Epilogue: All Ye Who Nipah Must One Day Tutturu

The filly sat alone on a rock. All around her was an endless gray landscape of stone, broken only by craters. The sky was a cold expanse of stars.

She turned to her left. Nothing but rocks and craters as far as the eye could see. She turned to her right. More rocks, and more craters. As far as the eye could see.

She stood up, and began to walk. There weren't any noteworthy landmarks, so she just picked a direction at random. She passed rocks and craters, and then more rocks and more craters. From time to time she would pass small piles of bleached bones, that looked suspiciously like filly-sized pony skeletons. She began to suspect that she was not the first filly unfortunate enough to have displeased the Princess. Perhaps Mommy Twilight, being the favored student, had been more fortunate than she'd realized.

Eventually, Pyx grew tired of walking, and plopped down on the nearest comfortable-looking rock. She stared at her surroundings for awhile. Rocks and craters, as far as the eye could see. She levitated a nearby rock, looked at it for a moment, and then put it down again.

Lonely, isn't it?

Her head jolted up at the sound of the familiar voice in her head.

"Y-yeah," she said after a moment.

The voice didn't say anything else.

Pyx continued to stare at the rocks and craters for several minutes more.

"So...what is there to do up here desu?" she asked at length. The voice's reply was immediate:

Pretty much what you're doing right now.

"Oh."

She sat in silence for a while longer. Then, having little else to do, she stood up and began to walk again.

Don't worry, you'll get used to the solitude surprisingly quickly, said the voice.

"Is there anything up here besides craters and rocks?"

Not really, I'm afraid. But...why don't you go and have a look at what's inside that crater over there?

Pyx felt her head pulled by some unseen force towards an enormous crater on her left. She trotted towards it curiously, peering over the rim. It looked deep, and very, very dark.

Go down inside it, the voice encouraged. You'll find a path about halfway around the rim.

Pyx did as she was instructed, found the path, and descended into the crater. As the smooth stone walls of the bowl rose up around her, it began to grow uncomfortably dark. She lit up her horn, which cast an eerie green light on the path ahead of her.

Though the crater had appeared to be a smooth bowl from above, once she was down here she discovered that enormous boulders littered the surface, making it hard to see exactly where she was headed. The path wove around them in twists and turns, and soon she lost all sense of direction, having only the canopy of the stars overhead to tell her which way was up.

Not much further now, the voice assured her.

Sure enough, the path made a couple of twists and turns around a cluster of particularly large boulders, and then suddenly the ground leveled out and opened up, and Pyx discovered she was standing almost dead-center at the bottom of the crater. Ahead of her, amazingly enough, was an enormous stone castle.

"Wow..." she said out loud.

Do you like it?

"It's...really cool desu. Did you...build this?"

Yes, its construction occupied the better part of the first century I was here. In retrospect, I probably could have picked a cheerier location for it, but at the time I was paranoid about being watched by my sister. I knew there was an observatory in Canterlot with a powerful telescope, and so I decided to hide it deep inside this crater, where the light seldom touches.

"Wow..." said Pyx again.

She went inside. The layout was almost identical to the ruined castle she'd explored in the Everfree Forest, except everything was pristine and well maintained.

I cast a number of protection spells on it, the voice explained. After all, I didn't want all of my hard work to be undone by a stray meteor or something.

"That makes sense desu," said Pyx.

Following some strange instinct, she made her way through a series of twisting corridors. The passages of the castle were lit by mysterious glass orbs set in the walls, that ignited when she drew near and faded out when she had moved on.

Eventually, she passed through a narrow doorway into a staircase that spiraled upward for a long, long time. After ascending for what felt like forever, she eventually emerged into an enormous round chamber. Tall windows set at regular intervals provided a view of the gloomy crater spread out below them, and between the windows were shelves stuffed floor to ceiling with books. Most of them appeared to be quite old.

"How did you get all of these books up here?" she asked, somewhat awestruck.

The voice somehow gave her the impression that it was smirking inside her head.

Oh, I have my methods. Perhaps I will teach them to you, if you prove to be worthy of learning my secrets.

"Worthy?"

However, the voice did not elaborate.

Pyx continued to explore the library, scanning the titles of the volumes in the shelves. Most of them were written in Old Ponish, a difficult language that Mommy Twilight had only begun to teach her, and only then during her rare moments of lucidity.

As if reading her mind, the voice once again spoke up:

Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to learn. And I assure you, there is much that I can teach you. That is...assuming, of course, that you've had quite enough of Twilight Sparkle and her little...'friendship lessons'?

Pyx hesitated, but then nodded sadly.

"Hai desu," she said. "I'm pretty sure those days are over now."

Yes, well, as I've said, it's a bit lonely up here, the voice admitted. But you'll get used to it.

Pyx didn't respond, however. A particular book had caught her attention. It was lying open on a reading-stand near the center of the room. She approached it and scanned the letters, surprised to see that it was in a language she could understand.

"Legend has it," she read aloud, "That on the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape."

She turned away from the book, and walked slowly to the nearest window. She stared out at the curving rock-strewn bowl of the crater, and the endless starry expanse overhead.

"Nightmare Moon?" she asked suddenly.

Yes, Pyx?

"How long is a thousand years?"

The voice laughed.

Oh, it's not as long as you think, child. It's not as long as you think.

Pyx smiled, continuing to stare out the window. Her gaze was drawn upward, towards the stars, and for the first time she noticed how beautiful they were.

"I'm glad to hear that," she said.

She looked up at the stars, and her smile widened.

"Tutturu~~!"

END

Author's Note

Closing credits theme:

I've had this parody rattling around in my head for a couple of years now, and I'm happy I found an opportunity to finally shake it out. Even though whatever relevance Past Sins might have once had (either in the fandom or the world at large) is probably well past its expiration date (and there may not be much of an audience for this), I still had a lot of fun writing it.

The original idea was to just do a straight-up scene-for-scene parody of the original with a much sillier character in place of the infamous Nyx. There were only two conditions that had to be met: the Nyx stand-in had to be as obnoxious a character as I could possibly make her, and the story had to end with her getting sent to the moon instead of redeemed. However, once I started actually writing the whole thing kind of went off on its own. I'm basically happy with how it turned out, but by the end of it I wound up feeling more attached to Pyx than I'd intended. I almost felt a little bad about sending her to the moon, hence the somewhat open ending. I'm debating whether or not it's worth bringing the character back at some point in a different story; I guess we'll see.

Anyway, I'd like to thank everyone who took time out of their busy schedules to read this ridiculous pile of you-know-what that I word-vomited over the course of November 2022. It may not be great art, it may not even be passable satire, but hopefully I at least managed to amuse a few people. Whether you loved it, hated it, or felt no strong emotion one way or the other, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to leave a brief comment and let me know what you think.

Until next time. Nipah and Tutturu. Desu.

--David Foster Walrus
June 2023