He looks left. Right. Good. Can’t find me. I’m hiding.
Can’t stop a chuckle. It’s funny, really. Everything’s funny. Just have to look at it the right way. The left way.
I step in front of him. I have a griffon musket in my grip, hovering in front of me. Neat things, they are. Got a discount from importing so many. I have to give them out, see. Spread them. The message. Everything can’t be perfect, oh no. But they can’t see that. They can’t see.
“Please. Please! I’ll—I’ll do anything...anything…”
He breaks down in front of me, sobbing. Guess he saw that I don’t want much of anything from him. Good for him.
He’s still blind, though. By the sun. By the moon, too, now that it’s back. Big and ugly, hanging over everypony’s lives.
Not mine, though. Never mine.
I lift the flap of my saddlebags and catch hold of some of the powder and a bullet. The bullet flies into the musket, while the powder streams in a tight little arc. Pretty.
It’s ready. I pull the trigger. A burst of smoke, a ringing in my ears. The stallion’s still alive, pretty orange coat covered in black soot. A misfire, then. Muskets are inefficient things. Not good at aiming either. That’s not the point, though. The point’s in the image. Gets into ponies heads. Hard to shake.
Oh well. I fling the musket forward. The bayonet plunges into the pony’s heart. He twitches, a pool of blood forming under him. I lean in, to hear what he says. Last words are important. Especially since Discord started speaking through them. Lots of chaos from a death. Funny, that he wants to stop them.
The pony’s head turns toward me, formerly blue eyes now completely yellow except for an intense red dot in the middle of each one.
“Discord! Fancy meeting you here,” I say, putting the musket butt-first on the ground and leaning on it like an elderly pony would a cane.
He glances around, taking in the room. It’s a bit small, with a single Sun Globe embedded in the ceiling. All stone, carved out by yours truly. Nice and circular. Anonymous.
“Here again. Where are we? Why do you keep doing this?” he growls at me.
I giggle at him. Turns out it’s pretty easy to hide from the lord of chaos. Just need a bunch of harmony around. Turns out pony magic’s got a lot of harmony. Fill a bunch of gems with magic, stuff them in the walls, and presto! Magic cloak.
“My home, of course. But don’t worry, you’re always invited. Be a little rude of you to keep coming if you weren’t, eh?”
I step forward and prod the pony with a hoof. Yep, gooey. They always turned to gunk after Discord wore them. Probably to keep me from using the parts. I used to know a pony like that, who needed a trophy. But I had a cause. Besides, the chaos in the bodies doesn’t evaporate, like it would anywhere else. Oh no. Instead, it sinks down into the floor, into my special gems.
Discord growled at me again. “When I find you, I’m not giving you to the Princesses. That is a promise, little pony.”
His voice is all echoey. That’s funny, so I laugh.
“Ah. So you’re one of those, then.”
Normal voice now, but a bit grim.
“Oh no,” I said. “I’m just me. Just me.”
The stallion’s eyes fade to black. Then he dissolves, turning into dust. Joining the coat of ash already there.
“Won’t even say goodbye.” I frown.
But a quick scan of the crystals and I’m smiling again. Always have to smile, no matter what happens. Always. Otherwise you’ll lose hope.
But hope isn’t hard to lose, now. I pulled on all the magic of the room. Chaos, alicorn, harmony, and...spirit. All at once.
It forms a ball of crackling energy in front of me. Swirling energies refuse to touch, rebelling against their opposite forms. Chaos against harmony, alicorn against spirit. The force that dissolves against the force that binds, life against death.
But I can bring them together. I have the spell ready. Memorized. Minutes blend into hours, and hours into days, as I bring the pieces together.
Finally. Finally it’s done. It’s finally done!
Just needs to follow the pattern I etched for it. I wait. Won’t be long now.
My trapdoor bangs open above me.
Now? Now, of all times?
I grin up toward the faces above me. There’s Discord, floating down on a murderous cloud of red and black liquid. He stands in front of me. A blast of energy sends my trapdoor flying away. Celestia thumps down to the floor of dust and ash. She tries to look at me, but fails. She still looks regal, even when she’s utterly disgusted.
“Don’t worry Celestia! You’ll understand once it’s done,” I assure her, waving to the massive cloud of magic above us with a wing.
Luna floats down beside her sister, wearing an emotionless mask that displays only judgment and the promise of pain.
“Excellent. Without all of you, things would’ve been much more difficult.”
I rub my hooves together, reaching down with my magic, searching for the trigger.
“Stop her! She’s trying to kill us all!” Celestia cried, aiming her horn at me.
Hah! As if. Can’t kill an alicorn with the mundane stuff. You need something much more esoteric. Something much darker.
I reach it. A cold chill blows across the room.
“No!” I shout. “No. I’m going to save you. I’m going to save you all!”
Not that they believe me. I’d tried persuasion, before. They always ran. Abandoned me. Betrayed me.
“And what you did to poor Spike?” Luna said, voice cold as ice. Colder. Like the void. “How was that saving him?”
The void was nice.
“Necessary. Don’t worry, when everything’s over, he’ll be back. You’ll all be back!”
I give them my best, most reassuring smiles. They edge back. Even Discord looks mildly sickened.
Oh well. They could only blame themselves for what came next. It could’ve been clean. Painless.
The wind picks up. The walls glow red.
Who Calls.
It doesn’t speak, the void. It thinks for you. It’s still loud, though. I tried studying it once. That was when everything broke. But I fixed myself. Put the pieces back together.
I understand it better now.
Acknowledged.
It’s not speaking to me. I’m below it. All ponies are below it. Even Discord is below it. But that’s fine. Funny, actually. I laughed.
Everyone else turns toward me as if I’m crazy.
“What did you do?” Discord whispers. He looks like he understands the most.
“It’s best if you relax,” I tell them. “Less painful that way.”
Then they collapse to the ground, the light, the life behind them completely absent. Screaming energy flows into my construct.
Everything turns white, and I’m floating in the void. I laugh. Back here. Again. Again and again and again and—
No.
Have to keep smiling.
Oops. I looked too hard.
The void looks back. It’s not white. Not really. It’s nothing. But it thinks. It sees me. It doesn’t like me. It wants me out.
My construct makes a weak point in the place I want. I don’t know how I dealt with everything before I built it. Without it, the void just spits me out of whatever exit got rid of me the fastest.
It’s still looking, though. The spitting will come later.
I close my eyes. It’s hard to keep them like that though, when I know it’s watching me.
So I remember.
Past lives float by inside my head. I built a civilization, once. It didn’t matter. Crumbled to dust. Then the void ate it. That was funny.
I built another sun once. One that kept the planet alive a little longer. Then it blew up. I wasn’t careful. Bye bye everyone. All gone. That was funnier.
I destroyed the world, once. Ripped it apart, piece by piece, every screaming chunk alive and twitching as I considered it and threw it away like trash.
That was the funniest.
But it wasn’t what I wanted.
In all the worlds I visited, in all the timelines I traveled, mine was the only one where the Elements spontaneously made an alicorn.
I wanted another.
Not just one alicorn, though. More.
That’s far off, though. For now, I settled for spreading messages in every world I went to. Telling them all the truth.
And every so often, I had a vacation.
I feel myself being squeezed, forced into a smaller and smaller space, breaking bones. That’s funny. I laugh even as tears try to force themselves from my eyes. They can’t, though. Even my eyes turn to jelly.
Then I’m in another world.
I unbend myself and hide my wings, then let out a long, hearty laugh.
“Twilight?”
I opened my eyes.
“Rainbow Dash,” I said. I put on my old mask. A facade I hadn’t worn for...a long time.
“I thought I saw...nevermind. Anyway, What’re you doing out here? I thought you were studying or something,” Dash said.
I smiled. “Honestly, I think I’ve been shut in too often, lately. I think I’ll just study friendship today.”
“Sweet! So, got anything in mind, or do you just wanna chillax?”
“Relaxing sounds good,” I said.
Vacation worlds are nice. Not particularly funny, but nice.
I start trotting, following Rainbow Dash across the grassy plain, taking everything in.
I think I’ll do everything by the book, this time. My friends will live out their lives, with all their ups and down, with me beside them. Then they’ll die, and I’ll be there.
I’ll have to study extra-hard the next world I visit, though. It’ll be funny.
Things will be funny for a while.
But eventually I’ll find out how to make alicorns.
And then things will be nice.
