Chapter 46: Dust in the Wind

The voice of Shub-Niggurah spoke. "THE TIME HAS COME. THE LIES ARE DONE. THE DREAM OF LIFE ENDS NOW!"

Expanding shock waves went out from the Blasphemy Focus, and reality rippled. Humans and ponies staggered and screamed, clutching at their heads and falling to the ground. Shub-Niggurath poured her immense power into the Blasphemy Focus, shuddering in vile pleasure while the arcane device converted the power of a demon god into the power to collapse a universe.

Up in the Overwatch cabin, Chris gasped and fell to his knees on the metal flooring inside as the wave ripped through him. He heard Dr. Hardy collapse as well, then suddenly he felt himself fading, as if his very quantum structure were trying to dissipate. He looked at Emmy, and felt a stab of horror that when he realized he could see the wall through her.

"EMMY!"

She turned to look at him, fading like a dream when the sleeper awakes. "Chris... I..."

The wave passed, and she was solid again. Her eyes closed, then she slumped forward and lay still.

Desperately, Chris fought the sudden weakness of his body and reached out to her, trying to touch her hoof in his hand. Another wave of damaged physics passed over them like an unruly ocean driven by a storm wind, and his hand was transparent as well. He felt himself disintegrating. The world faded, as if it had never existed.

It never had, had it?

"YOU ARE A LIE!"

He tried to scream, but there was no sound.

There never had been any sound.

Everything is a lie.

The true nature of the universe was just a dream away, and the dream was falling apart.

It was someone else's dream.

Chris cried non-tears for everything that never existed as his body slowly slipped into the void where someone who never lived could never die.

"I WILL DESTROY YOU. I WILL TEAR YOUR WORLD APART. I WILL PASS BEYOND. YOU WILL BE ALONE FOR ETERNITY."

Emptiness reached for him, devoured him and tore the soul he didn't have apart as it dragged him down into the abyss between realities.

He screamed soundlessly again and again, engulfed in eternal darkness where nothing could ever exist.

Except something DID exist. Something that smelled like bubblegum.

"Chris. You know what you really are."

But you're dead.

Chris focused on Pinkie Pie's tiny voice, and struggled to speak the written words that could not be spoken. "I am... nothing," he replied.

"It doesn't matter what you are. It only matters that you love. Love is real. Love makes all things real. Remember who you love!"

"I don't know what to do! I'm not here. I've never been here!"

"We need you. They all need you. I need you. You're important somehow." Even like this, her voice had an edge to it, as if she was having difficulty maintaining her composure. "I.. I can't get back without you. I came too far into the dark to find you. I am not real anymore."

(you never were)

(neither was I)

(nothing was)

"Chris!" She was so faint now, almost imperceptible, but the overwhelming horror she had fought to keep in check would be denied no more. "I see it now! It's changing everything! You have to fight it! Chris! Fight it! It's pulling me down! I don't want to go there. I'm so scared, Chris! Please! Help me!"

Her desperate, hopeless scream faded to nothing and she was gone, only the echo of her fear and loneliness remaining in his mind as she slipped into some swirling corridor outside of time and space where nothing had ever existed.

No!

Poor Pinkie.

Poor, brave Pinkie.

Is it too late?

(there is no time here)

(yet existence continues)

(love she said)

Love.

Forget the cold.

Forget the pain.

Forget the fear.

Love makes reality.

Remember who you love.

(Emmy)

(All of them slipping away)

(quickly now)

I need you, Emmy.

Chris reached out into the infinite void with his spirit and groped through empty eons and dead universes that had never lived. Centuries passed in a dream, the tattered edge of comprehension forever lurking just a millimeter away. Eventually, millennia passed, time wheeling meaninglessly in the cold darkness of space as stars birthed and died, red giants casting an eerie, waning glow into the emptiness where no eyes ever saw. In the depths of churning eternal chaos, a few tiny points of flickering light answered his call, reaching back across incomprehensible distance with the primal force that transcends time, space, and reality itself.

Love will never die.

***

"Ouch. You're SO heavy!" Rainbow Dash moaned, squirming weakly underneath him.

Chris groaned in reply and carefully pushed himself off of a very woozy looking pile of ponies.

"Darling, that was the worst possible thing," Rarity added groggily, her purple mane all tangled and matted with coolant and hydraulic fluid puddled on the floor. "Oohhhh, I'm such a mess!"

Pinkie Pie didn't say anything at all, but clung to him for dear life, her eyes clamped shut, tears flowing past her tightly closed lids. He put a hand on her head, and she opened her eyes slowly, then released him as she looked around. "Thank you Chris," she said, then she grabbed him again in a hug. "Thank you SO MUCH."

"For what?" he asked as he looked up. The world was phasing in and out of solidity, pulsing with his heartbeat as he reached out and took Emmy's hoof in his hand. She stirred, and turned to smile at him weakly as their bodies solidified.

Still holding her hoof, Chris looked out the front window and saw that the magic barriers protecting the Gate were gone. His mind was hazy, the last thing he could remember was the demon Shub-Niggurath sending some kind of massive pulse from the gate that made everything fade.

"Looks like somebody used up all their energy trying to erase us from this world," he said wheezingly. The fire suppression system had gone off in one of the rear compartments during the battle, and the dry chemical taint in the air was irritating his throat.

The eye suddenly noticed them. The voice sounded unpleasantly surprised. "WHAT? YOU SHOULD BE DEAD BY NOW!"

Chris smirked and spit an unpleasant mix of blood and fire suppression chemical onto the floor as he reached fumblingly towards the missile launch button, flipping the plastic cover off it. "I get that a lot." He hesitated momentarily, and addressed the ponies around him. "Since secrecy doesn't matter anymore, we are probably all going to die when this bomb goes off. We're at ground zero here."

"Let's not make this any harder than it has to be, then," Rarity said quietly.

"Just do it," Emmy said. "It's not like there's another option. I don't think it's going to work though. Not as long as the Blasphemy Focus is still intact."

Abruptly a pillar of light blasted up from the ground beneath the Focus. Celestia strained upwards, gritting her teeth, her power streaking forth like the sun, using every last wisp of her magical essence in this one attack. The beam struck the Focus and continued through into the heavens, a shining symbol of pure beauty that dwarfed everything horrible for a brief moment. Then the beam faded out of existence. Celestia's eyes closed, then she fell backwards onto to the ground and lay still beside Jeff's body.

The Blasphemy Focus cracked, and a horrible whistling sound began.

Shub-Niggurath let loose a genuinely shocking scream of rage and fear, unlike any sound she had hitherto made. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE YOU LITTLE SHIT!" Her tentacles seemed to be stretching and sliding into the arcane sphere, as if the damaged Focus were a black hole pulling matter within it. She swiftly retracted most of her twisted body, trying to escape back through the Gate, but the Blasphemy Focus seemed to be stuck fast, devouring her.

Chris gasped and swiftly threw his arm towards the launch controls. "I love all you guys," he said. He pressed the button and flipped the bird at Shub-Niggurath's immense eye while the missile streaked forward toward the Oblivion Gate. "Have a nice trip, asshole, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."

The missile flew directly into the Blasphemy Focus like a javelin, sticking in the crack and flexing in impossible directions when the bizarre tidal forces warped space itself on the very edge of the gate anomaly.

The sound of Shub-Niggurath screaming in pain and terror was deeply gratifying as she reflexively tried to escape back through the Oblivion Gate, tugging and lashing about, finally slipping past the threshold, dragging both the missile and the devouring Focus together into the anomaly.

Chris and the ponies all clung to each other, pulling desperately close in a tight circle as the experimental warhead detonated. Chris wrapped his arms around the group, an instinctive protective gesture that came without thought. He did not turn away from the explosion. There was no point in hiding at this range.

There was a single brilliant flash as the Gate warped, bending in a direction that none of the observers had ever seen before. It receded into itself and imploded into nothingness, a single small object falling from it onto the smooth glass crater that now marked the location once known as Oblivion Gate Two.

"Is that it?" Emmy asked incredulously.

Chris peered out the windshield. "Wow. The Gate is gone completely. I think the nuke detonated on the far side."

Emmy squeezed up next to him and looked at the shimmering pit. "It must have overloaded and destroyed the Gate without killing us."

"I'll take that," Rainbow Dash said. "I'm very OK with not being dead right now..." She hesitated, the vague, unsettling memory of an unknown darkness tearing her apart tickling somewhere in the back of her thoughts.

The others paused too, half-forgotten images fading from their minds.

Rarity shook her head and hugged Rainbow Dash. "For some reason, I'm just so glad you're here, darling," Rarity said.

Rainbow Dash hugged her back. "So weird. I feel like I lost something, but I can't remember what it was."

Pinkie Pie was smiling with tears in her eyes. "Group hug!"

They hugged again, and then Dr. Hardy grunted and sat up from the floor abruptly, looking around like he had no idea where he was. Finally his eyes set upon Pinkie Pie, and widened. "Are you a ghost?"
Pinkie Pie leapt upon him, almost knocking him back over. "Do I feel like a ghost?"

"You're alive!" he squeezed her hard.

"Let's get out of here." Chris moved towards the back of the vehicle, activating the release on the rear door hatch. It hissed open, and they stepped out into the now-quiet battlefield. All around, humans and Equestrians were climbing out of the disabled armored vehicles they had taken shelter in and helping each other up off the ground.

"I guess that did the trick," Chris muttered. "I don't see a single monster moving anywhere."

"HOLY SHIT!" Marky was gaping at them from on top of one of the tanks. He yelled down the open top hatch. "GUYS GET UP HERE RIGHT NOW!"

Twilight's head appeared in the hole. Her face was drawn with repressed suffering, as if she'd aged fifty years in an hour.

Rainbow Dash spoke softly, her voice horrified. "Oh my gosh. What happened to Twilight? She looks horrible."

"I don't know. Oh dear. Oh my." Rarity replied.

Twilight still had not noticed them yet. "Marky, what's going on?" her voice was heavy, listless. He didn't say anything but just pointed at them with his hoof.

Twilight looked, and her eyes bugged out of her head. She gasped and sank back against the edge of the hatch, her body going limp.

"Whoa!" Marky grabbed her telekinetically and kept her from falling back into the tank.

"What's goin on up there now?" Applejack shoved Twilight's rump up and out of the way, then squeezed up next to her. "Twilight? Are you okay sugar cube?"

Twilight silently pointed towards the returnees.

Applejack's eyes grew as huge as dinner plates. "BUCK ME."

Chris looked at the antics curiously. "They're acting like they just saw a ghost."

Fluttershy was the last to appear out of the hatch. She took one look and launched herself into the air, plowing directly into her friends like a bowling ball scoring a strike. She didn't speak a word, she just held them and cried.

Chris got squashed as Marky, Twilight, and Applejack joined in for another awkward and enthusiastic group hug.

He shrugged as best he could with Fluttershy's rump somehow crushed up into his face. Her long pink tail hung down over her back, covering absolutely nothing. "Whatever," he said companionably into the wiggling yellow ass. "Hugs are good."

***

Jeff groaned, listened to the headset, and then he opened his eyes abruptly.

"Celestia! Celestia!" He struggled momentarily, then realized he was lying under one of her spread wings. "Celestia?"

She lay beside him, eyes closed.

"Oh no." He crawled against her, putting his hands on her neck, unsure of where to feel for a pulse on an Equestrian. "Celestia! Please wake up!"

Don't be dead don't be dead don't be dead...

"Mmmm. Are we still alive?" she asked, her eyes opening slowly. "I feel like I got hit by a train."

Jeff exhaled and sank down, exhausted with relief. "Yes we're alive. And we aren't the only ones!"

"What?"

"Rainbow Dash and the others! Celestia, they're ALIVE!"

"WHAT?" She stumblingly tried to stand, and almost went over the edge of the glass crater they were teetering on. Jeff threw his arms around her and pulled her back. "I don't know how, but they're not dead. They're alive!"

She put her hooves around him, and for a moment they held each other, rejoicing under the cloudless blue Earth sky.