Journeys change you.

The experiences you go through, the places you visit, the people you meet, the mistakes you make. And yet you barely notice it, at least not in that way. It does not feel like it is you who change, it feels like everything else changes, with how you view them in new ways, with new perspectives. In a way I suppose it is part of growing up and getting old.

It is however a little worse when you learn to view things from the perspective of an immortal being. No matter how much you cling to something, no matter how much you like it or try to protect it, you blink and it is dust in the air. Everything rusts, withers and crumbles to dust.

It does not matter if there is something new to take its place, if life grows from the death. Because beyond the cycle of life and death, there is only the cold desolate eternity where emotions disappear, and memories are lost, and everything loses its meaning.

And so, I returned "home" again.

***

"Hey, you can't just fl-"

Earthbound ponies never quite expect the speed that a pegasus can build up, so when the guard mare lifted her rifle to aim I was already halfway through my swoop, and speeding down to the ground in less than a heartbeat. She took a few steps away from me in shock, and I could feel the other guards aiming.

"Can we please cut the yakshit and just get this over with, please?"

The mare just blinked at me in confusion.

"Pipbuck, stripes, I am obviously a citizen so are you going to let me in or what?"

The mare, I couldn't remember her name or if I even seen her before, managed to gather some of her wits.

"Who in Luna's name are you?!"

Of all the responses, that one I did not expect.

"Uhm, the daughter of Blackhorn? Honestly, I thought I was infamous at this point."

"Tartaros take you, you're not her. She's dead!"

Scratch that, this got even weirder. I sighed quite audibly.

"Conspiracies, demonic sorceresses, the Enclave, a sentient city, a rupture into the leyline, time warps, Windigoes. And now I have to deal with myself being supposedly dead. Honestly, at this point I didn't think my life could get any weirder, guess I was wrong. So, could you please begin with the obvious part. How am I dead and and how sure are you about that?"

For a moment she blinked in yet more confusion, it seemed to be her special talent, then she pressed a button on her pipbuck and made a call that hopefully got me to meet someone more competent.

"Gate security, we got a possible bug, please send back-up ASAP."

Sighing again I raised an eyebrow at her.

"Does that mean you are bringing in someone I can actually talk to?"

She was furious and a tad bit terrified, although I guess I should have gotten used to that by then.

"You stay right here, any sudden movement and we'll shoot!"

"All right, whatever you say."

As we waited, one of the guards on the walls panicked and was about to shoot me. If I had dodged, the rest would have fired as well. For an ordinary pegasus it would have been a risky situation, I however just looked at the stallion and knocked his beam rifle out of his grip. Telekinesis is quite a handy skill to have honestly.

The guard mare beside me widened her eyes at the sight.

This was going to get more complicated and frustrating than I had previously planned. Although that probably goes for anything in my adult life, and that meant I had to learn patience the hard way. Something I quite resented a tad bit.

***

When the stable door within the hillside opened, I was prepared to see my mother and any accusations she might throw my way. I did sneak away in the middle of the night, all alone, and I did work for ponies who were sort of our enemies, and did fly right into Vanhoover only to disappear without warning.

I was wrong, I was not prepared.

The four zonies next to her managed to look just as impersonal and far more threatening than any power armoured pony ever could. Dressed in thick black armour, with visors that glowed with a ice cold blue, and armed with weapons that honestly frightened my very soul. The long and slender shape of a star lance, connected to the Institute's refined S.A.T.S., and given to a zony that would do anything for their home.

In all honestly, I froze, paralyzed with fear at the sight.

"Oh, so you do recognize them. That will make things easier."

While I knew my mother's reputation, I had never been on the receiving end of that glare.

"Goldie, just what is this? A twisted attempt at a gift?"

As I gulped, I barely regained my ability to speak.

"I got her out, she is not in there anymore."

Her eyes narrowed, threateningly cold.

As her horn glowed with a purple glow, I twitched in reflex, bracing myself for possibly my last moments.

It did not come, her magic crossed over me harmlessly and she relaxed slightly.

"So you did... Now, doppelganger, care to explain where you came from?"

"...Vanhoover, we got caught in an anomaly, a big one."

The zony I considered to be my mother walked closer, lifted my head with her hoof and appeared to be deep in thought.

"Vanhoover... where the dead walk among the living. Never thought I would see it with my own eyes."

Her whispers were barely audible even to me.

"I have something to show you. Would you object to being unarmed?"

Shaking my head, I was made aware the difference between my feeble telekinesis and that of an actual unicorn as the magazines of my guns were removed, the chambers emptied, and my battle saddle fell apart before I could manage to blink. Turning to leave, she glanced back at me, and at my pipbuck, then it came off with a loud click.

The pipbuck levitated in front of her and she appeared to have forgotten about my presence.

"Move it, bug!"

The guard kicked me hard and I shot an angry glance back at them, immediately regretting it when my eyes met the cold visors. For a moment I wondered if Blackhorn had gathered her own group of hardened killers, and where in Equestria she found ponies willing to work for the Institute of all things.

***

Through the long walks through the ancient vault we were not met by a single zony, only a slowly blinking red light and an automated message from the time the stable was built, declaring a lockdown. Something that outside of drills, had not actually happened in my whole life.

"So... the guard said that I was dead?"

She did not answer, and the hostile glares from our escort convinced me to not make too much noise. Either I had missed a group of killers within the stable or she had brought in somepony... or somezebra.

Was that it then? That the rumours about the Institute working with the Zebrecian slavers in the south were true? No, impossible! I would have noticed something like that. The zebras dressed differently, spoke differently and would not have gotten past Goldstar.

The conspiracy theories had distracted me enough that I had missed where we were going, and it was not until we stepped into the stable clinic that I noticed. For a moment I was worried about medical experiments and dissections, and the fear was smashed aside by the imminent dread as Blackhorn opened the door to the morgue.

The morgue!

I felt a lump in my throat and felt my heartrate increase. My body felt paralyzed, my mind desperatly wanted to flee. The guards forcefully pushed me forward, leading me to a clumsy stappling trot forward, closer and closer to where the striped unicorn stood, carefully analyzing my reactions.

Then a purple cloud shimmered in the room, a tray was pulled out, with a grey sheet covering a shape of an equine. Another person might consider it to be a bluff, but every part of my mind and spirit revolted in its presence.

Naturally, I choked painfully as the cover was torn off.

The sight of a well preserved corpse is unnerving, the size of a dead relative is traumatic, and the sight of your own dead, distant eyes staring back at you from your own corpse is beyond revolting. It is not a thing meant to be possible, and utterly abhorrent. It still haunts my nightmares, and at the time... I blacked out.

***

At some point, waking up in that old stable made me feel safe, bored even. Since leaving my old home for the first time it has felt less friendly and more foreign every time I opened my eyes. And I guess you could say that this wasn't my stable. It belonged to that other me who lay in the morgue...

"Don't think about! It's Vanhoover, it is just a thing that happens sometimes..."

I remembered the guards and paused.

"All right, maybe I screwed something up, but it isn't like I could have made things any worse around here, right?"

There was no answer, just the droning of the ventilation and hum of the electric lights in the ceiling. I never noticed just how cold and brutal stables were, all concrete and plastic everywhere. Relying on machines from the war to keep you alive.

This time it wasn't about running away, I felt like I would be more at home in the wasteland than the zonies I had spent my whole life with, even my mother felt like a stranger. And I realized that I should probably avoid Amber or Violette, as either I had changed or the whole world had.

"Probably both..."

If you ever wonder why no one ever travels back in time and try to stop the end of civilization, and all that fancy science feels too much like nonsense; I had the chance to make a small difference and I took it. Not messing around too much, staying a few weeks, talking to some ponies, make a few preparations, all to have a fighting chance against somepony who already had centuries to work with.

And I returned to a time where I was already dead.

"Honestly, she might be the only one to recognize me."

Taking a deep breath, trying to put it out of my mind. No use dwelling on the past, and yes I get how ironic that sounds. Trying to fix things would just make everything even worse, I would just have to work with what I had and try to make the best of it.

Raising my leg I realized that my pipbuck was missing.

"Well... fuck!"

Looking around, I saw that I had no terminal and was probably locked in. Stable dwellers usually didn't get claustrophobic, rather it was the opposite, but this was quickly becoming a source of panic for me. No weapons, no pipbuck, no terminal, and no way out.

I knocked on the door, no response. Not even any sounds suggesting that there were any guards outside. I knocked harder, nothing. I banged as hard as I could, and kept banging. My legs hurt, I was panting, saw spots of white, felt dizzy and fell to the floor. Collapsed, hearing the background droning as a deafening roar, saw less and less. Nerves tingling with electricity and going stiff, then...

Nothing.

***

The night air was cold, the wind wailed and blew through the grass field. There was no sun, no moon and only a single star lit the world, or whatever it was. I was on an island that curved upwards in an unnatural fashion. The grass-covered ground twisted into walls on every side except the slope leading down to the black sea. The few trees on the island were healthy, too healthy to be in the wasteland or even on an island at all.

This sort of place only existed in dreams, at least that was before I heard other ponies talk of the strange desolate island in the Lunar Sea, the island few visited and none stayed at. Although that mattered less than the fact I was not alone.

The corpse was there.

It looked peaceful, eyes closed unlike the last time. It wasn't frozen and looked like she was just asleep. Carefully I poked her with my hoof, but apart from a ruffled mane there was no change.

"Always a bit eerie, no matter how many times you do it"

I didn't bother looking at her, nor ask which one of her it was.

"Looking at your own dead body you mean?"

The unicorn looked almost black as she walked in front of me, glittering golden mane and a cutie mark to match.

"Just that, it is a bit surreal."

"And that is coming from you of all ponies?"

She ignored my comment and looked down at the corpse.

"Strange thing, I take it that you did not mean for this to happen? There is barely any traces of there ever being a soul, it is like the soul left entirely, leaving the body without any semblance of sentience."

"So she won't get up and do things, right?"

"Not on her own no, destroy the body and this little thing fades away."

Some time passed with neither of us talking, we were just being there, experiencing the cold wind and the dark night together. Then I felt an impulse to ask an inappropriate question.

"How many times have you?.."

"Died you mean?"

"No, how many times have you looked on your own dead body like this?"

She seemed surprised for some reason.

"Oh, that... five or seven times I think. It is usually healthier to not think too hard about things like these; you always end up asking yourself questions you do will not like the answers to."

"Like whether you are the real one, or just some form of copy and the real one died long ago, in which case why are you even alive?"

"Exactly. I will save you some time and a lot of pain by answering those questions. As for which one is real, it does not really matter in the end. One of you is dead, the other is alive, the one who is alive gets to decide from there on. And bothering staying alive when you already died? Why not?"

"Why does that feel like you are just avoiding the question?"

"I guess I am, just a little. Anyhow, my raison d'etre is spite."

Then I had a thought.

"Any tips on how to get out of a locked room when you're disarmed and out of tech, hypothetically speaking?"

She gave me a mischevious smile.

"With or without any guards watching?"

"Hm... not right now, but there are guards, dangerous ones."

"So violence is ill advised and stealth unfeasible?"

I nodded.

"That leaves the verbal option, this one is quite easy if you are a decent liar; act according to expectation, wait for an opportunity and take it. Although you may have to wait for a while, do you know how solitary confinement works?"

"Not really?"

"Ponies, and zebras, are inherently social creatures; being alone too long stresses us out, unnerves and unhinges our psyches. Having access to literature or a radio can act as a pseudo-social substitute. Still, a week or three and you would break anypony."

"So it is a form of torture?"

"Exactly, and a simple one at that, all you have to do is wait."

I shuddered at her description. Then I recognized her facial expression, it was devious and... I guess the word playful is the best description. There was no hostility, it was more like she was waiting for the chance to tell a bad joke.

"From the way you're smiling I'm guessing there is fourth option."

"When the game is stacked against you, or if the rules are unfair, always figure out a way to cheat. It works wonders when nopony else realizes that cheating is always an option."

***

The Director sat by the distinct circular desk of the Overmare's office, the glass display cabinets were possibly more priceless than the things inside. Prototype technology, some art objects that looked like they were from Canterlot, others looked like they belonged to the Van Hoofs. Then there were the ones I couldn't figure out. Not zebrecian... Were they made by crystal ponies?

Blackhorn was willing to meet me without any guards. It only took about a week of not talking to anyone at all. Even my meals were handled by robots. Of course there always guards around the corner somewhere, and turrets in the roof. The point was clear enough, she didn't trust me and would have me killed if I did something stupid. She dared to meet me alone because she was confident she could handle me by herself.

Honestly, I was not sure if I was being underestimated or not. And I doubted that I could bring myself to fight her, I still considered her my mum even if she treated me as a freak of magic that should never have been.

"Tell me again, how did you last a whole week?"

Sighing loudly I repeated myself for the third time.

"Time's subjective, it flows differently depending on the person and situation. You say it has been a week but as far as I know it might have been a day or two. I'll admit to being bored out of my mind, but that's nothing new."

"My daughter would never last even that long."

"Look, things have been a bit weird since I visited central Vanhoover."

She actually rolled her eyes.

"And the part about time travel?"

"Again, there should be a file in the Overmare's private section written by Starlight Glimmer. If you would just-"

"I already have."

I relaxed back into the chair.

"Aaand..."

"It is there."

I let out a long breath, and my annoyance was replaced with confusion. Before I could ask she began to explain what she had been doing while I was locked up.

"Your pipbuck is an exact duplicate. Not just the software but the hardware as well, it is the one I personally customized years ago. The only difference is that one has unusual data past a certain date."

"Which backs up my story."

She leaned her head on her hoof, looking annoyed as I ever seen her.

"Yes, yes does. We also checked your DNA, also an exact match. You, and my dead daughter are, scientifically speaking, the exact same person. Or at least twins, which I know to be an impossibility. It was suggested that you are a clone, but I also checked your spectral profile..."

"And you're saying my story is unbelievable?"

"Let me finish, while it is theoretically possible that you are created for some ulterior motive, it makes no sense leaving an original around. And it is admittedly quite a stretch."

"So what is the problem??"

Her eyes flashed with murderous intent for a brief moment.

"The PROBLEM... is that my daughter ran away in the middle of the night, was seen in the company of a loose trigger steel ranger and was discovered dead in the middle of Vanhoover several weeks later. I was about to bury her when the steel rangers sent a message that she had been discovered alive and well. My brain is telling me that you are the same zony, but my heart is hating you for even looking like her."

So it was not that she didn't understand or didn't believe me, she was just struggling emotionally with me being both dead and alive at the same time. Meaning that...

"Oh, so you're not going to kill me then. You just need some therapy."

Bad choice of words in hindsight.

***

I was thrown out, locked up again and it took until the next day before she was ready to talk to me again. By the looks of it she had been drinking and didn't sleep at all. So while I was feeling more confident she looked... like she had failed her daughter, found her corpse and then find her alive at her doorstep. So yeah, she looked like shit.

"Anyhow, I got stuff I wanted to talk to you about."

"Like what?"

"Did you know dad had other daughters?"

Her eyes went wide.

"How did you?.."

"I've met both of my sisters, talked to an enclave agent and I have seen the memory he left you. So yeah, I know. Most of it anyway."

She sighed and was about to talk when I interrupted her.

"It's Violette."

"What??"

"Violette, the wingless pegasus me and Amber brought back a while ago? She's the daughter of Heaven Song and..." I had to search my memory for it "Commodore Pearl was it? Meaning that she is my sister and your step-daughter. So when you're done moping, please try to be there for her."

"Well... fuck."

"And when we're done here, I'm moving out of here. Don't exactly feeling welcome after being imprisoned a week for the crime of being alive. Seriously, what kind of parent does that? I've seen a tribal be more caring than you."

She covered her face with her hooves and sounded utterly exhausted.

"Did you have to bring that up right now?"

"Actually, yeah... I think this is it."

The noise she made was somewhere between a groan and a sigh.

"I fucked up, didn't I?"

"Yep, you did. I have to wonder, would it have been different if dad was around."

"Oh that was low.."

"No, I'm serious. I have no memories of my own about him and you never talked about him, then I found out that he was Enclave. Damn, you never really explained why I wasn't allowed to go above the clouds. I found about the Enclave being an actual thing by them trashing me from the cloud cover all the way down to the ground!"

She didn't say anything.

"Want to know why I was working with the rangers? Because they saved me when I crashed to the ground, and they treated me better then any of you ever did. They treated me as an equal, they actually listened to me and cared about what I had to say. Here, I was never anything more than a failure and troublemaker no one wanted to have around!"

I took a deep breath to calm down.

"Either way, the Rangers officially recognize us zonies as Equestrian citizens now. Anyone from the Institute is welcome at their forts, Celestia knows why I bothered, seeing as how I'm treated here."

"... Come again?"

She struggled with the topic change. Normally that wasn't a problem, but she wasn't thinking clearly that day. If she had, she wouldn't be having this meeting alone.

"I fixed that whole mess with the racist rangers looking for an excuse to kill us and take all of our stuff. Although I think they might try to recruit the Institute instead, so you need to be prepared for that. Speaking of recruiting, what's your plan for Goldstar?"

Another topic change.

"... Honestly, I was just going to her party, and then decide if I should just kill her. Collateral damage be damned. That witch has lived longer than she had any right to."

I smiled at that comment.

"Yeah, I know the feeling. But even if we could drive off the Enclave on our own, which we can't, everything would become a total shitshow afterwards. Raiders, Goldstar's army, the Rangers, slavers and worse... Vanhoover would just become like the rest of the wasteland."

"I fucking know that already... A chance for civilization, but with that mare as the princess? I rather blow my brains out than live on in that world."

And there it was, the moment I was hoping for.

"Or... we could let her do her thing with the gala, and then we break her, the way she breaks others."

she raised a sceptical eyebrow but said nothing.

"It can be done. I know her, several of her; and I know her methods, her magic, her plans and how to turn it all against her. I didn't spend a few weeks in wartime Vanhoover for nothing. I did it in order to destroy that mare."

Now she looked more interested.

"All right, tell me more."

***

When you are confronted with your own mortality like this, when you realize that somehow you have already died once, you begin to develop an increasingly paranoid fear that you might not be as alive as you are used to. It is not enough to feel a beating heart, to feel emotions or to have physical senses, part of your mind begin to worry that you might be a ghost and fade into nothingness. That one day, everyone around you will cease to recognize you as a thing that still exists, and that no matter what you do there is no coming back. Or worse, forget that you ever were.

So you begin to take notes, write journals, record memories and have physical proof that you existed. You begin to plan contingencies in case something somewhere goes horribly wrong, like a dead mare's switch; or in my case, a more occult solution or two. The confrontation I was preparing myself for was one I could very possibly lose, it was honestly pretty likely if you considered the centuries of planning I was facing. So it was not only clever, it was arguably necessary that I had something ready if I failed.

At least, that was what I was telling myself, and Blackhorn.

In reality, I was absolutely terrified at the idea that I screwed up horribly and might not actually be real anymore. I suspected that I would not die from old age like a regular equine anymore, but that just wasn't enough. I felt far too fragile and vulnerable in this body of flesh and bone, and while I suspect that my sense of self and spirit would survive even if the body died, I rather not be a mere ghost. A ghost like the rest of Vanhoover, forgotten, and fading into a faint echo on the wind.

No, I needed something tangible. Something resilient, something that would withstand the world ending a second time if it had to. As such I needed a soul jar, and not just an inert object whispering things to the ponies around me. No, I had other ideas.

One of the ideas stood in front of me. It was a bulky equine shape, but unlike any of the equine races that ever walked the Wasteland. It resembled a pegasus with a matte black coat, but with a tail that ended in a silver scythe, and eyes completely in an ominous yellow colour. It had no mane, and the wings looked stunted, and unable to keep it flying. To make the whole thing utterly surreal, it had the blue screen of a pipbuck built right into its leg.

You might mistake it for another of the Institute's increasingly equine robots, or think it was some experimental armour designed by our best engineers. You would be wrong though, this suit of armour was in large parts two centuries old, and evidently designed to last. It was a proper power armour designed exclusively for pegasi, and obviously related to the ones you can see in the Enclave. Not sure when I figured out that my mother kept it hidden away, but I knew it would be here, and upgraded with new electro-magical hardware, including the pipbuck I mentioned.

This piece of technology was practically made for me. It belonged to me, the one gift my father left me, carefully maintained and retrofitted by my mother, and it was just the thing I needed. The day I walked into the open air in that suit, I would become a high priority target for the Enclave, and for the ponies of the Vanhoover ruins I would be more than just another meddling mare. It would put me on the same level as the ghoulish mare of Flood Town, the Steel Ranger's elder, the Institute's director and it would put me on the same level politically as Goldstar's princess.

Maybe not as a hero, but maybe as a symbol. As a stable dweller I could remind ponies of the past they lost, as a zony aligned with the rangers I would be a promise that there be no racial discrimination in the society we needed to build, and as a pegasus... as a pegasus I would show the ponies of the Enclave that there was a place for them among the rest of us.

Again, that was what I told myself.

And again, the real reason was far more selfish. A soul jar constructed out of a piece of arcano-electronics would need no power source, and a soul jar made out of a suit of armour would be practically indestructible, and a soul jar made out of a suit of power armour would even be capable of moving on its own. If fate meant that I would end up a ghost, then it would be as a ghost in a machine that could still affect the world around it.

And the zony who was both my mother and not my mother was still trying to talk me out of it.

"If we go through with this, it would be permanent."

"I know."

"The ritual would be the single most painful thing to happen to anyone."

"Yeah, I figured that out."

"It is very probably that would damage your psyche."

I turned and looked her in the eyes, they were filled with pain and regret. Maybe directed at me, maybe my father, and probably things I was never told of. And still, there wasn't enough resolve to refuse. Not after everything.

"You know, I don't think I believe in sanity anymore."

"Still, pony minds aren't meant to last forever, they can't handle trauma beyond a certain point."

"Yeah... I know. I know..."

Of course, I was not going to tell her how I knew about the details and the consequences of the soul fracturing ritual, the ritual that was required for the creation of a soul jar in any form. Some secrets remain best untold.

***

Perk Added: Fractured Soul

By choice, or by coincidence, you are no longer one individual but several. You permanently lose 1 Luck from being a mere fragment of what you once was, and have an unnerving effect on any creature capable of sensing what you are. Death itself hesitate in your presence, as you are no longer merely alive nor dead but something more.

Ritual: Soul Fracture

Soul Jar Added: The Wings of Tartaros, a customized Empyreal armour Mk III.

Author's Note

There has been over a year since the last update, and this chapter has been waiting half finished while real life unfortunately took precedence for a while. That and various audio books distracting me from ponies, I even finally finished Fallout New Vegas in the silent year.

And it is strange to return to this, after every gap in writing my inspirational sources change and this was originally meant to be a gritty story of wasteland politics and wartime conspiracies, before the cosmic horror, before the existential dread.

Hm, at least it is distinct. And I still wish to finish this, Ètoile insists on it. Accursed self-aware characters, a strange side effect of writing stories where reality isn't quite as static as we are used to.