“I told you it was a stupid idea to keep her around!”

My vision rolled and tumbled like the sea as I tried to focus on something--anything--which could ground me in my surroundings. I could barely open my eyes entirely, partly from the pain in my head and partly from pure fatigue.

“Fucking idiot. I never should have listened to you.” The voice, though it sounded as if it were emanating from a tape recorder submerged in a lake, was familiar. The tone, however, was not; Blue Moon, sounding like somepony entirely different. Somepony angry and scared beyond belief.

I was staring down at the tiled floor of what I could now recognize to be the shopping center. Nothing else in town had quite the same shade of pale green with the little swirls of white curling through them. Much more noticeably, nothing else in town had little plants growing in the grout.

The sound of a hoof stomping on the tile floor rang out through the empty building. “You agreed that she’d be useful to keep around!” Nightwhisper, of course. Just as angry as always, those the helping of ear in his voice gave rise to a flicker of hope in my chest. “I didn’t know she was gonna drag her little dyke friend into this shit.”

Rainbow couldn’t even muster a reaction.

Rainbow!

I did my best to sneak a look at my dearest friend, now tied to a column in an abandoned shopping center. Her head hung down at the neck, and a little trickle of dried blood cut a trail through her fur under her nostril. Her face, slack and defeated, seemed not to move at all.

“Rainbow!” I hissed.

No response.

“Oh, not now, not now!” I thrashed a bit, but gave up quickly. Thick bounds of rope held me to mine own pillar, it seemed. “Rainbow, please!” The desperation brought out something wholly unrecognized in my voice.

Her eyelids flickered.

“Rainbow?” I asked. My breath hitched.

Her eyes cracked open, a telltale flash of magenta peaking out before they drifted shut again. “Mn,” she grunted.

“Oh, Dashie, thank Celestia you’re alive!” My voice strained not to rise above a harsh whisper.

She managed a glance in my direction, and a half-hearted smile. “Back ‘attcha, Rares.”

My limbs pulled against the restraints again in an effort to reach her.

“What’s happening?” I hissed. A lock of my dirtied mane came loose from its place behind my ear. I watched Rainbow’s face fall through the stringy bits of purple hair.

She did not respond.

“It’s fine. It’s all fine, I’ll handle it.” Blue Moon’s voice was drifting from another section of the shopping center entirely, and I couldn’t see her or Nightwhisper at all. “Like I handle every other damn thing.”

With the all of the echoes and the ambient sound of the raging windstorm, it was nearly impossible to pinpoint the source of our kidnapper’s voices. I scanned the mall for any sign of movement--a glimpse of a tail, the flash of a passing shadow, anything. As I searched, I spotted one more form slumped against a column in the distance.

I breathed in a quick gasp of air. “Moss.”

She wasn’t tied quite like we were. Her bindings were looser and lower, perhaps an assumption based on physical strength or magical prowess. Or, perhaps, it was a sign that she had been beaten to a point even closer to death than we had been.

But still alive, just as I had thought! Only barely, but certainly alive. I could feel it, deeply and intrinsically. And I, her supposed savior, was tied to a post.

Or perhaps Twilight was still meant to be her savior.

Oh, yes, the way the glowing white light of the full moon filtered through the glass overhead and fell, dappled and green, right onto her head. The way her crumpled and defeated form still looked somehow holy and sacred. The way the sand floated through the air like heavenly dust motes in her patch of dimmed sunlight.

She was Twilight’s little angel, wasn’t she? Twilight’s little pawn in a disgusting, incestuous, backwater conflict that nopony decent had any business partaking in.

I grit my teeth so hard at the thought I nearly shattered a tooth. Twilight’s betrayal burned so horribly in my memory that holding onto it for even a moment too long would surely cause me to overflow, to scream, to set fire to my very mind.

Twilight had murdered my friend. And she would get me murdered, too.

Not to mention Rainbow Dash, another pony who commanded my love and attention so completely that I was consumed with nothing but thoughts of keeping her safe and warm. Twilight’s little henchmen would see to Rainbow’s death, as well.

I thrashed against my restraints. Some rope, which burned. Some tape, which tugged.

“C-cut it out!” Rainbow ordered, her voice weaker than I’d ever heard it. “Just stop, you’ll hurt yourself!”

“I am not dying here, Rainbow Dash, and neither are you!”

“You’re wrong.”

We froze and silenced in an instant as Blue Moon’s voice floated down from above us. I knew without hesitation that she now stood in the same place that Rainbow Dash had stood many times, her body framed by the unnatural green light filtering through the rooftop windows, her wings casting stained-glass light forms across the floor…

Neither of us could turn to face her. We waited, stewing in fury, for her to come down the stairs and stand before us. Her steps were not slow, did not make savor the moment; no, they were hurried and stumbling.

She was wearing a dark robe. One that I recognized from her closet, come to think of it. I believe I mistook it for a bathrobe.

Otherwise, she was almost frighteningly the same. There wasn’t anything in her eyes that screamed for help, or seemed at all detached or confused. She was just the same old nervous, protective Blue Moon, only with the hood of a dark robe draped about her shoulders in place of an apron.

“Blue.” Rainbow spat blood onto the tile.

Blue looked her right in the eyes. “Rainbow.” She turned her head to look at me. “Rarity.”

“Blue, whatever she’s offering you, you can’t do this!” I shouted. “Moss was your friend! She protected you and helped you… how could you?”

“Because I have to,” Blue said. “I’m sure you’ve been too tied up in your own little mental breakdown to realize what’s been going on in this town.”

I scoffed. “You mean the missing ponies? The ones you’ve been kidnapping?”

Blue closed her eyes and turned her head just a few degrees away from me. It reminded me of the manner in which careful politicians react to ignorant hecklers. How poised, how diplomatic of her to stay calm and dignified in the face of our anger. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand. I just told you, you’ve been so tied up in your own private meltdown that you’ve missed near everything else.”

A twinge of doubt turned the tension in my chest one degree tighter. “Well, then… you owe us an explanation, don’t you?”

Rainbow managed a weak wink. Well done buying us some time, it said. Though I doubt buying more time would help us in the slightest.

Blue sighed. “I didn’t wanna do this. I didn’t wanna talk to you before the ceremony. I wanted to tape y’all’s mouths up and be done with it.”

“You didn’t,” Rainbow added. “Talk.”

“I’m gonna regret this…” Blue shook her head. “This town used to be lively. Bet you didn’t even know this, but it used to be called Autumn’s Peak. Celestia herself came up with that one, on account of how the sand looks in the sun… and the butte, of course.

“We had good prospects. We had nice folks livin’ here, we had a motel for passers-by. Had the best damn pie in the whole desert at Big Joe’s Diner. ‘Specially after gettin’ the gas station, this town was in line to make some real money. Grow and thrive. Be someplace real, not a… a… a non-place.

“But, the day that friend of yours came… I dunno what She did, but everything changed.”

“Friend?” Rainbow asked softly.

“We know that part,” I cut her off. “Why are you taking ponies?”

Over her shoulder, I could see Nightwhisper approaching Moss. He, too, wore a dark robe with the hood around his neck. I hoped with everything I had that he was moving towards her to untie her, but I knew that was too much to wish for.

“Because!” Blue spat back. “We’re doing what She wants to get our town back.”

“Why is this what Twilight wants?” I asked, my voice low enough that I hoped Rainbow couldn’t hear.

“T-Twilight?” Rainbow moaned.

Blue growled, stomped her hoof. “I knew I shouldn’t have talked to you. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

I took a deep breath in through my nose. Blue Moon was scared. Twilight was making her do this, and I had to give her an out. I had to let her know that she was safe, that I could protect her. Maybe there was still hope for the rest of us, too.

I breathed out through my mouth. “Try me.”

Blue was now pacing back and forth. “After She left, other ponies started leaving. Not like… moving. Like disappearing.”

My eyebrows knit together, only the slightest bit.

“Anypony who was lost or confused or needed help… they disappeared. Overnight. Poof, gone! And we knew it had something to do with Her because-- well, because Moss told me all about Her visit and everything. About how She’s supposed to take care of lost ponies or something. It all sounded like a load of bullshit to me, at first, but then…”

Blue wasn’t even looking me anymore. Just pacing back and forth, the words spilling out of her faster than she could control.

“But it wasn’t so simple as just disappearing, It was--”

“What are you doing!” The roar echoed across the shopping center. Mine and Blue’s heads whipped towards it, and spotted Nightwhisper kneeling beside Moss at her pillar.

He was on his hooves in an instant and barreled towards us. Blue snapped into position.

“I told you not to talk to them, you bitch!” He struck her across the face. “Can’t you even listen to one fucking order?”

“Don’t talk back to me, you shit-faced bastard. I’m the one fixing this for us,” Blue shot back. “I’ll talk to whoever I like.”

Nightwhisper said nothing, merely towered over Blue’s tiny frame. I remembered being on the receiving end of that. Watching it from the outside made my stomach sink to my hooves and my heart rise into my throat.

Blue stood strong. “I’ll go untie Moss, since you couldn’t even finish that.”

She trotted back up the stairs, shaking ever so slightly.

Nightwhisper’s eyes passed over me, and he set his sights on Rainbow Dash.

He moved in just the same way, skulking over towards Rainbow and standing over her, chest puffed out, his breath probably rancid. “You little fag. Trying to take my bitch? I’ll teach you a lesson tonight.”

Rainbow’s head tilted up the tiniest bit, a twisted smile painted over her face. “She doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Nightwhisper fumed a moment in silence, then pounded one hoof against the column just inches above Rainbow’s head. She flinched, but only just. Nightwhisper took this as a victory, laughed a hoarse and demented chuckle.

His eyes slid back over to me. The look in them was poison, was daggers. I had seen that look before, and only the worst of nights followed. Nights of being used like a doll and tossed aside without a second thought.

“Rarity,” he said.

I tried not to vomit.

“What you’ve been through? What you’re going to go through to tonight?” His face was blank. His eyes empty. “It’ll be nothing compared to the life She’s made me live. This is the easy way out.”

Without another word, without even another second, his magic lit the air before me and he tore a huge swath of packing tape from my skin.

I shrieked in pain and surprise. This was one of few things that seemed to disturb Rainbow in the least, as far gone as she was. Sent a bolt of electricity up her spine, though it only lasted that long.

Nightwhisper, unfazed, continued to release me in this violent fashion, but I bit my lip and fought through the pain. Even as I watched huge patches of my snow-white fur be torn out by the roots, I didn’t make another sound.

Rainbow was functionally unconscious. Panic was beginning to resurge in my chest.

At last, the final piece of rope fell away and I was free. I don’t really know was I was thinking, but I tried to get up and scramble away while Nightwhisper was refocusing on Rainbow.

He was faster than I was, though. He grabbed my legs in his magic and hogtied me with the same length of rope that had just dropped to the floor. This was done without a word. I don’t know if that made things better or worse.

I was made to watch while Nightwhisper untied Rainbow Dash. My brain was too rattled, physically and emotionally, to even attempt a spell. Nightwhisper knew this, of course.

It’ll be nothing compared to the life She’s made me live.

His last words echoed in my mind. Not much else was coherent enough to form words at all.

“I asked why…” I murmured.

“Shut up.”

“I should have asked if.”

Nightwhisper’s ear twitched.

“Is Twilight making you do this?” I asked.

Nightwhisper froze for a moment, his magic faltering, the continued to untie Rainbow. “Of course she is.”

“But…” I coughed lightly. “Are you working for her?”

“Of course!”

“Does she know that?”

Silence.

Rainbow’s head lolled about, almost involved, but much too far away for words.

“You’re just guessing, aren’t you?” I pushed.

The ropes fell from Rainbow’s body, and she fell into a pile of bones on the floor, not even trying to escape. Nightwhisper secured her wings with one rope, hogtied her with another. The way he wrapped the rope around the base of her wings and tugged, the feathers sticking in every direction, the joints pulled back into an unnaturally deep upstroke-- even I cringed at the sight of it.

I gathered myself. “You have no idea what she wants. You’re guessing and you’re guessing wrong!”

Nightwhisper didn’t speak. He took our ropes in his mouth and started up the stairs, dragging us along behind him. The cold, hard edges of the steps dug into my already irritated flesh. Rainbow’s right wing was pulled and tugged about as it moved over the uneven terrain.

“She wouldn’t do this!” I insisted. “And she wouldn’t want you killing for her!”

We reached level ground again, and Nightwhisper continued to drag us over the sandy tile without acknowledgement.

Then, he flickered.

The ropes fell through the air and landed on the cool tile with a light plop. Right out of his screaming mouth, right through his immaterial body. It was here and gone in an instant, and he scooped the ropes off the ground as quickly as he had dropped them.

My breathing hitched in my throat. It was so much like Rainbow Dash, the way she seemed to appear and disappear, the way she seemed to bend time to her will.

“Let’s go, Blue,” Nightwhisper mumbled around the ropes. “Nearly dawn.”

Blue was still hard at work undoing Moss’ restraints. I had to assume she was still alive, though she didn’t look it in the slightest.

“I-I’m trying,” Blue murmured. She was shaking terribly, now, barely able to stand upright-- let alone remove Moss’ restraints.

Nightwhisper sighed. “Take them.”

He dropped the ropes, and Blue ran to snatch them up.

While Nightwhisper busied himself, I set my sights on Blue.

“Blue,” I hissed.

She pretended not to have heard me.

“Blue,” I repeated. “You can tell me. Why does Twilight want you doing this?”

Blue’s knees knocked, but remained silent.

“Please, Blue. I need to know. She’s one of my dearest friends, and I-- I’m going to die soon, aren’t I?” I asked, my voice as soft and fearful as I could make it. Blue shivered. “Just tell me. Before I die.”

Blue sucked in a breath, checked to see if Nightwhisper was listening. Apparently satisfied, she set our ropes delicately on the floor and stood on the ends

“She wants to find ponies to watch over, but She can’t. They don’t last forever--don’t even last their whole lives in transition--so She…” A powerful shiver overtook her and she had to focus on not swallowing her tongue for a moment.

“Yes, Blue?”

“She… She takes them. She steals them away at twilight. Which would be one thing, but you forget them!” Her voice was panicked, now. Words spilled out of her at an unbelievable clip. “You forget all the ponies you used to know and love a-and even the ones you used to really hate. ‘Cause she just takes ‘em right out of the universe.”

I nodded, as sympathetically as I could manage while lying on the tiled floor. “But… WHy are you taking them, Blue?”

“We kill them,” she said so simply. “We kill them all. Before they can finish their transition. That way… that way She gets them on our terms. And we don’t ever forget them.”

Hearing it said out loud was so much different than the nebulous thoughts which had been swirling about in my mind. Judging by the way the color drained out of her face, Blue felt the same way.

She sniffled strongly and tried to speak a little more evenly.“We’ve done it to a few, now, but they were just guesses. Thought we saw flickers or something. But Moss…” Blue’s head rolled back, and she stared up at the ceiling in an appreciative daze. “Moss is… special. We know for sure that she’s in transition because she doesn’t… have…”

She didn’t have to finish the thought for Moss’ blank flank pass through my memories.

She cleared her throat. “We think that… if we give Twilight enough ponies to watch over, she’ll stop taking ones that aren’t hers.”

I could barely even open my mouth, but some part of me managed to push forward in the interrogation. “Who did she take from you?”

Blue Moon sniffled, but didn’t speak. I could tell she was on the brink of collapse, and could hardly bring myself to do what had to be done.

“Who?”

Blue let a choked sob escape. “My daughter.”

And, suddenly, it all made sense. Her protectiveness over Moss, despite her need to hide any and all information regarding her a secret. Her dedication to a group that she couldn’t stand to be in the presence of. Her fear of us being anywhere near her.

The others--Nightwhisper and his gang--were violent, and simply needed an excuse to act on it. But they had promised Blue her daughter.

In exchange for Moss, that is.

Blue was crumbling, now. “She took my daughter and I-- I can’t even remember her name! I can’t remember what she looks like, or if she had her cutie mark yet, or--” Another deep and powerful sob. “And the only reason I remember her at all i-is because I was saving money to… to send her to school.”

The shoebox of money hiding under her bed at the motel pulsed in my mind.

“See, everything she had o-or wore or made went away when she did. But I saved that money. I kept her alive and I hate myself for it because--” She broke down again, this time beat down to kneel on the tile in front of me. “Because it hurts!”

Snot and tears and spit dribbled onto the tile as Blue Moon knelt before me, defeated by a mere reminder of the stark reality beyond the shopping center.

“Blue?” I murmured in the most soothing voice I could manage. “Listen, Blue: Twilight didn’t take your daughter. She would never do such a wicked thing.” I was trying desperately to sit up, to give my words any connotation aside from desperate pleading. “Your daughter must be alive somewhere-- you mustn’t kill Moss for a chance to get her back! It won’t work!”

“Just try and prove that.”

Blue sucked in a breath so hard it nearly choked her.

Nightwhisper killed her with a swift downward blow of his hoof. The sickly crunch of her skull and the sudden jolt which shocked her eyes wide open, then faded away as quickly as it had come… it made me want to vomit all over again.

But instead I screamed. I screamed bloody murder, I screamed far beyond my lung capacity and sanity should have allowed. But, even as I screamed, Nightwhisper knelt down in front of me, bent his head to my level, and looked at me.

The smell of alcohol on his breath. The smell of blood and brains on his hoof and oh Celestia make him stop make him go away I have had enough of this evil stallion this rapist this abuser and tormenter and murderer and--

“You wanna know why I’m doing this?” Nightwhisper asked.

My brain locked tight. The screaming ceased.

Nightwhisper smiled the sort of tight, businesslike smile you’re supposed to give a difficult customer. “See, I’m the only one left, now. I killed all of them. Left Moss, here, for last. And once I offer her up to Twilight, Autumn’s Peak will start again. And I’ll own it.”

I heaved a crazed, growling sigh. “Money?”

Nightwhisper shrugged. “And you. And her,” he said, with a glance at Blue. “You’re what the colts call ‘an easy target.’ Not like your little faggot friend.”

My eyes slid past Nightwhisper and refocused on Rainbow Dash, laying with every part of her torn to shreds in a pile on the floor.

She looked dead, too. She had probably died while I was talking to Blue. Slipped away after a night of brutal beatings and batterings at the hooves of a sadistic stallion that I had put in her life. In my life. Over and over-- how many times had she done this again?

But… as many times as she had done this, some things only once.

Nightwhisper set about cleaning up the blood and the brains left behind from his angry outburst. He hummed to himself, presumably out of some need to intimidate me. Still had to be the alpha dog, even when it was him and two tied-up, nearly-dead mares left in this whole dead town.

And, as much as that should have sent me into a tailspin, my mind had somehow righted itself.

The drugs, only once.

“Sh-she’s… loyal.” I said.

Nightwhisper ignored it.

She had only told me it all once. Only broke down and told me once.

“Too loyal. That’s what.” I laid back down onto the tile. The coolness of it radiated through my fur and, for the first time, felt refreshing. “Too dedicated. And too trusting, I suppose.”

I remembered the way she had sped in to whisk me away-- not just since we’d come to town, but always. Plucking me out of the air, stealing me away to solve mysteries, turning for every little thing I had ever asked of her and more. And that was what she had given the Wonderbolts, those selfish--

“She needs…” I took a shuddering breath. “She needs to be with somepony who won’t take advantage of that.”

“Just shut up already,” Nightwhisper muttered.

“I’m the same way, I think-- too generous, too accommodating. I gave you too much and you used it against me,” I said.

This made him prickle, though he said nothing.

“And that’s what I need, as well. Somepony who loves that about me… but won’t take advantage of it.”

And I thought, again, of all the things I had given Rainbow Dash. Every dress, every gemstone, every ounce of my attention, every second of my time, every drop of love I could. How it had all been returned to me tenfold because that is what Rainbow does! She is spontaneous and loving and--

“We were in transition,” I said.

“Oh, fuck off, bitch.” Nightwhisper took my rope in his mouth and began to drag me away to whatever nightmare he had planned.

I squirmed in my bindings, not through any misplaced hope that I might get free but rather to look up at the glass which encased us all. To watch the amber sunlight creep up over the horizon and shine through the windows, bounce off of every surface, to illuminate everything which had eluded me since we had arrived.

“We were in transition, and we got stuck here,” I said. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it, but that. That is what Twilight did. She must have meant it as protection and had something go wrong and--”

My horn sparked.

“Goodness!” I jerked away from it a bit. It had been many, many years since I’d had an uncontrollable magic outburst.

Nightwhisper brunted something I couldn’t understand. I didn’t try to.

I closed my eyes and reached out… out past the wide, wide world of Equestria. Past Autumn’s Peak, past the San Palomino desert, past all of the places and times that I knew how to reach. Out into the empty nothingness which lay between this world and the next.

To me, it smelled like sand and cactus water and gasoline. It tasted like Qwik-Garb sandwiches and diner coffee and something metallic, like blood. It felt like the cool breeze in stagnant heat that you may have imagined. And it looked like Twilight Sparkle.

My horn glowed softly, casting its pale blue light through my eyelids and throwing a dazzling array of swirling shapes onto the insides of my eyelids.

“Hey!” Nightwhisper shouted, though that was the last I heard of him.

The light grew brighter and brighter with each passing second, consuming everything around it, filling the shopping center and reflecting off every surface.

I thought about Rainbow, how she had conquered that part of herself that needed to be liked and accepted to be happy. I thought about Moss, how she had worked so hard to love her blank flank in spite of herself.

I thought of myself, too.

And I thought about us. The two of us. How I only loved her once.

But she had loved me a thousand times.

And I sent these thoughts out into the empty spaces of the universes praying that they would somehow reach Twilight. Praying that I would not die before she came. Praying that she could fix things, somehow, some way… Praying that she was, in fact, Goddess of the In Between, and that her power meant something in a place like this.

My prayers were answered.

Author's Note

Threshold ends tomorrow