Author's Note

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

( C. S. Lewis, "God in the Dock" (1948))

Purgation

Purgation

High in the clouds, a chariot bears the end of all flesh. Her coming is felt as unease and dismissed by the fearful hindbrains of the interlopers as battle jitters. It is not. It is the human spirit knowing that it has been dormant too long--that it will be broken beneath what is coming next--that there is a reason why magic died on Terra. Man has written of himself--how in apprehension like a god--and yet this is the only thing that could have been meant. To mortal eyes, she shines like a thousand suns. She is the white hot center of the galaxy, her billowing mane the solar wind of the sun that shall never set and her eyes burn through your own and expose your every secret to the earth as if she had peeled back your skin by a mere command.

The universe has a cruel streak. It spins gods into the world, and then makes them nice matrons who enjoy tea and leisurely walks. Their mere presence could incite a city to madness, and all this one wishes is to have this dark business over with so that she might return to her gardens and a quiet life where paperwork is the greatest challenge.

Her student’s words were troubling. The butcher of the forest, for instance, was enough to chill the blood. Celestia is older than most ponies know or care to know, and she remembers the times when the world was savage as much as she remembers the ages of unbroken tranquility. She reads between the lines and sees the murderous eyes that no doubt peer out from the brush. Her guards are to be nothing more than a net or a fence, keeping the chaos inside. She will see to it herself.

LOG 14, Night

Tonight, it’s just me… Fluttershy, and Zecora. Twilight headed back. She and the other locals talked at length, and I tried not to eavesdrop. If they’d wanted me to hear, they’d have been louder and all. I don’t blame them at all--sometimes you just want a little privacy to think out loud and I understand that.

Talked to Malthus. I have… Concerns. That’s a good word. But I ain’t gonna talk about it now.

For now, I watch over this little pony. Shy and Zecora are sleepin’, and I got the watch in the darkest part of the night. Prox alarms reset, Judge ready. All is well.

Except the things that pretty obviously ain’t well and maybe never be well in any shape or form. Every now and a then, when I start feelin’ the night creeping up, I’ll stand up and walk the floor. Sometimes I’ll slip into his room to see if he’s doin’ alright.

He’s scared out of his mind of me.

Human. All too human--that’s what I was to him. I wasn’t a monster and he wasn’t blind. He knew what I was and what I had done and yet his eyes were blank with fear. And you know what?

I can’t stop thinking. I’ve been thinking all along but before I was starving or lonely or didn’t want to fill my log with stupid shit but now? Now I’m scared. Scared of what, you might ask? What isn’t there to be afraid of? You can take your pick--the murderer outside in the trees. The crazy Chris Columbus out there, with his trade and his empires. Tryin’ to rebuild dead America like it’s Lazarus to call out of the grave again, that’s what they’re up to here. And so was I. And so I am.

When I first fell out of that door in the air, I was incoherent and barely functional. Soon as I was either of those things, I had only one thought: this was the sun we were meant to see. That’s how everything was supposed to be like, right at the beginning of the whole damn mess. Beautiful and lush, green and vibrant. We were supposed to have a world worth living in and maybe this one is worth it.

When I was so, so young, we lived in Amarillo and we had a wonderful home. My mom had an affection for elaborate wallpapers and my father had the best comfy chair in the world and that’s all a child my age needed. And then we blew it up. In Shreveport, there were good things and books sometimes. And then they blew it up. Jackson, that city where the streets crack and flowers bloom--raided over and over. In Texas the water was poisoned and the people died. Across the sea they fight wars that erase cities in the blink of an eye. The world just keeps turning on like nothin’ is the matter and we keep murderin’ each other. Just stabbing away in the dark, end over end, hoping and praying we’ll make it--we’ll be on top--just one more time, just one more time. Grasping and reaching and…

What if you could go back to the moment the worst happened and just… nudge everything slightly to the side? I thought about it. When I was younger I imagined what it might be like to have control over time itself. I could go back to the moment the fifties from the Federal gunship tore my mother to crimson shreds. I could just… nudge her to the side. Maybe even push her a few feet closer to the door of the shelter.

It was like dad’s hooch. We both retreated into somethin’ because humans… we’re always running one way or another, either straight ahead to burn and take or backwards to hide. Cowards except when the knife work comes, that’s us. The idea that you could just… erase a really terrible thing before it happened was great. Stupid, but great.

But it’s more than just a little change. People will always find a way to fuck it all up, no matter what you do. Fix one hole and they’ll make three more.

Even if you could stop evil people from doin’ what they want, then what’s to stop you from doin’ what you want? It’s a weak argument, I know. “But I ain’t them,” is what I’d say, but if I’m honest… If I’m honest is it about types or degree? Am I so different, or am I the same but less? If I was really something new and different from people like the blackshirt, than why did I come here armed with a gun with size and power? I was meaning to bring a rifle alongside the judge, with enough ammunition to hold out for a day or so. I came not only anticipating that I would need those things but almost eager for their use.

How could I not be?

The feeling of the Judge roaring starts in your hand and travels down like electricity ‘till it gets in your heart and it just hums all up in you. You can feel it like a burn all the way to your toes. It’s good feeling. You hit something from two hundred yards that’s the size of an old world quarter and you just feel it in your gut, a pull, like a grin but for your whole body.

I don’t know if that’s bad. I just think maybe that in the end I may not be a different kind of thing than that bastard. I’m just not quite as bad. I know that for sure. Or, at least, when that poor little pony isn’t staring at me like I’m the devil himself… When I’m by myself I can think that and it feels solid like.

LOG 15

Today I’m twitchy. It’s not just nerves and it’s not just me--I made an offhand comment to Malthus and he echoed everything I was feeling. I’m not sure what it could mean, but I don’t like it.

Malthus came through for me a little before lunchtime. He tried explaining how it all worked, but a lot of it went over my head. The basic idea is that the stealth suits that truly bent light around them had some problems that nobody fixed ‘cause they weren’t worth the time or money. Some of it I get--if you can’t get light to your eyes, you can’t see, or somethin’ like that. But the worst problem wasn’t that part, because they worked out solutions with cameras and radar and all kinds of crazy sensors. The real reason that the suit was abandoned was because if you knew what to look for, you could pinpoint where it was even when it was running silent.

Malthus said he foiled some bombing on the coast because he knew what to look for, and I believe him. We don’t have the equipment that he did in the Concordat, but we do have his automapper, and we have some spare electronics from the Mule if he needs them.

In the end, he delivered. The automapper will pick up that bastard if he steps within a mile or so of it. Perfect.

Malthus even brought it by and showed me how it worked. Today we work out our plan.

Before that, Fluttershy and Zecora. Zecora seems to understand what we’re doing, and offered to help if we needed it. Fluttershy just looked after… what’s nis name.

Perique. I’m not sure I should be forgettin’ that name.

So she’s looking after Perique. I took Zecora up on her offer when she mentioned she could probably brew something up that would get our blackshirt to blunder into a trap. And while some people might mean “trap” as lying in wait with guns, I mean actual traps.

I have some ideas.

Malthus watches the screen, I sharpen a stake. Our native friends are quiet. Zecora is working on some potion or other, she said it would help.

We are all on edge, waiting for Malthus to find the tell-tale bleep. Every second without one is a blessing, really. If this thing had a visual component, I would show you what I’m working on, but I’ll just have to describe it--traps. I need time. Every second that murderer isn’t in range is a second I have to make another sharp stake.

I’ve planned out my traps as best I can, and for once I don’t care about mercy. I can’t. I can’t let him get out because after the first trap he’ll be too weary and it won’t work again. We won’t catch him any other way. Malthus thinks that we could lure him into the open, something about trial and error and me being a rabbit but…

But honestly I’m of two minds about that. I think Malthus might be decent. But I think he might also be clever, and cleverness always seems to get in the way of bein’ good. Sometimes. I don’t know. The point is that it would be awful easy to lose me along the way in that plan, wouldn’t it? Even if he didn’t mean to.

The other thing is that I think he may be bluffing so he still looks in control in front of me and Zecora and Fluttershy. He needs to seem all rational and calm but he’s as red-blooded and alive as me, and I’ll bet a greenback or nine he’s just as on edge. Hell, I know he is--asked him, didn’t I?

We talked a bit more. The conversation wandered, and neither of us cared. I knew I was radiating nervousness and I knew he was the same cause you could cut the air between us with a knife. What did we talk about? I asked him about the Army. He told me about Mauritania and the shitfest that was the desert. I told him about being a Courier. I told him Tolstoy sucked ass and he argued about that, and was also wrong about it. We talked about the future, if we survived. And by that, I mean he talked about colonies and porters and I was mostly quiet.

I asked him if he ever thought about how America was founded.

And you know, for a moment, he paused. I think he understood.

I just… I want him to understand. I want him to really, really understand what he’s saying.

I’m worried about what we’ll do to this world. I’m worried what it will do to us. The first few days, maybe I could have believed that this place would just wash us clean. We would realize what we had and maybe we’d all be good. Maybe before yesterday I could have believed we might come in peace. That some kind of damn door in the sky could be a good thing.

But I don’t believe that. Not anymore. In another world, in another time, with different folks… maybe. Maybe one day. Maybe before the world went to hell. But not now.

He’s got to see that. He has to see what kinds of hell we’ll dig up if we start tryin’ to put down roots in a land that ain’t ours, not as guests or neighbors but as… as a damn colony.

God, that’s what it is, isn’t it? We’ll just boot the Indians out and have ourselves a nice little Jamestown. Maybe the fuckin’ unicorns can magic us some alien turkeys and we can pass around the fuckin’ peace pipe.

Fuck! Hand slipped, cut a little bit out of my hand.

God, what is this feeling? It’s like… it’s like when I first met Zecora. I feel cold even though I know it’s a pretty warm day. Sucked on the wound like I have since I was little, noticed the taste of copper even though I stopped noticing it forever ago. It can’t just be nerves. Not nerves about the human out there, anyway. Someone is coming. Some pony or ponies or coming. I know they’re here. But what are they? Is is just how many of them, is that it? Is that why I feel…

Deep breaths. I’ll be fine. I’m going to be fine. I’ll ask Zecora if she can’t do any of that sealing stuff like Twilight Sparkle did so I can handle being in their presence. Maybe it just wore off and I’m suddenly feeling three natives all at once. That has to be it.

Just… I just have to hold on long enough to set something right. And then I’ll go home. Shut the door behind me. I can’t let them send more like him.

Celestia does not go armored. She spends most of the morning preparing, but not for combat. Rather, she spends her morning chaining the natural glory she exudes for the sake of her most favored student’s new friends. If a unicorn had sent one into cold sweat… if merely the passive magic of a Zebra shaman had left one shaking… Well. She would at least attempt not to send the poor thing into madness.

The troubling things in Twilight’s missive were beyond number. Some things were foreign, and others were known. The form of the creature in question she recognized. It was the world she did not know at all, and it was the world more than the creature that frightened her, what little was left to be frightened.

Mostly it steeled her will.

Poor, sweet Twilight knew so much, and yet the gaps in her knowledge were wide. There were vast oceans of darkness between the blazing suns of her lore, and in these gaps Celestia saw that which never occurred to Ponyville’s librarian. Twilight knew about danger and friendship and the power of the latter over the former, and of that Celestia was proud (it was a lesson she wished others had learned, before they sought alternatives) but of War Twilight knew nothing. Of War she was ignorant. Celestia was not ignorant. Celestia knew War.

For in this world she had invented it.

Do not misunderstand, as you see her before the edge of the woods, deep into that darkness peering. There is always, it seems, the temptation with beings of her like to be separated in two. Ponies see in Celestia one face, and then they think they see another in the pages of history or in the moments of their danger. Men look at the heavens and perceive a giving hand and they look beside them and see the divine fist. So it is with Celestia, who does not seem perturbed at all by the darkness of the wood or of by the nervous glances her guards give it and her, both alien in this moment.

Celestia the mother of all her kind. Celestia the God-Empress of Ponykind. The mistake was in thinking they were separate or even estranged at all, but she forgave and forgives now and will forgive distant future ponies this error.

“No pony is to be permitted in or out,” she says, needlessly. The guard beside her--Captain Ironshod, proud son of proud fathers, the second commander of the Celestial First of his line--knows his business. Yet there is a formality to these things, and Celestia has always been a respecter of certain rigid formalities.

“Yes, your Highness.”

“This includes Twilight Sparkle and her friends,” Celestia said softly, and then sighed. “If any pony tries to leave… detain them. Do not injure them. I wish to speak to any who emerge before I send them on their way unharmed.”

“I hear your will.”

“And Captain? Do keep them safe,” she added. The world outside of her narrowed war-grim vision began to fall away. “As a favor, if you will.”

“I would die rather than see any of this village be touched, Your Highness.”

“I know,” she said with finality, and then she trotted into the woods.

It did not do to go hunting on the wing, not in a place like this. Practically, magic or flying might alert her quarry to her pursuit. And there was just the principle of the thing. It didn’t do to hunt on such unequal terms. She could not shed her near-divinity or her nature, but she could walk. Even monsters deserved to die fighting. Maybe.

LOG 15, cont’d

I’m shaking.

It started a few minutes ago. I was covering another pit and I noticed my hand just felt… numb. I looked at it and I… is it colder? It has to be.

What is coming?

I have to focus. This is too important for me to break down now. I have to finish it. I have to finish him. I’ll keep this log up so I can talk myself sane.

Fuck! Thoughts… My mind is starting to feel sluggish. I need to remember the pattern .Where I was putting traps… Shit. At this rate I’ll fall into my own pits… hehe. Won’t that be ironic? Right? Perfect end right there, somethin’ outta books.

Borrowed… I borrowed Malthus’s long coat… maybe I can convince that bastard I kept my side of the… f-fuck. The deal.

My feet feel so heavy.

I can’t lose it now.

I can’t stop thinking about that poor little pony torn to shreds. I can’t stop thinking about his eyes when I went to visit him… he accused me but never said it but it was so obvious. I was Him, I was the Blackshirt. I did this. I led them here. I did this.

Can’t think straight.

Where does this pit go? Shit… I think I put the other one too far away from the path of least resistance. Gotta place ‘em where folk’ll walk or it don’t mean a thing…

Celestia does not hurry, but she does not dawdle.

Few can understand the deliberate pace of the long lived and long suffering. Where one pony would see nothing but aimless wandering, perhaps only Luna would see the careful and meticulous moving of the Inevitable Generalissimo.

You see, in the distant aching past Celestia had encountered violence and found it… chaotic. Petulent and childish. It was all noise and directionless running, wasteful and destructive (of course it was) but also unrefined. So she refined it. The old generals of that age had favored charges. Celestia favored high ground. They believed in the power of repeated volley of arrows and slings, and then later muskets before she destroyed the mechanical knowledge of the age of war. But Celestia believed in only one volley--if the pieces were all in the right positions, why waste shot or time or life? A single volley at the critical moment was worth hours of manuever. Where the Griffons used scouts and the Burro republics had favored spies, Celestia after decades found she needed both less and less. She set the board and invited them to play, and they did so--always so eagerly--and with dismay realized what had been evident all along.

They played into her hooves. And because she was gracious, because she was merciful, because she was loving, she did not make them suffer. Shock and awe were the best tools of war because they ended them. A single creature dies that its whole race might be spared the horror of slaughter. So it went.

So instead of barreling through the woods, Celestia moved with calm grace. She combed the forest meticulously. She felt constantly for the tell tale signs of life and found surprisingly little that stirred.

Hours went by, and she found no moving humans. She did, however, find their handiwork.

She found a few bodies left to rot, full of holes and covered in dried lifeblood. These did not faze her, though they saddened Celestia. Wasteful. Evil, perhaps. How callous. It had been the right decision, coming in person to nip this in the bud.

She found a shoddily constructed shelter in the woods, filled with garbage and marked by a hanging corpse--fen deer, if she wasn’t mistaken. Those were a holdover from before the Everfree’s devolution. Hunting did not bother her. She understood it. The decay of this creature’s basecamp was another story.

Celestia felt his aura everywhere and grimaced. It was not the worst she had felt, here or beyond. But it was certainly monstrous and acrid, tinged with madness. She found some of the murderous equipment and destroyed it without much thought.

Another sector of the woods cleared of the taint that walked on two legs. Now to go deeper, towards her old home, and all the reminders it had in store for her.

LOG 15

I think I’m done.

Every… every step I feel like someone is watching me and I don’t know if he’s there or if it’s something new. What do we really know about this place, after all? Fat lot of nothin’. God, god I can feel my sins crawling up my back.

I know it’s not just nerves now. It’s too intense, too fucked up to be that. This is exactly my reaction to Zecora and the others. It’s just so… so much more.

I had a thought. Twilight mentioned in passing… she mentioned some… some pony.

What was her name? Maybe this is her. The Queen pony or something. Her teacher? Princess? I can’t remember very well. And what I remember mostly is the past, stuff I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to see those things but I can’t stop seeing them.

Mom dying in the street. Over and over, every man I killed on the roads and in the rat’s alleys of Jackson and NEV and Memphis, over and over again. They all seem so unreal now, in this forest. Unreal cities. Unreal unreal unreal

Where am I?

What was I doing?

Hunting. I was hunting. I am hunting. Here is my bait, this coat. I’ll just… yes. Yes, that’ll work.

BLACKSHIRT! COME OUT FEDERAL! COME OUT AND TALK!

DID WHAT YOU WANTED!

GOT PROOF! BUT THERES SOMETHING YOU NEED TO KNOW!

COME OUT! COME OUT!