Tales of Fillydelphia

The show must go on, and the winner takes all.

Pinkie followed her three friends, lost in thought. The headaches and strange images flashing through her mind were increasing in frequency and intensity. This morning had started out so simply, and now she was chasing an acrobat, a contractor, and a police officer up the longest set of stairs ever conceived.

They ringed the next chamber, rising fairly steeply. There were no lights. Darkness shrouded the ceiling, and soon enough, the floor was invisible, as well.

The mental flashes were distracting. Pinkie stumbled, caught her footing, and shook her head. She kept her eyes on the light bobbing above Twilight’s horn.

She stumbled again and yelped, flailing for purchase before realizing that Rarity had caught her. She watched chips from the edge of the stairs tumble into the blackness beneath them, not hearing the impact of a larger chunk for some time. She gulped and allowed Rarity to set her on her back, gripping her stocky neck tightly and settling in to be carried.

Eventually, the stairs met a landing in the ceiling, the door opening into a broad circular room. A pony-sized crystal hung suspended between spikes extending from the floor and ceiling. Pinkie watched ghosts work at cross purposes in the center of the room. The air became gelid as two solid shapes stepped into view.

The hunter-green batpony waltzed across the floor with the tan pegasus. They seemed like a film with every other second cut out and replaced at random, their words not matching the movement of their mouths. The batpony was tall, at least Rarity’s height if not more, and worryingly thin. Fangs glinted from each corner of her mouth, showing to be at least 2 inches whenever she spoke.

The pair wheeled closer, and their banter on the subject of the other’s dancing ceased. They broke off and circled the quartet of ponies, examining them at length. They spoke in absolute unison, trading off segments of their sentences.

“From three,”

“Come five.”

“From Five,”

“Birth One.”

“One saves two.”

“From two, a nation.”

They bowed in unison. The air was clammy, cold as getting doused with a firehose. Breathing was difficult, as if a great weight had settled on all their chests.

“Is it nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?”

“Nothing is random, my dear. All suffering has a cause, and everything is important. After all, all the world’s a stage, and we poor fools the players. All have their exits and entrances, and many roles to play in our lives.”

The two chuckled discordantly as they circled the four ponies.

“I wonder if they passed.”

“Surely they do. We’d see it if they don’t.”

“Goodbye, thinker.”

“Goodbye, builder.”

“Goodbye, soldier.”

“Goodbye, lie.”

Pinkie swallowed and broke ranks with her friends, approaching the pair. Twilight’s eyes narrowed as she noticed the blank expression on her face. None of this gelled well with the cop.

Pinkie’s words echoed strangely as she froze, staring straight ahead. Twilight’s skull itched and burned.

“Echo chambers of the past. The Tower’s remembering what it was, what it should be. This chamber belongs to Silanxi.”

Twilight tracked Pinkie’s sightline. Her eyes were locked with the milky absinthe-jade eyes of the Nocturne. She drew her pistol, the slide thunderous in the vacuum silence as she cocked it.

The wall of the room lit up, turning transparent. Beyond the walls, the battle for the city could be seen. The Nightmare Forces were winning. The city was burning. Twilight heard screams.

Only Rainbow seemed unaffected, glancing at each of her friends with concern.

“The respect of Silanxi is reserved for the for the courageous and the wild.” Pinkie’s voice softened to a whisper.

Twilight could no longer hear the screams and sounds of the battle for Fillydelphia over mortar shelling and machinegun fire from a different city, a different battle. She fired. The casing hovered in the air.

She watched the slug flash towards the Nocturne’s fanged face. Her vision swam, the batpony’s face doubling. The green mare morphed, her shape changing to that of a Lung dragon with a red kerchief tied around his upper arm. He held a rifle that flashed terribly bright in her eyes.

The discordant voice of the batpony was taunting over the choked gasp of...

Tamp it down don’t remember it. Her vision swam again, and the floor came rushing up to meet her.

“You are fearful. You miss.”

Rainbow Dash watched as her friends went blank. She watched Twilight shriek and fire at nothing. She heard snatches of speech. She watched Pinkie as she muttered. Pinkie looked at nothing.

“Tinkerer.”

Rainbow Dash shook as Pinkie’s gaze swept over Rarity and Twilight.

“Builder, soldier.”

The pink mare stared through Dash. “Lie.”

She swallowed and let out her breath. This business was horrifying. She could handle a hundred-foot drop to certain death; she could handle this. She guided her friends to lay down so they wouldn’t hurt themselves in their trances.

She trotted to the crystal in the center of the room, gently laying a hoof on the smooth surface. A voice in the back of her head made her shudder with revulsion. Pinkie’s book would never have spoken about this chamber or the mythology of her people. The Speaking Hall, challenging the wandering pony to test her courage. Luckily, she had that in spades.

“Face the fears. Laugh in the face of danger, for it is your greatest weapon. Humor is the arms that can break the sea of troubles, the shield to deflect the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

Her hide crawled as she stroked Pinkie’s mane. But the temperature slowly rose as she tried to comfort the mare. The cold was replaced gradually with the smell of ozone as the color leached out of the walls, leaving them transparent. The city around them was revealed.

Twilight roused first. Rainbow watched as the three wandered in unison to the wall and watched the city burn.

There was a consistency, a common thread of the mutterings of the three: uselessness.

Twilight spoke aloud first. Behind Rainbow, the crystal shone dully from within its blackened surface.

“I shouldn’t be here. I’m an Equestrian soldier, and a Filly bull. I should be helping those poor ponies.”

Pinkie’s voice rose as Twilight quieted. “I was wrong. There’s no stopping this. We’re going to fail. I’m going to get you all killed. I’m a tinker, not a hero. This was all for nothing.”

Rarity was hardest to hear. “I shoulda never come here. Ain’t got a purpose being here. I’m a builder, not a fighter.”

I guess that makes me the Lie, Rainbow thought. Their words made her angry. They made her cry. They made her laugh. She understood the challenge presented to her. Conquering one’s own fears was easy. Conquering those of others was a challenge. She wiped tears from her eyes as she watched her friends tremble with fear, thousand-yard gazing over the burning city. The symbol of their failure and uselessness.

“It’s scary, sure. But we need to keep moving.”

They ignored her. It didn’t, couldn’t stop her. She rested her forehead on Pinkie’s, and her hooves on the chubby mare’s cheeks.

“You don’t need to be right all the time, but you’ve been right so far. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without your book, and you’re the only one who can read it. You can’t give up.” She shook her, gently. “C’mon. Up on your hooves. We’ll get through this.”

Pinkie’s color improved as they moved to Rarity. They both whispered in her ears as Pinkie got in on the joke. The very idea of them trying to scare her just made her want to laugh.

“You need to get up,” Pinkie whispered through a fit of giggles.

“When we win, someone will be needed to rebuild.” Rainbow’s voice was soft, but sparkled with barely contained laughter.

Twilight didn’t respond to any of the three’s proddings and encouragement. She just laid there, whispering to herself about fire, mortar shells, and murdered innocents. Rainbow gathered her up in a hoof, and struck her soundly across the face, knocking her to the floor. She shouted at her, standing over the bigger mare.

“If you give up, those ponies will die for nothing! We can beat them. This spot is where it was done last time. We can’t help anyone out there right now. We’d just become victims.”

She shoved Twilight onto her hooves.

She struck her again. "If we can still stop this, we should try. If we go back, if what you and Pinkie said is true, they’d just get stronger by the second. We have to move forward and try to stop this thing, or all that you’re seeing just will get worse, and those sacrifices being made right now will have been made in vain. Don’t let them win."

“Get over yourself, Corporal.” The fire in her eyes burned brighter than those outside. The false wings made her seem bigger, fiercer than she was. Her words echoed through Twilight’s head.

Twilight didn’t see Rainbow. She saw a bigger mare with an orange coat and Marine drabs. That same wing-splayed stance holding her against a wall as Ghangzhou burned and Griffon Fritzies fired mortars.

”People die, Corporal. It happens. Get yourself together, and get back out there. You swore an oath to do a job, and what is that job?”

“To protect  those under the protection of Queen Chromia’s empire. To stop shit like this, Captain.”

Spitfire thunked Twilight’s tin hat and shoved the unicorn’s rifle on her.

“Get out there and do your damn job.”

Twilight blinked slowly as the past collided with the present. She dusted herself off and slowly rose to her hooves, her stomach bubbling. The crystal stopped turning as Dash flashed a devil-may-care grin, which the unicorn mirrored. Twilight mimed pulling down a steel helmet. The giggles in her belly let loose, it being the first time she’d laughed in over a year.

They all started laughing at the weak attempt to stop them. Rainbow grinned and shoved her.

“What’s your job, Twilight?”

Twilight wiped tears from her eyes. “Stopping crime. We don’t usually get to stop crime; most of the time, we have to clean up after the fact.”

Rainbow nodded. “Let’s stop this one. Here’s a crime in progress that you can put an end to. Do your damn job, copper. Catch the criminals red-hoofed.”

Pinkie watched Twilight’s mock salute, glancing up to watch a set of stairs spiral down from an aperture in the ceiling. They curled around the central pillars, the crystal brightening as it spun again. As peals of helpless laughter shook the ceiling, no doubt reaching the prehistoric nags at the top, Pinkie noticed the blackness receding from the crystal. It was red underneath the soot.

Color spread across the floor, flowing along six lines cut into the stone. It revealed metamagical sigils and equations scrawled across every surface. Color crept up the walls, covering over the images of horror with a pictograph of Equine history. It traced the story of the Earth Mother from her part in the formation of the world to the crowning of the First Queen, Silanxi presenting the image of Queen Platinum with a set of gilt shoes.

The stairs locked into place as the mares got ahold of themselves. An agreement seemed to be reached. Pinkie needed to know something. She gripped Rainbow’s shoulder with a mechanical hand, as the other two started up the stairs.

“You were the only one not afflicted with the nightmares. Why?”

Rainbow shook her head. “I’m an acrobat and a wanderer. The Moons took me in as an orphan. When you’re reshaping your life like that, when your life revolves around hoofing your nose at the notion of death… no phantasm has the same weight as the reality of a hundred-fifty-foot drop to hard ground with no safety net. I learned to trust in myself and trust in my family.”

She smiled and patted the gauntlet bracing her shoulder. “That, and a mantra my mother taught me when I was very small. I could teach it to you, but it wouldn’t sink in if you don’t speak Lleferyddbluen.”

Pinkie released her and nodded, glancing back once as she started towards the stairs. “You’re not coming, after all that talk about moving forward?”

Rainbow gestured to indicate the room. “I’m still needed here. There’s still fear. I need to teach our friends and anyone else that comes along to laugh.”

Pinkie giggled to herself and nodded as she trotted shakily up the stairs, managing to ascend two before Rarity pulled her up onto her back and carried her the rest of the way. An image flashed across her mind as she rested her chin between the bigger mare’s ears.

Rainbow, but not. All-white instead of blue and rainbow. Her eyes glowed faintly, a defiant and determined grin painted above the rainbow hat-trick on her golden necklace.

Once the others disappeared through to the next floor, Rainbow sat on her haunches and glared at the crystal.

“Alright. Give me the real test.”