The Road to Healing Chapter 9

Duskfall knew she was falling apart. Her mind was unraveling. It was only by the grace of her journal that she knew something was wrong. So many memories swirling around in her mind, she remembered it all. The problem was there was no chain, no continuity. She remembered swallowing an explosive. It had been a fun death. She just couldn’t remember when it had happened or what she had done before or after.

Duskfall had also become very prone to starving to death, unable to remember when her last meal was and unable to care when she realized malnutrition was killing her.

A part of her wondered if this was a good thing. What did a sex toy need with memories? What did she need more than a body ready to be used and perhaps some basic personality parameters? If her memories left her completely…maybe that was her destiny?

Would anyone even care if she were consumed by this void in her Mind and Heart? She was nothing. An object to be used. All that mattered was fulfilling her purpose. Speaking of fulfilling her purpose, when was the last time she had gone out to do that? She couldn’t remember, of course.

So Duskfall wandered into a bar. She hoped her reputation would still be strong enough that someone would sooner or later show up to ask to use her. In the mean time, she ordered the strongest liquor the bar had. She wasn’t sure what bar she had walked into. Trying to sift through her memories for the right answer was an impossible task. She had been to so many bars and without a sequence of events to follow; there was little way of telling them apart, especially if she had been gone long enough for the interior to change at all.

Soon Duskfall had her drink and she started chugging. It wouldn’t get her drunk, but the searing sensation of the alcohol going down her throat was exactly what she needed.

“You look like hell, Duskfall,” A raspy voice suddenly said next to her. Duskfall choked on her drink and fell out of her stool.

“That was rude, Dashie,” If Duskfall had been shocked before, now she was terrified. An all too familiar looking prismatic mane. A laugh that had haunted her for centuries.

“STAY AWAY!” Duskfall screamed, her mind at war with itself. An urge to take both these ponies to bed. A desire to not let them see her like this. A fear they would hate her. A need for their faces to look upon her with disgust and distain. A want to be loved. A drive to be degraded.

“Holy shit, I knew it had been bad, but seeing it firsthoof…” Rainbow murmured.

“It’s worse than that, Rainbow,” Pinkie, the real Pinkie, replied softly.

“USE ME OR LEAVE ME ALONE!” Duskfall demanded, curled up into a ball.

“Duskfall, we can’t do that. You know I’d never give up on a friend and Pinkie’s not going to let you go until you’re smiling again,” Dash said firmly.

“No! I don’t need to smile! I just need to be used!” Duskfall insisted, her body refusing to move.

“Duskfall, I hate to do this, but you need to hear it: You’re defective,” With those two words, Pinkie shattered the broken remains of Duskfall’s mind. Rainbow turned to Pinkie in shock.

“What the hell, Pinks?!” Rainbow exclaimed, but the dominos were already falling.

“Defective?” Duskfall echoed.

“If you can’t keep your appointments and you can’t forge connections with people, you’re just broken trash. People would be better off with a dildo than you,” Pinkie insisted, ignoring Rainbow’s flabbergasted expression, her focus solely on Duskfall.

Pinkie’s words sparked something in Duskfall. Rage and Terror and Sorrow swirled in the ashes of her already failing mind. Under that, she felt…something. It was bubbling up through her subconscious. As it breached her conscious mind, Duskfall screamed in pain and ecstasy, her eyes screwed tightly shut.

Pinkie and Rainbow watched as black electricity started arcing across Duskfall’s body and her form seemed to blur around the edges.

“We should get her out of here before she hits critical,” Rainbow, ever a mare of action, decided. Snatching up her temporally displaced friend and ignoring the sting of the raw Darkness, Rainbow flew at speed to the closest barren wasteland. She wasn’t a moment too soon.

Duskfall had been drowning, fighting against the massive, incomprehensible things that were pulling her down. But then a single memory in perfect clarity floated before her. The day of Twilight’s ascension.

The moments after the Elements had vaporized her, but before Twilight had ended up on the Ethereal Plane with Celestia. Duskfall remembered the feeling of being bundled like a swaddling babe in a power far greater than herself, a feeling of safety and love and warmth.

This was different. Duskfall was feeling warmth, but that was where the similarities ended. Where Twilight felt as if wrapped in a blanket, Duskfall felt like she was in a suffocating cocoon. The Darkness was absolute. Yet, that inky blackness offered something else: Infinite Possibilities. Not in the same way a white canvas said that one could paint whatever one wanted on it, but true infinity.

What was being proposed to her would shatter most minds, but Duskfall’s mind was already broken. Somehow the pure Insanity of it all, translated in the Darkness, made sense to Duskfall. Duskfall stopped fighting to escape. She slipped beneath the waves of Darkness and Insanity and was reborn.

Rainbow and Pinkie watched as the Darkness smothered Duskfall’s form and the area around her started bending in ways that defied even Chaos. The Powers of Darkness and Insanity were claiming Duskfall as their own now and forevermore. They watched as with one last shuddering gasp, Duskfall died.

They could not see it with their eyes, but they both knew the Darkness was now healing their friend’s Heart while the Insanity rebuilt her Mind. Duskfall’s Soul, already one of impossibility, needed only to be baptized in Darkness while it was away from her body.

The pair stood vigil until the Darkness faded out of the visible spectrum and the Insanity abated. A moment later, Duskfall drew breath once more and her eyes snapped open.

“How do you feel, Dusky?” Pinkie asked hesitantly.

“I feel better than I have in… God, has it really been centuries already? I feel like me. I feel complete. Darkness has soothed my pain and Insanity has given that pain the proper perspective,” Duskfall giggled, a joyous smile lighting up her features, “I am the Alicorn of Healing Darkness, Wild Darkness, and Insanity, Duskfall Sparkle! I have friends who care about me! …I have friends who care about me.”

With these realizations, Duskfall was finally complete. A flash of light on her hindquarters and a brand new Cutie Mark appeared.

Author's Note

This is a fantastically bad picture of Duskfall's Cutie Mark I did myself. The triangle and the Riku Symbol are both copy and pasted onto a png file and then I painted the outline of the Riku Symbol red.

Anyway, The Road to Healing just has one chapter left and that's mostly an afterthought. Just Duskfall saying goodbye to Pinkie, Rainbow, and maybe stopping in on a few people. Then the Doctor and Celestia will show up to take her back to Equuis for Chapter 19 ofShattered Souls.