> When the Stars are Right
>  by Broken Phalanx
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> 1 Chess
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was 35 degrees Celsius in winter, but there were bigger mysteries afoot.

Deep within the castle's living and labyrinthine guts, just beside an unlit fireplace and an array of unfathomably pointy implements ostensibly designed to better research magic, stands a stallion.

Correction, what appears to be a stallion: it certainly breathes like one, albeit on an erratic schedule (15.6 seconds of utter stillness followed by perhaps 2 and a half minutes of heavy and clearly unconscious breathing), but the fact it had not otherwise moved in the slightest, not even with the barest fluttering of an eyelid, was debasing the notion of basic enchantment-

“Thou write in garbled and lengthy prose, little thing; to flaunt great intellect is to diminish it,” says a myriad number of voices in chorus, and in a moment Twilight has already written a chunk of the statement into her research notes unconsciously; muttering what you plan to inscribe works perfectly well until you’re being used as a mouthpiece for an alien entity. She has time for an impatient sigh before her mouth is again wrenched open and words not of her design spill forth once more.

“What of that slab? Another of your kind brought it forth, together you repositioned pieces of dead matter upon it.”

The chess board? I didn’t play chess with anypony but Spike, why does it think another pony was here? It could’ve been a mischievous Changeling impersonating me, but, wait, that doesn’t work; I enchanted the doors to only open to Starlight, myself, the girls, or Spike! And Thorax, I suppose. And all the rest of Starlight’s friends. And Celestia, Luna, my BBBFF, and Cadenc-

“Twas the scaly one,” Twilight’s own mouth mutters laconically, albeit in a voice that bore no resemblance to the purple princess’.

My inner sanctuary’s woeful lack of defenses aside . . .

“Spike isn’t a pony,” she finds herself replying automatically, before berating herself for her slip-up; it could play at being benign (or, given the thing’s utterly lackluster display of abilities during the last few experiments, banal), but it would take something stronger than the three glasses of ‘Bearhuggers Cider’ Twilight had downed (ostensibly to clear her ringing head) to dispel those initial moments of agonizing clarity.


***


A nose shouldn’t be bleeding like this, Twilight finds herself pondering, as if such a distraction may blunt the display of atrophic flesh before her eyes and stultify the mounting horror building within her brain; it may have worked, petty though the defense is, but for the fact it’s maddening attention affixes her, leaving her inexorably trapped in a state beyond even lunacy. Telepathy wasn’t the brightest of ideas; as a matter of fact, I think they specifically recommended against it-

And then her mental world is gone, dashed against eternal shores by raging tides, and with it shatter all the thousands of childish fears like monsters under the bed and Magic Kindergarten; what little remains is an unbreakable sphere that is so fundamentally Twilight it begins to inexorably drink the rushing waves of incoherent thought in a desperate attempt to pluck reason from madness.

And for a moment, she succeeds. Horrifically.

“I feast upon the cadaverific heavens, suckle upon the corpse-light of dead stars. I am the doom of a universe devoid of romance, and when the final atoms split free of their nuclear embrace, I shall consume them. I hunger,” and the sphere of Twilight seems to crack as the pressures of a vengeful sea press around her oasis of sanity, until, finally, the Totality of the Thing’s attention pins her fragile raft of Twilight-ness, and something heavy descends.

This is the end, Twilight thinks to herself, the concept dull and remarkably peaceful despite its implications. For a moment she shares a weighty kinship with insects of all kinds; there is nothing but the daylight, then the shadow of a descending hoof, and then-

A nudge back into the shallows and a distant snort of amusement, the sort a compassionate pony with a streak of sadism might give upon witnessing foals acting foolish before running off to aid in extinguishing the flames of childish failure. As for the push, it is a sensation not dissimilar to a starfish being plucked from the suffocating beach and returned to the welcoming seas.

There are words, Twilight is certain, but even this is too much for her overtaxed mind, and she gratefully slips into dreamless sleep.


***


Don’t you go playing the innocent in this whole charade, buster! I remember what you . . . uh, thought? Anypony who monologues like that is up to no good. And you put Starlight out of commission! Well, I suppose Starlight put Starlight out of commission, ignoring that sticky-note I put on you and what-have-you, but still!

“She’s still repeating the same thing over and over,” Twilight found herself muttering aloud. “Biggest smile in the world, surrounded by fuzzy animals of all shapes and sizes, and the only thing out of her muzzle is ‘The Horror’. On the plus side, Fluttershy’s out of the house more frequently. Shame it’s just to visit the farm, drink cider, and sulk, but eh.”

“What does this have to do with the board or Spike the not-pony?”

Honestly, it was getting irritating, speaking for two.

Maybe if I answer its question, it’ll shut up and let me science in peace. Oh! Or maybe it’ll let slip some of its nefarious plans!

“It’s a game board for Chess,” Twilight says initially, as if that alone were a sufficient explanation; the only reply is an uncomfortably durable silence that seems to dilate time around it, a veritable black hole of ignorant intelligence.

“Oh. Oh! You don’t know what Chess is! Well-”

The next few hours are filled with a wealth of facts and stories, a borderline collegial thesis on the history of a board game. Somehow, between explaining how the weakest pieces got the colloquial name ‘Pöne’, a diatribe on the ‘Dark Masters’ that plagued the game’s meta but a few scant centuries ago, and a brief overview of her own (hoof-carved) set and the legendary figures it depicted, there was even a brief demonstration on how each piece moved and how to play the game.

“-upon which Prince Diadem the 34th declared the naming of such pieces as ‘Bishops’ profane, resulting in a 27,000 pony strong protest that lasted for 6 days and dealt over 32000 bits in damages-”

A very brief demonstration.

And then silence, when all that can be said, has. One can almost hear the pendulum ticks of time’s advance, every second gobbled away by inevitability even as the two figures stood at an intellectual impasse.

“So. . .” the Thing says, the confusion palpable despite its myriad monotone voices, “‘Tis a game for imbeciles and fools alike?”

“What?! No!” Twilight splutters back, outrage and no slight amount of hurt tinging her words. “It’s a scholarly game, a smart game, the sort Princess Celestia plays while-” she pauses for a moment, reflecting on a thousand happy little bonding moments shared over the game, or of how Celestia would sometimes play it with the diplomats she viewed as friends, or, more recently, the Solar Princess would contest her sister and simply waste the time in silent yet mutual joy. Has Celestia ever lost a game of Chess?

No… but has she ever won one? Huh, that’s some food for thought.

“Less than 270 billion movements are plausible within the first five turns: it is as solvable as the Tic-Tac-Toe game Spike the not-pony played a few hours ago. Moreso, actually. What purpose does this ‘Chess’ possess, besides the education of dullards?” the Thing asks, and for a seething moment the only inhibition Twilight has to smashing the board over the Thing’s stallion host-body is that the chess set was a gift.

“It’s not intended to be ‘solved’, except on a match by match basis,” Twilight spits through teeth grit tightly enough to prevent interruption. “It’s supposed to emulate a battle, a sort of strategy game: specifically, my board is an homage to one of Nightmare Moon’s and Princess Celestia’s skirmishes.”

Which you would know, had you been paying attention!

Then Twilight inhales deeply, exhales, and awaits a response with as much composure as can be mustered by one whose entire species’ intelligence has been insulted.

A minute passes in horrified silence.

“What… who… represents the pawn?”

There is a quiet chill to the voice, now not nearly so loud and legion, and for a moment the world seems somewhat wrong, like a snake hiding in a bail of ice-cream.

“Oh,” Twilight says once the feeling passes, “That would be the foot soldiers of each side. Just some random ponies here and there.”

“And… The Queen. They are…?” And there it is again, a cold sort of condemnation that wriggles through the air like living icicles, but the first time just a moment ago is enough inoculation for Twilight to simply shrug it off.

“Well, technically, it’s the Princesses. Some boards put them as the Kings’, but most renditions put a throne or something for that.”

“Why does your own species see some of their own as expendable?”

Huh. Didn’t expect that.

Talking for two is thirsty work; lazily, a bottle of water, encased in purple magic, drifts over to Twilight. Carefully, Twilight sups the water, fully prepared to hurl it away should her… ‘guest’ decide that now would be an ample time to speak.

Seconds stretch to a minute as a reply is carefully formulated, tested for weaknesses, and is found to be sufficient. ‘Invigorating’ is rarely the word a sane individual would use to describe having every one of their words being scrutinized for weakness, but Twilight was one of those poor souls who found intense joy in crafting and defending a thesis.

Shame that I’m experiencing this because of some abomination from beyond the stars, but, eh, gotta take the good with the bad.

“We don’t see our own as ‘expendable’. But, if a threat arises, most are willing to defend the one who ensures tomorrow, happens. In this context, the Princesses,” Twilight replied, only to realize (to her chagrin) that a conversation intended to halt communication had instead promoted it.

“Truly? Because there is evidently a mathematical notation on the worth of each piece, as you’ve informed me; one queen to nine ‘Pönes’. And yet, one life is one life.”

“True,” Twilight replied slowly, even as her brain worked feverishly at trying to predict the inevitable twists and turns of logic this debate would spawn, “but there is more value in the living than just ‘being alive’.”

I mean, a pony’s life is worth more than an ant's, firstly...

“Ideally, yes,” and the Thing’s words are as slow yet inexorable as a glacier, smashing and crushing resistance, such that there is. “Thus a game that degenerates the condition of the living to mere numbers is all the more monstrous-”

“Enough!” Twilight cries out, wrenching control of her own vocal cords in a feat of anger enhanced focus and willpower. “It’s a GAME, a distraction from boredom! Nothing more! Simulation isn’t the same thing as reality, and a simulated life isn’t equal to a real one!”

“Oh.”

Oh.

And so the conversation ended, regret and unspoken apologies twisting in the gut of at least one participant.


***


Sometime later, a thought prickled at Twilight’s mind and simply refused to be forgotten.

Has Celestia ever won a game of Chess?

There are a few false starts, as the quill twitches in Twilight’s grasp and ruins more than a few pieces of parchment, but this feels intensely personal, something even Spike shouldn’t be made privy to lightly. And finally, in wavering yet legible script, Twilight manages, ‘Dear Princess Celestia…’
> 2 The Seer's Sight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Five days. Five sleepless, caffeine addled days; to say ‘they took their toll’ would be a gross under-representation of Twilight’s most recent bout of mania-fueled research, and if it weren’t for the valiant effort of her number one assistant, she’d still be obliviously drooling on her notes and snorting as some dreamworld phantasm nearly rouses her from her slumber.

Instead, she’s now doing all of those things (excluding the bit where she ruins her own research) on the comfort of a slightly scorched couch, sandwiched between a set of blankets. Distantly, even with a truly staggering number of walls and shut doors smothering the noise, one can just barely pick out the telltale snoring of the castle’s princess.

We gotta get the acoustics of this place checked, Spike thought to himself even as he tiptoed away, wincing every few seconds as crystal flooring nevertheless conspires to creak with all the subtlety of ancient wooden slats; it was as if the building loathed secrets, even ones that were so well known that the designation of ‘secret’ was a questionable thing indeed.

Scaled fingers rasp across a hidden book. No. A hidden journal, with a worn quill to match; just the place to put words that get far too easily mangled in the journey from heart to mouth. Then a series of squeaks, as wood rubs across the floor; a chair, in all likelihood. Finally, subtly, a rustling noise, the wings of a stationary angel, dancing with the rough yet loving scratching; for a minute the world is right, and what is right is written.

Evidently quite a lot of the world revolves around a Ms. Market Force.

And then the muse of poetry grows distant and aloof; for a floundering minute, Spike struggles, scribbling away at lines and mutter his frustration into the quiet work-room. It is the very picture of a struggling artist too overcome by the beauty of his subject to fully encapsulate it in words.

“Forget ye’ not to dot the ‘i’s.”

What follows is a rolling tumble that jettisons paper into the air and creates a momentary blizzard, a genuine masterpiece of multi-step failure. A moment passes in relative silence, the fluttering of paper wings being the only noise to accompany an irritated groan from the ground.

“Or to cross ‘t’s’, as such the case may be,” the voice added a moment later, with enough of a pause for Spike to process the orders were being issued from his own mouth.

Huh. Wonder how Twilight messed up bad enough for something this weird to happen. Aw, I can’t be like that: there’s a solid twenty percent chance it’s something Starlight did…

And then Spike spotted it; stuffed in a corner and with a half-soiled tea-cosy balanced precariously over its face like some form of mediocre camouflage, stands the breathing mannequin.

At least, Spike was assuming it was some sort of stuffed-pony-thing; it had arrived alongside a rather extensive letter from Canterlot’s Department of the Uncanny, Cryptic, and Calamitous that had been tossed to the side with little aplomb while the letter bearing Celestia’s royal seal was snatched up and read.

“Dunno how she forgot I’m literally her means of privately talking with the other Princesses…” Spike muttered to himself, unconsciously cracking a grin at the memory of the frenetic Twilight desperately trying to find deeper meaning within a basic census, only to frown a moment later as he stepped forward to examine the mannequin in more detail.

Lotta weird stuff’s been happening ever since this thing showed up...

It isn’t like Rarity’s dress mannequins, something that is effectively little more than barrel, head, and a ghostly off-white fur; this doll-thing is a mottled green, uneven in spots as if the fur were a fine patina. No Cutie-Mark, not even the subtle stitching of somepony’s initials that some of the more cheeky designers integrate into that spot as a joke. And finally, it breathed, and with enough unevenness to be unsettling.

In the spirit of scientific inquiry, Spike gently pinched the mannequin’s nose shut. A minute passes in harmonious silence.

“Unless ye’ aspire for the vaunted position of murderer, remove ye’ phalanges from my prison’s nose,” Spike said, before sticking out his tongue and stretching out his mouth in irritation; he may have said the words, but he was not their speaker. Nevertheless, he relinquished his grasp of the ‘stallion’s nostrils.

“You know, if you made any sense, you probably wouldn’t have a bit of cloth draped over your face. Who, or what, are you even supposed to be?” Spike replied, his tone drier and less nurturing than a desert.

“I am the hunger that drifts through sunless skies-”

“Yeah, nah, not playing that game. Try again,” Spike muttered, somehow interrupting the flow of words spewing uncontrollably from his own mouth with an acerbic interjection.

“I… am known as an Unclassed Ontological Reversal Entity?” and the tone, somehow, despite the myriad voices thrumming through the air, managed the slightest hint of uncertainty.

“Do I look like Twilight? All of that is so much gibberish to me. Come on, gimme a name or something to work with,” Spike says, his tone transitioning, softening from diamond to quartz with every word. His words are by no means welcoming by the end, but at least it dulls the steel in his voice.

The seconds pass in silence for the busy little dragon, who, so fully enthralled in his basic cleaning duties, the indecision of his speaking partner passes in mere moments. It is a blissful sort of existence, one so wrapped up in petty activities that a drake can carefully categorize the fundamentally absurd within a vault deep in the mind and never explore it.

“Impossible,” comes the reply, whispering out of the corner of Spike’s mouth, slurring and drunk off loneliness. “Names beckon the owner. I cannot share that with you; you’ve not the ears to comprehend nor the mouth to say it, little Not-Pony.”

“Okay, first, I’m a Dragon, not a ‘not-pony’. Two, that’s pret~ty lame, dude. I mean, I’ve told you my name-”

“Nay,” Spike’s own traitorous mouth interjects, admittedly not of Spike’s accord. Nonetheless, he soldiers on.

“-jeez, hello, my name is Spike, and to be fair, you were spying on me, watching me write, uh, private stuff!”

“I know not what this ‘spying’ is, but the watching, at least, I can answer in negation.”

“Dude, you were literally hidden in the corner until I found you. And you commented on my writing! You absolutely were watching me!”

“Nay, I was listening. I have not the capacity to see.”

There’s a lull in the conversation as Spike very carefully massages his forehead, takes two steps so the writing desk obscures his vision of the ‘stallion’, and scrawls out a short note upon a thus-far unruined parchment with a claw and a puddle of fast-drying ink. The little dragon pauses, wafting the unsent letter in the air until he’s certain all ink has dried, then waddles out from behind his makeshift shelter, armed with the knowledge that, one way or another, he would know the truth.

“Okay, let’s say I believe you. What’d I write, then?”

“Do you mean now, before you fell from your perch of dead matter, or two months ago?”

And like that, the certainty cracks and reveals itself to be nothing but a fragile skin over the yawning void of uncertainty and the creeping doubt of ambivalent heavens. That isn’t supposed to be the reply at all; this was quickly becoming complicated, the sort of complicated that hinted at chronomancy, kismet, and a bunch of other words Spike didn’t exactly know the definition of but had no issue with using in an attempt to sound mature.

“You weren’t here two months ago, dude; you couldn’t know-”

“-Dear Princess Celestia,” the legion of voices said softly, its interjection containing hints of a variety of emotions, “while I don’t want to sound petulant, I’m not sure why you placed D.U.C.C under my jurisdiction; how do amorphous abominations,” there’s a pause here along with some muttering too low to be understood, as if the voices found the phrasing distasteful, “fall under the domain of Friendship? Your eternal student, Twilight Sparkle.”  The myriad intonations cease spilling from Spike’s mouth for a moment, as if contemplating commenting on something, before adding, “T’was the thirty-seventh revision on that particular letter, but only that one is followed by the sound of combustion.”

Spike just… looks at the ‘stallion’, uncaring if such staring was rude; in a blur, all sorts of sappy poems and love letters come rushing to the forefront of his mind, not intended to be shared with the world. Spike opens his mouth, but the only thing that escapes his lips for a few seconds is a strangled exhalation, even as his cheeks start to veritably glow. Teeth clack together as he chews on his embarrassment, until, finally, Spike feels ready to speak.

“How?” he says, hoarsely.

“The universe remains a romance,” is the instantaneous reply, but the voices continue, prompted by the snort of derision the little dragon gives the ‘stallion’. “The waves of sound still crash against these crystalline barriers. Particles remain in union. All things endure until the end, and even so, I do.”

“Dude, you’re going full Manic-Twilight; repeat what you said in basic Equish, and maybe this’ll be a dialogue rather than a monologue.”

“Verily. I feast on dead stars. In my natural glory, I must listen, hear the choking gasps of suns that have endured millennia in agony so that I may find them. Even in this state of hobbled abnegation, I-” the voices pause as Spike pulls a dictionary from a wall and starts flipping through it, only to finish, rather lamely, “-I hear well.”

“Huh,” Spike replied, before tossing the dictionary to the side, leaning forward, and saying, “Dunno how this is ‘abnegation’ or whatever. I mean, based on the letter we got with your arrival, you’ve got some serious wards on you and stuff.”

“There is nothing upon me I couldn’t peel away in a moment, little not-pon… apologies, little dragon.”

“Then why do you stick like that, if it’s so uncomfortable?” Spike shot back, grinning in triumph; there may not have been much reason to it, but having spent most of his young life as a disadvantaged speaking partner to most of the stallions and mares he’s met, there was something refreshing about being an equal.

“Why do you stick like that, if it’s so uncomfortable, little greedy dragon?”

“What?!” Spike spluttered, before affixing the ‘Stallion’ with a glare. “Because being like that would hurt those around me, that’s why! What’s your excuse, huh?!

“So it is with you, so too with I,” is the reply, steady yet clearly well-tread, as if this exact conversation has happened uncountable times before.

A deflated “Oh,” is just about all Spike can muster up as his anger abandons him. He sits, brainstorming for a moment, before saying, as an audible olive branch of sorts, “I, uh, I turn into a borderline mindless monster when I own too much stuff. How about you?”

“Those conscious within my presence lose cognizance of the world around them-” the legion of voices hum, a low sigh as Spike’s eyes glaze, before, what was it, speaking in plain-Equish? “Your mind melts when you hoard, I melt minds when I exist. So, truly, this shackling is quite educational; I have learned to speak through mouths, and I have deemed that minute minds are functionally barbaric.”

There’s that same, humming, sigh, yet again.

“I, uh, think you may wanna work on talking through your own mouth, but, yeah, sure, that’s neat, I guess. But I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming here,” Spike replies, having entirely given up trying to follow-up the more archaic words with a glance through the dictionary.

“Oh? Verily, I thought your kind spoke to each other with the orifice nearest to the entity in question. How inefficient. Yet, yes, you are correct, little dragon; I simply take exception to the belief I am capable of being bound when it is not desired. Though, verily, I suspect the local Sun will perish before that belief propagates beyond reason.”

“Yeahhh…” Spike replies, his mind choosing to mull uncomfortably upon the implications of the statement, even as he avoids mentioning the reports (more akin to a footnotes, really) that detailed how easily the ‘stallion’ was subdued. “You kinda lost me there, but, hey! Uh, you keep up with the whole ‘foretelling the end of the world’ stuff, there, champ!”

“I find that to be a frequent statement made about my comments-” was about how how far the myriad voices got before the dragon pivoted and borderline sprinted from the room. There is a moment of silence, before, once more, a low hum fills the room, lonesome and weary; the rest of the words go unsaid.

-and yet I know not why.
> 3 The Power of Names
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the remnant of the table sits, for lack of a better word, a report; if one were so inclined, though, they could instead appropriately deem the papers as the scribblings of the insane. Given how the writing, at seemingly random variables, alternates between stoic, stately, and above all else scientific prose, and a frightening excitability constrained to parchment only through looping text that sees fit to crawl along the margins and alternates colors, and, far more worryingly, volatility, naysayers may have a point on this one.

What follows is not that report, as the lettering will spontaneously combust in perhaps twenty seconds and take the rest of the desk with it, and goodness knows twenty seconds is hardly enough time to read one page of a legendarily expository ‘Ms. Sparkles Scientific Analysis,’ much less the entire thesis. No, what follows is a re-drafting crafted primarily from memory, a sort of abstract that possesses enough chronological distance from the experiment itself to allow a sane retelling.

For the most part.

May the silent stars have mercy on us all.


***



Experimental Observations on Exotic Ecology and Enculturation


By Twilight Sparkle



What follows is a series of tests (and prospective Hypotheses) I, henceforth to be regarded as Twilight Sparkle, have performed upon the Unclassified Ontological Reversal Entity (henceforth regarded as Apostrophe, for reasons that shall not be elucidated upon later in this report).



 I do solemnly swear I have acted with professionalism and considerable moral concern in the testing of my subject, and am unaware of any influences upon my subject that may have skewed resultant data.



Interview 1: The purpose of this query is to establish what upbringing the subject Apostrophe possesses, as well as determine if its thought processes possess considerable deviance with its own kind.



Unfortunately, this interview is shorter than was originally anticipated.



***


“I possess no kin and was brought to maturity within a super-void’s chilly womb. And in those lightless places is where I dwell until the siren song of sustenance rouses me from my self-induced stasis. I have heard a thousand potential cosmos perish before they were born, I have heard the stars grow dark and silent, and I have heard the great detonation and the cataclysmic eventuality of gnashing infinite mass and zeroth volume, yet never have I witnessed another as me. Others exist, perhaps, as well-traveled, or enduring, or simple in design and function, but none are of mine, or ever will be.”

“But surely-”

“None. I would have found them, if there were.”


***



Interview 2: Given how little information we have on the subject’s Apostrophe’s physiology, I sought to correct this gap in knowledge. Due to the potential overlap this topic may have had with ‘Capabilities’ (ie, the magic we associate with Unicorns via the mutation of a horn nub, and the flight Pegasi possess via the unsettlingly well researched wing mutation), such tangentially related topics were included in this interview.



This was a mistake.



Tangentially related, Apostrophe’s ability to communicate has since seen remarkable growth; no longer are others required to speak on its behalf. Rather, the air itself is distorted, replicating the same ripples a soundwave might produce.



***


“What do you mean, you ‘render yourself massless’? You can’t just do something like that!”

“Verily? What of my adjustable Volume?”

“That too!”

“We find ourselves in a conundrum, then. For that is how I must traverse the cosmos and reach my nourishment. That is how I have endured the end times as they happen, with flames intense enough to boil stars. And that is how I am here.”

“Look, I don’t want to call you a liar, but-”

“Then call me a spinner of falsehoods, then; it amounts to much the same as what you do now.”

“... Let’s just table that issue for now and move on to something else, okay?”

“Verily.”

“So… what’s with all this ‘star eating’ nonsense?”

“I imbibe the light for basic sustenance and devour stars as they breathe their last; one could liken me to one of you ‘carrion-eaters’, though, verily, it is a pointless phrase. Few beings on your world aspire to eat the living, as the platter Spike the dragon served ye’ prior to this interview serves to prove; t’was naught but decaying cells.”

“Just for the record, I ate a hay-burger, but that’s neither here nor there: my real question, really, is how you claim to eat stars and other celestial bodies.”

“...Be that a query?”

“Yes, it was a question.”

“Verily? It lacked the lilt of one. Be that as it may, my explanation is conjoined with my evidently impossible capacities.”

“Just answer the question, please.”

“Verily. I, my natural form, lacks sufficient plating to endure the terrible ravages of a detonated star, save for within my stomach; therefore, I must approach with little to no geometric volume and a significant mass. In this state, my own incalculable density compels decaying star matter to my presence and renders light itself incapable of escape.”

“That’s… somewhat… no, no ‘somewhat’, that’s just terrifying. Ahem. If that’s true.”

“Ye’ entrap grains from cradle to grave whilst feasting on their kin before them. Wheat witnesses the depravity of hunger before the guillotine of the mill.”

“I’m not going to apologize for eating!”

“Nor will I.”

“Son of a [redacted]! [Redacted]! [Redacted]! [Redacted]! Look, even if that is how you eat, I fail to see how that nourishes you, you [redacted].”

“What is a [redacted], and how would it go about fitting in my [redacted]? How would one go about acquiring a-”

“Just answer the question, please!”

“Verily, though I still possess queries. I subsist not on substance , but on the ontology of the star. What it was and what it could be. Matter reverts in my true presence, traversing backwards upon the usual chronological axis, leaving me naught but a belly full of stars alongside my true foodstuffs, aspirations of warmth and fulfillment.”

“Wait. Are you telling me you eat the thoughts of stars?!”

“Indeed! And when the burn within my gut becomes an agony, I await the end times before regurgitating the plasma into existence.”

“Yeah, no, we’re not just skipping over the fact you eat the dying wishes of SUNS! What, what about the planets that require the star’s heat to maintain a thriving ecosystem?!”

“One suspects that if a life-form were incapable of escaping the expansion radius of the typical star, life-forms on that planetoid should possess far graver concerns than my hunger snuffing out the cosmic candle baking them alive.”

“Urgh… I think I’m going to be sick…”


***



Of course it turns out that the first intelligent extraterrestrial life form we encounter has more in common with a Chrysalis-aligned changeling.



Interview 3, Experiment 1: [Redacted]



Ask not for the subject’s Apostrophe’s true name.



***


“What am I supposed to call you?”

“Ye’ seem partial enough to pet names deriving from ‘entity’, ‘thing’, ‘monster’, and ‘abomination’; one of those shall  surely suffice?”

“My feelings on the topic of your ...diet... aside, I owe you at least that much of a common courtesy. You do have a name, right?”

“Always. But I shall not: names beckon, and your minds are ill-equipped to handle the unrelenting presence I, the-true-I, exude.”

“Really? I’ve established thirty-seven maximized ward ‘dulling’ spells contingent upon my mental well-being becoming at-risk; if you’re really so big and bad, they’ll activate, and I’ll be fine. So stop moping; what’s the worst that could happen?”


***



There is no proper way to truly explain what followed; the wards activated flawlessly, yes, but it was like using a thimble to scoop water out of a sinking ship. I understand this to be an uncouth practice, but I possess no method of encapsulating what happened at that point, besides the copying and transplantation of the fragmentary memories drifting in my brain; a vial of the memory potion will be included in the original copy of this report.



On the plus side, the sofa is no longer scorched; it seems Apostrophe doesn’t lie about the time-warping effect.



Interview 4 3: Once the effects of the prior experiment subsided, I inquired on the various effects I could still recall; unfortunately, this interview had to be cut short to prevent biological contamination.



***


“WHAT THE [Redacted] WAS THAT?!”

“Ye’ dribble life-fluid from mouth, eyes, and ears: surely that is of higher priority?”

“You! Science! Now!”

“If I were of the same caste as your kind, I would find your mania frightful. As it is, it is still quite disconcerting. With what should I even start?”

“How about with that weird distortion-thing?!”

“I assume with ‘weird distortion-thing’ you refer to my shadow’s shadow’s shadow?”

“...Explain.”

“Would a sixth-dimensional object possess a three-dimensional shadow? Nay. It would cast a fifth-dimensional shadow, which in turn would distort the fourth-dimension and so on.”

“And the cacophony? It, it stuttered, with emphasis on the wrong syllable.”

“Existence rarely comes silently to one such as me. Though, perhaps the noise you refer to was a fragment of my name?”

“You… talk a lot about how we’re not able to withstand your presence; well, how do explain me, eh? How do you like them-”

“You intermittently flickered betwixt consciousness and… not. Your functions utterly halted sixty-seven times over the course of my transient existence, and if not for diffusing the experienced terror through the subconscious, I suspect the end-state would have concluded on ‘halted’.”

“-apples…”

“Verily. I suspect there will be bad dreams for days.”


***



Apostrophe is dangerous. I don’t know how or why something like it was close enough to be captured and transmogrified by even the most powerful orbital mirroring spells, but it seems we should take Apostrophe at its word when it states to not pry into certain topics.



At least, not until we can get about a hundred thousand more wards set up.



For the moment, however, Apostrophe seems content to reside in the corner of the study; I have since learned that the irregular breathing pattern of the ‘stallion’ form is due to Apostrophe’s inability to consciously inhale or exhale, in much the same way that Apostrophe never learned to blink or see due to never having eyes before. 



It seems, in many ways, we (The Scientific Community of Equestria) may need to redefine the nature of ‘life’ if entities like Apostrophe are existent.



***


Twilight sighs, even as she coils the incomplete abstract up and (with more than a little bribery to a certain assistant) sends it to Canterlot via owl; simply remembering the outcomes of her manic fits twists her guts into an uncomfortably complex tangle of knots and pride. ‘Want-it-need-it’, of course, muscles itself to the forefront of her mind as the brunt of her anguish, an unsettling reminder of directionless fear and pointless terror; and yet, those same fits of temporary madness have seen her through more than a few of her happiest achievements, a wellspring of (albeit occasionally misguided) intuition and and quick-wittedness.

What would it be like to be in that state, perpetually?

She shudders; agonizing, that’s how.

The last seven days, with one spent in a state of tired burn-out: a lack of caution and restraint around the subject had resulted in more than a few worried visits from friends.

“This obsession needs to stop,” Twilight muttered to herself even as she snuggles deeper into her bed, her body wreathed in an almost ethereal shroud of blankets even as she closes her eyes to rest.

Funny, she manages to think even in the depths of slumber, I’m not having bad dreams. Guess it doesn’t know everything...

And so the night passes, in horrors unshared and un-experienced.
> 4 The Color of Starstuff
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A week.

It had been a week since the experiment, a week since the interviews, a week since the roar of manic obsession had been throttled away into a quiet whine. It had been a time of quiet contemplation and reflection, a time to spend with friends.

Twilight sighed, even as she massaged the fur around her horn; the memory alone threatened to nurse her migraine back from the dead.

At least Starlight is back to ‘mostly functional’.


***


“Darling, between Starlight’s, ahem, fit, and your own reclusiveness, well, let’s just say we’re worried about you. We’re all worried.”

In retrospect, Twilight had to hand it to Rarity; given the information the white Unicorn was, at that point, clearly working with, the fact the conversation hadn’t initiated with hysterics was a display of fortitude seen only during the most serious of moments. Furthermore, future-Twilight was going to have to award the fashionista another point, if only for sheer deviousness; Rarity had somehow coerced Applejack into attending the spa as well.

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” Twilight replied, only to wince and fumble for a more truthful answer when the empty platitude is returned with a snort from the farmer. “Okay, maybe there’s a small problem, but nothing I can’t handle-”

Another grunt, Applejack glowering from under the surface of the mud-bath like some vaguely concerned swamp-monster.

It’s almost as if they were made for the ‘good-cop bad-cop’ routine, Twilight thought to herself, even as she jerked her head towards Rarity, who was clearing her throat.

“You see, we heard some troubling things, dear-”

“From Spike,” Twilight interjected, tiredly; it didn’t exactly take a degree in Arcane Studies to figure that one out.

“Yes dear, from Spike; he really is quite the gentle-drake, I’ll have you know, but some of the things he told us were, well...” Rarity glanced at Applejack, as if beseeching the orange mare to share some of her inner-strength.

“What’s goin’ on, Twi?” Applejack finally said, slowly yet with a quiet forcefulness. “Ah’ keep hearin’ things about how yer usin’ a load o’ bandages recently, how you keep gettin’ bruises around yer eyes, and how yeh have some strange stallion livin’ in yer castle-”

“Applejack!” Rarity said, aghast, perhaps, of how straightforwardly and tactlessly the farmer introduced the topic.

“What? We’re all thinkin’ it, Rarity!”

Twilight, for her part, simply sat there, once again feeling the familiar sensation of being privy to one conversation while an undercurrent of subtext drowned out her ability to understand what the real dialogue was about.

I wonder if lies of omission and innuendo can somehow be added to the list of things the Element of Honesty considers a lie? Twilight pondered wryly, only to shake her head; if such things were considered lying, Applejack’s head would probably explode.

Then Twilight sneezed and stared at the minor dust-storm that ravaged across the mud-bath, grimacing as another thought, unbidden, made its home in her mind.

I hope this weird winter weather is resolved sooner rather than later; it’s been warmer than some Summer day--why are they looking at me like that?

“Well, dear?” Rarity finally prompted, her voice simultaneously soothing yet sharp, like the rasp of silk across a blade.

“W-well,” Twilight replied, suddenly feeling intensely scrutinized yet having no clear way to escape it.

Thankfully, Applejack came to her rescue, though, in hindsight, it felt more like an unintentionally brutal execution.

“Do yeh’ feel safe in yer home, sugar-cube?”

“What? Yes, absolutely!”

Except for all those volatile chemicals, the occasional experimental mishap, the weird ability for the crystal flooring to be flammable at the worst times, and--oh crap.

“Oh, Sugarcube-”

Twilight found herself pulled into an embrace, and not just a regular hug; this was an Apple family deluxe, the sort of hug that causes a faint ‘squee’ to squeak out of the hugged and causes a momentary weakness of the joints. It had been a dead art, until Pinkie Pie had rediscovered it in an ancient manuscript whilst traversing a dangerous jungle-

Shh, brain. Hugs.

And it was like a power-switch in Twilight’s mind had gotten flicked, leaving her with nothing more than a blissful smile and eyes glassy from joy.

“Rarity? Get tha’ girls.”


***


Funerals have been assembled with more levity.

And more coordination, evidently.

“Sugarcube? Ah ain’t exactly a math-y sorta pony, but Ah can clearly see we’re missin’ three-”

“Dude, you’re literally holding Twilight.”

“-two ponies, and none o’ yer sass, Dash!”

“I simply couldn’t find Pinkie or Fluttershy; though, even if we could, should we really try to bring the poor dears into such an…” there’s a pause, lengthy like a hangman’s rope, “...uncouth sort of situation?”

A moment of introspection passes for the assembled ponies (excluding Twilight, who for all intents and purposes might as well have been a non-entity for all the brainpower she was generating whilst in the throes of carefully concentrated friendship): the mere thought of how Pinkie Pie would’ve reacted to this chicanery is enough to cause at least one of the contemplative ponies to shudder and turn a lively shade of verdant.

“Well, dears,” Rarity finally manages, “To glorious victory or-”

“Or the part where we do the logical thing and call the cops, Rarity. Come on, I wanna give this jerk-patrol a hoof-sandwich and we’re not getting anywhere just standing around.”

“Yeah, cause yer doin’ so much with the Weather Patrol…”

“Hey! I can’t work with clouds that are literally evaporating before they get here, AJ; it’d be like trying to make Apple Cider without any freaking apples!”

The gentle bickering continues as Rainbow Dash pushes open the castle door and the ponies half-walk, half-drag their way indoors.


***


Something flickers at the edge of perception for Twilight; the generous might call it a thought, thought at this point it was still well within the realm of ‘instinct’. Namely, it is the instinct that a certain sense of warmth and security has abandoned her.

A hoof stretches out, blind and searching, slapping away at the aether of half-consciousness in pursuit of-

Agony, clearly, as the now fully cognizant Princess realizes she swatted one of Spike’s more spiny frills.Then she opens her eyes to pandemonium and the pain seems to partial relocate from her hoof to her brain whilst legally changing its name to ‘Migraine’.

The distant shouting of at least two ponies wasn’t exactly helping matters, either.

“Spike. What, exactly, is going on?” Twilight grunted, her blurry vision barely picking out the smudgy purple drake from the mass of red blockiness beside him.

“Uh, we’re gonna need snacks or something if I try to say the whole story, more like a saga, really-”

“Give me the Sparkle-Notes version, then! Focus Spike!”

“Rainbow Dash and Applejack are in the process of trying to fight Apostrophe and Rarity, well-”

“Fainted, yes, saw that coming a mile away,” Twilight grumbled, before realizing with a blink something peculiar in Spike’s earlier statement. “Wait. How are they ‘trying’ to fight the subject?”

“Twilight, Apostrophe is its name. You were the one to give it. As for the other stuff, well, it takes two to tango, so I figure ‘fighting’ requires both sides to take a swing-”

In a blur, Twilight was gone, the echos of something similar to “My research grants!” trailing behind her, even as Spike mumbles something under his breath and goes back to fanning his beau.


***


Words bounce through the castle walls, bestowing fragments of conversation to Twilight Sparkle.

“Verily, tis’ the Twilight entity’s fault for any harm that has befallen her-”

“Come on, AJ! You can’t tell me we aren’t allowed to rough ‘em up after that bogus line! ”

“Dash! We ain’t beatin’ a pony who's already tied up, no matter how much he deserves it. As fer you, fella, Ah recommend you start confessin’ yer crimes afor’ Ah have half a mind tah sick Dash on yah, personal hangups be durned! And start movin’ yer lips when you talk, it’s plumb weird when they don’t!”

“Ye’ have half a mind? My condolences. It appears I have yet to truly understand your kind.”

“My kind?!”

Twilight sighed in relief even as she rounded a corner, momentum skidding her into a wall hard enough to rattle the nearby windows; at least there hadn’t been a fatality yet.

Wait. Why am I running when I can just tele-

Her horn ignites and the whole of the universe shifts before her eyes.

-port?

Ancient poets had once regaled kings and commoners alike on nigh forgotten heroes performing incomprehensibly valorous feats of might, only for such stories to go the way of their tellers and fade into dust as entropy worked its magic upon both the physical and the cultural; a shame, really, given that the rattling contortions present within one of Applejack’s hooves could’ve been the muse for a million sagas.

The farmer was in a state of almost transcendent outrage, the sort that roots one in place and causes faint tears to form in eyes; manipulating such a pony with magic would be more likely to wound than evoke an undesired movement.

So Twilight body-tackles her, all whilst screaming perhaps the least intimidating warcry in three millennia-

“FOR SCIENCE!”

-and with a gentle ‘poof’ collides with Applejack, more reminiscent of a discolored ball of fluff attempting to do battle with the Sun than anything else.

Not to say Twilight’s impact did nothing, of course. It did far less than that.

Instinct forces a hoof to shoot out, even as a befuddled Applejack glances away from her target to the physically pathetic Alicorn grunting at her side and making feeble attempts to actually move her.

“Dude, Twilight, you need an exercise regime or something,” Rainbow Dash quips, before making the strangest strangled gasp noise and toppling on her side, foaming at the mouth.

Applejack, for her part, turns her head, looks down the length of her outstretched leg, and sees-


***


She had been a good filly, had always listened to her Granny when the green mare told the stories of ‘What Is’ and ‘What Was’, and could recite all of the tales by heart. She worked the fields, had helped save the world a half-dozen times, and respected her elders; she wasn’t a braggart and had always tried her best, regardless of the situation.

And yet there is Judgement. Granny had always mentioned something about this part, something that made her blood run cold even as she wracks her brain to remember it, before the memory flashes into her mind, as terrible and chilly as a cataclysmic cold-snap.

Good ponies don’t get Judged; only Bad ponies do.

And at the end of her outstretched hoof is Judgement, a thousand thousand eyes staring at her from between the shapeless wiggling, the half-lidded orbs green and familiar and terrible in their knowledge.

She tries to scream, but her mouth is gone and so the fear must be swallowed, consumed, left to ferment and rot within her guts. Her eyes, for the things glaring out from the destruction she has wrought are hers to the last, continue to Judge even as Apple memories continue to float to the surface like corpses in a river.

Was she a good pony?

Instinct cried “Yes!” but her eyes know better, have always been able to spot a liar in the midst.

“I’ve saved the world a bunch of times!”

And you’ve tended the trees a thousand more, the eyes seem to say; is either obligation righteous, or what should be expected?

And so the Judgement continues.


***


Perhaps a minute has passed, and little has changed except that there is now a gentle snoring pervading the room and the haphazard swaddling of gauze around Apostrophe’s head; even so, around the cloth peeks a hole in the skin of reality, a disconcertingly blackened scar that seems to writhe when stared at for more than a moment. It stretches downwards to the stallion’s cheek, more reminiscent of a crack in some dark mirror than any wound.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash naps, oblivious to the world.

“Why is she shuddering?” Twilight says as she tries to tend to her orange friend, her hair spontaneously coiling with metallic ‘sproing’s in increasing intervals even as the pitch of her voice rises with panic. “She shouldn’t be shuddering! Or unconscious!”

“Enlightenment is very rarely gentle,” Apostrophe replies, the myriad intonates warbling as the air shifts from the panicking Alicorn’s wings.

“Why are you acting so calm?!”

“My inability for mobility or an incomplete understanding of your primordial culture’s various nuances and conversational inflections does not mean I do not feel emotion, Sparkle,” Apostrophe says, the tone as calm as a summer breeze even as the words themselves are as chilly as an icicle dagger. “You and your kith are dear to me for breaking the monotony of existence; engaging in a fit would hardly facilitate-”

The world was filled with incoherent Alicorn noises as Applejack’s body clearly fought to take a breath, drowning out whatever else Apostrophe had left to say.

At least, until the air itself began to shift and boil in waves more reminiscent of the shifting coils that hover above flames and a bloodcurdling screeching cracks the crystal walls and silences the world.

I am louder, says a stray thought in Twilight’s ringing head, the words struggling as if constrained in some mighty vice even as the the thought adds, Wish ye’ to save your acquaintance? Oh bugger all, what’s the point in asking? The answer is obvious. Hold fast and remain unyielding.


***


It is all so broken. The fields, her family, even her world; the reaper cuts with the same scythe, one and all, and her eyes (the ones within her head, at least) remain affixed to what amounts to so much ash and-and-and other such things. And yet, somehow, Judgement continues, and all her regrets continue to stack up like so much cordwood.

A mocking slideshow of her life plays before her, each and every moment conspiring as if to denigrate her further. Even the triumphs, rare though they are, are tinged with the flavor of cinder and loss when contrasted with the decay of the cosmos. When the only thing left to do is fall, does anything matters?

And, for a merciful moment, Judgement abates and her neck, through no power of her own, shifts to look beside her. It baffles her, for perhaps a moment; a veritable wave of ponies, staring straight ahead, gazes unwavering even as their eyes twitch with tears or crinkle with a smile. They, surely, likewise see their own existences, lined before them and just as inconsequential as hers.

So how do some smile?

And when the moment of alien strength abandons her and her gaze once more directs itself upon the scattered recollections of her life, she sees a filly far too small to know the impossible odds the cosmos had placed against her existence, and in seeing this tiny, precious, bundle, her answer is found.

Every failure experienced and every wound endured could not hope to drown away even so paltry a memory from such a tiny thing; she had guided this filly, told of hurts made humorous by the passage of time and instilled in this fragile creature ethics to live by.

If every agony before that moment was even remotely necessary for that little filly to feel even a fleeting joy, so be it; it is a fine trade, one made with nary a regret. In a world where gold was meaningless, fame fleeting, and life tragic, she was a treasure.

Applejack watched her life unfold a dozen times more, and not once did this resolve waver; if a life of pains led to this single pure moment of joy, surely everything before it is justified, surely, surely…


***


“Is she going to be alright?” Twilight asks after a minute, nursing a mug of piping hot tea in the vague hope the drink would banish the migraines she had been experiencing; the last few moments had been the weirdest of the bunch, admittedly, with a fleeting sense of darkness followed by an agonizing pressure behind her horn, but such pain was transient and therefore ignorable. “I mean, she’s not shuddering anymore, so I suppose that’s a good thing…”

“She will smile until she wakes, held aloft on memories of blooming trees and baby sisters,” Apostrophe says, allowing itself a momentary pause before adding, “I had to rebuild the more broken portions of her psyche using your own as a template; there will be instability for a few days before such constructs are digested into the greater whole.”

The two beings stand beside each other, the purple one staring down at her friend even as the one with the patina-esque fur remains stock still. For a few seconds, all is peaceful and quiet.

“Are you alright?” Twilight finally says, the question feeling more like a ponderance than a genuine consideration of well-being; her face blooms into blush when silence is her answer, and she reiterates, far more sincerely, “Are you alright? I mean, you, uh, have a literal hole in your head, and most folks would either take, er, exception to that, or, um, be confronted with their own mortality…”

“The damage is done when the hobbles are nailed in, not when they are removed; when ye’ smash a prison’s wall, the prisoners do not perish, pony.”

“Well, that depends on whether the prisoners are still inside-”

“Ye’ are all like so many ants,” Apostrophe said shortly, each word weighted with an age experienced only by cosmic bodies.

“Excuse me?”

“No, ye’ are not excused. All the sorrows ye’ experience around me are reaped from poor decisions and hubris. I speak your kind’s tongue because the foolish and the mad peek within my mind and forget all things require a give and take. I wish to make no footprints upon this world and yet ye’ force me to stomp.”

“Really? You really think your introduction to the girls was low-key?” Twilight shot back, a grin nevertheless adorning her face now that the danger has passed. Her smile doesn’t last long.

“Ye’ wish for me to make my presence felt?”

“That feels like one of the worst ideas imaginable,” Twilight says, shortly, before peering curiously at Apostrophe; where, a portion of her mind ponders, is all of this animosity coming from?

“Verily, because it is.”

“Look, if worst comes to worst, can’t you just, you know, snip that portion out of her experiences? I mean, you literally revert time upon contact.”

“True, I am a cosmic repository of essential star material, a living reversal of entropic processes. But that is not the solution for all problems.”

“Really? Because having absolute control over a portion of time seems as if it could solve almost anything.”

“Verily? That is how ye’ see it? A pink pill for all woes? No. Some things are not so easily digested.”


***


Give, Twilight thought to herself as she flicked a bead of sweat off her forehead, and take, hmm? I wonder why it mentioned that?

“You sure it was a good idea to take them home?” Spike’s words are like a pickaxe, splitting stony and rigid thoughts asunder with a pointed tone. His thinking, at least, has hardly been impacted by the weather.

“Yes, Spike. Rainbow Dash and Rarity have jobs, and neither really experienced anything traumatizing. I’ll explain the situation with our ‘guest’ in great detail after they get a full night’s sleep.”

“Uhuh. And what about Applejack?” Spike asks, even as his stubby claws tighten upon his personal duster with an eerie creaking.

That’s the question of the day, isn’t it? What about Applejack?

“She’ll want to be home with her family,” Twilight says after a moment, her only evidence being the words of an alien and the certainty of personal experience.

For perhaps a minute, there is nothing but the sounds of rough sweeping and the clatter of cracked crystal before Spike speaks.

“Twilight?”

“Yes, Spike?”

“Either we put Apostrophe in a more secure place in the castle, or I’m writing a letter to Celestia. This stuff is too dangerous to have laying around where somepony could trip over it.”

“... you’re right, Spike. I’m sorry.”

“I am too, Twilight. Love you.”

“Love you too.”
> 5 The Undying Truth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time passes uneventfully for the broken-faced Apostrophe; a given, considering the bars buried deep within the crystal cordon the perimeter of the room. Slices of light cut their way through the dimmer corners, revealing unsightly dust bunnies migrating across the checkerboard pattern of illumination and shadow; Twilight had thought vertical bars alone insufficient for proper containment. This room, more so than any other, is the domain of the silent; even libraries possess gentle murmurings at their busiest of times, while here the only noise is the regretful dirge of unconscious respiration.

And in the silence Apostrophe strains his hobbled senses and, for the first time in what the locals called a ‘month’, truly listens. At first, there is little more than a familiar twinging, the singing of spheres as they illuminate the cosmos; more follows, less familiar yet equally beautiful, from the percussive breathing of the earth beneath to the violin shrieks of communication from one organism to another. The world is an orchestral score of communication distilled into its purest unintelligible form, and the familiarity of dissonent tones and sounds is enough for Apostrophe to momentarily relax, to think, not as an inhabitant of this dirtball cradle-grave, but as the nameless being that dwells amongst the stars.

And, faintly, Apostrophe can hear the future.

Strange electricity, echos of wordless thoughts given mass and power, crash against steel and crystal; icicles form on the ceiling, colorful with memories of universes too fragile to be sustained: the walls groan, yet hold, albeit barely, even as impossible hues flood the vacuous air in shapes that agonize the mortal mind to construe, much less behold. Something lingers on the horizon of perception, always watching yet never acting.

Apostrophe knows the Truth; in no form has it been ‘gold,’ the meaning of such a word unfortunately poisoned for terrestrials by the mineral. And at such a thought the shackles are equipped once more, the universe growing silent.

The fact is that the room is a prison; it traps the world behind myriad bars. After all, why else would the lock be located on the interior of the door, for easy manipulation by the room’s inhabitant?

The echoing songs of the stars finally fade, only to be replaced by breathing.

No.

Two breathings. Two heartbeats. Two… beings?

“Verily,” Apostrophe begins, “Are you alright, little fuzzy thing?”

“How long have you been here?” the only other free-being (pony?) asks, the rushing of winds around the squeaky voice revealing the speaker to revel in her (or a very unfortunate ‘his’) own excitability.

“Verily, by the score of ye’ kith, six mo-”

“Why do you talk like that?”

“Why-?”

Why, indeed.

The language of locals is a thing that falters before the inimitable mind of the Nameless; Apostrophe the Avatar is akin to a lump of coal brought before a star, the fuel incinerated into atoms when brought before it.

When Apostrophe was unnamed, it was mere forgetfulness. Named, it is a sort of death.

“It is the only way I know how,” Apostrophe finally replies. “How did you get here?”

“I came in through the front door.”

Apostrophe listens intently for a moment; the lock is unmoved, the hinges untouched, the bars still stolid and certain against any intrusion. Such an entrance is surely impossible, excluding sorcery or applied science.

Or applied clowning

“Verily?” Apostrophe says, because nothing more can be.

“Yuhp-er-oonie! Are you the stallion Twilight is keeping locked in her castle?”

“No.”

“No? But you’re in here, silly-billy!”

“I am neither stallion nor mare. I am no more imprisoned by Sparkle than the mountains may bow to the winds. And you imply any being can own anything more than its own essence; that is not the case. Verily, the statement is false on all fronts.”

“Okie-dokie-loki! Are you the being in the castle that Twilight lives in?”

“Verily.”

“Gotcha!” the other entity (surely a pony, and surely just as much a prisoner as every other inhabitant alive on this planet) said, the bubbliness in her voice as infectious as some sort of embarrassing disease. “Have you had a party yet?”

“I fail to see what a coalition could provide me that I am unable to take for my own,” Apostrophe replies, only to add, almost immediately, “Admittedly, however, such a brigade may prove interesting, should actions pan out similarly to how Spike the Dragon’s ‘theatre of the mind’ events transpire-”

“I don’t think anypony wants their weekly ‘Bandits and Barristers’ games to be public knowledge, silly-billy,” the pony is quick to interject.

“Verily? Given that the squeals they occasionally produce upon particular rolls are comparable to your kind’s joyous discovery of matrimony or conception, I would have thought otherwise.”

“Okie-dokie, maybe you’re in here for a reason.”

‘Verily, perhaps the world is out there for a reason.”

“Still, one itsie-bitsie cake shouldn’t matter…”

“Bother ye’self not. Countless others have visited your kith in this village prior to me, with nary a succulent and sugary affair in sight.”

“What? Nuh-uh! I have a checklist, see?”

There is a fluttering noise akin to autumn leaves: ‘confetti’, supplies a memory snatched from the mind of a local.

“No.”

“Okie-dokie, but if you opened your eyes, you would!”

“Perhaps. Nevertheless, others have visited your lands, and likewise gone thusly unrewarded.”

“Nuh-uh!”

“All things exist in all states and all locations, little pony.”

“Nuh-uh! If they did, I would be here-” there is an elastic stretching noise that seems to grow in intensity with every passing moment “-and there and there and back home with Gummy and-” and like the snapping of a rubber band the noise ceases “-and I could hardly talk with just you ‘cause I’d also be planning a prank-war with-” And then she pauses to breathe, mercifully.

Apostrophe interjects, “And yet they do. Allow me to show you.”


***


Once more, peaceful silence. It only lasts a few hours, however, before a clatter of hooves sprints down the hallway to Apostrophe’s make-shift prison, a concentration of high-potency magic handily tears metal apart like so much paper-mache, and the sound of growling and gnashing molars fills the room.

“Ye’ dentist shall have a field day if you don’t cease,” Apostrophe finally says, conversationally; it was a familiar sort of grinding tooth noise, the sort Apostrophe had heard much of whilst engaging in whimsy with the purple Alicorn. “Or, verily, ye’ shall continue destroying biological calcium deposits with nary a thought to the contrary. It bothers me not.”

The creaking continues, accompanied by trumpeting huffs; all slightly higher pitched than normal, likely a byproduct of the ever warmer days. Sparkle is taking her time to reply; this will surely be an interesting observation, as are all insights that take her more than thirty seconds to assemble.

“Why is Pinkie excavating a mountain for, and I quote, ‘baking purposes’?” Sparkle says, in that careful ‘I-shall-pretend-I-am-unfazed-by-this’ tone she adopts when she attempts to wear the mein of a leader. Her voice cracks a moment later, however, rendering her next few words a squeaky mess. “And why does she have diagrams explaining quantum superpositioning?”

“I know not,” Apostrophe replies, and Twilight sighs in relief, only to give a small choked-gurgle when Apostrophe adds, “Verily, I dictated the burning of those documents to be the wisest decision.”

“Why?!”

“The documents had served their purpose.”

“No, I mean, why did you tell Pinkie anything about quantum?!”

“Given her propensity to appear in the strangest places, such as, for example, this cell, I would think her already quite aware of this issue, albeit subconsciously.”

“Really? That’s your defense? Because as of three hours ago, she has been trying to host a party for every entity that could have, at some point, had an atom present in Ponyville!”

A few attoseconds pass in quiet calculation before Apostrophe quietly murmurs, “Ah.”

Twilight sighs, recomposing herself before saying, “At least you get the gravity of the situation.”

“Verily. The mass alone of necessary supplies borders on that of a small moon.”

“Yes, that’s… probably true, but I’m more referring to the fact she’s never going to stop partying at this rate! I did mention there is now a crevasse the depth and width of a mountain, right?! She’s turning it into an oven!”

“Nothing lasts forever, Sparkle. All things end. Even you. Even I. Even endings-”

“Oh, really? You don’t say? That’s great, because you’re helping me end this little friendship problem in the bud; I’m going to bring Pinkie Pie here, and you’re going to apologize for making up nonsense, and everything is going to be alright again, got it?”

“Why?”

“Why? Are you serious?!”

“Yes, why am I to lie? Is not education, to put it as you have, a ‘grand pursuit, wherein the reality of the cosmos shall be within hoof’s reach’? So why are you instructing me to lie now?”

It is baffling; in one moment there is nothing but an unconquerable thirst for knowledge, to know more, more, more! In the next, all of reality can be cast aside for another, centuries of advances tossed into the entropic flames of time’s ever-forward march simply because something altogether pathetic needed to be sheltered, protected.

It is hardly a fair question, Apostrophe knows, to ask another how one can justify an equation that is ultimately subtractive, particularly when Apostrophe itself has yet to solve it as well. And yet, it demands an answer.

“Because she’s my friend, she’s hurting, and because a little white lie will help her, at least for a bit,” Twilight replies, as if it’s the most obvious observation in the world. “Yes, the stars are all going to go dim; yes, everyone will eventually die; and, yes, everything is going to turn into atomic soup. So what? Here and now, we’re alive.”

For a tiny moment, as fleeting as the beat of a hummingbird’s heart, Apostrophe beholds the true ‘gold’.

“Verily, ye’ are mad,” Apostrophe declares. And, a moment later, drowned out by the buzzing of Twilight’s arcane energies, “I hope it is contagious.”


***


“Not once when I was a filly did I think I would be talking a pony down from a bowl of cake-batter.”

“Verily? But your kind so easily take such rare objects for granite-”

“Granted. Take for granted.”

“Truly? The orange one states the metamorphic rock.”

“Yes, well, Applejack has a lot of sayings that are a little mangled.”

“Verily. And yet despite their composite flaws you adore them.”

“The girls? Of course I care about them, they’re my friends!”

“Even when they take a chicken coop hostage-?”

“Okay, admittedly, this wasn’t Pinkie at her best, but, hey. That’s what friendship is.”

“Friendship is talking another down from robbery and fowl-rustling?”

“If you’re going to be pedantic about it, then yes, that can be a form of expressing friendship. But mostly it means we look out for one another when we’re in a more vulnerable state; I mean, it’s not right to just leave somepony when things get a little rough, right?”

“Verily, I would not know.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t possess friends.”
> 6 The Immortal Perspective
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There were many emotions Twilight had for Apostrophe, the patina-coated construct living in the depths of the friendship castle: an initial, almost instinctual revulsion; later, a much less illogical distrust and, yes, fear. At times, fascination and a strong competitive drive, whenever they stood in intellectual opposition.

And now, despite herself, a semblance of pity.

Funny how the world works sometimes.

But those are thoughts that have both a time and a place, and frankly, there were more pressing matters that demanded more immediate attention. Like friendship and science.

“So, Apple Bloom, I’m glad you could meet with me. I heard that Applejack was acting a bit… strangely, recently.”

“Strange, nothin’! She’s gotten a bajillion time more eff-effect-affec… huggy n’ stuff. Ah ain’t implyin’ nothin’, but, uh…”

“No, Applebloom, she hasn’t been replaced by a changeling, not even as a practical joke. She’s, well, she gone through a bit of a paradigm shift recently.”

“A whatzit?”

“A paradigm shift is a change in perspective, and a change in attitude, Applebloom.”

“Oh,” Applebloom says, before the gears in her head ratchet into a higher gear and she asks, with the straightforwardness only the truly innocent possess, “Does all this shiftin’ have somethin’ to do with the stallion yah have locked in this here castle?”

Something fundamental shatters in Twilight’s smile; oh, it looks the same, but an astute observer would find themselves subconsciously stating she is ‘baring her teeth’ rather than ‘grinning’. “What, exactly, makes you think that?”

“Cause yah didn’t deny it immediately when Ah just brought it up.”

“Applebloom.”

“Yes, Ms. Sparkle?”

“Go home.”

And in a purple flash, that is exactly where the adolescent filly finds herself.


***


Some say Friendship Castle held wards with a potency not seen since Starswirl the Bearded. Some say that if the world were dropped into the sun, the castle’s inhabitants would be fine. It is even rumored, by those found only in the grimiest and shadiest of places, that the Castle possesses a will of its own, and directs ponies in accordance to its whims.

To Applebloom, all of that was may have well been crab-apples. It doesn’t exactly hurt she is unaware of the impossibility of breaking in, which is exactly how she and her two closest companions find themselves scaling down an interior window.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this,” Sweetie Belle manages to mutter around the length of rope she holds securely in her mouth.

“Duh! It’s cause Applejack got replaced by a-”

“Naw, Twilight was tellin’ the truth about that. Ah’m just worried cause she ain’t tellin’ the whole story.”

Two Crusaders stare down at the third below them before Scootaloo says, “So, what’s it like, Applebloom? You know, gettin’ all panicky just ‘cause your sister is giving you more hugs and stuff?”

“Blow it out yer pipe, Scoots! What if  Rainbow Dash or Rarity were gettin’ all weird and lovey with y’all, hmm?”

A minute passes in silent descent.

“I kinda wish Rarity would be like that.”

Another minute.

“I mean, it’d be uncool if Rainbow Dash started acting all… you know… but I dunno. It’d be kinda, uh, cool, too. Heh.”

They reach the bottom of the rope a few seconds later, and the three of them carefully embrace, as if each of them were made of the most fragile of porcelain.

“So, uh, Ah suppose we’re findin’ this pony so he kin make Rarity and Rainbow Dash more like Applejack is right now, yeah? Assumin’ it don’t hurt’em none.”


***


“Applebloom, are you sure we’re heading in the right direction?”

“Fer tha’ last time, NO, Sweetie Belle! Ah’ve bin just as lost as you’ve bin, but Ah’m pretty sure if we keep headin’ down an’ towards the weirder noises, we’ll find somethin’ sooner or later!”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure we passed those metal box things three or four times already…”

“Scootaloo, we’ve gone down four sets of stairs since the last time we saw one, how would that even work?”

“I dunno, magic?”

“Ah’m startin’ tah think that’s a catch-all fer all the strange stuff in tha world…”


***


“Ah don’t wanna alarm none of y’all, but we’re out of sandwiches.”

“I’m more worried we’ve been wandering for about four days. I hope Twilight wasn’t a fan of the furniture we burned last night.”

“Urgh! We wouldn’t be in this situation if Applebloom was able to accept affection like a normal pony!”

“Hey!”

“Scootaloo!”

“No, Sweetie Belle, I’m not apologizin’, cause this is dumb! We’ve been gone for four days, and that means we’ve got at least six ponies, probably a whole lot more, lookin’ for us. And they still haven’t… found... us…”

The vitriol drains from the Pegasus’ tone at a soft sniffling noise, almost imperceptible amongst the echoes of Scootaloo’s outburst.

“...ah’m sorry, y’all. Ah just… Ah was scared, cuz mah sister ain’t always like that, and when she started, Ah figured Ah was… losin’ her…”

There is nothing but the shuddering of thunder as brisk magical light illuminates the three friends hugging as if their lives depended upon it, at least until Sweetie Belle prematurely breaks free from the group with a whinny of realization.

“We’re at least forty floors deep! No way we could hear thunder unless somepony like a Pegasus was here!”

“It’s like one of those what-cha-ma-call-its that Cheerilee always talks about when we read those old boring stories about Princess Celestia!”

“‘Deus Ex Machina’s?”

“Yeah, those’re the nerd words for it!”

A clatter of hooves, fueled simultaneously by hunger and hope, crack along the crystal foundations, the fillies hoping, perhaps, they had found salvation. Instead they find a tired storeroom, retrofitted with iron bars and barrels of, of all things, fermenting apples; not the most appetizing selection for a trio of hungry fillies.

Oh, and a green statue with a smashed-in face that looked hastily bandaged, but that was neither food nor water and therefore pointless.

“Well, ah suppose this ain’t the worst place to hole up fer now,” Applebloom says with a sigh, before she leans against the barrels and half-heartedly moans. “Better’n the hallway, at least; Ah’m pretty sure Twilight needs to bring Fluttershy here or somethin’. Monsters shouldn’t be wanderin’ the place like they own it.”

“Pftt, you can say that again.”

“Ah’m pretty sure Twilight needs to bring-”

“You don’t actually gotta say it again, Applebloom.”

“Ah know. Just makin’ light, ya’ know? Anywho, Ah’m thinkin’ we should make camp fer the, uh, time bein’, since we have some food and we ain’t exactly in danger here.”

The three fillies unconsciously shoot a glance at the foreboding statue and share a shiver; nothing so stock still should emanate the sensation of compressed wriggling. But the Crusaders had learned (for better or for worse) that Equestria was a land where like attracts like, and as long as they did nothing bad, nothing bad would happen to them.

Probably.

Yet despite lingering doubts, makeshift bedrolls are laid out and soon the three drift off to an uneasy sleep.


***


-the shadows are strange and the air thick and yet treasure is found and gold exists but it isn’t the actual metal it’s-


***


-thesunthesunthesunthesunthesunthesunthesunthesunthesun-


***


-more precious than that far more precious than any metal and yet it’s so easily taken for granted this gold through which even the fundamental forces are yoked-


***


-largerlargerlargerlargerlargerlargerlarger-


***


Like grains of diamond sand upon eternal shores. Common yet precious. A cosmic recollection. There is the color of beauty here. The color where the difference between zero and one is both distant beyond hope and-


***


-nearer than can be dreamed.


***


The three fillies awake with a start under an unbearably hot winter breeze, so warm that even the stars seemed to have fled the night sky. Something turns in the pits of their collective stomachs, a hint of forgotten regret mixed with a heaping helping of equally lost triumph.

They had done something they shouldn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, have, that much was certain. And they had undergone the weirdest dreams.

“Anypony feel…” Scootaloo manages, before the fundamental limitation of language presents itself as immutably as Friendship Castle’s walls.

“Yeah,” Applebloom and Sweetie Belle both reply, though they can’t begin to fathom why.

But the memory of such dalliances fades from their minds, as all dreams do. And quietly, they part, the undercurrent of sadness tinging their departure from one another as all partings from friends do.

And despite the ringings in her head, Scootaloo turns around to face Friendship Castle, that place where all three had shared… a dream?

For a cursed second she spies a blasted and molten landscape, steaming and screaming with rock so hot it had turned to gas. Nothing can hope to live as the orange seas lap against the blackened castle, except, perhaps, a dream.

And then the hills return and Scootaloo finds herself sprinting home in a cold-sweat.


***


Twilight sighed in consternation as she glanced at the cracks that spiderwebbed around Apostrophe, even as she mentally removed any possibility of interviewing Applebloom this afternoon. Even so, her analytical mind nevertheless managed to pick something of merit from this drudgery; the damage was less ‘cracks’ in the foundation, and more actually akin to the scuff marks a hasty hewing might entail.

“This is going to take a few days to repair, I hope you know,” Twilight says drily, knowing full well this is an exaggeration; a couple of hours, tops, and that’s only because the cracks were on the walls and few extending to the ceiling.

Thank goodness she had Spike ready and able to retrieve blueprints on a moment’s notice.

The only real loss was the barrels of 'Hard Apple-Cider' that had been fermenting the last few weeks; now, there were just a couple of barrels worth of apples.

“Verily, fret ye’ not. Ah enjoy the more rustic appeal o’ my considerably humbled abode; more pressin’ issues await discussin’.”

Okay, why is it dropping ‘g’s all of a sudden? It says it learns from social and mental contact, but even with the Applejack-mind-fix-thing happening, a country accent shouldn’t so overpowering-

“Verily, that was unintentional; I haven’t communicated in such a duration that my filters are hardly existent.”

If that’s supposed to be a jab, it’s a weak one.

“Verily, the youngest Apple-” there is a noise not unlike the crackle of static electricity “-here for a duration, among her two fellow… burglars, I suppose?”

There is a distinctive tinkle noise as Twilight’s magic abruptly erupts into existence. A look of intense consternation passes the Alicorn’s face as a thousand little magical alarms are checked.

“No she wasn’t,” Twilight finally says, sighing with equal parts relief and irritation.

“Correct.”

“So what’s the point of lying to me, then?”

“Verily, there was no lie. I simply concurred on your tense usage; she was not here. But she would have been here, will be here, a thousand little tenses your species has no words for, hundreds they never will.”

The smell of burning hair fills the room as the local Alicorn goes incandescent.

“What. Did. You. Do?”

“Verily, I fed them. Bartered for a time. Sent them home. You are such little beings, ponies, requiring much care to be nurtured. Commensurately tiny and fragile beings require exponentially greater care.”

“Bartered?! What did you take from them?”

“Verily, a few bad memories.”

“What memories? Don’t act like you’ve been struck silent, I know you have more to tell me!”

“Just because ye’ are so erroneously convinced of your own immortality you wish to remember every moment leading to the event horizon of death does not mean all others do, Sparkle. Death scares those wise enough to realize it cannot be evaded; in time, perhaps, they make peace with it, but rarely are the young so mature.”

“They died?!”

“No, everything else did.”

Moments pass in measured silence. Apostrophe doesn’t lie, has never truly lied, but can and has obfuscated facts before.

I suppose it's not too different from Applejack that way, Twilight finds herself pondering, only to bite her tongue a moment later to keep from mocking the comparison aloud.

“Look,” Twilight begins, before bringing a hoof to her forehead and massaging the ache around her horn, “This pseudo-philosophical babble can wait until tomorrow, after we get the walls repaired.”

I’m going to have to ask AJ if she has anymore cider stocked; that, or see if Fluttershy wants a drinking partner or something. This nonsense is absurd.

“Verily, it can wait? Your species places stock in the phrase ‘immortal’ so grievously, yet the word is a portmanteau of ‘I’m-mortal’. Should you choke in your sleep, or a meteor crushes you as you walk beneath the starless skies, or death visits you in a thousand little ways, shall we still wait until tomorrow to speak, as one cadaver to another? How foolishly ensconced are you in the notion that tomorrow will exist for you?”

“Are you threatening me? Jumping down my throat because I won’t make a few minutes to talk with you? Or are you actually trying to tell me something?” Twilight finally interjected tiredly; mortality was a topic she avoided addressing like the plague, for exactly this reason. Some smarty-pants would get it in their head that she suffered some undying ennui at her own longevity and try to get her to ‘open up’ about it.

At least Apostrophe is alien enough to make some new arguments; I don’t think I can tolerate another idiot trying to dedicate their existence to me...

“Verily, whichever ensures ye’ listen-”

“Look,” Twilight mutters, waving her hoof before Apostrophe and cutting off whatever was going to be said, “Even if you have something important to say, you’ve done nothing but be vaguely threatening or insulting since 'arriving'. I haven’t had enough sleep to deal with you, and I can’t honestly think of anypony you’ve endeared yourself to lately, either. Just… I’ll send Spike by in a bit, once you’ve calmed down enough to be civil, alright? He’ll be able to help you with whatever you’re having a meltdown over, or find somepony who can.”

She turns and leaves, the clacking of her hooves and the creaking of the door drowning out a self-satisfied, “Verily” behind her.


***


“Why do I get the feeling I don’t want to know the contents of this letter, much less how you wrote and sealed it?”

“Plausible deniability, as some of your kith declare it. Send it.”

“Uh, I don’t feel comfortable sending this letter-”

“Verily? Nevertheless, send it.”

“Dunno how you’re expecting to get a reply so quickly; plus, I’m pret~ty sure Twilight’s gonna ask all sorts of strange questions about this, and that’s assuming Celestia herself doesn’t-”

“Direct uncomfortable queries to me. Send it.”

“Fine, okay, your funeral. Remind me why I’m doing this, again?”

“Ye’ journal. Your litany of undelivered poetry regarding Ms. Increased-Property-Value-”

“-Rarity.”

“Verily, Rarity. And because you wish to see how this goes, and because it is a story that shall be worthy of retelling, however it transpires. Send it.”

“So, for ‘the luls’, basically?”

“And blackmail. Send it.”

“I can respect that. And chill, I’m sending it, jeez...”

And so flame takes a letter further than even the mightiest breeze could hope. And, for a time, there is silence.


***



Living Star,


Why does your Sun perish?

> 7 The Shackles Unbreaking
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“That letter you sent sure got everypony agitated,” Spike says, blowing at the vapor that hangs about his cup of chilled chocolate and briefly imagining a world where one couldn’t cook eggs on the pavement in winter. “I gave the response letter to Twilight like you suggested, and, heh, I suppose she was in such a hurry she forgot to take me.”

“Verily?”

“Man, we need to get you outside and socialized or something; you give me Twilight or Starlight vibes, but you’re about a thousand times worse.”

“Verily?”

“Like that! Nobody says that anymore, and I’ve heard ancient dragons and stuff talk more modernly! You’re speaking like somepony stuffy who’s still riding the high of getting their Doctorate about a decade after the fact.”

“Oh. That may very well explain my dictation, to an extent.”

“Really? You got all this logic from somepony smart but none of the social stuff?”

“Would you care about learning the social conventions of ants if you found yourself held in a mockery of a prison by them?”

“See, that’s what I mean. You can have all the reason and knowledge in the world, but if you start comparing folks to bugs you’re not gonna go far. Jeez, that’s, like, Etiquette 101 or something. I mean, you weirded me out originally with all your doom and gloom originally, and I hang out with a buncha folks I’m pretty sure have undiagnosed mental issues.”

“Verily, little Dragon?”

“To quote Big Mac on this one, ‘Eeyup’.”

“Oh. I have never truly been in ideal correspondence with another sapient entity prior; I was under the assumption my intercourse with Sparkle was the standard.”

“Yeah, don’t call it intercourse, just another one of those social things. But as for everything else, hey, it is what it is. Now, uh, I hate to be ‘that guy,’ but, you know…”

“Verily, I am aware; ye’ are to give me cues, whereupon I will ensure certain noises occur, correct?”

“Yeah; just gotta get you tucked under this blanket real quick, the guys should be here in, like, five minutes…”


***


“You all meet within a Tavern. Unfortunately, it’s thirty thousand feet in the air-” a low whistling fills the room, only to steadily rise in pitch as Spike continues, “-and falling fast! What do you do?!”


***


“-that’s not a vicious Gamma-Gnoll, that’s my wife!”

A solid second passes in dead silence before, evidently, the most thematically aware cricket in Equestria makes itself heard.

“...I, uh, I don’t think it was too terrible of a joke-”

“Can it, Cheese!”

The ensuing slide whistle went almost unheard amongst the laughter.


***


The wind roars as Spike speaks.

“Lemme see if I get this right, you’re trying to use your Blasting Rune spell to give the flying boulder one final bit of ‘oomph’?”

“Eeyup.”

“You’re… all aware you’re still on the boulder, right?”

“Eeyup.”

“Right-o.”

“Yup!”

“YEAH!”

“And you still think this is a good idea?”

“Of course not, but imagine how utterly incredible it’ll look when we land!”

“...you know what, yeah! Roll for damage, Big Mac, and as for the rest of you…”


***


“...Big Mac?”

“Eeyup?”

"How is it that, as a Wizard, you have the largest health pool?”

"Ah’m a Muscle-Wizard.”

“I suppose you are, then. Maximilian the Crimson pulls his comrades out from under the still smoking stone chunks, and from there-” a thud on the door echoes loud and clear through the dimly lit central room and startles the assembled working stallions of Ponyville “-we will have to pick up next time. Hope you guys enjoyed the game!”

Papers are shuffled together and dice are tossed into knapsacks with a quiet urgency found only in those who have a reputation to maintain. A few bits exchange hooves, the ‘winner’ of the night having been long determined, and bowler-hats adjusted even as the small dragon breathed a small gout of harmless smoke upon each of the players with practiced ease. A scaly hand directs the stallions towards the back exit, even as the drake sweeps the miniatures from off the table into an awaiting sack.

The stallions exit in single file, indistinguishable from amateur gamblers save for the smallest glint of enjoyment awake in their eyes. These were ponies whose greatest practice with poker face was on arriving home from rolling the bones.

Another thud rocks the front entrance, even as Spike scuttles forward towards the entrance, sack slung over one shoulder and having, somehow, conjured a brush in one hand and a bottle of window cleaner in the other.

“Yes,” Spike says while flinging open the door, clearly not feeling truly hospitable but too deep in the charade to so casual abandon all pretenses, “how may I he-errk!”

There is the tingling ‘twinkle’ of magic followed by silence, then careful hoofsteps, and finally the crackle of communication magic; whatever this is, it has the mark of a stoic and consummate professional.

The above description is also a filthy lie; the hoofsteps might as well have belonged to a particularly imperious neutron star given how they echoed with a volume visitors would have difficulty replicating with stomps, the ‘silence’ discarded in lieu of humming some sort of high intensity song, and the ‘crackle of communication magic’ actually being a gargled noise hacked up from the depths of the intruder’s throat.

When she speaks, it is in a tone that seems to demand respect, the sort of intonation from which wonders were crafted and armies were led.

“This is Firesquad Moonlit Glory, we’ve secured Spike the Dragon; teleportation to Princess Sparkle initiated flawlessly barring momentary confusion from the target. Proceeding to secondary objective once local side quests have been complet-ooh, is this a cold-brew coconut latte with a side of biscuit? Well, t’would be a shame to not partake!”

To the only other inhabitant, only two things were clear; first, that this burglar echoed with the 'scent' of food, and second, that this miscreant was in the process of stealing Spike’s snacks.

Underneath the blanket Apostrophe waits, the predatory stillness of the construct body more reminiscent of a coiled snake than any herbivore.

Apostrophe would only get one chance at making an excellent first impression, after all.

And minutes pass, the only noises (besides progressively more panicked whinnies when “the secondary objective is not where it ought!”) being the breathing of the land, the multitudinous organic squelches living beings somehow contain within them like some biological orchestra, and a quiet screeching as the music of orbits is disrupted.

The sun dances further away, buying perhaps another day.

It very nearly takes an hour for the dark blue Alicorn to find Apostrophe-

“Hello. I am called Apostrophe. You ate my associate’s snacks. Prepare to-” and Apostrophe, lacking any sort of social compunction that demands a duel be fully declared prior to engagement, says the first syllable of it’s true name.


***


There is a portion of the brain, lizard-like in its capacity for rational thought, that is entirely devoted towards self-preservation. It can act whilst the rest of the mind has blacked-out, swim when the body wishes to sink, and endure what the soul believes untenable.

For Luna, it can also apparently teleport while entirely unconscious.


***


The problem with becoming accustomed to company is that time seems to pass far more slowly while alone. Society, it seems, is infectious.

A minute passes as Apostrophe breathes, once, twice, trice-

One can count their breath only so many times. And there were subjects demanding deliberation.

“Starswirl,” Apostrophe says, as quoting the names by rote; the titles of supposed genii hanging in the air as fresh as rain water. “Clover, Trotticus…”

The naming goes on for a solid minute even as the colors of the room coalesce and part like a sea of shadows, nearing as the names beckon and retreating as the seconds pass. Existence turns a muted grey where the substance splashes, as if it were constructed from thieving waves, before the objects robbed of color fade and crumble like ash.

“...Maximilian the Crimson.” Apostrophe says after a moment of silence, and at this the various colors of the world fall into a rolling tumble, manifesting as a progressively more equine shape as the seconds pass. A low murmur of thankfulness fills the room; Twilight and her prejudiced views against simulated existences are, for the moment, not present.

And then an enormous red Unicorn stands in the center of the room, the floor crunching under the newcomer’s hooves like cinereous ash. And, of course, he had a wizard hat, as all self-acknowledged mages must.

“Where am Ah?”

“Ye’ are present in a crystalline castle in a world inundated with heroes old and young. The lives of those located on this planetoid are endangered; you will assist me, as is the typical action of those designated ‘Chaotic Good’.”

“Mmm…” Maximilian the Crimson grunts neutrally, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He glances about, clearly searching for the speaker, before replying, “Ah don’t help strangers. Leads to a lotta messy business.”

“I would find issue with that position, were any number of additional bodies capable of changing the outcome. I ask not for your brawn, but rather your brain; I query on the acceptability of euthanasia in such circumstances.”

There are looks, and then there are Looks. Maximilian affixes a random corner of the room with the latter, having completely given up on finding the mysterious speaker.

“Ah’m gettin’ tha’ feelin’ yer not tha’ one Ah wanna be helpin’.”

“Verily? Why is that?”

“Nopony meanin’ tah do good hides from a fella’. And yer talkin’ usin’ big words. So, given that, yer probably one of them ‘Morality is Relative’ folks since yer talkin’ about murderin’ fer tha’ greater good and what-not.”

“A clever supposition, yet flawed on two accounts, Maximilian the Crimson-”

“An’ now yer flappin’ yer lips and posturin’ like some sorta malevolent monologuin’ minotaur. Do me tha’ favor of puttin’ me out of my misery before yer soliloquy.”

“I suspect we have reached a mutually detrimental conversational impasse. Surely we are capable-”

And then, true to form for all such adventurers, Maximilian interrupted Apostrophe’s speech by setting a corner of the study ablaze with a fireball.


***


There was much to mull over, once the seemingly psychotic red Unicorn had been banished.

Namely, that simply because an entity is described as a ‘Murder-hobo’ does not mean said individual is willing to discuss mortality. Three more attempts test the veracity of Apostrophe’s hypothesis and find the anecdotal evidence conclusive enough;there is simply not enough ‘color’ in the room for a truly sufficient sample size, but one must make due with what is provided.

Yet progress is made, albeit unconventionally, and the observations gleaned are threefold.

First, residing under what is essentially a pile of coats is a form of invisibility to these equines; the sharper ones might glance at the vaguely equine shape in askance for a moment or two, but would eventually claim  such a spot as ‘Too obvious’.

Second, there was always an attempt of violence, albeit ill-directed given the first observation; clearly, such a species possesses a significant phobia on all things related to mortality to lash out as such.

Finally, the second observation did not hold true in instances where the individually ‘hummed’ the ‘color’ ‘purple’.

Apostrophe stills and listens to the rhythmic tap-tap-tapping of the future being spun into a predictable pattern; doomed planet, desperate ponies, last hope… failure. Writ into stone; such was the course, unavertable by any means of magic or might.

The sequence begins again. At the finale Apostrophe twists, and the melody goes askew; there is work to be done.


***


Everything is wrong and it’s somehow Apostrophe’s fault.

The last thing Twilight could remember was being with her friends on a mission to the icy edge of the world and then-

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, except the quarter-second view she got of her unusually grey study; then the floor caved-in beneath her and she had tumbled into what felt like a closet filled with a remarkable number of pillows.

“Arise from ye’ doldrum, Ms. Sparkle. I have found necessity in conversing with ye’.”

Of course something like this has to happen. ‘Oh no, the Elements aren’t working, or Rainbow Power isn’t glowing, or everything is on fire, better get TWILIGHT to fix every-

For a moment she struggles against the pillows; her face glows red when she realizes the cushions pack her so tightly in place that she doesn’t even budge.

“Ms. Sparkle? Verily, this is quite pertinent; arise, so that we may communicate.”

An attempt at teleportation is made; magic tingles from her horn as her internal reserves are tested, only to be found wanting for the moment. Twilight sighs even as she wiggles in futility; this comfy prison is going to be her home for the duration.

“Yeah, well, you’re going to need to get me or something.”

“Ye’ know such a task is beyond me whilst within this vessel.”

“Then this is going to have to be good enough, then!”

A second passes in silence before Apostrophe asks, “Ye’ have fallen and remain unable to arise?”

“... yes, Apostrophe.”

“Are ye’ not somewhat youthful to be having such-”

“Another word and I’ll bury you.”

“Hm. That would be unfortunate. This troublesome method of distant communication will suffice, then.”

“Good. Then maybe you can start by telling me why my study is suddenly grey and follow it up with why I’m here and not saving the world!”

“Verily, the former is an issue that shall be mended once I find the resolve to do so; it shall taste of dust and loss, but it shall not remain so. The latter, however, is far more easily answered; ye’ are still where ye’ think ye’ ought. Ye’ are simply here as well.”

“That doesn’t answer my questions, Apostrophe.”

“Nor was it intended to; after all, ye’ still imagine ye’ have a chance to restore that plasma sphere of yours.”

Twilight’s tone is low, dangerous, an absurdity when contrasted with her unseen yet clearly plush surroundings. “Is that a bet, Apostrophe?”

“Gambling implies probability; ye’ Sun is a clock that has run out of tocks.”

“Celestia herself told us where to find the Lighthouse of-”

“The Solar Doodad,” Apostrophe interrupts.

“...excuse me?” Twilight replied in a tone that, if it’s chilliness could somehow be bottled, could’ve delayed solar obliteration by at least four or five days.

“From the fragmentary glance I have had upon the mind of one such ruler, ye’ are more in tune with their thinking by simply stating the term ‘Doodad’. ‘Thingy’, evidently, is likewise common parlance amongst the-”

Apostrophe pauses, as if mulling over something, before saying, “Sparkle?”

“What is it, Apostrophe?” Twilight replies, her tone more resigned than anything else.

“If ye’ obtain many more compatriots amongst the ruling caste, it will soon come to rival or even outnumber the other twenty-seven thousand subsets of your kind.”

“Okay, first, no, ponies come in fou-er, fiv- okay, six sub-categories, and second, there is no caste-”

“Proving ye’ incorrect on ye’ own species is less pertinent than the myriad other issues we grapple with, Sparkle. Namely, ye’ sun perishes and inevitability approaches.”

“No, it doesn’t, because we’re going to ensure nothing like that happens.”

“Then entertain my erroneous predictions. If ye’ should fail, or find the Solar ‘Doodad’-” that phrasing earned an undirected glare from Twilight “-lacking, what shall be done then?”

“Then we find another solution.”

“And what is done should all the prospective paths falter?”

“We find one that doesn’t,” Twilight replies shortly. A minute passes without reply, during which efforts to extract herself from her cushy prison are redoubled; progress, in all honesty, seems to be negative.

“Sparkle, I wish to propose a philosophical experiment.”

“I’m absolutely fine with that,” Twilight manages from after a grunt of irritation, “as long as you don’t pretend the result has any bearing on reality.”

“Then, what is ye’ solution to the Trolley problem?”

“Really? That old thing? Five ponies on a track and fewer on the other, train approaching, you have a lever… that one?”

“Quite correct. What is your solution to the query it posits?”

“Try and save everypony, obviously.”

“That is rarely a valid option in such a scenario.”

“Somehow being in the position described in that thought-experiment is probably less likely than being in a position where you can force everything to turn out alright.”

“Verily, I concur.”

“That being said, younger me, by maybe two years, would’ve probably been more utilitarian about the entire ordeal.”

“Verily?”

“Yeah. But then I learned that, really, everything can be triumphed if you have friends-”

“I wish to propose another thought experiment.”

“...are you even listening to me?”

“Every word uttered is as vital to me as oxygen is to ye’. Nevertheless, time is short and the universe shrinks.”

"Okay, no, I KNOW you're wrong there; the universe is literally expanding!"

"Do you look in emptiness to find existance? The universe shrinks, the gaps between stars grow mightier by the moment, and nothingness out-measures somethingness by several orders of magnitude."

“Uhuh. You know what, forget it; what’s the question?”

“Trolley question, once more, but-”

“Are you about to ask if I throw myself on the tracks to somehow stop the train?”

“This is correct.”

“Then the answer is the same as last time, if I were actually confronted with that… circumstance. But…”

“Verily?”

“I mean, look. In the context of the question itself, in whatever pocket dimension that has contrived philosophical conundrums and false dichotomies are reality, I want to think I’m the kind of pony who could do that.”

“Even for entities that ye’ have not yet established bonds with.”

“A stranger is a friend you haven’t made, Apostrophe. That’s it.”

“A phrase that reeks of poignance and gold. Very well, a final question, Ms. Sparkle; do you feel real?”
> 8 The Infinite
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There should be an award for being right and loathing it.

It had been two days ago. Two days of hearing a tortured star have its expansion stifled and attempts at self-immolation extinguished. The singing of spheres grew dim, as if the very heavens find fault in this delaying of the inevitable.

Two days of prayers from ponies and other countless species across an entire world, two days to make amends for lifetimes of mistakes.

Two days of last dances and candle-lit romances.

Apostrophe had heard the death-rattle of a thousand infant civilizations; some hurled obscenities at the perilous skies, while others consigned themselves with a melancholic sigh. Apostrophe had heard all the ways a world could die.

This one, to its last, whispers, “Love,” the breath alone being of unfathomable gold.

Apostrophe listens to it for an eternity, the days passing in loneliness.

Then the door swings open and bathes the room in what feels like mocking light; for a moment she stands, back-lit, a living shade contrasting against the dying sun.

“In hindsight, I guess it’s kinda clear why you were so near to our planet,” Twilight says, her voice bright and fragile like a light-bulb of carefully maintained yet ultimately false positivity. “I suppose… I really could’ve just asked and you would’ve told me, huh?”

“Verily, falsehood is a social construct; I have never had need for it. Ye’, though… should this not be a time to be with kin and kith?”

“The girls are, and Spike's with Starlight right now...” Twilight says, and she seems to deflate as the words leave her, as if some great mask that has supported her thus far has been removed and caused all stability to falter. “But… you’re right, you know. Lying is a social thing. I told them… I told them I would be studying a way to stop this.”

“Ye’ are not?”

“I am not. There’s… there’s just not enough energy in any magical artifact we have, and even the energy we could use would be so unstable as to sterilize the whole planet anyway!”

The room was still for a moment, as possible responses were tested and found lacking in structural integrity; one, however, was eventually found.

"Ye' are rattled and prognosticating failure when it is not your due; what misfortune did visit ye' to leave ye' so broken and incontinent?"

"I... think your using the wrong word there."

"Ye' know the language strongly enough to know the intentionality, infantile star-being."

"I'm going to just ignore that statement..." 

“Verily, a wise decision for both our sakes. To the original point: why did ye' lie to them?”

“I… I want to give them a bit of hope, okay?”

“Verily, even when the situation is hopeless?”

“Especially then.”

“Such that it is, a not ignoble goal.”

There is a quiet sniffling noise, the sound of tears being swallowed, before Twilight adds, “You’re… not too terrible of a listener, for being a pain-in-the-neck star-eater, you know?”

“I take pride in my audio receiving organs, thank you.”

There’s a quiet shuffle, perhaps a couple of books being reorganized, before quiet gurgling noises erupt into true waterworks; it is the noise of sorrow, pure and simple and agonizing to behold. A suffering that wounds even its witness.

A deluge of regrets, too deep and unfathomable to be plumbed in a single day, sweep through the room: the simple, of parents who deserved better and friends who needed more; the selfish, of being more concerned of an entire world’s perceptions than her own desires; the cerebral, of tomes unread and theories unpublished; and even the romantic, of quietly imagined kisses and comforting cuddles.

And when it feels like it will drown the world in pain, the sobs stymie into hiccups.

“I guess,” Twilight manages, the effort of such self-restraint rocking her form, “I guess I won‘t ever get a chance to write that story I’ve got in my head…”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t matter! Because we’ll all be dead before it’s even close to being finished!”

“There is a trick to dealing with these situations, I have heard.”

“What, ‘live everyday like its your last’? Because I’ve heard that before. From Celestia. I think she was getting ready to dive into a lake of sponge cake when she said it…”

“No, such a statement is absurd. One cannot live everyday like it is their last; it is frankly impossible.”

Twilight, for her part, bites the sardonic reply she was about to shoot back with, and instead asks, “...okay, what’s the trick?”

“One cannot live everyday like it is their last. But they can live out their remaining days as such.”

“...you blend pedantic and quixotic in ways I’ve never seen before, you realize that?”

“My apologies, I lack the pithiness the golden-you possesses whilst you speak.”

“...Huh.”

“You have taken my, given the limitations of your sensory organs, seemingly incoherent ramblings with remarkable calmness.”

“No point in freaking out over stuff at this point. I mean, in a few days we’re all going to be screaming ash anyway, present company excluded.” Twilight shudders as she sighs, before adding, “Is this how it always goes?”

“What are you referring to?”

“Dying. Obliteration. The ultimate unmaking.”

“That is something neither of us knows.”

“Pretty sure I’m able to comment about it, at least-”

“No. You are among the most common entities across the sweeping waves of thens, whens, and nows. There is always a Twilight Sparkle, though the name and form changes.”

Her subsequent and righteous irritation seeped into her tone as she replied, “Sheesh, you really know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you?”

“I suspect this is irony, but it is the faltering of your own language rather than my intent that is resulting in miscommunication. You are common. You are like the atoms of a blazing star, the inconceivable and unplumbable beauty of a thousand colors invisible to your eyes but incandescent sound to me. You are common, and immeasurably precious, because you are necessary. You are gold, and will therefore exist amongst the cosmos, always, forever.”

“Huh," Twilight manages, her brain deciding that such a response, though lacking, was at least better than the dismissive grunt she had preemptively prepared. "That’s just about the most romantically platonic thing somepony has ever said to me.”

A minute passes in reflection and contemplation before Twilight asks, “Hey, Apostrophe?”

“I listen.”

“We never, really, got off to a good start, did we?”

“T’was akin to houses and flame; a great deal of screaming and obscenities ensued.”

“Heh. Look… I know this wasn’t ideal for you. I’m… sorry. I’m sorry I assumed the worst, sorry I put you in a cage for months, sorry I never showed you everything Equestria could be when it wasn’t terrified of alien invasions or other nonsense… I suppose I’m most sorry it took me this long to say, well, do you want to be friends?”

“Verily?”

“Verily.”

“Verily, then allow me to say, as a friend ought, start on thy tome.”

“Are you serious? It really doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“It matters to ye’, and that alone suffices. What do you wish to write of?”

“I… I want to write about friendship. About how it makes us better, brighter. About how it can conquer everything,” Twilight sighs, before stoically adding, “And other comforting lies.”

“The truth is a lie forced into reality.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever ye’ wish. Though… perhaps I might make a recommendation?”

“I’m not making it a biography about you.”

“Verily, curses," Apostrophe replies with initially, before saying, almost offhandedly,  "I hope ye’ craft better stories than falsehoods; that travesty of attempted subterfuge was likewise humorous and thoroughly laughable.”

Twilight’s magic wobbles and nearly drops her quill; a flurry of emotional responses are considered, before she clears her throat and replies, rather neutrally given her own internal turmoil, with, “Oh?”

“Do not misunderstand me; you can portray the defeated and subsequently demure personality quite strongly. Perhaps ye’ act convinces even you, but I know gold enough to realize it doesn’t tarnish under stress.”

“Okay, look, Apostrophe, I appreciate how you keep saying these… I suppose it’s flattering, honestly, but you’re laying it on a little thick for a friend, and you're ... look, gold is nice and all, but it’s just a metal-”

There's a silent desperation in the words, not carried by tone but rather in haste as Apostrophe rattles on, interrupting with, "Ye’ exist in that state betwixt two close eternities, do ye’ not? Ye’ see the reality of a cosmic gravestone and the countless names that litter it, and ye’ see the soft edges of infinite Maybes-and-Could-Have-Beens stacked beside each other like the pillows of coffins. Ye’ are under no delusions of which is which, and yet ye’ do not truly despair.”

“Apostrophe… you’re just being absurd now. I already know that nothing can be done, and you’re saying like I’m not sad?”

“ Ye’ can do nothing and are thusly possessed by an inimitable sorrow. This is correct. But ye’ still hold out for a solution, one ye’ kith would deem a ‘miracle’.”

“Of course I do! I mean, yes, I do, but that much is obviously going to be the case.”

“Then ye’ do not truly despair even now.”

“...Apostrophe, you’re acting pretty arrogant for somepon-... somethin-... someone I could just dump on the side of the road. At this point, what's the worst that could happen?”

“Ye will not do that. I know this by two reasons.”

“Mind telling me why? Because every time you start acting high-and-mighty I’m sorely tempted to just tip you over and be done with it,” Twilight says, and though her tone is clearly irritated she adds just enough of a lilt to her words to dull their edge with a humor she hardly feels.

“Reason the first: ye will not do that because we are friends,” Apostrophe replies, either oblivious to the attempt at jest or aware of how skin-deep it truly was.

A minute passes in silent consideration before Twilight turns back to her desk. Another minute passes; a blank tome is retrieved, a quill is sharpened, and ink prepared, before, inevitably, she asks, “What about the second reason?"

"It is, in retrospect, ultimately non-essential. Disregard it as meaningless, my... friend. I already have."


***


Twilight, lamentably, is correct; a book simply takes too much time to be written in a single day, and a day is all she has. And yet, even as the raging sun dips below the horizon whilst nevertheless strangling the light of stars, even as Twilight prepares what is certain to be her last, lonely, night within Friendship Castle, a meek “Ah,” reverberates through the room.

“What is it, Apostrophe?” Twilight says, wincing at the venom in her own sleep-deprived voice.

“Verily, would ye’ wish to hear… a last request of sorts?”

“That’s really morbid, Apostrophe. Even for you.” Then a yawn and the crick of popping joints fills the room and Twilight adds, “Yeah, sure, as long as it’s simple enough to do in a few minutes, what do you need?”

“Hurl me into that pit your pink friend dug. I am referring to the inverted mountain.”

“...why?”

“Verily, why not?”

The next few seconds are silence, before the quiet tinkle of magic fills the air and encapsulates Apostrophe’s constructed form.

“You ask for the weirdest stuff, Apostrophe.”

“Verily, and yet you are my friend?”

“Hey, what are friends for, if not for tossing into massive pits?”

“I suspect this is a jape.”

“You’re probably right.”


***


The sun rises the next morning, but proclamations of doom continue for three days.

A week passes.

Ponies leap back into work with a vigor rarely seen in less trying times. Doomsayers dwindle.

A month passes.

It is finally the subtle breeze of chilly winter that banishes the haunting memory of a dying sun from contemporary conversation.

Someponies write a book about the perishing sun; no publisher will touch it.

Come Winter Wrap-up, it is simple another unpleasant memory to be nestled away in some dark corner of the mind and be banished to the forgettable pages of a bleaker past.
> 9 The Finite
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So, why are we doing this?” Twilight asks, wincing at each and every step as if she strides upon a world of brimstone and crackling tinder. It is a short walk, one that should be the work of perhaps five minutes, but the heat seems to stretch time out like taffy.

“Verily, I shall not lie,” Apostrophe replies.

A fifth of the walk passes as Twilight awaits an explanation.

“Okay. So… what?” Twilight prompts, her patience evaporating almost as quickly as her sweat.

“I shall not lie, so I shall not speak until I’m in the pit.”

Twilight halts and gives Apostrophe the stink eye for a second before continuing her trot with a half-heartedly mumbled, “Shouldn’t be keeping secrets from your ‘friends,’ either.”

“But ye’-”

“Yeah, well, I’m the princess of Friendship, not the princess of ‘Always-avoiding-hypocrisy’,” Twilight interjects. Then, as the pit looms into vision, she quietly asks, “It’s not going to hurt anypony, right? Well, I mean, any more than they already can be...”

“Nopony will be harmed.”

And if you think I actually believe that, I might as well get into the shuckster business and put Flim and Flam out of business, some ancient and vengeful part of Twilight’s mind manages to think before being quashed by an admittedly wavering trust in Apostrophe.

And the she stands before the pit, Apostrophe held in the grip of her magic and nothing but a yawning darkness bleaker than the starless skies.

“Do it,” Apostrophe gently encourages.

Twilight casts Apostrophe into the darkness.

There is nothing but the whistle of wind for a few moments, and then, “Ye' really must be a chess player, Twilight. I had my doubts, and yet-”

The problem with using monologues in the presence of heroes is that the heroes in question tend to develop incredibly violent reflexes upon hearing even the tone being used. For Twilight, the flashback it induced was less a ‘code red’ scenario than a ‘nuclear option, salt the earth’ sort of response.

“I KNEW IT!” Twilight roared, even as her magic blindly lashed downwards, ripping gouges into stone and earth alike in a display of awesome power and hair-trigger impulses.

“What?”

“I knew you’d betray my trust, you back-stabbing jerk!”

“What?”

Apostrophe, by its very nature, spoke in myriad intonations simultaneously; it was possible, at times, to parse out the intended inflection by the tone used by the majority of voices, but such a thing was more art than science.

And yet, somehow, nothing but shock and a hint of outrage saturates its words, even as it says, “Are ye’ a fool of fools, purple pony?! You lull me nearer with sweet promises of friendship and now is the time ye’ unload your manifold psychoses upon me?”

“Yeah, well, real friends don’t do these things to one another!”

“Oh,” Apostrophe quietly replies, the voices morose and accepting. “I had no clue ye’ cared so deeply.”

“Of course I care, idiot! How could I not?!”

“I… I beseech your forgiveness. And yet, there is little choice; microcosm though it may be, lump of dirt though it is… your land matters to me. I cannot surrender it to flame.”

Wait, what?

“Uh… I think we’re on two different pages of two separate books on opposite sides of the library,” Twilight manages even as a blasting updraft of air from the pit brings the scent of salt and sadness.

“We are?” Apostrophe asks, the voices shifting and churning as a repressed existence once more tests it’s limits. “You are trying to prevent my abnegating act of… the word your kind use is ‘love’, though surely that’s not correct… correct?”

“Uh,” Twilight utters for a second, before the more judicious portion of her mind hijacks control of her mouth and supplies, “Yeah, that, uh, sounds about right. Don’t do… whatever it was you were going to do.”

Then Apostrophe laughs and the world goes manic, because even in a land as diverse as Equestria some things simply don’t happen.

The tone is clipped, even if the words themselves blending together like a mad rant; the myriad warbles of Apostrophe’s voices forcing a shiver from the surrounding earth in sympathy. “The trouble, little purple… friend, yes, friend… is a naivete unseen out of spinning cradle-graves; the lie that all victories may be won without…” and here Apostrophe halts, as if in contemplation, before continuing, tangentially, “Ye’ think in terms of absolute victory or defeat. All is lost or all is gained. Reality turns into chess. Why else do the many risk life and limb for one? It is an equation of absolute loss, and yet… it is gold. Challenging eternity for one more minute, one more second, the pinnacle of madness, and a beautiful madness indeed.”

And for the first time, Apostrophe intentionally draws a slow and shuddering breath, before saying, “Verily, something worth preserving, surely?”

Oh Celestia, now you’re making me feel guilty for doubting...

And then the world goes funny as the darkness of the pit twists into something heavy and irrepressible. The shadows, slick as oiled velvet, seep around Twilight’s hooves and even her thoughts seem to leak out of her skul-


***


The ocean, again. It stretches forevermore in all directions. Yet, it is as still as glass.

“Ye’ think of water when pushed to incomprehension, whilst the orange one thinks of organic machinery,” observes something that is Apostrophe yet-infinitely-more, its voice booming despite the subtle hiss that hints even this is a repressed whisper.

“Everypony’s got their own idea of what’s ungraspable,” a lump of Twilight-ness replied, before willing a set of limbs and sensory organs into thought-existence. She peers at her reflection before nodding in approval; she was exactly as she appeared to be.

“And that does not bother you?”

“Not really. I mean, okay, yeah, it’s kinda silly Applejack’s personal version of Tartarus is sort of related to applied mathematics, but I’m not going to judge.”

The surface of the ocean twitches, a miniature wave across an infinite plane. Apostrophe is perturbed.

“Verily, why is the unknowable considered so bleak to your kind?”

The line between thought and word is nonexistent in this ‘place’, and so Twilight finds herself replying, “Because the unknown is dangerous, and because the shadows held sharp teeth.”

“They still do,” the ocean replies.

“Yes,” says Twilight.

There is nothing but a dripping noise and the subsequent bubbles that rise from unspeakable depths to pass the time for perhaps a minute. The ocean shrinks, just slightly.

“Do you know your friends so fully?” Apostrophe asks, and though it should be imperceptible Twilight can hear its voice lessening.

“No,” she admits almost cheerfully. “I only know a little about what, really, makes them tick, and I get the feeling that even if I devoted the rest of my life on studying them I’d only get surface details. Having friends… honestly, it’s a learning process.”

“And yet you hold them close despite the danger?” The voice is growing weaker, that much is certain now, and the ocean is filled with countless tiny bubbles, as if it were boiling away.

“Of course I do; they're my friends. I trust my friends,” Twilight says, even as she swallows her doubt and tries to keep her shaking thought-legs resolute.

“Like treasure hidden in darkness,” the ocean adds, even as the end of the sentence trails off in a hiss of pain. Then once more in the myriad voices of Apostrophe ask, “Verily, we are friends, yes?”

This is a world of thought and intention; a lie cannot hope but die here, Twilight knows, and it leaves her screwing her eyes closed even as her jaw swings open and says-

“Verily.”

There is a trill, a noise that sings for a moment, in reply.

“What are you doing?” Twilight asks, even as the ocean froths and boils in all directions to the infinite horizons. And yet, except for where her hooves disturb and ripple the surface, she remains in an oasis, an isle of stable waters.

“Cooking. I am cooking, my little purple friend.”

“What’re you cooking?”

“I suspect, once more, it is your language that fails in communication…”

A second (though surely far less if this is truly a realm of thought) passes and the connection between subject and verb are realized.

“How?” Twilight asks, more than a little panicked. “You eat stars-”

“This is true. But what of it?”

“How can anything even burn you?”

“Through the willing refusal to manipulate my density to the impenetrable yet ultimately self-defeating levels of-”

“Stop being pedantic!” There is a haze of steam that hovers above the hissing ocean, only to dissipate before some ever greater heat. “Hurling yourself into the sun does nopony any favors!”

“Truly? Then there is nothing short of a tragedy awaiting this idiocy-”

“Are you serious?!”

“Certainly not. If there were nothing but tragedy awaiting this action, you would possess no consciousness to speak with me. Due to the temporary inconvenience of death.”

“Oh har-har, real funny, Apostrophe,” Twilight shoots back, her tone laced with biting sarcasm. “You know, you’d probably have better luck talking to ponies if you weren’t so morbid all the time!”

“Verily, I suspect I would have had better luck in that regard had I not been located on the bottom floor of a dungeon for the majority of my duration here.”

“Er… yeah, I… yeah, that’s probably true,” Twilight replies, her posture and tone drooping with barely contained shame.

She watches the seas boil in silence.

“So… jokes aside, what’s going on with-” she waggles a hoof vaguely at the horizon, “-all this?”

“It is as I have told ye’,” Apostrophe says, words slow and deliberate, as if they had to be forced into existence.

“... how?” Twilight finally says, only to add, “Why?” a moment later, as if that were the true question.

“For the former, nothing but my stomach can weather solar flames in such a state, but such a fragmentary thing is all that is necessary to erase a planetary gravestone.  Existence before essence, and entropy reverses in even my fragmentary presence. As for the latter…”

The ocean seems to ponder this, even as Twilight waits.

“It is not morality,” Apostrophe-the-ocean finally says, “because good and evil are not at stake. ‘Honesty’ is quite a mockery on your dirtball, ‘Loyalty’ is irrelevant as is ‘Laughter’. Only one blinder than I could think ‘Kindness’ as the reason, and to think this exchange ‘Generous’ is correct, yet not ‘True’.”

Another moment passes in pondering, the ocean growing frenzied and tumultuous. And yet the placid circle around Twilight remains unbroken, even as she is certain she spies a crackling sphere dancing like a buoy in the waves.

“Friendship,” the ocean finally concludes, “The answer, the poison that slays me, is friendship.”

“Friendship isn’t like that-” Twilight interjects, only to be interrupted by another trill from the ocean below.

“Ask one who drifts deep within a sphere so heated that light has mass,” Apostrophe retorts, though the words remain untinged with malice, “This is an expression of friendship, little purple friend, and it destroys me.”

“You don’t have to-”

“And yet I do, because the alternative wounds me more. That is the shameful part of this entire friendship ordeal. It is akin to a comforting shackle, or those objects that dwell in the lockbox beneath ye bed-”

“Uhuh,” Twilight interjects, her face transcending its purple origins to become a burning red.

“Verily, I never pondered to ask, are they intended to be anklets? But for the gossamer chains and padding, it would possess a clear nature-”

“Okay, the metaphor is clear, you can stop now!”

“Nevertheless, the point remains, if there is to be a trial, the murder weapon was friendship. And yet I find I do not mind. Congratulations, my purple friend; though knowing your kind slays me, I find little regret with it.”

If the ocean could express, it would be legitimately beaming at Twilight. At least, until the heavy malaise of sorrow and regret begin to manifest, emanate, from the little Alicorn.

“You’re pinning all this on me?” Twilight says, words catching as primordial sobs threaten her ability to speak.

“… I suspect two days is not enough time to obtain knowledge of adequate social norms,” the ocean replies.

“You.. you don’t say?” Twilight manages, before, all too quickly, her face shifts into mask of royal stoicism and dignity, “You’re supposed to say stuff about… about how you’ll succeed, and how you’ll come back, and how we’ll throw you a party and-”

“I… shall see you again.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“Verily, I am sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

The ocean continues to disappear, the bone-white sand growing more and more visible with every moment.

“Could… could ye’ say it, once more?” Apostrophe manages.

“What?”

“Ye’ know.”

“...you’re my friend.”

“Thank you.”

The seconds of silence that pass stretch just a moment beyond what ought to be allotted for a properly dramatic farewell, and it is just as Twilight begins to feel antsy that she hears, barely a whisper, “Verily, friends tell jokes, yes?”

“Um,” Twilight manages, “Some.... times?”

“Did I ever tell ye’ about the star-eater who got eaten by a sun?”

“No…”

“Verily, I now have.”

Twilight, for a moment, responds with stony silence. Then, as if wrested in a desperate internal struggle, the corner of her lip quirks upward in an undignified smirk, and the facade of dignity dissipates in a torrent of giggles and sobs.

“Thank ye’... oh, verily, and be sure to free the simulated Twilight from her pillow prison if she has not yet done so.”

"Wha-"

And with a pop, Apostrophe is no more.