A Place for Pinkieby ChinchillaxChaptersPrologueChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4EpiloguePrologueLuna focused her magnification spell further, enabling her to watch the floating orbs of light move around her cavernous throne room. She stared, transfixed at their eternal dance, their myriad colors invisible to all but the wielders of the right kinds of spells. The souls drifted around, always headed toward one place or another, stuck in that space between death and rebirth. She liked to guess about what kinds of lives they must have led to give them their colors. Her night court was empty as usual, and the dreamscape didn’t have anypony that needed her help, so she spent her time keeping track of a dozen or so souls. In the midst of the dance, something almost escaped notice—something creeping ever closer. She pondered the thing carefully. It bore a striking resemblance to an atom, yet it was far too large to be so. It was not entirely unlike a soul, but it was too small to be that, either. She seized it in her magic. If it was an atom, it would obey her commands. She loosened her grip and ordered the atom to move away from her. It disobeyed, continuing its march in her direction. If it was a soul, it would have memories. She cast a spell to read its memories, but no ideas or lifetimes returned. She let whatever the thing was loose, curious to where it would go. It crept closer and closer until it reached her horn, then disappeared. A chill ran down in her spine. Had it gone inside her horn? She only knew magic that could manipulate atoms or monitor souls. Whatever it was, she would be unable to extract it. She relaxed as an idea filtered through. She would tell her sister in the morning. Better yet, why not wait and tell Celestia when she found another thing like it again? If there was such a state between soul and element, then there would be more of it. Her entire frame loosened, parts of her body growing limp as more ideas came. Or perhaps, more likely, she had imagined the thing? She was in charge of dreams. Perhaps she had experienced a daydream without realizing it. Everypony else was dreaming at this hour, lost in their own inane fantasies, instead of enjoying her beautiful night. She worked so hard to manipulate the atmosphere to make the stars twinkle just right. The moon didn’t have to shimmer onto Equestria, bathing it in moonlight every night. Luna didn’t have to have night court, or monitor the dreamscape, or any of those other wonderful things she did. Her mother had given her daughters but one instruction: to make sure that the reincarnation cycle continued unheeded. Luna went above and beyond her duty and nopony even cared. And the sun. The more Luna thought about it the more her blood began to boil. That poor sun was being controlled by Celestia. And ponies loved her for it. They frolicked in that sunshine that didn’t belong to her. That sun deserved a rest for struggling for so long against its oppressor. It should be set free. And that would leave Equestria in the beautiful embrace of her eternal night. It was the perfect solution for both of them. Chapter 1The emotion of the moment was overwhelming, the sheer joy we felt upon reaching the end, the end of everything. We had done it, we had found it, the end of the multiverse. Our travels had led us to a wall that went on forever. And once we found out where that wall ended we would have a corner of the multiverse, and then someday we would know the exact size of the multiverse. We were happy and excited to finally have a limitation, to finally reach the end of infinity. It was in the midst of our celebration that an idea percolated throughout us: an awful, horrible, pessimistic, and downright distressing idea. What was on the other side of that wall? Queen Galaxia eyed the newly arrived sphere. She cracked it open, surprised to find the usually crowded container empty. She opened it further, casting a searching spell for any souls that might be hidden. When the spell pinged, she magnified her view until she could see that a single, glowing gray orb was the only cargo. She held it out in her magic, staring at one of the dimmest souls she had ever come across. She checked to see if the soul had been assigned to a world before, casting a spell to read its memories. A torrent of information rushed to become part of herself. She never could get used to the process, and the foreign memories drowned her for a few moments until she could categorize them and understand, eventually parsing through each of them in turn. Forty-seven lifetimes. The number was almost as staggering as the variety of the worlds the soul had been to. There was a lifetime spent on a world of sentient intertwining trees. One spent on a hive world of insect-like creatures, immense cloud worlds on giant gas planets where balloon-like beings could float up and down for a lifetime, majestic water planets of exquisite interconnected coral mountains. A technological world where beings spent their days doing whatever they wished in virtual environments of their own making. A world of isolation. A world of intertwining social systems. Worlds filled with war, peace, chaos, and harmony. It had hated all of them. Galaxia stared at it, unsure of how to proceed. She sighed before forming a temporary recreation of the soul’s last world, making another attempt at the soul’s after life interview. The soul’s last world had been a planet inhabited by legless, flat, manta ray-like birds that never touched the ground. The planet was actually a sun burning at a relatively cool temperature. Not cool enough for the birds to land on, but enough to provide thermals to lift the creatures, and their light nests. The physics of the sun planet made her head spin, it didn’t follow her ruleset, and she should not have expected it to. After all, each world was required to be an experiment in one way or another. She slid herself out of her domain and changed herself into one of the creatures, a blue, flat, broad winged bird. Galaxia breathed out onto the soul and navigated it to a temporary body she had created. The green bird started to breathe. Her temporary form hung motionless in the air, fear etched in her doleful eyes. “Hello, Asvarel,” she said, adept at speaking in the creature’s hums and beak clacks that passed for their language. “How are you?” “I’m dead... aren’t I?” Asvarel said slowly, trying to take in the vast space and the blue creature before her. “Yes, you are,” said Galaxia, changing the subject quickly to ask the most important question, the one that affirmed continuing the experiment. Any positive response would justify a King or Queen in allowing a soul to stay reincarnating on a world indefinitely. “What did you like about your life?” The bird wavered in the air before answering. “I hated it. Every moment.” The overwhelmingly negative response to such a basic question had led Kings and Queens like Galaxia to pass the soul elsewhere. She was an extreme outlier. Most souls got placed on their first world, the slowest taking at most five. Galaxia’s wings adjusted for the briefest of moments before going flat again. “But your home was so lovely, the beautiful sky above, the soft warmth of the sun below. Didn’t you enjoy that?” “No.” “What about your family, your father, or your mother? Surely you loved them very much?” “They provided for me.” “So you loved them?” “I tolerated them.” Galaxia tried to hide her pained expression. Her form was nearly incapable of producing external emotions besides from the different floating patterns. She tried to keep her position floating in a soft commanding posture. “What was your favorite moment home in Kial?” “The part where I tried to prove everyone wrong.” “By doing?” “I placed a wing on the surface. No one had ever done it before and survived.” “And how did that turn out?” Some of her tail feathers drooped. “I’m here now.” Galaxia let the full weight of the soul’s admission sink in. “I’m so sorry.” Asvarel didn’t say anything. “What is your greatest desire?” The bird didn’t answer for a few moments, before responding with humming and broken clacking noises. “To leave.” “Do you think that would make you happy?” “I don’t know.” “Do you want to be happy?” “I don’t know.” “What do you want?” The creature wavered, searching for something she desired. Galaxia awaited this response. Any desire would give a clue as to the right environment to place the soul in. “I don’t know,” repeated Asvarel. Galaxia pondered what to do for it. Most approaches had already been taken, her past lives evidence of that. And this interview wasn’t granting any clues. It was one of the conundrums of her role. If the soul mentioned a happy memory, or any clue to go on, then that would be enough happiness to justify leaving them there for lifetimes on end. The interview hadn’t helped, and Galaxia had known it wouldn’t, but that still didn’t stop her from trying. “I’m going to help you find someplace, Asvarel,” Galaxia soothed the soul. “Someplace you will be so happy that you will want to stay forever.” “I doubt that,” she said, softly floating in a more defiant pattern. “I don’t want to be anywhere. You can’t help me.” “I can help you. I’ll help you find a place where you belong.” “There is no such place.” She stared at the floating creature before speaking, an idea crossing her mind. “Perhaps something different can be arranged. You have had many lifetimes, Asvarel. If given the chance, I’m sure there’s some place or some combination of places that you could enjoy.” In the silence that followed, she removed all the barriers on Asvarel’s soul, unlocking the rest of her memories. One by one, all forty-seven other lifetimes returned to her. Galaxia floated there, watching the soul as it stopped and considered each new piece of information, each lifetime spent on each world, and how each previous interview with the other Kings and Queens ended unsatisfactorily. After a long time spent in silence the soul eventually asked, “Why are you all doing this?” “I want to find a planet for you to reincarnate on continuously. None of the worlds you have been to so far have granted a satisfactory response from you. Which lifetime, or combinations of lifetimes, did you like the best?” “None of them,” said the soul, the floating pattern of her body conveying anger. “I didn't like any of them.” “Just give me some idea of what you want. Someplace that you might find happiness enough to stay?” “I don’t want to stay anywhere,” seethed Asvarel, her feathers quivering. “I don’t want to reincarnate. I don’t want to be a part of this system. I don’t want to be ruled by you. I don’t want to be ruled by anyone! I—” her fluttering form slowed down to complete calm. “I don’t want to exist.” Galaxia had had enough. She snatched the soul out of its temporary body. The blur of the soft glowing gray orb floated in front of her. She held it aloft as she elevated up to her control space, transforming back to her preferred form. She had thought granting the soul access to the memories of her past lives would be a learning experience for it, a chance to see life—existence— differently. Instead it had shaken Galaxia. Those that desired nonexistence, the voidwishers, were tricky to deal with. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that souls cannot be destroyed. The ending of universes, big bangs, black holes, and the foulest of corrupted Kings and Queens cannot so much as scratch a soul. The most those like her could do is to give them a more complex form to interact with the universe better. The only thing to do for a soul that didn’t want to exist was to keep sending it through the reincarnation process like every other soul. It didn’t change the outcome, but it was rather discouraging. Where could she send this soul that others had not tried? Most of her current projects involved her interconnected sentient tree worlds, but a King had already tried several plant based environments. One of her sea serpent worlds? No, the soul hadn’t liked worlds like that either. Everything bipedal ended in disaster, despite a variety of social constructs. Perhaps something quadrupedal? No, species and the number of legs didn’t matter. Maybe the emotions of the place were the cause of this soul’s depression? The soul had been through an incredibly saccharine world, as well as a war-torn world. It had been through happy families, broken ones, and an orphanage. Perhaps it could be better suited in a more neutral family? Something tight-knit, but not necessarily visibly happy, a gray family with little extreme in any direction. Galaxia scanned through the worlds she was working on. She pondered for a long time, considering each of the current twelve worlds being prepared for habitation. Every single one of them shared too many similarities to worlds that the soul had already lived on. Her mind wandered off, reviewing some of the sixteen million worlds that she had personally set in motion. Ideally, they would never to be touched again until the final data harvest millions of years after all traces of life there had been extinct. Galaxia’s mind ended up locked onto a planet she hadn’t had an after life interview from in millenia. The inhabitants of the world in question were much different from the sapient plants and aquatic life forms she usually created for souls. An experiment among many that seemed to be doing fine on its own. The tiny sun that had orbited the planet had been taken from a separate universe entirely, which was a quick fix to allow for magic to control the sun directly, in defiant opposition with how she had set up suns to behave during the spell she cast for this universe’s big bang. It had been a collaboration with one of her acquaintances, Cosmos. After some successful habitation on the planet, she had placed two princesses on this world many millennia ago. She had made a habit of deciding that a few select souls she liked could be allowed special privileges, becoming one of her Princes or Princesses. Sometimes her approach was an avatar, a soul that would help the world by reincarnating along with all of the other souls on the planet. But this world was a different experiment, and with some prodding from Cosmos and special permission from Hope, she had been allowed to have the avatars of this world be immortal and skip the reincarnation process. It had been different from the norm, but every world was different from the norm in some way or another. She headed with the soul to the world to visit with them, two remarkable souls to whom she had gifted a world to oversee and cultivate for those that reincarnated there. She flowed out of her comfortable controlled space and extruded down into tangible existence, taking on the form that her princesses would find familiar. The body formed around her, a majestic, tall, almond alicorn with large billowing wings and a slender horn, her mane and tail flowing into an image of the galaxies she was in charge of, a single spiral galaxy as her cutie mark. Once she was finished with her transformation, she landed softly in front of Celestia. "Mother?" Celestia said as Galaxia’s form entered into the court, her presence radiating light and illuminating the room almost as much as the sun shining through the stained glass windows. Time had stopped and the earth pony that Celestia had been conversing with had been frozen mid-speech. Celestia whispered out at the regal, cosmic alicorn, “is that really you?” “Yes, it’s me, Celestia,” said Galaxia, a smile forming on her muzzle. Celestia flew off her throne and landed in the center of the great hall next to her mother. "I thought you would never return," Celestia said as Galaxia raised her hooves to embrace her. “How have you been? Where is your sister?" At this, Celestia froze. "Mother, I'm so, so sorry—I didn't know what to do. I—" Galaxia couldn't understand Celestia’s distress through her disheveled words and soft tears. She continued to embrace her while absorbing her memories. The history of the beaming, bright turquoise soul seeped inside Galaxia, every feeling, thought, and word of her lifetimes experienced by her in a moment. The memories came all at once. King Sombra—Discord—Nightmare Moon—the one thousand year banishment—the underlying melancholy that Celestia had been hiding for centuries, every experience, thought and action understood as clearly as if they were Galaxia’s own memories. Just like Hope had warned her, the immortality she had given Celestia and Luna had been a painful gift. The memories of the entities of Discord and Nightmare Moon baffled her and required further investigation, but for now, comforting her daughter remained her top priority. ”It’s okay Celestia, I'm here." "What else could I have done? The ponies would have had no sun to grow the food they needed to survive. I—" “You did the right thing." Galaxia said. "I... I did?" "Yes, you did. And I’m proud of you.” Galaxia held onto her hoof. The event hadn’t hurt anypony or changed the landscape of the world in any significant way, and there were always worse end results for immortals. Galaxia spoke, “I’m not often wrong about my selection for Princes and Princesses, but it looks like I was wrong in this case. Luna will have her immortality revoked, and I will arrange her next incarnation.” “No, mother, please no.” Tears started to well up in Celestia’s eyes. “You know that immortality is rarely granted. I’ve shown you and your sister how other worlds work and how special you really are. Luna knew what she was doing. I simply selected the wrong choice, she will need to reincarnate, just like every other creature here.” “But, I love her!” Celestia argued back. “She’s had almost one thousand years to reflect on what she’s done. I know she can be reformed. I know she can make it.” “What would you have me do?” “There’s a prophecy about Luna, about Nightmare Moon.” Galaxia accessed Celestia’s memory and pulled out the prophecy, repeating it aloud. “On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape.” “Mother,” Celestia began, “you are the stars. You will free her, and I will reform her. Please, at least give her that chance.” Galaxia watched as her daughter’s silent tears fell to the ground. What Celestia called a prophecy was merely a rumor she had started and leaked into the myths and legends of Equestria. More of a desire of hers than something set in stone to occur. “I suppose it was a good thing I came back.” She sighed. She had simply wanted to find a place for the soul, not worry about another one in the process. A few stray thoughts formed on the edge of her mind of how she could fix this. “I will work something out, Celestia. I might be able to save two souls if I can make this work.” “Two souls?” Celestia perked up a little. “Yes, I’m bringing another addition to the reincarnation pool of this world. I’ll be searching around for good souls to be part of its family.” “Yes, of course,” Celestia said. “And my sister?” “I only have snippets of ideas at this point, Celestia, but if I configure this correctly, then yes, I’ll be the stars that aid in her escape.” Chapter 2We teleported some matter past the wall and to the presumable void outside the multiverse. It failed to move. One of our number tried to teleport past the wall, and they did not move. Once we were sure there was no danger of being trapped outside, we started teleporting next to the wall at ever vaster distances. Was the multiverse in the shape of an oblate spheroid, like most universes were? Galaxia slowed down time to a trickle, enveloping the entire planet in an amber glow as she felt around for the planet’s root spells. She could feel the rules she had set in place for gravity, weather, the safe usage of hammerspace, the six elements of Harmony, a backup of the memories of every soul on the planet, the dreamscape, and more. She decided against absorbing the memories of every soul on the planet, it would take some rewriting to perform that spell without Cosmos anyway. She dug around and absorbed a record of what had happened from the land itself: some griffon wars, some dragon problems, a few magical maladies, a frozen lost dictatorship caused by a malevolent unicorn; it all seemed like life was progressing here as it should in some form or another. The souls here had complete freedom like Hope demanded. What they did with that freedom was their problem. She was a little discouraged that her changelings had stopped loving each other and had started using their magic for more hedonistic purposes. That particular efficiency loophole was mostly her fault. Looking through the root spells and spotting mistakes like these made her cringe. She had gotten so much better at creating worlds since she had made Equestria. She shook her head, focusing on the task at hoof and bringing out the small gray soul in front of her. Would it like being a griffon? Most of the griffon population lived in sprawling towns, the hunters and gatherers supplying the villages in the fringes of their territory. Their lifestyle had parallels to another world where the soul was part of a trio of souls, and that had not worked out. The warring dragons did not seem a good fit either, the war torn world that the soul had lived through had not inspired her to fight and live on, but to give up. At best, it would be among the many hermit dragons that were scattered across the world, their long lifespans and vast hoards keeping them safe but stagnant. It wouldn’t work. She looked at the other sentient creatures. Perhaps a nice camel form would best suit it? She looked through the memories of a few camels, finding similarities in the happy families that the soul had already lived in and decided to look elsewhere. Minotaurs, no, their isolated pockets of civilization on islands wasn’t too different from the lifetime it had spent as an Interlacer. Cows, no. They lived such peaceful lives, like that saccharine slug world it had lived on. Perhaps a unicorn? She eyed an expecting mother in Celestia’s capital city of Canterlot. There was already a growing foal in the household, the loving father and mother watching over him. It was a wonderful family and she loved the atmosphere of the home. The soul would hate it. She flew to the countryside. There was a nice family that farmed apples for a living, a little more boring than the unicorn family in Canterlot, but quite brave, strong and hardworking. She touched the souls of the orange coated mother and the bright red father holding an equally bright red foal. Unbeknownst to them, they both had a disease that would eventually cause their deaths, leaving a foal and any other children they had behind. This was not the place for this soul, she’d already been through an orphanage. She flew toward the nearby town. There was an engaged young unicorn couple. They looked mildly uninteresting, but not quite as boring as what she was looking for. She started to randomly teleport around Equestria, taking more samples of the souls that lived there. A rainbow maned stallion pegasus that had finished first place in the Equestrian games, his fiancée in second place behind him? Too interesting. A quiet pegasi couple that designed snowflakes? They might do, they were certainly boring. But the wings on their backs made Galaxia pause. The soul’s last world had been a lifetime floating in colonies similar to cloud cities. Was a pegasi form different enough that this might work? The more she thought about it, the more wings seemed to be a terrible idea. She flew past picturesque landscapes, the rainbow of colors and the beautiful environment vividly scratching her senses. It was a little too bright. Perhaps the soul needed an entire boring world to be on, as opposed to just an environment. No, if the soul grew up in a secluded environment, it would see the bright world of Equestria outside and experience life differently. The juxtaposition was needed, that much Galaxia felt. All of this traveling was getting annoying. She had billions of souls in the queue waiting to be assigned to worlds she should have created by now. And she had put all projects on hold to pay attention to this one insignificant soul? Why? Working on this soul meant leaving entire worlds unfinished. As much as she would celebrate the opportunity to help each and every soul, there simply wasn’t time to deal with every single problem. Hope had designed it this way, or else she would have only be given responsibility over one world and not millions. As sad as its predicament was, was it really worth giving this soul such unnaturally special treatment? In her pondering, Galaxia discovered a gray, drab piece of land. Even the clouds around it were gray, and nestled in the valley of the ash-colored, rocky land were several rickety shacks. She flew down to investigate the ponies who lived there. Working in the fields was a sturdy stallion moving boulders around. A stern mare was sitting in the farmhouse, nursing a newborn filly. Upon accessing their memories, she saw that these souls were currently living through an incredibly dull incarnation. The rock farm provided a means of income for the family, but it left the ponies there with as drab and dull minds as the rocks surrounding them, an intense focus on their duties on the farm leaving them secluded to a small boring section of an otherwise bright and beautiful world. They were perfect. They were a patch of boring amidst a cacophony of other more vivid lives. They were a simple haiku surrounded by detailed novels. It took time and an open mind to understand and appreciate the beauty of this family, but even so, their dullness was just what she was looking for. The genius of her plan took hold the more she looked into the lives of Igneous Rock, Cloudy Quartz and their little fillies, Maud and Limestone. The soul would be born into this family. It would be bored, but not understand how bored it was. It would live in ignorance, unable to understand the concept of laughing, smiling, and the colorful world that surrounded its gray existence. That spark, that change when the soul would experience laughter and other emotions for the first time had to be enough to get it to appreciate existence. Galaxia flipped through the forty-seven lifetimes of the soul one more time. This idea hadn’t been tried before, and she felt confident it could work. She placed her horn on Cloudy Quartz and cast a temporary protection to prevent other souls from attempting to be a part of this family, at least not until the soul was part of it. She then placed the soul nearby, giving it free access through the protection. Sometime soon, when Igneous Rock and Cloudy Quartz had their next foal, her soul would be that of Asvarel. She had placed the soul, and there was nothing to do now but wait for the plan to come to fruition. Galaxia teleported back to a world she had finished recently, the first few souls awaiting their first and only after death interview with her. Chapter 3After many more vast jumps and setting up a teleportation relay, we reached a consensus that the edge of the multiverse was completely straight. It made us wonder what shape the multiverse would be. A rectangular prism? A cube? The machines that make up matter are not straight on any side, neither are the suns, the galaxies, universes, or any of the naturally occurring phenomena central to existence. Whatever ancient race that had divided everything into universes and created the nanomachines, had not created the multiverse. We took satisfaction that perhaps we could surpass them yet. Galaxia was trudging through the designs for a fungi cell she was trying to nudge into an alternative evolutionary path, when she was alerted to a visitor. A King was tugging on a nearby piece of spacetime to let her know that he was coming. She left the bacterium alone and went to allow him into her subsection of spacetime. “Hiya Galaxia,” Cosmos beamed as he entered the void from which she was tampering with worlds from. At less than ten thousand universes away, his universe was the closest to her own. He had been reincarnated into a King around the same time she had, the behavior from their previous unknown lifetimes somehow warranting the role. He hovered into her controlled space. “How have you been?” Cosmos asked. “Quite fine, quite fine,” Galaxia said, looking back down onto the fungi cells. “What have you been up to lately?” “Nothing in particular.” “Aww… come on!” Cosmos said. “You’re always working on interesting projects, what are you up to right now?” “Well if you must know...” She turned her attention back to the cell designs and manipulated the view for him to see. “I have some lichen that’s starting to form a parasitic relationship with some of my trees, and I’m trying to make the relationship mutualistic, or at the very least commensalistic.” “Sounds interesting! What did you have in mind for making it mutualistic? Anything your trees are lacking?” “Nothing right now… there’s enough sunlight, most of the trees have enough carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. I’m not sure what to do. I could do nothing, but the trees really dislike the lichen and they don’t move quick enough to do anything about it.” “Hmm…” Cosmos gave the planet a once over, viewing some of the souls that inhabited the sapient, but slow as glaciers, tree creatures. “All of your trees live in the tropics of your planet?” “That’s where they choose to live.” “Why not have the lichen grow thicker around the trees furthest from the tropics? That should enable some of the trees to retain more moisture in the colder climate, increasing the spread of the trees across the planet, instead of leaving them concentrated near the equator.” “So I nudge the fungi to group more densely and to prefer colder weather?” Galaxia said, more as a fact than a question. “That is an interesting idea, but the trees hate the fungi, and if some trees start accepting the fungi to go to colder climates, it will cause a rift and lead to two separate tree species.” “Is that a problem?” “It’s just not what I wanted to happen, at least not for this world.” “There are always more worlds to create, Galaxia, just let this one evolve naturally. You can get through your quota of assigning souls to worlds much faster that way. Just spread some seeds of life on as many worlds as possible and go around to see if anything grew afterwards.” Galaxia stiffened. She disliked Cosmos’s idea of quantity over quality. As if assigning souls was a race instead of a delicate procedure. “Yes, but I still want the souls that go through my worlds to have enjoyable experiences, otherwise, what’s the point?” “I don’t think there’s a question in the multiverse that’s more difficult to answer than that one, Galaxia.” She turned back to the lichen cell, contemplating his idea before finally asking, “So, why did you come here?” “I just wanted to drop by and say hi,” he said happily, “As well as check up on some of the worlds we made when we spent some time together a few millennia ago.” She had nearly forgotten those joint projects, the memories of making those worlds bubbling up to the surface. “That gaseous plasma planet never evolved life like you thought it would. An asteroid impact forced most of the inhabitants of that silicon planet underground; they could be dead or have evolved to be accustomed to the darkness by this point, I’d have to check.” “Oh…” said Cosmos, a little saddened. “How about that pony world we made? I know we tried a different approach to your avatar system by making two of the Princesses immortal. How are they working out? How have they—” Sudden realization came over her, she stopped examining the lichen cell structure and stared at him. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “I nearly forgot! What year is it!?” “It’s 200789805—” he started to rattle off before she cut him off. “Sorry, I didn’t mean multiverse standard time, I meant for Equestria. I need to get over there now and see what’s happening.” “Mind if I come along?” he asked. “Sure, you helped me build the place.” She tore a portal to Equestria open and changed to her tangible alicorn form, casting the standard invisibility spells. Cosmos filed in after her, a stallion alicorn, appearance like the very stars in the cosmos. “Do you mind filling me in?” Galaxia placed her horn against his, passing the memories of all the souls she had analyzed from the last time she was here. She started flying to the rock farm. “Hey wait! Give me time to all process this!” Cosmos chased after her. “So Luna is on this planet’s moon? And we’re going to visit that soul I gave you a few years back?” “You gave that soul to me?” “Yeah, I hoped that since my bird world didn’t work out for it, you would find something in one of your worlds. I didn’t think you would send it here though, Hope prefers we leave worlds in progress alone,” said Cosmos as he flew alongside Galaxia, peering at the vast green landscapes and lush forests of Equestria below him. “Oh good! The pegasi still build cloud cities,” Cosmos said after flying past Cloudsdale. “Do you remember when we tested those out, Galaxia? We nearly had to rewrite how water molecules behave in this world to allow clouds to support pegasi and griffons.” Galaxia ignored him, racing to the rock farm, anxious to see how the soul had turned out, she hoped she wasn’t too late to nudge her cutie mark to being something else besides a rock. She finally spotted the rock farm. A pink dot stuck out against the drab landscape. “Is that Asvarel?” Cosmos asked as he caught up with her. They neared the pink form that was shuffling rocks around with her muzzle. They landed next to her, remaining invisible to the filly. “She’s pink!” Galaxia said in surprise. “Are you sure that’s her?” Cosmos asked as Galaxia landed and went straight to access the creature’s memories to confirm. The soul’s current form was a filly named Pinkamena Diane Pie. “It’s her alright!” Galaxia said as Cosmos went to view the memories of the current incarnation. “Pinkamena, huh? Well she certainly is pink,” Cosmos said, eyeing the small filly. “And her color is a fluke of genetics too. Well isn’t she something. What did you have in mind for her?” “I thought I would just get her to see the outside world somehow. She has no memories of laughing or smiling, just these rocks and the gray landscape.” “There’s not a lot of options, Galaxia, at least nothing natural,” he said, looking around at the rock farm, rifling through the memories. “There are no books, little imagination, and it looks like little Pinkamena doesn’t have any curiosity about the world around her.” “That was my plan, Cosmos. Now how do I get her interested in the world outside? At least enough to get her a cutie mark.” “Well…” he said, putting a hoof to his muzzle and looking up, and then back to her. “This whole thing is a little unorthodox, Galaxia, exactly how far did you want to intervene?” Galaxia stared at the filly, watching as she kicked one of the rocks and sighed dejectedly. She remembered the myriad of tragic previous lifetimes, determined to change the sad cycle. “Whatever it takes,” she said, turning to look at him. “Alright then,” he said, grinning at her and looking up, “these gray clouds stay pretty consistent, but there aren’t pegasi to move them.” “So we find some pegasi?” Galaxia asked. “Yeah! Let’s go with that!” Cosmos thrust off the ground, spread his starry wings open, and started flying to Cloudsdale, Galaxia dashing after him. “We can’t exactly have Pinkamena’s father hire a pegasus,” Galaxia began. “The rock farm doesn’t even need the sun like most farms do.” “So we don’t have him hire a pegasus. Why not have a gust of wind blow the clouds out of the way? Pinkamena will see the blue sky for the first time.” “I don’t think that’s flashy enough,” Galaxia said as they reached the outskirts of Cloudsdale. “We want to really spark some curiosity within her.” “Well she’s such a pink pony, and she’s never really seen color before, so let’s give her some color!” “How?” Galaxia asked. Cosmos eyed a rainbow maned filly lining up on a cloud outside Cloudsdale, assuming the position of a pony about to race as fast as possible. “Let’s give her all the colors at once! That should be flashy enough.” Cosmos flashed Galaxia a grin before racing to get to the rainbow maned filly. “What!?” Galaxia said as a yellow filly with a soft pink mane lowered a flag, starting the race. “I’m just gonna give this rainbow filly here a huge burst of magic,” Cosmos said, racing alongside the flying filly, Galaxia right behind him. “Ooh! I like this one, she’s fast!” Cosmos took a shortcut and flew to a ring of clouds close to the ground. He cast an invisible, intensely magical aura inside it. “Hold on a moment, how much magic are you planning on giving her?” Galaxia asked as the filly dived toward the ground. “You’re right, I’m not giving her nearly enough,” said Cosmos. He pumped even more magic into the cloud ring, the aura of magic so strong it would start piercing the visible spectrum at any moment, the rainbow maned filly seconds away. “That’s too much magi—” was all Galaxia could say before the rainbow pegasi bounded into the gate. All at once, a cacophonous rainbow shockwave jutted outward from that point, the rainboom carrying an intense powerful magic rippling across the land of Equestria. “Wow!” was all Cosmos could say as he excitedly went to chase after the rainboom, hurtling himself along in front of the sheer tsunami of magic. Galaxia chased him, wary to venture into the mess of magic that Cosmos had created. She flew around wave of magic and finally caught up to him. “Where are you going!?” “I’m going to go see Pinkamena’s reaction, of course!” Cosmos said. He dived down and landed next to Pinkamena, closing his eyes in anticipation as the roaring rainboom was about to hit. But the rainboom never did. He opened up his eyes to see Galaxia staring condescendingly at him. The rainboom stopped above them mere meters before it would pass. “I’m not letting any atom on this world move another nanometer until you tell me what you’re planning on doing to Pinkamena,” Galaxia said, a huff of annoyance escaping her. “Relax, I’m just gonna give her an earth pony magic boost,” he said, a happy grin plastered on his face. “Extra farming power?” Galaxia asked. “No, just some party powers,” Cosmos raised a hoof to his muzzle, ticking off the abilities. “Time and space manipulation... an ability to catch glimpses of other worlds... some precognition... and general silliness.” He added. “Nothing too big.” “You put all that in a rainboom!?” “Well yeah! Well… uhh… at least I set some of the magic to only go into Pinkamena here. It is a rainboom, no telling exactly where all of it will end up,” Cosmos said through a sheepish smile. “I can’t allow this. The soul has been depressed through all of her lifetimes, I wanted a massive change for her, but this is too much. Give me time to calculate the best course of action.” Cosmos’s horn glowed as he told every atom to continue, unpausing time, the roaring rainboom engulfing Galaxia as— “Cosmos! What are you thinking!? We have a magical blast permeating all of Equestria and you’re just gonna let it roll on through!?” Galaxia had stopped time again and was berating Cosmos through the rainbow blast. “How can you—” He smiled and unstopped time again. She stopped it again, the blast directly in front of a very surprised Pinkamena. Galaxia and Cosmos kept stopping and unstopping time. Their back and forth spells like foals on opposites sides of a room flipping light switches that belonged to the same light. “WILL.” Time stopped, the rainboom engulfing Pinkamena and making her mane stream backwards. “YOU.” Time started, the magic of the rainboom taking hold. “STOP.” Time stopped, the rainboom past Pinkamena, her straight mane starting to frizz. “THAT!” Time started. Time stopped again and Pinkamena’s mane had gone completely frizzy, a large smile beginning to form across her face. “To be honest, those last few spells unstopping time were all you. You should have been using a spell that only stops time, not the spell that flips the states,” Cosmos snickered. “And you wonder why we don’t collaborate more often,” Galaxia muttered under her breath, starting time up again. “I’ll just sit here and watch Pinkamena then.” “Call her Pinkie, Galaxia! That name fits so much better for her now. And come over here quick, that is the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on one of these ponies before!” Cosmos said as he watched her smile, her eyes reflecting the beautiful rainbow in the sky, a rainbow that Cosmos was slightly altering. “I just had that rainbow teach her to smile!” Cosmos grinned before scrunching his face. “And… I might’ve given her a glimpse into the creation of Equestria in the process, but I don’t think it’ll have any lasting effect.” “You—wait, what?” said Galaxia flustered. “Nevermind, forget I asked. What’s going to happen now?” “Just watch! I gave Pinkie all the ideas, and now she’ll figure out how to throw her first party ever!” “A party?” said Galaxia, almost annoyed. “Really?” “Just you wait, it’s gonna be the best party ever! It’ll be her own ‘end of wandering worlds’ party!” They watched as Pinkie Pie went to the farmhouse and started to think. “She’s getting ideas!” he crooned, watching as Pinkie imagined up some balloons, the mere act of wanting the balloons willing them into existence. “Thousands of years, you have barely visited this place a few times since we created it, and you spend your first time here in ages watching a pony plan a party?” “This is fun! And besides, I gotta make sure she’s not abusing her newfound powers.” “You do that, Cosmos,” Galaxia said. “I need to see what havoc you’ve accidentally wrought elsewhere.” Galaxia spread her nebulous wings, propelling her upwards and flying quickly through Equestria, looking for signs of something amiss. There didn’t appear to be any lasting effects on the landscape, just a few shell shocked animals. If something had gone wrong, Celestia would know. She zipped to Canterlot, stopping time and appearing in front of her. She had been talking to a small lavender filly that was positively bursting at the seams in excitement. “Hello, Celestia,” Galaxia began, “how are you?” Celestia was disoriented at the sudden stop in the flow of time, interrupting her conversation with one of the most promising fillies she had ever admitted to her school. Once Celestia realized what had happened, she embraced Galaxia, “Mother! You just missed the most amazing event!” Celestia motioned to the unicorn bubbling over in excitement and wonder, “This filly passed the rock portion of our entrance exam with flying colors!” “Flying colors?” Galaxia asked, cringing. “Yes! A rainboom went through Canterlot at the moment she was taking her entrance exam. Somehow, she was able to transfigure a rock we painted like an egg into an actual dragon!” Celestia said, pausing, ”and turn her parents into cacti.” Transfiguring the rock into an entire dragon must have taken a ton of magic. How much had Cosmos put inside that rainboom? “Her name is Twilight Sparkle, mother, and she is going to be one of my best students.” Galaxia nudged the filly to analyze her lilac soul. Before this life, her previous three incarnations had been gifted with a lot a magical ability. She had already attended Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns twice before. The raw magical ability of the filly had nearly septupled in power permanently from the rainboom’s effects, and the cutie mark allocation algorithm had celebrated the occasion by granting Twilight stars on her flanks. “A cutie mark from that rainboom…” Galaxia spoke softly to herself. An idea crossed her mind and she sparked her horn to life. The room they were in, all of Canterlot, all of Equestria, and then finally the entire planet was enveloped in an amber magical glow. Galaxia started feeling around for the root spells that she had set in place for the planet. She felt around past hoof dexterity spells and plant magic and found the system that gave cutie marks to ponies. She refreshed herself on how the cutie mark allocation spell worked, and made a list of the last ponies that had gotten their cutie marks. In addition to Twilight, there were two other fillies that had gotten their marks at almost the exact same time. And three more, including Pinkie, that were in the process of getting theirs directly because of the effects of the rainboom. Six ponies… six elements. Galaxia smiled and a few ideas popped up in her mind on what she should do. During this entire process, Celestia watched, awed at the display of magic that was beyond even her comprehension. “What did that spell do?” Galaxia opened her eyes, staring at her. “I was refreshing myself on some of the rules I set in place for this world, including the cutie mark allocation algorithm. It gave me a few ideas. Do you currently have an apprentice, Celestia?” “My last apprentice didn’t turn out so well,” said Celestia. “I don’t think I’ll take on another for some time.” “I request that you reconsider. This new student of yours has a lot of potential. I want you to take her as a new protégé.” “What do you want me to prepare her for?” “She needs to be a powerful magic user. If that cutie mark is what I think it is, she is destined to be the bearer of the Element of Magic.” “Element of Magic? As in, the Elements of Harmony?” Celestia asked, taken aback at the mention of the most powerful weapon she had at her disposal. “Correct.” “But only the bearer of the element of magic? Shall I be wielding the other five?” “I’m still figuring that part out, Celestia. If you do bear an element of Harmony again, it would only be one of them. The magic system of this world runs on relationships, particularly friendship. The more souls involved, and the tighter the bond between the bearers, the better. The ideal amount of bearers would be six, one for each element of harmony. But this configuration raises the chances of failure. If any of them don’t like each other the system could end up very weak. However, if they all get along the strength they give each other can only multiply.” “So who are these bearers?” Celestia asked. “I’ll tell you when I’ve found the rest of them.” Without a word more, Galaxia teleported away and unstopped time, leaving Celestia to readjust to the conversation she had been having with her new student, Twilight Sparkle. * * * Accessing that cutie mark spell made the process of hunting down those fillies much easier. The first filly to check up on was named Rarity. The cutie mark allocation spell was intent on this filly getting a cutie mark in fashion. She descended from above enough to examine the filly’s soul, all while the white unicorn tugged and carried a mess of jewels. The most recent memory was the most remarkable. The spell had dragged the poor filly to a big rock, supposedly to have her wait for the ideal moment to see the jewels stashed inside, which was when the rainboom hit. Besides that, the memories were fairly unremarkable, she was the daughter of one of the couples she had rifled through when searching for a boring family for that soul. Five past lives, including a theatre teacher, politician, architect, and two lifetimes spent as a nurse. Was she Element of Harmony material? Galaxia thought about it for a moment and then teleported to where a filly named Fluttershy was. The emerald forest was teeming with life, and all of that life was rapt with attention on a single gangly pink maned pegasus. Fluttershy was talking with the animals, somehow tapping into a rare branch of pony magic that allowed for such communication. She stepped closer and placed her horn on the crown of Fluttershy’s head, examining her soul. There were only three past lives, a carpenter earth pony that had constructed furniture, a dragon that had died in infancy, and an earth pony forester. Her current incarnation offered an interesting study into given names and how the ponies given them turned out. Her soul would make a great statistical report for one of the many studies Galaxia was conducting on how souls behavior changed over lifetimes based on names, though the tiny sample size of only three lifetimes was not enough for statistical significance. She looked forward to seeing the full data set when Equestria eventually ended. She teleported again, envisioning the orange Applejack. The spot she arrived at was deserted, so she flew up high and followed the road until she spotted the filly. The spell had set up Applejack for a long life of farming apples with the rest of her family. Racing alongside the filly and accessing the soul’s memories, Galaxia perused the previous lifetimes. Twenty lifetimes, most of them being earth pony farmers, but there were several as schoolteachers, a weather pegasi, two lifetimes as camels, once a griffon, and once a short lived life as a dragon. Applejack was heading to Ponyville, a place of mourning ever since her parents had both died. This soul was strong in every sense of the word, a fine candidate for an element bearer, but also the hitch in her plans. Applejack was destined to work on a farm in Ponyville. For her to be an element bearer meant that every other pony would have to move there. Fairly simple for Rarity, she already lived in Ponyville. Fluttershy wanted to leave Cloudsdale anyway now that she had seen the ground. Galaxia would just have to make sure everypony else ended up in Ponyville somehow. Her next stop was Rainbow Dash, the pony that Cosmos had infused with an absurd amount of magic. It was hard to find her at first, since the blue pegasi was still racing around trying to create another sonic rainboom. She caught up with her and was flooded with another set of memories as she examined her soul. Nine lifetimes, all of them with wings, five lifetimes as a pegasi with jobs ranging from weather control to beekeeping, three lifetimes as a griffon, and one especially long two thousand year period as a dragon. Galaxia didn’t like seeing all these ponies stories like this, all of them right in the middle. Under the guidance of Hope, Galaxia made sure that the souls under their care were put under as ideal conditions as possible and then they let the planet go for a couple million years. They only came back when the planet, or the galactic civilization that followed, was good and dead. They harvested all the souls, carefully recording all of the data about their lifetimes, analyzing how they had ended and why. Once done she would send the souls back to Hope, who would wipe the memories and send them back to other Kings and Queens. Reading the stories of the souls now felt like starting a book series without the last book having been published yet. Rainbow Dash flitted away, completely unaware that all her thoughts, feelings, desires, and forgotten lifetimes had just been scanned. She wracked her mind with how to ensure that Rainbow Dash would inevitably move to Ponyville, deciding instead to procrastinate by visiting Pinkie Pie and Cosmos again. “How goes the party planning?” asked Galaxia as she appeared next to Cosmos. “Ooh! You came just in time. Look at all of this,” he said, gesturing to the streamers and the cake and the various party paraphernalia decorating the silo. Pinkie Pie had been hard at work placing everything just right, still working tirelessly as Galaxia and Cosmos watched, music playing from some unseen location. “She thinks she invented the entire concept of a party,” Cosmos said. “Cosmos, have you been thinking at all about the lack of freedom you’re giving her?” Galaxia asked. “You said ‘Whatever it takes,’ Galaxia,” said Cosmos “Yeah…” I didn’t think we’d take it this far though. “We’re supposed to ensure that the souls in our worlds are allowed absolute freedom so their data won’t be skewed by the end.” “And we’re given loose guidelines about that for a reason. A forty-eight lifetime soul still without a home planet is grounds for some sort of intervention. I gave her ideas. It’s up to her to act upon them or not. Besides, having an idea in a mind is one of the hardest things I think these souls have to deal with. There could be hundreds of ideas bouncing around in the mind of a pony all at once. The true freedom for them is picking out the most important ideas to try to put into practice first. I showed Pinkie Pie a lot of information at once, it’s up to her to interpret those ideas and choose to act on them.” “So you think we have given her a real choice in this matter?” “I would say so.” “Interesting, ideally Hope will agree,” said Galaxia, staring at the pink pony decorating a party she shouldn’t know how to create, the first step to a lifetime friendship with other ponies that Galaxia would have to manipulate to cross paths with her. “What’s got you worried?” Cosmos asked, staring at her. She sighed, surveying the concerned expression on Cosmos’s muzzle before admitting her problem. “I need to somehow give four ponies a nudge to go live in Ponyville. They need to become friends with two ponies that already live there, and they need to wield the Elements of Harmony and defeat Nightmare Moon when I — or should I say ‘the stars’ — aid in her escape.” “I beg your pardon?” Galaxia touched her horn to his and transferred the memories of the last few hours into his mind. “Nightmare moon…” Cosmos began. “I almost forgot about that. Her and that Discord statue thing really need to be looked into. I take it you haven’t even checked on Luna yet?” “No… not yet. To be honest, I don’t know why I’m spending so much time here for this one soul. You as well, we have to get out of here and back to work on getting other worlds up and running.” “I suppose you’re right,” Cosmos said. “We don’t have time to waste on this, does she get her cutie mark or not?” asked Galaxia, her horn glowing as she commanded all of the atoms on the planet to speed up, the sun rushing down, the moon momentarily taking it’s place, all the while, a pink blur was adding more decorations and ideas into the barn. Speeding up atoms could mess up a planet, but a short leap wouldn’t hurt in the long run. When the sun came up again Galaxia slowed down the atoms back to their normal speeds, time returning to normal. Over the noise of the musical instruments that seemed to be playing from nowhere, Galaxia heard a voice outside of the barn. “Pinkamena Diane Pie, is that you?” asked Cloudy Quartz. Pinkie flung the door open, confetti and balloons escaping out of the barn as Pinkie yelled, “Mom! I need you and dad and the sisters to come in. Quick!” “Wait, her family is going to come to this?” asked Galaxia. “It is a party! And they’re the only ponies Pinkie knows, so of course it’s a party for her and her family,” Cosmos said. “I specifically chose this family for how boring they were, how are they going to react to all this?” The door flung open. The stern faces of the Pie family had a split second to react to the change in scenery in the room before Pinkie shouted out, “Surprise!” “Do you like it? It’s called a party!” said Pinkie, the jovial attitude in her voice masking her fears. The stern looks on the Pie family turned to shock as their gaze shifted around toward the cake, the balloons, the confetti, and the whole transformation of their now unfamiliar barn. Their mouths started to wobble as if they were buildings ready to be toppled over any second by a stray breeze. “What do we do!?” asked Galaxia, a twinge of panic carrying in her voice. “They have to love this!” “Shhh… it’s alright Galaxia. I’m sure it’ll all work out,” Cosmos said. The silence continued and Pinkie Pie started to deflate, melancholy replacing her happy attitude and dragging her smile down into the depths of a frown. “Oh, you don’t like it.” “Cosmos, we have to do something.” “Need I remind you that you were the one worrying about not giving ponies enough freedom.” The silence and the wobbles wiggled for a while until Pinkie’s parents and sisters pasted huge smiles on their faces, most likely the first smiles of the entire family’s life. Pinkie inflated, excitement taking over and bringing her back into high spirits, “You like it!” And then she was suddenly dancing with her family and shouting, “I’m so happy!” Galaxia could feel the magic of the cutie mark allocation spell seep into the barn and deposit three balloons onto Pinkie Pie’s flank. “Did… did that just work?” asked Galaxia. “I think it did!” said Cosmos. “You did it!” yelled Galaxia, grabbing him and starting to dance along with everypony else in the room. “No, we did it! I just stuck Pinkie on a solar planet, hoping she’d like it. It was you who wanted to give her the divine treatment!” “I guess I did. And it worked, she got her cutie mark! Now all that’s left is to make sure the rest of her life is this happy.” “Wait, hold on there, do you plan on following her entire life?” Cosmos slowed down his dance, looking at Galaxia. “No, just enough to get her on track. To let her choose,” said Galaxia following Cosmos’s slow rhythm until they both had stopped completely, staring into each other’s eyes for a few moments, enjoying the sounds of the small party around them, leaning closer. “Well… it’s been fun,” Cosmos said, opening a portal back to his own universe, turning to leave. “Anything else I can help you with before I go?” She stared at him, unable to say anything for a moment, before shaking her head and finally asking, “How do I get four ponies to go to Ponyville of their own free will?” “I think you need to learn the fine art of delegation, Galaxia. If you can’t think of anything, ask Celestia to take care of it, that’s why we have Princesses.” And then he jumped up through the portal. His alicorn form dissolved into something else in the void between his universe and this one, what form Galaxia didn’t see before the portal collapsed away. She turned back to Pinkie’s party and watched the partygoers for a few moments before teleporting back to Canterlot. Celestia was preparing for another day when Galaxia commanded the atoms to slow to a trickle and appeared in front of her. “Celestia, I’ve found you the six element bearers,” Galaxia said, the surprise on Celestia’s face relaxing and turning into excitement as Galaxia detailed whom she had found. “My task to you is to nudge these six ponies to Ponyville, where Applejack and Rarity already live. Make sure they are in a position to become friends with each other. Those six ponies and I can handle the rest. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to reform Luna afterwards though.” “I can do that,” said Celestia. “Just be the stars that aid in her escape.” Chapter 4We lost the wall. Granted, we were jumping absurdly huge distances, punching in higher and higher numbers into our teleportation spell. It would eventually fail when we had reached a corner of the multiverse. But we had gone too far and the wall was gone. We jumped back to our previous relay point, reporting the odd discovery to the rest of the collective. We halved the amount of our jump and the wall remained with us. We kept teleporting, trying to narrow down the position where the wall ceased. It took a while, but we eventually found where the wall met with another wall. Instead of enclosing us inside, leaving the multiverse smaller, it jutted outward at a one hundred and twenty degree angle. Galaxia was in the midst of watching a species of twelve legged, spider-like species try to discover how to manipulate atoms. The race had done a fantastic job of creating smaller and smaller machines, but eventually all of their work tapered off due to the size of atoms themselves. The best scientists of the species seemed to be on the cusp of understanding that atoms had been nanomachines themselves all along, just as programmable as any machine they could build themselves. It was a crucial step in all sorts of scientific breakthroughs that would send this species traversing through deep space to discover all the habitable galaxies that she had left as presents for them to discover once they reached this point. Her concentration on their effort was broken when a reminder floated to her attention to release Luna from Equestria’s moon. She readjusted her thinking and tried to put the plight of those hard working scientists out of her mind in order to concentrate on Luna. She teleported to Equestria and stopped time, landing in front of Celestia. She could say hello afterwards. Galaxia touched her horn to Celestia’s and gathered all the memories of the last ten years. The great rush of knowledge put her in the right frame of mind for how Equestria worked, as well as gave her good information about how Celestia had nudged those six ponies to Ponyville. She had cut it very close by having Twilight come there the very eve of letting Luna go. But Galaxia did have to give Celestia credit for making the five ponyville ponies be in charge of key aspects of the celebration so that Twilight would have to meet them. She breathed in and out and then teleported to the moon. She landed on the desolate rock, the craters littering the landscape, complete silence and darkness enveloping the moon. After casting a soul seeking spell, she discovered a black, menacing wraith lying completely still among the craters. The strange creature was a far cry from the Luna that Galaxia and Cosmos had nurtured into becoming an immortal Princess and protector of Equestria. Galaxia kept herself invisible to the creature, getting close enough to it to examine her soul. She read Luna’s memories, but they weren’t nearly as tangible an experience as Galaxia was used to. The last one thousand years had all been subdued, as if Luna herself were in some kind of dream, not entirely experiencing all of her actions. Every memory felt fuzzy and incomplete. They were the kind of memories that get tossed out during data harvests as outliers and irrelevant due to how messed up the data was. It was like trying to read a book that had some of its original pages ripped out and pages from a completely different book glued back in to replace them. Galaxia kept her horn on Luna’s, focusing on her memories and looking for the crossing point between perfect memory and the haze. It was somewhere after the start of the diarchy, but before the banishment. When was that threshold? She kept rifling through the memories until the initial nudge of the haze in memory started to appear. Luna had been in her throne room at the time, watching the nanoscopic souls float around. But there was something else that she had seen. It took Galaxia a few moments to recognize it for what it was and when she did she had to stop herself from screaming. It was an atom, a simple ordinary atom. An almost perfectly spherical nanomachine like other atoms, with only one harsh difference: it was by far larger than any other atom she had seen in her life. And it… floated into Luna? Galaxia stepped away from the wraith, still trying to unravel the situation. Without warning the creature opened its slitted eyes and blasted Galaxia with a shockwave of midnight magic. She rushed out of the way, but not before her body burned from the foreign spell. She yelped in pain and flew back from it. She landed and picked up some of the rocks on the ground, disintegrating them back to hydrogen, and fusing them into higher elements to place in her own body as needed. The creature’s eyes followed her. She uncloaked and recloaked, making sure the invisibility spells were working. The wraith rounded on her, flying into the air and shooting off more of the radiation, sending shockwave after shockwave after her. “I can still see you,” it said. Galaxia used her time stop spell, ordering all atoms in this solar system to a complete standstill. Every single one obeyed. Except for the wraith. “I don’t have to obey your orders!” it cackled. Galaxia spun out of the way of more of the magic. What was this thing? It was made of atoms, and atoms obey. And it had a soul, and souls do what they’re told. What was going on? She teleported to the opposite side of the moon to think. Her eyes widened as she heard the sound of a teleportation spell behind her, the wraith had followed her. There was no way it could have known how to follow her. Only a soul seeking spell could be used to do that. As Galaxia skirted around it’s attacks she scanned the creature’s horn. It was using a soul seeking spell on her. But Luna could not have used that spell, Galaxia had never taught it to her. “You’re... not Luna. What are you?” asked Galaxia. “Me, dear Queen? Since my sun was stolen from me, I suppose I’ll be the moon,” she smiled, fangs appearing menacingly. “Nightmare Moon.” Nightmare Moon cast a time stop spell on Galaxia, the atoms that made up her current form slowed to a stop. Her eyes widened in panic as another burst of midnight magic was about to engulf her. She fled out in basic form, a cream colored orb of light about the size of a hoof tearing away from under Galaxia’s body. She landed on the Lunar surface, disintegrating her surroundings back into hydrogen and forming herself back into Galaxia. She stared up from the crater she had made just in time to see her previous form melt into ash. “How do you know that spell?” screamed Galaxia. The wraith smiled. “While you were scanning Luna’s soul for memories, I was scanning yours.” Galaxia leapt backwards as another blast of the time stop spell almost enclosed around her. What the Nightmare said was impossible, only a King, Queen or Hope itself could read her soul. How much had it read? How many of Galaxia’s own spells did it know? Galaxia dropped all her defenses and started shooting off her own spells at the Nightmare. Nothing could destroy a soul, so obliterating everything else about this creature wouldn’t be a problem. She just had to do it fast, the more time it had the more it could experiment with the spells in Galaxia’s memory. One of her hydrogenization spells hit. The Nightmare screamed as part of the elements in it's body broke down to the smallest element. Its ethereal midnight tail severed in half. The Nightmare used its horn to slash in the air, opening a portal. Before Galaxia had any time to react, it slipped away inside and disappeared. For a brief moment, everything was calm. Galaxia panicked and cast a soul seeking spell. If it had some of her memories it could be anywhere, any galaxy, any universe. The elements of harmony had cut off Luna’s main method of teleportation for a thousand years, but Galaxia’s own portal spell circumvented that. Galaxia heard a tear in the fabric of space rip behind her. She jumped out of the way and watched it appear again, enveloping the six elements of harmony in it’s midnight magic. Galaxia’s eyes widened. Nightmare Moon spun the elements around itself, a rainbow jet of light erupting from her. Galaxia veered out of the way of the rainbow magic, but it chased after her, arcing along and appearing in front of her. She closed her eyes as the rainbow enveloped her. A warmth came over Galaxia, not the searing heat of a sun, but the calm warmth of friends. Hope themselves had given her sets of Elements of Harmony to place on worlds. They were designed to right any wrong, and there was no part of her that needed to change. The Nightmare on the ground cackled menacingly, unaware of Galaxia’s immunity. She teleported down next to the Nightmare, ripping the swirling elements away from it and spinning them around herself. “What!?” the Nightmare screamed. Galaxia added extra destruction spells to the mix of rainbow magic as it erupted out of the elements and into the Nightmare, disintegrating each and every piece of it into ash. Galaxia breathed a sigh of relief. It had almost won. She watched as the dark gray ash hovered in the air before slowly settling down on the lunar surface. What was that thing? She shook her head and cast a soul seeking spell, spotting Luna’s soul amidst the ash and quickly reading the memories again. The last thing Luna saw before the haze was that atom with an insanely high atomic number. She thought about it for a moment and then cast a spell to show locations of all atoms nearby with an atomic number greater than ten thousand. Her spell found something. She cast magnification spells and looked at it in surprise. It had all the aspects of the nanomachines known as atoms: protons, neutrons, electrons and the many other quarks all meshed together to form one… supergiant atom. Galaxia lifted it in her magic, careful to prevent it from moving towards her or escaping. Besides soul, hydrogen was the only thing in existence. Everything else came by adding another full set of protons, electrons and other quarks to reach the higher atomic numbers beyond hydrogen. Every atom she had seen before had an atomic number of less than one hundred thousand. But this one she held tightly in her magic as it squirmed, had an atomic number of exactly one trillion. No matter how hard Galaxia and the other Kings and Queens she knew had tried to coax the atoms into smashing together into higher and higher atomic numbers, every attempt past one hundred thousand had resulted in failure. This however, shot past former records and laughed them to scorn. How did this even exist? She wrapped up the atom in layers upon layers of magical wards and protections, folding it and the Elements of Harmony inside her wings for safe keeping. Galaxia focused on the navy blue soul close by. She set Luna's soul back down on the surface of the moon, hydrogenizing the landscape immediately surrounding her. And then fusing the hydrogen into carbon, oxygen, and other elements to recreate Luna atom by atom from the memories in her soul. By the time she was finished, Luna was lying in a heap in a freshly made crater. Luna opened her eyes and immediately the strange form of Nightmare Moon took over and Luna’s body shimmered from navy into a midnight black. Galaxia stopped time and Nightmare Moon obeyed this time, leaving Galaxia time to inspect her. Luna’s memories were still fuzzy. All she remembered was the Nightmare but not distinctly how she had become it. The residual effects of a thousand years under that external control had left her mind too used to the anger and hatred. But another blast from the elements (minus the extra destruction spells Galaxia had put in last time), might set her mind straight. She was no longer being influenced by whatever that thing had been. She could be cured. Galaxia let the elements float in front of her, gazing at each one in turn before she stared at a brilliant blue stone. It matched Pinkie’s eyes perfectly. She stared at the confused, bitter eyes of Luna below her and teleported her down to the planet. Nightmare Luna didn’t waste any time. Galaxia watched as she immediately froze Celestia in place and cloaked her. The Nightmare began to speak to a terrified audience of ponies. Everypony Galaxia had wanted to be there was here, and Pinkie was particularly chipper considering the circumstances. Perhaps Galaxia could simply get rid of this confused Luna alone? It looked like Pinkie was doing fine regardless of whether she was an element bearer or not. Her mind flashed to a few of the final scenes of Pinkie’s former lives and she shuddered involuntarily. It would be better to put an extra layer of protection to make sure that cycle didn’t continue. Galaxia watched as the Nightmare escaped as a shadow of darkness. She monitored Nightmare Luna as she made her way to the library where, thankfully, the Element Bearers had gathered. Nightmare Luna listened and rushed to the old castle to search for the Elements that had destroyed her last time. Galaxia teleported ahead of it and took some old stones and put various insignia on them. She configured five stones to act as decoys for Nightmare Luna to fight against for a few moments. She unfroze time and watched as the Nightmare cast every spell Luna had ever known onto the stones, attempting to figure out how to wield them herself or, failing that, destroy them. Galaxia smiled as Nightmare Luna began an earnest endeavor to figure out how the fake elements worked. However, it kept moving back and forth between the castle and the Everfree, trying to slow down the Bearers until it had figured out in detail the secrets behind the stones. It would be at this for some time. And her Bearers, including Pinkie were becoming better friends because of the occasion. The plan was finally falling into place. The only thing strange was the real cause of the Nightmare, the atom still folded under her wings. What was it? How had it learned from her so quickly? Was there more than one? Galaxia froze, staring as Nightmare Luna started casting more and more disintegration spells onto the stones. It would be at that for some time until the Bearer’s arrived. She weighed the risks in her mind for a few moments before teleporting to the Canterlot Gardens. The statue didn’t take long to spot. If it weren’t for the memories, she wouldn’t be able to believe that this used to be some being of chaos. He was a mish mash of strange body parts. No creature would ever naturally evolve that way. What genetic advantage would that level of asymmetry even allow for? And what King or Queen would force a species to not evolve better methods for existence. Discord wasn’t made by Kings, Queens, or even evolution… it was almost as if he made himself randomly as it thought up pieces of existence it liked. Galaxia closed her eyes and performed an entire, thorough scan on the statue. Every single part of it was made of ordinary granite. And there weren’t any atoms in there with an atomic number above one hundred fifty. The statue didn’t have a soul inside of it now. Perhaps he reincarnated? What if he had been a normal pony and had changed this way with magic? The possibility was there. There were plenty of spells that were known to unicorns that could explain for most of what Discord had done to himself and did to others. If that were the case, then one of the souls on this planet would have those memories. But the only way to find that soul would be to read every soul in Equestria. It would take way too long to rewrite that spell. And besides, he had been hit with the Elements of Harmony. They may have erased the memories on his very soul in an attempt to right every wrong committed. She stared at the statue. Whatever the Elements of Harmony had done to Discord, he was unlikely to come back. With that resolved, she teleported back to the ancient castle just in time to watch as Nightmare Luna finally succeeded in destroying the fake elements. She watched Twilight slump into despair. Galaxia had left herself little choice. When Cosmos had implanted those ideas into Pinkie, it may have already disqualified this planet as being a proper experiment. And that was on top of manipulating those six into meeting in the first place. Another set of ideas wouldn’t hurt. Galaxia cast a few idea spells into her, making sure Twilight made the connections between how her friends behaved and the Elements. The rest of the bearers trotted in as Galaxia began to work very fast putting the pieces together as Twilight spoke. She moved the shattered stones underneath Nightmare Luna and got an alchemy spell ready to convert the rock to a gold alloy necklace. At the same time she unfolded her wings to work on the true Elements, molding their shapes to look like their bearers mark. As the final piece came into place, the elements started to resonate like they never had before and a rainbow blast of magic overcame Nightmare Luna. Galaxia paused time and inspected the process. The elements were sharpening Luna’s memories of the time before the atom had invaded her mind, dampening everything after that. She unfroze time and watched the transformation unfold. It took several moments for her midnight coat to fade into a soft navy, her waving magical mane weakening into a soft blue. She fetched Celestia and let her talk with the Bearers. This, out of all that Galaxia had done for her, had to be a happy memory for Pinkie to think on. As Celestia got close to Luna, Galaxia froze time, leaving her daughters exempt from the spell. Celestia beamed upon seeing her, gratitude filling her eyes. “Are you okay, Luna?” asked Galaxia, leaning down to her. Luna’s eyes watered, staring up at Galaxia in despair. “Are you going to make me reincarnate?” Galaxia dipped down low and laid next to her, reaching out a hoof to stroke her mane. “No Luna, don't worry," she said, smiling serenely. "It wasn't your fault." Luna's mouth quivered, tightening her eyes as more tears started to stream out. “But I am responsible, I chose to do this! I— I chose—” "Shh... it's okay," Galaxia said, continuing to stroke Luna's mane. “You had something influencing you.” Luna opened her eyes as Galaxia brought out the unusual atom, magnifying it for them to see. “Do you remember this?” A look of recognition flashed on Luna’s muzzle and her tears subsided into shock. “What… is that?” asked Celestia, squinting at the substance. Galaxia hesitated. “I’m not sure, I’ll have to consult with Hope about this.” “Can you tell us what they tell you,” asked Luna, her mouth agape. Galaxia stood up and stepped back from Luna, shifting her eyes away from them. “Only if they let me.” “But—” said Luna, reaching out a hoof to Galaxia. “What if something like this happens again in the future?” Galaxia thought about that, and paused her daughters to think. After some time, she attached a new monitoring spell on their souls. If anything dared alter or access them, she would find out immediately. She unfroze them and said. “Don’t worry, that won’t happen.” The apprehension on Celestia and Luna’s muzzles slowly melted into reassurance as they looked at Galaxia’s calmness. “Now go. Enjoy this world for many eons to come.” She took one last glance at Pinkie Pie, the reason she had come back to this planet in the first place. Pinkie seemed as enthusiastic as when she had left her ten years before. Her end-of-life-interview was guaranteed to be filled with many happy stories. She smiled, knowing that she had found a place for her. EpilogueWe stared at the edge for a while before resuming our teleportation, it took us a while to find the next edge. It too, happened to be a one hundred and twenty degree angle. We calculated the width and teleported six times, reaching an edge each time and finding ourselves back where we had started. We had not found a wall at the end of the multiverse. We had not found an end to infinity. We had simply found the largest universe ever. A perfect hexagonal prism floating like a massive ship in the cosmic ocean. We mourned that we had not found it, as the possibility of reaching the edge of existence itself had been a great comfort to us. To have that snatched away was painful, and a great portion of our number chose to reincarnate after the discovery. Those of us that remained pondered more deeply on that first question when we had first confronted it: What was on the other side of that wall? What was inside the hexagonal prism that was 10^463652 number of universes tall? Galaxia started her journey back to the nearest gathering of them. The entity known as Hope was a combination of quadrillions of souls linked throughout the multiverse. They shared all thoughts, all ideas, everything was known to them. Someday Galaxia would break her own reincarnation cycle and become a part of them—that is, if the memories of the souls from her universe were acceptable. It had been thousands of years since Galaxia had last spoken with Hope. The ideal King or Queen would only speak with Hope for the first few years of creation and then not talk with the entity again until the end of their universe. But Galaxia needed guidance far more often than that and this was too important to leave as a mystery. It had nearly killed her. She made her way to Hope’s domain, using the teleportation relay through millions of universes looking for the network of souls. As she neared the gathering, she changed her form back into an alicorn, giving Hope an example of the worlds she had been building. “Galaxia… it is nice to see you,” said Hope as she entered their domain. They did not await her reply before the mass of souls converged on her and examined her memories, picking apart all the data and letting it percolate throughout all members of Hope scattered across the multiverse. As Hope withdrew, they took the strange atom along with them. “Do you understand how this got to Equestria?” they asked. “N— No,” she said. They always asked questions they knew she didn’t know the answer to yet. But she knew from experience that the questions they asked always led to answers. “You carefully planned out every aspect of your universe before you started it. When is the only time you have sought out extra matter outside of your own universe?” Galaxia pondered that for a while. “The only thing I can think of is that sun in Equestria. I set up the rules for suns to work much differently than the way I wanted Equestria to behave and so I needed to grab a sun from a separate place that didn’t follow my rules.” “Precisely.” She stood there, trying to chew on that information before giving up. “I don’t follow, Hope.” They hovered the thing that used to be Nightmare Moon between them and Galaxia. “You stole it’s home and its purpose. It came down to Equestria and despised what Celestia was doing with its former body so much that it possessed Luna and turned her into Nightmare Moon.” “What do you mean, its home?” “Suns sometimes have a guiding force, Galaxia.” “That still doesn’t explain what it is.” “What do you think it is?” Galaxia stared at the thing. “Well… suns combine element one, Hydrogen, into all the other elements. But we’ve never gotten a sun to manufacture an element beyond element one hundred thousand before. However, this looks like it surpassed all previous limitations and had one trillion hydrogen atoms combine to form a single atom. How did you surpass that limit, Hope?” “We did not. This… Trillion, as we call it in this form, was not created or manufactured by us. In fact, in order to find more we have to filter through dozens of universes worth of suns, and even then we may only find one or two.” “If it’s so rare, why do you search for it?” “What is the purpose of other large elements we have given you Galaxia?” She paused, thinking it over. “Higher elements demonstrate a tiny amount of sapience the higher the atomic number. With element ten thousand used to guide plants and the highest fusible element—element one hundred thousand—used for animals.” The amalgam of souls before her moved ever so slightly, as if they were nodding a head they didn’t have in order to encourage her to proceed. “I don’t understand. We already have souls for fully sapient creatures. It’s like this element is some strange imitation of soul.” “It’s no imitation, Galaxia.” She watched in fascination as Hope held the Trillion aloft, covering it in some strange spell. Elements fused around it, intertwining and connecting seamlessly in a way that Galaxia couldn’t understand how they were arranging themselves. When Hope stopped, all that remained was a single navy blue glowing orb. It looked just like a… Soul. Author's Note The sequel to this story will also be a sequel to The Library of Discord.
PrologueLuna focused her magnification spell further, enabling her to watch the floating orbs of light move around her cavernous throne room. She stared, transfixed at their eternal dance, their myriad colors invisible to all but the wielders of the right kinds of spells. The souls drifted around, always headed toward one place or another, stuck in that space between death and rebirth. She liked to guess about what kinds of lives they must have led to give them their colors. Her night court was empty as usual, and the dreamscape didn’t have anypony that needed her help, so she spent her time keeping track of a dozen or so souls. In the midst of the dance, something almost escaped notice—something creeping ever closer. She pondered the thing carefully. It bore a striking resemblance to an atom, yet it was far too large to be so. It was not entirely unlike a soul, but it was too small to be that, either. She seized it in her magic. If it was an atom, it would obey her commands. She loosened her grip and ordered the atom to move away from her. It disobeyed, continuing its march in her direction. If it was a soul, it would have memories. She cast a spell to read its memories, but no ideas or lifetimes returned. She let whatever the thing was loose, curious to where it would go. It crept closer and closer until it reached her horn, then disappeared. A chill ran down in her spine. Had it gone inside her horn? She only knew magic that could manipulate atoms or monitor souls. Whatever it was, she would be unable to extract it. She relaxed as an idea filtered through. She would tell her sister in the morning. Better yet, why not wait and tell Celestia when she found another thing like it again? If there was such a state between soul and element, then there would be more of it. Her entire frame loosened, parts of her body growing limp as more ideas came. Or perhaps, more likely, she had imagined the thing? She was in charge of dreams. Perhaps she had experienced a daydream without realizing it. Everypony else was dreaming at this hour, lost in their own inane fantasies, instead of enjoying her beautiful night. She worked so hard to manipulate the atmosphere to make the stars twinkle just right. The moon didn’t have to shimmer onto Equestria, bathing it in moonlight every night. Luna didn’t have to have night court, or monitor the dreamscape, or any of those other wonderful things she did. Her mother had given her daughters but one instruction: to make sure that the reincarnation cycle continued unheeded. Luna went above and beyond her duty and nopony even cared. And the sun. The more Luna thought about it the more her blood began to boil. That poor sun was being controlled by Celestia. And ponies loved her for it. They frolicked in that sunshine that didn’t belong to her. That sun deserved a rest for struggling for so long against its oppressor. It should be set free. And that would leave Equestria in the beautiful embrace of her eternal night. It was the perfect solution for both of them.
Chapter 1The emotion of the moment was overwhelming, the sheer joy we felt upon reaching the end, the end of everything. We had done it, we had found it, the end of the multiverse. Our travels had led us to a wall that went on forever. And once we found out where that wall ended we would have a corner of the multiverse, and then someday we would know the exact size of the multiverse. We were happy and excited to finally have a limitation, to finally reach the end of infinity. It was in the midst of our celebration that an idea percolated throughout us: an awful, horrible, pessimistic, and downright distressing idea. What was on the other side of that wall? Queen Galaxia eyed the newly arrived sphere. She cracked it open, surprised to find the usually crowded container empty. She opened it further, casting a searching spell for any souls that might be hidden. When the spell pinged, she magnified her view until she could see that a single, glowing gray orb was the only cargo. She held it out in her magic, staring at one of the dimmest souls she had ever come across. She checked to see if the soul had been assigned to a world before, casting a spell to read its memories. A torrent of information rushed to become part of herself. She never could get used to the process, and the foreign memories drowned her for a few moments until she could categorize them and understand, eventually parsing through each of them in turn. Forty-seven lifetimes. The number was almost as staggering as the variety of the worlds the soul had been to. There was a lifetime spent on a world of sentient intertwining trees. One spent on a hive world of insect-like creatures, immense cloud worlds on giant gas planets where balloon-like beings could float up and down for a lifetime, majestic water planets of exquisite interconnected coral mountains. A technological world where beings spent their days doing whatever they wished in virtual environments of their own making. A world of isolation. A world of intertwining social systems. Worlds filled with war, peace, chaos, and harmony. It had hated all of them. Galaxia stared at it, unsure of how to proceed. She sighed before forming a temporary recreation of the soul’s last world, making another attempt at the soul’s after life interview. The soul’s last world had been a planet inhabited by legless, flat, manta ray-like birds that never touched the ground. The planet was actually a sun burning at a relatively cool temperature. Not cool enough for the birds to land on, but enough to provide thermals to lift the creatures, and their light nests. The physics of the sun planet made her head spin, it didn’t follow her ruleset, and she should not have expected it to. After all, each world was required to be an experiment in one way or another. She slid herself out of her domain and changed herself into one of the creatures, a blue, flat, broad winged bird. Galaxia breathed out onto the soul and navigated it to a temporary body she had created. The green bird started to breathe. Her temporary form hung motionless in the air, fear etched in her doleful eyes. “Hello, Asvarel,” she said, adept at speaking in the creature’s hums and beak clacks that passed for their language. “How are you?” “I’m dead... aren’t I?” Asvarel said slowly, trying to take in the vast space and the blue creature before her. “Yes, you are,” said Galaxia, changing the subject quickly to ask the most important question, the one that affirmed continuing the experiment. Any positive response would justify a King or Queen in allowing a soul to stay reincarnating on a world indefinitely. “What did you like about your life?” The bird wavered in the air before answering. “I hated it. Every moment.” The overwhelmingly negative response to such a basic question had led Kings and Queens like Galaxia to pass the soul elsewhere. She was an extreme outlier. Most souls got placed on their first world, the slowest taking at most five. Galaxia’s wings adjusted for the briefest of moments before going flat again. “But your home was so lovely, the beautiful sky above, the soft warmth of the sun below. Didn’t you enjoy that?” “No.” “What about your family, your father, or your mother? Surely you loved them very much?” “They provided for me.” “So you loved them?” “I tolerated them.” Galaxia tried to hide her pained expression. Her form was nearly incapable of producing external emotions besides from the different floating patterns. She tried to keep her position floating in a soft commanding posture. “What was your favorite moment home in Kial?” “The part where I tried to prove everyone wrong.” “By doing?” “I placed a wing on the surface. No one had ever done it before and survived.” “And how did that turn out?” Some of her tail feathers drooped. “I’m here now.” Galaxia let the full weight of the soul’s admission sink in. “I’m so sorry.” Asvarel didn’t say anything. “What is your greatest desire?” The bird didn’t answer for a few moments, before responding with humming and broken clacking noises. “To leave.” “Do you think that would make you happy?” “I don’t know.” “Do you want to be happy?” “I don’t know.” “What do you want?” The creature wavered, searching for something she desired. Galaxia awaited this response. Any desire would give a clue as to the right environment to place the soul in. “I don’t know,” repeated Asvarel. Galaxia pondered what to do for it. Most approaches had already been taken, her past lives evidence of that. And this interview wasn’t granting any clues. It was one of the conundrums of her role. If the soul mentioned a happy memory, or any clue to go on, then that would be enough happiness to justify leaving them there for lifetimes on end. The interview hadn’t helped, and Galaxia had known it wouldn’t, but that still didn’t stop her from trying. “I’m going to help you find someplace, Asvarel,” Galaxia soothed the soul. “Someplace you will be so happy that you will want to stay forever.” “I doubt that,” she said, softly floating in a more defiant pattern. “I don’t want to be anywhere. You can’t help me.” “I can help you. I’ll help you find a place where you belong.” “There is no such place.” She stared at the floating creature before speaking, an idea crossing her mind. “Perhaps something different can be arranged. You have had many lifetimes, Asvarel. If given the chance, I’m sure there’s some place or some combination of places that you could enjoy.” In the silence that followed, she removed all the barriers on Asvarel’s soul, unlocking the rest of her memories. One by one, all forty-seven other lifetimes returned to her. Galaxia floated there, watching the soul as it stopped and considered each new piece of information, each lifetime spent on each world, and how each previous interview with the other Kings and Queens ended unsatisfactorily. After a long time spent in silence the soul eventually asked, “Why are you all doing this?” “I want to find a planet for you to reincarnate on continuously. None of the worlds you have been to so far have granted a satisfactory response from you. Which lifetime, or combinations of lifetimes, did you like the best?” “None of them,” said the soul, the floating pattern of her body conveying anger. “I didn't like any of them.” “Just give me some idea of what you want. Someplace that you might find happiness enough to stay?” “I don’t want to stay anywhere,” seethed Asvarel, her feathers quivering. “I don’t want to reincarnate. I don’t want to be a part of this system. I don’t want to be ruled by you. I don’t want to be ruled by anyone! I—” her fluttering form slowed down to complete calm. “I don’t want to exist.” Galaxia had had enough. She snatched the soul out of its temporary body. The blur of the soft glowing gray orb floated in front of her. She held it aloft as she elevated up to her control space, transforming back to her preferred form. She had thought granting the soul access to the memories of her past lives would be a learning experience for it, a chance to see life—existence— differently. Instead it had shaken Galaxia. Those that desired nonexistence, the voidwishers, were tricky to deal with. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that souls cannot be destroyed. The ending of universes, big bangs, black holes, and the foulest of corrupted Kings and Queens cannot so much as scratch a soul. The most those like her could do is to give them a more complex form to interact with the universe better. The only thing to do for a soul that didn’t want to exist was to keep sending it through the reincarnation process like every other soul. It didn’t change the outcome, but it was rather discouraging. Where could she send this soul that others had not tried? Most of her current projects involved her interconnected sentient tree worlds, but a King had already tried several plant based environments. One of her sea serpent worlds? No, the soul hadn’t liked worlds like that either. Everything bipedal ended in disaster, despite a variety of social constructs. Perhaps something quadrupedal? No, species and the number of legs didn’t matter. Maybe the emotions of the place were the cause of this soul’s depression? The soul had been through an incredibly saccharine world, as well as a war-torn world. It had been through happy families, broken ones, and an orphanage. Perhaps it could be better suited in a more neutral family? Something tight-knit, but not necessarily visibly happy, a gray family with little extreme in any direction. Galaxia scanned through the worlds she was working on. She pondered for a long time, considering each of the current twelve worlds being prepared for habitation. Every single one of them shared too many similarities to worlds that the soul had already lived on. Her mind wandered off, reviewing some of the sixteen million worlds that she had personally set in motion. Ideally, they would never to be touched again until the final data harvest millions of years after all traces of life there had been extinct. Galaxia’s mind ended up locked onto a planet she hadn’t had an after life interview from in millenia. The inhabitants of the world in question were much different from the sapient plants and aquatic life forms she usually created for souls. An experiment among many that seemed to be doing fine on its own. The tiny sun that had orbited the planet had been taken from a separate universe entirely, which was a quick fix to allow for magic to control the sun directly, in defiant opposition with how she had set up suns to behave during the spell she cast for this universe’s big bang. It had been a collaboration with one of her acquaintances, Cosmos. After some successful habitation on the planet, she had placed two princesses on this world many millennia ago. She had made a habit of deciding that a few select souls she liked could be allowed special privileges, becoming one of her Princes or Princesses. Sometimes her approach was an avatar, a soul that would help the world by reincarnating along with all of the other souls on the planet. But this world was a different experiment, and with some prodding from Cosmos and special permission from Hope, she had been allowed to have the avatars of this world be immortal and skip the reincarnation process. It had been different from the norm, but every world was different from the norm in some way or another. She headed with the soul to the world to visit with them, two remarkable souls to whom she had gifted a world to oversee and cultivate for those that reincarnated there. She flowed out of her comfortable controlled space and extruded down into tangible existence, taking on the form that her princesses would find familiar. The body formed around her, a majestic, tall, almond alicorn with large billowing wings and a slender horn, her mane and tail flowing into an image of the galaxies she was in charge of, a single spiral galaxy as her cutie mark. Once she was finished with her transformation, she landed softly in front of Celestia. "Mother?" Celestia said as Galaxia’s form entered into the court, her presence radiating light and illuminating the room almost as much as the sun shining through the stained glass windows. Time had stopped and the earth pony that Celestia had been conversing with had been frozen mid-speech. Celestia whispered out at the regal, cosmic alicorn, “is that really you?” “Yes, it’s me, Celestia,” said Galaxia, a smile forming on her muzzle. Celestia flew off her throne and landed in the center of the great hall next to her mother. "I thought you would never return," Celestia said as Galaxia raised her hooves to embrace her. “How have you been? Where is your sister?" At this, Celestia froze. "Mother, I'm so, so sorry—I didn't know what to do. I—" Galaxia couldn't understand Celestia’s distress through her disheveled words and soft tears. She continued to embrace her while absorbing her memories. The history of the beaming, bright turquoise soul seeped inside Galaxia, every feeling, thought, and word of her lifetimes experienced by her in a moment. The memories came all at once. King Sombra—Discord—Nightmare Moon—the one thousand year banishment—the underlying melancholy that Celestia had been hiding for centuries, every experience, thought and action understood as clearly as if they were Galaxia’s own memories. Just like Hope had warned her, the immortality she had given Celestia and Luna had been a painful gift. The memories of the entities of Discord and Nightmare Moon baffled her and required further investigation, but for now, comforting her daughter remained her top priority. ”It’s okay Celestia, I'm here." "What else could I have done? The ponies would have had no sun to grow the food they needed to survive. I—" “You did the right thing." Galaxia said. "I... I did?" "Yes, you did. And I’m proud of you.” Galaxia held onto her hoof. The event hadn’t hurt anypony or changed the landscape of the world in any significant way, and there were always worse end results for immortals. Galaxia spoke, “I’m not often wrong about my selection for Princes and Princesses, but it looks like I was wrong in this case. Luna will have her immortality revoked, and I will arrange her next incarnation.” “No, mother, please no.” Tears started to well up in Celestia’s eyes. “You know that immortality is rarely granted. I’ve shown you and your sister how other worlds work and how special you really are. Luna knew what she was doing. I simply selected the wrong choice, she will need to reincarnate, just like every other creature here.” “But, I love her!” Celestia argued back. “She’s had almost one thousand years to reflect on what she’s done. I know she can be reformed. I know she can make it.” “What would you have me do?” “There’s a prophecy about Luna, about Nightmare Moon.” Galaxia accessed Celestia’s memory and pulled out the prophecy, repeating it aloud. “On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape.” “Mother,” Celestia began, “you are the stars. You will free her, and I will reform her. Please, at least give her that chance.” Galaxia watched as her daughter’s silent tears fell to the ground. What Celestia called a prophecy was merely a rumor she had started and leaked into the myths and legends of Equestria. More of a desire of hers than something set in stone to occur. “I suppose it was a good thing I came back.” She sighed. She had simply wanted to find a place for the soul, not worry about another one in the process. A few stray thoughts formed on the edge of her mind of how she could fix this. “I will work something out, Celestia. I might be able to save two souls if I can make this work.” “Two souls?” Celestia perked up a little. “Yes, I’m bringing another addition to the reincarnation pool of this world. I’ll be searching around for good souls to be part of its family.” “Yes, of course,” Celestia said. “And my sister?” “I only have snippets of ideas at this point, Celestia, but if I configure this correctly, then yes, I’ll be the stars that aid in her escape.”
Chapter 2We teleported some matter past the wall and to the presumable void outside the multiverse. It failed to move. One of our number tried to teleport past the wall, and they did not move. Once we were sure there was no danger of being trapped outside, we started teleporting next to the wall at ever vaster distances. Was the multiverse in the shape of an oblate spheroid, like most universes were? Galaxia slowed down time to a trickle, enveloping the entire planet in an amber glow as she felt around for the planet’s root spells. She could feel the rules she had set in place for gravity, weather, the safe usage of hammerspace, the six elements of Harmony, a backup of the memories of every soul on the planet, the dreamscape, and more. She decided against absorbing the memories of every soul on the planet, it would take some rewriting to perform that spell without Cosmos anyway. She dug around and absorbed a record of what had happened from the land itself: some griffon wars, some dragon problems, a few magical maladies, a frozen lost dictatorship caused by a malevolent unicorn; it all seemed like life was progressing here as it should in some form or another. The souls here had complete freedom like Hope demanded. What they did with that freedom was their problem. She was a little discouraged that her changelings had stopped loving each other and had started using their magic for more hedonistic purposes. That particular efficiency loophole was mostly her fault. Looking through the root spells and spotting mistakes like these made her cringe. She had gotten so much better at creating worlds since she had made Equestria. She shook her head, focusing on the task at hoof and bringing out the small gray soul in front of her. Would it like being a griffon? Most of the griffon population lived in sprawling towns, the hunters and gatherers supplying the villages in the fringes of their territory. Their lifestyle had parallels to another world where the soul was part of a trio of souls, and that had not worked out. The warring dragons did not seem a good fit either, the war torn world that the soul had lived through had not inspired her to fight and live on, but to give up. At best, it would be among the many hermit dragons that were scattered across the world, their long lifespans and vast hoards keeping them safe but stagnant. It wouldn’t work. She looked at the other sentient creatures. Perhaps a nice camel form would best suit it? She looked through the memories of a few camels, finding similarities in the happy families that the soul had already lived in and decided to look elsewhere. Minotaurs, no, their isolated pockets of civilization on islands wasn’t too different from the lifetime it had spent as an Interlacer. Cows, no. They lived such peaceful lives, like that saccharine slug world it had lived on. Perhaps a unicorn? She eyed an expecting mother in Celestia’s capital city of Canterlot. There was already a growing foal in the household, the loving father and mother watching over him. It was a wonderful family and she loved the atmosphere of the home. The soul would hate it. She flew to the countryside. There was a nice family that farmed apples for a living, a little more boring than the unicorn family in Canterlot, but quite brave, strong and hardworking. She touched the souls of the orange coated mother and the bright red father holding an equally bright red foal. Unbeknownst to them, they both had a disease that would eventually cause their deaths, leaving a foal and any other children they had behind. This was not the place for this soul, she’d already been through an orphanage. She flew toward the nearby town. There was an engaged young unicorn couple. They looked mildly uninteresting, but not quite as boring as what she was looking for. She started to randomly teleport around Equestria, taking more samples of the souls that lived there. A rainbow maned stallion pegasus that had finished first place in the Equestrian games, his fiancée in second place behind him? Too interesting. A quiet pegasi couple that designed snowflakes? They might do, they were certainly boring. But the wings on their backs made Galaxia pause. The soul’s last world had been a lifetime floating in colonies similar to cloud cities. Was a pegasi form different enough that this might work? The more she thought about it, the more wings seemed to be a terrible idea. She flew past picturesque landscapes, the rainbow of colors and the beautiful environment vividly scratching her senses. It was a little too bright. Perhaps the soul needed an entire boring world to be on, as opposed to just an environment. No, if the soul grew up in a secluded environment, it would see the bright world of Equestria outside and experience life differently. The juxtaposition was needed, that much Galaxia felt. All of this traveling was getting annoying. She had billions of souls in the queue waiting to be assigned to worlds she should have created by now. And she had put all projects on hold to pay attention to this one insignificant soul? Why? Working on this soul meant leaving entire worlds unfinished. As much as she would celebrate the opportunity to help each and every soul, there simply wasn’t time to deal with every single problem. Hope had designed it this way, or else she would have only be given responsibility over one world and not millions. As sad as its predicament was, was it really worth giving this soul such unnaturally special treatment? In her pondering, Galaxia discovered a gray, drab piece of land. Even the clouds around it were gray, and nestled in the valley of the ash-colored, rocky land were several rickety shacks. She flew down to investigate the ponies who lived there. Working in the fields was a sturdy stallion moving boulders around. A stern mare was sitting in the farmhouse, nursing a newborn filly. Upon accessing their memories, she saw that these souls were currently living through an incredibly dull incarnation. The rock farm provided a means of income for the family, but it left the ponies there with as drab and dull minds as the rocks surrounding them, an intense focus on their duties on the farm leaving them secluded to a small boring section of an otherwise bright and beautiful world. They were perfect. They were a patch of boring amidst a cacophony of other more vivid lives. They were a simple haiku surrounded by detailed novels. It took time and an open mind to understand and appreciate the beauty of this family, but even so, their dullness was just what she was looking for. The genius of her plan took hold the more she looked into the lives of Igneous Rock, Cloudy Quartz and their little fillies, Maud and Limestone. The soul would be born into this family. It would be bored, but not understand how bored it was. It would live in ignorance, unable to understand the concept of laughing, smiling, and the colorful world that surrounded its gray existence. That spark, that change when the soul would experience laughter and other emotions for the first time had to be enough to get it to appreciate existence. Galaxia flipped through the forty-seven lifetimes of the soul one more time. This idea hadn’t been tried before, and she felt confident it could work. She placed her horn on Cloudy Quartz and cast a temporary protection to prevent other souls from attempting to be a part of this family, at least not until the soul was part of it. She then placed the soul nearby, giving it free access through the protection. Sometime soon, when Igneous Rock and Cloudy Quartz had their next foal, her soul would be that of Asvarel. She had placed the soul, and there was nothing to do now but wait for the plan to come to fruition. Galaxia teleported back to a world she had finished recently, the first few souls awaiting their first and only after death interview with her.
Chapter 3After many more vast jumps and setting up a teleportation relay, we reached a consensus that the edge of the multiverse was completely straight. It made us wonder what shape the multiverse would be. A rectangular prism? A cube? The machines that make up matter are not straight on any side, neither are the suns, the galaxies, universes, or any of the naturally occurring phenomena central to existence. Whatever ancient race that had divided everything into universes and created the nanomachines, had not created the multiverse. We took satisfaction that perhaps we could surpass them yet. Galaxia was trudging through the designs for a fungi cell she was trying to nudge into an alternative evolutionary path, when she was alerted to a visitor. A King was tugging on a nearby piece of spacetime to let her know that he was coming. She left the bacterium alone and went to allow him into her subsection of spacetime. “Hiya Galaxia,” Cosmos beamed as he entered the void from which she was tampering with worlds from. At less than ten thousand universes away, his universe was the closest to her own. He had been reincarnated into a King around the same time she had, the behavior from their previous unknown lifetimes somehow warranting the role. He hovered into her controlled space. “How have you been?” Cosmos asked. “Quite fine, quite fine,” Galaxia said, looking back down onto the fungi cells. “What have you been up to lately?” “Nothing in particular.” “Aww… come on!” Cosmos said. “You’re always working on interesting projects, what are you up to right now?” “Well if you must know...” She turned her attention back to the cell designs and manipulated the view for him to see. “I have some lichen that’s starting to form a parasitic relationship with some of my trees, and I’m trying to make the relationship mutualistic, or at the very least commensalistic.” “Sounds interesting! What did you have in mind for making it mutualistic? Anything your trees are lacking?” “Nothing right now… there’s enough sunlight, most of the trees have enough carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. I’m not sure what to do. I could do nothing, but the trees really dislike the lichen and they don’t move quick enough to do anything about it.” “Hmm…” Cosmos gave the planet a once over, viewing some of the souls that inhabited the sapient, but slow as glaciers, tree creatures. “All of your trees live in the tropics of your planet?” “That’s where they choose to live.” “Why not have the lichen grow thicker around the trees furthest from the tropics? That should enable some of the trees to retain more moisture in the colder climate, increasing the spread of the trees across the planet, instead of leaving them concentrated near the equator.” “So I nudge the fungi to group more densely and to prefer colder weather?” Galaxia said, more as a fact than a question. “That is an interesting idea, but the trees hate the fungi, and if some trees start accepting the fungi to go to colder climates, it will cause a rift and lead to two separate tree species.” “Is that a problem?” “It’s just not what I wanted to happen, at least not for this world.” “There are always more worlds to create, Galaxia, just let this one evolve naturally. You can get through your quota of assigning souls to worlds much faster that way. Just spread some seeds of life on as many worlds as possible and go around to see if anything grew afterwards.” Galaxia stiffened. She disliked Cosmos’s idea of quantity over quality. As if assigning souls was a race instead of a delicate procedure. “Yes, but I still want the souls that go through my worlds to have enjoyable experiences, otherwise, what’s the point?” “I don’t think there’s a question in the multiverse that’s more difficult to answer than that one, Galaxia.” She turned back to the lichen cell, contemplating his idea before finally asking, “So, why did you come here?” “I just wanted to drop by and say hi,” he said happily, “As well as check up on some of the worlds we made when we spent some time together a few millennia ago.” She had nearly forgotten those joint projects, the memories of making those worlds bubbling up to the surface. “That gaseous plasma planet never evolved life like you thought it would. An asteroid impact forced most of the inhabitants of that silicon planet underground; they could be dead or have evolved to be accustomed to the darkness by this point, I’d have to check.” “Oh…” said Cosmos, a little saddened. “How about that pony world we made? I know we tried a different approach to your avatar system by making two of the Princesses immortal. How are they working out? How have they—” Sudden realization came over her, she stopped examining the lichen cell structure and stared at him. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “I nearly forgot! What year is it!?” “It’s 200789805—” he started to rattle off before she cut him off. “Sorry, I didn’t mean multiverse standard time, I meant for Equestria. I need to get over there now and see what’s happening.” “Mind if I come along?” he asked. “Sure, you helped me build the place.” She tore a portal to Equestria open and changed to her tangible alicorn form, casting the standard invisibility spells. Cosmos filed in after her, a stallion alicorn, appearance like the very stars in the cosmos. “Do you mind filling me in?” Galaxia placed her horn against his, passing the memories of all the souls she had analyzed from the last time she was here. She started flying to the rock farm. “Hey wait! Give me time to all process this!” Cosmos chased after her. “So Luna is on this planet’s moon? And we’re going to visit that soul I gave you a few years back?” “You gave that soul to me?” “Yeah, I hoped that since my bird world didn’t work out for it, you would find something in one of your worlds. I didn’t think you would send it here though, Hope prefers we leave worlds in progress alone,” said Cosmos as he flew alongside Galaxia, peering at the vast green landscapes and lush forests of Equestria below him. “Oh good! The pegasi still build cloud cities,” Cosmos said after flying past Cloudsdale. “Do you remember when we tested those out, Galaxia? We nearly had to rewrite how water molecules behave in this world to allow clouds to support pegasi and griffons.” Galaxia ignored him, racing to the rock farm, anxious to see how the soul had turned out, she hoped she wasn’t too late to nudge her cutie mark to being something else besides a rock. She finally spotted the rock farm. A pink dot stuck out against the drab landscape. “Is that Asvarel?” Cosmos asked as he caught up with her. They neared the pink form that was shuffling rocks around with her muzzle. They landed next to her, remaining invisible to the filly. “She’s pink!” Galaxia said in surprise. “Are you sure that’s her?” Cosmos asked as Galaxia landed and went straight to access the creature’s memories to confirm. The soul’s current form was a filly named Pinkamena Diane Pie. “It’s her alright!” Galaxia said as Cosmos went to view the memories of the current incarnation. “Pinkamena, huh? Well she certainly is pink,” Cosmos said, eyeing the small filly. “And her color is a fluke of genetics too. Well isn’t she something. What did you have in mind for her?” “I thought I would just get her to see the outside world somehow. She has no memories of laughing or smiling, just these rocks and the gray landscape.” “There’s not a lot of options, Galaxia, at least nothing natural,” he said, looking around at the rock farm, rifling through the memories. “There are no books, little imagination, and it looks like little Pinkamena doesn’t have any curiosity about the world around her.” “That was my plan, Cosmos. Now how do I get her interested in the world outside? At least enough to get her a cutie mark.” “Well…” he said, putting a hoof to his muzzle and looking up, and then back to her. “This whole thing is a little unorthodox, Galaxia, exactly how far did you want to intervene?” Galaxia stared at the filly, watching as she kicked one of the rocks and sighed dejectedly. She remembered the myriad of tragic previous lifetimes, determined to change the sad cycle. “Whatever it takes,” she said, turning to look at him. “Alright then,” he said, grinning at her and looking up, “these gray clouds stay pretty consistent, but there aren’t pegasi to move them.” “So we find some pegasi?” Galaxia asked. “Yeah! Let’s go with that!” Cosmos thrust off the ground, spread his starry wings open, and started flying to Cloudsdale, Galaxia dashing after him. “We can’t exactly have Pinkamena’s father hire a pegasus,” Galaxia began. “The rock farm doesn’t even need the sun like most farms do.” “So we don’t have him hire a pegasus. Why not have a gust of wind blow the clouds out of the way? Pinkamena will see the blue sky for the first time.” “I don’t think that’s flashy enough,” Galaxia said as they reached the outskirts of Cloudsdale. “We want to really spark some curiosity within her.” “Well she’s such a pink pony, and she’s never really seen color before, so let’s give her some color!” “How?” Galaxia asked. Cosmos eyed a rainbow maned filly lining up on a cloud outside Cloudsdale, assuming the position of a pony about to race as fast as possible. “Let’s give her all the colors at once! That should be flashy enough.” Cosmos flashed Galaxia a grin before racing to get to the rainbow maned filly. “What!?” Galaxia said as a yellow filly with a soft pink mane lowered a flag, starting the race. “I’m just gonna give this rainbow filly here a huge burst of magic,” Cosmos said, racing alongside the flying filly, Galaxia right behind him. “Ooh! I like this one, she’s fast!” Cosmos took a shortcut and flew to a ring of clouds close to the ground. He cast an invisible, intensely magical aura inside it. “Hold on a moment, how much magic are you planning on giving her?” Galaxia asked as the filly dived toward the ground. “You’re right, I’m not giving her nearly enough,” said Cosmos. He pumped even more magic into the cloud ring, the aura of magic so strong it would start piercing the visible spectrum at any moment, the rainbow maned filly seconds away. “That’s too much magi—” was all Galaxia could say before the rainbow pegasi bounded into the gate. All at once, a cacophonous rainbow shockwave jutted outward from that point, the rainboom carrying an intense powerful magic rippling across the land of Equestria. “Wow!” was all Cosmos could say as he excitedly went to chase after the rainboom, hurtling himself along in front of the sheer tsunami of magic. Galaxia chased him, wary to venture into the mess of magic that Cosmos had created. She flew around wave of magic and finally caught up to him. “Where are you going!?” “I’m going to go see Pinkamena’s reaction, of course!” Cosmos said. He dived down and landed next to Pinkamena, closing his eyes in anticipation as the roaring rainboom was about to hit. But the rainboom never did. He opened up his eyes to see Galaxia staring condescendingly at him. The rainboom stopped above them mere meters before it would pass. “I’m not letting any atom on this world move another nanometer until you tell me what you’re planning on doing to Pinkamena,” Galaxia said, a huff of annoyance escaping her. “Relax, I’m just gonna give her an earth pony magic boost,” he said, a happy grin plastered on his face. “Extra farming power?” Galaxia asked. “No, just some party powers,” Cosmos raised a hoof to his muzzle, ticking off the abilities. “Time and space manipulation... an ability to catch glimpses of other worlds... some precognition... and general silliness.” He added. “Nothing too big.” “You put all that in a rainboom!?” “Well yeah! Well… uhh… at least I set some of the magic to only go into Pinkamena here. It is a rainboom, no telling exactly where all of it will end up,” Cosmos said through a sheepish smile. “I can’t allow this. The soul has been depressed through all of her lifetimes, I wanted a massive change for her, but this is too much. Give me time to calculate the best course of action.” Cosmos’s horn glowed as he told every atom to continue, unpausing time, the roaring rainboom engulfing Galaxia as— “Cosmos! What are you thinking!? We have a magical blast permeating all of Equestria and you’re just gonna let it roll on through!?” Galaxia had stopped time again and was berating Cosmos through the rainbow blast. “How can you—” He smiled and unstopped time again. She stopped it again, the blast directly in front of a very surprised Pinkamena. Galaxia and Cosmos kept stopping and unstopping time. Their back and forth spells like foals on opposites sides of a room flipping light switches that belonged to the same light. “WILL.” Time stopped, the rainboom engulfing Pinkamena and making her mane stream backwards. “YOU.” Time started, the magic of the rainboom taking hold. “STOP.” Time stopped, the rainboom past Pinkamena, her straight mane starting to frizz. “THAT!” Time started. Time stopped again and Pinkamena’s mane had gone completely frizzy, a large smile beginning to form across her face. “To be honest, those last few spells unstopping time were all you. You should have been using a spell that only stops time, not the spell that flips the states,” Cosmos snickered. “And you wonder why we don’t collaborate more often,” Galaxia muttered under her breath, starting time up again. “I’ll just sit here and watch Pinkamena then.” “Call her Pinkie, Galaxia! That name fits so much better for her now. And come over here quick, that is the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on one of these ponies before!” Cosmos said as he watched her smile, her eyes reflecting the beautiful rainbow in the sky, a rainbow that Cosmos was slightly altering. “I just had that rainbow teach her to smile!” Cosmos grinned before scrunching his face. “And… I might’ve given her a glimpse into the creation of Equestria in the process, but I don’t think it’ll have any lasting effect.” “You—wait, what?” said Galaxia flustered. “Nevermind, forget I asked. What’s going to happen now?” “Just watch! I gave Pinkie all the ideas, and now she’ll figure out how to throw her first party ever!” “A party?” said Galaxia, almost annoyed. “Really?” “Just you wait, it’s gonna be the best party ever! It’ll be her own ‘end of wandering worlds’ party!” They watched as Pinkie Pie went to the farmhouse and started to think. “She’s getting ideas!” he crooned, watching as Pinkie imagined up some balloons, the mere act of wanting the balloons willing them into existence. “Thousands of years, you have barely visited this place a few times since we created it, and you spend your first time here in ages watching a pony plan a party?” “This is fun! And besides, I gotta make sure she’s not abusing her newfound powers.” “You do that, Cosmos,” Galaxia said. “I need to see what havoc you’ve accidentally wrought elsewhere.” Galaxia spread her nebulous wings, propelling her upwards and flying quickly through Equestria, looking for signs of something amiss. There didn’t appear to be any lasting effects on the landscape, just a few shell shocked animals. If something had gone wrong, Celestia would know. She zipped to Canterlot, stopping time and appearing in front of her. She had been talking to a small lavender filly that was positively bursting at the seams in excitement. “Hello, Celestia,” Galaxia began, “how are you?” Celestia was disoriented at the sudden stop in the flow of time, interrupting her conversation with one of the most promising fillies she had ever admitted to her school. Once Celestia realized what had happened, she embraced Galaxia, “Mother! You just missed the most amazing event!” Celestia motioned to the unicorn bubbling over in excitement and wonder, “This filly passed the rock portion of our entrance exam with flying colors!” “Flying colors?” Galaxia asked, cringing. “Yes! A rainboom went through Canterlot at the moment she was taking her entrance exam. Somehow, she was able to transfigure a rock we painted like an egg into an actual dragon!” Celestia said, pausing, ”and turn her parents into cacti.” Transfiguring the rock into an entire dragon must have taken a ton of magic. How much had Cosmos put inside that rainboom? “Her name is Twilight Sparkle, mother, and she is going to be one of my best students.” Galaxia nudged the filly to analyze her lilac soul. Before this life, her previous three incarnations had been gifted with a lot a magical ability. She had already attended Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns twice before. The raw magical ability of the filly had nearly septupled in power permanently from the rainboom’s effects, and the cutie mark allocation algorithm had celebrated the occasion by granting Twilight stars on her flanks. “A cutie mark from that rainboom…” Galaxia spoke softly to herself. An idea crossed her mind and she sparked her horn to life. The room they were in, all of Canterlot, all of Equestria, and then finally the entire planet was enveloped in an amber magical glow. Galaxia started feeling around for the root spells that she had set in place for the planet. She felt around past hoof dexterity spells and plant magic and found the system that gave cutie marks to ponies. She refreshed herself on how the cutie mark allocation spell worked, and made a list of the last ponies that had gotten their cutie marks. In addition to Twilight, there were two other fillies that had gotten their marks at almost the exact same time. And three more, including Pinkie, that were in the process of getting theirs directly because of the effects of the rainboom. Six ponies… six elements. Galaxia smiled and a few ideas popped up in her mind on what she should do. During this entire process, Celestia watched, awed at the display of magic that was beyond even her comprehension. “What did that spell do?” Galaxia opened her eyes, staring at her. “I was refreshing myself on some of the rules I set in place for this world, including the cutie mark allocation algorithm. It gave me a few ideas. Do you currently have an apprentice, Celestia?” “My last apprentice didn’t turn out so well,” said Celestia. “I don’t think I’ll take on another for some time.” “I request that you reconsider. This new student of yours has a lot of potential. I want you to take her as a new protégé.” “What do you want me to prepare her for?” “She needs to be a powerful magic user. If that cutie mark is what I think it is, she is destined to be the bearer of the Element of Magic.” “Element of Magic? As in, the Elements of Harmony?” Celestia asked, taken aback at the mention of the most powerful weapon she had at her disposal. “Correct.” “But only the bearer of the element of magic? Shall I be wielding the other five?” “I’m still figuring that part out, Celestia. If you do bear an element of Harmony again, it would only be one of them. The magic system of this world runs on relationships, particularly friendship. The more souls involved, and the tighter the bond between the bearers, the better. The ideal amount of bearers would be six, one for each element of harmony. But this configuration raises the chances of failure. If any of them don’t like each other the system could end up very weak. However, if they all get along the strength they give each other can only multiply.” “So who are these bearers?” Celestia asked. “I’ll tell you when I’ve found the rest of them.” Without a word more, Galaxia teleported away and unstopped time, leaving Celestia to readjust to the conversation she had been having with her new student, Twilight Sparkle. * * * Accessing that cutie mark spell made the process of hunting down those fillies much easier. The first filly to check up on was named Rarity. The cutie mark allocation spell was intent on this filly getting a cutie mark in fashion. She descended from above enough to examine the filly’s soul, all while the white unicorn tugged and carried a mess of jewels. The most recent memory was the most remarkable. The spell had dragged the poor filly to a big rock, supposedly to have her wait for the ideal moment to see the jewels stashed inside, which was when the rainboom hit. Besides that, the memories were fairly unremarkable, she was the daughter of one of the couples she had rifled through when searching for a boring family for that soul. Five past lives, including a theatre teacher, politician, architect, and two lifetimes spent as a nurse. Was she Element of Harmony material? Galaxia thought about it for a moment and then teleported to where a filly named Fluttershy was. The emerald forest was teeming with life, and all of that life was rapt with attention on a single gangly pink maned pegasus. Fluttershy was talking with the animals, somehow tapping into a rare branch of pony magic that allowed for such communication. She stepped closer and placed her horn on the crown of Fluttershy’s head, examining her soul. There were only three past lives, a carpenter earth pony that had constructed furniture, a dragon that had died in infancy, and an earth pony forester. Her current incarnation offered an interesting study into given names and how the ponies given them turned out. Her soul would make a great statistical report for one of the many studies Galaxia was conducting on how souls behavior changed over lifetimes based on names, though the tiny sample size of only three lifetimes was not enough for statistical significance. She looked forward to seeing the full data set when Equestria eventually ended. She teleported again, envisioning the orange Applejack. The spot she arrived at was deserted, so she flew up high and followed the road until she spotted the filly. The spell had set up Applejack for a long life of farming apples with the rest of her family. Racing alongside the filly and accessing the soul’s memories, Galaxia perused the previous lifetimes. Twenty lifetimes, most of them being earth pony farmers, but there were several as schoolteachers, a weather pegasi, two lifetimes as camels, once a griffon, and once a short lived life as a dragon. Applejack was heading to Ponyville, a place of mourning ever since her parents had both died. This soul was strong in every sense of the word, a fine candidate for an element bearer, but also the hitch in her plans. Applejack was destined to work on a farm in Ponyville. For her to be an element bearer meant that every other pony would have to move there. Fairly simple for Rarity, she already lived in Ponyville. Fluttershy wanted to leave Cloudsdale anyway now that she had seen the ground. Galaxia would just have to make sure everypony else ended up in Ponyville somehow. Her next stop was Rainbow Dash, the pony that Cosmos had infused with an absurd amount of magic. It was hard to find her at first, since the blue pegasi was still racing around trying to create another sonic rainboom. She caught up with her and was flooded with another set of memories as she examined her soul. Nine lifetimes, all of them with wings, five lifetimes as a pegasi with jobs ranging from weather control to beekeeping, three lifetimes as a griffon, and one especially long two thousand year period as a dragon. Galaxia didn’t like seeing all these ponies stories like this, all of them right in the middle. Under the guidance of Hope, Galaxia made sure that the souls under their care were put under as ideal conditions as possible and then they let the planet go for a couple million years. They only came back when the planet, or the galactic civilization that followed, was good and dead. They harvested all the souls, carefully recording all of the data about their lifetimes, analyzing how they had ended and why. Once done she would send the souls back to Hope, who would wipe the memories and send them back to other Kings and Queens. Reading the stories of the souls now felt like starting a book series without the last book having been published yet. Rainbow Dash flitted away, completely unaware that all her thoughts, feelings, desires, and forgotten lifetimes had just been scanned. She wracked her mind with how to ensure that Rainbow Dash would inevitably move to Ponyville, deciding instead to procrastinate by visiting Pinkie Pie and Cosmos again. “How goes the party planning?” asked Galaxia as she appeared next to Cosmos. “Ooh! You came just in time. Look at all of this,” he said, gesturing to the streamers and the cake and the various party paraphernalia decorating the silo. Pinkie Pie had been hard at work placing everything just right, still working tirelessly as Galaxia and Cosmos watched, music playing from some unseen location. “She thinks she invented the entire concept of a party,” Cosmos said. “Cosmos, have you been thinking at all about the lack of freedom you’re giving her?” Galaxia asked. “You said ‘Whatever it takes,’ Galaxia,” said Cosmos “Yeah…” I didn’t think we’d take it this far though. “We’re supposed to ensure that the souls in our worlds are allowed absolute freedom so their data won’t be skewed by the end.” “And we’re given loose guidelines about that for a reason. A forty-eight lifetime soul still without a home planet is grounds for some sort of intervention. I gave her ideas. It’s up to her to act upon them or not. Besides, having an idea in a mind is one of the hardest things I think these souls have to deal with. There could be hundreds of ideas bouncing around in the mind of a pony all at once. The true freedom for them is picking out the most important ideas to try to put into practice first. I showed Pinkie Pie a lot of information at once, it’s up to her to interpret those ideas and choose to act on them.” “So you think we have given her a real choice in this matter?” “I would say so.” “Interesting, ideally Hope will agree,” said Galaxia, staring at the pink pony decorating a party she shouldn’t know how to create, the first step to a lifetime friendship with other ponies that Galaxia would have to manipulate to cross paths with her. “What’s got you worried?” Cosmos asked, staring at her. She sighed, surveying the concerned expression on Cosmos’s muzzle before admitting her problem. “I need to somehow give four ponies a nudge to go live in Ponyville. They need to become friends with two ponies that already live there, and they need to wield the Elements of Harmony and defeat Nightmare Moon when I — or should I say ‘the stars’ — aid in her escape.” “I beg your pardon?” Galaxia touched her horn to his and transferred the memories of the last few hours into his mind. “Nightmare moon…” Cosmos began. “I almost forgot about that. Her and that Discord statue thing really need to be looked into. I take it you haven’t even checked on Luna yet?” “No… not yet. To be honest, I don’t know why I’m spending so much time here for this one soul. You as well, we have to get out of here and back to work on getting other worlds up and running.” “I suppose you’re right,” Cosmos said. “We don’t have time to waste on this, does she get her cutie mark or not?” asked Galaxia, her horn glowing as she commanded all of the atoms on the planet to speed up, the sun rushing down, the moon momentarily taking it’s place, all the while, a pink blur was adding more decorations and ideas into the barn. Speeding up atoms could mess up a planet, but a short leap wouldn’t hurt in the long run. When the sun came up again Galaxia slowed down the atoms back to their normal speeds, time returning to normal. Over the noise of the musical instruments that seemed to be playing from nowhere, Galaxia heard a voice outside of the barn. “Pinkamena Diane Pie, is that you?” asked Cloudy Quartz. Pinkie flung the door open, confetti and balloons escaping out of the barn as Pinkie yelled, “Mom! I need you and dad and the sisters to come in. Quick!” “Wait, her family is going to come to this?” asked Galaxia. “It is a party! And they’re the only ponies Pinkie knows, so of course it’s a party for her and her family,” Cosmos said. “I specifically chose this family for how boring they were, how are they going to react to all this?” The door flung open. The stern faces of the Pie family had a split second to react to the change in scenery in the room before Pinkie shouted out, “Surprise!” “Do you like it? It’s called a party!” said Pinkie, the jovial attitude in her voice masking her fears. The stern looks on the Pie family turned to shock as their gaze shifted around toward the cake, the balloons, the confetti, and the whole transformation of their now unfamiliar barn. Their mouths started to wobble as if they were buildings ready to be toppled over any second by a stray breeze. “What do we do!?” asked Galaxia, a twinge of panic carrying in her voice. “They have to love this!” “Shhh… it’s alright Galaxia. I’m sure it’ll all work out,” Cosmos said. The silence continued and Pinkie Pie started to deflate, melancholy replacing her happy attitude and dragging her smile down into the depths of a frown. “Oh, you don’t like it.” “Cosmos, we have to do something.” “Need I remind you that you were the one worrying about not giving ponies enough freedom.” The silence and the wobbles wiggled for a while until Pinkie’s parents and sisters pasted huge smiles on their faces, most likely the first smiles of the entire family’s life. Pinkie inflated, excitement taking over and bringing her back into high spirits, “You like it!” And then she was suddenly dancing with her family and shouting, “I’m so happy!” Galaxia could feel the magic of the cutie mark allocation spell seep into the barn and deposit three balloons onto Pinkie Pie’s flank. “Did… did that just work?” asked Galaxia. “I think it did!” said Cosmos. “You did it!” yelled Galaxia, grabbing him and starting to dance along with everypony else in the room. “No, we did it! I just stuck Pinkie on a solar planet, hoping she’d like it. It was you who wanted to give her the divine treatment!” “I guess I did. And it worked, she got her cutie mark! Now all that’s left is to make sure the rest of her life is this happy.” “Wait, hold on there, do you plan on following her entire life?” Cosmos slowed down his dance, looking at Galaxia. “No, just enough to get her on track. To let her choose,” said Galaxia following Cosmos’s slow rhythm until they both had stopped completely, staring into each other’s eyes for a few moments, enjoying the sounds of the small party around them, leaning closer. “Well… it’s been fun,” Cosmos said, opening a portal back to his own universe, turning to leave. “Anything else I can help you with before I go?” She stared at him, unable to say anything for a moment, before shaking her head and finally asking, “How do I get four ponies to go to Ponyville of their own free will?” “I think you need to learn the fine art of delegation, Galaxia. If you can’t think of anything, ask Celestia to take care of it, that’s why we have Princesses.” And then he jumped up through the portal. His alicorn form dissolved into something else in the void between his universe and this one, what form Galaxia didn’t see before the portal collapsed away. She turned back to Pinkie’s party and watched the partygoers for a few moments before teleporting back to Canterlot. Celestia was preparing for another day when Galaxia commanded the atoms to slow to a trickle and appeared in front of her. “Celestia, I’ve found you the six element bearers,” Galaxia said, the surprise on Celestia’s face relaxing and turning into excitement as Galaxia detailed whom she had found. “My task to you is to nudge these six ponies to Ponyville, where Applejack and Rarity already live. Make sure they are in a position to become friends with each other. Those six ponies and I can handle the rest. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to reform Luna afterwards though.” “I can do that,” said Celestia. “Just be the stars that aid in her escape.”
Chapter 4We lost the wall. Granted, we were jumping absurdly huge distances, punching in higher and higher numbers into our teleportation spell. It would eventually fail when we had reached a corner of the multiverse. But we had gone too far and the wall was gone. We jumped back to our previous relay point, reporting the odd discovery to the rest of the collective. We halved the amount of our jump and the wall remained with us. We kept teleporting, trying to narrow down the position where the wall ceased. It took a while, but we eventually found where the wall met with another wall. Instead of enclosing us inside, leaving the multiverse smaller, it jutted outward at a one hundred and twenty degree angle. Galaxia was in the midst of watching a species of twelve legged, spider-like species try to discover how to manipulate atoms. The race had done a fantastic job of creating smaller and smaller machines, but eventually all of their work tapered off due to the size of atoms themselves. The best scientists of the species seemed to be on the cusp of understanding that atoms had been nanomachines themselves all along, just as programmable as any machine they could build themselves. It was a crucial step in all sorts of scientific breakthroughs that would send this species traversing through deep space to discover all the habitable galaxies that she had left as presents for them to discover once they reached this point. Her concentration on their effort was broken when a reminder floated to her attention to release Luna from Equestria’s moon. She readjusted her thinking and tried to put the plight of those hard working scientists out of her mind in order to concentrate on Luna. She teleported to Equestria and stopped time, landing in front of Celestia. She could say hello afterwards. Galaxia touched her horn to Celestia’s and gathered all the memories of the last ten years. The great rush of knowledge put her in the right frame of mind for how Equestria worked, as well as gave her good information about how Celestia had nudged those six ponies to Ponyville. She had cut it very close by having Twilight come there the very eve of letting Luna go. But Galaxia did have to give Celestia credit for making the five ponyville ponies be in charge of key aspects of the celebration so that Twilight would have to meet them. She breathed in and out and then teleported to the moon. She landed on the desolate rock, the craters littering the landscape, complete silence and darkness enveloping the moon. After casting a soul seeking spell, she discovered a black, menacing wraith lying completely still among the craters. The strange creature was a far cry from the Luna that Galaxia and Cosmos had nurtured into becoming an immortal Princess and protector of Equestria. Galaxia kept herself invisible to the creature, getting close enough to it to examine her soul. She read Luna’s memories, but they weren’t nearly as tangible an experience as Galaxia was used to. The last one thousand years had all been subdued, as if Luna herself were in some kind of dream, not entirely experiencing all of her actions. Every memory felt fuzzy and incomplete. They were the kind of memories that get tossed out during data harvests as outliers and irrelevant due to how messed up the data was. It was like trying to read a book that had some of its original pages ripped out and pages from a completely different book glued back in to replace them. Galaxia kept her horn on Luna’s, focusing on her memories and looking for the crossing point between perfect memory and the haze. It was somewhere after the start of the diarchy, but before the banishment. When was that threshold? She kept rifling through the memories until the initial nudge of the haze in memory started to appear. Luna had been in her throne room at the time, watching the nanoscopic souls float around. But there was something else that she had seen. It took Galaxia a few moments to recognize it for what it was and when she did she had to stop herself from screaming. It was an atom, a simple ordinary atom. An almost perfectly spherical nanomachine like other atoms, with only one harsh difference: it was by far larger than any other atom she had seen in her life. And it… floated into Luna? Galaxia stepped away from the wraith, still trying to unravel the situation. Without warning the creature opened its slitted eyes and blasted Galaxia with a shockwave of midnight magic. She rushed out of the way, but not before her body burned from the foreign spell. She yelped in pain and flew back from it. She landed and picked up some of the rocks on the ground, disintegrating them back to hydrogen, and fusing them into higher elements to place in her own body as needed. The creature’s eyes followed her. She uncloaked and recloaked, making sure the invisibility spells were working. The wraith rounded on her, flying into the air and shooting off more of the radiation, sending shockwave after shockwave after her. “I can still see you,” it said. Galaxia used her time stop spell, ordering all atoms in this solar system to a complete standstill. Every single one obeyed. Except for the wraith. “I don’t have to obey your orders!” it cackled. Galaxia spun out of the way of more of the magic. What was this thing? It was made of atoms, and atoms obey. And it had a soul, and souls do what they’re told. What was going on? She teleported to the opposite side of the moon to think. Her eyes widened as she heard the sound of a teleportation spell behind her, the wraith had followed her. There was no way it could have known how to follow her. Only a soul seeking spell could be used to do that. As Galaxia skirted around it’s attacks she scanned the creature’s horn. It was using a soul seeking spell on her. But Luna could not have used that spell, Galaxia had never taught it to her. “You’re... not Luna. What are you?” asked Galaxia. “Me, dear Queen? Since my sun was stolen from me, I suppose I’ll be the moon,” she smiled, fangs appearing menacingly. “Nightmare Moon.” Nightmare Moon cast a time stop spell on Galaxia, the atoms that made up her current form slowed to a stop. Her eyes widened in panic as another burst of midnight magic was about to engulf her. She fled out in basic form, a cream colored orb of light about the size of a hoof tearing away from under Galaxia’s body. She landed on the Lunar surface, disintegrating her surroundings back into hydrogen and forming herself back into Galaxia. She stared up from the crater she had made just in time to see her previous form melt into ash. “How do you know that spell?” screamed Galaxia. The wraith smiled. “While you were scanning Luna’s soul for memories, I was scanning yours.” Galaxia leapt backwards as another blast of the time stop spell almost enclosed around her. What the Nightmare said was impossible, only a King, Queen or Hope itself could read her soul. How much had it read? How many of Galaxia’s own spells did it know? Galaxia dropped all her defenses and started shooting off her own spells at the Nightmare. Nothing could destroy a soul, so obliterating everything else about this creature wouldn’t be a problem. She just had to do it fast, the more time it had the more it could experiment with the spells in Galaxia’s memory. One of her hydrogenization spells hit. The Nightmare screamed as part of the elements in it's body broke down to the smallest element. Its ethereal midnight tail severed in half. The Nightmare used its horn to slash in the air, opening a portal. Before Galaxia had any time to react, it slipped away inside and disappeared. For a brief moment, everything was calm. Galaxia panicked and cast a soul seeking spell. If it had some of her memories it could be anywhere, any galaxy, any universe. The elements of harmony had cut off Luna’s main method of teleportation for a thousand years, but Galaxia’s own portal spell circumvented that. Galaxia heard a tear in the fabric of space rip behind her. She jumped out of the way and watched it appear again, enveloping the six elements of harmony in it’s midnight magic. Galaxia’s eyes widened. Nightmare Moon spun the elements around itself, a rainbow jet of light erupting from her. Galaxia veered out of the way of the rainbow magic, but it chased after her, arcing along and appearing in front of her. She closed her eyes as the rainbow enveloped her. A warmth came over Galaxia, not the searing heat of a sun, but the calm warmth of friends. Hope themselves had given her sets of Elements of Harmony to place on worlds. They were designed to right any wrong, and there was no part of her that needed to change. The Nightmare on the ground cackled menacingly, unaware of Galaxia’s immunity. She teleported down next to the Nightmare, ripping the swirling elements away from it and spinning them around herself. “What!?” the Nightmare screamed. Galaxia added extra destruction spells to the mix of rainbow magic as it erupted out of the elements and into the Nightmare, disintegrating each and every piece of it into ash. Galaxia breathed a sigh of relief. It had almost won. She watched as the dark gray ash hovered in the air before slowly settling down on the lunar surface. What was that thing? She shook her head and cast a soul seeking spell, spotting Luna’s soul amidst the ash and quickly reading the memories again. The last thing Luna saw before the haze was that atom with an insanely high atomic number. She thought about it for a moment and then cast a spell to show locations of all atoms nearby with an atomic number greater than ten thousand. Her spell found something. She cast magnification spells and looked at it in surprise. It had all the aspects of the nanomachines known as atoms: protons, neutrons, electrons and the many other quarks all meshed together to form one… supergiant atom. Galaxia lifted it in her magic, careful to prevent it from moving towards her or escaping. Besides soul, hydrogen was the only thing in existence. Everything else came by adding another full set of protons, electrons and other quarks to reach the higher atomic numbers beyond hydrogen. Every atom she had seen before had an atomic number of less than one hundred thousand. But this one she held tightly in her magic as it squirmed, had an atomic number of exactly one trillion. No matter how hard Galaxia and the other Kings and Queens she knew had tried to coax the atoms into smashing together into higher and higher atomic numbers, every attempt past one hundred thousand had resulted in failure. This however, shot past former records and laughed them to scorn. How did this even exist? She wrapped up the atom in layers upon layers of magical wards and protections, folding it and the Elements of Harmony inside her wings for safe keeping. Galaxia focused on the navy blue soul close by. She set Luna's soul back down on the surface of the moon, hydrogenizing the landscape immediately surrounding her. And then fusing the hydrogen into carbon, oxygen, and other elements to recreate Luna atom by atom from the memories in her soul. By the time she was finished, Luna was lying in a heap in a freshly made crater. Luna opened her eyes and immediately the strange form of Nightmare Moon took over and Luna’s body shimmered from navy into a midnight black. Galaxia stopped time and Nightmare Moon obeyed this time, leaving Galaxia time to inspect her. Luna’s memories were still fuzzy. All she remembered was the Nightmare but not distinctly how she had become it. The residual effects of a thousand years under that external control had left her mind too used to the anger and hatred. But another blast from the elements (minus the extra destruction spells Galaxia had put in last time), might set her mind straight. She was no longer being influenced by whatever that thing had been. She could be cured. Galaxia let the elements float in front of her, gazing at each one in turn before she stared at a brilliant blue stone. It matched Pinkie’s eyes perfectly. She stared at the confused, bitter eyes of Luna below her and teleported her down to the planet. Nightmare Luna didn’t waste any time. Galaxia watched as she immediately froze Celestia in place and cloaked her. The Nightmare began to speak to a terrified audience of ponies. Everypony Galaxia had wanted to be there was here, and Pinkie was particularly chipper considering the circumstances. Perhaps Galaxia could simply get rid of this confused Luna alone? It looked like Pinkie was doing fine regardless of whether she was an element bearer or not. Her mind flashed to a few of the final scenes of Pinkie’s former lives and she shuddered involuntarily. It would be better to put an extra layer of protection to make sure that cycle didn’t continue. Galaxia watched as the Nightmare escaped as a shadow of darkness. She monitored Nightmare Luna as she made her way to the library where, thankfully, the Element Bearers had gathered. Nightmare Luna listened and rushed to the old castle to search for the Elements that had destroyed her last time. Galaxia teleported ahead of it and took some old stones and put various insignia on them. She configured five stones to act as decoys for Nightmare Luna to fight against for a few moments. She unfroze time and watched as the Nightmare cast every spell Luna had ever known onto the stones, attempting to figure out how to wield them herself or, failing that, destroy them. Galaxia smiled as Nightmare Luna began an earnest endeavor to figure out how the fake elements worked. However, it kept moving back and forth between the castle and the Everfree, trying to slow down the Bearers until it had figured out in detail the secrets behind the stones. It would be at this for some time. And her Bearers, including Pinkie were becoming better friends because of the occasion. The plan was finally falling into place. The only thing strange was the real cause of the Nightmare, the atom still folded under her wings. What was it? How had it learned from her so quickly? Was there more than one? Galaxia froze, staring as Nightmare Luna started casting more and more disintegration spells onto the stones. It would be at that for some time until the Bearer’s arrived. She weighed the risks in her mind for a few moments before teleporting to the Canterlot Gardens. The statue didn’t take long to spot. If it weren’t for the memories, she wouldn’t be able to believe that this used to be some being of chaos. He was a mish mash of strange body parts. No creature would ever naturally evolve that way. What genetic advantage would that level of asymmetry even allow for? And what King or Queen would force a species to not evolve better methods for existence. Discord wasn’t made by Kings, Queens, or even evolution… it was almost as if he made himself randomly as it thought up pieces of existence it liked. Galaxia closed her eyes and performed an entire, thorough scan on the statue. Every single part of it was made of ordinary granite. And there weren’t any atoms in there with an atomic number above one hundred fifty. The statue didn’t have a soul inside of it now. Perhaps he reincarnated? What if he had been a normal pony and had changed this way with magic? The possibility was there. There were plenty of spells that were known to unicorns that could explain for most of what Discord had done to himself and did to others. If that were the case, then one of the souls on this planet would have those memories. But the only way to find that soul would be to read every soul in Equestria. It would take way too long to rewrite that spell. And besides, he had been hit with the Elements of Harmony. They may have erased the memories on his very soul in an attempt to right every wrong committed. She stared at the statue. Whatever the Elements of Harmony had done to Discord, he was unlikely to come back. With that resolved, she teleported back to the ancient castle just in time to watch as Nightmare Luna finally succeeded in destroying the fake elements. She watched Twilight slump into despair. Galaxia had left herself little choice. When Cosmos had implanted those ideas into Pinkie, it may have already disqualified this planet as being a proper experiment. And that was on top of manipulating those six into meeting in the first place. Another set of ideas wouldn’t hurt. Galaxia cast a few idea spells into her, making sure Twilight made the connections between how her friends behaved and the Elements. The rest of the bearers trotted in as Galaxia began to work very fast putting the pieces together as Twilight spoke. She moved the shattered stones underneath Nightmare Luna and got an alchemy spell ready to convert the rock to a gold alloy necklace. At the same time she unfolded her wings to work on the true Elements, molding their shapes to look like their bearers mark. As the final piece came into place, the elements started to resonate like they never had before and a rainbow blast of magic overcame Nightmare Luna. Galaxia paused time and inspected the process. The elements were sharpening Luna’s memories of the time before the atom had invaded her mind, dampening everything after that. She unfroze time and watched the transformation unfold. It took several moments for her midnight coat to fade into a soft navy, her waving magical mane weakening into a soft blue. She fetched Celestia and let her talk with the Bearers. This, out of all that Galaxia had done for her, had to be a happy memory for Pinkie to think on. As Celestia got close to Luna, Galaxia froze time, leaving her daughters exempt from the spell. Celestia beamed upon seeing her, gratitude filling her eyes. “Are you okay, Luna?” asked Galaxia, leaning down to her. Luna’s eyes watered, staring up at Galaxia in despair. “Are you going to make me reincarnate?” Galaxia dipped down low and laid next to her, reaching out a hoof to stroke her mane. “No Luna, don't worry," she said, smiling serenely. "It wasn't your fault." Luna's mouth quivered, tightening her eyes as more tears started to stream out. “But I am responsible, I chose to do this! I— I chose—” "Shh... it's okay," Galaxia said, continuing to stroke Luna's mane. “You had something influencing you.” Luna opened her eyes as Galaxia brought out the unusual atom, magnifying it for them to see. “Do you remember this?” A look of recognition flashed on Luna’s muzzle and her tears subsided into shock. “What… is that?” asked Celestia, squinting at the substance. Galaxia hesitated. “I’m not sure, I’ll have to consult with Hope about this.” “Can you tell us what they tell you,” asked Luna, her mouth agape. Galaxia stood up and stepped back from Luna, shifting her eyes away from them. “Only if they let me.” “But—” said Luna, reaching out a hoof to Galaxia. “What if something like this happens again in the future?” Galaxia thought about that, and paused her daughters to think. After some time, she attached a new monitoring spell on their souls. If anything dared alter or access them, she would find out immediately. She unfroze them and said. “Don’t worry, that won’t happen.” The apprehension on Celestia and Luna’s muzzles slowly melted into reassurance as they looked at Galaxia’s calmness. “Now go. Enjoy this world for many eons to come.” She took one last glance at Pinkie Pie, the reason she had come back to this planet in the first place. Pinkie seemed as enthusiastic as when she had left her ten years before. Her end-of-life-interview was guaranteed to be filled with many happy stories. She smiled, knowing that she had found a place for her.
EpilogueWe stared at the edge for a while before resuming our teleportation, it took us a while to find the next edge. It too, happened to be a one hundred and twenty degree angle. We calculated the width and teleported six times, reaching an edge each time and finding ourselves back where we had started. We had not found a wall at the end of the multiverse. We had not found an end to infinity. We had simply found the largest universe ever. A perfect hexagonal prism floating like a massive ship in the cosmic ocean. We mourned that we had not found it, as the possibility of reaching the edge of existence itself had been a great comfort to us. To have that snatched away was painful, and a great portion of our number chose to reincarnate after the discovery. Those of us that remained pondered more deeply on that first question when we had first confronted it: What was on the other side of that wall? What was inside the hexagonal prism that was 10^463652 number of universes tall? Galaxia started her journey back to the nearest gathering of them. The entity known as Hope was a combination of quadrillions of souls linked throughout the multiverse. They shared all thoughts, all ideas, everything was known to them. Someday Galaxia would break her own reincarnation cycle and become a part of them—that is, if the memories of the souls from her universe were acceptable. It had been thousands of years since Galaxia had last spoken with Hope. The ideal King or Queen would only speak with Hope for the first few years of creation and then not talk with the entity again until the end of their universe. But Galaxia needed guidance far more often than that and this was too important to leave as a mystery. It had nearly killed her. She made her way to Hope’s domain, using the teleportation relay through millions of universes looking for the network of souls. As she neared the gathering, she changed her form back into an alicorn, giving Hope an example of the worlds she had been building. “Galaxia… it is nice to see you,” said Hope as she entered their domain. They did not await her reply before the mass of souls converged on her and examined her memories, picking apart all the data and letting it percolate throughout all members of Hope scattered across the multiverse. As Hope withdrew, they took the strange atom along with them. “Do you understand how this got to Equestria?” they asked. “N— No,” she said. They always asked questions they knew she didn’t know the answer to yet. But she knew from experience that the questions they asked always led to answers. “You carefully planned out every aspect of your universe before you started it. When is the only time you have sought out extra matter outside of your own universe?” Galaxia pondered that for a while. “The only thing I can think of is that sun in Equestria. I set up the rules for suns to work much differently than the way I wanted Equestria to behave and so I needed to grab a sun from a separate place that didn’t follow my rules.” “Precisely.” She stood there, trying to chew on that information before giving up. “I don’t follow, Hope.” They hovered the thing that used to be Nightmare Moon between them and Galaxia. “You stole it’s home and its purpose. It came down to Equestria and despised what Celestia was doing with its former body so much that it possessed Luna and turned her into Nightmare Moon.” “What do you mean, its home?” “Suns sometimes have a guiding force, Galaxia.” “That still doesn’t explain what it is.” “What do you think it is?” Galaxia stared at the thing. “Well… suns combine element one, Hydrogen, into all the other elements. But we’ve never gotten a sun to manufacture an element beyond element one hundred thousand before. However, this looks like it surpassed all previous limitations and had one trillion hydrogen atoms combine to form a single atom. How did you surpass that limit, Hope?” “We did not. This… Trillion, as we call it in this form, was not created or manufactured by us. In fact, in order to find more we have to filter through dozens of universes worth of suns, and even then we may only find one or two.” “If it’s so rare, why do you search for it?” “What is the purpose of other large elements we have given you Galaxia?” She paused, thinking it over. “Higher elements demonstrate a tiny amount of sapience the higher the atomic number. With element ten thousand used to guide plants and the highest fusible element—element one hundred thousand—used for animals.” The amalgam of souls before her moved ever so slightly, as if they were nodding a head they didn’t have in order to encourage her to proceed. “I don’t understand. We already have souls for fully sapient creatures. It’s like this element is some strange imitation of soul.” “It’s no imitation, Galaxia.” She watched in fascination as Hope held the Trillion aloft, covering it in some strange spell. Elements fused around it, intertwining and connecting seamlessly in a way that Galaxia couldn’t understand how they were arranging themselves. When Hope stopped, all that remained was a single navy blue glowing orb. It looked just like a… Soul. Author's Note The sequel to this story will also be a sequel to The Library of Discord.
