Arc 3 – Convergence Chapter 4 – Pale Horse

=================================

It could have granted Rainbow some tactical advantage—even her odds, rather; but she ignored King Sombra’s invitation to observe the Crystal Pony nation branching out in Vanhoover’s ruins under the guidance of the one who’d once greatly contributed to its fall.

She just couldn’t stand to witness their naivety, to walk amidst those who would be slain the moment they exhausted their use to the warlock as his subjects. Though, knowing him, they would find further application to his plans, one way or another.

Rainbow departed from the crystallised megapolis in abrupt fashion, leaving behind all the king’s shadows but one—the promise of their eventual encounter to discuss the technicalities of sieging the unyielding empire. It seemed to weigh the pegasus down as she soared over the wasteland of Equestria at a speed nowhere near matching her rush to the distant shore.

Part of her expected Spike to linger at Vanhoover; a darker fraction of that even suspected the dragon and the unicorn might have a chat. However, his arcanium bulk had never left her vision and even now he was tailing her at a respectful distance. She had other things to be bothered about, anyway.

What was she going to say to them?

Rainbow grimaced as Spike’s presence became oppressive with imagined smugness—he had been right all along. The camp, born from the drive to liberate the Crystal Ponies from their nightmare, had long lost its righteous anger—its efforts had turned to creating a place amidst the ice the equines could finally call home. The former captain of the infamous Royal Guard could be acting as abrasive as she wanted and her legend might have been forgotten, but the ponies and whatnot of the hamlet—a small town at this rate—sensed it.

The Element of Loyalty, tarnished though it might be, still burned in her eyes and, under her watch, they would know safety; prosperity if she could stop clinging to the grudges of the past and figmental debts.

If Rainbow somehow happened to have Applejack’s Element, she would still struggle to honestly say what she thought of that. Knowing that somewhere deep inside, a vestige of good persevered and it kept guiding her after all these years—that notion soothed her regrets like nothing else; that hope was what kept her upright for five centuries, not some runes. On the other hoof…

The pegasus shook her head as all that helped her none. She had to figure out how to break it to the ponies that couldn’t fight a single crystalline mare without the risk of taking casualties—a full-scale war was about to return to the plains of silence. To figure out how to tell them that she’d agreed to ally with the one who had started that endless tragedy… or at least shared the blame.

Beneath her, the snow-blighted ground passed, absolved of her gaze, turned inward. Until something caught her attention—amidst the shadows that grew in the light of the tired Sun, one did it in the wrong direction; the jittering silhouette on the sand also belonged to the only moving object in the desert stretching from horizon to horizon.

Banking to the side, Rainbow began her descent to get a better look at that anomaly.

The mare that used to be Luna reminded Rainbow of a sea.

Shadows swelled across the dirt, bleeding ice upon the sand as the anguished equine pulsed with otherworldly malice. The tide of the night would hesitate and advance in a different direction each time, then, ebb.

The alicorn in the heart of the undulating waves of ink valiantly fought back, drowning in the mass of something betwixt tar and mist. Other times the breathing and living mass carried her serene form, half-sunken into the shadows in her resignation to fate. And more than once she rode the crest of the eldritch maelstrom, exultant.

As the day withdrew—without the alicorn’s assistance, Rainbow noted, the darkness claimed more and more desert, finding steady purchase in the thickening twilight. She hesitated to confront the mistress of dreams and slave to Nightmare—whatever trace of Loyalty remained in her would be little use without the fabled jewels or her friends; both beyond recovery.

Nevertheless, one more lap later, the pegasus’ armoured hooves softly touched the ground. Luna’s failure to ultimately move away from the overgrown with the rime spot in the ruins spoke of an equilibrium reached by whatever reins were guiding her.

Yet Rainbow pivoted in a direction opposite to the struggling alicorn.

Spike waited for her to approach patiently; his body—a lantern powerful enough to thwart dusk from enveloping his still and gleaming form. Much like his companion, he observed the war of attrition betwixt the immortals; however, nothing betrayed if he cared for the outcome in the slightest.

The pegasus faced him, a severe grimace on her face, and fell silent. A full minute passed before she finally found what to say.

“Why?”

Realising that a question this vague, if fundamental, would produce another sharp-witted reply bound to deny her leading the conversation where she wanted, she hastily added:

“No bullshit this time, Spike. I know you could have easily killed Sombra if you wanted to—for good. Except you didn’t—stronger than any unicorn and you let him beat you.”

His arcanium head-skull-mask showed no reaction to any of Rainbow’s words; in a customary fashion, Spike didn’t hurry with his answer and when it finally came, it was a dismissive scoff.

“Measuring a mountain with a ruler.”

“What have you become?” Rainbow demanded, to no answer. “Even if you aren’t going to tell me, does he know?”

The metal jaws formed a smirk, even if tiny at that, although it didn’t reach Spike’s eyes—pensiveness settled there instead.

“What I’ve always been and it shouldn’t be a mystery to a mage of his calibre,” he thoughtfully rumbled with a shrug. “Either way, Sombra must have known what I’m capable of and he still decided to invite me. So I let him live.”

Rainbow studied Spike—the true Spike, that everlasting flame under the shell of magic metal. Her long life, its many years spent if not by Sunset Shimmer’s side but interacting with the witch, one way or another, gave her an insight into what writhed in that deadly fire. Yet, always being a pegasus on a mission and no longer with an egghead friend to inquire, she could only guess what arcane mysteries governed the dragon race, how Spike ended up being so different and what it meant to her… the entire world, even.

“Back to square one,” she grumbled, disappointed in herself for hoping she would have something revealed by asking the dragon-unlike-the-others. As another realisation dawned on Rainbow, her head shot up and she squinted as Spike. “Wait, don’t tell me you trust him.”

His laugh pealed over the whistling of cruel cold winds.

“Not a single word he said—I don’t believe in redemption.”

The statement caused Rainbow to cock her eyebrow and also meaningfully glance behind, there the former Princess fought for it once again.

Awkwardly clearing his throat, Spike corrected himself, “His redemption.”

As Rainbow tore her gaze away from the alicorn having little success in overcoming her folly, the pegasus’ glower locked on Spike’s expressionless visage.

“Are you going to answer me or not?” she barked. “And don’t give me that ‘make me’ crap instead.”

For once, Spike didn’t hesitate with a reply and a shadow crept into his arcanium features when he nodded in Luna’s direction. “She shouldn’t be here, not without her guardian.”

Rainbow followed his eyes, frowning at the miserable sight and recollecting the rumours of what her ‘soldiers’ had brought from Hope—they didn’t amount to much.

“The filly, right?” she suggested, unsure.

“A mare already,” the dragon sombrely noted and that tone held as he continued, “The Ebony Warlock should be dead. The celestial cycle is off. Something is happening at Hope right now.”

The pegasus spared him a wary glance. “Do I want to know how you know that?”

Spike shrugged off her suspicion and his voice gained a deeply grave quality. “One thing Sombra said was true. We’re on the same side of the barricades—pawns in someone else’s game. Massive gears are shifting right now—the machine came alive.”

His words gave rise to Rainbow’s shackles at first, and as he continued, the scowl on her face remained if for another reason—by the time Spike finished, she had a name ready on the tip of her tongue.

“The Machine Goddess.”

But the dragon shook his head. “Not her style—too risky. She might be just another figure on the board.”

“The queen is a figure, too.”

“The queen can be killed just like any pawn,” Spike darkly uttered.

Every time the Elements were used, Rainbow had to stifle a bout of vanity—their purging influence manifested as her namesake. As it failed to appear the third time she and her friends called for the intervention from Harmony, the memories of triumph and the ray of pure awesome were irreversibly poisoned. Then her own polychromy ended up being glassed—a dead butterfly to hang on the wall of eternity to reminisce about the days it could be seen in the sky. Ultimately, even her name faded from history.

Looking at what Luna had become acted like a steady stream of saturated brine blasting those old wounds that had never healed. Nor did it help to know that, ultimately, the first use of the Elements was for nothing—the monstrosity before her almost desecrated the memorable night that brought them all together.

Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to hate Luna. Rainbow could almost remember that after the Nightmare Night she’d planned to challenge the competitive mare for a race—fate had other plans, however. The pegasus even almost joined her crusade to the Badlands; perhaps, if she had, Luna wouldn’t have fallen…

A ghastly equine emerged from the boiling shadows to stare at Rainbow with a gaze as empty as the darkness betwixt the stars and four centuries of fighting nightmares made real helped her none to hold that otherworldly glare.

No, if she’d joined Luna, nothing would have stopped Nightmare Moon. She’d have remained loyal to… even beyond… death as a Shadowbolt.

Spike gently called her from the intrusive grim thoughts insidiously claiming her consciousness by loudly clearing his throat. Rainbow glanced at him, noting how the darkness cringed from the fire pulsing in the dragon’s ribcage.

A sudden hope bloomed in her mind. “Can you help her?”

He snuffed that light with a rueful shake of his head.

“Because Nightmare is another pawn you need to spare,” Rainbow acidly commented, indulging in being mad at Spike’s dubious decisions and ambiguous allegiance rather than wallowing in bittersweet grief.

Unswayed in his sombre watch over the thrashing alicorn, the dragon spoke, albeit darkly, “Nightmare plays its own game where it writes the rules. If I try to intervene, it might kill Luna and that would only make matters worse—so much worse.”

“What are our other options?” the pegasus asked in a deliberately reserved tone—she began to suspect the proximity to Nightmare was doing her no favours.

“Bide our time.”

The dragon seemed unaffected by the artful malevolent presence, though, of course, seeing Spike’s literal spirit gave her no insight into his thoughts; not that the pegasus was one hundred and twenty per cent sure she wanted to know the secrets burning in that cosmic fire.

“Great,” she deadpanned. “Do you know what happens when we’re out of it?”

“Nobody can answer that but her.”

Rainbow Dash considered herself a brave mare, but as someone who’d witnessed a mimic of that quality too many times, she knew that approaching Luna could only be called an exercise in foolhardiness.

This close, she started to pick up faint whispers—she dearly hoped, prayed, the microphones of her helmet were catching something.

“Prin—” The pegasus screwed her eyes shut at the slip; the voice in her ears was becoming harder to ignore. Did it mean the idea of Loyalty still clinging to her was but wishful thinking, that she stood all alone before the..?

“Luna?” Rainbow tried again, focusing solely on the tormented visage of the mare before her.

Either the name or the familiar voice struck deep—the spreading darkness viciously jerked back, returning to its source, and the alicorn soaked it into her mane. The shadows coalesced into ranks of warped soldiers standing betwixt their prey and the mare who dared to disturb the feast.

From under an inky film, two azure eyes stared at the pegasus for a long time and then Luna lifelessly uttered, “Rainbow Dash, the war is over. Go home.”

Rainbow stared at the former Princess, knowing well that every moment of hesitation contributed to the risk of never leaving that place—the alicorn’s side; she wouldn’t even notice when it was too late.

“We have nowhere to go back to,” she tried to remind the debilitated mare of the painful truth.

The statement brought some degree of clarity into Luna’s misty gaze.

“I wouldn’t have remembered it anyway,” she whispered sorrowfully. “Everything blurs together then fades away..”

Rainbow couldn’t help but share the alicorn’s tone and volume as she replied, “Some things stay eternal.”

The spark in Luna’s eyes gained a twisted quality and then those stars were swallowed by the pitch darkness expanding from her irises until black tears rolled down the gaunt cheeks.

“You can fix that,” she squeezed out of herself. “You should.”

An armoured hoof took a step forward, but no more than one—an arcanium tail prevented Rainbow from getting any closer to the beacon of hope only she could see. His shine banished the malevolent blinding radiance and the pegasus recoiled, backpedalling in horror.

“The irony is that this is what having a stronger will than Nightmare looks like,” Spike dryly commented. He meant to say something else, but Luna’s hoarse and desperate words came first.

“But it’s going to win anyway. Strike first, whilst you have a chance.”

Even though Rainbow had never been as thankful for the dragon’s presence as right now, she still meaningfully glared at him—something had to be done to that subtle taint.

“No.”

“What is your plan for when she dies and Nightmare gets an alicorn corpse at its disposal?” she all but yelled, pointing at the alicorn that already looked like bones and skin rigidly moving against all common sense.

Spike nudged Rainbow a step back from the ice silently snaking through the sand and his burning eyes never left the swaying alicorn as he said, “Even the best puppeteer without a marionette is but strings tangling in the void—a web waiting for another victim. Luna will live until she completely forgets why and that’s when it’s over.”

“You’re contradicting yourself,” the pegasus hotly objected.

The dragon’s arcanium skull slowly shook and though his voice carried a hint of vexation, he spoke patiently nevertheless, “And you don’t listen—Luna has Nightmare contained.”

Rainbow fell silent, staring at Luna—Spike spoke truly, as no matter how haunting the nightmarish sight before her was, the mare ground into nought in that cosmic crucible still answered to her name. Rainbow could clearly remember how Nightmare Moon scoffed at it back then at Ponyville’s town hall. The alicorn refused Nightmare, though it changed little in the end, as once called, it would reap its tithe—it had the patience of stars; a millennium was nothing to it and the pegasus doubted they would have to wait that long.

“How much time do we have?” she warily asked.

Instead of answering Rainbow, Spike called the alicorn, “Luna, what was her name?”

“Celestia.” A voice, fragile but clear as the night sobbed over the desert. “Tia—my Tia.”

A sigh of relief misted Rainbow’s visor as they left Luna to quietly lament in the company of the wind and the rising Moon before Nightmare would return to eroding her mind. Yet, the pegasus’ assuagement didn’t live for long—she sensed something even before Spike notified her:

“We have guests.”

An alicorn slid from a tear in reality—one of metal rather than withered flesh and sentient plague. Paying no mind to her black counterpart, she greeted the rest of the desert’s visitors with a shallow bow of her head.

“Rainbow. Spike.”

Sapped of any energy by Nightmare’s attempt to worm itself into her head, Rainbow didn’t even bother with a display of hostility—not that she had anything to herself to intimidate a goddess.

The dragon mirrored the bow and uttered with a hint of mischief, “Harbinger.”

Rainbow could swear that for a moment the typically serene arcanium mask reflected surprise; she herself would like to know how Spike could tell the actual Machine Goddess from her hierophants.

Even if her eyes didn’t lie to her, the Harbinger recovered instantly, though did sound somewhat apologetic. “The Machine Goddess is on her way. Certain matters demanded her presence.”

“What’s the difference?” Rainbow grimaced; she wasn’t Applejack, she didn’t care about the masquerade and her knowledge suggested the Harbingers followed their Mother’s will to the letter.

Warily glancing at Spike, the metal mare enigmatically replied, “There are a few more others who know Her as well as the Unity itself.”

Before Rainbow even considered if it was worth it to ask, the Harbinger stepped aside to leave in her wake a hole leading to Hope, the bulk of the Citadel betraying the city on the other side of the sandy expanse. Another alicorn hesitantly stepped through it—a mare of black chitin bearing an expression speaking of her enmity towards the doormaker.

The Harbinger didn’t bother to warn the changeling about her… acquaintances awaiting her on the other side of the convenient passage; nor did she mention the shadows that had begun to swell the moment the sand crunched under the obsidian perforated hoof.

“Clandestine Delight. Or Heterocera. Queen, I mean.” Rainbow shrugged. Now that she had no Canterlot to save, mustering any respect for the Swarm’s sovereign lay a bit beyond her old umbrages; she also, if only briefly, knew that mare used to be just a pegasus like her. “Whatever.”

“I’m not Chrysalis,” she bristled in response. Her ire faded into worry with a realisation that it wasn’t Rainbow who she needed to convince of that right now.

Amidst the mass of shadows two eyes of a predator lit up, focusing on the changeling queen with obvious intent.

“Good for you,” the pegasus grumbled, eyeing the living shadows; hard feelings or not—she would rather not have anything further destabilise the fallen Princess. “Let’s hope Luna gets that too.”

The Harbinger’s voice forced them to spare her their attention.

“Oh, that shouldn’t be an issue—her retainer is here.”

Another portal opened by her side, showing one more statuesque mechanical alicorn and a trio of wide-eyed young mares.

Author's Note

If you notice any mistakes sneaked in through the editing, let me know.

Stay awesome.