Forbidden Deeper

by SaltyJustice

Chapter 22

"Leave this to me," I whispered. Luna, though wanting to protest, had agreed that this was my task. I hoped General was right about this, but I had come to terms with it if not.

I walked gingerly towards her, wondering if she was even conscious. Would she attack me on sight? Was she in control of herself, the way Luna had been before? Could I hope to reason with her?

"It may not look like it, but I am extremely busy right now," Celestia said. "Do you think you could come back later?"

"Celestia, it's me," I said. She had been facing away, but I couldn't tell as her eyes had been closed. She turned around to face me, and opened her eyes. Blood red, no pupils. I steeled myself, couldn't react. Had to be strong.

"Damn it," she said, but not at me. At herself.

"Listen, Tia. I know you're in there somewhere, and it's going to be all right. Twilight is on her way, we can make it out of this," I said.

"You idiot, you idiots! You weren't supposed to see this. Why? Why couldn't you have been good little ponies and stayed home?" she asked.

This was not at all going how I had expected it to.

"You know we're not going to give up on you," I said.

"You weren't supposed to get here, they were supposed to stop you. You," she said, pointing directly at me, "were supposed to die."

"I - I - Huh?" I said, sputtering.

"I'm sorry Cadence, I didn't want to tell you all this. It was best if you died before you got here, then you wouldn't have to have watched all this. It'd have been better if you thought I had been consumed at the palace," she said.

"What are you talking about? Consumed?" I asked.

She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them, she focused on Luna.

"It was wrong of me to deceive you, most of all, Luna. I had hoped you'd understand eventually why I did this, maybe even agreed with me someday. I can now only ask your forgiveness," she said.

"What is this? What have you not told us? Why do you not speak as a pony possessed?" Luna asked.

Tia sighed, hung her head. She was every bit as tired as we were.

"I came down here of my own free will. I made a deal with the Unmaker," she said.

I paced my breathing to keep my heart from exploding. It was a tough choice between grief and anger.

"Why?" I asked.

"It can no longer contain itself, Cadence. It has been trapped down here, within its shell, for ten-thousand years, with no contact with anything outside of it. The endless recycling of its own ideas within itself, no outlets, no inlets. We drove it insane, Cadence. It is barely even aware of us right now," she said.

"Every now and then, it has moments of lucidity. They have become less and less frequent, and so I volunteered myself to step in. I have been here, preventing it from exploding and destroying our world in the process as it loses control of its own power. But I will not be able to detach myself from it, and so Twilight will have to destroy me as well," she said.

"Oh Celestia..." I said.

"It cannot be, there must be another way!" Luna said.

"I have considered that, but it is already done. I will be destroyed here. Perhaps that was my fate all along? Maybe this was how it was supposed to be," she said.

"Then why pretend? Why make us go through all that grief!? Why couldn't you ever just be straight with me!?" I demanded.

"Let me be straight with you now, then. Cadence, I wanted to keep it from you. I didn't want you to watch me sacrifice myself, I know you'd never part with me willingly. That was our mistake, and look at what it has cost us! Look at all the innocents who have suffered over the millennia because I was too weak and helpless, and because you would not let me do what I had been made to do. So here, I would have done it without you even knowing otherwise. You'd think I had died a simple death, that Twilight would have been unable to save me," she said. "Wouldn't that have been better?"

"No! No you idiot, if you had told me then I'd have done it in your place!" I shouted.

"And I as well! You had no right to take this burden, Celestia!" Luna shouted with me.

"Of course that's what you'd say, and that's why I couldn't tell you. Do you think I could bear to part with you, any more than you could bear to part with me? I could have saved you all that anguish by taking the choice away from you. So, so much simpler," Celestia said.

"It's not too late, is it? Is there anything we can do?" I asked.

"No, nothing. Already the Unmaker is no longer aware. It is taking the full force of my intellect to hold it in check, and soon even that will not be enough. And yet, I am glad that I got to see you one last time. It has been a treasure to know you, my sisters," she said.

"Then that's it. Do we just wait here for Twilight?" I asked Luna. She shrugged.

"Would fate really drag us down here only to leave us as observers? I think it has more for us than that," she said.

"I must concentrate," Celestia said.

A blast of cool air struck us suddenly, hitting my face and ruffling my mane. Luna shivered and shut her eyes.

"This one this one this one," Celestia muttered.

"Tia? What's wrong?" I asked.

"Tia? What a silly name. I am Tag Rufflepuff, chancellor of the pillows in this district. I'm sorry but I must collect a soft tax from you before I'll let you on your way," she said, without breaking her expression. Deadly serious, black features and blood red eyes, threatening us with a softness tax.

She shuddered visibly and spun back around to where she had been standing on the podium.

"Its dreams are not all humorous, I assure you," she said.

She spoke not a word after that, but the temperature of this void was shifting rapidly. Cold one moment, blisteringly hot the next. The air in here was swirling, and the cavern had begun an ominous rumbling. Celestia stepped back, thrashing wildly for no reason, terrified of an invisible attacker.

"Not now, it's too soon! Not now!" Celestia shouted.

A powerful and sustained rumbling came from below us, the earth itself splitting open as an enormous crack split the flesh that the altar rested on. Black fluid oozed out of the gap, and beneath it I could swear I saw the glint of something glowing. A bright point of light that was swallowed by the fluid.

"Cadence! Run! It's coming and I can't stop it!" Celestia shouted.

We tried to flee, but the path we had entered on had crumbled behind us. Wedge lifted off and flew towards the narrow entryway, but connected with something solid and invisible in the air. He darted back to us and set down, baffled.

"There was something in the way, I couldn't see it," he said.

"Augh!" Inkie screamed and pitched forward as something likewise invisible had hit her in the back of the head.

"What is this force? Celestia?" Luna shouted. We both turned to see her lying prone on the altar, and the black fluid that had coated her was dissipating. We wasted no time running to her.

"Tia!? Wake up, say something!" I pleaded. She wasn't moving.

"Whatever she had done must not have been enough," Luna said. Gabby, Inkie, and Wedge had run over to join us, and Wedge's face looked grim.

"Princess, look. The entrance has sealed up," he said.

I looked, but all around us was empty blackness. No way out now, nothing could save us. But I could try to save Celestia, try to buy us a few extra moments and hope for a miracle. Always hoping for a miracle, that was what I had done so often.

Luna's chest caved in and a neat dent formed in her armor as she cough and choked. She gasped for air before hissing, "Something just hit me."

I stood over Celestia and drew my sword, but that was not what I was hoping would work. I concentrated, bringing up my sight for what I thought would be the very last time.

Stars. All around me, stars. Galaxies, nebulae, great clouds of dust and gas. Space, in all its glory, an endless sea of stars. Never before had I see anything like this. As I watched, the stars were all being pushed out of some point far below me, off in the darkness, and they swirled and flew as dust caught in an updraft. They collided, grew, faded, were born, burnt out, collected together into clusters. An endless sea erupted up into the space above me as a grand web of stars collected together and flew at me.

I could see it, but I wondered if I could fight it. My friends were shouting now, as these stars, invisible to them, had become more numerous and more aggressive. They formed sheets and clumps and launched at us, striking them, knocking them down. I swung wildly but could not connect. Hopeless.

One of the clusters broke up and swirled over to me, around me. I couldn't hear my friends anymore, nothing could escape from the cluster. The points of light condensed and formed an impenetrable wall before lashing out. It ripped into me, tore at me. I dropped everything I was carrying, I dropped my sword. I struggled, tried to kick at them, to no avail.

The tearing continued until I couldn't feel my limbs anymore. Still I fought, numbed to the pain. The stars broke into shards and plunged themselves into my eyes, and the world went dark as the blood and tears poured out. I did not need to see, I could sense where they were and madly threw my dead limbs at them. At last, the stars sheared those off too, and I couldn't feel my body at all anymore.

There was something ahead of me, something still out there that I had to resist, so I did. I focused myself on it, on finding out what it wanted and on stopping that. It hurt me, somehow, though I had nothing left to be hurt. I couldn't hear anything, see anything, feel anything. Just pain, a mind floating through an empty void surrounded by pain.

Never give up, I thought. Never let them enjoy your defeat. Even if I was nothing but a floating idea, I would be the idea that they feared. Colors danced in my perception, my mind's eye. Golden orange, blue, pink. Purple. Something was happening. I felt a shudder, more pain, more discomfort, but I would not let it take me quietly.

I could choose to return. I could choose to continue, it was my choice to make. Ponies needed me, somewhere, somehow, and I could not abandon them. No matter how much it hurt, I would suffer for them, to save them, and I pushed and pulled until -

A great tearing in front of me. A wall of flesh torn apart and I stood in the gap between it, bleeding, covered in sludge, my armor dented and my sword in my hoof. I could not hope to explain how I had gotten here, it didn't matter. Don't stop fighting. Something tumbled out behind me and I realized it was my friends, my sister. Inkie, Wedge, Gabby, Luna. They piled out of the gap I had torn in the fleshy wall and landed on the ground in front of me. We were inches away from the elevator, and I put what remained of my strength into pushing them onto it. Exhausting, everything I had and so much more. Every fiber, every cell, every molecule and atom and whatever the hell is smaller than atoms was begging me to stop here, to go back up that elevator with them. Celestia wasn't here, she was still somewhere down there. Down behind that wall of flesh I had torn open.

I stood in it, looking down, into the void of space. It was a reflection of the night sky, below and not above, but the sky just the same. This, maybe, was the inside of the Unmaker, a universe all to itself, kept bound here in our plane by a physical shell it had grown around itself. Celestia was somewhere down there, down in that void. I could not go home without her, so I stepped out into it, and I plunged off into the darkness.

Into the nighttime eternal.