Iron and Salt

Cadance watched her husband uneasily as he sat at his desk in his office. He had not come to bed the whole night before, and now, even with the foal awake, he still chose not to sleep. A muscle in his jaw twitched, and he stared downward at a stack of papers, eyes unmoving. A glass of Scotch sat beside it, but he had drank only a little of it.

“Go to bed,” she said, firmly but gently. “You need to rest.”

“I can't,” he said. “When I try to sleep, I see things; some kind of backlash from the shield. If I sleep, I'm afraid they'll try to come into our world again through me.”

“I won't let them,” said Cadance. It was a whisper, but there was a certain ferocity behind it.

Shining Armor chuckled, and raised his head.

“You're one of the good ones,” he said. “You know that?”

She stepped over to him, and layed her head and neck beside his own.

“I can't hold this off much longer,” he said.

“I know,” she said, quietly.

“Hey!” came Twilight's excited voice from the opening door. “It's done!”

“Whoops,” she said, backpedaling halfway into the hall. “Bad time?”

“No,” said Shining Armor. “It's fine.”

“Rarity finished fixing the... my crown,” said the purple alicorn. “She wants everypony to come and see.”

“Well, let's go see, then,” said Shining Armor, and he stood. He stumbled slightly as he found his hooves, but then steadied himself.

Twilight gave her brother a look of pity.

“Just hold on a little longer,” she said. “This is almost over.”

“Relax,” he said. “It'll take more than a little thing like the end of the world to put me down for good.”

Cadance smiled at him, and nuzzled at his neck.

They followed Twilight back to the Palace Parlor, where Celestia, Luna, and everypony else were waiting. Lyra and Shimmershine were there also, sitting on a small couch together.

Rarity sat on a cushion, and a large, bejeweled box lay beside her on the floor. She was shaking slightly.

“Rarity,” said Twilight, noticing the tiny tremors running through her body, “are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” she said. Then, she levitated the box upward.

“No, she said; I'm better than fine.”

Sweetie Belle gave her a strange look of admiration that Twilight couldn't quite place, but as the box opened up, her eyes turned with everyone else's to the gleaming, golden crown within it.

“You're right,” said Twilight. “You are better than fine; you're amazing.”

“I do my best,” smiled Rarity. Her voice seemed hazy, but there was a positivity and a focus in it that had been missing since Twilight had first encountered her in the package store.

“When will we be ready to use it?” asked Rainbow Dash. “To use them.”

“Whenever you're all ready,” said Twilight, “I'm ready.”

“Then I say let's get 'er done,” said Applejack.

“Right now?” asked Lyra, anxiously.

“The longer we put it off,” said Celestia, "the greater the chance that another attack will take place.

“I see,” said the green unicorn.

“Alright then, girls” said Twilight, and she levitated the crown from the box.

She gave it a long look, trying to put in order how something so far beyond belief had come to pass. She thought of Spike, of her other self who had died leaning on her shoulder, and of the other five human women in the photograph. Each of them were, by now, most likely also dead.

Her eyes hardened.

“Put your makeup on, put your manes up pretty, and meet me tonight in the Crystal City.”

“What?” asked Pinkie Pie.

Twilight did not respond, but she saw Cadance smiling at her from across the room, her husband leaning on her shoulder.

***

They met on top of the Palace. As had been the case when they had first chosen to confront Cenasolus, there was little use in trying to hide. No matter where they did what they were about to do, if they should fail, nowhere in the world would be remote enough to protect anypony.

It was here that the fate of the world would be decided, beneath the gaze of the Mare in the Moon, atop the great Crystal Tower, so like the towering palace in Frigidus where they had first found the aethervox.

They stood in a circle around the little colt. He seemed fearful, but somehow also determined. He breathed heavily, but slowly, containing and controlling his fear much better than his age should allow. His mother sat outside the circle, her own face betraying uncertainty and worry. Celestia, Luna, and Cadance stood to the side, watching intently. Shining Armor sat beside his wife on his haunches, his weariness evident in his posture and expression. Applebloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle all stood near the Princesses and Lyra.

“What do we do, now?” asked Fluttershy.

Twilight shrugged, and pulled a cigarette butt from her mouth. She dropped it, and ground it out with her hoof.

“We set this motherfucker off,” she said.

The elements began to glow, and so did Twilight's eyes. They had all seen this before, but it had been years ago. None of them had ever really become accustomed to it, and the sight was still unsettling.

They levitated upward, carried aloft by the power of the glowing talismans they all wore, and from each Element there shone forth a beam of bright, colored light.

Shimmershine's chest began to glow, and in a moment, so did Lyra's horn.

She looked up, at it, and screamed in agony, putting her hooves to her temples. Then, she collapsed forward onto her belly, immediately drawing Sweetie Belle's attention.

"Miss Heartsrings, are you okay!?" she asked, stepping quickly in front of her, and kneeling down.

"There are voices." she said. "Voices in my mind!"

Cadance, Scootaloo, and Applebloom all stepped closer.

"There are so many!" she screamed. "They're so LOUD!"

"What the hell!?" said Applebloom, kneeling beside Lyra.

"They're trying to use her as a portal," said Celestia, looking down at the agonized unicorn. "The Elements have activated the aethervox. They're going to try to come through and stop them from being used." She shook her head in confusion. "But why her? If it's active, why not come in through the aethervox directly?"

"STOP IT!" came a high-pitched screech. Its source was Shimmershine, and instantly, Luna understood.

"They want revenge!" she shouted. "They're trying to destroy her mind to get at the child!"

Twilight turned her gleaming eyes towards Celestia, and the Princess could not help but think how very like her father's they appeared.

"Can we stop it!?" asked Twilight, frantically.

"I don't know!" shouted Celestia. "The Elements are acting of their own will!"

"Gods, I'm DYING!" shouted Lyra.

She convulsed and flailed wildly.

"MOM!" screamed Shimmershine, watching in horror.

Applebloom wrapped her forelegs around those of the unicorn, and held tight.

"Somepony's gotta hold her, or she'll hurt herself," she grunted out, straining to restrain the much smaller mare, even with her impressive earth pony strength.

"You have to try to stop it!" shouted Cadance.

"The aethervox has already been activated," said Celestia. "If we stop the Elements, they'll come through, anyway!"

"I have had enough of this insufferable bullshit," said Luna, and she stepped to where Applebloom was still struggling to control Lyra's convulsions.

She looked at Scootaloo.

"Hold her head still!" she said.

Scootaloo wrapped her forelegs around Lyra's head, holding her as tightly as she felt she could without hurting her.

"That's good enough," said Luna, lowering her horn towards Lyra's. "Didn't want to poke out her damned eye."

"Rub it in, why don't you?" said Celestia, flatly.

"Really?" said Luna, stopping mid-motion to look at her sister. "Right now?"

Celestia shrugged.

"I hate you, Celestia."

"I love you, Luna."

Luna touched the tip of her horn to the tip of Lyra's. There was a tremendous spark, and an electrical crackle. Luna's head recoiled, and she shook it quickly, batting her eyes.

"Dammit!" she said sharply. "They're repelling me. They planned for this."

"Is there anything we can do?" asked Shining Armor, stumbling towards where Lyra lay restrained.

"I don't know," said Celestia, her voice sinking direly.

"You don't get to choose, anymore" said Shimmershine, listlessly. "I choose what comes out of my heart. I choose where, and I choose when. I choose how." He seemed to pass out completely, laying over backwards in midair, his eyes rolling back into his head.

Suddenly, the glow from Lyra's horn slowly faded, and she lost consciousness. Even as she fell still and silent, the light around the foal's heart intensified.

"SHIM!" screamed Pinkie Pie, still held aloft by her Element. "What are you doing!?"

They were all shocked to hear a single voice, distant and huge; the same cold, dispassionate voice that had first spoken to them from the aethervox years ago.

"What you -- all of you -- taught me to do."

Then, from everywhere at once, there came the cacophonous roar of countless enraged voices.

“THIS IS BLASPHEMY!” they screamed. “YOU ARE ALL HERETICS AGAINST THE RIGHTFUL ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE!”

“Fuck the universe!” shouted Applejack. “Ain't never been nothing but a bitch to none of us!”

"WE WILL NOT SUFFER THIS INSOLENCE!"

A spire of golden light shone upward from the foal's gleaming chest, and formed into a sphere of brilliant light. From it there began to flow more of the bizarre, alien gods, clawing, scratching, and crawling their way from its illumination. Soon, their screams of rage drifted down to envelop the city. There were so many that they quickly eclipsed the enormous, throbbing ball of light.

“The portal is too close,” said Celestia. “There will be too many, this time.”

She shut her eye, and her horn shone with its characteristic, golden-white light. The swollen mass moved higher in the sky, growing so much as it did so that it still continued to fill more and more of the night sky despite moving further and further away.

"WE DEMAND WHAT WE ARE DUE!" shouted the voices, coming now both from the mouth of the colt and the gargantuan mass of spirits overhead.

“You are due nothing,” said Luna, harshly. “Your time is over. It has been over.”

A horrible sound ripped downward, causing the crystal tower to vibrate fiercely.

It was the sound of fear.

“Is it working?” asked Cadance, half-panicked.

Celestia grinned up at the orb.

“Yes,” she said, a peculiar mix of anger and satisfaction pervading that solitary syllable. “Look.”

The ball had begun to shrink, and from within it there came horrible shrieks of terror and rage.

“Are they dying!?” shouted Fluttershy, floating nearby, and staring upward.

“They were already dead," said Celestia.

Then, a single voice shouted out of the cacophony.

“THIS IS MY WORLD!”

Celestia and Luna looked upward sharply, their eyes wide.

“No,” said Celestia. “It cannot be.”

“I AM SOL!” shouted the voice. “MY WILL BE DONE!”

“What's going on!?” shouted Twilight, her eyes still aglow.

“Stop!” shouted Celestia. “Quickly, Twilight!”

“I can't!” she shouted. “I can't control it!”

The Elements of Harmony seemed to be pulled upward, and their wearers with them.

“The Elements!” shouted Celestia. “Take them off, now!”

No sooner had she spoken these words than there was a blinding flash from the six jeweled talismans, and when it had faded, their wearers were gone. Overhead, the orb still loomed. However, it had fallen silent, and it seemed to have solidified in some way.

“Where are they!?” said Shining Armor.

“Aunt Celestia,” said Cadance, “what's going on!?”

Shimmershine lay on the roof below where he had floated. Though he had appeared unconscious only moments earlier, he now began to stir.

“He's... He's still there,” said Shimmershine, sitting up onto his haunches. “That huge stallion you call 'Sol.'” He sniffled once.

"Is my mom okay?" he asked.

"I think so," said Applebloom, "She's breathing."

Shimmershine waddled over and nudged at Lyra's shoulder his forehead. She stirred, and opened her eyes.

"What happened?" she asked. "Shim, are you okay?"

"Uh-huh," he said. "The voices are all gone, now. They can't come back."

Lyra sat up, and hugged him.

“Princess, what's going on?” asked Sweetie Belle, running to stand before the white horse. “What went wrong?”

Celestia looked around at the terrified faces that surrounded her.

“Father and Mother created the Elements of Harmony,” said Celestia. “Their own souls are still bound to them. The Elements embody their eternal will to see this world endure in harmony. That wish, their one greatest dream, gives the Elements their power.”

“Which means what!?” asked Applebloom.

“Father's spirit cannot be undone by the Elements,” said Luna, and she stamped down hard with a hoof. “Not against his own will.”

“Why did I not anticipate this?” asked Celestia.

“I didn't either,” said Luna. “I thought for all the world that he would want to be at peace, but it would seem that his long imprisonment has stolen his reason.”

“Well, where are they?” asked Scootaloo. “Tell me they're not dead.”

“They're with him,” said Shimmershine, and everypony turned towards him. “I saw.”

“Well, where is he, then?” asked Cadance.

“There,” said Celestia, nodding upward at the orb, which loomed larger than the moon in the sky above.

“We have to go get them,” said Cadance.

“Yeah,” said Shining Armor, and he stood. He took a step towards Princess Celestia, and collapsed completely.

“Shining!” shouted Cadance.

“I'm okay,” he said weakly. “Go get Twilie, and the rest of them.”

“I'm not leaving you like this,” said Cadance.

“It's okay, Shining Armor,” said Celestia. “Only I must go.”

“Seriously?” asked Scootaloo. “You expect the rest of us to just stay behind!?”

“I must speak to him,” said Celestia. “I must reason with him; plead with him, if need be. If he remembers who I am, then he may listen.”

“And if not?” asked Cadance.

“I have no idea,” said Celestia.

“I'm with Scoots,” said Applebloom. “There is no way, no how that I'm not going after AJ.”

“I'm sorry,” said Celestia, “but there will be nothing you can do. Sol is mad with time and power, and his power is very, very great.”

“And what makes you think that I will let you go without me?” asked Luna.

“Luna,” said Celestia, and she stepped to her sister. “I need you to hold that abomination in place. It is trying to move downward, towards our world – to do what, I do not care to imagine. It is taking all my will to restrain it. Only one of us can go.”

She looked up at the weird, distant thing in the sky.

“I am the one who brought Twilight Sparkle to this. I laid too much of my own burden on her, and this has been the ultimate result. The lives of she and her friends are my responsibility. Just this once, I must ask you to allow me to bear my burden alone.”

Luna nodded very slightly.

“I understand,” she said.

“Can you take me there through the light of the moon?” asked Celestia. “I... cannot fly.”

“I can,” said Luna.

“Then let us go.”

The moon shone brighter for a moment, and they both disappeared.

***

The place where Celestia and Luna appeared had seemed ugly and grotesque from a distance. Up close, standing upon it, it seemed a thousand times more malignant and foul. It was like a tiny world, alive in completely the wrong way. There was skin where there should have been ground, and beneath that, the sisters could feel a framework of bone and muscle tissue. There were large, chitinous plates on the ground here and there, formed from the exoskeletons of creatures insectoid and crustacean. There were trees of bone, covered in vein-laced skin and with hair where there should have been leaves. Fur of different kinds grew in patches like grass, and tiny, weird plants made of bone, muscle, and sinew sprouted from the warm, gently pulsating ground.

Sol had made this place, somehow, from the twisting and melding together of the countless dead beings which had been his compatriots. It was as if all things fauna had reshaped themselves into flora, forced through this cruel transformation by nothing other than the long-dead alicorn's will to once again be master over some world.

Luna took a deep breath.

“Release it to me,” she said. “I will wait here.”

Celestia let go the force of her will which held this ugly, twisted world away from the beauty of the world far below, and she felt a tremor rock through the malignant ground beneath her feet.

Luna gritted her teeth, and the tremor ceased.

“I have it,” she said.

“Return, and hold this aberration at bay,” said Celestia. “I will find them.”

“How will you get back?” asked Luna.

“I do not know,” said Celestia, “but you cannot risk staying here. If I do not return, someone must take responsibility for the sun.”

“If you do not return,” said Luna, “I doubt that will be necessary.”

“Go,” said Celestia.

Luna disappeared, and left her alone in that impossible, alien landscape.

“Poor father,” she whispered, “Have you gone this mad?”

She shut her eye, and reached out with her subconscious. It was not so easy for her as for her sister, but still, she could faintly detect the mind and heart of her sire and her student. Soon, she was certain that Twilight, the other ponies, and her own father were not on this world, but in it, somewhere deep down near its core.

She stood still, wondering how she could hope to reach them. She could blast her way in magically, but the likelihood that she would kill those she had come to save was too great.

As she considered these things, she heard from somewhere nearby a rhythmic sound, like wind – the sound of breathing. She hobbled over a small rise, careful not to step on any of the ugly, twisting plants that grew from its surface.

In a small valley below where she stood at the crest of the living hill, she saw the source of the noise: a huge orifice, obviously vital in the tiny, living planet's respiration. It expanded and contracted with each breath, never closing completely.

It was too small to sustain a world of this size on its own, she decided. There must be many like it. Whether this was even the best way to enter this grotesque abomination, and whether it would bring her closest to her goal, she could not guess.

Still, however, as had far too often been the case in her life, she had no better plan.

She stepped down the hill carefully, and drew close to the edge of the black opening. Each inhalation and exhalation of the huge, alien orifice whipped at her mane. She cast a light spell, and peered inside.

It was like a shaft that went straight down. Its sides were pink, glistening mucus membranes. There seemed to be no obstacles to impede her, but still, she found herself hesitant to enter the void beneath her hooves. Finally, she remembered what she had come here to do, and lifted herself from the ground telekinetically.

She levitated herself down carefully, keeping her one remaining wing and the stump of its twin tight to her body, so that the steady gusts of the thing's breath, cool and dry on the way in, warm and humid on the way out, would not throw her about inside the darkness of the long, living tunnel.

Finding after a considerable distance that the passage beneath her had begun to slope, she set down her hooves, and cut out the telekinetic influence that held her aloft. This turned out to be a mistake, however, as her horseshoes gave on the slick, moist surface. She rolled down, head over tail, until the passage leveled out more completely. Mercifully, the warm tissue against which she came to rest was soft. Still, however, her stumps ached terribly from the impacts they had endured during her tumble.

She stood, and cast the glow from her horn around the dark chamber. It was the inside of a lung, she quickly decided. It was dryer than had been the passage through which she had entered, and as the air flooded into and out of it, the entire chamber, as enormous as the foyer of Canterlot Castle, expanded and contracted.

She reached out again, feeling for Twilight or her father. They were closer now.

She followed that sensation, and it led her to the wall of the huge lung. Seeing no other way to continue, she ripped a hole into its surface with her horn. Air whistled into and out of this new opening, and she forced her way through it, feeling it tearing around her shoulders and wings -- whole and ruined -- as she strained past its tension.

Past it, there were more passages, still. They were like caves, but their stalactites and stalagmites were bony protrustions with a thin, pale skin as a covering. In every respect possible, it seemed, including its subterranean regions, this weird, little planet mimicked the natural world.

She continued through this dark, living world towards the place where she sensed her student, finding more of the huge, dark chambers along the way. In some she found gigantic, pulsing hearts, and in others, long, twisting tracts of enormous intestines. Wherever she had to, she cut her way forward through whatever barrier presented itself.

It had been hours, at least, when she finally saw a light glowing dimly from the end of a passageway. As she approached it, it grew bright enough that she no longer needed the spell from her horn to see her way forward.

What she found at the end of that hallway surprised her beyond any of the hideous things she had yet seen: an oaken door, glowing with a magical emblem – her cutie mark.

And her father's.

As she approached it, the twin suns on her flanks glowed slightly, and the rays shining from the emblem on the door rotated around its center. There was a loud clattering as if from many locks, and it opened to her.

What she found inside almost made her faint.

“This place,” she said. “This place has been gone for so long”

It was the sitting room of her childhood home, an enormous castle that had once stood upon the tallest mountain in the land now called Equestria – the same mountain upon which she had aeons later founded Canterlot.

Everything around her was magical. Tables had no legs, but merely floated in the air. There was light from small, floating orbs of glass filled with nothing at all. There were shelves of books which she knew contained more pages than their sizes should have allowed. Everything everywhere was crafted in the same gentle, flowing lines and soothing colors that she had been so careful to emulate with Canterlot.

Most importantly, however, in the middle of it all, there was Twilight Sparkle – and there was Sol.

He was lying on a huge, brocade cushion, looking down at Twilight. This in itself would have been disconcerting, but what made the image all the more difficult for her to process was that Twilight had regressed in age.

She was a filly, no older than three or four. She wore a smaller version of a dress Celestia remembered having owned, herself, and she was playing with tiny, plastic pony dolls, moving them about with her hooves.

“What is the meaning of this?” asked Celestia.

“The meaning of what?” asked Sol, staring down at Twilight, and smiling.

“Why is Twilight Sparkle a child?” she asked.

“Why would she not be?” asked Sol. “Is that not what you have always called her? Is that not what they all are, your little ponies?”

“Twilight,” said Celestia, and the little filly looked up at her.

“Daddy, who is that lady?” asked Twilight.

“Why, that is your sister, Kaelestia,” said Sol.

Not even Luna had pronounced her name with that hard "C" and slight lilt of the first syllable for thousands upon thousands of years. Celestia did not even so imagine the word in her own thoughts, anymore. This was no figment of her imagination. There could be no doubt that this was, indeed, her father, Sol.

“Daddy?" whispered Celestia. "Sister?" her voice shook with confusion and disbelief. “Twilight, don't you remember me?”

The little filly shook her head. Celestia could see Twilight eying her bandaged wounds curiously, but she would say nothing else to this horse whom she perceived as a total stranger. She had always been that way when she was younger, Celestia remembered. It was part of what had made it so difficult for her to make friends, and that thought made Celestia wonder where her friends were.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“Look outside,” he said, nodding towards a window.

Celestia walked in the direction he indicated, and looked out the window. Outside this chamber was the same lawn she remembered from her own youth. The trees were in the same places, even the huge oak tree that had been present in the dream Luna had created for her the night before. The same tiny, stone bridge passed over the same little fish pond. The wall rose to exactly the same height, each and every stone set in precisely the same place it had been so many thousands of years ago. In every way Sol had flawlessly recreated the home he had known during the happiest era of his long, long life.

The other ponies, also reduced to fillies, were all playing, chasing one another about under the warm glow of an afternoon sun.

“Little Twilight here is something a loner, it would seem” said Sol, “but she's a good girl.”

He looked down at her. “Aren't you, Twilight?”

Twilight looked up at Sol.

"Mmmhmm," she said, smiling and nodding slightly.

“Father, what is this?” asked Celestia, confused and terrified.

“This, Caelestia, is harmony,” he said. “Peace and harmony given to those who deserve it most: those who embody it.”

“But this is wrong!” said Celestia, turning to face him, though still he turned his eyes only towards the filly Twilight. "It is not right for you to... reduce them all to this!" She indicated Twilight. “That unicorn there is a powerful sorceress; a Princess!”

Twilight looked up from her dolls, confused at Celestia's words.

“But was she happy?” asked the golden-maned ghost, still looking at Twilight Sparkle.

How tiny she seemed next to the enormous horse.

“Has her life been one of joy or one of sorrow?" he asked. "I have seen their memories, these six, and for all the goodness of their hearts, for all their laughter, honesty, kindness, generosity, and loyalty, for their magic, and even for their friendship to one another, they have still suffered terribly.”

He stepped to the window, and stood beside his daughter, never turning to face her. He watched the five fillies through window, and shook his head sadly.

“These little children have endured so much, Caelestia. They have endured death, and the the pain of solitude. They have endured violence at the hooves of those they love. They have endured slavery to their own weakness and to the brokenness of their own minds. They have endured the fading of hope and the loss of their greatest dreams.”

“But, Father, they have endured,” said Celestia.

Sol shut his eyes, and shook his head. He drew in a breath, and when he spoke, his voice was low and heavy with sadness.

“In the darkness of absolute nothingness, for aeons, my daughter, I contemplated my mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” asked Celestia. “You were flawless, Father.”

“All little girls believe that of their fathers,” he said.

“If I was flawless, would any of this had happened? I would have found a better way. I would have stayed with you and your mother and your sister. We could have had the bliss of billions of years – the lifetime of the sun, itself, to spend with one another. I cowered for fear of your deaths, and so I gave myself up for you. For that, I was damned to the very loneliness and loss that I had sought to avoid."

He gave a "Hmph," and shook his head.

“And for what?” he asked, turning and taking a step away from her.

“Your mother perished for despair, your sister was taken by darkness, the world was beset with misery, and the Elements of Harmony were bound to these six broken hearts.”

“All those things played out as they had to,” said Celestia, “and most were not unpleasant in their resolution.”

“But they still happened,” said Sol.

“How do you even know of these things?” asked Celestia.

“Her,” said Sol, nodding towards Twilight, who was still playing with her little, plastic ponies. “And them.” He gestured out the window.

Still, he would not look at her.

“I took those memories from them, Caelestia, so that they would not have to bear them, anymore. I took from them all their memory of a world full of death, hatred, fear, and loss. I can bear these things in their stead, now, and they can have the joy that you, yourself so long to see in their hearts.”

“I do long to see joy in them, but not because of a lie! Their choices are who they are – even their mistakes. You cannot deny them that.”

“Deny?” asked Sol, “I mean to relieve them of that. Would they have made those choices -- those mistakes -- if they had known their outcomes? I daresay not. Why must they bear the consequences of decisions they made without knowing their full weight? It is that cruelty of chance, the thing we call 'fate,' that I mean to remedy.”

He paused, and smiled out the window at the happy, playing fillies.

“I did not believe I would ever have a second chance, my daughter. I held out no delusion that I even deserved it. Then, after so very long without even the passing of days or nights by which to measure it, I felt that faint glimmer of your heart within that empty void of darkness. I reached out with all my being to give you a warning and a chance to preserve your world, and then I watched as you did something remarkable.”

He smiled at the playing fillies.

“You found a better way.”

“We found the only way,” said Celestia. “If I had cast myself into the jaws of the Sun Eater as you did, would he not merely have returned, again? There was no future in it, though when you did it, it was just and good; the only choice you had. You had no way of knowing he would return so quickly. You acted by the same precepts you instilled in me, and by that action, you gave us a future. Would you throw that away -- your own sacrifice -- by stealing back that very gift to replace it with this fabrication?”

“Those precepts to which you refer, Caelestia,” he said; “do you live by them, still? Have you not risked your entire world for the life of one child? Have you not risked it for the life of your sister? Would you not do so again?”

He hung his head.

“You are braver than I am, daughter,” and he looked up.

“Braver,” said Celestia, “but also more foolish.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “but the fact remains that your way is better. You found a way to save everyone, even those who were beyond salvation."

He raised his head, and pressed a hoof against the glass of the window, watching the five fillies outside with his jaw set tightly for a moment.

“Now,” he finally said, “I, too, have found a better way – not merely one that is good, but the one that is best. All of the broken world you have fought so hard to repair shall soon be absorbed into this one. There shall be no need of salvation; no need to ever choose between the few and the many. No one will ever have to bear any burden. No one will ever suffer the consequences of decisions that they are forced to make without knowing what the outcome could be.”

“Because they will have no choice,” said Celestia. “I cannot abide that.”

“That is not your decision to make,” said Sol.

Celestia ground her teeth, and pursed the corners of her mouth in a sneer so grim and tight that she felt the skin on the right side of her face split open once more.

“And why not, old stallion?" she spat through clenched jaws. “Do I not deserve the right to make it? Have I not earned at least that much, for all that I have paid?”

She stepped forward, and the bandage around her face glowed, and began to tear. In a moment, it fell into a damp, sticky pile on the floor. It was followed quickly by the others, until each and every one of her wounds was visible in all its glistening ugliness.

“Look at me,” she said.

“I have seen it in Twilight's memories,” he said, not turning his eyes from the window. “I do not need to look.”

“Please look at me, Father,” she said, her voice beginning to crack. Still he fixed his eyes on the false sun gleaming through the false window.

"Those wounds will be gone soon, Caelestia. There is no..."

“DADDY, LOOK AT ME!” she screamed through a sob, and her voice echoed through the chamber.

Twilight screeched in surprise at the outburst, and then again when she looked and saw Celestia's newly-revealed disfigurements.

Finally, the ghost of her father turned toward her, slowly.

As she finally came face-to-face with Sol, Celestia realized something that brought a shallow gasp into her lungs: his eyes were the same color as her own. In all her memories, they had shone gold, as they always had whenever he had unleashed the full breadth and depth of his power. Likewise in every other way, it seemed that his face was her own, but heftier and stronger, just as she remembered it. It was only his eyes that were not as she recalled. To realize that their memory had escaped her for so long broke her heart.

Tears streamed from both her living eye and the empty socket, one side gray with the running of her makeup, the other pink with her blood.

Sol did not speak. He faltered where he stood, and sank down slightly, still towering over her, so great was his height.

“I did not know that this would happen to me,” said Celestia, forcing the words out through her tears, “but I knew that it might – this and worse.”

He did not respond.

“Is that worth nothing to you?” she asked. “You say I am brave. Would you have a world where there was no use for courage?”

Still, he did not speak.

“That child there,” she said, indicating Twilight, “She is brave.” She gave a slight nod towards the window. “Her friends are brave.” She swallowed. “My sister is brave."

“Their very hearts are eaten alive by the cruelty of fate, and yet they persist. Even when they fall to despair, even when all their dreams lie in ruin, they strive onward. If you take that from them; if you make that courage meaningless, I will hate you forever.”

Now, he collapsed to his belly, and stared at the floor. After some time, he turned his head upward.

“How beautiful you are, Caelestia.” he said.

She took a step back, stunned at his words, and stared into those eyes that were so like her own. A tear rolled down the right side of her face to tickle at the corner of her mouth. Instinctively, she licked it away with the tip of her tongue. It tasted of iron and salt.

As she focused on that peculiar flavor of a single, blood-laced tear, the room itself wavered around her and twisted. Soon, it had faded into nothing. It had all been an illusion; an impossibly masterful illusion.

Celestia now stood in an enormous, gray chamber. Across it, in every direction, there shot innumerable thin, gray fibers, like wires. They were segmented, and each segment pulsed with tiny sparks where it joined the next.

Her father was now some distance above her, but he was not as he had been moments before. The sight of him filled her with pity and woe. For a moment, she even wished for the illusion's return, but it was too late. She had seen the truth of Sol's reincarnation, and it could not be unseen.

He had no legs, and his skin, bare of hair and fur, was drawn tight to his bones. His wings, featherless, were spread wide, and seemed to be grown into a wrinkled, ugly gray column that descended from the ceiling, suspending him from it. His torso was impossibly thin below his ribcage, as if there were no digestive organs in it at all, and his spine turned back at an impossible angle to fuse itself into the tip of the grotesque column, joining it where his pelvis should have been. An ugly mass of the weird, sparking fibers sprouted from the base of his skull, and wound up the strange column to spread out over the enormous chamber. He had neither eyes nor ears. There were only empty holes where they should have been. Indeed, it seemed that of all his body, only his horn was as it should be.

Around him were the six little ponies, appearing once more as adults now that the illusion was broken. They were suspended in bundles of the weird, gray fibers, their bodies mercifully whole and neither warped nor damaged in any way that Celestia could discern.

She watched as the fibers slowly loosened from each of the ponies, and even gently lowered them from high above where she stood to lay them on the floor at her hooves. The sparking strands then unraveled and withdrew, leaving no wounds or any other indication that they had ever been present, at all.

“Thank you, Daddy,” said Celestia. It was only a whisper, but she was certain that he had heard it. She stood there in silence, still weeping, and after a few moments, Sol spoke from where he hung high above her.

“Would, that I could give you my own eyes,” he said, his voice ragged and hoarse.

“You already did,” said Celestia, "And now you have, again. I had forgotten them, but now I remember.”

She looked up at him.

“I will always remember,” she said.

“So beautiful is my daughter, she who reigns over the sun, and who bears Heaven in her name.” He lowered his head.

“Do you believe in Heaven, Caelestia?”

“No,” she said quietly, shaking her head.

“Nor do I,” said the ghost-god, “but if we are wrong, I will tell your mother that you are still magnificent.”

His horn glowed, and in a flash, she stood on the roof of the Palace, the six unconscious ponies lying around her in a loose circle. Luna was there, and noticed her sister immediately.

“Celestia!” she shouted joyfully. “What happened!?”

Celestia sank to her belly. The exposed stump of her leg scraped across the crystal rooftop, and she cringed, but made no sound.

“There is too much to tell right now,” she said, "and I am... too weary."

Luna knelt beside her, and touched her face to the wounded side of Celestia's. It came away slightly moist with blood and tears.

Lyra Heartstrings, her son, and the three young mares all ran over to check on the six ponies, who were beginning to stir.

“Are y'all alright?” asked Applebloom. “Applejack?”

They all sat up, looking dazed.

“I'm fine,” said the orange mare. “What happened?”

“You don't remember?” asked Applebloom.

“Nothing,” said Applejack.

“Yeah,” said Pinkie Pie. “What happened?”

“Did it work?” asked Twilight Sparkle. “Did the Elements work?”

“Yes,” said Celestia, looking up at the strange orb in the sky. “Yes, they did.”

“Look at that thing,” said Rainbow Dash. “Gross.”

The others all looked upward. The orb was beginning rapidly to rot. All over, it turned greenish gray, and bits of it began to slough off. The stench of so much rotting flesh was so overpowering that it reached their nostrils even at so great a distance.

"I still have it," said Luna. "What should I do with it?”

“Let it go,” said Celestia.

Then, she shut her eye, lowered her face, and whispered, “It is dead.”

Luna gave the tiny world a mental push, and released it from her grasp. It descended lazily, drifting from over the city. They all watched as it continued to fall, pieces of it shedding away and disintegrating into dust. It plummeted faster and faster, and when it finally struck the ground, far out in the green fields of the Crystal Empire, it was so desiccated that it collapsed into an ashen, dusty pile.

“There,” said Luna, laying a hoof on her sister's shoulder.

Celestia only nodded weakly.

Author's Note

Yes, Celestia and Sol are actually speaking Latin. I didn't want to translate that much of it, and most people couldn't read it, anyway. So, I just wrote it in English.

Also, I did a little thinking on it, and I realized that Celestia would probably, in its most primitive form, be pronounced "Kaelestia." It comes from the Latin "caelum," meaning "sky" or "heaven." It would actually be spelled "Caelestia," since there was no "K" in classical Latin until the Romans took the letter Kappa from the Greeks. They only used it when writing Greek words in Latin, however, and the word "caelum" predates that. I chose to write it "Kaelestia" and to italicize it in its first iteration here to make it clear that it was being pronounced with a hard "C." Since Latin was an early written language that was developed phonetically, it is generally accepted that there was no soft "C" in classical Latin. It was probably added by the Catholic Church in the early middle ages.

I'm going to have to go back and edit "The Sun Eater," as I had Sol pronouncing it "Kelestia" in the first chapter of that one, and I think this is more accurate. I also just like it better this way.

I thought about a lot of names for this chapter, but I settled on "Iron and Salt" because that line is the single most visceral thing in the whole chapter to me. If you've ever lost a tooth or had a really good cry, (in other words, if you are human) you know what blood and tears taste like, and I like immediate, relatable sensations like that. It takes Celestia out of this place of distant, nigh-immortal goddess into this other place of "Oh yeah; she has feelings, doesn't she?"