Reward Prefers Risk

by AltruistArtist

Saek-Orlae Firen (An Ill-Fated Desire)

“I messed up, Starlight.”

Sunburst hadn’t slept last night. His hide felt too tight on his body, the sheets mussed with fitful turning. In the violent daylight at the cafe, he was wretched.

Starlight, to her credit, looked at him directly. “What happened? I thought you went home with Stygian last night?”

“I walked him there. I didn’t go home with him.” Sunburst’s hoof pressed hard into the white blaze below his horn. “I didn’t. Because I’m a coward.”

His teeth were bared in a grimace, eyes closed tight. He didn’t see Starlight’s expression when she said, “Sunburst, don’t beat yourself up. You’re seeing him again in a few days, right?”

“Why would he want to see me again? I walked away. All I ever do is walk away. He was right there in the doorway in that house he lives in all alone. And if he'd just asked me to stay the night, I would’ve…” Haltingly, Sunburst’s head tipped back. The sun hurt his eyes, white hot behind the cold skin of ozone. “I would’ve said yes.”

An uncomfortable pause wedged between their conversation as the waiter came by to take their orders. It allowed Sunburst a minor reprieve.

“I’m surprised he didn’t,” Starlight said as the aproned stallion trotted away, though she offered nothing more.

Sunburst’s brow furrowed. “Did you plan this? What did he say last night?”

A mild alarm overcame her at the intensity of his stare. “‘Planned’ is a bit of an extreme word, here. You know we've wondered about the two of you.” She sighed. “And I told you last night. What he said isn’t my story to tell.”

“Please, Starlight. If you can gossip to Trixie and Maud about me, you can at least tell me this. What did Stygian say?”

“I'm not going to tell you.” Starlight’s lips pulled back. She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, it was in the old tones of her role as a counselor. “You know, he didn't even ask me to keep it a secret. Because he trusts you. You have to see that. He trusts you enough to believe you wouldn’t demand me, your best friend, to tell you what he said to me in confidence.”

Sunburst was chagrined by how right she was.

“And don’t drag your old guilt into this. You’ll only hurt your own feelings.”

Sunburst’s ears jolted forward. “What do you mean?”

Starlight pantomimed, waving her hoof like a flapping mouth. “‘All I ever do is walk away.’ As though I don’t know exactly what that means.”

“Well… it’s true. It was the worst mistake I ever made.” He knocked his hooves together atop the wrought iron tabletop. “And knowing that, I should be doing things differently this time.”

Starlight was shaking her head. “Stygian isn’t me.” When Sunburst didn’t meet her eyes, she repeated, firmer, “He isn’t me. As much as I empathize with him, we led two entirely different lives. We made two entirely different, yet nonetheless special, connections with a wonderful unicorn named Sunburst. Who I admire for his aspirations to grow from the choices he made that… caused hurt. Not just to me, but to himself.”

She reached across the table, touching the white sock at the end of his hoof. “But do not disrespect me by casting me as a martyr in your own self-pity. I’m happy! Happier than I’ve ever been.” She smiled in the truest way. “And if all you’re doing for Stygian is just a way to make up for your perceived slights against me, then… I’m not surprised you walked away. But the way you talk about him tells me it’s something different.”

The waiter arrived with their drinks, setting a chilly glass of lemonade in front of Sunburst. His magical grasp was unsteady as he dropped in a pair of sugar cubes, a grainy cloud turning with the stirring straw.

When he took a sip, it still wasn’t enough. He’d tasted sweeter.

—

Ight likhen thouth varg em vys astandan. Dae kumosi naertrin.

(I would like you to work on this next. It comes later.)

That was all Stygian's next letter said.

Sunburst laid a hoof on the fresh envelope at his desk like a caress, pressing down on its unusual lightness. When he gained the courage to slip the pages free, there were only three. Three delicate pieces of soul.

The sentences written there were blunt in heavy quillstrokes. And as Sunburst transcribed them for viewing by modern eyes, he felt like he was stripping them of their skins, exposing raw nerves, more butcher than artist.

Hollow Shades was accursed, but it's where the Pillars and I built our fortress.

The town was in possession of a great library, once. A compendium of knowledge to edify its residents. Pilgrims traveled to its halls to remedy maladies no herb could soothe. When the mind ached, knowledge was a panacea.

For years, I read there. When a new monster arose, I studied its weaknesses until all the Pillars knew where their talents would strike it hardest. No amount of reading or talent prepared them for the one monster only time could defeat.

In the town center was a well. And below it was a cistern. And within was armageddon.

At least, that's what legend claimed. Ascetics from a long forgotten faith once guarded the Well of Shade, sealing it over with a rock. Their ancestors inherited their paranoia but not their piety. Something was below us and it was rotten. That’s all they knew. That is all they had to know.

I always thought it was cruel to build a town around an anathema. If it was so despised, why did it occupy the heart of its world? Send the thing that is different and wrong away if it is so unfit to exist. At least then, it wouldn’t know how much it was hated.

I wish that’s what Star Swirl did when I fell out of his light.

This was before my journey to Ponehenge. That was merely his second betrayal.

It was not a gradual descent. In one moment I was among the stars. Up there, one feels immortal. But stars, too, die. And in their terminal blast they kill you.

I told Star Swirl something I never should have spoken aloud. It wasn’t a curse, but he received it as one.

It brought to mind Anvilhorn. Another stallion who knew only how to look at me when I was somepony else. And to ever associate him with Star Swirl made me ill.

Everything, I saw differently now. Star Swirl’s presence became cold and I glimpsed the black hole within him. But when he smiled, so too did the Pillars. And why wouldn’t they? When they were the town. They embodied the virtues of true stallions and mares.

That is when I stopped feeling among them. I was like a body left discarded on the floor, stepped over.

In the quiet midnight, Hollow Shades existed between spaces. The veil between what went seen and unseen was thin.

And as I walked the streets in the blackness, I heard him speak for the first time.

When I pressed my ear to the stone over the well, I should have foreseen that the voice below would have been kinder than any of those above.

After all, I had known this darkness before.

Laying down his quill, Sunburst pulled off his robe and clutched it to his chest, holding it long and hard, like a scream.

Beneath his nose, it didn’t smell like anything at all.

His gaze dropped below the frames of his glasses, beholding the blurry turquoise stars in a sea of navy, flashing in their flowing vacuum of space.

A bold inspiration struck him, robe tossed aside. With quivering hooves, he pulled out a sheet of parchment. What he wrote wasn't a translation, but a letter, stuffing anger behind pleasant words.

Star Swirl,

I hope you've been settling well in Canterlot. I also hope that this message is received graciously, as we haven't seen one another since you first arrived in this era.

I'd like to meet with you. It isn't urgent, but to me, it feels that way. I'm currently helping Stygian write his next book. I'd be grateful to sit down for an interview with you, just so I may represent you accurately. I want to hear your perspective on the time you spent with him.

Sincerely,
Sunburst

P.S. The former Royal Crystaller of the Crystal Empire, honorably relieved of duty, and current Vice Principal of Twilight Sparkle's School of Friendship.

P.P.S. I was the one who translated your journal.

The letter rolled and was ferried away on Canterlot’s dragonfire network. A restless energy sung in Sunburst’s gut, hoping the old wizard could be cornered.

—

To be in Stygian's presence was like gazing into an open wound. At least, that was how Sunburst felt on that following revision day.

For the first time, they met at Sunburst’s house. Like a peace treaty, he invited Stygian there, rather than the school office. He didn’t even clean up his study, hoping its honest state of disarray would appear as an act of contrition.

Stygian sat across the desk, reading with somber focus. The page was held in front of his eyes, a square of flat, blank off-white where his face should have been.

When finished, he dropped it to the desk, revealing eyes encircled in shadows.

“Looks correct,” was all he offered.

With ginger nudges, Sunburst’s magic evened the stack of pages. He opened his mouth, the air cold on his teeth as he sucked in a breath. “You look tired.”

Stygian’s eyelids drooped, as though submitting to that acknowledgement like a command. “So do you.”

Sunburst pushed up his glasses and ventured, lamely, “Were you up late writing this?”

Stygian’s posture was at an unnatural tilt, all his meager weight supported by his hindquarters. His forehooves trembled, knocking at the wrists. He looked askance. “Among other things.”

It hurt to see him this way. The desk couldn’t have spanned more than a two foot divide between them but that distance was abysmal.

Sunburst ached to ask what Stygian told Starlight a night ago. He ached to ask what he told Star Swirl an era ago.

Instead, his question was, “Is there any more you could tell me about the Shadow?”

Stygian’s shaken gaze lifted. Sunburst’s heartbeat hammered up his windpipe.

“What do you want to know?” Stygian asked.

“Whatever you’re willing to say.”

Stygian tugged at the loop on his cloak. He rubbed his neck. There appeared to be a powdery dark stain on the underside of his hoof.

“I’m sure you recall I left little to the imagination in my book. The ghostwriter encouraged me to send all the material I could on the Pony of Shadows, as it was sure to captivate with its gloomy mystique.” His stare was vacant as he said this, lips twitching back in a weak sneer. His eyes flitted closed. “When ponies pick up that book, they will no doubt have all their cravings for the sinister sated.”

“In the most hokey prose possible.” Sunburst found a reason to force a laugh. When Stygian’s expression went unchanged, Sunburst winced and tried again. “What I mean to say is, like everything else in that book, its descriptions are so… lacking. In anything real.”

Stygian softened. “So you’ve said.” He took a steadying breath. “The Shadow was an ancient, vile spirit. Long before I was alive, it was locked away. It could only ever be contained. Never destroyed.”

“I remember you said it welcomed you when no nopony else did,” Sunburst said, encouraging gently. “What did that mean for you?”

“I was in a right place, with a wrong desire.” A raw desperation claimed him as he shrugged a hoof and beseeched, “What else is there to say that I didn’t write? Once more, I opened a grave. I trespassed on the resting place of an ancient evil and the rest, you know. You were there. You saw the Shadow.”

Sunburst had. What he saw had been a towering equine form in the amplitude of its stallionity. Bulky, booming, virile — a messy cobbling of power made manifest. Indiscriminately, it appropriated the visage of an alicorn in its hasty assemblage, willing even to usurp a female likeness of sovereign power to assert its might.

“Was that always what it looked like?”

Stygian flinched, as though deemed culpable of a crime. “How would I know?” And then, “I only saw it clearly, once. After that, it was all around me. So I suppose I was always seeing it.”

Sunburst did what he hadn’t the night of the festival. He grasped tight to responsibility and bravery and made a frantic marriage of them. On the floor, Me and My Shadow had been discarded after his searching final pass rewarded him with disappointment. But there was a single page he dog-eared.

The book rested on the desk, a watery flapping of quick turning pages animated by Sunburst’s magic. He opened it to the decisive line.

“‘The Shadow spoke to me with a voice like no other. I was drawn into its embrace like that of a lover,” Sunburst read. He swallowed. “That line… I’ve wondered about it.”

Stygian’s jaw hung open. Then, he fritzed into alarm.

“That is not what I wrote!”

In a sonorous voice Sunburst hadn’t heard since the antique shop, Stygian insisted, “An ill-fated desire. I was drawn into its thrall like an ill-fated desire. That is the truth of my words and she twisted them.”

He pressed both hooves to his forehead, his blunt bangs folding in strips. “Ponies read that. Like a…”

“Lover.” Sunburst’s ears hung low. “I like that word better.”

When Stygian’s face did not lift from his concealing hooves, Sunburst leaned over the desk, his head tilted, and asked, “Did you… read your book, Stygian?”

“Clearly, I should have.” He kneaded his pastern, flexing the joint. “What a fool I am, making this mistake again.”

Sunburst frowned. “Mistake?”

“Trust, Sunburst!” Stygian grasped with upturned hooves. “The thing I invite despite its continued insistence on hurting me!”

Sunburst flinched as though lashed. Then, he steadied. “Have I hurt you?”

“What?”

“You’ve trusted me.” Sunburst met his eyes. “You’ve trusted me a lot. Have I hurt you?”

Stygian became gentle again, desperation melting from him. Sunburst knew he was honest when he answered, “No. You haven’t.”

He went on. “In fact, I have put my faith in many in this age and have yet to be scorned, even as I struggled to believe them. Starlight. Princess Twilight and her friends. They assured me I would all be all right. And…” The conclusion to his sentence was left unended.

“If anything, it's I who will inevitably let them down. When I was saved, Princess Twilight told me she wanted me to be Stygian again. I’m doubtful I can fulfill that request. Stygian is a rather difficult thing to be.” He looked down, past the floor, into the earth. “After all, his bones ought to have been laid to rest a millennium ago.”

It was neither his self-referential use of ‘thing,’ nor the recurring reminder of time’s division that made the hairs on Sunburst’s nape rise in slow unease. It was the neutral voice Stygian used to evoke his own death.

At Sunburst’s expression, Stygian frowned and said, “It’s not such a sad thing.”

“No. It is.” Sunburst’s concern was undisguised. “It is.”

He stepped out from behind the desk. “Do you want to take a break?”

Stygian started. “Do you?”

“If I did, I would have asked myself.” Sunburst pointed his hoof toward his face, waving it slowly. “‘Do you need a break, Sunburst?’ No, I’m okay.” He looked sidelong. “But, I am worried about Stygian.”

With the same hoof, he reached out, smiling sadly. “Can I help you feel better?”

Stygian stared at the offering of his aiding grasp, his jaw trembling. He took it, lowering from the stool.

“I just want to do something nice with you again,” he admitted, crestfallen.

“That can be arranged,” Sunburst announced.

Stygian showed a weary smile. When he lifted his hoof from Sunburst’s, a faint gray stain was left on the cream coat of his sock.

It looked like soot.

—

Starlight gifted Sunburst with the weathered Dragon Pit box she produced during his first trip to Ponyville. It returned with him when he became a resident of the town. But it remained closed until now. Not even he and Starlight opened it again.

“Oh. It’s like marbles, or knucklebones,” Stygian commented, watching as Sunburst arranged the game board, depositing the tinkling pieces beside it.

Sunburst chuckled, unfolding the box that formed the base of the pit. “It’s a board game. Which, was derived from what you’re describing. So in part, you are correct.”

He lay on the floor before the assembled board, a relaxed leg kicked out behind him. His hoof clicked on the tile as he patted for Stygian to join him.

Stygian folded his legs beneath his barrel, making himself compact. He inclined his head to Sunburst, smiling with brows furrowed. “You’ll have to show me how it’s played.”

Summary given, Stygian lifted the die in his azure aura, turning it in a slow rotation. He dropped it with a light toss. Sunburst nodded at him to move his blue dragon along the path, and the game commenced, each of them cycling through turns in a peaceable quiet.

Sunburst was the first to break it. “You know, I made a large version of this game, once. It was interactive; my friends and I played as the dragons. It was something special I did for Starlight, when she was trying to reconnect with me after I’d been a bad friend.” He rolled the die; it clattered on a measly one. Sunburst moved his piece. “I’m good at gestures. I’m not as good with words.”

Stygian chuckled, spinning the die. “I have good reason to refute that. I’ve read your words and they’re lovely.”

“They were your words first.”

Another stretch of quiet elapsed. Stygian’s gaze was low as he said, “You speak of Starlight as though you adore her. But, she’s…”

“She’s with Trixie. And, while we love one another, we were never meant to be in love,” Sunburst confirmed. A lightness took hold of him at that direct, spoken acknowledgement. In the company of the game, he was unconcerned and free, buoyed by sentimentality. “After all, Starlight likes mares. And, I like stallions.”

The admission must have reached Stygian’s ears like the enigmatic nonsense of dreamspeak. He gave a slow blink, thoughts turning under his gaze like the rolling of Dragon Pit’s marble, spinning in its circuit, headed for the drop.

Thunk. Tiny hinges squeaked as the tile below the blue dragon piece fell out.

Like a rite of passage, the releasing of the trapdoor made its impression of hilarity on Stygian. His hooves shot out, his eyes went wide, and he let out a gleeful, rasping laugh that Sunburst never heard before.

It was adorable.

Stygian hovered an admiring hoof over the hollow trapdoor square, eyes squinted in endearment. In too high of a pitch he gasped, “That is so charming!”

Sunburst clenched his teeth in a grin. “You should have seen my first reaction. I don’t think we ever found the green dragon piece after I flipped the entire board!”

Stygian was still letting out breathy chuckles, hiccuping in the departing throes of sudden joy. He wore it well, the look of a pony who, for the moment, was carefree.

Time momentarily thinned. Sunburst was washed by an achy nostalgia for an experience he never had — a strange sort of missing.

And he said, “I wish we’d played together as foals.”

A shimmery gasp of magic sounded above. A scroll dropped, catching Sunburst on the nose.

Sunburst lifted it to read, eyes scanning rapidly, opening wide.

“Who is it from?” Stygian’s airy voice asked.

The scroll rolled up tight, the addressing name sealed from Stygian’s wondering eyes. Sunburst pulled it close.

“Somepony I need to talk to.”

—

As it turned out, Star Swirl wasn't as difficult to corner for an interview as Sunburst believed.

The return letter was enthusiastic, inviting Sunburst to meet with Star Swirl at his own residence. Sunburst’s younger self would have fainted dead away to receive such a privilege. Now, he just wondered if this gesture was a nicety.

Sunburst ensured Stygian returned home safely for the night. There was no tension or longing curiosity of whether they would cross the threshold together. Instead, Sunburst took Stygian’s hoof, and full of meaning, told him to be kind to himself. He then wrote to Trixie, asking her to pay him a visit that night. Her return message was in no short supply of colorful language at his request of a twilight hour favor, but she agreed — and Sunburst knew she was in the position to say the right things, should Stygian need to hear them.

Before a restless sleep, Sunburst pored over Star Swirl’s letter, readying himself. The next morning, he boarded a train, the landscape rushing by in the reflection of his glasses as he stared at the approaching mountainside.

Entering his scholastic Canterlot home, the first thing Sunburst noticed about the wizened stallion was that he was no longer angry. There was an amicable twinkle in his eyes and an avuncular jaunt in his step as he crossed the floor to welcome in Sunburst and entertain him in his study.

“You wrote to me at the right time. I’ve just come back from a delightful trip to Las Pegasus.” Under Star Swirl’s wide-brimmed hat, the long waves of his mane were starker, as though brightened by the crisp autumn sun he no doubt enjoyed. “In any case, let me bring us something to drink before we endeavor on this quest of personal history.”

From the kitchen, Star Swirl levitated a bottle and two glasses. As his white aura lifted, the bottle’s pale green contents became visible, swirling with thin leaves.

“It’s elderflower, lemon, rosemary, and honey. A bit late in the season to serve it chilled, but I have just come in from a warmer climate.” He chuckled. “I hope you enjoy this recipe.”

A fond smile came to Sunburst’s face as a glass was poured for him. “Actually, it’s one of my favorites.”

The sweet drink flowed into the second glass. “So, you and Stygian are working on the next installment of his authorial repertoire. You know, I read his third book while on my trip.” Star Swirl finished pouring and turned, an affronted hoof on his chest. “He characterized me so poorly!”

“Well, that’s because it wasn’t him doing the characterizing,” Sunburst said. “He hired a ghostwriter. Did you know about that?”

Star Swirl blinked and shook his head, bells jingling. “I cannot say that I did,” he said. And then, “That explains a lot.”

Sunburst leaned in. “What do you mean?”

Star Swirl took a somber pull on the cordial. His eyes were closed when he returned it to the table, the wet ends of his mustache curling over his frown. “I was expecting to find a very different depiction of myself in Stygian’s autobiography. I knew how I appeared through his eyes. I have always known. And when I didn’t see that represented, it made me… sad. I was ready to confront my greatest failing. I’m surprised he wasn’t.”

A funny grin came to him. “After all, who doesn’t get a thrill out of bashing their betrayers in literature? He ought to have dressed me down until there was nothing left but meager scraps of beard. Or, would that be the first thing to go, hm?”

Sunburst couldn’t comprehend how any of this was amusing the old wizard. He inhaled, cutting to the chase. “Stygian’s been much more honest in the writing he sent me. In fact, the reason I’m here is because recently… he wrote that a long time ago, he told you something in confidence and was hurt by your reaction.” Elbows on the table, Sunburst steepled his hooves flat together, resting his chin on their peak. “I want to know what it was.”

Only now did Star Swirl begin to sober. A glaze of recognition overcame his eyes and he sighed, true and deep. “Ah. That was when we all lived together, in Hollow Shades. Those were some of my happiest years. Until now that is. I no longer have to quantify happiness from scarcity. I’m rich with it today.”

Sunburst’s lips dropped into a condemning grimace. “If only we could all be so lucky.”

The comment wicked off Star Swirl. He lifted his head, beard curling. “In any case, my tale I will tell.”

Star Swirl let out a rumbling cough, clearing his aged throat, but before he began, Sunburst raised his hoof. “Wait — may I record you? You know. For the book.”

Star Swirl blinked rapidly. “Ah, that is new magic isn’t it? Of course, by all means. I’m rather delighted to see it in action.”

From Sunburst’s horn, a pale golden ball dropped to hover an inch from the tabletop. It susurrated with magical energy.

“All right,” Sunburst said, eyes fixed on the old wizard. “It’s ready.”

The sphere pulsed in time with Star Swirl’s voice as he began. “I was the first of the eventual Pillars Stygian ever met. For a few years, it was just the two of us, traveling lands that would become Equestria. He didn’t talk extensively of why he left his home village, but I knew a hurting pony when I saw one. I taught him skills I was privileged to have acquired in my later age — things I wish a mentor would have offered to a younger me.

“This vision of what I was to Stygian was clear to me. However, I don’t believe our eyes ever saw the same.”

A beleaguered sigh dredged up from somewhere low within his ancient chest. “I was a different pony, then. A wizard who fought monsters to relieve battles left undefeated in his past. I had become ruthless, preoccupied with survival. I had lost my capacity to listen with a caring ear.

“Stygian must have been feeling the loneliness creep in. He’d known a short, dedicated life with the Pillars and I. We were his world. But the world itself needed us more. Our renown had become recognized among courts across the land. I was well into my mentorship of Celestia and Luna. Clover was like yet another son. There were so many ponies who were special to me. That was no longer Stygian’s exclusive title.

“So, one day, he made a confession.”

Star Swirl paused with immense gravity. His eyes lifted, bags pronounced beneath them where the hide of the lids was thin. He took a deep breath and said, “He had amorous affections for me.”

There was not a word in Ponish, new or old, for bittersweet validation. Sunburst adjusted his glasses, his nostrils flaring with a firm exhale.

Star Swirl’s gaze remained on the far wall, lost to the distant past. “I remember how he looked as he said it. He was terrified. Not excited, not joyous. Terror — that is not the emotion a pony should feel when admitting to love.”

Sunburst’s breathing picked up pace. “Of course he was terrified. A secret like that in your time… it was an incredible risk. He couldn’t predict how you’d react.”

Star Swirl let out a single, embittered chuckle. “Oh, react I did. I told him a number of unabashedly cruel things. I said, ‘I cannot hear that. I cannot know that about you.’ Because he had pulled back the veil. He was no longer the younger version of myself I had longed to be shown gentle guidance. He was the one I could not bear to look at.”

Throughout his story, Sunburst’s ears had laid flat against his neck. Steadily, they began to lift.

With a stunning clarity that could only come from an eon of introspection, Star Swirl said, “I was so willing then to submit to absolutes. All I saw was his differentness. Maybe a part of me rationalized that if I turned from him, if I commanded him to repress himself, I would be sparing him from ponies who would do far worse than I.

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you know the foulest of horrors are committed not by monsters, but ponies. I could tell you stories, certainly. To repeat any of them now would be gratuitous. They would be heartbreaking and offer little value to either of us.”

A light jingle sweetened the air. Star Swirl turned back to Sunburst, a glint playing in his eyes. “Besides, I don’t live in that world anymore. And an old stalluvji like me is just grateful to be in a future filled with so much… love.”

The following silence was loud. A continuous, shimmering hum from the recording spell attempted to fill it.

“You were an inspiration, you know,” Sunburst murmured. “For those of us who felt different. Stallions who never wanted to be something like a guard, or an athlete, or… a blacksmith.”

“So I’ve been told.” Star Swirl folded his hooves rather pleasantly. “I have also read all the rumorous books written about me. The ones who remarked on my lack of wife or offspring. Those that speculated about my relationship with Commander Hurricane — how bold to presume. And, the texts that deemed me a stalluvji outright. Well, I say, if they insist on that term, then it belongs to me now!” He clapped his hooves together in a seizing motion, laughing brashly.

Sunburst was nonplussed. His gaze was low. “Why didn’t you help him?”

Star Swirl’s laughter faded. He sighed, a pained rattle in his breath. “When you’re surrounded by hate, some of it slips into you, masquerading as pain. It becomes dirty and festering, until you forget that the ugly new hate you now possess was ever pain to begin with.”

He reached a hoof partway across the table, easing the distance. “That doesn’t excuse what I did. You’re right, Sunburst. Stygian should have been helped. But I couldn’t have been the one to do it. I had nothing but wrong answers for him.”

Ill at ease, he said in pleading tones, “Stygian was just shy of thirty when we banished him and ourselves to Limbo. He was the youngest of all of us. Far younger than I'd been in a long time — not that either of those things matter much any more. It would not have been right for me to reciprocate his infatuation, to take advantage of his trust. Not when he never had the chance to know a pony who could love him without the long burden of our ten years behind us.”

That didn’t exactly make Sunburst feel better. “There were other ways to be kind. He didn’t need reciprocation. He needed understanding.”

Star Swirl continued to wear an air of remorse. “If I ever offered him kindness in all of my misplaced cruelty, there was but one. I kept his secret, just as I kept mine. I wrote a broader story in my journals, one where he was merely power-mad. A vague truth. Not a complete lie. He still took the artifacts. He still traveled to Ponehenge. History will remember him turning out of envy. It didn’t need to know the complicated underbelly.

“Because when I rebuffed him, it was the Shadow he turned to for comfort. I know this, because I heard it, too.”

Sunburst’s chin jerked up, keenly unnerved.

“We never should have built our fortress in that accursed town. But as always, I felt the pull of duty. Knowing what it held, I wanted the Pillars and I to be the first defense against the Darkness, should it wake. But it had never been asleep. At night, it whispered. It told you things you wanted to hear. It looked like what you wanted to see.”

A shade of the Star Swirl that Sunburst remembered came to the fore when he said, “I avoided it like death. I trained my mind against its ill desires. I looked upon what it showed me and allowed it to move through me.”

His head dropped, preparing for a terrible admittance.

“But when Stygian crashed through our door, wreathed in darkness, it was clear he hadn’t looked away. I knew exactly what the Shadow showed him when the monster he transformed into was all that he never was — and all that he never had.”

Sunburst covered his mouth, choked by the acknowledgement.

“My efforts yielded their own futility,” Star Swirl continued. “Because in the end, when Limbo closed in, I was just as lonely. Of course, I thought of the Pillars, lost to this fate with me. I thought of my students. But there was a space left beside me. A stallion I never met, a love I never had. And that was my fault.”

He smiled, faintly. “At least now, I’ve won the future. And that no longer has to be true.”

With that, Star Swirl said no more. This evident conclusion reached, Sunburst completed the spell. The golden sphere lifted, a story swirling within, and was pulled up into the tip of his horn.

He stared at the old wizard opposite him. “I'm going to show him this recording.”

Star Swirl nodded. “Of course. He’s owed that.”

Bitterness still rolled under Sunburst’s hide. “I think you should meet with him some time. It won’t be enough just to hear your voice. He has to see that you meant it.”

“You cannot possibly know how many times I’ve told myself to do just that. I don’t know how many more years I have. A decade, perhaps? Two, if I’m lucky. With that knowledge, all I’ve wanted is to enjoy my new life, to meet new ponies, and know love I’ve yet to experience.” Star Swirl’s rapt far gaze suggested he was already in pursuit.

He continued. “With all that remains unfinished between us, I do not feel right seeing him until I know he is content. I don’t want the wounds of our history to reopen in my presence. I want to know he has somepony to love him.”

A brilliant conviction rose in Sunburst’s chest.

“He does.”

Comments

[AltruistArtist]

11764328
Thank you so much. I'm glad to know it made its impact.

[kelponie]

i hhave goose bumps rn oh my luna

[Bicyclette]

“I messed up, Starlight.”

i’d say! (but also, been there, oof. okay not quite bad as this in retrospect but still)

“I'm not going to tell you.” Starlight’s lips pulled back. She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, it was in the old tones of her role as a counselor. “You know, he didn't even ask me to keep it a secret. Because he trusts you. You have to see that. He trusts you enough to believe you wouldn’t demand me, your best friend, to tell you what he said to me in confidence.”

Sunburst was chagrined by how right she was.

oof, Sunburst is just rappelling off the cliff here

When he took a sip, it still wasn’t enough. He’d tasted sweeter.

perfect

I always thought it was cruel to build a town around an anathema. If it was so despised, why did it occupy the heart of its world? Send the thing that is different and wrong away if it is so unfit to exist. At least then, it wouldn’t know how much it was hated.

with Stygian’s background and the society he grew up in and his experiences leading him to this, i see how it is all converging with the Pony of Shadows and wow, i am in awe of this story

When I pressed my ear to the stone over the well, I should have foreseen that the voice below would have been kinder than any of those above.

After all, I had known this darkness before.

just beautiful

Beneath his nose, it didn’t smell like anything at all.

symbolism!

P.P.S. I was the one who translated your journal.

hehe somehow just imagine Sunburst brandishing a gun here

It hurt to see him this way. The desk couldn’t have spanned more than a two foot divide between them but that distance was abysmal.

and everything in this scene makes that two feet feel like a chasm, augh

“I’m sure you recall I left little to the imagination in my book. The ghostwriter encouraged me to send all the material I could on the Pony of Shadows, as it was sure to captivate with its gloomy mystique.” His stare was vacant as he said this, lips twitching back in a weak sneer. His eyes flitted closed. “When ponies pick up that book, they will no doubt have all their cravings for the sinister sated.”

i can just taste the bitterness on my tongue i love it

“What else is there to say that I didn’t write? Once more, I opened a grave. I trespassed on the resting place of an ancient evil and the rest, you know. You were there. You saw the Shadow.”

augh, this connection as well! so good!

Indiscriminately, it appropriated the visage of an alicorn in its hasty assemblage, willing even to usurp a female likeness of sovereign power to assert its might.

author, i love you

In a sonorous voice Sunburst hadn’t heard since the antique shop, Stygian insisted, “An ill-fated desire. I was drawn into its thrall like an ill-fated desire. That is the truth of my words and she twisted them.”

ok, this reveal, i just love this reveal that those were not the words Stygian originally wrote. there are so many layers here, and if this is one of those things where two intentional lies somehow stack on top of each other to reveal a truth i am going to lose it

“Trust, Sunburst!” Stygian grasped with upturned hooves. “The thing I invite despite its continued insistence on hurting me!”

i love this both on the level of it being melodramatic and on the level of it being, yeah, i can see why Stygian would think that given his whole life

“If anything, it's I who will inevitably let them down. When I was saved, Princess Twilight told me she wanted me to be Stygian again. I’m doubtful I can fulfill that request. Stygian is a rather difficult thing to be.” He looked down, past the floor, into the earth. “After all, his bones ought to have been laid to rest a millennium ago.”

and yes, though the children’s TV show ends Stygian’s story with that line, it would certainly not be so easy…

Stygian showed a weary smile. When he lifted his hoof from Sunburst’s, a faint gray stain was left on the cream coat of his sock.

It looked like soot.

augh, the charcoal…

Starlight gifted Sunburst with the weathered Dragon Pit box she produced during his first trip to Ponyville. It returned with him when he became a resident of the town. But it remained closed until now. Not even he and Starlight opened it again.

you really are mining that episode to the bedrock and i love it

Sunburst was the first to break it. “You know, I made a large version of this game, once. It was interactive; my friends and I played as the dragons. It was something special I did for Starlight, when she was trying to reconnect with me after I’d been a bad friend.” He rolled the die; it clattered on a measly one. Sunburst moved his piece. “I’m good at gestures. I’m not as good with words.”

absolutely love that this is what Sunburst took away from that event

Entering his scholastic Canterlot home, the first thing Sunburst noticed about the wizened stallion was that he was no longer angry. There was an amicable twinkle in his eyes and an avuncular jaunt in his step as he crossed the floor to welcome in Sunburst and entertain him in his study.

ooh, definitely a happier Starswirl than i expected, so i guess i am with Sunburst here

Only now did Star Swirl begin to sober. A glaze of recognition overcame his eyes and he sighed, true and deep. “Ah. That was when we all lived together, in Hollow Shades. Those were some of my happiest years. Until now that is. I no longer have to quantify happiness from scarcity. I’m rich with it today.”

Sunburst’s lips dropped into a condemning grimace. “If only we could all be so lucky.”

and there is something just so dang real about this. Starswirl being free to get old and rich and happy and pleasant, free to grow and learn and regret the wrongs that he had done, while Stygian still lives with his scars and misery from those wrongs

Star Swirl let out a rumbling cough, clearing his aged throat, but before he began, Sunburst raised his hoof. “Wait — may I record you? You know. For the book.”

Star Swirl blinked rapidly. “Ah, that is new magic isn’t it? Of course, by all means. I’m rather delighted to see it in action.”

the contrast with Stygian’s reaction is a great character note again for the ease that Starswirl lives in, but also makes me think of this being the climactic scene in a journalism movie

A light jingle sweetened the air. Star Swirl turned back to Sunburst, a glint playing in his eyes. “Besides, I don’t live in that world anymore. And an old stalluvji like me is just grateful to be in a future filled with so much… love.”

The following silence was loud. A continuous, shimmering hum from the recording spell attempted to fill it.

and oof… though now thinking back, this is the only way this conversation could have gone

Star Swirl’s laughter faded. He sighed, a pained rattle in his breath. “When you’re surrounded by hate, some of it slips into you, masquerading as pain. It becomes dirty and festering, until you forget that the ugly new hate you now possess was ever pain to begin with.”

as painful as it is for me to see Equestria’s past as homophobic as our own, truths so well-observed make it more than worth it

He continued. “With all that remains unfinished between us, I do not feel right seeing him until I know he is content. I don’t want the wounds of our history to reopen in my presence. I want to know he has somepony to love him.”

A brilliant conviction rose in Sunburst’s chest.

“He does.

augh what a beautiful end to this chapter!