Against the Eternal Twilight
When, as every young unicorn of means must do at some point in their travels, one visits Grassgow, the “second city of the Crystal Empire”, one is immediately humbled and awed by the feats of primitive architecture on display. Soaring towers and majestic arches, each as old as Crystal Castle itself, stand watch over the city with a unique gothic intensity. Beneath the craggy skies and violent snow of the endless winter, the black granite monuments look like a scene from another age, transporting the mind to a time when dragons roamed Equestria.
The ponies who walk the city's chilly cobblestone streets, by contrast, are among the warmest and most congenial in all of the Empire. One cannot wander a single block downtown without seeing a busker playing the fiddle with frostbitten hooves and a welcoming grin, or a river kelpie selling piping hot porage from a pewter cauldron. All it takes is a simple “good morning” to elicit from them a stirring barrage of peat smoked salutations. In every interaction there is a sense that the sun still shines here, in the collective memory if not in any individual's.
This is the face that Grassgow shows to the wealthy traveller.
Like all great cities, its face is made of foam and artisanal cardboard.
The story of Equestria's Enemy begins a few miles downriver, in a corner of the city hidden by an expensive concrete wall from visitors on the train lines- a burgh called “Lower Gelding” by cartographers, and “The Bales” by everypony else.
Folk etymology has it that The Bales got their name from the four hideous brown cylindrical high rises that dominate the burgh's skyline. These complexes were built during the final years of the crystal rush, to house the workers of the Timberwolf Shipwrights labour yards, and have been serving the same purpose ever since, growing dingier and more decrepit with every year that passes.
Each building is arrayed like an elongated panopticon, with hundreds of living cells overlooking a central security tower. The tower is staffed by an armed guard, whose job it is to keep out visitors and other riff-raff. It is an essential job. The streets below teem with the ruthless and the hungry, the shivering denizens of the abandoned corpse houses that lie like shed scabs around the complexes. No life or spirit moves in those husks of frozen horseflesh, only an angry desperation clawing for a scrap of warmth, to drag down beneath the lapping slurry of soot and half melted snow where they sleep, next to death. Or so the grown-ups tell the foals, and secretly believe.
The complexes protect their residents from the endless winter, and from the ghosts and monsters that dwell outside. It is an immense privilege, offered freely to all Timberwolf workers, provided they follow the rules and don't make a mess or a racket.
The labour yards themselves are a harsh place, but not an unfair one. Applejack and Rarity's industrial sustainability agreement keeps the projects coming at a reliable rate, and holds off the threat of redundancy. Each worker has their task, a simple, honest task, that draws sweat from icy shoulders and keeps a fire burning against the blizzard. When their shift ends, they go home aching, a few bits richer, and experience something akin to pride.
“Ah pity th' artisan,” they say to each other, when the weather is particularly bad. “Stuck up thaur in her office, wi' her blueprints an' magic. Aw the taim she pit intae designin' thes rotten ship, an' she ne'er gits tae feel it in her muscles. Glaumerie's nae business fur a pownie.”
“Aye,” they reply, in a tone of rote wisdom. “Thae's unicorns fur ye, eh?”
In the old days, the yards were terrorised by foals, the kings and queens of The Bales. Vicious gangs of wains used to tear through the skeletons of ships, cursing and spitting alongside their parents, whom they seldom deigned to recognise, as they ran errands and fought each other tooth and hoof for the hardest and most dangerous tasks, in the tight spaces nopony else could reach. Occasionally one would get crushed, or fall through the ice, and the other wains would steal a bottle of whisky and throw them a piss-up, while the adults gathered at the Bracken Head and drunkenly waxed about the cruelty of the world.
It so happened that Fluttershy, on a friendship mission to visit all the impoverished corners of the Crystal Empire, stumbled upon The Bales in the wake of just such a tragedy. The songs of the mourning wains moved her so greatly that she remarked, in an address to the university: “The exploitation of foals by workers in the name of industry is among the greatest evils of our age.”
A few weeks later, mandatory minimum work age laws were enforced across Equestria, and a foal welfare system was established, wherein recently graduated nurturers were moved into areas with high worker populations, to take care of the foals during their formative years and ensure they weren't exploited or abused.
And so, a few dozen bright-eyed, tender-hearted pegasi arrived in The Bales, with dreams of raising future mayors and heroes. To their credit, it took several years for the cold, the crowded nurseries, and the undisguised hatred from the earth ponies whose offspring they had stolen, to break them down into bitter, chain-smoking mules. But they all got there in the end.
Four or five generations on, the only nurturers who seek work in The Bales are those whose talent, ambition and hope were squashed by others just like them. The ponies they raise are quiet, dull of wits and savage of temper, locked in darkness by a monstrous black hatred of all that exists within themselves, and a terror of what does not.
Thus life in The Bales persists, from decade to decade, passed along like a bad flu. Each pony endures their shared misery alone, petrified by the thought of glancing at the hell that waits below, one injury or infraction away, and seeing the face of a friend.
If somepony told them that over half the evictees end up moving away and starting a new life, or that the criminal underclass who lurk outside the complexes are kept there by the very same fatalistic attachment to the locus of their suffering that keeps the complexes filled with obedient workers, they would dismiss the very idea as “cradle talk”. They have all been to university; they have seen the kind of lazy, infantile ponies who inhabit the confusing jungle of magic, lies and strange beasts they call the summer lands. They have been pounded with stories of a better life, and repetition has made them jaded. There is no warmth or work outside of Timberwolf, not for them.
Born weary, and justified in their weariness by everything they see, they close their eyes and surrender to the tide, marking time until the day the Eternal Twilight takes them away and rewards them for their stoicism.
It was into this self-fuelling engine of drudgery and despair, that in the 236th year of Twilight, an alicorn was born.
This in itself was not an unusual occurrence. As all foals are taught, from the moment their hooves touch concrete, every pony is an alicorn. After all, what corner of the sky is beyond the reach of a powerful unicorn? What feat of strength can a pegasus not achieve with enough dedication and hard work? What spell can an earth pony not duplicate through mastery of potions?
This alicorn, however, was unique in that, although being born to two earth ponies, she possessed both a pair of wings and a magical horn. She also possessed a thick chocolate mane, which on a grey would ordinarily be considered bad luck, but since she was clearly a princess such flaws could be forgiven.
As word spread of her birth, an impromptu ceilidh broke out in the corridors of her parents' complex. When the noise prompted an intervention from the guard, instead of meekly returning to their cells as they normally would, the dancers and musicians spilled out into the street, and frolicked in the dirty snow until curfew.
In the afterglow of a miracle, all things seem possible. Dawn Sunshine Burns shredded the peaceful indifferent fog like a tornado. Ponies who had been content suddenly remembered that hope and happiness were real. Ponies who had thought themselves merely sad, discovered a seething well of anger they'd never noticed before.
There wasn't a single worker in The Bales the next day who didn't believe in spring.
And with that belief came a thirst.
They knew, from the old stories, that the changing of the seasons took the efforts of every pony, working together. And each had the fuzzy yet overwhelming conviction that the shattering of skulls was an essential component.
But who to fight?
The nurturers, who kept the workers' children from them, and treated them like dangerous slime? The very thought was unthinkable. Only a monster would want to crush those soft, protective wings.
The artisans? What had they ever done except give the ponies work and shelter, and let them be a part of their creations? Besides, everypony knew better than to pick a fight against wealth and magic.
It's hard to say how the riot started, or who was responsible. If it hadn't been one pony who cast the first snowball, it would have been another.
By the time the heroes arrived to break it up, the labour yards were strewn with wounded workers. One of the ponies taken to hospital died the next day.
An investigation into the incident revealed Dawn Sunshine's birth to the authorities, and a team of scholars came from the university to examine her.
After careful scrutiny, they concluded that she was not in fact an alicorn in the classical sense, merely a unicorn who happened to suffer from a rare mutation that disabled her wing inhibitors. She possessed no alicorn magic, and, though she made an interesting curiosity, especially given her earth pony parentage, she was not a princess.
So the workers- those who hadn't been evicted for their violent behaviour- went back to their homes, their privileges docked and their hooves bloodied. The gloom descended again, all the more oppressive for having briefly lifted.
And Dawn Sunshine, the focus of the workers' disappointment, was placed under the care of a nurturer named Tumshy Crabbit, who had raised the pony killed in the riots, and all the workers saw this as the fake alicorn's just deserts.
Only Dawn's parents, Chilly and Peaty Burns, held out hope for her. They knew that just because she wasn't an alicorn didn't mean she couldn't make something of herself. A horn went a long way in a world built on magic.
They resolved, the day she was born, to stop drinking, to eat nothing but plain porage, and to filter all of their money into making sure she had the future they were never given. The few hours each month when, under strict supervision, they got to see her and touch her and tell her Equestria was hers for the taking, sustained them through the gruelling years, when hardship and heartache threatened to destroy them, and the sight of each other's face made them want to vomit. The knowledge that every week spent driving rivets was another book or toy to send to Dawn Sunshine made everything else just a step on the journey.
Dawn was the sort of foal who got into high cupboards, and broke things for fun. She cried and screamed at the slightest provocation, and would bite anypony who got too close.
Tumshy, for all his anger and grief at the death of his ward, did try to love her. He knew that babies couldn't be held responsible for what adults did in their name. But her behaviour made it difficult. Over time, he held her less and less, and let her play further away, further even than the earth foals. By the time she could talk, his grief had crystallised into a spike of hatred that pierced his throat whenever he looked at her. So he stopped looking at her, when he could help it.
Dawn never got on well with the other wains. They all took their cue from Tumshy, and kept their distance. Not that she minded. Once she taught herself to read, she had no time for their nonsense anyway. She was too busy poring over the books her parents brought her, titles like “101 Tips For A Healthy Garden” or “The Artisan's Guide To Dressing For Success”, and writing her own stories about what it would be like to rule Equestria. When the dormitory was empty, she would talk to herself and pretend the strands of carpet on the floor were her subjects, cheering her every grandiose declaration and dying happy when she trod on them.
One day, another foal found her stories, and gave them to Tumshy, who read them out loud to his entire brood, while they cackled and cheered. At the end of each page, he scrunched it up, and tossed it in the fire.
Afterwards, he sat down with Dawn, and put a hoof around her shoulders. “It's alrecht,” he said. “Ah dorn't blam ye fur blirtin'. Ah ken whaur thes is comin' frae. Dorn't ye listen tae yer parents, ye hear? They jist hink ye're special cause they're yer parents. Typical earth pownies. Ye urny better than anypownie haur, ye unnerstaund?”
At the time, it struck her as an unspeakably cruel thing to say, but the more she watched the other alicorns, with their dreams and fantasies that flared up and blew away as they earned their cutie marks and tumbled down the road they were born onto, the more she realised it was probably true. Who was she, that she should succeed where they failed? The real cruelty came from those strangers who called themselves her parents, who had never been the ones taking care of her or wrapping her in their wings, who had planted the desire for greatness in her against her will.
For the first time, she understood the immensity of the future, and that she had no place in it.
The next time her parents came to visit, she avoided them, and ran outside to explore the city instead, looking for a place to hide for a while.
In a nearby burgh, where the houses were clean and the streets were swept of snow, she found just such a place- a building like none she'd ever seen before, glass fronted, doors wide open, stacked floor to ceiling with shelves of books.
The mare behind the desk asked her where her nurturer was, and Dawn ignored her, knowing better than to get into a conversation with a pony from outside the complexes. She bowed her head, and trotted straight to the nearest shelf, to flick greedily through the books and try and decide which to read first.
Every book she looked at seemed to her the most fascinating artefact she had ever seen, promising stories of heroism and adventure, or arcane knowledge from faraway lands, or snapshots of beautiful moments in time. They made her own meagre collection look like the smearings of imbeciles.
She took a stack of them to an armchair by the fire, and sat there, under the librarian's curious supervision, devouring them. She stayed until well after curfew, even though she knew it would mean sleeping in the snow. At cot-time, as she lay shivering, stomach growling, curled up in a dirty snow cave beside the steps of her complex, all she could think of was the world she'd just glimpsed, and when she would be able to return.
The next day, Tumshy scolded her for running away, and locked her in the laundry cupboard without breakfast.
Ordinarily she would have beat her hooves against the door and screamed blue murder, but the library had given her perspective. Pieces of a puzzle had clicked together, and she understood something she had always felt, but never been able to pin down.
Her life wasn't fair.
She didn't deserve to be treated the way Tumshy and the other foals and the adults and the whole world treated her. Theirs was a mundane evil, but an evil nonetheless, of which she was a victim, and now, a witness.
The knowledge calmed her, and smelted her wild, untamed anger into steely resolve.
She wasn't going to stand for it any more.
She sat down on the dusty cement, and glared at the door in silence. When Tumshy opened it, four hours later, she stood up, looked him in the eye, nodded solemnly like a diplomat accepting a declaration of war, and left.
After that, all of Dawn Sunshine's waking moments were spent in defiance of those who thought themselves better than her.
She stopped attending her friendship lessons, stopped pretending to even attempt her chores, ignored every command she was given. Any time she saw an opportunity to escape to the library, she seized it. When she returned, she did so without subterfuge or shame, and accepted her punishment, giving no indication that it bothered her, apart from a twinge of hatred in the grin she flashed Tumshy whenever he met her stare. She suffered hunger, lashings and the cold with a bitter stoicism worthy of Applejack herself.
The other wains delighted to see Tumshy's rage directed onto somepony who wasn't them. Though they were careful not to get too close to Dawn, they began to follow her example, slacking off and causing mayhem while Tumshy was busy butting egos. Tumshy, who was too old and sad for war, felt himself losing control of his brood, and called in the complex's entire network of nurturers to help him defuse the situation. Each brought a unique brand of punishment to the ever escalating arms race, and each completely failed to move Dawn to submission.
“She's th' dauchter a' Discord,” they told him, with a sympathetic pat, as they left, shuddering to themselves and feeling marginally better about their own lives.
For some reason, that moniker resonated with Dawn.
As time wore on, the world outside the books stopped feeling real to her. All her possessions were burned, and her parents were forbidden from seeing her, and that left very little purchase. Her life became a grey limbo, through which she floated numbly as a formless, faceless cloud, taking shape only when she attached herself to far off names and places.
Her body was weak, and often broke under the beatings, crying out against her will, forcing her to cover it with hysterical laughter. Hunger made her mean, and she would frequently isolate the other wains and flog them with kitchen utensils until they relinquished their scraps of food. It gave her no pleasure, and it caused her no guilt. It wasn't her doing it.
More than once, on the road to and from the library, when she thought she was alone, she burst into tears, and fell to the ground, unable to keep walking. Each time, she watched it happen with a kind of detached revulsion, then immediately forgot.
The thieves and scavengers of The Bales, sensing weakness, tracked her movements whenever she left the complexes, though none of them ever moved in. Perhaps they were intimidated by her horn, or put off by her air of unwantedness. Maybe, even in their state of complete abjection, brought about in several cases by the riot she precipitated, they still couldn't find it in themselves to damage the wings of a crying filly.
In any case, she knew they were there, and she didn't care.
She knew what would happen if they killed her. The Envoys would bring her before the Eternal Twilight, and the Eternal Twilight would gaze at her with eyes that had seen and judged her every thought and action, eyes that pierced through every layer of pretense. The Eternal Twilight would see the nothing inside her, and speak those terrible words, “you are not my friend,” and Dawn Sunshine would be dashed against the rocks of total and final rejection.
And that would be that. It would be over.
It was terrifying. But deep down, she longed for it. One all-encompassing punishment, and then rest. That was the justice she deserved.
It could never be as horrible as the waiting.
There was a filly who lived in the dormitory with Dawn, named Wattergaw Crabbit. She was the youngest of Tumshy's daughters, having killed her mother upon delivery, and she was the only one of his children who still lived in his brood.
Tumshy clung to her like a life ring, and told her often how he would die if she ever left him. She clung to him just as tightly, believing herself his solemn guardian and protector.
Like Dawn Sunshine, Wattergaw lived apart from the other wains, and felt no need to seek their approval- a similarity that did not escape her notice. Though she only spoke to Dawn a couple of times growing up, she often imagined the fake alicorn to be her secret nemesis, a fanciful fiction that became reality when Dawn launched her campaign to tear Tumshy's brood apart.
For a while, Wattergaw merely watched from Tumshy's side, offering him support and affection, adding her voice to his, and hoping that the whole mess would blow over.
But as the atmosphere became more and more unbearable in the dormitories, and Tumshy's mane grew so thin from stress that he had to wear a head scarf, she came to accept that standing by wasn't enough.
So, with a grave spirit, she took it upon herself to follow Dawn Sushine on one of her disappearances, find out where she went, and do whatever it took to end the hostility. Perhaps, she thought, she could succeed where her frail and kind-hearted father had fallen short, and cow the discordant mule.
When Dawn galloped out of the complex, Wattergaw pursued, bending the blizzard around herself to stay hidden- a trick Tumshy had taught her to calm her terror of the street ponies.
After a while, Dawn's lungs froze and she slowed to a canter, and Wattergaw decided that here, outside, where a scream for help would bring nothing but jackals, was where she would have the best chance of extracting an apology and a promise of good behaviour.
Just as Wattergaw was getting ready to pounce, Dawn Sunshine stopped. For a second, Wattergaw thought Dawn had noticed her, and she went rigid.
Then Dawn dropped to her knees, and wept.
At that moment, both Dawn and Wattergaw felt the same burning contempt for the little shrivelled creature shaking and gasping in the muddy snow.
Wattergaw saw her enemy exposed and defeated, and the victory she had half already claimed turned to ashes.
Part of her wanted to beat up Dawn anyway, and cement the defeat, and take revenge for all the damage she'd caused.
But another part knew, intuitively, that an act of violence now might galvanise Dawn forever, and would only make Tumshy's burden heavier.
She saw that Dawn was just a foal like her, strayed from the path of friendship, with wings that curled like hers in the cold.
And she thought of the words of the Eternal Twilight, words that really belonged not to Twilight but to Tumshy, and his soft cot-time voice that read them to her as she fell asleep at his side. “Fear not the frightful, nor dread the dreadful. Cast your friendship into dark waters, for there it is needed most.”
Wattergaw shook off the blizzard, and stepped forward, driving it away from her in a wide dome.
The snow gathering on Dawn's back blew away, and she raised her head.
Around her and above her, the blizzard howled, pelting the street and the houses. But where she knelt, the air was still.
A hoof crunched behind her, and she stood up in alarm.
There was the faithful lieutenant of her oppressor, staring at her with pity in her eyes, holding back the lashes of winter.
Dawn wanted to run away and hide, but she had shown too much weakness already.
“Whit dae ye want?”
Wattergaw only smiled, and took another step towards her. Dawn steeled herself, resolving not to flinch.
The pegasus threw her forelegs around Dawn's neck.
“I thooght ye micht be cauld,” she said.
Dawn glared straight ahead, refusing to be fooled into letting her guard down. Strategic gestures of kindness were a favourite tactic of Tumshy's, one he had clearly passed on to his successor.
As they stood locked together, sharing body heat in a bubble of calm, Wattergaw's flanks began to glow, and a pair of thunderbolts appeared on her rump, marking her as a hero.
Dawn knew then that Wattergaw's hug was not only genuine, but perhaps the most genuine thing she had ever done.
And her armour, that she had fought so hard to perfect, crumbled and blew away.
Conversation did not come easily to Dawn or Wattergaw, neither of whom had ever really needed it. But foals have a way of bypassing such trivialities, and soon they were mucking around between the black, half-built houses of The Bales, as though they had been friends from birth.
A disjointed discussion about all the adventures Wattergaw was going to have as a hero turned into a quest to track down and defeat the ursa major living somewhere near the shipyards, which became a competition to see who could fly the highest without getting scared, and so their preoccupations meandered.
A couple of times the fillies stumbled upon a shrunken, hollow-eyed pony asleep in a drift, or skulking around an alleyway, and were told to go and boil their heads, which made them giggle.
When Dawn asked Wattergaw if she was frightened of the street denizens, she replied, “A' coorse nae, yoo've got yer horn, dorn't ye? Ye can blest them if they misbehae.”
Dawn, humbled by Wattergaw's trust, chose not to mention that she'd never been able to do so much as move a feather with her horn.
The day stretched on, as uniformly dark as it had been for centuries.
Dawn and Wattergaw paid no heed to the time, lost as they were in the giddiness of first friendship. As they argued over cutie marks and the translucency of different stones, each found in the other, and themselves, a sliver of the magic that held the world together. It seemed not only plausible, but downright self evident, that whatever it was weighing down their souls and keeping them from floating away, must be something wonderful, or else how could it bring such joy to another pony?
The shipyard bell rang to signal the end of the late shift, and reality returned to invade their games.
“Thae'll be me, then,” said Wattergaw. “Ah dorn't wantae miss curfew. Ye comin'?”
Dawn considered, but shook her head. “There's still twa three hoors until th' libry closes. Ah can gie a wee bit a' reidin' dain, at least. See ye tha' moorns nicht?”
“Alrecht,” said Wattergaw, and with an awkward hug and an awkward smile they parted ways, just for a few hours.
Dawn galloped away through The Bales, a giant once again. Now that she was alone, in the familiar echo chamber of her own mind, she could see how different everything had become. Futures tossed and tumbled over each other, ridiculous, fantastical futures, filled with battles, quests and galas, and the symbol of friendship that was Dawn and Wattergaw marked them all, graven on the hearts and flanks of every pony in Equestria.
After all, why not? Surely Twilight and the Envoys were once no more than mortal ponies, who were transformed for all the world by this secret realm of sublime magic?
As Dawn's hooves stirred up the nations of snowflakes who chanted and cheered for her and her partner in glory, the futures bled into the present, and all the words and pictures in her head merged into pure golden light.
She couldn't keep going to the library now, not when she stood on the lip of this shared destiny. How could she sit and read about ponies from some other time and place while beautiful magic was happening in real life? How could she toss and turn in a snow cave, waiting for the doors to open, a hundred paces from where Wattergaw slept?
She made it back, sore and panting, just as the guard was locking up, and she raced up the spiralling corridor that overlooked the central chamber and security tower.
She reached the steel door of the dormitory, and knocked.
It was Wattergaw who answered. Her face was expressionless, but her ears pointed straight back.
Before Dawn could say a word, Wattergaw seized a mouthful of mane, and dragged her into the dormitory.
All the other foals stood silently watching, motionless, enthralled. Tumshy presided from his chair in the corner.
“Whittur ye daein'?” said Dawn.
“Wheesht,” Wattergaw barked, without loosening her grip.
She dragged Dawn through the commonroom, down the hall, and into the laundry cupboard, and slammed and bolted the door, all without acknowledging her cries.
Dawn sobbed and kicked and hammered at the door, her former bravado totally sapped. The darkness wrapped its gums around her, screeching with the sounds of her heart, stomach and useless horn, gnashing them into her skull until they were her entire being.
Words rose from the stinging, metallic pulp, words like “betrayal” and “idiot,” and each word was its own medley of complex flavours of pain.
She thought she could hear muffled shouting beyond the door, but it could have just been feedback inside her head.
How had she fallen for such an obvious ruse?
All the work she had put into building up her defences, undone in a single instant. A dash of magic, a potion perhaps. A fake cutie mark. A simple trick.
Hubris had convinced her there was nothing that could hurt her. She had built her walls a thousand shoulders high. And defeat had rolled right through the gates, disguised as victory.
As her despair settled, Dawn began to think, and to wonder whether Wattergaw's cutie mark had in fact been a trick. Perhaps this was how friendship worked in the real world. Perhaps cruelty was just a fact of life, and it was only the moments when a pony wasn't being cruel that counted. After all, Dawn bore no ill feelings to the foals she left bruised and hungry when she needed food. Maybe Wattergaw really did like her.
There was no way of knowing.
When Tumshy opened the door, the first words out of Dawn's mouth were “whaur is Wattergaw?”
Tumshy sniffed. “She's gone,” he said. “Yoo're ne'er gonnae see 'er agin.”
Dawn was sure he was lying. But as she searched every room in the dormitory, and saw the shaken expressions of the other foals, and Wattergaw's bed, stripped of her few possessions, her sureness gradually sank.
She burst into the corridor, and ran all the way to the ground, screaming Wattergaw's name.
She emerged onto the steps of the complex, and saw the blizzard, the same blizzard they'd sheltered from together, with its icy breath that hid distance and covered hoofprints, and she saw that it was true. Her friend had gone, out into the winter where nopony could hope to follow.
Dawn ran, blindly, numbly, forgetting after a while to call for Wattergaw, forgetting about Wattergaw altogether, forgetting everything, running from the darkness in her head. Her hooves bore her to the library, and she collapsed into the chair by the fire, and read, as her body had learned to do.
Whatever it was in the books that had once captivated her, was gone now. They offered no escape or respite, only words, that bounced off the swelling lead ball inside her without leaving the slightest impression.
Still she read, burning through thick tomes, that could have been in another language for all she noticed.
But the turning of pages calmed her at least, even if it was a restless calm. Her raging black firestorm shrank to a controlled blaze, everything equine within her withdrawing into a stone hearth, and her with her back to it, so she became no more aware of herself or the world than the chair she sat on.
When she emerged from the library, eyes red and memory blank, however many hours later, her flanks bore the six pointed star of a scholar.
Against the Eternal Twilight
Chapter One: Harmony Restored
“A horse seeks out wonderful things, that she may explain them, and yet she fails. What then has she accomplished? Does the sun shine less brightly on the flower than the scholar? Neigh, this too is foolishness. As the flower blooms, though it cannot see the sun, so the wise horse chooses to believe in what she cannot explain. Only a fool, when she discovers she is blind, will not follow the voice of a friend.”- Letters to the Sun, 1:15
“She who wields a heavy truth may fear to use it, lest she injure her friend. But greater is the injury wreaked upon the deceived. The charlatan says, 'better to be happy than right.' This is not the way of the worker.”- The Worker, 4:20
Ten thousand pegasus heroes scorch the words into the clouds.
“The Enemy is fallen. Harmony is restored.”
The workers in their fields and factories grunt their acknowledgement. When they break for lunch, they share a grim laugh at the Enemy's expense. Rumours fly half-heartedly between conversations. “I heard she was pitching an apple when they caught her,” is a popular one. By cot-time it has become the official story.
The starlit halls of Sparkle University echo with the impassioned chatter of the scholars, who seek to determine what this development might mean for the future of equinity. “Do you think that at last our cultural revolution may proceed?” they ask. “Perhaps,” they invariably respond, sipping their coffee. “Only time will tell.”
In cottages and studios across Equestria, the artisans panic and clear their workstations. All other projects are put aside, all creativity channelled into the need to do justice to this historic moment, to somehow, in some small way, be a part of it.
Outside, the entertainers take to the streets, playing old favourites, making extraneous noise, and giving the ponies permission to celebrate.
The nurturers watch it all transpire, sighing and quietly judging. “No death is a happy occasion, not even hers,” they murmur, to each other and to all who will listen. And they turn away, slowly shaking their heads.
But when they curl up in their nests, they find that a weight has been lifted from their withers, and they sleep better than they have in years.
In a cavern deep below Canterlot, where the limestone glitters with untouched gems in the light of a single brazier, the Enemy wakes to the pounding of raindrops on her face. She cracks open an eye, and yawns.
The falling droplets dampen her tongue, just enough to fan her thirst. She licks the water from her snout. Her throat is a dead thistle.
She can feel the stumps where her wings and horn were a few hours ago. She vaguely remembers them being sawn off, and cauterised with an industrial solderer. Her mane and tail are gone as well. Each of her hooves is attached by a short rope to a different hooded stallion, so that she hangs like a hammock between them. A pegasus hovers over her, poised to give the order for them to tear her apart if she makes the slightest move.
She laughs.
“You came to see me. I'm honoured.”
The Hero lands, and shakes the rain from her mane. She leans over the Enemy's exposed barrel, gently brushing her blistered coat with one hoof.
“I had to see you laid low with my own eyes.”
“I respect that,” says the Enemy. “You could have washed your hooves of me and flushed me down the system, but instead you're taking care of it yourself. That's commitment is what it is. That's why you're the Dashy. What are you, the twenty-fourth? Twenty-fifth?”
The Hero sniffs, and pulls away. “Uh-huh. Are you going to ask me for some water?”
The Enemy chokes down a lump of saliva, that might as well be a pine cone. “No, no. I think there gets to be a point in life where you stop needing water.”
“Alright then. Just remember I offered.”
The Hero rubs her hooves together, and strikes the Enemy with lightning. The cavern flashes lilac.
“Where are your friends hiding?” she asks, in a tone that tries too hard to be emotionless, but can't conceal the electricity crackling in her eyes.
The Enemy's screams quickly turn into more laughter.
“Straight in, are we? Haven't you been paying attention? I don't have any friends.”
The Hero abandons her composure, and shouts in the Enemy's face.
“Boxer Cherries. Doctor Honey Jack. Your confederates. You sent them into hiding the minute you realised you'd lost. Where did you send them?”
“I haven't the faintest idea what you mean.”
The Hero tries to stare her down, but gives up after a few seconds. Her eyes flick to the ceiling, and glaze over in thought.
“What are you doing?” says the Enemy. “Are you... Dear Twilight, are you about to sing? Please, I swear I don't know where they are.”
The Hero grins, and slaps her flank. “Of course. I've got it all wrong. You wouldn't send your pawns into hiding, would you? If you saw the end coming, you'd want them there with you, waving the flag while you all went down in thunder and fire. Or you'd sacrifice them so you could escape. No, they deserted you, didn't they? How disappointing. That's loyalty for you.”
A million year old drop of moisture falls from a jewelled stalactite, runs down the Enemy's belly, and stirs the puddle that remains of the Hero's rain storm.
“You'd know all about loyalty, wouldn't you Rainbow Dash?” The Enemy's voice is hoarse and humourless, her ears pointed back. “Why are you even here? Are you going to try and break me? You silly little pony, don't you know I was born broken?”
The Hero chuckles darkly. “Funny. From here you look almost intact.” She taps one of the stallions on the rump. “Gently now. Giddyup.”
The stallions shuffle away from each other, until the ropes and the Enemy's legs are pulled horizontal, and her joints creak, threatening to snap. She bellows through gritted teeth.
The Hero can't quite make herself watch.
“Whoa,” she says.
The stallions look at her.
“For mercy's sake, whoa.”
They let the rope slacken a little.
The Enemy's bellows fall to desperate panting, then to hollow laughter.
“You can't even torture me,” she says. “After everything you've done, you still think you're the good guy.”
The Hero throws lightning in her general direction. She misses, and hits one of the stallions, who absorbs it with a stifled whinny. “Sorry,” she mutters.
“Alright,” says the Enemy. “You want me to talk, I'll talk. There's no need to damage the help.”
The Hero calms herself, and narrows her eyes. “Go on then.”
“Here's what's happening right now. The hated of Equestria are gathering, in their burrows. They're discussing what they will do now that I am dead. By this time tomorrow, each of the factions will have begun a new campaign. Most will probably fight each other. A few of them will fight you. You're going to try and wipe them out, but everywhere you go you will find them breeding and swarming like cockroaches in the dark places nopony would think to look. Your civilisation will implode in time, and when it does, the infestation will survive in the ruins, keeping the flame of Discord alight in my name.”
The Enemy locks eyes with the Hero, until the Hero breaks away.
“But what about you, Rainbow Dash? When I get free and bite out your throat, or you slip in the bathroom and break an ankle and have to be taken out behind the shed, and the almighty She-Who-Eats-The-Sun-And-Moon descends from her tree house to anoint your successor... What happens then? Will anypony remember that you used to look a little bit different? One might argue that you never died at all. There must always be a Rainbow Dash, to sit on the thunderbolt chair. A strange sort of immortality, wouldn't you say?”
The strength in her voice gives out, and she drops to a whisper.
“You think you have power over me. But what can a pony, even an immortal pony, do to the carcass of a giant whose bones are mountains?”
The Hero looks from one stallion to the next. None of them show any reaction, but that doesn't mean they're not being swayed against her, just a little.
“Enough!”
In answer to the Enemy's question, she turns and blasts an ancient limestone formation. The thunderclap shakes the cavern. Another bead of moisture lands on the Enemy's belly from the stalactite above her.
“Ponies have levelled mountains bigger than you,” the Hero says. “But you're not a carcass yet. Where there's life, there's hope.”
She takes a deep breath.
“Anyway. I have a victory speech to be getting ready for. You, it seems, could use a little more time to get to know the subtleties of thirst. Perhaps next time we meet you'll feel differently about asking for a drink. Who knows? Maybe you'll change your mind on a few other things, too.”
She makes to leave, then stops and turns around.
“You know, it's funny. Everypony praises the Eternal Twilight for banishing night. But far fewer ask where she sent it. You're one of the few, aren't you? You know what I mean when I say the dark does strange things to ponies. Especially ponies who think they're giants. Imagine what shadows a memory like yours will cast. Gives me the heebities just thinking about it.”
She addresses the stallions. “Tie her to the column over there, would you lads? Nice and tight.”
They unhook the ropes from their harnesses, and string the Enemy up so her back is pressed against the jagged rock, with her legs bent the wrong way around the column behind her. Her shoulder blades dig into her spine, and contract her chest muscles so she has to lift herself to breathe.
“Don't forget the fire ants,” she croaks.
The Hero smirks. “Be careful what you wish for, my little giant. You have a long night ahead of you. However tight your body hugs you, I guarantee the night will be tighter.”
The stallions return to her side. She waves them away, and they duck through a metal hatchway into the chamber beyond.
“Farewell,” the Hero says. “And sweet dreams. I'll see you in the morning, whenever that may be.”
She kicks over the brazier on her way out, scattering its contents across the wet cavern floor. As her hoofsteps fade, the embers shrink, from yellow to orange to red. One by one they go out, like stars at the end of time, until only the darkness remains.
A droplet falls from the ceiling.
The Enemy closes her eyes, and waits.
