Rainbow Dash's ropy form lay limp across Pinkie's back as she scrambled alongside the Apple family and the Cutie Mark Crusaders, trying to maneuver their way to an exit. All around her, ponies she had known for years were either shoving past each other to make it to an exit or trampling one another in an attempt to locate misplaced friends and family. The whinnies of parents calling for their foals was almost drowned out by the panic of those desperate to locate an exit. The legion of horrors outside and the disintegration of the horizon beyond, had combined to drain all sanity from her once friendly neighbors, reducing them to blubbering idiots.

The hysteria was shattered only when the amplified voice of the Princess of Friendship shook the foundations of the castle, leaving behind a faint harmonization in its crystalline pillars.

"QUIET!!" Starlight called, flying high above the wailing herd. She cleared her throat in the ensuing silence and continued in her assertive, royal voice. "It's too late for anypony to leave the castle now, the only thing we can do is work together to better protect ourselves!"

"Where are the princesses?" Asked a stallion with a gray mane.

"Yeah, why isn't Princess Celestia here to take care of the monsters?" Demanded a unicorn mare.

You didn't become Ponyville's most prolific party planner by not noticing when somepony was having a rough day. There were wrinkles beneath Starlight's eyes, the kind which only came after you'd been crying. What had happened upstairs?

"Please, everypony..." Starlight began, glancing back toward the staircase. "The Princesses are working to solve the situation...what we need right now is to protect this castle. All adult unicorns need to line up by Sunburst and Rarity, together we are going to create a forcefield to protect the whole castle. All adult earth ponies need to help form barricades over the windows and doors, so that even once the barrier falls, we will be protected. And all the adult pegasus need to follow Fluttershy and help her gather storm clouds around the castle."

"But those monsters will devour us!" Called one of the male pegasi.

"Oh, don't lie! You'll be able to just fly away the second the barrier falls." Said an earth pony with an ascot. "The rest of us are the ones who'll be eaten alive!"

"PLEASE!" Starlight called. "Nopony is flying away! Nopony is going to be eaten...not as long as we work together!" Her face hardened. "But if we're just going to waste time arguing amongst each other, we might as well open the front door and let the monsters come in right now!!"

There was another moment of silence, before Pinkie sprinted over to beneath Starlight's shadow. "Starlight's right! We can do this!"

"We must, if we hope to protect our families!" Rarity said, galloping over to her, horn buzzing with magic.

"It's the only way!" Sunburst said, joining Rarity.

"Please, everypony..." Said Fluttershy, flying next to Starlight. "...we have to try."

The crowd, comprising mostly bakers, tailors, farmers, florists, mail ponies and weather pegasi, glanced at each other. Then something miraculous happened. It was something that always happens when people give speeches in front of frightened people. It was an everyday phenomenon, a bit of genetic coding which all social creatures benefit from. It was the other side of the same coin as peer pressure, a kind of groupthink which made sure that most of the herd always survived, no matter what or who got trampled in the process.

It was called hope. The desperate, blind hope that was the only alternative to that which was too terrible to consider.

For the past few weeks, there had been nothing to do but wait for more monsters to attack and let the sinking creep of worry slowly find purchase on Pinky's mind. But now...now there was no time to stay still. Now there was the rush of action and too much adrenaline to think about whether or not any of it would work.

"Fair warning, Miss Star," Discord said, as they re-appeared in a vaguely purple void. "Ponies have been known to go a bit...loopy...from being in here too long."

Twilight Sparkle gave him a skeptical look. "I wouldn't worry too much about it. Now, you're an expert at breaking reality...where is the crux of this dimension, the geometric point which gives it substance."

Discord leaned down. "Excuse me? Do you not understand? This is the CHAOS DIMENSION...there is no substance, in fact, there's no geometry either..."

"Inside of this dimension, no, but outside of it, is a framework...it's the thing which maintains the rules of each plane of existence...the logic behind the illogic. It's the reason why there isn't any geometry in this dimension. Where can I find the crux of that?"

Discord frowned. "You don't seem to understand. There is no crux! Even if such a thing existed, I would have destroyed it millenia ago!"

Twilight turned away. "With all due respect, you're not the most perceptive creature in Equestria...or the most innovative for that matter."

"Excuse me?" Discord snarl. "I am the most innovative creature in the universe, let alone Equestria! I have more original ideas on a daily basis than the rest of the planet has in a year!"

"But you have never been forced to grow." Twilight replied as she walked across the floating island of cheese onto which they had appeared and observed the animate pinwheels currently flying off into the distance. "You have been around so long and have had access to so much power, that you never had the need to learn from another creature. At least not before you were petrified for the second time."

She turned back to face him. "Probably because you were scared of what you'd learn..."

Discord roared. "You think you're so clever just because you've transcended time and space...well, have I got news for you," With this, he conjured up a black and white newspaper and threw it at Twilight's hooves. "I have seen more than you can dream of."

Twilight glanced, briefly at the paper, who's headline read "Discord awarded scientific prize for being innovative!" Then she put her hoof on the paper, making it wrinkle as she leaned toward him. "Prove it."

Celestia had not been knocked unconscious in over a thousand years. She had all but forgotten how uncomfortable it was. It took her a moment to remember what had happened and why her current predicament was so tight.

The strength of Evening Star's attack had sent her all the way to Sweet Apple acres, boring through a dozen apple trees and impacting with the now empty barn. Little embers seethed on the beams which hid her beautiful sun from her.

As she stood, she twitched her wings upwards, launching the burnt detritus around her several hundred feet into the air and cracking her neck hard enough to cause a sonic boom. Then she launched herself back toward the observatory at near light speed, the impossible rush of her flight flushing the dirt and ash from her fathers. Such was her urgency to protect her sister and save her kingdom, that it was only as she entered through the hole in the building caused by her expulsion, that she noticed the room was empty. The already burnt floorboards crackled and hissed beneath her hooves as she stepped into the center of the room, searching for some clue as to the location of her opponents.

She could see, even from across the room, the grayness which had almost consumed the entire Everfree Forest and which was fast approaching the refuge of the Castle of Friendship. And even as she stared at it, a translucent dome of multicolored energy appeared overtop the castle, just in time to stop a swarm of bugbears from crashing through the dining room windows. That was good. The citizens of Ponyville would be protected for the next half an hour or so, in spite of Starlight's betrayal. But nothing would be able to stop the grayness.

It was bad enough that Discord had gone rogue, yet again. But the unicorn they'd captured represented a much more present threat. If Celestia didn't find her and force her to end this corruption, all her little ponies were doomed not just to extermination, but to never have existed at all.

As she analyzed the magical residue of the spells which had been cast in the area, she turned to her sister to be sure she had been, at least physically, unharmed. After she was more than content with her investigation, she nudged Luna's neck with her muzzle, in hopes of rousing her from whatever daze this evil pony had put her under.

Her sister mumbled for a moment, a strange thing, considering Celestia had never known her to talk in her sleep. Then Luna opened her eyes, revealing unnaturally dilated pupils which quickly shrunk to their normal size. Then she closed her eyes and covered her face with her hooves. Celestia stared at her in horror and confusion as her battle-hardened sister shook inhaled sharply and then began to weep like a foal woken from a bad dream.

"Luna, what is it? What's wrong!? What did she do?!!" Celestia demanded. She had mastered healing magic millennia ago, but even the most accomplished alicorn required specifics to cure an ailment.

Luna shook her head and wrapped her forelegs around Celestia's midsection, burying her wet muzzle against Celestia's stained coat.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no..." She cried out. "I didn't know...how could I have known?"

"STOP IT!" Celestia commanded, pushing her sister off her and lifting her chin so that she could look into her eyes. "Tell me what you saw! TELL ME WHAT SHE DID SO I CAN FIX IT!!"

Luna's only response was more indiscernible whimpering and Celestia was forced to eventually push her off and watch as she crumpled to the floor as if unable to support her own weight. Her eyes were wild and her hooves kicked and curled periodically. "It's not my fault! It's not my fault! I didn't now! I didn't! It's not my fault!! IT'S NOT MY FAULT! NOT MY FAULT!!"

Twitches of instinctive magic spewed forth from Luna's form, forming rudimentary and ineffective protections and being dispelled by their own mistress just as quickly as they were created. Celestia closed her eyes but couldn't shut out her sister's piercing neighs. "BE SILENT!" She snarled, hoping that the flare of magic which had emitted from her might pull Luna out of her stupor.

It seemed to work, the sudden increase in light and heat around Celestia drawing the maddened mare's eyes away from their frantic search and toward her sister's battle-ready form.

"Our kingdom is in danger and I must find the creature responsible. Now, please...get a hold of yourself!" Celestia said, her frustration breaking through to sorrow as she realized her last command was a plea.

Luna shuddered and turned away, her voice hollow as a cenotaph. "Don't you see? I'm not me, Tia. And you're not you."

Celestia's eyes widened as she began to comprehend the permanence of her sister's affliction.

Luna continued to moaned, although now it seemed as if she were talking to herself. "We've already failed. We're already dead. All this is just a dream...a dream that we're still alive. We're not even really here, we just think we are...shadows of dreamers living and dying inside dreams...never alive...never dead...never real. Never real. Just...shadows..."

Celestia backed away, watching as the full grown Alicorn continued trembling and mumbling illegible disparagements. Luna traveled through the dreams of ponies across Equestria nightly. She faced the most depraved of nightmares regularly. But whatever soul-searing sight had lurked within the confines of their prisoner's subconscious, it had stolen from Luna all capacity for rational thought. Celestia prayed that the damage was not irreparable but sensed that her magics were useless in the face of such desecration.

Something alight within Celestia then, something which she had not felt since she'd incinerated Chrysalis and her followers.

Her eyes flamed. Her mane crackled to life, her gently flowing rainbow of color blazing into a raging inferno of white, yellow and red. Her hooves burned sooty holes in the floorboards. Her tail flared into a flame spout. Then she let out a roar as her teeth grew scraggily and sharp.

Twilight Sparkle, Evening Star, whoever she was. She had corrupted Celestia's favorite student and destroyed the mind of her little sister. She had to PAY. Her, Discord, that stupid zebra, every creature which had gotten in her way, every pony which had allowed this atrocity to transpire. They would all rue the day they had betrayed her.

But first, first she had a unicorn she needed to find.

"There! I found it!" Discord stabbed his talon into the fabric of the universe, ripping a hole in the Chaos Dimension and revealing a void of gray shadow and abstract machinery beyond. "Now tell me whose not innovative!"

"Thank you, Discord." Twilight couldn't help but smile. With the proper motivation, Discord was capable of nearly anything. She just hoped he would be up for the task.

She frowned, as she noticed a group of shadows in the void beyond, beginning to darken. As they increased in contrast with their surroundings, they also seemed to grow. Then she realized that they were moving, galloping in fact, on long, barbed legs.

"Discord?"

"Yes, Miss Neighsayer?"

"What-what are those?"

Discord turned to look at where she was pointing, and his eyes widened. "Oh...those would be the Hounds of Tindalos."

"They don't look like dogs." Twilight pointed out.

It was the understatement of the century. The creatures had triangular heads, with three pure black eyes on each side of their cephalopodic skulls. One bony fang stuck out from each corner of their cavernous jaws, while millions of rows of acicular teeth gleamed over the void at the back of their throats. Three limbs dangled beneath their spiny thorax, each ending in a webbed-claw that seemed to tear little punctures in reality, with each jerking movement. Tendrils, which might have been mistaken for tails, trailed behind their wrinkly blue forms, each one ending in a mouth or an eyeball, or sometimes a combination of the two. And three violet, razor-sharp tongues whipped out of their angular heads, slavering over the outside of their flabby, flattened cheeks and occasionally re-moistening their ovular, unblinking eyes.

"Oh, they aren't actual dogs." Discord explained as one member of the pack began to oscillate its head like a fruit blender, revealing the Hounds' primary method of consuming their prey. "They're just called that because they guard things like dogs do." He lifted his paw to his chin and stroked his beard. "Or is it because they 'hound' their prey across all time and space?" He shrugged. "It's one of the two."

"What is it they guard?" Twilight asked, as the creatures flailed their tendrils and tongues in rage at the intruders.

"Time, space...the reaches of reality where no creature dares tread. That kind of thing." Discord answered, nonchalantly as the pack of snarling, interdimensional predators drew closer.

"Can they be reasoned with?" Twilight asked, as the pack began to bray and bellow with unearthly hate.

Discord glanced at the creatures one last time. "Hmmm...no. Not by a pony...they're pretty stupid once you get to know them. They think all living things are food." Then he summoned a pouch into his hand and scooped a dozen clock-shaped chew toys out of it, tossing them through the rift. Twilight watched as the creatures hastened their gaits and then, completely ignoring the means of escape from their strange, colorless, angular world, they began chasing the chew toys that Discord had produced, with more than one even beginning to playfully fight its packmate over one.

"Luckily for you, they are old friends of mine." Discord said, too egotistical to pretend that he wasn't proud of himself. "They won't try to devour your essence unless I tell them you're on the menu."

Twilight rolled her eyes and leaped through the rift. Impossible shapes and indescribable colors formed and then deformed before her eyes. Machinery without end ticked in a mockery of cause and effect. And all around her, the chords whose vibration had created existence frayed.

Altogether, the reveal wasn't as traumatic a second time around. She supposed that once you remembered seeing the building blocks of the universe, it was hard to be frightened or overwhelmed by anything. It was a thesis that required deeper analysis, but one she would never get a chance to prove.

She slowed to a trot when she came to the source of Dullness.

A gaping blackness, its tendrils seeping across all existence, the wound which she'd created in the universe. She closed her eyes. She didn't want to think about it. She couldn't think about it. Soon enough, she'd be gone, and she wouldn't have to think about it ever again.

"How rude...not only have you neglected to thank me for saving your life, you also still haven't told me how it is you know all of this." Discord said, floating upside down and hanging his head in front of her face, and thus unintentionally obscuring her view of the void which represented her greatest failure. "Why, a draconques is liable to begin to suspect all sorts of nasty things about you."

"I'm trying to save the ponies you care about. That's all that matters." Twilight said.

He grinned. "Oh, I already know that...otherwise I'd never have taken you this far. Still, I usually like to know who it is I'm changing the fabric of reality with."

She turned away from Discord. "You know how I don't exist, technically?"

Discord snorted. "You're going to have to be more specific dear. Plenty of things don't exist, that doesn't make them not real."

Twilight sighed. "Fine...but there's someone else who...doesn't exist anymore. He's on the other side of this crack in reality. To seal it, we have to drag him through...but to get him through, one of us has to take his place...that will be me." She explained. "You just need to widen the hole long enough for me to find him. Once he's out and I'm gone...it will be like the Dullness never existed."

Discord floated closer. "So, you want to sacrifice yourself to save all of Equestria and you want me to just float by and watch?"

"In another universe we were friends..." Twilight admitted, still without meeting his hircine gaze. "I know that you know what it's like to not be able to make up for all you've done." There was the tiniest hint of guilt on the strange creature's face, although few ponies other than Twilight would have been able to notice it. "Please, Discord...let me fix my mistake."

Discord frowned. "Well, I'm certainly not opposed to you disappearing forever if it means Fluttershy is safe...but I'm afraid you've piqued my curiosity." He summoned a comfy looking sofa and coiled himself up on it. "Alright, spill the beans now. It's not every day that some creature nearly destroys the universe by accident."

She groaned. "Discord, we don't have time for this!"

Discord rolled his eyes. "Spare me the dramatics, madame...there's no time in this place. We could spend a hundred years in here and a second wouldn't have passed in the ugh...'real' world."

Twilight glared at him. "You aren't going to let this go, are you?"

He grinned. "Come now, what kind of FRIEND would I be if I allowed you to jump to your death without the pleasure of at least telling me why you don't deserve to live?"

Twilight sighed. "Fine. At least you won't remember it when I'm gone."

"You have to stop, Twilight." Spike said.

She had never heard him so angry or so desperate.

"Spike, don't you get it?" Twilight said, turning to him. "I can't leave the world like this...all my friends...everything is wrong..."

"TWILIGHT!" Spike hissed. "Every time you cast that spell, Equestria gets worse. And it isn't just this country either, it's the whole world. You HAVE to stop or soon there won't be anything left to come back to."

Twilight stared at the piles of paper at her feet. She had been struggling for the past two dozen trips to calculate what had been causing the timelines to change so drastically. She'd hoped if she could find the missing variable, she could adjust for it.

But she was no closer to discovering why the timeline was so unstable, than she was to finding out how to keep her friends from drifting apart.

She wanted to stop. She wanted to leave things the way they were. But that little part of her brain, the one that was harder to resist the worse things were, said no. It told her that she couldn't leave things the way they were, couldn't let them be a mess, not like this. Even if she stopped, even if she did what Spike said, she would have to come back. She wouldn't be able to resist.

"I'm sorry Spike..." She said, tears in her eyes. "I can't."

And with that, well aware of his intentions to stop her, she cast the spell for what might have been the thirtieth time, prepared to intervene even more subtly than she already had, to save her friends, to save Equestria. She would do whatever it took. She would fix things. She had to. She had no choice.

Then he tackled her, mid-incantation, and the spell was interrupted. The vast release of thaumic energy, designed already to tear a hole in the fabric of continuity, went sideways instead of lengthwise. The universe folded around the two of them and spat them out into some liminal plane between all forms of existence. Twilight and Spike found themselves falling, into a vortex of unimaginable circumference, the hole through which they'd fallen the only way back to the universe they knew.

Meanwhile, all around them, worlds and timelines other than their own splintered, mixed and disintegrated in an endless dance of perspective obliterating proportions. Twilight flapped her wings against the force which was dragging her and Spike toward gapping fracture below them. But even with her Earth Pony strength, she couldn't escape its pull, not while she also supported Spike's weight.

She glanced back at Spike as he held onto her tail, his own vision mesmerized by their kaleidoscopic surroundings. Then she looked past him at the crack in the universe. Somehow, she knew, that if she did not figure out how to fix it, it would devour her universe. She teleported herself closer to the hole, but was only able to elongate her descent, rather than gain any momentum toward the hole from whence they'd come.

"Twilight...I'm scared..." Spike admitted. The surroundings had seemed to have caused some kind of regression in his mind. Unable to cope with what he was seeing or what was about to happen to them both, his brain had reverted to a more primitive state.

"I know Spike..." Twilight said, as she felt the power drawing her towards it. She had created it, only she would be able to seal it up. Her friends would be doomed, unless she figured out how to escape.

"I promise...I-I promise. I'll come back." She told him.

Then she teleported herself toward the hole, this time not neglecting to bring her number one helper with her. She did not hear his screams (sound seemed to work differently in this place), but she didn't need to. Her imagination was exceedingly good at conjuring up the worst-case scenario and her mind's eye was incapable of seeing anything but the look of betrayal in his eyes, as he realized the just before it sealed completely.

As she escaped back into the Castle of the Two Sisters, nausea overcame her, at suddenly being on a three-dimensional plane of being once more. Collapsing onto the stone floor, she lay there as she felt her alicorn powers, draining away from her. Her wings folded, faded and then melted into her back. Her horn dimmed as her magical capacity shrank, and the extra strength and endurance she'd come to take for granted, seeped away, leaving her dizzy, exhausted and defeated the surface on the floor.

New memories crowded her head. Memories of never having awoken Spike from his egg. Memories of having grown up an orphan, without a brother, without a foal-sitter or a mentor or anyone. She struggled, for a moment, to keep the new memories at bay. To remember Spike, to remember her brother and her parents and most importantly, her friends.

But it was like trying to push back the tide. Eventually, her increasingly feeble magic reserves gave way and her brain, forced to choose between two lifetimes or succumb to insanity, chose the simpler of the two.

Eventually, the unicorn, would gather enough strength to leave the castle. She would continue talking to herself, telling herself not to forget, even when she collapsed again from exhaustion in the clearing just outside the castle grounds. But whatever it was she had reminding herself to remember, she had forgotten it by the time she woke up in bed at Ponyville Hospital.

"There...now you know...okay? I let my adoptive brother...be eaten by that thing...because I was scared. All of this...Celestia turning evil...the monsters attacking...all of it is my fault. If Spike had been here, the Changelings would have become friends with us and the Crystal ponies would still be alive...I ruined everything...and this is my one chance to fix it...so will you please stop looking at me like that and do what I ask?!" Twilight begged.

Discord continued staring at her with the closest thing to surprise an entity of his longevity and eccentricity could muster. Then he smiled. "What makes you think that throwing yourself in that stuff, will fix any of this?" He asked, nonchalantly given the stakes of the situation.

"I can't seal it with my magic..." Twilight admitted. "I'm not an alicorn anymore...I'm not powerful enough. And your chaos magic won't be able to fix a problem." He opened his mouth to disagree yet again and she shook her head. "Not one this big...doing so would be antithetical to the nature of your power. But I cast the spell, if I complete it close enough to the rift, maybe the Dullness will take me, and the rest of the world will be saved."

She stopped. "But we have to bring Spike back into reality first...otherwise everything will still turn out wrong."

"Hold on a second, let's think about this...now surely, if you were an alicorn, you were important in your...version of Equestria?" Discord asked.

She shivered. "Fate...circumvented that. I was Celestia's apprentice...in this timeline it was Starlight instead of me...she did all the stuff I needed to...she'll be there when I'm gone. Everything...will be normal again."

Discord frowned. "So, your plan to fix the universe was to make another tear in it..." He gestured to the entrance they'd entered through. "...and then rescue this dragon, and just hope that's enough to save everything?"

"If I had another plan, I would do it...but I can't think of any other way. I knew how to find it, I figured out what it was...but I don't know if I can close it. All I know is that if I don't at least try, everything will be gray and empty...forever."

Discord pondered this for a moment. "Fair enough...that possibility isn't particularly appealing to me either. Very well..." With that, he pulled out a giant carjack. "Let's do this thing!"

As Discord comically winched open the hole in reality, Evening Star closed her eyes and felt the gaze on her again. It was not really, Spike, she knew. Spike didn't exist. But in her subconscious, she'd become so used to him following her around, that she'd tricked herself into feeling like she could hear his footsteps and feel him watching over her.

I'm coming, Spike. She promised, as she cast every protective spell over herself that she could think of. She had no idea what, if anything, lay beyond, but doubted she'd be able to dissuade its hunger as easily as she'd done with the Hounds.

Then she plunged into the open rift, her body disappearing into the morass of energy.

There was nothing. There was less than nothing. Not that she would have been able to tell, given the fact there was no light. It was a bottomless ocean, the kind that should exist only the minds of the worst of thalassophobes. But it was real. Or beyond reality. The space where things that no longer existed went, the palace of paradoxes.

For a moment she feared she would drift forever.

Then her hooves made contact with something. With no friction in this place, no means of detecting texture, she had no way to tell if what she'd found was what she'd been looking for. But neither did she have much of a choice. She latched her hooves around the thing, whatever it was and began to kick against the nothingness, in hopes of retracing her steps. She had no way of knowing how far she had drifted or indeed if she was even moving at all.

But eventually, she began to feel something, some tickling sensation on the back of her neck and along the rim of her ears. Then light splintered into the darkness, slicing across her vision and revealing the blurred form of a familiar draconeques. She lifted her hooves and pushed through the rift the thing that she had grabbed.

It was Spike. He was as she'd remembered him. There was no time, after all, in the place where he'd been imprisoned. Still, his eyes were closed and his body unmoving and without heat or sound, she'd been unable to detect if he was even still alive. A part of her said that it didn't matter, that as long as he was back in the timeline, things would be fixed. But that voice was quickly quieted, as she galloped back through the barrier, feeling that tingling shiver across her entire form as the numbness of the void into which she'd entered left her.

"That's it? When you said a dragon, I imagined something a little more impressive..." Discord admitted.

"He's not breathing!" Twilight said, after pressing her ear to his chest. He had been without light, heat or oxygen, for what might as well have been an eternity. And he hadn't had magic to protect him, like she did. She hadn't been there, to save him.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she hung her head, pressing her horn to his chest. She had failed. Spike was dead and no one but her even remembered him. Her mind had been opened up to the secrets of the universe by her trip into this abstract plane. But she would have given up every last shred of knowledge for just a chance to say goodbye.

There was a roaring then and she looked up in time to see a meteoric collision fling Discord past her and into the rift.

It was Celestia. Or Sunbreaker. Whatever she had become because of Twlight's failure. If Twilight had just been selfless, if she had teleported Spike through the rift, instead of herself...but because of her, Spike was dead. And Celestia was a genocidal maniac.

It occurred to her for the first time that this was...wrong. She had been so busy processing all the trauma and truth which had suddenly rushed into her mind, that she had just assumed Celestia and Luna being evil was another weird, time travel result. But now that she considered the matter, she realized that everything else had been so consistent, that this stuck out glaringly.

"EVENING STAR! You have corrupted my pupil's mind, driven my sister to madness and allied yourself with that...abberation!" This last accusation was accompanied by a hoof pointed in Discord's direction and Twilight glanced back to see that he was still stunned from the attack and currently sinking into the void beyond. She didn't even want to think about what would happen if he was sucked out of reality. He had been around so long and changed so much. Equestria probably wouldn't even exist if he never had.

"For the good of ponies everywhere," Celestia said, her eyes pits of flame. As she reared up to unleash a torrent of flesh-searing flame, her horn glowed red with malignant energy. "I SENTENCE YOU TO IMMEDIATE EXECUTION!"

Her attack was pre-empted by the Hounds of Tindalos, whom, having just witnessed her assault their friend, began making all manner of burbling noises, which Twilight could only assume were indicative of anger. Their claws dug into Celestia's flank, ripping open the soft skin where her cutie mark was and staining her pure white cloak with viscera. She let out a scream and turned on them, blasting more than one away with her searing might. But there were dozens of the creatures, and they moved together in a pack formation, shuddering out of reality to avoid a blast of magic or a kicking hoof and reappearing next to the neck or soft underbelly of their prey.

Twilight was not sure if the things really were friends with Discord. But from the way they acted, she could tell they were territorial and that Celestia had neglected to offer them tribute when she intruded on their hunting grounds.

The vicious assault of her former mentor and friend should have been the most terrible thing she had ever witnessed. But her mind was a cavern now, carved by a molten flow which she had no means to slow or divert. All goodness in her, seemed sapped out by the horror she had inflicted and endured, and she considered then it was a relief that she would, hopefully, not exist much longer. Drifting in an endless and invisible void, didn't sound inhospitable when compared with a lifetime of listening to her own conscience gnaw away at the tattered remains of her sanity.

Still, Celestia had saved her when she was impaled. If anyone could bring back Spike, it was her.

There would be plenty of time to surrender to that living death she so richly deserved, after she saved the oldest and most betrayed of her friends.

She dashed to the edge of the rift, grabbing on Discord's paw with both hooves. He was being pulled back inside by something. Perhaps the prince alicorn from that incongruous story. Perhaps some other misbegotten soul, who, having been consigned to an eternity of incomprehensible seclusion, now grabbed onto Discord in hopes of forcing another entity to join its torturous existence.

She wondered briefly, why the thing, whatever it was, hadn't tried to stop her and Spike from leaving. She wondered if she would turn into the same sensation starved, semi-catatonic specter as what lay below when she dove back into that nothingness.

Then Discord shook out of his daze and glowered at her. "I am beginning to understand why Celestia was so intent on destroying you."

"Discord! Use your magic to teleport away from this rift. As soon as you do, I'm going to try to seal it." Twilight cried, as she strained to keep him from being sucked into the same position Spike had been only minutes earlier.

He nodded slowly and she could tell he wanted to say something. But whatever it was, he thought better of it, and as he used the last of his power (that which hadn't already been sucked into the void) to disappear in a puff of smoke, the absurdly large carjack currently jammed into the rift disappeared with him.

Twilight had only a few seconds to try to seal the breach or dive in, with the hope that removing herself from existence would fix all this. But she could see the thing surfacing through that impenetrable blackness, the thing which had tried to drag Discord in. Whatever it was, it was totally alien to both animal instinct and cultivated education. Whatever mind it had once possessed, had long ago been replaced with the unceasing hunger which uncompromised deprivation breeds. The thing was beyond reasoning, and like everything else in this strange abstract place between places, it could not be allowed to escape into Equus and defile the pastel paradise her friends called home.

With everything in her, she blasted the surface of the rift. It took every ounce of magic within her, to hold the thing at bay. But as the rip sealed over and she felt it's gaze disappear from her, she relaxed at the knowledge she had done the right thing. The Dullness had been stopped and so had whatever it was that she had attracted the attention of by retrieving Spike.

She felt a dull ache in her horn and realized as she raised a hoof to her head, that the force of her incantation must have cracked it. She could smell the metallic scent of blood in her snout too, and wondered if she might pass out.

The soul-shuddering shrieks of the alicorn who had introduced her to the beauty of friendship, roused her from the rush of fatigue and she galloped over to where Discord was sitting on a beach chair, watching the proceedings with a pair of binoculars.

She gave him one look and he sighed and tossed the binoculars away. "Oh, very well!" He admitted, before snapping his fingers.

The Hounds' blood frenzy paused, and they began whining, their jawless mouths salivating for Celestia's consumption. Discord gave them a stern look and slowly, they plodded away from their brutalized victim, returning to the chew toys he'd provided for them, although not without their pupilless eyes giving Discord looks which indicated that he very much owed them for this.

Twilight paid them no heed, galloping over to Celestia, whose eyes were clenched shut. Her hooves coated in a slick blue slug, the equivalent of blood for the Hounds who hadn't been fast enough to avoid a kick to their cartilaginous skulls. Her neck was ringed with acinaciform gouges and one of her back-legs was missing most of its skin. Her left wing was crumbled and her right one hung limply, having been partially torn from its socket.

She snarled, her sharpened teeth glowing menacingly at the approaching unicorn in a promise that she could still do damage and still would show no mercy.

Twilight realized then, what it was. Looking at the total lack of recognition in her eyes. It told Twilight everything she needed to know. Celestia's last apprentice, Sunlight Shimmer, had turned on her, just like her own sister. And Starlight Glimmer's anti-social tendencies had likely made teaching her a less than heart-warming experience.

The truth was that while the rest of the world had been able to circumvent Twilight's lack of existence, Celestia had not. Without a student, without someone to return her love...one thousand years, unable to trust or lean on anyone. Celestia had needed Twilight as much as Twilight had needed Spike. And without her...watching the Crystal Empire return to Sombra's control, it must have been the final straw. The last big blow to her psyche. Like Twilight, Celestia always wanted to do good, she always wanted to help others and make things perfect.

And just like Twilight, when sequestered from support, her worst qualities had festered.

No matter how much she had wanted otherwise, Twilight was needed. She sighed and gave in to the feeling.

Celestia looked ready to blast her apart. But just as she lifted her head to again fire a scintillating ray from her horn, she the change in her foe. Wings were folding up out of Twilight's midsection, feathers sprouting, expanding and shifting against invisible forces. Her horn was growing longer and her hooves becoming sturdier. Her exhaustion faded as glittering pink and purple energy swirled around her form, anointing her once more with the magic of an Alicorn.

"I'm sorry..." Twilight said, as she slowed in approach of the bloody but still fiery alicorn. "I'm so sorry for everything."

Then she bowed her head, her horn glowing faintly with one last spell. It was a simple spell, one of the first ones that unicorn fillies learned. It was a sharing spell. A spell for letting a loved one into a moment of great happiness or sorrow. It was, according to Twilight's teachers, one of the oldest spells in Equestria (and ironically enough, was one of the components for the memory spells which Celestia had used on Twilight's friends).

None of this ran through Twilight's mind as she cast it. All that she was thinking about was all the sweet and bittersweet moments which she had shared with her fellow alicorn princess. And soon, those thoughts had consumed the mind of the power-mad tyrant in front of her as well. Celestia saw the hatching of Spike's egg and his subsequent and thankfully temporary gigantism. She saw herself, agreeing to tutor little Twilight, so as to keep an eye on her. She saw herself, teaching Twilight about Kindness, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity and the importance of having a sense of humor.

She saw Twilight saving her sister, as she had known she would. She saw Twilight defeating Discord and battling Tirek. She saw reassurances about her phoenix, arguments about her acting ability and a conversation about Starlight Glimmer's future. And she saw Twilight worrying about disappointing her, over and over again. She saw the Crystal Empire saved, Starlight Glimmer redeemed, and the Changelings befriended. She saw everything which had been missing from her empire for her long reign.

Tears splashed to her eyes. She had never had a foal; she had never found a suitable mate. She'd always been...too busy. She had never known she wanted a daughter, until now. She had never realized how empty everything was.

"No...n-no...I...I didn't...I couldn't have, I..." The fire receded, the glow died, doused by the first tears shed in a millennium.

"It's okay...it's not your fault..." Twilight wrapped her forelegs around the princess' neck and pressed her snout against her blood-stained mane. "Shhh...shhh...let it all out..."

Celestia stared at nothing as the weight of her failures came down on her like a boulder and settled in her stomach and her throat like shards of stone. She had failed her sister, her pupil, her parents...worst of all, she had failed her subjects.

"Shhhh. Shhh. It's okay. We're both broken." Twilight reassured; her own eyes closed. "There's only one way to fix things now...but I need your help to do it. Do you have any magic left?"

Celestia shook, her form completely reverted at this point, although its beauty remained tainted by her grievous injury. Then she nodded, desperate for any distraction from the realization of her actions.

Slowly, the two trotted to where Spike hung in the air, still curled up, still not moving.

"I...I know you can't bring back the dead..." Twilight said. "But...if there's anything we can do...to bring him back..."

Celestia stared at Spike for a moment and then let out a shaky sound almost like a laugh. "He...he's not dead. He's hibernating. Dragons do it when they can't get any sunlight for a long time."

Twilight's eyes widened. "Wha-he...he's not dead?"

Celestia shook her head. Then her horn glowed, and sunshine poured forth wrapping around Spike's unmoving form and sinking into his heat absorbent scales.

Slowly, his eyes opened. Twilight let out a little sob and then she hugged him.

There were no words, as they exited the in-between place and returned to the Chaos Dimension. Words only went so far, and were really rather inadequate when used to transcribe the enormity of emotion.

"What am I going to do?"

It was Celestia. Discord was thankful she was turned away from him at the moment. He was sure if she saw him roll his eyes she would start blubbering again. Even though her alicorn magic had already healed her more grievous wounds, she still looked smaller and weaker than ever.

Had he still been entertaining evil, now would be a perfect time to strike back at her. He doubted she would even fight back.

"You're going to have to be more specific dear." He said, as he filed his talons. "Now that the timeline has been restored, it would appear that you and Luna can return to being retired. In fact, I expect that everyone back home will be absolutely losing their minds over the fact that the princess and her forebearers are missing. Along with me of course."

She turned to look at him, a little shocked that he even he could be so callous in this moment. "I-I killed...so many..."

He sighed. "Yes, yes, you killed them and now they never died and if things had turned out differently, they never would have been born at all...see, none of it really matters. Everything can change all at once for absolutely no reason...so it's just better not to get attached to things."

She just stared at him, her haunted look only deepening.

He sighed and leaned toward her. "Listen, you and me and Twilight and Spike...we're the only ones who will remember what happened. Do you know what that means? Do you know what kind of a gift that is? We're the only ones who remember...so we're the only ones it matters to. Now, you can either let yourself be defined by something that never happened...or you can accept that you've been given a chance to be something better." He leaned closer. "Take it from someone who already spent thousands of years being evil when he could have been happy...don't waste your immortality, princess."

With that, he was already lifting off the nothingness in which he flew and slithering off in the direction of the portal back to reality. As if their lives hadn't just been turned on their heads. As if they all hadn't almost been obliterated. As if this were just...another day.

Celestia watched him go and her thoughts returned to her sister. Discord was probably right. She was probably worried about her. She didn't remember The Dullness. She didn't remember the thing that Celestia had become. Her sanity was probably intact now. And if Celestia told her how evil she had been in this "other" world which she remembered so vividly, would it make anything better? Telling the sister, she'd banished to the moon that she had done much worse things than Nightmare Moon ever had? Telling her that Luna had helped do those terrible things, because Celestia had told her it was the right thing to do.

She shook her head and let it fall. It was selfish. All the self-loathing and self-pity which was consuming her. It was selfish. If she let it control her, she might as well go back to the between place and let the hounds tear her apart.

But she didn't think she could go on, pretending to be happy and above all...good, not with what the truth of how terrible her righteousness was. It was an impossible choice, the choice between isolating herself, and thus hurting her loved ones more than she already had. And choosing to go on living, knowing that there was no good inside of herself, no act in the universe that would rescue her from her own judgement. Knowing that she would eventually crack and either let it all come spilling out or terminate her own maddeningly prolonged lifespan.

It was an impossible choice, but the latter option was unquestionably and irrefutably lunacy. To go on living, knowing there was nothing to live for? They locked ponies up for less.

Just as she was about to admit defeat to those deepest and most poisonous of emotions, she turned to one last time look at her former student.

Twilight was talking to Spike. It was a quiet talk, not the tear-filled reunion which usually accompanies escaping a life-threatening situation, but the barely audible discussion of two people who didn't know if they could be part of each other's life anymore. Twilight seemed happy, that Spike was alive. She seemed accepting of his feelings, about what she had done. Celestia wasn't sure what it was exactly she was apologizing dor. Twilight hadn't yet explained it, but she remembered some of Twilight's friends had begun drifting apart from each other and that it had upset her greatly.

And Twilight had that same look of guilt on her face, that Celestia had seen in the countenance of hundreds of subjects over her long reign. It was the same look which Celestia was sure she herself was now wearing. It was the question "Why? Why am I still alive?"

That was when she realized what she needed to do. That was when she knew what she'd done wrong to begin with. She had always pushed Twilight, wanting her to grow into her own, to overcome her problems. But she hadn't been there for her, when it all started falling apart.

She wouldn't make that mistake again. They both needed someone to talk to, someone who would understand how profoundly damaged the other was. Someone who they could speak the truth to, and someone who would never abandon them how many years went by.

She waited until the three of them were back in Equus and Spike had said his farewells to Twilight, to speak.

"This is my fault." She admitted.

Twilight turned to her with a look that was slightly too tired for surprise.

"I...I knew you...I knew you had a problem, Twilight." Celestia admitted. "I knew you needed...order. And I thought...I thought that you would...be able to just...get over it. I gave you the throne...because I was selfish...because I was tired of my duty." She closed her eyes. "I didn't treat you like you needed help, I ignored what was obvious, because it was inconvenient. I put you in an impossible situation and-and I expected you to deal with it without me...I-I'm so...so...sorry. F-for everything."

Twilight sighed and stepped closer. "I hated not having any friends, Princess. But I didn't mind being anonymous so much...I didn't mind...not having to care about everyone's problems. I almost...I almost wish I could have stayed Evening Spark. She was miserable...but...but she never hurt this much..."

Twilight's legs trembled, then she had to kneel from the wracking sobs which were forcing their way through her body.

"I thought...I thought that my friends would be with me for longer...n-not forever...but...j-just a little bit longer..." She choked. "I don't know if I can live in this world anymore, Princess...I know that you need me. I know that every creature...needs me...but...I don't know that I can do it...I'm not...I'm not as strong as you were...I could never...do what you needed to do."

Celestia watched the display helplessly, incapable of stopping her own waterworks at the sight of one she cared so much for in such inconsolable turmoil. Then she trotted over and lay down next to her, laying her head over Twilight's neck and nuzzling her gently with her snout.

"It's alright, Twilight...let it all out. You aren't alone anymore. I'll be here...for as long as you need me. I'm so...so sorry."

Twilight didn't answer. She didn't stop weeping for a long time either. But once she had, they remained in that position, two immortal, nearly omnipotent beings sitting on a hillside and feeling only the warmth of each other's bodies and the coolness of the occasional breeze.

Eventually, Celestia lifted the sun, and the day began properly. Eventually, Twilight flew with Celestia and helped her lie to her sister about where they'd been. Eventually, Twilight reached out to Trixie and Zecora, writing down in a new notebook a few new lessons about friendship, the primary one being that no friendship can last forever, but that the lucky thing about friends, is that you can always make new ones. Eventually, the endless assault of anxiety-triggering responsibility returned to their lives, the flow of mundanity impossible more powerful even than those who can transcend time and space. But for just a few hours, the two ponies sat in darkness and allowed each other to simply...be.

Author's Note

This is not a Celestia x Twilight fic, nor was it ever my intent to make it one. In my mind, their relationship is one of parent and child, mentor and mentee. While Twilight's biological parents are never portrayed as abusive or neglectful, the lack of mention in them throughout the series and Twilight's own lack of emotional intelligence points to them failing her in certain places, if only because she spent so much time while she was younger pursuing her own interests and learning from Celestia.

But romance is not the cure to the horrific absurdity of existence. It's friendship, if that wasn't obvious.