Know That I Lived

Chapters

And Know
Know That I Will Continue
To Love You Always
Until The End Of Time

And Know

The young elk's heart felt uneasy as he stepped into the dim sunlight of a cloudy day. 'Twere it any other day, the cool breeze and the scent of musty wet dirt from a distant yet-to-arrive rain would've acted as pleasant companions to his usual grouchy disposition. He was never the sunny-side type anyhow and far enjoyed the comforts of a moody sky. But today, as normal as everything seemed to be, had a lingering feeling that seemed to give an uncomfortable pit to his stomach. Like a somberness that seemed to linger within the breeze, of sorts.

Maybe the air was just a tad bit too cold, as it chilled him to the bone and gave him goosebumps along his forelegs making the hairs on his coat stand on end. Maybe the wind itself was just a tad bit too strong, as the trees lurched and bent at the strength of its pull in a mesmerizingly synchronous way, beckoning almost menacingly as they threatened to break from the strength of that invisible gale. And maybe, despite the loud rustling of trees by said wind, it was all just a tad bit too quiet. No birdsong, no sight of friendly animals or monsters alike, not even any noise from the neighboring town of Ponyville.

It all just added up to feel like a premonition. An omen, as his grandfather used to put it, never by mistake. Like the very world itself was trying to tell him something important. Something serious.

But he was not the superstitious sort either. Despite living in a very magical world and all, he hated the ideas of preternatural laws. As far as he was concerned, the powers of Fate and Magic could go shove it. Nothing had ever changed his belief that there was no higher power in control of things, and that the only ones capable of carving a true and worthwhile future was us, ourselves, and not some invisible hand governed by unfeeling gods.

Still, what was it about natural weather that seemed so otherworldly? It's a bit contradictory, since this was the most natural the weather could get in this world of ponies and magic. Just like everyone in his family before him, he had purposely chosen to live within the pockets of Equestria who were still bound to a natural cycle since it felt the most "homely" in a way. His home was a small little cabin in the middle of the Everfree Forest, and although the forest itself was magical in many ways, it still had the most reminiscent weather he could remember from his youth when he lived back on Earth, the world of mankind.

Both back then and now, he felt himself sharing that same feeling when being met by the sensations of a day like this. In seeing the winds pick up stronger and stronger, he looked up towards the illusively fast dark clouds as they floated on by, only imagining what their speeds could be considering how faintly and slowly they move on an idle sunny day. It had a way of shrinking him. That no matter how much he did or how big he got in life, that the world itself was still spinning in ways he could not fathom. So how absurd was it then that he could not imagine a greater power the likes of fate?

In truth, it wasn't that he could not. It's that he would not. Bowing to the ideas of fate, to him, felt like being a puppet in a world were he wanted the greatest autonomy an individual could have. Freedom to live and die as one pleased. If it had been up to him, he would never have so much as grazed any 'fateful encounters' if he could've helped it. And despite all his abject denial of them, they still found their way to him on occasion, boomeranging back again and again frustratingly so.

Or such was his thoughts as he saw the familiar face of a grown pegasus mare who'd barely reached her twenties approaching him fast from the distance. Her peach-colored coat, light blue curled mane, and freckled white spots around her red eyes were unmistakable. His brows furrowed as she skidded to a stop right in front of him, her expression jovial all over like the good-natured saintess she was not. It was nothing about her troubling personality that he disliked about her. He had known her for over ten years now, and looking past her flawed components just came natural for two creatures who'd interacted as much they had. What it was that he didn't like was simply as to how they met, and the fact that she would not stop calling it the work of fate.

Beyond that, the whole pony race just didn't sit well with him and he would've preferred not having to interact with them either. Don't get him wrong. He didn't hold an ounce of contempt for them. Instead, he viewed them on with pity. Slaves to the whims of fate and magic. Their happiness banked on them. Hell, even their very physical health was somehow intrinsically tied to them. Being drained of magic, as he witnessed on several occasions, would reduce them to a depressive and weak state. And when they were deprived of their fate? Well, without the marks on their flanks to guide them, they'd lose to apathy and would become miserable in turn. That was evident by the Starlight incident, by the exploits of the Crusaders, and by a number of individuals who grew distant from their marks.

So understand that for him, the sight of that strikingly red rook symbol on this mare's flank was just an eyesore, if only perhaps because of where his headspace began that morning with thoughts about his hatred for fate. It served to remind him how much he disliked this world in general, what with its magical creatures and machinations.

Seeing the annoyed creases on his face as his bushy white eyebrows dug inward to show his discontent made the mare look more amused as a result. "Well, someone's quite grumpy this morning. I thought this weather was just your kind of thing. Where's that smile then?" She cooed with sarcasm.

The young elk grunted his displeasure and turned to go fetch his trusty yoke attached with two buckets at both ends in order to drape it over his shoulders so as to get ready for his day by grabbing the daily water he needed from a nearby stream. All while the mare followed quietly, humming to herself nonchalantly as though that grunt and cold shoulder didn't mean 'Go away, I'm busy'.

"You got something you need of me, Cozy?" He finally asked with exasperation clear in his tone after setting the yoke down upon reaching the stream's lip, which was only a small trotting distance from his home. The water level and the current's flow were higher and stronger than usual thanks to the recent rain.

It was unusual for her to stick around this long, and it only ever happened when she was on important business. This was entirely unlike how she was as a child, having been stuck to him like a persistent wad of gum that threatened to rip up the place she'd stuck to if she were to be removed. He learned that hard lesson a few times before finally giving up, and before she finally grew up and out of that habit. Perhaps she had simply grown tired of him at some point or another. He would never know if he never asked.

Cozy thought about his question for a bit before finally noticing she'd completely forgotten what she was even there for. "Yes. This is a stick-up. Give me all the magic you have on hoof, with haste." Cozy proceeded to grab the nearest cypress with her mouth and hold it up to his throat as though it were some form of deadly weapon. Their long history together had made her the only other creature alive with the ability to make him smile. With one quick snort of amusement, the corners of his mouth pursed up into what looked to be one.

"Alright, it's all yours for the taking." He played along by holding out his foreleg to her, which she proceeded to quickly latch onto to inspect. She glanced it once, twice, thrice over, and then made a show of annoyingly tossing it aside.

"Nothing. Typical. How a creature devoid of any magic can exist in this world is beyond me." She sighed while shaking her head.

"So what do you really need then, Cozy? I'm guessing you didn't come here just to relive your wasted youth trying to chase after something that's not there."

"I came today as a favor to you. Oh don't give me that look. I can be nice sometimes too. Nice...ish anyways." She said in response to his unamused expression. "Well, you more than anyone should know I'm not lying. What with those freaky eyes of yours. 'No magic' my flank." From the saddlebags she'd been carrying with her, she pulled out a small rectangular envelope. "See? I got a personal letter addressed for you."

"Personal letter? Not official correspondence from the Princess like usual?" His bushy brows furrowed again with a troubled look.

"Yep, personal letter. Although it arrived with none of the sender's information. Miss. Doo said that it just appeared one day and that she has been meaning to give it to you for a while. But you can't blame her for the late delivery since you're hard to reach, what with your oh-so welcoming personality and house in the middle of a dangerous forest and all. I decided to take it off of her hooves and deliver it you personally. Curtesy of being the only pony who actually knows you."

"Alright, I get it. I'm hard to love. Can I please see that letter now?" She turned her head away from him, audibly pouting as she did so. "Please?" With one of her wings, she flicked it towards his general direction, letting the strong wind carry it directly into his face as if it were an insult to injury. "And sincerely, thank you for going out of your way for me, Cozy."

"See, that's all you had to say from the start." Her smile returned with a mischievously toothy grin.

"It's strange. I've never gotten a personal letter before. You're the only pony or even creature I know on a personal level who would want to write to me. And you're the type to tell me what you're thinking to my face rather than write a letter." He spoke his thoughts out loud as he made a grab for the small envelope latched onto his small antlers after the wind almost blew it away a second time.

"Dead to rights. So who is it from?" She looked over his shoulders curious as all get out.

The lettering on the outside of the envelope clearly read: 'To Víss ør-grandr' in the common pony tongue, which made the contents of the letter that much more bewildering to look at. To begin with, it wasn't a regular letter at all. The paper that was used for it was much thicker and coated with a sort of glossy water resistant layer. It was a rather small rectangle and it only had one hole stamped right through the middle at the very top from which a red wool string had been weaved into and tied up so that it could hang. Beyond that, the paper was ornately colored and gilded with reds and metallic golds.

Víss immediately knew who it was from as soon as he had unveiled it, without having to read any of the words on it. His deeply amber eyes fell with a sadness to them and his eyebrows moved into a position that Cozy had never seen from him. For as long as she'd known him, she knew him to be a usually stoic, usually grumpy buck with the slightest capacity to joke and be happy at times. But never, not once, had she EVER seen him look even one bit sad.

To understand how world-shattering this was to Cozy, you have to imagine them as siblings, with Víss being her older brother. What initially began as an attempt to steal his supposed 'power', eventually evolved into a nurtured dependence on her part. She learned pretty early on that Víss had nothing in the way of magic or power to give, as he was one of, if not the only magic-less creatures in the entire world. But by that time, their relationship had progressed to the point where Víss was actively giving her a roof over her head. Talking her through sleepless nights. Comforting her when she'd needed to cry. Taking responsibility for the mistakes and wrong-doings she'd commit on occasion. Standing up for her when it seemed like the world was against her. Putting up with all her tantrums. Waiting late into the night for her to return home after a heated argument between them had made her run away. Giving her the exact life advice she needed at every moment when she needed it most.

Víss was the kind of rock and support someone like her needed in a time where she was the most impressionable and vulnerable.

For ten long years since they met, he'd been there for her. The distance that she had been actively trying to cultivate from him now was more of a result of what she believed to be what was best for him. Víss was the reason why she had quelled her power-hungry ways ever since she was small. It had taken a lot for him to fix and balance out her nature over the years, and Cozy had seen first-hoof the kind of sacrifices he had to make in order to make that happen. She knew that he much preferred to be alone, so taking her in all that time ago was actively subtracting from his daily life. She knew that the job he took on was only to pay for all the mistakes that she had made, as much as Víss hated working it. So more than anything, Cozy knew she could not remain dependent on him forever...

Although she was never likely to admit it with words, she cared about him and thought so highly of him for as long as she could remember. Knowing all about Víss as she did, she knew she didn't need to spell it out to him anyways. He could easily guess as much with his two eyes.

The only thing Cozy never could've imagined was that those same two eyes could shed tears from them.

She looked back towards the letter to read what had been written in it after noticing that Víss could not look away from it, a small stream of tears flowing down into his dark brown coat. It was ultimately a fruitless endeavor for her, as the letter was written in a language she'd never seen before. While the symbols bore some resemblance to Rockhoof's home language, if it had been just that much, she could've easily read it considering she'd become fluent in it after listening to so many of his tales.

"Víss...? Is something wrong?" She asked him with the gentlest tone she could muster, which is something she rarely did considering what kind of character she was.

The young elk only ignored her as he seemed to read the letter over and over. There weren't that many symbols in that letter, so he must have been agonizing over every single word within it. He seemed to almost snap out of the hold the letter had gotten him into when Cozy placed a hoof onto him in order to comfort him, and just as immediately as he had snapped out of it, he moved away from that helping hoof.

"I thought I had more time..." He murmured underneath his breath. He looked over to Cozy who was staring at him with intense worry plastered all over. He brought a hoof over to his coat to feel the moisture of his tears sticking to it around his face, and finally realized the kind of involuntary reactions he'd just made. "I'm... sorry, Cozy. Uhm. Can you leave me alone for today? I need to gather my thoughts." Without another word, he proceeded to walk back to his cot, leaving the yoke and mare behind.

Cozy's immediate thought was to follow and question him there and then. Just what was in that letter? What could possibly make someone like Víss even remotely sad? As she tried to open her mouth and move her limbs forward to do just that, strangely, she found that she could not. Her mind and her body were not in agreement. But why? She loved Víss like family, and it was important to her to know more about what was hurting him. She wanted to be there for him. So then why? Why did her legs fail her then?

Her opportunity vanished along with Víss as he disappeared into his cot. Even at that very moment, Cozy was still fighting with herself. For as civil as she could act nowadays, she was still very much the brazen girl she'd always been. In her mind, she had no problems with kicking down his door and forcing him to speak about all of it, his wishes for privacy be damned. But the reality was that she could not force a single hoof towards that wooden cabin. Somehow, it was like Víss had erected an invisible barrier.

With a heavy heart, she departed towards the town of Ponyville where she could ask a friend for a place to stay for the night. She was angry and troubled by the idea that there were still things she did not know about him. Deeply frustrated with herself, Cozy swore to uncover all of the young elk's secrets come daybreak of the following morning.

But more than anything, deep inside, she recognized her sincerest wish.

She just wanted to know that Víss would be okay.

Know That I Will Continue

By all accounts, Cozy is a scary individual. Especially now that she was a lot older.

When she sets her mind to something, she has the ability to follow through with whatever plan she concocted for ages and with little slips. Determination and perseverance are wonderful things to cultivate in anyone. But a perversion of those things can create an individual with relentless ambition. If an ill-will was attached to said person, then the world could do naught but tremble in fear. Thankfully for the world of ponies, Cozy's nature had been thwarted. Time and again, all her dastardly plans when she was in her youth had failed in no small part thanks to Víss' eyes.

He was not the only one with similar eyes in Cozy's life, but he was the only native to them and the only one actively using them on her, of all ponies. Coupled with his cold intellect, he had discerned and countered many of her best-laid plans and traps before she had ever set them. Cozy could take even Twilight and the royal princesses for fools all the live-long day, but there was no hiding the truth from Víss. No matter what she did, he would always know and with deadly accuracy.

So it should come at no surprise that a big part of Cozy's youth was attempting to foil and steal from the one power that could upend her games so consistently and thoroughly. Although such is the work of fate, as she found that 'power' wanting. No one else could've acted as a better foil to her character. Víss was not tied to any source of strength outside of his own physical ability. No harmony magic ran through him. No essence of friendship. Even Discord's magic had no effect on him, as though his chaos magic could not register or change the absoluteness of Viss' nothing.

Even his personality was so in-tune with this fact. He had no ambition, no goal, no destination in mind. No vice, no wants, and very few needs to boot. He even lived his life on individualistic philosophies, the likes of which preached self-fulfillment and actualization. He was the type who would sooner see himself to an early grave rather than ask for the tiniest bit of help from someone else. Borrowed strength is not true strength. Or so he would say.

Who better to guide her through life than him then? To Cozy, their meeting was truly fateful. She could easily envision where she'd be without him. Perhaps in a jail cell somewhere deep underground, or maybe even worse. She only had to look at their very first meeting to know just how close she'd gotten towards ruining her aspects in life.

Already in the middle of her greatest scheme yet and finally in the trust of Princess Twilight, she'd been slowly setting up dissent within the school and testing the power of friendship by shaking the new student's resolve, if only to see if it was as powerful as the Princess had made it out to be and if it was worth stealing at all. Cozy had specifically targeted the interracial group of friends that made up of Sandbar's group, as they seemed to embody the very teachings and centricities of Twilight's belief. Initially disappointed that it only took a few words to rip them apart, the events that transpired after with the tree of harmony beneath the school made her sure that there truly was power in the kind of harmony magic generated by their love for one another.

But love, even when hidden behind the cloak and dagger of her friendly facade, would not give her the power she wanted. Cozy never quite understood what true trust and friendship meant, and never grew it to its fullest potential with anyone as a result. That is why the power of friendship was beyond her reach, and why she decided that she would steal it for herself afterward.

For several long months, she scoured over every bit of information concerning magic and its properties. Looking, searching, yearning for a way to capture it for her own uses. And finally, in one dusty old tome titled "The Nature of Magic: By Starswirl the Bearded", she learned that magical relics and artifacts had the potential to do all that she wanted.

She would've gotten away with it too. Her plan was flawless. She'd even distracted Twilight, her friends, her protégé, and Starlight away from the school by sending them on a useless goose chase to the Crystal Empire, far away so that they could not make it back in time before all the magic in Equestria had been vacuumed by the Pillars' artifacts. She had Chancellor Neighsay groveling at her hooves. She had even taken extra measures to make sure Sandbar's group of friends would not meddle by putting them on their own quest far away from her. All on her lonesome, she would've brought the very foundations of magic and pony society down to its knees, fate willing.

But Fate had not willed it. On the contrary, it seemed that fate was actively fighting against her, as it had sent Víss of all creatures to foil all of her plans before they had ever been set to motion.

Víss had only just moved into the Everfree a few weeks prior. Princess Twilight had taken great pains to welcome him in the best way she knew how, but had, had all her suggestions and accommodations shot-down as fast as she could come up with them. Even back then, Víss' nature had not changed. Always the same stoic ambitionless buck he'd always been. He very much planned to live out his days in quiet solitude and wanted no part of pony society. The only reason why he had shown up on the day of Cozy's planned execution of her masterplan, was because he was there to formally refuse a suggestion the Princess had given him. She'd offered him a job. A very important job at that.

That's about the moment he walked into a mostly empty school building, save for that one dastardly filly.

Cozy always believed she was above all others in every possible way. Her nature had convinced her that she was the smartest, most cunning, most wily of all the creatures in the world. Mental gymnastics were a game to her, one that had always been set to 'easy'. So the very moment that Víss had walked into her life and had given her an impossible game to win, nay, not a game but a battle of the minds, is the moment that had changed the trajectory of her life for the better.

"Um, hello? Can I help you?" She said sweetly enough, hiding her pointed words and annoyance that someone dared interrupt this auspicious day. The young elk took one glance at her from beneath his bushy brows and grunted. With no other words spoken, he completely ignored her and set off to go find the Princess. Confusion and annoyance quickly turned to anger. "I'm sorry mister, but you can't be here today. The school is closed, like it said on the sign outside." She'd said between gritted teeth and a tone that was close to losing all semblance of civility. And again, nothing from the buck. He just kept walking down the hall, unperturbed. That anger within her turned to fury at this. "I saaaidd, YOU CAN'T BE IN HERE, YOU DAFT DEER." Cozy had flown to the front of him, stopping him in his tracks just to yell that at him, her vitriol and true nature now out in the open, plain for him to see.

And again, he ignored her, gently pushed her aside, and continued walking. Cozy was beyond livid. In her mind, she believed that Víss thought of her as an insignificant kid not even worth his attention. Mind games don't always have clear conclusions. Winning and losing is not always so black and white. But in that instant, it was more obvious than anything. The moment Cozy lost her cool was the moment she lost that war between wits.

It had all happened so fast for Cozy. No one had ever dared challenge her for even a single sentence or two. No one had ever made her question her own vanity and pride at being the best. Now there was this, what? Elk? Completely ignoring her. The nerve.

But it wasn't that Víss was ignoring her. He just couldn't quite believe the words she was saying since he'd already sensed that Cozy was a pathological liar and from the very first sentence she'd uttered. There was no holiday and no special notice about the school's closure. Only one measly sign drawn by a kid stating that the school was closed. He only half believed Cozy because the school itself was quiet and empty, and there were no signs of the Princess anywhere. Not even the faint signature of her lingering magic existed, which was an odd thing to be sure, as those could last for weeks before diffusing into the air entirely. And not just the Princess' magic, but anyone's magic either. Not even from the little filly beside him, muttering obscenities at him.

Something was odd. And it was connected to this tiny rapscallion. That's why he had made the unspoken decision to see for himself if the Princess was truly gone, and why he was sparing no words to Cozy as a result.

"WHAT ARE YOU EVEN HERE FOR?!" Cozy had already grown tired of calling him names and was now being slightly rational in her hysterics.

"I'm here to speak to the Princess." Were the first words he'd given to her.

The hateful filly seemed to calm down and toss her disturbed mane back into shape. "Oh. Well, why didn't you say so from the start?" She said, her gentle tone and patience back out of necessity to see him gone.

"You didn't ask."

And just like that, Cozy had lost again. This elk really had a way of pushing all of her buttons all at once with the least amount of words possible.

"WELL, AREN'T WE SMART?!" She clicked her tongue, recognizing that she was playing herself for a fool. "Play coy all you want, deer. But it won't change the fact that Princess Twilight isn't here at the moment. Or anyone except for me for that matter. Which is why THE SIGN OUTSIDE READS: CLOSED! So best get lost before I'm forced to get rid of you."

"My name is Víss ør-grandr." He said as he ignored her warnings, not having stopped the act of looking for the Princess by opening door after door throughout the entire school.

"What a lovely name. I DON'T CARE. I want you gone, NOW. This is my final warning you! In three, two-"

Her confidence immediately fell when at that moment, Víss had opened the one door that housed the ritual location for her masterplan. In her anger, she'd completely lost track of what she was meant to be doing or protecting, and she had inadvertently allowed the young elk to bust door after door freely until he had found it. Her plan was only just starting to get off the ground, with enough magic gathered around the Pillars' artifacts so that the ritual could not be stopped anymore by anyone, physically or magically.

"I wasn't going crazy then. I thought Ponyville was awfully still and empty of magic on my way here. Seems I found the reason." Víss spoke his thoughts out loud. He turned to look at the young filly who had been flabbergasted by how easily she'd been played, for only a bit until she regained herself and figured that there was no reason to fear. Silently, the elk began to walk closer to her almost accusatively.

This is where Cozy would've usually had, had the upper ground. She'd always been so confident and sure of herself, and by all accounts she had no reason to be nervous especially now that the ritual was nearly impossible to stop. It would take a while for it to be fully complete, but she was in total control of the situation. It was just one measly deer that was standing in her way. She'd made short work of far more headstrong foes, like Chancellor Neighsay. So then, why was there this... pressure to this deer? Was she afraid of him? Cozy, of all ponies? Was she somehow subconsciously acknowledging that he was smarter and stronger than her in wit and willpower? Impossible. But with each step closer he took to her, she took one step back towards the ritual circle's center.

"D-don't make me have to use this!" She withdrew an item from within her curly mane. It was a medallion, one that was very reminiscent of Chancellor Neighsay's if not the very same one. "It's a teleportation artifact. One tap on this thing and I could send you into the middle of a blistering desert or the highest mountains peaks. Don't test me! I will use it. And it will be super inconvenient for you and dangerous!" She threatened, taking more steps back since her threats had not deterred the oncoming elk. "Aright! You asked for it buster!" And just like she promised, with one tap of the artifact, a warp hole opened up immediately in front of Víss, making it impossible for him to react in time to dodge it.

Cozy had, had one good morning at most to feel content over her plan being flawless and she had felt relief for a split second after her failsafe came in clutch, not knowing if she would need it. But those feelings quickly disappeared the moment Víss' face appeared from the other end of the portal, practically phasing through the magic as though it were just one big lightshow. The buck hadn't shown an ounce of surprise either, having completely ignored the fact that the portal even existed in the first place and walking on through, undeterred.

"What...? How!" In Cozy's surprise, she stumbled backwards now truly unsure of herself. She quickly tapped on the talisman to bring up another portal. And then another, and another, and another. Again and again, she kept making portals in front of the buck as he slowly made his way over to her. And again, Víss walked on by.

In truth, it wasn't only Chaos magic that could do nothing to Víss. It was magic in general, in all its forms. It was as though his very being did not exist in the world of Equus, or as how Víss himself saw it, he shouldn't have existed in this world.

"S-stop... I-I've warned you..." Cozy finally understood how useless her medallion was going to be and had tossed it to the ground. To her own surprise, she was shaking. Had the elk cast some form of magic on her?

He had stopped right in front of her, staring down onto where she had stumbled on the floor. His expression had not changed even a bit. To Cozy, it was the kind of look that could kill. With no smile present, it looked angry. Furious even. And his deeply amber eyes seemed to glow even in the dim light of that room. Víss had only stared at her directly for a moment when they first met, and then not again until now. Now he was staring directly at her with a gaze that seemed like it could burn a hole into whatever it stared at. Now, Cozy was being put under scrutiny the likes of which she had never been subjected to.

This was the very first moment in her life that Cozy Glow had ever felt this way, and the first moment she finally recognized the feeling of fear. She was afraid. Of Víss. Of his eyes. Of his presence. In front of him, she felt so small. So helpless. So vulnerable. In her mind, she felt like she was before an unflinching and all-powerful judge being accused of every wrong she'd done up until that point. Try all she might and no matter how hard her internal voice screamed at her to break their direct eye contact, she could not. Like a moth to a flame, she was compelled to keep on staring no matter if she was burnt up by them.

After an excruciating silence that felt like forever, Víss finally spoke. "Is this your doing?" Cozy allowed herself one tiny breath so as to keep from passing out, and beads of a nervous sweat began to form along her coat as she thought on her answer.

"W-well, w-what do you think, smartie pants?" She sputtered out in response, her voice breaking and tripping over itself. Cozy had forced a nervous smile back at him, trying to show even the slightest bit of defiance as though she wasn't absolutely terrified.

"What did you think you were doing with all this?" As Víss spoke, he turned his gaze towards the artifacts that once belonged to the Pillars of Equestria. At long last, that glare turned away from Cozy and she felt her throat unclench. She allowed herself a deeper breath and more time for a sound response.

"What else? I was going to use them to gather all the magic in Equestria. Take it for myself. Become ruler of all. What every young filly wants." She said coyly, now being honest about her motives. Cozy was sensing that there was no use in lying anymore. Not before him.

"Then you should've chosen a different ritual. This one will just send all that magic elsewhere. A different realm or reality, probably." The young elk began towards one of the artifacts.

"What are you saying? No. I set this up so that I could get all that magic. That's what this is, isn't it?" Their conversation had taken a strange twist. She hadn't expected this kind of lukewarm reaction to what she was planning. Nor did she expect to receive ADVISE of all things. Not like it helped much, since she didn't feel like Víss was here to assist her any.

"Who told you that?"

"No one. I found out about this artifice ritual in an old tome written by Starswirl."

"And did it tell you what would happen to all this magic after you'd gathered it?"

"Yes it di-" Before she could finish that sentence, Cozy thought about it for a second. It did not, in fact, tell her what would happen after. The only thing Starswirl mentioned about the ritual spell was that magical artifacts could be used to vacuum a large amount of magic from their surroundings, and that by increasing the amount of artifacts, they could cause a larger and more powerful effect. Enough to affect whole states, even. Possibly all of Equestria if she gathered enough of them, and to her convenient surprise, Twilight had already gathered six of them. In the end, Cozy had only made a baseless assumption that she could somehow take control of all the magic they'd gathered after all was said and done. "Well, no, now that I think about it. But then... how would you know?"

"Because my grandfather was the one who created the ritual spell. When he arrived in Equestria, he grew a keen interest in magical artifacts and relics. Starswirl was one of his students."

"Starswirl wrote that book over two thousand years ago. You mean to say your grandfather was alive back then? We're talking dozens of generations ago."

"He's still alive, you know."

"Impossible. A millenarian?"

"Is that so surprising? He wouldn't be the only one in this world. But I'd be lying if I confirmed it for you as is. He's likely over a decem millennium by now."

"Over what now?"

"Over ten thousand years old."

"And yet you'll lie straight to my face anyway." Cozy sighed. She felt silly for having been led along so by the nose and by someone who she was now perceiving as a baseless braggart. That was, until she saw him reach a hoof out towards one of the six artifacts being held in place mid-air by a dense and powerful torrent of magic. "I wouldn't do that it I were you. It's going to give you quite the kick if you try and touch it. Trust me, Chancellor Neighsay tried everything in the book but gave up in the end. Nothing can stop the ritual now." Her words gave the young buck pause, short of reaching into the bubbles of magic.

"What's your name?" He asked, turning one eye to her after craning his neck just enough to see her from the corner of it. Even that one eye alone was enough to straighten the small filly back up again.

"C-Cozy Glow. T-the one and only." She said smugly as though her teeth hadn't started chattering again. "W-what's it to you?"

"Well, Cozy Glow. You should know... I don't lie."

The next moments after that were a bit of a blur for Cozy. Víss proceeded to bat the artifact floating in front of him straight out of the encased magic bubble with his hoof as it were no issue at all. A part of her feared and even half expected that this would happen, seeing as how Chancellor Neighsay's medallion was no use against him. But a bigger part of her had been SO INCREDIBLY SURE that Víss could do nothing against it.

See, magic is an interesting phenomenon in the world of Equus. Let's ignore all the more... "magical" parts of magic for a second, and look at the kind of physical properties magic adopts. The first thing you can observe of magic with just your eyes is its fluidity and state of being. It acts like a mixture between a gas and a liquid. In a sense, it's somewhat like a plasma, if said plasma was not hot to the touch and could make a lot of crazy things happen. But when a lot of magic is hyper concentrated into one spot, it becomes especially erratic in its consistency.

Sometimes, when that amount of magic is being managed by something or someone that cannot control it, it becomes unstable and releases that energy in the form of an ion wind. A discharge that resembles lightning. That's why magic overload can sometimes look like a thunderstorm of power. Sometimes, that magic can take on different properties and forms depending on the medium or wielder releasing that plasmatic energy. Did you think Twilight setting on fire during one of her angrier moments is a coincidence or some emoting magic she did on purpose? Or take for example, the manes of the royal sisters in their nebulae-like forms.

Now, in the rare instance such a large concentration of magic can somehow be properly controlled, like how Cozy's ritual was progressing, magic tends to take on a different property and state of matter. It tends to solidify at its center core, becoming more stable and impassible. Imagine if you will for a moment, the Sun. At its core is a solid mass of plasmatic energies, denser and more stable than lead, yet still a gaseous ionic energy. This, in essence, is what was happening with each of the artifacts that were being incased with a quickly growing, densely packed bubble of magic. From the outside, the artifacts were protected by a volatile and aggressive layer of lightning-like energy that repelled any who got close. From the inside, they were completely sealed into a dense sphere stronger than most metals on the face of Equus as though they had been dropped into amber and had been preserved by that sticky sap turned to stone after so long.

So then put yourself in Cozy's horseshoes. With how knowledgeable she'd become of magic since her arrival at Twilight's school, she understood that this is what was happening to the six artifacts from the Pillars of Equestria. She'd just been witness to how truly devastatingly strong this magic was ever since Chancellor Neighsay had caught her in the act of setting the ritual up, and then losing any semblance of hope when trying to stop it himself. Even his medallion's warp holes could not dislodge them, since the magic from the medallion could not penetrate through the bubble.

This was all of Equestria's magic, for Pete's sake. And THEN some. This was every magical creature's magic rolled into one throughout all of Equestria's borders and a few outside of that, like the Crystal Empire's. This was Celestia's, Twilight's, Luna's, Cadence's, and Flurry Heart's magic gathered into one spot. Every monster, every pony, every sentient race, every animal, every plant, hell, even the clouds why not. If Discord wasn't off in his own dimension, he likely would've seized to be, what with him being an entirely magical manifestation and all.

She never imagined in a million years that anyone had the capacity to do what Víss just did. As mentioned before, a part of her did considering the circumstantial evidence that came before that. But that part of her was so, so very small, that it never registered with her brain to be the least bit worried of what that perpetually ornery-looking elk was capable of. Cozy was far too surprised and stunned by what was happening to even fight it physically. Not that she would've been able to, since Víss was quite large and bulky as he was an elk in the prime of his life and she, she was just one tiny pegasus filly. All she could do was watch on in awed silence as Víss walked over to each of the artifacts to remove them from the ritual circle in order to stem the flow of the magic they were in the middle of vacuuming. And he did so casually, with no amount of hurry in his step.

The magic that had been collected by the artifacts, once removed, became unstable almost immediately, crackling with lightning and shaking the whole of the room they were in. The bubbles that had been neat perfect spheres of torrential magic now became sporadic and messy, bubbling and bending as if possessed. The shaking only became stronger as each individual artifact was removed from the ritual circle, causing the ground to crack and the school walls to shatter. Strangely, after the last artifact was removed, the magic that had been gathered had not gone away, but stayed in place threatening to explode at any moment. And again, Cozy could do nothing but stare defeatedly at the elk as he made his way over the center of the circle, not even caring for her own safety within that increasingly dangerous room.

What really took her off-guard at that moment in time, more than anything, was that she watched him sigh and grumble to himself. Was he... upset? Because she almost threw all of Equestria into chaos with her plans? No, that couldn't have been it. He would've chastised her more if that were the case, no? Maybe she still had a lengthy lecture coming to her afterwards? But Víss was showing no interest in lecturing her at all, so that didn't seem quite right either. He almost looked like... he didn't want to do this? Like he didn't want to save Equestria's magic?

Cozy watched as Víss dug a hoof into the soft soil below and run it across some of the ritual circle's runic symbols to erase them. He did this again and again, all while the school trembled and threatened to cave in. After he was done, he walked up to Cozy again.

"Chalk. Got any left?" He asked her, boring holes through her spirit yet again. She quickly flew out of the room and returned promptly with the bucket of chalk she had used earlier to write the runes herself.

"H-here." She gingerly pushed the bucket over to him, no ounce of fight left in her. She could've used that moment to escape if she had wanted to, but her brain wasn't all there at that point in time.

Víss dug his hoof into the powdery chalk and wrote symbols of his own around the ritual circle. Cozy quickly picked up on the fact that his symbols were not only in a different order and position around the circle, but that the runes he wrote down were much cleaner and more in-line with the ones she'd seen in Starswirl books, if not even cleaner than those. She wrote it off initially thinking that those runes were just some magic mumbo jumbo nonsense that only existed to make the ritual work, as they were not in any language she recognized. But now, now she was starting to believe the elk about the things he'd said concerning his grandfather. It was like watching a renowned calligrapher write a story in his own native tongue.

The effect when he seemed to finish the circle's runes was immediate. The six bubbles of concentrated magic that once housed the artifacts converged into a single point at the center, creating one giant sphere of magic. He made his way to the center right below where the bubble hovered, but not before reapplying one last layer of chalk to his hoof. Finally at the center, the young buck looked down towards the ground and gave his biggest sigh yet.

"I can't believe I'm doing this." He muttered to himself, hesitating to move his hoof across the floor. It was just enough for Cozy to overhear.

"Do what? What are you even doing?"

Almost as if waiting for any little excuse to stop what he was doing, he turned to the small filly who was beside herself with confusion.

"Well, what do you think?" Cozy felt her brain flinch at having her own words thrown back at her.

"I think... you're returning all the magic I stole?" The buck nodded ever so slightly, confirming her suspicions. "But why do I get the feeling like you don't want to do this?"

"You wonder why?" He returned to the ground and began to write the runes he needed to finish the ritual. "My grandfather still believes in the ponies and the creatures of this world. He trusts that they would be better, given time. And sure. They got better. But are they good enough yet, I wonder? I've seen many things. Many, many sad things. Perpetuated, exacerbated, distorted by the lust for magic. The greed inherent in power. The will of the fates. It destroyed an entire world once. And it threatens to do so again to this one. The inhabitants of Equus... they're too comfortable with their fated lives. Too dependent on the likes of magic. Too reliant on harmony to keep their balance. They can't imagine themselves in a world without them, and so they will not be prepared for the worst when it comes to pass. They will not be ready for Ragnarök, the end of the gods."

"What in the name of Celestia are you talking about?" This was all just gibberish to the small filly.

"Never you mind it, child. Just know that if it weren't for an old promise I made, I wouldn't have done this. I would've been happier seeing all of this magic gone." His hoof stopped on the final rune.

Suddenly, everything became very still. The rumbling that the magic was causing stopped. Then, the giant mass of magic that had been bubbling over this entire time became incredibly rigid and dropped to the floor like one massive crystallized marble, now entirely solid. But slowly, surely, that solid sphere turned to liquid, melting before their very eyes. The pure magic water that remained flooded the floor a few inches before beginning to steam into a gas. Without much fanfare, all of that magic seemed to diffuse and float off into the air. It seemed to shoot out into the breeze as though it had a mind of its own once Víss opened a nearby window and opened the doors to the outside, and within seconds, any trace of all that gathered magic was gone like if Cozy had never tried to steal it to begin with.

Their surroundings on the other hoof told a different story. She had made a right mess of the school. Debris lay about everywhere, and the whole of the room still looked like it could crumble with the slightest sneeze. Víss had closed his eyes and remained silent in the middle of the room, contemplating and thinking on what he'd just done. He seemed to be awaiting something. But what? Now that Cozy's heart had begun to slow after the adrenaline of the moment had worn off and her head had returned to her, she realized that she would be in serious trouble for what she'd done. It wouldn't take Twilight long to investigate and find out the truth, so at that moment, she felt her conservation instincts kick in and push her towards the door silently, being careful not to disturb the elk during the bout of thinking he was doing.

She had gotten as far as the door successfully and had placed both of her hooves on it to push it open with her eyes fixated on its mahogany texture, but she froze up at that last important second. She didn't need to see them to recognize that those two ruthlessly cold eyes were staring at her. The faint sound of hoof steps getting louder after she felt that gaze rest on her, only confirmed her fears. That large imposing shadow of the elk as it floated into view on the door's surface had made her shrink in terror. She turned her head up and behind her slowly, to stare right back at what had impeded her forward motion purely through psychological means. Those radiant amber eyes.

Already succumbed to terror as she was, Cozy did not think that she could feel anymore fear than she'd already felt. But despite his expression not being at all different from before, she could sense that something had changed in the way the elk was looking at her. That something else was a mixture of things, and although she couldn't understand what those things could be, she recognized some of them no problem. Anger, disappointment, fury. And something else too. Something that she wouldn't get to see again until a decade later.

"Cozy Glow." He addressed her directly, commanding her attention with the seriousness in his tone. "I will not be the one to condemn what you've done today. I cannot. A judge must remain impartial, and my own interests conflict in your case. As such, I will remove myself from this in any trial by jury, if you are granted one. I will only act as witness to what you've done here, and nothing more. Know that my testimony will be nothing personal against you. To that end, I ask that you forgive me. I swore by the truth, and so I will tell no lie. That will likely aid in your conviction. I'm sorry."

"I n-never expected you to a-anyway. W-who would think to take my side?" Her nervous smile broke free again, remaining defiant still. "A-anyways, so what?" Suddenly, Cozy felt something from within her chest. She felt... angry. Really angry. Deeply, deeply angry. She was entirely deserving of what was coming to her and she recognized that, fully, but why was there this seething frustration trying to claw its way out of her heart? Where was this indignation coming from? Her teeth stopped chattering, as wrath replaced her fear. Her nervous smile dropped and the expression on her face darkened. "It's like you said right?!" Now she'd begun to shout inadvertently, being unable to suppress her emotions. "Ponies are too dependent on magic. Maybe I was wrong and almost got rid of all that magic by mistake. But so what?! Who gets to decide who has power and who doesn't anyway?! Why can't I be one of those?! Maybe if I would've been one of the chosen ones, I would have never resorted to this!! Maybe if Fate would've chosen me, I could've had that chance!! I tried to take that chance myself!! I worked SO HARD for it! And if you hadn't shown up, that still would've been the case!! How could you even understand how I feel, you who was born with all that power! Not even the magic in all of Equestria was a match for you!"

Cozy tried hitting him as hard as she could with her hooves and her wings, but her physical efforts were not nearly enough as it had been dampened entirely by his thick coat. The expression on the elk did not change, only staring right through her. "Stop it, child. Suppress your anger. You've done enough damage for today. Anymore will increase the severity of your punishment. What you must do now is repent. Learn remorse for what you've done."

The pegasus filly began to laugh almost maniacally. "Well, aren't you just a big softie inside. Can't believe I was ever scared of you. You're just like the rest of the ponies. Well, big guy, you think you can make me repent? Try it. But I'm going to stop at nothing to take all that power for myself one day, you mark my words."

The elk sighed. In a move Cozy had not expected, Víss dropped his lower body to the ground in order to sit, to get more on level with her. Cozy again could've taken this chance to escape. She was no longer afraid of Víss, and so his gaze could no longer affect her like it had been. But she was deeply indignant and was dead set on seeing how he would respond. His expression had been washed away by that fourth feeling Cozy couldn't recognize. In a way, it looked like pity, and it only made her more angry the longer he used it on her. Finally, Víss spoke.

"You're right. I can't understand how it feels. I'm not you. I don't know who you are and what you've been through. But I can tell that even you wouldn't want the consequences of the actions you were bringing about with this ritual spell. I can tell, because you don't understand just what kind of crimes you were in the process of committing. You can only see what is in front of you. You're young and you're likely doing all of this without giving it another thought."

"Stop treating me like a kid!! I've thought of everything! I knew the consequences!" She bit back accusatively.

"Did you?" The severity in those two words were delivered in such a way that left Cozy speechless. There was a lot she hadn't accounted for, and hadn't properly looked into. She had almost sent all of Equestria's magic elsewhere by mistake, so she was forced to submit to that question. "Truthfully, it's better that you not know. The guilt of it is something that has crushed lesser souls."

"What do you take me for?! I can take it! I'm strong enough to know!" She said defiantly. She hated the idea that this elk, the one who had ruined her plans, was now trying to protect her from the truth of all things. How weak did he believe she was? She wanted to prove him wrong.

He stared at her in silence for a while, trying to measure something. Trying to measure the strength of her soul. Would she really be able to handle it?

"Then so be it, Cozy Glow." He judged her to be worthy of the truth. "First, you must understand that the ritual that was written down by Starswirl in his book was incomplete. My grandfather understood that if misused, it could cause a tragedy unlike any other, and so Starswirl agreed to only publish a surface-level study of the ritual. Not only that, but all research on magical artifacts was safeguarded due to the dangers such knowledge posed. Relics hold immense power as you are aware, and to avoid tragedy, my grandfather as well as Equestria's royalty have locked away any information about them for a long time. Even the small mentions of them like in Starswirl's book have become forbidden and taboo overtime. How you happened across that book is beyond me. I doubt Princess Twilight is careless enough to leave it lying around in her public libraries. So I ask, how did you get a hold of it?"

"I just... found it one day, at my bedside in the dormitories. But I doubt you would believe me." She responded.

"I trust you, Cozy. I cannot see you lying as you are right now, so rest at ease."

"Thanks... I guess... But wait, if it was incomplete, how did this ritual even work for me? It wouldn't have been possible."

"I have my guesses." The elk looked back to the ritual circle and frowned. "Do you remember writing that circle on the floor?"

"Of course I do."

Víss shook his head, indicating that was not the answer he wanted. "My apologies, Cozy, what I meant to ask was, do you remember writing that circle in its entirety? Word for word. Line by line. Can you picture in your head the entire process that you took. Every stroke, every adjustment."

"Well... no not really. I don't have photographic memory."

"Very few do."

"So what, someone else wrote it for me while I wasn't looking?"

"No, you wrote it all. Couldn't have been anyone else."

"Then what are you getting at?!" She was getting irritated now.

"It means that you might be a genius when it comes to magic and were able to finish the ritual's runic configuration out of pure instinct. I say instinct, because I doubt you can read these letters, right?" He pointed to the runes within the circle.

"Yeah no clue. But if it's about magic, I studied a whole lot. I don't doubt it was my instinct." Cozy had let a bit of that compliment get to her head. All the meanwhile Víss stared at the circle with a silent contemplative expression.

"Or, it could've been something else, Cozy. A force outside of you helped you write those runes. Maybe you were just fated to go through with this plan, somehow. Perhaps this was just an inevitability." The little filly looked at him with confusion written all over her face again. Half of the things Víss said just sounded like nonsense to her. "Whatever the case Cozy, it's now apparent to me that you really had no clue as to what you were doing. So promise me you won't beat yourself up for what I'm about to tell you next."

Cozy's brows dug inward, again feeling indignant over being seen as a weak child who could not even handle the truth. "I have NEVER felt guilty over what I've done, and I doubt I'll start now." She said pridefully, unaware of what was coming.

"That is because you have never committed atrocities before, Cozy. Evil though you may think you are, you are still pure of soul." Víss took in a deep breath. It was never an easy thing to break someone's innocence like this. But he sensed that Cozy could handle it, and that she needed to hear it more than anyone. She was just a child protected by a merciful world, and only the ugly truth could humble her. "Did you never stop to think what might have happened if you did remove magic from Equestria? To the ponies and all the living creatures within it? To its soils and its clouds? To its seas and its infrastructures? To its neighbors and its climates. This world is deeply intertwined with magic. From its mighty dragons, to its tiny ants. So I want you stop and think for a moment. Truly imagine it. Pluck magic straight out of everyone and everything. What would happen then?"

Cozy was silent at this, trying to imagine it. But she was only a child, and so she couldn't find a problem with it in the end. All she could imagine was the races and its creatures becoming powerless and susceptible to her rule, no different than how they were before other than they were under her beck and call.

"Pegasi..." Víss had begun again, breaking her away from her thoughts. "They use magic, don't they? They use it to fly. So what happens if you remove that magic?"

"Then they can't fly?"

"Right. A pegasus who can't fly is a sad thing in its own right, especially for those who love to soar through the skies, but that's not the biggest issue you're facing. Right now Cozy, where do most of the Pegasi live?"

"In Cloudsdale." She answered a silent elk who was giving her enough time to think about the answer she had just given him. And while it initially didn't register with her for a time, after a short while it finally hit her all at once.

Realization.

Her limbs began to tremble with the awful truth. She crossed her forelegs over her torso to hug herself, trying to keep herself from shaking, but now she couldn't stop it.

She had almost committed the unthinkable.

"It is as you can guess. Removing magic from Equus would've endangered them. Not only would you have taken their ability to fly away, but you would've stripped them from the ability walk on clouds with their magic. You would've taken the magic away from the clouds so even if they still had some magic lingering in their bodies, they would have fallen straight through. All of Cloudsdale would've seized to be in that moment, and would have become nothing more than mists of water, as true clouds are meant to be without magic to solidify them for the Pegasi. They would've lost their homes, their livelihoods, and for many, even their lives. Not only just the Pegasi, but the rest of Equestria would've been in danger as well. A lot of buildings and infrastructure are made by infusing magic into their construction. Major cities like Manehatten would've seen the most destruction, with Canterlot being the worst of them all, as without magic its structural integrity would've decayed and the whole city would've fallen. Many would have paid the ultimate price."

"B-but I didn't... I didn't know..."

"I'm sorry Cozy, but it doesn't end there. Those are not the only lives that would've been endangered either. The griffons would've likely suffered a similar fate. Although their nests are grounded, they would not be able to adapt so easily without the ability to fly. Their bodies use magic too, as they are too large and bulky for their wings to carry them normally. Gathering food would have become harder for them, and they would begin to slowly decline if left without magic. The dragons would fare better as most of them are land-roaming and are naturally strong in their physical capabilities, but their magical protection would be entirely removed, making their scales weaker and their resistance to fire zero, so they would have to migrate away from the dragon land's volcanic regions. With no ability to breath fire, they would have a harder time digesting stones and gems. The result would've created a fierce tribe of survivors hunting for food in whatever form presented itself to them. The bigger dragons would suffer a worse fate, not even being able to move their hulking bodies due to the density of their bones and muscles caving under their own weight. It's hard to speak about what would happen to the changelings without magic. Their very life force is tied to it, and their nourishment is mostly magic too, so removing magic all together would be catastrophic for them in more ways than one. The yaks would lose a considerable amount of strength, and it would make their lives out in the mountains nearly impossible without outside help. A good half of the hippogriffs now live underwater with the help of a magical stone that adapts their body to the sea. All of them would've been at risk down in those depths. It's not just the sentient races that would've suffered either. The monsters are deeply magical too, and they would've lost everything too. Their strengths and protections, their habitats and food sources. Regular animals would be lost without magic as well, as it has granted them special properties not seen in normal wildlife. Even the plants and trees who now depend on magic for their growth and survivability would begin to wither with time. Entire ecosystems would collapse. Equestria as you know it would have died."

It was all too much for the young girl. Cozy was in tears muttering how sorry she was, over and over. She thought she could handle the truth, but even imagining half of those things was a ghastly endeavor that made her feel like wanting to throw up. She had almost taken a lot of lives inadvertently and without realizing it. This ritual had almost cost everyone everything, and she had been clueless to it all.

She just wanted to be special... to be strong... to be on a pedestal. Adored, respected.... loved. Her frustrations had twisted those intentions over time. Those desires asked for her to take that power by any means possible. If it meant having to be hated, loathed, and feared, she didn't care. Somehow, she imagined that would all just fix itself for her once that power was hers. It cannot be overstated. She was just a child. How could she have understood the consequences in their full weight? It had been beyond her comprehension. But now that she was starting to understand just how dangerous her dreams were, she was horrified by herself. By what she'd done.

Cozy felt like her heart would break right there and then with guilt. Like it would explode with her remorse. She was experiencing ego-death, and was beginning to lose her sense of self, her very identity. All the same, with how hard she was hyperventilating now, her chest seemed like it would burst at any minute.

Then... she felt her head rest on something soft and fluffy. It was soothing and comforting. A hoof began to pat her in the back gently and carefully. A sympathetic hoof, one that seemed to somehow understand the hurt she was experiencing. One that seemed to wish her better. Instinctively she dug her face further into that softness and cried her heart out.

"Do not let it crush you, Cozy. You are strong. You made a mistake. You couldn't have known. You were wrong to have done this, but thankfully nothing happened. Thankfully I was here in time to stop it." Víss whispered to her gently, trying to comfort her. But again, all Cozy could say was sorry. "Everything is alright now, Cozy. Use this experience to grow. Never forget the kind of consequences your actions can have. Only by forgetting will you be doomed to repeat the same mistake. Will you promise me that you won't?" He asked after Cozy had calmed down enough, devolved to quiet sobs.

She nodded with her face still dug into his chest, his fluffy mane around his upper body damp with tears. "I will. I'm so sorry Mr. Deer." She said quietly.

"Cozy."

She finally looked up towards his eyes to see why he had addressed her directly again. Víss' expression had not changed. But what once looked like a grouchy and piercing glare had become a soft and gentle look from two peaceful and beautiful eyes.

"My name is Víss. Not deer." He pat her on the head a few times before moving his foreleg over to her eyes to wipe away her remaining tears with his coat. "Well, I guess as timing goes, this is almost too perfect."

Víss began to clamber his body back up to stand, seeing as his work with Cozy had concluded. Cozy remained seated on the floor, still trying to regain her emotions and composure, and also trying to understand what Víss had just said, which she immediately understood by what happened next. In front of them, a bright white light appeared. The kind reminiscent of teleportation magic. From it spawned Princess Twilight in a frantic frenzy.

"What in Celestia's name happened here?!" The lavender princess yelled in her astonishment.

"Good afternoon, Princess Twilight. It's a pleasure to see you again." Voiced Víss upon her arrival.

"Wait... Sage Víss?!" Twilight immediately bent a knee in order to show her respect. "I'm sorry! I didn't know you had arrived. A lot has happened today, and if I'd have known, I would've-"

"At ease Princess, I'm not someone who deserves that level of respect. I know that my grandfather has done a lot for this kingdom, but I personally haven't. We've already talked about this, so you should already be aware of it, Twilight."

The Princess gave a small chuckle and eased up. "You know, you do sound a lot like your grandfather. Both of you hated formalities. I'm sorry if that made you uncomfortable. I never got used to not showing my respects to Sage Fimbul, and now I feel like I'm repeating that all over again. Couldn't help it."

"Well, I'm not against it to be honest. I just rather you save if it for when I've done something of actual note for this statedom."

It was at that moment that Twilight took notice of the small pegasus filly who was too ashamed by what she'd done to even look at Twilight in the face, her eyes puffy from having cried so much. "Cozy, what's wrong?" She asked, genuinely worried for the girl until the severity of the situation finally kicked back in to high-gear and her hysteria reapplied. "Wait! Right now we have more pressing matters at hoof. Something horrible has happened to Equestria! Magic is being stripped away from everyone and everything! Víss, I'm sorry if I have to reschedule our meeting, but this takes precedence over everything else, I must return all that magic back!"

"Breathe, Princess, and calm your mind."

"This is NO time for calm!" Her voice cracked as she yelled it, beginning to hyperventilate herself.

"Magic has already returned, the danger is over."

"What do you mean?! I haven't been able to cast a spell ever since I arrived at the Crystal Empire! This is terrible, just terrible!"

"Well, how did you teleport here then?"

"With a teleportation spell obviously! I was able to cast it not too long ago. Do you have any idea how many places I've visited already trying to find the source of the issue?!"

"Okay, and with what magic were you able to cast those spells?"

"With my magi-" A bright pink flush began to replace the lavender around the purple alicorn's cheeks. "Oh, uh. I hadn't noticed. Haha. But the danger might still be lurking somewhere. Equestria CANNOT afford to be without magic even for a day. The consequences could be truly dire! I must continue my search."

"That is why I need you to calm down first, Princess. The answer is before us." He pointed a foreleg over to the ritual circle that had now been smudged across the floor thanks to the magic water from earlier. Cozy flinched as she saw Twilight's eyes fall on them.

One could almost physically see Twilight calming down now that her chest was beginning to slow and had stopped heaving her panicked breaths. Her studiousness had paid dividence yet again as she seemed to instantly recognize what the circle was meant for, despite how obfuscated its symbols had become. "That's... Fimbul's artifice ritual spell, is it not? The one mentioned in Starswirl's magic study?"

"Unfortunately so. Princess, remain calm and quiet while I tell you what has transpired. You must hear my testimony to its end, so that you know all that I've witnessed here today and so that you can deliberate justice with eyes unclouded."

Cozy had held out a small amount of hope in her heart for Víss. A bit of her wished that the gentleness he had displayed earlier would've extended further. That he would protect her in this moment. To a character like Cozy, it's only until they are at their lowest point that they open up their hearts and begin to see love and friendship in its truest form.

But as Víss gave his accurate testimony to Princess Twilight, she was made painfully aware of just how alone she truly was. Víss had spoken only the truth, staying true to his word. It was foolish of her to assume she had even the tiniest safety net. No one would ever trust her again, especially after this. She didn't deserve to be trusted. She didn't deserve to be forgiven. She didn't deserve to be loved...

Her eyes fell to the floor as the conversation continued, and she began to think on what Víss had said before. She grew queasy thinking about the possibilities she had narrowly dodged. Her face had grown hot and her ears were buzzing with a fever-pitch ring that would not go away, slowly drowning out the sound in the room. So many lives nearly upended. So many souls nearly lost. All because of her selfishness.

To Cozy, it felt like a hole had been torn open inside her heart. And the pain of that wound was in the form of the loneliness she was feeling. It was a cold and harsh pain, one that was pushing her closer and closer into a terrible depression. All the strength in her limbs had vanished. All the willpower she'd shown in the months leading up to this plan of hers, gone.

"Cozy." As her name was called upon by Princess Twilight, she couldn't muster the energy to bring her head back up to look at her. Did she deserve to even look upon her, after what she'd done?

"Why did you do this?" Twilight's tone was equally horrified as it was serious. She had not doubted Víss' testimony at all, judging by the question she had asked before ever confirming with her if this was all truth or not. It went to show how deeply Twilight trusted him.

"I... just wanted to be special..." Was all that she could mutter as a response, her head still fallen and unable to look upon them.

"Did you not know the damage you would've caused?!" Twilight had let a bit of her own emotion seep through before biting her lips and holding back after seeing how dejected the small filly already was. Cozy shook her head weakly as a response. Twilight tried to open her mouth several times to try to admonish her further, but could not. It was not within her nature to do such a thing, especially to an ailing child already at the peak of their remorse. Experience had shown her that doing so had never once helped things.

"What will be her judgement then, Princess Twilight?" Víss asked after allowing the Princess to process her emotions until they had calmed again. His eyes had fallen to the young filly, watching her closely.

"I can't say for sure now. I'll have to speak to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna about how they want to handle her. Cozy has been one of my best students and a big part of me wishes this were all just some terrible dream. It pains me greatly to have to indict her, but this crime is far too severe to be left unpunished. In all likelihood, she will, at the very least, have to serve a jailing sentence for a period of time. How long and where, is up to the Royal Sisters to decide..." Twilight had returned to biting her lips again. This time, she had drawn blood with how forceably she was driving her own feelings back. "Where did I go wrong with her? How was I blind to this? If only I could've done more..." She spoke in a hushed breath.

Cozy felt her heart clench at those whispered words. This was not the first time she was hearing those questions. She had been convinced that they would never have power over her again, like they used to. But now that she was hearing them again, despite how fake her relationship with the Princess had been, those words had managed to do the most damage she had ever felt in her life. It was as if Cozy could see a thread attached to herself at that moment. A thread that had been with her since she was born. One that had remained steadfast and strong despite every difficulty she had faced. Despite every lonely night and mournful day. She believed this thread to be more than just simple string. It was as if it were the embodiment of life itself. Every desire within her. Every bit of hope. Destiny itself, manifested.

And upon hearing those words from Twilight... that thread had finally snapped.

She felt herself falling. No matter how desperately she tried to beat her wings, they could not keep her from plummeting. They had lost their magic, and could not save her. As she fell, the world around her turned ominous and dark. That feeling of falling suddenly turned very cold, as if her body had hit water, sinking just as quickly into a darker and darker abyss, threatening to take her very breath away and crushing her in those depths.

But then... something happened. Something that she had thought was out of the question forever. Something that she hadn't expected, like the many things that had happened that day already. And that something... had saved her. Her. The one who least deserved it. The one who had it coming. The one no one should ever trust.

"You would imprison a child?" It was Víss. It was his voice. It had slowed her descent into darkness. It returned her to reality. And as she mustered the strength to lift her head in order to see him, she saw nothing but ANGER and FURY in his image. And unlike before when Cozy believed she had seen the truest extent of that within him, this time, it burned with an incredible rage that no one in her life had ever been able to match. "I cannot condone this, Princess Twilight. You must reconsider." Although the elk was not shouting, his voice carried his rage through with no problems and speaking with an overwhelming authority so grand, it was as if the very embodiment of wrath was speaking through him.

"I'm sorry, Víss, I truly am. But it is not for me to decide. The Royal Sisters will convene at the senate to carry out her sentence through a fair trial. Considering how far this forbidden ritual spell has affected Equestria and its neighbors, it will not be so simple as letting her off with a warning. Any noble and royal party from all over Equestria and dignitaries from outside countries will come to deliberate on what must be done. We will not be in a position to outright refuse much of what will be suggested, as it will be my and the royal sister's failing that has brought about this danger to our world." The Princess smiled weakly, dejected to the fate that had befallen her. "It... reminds of a line in a story Fimbul once told me. Of a boy who is to be cast away from his village by his father, for the sake of upholding his village's rules. The line is said by the father to the rest of the villagers and it goes... Pity me, for this is the hardest thing I've had to do."

"And is said by the son... Well don't expect me to pity you. What kind of father chooses laws over his own son?" Víss responded with gentleness at the mention of the tale. His anger had not gone away. He was deeply, deeply angry at this world. At the ponies. At its races. At its magic. At its balances. And at fate. To say that he hated Equus would be an understatement. "I understand, Princess Twilight. Then it is obvious what I must do."

"You don't mean...?"

Víss nodded to her response. "In the name of my lineage, I will offer to the court all that I am. This, my recompense to ponykind and the creatures of this world so that their anger should quell. I accept the job you've offered me, Princess Twilight."

"Are you sure? I know how much you hated the idea before. Especially after what Fimbul told me... I can't ask that of you. You don't owe us anything."

He shook his head to signify to her that she was wrong. "That's not entirely true, Princess. Simply by living in this world, I owe my life to it. The water I drink, the grasses I eat. To begin with, it is not as if I am entirely blameless in all of this either. It was my grandfather that brought that spell to origin. And so I stand atop the pillar of blame. I will take responsibility for all of this. I will become the grand judge you wished for me to be, in the name of universal law and peace."

"You don't know how much this means to us, Víss! Thank you. With you at the helm, peace and friendship talks with the rest of the nations of the world will go smoothly, I just know it!" Princess Twilight said excitedly.

"I do not do this because I want to, Princess. I do this, so that I can be granted custody of that little one." He pointed a foreleg in Cozy's direction.

Both of them were stunned by what he was suggesting. Twilight had an inkling of what he was getting at with his earlier words, but not to this extent. And Cozy, who didn't have any context as to what they were talking about, had been completely and utterly blind-sided.

"Are you absolutely certain, Víss? This is... big, you understand that, right?"

"I know what this means, Princess. I am very well aware. Do not misunderstand me, when I said that I would take responsibility it wasn't just for this incident alone, but for all who were affected by the spell. By it's effects, and by its existence. No one is more likely to have felt the scar of it than she has." Cozy looked him directly in the eyes, trying to search for whatever intention he might have to have done this for her. Was there some ulterior motive? Some underhanded plan he wanted her to be a part of? That was something she would've done, as the only reason she'd ever been kind to someone was so that she could manipulate them later. But search all she wanted, she could find nothing within his eyes. "It is my duty to make sure this mistake should never repeat again, and so I will personally take charge of Cozy to that end. There is no future in a cell. Atonement is impossible within a prison. I won't sit idly by as a child is stripped of her freedoms due to our mistakes. Children are meant to live carefree lives. Don't you agree, Twilight?" Víss had dropped all honorifics. This was him, talking to an equal. To a friend.

The Princess nodded with a large smile spread across her face, happy to have the tiniest out of this nightmare situation. There was no one she would've trusted with the task of reforming Cozy more than she did Víss. Loyalty and trust, as Cozy would come to find out in due time, is something that was earned, not given. She could not know just what kind of sacrifice Víss had done for her, both in name and in spirit, just to see her free from the shackles of her crimes. But she understood the price had been heavy. She was no fool. If Equestria, of all places, felt it necessary to jail a child in order to maintain peace within its borders, then her crimes had been truly, truly severe. Víss had spelled it out to her in no shortage of words.

This elk... had managed to save her. Twice. In one fateful afternoon. Once when he stopped her plan, and again now.

"So, now it's up to you, Cozy Glow. Care to be my pupil?" He extended a hoof out to her to help her up.

The mind is a tricksy thing. It plays with us if it can. It makes us see things that aren't there. Or perhaps, helps us see things that have always been there, but you just couldn't see it before. To Cozy, that hoof was shrouded in a wonderful glow of golden light, in the same shade as those two eyes of his. Taking that hoof, she envisioned herself being pulled up from the watery abyss that had been desperately trying to drag her down into its cold loneliness. She felt her strength return, enough to beat her wings instinctively, wishing to save herself again. She felt life return to her body, as the warm tears she thought she had already emptied out had streamed across her already smitten face once more.

And as she looked to Víss one more time, she saw a thread hanging behind him, strung to heavens. A bright, beaming, radiant thin thread, as gold and as yellow as the space all around him. Then she saw another, and another. Glints of light bounced off of one to another materializing hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of threads as if from nowhere. More and more until it finally stopped. All connected to him.

They made a truly spectacular, awe-inspiring and beautiful weave of gold, like a river made of glittering string. They strung this way and that, all up towards the sky. Until in the end, they shaped a truly enormous tree. It's arms and branches spanned out into the greater beyond, farther than the sky and perhaps farther than heavens themselves. To places and reaches so far beyond her, she knew she would never be able to visit.

What in the name of the gods was this elk?

A weaver of fate. A keeper of stories.

To Love You Always

"He just... makes me so mad sometimes! Argh! Why is he being so secretive?!"

"Well, males are usually like that. I've hardly met one who openly speaks their heart out."

"And get this, he's been holed up in our house this ENTIRE time. It's been a full week now! How much time does he need to gather his thoughts?!"

"It's certainly strange. I never took Víss to be the brooding type. One can't help but worry."

"Worry? Over him? I'm not worrying about him! He should be the one worried about me."

"Do you suppose it's really serious then, Cozy? Maybe we really should pay him a visit then?"

"I don't need to visit. That's my home too! I can go back there anytime I want..."

"What's stopping you from going then, Cozy?

"Nothing, I just..."

"It's hurting you to see him this way, isn't it...?"

"It isn't! It's not..."

"Come here, Cozy. It'll be okay. I'm sure Víss is okay. We just have to trust that he will be. I doubt he'd want us to worry over him like this. You know what he'd say. Something something about it being foolish to fret over what you can't change, or something like that. I can already hear it in his exact words."

Cozy had been embraced at that moment. Her conversational partner had noticed the she had begun to feel downtrodden over their talk. She was never particularly comfortable with these kinds of displays of affections as they had happened rarely in her life, and so she was as stiff as a board as she let herself be hugged. More than that, her worry had not gone away whatsoever. She could not find any comfort within that attempt made by her friend. Despite those best efforts, Cozy could not do away with that terrible itch that had rooted itself into her heart ever since that letter first arrived for Víss. She could not shake that image no matter how much she tried. Those tears streaming from his eyes...

It had been nearly a week since that event. It took Cozy three whole days to work up the courage to try and question him about everything, which was incredibly uncharacteristic of her. She had gone over to their house everyday since but had stopped herself from entering each time. To Cozy, the door felt incredibly heavy almost as if it had been barred from the inside. Maybe Víss had gone away and had locked up the house? For several hours she would linger outside, unable to put in the physical effort to bust her way in for some reason or another that she could not explain. She would wait, and wait, and wait, just to see if anything stirred or if Víss had returned. But she could see, feel, and hear nothing. The first day went by, and nothing. The second came, and nothing.

Finally on the third, her worry had become so much that it forced her to gather her bravery and strength. She quite nearly kicked the door to their shack down when trying to open it, since she psyched herself out into believing that it would be locked considering what she had wrongly assumed of the days prior. But to her surprise, it opened freely to her. Inside, she found that none of the candles had been lit for visibility. This was especially strange since their home had no windows and was built as practically as it could be by Víss himself, and so it was dark inside especially with how dim the light of day was thanks to the stormy dark clouds that had persisted for days on end now.

Well, none of the candles were lit save for one. A solitary candle for one solitary elk, overlooking a similarly lonely desk and one piece of paper. But on the floor short of where that candle could illuminate, there lay dozens upon dozens of balled up and scrapped sheets of parchment, all different than the rest. Some ripped straight out of books, some finely minted by paper presses, some even as unique and ancient as straw papyrus, scrolls, and did she spy a stone tablet? All of them with writing in that language that Cozy had seen from the letter that Víss had received.

Víss was entirely focused and so he did not budge at her arrival, only writing away into the paper before him. Perhaps because of the struggling candlelight, the expression on his face looked more intense than usual. It was obvious to Cozy that he was deeply troubled by something, judging by his muttering voice speaking to himself as he jotted each new symbol. From the sounds of it, it seemed like he was formulating ideas for a story. But it was quickly obvious to Cozy that every sentence was creating issues for the young elk since he'd quickly become frustrated after ending each one. By the end of the third, he'd gotten so fed up with what he was writing, he angrily stomped on the paper and violently tossed it to the side where it fell with the rest of the garbage that had piled up in a similar manner.

"Not good enough." He'd say to himself just shortly after taking out a new piece of paper to write with.

It had only been three days, but a large part of the floor had already amassed with rejected versions of what he wanted to create. The wear and tear on the visage of the elk said everything quite clearly, as the bags under his eyes showed he had not slept almost at all in the time since the letter's delivery. It was unlikely he had eaten anything in that entire time either, considering their kitchen had remained completely unchanged since all that time ago. The desperation in his eyes and the pronounced lines around his cheeks and ribs made him a sight for sorry eyes. It was hard for Cozy to stomach, and even harder to begin a conversation with him. All the hundreds of questions she had in the back of her mind had fallen silent immediately upon laying eyes on him, and her voice did not want to respond to her brain's call.

She couldn't have been more than a few feet from him, but yet that distance felt so incredibly far. To Cozy, Víss had gone to a place she could not reach. And she was made clearly and painfully aware of that once she finally did begin speaking with him.

"Víss... What are you doing?" Her voice came shy. It was hardly audible and forced from her throat, showing that Cozy had toiled a great deal just to formulate those few words.

And yet, despite her toils, there was no answer from the young elk.

"Víss... What was that letter?" This one came easier to her, and stronger. Now plainly audible for him to hear.

Again, no answer arrived to meet her questions.

"Víss... Are you okay?" This was delivered very very gently, at a distance she knew he would hear. Close enough to touch him if she could only muster the courage to bring a hoof to him again. But having it be rejected again like it had the first time had made Cozy deathly afraid that she would lose him again if she tried.

But there was no answer.

This time however, when she opened her mouth to voice another question, it was interrupted before it could ever take flight.

"Not good enough!" His shouting had startled Cozy. It was rare for him to raise his voice almost at all, and as he did, Víss had slammed his hooves onto the table and ripped the paper he had before him in two as he dragged it off his desk with such ferocity, it nearly took the candle sitting on the desk with it. The copper plate the candle had rested on had narrowly avoided being toppled over before rattling into a calm state again flat on the desk's surface. The wick of flame at the top however, had not had a similar luxury. It had been extinguished by that strong and sudden gust of wind generated by the foreleg that had kicked in its direction. Now the room had considerably dimmed. With very little light left, it was hard to think that anyone could write in that kind of darkness. There was only enough light to faintly see the outlines of the things within it.

Cozy heard as the other half of the sheet had been tossed to the ground as well, albeit more gently. She could barely make out Víss' body in that shade, but she could see him resting his head onto the desk, his forehead at the upper edge so that his antlers could freely float behind it. He stayed like this for a long while, up until Cozy had lit another candle to replace it with the one that had gone out. She said nothing as she took the other away, with not even the courage to look him in the eye once his attention had finally been placed on her.

"Cozy? How long have you been here?" She remained quiet as she looked to the floor, adverting her gaze.

"I only just got here." She voiced quietly. She looked up to see him to finally get a good look at how truly distraught and broken he seemed, and she recoiled at the pain of seeing this from him. Even the usual shine in his eyes were gone. They looked tired. So very tired. And so, so very sad. "Víss, what's happened to you?"

He was silent while he contemplated the question. "... Don't worry about me, I'll be okay." His gentle eyes looked to be almost pleading her to not dig further than that, but Cozy refused.

"It's not nothing. You've been weird ever since that letter. What's happened to you?"

"I don't think you should concern yourself with me." His voice had become more serious as his expression fell, now seemingly bothered by the fact that she was trying to forcibly pry at his concerns.

"Since when do I care what you think?" Cozy had not meant for that question to come out of her mouth as harshly as it did then, but her frustration had begun to spill over. She was annoyed that she had, had to go that far to voice her thoughts, when before Víss had always been so attentive to her emotional needs and had never had to so much as hint as to her actual feelings for him to get a clue.

See, Víss had allowed her to live her life without changing much of who she was. A not-very honest, often bratty and short-tempered girl whose words and actions were often crueler and more underhanded than she intended. Víss had done this simply by knowing everything. All the things she really meant to say and all of the things she really wanted, even if she could never be truly honest with herself about it. He had always known what to do to make her feel better, even if she herself didn't know her own emotional needs in those moments.

So she was annoyed that, perhaps for the first time since she'd met him, he seemed to be blind to what she wanted. To what she needed. Her words to him there should've been enough for even a normal pony to understand her true feelings. Knowing him like Cozy did, she never expected to have to take these kinds of measures to spell it out to him at all, but something was telling her that Víss wasn't listening. He wasn't looking. Not at her. His mind was elsewhere. Somewhere far away where she could not follow...

"I'm sorry, Cozy..." His voice was cold, almost emotionless once it finally did arrive. It was hollow. Lacking any sincerity. "But please, leave me alone for today. I need more time to gather my th-"

"How much time is enough for you?!" She found herself yelling again, annoyed to be hearing the exact same words that had pushed her away the first time. But despite her raised voice, she felt like she had just shouted those words into a large and empty valley, as the only sounds that could be heard after were her own breathing and the echoing of her question repeating over and over inside of her head, in different words and different patterns, all asking the same thing. How much time do you need? How much longer must I worry for? When will you tell me what's going on? Do I not matter to you? Do you not care about me? Do you not care about you?

"I don't know." Is all that the elk could muster to reply with. At this, he returned to his task by taking out yet another piece of paper to write on, signaling to Cozy that he was done talking to her. This tore at Cozy. It made her wholly angry from her depths. How was there something that Víss did not know...? He knew everything... right? But Víss does not lie. He has never lied before. Truth mattered so much to him. It was a paradoxical nightmare. Either he was lying, which Cozy did not think Víss was capable of, or he did not know everything, which she could not possibly imagine.

"FINE THEN!! Be that way! If all you want to do is dig your head in the sand and pretend like there's nothing wrong, then so be it! Have all the time you need. I'm not returning until you're ready to talk!" Cozy had stormed out of their house that day, fuming with indignant rage.

It certainly wasn't rare that she would run away from home. It had happened a handful of times already ever since becoming Víss' apprentice. But this was different from all those times. Very very different. To begin with, Cozy didn't want to leave. But her big mouth and quick temper had made her say something she didn't mean once again. She would come to regret that almost immediately, and excruciatingly so in the next four days after while she stayed at her friend's home.

Which just so happened to be Twilight's Ponyville home away from Canterlot, the Castle of Friendship itself. After many years and with Víss' help, she had managed to regain the good graces of the purple princess. And quite earnestly too, as she'd grown to understand those lessons she used to despise back in Twilight's school, useless as she once thought they were. Her honest efforts in redeeming herself had won her the friendship of not only the Princess, given enough time, but she had also obtained that of her conversational partner that she was in the middle of venting her frustrations to.

If it had been anyone else, even Twilight who now understood her a little better than most ponies, this talk they were having would've ended in poor tastes. Cozy had done nothing but complain and state how selfish Víss was being by acting this way. If you had been the one to sit in on that talk, you might have thought that she was an awful pony just from her words alone. It was almost as if she believed that Víss owed her everything. Like he hadn't the right to be sad or upset, since it would concern her in turn. And that her feelings were more important than his, so he should have knocked it off immediately for her sake. It was all just one-sided arrogance talk, and anyone not in the know of the pony who went by the name of Cozy Glow would've imagined her as a terrible individual all around.

And sure, while Cozy didn't like feeling concern over him, her words were pretty far from her true feelings. I mean... it wasn't as if Cozy had learned some degree of polite sensibility in all those many long years growing up by Víss' side. His stoic, solitary, and straight-laced personality had not really imparted any social wisdom onto Cozy's impressionable young mind. And ever since being humbled off her childhood pedestal, her theatrical cloak and dagger "good girl" performance had nearly all but vanished. When it came time to talk to any other pony outside of Víss, Cozy had become a fish out of water. She would immediately be struck with panic and anxiety that she could fall into her old ways, and coupled with her sharp mouth and quick temper, it turned out that Víss was not the only one that was hard to love.

In fact, this was a cause for a great many of her issues growing up and readjusting to pony society. Ever since that day, she had felt ostracized from the ponies and sentient races of Equus even outside her inability to socialize with them. She did not act like them, think like them, and could not feel the same way as they did. She felt like she simply could not connect with them. Like if her tether to reality had snapped for her, and she were only some spectator to the lives of all those innocent souls within this world. She had only realized this once she had a serious talk detailing her woes to Ponyville's newest premier therapist, Pipsqueak. The answer that he had returned to her had surprised her. Cozy's feelings likely stemmed from that fateful day. She had lost something that not many ponies in Equestria had.

Her innocence.

It's such a small and silly thing to consider, especially to a grown mare nearing her twenties, but this answer made such painful sense. Even the grown adults did not know half of the evils that she could recognize now, thanks to that terrible mistake she had made in her youth. To carry on like they did as though the world was always a bright and sunny place, was alien to her. It ultimately separated her from them, and connected her far more to someone like Víss. Even Víss' love for gloomy, cloudy days were something that she had adopted. Perhaps influenced by their close relationship, she had grown into his mentality more and more over time.

So then... What had Víss experienced to become that way himself? What had disillusioned him to point that he grew in love with his loneliness? Just what was eating away at him...?

This was not the first time Cozy had, had these ideas. She had thought on them endlessly ever since she was small. But Víss was not the type to talk about himself freely, and the opportunity to bring up those things never surfaced. Her crippled self-esteem would not allow her to ask those questions, even if her curiosity had screamed at her for ages to do so. And now, her decade-long cowardice was rearing its ugly head again at such a vital time. With not even the strength of character to demand those answers, she was afraid that she may cause more harm than good with the nasty tendency she had to let those harsh words of hers fly, especially now that Víss was not concerning himself with the truth of her words.

But something had to change.

Cozy could not continue like this. She could not allow Víss to keep despairing forever. She knew better than anyone that the stubborn elk would likely see himself to the grave if he were left alone. That was clearly evident by how little he had eaten and how tired he seemed when she saw him after those three days. The peach pegasus gritted her teeth and made up her mind in that moment. Even if she were to be hated by the person she cared for the most, even if she were to abandoned by him, and even if she had to make great sacrifice... She was determined to do right by him.

"Say, Chrys..." The bright yellow eyes of the girl before her returned to Cozy's direct line of sight after being addressed, pulling away from that lengthy hug. Her bright green mane seemed to shine with a luster from the coursing magic she'd been using by casting a soothing spell in order to ease Cozy's troubled mind, but the pegasus' worries were far too strong even for a seasoned and powerful healer like her to do anything about.

"Hmm?" Her head tilted only slightly to its side and her dark-grey face scrunched up with a questioning look in her curiosity , as she had never outgrown her youthful emoting.

"I... want to know more about Víss. I want to find out what's wrong with him. I... want to fix this." Cozy voiced quietly and slowly, forcing her mind to speak the words she wanted to say. "There's a lot of things Víss has never told me... And I'm sorry if it's not something you want to talk about, but I have to know... Please..."

The girl only smiled at her. She somehow seemed to understand the exact troubles that Cozy was having with her words and was being particularly patient with her. Cozy's awkward way of trying to piece her words together might've gotten anyone else to laugh, but not her.

"How can I help you Cozy?"

"Your eyes... I heard about them from Twilight once. I never asked about them before since I didn't want to assume for no reason but... They're similar to Víss', are they not? You both can see things that no one else can, is that right?" The girl nodded to confirm making Cozy furrow her brows as she thought on that response. She had always suspected as much, since her yellow eyes had always thrown Cozy off-guard. They were vastly different than the eyes of normal changelings, and somewhere deep inside, they reminded her so much of Víss. Almost instinctively so. And now she had finally gotten her answer. "I'm guessing that's why you've never had a problem with the way I speak..."

"That's right, Cozy. Though, even without them, you're not that hard to figure out. You love Víss a whole lot don't you? Like family. That was always evident, even without my gifts." The tinge of a blush formed along Cozy's cheeks as she was broken out of her seriousness for a moment. Had she truly been so easy to discern all this time? Her greatest skillset had been deception in the past, so to be told that her poker face had been pretty weak this entire time was terribly embarrassing for her. But the seriousness of the moment returned to her all too quickly as she thought on her next question.

"But your eyes are extremely rare, aren't they? Their power, I mean. How can it be that you share the same ability as Víss even if you're of vastly different race? With you being a changeling and him being an elk... What even is it that the two of you can see that we can't? I've always wondered..."

"It's not like they can read minds, you know. All they can do is see... well, something like a soul? I can mostly interpret how someone feels at any moment. If you're sad, if you're glad, that sort of thing. Its pretty handy, since I can discern and put together a person's intentions even without having the full picture of what they want or mean to say. They're the reason why your words have never really bothered me, Cozy." Pretty handy was an understatement. That was an inherently powerful ability. Cozy flushed with embarrassment since she was being told directly that she'd been an open book that entire time since they became friends years ago. "They were given to me after I lost mine when I was very young, passed down by someone in Víss' family actually. Víss really hasn't told you much, has he?" Cozy shook her head to respond. "Seems I'm finding stuff out about him I never realized before myself. I never expected this, not in a thousand years."

"What do you mean, Chrys?"

"Well, I never expected him to neglect you this much. Out of every creature out there, I was so sure you'd be the one to know all about him more than anyone."

"So he's kept secrets from me this entire time... I guess he never really wanted me in his life after all..." Strangely, Cozy was caught off-guard after feeling bad over this sad turn that their conversation had taken, since her conversational partner had begun to laugh, almost mockingly so with that distinctly hiccupy laugh of hers. "Hey! I'm confiding in you here Chrys! Please don't laugh!"

"I'm sorry! I'm terribly sorry. But you're misunderstanding something here. Víss absolutely loves you just as much as you do him, Cozy, so there's no way that's true. In fact, I'd say he has you beat."

"Not a chance, I-...!" No matter what she answered with, this was a one-way trip towards being embarrassed for the rest of her life. She'd gotten up from her seat in the tea room where they had been talking, momentarily upset with her curls beginning to unwind from her stress, but then sat back down and coughed in the most awkwardly polite way she could to make the changeling's knowing smile disappear to return to the real conversation. "That's not true, is it? He's never really shown it before..."

"Oh please, Cozy. How many times have you run to our home when you've gotten into fights with him? Do you even have any idea how many presents and thanks we've received from him for taking care of you on the sly? From the sounds of it, you're pretty clueless about a lot of things. I bet you don't even know how long and hard he's fought to keep your childhood crime from affecting your everyday life. It's less of an issue nowadays, but back then he used to personally threaten quite a few pony journalists who would drop into town just to get a scoop or some dirt on you. He would always go and apologize on your behalf to the townsfolk whenever you used to cause problems with your unintentional insults. And from what Twilight has told me, he put in a LOT of hard work in the courts just to keep you out of Tartarus."

Cozy had dropped her head, pawing at the ground uncharacteristically shy. "Well yeah, I knew about some of that stuff..."

"I know that you know it too. Who would come to tell me all happy about your reconciliation after your fights the day after you had one? Seems like Víss doesn't sleep until he knows you're feeling better, even if you returned to him at the late hours of the night."

"Okay..."

"Whose constantly fretting over wanting to grow independent just because she doesn't want Víss to keep working that job he hates for her sake?"

"Okay."

"You think all of those acts were not born out of love for you? I don't need my eyes to tell you as much."

"OKAY ALREADY, I GET IT!" Cozy had draped both her forelegs over her head, trying to hide her face. "But then why the secrets?! What's hurting him now that he doesn't want me to know?!" Tears had begun to flow down to her cheeks until they were finally visible past her forelegs. She felt a gentle hoof place itself on her back, tenderly caressing her to sooth her emotions.

"I'm not sure why he would keep this from you, to be honest. It doesn't make much sense to me, and it's only something that he could tell you himself. I'm sure he must've had a reason. But I can tell you what I do know. First, take a deep breath Cozy. Calm your mind. Víss is always stressing the importance of being calm in order to understand things better, no?" Cozy did as the changeling had suggested and brought peace to her mind by closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. When she opened them again, she saw Chrys holding onto an old weathered polaroid of when she was a child, standing beside two elderly looking figures.

(Illustration by DamayantiArts)

"Who are they...?" Cozy asked getting a strange sense like she could somehow recognize them.

"Those two are Equestria's original Sages of Fate. The pony is Tera Amare, the Blind Seeress. The only Equestrian to ever have become a sage after apprenticing under that elk there... Fimbulpur, the first of his kind as told in any history across all of Equus. He is known as The Great Sage."

"Tera Amare... and The Great Sage...? Why do I feel like I've heard those names before? And that moniker too..."

"I wouldn't doubt that you have. Because Víss is one of those sages, you know. Or at least, he was meant to be the next one. He still gets called that all the time when he makes one of his rare visit in on Ponyville despite not becoming one in the end."

"He was supposed to become one?" Cozy was taken aback by what she was hearing. In that moment, her memory had made the connection to the decade that had passed. Sage... Twilight had called him that on the day they met. She still didn't know the importance of that title, however. "What is a Sage of Fate anyway?"

"From what I've heard, they're scholars who record the history and stories of all Equus. They're said to be incredibly powerful mages too. Grandpa Fimbul, who I've met on many occasions, has been said to have helped out immensely with all things magical for Equestria since before it's founding. No one really knows how old he is, but Twilight said he's even older than auntie Celestia. And grandma Tera is supposed to be almost as old as him too."

"Grandpa Fimbul..." The gears seemed to be turning for Cozy as she brought up all sorts of old memories. "THAT'S RIGHT! That's Víss' grandfather! Over a decem millenium.... But wait wait, hold on Chrys. You're really confusing me here. They're all your family too?"

"Oh! Whoops. Sorry, old habits. No, I just call them that since Grandma Tera raised me for the most part when I was just newly hatched. Princess Celestia was my mom's friend a long time ago so I stuck to calling her auntie instead. And calling Fimbul just by his nickname didn't sound right to me. It only made sense to call him grandpa, you know? Perhaps you'll understand when you meet him someday."

"Okay, I was about to say... How would that family tree even look like?" They both chuckled as they thought about it. "Hmm... but what does this have to do with Víss?"

"A lot, I'd imagine. Víss hasn't seen his grandfather in over a decade. Their relationship has been estranged for a very long time, and no one knows why."

"In over a decade... would that mean...?"

"I don't have to use my eyes to recognize that face you're making, Cozy. Don't jump to conclusions. We can't know for sure."

"I remember now..." Cozy's eyes began to grow misty again. She recognized Fimbulpur's name, because Twilight had mentioned it on that day. And Víss had confirmed it for her too. The ritual spell she had almost destroyed Equestria with... it was a spell that The Great Sage had made... "So I really am the problem...?" She said as her heart wrenched with guilt.

"No. At least, I don't personally think so, Cozy. Grandpa Fimbul is not the kind of elk that would hold that against you or Víss." The pegasus mare was not entirely convinced. She wiped her eyes to no avail. "You see, there's a lot more you should know about Víss and his grandfather."

"Okay, I'm ready to hear it." Cozy's prepared herself, not knowing what to expect. It was already a lot to take in, and it made her painfully aware of how little she actually knew about Víss. Strangely, the changeling girl only stayed quiet as she thought about what she wanted to say. When her response did finally arrive after a good amount of silence, it was definitely not what Cozy expected.

"I've decided that I shouldn't be the one to tell you this, Cozy. It's something that you must hear from Víss himself, if he's willing to tell you. It's probably the reason why he hasn't told you anything already. It seems so obvious now that I take a step back and look at it this way..."

"Wait...! You can't do this to me, Chrys! We're friends, aren't we?" Cozy pleaded.

"I'm sorry, Cozy. I really, really am. But this decision is purely his, and I want to respect it."

In one swift and stormy fury, Cozy had gotten up again and flew to the door of the room as fast her wings could carry her. "I'M SO TIRED OF ALL OF YOU KEEPING THINGS FROM ME! I HATE YOU ALL!!" She proceeded to slam the door as hard as she could to make the most dramatic exit she could. All while the changeling smiled and sipped on her tea, unbothered and unfazed by it all. She stayed perfectly in place despite not needing to linger around the tea room anymore, waiting for a bit until the door finally creaked open again and a disembodied voice spoke. "Thanks for telling me all this stuff, Chrys. Sorry about my outburst. I didn't mean it."

"I appreciate the honesty. It suits you better. But you should definitely stop lingering here since you have more important matters to attend to, no? Don't let that newfound determination wane. You'll need it if you're to convince him."

And with no other words exchanged, the door closed and the troubled pegasus was gone, respectfully heeding that advice.

Cozy flew through the Castle of Friendship's corridors faster than she had ever before nearly knocking several decorative vases in her haste. She only needed the tiniest push from someone to pursue that desire within her, and now that she had been given it, she had unlocked that part of her relentless determination within her to see her plans through. She was going to force those answers out of him, one way or another. No more secrets. Not for him, and not for her. She promised herself there and then that she wouldn't let her dumb mouth speak for her anymore. If Víss was no longer bothering in finding the hidden truth in her words, then she simply had to not hide it. She would make it as plain as day for him. She would say the words she always wanted to say.

She picked up speed despite how recklessly she was already flying in psyching herself up for their confrontation. She'd been terribly concerned over him that entire time after she'd left him unattended for nearly a full week now. Truthfully, she would have flown straight through a window in her haste to get to him if it had not been the case that most if not all the normal windows in the castle had long been replaced by meaningful stained glass pieces that weren't known to open like normal ones, and so she had no choice but to maneuver through the castle's many halls.

Yet despite this burning new feeling that was spurring her forward, she hadn't even made it to the castle's opening hallway before she had slapped on all the breaks to stop herself from coming into view past the corner of the hallway leading up to the entrance. A voice had stopped her from making herself seen. It was Víss' voice, talking to Twilight. The suddenness of this encounter was too much for Cozy so she found herself inadvertently hiding again.

"I understand... This was our original agreement after all. I can't ask for you to stay any longer, but I do want to tell you how grateful I am to you for having devoted yourself to our kingdom in all these many long years. Thank you, Víss, for having kept Equestria safe all this time." Twilight's words were the first ones she had heard now that she had begun to eavesdrop by accident. Cozy heard shuffling after her words ended, imagining that Twilight was bowing to him. Rightly so, as it was just as she'd pictured it.

"Forgive me. This is something I have to do." Víss' voice was quiet and solemn in response.

"No need for forgiveness Víss, I know. I would go too if I could. A great library has burnt to the ground. It is a sad day for this world..." Twilight's words were equally filled with sorrow as they where sympathetic. "Are you really sure you're holding up well? You look awful, Víss. Even I can tell at a glance." Cozy had been desperately trying to hear every word as best she could until Twilight had uttered that statement.

Unable to contain her curiosity, she peered lightly over the edge to see what the Princess meant, and she couldn't have agreed more if she tried. Despite still being large and bulky due to his natural build as an elk, even his thick coat was now showing his features all too well. His eyes looked sullen and empty, whose shine could no longer be seen through their muddied screen. And his expression... even in the way that he moved and talked, all seemed to show how sad he had become like if a terrible depression had latched on to him almost as if it were a life-sucking parasite. Cozy's heart wretched at his image. Even the hooded blue cape he adorned was something he hadn't used in years, a tool meant to conceal who he was.

"Do not concern yourself with me, Princess. You will now have more on your plate than you've ever had before. More than you and your entourage alone will be able to handle. Equestria's fate has been growing ill as of late, as I'm sure you can tell. I've tried my best to stave it off, but the clouds have grown far too dark for even someone like myself to handle. And they grow darker still. That's why I must return to my original home while I still can..."

Stupid cryptic elk! Is all that ran through Cozy's mind upon hearing this. If Víss had one incredibly annoying habit that Cozy generally despised, it was his sometimes incredibly vague or nothing statements that she often had to decipher for days on end just to understand even a tiny bit of. Frustratingly, these statements were only something he'd use for very important and serious moments, often to teach her a lesson or something he'd use to mask the severity of an issue.

It was Víss' way to stay true to his words of telling nothing but the honest truth. Víss understood and had taught Cozy that the honest truth itself was not always the best solution to a problem. Sometimes, speaking it plainly could cause more problems than it could fix. His cryptiscm was born of the need to impart the truth in a "digestible" manner. A strangely candied manner, if said candy was a jawbreaker you had to wear down over a long period of time to fully appreciate. Needless to say, Cozy was not the type to appreciate the long effort it took to get to the truth of things.

"Take care of Cozy, Twilight. I trust she'll be safe with you. I've long since prepared her for this day, even without her knowledge. She won't understand at first, but given time, I hope she can see why this goodbye had to happen." What was Víss saying? A goodbye that had to happen? Was he actually planning to leave...? Where? Why? How come she wasn't told anything?!

"You really won't speak to her before you go? How long are you planning to be gone? Months, years? Can you even guarantee that you'll be back? The stories you've told me about your home... What Fimbul has said about them... What if you never return? That would crush her. Even if you do return safely, do you really think Cozy will just forgive you for leaving without saying a word?" Cozy had been gritting her teeth that entire time, fighting the overwhelming urge inside of her to pop up there and then to confront Víss once and for all. She was grateful to hear Twilight speak on her behalf, but some many troubling things were being said in that moment. Things that sounded like Víss would be met with danger incomprehensible to her. What ultimately stopped her was a familiar sorry sigh from the large elk.

"When I came to Equus to live with my grandparents, I sincerely thought I would spend the remainder of my long life alone. But my grandfather knew better. He always did. Do you know what he said to me before I left to live out on my own? He told me, 'Do not carelessly save someone if you are not ready to take full responsibility of what it means to do so. You don't just fix their problems in a single day and carry on like your meeting did not happen. Repelling the evil wolf once does not mean he won't strike again. Truly saving someone requires great sacrifice. Your life will change. You will change. If you really do desire it from the bottom of your heart, then you will spend the rest of your life making sure that someone is safe, happy, and loved. So be prepared to give your everything to this cause, as it will be the most important thing you will do in your life. Of that, I am sure'."

Great sacrifice..., repeated Cozy in her head.

Víss looked out a nearby window at the dark clouds looming overhead. Even the world itself seemed to be mourning, as the Pegasi had not been able to quell the natural rain clouds that had bled their way into Ponyville from the Everfree Forest. "I never understood why he had told me that. I had already given up my sense of duty at that time. It seemed pointless to lecture a kid who'd already given up on that aim. Who'd given up on people in general. 'I will never save another soul so long as I still breathe', I thought as I heard those words. And I believed it too. That was... up until I met Cozy."

Víss... Cozy took away her gaze and slumped against the wall of the hallway where she'd been hiding herself. She didn't understand everything Víss was saying, as she was missing critical information to understand it well, but she could feel the weight of it in his words. His voice was quiet, and it was struggling to keep from breaking down. Whatever it was that Víss wasn't telling her, it was breaking his heart to do so all the same, she now understood.

Víss opened the front doors of the castle, revealing the outside. He put up the hood of his blue cape as if preparing for an oncoming storm. Before leaving altogether, he looked back to the Princess to deliver his last lines before departing to who knows where. "So my answer to you, Twilight, remains the same after all these many years. I don't care if I come to be hated. I just want her to be happy and safe. Let her live the life of a normal girl. Let her be an Equestrian pony until the end." And like that, he walked away, the doors shutting behind him with resounding thuds.

"I fully understand, Víss... I just don't think Cozy would agree with your choice." Voiced Twilight to no one but herself as she lingered on those front doors contemplating his words.

"Princess Twilight...?" Cozy had called out to her meekly, unsure of where to start the conversation. She hadn't given the Princess enough time to think it through before she made her presence known. This ultimately caught Twilight off-guard and made her jump in her surprise.

"Cozy! You were here all along?! Look, I know you must have a lot of questions and-" She was cut short by a peach-colored wingtip that gently closed her mouth.

"Only one for you, Princess. The rest I want to hear from him." The Princess nodded, nervous as all get out not knowing what Cozy was thinking. Twilight half expected her to be in hysterics, yelling and spitting obscenities at these revelations she'd just overheard. To Twilight's surprise, Cozy was strangely composed. When she spoke next, her voice was calm, if a bit sad. "Growing up, I never understood what Víss' job was. The most I know about it is that he has some form of judiciary power in the royal court, and that he hates it. What is it really? And why has it allowed him to protect me for so long? Please, tell me just this much." Cozy lifted her wing from the Princess, hoping Twilight would take pity in her plight.

"I had a strong feeling that Víss' plan wasn't going to work." Was the first thing she said with a wise smile. "Very well, Cozy. You more than anyone deserves to know, and I never agreed or promised anything to Víss himself, so I have no obligation to remain silent forever."

"Thank you, Princess." This doubly surprised Twilight again. Cozy was not the type to be this honest. "Not just anyone can sweep what I did under the rug. My childhood crime was severe, that much was always obvious. But so long as it never affected me, I never bothered to question it."

"You're as bright as you always were, Cozy. It's exactly as you say. In fact, not even the Royal Sisters or I could've prevented your punishment back in those days. Even if you had, had the support of all the leaders at the time, like Queen Novo or Dragon Lord Ember, we still would've been hard pressed to keep you out of Tartarus. Perhaps shortened your sentence at the very most, but your life after that would've been severely hampered by constant surveillance, forced community service, and your rights as a sovereign citizen of Equestria diminished. It was a nightmarish situation. It would've put Equestria's core beliefs into question, and all of our moral tenets. Would we really sacrifice a child just to uphold a semblance of peace? To be honest, I was prepared to give it all up for your sake right there and then. Had Víss not stepped in, I would've stolen you away to the ends of Equus itself to find you a country where you could live in peace. I would not let Equestria turn you into a metaphorical monster, like it had with Chrys. Not again."

"It means a lot to hear you say that, Princess... I... honestly don't know if I would've changed my ways had it not been for Víss either. I don't know if I would've been worthy of such a sacrifice... I don't know if I'm worthy of it even now, if I had to be honest." Cozy said awkwardly and sheepishly, putting a terribly saddened frown upon the Princess' face.

"Oh Cozy, of course you are. At least I very much think that you are. You've grown into such a fine young lady. And I'm sure Víss thinks so to."

"Víss... so what is he then, Princess? How can he hold so much sway?"

"Víss is... Well, there is some things you will have to hear from him directly. But I'll tell you this much: Víss is an outsider."

"Outsider? Like from Equestria? I'm not sure I'm following along Princess."

"Fimbulpur the Great Sage, and subsequently Víss, his grandson, are both outsiders Cozy. Perhaps you've heard of the Sages of Fate?"

"A bit, only moments ago from Chrys. She said that the sages are world-trotting scholars collecting the history and stories of all Equus." Twilight nodded to confirm.

"Indeed. But that's putting it mildly. They are more than that. For as long as ponies can remember, the Sages of Fate have been seen as holy figures. They were believed to be descendants of the Gods, said to control Fate itself and the destinies of all living things. Fimbulpur himself is older than most recorded species on Equus, older than even the oldest dragons who are known to live for ages. In the past, there have been so few of them to have been known to roam this world, and due to their long life-span, rare appearances, and thanks to Fimbulpur's massive contribution to our understanding of magic, their race was inevitably seen as divine."

"Is that all... true?"

"What do you think, Cozy?" Cozy shook her head. She just couldn't picture Víss being anything but his normal self. But descendants of Gods... it would explain the eyes. "It's not true. They don't hold such immense world-changing power as mastery over destiny itself. Víss and Fimbul would be the first to dispel those rumors, since both of them hate to be seen as special. But it's important that you know these things despite not being true, because the rest of Equus surely believes it. If you want to know where his influence comes from, a big part of it would be that. And since they're 'outsiders', with no allegiance to any nation anywhere, their neutrality makes them the perfect candidates to be the overseers to international affairs. Do you remember what I told you about Chrys' eyes?"

"I do." Cozy nodded. "I heard about their power from her too. She also told me that her eyes come from someone in Víss' family, don't they?"

"Yes. From Tera Amare, the Blind Seeress. Fimbulpur's one and only pony apprentice. Tera herself had received her eyes from Sváss'ver millennia ago, a great Sage of Fate in her own right, and Fimbulpur's late wife."

"By receiving the eyes, do you mean...?"

"Oh no! Not like that. How to explain? Sorta like receiving the life in those eyes. The methods are unknown to me, but I imagine it was done through some form of magic ritual. Tera still has eyes, but she's perfectly blind in both of them."

"Thank goodness, I was starting to get a little squeamish." Cozy exhaled with a weak laugh. "But why bring up the eyes, Twilight?"

"They're very important to this whole mystery, Cozy. They're the only innately abnormal ability that Víss' race possess. By all metrics and standards that we can measure with our understanding, their eyes are not even magical in nature. Their race has no magic whatsoever. But it's thanks to their ability to learn about the true heart in others that makes them the best suited race to record the world's history. It's not like they're omnipresent. They're perfectly normal creatures otherwise, and like any historian, they document history by taking personal accounts from ponies or creatures who witnessed those events themselves. So do you have any idea how valuable being able to discern the truth in those accounts can be? Otherwise, you would have a world history written in embellishments, lies, and half-truths at best. This ability of theirs is also what makes Víss so particularly Great at his job, with a capital G. And it is why he was irreplaceable."

"At being an overseer in Equestria's royal court?"

"His job was more like a... International Arbiter. For the full decade that he worked with us, he has been solving international disputes amongst nations, not just for the sake of peace within Equestria. He has been putting out fires that would never have been possible to quell had he not been at the helm. His lineage granted him respect and peerage. His eyes granted him the power of knowledge and truth. And his personality left little room else to question him." Cozy chuckled to herself as she tried picturing the usually stoic Víss intimidating dignitaries into submission. "But..." Twilight got serious as she lingered on that word. "As you already know, Víss hated his position."

"Why? He had all the political power in the world, no? By the sounds of it."

"Does he strike you as the type to enjoy said power, Cozy?"

"..." She was silent at this. The answer was obvious.

"He has his own reasons. And those same reasons are why he has kept you in the dark for so long. He should be the one to tell you why. There would be no point in finding out from anyone other than him."

"Thank you for telling me all this, Princess."

"Don't think anything of it. This had to happen eventually. And now is the best time for it, since he plans to leave without saying goodbye."

"I'm done running away, Princess. I'll follow him to the ends of the world if I must. I'm not ready to say goodbye. I still need him."

"And he needs you, Cozy."

The Pegasus mare nodded, her determination renewed and evolved.

If you truly desire it from the bottom of your heart...

The trek had been relatively short. Víss didn't need to make his way to his home again to do what he needed to. He only had to be away from prying eyes, which was an easy thing to accomplish within the Everfree. The tricky part was finding suitable soil to etch into the ground the runic symbols necessary for the specific ritual he wanted to perform, and a clearing big enough to house it. He found it next to a shallow pond in the middle of a circular clearing of trees that seemed strangely peaceful and scenic, despite it being a part of the forest.

The ritual circle he was creating bore a striking resemblance to the one Cozy had used when they first met. The only difference lay in the runic configuration within it, which spelled "ᚢᚴᛏᚱᛅᛋᛁᛚ" along its borders. Once finished, he sighed and sat silently to look at the grey sky. In the middle of his contemplation, he felt a tiny raindrop land at the tip of his nose.

Perfect, he thought. The rain would wash the circle away after he was gone, so no one would be able to stumble upon it and misuse it.

From his cloak, he took out the stringed letter he had received a week before. He looked at it with a powerful longing, and proceeded to stow it back into his cape. He took one long breath after he was done, and finally mustered the courage to step onto the circle. At its center, he dug his hoof into the soil to write the final symbol required to make this ritual circle work. He closed his eyes, finished that symbol, and just like that, he was whisked away from the world of ponies, and into the Realms Between.

Until The End Of Time

The Realms Between are a strange thing. Something that perhaps, if you yourself ever visited, you'd never be able to make perfect sense of. It was a reflection of the world you know, but not. Does that make sense? Imagine everything and nothing all at the same time, blended together into a surreal smoothie. Like any optical illusion, your eyes and your brain try to reconstruct the nothingness and everythingness all around you into something comprehensible. It is a survival instinct for all living things, as the world around you was only ever a result of your perception of it. Without eyes, your world would have no shape. Without ears, it would have no sound. And in that sense, for the Realms Between who are in a state of constant flux between the everything and the nothing, your eyes and brain fill in the spatial and sensory gap with illusions of your own world. Mostly because that was the only "world" you've ever known.

Perhaps if you traveled to more worlds, more realms, more realities... perhaps only then would you start to get a true understanding of the Realms Between and the "everythingness" described. And perhaps, only when you seize to be entirely yourself, you'll start to get a better understanding of what that "nothingness" is too.

But for the purposes of this story, let's look at what Víss ør-grandr saw with his eyes. To him, the Realms Between where a nostalgic sight. It was a forest of otherworldly, mythical properties. Many of the thin tall trees shone and sparkled in the perpetual light of dusk, all with a golden yellow glow. They made for a whimsical sight, as the light that bounced off their reflective surface illusion the sense that they were all coursing with power. The white puffy mist that permeated this forest further drove that sense home, as it was thick and low to the ground enough to feel as if it was moving with purpose, obfuscating the soil beneath and making the whole area look like divine ground. Even the golden leaves from these golden trees fell through the air slowly from the dense air, putting on an ethereal display for any who traversed through it.

There was a pressure to this area unlike any other, and it had a way to unnerve those within who were not natives to this forest.

Stranger yet, the flora within the forest was not all uniform like Víss had expected it to be. He had spent a majority of his life within the Realms Between, and never imagined that it would change for him. Despite being witness to new places and new realms and new worlds, his mind was fixated on that golden forest for one reason or another. But yet...

Some of the trees were strangely thicker and more traditionally brown than he remembered. Some of the flowers that poked out of the mist were more blue and magical than he envisioned. And some of the canopy was far more green than was possible for the eternally gold leaves to make. Even the air felt... musky. Damp. Wet. Like that of a bog.

Was the Everfree Forest melding with his vision of that mythical one from his memories? Perhaps his time in Equestria had really affected him that deeply... He knew he missed Cozy a whole lot, but he never expected to grow fond of the forest itself.

As if that weren't enough for the unending surprises, as he traveled through the Realms Between, he began to see more reminiscent things from Equestria. Ponyville's cots and houses nestled and tucked themselves neatly into the corners of the forest. The soft soiled ground shifted to the stony dirt roads of that familiar little hamlet. And were those... the half-built hallways of Twilight's Castle of Friendship? Surely they must have been. As if cut in half, their crystal dissection lay in the middle of the forest, decorated with Twilight's old things and even the stained glass windows the Princess had personally commissioned.

With one startled realization, Víss sighed. He lacked sleep if he was this slow to pick up on it. He closed his eyes and focused his mind on the ground. As he did so, the mist beneath his hooves began to disappear to show the ground. The ground itself was becoming like that of the ground near the pond that he had used just earlier from the Everfree Forest. Without needing to physically write the runes himself, the circle and the symbols began to appear by themselves the more the elk concentrated his mind. Once he was sure it was done, he opened his eyes. He looked all around him trying to spot something out of the ordinary in that now strangely jumbled up Realm Between. His patience wearing thin, he decided to drop the veil of obscurity.

"You shouldn't have followed me, Cozy. I'm not going to tell you twice, get over here this instant so I can send you back to Equestria. This is no place for you." His voice carried anger and annoyance, clear as day.

After a bit of silence, finally the surrounding trees shook to signal to the elk her general location. "No." Is all that was replied back to him.

"You foolish girl..." Víss gritted his teeth, now making his emotions plainly obvious. When you haven't slept in days, haven't eaten much at all, and are deeply ailing emotionally, it tends to wear down your guard and your patience. "Cozy, for once in your life listen to me!"

"Huh? What's that? What are you talking about, Víss? How can I listen if you've never even told me anything?"

"This is not a game, child!" Víss... was losing this game of wits.

"I never thought it was. And I'm not a kid anymore."

"THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. YOU CANNOT FOLLOW ME, COZY!!" That was the loudest Víss had ever yelled in years. His voice broke as he said it, seemingly choking on his own emotion.

"And who decided that?" Cozy finally appeared before him, flying down from the canopy she'd been hiding in. She was near to the point of breaking down herself, but she was holding it all in, trying to be as calm as possible. "Why don't I get a choice?" Her body began to tremble. "Is it because of what I did?" Víss' expression softened as he witnessed the tears streaming from her face. Cozy was not bothering wiping away her eyes at all anymore. "Am I unworthy of one?"

"It's... not that..." Víss struggled to reply.

"Why am I the only one who doesn't get to know about you?" She began to move towards him.

"I just wanted..." Víss began to move back inadvertently as if trying to hide his shame. With his focus gone, the circle was now slowly disappearing back into the foggy ground. His eyes shifted nervously away from Cozy's direct gaze.

"Wanted what, huh? Say it. If you'd only said what you really wanted, I would've granted it. Even if you had to leave for who knows how long, I would've allowed it. You've done. SO. MUCH. for me, Víss. If you didn't want me by your side, I would've left you on your own forever, no matter how much it'd hurt me. When you grew so sad after that letter, I thought maybe, just this once, I could've done something for you instead."

With the ground now completely covered by that misty veil, Víss took a tumble as the rocky terrain from Ponyville's roads jutted out to meet his careless steps. He found his retreat cut off as his weakened body was finding it difficult to get up again. He could do nothing but look to the ground in his shame, as Cozy stopped right in front of him, looking down at him now that her new adult height allowed for it. This was the one and only time she'd ever been in this position. Cozy had only ever looked up to Víss, metaphorically and even quite literally. But now, it was like she was looking down at a broken husk.

"..." Víss was silent, unable to respond.

"Well, will you tell me now that you're like this? Now that I'm here, wherever this is? Will you finally tell me the whole truth, without masking it with cryptic nonsense?"

"..." More silence.

"I overheard your conversation with Twilight. Did you really think I have the capacity to hate you, Víss? After everything you've done for me? Did you honestly believe I would live my life happy without you in it? If you just up and vanished on me like that, what makes you think that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life looking for you, worrying about you?"

"..."

"Why won't you saying anything...? Why is it so difficult for you to tell me the truth...?"

Silence, once more.

Cozy had changed considerably in that last week. She was forced to. Her worry had been eating her alive that whole time, and now that she had the opportunity to smite it down, she was determined to never let it get to her again. If it had only been a week prior, if this had all happened without her knowledge, it wouldn't have tempered her resolve to this extent. She wouldn't have been able to stand before him and endure his silence. Her patience would've broken. Her sadness would've made her run away. Now though, she was going to wait in that silence until the end of time if she had to.

Thankfully for her, she didn't need to.

"I just wanted you to be free. I'm... not strong enough. Not smart enough. I can't protect you if you're with me... If I fell to my selfishness and kept you by my side like I've wanted, I'd be taking away your freedom for good." He finally responded, his voice quiet and grim. "What can I say to get you to return to Equestria? What can I say to make you hate me, so that you may live a life of peace as a normal pony?"

"Nothing." Cozy responded with no hesitation.

"Right... I thought that would be the case. That's why I kept you from the truth, all this time."

"I want answers, Víss. No more hiding it."

He nodded and finally turned to look at Cozy, who had seated herself next to him on the ground where he still lay.

"Time has a nasty way of bending the truth. I thought I would never save another soul, until I met you. And just like how I thought I would never agree with my grandfather, here I am, returning to him."

"The Great Sage Fimbulpur, right?" Cozy took this time to tell Víss all that she learned from Chrys and Twilight. "What happened between the two of you to become estranged?"

"It wasn't a fight, if that's what you're wondering. My grandfather and I both agreed that I should go and live my life as I wanted, away from our duty as Chroniclers. You see, because of my mother and father, I had grown to hate my race. As a result, I hated my duty. My grandfather was the only beacon of hope in my life, since he embodied everything good about what we did. But taking up my duty of writing the world's stories was too painful and difficult for me to endure. It brought up... old memories I'd long since buried. And so, at my grandfather's suggestion, I abandoned it."

"Chroniclers, you mean the Sages of Fate?" Víss nodded to Cozy's question.

"That's what Equestrians call us. The truth is, Cozy, we are not from Equus at all. We come from here, the Realms Between."

"From what I've been hearing and with Twilight calling you outsiders, I figured there was a chance of you being from somewhere very far away. Although I never expected something like an otherworlder. But now that I'm seeing this place, I have no choice but to believe it. Where is, here, anyway?"

"Not even we know the full mysteries of this place. This is just the birthplace for our race. Although I myself was born elsewhere. You can imagine this whole plane as a giant network of threads, connected to all worlds, realms, and realities. We call this place ᚢᚴᛏᚱᛅᛋᛁᛚ in the language that we speak of Younger Futhark. Pronounced uktrasil, in Ponyish. Translated, you would write it as... Yggdrasil. For all intents and purposes, we call it the 'Realms Between'. Though we originated from this place, most of our race make their lives out in the many different worlds. My mother, father, and I all come from a world known as 'Earth', a now magic-less world ruled by a people who know themselves as mankind."

"Earth... You said something similar when we first met. When you were changing the ritual circle. Something about an entire world being destroyed once..."

"That's right."

"What... happened to that world? Why did it become magic-less?" Cozy shuddered at the thought, since it hit so close to home. "Does it have to do with your parents and hatred for your own race?"

"You've always been incredibly sharp, Cozy." Víss patted her on the head, pride visible on his face. "Indeed, my parents are to blame for the state of Earth. Their actions resulted in Ragnarok, what we call 'The end of the gods'. But they alone do not hold all the blame. Many, many of our kind aided them. They committed true atrocities to secure a place for themselves in the world. With their innate power, long life, and 'divine providence', they influenced the many different races that once were known to peacefully co-exist. Oftentimes, for material or political wealth, they would purposely instigate fights amongst them. Known on Earth as the 'Norns', and acting often as soothsayers, prophets, and even gods at one point, they would trick adversaries into bloody wars simply by telling them of a 'future' or a 'fate' that was crafted to make it sound like their victory was assured. With their eyes, making them believe lies was simple enough. Or sometimes it was even simpler than that, as they would act like divine messengers and needed only give the different races moral and righteous justification for pillaging their neighbors. But it was never righteous or moral. Nothing justifies the loss of life."

"Víss..." Cozy placed a gentle hoof onto him. This time, Víss did not move away as he let it comfort him.

"I spent a large part of my life trying to save innocent people from the horrors that my kind were bringing about, whether they were of the magical races like the fae, or the humans of mankind. At one point, I could not stand it anymore. That darkness was too much for me to bare and I escaped to the Realms Between for a long, long part of my life. By the time I returned to Earth, magic was gone almost in its entirety. The magical races had disappeared, migrated with the help of my grandfather and grandmother. Ragnarok had already come and gone. Thankfully for mankind, they were not strictly dependent on magic, and so they outlived that catastrophe. But Earth was forever scarred, and the same could not be said for those of my kind, who were stuck in an impoverished, ailing and hungry world full of resentful souls who did not take kindly to our race's machinations. There was no point in worshiping supposedly divine beasts who fed you to a cruel fate at a whim."

"Then your parents...?"

"I don't know, Cozy. I wonder that same thing even now. After all they've done, I can only think that they reaped what they sowed."

"That's... horrible."

"Equestria is pretty benevolent in comparison, don't you think? Even in its worst, saddest history, Equus remains a far more peaceful and innocent place." Víss said to attempt to change the mood. "But now that I've told you this, Cozy. I hope you now understand why I hate who I am."

"But you did nothing wrong! You even tried to save lives instead of hurt them...!"

"Tell that to those who lost everything because of us." Víss expression was one of pure fury. And this anger was all directed at himself... For having runaway and let it happen freely. Cozy held her silence, not sure how to respond. She herself had almost caused a cataclysm of that kind of magnitude. Even until this day, she had not forgiven herself for what she'd almost wrought. So she understood perfectly what Víss was feeling in that moment. "I'm sorry, Cozy. You're right. My grandfather and grandmother always tried to tell me the same thing. But it always had a habit of falling on deaf ears." Víss proceeded to unravel the red letter he had received a week ago. He held it aloft for Cozy to see it.

"That letter...? You seemed so sad ever since you received it. What happened to you, Víss?"

"I was reminded of my duty in the worst way." He laughed sadly, trying to play it off. "This is a poem. It was written by my grandfather. It's a history and an account of the one life that we are not allowed to write about, until its end."

Víss hiccuped the sadness that had erupted from his throat as silent tears punctuated his troubled face, streaming from everywhere it could allow, even past his nose. When he opened his mouth again to explain, he could not. His teeth moved up and down in the air, and if they'd been together at that time, they would've chattered. It was not a pretty sight. Life is not always picturesque and photogenic. Crying your heart out is an ugly and unsightly thing. But when someone is willing to overlook it all just to comfort you, that's how you know they truly do care about you. Cozy wrapped her forelegs and wings around him in that moment in the most genuine hug she had ever given anyone. Skinship was so rare for her nowadays, and she couldn't remember the last time she had shared a hug with Víss. Since their meeting, almost. Her hug was tight, afraid to let go, half believing she would lose him if she loosened her grip.

"I... should've been ready for it." Víss struggled to say. "The signs were there. I thought I could handle it." His whole body trembled. "Little by little, I watched his mind slowly disappear when I was with him. When he suggested that I live on my own by running away from my duty, I knew... I knew that he was trying to protect me from more than just my past. He was trying to protect me from the future." His face dug deeper into Cozy's hug. "And... the worst part... Is that I was too afraid. I accepted it to save myself the pain of having to watch him slowly leave."

His whole body became quite still as he seemed to accept his sadness. Slowly he tugged at Cozy to pull away from their hug, which she reluctantly abided to after a while. He wiped at his eyes and nose to compose himself.

He coughed until he composed his voice as well. "I want you to understand Cozy, so let me drop the rhetoric. My race is long-lived. But we are not eternal. For my grandfather, it was only a matter of time. When that time has come, we slowly lose all semblance of our mind. Think of it like senility until it progresses to such a point that we are entirely gone. At such a point, our race has had only one unbreakable rule about what we write for the histories of the world. That rule is that we are not allowed to write about any of our own kind or of our involvement in those stories. That is why the wisest of our race found it important for us to remain as bystanders for the most part. The only time that rule changes is when our time has come. Only then are we allowed to write a personal account of ourselves. Be it our history in an autobiography, or as my grandfather chose, as a poem. Me receiving that letter was proof that he was gone, as it was a poem about himself that he wrote... to me. When my grandfather showed signs of senility ten years ago, he suggested that I move to Equestria where my grandmother lived until her final days, and where his apprentice still resides. I loved him so much, I couldn't bare to witness his degradation. I ran away like a coward. From my duty. From him. And I was doing the same to you, thinking that I was protecting you from it all."

"Then I am a coward too." She smiled at him sadly, understanding his pain. "I know what that must have felt like. I did the same, not even a week ago. I'd never seen you so sad before, Víss. It was painfully hard to watch my role model and my family break down like that. I couldn't get myself to visit you in that entire week because of my cowardice and stupid pride. But I don't want to run away from you anymore." Cozy placed her forehead to the side of Víss' neck.

"Neither do I..." He said, resting his cheek to her head. "There's something else I have to tell you, Cozy... I never told you anything because I wanted to protect you from sharing our fate."

"Hmm?"

"I took you in all that time ago with the pretense of making you my apprentice. In the same way my grandfather did with Tera Amare. It was the only way that I could protect you at the time, because the races of Equestria believed they would be obtaining another Sage if they allowed you to go with me. They stood to gain more than they could lose. You see, if I were to truly take you in as an apprentice, you..." There was a hesitation in his voice, afraid to say it.

"What is it Víss?"

"Well, you stop being a pony. You become something closer to us. You will adopt our long life span and our duty as a Chronicler. I... wanted you to remain a normal pony. A long life is an incredible burden. It's several lifetimes of uncertainties and painful memories, watching as your friends and family disappear from you as you watch the world change for the better or worse. As a Chronicler, you'd be burdened with a long and arduous task that you might not want, with no real power to gain from it unlike Equestria's alicorns. It's likely you would've lost any form of magic within you, making you unable to ever fly again. It's more than I could've ever asked from you. Too large a sacrifice to expect from you. And so I silently kept you as an apprentice in name only."

"I'd get to live as long as you?"

"That's right, Cozy. We age much more slowly than all other races. Mentally, you will remain the same for several centuries if you were to change to us now. I am now two thousand five hundred years old myself, and I feel like I'm not much older than if you took away the two zeroes from that number. By the time you feel like you're in your thirties, nothing will remain the same of the world you know as Equus. That much I can guarantee."

"So where do I sign up?"

Víss sighed, but now with a visible smile on his face. "Are you just not listening right now?"

"Of course I am. So what if I lose everyone and everything changes? Do you even have any idea of how I feel living in Equestria now?"

"How's that then, Cozy?"

"I don't know. I just don't feel like I connect with everyone. Ponies are far too innocent and happy-go-lucky. Everything they talk about feels like pointless nonsense to me, as if they can't see the bigger picture. Frivolity is the word I'm looking for here? I feel like... an outsider. Ever since I met you, actually. I even like rainy days more than I do sunny ones because of you."

"Maybe you've been hanging around me too often." He laughed for the first time in weeks. A gruffy and worn-out laugh, since he rarely did it. But a laugh all the same. "Still, this is a serious thing to consider Cozy. You might think that you want this now, but it is as I said, time has a way of bending the truth."

"If I get to live multiple lifetimes by your side, I don't think time would matter much then." She said with a cheeky smile.

"I hope you don't eat your words a few millennia into the future." He smiled right back at her.

The both of them helped each other up to continue their walk across the Realm Between. What once was a moody mess between two forests with some scattered architecture here and there, now became a much more pleasant atmosphere. Orbs of light seemed to float down from on high, almost if signaling to Víss how Cozy was feeling. These motes reminded him of a soothing spell that a certain friend of Cozy's often used.

"I still have so many questions, Víss." Cozy mentioned along the way.

"Shoot. We've got a ways to go still."

"Well, for starters, what did you mean by Ragnarok, the end of the gods?"

"Do you know what gods are, Cozy?"

"No, not really."

"In almost all worlds, the gods are recognized as forces of nature. Fate and Destiny is often one of them. Although different peoples and places will imagine earthly names and entities to embody them, with many cultures still having multiple different deities for the same god, they all at least recognize that Fate is a power beyond their control. It is why we are often seen as Divine Beasts wherever we go, since 'fate' is something that we laud. Another such god for all worlds is Magic. Magic is often depicted in the form of a woman due to magic's connections with life and willpower. Usually seen as a pragmatic goddess that gives and takes as it pleases, since anyone no matter their intentions can wield it for any purpose. Our race is believed to be descendants of the branch of Fate, because of our pension for recording history and because we lack magic altogether."

"How can that be? Are your ritual circles not magic?"

"Well, while we can't produce any magic ourselves, it's not like we can't use it either. Those circles are not magic, actually. But they do use magic. They take that magic from their surroundings to manipulate it into spells. That's what the runic configurations are for. We're long-lived, so we've researched all sorts of ways to use magic without being able to make it ourselves."

"Ah, I see. Guess that does make sense. But why can you use magic with the circles to come to this place, but every other form of magic just doesn't work on you?"

"That's... a pretty good question. Huh..."

"Hoho, did I stump the know-it-all?" She nudged him in the rib.

"Hmm. Can't say for sure. The secrets of the universe are much bigger than us, no matter how high we think we are on the chain. It's likely that the gods might have an agreement with us? But this is all conjecture. The gods are not really thinking, feeling beings like many picture them to be. If there is some specific interaction there, it's probably more like a universal rule of the greater cosmos, like how gravity is."

"That's a lot to think about. It's kinda hurting my head. So what happened on Earth that caused Ragnarok anyway?"

"Like I mentioned, I wasn't there for it when it happened. I don't know. Earth became... dark. No Magic, not even Fate. Even the last of the three gods, Harmony, has disappeared from it. The surviving peoples were no longer controlled by a destiny, and could no longer influence the world on a magical scale. In a sense... Earth became truly free. The people there have all the freedom in the world to be as cruel or as benevolent as they want. And I fear to find a hellscape in its place from the utter annihilation that freedom might cause, once I return there."

"Whoa, wait! You're actually thinking of returning to Earth after all that?! Is this what you were telling Twilight at the castle?!"

"You heard that bit too, huh?" Víss sighed. "Do you remember what I said when we first met?"

"Vaguely."

"I mentioned Ragnarok at that time too." Cozy hit her hooves together as she remembered it from his say so. "I fear the same thing is going to happen to Equestria sometime soon. The signs have been there for a while, just like they did when it was beginning to happen to Earth. I've been ignoring them in my complacency and fear, running away from it like I had everything else in my life... But my grandfather's passing made me realize that I can't just stand around forever and do nothing. He made me realize that if I really did care about you, about saving you, then I would have to fight it. I need to return, so I can find out what really happened in Ragnarok, and so I can understand how to stop it for Equestria. I thought all I wanted was to protect you and your world, but now that you're here, I'm realizing that I can't do this alone."

"This isn't just my world we're talking about, Víss. This is yours too. We have a home there. We have friends. Family. And you will always have me, so please let me help you in this." Cozy put her hooves onto his, which Víss gladly took.

"Thank you, Cozy. But I warn you, Earth might be incredibly dangerous now. There's no guarantee we'll even make it back. With Magic gone, our return circle might not ever have enough power to get us back. I'd planned to say goodbye to my grandfather first before heading there."

"I don't care about the danger. Now I'm just mad that you planned to do this alone without ever giving me a proper explanation and a goodbye."

"Sorry..."

"That's better." She harrumphed in the sassiest way she could muster. "But then, if you think that Earth's loss of the gods is a sad thing, why did you look like you were regretting saving Equestria's magic when you stopped me all that time ago?"

"Because for the longest time, I thought Equus' Magic and Fate were as bad as Earth's. I thought they were the same cruel and careless ones that brought Earth to ruin and allowed our kind wreak havoc as they pleased. Pony cutiemarks were especially egregious. Branded by the thing you loved to do and were destined to become good at. It felt like a twisted joke on all that I knew to be good, because yours was in the shape of a rook... But..."

"But?"

"The more I learned about Equus, the more I changed my mind. Especially after I met you. Fate there... seems to truly care. And it seems impossible to me! No other world has gods that have the capacity to care. But then... You've all been protected for so long. Not with false peace, but by some truly benevolent force of nature that, despite having to create harsh lessons on occasion, always turn out for the better. And so when my grandfather passed, I thought... 'Is this why my grandmother and him chose Equestria as their new home all that time ago?'. And the more I thought on it, the more I realized that was the case! And then... I felt I had to protect it. To save you."

"But I don't need protection."

"Well yeah, I realize that now too. I'm learning a lot lately, honestly!" They smiled at each other again.

"Your grandfather and grandmother, what were they like?" Cozy asked gently, wishing to hear it since Víss seemed to take great joy in talking about them.

"My grandfather was the wisest of us all, and if it had not been for his departure from Earth, it's likely he could've changed history there. But he was the one who suggested never to interfere with the stories of the world, and so I'm not sure if he would've put a hoof forward to stop Ragnarok. My grandmother on the other side... she was by far the kindest of us all. She had such a strong love and curiosity for all worlds. Even her name, Svass'ver, translates into "A love for the world". She adored Equus and would often speak of it fondly. But I don't remember much of her, as she passed on much earlier than grandfather."

"Your names translate to something? What is yours and your grandfather's?"

"Funny you should ask, Fimbulpur means..." He paused for dramatic effect. "Great sage!" He laughed as Cozy's face grew confused. "Well, it's a close approximation that just makes it sound like Great Sage. He told me that the moniker people used for him just kinda stuck after he told this to others, and eventually, he grew old and wise enough to fit into it with grace."

"It's very fitting though, from everything I've heard of him."

"Quite."

"So then what about your name?" Víss coughed, a bit embarrassed. Cozy snickered to herself. "What's this, what's this? Something wrong, Víss ør-grandr?"

"N-no. My grandfather named me, so I wear it with pride." He cleared his throat while rubbing at his coat anxiously. "It uh. It means 'Honest' and 'Wise'."

He scrunched his face while enduring the loud guffaw's of the Pegasus mare besides him, waiting patiently while she got it out of her system.

"No yeah, I see it. But you're not going to tell me that's why you take such a hard stance on always trying to tell the truth, right?"

"..." The silence made the laughing continue for a while longer.

"Okay, okay, I'm done." Cozy said as she huffed the last few laughs out of her. "One last question Víss..."

"What's up?"

"I heard about it from Twilight, about your job in Equestria. You were an important Arbiter. You had so much political power. Why did you despise it then?"

"It... made me feel like my parents. They had similar jobs on Earth, but they misused that power all for their own gains. It's not that I hated it, but I was just scared."

"Scared?"

"Of myself. If I had the power to cast judgement like that... what were the chances that me becoming my parents was just one misguided ruling away? And if you were ever threatened by someone... would I really not abuse it to save you? I felt like it was a necessary evil I had to undertake."

"I see..." Cozy walked closer beside him so that she could almost lean on him if she wanted, feeling grateful for everything he'd done for her. "I don't say it enough, Víss. Thank you."

"You've been awfully honest this entire time, Cozy."

"Whose fault do you think that is?" She said while hiding her face.

Their walk down the mixed forests of the Realm Between were a pleasant jaunt as Víss described to her the strange works of why the realm was manifesting itself in this way for them. On occasion, they'd see something from the many locales that Víss had seen, which he would purposely manifest by concentrating so that he could give a visual reference of mankind's inventions and architecture, like when he would create a still room of a human home. Cozy spent that time trying to replicate her own mental images within the Realm Between with mixed success, as she was brand new to the intricacies of it and could hardly make a few things appear from memory alone.

But there were things that were beginning to appear despite being almost entirely lost from both their memories. For Víss, his subconscious was creating the ruined burned villages of mankind's innocents and several desecrated grounds that magical creatures on Earth used to once roam around. The haunting images of his past.

For Cozy, she would occasionally picture Twilight's School of Friendship, where she had spent that entire time backstabbing others. It would remind her of her own childish cruelty. One particular building that they saw far away almost hidden by the trees, was a particular generic house. A large house nothing like the homes of Ponyville. Just by catching a slight glimpse of it, Cozy's eyes had widened and her head had dropped to the floor.

"Want to talk about it, Cozy?"

"What's there to say? Can't your eyes guess what I'm thinking?"

"Only what's on the surface. It helps to voice your concerns."

Cozy clicked her tongue, playfully pretending to be annoyed. "Okay, if you must know. That was my old home. The orphanage I lived in."

"Did you ever meet your parents?"

Cozy shook her head in response. "But if they were anything like the younger me, or even anything like your parents, maybe I was better off that way." She tried to laugh it off, to no avail as Víss' expression remained concerned. "The oldest caretaker was like a mom to me. I eventually did something that ruined that. I ran away and never returned. Didn't even think much of it, until the point I met you. I heard Twilight mutter to herself when she found out about what I did... she said, 'Where did I go wrong with her?'. Almost word for word what that caretaker did too. It... broke me. But then, you put me back together again. And I'm better than okay now."

"Do you still think about it, Cozy?"

"Occasionally. Mostly about wanting to go apologize for what I did. But I don't want to reconnect with them, if you're wondering. I've already found the home I was looking for all that time ago."

"Well once we return, how about we drop in for a quick apology then?" Cozy nodded with a large smile across her face.

After a mild trek more in blissful silence after the two had aired out all the things they wished they had said so long ago, they were finally met by a different view of places and things that were not from either of their memories. Giant gothic clock towers peaked out of the ground like bony fingers. Whole cathedrals twice the size of Canterlot in its entirety seemed to span the skies, as if hanging from the clouds themselves. Even their path had been replaced by a large open hallway ornately decorated by strange symbols along its sandstone walls, illuminated only by golden scones burning with a slow flame uniformly at its sides. It was a sign that they were getting close.

"Cozy, there is one last thing you should know. Being before my grandfather will be an extreme experience."

"Before your grandfather? Isn't he supposed to be... gone?" She tried to word carefully.

Víss shook his head. "His mind is entirely gone, but his body will persist for several more years to come. This creates... an issue. He will be unable to control the power of his eyes. Standing before him will be the most agonizing thing you will experience. It will be like having your very soul torn apart as his eyes peer into the very depths of it."

"His body can still act without a mind?"

"Yes. The loss of mind is not the loss of brain functionality. It is why we can see his memories still filling the space of the Realm Between. He has been reduced down to the most primal instincts of what we are. Cognitively, he is now less capable than an animal, and far, far more instinctual. So ready yourself.

Cozy gulped as she walked behind Víss, becoming increasingly more afraid as they walked towards the source of the ever changing structures and things that they could see making the Realm Between an absolutely surreal place. Then, suddenly without notice, the ground gave out before them as they plunged into the misty ground beneath them. Cozy felt like she were falling through a sea of clouds, trying to beat her wings as hard as she could, but they were not giving her any amount of lift within that dense and heavy fog. She would've lost her head in panic had it not been for Víss' foreleg and body wrapping around her. He was yelling through the rush of wind to keep calm. Finally, they softly landed upon a solid cloudy mass that bounced them forward into a clearing where the mist had dispelled. All around them where the tall, ancient trees of the forest much like the one Víss had imagined for the Realm Between. The only difference was that these looked, much, MUCH older. All shrouded by a ceiling of mist that permeated all around the walls and ground. One tree at the center of this area was otherworldly in its size. So much of it was shrouded by the mist, but just by the scale and bend of its trunk, one could imagine spending days trying to circle it, and still get only half way around its circumference. Strangely, this tree was not made out of any kind of wood either of them could recognize. If you looked closely enough, and closer still, it didn't seem like a tree at all.

Something at the sight of it was giving Cozy a strange sense of deja'vu. Before she could try to think on it, suddenly, she felt an immense wave of pressure push her from all directions. Her head felt like it would split open in that instant as she tried to fight back against it. Beads of a cold sweat formed all along her body wherever her sweat could manifest. She had felt this same feeling before too. From Víss' stare when they'd first met.

She forced her gaze upwards from where it was being forced to the ground to get a good look at what was causing it. And there they were. Two impossibly yellow eyes that burned like fire to gaze upon. They were brandished by an old, old elk, whose white mustache and beard connected with each other to hide his mouth, and whose length reached all the way to the floor where his body had permanently fallen to the ground. His tail was long, long and silky. Nothing like an Elk's tail. More akin to that of a pony's. It draped across the floor like a white river of strings. His coat was mostly brown, but due to his age, it was dotted and overrun by white strands all over it like an old dog's, making a beautiful tapestry of it. His hoof nails along with his antlers were so blindingly white. They seemed to have a highly reflective sheen that made them them glow in the sunlight.

The true stand-out thing about this elk lay in his antlers. To call them massive was an understatement. He looked more like a tree than he did an elk. They branched so erratically and beautifully in all directions into the sky above him. All along wherever there was space, there where sheets of small red paper dangling from red strings, identical to the poem that Víss had received. And jutting along his antlers replacing that reflective sheen where black runic markings in the same language that Víss had written in, carved into them.

Fimbulpur, The Great Sage. A race of divine beasts, was it? That moniker never seemed so apt than it did at the sight of him. He looked a world different than he did from the photo that Chrys had shown him. The size of his antlers alone was massively different and seemed unmanageable. Was there some form of magic that could obfuscate them? Shorten them perhaps? How would he move through a forest without them snagging on everything otherwise? They were impossibly large, and they were likely the reason that the old elk was not making any attempts to move. Too heavy for him to even get up off the ground...

"Cozy... are you... alright?" Víss managed to say in struggling grunts.

Strangely, Cozy was alright. After she lost herself at the sight of him, returning her focus to her own body seemed perfectly fine. That pressure was no longer pushing against her, despite those eyes trying to bore holes into her soul. She got up from the ground where she'd been forcibly knelt, and began to make her way over the aged elk.

"Cozy...?" Víss was bewildered by this, not understanding how Cozy was being unaffected despite him being bombarded by a kiloton of force holding him back.

The Pegasus mare was moving over to him, as if being called. Like a moth to a flame, she could not break sight with those fiercely brilliantly gold eyes. Then, not even inches away, she felt her senses return to her. She hadn't even a second to be startled when the misty ground beneath her gave way to the sight of an enormous runic circle across the ground just short of reaching Víss himself.

The circle immediately began to glow with a blinding white light, illuminating its numerous letters. It wasn't written solely in one language. It had many, many languages. Some dead, some still very much in use. Cozy even recognized Ponyish as she quickly scanned it. But she hadn't had the time to read it before what the circle was meant to do, went off.

For a brief moment, she felt blind. A white light permeated every corner of her vision and it disoriented her to no end. It felt reminiscent to getting a cutiemark or waking up at the first light of day being right in one's face. But as her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, she could finally see all the things around her. The first thing she saw was the ground, who had been covered up by the mist again. Looking further down at her own body and later her chest, she immediately startled at the sight of a peach-colored fire at the very center of her abdomen. She tried swatting at it with her hoof to put it out, but ended up just gut-punching herself in the end. She tried rolling on the ground for a bit before checking to see if it was still there, and this time, as she wondered how it hadn't gone out, she realized it didn't feel hot at all. Despite it being attached to her. Or, was it inside of her? How strange.

Finally she turned her gaze upwards to see the things around her, and was met by the greyed out eyes of a blind, old elk. She fell backwards in her surprise as they stared at her silently, and then she noticed another fire in this elk too. It was such a gentle and beautiful shade of white, but it was small. And somehow, she noticed that it was getting smaller. It would take time, but she imagined that it would go out soon almost intrinsically.

"Am I...? Going crazy..? Did he... really just plan this whole thing? Even with his mind gone? Grandpa..."

Cozy turned to look at the younger elk, whose golden, healthy, and glowing fire seemed to teeter from side to side, as if expressing sadness. "What... just happened, Víss? Why am I seeing a fire inside of us?"

"It's because you're now officially my family. My grandfather has given you a Sage's blessing. I... was still on the fence about giving you our duty. But it seems my grandfather chose for us."

"Is this what you can see too, Víss? And Chrys as well?"

"Yes. Those fires are the manifestations of our soul. Tell me, how does my fire look to you right now?"

"It looks... conflicted. Sad."

Víss turned to his grandfather and knelt before him to get on his level. Without the power of his eyes, the elk could not impose his pressure on anyone, and so Víss had no issue in doing this. Despite staring into his eyes, the old elk did not react to this. Whimsically, it looked down to the ground, now reduced to a blind, immobile animal.

"Grandpa... I... took your words to heart. I saved someone again. And I... realized what you meant about what you told me when I left your side." Cozy stayed quiet as she realized that Víss was now stating his final goodbye. "I met someone I really care about. I'm sure you'd like her too." He was taking in a deep breath before every delivered line, trying his best to stay composed. "I'm ready to take on my role finally, as I'm sure you'd be happy about. And I just wanted to say..." His face twisted into a powerful scornful face full of regret. "That I'm so, so sorry I wasn't able to say goodbye to you in your final hours. You did so much for me. You kept me from despairing for so long. And yet... I didn't give you so much as a letter in all these years. I'm a terrible person, and an even worse grandson. But I'm here now, and I hope you can hear my words, wherever you've gone. I throw the words you gave me back at you! Know! Know that I will continue! To love you always! Until the end of time!"

Víss took out the stringed poem he had received and had stashed away ever since showing it to Cozy. He proceeded to tie it around the aged elk's left antler, where there was a perfect little place for it to hang freely. Then, to Cozy's surprise, he took out another identical piece of paper. The same in make, but different in the ways that it mattered. It was perfectly white and carefully kept on canvas. The writing on it looked like very intricate Ponyish calligraphy written in beautifully ornate gold ink, strangely not in the same language as the one she'd seen Víss write in previously half expecting him to choose what looked to be his native language. Was this his way of saying his heart and home had changed? On it, it read a very simple story.

There once was a Chronicler by the name of Fimbulpur. He was known as a Great Sage, but he was an even greater grandfather. He was the wisest and smartest of us all. His legacy and his heart will continue to live for much, much, much longer than he ever did. For the love that we share for him lives on, eternal.

Víss tied this story to his own antlers. The first of many more yet to come.

"Say, Víss, are my eyes going to stay this color?"

"Yup. Amber not your look?"

"No, it's not that. I really like them. I'm just wondering how this whole colored iris thing works, since you said they weren't magic."

The duo had finished saying their goodbyes and were now making small talk while Cozy waited on Víss to complete the ritual circle that would take them to Earth. It was taking him longer than usual since Víss was trying to find countermeasures and loopholes to the situation going on there. Ultimately, he was trying to make a more concrete "bifrost" connection between the two realms that could siphon magic from either of the two realms to function properly, in case Magic truly was gone from Earth all together.

"Don't ask me. It's one of those great universe mysteries."

"When's the circle going to be done?"

"Well, if you let me concentrate, sooner rather than later. The Realms Between are tricky if you don't have a good mental picture of what you want to make appear."

"I'm bored."

"Boredom is good. That means you're safe for now. I feel like once we get to Earth, that's going to change all too quickly."

"Hey, Víss?"

"What is it now, Cozy?"

"I was thinking back to something I saw in that room with grandpa Fimbul."

"What was it?"

"That big ol' tree! It was ginormous!" She exclaimed from where she was lying on the ground, throwing her hooves into the air. "Does it actually exist, or is that a Realm Between thing?"

"Well... I'm not sure about that either. Maybe it was something in grandfather's mind? Uhm, the trees in that place looked a lot like the ones here. And this place is from my memories. They're my home from when I was newly born. I stayed in these woods until I was a hundred and fifty years old, but I've never stopped thinking about them since they're so near and dear to me. But yeah, that big tree didn't look like any of the trees here. Or the ones around it. Is it just me, or did it not look like a tree at all?"

"Yeah, yeah! That. It didn't look like a tree."

"But it was in the shape of one."

"I guess. Not like you could see much of it's true size what with all that mist. But you know, I bring it up because I had a really strange feeling like I'd seen that thing before."

"Really, Cozy? This is concerning my grandfather. I doubt that's a coincidence. Think hard about it. Where do you remember it from?"

Cozy wracked her brain for a long while, trying her darnedest to summon the memory by force. Almost as if stung by a bumblebee, she remembered.

"AHHH!" She yelled, startling the young elk as well.

"WHAT?! What is it Cozy?"

"I remember! When I met you! I saw that tree!"

"Huh? What are you talking about? We were underground, beneath the School of Friendship. There were no trees. Not even in the hallways when you were trying to kick me out initially. Unless you're talking about the potted plants."

"No no no, I strictly remember it then! Underneath the school!" She put a hoof to her chin to think on it. "Hmm hmm, what the heck. I didn't think it looked like a tree at all at that point either."

"Can you get your story straight, Cozy? You're throwing me for a loop here."

"No its... well, you see... Uhm uh. What was it?"

"Okay then, I'll just get back to writing the circle until you figure it out."

"When Twilight said that thing! You remember... about how it hurt me to hear it." Víss' face become troubled after hearing her connect to that moment again. He stopped what he was doing to listen more intently, now believing everything she was saying. "Well, uhm, I don't know how to explain but in the past, whenever I was at my lowest, I've always seen threads connected to people. Like thin almost invisible spider silk strands. I used to have one too. When it was connected to me, it felt like... the only thing holding me down to the world. Like my last connection to it. I don't know how to put it."

"Symbolic threads, Cozy? What happened that you lost yours?"

"Well, it was that thing Twilight said. I was already heartbroken to hear how much danger I had almost brought Equestria, feeling insurmountable guilt over it. And then to hear those words repeated back at me... I felt so alone. So very sad. I think that's what made my thread snap. It was so weird. I felt myself actually falling, despite being on the ground."

"What happened after that?"

"Hmm? That's when you saved me. And, I've never felt myself falling like that again."

"Did your thread return?"

"Why are you so interested in this tale I might just be making up? Even I don't know if what I saw was real. No, I don't think it did. But I haven't needed it either, so I'm fine without it."

"So what about that tree?"

"Oh yeah! A tree that wasn't a tree! That's what that thing behind Grandpa Fimbul reminded me of. It was a huge, HUGE collection of golden threads in the shape of a tree! It was so pretty. And it was tied to you, Víss."

"Ha." Víss slumped to the ground, floored by what Cozy was saying. Her story surely was no coincidence. If what she was saying was true... "I'm guessing you have no idea about what the symbolic meaning of threads and great big trees for us Chroniclers is, right Cozy?"

"Bingo!" She said playfully.

"Well that's fine. Maybe I'll tell you about it some day." Cozy bolted up right at hearing this, her face scowling with annoyance.

"No more secrets!"

"It's not a secret, I swear! It's just inconsequential mystical mumbo jumbo that we don't need to concern ourselves with right now. This runic circle takes precedence."

"Okay, but I'm expecting to hear it and soon! I will bring this up often. Mark my words!"

"Loud and clear, Cozy." He said as he returned to it.

Now done after several moments of quiet contemplation, he wiped his bushy brows with his foreleg to get rid of the sweat that had built up on that spot. He felt quite a bit of pride over it. It'd been a long time since he had practiced the art of magicraft. How many years had it been since he had made his own original circle? The one that took him to the Realm Between had been the first circle in a decade that he had used, and the one that he rewrote for Cozy when they first met had been his first real foray in magicraft in a century. Neither of them were his inventions. With everything going on in Equestria, he was getting a deeply rooted feeling that was calling him to study and research magic more in length. Maybe his grandfather's influence was beginning to rub off on him somewhat, as he felt a desire to continue his legacy in all its forms. Both in the ways of his duty, and that of his magical research that propelled Equestria's understanding of it by several thousands of years.

"Alright, time to make the jump, Cozy. You ready?"

"Finally!" She picked herself up in a hurry to walk over to the center of the circle.

"This should give us enough power for both the transport to, and fro. We just need to protect this circle once we're on the other side."

"Never thought I'd go on an adventure. And to save Equestria, of all places!" She let out a toothy smile as she made the elk chuckle. "Wait! I still had one more question before we go!"

Víss sighed. "Well, after keeping you in the dark for ten years, I suppose I owe it to you. Alright. What is it then?"

"What was in grandpa Fimbul's poem anyway?" This made the young elk actually laugh, with a merry start.

"You would've have thought that was a question for an earlier point! Alright, I guess it'll be important to know mankind's language before we go there. Come over here and I'll read it to ya. See if you can pick up the Younger Furthark alphabet and its meanings."

Cozy huddled around him as he went over to a clean patch of dirt and began to inscribe on the soil the runes that Fimbulpur had used for his small poem. Little by little, he showed her what it all meant.

Know that I lived.
Know that I sang when my heart was full of joy.
That I painted the pictures in my mind.
That I wrote of when I loved.

I am one of many, in cosmic entropy.
My fuse has run out.

But with you, I live eternal.

But that was just the front part of the letter. Written on the back of it, Fimbul had written the last of his words he had meant to give to his one and only grandson.

And know,
Know that I will continue,
To love you always,
Until the end of time.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading. This story was for all intents and purposes, an introduction to my character Víss, as well as the introduction to my version of Cozy. It was originally conceived with the intent to speak on Fimbulpur himself, and as you can guess, the story reflects my own experiences with my grandfather. When he started to develop Alzheimers, I began to visit him less and less despite him being the biggest role model in my life. The things that I could tell you about that man... would make you believe in saints. It hurt me to see him deteriorate into what he became in his last moments, and till this day, I regret not being strong enough to be there for him until the end.

There are scars you will never live down, no matter how much you change or push yourself to be a better person. Knowing my grandpa, I doubt he'd condemn me for my cowardice. All the same, I don't think I can ever forgive myself. The most I can do is to continue his legacy and respect his memory as I remember it.

"When an old person dies, a great library burns to the ground."