Princess Cadance and the Royal Respawnby Skipping the pony punChaptersPop!ShopTollPop!The explosion sounded like a hill-sized soap bubble had burst. One moment Twilight Sparkle arrived at one of the Castle of Friendship's guest rooms, starting to tell Cadance and Flurry Heart that Spike was making crêpes. The next she blinked, snorted, spat and shook out gunk with the consistency of chunky salsa. Well. Not the best thing to happen to Twilight today, but she was the last pony who should fault a foal for wanting to discover their magic. Once she had enough of the stuff out to function she turned her attention back to a roomy, generously decorated guest suite rather the worse for wear from being covered in red. Only Cadance, covered by a small rosy shield bubble, seemed to be unscathed. She dropped the bubble and gave Twilight a tired little wave and a smile. A wisp of smoke rose from an empty changing table that had been the epicenter, just as if Flurry herself had ex… plo… Oh no. -don't panic YES PANIC it couldn't have been her FLURRY NO just ask BUT HOW CAN I of course it's a mistake don't be CHANGELINGS I've developed schizohaynia! WHAT IS- A little pink hoof fell from the ceiling and booped Twilight on the snoot on the way down. ”AIIIIIIIIGH!” asked Twilight. ”Yes, Flurry has been all over the place today,” Cadance said. ”But she'll pull herself together.” Flurry Heart tasted like marinara sauce and cotton candy. ”…so sorry, Twilight. I thought you knew, I really did. I must've needed this getaway more than… Twilight, it's all right! She just detonated for a little.” The sheer insanity of the words made Twilight pause her retching and raise her gaze to Cadance, and the scene of carnage that… faded from view? Cadance pointed a hoof at the changing table, and sure enough, as soon the last of the red vanished (taking the stickiness and the aftertaste with it, thank Celestia) there was a ”coo!” from the table. ”FLURRY!!” Twilight leapt to embrace Flurry, poke her to see if she was real and not an illusion, and at the same time handle her like she might explode again. This added up to some kind of frantic side-pats. Flurry scrunched up her face and cast Twilight a baleful gaze. ”Ooh! Look, Flurry!” Cadance called out as she twirled the mobile above the table, making the baby giggle and squeal. She then spotted Twilight giving her what, in the circumstances, was a very generous expression. ”Explain.” ”Flurry can't die. The universe won't let her.” ”That's it?” ”That's it.” ”And how did you find this out?” Twilight narrowed her gaze. That earned a sigh from Cadance. ”Twilight, she's a baby. Leave them alone for two minutes and they crawl over a cliff. What's more, she's a baby who flies like an athlete, teleports like a wizard, fights like her name was Lunchbreak Wink. She's the infant against whom no lock will hold. She cannot be caged; she cannot be controlled.” ”I could've helped! Celestia could've helped!” ”But you thought we were on top of things, didn't you?” Cadance asked, not unkindly. Twilight nodded, so she went on: ”Honestly, so did we. Two lovers and best friends, thrust into a daunting adventure but rising to meet new challenges! Then Flurry got frightened by a cucumber and incinerated the kitchen she was in.” ”Cadance!” ”Yes, Twilight?” ”You're talking about your daughter. Dying. A lot! How can you be so casual?” ”The day she did it back-to-back fifteen times helped. Can you believe that by the end, Shining, Sunburst and I were all just bored? I thought Shiny was still a little skittish but then the next morning he'd put a big ”DANGER: Handle With Care” sign on the nursery door and I laughed myself silly.” Twilight gaped at Cadance, the unkempt mane, the bags under her eyes, the ”My world's on fire, how about yours" smile of a proud parent at the end of her rope, all fixtures ever since Flurry Heart was born. Twilight had never before realized how terrifying that smile was. ”The answer turned out to be removing the color black. Or pictures of fish. Or maybe she just really hated hiccups. It's always a bit of a guessing game when Flurry gets head-explodey. I keep fretting that she'll hate blowing up so much she blows up in frustration and gets stuck in a loop, but it's not like she minded at all when I popped her a moment – uh oh.” ”I- this- wha- that wasn't Flurry?! YOU BLEW UP YOUR OWN CHILD?!” ”Twilight! Don't shout in front of the foal!” Cadance hissed, her horn igniting. Flurry imploded silently into a sphere of utter darkness. It grew as it ate, gouging a deep furrow into the changing table. A wind whispered, blew, began to howl, but then the sphere vanished in a flash of light. ”Okay, go ahead,” Cadance said. ”What have you done, you MONSTER?” For the first time since reason was dethroned and madness reigned over all, Cadance looked annoyed. ”Well, it's not like I'm doing her any harm,” Cadance said. ”Oh no, of course not!” ”But then, I suppose I can't fault you for that.” ”You, I, but, that's – AAAAAUGH!” Twilight burst out in frustration. Flurry appeared unceremoniously on the ruins of the table. Cadance called out ”Ooh, good timing!” and scooped the baby up to the guest room's handsome four-poster. With her back to Twilight, she floated a few toys over from her things as she purred: ”Who's a good baby? You are! Yes, you are!” Twilight contemplated the matter, and whether or not to start setting things on fire and never, ever stop. A bag of bits bobbed toward her. ”Sorry about the table, Twilight,” Cadance called over her shoulder. ”You know how it is. Well, no. Never mind. Can you give mommy a smile? There you go!” Twilight took the coins, and with the way things were going, quickly checked that they bore images of Celestia and not – for example – ponies with their faces frozen in terror as they strained against the metal in a final futile attempt to push themselves free. They did, so she put them down somewhere. ”That'll hold her for a while,” Cadance remarked as she left Flurry chewing happily on a stuffed buffalo and turned back to Twilight. ”So,” said Cadance. ”So,” said Twilight. To Cadance's credit, she hardly flinched at all. She exhaled, inhaled, then launched into what sounded like a well-used speech. ”I'm the Princess of Love – bear with me, Twilight, I am – and that includes loving oneself. Ponies think self-care means exercise, or fancy vacations, or big sweeping changes that turn your life around. And some of the time it does! But it also means the small things. When things are bad and the world's run you more ragged than you thought you could be-” There was a helpful ”oaaao!” from the bed. ”-then it can be about the tiniest things. Always eating off of clean plates. Never going to sleep with your dirty uniform on. Something you do, or never do, because despite everything, you're still better than that. It doesn't have to sound like much, but in the moment, it's a way to show the world – show yourself – that you're still a pony, not a wreck.” Twilight waited. ”For me, it turned out to be not changing diapers with my mouth when I'm too tired to even use my magic safely.” Twilight waited some more. ”I guess that got me into a habit.” Yet, Twilight waited. ”She's dry when she comes back,” Cadance added. Twilight snorted. ”For a moment, I thought you were going to spin a tale about how you had to do this to keep Flurry Heart's magic from growing to threaten the whole world. Or something like that. Something that would make this worth it.” ”Trust me, Twilight. When it's 4:13, and you've been trapped inside with your foal for so long you genuinely can't remember if that's night or afternoon… at that moment, soiled diapers are your whole world. Besides…” Cadance actually chuckled. ”…all the best parenting books said the same thing: living with a child will be unlike anything you've imagined, but if you're attentive, you can learn to know your new normal, adapt to it, make the best of it.” ”So you became a serial killer.” ”It's a victimless crime.” ”Aren't you worried that Flurry will take after you? Make it a family tradition?” ”Oh, Twilight, it's good of you to ask. But she's at an age where she's far from clear that she has legs. That sort of conceptualization is well beyond her yet. Maybe I could show you those books? There's diagrams…” ”Cadance, you're rubbing your right foreleg with your left. That's what you did after you ate all the brownies my mother had left for both of us. What aren't you telling me?” ”Always quick on the uptake.” Cadance paused, then sighed, slowly, wearily. ”My daughter has no concept of death and shoots house-sized lasers from her face. Losses are well below projections. Also, we replaced Sunburst with a homunculus and a crystalline recording of his brain patterns.” ”You did what? Why?” ”I know, it's just like installing sprinklers. Everypony complains about the noise and tut-tuts about the cost and wonders why you'd go to such lengths, and then the sirens go off.” Twilight swore she could hear her own eye twitch. "Hm? Oh, sorry, tired. Flurry was cold, so she turned Sunburst into this big, warm, fuzzy blanket maybe an inch thick. We had to go to backup." ”Transformation magic isn't that hard to undo, even if it's not a formal spell.” ”She used telekinesis.” ”Ah.” ”She still has it, in fact. She pitches a fit if we try to take it away.” Twilight made a sound that she didn't know the name of. (Even now, that bothered her.) ”Is that everything?” Cadance said. ”Yes, I think that's everything. Now, I don't know about you but I've worked up an appetite. You said something about crêpes? Do you have raspberry jam?” Cadance made for the door, but reared back when Twilight teleported to block the doorway, teeth grinding, pawing at the floor. ”NO!” Twilight screamed. ”ENOUGH! This doesn't make sense! You don't make sense! The Cadance I knew would never act like this to her child, she'd never do this for, for convenience! She'd never become you! Make sense right now or I'll have Discord melt you into a big bowl of blueberry pudding, because pudding I can understand!” As Twilight finished, she noticed Flurry was staring at her wide-eyed, lip quivering, yellow magic sparkling and flickering as it started to build on her little horn. But then they both blinked as bright cyan shimmered in Flurry's mane and a thin, branching, white ropelike thing plopped onto it. It turned this way and that, patting its new surroundings with its branches, and as Twilight realized it reminded her of a mushroom's hypha it opened a maw far bigger than itself and pounced. One second later, where Flurry had been stood a large, handsome, bright-blue mushroom. The mushroom fell over with an undignified PLORT. Twilight glared at Cadance, who shrugged. A long pause. In the distance, a bird sang. ”Trust me, Twilight-” ”No!” ”- you don't want to know. And I say that knowing I'm talking to you.” For 0.4 seconds Twilight considered that maybe she really didn't want to learn something – close to a personal best. ”All right, we're doing this. Not that I expected any less of you.” Cadance closed her eyes, brought a hoof to her chest on an inhale, extended it on an exhale. Seeing this Cadance use the mannerisms of the old one managed to anger Twilight still further. Author's Note Cadance, what're you doing, that's terrible parenting advice ShopThen Cadance said: ”She's not mine.” ”Oh! Cadance, that's – wait. Is that the part when Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash crack up and it turns out all this was a hilarious prank?” ”Heh. Oh, I and Shiny had her. But when we discovered our foal couldn't die, of course we didn't leave it at that. It took… some doing… but we got to the bottom of things. We shouldn't have. It turns out we're convenient vessels at best. We're allowed to birth, clean and feed her – take care of the menial work.” ”There are forces greater than ponies, Twilight. Vile, awful, impossibly greater. My daughter's life, the course it takes, even down to what ”we decided” to name her – hah! All willed by things that mold our reality like clay. Do you remember when we all thought giving birth to an alicorn was impossible? It is! But they wanted me to, so I did. That's why Flurry can't die! Her life's completely out of our hooves!” Cadance was breathing heavily. She lowered her head and her voice. ”And that's why I have no say at all over what kind of mare my own daughter will become, or the life she'll lead. Flurry's in the hands of the vile power, marketing, and its horrible children, focus groups.” ”I wish I could've spared you that. But you never could leave well enough alone. I admire it, y'know. Your sense of justice.” She circled a hoof. For her part, Twilight had bitten back a remark about Flurry's life being in their hooves at all. Now she waited for the punchline. When none seemed to be coming, she said: ”You know, when horror writers play this card, they at least come up with something like "Chzo'Callay, She Who Paints Blasphemies With The Inks Of The Violet Undernight." And what even are hands?” ”Good for them! That sounds horrifying.” Cadance extracted a mirror from her bags and hoofed it to Twilight. It was round, maybe the size of a pony's head, and looked distinctly ordinary. ”You'll need this for the rest. It shows another universe. The universe. Place it on the fourth wall, and break it. Try to do so gently, with as few pieces as you can manage, to get a better picture.” Twilight turned it over a couple of times, then shot Cadance a ”seriously?” look. Cadance inclined her head in a ”Well, go on” gesture. What's she playing at? All right, I guess if the door is on one wall, the bed and things are against the opposite one, the windows are on the third, that means there's an odd one out. Twilight pushed the mirror against the wall at head height and found that it stuck. A moment's magical pressure in a precise vertical line cracked the mirror in two. ”Oh, well done!” Cadance said, but Twilight hardly noticed. Magic permeated the cosmos. Magic was friendship. Friendship was harmony. Whether it was law or harmony that ultimately moved the world was a matter for academicians to debate, but either way all things tingled with magic, and with it, all events bent toward friendship in the end. Except the mirror. Through means Twilight nearly didn't want to understand, the magic of friendship held no dominion on the mirror. It was a nauseating emptiness that reminded Twilight of Tirek's rampage, a soft murmur of ocean waves that you didn't notice until it was stilled. She wanted to scream and smash the thing, but Cadance had said it showed another world. Was this happening because that entire world was like this? Tirek could be fought, but how did you fight a world? Something showed in the mirror, but the light was all wrong. She peered closer and saw… ”What? Pinkie?” Pinkie Pie was trapped in a container with a colorful top and bottom but transparent, glossy sides. Her smile looked more like a rictus grin with how out of place it was on her still face. Pinkie was a verb, yet she wasn't even twitching. She wasn't even breathing, and the blood in Twilight's veins turned to ice... until she took in the Pinkie Pies below and above this one. Pinkie probably couldn't do that. To the right, a profusion of Rarities grinned vacuously. Beyond them, a wild procession of animals and machines, most of which Twilight couldn't name, all encased in vividly colored chambers. Museum? Test subjects? A ritual? What do they want from us? Behind each pony, a row of identical ponies, all hanging on great rods of unpainted metal, leading to a smooth grey metallic wall. Twilight looked down, and felt horrible vertigo as she realized her viewpoint hung unsupported in the air higher than many of Ponyville's clouds. She peered up… and up… and up. The wall was by far the biggest building Twilight had ever seen, yet everywhere grey, mirthless. Barren. It was amazing, but it felt wrong. How could the builders of this wast work not put anything of themselves into it? In Ponyville buildings were crisscrossed by little flourishes and decorations that varied wildly but all meant the same thing: This place is loved. In Canterlot ponies would never stop adding stained glass windows to a target this big. To leave the wall like this hinted at abject poverty (which obviously wasn't the case), the strictest of tyrannies… or an empty, resigned existence. An existence without friendship. Then Twilight saw them. The first word Twilight found for the creatures was gargantuan. A single one could've ripped the spires off of Canterlot Castle. Vaguely pony-like in body plan but almost hairless, they shambled about precariously on their hind legs. No two of them seemed to be the same size and shape. Twilight's breath hitched: their hooves split into smaller legs that almost squirmed with minds of their own. The second was drab. Despite their hideous appearance, Twilight was moved to pity. Their rigid little ears and impossibly small, beady eyes gave them blank, emotionless expressions. A lack of tails made their toneless appearance even worse. They were dirt-colored with only minor variations, and they wore the most depressing clothes Twilight had ever seen. Here or there was a floral pattern or the glint of metal, but for the most part they wore little more than unicolored strips of fabric that made the least elaborate of Rarity's leisurewear look like a gala dress. It was like they only bothered with clothes so they could say they made an effort, as if they were ashamed of going naked. Then three of them passed right past Twilight's point of view, and she found her last word. Abomination. Every bit of their skin was marred by texture. They crawled with lines, pits, creases. One had blood vessels visibly pushing against its skin, as if trying to break free. Instead of being single-colored or having a gradient, they were lighter there, darker there, then lighter again – how could they live without even knowing what color they were? Another changed color in disgustingly unnatural lines. Some kind of ritual scarification? And the lines! The wrinkles! The tip of a single squirming worm-leg was more shriveled by far than all of Granny Smith. Nothing could be that withered and live. Had there be a catastrophe and they were all slowly dessicating? Were they even alive? What was going on? And the base of the worm-legs had enormous, obscene grooves gouged into it that looked like the claw marks from a predator, only then you saw the smaller lines and then the still smaller lines, as if their entire bodies had been slowly savaged one little bit at a time by monsters of all sizes, the blood of giants gushing everywhere, enough blood to drown Twilight, to drown everypony in her castle… Twilight heard screaming, and realized it was coming from her. The mirror was cradled in a lavender glow and fell apart onto the floor. Mercifully, Twilight fainted. Author's Note That took a turn. It was always going to happen. I don't hate Flurry, but she broke the show's own rules. Not the first thing to do so in order to sell toys, nor last. It can make writing about her a poser, though. Baby Flurry has the ability to vaporize a dozen ponies by accident, but not to understand what she'd done or why it'd be bad. Equestria's worldbuilding, of course cartoony, was still deep enough for this to be an issue. So how to write a story about that? If I had it only result in wacky cartoon hijinks, I'd break the setting's internal consistency. If I took things to their logical conclusion, I'd clash horribly with the tone. A story about killing Flurry over and over with no word as to how would've been way too spiteful (but fun), and I didn't want to go full AU. I opted to square that circle by acknowledging that indeed, things don't make sense. The setting's internal logic has holes in it, and they're big enough that the characters have started to notice. This sort of thing seldom goes well for the characters. Bear with me, if that's something I can even say after only writing like 3k words. Oh, and here's a thought: in a world where breaking the fourth wall is the kind of unspeakable ritual that opens your mind to Things Pone Was Not Meant To Know, what does that say about Pinkie Pie, who can do it whenever she wants? TollFlurry Heart was experimentally pressing in on Twilight's muzzle. Twilight extracted a hoof from the blankets she laid under and scratched Flurry under the chin, making the baby giggle and squirm. Cadance watched from the bedside with a sweet, sincere smile. Twilight was in the guest suite's bed. Her coat was flushed with sweat, and the sheets were a mess, but her face had been wiped clean. A cool, wet towel rested on her forehead. Twilight looked at Cadance, looked at Flurry, looked at Cadance again. ”Not right now, no,” said Cadance. "Let's just take a moment." Time passed. Cadance tickled Flurry for a little. ”So,” Cadance said. ”So,” Twilight said. ”There's a world out there, with things living it who don't have friendship. Not as we know it. They'll never know the joy of bonding with each other so tight, it fires a giant rainbow beam.” Cadance hung her head and said: ”They'll never love each other so deeply, it sets off a city-sized shock wave.” ”And they know about us.” ”Heh. Oh, they do far more than just know about us.” ”I thought so! They made those ponies' capsules as colorful as anything in Equestria, but they themselves and their own things were so muted and listless. Why would they go further for us than for themselves? What kind of items would you value more than reality? Grave goods? No, I don't think so. What were those effigies?” Cadance closed her eyes. ”Us,” she muttered. ”I know they're us.” "The real us. Did you see yourself?" Cadance said, and when Twilight shook her head she went on: "I've seen you there. You're a sweet, pretty, inanimate object. So am I! And you better believe so's Flurry. Aren't you a good little statue, darling?" "Goo!" "So. The good news is: you're real! The bad news: that's the only part of you that is. Your hopes, your fears, your aspirations? Not real. The love you feel for your friends? Zzzzip! Equestria? You know it. We're not here. We're not having this conversation. We're the effigies and we're inside an illusion, while right this moment the real you stands unmoving and smiles." "In truth, you've never had a thought. You've never moved a muscle. You never, ever will." "...Well, that's one way to ruin the moment," Twilight said. "Isn't it just?" Twilight had worked enough all-nighters to recognize what Cadance was doing: she thought the worst was out and that she didn't have to fight quite so hard to avoid collapsing on the spot. But Twilight was owed some answers. "I refute it thus," said Twilight, and waved a hoof. Flurry got a look of deep consideration and then waved back. Cadance just nodded. "Dreams feel real on the inside, too. You know that old chestnut: "And Zig Zag asked: Am I a butterfly dreaming that he's a pony?" Well, we got the short end of that stick. We're a fantasy, a dream of those things from the another world. Silhouettes on a cave wall and they're the ones making shadow puppets." When Twilight didn't answer, Cadance added, "Surprise!" "Do you really expect me to believe that?" "Of course not! That'd be ridiculous. Let's use an example. How long has Ponyville had a railroad?" ”Huh? Thirty-five years, four months. What does that have to do with anything?" "All right, here's a better one. The past isn't real." "That's why it's the past, yes." "It's dream rules. If I'm a genius detective and it's decided that I've always had a bumbling sidekick, why, there he's been all along. Shiny and I are what, three years old? That's when the things that govern this reality decided that the cute little bookworm Twilight Sparkle has always had a family, and poof! You'd never lose touch with your BBBFF, right? Bear with me." As if Twilight hadn't been downright Ursa Majoring with her. "Yes, of course," said Twilight. "I'm not gonna claim we write regularly, with how things get and how I get, but we make do. We'd never leave each other hanging like that." "I know, it's adorable." Cadance's warmhearted smile was well out of place in the conversation. "What was first time you wrote to, saw, or thought about Shiny since your move to Ponyville? Say, the time you told him about all the friends you'd made?" "I moved in the day after the Summer Sun Celebration, so it would've been after the Running of the Leaves… Winter Wrap-up… the Grand Galloping Gala… oh. Oh no. The second Hearth's Warming… and I remember the snow was gone when…" Cadance hugged Twilight, who didn't turn away, and held her until she stopped trembling. "Are we a good dream?" said Twilight. "We're a profitable one. The return of Luna, the defeat of Sombra, our loves, our friendships, were a way to make us more appealing to those in the real world. Heh. Improve our scent, perhaps - did you see their teeth? I think they're predators." "We're… symbols of happiness? In a world like theirs?" "Symbols that cost money of happiness. I'm sorry to be so strict on this, Twilight, but to understand all this it's crucial to keep those in the right order. We exist in order to be sold at a decent profit. If being a reminder of happiness helps with that, so much the better, but never mistake it for generosity. I saw it in your expression as you began the rite - harmony or law, right? The answer is greed." "I'll need to see your notes. And your research materials on things beyond this world," Twilight said. "Of course. You should probably be aware some of them are a thousand years old and bound in griffon skin." "But…" "Easy. Just get it out." "What do we do?" "Do? Silly filly." Cadance patted Twilight on the head. "Stay in our packaging and smile. If we want, wait for Flurry to bring the end." Twilight looked at Flurry, who was sitting on the bed next to her trying resolutely to chew on her own hind leg, and said: "Bwah?" "Take it from me, Twilight: There's a difference between knowing this world is ruled by grim forces from beyond, and knowing those things paid a personal visit to your womb. I don't think marketing bothers with everypony, but Flurry? It was marketing that made her be born like this, it's marketing alone that keeps her alive." Cadance's words were speeding up; Twilight had a feeling she'd been wanting to get this off her chest. "Nopony can survive having the immaturity of a baby and the sheer power of an alicorn! My daughter was born non-viable! Every day she survives anyway it's because of how deeply she's in marketing's control. She couldn't even be alive except by being exactly as marketing wants her to be! What part of her came from my and Shiny's love, my desire to have a child I could love and cherish? None! She's not mine!" The fire seemed to go out of Cadance; she slumped, lowered her head, and squeezed her eyes shut. They brimmed with tears. "She's not mine…" Twilight's head spun. She had to do something to help, but she'd completely lost track of the factors involved, the situation was clearly volatile, and she was unfamiliar with half of the topics. "And yet… I love my little cuckoo-child more than I hate her. How could I not? I carried her for eleven months, dreamed so many times of getting to see her… but what claim do I have to her, anyway? What have I done for her? Feed her, raise her, what's that compared to writing it into the cosmos that fire's hot, water flows downhill, and Flurry Heart must exist? I..." Cadance trailed off, and began to sob in earnest. That was it; Twilight had to do something. Her friendship with Cadance and her position as Princess demanded it. "Um. Don't cry, it's not so bad?" Candance looked at Twilight as if she'd grown a second head, and started laughing like she'd just heard the best joke in her life. Partial success? "Do you realize - ahahahaha, thank you, that was great, Twilight - do you realize what I've done? I've given marketing a body! I was the caregiver for an empire, but I just had to have one more pony, one more that I could favor over all others! What harm could just one more do? Pfffffthahahaha. It was already so powerful from afar, now it's here among us! Any constraints it had are GONE! Why did it want this? What will it do now? I get to ponder that as I watch it grow and strengthen by the day, this little horror who I STILL love and who I still want to succeed! There's your bwah, Twilight! Bwah! What year is it?" "Er..." "What year is it, Twilight?" "1005 ACA, but you should-" "NO! The year is one, Twilight!" Flurry gave a yip as cyan magic pulled her into the air in front of Cadance. "The year." Cadance's horn glowed brighter, and her head rattled and shook as magic washed over it. "IS." Cadance lowered her front, raised her hindquarters, and opened her mouth from ear to ear, revealing rows of sharp teeth. "ONE!" Quick as a lightning bolt, Cadance slammed forward and upward, and with a RUNCH, wrenched Flurry Heart's head clean off her shoulders. She slammed her jaws together, chewed, and swallowed. After Cadance had turned her head back to normal, she said: "Whoof! Thank you so much, Twilight. I've had to tell somepony for ages." Cadance said: "I tried to sustain myself on Flurry once. You know, cloister myself together with what I'd done? But it doesn't count once she comes back." Cadance said: "Now then. Crêpes? I know this is hard for you, but here's my best tip for existential terror: whether anything matters or not, a good meal still makes it far less annoying." Cadance said: "Meet you there, ok? Come on, Flurry!" "Gdee!" Flurry said as she took flight and followed her mom out the door. Twilight began laughing, a wild, desperate, whooping laugh. She didn't know if she was ever going to stop. Author's Note Thanks for reading! tl;dr here. Poor Cadance's ideas on what marketing wants from her are a little off. She's also unaware that her world wasn't created solely to turn a buck, but as a collaboration between Faust, to tell good stories and inspire young girls, and marketing, to make people desire material wealth. Although Faust was defeated and departed and marketing reigned supreme, that'd make Cadance feel a little better. But (a) you gotta work with what you have, and if you want to learn about things beyond your reality that means the works of Appalling Always, the mad Arabian, and (b) the only thing she's interested in is what marketing did to her daughter, which happens to be one of the darkest times the lord of her reality intruded into it. She never had a chance. ACA stands for Avast Celestia's A**. She lost a bet. A big one. For an altogether more sensible use of Lovecraftian elements in a MLP setting, see Starlight's Portal by Anonymous Potato. For fictional characters with a more constructive attitude to knowing they're fictional, see the webcomic One Over Zero. This strip should help you tell if it's the comic for you. They had raspberry jam.
Pop!The explosion sounded like a hill-sized soap bubble had burst. One moment Twilight Sparkle arrived at one of the Castle of Friendship's guest rooms, starting to tell Cadance and Flurry Heart that Spike was making crêpes. The next she blinked, snorted, spat and shook out gunk with the consistency of chunky salsa. Well. Not the best thing to happen to Twilight today, but she was the last pony who should fault a foal for wanting to discover their magic. Once she had enough of the stuff out to function she turned her attention back to a roomy, generously decorated guest suite rather the worse for wear from being covered in red. Only Cadance, covered by a small rosy shield bubble, seemed to be unscathed. She dropped the bubble and gave Twilight a tired little wave and a smile. A wisp of smoke rose from an empty changing table that had been the epicenter, just as if Flurry herself had ex… plo… Oh no. -don't panic YES PANIC it couldn't have been her FLURRY NO just ask BUT HOW CAN I of course it's a mistake don't be CHANGELINGS I've developed schizohaynia! WHAT IS- A little pink hoof fell from the ceiling and booped Twilight on the snoot on the way down. ”AIIIIIIIIGH!” asked Twilight. ”Yes, Flurry has been all over the place today,” Cadance said. ”But she'll pull herself together.” Flurry Heart tasted like marinara sauce and cotton candy. ”…so sorry, Twilight. I thought you knew, I really did. I must've needed this getaway more than… Twilight, it's all right! She just detonated for a little.” The sheer insanity of the words made Twilight pause her retching and raise her gaze to Cadance, and the scene of carnage that… faded from view? Cadance pointed a hoof at the changing table, and sure enough, as soon the last of the red vanished (taking the stickiness and the aftertaste with it, thank Celestia) there was a ”coo!” from the table. ”FLURRY!!” Twilight leapt to embrace Flurry, poke her to see if she was real and not an illusion, and at the same time handle her like she might explode again. This added up to some kind of frantic side-pats. Flurry scrunched up her face and cast Twilight a baleful gaze. ”Ooh! Look, Flurry!” Cadance called out as she twirled the mobile above the table, making the baby giggle and squeal. She then spotted Twilight giving her what, in the circumstances, was a very generous expression. ”Explain.” ”Flurry can't die. The universe won't let her.” ”That's it?” ”That's it.” ”And how did you find this out?” Twilight narrowed her gaze. That earned a sigh from Cadance. ”Twilight, she's a baby. Leave them alone for two minutes and they crawl over a cliff. What's more, she's a baby who flies like an athlete, teleports like a wizard, fights like her name was Lunchbreak Wink. She's the infant against whom no lock will hold. She cannot be caged; she cannot be controlled.” ”I could've helped! Celestia could've helped!” ”But you thought we were on top of things, didn't you?” Cadance asked, not unkindly. Twilight nodded, so she went on: ”Honestly, so did we. Two lovers and best friends, thrust into a daunting adventure but rising to meet new challenges! Then Flurry got frightened by a cucumber and incinerated the kitchen she was in.” ”Cadance!” ”Yes, Twilight?” ”You're talking about your daughter. Dying. A lot! How can you be so casual?” ”The day she did it back-to-back fifteen times helped. Can you believe that by the end, Shining, Sunburst and I were all just bored? I thought Shiny was still a little skittish but then the next morning he'd put a big ”DANGER: Handle With Care” sign on the nursery door and I laughed myself silly.” Twilight gaped at Cadance, the unkempt mane, the bags under her eyes, the ”My world's on fire, how about yours" smile of a proud parent at the end of her rope, all fixtures ever since Flurry Heart was born. Twilight had never before realized how terrifying that smile was. ”The answer turned out to be removing the color black. Or pictures of fish. Or maybe she just really hated hiccups. It's always a bit of a guessing game when Flurry gets head-explodey. I keep fretting that she'll hate blowing up so much she blows up in frustration and gets stuck in a loop, but it's not like she minded at all when I popped her a moment – uh oh.” ”I- this- wha- that wasn't Flurry?! YOU BLEW UP YOUR OWN CHILD?!” ”Twilight! Don't shout in front of the foal!” Cadance hissed, her horn igniting. Flurry imploded silently into a sphere of utter darkness. It grew as it ate, gouging a deep furrow into the changing table. A wind whispered, blew, began to howl, but then the sphere vanished in a flash of light. ”Okay, go ahead,” Cadance said. ”What have you done, you MONSTER?” For the first time since reason was dethroned and madness reigned over all, Cadance looked annoyed. ”Well, it's not like I'm doing her any harm,” Cadance said. ”Oh no, of course not!” ”But then, I suppose I can't fault you for that.” ”You, I, but, that's – AAAAAUGH!” Twilight burst out in frustration. Flurry appeared unceremoniously on the ruins of the table. Cadance called out ”Ooh, good timing!” and scooped the baby up to the guest room's handsome four-poster. With her back to Twilight, she floated a few toys over from her things as she purred: ”Who's a good baby? You are! Yes, you are!” Twilight contemplated the matter, and whether or not to start setting things on fire and never, ever stop. A bag of bits bobbed toward her. ”Sorry about the table, Twilight,” Cadance called over her shoulder. ”You know how it is. Well, no. Never mind. Can you give mommy a smile? There you go!” Twilight took the coins, and with the way things were going, quickly checked that they bore images of Celestia and not – for example – ponies with their faces frozen in terror as they strained against the metal in a final futile attempt to push themselves free. They did, so she put them down somewhere. ”That'll hold her for a while,” Cadance remarked as she left Flurry chewing happily on a stuffed buffalo and turned back to Twilight. ”So,” said Cadance. ”So,” said Twilight. To Cadance's credit, she hardly flinched at all. She exhaled, inhaled, then launched into what sounded like a well-used speech. ”I'm the Princess of Love – bear with me, Twilight, I am – and that includes loving oneself. Ponies think self-care means exercise, or fancy vacations, or big sweeping changes that turn your life around. And some of the time it does! But it also means the small things. When things are bad and the world's run you more ragged than you thought you could be-” There was a helpful ”oaaao!” from the bed. ”-then it can be about the tiniest things. Always eating off of clean plates. Never going to sleep with your dirty uniform on. Something you do, or never do, because despite everything, you're still better than that. It doesn't have to sound like much, but in the moment, it's a way to show the world – show yourself – that you're still a pony, not a wreck.” Twilight waited. ”For me, it turned out to be not changing diapers with my mouth when I'm too tired to even use my magic safely.” Twilight waited some more. ”I guess that got me into a habit.” Yet, Twilight waited. ”She's dry when she comes back,” Cadance added. Twilight snorted. ”For a moment, I thought you were going to spin a tale about how you had to do this to keep Flurry Heart's magic from growing to threaten the whole world. Or something like that. Something that would make this worth it.” ”Trust me, Twilight. When it's 4:13, and you've been trapped inside with your foal for so long you genuinely can't remember if that's night or afternoon… at that moment, soiled diapers are your whole world. Besides…” Cadance actually chuckled. ”…all the best parenting books said the same thing: living with a child will be unlike anything you've imagined, but if you're attentive, you can learn to know your new normal, adapt to it, make the best of it.” ”So you became a serial killer.” ”It's a victimless crime.” ”Aren't you worried that Flurry will take after you? Make it a family tradition?” ”Oh, Twilight, it's good of you to ask. But she's at an age where she's far from clear that she has legs. That sort of conceptualization is well beyond her yet. Maybe I could show you those books? There's diagrams…” ”Cadance, you're rubbing your right foreleg with your left. That's what you did after you ate all the brownies my mother had left for both of us. What aren't you telling me?” ”Always quick on the uptake.” Cadance paused, then sighed, slowly, wearily. ”My daughter has no concept of death and shoots house-sized lasers from her face. Losses are well below projections. Also, we replaced Sunburst with a homunculus and a crystalline recording of his brain patterns.” ”You did what? Why?” ”I know, it's just like installing sprinklers. Everypony complains about the noise and tut-tuts about the cost and wonders why you'd go to such lengths, and then the sirens go off.” Twilight swore she could hear her own eye twitch. "Hm? Oh, sorry, tired. Flurry was cold, so she turned Sunburst into this big, warm, fuzzy blanket maybe an inch thick. We had to go to backup." ”Transformation magic isn't that hard to undo, even if it's not a formal spell.” ”She used telekinesis.” ”Ah.” ”She still has it, in fact. She pitches a fit if we try to take it away.” Twilight made a sound that she didn't know the name of. (Even now, that bothered her.) ”Is that everything?” Cadance said. ”Yes, I think that's everything. Now, I don't know about you but I've worked up an appetite. You said something about crêpes? Do you have raspberry jam?” Cadance made for the door, but reared back when Twilight teleported to block the doorway, teeth grinding, pawing at the floor. ”NO!” Twilight screamed. ”ENOUGH! This doesn't make sense! You don't make sense! The Cadance I knew would never act like this to her child, she'd never do this for, for convenience! She'd never become you! Make sense right now or I'll have Discord melt you into a big bowl of blueberry pudding, because pudding I can understand!” As Twilight finished, she noticed Flurry was staring at her wide-eyed, lip quivering, yellow magic sparkling and flickering as it started to build on her little horn. But then they both blinked as bright cyan shimmered in Flurry's mane and a thin, branching, white ropelike thing plopped onto it. It turned this way and that, patting its new surroundings with its branches, and as Twilight realized it reminded her of a mushroom's hypha it opened a maw far bigger than itself and pounced. One second later, where Flurry had been stood a large, handsome, bright-blue mushroom. The mushroom fell over with an undignified PLORT. Twilight glared at Cadance, who shrugged. A long pause. In the distance, a bird sang. ”Trust me, Twilight-” ”No!” ”- you don't want to know. And I say that knowing I'm talking to you.” For 0.4 seconds Twilight considered that maybe she really didn't want to learn something – close to a personal best. ”All right, we're doing this. Not that I expected any less of you.” Cadance closed her eyes, brought a hoof to her chest on an inhale, extended it on an exhale. Seeing this Cadance use the mannerisms of the old one managed to anger Twilight still further. Author's Note Cadance, what're you doing, that's terrible parenting advice
ShopThen Cadance said: ”She's not mine.” ”Oh! Cadance, that's – wait. Is that the part when Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash crack up and it turns out all this was a hilarious prank?” ”Heh. Oh, I and Shiny had her. But when we discovered our foal couldn't die, of course we didn't leave it at that. It took… some doing… but we got to the bottom of things. We shouldn't have. It turns out we're convenient vessels at best. We're allowed to birth, clean and feed her – take care of the menial work.” ”There are forces greater than ponies, Twilight. Vile, awful, impossibly greater. My daughter's life, the course it takes, even down to what ”we decided” to name her – hah! All willed by things that mold our reality like clay. Do you remember when we all thought giving birth to an alicorn was impossible? It is! But they wanted me to, so I did. That's why Flurry can't die! Her life's completely out of our hooves!” Cadance was breathing heavily. She lowered her head and her voice. ”And that's why I have no say at all over what kind of mare my own daughter will become, or the life she'll lead. Flurry's in the hands of the vile power, marketing, and its horrible children, focus groups.” ”I wish I could've spared you that. But you never could leave well enough alone. I admire it, y'know. Your sense of justice.” She circled a hoof. For her part, Twilight had bitten back a remark about Flurry's life being in their hooves at all. Now she waited for the punchline. When none seemed to be coming, she said: ”You know, when horror writers play this card, they at least come up with something like "Chzo'Callay, She Who Paints Blasphemies With The Inks Of The Violet Undernight." And what even are hands?” ”Good for them! That sounds horrifying.” Cadance extracted a mirror from her bags and hoofed it to Twilight. It was round, maybe the size of a pony's head, and looked distinctly ordinary. ”You'll need this for the rest. It shows another universe. The universe. Place it on the fourth wall, and break it. Try to do so gently, with as few pieces as you can manage, to get a better picture.” Twilight turned it over a couple of times, then shot Cadance a ”seriously?” look. Cadance inclined her head in a ”Well, go on” gesture. What's she playing at? All right, I guess if the door is on one wall, the bed and things are against the opposite one, the windows are on the third, that means there's an odd one out. Twilight pushed the mirror against the wall at head height and found that it stuck. A moment's magical pressure in a precise vertical line cracked the mirror in two. ”Oh, well done!” Cadance said, but Twilight hardly noticed. Magic permeated the cosmos. Magic was friendship. Friendship was harmony. Whether it was law or harmony that ultimately moved the world was a matter for academicians to debate, but either way all things tingled with magic, and with it, all events bent toward friendship in the end. Except the mirror. Through means Twilight nearly didn't want to understand, the magic of friendship held no dominion on the mirror. It was a nauseating emptiness that reminded Twilight of Tirek's rampage, a soft murmur of ocean waves that you didn't notice until it was stilled. She wanted to scream and smash the thing, but Cadance had said it showed another world. Was this happening because that entire world was like this? Tirek could be fought, but how did you fight a world? Something showed in the mirror, but the light was all wrong. She peered closer and saw… ”What? Pinkie?” Pinkie Pie was trapped in a container with a colorful top and bottom but transparent, glossy sides. Her smile looked more like a rictus grin with how out of place it was on her still face. Pinkie was a verb, yet she wasn't even twitching. She wasn't even breathing, and the blood in Twilight's veins turned to ice... until she took in the Pinkie Pies below and above this one. Pinkie probably couldn't do that. To the right, a profusion of Rarities grinned vacuously. Beyond them, a wild procession of animals and machines, most of which Twilight couldn't name, all encased in vividly colored chambers. Museum? Test subjects? A ritual? What do they want from us? Behind each pony, a row of identical ponies, all hanging on great rods of unpainted metal, leading to a smooth grey metallic wall. Twilight looked down, and felt horrible vertigo as she realized her viewpoint hung unsupported in the air higher than many of Ponyville's clouds. She peered up… and up… and up. The wall was by far the biggest building Twilight had ever seen, yet everywhere grey, mirthless. Barren. It was amazing, but it felt wrong. How could the builders of this wast work not put anything of themselves into it? In Ponyville buildings were crisscrossed by little flourishes and decorations that varied wildly but all meant the same thing: This place is loved. In Canterlot ponies would never stop adding stained glass windows to a target this big. To leave the wall like this hinted at abject poverty (which obviously wasn't the case), the strictest of tyrannies… or an empty, resigned existence. An existence without friendship. Then Twilight saw them. The first word Twilight found for the creatures was gargantuan. A single one could've ripped the spires off of Canterlot Castle. Vaguely pony-like in body plan but almost hairless, they shambled about precariously on their hind legs. No two of them seemed to be the same size and shape. Twilight's breath hitched: their hooves split into smaller legs that almost squirmed with minds of their own. The second was drab. Despite their hideous appearance, Twilight was moved to pity. Their rigid little ears and impossibly small, beady eyes gave them blank, emotionless expressions. A lack of tails made their toneless appearance even worse. They were dirt-colored with only minor variations, and they wore the most depressing clothes Twilight had ever seen. Here or there was a floral pattern or the glint of metal, but for the most part they wore little more than unicolored strips of fabric that made the least elaborate of Rarity's leisurewear look like a gala dress. It was like they only bothered with clothes so they could say they made an effort, as if they were ashamed of going naked. Then three of them passed right past Twilight's point of view, and she found her last word. Abomination. Every bit of their skin was marred by texture. They crawled with lines, pits, creases. One had blood vessels visibly pushing against its skin, as if trying to break free. Instead of being single-colored or having a gradient, they were lighter there, darker there, then lighter again – how could they live without even knowing what color they were? Another changed color in disgustingly unnatural lines. Some kind of ritual scarification? And the lines! The wrinkles! The tip of a single squirming worm-leg was more shriveled by far than all of Granny Smith. Nothing could be that withered and live. Had there be a catastrophe and they were all slowly dessicating? Were they even alive? What was going on? And the base of the worm-legs had enormous, obscene grooves gouged into it that looked like the claw marks from a predator, only then you saw the smaller lines and then the still smaller lines, as if their entire bodies had been slowly savaged one little bit at a time by monsters of all sizes, the blood of giants gushing everywhere, enough blood to drown Twilight, to drown everypony in her castle… Twilight heard screaming, and realized it was coming from her. The mirror was cradled in a lavender glow and fell apart onto the floor. Mercifully, Twilight fainted. Author's Note That took a turn. It was always going to happen. I don't hate Flurry, but she broke the show's own rules. Not the first thing to do so in order to sell toys, nor last. It can make writing about her a poser, though. Baby Flurry has the ability to vaporize a dozen ponies by accident, but not to understand what she'd done or why it'd be bad. Equestria's worldbuilding, of course cartoony, was still deep enough for this to be an issue. So how to write a story about that? If I had it only result in wacky cartoon hijinks, I'd break the setting's internal consistency. If I took things to their logical conclusion, I'd clash horribly with the tone. A story about killing Flurry over and over with no word as to how would've been way too spiteful (but fun), and I didn't want to go full AU. I opted to square that circle by acknowledging that indeed, things don't make sense. The setting's internal logic has holes in it, and they're big enough that the characters have started to notice. This sort of thing seldom goes well for the characters. Bear with me, if that's something I can even say after only writing like 3k words. Oh, and here's a thought: in a world where breaking the fourth wall is the kind of unspeakable ritual that opens your mind to Things Pone Was Not Meant To Know, what does that say about Pinkie Pie, who can do it whenever she wants?
TollFlurry Heart was experimentally pressing in on Twilight's muzzle. Twilight extracted a hoof from the blankets she laid under and scratched Flurry under the chin, making the baby giggle and squirm. Cadance watched from the bedside with a sweet, sincere smile. Twilight was in the guest suite's bed. Her coat was flushed with sweat, and the sheets were a mess, but her face had been wiped clean. A cool, wet towel rested on her forehead. Twilight looked at Cadance, looked at Flurry, looked at Cadance again. ”Not right now, no,” said Cadance. "Let's just take a moment." Time passed. Cadance tickled Flurry for a little. ”So,” Cadance said. ”So,” Twilight said. ”There's a world out there, with things living it who don't have friendship. Not as we know it. They'll never know the joy of bonding with each other so tight, it fires a giant rainbow beam.” Cadance hung her head and said: ”They'll never love each other so deeply, it sets off a city-sized shock wave.” ”And they know about us.” ”Heh. Oh, they do far more than just know about us.” ”I thought so! They made those ponies' capsules as colorful as anything in Equestria, but they themselves and their own things were so muted and listless. Why would they go further for us than for themselves? What kind of items would you value more than reality? Grave goods? No, I don't think so. What were those effigies?” Cadance closed her eyes. ”Us,” she muttered. ”I know they're us.” "The real us. Did you see yourself?" Cadance said, and when Twilight shook her head she went on: "I've seen you there. You're a sweet, pretty, inanimate object. So am I! And you better believe so's Flurry. Aren't you a good little statue, darling?" "Goo!" "So. The good news is: you're real! The bad news: that's the only part of you that is. Your hopes, your fears, your aspirations? Not real. The love you feel for your friends? Zzzzip! Equestria? You know it. We're not here. We're not having this conversation. We're the effigies and we're inside an illusion, while right this moment the real you stands unmoving and smiles." "In truth, you've never had a thought. You've never moved a muscle. You never, ever will." "...Well, that's one way to ruin the moment," Twilight said. "Isn't it just?" Twilight had worked enough all-nighters to recognize what Cadance was doing: she thought the worst was out and that she didn't have to fight quite so hard to avoid collapsing on the spot. But Twilight was owed some answers. "I refute it thus," said Twilight, and waved a hoof. Flurry got a look of deep consideration and then waved back. Cadance just nodded. "Dreams feel real on the inside, too. You know that old chestnut: "And Zig Zag asked: Am I a butterfly dreaming that he's a pony?" Well, we got the short end of that stick. We're a fantasy, a dream of those things from the another world. Silhouettes on a cave wall and they're the ones making shadow puppets." When Twilight didn't answer, Cadance added, "Surprise!" "Do you really expect me to believe that?" "Of course not! That'd be ridiculous. Let's use an example. How long has Ponyville had a railroad?" ”Huh? Thirty-five years, four months. What does that have to do with anything?" "All right, here's a better one. The past isn't real." "That's why it's the past, yes." "It's dream rules. If I'm a genius detective and it's decided that I've always had a bumbling sidekick, why, there he's been all along. Shiny and I are what, three years old? That's when the things that govern this reality decided that the cute little bookworm Twilight Sparkle has always had a family, and poof! You'd never lose touch with your BBBFF, right? Bear with me." As if Twilight hadn't been downright Ursa Majoring with her. "Yes, of course," said Twilight. "I'm not gonna claim we write regularly, with how things get and how I get, but we make do. We'd never leave each other hanging like that." "I know, it's adorable." Cadance's warmhearted smile was well out of place in the conversation. "What was first time you wrote to, saw, or thought about Shiny since your move to Ponyville? Say, the time you told him about all the friends you'd made?" "I moved in the day after the Summer Sun Celebration, so it would've been after the Running of the Leaves… Winter Wrap-up… the Grand Galloping Gala… oh. Oh no. The second Hearth's Warming… and I remember the snow was gone when…" Cadance hugged Twilight, who didn't turn away, and held her until she stopped trembling. "Are we a good dream?" said Twilight. "We're a profitable one. The return of Luna, the defeat of Sombra, our loves, our friendships, were a way to make us more appealing to those in the real world. Heh. Improve our scent, perhaps - did you see their teeth? I think they're predators." "We're… symbols of happiness? In a world like theirs?" "Symbols that cost money of happiness. I'm sorry to be so strict on this, Twilight, but to understand all this it's crucial to keep those in the right order. We exist in order to be sold at a decent profit. If being a reminder of happiness helps with that, so much the better, but never mistake it for generosity. I saw it in your expression as you began the rite - harmony or law, right? The answer is greed." "I'll need to see your notes. And your research materials on things beyond this world," Twilight said. "Of course. You should probably be aware some of them are a thousand years old and bound in griffon skin." "But…" "Easy. Just get it out." "What do we do?" "Do? Silly filly." Cadance patted Twilight on the head. "Stay in our packaging and smile. If we want, wait for Flurry to bring the end." Twilight looked at Flurry, who was sitting on the bed next to her trying resolutely to chew on her own hind leg, and said: "Bwah?" "Take it from me, Twilight: There's a difference between knowing this world is ruled by grim forces from beyond, and knowing those things paid a personal visit to your womb. I don't think marketing bothers with everypony, but Flurry? It was marketing that made her be born like this, it's marketing alone that keeps her alive." Cadance's words were speeding up; Twilight had a feeling she'd been wanting to get this off her chest. "Nopony can survive having the immaturity of a baby and the sheer power of an alicorn! My daughter was born non-viable! Every day she survives anyway it's because of how deeply she's in marketing's control. She couldn't even be alive except by being exactly as marketing wants her to be! What part of her came from my and Shiny's love, my desire to have a child I could love and cherish? None! She's not mine!" The fire seemed to go out of Cadance; she slumped, lowered her head, and squeezed her eyes shut. They brimmed with tears. "She's not mine…" Twilight's head spun. She had to do something to help, but she'd completely lost track of the factors involved, the situation was clearly volatile, and she was unfamiliar with half of the topics. "And yet… I love my little cuckoo-child more than I hate her. How could I not? I carried her for eleven months, dreamed so many times of getting to see her… but what claim do I have to her, anyway? What have I done for her? Feed her, raise her, what's that compared to writing it into the cosmos that fire's hot, water flows downhill, and Flurry Heart must exist? I..." Cadance trailed off, and began to sob in earnest. That was it; Twilight had to do something. Her friendship with Cadance and her position as Princess demanded it. "Um. Don't cry, it's not so bad?" Candance looked at Twilight as if she'd grown a second head, and started laughing like she'd just heard the best joke in her life. Partial success? "Do you realize - ahahahaha, thank you, that was great, Twilight - do you realize what I've done? I've given marketing a body! I was the caregiver for an empire, but I just had to have one more pony, one more that I could favor over all others! What harm could just one more do? Pfffffthahahaha. It was already so powerful from afar, now it's here among us! Any constraints it had are GONE! Why did it want this? What will it do now? I get to ponder that as I watch it grow and strengthen by the day, this little horror who I STILL love and who I still want to succeed! There's your bwah, Twilight! Bwah! What year is it?" "Er..." "What year is it, Twilight?" "1005 ACA, but you should-" "NO! The year is one, Twilight!" Flurry gave a yip as cyan magic pulled her into the air in front of Cadance. "The year." Cadance's horn glowed brighter, and her head rattled and shook as magic washed over it. "IS." Cadance lowered her front, raised her hindquarters, and opened her mouth from ear to ear, revealing rows of sharp teeth. "ONE!" Quick as a lightning bolt, Cadance slammed forward and upward, and with a RUNCH, wrenched Flurry Heart's head clean off her shoulders. She slammed her jaws together, chewed, and swallowed. After Cadance had turned her head back to normal, she said: "Whoof! Thank you so much, Twilight. I've had to tell somepony for ages." Cadance said: "I tried to sustain myself on Flurry once. You know, cloister myself together with what I'd done? But it doesn't count once she comes back." Cadance said: "Now then. Crêpes? I know this is hard for you, but here's my best tip for existential terror: whether anything matters or not, a good meal still makes it far less annoying." Cadance said: "Meet you there, ok? Come on, Flurry!" "Gdee!" Flurry said as she took flight and followed her mom out the door. Twilight began laughing, a wild, desperate, whooping laugh. She didn't know if she was ever going to stop. Author's Note Thanks for reading! tl;dr here. Poor Cadance's ideas on what marketing wants from her are a little off. She's also unaware that her world wasn't created solely to turn a buck, but as a collaboration between Faust, to tell good stories and inspire young girls, and marketing, to make people desire material wealth. Although Faust was defeated and departed and marketing reigned supreme, that'd make Cadance feel a little better. But (a) you gotta work with what you have, and if you want to learn about things beyond your reality that means the works of Appalling Always, the mad Arabian, and (b) the only thing she's interested in is what marketing did to her daughter, which happens to be one of the darkest times the lord of her reality intruded into it. She never had a chance. ACA stands for Avast Celestia's A**. She lost a bet. A big one. For an altogether more sensible use of Lovecraftian elements in a MLP setting, see Starlight's Portal by Anonymous Potato. For fictional characters with a more constructive attitude to knowing they're fictional, see the webcomic One Over Zero. This strip should help you tell if it's the comic for you. They had raspberry jam.
