Dissonance

Chapters

One
Two
Three
Four

One

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Part One

Trials

*******

In the early morning, Twilight noted that the life-enabling manifestation of Princess Celestia’s benevolent rule beaming down on all Equestria made it somewhat difficult for her to keep a schedule.

Instinctively, the drowsy mare turned away from the light peeking in through her windows. She pulled the covers over her head and snuggled deeper into her pillow. Ordinarily she would simply get up, but ere this Saturday morn she had decided, acting on the advice of a friend, to sleep approximately ten percent more than usual—she had even cast a special spell to make her covers extra comfy, but of course had to forget the all-important task of shuttering her windows. Her absent-mindedness now ended up disrupting her carefully planned sleep patterns for the third time this month.

Twilight Sparkle exhaled, trying to fold herself deeper into her comforter, but to no avail. She threw one sheet off of her body at a time, smacking her lips slightly as she tasted her own morning breath. After her limbs recovered enough will to respond to her mental commands, the librarian rolled out of bed, stretched, and rubbed her eyes.

Well, she thought, glancing at a mirror on the other end of her room, today’s my lazy day. She ambled over to her bathroom, brushing her teeth and patting down her cowlick. She thought to call and see if Spike had woken up yet, then remembered he was doing a volunteer project for Cheerilee and had left early in the morning. Since the library was closed on Saturdays anyway, she realized today was the first day in a while in which she had absolutely nothing to do.

Maybe... I should just sleep some more? she thought, but eventually decided against it. Now that I’m awake, I might as well have breakfast, she reasoned as she walked down the stairs to the kitchen.

After a quick bowl of oatmeal, Twilight began to revise her plan for the day. So Rainbow Dash suggested I take a ‘day off,’ a day where I don’t do anything with my friends or anything around the library. But... what else is there? She sighed in exasperation. Think, Twilight, think. You’ve already read all the books in the library on your own time, you’ve already written all those manuscripts to send out to Canterlot Drama; is there anything else you need to do?

She blinked. Wait... did I really finish all of those? She trotted over to her desk, which was a mess of ink, paper, and broken quills. That’s odd. I usually keep it so tidy, Twilight thought, peeling an ink-soaked feather off of her desk and making a face. Ugh, Spike must have spilled it. When she looked inside her desk, though, they were all there: Hundreds of pages of her own soul sat there, a six-book series that barely fit inside the tiny drawer.

For a moment, she beamed with pride at the physical manifestation of her brilliance, but then something occurred to her. How in the world did she find the time to do all this? She remembered writing a few pages, but nothing like the novels lying in front of her. Shrugging, she closed the drawer, thinking, Well, if that’s done, is there anything else? Maybe I missed a book or two.

She crossed a few rooms into the library portion of her home, scouring the shelves for any adventure she hadn’t yet delved into. After carefully scrutinizing her entire inventory, however, her search came up empty. She could count off all the main characters in each book by name, as well as quote several passages in ones that she found particularly well done.

Once again, though, this baffled her. I know I’ve been in this library for about a year, now, she thought, her mouth agape as she took in the volume of her achievement, but there’s no way I’d be able to read all this in twenty years, let alone just a few months!

A knock on her front door interrupted her thoughts. Twilight snapped out of her confusion and trotted over to answer it, and the door, once opened, revealed Rarity on the other side.

“Goodness, darling!” Rarity exclaimed upon seeing Twilight’s misshapen mane. “Battling manticores hardly seems a way to spend a Saturday!”

Twilight would have rolled her eyes, but the sunlight from outside was piercing. She cringed a moment and covered her face with a hoof before replying. “It just so happens that I was trying to take a suggestion from Rainbow Dash to sleep more.”

“Oh, did I wake you?” Rarity asked.

“No, I had just gotten up anyway,” Twilight said, closing her eyes arching her back a little bit in an effort to stretch out her weariness. So much for not spending time with friends, but I doubt I had anything better to do anyway.“Would you like to come in?”

“Thank you, but I was only here to see whether or not you had any spare fabric. I’ve been so busy lately that I seem to have run out just in time for my latest flash of brilliance! Picture this—” she began, rushing to Twilight’s shoulder and waving her hoof about in the air dramatically, “—a dress that completely captures the art of mimicry! Black and white stripes flowing beautifully, with a matching béret and face paint! Oh, Twilight, it would be simply glorious, but I just don’t have the necessary materials! It’s a travesty!”

“Well, I’d like to help you, Rarity,” Twilight said, stepping away from Rarity’s grasp, “but the best I could do would be sending an order to Canterlot Cloth, and you could do that yourself anyway. Why don’t you just go to the fabric store here in Ponyville?”

Rarity pouted slightly. “Well, I would, but they’re out of not only black fabric, but white, as well! It’s absolutely horrid! They say they won’t be in stock for another three days, Twilight! Three days! Oh, there must be something you can do!”

Twilight thought for a moment. “Well, if you have any fabric you don’t need, there is a transmutation spell I could use.”

“Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou, darling, this will save me so much time~!” Rarity squealed with glee. “I’ll return in mere moments, Twilight. Now hurry and prepare the spell before my inspiration fades!”

Twilight nodded and closed the door as Rarity scampered off. Today sure is starting out strangely, she muttered to herself as she located her spellbook by what seemed to be muscle memory. Before she could pull it from the shelf, though, she heard another knock on her door, followed by a soft ‘ting’ noise, as if somepony had hung a wind chime on her house somewhere.

“I wonder who that could be,” she wondered aloud. Sighing, she went to answer it, before once again seeing Rarity on her front porch.

Rarity gaped. “Goodness me! Did a manticore attack your mane, darling?”

“We went over this, Rarity, remember? I just woke up,” Twilight stated.

“Oh! Um, yes, of course,” Rarity said, though a look of incomprehension was clear on her face. “Well, Twilight, I was here to see if you had any fabric to spare.”

“...Fabric?” Twilight asked, feeling a peculiar sense of deja-vu. Didn’t this conversation already happen?

“Yes, of course! And not just any ordinary cloth, either; you know what standards I hold myself to!” Rarity said, bouncing a few locks of her mane up and down in her hoof. “You wouldn’t happen to have any available, would you?”

Twilight blinked. “Rarity... are you sure you’re okay?”

“The only reason I wouldn’t be okay, Twilight, is if I didn’t have enough material to bring my latest, greatest, most ingenious design to the world of high fashion! Oh, please, Twilight, there must be something you can do!” Rarity pleaded. Twilight saw a twinkle of light in her eyes, which wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary for the fashionista if it hadn’t been bright purple.

“...Let... Let me guess,” Twilight began. “You need black and white fabric, right? For your new dress?”

Rarity gasped. “Don’t tell me you had the exact same idea just this morning, Twilight!” She turned around, pacing in frustration. “Oh, I knew it wasn’t all that original an idea, but for you to have come up with it on your own, it must be one of the blandest ideas in all of Equestria! I mean no offense, of course; fashion just isn’t in your particular vocation, but honestly, I must be losing my touch if both of us have the same dress in mind! Oh, and I thought it was such a fabulous idea, too,” she finished, ending her rant with a slight pout.

Twilight looked at her, concerned. There was an odd glimmer about her friend’s mane, as if she had sprinkled glitter throughout it. “Look, Rarity, I don’t know what’s gotten into you all of a sudden, but—Rarity?” she asked, noticing her friend was still turned away from her. “Um, Rarity?”

“Twilight!” another voice called from down the street. Twilight gasped, shocked, upon seeing that it was, again, Rarity. “Oh, Twilight, I’ve gotten all the fabric~!” she called, bounding up to the front porch and levitating several rolls of silk at her side. She nearly dropped her precious cargo, though, upon seeing the second Rarity, who was sitting, frozen, on the steps.

Twilight felt something strike her upside the head. She staggered backward, the invisible force pushing her to the ground. She called for her friend as she collapsed to the hardwood floor, but no noise escaped. Why am... suddenly... sleepy?Twilight asked herself, trying to shake the fogginess from her mind and stand up, but her legs just wouldn’t obey. Her eyelids dropped down past her eyes, and she was lost to the world.

Twilight snapped awake. It was midmorning, and she found that her face was pressed into the side of a novel she was reading and her sheets haphazardly tossed over her back. The candle on her nightstand had burned down to a stub. Bleaugh... I must have fallen asleep reading ‘The Merry Misadventures of Mousey Mite.’She picked her head up and noticed a thin trail of drool coming from the corner of her mouth. Eww...

Wiping it off on her hoof, she stretched, yawned, and swung herself out of bed. “What a dream,” she complained, levitating the book next to her head with her magic as she clambered toward the door. Heh. Two Raritys. I can only imagine the conversation that pair would have. Her musing was interrupted as she nearly fell down the stairs, dropping her novel.

Catching herself instinctively, she gasped and steadied herself. “That’s funny,” she murmured aloud. “I don’t remember this staircase having quite so many... stairs.” She had tripped on the third-to-last step.

She picked up her book and made her way over to one of the library’s many bookshelves, treading lightly in case any of her floorboards had suddenly become equally fragile. Oddly enough, when she went to put her novel away, she found a second copy of the blue volume on her shelf, right in the special nook where she kept whatever book she was currently reading. In addition to that inconsistency, Twilight saw that somepony had scribbled a letter into the bookcase in bright purple ink, one she didn’t recognize.

She leaned in to examine the letter, but could discern no meaning from it. She swiveled her ears around, trying to detect whether or not she was being watched. After she was confident she was alone, she attempted to place her latest-read novel on the bookshelf so that she could pick up a different one about magical lettering, but noticed it had disappeared from her telekinetic grasp.

Ooo-kaaay... Twilight thought. She glanced back at the shelf, though quickly stepped back in shock. The familiar blue spine of Mousey Mite greeted her from the rightmost portion of the bookcase, but somehow all of the hundreds of volumes on the shelves had been altered to be that exact same shade of light blue. The bookcase itself was now also covered in unintelligible lettering, though the color of the individual characters varied through all the hues of a rainbow.

As a test, Twilight picked a random book and opened it, finding the interior a patchwork of every single book in her library—each page corresponded to a different story. Grand adventures were suddenly interrupted by a recipe for red velvet cake, only to continue into step six of how to build a birdhouse. Every page number was replaced with a random series of brightly colored characters.

“This is... really weird,” Twilight muttered, placing the book back. As a test, she turned away, then looked back at the bookshelf. All of the books had vanished. She tried again, and though this time the books had returned, they were all upside-down, with the text on the spines replaced with a meaningless series of rainbow runes.

This seems a lot like one of Discord’s tricks,Twilight realized. She thought for a moment. But... those weird letters are a common thread, and probably not something he’d include. She sighed. I guess I’ll have to cancel my day of relaxation and see what’s going on. If Discord is behind all this, then he shouldn’t be too hard to find.

She felt a slight tremor at her feet, and looked down to see that her once-hardwood floor was now made out of smooth tile. Grass was lining the walls. “What is this, Wacky Wednesday?” she complained, exasperated. “Discord, if you’re behind all this, show yourself!”

The doorbell rang. After rushing to the door and pulling it open, she saw Rarity trotting toward her, looking as frantic as she had yesterday. The librarian did a double-take, though, when she saw a white hoof resting limply just behind the library’s sign.

Rarity took a deep breath, but Twilight preempted her. “Dresses. Black fabric. Got it,” she stated, brushing past her friend and peeking behind the sign. Rarity, slightly miffed, followed her.

“What in the world has gotten into you today, Twilight?” the fashionista huffed.

Twilight didn’t answer—her eyes were wide, and her hoof up to her mouth as she gazed upon what lay before her. In the shade of the sign was a second Rarity, its head turned toward the tree trunk and lolled slightly to the side.

“R-... Rarity?” Twilight breathed, tapping the doll on the shoulder.

She yelped and stepped back as the mock Rarity fell over, but the real Rarity screamed in fright upon seeing its eyes, or rather, its lack thereof. The second Rarity was no more than a porcelain doll, with a smooth, reflective surface, and no nose, or mouth to speak of. Instead of eyes, brightly-glowing shards of glass, shaped into the likeness of letters, formed two hollow spheres inside the sockets. As it lay on its side, it began to break apart, slowly dissolving into dust and leaving only a few strands of purple hair behind. A wind chime tinged in the background.

“Tw-... Twilight, are you all right? Who was that?” Rarity asked, cantering toward her friend. “I was about to remark on her excellent sense of fashion, too...”

Twilight sucked in a breath and stifled a shudder, trying to convince herself that what she had just seen didn’t actually occur. “Rarity, weird things have been happening to me all morning. Unexplainable things. Has anything like that been happening to you?”

“Well, yes, in fact; it was what I was coming over here to ask you about,” Rarity stated. “You see, I found that I had a painfully low supply of black fabric. Well, apparently a rogue fashionista broke into my house in the middle of the night and used all of it up!”

“Used it... up?” Twilight asked, giving Rarity a sideways look.

“Yes, in fact; I have no idea how he or she did it, but they managed to turn all my materials into thirty pairs of the exact same dress! I found my basement simply full of them!” Rarity exclaimed. “And that’s not even the worst part! Just to spite me and make certain I couldn’t use their work, they sewed odd little letters all over each dress!”

Twilight blinked. “Go on?”

“Oh, but that is not even the—worst—part! The thief must have been a rival from the Canterlot industry, because they copied the design I was going to use to a T! I hadn’t even made any concept art yet, Twilight! Oh, do you know what this means?”

“...You have no black fabric?” Twilight asked.

“Well, yes... But it also means that the thief is a unicorn, and a unicorn with excellent taste! I came to you because I knew you weren’t suspect, but Twilight, you simply must know somepony who would do something like this!” Rarity pleaded.

“Gee, thanks,” Twilight muttered. Putting it aside for now, she added, “Rarity, to me, it just sounds like somepony—or Discord, more likely—just did all your work for you multiple times.”

“Yes, Twilight, but it’s the principle,” Rarity complained.

“Well, tell me more about the letters. What did they look like?” Twilight asked.

“I... Well, I’m not certain, to be quite honest. I was rather flustered, you see,” Rarity said, bouncing a lock of her mane in her hoof and trying her best to look dignified.

Twilight shook her head. “Look, let’s just get to the center of town, maybe talk to the mayor about what’s happening. We’ll go from there, okay?”

“Well...” Rarity trailed off, unable to think of a suitable alternative. “Okay.”

*******

A warm breeze was blowing on the dirt roads that linked the majority of the community, and the sun seemed much more glaring than usual. However, those details seemed minor compared to the fact that the town was absolutely devoid of ponies. Not a single soul was on the path leading up to the town hall, save Twilight and Rarity.

“I guess everypony’s inside trying to figure out what’s going on themselves?” Twilight guessed. She wiped her brow; the stark blue sky overhead was stifling.

“This wouldn’t be the first time,” Rarity said with an affirmative nod, “but one would assume that there would be more... panic.” She was about to say more, but just as she arrived at the town hall, a pale yellow pegasus slammed into her, gripping her tightly.

“Oh, Rarity! It’s awful, just awful!” Fluttershy sobbed, trembling with fear.

“Fluttershy, I appreciate the affection, but putting your friend into a headlock is most unbecoming of a lady!” Rarity snapped, just as Fluttershy realized what position she was holding her friend in.

Fluttershy released her grip on Rarity, then promptly curled into a tight ball. Twilight glanced around for anypony else yet wandering the streets, then asked her, “What’s wrong, Fluttershy?”

“The animals!” Fluttershy squeaked. “A-All I know is that I was giving Walter Rabbit an herb drink and th-then... he was ju-just shards of glass.”

“My goodness, darling, are you alright?” Rarity said, wrapping a limb around her traumatized friend. “What on earth could have done such a thing, and who?”

Twilight shook her head, trying to stave off disbelief, though she knew that the shards Fluttershy referred to were very likely the same pieces of glass that she had seen in the fake Rarity’s eyes. “This is the most complex magic I’ve ever seen. It has to be Discord; I know it.”

“But how did he escape? Y-You don’t think he’s after us, d-do you?” Fluttershy asked, turning her attention to Twilight.

“Hey!” the girls heard Applejack call from down the street. “Any y’all see Big Mac?”

Twilight beckoned the farmer over. “For some reason, everypony in town has vanished.”

“Along with all mah apples!” Applejack exclaimed, patting her stetson down on her head. “Bet’cha those vermin’ve been plottin’ this fer weeks.”

“Applejack,” Twilight began, stepping up to her, “did you see any letters, or glass on your farm? Things that weren’t supposed to be there. Bright colors.”

“You takin’ me for some kinda crazy pony?” Applejack asked.

“Did you or did you not?” Twilight demanded, though the look in her eyes coupled with her tone suggested that she was pleading, rather than ordering.

“Uhm... well...” She took a few moments of consideration. “The cider seemed kinda more orangish, I guess. Wasn’t really payin’ much attention.”

“Pardon my interruption,” Rarity said as she stood up and brushed herself off, “but is it just me, or is it swelteringout here?”

Twilight realized Rarity was right; what had started out as a cool day was now approaching an inferno. The sun’s piercing beams from overhead were growing stronger by the minute. Even more reason to stay inside, her instincts told her, but she knew that something bigger was at work here.

Soon enough, Rainbow Dash had landed next to them, her blue pelt dotted with beads of sweat. Pinkie approached from just a few meters away, her head covered in a parasol-shaped balloon.

“Is it hot out here, or what?” the weathermare asked, wiping her brow with a wrist. “There aren’t even any clouds to hide in.”

Twilight froze as a thought occurred to her. “Hey, Rainbow Dash... when was the last time it rained?”

“Just yesterday!” Pinkie chirped. “I remember it because it rained so hard I got to make paper sailers with Scootaloo and Mr. Cake’s newspaper!”

“Who did you organize it with?” Twilight asked, turning back to Dash. She fanned herself a bit with her tail as a bead of sweat dribbled past her nose.

“That’s easy, it was...” Dash raised a hoof to her chin, squinting. “It was—Look, I know this.”

“Why the hay didn’t you try’n deal with this heat?” Applejack asked of Dash, fanning herself with her hat.

“I tried, but there are no clouds,” Dash said, waving her hoof at the paralyzingly blue sky. “The ones I did find were covered in weird lights, and they dissolved when I went near ‘em.”

“Girls, my knee is pinching really bad,” Pinkie interjected, shaking out her right foreleg. One of her ears swivelled to the side. “Hey, do any of you hear that?”

Twilight was about to ask what exactly Pinkie heard when she heard a soft series of little clinks, as if shards of glass were colliding in midair. It sounded like it could have been musical, like wind chimes, but instead had resigned itself to an unsettling, dissonant noise—eerily rhythmic while still lacking a clear melody.

“Look up!” Rarity yelled, raising a hoof toward the sky. The sun’s light was too strong to look anywhere near it, but along the horizon, a thin, white line was carving its way upward, its path suggesting all of Ponyville was contained in some sort of massive dome.

Applejack heard Fluttershy shiver, and turned to see a luminescent piece of carved glass hovering by her cheek. It glowed faintly yellow, and didn’t seem subject to gravity.

Fluttershy leaned back as it floated past her cheek. “Wh-what is it?”

Twilight squinted. “Uhm... It almost looks like something from an old Equestrian alphabet, but I don’t recognize the character.” After a brief moment of consideration, she added, “I remember seeing letters like it in my house when everything started to defy logic. Maybe the letters are causing the chaos.”

“Girls, I do hate to interrupt, but I don’t quite think we should be ignoring the sky,” Rarity stated nervously, having pulled an emergency pair of frilled sunglasses out of her bag to better observe the situation. The mysterious line had already traced from one horizon to the other, threading itself directly through the sun.

“This reminds me of those dreams I get when I eat too much cream cheese,” Pinkie mumbled, the nagging sensation in her knee gradually increasing in intensity as time wore on.

A few more letters appeared, all of them sporting different designs and alternating colors. They were cold to the touch, and all seemed to drift from the left of the group to the right, gradually congregating in one central location in front of the town hall.

“I can’t wait to tell all of you about this dream tomorrow,” Dash jested, though she was shifting back and forth on her hooves. “...Right?”

“I know I’m not dreaming,” Pinkie replied as the glass letters converged into a small pile. From that pile, a small structure began to autonomously built itself, starting with what appeared to be four irregular cylinders, each of them about five centimeters high. Multicolored pieces continued to arrive.

A soft tearing sound resonated through the atmosphere, as if somepony was gently carving through a piece of silk. Twilight looked up to see the blue sky fall away like bed sheets, revealing a brilliantly clear night sky—whole galaxies could be seen, a picture of eons past swirling daintily an unfathomable distance away.

Twilight was almost awed before she detected movement. “I shouldn’t... how close are those stars?” she asked aloud. The entire sky seemed to be moving, shifting with the consistency of quicksand.

“Wh-what about the ring?” Fluttershy asked, craning her neck to look upward. The sun had dimmed, and was now possible to look at directly. What was significantly more interesting was the fact that a gargantuan metal track had been speared through it, following the same horizon-scaping path the initial thin line had.

The little dots of light had continued building, and their collective work was now starting to clearly resemble a pony. The torso was nearly finished, and the whole of the construct was starting to glow brightly, its patchwork of rainbow runes fastening in place.

“Whaddaya think we do?” Applejack asked, regarding the strange object cautiously.

“Let’s see,” Twilight said, circling the structure while being sure to keep her distance. “We all saw weird letters today. This is probably the source of the letters, and probably everything else.” She looked upward. “Since it’s impossible for the sky to split, somepony put an illusion over the whole of Ponyville.”

“So is Celestia just throwing a big surprise party for us? That would explain why she made everypony go and hide,” Pinkie suggested, immediately peeking inside a nearby shrub to check for anypony who might have been waiting for a signal within.

“No, it’s not a party, but if Celestia’s involved...” Twilight considered Pinkie’s mention of the Princess. Celestia had tested her before, but she’s always given her time to fit whatever task was at hoof into her schedule—Celestia always gave her time to prepare. “Maybe... it’s not Celestia, but Luna,” she murmured, more to herself than anypony else. She glanced up, checking the sky for a moon. There was none, just the sun, hanging like a lightbulb overhead. She shook her head. “None of this makes any sense. It must be some kind of test.”

“I don’t think mah question was really answered,” Applejack said, setting her jaw as the cylinders grew taller. “Twi, do you really think this is some kinda test? To be honest, I don’t really feel too safe out here.”

Nopony answered her. A faint voice was starting to whisper in their ears, though the tongue was too strange and the tone too distorted to communicate any meaning. Fluttershy felt another rune brush up against her, more forcefully this time, and she sucked in a breath—it was now much colder, so cold that it burned.

“What’s it trying to say?” Twilight asked as the strange pony’s head was finished. It resembled a stallion, though it had no mouth to speak of. His eyes were the only part of his body that were entirely symmetrical, both of them triangles that had a burning, golden appearance. The runes on the back of his neck and the dock of his tail glowed hotly before radiating their respective colors out into the newly night air, creating the semblance of hair, though it flowed weightlessly out into the air akin to ink in water before dissipating into the atmosphere. The last thing to form was the horn on his head, which manifested as a purple gem that radiated pure emotion—what emotion was specifically being radiated, Twilight couldn’t tell.

Some more words were whispered. The air grew distinctly chillier as the stallion regarded each of them, and though he was incapable of expression, Dash noticed that he stared at Twilight significantly longer than her or anypony else.

“Uhm... hi?” Pinkie ventured.

The construct’s head sharply turned to her. He stared a moment before returning his gaze to Twilight.

“Who are you?” Twilight asked, her gaze wary. She retreated a bit as the construct approached, arching an eyebrow.

The magical automaton raised its front hoof. A single purple rune radiated from the base of his hoof, drifting slowly up to Twilight’s skull. It hovered for a moment, giving her just enough chance to arch an eyebrow before burrowing itself into her skull.

Twilight felt herself knocked skyward, but in mid-flight, sound dimmed, and motion slowed. She heard the heavily distorted voice speak again, but this time, she could tell it was that of a stallion—even if he seemed to be speaking three sentences at the same time, two of them backward. Amidst the chaos, she could discern only this:

“My͟ ̀nam̛e͠ ̢̛is̵ Verba.̶̡̛C҉ommiţ ̷iţto̴memơy.”

After a few more moments, she landed flat on her back. Dazed, she sat motionless for a few moments, trying to catch her breath.

“Hey! You gotta problem, buddy?” Dash huffed, helping Twilight to her hooves.

“That may just be the only way he can say ‘hello,’ Dash,” Twilight grunted, feeling the rough impact particularly in her shoulders, which made it somewhat difficult to stand. She regarded the creature. “He says his name is Verba.”

“So why in Celestia’s name is he here? Is he the harbinger of all... this?” Rarity asked, sweeping her hoof across the sky.

Verba took a few steps toward Rarity, then raised a hoof. Another purple rune floated from the underside of his hoof, and he offered it to her.

She smiled anxiously, taking a step back. “Erm... no thank you, darling. I just had my mane and tail done yesterday.”

Verba tilted his head, but interpreted her withdrawal as refusal. He looked away for a moment, but when he turned back to the fashionista, the runes represented his eyes had faded to a light violet color. Some faint tendrils of energy flowed from them, reaching out to Rarity and tracing lines up her legs.

The sensation was odd, feeling a mix between a brisk breeze and a trickle of water, but Rarity, for fear of being thrown roughly onto her rump, stood patiently as the odd construct examined her. The smokey bands of energy stroked up her torso, then faded into nothing as they passed her cheeks.

Verba’s eyes flashed purple. Rarity sucked in a breath. “Well,” she stated, blinking.

“If I didn’ know any better, sugarcube, I’d say he’s checkin’ you out,” Applejack quipped. Verba proximately turned his gaze to her and stepping forward. Applejack stared at him directly. “Uhm... whadda ya want?”

Verba’s eyes flashed orange. Much to Rarity’s amusement, Verba began the same slightly invasive process with her.

“Allow me a hazard guess, darling,” the bemused unicorn began. “Verba is not a philanthropist, and all of these cosmic oddities are not merely the result of some creature wanting to feel us up.”

“Hey, I still think we’re dreaming,” Dash said with a shrug. “I mean, like, I’m dreaming.”

“I don’t think we’re dreaming, though, Dashie,” Pinkie said, seeming genuinely concerned as she gazed at her surroundings. Ponyville was starting to glow an odd, dark blue color, as if somepony had covered an enormous flashlight lens in blue flim and was now slowly turning its beam toward their hometown.

“Well, I can’t trust what you say. You’re part of the dream. Jeez, Pinkie, this is basic stuff,” Dash scoffed.

“Alright, well, if you know it’s a dream, shouldn’t you be able to do anything you want?” Pinkie replied with a huff.

Dash was about to afford her a retort when Verba took a patient step toward her, as well. She was not nearly as eager as Rarity, or even Applejack had been, and she did a sort of mid-air backpedal as he approached.

“Hey, buddy, get lost,” she said. “I don’t want you throwing me, or...” She trailed off—Verba had looked her directly in the eyes, and her motions slowed. She landed, dead-eyed, as the strange construct held her gaze. He repeated the process, his eyes flashing bright crimson before he broke eye contact.

As soon as the link was broken, Dash blurted, “—touching me, or being near me until I know what’s going on, okay? Okay,” she said, regarding Verba as he moved on to Pinkie.

“Hiya!” the confectionist chirped, sticking out a hoof to greet him. He took a step back, looking at her outstretched limb, before staring her blankly. Pinkie held her hoof up. “You’re supposed to shake it, silly billy.”

Verba’s eyes glowed, and he repeated the procedure on Pinkie, his eyes this time glowing blue. If he had even noticed Pinkie’s attempt to be friendly, he was either ignorant of her meaning, or apathetic to her cause.

After sorting through Pinkie, he moved onto Fluttershy. The pegasus quaked slightly as she approached, still significantly unnerved by the situation, stood up and turned her head away from him and toward the town. She noted that it was slowly being taken over by the blue glow, the horizon now completely absorbed and melting into the night sky. Only about a fifty-meter radius around the small group was visible—but she blinked as she saw a flash of something she didn’t recognize out the corner of her eye.

“Did... did you see that?” she asked Dash, desperately trying to ignore the slick sensation of coils on her coat.

“See what?” Dash asked, scanning the horizon. “I don’t see anything besides, like, the town disappearing. But this is a dream anyway, so I’m not too worried.”

“I’d exercise a small concern about that so that we don’t fall into some abyss, but honestly, darling, after all that’s happened within the past hour, I’m not surprised that Ponyville is dissolving,” Rarity sighed. “Though, I do wonder: Is this the real one? Are we dreaming? Nothing’s made to hurt us yet. This situation, though strange, seems more surreal than threatening.”

Fluttershy considered this a moment, though quickly came to the conclusion that Celestia or Luna would have at least shown up if something so destructive was happening to the actual Ponyville. For all she knew, Luna was intentionally playing tricks on them. This train of thought only lasted a moment, though, before she said, pointing behind Verba, “No, I saw some kind of... movement, just over there.”

“What did it look like?” Dash asked.

Fluttershy squinted, but saw nothing where she was certain something had been just a moment before. “...Never mind. I’m sorry for worrying you.” She looked back to see that Verba had finished with her, his eyes having just faded from pink and back to their original golden hue.

He stepped up to Twilight. As he looked her over, she did a similar inspection, trying to glean meaning from the text composing his body. She narrowed her eyes and squinted, some characters too blurry for her to even discern their shape. They almost appeared smudged, their colors blending into that of the surrounding runes.

This is the most advanced construct I’ve ever seen. Nopony alive should be able to make something like this, not even the Princess. She looked up as the tendrils stroked past her cheeks to see Verba’s eyes flashing bright purple, glowing so hotly that he took a step back, seemingly in surprise.

Twilight looked at him, confused. His reaction also garnered the attention of her friends, and she asked, “What’s wrong?”

Verba said nothing. Instead, he rushed up to her, pressing his snout into hers. Twilight’s friends rushed to her aid, but runes immediately broke off Verba’s shoulder and flew into their chests, completely inhibiting forward movement.

“Get off her!” Dash ordered, scratching at the green rune inhibiting her assistance.

Twilight, meanwhile, didn’t quite think she was threatened—yet. She instead watched Verba intently as he invaded her space, glaring at him as his eyes burned violet. She lit up her horn threateningly, and the air crackled with electricity as he stood over her. She could feel his warmth spreading across her as the standoff persisted. Verba’s horn sparked, too, though his burned with an almost blinding light.

There was a crackling noise reminiscent of a static shock. Twilight felt her magic fizzle just before it amplified several times beyond her threshold of control.

Dash watched in horror as a curved purple beam bounced between Twilight and her assailant. The resulting explosion smacked everypony present into the air, where they experienced much the same experience Twilight had earlier uninterrupted. Verba dissolved, fractured utterly into his component parts, which flew every which way.

The light cleared, fracting and refracting away into the darkness. Twilight slowly turned back to the group. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, her horn shattered and leaking crimson. Her coat was split open, having a similar texture to sun-baked mud, and was rapidly losing its purple hue, turning to gray. She took a step toward her friends, stumbled, and fell.

*******

Pinkie scrambled up to the crumpled form of her charred and bleeding friend. “Tw-... Twilight...?” She tried to reach a hoof under her body and lift her up, but the librarian’s skin broke on contact, coloring both parties crimson. Pinkie stared at the red on her forelegs uncomprehendingly for a moment before glancing back at Twilight, searching for the light that had always made a home in her eyes. Twilight didn’t make eye contact. Her gaze was dull.

Rarity raised a hoof to her mouth. AJ blinked, too shocked to speak. Fluttershy forced herself to look away. Dash was the only one who could even manage a thought.

“What happened to Twilight?” she gaped. She immediately turned to Verba. “You! What’d you do to Twilight?!”

The apparition, in the meantime, was slowly reforming. His hooves were covering his head as he knelt forward, his back legs quaking. He shuddered, his whole body made the desperate sound of a wind chime in a tornado.

The weathermare, her legs shaking but her will strong, took a few steps toward Verba as if to challenge him. “Well?”

She was about a meter away when he stood up and roared, his structured head now sporting a mighty jaw set with rows of jagged glass for teeth. The force of his bellow was enough to knock Dash away, but he didn’t settle for that—he grabbed her in midair and tried to grab her hind legs. He whiffed, thankfully, but his touch was numbingly frigid.

“Ow!” Dash yelped, ducking away and behind a building before realizing it was transparent. It had faded completely to blue, as had the rest of Ponyville, which was dissolving like wet tissue paper, collapsing into the darkened ground, which was rapidly crumbling to volcanic sand.

Verba bellowed, his voice painfully shrill, akin to glass grinding on glass. A blast of cold air pelted the girls, piercing them to their core. Thunder boomed, and a gale stirred in the vast void outside time and space. The sky churned, the sun obscured by clouds.

Applejack didn’t hesitate to beat a hasty retreat, and she practically dragged Fluttershy with her as she galloped away. Rarity leapt out the range of Verba’s swift fangs just in time for Dash to snag her in midair and carry her aloft, while in the meantime Pinkie helped Fluttershy find her wings and fly for her life.

The horizon was dim, the sun providing not nearly enough lighting to account for the increasingly ragged terrain—more than once did Rarity lose her balance as Verba barreled toward them, leaving a trail of white powder in his path. In the midst of all her panic did she notice the tips of her ears hurting, and how her face stung as she bounded forward into the unknown. It was then she realized she was absolutely frigid.

The air had chilled to levels either approaching or below freezing, and the thunder overhead roared as the air became obscured in the sudden blizzard of titanic force. The wind was indecisive about whether or not it wished to aid or inhibit the collective flight of the girls, but whether it chose to back or push against them was rather unimportant given that its mere presence burned them utterly.

Eventually, Rarity’s gallop was forced to slow to a canter, and both Dash and Fluttershy were forced to land, the wind proving too much for either of them to handle. Pinkie continued clawing her way forward, but Applejack was the first pony to trip on the now-jagged stones they trode upon.

Fluttershy was the only pony to hear the farmer’s exclamation upon her face hitting the now-arctic granite, and she was also the first to rush to her aid. Verba was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t saying much due to the fact that nopony could see more than two meters in front of their own faces due to the savage snowstorm.

It was a good thing, too, for just as Fluttershy stumbled up to Applejack in order to help her up, Verba pounced at them from out of sight. Having no other options, Fluttershy hissed in a breath and stared him directly in the eyes.

He paused.

Fluttershy’s will quickly diminished in the sheer cold of the blizzard, but for the few moments she looked at Verba, she saw only instinct—the same emotions she would see in an eagle, or a cat.

As her mental energy crumbled under the weight of the blizzard, Verba broke from his trance just long enough to swipe at her before Dash knocked her away. He roared once more, shooting cringe-worthy vibrations across the landscape, but they soon faded as the quintet fled.

They kept running as long as they could. They ran as the granite turned to dirt, and the dirt was covered with snow, they ran as the still-unseen sky slowly calmed to that which they knew and loved, and they ran even as hyperboreal wires crept up their limbs and into their torso, solidifying their bodies from the outside in.

And when they could run no more, they found their eyes frozen shut, their limbs unresponsive from the force of the storm, and they collapsed as a collective—as five.

The next morning, they woke up with four.

Author's Note

Story occurs just after Season Three's first episode.

If any links are broken, please inform me via PM. If at any time you have questions concerning the progression or frequency of updates, desire insight into future chapters, or wish to assist in the writing process, please contact me via PM as well.

Two

(([Note]: If you have not yet read the rewrite of the prior chapter, please do so to avoid confusion. Enjoy!))

*******

Dash awoke to find her eyes already open. She shuddered and pulled her wool blanket tighter around her body, but it was hardly enough to stifle the crushing cold that had crept into her every crevice. A dim fire burned in the center of the chamber, lighting up the inside of what appeared to be a train carriage. Whatever comforts had once existed within appeared to have been stripped away, however, leaving only the metal shell and a few bare necessities. A chilly wind blew in from a chipped window, as well as a few flecks of snow. Dash spotted three other lumps laying next to her, all of them huddled up in the corner furthest from the broken window. A small figure rested up against the fire, covered in a mix of thick cloth and formerly luxurious clothing, now reduced to tatters.

Dash coughed. Surprisingly, her throat wasn’t crushingly sore—it must not have been too long since she fell unconscious in the blizzard. Some life returned to her weary muscles as she remembered what had been chasing her.

“Hey, you awake?” the pony in the center of the rusted carriage asked, revealing himself as a young colt. He stood up and walked over, still mostly obscured by darkness. Dash could see some rags hanging off his front limbs, improperly wrapped, and some strands of his teal mane poking from under his head.

“Who are you?” Dash rasped, too weak to do most anything but look up.

“Oh, my name’s Lion’s Share, but you can just call me Lion,” the strange colt said. “You were just outside my place, and, well, that didn’t seem like the best place to take a nap. So I dragged you inside.”

“Well... thanks, I guess,” Dash muttered, clambering to her hooves even though the effort made her nauseous. She shook her head, remembering something important. She glanced back toward her sleeping friends. One, two... three...?

“What’s wrong?” Lion asked. Dash’s eyes had regained focus, and she saw that his entire head was wrapped up in muddy cloth, only one of his emerald eyes visible. The only sign of his mane was a matted lump atop his head, though the bandana he had covering his mouth served as the biggest oddity—it was several sizes too big, the tip falling down past his torso. She imagined it was made for a stallion the size of Big Macintosh.

The weathermare shook her head, but didn’t answer. Instead, she stumbled over each of her friends, slowly pulling back the blankets just enough so that she could identify them. The first thing she saw was an orange ear poking out of the first lump. Applejack. Willing her legs to keep her body off the ground, she slowly placed her hoof over the sleeping farmer and saw strands of pale pink hair lying on the ground in the light of the flickering fire. Fluttershy. A white hoof was tightly gripping the slumbering pegasus, its owner Dash recognized to be Rarity. Nopony else was present.

Dash swallowed, the ache in her throat significantly more severe. “Wh-... where’s P-Pinkie?”

“You had another friend?” Lion asked. “You four were all I saw when I went outside.”

Dash nodded, slowly turning around and clambering back over her friends. “Sh-she’s an earth pony. Curly hair.” Dash tried to press her wings closer to herself to no avail; they were already plastered to her side from the cold. “M-my name’s Rainbow Dash, by the way.”

Lion scratched the back of his neck, scratching off a few pieces of dirt in the process. “Nice to meet you, but... ‘Pinkie’ doesn’t really ring a bell. If you had a fifth friend, they probably just fell farther in the avalanche than you all did. Sorry.”

Fell farther in the avalanche. Dash blinked before raising a hoof to rub sand out of her eyes. “We... we’re still in Ponyville, right?”

Lion raised an eyebrow. “Never heard of it. That your home or something?”

Dash coughed, taking a seat next to Applejack and abandoning most personal space principles in exchange for some of her friend’s feverish warmth. “Could I have some water?”

“Sure, I actually had some snow melting...” Lion bent near the fire and picked a tin can up between his teeth before toting it over to Dash for her to drink. “Don’t drink too much. I’ve only got one can.”

Dash nodded, tilting it forward to take a few sips. The mostly-melted slush inside was nearly as cold as the air around them, and tasted faintly of tomatoes. She smacked her lips a bit at the salty aftertaste, then passed it back. “Thanks.”

“So... Ponyville? I guess that’s somewhere nearby?” Lion asked.

Dash found herself desperately wanting to answer yes, but instead rested her head in her hooves and whimpered, “I don’t even know anymore.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if you were from down south,” Lion stated with a shrug as he rewrapped his right foreleg. “I know that Symm at least provides prisoners with clothes. That must mean you’re adventurers, right?”

“...Symm?” Dash asked.

Lion looked at her funny. He uttered a long sigh. “Yeah... you must have hit your head or something on the way down. Symm runs Equestria, remember? They have for as long anypony can remember.”

Dash was about to interrogate more when Applejack shifted under Dash’s weight. “Consarnit, Rainbow... git off me,” she breathed, clearly trying to shift position, but was too tired to muster the strength.

Dash slid her body a little to the side, allowing Applejack to roll onto her back and expose her torso to the elements.

“Could use a drink,” Applejack whispered, staring at the ceiling. Her expression grew more vacant with time, until she eventually curled up into a tight ball and closed her eyes.

As Lion retrieved the can, Rarity stretched and yawned, her eyelids fluttering as she examined her surroundings. “Goodness me, where in Equestria did we end up this time?”

“You are adventurers!” Lion stated, nearly slipping and kicking the can into Applejack’s face.

“Well, I suppose you could say that, given recent events.” Rarity sighed, wrapping herself in her comforters. “I do hope Celestia realizes what’s happened before too much longer. Now then, where exactly are we?”

“Exile Three,” Lion stated, looking up at Rarity attentively. “Are you the leader?”

Rarity chuckled, almost dismissing the question before bringing it into consideration with events past. “Well... I’m not sure,” she stated, feeling suddenly colder. She shivered, shook her head, and instead asked, “Erm, what’s your name again, sweetie?”

“Lion’s Share, adventurer extraordinaire!” he chirped, raising a hoof to his forehead in a haphazard salute. “Who’re you?”

“You may call me Rarity. Now, Lion, where are we, and how did you get out here?” the fashionista inquired, sitting down next to Applejack and feeling the farmer’s forehead. “Goodness, she’s burning up.”

“Oh, we’re in Exile Three. I got caught and sent here by the Symm for trying to nab somepony’s purse—but I didn’t even do it!” He collapsed to the floor, pouting. “My friends did, and I tripped when I tried to follow them.”

Rarity noted his words, but was for now focused more on Applejack, who she hastily bundled up as best she could. “Applejack, can you hear me?”

A tiny nod was the farmer’s only response. Her face was flushed, her jaw clenched, and her eyes shut tight.

“Uh-oh,” Lion mumbled upon seeing the object of Rarity’s focus. “She looks sick.”

Dash rolled her eyes. “Thanks, I couldn’t tell,” she muttered, glancing back at her friend and pawing a bit at her blanket. The fire had warmed the chamber a bit, at least enough to protect them if they all huddled together.

“Where’s Pinkie?” Rarity asked, just noticing her absence.

“Dunno,” Dash sighed, shivering. She glanced at the door to the outside, its hinges sealed with rust and frost compounded over the years, yet somehow still functional. “I’m going to look for her.”

Lion snorted. “Good luck. That avalanche we had last night missed this car by, like, a meter. I seriously doubt Pinkie’d be out there.”

“Gotta chance it,” Dash said, bracing herself and headed for the door.

Lion stood up to stop her. “Wait!” he exclaimed, rushing up and skidding to a stop in front of her. “It’s not a good idea to go out on your own. And you know why I’m sure Pinkie isn’t there? Because I found Rarity hanging off the edge of the cliffside, no joke.”

“So? I can still fly,” Dash said, attempting to brush him aside with a hoof.

Lion resisted. “You can’t fly out here; I’ve tried. The wind almost tore me apart. I know you don’t wanna hear it, but Pinkie is gone, and it’d be just stupid to trek all the way down to the base of the cliff for a body.”

Dash sucked in a breath. She wasn’t yet willing to consider the notion that Pinkie was dead—not until she saw it herself. She was probably just dropped somewhere else... but why?

“Whaddaya mean?” Lion asked.

Dash blinked, not realizing she had spoken aloud. “Maybe she and Twilight were sent to the same place. Look, Lion, you can tell we’re not from here.”

“Yeah, I can look at your hips and know you’re new,” Lion said, still guarding Dash’s path to the exit in case she made a run for it. “So what?”

“So, all I really know is that before I got here, there were six of us, and now there’s four,” Dash stated, flicking her tail before turning around and beginning to pace the room. “Which means, there’s something about Pinkie and Twilight that’s not like the rest of us.”

“Not necessarily, darling,” Rarity said. “Remember how that creature examined each of us in turn? He could just be taking his time separating all of us—though how, I’m not quite sure.”

Dash shook her head. If we split up, we’re doomed. But if we stick together, we’re sitting ducks for Verba to come back and tear us apart. I just know he’s somewhere out there, looking for us. “What do we do, Rarity?”

“...I’m the leader in Twilight’s stead?” the seamstress replied, only slightly surprised. She moved to uncover Fluttershy’s face. “Well, first of all, is there anything else we could use to bundle up?”

Lion shook his head, moistening his chapped lips. “You’re sleeping in my bed. It’s all I have. I would go into town to get more, but I don’t have any money.”

Rarity’s blood thickened a bit as she gazed at Fluttershy. She was almost too still to be alive. Thankfully, the unicorn saw faint puffs of condensation by her friend’s mouth. Rarity raised a hoof to the pegasus’s ears, rubbing them a bit. They were tough and leathery, which wasn’t a good sign. “She’s frostbitten. We need to move both of them next to the fire.”

With help from Dash and Lion, Rarity slid both of her ill friends to the warmth of the flame. As they did, Lion said, “I think this fire should last a few more hours. I have some oil in case it doesn’t, but once we’ve used that...”

“What kind of place is this?” Dash breathed, worn out merely from the act of shuffling her friends over a few meters.

“You don’t know either, huh?” Lion asked Rarity. When she shook her head, he sighed, sitting down and leaning back against Applejack, facing away from the fire. “I wonder how you even got here.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Dash grumbled, nestling up against Rarity to conserve heat.

“Well, Exile is where they put ponies to die. Once you’re here, there aren’t any laws, and the plains and mountains are too cold to cross—nopony’s ever escaped. Some ponies in town make a living here, though. I know there’s one herbalist who can cure basically anything,” Lion explained.

Rarity’s ears perked when he mentioned the herbalist. “Could he, perhaps, assist our friends?”

Lion shrugged, raising a hoof to pick wax out of his ear. “Maybe. I just know that he makes a killing here. So unless you have something he would want, tough luck.”

Dash glanced at Rarity. Their eyes sparked, both knowing what the other was about to say. The weathermare, however, shook her head.

“This is a dream straight out of Tartarus,” Dash growled, standing up and shaking half-melted crystals from her mane and tail, “but dream or no dream, I’m going.”

“I’m sure you’d like to think that, darling, but be honest with yourself. You’re just as sick as Applejack, and in no state to travel in a blizzard. You also don’t have the experience I do in... negotiations,” Rarity stated in return, glaring daggers up at her.

“Huh?” Lion asked, glancing between the two of them.

“I have a few tricks.” Dash coughed, wiped her nose, and flicked her mane. “You’re a unicorn. You won’t be able to make the trip like I will. Pegasi are supposed to be out in the cold.”

“And that resistance seems to have done you great service,” Rarity blurted, stepping up to her friend, her gaze now more pleading than threatening. “For the love of all that is good, darling, it is my job to sacrifice, not yours. Stay, I beg you.”

“And be useless while I lose two more of my friends? Fat chance,” Dash stated, flicking her tail to the side and turning away from Rarity to face Lion. “Hey, you. You’re coming with me to the town, now.”

“Uh, alright. I guess we could pick up some food there,” Lion said, catching something on the inside of his ear. He pulled out a bit of wax and examined it before rubbing it off on his torso. “I hope you have money, though.”

“Don’t worry.” Dash sat by the fire a few moments, absorbing as much energy as she could without burning herself, before standing up, wrapping herself as tight as she could in her shawl, and pushing open the door to the carriage. A blast of cold air burst in with enough force that Rarity was forced to lean backward.

“Don’t do this, Dash,” she pleaded, though she lacked conviction in the face of the wasteland outside. The blizzard had stopped, revealing a dark sky devoid of even a moon, and though the stars glimmered overhead, they were dim, hardly compensating for the landscape of snow and permafrost.

Dash didn’t answer. She instead braced herself, then hopped out into the tundra, following the tiny colt that was her guide, before shutting the door behind her.

The air outside had stilled significantly since the blizzard. Dash remarked to herself that the abandoned train carriage, mostly obscured by snow and ice, served as an ideal hiding spot in the frozen, rocky terrain—Rarity and the others were, in all likelihood, going to be safe in case any nasty ponies ran their way. The carriage itself was half-landed in the base of a mountain, and there didn’t seem to be anything notable around, save the craggy, half-collapsed path down the hillside below. The sun was utterly absent, as was the moon.

“It’s winter,” Lion said when he saw Dash’s eyes pointed toward the horizon. “The sun hasn’t rose since I got here.”

“How long is that?” Dash asked, blinking and turning her head as a chilling breeze raked across her face. She fluffed her wings a bit, her sturdy pegasus exterior serving her well in the bitter cold.

“Just a month, I guess. Hard to keep track of time,” Lion said, kicking a rock aside. He took a few steps toward the path. “The town’s around the mountain, but we have to take the long way ‘cause of the avalanche I found you guys in.”

“You were going to town when you found us?” Dash asked. “I thought you couldn’t afford anything.”

“I beg, and I steal things,” Lion said, staring straight ahead as he shuffled forward, knocking pepples aside as his hooves skidded on the icy rock face. Dash looked at him. He stared up at her. “What? How about you try surviving a month here without cash.”

She withdrew her unspoken criticism, at least temporarily—she needed to see how bad things were in the town itself. She focused on putting one hoof in front of the other instead, trying not to trip over herself as she half-skidded down the mountainside. Lion appeared much more nimble, and didn’t hesitate to make conversation. He was talkative enough for the both of them, but Dash could hardly blame him. She was likely the first friendly company he’d had in the month that he’d been stuck in this Celestia-forsaken tundra.

“So you’re an adventurer?” he asked, looking up at her with his right eye.

Dash looked up, seeing a low, flat plain ahead. There were a few dots of light signifying a town in the portion of it nearest to a cliff face, likely because of its partial shelter from the wind. “I’m not, really.”

“So you’ve never been anywhere cool?” Lion asked, almost pleading her for a story.

Dash found herself wanting to smile, but the cold had stiffened her face. She tousled his hair. “Well, sport, I have been to the Crystal Empire.”

He gaped. “No way! That place is, like, mega off-limits to everypony! How’d you get inside?”

She winked at him. “Well, it’s kinda in my job description to go wherever I want. Battling evil, wherever it rears its ugly snout, y’know?” She paused, considering what he’d just said. “Wait. Off-limits? But the train runs right through it.”

Lion kicked a stone. “I wish. It’s supposed to be a lot better than Equestria. But they closed it off a long time ago. Nopony’s allowed in at all.”

“Did Symm do that? What is Symm, anyway?” Dash asked, ignoring the sting of her increasingly chapped lips.

“Symbolic. It’s some huge organization. “Symm protects your whim.” “Support Symm—keep your speech proper and prim!” That’s what I always heard back home. It runs Equestria, s’far as I know. I never really paid attention. Too busy trying to find a way to eat,” Lion explained. “If they did anything, I don’t really remember. So what do you do, anyway?”

Dash raised her head proudly and proclaimed, “I’m the Element of Loyalty.”

Lion looked at her oddly. “You don’t have to lie to impress me, Rainbow.”

“Huh? But I am. Like, seriously,” Dash said, cantering ahead of him and looking him in the eye. “Look, do I have any reason to lie to you?”

Lion made a wide, sweeping gesture to the land around him. “Oh yeah? Why does this exist? Battling evil wherever it goes, huh? Didja take a day off r’somethin’?” He sharply turned, flicking Dash’s knee with his tail. “Let’s just go.”

Dash set her jaw. “But...” She trailed off, not knowing how to continue the argument. I’ve... never been to this place. Has this always been here? How come I never found out? She interrupted her considerations with a shake of her head. Right... remember how you got here, Rainbow. It’s just a dream. Still... I’d better talk to the others before I think too hard about all this.

*******

It was about another half hour of walking before they arrived in the tiny thorp that was the town. Three rough walls encompassed the perimeter, but the walls were not paved by brick or stone, giving the impression that somepony had taken a massive, square shovel and carved out a section of the mountain to be designated as habitable. They were standing over one of the sides, and Lion told her that it was easiest to escape the blistering wind of the plains by hugging the walls as they crossed through.

When Dash inquired about the town’s name, Lion replied simply, ‘Exile Three.’ It was about a mile from the border station where prisoners were thrust into the bitter cold, and the closest place where a freshly-clothed and chubby outsider could barter some of his remaining livelihood in exchange for a night of peace, and maybe some directions or advice on how to survive.

“They send you in with whatever you can carry on your back, but a lot of criminals that come here aren’t really the richest. Most of them have already been let go once, but then broke a deal saying they wouldn’t do it again,” the foal explained, keeping his voice and head low as they strode through the mostly empty lanes and using Dash’s body as a shield from anypony who otherwise would have caught sight of him. Dash noticed this, but decided not to be bothered—she couldn’t risk her only guide being skewered by whatever stallion inadvertently recognized him as the foal who’d stolen his hardtack.

The streets, if they could even be called that, were unpaved and uneven stone, and Dash flinched as the occasional bit of gravel poked the interior of her hoof. The paths were windswept, with snowy dust whipping around her ankles. There were a couple rough huts made of pine wood, but those didn’t look particularly new, and were battered horribly by the wind. A few ponies stood by the imposing cliff face at the other end of town, the edge of which Dash had trotted close to on her way down with Lion. Their eyes were tightly shut, and they hugged themselves as they tried to survive the onslaught that was life in Exile.

They passed by one of the stallions on their way. He was tightly wrapped, bundled in the rags of the cloak he had arrived in. Bits of his maroon coat poked out the cloth covering his head, as well as tufts of his even darker mane. He looked up as they passed, inciting Lion to hug Dash’s side tighter as he walked on the opposite side of her, but didn’t seem to notice the young thief. He instead looked directly at Dash—not moving, not speaking, but staring up at her, his expression unreadable underneath his garments. The weathermare sped her pace to a trot in an effort to keep her distance.

“Who was that?” Dash asked Lion as they approached the center wall.

“Who was what?” he asked in return, rubbing a flake of snow from his snout and scratching his eyelid.

Dash was about to reply, That stallion, but when she turned around, he had vanished. She pulled her blanket tighter and said, “Never mind.”

In the center of the wall, there was a small tunnel barred by a weave of pine branches and sap. Lion informed Dash that most homes were contained inside—some of the more selfless criminals had carved out living spaces and air vents inside, but they were little more than dank cavities in the mountain shielded from the wind. That was something of a plus, but coupled with the damp core of the mountain and the lack of good ventilation or sanitation, nopony could stay inside for long. Lion said that most of the some hundred ponies in town, at this hour, were sleeping inside the outside huts, resting atop one another in an effort to stave off the cold.

“In those tiny things?” Dash asked, glancing at them. There were only four, with one of them collapsed utterly, and the three remaining about each as big as camping tents. She tapped one of the logs making up the corners, jesting, “Jeez, I hope they can breathe.”

“Outfielder suffocated a couple months ago. He was sick, and somepony sat on his face while they were all asleep,” Lion said bluntly, continuing toward the wall. Upon hearing Dash’s response, or rather lack thereof, he looked back at her and said, “What, you think this is some kind of joke?”

Dash shook her head. “I... just don’t like thinking things are ever this hopeless.” She paused, silently following Lion as he walked forward, a bit of cloth dragging behind him. He climbed through the small hole that had been broken into the wall edging the plains, but Dash looked back once more—in case the mystery stallion had been following her—before clambering after him.

After a couple minutes, they neared the other edge of the cliff, which dropped off into what looked like a ravine about twenty meters below, with a rather steep slope leading down into its mouth. The ravine itself, shaped like a craggy scar, travelled far beyond the horizon, its depths already far too dark to see. The only sign that it was inhabited at all was the steps leading down to a rough hole in the wall, which appeared to burrow directly beneath the windswept plains.

“There are some cave systems in there where Symm set up an artificial farm. Most of the ponies in town will get to work there when they wake up,” Lion explained as they approached the mouth of the crevice.

“Y’know, why aren’t you with them?” Dash inquired. She noticed that the very rim of the sky had started to turn a lighter blue, but the sun was nowhere in sight.

“The farm doesn’t feed everypony,” Lion said, refusing to look back at her as she spoke. She strained to hear him over the increasing winds, but managed to glean meaning from his speech. “I got off on the wrong hoof.”

Dash bit her lip, trying to maybe think of advice to give up, but came up blank. “Just hang in there, okay? I’ll do what I can for you once I figure things out.”

They came to the small stone opening, not even big enough to fit two full-grown ponies side by side. Lion looked up at her before entering, his expression tough to judge. “...Thanks,” he said lowly before scrambling back up inside.

Dash sighed, almost slipping on her hooves as she clambered up after him. The entryway led to an unlit passage, but after Dash felt and brushed her way through one right turn and two lefts, she was met with a metal archway, within which a hazy, plasmetic field was suspended, blurring all vision through it. Lion had seemed to have already made his way through, so Dash supposed she might as well, too. The steps had to be forced, because the magical barrier resisted her entrance, but a few steps later, her momentum shifted, and she was propelled heel over head into a cacophony of sensation.

*******

The interior farm was a virtual explosion of life in comparison to the exterior of Exile. Despite its craggy rock ceiling, unnaturally flattened floor, and the clearly artificial orb of light floating in the the chamber’s center, actual green grew in the pale, dusty mountain soil, and she could not thank the Princesses enough for the relief it brought. The smell of struggling life filled her nostrils, and though that may not have been so grandiose in comparison to her home, it was overwhelming after having spent what felt like months out in the cold. Moreover, it was warm inside the artificial farm—in Ponyville, it would have been considered brisk, or chilly, but given her current whereabouts, Dash may as well have been sitting in a sauna.

That is why it took a moment for her to pick herself off of the ground and rub the stinging side of her face. Lion looked at her, and he may have been smiling.

“It’s always weird the first time,” he said, chuckling a bit.

Dash rolled her eyes before giving herself an opportunity to better examine the chamber. It was absolutely enormous compared to the outside, with what Dash approximated as two square kilometers, total, of farmland. In the center of the chamber glowed a sphere of energy in a hollowed-out portion of a pillar, resembling something of a mini-sun. White and blue pipes led in from the ceiling and into the pillar, curving along its side before ending different points respective to the color of the pipe. Water flowed out of the blue pipe into irrigation channels that formed a cross centered on the pillar. The channels ended at the edge of the room, but Dash couldn’t see through the stalks to guess where it went. She did see, though, some stalks by the opening of the white pipe—it must have been part of the ventilation system.

She looked at Lion, waiting for him to lead the way, but he was already turning back toward the entrance. “Hey! Where’re you going?”

He cringed. “Shh!” He pressed his ears to the back of his head, slowly glancing around, before standing back upright and glaring up at Dash. “I told you I’m not welcome here. You need to handle this yourself. I’ll wait outside.” Without waiting for response, he scampered back through the archway and vanished into the blur.

Dash sighed, at least relieved to be out of the wind and the cold. She tossed the blanket back from her head, shook frost from her mane, and started walking carefully on the path leading across the field. There was only one path she could see—everything else in the area was grass.

A few minutes later, she came across a wooden door with rusty hinges. There was a sign on it that read, Love the enthusiasm, sugarbooger, but we’re closed! Not particularly discouraged, Dash gave a quick two knocks on the door.

After a few minutes of waiting, she heard some haphazard hoofsteps from behind the roughly-boarded door. It shook as something stumbled into it, and Dash jumped back as the door swung open, revealing the scowling mare behind it. “‘Oo goes ‘ehrr?”

The unicorn wasn’t eye candy by any stretch of the imagination. Her pale gray face was covered in splotches that looked like dirt at first, but upon closer inspection revealed themselves to just be a facet of her coat’s pattern. She looked as if she had just woken up, as she was squinting, but one eye looked more open than the other. Part of the right side of her mouth was sunken; presumably she had teeth missing in that particular location. Her mane was but a wisp upon her head, too faded for Dash to discern the color. The hunch in her back seemed to impede her standing up properly, as she was looking at Dash’s chest, rather than her face. The entirety of her body was wrapped tightly in a tattered gray shawl that she appeared to have had stitched so that she would never need, or even be able, to take it off. Lastly, her horn had several strange markings on it, almost like claw marks.

All of this would have been less disconcerting for the weathermare, of course, if not for the fact that the mare otherwise looked barely a year older than she was.

“Um... My name’s Rainbow Dash, I-I guess. I’m here looking for some herbalist I heard about,” Dash said, trying not to back away from the odd little mare.

“Hum? Ya barge in a’ four in the mornin’ fer wot noh?” she asked, craning her neck up at Dash and raising a hoof to rub her eye before carefully inspecting her visitor. “No manner s’is wot ya got, missums. Say ya wanna herbalist? Ya mus’ men Peryer.” She licked her chapped lips, revealing to Dash that she was right—the mare lacked a portion of teeth on the top of her mouth, a portion that was, dare she think, hoof-sized. “Name’s Trinket, luf. Ya jus’ got ‘ere, aye?”

“Yeah. Are you the farmer in this place?” Dash asked.

“Foremare, luf,” Trinket said, making an extra effort to pronounce her title. “Ponies slave ‘ere day in, day owf. The lil’ sun ‘ere makes harvest erry season. I bake up the wheaf. Ain’ edible otherwise.”

Dash nodded, trying not to think too hard about the mare’s dreadful looks. “I-I’d love to tell you everything, but my friends are sick, and I heard that, um... Peryer can help them.”

“Per-ee-yer, luf. Can’f ‘elp my sfeech. Long sory. C’min,” Trinket said, turning her head slightly to the side to gaze at Dash as she crossed the door into the inner chamber.

“Perrier?” Dash asked as she followed Trinket inside.

The interior seemed to be a one-room home that was fairly well-furnished, despite its underground nature. The floor was tiled, and there was a bed in one corner and a stone oven in the other. Some plants grew in the third corner under the light of another orb that seemed to only be a smaller-scale version to the one outside, which also served as the room’s light source. The two-meter ceiling and walls were granite, but there was an opening in the top that was presumably a skylight. There was a faint churning, mechanical noise in the background, which Dash quickly identified as coming from a large metal box in the corner. Said box had two doors on its front side, but other than that, its steel frame was barren save splotches of dirt and white dust. The chamber smelled very nice—something must have been baking, and for a moment Dash was homesick for Sugarcube Corner.

The oddest portion of the room, however, was the decorations. Various knickknacks had been pinned to the wall. Anything from scraps of blue paper to butterfly wings were nailed into the wall—the only common theme seemed to be the vibrance of the artifacts, with the whole of them forming something of a makeshift color wheel.

“Aye, luf. ‘Ee’s the doc ‘round ‘ere. Ooh, s’done already?” Trinket rushed to the oven, which seemed to have been carved directly out of the wall. Her horn glowed faintly, and she levitated a pie out of the oven. The smell of blueberries mixed with pastry grew almost overpowering, and Dash stared as bits of the candied fruit bubbled up from the seams cut in the center of the pie. Blueberries must have been what Trinket was growing in the corner. “‘Ave sick friends, aye?”

“Yeah,” Dash affirmed, licking her lips. Her friends were probably hungry as all Tartarus by now—she sure was. They wouldn’t last long on empty stomachs in this climate.

“Aye, aye. Common owf ‘ere,” the farmer said, nodding as if she was sympathetic, though the faintest of grins danced on her dry, cracked lips. “Wanna helf, luf, buf there ain’ no spare. ‘Less ya ‘ave coin. Ten bifs ‘at ‘ere is.”

Dash considered the following course of action: One, smack Trinket silly and snatch the pie for herself. There was no step two. She abandoned this train of thought when she remembered that Lion himself had probably tried something similar and gotten himself kicked out of Exile, however redundant that may sound. She couldn’t risk that for her and her friends, especially if they were stuck here forever. So, instead, she sucked in a breath, glared at Trinket, and said through clenched teeth: “I just got here. How am I supposed to have money?”

“S’the only reason ya’d haf any t’all, luf,” Trinket said, setting the pie down on the makeshift stone counter and pushing it away from Dash. She opened her mouth to say something else but as she stared at Dash, her eyes widened slightly, exposing the left one as lazy. “Wot pre’ie ‘air,” she murmured, taking a few steps closer. “Wot pre’ie locks ya got ‘ere. Wot luck ya got—s’worf a cen’ime, my dear. I’ll take the lot.”

She raised a hoof to Dash’s exposed bangs, but the weathermare swatted her away. “Don’t touch me! Leave me alone!”

Trinket’s eyes narrowed. She took a breath, then said, “Les make a ‘fice. I’ll give ‘oo all’f ten bits, jus’ think’v that!”

Dash wanted to say no immediately again, but she couldn’t bring her mouth to say the words. Instead, she found herself saying, “It pays for pie...”

“Jus’ think’v that!” Trinket said.

What can I do...? It pays for pie, Dash thought. She mumbled, “Ten bits might just save Fluttershy.”

Without waiting for a response, but knowing Dash wouldn’t object, Trinket glided toward Dash’s tail. The weathermare felt a soft tug on her dock before she felt half of it sheared off. Trinket didn’t stop there, though. Quickly pushing Dash’s blanket off her head, she used magical shears to slice off whatever she could snag of her mane in one swipe. Dash had her eyes closed for the entire ordeal.

After she was finished, Trinket wrapped the pie up in Dash’s sheet and to her levitated it over, instructing her to grip the knot in her mouth to carry it properly, so that it wouldn’t spill everywhere. “I like ya. Hope ih’ helps, luf,” she said as she saw Dash out.

Dash felt noticeably colder leaving the room than she did coming in, especially considering her blanket was now being used to carry the pie, which was apparently baked in a thin stone tin. Make do with what’cha got, I guess. “Where can I find Perrier?”

“Oh, ‘im? Wen’ deep down in th’ caverns lookin’ fo’ the filly ‘a his. Ya’ll haf’ta search down below. Be careful. Ya wouldn’ be th’ firs’ pony ta fall down a lil’ ‘oo far.” And with that final warning, Trinket departed.

Dash sighed, shivering as she heard the eccentric mare shut the door behind her. She made her way across the plains, stretching her wings a bit and dreading her reentrance into Exile.

It was difficult to bear the blast that was sheer arctic cold upon exiting the magically insulated greenhouse. Even so, Dash forged on, her eyes watering as she fought even against the relatively small amount of wind that managed to enter the partly sheltered caverns from outside.

As promised, Lion was waiting outside the farm, having sat himself down at the last junction before a departee was fully exposed to the wrath of nature outside. He shifted when she approached slightly before clambering to his hooves as soon as he saw his companion’s cargo. “Is that...?”

“It’s a pie,” Dash said, placing it down in front of him.. “I need you to take it back to Rarity.”

Lion licked his lips. “No way. How did you—” He looked up at Dash’s torn mane. “...Oh. Well, you really lucked out. I didn’t know she took hair.”

“Only mine,” Dash said glumly, feeling the chill nip at her ears. “Look. I need to go down into the caverns if I’m ever going to get back to help in time. That means you have to take the food back to my friends, and then you can have some yourself, okay?”

“Y-you’re trusting me with this?” Lion asked, his gaping mouth betraying his shock.

“Not like I have any other choice, right?” Dash huffed. She knelt down so that she could look him in the eye. “This is really important, okay? Fluttershy and Applejack could die if you don’t get them something to eat. I need you to get this to them pronto.”

Lion looked at Dash, then at the pie, then back to Dash. “...Okay,” he said, staring her directly in the eye.

Dash thought he was being sincere, but just in case he wasn’t, she raised a hoof and poked at his chest, scowling, “And if I make it back from this alive to see that you made off with my friends’ food, you better believe I will hunt—you—down.” Three words, three pokes.

Lion swallowed. “Yeah. Gotcha.” Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed the knot between his teeth, heaved it up, and scampered off. Dash momentarily worried how he was carrying it, with one edge tilted toward him so that it wouldn’t bang into his neck while he cantered, but decided it wasn’t worth chasing him down over it. Whatever made it back to the wrecked train car would be edible, so long as Lion didn’t run off with it.

That in mind, she poked her head outside, setting her sights on the depths of the caves. She spotted a faint glow down in the depths—she didn’t know what it was, but she decided that would be a good place to start. Taking a breath and fluffing her wings a bit, she braced herself and rushed into the piercing gale, hugging the wall of the ravine as she descended into its depths, cold, afraid, and alone.

Three

*******

Pinkie blinked open her frost-covered eyes. She could barely move; her muscles were growing number by the moment. She felt the wind’s cool fangs nipping her, and instinctively she rose out of the snow, shaking from the chill.

Her surroundings were too white for her to discern any details from her surroundings. The only thing she knew was that she was cold, beyond cold; so cold that her body had given up trying to warn her, and was now comforting her by sending her a soothing signal of warmth. Pinkie knew, however, what was happening. She forced herself to shiver, shaking herself off, though her movements were clumsy and uncoordinated.

“Y-Y-Yikes!” she whispered to herself, looking around. Her friends were nowhere to be seen, though she could hardly see anything anyway. How did I get here... from there?

Frigid winds roared past, and for a moment Pinkie just wanted to curl into a ball and ride out the storm. But she knew she had to walk—she might only get one shot at consciousness, and she had to make it count.

“Hello?” she called. Her voice was obscured by the winds. As expected, she received no answer, but she knew she had to keep moving. Okay, Pinkie, put on your brave face, she thought. She took a deep breath and plunged deeper into the blizzard.

The winds whipped at her, beating her viciously and dripping fire over her skin. She stumbled over her own hooves, choking on air and desperately trying to claw her way through the flurry. After less than a minute of her desperate struggle forward, her hoof fell through the snowdrift and she fell face-first into the ground.

Her body was not so much shivering as spasming, now. She vowed not to give up, but she was too weak, and her body failed her. Her muscles slowly cooled to nonfunction, her brain sparking as snowflakes flew into her eyes.

She tried to cry out, but her abdomen was numb. She lurched forward, her mind panicking but her body submitting, before her consciousness settled into a deep freeze.

Fading like... a birthday candle, Pinkie muttered to herself. She sighed as her sensory nerves shut down, no longer torturing her or screaming at her to do something. There was simply nothing to be done.

However long later—Pinkie wasn't certain—she woke up under a warm blanket. She shifted and pulled it closer, much to the ire of its owner.

"Hey!" she yelled. "Leggo my wing!"

Now awake, Pinkie felt her body start up like a rickety engine, and she shuddered as her senses roared to life. Her muscles seemed to ignore the message, instead responding with chills. Pinkie moaned softly, bringing her hooves slowly to her head and shutting her eyes.

"I think you have some kind of fever," a familiar voice stated. “Here, let me put it over you again, just don't grab it, okay?"

Pinkie felt soft down color her freezing body warm. She tried to speak, but her throat was dry and sore. After a few moments, her exhausted form plunged into unconsciousness again.

Another indeterminate amount of time later, Pinkie woke again, now not quite as sick. Her throat was still sore, and she was still shivering and feverish, but she could at least move. She looked up and saw that she was lying by a small twig fire in the center of the alcove, sheltered from the raging storm outside. Next to her, lending Pinkie her wing as shelter, a young pegasus sat. She had a bright white pelt, and flecks of snow dotted her pale pink mane. She stared at the blizzard outside and seemed unbothered by the cold surrounding the two of them, or perhaps just oblivious.

Pinkie bit her lip in order to stifle a stutter. “Who’re y-you?” Her throat ached, and she bit into a patch of snow for water.

The mare didn’t answer, though her ear twitched, as if she had acknowledged that there was, in fact, a pony speaking next to her. Her mane covered her eyes and a good portion of her snout, and it almost seemed that had styled it for the exact purpose of hiding her face.

Pinkie shifted, trying to stand up, but almost toppled into the flames. The mare pressed her wing on Pinkie’s back to steady her. “Stay still, okay? You don’t look so good.”

Pinkie paused, allowing the mare to slowly turn around back toward the storm, before asking, “Wh-wh-... what’s your name?”

“Diamond Dust,” she said, her voice harsh. She uttered a single chuckle, a seething laugh brimming with pain. “Like I have a name anymore. Just call me Diamond.”

“Where are we?” Pinkie choked, looking at her surroundings. The cave was damp and cold, but the blizzard outside wasn’t an appealing alternative. She heard the light crunching of snow under her hooves as she stood up.

“Exile,” Diamond said simply.

“From where?” Pinkie asked, standing up shakily and testing her limbs.

Diamond glanced at her, but didn’t bother trying to sit her back down. “Does it matter, weirdo? There’s nowhere for us to go back to. We’re just... here. You’re here for your reasons, and...” she trailed off, her voice tight. Pinkie recognized her expression. She had worn it many times herself when she was younger, before she had met her best friends. “You’re lucky you’re even here. I found you out cold in the snow. Literally.”

“...Well, I’m Pinkie,” Pinkie stated, weakly raising her hoof to Diamond. She tried to make eye contact with her, and succeeded to some extent, though her companion's eyes were covered by strands of her mane.

Diamond looked at her outstretched hoof as if she was offering her a gift card to a tack shop on the moon. “Wait. What’s this for?”

“All friendships should—” She coughed, hacking up fluids that had been draining down her throat. “...proper introductions,” Pinkie stated, wiping her nose and willing herself to ignore her stone-cold surroundings.

Diamond appeared genuinely concerned. “Look, I don’t think—”

Pinkie interrupted her. “As an official representative of Finkie bland...” She trailed off, hanging her tongue out of her mouth and biting some life into it, then continued: “...Representative of Pinkie brand Circle of Friends Incorporated... Hi!”

Diamond gave Pinkie an odd look, shook her hoof lightly, then pushed it away, muttering under her breath as if Pinkie couldn’t hear, “Weirdo.”

Pinkie didn’t hear her remark; the invitation extension proved quite exerting, and as a wave of nausea and headache washed over her, she was forced back to the ground. After collecting herself and eating a mouthful of snow, she asked, “So why are you here?”

“To die,” Diamond said bluntly, as if she were waiting for her train to arrive at the station. “Just killin’ time until I pass out. You?”

If Pinkie was stunned, she didn’t show it. “I just woke up here, but... did I hear right?” She stuck a hoof through one of her ears, checking for wax, and made sure her hoof had gone straight out the other ear before she determined that what she heard was indeed correct. To be absolutely certain, though, she asked, “You’re just... waiting?”

“Aren’t you?” Diamond asked.

“No,” Pinkie said, her throat hoarse from talking, but she continued anyway. “I’m making conversation!”

Diamond rolled her eyes. “Whatever floats your boat.”

“Why are you waiting?” Pinkie asked.

“Nothing else to do. I’ve lost everything. I’m just biding my time until I lose that one last thing everypony but me seems to care so much about,” Diamond explained.

“What did you lose?” Pinkie asked.

“Everything ‘cept my pulse.” Diamond exhaled. “My friends. My home. Just... everything, it’s gone.”

Pinkie nodded. “Yep, that sounds like everything. At least, to me.”

“You had friends?” Diamond asked.

“Have, silly,” Pinkie corrected, giggling.

“...Aren’t you worried about them not finding you?” Diamond asked.

“Not really. I know they’ll search to the end of Equestria if they have to.” She paused. “Well, I guess I could go after them, but if I go to find them when they’re going to find me, then we’d both find where we both were a little bit before, and then we’d try to find each other again, and then there’s a chance we might meet in the middle but we’d probably just end up in a completely different place...” She trailed off when she realized Diamond wasn’t following.

“Oo-kay,” Diamond said, “but what if your friends aren’t looking for you?”

Pinkie’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, then it gets really complicated—”

“Alright, alright! Forget I asked,” Diamond interrupted, exasperated, though she had the faintest of smiles on her lips. She sighed, almost wistfully. “Those must be some pretty good friends you have there.”

Pinkie nodded. “Especially on Saturdays. I’ve only really known them for a few years, now, actually,” she said.

“And before that?” Diamond asked.

“Well... I had lots of ‘friends,’” Pinkie said, using both her hooves to make air quotes, “but that was only because I threw lots of parties.” She took a breath as a sheet of exhaustion settled over her, and she rested her head on her forelegs.

“I’ve had friends like that, too,” Diamond said, looking down. “Not many, though.”

Pinkie considered dropping the topic. The conversation was taxing and she felt the urge just to lay down, rest, and wait until her strength returned before talking to Diamond further. Despite this, though, she picked herself up again and asked, “So what are you waiting for?”

“I’m pretty sure I said I was waiting to die,” Diamond repeated.

“Why don’t you wait until you meet my friends?” Pinkie asked, her eyes lighting up. “Maybe then you can see how many ponies actually do care about you.”

Diamond shook her head. “Look, I don’t think you understand. I lost everything. You think that I can just go back?”

“Mm-hmm,” Pinkie affirmed, looking at Diamond closely. “You still have that little bit of spark left in you—you can still light a match. I remember doing that once.”

“Losing everything?” Diamond asked.

“No, lighting a match,” Pinkie clarified. She furrowed her brow for a moment. “Now I can’t seem to find any anywhere anymore.” She shrugged, then turned her gaze back to Diamond. “I think you still have something. And I know what you were waiting for.” She paused. “You were waiting for me. You were waiting... for a friend.”

Diamond rolled her eyes, falling backward onto a mound of snow and covering her face with her hooves. “That’s so corny. You remind me so much of one of my other friends,” she exclaimed, and Pinkie could tell she was trying to hide a smile. Something dawned on her, though, and the smile vanished. She sat back up, and didn’t meet Pinkie’s eye. “Look, you should go.”

Pinkie tilted her head slightly to the side. “I can’t, remember? I’m waiting for my friends.”

“You can’t rely on your friends to do the right thing,” Diamond said bitterly, turning away from Pinkie.

“Sure I can. I’m doing that right now,” Pinkie argued. She folded her hooves, hmph’d, and turned opposite of Diamond. “I’m not moving.”

Diamond exhaled in frustration. “You really are like him. Look, what do you want?”

“I want to wait,” Pinkie stated.

“Why?” Diamond asked.

“You’ve already been waiting for me. It’s time that I started waiting for you, too,” Pinkie said.

“No, seriously. What do you want?” Diamond asked, turning to face Pinkie with a mixture of empty fury and desperate loneliness.

“I don’t like leaving anypony behind without trying to make them feel better,” Pinkie stated honestly. She swooned slightly, sickness trying to claim her, but she refused. “In... i-in fact, I don’t like leaving anypony behind, period. No, exclamation point! Like that!” She drew the shape of the punctuation mark in the snow. “Ha!”

“But I’m, like, a complete stranger,” Diamond argued.

“All my friends were strangers before I got to know them,” Pinkie pointed out. “If I didn’t try to make friends every chance I got, I don’t know where I’d be today! So whaddaya say, Diamond? Why not just give having friends a chance?” She stuck out her hoof again.

Diamond paused. She brushed her mane out of her eyes, and Pinkie got to look at them clearly for the first time. She had no pupils; her irises were blood red. This time, though, she didn’t try to hide her smile. “Y’know, Pinks... you’re alright.” She took Pinkie’s hoof and shook it.

And with that, not even considering Diamond’s oddity, Pinkie decided it was time to let her body have the victory it fought so long and hard against her for. She carefully set herself down, nestled herself under her new friend’s wing, and passed out cold.

*******

Twilight awoke to the glare of sunlight. She shifted. It almost felt like she was back in bed, at her home, beneath the covers, and under the watchful gaze of her protector, Princess Celestia, ruler and protector of Equestria.

But some bits of sand flew into her eyes, and as she flinched back, a few stray stones scratched her face. The cuts stung, and it was at that moment when she realized her hips and back ached, her throat was dry, and half of her body was on fire.

She snapped to her hooves. She had been lying on her side in what appeared to be a deserted courtyard, and under the skin where she had been exposed to the sun, she was on fire. She was broiling. It was so hot she felt like she was going to die.

Some shade offered solace nearby. She scrambled toward it, collapsing in the shelter and writhing to try and disperse the heat. It didn’t take long for her to cool off. There wasn’t much moisture left in her body to retain the energy. Her lips were cracked and bleeding, and bits of her pelt was peeling off.

The wind was also far too stifling to be of any help. There was far too much sand flying around for her to make out her surroundings. The stone was too hot for her to lie down, and the gale too fierce for her to look up, so she was forced to stand and stare down as her knees buckled and her joints caved.

Am I in Tartarus?

A force wrapped around her waist and gripped her, pulling her backward. She did not resist.

A little while later, she found herself staring upward into the void. She was underwater, boiling once more, trapped by the heat following her like a vengeful succubus. She thrashed, coughing, crying, and threw the comforters off her body.

She was in a bed—safe, at least—but still sweaty.

The dorm itself was fairly ornate, if showing signs of wear. Her bed was Princess-sized, and probably could have comfortably fit three or four ponies. The bedposts were scratched, one of them broken off, and the drapes, likely designed with the intent of obscuring their resident, were devoured by moths. There was a window to Twilight's left, and a mirror to her right, but the window was shutterless, and the mirror cracked into six pieces. Hot wind flowed in constantly from the sandstorm just outside, but no sand seemed to enter.

Twilight, still too hot to think, rolled off the bed toward the mirror. She hit the rug with a wet slap—her coat was practically dripping. She stared at the legs of the dresser, which seemed almost ready to buckle, for an indeterminate amount of time.

Hoofsteps approached. She felt herself levitated back onto the bed, staring up into the eyes of an unfamiliar stallion.

The best description of him Twilight could muster was that he seemed, at first glance, in about as dire straits as she herself was. His black mane, styled as to obscure his eyes, was slick with grease. His coat was matted, shining with the product of temperature regulation. His tail swished back and forth, though it didn't seem intent on swatting flies; instead, it resembled more a mental tic, a product of his curiosity concerning the specimen presented to him.

Twilight recoiled despite her weakness, but when she tried to speak, her vocal chords rebelled, and she hacked up a glob of phlegm.

The stallion didn't offer his name. He merely watched as Twilight, having nowhere else to deposit her mucous, leaned over and spat on his carpet, and waited patiently as she caught her breath afterward.

When he determined she was sufficiently recovered, he hopped onto the bed, showing off his fetlocks before sitting beside her and raising a hoof to her chest.

In the moment he touched her, an ocean breeze struck her with the force of a wave, and all was peaceful, cool, and still. She fell onto the bed again and lost herself in the mist.

She woke up again a while later, and this time with a tad more mental clarity. She was lying on her side, drooling once more into the covers. However, she was quick to launch herself from the bed that was not her own, land roughly, and turn in a circle as to verify that the dreaming was over, that she wasn't dying, and that she could finally figure out what in Celestia's name was going on.

She immediately noticed that her burns had utterly vanished—assuming she was burned at all in the first place. The thin blue lines tracing where her coat had previously been cracked and broken suggested that the stallion healed her, though he no longer seemed to be present.

She noticed the flicker of an escaping shadow by her door just before it vanished utterly, akin to a frightened stray cat. Twilight made chase.

The bedroom exited onto a balcony. The marble railing was missing, and Twilight skidded to a halt as she approached its edge. The view was sublime, and Twilight would have taken a moment to appreciate it were she frantically trying not to skid off the edge of the balcony. Once she had fully situated herself, she took a more detailed appraisal of her environment.

She was standing on the overlook of a massive, pale stone tower. Three matching towers stood, their only particularly distinguishing features being their various states of disrepair. Twilight tried to get a look at the tops of the sandstone towers opposite of her, but the sun was too bright to allow it, instead shunning her and forcing her gaze down to the courtyard, which seemed to be the only construction in the area not composed of yellow or white stone. It was the color of red clay, and did not seem to allow sand to rest on its surface, shooing it instead to the base of each spire. Her line of sight was partially blocked, however, by perhaps the most interesting feature of the area: A multitude of broken platforms and walkways, none more than three meters in length, hovered autonomously in the space between the courtyard and the sun-obscured tops of the towers. They had no apparent method to their madness; they hovered as if suspended in a world that applied precedence to the principle of convection over the law of gravity. Several platforms, seeming to sense Twilight’s gaze, gravitated toward her, gradually forming a rough path from her overlook to the center of their mass.

Twilight took a few steps back and turned into the bedroom, hoping for some kind of staircase to present itself and offer a less perilous route down. None did, and so she was forced back out onto the platform. There was a gap of about one meter between her and the roughly-joined stone blocks, but seeing as there was no other way forward, she took a deep breath and made the jump.

As she landed, the stone platform she was on responded to her application of force by tipping backward, and for a brief moment Twilight's stomach and heart lurched forward and back, respectively, in a sort of cosmic role reversal. The boulder did not balance itself immediately, and kept turning over until there was no way Twilight could have possibly held on—that is, had the laws of gravity still applied. Interestingly, the librarian found her hooves attracted to the stone by a sort of magnetic force. Even though she was standing completely upside down, she did not fall, nor did the platform drift any further from its one-hundred and eighty degree flip.

A shadow flickered in front of her. She didn’t get the best look at it, but it was somewhere inside the mass of platforms. When she tried to walk, she found that her hooves stuck to the platforms as if they were covered in big blobs of chewed gum mixed with glue, but she worked herself forward despite the extra effort required.

After a few moments of walking, she began to feel almost lightheaded, which she assumed was an indirect result of the realm’s inconsistent physics. It was hardly a natural situation, after all. Despite this, it took her only a little while to clamber her way to the center ball of stone blocks, which seemed to have quickly rearranged themselves into a rough sphere about six meters in diameter. There were small gaps between each stone block, only about enough for her to fit a single leg if she so chose.

Having forgotten which way was up and down, and at this point not caring too much, she dragged her hooves to the top of the sphere. Unfortunately, as soon as she set her hoof on the shape’s apex, the suction she had previously been experiencing faltered, and she fell flat on her back with a short scream.

Her mind prompted her to scramble to her hooves, but the drop scattered her willpower, so for a moment she just rested and tried to regain her bearings. Once she recovered, she saw that the stallion was standing in front of her yet again—this time with newly trimmed fetlocks, and a more reasonable manestyle that exposed his brilliant amber eyes. He prodded her a bit in the flank with a quarterstaff, and brushed her hair back with his hoof. The fact that he did both at the same time is what managed to startle Twilight to her hooves.

She jumped up and scurried away from him, not able to find her balance as she tumbled over the gaps in the stones. As the result of a snap decision to not put her hoof in a position where she could twist her ankle, she tripped over her hooves and landed hard on her back for the second time in a the span of a minute.

“Good gracious,” he muttered, smirking a bit at her performance. “I suppose one would have to be that clumsy in order to stumble across this locale.”

“Who are you?” Twilight demanded, steeling herself and getting up despite the aches she had managed to paint across her entire back. Her eyes narrowed as she watched him. He was an earth pony as far as she could tell, and yet a quarterstaff hovered by his side unaided, and there was no mistaking the supernatural nature of his earlier acts. His mane, she noted, was thick and glossy enough to possibly obscure a horn. “Weren’t you the one that healed my burns earlier?”

“Oh, it’s been years since then. I had been wondering if you were ever going to show up,” he stated, flicking his tail. “You’re not from here, are you?”

“My name is Twilight Sparkle... I’m from Ponyville,” Twilight replied, shifting her weight into her hind legs—she was rather hesitant to give out this information, but if the strange pony did, in fact, heal her burns, then he may have benevolent intentions. “What do you mean you healed me years ago? It can’t have been more than a day.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I suppose your clock runs slow, then, and my dear I do mean that both literally and figuratively." He cackled, taking a few paces around the walkable base of the sphere. “My name is Obsidian Doubledge, and I am the sole inmate of this grand construction. As for Ponyville, I have heard of no such place. Tell me, how did you manage to route yourself here from the real world?”

Twilight’s ear twitched a bit at Obsidian’s word choice, but decided to save that particular question for later. “I was foalnapped by a monster who calls himself Verba. You probably found me how he left me.”

Obsidian blinked. “Verba, you say? How charming for him to bring me a guest. He rarely visits anymore, you know.”

Twilight swallowed, her ears folding back against her head. “H-he’s a friend of yours?”

He grinned. “One could say we work in tandem. But do not fret, for it is well outside his power to send you here.”

“Then who did?” she asked.

“I did have the pleasure of meeting your guardian angel. She was the one who sent you to this safe haven of sand and sun, and she also shields you from its destructive glare. As to her motives, well,” he said, turning his head slightly, a slight smile swirling across his lips, “I suppose your guess, Twilight Sparkle of Ponyville, is as good as mine.”

Twilight would have asked him more, but he vanished when she blinked. In his place was a note, which she scrambled to grab with her magic before it was blown away by the increasing winds. It read:

“I tired of waiting. You may meet me in the tower opposite to the one you arrived in—this world responds to your powers, and I presume you’re able to connect the simplest of dots.”

Twilight glanced at the sphere of platforms. They were inching apart, apparently no longer shaped by Obsidian’s magic—though she remembered she wasn’t able to verify whether or not he was actually a magician. In order to get answers, though, she would have to play by his rules.

Crumpling up the note and tossing it aside, she focused her telekinetics on the platform directly beneath her, willing it to move. Though it glowed her signature magenta aura, it didn’t budge. She applied more pressure, and still it remained still. Determined to at least procure some sort of visual result, she pushed on the stone with as much force as she could muster—and it moved.

But it only moved a centimeter.

Twilight exhaled, looking up. She only looked up for a moment, though, for the sun was still too strong. Her gaze finally rested back on the boulder and its companions, and she began the arduous process of moving them into place.

It had felt like it had been hours. Twilight was sure she would have determined whether or not she was really in Tartarus by now, as she slaved away in the sunbaked landscape—and yet, the answer still eluded her. There were a few things she did know, however.

She knew that she should have been dead by now. Her core temperature could not have been less than forty degrees celsius as she slaved away in the heat of the setting sun, and such heat was unfathomable, unbearable, but she could neither sweat nor cool. She felt heavy, slow, but never tired enough to collapse, nor too uncomfortable to focus, and she could not summon the courage to lay down and rest for fear she would not get back up again. Whether her condition was a blessing or a curse was also something she had yet to determine.

She knew that the sun was supposed to have set. She tried counting seconds, but the numbers she spoke seemed to be stolen from her, one by one, lost to the rising winds. She could see them leave her mouth, dry up and shatter in the furnace of eternal sun. In the back of her mind, she noted the relation between high fevers and hallucinations.

Finally, she knew that, after all the energy she exerted, after all the spells she spoke, and after all the pleas she pled, that the boulders should be moving.

Every bit was an effort, every stone a source of suffering. The pathway to the lowest balcony of the tower in which Obsidian resided was no nearer than fifty meters from her present location. The stones themselves were about three square meters each. Moving fifteen of them to form a path from her initial boulder to the tower, for she had decided to construct the entirety of the bridge first before crossing it, ought to have been easy. They were floating. Floating. And yet, for all her magical potency, her touch was no more effective than that of a feather.

And so she sat, with two boulders correctly positioned after an unknown amount of time, in a land closely resembling her own personal Tartarus, chasing after her own personal demon, alone and not knowing whether she was alive or dead.

Her blood was boiling, and not just because of the temperature gradient.

“My name is Twilight Sparkle,” she said, though only the echoes of the desert returned her claim. She got to her hooves, staring down the third platform, glaring daggers at its immobile mass. “I was born in Canterlot, raised by Velvet and Noteworthy Sparkle. I was taught in Canterlot’s School of Gifted Unicorns and tutored by the Goddess of the Sun, Princess Celestia herself.”

Twilight widened her stance. She was drained by the strain of her previous attempts, but still she scraped together what might she could in preparation for her telekinetic coup de grâce.

“I have been using this spell since I was a foal. I use it every day,” she hissed, her horn beginning to glow. “I am the single most powerful magician in Equestria. I am the Element of Magic itself. And by my mother, by my father, by my brother, by my friends, and by the Princess herself I swear, you—will—MOVE!”

A coil of condensed magic sprouted from her horn and latched onto the boulder. Twilight craned her head to the side, compelling it to the left, willing it with all her heart and soul to move.

And it moved.

It traveled, just a few centimeters each second, but it moved. It was moving, and it was moving where she wanted it to go. Twilight collapsed; the force of her spell finally backlashed onto her body. Her muscles yelled, her heart slammed, her thoughts ran wild as the magic stampeded over her mind. She drifted to the ground, her tongue lolling out of her mouth, and she tried to catch her breath, watching the glorious scene that was a boulder finally moving.

Her gaze was clouded due to the force of the mental cacophony still raging in her head; however, whatever mental capacity she still had at attention briefly wondered something before joining its brethren circling her cranium: Why is the boulder still moving?

It was this thought that snapped the rest of the collective to attention, returning to Twilight her mental functions just as her accomplishment fell apart.

Twilight propped herself up on her front hooves, though she still felt woozy from the havoc still raging in her inner ear. The boulder was moving too far, too fast, and though it was in the original direction she intended, she quickly realized her planned trajectory was a recipe for catastrophe. The third boulder, the one she had burned all her magic moving, was sailing daintily toward the second boulder, having not been thrown far enough to clear the mighty stone.

“No,” Twilight breathed as, centimeter by centimeter, she watched her plans fall apart. “No. No no no no no no no!”

Her magic sparked like flint and steel on damp logs. She had nothing. There was nothing she could do.

And so it floated. And so it drifted. And the sound of the collision dully resonated in Twilight’s ears, and she watched as the third boulder pushed the second into the first, scattering them slowly, mocking her efforts, prodding her pride.

And, as she watched, Twilight Sparkle, student of Princess Celestia and the Element of Magic incarnate, fell down onto her side and began to cry.

Four

*******

As Dash dove into darkness, one thing she quickly realized she ought to have considered was the fact that her surroundings became pitch-black.

She spread her wings in an attempt to slow herself down, but given that she hadn’t the faintest idea where she was going, said attempt was interrupted by her flying smack into a stone wall. Luckily for her skeletal structure, she had slowed down enough that such an encounter would only leave her with a few unsightly bruises.

With the strangled cry characteristic of one who had just had their lungs speedily expunged of air, Dash crumpled to the floor, which was oddly smooth for that of a cave. In fact, she was quick to realize that her environment contained several oddities, one of which was that she was no longer cold.

She stood up just as her ears began to ache a bit from the sudden increase in pressure, far more than there ought to have been for the amount of time she had spent falling. She swiveled her ears back and forth, both to stretch them out after having been crumpled a bit by the fall, and to take advantage of her inner-ear function, one that was unique to pure-blooded pegasi, that allowed her to ‘feel’ out her altitude.

She didn’t like what she felt.

One could attempt to interpret increase in pressure as, rather simply, a proportional increase in depth. However, Dash found that her instincts didn’t quite agree with the proportion—she felt that she was far deeper underground, maybe even two to three times deeper, than the pressure on its own suggested.

She inhaled. The air was heavy, chalky almost, filled with dust, rust, and a general must. The taste was unbearably stale, and Dash felt weary after finishing her breath, rather than refreshed. She shuddered at its additionally unpleasant smell, which reminded her of a combination of wet dog and some of the less pristine gym showers she’d used.

Her ears picked up a bit of faint vibration an indeterminate distance away. Rather than pursue it, out of caution, Dash waited patiently for it to present itself again. It did, louder this time. It was approaching her. Dash stood, turning both ears toward the source and focusing on the origin of the sound.

It wasn’t long before she saw a light in the distance, turning toward her, illuminating its path slightly. It was a tunnel, Dash could see; somehow she had fallen through the concrete ceiling. By the sound of things, and by the vibrations she felt in her hooves, a train was on its way toward her.

Dash didn’t immediately panic. After all, the train was very far away, and she could easily outrun any locomotive, even flying at a leisurely pace. She was sure there would be a way out, but decided to wait until the lights on the train were closer so that she could see any gaps of the wall to which she could escape.

No, she didn’t panic until said beams illuminated the walls of the tunnel surrounding her utterly, and she realized that the train was travelling way—too—fast.

Dash’s ears drooped. She pounced up off the ground after a moment’s contemplation and dove forward just as the ground began to visibly shudder. Her eyes clawed at the walls and at the now suddenly solid ceilng, searching for anything that could possibly fit her form and save her from the incoming mass of... of...

Dash glanced back, just for a moment, to try and approximate her automotive aggressor. It was unlike anything she had seen before, a roaring metal monster, unceasing in its advance. It had no conductor, nopony she could cry to for help, nopony to see her struggles. Its face was blank, white, sterile almost, lacking completely the delicate and skillful touch, as well as the character, of her home’s trains.

Some consolation was that Dash had been itching to fly all day, and such a challenge complimented her competitive spirit, or such was her mentality when she took off at top speeds, fast enough to leave a rainbow trail in her wake. However, whatever worry she escaped through physical exertion returned to her once she realized that the vacuum created by the mass of metal was beginning to interfere with her flight pattern—the suction created by the vehicle was physically dragging her backward mid-flight.

Celestia was apparently watching over her, though. Just when she was about to be sucked back into the two-centimeter space between the train and the wall and ground to bits, an opening presented itself in the wall to her right. She dove forward, but missed a beat on her stroke, and felt a few unpleasant pinches as she fell.

Her landing was rough, and she yelped as her still-fresh bruises were further agitated, but her adrenaline rush helped mitigate her pain, at least for now. She covered her ears and curled into a ball, waiting for the train to pass.

After its mechanical rumbles had faded into the distance, Dash recovered to her hooves and swiveled her ears around, as her new location was also quickly fading to black, but all she could hear was the train grinding against the rails what must have been at least two kilometers away.

Unconsciously she tried to fold her wings against her side, but she winced as she felt an unfamiliar stinging sensation. She quickly realized that some of her feathers had been yanked out by the force of the train, at least a half dozen of them. With a disgruntled sigh, she took a few moments to preen them out, keeping watch with her ears. None of them seemed to be blood feathers, so at least she didn’t have to find a bandage or risk bleeding out. Still, flying without full plumage would be a chore, not to mention half as fast.

A clattering down the nearby hallway startled her to her hooves, and she bared her teeth, focusing both her ears on the source of the disturbance. A pony was approaching.

“Who’s there?” Dash asked. She diverted her attention for a moment as she heard something else, a faint ting, ting, ting drifting in the background.

“He comes,” a stallion rasped, though he sounded a fair distance away as well. In fact, Dash suddenly felt as though the room was expanding, the pressure on her inner ear lessening, and even the pitch-black chamber darkening as if to complement the foreboding atmosphere.

Wind chimes, Dash thought, though this thought mostly rested in the back of her mind. The stallion, whoever he was, cackled. He seemed no closer to her than before.

“Better run, child.” Another warning, though his tone didn’t suggest he was concerned. It more suggested he was waiting to watch what was to occur.

Dash whipped around as the chimes continued, ting-ing with the beat of a slow amble. She could see nothing. The darkness was piercing, and her heart began to beat faster, this time because she knew that she couldn’t get away.

“Who...?” Dash hissed, her tensing her punished muscles, swiveling her ears in a circle. The chimes resonated from all directions.

“Hey. Get up. It’s time to go.”

Pinkie shifted a bit before her eyes snapped open. She was lying on her side, a part of her that was now slightly scratched and sore, but she quickly set that irritation aside when she realized she was no longer cold and, more importantly, she was no longer sick. In fact, she had so much energy that she bounced off her side and too her hooves with an excited squeal.

“I’m doing good again!” she chirped. After a moment of consideration, she raised a hoof to her chin and added, “Wait a minute. Supermare does good. I’m doing well.”

“...Riiight.” Pinkie heard Diamond in front of her, but her eyes were still adjusting so she could only see wisps of the pegasus’s white coat. “Clover, where are we, exactly?”

“These tunnels are the bowels of the subway system. They used to use them to repair the trains if they broke down in the middle of nowhere, but they’re abandoned now, obviously,” a new voice, that of a slightly older mare, replied. Pinkie heard the strike of stone on stone and the glow of sparks, and suddenly her world was lit with blazing torchlight.

Pinkie blinked away from the light, her eyes abruptly reversing their previous course of adjustment. “I-I thought a subway was a sort of sandwich,” she muttered, struggling to coax out her vision. She heard the torch lifted into the air, and a few moments later, she saw her company in full.

Diamond, though recognizable as the mare who had kept her warm and saved her from the cold, now looked drastically altered. For one, she was wearing clothes: Baggy black leggings covered her back half, though were wrapped on her cannon bone as to not interfere with her hooves. She wore also a similarly-colored hoodie; however, given the warmth of her surroundings, had instead opted to tie the garment around her waist. Her manestyle was perhaps the most drastic change present—instead of the long, flowing locks that covered her almost below her shoulders before Pinkie’s nap, her head was shaved into a mohawk, similar to that which she’d seen on stallions before, but never on mares. Other than a simple cut down to size, her tail seemed unaltered. Also worth note were the numerous scratches and bruises present on all over her exposed torso and parts of her neck and face.

The other, Clover, seemed less haphazard in her dress. She wore leggings that actually fit her and did not need to be wrapped, and said leggings sported numerous pockets, many more than Pinkie had seen on any pair of pants prior. They were colored green, which nicely complimented her exposed blue coat—though not much of her fur was exposed; she also wore a swamp-green T-shirt, which had two holes fashioned on its base. A loop from her pants latched her shirt into place. Pinkie, if she were to be honest, thought that was more trouble that was worth, even though Clover was a unicorn and could easily manipulate such intricacies—what was wrong with walking around in your birthday suit? Every day was a party, after all. Having observed that, Pinkie focused her attention on Clover’s face and mane, the former of which adorned a scowl, the latter of which was tied tightly in an intricate braid unbecoming of Clover’s aforementioned expression, which suggested a mare of very little patience. Her tail was also likewise braided, and an upturned hoof revealed steel shoes—stamped likewise, she assumed, into each of the others.

“We’ve got to get moving if we’re going to save your burden,” Clover stated. Despite her cold remark, she did move to help steady Pinkie and making sure she could see.

“I couldn’t just leave her, not after what she went through,” Diamond stated, flicking her shortened tail and nickering at her companion.

“No sense in arguing about it now that she’s here,” Clover said. After she was sure Pinkie could walk, she set off in the direction of the unknown. Diamond followed and, having no other present options, Pinkie ambled along after them.

*******

Eventually, the chiming of the bells slowed to a gentler metronome, and a few runes assembled themselves in front of her face. Dash made to leap backward, but her limbs were frozen, half her mind hypnotized by the gaze of Verba’s half-formed face. She felt a pressure under the center of her forehead—u̡nd͟ér h͠e̡r͞ ͡s͝kul̷l, i͘t͠ fe̸l̴t̡—͠a͟ńd ̀a ̧tang̛l͜e ̧o̴f st͡a̶t̛ic̛ ͝w̷o͝u͝n҉ḑ its way͟ ͝into͘ ͡h͜e͏r̡ ea̧r, ͟soùndi͝n͝g̢ ͝so͟m̢e͡thi͜ng ̡li͠ke:҉

sͬ̓̒͋̆̐͏̨͍̝̟̝͖͙̟͕̬͉́ ͣͮ̈ͭ̒͋ͭͤ̓͆͑ͤ͆̃̓͘҉̷̹̘̱͔̭̩̭̥͈̤̭͜͞o̶̍̌̓͗̓̔ͩ͗ͮ҉͍̦̠̤͈̞̠͜ ̷̷͇͍͍̠̺͖̝̦̻͇̫̰̬̗̊̂̋̌̍̾ͫ̅ͦ͌̾͟͞rͤ̋̉͌͛ͨ̍̀̌̓̀͏̦̰̘̯̖͢͞ ͓̟̖͔̤̲͉̣͈̳͇̠̯̇̆̉̈̓̆͂́͟͢͝ͅȓ̷̷̢̡̯̪̪̮͉̮̞̳̳̫̖̫̏̇̎̔̅̔ͫ̋ͅ ̨̠͍͈̜̘̦͕̳͚͔̠͕ͨͪ͆͌ͭ͗̊ͪ̍̌̓ͦ̈́̈͘͢ỵ̣̝̖͔͚̠̯͚̈̒̋ͣ͌ͪ͑́͜ ̵̢͔͕̳̞̱̞͇̦͇̫̺̭̣͙̦͎̻̖ͪ̅͆ͮͧ̋ͫ͗̽ͧͯ̇̄̀̚ͅ.̢͈̙̲͎̟̭͎̳͕̰̼̱̮͔̬̭͇͉͓ͧͭ̃͛̆͆̑͂ͮͯͪ̚̚͘

The͡ i͠nt̵r̡u̶s̨i̢o͠n̢ of th̢e͟ n͠o͢ís͟e͜ di̷s͡ru̶pt̨e͜d ͠her͠ tho͏u̸g͟ht ̛p͏r͡oc͟ȩs͠s, ̀m̴a͜k͟i͝ńg̀ ҉i͠t͡ diffįcul̀t̀ ̧to ̢g̡lea҉n͢ me̸a̷n͡ing f̸ro҉m͞ ͢the̡ s̕o͏un͏d́s. ̛D̸a̛s̀h ͜was͡ o͡n̨l͠y̢ ҉a͏ble ̢t̴o m͢us͡te̕r͝ ̢t̕h͝e̸ mȩn̛t̛a̧l ͡e̷ner̸gy̨ ̨t҉o҉ s͟a̴y͡,̶ ̕we̢a̶k̢ĺy̴,̢ “̷Huh?҉”

s̸̋̇̈́ͥ̅͒ͯ̀ͧ҉̸̘̙͉̘̼͍͇̯͙̺̹̙͎͈̦̀ ̑ͣͥͭ̃̔͝҉͔̦̥̩̰͔͉ͅͅo̵̡̪̗̳͓̞̬͚͉̹̭̤͓͓̮̟͇̠ͨ̉͗́̾̽̽̂̓̏̀̊͂̀́͡r͚͈̗̦̹͔̦͇̞̠͕̓ͨ͋ͪ̍͒̐͑ͨͯ͛̌̌̿͑͌̏͟͡ ͙̖̰͕͔̜͔͚̗͙͉̟̀ͤͣ͆͊̒̐̎̌̓͋ͩ̓̈̿͟͝r̨̢̙̘̱͉̰͍͚̝̜̩̭̍ͫͭ̆͐͋̓̈́͢͝y̧̼̩̭͈̪͈̬͚̼̘̰̼̖̹͋ͥ͛͐̈̃ͪ̋̈̒͛̽͞.̶̢͇̮͓͎͖͖̦̞̳̯ͩ́̋̈ͣ̍͆̐̑̌́̚̚͘͠

T͢he̡ ro̵u̧g͝h̛ st̀a͞t͡i͜c͟ r̡od̡e ̨ove҉r͜ her c̶on̡s̵çi̴o͜usneşs̕ ̵i̡n w̕av̵es. ̵Da̛s͘h ͝s̴t̨a͜gg̡er͜ed ̵bef̷o̵re̵ ̀co̷l̶la̵p͘s̷i͜n͏g ̴ţo ̀h̴e͡r ̕k̷n͏eȩs, ̵th̴e͘n̨ ͠f҉in̕a͜ll͟y̶ ͜o͢n͡t̢o he̵r̶ s͘id͢e ͢a̢s h̕er ͜m͢ind ̶wa͟s ̧sl̨òwl͢y ͡a͟lt͞er̷e̡d̶ ͡by̶ t͝h͜e̴ ̧ún͜kno͟w̡n͠ for̶ce̴. Şhe ͘w̵a͝s͝ onl͏y ̨àb͠l̨e͏ t͞ó thin͠k̀,̀ ̸b̛r͝i̴efl͢y͠...҉ "̸Wḩo̡ ͏a͝r̛e͡ yo͢u?͏"͟

iͧ̓ͦͭ̀̑̎̓̓̑̈́̀͏͈̜̟̣̭̟̝̕ ̧̙͉̲̙̺͎̮̞͙̲̪͉̣̪̝̖ͣ͊͒̕͘̕͠.͌̾̅̆ͮͩͩ̔̍̔̆͏҉̦̹̤̼͇̲̞̠͔̣̲̗̝̤ͅ ̧̨̛̤̹̟̺͓̇͑͌͂͟ą̷̶̛͓̫̭̣͇͇̠̯̳͂̋͌ͦ̉ͪͦ̅ ̢̺̤̠̖̖̜̝ͣͧ̇̈́͊̔̉̊̏̂̿̈́̚̕.̇͂̏̓ͮ̄͗̐ͨͮ͗ͬ͒̎͞҉͏̨̖̝͈͓̬̖̦̹̳͇̲̕ ̛̳̟̻̆̃͆̉ͬͪ͆̄̀̚m̂̔̉̓ͯͥ͌͊ͭ̑̿̏̽̎̆̀̂̚̚͢͠҉̛̖̮̟͖̙̹̪̖̞̰͍̩̠̲ ̧̡̧̧̭̺͇͖͚̣͎̞̩̑̓̐̂́ͣͬ̃̚͝ͅ.̧̨̗͎͎̝̤̹͉̱̱̞̞͇̆ͣ͛̃̇͒͂͋͌̉̈ͦͬͅ ̢̪͈̖̳͍̞̹̫̗͓̰ͩ̆̿ͧ̇̈̀͡v̷̢͍̹͕̬͖͙͙̤͔̰̮͂ͤ̊̊͠ ͚̺͙̥̭̰̖̩̪̯̲̯̟͎̪͍̦͕̔̏̏͂͊̂̃ͧ̾ͣ̎͞ͅ.̧͈̘̟̜̒̀ͦ͂͋ͬ͒́́̓̊͠ ̶̟̠̣̠͓̹̭͚͐͛̐̾ͥ̕͡͝ͅę̴̪̟͉̟̘̲͛͋̓ͤ̓̔̔̉͛ͯͥ̿̃͂̚͠͡ ̱̮͙͚͔͉̦̲͈̆ͨ̓͌͡.̊ͬͥ̑̋͏̷̶̞̙̬̲̫̹͓͙̜́͡ ̸̧̟̙̖̻̘̮̭̯̼̬̗̄͛̂̈́̓ͨ̅͒̚͟͢͞ͅŗ̷̛͈̤̫͎͓̹̗̖̲̍ͣͪͣͦͩ̾̀̓́̈̽̔͢ ̌̓̓̽ͥ͂͒̎̈́҉̺̜̠͕͚̭̪͔̱̳̮̩͔͖̪̺̠̲̀.̷̜̠̱̞̰̹ͯ͊̽̀̒̈ͭ͛͒̽ͪ̉ͣ̌ͣ͞͝͝͠ͅ ̸̵̧̻̘̝̪̯̯̻̲͖̩̼̟͕̺͕̊̍ͥͪ̄͌̄ͣb̸̛̛̠͓̬̱̥̪͓͕̝̜͔̝̦̠̤̻ͤͤͤ͗̊ͣ͑̿͘ ̷͚̝̣͉̥͇̙̹̟͛̽ͩ͒ͤ͑̂͂̑͐ͦ̂ͬͫ̋͟.̷̟̻̪̜̜̘̞̘̖͓͛̍͛͂̑̽͢͟ ̯̞̤̮̼̲̗̺̘̪̭̣͌͌ͧ̍̀ͥ͝a̶̧̬̜̯̘̿̃̆̋ͪͤ̄̇̋͊́ͮ̉̍̀̚͟ ͈̹̮͖̗̲̤̏̾ͣ̏ͩ͑͟ͅ.̷̤̭͓̮̦͕̗̙̪̫̤͔͙̳̠͉̬̳̒ͧͤ̇̏ͫͪ̈ͨ̂̿̏͆̐̏ͦ͋͘͜

T͏h͝e͡ f͘og cla̧im͝e͟d he͡r.͏ ͠Th̷e presşưr̡e͡ ͟in ͞he̸r̢ mind̸ in̴̨c̴̢r̡ȩ̷͝a͜s̷̸ed ̴̧̛u̢͢͜n̢͢͠t̛i̶l̛ ̴̶she̢̕ s̢̀͝ù͡d̵̸́̕͞d̶͘e̶͢n҉̵̧͞l̡y͘͟ ̷̶͞͝f̶́͢͠ ̴̷̨͡e̷̢͝ ̵́́l̷̶̶̡͘ ̴͞͠t̷́͞

Pop.

From the darkness came clarity, in the form of Dash being sent at incalculable cosmic speeds back close to where she began, in the area just off the subway tracks, slammed into the pavement at a million miles an hour. For a split-second she assumed she would splatter on impact, but apparently simple physics didn’t apply in this scenario. Hurting, and baffled, she simply decided to lie on the cold concrete, waiting for whatever danger wanted to poke at her next. They all seemed to want a piece of her today.

A light flickered on overhead, revealing a unicorn stallion, donned in a tattered red coat, standing over her. Dash scraped together what little instincts of self-preservation she still had at that point and managed to stand up, confronting her counterpart with a bleary anxiety.

A few synapses in the back of her mind sparked, and her right eye, the one not yet blackened by her various impacts, widened. “Wait a sec. You’re that stallion from Exile Three.”

He was vibrating slightly, and it almost appeared as if two separate instances of him were contained in the same body. There was also something off about his eyes, but she couldn’t tell exactly what due to her slightly blurred, tired vision. His expression was neutral in the purest sense, which also off-put her slightly.

“You... see me,” he said. “The light refracts into your eyes, bouncing off my body, and... you see me.”

“Who’re you?” Dash asked, though at this point she expected such a question was an excercise in futility.

“My name is Dicidium, the title I was given at birth—D-D-Discidium,” he said, his head twitching slightly to the side each time he stuttered. “You may call me Discidium. The title I was later given, Veilborn. My name...” He trailed off. “Who are you? What do you call yourself, and what may I refer to you—how may I call...” He lost his words again. His eyes didn’t seem focused on her; rather, they didn’t appear to be quite looking at anything.

“Rainbow Dash,” she breathed, backing up to lean against a wall.

“You may call me Discidium. If you see me, call me Discidium. But if you see me, say... say...” He shook his head, thinking hard. “If you see me, yell ‘Layne.’”

“Is that your name?” Dash asked.

Discidium made to shake his head, but never turned it directly to the left, therefore appearing to be bouncing his face off an invisible wall. “No. That is not my name. You may call me Discidium.”

“Who... Who are you, though?” Dash asked.

“I created this. I made it, I crafted it, and now I live in it. I live and die in it. I am tortured by it,” Discidium said, still pointing his head toward her but still not truly looking at her. “The Void Passage.”

“What?” Dash asked.

“The Void Passage. The Void Passage is what I created. I didn’t create it. I created what created it. It is the invention of my invention. I was put here to live. I was put here to die,” Discidium explained. “The Void Passage. The Void Passage is what I created. I didn’t—”

Dash interrupted him, stepping up and turning his head toward her. “Wait. We’re in a place called the Void Passage?”

“The Void Passage. The Void Passage is what I created. I didn’t create it,” Discidium repeated.

“Do you know where Pinkie is?” Dash asked, though fast losing hope that she could procure answers from this haphazard shadow of a stallion.

“Here. She is here. The world grows smaller as he approaches. The Void Passage is infinite,” Discidium said. “The Void Passage is my creation. The creation of—The creation of my creation of my—” He turned around, shuddering.

“What about Fluttershy and Applejack? And Rarity, and Twilight?” Dash asked.

Discidium’s ears swiveled in a full 540° toward her, the skin around them bending like putty, a sickening motion that sent a shudder through Dash’s spine, before turning toward her. “Your friends sleep. Your friends are no longer in this world. Not in this Void Passage. They are no longer necessary. Their imprisonment is no longer necessary. They travel to another prison in the Void Passage, the Void Passage that I created.”

“What do you mean?” Dash asked, unsure what his true meaning was. “Are they dead?”

He roared, rushing toward Dash and ramming her up against the wall, looking directly at her for the first time. At that moment, with the wind slammed from her lungs, she understood exactly what was so off about Discidium’s eyes. The pupils in each appeared to have swelled and burst, eating into the surrounding iris and beginning to form black rivulets around the white of the eye. “Death is a lie,” he hissed.

A pause. Neither side moved; Discidium appeared to be at a mental standstill, and Dash hadn’t the strength to escape his grip.

“You... were put here to live,” he continued. “You... You can see me, so you were also put here... to die,” he concluded, staring directly at her, through her, now. His back legs took a step forward, increasing the pressure he had to exert on Dash to stay upright. “He comes.” He took another step, and Dash yelped with the pain his weight caused. “He comes... He comes for you, Rainbow Dash.”

“Get off!” Dash yelled. She struggled, but her muscles were too tired to resist the bulk of the larger pony. Lashes of pain raked their way up her back. Dash wanted to close her eyes and scream for help, but Discidum’s eyes mesmerized her anew, and she was forced to look up at him.

“You will see me,” he said, his voice now layered with what seemed to be at least two other instances of himself. “You must see me. He comes for you.”

Dash trembled, but managed to offer Discidium a nod.

It wasn’t enough, though. He was still forcing her up against the wall, unwilling to let go—though his gaze did soften. His voice now reverted to its original state, he said, “Save me, Rainbow Dash.”

Dash didn’t say yes, because she didn’t know what he meant, but didn’t say no for fear of being hurt.

Discidium’s gaze softened further. “Save me... Rainbow Dash. My son returns to find you. My son returns to see you. My son returns to see you as you really are.”

“I don’t understand,” Dash cried, her shoulders burning with the force of the unicorn assaulting them—but that force was beginning to dwindle.

Discidium’s gaze softened. It was at this point Dash noticed that a gaze cannot possibly be so soft, and it was also at this point, as Discidium’s snout began to droop and his jaw hung open, that he began to fall apart. His already maroon pelt increased in pigmentation until it was the color of blood, and before long actually was dripping off his body like that which it appeared. His eyelids fell over his eyes before dripping off and down his snout, exposing his eyeballs raw for a moment before they, too, melted down the side of his face like streams of tears. She heard a rasping from his throat as his muscles and bones bent, as if he was trying as hard as he could to hold onto her, but she heard four faint snaps as his brittle limbs broke. The impact of his body on the gathering pool of blood splattered everywhere, dotting Dash’s coat with specks of red and covering her hooves and fetlocks in the life of the stallion who’d disappeared in front of her, even his clothes dissolving into the pool of viscous fluid.

Dash blinked. For a moment, she wished she had the option to join him.

“Why me,” she hissed through clenched teeth, tasting iron on her tongue. The stench made her nauseous. The light which alerted her to Discidium’s presence also lit a corridor on the other end, leading away from the train tracks. Dash didn’t particularly care where it led.

Skirting around the edge of the puddle of a former pony, Dash flicked her head to the side to remove strands of mane from her field of view as she began to gallop away as fast as she could—which, unfortunately, was not fast enough for her to escape the stench of death before she had to slow down, lean against a wall, and vomit.