"Oh, you make plenty of sense. It's a selfish line of thought that causes others to assume it's your fault that they don't understand you."
- ███████████████, circa 1015 Post Nightmare.

Pinkie yawned. She reached her front legs high to the sky, eliciting a pop from her shoulders, then she brought herself low into the sort of stretch cats are so fond of. She snuffled the air in wonderment, and blew a strand of hair out of her face. She smiled, like she usually did, as there were a great many reasons for one to smile. She had just successfully napped longer than she had thought possible, three hundred and forty three years, and eight minutes, to be precise. Furthermore, she was gleefully looking down at the rolling view of a snowy tundra, from her vantage point high in the mountains.

She fluffed her hair out to cover more of her face and neck, because it was fairly chilly. Pinkie was happy, there was no doubt. But she was also excited. A whole new world! Well, it was the same shape and size as her old one, and a lot of things were in the same places as before, but a lot had changed too. So much to explore, and to adventure for. It was like Twilight cast a spell to bring one of her custom settings for Dungeons and Dragons to reality, and now gross monsters and beautiful treasure lurked around every corner.

"So, Pete!" Pinkie said dutifully. "What's the adventure hook this time?"

"My name is not Pete."

"Sure thing, Dinkle." Pinkie waved her hoof in a non-committal manner. "But we really need to get this show on the road."

Ghost sighed. He knew that the bond a Guardian and a Ghost shared was life long. And for this reason he was considering shortening his life. Literally thousands of Guardians, and probably thousands more potential Guardians lying in the ancient dirt. Yet Ghost had managed to unearth a what appeared to be a runaway patient from some mental ward. The incredibly slim odds upset him.

"Usually this starts out with us heading for the City." He said dejectedly.

Pinkie stood up to her full height, and puffed her chest out. She was ready. Ready to become a hero, and brand her legend into the supple flesh of history! But first, she needed to get off this mountain. Pinkie was standing just about on the edge of a heighty cliff, and though she felt it made for a beautiful scene, the clouds close enough to touch, as she stood proudly on the precipice of danger, hair whisping rapidly in the gusts of wind as the invisible orchestra, which had been her companion for over 360 years now, accented the scene, she couldn't easily make out any way to get down safely. She briefly wondered how she had even gotten there, but then decided it wasn't important. Pinkie scratched her chin, and puffed on her pipe.

"So whaddya think, Watson?" Pinkie asked, and Ghost looked in confusion at the old-timey smoke pipe which had found its way to his Guardian. "How do we get our heads out of the clouds?" She elaborated.

"Uhh." Somehow, the machine was at a loss for words.

"Perhaps I have some unknown power?" Pinkie asked. "Perhaps something which would allow me to glide to safety...?" She elbowed Ghost lightly.

Ghost stammered out of his stupour. "Oh, yes! You are what we call a Guardian!" Pinkie looked non-surprised. "Guardians are a select group of ponies who have a special connection to the Traveler, and that connection can make them very powerful."

Pinkie yawned lightly. She allowed Ghost to finish his lecture on the Light, by the end of it Pinkie was well versed in the knowledge of theoretical applied Light studies. Of course, this knowledge was not exclusively known post-lecture. So she leapt with great gusto, and turned her view inward. Away from the four hundred meter drop which gaped at her like a beast waiting for her to fall down its maw, and toward her inner workings. She waved politely at a friendly crackling star, she'd name it 'Sparky,' and it waved back at her.

They silently came to an agreement, and Pinkie let herself fall at breakneck speeds toward the rough, rocky earth below. Not long before she would ordinarily have hit it, just as the hateful mistress gravity demanded, she slowed to a near halt, and slid gracefully along the air. She was pleased to discover her angle of descent was actually less extreme than the slope of the mountain which still stood, even after the cliff she had already traversed, and so she was able to gleefully float along to sea level without further impediment.

In her idleness, she was allowed a portion of time to think. This is when her common sense kicked in, rather than her Pinkie sense, and it spoke to her in a violent, raging voice. You fool! This sweet, friendly half-man has instructed you in the ways of Light, and been generally polite, yet you offer him no introduction?

Hey! I was getting to it, I swear! Pinkie spat back at her sense.

Then do it! The notion roared at her.

"Hey, Finch!" Pinkie said joyfully.

Ghost sighed. "Yes, Warlock?"

"My name's Pinkie Pie, and it's real swell to meet you!"

"You're six minutes late on that, but I'm glad to hear it." Ghost said, to start his self off. "On another note; Pinkamena Diane..." He paused in apparent disbelief for a moment. "...Responsibility Pie?"

"Hi!" Pinkie smiled gleefully.

"Oh boy." Few tales were known of the Elements of Harmony. The records that survived the collapse were sparse, and relied on other knowledge, making them hard to understand out of context. But they were known to be powerful. Accounts of them saving the entirety of the earth from certain demise appeared several times. But the tales of the Elements were nothing compared to the tales of Pinkie specifically.

Ghost knew he was in for a wild ride, and the part of him considering the 'shorter life' option grew. It was still in the slight minority, however, and Ghost sighed. He mentally braced himself for the road ahead, and began to make plans. Plans to reunite the Elements, for they could be the last hope for the Traveler. For Equinity.

Ghost felt a pang of utter horror at the idea of this thing holding the fate of the world on her shoulders. Whatever the case, the two floating beings were nearing the base of the mountain. Pinkie relinquished her glide, and dropped bouncily to the earth, then began bouncing bouncily further along. Ghost was almost used to this by now, but not quite. He shook his head -that being his entire physical form- and groaned, before catching up to the oblivious pony.

"Okay, Pinkie." Ghost said. "We're pretty far north, the Crystal Ruins are just a little to the west, and that means walking to the City isn't an option."

"What about bouncing?"

"I don't think that's much better. We should focus efforts on find--"

"Prancing?" Pinkie interrupted.

"What? No!"

"Skipping, hopping?"

"Pinkie!"

"Galumphing!" She shouted with enthusiasm.

Ghost had lost his cool, something he was designed to be able to keep in any situation. "Pinkie! This is serious, and you need to stop babbling like a foal, and start focusing!"

Pinkie stopped in her tracks. She stared blankly at Ghost. He thought Uh oh. to himself, fearing what would happen next. But what came was no bout of anger, or defense. It was a quiver of disappointment. The Warlock's eyes watered for but a moment, before she squinted them clear and hung her head low. She ceased her bouncing and began dragging herself through trenches she cut through the soil with each step.

Ghost felt bad. That was a mistake. A sympathetic verse of sadness came over him, and he approached the Guardian slowly. "Pinkie, I'm--"

"It's okay." She said, but her voice was practically trembling.

"No, really. I'm just worried for you."

"No, really. It's--" She made a quiet choking sound, as her lower lip shook. "Okay..."

This happened a lot. Well, it had been on hiatus for over three centuries, but it happened a lot back then. Pinkie wanted everyone to love her, and she wanted to love everyone. It seemed like a perfect plan to her, and that's why she was always so brave about it. But only a few ponies could handle her consistently. Most of the time it bought her plenty of acquaintances, but few ponies ever really wanted to be her friend.

Life of the party. Good attitude. Charitable. Chummy. Everypony liked her around, but not for extended periods of time. She just got so excited to be around friends that she overdid it, and she overdid it again. She felt angry at herself for making the same mistake, every single time. It wasn't Hung's fault that he got angry, it was Pinkie's. She knew that.

It was okay.

"Pinkie, please cheer up." Ghost pleaded. "I lost my temper, that's all that happened."

Pinkie nearly cursed herself. She had already made a mistake by being irritating, and now she was being a bummer too. Before she got sadder, as that would only worsen the case, she sucked her drizzle of mucus back up her snout, and blinked so hard the tears squirted from her eyes like jets. She put on her best smile, and prepared herself to do whatever was necessary to keep Dinkledroid happy.

"It's okay, I forgive you!" Pinkie said cheerfully, though she felt there was nothing to forgive. "I promise I won't interrupt you when you're trying to be serious again."

Ghost imagined himself giving a warm smile, and said "Thank you." But more was at stake. Ghost perked his expression, and Pinkie perked her ears while furrowing her brow. After a moment of silence, the ears twitched and the Ghost flicked. They both spoke in unison.

“We’re being followed.” Though Ghost’s voice was distinctly more grave, and Pinkie’s more curious.

Ghost complimented her. “Impressive. Can you get a lock on position?”

“Yeah, no big dee.” Pinkie waved her hoof nonchalantly. She was about to say something, when she got a surprised look on her face, and began furiously scratching behind her ear.

“Huh, that one’s new.” She explained. Ghost didn't understand the explanation, but it was more of an out loud thought than a detailed account of Pinkie’s intrinsic abilities. Just as the scratching became more vigorous than ever, a bang rung out across the foothills. Suddenly, Pinkie was cast with mighty force through the air, and into the dirt. She grunted something through the snow and soil her face was buried in along the lines of “Holy moon wizard, that hurt!”

Ghost was quick to spot the large patch of red exposing itself through a smoldering hole in the ribs of Pinkie and her coat. He overclocked, and kicked everything into combat gear. “Light shields active, recovery systems charging, contacts north!” He shouted swiftly.

Pinkie rolled over, a dull look on her face. She was in shock, and had probably never been in shock before. Experienced Guardians learned to take a hit, and could keep fighting on the brink of collapse, but Pinkie was down until she got help. Lucky for the duo, Warlocks are quick to help themselves.

After only a short moment of eerie calm, something that would have been described as magical a few centuries ago began happening. The singed flesh stopped smoldering, and became a flush pink. Sparks of blue began to appear in exponentially rapid succession within the wound, and every time a spark faded there was more flesh in its place. The robe that had been damaged quickly was washed over with a wave of blue light, and in the wake there wasn't a single sign of injury or damage.

Slowly, as adrenaline, opiates, and nanotechnology was injected into Pinkie's blood stream, emotion returned to the mare’s face. “Wh...whaa?"

Ghost looked worriedly at the prone mare, then to the shaded cover of pine trees in the foothills of the mountain, and saw the distinctive glare of a wire rifle charging for another shot. Ghost shouted a warning "Pinkie, move!" as he threw his vision back to her position. Or rather, her former position. Ghost heard a voice calling from somewhere to the north east.

"On it!" The distinct, high pitched voice shouted enthusiastically. As ghost turned to the source, he saw Pinkie waving happily from about twenty meters away.

"Did you just Blink?!" Ghost asked, even though their was a conspicuous absence of the distinctive contrail made from snap-quarks.

"Nope!" Pinkie said, before frowning slightly. "Oh, wait." A moment longer, and her eyelids fell then bounced back up. "Now I did!"

With that dumbfounding display, Pinkie scratched her ear slightly, before a look of sudden surprise invaded her face, as she made a very important connection, and she leapt behind a snow bank, just as the ground where she had been erupted with steam and burnt soil. The peace of the earth meeting a crackling demise, as it was torn asunder.

Pinkie began frantically clawing at the snow under her, and in a matter of seconds was completely buried by her own will. Ghost began to wonder what she was doing, before he put the thought away. Either she was some sort of embodiment of entropy itself, and he intrinsically could not know what she was doing, or else he didn't have enough information to form an accurate model. Either way, any power devoted to the thought was wasted. It needed to be used for something much more important.

For Ghost felt the presence of a servitor. He began reinforcing the security on Pinkie's systems, and assaulting the security on the Fallen's. It was sort of like a dance, or maybe a board game. Everything the Ghost did was followed by an action of the servitor. Always in perfect time, every tick something would change in favour of the either side, and it was Ghost's job to look ahead so many ticks, and make his actions count in both the long, and the short term. It would be upsetting to relay the whole battle through speech, as if it were a board game, it took many trillions of turns before it was over, and the whole ordeal was really just the Ghost and the Servitor constantly stalemating each other.

That was how battles worked, in both the cybernetic and the physical world. Computers can't rely on the other guy making a mistake, so they just have to hold out as long as possible. It's up to the organics to make the mistakes, and to exploit them. Ghost really hoped Pinkie knew how to exploit mistakes, because otherwise she wouldn't last long. He looked up north, with his remaining mindfulness, and began spotting for Pinkie, hoping she would take a break from behaving like an ostrich at some point. Three vandals, one with a shock rifle, two with wire rifles. Tagged. Four dregs, each with a pistol and a blade. Tagged. Servitor, clustering near the dregs. Tagged. Captain, unknown.

Just as Ghost began extrapolating, and predicting the presence of a captain, A pink form erupted from behind a bush very close to the fallen who had last fired at her. Ghost forced himself not to frantically glance between the Warlock, and the hole she had dug herself into. He was learning, and fairly quickly, he thought. But he still looked slightly dismayed at Pinkie's latest location.

"Hola!" Pinkie shouted happily. "Me llamo es Pay de Rosa!" She ducked under a violently swung arc blade, and slid aside of a powerful few bolts from a shock pistol.

"Rude." She said blankly, and slowly. Sort of like a computer's error notification sound, or a buzzer for a trivia game. She followed it up with something Ghost honestly would not have guessed possible. She headbutted a vandal hard enough to send it crashing to the earth, with a mangled top left arm.

That was bad. Guardians weren't supposed to behave like that, not yet. Maybe some of the most veteran Titans would have done such a thing, but a freshly woken Warlock? No. All guardians, but Warlocks especially, were meant to retain their personality from their older life. The only kind of pony who would have done that now, is the kind who would have done it then.

A vandal was charging a shot for Pinkie. She noticed, and stepped behind a tree trunk, but only in a way that made her invisible to Ghost, the Vandal should still have been able to see her. It looked shocked, for a moment, when Ghost saw a familiar pink form creeping from behind another tree, this one behind the vandal. Again, she was only hidden from Ghost's view, not that of any of the Fallen.

Earlier Ghost had observed the vandal looking shocked. Now Ghost heard a horrific CRACK followed by a rumble, while Pinkie and the vandal were silhouetted, by blue light. When it faded, an instant before Ghost had heard the sound, the Vandal was crumbling and jerking about, while Pinkie apparently smoldered. As the vandal shakily turned its head back around to look at the Warlock, she spoke.

"What's the matter?" She asked, with a slow pause. "Shocked to see me?" With that, Ghost looked impressed and disappointed all at once.

Firstly, that was the first recorded instance of a Warlock using Arc Light in a very long time. Second, Pinkie was dropping fallen almost as quickly as a seasoned Guardian. Third, both of these things scared Ghost. The Servitor seemed disinterested with the pink pony's behaviours, as it launched a blast of void at her hooves. Pinkie leapt above the point of impact, just as it detonated, and was sent flying high into the branches of the tree above her.

All the remaining Fallen moved to inspect the tree, circling it like they were trying to catch a squirrel. You can't catch a squirrel. Pinkie swooped out of another tree, and straight onto the back of the servitor, and she began pummeling it's exterior. This gave Ghost a sudden edge in the battle of minds, and began working on diminishing the repair systems the servitor was employing on the fallen Fallen. Heh. They'd stay down a lot longer now.

Within a few strikes, each one accented by a beautiful, blue eruption, Pinkie had made a serious dent in the hull of the purple machine. She then grabbed one of the exposed edges in her jaw, and began speaking through gritted teeth.

"I am Ripper!" She shouted, and she tugged. "Tearer!" She yanked harder, Ghost shuddered. "Slasher" The other fallen fell away from their servitor, as it's plating was torn clean off. "Gouger." Pinkie thrust her hooves deep into its inner workings. "I am teeth in the Darkness!" She sounded like she was amusing herself, rather than like she actually believed her descriptions. She tore something that looked important out, and threw it far away.

"For mine is strength!" She screamed with glee, as she she dismounted the dying machine, and approached the last of the vandals. "And lust!" She picked up a shock pistol in her telekinesis, and fired a few shots into the retreating Dregs, which fell by her command. She strode closer still to the last vandal, who had sadly tripped over a root. "And laughter." She finished with a much lighter tone.

"I am Pink Happy!" She screamed joyfully, and slammed a blast of force from her mind into the Fallen, easily snapping its frail being.

Ghost wanted to warn her, but he had only realized when it was too late to speak his warning in time. He had located the Captain, just as its cloak had begun to fizzle for a swift strike. And what a strike it was. The arc blade sailed, cleanly and unabashed, through air and flesh alike. Pinkie collapsed, clearly in severe pain, as a gash from her shoulder to her haunch opened up, revealing severed ribs, and damaged organs. She was on the very verge of death.

The Captain lifted her up in a powerful telekinetic embrace, and held a sword to her gut with a claw, her massive form threatening to cease Pinkie's existence just by relative importance. It uttered something in its broken, once-beautiful language and pulled the blade back for a fatal plunge. Pinkie just barely gasped something to the Captain.

"Behind..." She slipped on her own words, and coughed blood. But she felt the blue sparks starting to appear again. "... You."

The mighty captain looked behind her, Ghost did not think that anything could fall for a trick like that, and that perhaps the Fallen were less intelligent than typically credited. Not to the captain's surprise, there was nothing behind her, and she looked back to her prize for a second. A second before she realized it had been replaced with the corpse of one of her former servants, with a crudely drawn note pinned to it's chest.

Get outplayed, scrub. The note said, and the captain shot her eyes back behind herself yet again.

Just in time to have a couple arc daggers plunged through the weak points of her helmet, blinding her, and sending her to the earth, in shock and in the imminence of death. That death was swift, to say the least. It was all the captain could have asked for. And so, victoriously, Pinkie cantered back south a couple dozen meters to her robot companion, smiling happily.

"That was fun!" Pinkie said, ushering in a grave worry to Ghost's mind.

That was impressive, but it shouldn't be fun. As evil as the Fallen were, as arrogant and as ruthless, they were living beings. Pinkie had not only made short work of them, but she had enjoyed it. She enjoyed not only the act of killing them, but deceiving and scaring them while she did so. That was unhealthy, and a flag for far too many mental divergences. Ghost felt the need to confront her about it, maybe it really wasn't as terrifying as it looked, and the Warlock could dismiss all his fears.

But Ghost felt oppressed by an instinct -or more correctly, a sub-routine-, of self-preservation. He didn't want to wake whatever it was that Pinkie was driven by, not when he was the only feasible target. So he calmly packed his worries away, and focused on the mission at hand. But perhaps something in his demeanour hinted at his fears.

"Something the matter, Gutt?" Pinkie asked, frowning worriedly. Ghost looked to her visage, remnant ether still whisping off of her from the broken warriors she left behind.

Ghost almost trembled. No. That was fear. and machines did not feel fear. They were quite proud of it, and Ghost was risking the integrity of his own pride. He lowered the brow above his single eye, and held Pinkie's gaze a moment longer. She looked genuinely distraught at his apparent disapproval, and she shrunk away from him. At least Ghost knew she wouldn't hurt him.

"Pinkie..." He trailed off, pretending to think about his next words. "What you did back there," Pinkie rose her eyebrows in expectation. "It was wrong." Her expression fell again, upset by Ghost's disapproval.

"I'm sorry..." She said earnestly. Pinkie didn't want to make her newest friend angry, she just wanted to protect him. What was the point of a world infested by evil if defeating said evil was bad? She wondered. But maybe there was more to Ghost's worries, she waited for him to elaborate.

"You know why it was wrong?" Pinkie shook her head. "Because it was fun." Ghost began leading Pinkie further on their journey as he spoke. "We don't fight the Fallen because we want to kill them, we fight them because they want to kill us. It's what's meant to separate Guardians from the Darkness, a sense of right that drives us. Not blood lust."

Pinkie thought carefully about her next words. She didn't really enjoy killing, but she hadn't really killed. She knew all the answers, but when she explained them to ponies, their eyes would glaze over and they would ignore everything she said like it didn't make sense. Maybe robots weren't like ponies though, maybe her new friend Bolivar would understand the simple things that nopony ever could. She would try to explain it.

"I only did it because the atmosphere changed." She said, still sorry sounding. Ghost seemed confused, so she continued. "I wouldn't have done something like that before today, back then everypony was happy and nopony got hurt." Her expression shifted to anger. "But then that big, dark, meanie came and hurt my friends!"

Pinkie remembered in excruciating detail the demise of Harmony. She remembered how all of her friends had died, except Rainbow. Rainbow was still fighting, when everpony else was breaking or crying. That was what she remembered the most. She hadn't done anything, she got scared and upset and then she died. She couldn't let that happen again, she had to stay happy and focused. She had never died when she was happy.

She continued her explanation. "That's when the motif changed, now those baddies are all over the place, and we need to do violent things. In the name of peace, even if that sounds silly. Otherwise all the important ponies would die, and there wouldn't be anything to talk about anymore." Pinkie's explanation started to become clearer, but also vaguer in a less important aspect, and Ghost's expression softened into revelation, over anger. He saw where she was going. "I know that ponies are supposed to take a long time to change, but if I hadn't changed quickly we could both be... Gone."

That made sense. Ghost thought, and his systems prided themselves. They had made sense of something the pink one had said or done. That was a first, and a great triumph for Ghost. He began noting things down in a language much more efficient than any that an organic could speak. Pinkie was a strange mix of consequential and categorical. She was clearly very focused on the outcome of an action, but she used fundamentals and subjective connections to achieve those outcomes. That was a sign of extreme intelligence, that she used all knowledge equally, as it suited her, to make plans. She saw that the most powerful tool was to be happy and excited about things, and she used it to save her own life.

Ghost had no doubt she would use it to save others.

"Pinkie." Pinkie looked scared of her own name. "That was the first thing you've said that made perfect sense." Pinkie smiled. "I know why you did all that now, but not everyone will understand. For your own social standing, you really should ease yourself into combat. You're clearly very capable, if not well-trained, but most Guardians take months to become comfortable with killing. Don't alienate yourself from your peers."

Pinkie understood that. It made sense. She was good at making friends, and she knew nopony wanted to be friends with someone who was scary. She wouldn't be scary. "Okay, Trumpkin! Writing that one down on the brain-fridge!" She said, tapping her head, and Ghost thought he saw her give a thumbs up. What?

--------*--------*--------*--------

"You desire protection." The voice boomed, and growled across the crystalline world. Water had not seen liquid form since the collapse, at least not here. Even in the castle, no fires burned. But it's master did not wish for warmth, he had forgone the need long ago. He prided himself not on strength, but tenacity. He had fallen many times, and every time he had returned. His last fall was 358 years ago.

A gargantuan, scaled head nodded in affirmation. But it scowled, as though it despised the master it was speaking to. Said master's green eyes drifted to a pouch within the monster's possession, and noticed that it had been burnt, and sewn back together. He wondered what was in it. As he began to form ideas, he feared what was in it.

"Why, I wonder." Battered armour, made from the remnants of Guardian equipment, and frosted together cracked as it was lifted from a throne for the first time in decades. "You have lived as long as I have without protection, and I doubt that anything short of the Vex could kill you." The beast worried that the master knew about his jewels.

"You don't need protection. Something you own does." The master looked again at the pouch, his eyes smoking. "It does not already have security, or else you could not bring yourself to me. So you are its sole protector." He grinned at the monster's dismay, as he pieced everything together. A chance to display his gift of cunning. "You would not leave it alone. You would carry it with you, perhaps in a pouch. What is it?"

The monster snorted. It could speak, but did not enjoy doing so. Especially to old enemies.

"Show me. Lest I throw you out, and leave you to defend it alone."

The toothy grimace of the dark form closed. Its tense muscles loosened, and its weight hung lower. The oily scales it had carried across the frozen moon started to look dry, or frozen. The creature gently grasped the pouch, in its deathly talons of black sky and blighted bone, with the slightest twitch, the knot came undone, and a few specs of gemstone were released into the dark palm of the towering being.

They looked whimsical. They were all brightly coloured, even in the frozen dark of the icy castle. A star, a lightning bolt, a diamond, a balloon, an apple, and a butterfly. They were childish symbols, that all reminded one of adventure or joy. They could bring nothing but a sense of happiness to any right-minded being.

The king looked mortified. He shared a knowing, hateful glance with the subject of his mercy. He could voice his anger, but that would do nothing productive. He needed only to destroy, or steal those jewels again. He knew what they meant. He would cast the monster from his home, and hope that the darkness of its cave would swallow it, and the gems, forever.

But that hadn't done it before. No, that was an instinctive reaction. He feared the gems, but to simply ignore them would not do him well. He would not fall again. Perhaps there was something to be done, a plan. A trick, even. But it would not be obvious, he needed to appear like he was afraid of them still, or the monster would know. It was wise.

"Why do you bring the relics of my death before me?" The monster looked neutral. "Do you think that you can intimidate me?"

The monster stayed silent, and let the king speak. That was bad, he needed the beast to believe it had the upper hand.

"You are an idiot. Go." The king paused a moment. "Now!" He shouted angrily. "Or I will strike you down myself!" The tiny, four legged form brazenly assailed the colossus of bone and scale and wing.

It shrunk for just a second, before it glanced away, apparently looking into itself. It found some inner strength, a force of will. That was exactly what the king wanted. It inhaled, and its chest expanded like a blimp. Full of flammable gases, and ready to assault an entire kingdom. Some of the air was released onto the frozen king, hot enough to melt the ice he bore as a device. His throne sunk into the earth slightly, and the monster bellowed.

"You will not." The king's voice had been deep, and guttural. This voice was so low a pony could barely register its existence, were it not for the vibration it caused in the king's chest. If the kings heart beat, it would have stopped right then. Shards of ice fell from the hundred foot high ceiling of the throne room, and broke off of the monster's muscular back. The king heard some of his subjects collapse from across the hall.

"You will help me. If you do not, I will be your demise, not the crystals." The king allowed his glare to falter, a facade of terror being built across his face. He took a step back, and allowed the monster to shift forward and close the gap he had just made. The king pretended to shake the fear from his face, and he resumed his hatred. His grimace twitched, before he spoke.

"Fine." The monster allowed itself to look pleased. "Though I fail to see what a few hundred corpses--"

"A thousand." The monster interrupted.

"--What a thousand corpses could achieve, that an Ahamkara could not." The legend did not speak again. "They will be on their way within a month, with a leader among them. They will do as you say, unless I command them not to. You see this as reasonable?"

The Ahamkara nodded, and the king did as well. For he now had two thousand eyes to watch the only thing he feared.

--------*--------*--------*--------

"Guardian down!" a voice chimed through a Warlock's helmet. It sounded excited, but not worried.

The Warlock was dismayed. She couldn't see anything, except the deep black ichor that leaked from a broken and punched helmet. The wings attached to the form fell limp suddenly, and the many colours of the tail seemed to dim. No, that was wrong. Twilight was sure that didn't happen. She was dreaming, she must have been. That sounded cliche to her, but it only seemed logical.

"Princess!" That was Crispy, yet another short-lived character in Twilight's mind.

Someone she had subconsciously willed into existence called Zombie looked at her, and raised a weapon menacingly. Twilight could see straight down the barrel, to the round that had been materialized in its chamber from smart matter. That didn't exist either, of course this was a dream. Twilight decided not to be afraid, and just kept looking at Zombie. Luna had taught her that in a dream, the only thing more powerful than you is fear. Twilight felt powerful, alright.

Zombie was about to pull the trigger, when a mass knocked Twilight to the Earth. It was Crispy, and the murderer's bullet ate through the Hunter's cloak, as it missed her by centimeters. What an odd thing. That Twilight's notion of space was defined by how big a certain drop of water is. Crispy seemed suddenly aware of her attire's damage, and cursed loudly. She grabbed an odd mechanism off of her belt, and tossed it over the root she and Twilight were hiding behind.

"This guy's serious. One of his goons is still up, you go for him while I occupy Zombie." Twilight vaguely nodded, beginning to contemplate what she would do with Zombie, now that she realized her total power over everything around her. The mechanism Crispy had thrown exploded, and Zombie coughed. "You hear me? This guy will kill you. For real. Now let's go!" Crispy leapt over the root, and began hailing rounds from an auto rifle at Zombie. Twilight thought some more.

She looked at her hand cannon. It was weak. She willed herself over the root, and the earth fell away from her, then rolled just enough that she was hovering a few meters away from Zombie and Crispy, who were about to engage in a knife fight. Twilight pulled the earth back to her hooves. Zombie glanced at her, and Crispy took advantage of the distraction. She threw her blade into Zombie, and it burrowed deep into his chest. He reeled in pain.

A dark Titan appeared on the roof of a building, and launched a searing projectile toward Twilight. She knew it was meant to explode. What an odd thing. That ponies, of all creatures, had used the knowledge gifted to them to develop a device that erased life with a simple, uncontrolled burst of heat. When it reached her, it stopped flying for a moment, before it burst into ash, inert. The Titan looked afraid, and she looked at him, unimpressed. Twilight plucked loose the thread that he was made of, and he stopped existing.

Crispy was now dumbfounded, and Zombie was shaking. Twilight wondered why she was willing the characters in her dream to be afraid. She moved Crispy a little farther away, and she looked earnestly at Zombie.

"I wonder how I thought of someone as evil as you." Twilight said out loud. She was about to make him go away, or maybe she would wake herself up, when she heard a familiar voice come from behind her, and to the left.

"Twilight?" It was a little raspy, but also cautious. As soon as Twilight flinched at the mention of her name, it spoke again. "What are you doing?"

Twilight turned around, and saw an armoured mass, with wings and a spectral tail. It was in perfect shape, not a dent or hole to be seen. But it looked afraid. Afraid of Twilight.

"I'm making this dream better, Rainbow." It wasn't the real Rainbow, but Twilight still was happy to see a memory of her, and did not want to upset that memory. What an odd thing. That she was worried about shifting the balance of chemicals in an imaginary representation of something she called 'life.'

Zombie was no longer a part of the dream.

"Twilight, what's happening to you?" Rainbow asked, her voice trembling, as she glanced away from where Zombie had stood.

Twilight was confused, then she looked down. Her clothing, and flesh alike wasn't solid. It was made of trillions of little particles, that were dancing around her bones like a wind was blowing them away. Sometimes parts of her fell away, dust and ash, and she had to ask them to stay. She furrowed her brow, and tried to make the disintegration stop, it was her dream after all. It wasn't working, though. She felt her thread becoming thin, and strained.

"Princess, you need to stop." Crispy said. Twilight looked at her, with a fearful expression. "I've never seen a Warlock do this before, I don't think you can handle it."

The words were starting to lose meaning. What an odd thing. That air, hissing through a bit of meat, could have ever meant something. Twilight could only hear the thin vibration of the thread that was existence. It bounced back and forth, like a guitar string, but she didn't know what chord it was playing.

"What's happening to me?" Twilight asked, echoing Rainbow's fears.

"Twilight, find the Light." That was Ghost. He sounded far away, but he was very intense as well. She needed to find the Light.

Everything had stopped being solid, and became swirling particles. They were all farther away from each other, like the spec of a planet orbiting a massive star. Then they had stopped being particles, and became an ocean of waves crashing against each other. But if you followed the waves, you'd see that they never started or ended, but tangled into each other. As the waves straightened out, they started to look like a string. There was no light, all Tiwlight could see was a string. Suddenly a stinging pain shocked her mind, and the string became tangled for just a moment, reminding her that it was the world. Some parts of the string, now tangled, glowed a little bit. Some of it looked like a bright fire, some of it had the eerie glow of faded purple. Everywhere along the string were sparks of blue-white light.

Part of that string was her, and that part was a beautiful mix of all three colours. She tried to grab it, and it felt strong, but incredibly tense. She used all her might to pull the thread around it together, and loosen the strain on it. It worked. As the string loosened, it naturally tangled back into itself, and as it did that, the waves became visible again. Then they waves became specs, dancing in the cosmic wind. Finally, to Twilight's relief, the specs stopped dancing, and clung together to build a world. She was part of that world.

She felt like she had been taken apart, and put back together haphazardly, and that was not a pleasant feeling. Her stomach lurched, and Ghost immaterialized the helmet covering her face just as she released the contents of her stomach onto the ground. She stumbled slightly, and heard a sort of buzzy whooshing sound in front of her, then the sound of a ship flying away above her. She looked up, bile still leaking slightly from her mouth, and saw a glistering, alabaster Hunter, with beautiful blue eyes, and curled purple hair looking worriedly at her.

"Hey, Rarity." Twilight said, the saliva in her mouth making her words a little sloppy, before she fell unconscious. Rainbow, Rarity, and Crispy all agreed not to tell her she had fallen in her own vomit.

Author's Note

OH GOD.

That's another chapter, ladies, gents and whatever else has managed to uncover my story. Too tired to write much here, just know that I value all your feedback, and I love every single one of you, who choose to be my audience. If you'd like to point out any errors, or ask any questions, I read every comment and message I get. I also respond to a lot of them.

Good evening, morning, night and day. Where ever you are, I'm sure it's good.