Chapter 20
Beneath one of Ponyville’s houses, buried among the cold stones and burrowing creatures of the earth, the Dark Lord Sassaflash lay on her pallet, drifting in fitful slumber. She had fallen asleep at last only two hours ago, and she would remain asleep until noon, wracked by half-formed, anxious dreams that never quite took full form, drifting in shattered, disjointed fragments through her wearied mind. But despite the disquiet of her rest, she was asleep, and for all she knew the apocalypse she had so carefully prepared might have already struck. She would never have known one way or another.
So it was that when, with infinite care, an exact duplicate of the Dark Lord crept up the stairs from the house’s dungeon laboratory, slimy and decked with squirrel entrails and errant pieces of badger, her original was none the wiser. Seeing that Sassaflash was asleep, her doppelgänger’s tensed wings relaxed slightly, and in silence she made her way across the room to the spiral staircase winding up to the first story of the house, climbing with careful, precise hoofsteps on the stairsteps she knew didn’t creak.
Within the angled depths of time, lean hunters stirred, scenting eddies in the currents of causality. One misstep, and Sassaflash‘s worldline would be cloven in half, slashing a rift down through time for them to pour through, hungry and implacable. One misstep. One flicker of an eyelid by her original. Any divergence from what had been—what must be—and she would be theirs.
Sassaflash made no misstep. Emerging into her crowded warren of books, she slunk over to the front door, eased the bolts open, and slipped outside. After sliding the door shut behind her and magically re-locking it from the outside, she hurried off, mist trailing off her wingtips and swirling in her wake as she darted down side streets and back alleys.
A quarter of an hour later, she emerged from the shadow of a bale of thatching by the Ponyville train station, where the Friendship Express sat quietly in all its pastel, heart-bedecked glory. Accompanied by a contingent of buzzing flies she had picked up along the way, she slunk across to the unoccupied platform and, after making certain that the ticket seller had not yet arrived in his booth, scanned the list of departure times posted by the booth’s tidy glass window. A short nod. Satisfied that she knew when and where to be when the time came, she vanished into the mists once more.
The Sun eased skyward, and the murmur of the waking town rose with it, a gentle hum of chatter and hoofbeats, the sound of wagon wheels and the chirping of birds. The shifting rhythm of village life asserted itself, wrapping all in a warm and familiar harmony…
...Until, that is, a dark-eyed old mule hobbled out of the Ponyville general hospital, his long ears swiveled back and his face hard and determined. His right front leg was held in a sling, and the wheelcart strapped to his chest creaked as he made his uneven, wobbling way forward, the irregular beat of his hooves a jarring note of dissonance in the music of the marketplace. There was an odd familiarity to the scene for him, a note of things remembered. He had walked this road before, seen these crowds, and listened with mild amusement to them as they went about their business. But of course he had; he must have walked this way a hundred times. Why should there be such a poignant touch to it, then? Why such a sense of occasion?
Then he remembered. On a morning much like this, some months before, he had walked this path en route to his first meeting with the mare who called herself the Dark Lord Sassaflash. She had been self-important, abrupt, strange—almost funny in her hauteur. He remembered thinking that he might as well go along with her on her mysterious quest. He didn’t see how it could do any harm. How she could do any harm.
“I was a durned fool,” muttered the Mule, quickening his pace. He should never have trusted her; he should have known right from the first, when she had refused something as simple as spitting on her hoof to seal their agreement. So what if it made her uncomfortable; that was the entire point! If she wasn’t willing to make little sacrifices, how could he have trusted her with bigger promises? He should have seen how deeply her pain and anger had sunk into her soul, and that nothing he could do would be enough to rid her of it. All he could do now was to try to undo what he had, in part, caused, before it was too late and everything fell into ruin. He turned from the main street on to the side road that led to the train station, wobbling urgently along on his wheelcart. If only he wasn’t too late.
“Mr. Mule!”
The Mule’s skin flashed cold. Without looking back at the mare who had called him, he drew a shaky breath and continued on his way.
“Mr. Mule, wait! Please! I was wrong!”
He could hear the sound of cantering hooves behind him as Sassaflash drew nearer. Glancing over his shoulder, he growled, “Leave me be, Miss Sassaflash. You just leave me be. I ain’t a-going to let you stop me.”
“I’m not trying to stop you!” She drew up several paces behind him, breathing heavily and trotting along without trying to bring herself alongside her erstwhile minion. She was soaked through, her mane dripping wet and her muddy tail trailing through the dirt behind her, and she smelled of frogs and mud. “But it won’t help; you won’t arrive in time to stop Sweetie Belle. It’s fixed in time; Tsathoggua must die, and Discord must be freed.” She hesitated. “Or worse still, you might get there in time. You don’t understand. Something horrible will happen if the timeline is changed.”
His eyes narrowing, the Mule said, “Maybe that’s so, and maybe it ain’t. I can’t trust you after last night, Miss Sassaflash, and that’s a fact. I got to try no matter what you says.”
“But the Hounds—”
“I said leave me be!” Snarling out the last word, he bucked his hind legs at the pegasus, narrowly missing her and striking nothing but empty air. Even as his hooves flew back he twisted awkwardly forward and slammed into the ground with a cry of pain, flopping over sideways with the wheels of his cart spinning uselessly in the air. Sassaflash hurried forward, concern in her eyes, but the Mule raised a hoof and waved her away, growling, “You stay clear. I can get up on my own.” He half-raised himself up, then lost his traction and slumped down to the paving stones again.
Reluctantly sitting back on her haunches and shivering slightly from the chill water soaking her coat and feathers, Sassaflash said, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Mule—more than you can know. I’m not the Sassaflash you spoke with last night.”
“You expect me to believe that you done turned over a new leaf in just one night?”
She raised her right foreleg and nervously rubbed at her left. “Two, actually.”
“‘S only been one night,” muttered the Mule, levering himself up on uncertain hooves.
Shaking her head and scattering droplets of river water around her, Sassaflash responded, “Not for me, it hasn’t. I mean it literally when I say I’m not the Sassaflash you spoke with; she’s still back in my—her—home. Tomorrow she’ll wake up to a destroyed world.”
“Then who is you supposed to be? And anyhow, ain’t that what you wanted? A destroyed world?
“No! I never wanted—you don’t understand. You can’t understand, not without having seen what will have happened…” She swallowed. “I'm the pony who will wake up tomorrow to find that all she ever cared for is gone. I’m a time-traveling Sassaflash from a future where everypony is dead. You were dead. I can’t bear for that to have been real. Celestia and Luna drained themselves in their battle with Discord, and without their wards in place I was able to travel back in time to this morning. I have to stop it all from having happened—and somehow I have to do it without actually changing anything, because if I alter anything that I remember, I’ll split the timeline in half, and then I’ll never be able to undo it. It will always exist. You will always have died.” She paused and, as an afterthought, added, "Also, if I split the timeline the Hounds of Tindalos will kill me, but that's a side issue."
The Mule, who had at last succeeded in getting himself upright, said, “And you expect me to believe all o’ that?”
“You must! I was wrong, I know, but I promise I've changed!”
“Ain’t that nice. But I don’t reckon,” said the Mule, turning, “that I can trust your promises, Miss Sassaflash.” He began to wobble off in the direction of the train station, trying to move evenly, trying not to show how much their conversation had upset him. Why couldn’t she have just let well enough alone? Why couldn’t she—
Ptew.
The Mule stopped, and looked back over his shoulder. The Dark Lord Sassaflash had raised her left forehoof to her mouth. Her gaze lifted, meeting the Mule’s eyes. Turning her hoof, she held it out, and the Mule could see a glistening wetness where she had spat on it. Her face pale, the pegasus repeated in a low, quavering voice, “I promise, Mr. Mule.”
At first the Mule made no motion. Then, with slow, awkward steps, he made his way back to where the mare stood, her hoof outstretched. He looked down at her hoof, then raised his head, his wrinkled, homely face reflected in her umber eyes. At last he raised his good forehoof to his mouth and spat on it as well. Turning it outward, he brought it together with Sassaflash‘s hoof with a hard smack. He drew a deep breath, and said with slow solemnity, “I’m a-going to hold you to that promise, Miss Sassaflash.”
She nodded, meeting his gaze. “I would expect no less. Now, we need—our first order of business—we need—” She drew a ragged breath, stared at her friend for a heartbeat, and then to their mutual astonishment flung herself forward and clung to him in a tight hug, nearly throwing him off balance again as she cried “Oh, you’re alive! You’re really alive! I’d killed everypony, I’d murdered you all, I thought I’d never—I thought—I thought—Oh, it doesn’t matter what I thought. You’re alive.” She clenched her eyes shut, her head pressed against his neck and one foreleg wrapped around his shoulders.
The Mule stumbled, taken aback. After regaining both his balance and his composure, he managed to raise his good hoof and return the hug, saying, “It’s okay, Miss Sassaflash. I ain’t dead no more. Or I ain’t dead yet. One o’ the two. It’s okay.” A pause. “Miss Sassaflash?”
She made a noise like a pony breathing through a wet dishrag, sniffled once or twice, and said, “Y-yes?”
“Why is you sopping wet?
“Oh. Yes.” She seemed to realize what she was doing, and drew back. “My apologies, Mr. Mule. That was extremely undignified. I don’t—I’m sorry. It will not be repeated.”
“It don’t signify,” said the Mule. “But you ain’t tole me why you’s wet. You look like somepony done dunked you in the river.”
“Right.” Sassaflash sniffled one last time, and replied, “That would be because somepony did dunk me in the river. Specifically, me. I needed to wash off the squirrel viscera.”
The Mule tilted his head, ears flopping over to one side. The word was an unfamiliar one to him. “The what now?”
“I beg your pardon. I needed to wash off the squirrel guts.”
“The what now!?”
“Mr. Mule, I fail to see how I can further simplify—”
“No, no.” The old creature shook his head. “Why was you covered in squirrel guts in the first place?”
“Oh.” The necromancer gestured to her forehead. “Only my mind was sent back in time, rather than my whole body. Much less difficult to arrange. But naturally when I arrived here I needed a new body, so my reconstitution occurred within a jar of corpses I keep in my basement—don’t look at me that way, they all died of natural causes. My rabbit associate, Angel, collects them for me. Apparently dead animals upset a pony of whom he’s fond—and, well, there were some raw materials left over. Internal organs, skin, bones, that sort of thing.” Sassaflash paused. “But this is a distraction. Time is of the essence. We must…” She raised her forehoof, held it poised in midair for a moment, and then let it slide back down again. With a rueful sigh, she admitted, “I have not the faintest clue what we must do. We are faced with a paradox, Mr. Mule. We must change the future without changing anything in the present, lest we split the timeline.”
The Mule considered this, his brow furrowed in thought. At length he looked up and asked, “We can’t change nothing?”
“Well, technically, we must avoid changing anything that I originally observed. But as I observed both Discord’s release and the destruction of Equestria…” She gave a hopeless shrug.
Tilting a puzzled head, the Mule inquired, “You saw Discord get free? I thought you said it was already free now, and you was still sleeping back home?”
“Yes, that is correct. I did not—will not—directly observe its unbinding; some hours from now, though, I will perform a simple test which will tell me that Tsathoggua has indeed been destroyed.”
“Oh.” The Mule turned, looking north towards distant Hippoborea. “I don’t reckon they’s any chance you done made a mistake?”
Sassaflash shook her head. “Hardly. I said simple, not unreliable. The test was quite sensitive, granted, but we have no grounds to hope that there was any unusual interference tainting the results, unless—” She paused, struck by a sudden thought, and turned to look at the Mule. “Unless…”
The Mule’s eyes widened, and he finished, “...Unless we was to do something. Right?”
“Precisely, Mr. Mule! The test could be corrupted, misleading me—my past self—into believing that Discord had been released when that was not actually the case. That does not, of course, address the minor detail that I directly observed the end of the world, but perhaps it buys us time. We might yet be able to make it to Canterlot and preempt Sweetie Belle.” She hesitated. “Unless, of course, Discord has already been released.” Twisting her head around, she bit into the primaries on her right wing, and yanked hard, wrenching loose a mouthful of feathers. With a wave of her other wing, she lofted four long, turquoise plumes into the air, folding and kneading the air to guide them down on to her upraised hoof. Sitting back on her haunches, she clamped her other hoof on top of them, holding them in place by the quills with their plumes sticking out in the four cardinal directions, and whispered, “Ehye.”
She raised her hoof. The feathers, rather than fluttering free, remained in place, balanced lightly on the edge of her hoof as though glued in place by the tips of their quills. The Dark Lord glanced up at the Sun to get her bearings, and rotated her hoof so that the feathers were aligned with the compass points. Then, motioning the Mule to silence with her free hoof, she waited.
For a few moments nothing happened, the feathers remaining poised at the edge of her hoof. Then the southern quill tipped up and slid to the ground, followed quickly by the eastern and northern quill. The western quill, however, remained in place. Sassaflash gritted her teeth. “Fhtagn.”
“That weren’t supposed to happen?” inquired the Mule.
With a frown, the pegasus responded, “I had hoped it wouldn’t. It was a test of unreality; a magical compass, so to speak.” She gestured to the northern feather, lying in the dust. “The spell holding that in place was weak, and in the absence of a magical field it decayed quickly, letting the feather fall. If Tsathoggua were still alive, the flux of unreality from Voormithadreth should have been more than enough to keep it from falling, as was the case for the western feather—held in place, before you ask, by the unreality pouring from R’lyeh. Cthulhu’s lair,” she added. “It is a statistical test, though, so perhaps we were just unlucky this time. A few more trials, perhaps…”
Further attempts, though, brought nothing but a repeat of the first experiment’s results, and after the fifth try the Mule laid a gentle hoof on Sassaflash‘s shoulder, and said, “I don’t reckon Tsathoggy’s still there, Miss Sassaflash.”
The Dark Lord scowled, and ground the fallen feathers under her hoof. “No, blast it. I had hoped—but no.” In a grim, hollow voice said, “Discord is loose, and the end of the world is nigh.”
In the solemn pause that followed this dire declaration, a few birds twittered nearby, chipper and happy, and a cool breeze swept its sprightly way past them, ruffling the Mule’s mane and tail and carrying with it the cheerful sounds of the marketplace. A white, tufted cloud drifted clear of the Sun, and the nearby thatched roofs glowed a goldenrod yellow in the light. The Mule scuffed his forehoof against the cobbles. “It don’t feel like things is fixing to fall apart.”
“No, it doesn’t, at that,” admitted Sassaflash. “Discord remembers its first defeat, and will not risk showing itself until it is certain that Celestia and Luna are powerless to imprison it once again.” She looked down at the feathers lying crumpled against the paving stones, dirty and twisted where she had crushed them. Somewhat absently, she stepped on one of them once more, grinding it beneath her hoof. “Which gives us one day.” Shredded barbs twined and ripped against the rough stones. “One day to fix things.” She stepped back, gazing at the sad remnants of what had once been a feather, and then looked up at her companion. “Tell me, Mr. Mule, how would you fix this quill of mine? Or rather, how would you make it so that I had never broken it in the first place?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued, “You couldn’t. Nopony could, no matter what powers they could bring to bear, for they would not be trying to mend it if it had never been broken. Therefore, our task is not to undo what will be—because that guarantees that what will be has been. We must take a different road…”
“That’s as may be, Miss Sassaflash,” said the Mule, “but we can’t let Discord wreck Equestria, neither.”
“Indeed not! You are quite right, Mr. Mule. Thwarting a God may be easier than rewriting reality, but that is no reason to neglect the problem.” She rose to her hooves. “Come, Mr. Mule. I think best when walking, and in any case I would prefer not to remain in the environs of Ponyville, lest my original spot me and split the worldlines. Are you well enough to be able to manage a gentle stroll? Yes? Excellent.” So saying, the pegasus turned and trotted off down the lane, the Mule limping close behind.
Sassaflash, the Mule found, made for a very strange companion—stranger than usual, at least—when she was trying to brainstorm. After having given a brief description of what had happened to her in the future, she withdrew into herself, muttering under her breath, with her wings shifting back and forth across her back as though pulled by invisible puppet strings. Every so often she would pause, retrace her steps, and then walk along the same path she had just trod, carefully stepping in her own hoofprints. Once or twice she blundered into him in her abstraction, and after a muttered “My apologies,” she cycled around in a circle once or twice before returning to her previous course.
About half an hour’s worth of this brought them under the spreading boughs of Whitetail wood, the trees’ leaves still gleaming a deep burnished green and as yet untouched by autumn’s colors. Up until this point the Mule had maintained a steady silence so as not to disrupt the necromancer’s train of thought. Surely, though, he thought, she should have at least the glimmerings of a plan by now. After a hesitant clearing of his throat that completely failed to catch Sassaflash‘s attention, he asked, “You done thunk o’ anything yet?”
The pegasus looked up. “What?”
“I asked if you done thunk o’ anything.”
“Ah. No, I have not.” Her lips curled up in an irritated snarl. “Nor will I, I imagine. Starswirl was right; I’m not a methodical thinker. My schemes come to me in flashes of brilliant insight, blast it, not tedious meditation. I just need the right spark, and it will all come blazing forth, perfect and whole—but I don’t know how to find that spark!”
The Mule nodded, and ducked as he passed under a low-hanging branch from one of the trees bordering the trail. “Well, maybe I can help. What was you a-thinking on?”
“Discord. Deicide. Traps, dark magic, forbidden rites, ancient lore—but none of it helps! None of it is enough! The only thing that occurs to me is a recycled scheme I came up with on the night of the Summer Sun Celebration, when Nightmare Moon returned. It would have taken a solid week, and might not have worked even then, but it was better than nothing. Fortunately those six ponies with the Elements of Harmony took care of things before I needed to put it into effect, because it would have gotten very, very cold before I was finished.” She scowled. “But that doesn’t help us at all, because we don’t have a week. We have one day, and perhaps one night. No more. If we only had more resources, more allies! I just don’t see how I can bring down Discord all by myself!”
“What if you did the same thing you done to Tsathoggy? Sucked its magic clean away?”
Sassaflash shook her head. “Not an option, unfortunately. Tsathoggua’s power didn’t just disappear; not only was it deposited within Discord, but a significant portion was also shunted into the swamp surrounding the Canterhorn. That area will clear itself of the excess magic in time, of course, but for now it’s saturated with unreality, and is no more effective a magical drain than any other place would be. There are no other places like it that I know of.” She scrambled over a tree trunk that had fallen across the path, slipping on the slick moss growing on its bark, and held out a hoof to help the Mule over.
Taking her hoof, the Mule clambered after her, clumsily maneuvering his wheelcart over to the other side. For some moments they continued on in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. At length the Mule spoke up once more. “You said you didn’t reckon you could beat Discord all by your lonesome. Do you have to, though? I mean, the Princesses is still out there, and so is them ponies who used the Elements of Harmony agin’ Princess Luna when she went all crazy with the evil.” Sassaflash gave a contemptuous sniff at the mention of the Bearers, but said nothing. The Mule, wisely electing to let this pass without comment, continued, “Supposing we just weakened Discord a mite? Took it down a notch, sort o’ like. Then the Princesses could take care o’ the rest, withouten smashing Equestria up.” He paused. “Miss Sassaflash?“
The Dark Lord had come to a dead standstill on the trail, staring ahead with vacant eyes at a vista only she could see. A muscle in her face twitched, and her mouth slowly drifted wide in an expression that looked very like awe. At last she inhaled deeply, and looked at the Mule. “I said I needed a spark, just now. I rather suspect you have just provided it. You’re absolutely right; we must unbalance Discord, just as we unbalanced Tsathoggua, and thus allow Celestia and Luna—Oh, very well, or your Element Bearers, if you insist on giving them credit—to precipitate it into the pit.”
“But—” began the Mule, but the Dark Lord’s eyes flashed, and with a triumphant grin she interrupted, “But we have no way of draining its magic, yes? Inconsequential! Smashing a window is not the only way to break into a house; one may also trick the householder into inviting you in. This we will do with Discord. It hides because it fears the Elements, and when they were revealed, Discord took no chances, striking down their Bearers before they could be use them. Thus the world was ended. But suppose Discord had no need to strike? Suppose it found the Elements already in its grasp, and could torment the world at its leisure, unafraid of any retaliation? Might it not let its guard down? Might not Celestia and Luna, no longer hopeless with the Bearers still alive, be able to devise some counterattack, once Discord believed itself safe?”
The Mule blinked. “Hold on, now. You mean you wants to—”
“To give the Elements to Discord. Yes! Exactly!” There was an almost manic look on Sassaflash‘s face now, her wings outspread and quivering with excitement. “Now, finding the Elements will be impossible using simple brute force methods—this is clear from Discord’s failure to locate them—but Celestia will have hidden them with cleverness, not with strength, and with cleverness they may be uncovered. No doubt there will be concealing spells, hiding them from scrying, but if they exist, they can be found. We just need some way of tracking them down, some way of catching their scent, so to speak—”
She came to an abrupt halt, apparently struck by another idea, and the Mule took advantage of the opportunity to interject, “But Miss Sassaflash, ain’t that just what we’s trying to stop? Discord getting power? We can’t just serve up them Elements on a platter!”
“Mr. Mule, if it does not obtain them from us, it will obtain them by force—and by a force so mighty that it will cast Equestria into smoldering ruin. We must lose in order to win! Yes. Yes! And to find the Elements in the first place—Oh, that is delicious. Hah! And then, to prevent the world from having been destroyed, to make that all unreal—foal’s play! Foal’s play compared to that! It only needs to be thought of, and that will only take a moment. Come, Mr. Mule! We shall be the pebble on the tracks that derails the train of fate!” With another gleeful cackle, she whipped around, mane and tail flying through the air, and cantered back towards Ponyville, calling over her shoulder one last time, “Come! We have work to do!”
But the Mule did not follow; not at first. He stood there, his ears hanging limp on each side of his head and a hint of fear in his soft, dark eyes, and he tried to decide whether Sassaflash really believed what she had just said, or whether she was trying to lure him into helping her destroy the world. Had she told the truth when she had spoken of what she had seen in the future? What if it had all been a lie? What if her plan had failed and the Bearers of the Elements had successfully sealed Discord away, and she had somehow returned back in time in an effort to salvage what she had worked so hard to achieve?
There were good reasons for him to take her at her word; Sassaflash could hardly have traveled in time, after all, if something horrible hadn’t happened to disable Celestia and Luna, and in any case unless her reformation had truly been genuine, her first action upon obtaining the key to the gates of time would have been to go back and rescue her mother. These were compelling and rational arguments. Neither of them, though, occurred to the Mule. Nor, for that matter, was he swayed by what he told himself had convinced him, muttering, “I don’t reckon she’d of acted so durn tetched if she was a-trying to trick me.” What ultimately settled his mind and set him hobbling back down the trail after the pegasus was the memory of the look in her eyes—haunted, desperate, and sincere—as she held out her hoof to him. She couldn’t have faked that. Nopony could have.
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This ought to be interesting. :)
Sassaflash is ending? that's too bad, I hope you make a sequel, after all you put Sweetie as a main Character but she didn't appear too much.
Problems in time travel, trying to set up a paradox that is only resolveable with the requirement of time travel, wether or not you actually know you already went back, or forward, or wonkawise.
Dont forget, the finale starts half an hour earlier than normal. Just so you can say, told you so, when I frget tomorrow with trying to handle all the cupcakes from the Church christmas fayre.
Would a hound Of Tynadlous be suseptible to Fluttershys Stare?
Eh, who knows? Maybe Starlight will get savaged by an angular entity from the dark corners of the universe. Probably not, but it's at least an interesting story idea.
In any case, a very touching chapter. Great job of showcasing just how much Sassaflash needs the Mule. Definitely looking forward to the answer of a question that still lingers over the Season 2 premiere, and the extra-Lovecraftian version of everyone's favorite draconequus. (Well, other than the Bugul Noz, of course.)
aaa
I was waiting for this chapter to be released before I also reread the previous chapter, for the changes you made. I think this is going in a good direction and I am so excited.
Ah, this is what I love about fanfiction. Taking the dangling bits left by the series and tying them up. In this case, it looks like you're going to explain the emptiness of the tower vault despite its being protected by a door only Celestia can open. The series seemed content with "because Discord," but this may turn out to be much more satisfying.
Oh, hell, who am I kidding. It has to be much more satisfying, because it perforce involves a pegasus made of dead squirrels. Let me just say that again: "A pegasus made of dead squirrels."
Okay, so, Discord is in for a bit of a shock I think. And Sassflash doubly so. It seems she wasn't really paying attention when Starswirl told her what Twilight and friends accomplished in the timeline as it should have gone.
6675166 Say, do you think the dead squirrel trick could be used for other things?
6675166
I can just imagine Aloe commenting on the texture and lustre of Sassaflash's coat:
"My goodness Miss Sassaflash! Your coat! So thick and and soft and silky! It is like pegasus foal down! Whatever is your secret?"
"Squirrels. 8 kilos of dead squirrel viscera. And a spritz of formaldehyde."
<screaming internally>
6675439
What can't dead squirrels be used for?
Yeah up date!! Don't rush the ending, I have seen plenty of other wise good fan fics fall flat on their face cause the writer rush the ending. If it takes another 20,000 words then so be it.
6675489 Well, I don't think they can be used to initiate stable nuclear fusion.
And so the comment thread was buried beneath a tide of squirrel carcasses. This story gets the weirdest (and most delightful!) comments.
6675663
You speak sooth, Kabasue. I don't think 20,000 words will be necessary, but 10,000 more is certainly within the range of probability. Hopefully I'll be able to get them out fairly quickly; this chapter was delayed quite a bit because my computer needed repairing, so now that that's all taken care of I can devote myself properly to writing.
6675464
Hah! Now I wish I could write that scene—although I don't know what I'd change from the deadpan delivery you came up with.
6674736
I'm quite excited too, to be honest; I'm really looking forward to writing some of the upcoming scenes. I've been sitting on one or two of 'em for...yikes, it's been a few years, now.
6674452
There is actually a way for Starlight's adventures through time to avoid destroying this tale's compatibility with canon, although I'm honestly kind of hoping the show doesn't go there, because if it does it'll completely preempt what I've got in store. We shall see.
6673860
In a purely Lovecraftian universe, the Stare would do nothing to one of the Hounds, but then this isn't a purely Lovecraftian universe. Who can say, really? I suspect it would at least make the Hound very uncomfortable.
6673790
I am actually planning to leave the possibility of a sequel in here, although I've no plans for one yet; other than one or two short stories I have in mind, I may take a small break from pony fics for a bit. Or, on the other hoof, perhaps not; it depends on how strongly that putative Celestia fic I've been pondering calls to me.
6676629 If you are not going to make sequels, are you going to give Sweetie Belle more screen time or just take her from the list of Main Characters?
6676649
More screen time. She still has a role to play...
6675927
Squirrel viscera is like fire and violence: if it does not immediately solve your problems, use more.
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A little post epilogue chapter after the dust has settled perhaps? Sassaflash closes up shop and takes the day off (courtesy of a spa coupon Rarity gave her in appreciation for protecting Sweetie Belle et al. during discord's outbreak).
"It is important that the viscera be dead. Slightly putrefied is ideal; superior texture, viscosity, and thaumoturgical capacitance characteristics and all that... Now with a spot of necromancy you can use live squirrel viscera. This will give one's coat and plumage a fetching pearlescent iridescence, much like the Neighweigan Sapphire parrot—beautiful plumage that!
"Too bad necromantically reconstituted bodies are incompatible with Equestria's natural background harmony magic; the feeling of your internal organs wriggling, squirming, writhing is most unpleasant. Have you ever seen that Miss Aloe? The sight of all your organs shifting and crawling around under your skin? It is quite off-putting, especially when you are trying to eat breakfast or use the restroom...
"And the screams. Have you ever heard the tortured wailing of the souls of dozens of squirrels? It is quite distracting and annoying; like tinnitus of the damned."
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Well, no Hounds of Tindalos in the finale, as it turned out. It's a shame; I'm never really able to enjoy time travel stories, because with a precious few exceptions (usually involving stable time loops; I wasn't bothered by the time travel in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, for example), they typically do horrible illogical things to causality (One huge problem, which shows up in The Cutie Remark and in countless other tales: what happens to the individuals in the "wrong" timeline when the time traveler goes back to undo whatever lead to the bad worldline? Do they just blink out of existence? If so, why? After all, if the events that led to their existence were erased, they should never have existed at all, not existed for a brief period of time. And if not...Are all the futures that Twilight visited still proceeding along in misery and devastation out there? What, to put it another way, happens to the inhabitants of Termina when Link plays the Ocarina? Is he serially creating and murdering countless worlds by his actions?). Which is fine, don't get me wrong; story must always come first, and I enjoy MLP because it tells beautiful, heartwarming, intelligent stories, not because it offers a logically ironclad cosmology. This shouldn't bother me.
...And yet it does. Blast it, I want to enjoy these stories, and I can easily allow other sacrifices of logic on the altar of story, but for some reason time travel always sticks in my craw. In a way, I suppose, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord Sassaflash is a reaction to that; the time travel involved here will (ultimately, I promise) make moral and logical sense.
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One thing I find particularly interesting is that all those parallel universes are possible regardless of whether or not time travel exists or not. Certain interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that it is possible that all possibilities exist in parallel universes. And quantum mechanics actually dictates that it is very well possible for the events of a time traveller to be replicated simply due to particles forming out of the matter in the surrounding area, in the precise shape and construct of any given time traveller. Such an event is obviously even beyond astronomical, likely being in similar range to the inversion of graham's number, but assuming all possible parallel universes exist, such parallel universes then must exist even. Of course, that is only if souls do not exist.
The thing that bothers me about changing time is that it's a direct contradiction. Change is something being different before and after an event. Yet when time is the target, what is the before and after? The timeline created must have inevitably "existed" "before" the time travel event on that timeline. No-one ever mentions this in any time travel stories, and I really get annoyed by it.
Also, the question of "fixing" a messed up timeline. What exactly is that supposed to accomplish? If you've been to a parallel universe, it must have existed, and as it is a timeline, it per definition has always existed (the English language(or any language I know actually) actually has no proper phrasing for this, timelines don't have a past, present or future, even saying they just are would be inaccurate) and therefore you're not fixing anything. You're just making a timeline very similar to the one you came from, but not identical (as that would be so improbable it's more likely everyone you know explodes). And the original "messed up" timeline inevitably still exists, as it must, per definition of a timeline. Unless one suggests the existence of a meta time, but then all timelines in their entire span still exists before they are altered from the view of the meta time. I'm sorry, but if you've ever been to a messed up timeline, that timeline in it's entire length has always existed. All those people/ponies/sapient lifeforms still died/are dying/will die a horrible, painful death.
Also, just give up on the idea of free will while you're at it. That also becomes an impossibility with time travel.
The main problem I have with time travel is that there is no room for the suspension of disbelief. You literally need to go only one step of thought before you hit a logical contradiction. You can set up a new set of laws of physics and I can enjoy the story, but so far noone has managed to set up a set of rules for time travel that does not contradict itself or the basic structure of time as we experience it (not even as we know it, literally as we experience it from day to day). I'm not even sure if it is possible, at least not without tossing morality completely out of the window as you realize you've just made an extremely large amount of people die a horrible gruesome painful slow deaths, with absolutely no way of reversing it.
Edit:
Right, forgot to actually address this fic.
Just so you know, I'm still hoping for the best. I've thus far only ever been disappointed, but it's really really hard to do well. I won't judge until I've read the last chapter in any case.
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One important factor to keep in mind, I think, is the multiplicity of timelines. In the Many Worlds interpretation of QM, all possibilities are realized, but they aren't realized with equal probability; some are vastly more likely than others. Given that, there can actually be a point to time travel to stop some horrific catastrophe; you can't erase what has happened, but you can make it less likely to have happened. If the world meets its destruction without time travel having been involved in the original destruction, then time travel makes moral sense; you can't undo the destruction from having happened, but you can alter events so that it afflicts only half (or a third, or a fourth, or...) of possible realities, rather than (effectively) all of them. Further time travel, in fact, will still be moral even if you have to travel through time multiple times, because you'll still be adding at least a thin thread of goodness to what would otherwise be a wholly corrupted worldline. On the other hand, if time travel led to the destruction in the first place, and you find yourself trapped along the "bad" worldline, then you have to be very careful. If you can be sure that traveling back in time will remove the apocalypse, go to it; you've changed the apocalypse from being something that occurs along half the worldlines to something that occurs along only a third of them. If, however, you fail on your first try, you've just made things worse; now 2/3rds of the wordlines lead to apocalypse, not just half, and the more times you try and fail, the worse and worse you make things. You would have done better to not do anything at all.
I will be very interested to hear your impression of what I've got planned for the conclusion of this tale, then, given all that. What I've got in mind isn't exactly new, per se, but I don't think it's ever been employed in quite this way, and it might—might—meet your standards for moral, logically consistent heroic time travel. We shall see, I suppose.
6677073 So, question: will this fic, at any point, whether during the course of the plot or in the epilogue (if there is one) address how Starlight was able to change time without getting hounded? Or are we going to have to officially slap an AU tag on it, rather than act as if this all following the events of canon?
Because if it DOES address the lack of Hounds of Tindalos, I think it would be really interesting if she managed to deal with them because they aren't -quite- so deadly as everyone thought. Better yet, they might not even actually -exist- and all the failed time travelers failed because they screwed up, and everyone just invented the hounds as justification, rather than admit they had no idea what they were doing.
But I suppose neither (especially the latter) possibility is terribly likely, given what has been established as true here.
Also! A thought that's just occurred to me: In an earlier chapter, Sassaflash seemed to be adamant that there was no such thing as a Shogoth, and seemed scared out of her wits when one appeared. This seems strange to me, considering that Shogoths were created by the Elder Things, a race that used little or no magic (unlike the Deep Ones), were constrained by time (unlike the Great Race of Yith), and were composed entirely of regular matter (unlike the Mi-Go or Star Spawn of Cthulhu), which would all seem to imply that the Shogoths would have similar limits.
Given all that, it seems strange that she would be -particularly- afraid of them. Not that she was afraid at all of course; Shogoths ARE monstrous things and rightfully feared by all who come across them. It's just that she seemed more afraid of the Shogoth than of any other thing in that mountain, including the god she went there to kill.
(An interesting aside: the Elder things were cool because, despite their limitations, they managed to fight both the Star Spawn and the Mi-Go (They could probably have completely beaten the latter if they weren't still recovering from the earlier war with the Star Spawn) to a standstill, and completely dominated the Deep Ones. They were only defeated when the Shogoths they created as weapons and laborers (interestingly it's implied that the Shogoths were 'construction vehicles first, tanks second' as it were) gained minds of their own (they were created mindless, but given they could spawn body parts at will, and were semi-autonomous, brains were an inevitability) and rebelled, making them an early example of victims of a robot uprising.)
6682503 Well, I'd assume it's because Sassaflash's knowledge concerning Shoggoths is filtered entirely through whatever was said about Them in the Equunomicon, and since that book was a parallel of the Necronomicon I'd say it's safe to say that the author was, like Abdul Alhazred, seriously freaked out by Shoggoths for some reason. Sassaflash hasn't encountered any Shoggoths, by the way. Those Beasties were Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua, and She was quite aware of the distinction when She finally set eyes on one in the daylight.
As per the Hounds, it's still unclear as to whether or not They'll be showing up, I think. The only reason We haven't seen Them now is because Sassaflash hasn't done anything that tampers with the sequence of events She experienced first time through. I'm looking forward to Their appearance if and when it happens, as I've always rather liked those Beasties.
(Oh, and as an aside, the Elder Things never faced the Deep Ones--or at least not in Lovecraft's canon. As per the Mi-Go, I'd say the primary factor that led to Them losing the conflict was the fact that They lost the ability to travel through space by that point; Tens or even Hundreds of Millions of years separated the Mi-Go conflict and the one against the Star-Spawn, after all, which is more than enough time to recover.
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Unfortunately, it'll probably have to be AU; I knew that time travel was going to be involved in the finale beforehand thanks to the assorted leaks/Twilight's line in The Friendship Games, of course, but unfortunately that didn't really help me future-proof this tale's plot, as I had no idea what model of time travel was going to be used by the show. One could argue, I suppose, that just as Starswirl's original time travel spell was crafted so as to avoid attracting the attention of the Hounds (by setting up a stable time loop, as seen in It's About Time), the modified version of it included a similar safeguard that guaranteed that, ultimately, the timeline wouldn't be disrupted, in which case during the original sonic rainboom, Twilight and Starlight were both just offscreen, watching on. There's even some justification for that in The Cutie Remark—specifically, in Zecora's realization that her worldline "should not be." Raw, unguided time travel shouldn't produce any detectable difference in different worldlines, so the question arises as to what, specifically, Zecora was detecting. Unfortunately, we never saw what specific effects Zecora's potion had on changelings, but...well, one can make some guesses.
Putting on our headcanon hats, and assuming that the laws and backstory of the Mendaverse hold here, changeling magic, like all other magics, involves replacing reality with unreality, the is with the isn't. In the Many Worlds interpretation of QM, though, all possibilities are expressed; some may just be expressed with vanishingly small probability/frequency. "Unreality," then, in this case, is simply those realities whose multiplicity is dwarfed by the number of realities following a more "normal" path, and magic is the emphasis of those unusual paths over the usual ones—or, to put it another way, a causal collapse of wavefunctions which allows one to choose which path reality takes, rather than the normal acausal, probabilistic collapse. Detecting magic is simply a matter of detecting when the wavefunction is collapsing in a deterministic way, rather than in a normal probabilistic fashion.
If we assume all of that to be so, then the problem actually becomes pretty simple. Zecora's potion in the Chrysalis timeline detects changeling disguises—in other words, it detects magic, or the artificial emphasis of one worldline over others. When she applied it to Twilight and Spike and received a different response, it was presumably because they were "super-real," relative to Zecora et al.; that is, just as changelings in her worldline were detectable because they were artificially selecting for improbable outcomes, Zecora's entire universe was also a selection for an improbable outcome, and only Twilight and Spike were following a normal, unguided worldline. Zecora realized at that moment that though the changelings were improbable relative to her, she was improbable relative to Twilight and Spike, and thus her entire worldline wasn't the "real" one; that is, it existed and would always exist, but at such a vanishingly low probability that in the normal course of things it should never be encountered. Starlight Glimmer's magical time travel was just that, magical time travel; that is, not only was time travel involved, but so was magic, and the worldlines in which she interrupted the Sonic Rainboom were not equiprobable with all other worldlines, but had been artificially selected by the spell she used in order to avoid splitting the timeline and calling down the Hounds. Starlight wasn't making the huge split in the timeline that she thought she was making; she was just being carried back to extremely improbable fluctuations in reality that had already existed, but with impossibly small probability relative to the "true" timeline.
...I'm not going to put that in this story, as there's no real reason for Starlight Glimmer's unique modification of Starswirl's spell, or modifications of the spell in general, to come up, but it can at least explain the events of the Cutie Remark and harmonize them with the events of this story. It also, incidentally, turns the Cutie Remark from a story about saving the world into a story about saving Starlight Glimmer (or rather, emphasizes that part of the story and deemphasizes the "saving the world" bit; The Cutie Remark was always about saving Starlight Glimmer), as the world itself, due to the nature of the time travel spell, was never in any actual peril.
Oh, and Shoggoth Lord hit the nail on the head; Sass is frightened of shoggoths, specifically, because Abd al-Hisan (the author of the Equunomicon), like Alhazred, was himself so incredibly creeped out by the very idea of shoggoths that he swore (falsely) that they didn't even exist in the world. The REASON that shoggoths are so frightening relative to other things is left as an exercise for the reader, both by Lovecraft and by myself. Donald Tyson, in his excellent version of the Necronomicon, hypothesizes that they're so disturbing because they're psychephages—soul-eaters. I'm not sure I'm quite satisfied with that as an explanation, but if it works for you, don't let me stop you.
Okay, so not a particularly long jump back. And yep, the Hounds are Watching.
Heh. Well, hindsight is 20/20.
Well, hopefully.
Ooooo, the hoofspiting hoofshake, good plan Sassaflash.
Huh, now that answers several different questions. But then again, were these the same corpses as used in the future to resurrect Starswirl? Seems like that could be a problem for the timeline.
Hmn, that'll be a trick. Though I'm a little uncertain about how this particular trip could be working absent interference in the first place. Maybe Sass can make changes (like this conversation with the Mule) as long as they don't affect the larger events that are coming? Or they count as not actually being changes yet on account of being in a stable time loop? So they haven't won until the Hounds notice, but as soon as They do Sass loses? Complicated.
Geeze, so there's Something Horrible slumbering or imprisoned in each cardinal direction out from Equestria, plus the middle since that's where Discord was? I'd wonder if the vacation industry must suffer a bit in this Equestria, but on the other hand staying home is a little questionable too.
Random thought, I wonder if the effects of the Elements are enough to avoid the interference of the Hounds? Maybe the solution will be to carefully set the girls on their canon confrontation with Discord?
Hah! Speaking of the Element Bearers.
Ooooo, there we go. Time for a little breaking and entering.
I mean, it's not a particularly great plan, but it's better than certain apocalypse.
My god, these comments. Dead squirrels everywhere.
It's glorious.