I, Fluttershy: Kill the Dawn

by President Dead

Rating: teen
Tags: Fluttershy, Tragedy, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Death
Length: 9120

After nearly four centuries of peace, a Shadow falls over Equestria, and Fluttershy and Twilight are faced with an impossible choice.

500 years have passed since the awful reason for Fluttershy’s suffering was finally revealed to her, and after a devastating series of events which all but put an end to equine society, Equestria has finally stabilised under the benevolent rule of Princess Twilight Sparkle.

But when an apocalyptic external incident threatens to undo all that Twilight and Fluttershy have worked towards, an old friend of Fluttershy’s arrives to pose a terrible question and an impossible choice, the answer to which perhaps found in an unspeakable past rooted in agonising guilt and profound despair.

Published 2018-02-11 13:00:07 UTC
Last updated 2018-02-11 13:00:07 UTC

I, Fluttershy: Kill the Dawn

I think the thing I regret most is not that I never told her my secret, but rather that I was never able to convince her that she was better off not knowing. And now, thinking back, I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t present: that faraway look in her depthless azure eyes, betraying a buried hurt, a concealed sorrow. I could tell she felt I did not trust her. But I guess that hardly matters now. And in any case, this is not the best place to begin.

I suppose it all started indirectly with Starlight Glimmer. The day we lost her, things had been going well for a while, despite, of course, my predicament and the strain its withholding placed on my relationships with the others. I still remember it all so vividly: Twilight walking into the entrance hall of the Castle of Friendship, where we were all gathered, looking like she hadn’t slept in several years. We all knew something was terribly wrong from the moment we were summoned, but the look on our friend’s face banished all doubt from everypony’s mind.

“Starlight’s gone,” Twilight says quietly, an emptiness to her voice to match that which has found its way into her eyes. “She’s gone.”

There now descends an intolerable, stifling silence, and for a time, I do not understand what Twilight has imparted. But then my legs give way, and I slump to the floor, head full of wasps and vision dappled, tunneling. My breathing is all I hear, and I vaguely realise that Rarity has her hooves around me, holding my head to her chest, which rises and falls erratically. With what is left of my conscious mind, I bury my face in her lush, purple mane, a soothing, passive waterfall. I could lose myself in here. Under this gentle, violet swell, I can pretend the world does not exist, that I do not either. In Rarity, there can be no pain, only a blissful absence of everything. This, among other things, is why I married her. She is perfect.

“H-how?” I hear Rainbow Dash ask Twilight, voice shaky. Reluctantly allowing one eye to emerge from my sublime sanctuary, I look around at my friends, and they all appear suitably devastated. Dashie and Applejack are both putting on a brave face, but they can’t hide their trembling, and I see that they are discreetly leaning up against one another for support. Pinkie Pie looks deflated, like somepony stuck a sharp object between her ribs, her typically vibrant, bouncy mane drooping. Spike is crying silently, kneeling, one hand covering his wet eyes and the other pressed against the floor. I have an overwhelming urge to go to them all, to comfort them, but I can’t seem to find the strength.

“She fell,” Twilight murmurs, evidently holding back tears of her own. “She fell into... fire and... insanity.”

I think this was the point at which we all finally came to recognise our fallibility, our ultimate mortality. It was also when Twilight began her downward spiral into self-loathing and self-sabotage, from which I suspect she never really emerged. Peace, physical peace, comes at a price after all, and that price is emotional violence. I, of course, knew this from experience, and was well aware of the horrors a pony like me could inflict upon herself, but I never anticipated the lengths Twilight would go to preserve her sense of security.

Initially, following the loss of Starlight, Twilight insisted that we all moved in with her at the castle for a while. But after her attempt at keeping us close to her fell through after only a few days, she instead became a complete shut-in, refusing to see anypony and rarely venturing outside. She even went so far as to cast protective spells over the Castle of Friendship to prevent even our entry.

The culmination of this surplus of emotional violence was what came to be known as the Alicorn War, the screaming blackness at the end of the bottomless pit Twilight had relentlessly dug for herself.

A few years had passed since Starlight was lost, and none of us had seen Twilight more than twice since that day. And even on these two occasions, both of which public events she was no doubt forced to attend, we only ever saw her from a distance. The first time, she managed to avoid us. The second time, I finally made a scene and confronted her, but it went badly. Oh, it went very badly. Up to this point, Twilight had been writing the odd lifelessly formal letter to us, but in light of the stunt I pulled, the only news of her we now received was from Spike, who, by now, was growing rapidly, and clearly unfit to remain a lowly servant.

One day, Spike confided in Rarity and myself over lunch that, when the time was right, he intended to return to the Dragon Lands to be among his own kind. Even as he spoke, the three of us were all painfully aware of the damage this would do to Twilight, who, despite her apparent neglectfulness, was likely highly reliant on Spike, both for his service and for his mere presence.

What is more, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack were all nearing the end of their lives. The years had been kind to the four of them, very kind, but even the Elements of Harmony were not immortal. Additionally, I greatly suspected that the rift Starlight’s passing had caused between Twilight and us had directly contributed to our friends’ gradual – perhaps even accelerated – decline, and sure enough, there soon came a day when they could no longer rise from their beds, so I arranged to have them all moved to the boutique.

But then I received a letter. Spike had brought it to me, which meant that it was from Twilight, and for a moment, I was sure my eyes were deceiving me. But then I opened it, read it, and everything was suddenly made clear. My old friend wrote that she was truly sorry for cutting us all off, but her work was under no circumstances to be interrupted. After the reality check that was the downfall of Starlight Glimmer, Twilight wrote that she had become obsessed with discovering a spell which could restore youth. Perpetually. And now that she had heard of our friends’ conditions, she was working harder than ever before.

Naturally, I was deeply concerned. I wanted to go and visit Twilight immediately, but I could see that Rarity and the others were on the brink of death, and I was too afraid to leave them for fear that they would die in my absence. The next thing I knew, there was a terrible cracking sound, and Spike and I rushed outside. The sight that our eyes were met with was truly horrifying: the Castle of Friendship was in pieces, and flying above the wreckage were none other than Princesses Celestia, Luna, and Cadance, firing bursts of magical energy at an immense being of writhing, purple flame, which I was horrified to realise was Twilight.

Spike took to the air, and I was about to follow, but suddenly, Discord appeared, ushering me back inside the boutique, and then transporting myself and the others to the safety of Sweet Apple Acres. Before he left us, Discord gently took my hooves in his claws, looked deep into my eyes, and told me not to leave here, if not for him, then for the sake of my bedridden friends. That was the last time I ever saw Discord.

The battle lasted three days, during which time, both Ponyville and Canterlot were razed to the ground, and the lives of Princesses Celestia and Luna, Shining Armor, Spike, and Discord, among countless others, were all claimed. Fortunately, most residents of both locations were able to escape, and I was informed that Discord was responsible for many of these evacuations, so for that, at least, I was grateful.

On the third day, when Celestia and Luna were dead, and Cadance had yielded so that Flurry Heart may yet have one parent left alive, the dark, otherworldly entity Twilight had merged with finally released its hold upon her, its contract completed. Upon seeing her fellow Princesses and what she had done, an anguished Twilight extracted their magical energies and rendered the sun and moon independent from the two sisters, in that they now rose themselves. But it turned out that the raising of the sun and moon were the least of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s problems.

When Twilight arrived at Sweet Apple Acres, looking gaunt and exhausted, she allowed me to slap her in the face until her mouth bled, and then I cried for probably an hour. For on the very first day of the battle, our four friends had all of them died. The Alicorn War and, in fact, the entirety of the last few years, had all been pointless, in vain, and to top it all off, Twilight hadn’t even had a chance to say her goodbyes and make peace with those she had wronged. It was the ultimate punishment and ridiculously ironic.

Following this, Twilight went into self-imposed exile, leaving Cadance, Flurry Heart, and myself to rebuild and re-establish order. Aid came from all over Equestria – from Baltimare, Fillydelphia, Cloudsdale, Manehattan, you name it – which certainly helped, but the proceedings, nonetheless, took a very long time on account of one crucial, missing factor that I was, at the time, loathe to admit: the impeccable organisational skills of Princess Twilight Sparkle, who, it was rumoured, now lived in the West.

For many long months, I hated Twilight, hated her with a vengeance. I hated her for neglecting our dying friends under the pretense of selfless action, and, even though I didn’t want her back, I, nevertheless, hated her for neglecting her home and the ponies she was sworn to protect in their time of need – a time of need, not to mention, instigated by her own foolish behaviour. But eventually, Princess Cadance persuaded me that it was time to bring Twilight back, so, reluctantly and with very little hope of success, I journeyed into the untamed, undiscovered wilderness of Western Equestria. It so transpired, however, that the rumours we had heard were correct, and after several months, I finally found Twilight, living alone in a log cabin on a bluff overlooking the sea. When she refused to return with me, as I suspected she would, I wearily made a bargain with her: I would tell her a story, and if this story was amazing enough, she would come home. She agreed, and so it was that I, for the first and last time, told another soul my darkest of secrets: my own story. The story of a pony forced to suffer so that life itself could continue.

I always begin the day I must enter the Mutual Affliction for one million years by visiting their graves. It has been this way for the last four hundred years, so, by now, it’s basically tradition, and as I ascend the wind-blasted hill upon which my friends are buried, I realise I haven’t learned or done anything new for four centuries. That must be why I feel like time has passed by so quickly, I muse; nothing has happened, therefore, there is nothing to mark anything by. There may as well be no calendars, no important dates, no clocks, no history. You would think that in non-times such as these, ponies would compensate for the lack of interesting occurrences by spending their anti-time looking back, but no. The will to preservation is far too strong, it seems, and ponies appear content to look forward to today, or rather to a tomorrow that is no different to today. There is no progress in Equestria anymore. It is actually quite sad.

Anyhow, spring has sprung, as they say, but it is still very, very cold, and I press my nose into the warm silk scarf about my neck, shivering slightly as the bracing air eddies through my fur. Rarity made me this scarf for one of my birthdays – I can no longer recall which one, I’m afraid – and though I dearly love its faded pastel blue, I tend to avoid wearing it because it stopped smelling like her a few hundred years ago. However, seeing as I am visiting my beloved today, I must temporarily renounce my feelings on the matter. Rarity always said that the scarf complemented my eyes and my mane, and I am inclined to agree, but this does not change the fact that the absence of her wonderful aroma will forever haunt me.

The grass underhoof is damp with dew, and making my way toward the lichen-encrusted stones which signify all that is left of my four companions, I gaze around at the serrated carcasses of trees, hopefully sprouting their tiny green buds. I wish that ponies could do the same; wet flesh and soft fur rolling over bare, obsolete frameworks, the empty grin of a skull becoming the loving smile of a friend.

When I started out from home today, the sky was bright and clear, an upturned cerulean sea, but now, gloomy, boulder-like clouds have swept overhead, all but smothering the light and bringing with them the damp, heavy smell of rain. Having reached the summit of the hill, I plonk myself down for a moment, panting softly and brushing my mane out of my eyes. I look out over my home. After the war, Ponyville was rebuilt exactly as it was prior to the conflict, and as of late, I am thankful, because this makes it one less thing that I am forced to rely on my memory for. Celestia knows it isn’t what it used to be. Surveying the collection of thatched, yellow-brown roofs and rolling, viridescent plains beyond, I am suddenly overcome by a great, sweeping sadness. The Castle of Friendship was the only structure which was never repaired, and I think there are still chunks of it lying around to this very day, littered about the place like the pieces of a broken world, but I rarely ever go there. Too painful. Too many memories.

I sigh, wincing at the familiar ache. I know I don’t look it, but I am so, so old now. That was what gave me away in the end, I suppose. Back in the day, we all of us knew that Twilight, being an Alicorn and so on, would inevitably outlive us, but when my friends noticed that I, too, was aging much, much slower than they were, I knew I was exposed. Nopony asked any questions or said anything, of course – it was far too late for that – but they never looked at me the same. That is not to say they resented me, or loved me any less, but the fact that their suspicions about me were confirmed was a blow, to say the least.

Rarity, on the other hoof, didn’t so much as bat a meticulously painted eyelash, but I could tell that this partial revelation left her, if possible, even more conflicted. On the positive side, Rarity obviously did not want me to die, but on the negative side, she knew that she would soon be dead, and that I, therefore, would have to continue on without her beside me. And she still did not know the most important thing of all: why I was the way I was. Then again, all of this was unspoken, so I can but speculate. With a sigh, I get to my hooves, turning.

“Hi, Rarity,” I say to the weathered stone, the letters of my love’s engraved name worn and softened by the long years. “How are you, darling?” I look over at the other three stones. “Hello, Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, Applejack. I’m awfully sorry I haven’t visited in so long, but don’t worry: I brought you all flowers.”

Opening my saddlebag, I retrieve four carefully wrapped bouquets, which I place at the base of each of my friends’ tombstones: elegant, butterfly-like, purple pansies for Rarity; cheerful, spongy, pink roses for Pinkie Pie; delicate but bold blue irises for Rainbow Dash; and simple yet striking yellow tulips for Applejack.

Having placed the flowers, I sit and wait. Any second now, I will hear the whispers, there will be a sort of slanting, sinking sensation, and then I will be in total darkness. Even after all these years, I still can’t seem to get used to it. As I wait, I contemplate beginning a conversation with Rarity. There is every possibility – in fact, it’s almost certain – that I will be whisked away into the void mid-sentence. Oh, hang it all. It’s too late in life to be playing cautious.

“So, how are you, Rarity?” I ask. “I trust you are well?”

“But of course, Fluttershy, dear,” Rarity replies, and I close my eyes, imagining that the cold wind is her melodious voice in my ear, her gentle hooves stroking my mane, her furry nose pressing against my cheek. “And, if I may say so, you are looking absolutely divine in that scarf, darling. Whoever made that must have known you incredibly well.”

I giggle. “Oh, she did, Rarity, she did.”

Rarity laughs. “I wager all the stallions in Ponyville – no, in all Equestria – must be after you on this day!”

“Oh, Rarity, stop it,” I snicker bashfully. “You know I don’t like to be flattered.”

“I am only stating the obvious, dear,” Rarity says good-naturedly. “So, what is new in our Ponyville these days?”

“Nothing,” I reply, accompanying it with a dramatic sigh. “Nothing at all.”

“Do you still miss me?” Rarity asks tentatively.

“Of course,” I say. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop.” A pause. “Is that… weird, Rarity? I mean, it’s been so long, and I still yearn for you like I... only lost you yesterday. Like I only lost all of you yesterday.”

“No, no, darling. Not in the slightest,” Rarity assures me. “Don’t be silly. What you and I – and, in fact, all of us – had was something special. Unique. Something truly worth remembering and treasuring. Pinkie, Dashie, Applejack, and I may have left our bodies far behind, but we have not yet left this world because you are still here. And Twilight, too. The four of us live on through you now.”

“But… what if one day I forget? And what happens when I’m dead? When Twilight’s dead?” I ask Rarity anxiously. I want to open my eyes, to see her, to see her face and what she is thinking, but I’m too scared that there will be nothing there but grey stone and faded letters. “Will that mean it’ll be like none of us ever existed? Like nothing we ever did meant anything? How will the six of us live on when none of us are left alive?”

There is silence for a moment, and I realise that I have somehow managed to dig myself into a one-pony conversational rut. I guess this means I have to take back what I said earlier about nothing new happening anymore. The chilly breeze ruffles my mane, gliding through my fur and cutting through my skin, fills my bones, and I feel so utterly alone. With my eyes closed, there may as well be nothing around me at all. No hilltop. No graves. No grass. No Ponyville. No Equestria. Is it we that are the void?

My eyes snap open, and I spin around, breathless. Oh goodness, the void! Surely it should have taken me by now! I blink furiously, the little blotches of sunshine which slice through the ominous clouds stabbing into my eyes like shards of sky. I then realise that I stopped speaking on Rarity’s behalf quite a long time ago.

Slowly turning, my jaw drops. The pony whom I loved and continue to love like no other stands before me, returned to youth, that heartrendingly genial, sympathetic expression etched onto her strikingly beautiful features. The violet of her mane seems to bleed into the air itself. And then she is gone, leaving behind only weather-beaten rock and the bitter cold of a once breathtakingly good world gone stagnant.

“Rarity,” I whisper, then louder: “RARITY!”

But there is no reply. I sit down heavily, my breath coming out in short gasps. What is happening to me? The wind howls like a pack of hungry timberwolves, and the dark clouds hang malevolently overhead, yet there is no trace of rain. It is like the wind, the clouds, everything is waiting. Equestria is waiting.

I wait at home all day, and still nothing happens.

After Rarity passed, I reluctantly transferred ownership of the boutique to a lovely young couple in her employ, who promised to continue her work as best they could, and moved back into my little cottage on the outskirts of the Everfree. The two ponies were talented, of course – not to mention dedicated – but without Rarity’s fail-proof combination of fiery passion, stylistic expertise, and boundless inspiration, they soon found themselves going bankrupt, and had no choice but to secretly sell the property off to a land developer. I, of course, was furious, as you can probably imagine, but in hindsight, they were wise to keep this from me, as I would most certainly have kicked up a fuss motivated purely by sentimentality, which, in the eyes of the law, is about as far from compelling as one can get.

I have never been a popular pony, but when my friends came and went, and I yet remained, the “freak stamp” I had became a “freak brand.” Upon her return from self-imposed exile, ponies feared Twilight – they were absolutely terrified of her, in fact – but once she had apologised over and over and over again, and then everypony who survived the Alicorn War died, it was like that terror, those circumstances never existed in the first place. Me, on the other hoof, without my friends to stand up for me, to justify both my presence and my existence, ponies were now free to look upon me with contempt and disapproval, resenting me for being the relic, the reminder of a world gone by – a world best left unremembered – that I was, that I still am. As if everything nopony wanted to believe happened was my fault. As if all the terrible, whispered things they feared, that they never knew they feared were all down to me. In short, I was a scapegoat. A scapegoat for some nameless, historic pain of no determinable source or direction which could not be blamed on anything or anypony else, let alone Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Suffice to say, the Carousel Boutique no longer exists, and neither does my place in society, and for the first time in however many years, my decision to give both up begins to beset me anew. It is a raw hurt.

Completely cut off from everypony else as I am, I usually do not enjoy my isolation, so much as find peace in it, comfort, but there is no peace and certainly no comfort to be found tonight. One is never truly alone with one’s thoughts, and on this kaleidoscopic night, my thoughts fragment into the most terrible things. Things without conscience, without name, without face. Things both misshapen and perfectly formed. Things which cannot be seen for fear of eternal madness. I feel them reaching for me in the dark with their scabbed hands, their wet holes for heads, stroking me in places I never thought existed, places I never wanted to exist. Sometimes, their unholy caresses instigate a savage, lustful pleasure; other times, they make me want to tear myself apart. In a state of feverish panic, I light every candle I own, but they are still not enough, and when they have all burned out, wax pooling on the wooden floor, on the carpet like the demonic excesses of my tormenting lovers of the night, I lie shivering below the windowsill. Cold moonlight spills over my body, and I know this night will not end.

Come morning, which is little more than a hesitant pastel smudge on the horizon, I decide to visit Twilight in New Canterlot. Something is clearly very, very wrong, and she is the only one I can think of that may be able to provide a theory or an explanation. Well, there is another, who would likely be able to give me a more definitive answer, but where he is at this moment, I cannot say. Strangely enough, I find myself missing him terribly, and I wonder why. By rights, I should associate him with the suffering I face inside the Mutual Affliction, but for some reason, I just don’t. There is something about him. A familiarity of sorts. Like I once knew and cared deeply for him or someone like him. And not merely because I have now known him for five centuries or so. My heart I gave to Rarity, but there is something else I gave to him, and yet I am no closer to knowing what that something actually is. I cannot explain it, and it bothers me. I think I am what I least understand about this world.

Wrapping my scarf around my neck as I gingerly step outside, a shiver passes through me, and I suppress a whimper. Easy, Fluttershy. I don’t want to admit it to myself, but I felt it last night. I felt the dark power of the Mutual Affliction as I have never felt it before. There was a horrifying ecstasy to it, a sense of triumphant, animalistic glee, and as the pale pink dawn trickled up into the atmosphere, and I wearily cleaned away the blood around my lips and on the floor from where I bit my tongue, I wondered if this was, in fact, the end of everything.

On my way to the train station, I come across nopony. The streets of Ponyville are abandoned, its arctic emptiness just a stone’s throw away from that of the void, and after a while, I consider perhaps knocking on a door or peering in through a window, but decide against it. I doubt my neighbours, regardless of whether or not they are unwell, would much appreciate my assistance. Nonetheless, I am very concerned. What is more, it’s almost 9 o’clock, and the sun doesn’t appear to have risen any higher than when I first awoke from my sleepless, restless slumber.

The train to Canterlot does not arrive either, which, at this point, I more or less expected, so I linger for half an hour, just to be sure, and then decide to fly instead. Soaring high above the outskirts of Ponyville, I begin to feel a little better, although the memory of my fathomless violation is still fresh in my mind. An involuntary shudder ripples throughout my being, and I struggle not to recall the sickening yet shamefully gratifying sensation of my countless vile impregnations at the hands of the loathsome night. Gazing upward, I observe that the clouds have thickened, creating a foreboding blanket of pink-tinged grey which all but obscures any trace of sky. The clouds give the distinct impression of gradual descent, and it is as though the world is folding in on itself, an inverted mountain range.

It takes me a just few hours to reach the sprawling, mountainside city of New Canterlot, stopping to rest every half-hour or so in fields of damp grass and atop loneliest of hills. It starts drizzling when I am roughly a third of the way there, and by the time I touch down at the base of the immense double doors of New Canterlot Castle, I am quite soaked. As I flew above the city, I noticed that, like Ponyville, it was completely abandoned, which, by now, does not surprise me at all. I knock, the doors swing open, I enter.

Silently padding down the vast, vacant hall, painfully aware that I am dripping all over the place, I at last enter the throne room. It is gloomy in here, cold, and once my eyes have adjusted, I see her, and she takes my breath away. Twilight sits upon her throne at the very back of the room, the spectral, polychromatic light which seeps in through the dull stained-glass windows playing over her features. I had forgotten how astonishingly beautiful she is, slender and tall and oh-so regal-looking, a long mane of raspberry-streaked indigo and those eyes like drowned violet stars. I find myself struggling to comprehend, let alone believe, that this pony had at one time been young, bookish, and totally neurotic.

“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

My so-called “friend” freezes, stiffens, turns to look at me. A hint of panic. And about time, too. Her eyes dart around. Everypony is watching, and we both know it. “Fluttershy!” Twilight hisses angrily. She is attempting to mask her embarrassment, and she is not doing a very good job. “This is not a good time!”

From behind me, I hear my friends – our friends – rushing up. “Fluttershy,” Applejack says uncertainly, a little out of breath, “sugarcube, are you sure ’bout this?”

“Of course I am,” I reply without looking around, keeping my eyes fixed on Twilight. “Twilight,” I say sternly, “this has gone on long enough. We need to talk. We need to sit down and talk about this.”

“No,” Twilight responds obstinately, “we don’t. Because there’s nothing to talk about.” She is looking around, trying to make it look discreet, and I tense when I realise she is hoping to make a break for it.

“Twilight,” I say again, gritting my teeth as what little patience I do not have left begins wearing thin, “if you leave now, we will never speak to you again.” I realise I am gambling here, and I can just about feel Rarity’s, Dashie’s, Pinkie’s, and Applejack’s anxiety bleeding into the air, into the nervous ponies around us, into Twilight, into me. “Is that what you want?” I continue in a softer, gentler tone.

At this moment, something changes in Twilight. For just a second – a time so brief I am almost certain I imagined it – she suddenly looks tired, so tired. All the life seems to simply drain from her, trickling down out of her face, out of her eyes, and in this moment, I understand that something has died.

Then Twilight is angry. Furious. The look on her face says it all. I feel the tears in her eyes before I see them. “You know,” my friend eventually manages to choke out, “m-maybe that would be best, Fluttershy.”

“No, Twilight, no,” I whisper. “Oh no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Please. I’m sorry.”

“Shut up!” Twilight suddenly screams, and I do not think there is a pony who does not flinch. “FUCK YOU! You don’t know a thing! You have no idea of the sacrifices I’ve made for you! FOR ALL OF YOU! You fucking ingrates!”

I think I hear somepony, probably Rarity or Pinkie, sobbing from behind me, and I am just a shell, a hollow framework. Oh Celestia, I feel like I just emerged from the Mutual Affliction. “Twilight,” I begin in a small voice, but I don’t know how to continue. But then: “what about friendship?” I ask. “What about... magic…?”

Twilight snorts somewhat hysterically, and I start when she just about punches herself in the face to wipe away the tears. “Don’t talk to me about friendship, Fluttershy. Don’t you talk to me about friendship. What is the fucking point of friendship,” she spits, “if it doesn’t last forever, and magic if it can’t fix that?”

And then, with a blinding flash of magical energy, Princess Twilight Sparkle, my friend, is gone.

“Fluttershy,” says Twilight, leaving the shadowy confines of her throne and approaching, “somehow I had a feeling you would be coming.” To my surprise, she pulls me into an unexpectedly tender embrace.

“Hi, Twilight,” I reply as we separate after a time, somewhat dazed. “Something has gone really wrong.”

Twilight nods. She looks debilitated, drawn, bags under her eyes. “I know. As far as I am aware, everypony in Equestria appears unable to rise from bed this morning. I don’t have an explanation. Cadance and Flurry Heart are in the Crystal Empire trying to… I don’t know, do something.” She already sounds defeated.

“That’s awful...” I say. There is silence for a time, and in this emptiest of rooms, this ballroom for splintered shadow things and black memories, it is as if Twilight and I are alone in the world, and I feel something I cannot quite identify. It is akin to relief, but also to a dread as deep as the elemental perpetuity of the Abyss itself, and I am confused. Then I remember. “Oh, Twilight!” I exclaim, alarmed by how unreliable my memory is proving to be. “I completely forgot! There's something I have to tell you!”

And then, at this precise moment, he arrives. It’s him. The Gatekeeper. His dark brown hair is longer than I have ever seen it, unkempt and flowing nearly down to his shoulders, pushed hastily out of his eyes. Coarse, untidy beard. Blood down the left side of his face, a crimson half-mask. Wearing scuffed black pants, a bloodstained white shirt, and a worn black suit jacket, right sleeve hanging, torn at the shoulder. Manic look in his impossible, chasm-like eyes.

It takes the Gatekeeper a few seconds to make sense of his surroundings, gaping and blinking at the all-encompassing gloom, but when he sees me, his face breaks into a relieved yet exhausted smile. “Fluttershy,” he begins, stepping closer, but then a vicious pulse of magical energy pushes him violently back. He wheels his arms around frantically on the spot, trying to retain balance and looking over at Twilight incredulously.

“You,” Twilight snarls through clenched teeth, face taut with rage. The last time I saw her this angry was the day I confronted her all those long years ago. A vast, ever expanding aperture has opened between the three of us, our reciprocated hollowness fashioning the perfect trinity of sacrificial desolation and timeless despair. The Gatekeeper, still looking on in disbelief, cautiously opens his mouth to say something, but Twilight, clearly not having any of it, unleashes a ferocious barrage of her most powerful spells, eyes blazing and jaw set. The Princess’ magic cuts through the oppressive gloom, throwing the shadows into a nightmarish, prismatic clarity and making them prance and dart mockingly.

“Hey, no,” says the Gatekeeper, just standing there, Twilight’s spells striking him over and over with no effect. He stabs a finger at Twilight in awkward condemnation. “No. Stop that. Hey, no. Stop. Stop. Stop that!”

But Twilight persists, and I can now see that she is crying, the sheer force of the magic she expels causing her tears to slide across her face and toward the back of her head. “FIGHT BACK!” she screams at the Gatekeeper. “Fight back! I’ll teach you to hurt my friend!”

At length, I am reunited with both the ability to think and to move , and I finally intervene, throwing myself between the two. Twilight stops immediately, as I knew she would. “Stop, Twilight!” I say as she tries to push past me, refusing to meet my gaze, eyes only for her perceived adversary. “He’s not our enemy,” I plead, strenuously holding her back, away from the Gatekeeper. “He’s my friend.” She looks down at me, and there is so much hurt, so much anger, so much confusion there that it breaks the pieces of the pieces of my heart all over again. “He’s my friend,” I mumble, moving my hooves a fraction higher so that I can gently run them through Twilight’s silky mane, over the wetness of her cheeks. With some effort, I lean up and plant upon her nose the softest kiss imaginable, allow my lips to linger.

“And me?” Twilight murmurs, barely audible, her sad, distant eyes searching my face. Searching for what? A thousand possible answers jostle for attention in my mind, and no one is any more pleasant than the other. “What am I?”

“You’re my Twilight,” I whisper back, our faces so close that with every breath, I inhale what she exhales. I look up at her, and she looks down at me. Warmth emanating from where the sweat seeps out, a faintly metallic taste entering my mouth, the scent of a perpetual, antediluvian fear. “You’re my Twilight, and words can’t describe how much you mean to me, how much I… how much I love you.” I want so desperately to reach into the putrid, unfathomable depths of her eyes and find that forgotten sparkle, pull it back to the surface, gasping for air. I cannot see it, and I haven’t for so long now. It is buried deep within some forsaken subterranean grotto, bitter island of existential illness amid unquiet waters of bleeding memory, but I know, I know it’s still in there somewhere. Accessible. It has to be. It must be. “You’re my friend, Twilight,” I continue, “my guardian, my world, my everything. You’re Rainbow Dash, you’re Pinkie Pie, you’re Applejack…” I draw breath shakily, “…and you’re... you’re Rarity, too.”

When I at long last find her, she is sitting alone on the threshold of a huge, grass-covered clifftop overlooking the glassy ocean and bathed in the rosy plumes of Equestrian dawn. There is a small and crude, but surprisingly cosy-looking log cabin to our right, its north wall situated right on the overhang, and the large trees on either side forming a tunnel of sorts with their strange but distinctly longing inward slant.

I open my mouth to speak, but find myself unable to form words. It has been months, and I don’t know what I am supposed to say to her. I’ve been living rough and on my own for such a prolonged period of time now that I am not sure I remember how to talk to anypony besides myself. And even if that wasn’t the case, this was Princess Twilight Sparkle, the pony who almost broke the world, who did break my heart.

“Hello, Fluttershy,” Twilight suddenly says without turning, and I am both relieved and unnerved in equal measure. Her voice, flat and bereft of emotion, doesn’t inspire any confidence with regard to my mission, which, come to think of it, never really struck me as an obviously good idea. “I figured you’d show up.”

“Oh?” I finally respond, mouth dry and heart thumping, staying where I am.

“I know why you’ve come,” Twilight continues, sounding decidedly uninterested, “but I’m afraid you’ve had something of a wasted journey. I’m not coming back. Not now, not ever. Those days are dead and gone, but, by all means, sit yourself down and enjoy the sunrise before you leave. Alone.”

And so, I sit myself down next to her and watch as life – or rather, what remains of it – slowly returns to the world. Even after all this time, I find myself on occasion forgetting that it is no longer the Princesses Celestia and Luna who raise the sun and the moon. I do not think I have ever seen a body of water so still and yet so disturbed, or a sunset so wonderful and yet so melancholic. It is as though Equestria itself is in mourning, and we – its inhabitants – along with it, and for just a second, that old hatred of Twilight manifests once more, virulent. But then I remember why I’m here, and I am left feeling merely empty. Everything I am, everything I feel just fades away, flowing from me in wispy coils and extending their delicate fingers toward where the sun meets the ocean, drowning fire and burning water.

“Our friends... died, Twilight,” I at last say, looking over. I observe her sightless eyes, the way her mane wafts in the sea breeze. “And it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anypony’s fault. You didn’t kill them, as you seem to believe, but you did abandon them when they needed you most. And now, Equestria needs you, Twilight, so come back with me. Make things right. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to happen overnight, but things will get better, things will work out. We may not have our friends to help us anymore, but we do still have each other.”

Twilight looks down at her hooves, upturned. “I didn’t get to say goodbye,” she murmurs dejectedly.

“I know,” I say. I contemplate rubbing her back or embracing her, but don’t. “Yeah, I know.”

“I’m still not going back,” she says, but this time, she sounds uncertain, lacking conviction. “I... I just can’t. Ponies get hurt around me. I… I hurt ponies.”

“Twilight, that’s just not true,” I persist. “It’s not you that hurts ponies; it’s what hurts you that hurts ponies. Trust me, I… I know. I do."

Twilight remains silent.

I sigh. The sun and the sea have separated. The world is risen, the world is born. Is it time? “Listen, let’s make a deal,” I say. Am I really doing this? “I’ll tell you a story, and if that story is the most incredible thing you have ever heard, you have to return with me.” There, it’s done. “Do we have a deal?”

At this point, Twilight looks right at me for the first time in many months, and I realise just how much I have missed her. And what is more, I now know that this is precisely what I have to do. “You’re going to tell me... a story?” she asks, a hint of skepticism. She blinks. Twice. Perpetuity ensues. “Okay,” she eventually says. “Deal.”

“Uh...” says the Gatekeeper from somewhere behind, and I turn, “this is heartwarming and all, I’m sure, but we have a serious problem that no amount of anything I have just witnessed will help in the slightest.”

“So, I take it you know why Equestria is suffering?” Twilight asks him, all business, and I am truly amazed by how quickly she is able to regain her composure.

The Gatekeeper sighs and pushes up his smudgy glasses to rub at his eyes. “Yes, but it’s bigger than that. Much, much bigger.”

“What do you mean?” I demand. “What happened?”

“Well, long story short,” says the Gatekeeper, “some absolute motherfucker has somehow managed to locate and harness the power of the Mutual Affliction, which, if you recall, is the sum total of all pain in the universe. And, well, it seems like we’re all going to die. I mean, my friends and I are trying to stop it, obviously, but, um… I don’t think there’s really anything we can do at this point.”

“Wait, friends?” I ask incredulously. “You have friends?”

The Gatekeeper looks a little taken aback, blinks. “Okay, ouch.”

“No, sorry, sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. You know what I meant.”

The Gatekeeper sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah. There’s five of us, but that’s not important right now. What is important is that I came here to give you a choice. And it’s not a pleasant one. That choice is this: either end Equestria now – today – or wait for things to get much worse.”

“End Equestria?!” Twilight cries. “End Equestria?! That’s... that’s insane! And even if we wanted to – which, by the way, is not what I’m saying here at all – how in the world would we do that?!”

The Gatekeeper looks at me. “Fluttershy, of course.” He now addresses me directly. “I take it you’ve told her?”

I nod numbly. I think I am beginning to understand now, and I really wish I wasn’t.

The Gatekeeper nods wearily. “Fluttershy is the focal point, the centre of this world. What this means is that without her consent, Equestria can’t physically exist. So, what I’m saying is, all that you have to do to end your world is convince Fluttershy that it’s better off not existing. It’s really that simple.”

My heart is threatening to tear itself free of my chest, and I turn to look over at Twilight because I don’t know what else to do. My friend is gaping at the Gatekeeper and does not return my gaze. The three of us are at this point swallowed whole by a monstrous stillness, a bursting emptiness which fills the submerged throne room like dead souls of dead stars in dead creation that have bled, and we are truly alone. There is no Equestria, no universe, no Mutual Affliction. The three of us are the splintered shadow things, fragile and incorrect, this ruptured room our nameless rock beneath the cosmic wasteland.

The Gatekeeper rubs his eyes again, and the spell is broken. “Listen, I… I have to leave now,” he tells us. “The choice is yours, of course, but I wouldn’t delay. The Shadow has already fallen, but it does not rest.” The Gatekeeper pivots as if to depart, but then he turns back around, awkward. “Um… Fluttershy? By the way, when I told you all those years ago that I was the, uh… ‘shepherd of souls’ or whatever it was that I said, I was... sort of exaggerating. There’s actually another guy for that. The Soulkeeper. I don’t really have anything to do with souls. Just wanted to clear that up before we all die horribly.”

“Wait,” I say without really knowing why.

“Yes?” he asks expectantly, face shrouded in shadow.

“Isn’t there something else you want to tell me?”

The Gatekeeper blinks, exhales slowly. “Oh. Right. Yeah. You and I, we met a long time ago and very far away from here. I would shed light on the specifics for you, but that story more or less defies all explanation. Also, I seem to have forgotten the vast majority of it. Sorry,” he says, looking embarrassed.

“Were we… in love?” I ask, and the words are alien to me, as though they neither originated in my head, nor left my mouth.

The Gatekeeper gives me a small smile. “You know, I can’t quite recall that either.” And then he is gone.

When I turn back around, I panic for a second because I cannot see Twilight anywhere. But then I can, and I follow the long, tongue-like, red carpet through the gloom over to where she sits, gazing at her reflection in one of two small pools at the base of her throne. The current generated by the miniature waterfall which flows into it is so gentle that it makes barely a ripple, and I wonder what Twilight sees in there, in the pony staring back. As I join her in peering into the shallow yet somehow depthless water, I am suddenly aware of how different Twilight and I are. I think our only true similarity lies within our eyes, their despondent weariness betraying our ostensibly youthful bodies. Life reduced by increase.

“What are we going to do, Fluttershy?” Twilight asks me. She sounds shattered, a discarded eggshell.

“I… don’t know,” I answer. Do we have the right to end suffering by ending life? And then I remember.

Even all the way out here in Sweet Apple Acres, we can hear the insanity occurring in Ponyville, great splintering cracks like thunder shaking the foundations of the structure, and a hellish razor blade screaming which cuts us right down to our souls – or what is left of them, at this point. There are a fair few ponies gathered here, all of which Ponyville residents I know only by name – with the exception of Applebloom and her husband, of course – and all of which cowering in various nooks and crannies around the house. Thankfully, however, my friends and I have this room all to ourselves, and gazing out of the window and over the trees, I can see bursts of devastating magical energy tearing the sky asunder.

“Darling?” comes Rarity’s feeble voice from behind me, and I immediately rush to her side, pushing away all thoughts that do not concern her. She is tucked up in the far-right bed, two thick, fluffy pillows beneath her weary head and an assortment of blankets piled atop her brittle body. I don’t think there was a time in Rarity’s life that she ever fell short of incomprehensibly beautiful, and even now, in her twilight years, she remains totally breathtaking, with that indomitable violet mane, those crystalline eyes, and the kindest smile a pony could hope to encounter. Lying beside my beloved in identical circumstances are Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack, all apparently asleep, snug and oh-so-faded.

“Yes, dear?” I say, taking Rarity’s hoof in mine and planting a kiss on her snout. “I’m here. I’m still here.”

“Fluttershy,” says Rarity laboriously, “darling, I… I think the others have gone.”

I smile down at her with what energy survives. There is a muted but, nevertheless, terrifying crash from outside, which I wince in response to. It sounded somehow closer this time, but Rarity does not seem to hear. “No, no, they’re all still right here, Rarity. They’re all right. It’ll... it’ll be all right.”

“No,” Rarity rasps, “no. I mean they’ve died, dear. I... I felt it.”

It takes me a moment or two to wrap my head around what Rarity has just imparted, but then I whirl around and rush over to my three friends. Their breath has left them, vapour in the void, and they are stagnant as the apathetic stars. They are dead, and my throat, my chest tighten as I sob with my face pressed into Rainbow’s still-warm forehead. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. This is so utterly wrong.

“Fluttershy, I’m going to go with them now,” says Rarity from her bed. “It is time.”

“No,” I exclaim, rushing back over. “Don’t you dare. No, no, you can’t!”

“Fluttershy, as you say, it will be all right,” my love tells me, her eyes half-open as she tenderly caresses my face. “Please do not fret. You won’t see me for a long time now, it is true, and I know that that will hurt, but we will find one another again. I promise. But for now, know that I love you and will forever, and that I am sorry.”

“Sorry?” I sob. “What could you possibly have to be sorry for?”

“That I was…. never trustworthy enough for you to… confide in me, dear…”

At this point, I scream up at the ceiling, inconsolable as my pain tears up into the atmosphere, through time, space, the void, flesh, muscle, bone, and soul, and right into the convulsive malevolence of the Mutual Affliction, where a young pony who shares my name and wears my face is brutally ripped to shreds, has her existence burned for one million years. This is a moment which transcends, a moment which encompasses.

“Fluttershy,” Rarity murmurs, her eyes shut, “don’t cry. It isn’t the end.” Then: “…where is Twilight?”

Suddenly, with an awful splitting sound like the uprooting of a thousand trees, the roof is blown clean off, and I find myself staring at the seething, repellent mass that was once Princess Twilight Sparkle. Whatever agreement my friend has made with this beast from beyond the universe, beyond order, beyond sanity has left her unrecognisable, vile and shapeless. Above her, the sky blisters and falls away.

“TWILIGHT!” I shriek, horrified but unable to avert my eyes. And above the sound of Twilight’s unearthly snarls, above the sound of the howling maelstrom overhead, and above the sound of the ponies scattered about the house screaming, I somehow manage to discern my beloved Rarity’s very last words:

“She is not gone, darling; merely lost. And all you have to do is find her and let go.”

Rarity saw this coming. I know neither how nor why, but Rarity’s final act was to warn me of this very day. Is this really what I must do? Save Equestria, save Twilight, save myself by destroying everything we worked toward? Everything we achieved? I glance over at the row of stained glass windows, and the sun still has not risen, only dead light now. Time has stopped. Equestria is holding its breath.

“I… I think we should do this, Twilight,” I hear myself saying. “It is time.”

Twilight slowly looks at me, her expression unreadable.

“This world – our world – died with the others, with our friends,” I continue, not really thinking about what I say, just saying it. “Every day since then has just been borrowed time. It’s all so faded now, Twilight, so blurred that nopony can even imagine doing anything new anymore. Everything that was good and beautiful and precious about Equestria turned to ash so long ago that we’ve all just... trodden over it until all knowledge of it was lost. We forgot how to be happy because the possibility no longer existed. This is it. This is where we end. I don’t want any more suffering, Twilight. No more pain. The ponies of Equestria deserve their rest. Being good, being happy; it isn’t easy, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight suddenly says. “I’m sorry I was a bad friend. I don’t... I don’t know if I ever said that to you.”

And then she is crying, brokenhearted and unintelligible, and I am holding her, tears in the dark, tears nopony can ever see. Four hundred years of this, I think as I whisper to her and hold her head to my chest, four hundred years. And all I want is to take this pain away from her. It is all I ever wanted.

And then I am alone. And I am falling. Twilight, the throne room, and everything else gone. Total blackness, but I can still see myself clear as day. I scream, try flapping my wings, but to no avail. I continue my fall.

And then I am the one being held, and he is holding me against him, my face pressing into his throat. He is whispering to me, haunted.

“I’m sorry,” the Gatekeeper tells me, his breath ragged in my mane. “I really fucked up. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”