracks moved across the floor, gaining speed. It wouldn’t be at all hard to close, but it would mean letting go of the big one!
A second pony came teleporting in next. It was that grey mare from before, one of the S-rankers. Moonlight Raven, Twilight believed her name was.
Now she wore a suit of purple armor and had four weapons emblazoned with runes floating by her side. The chest piece was curious, resembling an eye enshrouded in flames. Help would be welcome, but Twilight didn’t expect her to be able to give any.
“There’s more than one school in this town, you know!” Raven shouted after Sunset.
Twilight was about to tell her to just focus on getting the ponies out when Raven turned to the second hole with recognition rather than confusion. She lifted an overly large sword made of blue metal and thrust it into the center of the hole.
Instead of cracks running up along the blade, it effectively plugged up the hole, stabilizing it and stopping the spread. The blade must have been made of an alloy that contained broken spacetime! It was the only explanation, but Twilight had doubted Equestria had the technology to forge such a weapon.
“Hold on.” Twilight shot her a skeptical look. “You know how to deal with alicorn magic?”
“You know how to deal with alicorn magic?” Raven asked her back.
“Okay, that’s fair.” Twilight turned back to her task.
“We shouldn’t speak here,” Raven warned. “I’m worried somepony might have wanted us to–”
Her warning was interrupted by a small explosion down the hallway in the other direction. Scootaloo reappeared, the third hole underneath her. She lowered her head and made something like a hissing noise at Twilight.
Twilight probably should have given her a jacket before sending her to the mountain.
“Oh my gosh!” Pyrite tackled Dash, throwing her to the ground, and knocking the ice cream off her head. She laughed hysterically with her muzzle pressed against Dash’s. “I can’t believe you fell for the old ice cream hat trick! What a rube!”
“What? But you told me to–”
“The accelerate mind spell lasts three milliseconds! You really think ice cream cools your head off that fast?” She laughed again. “Everypony’s gonna think you’re a total idiot! Hahaha!”
Dash’s eye twitched as green mint cream dripped off her mane.
Now that she thought about it, the actual container was back in the real world and Laughter made this one just because. To think she could make Dash hallucinate anything like this would be terrifying if it didn’t last just eleven minutes at a time.
“Okay! You got me!” Dash pushed Laughter off of her. “Whatever! Can we help Scootaloo now?”
“So serious!” Laughter made an exaggerated march forward as the area reverted back to her throne room. “Okay. This was already explained to you so I’m not doing it again. Go sit on my throne!”
Laughter nudged her muzzle in the direction of the throne. If she said it was okay to sit on her throne, then why not? Dash had to fly up to reach it. Rings of rainbows encircled her.
“You can figure out how this works yourself,” said Laughter. “I’ll let you look at anything you want. You can spy on Starlight or my sister or you can connect to Scootaloo’s mind. Knock yourself out and let me know when you did everything you wanted to. I can keep doing the accelerate mind spell on and off all day. Slight risk of cancer if you go more than five times.”
Laughter created a fake couch and a pretend mug filled with an imaginary, frothy liquid to drink while she waited for Dash.
“And remember.” Laughter raised her mug to Rainbow Dash. “if you can see them, they can see you. Be careful what you look at.”
Still not sure what she was supposed to do, Dash put a forehoof on either arm of the throne.
A third eye opened up far above even this high throne, looking down at the planet below. Through it, Dash could see the entire world at once. To a normal pony, having a second set of vision, one with such an enormous view with hundreds of focal points rather than one, would be disorienting. But this was nothing compared to the makarakarn. This didn’t even make her stumble.
Dash soon found squinting this imaginary eye would allow her to narrow those focal points down to a singular, crystal clear view, and opening it pulled her vision out to see all of them at once.
She had to get to Scootaloo first, but before that she needed to find the filly. Rainbow Dash pulled all the way back. She could see it broadly now– every source of alicorn magic in the world all at once. She took stock of them all in that one instance.
Starlight. Scootaloo and her necklace. Something like Scootaloo (Lillymoon, Dash presumed). Two hundred and thirty-five sleeping black feathers, mostly in Area 5X. Something in Twilight’s treehouse. Something far away that seethed with malice towards her. A fragment of Laughter somewhere in the northern parts of Everfree. The element of honesty chained and immobile. The Darklord, the most intense light of them all.
Then there were two more, harder to discern.
One, far, far to the north in the far reaches– the endless plains of ice north of Equestria. That, Dash concluded, was where the last white feather rested. Though there was something odd about it.
No! There were two in that spot. But it was like they were glued together, rather than one wearing the other like with Scootaloo. One seemed unstable and broken and the other used to hold it in one piece. Dash couldn’t possibly imagine what was going on there.
Then, finally, was one last signature, unlike any of the others. Not far off from the fragment of Laughter, in Crater Cemetery.
That tiny little bit of curiosity in Dash’s mind, that inkling of surprise was enough to nudge her gaze ever so slightly. And as warned, it gazed back at her.
Like a tripwire had just been sprung, Dash felt the presence of an eye snapping onto her. Though it was just one eye, it may as well have been every pony on the planet staring at her at once. The weight of its stare became all too literal. It sent her to the ground, smothering every cell in her body.
She couldn’t breathe! The thing strangled her with nothing more than a look. Dash could only manage to kick her rear legs as it began to slowly apply ever more pressure. The strength behind that thing went on forever. Dash hadn’t yet reached the beginning of it. She could tell even this much was no attempt at all.
Instead, it was like a sadistic colt slowly lowering his hoof on a fat beetle to see how much force it would need to pop. Dash may have well been a bug underhoof. Already she was close to bursting.
“No!” Laughter held out a hoof.
Rainbows surrounded Dash. Air forced its way into her lungs and she began taking deep breaths again without coughing or sputtering. The darkness that surrounded her burst all at once into rainbow-colored light.
“Nothing but sunshine and rainbows are allowed in my house!” Laughter jumped forward to shout at the eye. “You take your nightmares and get out of here!”
And just like that, it was gone. Dash sat back up, realizing only now she’d at some point fallen off the throne.
“Yeesh! I told you to be careful.” Laughter stomped out a bit of smoking soot. She chuckled like that wasn’t the most horrifying thing in the universe.
“What?” Dash felt her neck. No lingering pain remained, nor a bruise. She supposed this wasn’t her actual body anyway. “What was?”
“Oh yeah!” She smiled and poked a dimple. “Remember how I said you’re all gonna die soon?”
Was that stupid ghost really their greatest enemy this whole time?! Something like that…
Maybe Dash was getting worked up. Twilight could just as easily strangle Dash too and with little effort. Shoot, even Trixie’s strength would feel limitless to Dash.
She shouldn’t jump to any conclusions before Twilight had the chance to assess this. Even if that was the ultimate evil, Dash had more immediate concerns.
“There’s the optimism I love to see!” Laughter cheered at Dash’s private thoughts. “You can take her if I help you! And I’ll totally help you if Pinkie gives me sixty-five percent of her soul! You saw how cool I was just now, right?”
Laughter swung her hoof in an arc, making a rainbow.
“I love rainbows because they’re so pretty! Did you know my grandpa invented rainbows? You know, Momma used to fly so fast sometimes that the sky would explode into rainbows!”
“But it has alicorn magic.” Dash looked off towards the throne. “What is it?”
“Maybe it’s the ghost of an alicorn.” Laughter waved her hooves about, making ghost noises. “Wouldn’t that be spooky? Heehee. Make sure to tell Pinkie how spooky that was. And how cool I was with those rainbow lasers!”
Laughter winked at her, getting an eye roll from Dash.
“Daw! Cheer up! Here.” Laughter clapped Dash on the withers.
Armor appeared on Dash, looking rather like the type the royal guards wore centuries ago. Except instead of the standard gold, these seemed to be made of a metallic rainbows.
“That will protect you from her!”
Dash didn’t have to wonder why she wasn’t given this in the first place. Thinking about it, this wasn’t even real armor! It was just a visual representation of Laughter actually being willing to help her now.
“You wanna spy on Crater Cemetery go ahead.” Laughter flew back to her couch and picked the mug back up. “She won’t nearly kill you this time. It will shield you from Starlight too! Or anything else.”
Dash watched her carefully. As tempting as it was to try and gather information on her enemies, Dash couldn’t leave Scootaloo hanging like this. Her friends had to come before her enemies.
Laughter watched her with a more subdued smile as Dash flew back up to the throne.
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Cheeky little bugger
gosh darn stop it with the cliffhangers
Rainbow is surprisingly capable of common sense.
11374869
RL Stine taught me to never give the audience a place where it's okay to stop. If you got a problem you can talk to him.
Well, that definitely wasn't who I was expecting "Not-Golden Feather" to be. I was way off. My money was on Night Glider post-ascendancy.
I'm going on record as saying I think the ghost of Crater Cemetery is Luna. Or more specifically the Nightmare aspect of her. Cast off and abandoned after the alicorns left the planet.
Dash really earning her Loyalty stripes in this chapter! That'll be one seriously dramatic revelation to. . . pretty much everyone.
Okay, now I'm convinced Crater Cemetery is Nightmare Moon.
...Okay, I am also now convinced Summoner Knights will be the key to saving the world.
I suspect that's probably got something to do with Ghost of A Chance. There's so many plotlines I'm going to need to do a reread to keep track of everything. With all the foreshadowing that just got dropped I'm sure there's stacks of it I missed before anyway.
I'm wondering if Pinkie is going to somehow be absorbed by laughter, then override their personality. It seems like the type of thing she'd do.
Does Twilight know what a school is? I can totally see that just passing her by.
Pretty delighted to have Dash's Makarakarn training pay off again.
Good chapter
11374922
Years from now or whenever this ends, we are all going to be laughing because Rainbow Dash will defeat the ghost of crater cemetery by losing a game of summoner knights. It will turn out that becoming the summoner knight champion is Nightmare Moon's unfinished business and RD can bestow the title since she never cancelled the tournaments.
Man, I love this story. If that is not the ending plotline it needs to be.
11375034
Well I'm going to post one a whole bunch of 'deleted scenes' and stuff when I get to 1,000 updates, but suffice to say a lot of things were different when I was still plotting things out before actually posting.
So here's one of them. This isn't really a spoiler since I changed course on all of it before the story even started, but:
Originally, the head of Crater Cemtery was actually going to be Cozy Glow. Also important was that Dash would have this incredibly rare, mint-condition All Seeing Eye card that lets you draw seven cards on your turn - used to be worth almost a million but she got it for 50 bits after the bubble burst. And Dash is really protective of it was going to be a running thread.
Anyway, at some point Dash gets captured by Cozy Glow. She learns that the ghosts are still into Summoner Knights since they 'have a hard time letting go of the past'. Dash tempts Cozy Glow into dueling her by showing her she's the 5 times world champion among the predeads and has the most expensive Summoner Knight card of all time. The stakes are her life against the freedom of a certain somepony.
In a dramatic moment, Dash takes out the All Seeing Eye card to use it in their match, destroying its perfect mint 10.0 grade in order to save one of her friends.
The reason I changed it was because the Ghost of Crater Cemetery kinda had to be one of the major villains of the series and I couldn't come up with a reason why Cozy Glow would be that strong, nor did I want her to go out like that after deciding their power level would be rediculously high.
11374922
If you think about it, that's what let Dash befriend Twilight in the first place, so it kind of already did. And now this.
I tried to make it so you won't be lost if you haven't read Ghost of a Chance, so don't worry about that too much. It's just a few scenes will be significantly cooler if you've read that first. Including at least one you've already read, though I won't say which. Shadowbolts are relatively minor characters with an overly-long and important backstory.
Sort of. She's seen the CMC get homeschooled in a makeshift classroom, but would know almost nothing about an actual schoolhouse. One idea I have for a possible one-shot in this universe is about the CMC going to said class.
I am with Sunset and Dash, Laughter is an ass. Oof.
Also, I really don't like that it wants Pinkie's soul. Very disturbing. Crater Cemetery... Chrysalis? NMM? One of those two is what my money's on.
Great chapter!
...Cadance?
That's the spirit
11375058
Sounds fun
11375253
Less "ass" and more "lacking empathy" without the usual accompaniment of being mean.
What she doesn't realize is that the deepest happiness relies on context from some of the sadness, so she'll never attain the ultimate form of her namesake that she so desperately craves. Unless Pinkie can teach it, which is quite likely.
Nice
I was so 100% right the entire time all along. As soon as the hints put together a good picture I knew it was NMM.
Loved this chapter! soo many threads and action stuff happeningggg
1a !!
Thanks for the update. I always enjoy your "Dash talks with some unfathomably powerful being and does a surprisingly good job of it" scenes.
RD's just gonna wander around the next few scenes with ice cream on her head, then?
After all, going by the pink mane joke, she is a fragment of Celestia.
Well, that's an ominous tease...
As is the satellite's-eye view of the world's alicorn magic. A lot to take in there, and I imagine a good chunk of the mysteries that drew Dash's attention will be relevant at some point. But for now, there's a filly and her skullmate to reconcile. Looking forward to it. Also, excellent work in portraying the Element of Laughter's alien mentality. She doesn't see the value in non-happy emotions and she doesn't want to, thank you very much.
11385989
>sunny skies all day long
I'm impressed somebody noticed that.
Not sure how I feel about laughter trolling us this hard XD
11375275 Cadance holding together the unstable Chrysalis?
11375058 Dash saves the world by summoning Exodia.
11389491
Yes just yes
If it's Discord's ex, it raises questions on if you will be bringing in other aspects of the MLP comics. Like for example, Bookworms to help Starlight with her massive literary collection (awhile eating books she disliked as a reward, maybe even Twilight's books?). Either way, it's going to be tricky for Laughter to work alongside Pinkie since she has a lawyer and all. But hard to say if it's a completely new villain you made.
A pink unicorn mare with green hair appeared suddenly just off to the left.
... Lemon Zest??
11529339
So I’m not the only one who caught that?
If that's the case then why is she afraid to take on things that hurt
And you so-called element of laughter, are nothing but a bratty child afraid to face any hardship
11555121
Because she is the defiance of bad feelings. She is being hopeful even when there is no hope left. She is not the endurance of bad feelings but the anathema to them. She does not know how to deal with bad stuff other then by ignoring it.