It had been a long time since Rota Fortuna had visited here, but what was time to a concept that existed beyond time the way Her Parents existed beyond dimensions.
Rota Fortuna entered Oblivion, in other words she entered Entropy, the mother of all Draconequi. This place was beyond concepts such as life and death (even Mortis had little power here), time, energy... destiny, free-will.
Rota Fortuna herself setting 'hoof' in this place was a flash-bang in the dark. And the dark hated flash-bangs. It made the empty shadows-of-existence have moments of guiding life, of being able to make their own choices... she was an infection. And like any infection, Oblivion's immune system would soon obliterate the part of her that visited here if she dallied, and 'dallied' wasn't measured in time, but actions. Time had no meaning in this place.
All things transient eventually found their way to this concept, all things finite were ultimately the rightful property of Entropy. Universes burned out, atoms decayed, photons perished, and all things of duration became a part of Her. And things that had never been.
Rota Fortuna herself admitted that Eremo, her brother, concept of Knowledge and Distance, the 9th Tarot, the Hermit... him categorizing those beyond all existence whose whims undid and remade all existence based on their attention span as 'Shadow Who Make' and 'Shadows Who Watch' were ultimately a poor nickname for them, considering it made the category of the 'Shadows of Existence', those wiped from having ever existed and having lost their Light of Existence, made things quite confusing.
Speaking of nobody... they watched her. Some had been innocent children, many selfish villains, other brave heroes, and the majority were ordinary mortals who had just wanted to live their lives in peace. By one happenstance or another, they'd been swept over and had in fact never existed.
There was an entire kingdom of Abyssinians who had ruled Equus and hunted Centaurs for sport... except they had never existed, one could go back in time and visit every inch of reality and find no proof they'd ever existed. But plenty of proof they had not. They now looked at Rota Fortuna with hungry eyes. The shadows all did.
Rota Fortuna's mechanical wing twitched.
They'd been heroes, villains, neutral, innocents... but the emptiness clawed at all of them, and they saw her, the goddess who tirelessly built the infinite roads existence walked on, the roads they'd been cleaned off of. What if they could somehow devour just the tiniest piece of her, surely they could reclaim existence yes?
It was a delusion, as unreal as the promises of swindlers once claiming ground up unicorn horns could grant longevity to dysfunctional centaurs.
Rota scoffed at little Celestia's moment of childish fantasy that retroactive erasing Entropy down one particular road meant anything to Her, Entropy existed across ALL the multiverse. This meant that if you went in one 'direction' 'far' enough, you'd eventually reach the cast-off husks of different worldlines.
Like any concept's inner-self, their 'domains' as mortal souls thought of them as, you could never be sure if what you were interacting with was a separate being, or the concept (or a facet of the concept) playing a part.
Sane Reality played all the roles in Elysium, Havoc played every role in Tartarus, dancing puppets with no consciousness for those who inhabited them.
Rota for a moment thought of Her Mother. "While Havoc, Entropy, and Father are forever be given more, while Azerhorse gives and takes in ways even it doesn't understand... Mother simply gives and gives, the souls she gives birth to fluttering out never to return to her unless they take up this terrible weight mortals call 'godhood'... only the concept of Empathy itself COULD carry such a burden throughout all the universes."
Rota Fortuna left traces of herself in her wake, of 'purpose' of 'free-will' of 'consequences' like flakes of skin, dust. The shadows hungrily tried to devour them as they were snuffed out by Entropy's very presence. Rota felt herself constantly dying inside Her!
Only one thing could inspire her to come back to this place again and again.
Rota Fortuna passed the ruined towns, the empty cities, the decaying castles, the frozen rivers, the burned out campfires, the leafless trees, the endless fields of frozen ash.
And there it was... the graveyard... the fence bent at impossible angles, looking like it should fall over at an infant's push, or be a child's game to jump over, but none could enter save through the gates. The gates that slide open for Rota Fortuna.
Looming over her were the statues that of beings who had never existed in the imagination or thoughts of beings of countless universes passed. Every moment in a different position, but never ever moving.
Any information on the graves were sponged away, or rather, had never been there.
"Hello," said a gray earth-pony mare with no expression, her Light turquoise eyes distant and cool, wrapped in the dirty grays and white of a grave digger, a shovel over one shoulder. "You came again. They wondered if they would."
Rota Fortuna didn't know, and feared to know, which 'they' She meant.
"This way, follow only my way, or something will find you that you'll regret," she said calmly turning around, a tiny pebble balancing on her back. She carried no lantern. Giving birth itself was so contrary to Her being it was agony. To conjure true light to within Herself was beyond contrary. Rota dared look up at the 'moon', a pale white 'eye' staring 'down' at her... things used by mortals who were roughly nine-things short after height, width and depth to grasp its true definition.
Rota Fortuna followed her through the graves, the Grave of the Unknown Soldier, the Grave of the Undiscovered Victim, The Grave of the Sunken Sailor, the Grave of the Lost Astronaut. But these were just memorials.
'Things never given names by mortals saw me, or perhaps almost saw me, blocked by the part of Her that had experienced the limitations of mortality. Them even laying eyes upon me might have warped the part of myself within Her into something unrecognizable, the things never given names by mortals because mortals had never encountered them... or at least not long enough to even formulate a point of reference.'
'Keep thinking of what you're doing Rota Fortuna, keep your mind on your thoughts. Keep yourself a unique concept within the depths where choices have no meaning.'
'And through the graveyard, she stopped at the destination she already knew I had come.'
"You speak to one who cannot hear you, perhaps. Anything that might have once been her resides within me... cast aside... broken, forgotten... not even written down by mortals, or your brother... I ask again, why."
"Friendship."
"I've seen that lightning rod wielded and invoked many times in this universe's lifetime, be wary the lightning you attract is not too mighty."
"I endure. That's what friendship is."
"Friendship breaks, I've been told that is what makes them precious."
"And why I endure for it."
And these graves, unmarked, but I knew them. Her children, lost to Her.
'Her first born... in every moment, the grave a tribute to his many incarnations, the voiceless heroes... save one, who was a voiceless hero in green who was not his incarnation, but carried on his intent before he lost sight of himself. But I've seen ponies fight the phantom parody of who he once was.
'Thankfully I've yet to have ever watch ponies as history exists now to face the empty phantoms of Her other precious children lost to her.
'T-mpltation. Though for a moment I swear I see two unicorn brothers sitting triumphantly atop her grave to claim what would become theirs and themselves... a future, one of many.'
'K-rma. For one of Her children, he sought balance in ways just as often worked with as against myself and... my friend.
... Ch-nce.
'So often she questioned her own existence. To flip the coin. To flip over one of the stones in my roads. Always trying to get me to smile... only for me to try and pull her out of the black pit she found herself in time and again, seeing herself as a slave to her own coin. We worked together.
'Destruction suffered self-denial to the point of madness.
'The First Born fought so many false idols, he could no longer tell the chaff from the wheat.
'Discord and Morning Star saw any compromise as a betrayal to their true selves.
'Ch-nce... questioned if her existence mattered at all. As her brothers and sisters tore down order and conjured up chaos... what difference did she bring to the universe? What unpredictability mortals both craved and feared in their lives did she offer? A moment of teasing on me, a moment of flustering... a moment of unpredictability in my own existence.
'I can 'see' everything, all the choices, all the consequences, and I can't escape them... I see the outcomes, the roads as I build them. Self-centered mortals who think because I can see their choices down the road, that they are therefore liberated of any consequences of them. Mortals never understanding that jumping off roads only create new ones. My own self, my own 'fate', is the one thing I can never escape.
My wing is torn off... again, and again, and again, in every branch... sooner or later... and it gives birth to my Blank Wolf to hunt down infections in reality.
'Ch-nce ... she gave me that moment that mortals experienced... that uncertainty.
'The giant clear crystals here... holding ... it's not right to call them remains... that implies they once existed... not memories... not thoughts... not memorials. They are Entropy, the part of Her that returned to Her when reality injured itself again and again in our war over ponies' right to exist after they almost destroyed reality... and injuring Discord's Mother.( For what it's worth, I saw her family's point of view, but I thought ponies had a right to explore their choices, not destroy all their roads in fear of the bad ones.) Even if all was done again... these parts of Entropy wouldn't become Ch-nce... No more than a second child who happened to have the same genes of a fallen sister could be that sister.'
"Hello Ch-nce... here again... Nice to see you too. Discord made himself be reset, like an Alicorn. I can't say if I ever really forgave him in this worldline for... for what I knew would happen. It's... awkward in the worldlines he's still around... No. For his actions will never stop haunting him... at least that's one thing he can't cheat.
"Destruction might able to be recreated with his whole essence taken from Discord. Have you see your new sister Rancor? Feisty little brat. Cadenza gave birth to a new concept, one that isn't even defined yet, perhaps. And Discord went and caused the same thing to happen with a filly who filled her heart with 'wrongness' trying to overturn me because of the will of those-who-watch. Is she the concept of 'wrongness'? Though Azerhorse's family has that covered I thought. Two concepts of the same thing never ends well.
"What new idea is she? It's exciting not to know sometimes, it all being up to... you... Or was... the weight is all on me now. There is no Ch-nce in this universe, everything is up to me instead... I miss you. I'll always miss you. You made me happy even when I wouldn't admit it. You forced me to grow and evolve. And I grew better for it... I never got a chance to say it before... thank you. You were a real friend. Even if the rest of the universe forgets you, I won't. I wish you could appreciate how much you meant to everyone, to me. And how much you could add to things.
"I'd just want you to know that. Oh, and I created a concept whole cloth from myself. It sure hurt. Yeah yeah, 'Still can't get a date huh?' very funny Ch-nce. Their name is Cardinal, Princeps nor Imperatrix have managed to touch them yet. They balance things out, ensure the heroes and villains have a meaningful chance of winning or losing so it's, well, meaningful. I hope you can appreciate why I didn't bring them along.
"My wolf is still around... I wonder if I should have gone with a bat, or a lion with how mortals perceive it... way too many diamond dogs claiming association with him. You'd think it was amusing him called 'blank wolf' but is in fact neither. He made friends with one of Cadenza's reincarnations... funny how that mess with the Wish Spell created several different incarnations of our families who were caught in it isn't it? Heh. Padora's still a brat for not taking responsibility for Chrysalis. I... Listen to me ramble, that was your department. And that's what it comes down to... I'm a goddess bearing for two... and unlike Celestia, you aren't coming back...
"But I'll bear it for you Ch-nce. Best friend."
I leave the graves the way I came, as is the rule in such stories, the journey back is never anything to write home about. The same shadows looking at me like starved wolves but none daring to be the first to attack. My 'mechanical wing' a constant reminder of when a part of me and myself was taken away forever. Fate is forever flawed and patched up, I am forever flawed and patched up. Much like Galaxia now after her leg was eaten facing the Hungry Darkness and replaced with a starlight leg. We of course had something new to talk about together.
Strife, Draconequus of natural selection, passes by me, she doesn't say anything. We lock eyes as we pass. Even if Strife won't say it, I understand the message all the same, 'I miss her too.'
I foresee I'll visit this grave again to speak-perhaps with Ch-nce, it is myself, it is my fate.
~Fin
Author's Note
Rota Fortuna, "Do you have any idea what it's like being a god that no one worships? When things go right, mortals don't hesitate to praise their own merits. When things go wrong, they turn around and blame me. And the precious few who think they have me to thank for their good fortune... feel ashamed instead."
Strife, "Don't prance about with your self pity sister-in-law. You are like me, Fate, you have no favorites. Only those who what they must, and the consequences of their own actions."
Rota Fortuna, "It's gotten lonely without Ch-nce."
Strife, "... I miss her too."
