The knife descends. It descends again.

I can't move.

The zebra hesitates, then screams, "WHY? WHY IS SHE SO IMPORTANT?!"

I can't move.

The zebra takes the knife to my wing. I'm in shock from the pain.

I can't...

I'm not sure how long I had walked. At some point, I could feel the sun on my face when the morning birds chirped. I was moving westward, I assumed.

I'm getting close to my destination. The Guidance is quieter than usual, but it still nudges me in the correct direction from time to time.

I am getting nightmares about the purple zebra more often now. Her face is contorted with the purest rage as she raises her knife. She blinded me and crippled me, and now the Guidance is leading me to her.

A chill passes through me. Is that fear I feel? Or some twisted form of relief?

What will she do? What will I do?

I press on. Another memory surfaces.

"What would it take to convince you that you're wrong?" One of us asks the other.

"For me to be wrong, you would need to be right. There is only one truth, my student, and it comes from the Star Father."

"One day, you'll realize that everything that you believe in is a lie, and that you hurt countless creatures for nothing. I hope I get to see it."

"You won't."

At some point, I pass by another traveler. I discover that Appleloosa isn't too far away and that the buffalo lands are nearby. I thank the traveler for the information and assure them that I do not need help.

It is another hour before the Guidance offers its next piece of advice: a slight left, through the meadow ahead. There are no rocks present, so I do not need to tread carefully. I briefly stop to admire the beautiful sounds of nature. It is... peaceful.

I wish I could share that peace.

Soon I reach a clearing, and the Guidance shows me a humble cottage with a nearby garden, along with some large trees offering shade to small critters underneath it. A clothesline is strung up with variously sized garments side by side. There is somepony working in the garden. I begin to approach them.

I do not call out to the pony, but I intentionally step on a branch to alert them to my presence. I hear them stop. They briefly look over at me.

"Another visitor? What ailments do you seek my help for?" A female voice. It's... there's something...

My breathing stops. That's not a pony, it's her. The purple zebra. She saw me.

She doesn't recognize me.

I'm lost for words. I simply stand there, frozen. The zebra is tending to her plants, humming a pleasant tune.

Eventually, she looks at me again. "If you're going to stand there, you might as well help me with..."

All of the birds are now silent. The leaves in the trees are perfectly still. The zebra stops as well. I can tell that her heart has skipped a beat.

She stands up. The color has drained from her stripes.

We stare at each other, but I can see her better than she sees me.

She's utterly terrified.

I manage some words. "You hurt me." There is so much more that I want to say, but I can't figure out how to say it.

"I... I know." She trembles as she tightly grips the trowel she was tending to her garden with just a moment ago. "Are you a spirit? Or are you really...?"

"I'm really here," I say. I feel like I should be furious with her, yet I feel nothing.

The zebra becomes only more tense. "But... how? How are you here? How did you... survive?"

I keep my head level as if to stare directly at her. "I think you know how."

I did not think her face could become more pale. "No... that's... that's not possible. The Guidance is gone. It-"

"The Guidance isn't gone, you threw it away."

The silence that followed my statement could be measured in eons.

In time, I find some words to say, but something unexpected happens. A young figure appears from the cottage. "Mom! I can't find my favorite book! Can you-"

"Gael," the zebra says with a tone so firm and commanding that it could humble even the most rebellious revolutionary, "Go to your room. Now."

Even still, the younger voice didn't understand the gravity of the zebra's voice. He looked at me, then back to the zebra. "Is that mare a friend of yours, mom? Why are there bandages on her-"

"I SAID GO TO YOUR ROOM, GAEL!" The zebra practically screamed at the young colt.

The young pony is frightened. He hurriedly goes back inside. No, wait. There was something off about his shape. The Guidance is correcting me. That wasn't a pony, that was...

"That's a griffon." A question in a statement.

"Yes," the zebra replied, "He is."

We are quiet again. I try to process this information.

The zebra eventually speaks. Her voice is uneven, almost as if she expects to die here and now. "Are you here for revenge?"

A well of anger springs up within me, then dissipates as quickly as it came. Or... at least I think it was anger. "I... don't think so."

There is yet another pause. Pieces of my memory begin to fall back into place: the zebra in front of me is (or was?) one of the most important equines within the Ascendancy. "Why are you looking after a griffon? After... after everything you did to them?"

The zebra is disarmed by my question. She falters, then lowers her head toward the ground. Is that... is that shame? From her, of all creatures?

"I... I had to know." She almost whispers.

Had to know what? I walk towards her. "You helped butcher them by the millions. Them and everycreature who stood against you."

"Yes," her voice cracked, "I did." Is she starting to cry? ...No, but she is now sitting down and staring at the dirt.

I press forward with more questions. "Then why come here, to a remote part of Equestria? Why raise a griffon in secret? Do you seriously think that this will make things right?"

A breeze picks up. The leaves in the trees brush against one another, and the drying fabrics on the clothesline flap in the wind. There is a small figure poking his head out of the attic window of the cottage. I doubt he can hear us from here, but he does see everything transpiring between us.

"I..." There are tears now. "I have to try. I... I can't..."

I'm right in front of her now. She's more broken than I was when I woke up in the hospital. Still, I want answers. "You can't what?"

She sobs briefly, then wipes her face and composes herself. "There's... there's something I want to show you. Come inside."

I almost tell her no. I almost demand to be told the truth here and now. But the Guidance also demands that I go along with her request. If that is what I am supposed to do, then so be it.

With some effort, the zebra stands up. She seems utterly exhausted, despite us speaking for only a few minutes. Perhaps it has been longer? Time seemed to flow much quicker ever since I obtained the Guidance. Regardless, she leads me to her cottage. It is quaint, yet comfortable. There are many herbs, materials, and concoctions that give away her trade as an alchemist, and...

My breath hitches.

...a knife. The knife.

It's on a countertop, next to a vegetable of some kind. The sight gifted by the Guidance doesn't specify further details.

The zebra walks past it without acknowledging it.

At the top of the stairs is the young griffon from earlier. He is staring at me curiously. I turn my head towards him, and confusion appears on his face. He must be trying to figure out how I can see things.

"In here, please." The zebra opened one of the few doors in the cottage. Inside is... I'm not sure. I am not privy to that information. I step forward, then hesitate. Walking into the unknown like that...

The zebra senses my fear. "Just as you are not here to hurt me, I am not here to hurt you." She offers a hoof, "I... I need you to see this."

"I can't see," I state weakly. A pathetic response, given that I had traversed the entire continent without sight.

"I know," She plays along.

I take her hoof, and then enter the void.

...

She closes the door behind us.

I cannot sense anything inside of this room. It's just me and her in an endless black abyss.

She lets go of my hoof. I hear her hoofsteps on wood as she walks away from me. She reaches into... a drawer? It's hard to tell. As she does so, she begins to speak.

"A long time ago, I had two friends," The void becomes a brilliant night sky, untainted by the light of civilization. There are two other zebras floating in the air above us. One male, one female. "They never knew each other, but... they both meant the world to me."

Two names come to my mind. "Zethro and Elishat."

She seems surprised. "...Yes. Is... did the Guidance tell you?"

"I read your journal, remember?"

She looks away again. I think she's recalling one of the many times she threatened to kill me for prying into her life. "Right. You did." She sighs, then retrieves that very journal from the darkness she had been reaching into. "I... lost them, but you also know that. But what I wrote down long ago wasn't what actually happened."

I tilt my head. "What happened, then?"

She hugged her journal close to herself. "When Zethro became ill in the Whitetail Mountains, I... I had the opportunity to ask for help from a nearby griffon settlement. I had done some research on that illness after he died, and... I found that it was native to the region." She grits her teeth. "If I had... If I had not been so stupid, so prideful in my race's superiority... if I had humbled myself enough to ask for help from those griffons, he might have lived. But I didn't."

I can't quite pin down the feeling I am experiencing, but it's not... pleasant. I opt to not say anything.

The zebra continues as the image of Zethro fades from the sky. "Elishat... I had feelings for her. When we were traveling towards the Key Lake near the Changeling Queendom, I almost confessed those feelings to her. It wouldn't have mattered if I did, because by then she was already dead and replaced by a changeling assassin." There are tears, again. "But that's not the whole story. When we first arrived in port to Ditrysium, she expressed concern about the trustworthiness of Changelings. I... I dismissed her concerns, because I was fully convinced that they were filled with the same spirit of equinity as myself. That they would never betray our trust. That they were better than the avians I had been taught to hate. If I had listened to her, she might still be here. But I didn't."

The image of Elishat fades from the sky. The zebra in front of me opens the journal and carefully turns the pages. "And then after... after I hurt you, I realized just how wrong I had been about everything. Every righteous action I had taken was a foolish mistake. Every dead heretic was just another innocent victim in the Ascendancy's genocidal campaign. Everything you said about me was right, and... It was just like you said: 'They died for nothing.'"

There is a lump in my throat. I feel like I should say something, but the words fail to form in my mouth.

Another image forms in the cosmos behind the zebra. It's... her, slumped against the side of the boat's cabin on that fateful day where she crippled me. She continues. "I was left without the power that made me who I was. It took me a while to accept that, and it wasn't until long after the Teacher's transcendence-" She stops, then corrects herself, "Hiram's death, that I stopped calling myself the Guide." She looks to the side, then sighs. "I couldn't bear to stand among them anymore. I don't know if it was guilt that convinced me to mess with the focusing crystals in that ritual, but... I suppose it doesn't matter. The Ascendancy believes that Hiram became the Godhead, but no, he's dead. I know it."

The scene fades, and another takes its place. She's walking alone through a town square of sorts. There are ponies helping griffon refugees. "I left, and I fled as far as I could from that cursed nation. It's doomed to collapse, anyway. Once they disagree on something, it'll fall like a house of cards. It's just a matter of time." She retrieves a small photograph from her journal. The details of it are not visible to me, but I remember what is on it: a young pony and a griffon hugging one another. "You asked me why I came here. Why I'm raising a griffon. Well, this is why. I needed to know for sure that I was wrong about them. I needed to know that they aren't inherently evil, and that the Ascendancy is wrong. That I was wrong. So I... adopted one whose parents were killed by them."

"That won't fix the fact that griffons are an endangered species now." The words leave my mouth before I consider how hurtful they are.

If my remark stings her, then she doesn't show it. "I... I can't ever be forgiven for the sins I've committed. But I have to try." She turns to face me, her eyes filled with hopelessness and cheeks stained with guilt. "I have to make it right. It's impossible, but I have to try anyway. It would be wrong of me not to. I owe it to all of those I've wronged. I owe it to... my friends."

She's pouring her heart out to me, and I don't know how to respond. I just stand there.

The cosmos fades, and the void returns. She closes her journal and sets it back into the darkness. "And now you're here. Back from the dead, and holding the Guidance I treasured so deeply. Why? I know I don't deserve it, but... I need to know. Why is the Guidance with you? Why did it bring you back to me?" Her voice raises, "Why did it want me to spare you?! What even is the Guidance?!"

It's just us, now. Floating in darkness, with a mysterious force that defies explanation. I consider her words, and the lump in my throat returns. I slowly make my way over to her, but each step feels like an eternity. She stands there, crumbling, yet holding on to herself.

She held the Guidance for so long, and yet at that pivotal moment where it demanded an action from her, she defied it. What did it want for her? What does it want for me?

It's quiet, and yet... the Guidance speaks to me. It speaks without words in the same way that I can see without sight. There is a moment of confusion, then comprehension, then acceptance.

I know what I must do.

I take one final step forward, then reach my front hooves out around her and pull her into an embrace.

"I forgive you."

What was left of the zebra's composure shatters, and she begins to bawl. I hold onto her, and eventually, she embraces me back. We stand there for an incomprehensible amount of time.

Eventually, she manages some words between her sobs. "H-How? How can you forgive me for what I did to you?"

Because the Guidance knew that was what she needed. It knew that she needed it now, and it knew that she needed it all those years ago, and even before that. "The Guidance always wanted you to walk the right path. You just made a mistake, that's all."

Her sobs intensify.

I wonder briefly if the Guidance brought me here solely to comfort her. Then it dawns on me.

I needed to see her as much as she needed to see me.

She needed forgiveness. I needed closure.

The Guidance wants us to become better ponies. Better zebras. Better creatures.

Somehow, despite the impossibility of it, a tear drips down from my bandaged face. I join her in her sobbing,

Time passes. Slowly, the shape of a bedroom forms around us, and the void we are standing in fades away. We separate from one another, then regain some semblance of composure.

A thought occurs to me between my sniffling. "You know... you never did tell me your name."

She chuckles in between her own sniffling. "It's Zayla."

That gives me pause. Such a mundane name for such an impactful, extraordinary zebra.

"And what about you? What's your name?"

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. "I... I don't know. I can't remember."

Zayla stares at me briefly, then laughs. "I think you know."

Oh. Of course. What else could it be, after all?

"I am the Guide." I wield the Guidance. The Guidance will show me the way. And just as the way will guide me to becoming better than who I was, I will guide others to becoming better than who they were.

Author's Note

For personal reasons, I find it very, very difficult to sit down and actually finish writing any of my stories. It's so easy to leave a story unfinished - when an adventure's ending isn't set in stone, then anything can happen. I won't think about what could have been, or worry that I may have disappointed someone with how I wrote it. But a story that doesn't have an ending is almost worse than never writing the story at all. I must have sat down probably fifty nights or so telling myself "I'll finish this tonight" and ended up doing something else unproductive. At some point, I recalled a quote by some author that I cannot remember: The worst story ever written is still infinitely better than the greatest story never written.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for accompanying me throughout the journey of the Star Father, the (original) Guide, her companions, and The Ascendancy as a whole. This is the end, well and truly.

I'll see you next time, in whatever adventure that may be.