Death, Sacrifice, and the man in blue

by MrTyrannousaurusX

Rating: teen
Tags: Profanity, Violence, Death, Human, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Thriller, Fluttershy
Length: 304697

After a day out in the trailer goes horribly arwy, Levi Cronell and his honorary brother Alan Sizemore end up in Equestria after not seeing any for many moons. The two try to find each other through the chaos of this unknown world.

After a drug batch goes disastrously wrong, Levi Cronell and his honorary brother Alan Sizemore somehow end up in Equestria after humans being absent there for many, many moons. While seperated, the two try to reunite while simultaneously trying to settle in and find there place In this chaotic world. At the same time, they attempt to grapple with powers none of them can understand, leaving many questions unanswered. Will they ever find each other? Or will they become victims of the unknown world around them?

Published 2023-02-11 17:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-11-05 02:52:20 UTC

Chapter 2: Another begins

As Levi’s vision returned to normal, he no longer saw the rainbow with the unicorn standing there. He saw a bright blue sky and he felt himself falling at an alarming speed. Levi screamed as he fell for a few seconds and…

THUD!

Levi whimpered and groaned in pain after his fall, his back and his head were throbbing and Levi felt like he was run over by a train. “Ala…Al…” He attempted to say, but was unable from his pain and him being dazed from the fall.

After a few minutes lying there recovering and pushing through his pain, he finally found the strength to stand up. Shakily and with some effort, he managed to stand up fully. He wobbled and almost fell back onto the ground but kept his balance. His head was swimming and as he put his hat back onto his head he scanned his surroundings, trying to get an idea of where he was all the while memories of what happened just seconds ago felt almost impossible to remember.

Slowly but surely, all of the events of the day came back to him. The dream, Howard, the failed cook, and Levi’s talk with Alan at the restaurant. This made Levi’s eyelids shoot up in a panic “ALAN!” he bellowed.

He cupped his hands over his mouth and looked up in the sky and screamed “ALAN! ALAN WHERE ARE YOU! AL!” there was no response. All he heard was the dead silence of the forest.

“FUCK!” He yelled out of anger. “Dammit Alan why! Why did you have to cook that recipe huh!” He exclaimed. “Big Ray” Levi said, rubbing his face with his hands. He was worried sick about Alan, about where he could be. If Levi had no idea where he was he assumed Alan had no clue either. Levi decided that standing around moping and feeling sorry for himself wasn’t productive in the least bit, and that he might as well start walking if no one’s around.

After about 10 minutes of walking, mostly limping due to Levi’s pain, Levi finally found civilization in the form of a small cottage. The large cottage had tan colored walls and red front door and small windows all along the walls, also along the walls were small birdhouses that were being held on a red stick attached to the cottage. The top of the cottage wasn’t a roof necessarily, but more like the top of a very large tree. There was a bridge running over a small stream that Levi used to cross over to the path that led up to the cottage's front door. Levi also noticed a lot of small animals jumping and running around in this person’s front yard, rabbits, squirrels, and birds were scattered all over the place.

As Levi walked over the bridge and onto the path, all of the small animals and critters suddenly took one look at Levi and began to run away in all different directions and hide. The squirrels dashed up the trees, the rabbits jumped inside of their burrows, and the birds hid inside some of the many birdhouses.

Levi continued staggering up the path until he got to the front door, which he promptly knocked on. “Hello?” He called out to whoever was, hopefully, inside.

“Coming!” He heard a soft voice exclaim from inside. A few seconds later, the owner of the soft voice, and all of the animals, opened the top half of her front door and Levi was shocked at what he saw.

It was a small yellow horse with big light blue eyes that matched the color of the sky, medium length pink wavy hair that laid along the left side of her head and neck and a tail of the same pink hair. He also noticed a small insignia on her back end, right above her right back leg, that was 3 small pink butterflies.

Almost immediately after laying eyes on him she let out a loud yet quiet “EEK!” and slammed the door in his face. Levi was incredibly annoyed at her reaction. Levi knocked on the door once again and called out desperately “Please Ma'am-horse-whatever you are open the door! I need help!”

“Wha-what are you? W-who are you?” The horse on the other side stuttered quietly, he could hear the tremble in her voice. He couldn’t believe these animals were that scared of him. “My name's Levi Cronell OK? Well, I’m a human.” Levi explained.

“Please I promise I won’t hurt you, I need help! I don’t know where the hell I am and I think I have a concussion!” Levi exclaimed desperately through the door, praying the horse would have pity and let him inside.

About 10 seconds later, the top half of the door opened slowly and ever so slightly so that the horse could see Levi. He saw her big eye through the crack in the door and she asked in a shaky and nervous voice “W-where did you c-come from?” “Tuscaloosa” He answered. “Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I’m not from here.”

“Listen I’ll answer everything you wanna know and more if you let me inside!” Levi bargained, still praying the horse would have pity on him and let him in.

The horse looked down in thought for a few seconds and then the top half shut and afterwards the entire door slowly opened all the way.

He quickly staggered inside the warm cottage as the door was shut behind him by the generous horse. Inside the cottage was a green couch and chair sitting on top of a light blue carpet in the center of the room, that matched the color of her eyes, right behind the couch was a window that shone bright light into the room which lit up beautifully. To the left of the couch was a lamp that stood in the corner of the room and a bookshelf to the right of it.

Levi hastily staggered to the couch and practically fell onto it, sighing out of relief. “Thank you.” He said.

“It’s n-no problem.” She responded in her soft quiet voice. “W-what do you need?” She asked him, letting her hair cover the left side of her face.

“Do you have any medicine? Painkillers or anything like that?” Levi asked.

“Uhm…I probably have something like that. I’ll go look for it.” She answered. As she walked upstairs, Levi dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone and pressed the power button and was delighted when his screen lit up and saw his lock screen. The time read 8:15 AM and he was surprised at how much time had passed, it was only an hour after that fateful cook.

As Levi was staring off into space, he noticed a white object jump from down the stairs and onto the floor in front of Levi. Levi looked at the object and saw it was a small white bunny that was staring daggers into him. “Can you talk too?” He joked, a grin forming on his face.

The bunny furrowed his eyebrows and stood up on his legs and crossed his arms at Levi. “I’ll take that as a no.” Levi said. ‘This world is so damn weird.’ He thought to himself, eyeing the bunny.

A short time later, the yellow horse walked back down the stairs and said “I found something.” “Awesome” Levi responded.

She cautiously and slowly walked up to him, which Levi immediately noticed, and handed him a small flower and quickly backed up away from him. “What gives?” Levi asked, confused.

“W-what?” She asked back.

“Why are you so scared of me, I’m not gonna hurt you.” Levi explained, attempting to gain the trust of the horse but Levi knew it wouldn’t be easy.

“W-well y-you're a human, I don’t even really know what you are.” She answered, lowering her head. Levi knew this was a conversation for a different time and decided to change the subject.

“Anyways, what’s this?” He asked, holding up his hand with the flower in it to the horse.

“Oh, that’s a Poppy plant. It’s good for relieving pain, probably the best thing I have for that.” She explained, causing a concerned look to grow on Levi’s face.

“Where I'm from these things can kill you if you eat too much.” Levi said.

“That’s if you eat a lot though.” She emphasized. “One won’t hurt.”

“If you say so, you got anything to drink? I haven’t had anything in hours.” Levi asked, trying not to sound rude or needy considering he was an unwanted guest.

“Oh of course, you have anything in mind?” She asked.

“Beer or water. Bud light.” He responded, expecting some form of surprise from the horse.

“Oh uhm, I don’t drink, I have tea though, if that’s any better.” She answered.

“That’s fine.” Levi responded, feeling refreshed just at the thought of tea.

“I’ll get right on it.” She said, as she was walking to her kitchen she added “Oh I forgot to mention, my name's Fluttershy.”

“That’s a nice name.” Levi complimented, earning a blush from the horse. “I’m Levi Cronell, but you know that already.” She thanked him and walked into her kitchen. Levi took a glance at the small red flower in his hand and, not thinking about any side effects, popped the flower in his mouth and swallowed it without chewing. The flower uncomfortably went down and Levi shivered from the weird feeling.

He took off his hat and tossed it next to him on the green couch and made himself comfortable on the couch as Fluttershy finished the tea. A few minutes later, Fluttershy emerged from the kitchen with a large teapot in one hoof and two small tea cups in the other.

She sat down on the green chair to the right of the front of the couch, she placed the pot and handed Levi a cup. He painfully sat forward and took the cup from her hoof and leaned back like he was pulled back into position. He held the cup out and she poured tea into his and her cup as Levi leaned back into the couch. “Thank you, truly.” He said. “Oh it’s nothing.” She said, her cheeks turning a light shade of red.

Levi took a sip of his tea and asked her “No offense but…what are you?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“LIke are you a horse or...what?” Levi clarified.

“Oh..uhm…” She answered, surprised by the question. “Well, me and everybody here in Ponyville are ponies.” She answered.

“Well another question..” He said, Fluttershy took a sip of her tea and went “Hmm?”

“Where am I?” He asked.

“Well you’re in my cottage.” Fluttershy answered, like it was an obvious question.

“No I mean like..where am I?” He asked again, clarifying his question.

“Oh, well my cottage is right on the edge of Everfree forest, but Ponyville is a few minutes away from here.” Fluttershy answered.

Levi took a sip of his tea and asked “Have you heard anything about humans before? Any history books or anything like that?”

“Oh uhm, no.” Fluttershy answered, taking a sip as well. Levi was relieved for some reason, he didn’t really know why but he felt like he had a better chance of living here if they didn't know about the history of humans.

“That’s good.” He responded, hoping Fluttershy wouldn’t ask any questions about what humans did.

Suddenly, the bunny that Levi had seen earlier hopped into the room from the kitchen and stood up on his back legs and crossed his arms and thumped his foot quickly on the floor. “Oh do you need to be fed Angel?” Fluttershy asked the bunny, him nodding in response. ‘Angel, so that’s his name.’ Levi thought.

As she walked over to the kitchen to grab the bunny something to eat, Levi decided to see if the flower did anything to him and he slowly stood up. There was a sharp pain in his back and head at first but after a few seconds it went away, and was replaced with a duller pain. He stumbled to the entrance of the kitchen and leaned against the wall for support, as he still had a little trouble walking. “Where’s your bathroom at Fluttershy?” He called into the kitchen.

She turned around and was startled to see Levi walked and jumped and responded with “O-oh! I see you're feeling better! It’s upstairs.” Levi turned around and looked at the stairs and he could already see the potential trouble that walking up the stairs with his condition could lead to. “I’ll just go outside.” He said, stumbling towards the door. “Oh, okay.” Fluttershy responded meekly, as Levi opened the door and walked outside.

A cool breeze hit him as soon as he walked outside and he smiled, happy at the hospitality he’d been given by Fluttershy. He decided it would be rude to urinate on a tree in front of her cottage, not to mention there was a birdhouse on the tree and there was a window where she could easily see him.

He walked a few feet behind the cottage where the border of the forest was and picked a random tree and stood close to it. He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants and relieved himself, however as he was looking around everywhere as he was urinating he noticed something strange in the darkness of the forest.

It was not night dark, but it was dark due to the large and thick tree tops of the forest. There was a large object that was standing eerily still, it was a good distance away from him so he could not see it that well, but what he did see were two light green eyes peering at him from the darkness.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness beneath the trees, he noticed the creature didn’t have regular features. The animal was black and brown and had eyebrows that looked like leaves and ears that looked like small spruce trees. Levi zipped his pants and buckled his pants and looked intently at the creature, turning his body toward the creature.

He heard a low growl and noticed the large creature was inching towards him, Levi reached into his back pocket and pulled out a large switchblade and flipped it open. He stared right into the eyes of the creature, he knitted his eyebrows as the creature got closer and closer.

Then, all of the sudden, the creature leaped at him and roared. Levi barely had any time to react but he managed to leap to the side and dodge the animals attack, he landed on the ground with a sharp pain in his back. “Shit!” He exclaimed, half out of panic and half out of pain. The animal leaped on top of him before Levi could do anything and pinned his shoulders to the ground and the animal reached his mouth down to Levi’s neck and attempted to bite him.

Levi managed to free his shoulders from the creature's strong paws and pushed the creature's face away from his, it was then when he realized this animal was a wolf made completely out of wooden planks and trees and leaves. The wolf barked at him, peppering his face with his saliva. Levi held the wolf’s face away with his left hand and dropped the switchblade on the ground and decided to punch the wolf. He readied his hand and punched the wolf in the face as hard as he possibly could, the creature immediately jumped off of Levi allowing him to stand up and grab his switchblade.

The wolf whimpered and backed away as Levi approached him, the wolf turned around and sprinted back into the forest, disappearing into the darkness of the forest. “Son of a bitch, fuck this place!” He exclaimed, flipping his switchblade back and sticking back in his back pocket. Levi fought through the pain and ran back to Fluttershy’s cottage.

Levi swung open the door and slammed it shut behind him, scaring Fluttershy. “EEK!” She exclaimed. “Sorry..” He said, stumbling over to the couch and sitting down. He didn’t realize until he sat down how worse his pain was now, due to him leaping onto the ground because of the wolf.

“Fuck!” He whined, gritting his teeth.

“What’s wrong?” Fluttershy asked, concerned.

“There was some fucking wooden wolf out there, it came at me and I leaped and fucked my back up more.” Levi explained, with pain evident in his voice.

“Oh dear…” Fluttershy responded, putting her hoof to her mouth. “There are timberwolves out in those woods, you need to be really careful.”

Levi gave her an annoyed look and replied with “Maybe you should’ve told me that to begin with Fluttershy.”

“I-I didn’t know. Sorry” Fluttershy apologized, lowering her head.

Levi saw this and felt bad for his rude comment and responded with “Oh it’s alright Fluttershy. I didn’t mean to sound rude.”

“It’s ok.” She replied, raising her head and smiling.

Levi smiled back but his smile quickly went away when he shifted on the couch and yelped in pain.

“There’s something wrong with my back, I need to see a doctor.” Levi said, going back to his original position and gritting his teeth.

“Well if you go to Ponyville someone may be able to help you.” She said, “But they might not be so fond of you.”

“Probably” He responded.

Levi grabbed his hat and put it on his head and painstakingly and slowly stood up. “Ahh fuck!” He exclaimed in pain. “I’m gonna head down to Ponyville, see if anyone there can help me.” Levi said, walking slowly towards the door.

“Are you gonna come back?” Fluttershy asked, shyly. Levi turned his head towards her and gave her a confused look, “Why do you ask?”

“I..I like the company…” She answered, a blush forming on her cheeks.

Levi noticed this and smiled at her and responded “I’ll be back later, I promise.”

This brought a smile to Fluttershy’s face. He opened the door and looked at her and said “Later Flutters!” “Bye Levi!” She responded.

He staggered out of the cottage and slowly closed her door, and was met with the same cold breeze he felt when he walked outside, before the Timberwolf encounter. Levi began his slow walk to Ponyville, already missing the comfort of Fluttershy’s cottage as he crossed the bridge to the other side.

Chapter 3: Warm welcome

Even thought it was a 5-minute walk, it took Levi nearly 15 minutes to get there, due to him having to stop and take breaks from his aching legs and back. “Dammit Alan…” He groaned to himself in annoyance.

“Why did you have to send me here.” he said to himself, as he staggered slowly to Ponyville. “We couldn’t just have a nice, normal cook. We can make some money, and I can pay my damn bills, and everything would be alright.”

“But no! Of course not, something had to go wrong!” Levi said to himself, annoyed. “Now I’m in some place populated by ponies. Fantastic. But, credit where credit is due, that one was pretty nice.” Levi said, making himself laugh.

A short time later, Levi finally arrived at Ponyville, when he saw he had reached his destination he let out a sigh of relief and put his hands on his knees and took a small break. “Hell..yes!” He cheered to himself, as he began to walk down the light brown path that led inside of Ponyville.

Near the end of the path there was a bridge, similar to the one at Fluttershy’s cottage but bigger and wider. As he crossed it, the ponies that were walking around and about began to notice Levi coming over the bridge. When he reached the end of the path after the bridge, a bunch of ponies saw him and were whispering and muttering to one another. Some ponies pulled their children closer to their side, Levi saw all of this and stopped dead in his tracks and looked at the small crowd of ponies that started to form in front and around Levi. They weren’t close to Levi; they were about 10 feet away from him, which made sense given Fluttershy’s reaction when she first saw him.

“Hey, I need help!” He exclaimed. The ponies said nothing but just continued to stare at him, with confused and nervous expressions on their faces. As Levi was watching the crowd of ponies that slowly continued to get bigger and bigger, he saw some of the ponies had wings like Fluttershy but some had no wings and some had horns. ‘Unicorns?’ Levi thought, confused.

“Please!” He begged. “I think my back is fucked up bad! I need to see a doctor! Please I’m not gonna hurt you!” He continued begging, taking a few steps closer to the crowd.

Suddenly, a light blue pony with darker blue hair came running from around the corner of a building that was to the right of the crowd and Levi saw as a look of horror came across her face. Levi could tell something was about to happen as he looked at her horrified expression. “IT’S A CHANGELING LOOK AT HIS EYES! RUN!” The pony screamed, causing the crowd to almost immediately go from confusion to nervous to panic in a matter of seconds. They all began to scream, much to Levi’s confusion. “NO! STOP! WHAT THE FUCK IS CHANGELING!” Levi screamed over the screams of the crowd. Every pony in the crowd sprinted away from Levi and ran into their houses and restaurants and hid from Levi, under the impression that he was a changeling. “STOP! PLEASE!” He pleaded, running further into the town. He watched as the word quickly spread like wildfire that a “Changeling” was in Ponyville, this caused more ponies to panic and scream and run away and hide.

Levi ran a little bit further but the pain in his legs and back became unbearable, forcing him to a stop. A look of desperation formed on his face as he watched as every pony, unicorn, and flying pony ran and hid either in the clouds or in their houses. “Fuck…” He said to himself. He saw out of the corner of his eye as a pony’s curtain parted slightly to look at him, and when he turned his head to look at it the curtain closed shut instantly.

Levi saw in front a large building that looked like a house but he had a feeling it wasn’t. It had white walls with brown wooden stripes on the walls, it had a brown that looked like cake and white icing on the edges, and what looked like a tower on top with the top of it being a large pink cupcake with a candle stuck in the top of it.

This confused Levi even more. but before he could make a comment about the odd building, he heard one of the ponies shout from out of their window “LOOK! IT’S THE WONDERBOLTS!”

The ponies cheered out of their windows as heard a sound similar to a jet flying in the air and he felt a strong gust of wind. He saw a group of 6 flying ponies wearing blue uniforms with yellow lightning patterns and goggles. “What the hell..HEY!” He shouted up at the flying ponies.

“I’M A HUMAN AND I NEED HELP! I’M NOT GONNA HURT ANYONE!” Levi yelled up at them, he noticed one of the ponies broke off from the rest and flew off to the left but Levi brushed it off. “SOMEBODY HELP ME! I NEED A DO-”

THUMP!

One of the flying ponies slammed into Levi at full speed, sending him flying for a few seconds but he began to tumble and roll on the ground until he slammed into the hard wall of one of the ponies' houses. Levi roared in pain as he laid there against the wall, unable to move from the agonizing pain in his arms, legs, back, pretty much everywhere on his body.

This was the worst pain Levi had ever experienced, and if his back wasn’t fractured or messed up in some way it was now. Without a shadow of a doubt. The ponies landed in front of him and a few seconds later a pony with dark blue hair landed after the rest, Levi knew he was the hit who had done this to him. The ponies all came out of their house and watched the Wonderbolts confront Levi, “What are you doing here Changeling!” she demanded, with venom in her voice.

Levi began to sob from the pain and he felt pathetic, lying on the ground in front off all these ponies crying out of pain. “Please…please don’t hurt me…” He pleaded weakly, flinching whenever the main Wonderbolt stepped towards him. The pony pulled off her goggles, revealing her strong orange eyes and barked “Why are you here! I won’t ask you again!”

Levi looked at her with pleading eyes and responded with “My name is Levi Cronell, I’m a human. I fell out of the sky and I need help…”

The main pony cocked her head at him and asked “Do you even know what a Changeling is?” Levi was barely able to shake his head.

The main pony looked back at her fellow Wonderbolts and the dark blue haired pony took off his goggles and spoke up “What if he’s lying?”

“If he was a Changeling he would’ve changed back already. There’s no way he’s not.” She argued. She looked around and saw the crowd of ponies forming around them and she said “We’ll talk in the sky.”

“What?” Levi asked confusedly, as she gently wrapped her hooves around him, careful not to hurt him. She turned to her teammates and nodded at them and they all went into the sky, with the main pony carrying Levi’s weak and limp body bridal style.

The ponies watched, clapping and cheering, as the main pony lifted him up into the sky. A short time later, when they were high enough in the sky where the ponies on the ground looked like ants, the main pony spoke “So, you’re Levi right?”

He nodded. “What are you doing here? Nopony’s ever seen a human before so that’s probably why they panicked.” She explained.

“I’m a human. I have no idea what the fuck a Changeling is. Just don’t hurt me again.” Levi responded, hoping to earn some sympathy from the pony.

She turned to her teammates and asked them “Where’s the hospital at?”

“You can’t be serious Spitfire, he could be lying for all we know.” One of her teammates with yellow hair argued.

“You think a Changeling is smart enough to think of a name like ‘Levi Cronell”.” Spitfire responded, making a good point to her teammate.

“Where are you from?” The yellow haired teammate asked.

“Tuscaloosa” Levi answered, choosing the longer name in the hopes it would convince them more. “See” Spitfire said.

“Now I’m gonna ask you again, where’s the hospital?” Spitfire asked, in a demanding tone compared to the first time.

Her teammate sighed and pointed behind her and responded “That way.”

“Then let’s go!” She exclaimed, putting her goggles over her eyes. “You're gonna be alright Levi.” She reassured him.

“Thank you so much Spitfire.” He said, graciously.

“It’s what Wonderbolts do!” She responded, beginning to fly with her teammates to the hospital.

Some time later, Levi was admitted to the hospital and was being given liquid morphine to ease his immense pain. After what had happened in the town, the last thing he wanted was visitors, but he was happy to see the person who walked in the door.

He was resting his eyes on the bed, enjoying the time with no back or leg pain which was a time he took for granted. “Hey” Spitfire greeted, walking over to Levi’s bed.

“Hey yourself.” He replied, sitting up in bed. Levi decided to go ahead and ask the burning question that’s been on his mind ever since he got here, “Spitfire?” “Yeah?” She responded.

“Who did this to me?” Levi asked, surprising her with his straight forward question.

“Depends, what are you gonna do if you see him again?” Spitfire asked.

“Nothin’” He answered.

“It was Soarin, just don’t do anything to hurt him. He’s one of our best, if he’s out it’s gonna be bad for us.” Spitfire said, getting a chuckle from Levi.

“I probably won’t be strong enough to fight him, I mean he threw me into a damn building.” He said, chuckling. Spitfire gave him a sympathetic look which Levi almost immediately noticed.

“Hey, don’t feel bad for me.” Levi said, looking into her orange eyes. “It wasn’t his fault anyway, he thought I was a Changeling and If I was that was the right thing to do.” He explained.

“I know that but, nopony deserves that.” She added, with a sympathetic look in her eyes. Levi said nothing, which prompted Spitfire to clear her throat and ask “Anyways, what are your injuries? Are they bad?”

“He said it’s a miracle I'm not paralyzed and I don’t blame him, I thought for sure I was out for the count.” Levi responded.

“Anything fractured? Broken?” She asked.

“One of my arms is broken, there’s 5 fractures in my spine, and there’s a big cut in the back of my head.” Levi answered.

“Damn…” She said, running a hoof through her hair. After about ten seconds of comfortable silence, Levi decided to say what he felt needed to be said “Thank you, truly.”

“It’s nothing, I do this kinda thing all the time.” she responded, degrading her own accomplishment.

“No I mean it, I’d probably be worse off if it wasn’t for you trusting me.” Levi insisted.

Suddenly, the doctor who had originally seen him swung open the door and walked in and said “Mr.Cronell, Princess Celestia needs to see you.”

“I’m sorry, who?” Levi asked, confused.

“Princess Celestia. The Princess.” He answered, talking as if Levi was an idiot.

“He’s a human Doc, he doesn’t know.” Spitfire chimed.

“Oh I’m sorry! Would you be willing to take him their Captain?” The doctor asked.

A short time later, after the doctor disconnected him from the morphine, he had to have his arm wrapped in a cast and be pushed out of the hospital using a wheelchair which he hated. However, the second the hospital doors closed, Spitfire picked up Levi and flew him to the castle to meet the princess.

After about a good five minutes of flying, Spitfire decided to take a break and slowly went back down to the ground and laid Levi on the grass. Where she had decided to stop was in the middle of a large forest, Levi had wanted to stay away from forests after his encounter with the Timberwolf back at Fluttershy’s cottage, but he supposed fate had something different in mind.

Spitfire was panting and was covered in sweat, she tore her goggles off and laid down, leaning against a tree. Levi managed to do the same by scooting his body over to the tree next to hers and leaned against it. “You’re..so damn heavy..” she said, taking breaks between words to catch her breath.

Levi looked at her and smiled, saying “You gonna be alright?” in a joking tone.

She looked at him, her face flushed from sweat and heat, and answered “I’ve done worse…I’ll be fine…I just need a break.”

“If you say so.” He responded, leaning his head against the tree and staring off into the sky. Admiring its beauty and watching the clouds move gracefully. This for some reason made Levi think of Alan, which made his heart sting in regret and worry. ‘What if he’s dead?’ Levi thought. ‘What if he didn’t make it, or he’s lost..dammit! I can’t keep thinking about this!’ He thought.

“Mind if I ask you something Spitfire?” Levi asked, turning his head to her once more.

“Go ahead.” She responded.

“Do you have somebody you’d do anything for? Someone you’d die for if need be?” Levi asked.

“Yeah, my parents, probably my team.” Spitfire answered.

“Damn, you must care a hell of a lot about them don’t you? It’s like there your family or somethin’.” Levi added.

“They practically are.” She replied. “I mean I dedicate half my time to them.”

“Yeah..” He responded. “Mine’s my best friend, he’s practically my brother.” Levi said, sadness filling his eyes.

“Who is he?” Spitfire asked.

“His name is Alan. We were..messing around with some chemicals and there was an explosion, I got sent here and he wasn’t with me. I’ve been worried sick about him since.” Levi explained, looking up at the sky again imagining where Alan could be.

Spitfire gave him a look of sympathy and responded with “I’m sure he’s out there somewhere, I’m sure he’s just as worried about you as you are about him.”

Levi smiled at her, he knew she was right, and in that moment he knew what he had to do. Once he recovered from his injuries, he was gonna find his brother. No matter the cost.

Chapter 4: The prophet

Levi pushed open the purple double door while being escorted by two spear-wielding guards. The double doors led to a long hallway that led to the throne room to the Princess of Equestria, Princess Celestia. Levi’s nerves were on high and he was extremely nervous about the meeting with the Princess. Based on what happened back at Ponyville and with Soarin, Levi was expecting something bad to happen despite the fact she was someone in authority, that fact made Levi worry worse

When they reached the end of the hallway, the guards guarding the double doors to the throne room looked at Levi and then the guards and asked “Is this him?” in a low, intimidating voice.

“Yes” They answered. “We’ll take it from here.” The guards at the door said. The escorting guards nodded to the door guards and they turned around and started walking away.

The door guards opened the purple double doors and turned their heads to look at Levi, he got the message and walked up to be with the guards as all three of them walked into the throne room. Levi was sweating out nervousness as the doors shut loudly behind them, echoing throughout the large room.

“Holy shit..”He whispered to himself when he saw the room. The large room had light purple walls and white pillars evenly separated from each other with some form of symbol in between the pillars. As they walked along the clean marble floor that reflected the ceiling it was under, he noticed all of the windows were made of stained glass. There were blue, yellow, and pink windows but Levi didn’t have time to get a good look.

At the end of the red carpet they were walking on was a golden throne. Standing on the throne was none other than the Princess of Equestria, Celestia. There were two guards standing at the bottom of the short staircase leading up to the throne and they nodded at the guards escorting Levi, who promptly turned around and left.

“So, you’re the human that fell. Levi, is it?” Celestia asked him, calming his nerves at her calm demeanor. “Yeah, how’d you know?” Levi joked in response, remembering moments later he was talking to the Princess and joking wasn’t the best thing to do.

“You're the talk of the town.” She responded, walking down the stairs off of her throne to be face to face with Lev. It was only then Levi realized how tall she truly was. “We need to discuss something important Levi, what are you doing here?” She asked, looking him in the eye.

“I-I’m not here for trouble Princess..” Levi answered, intimidated by her stature.

“Then what are you here for? No human has been here for many moons, surely there is a reason for you being here, yes?” She asked, with an inquisitive look.

“I know just as much as you do Princess, me and my brother were cooking something and there was an explosion and next thing you know I’m falling out of the sky.” Levi answered, earning a suspicious look from the Princess.

Levi saw this and sighed, saying “When the explosion happened I saw a bright rainbow and.. I saw you, I think.”

“What do you mean?” Celestia asked, the same suspicious look remaining on her face.

“I saw some white unicorn with her wings spread out. After that I fell out of the sky.” Levi replied, causing the Princesses eyebrows to go up in surprise. She turned to head to look at the guards behind her who wore the same expression on there faces, like they knew something Levi didn’t.

“Are you certain that’s what you saw?” Celestia asked, her demeanor quickly changing.

“Yes Princess, I’m certain.” Levi answered, the Princess turned her head to her guards once more before turning to Levi and saying “Come with me Levi.”

Celestia and Levi left the throne room and walked down the long hallway, with Levi lagging behind. Celestia took notice of this and slowed down so Levi could catch up to her, when he did she walked the same pace as him and asked him “What’s wrong?”

He looked at her and replied “My back is messed up badly, I need surgery.” Celestia gave him a look of concern and added “We have doctors here in the castle if it’s an emergency.”

Levi waved his hand at her and responded “It isn’t a big deal right now, but what did you need me to come with you for?” changing the subject.

“It’s important, but I’ll tell you once we get there.” Celestia responded. Levi simply looked ahead and kept walking, his mind racing on what could be so important. “Mind If I ask you something?” Levi asked.

“Go ahead” Celestia answered, in a calming voice.

“You mentioned humans haven’t come here in ‘many moons’, what happened to them?” Levi asked, curiously.

Celestia paused for a second before answering “It wasn’t a lot of them, only a few, but they wanted our power for themselves..”. She paused, closing her eyes for a few seconds before continuing “They killed a few of us, thinking killing us would give them our power. They found out that wasn’t the case far too late.”

“So, what happened after that?” Levi asked.

“They ran far away from here, out of Ponyville. Some say they ran to the mountains, some say they escaped back to the human world. Either way, they were never seen again. People have largely forgotten about humans, that’s probably why they thought you were a Changeling.” She explained.

“Hmm” Levi hummed in response.

A few minutes later, Celestia led Levi outside of the castle and to a building with tall brown double doors. The large grey building had blue and purple flags and banners decorating the walls with dark green windows with golden bars on them, right above the staircase was what looked like a balcony that had a large stone book on top of it.

“Where are we?” Levi asked the princess as they walked up the stairs.

“The library.” She answered, “But not for the reason you think, what I’m about to show you can’t tell another soul. Understand?” Celestia added, sternly.

“Got it.” Levi responded. Celestia used her magic, which created a glowing yellow aura around her horn, and opened the double doors. The library was massive, with many tall and long bookshelves with hundreds, possibly thousands of books. There were several desks with small lamps on them scattered around the front area of the library.

He watched as all of the ponies quickly stopped everything they were doing and bowed down to Celestia. “Princess Celestia!” One pony called out.

She simply smiled back and replied “Go about your business everypony.” They all smiled and nodded and continued doing whatever they were doing, but not before they all gave Levi a weird and confused look but decided not to think anything of it.

‘They must care a lot about their damn books’ Levi thought to himself.

“Follow me” Celestia whispered, beckoning for him to follow her. Levi followed as she walked slowly in front of him, knowing his condition. As Levi followed the Princess through the aisles, his eyes wandered to the various books and signs on the sides of the book shelf that read: “Fiction, History, Magic”. The sign that read “Magic” piqued his interest.

Levi glanced at the various titles on the spines of the many books that he passed: “Magic 101, The art of flying, The history of the Wonderbolts” the last one made Levi think of Spitfire, which brought a smile to his face.

A couple minutes later, Celestia stopped in front of a grey brick wall at the back of the massive library. Levi looked at the entire wall and noticed the only thing on the wall were two doors that led to the men and womens bathroom. “We’re here” She stated, standing in front of the wall.

“I uh-I’m confused” Levi admitted, checking out the entire wall a second time checking for anything of note. As he looked at the part of the wall that Celestia was standing in front of, he noticed something unusual about it. He noticed that there was a square shape in the wall that was a slight, barely noticeable, different shade of grey then the rest of the wall.

Right as he noticed this, Celestia looked around checking if anyone was watching and no one was. She used her magic creating a yellow aura around her horn and pushed the square in the wall forward, and then sliding it to the right. Levi was amazed how this made barely any noise, just some quiet scraping on the ground. “Follow me, quickly” Celestia whispered, walking through the opened hole in the wall.

Levi quickly staggered into the hole and next to Celestia as she used her magic to quickly close the door behind them, taking away most of the light in the long dark hallway they were in. The hallway looked like a long cavern, illuminated by several torches lining the top of the walls of the hallway. “Are you ready?” She asked.

“I’m nervous but yeah, I’m ready” Levi replied, which Celestia giggled in response. “You’re gonna be fine Levi. Come on, it’s this way” She replied, starting to walk forward through the dark hallway with Levi following next to her.

As the two walked side by side down the hall, Levi started to become worried about where he was being taken to. After all, he had just met the Princess barely even 15 minutes ago. “Excuse my rudeness Princess but, where exactly are you taking me?” Levi asked, as politely as he could without sounding rude.

“This is the Restricted Section of the library, where no one is allowed here except for only a small handful of people, myself included.” She explained.

“What makes it restricted?” Levi asked, curiously.

“It’s full of information no pony needs to see.” She answered, causing Levi to give her a concerned look which Celestia certainly expected. “Maybe I worded that wrong, no pony really cares about what’s in here. Old documents, old books the library doesn’t want, stuff of that sort.”

“Gotcha” Levi responded, “So what’s so important that I need to see?” He asked.

“You’ll see Levi” Celestia responded. Levi sighed and continued walking forward through the dark hall, his curiosity growing with each step.

When they got to the end of the hallway, the two walked into a small cave. The cave had moss growing on the walls with holes in the walls that served as small bookshelves with old, dusty books sitting inside of them. There were several miscellaneous things scattered all over the place, including a large fireplace with an intricately carved design in the border of the fireplace.

The thing that caught Levi’s attention was a large, brown, dirty piece of cloth pinned to the wall that looked like a dirty potato sack. Celestia walked to the towel on the wall with Levi still following behind and stopped in front of it. “Are you ready?” She asked.

“It’s like Christmas morning” He joked in response. “Let’s see it Princess”

“Very well” Celestia stated. Her horn glowed the sun yellow aura as she used her magic and tore the cloth off the wall, clouding the air immediately with dust. As Levi and Celestia coughed and waved their hands and hooves in front of their faces to clear away the dust.

When the air cleared, Levi saw what Celestia had told him was extremely important. It was several, very old paintings, with silver plaques underneath them that had black words engraved into them. Levi was confused at what he was seeing until he saw the person in each of the paintings was wearing a royal blue shirt, Levi put two and two together and realized this was about him.

“‘A man in blue bearing the name Cronell will fall from the sky and make himself known.’” Celestia read the plaque under the first painting which depicted Levi falling onto green grass, which is exactly what happened.

“‘After being nursed back to health, he will save the residents of Ponyville from great danger and will be hailed a hero. This is when the ponies will truly know his power.’” She read the plaque underneath the second painting, which depicted Levi fighting a black pony with black hair. Celestia frowned for a split second at the second painting, like she recognized the pony, but quickly went back to a neutral expression.

“‘Many times after that, many threats will come and threaten his friends in Ponyville and he will successfully stop them.’” She read the plaque under the third painting, depicting Levi with a small sword in his hand. He was standing in front of what looked like a grey dragon, a large red beast, a black pony with green hair, and a small white pony with wings and a horn.

“‘However one day, he will fail, when a evil king murders his brother in cold blood. The man in blue will promise revenge, and will stick to that promise.’” She read, the fourth painting depicted Levi holding a man in his arms with a red wound on his chest. The man was wearing light blue armor but his hair was what struck him the most. His hair was dark blonde and messy, Levi had always picked on Alan calling him “Bird nest” because of his hair so Levi recognized it almost immediately.

A somber expression formed on Levi’s face which Celestia quickly noticed, “You had a friend who fell here with you, didn’t you?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Alan,” He answered, still staring at the dying man in the painting, “Alan Sizemore. He’s my brother practically. He’s the one who brought me here, and brought himself here.” He explained. Celestia smiled at him sympathetically.

“I’m so sorry you have to see this Levi.” Celestia replied.

Levi smiled as best as he could at her, despite how fake it looked and he replied “It’s alright Princess, keep reading.”

She nodded and looked at the fifth painting’s plaque and began to read, “‘Many moons later, after all of his friends have passed away, he will come out of Ponyville after getting his powers back and save his new friends from evil’” The painting showed Levi standing there with the sword in his hand with crimson blood covering half the blade. In front of him were the bodies of the little unicorn with horns, the black pony with green hair, and the red beast.

“‘After he saved his friends, he will die peacefully on the beach with his friends by his side. The man in blue will die knowing the prophecy is fulfilled.’” Celestia read, the sixth painting depicted Levi on his knees on a beach in front of the ocean with a rainbow haired pony, pink haired pony, purple haired pony, a blond pony and a man with a grey hoodie and black hair. The yellow pony with pink hair he almost immediately recognized as Fluttershy. “Holy shit..” He whispered, recognizing the painting in front of him.

“I had a dream about that last night.” He stated. Celestia gave him a surprised look. “I know Fluttershy, she’s right there,” He said, pointing to the yellow pony in the painting “And Alan’s right there.” He said, pointing to the man in the painting.

“You know what this means right?” She asked.

“Yeah..” He answered, turning his head to look at her, “I have a job to do.” He finished.

“That’s right,” She said. “And I know how you're gonna get settled into Ponyville!” She added, enthusiastically.

“Really? How?” Levi asked, crossing his arms.

“I believe my student would love to help you. She's going to Ponyville soon and doesn't know anyone.” She replied, but her demeanor quickly changed as she added “You can not tell her under any circumstances. The prophecy must never change.”

Levi nodded slowly, understanding his job. It was a lot to take in, he was there to fulfill a prophecy, he was thinking how ever since the day he was born he was destined to fall here in Equestria. He stared at the paintings, deep in thought, he focused on the fifth painting staring at the crimson blade. His mind raced with many different scenarios of what will lead up to that moment, where Levi will kill those ponies. As he glanced over each of the paintings, he stopped at the fourth one and looked at him and Alan and his heart stung. Just the thought of having his best friend, his brother, die in arms was too much for him to bear. His heart was heavy as he bit his lip and looked down at the ground.

“Levi” She said, walking towards him and placing a hoof on his shoulder. “I know this is a lot to take in and the thought of losing your friend must be very hard for you to fathom, but these paintings have been here ever since I was a filly and that was many moons ago.” She said, sympathetically. “What I’m trying to say is that..whatever happens needs to happen Levi.” She added.

“However, those things are far into the future..” She said, glancing at the paintings. “All you have to worry about now is getting settled into Ponyville.”

Levi looked up at her and grinned. “If you don’t mind me asking, who’s the student?” He asked.

“Twilight Sparkle.” She answered.

“Sweet” Levi responded. Levi had no idea what meeting her student would bring him, and he had no idea just how much this interaction would change his life for better and for worse. Inside, Levi knew his purpose in Equestria, and he was more ready than ever.

Chapter 5: Kind soul

Beep…beep…beep…beep Levi’s heart monitor beeped rhythmically next to him as he laid on the hospital bed staring blankly at the ceiling, half-asleep from the morphine he was given for his surgery. Levi couldn’t tell how long he was laying there for but it felt like hours, in that time he couldn’t stop thinking about what Celestia had shown him back at the library. Even all the time he was thinking about it he couldn’t really understand what he was shown, that there’s a prophecy about him. Ever since the day he came out of the womb he was destined to come here. He thought about Alan and his death, whenever that happens to be, the thought wanted to make Levi cry. Levi was snapped out of his blank stare by a knock on the door, which was immediately followed by the door being opened and the doctor's voice said “He’s right in there Fluttershy.”

Levi’s eyes snapped to the door as he waited for his friend to walk in, “Thank you” He heard a soft voice say. Fluttershy emerged from the doorway, with her pink hair covering the left side of her face. As the door shut behind her with a click, she walked to the side of the bed and placed a hoof on his hand that was laid on his chest. “How’ve you been Levi?” she asked, softly.

“Hmmm..” He moaned, not being able to speak.

“That’s..good..whatever that means.” She replied, timidly. Levi smiled in response.

“Get me..” He struggled to say, “Get you what?” She asked, “Out of here..” He spoke.

“Oh-uhm, I don’t think I can do that.” She replied. She could see the disappointment in his barely open eyes.

“Ask…the doc…” He spoke.

“Levi I think you need to stay here for a little bit, you just had surgery.” Fluttershy pointed out.

“Time…what time?” Levi asked, taking pauses between his words.

“The time?” She looked up at the clock. “3 o’clock”

“Damn..” He muttered, surprised at how long he was there for.

“Can I get you anything?” She asked. He looked into her light blue eyes and replied “The fuck..outta here”

“Levi calm down, It’s just a hospital, there's nothing to worry about.” She responded, seeing the annoyance in his eyes.

“Spitfire..” He said. Fluttershy gave him a confused look, “Spitfire, get..Spitfire here.” He insisted.

“You want Spitfire? Like the Wonderbolts Captain Spitfire?” She asked, Levi barely nodded in response. “Why? How do you even know about her?” She asked, confused.

“I’ll tell you later…she can fly me somewhere..else.” Levi responded.

“Oh goodness,” She said, rubbing her forehead with her hoof. She caressed his hand and watched as Levi’s hand sank into his pillow, “I’ll see what I can do, okay?” She asked.

“Yeah..” He replied, his eyes shutting fully. She noticed this and whispered to herself “Poor thing..”

Levi heard this but didn’t have the energy to respond, and tell her not to worry about him and that he’ll be alright. All he had the energy to do was sleep off this drowsiness. As he heard the door click behind Fluttershy, he felt a sense of relaxation wash over him as he fell asleep.

About 2 hours later, Levi was awoken when the door to his room opened and the hallway light outside poured into his room and shone onto his eyelids. When he opened his eyes he was blinded by the hallway light, and as the light switch was flicked on he instinctively held his arm over his eyes and groaned.

“Fluttershy is that you?” Levi groaned, his voice low due to just waking up.

“I’m afraid not.” A voice answered, Levi immediately recognized the voice. He lowered his arm from his eyes and looked at her and the doctor next to her.

“What’s up Doc?” He asked.

“Well Princess Celestia here tells me you have somewhere to be, urgently.” The doctor answered.

“Well how would I get out? Like a wheelchair or somethin’” He asked, hoping that he could just walk out of there by himself, independently at the very least.

“Lucky for you that won’t be necessary,” He replied, as Levi cheered in his head the doctor reached into his coat pocket and pulled out 2 pill bottles and said “These are pain pills you’re gonna need to take, otherwise you’d be in too much pain to walk.”

Without a second thought, Levi responded “Sure. Hand ‘em over.” The doctor walked over to his bed and handed him the bottles. As the doctor was explaining when and how to take them, Levi carefully read the paper wrapped around the small orange bottle, he didn’t recognize any of the names on the bottle, he looked worriedly at the bottle and wondered to himself what kind of medicine these ponies had.

“Are you ready to go?” Celestial asked.

“Oh-yeah, let’s go.” Levi responded. Levi was shifting his legs to the side of the bed when he felt a hoof grab his ankle and stop him from moving, “You have to be more careful than that Mr.Cronell!” he interjected.

Levi gave him an annoyed look and retorted “How old do you think I am, 6? I can take care of mys-” he was interrupted by a yellow aura surrounding him and he felt the comfort of the bed leaving him as he was lifted off the bed. His eyes darted the room, looking for who could be doing this, and he looked and saw Princess Celestia with that familiar yellow aura glowing around her horn.

She used her magic to straighten his legs into a standing position, slowly to make sure she didn’t hurt him, and slowly lower him onto the ground. When he got on the ground, a huge uncontrollable grin spread across his face as he exclaimed “Woah! That was..weird.”

Celestia giggled. “That’s what most people say the first time that happens to them, you ready?” She asked, using her magic to hand Levi his blue shirt that was hung over the foot of the bed.

As he pushed his arms through his shirt sleeves, he answered “Yeah, let’s go”

Levi jammed the pills bottles into his jean pockets as he followed Celestia out of the door, amazed at how little pain he had and the fact that he could actually walk straight without staggering and stumbling. ‘I took walking for granted.’ He thought to himself, as he followed the Princess out of the hospital.

After the two left the hospital, Celestia and Levi walked a few feet outside of the hospital doors when she suddenly stopped. Before Levi could say anything to the Princess, her horn glowed the yellow aura he was beginning to grow familiar with and he saw a bright yellow flash.

“And…done!” A lilac colored unicorn exclaimed, sliding the last book onto her large blue bookshelf. “Finally rearranged!” She exclaimed proudly, looking at the bookshelf in pride at what she had done. For the past few hours, the lilac unicorn had been rearranging her bookshelf in alphabetical order which had been a long task considering how many books there were and how big the bookshelf was. “Gosh Twilight, how long did it take? An hour?” Her friend and companion, Spike, had asked her jokingly.

“An hour and a half” She corrected, smiling to herself at her accomplishment. “Now I just gotta do the rest!” She added enthusiastically, looking up to her second floor at the big bookshelves that looked down upon the first floor.

“Knock yourself out” Spike responded, walking over to the ladder that connected the first floor to the second and climbing it.

“Where are you going?” She asked as he was halfway up the ladder.

“To take a nap” He replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Ugh, you took one earlier!” She complained. When Spike got to the second floor, he looked down at her and grinned, saying “What can I say? Dragons need their beauty sleep”

“Alright then, make sure all your stuff is packed, okay? We have to leave at-” “12 PM sharp” He interjected. “It’s all packed Twilight, I’ll see you later” He said yawning, as he disappeared into the hallway of the second floor.

Twilight decided that she would start rearranging the second-floor bookshelves, considering Spike would be asleep it would be the perfect time. As she walked over to the ladder, she heard a knock on the door.

“Come in!” She called out to whoever was on the other side of the door. She heard her door open and close and footsteps approaching her. She noticed they didn’t sound like pony footsteps, considering they walked with four hooves it would sound like multiple pairs of hooves hitting the ground, but these footsteps sounded like one foot after the other.

When the person approached her, Twilight jumped in surprise and was startled to see the man standing there. “W-Who..who are you!” She exclaimed.

“Levi” The man answered, taking his hat off and fiddling with it in his hands, “Levi Cronell, Princess Celestia sent me”

“Oh my Celestia! You’re a human!” She exclaimed, her demeanor changing to one of panic to one of infatuation with Levi.

“Yes, I’m a human” He replied. She took a few steps closer to him and looked into his green eyes as he looked back into her purple ones.

“I..I’ve read about your kind in some of my books! You're so..fascinating!” She said, her head turning to her bookshelf. Her horn glowed a purple aura as a book came soaring through the air and right in front of Levi. “Look at this!” She said excitedly, using her magic to flip through the pages very quickly like something you’d see in a cartoon.

She suddenly stopped on an old looking page, on the top left read: “HUMAN” in bold black letters. Levi read and saw a male and female diagram with the human skeletal and organ system mapped and described. Levi was amazed that a unicorn had one of these, or that this unicorn knew about his kind at all, and this discovery prompted him to ask the unicorn something.

“Mind if I ask you something?” He asked.

“Go ahead!” She answered, closing the book with her magic blowing air into Levi’s face.

“If this book has me-humans-in it, then why is it that when I went to Ponyville everyone panicked?” He asked.

“You see this book is old, really old, so not that many ponies have it,” She explained, “And this specific version was made by a scientist here and I doubt any old pony in Ponyville would have it. He was the only scientist in Equestria who studied humans” She explained.

“Gotcha..” Said Levi as he placed his hat back on his head. “Listen, Celestia wants me to go to Ponyville with you. I know it seems weird that I just showed up out of nowhere and I have to stay with you for a while but-” “It’s not a problem” She interjected, “After all I have a lot of questions to ask you tomorrow”

“Awesome..” He replied, looking around. As Twilight carefully put the book back on the shelf, he asked her “Hey no offense but..where can I sleep? It’s gonna be dark soon” Levi asked.

“Oh of course! Up there at the door at the very end to your left is the guest bedroom” She answered, pointing up to the second floor with her hoof.

Levi thanked her and walked over to the ladder. As Twilight was walking away, Levi suddenly said “Hey Twilight,” “Yeah?” She responded, turning her head around to look at him.

“Why are you doing this? Showing me this kindness, I mean I’ve never met you before in my life?” Levi asked, not trying to sound ungrateful but inquiring.

“I mean..you’re a human, and Princess Celestia told you to stay here so I kinda have to.” She replied.

“Gotcha” He responded, grabbing one of the rungs of the ladder and climbing it.

“The kitchen is the first door when you get up there and the bathrooms at the end of the hall!” She called up to Levi.

“Got it!” He called back down to her, walking over to the third door. He noticed that the wood was not painted blue, the wood was blue, which fascinated Levi but also confused him. A lot of things in this new world confused him, so it was normal. He twisted the golden door knob and opened the door and was greeted by a room illuminated only by the afternoon light that shone through the window.

He reached his hand in and placed his hand on multiple spots along the wall next to the door frame, eventually finding a lightswitch and flicking it on, completely illuminating the room. Inside the guest room was a single one person bed, a nightstand with a lamp, and a window. He decided he was going to go find something to eat before he went to sleep, so he flicked off the light and closed the door and walked two doors down to the kitchen.

In the kitchen, he was greeted by a semi-dark room illuminated by the afternoon light shining through the window, similar to the guest room before the light was on. He turned on the light and walked over to the refrigerator against the wall.

Ever since he was in the hospital, Levi began to feel urges that were all too familiar. Levi realized that he never finished his beer when he was back at his apartment and he hadn’t had a beer all day. He hadn’t even thought about beer until he was at the hospital, because before that all he was thinking was trying to get somewhere safe.

Levi began rummaging through the refrigerator, hoping that there was a beer or some form of alcohol inside of it. Much to his dismay, all he found was wrapped up food and glass bottles full of milk and other drinks. “Dammit!” He muttered angrily, slamming his hand on the side of the refrigerator.

He closed it and desperately looked thoroughly through the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, hoping and praying that a beer would suddenly appear in front of him and he could satisfy his urges.

Levi sighed out of annoyance, knowing good and well he couldn’t ask the person that was letting him stay at her home if she had any beer. He grabbed an apple out of one of the cabinets and took a bite as he turned the light off and left the room.

He made his way back to the guest room and walked inside, as the door closed shut behind him with a soft click he took a large bite out of the apple and put it on the nightstand. He unrolled his sleeves and unbuttoned his blue shirt, when he took it off he held it in his hands and examined it. There was a good sized dirt and grass sta22ndin right in the top of the back, right below the collar. There were also some tears in his sleeves with grass and dirt streaks from when Soarin’ flew into him. He looked at the shirt for a few more seconds before hanging it off the foot of the bed. He took off his jeans and did the same thing and slipped off his shoes and put them at the foot of the bed.

Only in his boxers and a white shirt, Levi walked over to the window and pulled the curtains completely apart and opened the window. He leaned out of the window and saw the afternoon sun as it created an orange glow above the sky in Canterlot.

He stared into the horizon, his mind raced with possibilities of where Alan could be. He began to feel worry and concern for his friend, he had no clue where he could possibly be. The cool breeze hitting his skin reminded Levi where he was, in Canterlot, and he had nothing to worry about.

He sighed, closing the window and closing the curtains all the way making the room exceptionally darker. He made his way to the bed and quickly finished his apple, leaving the core on the nightstand. He pulled one of the orange bottles out of his jean pocket and swallowed a pill. It was supposed to reduce Levi’s pain in the morning due to just having surgery. He laid down on the bed and pulled the covers up to his chest, crossing his arms behind his chest. He stared up at the ceiling thinking how great Ponyville could be if he was accepted there, and he didn’t cause panic and fear every time he stepped foot in there, and not get thrown into walls.

Before he knew it, Levi fell asleep.

Chapter 6: Salvation

Levi emerged from his room with a yawn, flattening his shirt against his chest as he walked down the hallway and to the ladder down to the first floor. “Good morning Levi!” Twilight called out as he slowly made his way down the ladder.

“Morning” He yawned, his eyes immediately shifting to the small purple reptile that was sitting in the seat next to Twilight at the table who oddly enough wasn’t freaking out at the sight of him. The reptile turned around, revealing large emerald green eyes similar in size to that of Twilight’s, and locked eyes with him as he looked into Levi’s green eyes. Levi shifted his glance to Twilight, who somehow caught on to what Levi was looking at her for.

“Don’t worry, he knows about you.” Twilight said, continuing to eat her breakfast. Levi gave her a questioning look which Twilight saw and clarified “He knows about humans, he isn’t afraid”

“Good” Levi said, pulling the chair back causing it to scrape audibly against the floor as he sat down and grabbed his silverware. He was sitting at the seat across from the small reptile, relieved that he wasn’t freaking out at the sight of him like the ponies at Ponyville. The thought of Ponyville brought back memories of the incident with Soarin’ which made Levi dread the thought of going back to Ponyville, but part of him knew inside that going there was important. He didn’t know why he knew this, but he felt like it had something to do with the prophecy. The second the thought entered his mind he immediately thought of that painting with Levi and Alan, he closed his eyes trying to shake the thought out of his head.

“So…” The reptile finished his mouthful before swallowing, “How’d you get here? There haven’t been humans here in forever”

“I fell” Levi replied in a straightforward tone, not really wanting to explain how or why and just wanted to enjoy his breakfast.

“You fell?” He questioned, looking at him with a puzzled expression.

“Yes I fell. I know it sounds hard to believe but I was in my world one second next second I’m here” Levi replied.

“What’s your world like?” “Spike!” Twilight scolded out of the blue. “Don’t ask so many questions, we’re trying to eat, there’ll be plenty of time for questions on the way there” Twilight stated, earning a silent ‘thank you’ from Levi.

‘So Spike is his name?’ Levi thought as he ate, surprised at how good it tasted considering a pony cooked it. A few seconds passed without a word as the three ate in silence, the aura of sleepiness looming over them, especially from Levi who was the exact reverse opposite of a morning person.

“So Levi, did you sleep well?” Twilight asked, breaking the silence.

“It was alright..” Levi responded in a low, gravely voice like he was sick. Levi couldn’t stop thinking about Alan. As much as he wanted to get his mind off his best friend, he couldn’t. The dread he felt everytime he thought about the painting, the picture still fresh in his mind. Levi couldn’t begin to think about how wrecked he’ll be when that happens, seeing his best friend die in his arms. “I..need to use the bathroom” He said quickly, excusing himself from the table.

“You remember where it is ri-” “Yep!” Levi exclaimed, cutting her off as he climbed the ladder and stepped into the hallway off the second floor. He sped walked to the bathroom, walking in there and turning the light on as he shut the door behind him and placed his back against it.

He groaned out of frustration. He wanted so badly to just forget the painting even existed, the prophecy even existed, after all he couldn’t tell anyone so forgetting the prophecy wouldn’t be that big of a deal. He rubbed his face with a groan, getting off the door and looking at himself in the mirror.

His eyes looked tired, which was normal for him this early, and his hair was messy and looked like a bird's nest. He used his hand to run his hand through his hair multiple times and combed it with his hand. As he looked into his eyes in the mirror, he couldn’t believe that just yesterday he was in his own apartment in his own bed. He snickered at how ridiculous it sounded, living in a world completely occupied by ponies, if someone had told him that last week he would’ve laughed in their face and asked if they were alright.

Levi sighed as he looked at his tired face in the mirror as he filled up the small purple cup on the sink with water, drinking it in two loud gulps which relieved his dry throat. As much as Levi didn’t want to think about it, he began to think about where Alan could possibly be. That somewhere in this large unknown world his best friend was wandering somewhere, alone, worried, probably thinking about Levi as well. Levi thought about maybe Alan was somewhere in Canterlot, or somewhere in Ponyville, or somewhere out there.

He put his hands on either side of the sink and looked into the mirror, he noticed a sad expression was beginning to form on his face. “Dammit Alan..” He sighed, rubbing his chin with his fingers.

His mind wandered to the cook, that fateful cook that brought him to this place. He wondered why Alan was so persistent to cook the batch and how he ran to the table to finish it, and how he fought away from him to cook it, it’s like he somehow knew what the cook was going to do. It was like he wanted to go there, like his goal was to come to Equestria. Levi brushed off the thought.

The thought he couldn’t brush off however was where Alan was. Levi heard a knock at the door followed by “Are you alright?”

“Yeah I’m fine” He replied through the door, turning to the door and opening it to be met by Twilight with a puzzled expression. “Why were you in there for so long?” She asked.

“Oh you know, human stuff” He answered, walking past her and making his way to the ladder. “Come on! Let’s finish up, we got somewhere to go don’t we?” He said as he walked to the ladder. ‘If I wanna find Alan, I better man up and just go to Ponyville’ Levi thought as he climbed down the ladder. ‘What’s the worst that can happen right?’

SHUNK! A wooden arrow pierced a small white rabbit, ending its life instantly and pinning it to the dirt. “Yeah!” Alan whispered, pumping his fist as he emerged from the bush he was hiding in. He wiped the leaves off of his hoodie with his free hand as he approached the rabbit that was pinned to the ground lifeless. He pulled the arrow out and tucked into the waistband of his pants and grabbed the rabbit by its back legs. He held the rabbit in front of his face and admired his catch for a few seconds before turning around and started to jog back to his camp.

He had gone a mile or so out from his camp, if it could even be considered a camp, and because of that marked his way there a trail of rocks varying in sizes. Ever since Alan fell into Equestria, he was terrified of the forest he was thrusted into and walked for a few miles calling for help from anyone who can hear. When he found nothing but more forest, he knew help wasn’t coming anytime soon. So he decided to bunker down and set up a camp that would help him get by for the time being and he used the survival skills that his father taught him to help him. He created a bow with just sticks and string and sharpened sticks to use as arrows.

After hours of hunting away from his camp, he came back with only a small bird that he cooked and ate in less than 10 minutes. He realized the hard way that hunting for survival was going to be more of a difficult task than he anticipated. However, there was one thing that he couldn’t find that worried him the most more than anything else, even more than the fear of the unknown of what could be lying in wait in the forest. Water. Even after traveling a few miles into the woods, he couldn’t find a single source of water. No ponds, rivers, lakes, anything. This worried Alan because without water he knew for sure it was only a matter of time before he dropped dead from dehydration, and even though he could survive more than a week without water and with just food he remained extremely worried.

He woke up that morning hungry and with a dry and painful throat. The small bird that he ate could barely keep him satiated for the day and he went to bed that night on the cold hard ground with a growling stomach. Despite his tiredness and fatigue, he managed to jog the mile in a reasonable amount of time and arrived there panting which only made his already dry throat worse.

He leaned his bow against the tall tree that stood in his camp and took his arrows out of his waistband and leaned and also leaned them against the tree. He dropped the rabbit next to the rocks that were aligned in a circle on the ground with a pile of sticks in the middle that he called a campfire. He went over to a random tree and pulled one of the branches down and tore a handful of leaves from right and walked back over to the campfire.

He quickly rearranged the sticks into a tent formation just like his father had taught him and dumped the leaves inside the tent formation of sticks. He sat down by the firepit and grabbed the rabbit carcass and grabbed his switchblade that was hooked onto his waistband and flipped it open. Just the sight of the rabbit made Alan’s stomach growl like it was screaming for food. Attempting to skin the bird he had eaten was an extremely difficult task, considering the only animal he’s ever skinned before was a squirrel that was half the size of the rabbit.

He put the blade up to the rabbit as its soft fur tickled his fingers and attempted to slice off some of the skin, sawing the skin with the blade in an attempt to cut it off. He sawed through the skin and got his blade underneath it as blood began to pour out from underneath the skin.

“Shit!” Alan cursed under his breath, coming out as a hushed whisper, as the blood began to quickly turn the rabbit's white fur a crimson red.

Alan kept sawing the skin as more and more blood began spilling out of the animal which turned the animal's lower half almost completely red. After some more sawing, he got down to the legs of the animal and found it difficult to cut under the skin of the legs. Alan paused for a moment, thinking about how he could cut it, he decided to just use brute force and tear it off even with how inhumane it sounded.

He stabbed his knife into the dirt and grabbed the skin with hand and held the rabbit down with his other hand and began to tug on the skin. He realized quickly it was harder than he thought it would be to pull the skin off, and so for a few seconds he tugged and pulled on the skin as hard as he could and couldn’t seem to get it off.

“Come on..” Alan whispered, his arm getting tired from the constant tugging and pulling off the skin. After some more struggling to rip off the skin, he opted to pull the bloody skin up and cut it off with the knife. He pulled the knife out of the dirt and did exactly that, cutting the bottom half of the skin all the way through.

He sighed out of relief after he did this, holding the bloody skin up in front of his face and felt a bit guilty at what he had done but he brushed it off. He tossed the skin to the side and looked inside the animal, gagging at the sight of the bright red muscle underneath the skin.

He had no idea the anatomy of the rabbit, where the liver was or the heart or anything, so he opted to cut off a piece of the muscle and cook it. He began cutting into the muscle which was a lot harder than cutting the skin.

After sawing it for a few seconds and getting no progress, he pushed on the blade full force and sawed into the muscle. The knife slipped away from the muscle he was cutting and the knife accidentally sliced Alan’s hand.

He yelped in pain, gripping the rabbit and slamming it on the ground next to him in anger and stabbing the knife deep into the dirt. He grabbed his wrist tightly and looked at his hand, the skin right above his thumbs knuckle had a cut that reached almost to the middle of the top of his hand.

Alan was shocked at how long the cut was and watched as blood began to quickly come out onto his hand. The cut stung with pain as Alan took off his hoodie and dropped it on the ground and pulled off his white shirt and hastily wrapped it around his hand. He pulled the two ends of the shirt tightly, which caused his cut to sting even more and Alan to clench his teeth with pain.

“Ah fuck!” Alan whispered, looking at his hand and watched as the white shirt slowly started turning crimson. ‘What the fuck am I gonna do!’ Alan panicked in his head, ‘What if it gets infected! What if I get sick! Dammit I’m so stupid!’

He looked down and saw his knife was stabbed deep into the dirt to where only the handle was visible, he grabbed it and tugged until it came out of the earth. He wiped the dirt and blood off on his pants and folded the blade back and clipped it to his waistband.

He looked down at the bloody rabbit in disgust while his stomach growled and hurt from hunger pains.

“What the hell am I gonna do now?” He asked himself, running his hand through his black messy hair, looking around at the forest like someone was going to come out of the trees and save him. He knew if he stayed here in this camp and couldn’t even skin a rabbit, he would die, no doubt about it. However he also thought about how if he kept walking maybe he would find a source of water and he could clean his cut, but the thought of walking for miles and using up all of his energy worried him.

He looked at his watch on his wrist and saw that it was 8:46 AM. Alan felt as though had no other choice, so he looked at the rock path that he followed home just minutes before and grabbed his hoodie and bow and arrow and started walking. Hoping that the path would not lead him astray.

10:34 AM. Food. Water. Those were the only two things that Alan could think about as he sat on the ground leaning against a tree, his dirty hoodie resting in his lap. He leaned his head against the tree, his stomach pain and growling has now become more incessant and his throat felt like a desert.

He had walked a few miles in the two hours he was walking, however the walking had sapped all of the energy Alan had left in his body. On top of that, the fatigue from dehydration was getting worse, the dehydration also causing a headache to form in Alan’s swirling head.

Alan knew that he was gonna die right here against this tree if he didn’t move but, as much as he wanted to move, his body felt like cinder blocks were weighing him down and keeping him stuck to the ground.

Alan looked up at the sky as the morning sun cast light through the spaces in between the leaves of the trees, smiling at its beauty. As much as he didn’t want to die, as much as he wanted to find Levi and get closure for his friend, he thought that dying right here would be fine with him. Peacefully in a forest surrounded by nature’s calm embrace, right under the morning sun, a great way to die in Alan’s eyes.

“God…” He croaked, “I thank you for never leaving me…that you never forsake us…” he croaked, each word being a struggle to say. “But you love me…I trust you…and pray this in your name…Amen” Alan closed his eyes as his head rested against the tree, he put his hands one on top of the other in his hoodie and felt his head swirl and spin from dehydration. A few minutes later, sleep overtook the man, as he laid there vulnerable in the forest.

Alan woke up lying on his stomach in the forest. Confused, he stood up and brushed the grass and leaves off himself and looked around, seeing that it was the same exact forest that he was trapped in. He felt better, normal, no dehydration, no hunger pains or anything. He felt like his normal self. Alan looked around again, trying to see why he was in the forest but in such good condition.

He stopped in front of him, standing in front of him was Levi, he looked at the man in surprise and shock. A cool breeze began to form, blowing the flaps of Levi’s shirt in the wind as he approached Alan.

“Brother…” He called out, his voice booming like thunder and echoing throughout the forest.

“Levi?” Alan called back.

“You have to escape the forest Alan, it’s not far from where you are” Levi boomed, shaking the trees around them as the breeze began to turn into a strong wind.

“What’s on the other side!” Alan yelled, attempting to be heard over the whistling of the wind around them.

“Salvation” Levi called out, causing a confused expression to form on Alan’s face.

“What do you mean Levi!” He shouted as the wind grew louder and the sounds of the leaves being blown and shaken were growing louder.

“You’ll find out brother, trust me. Look for the crystals!” Levi yelled, making his voice louder than it already was. Just like that, he vanished, like he turned into thin air.

Alan woke up with a gasp which felt like he inhaled rocks. The fatigue and pains were still there making themselves known, but a newfound will to live coursed through his veins and filled his heart with determination to survive. As Alan slowly began to stand up, he heard a growl which caused him to go still with surprise.

He looked around him, looking for the source of the growl, he analyzed every inch of the woods around him while fear began to grow inside of him. He heard another growl followed by a twig snapping, his eyes snapped to where the sound was coming from and was horrified by what he saw.

Two green eyes staring at him from behind a tree, his body was covered in the shade and the only part that was visible were his glowing eyes and his eyebrows which were illuminated by their eyes.

The creature locked eyes with Alan and in an instant leaped towards the man with a loud bark. All of Alan’s fatigue was replaced by adrenaline in an instant as he leaped out of the way and skidded on the dirt, watching as the creature slammed into the tree which caused the tree to crack and splinter from the sudden force.

The creature almost immediately recovered from the impact and turned to face Alan, his leaf eyebrows furrowing as his mouth began to water, Alan pushed himself off the ground with his hands and feet and sprinted deeper into the woods. The animal followed closely behind, his paws pounding the ground as he ran, as Alan ran like his life depended on it. Which it very much did. He ran and ran, occasionally hurtling over branches and roots coming out of the ground and rocks that were in his way, all the while the beast trailed behind barking loudly with slobber flying out of his mouth.

Alan’s adrenaline kept him going as he sprinted, hoping to find the “salvation” that Levi was talking about. Eventually, after a few minutes of this nerve wracking chase, Alan foot came into contact with a shiny pink crystal that was embedded in the ground causing him to trip and fall chest first into the ground.

Alan quickly flipped onto his back as the beast leaped into the air and crashed down onto Alan. Alan slammed his feet onto the animal's wooden chest which prevented it from clamping its jaws onto Alan’s neck. He barked at Alan, spraying his saliva on the man's face as he clenched his teeth and tried with all his might to push the animal off of him, but he couldn’t despite his efforts.

Eventually, Alan remembered he had something that could save his life on his waistband, his knife. He reached his hand under his back and looked for the folding knife that was clipped to the back of his pants and eventually found it, gripping its handle and pulling it out. With shaky hands he unfolded the sharp blade which still had some dried blood from the rabbit, and plunged it deep into the animal’s eye.

The beast roared in agony as it jumped off of Alan, allowing him to reach over and pull the pink crystal out of the dirt and grip it tightly in his hands. The animal recovered from his injury in a few seconds and leaped towards Alan with full intent of tearing him into pieces. Before he could land on him, Alan swung the crystal and smashed into the beast’s face, sending bits and pieces of his wooden head flying.

The beast was sent to the ground, landing on its side with a thud, lying lifeless on the ground. Alan laid on the ground on his back, panting from the fight and as the adrenaline wore off noticed the soreness in his legs from running. He stood up, dropping the crystal on the ground and walking over to the animal’s body and tearing the knife out of its eye. He saw his knife was covered in fresh green blood but he wiped it off on his pants and folded it back.

He clipped it to the back of his pants waistband and walked over to his dirty hood and picked it off the ground and put it back on. As he did this he remembered his cut on his hand and looked at the makeshift bandage on his hand and saw that the top of the bandage was crimson red. ‘Wait, the crystal! Follow the crystals!’ Alan suddenly remembered, looking at the ground and saw that ahead of the hole in the ground where the pink crystal used to be was a trail of beautiful multicolored crystals.

He began to follow the trail, hoping that at the end was the salvation that Levi had told him about, sweet sweet salvation.

Chapter 7: Summer Sun

10:52 AM Alan’s stomach pain felt like his stomach was being twisted and squeezed with every passing minute and his throat was drier than sandpaper. With every step he took, he hoped and prayed that at the end of the path was the salvation that Levi had said there would be. Alan had never felt this tired in his entire life, he felt like if he blinked just a little too long he would immediately fall asleep, his legs felt they were being weighed down by boulders the more and more he walked. They were more tired and sore than they had ever been before.

His feet ached with every step as he walked on the crystal path, closer and closer to this alleged salvation that awaited him at the end. Despite how much soreness and pain he was in he knew that if he stayed in this forest any longer, his fate was sealed, he would be doomed to die.

10:56 AM After a few more minutes of walking, Alan saw something from behind a bush. Through the cracks in between the leaves in the bush, he saw a tall purple object that had a sharp point on it. Alan’s face lit up with hope as he pushed through the bush hastily, and what he saw absolutely amazed him.

There were two tall purple crystals and in between them was a path that led to a beautiful looking kingdom in the distance. It was the salvation that Levi had told him about. “Wow..” He managed to whisper in awe despite the condition of his throat. He felt a sudden surge of energy course through his veins which caused him to pick up his pace and start jogging in between the purple crystals.

Alan unbelievably went from jogging to full force sprinting in a few seconds and was dashing down the path that led to the kingdom, his heart was slamming his chest and his head felt like it was about to explode but he didn’t care. He fought through it and continued zooming down the path.

Eventually, he got to the end of the path and the sight he was greeted filled him with shock. All of the houses and buildings were made out of crystal. Streetlamps, crystal. Roads, crystal. The huge tower that sat in the middle of the kingdom, crystal. The thing that surprised him the most out of everything was the animals that were walking down the sidewalk and coming in and out of there houses.

They were horses. Some were unicorns, some had wings, and some were just plain horses. It completely shocked him and it apparently shocked all of the horses too as they immediately stopped what they were doing and stared at Alan.

“Listen! I need help!” Alan cried out, surprised that his throat still could make noise from how dry it was.

The horses continued to stare at him like he was some alien, some unknown lifeform, like he was on a different planet than these horses. Alan was convinced that he might be on a different planet from the way that wolf that attacked him looked, like it was made out of wood.

“With what?” He heard a voice ask him. He looked to the right sidewalk and saw a light blue unicorn with a flowing darker blue man and tail and hazel eyes walking towards him, slowly and cautiously.

“I’ve been in that forest for a day with no food and water! I cut myself and…” Alan suddenly stopped talking as he took a few steps toward the unicorn, immediately regretting his decision as his head felt like it was spinning. He felt extremely dizzy, like the world was spinning in circles around him, and the last thing Alan remembered was hearing the fast footsteps of someone running towards him before he slumped to the ground like a bag of bricks. “Sir! SIR!” The unicorn yelled as Alan’s eyelids grew heavy. The dehydration and lack of food finally caught up with Alan as he closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.

Levi leaned over the edge of the hot air balloon, watching the clouds as they passed by and enjoying the breeze hitting him. Twilight stood next to him doing the same thing, gazing at the beautiful blue sky as they traveled further and further away from Canterlot. Twilight smiled at the sight, she looked over at Levi and felt something off about him.

He was fidgeting with his hands and would plant his feet in a new position on the straw basket every so often, she could tell his fidgeting and constant moving meant that he was nervous about something. “Are you ok?” She asked him, drawing his attention away from the clouds.

“Huh-oh yeah I’m fine, just a little nervous” He replied, continuing to fidget and shift around in the basket.

“Why?” She asked curiously.

“It’s because of what happened..with the Wonderbolts and all” He explained, Twilight gave him a reassuring smile in response.

“Levi it’ll be alright, It’s highly highly unlikely that’ll happen again. It’s just bad circumstance that they were at that specific time” She answered, relieving some of Levi’s nervousness. However it wasn’t just that that was making him nervous, it was the concept of going back to Ponyville as a whole. The only ponies he knew really were Fluttershy, Spitfire, and Twilight in a town full of hundreds, maybe even thousands of ponies.

Levi clasped his sweaty hands together as he felt the breeze cool them, trying to relieve some of worries about Ponyville. “What if they freak out again? What if I start a panicked mob? Gosh..” He rubbed his eyes with his fingers as he took a deep breath.

“Levi the odds of that are very low,” Twilight responded, “And even if it did happen, I’ll just explain how Princess Celestia wants you to come here” Levi suddenly remembered the prophecy, the paintings in the library, maybe this was part of the prophecy. Levi thought this would calm him down, but it instead made his worries worse.

Levi sighed and looked Twilight in the eye, her purple eyes showing reassurance which brought a grin to Levi’s face. Despite only knowing her for less than a day, he felt a special connection to her. When he looked at her he didn’t see a unicorn, he saw an old friend. Instead of feeling confusion, Levi felt more comfortable around her.

“I hope you're right Twilight” Levi replied, noticing the clouds he was gazing at before going above the balloon instead of passing it. He looked down and saw the many buildings and houses of Ponyville come into view, watching as ponies walked from place to place and some fillies and colts running around playing with one another.

‘I really hope your right’

Levi’s hands were in his pockets and his head was pointed down at the ground, trying to ignore the burning stares of everyone around him as he walked. Watching his feet move one in front of the other as a way to distract himself from the current situation, he heard some ponies mumbling and murmuring to one another and Levi was glad the reaction wasn’t like the one he got last time. He could hear the pony’s voice screaming in the back of his mind, he still wondered what a changeling was.

Levi resisted the urge to run to the library where they were going to be staying, wanting to get there as fast as humanly possible and hide away from all the stares from every pony around him. ‘Mind your own fuckin’ business!’ Levi thought angrily in his head, looking up for a split second and seeing a pony looking at him with a confused look.

He glared at the pony who flinched a little in response, this got Levi thinking whether or not he was seen as scary to the ponies around him. Levi pointed his head at the ground again and watched his feet as they got closer and closer to the library.

After a few more minutes of the almost unbearable walk, the three arrived at the library and Levi looked up and saw the library and his jaw almost dropped at the sight. The tree was a brilliant purple color with bushy green leaves at the top, one of the branches connected to a balcony and a little bit to the left of the middle of the tree was a deck with the roof covered by leaves.

The door was a red color, with two small doors on the bottom of the door and a candle sign on the top of the door. Twilight pulled open the door and Levi quickly rushed inside pushing past Spike and Twilight, eager to hide away from the stares of the other ponies. When the door shut, Levi let out a sigh of relief and realized he took the feeling of not being the center of attention for granted.

The inside of the library amazed Levi, inside the walls were bookshelves filled with books and in the center of the room a light brown wooden table sat with a pony head carved out of wood on top of it. On the ceiling above the table was a sun that was painted perfectly on the ceiling.

She handed Spike his saddlebag that was slung over her back and said “Go get settled in upstairs, I’ll be there in a minute” Spike nodded and took the saddlebag and ran to and up the stairs. Levi snickered at the way he looked when he ran.

“See? Wasn’t so bad was it?” Twilight asked.

“Pretty bad to me,” Levi answered quickly, “It sucked”

Twilight felt a little disappointed at this, “Well once we get settled in we have to go make sure that everything is in line for the summer sun celebration” She said, causing Levi to mutter something to himself that Twilight couldn’t hear.

She pulled a list out of her saddlebag and scanned the scroll before listing off “Food, weather, decor, and music, and..” she paused to sigh out of annoyance “Make some friends” she finished begrudgingly, putting the paper back in her saddlebag.

Levi raised an eyebrow at the unicorn and asked “What’s so bad about making friends?” Twilight rolled her eyes and responded in an annoyed tone “I’d rather be in this library and get evidence about Nightmare Moon's return than be making friends! I just want to make sure everything is in order and then find as much evidence as I can”

“Nightmare Moon?” He asked, confused. “Oh that’s right, I forgot to tell you, there is a prophecy that this summer sun celebration will be the return of Nightmare Moon! But nopony believes me!” She responded annoyed, using her magic to levitate her saddlebag off her back and drop it by one of the many bookshelves.

Levi gave her a confused look but changed the subject by saying “Making friends isn’t that bad, talking to people is easy”

Twilight sighed out of annoyance and responded with “It’s not that, well partially that, but there’s so many better things I can do with my time then make friends” Her tone became more annoyed as she spoke the last word.

“I mean you met me right? I’m your friend” Levi replied.

“Well yeah but..it’s different” She responded.

“Why?” Levi questioned, intrigued.

“I’ll explain later, we have to go” Twilight responded, walking over to the stairs that led upstairs. “Spike let’s go!” She called up the stairs.

“Coming!” He called back down to her, and a few moments later he came running down the stairs and he and Twilight walked towards the door together. With Levi walking side by side with them, with Twilight pulling the piece of paper out of her saddlebag with her magic and handing it to Spike as they walked out. Levi prepared himself for the inevitable stares that were gonna come the moment he stepped out of the door.

Once he was outside, Levi found that there were less burning stares that felt lasers being pointed directly at him, and more ponies that were simply walking around and minding their own business. While some ponies continued to stare, Levi would rather have this then what happened the last time he was there.

“Spike what’s first on the list?” Twilight asked, looking down at the small reptile next to her. He held the paper close to his face for a few moments and said “Banquit!”. “To Sweet Apple Acres it is then” Twilight stated as her and Spike started to walk away from the library, but something caught Levi’s attention from his peripheral vision.

To his left trotting over in his direction was a pink pony with pink, poofy hair which looked almost cotton candy. On her flank was an insignia of a light blue, yellow, and pink balloon that were grouped together. Her light blue eyes had a friendly look as she made eye contact with Levi and began to trot over to Levi. A grin came across his face as the pink pony came closer to Levi, he saw this as a perfect opportunity to show Twilight that making friends is easier than she thinks.

“Twilight” Levi said, causing the lilac unicorn to turn her head and look at the man. “Yeah?” “I gotta show you something come here” He continued using his finger to motion the unicron to him.

She and Spike walked over to Levi and stood beside him as the friendly looking pink pony was in arms reach of Levi. She stopped in front of them, a smile plastered on her face as she looked at the three standing there. A nervous expression adorned Twilight’s face as Levi reached over and patted her on the back, saying “I’ll show you talking to new people isn’t that hard, try it?”

Twilight still had a nervous look on her face as she looked nervously into the pink pony’s eyes, blue met purple, and uttered “Uhm..Hello”

The pink pony leaped in the air with a long and dramatically loud gasp as her eyes almost popped out of her skull, she stayed in the air for at least a second before dashing away in the blink of an eye. Leaving behind a small cloud of dust on the ground and the sound she made from dashing sounded like a jet flying past them, the sound rang in the air for a few seconds after as ponies all turned their head and looked over at the three. After a few seconds they turned their heads back in front of them and continued going about their business like this was a normal everyday occurrence, judging by how quickly she reacted like that that was probably the case.

Twilight looked over at Levi, a surprised look on her face as she spoke “So much for new friends”. Levi’s grin faded and was replaced by an amazed look, “Is that a normal thing?” Levi asked, turning his head in the direction the pink pony dashed off too.

“Not where I’m from” Twilight responded, “Well we have places to be, come on you two” She finished, turning around and starting to walk towards Sweet Apple Acres with Levi and Spike at her side. As they walked, Levi glanced at all of the stands run by ponies that the trio passed. He looked at how each of them was unique and each stand had their own unique style to it, whether it was a different color paint or a different kind of wood or just how the pony was running it. Levi was surprised at what they were selling, squash, carrots, cherries, all of the fruits and vegetables that Levi saw were familiar to him which surprised him. He expected Ponyville to be filled with weird exotic food that he never heard of before, but he was delighted that he was wrong.

After a few minutes of walking with Spike now lying on Twilight’s back with his arms folded behind his head and one of his legs resting on his knee, Levi decided to make the walk less boring and decided to ask Twilight a few questions about ponies.

“Mind if I ask you something?”

“Sure, go ahead”

“What’s the mark above your back leg there?” He asked pointing his finger at her insignia curiously, Twilight turned her head around to see and answered “That’s called a cutie mark! It’s your special talent or whatever you're good at or really love doing, mine’s magic for example.”

“I see,” Levi replied, “Another question”

“Feel free”

“What are the ponies with wings called?” Levi asked.

“Pegasus, pegasi is plural” She answered swiftly.

“Gotcha” “Now it’s my turn for questions” Twilight interjected, excitement hidden in her voice.

“Go right ahead” Levi responded as he stuck his hands in his pockets as he walked.

“Where are you from?” “Tuscaloosa, Alabama” He answered hastily.

“How long do you usually live for?” Levi was surprised at the subject of the question but answered anyway “Usually until you're about 60 or 70, some people live up to 100”

“100?” She questioned, amazed.

“Yep, do you ponies live till you're 100?” He asked.

“It varies, but alicorns live for hundreds of years” Twilight replied, causing Levi to raise an eyebrow at the unicorn.

“Alicorn?” He questioned, confused.

“It’s a pony with a unicorn horn and pegasi wings, Princess Celestia is an alicorn for example” She explained.

“Wasn’t Nightmare Moon an alicorn?” Spike suddenly chimed in.

“You're right Spike, she was” “Are you ever gonna tell me who Nightmare Moon is?”

“It’s a lot to explain,” Twilight responded, “I’ll explain when we get back to the library” Levi nodded despite her not being able to see it.

Levi noticed the ground they were walking on went from the dark colored dirt of Ponyville to a lighter, sand colored dirt. Levi looked around and saw brown wooden fences bordering the path, serving as dividers between the path and the large orchard of apple trees on the other side of the fence. He was amazed at how many trees there were, easily hundreds, maybe even thousands from what he could see. He wondered who was running this farm to make it so lively and thriving.

The end of the path opened up to an open area with a large red barn and to the left of them was a small yellow chicken coop, and a few feet behind the barn were three small red shacks that were exactly the color of the barn. As the three walked into the open area, an orange blonde pony with a brown stetson hat on suddenly dashed in front of them, causing them to jump back in surprise. She ran over to an apple tree that was to the right of the three of them, she turned around so her back was facing the tree and bucked it hard. Levi watched as all of the apples on the tree came loose and fell into the buckets that were surrounding the bottom of the tree, filling them up almost completely.

“Let’s get this over with” Twilight said with a sigh, hanging her head low to the ground for a second before raising it back up. She walked over to the blonde pony standing by the tree and with a formal voice said “Good afternoon! My name is Twilight Sparkle and-” “Well howdydo Ms. Twilight, a pleasure makin’ your acquaintance! I’m Applejack! We here at Sweet Apple Acres sure do love makin’ new friends!” She exclaimed cheerfully as he wildly and rapidly shook Twilight’s hoof. Levi put a closed hand up to his mouth and laughed quietly to himself at the sight.

“Friends.. Well actually I uh-” Twilight said, her voice shaking from the rapid hoof shaking. “So Twilight, what can I do ya for?” Applejack asked with a wink, finally releasing Twilight’s hoof.

Twilight took a second to relax from the constant hoof shaking from the blonde pony, she put a hoof up to her mouth and cleared her throat before continuing “Well I am in fact here to supervise preparations for the Summer Sun celebration, and you’re in charge of the food?”

“We sure as sugar are!” Applejack replied, her country accent becoming more prominent in that sentence. Applejack eyed Levi up and down as the man stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, doing the same to her, noticing she had a cutie mark of three red apples. Levi didn’t really know how to react, so he decided to be polite and stick his hand out to greet the country pony. “I’m Levi” He greeted with a smile, extending his hand towards the confused pony.

Applejack looked at his smile and returned a friendly smile that was bigger than his as she threw her hoof into his hand and shook it, “You have a nice name Levi!” She exclaimed. Levi thanked her as he returned his arm back to his chest.

“Now that that’s outta the way, you care to sample some?” Applejack asked hopefully, looking the unicorn in the eyes with her emerald ones.

“As long as it doesn’t take too long” Twilight replied, with Applejack dashing off out of view in a split second in the middle of Twilight’s sentence. Levi was starting to believe this was a regular occurrence for the ponies. “I can get used to this place” Levi commented.

“Well I hope I can too” Twilight added, hearing a metal triangle being rung vigorously by Applejack a few feet away from the group.

“SOUPSON EVERYPONY!” She announced loudly despite the trio being the only ones there, or so they thought. The three heard a rumbling sound, like a earthquake, but instead of an earthquake it was 10s of pairs of hooves hitting the ground as they charged towards them. Levi and Twilight turned around and there eyes widened at the sight of a stampede of ponies running straight towards them, “Oh shit!” Levi exclaimed in surprise as the stampede got to them.

The stampede ran into the trio, lifting them off of the ground and above them like they were being crowd surfed. Levi was rolling and tumbling on the top as he was practically being juggled and bounced as the ponies ran without a care in the world for the people riding along. Eventually, the three were tossed off the stampede and landed on there feet at a table covered with a yellow and orange striped tablecloth.

Around them were 10s of ponies that Levi didn’t have time to count, it was the stampede that had carried them over to the table, all standing with big smiles adorning their faces. Levi was a little creeped out to say the least despite how friendly they all seemed.

“Why don’t ah introduce you to the Apple family!” She exclaimed excitedly, waving her hoof in front of her like she was presenting her huge family. Levi turned and looked at Twilight who turned her head the other way and responded as politely as she could “Thanks but I really need to hurry-” She was interrupted by a sand colored pony with green hair pushing a plate with a delicious looking dessert on it in her face, Spike licked his lips at the sight.

“This here’s Apple Fritter!” She introduced as she dropped the plate on the table and dashed away moments after being introduced.

Another similarly colored pony zipped up to the table with her curly red hair bouncing as she did it, in her mouth were two caramel apples. “This here’s Apple Bumpkin!” She introduced and just like the pony before her dropped her food at the table and dashed away.

Before Twilight got the chance to object, another pony came up to the table, she was light pink with lime green hair and on her head was a cupcake. It had lighter green frosting and a sliced apple on top of it, “Rad Gallop!” She introduced, she dashes away moments later.

“Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Caramel Apple!” Were only some of the names that Levi remembered come out of Applejack’s mouth as she rapid fire introduced her family to them as more and more plates of food stacked on the table.

She drew a loud breath before pointing at a tall red pony with short orange hair and freckles, holding the exact same cupcake that Red Gallop had in his hand. “Big Macintosh!” She announced.

Next to him was a small pale olive colored filly with wavy red hair and a big pink bow in it, on her back was a stacked brown cake with grass green frosting and an apple on top. “Applebloom!” She introduced loudly.

“Andddddd..” Applejack said as she walked over and shoved a green apple into Twilight’s gaping mouth, she pointed over to an old green pony sitting in a brown wooden rocking chair next to a tree away from the group of ponies. She had white hair that tied back in a bun and an orange bandanna with an apple pattern wrapped around her neck, her eyes were closed and she was fast asleep as she rocked back and forth in her chair. “Granny Smith!” She finished as she pointed to the sleeping pony.

“Upandatem Granny Smith! We got guests!” She said to the sleeping pony, causing her to open her orange eyes halfway and look around for a few seconds before standing up out of her chair. “Soupson…” She mumbled tiredly as she slowly walked over to the group of ponies.

“Why I’d say they're already part of the family!” She said excitedly, putting her hoof on Twilight’s back, her cheeks puffed out from the apple inside of her mouth. This caused her eyes to widen as she spat the chewed up apple onto the ground and sticking her tongue out, “Hahaha..” She laughed nervously, putting on an equally nervous smile.

“Well, I can see the food situation is handled. We’ll be on our way” She said, turning her head around only to be met by the disappointed and saddened faces of the Apple family. “Aren’t you gonna stay for brunch?” Said a sad voice from below her, Twilight looked down at Applebloom. Giving Twilight puppy dog eyes to convince her to stay, “Come on Twilight! It’s free food!” Levi added, looking around at Applejack’s massive family.

Twilight sighed out of annoyance, “Fine” she said, giving in to Applebloom's puppy eyed demands. The family, including Spike and Levi, loudly cheered and wooped for Twilight as Levi gave her a strong pat on the back and exclaimed over the cheering “Come on Twi have some fun!” A huge toothy grin on his face. “If you say so” Twilight responded as Applejack and her family began preparing the table. Preparing the trio for a delicious feast as Twilight begrudgingly took a seat at the table, with Spike and Levi eagerly taking theres.

Levi and Spike dug into their apple pies, enjoying every bite of the delicious desert, as Twilight opted for the apple fritter that was shown to her earlier. As much as her face showed disinterest for the feast, she enjoyed the fritter nonetheless. Granny Smith was seated next to Levi on his left and in front of Levi sat Applejack on the left of Twilight, on the right of Levi was Spike who was happily digging into his pie.

Granny Smith, who was more awake than when Applejack introduced her, was getting along well with Levi along with Applejack who was chatting up a storm with the man. The conversation was going along nicely with Granny Smith mostly eating her green apple quietly, that was until she piped in “Lemme ask you somethin’ youngin’, where’re you from?” She asked with an equally prominent country accent like Applejack.

“Not here, I’m from a place called Tuscaloosa Alabama” Levi replied.

“Tuscaloosa?” She questioned, raising an eyebrow at the brown haired man, “You mean Applelooza?”

Levi gave her a confused look, “No, I mean Tuscaloosa, It’s nowhere near here. Where I’m from there aren’t any ponies who talk” Levi clarified, eating another spoonful of his pie.

“That’s what the last one’s said” Granny Smith added, causing Twilight’s eyes to widen and her expression change immediately to one of interest. “What do you mean the last ones?” Twilight asked intrigued.

“It was a long time ago, back when I was filly, they came here lookin’ real dirty and dusty. They started beggin’ for food and I said no, they walked away and I never saw em’ again” Granny Smith responded. Levi thought back to what Princess Celestia had told him, about how the humans killed a unicorn in an attempt to take her power but nobody remembers it. Levi decided not to ask her about it as to not completely ruin the mood, but the question still lingered on his mind whether she remembered the murder or not.

“So you weren’t the first huh?” Spike asked.

“Guess not” Levi answered, feigning ignorance towards the topic. Twilight gave Levi a look, like she knew he was hiding something, like he knew about the humans. Levi looked her in the eye and he felt like he was under a microscope by her, like she was studying him, but she eventually looked away from him and continued eating her fritter. Levi internally sighed in relief.

After she finished her bite, she laid the fritter back on the plate and stood up from the table and put on a forced friendly smile and said “Thank you so much for the food you two but we really have to go. We have a lot to do”

Applejack returned a real friendly smile and exclaimed cheerfully “You all can come back anytime, the Apple family loves makin’ new friends!”

‘Friends?’ Twilight thought to herself as she started to walk away with Levi and Spike saying their goodbyes and following her. The three began walking down the long dirt path back to Ponyville, Levi hoped that the ponies they would meet were just as nice as the apples were.

“Ugh..that took way longer than it needed to be” Twilight complained as she walked with her head low to the ground and an annoyed look on her face, Levi however had a satisfied look on his.

“Oh lighten up Twi! We got all day!” Levi said, glad that the interaction he had with Applejack and Granny Smith went well.

“Yeah we were there for almost 20 minutes” Twilight complained some more, “And we still have to check on the weather, decor, and the music” She finished with a sigh.

“Speaking of which..” Spike piped in looking at the paper in his hands, “We’re looking for somepony named Rainbow Dash about the weather. She should be around here” Spike said, prompting the unicorn to scan the sky for the pony but finding nothing but clouds.

“Not around here” She stated. Suddenly, just moments after saying that, a rainbow and cyan colored blur came flying from nowhere and barreled into Twilight. Spike, who was on Twilight’s back, flipped in the air and came back down on the ground with a thud.

Levi’s eyes followed the purple blur that was Twilight all the way to a perfectly round puddle of mud that was a foot or so away. All of Levi’s feelings were replaced by worry in the span of less than a second, “Holy shit Twilight!” Levi exclaimed in a panicked tone.

He jogged over to the mud puddle and saw Twilight on her stomach laying in the puddle of mud, the mud was splattered on her but not covering her, the same went for the cyan pegasus on top of her. Levi was angered at what just happened, but at the sight of the pegasus all of his anger suddenly disappeared.

The pegasus had elegant looking rainbow hair that covered her neck like a rainbow waterfall. Her magenta eyes seemed friendly, similar to Applejacks, but when Levi looked at them while they were spinning around he felt a special connection to the pegasus. He felt like he had known her before, her eyes looked so familiar but he just couldn’t put a finger on it.

When the ponies recovered, the pegasus floated in the air using her wings and bent her head down to Twilight’s face. “Haha um..’scuse me?” She said in a raspy voice with a giggle. Levi folded his arms over his chest, a playful smile forming on his lips.

She started to hover in the air with her wings, “Here..l-let me help you” she said between giggles, suddenly dashing off into the sky at the end of her sentence. Just as Twilight stood up and faced the direction where the pegasus dashed off to, a dissatisfied look on her face, the pegasus zipped back to the mud puddle completely clean. She pushed a grey rain cloud with her body from the sky all the way to above Twilight, casting a shadow upon the lilac unicorn.

Twilight looked up at the rain cloud, which looked like it was about to explode from how much water was in it, with a shocked expression on her face. Levi watched in amusement as the rainbow haired pegasus jumped up and down on the cloud, dumping gallons of water onto the unicorn below it. Levi turned his head to Spike who had a similar look on his face as he watched Twilight get completely drenched by the pegasus.

The cloud went from grey to pearly white in a matter of seconds after all the water left it and covered Twilight. Her wet hair stuck shined and laid flat against the left side of her neck, the hair on the top of her head covered most of her eyes leaving only the bottom of the eyes visible. A frown was plastered on her face which only made Levi’s urge to laugh grow more.

“Oops I guess I overdid it. Mmhmm let’s see uh” The pegasus said in between laughs as she scratched her chin with her hoof, all the while Twilight looked up at her with an annoyed expression. Her hair still dripping wet from the sudden cascade of water that was dumped on her. “How about this!” The pegasus exclaimed, jumping off of the cloud and floating in the air for a few seconds before flying in a circle around Twilight who had a concerned look on her face.

She flew incredibly fast in a circle around the unicorn, and in a few seconds created a rainbow tornado. Levi’s jaw almost hit the floor at the sight, completely amazed at this pony’s ability to do this. The tornado caused the flaps of Levi’s shirt to flap around and his hair to move with the wind.

“My very patented Rainblow dry!” She exclaimed as she flew in circles with the tornado, leaving Levi to only imagine what’s happening to Twilight inside of it.

She finally stopped the tornado and held a hoof up to her chest and said “No no, don’t thank me, you’re quite welcome” as she slowly landed on the ground, her wings flapping slower and slower the closer she got to the ground.

Twilight stood there where the middle of the tornado was, her hair was curled and looked like cotton candy, similar to the pink pony from earlier but a lot bigger. The rainbow haired pegasus took one look at her as tears came to her eyes as she tried to hold in her laughter, after a few seconds she couldn’t hold it in any longer and she bursted out laughing falling to the ground. Spike followed after and fell on top of her, cackling with tears in his eyes, all the while the lilac unicron stood there with an annoyed look.

Levi held his closed fist up to his mouth and stifled a laugh with a huge smile on his face, “You too?” She questioned, turning her head away from the pegasus and to Levi.

“What can I say?” Levi replied, letting a short laugh out. Twilight walked closer to the rainbow haired pegasus laughing on the ground and asked “Lemme guess, you’re Rainbow Dash?”

She instantly stopped laughing and her magenta eyes widened as she stood up in the blink of an eye, shooting Spike off of her back. “The one and only” She responded proudly.

She hastily got in the air with her wings and flew in front of Twilight and extended her head in front of Twilight’s face and asked “Why? You heard about me?” In a tone similar to a kid asking for candy.

“I heard you’re supposed to be keeping the sky clear,” She turned her head away and sighed before finishing “I’m Twilight Sparkle and the Princess sent me to check on the weather”

She flew up to a cloud and laid on it on her back, kicking her back hooves up in the air and folding her hooves behind her head and replying “Yeah yeah, not a problem. I’ll get it done in a jiffy, right after I’m done practicing”

“Practicing? For what?” Twilight asked.

“The Wonderbolts!” She exclaimed loudly, pointing to a Wonderbolts poster on the wall on a house a few feet away. Levi looked over at the poster and despite how far away it was to him he could see a pony with a wonderbolts uniform on and dark blue hair, the same color hair as Soarin’, Levi brushed the thought off almost immediately.

“The Wonderbolts?”

“Yeah”

“The most talented flyers in all of Equestria?”

“That’s them!”

“Pfft please, they’d never accept a pegasus who can’t keep the sky clear for one measly day” This caused Rainbow to sit up on the cloud and turn around and face her, “Hey! I can clear this sky in 10 seconds flat” she said, pointing her hoof towards the cloud filled sky.

Twilight furrowed her eyebrows at the pegasus and said “Prove it”

Rainbow’s competitive spirit erupted to life inside of her like a bonfire as she gave Twilight a look that said “I’ll prove It!” She jumped off the cloud moments later and began and kicked the cloud she was just on, obliterating it completely with a satisfying poof!

She zipped around faster than Levi could comprehend, kicking every single cloud that dotted the sky, one after another the trio watched as Rainbow Dash took out cloud after cloud like she was a machine built for this. As she zipped around, she blew Twilight’s hair and Levi held onto his hat to keep it from flying off his head. Levi was mind blown at how she was doing this, he watched in awe as the pegasus took out the final cloud and landed on the stone bridge to the right of the three.

Twilight looked at Rainbow gaping in amazement as she said “See? What did I tell you, 10 seconds flat” She looked at Twilight’s face and laughed before flying up to her and adding “You should see the look on your face!”

She flew in a small circle around the unicorn and the reptile, laughing at the shocked expression on Twilight’s face. “You’re a laugh Twilight Sparkle, I can’t wait to hang out some more!” Twilight’s face turned from shock to surprise at this statement, but quickly turned to annoyance after.

“Welp gotta go! See ya!” She exclaimed, dashing off into the sky, leaving a small dust cloud behind her. “Wow! She was awesome!” Spike exclaimed with a smile, picking at some of Twilight’s cotton candy like hair chuckling. Twilight frowned at the reptile who snickered in response, Levi still had a smile on his face from the interaction. Even though he never shared a word with the pegasus, Levi loved her energy and the aura she had with her and part of him wished she stayed longer.

Levi felt a little odd inside as he thought these things, he never thought in a million years he would be hoping a pony would stay around longer. Levi looked over at Twilight and asked her “What’s next?”

Spike looked at the list for a few seconds and answered “Decor”, “Then let’s get going then” Twilight replied as she started walking over the stone bridge with Levi and Spike following.

The three walked into a round building and were immediately greeted by a large open room with several balconies along the walls, on the railings of the balconies was silky sky blue cloth that decorated the brown wooden railings. On two of the the balconies on the left and right wall were sky blue banners with a crescent moon and two stars and a sun on them.

Colorful banners hung from the ceiling and the very top of the walls of ponies in poses and various other symbols. All of the cloth and banners seemed to shine and glitter like diamonds, Levi wondered what the pony did to make them look this magnificent.

“Decorations!” Spike said as he checked off decor from the list. He looked up from the paper for the first time since he walked in the building and his eyes widened, “Beautiful..” He said in awe.

“Yes, the decor is coming along nicely,” Twilight replied, “This oughta be quick, one step closer to getting back to the library! Beautiful indeed”

“No, I mean her!” Spike replied, pointing enthusiastically at the white unicorn on the red carpeted stage. A crystal blue aura was formed around her horn as she levitated different pieces of ribbon in front of her, quickly deciding whether they were good or not before tossing them behind her.

She held a yellow ribbon up to her face, “No”

Blue ribbon, “No”

Green, “No”

Spike’s heart almost jumped out of his chest when he saw her, he started patting the green spines sticking out of the sides of his face and his tail and asked “How are my spines? Are they straight?”

Twilight playfully rolled her eyes before walking closer to the stage, “Good afternoon!” Twilight greeted. The unicorns purple hair was wavy and looked like she put time into making it look perfect, she turned her head around to look at Twilight with her blue eyes and responded “One moment please, I’m in the zone as ‘twere”

Her trans-Atlantic accent was like music to Spike’s ears as he gawked at her, Levi couldn’t help but enjoy the sound of her voice as well. “Oh yes! Sparkle always does the trick does it not?” She said cheerfully as she tied a red sparkling ribbon into a bow around one of the wooden support beams sticking out of the stage, supporting the balcony above it.

“Why Rarity, you are a talent!” She congratulated herself, “Now..how can I help you-AH!” She turned her around to face Twilight but screamed when at the sight of her, jumping up into the air.

“Oh my stars darling! What happened to your coiffure!” She exclaimed, looking Twilight up and down but focused on her hair which looked like a mess. “You mean my mane?” Twilight asked, looking at the curly strands that rested right above her eyes, “It’s a long story. I’m just here to check on my decorations and I’ll be out of your hair!”

“Out of my hair? What about your hair?” She asked astonished, galloping over behind Twilight and pushing her up onto the stage.

“Wait where are we going? Help!” Twilight called out worriedly as Rarity continued to push her further. Spike’s eyes were filled with love as he looked at her, the tip of his tail began to spin which lifted him off the ground. Levi smiled as he watched Spike follow Twilight and Rarity in the air, chuckling to himself as he walked up the stage and followed them.

“No..no..nuh-uh..too green..too poofy..not poofy enough!” Rarity critiqued as she cycled through various outfits for Twilight to wear as she stood on a purple pedestal in front of a mirror. The group were inside of Rarity’s boutique since the white unicorn had practically shoved Twilight there the entire way, with her trying to convince Rarity that they had places to be, her pleas fell on deaf ears.

Rarity cycled through outfits and styled Twilight’s mane, from wavy to poofy to curly, but eventually she decided her mane should be styled the way it normally would be. She also, finally, decided on an outfit that best suited Twilight. It was a white dress with two strings on the back of it that flowed and waved like wind was blowing them, there were many crystals embedded in it including several small pink, purple, and light blue ones embedded along the edges. On the front, a large emerald was embedded in the dress where the chest is, Levi was amazed that Rarity had all these crystals in the first place.

“Perfect!” She called out delightfully as Twilight looked at herself in the mirror. “Now go on my dear, you were telling me where you’re from” She said, extending her head towards the flowing strings on the dress and grabbing hold of them with her teeth.

She pulled on the strings as hard as she could to tighten the dress, squeezing Twilight’s chest causing her eyes to bulge and looked like they would pop out of her head. “I’ve..been sent..from Canterlot…to-” She struggled to respond, a tear escaping her eye as the dress tightened around her body.

Rarity’s eyes widened and she suddenly let go of the strings, sending both unicorns flying away from each other and crashing to the ground. “Canterlot!” She exclaimed excitedly, her face lighting up.

Twilight stood up and Rarity leaped over to her and continued her exclamation with Spike gawking at her lovingly as she did so, “Oh I’m so envious! The glamor! The sophistication!”

“I’ve always dreamed of living there! I can’t wait to hear all about it!” She got closer to Twilight as she backed away slightly away from the purple haired unicorn, “We’re gonna be best of friends you and I” She stated, a blank expression formed on Twilight’s face.

She glanced down at the emerald on her dress, she facepalmed internally at her mistake and exclaimed “Emerald! What was I thinking, let me get you some rubies!” Rarity then pranced into a different room away from Twilight, Twilight took the opportunity and jumped off of the pedestal towards the front door.

“Come on you two before she decides to dye my mane!” Twilight exclaimed in a panic as she ran towards the front door, Spike sat there and stared at the entrance of the room that Rarity disappeared into. Levi stood up from the bench he sat on and took a quick glance at Spike, annoyance covered his face as he jogged over to the small reptile and grabbed him with both hands and held him as he ran. Twilight used her magic to swing open the front door, causing the small golden bell above the door to ding loudly.

She held the door open for Levi and Spike as the man jogged out of the front door as Twilight let it close behind him. Spike had the same look of love and a grin plastered on his face as he stared off into the distance, his mind thinking about the white unicorn he had only met minutes before.

Spike laid on Twilight’s back as the three of them walked through the forest, he rested his head on the back of Twilight’s, daydreaming about the purple haired unicorn. “Wasn’t she wonderful” Spike thought aloud, gazing into the sky as he thought about the pony.

“Focus Casanova,” Twilight replied, “What’s next on the list?”

Spike pulled the list out and brought it close to his face as his green eyes scanned it, “Last one is music!”

“Hear that Twilight, ‘last one’,” Levi remarked, “Then you can finally go home from this torment” He joked. Twilight shot the man an annoyed look as he chuckled from his joke.

The group walked for a few more minutes through the woods, the breeze traveled through the ripped holes in Levi’s shirt and cooling his body, the flaps of the bottom of his shirt blowing in the breeze. After some more walking, Levi began to grow confused at where the group were even at. “So, where do you think the pony in charge of music is?” Levi asked.

Just as he said that, the sound of birds singing filled the air, but it wasn’t regular bird singing. It sounded like they were all singing together like a choir, at the same time, same pitch, everything about the singing was like they were being conducted by somebody. “I think that’s our answer” Twilight said, promptly walking towards the direction of the singing.

The three emerged from behind a tree and looked at the source of the beautiful singing and were surprised at what they saw. There was a small tree with no leaves on it with two long branches that stuck out to the left and the right, on the branches were several small birds that were singing. The pony who was conducting the birds was a yellow pegasus that was floating in the air with her wings with medium length pink wavy hair that flowed.

Levi looked at the pegasus, a smile slowly overtaking his face as he realized who it was. He walked closer to the pegasus as Twilight called out quietly “Wait Levi!”

“Fluttershy?” He asked louder than he intended. His sudden loud voice frightened the birds, causing all of them to fly in different directions in an instant, but also scaring Fluttershy too.

The yellow pegasus turned around her, eyes lighting up as she saw who it was. “Levi?” She asked, slowly floating down to the ground and standing on her hooves.

The two walked towards each other and hugged one another with Levi putting his hand up to the back of her head, enjoying the feeling of her soft hair on his fingertips, just as Twilight and Spike emerged from the tree behind them.

“You two know each other?” Twilight asked curiously, raising an eyebrow at the two.

“Hell yeah we do,” Levi answered as he and Fluttershy released each other, “When I fell here yesterday, she was the person I went to for help after I found her cottage. She was the only one who visited me in the hospital too” Levi smiled graciously at Fluttershy who returned a smaller shy one, a blush forming on her cheeks.

“You must be one kind pony, I’m Twilight Sparkle!” Twilight responded, extending her hoof out for the pegasus to shake it. Under any normal circumstance, Fluttershy would be way too nervous to shake her hand, but weirdly enough she felt a lot safer and comfortable with Levi next to her. Despite only knowing him for a day, Fluttershy thought she could trust Levi fully.

She took her hoof in hers and greeted “I’m Fluttershy”, Levi grinned at her as she did this.

“Well back to business!” Twilight said as she cleared her throat and fixing her posture, “I was sent by Princess Celestia to check up on the Summer Sun preparations and the music seems to be going wonderfully! It sounded beautiful!”

Fluttershy blushed a little at her compliment as she timidly replied “T-thank you”. Twilight smiled and sighed in relief as Spike checked off music from the list, the last preparation Twilight was sent to check on. As Spike checked it off, the sound the feather made on the paper drew Fluttershy’s eyes over to him. Her eyes widened in surprise and a smile overtook her features as she looked at the small reptile.

“Baby dragon!” She exclaimed loudly with excitement, scaring away the birds that had come back to the small tree behind her. She jumped up in the air and floated for a second with her wings before diving right into Twilight, sending her flipping in the air and crashing onto the ground a few meters away from the two.

“I’ve never seen a baby dragon before!” She said excitedly as she looked him up and down as though she was studying the dragon, “He’s so cute!”

“Well well well!” Spike replied proudly to Twilight, who was lying on the ground on her stomach, dazed from the fall. He crossed his arms over his chest and puffed his chest out proudly as the pink haired pegasus continued to compliment him which boosted his already inflating ego.

“Oh he talks? I didn’t know dragons could talk!” She commented curiously. Levi raised an eyebrow at Spike and asked “You’re a dragon?”

Spike looked at him with disbelief in his green eyes and replied “You didn’t know?”

“I thought you were a lizard or something” Levi answered as he snickered to himself at his own stupidity.

“That’s so incredibly wonderful! I just don’t know what to say!” Fluttershy said, her voice filled with excitement at this newfound knowledge as she floated into the air with her wings, an innocent smile plastered on her face.

As they were talking, Twilight had gotten up and walked behind her and in front of Fluttershy. Suddenly, she picked up Spike with her magic and lifted him over Fluttershy’s head and onto her back as she said in her forced polite tone “Well in that case we better be going!”

As she started walking, Fluttershy suddenly called out “Wait wait!” as she caught up behind the lilac unicorn, “What’s his name?”

Spike sat on the top of Twilight’s flank as he hung his small legs down comfortable, a proud look on his face from all the attention he’s been receiving from Fluttershy. “I’m Spike!” He answered, pointing his thumb towards his chest.

“Oh, I’m Fluttershy!” She greeted him, “Wow a talking dragon!” She said excitedly as she closed her eyes for a second.

“And what do dragons talk about?” She asked curiously.

“Well, what do you wanna know?” Spike responded, Levi could see an annoyed look beginning to form on Twilight’s face, one that Levi was all too familiar with.

“Absolutely everything!” She replied with her voice filled with intrigue, extending her yellow wings out in both directions. Twilight’s eyes widened for a split second as she heard this, a loud sigh escaping her lips as she hung her head down in annoyance.

Levi stuck his hands in his pockets as he followed, knowing good and well that it would be a long, long walk back to the library. As Fluttershy’s questions began to flow out of her mouth like a river, Twilight kept her eyes forward and tried her best to tune out the pegasus’s and Spike’s voices. Levi snickered to himself at Twilight’s annoyance as he continued to walk with the group.

“And that has been the story of my entire life!” Spike exclaimed as Twilight head threatened to touch the ground with how low she hung it, her annoyance replacing all other feelings inside of her. Levi’s legs were tired and sore and he wanted nothing more than a nap and a glass of water, he hoped Twilight’s library could give him that.

“Up until today,” He added, “You wanna hear about today!”

“Oh yes please!” Fluttershy answered as she trotted behind Twilight as she walked. Twilight saw the sign with the book on it and her heart leaped at the sight and she felt relieved as she finally saw the library, the place that she’d been longing for ever since she first left it.

She quickly whipped around to face Fluttershy, a forced smile on her lips as she said “I am so sorry! How did we get here so fast”

Levi yawned as he saw the library, longing for some well deserved rest inside the hollowed out tree that was the library. “This is where I’m staying while I’m in Ponyville, and my poor baby dragon needs his sleep” Twilight said as Spike turned his head to shoot her a confused look.

“Now I don’t-AH!” Twilight kicked him off of her like a mechanical bull, a huge forced smile on her face as Spike fell to the ground on his behind. She extended her neck towards him and continued in a voice that you speak to a baby in “Awww..wook at that, he’s so sweepy he can’t even keep his wittle bawance”

Fluttershy suddenly swooped in and held Spike in her arms the same way you would carry a newborn, “Oh you poor thing, we must get you to bed” she said, moving towards the door and pushing it open and flying inside.

Twilight dashed inside after her and pushed her out, the fake smile still huge on her face, as she said “We’ll get right on that!”

She used her magic to pick up Levi, surrounding his body with a purple aura as he was lifted off his feet, catching him off guard. He looked down at the ground where his feet used to be as he tried to force himself back to the ground, finding it impossible. “Twilight put me do-WAH!” He was cut off by Twilight yanking him inside the library using her magic, dropping him onto the floor.

“Goodnight!” SLAM! Fluttershy was left standing in front of the door, surprised and shocked at Twilight’s rude “goodbye”, if she could even call it that.

When the door closed, the only remaining light source was gone, engulfing the entire room in darkness. The only two things he could make out were Spike standing in front of him and what looked like streamers hanging from the ceiling.

“Wow, rude much?” Spike asked, crossing his arms as he made out Twilight’s form walking towards him.

As he said that, Levi heard a very quiet faint whisper behind him, like the voice was coming a few centimeters behind his back. Levi whipped around in a panic but saw nothing but darkness, the entire room was just pitch black darkness. Levi began to feel nervous just standing in the room as Spike and Twilight talked obvious to who’s in the room with them.

“Sorry Spike, but I have to convince the Princess that Nightmare Moon is coming and we’re running out of time!” Twilight explained, seeing only Spike’s eyes in the darkness of the room.

Levi began to hear more faint and quiet whispers, way too quiet. Levi slowly walked over to Twilight, his nervousness beginning to turn into fear as he had no idea who could be lurking in the darkness of the room. “Twi?” Levi whispered just as she was about to say another sentence to Spike.

“Mhm?” She replied.

The man reached his mouth closer to the unicorns ear and whispered as quietly as he could “We’re not alone”

“SURPRISE!”

Levi yelped in fear as the lights suddenly flicked on, illuminating the room and revealing 10s of ponies occupying it as confetti shot from a cannon and slowly floated down from the air. Levi felt relief wash over him as he saw all of the friendly faces in the crowd, watching as they released balloons into the air and cheered. Spike and Twilight almost jumped out of there skin, but that surprise on Twilight’s face was replaced by annoyance in a few seconds, per usual for her.

A pink pony with poofy pink hair suddenly jumped up in front of Twilight, her crystal blue eyes looked as though they were gonna pop out of her head. “SURPRISE!” She shouted, Twilight flinched from the sudden noise that was almost as loud as the whole crowd saying it together.

“Hi I’m Pinkie Pie and I threw this party just for you!” The pink pony greeted, the same pink pony that ran away from the three earlier that day. “Were you surprised! Were you! Were you! Huh huh Huh!” Pinkie asked incessantly, bouncing over Twilight’s head and back onto the ground next to her. Levi was amazed at how Pinkie was doing this.

“Very surprised, libraries are supposed to be quiet!” Twilight retorted.

“Well that’s silly! What kind of welcome party would this be if it was quiet? Duh! A boring one!” The pink pony replied in her energetic and cheerful voice.

As Twilight started her walk over to the snack table through the crowd of ponies, Pinkie followed closely behind her bouncing around all the while. “You see I saw you and your friend there and you were all like ‘Hello’ and I was all like-” She took a sharp breath to imitate a gasp as Twilight closed her eyes and tried to block out Pinkie’s voice, her voice cut through all of her attempts to tune her out.

“Remember!” She exclaimed, prancing up to catch up with the unicorn after stopping for a second. “See I never saw you before and if I never saw you before that meant you're new because…” The pony went on and on as Twilight sighed in annoyance, continuing her unbearable walk over to the snack table.

“And if you’re new that means you haven’t met anyone yet!” Pinkie exclaimed as Twilight finally got to the table, grabbing a red glass bottle with her mouth and pouring it into a wooden chalice on the table.

“And if you haven’t met anyone yet that meant you must not have any friends! And if you don’t have any friends you must be lonely! And that made me so sad!” The pink pony continued as the red liquid flowed into Twilight’s chalice, putting the bottle down when it was full.

“And then I had an idea and that’s why I went GASP!” She imitated the gasp once again as Twilight grabbed a straw with her teeth and dropped it into the red liquid, taking a few gulps.

“I’d throw a great big ginormous super duper welcome party and invite everypony in Ponyville!” Pinkie exclaimed loudly, prompting Levi to take a good look around the room at every pony that was in there with them. ‘This can’t be all of Ponyville’ Levi thought to himself as he looked around.

She jumped behind Twilight and all four of the ponies they spoke to today gathered around her, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy hovering over her and Rarity and Applejack standing next to her. All of them adorning friendly smiles that Levi couldn’t help but grin at.

“And now you’ll have lots and lots of friends!” Pinkie shouted as Twilight took one last gulp of her drink, immediately regretting her decision. Her face twisted in discomfort in an instant, she turned around to face the other ponies, her cheeks were puffed out and bright red as tears fell from her eyes and sweat began to drip down her face.

“You alright sugarcube?” Applejack asked, concerned.

Her face turned bright red as she jumped a foot in the air, her hair and tail turning into an orange flame in the blink of an eye as steam threatened to erupt out of her ears. Levi took a step back in surprise as the unicorn dashed towards the stairs in the air, Levi and Spike watched as she trotted upstairs but not before grabbing her saddlebag with her magic and bringing it with her.

“Damn!” Was all Levi managed to say at the sudden reaction from Twilight, Levi still couldn’t believe what he just saw was real.

“Awww she’s so happy she’s crying” Pinkie commented, a big toothy grin on her face.

Levi grabbed the bottle and examined it, finding a large orange fire symbol on the front, he felt confused at the realization that it was hot sauce. “Hot sauce?” He thought aloud curiously, turning his head over to the pink pony. “Why?”

“What pony doesn’t love hot sauce!” She replied enthusiastically, zipping over right next to Levi and dousing a cupcake with hot sauce, popping it into her mouth right after. Levi looked at her amazed as she swallowed the cupcake without even chewing it, with the paper on and all.

Pinkie noticed the puzzled expressions from all of her friends including Levi and Spike and responded with “What? It’s good!” with enthusiasm in her tone. Levi along with the rest of her friends laughed at her antics as Levi grabbed a green bottle next to the hot sauce on the table.

He examined the lime green bottle, finding nothing on the bottle that would give away what it is. Levi decided to trust his instincts about the drink and grabbed a wooden chalice off the table and filled it with the unknown drink. Levi put the bottle back down on the table and saw Spike was filling his cup with the same drink, Levi held his drink up to the small dragon and asked “Friends?”

The dragon gave a nod and a small smile as he reaffirmed “Friends”, clashing the two cups together as they each took a big swig of the unknown drink. The drink tasted strongly of apples but it was also terribly bitter, making Levi’s face twist from the taste.

“Ooooh..shit!” He said under his breath, looking at the drink like it was a liquid from another planet. The urges he’s been feeling from the lack of alcohol slowly faded away after the swig, making Levi wonder what kind of drink it really was.

“You like it sugarcube?” The blonde pony asked, walking up next to the taller man.

“Oh yeah totally, it’s just really bitter” He commented, his taste buds still reeling from the bitterness of the drink. Levi shuffled over to the ladder that led to the bed on top and started slowly climbing, putting his feet on each rung on the ladder like an old frail man trying not to fall off.

“What are you doing?”

“Going to sleep” He grumbled in response.

Twilight took a quick look around the room, finding there were no other beds beside hers. “Great” She whispered to herself sarcastically, scooting her and her books over to the other side of the bed.

Eventually, Levi made it to the top after what felt like hours and laid down on top of it, the bed creaking and groaning under his weight. As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out like a light, and the silence of the room was quickly filled with the man's light snoring.

Twilight looked at him peacefully sleeping, thinking to herself what the future would look like with him in it. Would he live with her forever? Would he go live with Princess Celestia? Would they actually develop a genuine friendship?

Just the word made her irritated. She sat up and leaned against the bedframe and brought the book about the prophecy she brought up to her face and began to read. As the sun began to sink into the horizon more, casting darkness over Ponyville, Twilight couldn't expect what was going to happen at the celebration. One thing was for certain, tonight would form a strong bond between the ponies forever

Chapter 8: Prophecies collide

The door opened into the room Levi was sound asleep in, the bright light shining directly into his eyes from the door. He groaned as he was rudely awoken from his sleep by the intruding light beaming from the door, rolling onto his side to avoid the bright stream of light. The small dragon had a lampshade on his head decorated with colored streamers that hung off of it and looked like they would fall to the ground at the slightest touch.

“Hey Twilight, Pinkie just started pin the tail on the pony, wanna play!” Spike asked excitedly, pushing up the lampshade to make eye contact with the unicorn.

“No!” Twilight answered loudly, “The ponies in this town are crazy! Do you know what time it is?” Twilight continued annoyed as the music from downstairs continued to blast and be heard in there room, only adding to the fire of her annoyance.

“Great question..” Levi commented in a raspy voice from just waking up. He opened his eyes fully and immediately regretted his decision, feeling the light from the door burn his eyes. He turned his head over to the clock and saw how late it was from when he first came upstairs. The ponies had been partying down there for hours after he left, Levi’s head threatened to ache just at the thought of being down there with that music for hours on end.

“Shit..” He said to himself as he rolled back onto his back, being greeted by the burning light from the door that shone straight into his retinas, he shut his eyes tightly and winced from it.

“It’s the evening before the Summer Sun celebration, everypony has to stay up to watch the princess raise the sun” Spike explained as Twilight turned her head to look out the window and look out at the stars in the big beautiful night sky, thinking about how big the celebration was going to be.

“You should really lighten up Twilight, it’s a party!” The dragon suggested, turning his back on the dark and sullen room and leaving, the door clicked shut behind him which muffled the sound once more. Levi could finally open his eyes in peace and the first thing he did was look over at the visibly annoyed Twilight.

“It’s just a party, it’s just a party!” She mocked in a baby-like voice, tapping the mattress as she did so. “Ugh!” She sighed as she flopped down onto the bed next to Levi, holding the pillow she had on her head over her lower body.

Her purple eyes stared at the ceiling as she laid there in the silent room, apart from the noise downstairs, realizing how much she took the quiet for granted. Levi laid his head on it’s side and looked at her, seeing the irritation on her face, and said “He’s not wrong”

She turned her head to lock eyes with him, “What?”

“I mean he’s not wrong,” He sat up and leaned against the bed frame, “I think you should lighten up a little bit, these ponies aren’t as ‘crazy’ as you think” She looked at him with a disgruntled look in response.

“Levi you don’t understand..I need to find evidence about Nightmare Moon but I can’t with all of this noise!” She responded irritated, shooting a quick glare towards the door below them as the music continued to rage downstairs.

The book levitated with a purple aura as Twilight hopped off the bed and walked towards the window, flipping through the pages in seconds as she stood in front of it, allowing the moonlight to illuminate her form. She looked up at the moon as it casted a white light into the small room, Twilight looked at it and saw something peculiar about it.

There was a dark colored unicorn shape on the face of the moon that had splotches and cracks in it like it was fingerpainted. The eyeless shape looked down at Twilight as the moonlight illuminated the page, like it was giving the unicorn permission to read it, and she did exactly that.

“Legend has it that on the longest day of the 1’000th year, the stars will aid in her escape and she will bring about everlasting night” She read. Pictured at the top of the page was a beautiful night sky exactly like the sky and a black unicorn with half her body hidden behind a crescent moon, a sad and gloomy look on her face as she looked down in sorrow. Her light grey sparkling mane flowed down the side of her head as her eyes spoke nothing but sadness.

An audible sigh escaped Twilight as she closed the book and looked down at Ponyville through the window, beginning to feel anxious about the celebration the more and more she thought about Nightmare Moon. The unfortunate alicorn who was trapped in the moon thousands of years ago. Levi shuffled over to Twilight’s side of the bed and leaned off the bed and attempted to relieve some of her worries by saying “Listen Twi, we don’t even know if that’s real or not. It could be some fairy tale for all we know”

Twilight gazed back up at the moon as it reflected in her eyes, “That’s what the Princess said to me, she said it was just an old pony’s tale,” she kept gazing at the moon, mesmerized by its glow and beauty. “I really hope she’s right”

“Listen,” He stood up from the bed and walked over to her, placing a supportive hand on her back, hoping that wouldn’t offend her since he had no clue where her shoulder might be. “Even if this ‘Nightmare Moon’ decides to come back, you’ll have me there to help you. It can’t be that bad right?”

Twilight blinked out of her trance from the moon and turned her head back to meet Levi’s gaze, his green eyes showing support as she looked into them. “You’re right, I guess you will be here with me”

She looked out of the window once more and was sucked into the moon’s glow, it looked like it would hypnotize her from the way she was staring at it. Levi pat her back and went back onto the bed, her mind still thinking about what Levi had said about this supposed old pony’s tale. “I hope you’re right Princess” She said under her breath quiet enough so Levi couldn’t hear, “I hope you’re right”

Levi and Twilight jumped as Spike came crashing into the room, plowing through the door like an angry bull and letting the intrusive light from downstairs in once more. Twilight and Levi whipped their heads around to see the small dragon standing in the doorway, the decorated lampshade still on his head as he pulled it up to look at Twilight.

“Come on you two, the sun's about to rise!” He proclaimed excitedly, pulling the lampshade off of his head and letting it drop to the floor. He quickly turned around and started running down the stairs before the two could even touch the ladder. Levi climbed down the ladder, internally groaning that he had to go out somewhere despite how tired and worn out he was even after his nap. When he reached the bottom, he dragged his feet over to his shoes and slipped his sore feet inside of them. He pulled his feet up and yanked on the backend of the shoes, struggling to keep his balance as he did so.

“You ready?” Levi asked as the unicorn walked beside him and towards the door.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” She replied, a tinge of anxiety coated in her voice, “Let’s go” The brown haired man and the unicorn walked down the stairs in unison and Levi was mentally preparing himself for the downstairs to be a complete mess. To no one's surprise, Twilight gasped when she saw the once perfectly library that was trashed by Pinkie’s overzealous party.

Empty wooden chalices dotted the floor with some of the liquid in them spilling out onto the floor. Cupcake wrappers and streamers were on the floor and on the wall next to the door that was rudely left open was a white piece of paper tacked to the wall with a crude drawing of a pony in pink marker on it. They figured that must’ve been the pin the tail on the pony that Spike was encouraging her to play. The tail was a piece of paper with a pink tail drawn onto it and it was tacked onto the top of the pony’s back leg.

The snack table was almost completely cleared out, Twilight’s cup of hot sauce still sat there on the table with her straw still in it. The bottle of whiskey was gone off of the table and rested on its side on the floor next to it. The tray full of cupcakes was completely cleared out except for one half eaten cupcake without a wrapper. There was a big blue bowl that somebody must’ve brought after Levi left to go upstairs, whatever was in it was gone and all that was left was a bowl full of crumbs.

Twilight’s eyebrows furrowed in frustration and looked like she was about to explode, all of the annoyance from tonight was starting to reach a breaking point for the unicorns patience. “It’s a mess!” She exclaimed in disbelief at how bad it had gotten from just one party.

“We’ll clean it when we get back, promise” Levi chimed in, walking towards the door with Twilight reluctantly following behind. He glanced back at the mess of a library and just the idea of cleaning it made him want to yawn, “Actually..maybe tomorrow”

Twilight rolled her eyes at the man. “Whatever, we’ll figure it out later,” She replied in a deflated tone, “We gotta get to the celebration” She finished, her voice changing to a more positive one as she said it.

Levi grinned at the unicorn and reached behind him, grabbing the doorknob and shutting the door closed behind him. “Lead the way Twilight” Levi said, allowing the lilac pony to pass him and walk in front of him with him following closely behind.

On their way to the celebration, Levi’s eyes wandered as he looked at every pony and every building that he passed. He admired the beauty of Ponyville at night as the moonlight cast a warm white glow onto the small town, illuminating the ponies and buildings that they came across on their walk. He looked up at the night sky and looked at every star that he could while paying attention to where he was walking at the same time, finding the sky to look way more gorgeous than the sky in Tuscaloosa.

With no cars or emissions or air pollution in general, none of that clouded up the sky and blocked the stars from shining down onto Ponyville. He looked up at the big attention grabber in the sky, the moon, that kept the same black unicorn shape and almost pulled him into a trance just by looking at it. As he looked into its bright eyeless socket, he felt like that unicorn wasn’t just a shape in the moon but a real unicorn. It was like he was making unbroken eye contact with the same unicorn that was pictured in Twilight’s book, the one that was looking solemn and sad while she sat behind the crescent moon.

‘On the longest night of the 1’000th year, the stars will aid in her escape and she will bring about everlasting night’ The story repeated in Levi’s head as he looked up at the planet in the sky. ‘Maybe it wasn’t an old pony’s tale..whatever that means, after all’

He moved his eyes from the moon and back in front of him, immediately catching the unicorn with her head turned to look at him from the corner of her eye. “You alright?” She asked, confused as to why he was staring up into the sky for that long.

At first he didn’t know why she was asking, then he realized he probably looked odd staring at the moon and thinking about “everlasting night”, “Oh yeah I’m fine, the sky just looks pretty tonight” He responded as he walked up to be side to side with Twilight.

“Where I’m from, the sky never looks like this, you see maybe like five or six max” Levi added.

“Five or six?” Twilight questioned, “Why?”

“Air pollution” Levi answered in a matter of fact tone, “But here there aren’t cars or anything like that, so no air pollution”

Twilight gave him a confused look which was what he expected from the lilac pony, “Cars?”

Levi grinned unwillingly at her confusion, “Do I have some stories to tell you, I’ll tell you all about it when we get home”

“Speaking of stories,” Levi continued before the unicorn could respond, “Remember when you said you’d tell me later why you were so friendly to me? What was that all about?”

“When I saw you the first time, it was like I was looking at someone that I hadn’t seen in years. It’s hard to explain” She explained, hoping the man would understand despite her lack luster explanation.

“I get that,” He responded, “Like dejavu?”

Twilight nodded and said “Something like that, but I was friendly to you because it was like I already knew you and it was easy to talk to you, but as you can see I’m not very into ‘friends’” Her voice changed as she said her last word.

Levi felt a little disappointed at her continued disdain towards her having friends but brushed it off, deciding to continue their conversation in favor of completely changing the subject. “Well, to be honest..I kinda felt the same too” Levi admitted, the unicorn giving him a surprised look in response.

“Really?” She asked.

“Yeah,” Levi replied, “I looked at you and you had that look in your eyes, like you knew me, but I knew we never met before”

“Interesting, there’s probably something about this kinda thing in one of my books. I’ll look after we clean up that pigsty of a library” Twilight commented dissatisfied, thinking about how she and Levi were gonna have to clean that whole room despite not even making the mess.

“You have magic right? Just use your horn and make it easy” Levi suggested.

“I suppose” She responded, her purple eyes suddenly snapping onto a fancy looking building that a bunch of ponies were walking into. The tall white building had some tall and square windows with the warm yellow light from inside glowing through them. Halfway up the building was a brown banister that circled the halfway point of the building. The ceiling looked very similar to the top of a belltower and another banister circled the top of it, with small colored flags sticking up from the support beams that held it up, the beams ran all the way to the halfway banister.

“Twilight, who builds these?” Levi asked curiously, looking at the magnificent building top to bottom.

“Construction ponies,” She answered almost immediately, “They're good at their job aren’t they?”

“You said it, come on” Levi responded, walking a step forward in front of Twilight as they both walked in sync inside the building.

Inside were the same decorations that Levi had saw earlier that day, the colorful banners hanging from the ceiling and the streamers and tapestries adorning the walls. That combined with the warm moonlight shining through the windows made the place inside look stunning, it was like Rarity made the decorations to blend perfectly with the moonlight. Judging by what she did in her free time, it wouldn’t be a big surprise.

Twilight quickly scanned the large crowd of ponies surrounding the front stage for Spike, eventually finding him standing next to Applejack, Rainbow Dash. Twilight furrowed her eyebrows at the dragon who had his full attention directed at the stage, not even bothering to look for her.

“This way” Twilight stated, walking towards Spike and the group of ponies he was standing with, Levi following closely behind her with his eyes and wandering at every small and big decoration that complimented the room.

They moved through the growing crowd as they walked towards Spike, politely saying “Excuse me” or “Sorry” as they passed by and bumped into other ponies on their way to the small group. Spike saw the lilac unicorn approaching him out of the corner of his eye, turning towards Levi and Twilight as they walked up to the small group.

“Twilight you made it!” Spike greeted warmly, half expecting her not to show up at all.

“I’m here too” Levi interjected.

Before Spike could even think about a response to Levi, an excited pink pony dashed out from out of nowhere and came to a halt right next to Twilight, an excited and vibrant look in her crystal blue eyes.

“Isn’t this exciting! Are you excited cause I’m excited!” She exclaimed in a high pitched voice, simultaneously whipping her head back and forth from facing the stage to facing Twilight in between words.

“I’ve never been more excited! Well except for the time I saw you walk into town and I was like-” She continued in her high pitched and ecstatic voice, imitating the dramatic gasp she made earlier once more.

“I mean what could top that” Pinkie finally finished, directing her full attention back to the stage as the sound of a choir of birds singing filled the room. Fluttershy hovered in the air in front of a wooden t-post in one of the balconies, directing the birds with a baton she held in her hoof. As the gracious singing of the birds came to a stop after a few seconds, a spotlight suddenly turned on and was pointed down at the center of the stage where an older looking tan pony with white hair stood. Her white hair was wavy and golden framed glasses adorned her face and covered her blue eyes. She had a white shirt collar around her neck and a pale green rose was pinned to it.

“Ladies and gentlecolts,” The older pony announced, “As mayor of Ponyville, it is my great pleasure to announce the beginning of the Summer Sun Celebration!”

Cheering erupted from the crowd on the ground and the pegasi hovering in the air high above the crowd, including high pitched and easily recognizable cheering from the pink pony next to them. Levi decided to keep his cheers to himself as he really didn’t know the significance of what he was supposed to be cheering for, he instead glanced over at Twilight who was staring blankly off into space. About what Levi had expected from the unicorn.

“In just a few moments, our town will witness the magic of the sunrise and celebrate this the longest day of the year!” The mayor announced proudly, everybody’s eyes shifting over to the long yellow banner hanging from the ceiling that depicted a sunny day.

Twilight’s eyes wandered around the room as the mayor continued to proclaim, eventually finding themselves looking up at the moon for what seemed like the hundredth time that night. Three bright stars were surrounding the moon in the star as the black ominous unicorn shape was still pictured on the moon.

The stars moved in towards the moon like they were being sucked by a vacuum, and when the stars were fully sucked in towards the moon out of sight, the moon flashed bright white for a split second. Twilight’s eyes strained and she winced from the sudden flash, looking back at the planet in the sky and finding the unicorn shape to be completely gone like it was never even there.

Her mind immediately jumped to the idea that the “old pony’s tale” was real after all, which would explain the shape in the moon to begin with, and worry began to creep inside of her as she faced up at the man beside her.

“Levi!” She whispered in a concerned tone, tapping his side with her hoof.

“Hmm?” He hummed in response, looking down and looking into the ponies concerned eyes.

“Look at the moon!” She whispered. Levi could tell by the sudden change in her tone from earlier that something was wrong and Levi could, oddly enough, sense that something wasn’t quite right with the celebration.

He looked up at the moon he was staring at on the way there, finding the shape vanished. He completely tuned out the mayor’s speech as he recollected Twilight’s story she read from her book and the picture of the black unicorn inside the moon. His feelings of something being off amplified at the discovery and the urge to just turn around and leave suddenly made itself known.

“You think we should leave?” Levi asked.

“No, I guess we’ll see what happens” Twilight responded.

‘Oh boy’ Levi said in his head.

“And now it is my great honor to introduce to you the ruler of our land, the very pony who gives us the sun and moon each and every day. The good, the wise, the bringer of harmony to all of Equestria..” The ponies surrounding Levi jumped in joy and the pegasi flew in small circles in the sky at every compliment she gave to the princess, huge smiles on their faces all the while.

Levi’s face was a far cry from the smile that every pony shared around him, instead he and Twilight shared concerned looks at what might happen in the coming moments.

“Ready?” Fluttershy whispered to her bird choir as the anticipation built for the Princess's arrival.

“Princess Celestia!” She announced proudly, waving her hoof in the air and looking up at the stage above her that was covered by a deep purple curtain. Rarity yanked down on the rope that was clamped in her jaws, pulling away the curtain as the anticipation reached its peak.

Levi hoped in his head that the white alicorn would be standing there on the balcony and the tale would just be that, a fictional tale, Twilight shared the same feelings. What they saw however completely destroyed their hopes for the tale to be fiction and the celebration to go normally, because as the spotlight moved from the tan pony on the stage to the balcony, the princess was nowhere to be seen.

As the bird choir’s singing stopped, a surprised Rarity standing up at the balcony where the Princess was supposed to be spoke a loud “Huh?” as the ponies below her echoed the same confusion.

The ponies began to chatter amongst themselves in confusion almost immediately the curtain was pulled, some were concerned and some were just plain confused on what was going on.

“This can’t be good” Twilight spoke worriedly, exchanging concerned and nervous glances with Levi.

The spotlight was once again directed back to the mayor who attempted to calm down the worried chatter of the crowds by saying “Remain calm everypony, there must be a reasonable explanation”

To no one's surprise at all, the pink ecstatic pony next to them began bouncing up and down before she exclaimed “Oh I love guessing games! Is she hiding?” she moved her head up and down as she spoke to imitate looking.

Alarm bells began to ring inside of Levi’s head as he saw Rarity trotting back and forth where the Princess was supposed to be, looking all around for her but not finding anything that could explain her disappearance. The more he looked around at every pony chattering and Rarity scrambling to find the Princess, worry began to turn into dread as he felt a strong sense of something bad about to happen. He turned his gaze to look down at Twilight who made eye contact with him, mirroring the same emotions he was feeling.

Suddenly, Spike came running over to the two of them, a worried look on his purple face. “Twilight, do you know what’s going on?” He asked concerned, hoping she’d have an answer.

“I don’t know,” She responded, putting the small dragon unwillingly onto her back with her magic, “But prepare for the worst Spike, you too Levi”

“Already on it” Levi replied.

He looked up at Rarity once more who stopped searching for the Princess and instead stood close to the railing and announced with surprise “She’s gone”

A collective loud and long gasp came from the crowd as Levi looked at some of the many now concerned faces of ponies around him, including Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s. “Oooh..she’s good” Pinkie commented playfully despite the circumstances, directing her big blue eyes at the balcony where Rarity once stood.

A horrified shriek escaped her at what she saw, completely shifting from her bubbly attitude to one of fear in a split second. Levi jumped from the sudden shriek that was followed by the other gasps and exclamations of fear and worry from the ponies around him.

Levi and Twilight looked up at the high balcony in unison and Levi’s jaw dropped at what he saw while simultaneously gasping from fright. The spot where Rarity stood just seconds before was now occupied by a black and blue sparkling mass that grew in size with each passing second.

The corners of the mysterious sparkling mass were a waving and misshapen ripple that grew bigger and bigger before anybody could do anything about it or evn comprehend what was happening. Twilight hung her head low to the ground as she realized the hard and scary truth of her situation. The tale was real.

“Oh no..” The mass grew big and formed a circular shape before a pony suddenly formed from the sparkling mass.

“Nightmare Moon” Levi uttered in horror, looking down at Twilight not knowing what to do.

A black alicorn stood where the mass once floated, she had a pitch black coat with what looked like a dark blue chestplate covering her chest with a crescent moon on it in a much lighter shade of blue. On her flank was a purple splotch that covered most of her flank and lower half and some of her upper leg, a crescent moon in the center of the purple splotch in the same color as the crescent moon. Her dark blue helmet allowed her ears to poke out from the top and her eyes and most of her face to be shown.

A hole in the top of the helmet allowed her long, black horn to stick out from her head. She had aquamarine eyes that looked down on the ponies beneath her like they were insignificant to her, like they were lesser beings. Her hair and tail is the same mysterious mass but instead of black and blue it was replaced with purple and blue.

Her hair and tail waved and flowed similar to Celestia’s but the black alicorn's hair behaved oddly compared to hers, like it was some flowing a lot more than normal. Spike put the back of his hand up to his forehead dramatically and fainted, falling off the unicorn's back and hitting the ground below with a thud.

The black alicorn flapped her wings and stuck them upright in the air before she spoke, her voice echoing throughout the room of terrified and quivering ponies. “Oh my beloved subjects! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you’re precious little sun loving faces”

Levi looked around at the expressions of the pony’s around him and the crowd, their eyes were wide and fearful and some of them quivered and shook from Nightmare Moon’s presence. Levi however stood fully upright and faced the alicorn way above him, staring her down and preparing for the worst.

“What did you do with our princess!” A rainbow haired pegasus demanded, her wings shooting out from her sides as she started to fly towards the black alicorn angrily.

Standing behind her was Applejack, who instinctively bit down onto Rainbow’s tail and pulled back as hard as she could to prevent the pegasus from reaching the balcony. She couldn’t break free from her grasp no matter how hard her wings beat. “Slow down there nelly!” She exclaimed through clenched teeth.

Nightmare Moon raised her head in the air and laughed softly before locking eyes with the angry cyan pegasus and responding “What? Am I not royal enough for you?” returning her wings to her sides. “Do you not know who I am?” She asked, putting a hoof up to her chest.

“Oh! Oh! More guessing games!” Pinkie chirped, Levi looked at her with disbelief at how she could act so bubbly and excited despite the situation they were in.

“Pinkie!” Levi scolded through clenched teeth.

“Ummm..Howkey Smokes! How about..Queen Meanie! No, Black Snooty Black Snooty-” Her name listing was cut short by an apple that was shoved into her mouth by the blonde pony holding Rainbow back. She attempted to talk with the apple in her mouth and her cheeks puffed out, but all that came out was muffled noises and squeaks.

Nightmare Moon leaned her body over to Fluttershy and her bird choir who hovered there still the entire ordeal up to this point. The birds all flew away in fright as the alicorn's head leaned closer to the yellow pegasus, who looked up at her scared and threw her hooves in front of her face in fear.

“Does my crown no longer count since I’ve been imprisoned for a 1’000 years!” She continued angrily, her horn just mere inches away from the frightened pegasus’ face. Levi stared daggers at her and knitted his eyebrows in anger at the way she was treating his friend.

She leaned close to Rarity who was hiding behind Fluttershy unseen ever since Nightmare Moon made her appearance and used her mane to hold her chin up like a third hoof. She stared into her blue eyes menacingly as she continued her speech, “Did you not see the signs?”

“I did!” A voice called out from below her, causing the alicorn to push up Rarity’s head with her mane and look down at the lilac unicorn who said it.

“And I know who you are! You’re the mare in the moon, Nightmare Moon!” Another gasp came from the crowd as the alicorn flapped her wings once more and rested them at her sides.

“Well well well,” She replied impressed, “Somepony who remembers me, well you also know why I’m here”

“You’re here to..to..” Twilight stuttered as the pony’s who once surrounded them began to back away as the unicorn continued to speak, loudly gulping as she looked into the menacing aquamarine eyes of the black alicorn.

She raised her head and laughed maniacally at the unicorns fear before announcing to the terrified ponies in the room “Remember this day little ponies for it was your last. From this moment forth, the night will last..forever!”

She raised her horn into the air as the familiar sparkling and blue clouds began swirling above her like a forming tornado. As the swirling clouds swirled around her they swirled high above her and into the air, creating a spiraling hurricane above her.

Krakoom!

Thunder roared from the sparkling cyclone and lightning caused the cyclone to flash brightly, the black alicorn cackling maniacally all the while, the sound somehow being louder than the thunder and lightning she created. Twilight put the still unconscious Spike on her back with her magic and Levi instinctively threw her hand over Twilight’s chest as he backed up away from the disaster forming in front of them.

The alicorn continued to cackle louder and louder as the swirling sparkling clouds got bigger and bigger above her, lighting flashed onto Levi’s shocked and horrified face as it became more frequent by the second. All Twilight could do was stand there, dumbfounded and speechless, as the prophesied mare in the moon unleashed her powers onto the screaming and terrified ponies. Scared ponies ran towards the door in bunches, bumping and slamming into Levi and Twilight as they scurried towards the door in a blind panic.

“SEIZE HER!” He heard a voice cut through the chaos unfolding in front him, he looked towards the stage and saw the tan looking Mayor standing on the stage. An angered expression on her face as she pointed her hoof up at the cackling alicorn in fury, three guards at her side all with matching golden armor and blue crests on their helmets. “ONLY SHE KNOWS WHERE THE PRINCESS IS!” She bellowed over the cacophony of noises that rang out around her.

The three guards obeyed and flared up their wings and began flying towards the alicorn on the deck, their faces hardened and their eyebrows furrowed as they darted towards Nightmare Moon.

She reared the instant she laid her aquamarine eyes on the three guards charging towards her, “Stand back you fools!” she called out loudly towards the three white pegasus, her wings flaring up as she turned her body to face them.

Her eyes turned a bright darkish blue color, the same color as the night sky only lighter, and a grin appeared on her face as she pointed her hoof towards them. The sparkling clouds shot around her violently like a puddle that’s been disturbed as the thunder suddenly clapped in the air, the deafening sound causing the three guards to stop dead in their tracks as they looked up in the sky. Horror and panic surged through them as they saw three white lightning bolts raining down from the sky and hurdling right towards them at speeds they couldn’t comprehend.

Levi watched in disbelief at the sight he was witnessing, recoiling as he saw the bolts strike the three pegasi in the air, watching as they went completely limp and plummeted to the ground below.

CLANK!

The first guard hit the stage below, a charred black spot on his armor on the front of his chest where he had been hit by the lightning. He laid there still with eyes closed and his wings disheveled, its feathers being completely ruffled and messy as it laid there limp on the ground. Some white feathers that were once attached to his wing now slowly floated down from the sky and onto its former owner.

CLANK!

CLANK!

Levi’s eyes widened as he heard the sound of metal armor colliding with the floor, the Mayor staring at the alicorn with the fear of God in her eyes as she slowly backed away from the scene. Levi whipped his head around to look at the door, or what he could see of the door through the gaps of the colossal crowd that was gathered in front of it. They all tried desperately to open the door as there screams of fright all combined into one ear piercing noise that rattled his brain, however despite their efforts, the door wouldn’t budge.

The sparkling clouds around the alicorn suddenly twisted around her like a black and purple tornado, and when it stopped spinning, Nightmare Moon had simply become one with the cloud. The mass seemingly jumped up into the air and dived towards the door, all of the ponies let out one final shriek of terror before jumping out of the way of the mass in unison, tumbling onto the ground in a multicolored jumble of ponies all on top of each other.

The mass barreled through the door and into the outside world as Rainbow Dash finally broke free from Applejack’s grasp on her tail. The very instant her tail left her mouth, she dashed through the double doors in the blink of an eye, much to Applejack’s annoyance.

“Come back here!” Rainbow yelled at sparkling mass as it flew off into the distance. She stopped and hovered in the air panting, watching as mass slithered threw the air like a snake and disappeared over the horizon, deep into the darkness of the fateful night.

“Nightime..forever” Rainbow said in a worried voice, her wings slowing down to a more calm pace.

The sound of clopping and running drew Rainbow’s attention back to the ground, watching as Twilight and Levi dashed out of the building in a hurry. Running as fast as they could back towards the library without turning back.

“Where are they going?” The pegasus questioned, raising an eyebrow at the duo as they ran off towards the massive tree that sat in Ponyville.

Spike lightly kicked his foot in his sleep and his hand twitched as he laid there in his wooden basket with a pillow inside, the thing that he called a “bed”. His jaw twitched slightly right before he suddenly shot up into a sitting position, and with half open eyes and a tired voice, said “We..we gotta stop Nightmar…” before his sleepiness overtook him mid sentence. He slumped back down onto his pillow, curling up on his side and beginning to lightly snore as the lilac unicorn threw a blanket over him with her magic.

“You’ve been up all night, you really need some sleep. You’re just a baby dragon after all” She whispered as she smiled down at a sound asleep Spike, walking out of the room and switching the lights off. Leaving the dragon to sleep peacefully in his basket, oblivious to the panicked searching that was occurring in the library just a room opposite of him.

THUD!

A cluster of books Twilight was scanning through in just a few seconds hit the floor loudly, ignoring the fact a dragon was sleeping in the room just next to her. She was pulling books off the shelves like there was no tomorrow, her eyes scanning every page of the book as she flipped through them hastily, wanting to waste no time to find out any information she could. The book she had brought with her in her saddlebag proved to be useless in her search for information, only giving a description of what she was looking for which was not a solution to her and Levi’s main concern.

“Elements, elements, elements!” She said in a panicked tone, dropping the books she finished in a few moments onto the floor loudly. The finished books cluttered the freshly cleaned floor as Levi looked through some of the books in the vast selection she had on her many bookshelves, grunting in frustration when the book proved to be worthless.

“Son of a bitch!” He exclaimed angrily, dropping the book and letting it clatter to the floor. “We’ve checked half this library Twilight and there’s nothing!”

Awkwardly standing in the corner away from the mess of books Twilight was creating was Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie, all of them following the pair into the library in hopes of finding an answer or a solution to the Nightmare Moon problem. ‘Nightime forever!’ Dash panicked in her head as she watched the unicorn scramble everywhere for an answer.

Levi begrudgingly began sliding books out of the bookshelf and scanning through the pages, flipping through them much slower than the lilac pony but it was a lot better compared to doing nothing at all. Rainbow Dash looked at the two of them as she felt more anxious by the minute. Rainbow Dash thought of the night lasting forever, Nightmare Moon getting what she wanted, never seeing the sun again. She couldn’t really fathom the thought of never ever waking up and seeing the bright early morning sun shine through her window, how catastrophic that would be for Equestria, and how bad it would be having Nightmare Moon be the ruler of Equestria. The thought sent shivers down Dash’s spine.

“Ugh!” Twilight grunted in irritation as she and Levi dropped another useless book on the ground in sync, Levi letting out a small grunt of frustration as he pulled another book out of the bookshelf. Twilight noticed the man’s movements becoming more sluggish and lazy the more and more books he was being pressured to look through for information that he knew wasn’t there, Twilight caught onto this almost immediately.

“Come on Levi!” She encouraged, “We have to keep looking! We can’t defeat Nightmare Moon without the Elements of Harmony-” “Can we know what the Elements of Harmony even are!” Rainbow Dash flew right up to Twilight’s face, their noses touching together and her angry magenta eyes staring into her surprised purple eyes.

Levi and the rest of the group looked at her in surprise at her sudden outburst towards the unicorn, with Applejack having a look on her face like she’s seen this before and knows exactly what to do. Levi dropped the book he was reading onto the floor and started walking over towards the group as soon as the commotion started.

“And how did you know about Nightmare Moon huh?” Rainbow demanded, moving closer to Twilight as she backed away from the cyan pegasus, backing up all the way until her back almost met the wall.

“Are you a spy? Woah!” Rainbow accused, her interrogative questioning being interrupted by Applejack biting down onto her tail and yanking her down and away from the unicorn.

“Simmer down Sally,” She said as Rainbow looked down at her with an annoyed expression, “She ain’t no spy”

The rest of the group moved in closer to Applejack and Rainbow Dash as they all looked at the lilac pony with a inquisitive look, the five of them moving closer to her as she backed away from the group.

“But she does know somethin’, don’t ya Twilight?” She asked, the group stopping in front of her as she looked at her with her emerald eyes. Levi walked over and stood next to Twilight as she looked down and sighed before looking back up at the curious ponies.

“I read the prediction about Nightmare Moon, some mysterious objects called the Elements of Harmony are the only way to stop her,” Her eyes wandered over to a window above one of the many bookshelves, the moon shining into the room ominously given the circumstances. “But I have no clue what they are or what they even do!”

“Elements of Harmony, a reference guide” A high pitched voice suddenly spoke from behind the group, drawing the attention of the ponies in the room and especially Twilights. Her eyes widened in surprise as she darted over to the pink pony in the blink of an eye, knocking out of the way and standing in front of the half slid out book on the shelf in disbelief and amazement.

“How did you find it!” Twilight exclaimed.

“It was under E!” Pinkie responded in her usual cheerful voice, starting to bounce around the room in her typical Pinkie fashion as Levi smiled subtly at her.

“Oh..” Twilight replied in a half embarrassed tone and hushed tone, looking at the pony bounce around the room playfully from the corner of her eye. Her horn glowed purple as she pulled the red book from its place as the group, including Levi, gathered around the unicorn as she flipped through the pages rapidly.

She laid her eyes intently on the page and began to read as she turned around to face the group who stood there in anticipation, “There are seven Elements of Harmony, but only five are known,” she read aloud, “Kindness, laughter, generosity, honestly, and loyalty”

The five ponies stood side by side as she listed off the Elements, like they somehow knew that was their purpose, as Levi stood at the end of the line with his arms crossed over his chest. “The sixth and seventh are complete mysteries…” As the unicorn continued to read, Levi caught something out of the corner of his eye at the wide window above the bookshelf the book just came from. A sparkling and sinister looking tentacle sat completely still besides the edges of it waving gently, it sat there staring into the wind like it was a sentient being, listening intently to their conversation. Levi’s heart jumped in his chest out of fear when he saw the tentacle with half its body hidden behind the window frame and the top part that served as its “head” poking out to look.

He immediately recognized it as Nightmare Moon’s sparkling mass that seemingly had a mind of its own. His eyes snapped to it and the very moment he laid his eyes on it, it was gone. Like it disappeared into thin air in a matter of moments. Levi scowled at the window as he focused less on the window and more on Twilight’s explanation, “The last known location of five elements was in the Castle of the Royal Pony sisters”

The ponies were all huddled together as they all read the page, Twilight being the only one reading aloud, with Levi standing behind them looking over their shoulders in an attempt to get a glimpse of the page. “It is located in what’s now known as..” An audible gulp was heard from the ponies before they finished the final word, “The Everfree forest!” They all exclaimed fearfully.

Levi’s face went from a blank expression to one of dread in the blink of an eye as Fluttershy turned her head to face him, a fearful look mirroring in their eyes as they looked at each other.

“Is that the place where…” Levi asked, his voice trailing off at the memory he was referring to.

Fluttershy nodded solemnly, ‘Yes it is,“ she answered in a hushed whisper as Levi struggled to hear her, “But with all of us hear it should okay”

“Damn..I hope so,” Levi replied, raising his voice slightly and uncrossing his arms as he spoke “Well what the hell are we waiting for? Let’s get a move on!” Rainbow grinned at him as she boosted herself up into the air and hovered as she returned his enthusiasm with her own, “Let’s go everypony! Whatever’s there we’ll face it together!”

The ponies except for Twilight cheered loudly and pumped their hooves in the air for a collective fist bump, Twilight had a worried look on her face as she closed the book and slid it back where it belonged. She looked over at Levi, her purple eyes displaying anxiety towards the thought of even going near the forest at this time of night, nonetheless going there to save Equestria.

Despite his confident and enthusiastic exterior, the same nervousness and anxiety was hidden behind his confident smile as they both listened to the group cheer loudly. He shot a reassuring smile at the worried unicorn in a silent way of telling her “Everything’s gonna be okay”. Twilight returned a grin as she walked with the group towards the door.

Levi felt a hoof hit him in his shoulder playfully as a raspy voice exclaimed “You ready for this Levi!”

He looked into her magenta eyes and couldn’t help but smile at the fact the pegasus remembered his name, but answered her question with an enthusiastic “Yeah!”

The cyan pegasus chuckled as she caught up with the group with Levi lagging behind and being the last one out of the group out of the door. He walked outside onto the doormat outside and looked over at the group of ponies as they walked, with Rainbow Dash being the only exception as she hovered in the air above them but still following closely. He reached his hand back and grabbed the doorknob and looked into the cozy first floor of the library, and thought to himself ‘Alan would really love this place, he always loved reading’

It was only then when he realized how long it had been since he really thought about Alan. When he first got here finding him was the only thing occupying his mind, but with all the drama of the failed celebration, he had a bunch of other things to worry about then just him. The more he thought about it the more he felt worried for his friend and what could be happening wherever he is, how the catastrophe that was the Summer Sun celebration made things different for him. He felt a grin grow on his face at the thought of finding his best friend and bringing him to Ponyville, letting him meet the friendly faces that lived there.

“Levi!” Rainbow called out a few meters away from Levi, her voice echoing through the empty streets of Ponyville, “What’re you waiting for!”

“O-oh, sorry!” He called back embarrassed at how lost he had gotten in his thoughts. He took one last look at the beautiful interior that he now called home and whispered to himself “I promise you brother, wherever you are or whatever is happening to you, I’m gonna bring you home”

And with that, the man closed the door and hurriedly began to run towards the group of ponies that were a lot further away from him than he thought. “Wait up!” He yelled out, holding his hand in the air for a few seconds to show them he was there. When he caught up, he stuck his hands in his pockets and walked with the group, overwhelmed with nervousness but at the same time excited for the journey ahead of him.

Chapter 9: Looming danger

Alan slowly opened his eyes groggily, wincing as he put his hand above his eyes to block out the intrusive light invading his retinas. His eyes eventually got used to the bright white light and his hand fell on his stomach limply, staring up at the ceiling tired and extremely groggy. Alan immediately was confused at the sight, the last thing he remembered was a unicorn running up to him before he passed out in the street of whatever kingdom or place he was at.

With effort, Alan lifted both of his hands to his face and attempted to rub the sleepiness out of his eyes, only to find his hand was expertly bandaged with what looked like a hospital gauze. This confused him even more as he cocked his head at his hand as he studied it, turning his hand around to examine every angle, amazed at how good the bandage looked and felt.

He felt like he was hit by a truck as he sat up in the bathtub he was laying in, tightening his grip on the side of the tub as he felt a sharp pain in his head the second his body was raised up. Alan popped his neck and looked to his right at the toilet that was right beside him, his eyes widening in disbelief and his heart almost jumping out of his chest as he saw what was on top of the toilet lid.

A tall glass of water sat on the lid, the water reflected his tired and exhausted image as he gazed upon the cup like it was a delicacy. In an instant, he reached over and swiped the cup of the lid aggressively causing some water to splash onto the tiled floor in front of the toilet.

He practically shoved the rim in his mouth as he began slugging the water aggressively, the cool liquid giving his throat the refreshment it deserved. As some of the liquid ran down the corners of his mouth and dripped off of his chin, Alan brought the cup back to the lid and placed it on top of it. He gazed at the empty cup for a few seconds as his throat finally went back to normal with his pain finally subsiding, he silently thanked whoever or whatever gave him the cup as he stood up from the bathtub.

He stepped over the edge of the tub and walked over to the towel rack by the door, pulling his tattered and dirty hoodie off of it and slipping it over his head, pushing his arms through the beat up sleeves. He turned and looked at himself in the mirror and furrowed his eyebrows at the man he saw, his hoodie was extremely dirty and covered in large dirt stains and his hair was visibly greasy and way messier than it usually was. He could barely recognize the person he was looking at, it was like he was starting to become one with the forest and if Levi didn’t come to him in that dream, he probably would’ve.

Alan turned his head from it and twisted the doorknob and opened up the bathroom door, being greeted by a wall directly in front of him and a door a little bit down that same wall. He fully stepped out onto the brown carpeted hallway as he closed the door gently behind him, turning his head to his right and looking out of the window at the end of the hallway and noticing how dark was outside.

“What the hell..” He whispered to himself after taking the ability to speak without pain for granted, “How long was I out for?” he questioned half confused and half concerned as he looked down at his watch. The hands behind the glass read 5:34 AM, much to the astonishment and disbelief of the raven haired man.

“What the hell..how” He whispered to himself once again, not truly believing he was experiencing reality and he was simply in a dream from when was knocked out much earlier in the day. Another possibility that crossed his mind is that he may be in purgatory and his lack of food and water and cut hand attributed to his death, he brushed off the thought as he pinched himself hard in the wrist.

Surprisingly, nothing happened. After he confirmed he was indeed awake and alive, Alan decided to let his hand fall down to his side as he surveyed the hallway he was in. The walls were painted a slightly darker shade of lime green which complimented the brown carpet nicely, a few framed photos that hung on the wall caught Alan’s attention. He looked curiously at one of the photos hung on the wall in front of him, he walked over to the picture and gingerly wrapped both sets of his fingers around the corners of the black wooden frame and pulling it closer to his face.

In the picture was a picture of a familiar light blue unicorn with a blue mane standing proudly in front of a large brick building. She had on a traditional black graduation outfit with the graduate cap hanging loosely on her head as it drooped down the back of her head in between her ears. She had a huge friendly smile as she looked directly into the camera with hazel eyes, two similarly colored unicorns stood next to her with their arms wrapped around each other. He assumed the unicorn with a mustache and a proper looking suit on her right was her father and the older looking pony on her left was her mother. But one question still lingered in his mind as he studied the picture, who was the unicorn in the picture?

He kept staring intently at the unicorn in the picture as he racked his brain for the answer he needed, and then suddenly, it came back to him. The unicorn who ran at him as he was falling, the one who called out to him as he hit the ground, everything began to make sense now. She was the one who gave him the water and the hospitality, he was inside the house of a unicorn.

Alan internally snickered at how ridiculous it sounded, him staying in the house of a unicorn, none of it made sense but whether he liked it or not it was his reality. He let go of the frame causing it to lightly hit the hall and make a sound louder than he anticipated, he clenched his jaw and winced from the unexpected loud sound and hurriedly moved over to the next picture he wanted to analyze.

Alan brought the frame closer to his face just like he did with the last one and read at the top in bold blue letters ‘Canterlot University’, he did a double take to make sure he was reading it correctly from how unusual it sounded but moved on and continued reading. ‘This award is presented to Violet Heart as a graduating Health Major’

“Violet Heart huh?” At the bottom left was the date she graduated, October 12, 2013, and a signature at the bottom right. Written professionally in black at the bottom right was ‘Princess Celestia’. Just as Alan was about to imagine the power dynamic in this world worked, his stomach suddenly growled out of nowhere, with Alan realizing that he hasn’t eaten in hours since he passed out.

He let go of the frame and walked towards the stairs that spiraled down to the first floor, his stomach growling impatiently barely halfway down the stairs. As he neared the bottom of the stairs, the delightful scent of a pumpkin smelling candle filled his nostrils as he made his way down closer and closer to the first floor.

When Alan stepped down third to last step, he could finally get a good look at the first floor and the rest of the house and possibly even the unicorn herself. His heart slammed in his chest as he peered his head from behind the wall which blocked his view and was greeted by a couch and a large coffee table in the first room and a big reclining chair next to the couch, right next to an open window. The kitchen was right next to the living room, the only things separating the two was the black and white tile floor and a half wall.

However the main thing that caught Alan’s attention was the unicorn that sat in the reclining chair with an open book in her lap, a candle sat on the small table right beside the reclining chair, burning and filling the room with the delightful smell of pumpkins. The smell brough Alan back to his childhood, where he would pick pumpkins in the field with his family and sometimes Levi, this made him miss his friend even more. He pushed the thoughts away and decided to focus on the pony in front of her, the one who in a way saved his life.

The unicorn’s eyes went back and forth across the page left and right as she read, too engaged to notice the tattered looking man looking at her from her own staircase. It felt like hours had passed since he started standing there staring at the light blue pony, too nervous to take another step down the stairs and greet the unicorn. He had every right to be nervous, after all the last interaction he had with anyone in this new world was a wolf made of wood trying to kill him. For all he knew this unicorn’s kindness could only be a mask to hide her true nature. After all, who sits on a chair in the dead of night and reads next to a candle, the more and more he thought about it the more his brain tried to convince him she was bad news.

It was only after she turned the page and her attention broke from her book for a second that she finally noticed Alan. Her horn glowed a brilliant blue color as she lifted a bookmark from the first page of the book and slid into place in between the pages, closing the book and simultaneously placing it gently onto the small table beside her.

Her horn glowed again as she turned the handle on the side of her chair and reclined it back to normal. The same friendly smile she showed in her graduation photo appeared on her face as she hopped up from the chair and made her way towards him.

“You’re finally up!” She said like she was talking to just another one of her friends and not a complete stranger. “Are you feeling alright? Any aches? Pains?” She questioned, her tone completely shifting to a more concerned one.

“I’m..fine..thanks for asking” Alan answered, taken aback by her hospitality and friendliness towards him considering he was just some man that just woke up from her bathtub.

“That’s great,” She responded relieved, “You want some coffee?” All of Alan’s worries melted away at this question, realizing there was nothing about this pony to be scared off at all. His face softened and his voice changed to one similar to hers as he fully stepped down her stairs and into the peaceful atmosphere of her living room.

“Absolutely!” He responded thankfully, extending his hand towards the unicorn, “We haven’t met yet, I’m Alan”

Her smile widened as she looked up at him and took his hand in her hoof and shook it, saying “Violet Heart”. She released his hand and turned around halfway and beckoning him with “Kitchen’s right here”

The two walked to the kitchen with Alan being greeted by a new yet still pleasant smell in the kitchen, the scent of lemon scented cleaning supplies filled his nose but he weirdly found it delightful. His attention was directed by the large brown table that oddly enough only had two chairs with one at each end despite its size.

Alan took his seat at the head of the table as he watched the light blue unicorn pull two coffee cups out of the top drawer and poured the steaming hot coffee into each of them. “How do you like yours?” She asked without turning around.

“Black”

“Great minds think alike” She commented, turning around with the cups levitating in the air with a blue aura surrounding them. One cup carefully moved through the air and landed right in front of him on the table and the other at her end of the table as she took her seat.

Alan looked down at the cup and watched as steam rose into the air and vanished into the air like it was never there. After a few moments, he folded his hands on the table in front of the cup and made eye contact with the unicorn at the other end of the table. He thought that, considering he was probably gonna be living with her for a while, he wanted to get to know her before he started to settle into her home.

Alan rubbed his hands together before breaking the silence and asking “So…whaddya do for a living? I saw your degree up there” he motioned his head towards the stairs as he finished.

“I’m a nurse,” She answered with a hint of pride hidden in her voice, “Been one for about..” she paused in thought as she put her hoof up to her chin and looked up, “Nine years”

“Nine years? Jeez..” Alan responded.

“What do you do? You seem like a blue collar kinda guy”

“I was a car salesman for a few years before they fired me..sons of bitches” He replied, remarking coldly at the end as his eyebrows knitted in frustration at the memory, seeing two men in suits tell him his ‘services were no longer required’. His grip tightened on the cup handle as he looked back up at the unicorn, a confused expression painted on her face.

“What’s a car?” Alan had forgotten that he wasn’t talking to just another person, but a pony, and he realized there was a pretty good chance they didn’t have cars. “Somethin’ you drive, I’m guessing you don’t have any?”

Violet shook her head as she took a swig of her steaming coffee, the coal-black liquid warming her mouth as the bitterness of the drink made her taste buds want to recoil. “Usually, at least here in the Empire, we either walk or we take a horse and buggy”

Alan lifted his hands a few inches above the table and piped up “Woah woah woah, Empire?”

“Oh yeah, you’re not from here,” She paused to take another swig before she continued “Right now we’re in the Crystal Empire and the forest you ran from is the Everfree Forest. It’s infamous”

“The more you know…can I ask you a question?”

“Sure”

“Have there been any reports of any other human being in the Empire? Or in this…world I guess I should say” Alan asked, internally hoping and praying she would say yes and give him confirmation Levi was at least alive. No matter what her answer was gonna be, he could feel in his heart that Levi was still out there alive and kicking. He knew the man too well for him to just roll over at something like this, he knew he was stronger than that.

“Not that I know of” Alan felt disappointment hit him like a truck as he did all he could to hide it, not wanting to ruin the mood at the table. However him slightly slouching back in his seat and his eyes falling down to the table, Violet could tell what she had just said upset him.

“Why do you ask?” She asked as curiosity grew inside of her like a sprouting plant, curious to find out the reason behind Alan’s sudden change in mood.

Alan sighed before he readjusted his posture and sat up with his back straight and his hands caressing the cup slowly, but his eyes still not meeting hers and instead looking into the dark liquid in his cup. Alan saw his sullen face reflect back at him from the rippling and shaking liquid in the cup before deciding to give the curious unicorn an answer, looking up at her hazel eyes with his gloomy ones.

“He’s my brother..kind of” He answered, his eyes immediately falling to the center of the table as he raised the cup to his lips. The small trails of smoke still coming from the cup warmed up the tip of his nose as he took a big swig from it, the bitterness and lack of sweetness matching his feelings in that moment.

Violet looked at him sympathetically, but the curiosity inside of her became evident in her voice as she asked “What do you mean ‘kind of’?”

“He’s my best friend..” He replied, his finger slowly going in circles on the rim of the cup, “I’ve known him for years, we’ve been through a lot together”

“How did he get here? Better question, how did both of you get here?”

He paused for a few seconds and stared into the cup, seeing his guilty face look back at him like the bitter drink was trying to taunt him. He looked up from the cup and made eye contact once more before he replied “It was my fault…”

“How?”

“We were-” He suddenly stopped, quickly thinking in his head if he should lie about what he was doing or tell her the truth about his immoral side hustle, “We were…cooking..with chemicals..”

The lie he spoke sounded way more ridiculous than what it sounded like in his head, but he hoped that the curious pony across from him wouldn’t catch on to what he was lying about. He saw her mouth open as she was about to speak and, wanting to avoid going into the topic, cut her off befores she had the chance to ask another one of her questions by saying “I don’t know what happened right before the explosion, it’s all just a blur, but what I do remember is is me falling into the woods.”

This gave Violet more questions than answers, what was he doing that teleported him here? Why was he doing it? How did he survive in that forest? Her mind quickly became a hurricane of questions, thoughts, and assumptions about the raven haired man across from her. She took a sip of her coffee as if it would calme her mind, it did no such thing.

“What were you doing exactly?” She asked one of the many questions she had, the question Alan was dreading.

He took a long pause with the sound of the clock ticking rhythmically being the only sound to be heard, Violet began to feel nervous as the seconds passed with no answer, fearing she had upset the man as he once again looked into his cup.

“...I was cooking meth..drugs..” He finally answered after what felt like hours, “I don’t know if you know what that is or not but-” “It doesn’t exist here” She interrupted, hoping this would make the guilty looking Alan feel better.

Alan looked at her in disbelief, “Really?”

“Yes..you’re making it seem like it’s a really bad thing which I wouldn’t doubt if it brought you to a whole other dimension practically” She explained.

“It is bad..very bad,” He emphasized, “But that’s besides the point” He waved his hand dismissively at Violet.

“The point is..I can’t even remember why I wanted to cook so bad that day” He admitted, “I mean I practically fought him to be able to cook it and…I don’t even know why” He put his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes with his fingers, his face twisting in frustration.

The unicorn took a sip of her drink before she replied “It’s not like you wanted to send you and him here right? It was an accid-” “Don’t tell me that” Alan interrupted sharply.

“It wasn’t! I know that but..I just hope he’s okay” He said, making brief eye contact with her before rubbing them once again. Violet stood up from her seat as her chair scraped loudly against the tiled floor and walked over to Alan’s side and placed a supportive hoof on his shoulder. Alan was surprised by the sudden touch but more surprised by the stark contrast it had from the feeling of a hand he’s been used to all his life.

Alan put his bandaged hand back onto the table before looking into the unicorn's gentle hazel eyes, his eyes being a little red from the constant rubbing. A smile formed on his no longer sullen face before he thanked her, but then asking after “Can you do something for me? It’s kind of important”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“After I’m done getting situated here or whatever…can we go look for him?” The question caught Violet off guard as her eyes widened and she placed her hoof back on the ground.

“I-uh..Equestria’s a huge place Alan, I don’t think you understand how big what you’re asking is” She responded.

“Equestria?” Violet internally facepalmed at herself for forgetting she was talking to a human, “It’s the world we’re in, It’s called Equestria. It’s made up of a lot of places” She emphasized.

“Yeah it’s a big place but it’s not impossible, right?” Alan asked.

“It’s possible, but Celestia knows how long it will take” Violet replied with a sigh, feeling sympathetic towards the raven haired man as he looked down at the table with gloom overtaking his face at the news.

“I think our best bet is to just wait until a report of a human being somewhere in Equestria is made public, after all nopony’s seen one in years” She suggested.

“How long do you think that’ll take?” He asked, hopeful the answer won’t be a drastic amount of time.

“Probably a few days, maybe even today for all we know” Alan’s heart jumped at her response as a grin spread across his face as he looked back up at her.

“Promise me we’ll find him Violet”

She smiled at the cheered up man before she put her hoof to her chest and replied “Hoof to heart”

Alan raised an eyebrow at her gesture with a puzzled look in his eye, “Whatever that means” he joked. Violet giggle in response as Alan looked down into his cup for what seemed like the hundredth time, but this time the man staring back at him was not the sad sack who lost his best friend. It was the eager and confident man who was going to find Levi. He smiled down at his reflection before taking a well deserved swig and saying in his head ‘I’ll bring you home Levi..I promise.’

‘I’m comin’ brother’

Levi and the mane 6 stood in front of the mouth of the Everfree forest as the darkness inside seemed to stare back at them as they looked at it with fear, all of them except for Levi. His bold, confident appearance was a far cry from the scared and nervous faces on the ponies standing next to him. Crickets chirped loudly all around them as the chilly night air caused goosebumps to rise on Levi’s exposed forearms. He stood tall before the maw of the dreadful everfree forest, the trees were separated from each other and a dirt path led from where they stood to the darkness of the woods.

Suddenly, like a white dove in the night sky, a voice cut through the air and exclaimed “Weee! Let’s go!” to no one's surprise, it was none other than Pinkie Pie. Her shrill voice caught Levi and Twilight off guard while the rest of the ponies looked at her like it was no big deal, Levi couldn’t believe who upbeat she was acting despite the harrowing place they were willingly walking into.

“Wait,” Twilight suddenly interjected, causing the pink pony to stop in her tracks and look over at her, “I really appreciate the offer, but I’d really rather do this on my own” she continued as her eyes looked nervously at the dark path ahead of her.

“No can do sugarcube!” Applejack replied almost immediately, walking up to Twilight so they were parallel to each other. “We ain’t lettin’ no friend of ours go in there alone” The word friend seemed to visibly affect Twilight, as her face twisted in disgust at the word like it was poison.

Before Twilight could protest, the blonde pony and the three other ponies trotted bravely towards the entrance of the forest without a care in the world. “We’re stickin’ to you like caramel to a candy apple!” Applejack added as her, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity trotted closely behind her.

Pinkie’s head perked up at the mention of the sweet treat before rearing and exclaiming “Especially if there’s candy apples in there!”. She turned her head around to face Twilight and Levi who awkwardly stood there and looked at the vibrant pony. “What? Those things are good!” She added as she began to trot into the forest fearlessly to catch up with the rest of the ponies.

Twilight looked at the dark and frightening jaws of the entrance, the two walls of sickly green colored trees that winded and spiraled like twisted roots erupting from the ground. The echoing cry of an owl rang through the air as Twilight looked at the woods with a look of nervousness displayed on her face, the thought of the fate of Ponyville and possibly all of Equestria resting in her hooves put a load of pressure on her shoulders.

Levi could tell how worried she was and reached down and pat her back before reassuring “It’ll be fine Twi, I promise”

She looked up at him, purple met green, as she smiled at his reassurance. The two began to hurriedly make their way into the woods to catch up with the group, with one prancing and one jogging as Levi’s heart slammed in his chest as his bold exterior began to crumble the moment he stepped foot on the dark path. His heart slammed in his chest and the sound of his frightened heartbeat managed to drown out the chirping of crickets all around him.

“So you all have never been here before?” Twilight asked in a nervous voice as they walked in a single file line on the now green path they were taking. Levi opted to be in the front of the line and lead the line, trying to keep whatever fragments of his brave appearance alive but not just for them, for himself too.

After they followed the dark dirt path for a few minutes, they began to walk up on what looked like a winding trail up what looked like a cliff side. Levi glanced out at the view from as high up as they were and, despite how harrowing the forest seemed, looked stunning combined with the light from the moon and stars shining down onto the dark green dank tree tops. The chilly night air continued to hit them and got a little bit colder the higher they went up, much to the annoyance of Levi.

“Oh heavens no!” Rarity replied dramatically, “Just look at it! It’s dreadful!” She finished.

“It just ain’t natural, folks say it don’t work the same as Equestria” Applejack added as she turned her head to face the ponies behind her.

“What does that mean?” Twilight asked, growing more and more nervous the more they added onto the conversation.

“Noooopony knows” Rainbow Dash suddenly chimed, making her voice shake and quiver in an attempt to scare the group for her own amusement. Much to Levi’s annoyance, it worked as Rarity, Fluttersy, and Pinkie Pie stopped dead in their tracks as Rainbow continued.

“You know why?” She taunted, her body low to the ground like a wolf ready to pounce as she slowly moved towards the frightened trio moving one suspenseful hoof at a time.

“Rainbow quit it!” Applejack scolded, rolling her eyes at the cyan pegasus as she continued to try and scare the ponies, completely ignoring her.

“‘Cause everypony who’s ever come in..never..comes..” She moved closer and closer until she was just inches in front of the ponies' terrified faces, their heads recoiling from the rainbow haired pegasus as she looked at them with a playful grin.

“OUT!” She exclaimed after a short pause, jumping in the air and moving an inch closer to the three faces as they jumped back a bit in surprise.

Suddenly, the group heard a cracking sound and felt a small rumble beneath their feet. Levi glanced under them and saw the dark dirt wall that was directly underneath them, the cracking cliff side being the only protection from the deathly slide beneath them.

CRACK!

Levi’s blood turned to ice and his heart sank to the pit of his stomach as a much louder crack filled the air. A visible split in the ground formed a large ring around the group that created a border between them and the path that led forwards and backwards. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy leaped into the air and there wings flared as they began to hover and watched in panic and shock as the ground beneath there friends completely shattered into millions of pieces and sent them all falling down onto the dirt slide.

Screams of terror ripped through the air as Rainbow's jaw almost hit the floor and her eyes became as wide as dinner plates. She saw a blue sparkling mass fly away from the freshly destroyed ground. Fluttershy shrieked as her friends began to slide down as dread filled her heart.

“Fluttershy! Quick!” Rainbow ordered loudly, dashing down to save her friends and leaving a small rainbow trail in the air for a few seconds.

“Ohmygoodnessohmygoodnessohmygoodness!” Fluttershy panicked to herself in a hushed tone as she dived down after the speedy pegasus.

“FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!” Levi screamed hysterically as he rocketed down the hillside, feeling small sharp rocks cut up his back as he slid and tearing small holes in his already battered dress shirt. Levi’s eyes darted around him and watched as his friends all zoomed down the hill at the same speed he was, the same look of shock and horror displayed on their faces, mirroring Levi’s emotions.

He saw as Rainbow Dash swooped down and grabbed onto Pinkie’s shoulders and hoisted her up into the air with a struggle, her wings beating harder than ever as she struggled with gritted teeth to hold the pink pony in the air.

Levi looked beside him and saw Rarity with her eyes shut tightly as she slid down the hill, her hooves scraping against the dirt as she tried in vain to stop herself from going any further. He watched as the blonde pony several inches from him bite down onto a root sticking out of the dirt like a long slender finger, stopping herself from sliding as she watched in dread as the rest of her friends passed her in the blink of an eye.

Fluttershy swooped down and clamped her jaws down on Rarity’s perfectly groomed tail and held her back from sliding any further, leaving only Levi and Twilight continuing to rocket down the hill with no available help that they could see. Levi watched as Twilight slid down all the way until the bottom of the hill, where a cliff side jutted out from the dirt and stared out menacingly into the distance.

Twilight slid all the way as her lower half and her legs slipped over the edge of the sharp dropoff, leaving her to cling to the ground in panic as Levi could only watch helplessly as his friend dangled from the edge. The pebbles and small rocks she disturbed on the way down tumbled down the hill after her and were sent flying off of the edge, plummeting down hundreds of feet to the ground below. Twilight ignorantly turned her head and looked down at the drop off as bullets of sweat formed on her brow in that very moment and her eyes widened in horror at the deathly fall.

Levi’s elbows burned as they dug into the dirt as he slid, the small sharp rocks and pebbles that cut up his back cut his elbows the same. Rainbow watched in horror as Levi slid helplessly down the mountain as she still had Pinkie held in her arms in the air as she watched the harrowing event unfold below her. Her panicked eyes darted to Levi and Pinkie as her mind raced hysterically, scenarios running through her head at what she could possibly do in this scenario.

Levi let out a guttural screaming noise as his feet were inches away from crossing the edge of the cliff and to his death. Rainbow Dash panicked even more as all she could do was sit there and watch in horror and dread as her friend’s feet slipped over the edge with the rest of her body following after. Twilight’s eyes snapped over to the panic stricken man as his body slipped over the edge of the cliff and he began his plummet to the bottom, the sound of his horrified screams echoed through the air as every pony could only spectate what was happening to their friend.

Tears stung Twilight’s eyes as she could only stare in emotional agony as she watched her friend fall hundreds of feet down, his screaming began more and more frantic and terrified with each foot he descended through the air. “LEVI NO!” The lilac unicorn screamed, her voice managing to be louder than the man’s screams.

Twilight’s eyes shot open wider as her grip on the edge of the cliff began to get weaker and weaker as she used her legs to attempt to climb back up or at the very least find something to put her hooves on. All this did was cause her hooves to slid down the intimidating wall of dirt below her and send small rocks and clumps of dirt rolling down beneath her.

Levi fell through the air as he let out a guttural primal sounding scream of pure and unbridled fear as his head snapped down to look at the large strip of grass that sat under him. His mind raced with thoughts faster than he could even comprehend as he saw the ground rapidly approaching him. He thought about how his parents and his friends would feel, both her and in Tuscaloosa, and about what Alan was gonna go through. He knew for a fact that Alan felt the same worry that Levi did, probably more considering he was one who brought them here in the first place, and how much grief he would be put through knowing his best friend fell to his death. A death that he unwillingly contributed to by sending the duo to Equestria.

All of the sudden, a miracle made its way into Levi’s vision as it jutted out like a sore thumb from the tall wall of dirt and rock. Levi saw a few meters below him sticking out of the wall was a long, twisty slender pale orange root that was perfectly within arms reach of Levi once he got down to its level. His heartbeat quickened even more than it already was and his fear was replaced by hope and relief as he fell down the few more meters he needed to in a matter of moments.

Levi grabbed the root as he body slowed to a complete stop instantaneously, his weight combined with the speed he was going at forcefully tugged the root down, almost completely ripping it out of the wall. The clump of dirt at the bottom of the root was sticking out of its original hole in the wall as the root leaned down against the wall with Levi. Levi’s shaking body rested against the wall of dirt as he clung for dear life on the root, making the grim realization that this root was the last line of defense between him and an inevitable death.

“HELP ME! HELP!” Levi cried out in desperation, “I’M NOT DEAD! RAINBOW DASH, TWILIGHT, ANYBOD-” Levi’s sentence was cut off by the sound of the root ripping more from the wall, causing Levi to slid down the wall about half an inch more. He yelped in fear as the root came more and more out of the wall as he continued to scream and beg for help, praying one of the pegasi would come and save his life before it’s too late.

Applejack looked down as her teeth continued to dig into the root she was clinging to, seeing a helpless and desperate Twilight fighting to stay clinging to the edge of the cliff. Applejack released the root from her jaws, leaving deep bite marks that lined where she held her bite at, and slowly and carefully slid down the hill towards the distressed unicorn. “Settle down, I’m comin’” she announced to the lilac pony as she slid down and stopped right in front of her.

She took her hooves in hers, finally releasing them from the tiring grip on the edge, as she looked into the pony’s terrified eyes as her emerald ones attempted to comfort her. “Applejack! What do I do!” She exclaimed in a panic, bullets of sweat running down her forehead.

Applejack squinted and looked up in the sky in thought as Twilight looked at her and grew more anxious with each passing moment, hoping the blonde pony would come up with an answer and fast. After a few seconds, she looked directly into Twilight’s eyes and with a straightforward tone, said “Let go”

Twilight looked at her in disbelief, completely baffled by what she had just told her to do, interpreting it as Applejack practically telling her to fall to her death. “Are you crazy!?” She rebutted.

“No I ain’t, ah promise you’ll be safe” She replied with sincerity embedded in her voice.

“That’s not true!” “Now listen here,” She said as she lifted her head up confidently in the air, “What I’m sayin’ to you is the honest truth. Let go and you’ll be safe”

Twilight gazed into her emerald eyes as she said this and noticed how sincere she looked at her. Twilight couldn’t have been more wrong about how she interpreted her words, she truly was being as honest as she could’ve been in that moment. The fear melted away as she continued to gaze into her eyes as her grip on the blonde pony’s hooves loosened and she eventually completely slipped from her grasp, falling to the mercy of gravity as a shrill scream cut through the air.

RIP!

The root ripped from the wall a little bit more, leaving barely any dirt for the wall to hang onto as the man holding onto it slid down about an inch. One inch closer to his demise. A familiar scream of fear filled his ears as he moved his head in worry to see what happened to Twilight, his heart dropped to his stomach and his pupils turned to pinpoints as he saw the unicorn hurdling to her death just above him. “TWILIGHT!” He bellowed, his voice being drowned out by the unicorns screams.

RIP!

The root ripped from the wall even more as the unicorn fell safely into the two pegasi’s arms, opening her eyes and looking around at the friendly faces of the ponies keeping her suspended in the air. Her eyes returned to normal and she let out a much deserved sigh of relief as she began her slow descent back to the ground.

Levi’s panicked scream sliced through the air one last time as the two pegasi whipped their heads around to look at him. The root had finally succumbed to the weight weighing it down and the strand holding it to the wall snapped, leaving Levi at the mercy of gravity once again as he started to fall the same deathly fall he barely escaped from before.

Rainbow’s eyes filled with horror at the sight, “LEVI!” she let go of the lilac ponies arm, the weight the cyan pegasus was holding suddenly dropped as Fluttershy struggled to keep Twilight up.

Time moved in slow motion for the brown haired man as he plummeted to the ground, looking up at the beautiful purple night sky. The stars sparkled exponentially slowly, the shine from the star as it sparkled and flickered lingered in Levi’s eyes for a few seconds as he relished the beauty. Possibly that last beautiful thing he would ever see.

His most precious memories were flashing in front of his eyes all the while. They all flickered in his vision like a slideshow as he reminisced over the experiences he had in his short 25 years. Both happy and bittersweet..small or big..he saw each and every one of them one after another. The cold night air blew into his eyes as he closed his eyes to escape the stinging sensation in his eyes.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw more clearly his happiest memories. He saw himself meeting Alan all those years ago, he saw himself at one of his childhood birthday parties, and he saw himself meeting some of the ponies he met on his journey. Just a few feet away from the ground, he visualized his new friends in the pitch black for the last time. He saw the bright amber eyes of a flame haired pegasus as she amazingly carried him all the way to Canterlot. He saw a lilac unicorn with indigo colored hair looking at him with amazement when he first stepped foot into her house, a decision that ultimately led him here. Right at death’s door.

He kept his eyes closed and felt comforted by the darkness as he willingly accepted his fate. He knew Alan was going to be devastated by the news of his friends passing, he knew how wrecked he would be knowing he wouldn’t have closure, he knew Alan would never be able to apologize for bringing him here in the first place. The only sound to be heard by the brown haired man was the whistling of the air in his ears as he came closer and closer to his death. Out of the blue, a new sound was heard, a sound like a huge lazer charging up and preparing to fire. The electronic sounding noise got louder and louder as it presumably came closer and closer to Levi. Levi peered his eyes open and looked straight down at the ground as the noise sounded like it was inches from him. He was met with the terrifying sight of the flourishing green grass just feet below him, a sight that invokes a positive feeling on any other occasion, but this time the only thing Levi felt was pure unbridled fear.

Levi realized all too late that he didn’t in fact accept his fate, he wanted to live more than anything in the world at that very moment. ‘It’s too late. It's too late!’ Levi’s panicked thoughts ran out of control in his head.

‘I”M DEAD!’ He went pale as the grass he was rocketing towards came very clearly into view and he prepared for the end to come.

THUMP!

He felt a force hit him in his stomach and a pair of hooves wrapped around his back as he instantaneously changed directions, the air whistling around him died in that moment and was replaced by the sound of wind rushing by his ears. Levi looked down instinctively to see whatever miracle had come to save him in that moment, and the miracle had cyan wings and a rainbow mane that flapped in the wind like a flag in a thunderstorm.

“Rainbow Dash!” He exclaimed accidentally as his still racing mind caused him to blurt out the first thing he saw.

Levi almost immediately fell to his knees the second his feet touched the ground, his eyes trained down on the grass as he began to pant and blink away tears from his eyes. His heartbeat refused to slow. His vision spun. Dizziness hit him like a tidal wave. An immense feeling of relief washed over him.

“Darling, are you alright?” Rarity’s concerned voice cut in as she and the rest of the ponies approached him. His stomach did backflips from stress as he dug his fingernails into the grass, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath in order to calm himself down.

“Y-yeah,” He replied shakily as he carefully stood up, pausing halfway up to steady his wobbling knees. He stood up fully and wiped the dirt from his thighs and knees, despite his best efforts, his jeans were still brown with dirt from the turbulent slide. His back looked as though a wild tiger had clawed it up and down, blue tassels hung lifelessly off of his back and holes were ripped into his elbow and the sleeve covering it. Blood stained the battered part of his sleeve that wasn’t completely torn from the rocks that cut into his skin like thumbtacks. Moving his arm up and down caused the cuts to sting worse than they already were, a wince and gritting of his teeth followed every time he moved it.

Suddenly, Rarity walked up to the man with a horrified expression on her face, one that Levi was all too familiar with from the ponies. She spun him around rather aggressively and her jaw dropped and a loud gasp escaped her, “Levi darling! You’re shirt!” she exclaimed in anguish. Levi felt slightly annoyed at where her priorities laid, more concerned about his torn shirt than his injuries. He gave her some slack however, taking into account where she lived and where she worked, she probably treat clothes like there her children in private.

She took one of the long ripped pieces of fabric in her hoof and looked at it in disbelief. “Once we get back to the boutique, you’re my number one priority!” She added enthusiastically, probably caring more about the way he looked and not how he just narrowly died just seconds before.

Levi seemingly ignored her comments about his shirt and turned around and looked at the rainbow haired pegasus deep in her magenta eyes. Her forehead glistened with sweat and her chest rose high before sinking low trying to catch her breath. Rainbow cocked her head up at Levi and before she could say anything, he wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace. He felt overcome with emotion and felt a lump form in the back of his throat, his lip quivering as he tried to keep his emotions under control and not wanting to break down in front of the ponies.

After a few awkwards seconds of Rainbow holding her hooves out to her side in surprise, she wrapped her hooves around his waist and let a smile form on her face as she pressed the side of her face to his waist. He sniffled as he gently pressed his hand to the back of her head, his fingers relishing the softness of her multicolored mane.

“Thank you..” He choked out just loud enough for her and only her to hear.

“I’m happy I could help” She replied with her raspy voice at the same level as him.

Levi mirrored the pegasus’s smile as he looked down at her, a feeling he couldn’t really describe igniting in his heart at that very second, a feeling he could only describe as the need to protect Rainbow. Keep her out of harm’s way, rush to save her whenever she’s in danger exactly like she did for Levi. Deep inside, he felt a special connection to the rainbow haired pony. Like they were preordained in some way shape or form to meet, and they finally did. They released each other after a short time with Levi turning his head around to face the path all of the ponies were now facing. A dark dirt path similar to the one they entered but the light brown coarse dirt was replaced by a dark brown rich colored dirt that ran deep into the woods.

As much as he dreaded the thought of going into the forest even more now after the sliding incident, he knew he had to. And with a deep breath and dusting off his forearms, he stood high as he walked bravely with the ponies in sync. He was ready for any danger that might come up. The Elements of Harmony were as good as there’s. Nightmare Moon’s reign of terror was going to end without a shadow of a doubt.

The group followed the dark path as the same twisty and sickly green trees formed walls on either side of them. The only sound to be heard amongst the ponies was Rainbow Dash’s loud reenactment of the event that just transpired, much to the displeasure of Twilight who was right next to the pegasus as she yelled.

“And once Pinkie and Rarity were safe, WOOSH!” Her raspy excited voice exclaimed as she flew up in the air and back down again next to Twilight to emphasize the ‘Woosh’.

“And Fluttershy did the loopty loop around,” She stuck her wings out to her sides and did a loopty loop in the air above Twilight and landed next to her with an audible “Wam!”. “Caught you right in the nick of time” She added with a grin.

“Yes Rainbow I was there,” Twilight replied, the visible displeasure on her face disappearing for a second when she looked at the pegasus, but immediately formed again once she looked away. “And I’m very grateful-” Her sentence was interrupted sharply and she let out a loud gasp as a thump was heard in front of them, the ponies behind them jumped in surprise including Levi.

Standing in front of them with an angry expression on his feline face, a red and peach colored manticore, staring daggers into the group with its menacing black pinpoint eyes. His scorpion tail showed itself from behind him as he raised it in the air, simultaneously unfurling his red leathery dragon wings and spiking them high in the air.

Twilight’s face turned from one of her usual displeasure to one of fright in a split second. “A manticore!” The beast let out a loud roar as it stood on its hind legs and raised its paws in above his head, his razor sharp claws extended from his fingertips. As Levi jumped in fright, he felt a small object bounce in his back pocket, something he didn’t notice before. In the midst of the chaos, he reached behind him and stuck his hand in his pocket and his fingers wrapped around a familiar feeling rough handle. His hand emerged from under the flaps of his shirt and in his hand was a black switchblade, the very same one he used to wound the Timberwolf days ago.

He flipped the handle in his hand and charged in between the ponies and stood in front of them, creating a divider between the ravenous animal in front of them and his friends. Shink! Levi pressed down the button in the middle of the handle, the blade shooting out of the front and reflecting the stars that shone above it. He furrowed his eyebrows at the manticore as he readied himself in a fighting stance, digging his back foot into the dirt and preparing to lunge at the creature at a moments notice.

“We gotta get past him!” Twilight proclaimed right as Fluttershy bounced in the air and began to hover a few feet above the group.

“Oh no..” Fluttershy whispered to herself, looking down on the group with worried eyes and especially Levi. She knew for certain that he didn’t truly know what a manticore was capable of, she was terrified of the concept of him seeing what it could do first hand in the worst way possible. A scenario that was about to come through as the beast fell back down onto its front paws and readied his body to pounce.

Another ear piercing roar cut through the air as the manticore pounced in the air towards Levi as he looked up in shock before adrenaline surged through his veins. The creature fell down towards him with his paw extended ready to attack, and that’s exactly what it did.

Its paw swung quickly at Levi the moment he landed in front of him. The man bounced back and successfully dodged the attack and clenched his jaw as he moved his arm back and swiped it across the beast's face.

The manticore let out a loud grunt of pain and jumped back away from him as the knife cut into the upper part of the bridge of his nose, a crimson line forming as the beast stared down Levi. A fiery anger ignited inside of him like a bonfire as he lunged forward, landing inches in front of the man, and roared directly into his face. His face was misted with the creature's saliva and his hat blew right off of his head only to be caught by Applejack. His putrid breath invaded his nostrils, reeking of the stench of death and blood.

Levi quickly recovered and swung his knife at the animal once more, but this time he wasn’t so lucky. Before he could react, the animal swung the back of his paw at the unsuspecting man, sending him flying back feet behind him as he skid against the dirt. The branches and twigs dotting the path snapped against his force as he slid on the ground and bulldozed through him. His palm naturally opened as his arm laid limply on the ground, the slightly bloody switchblade sat motionless in the palm of his hand.

The beast let out a triumphant roar, immediately charging at the man laying on the ground, who lifted his head up to look at the oncoming beast in a daze. Through his blurry vision, he could see the manticore suddenly stopped in his tracks as he could barely make out the orange blur mounting the animal. He looked up at the orange pony on top of him with a curious look, only to be met by the emerald eyes of an excited blonde pony looking down at him.

“Yeehaw!” She bellowed as she grabbed ahold of the manticores maroon mane. In disbelief, Levi managed to watch as Applejack began to ride the manticore like how someone would ride a mechanical bull. The manticore did exactly what a bull would do, kicking its back legs angrily and jumping up feet into the air and landing loudly back down. As his vision slowly came back to him, he saw as the yellow and red beast came down onto the ground just inches away from his head, his massive paw hitting the ground and causing dust to rise around the impact.

Right after, he saw a lilac unicorn approaching him on the ground and she extended a helping hoof towards him. “Get up Levi,” He grabbed her hoof eagerly as she helped pull him up with a struggle, immediately almost falling over the second he stood on his own two feet.

“That was-” THUMP! Levi jerked back as heard the loud pounding of paws landing on the ground next to him. “Is this gonna work?” Levi asked, slightly yelling over the noise the beast was producing.

After it the beast landed for the last time, coincidentally right where he stood when Applejack mounted him, he moved his head down and then whipped it back up with a roar. Applejack went flying off the head of the beast and soared through the air and passed Rainbow Dash just as she was about to descend. “There’s your answer” Twilight exclaimed in response.

“All yours partner” She said to the rainbow haired pegasus hovering in the air, immediately falling to the ground like a torpedo after saying this.

“I’m on it!” She replied with a salute, zooming towards the animal without a second thought in her mind.

“Wait!” Fluttershy called out in vain as the pegasus sped past her, blowing her mane the opposite direction as she threw her hoof in front of her face instinctively.

Rainbow flew to the creature and began flying in circles around in a rainbow tornado, the only thing visible behind the array of colors were the tips of his wings and tail as they spiked up in the air. The manticore growled and roared in annoyance as the pegasus flew around and around him, stopping not even being a thought on her mind at that moment.

With one forceful tail whip, the cyan pegasus was thrown from her rainbow tornado and flew through the air towards them. “RAINBOW!” Twilight cried out as her eyes followed her rainbow haired friend through the air. She eventually came down and skidded to a stop right in front of the ponies, looking up at them and meeting their shocked eyes with her magenta ones. Her wings were upright but her feathers were ruffled and the tip of her left wing looked bent out of place.

Levi extended his free hand down to the pegasus who gladly accepted it and pulled herself up from the ground. Twilight looked furiously at the beast with gritted teeth, leaning her body forward slightly ready to run. The beast mirrored her movements and leaned forward further than her as he stuck his tail high in the air, the stinger looming over his back and staring at the ponies.

The group all scraped their hoof against the ground and kicked up dust, all Levi could was bend his knees and look alive as he flipped his blade a few times in his hand. He grinned in anticipation at the manticore as he waited for the ponies to charge the angry beast, watching as blood from his wound trickled down the bridge of his nose as he huffed. Twilight huffed as she narrowed her eyes and in that moment began to charge like an angry bull towards the manticore.

The rest of the group almost instantly followed suit, sprinting in formation towards the manticore who stood high and mighty, ready to attack the ponies. Levi flipped the handle into a stabbing position, the blade pointed behind him as he sprinted and passed the rest of the ponies excluding Rainbow.

Out of nowhere, a usually quiet yellow pegasus suddenly jumped in the middle of the manticore and the squadron of angry ponies. They all skidded to a stop and looked at surprised at Fluttershy as she folded her wings back to her side, especially Levi, who had only known the quiet side of Fluttershy up to this point. Her face returned to a usual soft smile as she turned to face the manticore and began walking towards it, Levi’s eyes widened at the ignorant decision being displayed in front of him.

“Fluttershy!” He exclaimed as his voice echoed through the trees, “What’re you doing!” He received no response from the pink haired pegasus, only hearing the manticore's short roar at the oblivious pegasus approaching him.

When she got close enough to be able to touch the creature, it raised its paw high above his head with his claws extended in full view as he let out another short but loud roar. The ponies all veered their heads away and shut their eyes tightly, including Levi, who pointed his head straight at the ground as he tensed up.

“Shhhh, shhh..it’s okay” The ponies popped their eyes open one after another after hearing her soft voice coo to the beast. She rubbed her nose gingerly on the manticore’s paw that was held up in the air limp. He backed his hand away from her touch as she gave him a reassuring smile, reaching his limp hand up and looking at it for a few seconds before flipping it over. He revealed a purple thorn sticking out of the center of his palm as he brought it to Fluttershy, the group of ponies no longer tense but curiously watching the encounter.

“Oh you poor poor little baby..” She cooed once more, eyeing the thorn sympathetically.

“Little?” Rainbow Dash questioned aloud.

“Now this just might hurt for just a second..” She edged her mouth up to the thorn and bit down on the top of it. And with one hard tug, yanked the thorn from his palm with a satisfying popping sound. The beast grabbed Fluttershy aggressively and reared as he let out a booming roar straight into her face, her mane blowing back in the wind like she was inside a hurricane.

“FLUTTERSHY!” The group shouted collectively, but their worry died when they saw the manticore happily licking the pegasus's mane affectionately. Fluttershy giggled as he held her in her paw like a toy and said in a hushed voice “Aww..you’re just a little kitty..yes you are”

As Fluttershy continued to praise the manticore, the ponies let a grin form on their faces as they trotted past the manticore that once stood as an obstacle. Levi retracted the blade back in the handle with another Shink! He stuck it back in his back pocket as he caught up with the rest of the ponies, sticking next to Twilight while the rest walked ahead.

Eventually, the manticore released Fluttershy and she started walking up to the group of ponies ahead. Her one flowing swooping mane was now slicked back with the creature's saliva, completely straight back like a pink surfboard on the top of her head. Levi couldn’t help but snicker at how ridiculous she looked.

“How did you know about the thorn?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I didn’t, sometimes all you need is a little kindness” She answered in her normal soft tone, walking ahead of Twilight a little faster after her answer was given. Twilight looked down for a second in thought and looked back up as a grin formed on her face.

“You did good back there,” Twilight said as she looked up to make eye contact with Levi, “I didn’t expect that from you”

“Me either” He admitted with a smirk, “I kinda forgot I had that, guess it saved my ass..mostly”

Twilight giggle before responding “I hope you have more tricks up your sleeve”

“Just you wait and see” He joked, reaching down and giving her a light pat on the back before adding “Come on, we gotta catch up”

“Wait up!” Levi called out as they moved in unison further and further down the dank path. As the manticore unfurled his wings and flew off into the night sky, the thorn that rested on the ground suddenly came to life and began spinning rapidly. It spinned until it melted into a sparkling blue and black mass that floated with a mind of its own. The mass reared its front towards the path the ponies just walked down and began soaring through the air chasing after them. Doing everything it can to stop the ponies..at all costs.

Chapter 10: The Two Sisters

Rainbow Dash handed the taller man his hat as he slid it onto his head, feeling naked without it. The group ventured deeper into the Everfree Forest as the path under their feet changed color once more, turning from a dark brown to a deep swampy green. The area around them also looked swampy, brush and various multicolored plants and weeds stuck out from the ground on all sides. Mushrooms jutted from the dirt like sore thumbs, his feet threatened to sink into the ground with every step, but the most disgusting thing to out rule them all was the smell. Levi’s nostrils were attacked with a putrid, rancid smell of mud and rotting animals as they made their way deeper into the swamp. The odor made his eyes water and combined with the humidity of the swamp, despite it being in the middle of the night, made for an extremely unenjoyable experience.

He gagged as he closed his nose with his fingers, finally escaping the stench, as Rainbow Dash grinned at him playfully and said “Can’t handle it?” she snickered at his annoyed look that was shot at her.

“Don’t act like you’ve been through worse” He rebutted.

Rainbow raised an eyebrow at the sweaty man, “Who’s to say I haven’t?”

“Well I dunno..have you?” He questioned, his voice sounding a lot more nasally from his closed nose, making it hard for the pegasus to take him seriously.

“I’ve been to a lotta places Levi, I’m the fastest flyer in Equestria after all!” She boasted, putting a hoof up to her puffed out chest as Levi raised an eyebrow at her.

“The fastest?” “Yep!” She replied with a hyperactive nod, “What about the Wonderbolts?”

“You know about the Wonderbolts?”

“Of course I do,” He answered, “Who doesn’t ?”

“I just thought..nevermind,” She replied, shaking her head, “But I’m on the reserves!”

Levi gave her an impressed look as he thought back to how Spitfire flew for miles carrying the weight of a fully grown man. If she was the captain and was able to do that, he could only imagine how high her standards are for the members.

“Really?”

“Yuh-huh” She nodded rapidly, looking like her brain was rattling in her skull, with a huge grin on her face. “It’s been my dream ever since I was a filly!”

“So I guess you know Spitfire then?” He asked. She nodded in response. “Man, she’s great, she carried me to Canterlot from Ponyville”

Her eyes widened in surprise like she couldn’t believe what she was being told, but at the same time, she knew how well Spitfire could fly and she wouldn’t doubt she would be capable of such a feat. “Really?” She asked, her turn to question what was being said to her.

“Yup,” He replied with a nod, “I don’t know how she did it, carrying someone such as myself”

She giggled at his comment and responded with “You can’t weigh that much”

“Probably more than you”

As the pegasus and the man chatted for what seemed like hours as they trudged through the swamp and made the trip a little more bearable for the both of them, Rarity on the other hand was not very satisfied.

“Ohhh..my eyes need a rest from all this..icky muck” She complained in her usual dramatic tone she acquired in slightly inconvenient situations. She flicked some dark brown mud off of her hoof, the smell of decay invaded her nostrils like her hoof was some sort of plug for the putrid odor. She winced in disgust and wiped her nose as her blue eyes started to water.

The group continued walking and reached a row of trees on either side with thick bushy tops that stretched to either side of one another. They connected and formed a barrier above them where no light could penetrate between the leaves. Twilight looked up and saw the moon eerily disappear behind the leaves as the once dimly lit trail was now thrusted into an almost pitch black darkness. Levi started to feel anxious with each step they took in the dark, fearing the worst of what could be lurking in the shadows, unseen and unheard until it was too late. After all, if there was a manticore in this forest, anything was on the table for what could jump at them next.

“I didn’t mean that literally” Rarity added as she and the other ponies looked up in sync, confused as to where the moon and its light suddenly went. Levi peered and squinted his eyes in the dark in an attempt to see anything but the only thing he could make out was the iris of the ponies that seemed to cut through the dark. Their eyes collectively began to adjust to the darkness, allowing them to see the faint outlines of one another and were able to make out who was who in the impenetrable darkness.

“The ruin could be right in front of us and we wouldn’t even know it” Twilight chimed.

Profuse apologies from Rarity followed as she spoke hastily and Twilight replying with a polite admission of blame back and forth between the two. Apologies, admission. Apologies, admission.

The blonde pony looked down in disgust at her hooves as she felt a lukewarm sludge cake them as a revolting squelch was heard. Her face twisted as she raised her hoof and looked at the brown mud dripping from it, struggling to hold back the urge to gag at the odor. “I think ah stepped in somethin’” She commented aloud as she shook her hoof off like it was no big deal, Fluttershy’s horrified face looking in front of her confused her. Was she that scared of some mud? She let out a petrified shriek as she pointed her hoof in the space in front of Applejack, she couldn’t make out what she was so scared of in the inky black darkness in front of her.

She planted her hoof back down in the mud and began walking forward like she was originally, replying to Fluttershy’s unwarranted fear with “It’s just mud-” her sentence was cut abruptly by her walking face first into a hard wall.

She rubbed her forehead and adjusted her hat as she backed up a few steps away from the force blocking her path. Like it was on cue, her emerald eyes adjusted to the darkness and the tree that towered over her stared at her with a menacing face engraved in its bark. Its round spiral eyes that looked crudely carved stared daggers into her as its contorted mess of a mouth full of shark-like teeth gnashed at her. The edges of the bark were a deep red and the branches were situated on its sides right in the middle of its trunk.

The other ponies seemingly noticed it too, as they all let out a terrified scream in unison. Levi looked at the tree in confusion and fright as a mumbly “W-what the hell” escaped his lips. His hand clamored behind him as they fumbled on his rear, his fingers eventually finding themselves around the handle of his switchblade. The blade shot out as he gripped it in his hand, ready to battle any threat in the darkness at a moment's notice.

Tres transformed all around them, their bark being replaced by the twisted amalgamation of features like the trees suddenly came to life with evil intent. Burning holes into the back of their heads with their sinister stare from their lifeless eyes. The ponies screamed in terror as Levi whipped his head around in every direction and met the gaze of every tree, the cacophony of noise combined with the darkness becoming overwhelming for the man. The walls of trees that surrounded them on either side now became these horrifying trees as they all felt eyes peering at them from every direction.

They all slowly backed away from the trees and their backs collided in the middle of the path, a pair of eyes watching from every angle, preparing for something to jump out at any second. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the knife as hard as he could as he looked over his shoulder, his eyes widened when he saw no brightly colored pink pony in the circle they had formed. In fact, as he looked around, he couldn’t seem to find her anywhere. Her vibrant pink coat would’ve stood out in the darkness like it had been up to this point, Levi’s heart flooded with dread as he desperately double checked all around him but still had no sight on the pink pony.

“PINKIE!” He called out alarmed, desperation coating his voice as worry overtook him. The group noticed Levi’s concern and subsequently realized Pinkie was nowhere to be found. “PINKIE! WHERE ARE YOU!” Twilight called out after him, mirroring his concern and worry for the party pony wellbeing.

“PINKIE!” Rainbow’s voice followed.

“SAY SOMETHING!” After no more than a second of silence thick with tension, a very familiar and out of place giggle could be heard from a foot away from them. In disbelief, they all turned their heads to the source of the laughter and found Pinkie, standing out in the darkness as usual, but standing in front of one of the many demented trees. They all couldn’t believe there eyes and ears as they watched Pinkie stand in front of the tree and staring right into its carved eyes with her crystal blue ones, giggling like it was no big deal.

“Pinkie! What are you doing!” Twilight exclaimed, watching as Pinkie made faces at the tree and continued giggling at it continuously, like a mouse taunting a lion. Pinkie turned her head to make eye contact with the group before replying with “Oh come on girls! It’s just a tree!”

“Trees don’t look like that Pinkie!” Levi quickly rebutted, “They could be dangerous!”

“They don’t look dangerous to me!” She replied in her usual pip voice, beginning to spring into the air as she usually did, touching her hoof to the tree's nose with an audible ‘Boop!’ coming from the Pinkie. As one of her trademark giggles followed her playful booping, the ponies took another look at each of the trees with this newfound advice from Pinkie. The sound of her bouncing in circles around them and completely ignoring the trees released the tension building in the air and lifted the spirits of each of them. Levi’s knuckles returned to their normal color as he loosened his grip on the blade.

Their faces softened as they all exchanged glances before looking a third time at each of the trees and realizing that Pinkie was right, they were just trees, trees with faces that is. “She’s right,” Levi broke the silence as his blade slid back inside, “They’re just trees everybody”

He slid his knife back in his pocket as he felt a grin forming on his face unwillingly, the pink pony’s crystal blue irises caught on to his grin almost immediately on one of her bouncing rounds around the group. “That’s the spirit!” She loudly exclaimed as his grin grew wider as she began to let out her signature laugh.

The rest of the group’s faces turned from distress to much happier as they all looked at the once harrowing trees and began to mirror Pinkie’s infectious laughter as it spread like wildfire throughout the group. They’re laughing grew louder and more elated as they were past the point of no return and found it almost impossible to stop laughing, Levi couldn’t help but give in to the urge to laugh as well. Suddenly, the tree Pinkie was giggling at that started this laughing fit turned back to normal. The group paid no mind to it as more and more trees began to turn back to normal one after another, the nightmare they were experiencing becoming nothing more than a thing of the past as the final tree went back to normal. Levi glanced at one of the trees as tears formed in his eyes from laughter and, for the first time in his life, felt relief that a tree was the way it was supposed to be.

A thump was heard as Twilight hit the ground and was laying on her back, laughing and snorting all the while, as the rest of the ponies followed and dropped like flies one after another. A tear ran down his cheek as his stomach ached from the constant laughter as his knees made contact with the mud below him, his kneecaps sinking a few inches into the mud as the lukewarm sludge threatened to seep through his denim. Despite the odor attacking his senses, Levi continued to laugh and blocked out the smell like it didn’t even exist.

His green eyes made their way over to the pink pony laughing giddily on her back in a pile of the ponies and could still make out her vibrant form through the blurriness in his vision. Her positive energy radiated from her and and and a cheerful aura formed around her and seemed to follow her everywhere she went. He felt it and he was sure everyone was too, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He had no idea how lucky he was to have friends like them after he fell from the sky just a day ago. His smile grew wider as his cheek muscles grew sore as his laughter continued to fill the air and added to the mixture of different laughters like a brewing potion. Despite the circumstances of his arrival in Equestria, he was glad he did.

The springing sound of Pinkie’s bouncing drowned out every other sound as she led the way further through the forest on their way to the castle. The skin of Levi’s kneecaps rubbed uncomfortably on the dried mud on his jeans and his shoes looked filthy, adding to his disheveled appearance even more. The group followed each other closely as they moved in a line about half a foot behind Pinkie as she bounced, a big goofy grin displayed on her face which was normal for the pink pony.

The moonlight above masked by the trees now shined bright once again, repelling the darkness that cloaked them just minutes before. The stench got weaker and weaker the more they walked further into the forest, allowing the group to breathe a breath of fresh air. The ground hardened the more they walked and transformed from the soft rancid smelling mud to solid ground. The only sound to be heard was the white noise of the happy chirping of crickets and the giggling from the ponies in the group and the occasional words that were shared between them about the memory.

After a short time of walking, with Pinkie still being the leader of the march, the sound of a ruthless rushing river suddenly made itself known. Curiously, the group quickened their pace and walked closer and closer to the source of the sound as it grew louder the more they approached it. The group rounded a corner and after several more steps, came face to face with the source of the sudden sound.

It was a brilliant blue violent rushing river, the waves spiraling and diving back into the water like graceful dolphins. The river looked like a beautiful painting, the waves looking like spinning turbines as they rolled down the river and creating a loud, angry rushing sound that raged in Levi’s ears.

“How are we gonna get past this?” Pinkie questioned, raising her voice a little bit to be heard over the river, her voice was no match for the rushing that continued incessantly.

Before Levi or anyone else could make a suggestion, a sound came over the rushing and was heard by the group as they turned their heads towards each other in confusion. The sound was a man wailing, clearly upset by something, coming from down the side of the river. The group all exchanged confused glances before setting their sights on the sound and moving through the bushes and trees swiftly to get to whoever was making the noise.

The wailing got louder and louder with every few steps they took, almost drowning out the merciless rushing of the river, but the rushing was just that much louder than it. The sound of splashing water also filled the air the closer they got, peaking their interest and curiosity as they moved aside the last bush that stood in their way. When they moved the two leaves that blocked there vision from the source of the sound, a quiet yet audible escaped them in surprise at what they saw.

Stretching from one side of the river and almost to the other, was a long, scaly, and purple sea serpent wailing and slamming his tail and lower body into the water again and again. He had flowing gold colored hair that went down beyond the back of his neck and was styled perfectly. He had a mustache where half grew from the left side of his face and looked like a golden piece of seaweed growing from the side of his nose, and the other was the same thing but was cut off near the base.

“What a world! What a word!” The serpent bellowed in anguish as he raised his fists up in the air and pounded the air, sending drops of it sprinkling down onto the group standing on the shore near him.

“What in the..” Levi whispered to himself as his hand instinctively reached to his back pocket and his fingers began to slowly slide inside of it. A lilac hoof suddenly gently grabbed his wrist and pulled it out of his back pocket without breaking her line of sight on the serpent.

“Excuse me sir, why are you crying?” Twilight asked over the rushing and wailing.

“Oh I don’t know,” The serpent moved through the water and towered over the ponies on the shore with his arms raised out to his sides, “I was just sitting here minding my own business when this purple cloud of smoke just whizzed past me and tore half of my beloved mustache off!” He lowered his head down to eye level with the group, showing his torn off mustache in full view.

“NOW I LOOK SIMPLY HORRID!” He cried out as he let out another wail before falling backwards into the water, creating a large wave that crashed down onto the group. Completely soaking them head to toe in water as they looked up at him with annoyance when he raised out of the river.

“Give me a damn break..” Levi said irritatedly, looking down at his sopping wet dress shirt as it stuck to his skin and made it look like it was painted onto him.

“That’s what all this fuss is about?” Applejack asked as she walked forward with the rest of the group closer to the shore, her blonde hair now hanging in front of her eyes like a curtain. Rarity suddenly popped her head out from in between Rainbow and Applejack with her once perfectly styled hair now hanging limply from the sides of her head.

“Why it is! How can you be so sensitive” She held her head up high and marched forward to the head of the lamenting serpent as he laid it on the shore, a gloomy look displayed on his scaly features.

She went up and rubbed her hoof over his chin as she showered the serpent with compliments, praising his hair, his scales, and mirroring his anguish over the torn of mustache that really completes his look. “All of this ruined without your beautiful mustache” “IT’S TRUE! I’m hideous!” He exclaimed loudly almost immediately after, throwing his arms over his face in shame over his ruined image.

“I simply cannot let this stand!” She furrowed her eyebrows and suddenly, without warning, she lunged her head forward and bit down onto one of the scales on his chest and tore it off for no apparent reason.

“OW!” He yelped in pain as he placed his hand over the aching spot where his scale used to be, “Whatever did you do that for!” a tear rolled down his face from the sudden pain he experienced.

She raised the scale up in the air, reflecting the light from the moon as its sharp tip glistened menacingly towards the group. Twilight was somewhat worried as she watched in anticipation as what she was about to do with the scale. “Rarity, what’re you do-” she was interrupted by a slicing sound cutting through the air as she, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash stood there gaping with wide eyes. Her perfectly groomed purple tail fell down to the ground as she dropped the scale along with it, her horn glowing light blue as she levitated her amputated tail in the air.

She moved it over to the base of the serpent's cut off mustache and, somehow, replaced his mustache with her tail. Levi’s eyes widened, wondering how she did that with just the magic from her horn as the serpent raised his head in joy as he saw what Rarity had done. The purple impromptu mustache looked out of place on his face in comparison to the golden other half of the mustache that grew on the opposite side of his nose. Credit where it is due, the tail did match the color of his scales almost perfectly, and still looked a lot better than the stump of hair that sat there before.

“Yes! My mustache!” He let out loudly, his accent shining through with these words. “How wonderful!” He praised with raised eyebrows as he continued to compliment Rarity’s work.

“You look smashing” She complimented with a smile.

“Oh Rarity,” Twilight’s voice cut in as she walked up closer to her, looking at the cut off base of her tail that looked like the ending of a broom, “Your beautiful tail!”

“Oh it’ll be fine my dear!” Rarity replied, turning around to face her and the rest of the group, “Short tails are in this season anyway!”

Levi walked up to the unicorn and took the remnant of her once gorgeous tail in his hand as he looked at it, saying “You did all that for him? You never even met him”

“Oh it’s nothing really darling,” She glanced down at what was left of her tail, “It’ll grow back”

“So will the mustache..” Rainbow muttered under her breath, earning a chuckle from Levi who caressed the cut off tail with his thumb before releasing it. Another loud splash was heard as the rushing of the river died down significantly, allowing the water to become calm once again as it flowed down. The serpent used his long purple body to make a bridge with large humps that ran from the shore all the way to the other side. Levi was the first to walk forward and climb up onto the first hump, using his scales like he was climbing a rock wall.

Levi jumped to the next hump, followed by the group one after another, all the way until the very end of the makeshift bridge. His feet landed onto the light brown dirt as the ponies followed quickly behind him, landing onto the ground with a soft grunt from each of them as he landed. The serpent flipped onto his back and stuck his head and hand out of the water and waved towards the group with a huge smile adorning his face. The ponies waved back and shouted their goodbyes towards the serpent before he dove back under the water, their eyes following him as he swam elegantly down the river to places unknown. Levi watched with his hands in his damp pockets, his mind wandering on what other animals could be lurking in these woods if he found a manticore and a sea serpent both in the same night.

“Let’s go!” He exclaimed enthusiastically, turning around and walking towards the opening between the trees that were directly behind them. The ponies followed closely behind him and Pinkie pranced with a spring in her step as she started to go on and on about the experience they just had. Levi looked over his shoulder at the pony as she began to talk a million miles a minute about the sea serpent, he shot a small smile at her unnoticed as he turned his head forward once more. Finally escaping the swampy atmosphere for good.

The group continued to walk down the path as the moon casted a brilliant silver glow down onto them. The cold night air grew chiller the further they walked down the narrow path, causing the ponies to develop a slight shake from the drop in temperature. The trees slowly turned from the sickly green twisty ones back at the swamp to skinny birch trees that reached high up in the air. The gaps in between the trees revealed a hill that went down into a thick, impenetrable darkness that seemed to stretch indefinitely.

Levi’s teeth chattered as the cold wind relentlessly blew on him as goosebumps formed on his arms. He looked over at Rainbow who was reacting the same way, wrapping her wings around herself in a desperate attempt to keep warm but it did nothing to help her situation. As brittle leaves crunched under their feet as they walked, a sudden sound came from their right that was different from the chattering teeth and leaf crunching they were used to. The sharp sound of a twig snapping was heard over the howling of the wind, causing the group to whip their heads to the right to see the source of the sudden noise.

They stopped dead in their tracks and looked intently at where the sound came from, only being looked intently back by the darkness that accompanied the spot. A bad feeling came over Levi, like he knew something was wrong, and by one quick glance over at Twilight he knew she felt the same. “L-lets keep g-going..” He said with a quivering voice.

His face felt like it was being stabbed by hundreds of icepicks with each step he took. Snot ran from his nose as he sniffled in an effort to clear it but it came right back once again. He wiped his nose with his white t-shirt under his blue shirt and continued walking as the wind continued to howl around him. The more they ventured, the more the wind picked up its pace and the colder the group became. Despite the very unwelcome and harsh conditions, the scenery of the path and the nature around it was stunning. The small white flowers that poked out from the ground and the snow white birch trees made it look like a beautiful painting. Under any other circumstances, Levi would’ve killed to be here.

Despite how pleasing their surroundings looked, it was a far cry to how it actually felt being present there in that moment. The uneasy feeling that swept over them was exemplified when another more alarming sound was heard that once again halted the group. It was a very low and quiet snarling sound but just loud enough to be heard over the small break the wind had from howling. He furrowed his eyebrows into the dark like he was having a silent standoff with what or whoever was behind the sounds. He turned his whole body to face the mysterious creature responsible for the noises as he silently stared daggers at the creature that he didn’t know for sure was there or not.

The ponies looked at Levi like he was deranged as he intently glared into the dark which Levi couldn’t care any less about, the only thing he was focused on was finishing this standoff between him and the creature. Applejack took a few steps towards him before she asked with a shaky voice from the cold, “L-Levi, you okay-”

Crack!

Levi jumped back from the trees as a branch broke loudly behind them, followed by rapid pattering on the ground like a dog chasing after something. A horrified look overcame Levi’s face as he could see his panicked breaths, “We gotta go!” he exclaimed, whipping around to face the group, “NOW!”

The group didn’t hesitate to follow his orders as they followed closely behind him as he dashed forward down the path as fast as his legs could carry him. He heard the beast's loud thumping footsteps running in sync with him as twigs and branches stood no match for whatever was running with him, snapping and cracking with ease under its feet. Hooves pounded the ground. His legs burned. The beast continues to stay in sync with him. In Levi’s mind, he was seemingly out of options, and the only thing he could was hope that there was some miracle waiting to happen that would save their lives. But from the looks of it, that wasn’t happening any time soon.

The animal's thumping steps quickened and gained distance on the distressed and panicked ponies as branches cracked over and over like a clock ticking faster than usual. He kept his eyes trained in front of him, hoping that a blessing would come in some shape or form to rescue them and would just appear in front of them. Seconds later, something did appear in front of them, but was nothing like they were expecting.

Through a gap between the trees, the beast leaped through the air out of the darkness and landed on the path in front of them, causing the group to skid to a sudden halt and kick up dust towards the creature. Its paws slammed on the ground as he stared at Levi and only Levi with its one good eye. The snarling, the growl, the persistence, everything started to come together and the final piece of the puzzle was the snarling and growling animal in front of them. His eyes widened in horror and all the color drained from his face as he knew exactly what it was, a Timberwolf, a very angry Timberwolf.

It’s back went up and down quickly like it was panting and his lime green glowing eye affixed on Levi, staring deep into his green eyes as the wolf watched in satisfaction as a bullet of sweat ran down his forehead. The thing that caught their attention about the animal was his right eye, or what was left of it. His eye was nothing more but a smashed green pumpkin embedded in his eye socket with a disgusting knife wound in the center with dried blood caking the lower half of his eye. It took Levi a bit to realize why the Timberwolf was transfixed on him and him alone, it was the same Timberwolf Levi almost killed back at Fluttershy’s cottage, back to settle the score once and for all.

He was baffled by what he was seeing, refusing to believe this wolf was somehow able to hold grudges and how this beast was able to find him considering how deep into the forest they were. He came to the chilling revelation that he must have been getting stalked through the forest this entire time. The wolf watched him as he almost fell to his death, as he faced off against the manticore, helped the serpent, and now found the perfect opportunity to strike. On a chilly path in the dead of night in the middle of the Everfree, no help for miles except for the ponies behind him who stood no chance against a Timberwolf.

They all slowly backed away from the angry beast as it took a menacing step towards them as Levi pulled his switchblade out from his back pocket, the very same that caused this rivalry in the first place, and the blade shot out of the grip. He licked his lips as a rope of saliva dropped from his mouth that was twisted into a sinister snarl. He knitted his eyebrows together as Levi did the same, fighting through the fear and having only one objective in mind, to kill the wolf and protect his friends. He took deep breaths as he furrowed his eyebrows toward the wolf. Seconds felt like hours as the wind howled, the sound now feeling menacing as the two stood there waiting for one of them to make the first move and commence the battle to the death. Levi dug his foot into the dirt and flipped the blade around in his hand in anticipation as the wolfs glowing eye burned holes into him with its stare.

In an instant, the wolf let out a loud bark as he pounced aggressively towards him, soaring through the air and giving Levi only a few seconds to react. The man jumped out of the way as the wolf's paws slammed against the dirt and whipped his head over to look at Levi with an angry look as the man suddenly stabbed the knife deep into his body. The wolf let out a pained howl that echoed and reverberated through the trees as the knife slid through the cracks in the wood and pierced the wolf’s luminescent green skin. The back of his paw hit Levi like a truck as he flew back, crashing painfully into a tree with fresh green blood covering the silver blade almost completely. The wolf rushed towards the man as he quickly recovered from his daze, rolling out of the way just in time to avoid the wolf’s slash which carved four deep lines into the trunk of the tree.

Levi quickly scurried to his feet and stood with wobbly knees and faced the wolf. Enraged, the Timberwolf leaped at Levi and gave the man zero time to react as he pinned him to the ground with his paws. Memories flashed through his mind as the wolf dug one of his paws into his shoulder and one into his chest, the weight making it extremely difficult to breathe as his paw felt like cinder blocks weighing down on his lungs. Levi used his free hand to push back on the wolf’s lower jaw and shove him away from his neck, feeling his face flush and his chest burn like fire as the wolf barked in his face. Saliva was sprayed onto his face as all he could do was sit there in this compromising position, his knife wielding hand being shoved into the dirt by the furious beast.

Levi’s panicked and now bloodshot eyes darted all around him, desperately trying to find some way shape or form to free himself from this fatal situation. He saw an opening in the trees just inches away from him and saw how the hill below led down into pitch black darkness. He smirked internally as a risky idea popped into his head and, having no other options, followed through with what he planned to do. He tightened his grip on his knife and threw his hand up and grabbed ahold of the nape of the wolf, his fingers slipping underneath one of the wooden shards that formed his body. With all of the remaining strength he had left, he rolled his body over to the gap in the trees, using all of his might to roll the wolf down with him.

The very instant they rolled over, they began tumbling down the hill straight into the darkness below. As the wolf and Levi disappeared into the shadows, Rainbow and Twilight were the first of the group to run over to the gap with worried faces as they heard the commotion going on. Angered barks and screams accompanied by the sounds of a large object hitting the ground and breaking branches and leaves, growing more and more distant they further they traveled down the hill.

“LEVI!” Rainbow’s raspy voice yelled down the hill as the screams and the barks drew further and further away, “LEVI!” Twilight joined in. The remaining ponies stood side by side as they looked down into the darkness, listening to the sounds of their turbulent descent down the hill.

Levi’s head felt like it was being hit with a sledgehammer each time it collided with the ground, his shoulder felt like it was about to snap in two with how hard the wolf was pressing down onto it. His claws dug into his skin and stained his shoulder blades crimson red. The crushing weight of the wolf pressed down on him extremely painfully as the barking continued, coating his face in a thin layer of the animal’s saliva. Somehow, the switchblade never left his hand despite the tumble the two were taking down the hill, and several times Levi attempted to stab the beast as they rolled but to no avail. He heard the raspy yell of Rainbow Dash followed by Twilight’s drown out his screams as they echoed through the forest.

After what felt like hours of the agonizing tumbling and rolling, the wolf and the man finally reached the bottom of the hill, releasing each other as each of them rolled to a stop on the cold hard dirt. The wolf laid on his side in a daze for just a couple of seconds before he shook his head rapidly, standing once again on his two paws as his barking seemed endless. Levi on the other hand laid on his back as it throbbed in pain, coughing fitfully and attempting to catch his breath as the wolf lumbered over and stood above him. He looked down at Levi with an angry yet satisfied look, seeing the reflection of his one good eye in the man’s pained green eyes as his mouth twisted into an evil grin. Drool dropped from the tip of his lower jaw and splattered disgustingly onto his forehead, the man giving no reaction, only staring up helplessly at the beast. The ominous moonlight above created a shadow that loomed over Levi and highlighted its angry features.

The wolf licked his lips eagerly, his heart yearning for the revenge he’s been seeking for days, his heart slammed in his chest in excitement and anticipation. After a brief yet intimidating growl, the beast lunged his head down to Levi’s neck, fully intent on tearing it to bloody pieces once its jaws claimed it. Without thinking, the man threw his arm in front of his face, seemingly forgetting that he was being attacked by a wild animal and not a person. Instinctively, the wolf clamped down onto his forearm with an iron grip as he narrowed his eyes at the man and bit down hard and sank his teeth into his bare flesh. Levi let out a scream of pain into the air as veins threatened to pop in his forehead as he shut his eyes tightly. The wolf angrily spat out the man’s arm back onto the ground as the tips of his pearly white canines were now freshly painted crimson. He growled one last time down at the man before he lunged, only to be met with a white and blue blur flying at him faster than he could comprehend.

SHUNK!

The knife went deep into his head as his jaw went slack and hung down as low as it could go. His eyes went dull and colorless as Levi threw his hand up and pushed on the wolf’s chest as his lifeless body began to come down on top of him. He yanked the knife out of his forehead, causing lime green blood to spurt out from the wound like a broken faucet and splatter onto the unsuspecting man's face. The liquid tasted of pine tar and leaves but the taste didn’t linger for long as he quickly spat the blood out and onto the wooden shards on the wolf’s chest. He angrily shoved the wolf off of him, hitting the ground like a sack of cement as he irritatedly shoved the wolf’s motionless leg off his lap. He splayed his arms out to his side as he tried to catch his breath, relief washing over him as he stared up into the night sky. His back continued to throb and his head felt like it had been spinning for hours as the cold night air cooled the blood sticking to his face.

“WE’RE COMIN’ LEVI!” A country accent bellowed as several pairs of hoofsteps flying down the hill followed. He tiredly rolled his head over to look at the bottom of the hill, a smile growing on his face as he saw the ragtag group of ponies he had just saved run down the hill after him.

The group of seven stood in front of the tall wooden double doors that blocked the entrance to the castle. In matte black rusty metal, two alicorns reared high in the air with their wings flared and their heads pointed towards each other with there horns meeting in the center of the door. The design looked intricately made like a lot of love and passion was poured into it. The years it sat there however weren’t so kind, allowing the rust colored with a brown and white amalgamation of color like the color of vomit to infect it. The wooden door it was stuck to was in better shape than the metal having withstood the test of time after who knows how many years, still standing tall and opposing anyone who stood in front of it.

The group looked at the door nervously as they all exchanged glances, suddenly feeling tense about the face of entering the menacing looking castle. Levi took a close look at the rest of the castle in awe, seeing the coal black bricks that formed the wall and the large holes in them. Towers that looked like they used to scrape the sky now toppled over in a colossal wreck, laying in ruin starkly, immensely different from the tall and imposing form they once had. The grass surrounding them lacked life, every blade wilted and dead and painted the lawn a gloomy brown color as the only thing green were the pesky weeds which poked out from in between the rocks of the path they stood on.

Twilight’s horn glowed brightly as she lit the area around her, walking towards the door with the flashlight embedded in her head and placed her hoof on the door. She pushed as hard as she could as the door refused to even budge, instead squeaking as it scraped along the side of the opposite door. Her light died as she took a hold of the door with her magic, forming a purple ring around the tall door, and pushed with all of her might on the door. A few seconds later, the door finally was thrusted open by the unicorn’s magic as dust rained down from the doorway, creating a sullen grey shower in front of them. She pushed open the other door as another grey shower of dust accumulating for years fell from the doorway once again.

The only thing inside they could see was darkness. Vague outlines of pony shaped armor stands stood against the walls of the room, the moonlight from the outside shining in reflected off the years old armor back into their faces. The moonlight granted their eyes access to see the old moth eaten cherry red carpet that ran from the doorway all the way across the floor into the darkness. A quiet, fearful squeak escaped Fluttershy as she and the rest of the group timidly stepped inside the castle. There hooves made contact with the scratchy old carpet, poking them and causing Rarity to lift her hoof up and look down at the carpet with a disgusted look.

“Oh my!” She proclaimed loudly and dramatically, her voice echoing throughout the seemingly very large room, “This place is filthy!”

Levi grunted in annoyance at the white unicorn's behavior, “Who cares!” he exclaimed back at her, surprising not only the unicorn but the rest of the ponies as well. “We gotta find these Elements and stop Nightmare before it’s too late!”

“Twi,” Her purple eyes went from squinting into the dark to Levi, “Give us some light would ya?”

The unicorn obliged, closing her eyes in concentration as her horn began to glow. The light went from dim and barely noticeable but bursting with gleam as her face scrunched with effort. The entire room was illuminated, their eyes immediately studying every nook and cranny they could see. The cherry red carpet ran from where they stood all the way and up a staircase at the end of the long corridor, covering the old stone steps and into a shadowy hallway atop the small staircase. The railings were chipped and vines crept their way up and covered it almost completely. Vines slithered up the walls and met together in the center of the ceiling above like green thorny snakes.

“Wow..” Levi took a few more steps forward onto the carpet as it crunched underneath his feet with every step like no one stepped foot in there in years. Judging by its appearance, he was probably right. The ponies followed, Rarity begrudgingly walking alongside him on the carpet as her face contorted in disgust, Rainbow Dash hovered above them like her usual self. Twilight felt chills run through her body as her hooves touched the icey cold stone floor, a slight shiver came over her as she walked. Twilight led the group a foot or so in front of them, her horn being the only thing expelling the darkness that crept around every corner.

BAM!

The group jumped in fright as the booming noise echoed through the room and swept their heads around in a panic with wide eyes. To there shock, the tall wooden doors were slammed shut and a blue sparkling aura surrounded the border of the door. The aura glowed through the darkness which more or less covered it, only allowing the outline of the ponies plated to the door to be seen. Levi dashed into the darkness and gripped the freezing cold metal handle and pulled as hard as he could. Not a budge. He pushed as hard as he could. Same result. He rammed his shoulder straight into it and used all of his body weight to push against the door with all of his might. Nothing.

“Fuck!” The sound of his foot colliding with the door echoed off the walls as it rattled from the impact. He let his forehead fall onto the sub zero metal plate of the alicorn as he let out a loud sigh.

“We’re trapped!” Levi exclaimed angrily, resisting the urge to kick the door again in frustration. To make sure, Twilight’s light vanished as she used her magic to pull on the door just like she’d done before, shutting her eyes tight in effort the same way.

“There’s no turning back now” Said the unicorn, “Damn straight” Levi added, lightly pounding the door as he turned around and began his crunchy walk back towards the stairs. “We gotta get this son of a bitch” Levi muttered to himself as the group followed he and Twilight’s lead one step at a time.

Twilight’s horn illuminated the long dark corridor, revealing more pony shaped armor stands and stained glass windows, some broken and some remained intact. The cold wind from the outside howled as it traveled in through the broken window, making the temperature inside even more unbearable. The carpet was a deep purple color but still as crunchy and tattered as its cherry red counterpart. As they walked further and the light brightened every nook and cranny of the hallway, it revealed vines had taken over the once perfectly built brick walls and the banners that hung were now torn and tattered. Some black pots and vases, some broken, some not, stood up against the walls as they passed them. Some were a plain black color and some were a faded white color with some spots showing the original stone grey color of the vase before it was painted.

One of the pots caught Levi’s attention as they moved. On the side of it was a black alicorn with a long horn, very similar to Celestia and Nightmare Moon’s, and was rearing high into the air and kicking her hooves. Some of the paint had faded and chipped away making it look like an ancient artifact you’d see in a museum. Levi brushed his fingers over the oddly smooth golden armor on one of the armor stands as they passed them, relishing the satisfying yet cold, stinging sensation of the smooth armor against his fingertip.

They turned the corner as Twilight’s horn expelled the darkness occupying it, revealing more stained glass windows and armor stands scattered against the walls. A few feet down the hall and on there right was a matte black door. The group’s interest was piqued at the sight and, not having any idea where the elements may be, they decided to check out the room to see what they could find. The group crowded around the door as Levi attempted the doorknob, twisting it and finding resistance, and moved back a few steps to kick down the door like it was second nature. As his back was pressed up against the window behind him and his foot hoisted in the air, Rainbow suddenly zipped in front of the door and landed a heavy buck kick right square in the middle.

The door blew open and straight off its hinges, flying and eventually clattered onto the ground a few feet from the doorway. Levi looked up at the pegasus in surprise and so did everyone else as she folded her wings to her side and landed back on the ground. Noticing all the attention, she flipped her mane back dramatically and said proudly, “You’re welcome”. The group grinned at her as they all filed into the room, light exploding and casting away the dark almost instantly.

Levi began to cough as some of the dust swirling around in the air was inhaled into his lungs, looking around with teary eyes at what was inside of the dark and dank room. Many shelves full of books caked with dust lined the walls as a few paintings were on the floor and leaning against one of the bookshelves. The floor was a deep purple rug and was not as crunchy as the one in the hallway but was still tattered and full of holes from moths.

The group all split up in the room with each of them going off to look at something separately with Levi being drawn to the painting that was flipped over and leaning against the bookshelf like it was calling out to him to reveal what it was hiding. His curiosity only grew as he approached the painting, gently taking it in his hands as he lifted it from where it leaned against the shelf. He stood up fully as he flipped the frame around in his hands, surprise flooded his face almost immediately. In the center of the old yellowed paper held in place by an ancient looking wooden frame was a painting of a stone grey pony with his head pointed at the ground. The pony left only the tip of his muzzle and the lower part of his face visible, with the rest being hidden by the hood of his black cloak which swallowed his skull in its fabric. He was walking on a dark brown dirt path with walls of tall spruce trees on either side of him. In his hand was a cast iron bell he held in the air in front of him as he moved along, the rattle inside looked as if it was stopped in the middle of a swing. A light fog pooled at his hooves and covered the ground around him, barely allowing Levi to see the dirt that he stood on.

As Levi eyed the aged looking painting, he felt an indescribable dread as he looked at it, feeling like the picture held some kind of curse and whoever looked at it was inflicted with it. A concoction of negative emotions brewed in his heart as his eyes took in every detail from the painting. It was hard to describe what Levi was feeling, a sense of impending doom, the threat of danger looming over him, and the sudden cold breeze that wisped right against the nape of his neck. Hairs shot up on the back of his neck which was cold to the touch, he whipped his head around with wide eyes, thinking he could see whoever or whatever had just done that to him. The only thing he saw were the confused eyes of a certain white unicorn, rummaging through an old wooden chest against the wall opposite of him.

“Are you alright darling?” Asked Rarity as she raised an eyebrow.

It took a few seconds for Levi to respond as he was snapped out of the trance he was being sucked into, deep in thought about what had just happened, “Y-Yeah..just a little spooked”

Rarity let out a short laugh before replying, “I don’t blame you at all darling, not one bit,” her horn glowed a fluorescent light blue as she lifted up a broken sword handle from inside of the dust ridden chest, squinting and puckering her lips as she studied the handle, turning it around in all directions like she was analyzing a globe.

After their short interaction, Levi turned his head back around and shifted his attention back to the cloaked pony on the painting, now held with barely shaking hands. He noticed something right under the pony, words painted in a rich black color in between two larger than usual quotation marks. He squinted as he had struggled to read the quote written in a very dramatic cursive, the tip of each letter meeting one another like pumpkins connecting stems, and making the words look like an overall garbled up mess.

‘The stallion dressed in black..the reaper of Equestria..the toller of the bell..he goes by many names. When you hear his bell chime and his fog comes to greet you..your time is up and your debt is paid…’

The sense of something terrible about to happen felt like it was breathing down his neck after he was finished reading, like he had summoned some sort of entity or completed a ritual. Whatever the case, Levi wanted nothing more but to leave the room and act like this “Reaper of Equestria” never even existed. After a deep, heavy breath, the man let the painting drop and clatter to the floor. All of the attention in the room was directed onto him in that moment like a spotlight suddenly shone onto him. He could feel their eyes burning into the back of his head but he couldn’t care less, the only thing he could do was look down at the page laying face down on the rug where it belonged.

“Levi?” Fluttershy’s soft voice cut in through Levi’s thoughts like a sword, gaining the attention of the man. He looked into her soft blue eyes that calmed his worries down like a lullaby to a baby, a very soothing lullaby and a very soothing voice spoke to him after. “What’s wrong?”

“N-Nothing..don’t worry about it Flutters..” He lied, his voice lowering down significantly from a regular speaking voice to a low hushed tone. His eyes broke off from Fluttershy’s and back to the picture on the ground, glaring maliciously at it as if it had wronged him in the worst way. In his mind, it did. The sense of doom and dread that followed the moment he laid eyes on the bell wielding pony rested in the back of his mind and refused to leave. ‘What ARE you!’ He thought angrily as his eyebrows furrowed.

“Uhm..Levi-” “I think we should leave” her yellow supportive hoof stopped mid air and returned to the ground at his sudden interruption, her head following closely as she lowered it.

“Agreed,” Twilight chimed, “There’s nothing useful here”

The rest of the group nodded at the unicorn as they all began to file out of the door one by one with Twilight being the last one out, allowing the room to plunge into darkness the moment she wasn’t in there. As Levi walked behind Twilight as she led the group through the castle corridor, he looked back at the sullen and gloomy room that now lacked not even a hint of light or life. Just an empty hollow room filled with nothing but darkness and the awful painting of Equestrias grim reaper. The sense of an impending disaster still followed him as he sauntered through the hall, imposing and looking down upon him like an insignificant creature and felt as if he was burning holes into the back of his head with its stare. Levi didn’t bother to turn around and confront whatever was doing this to him knowing good and well no one was gonna be there. He battled with himself internally on whether or not what he was experiencing was just his mind playing tricks on him or if it’s something that he should be concerned about in the least bit.

Nonetheless, Levi still turned his head halfway around and glared into the darkness that crept behind him with every step they took. As he looked daggers into the abyss of black behind him, he could’ve sworn he saw a figure standing there for a split second. The same black cloak. The same stone grey coat. The same menacing bell held in his hand. Before Levi could even comprehend what he saw, it was gone. He turned his head back around and faced in front of him as he reached under his collar and rubbed the back of his neck, being taken aback by the ice cold feeling on his fingertips and the standing hairs on his nape brushing against them.

Minutes? Hours? The group lost track of time during their monotonous walk around the colossal and dark castle, hoping that eventually they’d turn a corner and be face to face with the Elements of Harmony. However, no matter how much they hoped, the only thing they were met with was the disgusting crunch of the carpet and another corridor to trudge through. They all sounded like they were walking on a pile of dry spaghetti as they walked begrudgingly with the only thing keeping them determined and motivated was the thought of defeating Nightmare Moon and saving Equestria. Levi kept his feet moving despite how sore they were and how much they ached with each step but he knew this had to be done, there was no other way besides this one. He went through too much to turn back now.

A small groan of frustration escaped Rainbow as she hovered above them, rolling her eyes as she did so and complaining “Ugh Twilight! How much longer!”

“I don’t know Rainbow,” she answered with a hint of annoyance hidden in her voice, “The same thing I told you the other five times you asked me”

“I know but still! This is booooring” she replied, drawing out the ‘o’ in boring for dramatic effect.

Levi sighed out of annoyance, the constant walking, his sore feet, and the sound of crunching under him all combined for a hurricane of negative emotions to form inside of him. He glanced over at one of the many broken windows he and the group had passed and stared out into the infinitely large night sky, wishing he could be somewhere else, be free from this. Not have to deal with any prophecies, not have to deal with any evil alicorns, just be somewhere with Alan. Be home. But he knew those days were long gone and this is the way it is now, but he also knew Nightmare Moon wouldn’t last forever. He was gonna make sure of that. He closed his eyes as he walked and took a deep breath before he prayed for some sort of clue or something that would point them in the right direction would just pop out in front of them. Like he was doing for however long they were walking for, he watched forward intently as Twilight’s horn lit up the dark sessions of the hall they were walking in. He kept his eyes peeled for anything he could see in the newly lit up area. But, just like every other time he did it, he never saw anything of interest or anything at all for that matter. That was until Twilight’s light expelled the darkness at the very end of the corridor they were walking through and his heart almost jumped out of his chest at what he saw. A velvety red carpet running up a small set of stone stairs and, unlike the others they saw, the carpet looked relatively well. Not a complete mess full of holes like the rugs they’ve seen previously.

While overjoyed that he found something that’s not just another unwanted dark and gloomy hall, he felt an odd sense of suspicion the more he looked at it. The devil red rug with inky black edges made Levi feel like it was too good to be true. Given how decrepit the carpets they found were that have seemingly been there for years, maybe decades, it was incredibly out of the ordinary for this almost perfect mat to be there. To add to the apprehensive feeling boiling inside of Levi, the rails of the stone steps were perfect. There wasn’t a single blemish or sign of wearing down on them, it was almost like they were built just minutes before they arrived. His joy was quickly overcome by these feelings of doubt and to top it all off, sitting atop the stairs was a maroon door, but not a regular door you’d see in a castle but a door you’d see at the front of someone's house.

He knew clear as day that something wasn’t right with this sudden miracle that jumped out in front of them but judging by the relieved smiles on the other ponies faces, they were not feeling the same way.

“Finally!” Rainbow’s raspy voice exclaimed, happy they finally found something that wasn’t just another long and dark passageway. Levi on the other hand was the complete opposite, feeling more and more anxious by the second with the sense of impending doom still lingering over him not making it any better. Twilight grinned as she led the rest of the ponies to the stairs, their footsteps going from the unpleasant crunching sound to a more comfortable sound of walking on the soft rug.

Begrudgingly, Levi followed the ponies and lagged behind as he traveled up the steps encompassed by the carpet. His suspicions were cemented even further as his foot made contact with the pulpous rug under him. It felt like he was walking on a cloud unlike any carpet he had ever seen before. It didn’t even feel real for the man, it made him feel he was in some sort of dream and that this carpet was just a part of it. He glanced over at the rail and placed his hand on, running it up and down and relishing in the flawless smoothness like he was rubbing a slab of marble. He noticed the stone reflecting the moonlight shining through one of the cracks in the tall windows not that far from it like a mirror. As he looked down at the fragment of the step not covered by the unrealistic feeling rug, he noticed the same thing happen with it, the moonlight reflecting off and back into his uneasy green eyes. Not only was the light being reflected, he could see himself in the wedge of the step as well, noticing how unkempt and terrible he looked.

His hair was a matted and sweaty mess. The second button below his top button was ripped, revealing more of his white t-shirt stained lime green from the blood of the ravenous wolf. His once perfect looking sleeve roll now looked like a clutter of royal blue wrinkles. His face had a dry streak of blood on it that crossed the bridge of his nose and the upper left of his forehead. His jeans were covered in large patches of dirt and a single leaf stuck to his thigh, immediately sweeping it away the second he saw it. He felt slightly ashamed at his appearance, usually he liked to keep himself looking presentable at all times. Nowhere near this.

He shifted his eyes from his disheveled appearance on the stair to the group standing atop the staircase. He met them there and he saw Twilight using her magic to open the door but failing despite how much effort she put into it. He looked over at Rainbow and could see in her eyes how eager she was to blow down the door like there was no tomorrow, waiting for the signal from Twilight for Rainbow to go all in at the wooden entrance.

She twisted the golden doorknob back and forth and back and forth and pushed it again and again. She tried pulling it as hard as she could. Nothing. The door wouldn’t budge. Levi excused his way through the group that was formed around them and took a crack at the door. Twisting it yielded nothing. Pushing it. Pulling it. Nothing. Twilight looked over at the eager pegasus and sensed what the goofy grin on her face was suggesting.

Twilight sighed before she said “Go ahead Rainbow”

Her grin grew wider as she began to hover in the air and floated over to the door, turning around and positioning her back legs to send the door to kingdom come. She cocked them back and sent them hard into the center of the wood.

BAM!

The door gave in immediately and flew open from the rainbow haired ponies kick, hitting the stone wall beside it loudly as the doorknob struck it from the swing. To add to Levi’s uneasiness, no grey shower of dust rained down from the doorway like the door they had broken into just minutes before. And weirdly enough, the pegasus’ kick didn’t break it off its hinges, not even leaving a mark or a scratch at the impact zone. The thick dusk inside the long and wide corridor seemed to stare back at Levi as he gazed into it, burning holes into his retinas with its menacing look. The moonlight from the perfectly intact windows inside the hall glowed into the room, casting a brilliant white silvery glow into the otherwise completely lightless room. The moonlight allowed the man to see another similarly colored maroon door at the very end of the passageway and a large doorway in the right wall.

Levi decided before any of them could go in there that he should voice his concerns about the door, hoping some of them would listen and understand. “I don’t have a good feeling about this” the sudden entry of his voice into the usually quiet atmosphere gained their attention.

“Why not?” Twilight questioned.

“I mean look at it,” he motioned his soiled hand to the newly opened door “This isn’t a door you’d see in a castle. This is something at somebody’s house, something’s wrong here..I can feel it”

Twilight gave him an understanding look before she replied “I agree, but look around Levi, what choice do we have?”

Taking her words into consideration, he looked around at the area they all stood in. The old, jet black walls claimed by vines that mocked them, the chipped stained glass that allowed some light into the gloomy castle, and the stomach-turning carpet. The one thing he couldn’t find was a choice, the one they didn’t have, the only choice they had was the one standing in front of them.

“You're right,” Levi responded with a sigh, rubbing his eyes with his index and thumb. “You wanna go first then Twi?”

The lilac unicorn gave him a small nod as her horn continued to emit the bright light like a star protruding from her forehead. Rainbow however decided to lead the walk into the hall before her to let her confidence shine. The ponies formed a single file line that ran down the stairs with Levi standing begrudgingly at the bottom step, fearing the worst for what could happen inside but knowing that they had no other option. Nightmare Moon had to be stopped and fast. He heard the faint sound of Rainbow’s hooves landing softly on the rug as she descended from the air. Her soft trotting became more audible as her hooves moved from the soft carpet to the cold stone floor of the corridor. Twilight followed closely behind her and just as she was millimeters away from stepping inside, she was abruptly met face to face with the door.

BAM!

The maroon door slammed shut right in her face. The sound boomed through the long and empty hall behind them as they all jumped in surprise and fright. All of his suspicions were confirmed as his heart sank to the pit of his stomach as it filled with worry. He moved away from the line and dashed up the stairs three at a time and practically slammed his body against the maroon wood. He whipped his head down and grabbed the doorknob aggressively and twisted and turned like his life depended on it, realistically, Rainbow’s life most likely did. When that didn’t work, he pushed the door with all of his might and pulled it the same way as beads of sweat began to form on his brow.

“FUCK!” he yelled as he punched the door. Small maroon colored wooden shards flew from the impact zone and landed next to his feet. Levi looked like he had lost his mind from the ponies point of view with Twilight jumping again at the sound of his fist crashing into the wood. One pony however wasn’t caught off guard by the man's behavior, instead, choosing to take action and stop him before he hurt himself any more.

Levi felt something bite down on the back of his waistband, putting deep teeth marks on his belt and yanking him back. The seemingly strong pony sent Levi flying backwards and slamming back first on the stone railing that lined the right and left side of them. His nape struck the dull edge of the top of the rails and, despite how blunt it was, it still sent lightning bolts of pain down his spine. He let out a loud yelp as he threw his hand to the back of his neck, letting a small groan of pain escape him afterwards.

“Woah Nelly!” He heard a strong country accent speak, a very familiar country accent. He looked up and was met with a pair of emerald eyes looking down on him with a concerned look.

“What has gotten into ya Levi? What’s the matter?” She asked, the sound of Twilight using her magic to push and pull on the door serving as background noise for her words.

“Rainbow’s in trouble!” He exclaimed in a panic, “We gotta help her! We gotta get in there!”

He put his hand on the shiny stone under him and pushed himself up off the ground, immediately regretting his choice the second his rear left the floor. Just like how it felt when his back hit that building days prior, his back stung like a thousand hornets as he made an effort to stand. He sucked in a large gulp of air and his jaw clenched as he let himself fall back to the ground. Levi looked behind the blonde pony and watched anxiously as Twilight and Rarity both struggled to open the door, their grunts and moans of effort filled his ears. He let his head fall back and hit the top of the stone railing. His mind swirled like a tornado of what could happen to Dash inside of that corridor. What could Nightmare Moon have in store for the pegasus? Levi couldn’t stand thinking about it. Nightmare’s distinct and chilling cackle echoed in the back of his mind like a bad memory and the image of the unicorn plastered onto the moon was burned into his memory.

‘Please…let her be okay…’

Chapter 12: Demons of the night

Gary’s heart ceased. His eyes went wide. For a split second, Gary regretted ever crossing the man to begin with. Or whatever Levi was. Man, God, some otherworldly being, there was no way Levi was a regular human. Not anymore at least. The very instant his hands trailing with a white flame from his fingertips hit the ground, an ear-splitting, skull crushing boom shook the corridor. It was like God’s wrath rained down on the earth, shaking Equestria to its very core. A ring of pearl white flame swelled around him and flew out, singeing a coal black ring on everything around him. The walls and pillars around them trembled like a man in freezing cold, wobbling and threatening to fall from where they stood. Chandeliers dropped from the ceiling and crashed against the ground, its once lit candles providing a sense of calm to the hall now dead once again, their freshly melted wax creating lines on the floor as they rolled. The one who suffered most from the blast was Gary, the man who had caused the eruption in the first place.

He went from standing tall and imposing on his feet one moment to smashing barbarically into a wall like a hammer to a nail. His gun flew from his hand and followed him all the way back until he struck the wall headfirst with a sickening crunch like dry spaghetti being cracked. An apple red splatter adorned the wall like someone had been shot right in front of it but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Gary went from intimidating with Levi and Rainbow’s lives gripped tight in his hands, to dead on the floor, where he belonged. Hell. He slid down and landed on his rear slouched low against the wall. His head continued to drip and paint the wall with his viscera like an open can of soup. His jaw hung slack like a man in the gallows. His head was slumped over to the right and his amber eyes, once piercing your soul like a spear, now dead and lifeless. Cold as ice as they remained open and glassy with a stare that stretched for miles.

Gary’s GMC, his beloved truck that he loved like it was his son, paid the price exactly like its owner did. The vehicle was mercilessly thrown in the air and collided with the wall on its right roof first. The car completely crushed from the roof almost all the way to the bottom like it was forced through a compactor. Rainbow had shut her eyes just in time to shield her eyes from the ring of fire which flew at her at mach speed, fortunately barely missing her and flying just a few inches above her, leaving a few of her cyan hairs burned in its wake. She winced at the sharp, penetrating sound of the windows and windshield of the truck being crushed relentlessly. She watched as shards of glass big and small, sharp and dull, rain down onto the floor under the destroyed carcass of the GMC. She watched the covers of the headlights be completely wiped from existence, leaving nothing behind but a hollow destroyed socket where a powerful lightbulb once sat. The exoskeleton of the car became nothing more than a wrinkled desecrated mess of metal that formed together to become one hunk of destruction. The tires of the car were the only thing spared from the ruination, sitting helplessly as the rest of the car was shattered to bits and pieces.

The car scraped against the wall and created a shower of sparks as it slid down and landed on the floor with the obliterated roof against the wall. Multiple streams of smoke rose through the cracks in the metal of what remained of the hood. The engine made little to no sound, only smoked to remind Rainbow barely hanging onto life. She felt satisfied that the car used to imprison her, while only for a short time, was now nothing more than a bad memory. Looking at the wrecked blight of what was once a shiny GMC filled her with relief that the monster who took her couldn’t hurt anyone again.

Levi’s body trembled uncontrollably as he remained on his hands and knees on the cold floor, now with two deep craters holding his miraculously fine hands decorating it. His heart palpitated as his lungs screamed for air, not satisfied enough with the painfully deep breaths he was sucking through his esophagus. Sweat ran down his forehead like a derby, each bullet racing to see which one could get to the bottom first. However, none of them did, as Levi reached an almost ungovernable hand slowly and with effort to swipe the back of it across his forehead. He allowed it to fall back into the bowls in the stone he had unprecedentedly created, his palms finding an odd sense of comfort in the small pebbles and shards of rock that dug into them. The god-like almost seraphic feeling that coursed through his veins left just as quickly as it entered, leaving Levi to feel the effects of exerting..whatever he had exerted out of him.

His entire body, every last inch, was burning with an almost searing pain. The armpits and back section of his shirt dampened with sweat in the blink of an eye. His bones felt like they were going to snap in two with one wrong move. His muscles begged for mercy from the unrelenting pain, but mercy never came, leaving them to pulsate in agony as the wake from the shockwave lingered. Above every other pain and aliment he was experiencing, nothing was more unbearable than the pain ravaging his brain like an aggressive cancer. It throbbed and drummed with an intense pain like he had been shot in the head more times than he could count. As a matter of fact, he’d rather be shot in the head than deal with this unyielding pain any longer, but he knew he couldn’t. All he could do was sit there and grit his teeth as he recovered from whatever godly power he had unleashed on everything around him.

After what felt like hours of Rainbow squirming in her restraints and Levi taking deep, body-wracking breaths, he decided to break the awful silence that persisted after the almost deafening sound. “Rainb-” He immediately regretted his choice as his lungs felt like they were on fire the second his words left his mouth. The flame that roared in his chest traveled all the way up his throat and left his mouth in the form of a raw, painful coughing fit. Crimson dots painted the floor under him as they escaped the confines of his mouth.

“Rainb-” Another coughing fit added to the growing pool of red below him, “Rainbow!” he finally managed to yell in a raspy, gravely voice after several agonizing seconds. A muffled shout was the only response he received, turning his head causing waves of pain to lay waste to his brain and neck. His bloodshot and blurry eyes met Rainbow’s as she writhed and wriggled on the ground helplessly, the same pleading look in her eyes that she did at the very beginning.

He knew he had to help her. He wanted to. Every bone in his body cheered him on trying to get him to stand, but his screaming nerves didn’t allow it. He felt tears pricking his eyes from the sheer amount of torture the godly feeling abandoned him with. As much as he dreaded the concept of standing and going over to help Rainbow despite how much he wanted to, he needed to do it. He didn’t kill a man for no reason after all.

His fingers slowly scraped against the bottom of the craters he created and formed a first, digging his knuckles into the stone and shutting his eyes tight as he mentally prepared himself for what he was about to do. As he sucked in one last deep breath and gritted his teeth, he used all of the strength he had left to push himself off the ground. His heart began to slam in his chest like a snare drum as his skeleton cried out in agony, begging for him to go back down and relieve himself of this pain, but Levi knew he couldn’t. Rainbow was counting on him, and he could not let her down. He had gone through too much pain to save her and he wasn’t gonna stop now. Not like this. His arms that were as fragile as brittle twigs shook like wiggling jelly as he continued to push up the weight of his pain-stricken body. A guttural scream escaped his lungs, causing even more almost unbearable pain to erupt in his throat and lungs like a volcano. No word in the English language couldn’t describe what he was feeling right now. His nerves felt as though they were being scorched relentlessly with a blowtorch. His bones felt like he had been brutally assaulted with a sledgehammer and barely made it out alive. Levi wanted to die, for someone to relieve him of this pain, but he saw no end in sight.

Nonetheless, he continued his callous struggle to stand, and managed to slip one foot underneath him. With all of the remaining strength in his body that wasn’t sapped out of him from the pain, he pushed himself off the ground with his leg wobbling like it's never wobbled before. The pain didn’t end but instead persisted. Just as Levi thought his suffering couldn’t get any worse, it somehow managed to get worse. After Levi was able to stand on his own two shaky feet connected to trembling legs, he felt a small amount of the pain rocketing through his body dissolve. He stood there still for what felt like hours, mustering up the courage to take a step fearing he might fall and the process would start all the way back over. Not to mention the risk of his bones shattering to dust the second they hit the floor, while realistically it was unlikely, he didn’t wanna take the chance of worsening his already awful situation.

He turned his quivering body over to face the tied and gagged pegasus, bravely moving his foot a full step in front of him and gently laid it on the ground before he put his weight down onto him. Lightning bolts of pain shot through his leg, his teeth gritted hard in response. His body screamed for him to stop, begging him to just fall back down to the ground where the pain was less severe. Determination drowned out the intrusive demands, being the only light he could see at the end of the dark tunnel full of agony. He repeated the process. Placing his foot flat on the ground. Biting the bullet as he put pressure down onto it and moved forward. So on and so forth. He stopped inches away from Rainbow Dash who looked up at him with a pleading look in her eyes. Slowly, he fought through the pain like a soldier as he bent down on one knee, reaching his tremulous arm behind him and slipping his fingers into the flap of his back pocket. His hand reappeared with his digits wrapped around his matte black switchblade.

The blade shot out like an arrow out of a crossbow with a satisfying shink! He reached down and grabbed a hold of the ropes which restricted her hooves unforgivingly, gently pushing her wing out of the way before lowering the blade down under it. He moved it back and forth in a sawing motion on the old rope that looked like it was pulled straight off a well. The several much smaller ropes that threaded like two snakes weaving in and out of each other's paths stood no match for his blade. After a few more seconds of the pain-inducing severing, Rainbow’s hooves were finally free from the constraints they were once forced into. A fresh, raw apple red ring rang around each of her back hooves, the threads creating a design into her skin like a french braid.

The sound of the last of her binds snapping apart delighted the rainbow haired pony’s ears as they went from drooped against her head to pricked up. Before Rainbow could, Levi’s hand jumped to the duct tape fastened strongly over her features and grabbed the corner that folded out like a dog eared page. Like a band-aid, the man ripped the white tarp-like material from her mouth, much to the displeasure of her senses. Rainbow saw a deal of her cyan hairs that once belonged to the skin around her mouth, now stolen property of the duct tape. Her savior's green eyes softened as he looked into her magenta ones, not knowing how to express how thankful she was for the hoops he jumped through to save her. The whole time she was watching Levi and Gary fight like starving lions over the last food in the prairie, she couldn’t help but feel somewhat appreciated by his actions. Granted, she had wonderful friends in Ponyville that have helped her out and stuck by her side through thick and thin. However, this was the most dedication to helping someone she had ever seen from one of her friends. Even another pony in general. Levi was getting beaten, slammed, a gun pressed against his head, all for one sole purpose. To save her. She couldn’t help but smile at that.

“R-Rainbow! Are you okay!” Levi exclaimed, taking her face in his hands and feeling her soft mane envelop his fingertips. She was caught off guard by the sudden touch but, weirdly enough, found some comfort from his warm palms pressing against her cheeks. She stared into his eyes with a relieved and grateful look, hoping he’d notice her wordless sign of gratitude and accept it. Judging by the small grin that began to form from the corner of his lips, he had received it fully. She snapped out of her trance and almost forgot the man was expecting a response from her.

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine,” She stammered, “Are you okay?” It was a great question considering the treatment Gary gave the man just meer minutes before this. A dark purple blotch stained his otherwise blemishless cheek. His eyes, while soft as he gazed into Rainbow’s, were tired and exhausted. It was like years had passed since he had ever made eye contact with her, she felt like she was looking at a stranger for a brief moment. His green eyes were usually vibrant and full of energy, ready to do whatever task or problem was thrown in front of him. Now, he had tackled the biggest problem he had faced in Equestria up to that point, and he looked like he’d have to hibernate for like for the energy he once had to replenish.

“Mostly,” He responded, continuing to speak despite the strong pain in his teeth every time they collided when he spoke telling him the contrary. “Listen to me Rainbow,” he continued, gently stroking her soft cheek with his thumb reassuringly. He left a barely noticeable red belt on her cyan coat, feeling disgusted that the demon’s blood still lingered on him like it was a parasite. To Levi, it was exactly that. “Don’t tell Twilight what you saw, alright? As a matter of fact, don’t tell anyone without asking me okay? I don’t want everyone knowing about this”

“Why not?”

“Just..don’t, alright? Can you do that?”

Rainbow simply nodded in response. The comfy warmth of his hand left her cheek, leaving her feeling a sense of want for his touch, something she never thought she’d feel in a million years towards Levi. Or any human for that matter, not like she had met any humans before him.

Levi stood up with less pain than last time and really took the time to look around the room at the mess he made with his…whatever he did was called. His eyes wandered over the coal black band that was burned into every wall around them, amazed how it continued to smoke and sizzle despite it being almost minutes since the blast. However, there was one except for the black band that stained the bricks around them, and it was the one where Gary’s corpse rested against. Levi’s face went from normal and emotionless, to a fierce scowl with a deep rooted resentment hidden behind his eyes.

On the center of his shirt in the center of his torso was the dark and smoking circle that blemished the walls to his left and right, him being the only thing sparing the bricks he smashed into from the same fate. It was burned completely down to his raw and slightly cooked flesh. His turquoise button down shirt and white tank didn’t stand a chance against the wrath of the white fire. The sickly sweet smell of roasted flesh awakened and invaded his nostrils as he continued to glare daggers at the black haired man’s cold dead eyes. The amber color in his irises dulled ever so slightly, serving as a reminder for Levi that Gary was in fact dead. Permanently this time. For the first time in his life, he was glad that someone had died. People in his life, friends and family alike, have come and gone. Some died tragic sudden deaths right in front of his eyes. Some left the land of the living in more peaceful ways. Gary’s demise was the furthest thing from peaceful, despite how wrong it seemed, Levi liked it like that. A violent end to an equally violent man, very fitting.

BANG! BANG!

Levi and Rainbow’s eyes snapped on to the coal black double doors at the end of the hallway where the thunderous pounding came from, watching as the wood was pushed inwards with every blow from the other side. The sound echoed through the colossal corridor and bounced off the walls stained with the ring of ash.

“LEVI!” A muffled voice screamed from the opposite side of the coal black wood, a voice that belonged to a particular unicorn. Levi’s legs prepared to rush towards the door like his life depended on it, but before he had the chance, the very same doors blew open with a surprisingly strong force. The entrance exploded agape, slamming against the stone walls next to it and chipping the rock that formed the bricks, a very faint sound of shards of foundation hitting the ground followed. Standing in the now expanded doorway stood the ragtag group of ponies, each of them with a different level of relief painting their faces, but none more so than Twilight. Her face was decorated with a look of solace that drowned out the rest of her friend’s mugs. Ever since she heard the boom and then the dreadful silence that came after, excluding the occasional worrisome howl of pain, she assumed the absolute worst. She couldn’t imagine the horror Nightmare Moon was putting Levi and Rainbow through, but when the door came flying open, all of her worries washed out of her and in its place was a very comforting feeling of relief that flowed through her body. In her peripheral vision, she saw the bloodied and burned corpse of Gary slouched against the wall that made her stomach churn and the wrecked ruins of what was once a car leaning against the wall. She felt a faint sense of confusion upon seeing the complicated contraption, her eyes studying each individual pipe and part that made the machine what it was. It was hard to decipher what certain parts were. Their present twisted and mangled states made it almost impossible to even have an idea of what it used to be. However, Twilight had all the time in the world to analyze it to her heart's content. Right now, the only thing she had to worry about was reuniting with her friend after what felt like hours of being separated. Levi felt a smile form on his features as he heard Twilight's hooves clicking against the ground as she ran, finally together at last.

CRACK!

CRACK!

CRASH!

A jet black door exploded inward and broke clean from its hinges as they clinged against the ground like silverware. The wood struck the ground loudly as a cloud of dust attacked their senses, thrusting the group into a relentless coughing fit. When the smoke cleared and granted their eye access to the room, a wave of relief washed over them at the marvelous sight that sat in the dead center of the room. A decent sized pyramid sat in between two stone discs, sat in the middle of the room. A stone pedestal with a ring of stone in the middle of the pedestal with a design on it that looked like a snake moving in a rectangular pattern rested on top of the pinnacle stone disc. On top of it sat a large, cracked stone ball with a thick and tangled mess of brush and vine sitting on top of it like a messy head of hair. Long, small, paper thin branches with small leaves sprouting from the wood grew from the bottom of the pedestal and snaked their way all the way to the top of the stone ball, getting lost in the maze of foliage resting atop the stone sphere. Branching off from the pedestal the ball sat on were seven long and small arms that extended in every direction that stretched from above and below the intricately crafted ring of stone. Connected to the end of each arm was a normal sized stone plate where five sedentary stone balls that were perfect in shape and were barely bigger than a soccer ball rested in each of them. Each of the balls had a unique shape chiseled into the front, a diamond with rigid edges, a circle with sharp corners like it was carved out of a block of gemstone, and a perfect triangle were just to name a few.

Levi’s eyes grew wide in awe at the very unique looking structure, his amazement only growing as they all filed in through the doorway to get a better view of the foundation.

“Woah..” Breathed Rarity in astonishment as she gazed upon the work of art in front of her. Despite her very high standards about what is considered good and bad, the white unicorn thought the stone construction was stupendous.

The room the edifice of stone sat in could barely even be considered a room, it was more of a corridor that sat in ruins with the entire roof missing like it had been ripped off viciously, taking chunks of the top of the walls with it. The pillars were cracked and looked significantly older than the ones in the previous corridor, with the same long and paper thin branches overtaking them like a plague. They were small brown veins that ran up and curved around the pillar like a serpent. Two pillars in particular were missing the top and the complete upper half of them like they had been maliciously torn away right where they stood. All of the glass in the windows was gone, leaving only a few sharp pieces sticking out from the wall that served as the edges of the window, granting a full uncensored view of the sinister looking pitch black trees that stood outside. The branches invaded the aperture with their long, twisted appendages, painting a menacing picture in the empty window frame. The black metal bars of it formed a shape similar to a goat head that ran all the way and met the bottom of the border. A brilliant moonlight casted down onto the room, basking it in its inviting beautiful white radiance.

“Wow..” It was now Levi’s turn to breathe his own words of awe at the sight, filled with an odd sense of triumph despite not knowing what was before his eyes. At the point he was at, anything other than another long gloomy hallway to lumber through was a win in his book.

Levi and the rest of the group walked in unison closer to the stone erection vitiated by the long irksome branches covering it almost top to bottom. The moon shined its dazzling light down onto the foundation, causing it to glow beautifully like it had been bestowed upon them by some higher being. While still dumbfounded by the almost flawless architecture of the exquisite structure, he really had no idea what to make of it. He hoped with all of his heart it was the highly anticipated Elements of Harmony that Levi and Rainbow practically almost died to get to. At the same time, it didn’t look like they would be elements of anything. They looked more like an ancient artifact you’d find inside of a pyramid, serving a purpose to the long gone people who constructed it but no purpose at all to the modern age. Then again, it looked way too convoluted in design to be just an artifact meant to sit there. These better be the Elements, Levi thought as he eyed the edifice up and down for what felt like the hundredth time, Erm..I hope

“Ain’t this what you’ve been lookin’ for Twilight?” Applejack’s voice chimed in, filling the silence with the pleasing sound of her voice.

Twilight walked through and ahead of the line of ponies that stood in front of the formation, planting her hooves in the ground right in front of it with a huge grin adorning her face. Her heart almost jumped out of her chest when she got a good look at the configuration of stone, relief washed over her like water from a spring cleansing her, relieving her of all other negative emotions in that moment.

“The Elements of Harmony!” Twilight proclaimed with excitement and triumph lacing her voice. Levi’s heart was injected with a strong sense of victory, bringing a feeling of great ease at the fact the nightmare they were thrown into was coming to an end. The only two pegasus exchanged a quick nod before flaring their wings and leaping high in the air. Their feathered appendages flapped gracefully as they both hovered over to one of the arms, grabbing a hold of the stone ball with both hooves. One by one, the winged ponies slowly delivered the stone spheres down to Twilight who was standing eagerly a foot or so in front of the structure and ahead of the line of ponies. In a way, she felt slightly nervous about using the Elements of Harmony all by herself, and rightfully so. The stories she heard about in the book she read right before Nightmare’s grand entrance about how both of the Princesses had used the Elements’ power to do almost inconceivable things. Imprisoning people in stone. Banishing ponies to the moon. After all, they were the most powerful thing in all of Equestria, but Twilight still couldn’t wrap her head around the things they were capable of, and how the most formidable weapon in the entirety of Equestria is gonna be right at her hooves. Each of the spheres rasped as the pegasus’ moved from their plates, the place they sat for longer than any of them had been alive.

“Careful..careful” Twilight said with emphasis as the rainbow haired pegasus lowered the fifth and final stone ball right in front of her, making sure to put great care as she placed the sphere gently on the floor. She landed on the cold ground with a soft thud, icepicks shot up through her arms and legs at the sudden change in temperature in the bottom of her hooves. The ball scraped against the ground as it rolled barely a centimeter forward closer to the unicorn as if to beckon her towards its incomprehensible powers.

Twilight looked down at the cluster of artifacts full of pure power in front of her. This was it. The Elements of Harmony. She had finally found them. But there was one problem that Twilight had blocked out of her mind all the way up until that moment, she barely knew anything about how to actually use them. The gravity of Twilight's situation began to set in and fast. The fate of Equestria was in her hands. It was all up to her to defeat Nightmare and rescue Equestria from eternal darkness. The more and more she looked at the meaningless looking spheres arranged in a circle in front of her, the more and more worrisome thoughts that swam in and clouded her mind, making her feel like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. In a way, it was.

Levi walked forward a couple steps and stood side by side with his lilac companion, looking down in utter disbelief at the Elements that sat on the stone in front of the two. Even though they were the real deal, they looked completely unmeaning, it was almost like they didn’t even know how powerful they were. In any other circumstance, Levi would’ve thought they were just some artifact at a museum or something he’d see on TV. They were anything but just “some artifact”, they were the Elements of Harmony, the thing they had all risked their lives to get to. He glanced over his shoulder at the line of ponies behind him, the ones who he had been stuck to like a fly to a flytrap for the entirety of the journey thus far. He looked at the violet stump protruding from Rarity’s dock that was once a tail, now just a husk of the beauty that once grew, but was also a symbol of her generosity towards the serpent she had never met in her life. His eyes met the vibrant pink of Fluttershy’s mane as it ever so slightly glistened from the Manticore’s saliva after she relieved it from its pain at the hands of the thorn in its foot. Despite how off-putting and repellent it was that another animal's spit made her hair shine, it still looked delightful with the moonlight shining onto it combined with the friendly smile that accompanied her features. Lastly, he glanced over at Rainbow Dash, her magenta eyes met his green ones. Rainbow easily suffered the most out of the seven of them by a mile, and Levi felt terrible for her. He felt as if it was his fault Rainbow had been kidnapped and had a gun to her head all because of Gary, someone that Nightmare Moon had brought back from the dead just to torment him. It was no surprise to either of them that Nightmare had roped Rainbow into Levi’s living nightmare as well.

Pinkie was the first to disband from the uniform line behind the man and the lilac unicorn, taking her place behind one of the five spheres circled on the ground in front of them with the remaining ponies following her lead.

“One, two, three, four,” Pinkie counted while pointing at each ball, her voice being unnecessarily louder than it needed to be, “There’s only five!”

“Where’re the other two?” Rainbow chimed, slowing her wings to a stop as her hooves hit the ground.

Twilight lowered her head just a few inches above the ground and examined the stone ball she was effectively assigned to, furrowing her eyebrows at the crudely chiseled square carved into it like it was staring back at her. “The book said, when the five are present a spark will cause the sixth element to be revealed”

“Now just what in the hay is that supposed to mean?” Applejack interjected, raising an eyebrow at the lilac pony.

“I’m not sure,” Replied the unicorn, “But I think I have an idea”

“What’s that?” Levi asked, inserting himself into the conversation.

“You’ll see, but I need you all to stand back. I don’t know what will happen” Twilight responded, putting emphasis on the order she delivered to them. She knitted her eyebrows closely together and laid down, the moment the sub-zero floor came into contact with Twilight’s stomach, she winced as a razor sharp, painful stinging shot through her nerves like a bullet. She winced at the extremely unpleasant feeling and raised her belly up a bit to alleviate the feeling but, much to her displeasure, the affliction persisted. As she fully lowered her midsection down onto the cold stone, the ponies who remained in the room heeded Twilight’s words and cautiously backed away from the unicorn as she closed her eyes in preparation, finding it exponentially easier to focus her magic in the comfort of darkness. Applejack trotted over and through the doorless door frame and heard the repulsive crunch of the carpet as soon as she stepped onto it, reminding her of how rundown and awful the castle was.

“Come on now y’all, she needs to concentrate” The ponies trotted hastily over to the rug Applejack stood on right as a purple aura began to glow and wave around Twilight’s horn and a faint glimmering sound came from it. Levi was a far cry from how eager his comrades were to vacate, as a matter of fact, he didn’t want to leave at all. His mind raced with the amount of possibilities that could happen alone in a castle where a threat like Nightmare Moon could be around any corner. Laying down in the inky black behind her eyelids, devoting all of her focus and attention to her magic, it was practically open season for the alicorn. Levi wanted to be there and essentially be her bodyguard if Nightmare decided to rear her ugly head once again and strike. Levi didn’t feel the want to protect her, he felt the need to protect her. The same feeling that ignited to life inside of him when he saw Gary yank Rainbow out of the back of his truck. Seeing how helpless she was as he shoved the barrel of his pistol into her head. He could only imagine how she felt. The sight of the pain in her eyes. How they begged Levi to save her. He didn’t want to see Twilight plead the very same way, he wanted to be in that room and be willing to flip the switch at a moment's notice if a problem arose. Levi shifted his posture, spreading his feet apart and unbuttoning the royal blue gauntlet button on his similarly colored sleeve and began to roll.

His once hidden blood stained forearms revealed themselves once again, meeting the stabbing and unforgiving temperature in the castle for the very first time. He took a deep breath and slipped his almost numb fingers into his back pocket, snaking them around his concealed weapon before pulling it out, flipping it in his fingers before allowing his arm to fall to his side. He furrowed his brows and flattened out his wrinkling shirt against his midsection. Flipping his uneven collar up and down and straightening it. He reached his free hand up to adjust the top two buttons but found only one was there. Lastly, he slipped off his hat and shook it a few times before slipping it back on his head like a glove, concealing the dirty and tousled mess living on top of his head that he called hair. Levi could feel Applejack and the rest of the group's eyes burning into the back of his head. He looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with Applejack, her emerald irises silently beckoning him over to the outside of the sojourn, but Levi’s similarly colored ones gave her an answer she wasn’t looking for. Finding that her look clearly wasn’t enough to show the man, she waved her hoof over her shoulder like an owner trying to signal their dog over to them. The only response Levi gave her was a small, slow, and deep nod where his chin almost touched the exposed white t-shirt covering his chest.

Before Applejack could make it any more obvious what she wanted, the man had already turned his attention back to the unicorn sitting in front of the circle of stone balls. The glimmering sound arising from her horn slowly grew louder and louder, in turn becoming more and more shrill and unpleasant to her ears. The aura surrounding her horn grew brighter with each passing second. She shut her eyes tighter, feeling all the magic she was burning beginning to take its toll on her body. Her heart picked up pace with desperation and anxiety, her already nervous mind being made worse by the lack of anything interesting, or anything at all happening to the Elements. She bit down hard on her bottom lip nervously to the point where she feared she may draw blood. The aura around her horn began to blaze a light purple color like a cracked open lightbulb that was still on. She felt a bead of sweat begin to trickle down her forehead, making her even more fearful that the amount of energy she dumped into the Elements was going to be in vain.

Just then, a quiet barely audible wisping sound pierced through the otherwise empty air on the right side of him. On high alert, he whipped his head over to the source of the intrusive noise, only to find a semi-thin stream of the blue sparkling smoke peeking its head from around one of the pillars that still stood tall and complete. He flipped the handle of his blade in his hand and pressed his thumb down forcefully on the button, sending the blade shooting out like a lion pouncing on its prey. Suddenly, the rope of black and blue soared through the air like a spear and landed inches away from the lilac unicorn who’s struggle to produce any sort of reaction from the Elements continued. It was as if the sound of Levi’s shoe scraping against the floor was Nightmare’s cue to strike. The sparkling cord got dangerously close to the ground and began flying at an incomprehensible speed around the circle of stone spheres like a serpent who had suddenly grown wings. Just as quickly as it had started, it got rampantly worse in just a few moments.

The stream that spun around became nothing more than a black and blue blur that ran in circles around the circle of spheres without even a hint at stopping anytime soon. In the blink of an eye, the color turned to a deep and rich navy blue and grew in size, significantly expanded in height. Levi watched in utter disbelief as the cable of smoke transformed into a tornado that swallowed the Elements whole like a starving whale, lifting them off the ground and twirling them around in its unrelenting grip. The Elements became one with the tornado, fading in and out of view and bouncing in and out of the maw of the twister. Levi’s eyes snapped onto the unicorn who still sat there with her horn blazing brighter than ever before. The panic kindling inside him expelled through his mouth in the form of one word he cried out frantically, “TWILIGHT!”

The lilac pony began to open up her eyes at the sound of her name, and through the sliver she could see between her eyelids, she was met with the dread-inducing sight of the navy blue tornado spinning violently just centimeters in front of her face. Her eyes shot open fully almost instantly. A squall of shock and surprise escaped her lungs. She jumped in fright and landed on her back, kicking her hooves and scurrying away as fast as she could from the remorseless twister. Her back was at the mercy of the ice cold ground who, unsurprisingly, showed no remorse to the unicorn's skin, sending a stinging pain shooting down her back. Twilight could hear Levi’s frantic footsteps as his feet pounded against the ground like an angry rhino towards her over the strident howling of the wind as it spun with no sign of stopping. The bangs of her mane whipped against her eyes as they blew with the tornado that swirled around unceasing, taking the Elements of Harmony along with it for the wild, terrifying ride. All of a sudden, panic began to course through her veins when she saw the very same Element she had been focusing in front of bob in view before being sucked back into the blue abyss of the tornado. This was it. Now the fate of Equestria was truly up to her. She had to secure the Elements at all costs, and the cost she had to pay was in the form of the navy blue tornado that continued its angry assault on the room.

She had a choice to make at that moment and she needed to make it fast. She could either sit there and watch as the only weapons against Nightmare Moon get pilfered, or fight her fears and try her damndest to get the Elements back. No matter the cost. Time seemed to slow, she glanced behind her over her shoulder and watched Levi run like his life depended on it towards her. She watched in slow motion as her friends slowly began to pile into the room through the doorway that was clearly not meant for what they were doing. She saw a mess of pink, orange, and cyan as the ponies who belonged to that color all attempted to bulldoze their way into the room. All it did was cause a traffic jam in the entryway that clearly wasn’t going to be fixed anytime soon. She turned her head back around and faced the behemoth of blue that towered over her. She saw the cracks in between the smoke, once again seeing the sparkles that were infamously associated with Nightmare Moon’s sentient gas. The blue and black colors reemerged from the tornado, in between the wedges and slivers that granted her eyes access to the inside of the twister, she saw the Elements fly helplessly around in circles like bowling balls in a whirlpool. She felt sweat trail down her face from her forehead once more, this time being a bullet instead of a small bead. She felt the warm trail the droplet left as it ran down her forehead and dripped off of her eyelid. Her breathing became deep and riddled with every anxiety she could think of. The stress of the situation was crashing down onto her all in the few seconds that were hers in her sluggish interpretation of time. She thought about what would happen if she did jump after the Elements, would she die? It’s likely. If the tornado behaved normally and wasn’t another trap by Nightmare then she would be smashed to pieces by the spheres caught in its unforgiving whirlwind.

She tried to calculate the odds of her survival, but her mind was swirling too fast and was choked full of every worrisome thought that her panicked brain could think of. Usually, she’d have no trouble at all evaluating something like this. Well not like this necessarily, but in any situation where she had to. Now, even the thought of trying to calibrate the odds of anything seemed monumental. She couldn’t calm herself down enough to think straight. She threw the thought away into the chasm of useless ideas in her head. The almost unbearable pressure of the situation she was thrusted into was almost constricting like an anaconda wrapping itself around her throat. Time was running out. She needed to make a decision as soon as possible. The deadline was approaching fast. She could see the tornado visibly begin to shrink in size, considering how her perception of time had been slowed, the fact she was visibly seeing it diminish was concerning. She watched as the cracks in between the navy blue began to appear less and less. The twister grew smaller and smaller. The realization hit her hard that she had no other choice but to jump in after them.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she knitted her brows before she quickly got on her hooves. She cocked her knees back and did what Levi and her friends could’ve never expected. She had lept gracefully from the comfort of the ground and was now flying freely through the air. Her mane, which usually cascaded over her neck, was now flapping through the air like a purple and violet flag. She saw the navy blue goliath grow closer and closer to her. She threw her hooves in front of her face, preparing for the possibly disastrous consequences of the action she put no thought into before doing. “TWILIGHT! NO!” The sound of Levi’s frantic shouting was barely audible over the ear-piercing roaring of the tornado that ravaged her ears. She threw her hooves over her face as she felt herself get picked up by the iron grip of the wind. Levi picked up his pace and sprinted as hard as he could until his heart felt like it was about to explode. His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach, his running ceased, but most of all, confusion plagued his mind at what he witnessed just moments later.

In the blink of an eye, the tornado was gone. Disappeared into thin air. No over the top scene of the tornado winding down to an eventual stop. No nothing. The twister had just vanished as quickly as it appeared. They looked down at the spot where the whirlwind had stood dormant as it sucked both the unicorn and the Elements in his inescapable grasp. Once again, nothing. No Elements. No marks. No proof the tornado was even there. The only thing left were pebbles of disturbed sediment and bits and pieces of the floor that were ripped up and scattered across the ground with the lilac unicorn nowhere to be seen. Levi felt dread slowly overtake him as his mind raced about what Nightmare Moon could do to her. Now, she was truly at the mercy of the black alicorn. His face melted into a look of intense worry as the sound of thunderous roar of a storm cloud boomed from the distance. As a cloud almost as black as the night sky it moved through rolled in right above them, the urge to protect kindled in his heart once again. A scintillating light as white as the heavens flashed brightly in his peripheral vision. He whipped his head to the source of the fulguration and saw a tall rectangular building formed out of coal black bricks that looked almost as old as time. Like most of the castle, the walls and roof had been nearly completely conquered by long ugly vines, completely defiling the almost painting-like image the tower had. All that remained of the upper half that used to be there were bits and pieces of stone that jutted out of the roof like sore thumbs. He furrowed his brows at the two windows that sat side by side on the left and right wall, showing a teaser for the chaos that sat inside of the tower.

Erratically flashing out of the windows like an out of control camera was an intense almost blinding white light. More and more stygian clouds moved in, prohibiting any moonlight from penetrating them and masking the castle and its inhabitants in a rich darkness. Another booming clap of thunder rang through the air as a lightning bolt shot down from the sky onto whatever poor piece of land the cloud chose for its wrath. Levi knew without a doubt that Twilight was being held in the steeple he was laying his eyes on. There it was again. The urge to protect. Now, it was more than just a kindling feeling, it was now a burning hot fire raging in his heart that needed to be satiated, and there was only one way how. Levi’s head zipped over to the doorway on his right that led to a staircase outside of the walls of the castle. He could almost feel the cold and gloomy air dashing goosebumps across his skin, the hairs rising on the back of his neck as he burned rubber all the way to Twilight. Adrenaline began to flow through his veins like a raging river. His already speeding heart somehow managed to increase. His feet fought to be free from the confines of standing. With a determined look painted on his face, he unshackled his legs pumping with eagerness and broke into a sprint aimed right at the doorway.

“Follow me!” He called out, hearing his voice bounce off the walls and back to him. As he left the doorway and his feet hit the first stair at the peak of the staircase, the sound of several pairs of hoofsteps clicking against the ground as they sprinted reverberated off what remained of the walls and eventually to Levi’s ears. He felt the freezing fingers of the night air wrap themselves around his exposed forearms, chilling him down to his bones. His denim jeans did not help the situation either, only contributing to the problem by practically turning to ice sheets that laid against the skin on his legs. Despite the discomfort that silently beckoned him to turn around, he persisted, continued to bomb down the stairs and more determined than ever to save his unicorn friend. Probably more than every pony in the group at that moment.

POOF!

Out of thin air, a bright white ball of light spawned from nowhere and grew to the size of a beach ball in just a split second before exploding, engulfing the room in a cloud of thick purple smoke that allowed nothing to be seen inside of it. Twilight dropped stomach first onto the much colder floor than before, immediately being thrusted into a coughing fit from the violet smog that invaded her lungs. When she opened her eyes, just like when she saw the tornado, they shot open as wide as they could go immediately. The room had many striking similarities to the corridor she was in just moments before. Pillars lay in ruins, some toppled over and riddled top to bottom with cracks and splits. The beautifully carved stone was now a shell of its former self. Now nothing more than a colossal wreck that’s overtaken by the overbearing force of nature. The pillars that remained standing had lengthy, hideous roots growing out from between the cracks in the stone like weeds on a sidewalk. The floor was also in a much worse condition than the previous one, large crude chunks of rock that once belonged to the ceiling now sat glumly on the floor, serving as a decoration that wasn’t supposed to be there. However, the one thing starkly different about the room was practically screaming in Twilight’s face, and that thing was a small pedestal in the front of the room in front of a large window frame. The frame was an oversized black metal chess board that lacked the key thing that made it a window, the window itself.

Standing on the pedestal was the alicorn who had caused all the trouble that led to the magnum opus that was coming any second, Nightmare Moon. Her blue and sparkling mane and tail waved rhythmically like it was breathing. Her aquamarine eyes pierced like knives into her, sending a sword of dread and fear stabbing into her heart. Her pitch black wings were erected high in the air, her feathers being illuminated by the last remaining bit of moonlight that shone down from behind the blockade of storm clouds. The five elements circled agonizingly slow around her like a halo of grey bowling balls as if to taunt Twilight even more than she already had.

Nightmare’s bone chilling cackle and the rumbling of the restless thunder outside rang through the otherwise dead silent corridor. She turned her body to face the stunned unicorn, delighting in the intimidating metallic sound of her metal hoof coverings hitting the ground, and stretching out her coal black wings fully on both sides of her. Lightning struck down on the earth accompanied by the angry roar of thunder, illuminating the alicorn’s form fully and casting a shadow down onto Twilight who gave a shocked gasp in response as her eyes grew wider than dinner plates. She scampered to her feet and the shock melted from her face and was replaced by a flaming hot anger that blossomed in her eyes. She pointed her head down to the ground like a rhino ready to charge and her face twisted into a snarl like an angry dog while simultaneously stamping her hoof down and scraping it back against the ground. Nightmare looked at the lilac pony with an odd sense of confusion, not believing the unicorn could be serious. She was staring down the alicorn who had the most powerful weapons and the fate of Equestria in her hands, and Twilight stood there with nothing, just the blazing acrimony displayed on her features as she refused to back down from Nightmare’s puzzled glare.

“You’re kidding,” Twilight’s eyebrows furrowed in response and a magenta aura formed around her horn, “You’re kidding, right?”

Twilight was anything but kidding. This fact was cemented further when the aura turned into an intense magenta glow that blazed, lighting up almost the complete half of the corridor she stood in. The radiant light beaming from her horn splashed onto the two pillars she stood in between. That wouldn’t last long as right after her horn flared with color, she began to charge like a furious bull towards the stone stage that Nightmare stood on. It took a few seconds for Nightmare to process the display of sheer arrogance in front of her like she was running just to entertain her. Nonetheless, Nightmare wouldn’t decline an opportunity to vanquish her adversary in the easiest way possible. A sinister toothy grin spread across her face, allowing her razor sharp canines to peek out from behind her lips. Gracefully yet still fear-inducing, Nightmare dropped the Elements onto the stage and leaped from it like a tiger pouncing on its prey.

Her hooves clanked against the ground as she jumped into a sprint the second they hit the floor. Her wings were extended out from her sides like black airplane wings, her feathers gently blowing with the wind as she charged at her foe that only came closer and closer to her. Her grin widened into a menacing smile that reflected the light from Twilight’s horn back at her as it glowed brighter and brighter, acting as the only light source that corridor had seen in years. Her blazing gleam illuminated every crack and blemish that stained the walls and pillars she passed, shining onto one of the many ugly roots that protruded from the ground and brightening its repulsive sand color. Her hooves continued to pound the ground. The metallic clinking never ceased. And Nightmare’s eagerness grew stronger and stronger the closer and closer she got to the unicorn. She licked her lips in anticipation as the beam from Twilight’s horn continued to get brighter and brighter. When the two ponies were just mere feet away from each other, Twilight’s horn was completely enveloped in the light which had turned into an almost blinding white ball of luminescence. Nightmare’s eyelids naturally closed slightly from the light burning her retinas like a lamp shining directly into her face, but nonetheless, she continued her stampede to the unicorn, ready to sink her teeth into her for even daring to challenge her.

Only inches separated them. Nightmare’s avidity was reaching its peak. A black aura formed around her already dark horn and she opened her mouth wide, allowing Twilight to see her sword-like fangs that were ready to dig into her skin. She cocked her head back. Her heart picked up speed. She shot her head forward like a slingshot, her eyes closed unwillingly, and she clamped her jaws down onto…the air? Nightmare opened her eyelids, only to find the space that was once occupied by the unicorn was empty. She skidded to a stop and whipped her head around with her mane flowing behind it like a flagpole on a mast and her eyebrows knitted together like it was second nature at the stage. Anger caught fire in her heart when she saw a particular lilac unicorn standing right in front of the newly dropped Elements that were practically free for the taking. Her aquamarine eyes drilled into the back of her head as a scowl formed on her face.

“Just one spark!” She heard the pony plead as she kept her head bent down, her horn growing brightly and illuminating the Elements, which only added fuel to the flame of rage growing in her heart. “Come on..come on…” Nightmare had decided right then and there that playing with her food was no longer going to be an option. She stamped her hooves on the ground before the navy blue tornado reared its ugly head once more, completely enveloping her in its spinning clutches before jumping almost to the ceiling. With Nightmare now possessing the twister that never ceased its dizzying twirling, she soared through the air and dove like a spear into the ground right in front of the struggling unicorn. A hissing sound pierced Twilight’s ears as purple smoke engulfed the small portion of the stage she chose to make her grand entrance on. The smog dissipated after a mere few moments and in its place stood the imposing alicorn. She looked down at the lilac pony almost at her feet, watching as her magic formed a violet ring around each of the Elements. Nightmare wiped the smirk off her face that formed as she watched Twilight think she could defeat her, Nightmare Moon decided to squash her hopes like the insignificant insects that they were by shooting a jet black beam of magic a few inches in front of Twilight.

BOOM!

The unicorn was shot from where she sat and rocketed down the corridor before her back finally met the ground, saving her from the turbulent trip Nightmare had sent her on. The black alicorn watched in satisfaction as the unicorn slid on her back even further down the hall, this time, allowing her toothy grin to stay on her face rather than rid her features of it. Nightmare looked down at the Elements, expecting them to revert back to how they were just seconds before, but found the almost pink ring remained, Electric popping and snapping came from the stone spheres as small volts of electricity zapped the other stone balls.

“NO!” Nightmare thundered in anger and disbelief, raising her hoof high near her chest like the Elements were covered in poison.

It was now Twilight’s turn to shoot a satisfied grin at the black alicorn as she rose to her feet, the sound of Nightmare’s endless lamenting being music to her ears. The electric crackling and snapping grew louder as bolts of electricity connected each of the balls together in a magic ring of energy that flowed through each of the spheres. Long strands of levin jumped from one stone ball to the other, zapping and cracking loudly as they did so, only adding fuel to the growing grin of triumph painting Twilight’s face.The light pink auras around the Elements amplified and glowed bright right into Nightmare’s seething face. Her mouth twisted into a scornful scowl as her lamenting refused to cease, only growing louder and more incessant as the Elements didn’t show any hint of stopping anytime soon. Twilight felt a sense of victory be pumped through her veins like a hose increasing its pressure with each spark or crackle the spheres produced, a rampantly better feeling than the fear that coursed through her veins just mere moments before. Nightmare’s panicked mind ran like a race horse in circles as she tried to wrack her brain for some sort of spell or magic that could reverse what was happening, any way at all to fix the plan that was briskly falling apart right before her eyes. The fierce glowing rings encompassing each of the balls reflected in the pools of anger and devastation in her aquamarine eyes. For a second, Nightmare had begun to come to terms with the fact that she had lost to Twilight and that she would save Equestria after all, despite her best efforts. However, the feeling of triumph that was slowly kindling to life in her heart was short-lived and the panic that flowed faster than Nightmare’s own blood dissipated like it had never even existed. The bright pink glowing rings enveloping the Elements had swiftly disappeared in the blink of an eye. The snapping and crackling fell dead. And the jubilation that was igniting inside of her was snuffed instantly. The same couldn’t be said for Nightmare Moon, who’s heart roared with glee inside of her chest at the sight of her adversaries' hope being stamped out right in front of her.

A loud gasp escaped Twilight’s lung that sounded like it had been years in the making, a surprised and dumbfounded voice spoke afterwards, “But where’s the sixth element!”

The black alicorn couldn’t have been bothered to listen to the ending of Twilight’s reaction as her maniac, booming cackling quickly overpowered her voice and drowned out every other sound. Her wings as black as the night sky rose towered in the air above her as she reared as high as she could. Her laughing, which was bordering on psychotic, showed no sign of stopping, even as she brought her hooves down with unimaginable strength down onto the stage. A gunshot-like sound boomed through the corridor, followed by the sound of shattering glass, but it was anything but glass that had been destroyed by Nightmare.

Twilight watched in shock and devastation as the stone balls jumped in the air from the force before completely shattering into hundreds of clear crystal shards, both big and small, that rained down onto the stairs leading to the pedestal. Her jaw almost hit the floor. The bits and pieces of the most powerful weapons in Equestria showered onto the stone floor, Twilight's eyes followed them on their journey through the air until they eventually collided with the foundations of the hall. The shrill noise of fragments and splinters of glass beating down onto the ground rang painfully in Twilight’s ears as she struggled to fathom what she had just seen. Before she could comprehend it, the alicorn behind all of it cut her voice through her thoughts like a sword, “You little foal! Thinking you could defeat me!”

Despite everything, she was right. Twilight did really think she could defeat her. Twilight tried to keep the small flame of hope in her heart alive, but it was extinguished as soon as she laid her eyes on the only way to defeat her was showered down onto the stairs, the moonlight causing them to glisten beautifully. Twilight’s head fell in shame along with the rest of her body, colliding with the floor which chilled her down to the bone, but her shame drowned out any other feeling in that moment. There was nothing she could do now. The reality of the situation hit her like a freight train, only amplifying her guilt.

“Now you will never see your Princess or your precious sun ever again!” Her mind immediately flashed back to Princess Celestia, imagining how ashamed she would be that she allowed Equestria to be brought to its knees by Nightmare Moon.

“The night will last..FOREVER!” She thundered, her wings shooting out to the sides of her once again. Her mane and tail flowed from the mass that formed her hair and streamed to the ceiling like a sparkling blue river. From the runnel of color spewed into the air was a large swirling navy blue behemoth of cloud that swirled into a hurricane above her, a hurricane that didn’t move. Her maniac cackling rang through the hall once again as a booming clap of lightning erupted from outside of the castle. Twilight looked at the alicorn on the pedestal with a crushed look on her face, shame filling the pools inside of her purple orbs. Tears threatened to fall from her eyes. The gravity of the situation came crashing down onto her like a tidal wave. Hopelessness filled the void in her once hopeful heart. This was it. The end. She was never going to see the sun again. Equestria as she knew it was practically finished. There was no way ponykind would survive in eternal darkness.

Celestia..I’m sorry..I’m so, so sorry…I failed you… As Twilight wallowed in the sorrow that brewed inside her mind, a sound could be heard from behind her that lit the dead flame of hope in her heart back to her life. The sound of a voice, a very familiar voice, echoing from the spiraling staircase at the beginning of the corridor behind her. To be more specific, a collection of voices that echoed from the stairs, but there was one that stood out the most from all of them. Levi’s.

“Twilight!” He called, “Twilight we’re coming!”

His voice was like music to her ears combined with the equally as pleasant voice of Rarity which bounced off the walls alongside his. She whipped her head around, watching as the shadows of the group of six danced on the bricks as they made their way hastily up the stairs to Twilight.

In that very moment, it was like every doubt and inhibition that night had been resolved by the series of sounds coming from the staircase. Not exactly the noises themselves, but the owners of the noises, her friends. Never in a million years would she have admitted the flame of hope in her heart would be reignited back to life from her friends, but yet, here she was, standing there with relief flowing through her with a newfound feeling of confidence flowing through her upon hearing her friends. Her heart felt a very specific way but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. What she did know was it was a very, very new feeling. Something she had never even thought of feeling in her entire life. It felt so…surreal? Otherworldly? Bizarre? She couldn’t think of a word to accurately describe the emotion coursing through her, but there was one thing she knew for certain, she had found the key to defeating Nightmare Moon once and for all. Her eyes turned to dinner plates. A small, quiet qasp escaped her lungs. Now, the small flame of hope was no longer just a flame, it was now a raging fire encasing her heart. Her look of hopelessness melted away and in its place was a look of triumph that Nightmare could almost see as the unicorn turned her head slightly to exclaim over her shoulder at her.

“You think you can destroy the Elements of Harmony just like that? Well you’re wrong!” Twilight fully turned her body to face the alicorn who thought she had conquered the world, the lilac pony was about to show her that was the furthest thing from the truth. The footsteps at the stairs quickened as confusion blossomed inside of Nightmare at what she could possibly be talking about. She had won. What was there to be wrong about?

“Because the spirits of the Elements of Harmony are right here!” Immediately after, like she had somehow summoned them from thin air, the entire group including a panting Levi stood behind her, all shooting searing hot glares right into Nightmare’s widened aquamarine eyes. Her turquoise orbs were quick to flood with confusion and a slight panic when she heard a faint jingling sound at her hooves like a wind chime on a windy day. The mess of what little remained of the Elements of Harmony at her hooves began to shake as handfuls of large shards donned a fresh, vibrant colored aura. Nightmare watched in disbelief as several handfuls of fragments of the Elements gained a brightly colored border, orange and pink shards trembled on the ground like fall leaves before rising from the cold floor. Cyan and purple borders rose from the ground and sat idly in the air surrounding her head as if to taunt her, mocking her with every rhythmic bob they took.

“What?” She thought out loud, the confusion in her voice being made very clear as her eyes snapped onto each crystal hovering around her. Her hooves clanked against the ground as she backed up a few steps in surprise, having no clue what Twilight and her comrades had done to hinder her plan so badly.

“Applejack!” Twilight proclaimed. Suddenly, all of the eyes in the room, including Nightmare’s, had been shifted to her in a split second. “Who had reassured me when I was in doubt, represents the element of honesty!”

Nightmare jumped ever so slightly in surprise as the shards with a lively orange glowing border suddenly soared through the air towards the blonde pony who was caught off guard by the sudden barrage of crystals. The bits and pieces of what used to be the Element of Honesty quickly surrounded the orange earth pony, circling around her body like a hula hoop. The borders around the crystals shined brighter than ever while they spun around Applejack, reflecting in her emerald eyes as she looked down at them in awe. Rarity lifted her hoof up in surprise at the dazzling ring of shards that surrounded the blonde in the blink of an eye, marveling at how beautifully they glittered underneath the soft blanket of moonlight that casted down right on top of them.

“Fluttershy!” Twilight declared once again, setting up the shy yellow pegasus to be the next center of attention. “Who tamed the Manticore with her compassion, represents the spirit of kindness!” A cluster of crystals with a glowing, sun yellow border tore whistled through the air with unimaginable speed. The rightfully frightened pony jerked away from the hail of shards flying at her and threw her hooves over her face briefly before removing them, looking at the vibrant glowing crystals that formed a ring around her body. A gasp that only she could hear escaped her lungs as the attention grabbing crystals shined in her cyan orbs.

“Pinkie Pie! Who banished fear by giggling in the face of fear, represents the spirit of laughter!” Nightmare watched in dismay as yet another handful of crystals, this time donning a vigorous pink border, flew through the air towards the similarly colored pony they belonged to. A huge, adorable smile painted her face simultaneously leaping high in the air like a puppy ready to play right as the shards surrounded her.

“Rarity! Who calmed a sorrowful serpent with a meaningful gift, represents the spirit of generosity!” A lively purple border surrounded the shards which soared through the air towards the unicorn. Rarity looked down at the crystals that hovered in circles around her body with a modest look, but her eyes told a different story, with pride pooling in her dark blue orbs at the achievement

“And Rainbow Dash! Who did everything in her power to get back to her friends, represents the spirit of loyalty!” Levi watched with a small grin plastered on his face as a volley of shards with the edges glowing a brilliant cyan color flew towards the deserving pegasus. After the nerve wracking night Rainbow had in the night in the castle, she truly deserved to be given the honor of being an Element of Harmony. His grin grew wider as he glanced at the proud and excited look painted on Rainbow’s face. She truly did deserve it.

“The spirit of these five ponies got us through every challenge you threw at us!” Exclaimed the unicorn, who simultaneously shot a triumphant glare into the eyes of the shocked alicorn. Nightmare’s eyes darted to each pony who stood before her, already feeling the beads of nervous sweat that haven’t even formed yet running down her face.

“You still don’t have the other two elements!” She exclaimed frantically, shooting her wings out to the side in a last ditch effort to intimidate the ponies, but the group of seven were way past the point of being fearful of Nightmare. In fact, they practically had Nightmare Moon on her knees. There was no way she could bounce back from this. “The spark didn’t work!”

“But it did!” Twilight quickly rebutted. She turned around to face her friends before she spoke again, “I felt it the very moment I realized I was happy to hear you, to see you, how much I cared about you”. The group could hear the emotion spilling out in the words she spoke, feeling the way they poured out of her heart like a geyser, a very emotion filled geyser. She made sure to make eye contact with each of her friends and gave a soft look of appreciation to each of them. Each of them were given their own dose of reverence from the unicorn's gaze, delighting in how their hearts threatened to skip a beat from the thoughtfulness and sincerity that spilled from her mouth and gracefully traveled into their ears.

“What I realized was..” Twilight continued, stopping her constant shifting of eye meeting and stopping at Levi’s comforting green ones. Despite the pain he suffered and the way his body ached as he stood there, he still managed to put on a smile that could light up a whole room, and it almost did. His grin warmed Twilight’s heart like a fireplace on a cold winter night. Like she was sitting right in front of an open flame of pleasure with its positive energy radiating from the blaze like the smoke that billowed out of it. Levi gave the lilac pony a deep nod, the very same nod he gave Applejack when he insisted on staying in the room to protect Twilight. A nod that topped off the courage she needed. A tear trailed down her cheek as she fought back a sniffle, her voice threatening to break like a cracked window while she spoke, “That you all…are my friends!”

She spun around to stare down Nightmare Moon as she glared down at the seven in disbelief. Before she could even think about opening her mouth to refute, a sudden almost blinding burst of light exploded from high in the air above them, sending thin rays shooting out in all directions like shrapnel from a hand grenade. The streams of light painted the drab and gloomy bricks on all sides of them, adding some vivacity to the walls that brightened the mood ever so slightly. Way above them was a stone ball that was the producer of the sudden light, or more specifically, another Element of Harmony. Levi’s eyes instinctively locked onto it but were immediately deterred away and punished with a wince by its brilliant irradiant light. The narrow lines of fluorescence that discharged from the sphere seemed to rotate and almost spin like an oversized disco ball that nearly lit up the entire corridor. On the front of the unanticipated Element was a beautifully chiseled star that had little to no blemishes, he could almost feel the love and passion radiating from its glaring rays.

The stone orb grew brighter as it flew down right above Twilight’s head. Levi threw his arm over his eyes and clenched his jaw from the searing luster that assaulted his green irises. Nightmare did the same, hiding her face behind one of her wings as she struggled to keep her eyes open from her body begging her to shut them. Instead, she kept a small slit so her aquamarine optics could attempt to make out what was happening through the chinks in between her feathers where light continued to invade from. The ponies however had a completely different reaction to the sight denying light, surprisingly staring at it in awe as if it wasn’t attacking their senses with every moment they gawked. Levi was amazed how the ponies could gape at the ball of brazen shine that threatened to tear their sight away from them without even a flinch, just standing there continuing to stare like there was nothing wrong at all. Levi realized right then there was clearly a lot he didn’t know about ponies, a lot.

“You see Nightmare Moon,” Twilight’s voice chimed over the faint but somehow pain inducing ringing from the shining Element, “When all of the Elements are ignited by the..uh..the spark that resides in the heart of us all. It creates the sixth element.”

The pain in Levi’s eyes began to subside as they simultaneously grew used to the utter blaze that once battered his senses, releasing his arm from his face and finally being able to get a good look at the possibly historical event unfolding right before him. Twilight stared down Nightmare triumphantly who, unlike Levi, still had her wing shielding her from the gleam that pummeled her eyesight, a look of sheer discomfort painted on her features that could barely be seen behind her winged appendage. The other five looked completely unphased by the dazzle that looked as though it was beating like a heart right above the unicorn's head.

“The element of..MAGIC!” Nightmare released her wing from her face just in time for her eyes full of disbelief to witness the Element implode in an explosion of white light that enveloped the entire room for a brief second. Levi was almost knocked to the ground by the sudden restriction of one of his senses that were completely enveloped in the lily white light. An almost electronic-like buzzing sound also came with the eruption that didn’t spare Levi’s ears from its incessant sound like a calvary of bees invading his ears. When the light dissolved after a very brief moment, the sight that the man was greeted to looked utterly jaw-dropping to him, but dread inducing to the black alicorn. All of the shards that formed a ring around each of the ponies, excluding Twilight, were all sucked into the center of every one of their necks. What it transformed into was a golden necklace with a small colored pendant that Levi couldn’t make out from where he was standing, but he knew it must’ve been magnificent if it was born from…whatever this display of power was. All of them had been raised high in the air as a brilliant shining white light formed a border around them, highlighting their features and blowing their manes and tails in a wind that Levi couldn’t feel or might not have even been there. A huge smile filled to the brim with pride and a sense of victory adorned each of their faces, almost making Levi feel a little proud just by witnessing it. The one that received arguably the most prestigious piece of jewelry out of the six of them was Twilight Sparkle, the new Element of Magic, who now had a gorgeous golden crown with a purple gemstone star almost identical to her cutie mark at the top of it. Light reflected from their necklaces and headpieces alike and back onto the walls, creating an almost painting-like image onto the coal black bricks, but also into Nightmare’s eyes which had dubiety pooling in them. Even attempting to fathom what was unraveling in front of her was a daunting task. She had no idea what to make of any of it. However, she wouldn’t need anymore time to comprehend or think, because the end of Nightmare Moon was speeding right towards her. Despite how bad she wanted to deny it, deep inside of her, she knew the end was coming and fast. She couldn’t swallow her deep rooted arrogance and accept it. As the ponies levitated much closer together and a mechanical of a colossal lazer preparing to fire filled her ears, she was going to have to accept it whether she liked it or not.

When the machine-like sound reached its climax, a sheeny white fulgurating exploded from the cluster of ponies with the sound of an exploding firework. They were immediately entombed in a large globe of bright white light that only allowed their black silhouettes to be seen. While levitating in a cluster high above the ground, their chests were puffed out and their arms were pointing behind them like they were being held back by a mighty force. Applejack’s ponytail was whipping out in the hurricane that was affecting them inside the dome of light like an angry snake being held by his tail. Through the blinding sheet of white, Levi could make out a bright glowing red apple carved out of gemstone on her neck that shined like a star in a blank night sky. He saw the blazing pink balloon pendant that adorned Pinkie. The gleaming star on the top of Twilight’s crown. The red lightning bolt decorating Rainbow that cut through the globe of light they were encased in. Despite how uncomfortable it was to look at, the sight seemed very pleasing for the eyes. The combination of different colors blended beautifully with the vault of snow white radiance, but nothing was more gorgeous than the two beams of rainbow that spewed out from the top like multi-colored rivers shooting out of a geyser.

The duo of anacondas bursting with color shot out from the orb of white and swirled in the air, overlapping each other like a french braid and the ends growing closer together. Levi noticed that both of the streams had different colors of the rainbow as if they had been split apart and were now two different entities. One had red, orange, and yellow, while the other had green, purple, and blue. As they whirled high into the air and almost reached the ceiling, the two ends which had bright milky white stars that burned like there was no tomorrow finally collided. The reunion of the two tails of the rainbow was as if it was hundreds of years in the making and when they ultimately clashed, a loud boom threatened to shake the corridor and almost knocked Levi down to the ground for the second time in the past few minutes. The celestial orbs at the end of the creeks of rainbow flowing, formed one shining gleaming star that was responsible for the roar moments before. What was born from it was a colossal multi-colored arch that finally had every color of the rainbow at last.

It spilled down from the spheroid sitting high and mighty above Nightmare and was rushing right towards her at fear inducing speeds. Nightmare’s eyes widened in panic as she jumped a few steps back before being locked in place by the distress caused by her impending defeat at the hands of the prismatic behemoth hurtling towards her. Her hooves were encased in concrete and refused to budge despite how fierce her body was in begging them to do so, her limbs spurned their requests, instead forcing Nightmare to stand there helplessly as her inevitable possible demise came at her at velocious speeds. Her wings shot out from her sides for the final time, but not in an effort to intimidate anyone, but from the fear they brought crashing down onto her like the heavens above were raining judgment down onto her in the form of an innocent looking rainbow. Right when the arch of colors was mere inches away from connecting with the stage, her hooves were released from the shackles of panic and granted her movement once again. By that point, it was far too late to do anything to stop what was about to happen. Dread, alarm, and desolation brewed inside of her to form a bubbling sinister concoction that was poured all over her heart, enveloping her in a cocoon of vile emotions.

The ground she stood on shook and trembled before the might of the multi-colored arch crashing down onto it. The alicorn struggled to keep her balance for a brief moment and planted her hooves firmly into the ground with a loud clunk like her hoof was made entirely out of metal. However, her surprise from the floor beneath her quivering faded and was replaced with dread and misery once a large serpent of every color in the rainbow shot out from the ground where the arch had hit. The ribbon of coloration swiftly circled completely around Nightmare, wrapping its odd warmth around her like long heated tendrils. The band of color swirled around her entire body but left big gaps in between the top and bottom of it, allowing Levi to see inside the twister that was forming with Nightmare Moon trapped inside like a rat in a cage. Nightmare reared as high as she could in the air while howling out in lament, crying whatever words of despair she could muster in that moment. Unbridled and unrestrained panic flowed through her veins faster than her blood as she flapped her wings desperately, sending coal black feathers flying off in every direction and being sucked in by the merciless whirlwind.

After a few more seconds of hearing Nightmare’s raw emotion attempting to form into coherent words, the polychromatic ribbon had twirled around her faster and faster like an anaconda chasing its prey and had formed into a full blown tornado. The rainbow twister completely covered any gap or slit that the band once had, allowing nothing to be seen of the alicorn except for the tip of her horn that protruded from the top of the whirlwind. Despite knowing that she was completely finished and there was no winning for her, Nightmare continued to screech all of her laments and words of grief up into the air, somehow drowning out the almost deafening sound of the wind rushing around her at mach speed. The twister got even taller and wider and, somehow, louder, all the while the six ponies sat in the orb of white shine still channeling their energy into the rainbow arch. Just then, a mechanical buzzing sound ravaged his eardrums and sent Levi’s hands flying to cover his ears and protect them from the noise that attacked them. He flinched and clenched his jaw as pain rocketed through his head like someone had poured molten lava straight into his ear canal. His head buzzed like it had suddenly been occupied by a colony of bees. Before he could react to it, the buzzing suddenly skyrocketed to ear-piercing volumes, causing Levi to fear his skull was going to split in two from the amplification. Suddenly, like something out of a horror movie, Levi’s vision along with every inch of the corridor exploded in a fierce white light that completely robbed him of one of his senses. The buzzing only grew louder. His head roared in pain. Disorientation claimed him. The last thing Levi was able to hear was a thunderous nuclear level explosion throwing him off his feet and tearing his ears to shreds.

BOOM!

Chapter 13: A new beginning

Twilight slowly opened her eyes as her head sloshed around like a fishbowl. Grogginess quickly claimed her and she truly forgot where she was and what she was doing for a brief moment. But then, the sight of Levi laying splayed out on his back a few feet away from her told her all she needed to know. A few inches in front of her face was her crown, her beautiful piece of headwear formed out of solid gold glinted in the moonlight that shone above her. The brilliant purple gemstone carved into a star was embedded into the front that was utterly shiny and flawless, like someone had used all of the energy they had to make it just for her. The gleam from above reflected off the gem and back into her big purple eyes which winced from the almost assaulting light on her senses. As she went to move, she felt her whole body become weighed by what felt like hundreds of pounds of dead weight dropped right onto all of her appendages. Moving an inch was like moving a mountain, she could feel fatigue wrapping its tendrils around her even at the mere thought of operating her limbs in any way. Nonetheless, she knew she had to get up to find out the status of Nightmare Moon and if the elements actually worked. Above all else, there was one question that bogged her mind completely, allowing no room for any other thought to be ruminated. Was Nightmare Moon even alive? Considering the elements were deemed the most powerful weapons in Equestria for a reason, it wouldn’t make sense how she would be able to survive what happened. If they had the power to banish a pony to the moon for a thousand years, imagine what the energy of all of them combined blasted ruthlessly at somebody would do to them. Living to tell the tale would not be one of the outcomes. The question pestered Twilight relentlessly like a mosquito on a humid summer day, constantly poking at her until she reluctantly gave in. Giving in meant doing the monumental task of moving her lethargic limbs to stand.

Knowing she couldn’t just lie there forever, and the fact that the curiosity for Nightmare was practically eating her alive, she sluggardly moved her forelimbs like her bones were made of solid concrete. She pressed her hooves firmly against the ground and pushed herself up from the icy floor. Her back legs had the same exact issue as her front ones, feeling like they were encased in cement while simultaneously being dragged down by hundreds of dumbbells. Nonetheless, she completed the monumental task of getting on her own two hooves, while at the same time, the rest of the ponies around her began to come to from the flash and suffer the same nuisances she experienced. Twilight heard her back and her legs softly pop and crack just barely loud enough to be heard over the collective groans and moans from the six mares surrounding her as they all woke up in unison. Her horn lit up with a ravishing violet aura as her crown was surrounded by a beautiful pink ring. She lifted it off the ground with a faint scrape and gently placed it onto the top of her head right against her horn, relishing in the comfort and just how normal it felt for her to have it despite only having it for a few minutes. She felt as though it was her destiny to wear the crown, like she had been waiting her entire life to but she just didn’t know it until now. Her thoughts about the golden grandeur that sat on her head were cut through by a particular cyan pegasus groaning much louder than every other pony before she complained in her usual raspy voice, “Oh..my head”

A short but high-pitched springy sound came out of nowhere as Pinkie Pie went from lying on her back in a daze to bright-eyed and bushy tailed on her hooves in the snap of a finger. Twilight’s eyes flicked up and met Pinkie’s bright diamonds that sat in her eye sockets that calmed, mostly, every worry that had been brewing inside of Twilight’s head. Something she noticed that hadn’t been there before was the gorgeous, solid gold necklace that rested comfortably around her neck; an azure gemstone carved into a balloon was embedded right in the front of the necklace. The moonlight glistened comely off the pendant almost like a reflection, but unlike one it sucked the light inside of it and reflected it in every direction, creating an effect like a shattered mirror.

“Is everypony okay?” Applejack asked from out of the blue, pulling Twilight out of her trance and back to the ring of ponies that were all struggling to their feet in a daze. One pony however was the complete opposite of stunned and surprised and instead was hyper and excited, suddenly exclaiming in joy about something. They all turned their heads to look at the source of the sudden shrill interjection, finding it belonged to none other than Rarity.

“Oh thank goodness!” She exclaimed, looking at her newly restored curly purple tail in delight and relief, not realizing how much she truly loved it.

“Why Rarity, it’s so lovely” Fluttershy added.

“I know! I’ll never part with it again!” She responded gleefully, raising her behind high in the air and waving her tail around like an excited baby ready to flaunt his new toy with the widest smile painting her face.

“No, your necklace,” Fluttershy clarified, motioning a hoof towards the golden jewelry that adorned her neck, a purple crystal carved out of brilliant purple gemstone embedded in the front of it. “It looks just like your cutie mark”

Rarity glanced down at the carcanet embellishing her neck, her smile grew wider than ever before at the dazzling beauty decorating her. She flicked her eyes to the attention stealing pendant on Fluttershy’s neck in the shape of a pink butterfly, the very same pink butterfly that graced her flank in the form of her cutie mark.

“Yours too darling!” She exclaimed, pointing at the necklace. Fluttershy looked down at it, a quiet gasp escaped her lips as a fragment of the moonlight shimmered off of it and back into her aquamarine eyes.

The thrilled expressions on her friends' faces prompted Pinkie Pie to look down at the remarkable pendant that sat right below the middle of her throat, her eyes immediately lighting up with excitement like a christmas tree. A really giddy, hyperactive, puppy-like Christmas tree. She bounced over next to her blonde comrade, her trademark springing sound following her with every hop, and squealed out “Look at mine! Look at mine!”

Applejack glanced down at hers too and couldn’t resist a grin. “Oh yeah!” Rainbow chimed in with a hint of pride in her voice as she feasted her eyes on the rainbow pendant carved out of blood red gemstone on her necklace, her wings flaring up in joy and her chest puffing out. Then, they all turned their attention to the true star of the show that sat right in the middle of all of them, Twilight’s glimmering crown.

“Twii…” Their eyebrows jumped up in confusion at the almost zombie-like groan that suddenly arose from behind them, ominously calling Twilight’s nickname that a certain someone had given to her, someone who had not yet been accounted for in the ring of ponies.

“Dash…help me up…” They all turned their heads to the source of the deep, husky moaning behind them, finding none other than their brown haired friend lying helplessly on his side. His hat somehow remained snugly fit onto the top of his head despite the blast he had just endured. His voice was like pulverized rolling stone tumbling down a mountain top like his voice had been completely ringed of any form of moisture. Rainbow grinned at the man as he let out a dry, pitiful cough into his balled up hand.

Rainbow trotted over to her companion, reaching down a supportive hoof that he practically threw his hand onto without hesitation. Despite how strong and athletic the pegasus was, lifting Levi from the confines of the ground was like pulling up an army of elephants considering how limp her friend was. He looked up at her, all of the vibrance that once pooled in his eyes was mostly gone except for a few droplets that remained. What was left were these piteous puddles of exhaustion and pain that made Rainbow’s heart pang with guilt. The dreadful memories of earlier that night of what Levi had to go through flashed in front of her eyes. She could vividly hear the sound of Gary’s boot striking him in the stomach over and over, and hear the nauseating crunch of Levi’s forehead smashing into his nose. The sound of Gary’s fists colliding with Levi’s aching, pain stricken body like drums was heart wrenching. Seeing how much pure agony he was in after the shockwave. It was awful. She wished that she never had to see Levi, or any of her friends for that matter, suffer the way he did at the hands of Gary. Never. And if they tried, it wouldn’t end well.

Rainbow finally managed to get Levi to his feet, the muscles in her forearms wordlessly thanking her for sparing them from pulling anymore. However, he wouldn’t stand on his own for much longer, as he practically collapsed into a pillar next to him shoulder first. He visibly winced in pain and his legs felt like paper thin bamboo shoots that would give out from underneath him at a moment's notice.

“Levi, you alri-””Yep, I’m good,” Levi interrupted, holding up a dismissive hand to the pegasus. “I’m fine right here” He continued, visible pain flashing on his face when he barely readjusted his stance. Rainbow shot him a sweet, reassuring smile before rubbing the center of his back with her wing comfortingly. Levi relished in the almost angelic feeling of her cloud soft feathers stroking his back gingerly, he could almost feel some of his aches melting away at that affectionate gesture alone. He returned her soft smile with his own despite the stinging in his legs threatening to warp it.

“Well gee Twilight, I thought you were just spoutin’ alotta hooey,” Applejack piped up, taking a few steps closer to the lilac unicorn. “I reckon we do represent the Elements of Friendship” She carried on, raising her chin up a little bit.

“Indeed you do” A soothing yet authoritative voice called out from thin air, echoing and bouncing off the walls like she had just bellowed through a never-ending tunnel. Levi’s ears pricked up right as Rainbow Dash trotted over to be next to the ponies. He recognized the voice almost instantly and more aliments inside him dissipated at the realization. ‘Could it really be her?’ Levi thought, ‘If so, where was she? She couldn’t possibly have just disappeared, right?’ The awareness of who the voice belonged to posed more questions than answers, but right as Levi’s mind was preparing to swirl with more thoughts and assumptions, a miracle happened right before his very eyes.

From behind the mountains Levi could barely make out from the window he was staring out of, the yellow behemoth known only as the sun rose up from behind the snowy and grassy peaks miles away from them. The sky instantaneously exploded with bright, gleaming sunlight, casting away the coal black stratosphere and taking the remnants of Nightmare Moon’s reign of terror with it. The burning star rose higher and higher as sunlight immediately flooded through each of the windows like a rushing river of shine. Levi had no other choice but to flinch and throw his hand over his eyes from the abrupt luster that invaded the corridor, but in anything but a bad way. The rays of the undeniably stunning sunlight were like knives soaring straight into Levi’s irises. After a few painful seconds, Levi was able to release his eyes from the darkness behind his palm and gazed in awe at the newly revealed corridor. Now without the veil of shadow blanketing it, Levi was able to see with strained eyes every nook, cranny, and blemish that stained the corridor top to bottom. The long, tan, repulsive roots that hung down from the ceiling like vines were highlighted and left with no ugly features to hide. They not only riddled the roof, but the walls and floor as well. The once coal black bricks were no longer dark as night but a warmer grey color after being splashed by the beautiful sunlight through the windows. Levi looked around at the once gloomy and dreadful corridor, now, it was the furthest thing from that. The tall pillars, while still run down and battered with cracks, were less sullen now that the sun's rays blessed it with its presence, now giving it a more lively look to it. The windows served as vials that poured sunlight down onto everything around him like it was a physical thing, basking him in its warmth along with the whole corridor around him, a stark and much more pleasurable contrast to the ice cold night air that had tormented him for hours up until then.

Levi’s attention was pulled back to the tall window like a magnet as the sun made it hard but not impossible to gaze out of it and into the beautiful landscape that it covered and claimed as its own. Just then, Levi’s eyes went wide with awe and his heart almost leapt out of his chest at what he saw just seconds later. A beach ball sized glowing white orb of pure light seemingly was formed out of one of the many streams of light that launched in every direction and stretched as far as the eye could see up into the sky and the ground respectively. The dome of dazzling radiance slowly hovered down like a flying saucer and into the windowless frame that the sun had risen from underneath, entering the room and immediately blasting it with an intense glimmer that forced Levi’s eyes shut for what felt like the hundredth time that night. The warmth from the sunlight streaming in behind him was nothing compared to the globe of luster that had invited itself into the hall. The sudden and abrupt change in temperature hit Levi unexpectedly, it was like he was standing right in front of a raging bonfire that wouldn’t go out no matter what, sending embers flying from the top of the flames and becoming one with the air. Levi grimaced as he felt the ruthless heat explode over his face, causing beads of sweat to almost immediately form on his brow and run down over his closed eyelids that weren’t spared from the fever-like feeling either.

As the intense and uncomfortable warmth continued to spread all over him like a plague, the globule of light sent rays shooting out in every direction like shrapnel from a grenade. Even though his eyes were closed as tight as they could be, the gleam still managed to taint the darkness that protected his retinas from it by painting his vision a deep red color. However, a familiar and hope inducing metal clanking sound cast away the discomforts and ailments that Levi was pushing through and in their place was a feeling of relief. Pure, unbridled, unrestrained relief that almost brought tears to the brown haired man's eyes.

Born from the orb of light and standing tall and mighty in front of the window was none other than Princess Celestia, the beams of light from the sun blazing down behind her coated her form elegantly. Her turquoise, pink, and azure sparkling hair flowed behind her and flapped slowly like a flag with very little wind but just enough to move it. Her pale magenta eyes looked down with pride on the line of ponies that had single handedly saved Equestria were now bowing down to their princess, their chins touching the floor and their eyes closed and reverence practically radiated from them. Her long, beautiful milky white wings were stretched out from her sides, blocking the sun's rays and casting a blanket of shadow that covered the line of mares in front of her. However, the one exception to the gestures of respect was Twilight who, unsurprisingly, was more than overjoyed to see her mentor standing just feet in front of her. After all, she had no idea what had happened to her after she just turned into thin air at the Summer Sun celebration. As she laid her eyes on Celestia’s graceful image, a million questions began running through her mind all at once. Where had she gone? Could she have helped? Did she hide herself?

“Celestia!” Twilight called out excitedly, her face lighting up like a Christmas tree, ignoring all of the thoughts that swirled around in her head and was only focused on reuniting with her teacher after the most turbulent night of her life. But also, the most eye-opening.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia crooned, shifting her wings to point towards the ceiling. Twilight galloped over and threw herself into Celestia’s warm embrace where the alicorn happily accepted. Celestia bent down slightly to compensate for the substantial height difference and wrapped her hooves around Twilight’s back, feeling the ends of her mane tickling her forelimbs and detecting a huge grin growing on her face. Levi felt the weakness in his legs dissipate and felt some of his strength flow back into his limbs where they rightfully belonged. With a grin painting his features at their sugar sweet interaction, he pushed himself off the grooves of the pillar and began to slowly walk towards the ponies, his boots scraping against the floor with every step he took.

Celestia released the lilac pony from her embrace who promptly backed up a few steps to look up at the much taller alicorn in her magenta irises with a confused expression, asking “But I thought you told me it was all an old pony’s tale?”

“I told you that you needed to make some friends, nothing more” Celestia answered, raising one of her hooves up to be chest level with her. “I saw the signs of Nightmare Moon’s return and I knew it was you who had the magic inside to defeat her” Celestia continued, her eyes moving to each individual pony as they all slowly rose to their hooves, with Pinkie excitedly bouncing up in typical Pinkie Pie fashion. Lastly, her eyes locked onto Levi’s as he made his way to be in sync with the rest of the ponies, shooting her a small smile that she happily returned.

“But you could not unleash it until you let true friendship into your heart” Celestia carried on, Twilight continuing to gaze up at her like she was the most important thing in her entire world at that moment. Her eyes were encompassed with an array of different emotions, they sparkled with solace knowing that the nightmare was finally over, they glimmered with a sense of excitement at how changed her life was going to be knowing that she and her friends are the Elements of Harmony. Celestia couldn’t express with words how proud she was of her student, but her delight would have to sit on the sidelines for the time being as the biggest problem in the room stirred awake in the corner of the corridor next to the stage. The seven of them followed Celestia’s eyes over to the black and navy blue alicorn that laid on her stomach a foot or so from the pedestal, bits and pieces of Nightmare Moon’s shattered armor sat on the ground beside her. Small trails of smoke rose in the air from hunks of metal like they had just been ripped from an oven.

Her smile faded and a neutral expression washed over her face and took its place. “Now if only another will as well” Celestia uttered, her golden hoof coverings clanking against the floor as she walked over to the body by the foundation.

The alicorn rested on the flooring peacefully with her navy wings laying limp against her sides and draping down onto the ground. Her coat was the color of a beautiful purple night sky. On her flank was a black splotch like a puddle of ink with a small crescent moon in the center. Adorning her head nestled snugly into her mane and against her horn was a small, coal black crown that glistened in the sunlight. Her mane was a lovely cobalt color that flowed down her neck similar to Celestia’s but without the constant waving and sparkling that constantly followed the white alicorn’s hair. When the alicorn finally left the land of dreams, she was immediately met with the ice cold floor stinging her belly like a vengeful jellyfish. She slowly opened her eyes, revealing cyan jewels dazzling in the remnants of sunlight that poured into the corner she was laying in. When her eyelids fully separated from one another, she was faced with a large shard of what used to be her armor sitting pitifully in front of her. Strings of smoke and dark blue sparkles lifted from the chunk of glossy metal that looked more like glass than what it actually was. The navy blue alicorn gazed at the reflection being in the fragment of armor as if it was trying to mock her. She couldn’t stand to look at how helpless and pathetic she appeared to be. Luckily for her, she wouldn’t have to for much longer. The clanking of Celestia’s hoof coverings against the ground pulled her attention away from the image, her eyes went wide and pooled with nervousness and anxiety as the white alicorn came closer and closer to her.

“Princess Luna,” Celestia declared, spreading her wings fully out to her sides as she walked, unintentionally making herself look more imposing to the alicorn than she intended.

“It’s been a thousand years since I’ve seen you like this,” Luna’s head retracted back like a snail retreating into its shell as Celestia took a seat on the floor right in front of her. She looked deep into Luna’s eyes that she desperately tried to hide from the taller alicorn, knowing good and well her true feelings would be revealed whether she liked it or not at the white pony’s gaze. Unfortunately for her, Celestia’s comforting look pulled her in like a fish to a worm, allowing Celestia to see the swirling tornado of emotions that roared behind her cyan orbs. Celeastia was only granted a very brief moment to view the confusing and unsure cacophony of feelings before Luna shut her eyes tight and lowered her head towards the floor.

“It’s time to put our differences behind us,” Celestia’s almost pacifying voice calmed the woes screaming inside her, giving her enough courage to lift up her head and look the one she had wronged so badly in the eyes, “We were meant to rule together, little sister”

“Sister?” The group let out collectively in a whisper.

The white alicorn stood back up on her hooves, once again demonstrating the immense height difference of the two like a tower standing next to a tent. “Will you accept my friendship?” Celestia looked down at the navy blue pony with a hopeful look who only shied away from her gaze with tightly shut eyes, much to the disappointment of her taller sister. The line of ponies locked their hooves into the ground and leaned their heads closer and closer to the pair like ostriches, anticipation flowing through them faster than blood all the while.

After what felt like hours, the navy blue alicorn finally opened her eyes, revealing her cyan irises pooled with an unpleasant brew of regret, sadness, and guilt swirling inside of her orbs like cauldrons. Eye contact with her older sister was a struggle for Celestia as her sisterly instincts kicked into high gear and she wanted nothing more than to comfort her kin, tell her everything was going to be okay until her cyan jewels returned to their normal beautiful state. As she looked down at the pony with her face hidden away, memories flashed in front of her eyes like a rapid fire slideshow of everything that led up to that fateful day when she was forced to banish her own flesh and blood. She thought about all of the good times they had as fillies, playing together in the backyard until late into the afternoon and then being beckoned back inside by their mother. She remembered all the sisterly arguments and quarrels they would have as teenagers about all sorts of things both big and small. It didn’t matter how trivial and insignificant something was, if it could be argued about then you best believe they would bicker and squabble until the sun set. She could almost smell the intoxicating scent of their mothers flawless cooking as they each sat across from each other at the dinner table, looks of excitement and eagerness painting their faces. Alas, when all of the happy memories the two shared together made their way through her mind, the negative ones reared their ugly head. She vividly recalled the face of the monster known as Nightmare Moon cackling in her face, her guffaws echoing through the spacious throne room they shared, as Nightmare sat atop the royal seat that belonged to her sister.

She could hear her maniacal laughs in the back of her mind as she recollected about the night that almost lasted forever. The look of her aquamarine eyes piercing her like sharp swords was burned into her memory. In her glare, she could see the remnants of what remained of her sister buried deep in her eyes as they stared daggers into her. Celestia blinked away the image she had absentmindedly painted in her eyes, snatching a quick glance at the smoking shard of armor that once belonged to the monstrosity that stole her sibling from her, finding great satisfaction in the fact that Nightmare Moon was no more. Her eyes snapped back to the alicorn at her hooves who still had her face hidden away from her older sister. They could all feel the anticipation in the air turn into a smog as seconds ticked away into minutes, waiting for the navy blue alicorn to give her an answer. An answer that very well may change the history of Equestria as they knew it.

Finally, after what felt like years since she had last seen them, Luna made contact with Celestia’s soft magenta eyes once again with her immense guilt almost radiating from them. Teardrops welled behind her eyeballs like a volcano of emotion ready to burst at a moment's notice. Luna shakily rose to her hooves, her eye contact never breaking, as the salty tears began to reach their breaking point closer and closer with each passing second. At long last, the words Celestia had been waiting to hear for the past thousand years finally erupted from the younger alicorn’s mouth with her geysers of tears disgorged along with it.

“I’m so sorry!” Luna exclaimed with regret flowing through her voice, her wings flaring up and tears beginning to rush like an angry waterfall. She dashed forward and practically rammed her head right under Celestia’s neck, staining her perfect white coat with her salty drops. “I missed you so much, big sister!” Luna cried into her chest muffled by the soft hairs that covered her body.

It was now Celestia’s turn to let out her sorrows and tears of joy, allowing them to flow freely from her eyes as she nuzzled her chin into the top of her sister’s head right between her ears. “I missed you too, Luna”

Levi couldn’t help but let a small grin spread across his face at the saccharine reunion, watching as the two alicorns made eye contact once again with tears of pure joy blurring their vision immensely. However, Luna’s cyan orbs cut through the wall of cloudiness restricting her sisters eyesight and allowed Celestia to see inside of the pools in her eyes once again. Where the twister of emotions once sat was now a lake of relief, delight, and rejoice all mixed together and living amongst each other happily.

While the two relished in their sickly reconciliation, Levi’s mind finally calmed and he was allowed to think about the remaining questions he had now that the threat was neutralized. The one that stuck out the most to him in that moment was the lack of a seventh Element of Harmony among the cluster of ponies in the corridor. He expected there to be a big over-the-top explosion or bright flash of light and born from it was the element of..something. Weirdly enough, it never came. He debated on asking Twilight, but seeing how happy she looked observing the tearful hug of the two long lost sisters, he didn’t want to interrupt her and make her overthink for the hundredth time that night. This posed even more questions than answers for the brown haired man.

‘If the power of all of them was needed to beat Nightmare, then how the hell did It work with six?’ The question refused to leave Levi’s head until it was given an answer despite him knowing it wasn’t a cause for concern. Yet still, the inquiry was a pesky mosquito buzzing incessantly inside of his brain, showing no signs of leaving until it was answered or acknowledged at the very least. No matter how much he wracked his brain, he couldn’t think of anything to reply to the question with. His brain suddenly turned from a headquarters hustling and bustling with activity to a dark, gloomy attic occupied by dust-filled corners and spider-webs. There wasn’t anything that could satiate the relentless query occupying every nook and cranny in his mind. It felt like he would die without an answer..but what could the answer be? Levi tried his damndest to push the thought to the darkest corner in the back of his mind and for a few seconds, the relentless pestering stopped. One glance over at Twilight’s crown that demanded all the attention around her reignited the mental harassment once again, much to the man's annoyance as he quickly pulled his eyes away from the dazzling headwear. He crossed his arms over his chest and sighed, realizing that the inquiry that plagued every corner of his brain would not be leaving anytime soon. As much as the question annoyed him, it was a good thought-provoking question. What would the seventh element be? There was a possibility that it wasn’t even anyone he or the rest of the group knew. It could be Alan for all he knew. Or maybe it was even the newly reformed princess who’s sobbing into her sister’s chest refused to dim down even a little. It could be someone in a far away land. It could be someone the ponies would never even meet in their entire life. As outlandish as it was, there was a slender, slim chance that Levi could be the rightful person to represent the seventh element. The more and more he thought about it, the more and more it started to make even the slightest bit of sense in his mind. He was the seventh person in the group, the man dressed in blue in the prophecy, the one who wrestled with death by fighting the Timberwolf. He remembered the spark he felt inside of him during the moments where he protected the ponies, or at the very least, tried to.

The moment he saw the Manticore and flew into action without a second thought. The instant he saw Gary throw Rainbow on the ground like a piece of garbage. He imagined that maybe, just maybe, that spark had something to do with the mystery behind who was the owner of the seventh element. His mind longed for an answer to relieve Levi of the constant torment the question unleashed on his brain. As much as Levi wanted one too, he knew he wouldn’t find one here, and certainly not while the two princesses were having their much deserved moment of joy from their reunion.

“You know what this calls for?” Pinkie’s high-pitched voice piped up, gaining almost all the attention in the room.

“A PARTY!” She exclaimed excitedly, giving one excited Pinkie hop high into the air with the comical springing sound following it as it always did. Levi smiled at the pink pony who returned a large, bright grin in response. Her sudden interjection made Levi feel better about the whole situation he was in. It was what Pinkie was best at after all. Brightening people’s moods and lifting them from whatever darkness they may be feeling was her specialty, and the happiness and relief he felt while inside her aura of delight was almost intoxicating.

“Sounds good to me,” Levi responded, “Whaddya say Twilight?”

“Hmm-oh yeah! That sounds great!” Twilight answered, slightly embarrassed from how zoned out she was looking at the two alicorns.

“That sounds mighty fine to me” Applejack added with a tip of her hat.

“I’m ready to get outta here” Levi was more than ready to do anything but be in that castle. He was eager to go have a party and put the dreadful memories of that night behind him and leave them to rot in the past where they belonged. But there was something else that Levi felt needed to be addressed between him and Rainbow, and it was about a very particular man in a turquoise shirt. He thought about how in the world he was going to explain Gary to Rainbow. When should he do it? How should he go about it? Give it to her straight or lay it down easily? Levi stole a quick glance at her and met her soft magenta eyes, sensing that she felt almost the same as him and he didn’t blame her. She deserved an explanation after the horror that the bastard did to her. However, Levi shook the worrisome thoughts away for the meantime and decided to focus on the only important thing that mattered to him right now. Getting out of the castle and partaking in one of Pinkie’s signature, slightly over-the-top, parties. He couldn’t resist letting a much wider smile emerge on his face and a tingle of excitement grow in his heart at the prospect of Levi unwinding and relaxing at a celebration. Maybe the uncompromising question would cut Levi some slack even if it was just for a few minutes. He could almost feel tranquility enveloping him at the mere concept of going back home to Ponyville and taking a long, much deserved nap in the library after whatever Pinkie had in store for all of them.

‘Home?’ Levi never thought in a million years he’d be calling a town full of horses and unicorns home, but yet, here he was excited to go back to a community full of them. A lively, beautiful, thriving community. In his situation, Levi wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘On second thought…’ Levi took a quick glance at the ponies around him, admiring the friendly look they managed to keep on their faces despite the exhaustion that threatened to swallow them whole. As he looked around, the love he felt for his newfound friends only grew stronger and he felt his heartbeat quicken. He recollected Fluttershy taking him in and saving his life when he first fell into Equestria. He remembered the very first interaction he had with Twilight back at the library and the surprising amount of hospitality. He could almost hear the loud, overdramatic gasp that escaped Pinkie’s lungs before she dashed off to who knows where to begin preparing Twilight’s party. And those were just to name a few of the memories he had made in the beloved town. ‘Yeah,’ Levi’s eyes found their way looking into Pinkie’s crystal blue ones, the edges of his mouth almost touching his ears at her hyper bouncing that brought great joy to the man’s heart. He knew then and there he had finally found his place in Equestria. He no longer felt lost or unsure about anything. This was it, his destiny. ‘This is my home’

The lush green grass that painted the hill felt like a soft cloud as Levi walked with slow, labored steps down it, making sure to take his time and appreciate everything around him. It felt like years since he’s heard the birds sing or see squirrels running sporadically from the trees that bursted with life on either side of him. It really made Levi regret ever taking nature’s blessing for granted. He never realized how good the morning breeze felt on his sweat soaked skin until it was gone almost permanently, relishing in the cool feeling on his back from the wind blowing through the torn up shreds of his shirt on his back. The back of his white t-shirt, which was still wet with sweat, combined with the crisp early morning zephyr made for an uncomfortable feeling like ice was being pressed down onto his bare flesh. Nonetheless, it beat staying in the cold confines of the castle by miles. At the same time, the aching in his bones refused to cease despite it being numbed down a lot more than it was right after the shockwave. It wasn’t enough so that it wouldn’t hurt, it was just barely enough to remind Levi that it was there and wasn’t going to leave anytime soon. Levi let out a sigh at his circumstances that, even though they weren’t his fault, was still annoyed by them all the same. He wished he could just take a nice walk through a nice spring day in Equestria, but nothing was ever that easy for the man which he learned in the worst way. He wondered how long all these aches and pains would last after the events of last night. Days? Weeks? Maybe months for all he knew. In spite of everything, he would try his damndest to enjoy every second of every day that he spent in Ponyville despite the conditions he was forced to bear. Trying to occupy his mind on something other than the ailments that plagued him, he looked around and revered at everything big or small he could lay his eyes on in the stunning nature of Ponyville.

Small, very round red and blue birds flew gracefully from tree to tree and even soared through the sky like they were the only ones who mattered. Small little insects crawled in and out of the holes they called home in the rich brown dirt at his feet. Woodpeckers hammered the strong trunks of oak trees, looking for any bug or worm that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. From what Levi could see, he wasn’t having any luck. While he was observing the world around him, he could help but notice the sun’s warm rays felt foreign to him in a weird way. For the past 25 years of his life, the burning behemoth in the sky had been like his guardian angel, always watching over him and surveying his life like it was his sworn duty as the sun. But now, after having it torn from him for what he perceived to be countless hours, it felt like he had never felt it before. His eyes were still not very used to the intrusive, bright rays of light, evident proof of this was the constant squinting and having to look slightly down at the ground where he walked to avoid the battering beams. The sense of irritation at his state of affairs was quickly scrubbed away by the gentle breeze that flowed over him like the comforting hug of an angel, relieving him of his woes and angers that once bedeviled him. Levi couldn’t resist donning a fresh small smile, a stark contrast to the stone cold serious face he had been portraying ever since the princess of the sun disappeared at the failed celebration.

It was a relief not having to focus solely on him and his friends' survival anymore. In all honesty, it was exhausting. So exhausting in fact his eyelids were actively going to war against him in the epic battle of wanting to shut and stay shut forever while his brain pounded with a sharp pain, like a sword had been driven deep into his skull. His ears slightly rung like a small bee had made itself comfortable inside of his eardrum. Despite the happy, relieved exterior he tried to keep up, he felt like he had been through decades of warfare and conflict in just a matter of hours. Levi was fighting against the urge to collapse and sleep for days tirelessly like his life depended on it. He knew for certain the moment his back touched the bed in the library, Twilight might as well not expect to see him for a while. Each step he took was like moving a mountain and his legs were practically begging for him to stop, trying to egg him on to surrender to sleep and lie down. However, when he saw the momentous party Pinkie had planned just a few feet ahead of him, he knew the land of dreams would have to be put on hold for the meantime.

From what he could see, several tables scattered around a small area, all of them adorning pink table cloths. On the tables were bowls of snacks and jugs of what seemed to be fruit punch, they really could be anything knowing Pinkie Pie. The area was bordered by multi-colored balloons that were like flashing neon signs that said “Party over here”. The mere sight of it made Levi want to giggle like an excited school girl, but his lungs couldn’t even comprehend the thought of doing a task that big, so he kept his excitement strictly internal.

After some more lumbering steps that he struggled to make, Levi was finally at the sea of ponies that made the party exactly what it was. Now that he was standing in front of the ocean of ponies that were all different colors, making it look like a painting from all the different hues that were on display, nervousness reared its ugly head inside of him. With all of the equines packed closely together like sardines, he was worried that him fighting to stay upright and falling could cause a catastrophe and completely ruin what was supposed to be a relaxing event. Nonetheless, he took a deep breath and swallowed his anxieties down to the darkest pit of his stomach and made the first of many awkward, heavy-footed steps towards the crowd. When Levi’s body fully emerged and became one with the lake of ponies, he sifted through the bodies of pegasi and unicorns alike like he was walking through a forest of tightly crammed trees. Just like his worries were trying to convey to him before he entered, his uncoordinated walking shined bright for all to see in the most embarrassing and worst way possible. One mint unicorn’s drink left her hoof and met the ground, the liquid seeped back into the earth and gave the grass it was fed to a sweet berry pink treat chocked full of everything sugary he could imagine.

“Hey!” The unicorn exclaimed in annoyance, whipping her head around and revealing sunglow eyes pooling with ire.

“S-Sorry” Levi stammered, his chagrin flowing out of his mouth and in the form of stuttered words. The mint unicorn scoffed and excused herself through the crowd, walking off in irritation and almost immediately dissipating into the sea of ponies like she was never even there.

“Damn..” Levi sighed to himself. Despite the humiliating bump, Levi continued to wade through the lagoon of unicorns and pegasi alike like he was walking through violent rushing waters trying his best to stay afloat. Levi began to grow annoyed by how far away the snack table was, beginning to grow unsure if he was even going in the right direction. After all, the last thing he wanted was to be trapped in the pony lagoon with nowhere to sit as weariness began to wrap its cold, unforgiving hands around him. The urge to fall over and sleep began barking much louder than before inside of him and the constant chattering and sometimes exclaiming of the ponies at all sides of him was beginning to take its toll. His head hammered like a drum. His legs ached like never before. His ears begged for mercy and the ringing grew louder from the voice that were pummeling it mercilessly. The light at the end of the dark and noise-filled tunnel was the snack table that could ease the twisting pain and roaring of his hungry stomach and quench his desert-like throat.

“Watch it!” A sand colored earth pony snapped after Levi’s foot collided with his ankle. A stammering and embarrassing response ran out of his mouth right after.

“Hey!”

“What’s your problem!”

“You spilled my drink!”

After what felt like an eternity of aimless walking through the marine of ponies, his body finally slipped out from the sliver of space between a gray unicorn with glasses and a chocolate brown one, and what sat gracefully in front of him made his heart skip a beat. There it was, the heavenly god-sent snack table. Levi’s mouth almost filled with saliva like a dog begging for food scraps and his eyes turned to saucers. Resting atop the pink table cloth illuminated by the sun like they were sent from the heavens above were two trays abundant with warm cupcakes made by the one and only Pinkie Pie. The small swirl of icing varied in color, ranging from the brightest most vibrant red he had ever seen to the richest purple. In the center of it sat a large bowl filled to the brim with the berry pink treat Levi had unintentionally knocked from the mint unicorn’s hoof. There was a tower of clear plastic cups that sat right next to the bowl and a long, silver serving spoon sat inside the glass dish. Much to his relief, there was a few feet of space separating the table from the crowd, forming a nice ring of open grass around the endowed table. Levi could almost see his reflection in the glass bowl that housed the fruit punch like it was beckoning him towards it. Without a second thought, Levi followed its silent commands.

He rushed over to the table like a starving primal beast and fought through the throbbing in his legs, practically slamming into it but catching himself on the edges of the wood. The pink liquid sloshed and swirled around at the sudden force Levi exerted onto it. He looked deep into the salmon colored abyss with narrowed eyes as his reflection stared right back up at him, it was only then when Levi realized how grungy he looked. His eyes were tired and lackluster, lacking the usual vitality that they possessed and was instead replaced with a look of pure fatigue. His hair was still a matted grimy mess like a rats nest placed atop his head but looked a lot better than the last time he saw his reflection back at the castle. He tried in vain to groom it on his walk to the party but found it almost impossible, be that as it may, it was a lot better than before. He had almost completely wiped away the green streak of blood across his face from the Timberwolf, but if you looked very closely, you could still see the faint outline of the bodily fluid across the bridge of his nose. His cheek had a small purple bruise on it courtesy of Gary’s rampage. Fortunately, it wasn’t as painful as it looked like. Levi looked past his reflection and saw what was truly calling his name inside the bowl, the fruit punch. Or more specifically, a drink. Something Levi would’ve killed for in that moment.

He grabbed the spoon forcefully, causing the bowl to jump an inch or so in the air and land back down, splashing some berry pink deliciousness onto the table, blending into the tablecloth. He tore one of the cups from the tower and unintentionally knocked the rest over pitifully on its side. The spoon rattled and clanged against the sides of the bowl, grabbing some of the unwanted attention and peering glances from some other ponies in the sea of them at the sudden noise. He lifted the long silver utensil from the puddle of punch and his heart almost leaped out of his chest at the sight of the sugar-filled concoction sitting patiently in the small bowl at the end of the spoon. Eagerly, he filled his cup, which already sat ready in his hand, and filled it to the brim. Despite the warm weather and the sun beating down on it every second, the drink still remained cold, which made Levi long for it even more than he already was. The very instant the spoon left his hand and dropped back into the bowl, he practically flew the rim of the cup to his lips and relished in the feeling of the almost ice cold liquid flowing down his throat. The dryness that once plagued it was gone in the blink of an eye. In its place was a euphoric feeling of pure relief as his gullet went from drier than a desert wasteland to a sugary water slide at the snap of a finger.

A few small droplets managed to escape his mouth and ended up on a one way trail down his chin. Levi released the cup from his iron grip,not having a single care in the world where it would land, and wiped his mouth with his soiled forearm, only adding to the many stains that afflicted it. Levi felt a tidal wave of relaxation crash down onto him as he felt one of his several ailments finally be wiped away for good, the sense of comfort and ease he was hoping to get from the party in the first place. Luckily for him, he got what he wished for, and more. As he stood there in the darkness behind his eyelids leaning against the table, one of his many other troubles reared its ugly head once again. His stomach roared in hunger and struck Levi with another twisting, teeth-gritting pain in his gut like someone grabbed ahold of his internal organ and crumpled it. In an instant, Levi thrusted his eyes back into the sunlight and gripped onto the edge of the table before reaching his dirt stained arm over top and over to the bestowed upon cupcakes. His thumb and index finger found themselves pushing into the soft bottom of the desert, feeling the white cupcake liner crinkle under the pressure.

Nonetheless, he yanked the pastry from where it sat on the metal tray and peeled the liner off without hesitation, fully intent on devouring it completely the second he could. The paper that once lined the bottom of the cupcake quietly hit the grass after it left Levi’s fingers. Straight away, he threw the cupcake into his open mouth, almost gagging as it struck the back of his throat and nearly hit his uvula. Levi sank his teeth into the soft delectable dessert and his mouth immediately exploded with flavor. The luscious chocolate flavor combined with the succulent taste of the perfectly made icing made for a blissful feeling for Levi’s taste buds, who wordlessly thanked him for bestowing the sweet treat upon them. Levi swallowed the half-chewed pastry with one mighty gulp, his newly freshened throat gave him its gratitude and accepted the dessert with open arms. Finally, Levi felt what he had been waiting to feel ever since he found the holy grail known as the snack table. Relief. The feeling washed over him like a warm shower on a cold winter day and made his heart thump just a little faster at the prospect of being able to finally let his hair down and unwind. No hunger pains, no dry throat, it felt like it had been the eons since he was refreshed on food and water, but he was glad the time had finally come. Excitement coursed through him at the thought of practically hibernating the very second he laid down in the library, despite how lively and vibrant he tried to show on the outside, he felt like he was on death's door on the inside. Knocking and ready for the reaper to open up and take him.

The reaper. Just then, Levi’s mind jumped back to the dread inducing painting he had seen back at the castle of what could only be assumed to be the Grim Reaper. Now that Levi finally had the time to really dive into thought about the picture, nothing about it made even the slightest lick of sense. How could colors on a piece of paper make Levi feel like he was being stalked? How could they have such an..influence for lack of a better word on him to the point where it's like someone is looming over his shoulder at all times. The sense of impending doom. That was the main thing Levi took from his experience. That feeling of his demise coming at any second. That fear that his death might be waiting for him around any corner. In simple terms, it was nothing but completely awful. Considering what he’s seen so far in Equestria, a haunted painting didn’t seem like that far of a stretch for weird or otherwise impossible things. After all, this is the same world where Manticores and wolves made of wood live together in harmony..somehow. Now that he really thought about it, a chilling idea crept their way into his head. Maybe, just maybe, his death had in fact been lurking in the sullen corridors of that old castle. In the form of none other than Gary. The more and more he pondered it, the more it started to make sense despite how much he didn’t want it to make sense. Gary was nothing short of a psychopath, plain and simple. His lack of empathy for Rainbow Dash’s pain and suffering hammered that fact deeper into Levi’s head. And after what he saw and heard of what he did back in Tuscaloosa, he was more than willing to kill if he really wanted to. Then again, this theory of Gary being a force of nature that this “Grim Reaper” threw at him posed more questions than answers. How did he know about Nightmare Moon? Why would he say Nightmare resurrected him? Was he lying? More importantly, how did the Reaper know about Levi’s past? He could almost feel the smoke coming out of his ears at the constant thinking.

Levi let out a sigh and turned around, leaning his back against the edge of the table. He decided to drop the subject for now and leave that conversation for another day. All it did was remind him of the inevitable sit down conversation he had to have to Rainbow Dash about Gary. Just the thought of telling her about him and his past deeds made his skin crawl.

“Hey Levi!” Out of the ocean of voices that all combined into one unpleasant sound around him, one very familiar voice stood out, one that belonged to a particular lilac colored unicorn. Right after, the very same unicorn emerged from the lake of ponies that formed a ring around the snack table, looking into Levi’s eyes with a friendly smile plastered on her face.

“Hey Twi!” Levi greeted warmly, “You enjoying yourself?”

“It’s louder than I’d like but it’s fine, I’m not the biggest fan of parties anyway” She responded.

“Would you rather celebrate saving the world in a library?”

“That’s what I would do but Pinkie seemed to put a lot of love into this,” She answered, her horn liting up as she lifted two cups and the serving spoon at the same time, “I can’t miss it even for a good book”. Levi could almost feel the elation in her voice at the concept of getting home and reading to her heart's content and keeping the library nice and quiet for Levi’s deep slumber. The thought almost sent Levi to the land of dreams right then and there.

She let the salmon pink liquid flow like a river into one cup before dipping it back in and doing the same for the other, levitating the drink over to Levi’s open hand. He wrapped his fingers around it and spoke his gratitude to Twilight before putting the rim to his lips without wasting a second, feeling the cold relief travel down his gullet like sugary heaven. Twilight stood next to Levi with her back to the table, staring out into the lagoon of ponies that all managed to cram in the small space the border of balloons provided. Twilight was amazed at the fact that there hadn’t been a fight or an argument yet considering how close they were crammed together. Then again, those ponies are probably used to being in these enormous social gatherings whenever wherever. Twilight on the other hand couldn’t even bear to think about being in that crowd a second longer. It was like she was shimmying her way through a tight constricting cavern, instead the stone walls were replaced by hundreds of bodies all pressing against her. Luckily, she could stay at the bestowed table as long as she needed to recover from the worrisome journey through the sea of Ponyville residents.

However, as the two stood there in comfortable silence next to each other. Levi could feel an odd tension between the unicorn and the man, but a tension of what exactly? Levi couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was that needed to be said between the duo and he felt slightly intimidated by the thick tightness in the air to ask. Whatever it was, he was hoping it wasn’t about what he thought it was going to be about. But knowing Twilight and what she saw back in that corridor, it probably was what he was dreading to talk about.

Right after Levi somehow heard a barely audible gulp from Twilight’s gullet, she turned to look at him with an inquisitive look in her big purple eyes. In her elongated violet orbs, Levi could already hear the words that were ready to escape the unicorn's mouth, his heart slowly beginning its descent into its stomach at what he assumed was going to be said.

“Listen Levi,” She began, “I need to ask you something important”

‘Oh boy, here we go’

“What is it, Twi?”

“Well…I don’t know how to say this but,” She replied, looking down at the ground like she was genuinely struggling to form her thoughts into her words as she absentmindedly began fiddling with her hooves. “If you don’t wanna tell me it's fine but..”

‘Here it comes’

“Who…was the man back at the castle?”

‘Dammit!’ Levi could feel his heart in his throat hammering nervously as he looked at the lilac pony deep in her eyes, hoping to grab onto some shred of reassurance in her irises that he could use to calm his racing nerves. Much to his dismay, nothing was there except for the burning hot desire for an answer to her question she’d been wondering ever since she stepped hoof inside that hall. Honestly, Levi could understand her curiosity towards what she couldn’t see behind the locked door. If Levi suddenly walked into a room with a dead body and a smashed metal object that he had no idea what it was with one of his friends laying in agony on the floor, he’d demand answers too. However, he really didn’t think the answers that Twilight wanted would be anything that she would want to hear about, not now at least.

“I…uhm…he…” Was all Levi could stammer in response before he fell into a silence, his eyes falling to the floor as he tried to conjugate his thoughts into a coherent sentence. At the same time, he snapped his eyes onto the behemoth of a tarn of ponies that surrounded them on every side with no exceptions. He searched frantically for something, anything, that would steer the conversation in a different direction and hopefully give Levi an excuse to go on a tangent about something completely different. Just like the universe was trying to condemn him to this torturous discussion he was fearing, there was absolutely nothing to rescue him from the inevitable chat he had to have and he knew it. No buoys. No lifejackets. No nothing. Just he, Twilight, and the crowd of ponies that never ceased to swell and grow around them.

“I…” Levi finally ended his nervousness-filled sorry excuse for speech with a dramatic sigh.

“Again if you don’t wanna tell me, you don’t have to” Twilight responded, almost being able to feel the tension rising inside of him. The problem was, he wanted to tell her. He felt that she deserved to know after two of her friends were suddenly locked in a room with seemingly nothing in it, then suddenly revealing a dead body and a truck when she opened the door needed some context. He just didn’t know how to explain who Gary was, or maybe is, to her without completely freaking her out. Levi desperately wanted to keep the shield of solace the party had fabricated around him, and even mentioning the monster's name would shatter that into a million pieces. Something Levi dreaded with all his heart.

“Twilight I…I’ll tell you later, alright?” Levi finally responded, “I don’t wanna talk about it here”

Twilight could almost feel her friend's tension about the extremely touchy subject resonating from him. Judging by the visage that was fully on display in that cold and gloomy corridor, she could only imagine what horrors happened that she couldn’t see to drive Levi to murder. She also thought of what triggered the deafening BOOM! That ravaged her and the rest of the group’s ears and shook the castle to its core. In a weird way, she felt extremely intrigued to learn the story behind the dead man. While at the same time, she felt slightly guilty for being that curious about something that clearly affected her friend exponentially.

“Alright then,” She responded, “Well, can I atleast ask you one thing?”

‘Can’t you just leave it alone Twilight’ Levi expressed his slight annoyance strictly mentally before giving a reply to the inquisitive unicorn.

“Go ahead”

“Well..It may sound like I’m being a little paranoid but…” She paused, shifting her eyes to the flourishing grass at her hooves for a brief moment before back up to Levi’s patient eyes. Purple met green once again. “Is he gonna be a cause for concern, Levi?”

Levi took longer than usual to answer the question that would normally have such a simple answer. “Of course not. He’s dead Twilight.” Is the phrase he desperately wanted to let run free from his lips but, unfortunately, he truly had no idea whether or not that was really the case. Shortly after Gary made his bloody entrance into Levi’s life years before, he remembered seeing the news report on TV and the Tuscaloosa newspaper. He watched it so many times to the point he could almost recite every word she spoke, every mannerism she had. Even as he stood there, he could almost hear her reporter voice speaking to him like she was a spirit living in the back of his head, looming over him constantly. Awful, indescribable night terrors hit him almost every night for the weeks following his demise. Hearing the report on TV he had recorded on almost every news channel in Alabama that covered it comforted his otherwise panicked mind at the fact that the man who caused him all of this distress was gone for good. He cemented this fact further by frantically ripping the newspaper, which had been decorated with a fresh coat of dust, out of the drawer and reading every line of text the article had to offer. ‘TUSCALOOSA DRUG DEALER FOUND MURDERED’ The headline screamed right in his face. Back then, he held those close to him like security blankets anytime Gary was mentioned by him or Alan and the risk of the terrible nightmares coming back struck fear in him. But now, after the events of the night, Levi wasn’t sure if Gary was truly dead.

Nightmare brought him back to life and Levi killed him. It should be an open and shut case. If the word ‘killed’ really meant anything to Gary. In his dreams, in Equestria, in Tuscaloosa, he always found a way to torment him no matter what. Regardless of what the dark truth may or may not be, not wanting to worry the unicorn anymore than she already seemed to be, Levi gave her the answer she was wanting to hear.

“You don’t have to worry about him Twi…he’s gone” In her eyes, the man could see a relieved look beginning to pool in them at his answer. Twilight brought the rim of the small cup to her lips and downed another portion of the punch, relishing in the sweet sugar-packed taste that blessed her taste buds with its entrance. An extremely stark contrast to the foul tendril of worry that once resided in her stomach, now cast out thanks to Levi’s reassuring words.

“That’s…good to hear,” Twilight shifted her posture against the table, refilling her cup with more of the liquid heaven despite the cup not being finished. “I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you Levi, for everything”

Levi raised an eyebrow. “Why? One could argue it was you and the others who saved the day”

“It wasn’t all just us,” Twilight rebutted, wanting Levi to take at least a shred of rightfully deserved credit for what he did. “The Timberwolf wasn’t us. That was you. We probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you”

In a way, Twilight was right. Levi hadn’t stopped to truly think about the copious amounts of good he did that night, instead focusing on the bad and the ugly. Levi felt a small flame of pride flicker to life in his heart and right alongside it was a bubbling feeling of appreciation at the thank you he didn’t know he needed in that moment. But, like someone had pulled him out of a good dream, he was roped back into the familiar ocean of dread once again once the thought of the inevitable conversation crossed his mind once again.

“I don’t like bragging but you’re right, I should take a little credit shouldn’t I?” Levi replied, taking another gulp of the punch, rewarding himself for his bravery. Levi knew he should be a lot more proud of himself than he was in that moment, after all, Twilight was completely right about him. If it wasn’t for his act of selflessness in battling the Timberwolf, he and the rest of the group would be long gone and Equestria would still be trapped in that everlasting darkness. It was a scary thought to think about.

“You really should,” Twilight said in response, “I can’t ever repay you for what you did, Levi”

“Don’t mention it Twilight,” Levi replied, “Besides, having some friends here is enough payment for me” A small infectious smile crept his way onto his face that Twilight quickly caught like matches on gasoline.

“PRINCESS!” Levi’s thoughts were cut short by a skull-rattling, ear-piercing cheer from the crowd that ravaged both the man and the unicorn’s ears. Levi winced and threw his hands over his lugs as he directed his attention up to the sky where every pony in the ocean of them were pointing, their mouths contorted into a smile that only Pinkie Pie could best. The duo could almost feel the excitement and joy radiating from them like they were radioactive with glee. Levi’s eyes went wide and a grin spread across his face despite the pain pounding in his ears at the sight meters above him.

Soaring across the vast sea of blue carried by two tan pegasi was a velvet chariot with rims as gold as the burning sun that reflected the sunlight back into each of their eyes. Rose colored large, wooden wheels sat on the back of the buggy like something you’d see propped up against the wall in a hundred year old barn that were somehow spinning in the open air. Inside the seats of the flying carriage was a very elated looking Princess Celestia who waved like she was personally greeting every pony who was lucky enough to meet her gaze, a once in a lifetime experience for some, and next to her was her newly reformed sister, Princess Luna. Her eyes were wide and looked bulged out like the eyeballs of a bug. Her mouth was warped into a perverted smile, or what looked like a poor imitation of a smile, that showed each of her pearly whites without exceptions. Levi couldn’t describe how forced and unnatural it looked on the navy blue alicorn’s face, it was as if it was waiting for this celebration to be done and it was just going to disappear until she needed it again. Whatever century that happened to be.

A few feet away from the pony lagoon and beyond the balloon border was where the chariot eventually slowed to a stop, the rickety old wheels finally coming to a halt and the loud pounding of the pegasi’s hooves ceasing as well. The very moment the Princesses’ ride touched back down on the grass, the horde of ponies stormed through the clearly marked boundaries of the party without hesitation. Over the almost thunderous noise of hundreds of sets of hooves beating the ground like sledgehammers, he could barely hear the sound of balloons popping and squeaking as they were mercilessly trampled by zombie-like mob. Latex blue and pink ovals floated out from between whatever cracks they could find between the ponies and into the sweet relief of the open air, no longer being assaulted by the crowd and left to peacefully rise into the great beyond above.

Levi and Twilight could feel the ground threaten to quiver beneath them under the battery of hooves. Levi’s cup fell from his hands in the aggressive and sudden chaos and spilled onto the dirt, seeping back into the earth, maybe this was karma for what he did to the mint unicorn earlier. Regardless of what it was, the cup was just a statistic in the clutter that plagued the ground around them like it hadn’t been cleaned in decades. Levi ignored the mess around them and instead focused his attention on the herd of bodies that almost completely enveloped the two sisters. Weirdly enough however, there was a gap between a stallion and a unicorn that allowed entry into the cocoon of ponies around the Princesses of Equestria. Levi took a few moments to survey around him and felt slightly out of place in where he was standing. All Levi could see where the lake of ponies once occupied were tens of pieces of garbage scattered all over the place and snack tables dotted around the now open area. It was a shell of its former self to say the least.

“Ever wonder how that feels?” He quipped.

“I think it’s better if we don’t know” Twilight replied, the very thought of being in Celestia’s position almost made her stomach do somersaults. Twilight pushed herself off the edge of the table she was leaning on and began walking, carefully stepping over the abundance of garbage and occasionally destroying a plastic cup under her hoof with a loud snap.

“Where’re you going?” Levi inquired, mirroring the unicorn’s action and moving off of the snack table.

Twilight looked over her shoulder and met the man’s emerald irises and, from what he could see, a solemn and somber expression painted the pony’s once vibrant and full of life face. “Going for a walk” Levi could see the sorrow begin to blossom in her purple eyes as she gave him her answer. Levi was slightly surprised about Twilight’s sharp change of mood, all of the delight draining from her in the few seconds she had her back to him, it also watered the concern growing in his heart like a beanstalk. Despite the worry in his heart screaming for him to go after her and question her, however, part of him decided against it. It had been a long, cruel, unforgiving night for all of them, and they all needed a break. Levi could only imagine what the elements had done to the group of six as they channeled its energy to defeat Nightmare. What had been running through their minds? What did they feel? Nevertheless, he knew now was not the time to pressure the unicorn about anything and just let her be alone for a few minutes. Allow her to recoup from the almost catastrophic affairs of the previous dusk.

Levi shifted his attention slowly away from the unicorn who grew further and further from his with every step and locked onto the entrance into the small crowd around Celestia. He stepped forward and heard the sound of a plastic cup being crunched under his foot as he began his labored, awkward walk over to the Princesses.

Twilight let out a gloomy sigh as her eyes fell to the dirt beneath her hooves. Crummy and grimy, exactly how Twilight felt in that moment. She kicked a leaf out of her path and watched as it flew away to places unknown in the breeze, only reminding her further of the inevitable fate that awaited her as soon as the party was over. That fate that she dreaded so much was the fact that she had to go back to Canterlot and continue living her old and, dear she said it, semi-boring life with Spike. She never thought she’d feel trepidation about going back to the castle, the place she loved the most more than anything. Surrounded by books on every side of her. Feeling the warm sunlight of the morning streaming through the colossal windows as she held a book diligently in her hooves, her eyes moving left and right across the pages. A nice, warm plate of food sitting on the table in front of as she absentmindedly forked mouthfuls down her gullet without breaking her gaze whatsoever. But now, the thought of going back to that life filled her with intense melancholy. The one factor that made her feel that way was the concept of losing her newfound friends. Never in a million years would she ever think that, but yet here she was. It was a very unknown and foreign feeling to her. The words ‘Miss’ and ‘Friend’ would never usually meet each other in a sentence that left the unicorn's mouth. Up until today, her list of friends would begin and end with Spike and the copious amounts of books that inhabited her behemoth of a library. That was it. Nothing more nothing less. And Twilight liked it that way. But now, with her new friends suddenly thrusted into the mix, her emotions became a conflicting mess.

Twilight let out another sorrow filled sigh as she slowed to a stop, the rhythmic rustling of grass at her hooves came to an end with it. Her eyes met the lush grass below her once again as more and more intrusive, saddening thoughts formed a hurricane inside her head.Twilight couldn’t bear to put any more thought into the prospect of returning home. The way that it was now, Twilight no longer perceived that huge lonely tower as home. When the word popped into her mind, she only thought of the warm embrace of the inside of the library that beamed a welcoming feeling at anyone who passed it by. She pictured the rows of books embedded in the wall in her mind that almost beckoned the unicorn to read it cover to cover, something she already planned on doing. The comfy hug of the bed’s sheets as she curled up under the watchful eye of the moon gleaming through the large window. Just the mere image she painted in her mind sent a syringe of relief plunging into her heart. Twilight knew she should cling onto that feeling for dear life as it might be the last time she would feel it in a while.

She let out a third much longer sigh as she lowered her body down until her belly converged with the soft grass underneath her. Instead of looking down solemnly, Twilight opted to devling back into the darkness behind her eyelids, not having a care in the world about what a random passerby might think if they saw her. In the endless array of blackness, Twilight dove headfirst into her memories about the tower, the place that she once never ever wanted to leave. She remembered her very first night there after Celestia had gifted it to her and Spike free of charge. She could almost feel the excitement that coursed through her veins at the first sight of the plentiful amount of books lined up in neat rows in the copious number of bookshelves. It was like she was a little filly in a candy shop, infatuated with all the bright and vibrant colors of the sweet treats around her which called her name. Then, Twilight moved forward in her slideshow of remembrances until she got to the very moment she laid down on the bed back at the Ponyville library. The mattress was like laying on a cloud and the pillow was as if she was resting her head on the side of a huge fuzzy bear. Despite how badly she wanted to push the feeling away and embrace the joy of returning to her Canterlot tower…she couldn’t. As much as she refused to admit it, the tower no longer felt like home to the unicorn. This was her home.

“Why so glum my faithful student? Aren’t you happy your quest is complete and you can go back to your studies in Canterlot?” Canterlot. The word brought another flood of negative emotions that Twilight somehow kept at bay from intruding her already aching heart. Twilight’s eyes shot open and a sharp gasp escaped her at the sudden familiar voice. When she whipped her head in surprise to the direction of the abrupt question, all she saw were multiple pairs of legs heading right in her direction from her point of view, the colors ranging from cyan as the sky above to dark dirty denim. Twilight’s cheeks filled with heat as she scurried to her hooves like a frightened animal, trying her damndest to put on a wide fake smile in spite of the flames of embarrassment roaring inside of her.

She felt blush dust her cheeks as she locked eyes with the deep magenta eyes of her teacher, her’s attempting to ease the obviously gloomy unicorn and Twilight’s beaming nothing but the woes and conflicted thoughts wrestling for dominance in her heart. She desperately wanted to keep her feelings to herself and not spill her heart out to her and all six of her friends standing side by side next to the Princess, but she knew better than lie straight to Celestia’s face. Twilight learned the hard way that Celestia was a living breathing lie detector. After all, you don’t become the ruler of Equestria without learning a few tricks. Twilight’s eyes scanned each of her friends like she was a robot, slowly moving over each one of them, her spirits being lifted inch by inch by the concerned faces that adorned each of the ponies.

Twilight let out a quiet defeated sigh, her eyes falling to the grass once more before returning to Celestia’s magenta orbs, her face now expressing the heartache she was truly feeling. With the mask of joy now completely dropped, Twilight took one last glance at each of her friends before spilling the truth from her stinging nucleus, hoping the emotional baggage being lifted would somehow make the pain go away.

“That’s just it,” She replied, already being able to feel the weight like a herd of elephants slowly being lifted off her shoulders, “Just when I learned how wonderful it is to have friends..I have to leave them”. Twilight slowly moved her eyes across the line of the ponies she now proudly called her friends, their features now donning a look of appreciation rather than concern like before.

Celestia took a small pause while continuing to look down at the sullen unicorn before she promptly declared, “Spike, take a note please”

A huge grin spread across the dragon's scaly face as he pulled a piece of paper from out of thin air and a long crimson feather appeared clutched in his fingers. Levi looked down at the small reptile, subconsciously noticing the stark height difference between the two like a tower compared to a campsite, and wondered how what just happened could possibly happen. His mind then flashed back to all the crazed and, what he thought were impossible, things. The Manticore reared its lion-like head in his mind. The Serpent's thunderous splashing and his bellowing cries echoed in his mind. The conclusion swiftly came to Levi that there was no such thing as impossible in Equestria, intriguing the man all the more.

Celestia’s golden hoof coverings made contact with her mouth as she cleared her throat before she spoke, “I, Princess Celestia, hereby decree that Twilight Sparkle will take on a new mission for Equestria. She will continue to study the magic of Friendship, and she must report to me her new findings in her new home in Ponyville!”

Twilight felt her heart explode in her chest with pure joy, setting aflame an irresistible urge to put on an ear-to-ear smile that almost lit up the entire town. Her once saddened purple eyes were now dazzling diamonds that brought a smirk to Celestia’s face. ‘Home! I can call this home now!’ The unicorn cheered internally, not being able to express her relief and happiness in words any longer.

Just then, each of her friends practically pounced onto the unicorn in a warm, comforting hug that nearly brought tears of joy to the lilac pony’s eyes. The cheering from and words of sweet nothings traveling into her ear were almost too much for her heart to handle, and she almost thought it would burst once again when she looked down and saw Pinkie’s glee-inducing face staring right up at her. She felt the warm trail of a tear running down her face from pure elation, quickly wiping it away before anybody noticed, but the short path it took left a wet mark right below the pony’s eye like it was drawn on her face.

“Thank you Princess Celesita!” She cried, barely being able to control the rodeo of emotions swirling around in her heart, “I’ll study harder than ever before!”

Unexpectedly, a booming cheer from the crowd of ponies that somehow migrated from the two Princesses over to them and had not been noticed by the ponies erupted. Small pieces and strands of red confetti rained down from the air and collected on the dark purple and raspberry streaked mane of Twilight Sparkle, the sole cause of what felt like world racking acclamation. Levi couldn’t resist a big toothy grin metastasize on his face. He too felt overwhelmingly proud of his purple-eyed friend immensely much similar to Celestia. Just like Twilight, he mirrored her feelings about going back to the hustle and bustle of Canterlot, being holed up in that castle for possibly the rest of his time in Equestria. Looking around at every shining friendly face in the sea of ponies that encompassed them, Levi couldn’t feel more excited to be a part of Twilight’s friendship journey in the beautiful town. Making his name known, being a pillar in the community, being the best friend he could be to Twilight and the group, the mere thought of it all made his heart almost leap out of his chest. But most importantly of all, finding Alan and bringing him back to show him the wonders he and Twilight accomplished. Show him the beauty of Ponyville in all of its glory. Let him meet his new friends. Levi could hardly wait. However, deep down, he knew he had a journey ahead of him before he could even think about doing that. He wanted to get settled in and take a much deserved rest after the events of the catastrophe that will go down in history as the day Nightmare Moon fell to the Elements of Harmony.

There it was again. The question returned like cancer invading his brain. Who was the seventh element? Levi smeared the thought away like a dead insect, not having enough energy to delve into the inquiry any longer. As he turned his head and looked over the mass of heads that surrounded him, he could see the bright morning, or what he hoped was morning, sun hidden behind a veil of clouds. The theory he came up with about him being the seventh element made more and more sense as seconds turned into minutes of thought, falling victim to the relentless question once again. The element of what thought? Strength? Probably not, but that earth-shattering shockwave said otherwise. Heroism? Maybe, but unlikely. Protection? Seems a lot more likely.

‘Levi Cronell, the fallen human, the man in blue, the Element of Protection’ The fictional titles he gave himself in his head sounded a lot cooler internally then they probably would have been out of his mouth. Regardless, it filled him with a sense of importance he never knew he wanted.

‘Element of Protection, huh? Maybe in another life’

The sun seemed to tell him otherwise like it had a mind of its own, casting doubt on his own internal monologue.

‘Yeah…another life’

Chapter 14: The Long Road Ahead

The old metal shower knobs squealed loudly as Levi twisted them the opposite way, killing the warm comfortable flow of water immediately, reducing it to mere droplets that fell into the bathtub. Levi immediately missed the toasty embrace of the water hitting his skin, almost instantly considering turning it back on and going for another hour. However, the smell of Twilight’s mouthwatering breakfast cooking downstairs and the scent of coffee resonating from the kitchen made Levi yearn for some food in his stomach. When his mind drifted away from the intoxicating smell traveling up the stairs into the bathroom, his ears were hit with the almost hypnotic sound of droplets of liquid colliding with the tub floor. The noise of the constant dripping was almost maddening, like the rhythmic ticking of a clock only louder, bringing droves of great annoyance to the man. He twisted both knobs even tighter than before to bring an end to the drops that threatened to drive Levi crazy and, thankfully, the dribbling ceased. Levi pushed his hair down against his scalp and slid it down, wringing out any excess water that remained after the much deserving shower and mizzling his nose. He mirrored the action with his face, rubbing any and all remnants of the easing water off his skin and left to fall to the tub below. He did the very same deed with the rest of his body, swiping off the water left behind on his torso and legs and ending with his drenched forearms. His leg hair looked like a toddler had grabbed a marker and scribbled like crazy all over them. The rings of the violet shower curtain scraped loudly against the metal bar they were being held by, greeting Levi with a very thin cloud of mist that covered the entire bathroom with no indication of leaving anytime soon.

He stepped out onto the purple mat laid outside the border of the bathtub just for him, allowing every bead of aqua he missed on his body to drop and seep into the soft fibers. Simultaneously, leaving behind large wet footprints on the once flawless carpet. Levi reached over and pulled a white towel off the silver rack to his right and put it to his damp flesh, disliking the sandpaper-like feeling of the cloth against his skin but ignoring it nonetheless. The aroma of freshly cooked eggs and perfectly brewed coffee entered his nostrils once again, making Levi long for whatever heavenly breakfast Twilight had cooked for the three of them, well, probably just him and her. Levi could hear the snoring of the small dragon with no signs of waking up anytime soon through the oak bathroom door. The picture in his head of Spike curled up in the basket he called a bed sound asleep casted a small grin to his face. After all, it was only 10AM, early for anyone else's standards, but just right for Levi’s and clearly Twilight’s as well. Levi continued sliding the rough towel up and down his flesh, leaving his skin smooth and dry as a hot summer day, as he stepped off the mat and his feet met the equally warm wooden bathroom floor. He took long strides to the marble sink, bringing the now slightly dampened cloth up to his hair which looked like he had been dunked in water just moments before. As he stood in front of the mirror which was completely fogged, allowing Levi to only see the blurry outline of his body and nothing more, he could vaguely smell the rose scented shampoo he had practically drowned his scalp in.

The temperature of the shower carried over into the rest of the bathroom, making Levi feel like he was being cooked inside of a microwave going almost as hot as it could. When not in the form of water, the heat was bordering on the edge of uncomfortable and congenial.

He wrapped the towel around his now dry neck like a scarf and swiped away a long streak of the fog that clouded the mirror, allowing him to see his reflection and bringing a confident smirk to his features. For the first time in what felt like years, not a single blemish stained his clean shaven face. The faint green streak of blood was nothing but a bad memory. His hair, once matted and greasy like he had been homeless half his life, was now restored to its former glory, brown and shiny. His emerald green eyes that once had been afflicted with a look of exhaustion and pain were now lively and bursting with vibrance. The way it always should've been. He reached up and ran his pruney fingers over his completely hairless face, his smirk growing wider at the satisfaction of his silky smooth skin. Even looking at himself made him excited like a giddy school girl to go outside and explore Ponyville the very moment he could. Now looking presentable and every pony hopefully no longer repulsed by him, he could go out and be a normal functioning person in the high-spirited town. Levi Cronell, fallen human and Ponyville resident. It had a pleasant ring to it. Levi continued the monotonous back and forth drying of his scalp, the towel against his head feeling like pavement being dragged across his cranium. He wondered how long those towels had been sitting there on that rack, a much better question would be what had happened to them to make them so dry and rough. Nonetheless, he bit the bullet and rid every last strand of his hair of any remainder of the shower.

He reached down to the seafoam green towel covering the entire toilet bowl, grabbing it and almost wincing at the asphalt-like feeling against his sensitive fingertips, and pulled it off. Underneath it lying neatly folded were the man’s dirty, grimy dark blue jeans, his blood stained white t-shirt, a pair of socks that were mostly unharmed and looked somewhat normal. The most important thing out of the articles of clothing was the royal blue dress shirt with its sleeves crossed over each other like an X on top of the rest of his clothes. Despite how rugged and tattered it was, Levi loved it like his own child. The man couldn’t combat a grin from spreading across his face once more at the sight.

The golden doorknob clicked as the lock was turned, swinging open just moments later by a brown haired man donning his signature attire. His cuff and gauntlet buttons were unfastened, causing the sleeve to swallow almost his entire hand. His shirt was also left completely unbuttoned, showing his mucky and sweat-stained white tee for all the world to see. Flagrantly, the stripe and splatter of the luminescent green blood from the long dead Timberwolf still remained on the collar of his tee, causing Levi to want to burn it just at the sight. Nevertheless, he began to button each one of his buttons and conceal the brazen mess of a shirt while slipping his feet into the warm confines of his brown loafers. He walked over to a small peg nailed into the wall and hanging on said peg was his iconic camo hat, the sunlight flowing through the window shining onto it as if to beckon him towards it. Luckily for him, he was already caught in its snare. He scooped it up off the wooden spigot and slipped it onto his freshly cleaned head of hair, relishing in the odd sense of comfort he got from sliding himself into it. Levi took another sniff of the aroma rising from the kitchen and up to his eager nostrils, almost making him stop his sleeve rolling dead in its tracks at the electrifying aroma of newly cooked eggs, ready to be devoured by a particular man in blue. His keenness for breakfast to be in his stomach almost completely consumed him and he could hardly wait for his sleeves to be fully rolled, imagining himself salivating at the holy sight of Twilight’s cooking. In another part of his mind, he hoped the nourishment would taste as good as it smelled. After all, this was a unicorn making it, who knows what magic could have altered the flavor.

Levi’s shoes clacked against the old timber stairs as he made his trek down. Each step was a split in half log that showed its bare inside for all to see, Levi almost tripped over himself admiring the rings that decorated its interior. This made him wonder all the more about who could’ve possibly built this magnificent library and how long. Years? Maybe months. The extent of unicorn magic was still a big unknown to Levi. Seeing how one managed to almost plunge Ponyville into darkness forever, the sky was most likely the limit. Levi turned the corner at the second-to-last stair and allowed the light inside the lower floor spill directly into his eyes, a stark contrast from the very natural light that occupied the entire upper level. In the center of the room was a medium length oak wooden table with two chairs on the front and back and one on the right-hand side. Sitting at the very front of the table was a tired yet enthusiastic looking Twilight who had a hot plate of her specially cooked breakfast right in front of her, smoke rising from the perfectly prepared scrambled eggs. Levi stepped down onto the final step, the clicking of his shoes against wood immediately gained the full undivided attention of the unicorn at the table who looked at him with gusto in her eyes.

“Good morning Levi!” She exclaimed, her voice being way too loud for someone who’s awake at ten in the morning, “Want some eggs?”

“Definitely,” Her horn lit up and the same electronic hum-like sound arose from it as Levi fully stepped down from the staircase and his feet met the floor of the library level. From out of Levi’s sight, a bone white glass plate with wonderfully cooked eggs smoking eggs resting on them zipped over and clattered to the table right at the seat across from Twilight. Longing for some food in his deserving stomach, Levi picked up the pace and slid the seat from where it was sitting comfortably pushed under the table, the legs scraping loudly against the floor. Levi was much more worried about harming the superb floor rather than the displeasing noise that came from it. Graciously, he took his seat at the table like he was fine dining at a restaurant rather than having breakfast with a unicorn and snaked his fingers around the fork that rested right next to his plate. Neat and organized, exactly the way Twilight likes it.

“Coffee?” Twilight asked.

“Yes, please.” Levi responded without question, the mere mention of the drink's name almost filling him with vigor. Without sparing another second, Twilight’s horn flared to life once more and, lo and behold, a lilac colored cup filled with the rich brown liquid landed safely on the timber next to him. Levi gazed into the abyss of hazel inside the glassware, the smoke rising from it almost hypnotizing him with its mouth-watering scent.

“I hope you like milk and sugar!” Twilight added like she was reading his mind minute by minute. Levi didn’t have time to make another mental comment about the magic of the unicorns, instead, he dumped all of his mental focus into savoring the blissful taste of the coffee as he brought the rim to his lips. Levi was like a moth to a flame when it came to the drink, and Twilight learned that as she watched the man down half the cup with one large swig. His taste buds were suddenly aflame with the euphoric flavor, internally thanking Twilight for bestowing it upon him with the assumption that she could read his mind. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, the liquid practically shot him awake right away, any remnant of sleepiness was slain in that moment without hesitation. Maybe it was a placebo effect or maybe it was just that strong. Regardless, it was like he had pumped himself to the maximum with energy.

“Wow!” Levi commented much louder than he anticipated, lowering the cup safely back to where it rested originally, “That’s the best coffee I ever tasted, Twi! Did you make that?”

A small blush formed on her cheeks from the compliment. “Well..yeah, but it’s not my recipe. Thank you though”

“Then who’s is it?”

“Pinkie's.”

Surprise overruled every emotion in Levi’s brain.

“She made this?” He questioned, “Does she run a shop or something?” Levi plunged his fork into a piece of egg and practically shoved it into his mouth, exploding with flavor like he half expected.

“Not a coffee shop but a dessert shop if you will. It’s Sugarcube Corner, not that far from here,” The lilac pony answered. Levi’s mouth threatened to flood. If her coffee was this good, he could only imagine how good her pastries might be. There was no question about paying her a visit later.

“How long has she been doing this for?” He asked.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t really know, I’ve known just as long as you have, Levi.” Replied the unicorn.

“Oh right, forgot” He dove his fork into another piece of egg and repeated the action, “Have you ever been there before?”

“This morning, yeah” Levi raised an eyebrow. ‘This morning?’ He thought, ‘How long has she been up for?’ Levi decided not to question the unicorn’s sleeping habits. For what felt like the millionth time since his plummet to Equestria, he reminded himself that he barely knew the customs and cultures of the ponies and maybe waking up at the crack of dawn was their thing. But dragons though, clear as day that wasn’t the case.

“Off topic but,” He paused, raising his finger as a way to keep the conversation on hold until he swallowed a large mouthful of egg, “Do you know where Rarity’s…business is?” He had no idea what to call her little fashion kingdom, business was the only word that felt right.

“I can take you to it if you want” She offered.

“That’d be great, my shirt isn’t in its prime as you can see” He replied, motioning to his ripped two top buttons with one hand and stabbing another chunk of his breakfast with the other.

Twilight let out a small giggle. “You’re right” She stated in response, mirroring the actions of her friend to her plate of steaming breakfast. Levi could hold back a smile no longer, letting his spill out onto his face from his joyful heart. The conversation they were having made Levi feel a lot more at home than he already was, and he loved it. For a few minutes after, the air was empty completely except for the comfortable silence that dominated the library, the exact way a library should be in Twilight’s eyes. The only sounds that dared to shatter it were the chirping of elated birds outside, the chit-chat of ponies that happened to pass by the library. Occasionally, a loud whooshing sound like a jet zipping soaring through the sky would pass by them, threatening to wobble the tree each time it happened. Wind rocketed through the open windows above the bookshelves looking down on the pair as they ate like a storm was raging outside, the breeze delightfully hitting Levi’s exposed forearms. When the shooting back and forth through the air came to a very brief stop, a familiar poofing sound would be heard for a split second before the soaring began again. Despite only hearing the noise once the day earlier, he could recognize immediately which pegasus was behind it, a very particular one with vibrant rainbow hair. Levi began to contemplate going outside and striking up a conversation with the cyan pony, but before he had time to run the idea through his head, his thoughts were interrupted by the unicorn across from him. What caught the man off guard was the sudden sharp slope in her voice, how it went from normal to..whatever it was now.

“Hey, Levi?” She asked. It was the same downtrodden-esque yet curious voice that she spoke with back at Pinkie’s party the day prior, the same tone she used when she asked the question that Levi had stalled for. The very same question he assured her he would answer after the party. The same question he dreaded even now and the thought of answering it brought a great amount of dread collapsing onto his heart. ‘Gary’ The bastard's name resurfaced in his mind, bringing a sour taste to his mouth.

‘Don’t ask! Please don’t ask! Please don’t ask! Please!’

“Yeah?”

“So..you remember back at the party yesterday when I asked you about, you know, that man?”

‘Son of a bitch!’ Levi lamented mentally. Facing the inquiry head on was like facing train lights bombing towards him in a long dark tunnel. The anxiety felt as though he was staring down his death, despite the fact all he was doing was satiating the unicorn’s curiosity. As much as he wanted to, he knew he couldn’t say no. If he found his friends in a corridor with a dead body, he’d want answers too, probably a lot more aggressively than Twilight. Levi took a deep breath and attempted to calm the whirlwind of worries and stresses that ran rampant throughout his brain like a rodeo. His stomach churned. Beads of sweat threatened to form. He took one last bite of his food for most likely a while and swallowed it, probably the last good feeling he would feel before the inevitable conversation that was happening whether he liked it or not.

“You really wanna know?” He asked, hopeful that Twilight would just drop it and move on, but he knew deep down that wasn’t going to happen. Her nod that followed only sent more dread coursing through his ticker. Just the mere mention of Gary was enough to make Levi’s blood boil and talking about him, hopefully posthumously, would set fire to his crimson liquid. He let out a long sigh, slouching back in his chair that he once found comfortable now felt like a throne of stone.

“Who was he?” Twilight asked, kicking off the hell parade that was this discussion. ‘Was’ The word seemed to have no meaning to Gary at all. From what he could tell, death meant nothing to him, so it always was present tense.

Levi swallowed the lump in his throat before he opened his mouth to speak. “His…his name’s Gareth. Gareth Demonio. But everyone called him Gary.”

‘Gareth? Demonio?’ The names sounded so foreign to Twilight, it really brought out the stark differences between pony names and human names. A human named Twilight Sparkle just didn’t fit right, and a pony named Gareth Demonio didn’t sit right either. Twilight pushed the thoughts away and focused on the man across from her as he spoke, bringing the rim of her purple coffee cup to her lips and taking a swig. Twilight gave a brief nod of understanding, giving Levi the silent thumbs up to continue.

“He was a major, major, dealer back in my neighborhood, Roseville. Almost everyone that was in the business in Tuscaloosa knew him, most feared him. But no one could understand how it was like living in the vicinity of him.” Levi could almost feel the almost paralyzing fear he felt while living in his old apartment, always at constant risk of witnessing a murder or an assault outside. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how lucky he was to be in Ponyville and away from the hellhole he somehow called home.

“Living there was…terrible. The apartment I had was nice but..everything else about Roseville was the opposite. Some nights you’d hear gunshots. Some nights you’d hear two junkies fighting over whatever junkies fought for, mostly it was about where they would set up their tents or whatever. Where they were gonna shack up and smoke.” Frustration and irritation threatened to boil inside him at the memory of all the nights he got little to no sleep hearing the homeless drug addicts having screaming matches over where their “spot” was. Rarely, it would get physical, but most times it was loud and incessant barking coming from their gingivitis infested mouths over trivial things.

“Gary treated Roseville like his little village of peasants and he was the king, playing God with us,” Levi could taste the bitter venom in his words as he spoke, his eyes falling away from Twilight’s and onto the table, catching himself before he completely zoned out.

“Whenever there was a drug deal that went wrong, most times it never usually went wrong. Gary decided he wanted more than he was selling for and he would get it whether they liked it or not. He’d beat them half to death and rob them of everything they got and not have a care in the world. Some of them died, most lived, but got outta dodge as soon as they could.” Levi could almost see the surplus of news broadcasts and newspaper clippings flash in front of his eyes of the drug deals gone "wrong". He pictured the bloodied and bruised faces of Gary’s victims when they decided to show photos of their faces for whatever odd reason they add, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly guilty for them. Another feeling flickered to life when he saw those images as well, fear, as much as he hated to admit it. Fear that Levi or worse Alan could be next on the chopping block. Luckily for them, that was never the case.

“Question?” Twilight asked, taking another swig of her drink.

Levi gave her a small nod in response.

“Why did he do it?”

“Greed. Evil. Because he wanted to. Probably a mixture of those,” Levi responded in a deadpan tone, “The business changed him. He wasn’t always this psychopath who liked to hurt people…at least I hope he wasn’t.”

‘The business?’ Twilight thought, confused, wondering what this “business” that made it so abhorrent that it drove people to murder. Questions flooded her mind, but she kept them to herself. Mostly.

“One day, Me, Alan, and our other friend James decided on the brilliant plan of trying to become his partner. ‘50/50’ is what we said, ‘we could spread your product all over Alabama.’” Levi continued telling his awful tale, donning a new mocking voice when he repeated the offer he gave to the demon that day.

“He thought we were insulting him, trying to call him stupid in some way shape or form. He uh…he didn’t take too kindly to it.”

“What did he do?” Twilight asked, hesitantly like Levi was a ticking time bomb about to explode.

Levi went silent, too silent, like he had seen his family die in front of him all at once. It looked like he was too scared to speak. Twilight could only imagine what horrors had been afflicted on him to make him terrified to speak of it, but Twilight would have to imagine no longer. Levi grabbed a clump of both of his shirts, pulling them down and exposing the skin underneath while simultaneously craning his head away, like he was ashamed of what he was about to reveal to the pony. A few inches above his collarbone sticking out like a sore thumb on his caucasian skin was a small, reddish pinkish perfect circle that couldn’t have been more than a few centimeters wide. Twilight didn’t have a clue in the world what she assumed to be a scar could have been. The only scars she’d ever seen were from magic accidents and those were only in books. No book could’ve prepared her for this.

“He shot me,” He clarified like it was nothing important at all, putting his index finger over the rough skin of his wound like he was rubbing his fingertip over the gritty face of a brick. “No reason whatsoever. We didn’t provoke him or try to hurt him, he just…” He continued, releasing his grip on his clothing and allowing it to cover his flesh once more while looking down at the table sullenly.

Twilight opened her mouth to ask one of the many questions she picked from the pool of them in her brain, but was stopped by more of Levi’s terrible story that Twilight thought couldn’t get any worse. She never knew she could be more wrong.

“Back in the corridor…he tried to kill Rainbow, Twi. He took her from the hall we tried to get into and I guess threw her in the back of his car and set up in the other corridor…the one where I found him in.” A tear threatened to gush from his eye at the immobilizing fear that hit him like a train the moment he saw Rainbow in that position. It truly hurt him to see her like that knowing it wouldn’t have happened without him there. If he did pull that trigger, the blood would most definitely be on his hands. It was a scary thought, living with the guilt of that for the rest of his life. If Gary allowed him to live with it.

“We fought…it got bad quick. To tell you the truth…he almost killed me, don’t know how else to say it. He had the gun to the back of my head and was ready to just..” A dreadful silence blanketed the room, the rushing outside that had been consistent background noise had died, thrusting the man and the unicorn into complete grim quietness.

“Levi I..I’m so sorry”

“Don’t be,” He quickly rebutted, “Rainbow’s the one you should feel sorry for, not me. It’s my fault after all.”

“Don’t say that-”

“I’m just saying it how it is!” Levi retorted, meeting her eyes once again after what felt like centuries. “If I wasn’t here or if you never met me, Nightmare would have no reason to bring him back. Hell, she wouldn’t even know he existed without me!” Levi said, finishing it off with a groan and bringing his index finger and thumb to his eyes and rubbing them. The guilt he was feeling was like a herd of elephants stampeding on his shoulders. He knew that most of their encounter and Rainbow’s involvement in it was out of his control, but the rue that stirred inside him like a wrathful dragon was eating him from the inside. He thought about what apology he could say to the pegasus to make things right when the time came, if any apologies were even satisfactory enough given what happened to her. The prospect made his head ache.

“You realize that she got taken from behind a door we couldn’t even open,” Twilight pointed out, “And besides, Nightmare put an obstacle in front of all of us to stop us. Maybe..that was your obstacle. Maybe that's how she tested your abilities.”

Levi never thought of it that way. His mind flickered back to all the hurdles the ponies had to jump in order to show they were all each an Element of Harmony. Applejack consoling the frightened Twilight on the cliff, Fluttershy easing the Manticore, and Pinkie Pie laughing away fear like it was nothing. Those were all tests they had to pass which indirectly proved they were one of the elements. Then, there was Levi, who’s alleged test was to rescue Rainbow from the clutches of a maniac with a chip on his shoulder. It made a lot more sense the more thought he put into it. ‘The Element of Protection’ The thought reemerged in Levi’s head and, given the new insight that Twilight had given him, the idea that he was the seventh element began to take form in his brain. It would explain all the urges and the fire-like feeling in his chest when any of his friends were in danger, the overwhelming urge to protect them suddenly crashing onto him like a tsunami. The sudden boost of adrenaline pumped through his veins when he saw his comrades in danger. Levi didn’t really know if he liked it or didn’t, but one thing he knew for sure, the immense satisfaction that came after his companions were safe from harm was addicting to say the least.

“I guess it makes sense,” He replied, “It would answer the big boom you probably heard.”

Twilight remembered the gargantuan explosion that shook the castle where it stood and threatened to knock the group off their feet. Curiosity suddenly claimed her, wanting to know how and more importantly why the explosion occurred. “What was the big boom?” She asked, her mind beginning to race with assumptions and ideas before the man could even think about answering.

“It’s hard to explain,” Levi responded, removing his digits from his eyelids and meeting Twilight’s intrigued gaze.

“Take your time, Levi. I have all day” Twilight replied, taking yet another swig of her caffeine-filled drink.

‘Here goes nothing’ Levi thought as he prepared to try and boil down the burst of power into simple, coherent sentences. Levi took a much longer than anticipated pause with Twilight’s head still swirling with countless ideas of what happened behind the locked door. Did Gary have something to do with it? Was it the metal contraption Twilight had no clue what it could be? Was It Rainbow Dash?

“It was this…burst of..power?” Levi stated, sounding more like a question than a solid answer for the unicorn’s rushing mind. “I don't really know what I could call it but, right before he was about to kill me, there was this feeling in my chest, Twilight. It sped up my heart. A huge adrenalin rush hit me. Gosh it was…kind of an amazing feeling.” Levi explained, sparing zero details in the process.

“I slammed my hands on the ground and there was this explosion all around me. Fire went everywhere, Gary was dead and I was afraid I killed Rainbow too but..I didn’t somehow,” Levi lost the eye contact he was holding and his eyes drifted down to the table in thought, subconsciously noting all the crooked dark lines and rings that decorated its surface. “Once it was over…the pain…” Levi struggled to even say the word, not wanting to risk any more memories of the searing agony to plague his mind any longer. Just by looking at his somber expression, Twilight could tell how hard it was for Levi to recount the tale.

Levi coiled his fingers around the handle of his coffee cup and brought the rim to his lips, hoping the sweet gulp he ingested would calm his raging anxieties inside. A cloud of disappointment began to form and rumble above him when his efforts proved to be in vain. “So that’s what it was? Some power that came out of nowhere?”

She received a nod in response.

“Do you have any idea why?” He shook his head, his gaze still resting on the table as if he was studying it intently.

“Not even a little bit?” Another head shake.

“That’s..odd to say the least,” Twilight replied for lack of a better word. Calling what happened to Levi alarming would probably cause even more worries for her friend, substituting the word was the only thing she could do. “I, uh, suppose I could skim through some books and see what I could find!” She said with unwanted excitement in her tone. In her defense, she couldn’t help it, the word nearly lifted her off her hooves everytime without fail, and this wasn’t an exception. However, there was a time and a place for elation. This is usually the place, but definitely not the time.

Twilight clears her throat. “Or I could go talk to Princess Celestia about it. If you're feeling pain after using it then it’s not any magic I’ve ever heard of” She brought a hoof to her chin in thought, her eyes finding themselves affixed to the many rows of books embedded in the walls calling her name.

“I’m a human, Twi,” He pointed out, “If I did have some kind of pony magic it would probably affect me a lot differently.”

Twilight nodded subconsciously as if she was on auto-pilot, using her main focus to scan the lines and lines of books all around her. Even the mere prospect of diving headfirst into each and every one of them pumped her full of jubilee. “You’re right,” She replied, pulling herself out of her trance-like state for just a brief moment.

“But, then again, nopony knows a single thing about humans except for maybe the Princesses” She somehow managed to pull her eyes away from the euphoric collection of hardbacks and met his gaze, feeling tiny under his displeased look.

All of the sudden, small barely audible footsteps taking their time moving down the stairs split the almost complete silence in half. In a split second, every ounce of their attention abruptly shifted to a small, very clearly drowsy, young dragon while he took his time traversing down the stairs. As he emerged from the corner wall and his form became visible to the man and the unicorn, he could almost feel the longing for sleep that echoed off his being. Large, ash grey bags rested underneath both of his big green eyes like overflowing sacks. His head hung low in what looked like despair as if he was walking towards the gallows for his execution. In his claws pinned closely to his side was his white and blue-rimmed blanket that he clutched tightly in his unguis. His vibrant lime green mohawk of spikes that once sat erect on the top of his head were now a tousled mess, like a bird's nest caught in the onslaught of a tornado. His tiny feet made little to no noise against the stairs as he hopped down them one at a time, taking a very brief break in between jumps as if his brain was still fathoming the fact he was no longer asleep. His limbs moved like they were entombed inside concrete blocks, slow and more sluggish than Levi had ever seen in his entire life from anyone. In his opposite unguis held limply was a white scroll that was very distinctly opened and was lazily rolled again. Levi was more thankful than anything that something had finally thrown a wrench in their conversation and steered it in another direction, he had no idea how many more seconds he could last talking about Gary.

“Morning,” Spike yawned while simultaneously rubbing his immensely tired eye, bringing his blanket along with it up to his face, the soft fabric brushing against his scales lovingly.

“Good morning Spike!” Twilight replied with a hint of excitement in her voice that her reptilian friend was finally awake, the exact opposite of what Spike wanted to hear in his first waking hours. Spike liked calm mornings. Not filled with unicorns chirping ecstatically upon his arrival. He soon came to learn this was anything but a good traditional morning in his book.

“Hey,” Was all his brain managed to produce in his inebriated-like state, his voice like pulverized rolling stone from the sleep that once claimed him just minutes before. The very thing that Spike’s barely even functioning brain wanted more than anything in the world. “What’s for breakfast?” He asked, addressing the second most important thing, his roaring stomach. A problem no amount of blissful sleep could fix.

“Scrambled eggs! I made them just the way you like them!” Twilight chirruped. Her horn lit up with brilliant purple as another steaming plate of food levitated through the air and clattered right in front of the empty seat between the unicorn and the man. Spike dragged his feet off the final stair and landed with a grunt on the timber floor decorated with many dark lines and rings from the tree it was formed from.

“Here,” The dragon suddenly tossed the poorly rolled piece of paper up onto the table and centimeters in front of Levi, “It’s for you”

“What is it?”

“Something from Princess Celestia,” He answered with unwarranted annoyance, “I didn’t read it though, it’s none of my business.”

Spike jumped onto the oak chair, mentally cursing the stark height difference as he did so, and wrapped his blanket around his shoulders like it was the only thing keeping him alive. In fact, he looked more dead than alive. His face was plagued with so much drowsiness he easily could’ve confused him for a corpse. His eyes looked like they’d lived a lot longer than the reptile they belonged to. The only time he’d seen eyes like those were Alan’s in the hospital after…he almost immediately shoved the thought away back to the deepest corner of his mind. Levi looked down at the coil of papyrus like it was some extraterrestrial thing, as if some alien from another dimension had intentionally dropped it in his hands. Levi, for some reason, thought his interactions with the Princess of Equestria, or now one of two, were over after the disastrous celebration. Now knowing he was wrong, Levi’s mind raced like a derby of every humanly possible scenario that he could generate in his brain. He could almost feel the smoke billowing out of his ears as the cogs and wheels in his mind spun like never before.

“Levi?” The man was abruptly torn from his trance by the soothing sound of Twilight’s voice, causing Levi to jump ever so slightly at the disturbance and meet her curious gaze. Levi nodded at the lilac pony before grabbing the top of the page, sliding the what remained of the coil down and dropping the shroud of secrecy that once covered the scroll. He held onto the sides of the paper and lifted it a few inches above the table, Twilight watched as Levi’s squinted eyes ran left to right rhythmically like a robot as he read. Levi’s emerald irises went from pooled with hesitance and anticipation for something dreadful to jump out at him to soft, to relaxed once his semi-tired brain had finally processed the words written in hard-to-read cursive. Any letter that had a line protruding from it was not spared from being given an extra long, dramatic tail that looked like a ponytail hanging off it. ‘Did she write this with her hooves?’ Levi thought, making him realize the sheer extent of how little he knew about the customs of ponies.

“What does it say?” Spike asked with a much less rumbly voice as he took a draft of his coffee.

“Celestia needs me to come to her castle,” Above all else, confusion reigned supreme in his tone as he raised an eyebrow at the page, “She didn’t say what for. Just ‘’Important matters” Levi’s imagination had no limits when it came to that phrase. “Important matters” could mean absolutely anything taking the Nightmare Moon fiasco into account. Maybe they found Alan? Maybe Gary was back? Maybe…anything. Levi didn’t know whether he should be eager or worried about seeing Equestria’s loyalty, how was he even going to look Luna in the eye after what happened? After what she did. Part of him didn’t want to blame her for unearthing his trauma, but another part of him was filled with rage at the concept of seeing her again. Whatever Nightmare was, it wasn’t Luna, or any part of Luna for that matter. It was...something else, something Levi couldn’t explain. Just like Gary’s resurrection, an unexplainable phenomena.

“Twilight, how am I gonna get there?” Levi asked, pushing the invasive inquiries to the back of his mind, dropping the scroll back onto the table with a faint brushing sound as it met the wood. “Hot air balloon again?”

The unicorn gave him a small nod, lighting up her horn as the spoon gained a new, beautiful purple aura as she plunged it into the mass of eggs.

Levi thought back to the very first time he stepped foot into the general population in the overly fancy, high-society ambience of Canterlot. The white stone houses. The gold rims that bordered just about everything he could see. The marble roads ponies walked up and down on. It was all so surreal. What was equally if not more surreal was the tens of confused and occasionally horrified glares that burned into his body like lazerbeams. The prospect of going back there, especially into the castle of all places, seemed like a daunting task to fulfill. Regardless of whatever his feelings were towards the situation, he knew for certain that him visiting the Princess wasn’t a choice. After all, Celestia wouldn’t call the only one of two humans in Equestria away from home for no reason, right? Whatever the reason, there was one thing Levi had to resolve before he even thought about stepping foot out of Ponyville, His appearance. His grimy, sweat-stained, nearly repulsive appearance. There was no way possible he could show up to the Canterlot palace looking like…this. He ran out of damaging words in his vocabulary to describe whatever he looked like. Luckily for him, he had a savior whose sole purpose was to rescue people like him from detrimental fashion crises like this one. He could already see her deep blue eyes eyeing him up and down like she was a scientist studying an insect before she flew into a frenzy to fix his outlandish look. He could almost hear her pacifying voice turning into a shrill cry that’s destined to tear his ears to shreds when she laid her eyes on his disheveled clothes. He just hoped there was any way she could fix what had been done without simply tossing it out, Levi loved his clothes and the way he made himself look like they were his own flesh and blood after all.

“Twilight, where’s Rarity’s fashion shop?” Levi asked as he pushed his chair back, the loud and very unpleasant scraping sound obliterated what remained of the calm atmosphere.

“It’s over-nevermind,” Twilight pointed her hoof backward as if she was giving the man directions through the walls, forgetting the fact he had no idea where anything was in Ponyville. “Do you want me to take you to it?”

“That’d be nice, wanna come with Spike?”

“H-Huh-” Spike jolted up in his seat, his knee colliding with the underside of the table and rattling every cup and plate that rested on top of it. Spike's cheeks threatened to go red hot with searing mortification after having been rudely awoken on his blissful journey to the land of dreams. “N-No, I’m good, you all go without me”

Twilight raised an eyebrow at her friend, who sat their bleary eyed and on the verge of unconsciousness despite the caffeine he was practically pouring down his gullet. Now that she thought about it, Spike was never usually up this early anyways, so seeing him this inebriated wasn’t a surprise. “Are you sure? You look pretty-”

“Sleepy. I know,” Annoyance laced his tone from the lethargy that was teetering on the edge of swallowing him whole, wanting desperately to surrender and sleep for days. However, the coffee was the only thing blocking him from doing so. No matter how much he wanted to not feel as tired as he was, he had first-class seats on the struggle bus, and the road ahead was bumpier than ever. “Just..go on without me and…I’m gonna try and get some sleep.” Between words, Spike’s head would drop before immediately jumping back up with a small sniffle each time like he had been shocked back to life with jumper cables. It was like he was on the border of dying and his brain outright refused to let it happen and, from Levi’s point of view, he thought the dragon was having some sort of episode from his odd mannerisms. But, from one look on Twilight’s face, everything was business as usual.

Twilight’s hooves clacked against the ground almost like high heels across the old, scuffed up floor as she practically bounced off the chair and walked towards Levi, an excited grin painted on her face. Levi couldn’t help but allow her infectious smile to sprout to life on his face, he could almost feel the elation beaming from her like an industrial light bulb and gazed into her eyes shining brighter than the sun. He still couldn’t get over how odd the ponies’ eyes looked compared to Levi’s. All his life he had known human eyes that had a strict range of colors it had to abide by. The only ones he had really seen in his life were blue, brown, and hazel but on very rare occasions he would see a man or woman with eyes greener than the grass they stood on. Now, the culture shock was still hitting as hard as it was when he first encountered Fluttershy however many days ago that was, his mind was so cluttered with thoughts and ideas he couldn’t possibly pick the exact date he fell here out of them. The ponies irises were, for lack of a better word, interesting to say the least. Out of everything he had seen both fictional and the opposite, never had he seen someone's eyes be as purple like gleaming amethyst. In spite of how odd it was, they were pretty pleasing to look at, as weird as it sounded.

“We’ll be back soon, Spike!” She called out to the dragon who looked as though he was clinging to every last strand of life left in him.

“Uh-huh..” He slurred and, without another word, allowed his head to go limp and fall to the table face-first with a loud thunk. All of the cups and plates rattled like the wood had been struck with a sledgehammer when, in reality, all it was was Spike finally capitulating to the relentless army known as sleep.

Twilight snickered at her friend and raised a hoof to her mouth to conceal it as the reptile’s snoring wasted no time filling the room without exception. “I guess we should be going now.” Twilight said in a half-whisper, trying to suppress the surplus of giggles that bubbled from her heart.

“Agreed,” Levi replied, he too finding it hard to not let out even a chuckle at the actions of his surrogate roommate.

The clacking and beating of their feet against the floor blended into a single sound that was very irksome to Levi’s fragile ears like someone poking the tip of a knife into a window. He reached out and coiled his fingers around the lukewarm metal of the doorknob, eager to escape unpleasant footsteps that plagued his eardrums and slightly thrilled to finally get a good look around Ponyville without being smashed into walls like a ragdoll. ‘Soarin’’ The name rested distastefully on his mind before being quickly wiped away like a dead bug on glass. He twisted it, hearing the clicking as the intricate internals allowed the door to open, with Levi quickly pouncing on the opportunity like a lion to a dying gazelle. When the deep maroon colored passageway granted them access to the outside world and out of the clutches of the library, he was instantly greeted by the morning sun beaming down and embracing him in a warm hug, silently welcoming him to Ponyville. The scent of flowers and what smelled like honey blessed his nostrils and, hanging on one of the many branches in the library, he could hear the faint buzzing of a colony of bees hard at work doing what they did best. Making their signature thick golden ambrosia for everyone’s tasting pleasure.

Now finally out of the walls of the oak tree, Levi looked around and scanned his surroundings, taking in every little detail that he could make out. Strolling down the wide, mostly empty streets of Ponyville were several ponies of all different colors and hairstyles sauntering down the old pale gold colored dirt roads. His eyes landed on each individual stand that dotted, what he considered to be sidewalks, of every way that he could lay his eyes on. He could almost sense the ponies’ pride in their small store resonating from them like a nuclear reactor, despite it not being much and merely an ant in the grand scheme of the town, they loved it like their own child.

Love. The word had brought out a major flaw that he hadn’t really had time or the brain space to notice until now. All the thoughts that were competing for dominance inside of his head left no room for anything else. Gary, the Elements, the inevitable explanation to Rainbow, they were merciless in taking up every nook and cranny in his head. Now that some of those thoughts had been calmed, it allowed his mind to conjugate something new. As he looked around at each of the ponies walking around while simultaneously feeling embraced by the warm morning sun, a lack of a certain black haired man stood out like a dove in the night sky. A very particular man. Alan. His mind had no limits when it came to envisioning what fate Alan was subjected to in whatever part of Equestria he landed in. Maybe he too was smashed into a wall by a Wonderbolt with a ridiculous sounding name. Maybe he had been cared for by a pony. Maybe…maybe he wasn’t as lucky as Levi. The thought was saddening to say the least, the prospect of his brother being out there in the boonies of Equestria dead was almost too much to handle. Levi wanted desperately to find him and bring him here, back home, but he knew that would be near impossible. From what he could see, Equestria was utterly colossal, trying to find one man in the sheer amount of civilizations and cities that dotted the map would be like trying to find a needle in a pile of needles. That too was deeply saddening to think about. Maybe, just maybe, that was what Princess Celestia had called him to her castle for. Perhaps she found him and was ready for their reunion.

“We found your friend, Alan, was it?” He could hear her say in his head with her consoling, motherly voice. “He’s alive and well, more healthy than we thought in fact.”

Alas, he knew the possibility of that was slim to none, but fantasizing never hurt anyone before. Levi pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind for the meantime with a small shake of his head, setting his sights on the goal that he needed to complete before seeing Celestia. How was he going to look Luna in the eye after what happened? After what she put him through? Levi didn’t know and quite frankly, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to Rarity’s boutique and giving his clothes a much needed repair and most likely a deep cleaning. The powerful pungent odor of sweat and grime singed his nose hairs every time he took a breath, if it was a struggle to even sniff the air with these on, he could only imagine what he smells like to other ponies around him. The stench… Levi nearly gagged at the prospect. However, as much as he wanted to shove any mention of Alan to the dark corners of his brain until later, he couldn’t shake off the worry he felt for his friend. There was, despite how much Levi dreaded it, a chance that he was dead. There was also a chance that he’s alive and well out in a forest somewhere. There were hundreds of possibilities and hundreds of chances, and Levi couldn’t decide which one he wanted to hope was reality out of the bunch. In spite of every pessimistic idea that popped into his head, he knew his brother wasn’t dead. He knew that he was out there…somewhere, alive and healthy. He knew it.

Violet’s eyes unintentionally snapped onto a small pebble skidding feet ahead of them on the sidewalk for what felt like the hundredth time, courtesy to the jet-black haired man walking beside her for the past several minutes. His shoes scuffed against the ground and threatened to ruin the shiny, nearly flawless sidewalk made out of the purest marble Alan had ever seen. His hazel eyes scanned his surroundings as he strolled down the mostly vacant walkway with his savior turned friend by his side and, like always with the Crystal Empire, the beauty never failed to stun him. Tall, charcoal black lamp posts stood high and mighty on the side of the path, their crystals as yellow as the sun rested comfortably inside the glass dome they were encased in. The road was made from pure smoky quartz that looked like dirt was turned into solid glass. The reflection of the unicorn and earth ponies alike who moseyed on down being painted on the street beneath their hooves like they were walking on a colossal mirror. The morning sun beamed down and blessed the Empire with its rays, the light glinting off the stainless marble that formed the very path that the duo moved down, taking their sweet time to soak in the spectacular world around them. The rattling of rickety old wheels that were surprisingly still intact filled the mostly quiet air. The behemoth pile of countless different fruits and vegetables slid and bumped loudly around inside the wagon like bumper cars.

Alan sent a small pebble that rested on the shiny marble sidewalk barreling down the walkway with a kick, his shoe squeaking against the pavement like running his hand across a freshly cleaned window. Alan looked down at his sub-par appearance in the reflection at his feet, not too disheveled and dirty but not too kempt and clean either, it was an even balance between the two. But certainly not a good one. He shoved his hands in his pants pockets to protect his hands from the cool breeze that attacked them, feeling his fingertips immediately coming into contact with his now useless, and probably long dead, phone. In his other pocket, much different than the feeling in his other one, was a small folded slip of paper that almost instantly caught his attention from the sudden shift in texture. He knew what it was. A blanket of guilt completely enveloped his heart at that moment. It was the recipe from “Big Ray” for the methamphetamine that could “change their lives”.

“It’s going to make you millions! Possibly even more!” He vividly recalled him saying with a bone-chilling yet simultaneously infectious laugh, “Trust me, Alan. You won’t regret it!”

His words now felt like searing hot grease burning into his brain. In truth, Alan did regret it, he regretted it more than anything he ever did in his entire life up to that point. The black haired man couldn’t quite wrap his head around the gravity of the situation he had sent crashing down onto the both of them. His actions, nobody else to blame, but him. He was the one who thrusted his brother into this strange, pony-filled world. He was the one who roped Levi into this business in the first place. He was the one who caused himself to be stranded in the middle of nowhere for who knows how long. He might´ve even caused the death of Levi for all he knew, and if that was the case, the blood would forever be on his hands. That was something he couldn’t even bear to think about.

“Alan?” The intimate voice of his unicorn friend asked, prompting the man to turn his head that hung low to the ground. “Something wrong?” She queried, his hazel eyes that shined a lot dimmer than usual met hers as they pooled with concern over his sudden downtrodden demeanor.

“I’m fine,” He answered swiftly, moving his head back to its original position, “I just gotta lot on my mind right now”

Violet knew it would be best not to question the reasoning behind her friend's sudden landslide in mood. After all, the constant dread looming over you that your actions might have caused the death of your best friend is sure to bring a wave of negative emotions with it. A wave that Alan was most certainly feeling crashing down onto him right then and there. In a way, she was intrigued to hear about what led up to that catastrophic cook that sent them to an entirely different dimension. More specifically about this “Big Ray” character that he mentioned in his short, semi-encompassing summary of the fateful tale.

He sounded unsure as he explained it, like he wasn’t entirely keen on what details were right or wrong about this supposed person that gave him the recipe. Along the way, a visible nervousness crept its way onto his normally stoic face and an invasive stutter conquered his voice unwillingly. The descriptions he gave about “Big Ray” all seemed to contradict themselves left and right. If Alan’s goal was to paint a picture in her mind of what this person looked like, all it did was make her feel like a filly trying to decipher hieroglyphics. All of the signs were practically screaming in her face that something, maybe everything, about Alan’s recounting was the biggest most elaborate lie she had ever been told. When you go to medical school for many, many, years of your life, you tend to pick up a few habits here and there. One of the many ones she acquired in her numerous moons of study was how to easily pick apart a bald-faced liar from the inside out, like she was a buzzard tearing apart its dinner. That was something Alan was unavoidably going to learn the hard way if he continued this ruse he was portraying like an act of a poorly constructed stage play.

Minutes passed as the pair continued their seemingly unending travel to the bistro Violet hailed like it was some sort of deity. The whole way there was filled with nothing but silence between the duo, a silence that was somewhat comfortable yet blended in with a tension like a rubber band stretched to its utmost limit. Despite all of the background noise that seemed to fade further and further away from them with each step they took, the tightness in the air between them refused to dissipate as if they were a soldier fighting to their final breath on the battlefield. Undeterred. Lingering. Resistant to crumbling. Exactly what the lack of sound betwixt them was. Violet fought back a sigh of relief when the small cozy looking building with bright yellow light beaming from the wide windows like the sun had been pulled from the sky and placed dead center in the diner. A metal ruby sat fixed to the wall a few inches above the door frame that had a small curtain covering the similarly sized window embedded in the door. Through the glass, the duo could see many vibrantly colored unicorn and earth ponies alike chatting away like there was no tomorrow with the hugest grins imaginable painted on their features, relishing in the sweet deliciousness of their milkshakes all the while. Violet wished her visit to the Ruby Red Cafe wasn’t so rooted in the subtle dread that came with the inevitable conversation she was going to have with her raven-haired friend; she could almost feel the weight of his lie crushing him to dust as Violet tore it apart right in front of his face. In a weird way, part of her didn’t really want to know the full truth, almost as if the veracity was going to harm her in some way shape or form.

In spite of all of her worries and doubts, the warm glow from inside the diner gleamed bright in her eyes as though it was trying to travel straight into her soul and beckon her inside. For the years she had been going there almost every night, or day depending on the mood she was in, the spell it seemed to put her under worked every time. Every time she passed it she heard the hurling and bustling of underpaid busboys scurrying around trying to give their all for their lackluster job, making her slightly pity them but also feel grateful she put in the time to go to med school. She couldn’t bear the thought of doing something like this to make ends meet. Regardless, there was some sort of alluring feeling braided within the cacophony of sound arising from the cafe while still a bit muffled by the walls. It was almost as if she was being pulled towards its inviting doors like a hoof with a fish in its mouth everytime without fail or exception. In fact, the sort of spell it put her under was no longer the thing that drew her in, she opted to willingly give into it silent demands every time. The warmth from the red hot grills in the kitchen spilled out into the main room, capturing all of the diner-goers ruthlessly in its cozy net. The feeling was addicting to the unicorn and was probably the reason she constantly came back to it. Nonetheless, excitement coursed through her faster than her own blood to show Alan the place she loved more than she could describe with words. Maybe, hopefully, they could share the love that Violet had for the cafe together.

Violet's hopes went past the clouds as she and Alan walked side by side up the decrepit looking set of stone stairs. No carpet. No coverings. No visible attempt whatsoever to make it look any less dilapidated. Just stone steps that looked like they were pulled straight out of a medieval castle. Alan’s optimism about this place being as good as Violet made it out to be nearly died right then and there. Yet, there was still a little flame inside him that encouraged the man to keep his expectations up for the place the unicorn loved so much. With a barely audible sigh, Alan conformed to the demands of the flicker of hope and resurrected his convictions, secretly hoping the inside was better than the outside.

Where the stairs ended sat an old-looking, pale yellow door with long streaks of paint missing from it. Small chips of color were gone from the almost ancient looking color, revealing small parts of the dark brown door underneath. Alan could tell strictly from the appearance of the wood that sat underneath the dying layer of pigment the years have been nothing but cruel to the diner. The doorknob, probably once gold and shiny in another life, was rusted, the brown infection spread over it like a cancer and claimed almost its entire being. A black, cloth curtain draped over the small window in the door from the inside. Judging by the outside appearance alone, it was probably for the best that it remained hidden for the meantime. Maybe it was a pony thing to enjoy going to places that looked like they once housed cavemen. Knowing he’d only been in Equestria barely a day, Alan kept his judgments to himself just in case that was the case.

Violet eagerly threw her hoof onto the knob and twisted it, a squeal suddenly bursted from the rusted internals like a pig about to be slaughtered. Alan flinched at the abrupt sound, mentally apologizing to his ears for the torment it had been unwillingly subjected too. Without hesitation, the light blue unicorn swung open the door with an impossibly wide smile painted on her face as if she was opening the door for some sort of messiah to walk through. Violet’s messiah in this case was the smell of cooked meat and soft music that was slightly muffled by the speakers on the old radio. Alan could only imagine how much they had been played over the years. With the postern now fully open and what awaited him inside no longer concealed, Alan eyes were granted access to the cafe and, in more ways than one, it was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

The floor was a checkered pattern of white and black squares made of pure crystal, the light pouring in through the windows glinting off them beautifully. The tables were made of shiny, celestial mahogany wood that reflected anything and everything. The seats on both sides of it were comfy looking burgundy leather banquettes that seemed to call his name, he could almost feel the relief cleanse the incessant aching in his bones as he sat down. In most of the booths inside sat several ponies of all different hair styles and colors and, more prominently, cutie marks. To say that Alan’s doubts were struck down instantaneously would be nothing short of an understatement.

Violet’s hooves clacked against the cafe’s radiant floor as she entered with a newfound pep in her step, the elation coursing through her resonating off of her like a nuclear reactor gone haywire. Alan stepped in fully, his shoes scraping against the concrete noisily before beginning to squeak across the lustrous, glassy diner floor like a small animal died with each step he took. He wondered how the ponies here didn’t go insane hearing that every time someone took a step. However, none of them had shoes except for him, making Alan question if he should even wear shoes in this society. Or Empire? He didn’t even know what to call this place. The culture shock still hadn’t subsided and seemed to be along for the ride, much to Alan’ disappointment. The door closed behind him, the small golden bell above the door frame rang its joyous tune throughout the cafe as a reminder to the penniless employees they had another pair to serve. In a weird way, Alan felt bad for the workers. He knew how terrible fast food jobs were back in Tuscaloosa, mainly from experience and partly from the sort of horror stories his friends and colleagues used to tell him about him. No money. No time off. No nothing. The phrase “May I take your order?” being engraved into their minds for years to come. He wondered if he would ever see those people again in his life. Did Equestria have some sort of portal back to where he and Levi came from? Did Levi already leave back to Tuscaloosa? Is he in his apartment right now waiting for him to return worried sick?

Alan had time for internal hypotheticals and “what ifs” later,now was the time for him to finally experience the heavenly diner Violet praised like a god. Internally, he hoped the outside wouldn’t be any indicator for the quality of his visit. Maybe they were renovating and had to take whatever covering was on the stairs. Maybe they were getting ready to repaint the door soon. The amount of maybes running around in Alan’s head like a rampant derby was almost dizzying.

“Violet!” He heard an animated voice call out loudly, her high pitched tone threatening to shatter Alan’s eardrums like glass. He had already heard enough ear-piercing, deafening noises to last him a lifetime and the worst part was he had only been there for less than five minutes. ‘Damn! My head!’ He complained to himself, ‘How can this get any worse? It can’t..right?’

“Hey, Emerald!” Violet’s hooves clicked against the floor like high heels once again as she trotted over to her, like her name suggested, emerald green colored friend. Her wavy seafoam green mane flowed down the side of her neck, leaving the other side bare and mostly empty. She had stunning forest green eyes like dazzling jades in her eye sockets that glistened in the sunlight. She had a short sleeve blood-red button down shirt with a small ruby shaped pin right above her shirt pocket with a small name tag dangling off it that read “Emerald B.” The absurdity of the names the ponies had never ceased to amaze him. If he had a human child and named her after some sort of object or adjective, everyone would bat an eye. However, here, it is just a normal everyday thing to meet someone named Emerald. His imagination had no limits when it came to what the B in her name could possibly be.If what he saw thus far was an indication of anything, everything was on the table. Emerald’s horn lit up with a dazzling mint color as the large silver tray she had in her hoof gained a similarly colored aura, lifting from her grasp and landing with a faint clink on one of the empty tables beside her.

The two locked into a brier yet warm embrace and, despite the length they held each other in their hooves, the platonic love resonated all the same. “Who’s your friend, Vi?” Emerald inquired curiously, releasing her light blue friend and taking a few steps towards Alan. Her green eyes meeting the raven-haired man’s as a slightly worried expression overtook his features. Despite the friendly smile she shined at him like a star that tried their damndest to calm his anxieties, his frets still reigned supreme inside him and were made painfully obvious in his face in spite of his best efforts to hide it. The only other pony he had met in this entirely new world was Violet and the mere prospect of talking to another unicorn other than her sent feelings of brood shooting into his heart like arrows. He swallowed down the nervousness boiling in his throat like a cue ball before it could get in the way of his first impression. They were the most important thing when meeting someone after all.

“Oh, this is Alan!” Violet greeted, enthusiastically. “He’s new to the Empire.”

“New, huh?” Emerald repeated, extending her hoof out in greetings to the rightfully surprised man. Alan looked down at her trotter like it was some foreign alien lifeform, astonished at the amount of hospitality being bestowed upon him by the jade colored unicorn. His mind thrust him back in time to the day, or maybe two, prior when he first made his dramatic and cornering entrance into the Empire for the very first time. The looks of utter and complete bewilderment from every pony as far as the eye could see being burned into his memory. In all honesty, he didn’t blame them. If he saw some grimy and blood stained man hobble into his apartment complex with his clothes looking as though he had narrowly escaped a tornado, he would give them an overtly weird look as well. But now, no longer being under the threat of starvation and death, he felt honored to be welcomed into the diner with such warm friendliness like she was greeting an old friend. Not some complete stranger who’s a completely different species than her and everyone around her.

“That’s me,” He replied, enveloping her hoof in his rough-looking hand and giving it a firm shake, a hint of relief braided within his voice.

“It’s nice meeting you,” She commended, “Say, how did you get to the Empire out of curiosity?”

‘Oh boy’ Alan thought worriedly in his head, the smile that was painted across his face threatened to fall like a mask right at that moment. How was he going to explain how he got there to a pony he just shook hands, or hooves, with just moments ago? ‘Yeah me and my friend we’re cooking meth and it kinda just..blew up, y’know?’ Didn’t sound applicable or even acceptable at all in the last bit. ‘I fell from the sky and cracked a wolf's head open with a giant crystal’ Didn’t sound right either. Alan loathed lying with every fragment of his being. He considered himself to be a pretty honest and moral man, albeit not perfect in the least bit, but only told lies when he felt it was absolutely necessary. Now, he had a choice to make. Either lie to make his second interaction with a pony not riddled with his past mistakes, or tell her the truth and risk..whatever was going to happen next. Alan found the former to be the better option.

“Visiting.” Alan responded a lot more unsure than he intended. All Alan received in response was a small nod from the unicorn before her hoof left his grasp and fell back to the floor, her horn liting up and the silver tray being lifted from where it sat on the table. “You’ll be over there at table six, I’ll be with you in a sec” She stated, pointing over to an empty banquette in the far corner to their right stationed against one of the two large windows Alan looked through before he entered. A small grin formed on his features at the image in his head of completely and utterly devouring whatever food the diner had in store for him. If Violet’s continuous eulogizing wasn’t just an intense bias, Alan was looking at one of his best breakfasts in years. It beat eating off-brand cereal and microwave meals at 11AM in his cold, desolate house by a landslide. As Emerald walked off to whatever waitress duties she needed to attend to, Alan and Violet moved across the glittering floor over to their table as if they were walking a path straight to the gates of Heaven which was exactly what the ground reminded him of. Each step he took felt like he was strolling down a trail of dazzling diamonds embedded below him with the pearly white entrance to the paradise above just within reach. In an odd way, the cafe felt way too fancy-like to be some place anyone can saunter into at any time and have a quick bite to eat. It looked as if it was pulled straight out of some fairy tale castle, in fact, the entire Empire looked that way.

While the pair gave the jade-green unicorn their orders in the indescribable comfort of their respective maroon leather seats, Alan leaned his head against the seat and allowed his head to tilt, aiming his eyes towards the unfathomable beauty that was the Crystal Empire. He made sure to take his time in scanning every nook and cranny of the Empire he could possibly see from the wide casement he leaned his head against, his temple being cooled by the window chilled by the light spring breeze. No matter how many times he looked at it, he still couldn’t help but become mesmerized by the gorgeous crystal that made the roads that ponies sauntered down day and night. Unable to stop himself from becoming utterly astounded at every crystal that glimmered in his eyes surrounding not only the diner, but everywhere. Not a single nook or cranny in the entire Empire was spared from being conquered by the brilliant gems, but not in a bad way, in the best way possible. While staring mindlessly out of the glass without a care in the world about the what seemed like hundreds of conversations going on around him, he slowly began to realize just how lucky he was that he fell to Equestria at the time that he did. He vividly remembered all the sleepless nights he got, commonly hearing fights and gunshots between homeless people and junkies alike fighting for whatever junkies fought for. Whether it be their “turf”, the curb they got to sleep on, who’s dirty flea-infested sleeping bag belonged to them or not, or the root of all evil in Roseville. Drugs. The very same drugs that he and Levi produced and sold.

He hadn’t yet registered how awful his life was before he had spent the night chatting with Violet about all sorts of things and really getting to know his surrogate unicorn roommate better. He hadn’t gone a night for years without hearing insults being slung around left and right just mere feet away from his front door that were, thankfully, slightly muffled by the walls, but were still loud enough to affect his sleep. If he got any at all. Sitting in Violet’s living room taking swigs of his coffee in the dead of night talking about whatever came on their minds reminded Alan of what most people consider a good life is, a life Alan never thought he’d live. But yet, here he was, sitting in a diner across from the pony that became his savior.

Out of the blue, the constant clinging of Violet’s spoon against the inside of her coffee cup as she stirred it suddenly came to an end. The abrupt change in background noise ripped Alan from his trance like a fish being yanked out of water by a fisherman, moving his head from the semi-comfortable window and to an upright position along with the rest of his body.

“So, Alan,” Spoke Violet, the aura around her horn dying and her hazel eyes meeting Alans. “I need to talk to you about something.”

The unexpected seriousness in her voice caught him off guard and, although he wanted to deny it, intimidated him for reasons he didn’t fully understand.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Alan replied, trying and fortunately succeeding in hiding his inner emotions from seeping into his voice.

“It’s about that other human you told me about back at the house..’Big Ray,’” Violet answered, unsure if this “Big Ray” character was even a human at all. In fact, she couldn’t tell what it was at all from Alan’s mangled mess of descriptions. The only image her mind came up with from his failed illustrations was a garbled-up disorder of colors and shapes. The unicorn could feel a shift in the air and, much more prominently, a shift in her friend's demeanor. His hands moved interlocked on the table to fiddling nervously in his lap in just a matter of moments and his eyes strayed far from hers, looking outside once again as if he had fallen victim to its daze once again. It was like Violet blinked and Alan had been teleported away and replaced with this nervous, anxious clutter of a man in front of her.

“Oh…yeah. What about him?” The apprehensiveness braided with his words and the lack of eye contact was practically screaming in her face that something was very wrong with Alan. She couldn’t believe she was actually talking to Alan and not some random human dictated by some malevolent force to act so…scared.

“Well…I know you were lying about him. You’re not very good at it,” Violet replied, eager to get to the bottom of whatever was troubling her companion. “And the way you were acting when I brought it up is worrying me. So I wanna know the truth.”

The assertiveness in her voice, whether it was intended or not, caused nervous cannonballs of sweat to form on his brow and travel down his forehead, somehow concerning Violet even more than she already was. Alan hated that he lied to Violet to begin with and would do anything to reverse what he had done, but he knew deep down he couldn’t. More specifically, “Big Ray” wouldn’t let him. In fact, Alan was done calling him what he wasn’t, he was going to refer to him by what he really was, the beast. That amalgamation of different animals that he couldn’t even decipher with his enticing voice that was laced with poison. However, to say the abomination had put the fear of God in him was an understatement. The things he said…the threats…his power. He wanted to reject his offer and tell him to go find someone else to intimidate, but the offer was too tempting. The reward he and Levi were going to reap was more than anything he could ever ask for. It would be foolish to turn it down and, from the way the beast was acting, he made it seem he had no other choice. But, as much as he wanted to tell his friend the truth, he knew he couldn’t. The things the creature prophesied if his true name ever got revealed were frightening to say the least. While at the same time, Alan had his doubts about the predictions the beast insisted was going to happen. The absolute absurdity of the outlandish events seemed like it was yanked straight out of a fever dream, too over-the-top and dramaticized to be anything more than a work of fiction. Simultaneously however, he felt a needle of dread poking his heart at the prospect that what the abomination said was true. Alan’s eyes met Violet’s once again as she gazed at him, a patient yet slightly irritated look in her eyes. It was only then when Alan realized how idiotic he must’ve looked staring off into space for what felt like hours, him being deep in thought while keeping Violet waiting for an answer in the real world.

Alan took a deep breath before he answered. “You want the truth, don’t ya?”

The unicorn nodded.

Before he even thought about opening his mouth to speak, Alan decided it would be best if he ran through what he was about to do in his head beforehand. On one hand, it would feel a lot better to finally have it off his chest and clear the air between him and Violet. While on the other hand, spilling the truth to her could easily ignite the beast’s eccentric prophecies to life and spell the end for Alan Sizemore as he knew it. Possibly even the entire Empire. Boldly, in spite of everything that was at risk, Alan’s sheer hatred for lying prevailed over the scarily feasible peril that could potentially arise from the decision he was preparing to make.

“You can’t tell another soul this Violet, ya understand me? ‘Cause..I don’t know whats gonna happen if you do.”

The unicorn nodded once more.

“Alright,” Alan took another deep, nervous breath as he delved into the darkness behind his eyelids, hoping to find even a microscopic shred of comfort to relieve him of his intense anxieties. The uneasiness about telling Violet the truth and nothing but the truth swirling around like an angry dragon in his heart, refusing to spare Alan from its onslaught on his emotions. Alan decided it was best to bite the bullet and soldier on through the uncomfort raging in his chest, after all, what could the truth really hurt…right?

“His name was..somethin’ weird I…”

“It was uh…” He looked deep into Violet’s eyes, the answer she was looking for all this time building up like a dam ready to explode. One thing was for certain, she couldn’t have prepared for the answer no matter how hard she tried.

“It was uh…Discord.”

Chapter 15: A Hero's Life

A light-yellow aura formed around the borders of a tall golden set of double doors, its head reaching high above them and nearly touching the ceiling that rested countless feet above it. To the white alicorn princess and the man in blue standing in front of it, they looked like mere insignificant insects compared to the behemoth standing imposingly in front of them. Ever since his departure from Twilight’s library hours ago, all was well in the town of Ponyville on his walk to the boutique belonging to his fashion savior, Rarity. The morning sun was shining bright and clasped him in its warm embrace. The tips of the blades of lush green grass he and his unicorn companion had the pleasure of stepping foot on tickled and poked their ankles. The ponies of all different colors and species that passed by them greeted them as they strolled along to settle whatever business they needed to. Levi vividly remembered the faces of almost every pony who just so happened to cross paths with him like they were his own family that he’d known for years. The very first one he saw was a tall, tan unicorn with a fancy-looking amber mustache with curled ends that made him look like a stereotypical villain in a fairy tale. What little that could be seen of his perfectly slicked back hair shined, the remainder of it being hidden underneath his intricately sewed black top hat. His gentlemanly flawlessly tailored black and white suit, while not failing to make the unicorn in question look great, looked very out of place in the overtly casual setting of Ponyville. Levi could see the illustrations in his head flowing through his mind like a river with each moment that passed. The same mint unicorn with similarly colored hair who’s cup was knocked from her hoof and seeped back into the earth where she stood. A maroon pegasus. And most surprisingly of all, Fluttershy, who stopped to talk for a few minutes before going on her merry way.

However, all good things had to come to an end, and the tranquility of the duo’s trip was no exception. What Levi had not yet realized was that being on the receiving end of a brutal beatdown by a psychopath didn’t come without consequences. He could almost feel the tip of Gary’s rock-hard boot thrusting into his side like a rocket ship, his ribs teetering on the edge of shattering into a million pieces. His side exploded in pain. The agony that shot through his veins like slag being poured down his arteries. That morning, his mind was so focused on explaining to Twilight the story of the very same man who did that to him that he lacked the space in his brain to even acknowledge the fallout of the fight. That was the case until Levi took one final, fateful step forward, a step just like any other he had taken in the minutes following the beginning of his trip. But this one wassent straight from the deepest pit of hell like a sick, ill-favored gift basket sent by one man in particular. Gary. He could almost picture in his head the image of the raven-haired man’s well-toned arm hurling a ball of agony up from whatever lake of fire he was, hopefully, cast to and right to Levi. When his orb of torment hit its intended target, a ravenous and bloodthirsty affliction that followed was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. It felt as though the red-hot tip of a metal spear was driven and twisted right into his kidney, laying waste to his internal organs and setting the inside of his torso aflame with pain. Levi wasn’t one to stop and lick his wounds when he was in a bad situation or a scenario just like that one. However, the aftermath of his clash with Gary the night before hit him like a truck and was more than enough to send him to an abrupt halt.

In the hours that passed since that fateful moment, the pain got less and less with each step he took. He couldn’t even imagine what he must’ve looked like hobbling into Rarity’s boutique like he was some sort of zombie. His hand clutched over his oblique. Shirt being a tattered, shredded mess akin to strands of royal blue confetti hanging off his back. His face twisted and contorted in torment. He could only imagine what would happen if some pony happened to walk in and see him like that, he wouldn’t blame them a bit if they thought he was a dead man walking.

The centuries-old hinges moaned noisily as the Princess split the two golden, colossal doors apart, allowing a fresh wave of bitter cold air to splash right onto Levi. His hands were stuck deep in his jean pockets in an attempt to rid his body of chills that wracked it, much to his dismay, his efforts were in vain. His rapidly plummeting body temperature only grew worse at the rigid onslaught that finally escaped behind the confines of the solid-gold entryway, ready and willing to torment anyone that was unfortunate enough to stand in its path. Luckily for him, there were no shredded holes or large gashes in his clothing that could’ve easily made his situation worse tenfold, thanks to one particular white unicorn alone. Despite the morning sun beaming bright throughout the castle like it was nobody’s business, the hallway that seemed to stretch for miles in front of them was oddly dimmed. An impossibly long, lush, deep purple carpet ran from the entrance of the corridor all the way to the end that Levi couldn’t see no matter how hard he strained his eyes into the shade. Mammoth stone pillars standing high and mighty and overlooking the passageway they rested in dotted the walls. Tall, yellow-stained glass lancets were on both sides of each of the columns, only confusing the man even more as to how nearly zero light inhabited the endless aisle. Metal stands were scattered across the left and right sides of the halls, each of them having a half-melted candle held snugly in its black iron slot.

Celestia’s hooves went from harsh clinking against the marble floor to soft pattering as they moved to the rug, a much more pleasant option than having his ears pierced with every step she took. Despite his hesitancy about the seemingly unending and darkness infested hallway, Levi followed closely by her side while she began her stroll to wherever Levi needed to go next. At least where Celestia believed he needed to go. Ever since he got here, the Princess had refused to tell him what exactly was so important he had to drag his feet halfway across Equestria just to be in the castle. The only response he received was that it was a “surprise”, while amusing to hear at first, it gradually began to annoy him each time he asked. Her calm voice with a hint of enthusiasm braided within it didn’t help Levi’s growing frustration either, like she was unintentionally throwing gasoline all over an open flame. He felt sorry for feeling that way towards her considering she didn’t do anything wrong, but those sentiments of regret quickly died as he reminded himself his emotions were completely out of his control. Or so he thought.

“So-”

His sentence was rudely interrupted by a sharp hiss escaping his lungs, pain flaring up where Gary’s boot made contact every time his foot returned to the ground where it belonged. “Am I allowed to know where we’re going now?”

Celestia turned her head slightly to look down at the man, the familiar look in her large magenta eyes brought Levi to the conclusion immediately that he was going to receive the same answer he had gotten every other time before. He mentally face-palmed at the fact that he even asked again in the first place. “Patience, Levi. We’re nearly there, and besides, I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

There it was again, the same vexation-inducing reply he had been getting for the past..however many minutes he had been walking through the incomprehensible maze she called a castle. Levi fought back a grunt, not only from the aggravation building inside of him, but from the stinging that ravaged him everytime he took a step. The mere fact that the constant torment was inescapable if he wanted to function like a regular person was disheartening to say the least, but the last thing he needed to do was worry Celestia with his, what he considered to be, minor problems. After all, the limp he was struggling to keep hidden was already concerning enough as it is.

“As you wish” Levi obliged, knowing that any attempt to gain further information out of the alicron was futile.

To say the corridor made the man feel uneasy would be an understatement. The sight of such a faintly-lighted place in the usually bright and vibrant castle that was bursting with life even at the slightest glimpse was off-putting to say the least. The vacancy in his mind was suddenly chocked full of every possible reality and assumption that could possibly explain the purpose of the passageway clogged with shadow. Could she be leading him to some sort of dungeon? It would fit the gloomy look of the hallway if that happened to be the case. Could it be something Levi couldn’t even predict or prepare for? The only thing that could guide him to an answer was his feet that pushed him forward, continuing to shuffle down the incessantly long corridor as he felt seconds labor on into minutes. The man continued to stay close by the snow-white alicorn’s side as she took a sharp right that was once hidden behind a veil of darkness, one of the few things Levi could make out on the floor was the lush carpet turn from deep purple to stone-grey. Something on the usually bland and smoke-colored wall caught his attention like a shooting star, it was something out of place for the not-so-royal looking corridor Levi had the misfortune of walking in that Levi thought for a split second his mind was playing tricks on him. It was a golden plaque embedded into the ash-tinted bricks like a dove in the night sky, the only thing in that entire hallway that demanded any attention whatsoever to the naked eye. The solid gold the tablet was forged from tried in vain to show its beauty by glinting what little light occupied the space around it, but its efforts were unfortunately fruitless, leaving the panel to sit in shame with nothing to show for it. One would expect a lot of those things to be in a castle of all places, but for reasons no one could understand, the plaquette was the only shred of what this passageway belonged to. A castle.

With what little time he had before the Princess plunged deep into the new even-darker hall, Levi squinted and tried his absolute damndest to read the impossibly small words printed onto the sign. The result was almost exactly what he expected, which was making out little-to-nothing at all. In spite of his struggles, his attempts weren’t entirely nugatory. Out of the many words on the plaque that grazed his eyes, only four were able to be seen in the pestering darkness that concealed them like they were ancient treasures that could never be seen by the light of day. Or lack thereof. “In memoriam” and “Platinum Wing” were the exponentially lucky few that were able to be discerned by the man’s strained emerald eyes. This sent a flurry of questions that lacked any answers flooding his mind that, at that point, was only filled with laments about the blackness that swallowed him whole inside the corridor.

‘Platinum Wing?’ Levi thought to himself, fighting off the urge to raise an eyebrow in confusion. ‘Who could that be?’

His mind wasted no time in becoming a blizzard of assumptions about who this “Platinum Wing” could possibly be. He knew for certain that he had to be someone very important for him to have whatever awaited him and Celestia at the end of the hallway dedicated to him. Levi looked down at the gunmetal grey rug, or more specifically, the platinum grey rug. Whomever this pony could be, the Princesses must’ve taken a great liking to him to put something in the royal castle in his honor. He wondered what position Platinum had once filled that held such a substantial importance to Celestia and Luna that warranted this treatment. Could he have been someone who saved their lives once upon a time? Could he be a part of their family Levi didn’t know about? Could he have been a pronounced hero in some way shape or form? Realistically, there was no way for Levi to tell at that moment. His brain was hungry for answers, becoming more and more ravenous by the second as his curiosity skyrocketed further and further with each pain-inducing step he took.

The rhythmic stinging in his side was overruled by the overbearing inquisitive-feeling towards the subject. He had no idea why he wanted to know the solution to the snowstorm of inquiries inside him wanted a response so badly and he had no room left in his head to conjure a reason. Maybe it was the need for a basis on why he was there in the first place that he lacked the entire walk there coming to a head. Maybe it was the fact that each similar, barren hallway had been the same except this one. Maybe it was all of them combined. He had no didn’t have the slightest clue of which could be the one like trying to assemble an unsolvable puzzle in his head. In the blink of an eye, Celestia’s horn gained a gleaming light-yellow aura as the corridor, which was once teetering on the edge of pitch-black, exploded with a brilliant golden light. Levi’s eyes were anything but grateful, wanting nothing more than to retreat back into his skull to escape the searing shine that felt like the sun was spawned right in front of him. The only thing Levi could do was close his eyes and hide it from the wrath of the Princesses luminescence. Celestia looked over her shoulder at the harsh-sounding noise with an eyebrow raised high at the wincing man.

“Ah, damn!” Levi hissed, taking a step back in back in surprise with his hand pressed firmly over his still stinging eyeballs.

“Oh! My apologies!” Celestia declared much louder than intended, her voice echoing off the walls and back into Levi’s ears more times than he could count. No matter how many amends left her mouth, none would calm the spear-like pulsating in his peepers.

“I suppose I should have warned you” She spoke, her voice much quieter than before but the regret still braided within it all the same.

Levi removed his manus from his scrunched-up face, rubbing his optics with his fingertips and ridding himself of any discomfort that still remained behind his eyelids. Or, at the very least, rid as much as humanly possible.

“No, It’s alright,” The man removed his digits and allowed his green irises to see the light of day once more, fluttering them for a second or two before fully opening them and hastily scanning his surroundings. The walls, albeit still drab and gray, were adorned with several red banners that really made the small section of hallway come to life. A stark contrast from the utterly boring corridor Levi had the dishonor of walking through. In the center of the flag were two swords with smaller than usual blades crossing over each other to form an X. The handles were bone-white with a paper-thin gold line going from long-ways along the sides and bottom of it. The years weren’t kind on the crimson cloth that formed the burgee, small holes and tears dotted the fabric, revealing the ugly brown unknown material underneath the layer of the faded and dying red.

“Let’s keep going” The much taller alicorn gave Levi a small smile and a nod, turning her head and commencing her rhythmic footsteps along the silver carpet like a muffled heartbeat in his ears. Levi’s irregular and heavy-footed strides further down the carpet were soon to follow, the curiosity inside of him edging closer and closer to a boiling point each time his foot left and returned to the ground like a volcano ready to burst at a moment's notice. ‘Platinum Wing’ Despite his best efforts, Levi couldn’t clear his mind of the pony’s name. ‘Who could he be?’ It was the question above all questions, the inquiry that would badger his mind until the end of his days if he didn’t find out soon. He had no clue why he felt so obsessed with it. It wasn’t like he wanted to, it just..happened without explanation. If he was being honest, he didn’t want an explanation, or to even think about it at all. He had suffered through enough bothersome queries to last him a lifetime.

After what felt like hours of walking, Celestia’s hooves came to a comfortable stop at the conclusion of the hallway. Her horn, that never ceased shining its bright sun-yellow light that it was trying to illuminate the entire planet, cast away the veil of darkness it once hid behind and revealed every inch of it to Levi’s starving eyes. The solid-iron entryway looked more like something pulled straight out of a medieval dungeon than a castle ruled by Celestia. Long spears were engraved into the border of each aperture, the bottom of the handle touching the bottom corner and reaching all the way up until the tip touched the top corner. In the center of both of them inscribed into it like a gravestone was the very same symbol that adorned the banners, two short-bladed swords crossed over each other to form an X. Unlike the flags however, no color resided in them, just two cutlasses overlapping each other with zero attention-grabbing features to them whatsoever. A stark contrast to its placard counterpart that sat idle on the wall just inches away from the hulking, impenetrable-looking metal door. Just as quickly as Celestia’s light lit up the hallway, it died, thrusting Levi and the white alicorn into the eager mouth of the thick darkness once again. Fortunately, the shadows' ironclad grip wouldn’t hold the man in blue for much longer. Celestia’s horn flared to life with the same luminous golden aura and the identical humming sound reverberating from it blessed Levi’s ears with its presence.

The doorknobs, which were decorated with an ornate floral pattern, gained a scintillating yellow ring without a moment to spare.The Princess wasted no time in turning both of the studs in there respective directions, the sound of what seemed like a burdensome metal bar being slid out of place noisily rung down the hallway as if the alicorn had opened the doors of a bomb shelter. Levi’s nerves were on high alert. His curiosity overruled them, conquering every last inch of his senses. This was it. The answer to all of the questions that were having a bloody way inside of his head for dominance over the man would finally be revealed. In short, Levi couldn’t wait another moment for the steel mammoth entryways to swing open and welcome him into their open arms. The roaring of the hinges, that were bordering on the edge of ancient, only sent half-excited half-anxious chills shooting through his bones like lightning bolts thrown from the heavens. The two hulking solid steel doors agonizingly slowly split apart from one another for the first time in, what Levi could only assume to be, years. Possibly even longer. However, the lack of dust showering down from the head of the apertures like smoke-gray rainfall shot down his theory. Whatever the case may be, the inside of the spacious corridor inside being leisurely revealed centimeter by centimeter only added fuel to the raging inferno of interest inside his heart. The ponies name bounced off the walls of his skull more times than he could ever dream of counting.

The creaking of the doors hinges like the moaning of an old rusty boat was almost maddening. The desire to know what was so important was beginning to eat the man alive from the inside. He needed to know and fast. He struggled to stop himself from leaping out of his skin, that for once felt like a prison holding him back, and dash through the door without a second thought. Levi’s legs flowed fiercely with adrenaline like a horse jacked-up on steroids held back by chains, fighting vigorously to be free like his life depended on it. Straight out of the blue, an almost blinding ray pink-tinted sunlight shot straight into his green irises like a spear. The man instinctively threw his arm over his globes, shielding them from the ruthless beam of luster that laid waste to his vision. He thrusted his eyes into the solace behind his eyelids, the darkness welcoming his presence with camaraderie for the second time that day. In a way, the sea of blackness acted as a surrogate savior to the man’s optics. It rescued him not only from Celestia’s implosion of light but from..whatever caused the streak of radiance stabbing his peekers like spears. If he could thank the infinite dusk behind his lids, he would.

As quickly as the stinging in his eyeballs began, it subsided, allowing Levi to lower his forearm back to his side and open his optics once more. With the doors now fully divided and whatever was hidden behind them now shown for all to see, Levi’s jaw hit the floor and his eyes pooled with a feeling he couldn’t quite describe. Amazement? Astonishment? Could it be a mixture of both? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing he knew for certain, anything and everything behind the apertures was worth the wait. The cyclone of questions in his mind could now finally be put to rest.

The hall was more grandiose than Levi could’ve ever imagined. The ceiling was higher than any he had seen before in the castle thus far with mountainous pillars dotting the grey brick walls, touching the roof that looked as though it was a hair away from colliding with the heavens above. Lancets sat on either side of the towering pillars with blue, pink, and tan colored stained-glass inside the frame to form an illustration of what the man could only assume to be revolutionary events.

The same platinum colored carpet ran from the now open doorway all the way to the set of silver double doors standing high and mighty at the end of the aisle. Impossibly long red banners sat on both sides of each of the windows, the triangle-shaped tail end resting dangerously close to the floor but somehow managed not to touch it and risk desecrating its pristine image. The very same X formation of two swords remained in the center, much larger than the ones Levi had seen previously, and took up a lot more of the flag than he intended. Dabbed along the squeaky-clean walls were silver sconces with torches sitting snugly inside them, the fire raging on the head looked like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb. Flames and death as far as they could see. The upside to the constant smoldering was the sickly-sweet scent of a blazing bonfire filling every inch of the grand hall. Alongside the lancets and pillars was a large painting depicting an earth pony donning pure platinum armor with his hoof planted firmly on top of something that Levi couldn’t make out. Whether it was a stone or the head of a fallen enemy, he couldn’t tell. Judging by his experiences in Equestria thus far, any one of the two were on the table.

However, the true star of the show wasn’t the beautifully painted windows or the ancient Greek style pillars, it was what stood in the dead-center of the room, basking in its own glory as if it knew how magnificent it truly was. A pedestal forged out of pure, unadulterated marble with black specks sprinkled from the top to the bottom. Situated at the flat square base at the peak of the podium was an old, wrinkled, and slightly blood-stained chocolate brown leather sheath standing upright inside its rectangular glass container. While the blade itself remained hidden inside the hide holster, Levi could see the hilt jutting out of the scabbard, soaking in all of the attention Levi’s widened eyes were beaming onto it. It was a spotless, shining bone-white metal with a thin gold line bordering it. The light from the morning sun that flooded in through the multi-story windows shone onto it as if it was some gift from God himself, the handle glittering and the solid-gold glimmering in the radiance.

Levi separated his jaws to speak, but he found all of the air that once occupied his lungs was expelled simultaneously in an awed gasp like a giddy school girl seeing her crush. The man couldn’t stop his head from swiveling from side to side, scanning the surroundings over and over like his brain was forcing him to memorize every square inch of the corridor as though his life depended on it. Levi fully stepped through the silver double doors and into the new and refreshing atmosphere of the majestic hall, concurrently feeling a surge of much warmer air cascade over him akin to a river of lukewarm water flowing over his form. Inside, Levi felt the need to apologize to this long-dead pony for defiling his floor with his filth-ridden shoes. The

“Do you like what you see?” Celestia’s soothing voice asked, shattering the peaceful silence that formerly conquered the superb corridor.

“I…it’s beautiful,” Levi breathed, just loud enough for the alicorn’s ears and her ears alone. “But I gotta ask, who’s this ‘Platinum Wing’? Was he some sort of war hero or something?”

The man turned his head to look over at the princess, magenta met emerald, and the solemn look that was written across her face gave Levi more questions than answers.

‘Could he have been her lover? Maybe her brother? Or her father?’ Each thought Levi cooked up in his head made more sense than the last. Each one would most definitely explain the stark shift in emotions displayed on the alicorn’s face. He could see in his mind the image of Celestia’s face bursting with positivity like an erupting volcano one moment, then for the brief few seconds he had his back to her, the Princess of Equestria was replaced with a whole new pony. Her downtrodden expression made her unrecognizable to the brown-haired man. For his entire stay thus far, he had known her simply as the cheery unicorn with wings that set him on a course to eventually go head to head with Nightmare Moon. But now, seeing her essentially drop a mask and expose her hidden not-so-happy emotions that she held under lock and key in her heart was like gazing into the eyes of an extraterrestrial.

“He wasn’t just a war hero,” Celestia replied, the sorrow pooling in her eyes like a lagoon of vile sensations told a thousand stories at once. “He was the hero.”

Levi shot the princess a confused look.

“You lost me.”

Celestia let a barely audible sigh escape her lungs, not an action she did out of annoyance or anything of the sort, it was something she did out of very apparent despondency. Hearing Celestia speak in this low, solemn tone was an experience he never thought he’d have and, quite frankly, never wanted. The feeling of, what could only be described as, grief that was braided within her soothing voice was almost difficult to listen to. It was the same, heartache-plagued intonation one would expect to hear from someone staring down the headlights of an oncoming train. Standing there, waiting for the impact. For the reaper to arrive and take them to the heavens above.

It stung Levi’s heart like a thousand spears to say the least. As much as he wanted the alicorn to cease speaking in her misery-ridden and return to her normal joyous self, he knew for certain that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Much to his dismay.

Celestia’s hung head low like a prisoner marching to the gallows, her hooves going from softly pattering against the rug to harsh clinking against the marble floor once again. She took long painfully slow strides away from the man and over to the mountainous painting that embellished the wall, each labored step she took looked as though she was pulling her hoof out of molten hot slag each and every time.

The colossal work of art with a solid gold frame that glimmered in the sunlight depicted what seemed to be some kind of bloody battle, many lives lost but no clear winner as far as Levi could see. However, the biggest and arguably most attention-snatching part of it all was the ironclad earth pony dead-center on the page. There he was, the answer to the big Bertha of all questions that continued to linger in his mind, Platinum Wing.

He had basic-looking, as his name suggests, pure platinum armor with the long streaks and splotches of crimson bestrewed along the reflective steel. The metal that completely encased his hooves was caked with rich brown dirt with small hints of blood hidden within it. He had blossoming pumpkin seed colored skin that, much similar to the steel that shielded his muscular form, was plagued with lengthy red stripes strewn across his flesh like someone had swung a paintbrush over his pigmentation. Oddly enough, despite the soldier-like appearance Platinum donned, he lacked arguably the most important article of armor you need to survive in battle. A helmet. Without it however, his sharp and striking features would be concealed to the world. Something he clearly didn’t want. He had a royal-blue mohawk that looked like it had been through some of the worst conditions imaginable. His hair was drenched with sweat and ichor and, despite being matted and bedeviled with grime, the mohawk shape somehow remained standing. Much like the pony it belonged to. Refusing to give in.

His eyes were a deep hazel color that looked as though they could be as piercing as a sword to some while soft and bursting with life to others. The unicorn's head he had beneath his hoof however was at the receiving end of the hate-filled side of Platinum’s irises. His teeth were clenched like a raging fire of fury had entombed his heart and cast out any remnant of positivity that once lived inside him. Despite the pony being long dead for years, his optics gave the man an uneasy feeling just by gazing at them. He could almost feel the wrath in them scorching his globes at the mere sight.

The sky was smoke-grey above his noggin akin to a dreadful spectre constantly looming over the bloodshed that showed no signs of stopping whatsoever. Spears were driven into the enemies throats. The chests of Platinum’s men gained the razor-sharp end of a sword. Levi could almost smell the stench of battle through the canvas, the odor of blood threatening to singe his nose hairs despite whatever battle went on in the illustration was long over and done with. Out of everything that was occurring within the confines of the golden frame, the particular weapon that Platinum had fit snugly into a chocolate-brown sheath at his side was a sword. But not just any sword. The very same one that sat upright on a marble pedestal in the focal point of the hall.

“This is Platinum. He was the head of the royal guard for as long as I could remember,” Celestia gazed up at the gore-covered pony with desolation pooling in her magenta eyes, thinking back to a time long ago when this pony wasn’t just a legend.

“Thousands of years ago, King Sombra and his army invaded the Crystal Empire and tried to take it for himself. He single handedly led the guard into battle and fought valiantly.”

‘King Sombra? Crystal Empire? Damn..my head…this is all too much.’ Levi thought in his head, confusion beginning to rear its ugly head as more and more names that he didn’t recognize surfaced in Celestia’s words.

“Sombra didn’t stand a chance,” Celestia spoke.

The man couldn’t detect not even a shred of dramatization in the alicorn's voice. Judging by the slaughter of enemy ponies exemplified in the painting, he didn’t doubt that one bit.

Maybe Equestrian history wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows like he initially thought. Even the purest of places had their times of violence and death. Equestria was no exception.

“Platinum and his soldiers laid waste to his army and forced a retreat. We knew there was a possibility this would happen again and we asked whether he could handle another threat like this. I already knew what the answer was before he opened his mouth.”

Celestia’s mind flashed back to that moment centuries back to that very moment. She remembered it like it was yesterday. She could hear his boisterous laugh booming through the throne room, acting as if the danger Sombra very clearly presented was nothing more than a joke.

“Oh don’t you worry about a thing, Princess!” She replayed his exact words in the back of her mind.

“That old bastard doesn’t stand a chance!”

“Mind If I ask you something?” Levi inquired after what felt like an eternity without him even uttering a word.

“Ask away.”

“Was he your friend?” The man asked.

The eye contact the duo held broke for a brief moment by the princess before it returned like it had never even happened.

“Yes..he was. He was one of my closet as a matter of fact,”

Despite the masquerade the alicorn was very blatantly putting on to hide her emotions, Levi could sense the sorrow braided within her words all the same.

“I knew him since I was a child, we did virtually everything together.” Celestia responded, avoiding the trip down memory lane at all costs, not wanting to make a scene with her waterworks.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to but..what happened to him?” Levi questioned as hesitantly as he could, not wanting to trigger some momentous emotional moment out of Celestia.

“Oh…right,” Her tone returned to the grief-stricken one Levi was beginning to grow familiar with.

“Just like I predicted, Sombra did return, and with more power than any of us could’ve prepared for. Due to the uptick in threat, I was the one who led the charge with him by my side.”

Levi was mentally preparing himself for the ending he could see from a mile away was going to happen, simultaneously hoping and praying that Celestia doesn’t burst into tears right where she stood.

“Some lived…some died…plenty of blood was shed,” Her gaze fell tremendously, not having the emotional strength to look at the painting of her friend any longer. Despite more years than she could count passing ever since that fateful day, bits and pieces of the memory flickered together like a sinister slideshow, stringing together the blood-stained events that led to…what happened to her comrade.

Millenniums ago…

KRAKOOM!

Celesita’s heart felt like it was being torn from her chest as she witnessed yet another slaying of one of her many, many soldiers. While never having met the fighter in front of her, she viewed each and every one of the ponies in Equestria as her family. But now, seeing one of Sombra’s bloodthirsty and barbaric warriors blowing another one of her troopers heads clean off there shoulders with a singular magic blast was proving to be too much for the alicorn to handle.

The crimson fluid that once belonged to the unicorn just inches ahead of her painted her snow-white chest with a fresh, thick coat. All that was left of the soldier's noggin were bits and pieces of his skull and membrane that now peppered the earth beneath her hooves. Blood erupted from the stump of what remained of his neck and sprayed onto the princesses’ golden hoof coverings, infecting their once stainless form with the unicorns gore.

The shock was slow to subside but was quickly overruled by an intense, scorching fury like the fiery pits of Hell rose from her gut and claimed every last bit of her at the sight in front of her very eyes. With a loud thump that was barely audible over the roaring and sounds of swords and shield clashing on the death-soaked battlefield around her, the trooper's cadaver hit the ground. The red liquid never ceased to spurt from what remained of his scrag now seeping into the dirt, coloring the ground a much darker brown and transforming the soil into a thick mud.

Several inches from where the fighters final stand took place just moments before stood the unicorn’s executioner. His dark colored fur brought the stench of battle everywhere he went. His armor was almost completely engulfed by the scarlet ichor of his ruthlessly butchered enemies, leaving the silver color that it once possessed to be nothing more than history. His ruby-red irises pierced Celestia’s magenta eyes, not phased a single bit by the blistering rage that pooled within them like a volcano ready to erupt. She internally snickered at the arrogance plaguing the murderer a foot frontwards from her. His fate was already written in stone. He was as good as dead. The funny part was, he just didn’t know it yet.

Celestia gritted her teeth as hard as humanly possible, the almost blinding ire beginning to take over her every action. Her horn ignited, the light-yellow aura that was quick to form putting on a much more sinister look than any of the other thousands of times she used her magic. The tip wasted no time in going from a dull golden light, to brighter than she could’ve ever imagined in a matter of moments. The alicorn jerked her head forward, sending the resplendent bolt of energy shooting from her horn like a bullet out of a sniper rifle.

A deafening blast dominated the ears of every pony friend and foe alike around her as if hundreds of shotguns fired all at once into the sky. The killer’s face went from prideful and bursting with a sickening arrogance, to flooded with dread in the blink of an eye. For a split second, she could see the daunting flaxen light color his face with a gleaming gold color that, under any other circumstance, would look alluring. But now, all it represented was one word and one word alone: Death.

The arrow of magic that launched from the tip of her horn soared directly in between the unicorn’s eyes before his years of military training kicked in. Maybe in some other life, they would’ve saved him. Celestia on the other hand was not going to let that happen, not while she still drew breath.

BOOM!

Chunks of his skull went careening in every direction like an exploding egg. A ring of his own blood rocketed out of where his noggin used to reside, giving the alicorn a new scarlet band of gore across her heaving chest. The rhythmic rising up and down of her sternum and the inferno beginning to ignite in her lungs from the massive exertion of magic was painful to say the least. Not any more so than watching another one of her children get his vertex turned into pulp by a remorseless soldier for just following what he was told.

During that intense battle that felt like it was going for years when it had been merely hours, the once pacifistic white alicorn had blown the enemy troopers' domes clean off their shoulders more times than she could count. When she and her sister first became the rulers of Equestria, their father had warned them that times like this were inevitably going to fall on the duo. They were going to have to fight until their dying breath to protect the land they loved with all of their heart. There was no debating about it. Celestia’s father had fought in wars and taken his fair share of lives during his rule. Just like his father, and his grandfather’s father, and so on and so forth. In a way, she felt that this battle right there and now was a turning point in her life as a Princess of Equestria. Either she leaps into the battle to the death for her people, or she stays behind like a coward and watches her children be slaughtered like pigs. Ultimately, the former brought her to where she was now.

The unicorn’s corpse hit the ground, signaling to the alicorn another one of her soldiers had been avenged. Melting into the ever growing group of revenge killings she had enacted that day. Celestia tried desperately to fill her burning lungs with oxygen once more as sweat streamed from her pores, causing her sherbert colored mane to stick to her skin like she had just left the shower a nanosecond before. Despite the blazing afternoon sun being hidden behind a blanket of grey clouds high above her head, the heat continued to beat down on the white alicorn like never before. The lack of visible sunlight cascaded shade down onto the death-soaked warzone. It was once a peaceful field, now permanently scarred by the abominable massacre that Celestia was, unfortunately, a part of.

Taking one slow look around her, she found she was a lot more responsible than she thought she was. Corpses upon corpses were scattered about the pasture that was once home to nature, now completely claimed by the viscera of the day’s events. Carcasses bespeckled the field, their heads nothing more than a thing of the past. The only remnant of them that remained whatsoever were the chunks of bone and lumps of brain matter that lay splayed across the battlefront, only adding to the unspeakable amounts of ichor that drenched the topsoil all around them. To add to the carnage, shields shattered into tens of fragments and swords split in half with a single strike bespeckled the ground alongside the remains of the ponies that used them, both friendly and not.

The alicorn’s chest never ceased to rise up and down forcefully, like she was trying to savor every last breath she managed to suck in as if it was the last in Equestria. The golden sparks shooting from the tip of her horn died. Her breathing, albeit slowly, began to return to normal. If any of the other ponies she executed were any indication, this calm inhaling and exhaling of oxygen was going to be very short lived. She knew that another one of Sombra’s vile, barbaric beasts he called ‘Soldiers’ could rush her at any given moment and thrust her into another fight for her life. One of the many fights for survival she was being forced to endure what felt every other minute.

KRAKOOM!

Celestia felt another blast of magic rocketed from an enemy's horn strike her in the side. Fortunately for her, the custom-made armor deflected the bolt straight back at the unlucky soul who fired it. The concentrated burst of energy collided with the unfortunate unicorn’s face, hitting him like a freight train and immediately casting an intense scorching pain onto his bare flesh. With the enemy’s hooves clasped firmly onto his smoldering skin, Celestia wasted no time in whipping around to face the struggling-to-stand trooper. Just like all the others that fell before her, her horn ignited and the end of her horn glowed as bright-as-can-be.

BOOM!

A golden arrow of magic struck the unicorn dead-center in his chest. His life ended immediately, fading into the colossal number of corpses that, just like him, hit the ground with a barely audible sound. The sparks from her horn died. The heaving began once again.

At that point, the aftermath of every major exertion of her magic was practically torture to the alicorn. The inferno that ignited to life in her lungs with every being she slayed was beginning to grow unbearable. The pounding headache that was slowly dawning within the confines of her skull was like a cancer, expanding and expanding with every pony she slaughtered. To say she utterly loathed what she “had” to do was nothing short of an understatement. She wished with all of her hammering heart that this would all just end, that Sombra could finally listen to reason and surrender. They could finally put an end to the unremitting decimation of both sides. They could live in peace at last. No more death. No more sacrifice. No more of…this. Just harmony. But alas, much to her dismay, she faced the reality long ago that her pacifistic way of ruling wouldn’t meet every ponies demands. Something she learned on that fateful day when the so-called “King” invaded the Empire.

“LEAVE NO PRISONERS!” She could hear his booming and semi-menacing voice laced with venom soar through the streets of the Crystal Empire, the bloody massacre he ordered his men to commit already in full-swing.

Sombra didn’t listen to mercy or reason. Sombra, from what Celestia could understand, didn’t care who his actions hurt or killed. As Sombra scowled deep into Celestia’s irises, his scarlet optics burning into hers like blowtorches, a revelation dawned on her.

If she wanted him to defeat him, she had to speak his language. A bloodbath. The very thing Platinum Wing and his loyal soldiers were beyond fluent in.

“PRINCESS!” A familiar, breathless, and panic-stricken voice blared over the cacophony of noises that raged on all around her. She was amazed she was able to decipher anything at all over the vile blend of clashing shields and the ear-piercing clanging of swords battling for dominance over one another.

Celestia’s eyes and her entire body whipped around to face the direction where her title was called out, her horn igniting for what felt like the thousandth time with her signature brilliant gold aura. Regardless of how sure she was that she knew who the voice belonged to, in the hellscape she was in, she couldn’t afford to take any chances.

Her heart slammed against her ribs painfully, each beat felt like nails were skewering her nucleus. No matter how hard her core pounded onto her bones, it seemed as though her body couldn’t get enough blood to flow through her veins. Her lungs never ceased to burn as if the deepest pit of hell opened up to swallow them whole, casting them into unending pain. Sweat oozed from her pores. A fierce soreness radiated from her horn. Her brain felt clobbered, each rhythmic agonizing blow against the walls of her skull threw it closer and closer to shattering into thousands of pieces. At least that's how she perceived the nearly blinding torture ruthlessly battering her head. Her legs trembled, her bones were teetering on the edge of splitting in two, all the while her hooves struggled immensely to stay planted into the blood-soaked ground. The breeze hitting her would feel immensely pleasurable under any normal circumstance. However, now, it only cooled the sweat that drenched every inch of her skin and stung like a kingdom of wrathful hornets.

The sound of hoof coverings pounding against the dirt akin to four different jackhammers striking the ground rapidly approached her faster than she could comprehend. The silver armor he donned clanged as it bounced with every hasty, thundering step he took. His lungs, similar to the alicorn he was rushing towards, felt enveloped in a raging blaze he couldn’t describe with words. The only one that felt satisfactory enough to describe the torment was hell. Pure, unadulterated, hell. Much like the death and misery in high-gear all around him.

“CELESTIA!” Now that the voice was much closer than before, Celestia allowed the glowing tip of her horn to dissipate and the aura around it to vanish.

“Platinum!” The princess called out, her voice lacking the strength to yell any louder. “Is that you?” Her voice was nothing but a meek sound among the sea of shouting and the constant clanging and clashing of weapons but, miraculously, the very pony she was hoping for finally emerged.

Bulldozing through the ocean of soldiers both enemy and not, charging head-first towards the sound of his name knowing without a shadow of a doubt who it belonged to was none other than Platinum Wing. The leader of the Royal Guard.

His once stainless-steel armor looked like a cannon full of blood blasted all over him from every side imaginable. One of the metal plates that formerly shielded his leg from the horrors of war was no more, revealing his bare and ichor-stained forelimb for all to see. A large, cavernous gash defiled the once flawless tan skin that covered his appendage. A long and seemingly endless crimson trail was soon to follow, running from the dire wound and touching the top of his hoof. Celestia was nothing but amazed at the fact the pony before her was able to walk after such a grievous injury, much less use every ounce of energy he stored to dash like his life depended on it. Then again, this was Platinum Wing she was talking about. She’s witnessed him do more dangerous and downright life-threatening things before. The laceration was merely child's play in comparison to the copious amounts of other feats he achieved with flying colors.

“Celestia! Are you alright?” Platinum clamored, his voice running dry and raspy from the hundreds of commands she heard him boom from the other side of the battlefield to his soldiers.

Some of which were long gone by the time they flew from his lungs. Thankfully, he didn’t know yet that he was wasting his breath shouting at corpses. It was better if it stayed that way.

“Yes, Plat! What about you?” Celestia fired back over the deafening brutalities of war all around her, her eyes pooled with enormous swirling worry darting to the egregious slash.

She half-expected him to reply back with something like ‘Oh It’s nothing Celestia! Worry about yourself!’ in his usual over-the-top cocky tone. The one he somehow managed to keep through almost lethal amounts of stress or the mountainous pressure to win that encumbered his shoulders.

“I’m fine! Are you hurt?” The earth pony yelled, his hazel eyes scanning every inch of her frame like an insect under a microscope.

“No! How many casualties?”

“Too many! Sombra has a lot more than we do!” Celestia strained her ears to listen to the much shorter pony below her.

Over the cacophony of death and colliding swords, Platinum’s voice was destined to become a faded whisper among the array of uproar that laid waste to their eardrums. Celestia tried her damndest to make out every word he was saying, going as far as to try and fail to read his lips in a vain attempt to discern every letter that left his mouth. Platinum’s face showed not even the slightest hint of discomfort or pain to the discord that engulfed them, fighting tooth and nail in the battle zone for years hardened a ponies senses to the horrors of war. Regret and discomfort were written across the alicorn’s face, something the tan pony picked up on almost immediately.

He knew Celestia’s potential in the field more than anyone in Equestria. Her power could decimate Sombra and his entire army in a matter of minutes with no more than a single blast, wiping every last barbarian that screamed there lungs out across the pasture from history. The fact that she couldn’t see the power that was locked deep within her was downing to say the least. However, he knew then was not the time to give his friend a pep talk about finding their inner might, now was the time to survive. Something the pair were not going to achieve by standing there any longer.

Suddenly, a new sound entered the princesses’ earscape, a sound that sent lightning bolts of dread shooting through her bones. A low, gravelly chuckle arose from less than a foot away from the duo. Immediately following it, the familiar robotic-like hum of a charging horn plagued the air with its presence as the unicorn it belonged to channeled all of his magic to blast Celestia to kingdom come.

Fate’s cruel nature was shown in the form of giving Celestia little-to-none reaction time before the enemy unleashed his wrath upon her. She could almost feel the anticipation radiating from him to finally turn her head into mush for all the comrades he watched her slaughter. Platinum on the other hand was fate’s worst enemy. A stark contrast to her, his lightning-fast reaction time gave him the upper hand to whatever Grim Reaper was watching over them, ready to snatch their souls the very moment their bodies touched the ground.

“PRINCESS, WATCH OUT!” Platinum’s muscular forelimbs delivered a mighty blow to Celesita’s blood-stained chest, some of the remnant from whichever soldier it belonged to adding yet another stain to his hoof coverings.

Platinum whipped his entire body in the blink of an eye to face the foe who threatened the life of his dearest friend. The concern for his comrade melted from his face and in its place was a searing-hot fury. His sword left the sheath slung around his form and was gripped tightly in his hoof.

The unicorn’s expression went from the excitement of Celestia’ forecasted demise to pure and unbridled horror like a mask had fallen from his features, revealing his true emotions. With what little time she knew the trooper had left to draw breath, she made the briefest eye contact she had ever had in her life up to that point. She was almost unable to make out the unfathomable levels of dread pooled within his lime-green irises before he was struck down.

SHUNK!

Platinum dashed forward with the power of a thousand men and dove his vibrantly-colored blade into the unicorn’s Adam's apple. The pathetic adversary raised his twitching hooves to his gullet just mere moments before his killers forelimb collided with his chest, kicking him from his cutlass and sending his soon-to-be cadaver to the dirt. Fast food for the Grim Reaper he supposed.

Before Celestia could even attempt to stand, her trembling limbs were granted mercy by the fibrous hooves of her comrade and lifted her to her quivering hooves. The alicorn separated her jaws to speak, but was silenced by yet another concerned bellow from the tan pony’s lungs.

“Are you alright, Pri-”

“Yes!” Celestia interjected, as loud as her voice could reach. “Platinum, please! I’m fine! You have to go look after your soldiers! They need you! I can handle myself!”

The very instant his lips parted to combat his superior's demand, barreling out from the lagoon of black and silver armor that surrounded them was one of Platinum’s many beloved soldiers.

His limbs, much like hers, were taken ahold of by violent tremors that shook his bones to the core. The peach unicorn’s face was flushed, dark lines left behind by trails of sweat plagued his usually blemishless features. His heaving chest looked as though it would burst from the armor protecting it. His eyes however were nothing like his overall crummy appearance, they were something far worse. The only word Celestia could conjure to describe them would be fear. Unalloyed, rampant fear that conquered every inch of his pale-green orbs. Celestia felt fright wrap its tendrils around her heart at the prospect of whatever could be out there hiding in the carnage of the battlefield that inflicted so much horror into the soldier that he hadn’t seen before. The alicorn’s imagination had no limits as she tried to fabricate a response to ease her newly distressed mind.

“C-Commander…” The peach pony caterwauled, his voice breathless like he used every last bit of oxygen in his lungs to speak. “We have a s-situation!”

“What is it, Private?”

The lower ranking soldier looked deep into Platinum’s eyes filled with extraordinary levels of worry that the Private could barely comprehend.

“W-We have a lot of casualties.”

“How many?”

“More than I could count,” The Private exclaimed, regret entwined within his words. “We don’t know what the hell happened!”

“Well tell me something!” Platinum shouted, anger beginning to creep into his tone at the peach pony’s lack of an explanation for the devastating information. “How many was it!”

“One!”

Platinum began to see red.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONE!” He thundered furiously.

“There was one!” The Private repeated, only adding fuel to the growing fire of rage inside of Platinum’s heart, in turn adding more pain atop the silent mourning for his fallen soldiers.

Platinum gritted his teeth so hard he feared they would explode like popcorn kernels under the pressure. With the amount of thoughts both angry and sorrowful forming a hurricane in his brain, losing his molars was one of the many things that were placed to the back of his mind to focus on the dire situation. Being told a mass amount of the people he viewed as his own family without him even being there to see it, on top of the fact they were all wiped out by one singular pony was almost impossible to fathom. Platinum wanted to believe the Private was telling some tall tale. That at any moment his men would come running for him, standing there patiently awaiting their orders. If the bloodletting that showed no signs of stopping anytime soon all around him was an indication of anything, the trooper's words were the furthest thing from lies.

“WHAT DID HE LOOK LIKE! WHERE IS HE!” Platinum suddenly lurched forward, his hooves gripping onto the borders of his armor and tugging him closer.

Microscopic beads of his superior’s saliva peppered his face, being lost in the mess of sweat defiling his forehead. In all of the years he had been under Platinum’s command, never had he seen him get this enraged over anything at anyone before. Even in all the times and the Private and his comrades had royally screwed up and were dealt an inevitable pep-talk, nothing had ever triggered his outburst. But now, being faced with the reality that all the blood, sweat, and tears he put into his soldiers was all for naught, a tidal wave of wrath came crashing down. Whoever, or whatever, was responsible for their deaths was going to pay the ultimate price. Platinum’s blazing eyes cemented that fact further.

“His horn was-”

CRACK!

A noise identical to a clap of thunder killed the words that were about to leave the peach pony's mouth. Several meters off in the distance, over the heads of the hundreds of soldiers that occupied the battlefield, a colossal flash of lime-green light exploded from the center of a small group that surrounded somebody. Whatever the sudden burst of color was, it was more than enough to force a retreat from the ponies who enveloped him. Screams of terror were somehow audible over the clanging of swords and shields. The pounding of hoofsteps like suppressed gunfire trailed off in every direction, hastily fading from the trio's ears and melting into the sounds of the war, becoming just another morsel of the pandemonium.

Celestia’s eyes became as wide as dinner plates. Her pupils transformed into pinpoints. Her heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach. To say she knew who the green magic belonged to was an understatement. She was all too familiar with the sickly color that nearly sent biles roaring from her mouth at the sight. Wherever that hue was, whatever place the panic-inducing thunder clap erupted from, death was sure to follow. Something she and, what she assumed to be the entirety of the Royal Guard, learned in the worst way possible. Celestia could only imagine what the poor pony who was at the receiving end of the blast was feeling. Entertaining the thought any longer brought droves of anguish crashing down onto her already aching heart.

CRACK!

Another blast of green light. Another soldier, or soldiers for all she knew, mercilessly slaughtered.

Sweat broke on the alicorn’s forehead, her snow-white skin shone in what little sunlight was able to penetrate the thick barrier of grey clouds in the sky. She whipped her head over to lock eyes with the tan colored pony, hoping to find even a sliver of reassurance in her time of distress that never ceased to rise with every passing second. Much to her dismay, the look she received was anything but helpful.

His hazel eyes, formerly sharp and brave, were now the exact opposite. Gone were the bold, fearless, courageous irises that were bursting with vigor, ready to tackle anything that stood in his way. In their place were two dying auburn orbs, pooled with dread and an indescribable sense of primal fear, like she was staring into the globes of Platinum Wing’s corpse. With the brilliant copper color she sought comfort in for all the years she knew him dying before her very eyes, the panic that was flickering to life in her heart only expanded like a cancer, putting more and more weight upon her crying shoulders.

CRACK!

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she knew without a shadow of a doubt who the blinding discharges of magic belonged to. The garish, fear-inducing, nauseating lime-green color could only belong to one pony and one pony alone.

CRACK!

Another warrior dead.

The sound felt like it was beginning to bore holes into Celestia’s skull. Her slamming headache grew almost unbearable with each deafening clap that split the air.

CRACK!

More death and screams. Terrifying, petrifying screams of terror.

Celestia took several panicked and hasty steps back as the blast that signaled ruthless killing inched closer to the trio.

CRACK!

Death. Screams.

The sound of pounding hoofsteps scattering in every direction like a frightened murder of crows invaded Celestia’s ears. Roars of pain rang over the battlefield with each ear-splitting explosion of magic.

“Platinum! W-Who is that?” Celestia stammered, the sheer amount of horror plaguing her heart now conquering her speech with an unwanted stutter.

The only response the alicorn received was the shrill singing of his pure crystal, vibrantly colored, short-bladed sword leaving the comfort of his worn down sheath. Under any normal circumstances, the strident whistle of Platinum’s cutlass would strike fear into the hearts of any damned soul to happen to be in his way. Years and years of training allowed the dagger to transform from just a unique looking blade, to a weapon capable of bringing cities to its knees. Celestia saw first-hand what her friend was capable of with it. The sight of the crimson trail that ran for what seemed like miles and the heavily lacerated, blood-soaked corpses in his wake kept her up at night for days on end. She hoped that now the tan pony could unlock that fighting spirit she knew all too well that he had and send..whoever it was that killed his men back to the hell he spawned from.

CRACK!

“NO!” The trio heard a voice laced with sorrow and grief roar from the top of his lungs.

“You son of a bitch! I’m gonna ki-”

CRACK!

The once impenetrable ring of soldiers that surrounded the trio became thinner and thinner with each step the mass murderer took like he was the devil himself marching upon the earth. Judging by everything he’s done thus far, that theory didn’t seem too far-fetched in Celestia’s swirling mess she called a mind.

The end of swords drove deep into the soil as they fell from the hooves of mortified ponies.

Shields collided with the ground with loud thunks, the soldiers who once used them to protect themselves from certain death were quick to abandon them without a second thought.

Shattered pieces of armor bespeckled the ground. Demolished ruins of helmets and chest plates alike were scattered across the gore-immersed field, marking the impromptu graves of valiant soldiers. In life as they were in death: Warriors.

“Group together!” Platinum boomed with all of the air remaining in his lungs. “We’ll have a better chance if we take him on together!”

Celestia’s quivering hooves, along with the Privates' much more collected ones, scurried over to form a mini-battalion with the excessively confident commander. In spite of his hardened gaze and eyes sharp as knives as they glared in the direction of the unavoidable threat, the alicorn saw through her friend’s masquerade as though it was never even there. Celestia knew what a true face of genuine bravery looked like on the tan pony’s features, she knew it like the back of her hoof. The mask Platinum was trying his damndest to keep from crumbling to dust right before his eyes was hard to watch to say the least. Her magenta irises broke through his vain attempt at deception, granting her eyes access to see the true emotions having a battle for supremacy inside of him.

The glorious clash between the urge to behead the monster who slayed his men and the desire to curl up in the fetal position in fear was a sight to behold. If Platinum’s stone-cold serious stare and rhythmic swelling and falling of his chest was an indication of anything, the duel had a very clear winner.

His grip on his white metallic handle tightened, the jaws of a starving animal would be envious at the sight. Cannonballs of sweat raced down his forehead and in between his eyes leaving dark trails in his coat in their wake. She could almost hear his heart pounding against his ribcage like a sledgehammer.

The Private’s brow furrowed. His horn fulgurated, immediately being engulfed in a tan colored cloud in the blink of an eye. Celestia’s eyes shifted over to meet the Private’s for a very brief moment, despite the shortness of it, the consuming terror vanquishing every other emotion in his irises was all too obvious. He, much like his commander, tried his utmost to desperately shield his inner emotions from the outside world. As much as Celestia condemns that type of behavior, for a soldier, it was necessary in a way. If an enemy saw your fear, you're as good as dead. Making yourself look as confident and intimidating as humanly possible gave you a much better chance at survival then if he were to coil up and weep in fright. In spite of his best attempts at concealing it, the alicorn could see it clear as day that it was exactly what he wanted.

CRACK!

The sound of death was growing dangerously close to its destination.

The tip of the Private’s and Celestia’s horn glowed like the inner core of a lightbulb fixated to their head.

Platinum’s vice-like hold on his hilt only increased. Veins jutted from his arm as if he had lively colored snakes seeking refuge under his flesh. His heartbeat boomed in his ears. The pounding headache battered his skull, causing him to fear his skull would burst into thousands of pieces under the pressure.

Somehow, over the blend of stampeding soldiers and weapons and shields alike hitting the ground, another sound miraculously made its way into the spotlight. Slow, methodical hoofsteps approached the trio as they anxiously awaited his arrival. Regardless of how faint the noise was compared to the cacophony all around him, it struck a fierce and unforgiving dread into their hearts all the same. For the first time in the years that she had known him, never had the alicorn seen Platinum show even a hint of being afraid in the face of any threat. His defense portraying him as this tough as nails and undefeatable killing machine was crumbling to ashes right before his eyes, thrusting his internal not-so-courageous feelings into the light of day. Seeing her normally undaunted, occasionally brash, friend radiating trepidation like a nuclear reactor spawned immense speeds she never knew were possible in her heart. Each thump of her core casting waves of alarm through her slightly shaking frame.

Celesita fought back the urge to jump out 10 feet in the air by the skin of her teeth as the menacing being approaching them stomped onto one of the many shields splashed with crimson that bespeckled the dirt. The old dark brown wood was no match for the black metal hoof that came slamming down onto its weakened center like a wrecking ball. The timber exploded, sending fragments and shards alike flinging out every which way with a thundering crack akin to a gunshot. The studded black metal that once bordered the planking was history, becoming nothing more than another grotesque decoration to the gore-infested ground.

The aura around Celestia’s horn intensified. Her eyes sharpened. Her bones ceased their insistent trembling. Determination to put the monster creeping towards them six feet under burned brighter than the sun could ever dream of doing.

Soldiers fighting with every ounce of strength in their bodies whipped their heads towards the impending threat. From what little she could see through the punctured holes and cracks in their helmets overtaken by splotches of blood, the alicorn could tell there instinctive will to survive kicked into high gear in the blink of an eye, throwing out any shred of reason or logic that formerly resided inside them. The familiar dread-inducing sound of weapons clanging against the soil rang through the air, almost instantaneously followed by shrill cries of terror as their aching hooves carried them with all of there might to safety. At least what they hoped was safety.

“WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!” The Private thundered, the wrath entangled in his voice wrestled for dominance with the acute fear that aimed to conquer the pony.

The front of bravery he tried in vain to put on was like attempting to protect himself from a sword with a sheet of cardboard. Anyone with a set of eyes and ears could pick apart the Private equivalent to a vulture tearing apart its next meal. If it was almost pitiful for the alicorn and the commander to hear the courage lacing his tone falling victim to his fight, they could only imagine how laughable it was to the personification of death marching towards them.

Platinum shot a fleeting, piercing glare that stabbed dead-center in the Private’s pale-green orbs. It was a stern yet silent way of demanding the peach pony to take the situation stone-cold serious. It was a mere fragment in the much larger spectrum of Platinum’s hidden and impressive talents. Being able to cast silence onto a pony with nothing but an almost missable scowl was awe-inspiring to say the least. No one really knew how he made his glower so menacing and vicious that it was able to kill anymore words from leaving somebody’s mouth. The fact he was able to do it in the first place provided even more irrefutable evidence that he was born to be a commander. Yet, in spite of the high success rate Platinum’s scorching gaze held with honor, the Private by his side had a fire in his bones that couldn’t be tamed, a flame that the commander's gaze was unintentionally throwing fuel on.

The Private had a fire in his bones that Platinum had accidentally given life to. The peach unicorn’s sneer contorted into a wrathful sneer, the dudgeon nearly scorching the tan pony just by the mere sight of it. The commander watched vexed, exhausted eyes as the Private separated his jaws to bellow another taunt at the externalized death striding towards them.

Out of the blue, from the lagoon of soldiers that grew thinner and thinner by the moment, a dark brown wooden blood-drenched spear whistled through the air as it soared at unfathomable speeds. A rich aura surrounded the javelin that, despite Celestia being given less than a few moments to process it, the realization hit her like a freight train nonetheless. The cloud of magic that swallowed it whole was a deep purple and vibrant green that seemed to bubble and swirl around as if restless vipers had made the lancet there home.

The shrill cry of the air splitting in two from the weapons warpath was enough to cast silence onto the trio, but the sickening and stomach-churning sound that came after was enough to haunt the alicorn and the commander until the end of there days.

SHUNK!

The merciless, razor-sharp end was entirely devoid of ruth. The head drove dead center into the Private’s throat, skewering his windpipe as though whoever threw it was trying to craft some grotesque kabab. The honed and slightly battle damaged tip laid waste to the core of the unicorn’s neck, remerging from his nape with every inch of the once stainless steel with a thick blanket of crimson. Ichor dripped from the keen nib as what little sunlight was able to penetrate the thick barricade of clouds above their heads glistened off the thick red fluid like scarlet jewels under the morning shine.

The Private’s pitiful attempt to speak only resulted in copious amounts of gore to spew from his gaping mouth, only adding to the fathomless quantity of blood that seeped into the earth. His formerly pearly white teeth were now painted with a fresh layer of his own scarlet sap. Words that he somehow managed to form in his panicked, dying brain only came out in shallow indecipherable breaths. The brilliant hazel color that once resided in his irises began to fade, leaving lifeless sorry excuses for jewels embedded in his sockets. Faster than he could comprehend, he felt every last drop of strength began to secrete from his body as the alarmed slamming of his heart slowed to dangerous levels.

The Private used whatever microscopic strands of energy he could cling onto for dear life to turn his violently trembling head to face the duo. He locked eyes with Platinum, the very same commander that promised him many moons ago to lead him and his comrades to victory. The defeat, anguish, and grief that pooled in his eyes like vile lakes of emotion were almost unbearable to look at. His orbs snapped onto Celestia’s, her formerly vigorous magenta optics were anything but. Where they inhabited sat numb fuschia globes with horror filling them akin to a water balloon teetering on the edge of bursting.

The only words the walking corpse could evict from his lungs was the title of the pony who swore him a life of vanity, a life of freedom. But most importantly, a life at all.

“C-Comma-”

The remainder of the word died in his mouth alongside himself, the blood loss finally ending the suffering of the valiant warrior. His cadaver hit the carnage-infused dirt like a burlap sack filled with sand, sending plumes of dust and sediment shooting into the air mere inches above the newly departed unicorn.

“N-NO!” Platinum roared, the indescribable pain braided within his voice being almost too much for his alicorn friend to handle. “PRIVATE!”

“Finally!” A gruff voice laughed, his boisterous guffaw sending flocks of panic flying straight into Celestia’s aching heart. “He talked too much!”

‘No…’ Celestia’s mind panicked, “No! No! NO! This can’t be! It can’t be him, right!?”

The crowd of soldiers that shielded the Private’s killer’s image from the duo finally dispersed, allowing their eyes brimmed with tears to decipher who could possibly be behind all of this bloodshed.

The tons of dread that hit her like a cement truck was bordering on the edge of unbearable. It couldn’t be who she thought it was…right?

Chapter 16: The Silence of Sacrifice

Fire.

Red, hot, boiling.

Those were the only words Celestia struggled to conjure to describe the nameless, blistering wrath painted over Platinum’s features.

His eyes, once sharp and booming with confidence, were now smoldering. In the place where his hazel jewels once resided were simmering husks, like the ends of fire pokers glowing white with an indescribable heat. Veins jutted from his forehead and neck as if red and blue vipers had sought refuge underneath his stone-gray flesh. His skin was vandalized with the dark trails, merely a byproduct of the cannonballs of sweat that had a marathon down his face. The blistering rage radiating from the formerly collected earth pony threatened to singe the alicorn. His back and chest rose high before making a dramatic fall as gusts upon gusts of oxygen entered his lungs. His heart clobbered his lungs with each thump that rang in his ears, sending colossal levels of pain shooting through his quivering frame with every beat.

Never once in all of Celestia’s years of ruling Equestria, or her entire life for that matter, had she seen any pony fuming that much. Much less Platinum of all people. Celestia showered the commander with reverence for his calm and cool as an iceberg mentality when faced with the most perilous situations on the battlefield. His ability to shoot orders like a verbal machine gun and watch in satisfaction as his loyal warriors followed them without question. The constant “Yes, Commander!” flowing from their mouths was music to his ears.

But now, being faced with the jarring reality that all that remained of his beyond obedient soldiers were bloody capsules left to rot in the field, every last remnant of his tranquil nature was dashed. Eagerly occupying its place was a roaring fire of rage that swallowed his heart without hesitation, making Platinum merely a puppet in its presence. His blood turned to molten hot slag that traveled through his veins. Every action, every piercing glare he fired, every trooper he planned to slaughter for revenge was nothing more than his personified wrath tightening its grip over him. The flames of indignation that burned as if the sun had been placed in his chest jerked the strings controlling the blue-haired pony.

Platinum reached a trembling hoof to his side, catching the gore-stained handle of his cutlass, that saw more violence in one day than it had in its lifetime, and tore it from his sheath.

The blade, short but more deadly than anyone could imagine, was a mixture of several different colors. Pink, red, ice blue, and countless others melted together to form the dagger that the commander knew as if it was his child. Thin white lines ran up and down through it like the long, lanky legs of a spider, reminding Celestia of every crystal that was sacrificed to forge it.

Platinum flipped the instrument of doom in his ironclad grasp almost identical to a lion toying with a dead gazelle in between its jaws. The keen razor-sharp end pointed towards the ground, reminding any enemy who laid there eyes on it where they would be if they crossed his path. His globes, ominously, never left the cold, lifeless globes of the Private.

The copious amounts of crimson that spilled from his grievous wound were no more, merely melting into the ocean of ichor that became one with the earth. His jaw hung agape, revealing the nauseating and equally as pitiful sight of his scarlet stained teeth. His eyes were the father of all nightmares. Cold. Dead. Celestia began to quickly run out of words to describe it. Simply put, a ceaseless reminder of the lack of life that resided within the peach unicorn.

Platinum felt a sea full of guilt hit him like a freight train as his fiery gaze just so happened to fall right onto the Private’s optics. His mind thrusted him back in time to no more than seconds prior, seeing his eyes bursting with vigor and his voice laced with fear and confidence was a stark contrast to the corpse he was sharing a depthless gaze with. Or what could just barely be considered a sorry excuse for a gaze. They say the eyes are a gateway to the soul, if that was truly the case, the Private’s soul was empty. A dark chasm among powerless machines known as organs all around it.

“I…I’m so sorry, Private,” Platinum lamented in an immensely hushed voice. “He won’t get away with this! I’ll die before he does!”

Platinum craned his neck, hazel met magenta, the fierce and ravenous heat of indignation that rested in his orbs was almost frightening to the alicorn. Weirdly enough however, in a stark contrast to his appearance, his voice lacked even a sliver of what was readily present in his orbs.

“Be on high alert, Princess!” Platinum found it impossible to stress the importance enough in his panicked tone, in spite of how much he masked it with a front of unbelievably false bravery.

Platinum knew the jig was up. He had been caught. He was no longer the pony oozing with confidence that could slay any threat that dared to step in his path. All he was now was a frightened, worried, and deathly anxious commander who was holding on by the skin of his teeth to keep himself from crumbling to ash.

Regardless of what his appearance looked like to others, he would try with every breath in his body to keep it up and running as long as it took.

“Be on high alert! We have no idea where-” He stopped. His eyes ascended hastily from the alicorn's and to a spot several feet above his head. The sky, that had been utterly drab and colorless with the blanket of clouds that shielded the sun, gained a new decoration that grabbed the eyes of the duo. However, it wasn’t for the reason one would think, it robbed them of their attention for all the wrong reasons. More specifically, how downright dangerous and dread-inducing it truly was.

Resting idle in the open air, transforming the air around it thick with menace, was a perfectly circular beach ball sized globule of magic. The illuminescent, lime-green color in contrast with the smoke-gray clouds it sat under made it look like a figment of the imagination. Something their brain fabricated in order to fill the colorless painting that was once the beautiful clear sky of Equestria. A thin ring circled the orb as if whoever spawned the sphere into existence pulled a planet from space and right before their very eyes. Large clusters of viridescent sparks erupted from all sides of the spheroid of raw magic while the hoop encircling it spinning, making it look more like a greenish blur than a hoop.

The very moment Platinum’s jaws separated and the aching bones in his arms prepared for battle, the perpetual robotic-like humming reverberating off the ball was sliced in two. Almost instantly, the sound was laid to rest by a great boom nearly identical to cannonfire that threatened to shatter the commander’s skull. His ears cried out in agony as he blenched, his already sore and pulsating frame nearly crumpling to the ground in agony at the sudden movement. Celestia on the other hand was a lot more fortunate than the earth pony. Her body, that was thankfully not riddled with afflictions, remained standing strong in the fear-inducing presence of the mighty globe.

In spite of her emotional blockade refusing entry to the fright the magic sphere hurled at her, an unexpected and pitiless strand of panic wriggled its way past her defenses. Deep inside, she knew without a shadow of a doubt who the magic belonged to. The color. The behavior. The laugh. The voice. Oh gosh, the voice. She knew it all too well. Keeping it hidden from the already distressed commander was the number one option for the alicorn and clearly the best out of the limited choosings she had.

Option one: She tells Platinum the identity behind the pony who laid waste to his guard and possibly risk..what could only be described as an outrage of the ages.

Option two: She keeps it concealed behind a veil of secrecy while simultaneously preventing an inner explosion from the blue-haired pony.

The latter was the much more alluring option.

Without any hint of a warning, the brightly colored globe fulminated into a beautiful lightshow of solid color. Streams of deep purple and forest green wasted no time in painting the sky with their overwhelmingly attractive colors, as if someone was pouring paint over an upside down bowl Celestia and Platinum found themselves trapped inside like insects. Tinctures never ceased to brighten the sky, the gleam that nearly led tears to well in their eyes was still a much more lovely option than the monotone gray sky the alicorn had been used to ever since she began to engage in the bloodshed. However, regardless of how unbelievably pretty the detonation of shades and tints was, the sinister nature behind their very existence was beyond evident to the distressed Celestia.

The radiance continued to pour down the walls of the magical cupola that encased them, as if the northern lights were a liquid that descended down the invisible barriers. Impossibly long streaks of purple and green like sage and violet veins entangling each other painted the unseen barricades. The gleam, which looked more like hypnotically-colored melted ice cream, descended agonizingly slowly down the blockade. Platinum’s grip on his bloodthirsty cutlass tightened with each passing second. His features sharpened with each dread-inducing moment that ticked by. His eyes began to don a fierce, unmatchable flame that would put the Devil himself to shame.

At last, after what felt like years since the sparking ball spawned into existence, the army of vibrant tree sap’s adventure down the rampart came to a satisfying conclusion. And with it came…silence. Complete and utter silence. Not a word spoken. Not a sound being able to penetrate the impassable, mountainous walls of amethyst and virecent that enveloped them. With the dazzling dams of dazzling light and their ability to hear the horrors of war robbed from them, their senses were left with virtually nothing. The only thing capable of being heard within the spacious cage of color was her heartbeat hammering in her throat accompanied by the cyclone of thoughts that plagued her mind. The copious, inconceivable amount of thoughts. Most struck dread into the alicorn’s heart while most did the reverse opposite, sending jitters and lightning bolts of hope shooting through her throbbing bones.

Platinum’s ironclad grip on his ichor-soaked hilt somehow managed to tighten, sending his veins popping through his flesh and the urge to battle until his final breath flowing through his arteries. The prospect of beheading the pony who stole the one thing he cared most about in all of Equestria from him was the one and only thing keeping his heart beating. His lungs desperately wanted nothing more than to cease and surrender. His extremities cried out in agony, unfathomable levels of soreness claiming every inch of his limbs. His nucleus no longer had the will to keep trucking along, it too wanted to crumble to dust and perish right then and there, sending Platinum with it on its one way trip to death’s door. However, much to his evidently suffering organ’s dismay, Platinum would not allow that to happen. Not if the violent and endless firestorm raging in his chest still had a hunger for only one feeling that could possibly satiate it. Vengeance.

Revenge. The word left a putrid taste on the commander’s tongue that nearly sent bile roaring from the bowels of his gut. Being the captain and sole leader of the force protecting the Princess of Equestria, on top of viewing all of his soldiers as though they were his own flesh and blood, didn’t come without consequences. Colossal consequences. Consequences that the blue-haired pony learned in the worst way possible time and time again. From KIng Sombra’s onslaught on the Crystal Empire, he watched with grief-stricken eyes as the warriors he devoted years upon years of his life to become nothing more than a cold carcass bespeckling the marble floor. In spite of his momentous efforts to prevent the latter, more and more bodies fell. Each set of irises that locked with him in their final moments in Equestria, silently begging for mercy or for their much beloved and revered commander to rescue them from certain doom, progressively chipped away at his aching heart.

As much as his inner flame to protect anyone and everything ignited in the deepest pits of his core, nothing he could do that was within the boundaries of reality could save them. The bloodthirsty enemy’s expertly-honed blade was en route to his trooper’s jugular, just mere millimeters away from a devastating and, without question, fatal blow. Platinum was forced to only two equally dreadful options to choose from. Either he stood there and watched his comrade’s final seconds alive, or he rush over in vain and try and fail to cease the inevitable.

In the end, Platinum was always left with the former. Everytime. No exceptions.

The cutlass collided with their flesh, the bitterly cold metal biting their raw muscle as it buried into their neck like an animal seeking refuge beneath the earth. A geyser of scarlet was soon to explode from their utmost grievous and cavernous wound, painting their killer's manic expression with a fresh ruby-red coat. With their jaws heavily separated and their carmine-stained canines glinting in the golden light of the sun they didn’t deserve to live under, all the crimson volcano ended up doing was giving their attacker a more striking resemblance to what they truly were. A monster.

Even after watching his companion get murdered just feet away from him, Platinum didn’t have room in his heart for the desire of revenge. In his mind, retribution was a grudge, something he utterly abhorred entirely. When he was battling for his life in the battlefield, the stench of death laying waste to his senses, harboring any sense of emotions towards an enemy grunt felt like an absolute waste of energy. The emotional power that he could’ve used to retain an intense hatred for another pony he instead used to slay soldiers that would’ve executed his men otherwise.

In the present however, with the reality of his entire array of faithful men-at-arms being six feet under crushing his bones, every philosophy he previously held close to his heart was nothing more than a memory. A memory permanently stained with the fury and ichor of that fateful day. The remembrances of every pony he slayed that were tragically misled by their so-called “King” being forever engraved into his psyche.

Outside of Platinum’s swirling, stormy mess of a mind, the indestructible silence shared between the blue-haired pony and the alicorn never ceased. It was only him, a sweat-drenched Celestia, and the lifeless cadaver of the Private, the spear that robbed him of his life still lodged in his windpipe. The duo didn’t dare to move, in fact, the thought never even crossed their minds.

They stood there. Still. Deathly still. Platinum’s head leisurely swiveled from left to right like he was a turret scanning for a target to annihilate. More specifically, looking for the owner of the boisterous laugh and most certainly the one who was responsible for the magic dome they were trapped in.

Whoever or whatever it was, they knew with the utmost certainty that Platinum and Celestia were his prisoners. His playthings he could release or torment at his convenience. For all intents and purposes, their lives were being juggled in the overlord’s hooves, spectating them from wherever he stood. Waiting for the perfect moment to strike to sink his fangs into the shatterproof pair.

Moments turned into seconds.

Seconds bled into minutes.

Soon , time lost its meaning entirely.

The only thing that even slightly resembled a chronometer was the mental clock ticking rhythmically in Platinum’s head, a constant reminder how long he had been confined to this vibrant dome.

One minute and fifty-two seconds.

Nothing.

One minute and fifty-five seconds.

Still, nothing.

One minute and fifty-eight seconds.

Dread wrapped coiled its tendrils around his spine. Fear threatened to swallow his heart and extinguish the flame of undying anger that burned brighter than the sun within it.

Out of absolute nowhere, tearing through the menacing silence like a bullet through a pillow, a sound erupted. However, much to his dismay in spite of how much he tried to suppress it, the booming and boisterous laugh that invaded his ears was unlike anything he had ever heard before. Not because of how unique or striking it was to the senses. No. In fact, it was quite the opposite. It stood out to the blue-haired pony for every vile reason one could comprehend with a sane mind.

The amount of fuel it cast into the hellfire of wrath that devoured his heart and, slowly but surely, his soul, was the one and only reason it struck Platinum harder than ever before. To add to the mammoth list of why the guffaw was beyond wicked, it was the same alarming noise that bursted from the crowd moments before the Private caught a javelin with his windpipe.

That magic aura…it looked so..familiar. So insidiously familiar.

Platinum couldn’t put his hoof on it despite his best efforts.

He knew he’d seen it before, that was for certain. The colors were indescribably distinctive. In all of his years of living, he had never seen such a color pattern form around an object. Platinum tried in vain to sift through through the fiery hurricane laying waste to his mind to find something, anything, that would point him in the right direction and give him the answer he oh so desperately wanted. Not that he wanted, he needed.

Maybe if he could decipher who the identity of who the colors belonged to, it would be exceptionally easier to fabricate fantasies in his head where the monster’s head was no longer attached to his being. Just another fragment of the revolutionary battle that took place right in that very field where his skull lay. Lifeless. Dead. Exactly what he deserved.

“If I’m honest with you Commander, I’m surprised you made it this far.” A reverberating voice erupted from the thin air occupying the dome, a repugnant measure of pride poisoning his every word.

“WHO ARE YOU! SHOW YOURSELF, COWARD!”

“There’s no need for introductions, Commander,” The disembodied voice continued, his the raw menace braided within his speech stabbing the blue-haired pony’s eardrums like thumbtacks. “I believe you and I know each other very well.”

“C-COME OUT! NOW!” Platinum thundered, bravery oozing from his booming threat, only to be betrayed by an anxious stutter that invaded his words.

In spite of his best efforts, Platinum couldn’t cease the panic kindling to life in his chest amidst the everliving bonfire of wrath at the pony’s foreboding tone. To say the hunger for revenge and the insatiable urge to call up into a ball in fright were fighting for supremacy would be a criminal understatement.

“Is that truly what you want?” The Royal Guard's killer asked, as though he was genuinely trying and failing to warn them of some impending threat just on the horizon.

The sudden and stark shift in his timbre was frightening to say the least. Having someone’s words strike mountains of fear into him and take a sharp U-turn, replacing the menace that once resided there with a sense of apprehension. Was he indeed looking out for the soldier’s well-being? Or was he the most vile liar on the face of the planet and treated gaslighting as if it was a game with a prize at the end?

Platinum had no idea. What he did know however was that all the coward behind the cryptic statements was doing nothing but buying time. Spending every last metaphorical penny he had to his name for crucial seconds to run out the clock. Maybe, if he was lucky, a few nickels would get him half a minute away from Platinum’s wrath.

The only thing that kept his starving heart at bay was the fact encased in truth that one of these moments that were looming dangerously close, the unicorn would reveal himself. Only then would the barking dog in his chest be satisfied.

“I’M NOT GONNA ASK YOU AGAIN!” Platinum’s miniscule ultimatum practically exploded from his mouth, the endless fantasies of the Guard's murderer’s demise running more and more rampant in his mind with each millisecond that ticked by.

“ARE YOU SCARED TO DIE, YOU BASTARD!”

“‘Scared to die’?” The voice remarked, the battle against the desire to burst into laughter bleeding into his inquiry. “Do you really think you can kill me?”

“YES!” Platinum roared, his voice transforming into a barren desert wasteland with every letter he rumbled. “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?”

“For you to realize the mistake you’re making,” The unicorn replied. “Do you not yet understand what I’m capable of?”

“I suppose I do!” Platinum exclaimed, his throat running too brittle for him to scream any longer.

“That ‘Royal Guard’ of yours didn’t stand a chance against me. What a great leader you are.”

Platinum’s breath quickened, each gust of oxygen that escaped his lungs felt like he was breathing the fire of fury living in his heart. His teeth clenched as hard as he could for the second time that day, the worry of his jaw shattering to pieces being the last thing on his laundry list of reasons to grow nervous. The Grade A hazel gems that occupied his eye sockets were gone, in their place were smoldering hunks of brimstone that vaguely resembled the amber color they once held. The thick charcoal smoke rising from the flames of rage swallowing his core threatened to expel from his nose.

The longing for vengeance materialized into a famine. The yearning were no longer yelping canines fighting their damndest to be free, stealing their position right from beneath was a herd of malnourished lions, their incessant roaring terrorizing his thoughts.

However, as if some omnipotent being blessed him with their grace by allowing his needs to be met, the pack of empty carnivores deep within him would have to suffer no longer. Platinum finally got what he had asked for.

Just a mere few feet behind him, a dull yet still painful sound of a band of firecrackers detonating all at once erupted from behind him, sending the fragments of whatever silence once resided in the dome falling to the ground. The blue-haired pony knew the sound all too well, in fact, the normally annoying popping noise thrusted the commander years back in time.

In a period when his Royal Guard still inhabited the land of the living, a tsunami of now bittersweet memories turned his mind into a tornadoing mess into a whirlpool in almost no time at all. He recollected the hours upon hours he would spend with his warriors in the blazing sun above their heads, honing their ability to teleport at will to gain a crucial advantage on the battlefield. The sights of their horns igniting, filling Platinum with anticipation for what was to come, only a small and pitiful streak of magic to fall from the tip. He remembered fighting off the urge to sigh and vocalize his disappointment in fear of striking down the trooper’s aspirations of fighting for the Princess. All that poor sputter indicated to the tan pony was immeasurable hours he would need to spend sharpening their capabilities.

In the present, Platinum wanted nothing more than to go back and cherish those moments with his comrades. Do anything but take the days and weeks he spent with them for granted. Tell his prideful past self that, contrary to his popular beliefs, he and his infantry were not invincible. That one day a threat could and would be more than capable of wiping his army from the plain of existence, making them nothing more than a name in the yellowed-pages of history books. Nevertheless, despite how much he loathed admitting it, he knew all of the thoughts leaping off the walls of his skull were just that. Thoughts. Veined attempts to cope with the earth-shattering loss he suffered.

However, there was one method of coming to terms with his privation that stood behind his sweat-drenched back. The very same one who caused the emotional turmoil laying waste to his psyche in the first place. Separating the unicorn’s head from his neck would grant the blue-haired pony the satisfaction he needed to push through and recover from what had been lost. All of the unfathomable amounts of brutal, grisly make-believe scenarios his grief-afflicted brain fabricated led to this. This was it.

Platinum’s grip strengthened around his hilt to levels he never even considered were possible, like a shark tightening its jaws around an unsuspecting seal, moments away from consumption. Small, pitiful strands that peeked out from the matted and entangled mess he somehow called a royal-blue mohawk blew in the breeze as he whipped around like weeds being bulldozed by a mighty wind. His hooves left the molds that his armor embedded in the blood-soaked mud for a split second while his body whirled around, his body metamorphosing into an unearthly blur for a shred of a moment.

The commander’s tender and throbbing appendages met the gnarled soil once more, sending marble-sized richly colored drops of sludge shooting from the landing site and only adding to the ever growing collection that fully caked his formerly silver sabatons. His bones, which were already teetering on the edge of splintering into a thousand pieces, didn’t respond favorably to the action whatsoever. His core threatened to rupture at the nearly torturous move, simultaneously sending electric bolts of agony blasting through his nerves like a subway train kicked into overdrive.

This was it. The moment he and the spirits of his fallen comrades have been waiting for. The fight of his life. He had two and only two options now: Either avenge his fallen comrades who’s specters continue to loom over him and spectating the fight like romans watching gladiators, or die trying. He had no other choice.

However, the very instant his body twirled faster than any brain could comprehend, a new feeling began to devour his heart and threatened to snuff the flame of ire that reigned supreme. He couldn’t exactly put his hoof on what exactly it was. Dread? Fear? Panic? It didn’t matter. The bottom line was that whatever emotion had contaminated his core, it was powerful enough to override the dominating hunger for vengeance that had been sovereign up until that point.

His hoof gained a new, troublesome tremble, shaking furiously as it lowered just barely over an inch to the ground.

His jaws, once clenched and on the border of utter destruction, separated, forming his grimace into raw and unbridled shock.

He refused to trust whatever hallucination was being presented in front of him.

There was no way in any frame of reality he was the one. It couldn’t be. He spurned to believe it. After all this time, the unfathomable agony laying waste to his psyche of being deprived of his Guard was…him.

Platinum, with a struggle, shifted his eyes from the stabbing globes behind the slits in his visor helmet and swiveled his head, meeting the panicked gaze of Princess Celestia. Splashed over her features and forming a lagoon in her irises was a question, an inquiry burning brighter than any star could ever dream of. It was one word and one word alone: How?

Standing before the shell-shocked and horror-stricken pair with perfect posture with his hooves planted securely in the dirt was a large, ironclad unicorn that put any bodybuilder the duo ever laid eyes on to shame. His midnight-black armor devoid of even a fragment of a color stood in stark contrast to the vibrant virescent dome several meters behind him. His sabatons were smothered in shimmering scarlet ichor, the vile wet contents that once belonged to the inside of a pony glimmering in what little sunlight pierced through the clouds.

Large and repulsive charcoal stains bespeckled the entirety of his torso like the aftermath of an explosion. Despite how well it blended in with the stygian metal, it never ceased to plague the near perfect image his protection had. Lengthy streaks of mud and somehow still sparkling crimson stained his previously flawlessly made helmet. Holes, cracks, and anything that could be considered a blemish dotted his hard guard, allowing his ashen flesh to be seen. From the slats in his eyeshade, Platinum could see with elongated and terror-afflicted eyes the ruby-red optics the demon possessed. To say they struck droves of trepidation into his already aching nucleus would be nothing but a criminal understatement. Jutting out from a hole at the peak of his head shield was a..peculiar looking horn to say the least. The base was a sinister smoke-gray tint that gradually bled into a deep, angry carmine the further it traveled up his source of energy. Small trails of smoke rose from the razor-sharp end from the copious amounts of magic stored in his being he exerted on Platinum’s undeserving men.

The menacing and, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, threatening hue sent mammoth levels of trepidation rocketing through his bones. Adrenaline became the new king of his veins. His body stiffened.

Platinum fought back the urge to jump at the crackling sound that abruptly erupted from beside him, instantly seeing the snow-white skin belonging to Celestia standing high and mighty at his side.

Ever since he had been appointed as the head of the Royal Guard many moons ago, he knew a day like this one was on the horizon. A day where the army that Platinum dumped months into would crumble to dust slipping from his hooves. More importantly, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that with every battle he engaged, his end was gradually approaching. Blow after blow. Death after death. His reckoning was nearing inch by inch with each body that hit the floor. He accepted that reality long ago. He was more than aware that one of the many times he rushed into the battlefield with a chip on his shoulder, he would become one of the many that never come out.

Platinum realized his time was looming over him and, despite how much he desired to, he couldn’t stop fate. If he couldn’t cease it, he might as well accept it. If he was going to drop dead in that battle, have this glorious and valiant clash be his last, he was going to make sure he took the monster down with him. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Celestia’s horn surged. A blinding gold orb formed at the tip. Sterling and unconstrained waves of magic swept through her lightly quivering frame. Her blood picked up pace through her arteries, turning each and every one of her blood vessels into rampant subway stations as cells rocketed through. The alicorn's eyes, once harboring an undying determination within her magenta orbs, was dashed. In their place was a burning, smoldering, ceaseless urge to strike down the unicorn leisurely approaching them. The aura he carried on his shoulders without even a sliver of a care in the world radiated a sickening, nearly nauseating arrogance that threatened to send bile erupting from her gullet.

“Oh, you two,” The butcher laughed, raising his head high as his hearty, boisterous chuckle invaded the pairs’ ears. “How pitiful.”

“What are you waiting for?” Platinum spat, animosity braided within his words. “Fight me! Fight us!”

In spite of the slits in his helmet shielding his scarlet globes nearly perfectly, the commander still managed to make out his brows furrowing. A confused yet amused expression painted over his features concealed by his lifeless, dark steel helmet.

“Are you sure that is a smart idea, Commander Wing? After all, you’re under my control now! You have no place to be making demands of me.”

“You’re not in control of anything anymore!” Platinum thundered, all of the rage he let bottle up in his nucleus be released at long last. “I’m gonna rip you apart!”

In the span of what could barely be considered a second, Platinum’s wrath transformed into a smoking abhor that wounded his heart. Celestia on the other hand felt her world crumble to dust and blow to oblivion in the breeze that tried and failed to ease her scorching, sweat-drenched skin.

The maniac’s horn ignited, engulfing it along with the borders of his helmet in a mellifluous and ill-omened purple cloud of magic. In one swift motion, before Platinum or Celestia could prepare their irises for the event they were dangerously close to witnessing, it finally happened. The moment Platinum had been waiting in the agonizing minutes following the revelation that his Guard was deceased. The identity of the murderer who robbed Platinum of everything would be revealed at long last.

To say the commander was practically secreting eagerness to sink his teeth into the butcher would be an understatement. His heart bled with excitement, something he never thought he’d feel in all of his ways towards killing another pony. After all, it was something Platinum utterly loathed. However, he knew for certain that if it had to be done to secure his and his comrades’ safety, it was going to be done. No exceptions.

In spite of every moral guideline Platinum had strictly abided by for countless years, all of it was dashed in a spur of a moment at the sight of the hulking headsman before him. Every last remnant of once was a set of stern, invincible sets of principles that he followed as intently as humanly possibly were reduced to clusters of fleeting memories.

There taking the liberty of the frightened duos’ eyes away was the unicorn himself. The unicorn who struck fear into the hearts of ponies far and wide with the mere mention of his name. The unicorn who thrusted all of the bloodshed and carnage into motion that fateful day. The unicorn who sent Platinum’s life work plummeting into an untimely grave.

King Sombra.

His shrewd crimson orbs were housed by an ashen, smoke-gray face with a chin occupied by a sleek, glossy beard that swayed like a undeserving boat on rocky waters. His sharp, almost too sharp, features were complimented and dare he say one-upped by the long and lustrous midnight mane flowing behind his head. The velvet and glistening charcoal hair looked more like darkness in liquid form oozing from his skull rather than real locks. The way it gracefully waved and fluttered in the chill-inducing breeze would usually dazzle the pair under any normal circumstances. However, looking back down at the manically grinning, keen features of the so-called “King” boring holes into them, the once elegant movement swiftly turned to a blaring warning symbol. Trying it’s absolute damndest to deter the two from engaging the monarch any further.

Before the commander could even think about heeding their cautions, the still thriving flames of fury residing in his heart killed any feeling of trepidation that threatened to enter. Now, with the pleas forever condemned to fall on deaf ears, Platinum was hurled back into the smoldering clutches of his heart's desires, giving his strings a tug to remind him of his goal. The very reason he refused to collapse and die in the face of forthcoming doom. He would have the head of King Sombra. Even if he lost his life in the process.

The twosome’s attention was briefly robbed by the weighty, solid-iron helmet impacting the dirt with a loud metallic thunk. The tip of the pitch-black steel embedded several inches deep into the gore-soaked soil, becoming one of the endless amounts of armor fallen from their previous owners that bespeckled the battlefield.

“Hello, Princess.” Sombra sneered, the arrogance leaking from his ever-so-slightly intimidating voice nearly bringing bile to the alicorn’s throat. “It is about time we meet again, Commander Wing.”

“It was you…” Platinum breathed, his brain just barely being able to fathom the information being funneled down his throat.

The blue-haired pony couldn’t believe his ears, fully convinced without a shadow of a doubt they were deceiving him. Playing some vile, fabricated tune to release the beast battling for freedom in his core. It was…him? All the time his mind wasted creating repulsive and utterly gruesome fantasies of revenge were ash. The eagerness coursing through his bones died in the ruthless wake of shock. The raw, unbridled, rampant shock that rippled through his being like a boulder meeting a colossal lake. How did Sombra manage to do this? Why would Sombra go out of his way to battle a group of keenly trained warriors knowing full well that death was a very likely possibility? Just…why?

None of it made even a sliver of sense. Out of all the confrontations and clashes Platinum and the Guard initiated with Sombra’s army, why did he choose now as the perfect time to strike where it hurt the most? He couldn’t wrap his head around any of it.

However, just as quickly as the cyclone of inquiries swarmed his psyche like a kingdom of hornets, they were banjaxed. In their place, making themselves comfortable in the throne of Platinum’s mind, were the formerly make believe scenarios of revenge against the Guard's killer. Now back with an undying vengeance invulnerable to any thought of reason.

With a snap of their fingers and a grimacing chuckle that echoed through his skull, his immortal heart of wrath tugged the strings once again. Floodgates ceased their blocking of adrenaline, allowing it to claim supremacy in his veins in the blink of an eye. Molten hot slag became the new king of his arteries. Vigor rushed through his bones, eliminating any and all aches and pains that once ailed him. His grip, in some way he couldn’t understand, tightened around the vibrant sword’s handle.

The image his mind illustrated of Sombra’s head resting lifeless on the ground, his scarlet globes forever lacking the heart-stopping menace they once held with pride, sent flocks of excitement enveloping his bones.

He was ready. His final battle was here and now. King Sombra would not see the end of that day, a fact the monarch's sickening pride wouldn't allow him to process. Whether he believed it or not, Sombra was going to learn the fact one way or another.

Platinum whipped his head to lock eyes with the slightly intimidated Celestia. Seeing her close friend’s globes blazing hotter than the sun with an astronomical level of fury she couldn’t describe unnerved her to say the least. For years she had been accustomed and quite welcoming of the commander’s soft, inviting hazel gems that beamed an indescribable joy. No matter how dire a situation may be, or how down in the dumps Celestia might be, she knew unquestionably Platinum would be there. Being his superior’s safe haven and a bursting spring of comfort was something the blue-haired pony cherished more than nearly anything.

However, with the intense inferno in his optics swallowing every fragment of solace in the present, Celestia couldn’t fight back a sense of intimidation from kindling. A feeling she never thought in a million years she would experience towards him. A pony who wanted nothing more than to make sure Celestia could wake up breathing. Someone who had been a shining star in her otherwise dark, stress-filled royal life. Somepony she viewed as her best friend. Now, seeing the apex of his fury unfolding right before her very eyes, a part of her knew that pony was gone. Left to rot in the hellfire which consumed his formerly loving heart.

Still, she knew with the utmost certainty that now was not the time for lamenting. It was time for the fight of her life. The alicorn would have all the time in the world to cope with the day's events after Sombra’s cadaver hit the floor. If they both lived to see it.

Celesita shot the beyond eager commander hasty nod, praying with every ounce of her strength he didn’t penetrate her masquerade of bravery. Much to her relief, the only thing he saw was the pinpoint of determination glinting in her magenta irises. The sole thing he needed to ignite his fighting spirit. Maybe, more possibly than they would’ve liked, their final battle. If that happened to be the case, Platinum wouldn’t draw his final breath until the deed was done. He knew that for a fact. If he was going out in a blaze of glory, he was taking Sombra down with him.

“All this time it was YOU!” Platinum roared, animosity braided within his words as beads of saliva careening in every direction.

If he had let out that mighty bellow at any normal pony, they would’ve crumbled into a trembling mess in the blink of an eye. Sombra on the other hand acted as though it never even happened. Was it his lack of fear? Mental strength? With Sombra, anything could be the case.

Platinum and Celestia sprung back in unison, their combined battling spirit dashing side by side with their inconceivable amounts of adrenaline. The alicorn's horn threatened to blind any and all who dared to lay there eyes upon its golden glory. Teeth clenched. Jaws tightened. Eyes like perfectly honed swords. The pair couldn’t make it any more obvious how unexpectedly powerful their desire to end the monarch’s reign of terror truly was.

All in all, much to no one’s surprise, Sombra stood unphased. His imposing demeanor and razor-sharp features plastered on his face showed not even a sliver of stopping.The only thing that remotely showed any signal of change whatsoever was the sinister, bone-chilled deep purple aura his horn suddenly gained. A final clamoring warning of imminent doom. If the duo didn’t back down now, catastrophe would soon follow. But, doomed to share the fate as the first indications of danger, their pleas fell on deaf ears.

“I’ve been looking for you, Commander Wing. I figured you’d hunt me down by now for what I did to your pathetic excuses for soldiers.” Sombra sneered, another one of his signature booming laughs escaping his lungs.

Platinum used every last drop he could muster through his trembling being to power his ironclad legs to their utmost. Each pound of his hoof slamming against the dirt was like seconds ticking on a timer, flashing impending danger for the ruthless ruler when it reached zero. Despite his molten fury and the slag lumbering through his veins, Sombra once again stood undaunted. It seemed having no care in the world whatsoever about his safety was a special talent of his.

The commander charged with adrenaline-induced speeds, the whetted end of his sword aimed dead-center at the unicorn’s heart. The rushing ball of wrath dove his sword through the air with the strength of a god, fully intent on reducing the monarch’s heart to mere shreds. Alas, fate dealt its cruel hand to the grieving pony once more, rearing its ugly head in the most dreadful way imaginable.

When the crystal cutlass was a hair lengths away from laying waste to the king’s core, a blinding and abrupt explosion of purple and green instantly robbed him of his sight. Platinum’s years of war training utterly betrayed him, causing his cemented instincts to hijack his seemingly impossible rage-influenced being.

The unforgiving ice-cold mud wasted no time in ravaging the nerves hidden beneath Platinum’s face, sending lightning bolts of chills rocketing through his already aching frame. The commander’s mouth, remaining agape from the deafening war cry he released, wasn’t spared from the dark sludge’s ruthless onslaught. His tongue exploded with the vile, wretched taste of blood and spilled organs. His nostrils wanted nothing more than death. In stark contrast to every other sense throughout his body, the rage never ceased. In fact, the humiliation of Platinum’s degrading tumble only added more fuel to the already roaring and evidently untameable flame.

Sombra let an amused chuckle break loose from the bowels of his lungs. Amusement overcame his will to bash the blue-haired pony’s brains into pudding. Seeing his adversary, and the only real threat to him on the battlefield, drag his hooves from the nauseating mire as he struggled to stand was a circus act. Much to his shock and dismay, the realization that all things good and bad alike have to end eventually hit him in the utmost dreadful way. Or, more specifically, struck him like a golden magic bolt from a wrathful alicorn’s horn.

KRAKOOM!

Sombra’s features, once painted with repulsive levels of arrogance and mirth, were now under new management by fury. His teeth clamped. His jaws threatened to shatter one another. His heart was attacked by a wave of anger. His eyes snapped to his side, vexation flashing in his crimson optics at the smoking charcoal impact zone. Another attempt at his life tallied in his brain.

Sombra’s globes broke free from the nearly hypnotic gaze of his armor’s fresh blemish and into a sea of magenta. The very same hue that belonged to the orbs of the sweat-covered, heaving, trepidation-filled Princess of Equestria. Long strings of smoke rose from the tip of Celestia’s source of magic. Cannonballs of perspiration secreted from her pores, the competition of which bead could reach the bottom first having a clear winner. Her irises, formerly sharp and determined, were now wide akin to a deer staring down headlights. In Sombra’s case, he was the car and Celestia was the unsuspecting doe, staring down her imminent demise as the gravity of her mistake quickly overwhelmed her.

For every time Celestia thwarted the monarch and threw his plans into the flames. For every soldier that lost their life at the hands of her army she gave orders to. She fully expected without a doubt in her mind that her existence had come to an end. She was beyond finished. Any moment now, the king’s horn would flare and her head would be a memory, condemning her to a cruel fate of being a statistic among the thousands of dead warriors.

How would her family feel? How would Platinum feel, if Platinum would even survive long enough to feel anything for her. How would Equestria survive without her? Who would be the next princess? Nothing in her stormy rumbling tornado of questions in her mind had even a shred of an answer, nor did she possess the capabilities of fabricating any. Her perception of time swiftly died, causing the measly second after the blast to stretch into what felt like days. All the while her psyche tried its damndest to survive the barrage of panic laying waste to her fragile foundation.

Minutes dragged. Hours lingered. The ticking of her inner chronometer lost its meaning. Despite the passage of the world around her, the overbearing dread of her, what she assumed to be, impending doom remained. The battle for dominance inside of her throbbing and stinging heart was a glorious sight to behold. Seeing the ravenous spirit of fear locking horns with the valiant warrior of confidence was certainly spectacular to say the least. Though, amidst the blood and carnage the combatants left in their wake, a clear winner was never decided. However, the very instant she comprehended the sight of Sombra’s scarlet horn gaining an almost blinding glow, a new contender entered the brutal scuffle.

The sense that her quietus was just around the corner. Whether she liked it or not, she was going to have to face it head on. Death was here with the Grim Reaper in tow, ready to seize her soul the very moment her cadaver hit the soil. All she could do was stand and watch.

As the earth-shattering noise signaling a violent end to her days ripped through the dome’s silence, the only option left for the alicorn was to stare down her demise. A fate she never thought she’d endure in a million years.

Ever since her teenage years, when she truly realized the concept of dying, she dreamed of a peaceful departure. At least as much as she possibly could. Nothing about having one’s life slip from their grasp sounded “peaceful”, not by any stretch of the imagination. Drawing your last breath. Hearing your heart pound against your ribs one last time. The family that surrounded you seeing your globes dulled by age shut for the final time. Not one bit of it sounded even remotely close to anything tranquil. To Celestia however, lying in the comfort of her own room flooded beautifully with sunlight as she rasped her goodbyes was ideal. It’s what she always wanted.

In spite of what Celestia desperately desired, as if destiny itself was spitting a shiny lob onto her hopes and dreams, that was a reality made impossible by King Sombra. Glaring definitely at the dazzling yet sinister ball of raw magic hurtling towards her, the aspirations of a soothing exit of the land of the living sounded beyond pleasurable. Resting her pulsating head gingerly against her pillow, awaiting the Reaper’s glacial, bony hand to guide her to the heavens above sounded much more appealing than…this.

In the end, it didn’t matter. She was going to die. That was a fact that cemented into her psyche quicker than she would’ve liked. The very instant Celestia began to feel the blistering heat of the globe against the bare flesh of her neck, a winner was finally declared in the battle raging on in her core. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t determination. It was…acceptance.

BOOM!

Whether it was Celestia’s cadaver or still living body taking a meteoric ride through the air like a star plummeting from the heavens Sombra wasn’t entirely sure. Whatever the case may be, the utmost and immense satisfaction he felt watching the pesky alicorn’s form turn into a white blur was completely unmatched. Nothing he had ever done in all of his years up to that point felt as good as blasting the Princess of Equestria to kingdom come. Somehow managing to surpass the moment he began his reign of, what he viewed to be grace, over the Crystal Empire all those decades ago.

Glee swiftly knocked every other emotion off there throne, reigning supreme in Sombra’s blackened and oozing, despite it being a sorry excuse, heart. His nucleus jumped for joy and waged war against his ribcage, engaging in a fierce battle for freedom. The monarch’s face donned a sinister, contorted smile, flashing his glinting canines for all the world to see as his tongue traveled across his lips. Delight beamed from his rubies embedded in his sockets like a flashlight, his sick and utterly twisted sense of humor being on full display. Strands of ashen smoke rose from the end of his, somehow still surviving, horn from the thunderous blast that surprisingly didn’t shake the planet.

However, in spite of how dearly the king didn’t want his relishing to conclude, all good things had to come to an end. At least what his contorted and beyond wicked mind viewed as “good”.

With Celestia thoroughly and completely eliminated from the question, that left only one pony to be scratched from his list. The very same one that remained stomach-first in an abhorrent puddle of grime and shame.

For everything Platinum Wing had done to harm Sombra and rock his entire operation to the core, he deserved more than what the unicorn was going to lay down onto him. A lot more. Without question. If he had it his way, mercy would’ve been wiped from his vocabulary unaccompanied by even a shred of ruth. Yet, much to his dismay, a job had to be done. To Sombra, the battered commander, who’s psyche lay teetering on the brink of vanquishment, was nothing but a thorn ready to be plucked.

Across the vast sea of failed and veined attempts to siege Canterlot and its inhabitants, one smug and hardened face consistently appeared in each one of his memories without fail. Every last one of them contained a set of hazel, keen, intelligent globes that lacked any sign of exhaustion as the owner bulldozed through the battlefield. The cries erupting from his lungs ringing out through the discord of war replaying in the back of his mind like a broken record. Seeing ropes of crimson fly from the freshly severed necks of his soldiers, only adding to the ever growing ichor polluting Platinum’s armor, adding logs to the ever growing fire within his chest.

Truthfully, Sombra didn’t care as much as his adversary did about his warriors. The way he saw it, they were just tools. Merely chess pieces with beating hearts and inflating lungs that bring him one step closer to victory with each kill that garnished the battleground. Regardless of what little space in his heart he reserved for his troopers, they were his at the end of the day. As a result, they were his responsibility and his alone. While being a king was nothing short of intoxicating, having to cater and train tens of thousands of ponies for combat was tiring. Be that as it may, if he dumped hours and hours of his time into them, he expected results.

The imagination had no limits when it came to thinking the extent of his outrage when the only outcomes he received had not even a hint of success. Off the chart, skyrocketing casualties were the sole thing staring him back into his blazing eyes. The sheer level was incomprehensible.

Ever since that fruitless attack on the hub of Equestria, he knew with the utmost certainty somebody had to pay. Someone needed to suffer the consequences for the unthinkable setbacks they brought upon him like the wrath of god striking him down for his sins. For months, Sombra had been yearning for the atonement he so desperately wanted for all the trouble imposed onto him. Now, the very same bastard who summoned all of the unicorn’s difficulties into existence was at the ruler’s mercy. Sombra had his life juggling between his hooves, and he planned to take full and unadulterated advantage of it. No one could stop him now.

“Now,” The sovereign drawled, leisurely turning his head to face his soon-to-be victim, who never strayed from the pool of revulsion. “Where were-”

WHUMP!

Before the monarch had even the slightest clue of what was to come, he felt the entirety of the abused and maltreated commander’s body weight crash into his. Sombra could only envision the agony that must’ve been swarming his skull after suffering such a blow to his bulky armor. After such a collision, especially from a helmet-less head, it was a miracle Platinum didn’t deflate and perish on the spot. However, if the day's events were an indication of anything, the commander was far from his demise. A fact Sombra knew wouldn’t stay truthful for much longer.

In spite of his best efforts to remain upright, the so-called king crumbled, his hefty armor sinking inches deep into the gore-soaked mud beneath him. Right as he was moments away from mustering the magic to knock Platinum’s head clean off his shoulders, he felt two ironclad grips clamp onto his forelimbs. With zero regard for his well-being, he was lifted from his bitter and putrid temporary prison of sludge and slammed back down. The only difference from his last position being the immense weight threatening to collapse his midsection and the duo of aflame amber optics boring holes into his.

As if his impenetrable emotional wall downright betrayed him, a ghost of intimidation snaked its way into Sombra’s oozing heart. While continuing to bask in the light of his sickening confidence, the ruler couldn’t help but feel just a nanometer smaller than before underneath the chief’s scorching gaze.

“All of this! All of this for WHAT!” Platinum thundered, sending pearls of saliva raining down onto Sombra’s unsuspecting face. Regardless of the coolness of his bodily fluids, the lethal levels of rage were felt all the same.

The stream of virescent and amethyst light, that had been constantly streaming into his orbs, was abruptly shattered, With the newfound shade freshly draped over his irises, he broke free from the white-glowing chains of Platinum’s scowl and onto his hoof raised high above him. But not just any regular hoof. His very specific, war-torn, sword-wielding hoof. The very same one that held his signature cutlass and simultaneously sliced the, up until now, consistent train of illuminance.

Unlike any regular pony in the situation he was suddenly thrusted into, instead of flying into an uncontrollable panic and shooting off magic like there was no tomorrow, a different approach was taken. One the sovereign himself didn’t remotely expect him to take whatsoever. In the face of his impending murder at the hands of his second most hated individual in all of Equestria, he felt an odd sense of…collectiveness. A stark contrast of the distress anypony else would feel in his scenario. Muddled in with the out-of-place feeling of order within him, there was also a slight yet still readily apparent feeling of annoyance towards his adversary.

He was unsuspectedly sucked into a storm of irritation at the circumstances his sworn enemy put him under. His swirling angry cyclone that never ceased in the recesses of his mind, consisting only of aspirations of revenge, emerged from the bowels. He was going to see Platinum dead no matter the consequences. Any means necessary were on the table ripe for the picking. One of them was short, sweet, and simple. The one Sombra found the most attractive out of the bunch.

He blast Platinum’s sword into the afterlife and split his hopes of vengeance in half. It had a pleasant ring to it that would sound even better if he brought it into reality.

The very same thing he did just moments later.

The unicorn’s horn ignited. His crosshairs were set. And a bolt went soaring.

A searing, torturous legion of agony swiftly laid waste to his hoof, instantaneously shooting down his arm and adding to the pain that heretofore existed there. However, somehow and someway, Platinum’s appendage wasn’t the one who paid the heftiest price for the killer’s brutal attack. The blue-haired pony’s distressed hazel orbs snapped from the gruesome wound adorning his trotter and locked onto his blade.

Flipping through the air like a gymnast sprouting a fresh set of wings was his crystal, inexplicably powerful blade. In the brief blink and you’ll miss it time period he was graciously granted to lay his eyes upon his beloved weapon, the reality of the move Sombra just made almost instantaneously crashed down upon him. His grief-stricken retinas followed the acrobating dagger until it disappeared from his view.

Despite his dominant limb being afflicted with the utmost grievous wound imaginable and his primary weapon being possibly miles behind him, his rage emerged victorious once more. In spite of his harrowing and grave circumstances, Platinum swore allegiance to the spirits of his soldiers to avenge them no matter the cost. A promise even death couldn’t force him to break. Not now, not ever.

Platinum whipped his head, his scowl once again splashing over his features as his eyes practically bursting with flame met Sombra’s once more. His teeth were gritted both in rage, and in the unsympathetic pain that ravaged his nerves. Regardless of the reason, his jaw nearly exploded under the pressure nonetheless. The apex of his anger was here and now. To say he was ready to rip the “king’s” head from where it sat was an understatement. He was more than willing to go back in time and do it again, and again, and again.

Platinum left and unscathed hoof elevated above his head, every last droplet of strength funneling from his heavily damaged arm to the other. With all of his power ready for exertion like a family of chained-up starving dogs, the commander’s trotter crashed down onto his unaware and short-lived nose.

A rumbling, tumultuous crack resonated through the blue-haired pony’s ears as Sombra’s cartilage swiftly fell under the catastrophic blow. The sound that, any under normal circumstances, would be quick to flood Platinum with concern for whoever the victim may be. However, right then, the normally worrisome noise was almost immediately followed by an uncanny wave of delight. The momentous wallop, combined with the warm thick crimson that painted every inch of his hoof, made for an almost overwhelming glee to soar through him.

Granted, it was nothing in comparison to the possibly unspeakable horrors the monarch cast down onto his soldiers. But in the grand scheme of things, it was only the beginning to a much, much, more brutal beatdown of unearthly proportions. The colt could only imagine the anger and confusion drizzling onto his hammering, heaving heart, that threatened to vanquish his ribs with every beat.

Platinum lifted his now ichor-stained trotter from the king’s face, relishing in the mass amounts of tepid scarlet erupting from his once functioning nostrils. From having his nose snout caved in more times than he could count, the mustang knew for sure what the ruler he was straddling must be feeling. To say it sprayed gasoline on his roaring flame of pleasure would be a criminal understatement.

The ruby-red gore never ceased its constant exploding from the monarch’s most certainly destroyed muzzle. Everything from his freshly vandalized upper lip to the very end of his razor-sharp chin, nothing was spared from the merciless onslaught of the blood geyser. His ashen face, formerly blemishless and devoid of even a hint of an imperfection, was utterly disgraced. The carmine-colored tips of his canines were now fully splashed with his own bodily fluids, making his cuspids look as though they were carved from a cerise gem.

In truth, it was not the raw and remorseless vengeance Platinum had been longing for ever since the world-shattering revelation. It was however a savage, cruel, ferocious beginning to kick off Sombra’s own personal hell. With every blow that connected and every last drop of crimson that fell, he was marching one step closer to his untimely end. That was for certain.

In spite of Platinum’s blistering fury tugging it’s strings once more, ready to unshackle and ravage the monarch, Sombra shut it all down. It was a move that the commander never even considered to be a viable way to terminate his assault. He never would’ve guessed in a million years that the sovereign's blinding, imposing wall of pride would allow him to do what he did. Yet, the reality being displayed before his very eyes lacked any sign of a lie or any evidence this was all a ruse.

“Enough of this!” Sombra’s booming voice, previously intimidating and capable of striking fear in the blink of an eye, became nasally and pitiful. However, none of those adjectives were anywhere near to describing the menacing, bubbling cloud of magic that swallowed his vermillion horn.

Needless to say, Platinum’s scorching heart’s desire for a bloody and drawn out revenge would have to wait. The blast of raw energy that fulminated mere inches from his widened, utterly shocked eyes took no prisoners. More importantly, it lacked even a fragment of anything that could be considered mercy. An eerily accurate depiction of the unicorn it belonged to.

BOOM!

Before the commander could even process the sight that abruptly dawned without a sliver of a warning, Platinum found himself easily a mile away from the battered unicorn. His freshly ignited vexation knew no bounds when it came to releasing its might onto the stallion. It was nothing short of a limitless outburst, the very same thing that Platinum just so happened to be on the receiving end of.

Now, lying on his stinging back in a deep trench of mud his body created as it skidded against the soil was the mustang. The ceiling of the dome he couldn’t summon the strength to look away from blurred and faded in and out of vision, going from a green and purple fuzzy blob to darkness sporadically. His face felt as though every inch of his head had been plunged into a thriving furnace. But, weirdly enough, he felt little to no injury on his flesh. Only the intense and nearly unbearable at times burning resided. Not good by any stretch of the imagination, but better by a landslide.

The vile stench of the sludge consuming his tail end traveled into his snout with every labored breath he struggled to draw, like trying to pull a boulder up a hill with a measly rope. Not impossible, but most certainly incredibly difficult. At the point he was at, merged with all of the beating and bludgeoning he suffered that day, he felt he was reaching his long awaited end. This was it for the world renowned leader of the Royal Guard. An unceremonious conclusion to the otherwise wild, thrill-packed life of Platinum Wing. Left to die by his sworn adversary, slowly being swallowed by the bitter ooze while the malador nearly ending his life with each strained puff of oxygen.

The finale of the commander’s vehement existence was here and now. The curtain slowly dragged, taking its sweet time to reveal the stairway to the heavens above just beyond the veil. As much as Platinum wanted to keep his ironclad grip on whatever strands of life remained inside him and secure Celestia’s safety, he knew his demise was soon to come. Before he would even realize what had happened, death would claim him. It was only a matter of time. Whether it be seconds, minutes, maybe even hours, it was going to happen. All Platinum had left to his name was time and a legacy, time that was briskly slipping from his hooves.

The blue-haired pony’s head fell, the last ounce of strength occupying his aching skull snuffed. His cheek, already stained dark green from the previous muck onslaught, met the mire once more. The ill-omened reunion was accompanied by an almost unseeable pinpoint of light in his otherwise pitch-black scenario.

His sword stood jutting from the earth just barely a few inches away from him. The upper half of the vibrant crystal blade sat embedded into the dirt, while its lower counterpart along with the hilt remained unscathed. While the sight of his highly adored weapon sent sparks of hope showering his heart, cessation almost immediately swarmed them. Even if he were to suddenly spring to his feet, which was clearly not going to happen anytime soon, and lock horns with Sombra once again, it would be his last time doing anything. The commander’s agony-wracked being was one good blow away from shattering like fine china. Engaging in a battle with the maniacal monarch spelled inevitable doom.

In spite of his bedeviling doubt, if he were going to sacrifice his life for his dearest friend, he was more than aware that merely staring at the cutlass would solve nothing. He needed a miracle or some divine intervention to grant him the muscle to strike down the monarch and fast.

However, the one mammoth problem holding Platinum back from tearing Sombra to shreds was what little time he had left in Equestria. The events of the unforgiving, brutal war gradually began to take their toll on the commander’s body. At first, the only thing keeping the stallion alive was his undying fury and the adrenaline flowing through his veins. Now, his rage proved no match for the hooded skeleton with his glinting scythe in tow. Nothing could stop him, not even one of if not the strongest pony in Canterlot could hold a candle to.

Platinum Wing was as good as dead, his legacy forever engraved in the hearts of many until the end of time. The lionhearted actions of he and his guard would be eternally etched into the long, fierce history of the Royal Guard.

Even while staring his seemingly inescapable end right in the face, Platinum did what he had been known for all his life. He persisted. The Grim Reaper couldn’t stop him now, no one could. At that moment, with the spirits of his fearless comrades watching over him, some comforting some not, he made a decision. Possibly the biggest he had ever been forced to make in all of his years.

King Sombra would not see the sun of tomorrow. He would not defeat the most powerful commander Canterlot had ever seen that easily. More importantly, he would pay for what he’s done. If the heavens above had their gates swung wide open for him in preparation, the angels waiting with open arms, he would fight like hell before he got there.

Platinum’s face hardened. His eyes gained the razor-sharp keenness they were known for. His grievously wounded hoof twitched, his body practically canceling out the lightning bolts of pain it sent rippling through his aching frame. The once snuffed raging fire that devoured his heart reignited. Adrenaline made its bittersweet reunion with Platinum’s veins. The commander knew it would be his very last time feeling the intoxicating rush the chemical cast down upon him. The sensation he loved. With every slam of his heart against his ribs and every pungent breeze that hit him, the god-like feeling the epinephrine graciously granted him reminded him of his goal.

His jaw clenched for what seemed like the thousandth time that day. Before another shockwave of agony could explode throughout his being, it was swiftly struck down. With ease, he swiveled his head to give himself an update on Sombra’s location and, just like he predicted, the worst outcome was being brought to reality.

There he stood towering over a barely conscious and grimy Princess Celestia. Her horn tried in vain to produce even a sputter of the mighty golden magic that could easily save her life. Much to her dismay, similar to the rest of her trembling form, nothing came of it. The only sorry excuse for energy that left the alicorn were a nearly unseeable speckle of sun-yellow sparks. The only action the flicker managed to accomplish was casting a sinister, anger-inducing grin to the king’s lips.

“No!” Platinum breathed aloud, lacking the mental fortitude to keep his thoughts out of his voice. “No! I can’t die!” His voice, while still meager and fraile, got louder and louder. A far cry from the commanding, booming voice he was known all around Equestria for having, but an improvement from the pain-influenced silence nonetheless.

“Sombra…” The mustang growled through gritted teeth. Platinum’s elbow dug into the mud practically encasing him to flip his body onto his obliques. The pain that once roared with animosity at even the slightest movement was nowhere to be seen.

“Sombra!” The stallion’s left and unharmed hoof came down onto the snow-white handle, the warm steel greeting his ironclad grip for the final time, ready for the grand finale. Beads of sludge dripped from the whetted edge and back into the vile mire they dawned from as Platinum tore it from its prison of muck.

He was beyond aware the adrenaline running alongside his bloodstream would not wait for the blue-haired pony to take action. It, like everything both living and not, had time that slipped from them whether they liked it or not. In the event that Platinum continued to take his sweet time pulling himself from his chamber of mud, the very thing keeping his heart beating would fade out of existence once more, leaving the commander at the mercy of his grave injuries.

No longer restricted by the shackles of agony, Platinum was given free reign over his movements once again without the fear of sending bolts of pain radiating through his bones. Just as quickly as his hooves initially left the ground from Sombra’s assault, they reunited. In spite of his swirling, vexed thunderstorm that swallowed every inch of his brain, Platinum’s mind felt clearer than ever.

He knew he was going to die soon. There was no avoiding it. If it was not the ruinous exhaustion that sent him six feet under, it would one hundred percent be at Sombra’s hooves, regardless of how abominable that fate would be. Instead of cowering in the face of his impending doom, he accepted it. He was well aware that day would be his last. With his newfound clarity, he was hellbent on going out with a bang and rescuing Celestia. With his psyche no longer plagued by the fright of death, he could allow himself to set his lazer focus on one pony and one pony alone. King Sombra.

Platinum shifted his beyond careworn globes to stab the monarch with his piercing scowl, tongues of flame belonging to his inferno of a heart licking his irises. Platinum’s hooves hit the ground like a squad of jackhammers, punching cavernous holes into the soil in his wake. Platinum was no stranger to rushing head first into battle knowing good and well his life was on the line. His charge to Sombra was no different. He felt the chilly yet still encouraging hooves of his soldiers’ phantasms breathing life into his scorching, fatigued legs.

Breath struggled to stay alive as it climbed the parched and desert-like walls of his throat. Ovoids of sweat gushed from his brow and just narrowly missed his honed eyes, leaving dark trails in his once vivacious tan skin. The last reserve of adrenaline drew closer to its end each time his hooves impacted the ground. His disheveled mess that could be easily confused with a rat's nest blew in the breeze that carried him, the pungent odor of war in tow.

Abruptly, only spraying fuel into the turbulent fire of determination in his chest, Sombra’s horn ignited. The deep purple bubbling cloud of magic that swallowed his crimson horn in a split second, a blaring warning sign that Platinum needed to pick up the pace and fast. If not, Celestia was surely doomed. A princess lying in the dirt, disappearing and reappearing out of the realm of unconsciousness, while being at the mercy of a remorseless killer didn’t go well whatsoever. If Celestia died, the entire battle would be in vain. Something he would not allow to happen while he was still able to change it.

The ironclad muscles dressing his internal forelimbs were pushed to their utmost. Tendons threatened to split in two. His bones were teetering on the edge of crumbling to dust. His entire frame swayed on the border of collapsing before his very eyes. He could feel it. He had never pushed his body that far in all of his years. Even while being thrusted into the exceedingly violent situations imaginable in the most uncharted and dangerous lands known to man. While this warzone was not the most menacing place he had the misfortune of entering, it was the bloodiest by a longshot. Thanks entirely to the monarch whose life was nearing its untimely and well-deserved end.

Platinum’s much loved crystal cutlass fell from his hoof, left to impale the sludge it was released from just seconds before, quickly becoming nothing but a brightly colored blur in his peripheral. With all four of his war-torn hooves now shaking the earth with every hammering gallop, his destination was mere feet away from him.

This was the commander’s golden opportunity. His final chance for a fiery departure from the land of the living was staring him in the face, beckoning him to come forth and seize it. As the number of feet separating the Celestia’s impending doom and the personified justice dwindled hastily, his conclusive blaze of glory was practically in his hooves. The sphere of fervent energy spawning to life at the end of the sovereign’s horn slowly began to intensify. With each crucial moment of inaction that passed, the ball only became brighter.

The distance continued to diminish. Feet melted into meters. Meters bled into minimal inches.

Platinum used every last bit and piece of strength he could possibly muster within the bounds of reality to cock his legs like a shotgun ready to fire. Much to Sombra’s ignorance, he launched with all of the brawn his aching form had to offer.

Finally, at long, long last, Platinum could finally receive the incandescent exit he desired. Peace. That was the only feeling that conquered every other emotion within his once blazing core. The simmering, white-glowing vile concoction of wrath and loathing was nothing but a savage mark on the past. Sadness was history. Any senses of indignation, worry, or anything of the sort were ash. Tranquility reigned supreme.

It was this cozy embrace of utter and absolute calm that he had longed for his entire life. Ever since the moment he first learned the concept and total inevitability of his demise, he had wondered when his final moment would come. Would it be peaceful? Would it be grotesque as he was sliced to ribbons in the heat of battle? Truthfully, no one alive had the answer for him. It was something the stallion had tossed and turned about for decades leading to this moment.

Now, it was exactly what he had longed for all those years ago. He knew with the utmost certainty that he was going to die. Hopefully Sombra’s ruinous blast of pure magic would slay him quickly, no pain or suffering. Worst case scenario, the unicorn's magic would lay waste to his body and…he decided not to delve into it further.

Time began to move impossibly slow. The mustang managed to maneuver his body whilst he soared, the wind dragging the pungent odor of gore delivering a brutal assault to his senses all the while. Something he never fully got used to, and he would never get used to. With his heaving and burning chest now facing the homicidal maniac ponies managed to call a “king”, he was ready to soak up the brunt of…whatever magic he had in store to wipe Celestia off the face of the earth. In truth, Platinum was ever so slightly anxious about the fate that awaited him that he would have to come to grips with in mere moments. After all, he wouldn’t want his friend’s last memories off him to be just a pile of gore or a charred corpse.

A loud boom casted destruction down onto the, almost, complete silence engulfing the dome. A very particular sound. A noise that brought droves of dread flocking en masse into Celestia’s throbbing heart. It was the indication of death. The warning that, at a moment no one could predict, another pony would die under the momentous wrath of the monarch. Platinum forbid the person Sombra unleashed his fury on to be his closest and longest lasting friend.

As the lilac and virescent bolt of raw magic soared through the air like a bottle rocket of doom, the commander’s mind soon became a VHS player of memories. They all flashed before his very eyes, as if a broken TV had suddenly begun to flicker, allowing Platinum to review every action in his life for the very last time.

His first meeting with Celestia. Introducing himself to his Royal Guard. Bestowing the triumphant news to his parents. The echoes of all possible positive decisions he made in all of the years leading to this moment were utterly and absolutely beautiful. He lived a long and fulfilling life. In spite of how much he didn’t want it to end, just like every other pony who’s ever walked the earth, all this had to come to an end one way or another.

“The wave’s gotta crash.” His dad would always tell him.

The green and purple arrow aimed dead-center at his chest was exactly that, a wave preparing to crash. When it finally hit, Platinum would finally find real unadulterated calmness of love. The toasty heat radiating from the blinding golden light of the heavens above, the gorgeous symphonies of trumpets welcoming him to his new and eternal home.

‘Wait for me at the gates, comrades. Don’t fail me now.’

The projectile collided. His chestplate split. An explosion shook the brightly colored walls to their cores. Platinum’s vision was engulfed in a brilliant, unfathomable white light.

Then…silence.

Chapter 17: Was this fate?

Silence.

The man in blue was foolish to believe that he knew the true definition of the word all his life. A lack of sound. Completely devoid of anything that even slightly resembled it. Easy enough. He couldn't have been more wrong.

This. The utter and complete quietude that instantaneously conquered every inch of the corridor after the details of Platinum’s fate escaped her lips was the true meaning. Absolutely nothing. Bare bones. Zilch. Every last shred of all that that dared to even barely bear a resemblance to a noise was cast out. Laid to rest by the thick, concrete brick walls forming the spacious passageway. The very same one posthumously built in the honor of the revolutionary commander. Or, in better words, Princess Celestia’s savior.

Levi wouldn’t allow the mere thought of speaking to even cross his mind. He was in desperate need of the right words to say that would perfectly shatter the silence without making the sorrow he knew was in Celestia’s heart to blossom into something devastating. Much to his dismay, his pleas were condemned to censorship, forever being hushed and forcing the man to fabricate another option. Exactly as he expected, his efforts proved fruitless, leaving the pair to suffer through more of the deathly thick absence of sound. The only other living thing within the walls of the colossal hall besides the duo was Levi’s swirling, raging storm with a vague silhouette of a coherent mind within it.

“Celestia, I… Wow.” Were the only words Levi could conjure. The only thing in the foreseeable future that would fill the impossibly thick silence.

In truth, he couldn’t muster a response to the harrowing recounting even if he put forth every last ounce of his effort. The brunete was amazed he could even fabricate a reply at all considering the unfathomable levels of information dumped into his skull during the grim tale.

“Ever since that day-” Her words were severed in two by another one of her many sniffles, immediately followed by her golden sabaton removing yet another tear from existence. The stinging pain ravaging her nerves like a starving lion to a gazelle couldn’t hold a candle to the gnawing sorrow devouring her heart.

“I try to honor him every chance I get. Luna thinks I’ve done enough but.. Nothing seems to be enough for what he did for me. At least that’s how I see it.”

“I think you did well,” Levi added, his ability to speak without the need to forge an answer slowly coming back to life. “He would’ve liked this.”

“He would’ve liked you, as well. You have the heart just like he did.”

“You think so?”

“I do indeed,” The alicorn replied, the dark trails left in the wake of her drops of grief defiling her once flawless features. “I like to believe you would’ve done the same given the chance.”

“Definitely.” Levi looked back on that fateful moment within the cold, unforgiving walls of the decrepit castle corridors.

The sound of the millenia old carpet, which clearly hadn’t heard the word clean in decades, crunching underneath his feet like dead leaves as he staggered through the halls. Not knowing whether the Grim Reaper was looming around one of the countless dark, imposing corners. However, the very moment after he crashed through the feeble double doors and were met with headlights, it was clear death had found him. However, in spite of the clash that nearly left all parties involved six feet under, the important takeaway was the very same thing that led to Gary’s death. Alleged death that is.

The flame. The insatiable, undying urge to protect. The one that led to the thunderous shockwave of raw unadulterated power that left the demon in turquoise, hopefully, deceased. Maybe, by some wild stretch of the imagination, Platinum and Levi were more alike than he initially believed. The both of them would do anything possible within the bounds of reality to shield the ones they loved from danger. Even in the face of the dangerously high chance their life would reveal themselves to be the ultimate price. If it meant that the ones they held close to their heart would be able to wake up in the morning and draw breath, any and all who stood in their way would fall. Strikingly similar to the savage battle that occurred just the night before.

The further he cemented the belief into the wrinkled walls of his brain, the more it began to click into place why the princess had brought him here to begin with. The spark. The immortal impulse to stand in the way of impending doom so their comrades’ hearts could beat again. Two and two came together at last. Platinum and Levi weren’t just remarkably similar to one another. Their drives were nearly identical. They both shared a mutual animosity for anyone that somehow mustered the courage to inflict any form of distress upon the ones they cherished dearly. Perhaps there was some way the duet was connected. Be that as it may, looking into the deep hazel eyes of the beautifully painted pony felt… odd to say the least. Was it deja vu? Was it the feeling he received from reuniting with an old formerly lost friend? His best efforts on pinpointing the feeling that invaded his heart proved fruitless.

Whatever it was, looking into the confidence-filled orbs of someone he knew was dead and gone felt unusual. Especially after knowing the sheer level of death and murder he witnessed with those very same irises. Not to mention the hemorrhaging head of the most certainly doomed pony under his hoof, his skull being pushed into the dirt without a hint of mercy. To say it drove swarms of uneasiness into his core would be a criminal understatement.

“But, I believe now is a perfect time to tell you what I really brought you here for.” Immediately following Celestia’s soothing voice, threatening to lull the man to sleep with every word, the harsh and unsympathetic clinking arose again.

Levi battled the urge to wince as each time her golden sabatons met the reflective floor, the agonizing onslaught unleashed its wrath upon the man's ears. However, much to Levi’s immense relief, the borderline unbearable pain ended after a mere six steps to the center of the passageway.

There, resting in the core of the posthumously dedicated passageway was Platinum Wing’s crystal cutlass. The moment Levi first laid his eyes upon the glory, the aura around it warranting respect and honor, he thought nothing of it other than an ancient reminder of Equestria’s bloody past. But now, after having every gorey detail of its history relayed to him, the sight gained a much more sinister undertone. His imagination had no limits when it came to trying to visualize the limitless levels of brutality the weapon had witnessed. The amount of heads who’s relationship with their neck being severed, both figuratively and literally. The number of hearts pierced. The countless pools of blood spilled. The pure massacre. Levi chose to cease the train of grotesque thoughts there.

Celestia stood at his side, green and magenta irises consecutively, gazing at the magnificent relic of a time long lost. A aide-memoire of a period that once was, the dreadful generations beyond the realm of understanding for the man in blue. A reminder of a pitch perfect example of how to handle grim and catastrophic events. An article of virtu left behind by the particular pony it was forged and held with honor by, but abandoned for a noble reason.

Celestia let a sorrowful, grief-stricken, woeful sigh escape her lungs. Her calm gaze abruptly donned a fresh layer of dejection, falling ever-so-slightly from the flawlessly polished glass and to the solid marble base. She couldn’t stop the whirlwind of memories, both bittersweet and pleasant of the stallion, from conquering every last inch of her mind. All this remorseless attack of recollections did for the alicorn was mock her evident missing of her dear friend.

As much as she hated to admit it and tried her best to hide, she longed for her companion dearly. She yearned for his boisterous laugh, his joyous presence, the jokes he would crack over the dinner table, causing everyone attending to fall victim to a giggle fit. She pined for it all back. But, over the centuries following his untimely passing, she slowly began to come to terms with the fact that Platinum was gone. Forever. No longer having his ironclad hoof console her during times of almost unbearable stress was a hard pill to swallow. Since the banishment of Luna, Celestia didn’t have anyone to run to for comfort when the road got rocky. No one was there to aid her in her journey back to a state of peace and tranquility. After all, being the ruler of every last colony that resided within the land of Equestria was the furthest thing from easy. In fact, saying moving the heavens would be easier was nothing short of the truth.

After his departure from the land of the living, and the everlasting pain of having condemned her sister to the moon, the path got beyond rugged. All she had now was an overly large castle that a family of mountains could live in, an overbearing sense of loneliness, and the weight of the world upon her shoulders. The only thing that remained of tranquility within the royal stronghold was the very same hall Levi and Celestia stood in. The one she paid laborers handsomely to construct restlessly. One where, on days where the responsibilities got too hefty for comfort, she could reside in and swing open a book and be lost for hours. Hecklers called it unusual. Others speculated they were lovers. The truth was further past their boundaries of knowledge, the roots buried within a grisly story nobody knew and would probably never know.

Except for one. Levi Cronell. The self same who would carry the legacy of Platinum Wing for as long as his heart still beat on earth. The method of how he would go about doing that would reveal itself before he knew it, and in a way he never would’ve expected in a million years.

Celestia’s horn engulfed in the all too familiar golden cloud of magic, the lively brilliant yellow glinting in the man’s gleaming emerald irises. Also reflecting in the brunete’s intelligent orbs was the sudden and entirely unexpected, bright aureate ring that formed around the borders of the glass prism. The exact one that housed Platinum Wing’s crystal dagger. The heirloom, previously deserted in a ichor-infested battleground, that Levi assumed would rest inside the container until the end of time.

But, he had been wrong before, and this was just another one of those times.

“As you know, Levi, I was awaiting your arrival into Equestria for decades.” Celestia spoke, an uncharacteristic sense of eagerness braided within her words.

“As I spent more and more of my time looking over those paintings in the library, I began to wonder. How is this ‘man in blue’ supposed to protect Equestria with no magic to his name,”

The clear lid protecting the priceless curio from any and all harm known to man separated, allowing the sword forged from pure gem to feel the afternoon sun for the first time in generations.

“So, after a lot of careful consideration, I made up my mind. If the ‘man in blue’ plans on protecting Equestria,” Celestia’s sun-yellow aura shifted from the lid, which now sat idly on the blemishless flooring, to an item that made Levi’s jaw threatened to divorce his skull.

The next target for the princess's magic aura was none other than Platinum’s blade. The one still relaxing comfortably and peacefully in the tattered, war-torn sheath. Levi’s eyes turned to dinner plates. His optics disappeared underneath a sea of shock and utter disbelief, being swallowed whole beneath the waves as his heart was swiftly dealt the same treatment.

‘W-What?’ Levi thought, even in his mind, he couldn’t escape the stutter that conquered his words at the baffling sight. ‘Is she serious? This has to be a joke or..something. Right?’

Levi’s peeper’s shifted from the mind-boggling event unfolding before him and up to the collected magenta globes belonging to the alicorn. No sign, not even a sliver, of anything that would suggest all of this was a comedic stunt for laughs. On condition that was the extremely rare case, it would be downright distasteful, even if the the most world renowned comedian pulled it on the brown-haired man. The only microscopic speck of evidence suggesting all of this was a comical ruse was the small, sorry excuse for a grin yanking at the corners of Celestia’s lips. In spite of her brain’s best efforts, the smile would be doomed to never fully form on her features.

“Then he should carry the legacy of the protector before him.” Celestia pulled the cutlass and worn sheath into the orange afternoon sun flowing through the windows, finally freeing it from the infinite cycle of bobbing up and down at long last. The umber baldric, painted with wrinkles and tan creases, served as a reminder of the centuries that have come and gone since anyone alive had last brandished it. However, based on the events of the past few hours and the event unfolding before Levi’s very eyes, it was clear the cutlass found its new owner. Whether the man being involuntarily endowed felt deserving of it or not.

The snake-like strap, that once coiled comfortably around the ironclad form of Platinum Wing, had seen better days without a shadow of a doubt. Small nuggets of the chocolate-brown leather were missing, allowing the pair’s irises access to the unprepossessing tawny core underneath. The chestnut-colored pocket, the one that had been housing the crystal blade ever since its desertion, was not spared from the cruel hand of time. A medium and larger sized hole defiled the once beautifully hand-crafted holster, allowing the soon-to-be warrior to get a sneak peak at the drop dead gorgeous craftsmanship of Platinum Wing’s dagger. The vibrant hues and shades of the raw gems it was formed from blending pleasantly. Despite the little amount he was able to see through the cavities vandalizing it, the delightful pink tint sent slight shivers of excitement rippling through his being at the prospect of bearing Platinum’s legacy.

Yet, as the ancient artifact of Equestrian history began to curl around his waist, which placed a weight upon his obliques he couldn’t prepare for, an unprecedented feeling wrapped its tendrils around his heart. A sense that the man wasn’t worthy of carrying the weight of Platinum’s legacy at all. And especially not like this.

If Levi was being brutally honest, this object was a relic of a time long past, of someone who Celestia held so close to her and dearly missed each minute of the day. Not a second went by when the tan pony never crossed her mind since that fateful battle. With that being said, the princess putting the fate of everything Platinum worked for his entire life in his hands felt like a task too momentous for him to tackle. Levi was practically staring at a mountain without arms and being told to climb.

Learning to use it wasn’t impossible, not by a longshot. It could easily be done with months, maybe even years, of practice in fencing. Hell, to think of actually using the sacred artifact to attack another person much less kill them seemed too out of the bounds of reality. With the sheer brutality and overtly barbaric circumstances the heirloom had endured in its time of active use, putting it through even more savagery seemed disrespectful.

It was almost the same as handing an elderly, borderline crippled war veteran a rifle and commanding him to kill. Why would Celestia let her best friend’s most prized possession be exposed to the cruelty of the world all over again, when it could happily rest peacefully within the comforting confines of the castle. In the corridor created specifically for its owner.

Although, feeling the buckle of the beyond beaten and battered girdle strangle his waist for a split second, Levi knew good and well Celestia had other plans. After all, she was the one who was awaiting his arrival for who knows how long, she had more than enough time to think. This plan that she came up with, the one she thought about as generations came and went before her eyes, must’ve been spectacular to warrant this. All the man in blue could do was hope.

Abruptly, just as quickly as it spawned into existence, Celestia’s golden embrace died. The heft of the expertly-honed blade fallin was like a belt of stones suddenly coiling around his midriff. If what Celestia was suggesting to the man wordlessly was not an exaggeration by any means, getting used to the feeling would be a colossal task in itself.

Green irises met the metallic, snow-white hilt accompanied with a gold ring reaching from one end to the other. Trying to find acceptance that the event unfolding before his very eyes was anything but a ruse was like searching for a needle in a vast ocean of hay. It wasn’t happening anytime soon. Yet, even as the alicorn took a step back as if she was admiring a trophy in a case, his mind remained swallowed by a thick sense of incredulity.

To even think that the Princess of Equestria would give an item harboring so much emotional baggage to him of all people didn’t sit right in his psyche. For all intents and purposes, the dagger’s permanent residence until the end of time was rightfully in the glass repository. Being constantly surrounded by immaculately illustrated pictures of his valiant, lion-hearted possessor. Instead, Celestia chose to put the wellbeing and honor of the armament in his hands. Levi didn’t know the first thing about fighting with any sort of weapon other than a gun, something he indulged in once in a blue moon, much less sword fighting. Possibly after many frustrating months he would master the art. But even then, why Levi specifically?

Other than his selfless clash with Gary within the frigid walls of the old castle, he never viewed himself as heroic as Celestia was making him out to be. Especially not someone like Platinum Wing. The altruistic measures he took to shield and take the brunt of every last strand of harm that dared to even touch them was an impossibly high bar that no one could surpass. At least not anybody Levi knew or would probably ever know. Apparently, in some way shape or form according to the princess, the man in blue could. The sheer weight of the commander’s sacrifice was enough to deter all from even thinking about stepping up to the same level as him. No magic to his name. No special abilities, sans the unexplainable shockwave inflicted upon the monster the previous night. No… anything. He was just Levi Cronell. A man living through a prophecy he couldn’t even begin to understand. Mayhap the ancient path dug for him before he was even a word in anyone’s mouths would clear someday.

Whenever that happened to be.

Levi snaked his fingers around the somewhat chilly handle. In spite of the hundreds of thousands of seasons that must’ve passed since its forsaking, it did nothing to aid the unforgiving temperature of the age-old steel. The superbly acuminated edges let out a soft, barely noticeable ring as it slid against the elderly leather. A sound he imagined so many troopers heard before their, hopefully, merciful end swiftly came. Slowly but surely, inches of the vibrant hues from the crystals it was molded from so long ago emerged from the brown pocket it had known its whole life. When the dim and somewhat pleasant chime came to a satisfying end, with the crystalline blade no longer hidden behind an auburn mask, the man’s eyes were finally granted access to his new method of self-defense. Both now and in the decades to come.

He rested the icy handle against his palm, the stinging that never ceased to ravage his palm making itself evermore present, and the keen end of the cutlass relaxing against his opposite one. Now, with full unadulterated viewing pleasure of the beyond magnificent brand, he could lay his orbs upon the world renowned headman’s weapon at long last. To say it was worth the wait would be a criminal understatement. But, even though the wonder he held in his manuses with as much respect and dignity he could muster, it still didn’t sit right with the brunete not one bit. In spite of his best efforts to force his brain to come to terms with his new circumstances, it couldn’t. This sword shouldn’t and couldn’t belong to him. Platinum was an expert, a prodigy in all things sword fighting and battling in general. Levi on the other hand was merely a mindless chimpanzee holding a knife in comparison, scratching his scalp in confusion without even realizing it.

The man didn’t have a fragment of a clue as to what Celestia was planning for him by doing this, but he sure hoped it was worth giving her closest friend’s most cherished possession to him.

“C-Celestia, I… why?” Levi somehow managed to stammer, the glimmering salmon-pink steel hypnotizing his perplexed globes with its attraction, like a siren luring sailors to their demise.

“What do you mean ‘why’?” Celestia inquired, “You’re his predecessor now, Levi. The one who will step up as Equestria’s next protector.”

“Celestia, I’m honored really, but…” His words were severed once more by the polarizing features of the omnibus weapon before him, “I don’t deserve this.”

“Why of course you do. Why wouldn’t you?”

“I’m nowhere near like him and I probably never will be,” Levi finally managed to free his eyes of the sword’s mesmerizing gaze, magenta met emerald, his trepidation clashed with her hope.

“I mean, you said it yourself, he was the best fighter the royal family has ever seen. I’m just… a man. I don’t know the first thing about sword fighting.”

“You could always learn.”

“It’s not just about that,” He chimed, “It’s about.. everything. This deserves to stay here, it’s priceless. If I use it, I’ll end up just embarrassing his name. I don’t want that and I know you don’t either.”

“Who says you will?” Celestia replied, “You have to stop thinking about the negative things ten miles down the road and think about the next step.”

‘Maybe she’s right,’ Levi thought, ‘I do overthink more than I should.’

“You’re the man in blue. There is an entire prophecy about you. Even Platinum knew about you.” Celestia continued.

That fact nearly blew the man’s head wide open. Platinum Wing, the very same one who’s weapon he was practically inheriting, knew about him. About the prophecy. A mix between honor and shock filled his heart all at once.

“Listen, Levi, you’re right, this does deserve to stay here forever. However, I believe you are the right one to give it a purpose again,” Celestia carried on, her optics briefly falling to her companion’s esteemed belonging before meeting Levi’s irises once more.

“I wouldn’t have given this to you If I didn’t believe you were worthy of having it.”

“But he was a hero, Celestia. He saved Equestria. All of Equestria. Including you.” Levi rebutted, “How can I top that?”

“I wouldn’t say top, but you surely did something close.” Celestia responded. “How you flew into battle to protect Rainbow Dash from that wicked man, you put your life on the line to make sure hers didn’t end. I’d say that’s valiant enough as it is.”

Celestia was more than right. Levi knew exactly what he was getting into on that fateful night. He could vividly remember the unsympathetic below zero air stabbing his being with every step he took through the foreboding castle, threatening to cast goosebumps upon his arms despite the toasty corridor. He could almost feel Gary’s piercing amber orbs jabbing into his like searing javelins. They say a person's eyes are a gateway to their soul. If that was the case, all that remained inside the bastard after his rule with an iron fist over Roseville was a heart of stone. Not a single shred of mercy or regret in sight. Exactly what he expected from someone like Gary Demonio. He recollected the moment he stood barely two inches under him, feeling his white-hot gaze boring holes into his flesh, the moonlight surging through the glassless window frames highlighting his sinister grin.

Right there, as he scowled deep into the peepers of the devil on earth, he had a decision to make. Either he tried to escape in vain and caught a bullet in the back of his head, essentially sentencing Dash to death. Or, he fought until his last breath to secure Rainbow’s safety and put Gary in the ground once and for all, in spite of the grave risk of dying he was aware of. The devastating headbut he delivered a nanosecond later cemented his choice forever.

Maybe he was as heroic as Celestia portrayed him to be after all.

“You’re.. You’re right,” Levi said in response, “But, does that really make me deserving of this?”

“Obviously, you don’t see your potential the way I do,” Celestia’s horn ignited, bathing it in the familiar golden cloud of magic. “Allow me to show you, Levi.”

In a blink and you’ll miss it event, the tip of Celestia’s cornet burned like a lightbulb lacking a glass dome. Suddenly, the most unexplainable and incomprehensible event he had ever bear witness to, or experienced in this case, flashed before his shell shocked eyes. A blinding sun-yellow blast engulfed his vision in an impenetrable layer of pure flaxen gleam for a fraction of a moment, like a supernova had commenced mere inches in front of his unsuspecting being. On instinct, exactly how he did it when Celestia cast out the darkness on the way into the corridor, Levi’s eyelids met once more.

However, with that crucial blink that the alicorn most definitely intended for the brunete, the fabric of existence around him shifted. When his optics decided they fully recovered from the sight-robbing explosion of radiance, his lids divided a meager centimeter apart. When the stark shift in his surroundings hit him like a freight train kicked into overdrive, his eyes fully shot open to the size of planets, giving his irises no boundaries when it came to scanning every inch of his new environment. Or, better yet, lack thereof.

All around him, for hundreds of millions of miles reaching far beyond the bounds of the horizon, was just pure white. Nothing but white. All around him, stretching far and wide in every direction leaving not even a millimeter spared from the blanket of ivory, was blank. No signs of life. Nothing that would hint a corridor once stood high and mighty there. Absolutely, in every definition of the word, bupkis.

The man couldn’t believe what he was supposed to accept before him. His mind must be deceiving him. Some omnipotent being somewhere in Equestria, far powerful than any princess could dream of being, must have thrown into a false reality. A world with all remnants of color and life swiped away without hesitation. A land lacking existence. A vacant universe with nothing to show for it, other than the man in blue who stood in the dead-center like a dove in the night sky.

“What… where… am I?” Levi thought aloud, seeing no need to keep his words confined within his head. After all, there was nada as far as anyone could see. Who was gonna hear him? Certainly not the princess who sent him here against his will for no apparent reason.

Levi took a slow cautious step into the colorless limitless ocean, hoping to find more solid ground and not plummet never-ending depths below him. The bottom of his shoes met the ground, sending a shrill click radiating through the boundless sea of emptiness all around him, like a high heel clacking against tiles. The way the sharp clicking rippled through the infinite ocean of nothingness only reminded the man of the confusing yet somewhat dire situation he was unwillingly thrusted into.

In truth, Levi didn’t have a clue whether he should be worried, perplexed, or fearing for his safety amidst the circumstances he found himself in. Perhaps Celestia had some sort of plan for him here. Maybe, by some magnificent shred of fortune, this would provide him the answers he needed as to why he was chosen to support Platinum’s legacy. The brunete had zero way of telling. All he could do was lie in wait for anything to suddenly erupt from the scads of pure white all around him that would reveal the truth. Whatever that truth happened to be.

“Celestia!” The man called, trepidation braided within his words. Hearing the alicorn’s name bounce off the walls of the never-ending aisle of nihility and back into his ears only ignited the growing fire of concern within him more.

“Hello?”

“Don’t worry, Levi. This place is nothing to fear.” The princess’s tranquil tone echoed throughout the unbounded void overtaking him. “I only brought you here to show you what you clearly do not see in yourself.”

“What do I not see?” The man inquired, the harsh clacking emitting throughout whatever plain of reality he was at the mercy of.

“How much of a hero you truly are,” She elaborated. “Allow me to show you.”

If she had the power to teleport him and, very possibly, herself to an entirely different world, his imagination had no limits when it came to fabricating what “showing” could possibly mean. Clearly, capabilities weren’t an issue, it was only a matter of how the monarch would go about doing it.

Out of absolute nowhere, appearing before his very eyes with an unpleasant firecracker-like sound, was what looked like a portal. It was almost as if it was formed out of TV static and abruptly spawned into the barren wasteland mere inches in front of the rightfully puzzled man. The blurry, fading mess that vaguely resembled the edges of the loop seemed as though they were at death’s doorstep. One wrong gust of wind hurtling in their direction would cast them out of existence. Condemning them to be nothing more than a colony of grey specks amidst the breeze forever carrying them.

Regardless of the fragility of the porthole, the true star of the show, and the reason it was there in the first place, was what resided within the confines of the fuzzy ringlet. It was a memory. Or, more specifically, Levi’s. And not just any, it was the one leading up to the final confrontation of Nightmare Moon.

Lacking color for reasons he couldn’t understand was Levi, the group, and the wrathful manticore rearing its head high in the air. Orbs of saliva catapulted from his wide, eager jaws. His canines like keen knives protruding from his gums. His eyes, sharp and focused, set fully on one of the seven. The man in blue standing high and mighty, his sorry excuse for a weapon constricted in a white-knuckle grip akin to an anaconda ready to devour a gazelle.

At the time, with a whirlpool of adrenaline utterly consuming his heart, fear was nothing but a trifling remembrance in the deep recesses of Levi’s mind. Now, looking back at the harrowing ordeal he willingly thrust himself into, it seemed foolish for him to do so. A meager human being with no special abilities to his name striking down a beast of that size and ferocity, much less with a scanty blade, was nothing short of an unfulfillable dream. A recipe for a violent demise. But, the one and only thing allowing his brain to make such a witless decision such as that was the flame. The undying urge to protect the ones he cared for the most, even if he was the one who would have to pay the price. The immortal fire that reigned supreme within his chest cast out any doubts before they had a chance to settle in.

Perhaps it was the same feeling Platinum felt during that fateful battle. Only time could tell what the true answer was.

“Do you see? You put yourself in a fatal situation to protect Twilight Sparkle and the others. Would someone with no heroism inside him do such a thing?” Celestia echoed,

“Well… no.” Levi replied.

Just as swiftly as the grim reminiscence dawned before him, it faded. In its place within the staticy borders of the cloudy circular gateway was a new evocation. This time, more dreadful than the last by leaps and bounds. A lot more dreadful.

Reflecting in his emerald globes, sending a half-mortified half-incandescent look splashing over his features, was the image of the bastard in turquoise. The one who had gravely wronged him years before and paid the price dearly on that fateful night. On one side of the foreboding nippy corridor stood the man in blue, aghast and beyond appalled at the sight before him. On the opposite end of the passageway, his insidious features highlighted in the moonlight that bathed him, stood Gary Demonio. The way the monster conquered the entire half of the hall he stood in with his presence alone was bone-chilling to say the least. The complete absence of color did nothing to aid with exterminating the piercing amber orbs that, despite the lack of hues, never ceased to impale him.

Even a minimal glimpse at the charcoal tiles of gloomy frigid castle awoke the feeling of dread from the bowels of his mind. The very same emotion that clamped its jaws around his heart the moment he learned of Gary’s reality-defying survival. Even in death, the raven-haired man never failed to strike ruinous fright through his being.

As a matter of fact, maybe “dead” was too gracious of a label for the monster.

“And this, when you struck down that wicked Demonio.” Celestia’s voice chimed through the endless realm of oblivion once more. “You were fully aware that you could have lost your life to that man. No questions about it.”

The alicorn couldn’t be more right. Levi knew with one-hundred percent certainty that sparking a vehement affray with the psychopath would end in one of only two ways: Levi lives to tell the tale with borderline catastrophic, and possibly fatal injuries. Or, Gary blows his head clean off his shoulders, essentially dooming Rainbow Dash to suffer the same fate. Something he wouldn’t allow to happen if he was alive to change it.

It was beginning to become clearer with each still-image displayed before him that he was a lot more valiant than he initially believed. Not at Platinum’s level, not by a longshot. But perhaps just enough to view himself worthy enough to carry his legacy upon his shoulders.

Levi fractionated his jaws, reeling in a breath to let yet another contradiction to Celestia’s claims pollute the void. However, the booming voice ringing through the limitless emptiness killed his words before they had the chance to escape his lungs.

Abruptly, just as swiftly as it entered, the snapshot of Gary and Levi’s fatal confrontation vanished. Assuming its position within the bleary ring of dread-inducing memories was a new snapshot in time. Not an echo of one of Levi’s many harrowing past experiences. In fact, it was anything but. It was almost as if Celestia had played some sort of prophecy right before the man’s deservedly bewildered orbs.

Before him, within the confines of the halo of static, was an image of a fierce battle. On one end of the white ring of fire the two adversaries found themselves in was Levi, well, what he assumed was supposed to be him. In truth, in spite of him having seen his reflections all his life from the time he was born to now, he couldn’t even recognize the disheveled male in blue that was allegedly him. Gone was his signature camo hat, shouldering its position was a sorry, pathetic excuse for a head of hair. The light brown heap adorning his head like a repulsive, nauseating crown were his once satisfactory locks. It looked more like a nest colonized by a legion of birds and rats joining forces to vandalize his scalp more than tressess. To add insult to injury, brigades of sweat polluted his thatch, only amplified by the streaks of lime-green ichor hidden within it.

His features, formerly sharp and focused on any and all tasks he needed to tackle, now became one with the heat of the ferocious battle he was thrusted into. Grimace dripped from his menacingly wide sneer, sizzling against the forever scarred grass at his feet like drops of blistering grease.

Concealing a vast majority of his arms and torso was a jet black collared leather jacket, fitted impossibly perfect over the man’s totem pole-like stature. The only part of his rich cobalt shirt that emerged victorious in its rebellion against the coat’s efforts of obscurity were the half-inch of fabric, poking out from the bottom of the sleeves. The only remnant of the material that prevailed.

However, the biggest takeaway from the prophesied event bestowed before his very eyes was the tattered and elderly chocolate-brown sheath snaked tightly around his waist. With his digits coiled tightly around the crystalline blade’s hilt, his opponent mere feet from him better be prepared for the mountain of wrath ready to crash down mercilessly upon him.

His foe in question, while strikingly similar bordering on identical to a regular unicorn, something was off about the creature. In fact, to put it bluntly, there were more than enough things wrong about the equine-esque beast.

Holes nearly as big as baseballs riddled the unknown thing’s being, almost as if a vengeful contender loaded his body with shotgun shells moments before their encounter. His horn was a stark contrast to the many ones he had seen before in his time in Equestria. Utterly devoid of the semi-blunt, spiral shape the ones he had laid his irises upon before possessed. Instead, a keen midnight-black funnel assumed its place upon the peak of the warrior’s head. It too was not spared from who or whatever had ruthlessly disfigured the combatant, having been afflicted with the same punctures clean through one end and out the other. The honed end pointed up towards the heavens above threatened to sever the fabric of reality in two. The cornet seemed to resemble one belonging to a rhino more than a pony. But, with the sheer level of discord Levi had witnessed thus far, he stood immune to any and all surprises that grazed his path. This was nothing more than a prime example bespeckled among a sea of them.

Its flesh was reality-defyingly dark, as though whatever god or lord created it carved it out of Equestrian dusk and breathed life into its veins. His eyes were enlarged viridescent soccer balls embedded within his sockets. Long, conjoint, repugnant wings laid flat on the roan’s back, almost homogenous to the pinions sprouting from the sterns of flies. All the comparison did was make the appendages all the more revolting to the man.

“I have seen far into the future, Levi. I know exactly what happens after this day and in the years to come. This is one of the many hardships you will have to face if you accept what I am giving you.” Celestia spoke.

‘One of the many.’ Those words clutched onto Levi’s mind with a fierce grip, refusing to vacate his psyche. If this evidently pain-staking duel was only a pinpoint enclosed by an ocean of clashes and challenges in the decades following this day, then the road ahead was certainly rocky. Responsibilities and colossal weights his shoulders were forced to bear served as pesky stones littered along his path. However, the brunete knew with one-hundred percent certainty that facing a colony of misfortunes and horrors was the price to pay to protect Equestria. He was more than aware.

If Platinum was willing to sacrifice whatever was necessary for his friends’ survival, surely Levi could too.

“Believe it or not, Levi, Platinum was just the same as you before he joined the Royal Guard.”

The male cocked an eyebrow at the endless blanket of nothingness above his head.

“Really?”

“Of course,” The alicorn briskly responded. “He was unsure of his abilities. Oblivious of what he could, and did, accomplish.”

“Do you think I can do things as big as him, Celestia?”

“Without a doubt in my mind, yes. Possibly even bigger.”

The princess's statement sparked a question to life inside the man’s brain. What could he do that the commander didn’t already do, while simultaneously one-upping saving the ruler of Equestria and giving his life in the process. However, given the forecast displayed to him, maybe he’d surpass the stallion in one way or another with his feats. Only time could tell.

In a trice, much like the other snapshots of history before it, the picture enclosed in the blurry ring became a thing of the past. Once again, mirroring the process of the images that previously took its place, it was instantaneously replaced.

Instead of a depiction of a savage duel Levi would inevitably take part in with time, it was much, much darker than he could have anticipated. It was Ponyville. The normal hustle and bustle of the town he fell in love with. The self same he could say with pride was his home. The place he rescued from eternal night, which was practically a death sentence in the long run. Yet, a major difference trekked slowly over Levi like a sluggish freight train, making sure to grind the male’s heart into a vile puddle of kibble.

His beloved residence, the small quaint town he would do anything for, was merely an echo of a lost time. Ponyville was utterly and completely vanquished in every sense of the word. The buildings Levi used to stroll past with a spring in his step were smothered in a blanket of bright orange flames. The houses and structures, that were once a roof over a pony’s head, were gone. All that remained of the vibrantly colored constructions was a hollowed, charred husk, left behind after the sadistic inferno decided it had had enough. As the cruel blazing hand sauntered along to reduce its next victim to ash, the smoking skeleton of an unrecognizable domicile was all that remained.

And that was only the carnage inflicted upon the dwelling. Levi’s heart couldn’t handle entertaining the idea that the colts and fillies trapped inside the chamber of doom suffered. That barbaric fate didn’t just fall upon one singular spot. Every last inch of the conurbation the brunete cherished deeply fell prey to the starving jaws of the ravenous conflagration. The long streets turned from a pleasant smooth dirt path, to a highway straight to hell.

Levi’s imagination had no limits when it came to attempting to fabricate the events that lead to whatever catastrophe befell Ponyville. Truthfully, he didn’t want to know. Twilight. Rainbow. Fluttershy. He knew for certain none of them survived the boundless onslaught brought down full force upon the tranquil community.

Yet, as if seeing his much loved home be brought to its knees by the starving flame, another dreadful element was tossed into the vile cauldron before him. It wasn’t just a picture pulled from the bowels of whatever alternate timeline Celestia pulled it from. A cacophony of stomach-turning crackling intertwined with the roaring of the malnourished hellfire claiming Ponyville and its entirety. Whether the constant snapping and cracking was from the purgatory laying waste to the once sturdy foundation or the brutal disposal of corpses Levi couldn’t tell. In every way, it was better if he didn’t. The brimstone showering the poor, defenseless burgh danced in his emerald optics.

“C-Celestia…” Levi breathed, the remnants of his shattered heart drifting through his words. “Why the… what… is this?”

“I’ve seen many timelines, Levi. Both with great changes and not,” Celestia replied, her soothing tone, that would usually threaten to turn Levi into a puddle, now did nothing to quell his fragmented soul.

“This is the fate that befalls Ponyville without you to shield it from harm.”

The distraught man gazed deep into the almost hypnotic tongues of flame as they licked the streets of Ponyville clean, leaving nothing but catastrophe and devastation in their wake. His mind no longer had the room to occupy any thoughts of how big the burden would be if he were to accept Celestia’s proposition. The only thing that catapulted off the walls of his skull was an inquiry. And a burning one at that.

How?

How in any possible scenario does Levi leaving the sword in its rightful place lead to that. None of the copious amounts of scenarios he conjured in his thunderstorm of a mind made even a sliver of sense. There was no way in any interpretation of reality the oncoming crucial moments caused this. Death. Smoke. Hailing brimstone. He could only imagine what adversary someone must’ve angered to unleash the wrath of God upon the earth in such a way. The only two nefarious individuals in all of Equestria that he knew about thus far were the newly defeated Nightmare Moon and Gary. One of which was no longer in existence and the other wasn’t capable by any means of inflicting harm to such a degree.

However, regardless of who or what may have caused such a fatal cataclysm such as this, none of it mattered now. The only thing of importance that lingered in the brunete’s psyche was the ever-so-pivotal decision that hurtled toward him like a freight train. All he had were two choices: Either he deserted the weapon and returned home, plagued with trepidation for whatever devil on earth was going to blast Ponyville to kingdom come. Or he accepts his role with open arms, embracing the fact that he was and always will be the bearer of Platinum’s honor. The one who would keep his name alive and thriving for years, maybe even generations, to come.

“Levi, you do not yet realize your importance,” Celestia stated. “Equestria needs you. I need you. Twilight, Rainbow Dash, they need you,”

“What’s going to happen if Demonio returns? Or a much bigger threat than him returns? What if they best me and Luna? Or if Twilight doesn’t stand a chance? What then?”

The alicorn couldn’t be more correct. And to top it all off, Levi didn’t have an answer. What would happen next could only be described as a cataclysm of momentous proportions. The only thing remaining that even vaguely resembled the glorious providence of Equestria was a smoldering heap of ash. Everything that survived, which was a giant “if”, would be reduced to nothing more than a smoking skeleton of its former glory.

All that would endure from the doomsday would be the vast boundless history forever tied to it. A lengthy retelling of the beyond countless events that led to the formation of the kingdom. One that Levi himself was, albeit unintentionally, tethered to.

Even the mere prospect of all of the soldiers that valiantly gave their lives, merged with the blood, sweat, and tears of the unflagging founders, all be for nought was disheartening. If the man in blue could prevent that from happening by simply taking the sword and claiming it as his own, there was no reason the brunete could refuse the proposal. Yet, despite the obviously calamitous consequences, his doubts refused to depart.

In a trice, as if the alicorn had personally answered his prayers, the tortuous blurry hoop became one with the air around it. And, identical to the moment he entered, the endless dimension of emptiness was swallowed by a thick silence once more. In the hundreds upon thousands of miles stretching deep into the infinite sea of white, not a peep dared to break through the impenetrable blanket of quietude.

Abruptly, severing his thoughts in two, a sound like a colony of firecrackers fulminating arose. With the peace and quiet of the realm now scattered in pieces, Levi allowed his focus to hone in on the object that swiftly stole the portal’s position.

The sheath. The home of the crystal blade. The one that at first glance seemed like a regular weapon, albeit with ever-so-slight chips and dulling. To Levi however, the sword struck a much different feeling in the man’s quivering heart. The offspring of trepidation and foreboding dread clamped its jaws around his core. All the iron tight grip on his nucleus accomplished was to remind him of the crucial decision rapidly hurtling towards him.

“So, Levi, I’ll ask you this again.” Celestia spoke. The rhythmic bobbing serving as a blaring warning for the grim fate that awaited Equestria if the right choice isn’t made. Weirdly enough, the cutlass looked a lot more alluring the second time around.

“Shall you accept my offer?”

Levi’s powerful urge to welcome not only the sword, but the momentous role that came alongside it, locked horns with his badgering doubts invading his core. With Celestia’s argument as to why he should accept, and the disastrous outcome if he were to decline, now on the table, he could consider his options at long last. It was only him, his raging storm of confusion and anarchy that barely resembled his mind, and the never ending silence. The only things that occupied the boundless realm of oblivion he found himself in.

On one hand, if he took the position as Equestria’s defender and sole protector, he would have what he had been longing for for the past two decades. A respectable, honorable job. That flame, that undying urge to shield his friends from harm and the god-like power that came in tow, was borderline intoxicating. It was almost as if whatever almighty being injected the man with that sheer level of energy knew he would be hooked. Under any normal circumstance, saying he was on the brink of addiction to a feeling could be either utterly terrible or innocent. Admitting he was jonesing on the might he exerted as he cast his fury upon Gary sounded concerning in hindsight. Yet, if he received the sword and was told that would be his solitary objective, complaints would be a thing of the past. After all, it was what he always wanted.

Being a drug dealer came with a high cost. Both emotional and physical. None of his health was spared from the drastic mental toll the line of work required. If he could even call it that. Watching the clientele he dealt with get grimier and more disheveled as their weekly dealings ticked by was heart-wrenching to say the utmost least. He vividly recalled their faces, the signs of substance abuse only minor, now wrinkled as can be. With their features now reduced to a paper-thin sheet of crumpled flesh draped over a skull, their untimely demise rapidly approaching, it was only a matter of time before that week would be their last. Nine times out of ten, it was. Whether they were thrown in handcuffs or drew their last breath with a smoking pipe in their grasp, their life ended one way or another.

Junkie after junkie. Year after year. The almost fatal sorrow and guilt for his sins had his heart in its ironclad grip, tightening with unfathomable strength with each death he set into motion. He knew for certain Alan felt the same. Despite his best efforts, the misery Alan felt was ever-so-prominent. Looking into his eyes, the only thing that stared back at Levi was his pulsating remorse-stricken soul. To describe it as dreadful would be a criminal understatement. Between the two males, it was mutual and practically mirrored.

However, with his life of transgressions of suffering now abandoned in a different dimension, this was his chance at redemption. An opportunity of a lifetime. A way to prove his worth to the world and show he was more than a broken down meth peddler. It was what he had longed for ever since the first bunch of narcotics they produced in that forsaken trailer met his gaze. Instead of providing a means of essentially suicide to helpless people, he could instead be a savior. Just like he did with Rainbow and, essentially, the entirety of Equestria. Evil must be stopped dead in its tracks. That was for certain.

There was no feasible way to predict whenever it would arrive with a thirst for blood. Prime examples of this were Nightmare’s escape from the moon and Gary’s departure from the land of the dead. Both of those were entirely unpredictable. Not even the smartest individual to ever walk the planet could’ve foresaw that happening.

All in all, Celestia was beyond right. Monsters lurked within the colorful land of Equestria. Sinners hiding among the saints, waiting like restless cobras to strike and unleash their wrath upon the innocents. Foretelling any of the events was a next to impossible task. What Equestria needed was a lion-hearted warrior ready to give his life to protect the land they adored from whatever wicked threat dared to harm them.

It was clear to him now. He finally understood. In the generations prior to his arrival, copious amounts of wrongdoers faced judgment head-on. By any means necessary. And if ponies like Nightmare Moon were an indication of anything, there were plenty more to come. If they dared to inflict any harm upon the ones he viewed as his family, or the land he now proudly calls his home, they would pay the price dearly. That was for certain.

Confidence overruled all other emotions pounding in his trembling heart. The corners of his mouth were reeled upwards, fueled solely by excitement of his new beginning.

If it was protection Equestria needed, it was exactly what they were going to receive. The man in blue was here to stay. If any and all evil-doers wanted to hurt, they were going to have to go through him first.

He coiled his digits around the snow-white metallic blade, the frigid gold border embedded inside stinging his palm. He gave it a mighty tug, not only releasing the cutlass from its former forever residence, but setting his sights on his new path.

‘If you ever come back, Gary, I’m gonna send you back to hell. I promise you that.’

The oak door creaked as its hinges swiveled, allowing the wooden plank that once forbade access to grant it. Dusk had conquered Ponyville by the time he had returned home from the endeavor Celestia summoned him to. He vividly recollected the warm orange afternoon light gushing through the lofty lancets as the harrowing tale of Platinum Wing concluded. If the post meridian had come and went during Levi’s unexpected journey through the limitless ocean of emptiness, it really made him wonder, how long had the alicorn practically trapped him in there?

Whatever the case may be, and despite the man’s laments about his entire day now down the drain, he felt somewhat thankful in a way for the passage of time. He could only imagine the curiosity and trepidation that would bring his veins to their knees if Levi abruptly appeared with a sword belted at his side. Much less the self same belonging to Platinum Wing. When the day came and the sun climbed to claim its rightful spot in the ocean of blue, he prayed none of the townsfolk, much less his friends, would recognize the crystal blade. Perhaps they would confront him for stolen valor, a slanderous name, or maybe tack a crime of grand larceny for his transgressions. That posed an unexpected question, did Ponyville even have a jail? Was a police presence a thing in the town, or were the civilians left to their own devices 24/7.

Levi lacked a solid answer. In fact, he barely harbored the energy to keep himself from meeting the sod he stood on. On second glance, the conurbation’s lush green grass seemed oddly alluring in the enticing moonlight.

The brunete tore his gaze from Ponyville’s turf, focusing every last drop of strength that remained in his fatigued bones to get upstairs as though his life depended on it. To him, it felt like it most certainly did.

The elderly logs uniting as one to form the floor let out a strident squeal the moment his feet greeted them. The intricate internals within the timber door clicked when it slipped into its frame once more, courtesy of the man’s ginger push. Commanding his utterly drained legs to move was comparable to commanding a morbidly obese person to march through a desert. It was a next to impossible task. All his body wanted was to collapse into a pile of black, blue, and white on the wood and fall unconscious. Allow sleep to abduct him and grant him the relief he so desperately wanted. The solace he felt he required for survival.

Nonetheless, in spite of his debilitated frame’s unwavering demands, Levi knew he had to get upstairs.

Twilight. It was only then when the lilac unicorn had entered his mind for the first time in what he perceived to be years. His brain had completely phased out the inevitable discussion between the two that would have to come to pass. How was he going to explain his role as Equestria’s sole protector, especially the part where his life could be the price? Perhaps it was another one of his frivolous overthinking spells engulfing him speaking in his head or his worries personifying. Whatever the case was, hobbling up the flight of steps and to the warm sanctity of his bed was worth the unavoidable talk. Maybe the night would permit him a fair share of mercy from the inescapable chat, allowing him to converse with the pony in the morning. All he could do was hope.

Levi passed the kitchen table, vividly remembering the dread swarming his heart like a colony of ruthless hornets as the story of Gary met the air the day prior. Most certainly plaguing it with its presence. The chair, which the borderline inebriated dragon once clinged to wakefulness for dear life in that daybreak, still in the same position the reptile left it. He could only imagine how many hours Spike’s head remained planted on the treen before he summoned the strength to make it to his “bed”.

The man halted at the dawn of the stairs, his foot firmly planted on the woody beginning step. He craned his neck to gaze at the entire lower floor. Once beaming with life and radiating with the utmost positive energy one could think of, it lacked a majority of the waves of tranquility it once harbored in the dead of night. When dusk had conquered every inch of Ponyville, it too fell prey to the ripples of drowsiness that the nightfall brought in tow. It was almost as if the kitchen and reading room combination had become one with eventide outside. Blending into the moonlight, divided into four squares by the checkers board window frame that beamed onto the aged table.

Levi grinned at the calming sight. He had always loved the hours that followed the sun clocking in for the evening. Seeing the entire town disappear under a blanket of tenebrosity, allowing the stars to claim their rightful spot in the sky, seemed frightening to some, but tranquil to him. Sometimes, when the burning behemoth would vacate the vast ocean of azure it called home, Levi would pull out a lawn chair and relax on his front porch of his house. The shine from the colossal planet above throwing him into its warm, peaceful embrace. The self same sensation the library consistently thrust him into every time he stepped foot inside. However, much to his disappointment, all of that changed when he was evicted. His landlord, that stuck-up Howard, throwing him to the wolves was years ago, but the irritation was present in his chest.

The male had almost completely forgotten about the snotty, goodie-two-shoes, church boy sod he was unfortunate enough to share the same building with. Much less the same city. Always dressed in his Sunday best with each consecutive badgering instance he rapped on his door, interrupting whatever activity Levi took part in to pass the time. Standing there asking for more money he could make a throne with and buy more of his ridiculous cloth belts and pairs of shiny leather shoes. Levi went to war with the urge to bash his nose into another era at any moment his voice invaded his ears. Now that he thought about it, he was more than relieved he didn’t have to deal with taxes or rent. He didn’t have to put up with Howard’s greedy shenanigans any longer. In fact, he could allow Howard to drift into the deep recesses of his mind and fade into obscurity. Condemning him to become a vexing memory of a time lost. A period of his life he could cast out for good.

Levi swiveled his head back to the stairway to bliss, every step he climbed was another foot closer to the godliness of his bed's comfort. Eventually, with the heft of his sword threatening to tug him to the floor like an anchor hanging from his waist, the apex of the flight was below his feet. At last, he was only inches from the paradise known as the land of dreams. The sanctuary of repose was practically in his pocket. He could deliver his bone-tired form the rest it needed to recharge, be ready for whatever task needed to be tackled in the following day. Perhaps he could go see Fluttershy again. After all, they hadn’t really talked much, surprising him considering she was the sole reason he still drew breath. He owed her some time to sit down and chat with just the two of them.

Levi’s palm enveloped the golden knob on the bedroom door, giving it one ginger yet still herculean twist, the organs of the door clicking softly in response. The entry divorced from its frame, Levi instantly getting an eyeful of the moonlit, spacious room that looked more like an observatory than a sleeping quarter. Alas, it was a place to refill his batteries nonetheless. If it had a mattress within it to lay his head upon, nothing else mattered to the brunete.

With as much care as he could possibly muster, the male returned the door back to its rightful case, the maze-like internals clicking softly. Levi slipped his hat from his scalp and hung it on one of the many pegs protruding from the wall. His forearms, once exposed, were now swallowed by the hungry maw of his royal blue sleeves, before being shed from his being. The faint jingle of his buckle sending shivers of worry casting goosebumps upon his frame, not waking the peaceful snoozing dragon and unicorn being his number one priority. The brunete’s feet left departed from the confines of his worn shoes, years of wear and tear were ever-so-evident in the barely noticeable but still present tears vandalizing the exterior.

Levi unbuckled the scabbard with the utmost clemency he could within the bounds of reason, freeing his waist from the pestering weight at long last. As much as the heft threatening to tug him to the ground with each step he took sent lightning bolts of annoyance shooting through his bones, getting used to it would take some time. After all, if Platinum could charge like a bull in a house of glass for years, surely he could too. Levi, giving the blade the same treatment as his cap and collared attire, fixed the cutlass to one of the spikes.

Ease and utter stealth became his number-one priority the instant the balls of his feet made contact with the first rung of the ladder. A ripple of excitement radiated through his being at the prospect of finally laying his head down upon the pillow and allowing sleep to seize him. Fighting back the urge to scurry to the mattress without a care in the world was nothing short of a challenge.

Levi’s back sunk deep into the god-sent bunk, the lush foam encircling the man in its pacifying embrace. Under any normal circumstances, even the mere mention of sleeping in jeans was Levi’s own personal hell. The rough denim snagging the blanket every time he tried in vain to shift into a more comfortable position, the sandpaper-like textiles refusing to cooperate with the sheet adorning the bed. Truthfully, Levi would’ve rather chose to sleep nude on a pile of leaves during a snowstorm than do what he was doing now. But, combined with the undying drowsiness that only got stronger with each passing second, sleeping practically half-naked in his boxers next to a unicorn wasn’t the most appealing option. To add insult to injury, a fact he learned the hard way was that the library was prone to get overwhelmingly cold when night splashed over Ponyville. It was either he sacrificed comfort and be refrigerated or he learned to endure the discomfort. The latter proved to be a lot more attractive by a landslide.

Silence.

The man in blue cherished moments of peace and serenity such as this one deeply. There were times in his life where he desperately longed for a moment or two of utter quietude as far as the eye could see. Not a sound to be heard for miles. Just him. Alone. Devoid of any shouting from junkies and vicious screaming matches in the late hours of the night. Absent of any domestic alterations from his neighbors. No early morning knocks from his hounding landlord. Nothing.

Absolute silence. Which is exactly what Levi was granted. The only noise able to penetrate Levi’s ears was the serene chirping of colonies of crickets, only struck down by the reverberating hoot of an owl ringing down the empty streets of Ponyville.

No hustle and bustle he was beginning to get used to in the town.

No rattling of elderly wheels on equally aged wagons, carrying their fill of fruits and vegetables from one house to the next.

Absolutely bare bones. Just as Levi liked it.

It gave the brunete some much needed time to process the heaps and mounds of information dumped onto him by the alicorn princess. On top of informing him of the disastrous consequences if he left empty handed, what she relayed to the rightfully shell shocked male once she removed him from the realm was unbelievable to say the least.

When the maw of the cascade of warm air crowding the hall swallowed him whole, finding himself no longer in the endless ocean of blankness, emerald met magenta once again. It felt foreign to see living beings and objects after being surrounded by utter and complete nothingness for what seemed like days. When the culture shock subsided and an intense confusion caught his heart in its swirling, raging hurricane, he only had one question for the monarch: Why? What was the meaning of…whatever that was supposed to be?

One could only imagine his shock when the words “The seventh Element of Harmony is you.” had left her mouth. The “Element of Protection” was Levi’s second and arguably most important role. In a way, Equestria’s sole hero and being one of the Elements of Harmony went hand in hand. If being a bearer of one of the Elements meant he had to face threats such as Nightmare Moon, then his job was somewhat made easier.

The seven of them all bearing the power to wipe any threat off the face of the earth, given there all combined, sounded immensely easier said than done. Would more dangers like Nightmare appear in the days, weeks, or maybe months to come? Would Gary return and test his abilities? Was Gary even alive? There were too many questions for Levi’s sleep-deprived brain to handle all at once.

As his eyelids came together in unison to provide the male some desperately needed repose, he couldn’t help but think intently about what the future may hold. Being an Element of Harmony on top of a valiant defender of Equestria, his life in Ponyville was sure to never be lacking of anything.

But, as thrill packed as the years to come may seem, Levi realized downsides were inevitable. Locking horns with foes similar to Nightmare Moon and Gary sounds like a recipe for disaster. The man was well aware that the power of friendship won’t solve all of their problems. If evil was going to come to attack Equestria and threaten the lives of the ones he loved, and especially innocents, were on the line, whoever caused it will pay the price dearly.

How will the group handle Gary if he ever comes back? Sometimes, wicked individuals need to be eliminated, a fact Twilight would have to learn the hard way eventually.

Before Levi could entertain the thought any further, at long last, sleep finally caught him in its indestructible grasp.

Whatever the future held, they would face it together.

In life or in death.

Chapter 18: Fangs of silver

A senior oak chair, aged alongside the generations it had seen come and go, released a strident squeal from its elderly hinges. A tranquil breeze, a symbol of the dominating peace that conquered Ponyville for centuries, surged. The scent of the byproduct, belonging only to the family of unflagging bees who created it, accompanied by the intoxicating aroma of roses infiltrated Levi’s nostrils. The potent fragrance of colonies of flowers of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors threatened to seize the man under their spell with each breath he claimed, like sirens luring sailors to their untimely demise.

The slats within the borderline ancient seat dug into his rear like an army of shovels plunged into the dirt, only to be met with a cosmic bed of stone beneath the soil. The gusts of wind that rolled through the quaint, tranquil town with their nearly hypnotic balms in tow caressed Levi’s bare forearms. His jungly brown vellus hair danced with the tune of the zephyr.

Levi didn’t bother fighting the fruitless battle against the highly infectious smile reeling the corners of his mouth to the sky. The brunete’s grin clashed tooth and nail with the sun’s brilliant rays in a competition of sheer amiability. However, with one quick glance at the burning behemoth in comparison, the duel was written in the stars to be in the male’s favor.

Levi couldn’t help but get lost in the mesmerizing yet simultaneously soothing formation of Ponyville from the comfort of the library balcony. His view remained almost entirely unhindered, sans the railing keeping any and all from plummeting to the heavenly lot of sod below. The man’s emerald irises flicked from one flawlessly constructed building, its pure passion and unalderated craftsmanship made evident with every detail, to the other. With each elegant stroke of paint, colors both warmer than an evening campfire and cold as a glacier. The nails hammered deep within the base. He could almost smell the sweat swiped from the brows of unwavering workers as hours melted into days, the progress of the previous noon's work bleeding into the next. To anyone on the outside looking in, the tireless lengthy weeks of hefty effort and waging war on the urge to collapse in a heaving puddle seemed like madness.

But to them, nothing that a neighsayer alive could utter could shatter the deep-rooted love for the job. Or, at least what they considered to be, an art.

Levi’s globes never strayed far from the peaks of each and every humble abode that strived to forge the beloved conurbation. Silently admiring the mastery buried within the walls so many ponies strived indefatigably to mold from salt and sand was oddly refreshing. Levi enjoyed the moments in Ponyville where he could just..be there. Experience the moment for all of its worth. Graciously accept the sweeter-than-honey oxygen until his lungs met their full capacity. And, like icing embellishing an already flawless cake, there was a reason Levi killed the leisurely passing time upon the venerable balcony.

After Levi awoke that morning with a spring in his step, he had been informed by Twilight that the note idling peacefully upon the kitchen table was delivered by none other than Spitfire herself. The very same who threatened to split the air into a family of fragments each beat her wings produced, rushing the gravely injured man to Canterlot with never-before-seen power days prior. Or was it weeks? For the life of him, Levi couldn’t remember. With the harrowing reunion with Gary and rescuing Equestria from the irontight clutches of Nightmare Moon all hitting the male in the span of twenty-four hours, time lost its meaning. Events he assumed to have occurred not long ago felt like years had passed since. Whatever the case may be, a reconciliation was long overdue. A fact that Spitfire was clearly well aware of.

“The Golden Dashers are going against the Wonderbolts tomorrow!” Twilight’s jubilated squall bounced off the walls of his skulls, forcing him to relive the microscopic, yet still all the more present, sliver of dread. “And she gave us V.I.P tickets!”

‘Golden Dashers.’ Levi thought, ‘Wonder how good they're gonna do.’

In truth, the man seriously doubted they had a chance at winning. While it was a best-to-three tournament for the title of the best flying team in all of Equestria, their chances were slender at best. With the magnificent, reality-defying feat she put on display for all the world to see during their first interaction in consideration, whoever their captain was couldn’t hold a candle to her. Not to mention the lengthy, victory-ridden decades-long legacy the Wonderbolts held under their belt with oozing pride. Levi’s psyche flashed back to the fateful trip-turned-tour of Ponyville in the hours preceding the Summer Sun celebration. Where, much to no one’s surprise at all, had posters with each of the members bathing in their golden glory plastered on walls as far as the eye could see.

With the mountains of notoriety in their favor, combined with the unmatchable brawn the pegasi harbored, spelled certain doom for the Dashers. However, keeping in mind Levi had never heard nor seen of the much less notable crew since his arrival in Equestria, only time could tell their fate. Perhaps they were an undiscovered family of prodigies, ready and able to stomp Spitfire and co into the dirt while spitting shiny loogies on their names. But then again, looking back on the unrivaled might both Rainbow Dash and Spitfire showed, his vacillations never ceased there reign of supremacy.

Levi shifted his weight from the divine, unmatched comfort of the timber seat to the octogenarian logs the chair rested on. A shrill, sorrowful wail escaped the planks, a strident reminder of the generations that had come and gone since the birth of the mighty tree it resides in. The male’s brain felt as though it was ricocheting off the borders of his skull with each movement, despite how small or insignificant it was.

The early morning hours were still upon them. With Ponyville utterly and completely bathed head to toe in the mighty sun’s golden benediction, the drowsiness from Levi’s freshly awoken brain refused to subside. In fact, it had reached its apex. The fearsome star’s grace released him from its balmy clutches, the roof he oh so luckily had over his head becoming his savior in a split-second. Almost instantaneously, the harmonic symphony of prematurely risen families of birds vacated his ears. The tranquil opera of singing gusts of wind and whistling breezes tearing its listening pleasure right from beneath his feet. The intoxicating aroma of roses and honey, that threatened to submerge him under their irresistible spell, became nothing more than a fleeting memory. An indescribable but forever pleasurable echo that ran for the hills, forsaking his psyche indefinitely.

Without hesitation, assuming their positions in Levi’s groggy but more active than ever senses, was the normal landscape of sound that regularly occupied the household. Spike’s snoring blended into the otherwise dead silent library, as if a murder had taken place just moments preceding his arrival. Not a peep to be heard in the near future, exactly the way the lavender unicorn in the floor below preferred it.

Levi didn’t dare to move. His bones, once surging with life like a rushing angry river ready to tackle the day, plummeted into an abyss of motionlessness. Fear of a creak revolting against the absolute peace conquering the abode paralyzed the brunete. For a few seconds, he relished in it. He allowed the quietude to wash over his being. The perfect tranquility was akin to rolling flurries of nicotine infiltrating his form.

To the male, for all intents and purposes, his day thus far was nothing short of perfect. Losing track of time hugged by the sultry spring air, showered in the herculean star’s dexterity. While viewed as anything but grace to some and ferocious wrath raining down upon the earth to others. To Levi, it was a reminder of the sheer luck that blessed him for granting him with another day in Equestria. Another chance to prove he was beyond his past life of sins and transgressions. One that he planned to use for all of its worth.

And, to top it all off, he got front row seats for the gorgeous hush in Twilight’s library again. A favor from the heavens above in itself. However, like all things in life both precious and insidious, it had to arrive at its inevitable end.

One after the other, with the utmost ginger his bones could possibly muster, Levi’s soles met the billets uniting as one to configure the floor. Time became comparable to a river of magma leisurely crawling down a hill. Seconds bled into minutes. Hours threatened to rear its ugly head. All the while, the air encompassing every last inch of the mountainous tree torpified. Nothing dared to vanquish the quietude that spared not even a meager centimeter from its crusade. The only thing throughout the entire library that even ever-so-slightly resembled a commotion was the never ceasing snoring from the sapped dragon. The rhythmic rising and descending of the thin white sheet cloaking him under a veil of secrecy served as a pillar of relief for the man. A reminder that his trekking had, thankfully, reprieved the young reptile from joining the land of consciousness.

His nasally snoring, like the teeth of a saw dragged across a wooden trunk, never halted, even after the brunete’s soles greeted the old timber stairs. In stark contrast to the ligneous ground he traversed on just moments before, the steps were anything but lenient when it came to the pandemonium they would create. The very instant Levi’s weight became known, simultaneously spawning a slight warp within the wood, a dastardly tumult raided the air. Without a sliver of a doubt, Spike had been pierced by the relentless hook of day. An inescapable wrench was sure to follow. And, mere seconds after the wailing plank made its presence beyond noticed, the reptiloid joined his housemates at long last.

When the apex of the flight was behind him with the dawn of the escalier behind him, Spike emerged. Identical to the daybreak prior, at roughly the same hour, there he was. His statute surpassed the boundaries of “just being tired”. Spike looked utterly crushed by the revelation his residence inside the dimension of dreams was a memory. It was made all the more evident by the blight sacks of shadow dangling from beneath his wide jades that he lamented his awakening. Only amplified by the unintentional rudeness of it. The intense mourning of being devoured by the waves rolling amongst the cosmic ocean of sleep was evermore present in his close to inebriated globes.

With drowsiness anything but a distant echo in Levi’s brain, he couldn’t help but sympathize with the juvenile dragon.

Levi’s trotters relinquished the birth of the stairwell, allowing his marginally bone-tired frame to be drenched head to toe in the infectious excitement deluging the lower floor. Even being within a six inch radius of the pacing lilac unicorn, that single handedly claimed every inch of the level with her energy alone, the elation was a plague. Waves of jubilee radiating through the entirety of the home, having not even a hint of mercy in its ruthless warpath of infection. Spike, despite his borderline unconscious state, couldn’t battle the urge to smirk at Twilight’s animated presence. The corners of Levi’s mouth were easily hooked by the mountainous combers of exhilaration and reeled up without a second to spare. To say it was refreshing for the man to feel that level of excitement this early in the daybreak would be a criminal understatement.

The amethyst pony trekked briskly from one end of the library to the other. Her hooves leaving an imprint of her rapture inside the ancient wood permanently with each step she took. Her eyes, that surprised the brunete on its own with the unearthly size, seemingly multiplied in expanse. Dilated purple orbs conquered whatever shreds of white were left within her globes.

For someone who’s life practically revolved around books and literature like it was the only thing that kept her alive, being unexpectedly exultant for going to a sports game of all things was a shock. Twilight, the very same who lived and woke up everyday utterly surrounded by paper and hardbacks alike, was beside herself with happiness for a flying competition. Levi never thought he’d live to see the day.

The prospect of traveling far into the cavities of Equestria to the world-renowned, stunningly captivating cosmic bed of clouds known only as Cloudsdale. From what little was shown to him in one of the countless books embellishing the walls, the city enclosed by a limitless ocean of azure was reality-defying. Deep within the great big blue above their heads, far beyond the capabilities of the naked eye, was Cloudsdale.

A hustling and bustling metropolis forged solely from the fluffy, ivory masses that once decorated the airspace above. Rows upon rows of lofty skyscrapers adorned the otherworldly sheet of unpigmented puff. The magnificent, and most certainly breaking a law of reality, heights looked as though God’s hand reached from the abyss of albino to graze the heavens. Strips of colossal, mammoth rectangular office buildings defiled the otherwise flawless illustration of the municipality. A grim reminder that even the most joyful lands were not spared from the wrath of corporate greed. A fact only cemented further by the herculean structures that were like torture chambers for middle-aged wage-slaves than a place of work. Geysers of brilliant rainbow gushed like rivers one would expect to see within the mind of a child. Flowing beautifully from the colorless empire and plummeting to lands unknown beneath the buzzing province.

Hundreds upon hundreds of much smaller cloud platforms bespeckled the cyan ether encompassing the burgh. Resting peacefully upon them were boxy homes, compact restaurants and bars, and two very distinct factories. One, according to the lavender pony rapid-fire explanations, was the hub of creation for Equestria’s clouds. Rain. Snow. Hail. Regular ones for everyday viewing pleasure. If one could name it, it was born there. Courtesy of the unflagging pegasi who worked from when dawn broke exploded over the nation to when dusk reclaimed its throne at nightfall. The second, and plainly triple the size of the previous one, was the heart for all rainbow formation.

A trinity of towering smoke stacks protruded from the roof of the equally sized mill. Waving, multi-colored thick ropes of smoke erupted from the stone obelisks, a color identical to the magnificently alluring arches they forged inside the confines of the plant. Other than the inherent purpose it serves, not much else was known. According to Twilight, the recipe and exact methods of producing the prismatic bridges were shrouded in secrecy. Allegedly, the employees were to sign a lengthy contract upon their acceptance into the factory. As per the insignificant shreds of exposed information about the facility, if they were to ever out the formula by any means at all, they wouldn’t like what happens.

“Well, what would happen if they did?” Levi vividly remembered asking that morning.

“‘Immediate termination’ in their words, or they exiled them. It really depended on how much they spoke.” Twilight replied, splashing a mask of overwhelming shock upon the rightfully perplexed man’s features.

‘Exiled?’ Levi thought to himself, the word bouncing off the walls of his skull like a twisted game of pinball. ‘It can’t be that big of a deal, right?’

To the citizens and government officials of Cloudsdale, it very much was. As to what lies cloaked in a thick veil of mystery in the innards of the workshop the public may never know, but the piqued interest was still there nonetheless.

It really made him wonder what kind of hierarchy the metropolis used that warranted banishment as a viable consequence for a crime.

Tens of minutes passed. Pages flipped hastily, not wasting even a nanosecond of elucidating. All the while, Twilight’s motormouth showed no signs of ceasing in the near future. As far as Levi knew, the plum unicorn was in for the long haul. However, the male’s brain could only comprehend so many oceans of words and sentences before it began to tune out the elated pony’s speech subconsciously.

As paper was overturned and Twilight’s jaws divorced and reunited more times than he could count, his psyche was soon to drift off into distant lands. No longer was Levi’s mind impounded within the ligneous walls of the library. His brain meandered deep into the innards of Levi’s head, effectively summoning one of the copious amounts of overthinking spells that were no stranger to badgering when need be.

The Golden Dashers. Ever since the name of the Wonderbolts’ adversary had been relayed to him early at dawn, it refused to vacate his thoughts. There was something so…uncanny about it. Dreadful? Deja vu? All of the above? In truth, the male didn’t possess a scrap of a clue on what exactly the sensation could be. Every time the words replayed in the darkest corner of his pneuma, a ferocious kahuna of trepidation wasted no time in claiming his heart in its maw. Something somehow struck ripples of disquiet radiating through his being, latching onto his bones like starving mosquitoes dismissing Levi’s demands to depart.

The brunete’s unexpected and untimely combers of angst weren’t something to be taken likely. After all, those very same whirlpools of emotions that utterly devoured his core, for reasons he believed were meaningless worries, paved the way for a very real threat. It was the same internal uproar that preceded Nightmare Moon’s pronounced entrance. The identical intramural turmoil that arose seconds before crashing into the gloomy, fog-infested corridor. The very one conquered by Gary. A fact the male learned in the worst way possible. The list only continued. And his encounters with the ever-so-familiar rivers of fear surging through his veins weren’t limited to confrontations in Equestria.

More times than he could count back in Tuscaloosa, he could vividly discern the canals of fright overruling the blood inhabiting his arteries. Preceding clashes with junkies trying to raid his car for anything they could get their grimy, flea-ridden hands on. Just moments before a drug deal that would, in the span of a blink, decay to a worthless mound of ash.

The gush of anxiety wasn’t something Levi took lightly. Especially when it was for an event crowded with hundreds of thousands of people, with him and his friends merely a pinpoint among the lagoon of ponies. If what the man witnessed so far in Equestria was an indication of anything, predicting why he became consumed by the notorious lake of consternation was a next to impossible task. All he could do was hope. Sitting there, simultaneously under the onslaught of information unleashed upon him by the lilac unicorn, he prayed.

He mentally clasped his hands and directed his somewhat uneasy globes to the bright, buzzing heavens above. All he wanted was a peaceful outing. Was it really that much to ask for? A nice, cool spring day only made better by a free trip to the magnificent and stupefying metropolis of Cloudsdale. A chance to bear witness to, very possibly, Wonderbolts history in the making. The image his brain illustrated for him threatened to send his heart into a fluttering frenzy.

Sinking deep into the lush cushion in the best seats the stadium could offer to the trio of V.I.Ps. His form being delivered the riposte he desired on a silver platter. Trays of delicacies and fine wine provided to the trinity spectating the mortifying beatdown of the Golden Dashers through a thin layer of glass. An event that would add another notch to the Wonderbolts’ belt. Another victory to tally in the history books accompanied with a golden idol to shine their win for all the world to see.

There it was again. The creeks of dread. His blood vessels a victim of the merciless warpath of tyranny, its sights trained keenly on his unsuspecting being.

‘The Golden Dashers.’ Levi thought. Even when confined within the walls of his skull, the crew's title never failed to leave the tang of poison razing the male’s mouth. ‘Why can’t I stop thinking about them?’

It was a great inquiry. The abrupt torrents of fretfulness seemingly arrived without reason. Not even a hint of a basis for their entry. Levi’s mind, once an infinite terrain ruled by absolute peace and tranquility, was dashed by the group’s moniker. The Dashers were nothing but weeds erupting from the soil, ready and able to wreak havoc on the land governed by utter bliss.

The brunete desperately longed for a day devoid of turbulence. An afternoon where he could simply be Levi Cronell. Not the man in blue. Not Equestria’s sole protector. Not anyone’s savior. Just him. Nobody else. However, much to his crushing disappointment, the crushing trepidation for what was to come refused to die. Their presence was made loud and as clear as humanly possible. And the impact left on the male’s psyche didn’t bother to put forth any vein attempts to conceal itself.

Something was bound to occur at the game. Whether good or bad. Meaningless or downright evil. A subtle spark to ignite a lengthy chain of events or an explosion blaring in his face. Striving to predict the event his mind somehow knew would materialize wasn’t possible by any stretch of the imagination.

The only option he clutched with an iron grip in his manuses was an aspiration. A hope that all of his discord laying waste to his previously pacific psyche was merely a ruse. A blanket of vexation smothering the man’s brain that ultimately harbored no real meaning whatsoever. All it was was a masquerade summoned by one of Levi’s copious amounts of overthinking spells. Hoping was the only option left in his hands.
Whether the Golden Dashers would prove to bear any insidious intentions to riddle Levi’s life with troubles was an answer only time fostered, and one it would not release easily. Patience was key. The only task the male had to his name was keeping the ravenous, rebellious emotional typhoon battering the walls of his skull at bay.

Pools of elation gathered and glittered within her violet optics, harboring no end in sight for as far as the eye could see. Her lips parted and greeted one another at a rapid-fire, almost unearthly speed that the male could hardly comprehend. His grasp on the mounds of words catapulted at him with blinding speeds slipped further with every letter he couldn’t fathom.

Her excitement, her sheer jubilee for the event that was right around the corner, was a priceless sight to the man. The much less serious side of the unicorn was a spectacle to behold, and a precious one at that. Even the mere prospect of shattering her pure and unadulterated joy into a family of shards by his radical, possibly over-the-top worries was a nightmare. All he wanted for the trio, himself included, was a pleasant outing with no concerns or anxieties for miles beyond the horizon. Considering the Nightmare Moon and Gary fiasco they had to endure the night prior, the rearmost outcome he desired was more heartache to ravage the threesome.

A sparkling beam overshadowed his features. His delight radiating from his pearly whites like a lighthouse with its sights trained on the amethyst unicorn ahead of him. Who, much to no one’s surprise, never ceased her onslaught of speech. Pages flipped perpetually. There rations of the spotlight being used to their entirety before a violet hoof briskly cast them into obscurity once again.

In spite of Levi’s overwhelming efforts and tireless attempts to smother the orb of dread within him, his futile endeavors were abortive. His grin was nothing more than a masquerade. A barricade of false exuberance. All of the brunete’s labor shouldered by an almighty hope that the oblivious unicorn remained blissfully unaware.

His trepidation did anything but halt. In fact, with each second that passed where the man refused to address its existence, it only snaked its tendrils around his heart more and more. The Golden Dashers. The name wasn’t familiar. He had never heard of a title anywhere near remotely similar in all of his years. No explanation was apparent as to why his core was ravaged by the unwavering unease. None of it made sense. Not even a remnant of clarity was discernible for as far as the eye could see. For all intents and purposes, Levi was alone. Forsaken deep beneath the waves of internal ferment to clash tooth and nail with his emotions.

Levi’s mind catapulted him into an unwelcome journey down the battered, winding trail known as memory lane. Vivid yet distasteful echoes of the dimension of pure and unadulterated nothingness emerged from the cavernous depths of his memory. The harrowing images displayed within the confines of the static ring suspended mid-air flickered before his eyes, like a broken TV sputtering colorless amalgamations.

The deathly clash inside the ring of fire against the equine-esque creature, that was more akin to a mockery of a pony more than the real deal. The grimace seconds leading to the borderline fatal battle with Gary inside the frigid corridor. The aftermath of…whatever beast unleashed its divine wrath upon Ponyville. The quaint town, or what remained of it, left a vile mark engraved into the wrinkled walls of Levi’s brain. After the shower of brimstone and merciless hail of hellfire, what little was spared from the massacre could only be considered a blazing wasteland. Charred husks of hollowed, vanquished buildings bespeckling a sea of smoking skeletons. The spectacle was utterly and absolutely dreadful to say the least.

Levi couldn’t predict evil. That was the main takeaway from the brunete’s foreboding recounting of the previous day’s events. Sinners hide among the saints, lying in wait within the tall grass of Equestria to sink their fangs into the innocents. It couldn’t get any more truthful than that. Predicting when danger would fall upon Ponyville, himself, or his friends was out of the question. All that he had to do was follow his gut in whatever direction it commanded him to march in. No matter how big or small the threat may seem. Despite the sheer level of absurdity it may present, or the insignificance of it.

Whatever the case may be, his intrusive anxieties would have to reside on the backburner indefinitely. The rapping upon the senior door of the library, that could only belong to a particular captain, meant one thing. The clarity he fancied would finally come to pass.

Humans and Cloudsdale weren’t friends. That was a sentiment that struck him like a freight train the very instant his foot left the sanctity of the hot-air balloon. The solid ground was no longer the save and grace he oh so dearly took for granted all his life. When the expertly painted azure cradle dangling below the mammoth gasbag finally greeted Cloudsdale’s terrain at long last, the threesome fit the definition of eager like a glove in every way imaginable.

However, the precise second Levi’s foot met the lush terrain of Cloudsdale, his heart plummeted alongside his freshly petrified being. To say Spitfire's brisk transformation from dear friend to savior wasn’t stupendous would be a criminal understatement. It took every fiber of strength within the male’s frame to resist sighing at the animated unicorn’s overlooking of the crucial spell. The magic needed for not only the brunete but the young, equally eager dragon to walk among the pegasi upon the lush terrain of clouds. In the end, every last bit of waiting and wrathful swarms of dread was beyond worth it.

A sight people would pay thousands to see was granted to him atop a silver platter. Any other emotion that previously occupied Levi’s form was cast into a thick lagoon of obscurity. Doomed to forever be exceeded by the flock of beaming thankfulness conquering the man at the flame-haired captain’s generosity. He was foolish to believe her kindness ended at her reality-defying rush to the hospital days prior.

As Levi would swiftly learn on his holycon uneventful trip to the world-renowned arena, the picture displayed to him by Twilight failed to seize each and every ounce of beauty Clousdale possessed. While the factories dotting the cosmic blanket of ultramarine cuddling the city snugly were a sight to behold, what lay within the confines of the ivory burgh was the true star of the show. The colossal, reality-defying towers that scraped the heavens robbed the entirety of the metropolis of the sun’s precious rays. Lengthy strips of small, unappreciated businesses relished in what little gleam that wasn’t utterly hogged by the mammoth obelisks protruding from the sea of ivory fluff.

Small talk circulating between the exalted trio tried in vain to override the borderline blaring pandemonium that none of them, especially Levi, bargained for nor expected. They couldn’t have guessed in a million years that a municipality harboring such a magnificent, tranquil exterior would be plagued with such bothersome commotions every second of every minute.

Some pegasi, who were immensely angrier and confrontational then the ones he had met thus far, thundered off in the distance. From what little Levi could dissect from their wrathful shower of words and hail of spiteful slang, their argument sparked into existence from one pony seizing the napping cloud of the other. From what the male could discern without needing a moment to ponder, hundreds, possibly even thousands, of impromptu beds lay sprinkled across the enormous sheet of cyan. As to why the duo of brutes never ceased their brigades of insults despite how ridiculous they appeared was nothing short of a mystery to him. The constant back and forth whistling of the air as the winged civilians dashed from one place to another raided Levi’s ears like a militia of Vikings. The strident whistle, that erupted each time another ironclad pegasus became a blur all around them, threatened to split his skull in two with every turbo trek. However, in spite of incessant, badgering auditorial discord of the fussing metropolis, the positives outweighed the negatives tenfold.

Since the wen resided practically adjacent to the heavens, the breezes and lengthy gusts of sugary-sweet wind arrived directly from the source. The almost non-stop zephyrs combed their long fingers through Levi’s locks. No scent dared to vanquish the perfect, unadulterated scent of the inodorous cat’s paw. In Ponyville, the air that radiated through the serene roads on a daily basis at no time came empty-handed. There was always an intoxicating fragrance of flowers nestled snugly in a field way over yonder like a souvenir from far away lands carried right to his doorstep. Or a hypnotizing aroma of freshly baked goods that sent his stomach into a rolling frenzy.

However, being nuzzled cozily in a cavity within the celestial sheet of cyanic, the gales possessed no such thing. Occupying the empty space where a heart-fluttering and irresistible aroma would lie was, what could only be described as, a hint of utter tranquility. In a way, it felt as though that currents that rode through the preoccupied streets of Ponyville were there only for the nasal pleasure they provided to the grateful civilians. It seemed, at least to the man, that the drafts that barreled through Cloudsdale were a gift dropped down from the promised land high above their heads. The puffs traveling up their nose rid his head of anything that even remotely resembled a negative thought. The very thing the man desperately needed at that moment.

Accompanying the discordant hissing of the soaring pegasi and the soothing song of the nomadic breeze was another sound. A much, much louder and immensely chaotic clamor belched their vile donnybrook as though they were attempting to harass the city of God overhead. The volleys of rumbling cheers and bombards of malicious jeers prophesied a very unpleasant aural experience for any and all who dared to enter. Aiming to decipher the carpet bombing that was the flood of heckles was equivalent to demanding a blind man to decrypt hieroglyphics. It couldn’t be done. And, if Levi was honest, there wasn’t really a need to. Their tone alone and the sheer, almost out-of-control level of their combined voices told the brunete all he needed to know.

While the troika’s features twisted and contorted under the crushing pressure of the wave of bellows disgorged from somewhere, Spitfire’s owned not even a hint of anything that even slightly resembled discomfort. Poised amber irises lay concealed behind jet black lenses. Being held in place by lengthy silver arms that reached behind her head and made themselves at home in the crevasse dividing her ear from her temple. The scentless tempest washed over her relaxed frame just the same as the trio at her rear, allowing the collar of her captain's uniform to dance in the zephyr. To her, the jarring disharmony, that virtually laid waste to their skulls, was business as usual. To the triumvirate who struggled to keep their faces from scrunching like a crumpled plastic bag, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The closer they got to the ruthless barrage of hullabaloo, the harsher the abominable blend of acclaims and mocks became. Spitfire’s ear twitched. A practically nanoscopic sign that the assault on their senses was finally getting to her, but an indication nonetheless. A thought that lingered in the depths of Levi’s mind was what the actual arena holding the much anticipated game was going to be like. His brain wasted no time in becoming a rampant, uncontrollable hub of tens of hundreds of possibilities as to what the mammoth stadium could possibly be. His fantasies ranged from far beyond the boundaries of reality to more grounded. They fluctuated from utterly wild illustrations of grandiose theaters bathed in grandeur from head to toe. The finest gems dug from the most cavernous bowels of Equestria, reeled from the earth by the finest carts money could buy, bedazzling its being. The jewels glittering in the soft blanket of the morning sunlight that completely enveloped it, transforming the ring into a glimmering idol of glory.

When the ashen asphalt path came to a conclusion, the sight before his eyes completely turned his impossibly high expectations to dust. When the mammoth building came into view, Levi’s irises were fully expecting to bear witness to something utterly different. He anticipated a colossal, magnificent building either identical or close to what his rife mind fabricated. What he received however was not only more reasonable than his fantasies by a landslide and a half, but more to his liking than he initially believed.

Perched on a cloud, a mere speck in the cosmic blanket of blue it rested in, was the grand stadium. If he was honest, there was nothing readily apparent about the arena that differentiated it from an coliseum plucked straight from the Roman empire. In the stead of the tan bricks forged from the rich, silky sand that blanketed ancient Rome was dull gray concrete. Cracks and divisions defiled the once flawless exterior of the enclosure. The only indicator that would signal it was in fact based in the modern era were the lofty golden flagpoles erected from the top. The immense pride it harbored practically resonated through Cloudsdale with each flap to the whistling wind.

Beyond the entrance, a long crimson carpet with deep, foreboding black borders on either side ran the full length of the entrance. The rug looked almost painted, as if it was one with the floor from the moment it dawned into existence. The walls were flawlessly cleaned and maintained stone-gray bricks, courtesy of the, what they could only assume to be, armies of janitors who furbished the place unwaveringly. The passageway was more narrow than Levi expected. However, the vast amount of vibrantly colored accolades and medals adorning the wall made the aisle all the more cramped. The rows upon rows of symbols of many victories in the decades, possibly even centuries, since the bowls birth tried and failed to rob him of his attention.

The striking resemblance to the dark, decrepit stronghold that once housed the Royal Sisters long ago sent a pulse of dread radiating through Levi’s being. The borderline identical tapestry, sans the nauseating crunch from decades of uncleanliness the former possessed. The dusky bricks lined with a seemingly unending display of conquest in the form of limitless awards and tributes. The blazing hues of the extensive banners dangling from the stygian walls like a dove soaring through a night sky practically screamed for attention in Levi’s peripherals. In spite of the dingy, overall woeful outward appearance, it was a stark and most certainly more appreciated contrast to the wretched castle. Having unending lines of prominent captains portraits and boastful recognitions was inherently superior to a murderer donning turquoise holding your friend at gunpoint. Or a shadowy alicorn roaring her dread-inducing cackle throughout the decaying halls.

On second thought, maybe more was evidently awful about the ill-omened fort than the grand stadium by leaps and bounds. However, only time could tell what the long-awaited game would hold.

Levi sank deep into the lush, heavenly chairs of the V.I.P suite. The bold golden behemoth nestled snugly in the boundless sheet of azure above rained its blessing upon the vast stade. Levi’s frame, almost always ready for anything ever since the harrowing encounter at the castle, melted into the warm open arms of the chair.

The room, reserved only for the fortunate few who were granted access, was everything Levi expected and desired for it to be. All he wanted was time to relax. Even a mere five minutes to let loose and live his life. Seize the crisp, odorless air of Cloudsdale into his pining lungs. Feel the luck of his survival pulsate through his form with each rhythmic pound against his ribs. Allow his taste buds to frolic in utter jubilee at the heavenly elixir dropped from the heavens on a golden platter for the V.I.Ps to indulge in.

It was the experience the man longed for ever since his return from Celestia’s castle the night prior. He desperately hungered for a day, hell, even an hour of pure uninterrupted relaxation. Not have to worry about undead bastards looming over his shoulder. Fearing that one day, the frigid metal of a pistol would dig into his nape and the male would be no more. If only he didn’t have to fret about perils that threatened to lay waste to Equestria, leaving survivors nothing more than a thing of the past. A remnant of a time long-lost.

Relief flocked to the male’s heart in droves and armies. No longer did the overbearing anxiety of brewing menace impale his heart with their swords of dread. He could, in the simplest way possible, exist. A fact that sent the corners of his lips lurching towards the heavens above.

A silky midnight-black carpet concealed the stone floor beneath. Lengthy smoke-grey stripes mustered the courage to defy the sable rug, reaching from one end of the matting to the other diagonally. To Levi’s left were three other seats, identical to the one the brunete resided in, each of them divided by a small stygian table. The walls possessed a sooty complexion, as though they were decorated top to bottom with the ashes of the deceased. Large silver plates adorned the crown of each of the bijou tops. Presented atop the trays, the liquid harbored within glimmering in the wrathful rays of the blazing mammoth star, were three lofty bottles.

If the way the royally-suited waiter rambled on and on about the jungly, disorienting mess of a history about the supposed “delectable” drink, one would assume it was only the finest alcohol. A concoction fermented only in the highest towers of God’s kingdom. Stewed in the largest pots forged from superb gems excavated from the earth. Instead, the only thing the trio received was a drawn-out babble and a triad of glasses filled to the utmost with subpar belly wash. Great.

However, Levi refused to allow a badgersome rant and a serving of inferior, sorry excuse for sherbet completely mar his outing. The true star of the show. The cream of the crop. The feature the quarters possessed that frankly saved the trio’s expedition lazed embedded deep in the concrete wall before them. A large, absolutely blemishless, broad window accorded their peepers access to the stupendous arena in its entirety. Thanks in large part to the dim, ill-light space they found themselves reposing in, the three’s sight of the grand hippodrome housing the uber-anticipated event was far from impaired.

An oddly smooth, behemoth disc of clouds idled in the bullseye of the grandiose dome, that seemed as if it could house a stade of its very own solely by itself. Protruding from the bald ivory playing field were yellow and black striped metal poles. Extensive, battered rings served as heads for the lofty totems jutting from the pigmentless ground, their paint beyond worn and beaten from their evidently weather-torn beings. The vibrant hues didn’t stand even a sliver of a chance against decades of merciless rainfall. The top-left corner of the alloy hoop was unfortunately a victim of the incessant, ruthless showers.

The varnish, once lively gold and the richest black imaginable, was nothing more than a figment of lost time. In its stead, rearing its ugly head for all to see, was the hideous pale innards of the ringlet. No longer were the unappealing ore, the skeleton of the obelisk, concealed beneath a veil of high-spirited hues. The years of war against the unpitying nights of wrathful storms and angry thunder exploding through the air left the augmented stanchions as a message to all.

If Levi was honest, the omphalos of the monumental amphitheater was anything but what the man expected. He anticipated the hub of the stade to resemble exactly the way the exterior portrayed it to be. A borderline ancient bowl where lion-hearted gladiators fought until their heart slammed against their ribs for the final time. He expected a vast pool of sand to inhabit the middle and metal, barred gates as old as time reel up by chains. All to reveal the fiery introduction of the valiant fighters, their veins transformed into canals of fiery adrenaline amplified by the skull-crushing roars of the exhilarated spectators.

While Levi received the furthest thing from that, the combers of excitement that sent shivers through the pegasi bearing witness to the game bathed his form. The energy alone pulsating through the crowd like a mushroom cloud was a sight to behold. His hopes were higher than the golden paradise above for what the close-nearing tournament had in store for the lot of them. If the buzzing vitality echoing throughout the stands was an indication of anything, it was sure to be a spectacle worth dying for.

Levi removed his arm from the cozy sanctity of his lap, coiling his fingers around the slender body of the elegant chalice. His lips unified with the brim of the outright stainless goblet, the ever-so-familiar sharp tang of cheap wine violating his formerly serene mouth. Nevertheless, in spite of the acidic punch that showed not even a sliver of mercy to his chops, the aftertaste was worth the wallop. Needless to say, the chipper host’s nearly unending assault of words didn’t lie.

The brunete returned the sylphlike vessel to its rightful platter, bringing his hand back home in the toasty hug atop his thighs. The denim warmed by the blazing beast of a star only made the manus’ embrace all the more restful.

Levi somehow managed to tear his globes from the hypnotizing view of the Cloudsdale horizon, briskly stealing a glance of his two companions seated beside him. It was a wholesome display to say the absolute least. Witnessing the soft, evidently more sensitive side of his friends felt like a show of emotion too precious to be seen by anyone excluding themselves.

Levi’s mind briefly flickered back to the distressing nightfall that truly sent the brunete down his path as the “Man in Blue”. The fateful, catastrophic, failed attempt at a Summer Sun Celebration. The look of raw, primal terror invading her otherwise peaceful plum optics. Her heart rate skyrocketed to unimaginable levels she never even considered were a feasible prospect. Her deep purple and raspberry streaked mane waving in the bitter castle air as she burned rubber to Levi’s side.

Comparing that petrified version of the lavender unicorn to the one practically becoming one with the leather recliner was like contrasting two entirely separate people. In a way, it was. However, Levi didn’t have to worry about that nigh on deathly night any longer. He could finally allow it to drift into the cavernous bowels of his mind, forever and always. Doomed to be consumed by the ravenous waves of obscurity. Where it rightfully belonged.

Without warning, the strident pandemonium of mechanical whining led a violent rampage through Levi’s ears. In spite of the distance from the source of the commotion, combined with the thickness of the glass, one would expect they would be spared from the uncharitable bedlam. However, Levi had been wrong before. And this was merely one of those times.

The robotic, stentorian whirring fortunately persisted for only a handful of seconds more. Levi’s belief that his hearing had suffered enough in the past few days to last him a generation was swiftly crushed. The earth-vanquishing boom that sent Gary back to hell. The explosion from the Elements as Nightmare greeted her defeat. The whizzing as Soarin’ sent him barreling upon his first entry into Ponyville. But, if the shrill computerized singing was an indication of anything, his auditory torment was far from concluded.

A duo of ample metal sheets, identical to garage doors sans the iconic ridges the latter possessed, rose from the ground. The alloy panel briskly divorced the floor, permitting the prodigious ocean of more than eager onlookers visual ingress to what lay within.

The chamber beyond the iron slab looked as if it hadn’t heard the word light in centuries. Impossibly thick darkness clung to the walls like starving mosquitoes. Viscous tendrils belonging to the murky shade wreathed the tenebrous silhouettes inhabiting the rooms. Attempting to discern the identities of the crews residing in the belly of the dusk stretched far past the point of impossible. If Levi was honest, the fact he could make out their vague shapes from the distance and density of the tenebrosity was itself a miracle. From what tiny miniscule details the male could make out from the lightless void, Levi distinguished the faint configuration of goggles fastened tightly over their domes.

The gargantuan lake of beholders were instantaneously lit ablaze the very instant the mystery pegasi’s hooves vacated the abyss of gloom. Simultaneously, two winged ponies released their trotter from the garroting tentacles of the internal twilight. Levi amazed himself once more at his newfound exemplary vision he didn’t even know he possessed.

From the left chasm of shadow emerged a hoof costumed in flashing, vibrant hue of yellow. A pigment that would cause the sun to turn green with envy. A mere inch above where their appendage ended rested a cyan lightning bolt from one side of their limb to the other. A Wonderbolt. Arguably the most recognizable color scheme he had beared witness to thus far in his Equestrian journey. After all, how could he forget the tint belonging to the pegasus who rescued him from an immensely perilous fate.

From the right lightless cavity, in stark contrast to their adversaries, the opposition to the Wonderbolts wasted no time in setting their grandiose entrance into motion. The co-captain of the Golden Dashers materialized from the ill-light lacuna. The raging pride she held for her comrades made itself known with each step she took. From the murk, with her deep blue and fuchsia striped mane whipping in the breeze like a flag in an unrelenting thunderstorm, was the second head the team possessed. And arguably the Dashers’ better half.

Cloud Rider. Her dark navy hair flowed down her muscular neck, one half of the indigo vanquished by a belt of rich salmon-pink. Her profound blue eyes were hidden behind a veil of silver-rimmed cobalt goggles secured snugly around her skull. Her expertly-tailored fliers suit stayed tried and true to the crew’s name in every way. Each inch of her ironclad frame, sans her flowing locks and tail, were sleeved with an exuberant shade of gold. A lengthy, sapphire flame coiled around her forelimbs, as though a viper bursted into bright azure flames and slithered up her protuberance.

The slender finger of fire spiraled up until it conjoined with a long tentacle of similarly colored flame, reaching from the rear of her head all the way to the dawn of her tailpiece. Instantaneously, the cosmic lagoon of spectators fulminated into a jubilated inferno.

That morning, during Twilight’s seemingly never ending rant about Cloudsdale and its extensive histories and legacies, one name jutted out from the hundreds of words he subconsciously tuned out. Years preceding Levi’s fateful arrival, after the original founder of the Dashers vacated the land of the living, two high-ranking members swooped in to take his place. Cloud Rider, the very same marching with her fellow allies to the playing field. And another, one the man had not made out or discerned from the line of Dashers yet, Silver Spears.

From what little the man picked up from her boundless explanation of the cadre, it seemed Cloud and Silver were polar opposites. The furthest thing from two sides of the same coin. Silver, according to the lavender unicorn, put winning as her top priority above all else. While Cloud on the other hand cared more about the well-being of her troupe than seizing victory. How the duo harbored even a sliver of chemistry given their clear-cut deviations was anyone's guess.

Levi welcomed the somewhat bitter zip of the low-grade wine with not-so-open arms as he gazed through the behemoth window. Spitfire stood as high and mighty as her jubilated nerves would allow. Her hooves remaining firmly planted into the chalky disc, a posture that would not live long.

“Dashers! Are you ready?” From a chocolate-brown wooden announcer's booth, nestled amply between the two endless rows of onlookers, a more-than eager pegasus’ voice declared. Combers of exhilaration drowned the cosmic lagoon of spectators without a moment to spare. Levi ogled through the stainless glass, his emeralds grazing over the blatantly nerve wracked flock of Golden Dashers.

A toned-down yet still shrill squeal of utter and unbridled joy catapulted from the lilac unicorn’s lungs, sending quakes of elation echoing through her frame. Only time could tell if Twilight’s strident display of joy would be warranted or the polar opposite.

The way Levi saw it, the Dashers were tepid, off-brand, generic cola locking horns with classic Coke. Grade-school tee-ball versus the New York Yankees. The odds were not in their favor. If anything, it seemed to the brunete that the omnipotent being watching over them set this event into motion all in an elaborate ruse to humiliate the Dashers. And, honestly, the male wouldn’t be even remotely surprised if that was the case.

The horde of over-the-top, nerve wracked jocks attempted in vain to fein the thinnest facade of menace while trying and failing to stare down their graphicly better adversaries. Their bones convulsed with the same crippling panic that rocked their steel-plated being. Cannonballs of sweat, leaving lengthy murky trails in their wake, held a derby down their feather-coated wings. Moisture virtually gushing from their foreheads threatened to turn their sharp features, cloaked behind a false veil of confidence, into a slip-n-slide.

Over his extensive stay in the, very rarely, beautiful city of Tuscaloosa, Levi had drifted in and out of his fair share of sports teams. Both harboring a momentous role that needed to be fulfilled and expertly played out, unless he desired the beatdown of his life in the locker room. Or, he possessed a small one. A position that, if he missed a few practices or games, it was no skin off anyone's back. With that stated, the brown-haired man had been a factor of numerous competitions, identical to the one he was witnessing, in the decades he spent in Alabama. Never, in all of his months upon months of exercise and hardship, had he everexperienced a level of disquiet even remotely similar to the Golden Dashers.

In fact, the more he thought about it, nothing about them seemed normal in the slightest. Their posture nearly collided with their fate several times. The skeleton keeping their daunting forms alive next to crumbled on multiple occasions. If their optics were visible there impossibly dark lenses, he was more than certain they would be pooled with stress as far as the eye could see. Truthfully, he probably had no idea the utter depth of the lagoons of alarm plaguing their globes.

“Golden Dashers, will the first racer take their place.” The thunderous declaration rocketed from the metallic, achromic speakers situated all around the ceaseless ocean of spectators.

Cloud Rider, the only one out of her lackluster blob of goons that seemed to possess even a measly shred of fortitude, sauntered through her subpar mob. The boundless strips of royal blue cushioned seats only now presented their division for all the world to see. It was clear as day which side inhabited which militia of fiery, undying zealots, ready to shout from the rooftops in support until they drew their last breath.

The left, the Wonderbolts barmy army, swore a solemn vow of silence when the Dashers’ deity emerged into view of the public eye. Met with blistering scowls by some, and nothing but the most divine gazes and eyeballing by others.

“On your marks!”

Cloud settled her hooves deep into the ivory plate completely devoid of every last remnant of color. The sharp, immortal longing for victory within her peepers nearly pierced the glass shrouding her irises.

“Get set!”

The triad shifted in their seats.

Cloud’s brows furrowed.

Her sights were acutely locked onto the gold metallic hoop before her.

Conquest against easily the utmost skilled band of fliers in all of Equestria was nothing short of a next to impossible task. She knew that more than anyone. However, the raging lion forged from an immortal longing for triumph refused to die. In the toasty palms of success or the bitter clutches of defeat, Cloud would not back down. Only when her dead body hits the floor would she ever even consider the possibility.

That promise, the oath she earnestly affirmed to follow regardless of the prices of the path she took, would test her here and now. Even in the face of an abashing, downright dreadful loss that would stain the Golden Dashers’ broad legacy for as long as it remained standing, she didn’t care.

This was the moment she proved herself. Right here. Right now. And she couldn’t be more composed.

“Go!”

A booming crack tore through the air.

The pegasus’ muscles kicked into high gear.

Her hooves exploded from the ground.

Cloud’s wings knew the mission.

And so did she.

A serene gale invited itself into the nostrils of the man in blue. The placid zephyr danced to the beat of its own drum as it traveled through the hushed ether of the Wonderbolts Academy. The tranquil, soothing gust trekked down the boundless canals conquering the airspace, leaving a faint whistle resonating throughout the polytechnic. A short-lived yet still discernible legacy left behind, fading into the oxygen he bore the fortune of breathing. Disappearing into the morning atmosphere as though it was never even there. A ghost vanishing into the night.

Levi liquified into one of the man lush navy blue cushioned seats in Spitfire’s office. The hub of all decisions pertaining to the greater-good of the team, both downright lifesaving and utterly dreadful. The prospect of granting his being the respite it oh-so desperately needed in the self same room where so many ponies had their dreams vanquished. Their chances at victory and fame robbed from beneath their hooves. The stem of the flourishing, lively tree that was the academy. Where with one foul crimson stamp, a pegasus’ burning aspirations for reverence would be destroyed. In a matter of merely milliseconds, years and decades of yearning would be for naught. The countless hours they transformed to ashes spent in the gym. The nigh-uncountable days turned to cinders of boundless studying, praying with whatever mental fortitude stood high and mighty within their skulls they would pass. Every last bit of it with a sole, raging ambition in mind. An undying determination.

Not only would they survive the grueling and sometimes outright cruel bodybuilding required for an extended stay, but thrive. Become one of the best. A king of all kings. The shining stallion on the cover of Equestria Daily. Have their name be roared for miles when there time to put their skills on display for all the world to see in the core of a stadium.

It would be the holy grail a regular pony couldn’t even fathom. It sounded easy on paper. Exercise. Study. Endure. Then, you’re home free. Until that fateful day when they’re called into the very headquarters Levi reposed in without a measly sliver of a care in the world. When they find themself under the stern, expertly-honed amber gaze of the flame-haired captain, their blood ran cold. Veins converted into neverending canals of ice. Arteries metamorphosed to frosty wastelands. Where their confidence once lived now resided a barren fallout zone. The valiance they formerly possessed to look Spitfire in her razor-sharp, unforgiving irises without crumbling to dust died with their goals.

One fell swoop. A scarlet blotch of ink defiling the achromatic paper where all of their information lied. The fatal dread that must’ve swarmed their nucleus like a colony of vengeful hornets. “Pack your bags,” He could almost hear the fierce headmaster speak, “You’re going home.”

Truthfully, Levi didn’t have anything remotely close to a clue as to what long-winded, verbose scenarios his brain fabricated under the wrathful force of boredom. In fact, all he pined for in the cozy confines of Spitfire’s, what he perceived to be, happy place was rest. For the limitless darkness to establish supremacy in his psyche. The lengthy inky tendrils of sleep to coil around his frame. Grant the maws of the cavernous depths of slumber permission to swallow him whole.

Attempting to garner an ideal position for the utmost possible ceasing of consciousness was a challenge to say the least. Constant shifting. Incessant scraping of the legs grating against the flaxen flooring, threatening to vandalize its flawless complexion. The perpetual arching and contorting of his poor defenseless spine to try and will a congenial stance into existence. He tried, in every sense of the phrase, all he could think of. Fingers clasped behind his head. Hands idling in his lap. His feet crossed versus folded. His strives evinced unavailing.

Seconds melted into minutes. The aggregate of countless futile efforts showed without a shadow of a doubt that the peace and quiet he so miserably lusted for was stationed far beyond the horizon. Each rhythmic tick of the clock situated above his head, while simply a component of the miniscule background noise that faded into obscurity for anyone else, struck a starkly-different emotion deep in the man. The click that rang from the chronometer and ricocheted off the vibrant indigo walls was a smack to the male’s face. As though the omnipotent being watching over him from the heavens above strictly forbade entry into the land of dreams to mock the brunete. In truth, it seemed more tortuous than that. A punishment for his sins would be a more fitting label.

At least that’s what Levi wanted to be the case. The man was correct to some degree. Something was indeed looming over them and simultaneously more-than-guilty of the sleep robbing it committed. A malevolent being. The life it bore the misfortune of living insidious and riddled with blasphemies.

It was a bony and evil beast. One that went by only one word.

Worry.

An intense, drastic, never-before-seen level of anxiety that plagued every last nook and cranny of the otherwise tranquil bower. The odorless threads of Cloudsdale wind, who brewed the courage to even fantasize about entering, sealed their fate the very instant their form greeted the perturbing air. Whatever otherworldly entity that personified the precise emotion utterly claiming Spitfire’s frame adopted the doublet into its grasp. And resistance was futile.

It all started long before the rock-solid pair of friends touched base back at the flying institute, when the scorching feud’s finale came and went. Rainbow Dash accompanied the blaze-haired captain as she sauntered along the titanic panorama of clouds, with one destination imprisoned in her mind’s sights.

A diner. More specifically, the mother of all restaurants in Cloudsdale. It was, in every sense or definition of the word, the best. It had dawned greatly preceding the birth of any of the people briskly trekking to the eatery in the present. In fact, prior to the accouchement of most if not all of the pegasi residing in the buzzing city on that very day. Spitfire’s grandparents had told her wonders about the allegedly divine venue.

Sanguine reviews from all walks of life. Heavenly food dropped down to the table from the golden paradise above solely for their indulging pleasure. Drinks, both for the heaviest of drunkards and lightest of drinkers, were nothing short of seraphic.

It was the whole shabang. A perfect terminus for a downright flawless day. Just the mere prospect of Levi blessing his body with the cherubic respite it so-desperately needed after an energy-burning outing nearly made the brunete’s mouth water.

Minutes of strolling beneath the wrathful eye of the blazing behemoth sitting in his throne above their heads passed. A weariness blossomed in their feet and hooves respectively. Heads transformed into mindless, bone-tired goldfish wandering aimlessly in a glass tank. Their port of call, which was advertised to be “a wing flap away” by the world-renowned headmaster, seemed miles beyond the horizon.

Right as fatigue began its rapid-fire consumption of the man’s physique like a starving disease, the yellow and tan striped structure materialized into view at long last. Finally, following the couplet hour long venture from Ponyville to the vast city of Cloudsdale, Levi made it. Repose, a way to appease his roaring gut, and quenching to his desert of a throat were bundled into a lone all-in-one package. Levi’s build threatened to melt into a puddle of black and blue at the thought of dissolving into the lush leather of the luxurious benches. To feel his taste buds thank him on its hands and knees, palms firmly pressed together and all, at the stunning cuisine he would be provided. Hopefully free of charge.

It was a flawless recipe for an equally mint trip. However, when the strident ring of a bell hanging over the front door invaded the assembly's ears, their odyssey was devoid of normalcy from there on out.

When the mostly stainless glass bordered with a dying aurate-painted metal briefly divorced its frame, a brace of well-dressed pegasi eventuated.

One was instantly, albeit effortlessly, recognized by the sapped male as the very same contender he was silently rooting for during the Dashers’ entire…whatever that was. A circus act was a more fitting title.

It was Cloud Rider. The mare’s bone-white skin was no longer swathed beneath the sun-yellow and azure outfit he associated with her until that moment. Her deep sapphires were no longer betrayed by her veil of cerulean-tinted goggles that hid the sight-to-behold from the world. Her navy and pink striped mane was better resting peacefully against her neck than whipping wildly in the wind as calories converted to fleeting memories. A cyan inscribed polo shirt sleeved her ironclad chassis, the team’s logo sewed with pride into where the right front pocket would normally reside.

A pegasus in a spear formation, reducing the sound barrier to an echo of a lost time while the winged pony burned rubber through the air. The ultramarine cobras of flame gliding across the individual's structure, a carbon-copy of Cloud’s own uniform Levi had beared witness to the hour prior.

Her coat retained a thin, borderline unnoticeable blanket of sweat from her rigorous yet vain strive at triumph. The sun’s irate shafts of flaxen radiance gained a fresh mocking undertone as they brought a sheet of glimmer upon the co-captain’s flesh. While stunning to some, with the context in mind, it obtained a sickening inkling.

The companion situated at her side however was an entirely different story, while simultaneously being the culprit behind Spitfire’s overwhelming fret. It was the leader of the sorry-excuse for a ragtag gang. The one who assisted in the founding of the team years ago. The self same who garnered mass amounts of both hatred and support from the general population of Cloudsdale.

Silver Spears.

Arguably the most infamous flying organization founding father in the history of the metropolis.

She had stone-grey skin with a mane almost identical to melted steel flowing over her cervix. Her eyes were pools of molten bronze, most certainly hiding something beneath its surface. The collar on her achromatic button-down fitted snugly over her muscular being was divided. Granting their eyes access to the argent whistle dangling from a slender scarlet necklace.

The air around swallowing the two jarring parties shifted like tectonic plates. Life all around them halted. The background noise of the whistling of Cloudsdale’s gales and the joyous harmonizing of birds ceased. In every way, the sudden and unwelcome encounter slayed the world in all directions with one fell swoop. A singular cleave of a blade, and Equestria died.

Gazing into her chestnut optics, seeing the microscopic pinpoint of something other than the overbearing hospitality, felt odd to say the least. He couldn’t put his finger on it despite his best efforts. However, what he could decipher from the marine of inconspicuous emotions was the uncanny stir in the atmosphere. A disturbance. An unmistakable symbol of Levi’s unnatural, somewhat eerie, ability to detect inherent danger, either apparent or not, kicking into high-gear.

The congruent sensation he received as he traversed through the ashen fog in the castle. The dread and unease kindling in the pit of his gut seconds foregoing the dastardly headlights laying waste to his vision.

While yes his potential to forewarn threats has worked before, and there was certainly no reason for its effectiveness for Silver to be up for debate, Levi had his doubts. On one hand, the unusual and still unexplained combers of trepidation that completely consumed the man in blue that morning would ultimately have an answer. That being it had something to do with the Dashers’ chief before him.

On the other hand, Levi could’ve easily fallen victim to another one of his copious amounts of overthinking spells. That perhaps he was allowing his internal discord to manifest into an unwarranted disquietude towards the sooty pegasus.

Shaking her hoof, surveying every last drop of emotion that dared that inhabited each individual centimeter of her copper-colored globes, it wasn’t all peaches and cream. Behind the treacherous masquerade she reinforced to the absolute utmost, a pinpoint of something in her cavernous lakes of rust resisted her endeavors at censorship. As her jaws separated and reunited more times than Levi could keep up with, her rambling having no end in sight for miles, it gave him all the more breathing space to analyze the speckle. The sinister dot. A dabble for whatever evil transgression she had planned.

It wasn’t her hasty, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it introduction to Levi that metamorphosed Spitfire into a confident and unbreakable pillar, to a nervous train-wreck of a pony. He didn’t know what foul, ungodly kahuna overcame Silver’s irises, but whatever it was, it struck the fear of god in the Wonderbolts captain.

Even a half hour in the wake of the ordeal, Spitfire’s body once tough as nails body language became a distant memory. Now, trying and failing to relax in her midnight blue swivel chair, a meager task as small as scrawling her name across a document didn’t come without a mountain of disquieting mannerisms.

An attenuate layer of sweat dawned on her brow. Colonies of cannonballs of hidrosis commenced a derby down her forehead. Her teeth clenched, an effort to keep her quivering jaw at bay. One that, unlike anything else she did to halt her jittery movements, proved successful. A hoof ran through her mane every few seconds, only adding to the ever-growing collection of moisture accumulating on her scalp. If somebody were to waltz into the room, it wouldn’t surprise Levi a bit if they mistook Spitfire for a marathon runner who just crossed the finish line.

Abruptly, vanquishing the silence in its entirety, a low deep groan escaped Spitfire’s lungs. Her pen clattered against the mostly blank sheet of paper on her chocolate-brown leviathan of a desk. In truth, if the barely any lines filled in whatsoever were an indication of anything, it didn’t seem like she would be using it anytime soon.

The short-lived clunk. That momentary pandemonium. Despite the barely noticeable length of the commotion, it was enough to knock the roaring silence of its mighty bedazzled throne. The ignition for Levi’s dissection of the situation. The trail of gas lit ablaze.

It was time to get to the bottom of whatever was irking Spitfire to such a degree. If Levi was honest, it was long overdue.

Levi stood, his weary knees and bone-tired joints immediately sparking a rebellion. Loudly demanding the sanctuary of the chair be returned to them, a reality that would forever remain a fantasy.

Levi meandered his way across the yellow lightning bolt-patterned rug to the treen behemoth somehow called a desk. A safe haven for the pegasus when times got rough and the road grew jagged. However, gone was the sensation of home that overtook her each time she bore the fortune of sitting in it. All it was now was a chamber of restlessness. An inescapable prison consternation that not only was absent of an escape, but devoid of a fragment of ruth. Much to Spitfire’s divided emotional landscape of relief and overwhelming agitation, Levi saw the shackles that bound her. And his mouth was the key.

“Spitfire?”

A low, misgiving hum broke through the irontight barricade of her sealed lips. The air struggling to climb the walls of her throat.

“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

Despite the silence, Levi knew as clear as day she realized the male was speaking the cold hard truth. After all, one doesn’t simply bail someone out of a painful fate without developing alayer of trust. Small or big, it didn’t matter. All that did was that it was there, ready and able to be used. A privilege he hoped Spitfire would seize and utilize to rid her chest of the harrowing mountains crushing it.

Hush reigned supreme in the room. Absolute, unfiltered quietude claimed its rightful seat on its mesmerizing throne. Every last shred, remnant, and scrap of sound for miles beyond the borders of the training establishment fell dead like poisoned birds. The only thing that remained of a regular functioning world were the slender streaks of golden radiance impinging through the crevasses in the blinds.

If he was honest, the brunete wanted anything but having to coax her into relieving herself of her grievances. Not only for pegasus’ own well-being, but for her fliers. Her fliers. Not anyone else's responsibility. Hers. So if Spitfire chooses to keep her feelings under lock and key, combined with personal suffering from her acute worry, her team would bear the brunt alongside their leader.

“Spitfire,”

Levi’s arm unfurled, allowing a supportive yet still gentle palm to cascade down upon the uber-tense pony’s shoulder. The rough textile of her captain uniform’s jacket felt like the flesh of a rhino unifying with his hand. The chafed material barely grazed the surface when it came to amputating her nucleus from the inflicted injustices.

The brown-haired man’s advances were only met with a stiff, sharp sigh, as though only a splinter of her internal turmoil managed to breach the prison behind her ribs. The lucky handful that were graciously granted the opportunity of emancipation.

“Come on, talk to me.”

Spitfire sensed a handful of corpses impact the ground inside of her, belonging to the worries that once plagued her core. She relished in the comfort of Levi’s tranquil tone ending the existence of her harsh anxieties with one solitary cleave. Spitfire didn’t bother shielding herself from Levi’s infectious plague of a smile. Spitfire was alert to the fact that declaring war on the urge to mirror their smiles was worthless. Their conflict ended exactly as she expected.

All the curled corners of her mouth indicated was how weak and frail her facade of merriness truly was. Her grin was akin to a nigh-invisible sheet of paper trying and failing to block a burning, blazing, raging orb from the view of the outside world. It was impossible to say the least. A fact only cemented further by Levi’s clear-cut puncturing of her brittle masquerade.

As much as her body pleaded with her to rid her chest of the mountains crushing it and give in to the man’s soft emeralds. Surrender to the might of his liquifying beam. Allow the chambers of her heart to be devoid at long last of the overwhelming, borderline fatal dread hijacking her being. She desperately pined for it. The sensation of freedom and intramural tranquility. The very same she profoundly took for granted in the perfunctory block of time preceding Silver’s fateful saunter through the diner door. The ear-piercing ring from the small golden bell swaying from the peak of the entry now stabbed her core like a sword of raw, searing apprehension. Unsparingly slapping the air from her desolate lungs. Even the mere mention of the uber-revered restaurant she previously loved and held on the highest pedestal within the bounds of reality sent her heart into a panicked frenzy.

She longed for that relief. To not experience the harrowing aftermath of a seemingly meaningless gaze and hoof shake. To others, they would practically collapse and succumb to the glut of elation of being in a ten-foot radius of a celebrity. To her however, it was an entirely different story. With her reputation riddled with sin, transgressions, crimes, the whole lot, Silver Spears was the last pony you would want grazing your presence. The rearmost option on any and all lists. If anything, it seemed to the sun-yellow pegasus that Silver had this planned out the precise moment she was informed of their upcoming feud. Infect Spitfie’s aura. Strike her with the king of all blistering glares that threatened to slay the captain where she stood. Leave. Simple yet effective. A fleshed out, flawlessly executed hit-and-run on her psyche. It was as though she smited the Wonderbolts headmaster with the sole purpose of afflicting her with the most amount of emotional discomfort and turmoil. Perhaps she enjoyed the nearly lethal angst that gnawed their souls at her impending arrival. An advent that was sure to bring a horde of disastrous consequences in tow, leaving nothing but anguish and ruination in their path.

Then, when their hapless victim was razed to dust, they left. Fading into the darkness from which they had come. A ghost melting into the tenebrosity of the night. Or, in Silver’s case, the devil retreating back into the hellfire it called home. Yeah, that was a more fitting label.

“Captain?” Abruptly, robbing the attention of the duo, a familiar voice emerged from the impenetrable silence of the academy. A little too familiar for Levi’s liking.

“C-Come in.” The words tripped and shambled from the prison behind her sealed-tight lips like a herd of heavy-footed elephants. In fact, speaking at all in the utmost hushed room felt…wrong in an unusual way. As if they were violating the soundless chamber with anything that seemed remotely similar to a sound. However, if the brunete thought that was bad, then he was anything but prepared for the badgersome trio of knocks upon the navy blue door. If the noiselessness wasn’t vanquished already, then it certainly was now.

The silver knob twisted. The old hinges groaned in annoyance as the steel panel divorced its frame. Inhabiting the indigo entry, basking in his own glory that he believed he harbored, was none other than Soarin’. The identical one who sent him barreling into a wall at speeds Levi never even considered were possibly under the laws of reality without a care in the world. No wonder he was a Wonderbolt.

“What is it, Soarin’?”

“The new batch of newbies are here. Thought I’d let you know.”

Spitfire’s domino of fraudulent confidence toppled.

“Here? Now?”

“Yeah, Cap.” Soarin’ responded. “Are you alright? You seem kinda-”

“I’m fine,” Spitfire sharply severed his words in two without a hint of hesitation. “I’ll meet you there.”

With a short-lived nod and a twirl of his ironclad physique, Soarin’ was gone. Vanishing into the ill-light hall from where he materialized from in the first place like a leaf in the wind. In absentia before Levi was permitted the chance to fully recognize his existence.

Spitfire’s haunches deserted the sanctity of her lush cobalt swivel chair, the wheels ceasing there rasping mere centimeters before colliding with the midnight blue wall behind it. Hooves transforming from clacking against the tan floor to muffled by the aurate carpet was foreign to the man’s ears. A sound that once upon a time was a standard noise that simply dissolved into the background noise of everywhere he went. A vital organ of the complex, thriving body known as the unnoticed ambience. However now, it seemed unnatural in an immensely odd way, as though Spitfire shouldn’t be walking.

That, at least to Levi’s very possibly overthinking brain, that Spitfire would be better off by leaps and bounds if she opted to remain in the deathly-silent chambers. Not to cure the brunete of his inescapable loneliness, but for her own good. Nine times out of ten, Levi trusted his gut more than anything alive or dead that ever walked the earth. The sensation that ravaged it. The begging-to-be-recognized merciless whirlpool that dawned in the fathomless bowls of his stomach each time the prickle of forthcoming danger stung his nostrils. And in the meager handful of days he’d been in Equestria, the internal uproar hadn’t failed him yet. Even in the years and decades preceding his fateful plummet into the world of ponies, the inner commotion was his own personal guardian angel.

From the instant his memories were capable of being remembered to now, it was practically his right-hand man. His bodyguard. His ride-or-die. The one thing, sans Alan, he could rely on the most in any world at any time. It didn’t matter whether his being was stationed in Tuscaloosa or a vast, boundless land ruled by a unicorn with wings, it would never stop being at his side when he needed it the most.

With that being said, and with the tingling in his belly amplifying as the seconds ticked by, Spitfire vacating the safety of her office was nothing short of a terrible idea. Not a thing with a functioning brain roaming the terrain of Cloudsdale would even dare to think about infiltrating the heart of the Wonderbolts academy. The moment her physique travels beyond the confines of the team’s hub, the story takes a drastic slope. If Levi’s roaring solar plexus at the sight of the strolling Spitfire was an indication of anything, anywhere outside the confines of her boudoir at any time spelled fated doom. A looming threat that no one could predict and most certainly couldn’t anticipate.

The specifics of what danger laid in wait deep in the dusky corridors of the institute were a blur. All that mattered was the major blaring takeaway from Levi’s forecast of precariousness. Something was coming for Spitfire. He had not even a shred of a clue as to who or what, but he was more-than-aware that it was rapidly approaching. Second by second, minute by minute, all they could do was buy time before its ineliminable arrival. The training establishment was its terminus. It was fate, perhaps destiny.

It couldn’t be altered, changed, or halted in any way shape or form. It was bound to happen. And his flame-haired friend forsaking the sanctuary of the Wonderbolts H.Q was merely pushing a marble down a lengthy, catastrophic, dreadful hill. The only thing that awaited the captain on the horizon let she continue down her path was anguish and misery.

A future Levi utterly abhorred. One he was going to stop dead in its tracks. Right here. Right now.

“Spitfire!” His companion’s name catapulted from his lungs as he whipped his physique around, his tense and tight-with-worry frame facing his oppo.

The headmaster’s movements ceased. Her head craned. Amber greeted emerald. His globes were pooled with alarm. A stark and graphic contrast from the deep yellow irises he gazed into with fret and panic. With the incessant clicking of trotters on flooring, a blanket of unfeasibly-thick quietude enveloped the pair once more. In a way, a vastly uncanny one, it was as if the duo had swapped bodies, dragging their personalities in tow.

Instead of Spitfire being the one nearly driven mad with anxiety, Levi assumed there stead. And the pegasus he looked down upon with nothing but concern seemed a lot calmer than she should be. Pinpoints of the suppressed dread that previously hijacked every inch of her being remained, the masses smothered by the untrue facade of fortitude.

“Yeah?” Her tone wasn’t spared from the suppression of the fabricated disguise of resilience. It sounded like the exact reverse opposite of the pony before him: Normal everyday Spitfire.

The more he peered into the cavernous depths of her optics and the longer his build sojourned in place, the louder a revelation screamed in his skull. Mayhap, contrary to Levi’s hysteria-ridden brain, Spitfire was capable of withstanding the storm in the foreseeable future. Maybe she possessed the brawn necessary to prevail over whatever threat made the downright foolish decision to harm the leader of the Wonderbolts.

Perhaps another one of his dastardly, wretched overthinking spells had reared its ugly head once more. Or a real risk to Spitfire’s lied ahead. In any case, intramural doubts began to surface that the imaginary or not peril harbored the muscle to take down the heart and soul of the Wonderbolts.

“It’s…nevermind.” The dismissal tottered from his lips.

“You don’t have to stay here, Levi. You can take a tour of the place if you want.”

‘A tour?’ Levi thought, the prospect of clearing his mind after such an unease-infested experience resonated through his head like the mighty golden bells of heaven. ‘Sounds nice.’

“I’ll do that,” The brunete replied, “Thank you.”

“No problem. Just try not to get lost, I don’t wanna come searching for you.”

A chuckle mostly rid the air of the emotional opacity.

“I’ll try. No promises.”

After a mutual sharing of a sweet, sentimental grin, Spitfire departed. Abandoning Levi in the boundless landscape of notions in his psyche. The man in blue sauntered out of the refuge of the office. As his shoes unified with the black and grey tiled floor of the hallway, regrets began to seep through the cracks of the almost perfect barricade he forged in his brain.

Was letting Spitfire go a bad idea? That was the sole inquiry that plagued the limitless landscape of his cerebrum. Were his intense perturbs really based in reality? Was her welfare something he truly needed to lose sleep over?

Levi’s rigid and vibrantly-clothed being became engulfed more and more by the tenebrosity with each step further he took into the maws of the shadow. His dark denim jeans became one with the gloom encompassing the passageway. And, just as quickly as the man in blue entered the absence of light, he vanished within it. Leaving behind only a husk of the meaningless trepidation.

‘Meaningless,’ The word echoed off the walls of Levi’s cranium, ‘Gosh, I hope so.’

Chapter 19: A reason to fear

Light. It was a beautiful thing. Casting out the dusk from the nightfall prior and blanketing the world in a lush layer of gorgeous radiance. Usurping the throne from the cruel, iron-fisted moon and allowing the burning behemoth to assume its stead. While still wrathful in its unleashing of its fiery rays upon the earth, a far cry from the dastardly dictator the colossal dull planet was. Banishing the bitter, frigid night air back into the darkness from whence it came. Shouldering its place a brisk, pleasant gale that galloped through the streets of the towns and cities it adored. Blessing the oh-so grateful citizens with its presence.

Levi never even considered in all of his years how he could take the mammoth inferno for granted. However now, as he traversed down the windy gloomy halls of the Wonderbolts academy, the realization couldn’t be more clear. It genuinely caught the man in blue off guard how dingy and overall dowdy this multi-thousand, possibly even million dollar institute seemed when illumination was a fleeting memory.

Long glass tubes nestled snugly in a achromatic metal bed alongside their brethren dangled from the ceiling. Their purpose solely to provide a stable source of luminescence to the otherwise tenebrous, shabby corridors of the establishment. With their intricate electrical bowels dead and lambency an echo of a time long lost, they were practically condemned. Imprisoned within their chalky steel prison, hanging from the stone-grey roof by slender, lengthy sable wires. The vast and labyrinthine mechanical organs, inhabiting whatever space lay atop the plafond, was now nothing more than a knotty colony of robotic organs devoid of a purpose. A barren wasteland of hundreds of stygian threads and silver panels, like an ancient city lost to time.

Where the passageways weren’t abandoned by the bulbs that forsaken them, the small square windows were barely enough to suffice. Whoever had the utterly brilliant idea of suppressing the sun’s lucid blessing put little moil into their efforts. From what miniscule, minute dividends prevailed from their endeavors of censorship, rangy shafts of golden gleam breached. The tan walls, downright absent of personality, were given a nanoscopic hint of the sheer beauty it was missing out on. Willowy bars of aurate luster adorned the sand-painted partition, the shadow of the shutters expurgating it casting a shelf-esque pattern. They reminded the male heavily of what the flaxen luminescence was trapped behind, bars of a cell.

And, if he was being brutally honest, that was exactly what the building evoked inside the brunete. A prison. Neverending oxbow aisles, dusky conditions, the white and grey bathroom tiles that formed the floor. It was an entire package that spelled an inevitable dreadful experience for any and all who entered. For Levi, that was most certainly the case.

Ever since the moment he vacated the sanctuary of Spitfire’s office and stopped himself from questioning her further, there had been a pang vandalizing his heart. A thorn periodically impaling his core every time the captain’s name ever dared to cross his mind. Whenever Spitfire grazed the endless pasture of Levi’s psyche, there it was. When he reminisced about his vain attempts to reel her negative feelings to the surface, it made itself known. Time after time, it was always there. Tormenting the male as if it was his own personal purgatory. A punishment that was forever locked behind his ribcage. One that, in spite of his momentous efforts to cleanse himself of it, was there to stay.

However, out of the laundry list of badgersome effects it brought in tow, one stood out from the broad sea of transgressions it inflicted. It wasn’t any of the pain or discomfort it afflicted him with. It wasn’t the domineering confusion that surrounded the pain’s existence in the first place. In fact, it was something Levi felt he shouldn’t even be fretting over. Yet, here he was. Wallowing atop his own personal mountain of regret, lamenting about the paths presented to him. One shining brighter than the rest but somehow the one he deserted.

During his silent trek, occasionally interrupted by an unnecessarily loud conversation from beyond the palisades, he was amicably gifted all the time he needed to think. Simply walk, breathe in the odorless Cloudsdale air, and think. However many minutes or hours he needed, it was all there. Right at his fingertips waiting to be used. Lingering, ready and willing to be burnt by the man in blue. Unsurprisingly, the unwelcoming tenebrous conquering every inch of the cloister was the ideal formula for exactly that. The tendrils of the murk coiling around his being like a militia of inky cobras threatening to lull him into a state of deep brooding. And, just as Levi turned a razor-sharp corner into another unsurprisingly ill-lit cloister, exactly that was achieved.

The gloaming swarming his vision perished. In its position, immediately swooping in like a malnourished vulture, was an immensely less drab and frowzy sight to behold. Levi found himself once again in Spitfire’s office, marinating in the deathly-thick air as he struggled fruitlessly for an optimal sleeping posture. He vividly remembered the constant pestering shuffling his build endured, trying with the utmost effort his bone-tired frame could withstand to pinpoint the perfect resting stance. Folding and unfolding his arms. Contorting his legs in every position he was aware of. He harked back to it all. The slight pinch of annoyance replayed in his heart was the repose he miserably longed for never came. Instead, all he received was a cruel drowning in the herculean ocean of worry the room was engulfed in. The chamber and the brunete had one thing in common, they both suffered from the sickening waves of anxiety radiating from the flame-haired pegasus’ tense form.

He was well-aware that if the walls could talk, they’d most certainly be pleading for Spitfire’s acute concerns to be addressed. And, not wanting to bear the brunt of the typhoon of trepidation any longer, Levi addressed the situation. However, the outcome he received, and the one he was partly responsible for, was the reverse opposite of what he strived for. In fact, he did more harm than good in every sense by leaps and bounds. The sudden death of the intense perturb, shrouded by a regnant veil of the infectious confidence he knew her for. The key word in all regards being “shrouded”. Not casted out to the cavernous bowels of Spitfire’s psyche as Levi intended. Not getting to the bottom of who or what Silver Spears truly was that terrified her to that degree.

He achieved none of that. All he did was not only give birth to a mass of questions with zero answer on the horizon, but breathe life into an army of misgiving that ravaged his nucleus without a fragment of mercy. One inquiry however ruled above all else, keeping its supremacy alive with an iron fist and a grim absence of ruth. A query that Levi wished had an easy, simple answer. A response that demanded no pondering or internal tussle for what was the correct answer. Over and done with in the snap of a finger. Howbeit, like all things in Equestria, it harbored no such thing. That probe, that scorching inquisition that robbed his brain of all ounces of attention, seemed undemanding on paper, but was per contra in reality.

Who is Silver Spears?

Easy. Not a problem. No sweat whatsoever. It appeared to be immensely straightforward. Labor was unnecessary. Any active contemplating or musing was gratuitous. At least that’s what he pined for. It couldn’t have been more obvious to the male that the real world had graphically different ideas. Why wasn’t the riposte as facile as it should be? Silver Spears was one of the two co-captains of the Golden Dashers. In spite of that being the only solution Levi could possibly offer his truth-starved intellect, he was more-than-aware that wasn’t the full story.

There was more hidden deep beneath the surface. The veracity behind the real identity of the pegasus was nestled somewhere in the depths of the darkest cavern. Waiting to be found in the abyss of the dusky canyon of mystery. It wasn’t a matter of Silver being some false name and discovering the valid identity of the pegasus. It was for more compound than that.

His confusion and intramural conflict dates back hours before his current footslog through the light-devoid aisles of the academy, following the Wonderbolts’ victory against the mediocre, ragtag group. The uncanny, oddly off-putting encounter with Silver and her lackey was the root of all of Levi’s current inner frays. The emotional skirmish he couldn’t seem to dig up the reason for. There was something so…weird about her. Her aura discharged the furthest thing from what her features eagerly painted with the brightest, most loudest of hues. It rippled a sentiment. One that Levi, sans Gary, had never experienced around another person ever in his life.

The outright joyous, beaming grin was a clear-cut dissimilarity from what candidly lied within. To say the ambience she carried on the crests of her shoulders with every step she took utterly betrayed her would be a criminal understatement. The piscinas of molten bronze, despite their exotic and unique appearance, without a doubt concealed something. A sinister intent. A hidden insidious nature burrowed in the gaping gulch of Silver’s internal vault of sentiments. And it goes without saying that Spitfire bore the brunt of her blazing, incandescent glare, where the truth was ripped to the surface without a sliver of pity.

The Dashers captain’s honor must’ve been tarnished to the maximum to warrant such a petrified, horror-stricken vizard to make itself home upon Spitfire’s features. His imagination had no limits when it came to attempting to decipher the conundrum of Silver Spears. What broad sea of crimes did she commit to sanction fear in the hearts of the ones who opposed her? How horrific was her character to permit the all-out consternation that unreservedly swallowed Spitfire?

Levi didn’t know what to think. His head was pitilessly scrambled from the vast array of thoughts ravaging his psyche. Simultaneously, just as quickly as he entered, he was thrust from the cosmic landscape of his mind. Now, as he wandered through the ghastly, decrepit halls of the academy, his brain served as a home for one pony and one pony alone. Silver Spears. The one he lacked the sufficient amount of knowledge to pinpoint his stance on. The one that terrorized his dear friend’s heart with enough dread to last a thousand lifetimes. Perhaps the veracity of what was candidly behind the mystery of Silver would come to him one way or another. Time worked in mysterious ways after all. It would reveal the candor when the appropriate situation arose. The moment the hour struck and the minute rhythmically ticked into existence, only then would verity prevail. Whether it be in the most heinous way imaginable, or tame enough for all the world to bear witness he had no idea. All he could do was clutch his hopes close to his chest and pray alongside them. Desire for an insipid reveal of the conundrum’s enigma. Tomorrow, next week, next month, hell, even later that day, no date was spared. Longing for a peaceful reveal was the only option that remained in his hand.

CRASH!

Levi’s skeleton threatened to leap from his skin in pure, unsullied fright. It was the first thing in what he perceived to be hours of aimless wandering that even slightly resembled a noise. In fact, anything that harbored a meager pitiful sound wave.

Putting the unusual and unexpectedness of the outcast pandemonium aside, the auditory discord wasn’t the only thing that piqued the brunete’s attention for better or worse. It was the sheer ferocity of the impact that hit the male in more ways than one. It was devoid of the simplicity of being just a regular old bedlam of two, somewhat immature, Wonderbolts messing around. Given the unforgiving nature of the training Spitfire practically tortured them with, it was no surprise that they pined for a few minutes to relax. At least, whatever they considered “relaxing”. Piledriving one another into the unyielding, chilly tiles and barreling into the spotless walls was their twisted definition of fun. Over and done with. Case closed.

It was the answer the man in blue yearned without a snippet of a doubt, but it was the exact opposite of what fate cruelly dealt him.

The audible dissonance, thankfully muffled by the solid textile dividing the first floor from the second, was too, dear he say, violent to be considered ordinary background noise. It advanced far beyond the boundaries of being standard clamor that all who grazed the academy were accustomed to.

No. It was so…savage. That was the only word Levi could conjure that could come close to describing the sickening, bile-inducing thump. Imagining the raw, unbridled fury that must’ve been put into the vile strike sent Levi’s stomach on a world tour. And to think the true nature of the bash was, thankfully, somewhat muffled by the pristine slabs he stood upon was…disheartening to say the least. It gave a barrage of shivers all the permission they needed to radiate through his frame, lacking a hint of hesitation.

The reality-defyingly thick silence that followed was unlike anything the brunete had ever experienced before in all of his years. Throughout his lengthy and admittedly tumultuous life both inhabiting Equestria and not, he had been faced with his fair share of deathly-awkward situations. Some warranting a public execution for how outright awful he handled it. Others brought upon a swarm of humiliation and disgrace to lay waste to his reputation. A handful of times where he was put to shame by one method or another, he was always able to bounce back…well, most of the time. This however, was the Ozymandias of all cumbersome situations. The father and mother of cumbersome interactions. It took the cake and then some. It roved an unfathomable distance past the borders of just being considered a cringe-making state of affairs. Now, it ambled into the dead-center of no man’s land. Danger. Genuine, bona fide danger.

In a way, he could discern the feud underneath his feet was starkly converse to the usual ruckus. And the fact that Levi of all people, an alien within the walls of the training establishment, identified that before anyone else was worrisome in itself. Coinciding with the brisk realization, the male had not even begun to question who or what could’ve caused the furor. There was no additional hue or cries immediately following the harsh maelstrom. Nothing at all that could even barely scratch the surface to the agonizing puzzle. The way Levi saw it, only two scenarios were readily plausible given the time and setting.

One, a meager object fell prey to a mighty tumble. Or two, the one he immensely brooded, somebody was hurt, and bad. The factor alone that the wrathful wallop harbored the ability to pierce the floor was grave. Combined with the eerie, impenetrable silence that arrived meager moments after. The ceasing of all noise, both background and not. Hush reigning supreme. His heart in a frenzy. The murk clamping its septic jaws onto the brunete with a blazing refusal to grant mercy now fostered an unwelcome feeling. A ghastly one. Levi lacked the words in his expansive vocabulary to properly describe the nameless tension hijacking the air. The serenity and tranquility that once greeted Levi with arms stretched to their limits was a distant echo.

Now, all that remained from the ruthless purge was…whatever this could be called. It seemed any word or adjective he could think of did nothing to aid in properly addressing it. Not by a longshot.

Every last remnant of anything that could possibly serve as a disturbance to a severance to his concentration perished. All other distant commotion from beyond the walls lost all signs of life. The onslaught of voices from the asphalt landing strip outside, some brimming with encouragement while others trying their damndest to shatter souls, existed no longer. The pestersome whizzing and strident whistling as the air stood no match for their ironclad builds vanquishing it faded into limbo. The competition for who could be the most loud and obnoxious of them all having a clear, graphic winner. His imagination had no limits when it came to fabricating the grandiose trophy presented to the victor.

His grade-A emerald embedded within his sockets transformed into borderline-microscopic shards of jade, as though the gems that once assumed their position were no more. All that endured the grim massacre were minute lumps of beryl crystal residing amidst the pool of white. The genocide of sound around him wouldn’t be complete without a dying whisper of posterity. The one who outright denied the Grim Reaper, their smirking mug reflected in the blemishless steel of his honed sickle. A destroyer of the odds. The solitary survivor. That lucky individual, the sole entity that bore the brunt of the purge and emerged triumphant, was none other than his heart. The very same battering his ribs like a shackled furious bull, kicked into overdrive by the cocoon of choleric conflagration.

The flame. The undying necessity to protect anyone who ever possessed the fortune of grazing his path. The male’s old friend was back and better than ever. With his sights locked and the floodgates of adrenaline divorcing, he rolled out the red carpet for his appetite. His snarling gut could only be satiated by one thing alone. Shielding the hapless soul below him from whatever harm had befallen them. And Levi was starving.

Endorphins coiled around his arteries. His veins were brought to their knees. His bloodstream was conquered. A newfound energy declared their stony-hearted supremacy. Levi’s crura sought liberty from the chains that bound them. The silver bilboes that restricted the man, gatekeeping him from bringing the hammer down upon the septic grip of danger. Strike down the vile forces that dared to exact the darkness inside them upon the innocents.

No. Not now, not ever.

Levi’s appendages proclaimed rebellion. A bloody and ruinous revolution dawned in his arms. Limbs thundered for freedom. To be granted the ability to burn rubber to the person below him and tend to, from what it sounded like, their grievous wounds. Amnesty was on the horizon. Just mere centimeters out of reach. All they needed was a single push, even a trifling bump of a fraile breeze, that would send Levi into overdrive.

Teeth clenched. Jaw threatening to pop from his skull. Venules rushing. His blood now an irate river.

It was time.

His feet exploded from the ground. His shoes clicked and clacked against the pristine tiles like panicked typing on a keyboard. The gloom, whose stygian tentacles formerly strangled the man in blue, were puny in comparison to his newfound agility. Levi’s never-before-seen athletic prowess put the dense tenebrous to shame. In a way, without even realizing it, the brunete had single handedly usurped the throne the darkness previously reposed on.

His footwear infected the air with a strident, raucous squeal as he whipped around, what he perceived to be, the thousandth corner in the past hour. Judging by the mighty tumble the male just barely escaped from upon turning, it was more-than-evident the unsullied stoneware wasn’t meant for running. And most certainly not designed for valiant charges with little-to-no time to waste.

Situated at the terminus of the passageway was a wide staircase. Stainless silver railings adorned the sides of the broad flight, accompanied by a tall, blank lancet on the wall. Herculean shafts of flaxen radiance decorated the steps with long golden belts while simultaneously breaching the erstwhile mighty palisade of murk. To anyone on the face of the planet in Levi’s circumstances, they would practically fall to their knees and rejoice at the divine sight. Cry out the name of the Lord to the heavens above in unfathomable thanks for the gift that poured from his core.

Honestly, in any regular situation, Levi would most likely do just that. Sincerely express his gratitude as best as he could with the tools he was provided to the hancho upstairs. To the brunete however, he only viewed it as a red herring. A false symbol of hope who’s poor, pitiful existence served one purpose and one purpose alone: To deceive Levi. Fool him with the greatest trick whatever phantasm followed him had to offer. Whether the golden rays were ones of truth or lies was a discussion for another day. The only task Levi had locked into his sights were completing his meteoric descent down and rescuing whoever was lied beneath. Even if he was more wrong than he ever could’ve imagined, he could at the very least find comfort in the fact that he pursued his duty with a fiery urge.

Levi’s trotters lacked a measly sliver of a moment to comprehend what they were colliding with. The encounter with his soles and the coarse materials of the steps was short-lived. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it event. A breath in the wind. The fugitive greetings of the rough textile was the absolute least of his worries.

The kindling inferno in his lungs. The cataclysm of all cells of energy congregating in his being. The red-hot, glowing tendrils of exhaustion beginning to coil around his bones. His physique initiating its purge of vigor. The ever-increasing dread with each second of inaction that passed. Those were just to name a few, and all of them surpassed one another by leaps and bounds. The incessant flock of feelings were akin to a gladiator arena with fierce, vexed dragons as contenders. Clashing with glistening carmine-stained teeth and broadened wings to declare the winner. Distinguish the pathetic few from the solitary victor. The battle was exponentially gruesome. Ropes of crimson belting in every direction. Showers of crimson erupting from the necks of the fallen. Patches of ichor and mounds of organs spilled from the anatomy of the defeated. It was nothing short of a bloodbath. One where a champion would emerge from the ocean of gore and enter the hall of fame. Whenever that happened to be.

The flight was divided in two. One half, the very same Levi rocketed down in the blink of an eye, led to a spotless rectangular platform of solid marble. Not only was it a stark contrast to the meters of flooring he had seen thus far, but it looked as though it was plucked straight from the heavenly kingdom above. Levi lacked both the time and care to thoroughly examine the textile his sneakers glided over. Yet again, identical to the various other instances where his feet glissaded, a stentorian, jarring screech impaled the air like the song of a swinging sword. Only amplified by who knows how much.

At that point, the merciless assault on his hearing was beginning to take its toll. Axes of agony cleaved and hacked his brain to gruesome ribbons. Sweat began their daring escape from his pores. A fist forged entirely from needles and broken glass abducted his heart in its grip, compressing the drumming organ devoid of a flake of mercy. Every last inch of his build pleaded with Levi for a rest. Or at the very least to slow down. A command the male outright refused to yield to. Evidently, Levi wasn’t a buff man. Not by a longshot. He had taken his fair share of footslogs to the gym in his years, from the freshmen year in high school to the week he was sucked out of Tuscaloosa. In that time, he had garnered, what he considered to be, a decent build for a 25-year-old.

Whether it was weary bones or his utterly sapped limbs who had the loudest voice was unclear. What wasn’t however was the thundering sentiment resonating through the long empty chambers within his frame. Bouncing off the walls of his ribs and ricocheting from the meaty blockades of muscle.

His being pined for a rest.

The plea fell on deaf ears. He abandoned the prospect of capitulating. The idea of conceding to such an order almost summoned bile to his throat. No, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Not before he knew without a shadow of a doubt that the pony he was charging towards was safe from harm. Then, and only then, will he permit the respite it begged for.

Now, the only thing his blustery psyche could fabricate were strategies. Schemes to save as many precious minutes as he possibly could under the laws of reality. With the unfathomable amount of them he had invented on a whim, he could effortlessly fill an ocean of papers.

Levi leaped from the second-to-last stair with the force of a burly god. The collision of the bottom of his trotters to the unsoiled tiles was one the brunete briskly regretted. The ironclad jaws of pain latched onto his appendages, threatening to crack his marrow at the seams. The frigid stoneware bit into his palms. Despite the shield of denim his kneecaps maintained, the brumal ground still managed to unleash its wrath upon his flesh.

Did he want to give his aching frame a break? Yes.

Did he long for the sanctity of the bed back at the library? Yes.

Would he submit? Absolutely not.

This was his duty and his alone. Nobody else could fulfill it. He reiterated it to himself before and he’d do it again. Even if it was all a false alarm, he could at least relish in the comfort in the fact that he pursued his obligation and denied deferring.

He scrambled to his feet.

Breath heavy.

Legs weak.

Heart screaming.

The silver rectangular door handle before him beckoned him. Lured him in like the shrill melody of a siren. The beige accession was a carbon-copy of all the others he’d seen on his breakneck journey. Same dull, absent-of-personality paint. Same partially faded color with miniscule chips missing from the grand varnish, exposing the sable bulky steel underneath. Same sense of urgency that claimed his nucleus from the instant he discerned the sound to now.

His hand slammed onto the argent metal. The complex organs clicked in response. It divorced the frame.

And then…

Horror.

Never-before-witnessed, unbridled, pure horror.

The hallway retained the congruent features of its brethren on the floor above. Identical bland, boring tint plaguing the walls. Identical aluminum beds cradling dead bulbs dangling from the ceiling from stygian cables.

In no variation of reality both fictional and not would Levi have ever come close to guessing what was dumped in the center of the corridor. In all honesty, it was next to impossible to believe anything in front of his eyes. He was being deceived. A snake shrouded by tall grass certainly invaded the once tranquil terrain of his mind. That was the sole answer his panicked, utterly distressed brain could conjure.

Contrary to what his downright terrified psyche wanted him to accept, what lied in a bloody mess in the middle of the passageway was anything but a nightmare or a ruse. This was the overtly tragic reality.

From the small square windows, some open some not, dotting the right wall, lengthy bars of stunning golden gleam were granted access into the murky atmosphere. The primary objective in their tunnel vision was to rid the corridor of the vile, gloomy air slowly ending its life with each second of inertia that ticked by.

Levi’s blood went from flowing, healthy warm rivers to canals of ice at breakneck speed. The male’s feet burst from their idle position, freeing him of the dangerously impending suspension of his limbs.

Sprawled out in a mangled amalgamation of stock-still limbs and lagoons of ichor was a pegasus. The lengthy flaxen shaft of luster, that would normally brighten both the mood and the room under normal circumstances, turned more-than-sinister. Whatever remained of her battered, pummeled features thankfully lingered within the secrecy of the perpetual shadow. However, from what borderline-miniscule details Levi could discern from the brawny palisade of tenebrous, the fury focused solely on the poor individual was incomprehensible. To anyone else in Levi’s situation, they wouldn’t be wrong in assuming the pony before them was long gone from the land of the living. Not-so-peacefully departing from the earth in a loch of their own internal fluids. The only thing differentiating the grimly marred pegasus from an ice-cold corpse was the barely noticeable swelling and falling of her chest.

With the man now towering above the inert shattered frame, the shroud of secrecy the dusk provided reached a dead zone. No longer did it harbor any form of power under any laws over him. His panicked, immensely distressed globes were now fully granted access to the harrowing spectacle at his feet. His skeleton trembled. Bones rattled like fishes torn from the watery abyss. His heart threatened to fragment his ribcage with every assault it inflicted. The torturous throbbing and ruthless onslaught on his aching brain rejected his desolate pleas to cease.

Swollen cheekbones. Bulging, ugly purple eyelids sealing her globes with an impenetrable barrier. A stray tooth abandoned inches away from its former owners maltreated features. Her dark navy jacket, usually looking nothing short of glorious, was now the furthest thing from it. Large patches of the rough, coarse textile were violently lacerated, revealing extensive blotches of white from the tattered button-down underneath. Ribbons and slender slices of the indigo material were strewn about, becoming one with the ruby lagoon her clobbered being was claimed by. The already dusky sliver of material transforming into a sopping inky strip.

However, amidst the vast ocean of dire details on full gruesome display for Levi to fret over, there was one that solidified the identity of the bashed pony. Amidst the relentless purge laying waste to his mind’s landscape, what microscale shreds of rationality endured the eradication were strained to the utmost. The sole purpose of its existence is to at the very least attempt to comb his tempestuous brain for the answer he desired. The identity of the individual crumpled in sanguinary shambles beneath him. Her features, in spite of the immeasurable bruises and gashes desecrating it, were easily recognizable. Combined with the clothes sleeved over her belabored frame, he had a name for the borderline corpse.

His psyche was a mess. A lagoon of tatters and scraps of what once was a buzzing empire of sane thought. A metropolis of sanity, built from the salt and sand of the numerous heinous deeds inflicted upon the man in all of his 25 years of living. How the mighty fall. It never ceased to amaze the brunete how one measly, seemingly worthless glance summoned a herculean deluge that rivaled its brethren from generations past. In an instant, his intramural kingdom was gone. Reduced to nothing more than a mountain of sooty ash and mounds of pitiful rubble bespeckling the land as far as the eye could see.

Disaster reigned supreme. And even more would soon approach the horizon let one more second pass with inaction from Levi. The frayed, sorry-excuse for rags fitted over her physique. The scarily familiar sun-yellow complexion. Hair akin to flames roaring from her scalp. Her-wait.

Flame hair.

Flame hair.

No…no, no, no, NO! It can’t be, right? This couldn’t be who Levi thought it was. It had to be a nightmare. There was no way possible in any plane of reality that it wasn’t.

It was all coming back to him. The image from just a trifling ten minutes before. The picture that lingered. The regret that gnawed. The guilt that badgered. It all made sense now.

Levi shouldn’t have allowed her to leave. He should’ve stopped her, interrogated her until the sun departed for its righteous slumber. Continue grilling her even after the metaphorical smoke strangled him and violated his nostrils. But no, he didn’t. This was his fault.

Spitfire was now withering away in an assemblage of her own bodily fluids in unimaginable agony…and he was to blame.

“Oh…oh, Lord, no!” A fatigued dam exerted every last ounce of strength it possessed to keep the salty orbs from surging. Moment by moment, lament after lament, the cracks were plaguing. Rifts and canyons riddled the palisade. The reckoning for his tears was nigh, he knew it clear as day. But he couldn’t.

No was most certainly not the time for mourning or grief. The hour had long struck for action. Measures that, for reasons unknown, Levi had yet to implement into his current dour situation.

“I’m sorry…” Levi’s ghost of a voice accomplished nothing. His words were fruitless. Not a phrase or a line of speech would do anything remotely close to aiding his friend.

As he scooped up his shattered companion, his forearms becoming bathed in her vivid carmine, the bottom line was clear to him now. Spitfire needed not reassurance or sentimental consolation, but for the travesty lashed out upon her to not be in vain.

Whoever did this, whichever monster hiding amongst the saints, was going to wish the day of their birth never came to pass. He would make them regret. In that moment, Levi made a silent promise that carried through the stale air of the forever scarred hall.

Somebody was going to pay for this tragedy. One way or another, it was inescapable.

“Forgive me, Spitfire…” Levi rasped, “Forgive me…”

Levi’s heart was torn to pieces. Each one of the fragments it was viciously shredded into and strewn about the yawning chasm of his core were an emotion. An undying, burning sentiment. Guilt. Sorrow. Regret. A fierce fury. All of them directed at the torpid pegasus a mere foot before him. Belts of gauze and bandage concealing her grievous wounds from the outside world.

The copious amounts of people that funneled into the room one after another to visit their downtrodden friend and the equally anguished brunete were lucky in his eyes. The way he saw it, they should be on their knees with their hands clasped, gazing up to the heavens above in inconceivable thanks. Expressing as much gratitude as their misery-racked beings could fabricate at the fact they weren’t the ones who found her. The job of discovering the grisly scene not being dropped upon their shoulders, the weight threatening to reel them to the center of the earth with each passing second. Her friends and family candidly had no idea how fortunate they were to not have that unintentional responsibility. And Levi wished he didn’t have it either.

The man in blue forlornly recollected how joyous his heart was strolling through the desolate halls in the minutes preceding the cataclysm. How cordially blind he was to the horrors that awaited him beneath the tiles he stood on. Oh how he pined for one more meager waft of that ignorance. A measly hint of that echo of euphoria. The calm before the storm. Never in all of his life had he taken anything more for granted.

At the root of it all, he was well-aware he was not the one to blame for Spitfire’s tragedy. Not by a longshot. Contrary to the popular belief his agonized, tortured nucleus forced upon him, his intervention would’ve done next to nothing. A lesson he learned in the worst way possible through his twenty-five years of living, some things he experienced, both harrowing and heavenly, were entirely out of his control. Not a thing he could do or imagine doing would shift the tides of time in his favor. It was a train on a one-way trip to either rock his existence to the core or bless it beyond belief. And there wasn’t an action, measure, or act he could establish that would stop it. It seemed to the male that, despite the excruciating nature of the travesty, this was one of those inevitable obstacles. A mighty hill he was forced to cross.

One after another, Spitfire’s kin and numerous companions filed into the chamber. First it was her mother. Stormy Flare. Her vibrant purple cardigan sleeved marvelously over her aged physique was the exact reverse opposite of what her quivering body conveyed. Her priceless pearl necklace standing its ground from the momentous lump inhabiting her throat. Her combed back orange hair being used as a not-so-effective tool of self-comforting, running her hoof through it more times than Levi could count. Her sooty eye shadow marvelously withstood the barrage of tears that declared war on her wrinkled features. In the end, her face lost the ghastly battle. Remembrances of the macabre battle being lengthy red trails and puffy eyes brought upon by the salty orbs.

When her bout of seemingly endless weeping arrived at its terminus, the more-than-distraught matriarch asked the wretched question. The inquiry he feared the most.

What happened? And why?

It was the same pained tone that ravaged what little slivers of unperturbed remained in his mind. The identical timbre her father used. Twilight used. Rainbow used. Everyone used. The worst part of it all, he couldn’t bear to tell them the veracity of her fate. Not only were the ambushed and swiftly slain on their trip up his throat, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy their decimated souls. For a short while, Levi imagined himself in their shoes.

Standing in that dastardly hospital room. The comfortable air outright defying the true schmaltz that lie within. Barely able to keep standing on his own duo of trembling legs. His core gloomily yearning for closure. Only for the bombshell to smear him away from the land of the living being that…they didn’t know. They found her leaking her vital scarlet fluids and that was it.

The scenario proved too much for his fragile chest to bear. If another desolating fantasy dared to cross the cosmic landscape of his mind, the overwhelming woe would prove ruinous.

Levi mirrored their concerns and queries wholeheartedly. He too was desolate in his forage for answers. His search for a reason or something that would even slightly resemble a motive was proving fruitless. And Levi was growing desperate with each tick of the clock. He couldn’t wrap his head around the sober circumstances that suffocated him. None of it made a fragment of sense. It was, from what diminutive evidence he had to his name, a flurry of senseless violence. An unpitying attack with no endgame or goal in mind. A sudden, unexplainable burst of savagery. The works of a psychopath blending in amongst the sane masses, his mask of normalcy plastered with frightening expertise. Whichever devil donning a masquerade of an innocent pony was not only cruel in their delivery, but horrifyingly experienced.

Looking down on the grimace with a different set of lenses, it never stood out to Levi before the skill and stealth it would take to pull something like this off without a hitch. The more he thought he put it into it, the more it became lucid. There was no clamor of a broken down door or a vanquished window. Instead, there was the eerie quietude of a sneaky entrance. The assault wasn’t a rapid-fire barrage of punches and blows. It was a one-and-done deal. A singular couple of brawny wallops and they were gone with the wind. Like they were a dreadful phantasm melting into the atmosphere enveloping them. After lashing out their inner demons upon the world, they vanished. No repercussions. No consequences for their actions. No wrath from an irate man in blue. No nothing.

In the end, the pony, unicorn, or whoever that threatened the life of one of his dearest friends was anything but a specter. As much as their alarming set of skills strived to make him believe, they weren’t a ghost. They were not some otherworldly being set on cascading torment and gloom upon the earth before dissipating permanently. They were a living being with a stony heart and a twisted brain. A mortal walking the same lands as Levi. One that clearly hadn’t been taught that their actions had consequences. A lesson that, the moment their identity became known, would be engraved into their psyche forever. Lunatics are just people religiously following the perverted roster of principles their vile mind fabricated.

In other words, just a person. A person that Levi would waste no time strangling for their sins. All it was was a matter of who and where. A process that would manifest easier than he anticipated.

The abominable lagoon of carmine that perpetually stained the hallway wasn’t there just to display the sheer brutality of Spitfire’s attack. The deafening vivid crimson color highlighted all the evidence Levi could ever ask for. From a first glance, the piece seemed worthless, miniscule at best. A feather. When the brunete’s emerald irises were first laid upon it, he suspected nothing. After all, they were in the heart and soul of Cloudsdale. They were bound to find somebody somewhere with that extremely distinct feature with no effort whatsoever.

Under any normal circumstances, that would be the case. Trying to pinpoint a regular, everyday feather to a horrific crime of unimaginable proportions was a nigh-impossible task to fulfill. Even a glimpse of the reality of Levi combing every last inch of the city in the sky looking for the culprit riddled his being with desolation. No one would pay. There would not be a soul to punish. It would all be in vain. Well, that would’ve been the case. The dead giveaway was a detail Levi should’ve forgotten about. A pony so outwardly insignificant to the male’s existence that his brain would simply tune her out permanently. Casting her to the cavernous lake of obscurity in the bowels of his brain. From the heart-shattering, earth-rocking revelation that was pieced together with no time at all, his psyche clearly had other ideas.

Grey. The hue of a coarse rock face free from the shackles of blemishes that threatened to reel it. The pigment of newly melted iron. A billow of dark smoke roaring from the gaping maw of a mammoth fire. The exact same shade belonging to one in particular. Someone that by all accounts should’ve left well enough alone. Someone that would learn of their grave mistake as soon as the opportunity arose.

Silver Spears.

That bastard. That wretched, repugnant, stony-hearted mound of waste that robbed the world of oxygen she didn’t deserve. It all made sense. His mind, once a foggy mess of borderline lethal worry and a mist of confusions, was crystal clear. As clean and spotless as the window of the V.I.P booth at that fateful game. The self same where Spitfire’s fate was sealed when the gleaming golden trophy met her eager hooves. The sun’s magnificent rays glinting off the bold ore. An awe-inspiring sight to some, an invitation for cruelty for the Golden Dashers.

Whether the entire plan from the genesis hinged upon Silver’s unbridled inhumanity was anyone's guess. The bottom line was Levi was right. The perpetrator wasn’t some wraith hellbent on unleashing obscenities on the living. They were alive. The same bones shielded their organs. The same lungs swelled and shrunk with unwarranted ozone. The identical heart that struck their ribs.

Only difference being hers wouldn’t beat for much longer. He couldn’t protect Spitfire then, but he can damn well prevent another calamity such as this one from occurring again. Morality be damned.

So, there he was. His haunches embraced by the hypnotic comfort of the lush hospital chair, the luxurious coffee-colored cushion clearly engineered to ease the misery of all who entered. His imagination had no limits when it came to attempting to fathom how many elders withered away in the bed Spitfire reposed on. How the last hours and days of unfortunate souls played out as cancer laid waste to their being. The ravines of tears that broke free from their shackles. The trembling bodies quaking with sorrow when their kin’s reckoning struck. The ear-piercing flatline resonating inside them for decades to come. The haunting tune of the Grim Reaper trekking to fulfill his duty. The countless people that experienced just that in the very same seat he found himself in was oppressive to say the least. The lavish pillow beneath his rear put forth its best efforts to cleans Levi’s heart of its ales, all to no avail.

Noon had long passed since his arrival. His limbs never altered their position, as though his bones were caked in an impenetrable block of concrete. His globes ne’er strayed far from the leaden quill he twirled against his hand, the bristles uniting as one to form the plum tickling his palm. The crimson spilled from either his friend or the maniac who assaulted her leaving a ever-so-slight tinge of crimson on his flesh. His face was cold, every last remnant of personality or emotion an echo of lost time. A fleeting evocation bouncing off the walls of his skull. A distant reminder of how badly he had taken joy for granted before it was heinously robbed from him. Ardor to beat Silver’s head into the ground for what she did was all that inhabited his mind.

It wouldn’t take long for the totality of the Wonderbolts to burn rubber to their leader. If Levi was honest, he wished they would’ve stayed far from her. The futile strives to catch their breath, choked sobs, and muffled wails were better left within. Seeing a team of the most highly-trained, strongest pegasi reduced to a bawling crew was severely disheartening. Even witnessing the brawniest of the brawny in a thousand-yard stare unable to comprehend the harrowing sight before him made Levi wish this was all a dream. A nightmare he could be shaken awake from in a puddle of sweat. Despite his clothes drenched and his throat desiccated, he at least was liberated from the claws of terror that throttled him.

However, the reality he shouldered the misfortune of living in had different ideas. One that didn’t cater to Levi’s preferences in the least bit.

Time lost its meaning in his brain numbed by the dire state of affairs he was in. A measly handful of minutes? Hours? Or maybe even a half day? Levi couldn’t tell and, from the less-than-pleasing statement given by the doctor, it was better that way.

“She’ll be in a medically-induced coma for possibly the next few days, Mr. Cronell.” The amber pegasus droned, his coat identical to the optics of his marred friend. “It may be tomorrow, it may be next week, we don’t know at the moment.”

His tone was bereft of empathy or emotion. Not a shaving of an attempt at consoling the brunete. A trifling affirmation of her injuries and a pitiful, sorry-excuse for condolences. Just like that, he was gone. Departing and forsaking Levi in the dull prison cell known as an infirmary. The decaying cyan paint reminded him of his rainbow-haired companion who had brought him here in the first place. Unlike the dark trails left behind from the chiliad of tears she exerted, the pigment was flawless. Putting the dying flare of the hue into consideration, it appeared the dingy varnish reflected the internal turmoil of all who entered.

Each rhythmic tick of the equally slummy clock riddled with cracks and chipped glass was his cue to leave. An aide-memoire that he had a vastly more happy and joyous home patiently awaiting him back in Ponyville. Every minute that passed was time wasted in that damned dungeon. The mundane odor of medicine and cheap cleaning chemicals sieging his nostrils. The unceasing beeping from neighboring rooms and non-stop chatter from the immensely positive staff congregating in the halls.

For the first time following his meteoric entrance, Levi abandoned the snug cushion. In a desperate shot to gain any feeling in his deadened being, the male stationed his stiff legs on Spitfire’s bedside. A place neither of them should be. After the curtains closed on his life of sin in Tuscaloosa, all Levi sought was peace. A chance to alter the path his existence took and start anew. Gone were the sleepless nights where his slumber was severed by either a screaming match or a gunfight. No longer would the weight of his crimes splinter his bones. His days of immeasurable transgressions were over. He had finally achieved what he lusted for all these years: Tranquility.

As proven by the gut-wrenching events playing out before him, that serenity was solely a ruse. A temporary guise for the true horror that lies in the veld of Equestria. Atrocities that Spitfire has experienced firsthand. His emerald irises scanned her wrecked complexion as many times as his gnawing heart allowed. All the Lilliputian belts of bandage secreting her ghastly injuries from the outside world. Each and every small strip of gauze shrouding her wounds. To Levi, all of her intimates both blood related and not had no idea how lucky they truly were. If he believed the utter despondency plastered over their features was tear-inducing in itself, he could only imagine how they’d react had they been in his position.

Finding her in a tarn of ichor. Her bruises and lacerations visible. Superbly combed mane diluted to a disheveled, sweat-ridden mess like a kingdom of rats. The guilt… It was better if he didn’t dwell on it. With the carmine-stained proof tucked away cozily in his back pocket, Levi possessed all the fuel he needed to ignite his warpath for revenge. Silver was going to pay for what she did. That was non-negotiable. The path of all the others who wronged him throughout his life was paved with pain and rue. One way or another, whether it was in their life or the next one that awaited them. Their actions always found a way to strike back with the force of a thousand suns. The customers who crossed him in Tuscaloosa. The homeless junkies who made fruitless endeavors at murdering him. Gary. They all faced judgment, and Silver was not an exception.

Levi gingerly rested his palm upon Spitfire’s rigid forelimb. The grim stiffness overpowering her appendages a far cry from the pegasus they belonged to. A pony that was brimming with vigor and brawn, a fearless captain of arguably the best flying team Equestria had ever seen. The sable lens of her sunglasses sparing the life of anyone who shouldered the adversity of being on the receiving end of a verbal beatdown. If looks could kill, her sharp amber orbs were cleave them in two without a hint of pity.

In the present, all that made Spitfire who she was was a short-lived memory. A thought residing amongst the masses living in the rearmost end of their mind. Her vibrance was null. The fine fettle she owned with pride turned to ash and rubble. Spitfire as he knew her to be would never be the same. Forever plagued with the scars both physically and emotionally that Levi couldn’t protect her from. An attack he couldn’t stop.

How did he not hear it?

How was he not alerted to it sooner?

Why did it happen?

Levi shut his eyes tight. His featherly caressing of her lush fur stopped dead in its tracks. Fleshy palisades strained to the utmost to keep a surplus of tears from breaching to the outside world. He was well-aware that the time for grieving was somewhere along the horizon, but most certainly not now. He wouldn’t allow himself to get lost in the endless field of who, what, and whens. Combing the extensive pasture of his psyche for a fictitious fantasy where he did swoop in like an angel diving from the heavens. Ready and able to be Spitfire’s knight in shining armor, prevent this tragedy from coming into fruition to begin with.

However, at the end of the day, they were all fictional scenarios. Mini-movies flickering in Levi’s head that couldn’t amend the past, present, or future in any way. In other words, a total and complete waste.

You had to take action to make change. Those were the words Levi had heard a handful of years back. The ultimate driving force, alongside his mountain of guilt, that drove him to change his life. A goal which he succeeded. At that moment, the brunete had a choice to make. Either give in to his doubts and not put forth any strives to avenge his companion, or teach Spears a lesson she’ll never forget. After all, there was a possibility, albeit unfathomably slim, that Silver wasn’t the culprit. It was perpetually present in any criminal case on the face of the earth.

It didn’t matter how rock solid or utterly undeniable the attestation was, a gracile odd was unfailingly present. Looming over the victims in their time of grieving like the phantasm it was, haunting them eternally with the possibility that the culprit would never be brought to justice. That the righteous hammer of karmic retribution would ne’er meet the one who cascaded pain and anguish upon their existences.

It harbored no significance to Levi whatsoever how many grueling days and sleepless nights he’d have to endure in order to deliver their punishment. They would kneel before the mighty throne of the Law Lord. Where right then and there, Levi would be granted all the permission he sought to make them suffer for their misdeeds. Whether it was Silver Spears on the receiving end or a nameless face would be decided when the bridge to cross happened on his path.

Precious hours were melting away. Spent wasted in that wretched cage in that equally foul hospital. Second by second, minute by minute. Opportunities were slipping through the canyons between his fingers. He had to pursue them. He had to leave Spitfire and venture out into the far lands of Equestria for better or worse.

Levi’s legs begged for release from the chains that tethered them. His arteries were ready and able to flip the switch on the floodgates, opening the maw for rollers of adrenaline to funnel in. His lips twitched, a much needed apology lingering on the surface. Pleading on their hands and knees, clasped hands and all, to permit his pent-up apology liberty. A request that would be fruitless if commenced.

If Levi were to express his sorrow in vocal form, what would it accomplish? An image that the man in blue was some sort of maniac trying to converse with an unconscious pegasus. He had read his fair share of medical studies and articles in Tuscaloosa about comas. Delving deep into the fascinating nature of them. How the brain was affected. In what ways the limbs suffered. The reason and why they happen in the first place. He recollected vividly one of the addressing the subject of speaking to the sufferer in question. One that, from what little his interest allowed him to soak in, wouldn’t be beneficial.

All it would attain was making Levi appear to be a guilt-ridden, manic human, hellbent on talking to a pony he was well-aware wouldn’t respond. The last thing he wanted to tack on to his conscience.

Levi’s honed, indignation-filled globes grazed to the door. His brows furrowed. One of his eyes quivered. His teeth greeted each other, threatening to fulminate at a moment’s notice.

Levi was ready.

And he knew just the one to do it.

The brunete rushed through the black-and-white tiled hallway. The colors being identical to the academy where he failed his friend shortly before. A mistake he would never bring into reality again.

“Rainbow,” Levi’s tone was assertive. Nothing in comparison to the downtrodden equine he addressed. His irises flicking to her wings for a fleeting instant.

“I need a favor.”

The roaring of wind in Levi’s ears skidded to an abrupt halt. The rhythmic pumping of a familiar pair of cyan wings ceased. Rainbow’s hooves followed his feet on their journey to the clouds, his destination nestled snugly atop it. The innocent seeming compound that would quickly transform into a lion’s den. Perhaps even worse than that.

The Golden Dashers HQ was a sight to behold. It was a behemoth structure forged entirely from ashen bricks, held together by long thick belts of sooty cement. Some of the excess paste binding the building at the seams dribbled down the walls. The set of glass double doors with a duo of black steel handles appeared inviting, but the potential horrors that could lie within might prove otherwise. After all, any place run by a serial criminal couldn’t be a happy place to be. The roof was a flat bed of concrete bordered by white metal gutters, ready and able to funnel whatever wrath Mother Nature decides to unleash upon them. An uncountable amount of cracks and fissures riddled throughout desecrated the semi-perfect image it attempted to display, simultaneously revealing its age in its entirety. A vibrantly-colored poster was tacked to the palisade, one of its vivid corners peeling from the cruel hand of time. Despite the only source of vivid hues all around the gloomy, desolate hunk of stone, it fostered no importance.

To Levi however, the familiar vigorous pigments screaming for attention was all the confirmation he desired. This was the home of the vile sod and her lackey he went there for. In truth, Levi didn’t have a shred of a clue as to how Silver, or anyone else on the team for that matter, would react to a human strolling in. Much less with an undying vexation and a debt to settle. Even if Silver demanded he leave right there and then, there wasn’t a lot she could do to force him. And if the last of her brain cells perished and she did demand his immediate exit, his comrade buckled tightly to his waist would talk before he did.

A grin dawned over his features.

Before he had arrived at the detestable breeding ground for cheaters and delinquents, the speedy pit stop at the library served only one purpose alone. To retrieve Platinum’s sword.

If he was going to confront someone he never uttered a word to in his entire life, there was a sizable probability she wouldn’t take too kindly to the accusations. If her alleged actions thus far were an indication of anything, Levi could be in for hell or high water. The exact grounds for fastening the instrument of war around his obliques and setting off. In spite of his experience using it or any blade at all being a barren wasteland, it sounded like an idiotic idea. Mayhaps the pony would tremble in fright at the spectacle. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Either way, if it goes south, his fists were the ideal substitute.

The calm, ginger afternoon breeze of Cloudsdale never failed to embrace him wholeheartedly. The smell, or lack thereof, of a freshly produced gale nearly put him under its spell. Threatening to lull him into a deep uninterruptible slumber that could only be broken by the warm radiance of a new day. The achromatic puff beneath his trotters welcomed his presence joyfully. Levi’s reality was any child’s dream. Walking amongst the pale fluff, swallowed entirely by the azure sky blossoming with life and vibrance. When it came to dealing shocks and surprises he ne’er would’ve considered were possible, at no time did Equestria blunder. Something he hoped would last forever.

“Levi?” The male turned, his eyes shielded from the herculean rays by the brim of his hat. Rainbow, who was squinting to the point of discomfort, didn’t possess that luxury.

Lengthy streaks of sweat ran from the crest of her forehead shrouded by the multi-colored veil of her bangs, leaving dark, displeasing trails in their wake. Her ultramarine cheeks were splashed with blush. The flier’s chest swelled and died like a roiling sea in the furious storm. Considering how Spitfire was grounded after a meager few minutes of what Rainbow had endured the whole time, it made him wonder how strong they were in contrast.

“Yeah?”

Rainbow’s jaws divided. The words died in her esophagus. Hesitation was blatant. The pegasus’ globes steered from his for the briefest of moments before contact was kindled again. The sentence rose from the land of the deceased in her mouth.

“Are you gonna…you know,”

Levi’s smirk decayed ever-so-slightly.

Unlike Fluttershy or Rarity, Levi didn’t know Rainbow as well as he believed he did. Him saving her life from Gary formed a brawny, unbreakable bond that would survive for years to come. That didn’t mean he could read her body language like he can with Alan. But, if her nervous circle-drawing in the ground and flicking irises were a sign, he could deduce what she was referring to.

Levi shook his head, the sliver of doubt plaguing his heart betrayed the movement.

“You don’t have to worry, and even if I…” Levi chose his next utterance carefully, “You saw what she did, right? I’d be doing everyone a favor.”

Rainbow gave a small nod.

“Right…” Her wings flared to life, cyanic feathers were highlighted by the toasty luster of Cloudsdale. “I’m just worried. I don’t want you to end up-”

“I won't. You don’t have to worry about me, Rainbow.”

With a diminutive smile and an explosion of force from the bed of clouds, Rainbow Dash was gone. Melting into the ether her coat blended into. Trying to spot her now on her meteoric rush to wherever she set her sights on was a nigh-impossible task.

Levi swiveled his head back to the primary objective. His destination was locked firmly in his psyche. The goal was lucid to every compartment residing in his frame. He was dead set. No turning back now.

The senior, beyond tattered leather sheath slapped against his thigh with every stride. The old golden buckle keeping the borderline ancient straps of hide together jingled with the slightest of activity. The untucked flaps of his royal blue shirt danced to the tune of the zephyr gracing him with its presence. His stoic, ice-cold face refused to conform to the peaceful environment that had assimilated his being. For all intents and purposes, the sum of his personality was hidden under lock and key. Not a soul inhabiting the scurvy headquarters would see a glimpse of his true colors. He had come there for a purpose, and he would spurn the prospect of departure until it was met.

That was a promise he couldn’t break.

Levi’s presence was beyond unwelcome in the training establishment. In fact, the English language lacked a word to properly describe the aura. However, all it took was one measly excuse for his unasked attendance to be condoned. If only their security measures were as good as their leader’s undying will to win, situations kindred to the upcoming calamity could be avoided. Even if their impregnability was exceedingly tighter than their present operation, it wouldn’t halt Levi’s blazing path of antipathy. Not in the slightest.

The corridors were noticeably shorter and narrower than the Wonderbolts’. In the stead of the bland black-and-white tiled flooring that blanketed Spitfire’s academy were ashen ceramic slabs. The gap between them filled by a sooty paste identical to that of cement. The walls were equally as unexciting as their brethren below them. The midnight blue varnish nearly made the brunete blend into the deep, cavernous sea of color, reducing him to a walking pair of paints and limbs. The hue would’ve been excellent had Silver gone through the effort of decorating. Her perennial disposition for achieving victory no matter the carnage she leaves in her wake was her top-priority. That was abundantly clear. All that dared to defy the constant stream of pure indigo were the standard windows scattered throughout. Some cracked open to ease the tension throttling the hallways, others not.

The rhythmic patting of the nonagenarian scabbard against his leg was a ceaseless reminder of his intramural wrath. The imprisoned anger he flawlessly kept sealed from the outside world. The chains that kept his fury at bay rattled and trembled, the ravenous endeavors at escape taking its toll. Levi was, in every definition of the phrase, a ticking time bomb. A singular wrong move or the most diminutive accident, and Levi would explode. What exactly that entailed was anyone’s guess. A flurry of haymakers faster than the light that would illuminate their inevitable wounds. A tempest of punches that would leave his knuckles marred. Possibly even worse. When control on his temper slipped from his grasp, all hell would snap the shackles that detained it. Releasing never-before-seen indignation on whoever made the fatal mistake.

On second thought, maybe bringing a weapon to a confrontation of this nature wasn’t the best idea. For his safety and hers. There was nothing he could do about it now. And honestly, he didn’t necessarily desire for the change. In the event that a conflict would turn lethal, so be it. Silver chose this life, accepting the fated consequences that coincided with it. Erego, she should have no problem at all giving into the colossal mass of her sins and crumble. Admit everything she’s ever done that maimed an innocent. Or she could stick to her guns and lie through her teeth. Either way worked for Levi.

The few Golden Dashers that strolled past him were anything but happy with his gratuitous appearance. The brawny pegasi donning their spirited signature colors bore holes into his irises with their searing, red-hot scowl. The female fliers, while less physically intimidating, looked as though they could deliver a righteous beatdown if a situation called for one. Their glares were equivalent to a hailstorm of blades impaling his orbs. A wordless yet highly effective beckon. Reminding him of the hell he would wrought let he continue with his undeterrable path of vengeance.

Through all of his unintelligible, on-the-fly plans of Silver’s nemesis, never once had he pondered how the team would react if Levi were to take action. Despite Levi’s complicated moral compass advising against it, violence would most likely prove to be the equalizer in his state of affairs. Given this not-so-revealing revelation, it was assured without a sliver of a doubt that the ponies she trained for immeasurable days and nights would fire back. Whether that meant striking back with one of his dearest friends as a martyr or something entirely unpredictable was impractical to forecast. And it was a thought his mind didn’t have a space for. Even if it did, it wasn’t welcome. Not in any way imaginable.

Sharp corners were turned. Reluctant members guided him. Searing, red-hot glowing swords transfixed his heart. Wrath bubbled and boiled in the chasm of his core, rolling like an irate ocean in the midst of a storm. Only amplified further by the stone-cold irritation splashed across the mugs of every Dasher he came across. Their sweltering scowls all echoing the same sentiment. The identical resentment for Levi’s presence. If looks could kill, the man in blue would be a frigid corpse doomed to rot. Pure and unadulterated quietude governed the compound with an iron fist. The howling of the afternoon wind breaching the palisades was the only glimmer of a revolution in sight. And one that didn’t endure the silence long, condemned to waste away in an ocean of deafness for its treason. Then, just as it had been for as long as the building stood, hush reigned supreme.

“Here it is,” A particularly spiteful constituent hissed, his hazel glower drilling grottoes into his skull. “Good luck.”

Levi returned his surrogate shepherd’s lour with forced thanks and an equally pseudo grin before his departure. Honestly, the walk there solo would’ve been preferably over the inconceivably thick air that hung over the duo. Nonetheless, Levi had gotten exactly what he wanted out of the Dasher.

The golden name plate with the unfit label of “Captain” imprinted in bold, stygian letters, adorning a pale door. The silver knob glimmering in the fluorescence enveloping the aisle.

The time was now. Silver Spears, the one who had barbarically marred his dearest friend, was vulnerable. Right before him. All that stood between them was a measly hunk of metal decorated with her worthless title mocking him. Long veins of the ugly steel flesh beneath, once shrouded by a veil of white varnish, desecrated its image. Akin to the spirit of the pegasus residing behind it.

Foul. Vile. Disgusting. Evil.

Levi was aware of what he had to do.

He couldn’t waste not a second more.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

A trio of thunks of his knuckles against the decaying metal eased into the stream of quietude. An absolute absence of sound that Levi had come to enjoy, now vanquished by the echoey rapping upon Silver’s cage. Her chamber. Personally, Levi would have immensely enjoyed smiting the rusted, sub-zero bars of a prison cell rather than a cozy office. Relishing in the sight of her sooty coat almost entirely masked by an orange jumpsuit. Her formerly kempt mane now a gladiator arena for rodents. The impenetrable mist of dust throttled her at any chance they got.

Mayhaps that’s where Silver was destined to land. Only time could tell.

“Come in!”

Levi reeled a deep, laborious gust into his quaking lungs. The darkness behind his eyelids smothered his vision. In defiance of the blatant chance for righteous savagery practically dangling in his face like a toddler with keys, his heart lurched with worry. That inkling of anxiety. The foreboding ghost of a doubt in the deep recesses of his mind.

Levi reached his manus out. His palm was mere centimeters away from eliminating the sole barrier preventing the inescapable confrontation. A conflict that was bound to occur from the instant he happened on Spitfire.

This wasn’t an accident. It was the furthest thing from it. It was a deliberate, possibly meticulously planned attack with seemingly no reasoning for it whatsoever. Silver had breached the allegedly secure walls of the Wonerbolts’ base and laid waste to their captain with zero consequences. Judging by Levi’s cold feet and the siren song of doubt seducing him, it appeared it was going to stay that way.

Levi gritted his teeth in frustration.

“Hello?” The bastard beckoned from beyond the entry. Still relishing in the comfort of her chamber.

Dammit!

Why couldn’t he do it?

What was so difficult about laying the hammer of justice down on her?

She was guilty. That was it. Over and done with. No need for any mental gymnastics or second thoughts. No, Silver was a monster. That was the diagnosis. Plain, simple, and clear-cut. No need for a discussion of any variety.

So, all of that still begs the question. Why?

Why is that miniscule flame of uncertainty still alive?

Why can’t Levi generate the courage to twist that bulge?

Why couldn’t Levi do what needs to be done?

Did it need to be done?

Is any of this truly necessary?

Forthcoming sweat stabbed his back as though a blanket of nails were pressing into his skin. His brain was tempestuous, a whirlwind of questions with no readily apparent answers. A ravenous, hungry typhoon laying waste to the previously serene terrain of his mind. The peaceful fields of lush grass that stretched far beyond the horizon were totaled. Harmonious pastures of rational thoughts were a fleeting memory. An echo of a time long before Silver’s dark path paved with savagery crossed Levi’s. It really made the brunete wonder…would his life ever be the same if he took authority? Jurisdiction he knew wasn’t his and didn’t belong to him and yet, here he was. Standing awkwardly at the only thing prohibiting a clash from being given life, a thin layer of anxious moisture turning his stern damp.

“Cloud, is that you?” Her blood-boiling voice arose again, thankfully slightly censored by the thick metal dividing them.

One of two things were bound to transpire in the dangerously near-future.

Levi would saunter inside, briskly confronting Silver with the evidence he possessed, albeit small-scale, but damning nonetheless.

Or he departs from the Dashers’ H.Q. Awaiting Rainbow’s arrival with the utmost patience and returns to the sanctity of his home.

One of those not only downright defeats the entire purpose of his trek, but leaves Silver walking away unscathed. A stark difference from his brutally destroyed familiar wasting away in that wretched stretcher. The rank odor of cheap disinfectant and nauseating medication assaulting her senses.

She had clearly gotten away with it so many times prior to Levi’s pain-staking arrival to Equestria. No one before him harbored the nerve to stand up to her. If Levi left now and turned his back on the bastard virtually within arms reach, he’d not only fragment his promise, but seal the fate of many others down the road.

Any and all inaction at that very moment was ruinous.

Countless fliers would suffer. Families would be shaken to the core.

A reality Levi found sickening.

A reality he would not allow to happen, not while he was alive to fix it.

In one fell swoop, the knob gyrated. And Levi pushed.

Chapter 20: Salvation for the damned

The moon rested soundly in the vast lake of rich indigo above. Chiliads of stars accompanied the rocky behemoth in its short but fruitful reign over the airspace. The sole entity overhead offering salvation from an existence of utter and complete isolation. A fate too grim even for a celestial body. And there was only the famed Princess Luna to thank. Families of crickets chirped happily, their twittering being lost in the flowing stream of white noise running down Ponyville’s empty streets. Becoming one with the nightly ambience, accompanied exclusively by the low whistling of the chilly breeze. An auditory tradition that Pinkie Pie had grown accustomed to ever since the Cakes gave her free reign over Sugarcube Corner long ago. A decision that would prove ruinous for Pinkie’s once pristine, flawless sleep schedule.

When the bright pony’s 16th birthday came and went, she had been informed by her cake-loving guardians that the responsibility of opening and closing the beloved shop was in her hooves. A duty she took more seriously than they ever could’ve dreamed of. With running and working in the bakery being the activity she loved more than anything, it was no surprise to anyone when the colorless open sign was flipped incredibly early. Giving Pinkie hours to prepare for the sugar-starved swarm of equine to flood the glass doors when the sun finally rose to usurp it’s throne. Sending the moon’s comrades back to their periodic slumber, charging their batteries until their presence was needed again. It had become a custom Pinkie followed religiously with no sign of stopping whatsoever. So much so to the point where, if she overslept by meager minutes, the mood of the remainder of her day would be thrown into jeopardy.

As such, forgetting her daily routine was nothing short of a cardinal sin. Pinkie would rather face death head-on than miss it. She never did. And tonight was no exception.

The clock struck the boldly-printed five in the Cake household. Pinkie’s longtime guardians and closest friends continued to frolic in their peaceful repose. Sinking ever-so-deeper into the broad ocean of slumber, running headlong to the siren’s song of the murky fathoms. Even on holidays or rare acts of God where the shop wouldn’t open its doors, Pinkie Pie was a proud and experienced night owl. No stranger to the dead of night or the brightest, earliest mornings. Filling the mundane space between where her brain wouldn’t permit the respite she craved for with feverish journal writing or reading. How somebody as active and jumpy as her could handle sitting in one spot for any amount of time was anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t trade it for the world. Relishing every moment and beat of silence in-between pages. Wholeheartedly enjoying the shifting of old paper and the dulcet singing of owls, residing placidly outside the vibrant walls of her humble abode.

However, as pleasant and timeless as her nightfall activities were, she, akin to everyone else in Ponyville, had responsibilities. And quotidianly, sans remarkably rare occasions, she was the one to fulfill them.

It wasn’t a burden by any means. The furthest thing from it, in fact. Her vast and colorful vocabulary, no matter how tediously she scrutinized it, the proper word to describe it. Love was simply too sub-par for her liking. Pinkie fell head-over-hooves for the way her heart slammed excitedly against her chest when her eyelids sprung open. Responding to her slightly obnoxious alarm’s cries and bleating, screaming for the acknowledgment of the party pony. Leaping from her mattress, blanket hovering down from the sudden hurtle, ardor surged through her being. For any equine in Ponyville that fit society’s definition of “normal”, no sane person alive could be this energetic and squirrely mere instants from awakening. Much less deliberately choose to and thoroughly enjoy it. If Pinkie’s hyperactive antics didn’t already prove she was poles apart from the average equine, this certainly proved it by leaps and bounds.

The moonlight that morn was somehow even more beautiful than the countless other times the zealous pony had laid eyes on it. By the time her lids bisected and her globes were relieved from the endless darkness, pale slender shafts had already filtered through the small gap in her curtains. Showering her small frame with its brilliant radiance. The rocky behemoth’s reign over the vast lake of tenebrosity above was unfortunately temporary. A fact that Pinkie, contrary to what others may suspect, wished was a mere falsehood.

It would be utterly mind-rattling to anyone who knew her that Pinkie Pie, a pony with enough adrenaline whirling through her to kill an army, preferred Luna’s peaceful monarchy over the daytime. While yes, the dusk had its fair share of pros and cons that Pinkie wasn’t particularly fond of. One of the numerous disadvantages she loathed was the severe scarcity of people to tenant her aura of verve. Ever since the day she began this day-to-day ritual, the sole beings to accompany her in the early stages of daybreak were the families of crickets and occasional boisterous owls. Other than that, loneliness was her solitary ally. Nothing to satisfy her undying lust for conversation other than her own thoughts and the rare Rainbow Factory worker returning home. Stumbling through the polished glass doors, drenched head-to-hoof in a thick mire of sweat. Their faded cyan work shirt honeycombed with dark orbs of grease and long streaks of vigorous color, like vibrant vipers holding a marathon down their worn fabric. Seeing somebody barely able to stand on his own two hooves made her more-than-appreciative of the life she was fortunate enough to live. Not having to return home encased in a putrid aroma that laid waste to her senses. Or for the zeal to be beaten from her crystalline globes by tortuous, grueling hours, leaving dull remnants in its wake.
And it wasn’t just them who would saunter into Sugarcube Corner with vastly different intentions than a hankering for sugar and caffeine.

Weeks before Nightmare Moon’s nigh-cataclysmic return, a cloaked zebra meandered her way into the bakery. Her sable cloven hooves clicking against the tiles akin to clattering dice as she approached. Radiant gold irises stabbed her vision, slicing through the thin screen of darkness between them. The torn, patch-riddled sack tied around her neck with an elderly rope cloaked her features in rich tenebrosity. Despite the mere inches separating the two, Pinkie tried and failed to decipher the mind-jambling puzzle that was her face. All the thick shadow granted access to was the protruding banded muzzle, alongside her razor-sharp eyes.

Zecora was her name. A newcomer to Ponyville. Not much was revealed in their brief yet surprisingly informative conversation. Apparently, the immensely small handful of civilians who didn’t cower in fear at the sight of her spoke Pinkie’s name in reverence. Showering the equine in praise. That was all the encouragement she needed to seek out Pinkie’s allegedly high-spirited, and dare she say addictive, atmosphere. Zecora’s heart begged on their knees with clasped hands to stay, permitting her to absorb all of Pinkie’s energy down to the final ounce. But the beckons of her home echoed down the ill-lit Ponyville streets, carrying the slightest hint of the olid swamp tang with it. Pinkie and just about everyone she knew, Applejack the sole exception, would face death head-on then be within a mile radius of any bog Equestria had to offer. How a pony could live and sleep there willingly was mind-boggling.

Other than Zecora’s fleeting yet memorable interaction, her nights were occupied solely by the tranquility she signed up for from the get-go. Jubilated families of crickets chirping to their heart’s content, singing their passionate song from every corner of the pacific village. Spasmodic, somewhat ominous, hoots of roisterous owls. Glancing out of the window and seeing the desultory unicorn going on their morning jog. Or a pegasus taking their dog on a much needed bathroom break. The stark difference in grogginess between the two makes it seem as if they were from different planets. A pup happy as can be trotting down the Ponyville avenues, restricted only by the leash tugging their nape. And then there was the owner. Eyelids drooping, beseeching for merely a moment of repose from the inflicted torment. Hooves shuffling against the ground. Small-scale plumes of dirt and sediment rising from their fatigued appendages, blending into the midnight surrounding them.

Pinkie couldn’t help but beam ear-to-ear at the sights she witnessed on those lengthy fall nights. To others, the spectacles would be nugatory. Simply an event occurring in somebody else’s life that doesn’t concern them in the least bit. A wedge of Ponyville’s background, if you will. But to her, they were far more than that. More than the owner or the innocent jogger could ever begin to understand.

Turning a meaningless exchange of commerce with a complete stranger into a chat with a brand new friend was Pinkie Pie’s specialty. The cream of crop in the world of talent. Perhaps by brightening her day with their presence, she could mirror the same effect on theirs. No matter how gloomy or foreboding it was. However, the aggregate of Ponyville’s population wasn’t wholly civilians or world-rescuing groups of friends. Sometimes, albeit extremely rarely, evil prevailed over the supreme serenity she had become accustomed to. Nightmare Moon was a prime example that came to mind. She wasn’t particularly keen on diving headfirst into the rabbit hole of “what ifs'' when it came to that dreadful night. Sporadically sprinkled in the weeks following the avoided travesty, her mind would wander to distant lands while restless in the dead of night. Exploring far and wide the array of possible outcomes and endings that could’ve easily befallen them. How many times death could’ve annexed her on their perilous trek through the Everfree. Or the manifold of opportunities where the untold horrors of the decrepit castle would have revealed themselves. In unimaginable ways. And Nightmare’s wrath wasn’t explicitly reserved for her. It could’ve been unleashed full-force on any one of her dearest friends. Twilight. Rainbow. Possibly even Levi. Although with that corpse that Pinkie refused to look at in the corridor, it appeared he was dealt the lion’s share of her fury. Face bruised. Skin split. Carmine dashed across the flesh in sickly belts. Buttons popped from his shirt.

It was a miracle she wasn’t the one leading the charge against the nefarious alicorn. If she was, who knows what that monster with the demolished truck might’ve had in store for her. His fists were clearly parched from the taste of blood. It mattered not to him who the unfortunate victim was.

With that in mind, it was perfectly reasonable for Pinkie to be wary of individuals who brought a bubble of unease with them. People who shook the silence to its core without so much as a peep or a movement. Making the formerly amicable bubble Pinkie inhabited tremble in fear at the sight. Contaminating her euphoric vanity with its anxiety-inducing venom. Whetted teeth sunk deep into the fragile walls of her castle in the air, razing it to a pitiful mound of ash and glowing embers. Luckily, barely anyone fitting that harrowing bill had crossed her path for some time. And it was much better that way.

However, life was a cruel sod. Heeding not to the feelings of those it manipulates remorselessly. Refusing to bend or bow to the emotions of others. Twisting lives without an inkling of ruth. Whether he was blind to the ruin he wrought or simply didn’t give a damn was unclear. An inquiry with no lucid answer. And there would most likely ne’er be one. If the sadistic hands of fate tugging the strings didn’t bear the brunt of the pain they blatantly summon, what reason would they have to care? None at all.

Pinkie Pie would learn that lesson harshly. Just the same as a myriad of ponies have before her.

Five o’clock rolled around, the same as it always did. The same alarm thundered in her eardrums. She jolted from her slumber in the same manner she always did. Leaping from the cocoon of blankets and sheets as though electricity replaced the blood in her veins. Akin to her bones being wreathed in glowing-hot coils. The catastrophe of lively pink curls atop her head resembled the grisly aftermath of a hellish war. Each loose lock protruding from the loch of tousled mane like gravestones of fallen soldiers. Without even the slightest allusion towards a deviation from her routine, Pinkie pranced happily to her bedroom door. While her lush arresting carpet aided in her stealthy awakening, the aged hinges keeping her door stable were the reverse opposite. Textbook definition of a clear-cut Judas. Every single morning without fail, her beautifully hand-crafted mahogany door set out to stab her deep in the back. If rudely reeling everyone in Sugarcube Corner from their blissful slumber was the main objective, it was a miracle succession strayed far from its path.

In stark contrast to the desolate groaning ricocheting off the brightly painted walls, the deep maroon carpet was Pinkie’s number-one trusted ally. Having her back in muting her otherwise clamorous trots night after night. Rescuing her from the potential sweltering scowl of a rudely-awaken Cake patriarch. A strident hum rose from the extremity of her throat, the grueling night of inactivity having taken its toll. In spite of seizing consciousness mere minutes prior, Pinkie’s impatient bones were already settling into their old habits. Bouncing with avidity leaking from her hooves, forever welding her mark into Sugarcube Corner until time reached its coda. Even posterior to the manifold of times Pinkie had drilled through her crafted formality, nix was ever homogeneous. Every uncharacteristically soundless stride. Every hymn she ever crooned, blessing the stale air with the marvelous tune. Every dream she experienced moments before her brain was wrenched from slumber. All of it culminated into a grade-A Pinkie Pie experience. Chiseling a dull and downright insufferable state of affairs into an exponentially more enjoyable ordeal for everyone involved.

The pastel equine bounded enthusiastically down the coiling flight, her jolly carol on no occasion losing its infectious merriness. Her heart battered happily against her robust ribs. Pinkie’s frame was arrested by the iron-tight clutches of unbridled excitement. What would the upcoming handful of hours hold for the jubilated pony? The question didn’t yet harbor a clear answer. But that was what made it so incomprehensibly fun for her. Discovering in real time what was in store for her was precisely the reason she kept continuing these mores on a consistent basis.

Amidst the blaring jamboree raging on within her core, something else somehow managed to slip through the cracks of her palisade of gaiety. A sensation more sinister than Pinkie ever could’ve thought of anticipating. It wasn’t a feeling she endured often. In fact, heretofore that nerve-wracking calamity of a celebration, fear hadn’t truly gotten its hands on her longer than her memory spanned. Pinkie Pie was the polar opposite of a pony easily deterred from her usual cheery way of life. If anyone else in her shoes had trudged through a boring existence for years, only for it all to be shattered by a single beam of color, who would forsake those emotions. The circadian intoxicating waves of pure, unchained delight that drowned her was teetering on the border of addicting. Even so little as a fleeting second drifting from her epoch of glee would be spent in agony.

Pinkie’s hooves greeted the chilly Lincoln green wooden floor blanketing the bottom level with a drawn-out whine. Not every inch of the house actively worked in Pinkie’s favor. That much was transparent. Perhaps the wretched golden door hinges and the damned treen beneath her had been conspiring together all along. Working to fabricate the perfect plan to burn her to a meaningless heap of illuminating cinders. If only the truth was as bright as her undying love for this place.

Clear glass tables held together by a faded green, slender metal skeleton, like the hue of deteriorated copper, dotted the border of the shop. Accompanied by steel chairs, crafted from the same rangy material. That waning copper green, as though the small family of restaurant appliances had stood the test of time ten-fold. From the outside looking in, one would be forgiven for mistaking the five-star bakery for a lawn display at a hardware store. And if Pinkie was honest, that was precisely what she felt upon first glance. However, after many years of meticulous cleaning and treating it akin to her own child, the willowy seats and framework exceeded that stereotype. Situated bare centimeters from the vast pock-cleared windows, any and all who were fortunate enough to bask in Sugarcube Corner’s glory got the best space any diner could offer. Granted full faultless, uncensored access to the picturesque spectacle that was Ponyville, in all of its scenic beauty. Watching colts and fillies frolic up and down the plodded roads, no care in the world about anything else sans their innocent games. Seeing unicorns dragging grey-haired wagons behind their back, the grumbling of old tires and placid chatter muffled by the unsoiled aperture. Heaven was the only word in Pinkie’s surprisingly elephantine vocabulary that barely scratched the surface of accurately describing it.

She stepped down off the final tread board, no longer tethered to the demarcations of the noise-killing territory. Numerous stands were sporadically scattered across the shop tier. Mountainous cakes just barely rivaling the one made before it and trays of muffins were stacked atop them, basking in the moon’s pale beams streaming from above. Bronze chandeliers with several oval bulbs dangled from an elderly chestnut chain. In spite of being abandoned by the sun’s glorious rays, the arresting decorations adorning the tan walls continued to burglarize Pinkie’s attention. Resuscitating the otherwise bland, uninspiring varnish with new striking features.

Pinkie pranced on the eau de Nil planks to the sanctuary behind the register, heart palpitating at the dazzling display before her. It didn’t matter how many hundreds or thousands of times the awe-inspiring myriad of sugar-concoctions grazed her vision. Each and every time, bereft of failure, it was always special. Unique in its own exceptional, and in Pinkie’s eyes, beautiful way. Either an amalgamation of sweet and tangy, or a conglomerate of sour and cloying. Perhaps even both combined into a single mass of icing and sense-obliterating taste. And the non-stop barrage of piquancy wasn’t the sole enchanting characteristic. The semi-thick layer of candied varnish was the dusty rays of moonlight’s personal playground. Witnessing the glittering alabaster shafts frolic along the polished edges of the layers was beyond mesmerizing, like a microscale colorless parade. Aisles of barely discernible specks of shimmer dancing carelessly to the beat of their drum. All in unison, giving their extremities free reign to bask in the temporary relaxation. Knowing fully that, when the sun inevitably returned in meager hours and exiled their overlord, the party would be over. Mercilessly cleaved without an ounce of ruth. Leaving the lacerated soon-to-be corpses to bleed into the blood-orange horizon of a new day in Equestria. And through it all, there was Pinkie Pie. Standing idly by as the utterly oblivious celebrations dawned, and the equally ravenous massacre came to fruition. Night after night, second after second, it ne’er deviated. At least when her eyelids divorced and were eager to tackle the daybreak, it was something to look forward to that was guaranteed to arrive. On time and ready to deliver the entertainment and viewing pleasure of the gorgeous spectacle. Unlike many other outlets of entertainment she pursued with cipher to show for it.

The mule for all the money earned fair and square was polar to the touch. A feeling that would make even the mightiest mountains of Yakyakistan grow green with envy. With fall briskly approaching Equus, darkness now brought a new bloodthirsty, esurient foe to the table. Cold. It was a salivating beast of a force that forlornly roamed the streets of Ponyville, silently pleading with the heavens above to provide it with a space to invade. Infect the entirety of whatever was unfortunate enough to cross its path with its influence. As luck’s cruel hand would have it, Sugarcube Corner was dead-center in slobbering monster’s crosshairs. It wasn’t long before it pounced with bisected jaws. And it left nothing to be buried. Wooden floorboards metamorphosed into sheets of pure ice, piercing the equine’s soles with every chance it got. Once lukewarm, comfortable air was shattered into combers of splintered glass, laying waste to Pinkie’s not-yet-acclimated flesh. The glass shielding the plethora of baked goods from the prying hooves of the outside world. The coins that Pinkie counted absentmindedly, each drop onto her hoof adding a small jingle to the auditory wasteland. None of it was spared from its wrath.

Pinkie’s cerulean globes flicked from the polar steel skin of the cash register to the scenic view of tenebrous-cloaked Ponyville. It wasn’t often one bore the fortune of witnessing a normally buzzing and animated town, almost always ensnared in some form of thunderous uproar, in this state of serenity. But even with oak treen blinds shielding their ill-lit rooms from the moon’s eminent luster, a whisper of that nigh-daily rumpus continued to linger. As though it too was resting soundly and bereft of a care in the world along with Ponyville’s placid population. But that term was neither here nor there on some days. And when a villain got his way and chaos reached a formerly unachievable climax, a new discordant atmosphere would be formed. A crude mockery of the quaint nation of Equus. Hints of the tranquility that previously reigned supreme lingering in the air, barely smothered into oblivion by the malador of death. Pinkie managed to prevent drowning in that bottomless ocean of “What ifs?” and turbulent scenarios. With her cyanic optics now fully drawn to the present, she can revel in the existing beauty she was lucky enough to live in.

A soft gale whistled down the drubbed, hoof-imprinted streets, the percolating aroma of dew-frosted grass being carried along with it. In some form or fashion, the early-morning fragrance managed to breach the ultraclean windows of Sugarcube. While others were prone to annoyance at the smell of nature infiltrating indoors, Pinkie gloried in it. After all, it beat the tacky ridicule of pine tar that Mr. Cake insisted was sprayed in every corner of the Earth. The reason? Who knew. Whether it was a heart-stopping phobia of undesired odor or a simple hankering for the scent was unknown. But either way, Pinkie loathed it. A harmonious orchestra of chiliads of crickets chirped to their tiny heart’s content. Joining the ragtag acapella group were a generous lot of cicadas scattered throughout the quaint village. There sonorous song like the creaking of an old swing one would expect to find collecting dust on an abandoned house’s front porch. Swaying pitifully in the wind, hinges groaning akin to the dying breaths of a frail elderly man. However, in spite of how inherently absonant the noise was on its own, it was an unlikely duo with the joyful song of the crickets. Sporadically throughout Pinkie’s nightly duties, the boisterous, prideful call of an owl would join the indignant quartet. The only source of music that traveled into Ponyville with an intent to stay. Not a nomadic unicorn with unbelievable magic tricks or a traveling loosely-strung band. It was a nice change.

Pinkie happily pranced from behind the frigid counter. Both corners of her mouth crimped to the absolute utmost. In the face of the unwanted baltic air gnawing on her extremities like hordes of famished mosquitoes, it was a miracle her breath remained invisible. A small white sign dangled from a peg stuck firmly into the glass door by a thin colorless string. In jumbo, bold sable letters, “OPEN” stared her square in the face. Pinkie declared a fiery war against the urge to grimace at the travesty before her. If she had it her way, the beloved one-stop-shop for all things sugary would ne’er come close to the concept of closing. At a certain point, the prospect would soon become foreign. Her own pitch-perfect reality. But alas, Pinkie’s dreams of keeping the Cakes’ pride and joy open all year-round would forever stay as just that. A dream. An unsatisfiable hankering.

Pinkie corrected the cardinal sin in a heartbeat.

Regardless of how rich the tenebrosity burying Equus was, Ponyville always seemed to prevail no matter how cumbersome the dusk was. Each and every individual building withstood the night’s defeatist and futile efforts to terminate their radiating energy. No matter how gloomy the time of day or weather proved to be, not a thing seemed to phase town. As if Ponyville was some form of puppet show with a painted cardboard background. Rainy. Snowy. Morning. Night. Stormy. Balmy. Ponyville remained all the same. Flipping the illustration to the blackest dusk or the shiniest morn changed nought. The atmosphere was the sole thing no being alive was able to alter by any means. A mere speck among the innumerable things Pinkie cherished about the town. There was ne’er a shortage of happiness to go around. And the party pony simply couldn’t get enough.

The limitless society of trolling insects outside greeted her presence with a buoyant carol. A living, breathing torch to shed Sugarcube’s robe of gloomy fatigue and grant it a brand new cloak to don. One of newfound vim to welcome strangers and comrades alike through its polished maw, permitting Pinkie’s motormouth to let loose. Show no signs of stopping for the foreseeable future. The very instant a sleep-deprived factory worker, a jogger, or even a dog-walker sauntered in, they would be caught in her trap. Entangled in the vines of boundless conversation and balls-to-the-walls energy. A sight that they had probably seen before during one of her many town-wide shenanigans, but had never experienced up-close. Enlisting random civilians to belt out lyrics to her own song as she marched through the village. Hosting a colossus of a party for the smallest of accomplishments her friends and family achieved. Blessing the beholden townsfolk with her bakery expertise. Although, throughout her cosmic roster of celebrations she had hosted, not many could boast about experiencing the magic first-hand. Let that be the case, whoever happened to trot into Pinkie’s domain would be the luckiest there ever was.

Pinkie’s pearly whites cast out a small chunk of the murk annexing the lower floor. The sheer power of her pearly whites knew no bounds. But the old bronze chandeliers sagging from the ceiling mirrored that robustness, all but surpassing it. Her urge to switch it on and cleave the thick, obnoxious crepuscule in two was borderline overwhelming. To the point where averting her gaze from the arresting features of it was the lone remedy to wan her cravings. The years were cruel to the bulbs, and they were prone to buzz from active use. While in the hustle-and-bustle of everyday life, the monotone bombinating was tolerable. In fact, its existence was scarcely, if not never, noticed by the earth pony manning the register. But when that commotion died and Luna carried out her duty, the droning seemed to roar in her ears. And with the lightest sleeper the world has ever seen resting soundly on the floor above, that was the last thing she wanted to activate. Her feverish nature was enough as it is.

A great majority of her time during the Lunar Princess’ reign was the waiting game. With the shop open for commerce, anything could happen. Maybe it was Rainbow Dash who would stumble in, sapped of fuel from an early fly. Or perhaps Twilight would rear her multi-colored head, walking in to talk to Pinkie about the newest book she read. Levi was also a perfect candidate. While she didn’t know the human as much as she wanted to, she could still cling to the hopes that he too was a night owl. Choosing to indulge in the quietude instead of sleeping through it. She couldn’t forecast any of it. That was the grounds for its name from the get-go. Waiting was the furthest thing from Pinkie’s specialty. It was the only portion of her routine she dreaded in the slightest. Standing there, surrounded by sweets she battled the appetite for, feigning patience for anyone to greet her. Sometimes the full length of the morning was spent in solitude. Others she would get a visitor of some sort. Griping from an overworked, stress-ridden factory grease monkey, bringing the malador of sweat and oil with him. Or casual chats with normal, run-of-the-mill ponies going about their business. Any and all conversation, paying no mind to who the outlet was, is what kept Pinkie Pie sane.

A solid half-hour had passed since the Sugarcube Corner’s lock was turned and the mouth thrown open. Not a thing had deviated from the usual path her nightly ritual was set on since its inception. No creak or groan of any tempo or degree infiltrated the household. Breezes still carried that semi-nostalgic fragrance of dew-blanketed fields, some more strident than others before it. And at the heart of it all, the daily show of Insects in E minor continued to rage on, where Pinkie was gifted front row seats.

By all accounts, it appeared there wasn’t anything that would disrupt the constant flow of sights and sounds. Crickets were still chirping. The small golden bell looking down from above the doorframe didn’t chime. No form gloved by darkness shambled out into Pinkie’s line of sight. For a split-second, boredom managed to peek its head from the roiling, tempestuous ocean of jubilation within her. Just as briskly as it rose, it was devoured once again. Dragged deep into the inconceivable fathoms below.

‘Another night. Just the same as the last,’ Pinkie lamented, ‘Does nopony else enjoy the night other than me?’

From the outside looking in, no-one else did. The only physical beings accompanying the equine during these uneventful morning hours were the civilization of insects. Their brains unable to process the alien prospect of boredom, or anything remotely similar. Sleep, eat, survive, repeat. That was the mantra their minds were programmed to since their genesis. Blissfully unaware of whatever events, important or niche, may be transpiring before there beady, pinpoint eyes.

Pinkie’s ears perked. Heart skipped a beat. Mountainous waves of excitement slapped her ribs lustily. Hooves threatened to spring from the forced blocks of concrete they were encased in.

Turns out there was somebody else who enjoyed the dusk just as much as her.

The singular crunch of a leaf being put to eternal rest was what ignited her intramural uproar. Somewhere out there amidst the thick fog of tenebrosity jacketing Ponyville, somebody was coming to pay her a visit. Cradle her in their arms of salvation, rescuing her from the inevitable existential conversations she had in her lonesome. A trend that had followed her for years and manifested itself during her nightly practice. Inner debates about the existence of an afterlife. Contemplating her inevitable demise decades down the road. The circadian invasion of these dread-inducing, while simultaneously eye-opening, thoughts was badgersome to say the least. And thankfully for her, another pony had been dropped from the golden vault from heaven. Pinkie peered out of the clear glass door, head leaned forward to the utmost as her orbs worked overtime. Attempting to slay the rich mist of gloom clouding her vision. All to no avail.

The imperceptible cloak of gloaming disguising its features worked wonders. There wasn’t a thing that, no matter how diligently she attempted to carve a peephole in the murk, could do to discern his characteristics. All but one. The blatant, unbelievably obvious fact screaming in the equine’s face. Slinging her limp frame back and forth, adjuring Pinkie's full, undivided attention. And the very instant her nucleus had caught wind of what the thing’s camouflage failed miserably to hide, dinner plates replaced her optics.

It was not a pony. The furthest thing from a pony Pinkie had ever witnessed with her own two, practically bulging irises. A human was marching head-long towards her, forging a beeline for Sugarcubes alluring maw. The singular time when the bakery’s unrivaled charm and enticement hadn’t worked in her favor.

Step by step. Merciless execution of leaves, one after another. A grotesque melody of rhythmic snuffing. The human approached, closer and closer. Hands stuffed deep in their tattered pants pockets. A short-sleeve button-down fitting their beefy frame snugly, stark white buttons managing to pierce the palisade of darkness. Heavy boots sinking deep into the Ponyville terra firma with every long stride, as though Pinkie was his number-one objective.

Pinkie heard through a miscellaneous grapevine that Levi Cronell wasn’t alone in his meteoric arrival into Equestria. While yes, he agonizingly staggered alone into Fluttershy’s haven, but another human being resided somewhere in Equus. Equally as worried for the welfare of their friends as Levi was for him. No matter how happy or vibrant his voice was or how brightly his eyes exploded with glee, there was an underlying sorrow lying deep below the surface. Like a serpent slithering clandestinely in the tall grass, undiscovered by all except for her. A hunch goes a long way. However, someone in the same village as their best friend, who’s status is currently unknown, their mannerisms went bereft of lucid reasoning. Flicking their globes left and right in rapid-fire succession. Their head pointed at a sharp 45-degree angle, concealing their face from the world around them. As if a dangerous, ne’er-undefeated assassin had a hankering for his head above a fireplace. Scouring every corner of his peripheral vision for a crimson laser sight or a barrel of a gun ready to crop dust the town with his gore. Not exactly scared. But more desirous than anything else. Mayhaps he was the blood-starved assassin prowling the empty streets. Skulking for the victim he’ll execute in a heartbeat.

Maybe his true intentions being masked in secrecy was for the better.

The closer he approached the small lamp stationed above the diner’s entrance, the more his deceptive shroud of tenebrous slowly began to go phut. There was no shortage of patches missing from his threadbare pants, as though he had precipitated into a ichor-stained war zone. Holes honeycombed into the textile. Tears and fixations sprinkled throughout. If Pinkie’s eyes were granted access to the skin underneath, there was no doubt in her mind they matched, if not surpassed, the abysmal cloth in sheer grime. Turquoise fit snugly over his physique. Legions of blemishes and pocks desecrated the once silky, beautifully sewn shirt. Whatever cruel, barbarous fate the bottom-half of his attire was subject to, his upper, and arguably better, bisection subsequently suffered the same. With the enigma now mere inches from crossing the threshold into Pinkie’s realm, leaf after leaf met their grim demise. One after another, no hint of relent to be seen. A discordant orchestra consisting solely of hefty thumping of boots and the strident whistle of fall’s gradual debut.

Pinkie had ne’er been scared of a confrontation before in all of her two decades of life. Sure, she had experienced a spell of nervousness before her nerves were fully acclimated to her brain’s hunger for interaction. Anxiety had swarmed her before. So had apprehension. But fear… It was territory the equine never believed she would step into where potential new friends were concerned. But now…perhaps the darkened form shrouded by mystique was better off far away from Pinkie’s existence. Trudge somewhere miles away from the comfortable boundaries of Sugarcube Corner. Leave her to her own devices, allow a more suitable outlet of banter to assume it’s stead. Mayhaps pursuing the high-bounty target it nigh-incessantly searches the outskirts of his vision for was a better road to follow.

Alas, her hopes fell on deaf ears. The Trojan horse had arrived, and there was null that could be done to cease it. She could either face the quandary head-on without a droplet of fright to be discerned, or flee to the peaceful confines of her bedroom. Grant the bottomless lake of slumber to envelop her with its broad, mammoth jaws. Without a shadow of a doubt, salvation from these intrusive emotions lied within the bowels of the loch. If she were to pursue it, that is. Seeing a thick arm materialize from the aquamarine and grey contours, that avenue was long-since clogged.

Calloused, wrinkled digits coiled around the metal bar. The dreadfully slow-but-assured genesis of Autumn chilled every fiber of the stainless-steel handle. But the tenebrous-masked silhouette cared not how savagely his nerves fulminated with baltic stinging. It had a goal, and stopping was tucked neatly in the furthest tartarean corner of his mind. Sinking deep into the fathoms of obscurity and unimportantance. The individual stole one final glance in each direction, hoping that maybe, by some solidus of unfiltered luck, the manslayer shadowing him would manifest itself. Abandon his cowardly ways and forsake skulking in the gloom of Ponyvillle’s alleys. Emerge with a prodigious equalizer in-hand and an equally lethal iron adorning his hip. The fated battle would be a glorious sight to behold, indeed.

A euphonious chime ricocheted off the walls of Pinkie’s skull, echoing sonorously throughout the entirety of the lower floor. A pair of cumbersome, inconceivably sullied boots greeted the Lincoln green planks harshly. The wood groaned miserably to the foreign weight depressing it, like the conclusive breath of a man greeting his fate arriving at his concluding terminus. Pinkie believed that the blemishless screens of glass were doing the man a favor. Hiding at least some of his patches of missing cloth or blotches of grime and grass-stains. But, judging by the abomination in human flesh that just shambled into her happy-place, she had been a clear-cut fool.

The glass door returned to the sanctity of its frame. Every last shred of the calm, lighthearted atmosphere that Pinkie developed a fond endearment for was dust. Razed to nothing but a heart-rending mound of ash by the unknown human that stood before her. Piercing amber irises cut through the palisade of tenebrous like a flock of whetted spearheads. Dusk did virtually nothing to aid in concealing his sorry-excuse for attire, as though even the darkness was repulsed by the idea of claiming him. Referring to the male as “there's” would bring bile erupting from there core. Oh how Pinkie longed for whatever monster of unimaginable proportions raked the roads of Ponyville to have its way. Provide respite from the constricting binds of the uneasy, strangling air the cipher dragged in after him.

That was not her reality. That would ne’er be her reality. What was, however, was the inescapable discussion the pair were fated to have from the moment he emerged in her line of sight. The dead-set line he crafted, no deviations or anything remotely similar to a variance to be seen. Marching with a purpose. A reason to be.

The gloom had annexed Sugarcube Corner’s bottom level refused to abut the raven-haired man, as if he was patient zero for the most bloodthirsty diseases the world had ever endured. In its eyes, the human was covered head to toe in oozing, nauseating puss sores, launching arrows of pale yellow sanies every which way. Because of the dark’s refusal to claim him, a great majority of his features were exposed to Pinkie’s naked globes. No squinting or further examination of who, or what, had just sauntered into her home unannounced. And quite frankly, unwanted.

The man possessed a face one would expect to be complimented by a dense cloud of expensive cologne enveloping his chassis. Somebody who the equine fully anticipated to reside in the bougiest, top-of-the-line towers in Canterlot. In colossal marble skyscrapers chiseled and molded by those the inhabitants viewed as lower than them. Those miserable sods in that equally miserable city had an unspoken hierarchy. That much was clear from the incredibly scarce handful of visits she made to the capital of Equestria. A boundless sea of gold and silver, civilians hiding behind monocles and laborers sweating pearls to meet a quota. All for a disdainful paycheck and a glower as they depart from a company that loathes them. Exactly where this gentleman belonged, it appeared.

There was one characteristic that ninety-nine percent of the time, without fail, provided an uncensored view of who someone truly was. No filters. No sugarcoating. No beating around the bush. And that was his eyes. Those shrewd moonstones embedded in his sockets that played an extensively grim tale. A horrific story that Pinkie didn’t desire any detail for. All that she wished wasn’t known to her was he wasn’t hunted by any stretch of the imagination.

It was him who was neck-deep in a restless pursuit. She should’ve known from the get-go.

“Hey,” The man’s voice carried the full length of distance graciously placed between them. Tiny, barely discernible hints of drowsiness, eagerness, and an unidentified craving sprinkled in his words.

“Hi!” Pinkie replied jubilantly, her forced gaiety-braided response a far cry from her inner turmoil. And it was better that way.

It was very possible that the male before her was the furthest thing from a foe. Perhaps there just a lost traveler prowling the endless stretches of Equus for the one who wronged him. Or a potential new friend who’s underlying good-hearted nature lied behind a screen of faux emotions, given life by nothing more than a bad day. While the latter seemed more of the benefit of the doubt than anything else, it was better than jumping the gun and sounding the alarm over this person.

Murder was a crime punishable by execution in Equestria. It had only been done once before. Nearly a millennium before Pinkie’s spawn, by two creatures that the party pony was never told the names of. It didn’t matter how unshakable a facade of nonchalance and carelessness was, deep down, everyone valued their life to an extent. Voluntarily choosing to lay it down as a means to pay for another soul to perish was insanity. Surely her fears were simply a byproduct of rapid-fire overthinking. Surely this male wasn’t window-shopping for a life he deemed vile enough that he’d choose to die for it. Surely the man standing meager feet from her wasn’t a complete and total madman…

Right?

“How can I help you?”

“A friend of mine told me you’d be here,” The human replied, “also told me you know what I wanna know.”

Pinkie cocked an eyebrow. “What do you wanna know? ‘Cause I know everybody in Ponyville! Ask me anything!”

The human grinned nefariously. “‘Everything’, huh?”

Pinkie nodded feverishly, the icy swords of dread impaling her heart laid waste to her imitation of her usual self. Everything screamed for Pinkie to burn rubber upstairs and put this night behind her. To not fall prey to the male’s siren song of a smile any longer. But she couldn’t turn away. Her nature to see the best in everyone had machinated against her.

“I’m Gary,” The noirette introduced himself at long last, his hand stuck deep in his pocket, rifling around the lint-littered corners for whatever was hibernating there.

His manus emerged from the ill-lit pouch, a singular gold, slightly scratched coin fitted gingerly between his fingers. The golden face of the beloved Princess of Equestria glimmering in the gentle moonlight.

“I need to find Levi. Levi Cronell. I know he’s here somewhere.” Gary broke eye contact for a split-second, silently surveying every corner of eau de Nil floorboards.

“What’s your best drink?”

This was it. No turning back now. Either the harmonious pealing was the start to a new, contemporary friendship, or a sneak peak at the knells roaring from a distant church tower at her funeral. There was only one way to find out, she supposed.

Pinkie reached across the spotless counter, unsheathing a tall milkshake glass from a stack.

This was going to be a night to remember.

Morality.

Morality was the mammoth slab the Golden Dashers were founded on. Without it, they had nothing. The building blocks of the team that Silver Spears and her trusted confidant Cloud Rider both relied on. A simple prospect. Let the team’s broad array of talented fliers be bereft of a solid, unmovable set of ideals and morals, failure would rear its ugly head. Honesty. Hard-working spirits. Integrity. In order to be rigidly soldered by respect, all of those boxes needed to be checked. In a way, they were all veins leading to a teeming, drumming heart in the core of the Dashers. Morality.

Their fearless leader, however, seemed to forget that lone fundamental principle. The solitary idea of ethics and a basic understanding of right versus wrong was fundamental. Let that succumb to non-existence, and disaster was sure to follow. Silver’s trusted, more-than-skilled roster of unflagging soldiers viewed the team as a whole like a body. An organism, if you will. Each individual ideology, in spite of how benign or meaningless it appeared to be, all led to a greater divine purpose. Arteries forging knotty roads and winding paths guiding the rivers of blood where it needs to be. The totality converging at the same avenue, rushing into the same palpitating core. And there it was. Basking in all of its righteous, earned glory.

Morality.

But Silver Spears was the polar opposite of moral. For years, being moral had become an alien conviction to her. Victory was her muse. A better way of referring to it, a drug. One she had been addicted to beyond comprehension for the latter part of her reign over the Dashers. And if she couldn’t see her bronze stare reflected off the face of a solid gold trophy, there would be hell to pay. Hell was a perfectly fitting word. The chances were few and far between Silver simply accepting a loss and finding another team to skirmish. More often than not, despite how allegedly hardened she had become since being sworn in as head honcho, grudges would be held. Rancor that could only be fizzled out by seeking the services of her vice. Her other, drastically more sinister muse that rarely ever saw the glorious light of day. A feature that even her closest friend was unaware it existed. It wasn’t until numerous newspapers deluged all of Equestria of a vicious attack befalling an innocent flying team. Their leader found marred, beaten far beyond the point where mercy should’ve been applied. No picture was provided, but the harrowing image forever engraved into her brain would suffice.

The image was made more stomach-roiling when the realization walloped her like a freight train.

Incidents were cropping up, coincidentally, after every single loss the Golden Dashers suffered. One after another, month after month. Rocketing out of the woodworks for a reason shrouded in the utmost mystery. An enigma among the complex network of teams. No-one could put a face to any sort of name of the culprit behind it all. Some believed it was Cloud hiding her underlying twisted nature behind a masquerade of honesty. That, at the root of all this discord, she was behind it all. But gaining what from it? A medal? A worthless accolade that’ll rot for decades on a wooden shelf? Collecting dust and watching the office they overlook grow old and frail? That was certainly not worth risking the second-highest capital punishment from the supreme law of the land. And Cloud, unlike a vast majority of the spearheads in her tight inner circle, harbored a rigid palisade of morals. A strict laundry list of philosophies she’d follow until the day her time on Earth reached a coda. Cheating. Lying. Bribery. Rigging. Those were a small fry in comparison to the Bible-length directory of sins the other teams committed haphazardly. Almost all, sans the Wonderbolts, were guilty of some form of deception. Getting what they want was consistently the top priority. It mattered little how the public opinion of them shifted and deviated from the usual trail of positivity. As long as what they yearned for ultimately landed in their possession, the ones they tricked and led astray were fed to the void.

In comparison to that, those chiefs were mere ants scouring for food in a derelict sandbox. Silver, on the other hand, was a sharp-eyed, cunning hawk. Prowling the clear Cloudsdale skies for their next meal. A new gang of fliers to rock to their core. Inflict them with a grim, carmine-stained memory they would never forget. Scars that would remain until the curtain drew on their existence. It took more time than Cloud liked to discover the truth. Silver Spears, her best friend she had loved like her own sister since childhood, was not only a monster, but betrayed every ounce of trust they had constructed. Going behind her back and beating a virtuous pegasus who didn’t deserve it. She should’ve known from the get-go. Hearing her stumble into their shared apartment in the dead of night, scarlet-soaked hueless rag cloaking her hoof. Chest swelling and contracting like a vengeful sea. Ring of sweat choking her brow, begging to be mopped by one of her sore extremities. Cloud would unsurprisingly be stirred from her sleep by the raucous yelping and the jittery activation and deactivation of the bathroom sink. But, she figured the furious clutches of yet another bar fight had abducted her. And she did what she did best. Inflict agony upon another living pony all as revenge for taking the title of victor away from her. Even if triumph wasn’t in her future regardless of her prowess.

In fact, that was exactly where Silver was heading right now. The bar. An unlikely sanctuary that no-one from a first glance could tell was her outlet of comfort during rocky patches. Thankfully, upon introductions, nobody could discern she was one of those ponies. A pony who found comfort and solace in the bowels of a half-empty bottle. Staggering home at any odd hour of the night with a fresh bruise or black eye was her afflatus. Even in the face of how greatly it would vandalize her image if any picture from a prowling paparazzi were to be published. But on the off-chance it did, why should she care? None at all. That was the grounds behind her decision to be as casual as humanly possible. Not a hint of a bother to try and hide her appearance from any potential prying eyes or swarm of camera-wielding pegasi, flocking her like emaciated locusts. Because, for reasons she could never begin to understand, a single photograph of a celebrity, in spite of her relatively small social status, was the holy grail. Revered to the utmost for their “expertise” in snapping a photograph of a pegasus already in the newspaper.

WONDERBOLTS VICTORIOUS OVER DASHERS!

Her face painted with a begrudging beam and faux-acceptance of her turbulent defeat. Humiliating. Absolutely, undeniably, incomprehensibly humiliating. Something she wouldn’t wish on the worst of her titanic catalog of enemies.

The Rusty Tavern was, in every way blatant and tenuous alike, a gorgeous place. Not just in the realm of appearance that left Silver in a puddle of awe when her eyes first grazed it, but the atmosphere. The view. The ambience. The lack of tumultuous pollution from the auditory cacophony of Cloudsdale’s major city. It was a miracle she had discovered this pristine location to begin with. Stress from her day-to-day life managing a team devoured her, sending her on a late-night fly. This inadvertently set her in the crosshairs of the Tavern, which she had stumbled upon when the afternoon hours were crawling to a close. A rich, striking indigo declared war against the mishmash of soft orange and pale yellow when she entered. And crepuscule had annexed the sky when she departed.

Tonight was bound to be another one of those nights.

Situated on a small cloud disk resting in a limitless ocean of cyanic sat the Rusty Tavern, basking in the moon’s illustrious rays. Bathing in its own undiscovered glory. A relatively minute two-floor building with sanded oak wood decorating the exterior, glazed with a vandyke brown varnish. Standing the test of time with little to show for the years that had passed it by. Four windows were installed, two above and two below. The glass duo residing in the upper level were cloaked with thin forest green curtains. Light from the multitude of lamps and bulbs illuminating the owner’s personal space breaching the textile. On eye-level with Silver was another glass pair, built about a foot away from either door. Shrouding the magic that lied posterior to the umber set of double doors from scrutinizing outside gazes. A round metal tube was erected from the ceiling, lengthy tendrils of smoke rising to infiltrate the heavens. Adding the intoxicating scent of rare steak into the otherwise mundane airspace.

Silver quickly fell in love with every individual detail inside and out. But simply the endoskeleton didn’t do the Tavern the justice she knew it needed to. Being the head coach and leader of a mammoth team of fliers, Silver knew good and well that a bad mien wasn’t definitive of who they were. The equine had met several of her once former, now current, Dashers that possessed tremendously questionable looks. Under the flesh, however, was a starkly different story. Others may perceive the Rusty Tavern as just another honky-tonk georgic bar manned by a run-of-the-mill hillbilly. Chucked from the woodwork at Appleloosa and thrown to the wolves in Cloudsdale. But it was borderline painful how wrong they were. So unbelievably wrong.

She retreated to this place more instances then she could count when things didn’t go the way she planned. Whether that be a place to alleviate her fury after a loss or soothe the fire singing her ribs from a blow-out fight with Cloud Rider. And tonight deviated not from that established trend.

It was a clash unlike any other the dynamic duo ever ignited before. And, to virtually no-one’s surprise at all, the topic that lit the match was Silver’s sinful tactics. Her hypocritical nature that garnered them an existence of grandeur and luxury, but blood was the price that had to be paid. Carmine flowing from split skin and knocked out teeth. Left to corrode in a foul pond of their own bodily fluids. Something Cloud wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. In short, tempers flared. Spiteful words were shared. A door was slammed. That’s what led the Dashers leader to where she was now. Trudging across a terrain of fluffy, angelic clouds. The white-hot glowing choler trouncing her veins forging a barricade of immunity from the raw Autumn breeze. Too angry to experience any sensation other than the inferno clamping its titanum jaws around her heart. An unrivaled longing for that familiar burning to ravage her throat once more. Time to metamorphose into a tranquil rushing river flowing past her, the discordant roaring of water being mashed into seafoam bleeding into limbo.

Gloaming had long-since cascaded over the glorious, buzzing city of Cloudsdale. The never-ending billows of prismatic smog percolating from the gargantuan stone pillars of the Rainbow Factory had taken its toll. Silver vividly recollected twenty odd years ago when the ravenous armies of air pollution didn’t lay waste to the pristine Equestrian sky. While the clear blue mesmerizing blood-orange remained identical no matter the environment, it was when the sun’s throne was robbed when Cloudsdale truly boomed. Its beautiful sights and sounds of a clear serene night being worn on its sleeve. Ponies from far and wide, included but not limited to the Dragon’s Kingdom and Las Pegasus, burned rubber just to see a snippet of the hypnotic spectacle. After all, the ceaseless hustle-and-bustle of a casino and black clouds erupting from volcanoes were ne’er good for the environment. This much was proven in every way by the bleak, dead, starless dusks that the inhabitants bore the misfortune of experiencing. However, that was a time forsaken in antiquity. Some would go so far as to call the once captivating exhibition that drew tourists like a siren’s dastardly tune “ancient”. To Silver, it surpassed that term by leaps and bounds.

In the present, there was nothing to accompany the stone-grey pony on her trek to the bottom of a bottle. Just a thin blanket of soft indigo with an incomprehensibly sparse handful of white pinpoints haphazardly adorning it.

Silver’s hooves landed gingerly onto the bijou plate of lush cloud, the soft chiliad of feathers creating her wing gently tickling her obliques as they retracted. The blistering vexation churning in her molten bronze eyes was a memory. Glowing embers of torrid fury piercing the gloomy air just moments before, but no longer. However, the savior taking the form of The Rusty Tavern cradled her in the arms of salvation before. Freeing her heart from the tyrannic, hampering binds of anger. Spleen no longer ruled her mind with an iron-fist. That wretched haze of indignation a fleeting memory. And it would do it all again. For the first time following her meteoric departure from her shared dorm, the corners of Silver’s lips were reeled to the sky. Cheek bones ached from the infrequent sensation. Silver pranced excitedly on bandaged front hooves, the serpents of pain wreathing her bones strangling ever-so-tighter with every step. The prospect of the pain, physically and everything in between,

The few feet separating her from the sovereign succor and relief she forlornly yearned was briskly squashed. Two curved branches served as ghetto substitutes for regular knobs. Melded into the oak door by a couplet of coal black metal rectangular bars. Two marred eyes stared back at the shoddy reflection presented in the semi-blemishless glass. One blackened with swollen purple eyelids disfiguring her optic and the other inflicted with a measly bruise. An act of mercy, if you will. Both brought upon by the same spate of skull-crushing punches. With competitive flying being some of, if not the most, attractive and revered events in all of Cloudsdale, it’s no surprise Silver was a vital organ in the knotty web of spearheads. Mutually agreed upon reverence about the tough-as-nails flame-haired pegasus became the topic of conversation more often than she would’ve liked.

“Her leadership is outstanding!”

“How does she do it so well? We gotta take notes.”

“We’re in trouble this season, boys and girls.”

To anyone on the outside looking in, that utterance would be regarded as prophecy.

They were in the same trouble every season, without fail. Spitfire, who departed from the clannish group years ago, always led a savage conquest through the flying scene. Any team who was unlucky enough to be assigned as their adversary had enough time to pray and write their will before the unavoidable beatdown. Bearing witness to their blood, sweat, and tears being pulverized into a fine powder would brew sorrow within anyone. The more she thought about it, labeling it trouble would be a criminal understatement. In a way, Silver fulfilled an unspoken yet intensely longed for favor that no-one before her harbored the courage to pursue. Beating that show boaty cur into the tiles kindled an undying satisfaction of unfathomable proportions. An epic deluge of tingles and sensations ne’er seen before by ponykind in any capacity. Every throe climbing up her throbbing forelimb like a vine of thorns slithering over her bone. Every movement, no matter how slight or benign, that caused her bruised chassis to wince. All of it brought her back to that crucial day. A day where Silver Spears committed the crux of her drawn-out life of blatant sin and transgressions.

But Silver possessed no reason to ponder over anything else sans the present. The inevitable repercussions that sought to raze her to ash and dust were bound, but not current. All she had to think and internally wrestle about was how deep into the night she’d spend wallowing in liquor. Not the acute scrutiny from a legion of stoic Canterlot detectives. Not the inexorable interviews and blistering glares she’d receive. Or the ever-so-slight pangs of regret while reading the incident in the Cloudsdale paper. The leader’s name printed in garish bold, accompanied by the title of the team that she decided to decimate. A brief description of the injuries they were dealt. Silver could almost smell the match thrown onto a gas trail leading to a bonfire of mystery. One that would rage for days that melted into weeks. Then dripped into months. Silver didn’t have the mental vigor to tackle easily quellable future problems. Here and now were the solitary two words that owned any sliver of significance in her mind.

The strident whine of senior, rusty hinges added life to the otherwise dead, soundless night. Gauze-wound hooves reunited with the arresting titus wooden planks, akin to a soldier charging into the open arms of his family. Horrors of war finally drawn to a close and that hankering for familial warmth could finally be satiated. The inflaming fragrance of pine sap-scented polish set her heart into jubilated hysteria. A triad of flamboyant bulbous light bulbs dangled from the ceiling. Rangy stygian wires slithered out of a baseball-sized hole in the tan roof, providing a means for the illumination to defy gravity. It wasn’t exactly clear whether the punched cavity was unintentional or a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment idea. Given the saw-blade-esque ridges bordering the crater and the overall dingy appearance, the truth was leaning towards the latter. The umber walls proved just as staggering as the undervalued exoskeleton. Several framed, and surprisingly clean, paintings and photographs bedecked the chestnut interior.

A decades-old image of the Rusty Tavern’s owner standing beside a suit-clad gentlecolt. Bright beams furnishing both of their features. One genuine with a singular gold tooth glittering in the camera’s blinding flash, the other deviating from the flaring pride of his comrade. Brown cowboy hat, grimy checkered flannel, sun-baked skin. In comparison to the goodie-two-shoes, bougie mustang he proudly stood beside, the clarity was undeniable that that relationship was doomed to fail. And that was precisely what occurred. Slicked-back hair and newly tailored attire. He looked as though bile roared from the pit of his stomach at the mere mention of anything remotely southern. With forelimbs wrapped around their broad shoulders and pulled tightly together, not much of the building behind them was visible. But, from what minute slivers were discernible between the two forms, very little was altered since the bar’s inception.

A myriad of other miscellaneous snapshots, mounted deer antlers, and taxidermied animal heads littered the lightly blemished walls. The decapitated pate of an uber-minacious grizzly bear was the only amidst a plethora of decorations that Silver despised. Those obtruding, smoky amber globes and ample jawbones forever locked in a perpetual state of menace. Flashing their chiefly intimidating features for all the bar-goers to stop in awe. Anytime the rickety stool welcomed her presence and her back was to the beast’s remains, it always felt as though it was watching her. Somehow, from beyond the grave, a slight sliver of the life it lived endured the baltic snare of death. Watching her. Stalking her. Lying patiently for the day when her guard was down and it would burst from its facade of quietus with a thunderous roar. The dome of the brute overlooked numerous wiped-down tables. Picked-clean beer mugs and shot glasses lie sporadically scattered across the lake of unsullied wood. To the right of the seating area was a long bartop, mirroring the appearance of just about every other ligneous appliance in the Tavern. Similar to the droves of tables across from it, pegasi neck-deep in a fit of loneliness and sorrow cared not what condition they left the bar in when they departed a drunken mess. All that mattered to them was getting what they wanted and then some. Condemn their internal misery to a watery grave, suffocated in a long river of razor-sharp liquor. As such, ravaged glass and half-vacant flasks dotted the countertop.

Behind the bench was a large cabinet, brimming with all kinds, variations, and revisions of alcohol the mind could imagine. Bitter whiskey. Sweet tequila. An ovoid jar of spiked lemonade. Home-brewed flavors never touched by man. The vast roster of bottles, all unalike from each other in some way, was a sight to behold. Tall and short. Round and rectangular. Bulky and skinny. Bright and dull. It was almost beautiful to the equine. She had been there so many times, she could probably individually name and describe the taste accurately of every poor decision up there. Well, if her mind wasn’t a totally stressed and muddled mess, then probably. On either side of the array of spirits were two doors, almost identical to the set that permitted her inside, but sans the glass. They led to the kitchen that, surprisingly, Silver barely ever saw activity in. Granted, there was always some intoxicated sot who craved a middle-of-the-road steak or a burger served on stale buns. She rarely, if not ne’er, bought food from there. But the enticing, permeating aroma of smoky beef always added to the already immensely comfortable environment.

A line of venerable stools rested soundly beneath the bartop, stygian streaks vandalizing the speckless floor left in their wake. Each and every seat possessed their own set of grooves carved into the flooring. The obvious fallout of years upon years of constant dragging and scraping as drunkards scrambled for a seat. A place to rest their drowsy, inebriated forms before an unfortunate bar-goer had to lift them back to their hooves. To say hoisting a stupified, befuddled pegasus bereft of basic motor control was a burdensome task would be a criminal understatement. Silver picked a chair from a row of its brethren, raucous screeching against the abused planks splintering the comfortable silence. Not that there was anyone there to spall it to begin with. Barring the small petite frame shrouded in a sable cloak brooding in the farest corner. Veiled features buried intently in a book, extremities stock-still. As though a transmogrify occurred in the blind spot of Silver’s vision. Metamorphosing into an ancient tree, forever rooted into the dark maroon leather bench they were seated on. Not a sliver of anything remotely hinting at the secreted pony’s identity was visible. The only thing that could barely be considered a hint was a pair of cyan hooves intently gripping the edges of their novel. Concealing the author or the title from the prying eyes of the nosy outside world.

All the equine gave to the enigma was a fleeting glance. Over the years she spent sulking absentmindedly at the Rusty Tavern, she bore witness to some oddly entertaining episodes every now and again. Distraught fathers stumbling in at the peak of the moon’s reign, bloodshot irises and puffy sockets telling a grim tale of sorrow and misery. One that, based on the destination they lumbered into, didn’t harbor a light at the end of their decrepit tunnel. Wailing inconsolably about their wife robbing him of his children. Labeling his supposed love for life a handful of very colorful words. Others were average down-in-the-dumps stallions, pondering the drastic plummet their life is about to take. Oncoming unpayable bills they can’t escape, an unforgiving divorce, imminent bankruptcy. She saw it all. But not once had she bore witness to a pony willingly coming to a bar to…read in quietude? It was unusual. Abnormal, even. But everyone had their unique vices. Mayhaps this was there, in spite of the anomalous nature of it.

A set of heavy hooves caused the planks below them to yawn gloomily. A familiar sound she immediately identified the source like a callous bloodhound snagging the scent of fresh prey.

“Miss Spears,” A profound, resonant voice beckoned every inch of her attention span to the gray-haired being residing behind the countertop. Akin to the rumbling plucking of an untuned guitar string. “I was startin’ to wonder when you’d stop by again.”

Silver grinned. An uncanny spectacle to anyone omitting the senior before her.

“I had to swing by and see my favorite bartender someday, Moonshine.”

The elder mirrored her beam, flashing a maw of nicotine-stained, yellowed teeth. Spending half his life with a gob of chewing tobacco between his jaws didn’t come without consequences.

“Well, ain’t that a joy.”

Moonshine, the long-time owner and sole caretaker of the Tavern, was an old bronco some would derogatorily refer to as ancient. One would be forgiven for assuming he was a pillar of wisdom and guidance prophesied travelers would seek out for knowledge. While his barely sunken seafoam green globes and creased features, face wrinkled like a discarded plastic grocery bag, certainly implied that tale, it was poles apart from the truth. The only utterances that could be considered knowledge was detailing how many different alcohols he had tasted in his glory days.

Silver locks poured from down the back of his head like a cascade of molten silver, argent tendrils hanging down the sides like argent vines. A tattered, patch-littered brown cowboy hat shielded his most likely balding crown from the world. A hoary coffee brown and coal black checkered flannel sleeved his frail frame, barely noticeable holes exposing an equally aged white t-shirt beneath. Dark brown tattered pants appeared to be hand-me-downs from his father. Whether he was a rancher or some adrenaline junkie rodeo king was a mystery Silver had been striving to solve for years. The decades passing him by since the coda of his golden age reflecting on his sun-baked, crinkled olive skin. A grizzled, pale brown hook mustache invaded by lengthy veins of stone-grey enshrouded his top lip. Illumination radiating from the pendulous lights casting a small glimmer onto his golden tooth. One of its kind, sitting in solitude on his bottom jaw among ranks of flaxen chompers.

“You can just call me Silver, you know,” The argent pegasus spoke, “we’ve known each other too long to be on a last name basis.”

“It’s just how I was raised, Miss Spears. Manners over everythin’. Nothin’ personal.” Moonshine replied, his low, thick country timbre caressing her ears.

In one hoof held an erstwhile grimy beer mug. The home of some unfortunate sod’s liquid, and unrelentingly bitter, happiness. In the other gripped a vibrant orange sullied rag, one that was inside the belly of the glass, rhythmically turning and twisting. Laying waste to the dross that dared to invade his pride and joy.

The Tavern owner’s hoof ceased the massacre of the filth befouling the mug, stuffing the pock-littered rag into his equally ramshackle pants pocket.

“The usual, I suppose?”

Silver nodded. “Put it on my tab, Shine.”

“Will do.”

Elephantine hoofsteps amplified the natural wear-and-tear the vandyke floors already possessed. Groaning forlornly like the culminating gasps of a dying old man, lying in a mess of sheets and tear-stained tissues that was a sorry-excuse for a hospital bed. The air being sapped from his lungs and baltic swords of dread fixating his core as Death greeted him. Cloying respite to some, a burglar to others. The Rusty Tavern would most likely take the Grim Reaper’s guant hand in theirs if the opportunity befell it. Nigh-constant desolate moans and whines at the slightest of movements. Things that could barely be discerned from adjusting their seating position to an intentional shuffle caused the building’s joints to ache and lament. Howl to the heaven’s above to ease their suffering. A miserable pleading that would ultimately prove fruitless.

Moonshine returned the tall, daunting bottle of her ad interim remedy for choler back to its home. Standing high and mighty in all of its three-quarters-empty glory, looking with utter gratification and content for the bar. Its rectangular torso and slender scrag gazing with gaiety at the dark wooden planks, scarred with scratch marks from scraping chairs, and the trophy-riddled walls. Even the perplexing cloaked frame still residing in the furthermost corner. Features perpetually veiled in ambiguity, securely hidden behind the striking colors of her novella’s cover. The distance, combined with Silver’s out-and-out lack of interest towards the enigma, cast the book’s title into ever-stretching mystique.

A calloused hoof prudently placed a tankard of acetous, ocher alcohol inches from Silver’s beyond eager clutches. Waiting on bated breath to abduct the rangy handle in her grasp, like a colony of vultures excitedly flocking around a soon-to-be cadaver. Primed to plunge their rancid beaks deep into its gangrene-ridden flesh.

Silver lifted the cup of pity to her lips, a halo of condensation staining the finely varnished bartop in its wake. The stone-grey pony greeted the bittersweet, familiar tart with open arms. Traveling down her throat like a mudslide of TV static brewed with searing magma, burning and singing the sensitive walls of her throat. If a day of barking orders and thundering reprimands at her subordinates wasn’t enough to raze her esophagus, this would achieve that goal with flying colors. Mayhaps an array of arresting fireworks apace with a blizzard of confetti was appropriate for the accomplishment.

“When are you gonna get to payin’ that tab of yours?”

Silver winced. The wallop of her panacea partly to blame. Despite having consumed lagoons of the acidic firewater in her lifetime, the sadistic acupuncture on her taste buds felt the same every time. Even after downing thousands of shots with repeated ferocity over the years, there was a quality in the ale she couldn’t quite pinpoint. But whatever it was, she couldn’t prepare for it. No matter how laborious her efforts were.

“When I stop forgetting to bring my wallet.”

Moonshine released a short hum from his lungs, muffled by closed lips. Eyes falling to the moist ring perverting his pristine counter, fishing for Ol’ Reliable out of his pocket.

“You better stop forgettin’,” Moonshine swiped the violation into oblivion, “tabs got limits, you know?”

“I should know that better than anyone,”

Silver’s heart burned. A colossal pot of ne’er-ending flames of anger and a slight wisp of regret, complemented by a frail phantom of dread, staring down upon the vile concoction with an unknown conviction. The wrathful inferno born from the tongue of magma drooling from her core burned bright. Solely fueled by the legion of pestilent locusts latching onto the rear of her mind with an undying ferity. Plaguing her mind with their incessant bombinating. Her greatest failures replaying before her tired pleading eyes like a grotesque projector reeled from the bowels of Hell. A torture device designed and built solely for her. Personal damnation she was forced to endure. One that no-one could save her from, sans herself. If only she was aware of exactly how she could.

Guilt. There was a time long-ago when she felt it. A period of years where her sinful deeds robbed her of a peaceful sleep. And when the slumber she desolately longed for finally claimed her, it spat her out in an abominable loogie of night terrors and rues. Seeing the blood flash before her vision, no longer tinted scarlet by a film of pique over her retinas. In the moments prior to her sacrilege of life, she toiled tirelessly to close her heart to their suffering. Block out the inevitable comber of incomprehensible grief before it arrives. And she did. Until the reality of what she’s done hit her full-force as she stared down upon the battered sack of flesh and bone.

Another swig traveled down her gullet like a chute of slag. She winced, eyes shut ever-so-tightly for a split-second. It didn’t matter how many tens of thousands of bottles she imbibed with unimaginable ease, the acidic blazing would ne’er show her the beauty of mercy.

“Anything interesting happen lately?” Silver inquired, declaring war against the tears threatening to sting her orbs.

Her muse was a foul abomination. There was no question lying on anyone’s conscience as to why she endured this torture from the wrathful alky. Her intramural turmoil needed to die somehow. But not by swords or a barbaric skirmish. A waterlogged casket was the only solution.

“Any new bar fights I missed out on? New people?”

Moonshine shook his head. Gaze intently fixated on the sullied mug fit snugly in his hoof. Bright orange rag splitting the ill-lit atmosphere with its attention-robbing features.

“Nothin’ really noteworthy,” He rumbled, mustache bouncing and undulating with every word, “just a few idiots punching each other’s heads off. I wouldn’t feel too bad about missin’ it.”

“A fights a fight.”

The senior nodded. “‘Least I didn’t have to replace a table, this time around.”

Silver snickered at the vivid memory. A recollection that, outside the demarcations of the pub, fell prey to forgetfulness. The umber framework and scent of sub-par meat stoking the flames of the evocation. Years ago. A barrage of alcohol-influenced insults rained down.

David and Goliath. A drunk pipsqueak made small and timid under the blistering gaze of a walking, breathing mountain. An all-expenses-paid viewing experience to a modern-day gladiator fight. One swift motion, and the weakling was down, like a scarecrow plowed by a pick-up truck. Smashed through a table, a snowstorm of splinters and glass shards tossed every which way. Bathing innocent bar-goers in the amalgamation of inanimate gore. The puny pony lied immobile. Limbs encased in cement blocks. The humiliating memory forever welded into the wrinkled walls of his brain. As far as objective-less battles between drunkards go, this wasn’t going to be topped anytime soon.

“What I wouldn’t do to see that again,”

“Easy for you to say. Tables are expensive, Miss Spears.”

“You’ll live,”

Moonshine returned a freshly cleaned glass to his right-hand side. A genesis for a stack that was soon to come. At least Silver was there to keep the old pegasus company.

He reached under the table and pulled another sullied mug out of seemingly nowhere.

A bandaged hoof reached for the cup of lava. The subject of an intense love-hate relationship.

Wrinkled lips parted in speech once more. The elephant standing proudly in the room was yet to be addressed. He knew it and she knew it, in spite of her refusal to acknowledge its existence.

“Mind if I ask you somethin’?”

“Feel free.”

Whether it was foresight or blatant common sense, Silver could see the question hurtling from miles away. The resonant, borderline gravely voice preparing to utter it was almost crystal-clear in her mind, alongside the nigh-ceaseless aches and throes befouling her. Every slight movement or shuffle. Every titanic gulp. No matter how insignificant or benign a motion seemed, a subway train inhabited by agony zipped down her bones at breakneck speed. A buzzing railway of remorseless pangs. Those dire images flickering in her vision. Those macabre crimson-tinted pictures that didn’t understand the concept of ruth or relent. Just torment. It was what their heart pumped and the very thing that kept them alive for the sole purpose of torturing her. Torment. All else were alien prospects. Ideals of simple-minded beings.

Silver wouldn’t be surprised if she had perished in the nap after the blasphemy was committed and wound up in purgatory. Her own personal Hell until the heavens saw it fit she experience the real deal. A chamber of maltreatment masquerading as the Tavern she knew and cherished deeply. Torturing her with snapshots of her crimes and transgressions. That bloodied heap of feathers and yellow flesh, marinating in her grume.

May God have mercy on her wretched soul.

“How did you wind up with them bandages?”

“Got in a fight.”

“Is that so?” Moonshine replied, ever-so-slight surprise painted over his creased features, “with who, might I ask?”

“Somebody I wish I didn’t.”

Moonshine’s rhythmic annihilation of germs tennating his mugs and shot glasses drew to a close. His aquamarine irises like cloudy emeralds flicked to greet bronze eyes, flooded with, despite her prevalent attempts to stow it away, regret. For the first time since she could remember, rue inhabited her sockets. But for who? It was a cipher Moonshine wished to solve.

“We got all the time in the world, Miss, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Moonshine crooked, orange rag and begrimed glass returning to their respective homes.

Leaning forward on his rickety forelimbs. Attention entirely magnetized and absorbed by her burnished optics. Expression blank. Mouth a measly line scribbled upon a wizened canvas of skin. His gateways to the soul spilling more than he’d like. Empathy. Concern. Worry. Pervasive curiosity threatening to overrule all else.

This bubbling concoction of emotions and sentimental sensations for an unrighteous pony. Somebody who the senior should throw out of his doors with a boot in her ass, bark until his lungs collapsed about how she was blacklisted from entering. If only he knew the truth. The true evil that lie secreted expertly in the bowels of her black hellscape of a soul. A slight pinpoint of…something positive remained undeterred by the darkness around it, but with each and every crime, it dwindled more and more. Soon enough, there wouldn’t be a Silver Spears anymore. There’d just be a walking husk with a chip on it’s shoulder, hellbent of emerging triumphant over others no matter the cost. Violence and carnage being the only two languages it spoke. And if someone else didn’t, they would wind up ambushed in a desolate hallway. In a place they thought was a sanctuary. How dearly wrong they were.

“Miss?”

“Hmm?”

With every passing moment of speechlessness, Silver sunk deeper into this trance she found herself in more often than not. And this newfound gentleness in the oldster’s tone didn’t help one bit. She could be lulled to slumber in a matter of seconds if she so desired.

“It’s just us two alone,”

Moonshine threw a fleeting glance to the manifold of deserted seats and tables occupied solely by void. Rich burgundy leather benches bare sans the loner residing in the farthest corner. No alcohol to enjoy. No soul around to possibly ignite conversation with to fill the stale silence. Just her, at least he presumed it was her, and the book whose pages submerged her. The oldster’s observation was clearly noticed. A sliver of a magenta globe peeking from the top of the cover, only to almost instantly disappear. Moonshine cherished each and every one of his customers unconditionally. But some of their shenanigans never ceased to befuddle him.

“Well, mostly alone, anyway.”

He focused his undivided attention back to the task at hand.

“Listen, whatever’s troublin’ ya, it’s safe with me. You have my word.”

Moonshine's eyes continued to brim with that same hybrid of emotion. Each individual vehemence was a river feeding into a singular, malnourished mouth, ultimately leading to the old pegasus’ orbs. There, the magic truly happened. All of the spirits conjoining as one, melting into a singular glowing ring of waning green. Those optics Silver had grown incredibly fond of. Was opening the floodgates to her screaming, agonizing heart worth a potential prolonged stay in the Canterlot dungeons?

“I’m fine, Shine. Really-”

“Bullshit.”

“Can we just drop it?”

“Why?”

“It’s just-” Silver rubbed her forehead. “It’s complicated, okay?”

“You know I’ve been in my fair share of complicated jams, Miss Spears. I got some experience in handling them.”

Silver’s creativity knew no bounds when it came to imagining the sheer ferocity of the antics Moonshine found himself in decades prior. When his arteries flowed with the youthful robustness Silver took for granted that, to him, was akin to the elixir of the gods. A time long before the rust that age brought in tow annexed his joints. Silver bled into his hair. Bones shackled with manacles held tightly by senescence. His new and perpetual leader, who’s iron-fisted reign would persist until his time arrived at its coda. Even if she was granted knowledge to everything Moonshine had accomplished in his glory days, no fair share of “complicated” anything could compare to her. Beating someone half-to-death in contrast to sneaking booze in the middle of the night was standing a scarecrow in front of a mountain. The difference was crystal-clear.

“I don’t doubt that, but…”

“But what?”

Silver’s eyes were torn from his. The fathoms of the orange, bitter abyss situated next to her hoof greeted her gaze. Almost beckoning for her to ingest it. Slay her sorrows with a single gulp.

“Why are you being so persistent, Shine?” Silver inquired, “if I told you it’s fine, then it’s fine.”

Moonshine cocked a brow. “I know you must think I’m some crazy old geezer, but I know a hurt pony when I see one.”

“You’re hurtin’, Miss. Bad. I can feel it.”

“Moonshine, I came here to drink and unwind, okay? Not to talk about my feelings,”

Silver’s urges emerged triumphant. That familiar trek down Bitter Avenue was just as acidic and sharp as before. No change to pain and discomfort it wrought. Yet, for some reason, she couldn’t stop. The psychology of addiction was a knotty labyrinth of contradictions and complications too daunting of a subject for her to tackle.

“Unwindin’ is talkin’ ‘bout ‘em, in a way.”

Silver returned the glass to the table. She paused. Glancing back at the practically non-existent hooded figure continuing to moon over nothing in the corner. Eyes still asphyxiated under the mounds of aptly written pages. No shred of a nudge towards the idea of departure anytime soon among her frozen limbs and shrouded hallmarks. At the end of the day, this was just tadpole amidst the extensive ocean of bar-goers that come and go on a daily basis. Surely she’s heard dire, never-before-heard secrets that people would die to keep hidden under a dense blanket of secrecy in her time here. What’s the worst that could happen?

“If i’m houndin’ you then don’t feel pressured, Miss. I’m just offerin’-”

“Somepony might die because of me.”

Moonshine’s face was paralyzed. Forever locked in a perpetual state of confusion, disbelief, and a multitude of other sensations Silver couldn’t pinpoint in those seafoam orbs. Gateways to the soul, if you will. Let that be the case, Moonshine’s spirit was a muddled realm of chaos and discord. A euphoric reality for a certain draconequus she learned about in history class in her younger years. Out of all the benign, meaningless information drilled into her cranium back then, the legend of Discord was one she remembered.

Now, even Discord of all beings would lour down upon the metal-haired pegasus with searing shame. A precise replica of the scowl primed to paint Moonshine’s wrinkled mug in the near-future.

“I made a mistake… A huge one.”

“What do you mean somepony might die?”

“I hurt her… Badly.”

Her gaze fell, eye contact plummeting to its grisly demise. The cloaked frame skulking out of her peripheral vision listened intently.

“Who?”

She paused. A heartbeat swayed on the brink of being discerned in the deafening quietude.

“Spitfire.”

Shame was braided within her words as they shambled out of her lungs, polluting the midnight air with her self-pity. Whether the regret was a work of fiction or a true display of guilt was up to interpretation.

“She won. She beat me and… I wouldn’t let that pass me by.”

“The anger was so painful, Shine. I could barely contain it on the fly there. Then when I finally did…”

Those snapshots of misery blackened by ichor ravaged her psyche. The screams of the flame-haired pegasus before her hooves thoroughly silenced her. That sickening crunch as her skull and the checkered floor became one. Clacking of teeth scattering. Hooves impacting with nauseating slapping sounds, like they were both merely punching bags thronged with raw meat mistakenly given life. For one of the two in that vacant, dusty hallway, that was true. No further investigation was necessary to uncover the identity.

“I tried to stop myself. It wasn’t my choice after a while. I was… I was a puppet. My heart tugging the strings that I couldn’t cut, it was-”

Silver rubbed her face. Her skin still harboring the effects of the brisk crepuscule breeze whistling by the pub.

“Dammit! I can’t even describe it.”

“Ya don’t have to, I got a pretty clear picture as is.”

Unbelievably, the air remained as tranquil as it did before her bombshell of a confession. His mood and facial expression refused to deviate. No disgust or choler towards the equine like she wholeheartedly expected. Merely a patient line defying his wrinkles that was his mouth, almost entirely hidden by his bushy mustache.

“That was… awful, to say the least. But there was something else that’s been bothering me about it. I can’t really put my hoof on it.”

“Again, we got all the time in Equestria. I’m listenin’.”

Silver paused for a moment before a frustrated sigh escaped her lungs.

“I’ve been feeling this weird sense of dread. Almost like my brain and my body know something big is coming, but I don’t. I want to know so bad but I just can’t. Am I making sense?

Moonshine wordlessly nodded.

“And that human, Levi, I think, gave me the creeps when I first met him.”

Levi was an oddity without a shadow of a doubt.

The way her fleshy hand felt in her hoof. How vibrant emerald green met molten bronze with an underlying, not-so-hidden wisp of apprehension. As though the first human being to ever grace Equus in thousands of years was some sort of mythical being, able to pry and peer deep into the ruinous chasms of her soul. All her past sins and transgressions, no matter how small or benign they may seem, being seen by the Man in Blue. Silver knew in the back of her psyche that wasn’t the case. But, if in some way it was, surprise would be the last thing infiltrating her heart.

There was something about him she couldn’t quite decipher. A sensation that radiated off his lively-dressed frame with no name or exact origin. In spite of her laborious efforts in the few seconds their manuses met, identifying exactly what it was proved to be more daunting than she anticipated. Whatever it was, it accomplished the grim goal it most certainly intended to. Stoking a roaring inferno of worry within the pegasus. An unshakable ghost of terror, haunting her as a punishment for crossing the male’s path. A behavior it intended to rectify.

“The way he looked at me… there was something so, how do I say it? Angry, I guess? It’s hard to put a name on it.”

“Why would he be angry with you?”

“No clue,” Silver answered, honestly threatening to leak from her words onto the dark wooden floor. “Some premonition or dream he had is the only thing I can think of.”

“Otherwise, Shine…I’m out of ideas.”

The air shifted, as though uttering the serpent among ponies’ name had conjured his presence. Silver’s ears perked. The cloaked cyan pegasus posterior to her drew a close on her abnormal reading session, but Silver chose to not pay the noise of rustling paper any mind. Something was drawing near. Ever-so-dangerously close. She could feel it. Her bones racked with the sensation, like an army of spiders scaling her skeleton.

Moonshine’s gaze, confusion gradually drizzling into his dwindling orbs at the abrupt death of the conversation, stretched to impossible lengths. Time passed like slag crawling down a charred hill face. Floundering incomprehensibly with laggard movements. Anxiety turned her flesh to marble, holding her hostage in this endless period of nervous anticipation.

The maroon bench behind her creaked. A goodbye to the blight among the vandyke flooring. It wouldn’t surprise a bit if she arrived at the conclusion that she had some part in orchestrating this. Whatever she could possibly classify the sudden and drastic slope in the ambience. The crescendo of the famed orchestra of crickets came and went. All hints or inklings of noise ran for the hill in what could only be considered fright. Putting a name to the face of what lied beyond the invisible curtain of secrecy was nonviable. It was clear somebody was tugging the strings, playing with circumstances as though they were merely shoddy childrens toys. Inanimate, emotionless objects designed to entertain the vices of an unripe toddler’s mind. Paying no heed to the judgment of others as they thoughtlessly trifle with her conditions.

In a way, this pathetic display of idiocy was, at the end of the day, a show of sorts. An intricately delineated game that, like all things, possessed an inevitable end that no oasis could offer refuge from. One inescapable moment where that sheet of confidentiality is drawn, revealing the headmaster in all of his glory. It didn’t take a bona fide genius with a doctorate to realize when that veil was torn away. With a longer-than-usual miserable moan from the senior hinges and the creak of floorboards, the mastermind behind it all stood in all of his glory. His vivid blue, attention-robbing, very human glory.

Whetted emerald orbs lacerated the tenebrosity. And soon enough, the sword resting soundly against his thigh and dangling from his waist would too. The weapon looked undeniably familiar. Was it an artifact? Some magical relic hidden expertly in the belly of Canterlot’s knotty royal castle? It would come as a shock to no-one if all the secrets of that labyrinth of crimson carpets and burning torches were unlocked by the Princesses and delivered to him on a silver platter.

He reeled a deep, hefty breath into his lungs. The intoxicating scent of the Rusty Tavern luring him into an unavoidable drunken stupor like it had done to her countless times. Mayhaps Moonshine cast a spell onto the building to have that effect.

Levi exhaled. Loudly and with tightly closed eyes. Arresting green met molten bronze. Hands balled tightly at his obliques. Ambience irreparably stained by his presence. The double doors returned to their default positions, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the broad doorframe.

And then, he took the first step towards her.

Author's Note

Holy SHIT it's finally done! I'm sorry for the wait for the ones who are still following my fic. Writer's block whooped my ass for a while and life did what life does best, getting in the way of things.

I'll be back to a more consistent schedule (New chapter every month hopefully or every few weeks). But thanks to everyone who continues to read my stuff, it means the world.

Chapter 21: False Prophets

In his old world ran by the cruel, sin-ridden hearts of humans, wolves donning a masquerade of sheep’s flesh was a normal occurrence. In fact, the very people providing a crude mockery of stability and protection were the most ravenous of them all. Lawyers, politicians, even the organs of the government that allegedly have the population’s best interest in mind. Building a dome of security and trust, one they vow to keep intact until their dying breath.

Lies. All lies. Trickery flowed through their veins. Their facade of good nature was a deception Levi, along with countless others, fell for. When that skull-hewing explosion ravaged his ears and consumed his vision, Levi was fully certain the blazing wrath of justice was in full effect. His punishment for the wretched life he chose to live. But when he awoke in a realm governed by talking horses and dragons, he pounced on the opportunity for a second chance. A new reason to breathe and trudge through whatever hardship life hurled at him. Not an existence built on incomprehensible guilt and innumerable sleepless nights, honeycombed with sin a preacher would vomit at the sight of. No second-hand murder. No assisted suicides. No blood on his or his brother’s hands. Just living in peace. Leaving the nigh-constant deceit to rot in the past.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing tenanting a world forged with positivity and forgiveness were two concepts that shouldn’t mix. And if that recipe for ruination ever came to actualization, there wasn’t a shard of a doubt that the bane of all those involved would briskly follow.

Silver Spears was far beyond the point of being considered a meager wolf. A classification that suited her better by leaps and bounds was a beast. A ravenous, inhuman monster hellbent on summoning havoc on whoever at any time or place. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if she salivated at the prospect of getting her sullied, carmine-stained hooves on Levi next behind closed doors. After all, he was the only one that was seeking retribution for the world-altering injuries she exacted on Spitfire. One of his closest friends, in spite of the short span they’ve been aware of each other. Instead of looking down at his marred, decimated form with a vile hybrid of disdain and satisfaction, she cradled him in the loving arms of salvation. His savior in mortal flesh. It wasn’t fair to her the cards fate dealt her. She rescued him without a flake of hesitation, but he couldn’t return the favor.

His mind was boggled to the utmost when none of her subordinates, friends, or even family accepted his offer of traveling to the Tavern with him. Surely, out of everyone she knew, he wasn’t the sole deviant to Silver’s cycle of anguish and woe. An ouroboros of misery and boundless agony. A series of deadly attacks and forlornly failed persecutions that altered the lives of so many. It was a miracle that he had enough nerve to stand up and shout his defiance with all the air in his lungs. Rushing headlong to the kernel of all her sinister deeds. Only for his courage to die the moment digits met the cold steel of the door handle. Needless to say, shame ravaged him as he trekked out of the Dashers’ compound. Vowing to never step foot in there again.

Unleashing a flurry of punches and curses right where tens of muscular ponies resided and slept was a ghastly idea from the start. If revenge is what he wanted, a semi-secluded location with no security measures or loyal inferiors to fight her battles was a must. And this dingy, run-down bar smack-dab in the middle of nowhere was borderline euphoric to the male. A flashing neon sign pointing to the place Silver would ne’er see the same again after tonight. Dead-center in a vast expanse of rich inky indigo, dotted with small pinpricks of white and far-off distant homes and businesses. Plates of hueless fluff providing a basis for humble abodes or restless shops that never saw a wink of sleep since its inception. Slaving away tirelessly night after night in utter and complete solitude. Stretching far beyond the darkened horizon was the Rainbow Factory, resting soundly on its own colossal lush platter. Spitting thick snakes of multi-colored smog into the atmosphere. Viewed as injurious environmental peril to some, a prison operated by wage-slaves to others, and the controversial face of Cloudsdale by all.

The city was beautiful. That was a fact the man couldn’t deny. It was a crying shame the circumstances surrounding each of his visits always ended in tragedy in some form or another. Whether it be meeting a future adversary or confronting the odious aforementioned adversary.

Maybe he’d take Alan here someday. That would be a trip nothing could possibly spoil.

The brunet shook the thought away.

Levi vividly recollected that moment days prior where he gazed into those molten bronze irises. Faux-hospitality coloring her features. Wide beam a frail facade for the monstrosity that lied beneath the surface. The brunet pierced her masquerade with ease like a whetted edge against wet cardboard. Seeing her for what she truly was. Evil. Pure, unbridled, undisputed evil. In the half-week following the Silver debacle, Levi’s hours seemed to drag. Both in the hospital and in the sanctity of his own home. Clemency from the ravenous legions of dread and forlorn assumptions was alien. And over the past seventy-two hours, it was beginning to culminate into an impossible prospect. His own psyche was betraying him.

The treachery solely chose to manifest itself when respite was in fingers-reach. A hailstorm of concern-filled speculations and theories regarding the well-being of his best friend. Unintelligible guilt at the blitz he couldn’t save Spitfire from. The anger was arguably the worst by far. Unlike woe or worry, the choler that consumed him was painful. Stinging his nucleus and setting his brain ablaze at every possible opportunity. When his attention wasn’t sucked into a conversation or an activity of some sort, it returned. Each and every time somehow worse than the last.

Pinkie Pie, for reasons unknown to the masses, was the proud possessor of an entire genus of tan-colored training dummies in her so-called “Party Cave.” All of them identical in body shape and tint. All of them vandalized with vibrant colors in all kinds of patterns and manners. The only viable reason as to why she owned them was to test her myriad of gizmos and the gargantuan party cannon. Either way, Levi saw an opportunity and seized it by the throat, using the lifeless mockeries of ponies as sword practice. When those whistling winds of rage snagged him, he grabbed his sword and marched outside. Greeting his soon-to-be victims with an irate glower and a maw of gritted teeth. Then, he began his wild swinging. One after another, heads flying every which way. Limbs divorced from their hard plastic torsos, sliced like creations of butter. None were spared from the slaughter. Lines of dopes ready to die. And die they most certainly did. When the heaving, sweat-drenched human had enough of the savagery, he holstered his blade and abandoned the broad graveyard. Left it to be disposed of by a significantly calmer and well-mannered Levi the next day.

Now, there was no need to unleash his internal resentment on guiltless inanimate objects. He was here. Finally here. A terrifyingly short distance separated the predestined casualty from the perpetrator. Velvet cobalt button-down sleeving his attenuated frame, sleeves rolled to expose a set of rank forearms. Dark denim jeans nearly becoming one with the dense tenebrosity encompassing the city. A generous handful of achromatic pinpoints were sprinkled fairly around his tense chassis. An elderly leather sheath, wrinkled and beset by disfiguring fissures, dangled from his waist, the weight resting against his thigh like a belt of hefty stones. Never concluding their tireless, futile efforts to drag the male to the floor. A pearly-white and gold-ringed hilt protruded from its old home, giving away to a crystalline blade of unequaled beauty beneath. Harboring a honed edge that, despite the untold number of families of plastic dummies he chopped down mercilessly, saw dulling as a foreign idea. Even with three days worth of nearly non-stop hacking and slashing, not a sign of the wear it was subjected to was evident. Not yet, at least.

Levi’s emerald orbs unrivaled the tawdry lightbulb dangling from the holey ceiling. Glimmering far brighter than any sorry-excuse for slipshod management could ever begin to comprehend. Albeit shimmering for all the wrong reasons. Bona fide astonishment reared its head at the absence of moths flocking towards the dingy source of illumination. He could only imagine what insectoid horrors lied just above his head. An ardent war between the Arachnid Kingdom and the Moth Empire was surely in full execution. Levi’s blazing irises scanned every inch, nook, and cranny of the ramshackle bar, his disdain almost applying a glossy varnish to the drab vandyke walls. The taxidermied animal heads stationed above the plethora of tables and chairs fixated him with an undeniable glower, each one more intense than the next. The aftermath of a deer decapitation glared in spite of its mug being frozen in a perpetual state of fake tranquility. Smoky orbs of a grizzly’s pate staring deep into his. Gaping jaws and soulless optics coming nowhere close to striking fear into the Man in Blue. It was a mystery of whether they showed fervent indignation towards Levi or the elder behind the bartop.

An enigma he cared extremely little to solve. After all, he didn’t travel all this way to stare at wall-mounted corpses in a gimcrack saloon. There was a job to do. A cycle to break. Justice to allocate. Duties that needed to be fulfilled. And Levi’s shoulders were the ones that creaked and groaned beneath the weight of his harrowing responsibilities.

Thin bleached shafts pierced jerry-built blinds, slender belts of serene moonlight painting the macabre ornaments. Some bars deviated from the factory default setting a vast majority of their brethren were set to. Stretching longer and rangier or shattered by an awkward bent angle or a fixation in the unbelievably low-quality shades. Sending splinters and shards alike scattering across whatever mundane spot on the umber wall needed a breath of life. Like an artist from beyond the stars being thrown into a frenzy upon the defunct relics. Feverishly whipping her brush of milky luster every which way, throwing her influence around the room in a spell of hectic mania. Floors, tables, glasses, stock-stiff heads of long-dead animals, not a thing was spared from her uncultivated fit.

A wrinkled visage belonging to a lean, primordial frame was the owner of this less-than-boastable Tavern. Moonshine, his name was. Courtesy of Thunderlane’s boundless and unfading knowledge of every location, both unfrequented and bustling, that Cloudsdale brought to the table. It mattered little how drastic or expansive the amount of souls who visited were. The Wonderbolt knew it. And the Rusty Tavern was no exception from his seemingly never-ending expanse of knowledge.

Levi deliberated heavily on the grueling trip from his humble, down-to-earth library in Ponyville to this dilapidated blight among the Equestrian sky. A deviant from the loch of indigo with an untold end, altering starkly from the gentle blanket of tintless pinpoints honeycombing the airglow. An internal battle waged by a transparent sense of right and wrong raged within. Cannons blasting and soldiers impaled with enemy swords at every opportunity. War knew no bounds, after all. The carnage was endless. And he hoped with every ounce of his being that, by the time he came face-to-face with his adversary, he’d have his answer clear as her guilt. But he didn’t. Hell, even that didn’t appear blatant anymore. Whether it was a trick of the male’s indecisive psyche or one of Silver’s manipulative snares was a discussion for another day. A time and a place far from the demarcations of this lifeless husk of a building.

The dark floorboards protested at his presence. Mayhaps sensing his sinister intent intensifying with each burdensome stride he took. His leather sheath rhythmically slapped his thigh with every step, the crystal blade bouncing and rocking within Levi’s thralls. Even with a shaft of shade generously provided by the flat brim of his hat, the Man in Blue could feel his disdain attempting to drill into his skull. Yet it hit like a rotten branch to a wall of platinum. Discriminate however he likes to, there wouldn’t be a difference to be noticed. He was here for a reason and, try as he might, Moonshine couldn’t reorient his blazing path. Perhaps he recognized the purpose in his movements. The undying determination to reach his goal, no matter how nefarious they prove to be.

Levi’s emerald flicked from the cavernous holes he bore into the uneasy pegasus to his loyal confidant emerging from her manacles of stiffness. Stretching her cyan limbs for what she perceived to be a century of ear-straining and more-than-noticeable eavesdropping. Somehow, by some miracle, Rainbow Dash wasn’t caught in the act. Viewed simply as an abnormal nameless character brooding in the darkest recesses of the Tavern, untouched by the warm billows of candlelight. No flask or signs of attention to herself. Just her, a beloved entry in the Daring Do series, and the maroon bench she was all-but welded to. Exactly the way Levi wanted it.

With her lower half no-longer secreted beneath the elderly mahogany table, the cloak spilling down her forelimbs and the hood baggily draped over her skull only did so much. Her multi-colored locks peeking from beneath the mantle, adding some desperately-needed life to the otherwise dead, rotting corpse of a building, waiting for a dire natural disaster to blow it into oblivion. Cast its decaying remains for the civilians below to dispose of accordingly. When the pair met dead-center in the full expanse of tumbledown floorboards, the nonpermanent spy and her temporary superior shared a trifling handful of hushed words. Although they kept there optics trained on the ground the entire length of there cursory interaction, the sincerity braided within her words was hulking.

“Don’t do anything you’re gonna regret, Levi. Now's not the-”

“Time or the place. I know, Dash. You don’t gotta worry about me,” Levi assured.

“Go home. Make sure Twilight never hears about this.”

The cyan pegasus nodded, the minute sliver of her muzzle laying bare contorted into an abnormal frown. As though her lips were engaged in a fiery, passionate war for what emotion to accurately display. One side was concern for Levi’s actions, knowing full-well what exactly he came here to do. The opposing side was a bent variation of satisfaction.

Just as quickly as Silver’s Tavern escapade was soiled by the esteemed Wonderbolt, Rainbow left. Shrouding every living soul in an impossibly thick quilt of unwavering, spartan silence. A veil was drawn between two factions in Silver’s heart. A conflict eerily similar to the one perhaps still raging on Rainbow’s visage. Two cabals were entangled in the vile vines of battle, both skirmishing valiantly for unshakable superiority over the silver-haired pony’s being. Either fear or defiance would emerge victorious and plant their flag on that sinister Autumn night. Eye contact only stoked the blistering inferno behind the prison bars of her ribs, charring them to no end. Her brain told her to run for the hills and never look back until her extremities failed her, collapsing into a sweat-bathed, fatigued mound of twisted limbs and an oily mane. But her body turned her blood into swiftly-drying cement. Encasing her eager, feverish wings that itched for the rush of flight in a new skin of concrete. Part of her pondered briefly over whether her frame’s outright denial of her orders was an allocated punishment decided by a higher being. One looking over every action, sin, and transgression no matter how small and judging her for it. And this was their righteous judgment. Made a slave by her own body and forced to sit and endure whatever the male had in store to rectify her destructive behavior.

Levi approached ever-so-closer. Beaten-down shoes not welcomed by the senior planks beneath him. Instrument of doom slapping his thigh with every short, calculated stride. His glower firmly locked to her side profile, in spite of the lack of acknowledgement it received from its donee. He didn’t care. As long as she was more-than-aware that lour was freshly implanted onto his mug, that was all that mattered to him. After all, scrutinizing her beneath his wrathful stare wasn’t his sole objective.

The pates of the animals forever adhered to the wall bore holes into his callous, unbothered irises, not bothering to pay what remained of their stock-stiff corpses any mind. A deer with the tranquility and resolve of death plastered on its tan flesh managed to garner a form of malice. The ill-omened yellow and black-dotted orbs of a beheaded goat tried and failed to slay the brunet where he stood with resentment alone. Floppy brown ears pierced with two gold rings. A set of whetted canines erupting from her bottom jaw like bleached, razor-sharp spires that barely grazed her cat-like nostrils. It was poles apart from what a regular, run-of-the-mill mountain goat would resemble. But then again, the only images of the aforementioned animal were limited solely to nature documentaries on a flat-screen and polished images from a decades-old textbook. Perhaps they always looked like this in person. This was Equestria he was talking about. Nothing at all remotely bore a similarity to the wretched world his genesis took place in. Lastly of all, Levi couldn’t mull about decapitated noggins without at least recognizing the king of the wall they all were mounted on. That ravenous, bloodthirsty grizzly who, even in its not-so-peaceful quietus, harbored its primal instincts for two things alone. Food and survival. Those necessities died with the beast they controlled, he knew that well. But unnerving couldn’t begin the cumbersome task of describing it.

As Levi began to wonder when the next strident groan would defile his ears, his question was briskly answered by the dingy stool. Adding the faintest trace of life to the pub for a fraction of a second. The stone-grey body beside him shuffled uncomfortably against the grainy wood of her seat, keeping her hooves stationary now became a chore to accomplish. This was precisely what the Man in Blue wanted out of her. Making a spectacle of her involuntary anxious tics and jerks while continuing his undying scrutiny. His scowl like a pencil of sunlight through a magnifying glass with her being the unfortunate ant, becoming a compulsory star of this sadistic show with no prize or entourage. Just him and the wrath within, waiting for the ideal moment to tear the pegasus to shreds. There was no doubt that was what he came all this way for. No-one, especially somebody with Levi’s level of notoriety and uniqueness, forsakes sanctuary without a valid reason. But this… this was as valid as it gets.

Moonshine’s dull globes met Silver’s for a desultory instant. Showering her in that fatherly, unconditional comfort that she ne’er knew she needed. A sensation she adored wholeheartedly. Much to her despair, his seafoam green leer focused on the foreign creature before him. Vibrant orange rag ceasing all movements, deeming the mug clean enough for the time-being.

“Can I…help you?” The elder asked.

Levi laid his hands upon the pockmarked bartop, right palm over his left knuckles. Moonshine suppressed a flinch at the sudden movement.

“Apple cider.”

“From the Apple family?”

“Sure.” Levi was utterly apathetic towards the origin.

“You’re one lucky fella,”

Moonshine pocketed his towel and stacked the semi-pristine cup to the side. He turned around, scanning his mammoth ranks of spirits for the thing to satisfy Levi’s hankering. The stark orange slender-necked bottle snagged his attention like a fish to a barbed hook.

“You got the last bit.” Moonshine spoke, his voice reduced to a stretched groan as he reached high above his head. Scooting the wide-bodied flask off the venerable shelf. He blew a plume of dust off the pitcher’s rump, popping the cork with a satisfying noise everyone loved without a shadow of a doubt. Mayhaps the sole exception being the indifferent human, staring deep into the bottle’s mouth while the waterfall of liquidized copper flowed.

The mug scraped harshly across the wood, as if its owner paid the counter’s well-being little-to-no heed in any regard. Levi’s foot bounced against the rung of the stool. Not in excitement, but something else. Something unidentifiable. A feeling Silver wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of, bereft of a shadow of a doubt. Perhaps it was better for it to remain cloaked in anonymity.

When times got tough back in Tuscaloosa, alcohol was his muse. His rock. The rigid adamant totem of support that held his sore bones and aching heart unconditionally. No matter the time of day or the weather, it was there. Rushing to his aid whenever it was required. The bond he and his liquor shared was a match made in Heaven. He paid minimal mind to the ruinous consequences that inevitably awaited him at the end of this mistake-paved road. His psyche drew a wool over his eyes to how outright pathetic this once unshakable soldier of a man appeared. All that he truly cared in any fashion about was his trauma being ailed, if only for a fleeting moment in a drunken stupor. When a person can only find comfort in the bitter orange fathoms of a bottle, they were practically a living breathing corpse. A dead man shambling through the boundless graveyard of sucked-down glasses clouding their living room floor. A pale, sickly cadaver with blood somehow inhabiting his veins and bile roaring from his hung-over form.

Levi’s thousand yard stare stretched into the tawny abyss wreathed by his fingers and palm. The serrated teeth of the upcoming tart bite began to blossom on his tongue before the rim ever reached his lips. His memory was too vivid for his own good, it seemed. One would be forgiven for assuming the brunet was subjugated by a hailstorm of traumatic flashbacks. The horrors of whatever war or unspeakable violence he was entwined in staining his mind.

“How much?” Levi inquired, somehow breaking his iron-solid staring contest with the terracotta-colored chasm.

“Seven bits for the glass.” Moonshine rumbled in reply, “Unless you aren’t through with it.”

Levi ogled with abnormal lust at the glass held in his manus. His hand delved into his jean pocket, fingertips grazing the craggy surfaces of the four golden coins inside. The absence of his cellphone was still somewhat foreign to the male, but that lifeless, paltry hunk of glass and metal bore no place in Equestria. No whisper that reminded him of that hellish impercation that was Alabama belonged there.

Silence shifted uncomfortably in its throne. Nothing possessing the hallmarks of a sound dared to disturb the quietude, sans the dullened acapella of crickets lying beyond the doors. If the lie of the land was anything unlike his current state of affairs, the atmosphere would be peaceful. Dare he say heavenly. Auditory euphoria. Yet, it struck unease in the senior in front and the sinner beside him. A wisp of the perturbation he wrought threatened to permafrost his blood stream.

The building’s rusted hinged and rot-infested skeleton retained a state of unbroken stillness. Until the Man in Blue spoke once more.

“Maybe I’ll have a few more. We’ll see.”

His brain prepared another utterance. Lips parted, yellowed teeth separated. Only to be cast into silence by Levi’s abrupt interjection.

“Do you mind leaving me and her alone for a few minutes? Hate to be a bother but it’s…”

Levi shot a glance to the perturbed pegasus at his left. Her glass of similarly colored poor decisions in liquid form ne’er departed from her hoof gripping it. The only thing within arms-reach that could stand a chance against the wrathful cage of imprisoned emotions.

A monster of her own creation.

“It’s really important. And private.” Levi concluded, faux sincerity bleeding through the final syllable.

His visage was stone-cold, bereft of any hint or the faintest of nudges towards anything exhibiting semblance to the countenance of innocence. A face free of ill-intent and an immortal lust for maltreatment towards the sinner shifting distressfully at his elbow. Moonshine, a pony with decades under his belt and limitless experience in reading people, should’ve detected Levi’s more-than-despicable goals in the blink of an eye. Cradle his loyal customer and friend in the ginger arms of salvation. Bless her with heavenly deliverance from the grisly fate she was tethered to if this inaction persisted. A solitary glare from the Tavern owner, and it would’ve been tail lights for the Man in Blue.

But somehow, by some incomprehensible miracle, Levi remained. Practically welded to that ramshackle bar stool, waiting for the rightfully perplexed elder to vacate the pair. Essentially heaving Silver into the gaping, salivating jaws of a malnourished wolf to snap down on. An inhumane beast whose illimitable hunger could only be satiated by the blood of a righteous sinner. While the human separated from her by scanty centimeters was the furthest thing from one, those eyes told a different story. A tale of horror and upcoming bloodshed. She wouldn’t be surprised if the male was secretly the canine her brain illustrated. Cursed in some way shape or form by a witch to inhabit the slender fleshy frame of a human being.

“I don’t see why not,” Moonshine replied. Centuries seeming to pass since his last reverberating utterance. “as long as you don’t go runnin’ off without payin’. I don’t take too kindly to thieves.”

“Do I strike you as that type? A thief?”

Moonshine dragged his orbs from the brunet’s kempt locks to the crest of his waist. Perhaps he knew, perhaps he didn’t. A mystery Levi hoped he would never solve.

Moonshine shook his head, swiveling his wrinkled chassis. Something glimmered in the deep, murky recesses of his optics. Something Levi, even with his best efforts put forth, failed to put a name to. Almost knowing but still poisoned with barely noticeable whispers of ignorance. Levi never realized how hard reading people truly was until now.

‘Come back! Please! I need somepony to save me! Anypony at all! Moonshine!’

That harrowing series of pleas, agony thoroughly woven between each individual letter, clawed fruitlessly at the demarcations of her lungs. Forlornly scratching the palisades of her lips like ravenous legions of demons raking the only exit to Hell. Begging with all the air in their lungs to be liberated from the confines of her mind and be given life. The ability to spill her internal squalls into the endless sterile desert of sound that populated the bar. Sprinkle some life into the extraordinarily stark air, even if it harbored undertones of dread to the highest degree.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t would’ve been a better way of putting it. Moonshine’s hooves moved in drawn-out strides, bringing forlorn moans into existence every time his weight pressed into the dying planks. His rat tail materializing from the drooping rear of his hat slithering down his nape disappeared behind his shirt collar, peppered with slender lanes of silver. Her only chance of any variation of mercy had swung open the tintless doors to the malodorous kitchen and vanished into oblivion. As though the heavens above decided that clemency from this dastardly destiny was outlawed. Plucking her soon-to-be savior essentially from the world around her being the final nail in the coffin for her. The grim, wearisome tale of Silver Spears was coming to an end tonight. Right there on the rotten treen floorboards, the heads of deceased creatures all around her observing her grotesque yet, although they’d refuse to admit it, righteous end. A twisted modern-day gladiator arena, it was. She always assumed the ponies generations before her had deserted those customs to the cruel hand of time. Left to rot in a time long-lost. But, like he had done many times before and would probably continue to do, Levi rewrote history. And he’d do it again that fateful, cataclysmic night.

The brunet snaked his fingers into the handle of his mug, strangling the glass with a white-knuckle grip. He brought the copper-colored liquid to his eager maw, practically trembling with lust at the prospect of satisfying his badgersome urges. Without hesitation, the bitter hellfire-in-a-glass robbed him of his breath. He withstood the desire to jerk in surprise at the sensation. That damned acidity clung to his lips despite his tongue’s prevalent efforts. The mug clinked gently as he returned it to the bartop, creating another halo of precipitation to add to the titanic collection.

Levi swallowed. An futile attempt to rid his throat from the boundless wrath of the tart. His Adam's apple bobbed before he cleared his throat. Appearing and sounding a lot more obnoxious and raucous in the barren wasteland they found themselves in.

Just him, his rage, and the one who marred his beloved-by-all friend with zero remorse. If any soul was able to see them at that moment, they’d give Silver a new, much more fitting, name. A walking corpse.

Silence’s reign stretched on for a handful of seconds before Levi’s low, menacing tone deposed it.

“I take it you know why I’m here, right?”

“I-”

It was Silver’s turn to clear her throat now. She paused for a long while after.

“I can probably guess why.”

Levi hummed. A vile compound of choler and a hunger for retribution bleeding into the air. “I bet you could.”

“You were the one at my compound, weren’t you?”

The question didn’t deserve an answer from the wrathful man. It didn’t even merit something as small as a gesture of any kind or alteration. For reasons unknown to him, the gangrene-ridden husk known only as his heart harbored its own unique ideas for this interaction. A small snippet of the abnormal array of choices it would decide to make being the conscious effort to humor the bastard.

“I was,” Levi replied in that self-same timbre, dripping menace onto the dark planks beneath him.

“Why couldn’t we handle this there?”

“Crowded. Too many of your lackeys around.”

“‘Lackeys’?”

Levi returned the glass to the pockmarked countertop sharply. Not with enough brute force to be considered a callous slam, but just barely teetering on the edge of being considered one. The brunet withdrew a mountainous breath from the warmed-over atmosphere, his eyes closed briefly. The malice he channeled through his irises, siphoned straight from the source, could be felt galaxies away. He wouldn’t be surprised if her grand-children had nightmares about it.

“I’m not here for a discussion. You know why I’m here. Don’t play stupid now.”

“I’m not playing anything,” Silver retorted, “I’m waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For you to beat me, kill me, go on a tirade. Whatever you have rehearsed, get on with it.”

Something shimmered in Levi’s emeralds. A sense of understanding, like puzzle pieces finally clicking into their respective locations. The cipher had an answer at long last.

“This isn’t your first rodeo, is it?”

Silver stared off into oblivion, hooves clutching her half-empty glass like a security blanket.

“I’m not the only one with the nerve to stand up to you, am I? You’ve been here before.”

Silver took a swig. “If that’s the way you wanna put it, then yeah, I’ve been here a lot.”

“There is no ‘way to put it’, Spears. There’s only the way it is,” He replied, “nothing more, nothing less.”

“Then I guess that’s the way it is, Levi.”

The male’s fingernails threatened to impale the soft flesh of his palms. Knuckles resembling tiny cue balls more than a vital portion of his hand. Veins obtruding from beneath the veil of his skin, the vibrant blue and green colors matching illy with the ichor that flowed within. The manifold of canals that all fed into one central hub. That being his slamming, vexed, roaring heart, doing it’s damndest to cling to every last thread of his previous emotions. The ones that, once upon a time, held a rigid monarchy over his frame before the blighter at his oblique materialized into the picture. Walking straight out of whatever portal to Hell she dawned in and wreaking havoc and discord as far as her hooves could carry her. To say he was dumbfounded by her blinding nonchalance to his intemperate advances would be a criminal understatement.

Here they were. Enveloped in solitude at the dead of night in a chiefly deserted pub. No-one around for miles. The closest building he could spot amidst the ocean of white pinpoints and indigo was a small cake shop far into the distance, and even that distance couldn’t successfully carry her woeful screams. Behind that lie the monstrous titan of concrete and solid steel vomiting prismatic smog into the formerly pristine Cloudsdale air. In other words, an acute lack of salvation. Meaning that the dull-witted pegasus, despite what her panic-racked brain was pushing her to believe, was utterly and completely robbed of her discretion. Repose was alien now. Yet she couldn’t seem to accept she was no longer in any sort of control over her current predicament. Levi didn’t like beating around the bush all too often, but relishing in his soon-to-be triumph over the ruthless sod was a necessity. An opportunity he couldn’t shoulder the regret of missing.

However, in the unplumbed entrails of his psyche, an inkling stood defiant against the unwavering forces of foul intentions. A rebel who aimed to ignite a gas trail leading to an explosive, world-altering revolution against the unholy ranks storming his home. One with a rock-solid set of morals that refused to be deviated in any way shape or form. Standing unshaken by the vile ventures taken to undermine his good nature. This freedom fighter sent pure, unbridled disgust rippling throughout every inch of his form. Even while a legion of whetted spikes, courtesy of resentment, fixated his core without a waft of ruth to be discerned, it managed to subvert their attacks. Assuming there stead was the furthest thing from good. But at the very least, it opened his eyes to the atrocity he was preparing himself to commit. Perhaps influence the soon-to-become criminal with a future arrest warrant issued by Celestia herself to go home. Find another way to prosecute the dastardly pony bereft of muddying the waters with vigilante justice.

That was the mutineer’s plan. In spite of his supreme endeavors to lay waste to his vengeful spirits, not a thing could dissuade the male from his warpath. A tragedy to some, if not everyone, but a royalty to him. The closest thing to heavenly bliss that a living mortal could experience.

“Part of me thinks you haven’t comprehended what I’m here for.”

For the first time, and most likely the last, in their entire conversation, the pair locked eyes. One plagued with a futile haze of defiance pulling a wool over her orbs to her state of affairs. The other like a polluted river, only undying hatred and bloodlust undertook the grim responsibilities of sewage.

“I have. Did you really think you’re the only one in Equestria who hates me? A lot of ponies do, they just don’t do anything about it.”

“Guess I’m the first, huh?”

Silver gave a small hum of agreement. Her lips found the familiar smoothness of the rim of the glass, downing the concluding gulp to her drink, returning the vacant cup to the bartop.

Levi released a miniscule, unidentified murmur from the chamber of his lungs. He couldn’t tell if it was always this way and he never noticed it, but Platinum’s sword’s hilt ne’er looked as appealing as it did right then.

“I didn’t expect this conversation to be a conversation at all.”

“What did you expect?”

“‘You don’t have to do this, Levi,’” He mocked in an obnoxious, strident tone. “‘There has to be another way! There has to be!’”

“You really think I’d beg?”

“Yeah. I think you would,” Replied the brunet. “Did Spitfire beg?”

Silver choked on the quietude enshrouding the bar.

“What?”

“Fractured skull. Broken wing. Dislocated jaw. Doctor said she may not wake up from her coma for weeks. Months at the worst.”

With each gruesome detail Levi spilled into the air, the more Silver’s body beckoned her to collapse like a fist into herself. Not out of debilitating guilt for her sins. The furthest thing. She was more worried of what his culminated hate and choler for her actions would manifest into.

“She’s gonna carry those scars for the rest of her life because of you.”

He paused, his bone-splitting grip strangling the hand folded into his.

“Let me ask you something,” Spoke Levi, “what went through your mind when you decided that the Wonderbolts would be your next target?”

She said nix. The staring contest with the inanimate wall beginning to climb towards it’s apex. A cannonball of sweat was born on her forehead, beginning to rush down her muzzle.

“The most popular flying team in all of Equestria? Countless wins under their belt? What led you to attack their leader of all ponies?”

Silver pressed her hooves into the underside of the table. Again, eye contact was a thing of the past.

“I didn’t think sociopaths existed here but… guess I was wrong.”

“Where’s your proof?”

Levi paused.

“What did you just say?”

“Where’s your proof?” She repeated like the loathsome broken record she was. “You’re gonna go to the Princess and give her what? Suspicions?”

Levi chuckled, his digits easing into his left back pocket. “I thought you’d never ask.”

His manus emerged from the denim cavity, the argent, carmine-stained smoking gun clutched charily with the utmost caution in his fingertips. The ends of his index and thumb seized the stem of the frayed feather. Each individual silvery thread that united as one to form the abominable quill were frayed. Some merely divided by millimeters that qualified as viewable by the skin of their teeth, others split apart like the aftermath of a hatchet chop. Spanning from the middle to centimeters away from the plume’s tip was deep scarlet, ever-so-slightly darkened by the passage of time. Despite the mortifying event having occurred in days that have long-since passed him by, the world-altering pain his dear friend experienced still radiated from the grim artifact. Combers of agony rhythmically pulsed from it, even after countless hours of it being in his possession. Even the slightest glimpse of half-grieving, half-alarming sight was enough to transform his bloodstream into bubbling rivers of tumbling magma.

Levi gave the contemptible object a cursory twirl before laying it down upon the stained bartop in the middle point between them. Silver’s gaze turned icy, a slight pang of fear adulterating it in the face of her efforts to mute it. Another emotion hid in plain sight Levi’s too became arctic, but for an all-too-nefarious reason that anyone of any intellect could identify.

“I asked for proof.”

Levi cocked a brow. “Excuse me?”

“I asked for proof. This just looks like a feather with blood on it.”

“It’s your feather and I think you could guess who’s blood it is.” Replied Levi, growing more infuriated by the second.

“How do you think the Princesses are gonna feel about this?”

“Celestia and Luna have brains, Levi. Did you forget?”

“Anyone with a brain can see how fucked up you are. It’s gonna be a field day for the… whoever runs the law here. Judge, courts, whatever.”

The corners of Silver’s mouth crimped. Her heart surged. “This isn’t anything. You look a lot crazier than me holding a blood-stained feather in your back pocket.”

“You must not have very good hearing,” Levi retorted. He shifted in his stool and faced the entirety of his frame towards her. “I said it’s yours. In the hallway right after it happened.”

“Is there a way of telling if it belongs to me specifically?” Silver prodded. “I mean, there’s probably hundreds of millions of pegasi in this city alone with that same color.”

“You don’t know that for certain,”

“It’s a safe bet,” Silver responded, “for all I know it could be my cousin up in Manehattan.”

‘Manehattan, huh?’ Levi thought. Another nugget of information chipped from the gargantuan gold mine of potential knowledge Equestria offered.

“Only problem is it was you, not him. I’m sure Celestia will see it that way, too.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Dumbfoundedness painted his features. He leaned towards her a bit more. His hand hovered above the enticing hilt of his blade. Dangerously close.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He all-but growled. “Spitfire is the leader of the Wonderbolts. That’s practically Celestia’s team as much as it is hers.”

“The way I see it, you’re pretty much damned from here.”

Silver’s irises were unsure of her destiny. A battle between what was right and what was wrong raging within. She hesitated a moment before speaking.

“H-Have you stopped to think about where you fit into all of this?” She asked. “After all, you sent a spy here to follow me. Came in here with a weapon. You don’t look so good yourself.”

A pair of pears of sweat cruise down her visage like a macabre bowling tournament.

“I look better than you. Way better.”

His hand shaved off a few more inches between his primed palm to the metallic handle of his sword. The brunet’s eyes glistened in the faded shafts of moonlight beaming upon his velvet blue attire. An alluring sight for just about anyone else under circumstances deviating from Silver’s. For her, it was a nightmare of epic proportions unfolding before her broadened, dread-struck eyes. Another bullet of perspiration betrayed her emotionless face. Has her shirt always felt this constricting? Was it’s ultimate goal to strangle her? Was it too aware of her deepest secrets?

“That’s a p-pretty low b-bar, I guess.”

Levi grinned in amusement, yet the malice remained. “It is.”

More distance was trimmed. His fingers desired to wiggle like a cowboy in an all-chips-in duel in the 1800s reaching for his revolver. The wrathful Western sun unleashing its unbridled fury upon the two. Wisps of sands brushing their jean-clad legs and forelimbs respectively. Their faces shielded by the wide, drooping brims of their leather hats. In fact, he would’ve preferred that wholeheartedly over this sorry-excuse for a stand-off in this lazy recreation of a saloon. At least then someone could pay the proper price for their ill-omened deeds. Blood.

It was precisely what Levi wanted to paint and lather the nigh-black planks with, smothering them in a glistening varnish of fresh, repugnant crimson. One swing of his sword, and all of this heartbreak and seemingly boundless mental anguish could finally end. The survivors of this tragedy could be granted a chance to heal, no longer tethered to their vile prison of memory by grievous wounds. Everything that was and will ever be associated with Silver Spears would be spurted across the Tavern floor. A thin scarlet pencil drawn across her throat. Ichor thrown every which way. Her quivering frame, racked with terror from her inescapable demise, collapsing to the ground drowned in her bodily fluids. Levi would most likely stand too. Watching in a brew of satisfaction and guilt at the writhing entanglement of limbs and blood. Squirming with feverish intent of being liberated from the ever-so-tightening chains of death. Thrashing and swinging wildly with all the strength her limbs still harbored. It would take minutes for her to die. More than enough time to watch with panicked, bloodshot eyes as her empire of endless misery crumbled. Nothing beside would remain, sans a woeful Levi fleeing from his sins and a corpse pockmarking the Rusty Tavern.

That’s what he longed for. It’s the origin of the illimitable hunger annexing his orbs. The seed that sprouted his rapid-fire breaths. Alongside the clenching of his teeth. Strangling grip on his hilt. And last but especially not least, the adrenaline gnawing at his veins and wreathing his bones. Electrifying his skeleton like the jagged jaws of jumper cables biting his flesh.

The bar stood stock-still. All of Equestria followed suit. That ramshackle pub held its breath with an iron-tight grip. Silver was, in every regard, a faux-warrior staring into the sharpened eyes of a Basilisk. Lying in dreadful wait for the assured expiry she knew was arriving. This was the Man in Blue. There was no such thing as “fighting back” against Celestia’s lapdog. It was foreign beyond comprehension. If a friend, or dear she say slave, of royalty wanted her head on a silver platter, his wish would be granted. No relent. No ruth. No iota of anything remotely similar to mercy or respite. Just a cruel, unavoidable destiny she had every chance to derail, but failed too.

Deep down, she was well-aware she chose this. It was made more-than-lucid by the hundreds of dodged bullets over her transgression-riddled years that eventually, someone would come by that wasn’t like a regular pony. Somebody that wouldn’t tolerate her remorseless nature and blatant blind eye to suffering or consequences for a second. All her life she had been sauntering down a rusty belt of railroad tracks, awaiting the inexorable freight train shouldering the weight of her immorality to come barreling down. Swaying dangerously on those rickety tramlines. Enveloping Silver in its broad cone of vivid direful yellow, like the eager slavering maw of an underfed beast. Its mammoth metallic and wooden torso, nigh-unfathomable in length, would come jetting down that lengthy, desolate burrow eaten alive by tenebrosity. And then, it would collide, leaving Silver and everything she stood for to rot in a casket six-feet below ground. Out of sight, out of mind.

However, it didn’t matter if Silver suddenly decided now was a good time to fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness. A more accurate term would be mercy. Levi’s hand fully seized the pearlescent hilt of his weapon. Eyes ravenous, his imprisoned fury restrained by faltering chains clawing at his retinas for freedom. An outlet to dispense his intramural wrath onto the sod and permit his being liberty from the agony that came with storing anger. The constant pangs in his heart. Sleepless nights and thoughtless days spent mindlessly hacking and slashing plastic mockeries of life to bits. Reduce the once flourishing field posterior to the Library to a loch of decapitated heads and amputated limbs. More of a shoestring budget recreation of a warzone than a pasture now. All because of her. The good-for-nothing, worthless, remorseless bastard who not only brutalized his dearest friend, but left her to die. That was arguably the worst part of the entire travesty in his eyes. Beating a pegasus and pushing her to the brink of a cruel demise was one thing. Punishable by the highest penalty Equestria could bring to the table in its own right. But what would’ve happened if Levi hadn’t found her? Who would’ve? Would she have perished from oceans of blood spewing from her split skin and flagrant wounds? Would another with far-less relent than he had have found her? What would they have done? Would Silver still be talking to him or would she have long-since bit the dust in an act of callous redress?

An unforgiving blanket of demolition was cascaded down onto the formerly tranquil, lush landscape of his psyche, bringing the life that was once flourishing to no end to an abrupt demise. Thoughts ran rampant. Assumptions and fictitious scenarios formed violent rebellions, launching a full-scale revolt against the Man in Blue. All of them armed with the undying goal of deposing the dithering male.

Levi was hesitant, doubtful of the imminent boundless hellfire he was about to unleash upon his serene life. Revenge always had a price. When you live in a city strangled by violent, tyrannical hobos and cruel maniacs all with a common objective, that rule becomes ever-so-clear. Friends, family, significant others. It didn’t matter. If someone close to you was callously robbed from this Earth by a remorseless sod, vengeance was the last thing tacked down on a list of retaliations. An endless cycle of bloodshed and purgatory. A ouroboros perpetually devouring its own gore-bathed tail. Retribution never ended. That was one of the titanic catalog of reasons as to why Tuscaloosa was as diabolical as it was. The homeless lost their domiciles and the dealers gained their cutthroat nature from someone or something. After all, it was highly unlikely, but not completely out of the picture, that a man wakes up and chooses barbarity or anarchy.

He couldn’t begin to stomach the concept of Twilight dealing with the fallout of his, as much as he despised admitting it, sickeningly selfish declaration of war. Levi vividly recollected that hivemind somehow known as a “compound” like the back of his quivering hand. The incomprehensible number of robust, ironclad pegasi crawling up and down those tiled halls, the air unimaginably spongy with their secreted resentment. Almost as though they could see right through his undeniably thin veil of calm, breaching the doors to his soul and get an all-expenses-paid view within. The sweltering inferno of anger burning their retinas being the only thing dissuading them from following through.

Let the braces of relent cuffing Levi’s wrist break and the crystalline dagger fly from his holster, there would, bereft of an iota of confusion, be hell to pay. An entire army of fliers against him, a measly dragon a quarter of his height, and a bookworm unicorn didn’t appear to be favorable odds. And enlisting the help of merely those two was a mountainous“if” in its own right. In a perfect world, Levi was successful in recruiting Twilight and Spike to essentially wage an all-out, animus-rooted skirmish. And in an even more perfect world, Levi emerged victorious above the imposing likelihood of his defeat. Only problem being that, when retribution was the center of discussion, triumph harbored no meaning. Non-existent, for lack of a better word. It bore no truth. Becoming the winner of a never-ending loop of misery and death simply wasn’t implanted within the demarcations of reality. Levi knew that better than anyone. It would take countless hands to accurately measure how many lives he’d witness crash and burn from the perpetual recursion. Standing and observing helplessly as their comrade was haphazardly slaughtered and tossed aside, fully intent on beheading the one who dared to disturb their imaginary bubble of peace. Despite knowing the full length of the decision they made to join the narcotics business to begin with.

Violent recrimination was an alien prospect to the happy-go-lucky citizens of Equestria. That fact alone was the closest thing to Heaven on earth a mortal like himself could experience. Equus, a euphoric fantasy that was tethered only to his wildest dreams of stupor, had finally become his reality. A blemishless wonderland that granted him and, hopefully, his lost comrade a chance to restart and begin anew. Forge a new name for themselves as the sole humans to have entered these lands in what he could only assume to be centuries. Possibly even longer than his meager mind was able to fathom.

Equestria was a gift from God. Plain, simple, and straight. He saw the hardships and, at long last, answered Levi’s forlorn years of begging for a second chance. An opportunity to right his wrongs in whatever way possible and desert his sins in Alabama. Run far away from the shattered shackles that once bounded him rigidly to Tuscaloosa. Tear his roots from the vile, blood-stained dirt. Plant his essence in that enraptured Library he was fortunate enough to call home. Even a trifling remembrance of the name sent his heart into an animated frenzy of beats and pounds. Miserably longing for that tranquil warmness and welcoming scent of tree sap to embrace him. Mayhaps, by some miracle, he could at least come close to drawing the curtain on this disgusting tale and conclude his ravenous fury. Bring it to its unceremonious demise. In simpler words, give Silver an ultimatum she couldn’t turn down.

Levi closed his eyes, breathing as deep as his lungs would allow. A hand vibrating with unrestrained malice ceased the barbaric asphyxiation of his sword’s hilt, moving shakily through the stale air and coming to rest upon the bartop. His manuses clasped gently together, but the waves of unbridled wrath still radiated in rhythmic pulses. Reeling breaths to satisfy his galloping heart was akin to pulling a leviathan from the ocean with a trifling stick and string. The urge to beat Silver’s head into a muddled macabre oatmeal of bone and brain persisted, but he refused to give in.

“I’ll be honest…” Levi spoke slowly, his teeth threatening to collide with one another with each word. “You deserve to die for what you did. And I should kill you.”

Levi paused. “But…even though you don’t deserve it, I’ll be fair.”

Silver’s was an unintelligible conglomeration, but Levi cared little to decipher what each individual strand of emotion was. He stared forward akin to the bastard at his elbow for the majority of their conversation.

“How about this…” Levi shifted in his stool. “A. You resign. Confess to everything you did to the Princess and whatever happens to you after that… I could care less.”

“Or B. You don’t.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

Levi glowered at her. “It would be better for both of us if you don’t find out.”

“Why should…” Silver hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Why should I be afraid of you? You-”

“Celestia gave me this sword for a reason.” Levi interjected, “There’s a reason I’m here in the first place. To protect.” Levi downed a swig, scrunching his face before continuing in utter stoicism.

“The way I see it, taking you out of the picture is protecting a lot more people than…” Levi’s words perished in his mouth, their corpses being left to rot behind his air-tight lips.

“Actually, I don’t owe you an explanation.”

Levi raised the bottom of his tawny mug to the heavens above, relishing in the singing of his throat like a mudslide of raw flame traveling down his esophagus. He returned the glass to its precipitation halo desecrating the bartop before sliding the slender legs of his stool back. To absolutely no-one’s surprise at all, the elderly chair cried out in fatigue and anguish. With all of their sorrows and woes escaping from its hinges with a singular strident wail. The man stood, his legs and beaten brown shoes rejoiced from the newfound liberation from their cursory prison beneath Moonshine’s countertop. Bones moaned while they stretched. His back popped and crackled like a soothing fire. He dug into his left jean pocket and fished out his coven of golden doubloons, allowing them to rest soundly in his closed fist.

“But, Levi, wait-”

“Moonshine!”

“Just a minute!” The old stallion called back, echoing throughout the dingy confines of the kitchen. Clamorous banging and clanging of pots and pans butting heads swiftly followed, adding some desperately-needed life into the otherwise colorless air.

“Levi, please, there has to be another way! I can’t resign. I can’t leave my team without a good leader. And I’ll die before I leave them over this slander.” Her pathetic pleas to rescue her dying career of infamy fell on deaf, disregarding ears. If the titanic kingdom of fear and brutality led entirely by Silver had to collapse, he had no problem at all being the Trojan Horse. If cruelty was her language, he would speak it. Didn’t make a damn difference to him.

When his globes caught the willowy, gray-haired frame of the Tavern’s owner cross his sight, he wasted no time in letting the coins clatter onto the counter in a raucous mess of sound.

“Put it on my tab.” Levi spoke, “It’s the Man in Blue.”

The brunet shoved his hands into his now-deserted pockets and began his departure from that wretched, dirt-poor pub. Protecting his hands preemptively from the sharpened bite of the cold Cloudsdale air. Bracing for the inescapable scowl from the sheet of clouds above him.

“Another damn tab. I miss when people paid honestly.” He heard Moonshine grumble to his back.

Levi hadn’t necessarily considered his way back to homebase throughout their entire predestined discussion. All he cared about was making it as clear as realistically possible to her how grave her current situation was. Either take his gift of mercy he practically delivered to her on a silver platter, or don’t. In truth, he really didn’t know what would happen if option B was the pill she eagerly swallowed. And if he was honest, he didn’t desire to know anytime soon. Revenge was vile. A sickening cycle. That had been made as lucid as a cloudless day in Alabama countless times. The illimitable newspaper clippings of some major dealer went down in flames, with vengeance being the one who ignited the inferno. Alongside the hundreds of mugshots or I.D. photos flashing across his small TV screen, the reporter’s voice filling him in on all the gruesome details he never knew were doable to another human. Shot, stabbed, trapped in a house fire, drive-by, bludgeoned to death. He heard it all. There was ne’er a shortage of ways to perish when drugs and money were hanging in the air free for the taking. The way anyone else saw it, they were just easy pickings. Take out the one who wanted it and the prize was all there's.

How far or how short Equestria’s limits for forgiveness reached was an enigma. Perhaps those brawny, meat-headed fliers occupying that dastardly compound had a transparent sense of right and wrong. Unlike their leader, followed a strict set of unwavering morals. Or maybe, and the more grounded-in-reality scenario, they were almost identical to their leader. Trying to keep the Dashers’ reputation spick and span, utterly free from the cancers of defamation and character assassination. Key word being “try”. With a head honcho with a barbarous nature like hers, it was a miracle the team and its entirety weren’t ruthlessly slaughtered by the family of those she maimed. Levi could hardly believe how, at the very least, Silver hadn’t died long before his arrival. Beating innocent, guilt-free ponies half-to-death and leaving them to rot in a lake of their own bodily fluids. By all laws of society, freedom should be a feeling she missed dearly. Not one she gloried in on a daily basis. Whether locked in a dungeon with a missing key or hung at the gallows, she shouldn’t be in the position she was now.

Yet here he was. Standing outside the temporary prison for Silver Spears putting her life in her own hands. Him being the one playing a glorified game of cops and robbers, with him being the relentless law prowling the streets for his adversary. He wasn’t fully keen on Luna at the moment for blatant reasons, but he knew for certain that Celestia was the best overlord Equestria could ever ask for. So it was miraculous to say the least how Silver, a pegasus drowning in an ocean of damning evidence, still drew breath and bore witness to the morning sun everyday. Part of him wanting to relinquish his duties as a faux-officer of the law and leave her fate in Celestia’s hooves. Watch with a satisfied grin while she gets dragged away in shackles to her eternal mortal confinement. Having a noose hug her neck would also be fine with the man. Regardless, she needed to face punishment in this life or the next. And he couldn't shoulder the mental burden of fretting over her next move. After all, he still hadn’t fully acclimated to life in a world governed and occupied solely by equines yet. On top of that, there was that fleeting but all-too-feasible chance that Gary was alive. Somehow able to breach the veil separating the deceased and the living for a second time. If he was piloted by bloodlust and an undying hunger for retribution, he would’ve done the same thing. Another reason why recrimination wasn’t a topic for consideration.

Thunderlane should be returning within the hour. The clock long-passed twelve, now venturing further into the average night owl’s territory. About thirty minutes until one. All Levi had on his hands now was time. Precious time to ponder and internally wrestle with his current state of affairs. Imagine how euphoric that familial warmth of Twilight’s voice, combined with the natural feel of the library, would be as it greeted him upon his arrival home. All he could do was wait.

He glanced over his shoulder at the gimcrack saloon staring daggers into the back of his head. Seeing Silver still hunched over the bartop, smothering her sorrows in that choler bottled-hell. An attempted tug at the heartstrings for some, but a struggle to not chuckle for others. Him included.

‘Just pick A, you sorry bastard.’ Levi thought, swiveling his cranium to face the endless abyss of tenebrosity before him. The darkness appeared to almost stare back with an intense leer.

‘Please. Pick A.’

Chapter 22: Fictus Sanctuary

Worthless. Absolutely worthless.

Those were the only two words in Gary’s mammoth vocabulary that could begin to reasonably describe the debacle at Sugarcube Corner. Fruitless. A complete and utter waste of time. If the man were to perish that night, burning his precious minutes not only walking there but interacting with the owner would be his solitary regret. A woeful one, at that.

An odd handful of minutes had passed since five-thirty in the morning struck. Under any normal circumstances, Gary would’ve been half-dead drowning in the illimitable ocean of slumber. Tucked gingerly and fastly in his air conditioned home with whatever TV show he randomly flicked to blending into the white noise of Roseville, Alabama. Homeless junkies declaring war for ramshackle street corners they viewed as “territory”. A situation he played a helping hand in forging with ravenous business tactics. The occasional gunshot or two signaling an inevitable flock of a Roman Army of police cars. Red-and-blue deluging through the uncurtained windows of the drug-addicted residents. It was only a matter of time till the newspapers came vomiting out of the woodworks, that same wretched, pitiful headline plastered in the boldest font known to humanity.

“MAN SHOT AND KILLED IN TUSCALOOSA. SUSPECT IN CUSTODY.“

Whatever endless rambling followed after that could be predicted by a child with a third-grade reading level. Father of whoever. Uncle of whoever. Innocent bystander. The one who brought death to their doorstep being their son, nephew, niece, daughter. Someone they never met in all there thirty, forty, maybe twenty years of living. News grew stale briskly. It wasn’t a tragedy that rippled up and down those pothole-littered, hobo-infested streets any longer. Over time, the manifold of law enforcement and titanic colorless vans of the news struck the citizens more as an inconvenience than anything else. Not a moment of silence to honor those who suffered a meaningless death for an equally futile cause, but a moment to groan in aggravation. A few days later, thankfully, they’d be gone. Their investigation would conclude and the icy corpse would be wheeled off to its final resting place. An urn or a cheap casket dropped in a dirt hole being their terminus.

If there was anything remotely similar to positive that could arise from his current state of affairs, it had to be, without an iota of doubt, the peace Ponyville wore on its sleeve. The unwavering reign of serenity. A veil of tranquility that separated the quaint dome of protection the village offered from the unnamed horrors that lie beyond its demarcations. Equus was herculean. He figured as much when he trekked those several ghastly, bitter hours all the way from the benign field the Ether spat him out to here. To this foreign place so undeniably alien in nature and the unearthly inhabitants it housed, yet teeming with a never-before-felt exuberance and vibrance that Gary couldn’t rebut. A fact known and recognized by no-one sans himself about the bastard was that, despite how euphoric his limitless power over Roseville was, it invariably failed to satisfy his muses. The urges for an existence bereft of the bloodshed and misery he wrought upon its half-irreproachable, half-deserving populace. A common lust that could effortlessly satisfy his basic human makeup, but was hollow in its efforts to soothe his wild, unchained fantasies of grandeur. Those nagging images of golden thrones and skin-and-bones servants bending backwards to his every command. Bowing to his disastrous will, both metaphorically and literally. His psyche was merely a slave to those pipe dreams as much as the natives of Tuscaloosa were to him. Gary desired an existence where he could fulfill his restless hunger for simplicity and normalcy. No existential crises after every gunfight or skirmish. Waking up in a boundless ocean of cold sweat not being a common, nigh-nightly occurrence. Just him, a rickety old chair on a back porch, and a windy day. Alone, bathed in pure, precious solitude. Bereft of fake heroes and unpunished murderers. A great chunk of the motivation for migrating to Alabama was to accomplish that.

But when he fell into the throes of hard times all those years ago, his options were nix. Either slowly rot away in the vice-like grip of starvation and the wrath of the elements. Or flourish in prosperity in a vile profession. Essentially alter everything he was taught during his rocky upbringing and become the man his parents feared he would grow into. Suffering a needless demise or being a shepherd guiding lost souls to slaughter wasn’t a choice. But it was an ultimatum that required a verdict. When he strolled into the gun store and greeted the bushy-bearded man with a fabricated grin, his ruling was jarring. No effort put forth to conceal it in the least bit. Regret for his harrowing crimes seized him for the latter part of nearly a decade. But when Levi and Alan sent his heaven-scraping tower built on deceit and genocide into oblivion, there was only one thing left. For the Man in Blue’s blood on his hands.

He pinned the blame on his savage appetite for revenge on his present less-than-favorable situation. The sharp rubber treads of his boots, like a intricately detailed map for an inescapable labyrinth, impaled the soft Ponyville dirt with every smarting stride he took. His grey work pants with the hems pooling and tucked neatly behind the tongue of his shoe aided in the unforgiving bite of the early morning air, his shirt did the opposite. If anything, the aquamarine button-down was akin to a palisade of paper mache attempting to repel a blitz on a castle. Everything below the midway point of his pythons were bare and in the throes of the whistling, gnawing gales. Swimming down the empty, dead roads of the village lined and bordered by deserted carts and vacated stores. A vast majority of them lying stock-still and lifeless in cursory quietus, but a minority stood lit by a singular candle or lightswitch. Illuminating the lifeless floors and blackened windows of their establishments, devouring their goods and products in the gentle umbrella of gleam. The rank jungle of coiling forearm hair twisting around one another like exposed wires attended to the orders of the breeze, dancing fervently.

A cosmic plain of hueless pinpricks honeycombing the sheet of rich tenebrosity above frowned upon him with a sweltering glare of animosity. The venom dripping from their razor-sharp gaze manifesting into the strident, arctic zephyrs stealing precious breath from his lungs. Oxygen he undoubtedly wasn’t deserving of. Their own unique method of inflicting their inner secreted indignation towards the male. He wondered which one of the specific atrocities he’s committed upon the guiltless had indirectly affected the stars. Combing every inch of the broad pasture of his psyche for, out of the tens of thousands he’s perpetrated, the singular transgression that spelled ruination for the celestial bodies.

With a name as jolly and merry as Sugarcube Corner, one would expect their visit to be riddled with joyful memories that send their heart into an elated frenzy. The mere mention of the bakery’s title being more-than-enough to tear the ripcord on there core, galvanizing every cell of their essence. But from now until time’s coda, whenever Gary looked back on that deranged madhouse of pastries, the only thing he could do was mourn for the scared time barbarically butchered in front of him. Kneeling on one knee at its side, clutching its ever-so-benumbed hand while life spilled from their irises with every word. Each sentence more unique and faster than the last. The male forsook the idea of attempting to cling onto any string of dialogue he managed to catch by the skin of his teeth. Tuning it out and forlornly longing for an opening to depart being the solitary concern plaguing his mind.

Well…that and the welcoming-slash-badgersome voice occupying his skull rent-free. Shut out by the world and penned in a coarse veneer of stone flesh, but accepted by Gary for reasons unknown to the both of them. Two minds that thought relatively alike. A duo of brains hellbent on the same goal, a healthy mix of revenge and domination. Sweet, sweet domination.

“Discord?”

“Mhm?” The disembodied draconequus answered, drowsiness polluting his tone despite his spectral state.

“So what the hell do I need this book for? Still haven’t told me.”

Gary motioned with his populated left hand clutching a mahogany-brown book encased in genuine, smooth leather. A singular golden horseshoe was plastered onto the cover, bejeweled with a continuous row of glimmering round sapphires barely bigger than his thumb nail. The bougie gemstones complimented the moon’s pale influence joyously. Glimmering with a radiance Gary hadn’t seen from anything in years, and a sight he never knew he missed until now.

The noirette noted the absence of the rhythmic jingling of the coins tenanting his pocket with every stride. Two precious things would be wasted that night, it seemed. Money and time. The lifeblood of the universe. Precisely what kept the globe spinning and the seasons changing.

“Well maybe if you put some pep in your step, we’d be at the motel by now,” Discord replied.

Gary somehow managed to stifle a scoff in spite of knowing his tone wasn’t malicious.

“Whatever.”

“Oh, lighten up, friend.” Discord exclaimed, “Be grateful you’re not the one trapped inside a head.”

“What do I have to be grateful for?”

“Walking. Eating. Sleeping. You can do just about anything. What can I do?”

“Can you get cold?”

“Not exactly-”

“Well, I can.” Gary retorted. “That’s something I won’t ever miss.”

Matching the testimony of that wretched unicorn’s posse, Gary had died that day. The last thing he remembered before he was thrust into perpetual darkness was fatal doses of glee, a skull-splitting explosion, and silence. But only for a minute did that quietude persist. With his jaw-dropping several minutes of fun being a thing of the past, a gaping maw of hellish damnation widened its jubilated jaws to swallow him whole. The only way his sin-paved road could properly conclude.

And if it wasn’t for the semi-pesky draconequus ravaging his mind with nigh-constant banter about everything, he would’ve stayed trapped in that hellscape. A boundless sea of impossibly smooth sable obsidian. No blemishes, divots, or anything of the sort that dared to disrupt the measureless lake of perfection. Just him, an utter lack of senses, and his crimes to torture him illimitably. But a deal was struck. A deal he couldn’t refuse even if he set his blackened, oozing heart on it. Discord breathes life into his parched, decayed veins and Gary does the same in return. It didn’t take a pinnacle of man’s genius to figure out why a being labeled as the so-called “God of Chaos” wound up there. Trying and failing numerous times to piece together the story that led him there was enjoyable in a way. A stark deviation from the righteous torment pulverizing him day-in and day-out. But if his countless failed machinations against his enemy were an indication of anything, this venture would only lead to one familiar avenue. Death and eternal doom. Locked away to wither in dreadful isolation, sitting on that limitless bed of obsidian with crossed legs and a face of stone. A blight among the endless dark, like a dove defying the cold command of the night sky.

Gary lost track of how long ago the glacial, bony hands of death sabotaged his ineffective endeavors at redress. He wanted to say five grueling days at the bare minimum and, surprisingly enough, the imbuing headless voice filling his pounding skull couldn’t tell him. If a god who’s lived to see empires rise and fall more times than he himself could count was unable to recall, who’s to say anyone could? Through forests invaded by spongy tenebrous and desolate paths untouched by man, Discord was his sole companion. A knight in shining armor riding valiantly through the excruciating reclusion, liberating him from the throes of solitude. While the unholy amalgamation’s company wasn’t what he envisioned for a companion, it was better than the other alternatives. The breathy voices of his victims spewing mocks and taunts from a realm far beyond his understanding. Knowing clear and well the monster who ended their lives was unable to reach them. If he could, it was more than assured that dimension would see the end of its days.

Although, sometimes, the woeful calls from the land of the dead were preferred.

“Not that book!”

“I said brown leather, didn’t I?”

“No, no! Not that one either.”

“Do you plan on staying here until the sun rises, Gary?”

That excursion through the library should’ve been rewarded with a medal of the highest honor for his patience. Trekking through the blazing magma field of Hell would have been dramatically easier. It was prodigious how the owner of the book surplus hadn’t stirred from her placid respite. Never had he picked a lock that easily in all of his years.

All Gary needed now was a place to lay his weary head. A malleable mattress where a canyon could be gouged into the textile with his ironclad frame. The scanty knowledge that a compendium of pillows and blankets awaited him somewhere in this ramshackle town made him weak in the knees. If his knees could grow any weaker, that is. He mentally scalped himself for making the grave mistake of wearing high-top work boots in the comfort of his own home. When that bullet drilled into his ribcage, his footwear was the last regret plaguing his loathsome, dying mind. But now, with the Grim Reaper hot on his tail for the head of Gary Demonio, he could grieve his mistake to his heart’s content.

The raven-haired sod scanned the vista intensely with furrowed brows and exhausted amber orbs. Prowling the trodden roads of Ponyville, grazing the jagged horizon of chimneys and abnormally-shaped roofs and houses with a fatigued gaze. While the permeating crepuscule had no problem leaving the man to his own devices, it took great satisfaction in hindering almost every sense or bodily function he harbored. Sight had been robbed from him long ago. Ears were ravaged by the discordant orchestra of crickets, singing their palpating hearts out for all the ponies to watch in awe. Only there were no mares or mustangs to dazzle at their inharmonious performances. Just him and the unbothered beast lodging in his head. Taking steps with mindless ease was a distant memory. Now, each and every one of the untold divots or gouges in the earth would threaten to hurl the man to his knees. Maybe these signs of the universe were pointing Gary in a different direction. One bereft of the inevitable warpath he would surely pave with illimitable sin and carnage. Whoever created these otherworldly creatures blessed with the gift of cognitive thought and free speech has a plan for him. But so does he.

“So, Discord.”

“Yes?”

“You still haven’t told me what the hell this book is for?” Gary reiterated.

“You know, the one I spent half a damn hour looking for?”

“I was only persistent because you weren’t looking hard enough.”

“That isn’t the point.” Gary replied, attempting to cleanse his tone of aggression towards his only sliver of sanity. “I would like to know what it’s for.”

“Well, I’d need your full attention for you to retain everything.” He responded, “And right now you can barely walk without stumbling.”

“Maybe if you didn’t send me on the longest fucking path here, this wouldn’t be a problem!”

“There is no ‘long path’. There’s only one way.”

“I’m sure there was another way.”

“There wasn’t, Gary.”

The male scoffed, the choir of insects raging on only stoked the cocoon of irate flames clasping his heart. His head thundered with agony, like white-hot glowing spears impaling the wrinkled walls of his brain without a hint of relent.

Gary sighed.

“Dammit.” Gary rubbed his dirt-caked visage in irritation. His stygian stubble poked the hardened skin of his fingertips like cactus needles. “I need a break.”

“Oh, no need to tell me, friend.” It could’ve easily been a trick of his wrung-out brain, but he could’ve swore he discerned a faint iota of sympathy from his exclamation.

“If it makes you feel any better, we’re almost there. Just keep it together until then. I’ll tell you everything when we get a hot meal and a shower.”

Gary’s breath hooked to the walls of his throat with wild vigor. Surprise led an uprising against all else.

“Excuse you?”

“Whatever is the matter?”

“We-I am me. You are you. There is no ‘we’. Not yet, at least.”

“May I remind you who brought you back here in the first place-”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Gary never thought interrupting a voice in his head mid-sentence was a feasible action.

Yet here he was, severing a statement that he wasn’t entirely sure was even planted in reality. For all he knew, Gary’s entire journey from that hellish perdition he was flung into was all an unchained ruse. The byproduct of free reign granted to a crazed mind deluded by violence and unshackled urges. Accorded freedom where it doesn’t belong. Emancipated insanity with complete and utter prerogative to manifest whatever its rotten depths desired. If not that, then this entire escapade with fairy tale-esque Discord could be chalked up to his conclusive moments of consciousness stretched incomprehensibly. Perhaps he was still lying there in that dank, frigid castle. A bitter mirth forever locked in the belly of his stagnant lungs. Slack, yawning jaws hanging like unfortunate criminals in the gallows. Heart ceased and amber eyes drained all of arrogance, yet his brain persisted. He persisted. Survived against mountainous odds like he had his whole life.

The gimcrack, sorry-excuse for a hotel was nestled snugly between two near-identical houses to the male’s left. Both of them cut from the same cloth with terrifyingly similar features, the thick stygian smog clinging to the coarse skeleton of the cardinal chimney being one out of the numerous. A semi-lofty, three-floored rectangular building stood high and mighty, dominating the serene ill-lit sky grinning down on the picturesque town. Every roof and olden cottage within a five-foot radius of it turned a sickly green with envy, gazing upon its gangling build with an undesired longing for a similar chassis. While to Gary, an individual from a world where buildings pierced the clouds and managed to grow higher, the construction was meaningless. Something he’d expect a ragtag band of Amish to make in a few months out smack-dab in the center of nowhere. Living contently in the undivulged bowels of a rank forest. Somehow, someway, glorying in their willingly chosen existence of solitude and societal divergence.

A set of sliding glass doors, locked rigidly shut with a slender steel bar, stood posterior to the not-so-spacious deck in each of the rooms. One singular lounge chair and a solid black metal table with a cobweb pattern, standing on two duos of criss-cross rangy legs, imprisoned by chest-high wooden railings. The smoky grey curtain, embroidered with some pattern he couldn’t recognize, shielded the reposeful quarters from the calamitous cacophony of sights and sounds lying outside. A sanctuary away from the cultural amalgamation that seized Ponyville on any given day. Essentially closing the fortunate paying customer in their own personal bubble of respite for a, hopefully, meager price.

Gary scoffed at the oak flesh and mahogany triangular roof, glowering at him with vigorous animosity mirrored only by the loathsome stars minutes prior. He suppressed a mental beatdown of reprimands and a slew of unholy curses at himself for his impossibly high expectations. Anticipating a paid dormitory bearing any sliver of resemblance to one he’d find on the outskirts of Alabama was a losing game. A fool’s contest with nothing but rotting corpses of sky-scraping assumptions and disappointment lying at the end. A grizzly prize for an equally grizzly man.

After a razor-sharp cut to his left, relishing in the transition from doughty silt to the lush belt of vibrant grass, Gary’s larger-than-normal calloused hands wreathed the handlebars. Two superlative tubes of wood, polished and sanded to uber-perfection, were incarcerated to the duo of doors, held in perpetual confinement against them. The entryway itself was as Ponyville-like as Ponyville could possibly get. A pair of megalithic manchester doors had a measly pitiful handful of inches that could barely be considered an advantage towards the raven-haired sod. A small porthole bordered by a ring of steel dotted with bolts adorned each door, granting his amber leer access inside the fine establishment. “Fine” in every sense sans the traditional one. Fine for the purpose it was striving to achieve. But the instant Gary steps foot in there, each and every hair of hospitality or warmth would be incinerated. From what little wasn’t censored behind the mangled corpses of trees, all he could make out was a shined staircase and the sharp corner of a large reception desk.

Gary sighed, enveloping the handlebar with a large palm and divorcing the door from its frame. Given everything else he had seen thus far in both Tuscaloosa and Ponyville, how the owner would react to a bipedal alien sauntering into his establishment demanding domicile. It could easily be one of two things. An irritable senior with a chip on his shoulder, ready to blast the youthful vigor he oh-so forlornly longed for out of him. Or a significantly calmer individual could be residing behind the gargantuan desk. An equine that viewed anger as a foreign concept. Not an irate envious mustang eager to stuff his shotgun barrel down his throat. On second thought, a yokel musket or a whetted tomahawk seemed more fitting. How could a town absent of power lines and partially lit by half-dead candles have militarized gunpowder? It simply wasn’t feasible. His imagination knew no bounds when it came to envisioning what form of dilapidated government they enforced. It wouldn’t shock him if he saw criminals dangling from rickety gallows in the near future.

Gary’s boots were rude to the vivid scarlet carpet protecting the meticulously shined wooden floors. Its rubber map-like treads dug into the lush textile, his footsteps pounding. Each one akin to a prodigious stone being hurled at the ground. Above him, hanging limply like an executed prisoner, was a large silver chandelier, clad with an array of tallow candles. Their wicks aflame with arresting orange life and their slender frame a quarter of the way melted. Each passing minute sent the wax one stride closer to their inexorable demise. In accordance with the moon and the illimitable stars, it too harbored a rooted, unwavering animosity towards the man. He could only wonder what lifeless, inanimate thing would scrutinize him next. The oak walls were destitute of any flare or personality. Just bare uniform planks adorned with miniscule framed photographs and a singular painting. A sunrise in a vast, naked desert, the blood-red sky a beautiful backdrop for the equally alluring sun barely peeking out from the coarse horizon, bordered by a mahogany frame. One of the astronomically few displays of artistry Gary surprisingly took a liking to.

Halfway down the arresting carpet on the right-hand side was the colossal reception desk. Bankrupt of anything that can be remotely correlated to clutter. A glimmering mass of carved wood that reeked of expensive polish, akin to the intoxicating scent of perfectly aged wine. The consistently flat desk dropped dramatically behind it, giving whoever manned it a small cubicle of space to themselves. Inside sat an opened book with a maroon leather cover, flooded with lines upon lines of aimless scribbles. A kind of witless writing one would expect to see either engraved into a cave wall miles underground, or found in the diary of a lunatic imprisoned in a derelict asylum. The manic jottings were illuminated by a tall candle, lagging behind its brethren above on their staggered march to death. A pattern was engraved into the bottom half of the golden bell situated atop the desk. One rose vine. Stretching and winding the full length of the bell.

At the rear of the brown treen chair for the receptionist was a hollow doorway, giving into a break room for whomever grew weary of the extraneous labor of reception. Jotting down names of cursory inhabitants and collecting payment is back-splintering work, after all. In the mini-lounge room, a tallow-colored pony stood diligently stirring a steaming bowl of oatmeal. Her wavy mane was bisected. One half navy blue while the other deviated, taking on a vibrant bright pink. The war between colors didn’t stop at just her head. The mare’s tail was no exception to the horrors of this calamity. Two hues battling for dominance over the equine’s luscious locks. A duel with no possible way of victory for either side. Crystalline blue irises gazed into her early morning meal with a wild hankering, stomach brimming with unbridled hunger. Her flank was plastered with a trio of neatly wrapped cyan-and-yellow striped candies. Their shape as stereotypical as they come. An oval center with two flared edges on the left and right.

Gary stuffed a calloused hand into the murky depths of his pocket. Oh how miserably he took his immeasurable wealth for granted. That field of stuffed suitcases he cached beneath his tumbledown floorboards, like a battlefield of dead soldiers. Their zippers on the cusp of greeting its maker. Tail ends of Ben Franklin and Ulysses Grant peeking out from the bowels of the sack, annexed by silt and dust and crinkled by the absence of space. Money he always planned to use for a good reason. Yet the opportunity never arose. He could only wonder where that limitless fortune smothered by soil beneath his flooring was now. Reclaimed by the bank? Given to the homeless by a vigilante who raided his house? On that note, where was his house? Demolished? Reclaimed by either nature or his scroogelike landlords? Gary had all the time in the world at a later date to lament the loss of all he held dear. He possessed little, and time was one of the things that scarcity ravaged.

Now all that belonged to his name was a trifling handful of bits, limited time, and the stygian big iron tucked securely in his waistband. And if his brutally low finances won’t cut it, perhaps a pistol barrel to her forehead would do the trick. He was doubtful she witnessed a determination as fiery and unwavering as his. Let a room in this ramshackle establishment not be in his name by the end of the night, he would be the final person she saw.

Gary cleared his throat, the frigid early morning air still clinging to the dry walls of his throat. Measly minutes followed since he regretfully consumed that sugary concoction born from the twisted fathoms of lunacy. While the aftertaste wasted no time in beating him to a pulp, food and water were the only thing separating him from a corpse. Two necessities that moron at Sugarcube Corner couldn’t provide. He fabricated as much faux-kindness as his blackened heart would allow, pouring it out into a duo of words.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t see-.” Her head swiveled. Anything that could’ve barely resembled hospitality was deposed. Assuming its stead was a vile amalgamation of many things Gary half-expected, half-dreaded. Fright. Confusion. Urgency. A twinge of panic. Just about everything the raven-haired man had forebodings about. If negotiating the mountain-high price was barely considered an option before, it had been undeniably squashed to bits now.

Whatever the case may be, at the end of the day, one of these temporary quarters was going to be his. No ifs, ands, or buts. One way or another. It didn’t matter what lens the situation was viewed from by any party. This hotel was the key to Levi’s blood painting this decrepit town. And the only thing that could stop Gary now was his severed head hitting the hardwood floor. He’d get a room by any means necessary. That was a promise to the heavens above.

“You…” The petrified receptionist finally concluded. Her forelimbs welded to the carpet. Bones imprisoned in blocks of terror. Confusion seized her thundering heart. Eyes scanned all around the spacious lobby, scanning for some proof that she was trapped in a fever dream. A clock or some other off-the-walls detail that would grant this theory with concrete evidence. But there was none. She swallowed.

“H-How may I h-help you?”

The receptionist brutally tore her hoof from where it was rooted into the floor. One after another, painful steps. Slow, calculated strides, as though she was approaching a malnourished lion annexed by primal hunger and plagued with rabies. And in a way, that wasn’t too far from the truth. After all, the noirette’s hands always felt empty without the coarse material of his pistol grip digging into them. Pushing the gun barrel to her forehead would secure him a domicile devoid of question. But was it the inevitable bounty that would be placed on his head that stopped him? The wanted posters? Or was it the manhunt?

With distance now shaved, a rectangular golden name tag was clipped to her bare chest. The aurate badge read Bon Bon.

The earth pony took a seat.

For the first time in his life, Gary had second thoughts about securing his desires with violent intimidation.

“I-I’m Bon Bon. What can I d-do for you?”

Gary suppressed the gnawing urge to flash a confused mug at Bon Bon. Partly for the sheer stupidity of her name that matched her flank tattoo to a T, but greatly for her fear. That cold, unwavering, heart-palpitating fear that he’d expect to see in a person staring death in the face. Outright rejecting its claims that their time had come. Spitting in the wake of truth that their terminus had arrived and he was here to take him. The face of a man who was by no means prepared for death. It was debatable on whether she recognized, or at the very least saw, the instrument of war tucked into the back of his tattered pants. Given all he had seen thus far from Ponyville, he wouldn’t bet money on finding an operational gun store anytime soon. If she charged at him clad in glimmering Spartan gear and a whetted spear, shock would be the last thing he’d experience. But he doubted that battling him was a resort she’d consider.

Gary grinned.

“What’re your prices?”

“E-Each room is twenty bits a night.”

“Twenty?” Gary replied, baffled.

“Yessir, twenty.”

“Shit!” Gary cursed beneath his breath. “Can it get any cheaper than that?”

“I don’t t-think so.” Bon Bon avoided eye contact with the Grim Reaper like the Black Plague. “I won’t be a stranger to n-negotiating if that’s what you want.”

“I’d like that a lot.” Gary rested his hairy arms on the reception desk, his head leaning ever-so-closer. The timid mare recoiled like a cornered street dog.

“I’m new to-”

One of the vast array of drawers at Bon Bon’s disposal exploded open. The desk quivered from the sheer might of the herculean tug. From his new perch on the table’s crest, his amber orbs locked onto the brutalized drawer’s innards. A lake of golden keys occupied the otherwise dark, lifeless space. Each of them clad with a royal blue plastic tag printed with a stark white number. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty-eight. Thirty. It seemed this building was a lot bigger than he anticipated.

She carelessly plucked a key from the nameless sea and threw the drawer shut, dropping it with a sharp clink! upon his freshly claimed territory.

“H-Here. Take it.” Bon Bon stammered, sinking into her seat that swallowed her like a tar pit. “Give me whatever you have, it doesn’t matter.”

Gary shrugged, blessing the pitiful family of glimmering coins in his pocket with light once again. They clattered to the blemishless wood stridently, one of them rattling like a snake’s tail before its fervor was drained by gravity. All that stood in that surprisingly well-kept hotel lobby was Gary, satisfied and racked by poverty, yet taking steps down his blistering warpath. And a mortified earth pony, accepting his hollow ‘thank you’ with zero grace. Gary’s boots boomed against the firm wooden stairs. Scuffing the flawless polish irreparable with each callous step. The sonorous sounds that echoed throughout that gimcrack building sent combers of unrest in all directions. Colossal waves opening their broad, mammoth jaws to swallow the serenely resting residents whole. They all might be devoured by the tranquil ocean of slumber, but their hearts were the polar opposite. Wide awake. Electrified, jolted by fright and unease. Perturbed to the utmost of the manifestation of bad luck sauntering through the darkened halls. His thick boots pounding the floor carelessly, like a ravenous, greedy bounty hunter strolling into a saloon. Prowling with furrowed, shrewd irises for his target’s horror-struck mug.

In more twisted ways than one, Gary’s life bore many similarities to that of a vicious, unforgiving debt collector. Roaming the pothole-marked streets of Roseville. Walking through the fields of dead grass, the blades either a sickly yellow or scummy brown. There was never an in-between. His menacing footsteps thundering up and down that decrepit neighborhood. Bulky pistol almost always tethered safely to his side. There were two beacons of absolute superiority in Roseville. Him and poverty. No cars. No top-of-the-line security systems. No police. Just him and his mighty kingdom. He was the ruler of all. The emperor. Playing god with those innocent, manipulated souls like a child with a ball. A puppeteer in a sea of misguided dolls, tugging the strings in whatever way he pleased. It was heaven.

However, now, his state wasn’t too far off from the poor bastards he governed with an iron fist and cold command. Now, he was as worthless as the meritless peons he dominated. He filled the shoes of someone who would, under any normal circumstances, go into cardiac arrest at the mere mention of his name. Scrounging every corner, nook, and cranny of this out-of-date village. A trifling speck in a foreign world with an equally foreign feeling plaguing him. One of utter inferiority. That euphoric thrill of authority had long-since abandoned him. Deserted the man and left him to the elements, like it had done with so many others before him. Presently, he was merely a husk. A living, breathing corpse of that unshakable pillar of supremacy that made that town his footrest. He was nothing.

The darkness of his room reminded him of this in every way. Mocking him, screaming soundless taunts from its endless bowels. Roaring with wild ecstasy and pleasure at his fate. Muted howls of mirth. A deathly silent guffaw engulfing him and invading his psyche with every step. Insults that had no face or name attached to the source. Just pure, unadulterated malice from the boundless dark, decimated only by a singular candle. Standing proudly in the fullest state he had seen thus far. Perhaps this was another one of the tenebrosity’s cruel jeers. Showing a lonesome, fatigued molt of a male looking at a high and mighty being. Gary paid the jeer no mind. Simply igniting the wick and stripping his grimy button-down and tattered pants. For a town with little-to-no electricity or generators, the fact that running water was extant was nothing short of a miracle. Cleansed but far from restored, Gary rested his weary head on the lush pillow. Throbbing spine comforted by the alluring textile. Pounding skull soothed, yet the agony remained more thunderous than ever before.

Gary sunk deep into the lush textile of the motel bed. Devoured in an unchained sandstorm of quilts and blankets, his head consumed by a pillow’s starved mouth. Buzzed sable hair quenching its roaring stomach. His pockmarked stone-grey pants, belt, turquoise shirt, and his frayed boots all melted into a singular shambolic pile at his bedside. His unpigmented, pockmarked socks stuck out of his left shoe like a crude mockery of a plant protruding from the earth. The room’s natural, inert musk of moth balls and dirt-cheap cleaning chemicals would surely cling to his only outfit. Following him on his wolfish hunt for the so-called Man in Blue until one of the two men perishes. Sauntering down the drubbed roads of Equestria with an unfaltering stench was better by leaps and bounds then the contrary.

A human teetering dangerously on the cusp of being considered a kinetic corpse. Sleep-deprived, famished, and unwavering, skulking in the shadows for his unfortunate target. Eyelids howling for mercy. Bloodshot globes scaling up and down the battered frame of his enemy. Hands trembling with desire as the hammer clicked back. Trigger pulled. An enraptured bark. A new glittering varnish of brains and ichor. Enough gore for all of his mortified family to scream in misery at to their grieving heart’s desire.

That was the inevitable reality Levi would soon face. The removal and subsequent decimation of his kingdom would not go unpaid. Every injustice that was brought upon the noirette all his life didn’t go unchecked. And that wouldn’t change now. The only thing stopping him was the titanic thorn in his side that he, as much as he resented confessing it, owed a stupendous favor too. Rescuing a fallen soul from beyond the grave and bringing himself along with them was a daunting task. One that required extraneous amounts of magic that no being, neither mortal nor omnipotent, were capable of. Yet he accomplished it. Somehow, someway, Discord managed to do the impossible. Like he had done many times before, according to him. All he needed in return was a simple one-time payment. Sweet liberation from his eternal dungeon of stone flesh and to break the chains on centuries worth of shackled chaos. Unleashing thousands of years of pent-up disarray onto an oblivious Equestria. Glory in the illustrious screams of confusion that gorge itself upon the entire nation. Ever-so-beautiful anarchy spitting its fury out onto any hapless civilian who happened to cross the discordant warpath. And Gary envisioned himself gazing out at the boundless destruction. Sitting on a throne crafted from solid gold at Discord’s hand. Not a lap dog or a meaningless pawn in his illimitable game, but in a position of power. Authority. The very same he had been lusting for since that bullet laid waste to his heart years ago. Countless others in the same position he once had would die, but he would persist. He would thrive in this brand new world forged from utter discord and pandemonium. Madness reigning supreme.

That was fair. That was just. An even trade. An effortless life of grandeur for…the destruction of millions of lives. Alongside the vanquishment of the fragile fabric of society.

That was fair. That was…just?

Right?

The ancient book, worth the lion’s share of his already bone-dry funds, was fit snugly between his broad blemished hands. Creased hide greeted his thickened fingertips with grace. Who knew how long it had been since another living soul blessed it with their touch. Out of the hundreds of ever-so-slightly yellowed, grooved pages, Gary had flipped to a single particular one. Page two-hundred and thirty-three to be exact.

Or to be as specific as possible, the treasure trove for all that was known about the prehistoric totalitarian entity occupying his skull. The one and only draconequus alive. Discord, the God of Chaos. A black-and-white olden photograph was plastered onto the upper half of the page. A twisted amalgamation of limbs and an unchained variety of flesh. Ranging from the mangy fur of a mountain goat to the vibrant seaweed-green scales of a primordial dragon. His right foot a cloven hoof of a Ram, his left a scaly, three-toed appendage of a reptile. Left arm a mighty lion’s paw, the other an eagle’s set of whetted talons. Left small wing a leathery purple pinion like a bat, right wing a feathery one bearing many similarities to an average brightly-colored eagle. His slender frame was like a pool noodle gifted with the girth of a large totem pole. The middle portion of his frame was thick dark fur that gave way to a winding squamate tail, punctuated with a tuft of stark white hair at the end.

Discord’s visage and all that surrounded it wasn’t spared from the rotten lunacy his creator was plagued by. Long achromatic bushy eyebrows. Pointy ears like that of a gargantuan squirrel with pink interiors. A singular sharp, tusk-like tooth jutted from his upper jaw, stretching past his impossibly lengthy lower brethren. Two horns protruded from his scalp, one resembling a small cornuple, the other a thin antler that appeared more like a dying branch. A stygian plume grew from the back of his neck and extended to his upper back.

Discord stood frozen in a never-ending state of glee on a tiny Greek-style pillar resting in a wide plate. His gangly tail coiled around the granite pole beneath him. Wings pointed towards the lush plane of grass he would ne’er feel the touch of again. Massive paw placed on his chest, razor-sharp talons pointed behind him. Mouth open ever-so-wide, as though he was petrified in a herculean guffaw. A howl of laughter at his cursory victory severed by the unintelligible blast that defeated him. Standing on both sides of him were the Royal Sisters. Composed and stoic, although shoving screams of relief at their conquest into the murky recesses of their stomachs.

Maybe Gary would prove to be a pawn after all.

Discord’s sighed echoed endlessly in his head.

“What am I looking at here?”

“That’s me. At least that’s what they turned me into.” The fallen god replied, “A prisoner in stone. A tourist attraction.”

“What the hell did you do, Discord? They don’t do that to everyone who’s a criminal, right?”

As much as Gary resented pondering the possibility, imagining the consequences of his raging warpath for the Man in Blue was a past time he was beginning to grow accustomed to. He couldn’t bear the prospect of living in a cage of coarse stony flesh. Forced to stand and endure the passage of the world around him, weighed to the absolute bottom of the river of time. Decades swimming past him gracefully, mocking the noirette for the grand heist on his freedom. The seasons changing, and the world shifting. Sun rising and the moon setting. Yet all of it unfelt. Cherished by all except him. He suppressed a shudder.

“I…I won…only not for long.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I conquered Equestria a millenia ago, and that was the punishment the Princesses saw fit for the likes of me.”

“Princesses?”

“Yes, the Royal Sisters. Celestia and Luna. They control the sun and the moon. Luna’s been gone for quite a while, I’ve heard. It’s only Tia now.”

“What happened to her?”

“Equestria’s fearless leader banished her to the moon for a thousand years. Jealousy got the better of her.”

“Huh.” Gary shifted comfortably.

“But that’s nowhere near important,” Discord emphasized, “what lies in that book is the key to getting me out of that wretched place.”

“You don’t like my mind?”

“It’s…alright. A lot of terrible memories in here. But it’ll work.”

Gary paused for a brief moment.

“When are you gonna tell me your story, Gar-”

“Soon.” Gary interrupted. “Soon. Very soon. Let’s… let’s find out about this damn curse or whatever first. Priorities, Discord.”

“The Elements of Harmony.”

Gary cocked an eyebrow at nobody. Not even a sentence into this damned book and the interruptions are coming in full-force. “The what?”

“The Elements of Harmony. The most powerful artifacts in all of Equestria. They hold all the power you could ever dream of, my friend.”

“That’s how you ended up here?”

“More or less,” A faint hint of shame peppered with vexation polluted his formerly calm voice. Discord subdued a sigh bubbling in the pit of his non-existent throat.

“But never the matter. That is an Equestrian book detailing all of the magnificent feats of our rulers over the centuries. Both before me and after.” Discord explained, his tone honeycombed with sarcasm. “Somewhere in there, I know there’s a way to free me.”

“How do you not know yourself?” Gary inquired, “Shouldn’t you know by now how to break your own…whatever the hell this is?”

“It’s a lot more complicated than you think, Gary.”

“You’re the God of Chaos. What’s stopping you from-”

“I will not tolerate mindless questions.” Discord interjected. “Less blabbering, more reading. We don’t have any time to waste.”

“We have all the time in the world.”

“I’m sure that poor little pony downstairs alerted the entire Royal Guard here by now.”

It could be a trick of his mind but…was that panic he discerned? Worry? Was the Discord perturbed by the fear-governed actions of a meaningless civilian? What could this so-called “Royal” Guard possibly do to him that a shower of bullets couldn’t fix?

“And if they find out what we’re planning-”

“How could they?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Discord responded, “just read. We have to figure something out.”

Gary’s amber orbs diligently grazed each individual cable of text. Sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, Discord’s story was gradually unraveled, one miniscule thread at a time. His eyesight, when used for anything other than locking foreheads in his crosshair, was the textbook definition of dirt poor. Combined with weak coalition between the dim candlelight and ever-increasing morning gleam, dissecting age-old abnormally constructed writing was a nigh-impossible task. Retaining pages upon pages of a topic he was barely invested in was a daunting challenge in and of itself.

Allegedly, countless centuries ago, Discord attempted to overthrow the basic fundamentals of sane government and society. And to say he paid the price for it would be a mammoth understatement. Something about Celestia, Luna, and the union of power from the Elements of Harmony forced him into a mortifying defeat. Blah, blah, blah… The tale stretched endlessly. Diving head-first into the fallout of Discord’s failed machinations and dismantled reign of terror. ‘Till this very day, the Statue of Discord stands as a monument to Equestria.’ The spun-out fable read. ‘Standing as not only a testament to all upcoming villains who sought to destroy Equestria, but as a demonstration of-’

This, that, and the other about how courageous the faux-democratic leaders of Equus were. Celestia and Luna, Equestria’s knights in shining armor. The aristocratic duo who oh-so valiantly put their lives on the incredibly thin line to rescue the country. Wrench it from the septic claw and lion paw of a certain draconequus.

Yet, throughout the entirety of the ramble that somehow managed to get published, no remedy for Discord’s ceaseless ailment was recorded. Not buried beneath a thick layer of subtext or secreted deep in some hidden code or cipher. Nowhere. In every page regarding his long-lasting confinement, any page that mentioned the God of Chaos’ name, nothing was present. Not in the section dedicated wholly to Discord. Absent in the section devoted to Princess Celestia and Luna. Nor in the ones discussing the Elements, the royal family dating back thousands of years, Canterlot, or the mind-boggling twenty-two chapters talking about every variation of magic. Changelings and their isolated ability to shape-shift. The Crystal Heart and its paramount significance. A long-dead foe named King Sombra and his gift of mind-control. Lord Tirek and the Centaur race’s expertise of burglarizing magic from others by force.

If the circumstances were deviated from the sinister road he was currently on, Gary would’ve stayed up night and day tirelessly studying the book. Every unrepeated species. Every creature, both viciously hostile and not. Every location, spell, magic variation, everything this book had to offer, whether big or small, was appreciated wholeheartedly. A small flash of serenity in a calm setting. One blessing amidst the violent, savage cacophony of death and tyranny he had grown accustomed to. A worthless life led by utter and complete barbarity. It was him, his guns, his wealth, against the herculean forces of the world. The more he thought about it, bitter solitude was his only company throughout the entire ordeal. Always ever him. His heart harbored zero space for anyone else other than him. Perhaps Equestria can be a second chance. If he survives that long to see the opportunity, that is.

With no cure for Discord’s imprisonment blatant, Gary reread just about everything involving the chaotic draconequus in full. And it was only then, by some unrighteous divine intervention, that medicine for his stony condition had been discovered. But more importantly, foolishly written down for all to see. Especially Discord’s newfound partner-in-crime.

“Oh, this is hopeless.” Discord whined mere moments before. “How are we to-”

“Quiet!” Gary whisper-yelled to the voice in his skull, “Let me read, dammit.”

‘Legend has it that the only way for Discord to see Princess Celestia’s light is to ignite his passion for chaos with chaos. Despite being disproved numerous times by the Royal Sisters when asked of it, it hasn’t stopped the citizens of-’

Again. Blah, blah, blah. Trudging through the remainder of that gangly paragraph was fruitless. His answer was there. All he needed to achieve his, what he felt inclined to refer to him as, comrade’s freedom and his lust for Levi’s brains misting the town. “Glorious chaos” was exactly what he was promised. Eternal anarchy for the entirety of Equestria until the end of time. Or at the very least until the bastard responsible grew weary of that constant, uniform cycle of screams and howls of anguish. Retreating back into his home dimension, taking the unfathomable havoc he wrought along with him.

Gary had wondered for some time where he would fit in this grandiose plan of nationwide domination. A hellish realm known as the aptly named “Chaos dimension” was the tumultuous damnation Discord managed to call his humble abode. A reasonably-sized home floating amongst a boundless plane of oblivion, accompanied solely by the lawlessness scattered every which way. If Gary’s fears were rooted in reality and Discord did eventually abandon Equestria, where did his puzzle piece fit into the grand scheme? Fleeing back to Discord’s home? Him being forsook by the god, deserted to face the full wrath of whatever unbridled judgment was warranted? Gary was more-than-aware of Discord’s incomprehensible, manic ruses and machinations in the very same literature where his cure lie hidden. A part of that felt overwhelmingly poetic. Not only that, but somewhat prophetic in a way.

What if Gary was another one of his pawns? What if all this effort he’d put in to free his savior was all for naught? In the end, when all is said and done and no amount of forced guilt could reverse their ruinous actions, what would be left? A human clad in turquoise standing upon the mildew-conquered gallows. Patchy potato sack, annexed by grime and walloped by age, enveloping his pate. Gritty rope biting deep into his neck and nape. A crowd of millions jeering him, cheering the anonymous harbinger of death to slam the lever. All of them waiting in combined excitement to watch the callous sod swing lifelessly. To hear that sickening crunch as Gary Demonio exited Equus as quickly as he entered. One command from the Princess, and he was dead. Gone. Forever. Gone to a place where none of the souls he irreparably marred could reach him. Roar his name in unbelievable agony, but no screams could pierce the veil he hid behind.

Was that what awaited him at the end of this road? Death and suffering. Not just for all, but for him? It was a truly thought-provoking exercise. One Gary had no interest in entertaining any further.

“Is this what you were looking for? ‘Igniting chaos with chaos’?” Gary asked, part-hopeful and part-desperate for slumber. His pine sap-colored irises strained.

Discord chuckled. A deep rumble of satisfaction, elation, and lunacy like tires rolling slowly over pulverized gravel.

“Yes…precisely!” Discord replied, undeniable fever braided with his words. “Oh, Gary Demonio, you and I will reach great heights together!”

“I sure as shit hope we do.” Gary slammed the book shut callously, utterly destitute of vigilance for the delicate sleep of those housed around him. The noirette haphazardly dropped the tome onto the discordant heap of old clothing and beyond battered footwear. Its spine collided with the grimy toe of his boots, situated side-by-side, before meeting the hardwood floor. Gary’s gaze flicked to the surprisingly lively candle on his bedside table. The sole abnormal aberrant to the soupy tenebrous devouring the room in its entirety. A soldier with boundless valiance leading a one-man rebellion against the mighty forces of the dark. The wax’s slim frame was bisected. Bottom portion melted far past the bounds of recognition, fusing together and bonding with the black steel candelabra. The top half standing high and mighty like the unflagging trooper it was. Vivid flame in a passionate flamenco, wick burning ever-so-bright. The sable metal stand it stood on was in the vague shape of a wine glass. Flat base, slender form, and broad bowl the wax itself burned on.

“Save your hopes for another, my dear friend. This is our destiny!”

Gary’s thumb and index fingertips ran over the top and bottom of his tongue. Lubricated with saliva, the raven-haired male squeezed the dancing wick. The flame died between his calloused digits. His gimcrack hotel room was plunged without warning into darkness, sans the shafts of preliminary morning light storming his cursory domicile.

“‘Destiny…’” Gary scoffed. “I never really believed in it.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. Never have, never intend to.” Gary pulled the quilt up to his neck, pinning it to his chest with his chine for a split-second.

“Why, my dear friend?” The draconequus asked, “We are all tied to destiny. We’re bound to it, can’t change it.”

“Do you think my destiny was this? Or what happened before you found me? What god would want me to do that?”

“A god from your world, I suppose.”

Gary barracked at the idea.

“I doubt my world had a god. Even if it did, it left me a long-ass time ago.”

“Did it leave you, or did you leave it?”

“I don’t care,” Gary managed to be drawn deeper into the plush mattress. “and it doesn’t matter. It’s been too damn long to do anything about it.”

“I’m inclined to believe you didn’t fancy the idea of a god much, did you?”

“You read my mind.” Gary flipped to his side, facing the oncoming armies of lionhearted beams of light plunging into his room. “I wasn’t too crazy about the idea of some all-knowing being watching over me. Judging everything I do, no matter how small. I didn’t like following their rules either.”

“Rules?”

“It’s too much to explain. Ask me in the morning, Discord.”

“I’m dying to know,”

His breathing slowed to leisure heavy swarms of air. Brain lulled ever-so-deeper into the thick river of slumber. Being carried onward in its ginger, tranquil current. In other words, a euphoric land absent of Discord’s inescapable barrage of questions and inquiries.

“Rules like what, Gary?”

Radio silence.

“Gary?”

A deep guttural noise erupted from his nostrils. Akin to an elephant’s trunk, clogged with mucus and slime, attempting to release its mighty pandemonium.

“Gary? Are you there?”

Nothing.

All was silent, sans the panicked receptionist eager to bound to the Ponyville Gazette the instant her duties were relieved. Trouble was brewing, but not imminent. A stark contrast to sleep.

“Gary?”

Chapter 23: Greener Pastures, the Greatest Lie

When Gary Demonio first experienced the glacial kiss of Death all those years ago, the Grim Reaper’s bony hand presented him with his first-class ticket, and he was off. Sent flying on a metaphorical belt of ramshackle train tracks, utterly devoured by rust and grim. Squeezed with wild vigor by the cruel, unforgiving hand of time and indifference to its state. Where that stygian locomotive dumped him was somewhere smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, everywhere, nothing, and everything.

That was the answer presented to the nefarious God of Chaos the previous early morn. That internal, sometimes infernal, voice trapped within the demarcations of his skull until further notice had posed the question. Gary’s eyelids were securely sealed shut. Lethargy and unrivaled drowsiness being the unbreakable glue latching them together. His bulging, veiny pythons and jungly forearms were bare. His soon-to-be infamous aquamarine button-down free from his ironclad frame. In coalition with his stone-grey, tattered pants, war-torn boots, shockingly spotless socks, and battered belt. All of them resided in a small puddle of linen, threadbare textile, and a singular glimmering buckle at his bedside. Directly in front of his oak bedside table. His left hand rested soundly between the decently groomed back of his head and the lush pillow. His right limb was tucked neatly beneath his welcoming seafoam-green blanket, calloused manus lazing on his thigh.

Gary was primed for respite. Most likely the champion of every nap or slumber he’s ever bore the fortune of having in his four decades of life. Undeserved life, that is. His radically, incomprehensibly wrung-out frame and pulsating legs were devoured by the mattress. And Gary, for the first time since his brain began to hoard memories, relented to an opposing force’s advances. Surrendered every minuscule fiber of every cell of his being into the limitless inky ocean of drowse. Its ebony maw reared its ugly head from its murky, incalculable fathoms. Ready and eager to devour the man whole haphazardly, without a hair of uncertainty behind it.

And the yawning set of titanic jaws was mere centimeters from his sin-stained flesh when Discord’s incarcerated voice erupted from the bowels of his psyche. Inquiring about sacred, never-before-disclosed information that a God, a supposedly undying one at that, shouldn’t bear any concern about. Why would an immortal Draconequus, hellbent on pummeling and hammering the world into his beautiful chaotic vision, fret over death. It didn’t make sense to the bastard. Hell, nothing made sense in this world. Talking horses, unicorns, and pegasi governing these ceaseless lands? A tried and true government being fully implemented, no hitches or cancers plaguing it? No rationale or sliver of denotation could be uttered to paint his state of affairs with any hue of clarity.

Gary knew full-well that giving Discord a long, irritated bout of silence as an answer would only fan the flames of his sweltering curiosity. Perhaps even fear. Discord, a creature that could easily be mistaken for a barbaric guardian of Hell, cowering in the face of anything? Being fearful towards any mortal concept or action? It was impossible. Not feasible no matter what way you twist and interpret it. But so was his miraculous resurrection. As far as so-called unattainable marvels were considered, the sky was undoubtedly the limit.

Gary obliged his brain’s badgersome-slash-insightful roommate with his wretched tale. It was simply, in every definition or meaning of the word, null. Nothing was able to pierce the horizon and liberate his vision from the endless, soupy darkness. If he could even call it darkness. Dark is the absence of the light. It’s expelled either by the herculean sun assuming his throne in the grand cyan mantle above, or the effortless flick of a switch. But there, after that searing hunk of metal tore his ribcage asunder, there wasn’t any time left to appreciate how fortunate he was to have light. In there, calling it darkness would be nothing short of a luxury. A luxury that, in spite of his years ruling Roseville atop his throne of blood money, failed to afford. A shapeless void, boundless and naked. A field of impossibly smooth obsidian, free of anything bearing any semblance to a divot or gouge. Just an incessant, glassy terrain, rambling on into more nothingness as far as his amber orbs could process. Could he even call it a void? Referring to it as such would classify it as a thing. All things considered, a void is a thing, after all. Yet this realm wasn’t anything at all. No word in the mountainous English language could begin to assist anyone in understanding the severity of the emptiness. The absolute occupation of no physical thing, tangible thought, or hopeful prospect. Just him, the satisfaction of every life he slew clasping his racing heart, and his mind. His twisted, aberrant, beyond debauched mind, still swimming and roiling infinitely. Urges and lusts more dire than any sane being could begin to comprehend assaulting the walls of his skull. Pounding with wild, unchained vigor, fighting for liberation in a world that, unbeknownst to them, provided nothing. They clashed tooth and nail with their restraints and bindings, with all of their laborious efforts bearing no light at the end.

The noirette was once in that same boat. Hell, he practically lived in that boat. If time bore any sort of meaning in that eternal, formless chunk of oblivion, he would’ve lived countless lifetimes there. Stuck. Trapped. Imprisoned. Dead. That was the word that rang a manifold of bells in the hearts of many. A chime that summoned a blitzkrieg of joy, relief, and pleasure at the death of the humanized demon. Only he escaped. Somehow, someway, by some bout of incomprehensible luck, he made it out. Alive. His heart beat. His lungs swelled and deflated. His veins flowed feverishly. His grotesque, loathsome antics could continue. Will continue. The luster at the end of his lengthy, stygian tunnel was reignited. Gary was given a purpose to live once more. A goal to reach for. All anyone could do was hope and pray that a bullet finds its way into his nucleus for the final time. Rid this sugar-coated, innocent world of a devil that sought to destroy it. Eliminate the barbarian that was willing to burn the planet to the ground as long his arch-adversary’s death was assured. Nothing else mattered. No one else harbored any importance. Any existence sans his own could end at any moment, and no hole would be chewed from his heart by the ravenous jaws of shame.

The crickets’ arresting swan song Gary was lulled into slumber by had long since met its timely cessation. Equestria’s mighty, herculean sun rose from the bowels of the horizon to claim its righteous throne hours ago. Casting the stars into temporary oblivion, secreting them behind a veil of a brilliant cyan, cloud-spangled sky. Baby Blue declared war against the deep indigo painting the Equus atmosphere. A slender shaft of golden radiance breached the slim crack between old-timey, antique drapes, the color of sanded oak. Arrested to a polished golden rod bolted into the nigh-naked mahogany wall. Beyond the square glass window, roughly a half-foot in diameter, wearisome and unwelcomed weather was culminating. A palisade of sooty, ashen clouds reigned supreme over the, mere hours before, crystalline Equestrian sky. The smoky thunderheads were akin to the silver underbelly of a titanic airship. Blotches of grime blighted the glass like rogue cancer cells, somewhat souring the otherwise, at least to the bastard, galvanizing spectacle. To any normal equine trotting down the streets of this ramshackle clot of homes and businesses, this sight wasn’t unique in any way shape or form. But when you spend the latter half of…how long had it been? Years? Decades? Whatever the length of his hellish tenure truly was, anything that didn’t resemble an infinite void of nothingness was unbelievably treasured.

A comber of thunder splashed over the nation far off in the distance.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?”

Gary was a trifling handful of seconds away from allowing the penned Draconequus to slip into the recesses of his memory. Part of him desired peace and quiet in a time such as this, but given his impossibly grim circumstances, company was always welcome. Even a God of Chaos lounging inside of his skull rent-free, bereft of a care in the world.

A grunt of agreement scaled the arid walls of his throat.

“Something we can agree on.”

Discord scoffed.

“Please, Gary, can we forget that travesty last night? Forgive me for believing the most sociable pony in all of Equestria didn’t have what we sought.”

“I’m sure she did,” Gary replied, the sun’s muted glory breaching through the pinpricks in the titanium dyke, glimmering in his tree sap irises. “She was just too damn hyper to focus her thoughts on anything.”

“Let’s not judge too harshly, my friend. We’ve all had our moments.”

“I guess so, Discord.” Gary rubbed his fatigued, bone-tired eyes with his two calloused fingers and gritty thumb at the memory.

“Wish she didn’t have her moment right when I fucking needed something.”

“I’m almost positive she’s like that all the time.”

“How do you know?”

“It seemed too natural to be a one-time thing. It’s in her blood, I guarantee it.”

Gary sighed. A deep, bottomless ocean of air fleeing his heaving lungs.

“Maybe.”

There was something so unusual about this interaction. Something so unusual about every interaction the worthless sod had with the grotesque, otherworldly beast providing his brain with much-desired company. For as long as he could remember, there wasn’t a single mortal soul with a sane mind in Roseville whom he could call his friend. His brother was the closest he ever had. When he perished and his icy cadaver was lowered six feet under all those years ago, Gary was, in all senses of the word, alone. Deserted by unseen forces to live the rest of his pitiful existence in dreadful, perpetual isolation. Left to roam the fissure-ridden streets and splintered sidewalks in unmitigated purdah. Walking up and down the cobweb-littered hallways of his sub-par, half-rotten house. Putrescent floorboards wailing beneath his wet. Stone-grey carpet bedeviled by viscous gunge and haphazardly scattered coffee stains. Whatever miscellaneous cheesy TV show or vintage Western he put on being the only background noise the town had to offer. Seconded only by lone thunderous gunshots reverberating down the pummeled, carless roads. The occasional howl of agony or ecstasy, depending on the event and time of day. And silence. Deafening, blaring, nerve-wracking silence.

Then there was Gary. All by his lonesome. Lazing deep into his golden throne overlooking his mammoth, unrivaled empire. The building blocks of angst and ceaseless suffering it sat on wobbling with the breeze. His drug mules bowed to his every command, no matter how sinister or outright fatal they proved to be. Money was tossed at his feet as he ordered. Tearing open the moth-devoured duffel bags and locking eyes with Benjamin Franklin was the highlight of his week. The only outlet of joy or relief to be found in that dying, decomposing town. Every junkie or hapless hobo roaming the streets like writhing larvae.

In Ponyville, staring out at a land soon to be ravaged by a storm of herculean magnitude, Gary found himself feeling like a man. Like a person. For the first time before he took matters into his own hands and conquered that moldering wasteland. Beneath the elephantine layers of sin, unrivaled guilt, and deathly regret, a fragment of who he was remained. A chunk carelessly torn from his soul and chucked into the blackened, murky depths of his frame. With every bullet fired and life claimed, the fathoms only got darker. But now, with nobody around to bow to his every whim and commandment he barked, it was just…him.

Gary blinked hard. He managed to wrench his blissful stare, brimming with whimsical exhilaration and child-like wonder, from the soon-to-be downpour.

Every inch of the motel was plunged into unexcelled silence. The town was alive, without a shadow of a doubt. With the early morning hours being a memory drifting further into obscurity, every thrill and buzz Ponyville rendered was on full bold display. The sickly-sweet air was occupied solely by delightful, light-hearted banter. Colonies of birds living their best life, unbothered and oblivious to the horrors of everyday life, sang blithely. The muted thump of a soccer ball impacting the vibrant, lively grass was a soothing backdrop to the legion of giggles and howls of laughter. Blissfully unaware children engaged in a match-up of Homeric proportions. Old wagon wheels squealed up and down the trodden streets, surely belonging to the manifold of businesses temporarily abandoned in the night.

With two massive, calloused hands, Gary tore the drapes apart. The rungs squealed against the spotless bar. A tsunami of radiance and gleam assaulted his senses. Luster declared war against his bare pythons, sliced in two by his chiseled, picturesque chin. One would be forgiven for mistaking the begrimed pane of glass for a world-renowned painting. The titanium sheet deadening the sun’s marvelous influence. A space of expertly trimmed grass, melting into a gargantuan expanse of trees, stretching for miles far beyond the point of comprehension. The human residing within the blackness of his soul labeled it as beauty, the devil did not. It was only a setback, it claimed. A blight among their grandiose plan of domination and unforeseen anarchy upon this mortal world.

Gary lumbered with the finesse of a Greek statue, life breathed into his veins meager minutes before. Bare feet threatening to bond with the lush carpet on a subatomic level. Brain yearning for the sanctity of the mattress once more. For his responsibilities to materialize into a heap of ash and dust. For Discord to abruptly burst from the demarcations of his cranium. Destroying not only his mountainous, heaven-scraping expectations but also the need to depart from this euphoric building. Lying down and rejoicing in a measly five more minutes and slumber would quell all of his ailments. His pulsating calves. Head screaming for mercy and respite. Eyelids hasped by hulking dumbbells. Let a singular blink be one second longer than the quota they strictly adhered to, he’d be gone. Gone to that realm of infinite and interminable tenebrosity. His heart quaked at the prospect. His human heart.

Discord shifted uncomfortably inside the man’s head, in spite of his disembodied disposition.

“Gary?”

“What?”

“You’re memories…they’re a dark place, my friend.”

“They are. What about it?”

The Draconequus paused. Seconds were hours now.

Gary slipped one shank into his tattered work pants, his belt buckle jingling with every jerk like bullet casings striking the concrete.

“I’m certain that these…what should I call them? These ‘choices’ of yours don’t tell the full story.”

He fastened the elderly, crinkled belt around his slim waist.

“They don’t.”

“So, assuming I’ll be in here for a while, when are you going to humor me?”

“Huh?”

“When are you going to tell me your story, Gary.” Discord clarified. “We’re partners now, correct?”

“If that’s what you wanna call it, sure.”

“So if I’m going to be trapped in your mind for the foreseeable future, it would make sense if we knew each other. Make sure we’re not total strangers.”

Gary clasped the button right underneath his chest. The dried blood marring his top, a permanent reminder of his ghastly escapade in Alabama, was as grizzly as ever. He couldn’t bear to amuse it with his gaze a second longer.

“I’m the one saving you from being a statue, Discord,” Gary replied. “I don’t think we’ll ever be ‘total strangers’.”

“You know what I-”

“If I don’t wanna tell you, then I won’t.” Gary hissed, tying the dirt-encrusted laces of his left boot into a duo of neat rabbit ears.

For the second time, the noirette managed to interrupt a voice in his head. A voice he still wasn’t entirely sure was rooted within the partitions of reality. Maybe it wasn’t as odd as he believed it to be.

“If I wanna fucking tell, then I will. But it’s not a happy tale.”

“Well, I figured that,” Discord remarked.

“What I wanna know is why it was so unhappy. You piqued my curiosity, Gary Demonio. That’s something you can never come back from.”

“Aren’t I just the luckiest man on Earth?”

“Indeed you are.”

Gary swallowed hard. Saliva tumbled down the arid interior of his desiccated esophagus. If he was honest, ingesting a mouthful of pulverized, sun-baked asphalt would’ve been highly espoused in its stead. Gary swiveled his skull, two pools of fatigue and elation at the upcoming journey clashing for dominance. A brutal fight with no concise victor in sight, just violent, callous splashing fueled by wild bloodlust The chronic taste of sand walloped his taste buds. Somewhere in there, hidden deep within the manifold of cells of his tongue, the tart of his last drink haunted him. Sharp, acrid cinnamon. A hearty cup of Scotch on the rocks, a beverage he vividly remembered downing without a second thought years ago. Standing in his high-top work boots on his marred, scuffed kitchen tiles, pouring the liquid amber into a polished shot glass. He ogled at it for mere seconds before it disappeared down his eager gullet, leaving a bitter trail of flames and charred flesh in its brutish wake.

Out of the multiplex of regrets of yesteryear he began to mourn in Equestria, none dared to rival the harsh bite of that fiery alcohol. A failed attempt at sending his muted sorrows and smothered misery to Davy Jones' locker. The anguish he stranded and left to the elements in that sullied, befouled crab trap he somehow managed to call home for so long. A term he came to use extremely loosely. Gary’s smoky quartz flicked to his bedside table. A tall wooden box with two regular-sized drawers, fit with a twain of stygian metal handles like bougie door knockers, elevated above the mahogany floor by a squad of slender legs. Next to a smudged golden lamp harboring an hourglass frame, the object of the male’s indivisible attention sat. His matte-black utensil of boundless carnage and ravaging. The foreboding contraption of ceaseless death basked in unwarranted respite, sheltered by a small umbrella of soft golden gleam, courtesy of the Victorian-era lamp at its side. Unease and angst were discharged from the murderous apparatus, like a sable, addled heart pumping blackened blood into the atmosphere. Wails from the ever-stretching laundry list of lost souls rocketed from the lightless barrel.

Gary reached a beaten, war-torn hand and smothered the coarse grip with his palm. The raven-haired male rose to his aching feet. Age-old floorboards mewled beneath his weight akin to a gutshot horse galloping ever-so-closer to heaven’s yawning maw. His labyrinthine rubber treads below his boots stabbed the red Christmas-esque design rug at his bedside. He shoved the weapon of mass destruction down the back of his pants. Its straightforward yet knotty skeleton bit into the flesh of his lower back, secreting it behind the bottom of his turquoise top. A curtain caching its horrific nature from the outside world. Concealing it from a vast race of individuals who most likely, based on the ramshackle pilgrimage he witnessed thus far, probably don’t have a slight grasp on what it's capable of. More importantly, what its vile wielder is capable of.

Thunder splashed over the country in the far-off, incomprehensible distance. A vibrant javelin of lightning surely impaling the earth by now. Rain was charging headlong. The hourglass was spewing sand faster than his mind, and the lawless soul accompanying his mind could’ve ever forecasted.

“The storm is gonna be here soon, my friend.”

Gary rolled his dog-tired eyes. A snide action he could only hope his comrade couldn’t detect. If scrounging through his memories like a starved raccoon in a trash can wasn’t absent from the realm of possibility, who’s to say anything was?

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

The male tugged his pants up ever-so-slightly. His repugnant friend slid up his lower back like a surgeon’s icy scalpel.

Oh, the things he’d do for a measly five seconds of target practice. For the opportunity to tear open his flesh and release his long-manacled demons from their icy dungeons. Invoke the unfathomable fury of his ravenous urges and hankerings. Levi resided somewhere within this town’s dilapidated demarcations. The only question that desperately required an answer was where. Where in the hell could the Man in Blue possibly be?

Gary could rest easy knowing that inquiry wouldn’t be abandoned in limbo for much longer.

“We gotta get moving.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“What time is it?”

Gary’s parents weren’t the brightest pair on the tree, nor the sharpest duo of tools in the gimcrack shed. But if there was one thing they were semi-proficient at, rambling on and on about “meaningful” philosophies and ideals to live and die by was just that. The male was, at best, indifferent to their pleas for him to pursue a life of grandeur and elation. Bereft of the bloodshed and endless havoc they knew-slash-assumed was inevitable. Steering him clear from the gore-stained, ichor-caked highway to Hell that was leering at him from the future. Failed efforts and soured memories were all he barely remembered from his paunchy father and careless mother. Their words, however, were immortal. Perhaps invincibility to the bitter hand of time and decay ran in the Demonio’s blood. Only manifested differently for others. Appreciating what you had before it was gone indefinitely was one of the countless lessons drilled, hammered, and nailed into his brain. Plastered for good measure.

He never stopped to realize just how convenient a clock dangling from the crest of a wall or a watch was until this mockery of the Oregon Trail threw a lifetime of hardships his way. A feat he ne’er thought possible in the span of a day and a half. This was Equestria he was talking about, after all. Shattering expectations and rivaling standards was the staple of the calamitous experience.

“How do you expect me to know, Gary? You’re the one with a body. Find a way.”

Gary glared at no one. His vitriolic leer scorched the dead, lifeless air, trained on the guiltless doorway. Simply in the wrong place at the absolute wrong time, providing sanctuary for an awful man.

“If I had a way, I wouldn’t have fucking asked.”

“No need to get that defensive, friend.”

The raven-haired male sighed deeply, a lake of air vomiting from the pits of his lungs.

“For fuck’s sake.” Gary breathed. “I don’t know if ‘friend’ is the right thing I’d call you.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“Freeloader.” Gary quipped. “Brain cancer.”

“I think I’ve heard enough.”

Gary chuckled. The corners of his lips reeled to the sky, like unruly fish being tugged from a crystalline river. Decades-old planks caterwauled beneath the unsympathetic rubber of his begrimed boots. Two lingering strides brought his avid hand to the grubby golden knob. Gary gyrated the lock. A soft click of its maze-like internal structure adhering to his command. The raven-haired male pulled, ever-so-slightly. Just over three inches of space divided the freshly cracked door from its home.

Outside, something was coming.

Something was there.

The sonorous cacophony transformed his brows into a furrowed mess of shambolic confusion, and his psyche into a discordant war zone. Gary, in all of his four decades of unmerited time he spent extant, never had his ears tickled by this…whatever he could classify “this” as.

It sounded oddly similar to a train. Only take a hustling, hulking locomotive, eliminate its raucous screech and roar of an elephantine engine, and there it was. This bustling, roaring, chugging thing marring his hearing. Either soaring through the dead, soulless ocean of endless gray that could barely be called a sky. Or barreling down the endless rolling fields of Equestria. If he were to remove a much-needed censor from his thoughts, they would sound a little similar to this.

No Levi, then no care was needed.

Unless he peered out of the sullied window and bore witness to a royal blue flash zip across his overtaxed vision, his indifference would die on the spot. Its icy corpse collapsing onto the floor of his mind. Swiftly forgotten and uncared for, kicked under the rug like a loose penny dropped on a carpet. Whichever abnormal name this equally abnormal race conjured for the brawny machine would surely be discovered soon. Another nugget of information mined from the burly lump of raw fresh knowledge.

While Gary couldn’t muster a sliver of exertion towards anything sans his goals to save his life, Discord’s blithe, devil-may-care attitude towards the aggregate of Ponyville’s balderdash. After all, being hemmed inside the mellow skull of a deranged madman didn’t harbor any need for concern or fret. Quite frankly, it was the closest thing to a bougie life of luxury and grandeur a God of Chaos could ever earn. Being imprisoned in a casket of coarse granite for a long-forgotten number of decades was less than ideal.

Whatever the monstrous airborne or grounded fountain of sound was perturbed the Draconequus. Rammed a glacial sword of dread smack-dab in the center of his spectral, disembodied heart. His ribs torn asunder, laying waste to his ghostly frame.

Scratch that. Discord, the globally feared God of infinite and illimitable Chaos, was terrified of what had just arrived outside the hotel. Whether it was, somehow, frightened by the prospect he’d be banished back to his hellish repercussions. Or be kissed by the subzero lips of Death. Whatever the case may be, consternation deposed all else within the inhuman beast. In spite of how vehemently he’d deny it, it ever-so-slightly infected the raven-haired man alongside him.

“Oh, no!” The Draconequus cried, his pitiful wail echoing endlessly in the cavern of his skull.

“No, no, no! Why now? Of all times, now?! Why?”

“What the fuck is it, Discord?”

“Oh, no! No! How did they know?”

“Discord!”

“I recognize that sound anywhere! It’s the Royal Guard!”

Gary cocked a brow perplexed at thin air, fully separating the door from its humble abode.

“Alright? What’s the damn problem here?”

“The Royal Guard. The army responsible for defending all of Equestria. That doesn’t sound like a ‘damn problem’ to you?”

“Discord,” Gary stepped into the small hallway. The rows of ruthlessly monotonous dark oak assaulted his senses. “If these horses or whatever can barely use electricity, what are they gonna do to me? Cane me? Club me?”

“This isn’t a game, Gary. Why won’t you take me seriously?”

He shut the door behind him. A melodic click betrayed the thick silence drowning the once-tranquil establishment. Only that was a soon-to-be-forgotten memory of a time long lost. One that disappeared the instant Gary Demonio laid eyes on the building.

“I take you seriously ninety-ninety percent of the fucking time,” Gary replied.

“Problem is, this just sounds stupid. We have a job to do, remember? What is this ‘Royal Guard’ gonna do?”

On the male’s left and right, two doors adorned the caliginous, ill-lit walls, separated by a meager ten inches of space. Sullied gold knobs were the sole deviants to the calculating, cold command of the redundant color. At the end of the hall was a sharp right-turn, leading down to the bowels of this ramshackle place. The front double doors where not only his solitary escape lie, bedeviled by acute impatience, but the potential horrors that arrived in that nameless sound machine. Either chiseled warriors or poignant laughing stocks, destitute of an in-between.

Three long strides brought the noirette to the apex of the staircase. A belt of steps that spilled down into a small rectangular floor, with a trio of stairs granting access to the lobby. Beyond the mahogany rectangle was another tongue of steps reaching up to lick the right half of the building. The sorry excuse for a vestibule was brighter than Gary ever could’ve imagined that room was capable of. How a singular chandelier housing a multitude of halfway-dead candles enveloped every nook and cranny with gleam was a mystery. Mystery. That was a recurring theme in this living, breathing antique of a town. Enigmas around every corner and wandering down every street, bereft of deviations.

Gary lacked both the time and the energy to care about such trivial things. Like he vehemently stressed to the Draconequus occupying his tenebrous-dominated cranium, he had a job. A sworn duty to this alien world. Find Levi Cronell. Murder the man who tore his kingdom right from beneath his dirt-encrusted boots. If Alan Sizemore hadn’t already fallen prey to the elements and beasts of this realm, he would find him too. Perhaps he’d chuck them into the same shallow grave between everywhere and nowhere. Showering their pale vigorless visages with loose soil would be an unrivaled pleasure, to say the least.

“What are they all about anyways?”

“What do you mean?”

“Weapons. Guns. Shit like that. What the hell do they use?”

The impossibly illuminated entrance was a measly two steps away.

BOOM!

The Krakatoa of sound flared from the porthole-adorned double doors.

“Suppose you’ll find out soon enough, Gary.”

The male’s back was magnetized to the pin-striped wall. His calloused manus flung back, ripping down the aquamarine curtain shielding his artillery from Ponyville’s probing optics. The coarse grip sanded his palm. Fingertip lazing across the blemishless trigger. His home, his sanctuary. The key to his freedom.

Gary had heard that ear-splitting, mind-rattling crash before. In a long lost time, melted into the vast expanse of yesteryear’s terrors, that tumultuous clamor was Roseville’s staple. It’s vile, terrifyingly distinctive fundamental nigh-everyone was familiarized with. They were all accustomed, but the effects were far from deadened or suppressed. That in and of itself was a daunting, impossible task no-one could undertake.

The Police would come late in the afternoon. A dyke of SWAT vans perched outside like a legion of malnourished vultures, skulking in the inky gloom for a beast to drop dead. Men poured from the rear’s clad in herculean stygian riot armor. Assault rifles primed and ready to unshackle a tsunami of callous slaughter. Some clutched fiercely in their gloved hands, others swung over their backs. A manifold of soldiers cascaded from the iron mouth of the steel-plated colossus. A battering ram laid waste to the flimsy oak door and silver knocker. The indigent innards within the ramshackle moldering abode were wrenched from their shambolic hive with extremities bound by handcuffs. Skinny arms like fleshy power lines just barely filling every inch of their restraints. Gaunt face aimed towards the canyon-littered asphalt and barren desert wasteland they somehow called a front yard. Their brittle hair spazzing and jerking in the ginger breeze, like a thatch of dead grass stapled to their scalp. It was always the men who were more accepting of their fates. No fuss, no fretting, no panic for the inexorable years behind ice-cold bars they’d be forced to endure. Just solemn catharsis. The women, however, the ones who awoke in oceans of sweat from nightmares about this specific day, were always turbulent. Hell, even that was a herculean understatement. Screaming. Howling. Wailing at the absolute crest of their nicotine-stained lungs. Charred black steaks trapped posterior to their ribs was a more accurate term.

Gary looked at the entire spectacle with undeniable glee. Seeing the cops, Roseville’s supposed lionhearted angels-in-disguise, hurling the wrong people into their blue-and-white Toyotas was euphoric. Heavenly, even. The truth that the true monster who orchestrated every sinister event in this decrepit town watched an arrest he planned was…joyous. He wouldn’t trade the feeling for the world. In fact, he practically already owned the world. His own twisted, disturbingly unique pocket of the world he ruled with a fist of pure iron. Sitting atop his bedazzled throne of gold and misery, overlooking the stormy horizon with shrewd amber globes.

But that wasn’t the feeling that booted Gary years into the past. It was the very sound that echoed down those crumbling streets and muddled husks of homes. That sound. That sickeningly gratifying, galvanizing sound. The deafening roar like a whip of thunder cracking as the colossal steel cylinder blew the door from its hinges. Jerry-built oak splintering into a multiplex of fragments and sharpened stakes. Culminating into an unsympathetic lake of obliterated wood and a singular deviation marring the termite feasting ground of a floor. The rusted aurate knob resting cock-eyed in the center of the discordant jumble.

Discord was right. Far beyond just being considered merely correct. There wasn’t a word in Gary’s spacious vocabulary to conjure a word to appropriately describe it. He was faultless in his remark. He would find out soon enough. The sheer ferocity of the blast. The way the air shifted and turned uncomfortably like a parting sea, making way for these pillars of unwavering authority. The menacing clanking of their armor against the scuffed wooden planks. In coalition with the way it shifted over their burly frames with every respect-demanding stride, it all came to a stomach-churning crescendo.

The unquestionable realization harrowed him like a gauntlet of wrathful bulls. Gary Demonio, the abhorred and fearsome monarch of Roseville, Alabama, had finally met his match. Here it was. Right at his fingertips. A potential clash to inundate his avid cells with enrapturing jubilation. The mighty, ravenous lion with an aching empty stomach. Only one procurable thing in this exotic land was able to quell his immeasurable appetite. The blood of his enemies staining his canines. Perhaps this laudable sect of gladiators hellbent on flogging him with the herculean hand of justice could provide the remedy for his ailments. For his every miserable longing.

When the double doors finally returned to their frames and Gary’s faux security was annexed, four beings were present in the lobby. A squad of the lionized, allegedly “Royal” Guardsmen demanded every last ounce of respect and awe they could wring out from…what was her name again? Was it Bonnie? Bon? It didn’t matter. Not to him, at least. Not now. All that mattered to him was assessing the situation. Or more accurately, coming to terms with the actions he was preparing to commit. Specifically the tidal wave of illimitable violence so high, the grand pearlescent gates of heaven confused it for a resident.

The male shifted his body ever-so-slightly, stabbing each and every one of them with his amber glunch bereft of a hint of ruth.

Far beyond the demarcations of his peripheral, a being spawned at the top of the stairs. Wrenching himself from the septic jaws of the slumber, only amplified by the murky depths of the corridor.

Four burly stallions savored the chandelier’s Elysian gleam. One of them, without a speck of doubt in Gary’s perverted mind, had assumed the stead of leader long ago. A robust pegasus stood at the receptionist's desk, filling the boot prints undoubtedly left in his dreadful wake the night before. His vivid gamboge skin was shielded by an expertly polished golden torso piece, its craftsmanship unrivaled and unquestionable. From the halfway point of his frame, a pair of groomed wings sprung from a hole in his armor folded neatly against his obliques like a stack of towels. Every individual feather highlighted the roaring illumination dangling high above him and his platoon of goons. An aurate helmet fortified his cranium and the majority of his face, a strip of gold crawling down the bridge of his nose. A royal blue mohawk crest blossomed from the peak of his headwear. The color was mirrored in his silky cobalt tail, the end hanging a measly two inches from the scarred floorboards. A half-foot behind him, the trio of his inferiors stood rigid and stock-still. Their bones devoured by bear traps of concrete. Blood metamorphosed into infrangible dales of obsidian. Their broad, bug-like peepers chiseled into a scorching glare. Somehow, in some way shape or form, their targetless glower was sharper than the silver spear clutched tightly in their right hoof. Its keen, glistening head pointed to the heavens above. Whetted tip like a macabre lighthouse, scanning for a hapless up-and-coming victim hiding in plain sight.

With furrowed, unabated amethyst globes and a water-tight deadpan mug, the head honcho acutely studied a stark white piece of paper in his left hoof, spear in the other.

Gary retreated to the sanctity behind his wall. Well, more accurately, the only sanctity available outside of their vision.

“Are you absolutely sure this is what you saw?” The chief of the operation inquired. His voice shattered the expectations of Gary Demonio in a boundless loch of splinters and shards. A deep, sonorous blend of every element one would expect to locate in a commander’s timbre.

The boom of a guitarist’s plucked bass string, tethered to a speaker at maximum volume? Check.

The bark of a chained Rottweiler? Check.

The absolute dread-striking cadence of a mountain-sized trombone? Check.

The righteous fury at the male who desecrated the tranquility of this innocent, pitiable place? Check.

Gary tightened his grip on his pistol. The hilt was sandpaper against his palm.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit!” Gary whisper-yelled through a rampart of gritted teeth.

“Whatever is the matter, Gary?” Discord quipped, half-taunting the rightfully panicked noirette, half-genuine in his question.

“Shut the fuck up!” Veins bulged from the base of his beefy neck, like vibrant serpents bathed in oil seeking refuge beneath his skin. “I can’t fight these pieces of shit!”

His back was swamped with perspiration. A pearl of sweat dawned on his forehead.

“Why not?”

“Do you see their armor? I don’t have enough bullets for that. There’s no way in Hell.”

The captain spoke once more, his tonality siphoning the attention from every mortal soul in a five-mile radius.

“What is he?”

The receptionist’s reply came out in hushed murmurs and breaths. One would be forgiven for crafting the assumption the soldier was having a conversation with the air around him. The air he forced to a boiling point with his trifling presence alone.

“What was that?”

Another billow of whispers, shorter this time.

“I doubt he’s from here, as well.”

Whispers. A council meeting of mice.

“Did you ever see him leave?”

Whispers. A jury of mice discussing a verdict.

“He’s still here?”

Gary’s mousy movements were far from the norm he briskly became accustomed to in Roseville. Back in Alabama, any movement or sight adjustment he made was practically thundered down those moldering, silent roads. If he ordered everyone in that spartan town to be awake with the pound of his boot, it would happen. If he fancied a concert of a hailstorm of gunshots in G minor at the first minute of dawn, it would happen. Hell, if he wanted that town burned to the ground and everyone trapped within to die, it would happen.

Controlling his sounds and monitoring his movements was a skill he’d yet to hone. And a skill he ne’er could’ve forecasted needing. Not ever, and especially not in a place like this.

The raven-haired male tentatively reached his right foot back. He eased it down onto the boisterous step. No moan or whimper. Perhaps this building was finally showing a sliver of clemency to the worthless bastard.

“Did he have any weapons? Objects? Contraband? Anything we need to worry about?”

Gary ebbed another step. No sound, no clamor. No fuss.

“Do you know what was in the back of his pants, Miss?”

Gary refluxed another step. His rubber treads stabbed the hair-shirted step, marked by deep ridges by its countless years alive. Was it alive? Could this brutalized cadaver of a deceased tree be considered alive? Could this building be alive? If it was, why wasn’t it doing more to expel the meritless sod from its bowels? Why did it continue to house him and provide him with stable shelter? Why did it keep him alive?

There were too many questions battling for dominance within the man’s skull, and there was little doubt projected at the notion that Discord saw it all. Witnessing his synapses firing, his neurons slamming together like an atom-sized pinball game. He could only wonder what the Draconequus saw within the mind of another. Especially a male with a psyche as aberrant and rotten as his. Was it darkness? Did he see out of his eyes?

“What room is he in?”

Gary’s heart floundered in a mammoth pond of dread. Who would've guessed? Gary Demonio, the disdained and ruthlessly efficient butcher from Alabama, scared of…talking spear-wielding horses in armor? Not just scared, seemingly petrified of what was about to come barreling up his flight of stairs in the next five seconds. After that, who knows what could happen? One thing was assured. A fight to please centuries worth of his pent-up sickening desires and entertain his muses was knocking on his door. It was all up to him to twist the lock and permit it access.

It seemed two choices were readily apparent now. Two gargantuan, world-altering decisions that required an immediate ruling. Time slowed around him, moving with the finesse of a slug of magma crawling down a hill. Minutes were hours now. Seconds stretched infinitely.

Gary stood, rigid and unfaltering. His nigh-toxic confidence and noisome hordes of arrogance setting the air alight. Tension bubbled. A hellish cauldron of unrighteous wrath and torrid adrenaline was boiling. Its gaping maw raring to guzzle him whole like the trembling beak of a malnourished pelican. His heart was dunked headlong into that roiling pot of scalding emotions, its frothing surface shattered by his corroded core. Every fiber of his wretched soul forever lost to the fathomless bowels.

Either the maniacal, barmy murderer of hundreds stood his grounds for one final glorious battle. Brave the gnarled, blackened hands of the damned reaching from the volcanic fathoms of Hell. His old friends. Acquaintances and companions, greeting him for a second time they never thought possible. Jubilated by the prospect of submerging his icy carcass into the boundless lake of fire once and for all.

Or he does the exact opposite. Gary surrenders. All his chances for righteous vengeance dashed. His opportunities for a new life of slaughter and bloodshed transformed to dust. Levi Cronell would roam these trodden streets a free man. An alive man. Levi Cronell would live with the sins and atrocities he’s committed against the bastard in turquoise. He’d walk around with a broad smile plastered on his features. Make new friends. Thrive with his newfound adoptive family, teeming with light and brilliance from each mind. He’d live. Gary would wallow in his shallow grave for decades to come. All up until the penultimate moment he reels in his final breath and the bitter kiss of Death greets him, as well. No second chances. No resurrections. No more smoke and mirrors. Just him, the bougie funeral he’d no doubt have, and his corpse lying in peaceful repose six feet beneath the vivacious grass and foliage.

Peace.

His veins were transmuted into incensed rivers of molten slag billowing from his irate, singed heart at the prospect.

Peace? Did Levi Cronell, the man who single-handedly toppled his regal kingdom constructed on strife and carnage, deserve to rest in perpetual peace? A bout of tranquility with no end, boundless and unceasing. Gary was alive. Gary was brought back for his, what he could only assume to be, grand overarching purpose. His sole objective. Bring death to the Man in Blue no matter the cost of the path or means he implemented. If he couldn’t live in unrivaled serenity in that barbaric theocracy he crafted from salt and sand, nobody could exist happily. Especially not the man who returned everything he lived and died for to the earth.

Gary straightened his arm, bone now confined within a coarse bracer of concrete. White-hot glowing wires of adrenaline slithered around his skeleton, strangling every cell of his marrow with unshackled disregard. His back dampened. Calves throbbing. Soreness rippled throughout every centimeter of his frame. An inclement brew of fatigue and lethargy clasped his head with its roaring hand of fire. His eyelids begged on their hands and knees for a fleeting moment of repose.

Yet, much like the hapless cannon fodder here for their spears to taste his blood, mercy would not be granted. Hell, anything bearing any remote semblances to it being accorded was a laughable concept.

His crosshairs were trained at the bottom of the steps. Finger adjoined with the slick stygian trigger. Hand trembling with anticipation. Irises honed sharper than any blade attainable by a mortal, gelid and insensate. The countless humans who fell to him were howling from the heavens high above his aching head. Screaming to the lionhearted, audacious warriors to turn around. Swivel their robust frames and march out of the front doors they burst open mere minutes prior. Saving lives from the cruel grasp of those who wished to end them was their job, after all. A sworn duty they promised to fulfill until their terminus arose to greet them. When an ill-fated being of any race, gender, age, or demographic no matter how small, their fate was sealed. No savior could rescue them from the purulent maw of peril. Or, more accurately in this case, the acidic jaws of certain unshakable doom.

A flurry of strikes against the scarred hardwood floor bedeviled the noirette’s ears. Fanning the flames of warranted torment actively devouring his cranium, leaving no crumbs for the ants and birds to feast on. A colony of sabatons battered the floor. Their owners charging headlong into a realm of possibilities they never deemed nor thought possible. A murky ancient forest of unfathomable proportions. Tenebrosity holding every form and variation of dominion over its diseased trees and ravenous fauna. To them, the roily tale of Gary Demonio would’ve been the equivalent to a Greek legend. A story of deception, heartbreak, and unimaginable bloodshed of mind-splitting quantities. Levels of violence incomprehensible to the forever rose-tinted optics of these sentient equines and unicorns. The meager thought of having that degree of infamy in this fresh alien world enraptured the raven-haired man.

“Don’t do what I think you’re about to do.” The Draconequus warned.

Anyone who wasn’t that repulsively colored commander with an arresting cadence had no business leading the bewildering charge toward the male. Yet, as luck would have it, that arrogant sod with a voice like a doomsday siren lagged behind the rest. Shucking off his responsibilities as spearhead of the operation, allowing this unfortunate soul to assume his stead. Whether intentional or not, the ruinous consequences would arrive all the same.

“Gary, don’t.”

A chestnut mustang was the hapless head of this soon-to-be-concluded hit against Gary Demonio. His slender stainless-steel spear whetted and sharpened to the absolute utmost was pointed at a forty-five-degree angle. His gruff, foolishness-be-damned visage was marked with a single curved line. His thin lips crimped into a sorry excuse for a smirk. While his face was painted by utter and complete stoicism, like a stone mask imitating a Greek god, his eyes were the textbook definition of Judases. Those hazel gemstones embedded into the small craters in his face told a wildly dissimilar tale. Deviating far and steering clear of the faux varnish of unflappability. Informing Gary of a different story. A turbulent fable of fear and terror for his oncoming, unshakable fate he was forced to endure. A sentence of inexorable doom he always knew was possible, yet never pondered the prospect until now.

Until the Grim Reaper clad in a suit of human flesh paid him a visit.

Hazel locked horns with amber. Unmistakable panic grappled tirelessly with pleasure. Undeniable, enthralling pleasure, its viscous tendrils wreathing every inch of his frame.

“Don’t!”

For any sane mortal being bearing a whiff of value towards their life, standing off against the second-highest form of authority in Equestria was an impossible match-up. Pitting a paralyzed cockroach against a wrathful elephant. It simply couldn’t be done. And throughout the vast majority of Equestria’s history, it hadn’t been accomplished. Hell, the sentient disembodied phantasm residing within his skull was living proof of this sentiment. Battling the Royal Guard had only two destinations lying patiently at the endgame. A brutish, callous demise. Or the rest of your days withering away in the bowels of a castle. Shackled to a gritty stone wall penned by rust-peppered bars.

Only Gary Demonio didn’t believe in the word infinite when cycles or loops were involved. Hell, even Roseville, arguably the most barbaric perpetual repetition known to humanity, had to end eventually. Just like the Royal Guard’s tendency to pulverize and bring insubordination to a screaming halt.

Hazel and amber were cuffed together one final time. Dread of incomprehensible levels and elation skirmished for superiority. If given the time and patience, the two polar opposites of emotions would’ve brawled relentlessly until either the sunk sank or burned out. Gary lacked a lot of things most normal men of sound mind seemed to possess. Time, patience, and most prominent of all, mercy.

The Bereta thundered scornfully. Gallons of thick, inky darkness were expelled from the stairway by a gargantuan flood of white. The mass exodus of suspense was a glorious sight.

A searing chunk of metal sliced the frantically churned air to ribbons.

The golden smoking cylinder pockmarked the upper-right corner of his forehead with an isolated crimson stamp, terrifyingly flawless in shape and size. Perfect width. Exact circumference. All in all, in every way imaginable, it was an arrant circle. To Gary, it was beautiful.

His lust for serving justice setting his irises aflame was snuffed. Eyes rolled backwards, hazel optics plunged into the tenebrosity permeating his skull. Every rushing river of adrenaline was plugged and dried. Veins like electric cables powered by vigor were snipped. The colt crumbled to the ichor-stained dark wooden floor.

The ear-splitting crash of elephantine armor against the ground nearly drowned the agonized cry of the commander in the roiling cacophonous sea.

“Onyx!” The general caterwauled.

“Dammit, Gary!”

For a voice as stentorian and robust as his, combined with its esteemed ability to magnetize respect towards it, one would expect the pain of grief couldn’t seep through. An air-tight emotional bulwark and moat of stoicism was surely in place to prevent events such as this. After all, if an adversary heard this level of unfathomable sorrow, they’d cackle themselves half-to-death before ending everything with a single cleave. That’s probably what the bereaved soldier wants. A clean, quick death. The only wizardly remedy to this emperor of all ailments.

Gary swiveled his frame at break-neck speed. He effortlessly bounded the remaining five steps of the staircase in a half-second. His psyche was an indignant, tempestuous sea entangled in the throes of an irate storm.

“Kill him!” The commander thundered, righteous fury threatening to set the air ablaze. “Kill him now! That’s an order! No matter the cost!”

“It was nice knowing you, my friend.”

What remained of the mangled platoon burned rubber up the stairs, following closely in his tight-knit trail of sin-stained boot prints. Their spears practically roaring in longing for the metallic taste of Gary’s gore on their tips.

The raven-haired male rushed down the hallway. Strides bigger than a whale’s mountainous maw. Every step was a shotgun blast. His ears bombinated to no end. A flash grenade exploded within his cranium.

The sanctity of his hotel room all but lassoed him into its balmy quarters. He flew in, whipped around to face the steadfast freight train of consequence, and threw the door into its frame. The wall threatened to ripple like a serene pond desecrated by a mammoth boulder.

“This is quite the show, Gary Demonio.” Discord quipped, his badgersome voice only casting fuel onto the fire gripping his brain. “Shame my popcorn is nowhere to be found.”

Gary wheezed. His knees just barely met the requirement to hold his weight. If his bones had been robbed and swapped with a scarecrow’s extremities, he wouldn’t have been able to discern a difference. One thing prohibited the bastard from collapsing into a worthless heap of sweat-bathed, aching limbs. Levi Cronell. He wasn’t allowed to die until he drew his final breath. That was a promise no mortal force on this Earth could even consider vanquishing.

The incomprehensible power of a thousand gods blasted the jerry-built, spartan bedroom door. Its hinges were unflappable, their spirit fit as a fiddle.

“For fuck’s sake!” Gary managed to tear from his heaving lungs. A hellish blaze roared within. He spat a loogie onto the unexpecting planks at his feet.

“Have some damn faith in me, Discord, I’ll get us out of here.”

“I’ll-”

His sentence was butchered by another bash at the door. The world nearly trembled from the sheer might of the fleshy, armor-clad battering ram. Its golden begrimed hinges were embroiled in an abhorrent war between two worlds. A realm hellbent on infecting as many innocents as humanly possible with its limitless violence. The other on God’s righteous jury, sent down to the Earth to slay those who deserved slaying.

“I’ll find a way.”

Gary tossed his utensil of doom onto the black-and-white striped blanket lying in a twisted cyclone on the mattress. The male dashed to its side, his bones coiled with glowing red-hot springs, planting his hands firmly into the lush bed. The very same he once called a safe haven several hours before. Now, it was his final ally reluctantly aiding him in erecting a dyke. The only rampart forming any sort of separation between him and the ravenous punishers yearning for his ichor on their tongues.

He rooted his arched feet into the boards. Calloused hands welded to the middle of the plush cot. Veins bulged from beneath his sweat-slicked skin like raging dales of brilliant watercolor. Invisible icy bear traps of pain chomped onto his calves with savage fervor. The bed’s thick square legs abraded the hardwood floor, carving incurable scars and gorges into its pristine skin. Slender golden lamps clattered. The diminutive nightstand stood zero chance against the wrath of this glorified wooden snow plow. Their efforts were the equivalent of hurling rusted forks at a mountain face.

Another bone-rattling smash barrage walloped the door. It was a miracle the entire globe didn’t quake from its otherworldly might. Scratch that. The full expanse of this life and this next each got a taste of the incomprehensible power. Hinges were crying out in indivisible agony, howling to the heavens above for their suffering to be forced to a halt. Clemency would never come. A sentiment echoed by the avengers outside, and the depraved demon inside.

Gary pinned the king-sized mattress to the austere entryway. A more fitting name being the soon-to-be lake of splinters and firewood. An even more fitting name, an all-you-can-eat buffet for a furnace.

Another crash at the door. A solid gold pin popped from its chamber on the ever-so-maimed hinges. Lustrous golden armor appeared through ruptured slits in the jerry-built wood.

“Shit.” Gary grimaced, his face a twisted death mask glazed by a thin film of sweat. “For fuck’s sake!”

“What made you think they’d-”

“Be fucking quiet!”

Gary’s arm straightened, limb frozen in perpetual paralysis. Wrist vibrating with galvanized elation. Finger animated with a glut of zeal. If the raven-haired man had been snapped away from Ponyville and penned in the stomach of a volcanic leviathan, he wouldn’t have been able to discern any difference. The air was blistering and pungent, a churning angry maelstrom of fathomless wrath and soupy unease. Unplumbed, righteous, warranted dudgeon. A cloud-slicing comber of emotion more vigorous than anything he ever laid his astute irises upon.

Perhaps this entire debacle was the work of some foreign chagrined god. Another eldritch being with the appearance of a deranged child’s imaginary companion. Wrenched from an endless chasm of thorny, blackened vines. A being that one would find solace in the fact it was rooted in fiction. Forever hemmed behind titanium gates of fantasy.

Two seismic, skull-cleaving barks erupted from the barrel’s lightless catacombs.

A duo of bullets navigated frolicked through the boiling ocean of throat-gripping anxiety. Searing chunks of metal, dreadfully similar in power and appearance, chewed two knuckle-sized holes about three inches apart from one another in the spartan door. Right below the entryway’s midsection.

A contorted, mangled mewl of unfathomable agony and nigh-fatal grief tore from a soldier’s throat. Another one bellowed an ear-splitting caterwaul, the unholy offspring of vision-robbing anger and a kahuna of unmatched sorrow. Clusters of elephantine golden armor blared against the forever-marred planks. Muffled ever-so-slightly by the half-vanquished jerry-built wood, but still enough to rattle the male’s skull. And if the disembodied wraith tenanting his cranium could be shocked or appalled anymore, he’d be zapped by a lightning rod of perturbance.

“No! Flash!” A heavy-hearted, emotionally gutshot trooper wailed in terror. “Flash, no! Get up!”

Their commander gave no response. His thunderous, respect-commanding timbre was a distant memory, sinking ever so deeper into the murky bowels of triviality. Becoming nothing more than an echo of a time long lost. A time that was thoroughly impossible to recreate or experience again. The lionhearted paladin, the spearhead of this fearless calvary, sputtered ichor from his trembling jaws in response.

“Captain!” The soldier seemingly directed his attention to the remainder of the cannon fodder. “Get help! Alert the Royal Castle, hurry!”

A slender string of glimmering crimson blood snaked beneath the shoddy lumber, saved from an irreversible bout of razing by the crack of Gary’s gun. Like a mountain-sized whip upon the back of unruly cattle.

Flash gargled haplessly. The sound would’ve been nothing short of nauseating to any regular, ordinary human being. Hell, any regular living being at all. Pony, unicorn, pegasi. Anyone would’ve keeled over in a loch of khaki-colored vomit when the revolting noise kissed their eardrums. If Gary was honest, saying he’d heard worse bereft of a guttural response would be a mammoth understatement. He’d caused and witnessed with front-row seats immeasurable atrocities of hellish proportions without a care in the world. Lodging a blistering bullet deep in the gullet of a talking horse would be no difference to him.

Gary flipped the safety of his tool of misery before stuffing it into the rear of his pants once more, hugged snugly by his crinkled belt. Discord was silent. Everything and everyone was silent. Every inch of the world was bathed in never-ending serenity. The only sound that dared to defy the tyranny of quietude was the muted sobbing of a warrior. Bawling his shattered heart out at his dying chief’s side. Remorse was far from the sensation that seized Gary.

The raven-haired male glided his stony palm over his buzzed sweat-caked scalp. He marched to the begrimed sliding glass door. The floor suffocated the urge to retch and quake from his presence. The scarred, wounded walls glowered at him with never-before-seen ferocity. Glowing white-hot knives of wrath sank deep into his back, searing his spine a foreboding shade of black like the bricks of a castle in Hell. But, like all things that had nothing to do with Levi Cronell, he didn’t give a damn. Not about the ravenous grimace adorning the room. Not about the pitiful pair of corpses he abandoned in his wake, simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Trying in bitter vain to incarcerate the absolute wrong person. Not about the dumb-founded audience of one inside his head, drowning in thick, soupy silence. Only about his goal. His objective. The broad meaning of all this limitless carnage. The bigger picture painted in gore that overlooked everything.

Gary flipped a tiny lock on the door’s oblique, tearing it open incautiously. Its elderly hinges squealing akin to a strangled bird. A tranquil arrow of wind whistled stridently into the mutilated battleground, formerly known as a hotel. The enticing scent of rain avidly punted him two and a half decades back in time. His terminus residing at the tail end of a happier time. A period where there was no mystical unnecessary obligation for vengeance. A time where Levi Cronell didn’t exist. Where Alan Sizemore didn’t exist. Where his tumultuous, crimsoned reign of terror over Roseville, Alabama had yet to come to fruition. No killing sprees with no visible end. No unfourtnaute victims begging on their blistered hands and knees for mercy at his feet. No gun barrels pressed against the skulls of souls he deemed unworthy of life. Human beings entangled in the thorny vines of lamentable circumstances. Robbing them of a life they could’ve easily forged into a path paved with gold.

That chance was long-gone. Much like the chance of Gary Demonio being anything other than what he truly was. A ravenous, bloodthirst, sub-human monster. A nameless beast who crawled from the volcanic depths of Hell’s belly. The smoking cauldron of sin and punishment he was cast into welcomed him with open flaming arms. Only he rejected their hospitality. Down there, punishing and massacring innocent men and women was not his prerogative. That was a reality he refused to accept. That was probably among the multitude of reasons he clawed his way out of that warranted sentence. Where there was havoc to be wrought in the mortal world, Gary could be found. Skulking in the shadows one second, jamming his boot on the neck of a man the next.

Gary stepped out onto the sub-par balcony. Old planks moaned beneath his weight. The wind threatened to sling it to the vibrant grass below with every whimsical breeze. A silvery blanket of steel clouds stretched as far as the human mind was able to fathom. Shrouding the nation and its entirety in a gloomy umbrella of shade. The sun was unable to provide a sliver of salvation for those who appreciated its presence. Cool gales whipped his frame painlessly, transforming his sweat-painted back into a plate of ice. A mighty lion of thunder roared in the distance. Beckoning him. Summoning him to far away lands. A vista that was yet to taste the delicacy of chaos and anarchy ready to be cooked by the dynamic duo. The god of all things discordant and the Alabama butcher.

Gary swiveled his aching head back to his former sanctuary. The bed fastened against the tawdry door, solid gold visible through small cracks, and the whining, sorrowful and unceasing. He gazed forward once more at what truly mattered. The world who had no idea the danger that had just breached their tooth-rotting barricades. He was doubtless in his assumption that there would be hell to pay for this travesty. After all, a globally revered army suffering two losses at the hands of a madman was sure to be broadcasted everywhere. He’d give it an hour or less before news reached the diplomats and the newspapers. Maybe ten minutes before greedy assassins prowled the streets for his head on a pike.

Gary looked down at the expanse of grass below. A five foot drop at the bare minimum. Not many grievances would befall him if he dove from the deck and continued his journey. Every step of the way carving his path into the unexpecting earth.

Gary gazed one final time at his room.

He double-checked the back of his pants, feeling the rigid bulge of his pistol.

Then, without another crumb of thought, the male leaped from the balcony.

No wrath could ever consider stopping him now.

Chapter 24: Death and Riches

Levi Cronell had only known loss for so long.

During his turbulent, anguished tenure in Alabama, all he was ever taught was methods of coping with his loss. Never any tangible means of gaining or accruing. That rule didn’t just apply to money, joy, or a sorry excuse for a cot to laze on. It went for everything. Family, friends, appreciation for what he had, a cordial cluster of neighbors. Nothing.

Levi was the absolute furthest thing from a materialistic.

Before his tempestuous arrival into this alien world, he knew many people. The minority of whom he pridefully called his friends. The vast majority, however, were dealt nothing but scornful glowers and barbed stares. Out of the tens of faces he knew like the back of his own hand, a diminutive number that trotted closer to zero by the week weren’t met with animosity. Friends. Family. His brother. They were all familiarized entirely with those soft sheeny gems. A stark and frankly unwelcome contrast to jagged jades his…what could he call them? They weren’t technically enemies, nor were they adversaries no matter the interpretation. So what were they?

No word in Levi’s expansive vocabulary could cater him to the proper word. And in all honesty, scrounging and combing the tranquil terrain of his psyche was, in every way, an incineration of time. They were all dead now. It didn’t matter how fervently he chirped about them or how many gallons of disdain he funneled into his sentences. They were gone. All gone. Gone to a place where his woes and illimitable grief bore little importance. Seized and wheeled off to a realm, sealing the hankerings of his bereaved heart behind an air-tight bulwark. Forever dashing his yearning for a final goodbye. For one last solemn stare before the pearly behemoth gates of heaven penned them within. To him, he wasn’t asking for much. But apparently, in the grand scheme of the universe, his request was titanic. Too colossal for any omnipotent being to grant in a timely manner.

After observing Levi tumble down the mighty hill of life, striking his hapless head on countless hardships and misfortune, God finally decided the up-and-coming Man in Blue had had enough. He plucked a miracle from his garden of lustrous wonders beyond human comprehension and sent it down. How it manifested during its turbulent jaunt through the stratosphere was anyone’s guess. The way it ultimately culminated, that radiant supernova that rammed him out of his universe, was God’s helping hand. At least, that’s the only logical reason that made even a sliver of sense in the brunete’s mind. How an explosion so mighty not only didn’t turn him into a meek handful of stygian ash, but hurled him into an alternate reality was puzzling. Levi had already spent countless nights lying awake in his personalized lush cyclone of blankets and pillows thinking. Pondering over the odds and the impossibly slender percent chance that he wound up here instead of joining his family and comrades. Devoting more time and energy into entertaining the prospect of it all during the waking hours was a waste. And one Levi couldn’t afford.

After all, when a man’s casualties and dissipations surpass the number countable with fingers, it would be foolish to not stop and appreciate what you’ve been given. To truly screech to a halt and gaze at the manifestations of luck around you. How years of supposedly insurmountable hardships and adversity didn’t always harrow you. A callous desertion at the coarse bottom of life’s most fathomless canyon wasn’t always in their future. Levi Cronell was a prime example of this.

On a rainy day such as this one, Levi wouldn’t be doing anything else sans moldering on his spartan, moth-eaten couch. His feet lolling in a grim graveyard of rank beer bottles. Tree sap-colored glass jacketed with a royal blue sleeve peppering his dingy carpet. Heartlessly burying his deep-rooted flagrant grievances under oceans of fiery liquor. Wallowing in a murky quagmire of self-loathing and sorrow. A dark tunnel lined with viscous, inky tentacles of despair. Spreading their vile influence across every gritty inch like a colony of bacteria. The only sliver of light, both metaphorically and literally, that ever penetrated the endless dark was that skull-splitting explosion. Both a gift and a curse in many ways.

One of the many positives of that earth-rocking fulmination was the illustrious, eminent scenery he was thoroughly blessed with. Out of the beautiful gilded bouquet of miracles wrapped snugly in a handbasket he received on that day, Ponyville and the residents within were the shining star. The golden child among the plethora of marvels practically dropped at his feet for his enjoyment. Even as the rain unleashed its limitless wrath upon the quiet ill-fated town, pelting him like a volley of keen ice arrows, there was far from a shortage of things to treasure and hail.

The Man in Blue sauntered down the trodden roads of his beloved, glorious village with an unforeseen stride. A purpose seeping into the vandyke sludge acquiring more and more water by the second, adding distance to the inescapable mire seizing the town. The soles of his feet were caked, encrusted by a thin film of arid and wet silt. Every last ray of luster that once showered each individual house and business was a foreign memory. Suppressed and censored by the iron-fisted sooty stomach of this titanic expanse of clouds. The irate, vengeful thunderheads was molten steel poured on the ceiling of a mammoth glass cage he and all the others were hemmed in. On his left and right, cozy abodes bursting with golden gleam and vibrance stood stock-still. Their roofs shielding their guiltless inhabitants from the maelstrom of frigid darts. Slitted windows shut and latched. Wagons outside bearing the brunt of Mother Nature’s incurred fury were guarded by their knight in shining armor. An umbrella fastened to the wagon’s old, rickety frame. Some were red-and-white, others were black-and-yellow. One in particular was a bold, arresting pink, standing proudly amongst its striped brethren. Breaking the cycle and fully indulging in this life of deviancy.

Amidst the myriad of protection from the environment’s titanic tantrum, the brunete was dealt the short end of every stick imaginable. His short sandy locks were plastered to his scalp. Bare forearms slicked with Adam’s ale. Denim jeans darkened a deep navy blue. Royal button-down glued to his flesh like a three-piece suit made entirely of frost. As if a demigod grabbed a thread of arctic wind from the sky and sewed it into a magnificent article of clothing. A brilliant idea on paper. Gorgeous execution. Practically, it was less than favorable. Dangling from his hip, the jumbo weight like a belt of stones, was his crystalline sword. Hell, if he could even call it “his” yet. It was still Platinum’s. It would always be Platinum’s from now until the end of time. No matter the throats he slashed or divorces he forced between head and neck, it would always be his. That was a title no mortal alive could ever usurp. Especially not the likes of him. An inexperienced swordsman who’d get bested by a sloth in a fencing competition. Practice makes perfect, he supposed. He wasn’t going to get to an apprentice level without any training or exercising of his abilities. If the stoneless cemetery of barbarically butchered training dummies in his backyard could speak, they’d echo that sentiment wholeheartedly. He didn’t know if talking is the first thing they’d do. All he could do was pray they weren’t sentient in any way shape or form. After all, this is Equestria. The bar was scraping the heavens.

Levi had touched base back in Ponyville around an hour and a half ago. His visit to the Cloudsdale hospital was…an experience to say the absolute least. It wasn’t bedeviled with heart-grating sorrow that hurled his heart into a bereaved woodchipper. It was a cross between acceptable on many levels, but still unfavored in every way or interpretation. Walking through the glass double doors of the establishment was something he ne’er thought he’d do again. He was walloped by the comber of cleaning chemicals the same way. He was greeted by the receptionist in the same outfit, her toothpaste-colored hair tied in the same regal bun. The walk down those corridors that stretched endlessly was the same. Spitfire even looked the same. Some of her injuries were healed to the best of her robust body’s abilities. Her right eye was swollen closed like a bulging rotten grapefruit jammed in her eye socket. A small scar pockmarked her left temple. Scuffs and perpetual wounds desecrated a vast majority of her visage and neck. Her top tight canine was gone. Most likely deserted on that ichor-stained black-and-white tiled floor back at the academy. Her academy. A supposed sanctuary where no enemies could breach their titanium gates. At least, that’s how it was on paper. That was how it was supposed to go. But, in typical Equestria fashion, nothing ever went according to any blueprint of normalcy.

Their talk was cordial and joyful. In spite of the dire, macabre state of affairs she found herself in the throes of, her personality was unharmed. Her flesh might be marred and her face irreparably sullied, but her heart remained the same. Lazing idly in its dormitory posterior to her distressed ribcage. Lolling in absolute unwavering ease and comfort. Levi flashed a sickly green from the envy besieging him at her nucleus. That was all he ever wanted in the end. Peace. Unrivaled, steadfast, inexorable tranquility where he could simply live and breathe bereft of a care in the colossal world. He wanted a fresh life, he received it. He wanted a family, he received it. He wanted serenity, he received it, only with a miniscule cost stapled and written in petite letters. In order to be permitted and maintain this blissful catharsis, he’d have to don the mantle of a warrior long-before him. Battle the unspeakable evils of this world who dared to consider burglarizing its prosperity and harmony. Locking horns with abominable evils hellbent on burning this mortal world down to its last morsel. Leaving a single soul alive to witness the boundless carnage and ruination before claiming their life as well. Their corpse a mere ant among the illimitable ocean of ones just as hapless as them.

Great. This was perfect.

Platinum’s sword slapped his thigh with every stride. A sharp, fleeting sting, a stern reminder of his broader purpose. His role in this gargantuan opus painted with dark shoulder-crushing responsibilities and pastel laborious duties.

Through the downpour of liquid iron blinding the male annexed by shivers, another sanctuary was in perfect view. A trifling ten minutes of braving the storm that rattled the fabric of reality later, and he finally arrived. The Golden Oak Library. Sitting smack-dab in the center of Ponyville. To him, the library was, without a hair of doubt, the town’s hammering heart. Working overdrive on gloomy, sullen days such as this to keep jovial delight rushing through the village’s veins. On any normal day of the week, however, the stand-in for the Tree of Life, much like the inhabitants within its treen cocoon, could relax. Liberate themselves from the strangling, throat-gripping binds of stress and unease. Laze in peerless quietude. The mystical, wizardly remedy for all of their flogging ailments.

Levi’s solemn emerald gaze stretched far beyond the torrential haze of liquified steel trouncing the town. It burrowed deep into the grandiose meaning behind everything. Looking past the belts of humble abodes lining the battered roads. Beyond the tranquility and beauty behind it all. Into the thin, delicate fabric of everything Equestria has to offer. Because at the end of the day, Levi was well-aware all of this happiness and galvanizing jubilation had to stem from something. A dainty disposition bedazzled with a tooth-rotting glaze of macarism didn’t sprout from the dirt. If it did, who knows the exponentially more positive fate that would’ve befallen the aggregate of Roseville. The brunete was chest-to-chest with the notion that this cordial nature wouldn’t last forever. If he was honest, a part of him believed this was all a ruse. No place inhabited by mortal beings with a beating heart and autonomous mind is this destitute of crime or hardship. Somewhere out there penned with Equus’ super colossus borders, a cancer doubtlessly blighted the picturesque reputation of Equestria. Whether it be poverty, a serial killer racking up corpses, or all-purpose discord annexing the general population. There had to be something…right? No place was this peaceful. Even during his parent’s time in that wretched town he somehow managed to call home for so long, it wasn’t always the hellscape that it was chiseled into. Roseville used to be decent. Something at some point in time erupted from the sin-stained soil and infected everything.

To this day, Levi never received an answer as to what truly happened to that small ramshackle, sorry-excuse for a refugee center in Alabama. Perhaps Gary was erected from bones and gore for that sole, terrifyingly unique purpose. To spread the Devil’s influence beyond the charred demarcations of that sinner-infested pit he claimed dominion over. His imagination knew zero bounds when it came to fantasizing about the horrors that may lie past Ponyville’s margins. What potential demons in donning cloaks of flesh secreted their true power-gluttonous nature until now. Perhaps Levi and Alan’s arrival could’ve awakened some ancient primordial evil beyond mortal comprehension from a centuries-long slumber.

Levi shook off the prospect. Literally. Whipping his head from left to right, his dampened bangs slinging pearls of moisture every which way. Dissipating into the repulsive quag at his feet like tears of a grieving mother in the ocean.

A cacophonous, raucous roar strangled the calamity of the rain’s incessant assault. Burying the deafening whip cracks of thunder alive with its unchained ferocity. High above his drenched, frigid skull was a splendorous spectacle. One Levi had laid his eyes upon numerous times since his arrival back at Ponyville. Too many times, for that matter. The brunete flicked his vivid emerald globes to the quivering ashen ocean of titanium above. Lively irises badgered by the storm’s unrelenting assault.

Bounding faster than any spear of lightning could ever dream of, the sound like a cosmic train chugging across galaxies, was a gilded carriage. A mammoth aerial wagon bedazzled by sparkling gold and arresting royal blue. Two stark white soldiers piloted the noble convoy donning glimmering aurate cuirasses and vivid cobalt crests. Slender voracious spears resting soundly in holsters slung over their backs. The reverberant conflation was a flagrant blight among the endless churning sea of steel. As quickly as the avian platoon rocked the atmosphere to its core, the troopers vanished. Materialized into the limitless gallery of wrathful thunderheads.

Four. That was the amount of shipments carrying beyond vexed Royal Guardsmen thus far. Four wagon-fulls galloping across the ashen, melancholic atmosphere. Their blinding dudgeon sealing their heart in a flaming brazen bull like a deranged punishment by a Greek god. Rage and unpitying woe collided. Two colossal forces of nature striving for total and unflappable dominion over the pale gloom sprawling over the nation. No nook or cranny spared from its rampant, impregnable warpath of incomprehensible quantities. In spite of the frivolous war’s brunt blooming right before his water-bludgeoned globes, no winner was written in the stars. No victor was painted with steadfast clarity. The skirmish had zero boundaries, no laws or regulations. Attempting to chisel a blob of this insanity into a method to the mangy madness.

Out of all the contenders in this vehement maelstrom of emotion, wrath and despair the spearheads of the feud, Levi’s heart was fixated by the exact opposite. Perplexity garnered a crown of supremacy. Nuggets of Adam’s ale commenced a marathon down his puzzled visage and furrowed brows, gazing with answerless disarray.

Seeing anything bearing any remote semblances to the sovereign royalty cross Ponyville’s demarcations invoked the obverse of reverence. To the manifold of blissfully witless citizens forming the town’s populace, it was merely a visit. The ones who lazed blithely at the snowcapped crest of Equestria’s hierarchy. A more accurate term coined by the ones languishing miles below them being the “food chain”. Levi was an avid subscriber to that pioneered phrase. Being among the bottom, perhaps one rung above the rest, in Alabama was a heart-crushing sensation. One he wouldn’t wish on worst adversary, no matter the barbarity of their actions. Even with his prestigious title teeming with importance and radiating grandeur, the brunete didn’t consider himself above these sentient equines. If he was honest, he was even with them. A sword and a shirt crafted from the finest cobalt silk failed to make him any more lordly and god-like than the rest. After all, living with a unicorn and a dopey dragon he deemed as beneath him was a flawless recipe for ruination.

If there was one thing he did have that trumped his cloven-hooved comrades and family, it was intuition. Intelligence and experience. Two things he garnered oceans of within the sin-stained, ghastly frames of Roseville. Where high-ranking enforcers, their neck jammed beneath the boot of Gary Demonio, were found, disaster would soon follow. And when that mangled, moldering corpse of a town was the subject of conversation, disaster bore no shortage of meanings. A comber of death. A tragedy of unspeakable proportions. Illimitable oppression and injustice, adding another tally to the list of crimes against these hapless husks of people. Bled to their bleached bones and discarded like the meaningless sacks of flesh they were labeled as. Telling Levi the tearful story of Platinum Wing held the crown for one of the most important events in his twenty-six years of living. If Equestrian royalty was involved in events bearing that level of significance, them flocking here in vexed droves had the furthest thing from a positive outcome. Whatever would come out of this abrupt, unforecasted invasion couldn’t be good. Not in the slightest.

Levi’s hand meandered to the slicked golden doorknob. The gargantuan, super colossus tree spoke to the Man in Blue. Its enchanting aura and undeniable offer of sanctity from the indignant squall brought a sparkle to his emerald irises. Whispers whistled through its sodden gyrating leaves and girthy branches. Voices beckoning the male into its treeny, archaic stomach. Unseen and unfelt by the naked eye of an average man, but far from unheard.

The knob clicked. Labyrinthine organs rotating and cooperating as one. Timber maw opening to implore the man into its cozy bowels, envelop him with its tendrils of serenity. Levi had dealt with a fair share of siren songs in his lifetime. Some more cruel and perilous than others. A stark contrast to how he’d handle these crises in the immoral world of human iniquity, Levi Cronell deviated. He surrendered to the temptress’ enticing tune, practically falling to his knees at the prospect of the upcoming repose.

Inside, in the safe haven shielded from Mother Nature’s frenzy upon the living, a being resided. Twilight Sparkle. Situated in the far-right corner of the living room and kitchen melded into a singular floor. At the head of the sprawling pale oak table sat the lavender, bubbly bookworm, her back mere inches from an all-encompassing wall of books. An ample dynamic panorama of spines, all differing in thickness and vibrance. The picturesque sight was a vivacious supernova of arresting colors and brazen hues. A fulmination of shades and tints reminiscent of the titanic burst of life that dawned the universe. Hasped by her unerring hooves was a rich stygian hardcover. Printed on the front in lurid gold writing was the title: “No Country For Old Ponies”. Resting side-by-side in the dead-center of the blanching wood was a stark white cardboard box topped by an aurate cover. Beside it was a smoking, sweltering kettle, slender strings of steam rising from its arched sylphlike nose. The contents within were nothing short of an enigma. Whatever ponies chugged in the late afternoon hours to pass the time were a mystery to the Man in Blue. A mystifying conundrum he never knew he bore any interest in solving until now.

A pair of gem-like amethyst irises somehow managed to wrenched themselves from the book’s mesmerizing innards.

“Hey, Levi,” The unicorn chirped, bringing her ever-so-merry fictional tenure to a cursory halt. “You were gone way longer than I hoped.”

“Tell me about it,” The brunete was fully submerged in the Library’s beguiling sanctuary, the downpour’s raucous roar forever smothered by the closed door.

“I took a walk around before the rain.”

“Did you?”

Twilight shut the hypnotic novel, white bookmark jutting out from between the tanned pages. “What did you see?”

“Things I never thought ponies were capable of.”

Twilight grinned. “Like what? A bar fight? A real fight?”

“It wasn’t that interesting, Twi,”

Levi unbuckled his ramshackle, archaic scabbard from his pulsating waist. Allowing the drowned leather to wallow in solemn silence on a protruding coat rack. The lively, energetic crystals pined for a measly five minutes in the heat of the battle. Perhaps glorying in the divine discord of an arid warzone was in its future.

Only time could tell. Slow, merciful, leisurely trekking time.

“There’s plenty of interesting things in Ponyville.”

“Depends on how you define interesting.” Levi replied. “You probably wouldn’t blink twice at anything other than a book.”

The unicorn chuckled.

The Man in Blue coiled his fingers around the chair’s backrest. In a way, it felt erroneous using appliances fabricated from a tree’s long-dead corpse inside of a tree. The chair, table, bed, night stand. Just about everything they used on a daily basis could only have been achieved by the Library’s kin being culled. Slaughtered without a whiff of relent to be discerned from the mist of sawdust and chips. All in the name of…what? Money? The well-being of the citizens?

That was another mystery to add to the ever-expanding list.

Four rangy treen legs bruised the floor. Levi unlocked the shackles imprisoning his pent-up desires for relaxation. Bashed the bars to pieces that once penned his hankerings. His craving to collapse onto the doughy Ponyville quagmire and be ambushed by the ravenous jaws of slumber. Whether jeered by the barbaric thunderheads above or lulled by his blanket’s sweet nothings, sleep would arrive all the same. But now that he was here, finally here, sleep was alien. After traveling a combined untold number of miles down the rank hospital corridors and swampy Ponyville aisles, it was foreign. His calves ached ever-so-slightly. Thighs wracked by soft pangs. His mind, however…his mind absorbed the meat and potatoes of the universe’s fury upon him. Anger for what, exactly? Who knew? Perhaps it was his inexorable invasion of this world. Briskly becoming a blight among this sprawling hooved population was a cardinal sin. A crime far beyond the scope of forgiveness. As far as Mother Nature was concerned, at least.

The man sat, his body all-but collapsing in reverence at the respite’s feet. Its birch extremities squeaked.

“What did you do after you got here?”

Twilight’s horn ignited. At the opposite end of the table, two small ceramic lily-white cups resided. Resting side-by-side both exact in their appearance and function. A lavender aura of unadulterated magic consumed them.

“Not anything too special, just visited a coffee shop. Met some new people.”

“New friends?”

“You could call it that.”

One of the colorless glasses landed inches from his hands, clasped together gently on the table.

“What’s her name?”

“Lyra,” The man replied, “Lyra Heartstrings.”

Twilight cocked a brow. His imagination wreaked endless havoc on his mind.

“Heartstrings? Seriously?”

“Yeah,” It was Levi’s turn to arch an eyebrow. “Is that a bad thing?”

“No, no. She was one of my friends from Canterlot years ago.”

The steaming kettle hung above her cup, sylphlike nose eager to disgorge its delectable innards. Its owner was trapped in deep thought. Gazing blankly at the ceiling for a handful of seconds.

“How long was it? Three, four years now? Something around that.”

“You used to live in Canterlot?”

“Of course I did,” Twilight chirped. “Why do you think Celestia sent you there?”

“I assumed you were just staying there. Now I realize living in a library is your dream.”

“You know me so well,”

A tranquil, steady waterfall of divine rich brown tea decanted into the livid cup. Ropes of soft pale steam climbed to the heavens above.

Comfortable silence annexed the aggregate of the Golden Oak Library. No hair of anything bearing any semblances to a sound to desecrate the pristine gallery. The only remnants of din that violated it were the gentle jackhammers of rain against the ceiling and a snore. A placid rumble that breached the second floor, staining the serene air with its nigh-silent yet all-the-more obnoxious presence. How could he ever get to know his adolescent scaly roommate if he was better friends with the realm of sleep than the waking world?

“How was it?”

“Canterlot?”

“Yeah. Was it as quiet as a library should be?”

“It was for the most part, but not always. Canterlot can get very loud very fast, surprisingly. I learned that the hard way.”

They shared a chuckle.

“I’d probably lose my mind living with you then.”

“How come?”

“Too much silence is a bad thing, you know? It’s peaceful in moderation. But every hour of the day? Too much for me.”

“We’ve been here for two weeks and the loudest thing I’ve heard is Pinkie Pie,” Twilight remarked. “Silence is the last thing you’re gonna get here.”

A volley of factious memories fixated the Man in Blue. Impaling him with their whetted heads, infecting them with their fatal calamitous venom. When Levi was first granted the opportunity to call Ponyville his new home, he had heaven-scraping expectations. In every definition of the phrase, he anticipated a second chance at life. More specifically, and more preferred, a calm life. An existence governed exclusively by a monarchy of quietude and serenity. Not a worry blighting his mind of his waking up with the news of a fresh tragedy knocking him out cold. Everyday a new twisted variation of yesterday’s debacle. His friend or family member dead, shot and bled dry by Roseville. His friend or family member actively dying in Alabama’s finest hospital. With the inexorable stampede of bills and debt plaguing the horizon, death would be a vastly better option.

In all honesty, Pinkie’s daily antics and shenanigans were greeted with a warm welcome by the male. As long as she didn’t embark on a blood-stained tenure anytime soon, all was well in Ponyville. Hearing her bound up and down the trodden roads with lethal levels of gung-ho verve frothing through her veins was a sight for sore eyes.

“You didn’t expect anywhere where Pinkie was to be dead-silent, did you?”

“I expected a little bit of peace and quiet. Especially for a town,” Twilight replied, “But this is better than the city.”

Levi snickered. The male brought the torrid mug to his eager lips. His tongue reveled in the bountiful discharge of heavenly, angelic tastes. The godly savour was akin to the Garden of Eden beaten and pulverized into liquid form. Every flower, herb, and aroma known to mankind melted into a singular glorious experience. Levi possessed zero rebuttals to the idea of this becoming a daily occurrence.

Twilight’s movements ceased. Her apprehensive amethyst orbs magnetized to her rippling tea.

“Twi?”

The air lurched. Every last ounce of ease and light-heartedness was herded to pasture’s anew by a shepherd of pure, unfiltered dread. His twisted cane forged from the blackest of crystals from treacherous atrocious caves. An elephant planted its titanic plate-like feet into the scuffless floor. Standing there with unrivaled menace, stock-still in perpetual paralysis. Imprisoned by the unshakable binds of a witch’s curse. Forever trapped in this motionless, hellish damnation until its presence become known by all. Twilight gazed into the open air for a fleeting moment. Perhaps locking eyes with this unseen prisoner, crying out in muted howls. Panic met angst.

“Yeah?”

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She kneaded her cup anxiously. “I’m worried about Spitfire.”

Levi’s mood was slain. In a matter of seconds, a colossal exodus of biblical proportions. As a matter of fact, saying it merely perished and was laid to rest on a sun-baked patch of dirt would be an understatement. That pleasant, peerless joy was abducted in the dead of night. Subjected to senseless horrors beyond the scope of comprehension from a sound mind. Then, it was finally granted the gift of death in a wrapped gift basket. Topped with a royal blue bow. Afterwards, it was dropped in a miscellaneous meaningless death in the bowels of a barren desert. No life to be found for hundreds of miles in the rambling expanse of whistling sand and erect cacti. All except the echo of a life long-lost, the wide-eyed contorted corpse lying in a mess of gangly limbs imprisoned below the golden coarse ocean.

Levi gazed with never-before-seen, unorthodox anguish. His reflection, painted by a shade of rich brown, gazed deep into the man’s aching soul. An unending gluttonous ouroboros of anguish colonized his solemn globes. Their parched veins strangled by unwarranted life, arteries rebooted by the excavated memory. His mind wasted no time in locking the gruesome image millions of miles beneath the lush grass of his psyche’s terrain. Trapped in a concrete prison of Homeric proportions, fatally stupefying to a sane human mind. A glimmering flake of joy grew treacherous to the oppressive grief. The textbook definition of a bona fide Judas.

“Right…” Levi dragged his fingernail along the cup’s sleek face, dejection far from cessation. “Spitfire.”

“She’s…fine. I guess fine is the word. I don’t really know what ‘fine’ means anymore,”

Twilight indulged himself in another swig. The quietest hint of sugar kissed her grateful tongue.

“Honestly…I don’t even know what I should be feeling about this whole thing.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I mean I…” Their eyes met once more. Ceaseless strife challenged unabated optimism. “It’s hard being put into this position, Twilight.”

“Well, yeah, I figured as much. I can’t even imagine having Equestria practically on your shoulders.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Levi replied. “Being the Man in Blue is the least of my worries. I have too much on my plate.”

“What position are you in right now?”

A swampy silence stabbed it's fluttering flag into the spotless Library floor. Iron-fisted reign of carnage sparking to flaring, luminous life. Unseen and invisible to his naked mournful irises, but certainly not unfelt. And not unheard bereft of a sliver of a doubt.

“Did I ever tell you about that captain of the Golden Dashers? The game we saw a week or so ago?”

Twilight peered at the sprawling catalog of limitless knowledge behind him in fathomless thought. Amethyst gems trailing over the vibrant forest of spines both thick and thin, long and short. Teeming with words and long names of hooved authors, others destitute of more than a half-sentence.

She greeted his emeralds.

“The one we met after the game, right? I read about her after we got home,” Twilight spoke.

“She’s…unwell, to say the least. I don’t know what went wrong or when, but something definitely hurt her.”

Levi’s mind recoiled back, landing back-first in a sprawling expanse of soured memories. The jungly mass of rancid, putrefied recollections forever stained by haunting undertones was his terrifyingly personalized No Man’s Land. A moldering garden of rank thorny vines pumping unmerited nutrients into wretched rememberings. Strident echoes of times long-forsaken. Disparaged and left to rot in the boundless, rambling hellscape of his past. His longing to abandon that vile memory in his brain’s unplumbed recesses stretched far beyond the point of description.

“Yeah,” Levi hid his clenched fist beneath the table, fingernails fixating his palm. “Her.”

Those swirling cyclones of molten bronze. A polluted lake of copper befouled by veins of deceit and hankerings for chicanery. Those orbs… Oh, those fear-venerating orbs. The self same that rammed a frigid sword of unpitying dread into his unaware hapless heart. Not dread in the sense that his own life would soon be neck-deep in peril. But more dread for…someone. He didn’t know who yet, and he certainly didn’t know when. The titanic blinding takeaway from their interaction was the glaring prospect that somebody somewhere at a non-descript time would be marred. Whether it be physically, mentally, socially. Razing their career with boundless slander until its nothing but a mound of sooty pulverized dreams. He didn’t know it at the time, but if only his Man in Blue status granted him cosmic irises that tapped into the future. Maybe then he’d prevent one of the hopefully not many abominations Equestria brought to the table. After all, too much sickly-sweet sugar was bound to cause cavities. Only when they’d rear their atrocious head and how barbaric their entry would be was an entirely different ball park. And one Levi didn’t dare to stick his foot in.

“I don’t think you told me what happened. Well, I mean, you kind of did.”

“How much do you remember me telling you?”

“Not that much, just bits and pieces here and there. Nothing too groundbreaking.”

Levi nodded slowly.

“Alright.” He breathed.

“What happened? How’d she get hurt like that?”

The male herded a mammoth ocean of oxygen into his lungs, fleeing into the darkness behind his eyelids for a fleeting second. Glorying in the cursory comfort of the tear-filmed tenebrosity. Levi greeted the chandelier’s reverence-worthy luster with his gaze once more, swiping a bare forearm across his optics.

He paused. He stared at the inanimate table for a while.

“Silver did that.”

Twilight’s lids were caught between two worlds. The top one being reeled to the sky, the other being towards Silver’s eventual terminus. Hell.

“She beat her nearly to death then just…left her there like garbage. I didn’t know anyone here even knew that kind of cruelty existed, let alone actually do it.”

Speech was an alien concept in the Library now. As though any utterance even if only barely discernible was outlawed and abhorred.

“I was the one who found her…” Levi spoke, bereaved.

His face plummeted into his balmy hands, warmed by the tepid cup, massaging his forehead with his digits. Trying and brutally failing to baptize his mind. Cleanse his psyche of the heart-wrenching illustrations of pure, unadulterated barbarity. Cast the visions of that fateful afternoon where Silver and her band of goons rightfully belonged. Tartarus. The incomprehensible fathoms of the Lake of Fire. Doomed to drown in the never-ending canal of flame and brimstone until time marched to its coda. That was where Silver Spears’ turbulent tenure was destined to end. Her righteous, impossibly grim kismet. He knew it. He was almost certain Twilight knew it. And there wasn’t a doubt staining his mind that Silver was well-aware of it, too. Perhaps there was some secret grand meaning to this broad picture, spanning across several lives and altering them in countless ways. Maybe Levi was one of the vast array of vibrant colors in this macabre sprawling painting.

Twilight couldn’t conjure a word to quell the male’s unending intramural turmoil. She just sat, rigid and straight as a soldier at ease. Hell, maybe more probably. Lazing was a foreign concept to the brilliant unicorn. Through it all, however, a kahuna of anguish drowned her features. Tugging her lavender orbs beneath its churning surface.

“I had to get help to get her in, of course, but if it wasn’t for me, who knows what would’ve happened. I don’t even wanna think about it.”

“It’s been confusing me to no end recently,”

“Trust me, I’ve been just as confused as you lately. More probably.”

“Not like that. It’s hard to explain. I can’t fathom that something like this happened. That it could happen in the first place. Under my watch.”

Something flickered in Twilight’s eyes. Sympathy? Most likely. But this was Equestria, after all. Nothing nowhere at any time was close to predictable here. Not now, and definitely not ever.

A titanic billow of tears began to ruthlessly strangle his woebegone emeralds. That dastardly girthy cue ball spawning in his clenched throat. An unwelcome yet far from unknown stranger to Levi Cronell.

“I just…can’t understand why. How did I let this happen? How? I can’t wrap my head around it.” His wistful cries were all but censored by his lush manuses, providing his visage a sanctuary granting him anonymity from the outside world.

“This is all my fault. It’s all my damnfault.” Levi lamented. “I should’ve been there, I should’ve saved her. I was right above her. How did I not hear? How could I not have heard?”

“Levi, please-”

“First, Alan’s gone. Disappeared into thin air somewhere out there. Now Spitfire. Now one of the only people I can call my friend here is covered in scars and bruises because of me. Me!? No one else but me!”

Twilight relented to the Man in Blue’s sorrows. Attempting to console him and slice this interaction to ribbons was unfeasible. No set of words or pattern of syllables, no matter how fervent the comfort behind them was, could begin to comprehend calming this maelstrom. The might of pent-up emotion vomited into a singular whirlwind of incomprehensible fury was peerless. A degree of strength every god known to the mortal world combined couldn’t rally or rival.

Levi freed his contorted, mangled visage of grief and wrath from his lush palms, kissed by the warm lather of tears. His orbs marred by brightened veins, the lake of white his iridescent emeralds floundered in was eliminated. Assuming its stead was a scarlet-tinted backdrop granting his optics with a sinister yet all-the-more bereaved undertone.

“How could this happen, Twilight?” Levi inquired. “How? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I have no idea. This shouldn’t have happened nor should it ever be happening.”

“I just wanted a chance. An opportunity to be better, to make something of myself. No crimes, no needless deaths, no nothing. I hated being immoral to survive.”

“I know, Levi, I know.”

“I never chose that life. Sometimes it feels like it chose me more than anything. It made a choice I can’t escape from, even worlds apart. Universes apart. It’s still me.”

“But you can be better than what you were, Levi. How you were in your past doesn’t define you.”

Levi honed his bloodshot gaze like a shark locating his next hapless victim. Treading the sprawling swaths of crystalline water, blissfully unaware of the mortal danger that slinked in the inky shadows.

“No. No, you don’t understand.”

“What do I not understand?”

“Horrible, terrible things. What I’ve done, the things I’ve seen…it’s too much for anyone to bear.”

Levi rubbed his forehead. Wrinkles, granted unmerited life by mountainous stress and illimitable hardship, threatened to marr its smooth surface.

“I’m not sure I can stomach much more. These people don’t deserve this, especially not Spitfire.” Levi stared into an limitless oblivion for a fleeting second. “I have no idea how I should try handling this. That’s what’s been tearing me apart for days, Twi.”

Levi ran a hand through his sumptuous locks.

“Well, what are you considering? Is it anything drastic?”

“Depends on what drastic means to you,” He replied.

“Something that’s gonna cause heaps of trouble and problems. That’s how I define drastic.”

“Then, I guess drastic is the right way to put it.”

In every reality, referring to Levi’s heart’s grisly desire as merely drastic would be a herculean understatement. In full uncensored honesty, that would be viewed as a compliment to his yet to be implemented macabre plan. Contrived from the singed flaming depths of fury’s furnace, devouring and imprisoning his core within its adamantine maw. There were a lot of words in the colossal English language that could begin the laborious process of describing it. Simply using drastic as a summary to his vile hankerings wouldn’t cut it. Frankly, nothing would.

Where the Man in Blue originated, if two men or women had a feud that needed to rest in peace perpetually, there were two clear solutions. Either you brawl and shoulder the brunt of the humiliation of falling short, or you die. There was never, and never was used very exclusively, an in-between or shortcut. You locked horns with your adversary, and whoever’s lungs continued the cycle of swelling and deflating was the victor. The peerless, unfaltering champion in the skirmish. It was either that or quietus. How you perished was an entirely different ball game, and one that provided more-than-enough outlets and methods. When Levi peered at the conundrum outside his third-story apartment window, he’d seen it all. Secreted knives torn from obscure scabbards. Hidden guns seeing the light of day. Foreheads blasted, throats slashed or shanked. Heads dashed against concrete. Men strangled, their meth-hooked irises widened by the primal fear of death being robbed of all vigor and life. All those sights and sounds in Alabama kept him awake some nights. Those who died polluting his psyche’s reign of tranquility. Their stony faces, the cries and caterwauls of their friends and family. Bystanding haplessly as the one they loved and cherished, even in spite of their addictions he played a hand in causing, departed from this Earth. Unable to assist in their survival in any feasible way shape or form.

It summoned the ire of an unintelligible, untethered maelstrom of thoughts and ideas, wrestling with feral fervor for supremacy over his mind. Levi Cronell was entangled in the thorny vines of a gore-stained war. Caught in the crossfire of two sects, each harboring their own laundry list of pros and cons. His spirit impotent, incapable of determining where he should firmly plant his roots.

Two fiery factions in this paramount strife had been decided long ago. More accurately, his aching soul and heart was bisected. Good was sundered from evil. Nefarity departing from pure, unflappable honor.

On one side was the man who was born and raised in Roseville, Alabama. His limitless colorful catalog of sins and mistakes he vowed to desert in that decrepit, rabid town. A place where he was once ensnared in the labyrinthine web of violence and unending cycles. Its haplessly addicted residents and iron-fisted sovereigns were caged in their own personalized chunk of the universe. A corner of creation untouched by the blessed hand of normalcy. Instead, they were given free reign to carve out their own destinies. Gouge whatever markings or scars they deemed appropriate into the land as it cried out for sweet, bountiful mercy. A bout of clemency that would never arrive. But, like all people when too much power was permitted over an ungoverned territory, it went mad. Hijacked by the never-ending fountain of lunacy showering the town’s blackened, writhing heart. The harbinger of all this doom clad in aquamarine with buzzed hair darker than any solar eclipse could ever dream of being.

His core was still bound by those viscous baleful tendrils, even with a titanic universal bulwark between them. The murky blackness that sullied the walls of his heart screamed. Vibrating his trembling ribs with their strident siren’s song. Begging the Man in Blue to turn his back on the golden light of this beautiful, galvanizing world. To turn his back on everything. His new friends, his family, the unicorn that sat mere inches from him. Her curious gaze unceasing. Swivel his frame and trek back down that path paved by sin by hellfire, punctuated by brimstone hurled from the highest of Hell’s spires.

That portion of him longed for the taste of Silver Spears’ ichor. For his hands to be crimsoned and marred by a whirlwind of assaults. Punch after punch, kicks one after another. Teeth scattered. Eyes rolled back, lolling in their sockets. Hair a mangled nest housing nothing but sweat and regret. And in the end, the demon prodding his heart wanted her head upon a pike impaling his front yard. A trophy for every inch of this tooth-rotting village to see.

She knew what she was doing the moment she stepped foot into that byzantine compound. Silver was well-aware. There was no loaded shotgun poised to transform her rotten brain into a vision-robbing haze. Nor was there a spell tethering her soul to an unseen force of unsullied malevolence, fueling her ruinous decisions with duress. It was just her and only her. No outside hands throwing cards into this incomprehensibly grotesque game of crazy eights. It was just Silver Spears and her psyche guiding her. A messiah to a soul long-lost in the endless mist of villainy, inept in their abilities to send her careening off her path.

Silver deserved what needed to happen to her. She chose this. Levi knew it, and he knew it more than most likely anyone on Earth. Yet, for reasons he’ll never start to understand, his mind didn’t. The opposing, righteous side in this internal holy war refused to adhere to his heart’s miserable pining.

Why couldn’t he just do it?

Why couldn’t he saunter to Silver’s office indifferent to any possible repercussions, enraged serpents of fire slithering down his bones. Wreathing and charring his skeleton bereft of a shaving of ruth. Then, when that golden doorknob twists and the divider is removed, Levi can fly into a fiery bout of warranted wrath. Swinging wildly with the ferocity and abandon of a neanderthal pouncing on an injured sabertooth. Why wouldn’t his heart grant him permission? Why couldn’t he do what needed to be done?

A thunderous string of mighty pounds upon his front door beckoned another outlet for his focus to be funneled to. The skull-splitting roar that followed moments after cemented the prospect that more important duties were on the horizon. Exponentially more significant ventures were at the forefront.

“Royal Guard!”

Levi scrambled from his pale seat, hands clammy and plagued by a quiver. The male ripped open the door.

Outside, his gleaming golden attire punctuated by a background of rainfall, a Guardsman stood, unphased by Mother Nature’s boundless fury berating him. His feet rigidly rooted into the newly formed quagmire devouring every last inch of Ponyville’s glorious soil. Chestplace glinting in the dying remnants of an Equestrian afternoon, censored brutally by the titanic ocean of seething silver above. Cobalt crest burglarized of all gusto, garnering a sodden appearance as though it was painted to the stallion’s helmet. In his left faded brown hoof, peppered by drops of Adam’s ale, a piece of paper the color of tanned hide was present. More precisely, it bore far more importance than just being measly paper. It was a wanted poster.

Printed across the crown of the page in blocky stygian letters that couldn’t be any bolder, the words ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ screamed for every ounce of attention. Below that was a small square with a visage penned within its stingy demarcations. A face of the Grim Reaper donning a getup of human flesh. Raven hair blacker than any night. Aquamarine shirt as vivid as ever. Chiseled jaw painted by a small stubble. Amber orbs uncharacteristically deadpan and lifeless, as was the entirety of his features. Perpetually trapped in a snapshot of abnormal catharsis and tranquility foreign to Gary Demonio. If this was an arranged photo he had time to prepare for and not a masterful painting, that damned toothy smirk would most definitely accompany him. Just like it accompanied him everywhere before. No name or catalog of identifying features existed beneath the boxed-in illustration, but a reward and description of his crimes were.

‘Any price will be provided by the Royal Sisters for the capture or execution.’

‘Wanted for murder of multiple Royal Officials. Armed and extremely dangerous. Proceed with caution.’

Levi’s emeralds flicked from his worst possible nightmare in physical form to the hazelnut-colored mustang wielding it. A bereaved robust pony with a face blighted by a varnish of sorrow and grief. Despite the soldier’s laborious attempts at secreting it from the outside world, his anguish breached his self-erected dyke. Levi was always told the eyes were a gateway to the soul. A simple passage to his aching, throbbing spirit. Wallowing in a broad stagnant lake of sorrow for reasons Levi would be better off being left in the dark about. Now and very possibly forever. But he knew better than that. He was well-aware those rich brown optics, conduits to that paralyzed loch of emotion, weren’t there for no reason.

“Princess Celestia needs to see you in her castle urgently,” The soldier spoke. His timbre was that of a grizzled mountain man one would expect to find hunting grizzlies in the bowels of Winter. Not here delivering world-altering news, both metaphorically and literally, to a duo of hapless beings.

“We take it you know something about him that could be useful to us.”

His world collapsed around him like the legs of a dead spider, closing in to imprison him within their frigid confines. Levi would have predicted in a million years he’d hold the poster with a dead man’s likeness printed onto it. Especially his worst adversary forever bound to a world crawling with his kind.

Levi gave the disgruntled paladin, the herald of an inexorable skirmish bound to incite endless catastrophe, a half-nod.

Levi yanked his sword from the coat hanger.

‘SECOND HUMAN SPOTTED ATTACKS PONYVILLE! ROYAL GUARDS KILLED!’

Levi stared with a bustling mind and a heart seized by dread at the newspaper, clutched with undying disbelief. Homeric refusal to accept his current reality surging through his frothing veins. The omnibus of Ponyville’s domestic workings and affairs was crinkled at the edges. Garroted by hands fueled with a wrath unknown and unfelt by a vast majority of Equestria’s populace. An anger churning and writhing within the starved furnace of his core, impatiently slinking in and out of the shadows of secrecy. Waiting with bated breath and a teeming tank of patience for the moment to strike. Sink its whetted fangs into this peaceful world, infect it with blistering venom that was once bound to an alien realm. Incomprehensible wrath scorching his veins, charring every inch of the map of arteries keeping him alive. Life surging throughout his guilt-wracked frame, rivaled only by the acidic ocean of vexation annexing his jugular.

Reading the aggregate of the reporter’s findings forever engraved into his mind with diminutive letters was nothing short of a daunting challenge. His attempts at thoroughly analyzing the ruination blanketing the lives of these innocent equines was rhythmically interrupted. Flashes of a vile brew between heart-palpitating indignation and bone-crushing remorse painted his vision an angry crimson. His hearing burglarized, an eternal drone impaling the male’s ears. Not much invaded the mammoth scope of his understanding. An impenetrable bulwark of raw, bewildering emotion fighting until its dying breath. Its refusal to bow or bend to any entity’s whims steadfast and unceasing. The only glaring takeaways his confounded, bemused mind could fathom were things not eye-catching to any normal being. But to him, it was the offspring between world-concluding and undeniably ruinous.

‘Suspect escaped and is still at large…’

‘Armed and extremely dangerous. The Guard suggests staying inside and locking your doors…’

‘Any law enforcement entity, exercise extreme caution…’

‘Leaving two dead in his wake…’

Asking how would be a bona fide waste of time. Hell, everyone in that room would be better off staring at moving clouds than to ponder that inquiry. But why? That was a question every soul in that room would kill to know.

How? Simple. It was Gary adhering to the very same behaviors that razed his empire to worthless spates of rubble and bleached bones. Just mindless, senseless killings stemming from the repulsive bowels of a moldering heart. Its adoration for unremitting suffering and agony was boundless, yet its capabilities for mercy were arid.

Why? Simple, yet again. It was Gary Demonio. They got in the way of his goal, a path to Levi Cronell gouged by death and ichor, and they paid the price. Any mortal being with a beating heart and a brain was no exception to his boundless brutality. As long as they formed a dyke between him and his desired endgame, clemency was alien.

For the Man in Blue, the inquiry required little-to-no brain power to conjure an answer. It was absurdly facile, but impossibly grim all the same. Gary Demonio had an undying, incandescent hankering for Levi’s head screwed onto a pike. Anyone or anything that stood in his hellish warpath as he marched from the pits of Hell were… He tended not to think about how his victims were dispatched. The method in which they were punted from the mortal world and seized by the frigid grip of Death, hauled to places unknown. Possibly unfathomable to the minds of both humans and equines. Now, he had no choice but to ponder. The only option present in his hand being to wrestle with the prospect that he, the allegedly lionhearted paladin who vowed to provide salvation, failed.

Levi knew good and well why those harrowing events unfolded.

Two extraordinarily bemused ponies, however, both prominent figures in the male’s newfound existence, didn’t know. More accurately, they couldn’t begin the laborious process of fathoming this tragedy. A travesty one would expect to find buried deep beneath the plentiful pages of a poorly constructed novel. An event that trekked far beyond the rigid borders of serenity Equestria fabricated so long ago. Hiking further and further past the adamantine margins of No Man’s Land, disappearing into its silky whispering sands. An abhorrent abomination of Homeric proportions, akin to defiling a beloved children’s book with a profane fulmination of carnage.

Levi rested in perpetual, ceaseless unease, his bones mulled and imprisoned within coarse blocks of regret and sorrow. An ouroboros of dejection languished in both of his irises trekking back and forth across the caramel-tinted swath of paper. The expanse and titanic array of stories at his disposal was ample. His curiosity and drive to indulge in those tales, however, was an entirely different story.

The Man in Blue, his distraught friend, and the Princess of Equestria with a lust for answers all sat at the same table. A broad, lengthy sheet of brilliant ultramarine crystal, mined from the deepest cavities of the Earth. Scourged from depressions that stretched miles into the terra firma’s bowels, reaping absolutely gorgeous treasures from its serpentine innards. Levi and Celestia sat at both heads of the table with enough space to house and feed an entire famished colony, both of them shifting warily in their crystal chairs. Wallowing in the throat-gripping tension strong-arming the air to a simmering boil. At his left was Twilight, sitting at the spearhead of a countless row of seats identical to Levi’s. Only bereft of the imposing size and myriad of attention-robbing features.

A titanic ceiling crafted from the finest blanket of polished marble reached easily twenty-five feet above the brooding trio. The vanguard shielding them from the ruthless, famished bite of the softly whispering air. Autumn’s wrath was marching ever-so-closer to Equestria by the day, and it was only a matter of time, a week or two at best, before they were walloped by it. The difference between life and death for the brunete was a batch of warm clothes and a machine-knitted jacket dropped at his doorstep on a silver platter. The floor was a sprawling array of spotless lily-white ceramic, adorned with thin lines of unadulterated gold filling the cracks between. Glistening and basking in the moribund shafts of luster cascading through the rangy stained-glass windows. The storm’s boundless and indiscriminate fury was subsiding. Its sweltering rage, hot enough to bathe the aggregate of Tartarus in vibrant orange flames, had cooled. It too a victim of Fall’s frigid tendrils slowly but surely coiling around the blissfully unaware nation.

A trio of five-foot tall windows were at the prodigious table’s left, each one a different accosting color. The first was a graphic scarlet, as though a lake of blood had crystalized and been jostled into its frame. The second was a glorious blue. A beautiful cobalt, nearly identical to the silky button-down sleeving his condition-wracked chassis. Last but most certainly not least was a ravishing emerald green. Each and every one bereft of exceptions were embellished with the same picturesque design. An inexhaustible, byzantine labyrinth of what Levi could only discern to be cracks in the vivacious glass. The sprawling network of lines all tethering and conjoining as one gargantuan picture was gorgeous, like the ink of a squid blighting the limpid ocean blue. Its jet-black tassels and sylphlike form floundering in the limitless expanse of Adam’s ale, crawling up and down the water like gleaming veins on a frozen corpse.

Levi steered every ounce and drop of indivisible attention back to the indescribable calamity. The chief task at hand that trumped all else his psyche dared to distract him with thundered. Bellowing with the might of a thousand gods with all the air in its massive lungs, imploring for the lion’s share of Levi’s aid and focus.

Levi flicked his wrist, releasing the swathe of stories and tales of Ponyville’s everyday life from his bone-crushing grip. The drove of paper slid a few inches across the pristine, spotless ultramarine table, seized by an unshakable twirl. It was a super colossus of furniture. A mammoth diving board forged from the finest of gemstones, given life and purpose by a quad of thick legs beneath it. Firmly rooting it to the castle’s equally illustrious flooring. For the most part, its edges were smooth. However, akin to the demon in fleshy form they were meager seconds from discussing, there were always deviations. An entity or thing that refused to bow to whatever will or command was imposed upon them, whether inherently awful or not. A slim handful of bumps marred the flawless sides.

The Man in Blue stole one more glance at the bulk of paper. Bereaved emeralds raked across the title. It was only then when Levi learned the true nature of this incomprehensible cataclysm. Gary Demonio’s vile magnum opus was published in the national paper. The ‘Equestria Daily’ to be exact. Every citizen from every walk of life in this expansive new world was aware of the inbound torrential disaster. There was nothing bearing any semblance to doubt in his mind about that prospect. Ruination was coming, and it was coming at lightning speed. A swiftness so brisk and nimble, Zeus would lead a centuries-long crusade in an attempt to harness its vigor. Next to the newspaper was that wanted poster. A more appropriate term for it would be the catalyst of Levi’s foiled chances at a new existence. One deprived of the endless carnage and merciless savagery that reigned supreme back in his hometown.

His imagination recognized no bounds when it came to pondering how he’d handle the noirette.

Levi leaned back in his marvelous seat, folding his bare forearms over his heaving chest. The air was stagnant for a time no one could keep track of. Stale yet blistering, like a dead river conquered by bacteria and invasive fauna baked by the raging passion of summer. Every sound known to the entirety of humanity cowered in unintelligible fright, impaled by a gelid sword of dread at the silence’s unyielding might. Shivering in terror while bathed in the gloomy shadow of its towering stature. One wrong move of its gargantuan crown would send the golden empire of heaven hurtling towards the Earth.

The threesome’s current state of deathly quietude wasn’t always this way. In fact, less than a half-minute bid farewell to the brooding trio since anything resembling a sound had been uttered. All it took was one suggestion for the monstrous massacre of noise to unravel. One witless, seemingly comedic proposition from the so-called “brilliant” ruler of all of Equestria.

Two words. It was a measly duo of words that slaughtered any fragmented sentence he slogged to conjure.

“What was that?” Levi uttered, unfathomable perplexity bleeding into the torpid atmosphere.

The oppressive, paramount quietude reigning supreme over the juggernaut guildhall was uprooted. Heartlessly wrenched from its unwarranted throne, deposed from the leviathan spire of power it rested on. Cast into the murky unplumbed chasm of irrelevance. Returning back to the boundless gloomy wasteland it somehow managed to call home.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but did I hear you say bounty hunters?”

“You heard me right, Levi.” Princess Celestia, one of Equestria’s lionhearted figureheads, spoke, her intelligence and wisdom allegedly limitless. Her supposedly all-encompassing knowledge blanketing the full expanse of her vivacious mind.

“Bounty hunters? Bounty?”

“Levi, you have my word that these are some of the most skilled ponies I could’ve possibly implored to fulfill this. They’re the best in their field, without a shadow of a doubt.”

“Bounty hunting isn’t a ‘field’.” Levi fired, a vile brew of heart-grinding anxiety and craggy disbelief stained his tongue. “A field means there’s skill, right? What skill is there in bounty hunting?”

“It takes a lot to master the profession. A lot more work and effort is put in than you might think.”

“Profession?” Levi lobbed across the pristine ultramarine table. “I wish you’d choose your words a lot better, Princess. There’s nothing professional about a bounty hunter. All they ever care about is the money.”

“Not always,”

“I know people, and people are greedy. Where there’s a price tag, they’ll swarm it like the vultures they are, no matter the size of it.” Levi sneered.

The Man in Blue folded his arms over his constricted chest, blighted by an empty-bellied ouroboros of barbed sorrow wreathing his heart. Glorying in the sanctuary behind his adamantine rib cage.

“What’s your reasoning that these ones are gonna be any different?” The male inquired.

“Since you desire, they have dedicated their lives to serving Appleooza.”

Levi cocked a brow. “What do you mean by serving?”

“They’re a unit of law enforcement, Levi. Where the Sheriff and the other officers fail, they’re available to clean up whatever mess is made. No matter the cost or means.”

“I don’t want to belittle you, and don’t think that I am, but do you truly understand our situation? Every aspect of it?”

Celestia paused. A bristled cord of hesitation was wound around her tongue, strangled with the might of a legion of furious gods.

“I am…” She stared blankly for a few moments. “I am a princess, so I will not lie to you. Not now or ever in the future. If I’m honest…I’m not sure I have fully come to terms with….”

She flicked her forlorn gaze to the bundle of agonies plaguing the table’s immaculate, unbreakable surface.

“With this. I don’t know what exactly I can refer to this as.” Celestia spoke.

“I have an idea,” Levi chimed. “A massacre is what this is. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t have a clue on what kind of authority I have here, but we need to find him.”

“We will.”

“No, we are. Today. Now.” Levi stabbed his fingertip into the table’s unsullied skin. “I refuse to put this amount of trust into a bunch of damned bounty hunters. I won’t do it.”

“You’re going to have to, Levi. This is too perilous of a mission for you to do it on your own.”

“Do you think I can’t handle myself?”

“Not at-” Celestia severed her words in two. Her brilliant lavender orbs shut, a sharp arrow of wind magnetized into her lungs. “Not at all, Levi.”

Twilight sat rigidly, paralyzed by the unwavering, blistering tension throttling the soupy air.

Levi paused, shifting in his crystalline seat. Gaze unfaltering. He leaned forward.

“You don’t understand what he’s capable of, Princess.” He growled. “He’s murdered so many. My friends, my family, these innocent pe-” He caught himself. “Ponies, I mean. Give me your best soldiers. Not many, just a few. All I need is a few. I’ll go out there and I will find him. I promise you that.”

“Those were my best soldiers,” Celestia quipped. “They…were…”

Were.

The word trapped her heart in a byzantine labyrinth of whetted spikes and barbs.

Were. Flash Sentry was the pinnacle of chivalry and valiant combat. Flash Sentry was the antithesis of their most vile adversaries and foes. Clashing tooth and nail for the sake of his beloved, beyond cherished home. Flash Sentry was alive. Now, he was not. Callously slain by a singular bullet to his windpipe, strings of ichor jetting from his grievous, irreversible affliction. Forever marring the hapless walls of that equally hapless building, inhabited by hapless ponies entangled in the thorny vines of this limitless carnage. Savagery spurted from the blackened maw of an unfathomable monster.

A golden sabaton rapped upon the titanic golden double doors. Towering kahunas of roaring tumult came crashing down on the melancholic trio, marauding them with their cacophonous wrath. One half of the bisected entryway divorced its regal, bedazzled frame. A miniscule crack was born between the door and its aurate brethren, filling every inch of the blank space was the stony, stoic visage of a peach-colored mustang. It was a Royal Guardsman, flaunting his impossibly straight posture and calculating bronze irises, the color akin to a pot of melted pennies. Those irises… A blitzkrieg of harrowing memories, some long past and others yet to materialize, flogged his psyche. His jawline was a sculptor’s magnum opus, sharp and chiseled to the absolute utmost. A twain of pearlescent rows of veneers resided within his maw.

“Your Majesty,” An unplumbed voice boomed from the bowels of his veiny throat like the crash of cymbals. Not as gritty or coarse as Levi expected, yet fathomless and baffling all the same. “They’ve arrived.”

“Perfect!” The Princess chirped. “Bring them in.”

The warrior swiveled his massive head with the precision of a turret shifting to a new target. He glanced behind him for a fleeting moment, dealing the beings at his rear a short nod and an unintelligible mumble. The ironclad paladin retreated into the inner byzantine workings of the castle corridor. Swiftly dissolving in the sprawling networks of bejeweled halls and silky curtains. The left door fully opened. Centuries-old hinges groaned like a horde of drunken sailors. Dainty maw of gold wider than ever akin to a gilded yawning whale shark.

Levi rotated in his resplendent chair. Bony elbow reposing on the chair’s arm, chin lazing in his clammy palm. Fingertips brushing the cactus ends of his faded sideburns. His frame faced the entryway.

In Levi’s tempestuous maelstrom of vexation, known simply as his mind, his expectations were all but buried in the chilled Equestrian dirt. Entombed under a dense mantle of lifeless soil, drowning in silt miles beneath the Earth. When it came to measuring his shoddy outlook on this supposed solution in physical form, a meager three levels were at his disposal. High, medium, and last but not least, low. The lowest low. Deep in the unplumbed fathoms below his firmly rooted feet. Housed by the begrimed, archaic catacombs in Equestria’s bowels, abandoned by the cruel council of time.

How would a pair of pot-bellied bounty hunters with spacious stomachs teeming with an indigestible lust for wealth solve his problem? On that note, what was their definition of solve? Solving meant what to these ponies? A job well done meant…what exactly? A burlap moth-eaten sack of gold or clods of cash? Or perhaps it was another notch on their engraved belts. Yet another kill. Another bullet breaching a skull or a rib cage shattered with a brisk round. More lives being lost to Gary’s boundless bloodlust? When would this carnage conclude? Was there even an end to sight? A roaring, angry furnace of torrid questions swallowed the Man in Blue’s skull. One singular, isolated method of snuffing the extravagant fountain of fire was a being. Whatever earth pony, unicorn, or pegasus happened across this pristine guildhall.

A foreboding band of equines sauntered into the prodigious hall. Menace rippled every which way from the raucous amalgamation of hoofsteps and talons scraping the pristine floor. Reverberating endlessly off the mesmerizing walls. Its eminent shimmering flesh towering above the lawless troupe, their efforts to bewitch the diverse array of vigilantes were vehemently denied.

An elderly Griffon was the prideful spearhead of his quintet of unrelenting pursuers. The archaic creature was a husky geezer, blessed with the utterly flawless combination of strength and wisdom. On the outside was a frail, nigh-worthless rat with wings, no better than a scouring pigeon blighting the sky. On the inside, however, was an entirely different story. One scratched across paper by a feather dipped in a vial of iridescent blood. Beneath the veneer of pale salmon-pink flesh, akin to that of a naked chicken, lathered with a thick layer of ashen smoky feathers, was a warrior. Far behind his mangy sky blue irises was an omnibus of harrowing, bone-chilling tales. A boundless library teeming with an unending catalog of macabre memories. Stories plumbing the fathomless depths of callous violence. Most of the recountings were warnings. An unflagging horde of shepherds trying in vain to steer any soul they can away from the life he and his cronies lived. And from the looks of it, a life of misery they continued to live.

A charcoal-black sports coat veiled his average build. Above his buttoned outer breast pockets, etched into the sable fabric with golden thread, were a twain of Victorian-era flowers. Their heads flamboyant and arresting, flaunting their blemishless appearance as though tomorrow wasn’t assured. Judging by the motivation behind their arrival, it would be a safe bet to assume it wasn’t. The jacket’s interior was a gorgeous scarlet punctuated by a diamond stitch pattern adorned with two inner pockets. His navy blue button-down was fully conjoined sans the top two buttons. A chest-full of feathers the color of cast raw steel burst out of the canyon in his shirt. The waistline of his faded weather-beaten pants consumed the bottom of his shirt, sealed inside by a war-torn brown belt.

His stony visage, clenched by the unyielding forces of indifference, was wrinkled. His pale flesh crawled down his face like rolling magma down a hill. A cracked tallow-colored beak was perched above his marred chin, forever disfigured by a hideous laceration. Battle scars from a frivolous skirmish. A result of his unflagging pursuit of his heart’s materialistic desire. His sunken sockets were like the gaping mouth of a titanic cavern, his azure globes, plagued by the memories of his sins, lazed blissfully within. His attention-robbing posse assumed their places in the row of chairs on Levi’s right. Slender crystal legs glided across the picturesque marble floor. The remainder of his cohort were seemingly ranked by mere surface-level importance and cleanliness. Whether the arrangement was purposeful or was a mammoth mishap was a question for another day.

Beside the Griffon was who Levi could only assume to be the elder’s right-hand unicorn. Age-wise, the discrepancy was vast. With the Griffon being neck-deep in his seventies at the absolute bare minimum, his comrade was at the very least in his forties. A stark white stallion destitute of a flowing mane sprouting from his broad neck, mapped by bulging veins. His irises were a bygone prospector’s dream, two orbs of molten gold floating in ponds of white within his sockets. The mustang’s outfit on the other hand was exponentially lacking in comparison to the head honcho. A simple combination of a tattered, dirt-streaked khaki button-down with rolled up sleeves and frayed blue jeans. Ominous fissures were present in the denim. His pants torn and mangled from one of the countless futile battles he found he found himself ensnared in. Clashing tooth-and-nail for a frivolous cause, beaten half-to-death for an equally frivolous purpose. After all, a mortal can’t turn their back on Mother Nature’s commandments without bearing grizzly consequences. Levi knew far too well. Both personal experience and eye-witnesses.

The Griffon’s front talons were folded over one another atop the crystal table. It was only then when a myriad of miniscule, diminutive features stumbled into Levi’s sight. A golden ring annexed by rust hugging his ring finger. A silver necklace wreathing his feathery neck, slithering down into his shirt. He wore a white pork pie hat, crafted from the silkiest fabric his blood money could possibly purchase. A black feather was tucked into the hat’s ribbon tied around its crown.

Levi’s gaze metamorphosed into a needlelike, acute glare impaling the Griffon’s nettled irises. It wasn't fury or disgust that chiseled his stare into an adolescent glower. It was difficult to describe, the more the brunete internally sparred with it. He wanted to tack the blame on disappointment. Waste no time in pointing an accusatory finger at the brutal murder of his expectations. After all, what did Levi truly and undoubtedly expect to see stroll into the royal hall? A different mythological beast? Perhaps an axe-wielding Minotaur hellbent on dishing out heaps of righteous justice. Or a Centaur with fire clasping his bones and a heart trapped in a furnace of wrath. He didn’t know to a pinpoint certainty what exactly he wanted to be spat out of those doors. And, if he was thoroughly honest, this was inarguably the best hand he could’ve ever received.

The Griffon challenged his grimace with his own monstrous, grievous version of it. It was a perfect blend of bitterness and annoyance, as though he’d been practicing since the day he dawned into this world. Judging by the work he came here to pursue, that was doubtlessly the case.

“Thank you for coming today, Mister Surly,” Celestia spoke, razing the silence to a mound of nothingness. Levi and the Griffon concluded their staredown in a hard-fought tie. “It truly is a pleasure.”

“I hope it is,” The Griffon, Mister Surly, finally spoke. His voice was like the crushing of a thousand logs, each of them pulverized into a heap of splinters and kindling. One after another, operating in perfect synchronized consecutiveness.

The Man in Blue refused to pat himself on the back for his correct prediction. It seemed…rude to him? Rude. That was a funny word during his particular state of affairs. Mister Surly and his band of lawless renegades were here to turn a hopeful death from a pipe dream into a preordained execution. To say anything was considered rude or impolite seemed otherworldly now.

Mister Surly swiveled his craggy optics. Frigid blue met anxious emerald.

“Is this the human I’ve heard so much about?” Mister Surly questioned.

Something was braided with his words. An obscure, concealed emotion that Levi struggled to pin an appropriate name onto, yet it resided upon the tip of his tongue. What was it? The only semi-likely guess his scragged mind could conjure was that the Griffon harbored his own sense of disappointment. What the male felt towards the old geezer was sourly reciprocated.

Levi merely nodded.

“I thought you woulda been taller. A bit bigger, too. But whatever.”

His assumption was confirmed.

“Thank you for coming today, Mister Surly.” Celestia chirped.

“Get rid of all this ‘mister’ shit,” The Griffon barked. “I loathe manners, always have and always will. But I guess I can make an exception for the Princess. Name’s Mortimer.”

Mortimer motioned his head toward his confidant at his side. “This right here is Dread Shot. Got the finest aim in all of Equestria.”

The Griffon pointed a yellowed claw at the grizzled earth pony beside Dread. His coat the somber color of a charred log, while the stallion’s irises was the stark opposite. Vivid brown, the shade of an oak tree’s rugged bark, occupied his dog-tired sockets. His bushy jet-black goatee was polluted with bright veins of silver. Fatigued visage aimed at the table, his haggard expression mirrored in its gleaming surface. The equine’s outfit didn’t venture into uncharted territory by any means. An impossibly simple brown short-sleeve button-down paired with a black Stetson hat, a stampede string fastened beneath his chin. A small golden string was tied around the hat’s grooved crown.

“That right there is Tacitus, but he lets his friends call him Taci.” Mortimer exclaimed, zero regard for his volume being present. “He doesn’t talk much. It’s somethin’ y’all gonna have to get used to.”

Beside Tacitus was another unicorn, a female this time. Her platinum blonde hair tied back in a Viking-style braid. Seafoam green skin faded from a myriad of things, stress and endless pointless battles the likely prominent cause. Contrary to her rugged, husky comrades, the mare was the most innocent seeming of the brash bunch. A wrinkled black jacket, designed to outlast its user in the cruelest conditions, was complimented by a spotless white tee, her labyrinthine braid snaking beneath her folded collar. Two rows of gleaming pearlescent teeth punctuated her intoxicating smile. A singular solid bronze canine added ravishing pizzazz to her already enchanting smirk. The doelike grin, akin to a Cheschire cat, seemed more like a brainwashing technique than a simple mesmer. Perhaps too long of a gawk would rewire his mind into a thoughtless invalid, programmed with the solitary purpose of serving…what was her name?

“That’s Clear Sky there. The nicest of my band of fuck-ups.” Mortimer chimed. “And that at the end there is my son, Mortimer Junior.”

At the end of the row, seemingly ranked last in terms of significance, was a smaller Griffon. The colors of his all-encompassing feathers were nigh-identical to his archaic father. In the stead of his guardian’s foreboding, smoky hue was a pale silver. His beak was a light amber color, bereft of the defining grievous cracks and crannies his father wore. The young Griffon, who couldn’t have been older than seventeen, was clad in a yellow-and-blue checkered flannel with rolled-up sleeves. A pair of tattered black peg-leg jeans were filled by his slender claws with the flaps of his untucked shirt secreting his waistline. The small patch of skin above his left eyebrow was marred by a puny laceration, one of his bone-tired azure orbs resting beneath it. Jumbo eye bags were hooked onto his bottom eyelids. A jet-black bowler hat with a purple ribbon once lazed atop his naked scalp. Now, it was held within his whetted claws, clutched by the curved brim.

“Hey.” Mortimer Junior’s diminutive voice uttered, giving the Man in Blue a half-assed wave. His eyes met Levi’s for a fleeting moment before being magnetized back to his headwear. The object of his unending anxious fidgeting.

“That’s outta the way now,” Mortimer warbled. “Let’s get down to business, gentlecolts.”

“‘Business.’” Levi’s mumble was suffocated by his breath.

Under any ordinary circumstances, an action of that variety was vehemently abhorred by the brunete. His disdain knew zero bounds to that degree of disrespect no matter who the target happened to be. But if this arrogant, crass beast from Greek mythology possessed little regard for his etiquette, what reason did Levi have to care for his?

“Who is this ‘Gary Demonio’ I’ve been getting my ears talked off about?”

“This ‘Gary Demonio’ is a human like I am, just a lot bigger and taller. I’d say about five-foot-eleven, maybe six-foot. Huge arms, really wide. He’s impossible to miss.”

“What makes him so damn special?” Mortimer asked. “If he’s just like you with a couple more inches, why is he so important?”

“Have you been reading the papers, Mortimer?”

“It’s Mister Surly to you.” The Griffon snapped.

“Fine then. Have you been caught up, Mister Surly?”

“I can’t say that I am. I haven’t touched a newspaper in fifteen years.”

“Figures,” Levi grumbled. “This is the most important bounty of your entire life, the biggest payout too, and you insist on arguing about it. Why?”

“Who’s arguin’?” Mortimer flared. “I’m just not a fan of your attitude, Mister whatever your damn name is.”

“I don’t like yours much either, Mister Surly.”

Mortimer nodded slowly. “Then why on Celestia’s green Earth should I waste my time helpin’ you then?”

“You aren’t helping me, you’re helping the entire country. You’re helping your people, too.”

“How?”

“Twi, can you?.” Levi motioned his hand to the duo of papers atop the table.

“Oh! Of course.” Twilight replied, abducted from her bout of daydreaming and tossed into reality.

She briskly nodded, her horn flaring. The newspaper and discomforting wanted poster were garnished by an arresting, bold lavender aura. Both articles of paper glided across the table both halting mere inches from the Griffon’s sullied talons. Mortimer seized the recounting of Gary’s injustices, while Dread Shot analyzed his illustrated visage. The artistry failed to capture his unnervingly unique amber irises, teeming with a bloodlust no mortal being could comprehend. His giant calloused hands varnished by glimmering crimson.

“He killed two Royal Guards, Mister Surly. Two.” Levi explained.

The Griffon’s ancient optics soared left and right across the page. Attempting to decipher what was surging through his feeble yet acute mind was a nigh-impractical task. And judging by what he bore witness to thus far, it was all too possible he refused to allow any sort of emotion to conquer his features.

Those eyes…

The eyes, the gaping uncensored gateways to the soul, always followed one universal rule, destitute of exceptions. To always display what resided in the heart for all to see, no matter how vile or honorable it was. They swore an oath to always bring the inside to the outside. Mortimer Surly had zero hand in that matter.

“One was shot in the throat, the other in the head. Both bullseyes. No other bullet casings were-”

“I can fuckin’ read!” Mortimer spat.

“Let me see it, Dad.” His son spoke.

“Why? You can’t read, Morty. Did you forget?” His father chided.

Mortimer Junior pointed his face to the table. His ceaseless fidgeting was persistent.

“I saw the pistol he had. It’s high power,” Levi scratched his cheek. “Strong enough to kill twenty of you before you could even blink. I don’t need any more dead ponies on my conscience, Mister Surly.”

“You won’t get any,” Dread interjected. “We’re a lot of things, but dead ain’t one of ‘em. You can rest easy.”

“Lemme take a look!” Mortimer robbed the poster from his comrade’s hands. Irritation reigned supreme upon his craggy features.

Mortimer paused, glancing over the hastily scratched words.

“Dangerous?” The Griffon scoffed. “I’ve seen enough dangerous to know this isn’t anythin’ new.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet.” Levi refuted. “Take what you know and double it. I’m willing to bet it still won’t hold a candle.”

“Y’know what?” Mortimer hissed. “What makes you so fuckin’ educated, Mister? Why do you think you know better than me? My whole damn life has been dangerous, I know it better than you know yourself!”

“Because my brother killed him.”

The entirety of the Surly Gang was flabbergasted, dunked into a soupy lake of heart-gripping shock.

“Say again?” Dread inquired with brows raised to the heavens.

“My brother, Alan, I’m sure you’ve heard of him, he shot Demonio years ago. Not here, but in a world far away from here called Tuscaloosa. That’s where we’re both from.”

“Sounds a lot like Appleooza.” Dread commented.

“Sounds a lot like a plate of bullshit to me,” Mortimer sneered. His talons were folded over his chest, leaning back into his chair. “If he’s been dead in another world for who knows how long, how on Earth did he end up here?”

Levi rubbed his eyes in unalderated annoyance.

“Better yet, how are you here?” He continued.

“Mister Surly, I believe you’re missing the point of this visit.” Celestia piped up. “Demonio is a threat to the general safety of Equestria. If he’s capable of defeating one of our best commanders with ease, the potential outcomes are endless.”

“Oh, I’m sure they are.”

“Please. The fate and safety of countless citizens is in jeopardy, Mister Surly.” Celestia pleaded. “You and your gang are the only ponies I believe are skilled enough to see this through.”

Dread Shot swiveled his head. He and his ill-tempered superior exchanged glances. One was the offspring of hope about this exhilarating prospect and trepidation over their target. The Griffon, however, couldn’t decide which factions of his heart were more important. His pride, or his bare-bones money chest buried beneath his floorboards back home.

“Any price,” Levi commented. “Think of it. Anything you could ever dream of just from one man. One bullet to his head and it’s all yours. I’d give you this whole castle for his head.”

“Any amount of money for one last bounty, Mort. Do you know how fortunate we are for this?”

“I got ears, Dread!”

“I know but…think of others. Don’t just think of us.”

Mortimer stared at Levi for a long while, his focus shifting between his only two options. Illimitable riches and the opportunity to forge a new life, free from the adamantine chains of sin. Or he could leave. Depart from this bougie crystalline place and take the next train back to this endless cycle of pursuing frivolous dollars.

“Any price?”

Levi nodded.

“Fine.” Mortimer grumbled, leaning forward in his chair. “Tell me more about this ‘Gary Demonio.’”

Chapter 25: The Way we Fall Apart

“Pawn to D4?” Violet Heart inquired, gazing bemused into the gratified crystal eyes of her housemate.

“Yeah, what about it?” Alan Sizemore rebutted with a smirk.

“I thought you rarely ever played chess?”

“That’s true, but that don’t mean I ain’t know anythin’.”

“The Dutch Defense is a pretty complicated move, Alan. It’s not something you just know.”

“Well it’s clearly somethin’ I know. I know a lot more complicated things than a chess move, Miss Heart.”

Violet cleared her throat. “Suppose you are.”

“You don’t gotta ‘suppose’ anything.” Alan chortled.

The long-lost human, marooned in an empire crafted from a cave-full of crystals, sat at a birch dining table in the dead-center of his comrade’s kitchen. None other than Violet Heart’s kitchen. Its black-and-white tiled floor and cyan-painted drawers and cabinets all emanated a similar scent. An intoxicating fragrance that threatened to lull the raven-haired man into a bout of nostalgic recollections. The siren song had long-since breached his flaring nostrils, no contest proposed to its entry. And for the first time in, what he could only assume to be, a manifold of years, Alan was finally content.

Alan Sizemore had struck gold.

He finally found what he had been tirelessly searching for with every unflappable cell in his feeble frame. His unending pursuit was nothing short of resolute. The fruits of his tenure were few and far between, yet his desired endgame was always the infatuation of his tunnel vision. All he ever possessed a hankering for was merely a life he could call his own. Not that eternal, interminable cycle of damnation he barely classified as living back in Tuscaloosa. An everlasting loop of hellish suffering that bypassed all bounds and margins. Whether they were extant at all in the first place was an entirely different discussion in and of itself. If anybody were to ask the male his brother called Bird’s Nest, he’d fervently preach with all the air in his lungs that they never existed at all. And there was a myriad of evidence to suggest that proposition.

When Alan allowed his pulsating head to be swallowed by his lush pillow, he was pleasantly surprised at the nightly outside tumult that became habitual for him. The lack thereof was a better way of describing it. No bitter active war between separate congregations of homeless fiends, willing to take any action to achieve the mountainous high. A wool was drawn over their crazed, sleep-deprived eyes towards the glaring truth. The singular fact that what they blissfully reveled in during their first encounter with narcotics was a prospering memory, but one that was unable to be re-experienced.

For years upon years, when Alan surrendered his frame to his blanket’s gluttonous clutches, that was his macabre lullaby. Incessant roaring and howling, badgering the beaming moon. Haymakers hurled one after another, a feat the man never thought possible with their brittle malleable limbs. A pair of icicles covered in flesh would’ve seen the job through better than those wiry sore-ridden hags. The unfaltering scourges to Roseville that he and his brother essentially ushered into existence.

In this gleaming glass wonderland, ruled by utter and unadulterated tranquility, the moon’s whimsical reign was accompanied by…silence. Nothing else dared to exist within the Empire’s soundless borders. Nothing but the sweet, succulent, placid silence. When he laid his weary head down to rest in a clean bed he could call his own, he was at peace. Badgered by a ravenous drove of worries and doubts, yet amongst the ceaseless discord, he scrounged serenity. Even beneath the sun’s golden watchful eye, it was still largely conquered by quietude. No gimcrack vehicles, clawing at any strand of life they could forage, thundering down the pothole-littered roads. No homeless menaces leaving their abominable mark on his diseased old world. No negatives formed a canker sore on the vista.

His life, this newfound opportunity for prosperity, was perfect. Perhaps too perfect.

“How much did you learn from your books, Alan?” Violet inquired.

“More than you’re thinkin’, I’m sure.” Alan replied. “I ain’t just some dumb hic from the boonies, Violet.”

“How many more chess moves, hm?”

“Scillian’s defense, Bird’s defense, Scandinavian defense. My memory’s been a little hazy for a while.”

Alan’s stone-grey ceramic coffee cup was wreathed by his battered, threadbare hand. Scarred knuckles and calloused palm ignited by the balmy liquid within. Ghostly strings of steam floated out of the chocolate-brown lake like lost souls ascending to heaven’s golden gates. The raven-haired male reveled in a hearty swig, scorching the fleshy walls of his throat like a clod of slag. How his esophagus wasn’t inundated with infernal flames was a bona fide miracle. A gift from the very same gods the threads of steam rose to greet.

“Is there anything you know that’s not a defense? You can’t win a chess game by defending the entire time.”

Alan stroked his butt chin, the badgersome stubble ravaging his visage prodded his fingertips like a field of whetted daggers. “The Queen’s Gambit.”

“Alright.”

“The English Opening.”

“Is that it?”

The man gazed at the painfully drab tan popcorn ceiling, swallowed by the titanic salivating maw of deep fathomless thought. Thirty seconds passed. Thirty seconds of feverish, zealous combing of his mammoth catalog of memories and knowledge. Thirty seconds that amounted to a fruitless conclusion.

“You got me. I’m spent.” Alan responded. The unicorn chortled. “Just play your move, we ain’t got all day.”

“Of course we do!” Violet rebutted. “What kind of plans do you got?”

“I didn’t tell you?”

Violet moved her far-left pawn up two spaces. B6.

“What secrets are you holding from me?”

Alan moved a second pawn. E4.

“I talked to a few of the locals and read the paper yesterday, turns out Levi’s fine. More than fine actually. They’ve been calling him the ‘Man in Blue’.”

Violet moved her left knight. F6.

“The man in what?”

“The Man in Blue. From what I’ve heard, the princess here gave him this sword made outta crystals. Word around town is it belonged to this warrior a hundred years ago.”

Alan moved his far-right pawn. H3.

“Platinum Wing?”

“You heard too?”

“Of course I have. You think I live under a rock?”

“We’ve been living under one for a while. This house might as well be a rock.”

Violet’s lionhearted knight advanced, its passion for delivering justice unyielding. C5. The valiant paladin glowered at the petulant bishop across from him.

The unicorn snickered, snagging another gulp of her liquid caffeine. Her cup was a glorious shade of azure disfigured by a meager handful of chipped paint shards. “Shut up.”

Alan wiped away his smirk. “Where is he again? Ponyville, yeah?”

“Yes. Ponyville. I heard it’s pretty boring up there around…every time of the year.”

“I’m sure Levi’s spicing it up. Roseville was Hell, but that Hell was better with a friend.”

Alan’s far-right pawn trekked further into the calamitous No Man’s Land. H4.

“When are you going to tell me about Roseville?” Violet inquired. “I’ve been super curious ever since you mentioned it, Alan, you know me.”

“You got that too right. Sometimes I feel like I know you too much.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Yup.” Alan seized his ardent cup with an elated grip. Pale snakes of steam levitated from the rippling Vandyke pond, tickling his nostrils. “Best chance you got of knowin’ is after I’m dead.”

Another slug of the brown torrid liquid dove down his throat, crashing into their wide hospitable arms. The bewitching taste of rich French vanilla massaged his tongue.

“Why is that?”

Violet’s sable knight bounded with unyielding zeal. His baleful lance agleam, its menace was pestilence among the house’s colorful atmosphere.

“It’s…” Alan’s far-right rook glided across the unsullied wooden board, crashing into his pawn’s unsuspecting rear. H3. The male’s brain worked unpaid overtime.

Unflagging and unceasing, rusted cogs and archaic pistons chugging to their oily heart’s content. Attempting to conjure a feasible response as to why that bloated corpse of a town couldn’t be discussed was nigh-impossible. In all honesty, the word “couldn’t” was nothing short of generous. The man cannot, under any circumstances in this life or the next, tell Violet Heart about his… Even with years bidding him farewell since the injustices he and his brother committed, he wasn’t sure what name best fit his actions. Hell, he wasn’t sure what name best fit him because of them. Atrocities? Cardinal sins? Detestable inhumanity rivaled only by the demon in human clothing he exiled from Earth? If he was truthful, like Alan always swore to be, he was all of the above. Candidly, the boundless laundry list of potential mantles he could don stretched into starry oblivion.

Alan’s icy irises plummeted to the table for a fleeting fistful of seconds. The illustrious, untarnished crystalline table displaying his sorrow and regret like a macabre theater performance. A first-row seat showing for Misery and Guilt at Seven o’clock sharp, showing only at none other than the Crystal Empire Grand Theatre. Located right at his doorstep, both metaphorically and literally.

The soupy quietude was leaden. Cumbersome on the unicorn’s immaculate heart, her ribs threatening to fulminate into a lake of splinters. Asking the absolute supreme leader of dour inquiries was a crime she’d committed far too many instances prior. However, akin to the homicidal urges of Roseville’s disgraced monarch, her curiosity was ceaseless. Heeding not to any variation of borders or margins, refusing to adhere to social limitations. The way her pestersome, prying questions stormed the adamantine castle of one’s privacy was borderline impressive. Becoming a private investigator was the dream she gunned for as a child, after all.

A glaze of remorse, the magnitude foreign to Violet, poured over his frozen visage. Swallowing every defining characteristic and feature daring to infiltrate its warpath.

“Alan?” Violet spoke. “Everything oka-”

“I need to check the mail.” The noirette interjected.

Alan shoved hard on the undeserving table. To his housemate’s unadulterated shock, the table didn’t crash into the speckless tiles the way she expected. No mighty tumble of Homeric proportions occurred, yet the departure of her loyal friend did.

Four legs giving life to an elderly dining room chair growled, dipping ever-so-slightly into the grooves between the monochromatic tiles. A duo of feet clad in dilapidated threadbare socks nearly jetted across the kitchen floor. His middle toe and gnarled nail peeked from the fabric sleeving his foot. How the tear dawned into reality was a question no one alive could clarify. Whether it was simply by natural wear-and-tear or his skirmish with that profane beast in the belly of the woods was up to interpretation. Alan scurried from tile, to lush carpet, then finally to the coarse doormat, slipping his extremities into his ramshackle shoes parked next to the door.

“Alan, what is it?”

The deadbolt flung from the doorframe. Its latch following suit, dangling from the entryway like a dead snake boasted by a hunter.

“What’s wrong?”

He twisted the knob.

Outside, the Crystal Empire was as ethereal as a location on Earth could possibly get. In fact, granting credit to what warrants it, it was the closest to Heaven’s mystical terrain he never thought he’d bear witness to. Viewing a beauty of this unrivaled enormity was a feat he undoubtedly didn’t deserve. After all, with lives either lying in shambolic rubble or in the throes of addiction because of him, why should he be able to experience this. Every human has one life to live. Not a free trial, not a prepaid adventure, and certainly not a test run. One life governed by their own volition and desires, and that was it. Alan had razed countless. Either forcing them to a brutish, poignant terminus, or allowing them to saunter towards it naturally. Legs piloted by their tank of vitality, destitute and scanty. Yet, the merciful God he surrendered his life to long ago did exactly what he was known for. Permitting clemency to those who plead for their paths to be altered.

The herculean sun held steadfast dominion over the Empire it held partial ownership of. The fact of the matter always was that, without it, its unequaled heart-gripping glamor could never exist. A river of golden luster pelted the craggy horizon, populated only by glimmering triangular roofs and gleaming inactive street lamps. The sainted blemishless gung ho sidewalks were buzzing with life and exuberance. Unicorns and earth ponies of all ages and appearances gave the Empire the lifeforce it merits. An interminable belt of bobbing hairstyles was all Alan’s grief-stricken mind could process, not one identical to another. Their sheeny flesh and the string of houses they strolled past shimmering in the same dazzling fashion.

Alan’s quaking legs and teetering knees were welded to Violet Heart’s front porch, if “porch” was even the correct term. It was a medium-sized cyan crystal block with two perfectly rectangular steps leading to the walkway. Three slabs were planted firmly into the Empire ground, spilling out into the ever-stretching mesmerizing road. The small path was enclosed by a small garden imprisoned by, to no one’s surprise at all, an azure crystalline waist-high fence. Two small squares of vivacious, exuberant foliage added pizzazz to the quaint abode. Emanating bountiful elegance amongst an unending strip of monotonous uniformity. As much as Alan revered this kingdom he was blessed enough to call his cursory home, he had to admit redundancy was a blight upon its serenity.

Inhale. A sprawling ocean of oxygen was herded into his lungs. Exhale. The sea of air fled his chest. Both seas quivered endlessly, shaking like a man with a pistol barrel delving into the back of his head. Alan receded into the semi-comforting oblivion behind his eyelids. His cyanic irises, unperturbed and level-headed under any ordinary circumstances, were a decaying husk of their past selves. A granitelike mask of abominable, unyielding fright was soldered onto his sodden visage. Two dour pinpoints of cimmerian dread occupied his sockets, his optics evicted. Alan tugged the collar of his slim-fitting white tee, swiping his saturated forehead with the silky ethereal fabric. Pearls of sweat crawled out of the wrinkled flesh above his languishing irises. Some absorbed by frayed tentacles of hair striping his forehead, others cantered down his countenance.

“Ah, man…” Alan rumbled into his vibrating palms. “Lord have mercy. I need to get a grip.”

The male swept his greasy jungly bangs from his pang-ridden orbs. He reached a chapped, craggy hand to the brilliant azure mailbox, flipping the lid and rifling through its innards. It emerged clutching three articles of paper, each varying in thickness and texture. One was a broad laminated sheet, most likely a vast catalog of desperate advertisements and pot-bellied sponsors. The two others were poles apart from one another. A sleek envelope and a tightly rolled tube of paper, the probable culprits being a pestersome bill and a bountiful newspaper.

Alan’s hand receded from its crystalline belly, its glossy lid stridently closing. The prospect of never judging a book by its cover was drilled into his besmirched psyche. Now, the sole instance when his judgments were based exclusively on appearance, its rusted hinges walloped him with the truth. He sauntered back through the maw of Violet’s modest abode with a disinfected heart and an unburdened mind. Clutched in his left hand was the trio of parchments fished from the archaic mailbox, his right lazed by his side. Violet Heart stood in the kitchen’s yawning mouth directly where the drab carpet converted to elegant checkered tiles.

“Alan?”

“It’s nothin’ to worry about, I’m okay.” The rattled human replied, stifling a vocal tremor overstaying its unwarranted welcome. “You got somethin’ worth looking at.”

“Sore subject?”

The male nodded. “More than sore. Too touchy for my likin’.”

Alan tossed the trio of papers to the queen of the household. The prideful owner of this errorless roof he bore the luck of living and breathing beneath. Her horn swiftly detonated in a starburst of arresting vivacious gleam. The parcels were ruthlessly seized by a bold, attention-robbing lustrous aura, briskly forced into a uniform row in the open air. All three were arranged in a painfully precise single-file line with roughly five-inches of space between each of them. On the left was the spyglass-shaped rolled-up newspaper, the middle was the envelope, and the right was the manifold of slogans and advertised products. A duo of glinting hazel irises scrutinized the contents of the papers to the highest possible extent. Their fate dangled haplessly in the indecisive atmosphere, one of two fates would befall the pitiful sheets. Condemned to hellish doom in the recesses of a garbage can, or set aside for later more intimate examination. The right sheet was the first to be analyzed.

“Garbage.”

The paper soared into the kitchen, still imprisoned by a sensational azure ring, and crammed into the half-filled trash can. Becoming one with the colony of meritless objects deemed unworthy of life within.

The envelope was examined.

“A bill.” Violet spoke in the selfsame deadpan, uninterested timbre.

She hurled the envelope onto her black leather reclining chair, slipping into one of its many lightless crevices.

Lastly, the newspaper was the final victim of her boundless rigorous scrutiny. A tube of brown-tinted paper rolled into the shape of a shotgun barrel, bound together by three strings of cobalt thread.

“You think anything exciting is going on?” The unicorn playfully inquired. She freed the plethora of information from its badgersome bindings.

“Let’s hope not.”

“Why not?”

“Excitin’ usually means trouble where I’m from. I never liked excitement in the papers.”

“Well you’re not there anymore,” Violet replied. “Excitement here is just plain excitement, no strings attached.” She unfurled the newspaper.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Alan spoke with a beaming charismatic grin.

With Alan anchored to her left side, the inquisitive pair rested their intrigued orbs upon the cinnamon-colored paper. Absorbing every eloquently constructed sentence and fresh batch of knowledge the articles presented for consumption. Nothing was spared or granted clemency from the duo’s ravenous lust for details and enthusing developments. Even in Roseville, where abominable headlines displaying detestable machinations was the standard, Alan was no stranger to perusing the extent of humanity’s depravity. Even the most gloomy amidst the rambling field of sins.

However, despite the thousands of malevolent injustices he’d seen flagrantly exposed in the local papers, none of them ever succeeded in tugging his heart into his stomach. Drowning it in the septic fathoms of his stomach, wound tightly with barbed wires of dread. A frigid, unyielding dagger of fright arrived with long-entombed memories in tow, engaging in a frenzied primal stabbing spree. His core was fixated and honeycombed. Grievous emotional wounds littered his tremor-wracked form.

‘MURDER IN PONYVILLE!’ The caption screamed. ‘ROYAL GUARD SLAIN! FAMILIES IN TEARS!’

His ears ceased their ordinary function. Anything strident nor slight could breach the bulwark of incessant shallow ringing. Not Violet’s words of concern. Not the maelstrom of mortifying recollections of the long-bygone town he called home. The thunderous barks of hurtling bullets swarmed his skull. Raucous howls of desolate men gazing into the Grim Reaper’s dour sockets. Every sonorous laugh and loathsome chortle that ever scampered from the bowels of Gary’s throat. His disregard for human life prevalent with every quip, with every yank of the trigger.

His face…

That stomach-churning, heart-pulverizing, sickeningly obnoxious countenance. Those amber orbs, teeming with enough arrogance to annihilate an entire army. Chiseled jawline like a scrapped addition to Mount Rushmore. Turquoise button-down fit snugly over his ironclad frame and rugged chest. The unrelenting tempest of reminders of Roseville’s former dictator all stemmed from a talented artist’s magnum opus in the bottom-right corner. Beneath it, printed in small letters and imprisoned within parentheses, read a name. The name. The only thing that swayed him away from any possible separate outcome to this vile state of affairs he’d soon be entangled in. This wasn’t some terrifyingly identical twin forsaken at birth by his equally monstrous parents. This wasn’t some despicable night terror or a sadistic game played by a maniacal god. This was reality.

‘Artist’s depiction of Gary Demonio.’

“Alan?” Violet’s ginger voice infiltrated his ears at long last. “Alan, what’s wrong? What is it?”

His chapped lips mumbled soundless words. A traffic jam between his lungs and his throat was erected. Any garbled mash of words he could just barely construct a coherent sentence out of was lifeless. Brittle shallow skeletons of words barely fettered together with rotting ropes and frail wires.

“Come on, Al, pull that fucking thing! Pull that trigger!” Gary’s mockery pinballed endlessly off the walls of his pulsating skull. His dying words. The final instance he expected to ever hear his voice. From then until the instant time reached its ceremonious coda.

Yet, here he was. Bearing witness to the ignition of the inevitable trail of firecrackers, each explosion charring his warpath a deeper stygian. Burrowing his viscous tendrils of malevolence further into the blissfully oblivious earth. He and his brother brought this monster back, not a hint of doubt vandalized that statement. The guilt bludgeoning him was nigh-fatal.

“Alan, please, what’s-”

“I…” Alan’s quivering feet were welded to the plushy carpet. The floor was transformed into a titanic glue trap, tearing his palpitating shoes from the unsympathetic flooring.

Alan was a hapless mouse trapped in this diabolical game. An internal fray given unwarranted life by a trio of unseen gods. Their influence abhorrent and prodigious, the male reduced to a meager object of homeric ruthless desire.

Alan wrenched his left foot from the carpet. It was a struggle of intergalactic proportions, as though the magnetic force of the planet was boosted twentyfold. Adamantine chains shackled his right hand to his roaring chest. A bundle of velvety white fabric was clutched in a bone-crushing grip.

“I need some-”

All in one breezy moment, Alan twirled his unfathomably shaken frame, strode a single step towards the kitchen, and gravity’s salivating maw ingested him. His legs crumbled beneath the weight of the countless lives Gary has yet to claim. Gravity wreathed its wretched tendrils around the man’s obliques, tugging him to the rigid ground. Alan fell prey to a mighty tumble with little to no parallels. The closest thing that could hold a candle was the fall of the Roman Empire.

Forearms bashed the kitchen tiles. Legs still penned within the living room’s margins. Alan lifted his head, utterly and entirely engulfed by a mist of disbelief. Tear-flooded eyes snapped onto a flimsy, gimcrack wooden door directly across from him. It was constructed from birch wood with a windowframe bereft of glass, only a slightly rusted square of thin mesh wire dwelled within it.

“Alan! Alan, everything’s okay!” The male couldn’t quite pinpoint what method of speech she implemented to call out his name. It lacked the crucial potency to be considered a bellow, yet it was too clamorous to be titled as a whisper.

The noirette’s ears were blighted by an eternal drone, an unceasing bombardment like the tranquil hum of a microwave. Any shred of noise that dared to frolic in his ear canals was a faint ghost of its former self. His quivering ribs were the subject of his heart’s ruthless clobbering, veins frothing with petrified vigor. Alan buried his toes into the carpet, boosting off his trembling feet. The raven-haired male charged like a vengeful Rhinoceros with an unyielding lust for blood and demolition.

The world collapsed all around him. More accurately, his world. A fresh new chance at an unsullied, stainless existence in a dimension where villainy of this degree was alien. This opportunity-his final opportunity-to trek forward into a life destitute in the boundless carnage and languishing that had grown habitual to witness was dashed. Heartlessly harrowed and incinerated right before his tear-filmed sky blue irises. The feverishly dancing orange flames almost reflected in his quaking pupils.

Alan dashed to the feeble door, hapless and unsuspecting toward the oncoming blitzkrieg. He charged across the black-and-white tiles in a mere duo of seconds. A burly, ironclad shoulder barreled into the frail wooden door indifferent to the preordained aftermath he was well-aware walked across the horizon. The door exploded forward, ricocheting off the wall left to its puny frame.

The backyard was, in comparison to the entirety of Violet’s abode, nothing worth catching anyone’s attention. A small rectangular lot of animated flamboyant grass tripped the light fantastic in the hushed Fall breeze. Imprisoning the diminutive, shrunken-down lawn was a lofty picket fence, easily surpassing Alan’s height. In retrospect, that feat wasn’t much of an accomplishment. Most likely anything throughout that modest home could tower over a hunched-over dilapidated husk of a man. Knees impaling the boggy dirt, moistened from the previous unsympathetic assault of rainfall. Loose hands, robbed of anything bearing semblance to structure or zest, crashing into the distant cousin of a swamp. The heels of his manuses shouldering the brunt of his meteoric impact. Slender dandelions lept from the luscious earth, ghostly pale seeds abducted by the tranquil melodic gale. Their bulbous heads burglarized of all signs of life. With their colorless dandruff traveling to alien greener pastures, all that remained was an erect lonesome stalk wallowing in forced bitter solitude. Their equally melancholic brethren provided shallow company, yet nothing to begin to quell the sorrowful loneliness.

Dotting the yard’s outskirts were evenly spaced bushes, varying ever-so-slightly in size and thickness. Some were puny and just barely surpassed a bowling ball in size. Others were titanic, effortlessly dwarfing an Elephant’s gargantuan foot. Alan’s dumbfounded irises, conquered by incomprehensible dread and terror, were magnetized to a hapless mammoth bush. A colossal stone spawned in his roiling stomach, his belly tumbling enough to make a gymnast glow green with envy.

The male scrambled across the lawn like a famished Jaguar infatuated with a dying Gazelle. He slid on his buckled knees, halting mere centimeters from a behemoth bush. One final rotation of his stomach violently tugged the ripcord. His crashing world spun one conclusive gyration, brain pirouetting in his aching skull. A geyser of repugnant, obscene bile singed his esophagus like a Phoenix’s indiscriminate wrath. The bush’s rangy thorny limbs were vandalized, disgraced by a despicable glistening coat of the khaki-colored abomination. His scalded throat was transformed into a ravenous geyser of steaming quicksand. Trembling denim-covered kneecaps swallowed by the spongy lawn.

Amidst the shallow cacophony of ceaseless droning laying waste to his eardrums, the leaden thump of hooves against the backyard mire.

A strident wail ripped through the overstrung air, ravaging the eardrums of his concerned housemate. The male sobbed to his fragmented heart’s content.

“No, no, no, no! NO!” The noirette wailed, rocking back and forth. Every moment both tiny and prodigious stirred the sorrow-infested waters of the atmosphere, rippling relentlessly. “Gary, he ain’t dead! He ain’t dead, man, he ain’t dead!”

A set of ginger hooves pressed into his lurching back. “Alan, what-”

His quaking frame exploded in a vicious starburst of unbridled aggression. Left elbow shooting back like a trained hunter’s arrow, body slightly twisting. Alan’s bereaved, misery-wracked countenance was the recipe of nightmares. Crystalline icy irises, like smoldering rings of glorious blue flame, were thoroughly extinguished. Pupils were akin to a cloudless, starless midnight sky. Just utter unrestrained darkness as far as the eye could see and comprehend. No life. No hidden undertones of love or admiration. Nothing but hollow tenebrosity. The experience was bone-chilling, akin to gazing into the shallow eyes of a frigid corpse. Two unplumbed chasms into a lightless damnation, anguish and agonized souls of the condemned holding rigid dominion. A thread of saliva dangled from his bottom like an empty nose swinging in the gallows, swaying in a decaying breeze.
“He ain’t dead!” The afflicted raven-haired man caterwauled with a rumbling sniffle. A twain of mucus strings retracted into his nostrils. “He ain’t dead… How is he not dead…?”

His deafening, throat-ripping howl had devolved into a pitiful murmur. “How…? He ain’t dead, man… He ain’t dead.”

Alan was imprisoned within an interminable loop. Incessant back and forth rocking, grumbling sniffles seizing his draining nostrils, and the occasional sob. A violent, lung-squeezing cry of unchained agony and trauma. Another crucial part of this infinite egregious loop was the darkness. More specifically, and more accurately, what occupied this soupy unending void behind his eyelids. When his bloodshot orbs were plunged into that familiar murky oblivion and a tear stampeded down his cheek, a vicious maelstrom pillaged his psyche. Memory after memory, carnage bled into senseless Kafkaesque senseless barbarity that recognized little to no parallels. Past gunshots clobbered his eardrums. The snide mirth that subsequently plagued the Roseville air slammed against his skull like a legion of trains, traveling from the mouth of the one he slew.

Violet lathered the noirette’s tense back with her consoling hooves, feeling the bony ridges of his spine through the sweat-drenched shirt. The volume of his body-wracking sobs plummeted. He wrenched a trembling hand from the waterlogged grass, swiping it across his pumping nostrils. A sickly yellow thread of mucus vandalized the calloused flesh, rivaling his dirt-caked fingernails in sheer nauseation.

“Gosh,” Alan croaked, swallowing the eight-ball in his esophagus. “He ain’t… Why is he not dead…?...Why?”

“I don’t know, Alan,” Violet crooned, rubbing miscellaneous, nondescript patterns into his back. The shapes were akin to crop circles left by otherworldly aliens. “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.”

“He’s gonna burn this world down. All of it. We’re all gonna die.” The man breathed.

“We’re not, Alan.”

“We are!” His voice was shallow and breathy. “We are… We’re all finished…” He was seized by an unyielding coughing fit.

“Alan-”

“Where did that paper say he was?”

“What was that?”

“Where did that paper say he killed those people at? Was it some town?”

Violet paused, her hooves unceasing. “Ponyville.”

“How far?”

“Alan, absolutely-”

“How. Far. Away?” The male drove his fist into the sodden ground with each spat word.

Violet sighed in defeat. “A few hours away at the earliest.”

Alan seized a handful of the grass-infested mud with a wrathful hand.

“Pack a bag.”

“You can’t be serious, right?”

Alan socked the ground with the might of a thousand angry gods. “Why do I keep repeatin’ myself!” The male barked. “Pack us a bag, we’re leavin’!”

“Are you sure this is the right thing, Alan?”

“When’s the next train?”

If Levi Cronell was given every year Earth had in its expansive vault of free time, nothing he was able to imagine or conjure could ever dream of surpassing his current state of affairs.

Here he was, a human being hidden within the regal grandiose bowels of a colossal royal castle. Sitting at the head of a crystal table conversing with a band of bounty hunters, led by an overtly spiteful, callous Griffon. A Griffon he was currently imploring to the highest possible degree to see beyond the murky film of venom blinding him. Robbing him of the dire ability to view this horrendous, ghastly situation and every portion of it for what it truly was. Somewhere out there, deep in some miscellaneous forest or aimlessly roaming a heartless desert, Gary Demonio was alive. A human being just like the Man in Blue, only bereft of a functioning moral compass and so much as a morsel of ruth. Hidden amongst Equestria’s rambling and lively landscape, all choked by the rigid dominion of Princess Celestia, Gary survived against titanic odds.

The only thing Levi could feverishly pray for was that Mortimer Surly harbored the capabilities to rival those odds. Approach the raven-haired bastard as he mindlessly roamed these alien lands and launch a round into his forehead for his sins. Pulverize him beneath justice’s mammoth hammer, assume the stead of judge and jury. Above all else, however, becoming the swift and cunning executioner was all that truly mattered. The morality of this scenario was meaningless, as did the means to achieve it. It was all shrouded beneath a broad, all-encompassing umbrella of worthlessness. It mattered not how unjust or inhumane the means to achieve it were. This unending vivacious landscape could be charred and scathed from their homeric battle. Equestria’s lucious earth scalped off all vibrant life and vivid plants. If someone were to assume a biblical, prophesied apocalypse had occurred there, they’d be forgiven for their not-so-baseless assumptions.

The bottom line was, no matter who got hurt or maimed in the process, Gary Demonio will die. Even in spite of the elephantine costs that may sprout to achieve it. Levi knew it. Celestia knew it. Hell, he was almost positive that Twilight knew it. The only one who needed to understand the severity of their hellish situation was Mortimer. Perhaps the answer to his burning question would appease his famished inner doubts, gnawing on his calcified heart of stone.

“Tell me more about this ‘Gary Demonio’.” Mortimer Surly asked, leaning forward in his illustrious seat ever-so-slightly. Shrewd, calculating irises scrutinizing the Man in Blue to the utmost. His secreted unwarranted convictions singed the male’s emerald optics.

“I need to know a few things about you and your people first,” Levi replied, resting his ankle upon his knee. “What’ve you and them done together?”

“Captured bounties. Tons of ‘em.”

“How many?”

Mortimer’s orbs flicked to his comrade on his right. Dread Shot stared off into some unseen invisible oblivion, abducted by a mist of deep fathomless thought.

“Two-hundred or so, something around that.” Dread answered.

Levi nodded slowly, his countenance indecipherable. Twilight shuffled nervously in her chair.

“How were they?”

“Watchu mean?” Mortimer fired.

“How were they? Violent, calm? Did they go down easy?”

“Barely any of them went down ‘easy’. A whole lot of ‘em were a royal pain in the ass. What’s your point?”

“How violent?”

Mortimer’s brows furrowed. “Are you an undercover lawpony, Mister?”

“Why would I be?”

“‘Cause you’re real good at interrogatin’,” Mortimer snapped. “Why are you askin’ all these damn questions? I hate repeatin’ myself, what’s the damn point?”

“If you’d really like to know,” Levi spoke, stifling a yawn. “I’m trying to figure out what you’re capable of, Mister Surly. The Princess thinks you can do it, I’m just not so convinced yet.”

“Would you like me to put a bullet in your leg to prove I can ‘do it’. I can draw fast enough to make your head spin, Mister.”

“That’s good to hear, but you all have…guns?”

“Yes we have guns, what’s so suprisin’?”

Aberrant and unbridled surprise bludgeoned his roaring heart like a jury of wrathful sledgehammers, deeming him guilty with no likelihood of clemency. Flocks of deplorable memories led a bloodthirsty blitzkrieg upon his psyche, its thunderous wrath boundless and indiscriminate. Remnants of skull-splitting gunshots, robbing lives from men gone and forgotten to time and indifference, resounded throughout his brain.

“Just…” The words fought tooth-and-nail with his rebellious tongue. Engaging in a torrid primal clash for unwavering supremacy over the male’s lips, half-open and paralyzed. Primed to utter a sentence that would never be granted life. “We’re getting off-track.”

“How much longer are you gonna grill us, Mister?” Mortimer croaked, scornful impatience bleeding into the high-strung air.

“What kind of guns are we talking about?”

“Depends on who you ask. Revolvers, repeaters, a few shotguns and pistols.” Dread chimed. His silence and lack of any addition to the conversation lasted trifling minutes, yet moved slower than eons.

“Are they easy to get?”

“I wouldn’t say they are. They’re outlawed just about everywhere if you’re not law enforcement. Even for us they were a pain to get our hooves on.”

Levi slowly nodded. “Understood. I just wanna rest easy knowing he can’t get more than he already has. If it gets any easier for him to take lives…who knows how many we’ll lose.”

“We?” Mortimer questioned. “The only ‘we’ here is me and my family. I’m not doing this for you, Mister.”

“It’s Mister Cronell.”

Mortimer scoffed. “I’m still not doing this for you, Mister Cronell.”

“Think whatever you like, Mister Surly, it doesn’t matter to me. You need to understand it’s not about you or money, there’s a bigger picture.”

“I can see the bigger picture just fuckin’ fine, Mister.” Mortimer refuted. “How many more questions do you got in that empty head of yours?”

Each gratuitous, senseless obscenity that flung from his cracked yellowed beak was an injustice. Despite his disdainful words having a clear target bereft of any muddled confusion, every backhanded insult was a stab to the regal atmosphere. He could almost hear the bedazzled walls and royal chandelier suspended above their heads forlornly weeping.

Levi’s jaw tightened. His teeth had all but become one, soldered together by a righteous aggravation.

“I got more than enough questions,” Levi replied. “All I need to know is if you’re capable of doing this right. Doing this at all, as a matter of fact. I hate to sound like a doubter but-”

“Clearly don’t hate it that much, Mister. You’re doubtin’ my damn ears off!”

“Relax, Mortimer,” Dread spoke, taming the snarling beast. “How many more questions you got for us, Mister Cronell?”

“Not many.” Levi shifted in his chair. “It’s just…how do I say this? I just want you all to understand the severity of this.”

“We do,” Dread responded.

“I’m sure you do. He’s the one I’m most worried about.” Levi pointed his index at the vexed Griffon. “If your leader refuses to understand how important this is, who’s to say any of you will?”

“He will. I’m positive he will.” Dread swiveled his head towards his comrade. “Almost positive anyway.”

Mortimer tightened his talons into a grainy fist. His slender bird-like extremities bore the appearance of golden bamboo. The elder’s icy irises maced his right-hand man’s indignant orbs without a faint inkling of mercy. The pair relayed a wordless message to one another, the contents being anyone’s guess. A silent plea to the head honcho that their departure needed to graze the horizon, perhaps a differing transmission entirely. Whatever the conveyance happened to be, it was enough to invoke a badgered sigh. At this point in the drawn-out declaration of boundaries and payment, anything that wasn’t a wrathful slew of vulgarities was appreciated. More than that, in fact. It was revered in every sense of the word.

Mortimer grumbled a bulk of nothingness before he spoke. The timbre of his elderly voice akin to the growling of a rumbling volcano. Mightier than the mountain of fire that erased Pompei from history’s manuscript.

“Mister…?” Mortimer shot Dread a bemused glare.

“Cronell.”

“Mister Cronell, if this ‘Demonio’ is so important and life-threatenin’, why are you wastin’ our time yakin’ about nothin’? We could’ve brought you his head twenty minutes ago if you would’ve cut us loose!”

“The thing is-”

“What’s the damned thing?”

Levi closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. Anger marred his countenance. His visage was a roiling, tempestuous lake of glorious rampant flames.

“The thing is I need you to understand-”

“The severity. Yes, I know.” The Griffon grumbled. “I’ve already come to an understandin’ twenty minutes ago!”

Levi addressed Dread Shot. “You’ve known him far longer than me, is he truthful?”

“‘Course I’m truthful!” Mortimer shot.

Dread pivoted his head to face his dear friend, scanning his features with systematic scrutiny. A machine-like analysis with a degree that Levi had never witnessed a day in his life prior to this torrid meeting. If he was entirely honest, this crude mockery of a discussion was anything but a junction between two factions. It wasn’t a blissfully simple, effortless conjoining of two parties with one shared objective welding their minds together. The aim of stopping a mass butcher, hellbent on executing any man, woman, or child to get to Levi Cronell, wasn’t enough to craft even a mediocre bond. What this was, this event held within the regal margins of Canterlot, was an ungoverned crash of two worlds. With the unshackled mayhem of colliding galaxies, realms smashed into one another like Maladors entangled in an ancient quarrel. Glaring stars callously routed. Planets bounced and careened like an intergalactic pinball championship, spanning across the aggregate of illimitable universes.

The duo of domains made themselves clearer than any crystal could ever dream of being. Mortimer Surly Sr. The gluttonous, indurate king of his band of semi-decent cronies. His black oozing heart teeming with a glut of baseless spite. Arguably the spearhead of this nation’s bounty hunting sect, otherwise known as Equestria’s money-hungry cesspit. Then there was Levi Cronell. A man with an open mind and a lust for stamping out the roaring flames consuming Equestria’s parched fields. That fire donning an aquamarine shirt and a belt swallowed by the waistline of his pants.

They were polar opposites in all the ways one could possibly envision. A triage of gunslingers and thieves led by a false messiah and a warrior preordained by an archaic prophecy. How could they ever successfully mesh as one? Weaving and crocheting their unique abilities and talents into one unstoppable power. An obelisk of unflappable might that would never see a deposition. If there was one thing Levi harbored a fatal allergy to, it was a pathetic surrender.

“I think we’re just about done here.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, I know.” Levi’s hand curled into a bony fist upon the table. “If you can’t understand now, there’s no way I can help you.”

“I’ve told you already! I understand and so does my family.”

Levi glared at the man for a long while, several seconds or so. “I’ll take your word for it.”

The Man in Blue rose from his chair. An array of hushed cracks and soft pops coiled around his spine. Mortimer and his ensemble of haggards followed suit, closely mirrored by Twilight and Equestria’s lionhearted ruler.

“Thank you for your time, Mister Surly.” Celestia proclaimed, regurgitating bare lies through her flawless pearlescent teeth. The alicorn towered above the Surly gang, but none more than the crude ill-mannered winged Rat they somehow called their leader.

Out of every being in that room, each armed with their own varying degree of authority, one would envisage that, of all people, the Princess of all of Equestria would do the trick. She would accomplish the goal of delivering a beyond righteous reality check to the abrasive Griffon, currently soldered onto the saddle of his high horse. His nerves hastily bounding to lofty heights as Levi extended his hand across the table. Mortimer, standing at the rear of his chair he neglected to push back in, grumbled like an angry stomach.

“Well, it was a pleasure to meet you.” Levi spoke.

“Why’re you wastin’ your breath lyin’ to me?”

Levi’s visage hardened. His false mockery of a grin ironed out into a stiff line drawn across his flesh. Lips shackled to each other by adamantine chains of vexation,

“Why are you wasting your time still talking to me?”

For quite possibly the ten thousandth time that poorly spent afternoon, Mortimer Surly glowered at the Man in Blue. His beak shut tightly by a furious glue, azure irises sharper than the timeless sword sleeping against Levi’s thigh. Sharper than the jaded dagger of impatience lacerating Twilight’s countenance.

Mortimer’s indiscriminate smoldering glower was ever-so-incandescent. Correctly identified the raw emotion scrawled across the Griffon’s wrinkled features was daunting. Far from daunting, in fact. Venturing dangerously far into the uncharted realm of impossible, unachievable prospects. Anger? Annoyance? Disgust? A repugnant tapestry of the two? No one dwelling beneath that sprawling marble roof was able to find the truth amidst a lake of perplexity. Even Levi, the self-christened maestro of deciphering the most byzantine of body language, was astounded at his inability.

“So, Mister Surly,” Celestia’s strident cadence chimed. “What amount have you decided? To remind you, any price you desire can be done.”

“Any price…”

Mortimer gazed at the gleaming ground. The pristine sheeny floor was a radiant warzone. The herculean sun’s robust dynasty clashing barbarically with the Sparkling Empire. Brilliant golden rays swung their unseen swords, cleaving the head of countless twinkling goons. Their glistening corpses flung across the scarred battlefield and danced around his hind legs like rouge firecrackers.

“A hundred-thousand bits and a train to Manehattan and everything’ll be even.” Mortimer answered, meeting Levi’s emeralds. “You’ll have his head in no time. No time at all.”

“Give me an estimate. How long?”

“‘Course you want an estimate,” He murmured.

“The bare minimum is a couple weeks, maybe less. The longest it’ll take us is a month or two but I doubt it’ll come to that. We’ve never slacked off with a job like this in years.”
Levi cocked a brow. “He could kill an entire town in a week, a country in a month.”

“I believe they understand the importance of this job, Levi. Trust is a significant during times like these.” Celestia spoke.

“Sounds to me like a lot of garnish with no meat to me. When are you gonna be done pukin’ out this dramatic bullshit.”

“Just get out of here,” Levi sneered, rubbing his palm from his forehead to his chin in annoyance. “Just get out and get it done. Don’t come back unless you have his head in a basket for me.”

With a derogatory quibble and a look sweltering enough to set a planet ablaze, the Griffon swiveled his slender frame. Before the Equestrian king of thieves wrenched himself from Levi’s presence, he made sure to make his already loathsome, puss-oozing mark more revolting. Light the fuse for the rocket of aberration and foulness to soar to unplumbed heights. One last murmur escaped the prison that was his worn dog-tired lungs and fissured beak.

“As you wish, tough ass.” Quiet enough so his right-hand man wouldn’t bash him over the head for his despicable impudence. A feat that struck Levi dead with shock that it hadn’t been achieved earlier.

Mortimer, the silent giant walking among mortals Tacitus, and the indifferent Clear Sky all sauntered in unison to the door they all entered from. The entrance to this hellish nightmare of baseless crudeness the male was heartlessly subjected to. Hell, if this was some cruel game put on by a god infatuated with sadism tugging the strings, surprise would enter his heart last.

The aggregate of the gang was preparing for a swift departure. All sans one singular exception. Dread Shot. The golden child radiating blinding rays of hope in all the directions. Amidst a boundless rambling ocean of charred husks of buildings within a dead city, Dread Shot was the city on the hill. Looking down upon them all with a pitiful gaze. In his left hoof held closely to his mouth was a white note card pulled from his breast pocket. Locked in between his jaws, the end dashing wildly across the soon-to-be polluted paper, was a black ink pen.

Dread’s feverish scrawling concluded, spitting the pen back into his breast pocket. He handed the bemused yet doubtlessly intrigued human the transcribed slip.

“Don't say a thing, Mister Cronell, just go.” The stallion whispered. Quieter than a docile gale swimming through a town’s vacant streets in the dead of night. “If he’s as dangerous as you say, I trust you ain’t lying, then you’ll need one.”

Levi clasped the note card in his fingers, scrutinizing the discordant handwriting. Attempting to decipher these prehistoric otherworldly hieroglyphics would be a detective's euphoria. For the brunete, however, it would be his own personalized damnation. But one that could never dream of rivaling that atrocious first contact with Mortimer Surly.

Levi’s inquisitive emeralds were magnetized to the paper. The ruthless incoherence of the handwriting launched a hellish crusade on his eyeballs. Relentlessly cryptic and scarily byzantine, the words were akin to the path of a headless chicken. Aimless dashing in all directions bathed in thickest and blackest mire, stump vomiting ichor endlessly. Levi gawked at the muddled swamp of bleary letters with a tilted head for numerous seconds.

“Appaloosa, Fool’s Doom, ASAP. Guns for $.” The dollar sign, what Levi could only assume that garbled pig-pen on paper was, was a shoddy charade of the shape. A slanted crooked S impaled through its scalp by two wavy snake-esque lines like reflections of serpents in a rippling lake.

‘Fool’s Doom?’ Levi intramurally inquired. ‘I wish I knew who the real fool is right now. Me or that bastard Griffon. I can only wonder.’

After snatching his hat from the coat rack’s gimcrack substitute, the Surly Gang was long gone. Dissipating into whatever miscellaneous strident wind elegantly pirouetted through the city’s mesmerizing streets. Vanishing entirely from his sight as briskly and unsuspectedly as they arrived. Breaching the brittle bulwark of solace he constructed from the feeblest of twigs and twine.

“Fool’s Doom. I can only wonder what this is gonna be.” The male grouched beneath his breath. He slid the legal graffiti in the back pocket of his jeans.

“How are you feeling, Levi?” Equestria’s Princess questioned.

“As fine as I’ll ever be. I guess ‘fine’ is the word I’m looking for.”

“That went better than I was anticipating,” Twilight replied. “I knew Griffons weren’t the kindest in Equestria but I never could have prepared for…that.”

“Me neither. Not in a million years, Twilight.” Levi replied. Twisting his neck left and right, guttural rumbles echoing down his bony spine. “You ready to head out of here? I need a break. I’m sure you’re having book withdrawal by now.”

“We all do, Levi, but you do the most out of all of us.”

“I suppose I…need some time to process everything. It’s all so…raw still.” Celestia’s voice, once a gorgeous river of sunlight in auditory form, was a diminished husk of its past self. “Flash Sentry was one of my greatest.”

Levi paused for a fleeting handful of seconds, assembling his words with monolithic exercised caution. “He didn’t die needlessly, Princess, and it won’t be senseless either.”

“How likely are the chances he is caught?”

“If these bounty hunters are all they’re chalked up to be, then very likely.” Levi spoke. “If me and my brother could beat him in that old town of hillbillies, who’s to say Mortimer can’t?”

Celestia breathed deep, herding oceans of air into her titanic lungs. “I suppose my worries can be quelled in the meantime, Levi. I’m putting my trust in the both of you.”

“I don’t say this often, but when I do, I mean it. You have my word when I say this. I will make Gary suffer for this. I’m sure they want the same as me.”

“They lack the personal vendetta, Levi. Their drive won’t be as passionate.”

“I know that more than anyone but it’s still a drive regardless, and that’s all we need.”

“I suppose you are right, Levi.” Celestia replied. “Only time can guide us now.”

Time.

Levi never fancied time to be an accurate compass under any circumstances at any instance, heedless of how ordinary or aberrant they were. Tuscaloosa was where this seed of unfettered wrath towards the perpetually marching concept bloomed, he supposed. After all, at this tumultuous stage in his fractured puzzling prism of a life, supposing was his only option to make sense of anything.

When that ramshackle skeleton of a town housed his roots and dwelling, any free time he possessed in his trembling hackneyed hands were spent calculating. Tossing countless hours into a fathomless inferno forlornly striving to console his storming heart, rioting behind his ribs. The cage containing the hammering organ quivering in frigid all-encompassing fright. One tangible, readily apparent method was at his disposal to soothe the ravenous internal tempest. It was an affirmation he uttered religiously, like a zealot clinging to centuries-old proverb. One saying that constructed a trifling wall between him, and the fathomless bowels of insanity. A dreadful plunge where surviving was an alien concept.

The prospect that one day, hopefully someday soon, Gary Demonio would be gone. Forcefully transported to a tartarean realm far beyond the margins of human understanding. Vanishing in a haze of scarlet mist to a land of boundless, unfathomable righteous reckoning. One day, Gary would be dead. One day, Gary would die. One day, Levi would be free from this unwarranted cycle of brutish torment. One day, Levi could live.

He never expected in a billion years that, even universes from his fallen kingdom, Levi would be repeating that same mantra. The words practically branded into the walls of his fatigued skull. His cranium growing dog-tired from the unpitying monotony. After all, words, both internal and oxygen-powered, possess exclusively the power supplied to them. The long-winded sentences creating permanent grooves in his vexed skull are just that. Sentences. Not promises. Not assurances. Not a forward peek into a golden care-free universe. Just sentences. Shallow, empty capsules of letters tethered together into a train of meaningless thought.

High above the ceaseless extravagant fields of Equestria, oblivious to the devil blighted their population, Levi and Twilight stood anxiously. Feet planted firmly into the tan wicker basket providing them an effortless casual cruise. The main supplier of ease and relaxation was a titanic, bulbous lightbulb-shaped balloon, its material anonymous and shockingly cryptic. Its color was an arresting metallic blue with a miniscule opening located directly above their heads, occupied by a tiny torch. Spewing a brilliant torrent of orange-and-blue flame into the sprawling expanse of open air within. The pair serenely coasted in a vast, extraordinarily smooth ocean of vivid cyan. Amidst their tranquil wayfare tens of miles above civilization, they were accompanied by illimitable unexpected companions. Rowboats of clouds braved the waters alongside them, countless of them, each of them completely and utterly unique in their own way. Among the fathomless ranks of them the twosome bore witness to, not one was alike to another. Each possessed their own array of exclusive properties, varying from their plush brethren in size, width, location, girth. A myriad of different characteristics defined them. Some were mere canoes treading the good-tempered waters while others were mammoth yachts, holding an elating cruise to a deaf, mute audience aboard.

Levi stood at the edge of the wicker basket, his forearms resting upon its spiral edge. Diminutive shards of bronze-colored wood broke free from its creator’s power-hungry clutches, garnering a new identity of bothersome stragglers. Poking and prodding the male’s limbs with every slight movement of the basket in the tame Equestrian zephyrs. Rocking the gimcrack substitute for a cockpit with each breeze, no matter how furious or peaceful. Although, judging by the stony mask of dourness secreting his features, he didn’t mind it much. From the looks of it, he didn’t seem to mind anything much. His chapped, dry hands hung dangled loosely above the bottomless abyss of color beneath. Levi gazed deep into the hustling-and-bustling tight-knit community of boaters ceaselessly, his stare void and vacant of all life or jubilation. The Man in Blue’s gaunt, deadpan visage barely resembled that of a living breathing human being with an operating heart. If anyone else sans the sympathetic unicorn behind him bore witness, they’d be forgiven for assuming he was a grave-robbed corpse. Perpetual and halcyon slumber permanently discontinued. His countenance was akin to a skeleton with a pair of burning coals inhabiting its abandoned sockets. A victimless glare forever burned into those smoldering nuggets of brimstone taking the place of his vibrant emeralds.

Levi stole a deep, mountainous breath from the air, shifting his hand. His left moved to the stone-grey string connecting one of the basket’s corners to the colossal balloon. Coiling a set of fingers around its gritty skin, caressing it absentmindedly. Unremitting glower refusing to obey an order to cease all operations, going AWOL from his brain.

“What’re we doing when we get back home?” Levi asked, shattering nearly fifteen minutes of soupy silence.

“What was that?”

“When we get back to Ponyville, what’re we doing?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking about that this whole way, but I got an idea.”

“Let me hear it.” His voice was utterly defeated and deflated, not bothering to meet the lavender book-addict’s amethyst irises.

“Well, first, we have to consult the group.”

“Group?”

“We’re the Elements of Harmony, Levi, of course we’re a group.” Replied Twilight. “We need a course of action.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong. Only I’m not sure what a farmer and a party planner are gonna do to a mass killer, Twilight.”

“I’m not sure what they’ll do either. To tell you the truth, I’m…feeling doubtful.”

“Aren’t we all?” Levi moved his hand back to the basket’s edge. It hung next to its brother like a lifeless pendant, imprisoned within a dead Grandfather clock.

“I can only assume you are, too?”

“Of course I am,” Levi responded. The closest thing to eye-contact she received was a slight turn of his head towards her, gazing in his peripheral vision. “What reason do I have to trust them?”

“You don’t have one yet, but I’m sure they’ll prove you wrong.”

“Who’s to say they will? Because I know for a fact Mortimer doesn’t understand a damn word I said, neither does Dread Shot or…whatever the other’s name was. Tacitus, I think?”

“Tacitus and Clear Sky.”

“Whatever,” Levi waved a dismissing hand at the skybound ocean they dwelled in. “They’re all the same to me. Just money-hungry, greedy pigs looking for a payout.”

“That’s not true.” Twilight insisted.

“They haven’t given me a reason to think otherwise, Twi. Not yet. I mean, a few weeks? Who knows how many could die in a few days, let alone a damn week?” Levi scoffed. “Ridiculous.”

“You can’t rush miracles, Levi, and you certainly can’t force them either. Mortimer agreeing to help is exactly that, a miracle. I expected nopony to show.”

“I expected a pony to show. Not some worthless money-famers.” Levi jeered. He paused for a moment, robbing another deep breath. “What if Gary comes to Ponyville?”

“Levi-”

“This has been on my mind for a little bit, just listen. What if he comes to my home, our home and sets his sights on us. What then? What will Mortimer do?”

A small intermission seized the duo before Twilight punched the resume button on their discussion. She sighed.

“You need to stop doubting. Doubt doesn’t solve anything, doubt won’t…kill anypony. Doubt is useless.”

“I know it is,”

“Then act like it, Levi. I know you have a big heart, use that to believe in this. Use it to believe in something good, at least.”

“It’s hard,”

“It is,” Twilight stood beside her friend, attaching a consoling hoof to his bicep. “I know.”

“I don’t think you do know. Not the full extent.”

“Tell me, then.”

He breathed deep once more, fondling his hands and fingers.

“I tried to use this world and the people in it to escape what I left behind. To get off that path of sadness and death. But apparently it seems I’ve waded far too deep in the swamp to get out now.”

“Swamp?”

“You know what I mean. I walked one too many steps down the dark path that the light’s rejecting me. When me and Alan came here, I thought I’d be safe from the monsters.”

“You are.”

“I’m not,” He finally met her eyes. The wind swam through his bangs, whipping them side-to-side violently. “I’m really not. I thought wrong. I wanted to be safe from murder, from guns, from firefights. From him.”

“Ponyville doesn’t have any of that. Equestria doesn’t have any of that…for the most part.”

“Seems like I’m getting further from where I want to go, from what I’ve been destined to become. I thought here I could control more than I could in Alabama but…I was mistaken.”

Twilight nodded. Her life was far too care-free to empathize with her housemate, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try.

“Truth is I love Rainbow, Applejack, Fluttershy, you. All of them. I do. I can’t stand the fact that dead bastards from my past could come back and…” He resumed his unending stare into the abyss. “And destroy everything I’ve got.”

“He won’t, Levi, he won’t. That’s what you need to believe. I know it’s hard, believe me I do, but you have to believe.”

“I can’t believe what I don’t know is true.”

“Then…take a gamble. Take a risk that this is real life, that it is true, and believe it with all your heart. That’s all you can do right now.”

Levi’s glower at nothing was accompanied by a small smile reeling the corners of his mouth to the gargantuan balloon above.

“I guess you’re right, Twilight. There’s another gamble I’ve been meaning to take.”

“Don’t spare any details.”

“I heard there’s a third human that sounds an awful lot like my brother living down in the Crystal Empire, wherever that is. It’d be good for us to go there and check it out. Could be just town-wide rumors, though.”

“What’re we waiting for then?“

“A lot of things,” He replied. “One of them being this balloon’s gotta land.”

Twilight snickered. “You’re right.”

“When am I ever not right?”

For the conclusive minutes of their journey, the rigid casket of worries and overdue responsibilities tormenting his heart were dashed. His core free from the searing chains of trepidation temporarily. Silver Spears didn’t pollute his mind. Images of his battered friend that desperately required avenging followed suit. And that raven-haired sod searching unflaggingly for the faintest whiff of him did the same.

It was him, his dearest friend, and the outline of a goliath tree breaching the cyanic ocean surrounding him.

Chaper 26: All or Nothing

Off the weather-beaten, sin-paved road of civilization, miles away from the warranted reckoning tracking his scent like a famished Bloodhound, a man walked bereft of rhyme or reason. No aim could be discerned from his stunted, heavy-footed lumbering. There wasn’t a lucid goal to be found from his sluggish shambling, each pained stride akin to pushing a family of mountains. In fact, if a label existed for this battered, begrimed shell of a murderous beast, it bore no semblances to a normal human being. Credit where it is due, when comparing a brutish killer to the incomparable Man in Blue, almost any fiend from the middle of nowhere would gain that label.

Gary Demonio wasn’t quite sure what he could call this boundless, rambling landscape where this purposeless endeavor commenced. If he tore away the filter from his mind, one that was just barely dangling above the fathoms of neglect, the truth to the matter was…he wasn’t sure of anything. Every last thought that congregated within his black oozing brain devoid of exceptions was polluted by a singular cancer. A ravenous plague that infected the fibers of their being. The surviving threads of humanity that outlasted his madness, few and far between enough on a regular basis, were contaminated. Festering in a septic mass of this sole prospect, igniting a wolfish pandemic pillaging his psyche.

Doubt.

Gary was poles apart from being considered a dubious man. For those who knew him during his iron-fisted bout of carnage in Roseville, he was all but allergic to the concept. Doubting anyone or anything at any time cast a constellation of hives across his burly, ironclad frame. The hellish damnation crawling across his flesh nearly bursting through his button-down. Yet, presently, as he tottered forlornly destitute of a set destination, doubt was the only thing gnawing at his brain’s wrinkled fleshy walls. Swarming the diabolical, infernal fields of brazen flame that was his mind. At least, what his all-encompassing insanity left for the buzzards and the rats.

His outfit, the terrifyingly unique getup he lived and died fruitlessly in, was smothered by sweat’s foul battalions. A division of putrid soldiers besieged his armpits, coloring the aquamarine fabric a deep forest green. This custom was practiced by his wide back. The fabric polluted by the vile gallons of perspiration vomited from his pores. His buzzed iota of stygian hair was inundated. The sorry-excuse for a stubble engulfing his statue-esque sculpted jaw suffering the same fate. Aquamarine shirt raided by impolite squatters of coagulated mud. A belt of the soupy hazel sludge vandalized his bewildered back absent of any hints or traces of remorse for their desecration. Numerous patches and spots peppered his obliques and forearms, all dried and parched like a cheapjack homemade tattoo out of a filthy, roach-infested apartment. Gary’s work pants, greyer than any mountain face could ever dream of being, shouldered the brunt of a callous crusade. The greedy chocolate-brown mire was starved for territory and dominion, not satisfied by his upper half they barbarically annexed.

The noirette’s legs were akin to a star-spangled night sky in human form. A silvery backdrop pricked by a myriad of unfathomably tiny dots of mud, some besting others in size and shape. Constellations of the nauseating silt marred the hardy fabric. Work boots lurching across an incessant field of barren oblivion without touch of grace, like an iron sentry’s steel boots. The male’s shoes served more as an excruciating leather prison than his bare feet’s first line of defense, shielding him from the agonizing afflictions of the outside world. Strips of dead bramble died beneath his byzantine rubber treads, cracked like the shells of degloved peanuts. Sharp lumps of shale and miniscule arrow-like rocks stood in ruin against towering odds. All the while, his fleshly soles were secure. Ensnared within a pair of rank white sweat-soaked socks, Athlete’s Foot stumbling ever-so-closer on the bloody afternoon horizon. Toes teetering dangerously on the edge of becoming a breeding ground for maddening blisters. Skin chafed like a heartless sandpaper massage.

Languidly, with his tank of energy in hospice care tethered to a manifold of rusted oxygen tanks, Gary Demonio stuntedly ambled. The unfruitful forsaken thatch of land the bastard happened upon was not only entirely unnerving, but next to impossible to identify. After fleeing from that high-end hotel and outrunning bereaved soldiers with an tireles thirst for his viscera, the last thing he needed tossed on his plate was another mystery. Another lightning-fast barrage of questions bereft of a solid answer. More mists question marks and empty inquiries permeating his gangrene-infested mind. Enough polluted his psyche to last him a plethora of lifetimes. In fact, if he was granted another thousand years in that dark damnation, lucidity would be few and far between.

Why was there not a single human in sight?

How was he dead for years but back?

Why were unicorns and flying horses in golden armor the authority?

And now, one more question to add to the skyscraping mountain.

Where the hell was Gary Demonio?

A multitude of clues attempted to nudge the pitiless butcher in the right direction. Confusion erected a tyrannical empire with supreme authority chugging through its winding veins. In spite of the clues trying and failing to depose it, his location was bleeding anonymity. Shrouded by a thick cloak of secrecy secreting any identifiable features.

An unending field of tan, sun-baked deceased grass housed the turquoise-dressed man. All around him, scattered haphazardly throughout the colossal reaches of dead foliage, were coal-black trees, all of them frighteningly alike. The slender scorched corpses of wood and lush foliage blighted the boundless rolling fields like devilish chicken pox. Begriming the topaz-colored ground were a plethora of forlorn reminders of a time long lost to Death’s stone-cold clutches. The grim remnants of a ghastly demise, drowned in unfaltering confidentiality, were scattered asunder across the scalped wasteland. Rangy sable limbs and branches discarded by their singed parents polka-dotted the ground. Their murky hue mirrored by its unanimated brethren. Sickly bushels of bramble had bitten the dust long ago, the exact amount of time cloudy and ill-defined. Had it been months? Years? Decades? Perhaps it was a curveball and this gargantuan exodus of all life and vigor was mere days prior. Whatever the case, the brittle, dust-choked ghosts of bushes stood unshaken. Defying the bitter, gelid breeze galloping down the endless legions of cadavers. The spirits of deceased shrubs gave a ghastly dance to the wind’s command, lifeless stygian branches mirroring its movements. Some couldn’t bear the poisonous gift of life any longer and succumbed to Death’s stony, calculating authority. Peppering the stagnant earth were a host of rotting pears, decomposition biting a gluttonous chunk from each of the illimitable supply of oval-shaped frames.

One of the tens of hundreds of putrified fruits interspersed throughout the hideous scene was hapless. Cowering beneath the elephantine might of Gary’s boots, face-fo-face with the Grim Reaper manifested in a sole of rubber treads. Its demise inexorable and nightmarish. The rotten pear stood no chance against his foot, in spite of the nigh-fatal doses of fatigue plaguing it. It imploded in a repugnant starburst of sickly tallow-colored innards like an explosion of melted candle wax. Shreds of vomit-green flyblown flesh clung to the bottom of his boot. Orbs of pale, milky viscera dripped from his treads.

Each word was a lit match pressed against the walls of his arid throat. His esophagus was a tunnel of parched sandstone leading into the catacombs of his heart. That was almost entirely the reason why this passionless grove was swallowed by silence’s salivating maw. In coalition with the uncharacteristic absence of the pestilent disembodied voice badgering his skull, it was all a recipe for deathly quietude. Perfect conditions for an even more perfect monarchy of utter and absolute soundlessness, one that would be accomplished in a flawless world. As with all iron-fisted tyrannies throughout the vast expanse of time and history, outliers never failed to exist. Gore-hungry brawlers with rebellious dispositions, pledging to bring baseless cruelty to its coda. Gary’s deprived gut was among these ferocious rebels. Defying the silence’s frigid command.

Hunger’s searing, barbed chain tied a hangman’s knot around his vacant stomach, constricting it like a lustful Anaconda seized by its primordial instincts. Arresting, dread-inducing marble-like eyes spelling two avenues to whomever happened upon its crimson path. You were either a replenishing dinner, or its heart’s desire. Pangs radiated throughout his tender bruised frame, only two nigh-cataclysmic events shouldering all responsibility. His unpredictable resurrection and the vicious double slaying of two innocent soldiers. Simply fulfilling their invigorating passion and answering their heart’s dire calls for something. More than the merciless redundancy and mundanity they were doubtlessly hagridden by. Two hapless guards, a leader and a goon. Both undeserving of the unjust fate they were involuntarily exposed to. The gloomy outcome, however, cared little for their opinions towards the matter. Inevitable starvation chewed on his vacant, deserted stomach. A sickening guttural rumble emanated from his impoverished intestines.

Gary lumbered with leaden bones through the graveyard of sullen trees and stone-dead pears. Brain swallowed by a pot-bellied haze of drowsiness and fatigue, floating absentmindedly in his throbbing skull. Ankles impaled by white-hot fire pokers of agony with every labored stride. Some hidden iota of common sense deep within his maggot-infested heart chided him with every harrowing step. Leaping off a second-story building to escape the mob of warranted consequences was nothing short of witless. Hell, the bodiless God of Chaos, destitute of functioning extremities and an ability to become anonymous, could’ve fabricated a better plan in half the time. But yet, like everything else in the demon’s life up to that grisly milestone, it was never anyone else’s call. Gary’s word was the only opinion that harbored even a splinter of significance. Even if the second-hand judgment came from an immortal being of purported endless wisdom.

The morning was dying at a snail’s pace, but far from discreetly. The sun’s vicious campaign of mild yet intolerable heat and vision-robbing arrows of luster were arriving at its terminus. Each convoluted maze of shadow punctuating the bronze grass would perish peacefully, strolling into the afterlife with ease. Oh, how envious the monstrous sod was of their tranquil, effortless departure. Pearls of sweat crawling down his sun-baked flesh like trails of magma. Legs crushed by cannonballs of exhaustion. Throat ravaged, chest heaving. All Gary could ever dream of in that soulless grove were a twain of prospects. A brisk death and a simple one-way conversation. Both allegedly unattainable beneath the glaring ball of molten gold, plummeting deeper into the horizon by the minute. If a random so-and-so was cast from the heavens and crash-landed smack-dab in the stock-still heart of this orchard, he’d be forgiven for assuming nature was absent. After all, a land of charred trees abandoned by the harmonious ensembles of birds and pitter-patters of squirrels was all but deserted by Mother Nature.

Throughout Gary’s stunted, lead-footed tenure in this long extinct grove without an end, minutes groveled in the silky dirt. Slithering slower than an elderly silver-haired snail robbed of his cane. Hours melted away. The early afternoon was slipping from the orange horizon, like a broad river of whiskey running beneath the ball of fire. An arctic Autumn breeze, the concept of mercy excluded from its vocabulary, trounced the pitiful man. The only thing bearing any semblances to a punishment for his illimitable crimes and stomach-roiling sins. If the half-witted mortals populating these inadequately governed lands couldn’t parcel out justice, then Mother Nature would gladly assume their stead. Judge? Jury? Executioner? All in one. It made little difference to her. After all, before living breathing beings with the curse of unrestricted thought arrived, there was nature. Left to legislate their own policies and regulations all in barren seclusion.

Through the course of this extraneous journey, where the tracking of time swiftly became impractical, Discord said nothing.

With all of his academic might and guessing capabilities, roughly a half-hour and some change had passed since he infiltrated the pear orchard. In other words, in a way even the mindless brutes of this world could understand, thirty minutes of unadulterated suffering. In layman’s terms, a chunk of Hell torn from the flaming dales of slag below. His attention and hideously thundering brain were faltering, like a candle’s wick in a murderous wind. One isolated tree blacker than a midnight destitute of stars. Its trunk bearing the titanic size of an Elephant’s foot. A serpentine network of gnarled ash-stained branches outreached into the melancholic molten copper sky. The limbs were contorted and maze-like akin to a family of seaweed dancing in a vigorous wave, frozen in a snapshot of time. There was a generous quantity of empty space around the trunk. The vacant lot of grass was drenched in the daunting sun’s wrathful scowl.

It was Gary’s sweat-bathed maltreated back that greeted the ashen bark first. The coarse, craggy grit were glowing-hot spears against his enraged flesh. Teeth gnashed, fingernails threatening to excavate his palms. With as much grace as a battered, eroded forty-three-year-old killer could summon, Gary collapsed onto his rump in the rust-colored grass. The foreboding metal-grey of his work pants irreparably defaced, swiftly replaced by a bothersome silt vandalizing the durable textile. In the rear of his waistband, his haunted pistol stabbed into his lower back like a glove of thorns. Gary fished the utensil of endless destruction from his pants, dropping it by his folded feet in the dirt.

Despite the jumper cables of pain gnawing on every extremity and the sun’s grimace unceasing, Gary Demonio’s false stoicism persisted. His face pained but stony like a Japanese demon mask. The sight was enough to send a flurry of dreadful swords into a sternum, but behind the masquerade of heart-stopping terror, there was…something else. Something too human for a monster to possess.

With every shift or movement no matter how slight or insignificant it seemed, it was enough to sanction a brutish mortar strike of abominable vulgarities. Throughout this furious squall, Discord still sat on his towering hill of silence. Willing to die on it if need be.

Gary stared with pinpoint accuracy at a miscellaneous spot in the sprawling cloudless ocean of whisky above. A marble of sweat halted on his left top eyelid, blinking it out of existence. His lungs floundered behind his ribs. The world twirled in endless circles in his strained vision.

“D…D-Discord?” Gary rasped, every word a gang of fish hooks dragged across his flesh. His mouth lolled like a brainless drunkard with parched lips of sun-baked stone. “Y-You there?”

The male’s voice was a jerry-built mockery of its former self. Once upon a time, whenever a stentorian roar boomed from the pit of his throat, fear blighted the hearts of all how perceived it. His words sending a ghastly volley of throat-gripping fear, laying waste to those shouldering the misfortune of residing in its crosshairs.

But now, in this personalized self-forged damnation he inscribed in the book of his wicked existence, every pathetic word was victimless. The only thing harboring any semblances to a guiltless soul he could oppress were the sprawling plethora of trees. Each somehow erect in spite of their macabre unwarranted fate. Standing like a sorrowful flock of nuns assembled around a grave, fractured irreversibly by the demise of a preacher. Coagulated into a brittle, fragile herd by the world-rocking loss.

“Hmm?” The God of Chaos replied. His hours-long streak of silence was an eternity and a half to the bastard in turquoise.

“You’ve been quiet for-” Agony reverberated down his esophagus, like the devil’s tune in an unending subway tunnel. Every word tightened the barbed wire necklace around his desiccated throat. “For too damn long. What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have one. I’ve just been…thinking. Nothing too out of the ordinary.”

“You not talking for more than five minutes is out of the ordinary,” Gary spoke. “What’ve you been thinking about this time? Digging through my memories again?”

“Of course not, those are far too harrowing for my taste.”

“Did I really just shock the God of Chaos? I think I deserve a fucking trophy, Discord.”

The Draconequus hummed uneasily. “I’ve been thinking about what happened back at the hotel. Flash Sentry, I believe his name was. I forgot the other.”

“I did, too. Wasn’t that good of a fighter anyway. If I didn’t kill him, he would’ve been in five seconds on a battlefield.”

“You didn’t give him much of a chance to fight, Gary.”

“He didn’t deserve one,” Gary muttered. “It was me or him, who gives a damn?”

Discord paused. “I just think there could’ve been a better way to handle that, that’s all. One that didn’t involve bloodshed and trouble.”

“Aren’t you the fucking God of Chaos? Isn’t this what you love? Chaos? This should be a damn circus for you.”

“There’s a fine line between what I like and you like.” Discord replied. “You and I don’t possess the same interests.”

“You and I are plenty alike, more than you probably think.”

“What’s the fun in chaos if nopony’s alive to experience it? With nopony around, all you’re doing is just…playing, I suppose.”

“I’m not gonna kill everything that breathes, Discord. I just need Levi.”

“Yes…Levi.” Discord responded. “And all I need is for us to get to that museum.”

Gary stroked his neck forlornly. “How far away is it?”

“If memory serves me right…” Discord paused, gazing out of amber irises that didn’t belong to him. Scanning the rocky vista of bold orange and rolling forests. “I believe a mile or two is all we have to cover. There is a slight chance I’m wrong, however.”

Gary’s chest constricted at the prospect. “I don’t think I got a mile or two left in me, Discord. All I got is…whereever the fuck we are.”

“This all seems familiar to me but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Was this the field I turned into candy canes way back when?”

“Is that the king of your fucking worries?” Gary grumbled, a windy garbled rasp. “I think we got a lot more important things on our hands than candy canes, Discord!”

“Maybe if you got a move on I wouldn’t have to think about candy canes!” Discord quipped, irritation bleeding from his words. “Now, come on, please. It’s the final leg of our journey.”

Light bled from the golden, flaming sky faster than the fatigued man, bankrupt of all energy and stamina, could’ve ever begun to predict. The horizon’s monstrous unflappable clutches abducted the sun, yanking the orb of fire into its ominous unseen bowels. With the sun deposed, a new order was hastily established from the ruins of the previous empire. One of utter and unbridled tenebrosity and gloom. A stygian star-spangled kingdom ruling the cosmos with a callous fist of steel. The eerie murky yonder high above his roiling head was the terrified expulsions of a galaxy-sized octopus. Frightened by colossal entities unobserved by the bare naked eye. In one titanic spew of rich ebony ink and white pinpoints, any sign that luster once resided was thoroughly erased. Meticulously and feverishly scrubbed from history’s mammoth manuscript with primal abandon.

Now, with the occasional private performance of zealous birds trapped in the past’s sprawling collections of sights and sounds, Gary was strangled by solitude. Only three companions were welded to his side by fierce situational loyalty. A trifling rag-tag trio that dared to rival his all-encompassing depravity and abominable machinations. His pistol, the indigestible hunger deluging his roaring stomach, and Discord. The closest thing to faithful comrade in this foreign world, populated exclusively by unfathomably enraged souls. Beings who obsessively lusted for his gushing stump and stock-still visage to be framed in every circle of every town.

After nearly ninety strenuous, back-breaking minutes, his progress was stomped into the bitter icy grass by countless hindrances. Starvation devouring each and every aspect of his being. Arid throat a stony bone-dry desert where survivors of its sweltering grasp were a fictional prospect. All of those mountainous oppositions, combined with monolithic doubt that this unholy orchard held a conclusion, spelled unquestionable ruination. For both the deserving human and the hapless chaotic magnate imprisoned in his skull.

Gary Demonio’s arduous tenure to, what he believed-slash-hoped tirelessly was, the anti-climatic finale of the desolate confining wasteland. The raven-haired monster lumbered through the decaying exhibit of death’s inevitably and inescapable nature. The war-torn pear orchard’s remorseless redundancy was barbarically dethroned. Slowly but surely hijacking all avenues of authority was the very thing that scorched grove desired. Life. Charred bark was replaced by its distant, vastly more animated cousin. Vivid, high-spirited mahogany crossed his declining bloodshot vision, lashed by arctic gung-ho gales. Spotting the vibrant grass, the furthest cry from the lifeless golden expanses at his heels, were elephantine oak trees. Their trunks and lengthy, rangy network of extremities akin to the roots to a swamp tree fabricated a canopy from the Big Dipper’s dour glare. Every hunk of merry wood was clad by a teeming sombrero of leaves, each bearing their own unique color. A vast panorama of Autumn’s highest quality shades and hues were on full unshackled display. Shades of dark cherrywood, the thickest batch of maple syrup, and a radiant golden moon were all tossed into Mother Nature’s mortar and pestle. Finely grounded into this extravagant presentation of her magnum opus.

Like all things yielding any sort of euphoric beauty, Gary Demonio was indifferent to the alterations Fall brought in tow. Nothing on these trees could quell his ravenous hunger, nor cease the irksome fire submerging his withering throat. The bright pumpkin-colored leaves peppering the lush earth wouldn’t summon food. Distant ballads from unaccompanied owls swimming from the forest’s rank innards failed to spawn water. Unless the dastardly Man in Blue abruptly materialized from this batch of trees, his heart would remain a dormant volcano. Primed to burst at the slightest irritation.

Gary’s endless ambling was far from unaccompanied. In the deepest recesses of his mind, far from the tangible grasp of any being, an unholy creation exiled from God’s Kingdom dwelled. Crouched in the depths of his brain like a troll claiming a bridge’s underbelly, Discord rambled endlessly. His formless jaws flapped endlessly. Motormouth congested with enough gasoline to last a thousand years of incessant yakking. Truth be told, if Gary was capable of surviving that long, it was impossibly safe to assume that would plant an elephantine foot in reality. It was one question. One singular and, from a surface-level observation, meaningless inquiry that ignited the vocal explosion.

Gary had questioned the full extent of Discord’s crimes. Not every single detail, in spite of the insignificance or pointlessness. Just a superficial shallow explanation of his cursory yet unfathomably wide-reaching reign of chaos. But Gary Demonio didn’t deserve to receive exactly what he implored. This very well could be the universe’s punishment for his impudence and countless abhorrences. Avenging souls whose roots planted in a jovial life were brutally torn from the earth. It wasn’t often when Gary Demonio pleaded for an opportunity to crank back the clock. Wind it back as far as the stygian slender hands would grant, rid himself of this loathsome state of affairs blighting his journey.

Gary Demonio had lost what little lucid coherency the conversation garnered long ago. All he had to his repulsive name now was his number-one trusted companion stuffed in his waistband, his lust for vengeance, and a cycle of endless rambling in his skull. Blabbering endlessly about what particular lands with puzzling yet self-explanatory names he infected with his anarchy. One detail clung onto the wrinkled walls of Gary’s brain. One bemusing design choice chosen by the God of Chaos all those centuries ago. Gary was all but doubtless in his assumption that, even if he inquired the reasoning behind the bizarre configuration, he wouldn’t receive a sane answer.

Titanic oak-brown thunderheads was the only harebrained choice that hasped his interest. Gargantuan clouds that spilled, of all things, chocolate milk from its sugary innards. A delightful drink meant to exclusively be consumed on a jovial, jubilant day. Although it was clear to the raven-haired male that societal customs bore no cumberance on Discord’s mind. He rained the tooth-rotting beverage upon a world torn asunder by his feral lust for lawlessness.

“Oh, that reminds me of when I turned every cow in Equestria upside-down! That was the most hilarious sight, I must say, Gary. Seeing them all scoot on the top of their heads was marvelous!” Discord exclaimed, feeling no need to stifle his thunderous mirth.

“I’m sure it was.” Grumbled Gary.

Nestled deep within the mazelike labyrinth of flourishing trees and wildlife, polluted by Kafkaesque complexity, the male happened upon a path. If no filter vandalized his maw and the truth was unconfined, Gary wasn’t entirely confident this path was a route to prosperity. Quite frankly, no matter how timidly he trekked down any course in his life, the gluttonous flames of Hell would feverishly follow. The most loyal companion in a world hijacked by betrayal and deception.

Housed by two stately walls of bold, enforcing oak trees, their leaves like verdant mushroom clouds, was a slender dirt trail. The path was a singular runway of soupy sludge, looked down upon by the monolithic forest confining it. The boundless ocean of rich sable pen ink hurled not-so-baseless profanities and insults at the man in turquoise. Ridiculing him to no end for having caught himself in these vicious, famished throes to begin with. Scintillating stars howled with stomach-aching laughter fully at his expense, keeling over in their stygian abode. The arresting moon, the gung-ho leader of this ragtag band of cackling celestial bodies, was absurdly stoic. His crater-riddled, craggy visage emotionless like an unproductive artist’s canvas. Although, even a mortal such as Gary Demonio can see the slight tremble of a suppressed guffaw from here. Searing its pale expressionless countenance with a dour scowl as the mammoth rock crammed a chortle into the fathoms of its lung.

Gary’s gut roared with inexorable malnutrition. A swollen tongue of flame lapped his arid throat like a thirsty dog. His head was massacred and harrowed by a battalion of ruthless agony, laying waste to his maltreated brain. Each individual ache and pain armed with a white hot-glowing fire poker to gratify their despicable muses. Time was running out.

The male marched with lethal doses of chagrin igniting his decelerating veins. Rubber treads being absorbed by the spongy badgersome mire, only to wrench it from its abhorrent clutches. This mercilessly monotonous process was repeated more times than anyone there was able to count. Discord, too engrossed in his one-player conversation, was an invalid in that regard. Gary’s head swam far too much to do anything sans gripe and contemplate his future, slipping further from his calloused grasp by the minute.

Every chance at salvation seemed dashed. Pitilessly tossed into an inky bottomless oblivion, where survival was a shallow and depthless prospect. All aspirations to satisfy the ravenous dog barking in his rancid heart were lost to nullity. The further Gary Demonio sauntered down that infertile path to bona fide solitude and inexorable ruin, the more weight his chances of survival lost. His spree of heavy-footed, beyond awkward ambling was miles from its terminus. The vagabond demon donning a costume of sweat-bathed, hairy human flesh lumbered through the gelatinous darkness. Stomach strangled by starvation’s herculean wolfish tentacles, its pitiful crusty wail sonorous and irksome, threatening to swim up and down the channels of trees. Throat continuing to feel like the underbelly of a weather-beaten, barnacle-encrusted pirate ship. His esophagus mercilessly keelhauled bereft of a twinge of ruth. Time shed all variations and interpretations of meaning. Heart working unpaid laborious overtime, striving to fuel his bone-dry veins with anything sans sorrow and unconquerable woes. Although, when the lush measureless brigade of oak was the hub of conversation, considering a prospect other than unconditional defeat and ruin was a comedy show.

His gaze rose forlornly to the lusterless tartarean abyss high above his pounding cranium. The mystifying freckled sky, scaled of its luscious wig of clouds long ago, was like the visage of a colossal celestial tarantula. Each and every pale colony of bone-white stars was an eyeball. Its sole purpose in its superficial existence to provide eyesight for a sprawling, galaxy-devouring arachnid. The hivemind blind to its creator’s apex goals and desires, shackled to an alley of gluttonous dark and confidentiality.

Perhaps that eight-legged behemoth’s droves of mindless goons were the ones who mocked him. Lazing slothful in their chairs of refined stardust, propping their unused feet upon byzantine constellations. Launching petty, elementary chortle-infused lobs of utter and irrefutable mockery. Trapping the bastard within a desirous oven of jeering, fixating his frame with white-glowing spears of callous ridicule.

Gary untethered a colossus of a sigh from the pang-ridden fleshy cage known as his lungs, working their miniscule fingers until bleached bones is all that remains. He licked the back of his bottom teeth. A gummy tidal wave of plasma pink shattering against a stark white reef. The male’s mouth was saddled by a foul encumbrance. The repugnant, stomach-roiling taste of filthy gums and plaque-ridden chompers gnawed on his tongue. But, if he was filterless and frank, he couldn’t be bothered. All that plagued the noirette’s blackened, gangrenous psyche was the flickering, dying light at the end of the tunnel. This long, murky, abhorrent tunnel. Soundless and bereft of life, occupied only by his strained pang-ridden breathing and the auditory torture of Discord’s ramblings.

Gary stared forward. He rolled his shoulders and cocked his neck both sides, glorying in the pleasureful rumbles erupting from his aching joints. All the while, the ramshackle life-despising machine continued on. His strides robotic and interminable, agonizing and harrowing. Yet, like many things he was “forced” to do during his tenure on Earth, it was a necessary evil.

A boisterous owl’s strident call exploded from the forest’s gloomy bowels.

“Whoever knew a place as dense and vibrant as this could feel so…dead.” Discord, the unhelpful god of all things chaotic, spoke in the head of Gary Demonio. It was the only string of words that exited his formless maw in…who knew how long?

It felt like hours, but even that did nothing to properly narrow it down. Anything and everything felt like hours in that rolling expanse of silent, stagnant fauna. On a more realistic and down-to-earth scale, it was roughly twenty minutes of wordless disjointed sauntering. The thankful, God-given conclusion of Discord’s unending tangent about his time as Equestria’s momentary monarch had arrived long ago. Right around the point where Gary, using his dimming consciousness to the fullest ability, noticed the absolute absence of senses. When the raven-haired male first breached the gates of this robustful wonderland of sycamore and shrubbery, all that dwelled on his internal horizon was pure and unbridled prosperity. Or, at the very least, whatever he could call the carnage-filled fairytale of revenge and slaughter that was his heart’s greatest muse. Now, as it had done numerous times throughout this strenuous odyssey, laden with the sickest of intentions, reality showed its utter indifference to the bastard’s ambitions. Gary had a quenchless appetite for success no matter the price of the path he ventured down, but the world was heartless to his plight. Standing mighty and defiant against his thirst for oppression of guiltless citizens. Refusing to adhere to his brash, stone-hearted command.

Gary’s sanity was few and far between. Back when in the golden age of his grisly, spiteful dynasty-of-one, most men and women residing in the margins of his feasting grounds echoed that statement. Lobbing smoking fireballs of searing, soul-obliterating accusations and insults with their final breaths on the planet. A planet he blighted simply by shoving breath into his faltering lungs.

He had been called a myriad of things. Monster. Devil. A filthy piece of shit. The laundry list of vulgarities, profane enough to send a devout nun into cardiac arrest, stretched beyond infinity’s demarcations. Some were scourging and envenomed, infused with the hottest malice the human could conjure. Others were pathetic. Caterwauling like children begging for a toy at the supermarket. Pleading for their lives forlornly, terrified of whatever waited with bated breath for their inexorable arrival. Regardless of whether sorrow of disdain laced their words, Gary guffawed exuberantly. Because, at the end of the day, words were just that. Words. Not a secret weapon to flog their assailant. Not a tool to a valiant victory. And certainly not a key to survival. Just oxygen flowing from their trembling lips and quivering tear-stained chin. After all, he was the one playing with their lives like toy cars, not the other way around. In his unfathomably bleak present, perhaps those sanctimonious allegories possessed an iota of pragmatic truth. Those manic allegations sinking an elephantine anchor in unfiltered reality. After all, the textbook and universally understood definition of insanity was impossibly simple. You repeat the same action over and over again, brutalizing your psyche with the merciless drudgery, anticipating a fresh outcome each run that deviated from the last. Whether you understand the pointlessness of your actions is an entirely separate conversation.

Gary Demonio wasn’t precisely sure he was even aware his actions were clones of one another. Throughout the lion’s share of this toilsome pilgrimage to nowhere, a modern-day rendition of the Trail of Tears, his actions teetered on the border of robotic. For what felt like a thousand years, Gary swept his sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes left and right across the redundant landscape. His victimless glower bringing the murky stygian snaking around the armies of trees to a torrid simmer. Like an angry foreman scrutinizing an unruly work floor, Gary swung his gaze side to side. Over and over. Failure after failure. Hour after hour. Nothing changed. No matter how many pained strides or agony-riddled steps he took between each attempt, it all fed into the same pool of outcomes. He’d exhaustively analyze the limitless black, looking past every dense body of wood into the bowels of this winding glorified torture dungeon.

The forest donned a rock-solid facade of life and luster. An insidiously deceptive masquerade to shroud the unbridled wasteland’s true uncensored colors. That was a reality Gary was almost positive a myriad of godforsaken wanderers long before him had realized. The path was a lengthy serpentine tongue of silt unraveling from the forest’s dark salivating maw. Its taste buds firing in jubilated anticipation for Gary’s inexorable fate. Unless the desolate trail fed into a vast hospitable clearing with an elongated table stationed at its heart. Upon it, a beautiful conglomerate of foods from every culture and walk of life the planet offered. Teeming cornucopias, its prismatic, nigh-sickening panorama of spirited colors vomited upon the sleek mahogany. A variegated amalgamation of fruits and vegetables, wheats and grains. All splayed out for consumption. And at the head of the unwarranted table, a sinner would laze in a golden throne. Gary Demonio. Basking in a buffet-of-one fit for a king.

Only that otherworldly euphoria of unchained lusts for grandeur only a preschooler could conjure were trapped in his thoughts. The machinations of his one and only far-famed second-in-command. His mind. That’s all Gary Demonio was now. A brigade of only three members. He, the aptly merciless head honcho. Discord, the God of Chaos and de facto compass. And his feral imagination, running amok with primal fantasies and crimson-soaked aspirations. He wasn’t entirely sure what exact purpose it served, but it was crucial nonetheless.

Beneath the scornful, judgemental eye of the blowhard moon, Gary and his ragtag governless infantry continued their haggard death march. A glorified mission of undignified suicide that, no matter the name change, harbored the same endgame. Absolute and unshakable ruin.

Gary pressed resume on his automated default settings. Marching painfully, each footstep a harrowing nightmare he was involuntarily enduring. Swinging his vision left and right, over and over, scanning for a ticket to salvation that would never exist in this desolation. Gary’s tragic state of affairs all pointed down to one dark, caliginous avenue. Death. Nothing more, nothing less. These woods were preordained by the Norns of these wretched lands to rob him of his life.

That was, however, until the Draconequus obliterated the silence like a cannonball to the hapless hull of a ship. Blowing a gaping, yawning mouth into the thick quietude.

“Do you see that over there, Gary? To our left?”

“What the fuck is over to our left?”

“Look before you get snappy with me, friend.”

Gary halted. The pain rebound that lashed his scorching legs was unlike any other in his four decades of living. Hell, even catching searing bullets in his flesh and living to tell the tale was preferable. A tidal wave of black-crusted magma shattered against his bones. He winced against his will.

He swiveled his throbbing head to the left. Amidst the ruthless monotony of the limitless trees, the wall of oak like binary code in physical form, Gary saw nothing. Not a surprise and certainly not a change of pace.

“The hell are you talking about?”

“Look again. I wouldn’t stop us for nothing.”

“I doubt that.”

Gary sighed in vexation, squinting into the abyss with furrowed brows and shrewd fatigued pupils. His patience waned. Sweeping his globes left and right across the endless hive of trees and tenebrosity, Gary emerged fruitless from his endeavor.

“Discord, I swear to-”

He stopped.

Mere nanoseconds before he would irreparably chide the notorious God of Chaos for his time-wasting impudence and ignorance, he happened upon a discovery. A world-altering, life-shifting, path-changing breakthrough in his tireless, unflappable foraging. He rubbed his buzzed pate in unbridled incredulity. His mandible on the verge of plummeting into the spongy sludge absorbing his boots below him. Partly from the modern-day buried treasure after what he thought was decades of searching. Moreso because of the unfathomable prospect that the rambling buffoon Discord was the one who sighted this paramount rarity.

Through zig-zagging bodies of oak and sycamore like jail bars to a hellish eldritch prison, Gary Demonio saw his glorious passport to righteous salvation. About forty-something yards from the path of despair he marched upon, a faint glow rebelled against the moon’s radical all-encompassing customs. The diminutive gleam was an incandescent orange marble, levitating in the stale frigid night air. It reminded the bastard of the eye of a titanic reptile. Utilizing the drought of human characteristics as a blunt weapon of terror.

The feeble shred of luster from a hopeful bygone time was as bleak and lifeless as Gary’s chances of survival previously were. In spite of the flare’s impotency, it illuminated the blackened logs painted by ghostly ash that was erected in a gimcrack pyramid. Resting on an eerie pillow of soot caged within a halo of smooth stones. Even with the imposing starless desert above him as a backdrop, the slender chain of smoke drifting from the pyramid’s crown was visible. Suspiciously visible to Gary Demonio. The deceased campfire tenaciously clutched its final table scraps of life animalistically, as though shielding itself from some unseen cluster of vultures. Primed and eager to tear the cadaver asunder the very instant its heart lie stock-still in perpetual slumber.

Gary cracked his knuckles before he snaked an exalted hand to his rump, fishing his dearest comrade from his waistband. After cocking the pistol and preparing it for the habitual atrocities it regularly savored, he departed from the present-day Trail of Tears. Shattering the cycle of heart-gripping disappointment with every torturesome stride. Breaking free from the mendacious notion that eventually, perhaps even the very next footstep, he would yield some fruits from this sanity-eroding tenure. However, just as he was countless times in his ichor-stained life, he was wrong. So incredibly wrong. Except now.

After laying waste to dead branches thick and thin and crossing strings of deer tracks, Gary Demonio sauntered into the campsite. And even that was a term he used exponentially loosely. Before him, the suspense accompanied by a traveling band of irksome crickets, was a glorified village for the homeless. The sorry-excuse for a fire, an entirely soundless rendition of a siren’s alluring call, was in dirt-poor hospice care. Sporadically peppered throughout the ramshackle encampment in no particular uniformity were two tents, each identically tattered and weather-beaten.

The first and best kempt of the twain was a gimcrack hideaway a foot away from the campfire’s corpse nestled against a particularly towering tree. Its silky yet water-logged fabric, greener than a pond blanketed in scum, was granted an ethereal sheen in the moon’s unkind light. The tent’s structure was more bizarre than any sight he had staggered upon in his gore-stained tenure in Equestria. It was oblong and exponentially steep like a snow skier’s picturesque euphoria. Whether the aberrant oddity was an injury it shouldered throughout its poverty-stricken life or the creator’s wish was lost on Gary. An incredibly peculiar question cruelly starved of answers. A sole deviant of the repulsive vomit-green hue contaminating the jury-rigged living space was extant. Near the lofty crest, separated from the crown by paltry centimeters, was a singular sun-yellow path. Expertly sewn and melded into the sun-yellow fabric. Across from it on Gary’s left was its elegant, expertly manicured and groomed brethren. Its rich, attention-demanding mahogany hue threatening to blend with the endless wood engulfing the site. A site for…what exactly? A shrine for bounty-dodging criminals and roofless vagabonds, snagged in the morose throes of their atrocious luck? Sanctuary for those who deserved the exact opposite? Clandestine asylum for those who gripped modern civilization and all of its flaws and blunt edges in a flaming fist of disdain? Perhaps it was refuge for ponies who were incompatible with each and every one of those classes. Simply two long-time retired brothers-in-arms or tight-knit friends enjoying the unrivaled, peerless sanctity of nature and all of its bountiful contents.

Gary’s eyelids were hauled towards the earth with the entire weight of the cosmos. His visage was a blemishless shimmering wall of passionless stone. Each and every dominant desire tearing his frame asunder was engraved in crude, vulgar carvings, trumped only by half-witted neanderthals. The primal inhumane hunger as intense as a Greek god’s punishment vehemently pummeling his stomach. His throat torched by dehydration, every word or breath like a sack of hot coals tumbling down his maw. Limbs wreathed by red glowing-hot wires of soreness and agony. His heart a rampant, berserk washing machine filled to the cusp with stones. Its janky thunderous movements and slams were discordant, yet terrifyingly synchronous.

“What do you think of my findings, Gary?” The Draconequus asked the silent golem of a man, pride bleeding from his praise-hungry words.

An indecisive concoction of razed hopes, disappointment, and a timid dash of anger was plunged into his amber globes. He swept his inquisitive gaze-slash-scowl once more across the jerry-built dynasty of hobos. Gary loathed how much it reminded him of the fallout of his visceral sojourn in Roseville.

Gary scoffed. The sound like sandpaper licking a hollow aluminum tube.

“I don’t know what the hell I expected,” He croaked. “I guess I wanted a god to find me something more usable.”

“We’re in the slums of the Everfree Forest, my friend, are options are neither here nor there.”

“The Everfree Forest? So this hellhole has a name now.”

“It’s always had a name. I figured you didn’t care enough to hear it.”

“You couldn’t be more right.” Rasped Gary.

The raven-haired sod marched to the first tent on his right-hand side. The grass encompassing the puny pouch of humanity amidst Mother Nature’s sovereignty was matted. Bashed into damp clots and clogged, enmeshed tangles by the shoes of whichever ill-starred soul was forced to accept respite here. Every step was akin to an abominable march across a field of broken glass. That same horrifically familiar hurricane of sultry slag swallowing his legs. Bones flaming, nerves like lit firecrackers. Each movement, no matter the irrelevance or puny size of it, trapped his ironclad frame in an iron maiden. Torrid smoking harpoons lining the walls of his personalized cage of nonconsensual penance. An incredibly bizarre punishment given the monolithic catalog of crimes and circumstances, the likes of which witnessed only in Greek tales of old.

He surveyed the hermit’s paradise one final time before he spoke.

“What the hell do you think could even be here? Cigarettes and buckets of shit?” He sniffed the air, the oxygen cauterizing his esophagus. “Smells like it.”

Discord sighed, pestered. “The title ‘God of Chaos’ doesn’t mean I see the future, Gary. Premonitions aren’t my forte.”

“Oh, I’m sure it isn’t.”

Gary strode to the vomit-green tent, reaching an avid hand to the moist satin drape doorway. He slipped a trio of stony restive fingers between the drapes and tore open the right flap. How long his unflagging, fruitless voyage down Starvation Boulevard and Hell’s Lane accurately lasted had not yet fully dawned on him. Time was varnished with an easily distinguishable, infernalnew meaning. Swaying on the edge of becoming Gary Demonio’s newfangled overhauled damnation. Perhaps the innards of this glorified outlaw hideout would furnish his being with the deliverance he miserably pined for, but far from deserved.

The tent’s interior was as cramped as the rusted carcass of a drowned car, suffocated and marooned at the bed of a dismal lake of darkness. Twilight was crammed into every corner of the clouded jade-colored textile. Assuming a stoop Upon the inundated floor, glossy and glistening in the silvery moonlight, was a bare-bones assortment of furniture and utensils. Furniture being a term the male used extremely loosely. A white nylon sleeping bag lie unzipped and disturbed, its flap thrown to the right with unchained abandon. Crumpled in the far left corner, greedily feasted upon by the dark’s quivering jaws, was a balled-up khaki jacket. The exact style clad in a helm of secrecy from its idiosyncratic maltreatment. Perched neatly atop it like a hen shielding her eggs was a colorless cowboy hat, the left and right end of the brim curved to the midnight above. The crown was adorned with a king-sized canyon through the center akin to a sea of snow being cleaved in two. Wound around it was a velvety royal blue ribbon, contradicting the cold bile-inducing color palette envying it.

Countless passages of braille marred his arms in the form of goosebumps. His mandible shuddered like a hingeless door in a tornado. Mother Nature commanded volley after volley of gelid, icy spears to plant themselves into the bastard. She sought vengeance for his treachery. Vowed and pledged to the earth and all those who dwelled upon it that Gary Demonio, the wolf garmented in sheep’s attire, would not see the light of the day after this one. A half-decent pilfered coat and semi-fashionable headwear would provide longed-for clemency from the wintry reckoning. Yet nothing robbed him of all of his attention like what he smoked out at the bottom-left corner of the tent.

A small dysfunctional family of cans cowered pathetically in the dreariest corner of the lightless fabric cave. The tins, all of them empty and ransacked sans a single deviant, all skulked defenselessly in their own private pocket of darkness. Whether they were waiting with bated, dread-filled breath for the return of the tent’s ill-omened owner, or simply glorying in temporary repose was anyone’s guess. Whatever the case may be, one of those options certainly wasn’t being lassoed into a face-to-face meet-and-greet with the ultimate Equestrian evil. However, the pestilence of tragic luck looming over the camp and the bastard were alike in many ways. Both inexorable. Both unable to be negotiated with, sparing the bother of attempting to evoke clemency. Both gazing lustfully at the cans. A begrimed silver fork lazed inside a plundered orange-striped can of carrots. The fourth unsullied can was packed to the utmost with ripe strawberries.

Gary collapsed to his knees. His primal instincts clawed out of the lunacy-riddled fortress of his blackened heart, electrifying his trembling arms with a savage flame. A fiery passion for survival he never knew he’d ever find himself rescued by. With a wild, jubilated swing of his arm, the solid scarlet mass of the sugar-packed fruit dove down his arid throat. His stomach extricated from hunger’s authoritarian governance at long last. He tossed the pillaged can backwards into the gloom-infested wilderness, wiping the ruby remnants with a jungly forearm.

“My goodness, Gary! I haven’t seen anypony that desperate in a thousand years.”

“Shut the fuck up,” He sneered, coming back to his feet. “It’s either I look like a damn bum scrounging for food or we both lose. Your choice.”

“Not saying it was a bad thing. I thought that chug was rather impressive.”

Gary couldn’t help but smirk ever-so-slightly as he reached two hands into the tent’s innards. One seized the lily-white hat, the other snagged the sleeve of the khaki jacket. With his callous stone-hearted robbery complete, the male stood fully on his legs trapped in a never-ending furnace of anguish. The coat was large on Gary Demonio. For a man of his stature and raw primordial brawn, that statement was one used exponentially scarcely. A sentiment that sat on the brink of extinction in Gary’s vocabulary. He eased his arms into the ever-so-slightly baggy jacket. Brown stripes dawned at his bowling ball shoulders and stampeded down both sleeves, concluding at his hands. The end of the sleeve effortlessly swallowed the mid-way point of his hands and left only the flesh above his knuckles exposed. With a simple cuff of the sleeve’s ending, this irksome predicament ceased to exist.

The raven-haired man slipped the bleached hat upon his sweat-logged scalp. It was a bit too small to gratify his narrow-minded tastes and preferences. At the end of the day, in spite of how vehemently Gary attempted to traverse around the face, he was and perhaps always will be a beggar. A groveling mangy parasite blighting this homeless pony’s kingdom with a grim drought of defenses.

Gary strolled to the opposite side of the encampment. The campfire’s final remnants of flame wandered far beyond the margins of saving. What was once a dull yet somehow active cluster of embers upon Gary’s entrance was now a cadaverous spark. Regardless of the strength of the fire’s last moments on Earth, the oak-brown tent was untouched and unbothered. Becoming another nameless gratuitous victim of the night’s colossal stomach.

“What do you think’s gonna be in this one?” Gary spoke, his voice ever-so-slowly reuniting with his bygone stentorian boom. “The cigarettes and shit I keep smelling?”

Gary mirrored his previous set of motions. Lowering into a slight crouch. Fingertips eased between the two drapes, nigh-invisible in the smothering twilight. He shoved the right drape to the side, all but pinning it to the moist corner. When the raven-haired man had practically bullied his way into the tent’s heart and soul, he expected a similar outcome to the one he recently received. If he was lucky, and luck was almost always disloyal and transient, he’d be granted a few more undisturbed cans of lusted provisions. Besides that, he couldn’t possibly envision in his roiling sleep-deprived psyche of what could begin to galvanize his frame. A half-empty pack of cigarettes? A pipe choked by mounds of tobacco eager to be torched? Or perhaps something else his foggy brain couldn’t conjure before that would rescue the day?

One of those things that he always desperately required and longed for was something he was nigh-incapable of placing his finger on. Making the very tip of his forked silver tongue its cursory domicile.

Guns.

Lots and lots of ladened, blood-hungry weaponry. Enough firepower to make a nihilist warmonger flare green with merciless jealousy.

Splayed out across the full width of the tent horizontally was a roll of thick, sun-baked animal hide the color of beef jerky. In front of the leather unfurled roll was a forest green nylon sleeping bag, it too horizontal and facing the right side of the tent. Marbling the leather and lined up in tidy rows bleeding with uniformity were firearms. In spite of the care and modernization put into its arrangement, they weren’t marshaled in any particular order. As though an isolated hunter’s armory vomited its high-caliber contents into the tent, and the owner was abruptly saddled with the duty of making sense of it. The sprawling quantum of munition was enough to send the male’s heart into an exalted thunderous maelstrom.

On the far left was a nine-inch hunting knife with the sleekest ivory handle Gary had ever laid his eyes upon. It was glossy and bore an enticing sheen like white plastic, resembling nothing of the tusk it was created from. But their was zero doubt in the shared mind of Gary and Discord the pearlescent grip was the victim of callous poaching. Beside that on the right was a standard revolver with a deep walnut grip with a frame constructed entirely out of pale nickel. Adorned by engravings inlaid with scintillating iron that Gary struggled to recognize or make lucidity of. On its right was, without the tiniest morsel of doubt, the breadwinner of this vault hidden in plain sight. The glorious mother-of-pearl of the secret stockpile.

The apple of Gary’s eye infested by a lust for heartless larceny was a magnificence double-barreled shotgun. Doubtlessly its fervent creator’s magnum opus. Its wide grain stock conceived from the slaughtered carcass of a black-spotted birch tree. The role it played prior to its unwarranted butchering was unknown. Perhaps a gentle giant in a crowdless lush clearing, or one of thousands in a dense labyrinthine forest. The lengthy extended twin barrels were fashioned from the most solid, robust iron cash could possibly acquire. Engraved crudely into the sallow butt of the shotgun was what Gary could only assume to be a motto of an adept ambitious hunter. The words “HEART=CLEAN KILL” were carved into the pale wood. On the right of the double-barrel was a gunmetal-colored Schofield revolver with a stygian wooden grip.

Gary’s knees kissed the sodden earth once more as he lowered his weight onto the forest bed. He cradled and psycho-analyzed the shotgun in his calloused sin-stained hands. With the business end lazing in his left palm and the butt atop his right, the sling dangling loosely like a dead snake, more details and artistic additives were apparent. Highlighted by the curious moonlight. Graven into the top and sides of the twain of barrels was an illustration. Small iron birds in flight from the looks of it. The birds sporadically polka-dotted the barrel’s top half. Long winding lines drawn as gusts of wind tailed the birds, carved deep into the stainless steel. The method of draftsmanship was undeniably vulgar, its primitiveness rivaled only by neanderthals on cave walls. The sketch, however, ventured far outside the realm of crudity. Some might tack the word beautiful onto their vast corkboard of descriptions for it. Others might refer to it as abhorrent and sloppy. Labeling the image as merely the machinations of an old society-despising, banjo-expert yokel.

One word marched across the vast landscape of Gary’s mind when his irises landed upon it. It was useless. Unless the picture of paltry birds and wind yielded any sort of value to the bastard, his interest was focused elsewhere. Currently, every last ounce and drop of Gary Demonio’s attention was soldered onto the tent wall before him. Somewhere blighting the northern religion of the Everfree Forest, an amalgamation of sounds lumbered towards Gary’s short-lived secluded paradise. The snapping and slaughter of cloven hooves against branches. The empty muted crunch of geriatric leaves. The odd squeal every so often of a lantern swinging back and forth on rusted, elderly hinges. Above all that, serving as the self-appointed overlord of all sound in that general vicinity, was voices. The joyful, blissfully care-free cadence of three lifelong friends enjoying a nightly stroll. Unsuspecting and oblivious to the monster engaging in haphazard primal piracy.

“Oh, hell!” Gary whispered.

“Are you hearing what I’m hearing?”

“Of course I am, you dumbass!”

Gary hastily scoured the tent for a few more seconds, seizing a small brown cloth satchel and tossing it around his left burly shoulder. The bag of aurate bullets and shotgun slugs jingled calamitously like a militarized Santa sack. Something he’d expect to find out in a miscellaneous bunker, seeking refuge from the exterior discord beneath the earth. Not in the bowels of a random hunter’s encampment miles from a hustling-and-bustling civilization, waiting with open, hospitable arms to welcome them back to humanity.

He snagged the ivory knife and its black faux-leather scabbard and tethered it to his waist. Repeating the motion with the Schofield and its dark brown tanned leather holster. He belted it around his midsection, checking the cylinder of the revolver. Odd but far from unappreciated, all six golden dime-sized circles resided within. After slinging the custom-made shotgun around his torso, he mirrored the action. The chamber was packed full of blood-thirsty lead and pellets. He stood fully, his shark-tooth grin emanating a vile breed of grim delight and merry joy. Corners of his lips aimed to the faceless sky above like fallen forlorn angels.

Gary’ carnage-starved leer was magnetized to the endless ranks of trees and arresting vegetation to the north. The hammering, barking heart of the undesired conundrum marched in a pair of three. Their features enveloped by a relentless haze of anonymity. On the left of the pompous, boisterous triad of hillbillies was the christened light bearer. Clenched loosely in his gloved weather-worn hoof was a slender sable metal wand, mottled with maculations of flayed paint. Sores of revolting appalling rust freckled its languishing frame. Even worlds apart from one another, amber conniving optics shredding the tenebrosity asunder, Gary knew good and well the lantern had seen better days. Imprisoned within the begrimed glass cage dangling and swinging deliriously with every careless stride was a powerful orb of radiance. As though this garish devil-may-care ensemble of hicks abducted a comet from the twilight. Burglarizing its freedom and transforming it into their personal chattel.

Discord quailed at the uninvited torrent of barbarous prospects adulterating his psyche.

“I’m not too keen on whatever you’re planning, my friend. These are just hunters.”

The glaring light was a captured star waving maniacally in the all-encompassing twilight. His eyes squirmed pitifully in his groggy unflappable sockets, cowering away from the glaring shrunken sun. Gary’s heart was corralled by burning chains of jubilation at the spectacle. In all reality, considering it merely a sight for sore eyes would be the overlord of all understatements. To Gary Demonio, this ignorant band of moseying cannon fodder bore uber-importance. Vastly more significant than a grievous, monstrous crime scene waiting to explode in a starburst of viscera and brain matter. This was his greatest muse. A means to galvanize his wistful contrivances, begging on their scabbed, ichor-stained hands and knees to be gratified and pleased.

And when his number-one pastime was the hub of conversation, declining its gluttonous advances was a cardinal sin. Even in his intramural hypocrisy-littered bible of morals and rigorous guidelines.

“They’re not ‘just’ anything, they’re in my way. They could be bounty hunters for all I know. You want that?”

“Of course not, Gary, but-”

Gary caressed the sheeny smooth stock with a twitching thumb, his rapture bleeding onto the redoubtable wood. A possession far too grand for a wicked ghoul of his caliber to wield with mock valiancy.

“Besides, I’ve been following your orders ever since I got back here. About damn time I had some fun.”

Gary stabbed the pale birchwood stock into his bulky shoulder. The baggy khaki fabric rustled. Finger stroking the sleek trigger impatiently. The hapless light bearer fastened in his crosshairs. With a final lick of his lips and a diabolical hankering for slaughter sullying his sap-colored gaze, Gary Demonio yanked the solid steel trigger.

A volley of heat-seeking pellets, almost mirroring his hunger for violence and devastation, soared towards the hillbillies. A skull-splitting eruption of world-shaking magnitude shook the kafkaesque Everfree Forest to its rotten core.

For the first time in his countless decades of mayhem-infested existence, the god of all things anarchy and bedlam was stunned to silence. A silence swiftly razed by the bereaved roars of dolorous ponies not ready to die.

Chapter 27: Doomsday Wears Green

Sand.

Sand was an almost universally known and recognized facet of nature. Sometimes, it was the grim yet irrefutably gorgeous byproduct of innumerable millennia of erosion. Other times, man-made concentrated destruction and pulverizing was the flagrantly red-handed culprit. Or, for the case of Equestria with zero parallels and its sprawling multifaceted population, a pony-made pattern of forced weathering and gullying.

Sand also harbored a bountiful manifold of uses and purposes. A basic foundational element of nature that was far from eye-catching. Yet somepony at some nondescript point in history discovered the pale grainy ingredient and saw it for what it was. An opportunity for unrelenting prosperity. A seed that would blossom into a fruitful basket of idiosyncratic jobs surrounding sand, not one alike to another in any way shape or form.

However, amidst a scattershot populace of banjo-loving yokels and cheapjack hillbillies, one equine in that godforsaken purgatory known as Appleoosa was adept. Proficient in just about every freeform medium or paltry pastime in those rambling swaths of gilded grit. And even that was a statement that, both in paper in the minds of whoever would listen to its utterance, appeared indisputably jaw-dropping. To be fluent and knowledgeable in the whopping three different artforms Appaloosa accorded to its ill-starred residents was far from the grandiose challenge it sounded like. That trio of hobbies being horseshoe tossing, becoming a rodeo clown, and racing.

Mortimer Surly Senior had done the entire triad enough to last him a thousand lifetimes. After all, when you’re teetering dangerously on the brink of being deemed a doddering octogenarian, there’s only so many things one could indulge on. Mortimer tossed hundreds of horseshoes. Made a blithering, half-minded fool of himself all in the name of entertaining the immensity of Appleoosa’s world-weary citizenry. And the races. Oh, the races. He had lost track decades prior of how many impeccable feebleminded fools dared to propose a well-disposed race. All they received was an unjust marathon with an unfathomably lofty skill ceiling and a shower of rancid humiliation.

On balmy days where the sun circumscribed its indiscriminate sweltering fury, Mortimer standing alone outside his gimcrack beguiling cabin was a natural commonality. When the weather harbored as many numbers as he did, that being the mid-sixties to low-fifties, Mortimer would idle outside his jerry-built lodge. Putting roughly four or five feet of distance between him and his moribund dark oak front door. One that was shackled to a bed in hospice care, spending its final weeks of life fettered to an iron lung. Every single day he woke up in that benign sultry cabin, it wasn’t a short prayer thanking the Lord above for another day of existence that was his first action. He shed his blankets, freed his ropey frame from the mattress’ lush siren song, and vagabonded to the kitchen. Nailed to the ringed caliginous wooden wall straighter than any evergreen could ever achieve was a thermometer. And that was nine times out of a ten, bereft of a pinch of doubt, the object of Mortimer’s every desire or wist. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to decipher whether that day would be spent outdoors lumbering awkwardly down Memory Lane. Or spent penned inside his elderly cabin, welded to his garish reclining chair with a sub-par book clamped in his timeworn talons.

That characterless, ordinary November morning was just another example of this long-antiquated cycle. Another day in the obsolete meritless life of either unflaggingly stalking and pursuing two-bit criminals and thugs like famished bloodhounds or…this. Whatever word somebody decides to classify his forlorn recollections of bygone years and decades as. Some, even his fellow confidants in the nefarious Surly Gang, categorized the bittersweet avocation as a “useless waste of time”. Others, meaning exclusively the amicable titan Tacitus, praised the head honcho. Placing it upon a bedazzled regal mantle in the illustrious hall of so-called “therapeutic recreations”. While Mortimer wouldn’t be caught stone-dead referring to his melancholic sojourn into his departed history as anything synonymous with therapy. Hell, Mortimer didn’t even believe in therapy. He barely believed in anything at his age. Nothing but what truly mattered. Liberation from oppression. The irrepressible pursuit of wealth and ceaseless harmony. And above all, the hounding for happiness. The never-ending eternal ouroboros that was the goose chase for joy and contentment. One that Mortimer had been the first in line to participate in since the day his dust-caked wings could carry him.

Mortimer Surly stood far from his unsound, bedraggled cabin. His home was situated noxiously close to the only belt of railroad tracks leading out of this legalized damnation. Far into the banal unending distance, the sight that had grown equally tiresome and semi-homelike greeted him with sultry open arms. Repeating the same monotonous action as it had been for a limitless number of years since his dawn in the tumble-down cabin at his rear. A boundless stifling ocean of sizzling sand painted the impossibly bleak horizon, walloped by a grim drought of hope and luster. Two deviants pledged to shatter the ageless circuit of monotony and merciless tedium. One was the passionless barbed cacti sporadically polka-dotting the insipid hellscape. Standing erect and unbowed like a green-dyed bleached skeleton trapped within a diabolical cage of thorns. Its rangy L-shaped limbs cock-eyed with a single formless fist at the end akin to a verdant pool ball. Some arms were jutted towards the lifeless ground where insects sought refuge from the irate warlord conquering the sky, scampering in unseen tunnels of sand. Some arms of cacti were pointed to the tricolored morning sky, the sun a mere catalyst to the spirited omnibus of arresting hues and shades. As though a buckshot was fired into a pyramid of paint cans and the aftermath was a variegated puzzle. An iridescent glossy lake of vibrance and life with no extant parrales coming anywhere close. Sitting proud and gratified atop the skyscraping bar it set single-handedly.

Fauna entirely separate from the night-invisible arthropods of the blistering desert slithered and hobbled. The alphabet of zoological life ranged from tough-shelled spry armadillos to conniving zone-tailed hawks, perched upon slender branches of dead trees. A facet of the desert seldom witnessed by Mortimer and Company. The second deviant, traitorous to the unsympathetic mundanity of the sand and rocks, was a craggy vista. Composed entirely of remote lonesome families of mountains bearing mind-boggling heights like the weather-beaten decrepit ruins of almighty pyramids. The horizon was rugged and jagged akin to the teeth of a novel buzzsaw, peerless and dread-inducing. In the countless hours, weeks, and months Mortimer spent marooned amidst the eclipsing vastness of the desert, the Griffon never came close to fully comprehending its height. In all truth and veraciousness, if Mortimer was abruptly abducted by space-bound extraterrestrials and dropped on the face of Mars, he wouldn’t be able to discern the difference. The only somewhat attractive drawcard beguiling hapless souls to a soulless place was the physical town of Appaloosa. Which, admittedly, wasn’t as exceptional and revolutionary as it was interminably chalked up to being. The only reason any sane autonomous individual with an unimpaired brain stem would ever go for were two things. A belated family visit or the uber-famous whiskey solely located in the town.

Appaloosa was wholly invisible from the Surly Gang’s alienated flyblown rattletrap. Completely and utterly disjunct from the gluttonous slothful machinations of malevolent civilization. In all honesty, not just the infernal contrivances of the banjo-loving backwater civilians of Appleoosa. They were in the back of beyond in every conceivable way the human mind could imagine. The desert was a vacuum of everything bearing any semblance to vitality and life with a sprinkling of exceptions. The occasional odd rambunctious screech of a starved hawk exercising the textbook definition of insanity. Patrolling the incalculable flaxen wasteland umpteen amounts of times, scrutinizing the grim, pitiless landscape for sustenance.

Around a klick southwest of the cabin, indubitably the most effervescent location in the savage badlands, was a placid river. Teeming with a bountiful abundance of diminutive yet fulfilling bluegill and belligerent trout. In tow with a vast, sprawling manifold of plump boisterous mallards, their vexing quacks incessantly obliterating Mortimer’s tranquil afternoons. Unquestionably, the most engrossing thing dwelling within the blonde panorama was situated ten feet or so on Mortimer’s left. A colossal pueblo-colored rock jutted from the silty earth like a mammoth arrowhead. As if, somewhere amidst the all-encompassing fadeless discord of Hell’s grimmest bowels, a train-sized spear launched from the haze of bedlam. Akin to the countless other endeavors to bring humanity to its righteous unpunctual coda, it failed. Leaving only the titanic whetted tip of the spear visible to the naked eye. A new oddity for the ones he conspired to annihilate to gawk and admire to no end.

“Boss!” Far behind the pensive Griffon outside his cabin, Clear Sky thundered his name. Entirely razing the placid quietude of his harmonious recollections. “Come over here a second, will ya?”

Mortimer whipped his head to the badgersome humdrum behind him. Cracked beak and timeworn cyanic irises sharpened into a sweltering glower. He pounded his right talon into the dirt before he spoke. “What is it, Clear Sky!”

“Just come over here a sec! I need to talk to ya!”

“Son of a bitch!” The Griffon growled scornfully, the distance turning his words into unsung derisions.

Mortimer sauntered back to his dog-tired cabin, vexed beyond the brink of belief. A state of emotions that was poles apart from being considered atypical for the elder. The gang always harbored a miniscule fleeting theory about the forever irate senior. Attempting to derive even the most benign of particles of clarity or sense from his unremitting, unwarranted fury to his so-called “family”. Perhaps it was something that simply came with age. Nothing more and certainly nothing less. Or, the hypothesis almost everyone in the gang had long-since subscribed to, was that somewhere along the sin-stained road of his life, he lost all smidgens of joy. The gang couldn’t precisely pinpoint with laser-sight accuracy what particular event may have caused it. All they knew is that, at one point during his lifelong tenure of hurling good-for-nothing criminals in barred cages, his heart was carpet bombed. And all joviality was turned to ash and dust along with it.

The cabin’s outside view was about a repugnant concoction of deathly stark and barebones combined with the dreadful drab of a squatter’s kingdom. Its aged weather-beaten cherry oak walls were bitter acrimonious husks of its former self. Lorn and drowning in ceaseless yearning for its bygone elegance. The desert’s merciless banality siphoning its envy-inducing brilliance, funneling it into unseen facets of the borderless sands. Atop the cabin was a sloped triangular roof adorned by black shingles spangled with unknown white dots. Random patches of shingles were bemusingly absent. Whether violently scalped by a ravenous thunderstorm or wrenched from the wood by a ruthless squall, it all ended in the same byproduct. With abhorrent patches flaxen wood mottling the roof like rampant melanoma. On the right of the cabin was a large birch wood custom-made covered wagon. Its hulking wheels and flaxen frame nearly identical to the color of the sand callously suffocating the land with its coarse immensity. The white drape covering the cargo in the back of the wagon was begrimed, marred by giant patches of faded mud stains and faded pink splatters of blood. The Surly Gang’s innumerable victims forever tattooed upon the bullet-hole-riddled drape flapping feverishly in the high-pitched desert winds.

The wagon’s rear was a gaping man-sized, U-shaped maw thronging with every ware and apparatus mandatory for an unflappable bounty hunter’s prosperity. A large brown chest sat at the back of the wagon securely latched with a bulky sable padlock. Lounging care-free inside was a superabundance of dried fruit, jerky, and spare munitions. Not the most appetizing chunks of nutrition, but it was a surefire method of keeping starvation and fatigue at bay. Erecting a rigid bulwark between reality and the harrowing hellscape of hypothetical states of affairs. Lining the wagon’s back walls were small birch wood crates with six glasses. Some contained chilled milk fresh out of the cow’s udder while others contained ice water, condensation painting the long-necked glass. In the middle of the cargo bed was a gargantuan burlap sack of freshly picked potatoes vendored in Appaloosa. The town’s name stamped in faded black letters on the top of the sack.

Mortimer approached the seafoam-colored unicorn. She lugged a jug of purified river water into the back of the wagon, sliding it further in. It swiftly became roommates with the vast enormity of ripe potatoes.

“What can I help you with, Clear Sky?” Mortimer inquired coarsely.

She turned to gaze into his cerulean irises. Insufferable vexation clashed with the toils of labor dwelling in Sky’s drowsy sockets. On the sand-blanketed dirt bed at her hooves was a small heap of items yet to be chucked into the soon-to-be makeshift oven. Several glass bottles of crystal-clear water packaged within old moonshine jugs and two small black wooden boxes, one scarred by a single hole in the top-left corner. In the boxes was another abundance of loose rounds and shells in coalition with a supplementary blackened-steel Ranchand’s revolver. A lengthy slender white wooden box was segregated from the others with a custom-made stainless-steel pump-action shotgun within. The only firearm in the Surly Gang’s entire straggling catalog of bloodthirsty artillery that was earmarked exclusively for dire emergencies. Only one instance comes to mind when that glorious, far-famed opus when put into use.

The fallout of the pony who was flogged by its wrath was the primary object of decades of night terrors.

“Would it be out of line to ask what in Tartarus were you doing over there?”

Sky’s voice, effortlessly perceptible in contrast with her fellow hunters, was wholly bereft of the warm country twang. And the reason behind the destitution of the sugar-and-honey hillbilly drawl didn’t take a Harvard scholar’s wits to understand. Born and raised in Manehattan, spent a year’s long sojourn in Appleloosa to clear her head, and met Mortimer Surly Senior in the streets at the dead of night. The rest was history.

Mortimer huffed, already considering the multitude of ways he could pull the plug on this conversation prematurely. “I was…thinkin’. Like I always do. Why does it concern you?”

“‘Cause we’re about to go on the ‘biggest road trip of our lives’ according to you, and you’re not lifting a damn finger to come help.” Sky retorted. “Staring at the mountains or whatever won’t help us.”

“I’ve been helpin’ plenty!” He sneered.

“Barking orders every blue moon don’t count as helping in my book, Mortimer,” Her Boston-accented voice replied. “How about you grab a box and get moving.”

“I’m a senior citizen, box movin’ ain’t my forte anymore. No time for it.”

“But you have more than enough to stare at a cactus, yeah?”

Sky grabbed the handle of a black briefcase made from bona fide leather of an anonymous creature. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember who the gang robbed to acquire it. All she could discern of its history now was the strident, unwanted jingling of loose revolver rounds and shotgun shells within. Roiling about in its leather dungeon like the shifting of tectonic plates.

Mortimer’s brows were knitted together. The edges of his beak threatened to curl. A snarl so unfettered and viscous, a rabid pitbull piloted by bloodlust would go mad with envy. “Shut the fuck up and pack. We ain’t got the time for this nonsense.”

It was abnormal for Clear Sky to fly into an unhinged bout of flaming dudgeon at Mortimer’s incessant chagrined prods and snide remarks. She didn’t fully subscribe to the notion that the remainder of the gang understood that an irate rise or infuriated glower was exactly what he wanted. At least, that was the theory that Clear Sky clung to with every self-governing fiber of her being. Either he wanted an infuriated implosion of world-rocking magnitudes, or that was simply the building blocks of his often irksome personality. Only one member of the gang felt true undebatable rage at the leader’s crude, sneering diatribes. His own son. Another gang member was stoic and stone-faced in the face of a volley of envenomed insults and ridicules. One that was puzzlingly absent from the cabin.

As Clear Sky grinned at the haggard senior, Mortimer scanned the cabin and its barren outskirts briefly. His meticulous machine-like search yielding zero fruits in all departments.

“Where the hell is Tacitus? We can use him right about now.” Asked Mortimer.

“I’m not sure,” Sky replied, her voice strained and agonistic as she lugged another jug of river water into the wagon. “Junior told me he saw him heading out to the river at five or so. Haven’t heard any updates.”

“The fuckin’ river again,” Mortimer harumphed gutturally. “What’s he bringin’ back this time?”

“He told your son duck was on the menu tonight.”

“Duck again? For shit’s sake!”

“Trust me, I know.”

“I’m tired of him and those fuckin’ mallards. He needs to let them migrate and leave us be. He always salts them till they’re whiter than angels.”

“Maybe you could go bitch at him for a few hours, yeah? That’ll change his mind.” She teased with an infectious bronze-toothed smile. “That’s your specialty, boss.”

Mortimer bore holes into her gleaming beam.

“Mortimer! Come in here a second!”

The Griffon’s ireful gaze snapped on to the gaping front door of the cabin where the sonorous beckon of his name spilled into the formless desert. Confusing the conversate voice was unfeasible to confuse or mistake for any pony whatsoever in that windswept nothingness. It was Dread Shot, beseeching an interaction with his right-hand comrade for whatever reason. There was a kaleidoscope of possibilities of where this inexorable conversation could lead. Ranging from banal and meaningless to operation-changing.

The Griffon met Sky’s irises once more. “Holler if that dumbass ever decides to come back from the river. I’ll send him a few of my kindest words.”

“Will do, boss. Don’t give yourself a hernia in there.”

Clear Sky chortled as the elder sauntered away with a gruff under-the-breath growl. Mortimer Surly strolled into his melancholic, dour sorry-excuse for a living room. The comforting temperature of the outside wasteland and within the cabin’s walls were impossibly congruent. Not a degree neither above nor below that day’s status quo. It was a rare infrequent moment in history where Mortimer rejected living up to his surname’s sake. A strident squall of complaints and grievances staying penned in his rickety rusted lungs.

The cabin’s cramped living room was, without a trifling morsel of doubt, the golden poster child of the Surly Gang’s cabin. In comparison to the hideous remainder of the mangy abode, the tarnished living room was a fountain of youth spewing gold and riches every which way. Only a trio of articles of furniture existed within the crammed congested space. A few inches away from the wall, the ramshackle home to a ravenous society of termites, was a black leather couch. Its lacerated stygian flesh sleek and traumatized, adorned with wild, feral slashes and wounds of enigmatic origin. However, to be frank, judging by the sanguine vandalizing the wagon, it wasn’t fractious to precisely pinpoint the genesis. Prodigious plate-sized blotches of the pale cushion beneath mottled the vest-pocket sofa, the stygian threadbare leather flayed in limitless areas. In front of the shabby couch was a medium-sized coffee table matching the sofa in length, yet significantly wider than it could ever dream of being. Its edges were small jet-black ceramic tiles all pasted together with a single streak of a sooty paste. Resting upon a quartet of slender ebony metal legs, the square center was occupied solely by top-grade splendor. The best money could ever possibly buy. A diminutive rectangular lake of glistening vitreous pitch-black marble spangled by lily-white dots. The night sky abducted from beneath the moon’s uncharitable watchful eye and condemned to an earthly prison. Forever sentenced to serve as a meager conversation piece in a jackleg cabin of stony-hearted thieves and outlaws. Jailed smack-dab in the middle of an endless vacuum of sand and chipped sun-baked rock, where intelligent life all but ceased to exist long ago. Beside the left arm of the couch was a diminutive wooden bedside table. A square of laser-engraved sanded oak wood erected by four rangy treen legs.

Sitting on the withered morose couch was the moon-white stallion who summoned his indignant being inside to begin with. Basking in muted rays of the early morn’s brilliant shafts, slightly muted by floral drapes masking the begrimed windows, was Dread Shot. Atop his formerly naked scalp was an article of headwear seldom sported by the mustang. A midnight blue curved-brim gambler’s hat in nigh-pristine condition. In front of him atop the coffee table, far too illustrious to belong in a den of maniacs like this one, was an unfurled cinnamon-colored newspaper.

“The fuck is it now, Dread Shot? We’re supposed to be packin’ and gettin’ outta here soon.”

“I know, but all that can wait. When does our train leave anyhow?”

Mortimer paused, dust-clogged brain impounded by thought for a few seconds. “An hour or so.”

“We’ll be fine,”

Dread Shot rose from his war-scarred seat, the removal of his rump exposing the largest irreparable lesion of them all. A scalped patch of pale rope-colored cushion that vagabonded far beyond the margins of any possible mending. Dread sauntered with an unsung wordless purpose and planted his hooves in front of the coffee table. Mortimer rested his weary iron-sick bones upon the couch. Taking his place amidst a boundless revolting constellation of wounds and slashes.

“What in Tartarus is this all about? We got places to be, Dread.”

“You think I don’t know that? I figured you’d like to know.” He nudged the newspaper towards the irritated Griffon a few inches. “Take a look.”

Mortimer disgruntledly snapped his indifferent pupils onto the omnibus of articles and over theatrical headlines. If raw unfiltered honesty piloted the ireful senior, and it invariably did in all the errorful ways, Mortimer couldn’t find a thread of bother to spare for the news. The very nanosecond that imposing rampart of words and drawn-out sentences walloped his elderly irises, his focus was eradicated.

“My eyes hurt,” He fibbed.

Dread sighed. With the plethora of papers clutched in his hoof, he relayed its abhorrent contents to the Griffon.

“Three hunters were killed up in the Everfree last night. Messed up real bad, too. One took a shotgun to his head, one got caught a few rounds to his chest. The other got beaten to death.”

“What’s that gotta do with us?”

“Demonio did it. Clear as day.” He dropped the papers back onto the table with a hushed ruffle. “He stole a shit-load of guns from their campsite and went on that little rampage of his.”

“What kind?”

“Another few boar hunters saw him a few hours after but he didn’t see them thankfully. Said he had a huge double-barrel and a few revolvers on his hip. Stole a knife, too.”

“Can’t forget the knife, can you?”

“When are you gonna start taking this serious? As serious as needed?”

Mortimer callously forsook eye contact with his second-in-command. In his right suit jacket pocket was a glut of clear vials of gun polishing oil. He fished one out along with a bone-white velvety cloth with sawblade-like edges, holding them in his left talon.

“Fuck are you talkin’ about? I am takin’ this serious.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve seen you at your most serious and you’re treating this like a big game,” Dread retorted. “Seems nopony in this damned cabin has any sort of sense.”

“I got sense!” Mortimer griped. “I fail to see why this requires so much fuckin’ caution. It’s just a bounty, we’ve done plenty of those.”

“You heard what the Man in Blue said, right?”

“The Man in Blue said a lot of things!” Mortimer riposted. “I also saw the Man in Blue! He looks like he’d be scared of his own shadow. It’s hard to take him serious.”

Mortimer reached his right eroded talon into the interior of his scarlet-lined jacket. Beneath his unequivocally redoubtable jacket, snaking around his wiry shoulders, were brown authentic leather holster suspenders. Resting placidly within the occulted scabbard was Mortimer’s signature, albeit barbarically plundered long ago, time-tested revolver. A gilded Schofield with a snow-white pearlescent handle, scuffed and decadent from innumerable years of unflagging hounding of gutless outlaws and thieves. Engraved with the utmost unambiguous talent and the sharpest of eagle eyes were two paltry letters in the mother-of-pearl. Both bold and arresting on either side of the handle and ensnared with a brilliant golden ringlet. Italicized and adroit no bigger than a human thumb was the letter A on the left, and L on the right. Inlaid with the finest refined gilt-edged ore ponykind could possibly get their fascinated hooves on.

“I don’t blame you, Mort, but you gotta understand where I’m coming from.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“It sure seems like you’re not giving half a shit about any of this!” Dread exclaimed. “Just because you don’t believe in boundaries or limits doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We ain’t the strongest ponies to ever graze Equestria.”

“We ain’t the strongest, sure,” Mortimer untwisted the vial’s cap with his battered war-torn beak. He drizzled the steel-colored liquid onto the handkerchief’s center mass. “But you can rest assured knowin’ I ain’t gonna topple to some hot-shot ‘Gary Demonio’.”

“You really think?”

Mortimer glared at his confidant. The first sorry-excuse for eye contact the pair have had in, at least to Dread Shot, a millenia during this otiose interaction. The Griffon funneled every last drop and ounce of his attention back to his uber-treasured firearm. Diligently sliding the sodden handkerchief up and down its gleaming mesmerizing metal, its lengthy barrel like a truth-telling Pinnochio.

“I ain’t thinkin’ shit. I know.” He moves the handkerchief to the barrel. “I ain’t askin’ for much, all I want is a little faith in our operation. In our abilities. Is that so hard?”

“If you look at it that way, then-”

“There ain’t no way of lookin’ at it, Dread. This is the way it is and the way things are, no changin’ anythin’.”

Mortimer thrust the opulent instrument of ceaseless terror to the left. The sumptuous cylinder flung from its cradle of solid, unquestionable gold. He encompassed the full girth of the loaded cylinder with the inundated handkerchief. The oil was rank and unapologetically obscene. Throat-pounding and merciless, the malodour was akin to a mountain-sized effigy fabricated solely out of plastic and wreathed in flames. Its fumes aberrant and lung-razing.

“Are you even paying attention to a damned word I’m saying?”

“Yes!” His leader barked. “I’m just gettin’ ready for this ‘battle of our lives’ you keep preachin’ about.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Mortimer.”

“You think Tacitus and my boy are ready for war?” Mortimer replied, a timid ghost of a grin snagging the corner of his beak. “Can you see Taci out there yet?”

Dread unleashed a chagrined ireful huff from his vexed lungs. “This is a waste of my time, you couldn’t give a shit even if you’re life hinged on it! And it does!”

Mortimer meteorically rocketed from his couch, slamming the cylinder back into the sheeny base. “Only thing I ain’t givin’ a shit about is santimonium! My mind ain’t got no room for your preachin’.”

“Preaching,” Dread scoffed.

“Yes, preachin’.” Mortimer reiterated, grizzled brows tethered as one single salt-and-pepper strip of hair. “Here’s what you need to understand, Dread.”

“What?”

“This is the biggest fuckin’ bounty of our entire worthless lives, all of us. And we ain’t got time to be sittin’ around doubtin’ and thinkin’ about how dangerous it’s gonna be. It might, or it might not. I don’t think it is.”

“You don’t think a lot of things.”

“Listen to me,” Spoke the haggard weathered elder. “We’re the best bounty hunters this world has ever seen, you realize that? So why waste our time sittin’ in this…” Mortimer waved his occupied hands around the ramshackle cabin. “Hellhole!”

Dread was soundless. His lips a pencil-drawn hyphen carved into an untarnished glacier.

“Is this somewhere you plan on spendin’ the rest of your life, Dread Shot?”

Dread paused. “Absolutely not.”

“Then, what in Tartarus are we still doin’ here?”

“Trying to make you see the danger in all this. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Mortimer riposted. “Only it ain’t workin’ ‘cause there ain’t no danger to be seen.”

Dread inhaled deeply, aurate irises plummeting to the scabbed, grunge grey-wooden floor. A miniscule detail crossed the gold scrutinous beam of judgment that was Dread Shot’s optics. Beneath the pristine coffee table were two empty silver bullet casings. Whichever specific array of nightly drunken shenanigans led to its anti-climactic spawn was nigh-impossible to uncover. An enigma forever smothered by a thick blanket of bemusement.

The uptight uncivilized war of words between both militant parties was nearing its unceremonious coda. That being a humiliating loss and a hefty slice of humble pie to Dread Shot. The serial recipetent of demeaning losses one after another, time and time again. No deviant seeking to rebel against the callous monotony of the wolfish ouroboros of failure and abasement.

Dread, for the first time in what he could only assume to be almost decades, harbored an iota of hope that this auditory farce would prove victorious for the former. However, as he routinely was, life’s cruel algorithms had a starkly different agenda.

“Fine,” Dread spoke. “Fine. We gotta go, I ain’t missing the train.”

“We won’t,”

A thoroughly nettled Dread Shot stormed towards the gaping door. Mortimer Surly did the opposite, strutting over to the hallway in front of the living room.

“Morty!” He bellowed into the lusterless murk-infested cavity.

“Yeah, Dad!” His son shouted.

“We’re leavin’! Pack your shit!”

Mortimer Surly swiftly became evanescent in the caliginous aperture. Vagabonding down the narrow aboveground catacombs to his son’s discordant bedroom. Failing to mirror the factious kingdom of raw, unbridled chaos that was the gang’s cabin and its totality. Dread shot, bearing zero patience for any possible shenanigans between father and unruly chip-on-the-shoulder son, sauntered out the yawning front door.

Outside, Clear Sky had brought her rigorous and untiring packing to a gratifying conclusion. The wagon’s broad-mouthed rear was the esophagus of a beached whale, lying cavernous and agog. Inside was a titanic immensity of pale-colored boxes and crates. Repurposed moonshine jugs accorded a fresh chance at a better life with purified river water. Stygian leather briefcases and colossal burlap sacks of diverse vegetables. Sitting pridefully in front of it was the Manehattan escapee herself, roosting boastfully on the back of the wagon. Bare back legs hanging above the rambling fervid ocean of sand, fidgeting with her trademark lever-action repeater lying horizontal across her lap. The sleek unsullied silver barrel staring out at the unending lifeless topography. A flaxen lake of grainy cobbled sand and the odd, almost extraterrestrial rock formation. Either standing or crouched down like ghostly avatars. Condemned to forever stand unwavering and inexpressive in this coarse damnation. Akin to an unreachable out-of-bounds zone knowing no margins in a dirt-poor budgeted video game.

Sky gloried in the rejuvenating provision of shade brought upon by the wagon’s morose covering. It itself was an egregious, flagrant tapestry of every sin and unforgivable transgression executed by the unmerciful gang. Either tactlessly slaughtered by their bloodthirsty, often obnoxiously gung-ho, leader or heartlessly dispatched by his lackeys. It wasn’t often when Dread Shot found himself behind the worn trigger of a gun. And the already pencil-thin chances of a reality where he was the pony taking lives like candy from a baby’s clutches was practically non-existent. Dread would’ve fervently treasured a reality where the sullied cover of their wagon wasn’t…whatever class he could categorize this into. A brazen winding maze of sporadic faded blood splatters and pockmarks of dried dirt and sludge like unorthodox hickeys. Its abhorrent detestable nature punctuated by a sprawling, fungating network of grisly bullet holes. A permanent scar forever etched into the satin almost khaki-colored textile by those poignant sorrow-ridden ponies. Misguided souls sojourning blindly and aimlessly down the vast warrens of life’s underground cesspit of unapologetic barbarity and debauchery. Beings, some he would even classify as innocent, burglarized of their singular limited-time-only opportunity to right their wrongs. Iron the irksome kinks marring their defaced, vandalized reputation and image. A chance that had long-expired. And, more importantly, a chance that Mortimer Surly and the others cared little to acknowledge. Heaven forbid allowing a so-called “irredeemable son of a bitch” to exercise another chance turning their deeds letter-perfect.

After all, Lord knows Dread Shot would kill for that chance.

The mustang approached the engaged unicorn. Her horn dull and lifeless like a blunt stalagmite, manually loading round after round into the chamber of her repeater. Prepared and embattled for a war that was terrifyingly inevitable, yet sorrowfully meritless.

“Good job with all this, Miss Sky.” Dread commended merrily with a broad closed-mouth grin.

Sky was wrenched from her mesmerized haze, meeting his irises. She mirrored his beam. Hers undeniably bewitching, ordained with her single bronze canine glinting in the half-risen sun illuminating the wasteland. Perhaps this vacuum harbored life and joviality after all.

“About damn time somepony recognized hard work,” Sky replied. “You seen Taci anywhere?”

“Wish I did.”

“Where’s the boss?”

“Inside getting Junior up and ready. I can only imagine how he feels about all this.”

“I don’t even wanna think about it.” Clear Sky laid her repeater on her right side, folding one hind leg over her knee. “They’re both masters at bitching about nothing at all.” She chuckled.

Dread couldn’t deny it. “Cut the poor colt some slack, he’s had it…rough. That’s the best way I can put it.”

“LIke all of us haven’t?”

“Maybe you’re right,”

She chortled. “When am I not?”

Mortimer and his oddly chipper son emerged from the cabin’s gaping maw. Mortimer Junior was clad in an outfit nigh-congruent with his first conference with the Man in Blue. Gladly assuming the stead of his gaudy checkered flannel was a sable long-sleeved button-down, every button free and unbound. His bare chest was a bounty of ghostly silvery feathers fondled by the shrill pernicious desert winds. Affixed to the young Griffon’s plumy scalp was his matte-black purple-banded derby hat. Its curved brims failing to combat the spear-like beams of the morning sun. Peeking over the unnameable horizon, austere and graceful, like a colossal wedge of molten gold. Mortimer Junior granted the wonder-striking vista with a fleeting glance, his bleary eyes barely hung at half-mast.

He shuffled to the back of the wagon while sloppily and lethargically buttoning his shirt. Dread Shot reached a hoof into the sprawling immensity of boxes and crates. He emerged with a timeworn tattered leather holster the color of coffee. Crafted from the marvelous hide of a dastardly coyote he slew what felt like lifetimes ago. In reality, if his shoddy memory sought to please him, twenty years or so had passed since that mindless execution. Slaughtered with the very same black-steel Mauser pistol tenanting the trite holster. He belted it around his waist.

Mortimer Senior followed his son out of the door, passing him and moving to the front of the pale birchen wagon. The encumbered wooden bed behind him moaned pitifully as his son became situated. A hushed yet all too audible groan of contempt expelling from his huffing lungs.

“Any updates on Taci, boss?” Clear Sky inquired.

“He ain’t been back. He’ll just have to meet us at the station, he’ll live.” Mortimer responded.

At the head of the wagon lie two burly, ironclad birch wood yokes. Each one fettered to the wagon’s blemishless face by a short wooden square pole, connected to the pole by a small steel chain. They sat in the silky satin sand like forgotten marooned carcasses. Unmoored and deserted in the boundless flaxen oblivion.

Mortimer picked up the right yoke. His rusted joints and weather-beaten sun-cracked bones roared for mercy. Dread Shot stood to the side, glowering unsatisfied at the event.

“What’s our first order of business in Ponyville, boss? We got any leads?” Clear sky questioned, shifting noisily on one of the meshwork of boxes.

“Of course we fuckin’ do. I wouldn’t have left the house without one. He killed a few hunters out in the dark parts of the Everfree Forest, miles away from the town.” Mortimer replied. “We got the trip of our lives, gentlecolts.”

His son huffed vexingly, rubbing his piercing sapphire globes in conspicuous irritation. “Here we go again.” He whined into his talons.

“Quite your ass down back there, son! It’ll be done before you know it!” His father chided.

Mortimer abstracted his white pork pie from his iron-grey pate. Headwear outstretched in his left talon, the monolithic ring of robust wood in his right. He gingerly lowered the yoke down, allowing it to roost mellowly upon his eroded dilapidated shoulders. The Griffon groaned in unwarranted vexation from the badgersome weight upon his weary elderly frame. Both literally and metaphorically. The sun wasted no time in walloping the geriatric’s susceptible crown. Exacting the same indiscriminate stony-hearted treatment it did just about every entity, both inanimate and vigorous, in that unvarying hellscape. Grilling the roof of his head bereft of a morsel of clemency. He returned the hat to his head.

As Mortimer’s talons shifted unpleasantly, slowly but surely coming to terms with the elephantine onus upon his dog-tired spine, he gazed to his left. All he found was the yoke still slumped lousily on the sun-baked desert floor, and Dread Shot standing six-inches from it. Standing intolerant and unfaltering. The Griffon gazed out at the ceaseless reaches of the sand in front of him. His milky cyanic optics seemingly breaching the flaming horizon. He ogled for numerous seconds before swiveling his head, imprisoning Dread’s peepers in a wicked contest. A competition to see who could defy and rebel against one another the longest before a seismic nuclear apocalypse of rage and vulgarities commenced.

“What’re you doin’?”

Dread stared soundlessly for a moments before he replied. “Last chance. We could all just unpack and head inside and live our lives in peace, pretend this never happened. Leave Demonio to his demons. Taci’s still gone, it could work.”

“Now why in Tartarus would I do a thing like that?”

Dread inched towards him. A few steps. “I don’t think you’ve really realized what we’re walking into. What you’re walking into.”

“We’re walkin’ into a bounty lookin’ for some money! What’s the big damned difference you keep belly-achin’ about?”

“This isn’t some bounty. It ain’t some asshole who stole a few apples from a store and got a price on their heads, this is a killer. A cold-blooded killer.”

“And?”

“He could kill us all in a split-second. You heard the Man in-”

“I don’t fancy the Man in Blue a liar!” Mortimer interjected. “Only an exaggerator. I’m sure Celestia paid him to make it sound as bad as possible.”

“I doubt it,”

“It don’t matter what you doubt!” Mortimer growled. “All that matters is the truth.”

“What truth?”

Mortimer slapped the sand with his talons. Chagrined beyond belief. “The truth to the matter is we’re in good hooves, Dread Shot! That’s what you need to understand.”

“I ain’t doubting that. I’m just saying we’d probably be better off pursuing something else.”

“Somethin’?”

“Yeah, something. A new job or a new…anything. Something else that ain’t this. We ain’t obligated to see this through.”

“We talked to the Princess and her lackeys. We sat in her castle. If that’s not an obligation I don’t know what the fuck is.”

Dread sighed, his jaws divorcing to breathe life into another vocal cesspool of obstructions and defiance. Mortimer interrupted the dubious pony.

“Dread, listen to me close. Real close.” He cleared his throat. “If I truly thought for one second in my head you were right, that if I believed this was some hidden death trap, I’d still be asleep. Believe me. I’d tell Cronell and all them idiots up in Canterlot to go fuck themselves. But I haven’t.”

“Mort, I-”

“Please, just trust me. This is our last rodeo. I mean it. After this, we ain’t gotta worry about no more of this horseshit.”

Dread Shot was seized by the unsympathetic throes of an internal deliberation. Unable to effectively pinpoint what exactly magnetized his infuriated gilded irises to the king-sized yoke. Slumped slothfully in the sultry lake of torrid grainy stone-littered sand, rambling far into the stupefying unfathomable distance. He wasn’t exactly sure what foreign cancerous emotion in his perturbed heart hijacked his dexterity to don the yoke. Mirroring the exact self same actions performed mere seconds before by his brother-in-arms. Momentarily removing his hat, slipping the wooden halo over his neck like a macabre medieval punishment, and placing his gambler atop his head.

Who was the culprit? Which conniving traitorous sensation in his rattled core was behind these machinations?

Was it stupidity? A dire drought of impossibly common sense and a third-grade education? Loyalty so blind that all it knew was perpetual unceasing darkness? Or was it the prospect of a tranquil catharsis when the endgame of Mortimer’s plane came and went? Was that it?

Dread Shot wasn’t sure what he wanted. All he knew was that, akin to every other feeble gutless attempt in their decades of cabals, he failed to convince the Griffon otherwise. Even steering him from a glaring flashing neon sign pointing to Ponyville that “CERTAIN DEATH AHEAD” was an impractical task.

The Surly Gang dragged that birchen chockablock wagon beneath the bold morning sky. Marching bereft of a reputable guide, shepherded like a herd of sightless sheep lumbering haplessly without rhyme or reason. The shepherd himself having not a sliver of a clue of their ultimate destination or endgame. All he had to himself was his vacant sockets, tenanted only by a gluttonous hankering for…something.

Whatever Mortimer Surly truly desired.

Whatever Mortimer Surly was willing to die for.

The daunted-slash-battle-hungry Surly Gang walked across the blistering desert floor. Their crosshairs welded to that brazen, bold-faced neon sign, Certain death.

With a shallow pitiful groan of a door painted whiter than the heavens, Silver Spears, the decadent callous chieftain of the ill-famed Golden Dashers stood in its gaping frame. A rectangular arch flawlessly mimicking the colors of a world-ending supernova, bereft of any flakes of bare wood or mottles of amputated color. As pristine and novel as the setting of its genesis. The illustrious, fabled puffy wonderland known only by its prestigious unmistakable name. Cloudsdale, the home of all things flying and aviation. A euphoric optimum arcadia with no known parallels anchored in reality. The only known wonderland bearing any similarities to this nigh-fantastical prairie of elation being an infantile daydream. The intramural machinations of a bone-tired toddler, granted the desperately pined-for repose it hungered for. A jubilated imaginarium of the highest possible caliber. A frothing conduit for the gluttonous, back-breaking demands for a continuous stream of joy.

The loathsome lull in Silver’s requisite slumber didn’t, at least she vehemently hoped it didn’t, arrive without a warranted rhyme or reason. And even then, whether it fit her impossibly hard-and-fast compendium of scrutinous rules was a wholly different story. After all, with a jerry-built apartment cursed with wafer-thin walls constructed ten feet from Cloudsdale’s singular bar, it was no wonder nettlesome disruptions became habitual. Infuriatingly, vexingly, wrathfully habitual. Over the years of her serene tenure at her comme il faut apartment, she had shouldered a straggly bounty of cacophonous, raucous gaps in her pined-for beauty sleep. Almost every night in that crude mockery of a gilt-edged euphoria, a discordant implosion of riotous sound and slurred voices. Ambling cock-eyed and objectiveless out of her beloved Tavern, bellowing whatever happened to cross the inebriated chaos-riddled landscape of their minds. Bellowing miscellaneous Christmas carols at the apex of their lungs smack-dab in the middle of November. Flying in purposeless circles around the bar late into the owl’s singing hours, thundering the lyrics to amalgamated, butchered lullabies and nursery rhymes. To engaging in liquor-fueled bouts of mindless ritualistic combat. A duo of either perturbed geezers or chagrined young lads, it didn’t matter how far or low you were on the boundless spectrum of age. Octogenarian to hapless pegasi ensnared in the throes of a mid-life crisis.

The noisome laundry list of innumerable drunken altercations stretched far into the formless depths of oblivion. Days of the circadian nonsensical discord stretched into months. Those melted into trimesters. Then, it became years of this boyish bedlam. Silver heard almost every meritless tasteless conversation ever bellowed between their tight-knit groups of revelers. Some she annoyingly recognized as her own teammates, both subordinates and allegiant comrades.

Although tonight…tonight was a deviant to that unending ouroboros of preposterous balderdash. On that nondescript Wednesday evening, dead-center in Autumn’s horrifically frigid rampage, a sound breached the bulwark of tranquility in her shared apartment. A noise worth scrutinizing to the highest possible extent.

Across from Silver’s bedroom separated by a smokey-grey slender wall was the dormitory of Cloud Rider. Her christened best friend and closest out of the platoon of nimrods employed at the Golden Dashers’ kingdom-esque compound. Not only did she effortlessly scale the ranks in the notorious team in a matter of trifling months, she also bounded up the rungs in Silver’s life. As the late-night hours passed them by without an acknowledgment or utterance, their jaws continued to flap. Volley after volley of emotionally-charged words leaping from their maws. Their hearts all but soldered together as one unstoppable relationship no earthly force could ever consider challenging. The exact time of the dissonant clamor was lost on the stone-grey pegasus. And in full undiluted honesty, its importance was neither here nor there.

All it took was the sleep-robbing din of an elephantine weight in some medium or another colliding with the floor. The tumult akin to a bloated whale carcass slung against the undeserving carpet like a world-weary titan’s play-thing. Her veins wreathed in white-hot, electrifying wires of bewilderment. Starved jumper cables of primordial fright clamped onto her pitiable bones, striking her goggle-eyed and disconcerted.

“Shit!”

That muted exclamation, try as her esteemed housemate might, refused to fall upon deaf ears. Ever-so-slightly suppressed by the gimcrack drywall, yet far from unharked. Silver Spears emerged from the cramped box of caliginous tenebrosity listlessly. Three of her four ironclad calloused hooves fully functional and primed for employment. While one, the bona fide black sheep out of the squad of extremities, was savagely war-scarred. Clad in a skintight helmet of snow-white bandages with zero accrued sympathy under its belt, even in the weeks following the warranted grievous injury. She waggled and quivered on a three-legged stance, her strife-ridden bandaged forelimb levitating two inches from the hallway’s ashen rug. A piddling handful of labored half-bounces freed her from the dismal confines of her gloomful bedroom.

The shared gimcrack apartment was as modest and vapid as the Cloudsdale housing industry could possibly be. A miniscule two-bedroom home ornamented with a singular uncannily vibrant bathroom. The hall was a narrow gossamer-thin corridor no wider than a set of railroad tracks. To Silver’s left marking the dead-end of the hallway was a shut door, cascaded in a murky comber of soupy stygian. Behind the loose golden knob, its bygone allured a waning memory, and ash-colored lively paint was the bathroom. If anything, it was nothing more than a glorified cubicle with a few garish overcolored articles of fashion. A vivacious undeniably ostentatious forest green shower curtain and a teeming excess of variegated towels. Each one harboring its own unique pattern, theme, style and flamboyant scheme of nauseating color. For any normal abode under any normal umbrella of circumstances, the vivid spectrum would be a well-received addition. However, in defiance to their herculean efforts, they couldn’t find it in their hearts to adore it.

In front of the merciless pegasus, standing statuesque and swaggering against a smokey-grey wall, was an archaic Grandfather Clock. The antiquated artifact of a foregone hoary period stood lofty, strainlessly imposing upon the wounded equine. When Silver’s grandparents bit the dust and transcended to a more jovial care-free plane of existence long ago, this was the singular object left solely to Silver. Their cherished grand-daughter, who grew shamelessly elated at the grandiose prospect of a hefty inheritance, was instead granted a venerable clock. A stately pillar of wispy shadow, cloaked in a cimmerian poncho of viscous bramble of darkness. Through the lithesome gaps in the spidery tentacles of tenebrosity, a pristine gold pendulum swung absentmindedly. Swaying back and forth in endless interminable cycles like a killer condemned to the gallows, left to dangle enticingly in the shrill afternoon winds. Its soft ginger tick was an oddly soothing repetition. The exclusive solitary aberrant to the ruthless command of silence the apartment was almost always oppressed by. Providing a pacifying, delicate source of irreplaceable white noise no earthbound device or apparatus could ever rival. If she was accorded the decision to cast the clock into obscurity in favor of a bounty of inheritance, it was blatantly apparent the choice she’d make.

To her right were two apertures, one gaping while the other identical to her bedroom door. A few inches to the right of the ever-wakeful clock was a gaping doorway, shaped like the entrance to a colossal medieval castle bereft of a drawbridge. It spilled into the quaint conglomerate of a living room and kitchen, exponentially meek in the realm of furniture and decorations. With blinds veiling the meager duo of windows and the gaunt starlight exiled, hardly nothing could be seen. Just a squared arch of a doorless frame into pure and unadulterated nothingness. An abyss with hidden life secreting the secrets to an unseen oblivion. On Silver’s right, the object of her numerous perplexed and confounded desires, was the clamorous bedroom of Cloud Rider. From an outside superficial viewing, one would be forgiven for instantaneously confusing the two doors. For anyone who wasn’t a continuous force dwelling beneath the roof on a day-to-day basis, discerning which one belonged to which cherished housemate would be an impractical task. A duty that proved arduous and puzzling to the likes of Silver Spears on occasion. When the redoubtable sun retired for the night, relinquishing its prerogative to the crater-riddled moon, attempting to spot the difference between the two was unfeasible. As the proud owner of that modest abode, distinguishing the two was wholly trouble-free. Peculiarly, no light breached the underside nor any cracks or lacunas in the door. Its appearance was the average normative custom for that time of the night in Silver’s home. Lifeless. Stagnant. Bereft of any sliver of luster or radiance.

Silver hobbled from her dusky bedroom. Her back legs and left forelimb gracing the well furnished carpet. The dourly maimed right hoof, however, was a different story in its entirety. Levitating a measly inch or two from the plush flooring, a grim wince ravaging her aching bone with every accidental graze of the ground. A whetted searing punji stick of agony launching through her leg. Truthfully, her brutish unpitying blitzkrieg upon the Wonderbolts spearhead yielded little to no fruits for all parties involved. For Spitfire, the fallout of the banzai assault was ragingly apparent. A vile stomach-churning constellation of bruises, scars and split lips. Transforming her from a robust ironclad pegasus elated for the heat of cut-throat competition, to a bundle of sun-yellow feathers and flesh. Bedbound and wallowing in a blistering lake of regret and self-pity. The only detestable mementos received by Silver Spears were a few missing feathers, a sore wing, and last but not least, her maltreated hoof. An area where a lack of pain and interminable dysphoria was greatly taken for granted.

Silver ceased her harrowing nerve-shredding movements at the face of Cloud’s door. Within its concealed adynamic bowels was a desolate vacuum of life and utter quietude. The only aberrant exceptions to that all-encompassing rule being the gentle heartbeat of the ancient clock and the hushed movements upon carpet inside. Silver leaned against the ashen wall, twisting the gilded knob with her ailment-free hoof.

“Cloudy?” Silver spoke, bleary-eyed and flagging. Rubbing her dog-tired copper irises as the door groaned open. “What’re you doing?”

Silver nudged the door to the wall, granting her bewildered optics a full panoptic viewing sparse, semi-congested poor specimen of a bedroom.

Akin to the lilliputian unjustifiably ennoble cage Silver Spears somehow called a snug amiable domicile. The contents of Cloud’s bedroom, an overglorious dungeon of aged timeworn drywall and outdated flaxen carpet, was the prime blaring reason she sparsely occupied it. In the left upper-hand corner was a quaint medium-sized table equipped with a black swivel chair and replete with a teeming manifold of paper and documents. Some pertaining to the dog-eat-dog unmerciful realm of the Golden Dashers and their vehement opponents, rivals who couldn’t even consider stomaching the prospect of a loss. Others, one small weathered brown leather book in particular, was the lackluster Pandora’s box of all of Cloud’s coveted sentiments and judgements. Its sleek oldfangled dark brown flesh mottled with hives of reprehensible coffee rings. The byproduct of steaming mugs of barefaced concentrated caffeine left to languish upon its glossy skin.

Behind the table in the back left nook of the soulless benumbed vacuum was a diminutive, sacrilegious mockery of a bed. In the stead of the bounteous eye-appealing alternatives one would envision upon hearing the word, the confineless catalog was destitute of…that. A large wafer-thin mattress was an oversized featureless circuit board, held away from the ground by four pudgy rectangular legs. Stubby and blubbery, yet doubtlessly untiring. A ghostly white sheet smothering the bed like a discarded article of dust-clogged unwanted furniture, forever shoved into a nondescript corner of a lorn storage container. Bemusingly, the entirety of its accessories and bedware were absent. Leaving nothing more than a bare rambling void of snow-white nothingness with zero occupants or spectators. On the right of the bed, carved into the wall, was a small closet with black wooden sliding doors. The flawlessly groomed and tidied closest was inexplicably gutted, its innards innards, once hanging on pale seafoam green hangers, burglarized callously. The center of the floor housed the culprit behind the abundant multitude of unaccounted oddities.

Cloud Rider squatted on her haunches in her own bedroom’s zero point. A black unzipped backpack, its flappy unjointed maw gaping and agog, rested broad-mouthed on the sand-colored carpet. At her side was a black battery-powered lamp no bigger than two cans of processed goods stacked atop one another. Its bleached pretentious shafts of synthetic luster projectile vomited on the tan walls. Scattered evenly across the sprawling network of vibrant, nauseatingly-colored posters. Each one a starkly different disparate facet of her ceaseless and perpetually deviating interests and hobbies. Movies, famous actors, far-famed singers, and even one above her barren bed about the Golden Dashers. One Silver couldn’t help but smirk pridefully at.

“Cloudy?” Silver reiterated her comrade’s name somnolently, leaning her full and unbridled weight against the chipped door frame. Rubbing her bronze irises once more.

“I heard you the first time.” Cloud replied, razor-sharp and unwavering. Focus never straying far from her rigorous inexorable stream of packing.

“Then, when are you gonna tell me what’s up?”

“I…” She paused for a fleeting moment. A spare tee-shirt frozen in her hoof, inches away from the backpack’s floppy gluttonous mouth. “I was banking on the hope you’d still be asleep.”

“I guessed that,”

“Well, can you guess what else I’m doing, then?”

“No. And I don’t want to,” Silver retorted. “What’s wrong, Cloudy?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Can I know why?”

She shoved a loose cyanic hoodie into the backpack. “Can you guess why, since you guessed everything else?”

Silver’s brows furrowed. Knitted into an underscore etched above her bleary yet vexed orbs. “You don’t have a reason to be so ugly to me, Cloudy.”

“I have every reason, Silver.” Cloud responded, her somber cadence peppered with grains of melancholy. “I was hoping you’d still be asleep.” She concluded solemnly. Her voice devolving into a paltry guilty murmur.

“What woke me up to begin with?” Silver inquired, rubbing her forehead with closed muddled eyes.

She paused once more. The nigh-constant rhythmic disruptions in her movements like a dying car. Its engine pitifully gurgling to life and perishing mere seconds later. A mournful ouroboros with no conceivable end or coda in sight. “I tripped.”

“Huh.” Silver limped a few more haggard steps towards her, gnashing her teeth when her wounded hoof greeted the blonde dirty blonde carpet. She swept her iron-grey bangs from her forehead.

Silver was permitted an all-inclusive gaze inside Cloud Rider’s bulbous pig-bellied backpack. The top surface-level of its contents were a motley array of long-sleeved shirts and hoodies, each one a bold iridescent color, and a green-and-black checkered blanket. Through a crack between the tip of the iceberg of textile and cloth, she discerned the purple corner of her pillowcase. The once unsolvable enigma of the missing sleeping utensils was finally solved.

Silver dropped her voice down a singular octave. A hushed, tranquil whisper teetering on the border of being considered a loving purr. One she allotted exclusively and specifically for ponies who sat upon the apex of her hierarchy of friends. Cloud Rider was perched at the absolute summit, alone and devoid of a soul to compete with.

“What’s going on, Cloudy?” She crooned. “You can’t just up and leave in the middle of the night, it’ll kill you.”

With an unsuspecting Equestria now smack-dab in the center of Fall’s indiscriminate warpath, the half-decent temperatures facilitated by the sun toppled. It was nigh on forty degrees in Cloudsdale, and most likely the same for wherever Cloud was hellbent on sojourning to. A vivid vermillion cardigan and stark white tank top’s efforts against the glacial cold would be all but unavailing. Marching outside into the wintry wrath was poles apart from the ticket to the prosperity Cloud hoped to jaunt to.

However, for the first time in their years of adamantine camaraderie, Silver Spears wasn’t sure what Cloud Rider wanted.

She shoved the last of her garments in the backpack. A helter-skelter clod of satiny fabric was a conglomerate of lustrous, velvety shirts and boxer briefs. Cloud crammed the synthesis of varying fabrics and materials into the overfluxed bag. The backpack, utterly and completely packed to the gills, was akin to a titanic bowl of halloween candy. A fathomless pocket of variegated colors with no twins or doppelgangers extant. She hastily zipped the bag and slung it over her ironclad back, flexing with a wiry network of stalwart muscle.

Silence drizzled onto the still-waking pegasus like molten glass poured from a colossal unseen conduit in the star-spangled void above. The more she thought about it, the twinkling stareworthy ocean of indigo above bore one too many commonalities with their current state of affairs. Both the late night sky and Cloud Rider’s bedroom were a dire vacuum of merriness and noise. Both pledged infrangible allegiance to an impenetrable formless silence. Both were annexed by incontestable, undaunted silence, its inaudible reaches smothering and blatant. The sole difference separating the sullen bedroom to the equally melancholic sky they dwelled in was Silver Spears. The ignorant pegasus who foolishly decided to betray its cold command of quietude.

As Cloud Rider shifted her brawny frame towards the yawning bedroom door, Silver fool-heartedly was insubordinate to the tyrannic governance of silence.

“Cloud, please-”

“Stop!” Cloud’s ear-splitting bark threatened to rock the house to its unwary core. To say it threatened to shake the entire globe to its core would be far from an understatement in and of itself. “Just stop, Silver?”

“What’s wrong?”

“You know what’s wrong!” She exclaimed.

“No, I don’t.” Silver riposted, turning around and welding her back to the door. “And you’re not going anywhere unless-”

“Damn this!” Cloud exclaimed, stomping the floor and whipping her head to the adjacent wall. It was nothing short of a miracle her chagrined glower didn’t encase the room in a cubicle of ardent flame. “Damn it, Silver, why couldn’t you just stay asleep!”

“Cloud, you need to listen to me.”

Her housemate snapped her optics back towards her, glunching indignantly. “What do I need to hear that I haven’t heard before? What, Silver, what?!”

“I don’t know where this came from, but all I want to know is what’s troubling you.”

“You’re troubling me!”

Every ounce of ginger motherly care melted from her visage. Her countenance was rebooted to default settings. Gaze narrow and needle-like. Mouth an underscore pencil-drawn beneath her muzzle. “What could I have done that warrants this?”

“You’re really gonna ask me that?”

“If it was so important you needed to cause this much shit in the middle of the night, why didn’t you mention it before?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t give a damn! Like you always do!”

“Then, let me in, Cloudy. What did I do?”

“Look at your hoof! Do you remember where that’s from? Or did you ‘forget’ again?” She exclaimed.

“What’re yo-”

Cloud empathically shook her head, tossing it side-to-side. Flakes of her volcanic rage slung every which way. “I’m not wasting my time here. Move.”

With three elongated strides, her hooves practically branding the carpet with her rampant vexation, she closed the distance between her and her unceremonious exit. Sauntering through the empty aperture and into the shadowy tenebrosity of a model Cloudsdale night. Defied only by the hazy milky sheen of the stars, gazing contently down upon the citizens. Even the snake skulking among an endless array of saints known only as Silver Spears.

“What’re you doing, Cloud Rider?”

“Something I should’ve done months ago, Silvy. Months.” She exclaimed from the amorphous dark.

Living in that merry abode with the lightest sleeper known to humanity came with an arduous gauntlet of challenges. Especially for a serial night owl such as Cloud. A pony who revolted her brain’s stern demands for slumber on a nightly-basis. Cautiously and meticulously traversing the living room straying emphatically from the few articles of furniture was second nature. The floor plan of the central hub of the apartment had become inscribed into her brain. As such, braving the caliginous dimensionless void at that lusterless hour and storming around the couch was impossibly facile.

Silver on the other hand was entirely inexperienced in that field. Opting to amble with her trademarked pathetic limp to the squared doorless frame. Hobbling like a feebleminded pirate with a rotting peg-leg. Silver leaned against the left side of the vacant aperture, stroking her wounded hoof in vain efforts at self-soothing.

“You aren’t going out that door unless you tell me what’s up!” Silver exclaimed into the abyss.

A vague silhouette of the ironbound pegasus stood humorless and sober inches from the front door. Next to the entrance of their lodgings was a mahogany coat rack. A slender, sylphlike wooden pole with an eight-armed crown atop with a glossy round dome in the center of it. The octet of octopine extremities each jutted out like upside-down sickles with their acuate ends substituted with small orbs. Only a trifling twain of vestures called that lank construction their home. A red fleece-lined flannel zip-up, consummate in the realm of staving off the high wintry dudgeon outside. Hooked next to it was an arresting navy blue bomber jacket with a small nickel-sized hole in the right pocket. Weather-beaten and emaciated, but far from neglected.

Cloud’s laughable, pity-wracked attempts at feverishly donning the sultry jacket was a spectacle in and of itself. Far more superior than any bread-and-circuses showpiece and reaching heights that were never thought possible. As the righteously irate equine fumbled piteously for the first sleeve, Silver shouted into the cimmerian nothingness consuming every centimeter of their living room. Shouting at the vague sketch of her closest friend drowned in the unending viscous oblivion. Her veiled physique draped with a downy quilt of inky black and bleached starlight.

“I don’t understand!”

Silver’s indomitable conquest for answers to her scorching questions was undeterrable. Her ravenous, unfettered scrounging knew no foreseeable coda or terminus. The foraging persisting and thriving in the flaming face of the obstinate harbinger, refusing to expel the reasoning behind her behavior from her grasp.

“If you can’t understand now, nothing I’ll say is gonna fix this.”

“Fix what?”

“Stop playing stupid!” Cloud thundered. “You’re smarter than that! I wanna believe you are, at least!”

Silver shifted her position against the doorframe. She winced, her teeth gnashing in vehement disapproval. “There’s a much easier way to handle this, Cloudy. I don’t wanna wake up our neighbors-”

“So that’s what’s important right now? Our neighbors? Not me?”

“Cloud, it’s not like that.”

“Look at your hoof, Silver! Do you see what you did? Have you understood it? The mayhem you keep causing for no good reason!”

Silver scoffed. “This is about that idiot up at the Wonderbolts HQ, isn’t it?”

Cloud’s countenance was incandescent. Cascaded by a skyscraping, mountain-sized comber of scintillating, burnished flame. “Her name’s Spitfire and it’s not about her, it’s about you!” She sneered. “It’s always ever been you!”

“You’re letting our competition get in the way between us? Is that it?”

“Do you understand the gravity of what you did, Silver? You snuck into her compound and almost beat her to death in broad daylight! Have you not comprehended what you did?”

“I comprehended ever since the hour it happened,” Silver responded. “I think about it every night. Everyday.”

“Probably don’t regret a damned thing, do you? You’d do it again in a wingbeat.”

“Don’t sit here and put words in my mouth.”

“I’m not putting words anywhere! They’ve always been there you just don’t wanna admit it.” Cloud proclaimed. “I’m done.”

“What do you mean you’re ‘done’? What’s that supposed to mean? The second game’s tomorrow.”

Cloud Rider glowered ardently, wrathfully penetrating the right sleeve of her jacket with a raring forelimb. “Count me out of it.”

“You can’t be serious. You’re bluffing!”

“I couldn’t be more serious. The most serious I’ve been in my whole life.”

Silver gawked agape. She paused before she spoke. “How long has this been in the cooker for, Cloud Rider?”

“Long enough. Ever since I’ve seen you flush your meds night after night. Did you guess I would ever find that out?”

Medication. Silver Spears detested the word. Spending every paltry drop and drizzle of impassioned malignity gnawing her heart to loath it. Thoroughly despise the term and its innumerable definitions and meanings. Some smothered in enigmatic ambiguity, others clearer than the burning morning sky.

She wasn’t exactly sure why the word and its inculpative connotations turned her veins into a winding, tangled labyrinth of flaming gas trails. Whether it was the implications of ill-boding lunacy, both unsung and exclusively implicit, or the exact antipode was the essence of torrid debate. Whatever the case may be, it didn’t cool the pegasus’ igneous nerves and thunderous heart by even a scanty degree.

“Excuse me?”

“Did you think I don’t have a brain? I know what you’ve been up to.”

“And what’s that been?” Silver riposted, embittered. Her words more sharp and knife-like than expired vinegar, each letter a whetted torrent of daggers.

“Going into the medicine cabinet at two-o’clock in the morning everyday then taking a one-minute bathroom trip? Every fucking night, Silver.” Cloud militantly scorned. “I wanted to give my best friend the benefit of the doubt. Trust me, I did.“

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because you’ve been…” The indigo-haired mustang gagged on a wad of her despondent, brain-stabbing words. A barbed, bristled cord of thorny unvoiced judgements lacing her throat. “You’ve been too eager to hurt ponies, Silver, I don’t know how else to explain it to you.”

Silver’s visage was mangled. A brutalized, discordant muddle of mind-boggling disbelief at the egregious accusations and an omnibus of…something. Cloud Rider couldn’t quite pinpoint the macabre encroaching sentiment. A faint apparition of the ghastly emotion blighted her pools of molten bronze. Feeble and spectral, like an impotent haze wiped unjustly from the plain of existence by a herculean gale, yet unapologetically grim. A singular vague parallel materialized in her palpitating dolorous heart. One she struggled to accept as candid gospel, in spite of the lofty chances of it being reality. A reality that was as palpable and unabashed as the grains of pride marring her scintillating irises.

“I can’t believe you,” Silver’s head dropped like a broken Pez machine. Her neck rubbery and fallible. She shifted uncomfortably against the wall, her robust extremities impaled by white-hot glowing spears of fatigue.

“I can’t either.” Cloud fired back. The black-and-red flannel zip-up fully veiled her statuesque frame. Her bounteous backpack was a colossal tumor welded onto the center of her spine. Hexed with the grisly appearance of a malformed hunchback in the gloomful living room.

“Who are you to get angry on that cocky bitch’s behalf? We both know she needed to be knocked down a peg or two. Maybe three pegs!” Silver bellowed shamelessly.

“Oh, no…”

“What I did, what I’ve been up to all these years, that’s simply the price you gotta pay to be in this business. It’s the cost of admission, Cloud Rider. That’s your ticket to success here. What’s the point of being the ‘best’ or being ‘great’ if nopony’s there to challenge you? They need me!”

“To beat them and leave them to die?”

“If that’s the way you wanna put it, then absolutely.”

Cloud’s stare was a meager duo of terror-struck pinpoints. Those ravishing diamond-like optics irreparably cracked and fissure-ridden. Clouded with a nameless ineffable revulsion that no mortal could ever begin to comprehend. Even the pegasus that found herself shackled to its kafkaesque throne of unutterable earthly terrors. She paused before she spoke.

“I’m not gonna sit here and wait for somepony to come get their revenge on you for this. I mean, you heard what the Man in Blue said, didn’t you? And you’re far from retiring early!” Cloud withdrew a trembling, quaking chunk of oxygen from the suspensive atmosphere. “This is it. I’m finished. I refuse to be a sitting duck when he comes here to kill you, Silver! I won’t do it.”

“He-”

“Count me out of the game. Count me out of everything while you’re at it.”

The wispy caliginous configuration of oblong shapes and picturesque brawn departed. With one brisky hasty motion, she flipped the deadbolt, twisted the knob, and ventured into the Icelandic eventide. Forsaking her former housemate, lorn and dismayed beyond basic comprehension, to dwell in a rancid cesspool of her gravest transgressions and sins. Deserting her in a living room as black and unsympathetic as her maniacal psyche. No entities were present in that household. Just the lunacy-wracked Silver Spears, her ireful blusterous heart, and her mind. A mind that was swiftly annexed by a raging maelstrom of self-loathing and the inability to accept her…what was a good word for them? What was an appropriate term to christen her brazen bouts of merciless assault? The world around her, the sane right-hearted aggregate of Equestria, harbored a colorful encyclopedic vault for words to coin her bold-faced abominations. Unwarranted blasphemies exacted upon those, depending on a myriad of circumstances, were ineffective in the realm of self-defense.

The ancient, dust-blanketed Grandfather Clock stood stoic and formal like a bodyguard at a high-society thronging funeral. Its rangy aurous hands ticking tranquilly, shifting inch by inch at a glacier’s pace. Second after second, minute after minute. Grueling hour after grueling hour. Perpetually imprisoned within a cyclical unending race with no finish line. A maze with no prize or hidden tunnel to freedom. A serpentine labyrinthian with no minotaur to conclude the suffering of the singular ill-starred inhabitant. Merely endless ticking on a stark white numbered face. The only exception to this brutal, callous monotony being the rhythmic sonorous chime. The golden pendulum watched from its spotless glass case as a bereaved, tear-logged Silver Spears lumbered from the lightless room. Catapulting volcanic clods of profanities and unholy vulgarities at no one. Clumps of flaming grievances taken out upon an invisible force that didn’t exist.

Two entities were present in that house. Only two. The miserably weeping Silver Spears and that old antiquated clock. Older than the floorboards it rested upon. Its thunderous nasally chime failing to drown out the strident inconsolable wails behind Silver’s bedroom door.

The pegasus ruminated ceaselessly about that grievous night from the moment she was abducted by sleep’s ginger embrace, until the nanosecond her alarm pried her from it.

She wrenched herself from the beguiling margins of her lush mattress. Contemptibly lumbering from the barren austere apartment, encumbered by a morose drought of sound and fervor. Silver’s somberly taciturn home, at least in the realm of joy and overall felicity, was a bone-dry fruitless wasteland. The only known parallel hosting an abundant nimiety of similarities being the extentless, recessed deserts of Appleooza. Silver Spears, a misfavored pegasus drowning in scalding infamy every waking second of her existence, waddled wretchedly. Every formerly effortless and brisk, passion-filled step to her routine was back-breaking drudgery. The most wearisome spree of ho-hum donkey work conceivable within the demarcations of reality. Every distinct stage in her ritualistic, religiously obeyed morning routine was completed at a glacier’s pace. Fishing a half-decent outfit from her wardrobe was impossibly arduous. Cleansing her teeth of its accrued nightly grime and combing her chrome locks was strenuous. In all uncensored honesty, attempting to create a marble statue with rusted dinner spoons would’ve been immensely easier. More unstrained and facile by leaps, bounds, and hurdles. Her apartment was nothing short of a lusterless, gulag-like purgatory rather than a functioning mirthful abode.

The most herculean obstacle, devoid of doubt’s ghastly aura, was that fateful, heart-rending gaze into her pristine bathroom mirror. Leering acerbically at her dolorous, bereaved visage, boring holes into her red-rimmed lakes of liquified copper. The stygian plastic handle of her veteran hair brush clasped in her wounded, war-torn hoof. Her plaintive globes, bordered by a puffy ring of pale ruby-red flesh, straight and unfaltering. Inaesthetic eye bags painted a pallid unpicturesque salmon-pink. The veteran brush, used exclusively by her for an unnumbered sum of years yet still fit as a fiddle, went through its habitual mannerisms. Traveling through her rowdy discordant river of iron sprouting from her scalp and cascading down the rear of her neck. It too as disheveled and distraught as the pony it supplied a luscious mane to. It took almost ten mournful minutes to thoroughly and errorlessly wring her psyche out. Exhaustively cleansing her overwrought tempestuous brain and gut-shot heart of the remnants of the previous calamitous night. Even after that scanty period of despondence, the woeful byproducts of Cloud Rider’s melancholic departure survived. Persisted against a skyscraping alpine of leviathanic odds. Enduring her unflappable endeavors at purging every trifling atom of its existence from the tear-stained slate.

The couch she roosted disquietly upon was a broad ashen sofa. Its perturbing sooty color scheme was irrefutably disconcerting, as though clad in a boot-faced panoply of armor forged from the ashes of a scorched mansion. A tiny placid triad of tricolored throwing pillows were uniformly deployed in the couch corners. In the right-hand corner was the blank stygian patriarch. The left housed one fabricated from velvety scarlet textile, adorned with a bold ornate cross-stitched illustration of an afternoon sun. In the middle, haphazardly lying flat as a washing board in the couch’s center, was a faded seafoam green pillow, perceptibly punier than the rest for no ostensible reason. Silver Spears blighted the left-hand side of the titanic sofa. Her swathed staunched hoof dangling lifelessly in her lap, languishing listlessly above the unsullied living room flooring. After another rueful spree of feverish eye-rubbing and a frenzy of self-loathing of the highest caliber, Silver clashed tooth-and-nail with her intramural yearnings. Contravening against the nonpermissive catalog of various noxious fantasies she desperately longed to bleed into reality. Among the prolific was a twain of rampant euphorias, one that garnered the most bizarrely exotic enthusiasts imaginable. Two imaginariums that only the most slothful of self-pitying basement-dweller’s could possibly pine for. Either she traipsed back to her gleamless bedroom and wallowed ceaselessly, or she absentmindedly drifted back to the only place that made sense amidst a tapestry of bedlam. The Golden Dashers compound. More specifically, into the frigid confines of her box-like office. Glowered upon by the twinkling superabundance of pocketed trophies and gilded resplendent accolades. The fruits of her unvarying steadfast endeavors. Bounteous yields from her grueling day-by-day toils and ear-splitting shouts to her parched fervid team. The only heavenly elixir that could ever quench their nagging cravings being a bone-crunching victory. Accrued no matter the cost.

Silver’s deliberations were irreparable muddles and clouded by her inexorable ruminations. Smothering her scrutinous consideration in a vision-robbing haze. Ultimately, trekking to her solitary duty with no zealous Cloud Rider in tow was preferable over the other myriad of possibilities. After all, being secure and sound in insured safety inside her castle-like sanctuary was vastly better than her home. Sitting high-strung and anxious, trying in vain to bide her time until the Man in Blue arrives to pay her grievous dues. Silver Spears gathered the shattered fragments of her bearings, hid her vermillion eye sockets from the world, and decamped from her abode.

The Man in Blue.

The half of a foreign human duo, none other than the sword-wielding uninvited Levi Cronell, polluted her every thought and notion no matter the subject. Her cumbersome flight with the leaden weight of her insurmountable injustices cracking her vertebrae was sullen to say the least. Every flap of her robust, ironclad wings arrived bereft of the flaming whip of passion lashing her drumming heart. The only companion in her extensive verbose life that was there to stay and tore its roots from her frame. Callously exiled and shunned by a melancholic army of countless. The barbaric Captain Sorrow and his chiliad of equally barbarous soldiers and goons, each one a variation of their chieftain.

If Silver was as veracious as she proclaimed to anyone who would listen, she wasn’t entirely sure who to blame for this travesty. The unbridled volcanic fulmination of her most cherished, prized relationship. Every inch and flap of her wings throughout that strenuous trek from her cadaverous home to the Dashers’ compound was spent contending. Internally mooting endlessly with no merciful coda, neither forced nor natural, on the horizon to rescue her being from the thorny shackles of contention. It seemed no answer her semi-lucid psyche could conjure was proficient enough to outlast her outlandish standards. If her mind’s alleged “remedy” for her boundless mulling didn’t fit in her wasp-waisted requirements, it was stony-heartedly ousted. Banished for insubordination it would’ve never dared to take part in. Not in any conceivable manner, fashion, or method.

With Silver’s heart in a shambolic mound of sliced sorrowful ribbons, it came as little surprise she opted for a shortcut. An airborne path far afield from the conventional routine route undergone by limitless average citizens daily. Not the aftermath of some abrupt epiphany that her enfeebled public image could be furthermore sullied by tear-misted visage. She simply longed for a vagabond to her occupation occupied predominantly by halcyon repose. Coveted peace and quiet, in everyday layman’s terms. A period of time, regardless of length or objective, where the air was annexed by pure and unadulterated tranquility. Candidly, especially in a lively city such as the vibrant Cloudsdale, the prospect was a will-o’-the-wisp. But one she somehow managed to achieve. Somehow, someway, Silver Spears was always delivered what she desired upon a gleaming silver platter by fate. Whether it be a mundane yearning for vaunted repose or impunity from her injurious manic shortcomings. Fantastical, wizardly, unfathomable impunity.

She darted high above the already lofty metropolis, the shrill platoons of gales and maelstroms screeching in her eardrums like a cavalry of ear-splitting teapots. In fact, the more she burned rubber northbound towards the sun’s indomitable monarchy, it appeared Mother Nature was surly. Growing dog-tired and vexed of her interminable spells of forced one-sided gladiatorial combat with ill-deserving ponies. The way the clouds hindered her bloodshot pupils. Not enough to be a dire crisis that demanded stern acknowledgment, but just nettlesome enough to be considered a trivial chafe. In all undiluted actuality, it wasn’t just the nuggets of downy ivory cloud that sought to badger the Dashers’ ambassador. It seemed impossibly clamant that every facet of the far-famed, distinguished golden morning sky was hellbent on obstructing her shortcut. The way the stone-cold whistling wind lashed her glower. Transforming her still-damp paths where tears gushed the night prior into an aberrant, entirely personalized torture apparatus. Harrowing the bottoms of her eyes like a heat-seeking fleet of acute icicles.

The way herculean sun glinted ferociously in the slim gaps between the migrating clouds. The way the Autumn morn was just a trifling degree or two above the already semi-comfortable status quo. Every crucial ingredient to make the introduction to that anguishing November Wednesday even ever-so-slightly adequate was absent. All aspects and dimensions, no matter how minor or arbitrary they appear on a surface-level spectation, were unapologetically egregious in one way or another. Yet, as Silver Spears always did when her team was the object of her heart’s unfaltering desire, she endured. Equestria’s attempt at erecting an impregnable rampart between her and her second non-blood-related family were in vain. Whether their reasons for the purposeful hindrances were rooted in positive intention, or the sickest of dark desires.

The commune to the Dashers’ compound was a tad bit longer than it usually was, courtesy of the unorthodox bird’s-eye-view shortcut she undertook. Adding a handful of precious moments onto her shuttle all in the name of avoiding Cloudsdale’s thronging civilization was…bemusing. Especially for a stickler who placed rules and fast-and-hard regulations in her facility on a grandiose throne such as Silver Spears. For the entirety of the taciturn fifteen-and-a-half minutes, she decrepitly fluttered like a maimed eagle through that cloud-mottled cerulean expanse. On the outside, her exoskeleton was misery-wracked and infected by the unceasing Silence Virus. A voracious, wolfish plague that seemed to revolutionize the ambient pale blue ether. Her globes were a glossy, nebulous dam between the world encompassing her and a chiliad of unwarranted tears. In fact, the totality of her being seemed like a glorified, pompous doomed-to-fail attempt at staving off despondecy's power-intensive armies.

Being almost two miles above the buzzing, teeming streets of Cloudsdale, she passed a manifold of buildings and various constructions. No twins or duplicates existing in this sorry-excuse for a God’s-eye view of the sprawling city. The mammoth distance dressed any methodically fabricated edifice in a thickset helm of anonymity. Through a paper-thin layer of misty clouds, the structure donning a nebulous haze, all she saw was a ghostly outline. The faint, nigh-imperceptible diagram of the unparticular building’s framework. Each phantom-esque sketched-out framework appeared pencil-drawn, occupying the bottom half of her peripheral view in its entirety. Every block or rectangular prism seeming more like plastic pieces in a broad, all-encompassing game of Monopoly. Eventually, by some mystical grain of divine heavenly luck, the outline of the Golden Dashers’ headquarters endowed her quick-tempered vision.

A titanic staple-shaped structure fabricated solely from the black concrete of its cobbled ceiling and the smokey-grey concrete of the remainder of its goliath skeleton. The ashen walls were bisected, its top half an arresting, bold gold and its antipode bearing a saturated royal blue. Behind the colossal hunk of concrete and barred glass windows, its mold like a gargantuan handlebar to an unseen detonator, was the training field. A prodigious rambling expanse of a flat faceless plain of ivory cloud. Sporadically scattered haphazardly were medium-sized clusters of the lily-white fluff. These pellets of land polka-dotted the brilliant azure backdrop of the ravishing Cloudsdale sky, housing a novel myriad of vibrant metal hoops.

Silver Spears paid little to no mind in any fashion to the extravagant jungle gym posterior to the compound. Frankly, she callously neglected and disregarded every entity, both inanimate and the reverse opposite, that blighted her shallow sour gaze. Any emotion or activity illuminating the outside world that dared to breach her somber copper-colored stare was tactlessly ostracized and shunned. Heartlessly extradited without rhyme or reason from Silver’s own self-absorbed manufactured universe in her skull.

When the spotless glass double-doors soundlessly divided, a barren flaxen lobby deserted by all symbols of life welcomed her with lusterless arms. Its cobalt polished tile floor and stark white bricked walls housing zero indications that a red-blooded being dwelled within its demarcations. A broad salivating maw of icelandic air clamped its wintry, pitiless jaws around every inch of her joyless physique with feral abandon. When her chestnut irises and pupils, clogged with anguish yet to be mitigated, landed upon the rows of vacant chairs, a fuse burst inside. A circuit breaker residing in the loathsome margins of her smoked and popped.

She was alone. Utterly and completely recessed from the conventional inexorable tumult from her semi-redundant everyday existence. Was she as exponentially appreciative of the unscheduled quietude as she wanted to be? That was a daunting question to provide an answer for. The benumbing, elephantine weight, try as it might, left more than enough room for doubt to mosey inside and make itself comfortable. Nestling snug and well-heeled in the crow cage of Silver’s heart.

Whatever specific name or helm the dagger-sharp vehemence sported was arbitrary. It was neither here nor there. The dire significance it possessed beneath those harrowingly peculiar circumstances was few and far between. All that mattered to Silver Spears, the alleged fearless lionhearted leader of the Golden Dashers. The solitary illustrious pegasus who, with her zealous confidant Cloud Rider at her right-hand side, would shepherd their fervorous team to victory. The barren arctic halls were the textbook definition of barren and its perpetual laundry list of synonyms and its variety of classifications. Her hooves tapped shallowly against the pepful blue-tiled corridor like fist-sized pouches of marbles dropped onto the tasteless, pale shadow of a mosaic. Each systematized vivacious square bordered by a slender stygian thread of paste, saddled with unmerciful uniformity. Grey-painted walls with the sole exception to the mundanity existing in the form of a golden bar. A sun-yellow stripe embellishing the wall’s bisected bottom portion, situated easefully inches beneath the rectangular barred windows. The broad expanse of imprisoned glass rain-streaked from the undried drops of the long bygone storm. Remnants of those raucous torrents eternally begriming the window, itself fettered within an ageless crow cage.

Her office was settled in a matrix of unbridled isolation that recognized little to no parallels. A pale grey door at the tail end of a lengthy verbose corridor, the only of its kind amidst the countless feet of concrete and nauseating hues and shades. The right-hand section of the blocky upside-down U-shaped compound was afflicted with a morose drought of life. All that populated its razor-sharp corners and redundant cadaverous halls was the tiresome architectural status quo. A boundless stretch of unsullied cobalt tiles, twinkling in the rangy tubes of artificial light socketed above, and windows incarcerated by a ribcage of spotless steel bars. The reason being? Silver, even after nigh on seven years of calling this leviathanic building her second home, had not a grain of a clue.

Silver Spears vagabonded to her modest-slash-egomaniacal office on the dejected lonesome right wing of the compound. Plucking a small aurous key from the breast pocket of her snow-white button-down, unlatching the pale grey door, and entering its glimmering innards. Her sojourn inside the gelid cubicle lasted a trifling fifteen seconds before she materialized from its glimmering innards. Wreathing her neck mapped by sooty veins was a gangly, rich scarlet woven necklace. Tethered to the center was the unshared reasoning behind venturing to her office from the get-go. Her small untarnished silver whistle. Resting placidly against her sleek chest and perched atop the slim unbuttoned crevasse of her collar like a holy pendant. Feverishly purged of all signs of grime or wear, no matter how minor or negligible. Emancipated from the abhorrent quivering jaws of flagrant disrepair. A fair that an abundance of the Dashers’ compound suffered in the dark, its creators sickeningly neglectful and unbothered.

With her pride and joy fastened to her throat and her merciless melancholy transiently stifled, Silver Spears began to walk. In uncensored actuality, the word ‘walk’ wasn’t the quintessential word the bronze-eyed equine would employ to describe…this. For a grueling period that passed like decades, Silver paced back and forth from one end of the compound’s pristine upper floor to the other.

Ambling pathetically.

Hobbling pitifully.

Lumbering.

Lumbering.

Lumbering.

“It don’t gotta be perfect, Silvy. For goodness sakes, it don’t even gotta be good. Not decent neither. Just run this place the way you see fit.” A geriatric venerable pony rasped in an archaic family manor long ago. His brambly voice like brain-sized stones twirled ferociously in a raring dryer.

“Take care of it for me, will you? Please. It’s all I ask.”

It was nigh-impossible to decipher the misty line between indifference to her cadaverous father’s final rites, or some other mystical esoteric excuse. Either a morose, dour deficiency of the capabilities to fulfill her dearest companion’s singular deathbed request. Or…something else. A chimeric infrequent reason that she hadn’t mass-produced innumerable amounts of times yesteryear. Attempting to feverishly scour the unending cabinets of excuses and bounteous vaults of exculpations. To locate that will-o’-the-wisp, that irreplaceable singularity in the virus-riddled motherboard of her mind, was inches from the biome of impossibility. In all unfiltered reality, reaping a matchless, copybook excuse, one that never dwelled upon the facetious tongue of Silver Spears before, was impossible. Simply put, in every contortion and definition of the word, an ignis fatuus. An infantile delusion penned within the fallacious demarcations of a toddler’s imaginarium. Delusions that aided naught but overfeeding the blissful dreams and jubilations of her father. Tossing gluts of mendacious hopes onto her moribund guardian’s plate, already replete and bountiful from her years of hollow disconsolate promises.

Silver sat stolid and inanimate atop a board of timeworn black-speckled oak planks. Its formerly unflawed, adeptly ridged topmost layer eroded by the dampened towel-clad posteriors of the aggregate of the lawless Dashers. The haggard bench was affixed to the seafoam-green-and-white checkered tiles, each square larger than a dice, by two metal pillars. In a foregone epoch, these metallic pillars bearing the mirrored shape of a fully exerted paper towel roll were endowed with a brilliant hue. In all of her innumerable years vagabonding to luminously painted stadiums and mastodonic arenas, that arcane facet of the boundless wheel of color was seldom viewed. In all reality, to even say “seldom” was a gargantuan understatement. That decrepit twain of cylindrical tubes of steel fastened to the peculiarly unsullied floor by hexagonal bolts, once upon a time, was the most brilliant of red. A gorgeous hybrid between vivacious vermillion and pepful scarlet. Endowed with the consummate quantity of shades and tones to somehow ameliorate its flawless features. Each metal tube was endowed with this gorgeous color and donned it with resistless pride. A tint unseen by the debauched Silver Spears in spite of the sheer incalculable copiousness of her travels to venues of all varieties and varicolored patterns.

A quartet of those miraculously unsullied benches idled mere inches from one another. Each construction of piebald ragged wood and ravishingly painted steel had between them around six or seven inches. Lined and ordered in utmost copybook uniformity that would’ve calmed the unshackled lunacy of the most compulsive of men. Maddened and steered towards impossible depths of their ineffable, roaring hunger for perfection. Idyllic, halcyon perfection that, of all places, found and erected sanctuary in the barren stomach of the Golden Dashers’ compound. Behind the anarchical pegasus was a foursome of rectangular showers. Each cubicle constructed solely from spotless aquamarine tile was appended to the equally clear-swept wall. All interconnected and separated by a singular turquoise rampart.

That color…

That shivery color. The self-same indistinguishable tone pridefully donned by one image that every centimeter of every facet of Equestria seamlessly integrated into everyday society. An alarming hue prodigal with detestable perturbation that invaded the limelight with a killer’s tatterdemalion attire. The exact epithet of the so-called “Butcher of The Everfree”, a label sanguinely endowed by some, was lost on her. Yet the color of that ragged getup, a shambolic dour mosaic of his crimes and transgressions, never departed her psyche.

Dangling from the pale rod was a thick yet willowy curtain vertically striped with royal blue and brilliant lustrous gold. The avant-garde saucer-head of the shower, its perforated visage blighted with a lily-white rustic powder of enigmatic origin, stood prominent above the curtain. Soldered to the wall above the tiled carrel for, yet again, a bizarre reason helmed in an oracular mist.

With a single turn of throbbing head, Silver’s soulful irises would’ve crashed down upon either one of the pair of twins on her right and left. Dwelling in both factions of her vision was a titanic roofless cube, its color congruent with its minute brethren a few scant feet from its side. Through a small doorless aperture stood a lusterless commodious cube with stark-white tiled floors, bemusingly untouched by the fluorescent slender bulbs above almost entirely. Permitting the access of soupy, vision-robbing murk to annex its jury-rigged defenses. A squad of rangy, lithesome silver pipes jutted from the grimeless walls with four disc heads welded to them.

Somehow, in some fantastical way, a lukewarm shower in this glorified prison of blinding tiles was a pacifying ritual for Silver Spears. Of all ponies who dwelled within Equestria’s mind-twisting demarcations, it was the Dashers’ ungoverned leader who derived allaying tranquility from an avocation such as this. A meager wedge of personal time spent idling beneath an untarnished rivulet, basking in the elementary sensation of water against flesh. A pegasus who believes the only sane means of acquiring a victory was nearly fording the line into perpetrating a brutish murder, water against skin seemed too…what was the word for it? Normal? Sensible? Too ordinary and lawful?

Silver in all of her low-spirited, sympathy-hungry glory was taking the habitual preparations to indulge once more. Garish bile-yellow towel folded in her parted lap. Stark white metal door pockmarked by chipped paint, bearing a reveal for the spartan steel beneath, was latched and double-secured. Far behind her was the door’s congruent twin, it too locked and double-checked. Line of sight to its brethren irreparable impeded by the mastodonic shower block to her right.

Doors fastened to hamper the unheralded entry of any one pony. In spite of the barren population residing in the empty-bellied corridors above her head, safety was always her chief priority when it came to vulnerable moments of this degree. At night, before slumber’s unpitying battalions savagely wrested her from the grasp of the mortal world, her doors were always locked. Three double-checks later, and her home would at last feel innocuous enough for her shut-eye. Her office was the same story. Checked the lock once. Checked it twice. Checked it again. As long as her well-being was the one dangled hazardously in the balance, the ramifications of a disregard for her arbitrary rituals was the most dire of nightmares.

With the pipes activated and the air conditioning cascading that malevolently cascaded that capacious room disarmed, Silver Spears was thoroughly prepared. Although, any sane human being of sound mind and lucid thought would be quick to understand this bootless action comes without a grain of cruciality. No horde of fetid sweat begriming her glistening coat could parallel the caliber of what desperately needed sterilization. Her soul. That scabrous, tarnished, blackened pulp of ingrateful sin she somehow managed to call a heart day-in and day-out. That was what truly, bereft of a hint of doubt, required a rigorous scrubbing in its loathsome entirety.

“I thought my words were clear.”

Silver’s sin-caked heart bounded vociferously like a rabid race horse, unshackled and unfettered from the chains that obligedly bated him. However, presently, those adamantine manacles were a fugitive memory. A skull-grating screech of the shower curtain’s rings against its rod burglarized every scant drop and morsel of her attention. Her bogged head and plaintive irises swiveled at a speed only a woolgathering Hermes could ever dream of trumping. Melancholic globes finding the incensed victim of her heat-seeking yet disconcerted wide-eyed gaze.

Standing high and mighty in all of his velvety, wrathful glory was an irrefutably ireful Man in Blue. Idling within the second incommodious shower block filling every centimeter of space that green-and-white checkered cubicle brought to the table. His attire was, in more ways than one, a deviant to the monastic outfit he donned upon their foreboding introduction. A sleek, fine-grained collared leather jacket sleeved his gracile frame effortlessly and bereft of any loathsome wrinkles or loose material. The stygian coat was perfectly fitted to his willowy chassis. Its fabrication was doubtlessly the work of a maestro in the sophisticated craft of fashion. In Ponyville, it didn’t take a Harvard-educated rocket scientist to put two and two together on who its dexterous creator was. Understanding Levi’s indignant intentions, powered exclusively by righteous fury, didn’t take the intellect of a one-in-a-million polymath either.

It was clear why he was here.

And it was clear that a harmless escape for Silver Spears was far removed from the deck of possibilities for how that interaction would conclude.

“L-Levi!?” Silver choked, pouncing from the timeworn bench. Ostentatious towel slipping between her ardent legs and crumbling pathetically onto the tiles in a pale yellow heap. “How-! Why did you-”

“My words were clear, weren’t they?” He bowed beneath the alabaster-white rod and past the tiled margins of the cubicle. His chaste burgundy steel-toed leather boots clacking stridently like rouge dice rocketed to the floor with each and every step. Balled fists welded to the side of his thighs. Knuckles painted a ghostly white. Jaw clenched, varicolored veins mapping his throat. Emerald irises keen and choleric, incaging the cowardly pegasus in his houndlike stare.

‘Oh, no! No, no, no, NO!’ Silver’s agonized roars reverberated endlessly in the pounding vestibule of her skull. ‘Why here!? Why NOW!? Why now?’

“I-”

“I gave you a choice.”

“I-I know, I-”

“Either you step down or you stay, right?” Levi inquired, eyes manic with unvoiced rage. Trapped in a boiling vat in the deepest recesses of his jovial heart, now free from their bindings. “I didn’t leave any room for confusion.”

Levi approached closer, stridulent steps failing to mirror the pace of Silver’s stampeding oozing heart. Silver backed away with every stride, Levi only trekked closer. Extremities stifling an irate tremble. The male found himself in the Lilliputian quartet of venerable benches. He strode between the back duo of benches, throwing his roiled-up dominant hand and latching onto the side of the wood. His one and only herculean tug was in vain, too impotent to uproot the Augean bolts in the tiles. Accomplishing nothing but etching a vibrant, bulging composition of veins across his unsleeved forearm.

His core only sank deeper in the bubbling raving dale of rageful slag bulldozing through his bones. Usurping his bloodstream and bringing the frothing ichor to a torrid slow-bubbling boil.

He was ready for this.

His amped body and fevered extremities were ready.

His unquenchable thirst and voracious stomach for revenge and blood was ready.

His mind… His mind was an entirely different story. The only impregnable hindrance he feared would erect an impedance on his sojourn to Cloudsdale. The only thing that could come close to hampering his ignominious warpath. This dishonorable, unrelenting crusade that wouldn’t halt and answer to any totem of authority, in spite of their insurmountable nature. His heart was struck daunted and frightened at the prospect of an unforecastable caesura. In truth, his heart was ensnared in a rusted bear trap of matchless dread at the option a wrench could be rocketed into his, albeit tenuous and jerry-built, plans.

Yet…here he was. Contrivances unimpeded. Loosely engineered agenda for merited retribution as stalwart as they come. Him, the valorless sod before him cowering in the smoldering face of his fury, and two locked doors.

Levi approached ever-closer. War-torn cavitied scabbard slapping his thigh with every lunging purposeful stride. Holographic sword, untainted by the cancerous light of the compound’s unnumbered bulbs, fit snugly in the weather-beaten leather. Pearlescent gold-lined hilt glistening in the shafts of synthetic luster. Silver cowered snivelingly against the stark-white wall, a deviant to the hard-and-fast creed of mundane colors this dungeon of banality followed. Entire right half of her body all but soldered to the blanched bricks. Aghast irises agog and plumbing the fathomless depths of fear and all of its winding caverns. Dragging her malleating heart into profundities she ne’er thought possible in all of her decades of life on Earth.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to her? What you’ve done to me!? Even the slightest clue!” The Man in Blue barked sonorously.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think this would happen!” Silver finally parried with her own embittered remark. A spiteful chortle preceded her next envenomed rejoinder. “That asshole had it coming! About time somepony-“

The remainder of her acrimonious banter, verbatim with Spitfire’s peace and tranquility, was unmendably squashed. A bony hand catapulted from its temporary domicile against his left thigh and circumventing the width of Silver’s throat. Ferocious digits, batteried by unhallowed forces far beyond the capabilities of her understanding, becoming a vice of flesh and bone. Tightening with the unrivaled brawn of a precocious gladiator. Her words mashed into a trifling squeak fleeing from parted lips.

The male rammed the pegasus barbarically into the bricks. Back of her skull bouncing off the marmoreal wall. Bronze snapped onto emerald. A vociferous vortexes of sorrow and wrath boring holes into those piteous chestnut globes. She scoured every inch of her brutish attacker’s umbrageous optics. A twain of peridot pools almost entirely conquered by a stygian void, his dilated pupils like boundless vortexes into a vanquished dimension. Just pure, unadulterated, unalloyed oblivion as far as her jerry-built mind was able to fathom.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me now! We’re past those games!” The male thundered tympanically. Distance between his grudgeful visage and hers was a paltry few centimeters. His breath smelled potently of apple cider and peppermint toothpaste. “We’re past everything!”

The left side of Silver’s face was tenaciously jostled against the wall. His bone-splitting grip on her throat unceasing and barbaric, her impeccant lymph nodes wailing for coveted mercy. In fact, it seemed every millimeter of her dysphoric frame miserably cried for that same clemency. A wish that shall never see the light of fruition.

“D-Dammit, Levi! Let me g-go!”

“I gave you a choice, right? A decision that you had to make! I told you what would happen clear as day.” He barked. “Either you step down or something you’re not gonna like is gonna happen, right? Isn’t that what I said?”

He pounded the rear of her skull against the wall as he reiterated her options. Selections that were, in every imaginable, choosing the least lethal of two poisons. Being demanded by a foreign resident in her home that never belonged to either lose every noteworthy thing dear to her or this wasn’t much of a choice.

She nodded pathetically.

He pressed her firmer into the tiles and lifted her a few more inches higher from the ground. Forelegs dangling like jellyfish tentacles in the high-strung open air. His left hand slinked across his waist and his digits coiled around the defectless hilt of his sword. Both hands now occupied by a veiny, robust grip that only the gods of Olympus could ever think of breaking.

“Then, tell me why you’re still here.” He ordered through gnashed teeth. “Do you want to die? Are you that guilty? Is this your death wish?”

“P-Please. L-Let me-”

“GIVE ME A FUCKING ANSWER THAT MAKES SENSE!” His stentorian roar rocked her harrowed skull. The room threatened to recoil in fright. “You left her in a pool of her own blood and waited for her to die! And I’m supposed to just let you go!? You’re making it hard for me to even consider letting you go!”

“W-Why?” Silver replied in strangled words.

“Because you’re still here!”

The entirety of the bottom floor was annexed by that familiar soundless tyranny. Tadpoles of sweat commencing a prodigious derby upon his bulging forehead and blazing countenance. His twain of indignant moss-green orbs bringing Silver’s petrified irises to a smoking broil. The volcanic anger roiling within his sockets as incomprehensibly vitriolic as it always was, no matter the target or recipient. It was always indiscriminate. Its focalization always trained on the nature of the sin and who cruel-heartedly committed it. No other factor could ever begin to stifle the conflagrant tongue of blaze lapping up his heart like a parched dog in the reaches of the Sahara. Somehow, someway, his obstinate psyche conjured a method of taming that rapacious jackal fettered behind his ribcage.

Every factor presented brazen and flagrant before Silver Spears all spelled a watertight, unfaltering fate. A rage of Homeric proportions previously unseen by the pegasus, a utensil of limitless ruination and violence at his hip, and a white-knuckled grasp upon the hilt. The equation was simple. Impossibly elementary, yet unfathomably dire. An angry man, the origin of his heartache in his acerbic clutches, and a sword primed for carnage. It all seemed methodically engineered for a singular ichor-stained outcome that Silver always dreaded the prospect of facing the instant she stormed into this playing field. She stared down the lightless barrel of all of her crimes and injustices, the seeds she sowed had bloomed long ago. And Levi Cronell presented the scythe to reap them.

Minutes of restive quietude moved like a slug bathed in molasses. Hand welded to the uncivilized mongrel’s throat with peerless might. His left one magnetized to the illustrious handle protruding from his age-old scabbard. Brows knitted together, sweat budding across his brow in spate. Divulging a bestial war against the inexorable cravings to slake his desires for a sanguinary requital. Two brisk motions is all it would take for this nightmarish encounter, and the penniless existence of an equine who didn’t see the value of life, would conclude.

Tearing the sword from its holster and laying waste to her heart. Two movements. Pulling and plunging. That’s all it would take. For reasons shrouded in anonymity to the Man in Blue, he was incapable of performing his heart’s broadest desire. His bones struck leaden by hesitation.

“Fuck!” He irately sneered.

Levi razed the stalemate. He brought the bronze-eyed pony back to her trembling hindlegs, hooves sparking contact with the prestigious delicacy known only as solid ground. The male liberated both his hilt and Silver’s garishly bruised throat from his Augean grasp. Two throbbing hands seized a spate of silky lily-white fabric from her button-down, twirling his frame and pirouetting the pegasus the full weight of the pegasus along with him. He stood her on her hind legs behind him, nestled uncongenial between the front twain of benches. His left hand clutched a mound of buttons and downy opal-white textile while his dominant extremity had other ideas. In a singular brisk motion, with time exuviating all meaning and relevance as it tended to do in instances of this nature, he wound back a clubfist and launched it into Silver’s visage.

The iniquitous equine’s nose stood a diminutive chance against the gaunt yet sharp mass of bony knuckles and skin rocketing at her indubious countenance. She soared backwards, crashing down upon the speckless tiles supine. The rearmost portion of her skull walloping the unforgiving floor. Fraying her searing nerves and amplifying the scorching agony baking the back of her skull, as though she landed upon a smoking bed of red-hot glowing coals. And every hellish moment that passed, an unseen force hammered her deeper into the Tartaren cavity of martyrdom. She slid backwards almost a foot away from her unruffled attacker. Standing monolithic and stoic still stationed at the wall she was practically ironed to meager milliseconds before. Crimson dotted his trembling white-hot knuckles like visceral pond scum.

“Dammit! What the fuck!” Silver bellowed. Her voice was a sallow travesty of its former far more stupendous self. Struck nasally and whiny like the squeal of a pig outfitted for slaughter performed by a bass singer.

“Why’d you have to stay here?” Levi inquired. “I don’t see the appeal, Silver. I warned you!”

“You just broke my nose, you fucking lunatic!”

“Yeah, I did, but what makes you think I wanted any of this mess? I didn’t.”

“Don’t lie now! This is exactly what you wanted!” Silver wailed, spinning and going prone.

Rich, obscene ichor trailed from her pulverized nostrils, bearing the appearance of caved-in tunnels. Rivulets of ruby-red trounced down her upper lip and tainted her pearlescent teeth and tongue, the pink slab of muscle recoiling in abhorrence. She spat a red-tinted loogie onto the tiles. Gore fervorously pumped from her nose, dripping onto the floor apace like one of Hell’s broken faucets.

Levi closed his disquieted eyes and breathed as deep as his organs permitted before he spoke. Fists balled at his obliques, his quaking digits zealously itching for his gloried hilt. His voice was low and baritone yet somehow managed to remain an untoppled dastardizing pillar. Looking down upon the battered and aboundingly bleeding pegasus like a wrathful god.

“You can’t understand how much I want to kill you right now. To just…” He brought his fists up to the sides of his head and flexed them open and closed. Eyes closed, face twisting into a cracking mask of unholy thoughts unable to be funneled into reality. “To just beat you into the floor and watch you bleed. Walk away and leave you to die in the dark. Just like you did to her.”

“That cocky, arrogant bitch needed it,” Silver riposted with a secreted grin. “What makes you think she’s past punishment?”

“Punished for what? Who made you the lawbringer of Cloudsdale?”

“You’re one to talk,” She put forth a singular futile attempt to rise to her hooves, crumbling back onto her stomach. Her rattled pounding skull in an unmendable dizzying haze. “Breaking in here like some hotshot. Holding me up against my own wall. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not going around hurting people who don’t need hurting, all for a damn trophy? You’ve lost your mind way before I showed up.”

“Who suddenly made you the judge and jury?” Chortled Silver. “You get Platinum’s old plaything and Celestia’s blessing and now your…what exactly? Some god? You aren’t anything but a loyal lapdog.”

“I’m here to protect you ponies. Protect Equestria.” Silver guffawed at the male’s rejoinder. “And if that means beating a few bad seeds senseless, then I’ll do it. Don’t mean I wanted it.”

“Oh, you wanted this. I know you more than you know yourself.” She snarled. “Call it what you want, but what you’ve done to me is vile.”

Levi stifled a pitiful laugh at the nigh-comedic clogged voice Silver tried and failed to fashion into an intimidating timbre. If he was honest, he wasn’t entirely sure his body bore the capabilities to laugh at that moment. Better yet, showing any signs that anything other than scalding rage torched his innards was unfeasible.

He paused, fingers dancing fervently a handful of scant centimeters away from his hilt. Two brisk movements and this could all be over. That was the sole sentiment occupying his overladen psyche.

“This is the price of the game! There’s things you do and things you don’t do, it’s as simple as that. That asshole has been a thorn in my side as long as I’ve been flying here.” Silver exclaimed. The floor was a mosaic of viscera. “If it wasn’t me, nopony would’ve.”

Levi breathed deep before he spoke. Clashing with every rapid-firing neuron in his mind to prevent the callous killing of Silver Spears.

“You deserve to die for what you did. There’s no doubting that.” Levi spoke, vastly calmer than before. “I’m not a judge. Or an executioner. I don’t get to decide who lives and dies yet. That wouldn’t be fair for anyone.”

Bronze met emerald. Silver’s mandible was varnished by crimson, glistening hideously in the mendacious radiance. She propelled another loogie onto the tapestry of bone-white, defaced aquamarine and vivid squalid carmine. An ignoble, hideous tapestry for an equally hideous pony. Still lying prone atop the horrific opus of her own creation, her rhythmic spitting as unceasing as the streamlets of cherry-red from her atomized nostrils.

“What’re you saying?”

“I’m saying that you don’t deserve what I’m about to give you, not by a longshot, but it’s the only fair choice I see.” Levi gazed resentfully down at the battered Golden Dasher, his eyes like an antique box television swarmed by nothing but dead static. Unreadable, puzzling, strangled by unintelligible mystery. “This is the last chance I’m gonna give you.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” Silver retorted. She underwent another contemptible endeavor at standing once more. Yet, it only followed the pitiable mold of her last honest attempt. Rising only a measly inch or two from the blemished tiles before plummeting back down to the earth like a wounded dog. All it would take from Silver would be a strident whine of botheration and Levi wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

“Don’t ever step foot in Ponyville. Stay far, far away from Spitfire and the Wonderbolts. Stay out of my life. I have a lot more important things to worry about then you, Silver. And I’m getting sick and tired of worrying about you.”

Her head pirouetted endlessly. Mind rattled and psyche scrambled. Yet, with every last minute drop of might, she listened to his demands. Bottom jaw quivering.

“I don’t ever wanna see your face again for as long as I live.” He continued. “If I ever do, or if you ever give me a reason to come back here, I’ll kill you. Am I understood?”

Silver said nothing. Just glowering ignominiously. Her tangled brain trying and failing to concoct an intricate plan to deliver reprisal to the Man in Blue.

He dropped to a squat and dangled his forearms over his knees, his hands limp and sinewy. Not exactly eye-level with the equine as he desired, but close enough to satisfy the hot spring of fury drowning his heart.

“Am I?”

“Yes!” She growled through gritted, blood-stained teeth. Deep scarlet smudged across her incisors.

“Alright,” He slowly assumed his mastodonic standing position. “My advice is to get out of Cloudsdale.”

Silver gaped ever-so-slightly aghast and ravished by shock. “I’m not going anywhere!”

“Oh, I know that. I’m just suggesting you leave is all.” Levi spoke. “Fly off to the mountains or to some other kingdom. Go live dignified somewhere else. Let this team grieve and get a new leader.”

“You don’t get to demand me! I’m not leaving until I’m good and ready!” She barked. Another apple-colored loogie was fired onto the tiles.

“It’s just a warning, nothing more. Whether you listen or not is up to you. You know what happens if you don’t.”

“You can rot for all I care. Take your warnings and get the fuck out!” She barked. “You should be the one doing the worrying.”

“Whatever you say,” Sighed Levi.

The male strode past the cluster of benches and cleared the colossal turquoise shower block, still crammed to its absolute brim by soupy murk. He meandered to the rearmost exit of the shower floor. To the Man in Blue, however, that exponentially coveted lily-white door bore a myriad of other names far more prestigeful than a meager exit. A one-way-ticket to the paradisal elysium of the outside world far removed from the monotonous demarcations of Cloudsdale’s most notorious inhabitants. The team and its entirety prodigal with infamy. Their limitless laundry list of sins and injustices upon the innocent and inculpable dissected beneath an ignominious microscope. If Levi was permitted the option to peruse Hell and plumb its unending smoldering roads of brimstone and anguish or stay one more minute in those showers, the choice was blatant. Gallivanting down those flaming avenues dwelled exclusively by languishing souls and damned forlorn spirits sounded immensely more enjoyable than Silver Spears’ presence. A comparison he never would’ve believed he’d contrive in a hundred years, for anyone at any time. Yet, here he was. Choosing to consensually analyze every nook and cranny of the fearsome land of righteous, sweltering reckoning then dwell longer beneath that roof.

The lock was akin to the tip of a flat-head screwdriver jutting from the center of the lever-style doorknob, all created chiefly from refined polished brass. He clicked the lock and smashed the knob down and swung the titanic sheet of pale metal towards him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Exclaimed Silver.

“Away. And you need to do the same,” Levi craned his neck to meet her globes. “I meant what I said. Every word. Get out of here and live the life of an innocent somewhere far away from here.”

“I don’t gotta listen to a fucking word you say!”

“You don’t.” He halted for a few seconds before resuming. “I didn’t want you to choose this. Truly, I didn’t. You brought this on yourself, I wanted peace.”

“No, you didn’t,” She spat. “You never wanted peace.”

“If peace is the opposite of this, then I’ll take it.”

Beyond the cusp of Silver’s view, the door groaned stridulantly and leather boots clacked obnoxiously against tile as they breached the margins of her compound. Striding out into sweet, succulent relief of the arcadia of the outside world. Far afield from the monstrous pegasus he deserted, bleeding and unfathomably humiliated upon the shower floor. Upon Levi’s departure, the rotten, vile figurehead of the Golden Dashers rose to her hooves at long last. Heart floundering in a septic loch of fury and sorrow burning hotter than even the brightest minds could thoroughly comprehend. Shame summoned a curtain of tears to her puffy bronze orbs.

Alone and forsaken in the bowels of her own establishment, Silver Spears began to weep.

Chapter 28: Chaos, The Finest Excuse

Late couldn’t begin to describe the state at which Levi Cronell was unjustly hurled into disorder. Although, in spite of the journey of the unflagging clock hands stretching far into the ravishing Equestrian twilight, it wasn’t territory alien to the Man in Blue. He had christened himself a bona fide veteran night owl long ago, down in that ramshackle putrefied cavity of the universe God forsook known only as Roseville. Either with his eighth half-drank moonstone-colored bottle of alcohol begriped by his voracious palm or simply existing. In every way and contortion of the word, Levi opted to plainly live and breathe in the incomprehensibly sought-after sanctity of his one-window bedroom. A small spotless pane of glass he, ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, smothered with onyx black-out curtains. A simple surefire method of keeping the discordant horrors and frights of Gary’s jury-built empire outside the innocuous arcadia of his own creation.

Now, in his favorable and elysian reality he craved for a time too long to be precisely recalled, he slept consistently facing a gaping window. Placing the splendiferous, quaint town he loved with every facet and inch of his golden heart and the vista beyond on a pedestal. Showcasing its boundless beauty cascaded by a comber of star-spangled indigo where, somewhere amidst the unbounded peerless grandeur, the Princess of the Night surfed its silky waves. Perusing the fantastical, unchained woolgatherings of Equestria’s unbounded populace. Residing in a placid dimension occupied solely by the exotic dreams and sterlings imaginariums. An existence likely envied and mammothly sought in the land of Equus, and a coveted occupation irrefutably yearned-for by the brunete. After all, spending elongated nights browsing and spectating the ceaseless compendium of the contrivances of sleeping minds sounded elysian. Being shackled to the title as the lionhearted Man in Blue paled in comparison to Luna’s endless duties prodigal with merriment and repose. Not having a legendary deceased warrior’s sword tethered to her thigh at all times. Not having the elephantine brunt that hundreds of thousands of innocent, inculpable lives spawned on a day-to-day basis. Not feeling the unmanageable craving to dart to foreign lands after a bottle of booze and threaten a pegasus. Needlessly provide her with an all-expenses-paid free trial for the upcoming carnage that was to befall her if her actions continue to stand unchanged.

Levi couldn’t quite recall the hazy nebulous mess of a dream, chock full of familiar faces and enigmatic events that rendered recollection nigh-impossible. There were a lot of things the Man in Blue had accomplished in his fresh valiant life that the world around him coined as impossible. Yet, try as he might, recalling the intricate descriptions and specifics of a measly dream was unfeasible. He could plummet from another dimension into the center of a forest and survive. He could save his hide from a blood-hungry murderer piloted by unmatchable lunacy. But recalling a dream? That was far afield from his skill set for perplexing reasons.

Minutes prior, Levi was tranquil. Drifting aimlessly amid the confineless stygian sea of slumber, relishing in the pacifying swaying of its smooth ginger waves. Eyes fastened with the singular method of prying them open being the omnipresence of Celestia’s gargantuan sun. Its ardent lustrous rays painting his stock-still visage. Piercing his unpresuming guiltless irises with its spear-like golden beams, sharper than a shark’s tooth. Presently, he was granted the harsh indubious reality that, in a world annexed entirely by distractions and unwelcomed discord, the sun wasn’t the only entity capable of such crimes. In all reality, a bounteous manifold of extraneous forces can begrip the man and displace him to the realm of the finite wakeful souls whenever they please. When certain earthly powers were the kernel of the conversation, it wasn’t a matter of attempting to forestall occurrences of this badgersome nature. Erect a soundless sanctuary shielding their impeccable sleep from the penniless sods who sought to disintegrate it. The subject that fell under conjecture was how exactly to handle it when it happened to materialize from the clear open blue. The only beings to occupy the cadaverous oblivion idling mutely above their heads night after night were the stars freckling it. That was the way it always was, and the way it always should be, bankrupt of exemptions from this mold the world followed. Yet, Equestria’s true indeterminable nature entered the fray once more. Proving to the entirety of its multifaceted population that it refuses to behave in accordance to its previous rules any longer.

A firm salvo of knocks against their front door discourteously stirred the halcyon pair. Basking in their merited respite meager inches from one another, both entangled in the swath of their bone-white blanket. Twilight Sparkle was the first to greet the domain of the unslept prematurely. Her dog-tired lavender optics springing open at the loathsome din, only for a comber of righteous annoyance to swallow them whole. Levi on the other hand was a vastly different case. The objectionable cacophony of hoof against wood had ravished the male from his assuaging recess. However, in austere contrast to the groggy unicorn on his right, the male took an honest stab at pretending the volley of knocks never existed. Combing the vast rolling terrain of his vaults of knowledge for any excuse or imaginary identity for the din. Any reason in any fashion, no matter how minute or jumbo, that would eliminate the imperative need to answer it. The house settling? A branch hammering against the hull of the Library? Some sort of animal? Or merely, as silly and undeniably farcical as it appeared, a fabulation of their weary, flagging minds. A figment of a brain so recently pilfered from the quitsome lake of surgless black their raddled minds lazed upon. A majority of the lazy endeavors at rationalizing his current state of wearisome affairs could hypothetically be truthified.

His psyche had snapped to consciousness faster than the strike of an arsonist’s match at the clamorous barrage. Eyes flicking open, his fatigued emeralds transformed into roiling ponds of unrefined fiery annoyance. He glanced around his side of the room and psychoanalyzed every nook, cranny, and dust-choked cavity his eyes held permission to search. The fruits of his half-hearted search followed his slothful predictions verbatim. Outside, everything yielded to the ordinary status quo Ponyville stuck to nightly. Inside, nothing fashioned by Levi was out of the standard position he assigned and habitually abided by. His clothing deftly folded into a tidy square of clothing at his bedside, next to it his maroon steel-toed boots placed side-by-side. Belt curled into a ring like a leather snake beside his outfit with the spotless silver buckle sparkling in the flowing moonlight. On the wall to the left of the broad unsullied window was an oak wooden hook, its curved end like an upside-down beak. Dangling from his was the hard-weathered, war-torn scabbard with its gilt-edged pristine hilt protruding from its leather orifice. Lying bifold across the interior windowsill was his stygian leather jacket, the stylized bold R stitched into the back painted in the most ravishing ray of moonlight.

He sealed his lids closed once more and nuzzled deeper into his opulent pillows, assaying falling back into quaint clutches of sleep once more. Only for his ventures and hopeless aspirations to be obliterated by a second brigade of knocks upon the front door. Twilight groaned beside him. A low rickety sound that, in the lively few weeks he’d been getting to know her, he arrived at the brisk conclusion that a groan from Twilight Sparkle was never a positive sign. Always an implicit herald of another all-too-possible chagrined tirade. Her frame shifted on the congenial mattress to face her beyond vexed housemate, obstinate to the knocking’s hard-and-fast orders for consciousness. Slumber was at the unequivocal apex of his priorities. No nameless equine at their front door in the dead of night could usurp that inviolable position. Even if the unflagging pony at the door was there to transmit news that doomsday had arrived with a thirst for ruination, it would be dwarfed by his pining for relaxation.

In spite of the cold indifference and unabashed ignoration, the equine was indefatigable. Another battery of knocks upon the door had ignited his core. Each rhythmic thud another enkindled match tossed into the pool of gasoline his heart dwelled in. Chained to the bed of that flaming pond of hellfire. Twilight’s frame shifted beside him and turned to face his tense back. Her voice chimed from the caliginous tranquil body of darkness engulfing the bedroom and its entirety.

“What time is it?”

Levi reached a hand to the top-right corner of his walnut wood nightstand. It was a black rectangular electronic alarm clock with the time of the ill-mannered awakening displayed in bold neon-green numbers. The male squinted at the garish, brazen screen.

“About three-o’clock.”

“Who could it possibly be at this hour?”

“Not sure,” Levi grumbled, chucking the blanket from his ireful frame. “I’m gonna go have a look. Go back to bed.”

He sat perched upon the edge of the mattress and swiped his royal blue button-down from the top of the clothes pile, fetching his dark denim jeans. A twain of lanky peg-legs filled the two flaccid sleeves and his weathered belt was fed through the loops. Levi rose from his cursory roost before striding to the wall. His spidery digits coiled around the frigid pearlescent hilt and unsheathed the keen holographic blade from its holey chasm of old leather.

“Is that really necessary?” Twilight yawned from the tenebrous behind him.

“Who knows who could be at the door. Just go back to sleep,“ He grumbled. “I got this under control, Twi.”

“Okay,” She tossed and turned back to face the opposite side of the bedroom. Unceasing fatigue braided within each and every word spoke from her aweary lips. “Goodnight, Levi.”

“Night, Twilight.”

He embarked on the exasperated journey to the bottom floor of the Golden Oak Library. A precarious vagabond down a singular ladder and a measly spiraling flight of stairs, where clandestine peril was stashed beneath every fortissimo creaky floorboard. Hazards pocketed in the antiquated hinges of the walnut door and each eloquently varnished step that spilled into the soundless bottom floor. A riskless haven of the loftiest caliber where, in the weeks of his indefinite sojourn within the hollow innards of a chiliads-old tree, he strode across the living room floor innumerably. The quantum of bothersome groans and wails from the flooring ultimately culminated into a consummate zero.

His white cotton socks greeted the pale birchen steps like satin pillows as quiet and anacoustic as a melancholic funeral. No vexatious clamor of any variety or degree of brashness bore the gumption to defy its sacred order. From the thin rectangular windows above the right catalog of bookshelves, a jet stream of milky divine moonshine breached the untainted slender glass. Spilling across the unsullied floorboards like a famished tide of wispy opal-white light that had long since grown jaded with the prospect of receding. If this was any run-of-the-mill night for the wrought-up Man in Blue, his tendencies to stave the roughshod armies of blissful slumber would be entirely actuated. If that night, unrecoverably ravaged by the pestiferous doing of whoever rapped upon his domicile, had followed anything bearing any semblances to the normative mold, he’d make the living room his palace. Lazing upon one of the squad of rangy chairs with his feet roosting upon another, indulging in one of two gratifying activities bereft of deviancy. Either luxuriating in the elysian moon-stained ambience of the placid kingdom of unbounded literature authored by the most esteemed of virtuosos. Or fishing one out of the colossal regiment of books and opening its covers. Peering through the encroaching hazy dusk and withstanding its unwavering vision-robbing nature.

Prismatic whetted sword at his side. Acute spear-tip bobbing up and down with every impatient stride undertaken by its owner yet continually aimed at the front door. Edges sharper than a cragged maw of shark teeth. Another torrent of knocks locked Levi’s heart in a sweltering furnace roaring with luminous hellfire. Shorter than the rest, lacking the final two knocks in its persistent pattern of five, yet equally as maddening.

“I’m coming!” Levi exclaimed.

The preeminent quietude Levi jacketed in the most acclaimed of honor in his eyes was already riven. Shattered beyond the cusp of repair and recognition. With every clobbering upon the wooden face, the pile of glittering routed shards was stomped upon. He ejected his left hand onto the gilded deadbolt and twisted before redirecting it to the doorknob. Amidst the iron maiden of red-hot glowing spikes of annoyance his frame was fettered in, a new mighty contender charged into the fray. Begetted by the unsympathetic sensation of frigid metal against his palm. Summoning an unrelenting question incapable of resting in the peace it required without a solid, incontestable answer, where the prospect of disputing was unexistent.

Who exactly, in all of Ponyville and the syndicated regions transcending far past its margins, would pay a library a visit at the dead of the night? Especially one dwelled and called home sweet home by the Man in Blue and Twilight Sparkle. Levi’s mind was blitzkrieged. Once a pasture of rivalless tranquility and serenity of the most prestigeful merit. Now it was a land of utter and unadulterated bedlam, a harried and hasty blightscape where anxiety and deep-seeded fear burst from the earth. At every arrow on the compass, its flagitious influence marred the placid backwater it barbarically intruded upon.

When he turned the knob and swung the lilliputian curved door towards him, he was far from oblivious of the potential horrors that could conceivably arrive to spell his doom. After all, the writing was on the wall for Gary Demonio to pay him a belated malignant visit. Would he happen upon a fleeting flash of vibrant turquoise and see the dark tunnel of a pistol barrel? Would it be the scintillating golden chestplate and pepful plumes of Royal Guards? Coming to deliver retribution for taking matters into his own hands at the Dashers’ compound? The possibilities were unbounded. Effortlessly trumping his ability to forecast and predict what would be standing behind the burnished wood. Part of him desired for the loathsome figure to remain forever enigmatic. Creeping silently back up the stairs and pray to the miraculous heavens above that the bastard would simply vanish. Trek back to whence he came and melt into the night.

But, like every portentous event that spawned in his path thus far, facing it was the only possible outcome that would bring an end or…whatever would come of the encounter.

He hurled the door towards him with his left hand, priming his blade for a skirmish.

“Do you have any idea what-!”

He froze.

He did more than freeze. Levi Cronell became one with the leviathanic shock and heart-rattling jubilation cascading over his astounded frame. Lincoln green eyes out on stalks, feelings as though miles upon miles of space separated his widened lids. The grip on his weapon dying along with his now baseless fear. Enjoying their final breath and moments of animation in Levi’s heart, perishing beneath the many eyes of the moon.

“I was hopin’ you could help me,” The human before him spoke. His voice was a dale of sugar and honey unstinting with that homey trademark twang of a thoroughbred Southern man. “I’m lookin’ for my brother.”

His voice fragmented and swiftly unraveled from the seams like a shoddy jerry-built suit. A drape of jovial tears coating his ice-blue optics. Tanned jungly arms filling the short sleeves of his stark white tee, his snug collar sodden with a dark bib of sweat. Stone-grey chino pants fit his legs cozily with his hems besmirched with a varnish of dried dirt and mud. Grass-stained tennis shoes almost darker than the lifeless abyss looking down upon the ecstatic pair. Untied shoelaces pooling in the soil surrounding his feet. His right hand collapsed into a fist and placed in his left palm, the male anxiously rubbing the pads of his fingertips against the top of his copper-colored hand.

Levi’s fingers gave out, his bones no longer piloted by the animalistic fright of the unknown. The hilt sneaked away from his grasp and dropped onto the floorboards with a hugeous thud. Its metallic clang akin to a ravel of silverware plummeting onto the sheet of wood.

“Al…Alan…?” Levi’s orbs donned their own blear of bottomless elation in liquid form. His arms fell to his side.

“He looks a lot like you, just a lot less ugly.” Alan choked with a diminutive grin, the absolute tiniest sliver of his incisors filling the gap between his lips. A tadpole-shaped spheroid dawned from his misty globe, meandering down his right cheek.

The Man in Blue pounced upon his comrade. Opening his arms wider than the mouth of a whale and crashing into his torso, pressing the right side of his face into his damp shoulder. Two bronzed arms returned the blitheful gesture and connected at the center of his upper spine, squeezing with the might of a brutish gladiator. Pressing the duo of starkly different bodies as tight as their mortal bones and muscle would permit. A bond that brought the incredibly coveted placidity and ataraxis of that gimcrack apartment in the armpit of Alabama. A miserably and tearfully pined-for moment that once was inept in its abilities to breach the demarcations of a fictional imaginarium. Forever imprisoned within the sorrowful confines of Levi’s hopes and aspirations, dreams for what he desired his life to look like. His desires for who he wanted in his new life as a prophesied warrior assigned the duties of shielding the lives of millions from an anonymous peril he’s yet to face.

Now, with his long-lost brother returned to his open merry arms, this new world of discordant fighting and warfaring that’s yet to come to fruition makes sense. The most precious currency Equestria could offer. Sense. A meaning to the mind-twisting madness. A lull beneath the roiling choppy waves of unintelligible chaos.

“We all thought y-you were d-dead.” He whinnied. “How did you get here?”

Alan sniffled and swiped a hand across his oozing nostrils before he spoke. “I got a story for you, brother.”

“Oh, you and your stories. Surprised I’ve been missing them.”

“I know a thing or two about surprises now.”

The expedition of the clock’s hands was tireless. Two brothers trekking unendingly across a blank slate of white bordered by onyx numbers and dashes. The longer of the pair now resting upon the mighty three, lazing upon the digit while his other half moiled. Minute after minute, second after second, the drudgery never staring down the barrel of a proper terminus. Cabined within a mundane world of black and white that knew only one sound. Rhythmic circadian ticking. And a humdrum realm with a singular activity to repeat endlessly until it's beyond trite and hackneyed. The drudgery of time’s limitless advances came at the cost of labor, but a price that was nothing short of a necessity.

The unabating clock gazed down upon the variegated triad seated at the dining table trammeled in the meshwork of a gratifying, long overdue conversation. On the right of the table sat Levi and Alan Sizemore side-by-side. Two brothers finally glorying in their mutual uber-enthused presence. Coiled by their digits and resting against their palms were two stemless glass wine cups, unflawed and speckless. Half-filled with rich, vibracious orange cider, straight from Sweet Apple Acres and into their cups. Twilight opted out of this indulgence and preferred with a lily-white ceramic coffee cup filled to the cusp. Strings of smoke rose like wavy spirits from its spruce-brown gulf.

“A wolf made out of wood?” Twilight inquired with a cocked brow. Her horn enkindled and raising the rim of her mug of caffeine to her lips with a vivacious lavender halo. The coffee was black and as austere as they could possibly become. The exact copybook method she fancied.

“Yep. Chased me from my camp onto this trail of crystals in the ground,” Alan explained. “Cracked it over the head with one of them giant gems in the dirt. It didn’t last long afterwards.”

“Pretty sure those are called Timberwolves. I’ve had my fair share.” Replied Levi. He positioned his chair to face his once deserted brother, his ankle resting upon his kneecap. Glass in hand and roosting on his right thigh. “Right at the entrance of the Everfree, too.”

“What is up with you two and your love for that forest?”

“I don’t love nothin’ but the inside of a house now.” Alan spoke with a chuckle.

“I hope you find yourself at home here. I doubt anywhere else can beat this.”

“Livin’ inside of a tree? You’ve moved up in the world, brother.”

“That I have.” He replied with a deep nod. Levi flushed a hearty draft of the sugared concoction of the pluperfect amount of cinnamon and pulverized apple. The heady brew slinked down his esophagus, leaving a tart trail in its wake. “I’m a sophisticated man now, Al. I finally found me a cause worth fighting for.”

Twilight smiled. “That reminds me, where did you end up after the Timberwolf attack?”

“Some place called the Crystal Empire. Some doctor found me when I passed out in the street. Violet Heart.”

“How’d you get here?” The inquisitive unicorn uttered. A minute sip of her coffee another one of her retinue of questions.

“Do I gotta story for you fine people.” Alan placed the cup on the table and shifted in his seat and held out two opened, widened hands with ample space between his fingers. “Ponies, too.” He corrected.

“What happened that was so mind-blowing?”

“I took a train outta the Empire at five yesterday, the junk broke down at seven. Walked for a few miles until this unicorn picked me up in her wagon.”

“A unicorn? Who?”

“Some popular magician from...wish I could remember the name. She rolled up in the middle of nowhere when I was walking through a field. Trixie, I think her name was.”

Alan took the tiniest sip possible, more likely than not sucking down a handful of atoms rather than liquid. His face twisted. Throat cowering from the bite of the ravenous cinnamon.

“I’ve heard of her a few times since I’ve been here. She doesn’t seem to be breaking the mold as far as I heard.” Twilight chimed.

“You never know though, Twi. She could be the best magician you’ve ever seen.” Levi said with a toothy grin. Crimped lips that were soon met by the glass rim of his glass, robbing another redolent swig.

“I haven’t seen enough to be the best judge.”

“Me neither, but she was a kind enough soul. The nicest thing I’ve met so far here until I came here.”

“Wait until you meet everyone in the morning. Rainbow is a treat.” Said Levi. “I feel like you and Spike will get along like peas in a pod.”

“Rainbow and Spike?” Alan questioned, bemused. “Lord have mercy on us all.”

“You’ll get used to the names, trust me. I’m trying my best.”

“Will I ever get used to you carryin’ that sword around?”

“I still haven’t. It’s pretty jarring, even as the Man in Blue.” Twilight responded.

“‘Jarring’,” Levi retorted playfully. “You all wouldn’t know jarring if it kicked you in the face.”

“You wouldn’t know jarrin’ if it stabbed you with that sword, brother.” Alan spoke with a communicable mirthful guffaw. Its infectious influence cascading upon the aggregate of the Library’s wakeful residents. Twilight giggled with her mouth against the brim of her cup.

There was something Levi adored about the pleasant becalmed scene he played a vital role in before him. Something he loved with every gallon of unadulterated, untainted love that flowed from every nook and crevice of his heart. Corner to corner, wall to wall, the man’s core was drained into a barren desiccated wasteland. Not for any impossibly grim reasons or a destitution of love, but for every sanguine impetus one could possibly imagine. A conduit frothing with endearment stemming from the navel of his frame to the entirety of the verveful Golden Oak Library. Bumbling with beatific mirth and animation, spiting the night’s dictatorial bidding for quietude and serenity. The uncensored truth was that only half of its invariable orders were heeded. Quietude was far from practiced and retained, yet the new freshly formed motley family exercised their own definition of tranquility. Seeking out a novel definition for the word and reaping the fruits of their untiring hunt.

Although, as gleeful and exultant as their riveting banter was, a dour, ghastly silence smothered the felicity and every vestige of it vamoosed in its wake. Levi was the first to observe the inexorable stern tone nonconsensually fostered by the ambience, and how swiftly its poison fanned out. Bringing an abundant retinue of its vile inclinations and the abominable desires of its putrefied heart. The venom transitioned from unsung peril to a caustic entity bearing its own system of autonomy.

Levi was the first to observe the byproduct of the pollutant. The stern gaze that unfurled over Alan’s stony visage. Twiddling of his digits practically thundering his perturbation.
Rangy stygian tentacles of hair dangled over his soulful irises, locks caked with dried sweat.

“Y’know, Levi, I…I was doin’ some thinkin’ on the way here.” He drummed his fingertips against the face of his glass. Ripples permeated the pale-tangerine-colored liquid within. “‘Bout some things we need to talk about.”

“I was waiting for you to mention it…” Levi placed his glass on the table.

Alan’s tongue froze for a spell. Encased in a rigid block of hesitative ice colder than the bony touch of the Reaper. His lips parted briefly, yet his maw stood stagnant and soundless. For several seconds, it seemed the world fell still. The only evidence the globe continued its cycle of twirling was the pacifying octet of boisterous crickets beyond the Library walls. Their entire lives from genesis to quietus devoted to the singular action they passionately repeated for hours without end. Fevered chirping to their heart’s content.

“Is there much to be said?”

“Course there is. I’d love to know how it all went down and where he scurried off to. I read the papers, Levi, I know what he’s been up to.”

“The hotel?” Twilight dovetailed into the conversation meek as a frightened animal.

“The forest, too,” He sat up in his chair. “Seems a bloodbath follows him wherever he goes.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“You got any other ways?” Alan replied. “I sure don’t.”

Levi shook his head.

His throat was a barbarous prison with zero regards or grievances towards the ill-starred soul trapped within. The walls of his esophagus transformed into grainy bulwarks of adust brick like a flame-grilled chimney. Scorched irreparably and contrived with the solitary objective to hamper the Man in Blue’s speech to the highest possible magnitude. Vocal cords savagely manhandled. A wrench lodged into each and every word uttered by the brunete. This inflexible conversation was a reality permanently and unwaveringly graven into Levi’s up-and-coming future. Regardless of his liking or vehement disdain towards the prospect, it remained fixed upon the crest of his horizon heedless to his feelings. Irrespective to his fervent hopes and frameless dreams for it to depart from the vista and gallivant to greener pastures far afield from the Man in Blue. However, as things often did in this bemusing world of equines and hasslesome resurrections, this very exchange of fear-laden words sought him. And it marched shameless and sodden head-to-foot in perspiration. Long-lasting evidence of the arduous toils and hoops he bounded through to vagabond there.

“Uhm…” Twilight squeaked before her voice climbed a dozen rungs in the decibel ladder. “Levi told me about the story, and yours too by extension. How he died and…came back to life.”

“I’ve been reading a lot during these past couple nights. Magic books, sorcery, history, you name it and I checked it. Nothing like this has ever happened in history.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” Levi tapped a finger against his kneecap. Digits bedeviled by a faint yet all the more badgersome quiver. “I…couldn’t find a thing.”

“Seems we’re alone on this one, brother.”

“I wouldn’t say that. My brother, Shining Armor, is the captain of the Royal Guard and I got a letter yesterday about the Gary debacle.”

“And you didn’t bother to tell me?”

“I was going to if you weren’t busy boot shopping.” She retorted.

Levi scoffed. “That’s besides the damn point, Twilight.” He rejoindered with words whetted like the sword of an untamed centurion. “What’s the Royal Guard doing?”

“Apparently, they're sending search parties all across Equestria, every road and forest, looking for him. So far, it’s been fruitless.”

“I ain’t surprised a bit.” Alan replied deadpan. His visage secreted by a blank inscrutable mask of sorrowful static and virgin fear, undiminished by the words of the lavender unicorn. “He’s a snake. Always has been. Somehow knows his way around everywhere.”

“Ponyville isn’t a large town by any stretch of the imagination. The Everfree Forest is the only place he could be hiding, and even then the Guard is bound to find him.”

“Bound?” Asked a dubious Levi. “What about the Surly Gang? Any updates on them? If they’re truly the best of the best, there’s gotta be something. Surely.”

“I heard about them. Bounty hunters? We’re trustin’ the life of a mass killer in the hands of bounty hunters? Even America weren’t like that.”

“I haven’t heard anything but I can only assume they haven’t found much, otherwise we’d be hearing from them.” Twilight took an anxious sip.

Levi seized his glass from the table and brought it to a rest atop his knee. “This is ridiculous. I’m the Element of Protection, I should be out there looking for him! Not Mortimer or some soldiers.” He exclaimed.

“Element of Protection?”

“We’ll get to that later, Alan.”

“What if one of them dies, Twilight? What if the Royal Guard doesn’t stand a chance?”

Twilight paused and gazed absentmindedly at the table for a split-second, shucking off a thought she regretted pondering. “It’s better to be optimistic and be happy where you are, Levi. There’s not more you can do.”

“Oh, but there is. I could be out there helping to put an end to this. Bring back peace. Damn it!”

Alan leaned back in his chair and watched the volatile bonfire of harbored chagrin and hellacious guilt assume the vague form of his younger brother. A sight he’d grown accustomed to during his sinful tenure in Alabama, and a sight he reckoned he’d witness day-in and day-out. After all, with a demented infernal mass killer immune to the elephantine brawn of guilt, becoming awash with enough guilt to drive a planet to lunacy was a fate where no escape was extant.

While never being locked in the crosshairs of an igneous tempered rampage, his words scorching the ground like a skiff of sultry brimstone, whichever ill-omened soul happened to be the victim had to lean on divine intervention. Prayer was the only thing that bore any morsel of luck towards their survival. And with a keen crystalline sword at his hip eager to swill the blood of its prey, the possibilities plumbed the fathoms of unintelligible horror.

“Levi, calm down, it’s gonna be okay-”

“Nothing about any of this is ever gonna be okay!” Levi snapped as his arched foot bounced apace with the balls of it pressed firmly onto the wood. He cupped his hands over his plaintive countenance and spoke through a muzzle of shaky flesh. “I didn’t trust them from the start, I knew I should’ve been out there myself. I knew it!”

“Don’t say all that, brother. Blamin’ yourself won’t fix nothin’. I’m sure these people need you right about now.”

Levi’s hands dropped into his lap with soulful globes trained at the ceiling. He glided his tongue against the rigid ends of his incisors thoughtfully, stopping at his arrowhead canines. Seconds advanced tardily. Marching like an amputee stampeding through a lake of quicksand.

“Maybe…Maybe I’m not as fit for this role as I thought.” He inhaled deeply before he resumed his rueful monologue. “Damn it all to Hell.” Levi muttered beneath his breath, envenomed.

The glass rim of his cup was returned to a familiar place. The voracious lips of Levi Cronell, abducting the final draft of cider and reeling it down his tightened esophagus. An entire half-glass of the brew of vaulting cinnamon and intoxicating sweetness gone in an instant. Reduced to a meager smear of orange droplets and residue at the bottom of his cup. Ceasing to exist in a matter of a moments-long gulp faster than the strike of a match. An errorless ring of condensation was deserted in its wake.

“Damn it all…” He placed the glass on the table and stood before sliding his chair underneath the table. Utterly careless towards the nettling grating of its slender legs against the floor.

“Damn it…”

“It’s gonna work out, Levi. Promise.” Alan reassured. “Now that I’m back, he ain’t gonna be alive much longer.”

“Sure. I’m going to bed.”

Bereft of another muttered word or from either party that constituted the trifecta, Levi swiveled on his cotton-clad feet and walked to the stairs. Wearily hoisting his encumbered frame, each step was comparable to scaling Mount Olympus. Numerous laggard steps later, the pensive Man in Blue retired to the murky tenebrosity flooding his anacoustic bedroom. Dodging an arduous conversation in the most coward, lily-livered way imaginable, all for another quaff of disconcerted wistful slumber. Whether the grueling discussion about his murderous nemesis persevered against fatigue’s wolfish forces, long forsaking the ignominious concept of ruth. The solitary monarch in the vast kingdom of past and present enemies who lusted for the demise of Levi Cronell. His adversary with a blackened heart darker than the inkiest of starless nights. An all-expenses-paid lodge for a broad compendium of despicable muses, paying little heed to the ruinous ramifications they unfettered. The way it appeared to the Man in Blue, Gary Demonio was bestowed full unbridled reign over these craggy polyfaceted lands. And by extension, unstoppable sovereignty over the unsuspected population breathing life into the vivacious verdant foliage and leviathanic mountains.

Inculpable ponies glorying in blissfully incognisant to the imponderable peril they all were in. Regardless of any outside factors or entity, no exemptions to his roughshod interminable rampage were anchored in reality. Their roots ingrained into the soil of their most figmental dreams, fictitious and inconceivable. A wool fastened tautly over the eyes of the sprawling majority, with a select few lionhearted souls living day-by-day with naked optics. Bearing witness to the boundless, ineffable carnage that would wontedly forburst the minds of Equus’ run-of-the-mill residents. Living out common lives bereft of a morsel of exotic character or idiosyncratic flair. Anything at all that would differentiate it and place it upon a pedestal, injecting it with a hearty dose inquiry. In the grand scheme of things, they were far from a remarkable singularity with no equals. Just a pony milling down a lengthy unending line of uniformity without a terminus. Accomplishing banal tasks, taking the opportune amenities of everyday lenient life for granted. Indubious to the untellable slurry of jeopardy their trite existences festered in.

Words drifted from the mouths of the final two souls at the kitchen table unharked by the male. Long gone and materialized into the tuneless ether beyond the curve of the stairway. His mind was a blinding white oblivion. A lacuna deprived of a means or a grandiose purpose to its mind-warping maddening vacivity. The mystifying vastness of the flat unbordered universe, where no concepts of emotions or abstract thought of any variety bore a position. Pure and untarnished vacuity, in every definition and interpretation of the phrase. One thing, a singular iota of conscious autonomous thought, was hosteled in that dream-esque scape. A bubble of thought stained the deepest coat of red and going by one individual name. Fear. Ungoverned, feral, primal fear of the most towering of calibers.

Levi returned to square one. Roosting upon the edge of the bed and desheating his frame from the confines of his attire. The idea of folding his getup for whatever shenanigans awaited him in the morning was denied entry to his psyche. That stark white oblivion knowing nothing harboring a semblance to form or dimension. Just raw animalistic fear and a pining for slumber. A desire tranquilized by Alan’s unpredicted arrival, yet invigorated by the sensation of the downy mattress upon his flesh. Levi’s head crashed onto the pillow while two mammoth urges were absorbed into a barbaric fray. A bone-crunching scrimmage between two warring yearnings. The miserable longing to rove down the flaxen steps and indulge in the splendid art of conversation once again. In the other corner, it was lambasted by the incogitable fright of morose events yet to make their debut into the real conscious world. Failing to liberate themselves from the boundaries of Levi’s nightmares that stir him in the night, wrenching him from the snoozing world in a bath of frigid sweat. Heart fought against the chains that bound it to dart to the lower floor. His mind, as it often was, had a starkly different idea pinballing off the paries of his skull.

He settled his cranium into the mold embedded in the silky pillow. Doleful optics level with the comely topography of triangular smooth roofs and smoking chimneys. Phantom-like ribbons of ash-grey floated and vanished into the onyx airscape. Melting in the vacant paths between the stars.

As the Man in Blue drew the curtains of his leaden eyelids, elated to be adopted by that sable ocean of slumber for the final time that night, a flash of turquoise stabbed the darkness. And an impossibly dismal guffaw he knew far too well echoed down unseen chasms in his head. That robustious laugh a herald for doom far past the brink of comprehension to every last one of these ponies.

Ponies who had not a clue what was in store.

“‘A few miles’, he said. ‘Not too far from here’, he said.” Gary Demonio muttered through chapped arid lips. His inflamed words exiting through a desiccated throat drier than a sun-baked skeleton.

“Being inside of a head doesn’t help my estimation skills, Gary,” Discord spoke, dodging the cumbersome guilt for their inhospitable state of affairs. “I’m surprised you never took my words with a grain of salt.”

“I thought there wasn’t a lying prick living in my head but I couldn’t be more fucking wrong.”

His voice stained the placid yet irrefutable unnerved ambience of the Everfree Forest with its gravely cacophony. Neck-deep in the labyrinth of centuries-old trees glowering down at the flagrant miscreant and rhythmic snapping of branches. Sporadically forsook by the oak and sycamore obelisks they formerly called their unsubstitutable home. A welcoming domicile who uttered few rebuttals towards the prospect of their unforeseen departure. Not due to the machinations of a blithe cold-shoulder to its eudemonia and well-being, but the deprivation of the pivotal autonomy required to halt the process. The only option that remained on the pint-sized table was to sorrowfully idle and woefully stare upon the process of nature. Unable to appropriately wretch and cower in a septic puddle of mortified anguish. To the shock of no person alive, the mass slaughter of branches against the indurate rubber treads of boots wasn’t the only terror they were forced to stand and observe. Listless and stock-still, not of their own volition. The trees observed with hearts perforated by glacial daggers of dread, rapid-fire stabs hasty enough to make Hermes shed an envious tear.

They stood stirless as the notorious, inimical Gary Demonio tottered through the Gordian unending labyrinth of trees belonging to all species and breeds. No duplicates toting a coveted position in that nightmarish Forest that, at least to the bastard in turquoise, seemed to be hellbent on burying his corpse beneath the roots. Sending every apparatus of nigh-insurmountable calamity to hurl a rusted wrench into his plans. After all, the noirette’s journey in this wooded purgatory began in a cadaverous deceased orchard. Propped against a tree under the shrewd calculating scowl of the torrid sun, awaiting his stark droughty throat to claim his otiose life. Only beckoned to locomote to the only incredibly slender chance of blissful salvation by the sole being in these lands able to trump his notoriety. The God of Chaos, who bathed him in beatified salvation himself not too long prior.

Now, he lumbered with an implacable objective stamped onto his moldering psyche. Dead-eyes huddled beneath a canopy of knitted brows, trained like a starved hawk on the gilded beaming horizon. Endowed with a feverish hankering to locate that desiderated deliverance from the barbed throes of self-imposed detriment. Not to wreath his covetous digits around and bleed it dry of all of its worth. But to bring the incarnation of Hell’s sultry wrath to the lackless world above. Char the lush fruitful expanse of tranquility and prosperous contentment. Bring that sanctuary constructed out of glass to its languishing knees. As above, so below. A phrase Gary seldom harked back in the untethered scape of hackneyed strife and bedlam known only as the United States. Yet, it was a phrase that ne’er came close to migrating to the caliginous chasm of forgotten memories. Callously deserted by his mind and cast into the darkness, forever exiled from sight and mind until the end of his days. Presently, that phrase never held true untarnished truth until the past few days of his sojourn in Equus. Life breathed into his parched arteries and stone-cold bones and dropped from the sky in the dead of night. Leaping back into the limelight with the ineffable revulsions of the land of brimstone and reckoning dragging behind him. Bounding from the hellfire like an infernal jackal.

Discord gasped in his head as Gary weaved between the mastodonic sprawling net of rangy trees and branches hanging at obnoxious lows. Coming parallel with his neck, hammering chest, and sweat-studded forehead more instances than the human brain was able to keep track of. And every repetition of this noisome chiseling of his jury-rigged vat of patience all concluded identically with no existing deviants to the monotony. He’d coil his wrathful digits around its minute girth and tear it from the trunk, slinging it onto the forest bed. Frush auburn leaves were jettisoned from the mass of root-like smaller branches and wafted to the forest bed. Swaying gently like nature’s unremarked pendulum.

Discord gasped as Gary was subjected to another unpassable encounter with another chest-high branch. Bumping into his sternum with the selfsame foolish gumption its brethren lived and died by.

“I’m a lot of things but a liar?! How preposterous.”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” Gary rumbled, viciously plucking another branch from the stocky trunk and chucking it into the foliage on his left without a glance. “This sure as shit doesn’t feel like the ‘few miles’ I was promised.”

“Don’t twist my words, my friend. I never promised, I simply told.”

“Word it however you want. Bottom line is this is a lot fucking longer than what you said.” Gary whinged. “What am I even looking for anyway?”

“What do you mean, Gary?”

“I mean, what does this museum look like? I’m working off jackshit.”

“A huge hedge maze with an old stone building and a lot of statues out front. Expect a crowd. For some reason, ponies are attracted to the likeness of milksops out of stone.”

“Hell, maybe they’ll make me out of stone one day. Why the fuck not?”

“They make statues upon their defeat. Or death. Whichever you prefer.”

“I’m not anticipating it.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

The path Gary trail blazed off the weather-worn primary trail, freighted with peril wherever the eyes could reach, was what he unworthily coined as a “shortcut.” One that he vehemently defended to the Draconequus imprisoned within his cranium. The very same that, after being pelted with the full-throated support of the idea, yielded to his persistence. As if he possessed any choice in the matter to begin with. They winded endlessly through a rambling catacombs of rugged bald sycamores and oak gourmands. Whiskey-colored leaves dangled from the thick limbs like gimcrack ornaments, crisp and brittle akin to the discarded exoskeleton of a cicada. Attempting to conjure the ceaseless frights and brutish clashes of nature these long-in-the-tooth towers of wood witnessed was insufferable. Living in a rambling forest where Manticores and Timberwolves mingled on a daily basis, it was no surprise the trauma endured by them was arduous to fully fathom every facet of it.

The soil his boots tattooed with the indecipherable pattern of his rubber soles like hieroglyphics had long since recovered from the rife rainfall. Fully returning to the stiff unmoving dirt that set the groundwork for the entirety of Equestria’s unbounded terrains. Grass was an uncommon commodity in the male’s ramshackle endeavor at dicing the walking time. Vibrant Lincoln green blanketed the ground for the first mile or so but, after the moon furtively slinked back to the unknown underneath the horizon, the ground was altered. Not due to the rotation of the mammoth celestial bodies above, but for reasons enigmatic to the man piloted by vile ambitions. Paying little heed to the stark contrasts and even less for the constants that accompanied him the whole journey. That being the tawny and maple-syrup-colored leaves polka-dotting the scarred forest floor and forlorn branches strewn haphazardly. Waiting with bated agonized breath for a foot or paw to seal their fate and end their ceaseless sentence. Resplendent shafts of sunlight blasted down upon the makeshift path. Frigid winds galloped through the trees and kissed his bare begrimed skin with its gelid lips.

The pair fell silent for minutes. No sound dared to object to the quietude encompassing the Everfree’s plethora of untouched avenues. All bar the rupturing of branches beneath the boots of the savage man, its brazen temerity on full unabashed display once more. The rhythmic crunch of coppery leaves matching the beat of a heart far steadier than Gary’s.

“You know a lot about death?”

“Excuse me?”

“Death. I take it you’re familiar. Perhaps too familiar.”

“I know a thing or two.” Gary replied. A foul iota of pride braided within his words. “I’m guessing you do, too?”

“Not a bit, believe it or not.” Discord responded. “I always avoided taking lives. It was never my intention when I took Celestia’s throne all those centuries ago. I wanted chaos, not bloodshed. There’s a clear difference in my eyes.”

“Your eyes are outta there damned mind. Bloodshed gives birth to chaos, end of story.” A branch butted him in his Adam’s apple and, flooded by scalding dudgeon, ravished the branch from the tree. He dropped it on his boots and resumed his traipsing.

“Spilling blood is your profession. Chaos is mine. I know far more than you.”

“I don’t doubt it but, where I came from, chaos was the blood. It’s all it was and all it ever will be. Even with me gone, people still die. They still kill each other. Chaos still exists.”

“Do you believe those hunters back there birthed chaos?”

“I like to think so, Discord. You think different?”

“You bet I do.” Discord quipped. “What was the purpose of ending their lives?”

“Don’t preach to me about being good or sparing people. If I just walked outta there with the bounty on my head I would’ve been full of lead in three seconds.” Gary snapped, his ire staining every syllable. “You gotta think about what could happen. Worry about the close ass future.”

“I have been. And I’m debating where you stand in my plans.”

Gary halted. “What’d you say?”

“I want chaos. You want a massacre. All of that is clear to me now.”

“I want Levi,” Gary spoke. His striding began again. “If any other bastards wanna get in my way, then so be it. They can die with him.”

“Those hunters probably didn’t even know Levi. We’re a long ways away from him by now.”

Gary slithered through the motionless chiliads of wooden spires both wider than an elephant’s leg and as svelte as a wasp-waisted ballerina. The threadbare mahogany-brown leather bandolier resting sloped across his chest. Running from his robust right shoulder to a few inches beneath his left armpit. The twin convex barrels of his pilfered bespoke shotgun pointed towards the thickly clouded azure sky. The second machination of his covetous hands was the gunmetal-blue Schofield slid into his left jacket pocket.

“Most hunters don’t like their shit being stolen, Discord. If I walked outta there with their guns over my back I’d be six feet under.”

“I’ve searched your memories for any inkling you're not the human I took you for after that nonsense at the hotel. But it’s all showing the same thing. Needless killings, over and over. Seems to be the only thing in here.”

“If you don’t like it I could turn around,” Gary snarled. “Find some shelter and shack up for a while and you can be with me a whole lot longer. Would that be fun?”

Discord paused. His head was empty for seconds before the otherworldly beast chimed, disgruntled and doubtlessly vexed beyond belief.

“I fear our plans will converge, Gary. You and I want vastly different things for Equestria.”

“I want Levi, you want chaos. Not a lot of people have to die for that to happen, Discord. I can’t read the future and tell you what you wanna fucking hear.”

“I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“We will.”

That conversation was a merestone in the toilsome odyssey to the expansive keeper of their king-sized goals. The Ponyville Museum. A location he’d only seen slovenly illustrated in the worn book he discarded back at the crimson-stained hotel in the emotionally mangled town. A hamlet that, once upon a time, had been merrily subservient to the trademark peerless peace. Impeccably content with the comitatus of auspicious benefits that placid walk of life brought in tow. An austere dearth of small-town drama and vicious yet ultimately vacuous bar fights in the glacious hours of the Autumn nights. A dire scarcity of barbarous conflict between townspeople or ferocious skirmishes in the booths of citizens crying and marketing their wares. Begriped into a farcical conflict by a shameless cheapskate staring down the barrel of an ever-so-slightly inconvenient price or some variety of that loathsome event. The most frightening of nightmares breaching the demarcations of the waking world for those eating and breathing from the trinkets and commodities they ruthlessly publicize. All in all, every aspect of Ponyville was pluperfect bereft of an angle where hideous blemishes secreted by a facade were present. Or an underhand snake oscillating through the tall grass that would callously divulge the town’s starkest secrets. Seize it from some unseen, undiscussed coffer buried miles below Ponyville’s trodden soil. When any encapsulated society situated smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, clandestine skeletons in the closet were designed to be enrolled into the dirt without a second to spare.

Ponyville was sanguinely omitted from every last one of those shadowy categories. Passing the test to see if its helm as “one of the calmest places in Equestria” was truly and unfeignedly warranted. Or merely a propagated bias blindly believed eyeless sheep. The blithesome allegories encompassing the town and all of its diminutive population were all as veracious and blatant as the sunlight painting the rugged back of Gary Demonio. The same cutthroat sod who sauntered into Ponyville when the moon’s kingdom was torn from the weeds and given invigorating dominion over the nation. Underneath the lake of indigo beaded by heaven-white stars and incomplete constellations, Gary flagitiously ambled into that graceful, unanticipated village and rocked it to its confectionery core. A dour reminder of the unsympathetic mortality they all possess and harbor a tendency to blank out while they mill mindlessly. Strolling about their everyday lives negligent and heedless to the prospective peril that lie primed and eager to pounce just beyond the horizon. In their case, and in the case of the ill-starred Royal Guards and hunters slaughtered by the unbenevolent raven-haired man, that untold hazard prowled mere feet beyond their margins. And it thundered within with a big iron tucked snug against his back and calloused hands frantic with verve to draw the curtain on as many lives as he can reach. Five down, countless to go.

For a relationship fabricated in the crucible of carmine-stained conquest and inevitable turmoil, riveting conversation was at the absolute depths of their priorities. A fact needlessly aggravated by the gratuitous expulsion of life from the robust and timeworn bodies of his victims. Torturesome happenings where Discord was granted a non consensual front-row seat to the crimsoned action, sitting courtside while carnage unobserved by Equestria for millenia unfolded.

The sobering drought of gratifying banter persisted until Gary’s bone-tired legs halted. Red-hot wires of scorching fatigue and anoetic agony wreathed his weary tibias, strangling his bones without a scant morsel of ruth. Outspent feet encased in rigid, unforgiving blocks of wrenchful lead. Haggard high-top boots and besmirched shoelaces, encrusted by a chipped shell of dried mud, transformed into dungeons of sweat and incomprehensible anguish. The harmonious rhythm of split branches and demolished leaves ceased for a good reason. In Gary’s flagging amber irises, to call the esteemed discovery simply “good” was the emperor of all understatements. Utterly exemplary and magnificent to the bastard and his discontent partner-in-crime, yet undeniably ruinous to every facet of Equus.

He stopped at a flimsy leafless palisade of trees that stood as a futile border between the unfettered scourges of the Everfree Forest and civilization, unprepared to collide head-first with the foes within. However, as time would soon show these indubious equines, not all adversaries respected the border between the long-warring lands. It was a seemingly endless wall of rangy trees with a sinuous network of slender, sylphlike branches broadening in all directions. Some reaching towards the delectable elixir of the tepid daylight, others reaching out to the left and right for motives perplexing to the man. The space between the lissom totems of sycamore was inconsistent beyond belief. Certain points held a gracious chunk of distance between one another, like the space before Gary, while others were separated by paltry centimeters or inches. Not enough to fit the girth of a fully grown man with a loaded shotgun across his back, except for the aperture in front. Through the crannies in the trees, Gary Demonio laid his fatigued eyes upon the key to Discord’s soon-to-be helter-skelter reawakening and discharge from his aching skull.

A lofty verdant wall of expertly groomed and kempt hedges stretched for almost fifteen-feet to the right. Without a grain of doubt its identity being the bizarrely located maze forecasted by the God of Chaos. The intricate design and serpentine twisting paths braiding together was invisible from his position. But he was almost keen on the prospect that, in a few minutes' time, that exotic labyrinth of shevelled foliage would be fully exposed to him. To what extent it could be employed for his despicable ambitions was unbeknownst to him. To the left of the maze’s wall was a gaggle of earth ponies and unicorns with a sparse select few pegasi dotting the bountiful crowd. Some clad appropriately for the bone-chilling weather and the bite of Fall’s razor-sharp maw, while others chose to brave it for one reason or another.

Eight adeptly chiseled stone statues stood high and mighty upon embellished square bases, ornamented with a small rectangular silver plaque detailing the identity and significance of the likeness. Arranged uniformly in rows of four with about a half-foot of space between each smoke-grey sculpture, with a second row of four stationed about a foot adjacent to the first. In the top left corner of the sprawly menagerie of historical effigies of brazen mongrels and the kafkaesque above-ground warren was a mighty structure. Created exclusively from the greyest of smooth stone gorgeously sanded to the absolute utmost, following the relative mold of an august, awe-striking courthouse. One where, let this unchained mayhem of Homeric proportions be set on a backdrop of America, Gary would undoubtedly be sauntering into with an acrimonious lawyer at his hip and trammeled in shackles. Burly calves and maltreated ankles connected by gleaming chain-links from the sheeniest bona fide silver money could buy. Wrists charted by bellying iridescent veins, flaming conduits for his ineffable unmitigated wrath towards his inopportune state of affairs. While cumbersome and destitute of the slightest of shreds of fortune or divine intervention, it was far afield from the conjecture of whether it was righteous or the reverse opposite.

“I’ll be fucking damned…” Gary whispered with widened travel-weary optics and a grim, macabre beam.

“We’ve found the holy grail, Gary.” Discord chimed in a voice deprived of the nettled concern present mere minutes prior. “Feast your eyes, my friend.”

“‘We’ve’,” Gary scoffed. “The hell have you done to get here.”

“Be a pleasant companion.”

Gary rolled the lethargic eyes he shared with the magnate of all things chaotic and discordant. He gazed and squinted at the mighty prodigious building at the far end of the Museum grounds, astronomic and behemothic like a Greek temple pledged to a fictitious god of one of nature’s versatile elements.

The building was a titanic box of veritable stone sitting upon a broader base, bordered by Greek-style monolithic pillars uniting as one to support the angular beautifully designed roof. Embellished by a bewildering pattern of small squares residing in the confines of bigger squares, over and over. A puzzling template that, even if it was to save his life, couldn’t beat the location of where he laid eyes upon this similar pattern in his old world out of his brain. He scoured endlessly and tore the wrinkled walls of his psyche asunder, yet emerged from his laborious dearthful undertaking with zero fruits to show for it. At the front of the base the box sat upon was a mighty fifteen-foot wide staircase that fed into a gaping boxed mouth. Beyond the yawning titanic copper doors forever agog for the thronging channel of visitors was the second half of the Museum. A glorified flea market of prehistoric bric-and-brac and unmeaning, dust-choked trinkets imprisoned within glass cages. While unseen by Gary with his less-than-optimal angle and distance from the legions of ganders, his predictions were meager inches from the realm of veritability.

“What’s that over there?” Gary inquired, jutting a jungly arm out of the broken rampart of trees and pointed a begrimed index finger at the temple.

“That’s where they keep all the knick-knacks and toys from ponies in history. I perused it the last time I was free, bored me nearly to death.”

Gary chuckled. “I never liked museums.”

“Something we can agree on, I hope.”

“Keep hoping.”

A twain of stupendous rugged hands, akin to the paws of a nomadic mountain hermit galaxies away from society, stretched from the caliginous bounds of the Everfree. His palm and the top of his wrist were stippled with pea-sized dots of glum, morose carmine. The final vestiges of the hunters’ existence upon the craggy face of the earth, sans the deserted corpses miles back at their desolate campsite. Likely to be untouched by the fingers of man or hooves of this befuddling equine species. Marooned in an endless perilous ocean of austere blackened trees and sporadically sprinkled grass. Left to become the early Thanksgiving dinner of the voracious buzzards and edacious rats and whatever breed of vermin marauders cared to dine.

Gary parted the trees and swung a heavy foot fixed to the bottom of a quivering leg into the sun-kissed pepful scape, his soon-to-be cataclysmic presence unbeknown to the star-crossed sightseers. The living and unfathomably vigorous incarnation of doomsday sauntered towards the plenteous plethora of equines. Hands jammed in his purloined khaki jacket pockets. Lily-white hat fastened to his sodden quagmire of a scalp, like remnants of a detested stomach-roiling mire slathered across the crown of his head. The effervescent cobalt plume wedged into the ribbon of his hat twitched and jerked in the unmerciful jagged maw of the glacial winds. Gingerly whistling past the gelid shell of his ear like the old quaint tune of a geriatric’s eroded windpipe. Absent-mindedly gazing across the vista with pursed lips and refining the glut of oxygen in his drawn lungs into a harmonious, angelic tune. Proudly fostered by the breeze as gentle as the birdsong from his throat and freighted down sinuous straits and unending dales. See-sawing back and forth on an outmoded birchen rocking chair upon a venerable back porch. Unseen by the direfully unabating forces of nature like the wolfish Gary Demonio. A vanguard deployed by the iron fist and sin-packed heart of Tartarus’ boundless forces to remind the world of the living that mortality, in spite of its lack of mention, was concrete. The sole mobilized enforcer of the natural order of the ceaseless ouroboros of life and death, journey from birth to expiry. Gary was the closest thing to the commander of Hell’s barbaric brigades.

“So, Mister Chaos, what’s the plan when I get up there? What’s gonna free you and let us move the fuck on to bigger things?”

“One word, my dear friend. Chaos.” Discord replied with a mirthful chuckle akin to the squeak of vociferous hinges.

“I thought I didn’t know a damn thing about chaos?”

The restive Draconequus sighed, the exasperation bisected into two factions. One half was camouflage vexation, the other was ample gallons of impatience eddying around Gary’s skull.

“Bring it in whatever way you see fit. Just…Well, I’m not sure what to tell you exactly. Just don’t get carried away. Do you remember my words?”

“Of course I do,” His heart’s vastest desire chiseled a manic smile chock-full of marble-white teeth onto his stony visage. Dominant fingers avidly winding around the stygian grip of his Schofield, wringing it with a force that could invoke the raging flames of envy within Zeus. Invite a covetous spirit to pilfer the unintelligible brawn possessed by the unbenignant bastard.

“I got an idea of my own.” Gary’s words smirked in their horrific, stony-hearted fashion. A scragged thumb itched the revolver’s hammer.

The noirette strode ever-closer and was mere feet from the octet of statues, individually smothered by their own personalized wealth of tacitly chinwagging earth ponies. Infatuated with the dexterously chiseled identicality of the gold-coated fabled hero of old legend or, on the stark contrary, the malignant adversary of the entirety of the Equestrian population. Disdained and accorded their title for whatever despicable imposition they attempted to callously enforce by any means their aberrant mind could conjure. Conjuring the ideas of policing their ideals was always one thing, but keeping them extant until it all falls trite and hackneyed was always where the brunt of the crimes stemmed from.

Gary was a foot from the first statute out of the row of four. Hands engulfing the Schofield’s immaculate unflawed grip. Cold gunmetal frame bereft of any loathsome defects or flaws practically devoured by the fabric. Heart-splitting elation igniting the elongated gas trail of his veins. Enkindling the never-ending streams of rich irony ichor into smoldering creeks of luminous magma. Garnished by a roaring sheet of tempestuous flame biting endlessly at the air. All leading to the marrow of the hellish phenomenon. His jubilated heart. A spewing frothing fountain of verve and fervor for the up-and-coming task he almost found unfeasible to wait any longer.

His bones were alight as he stood with planted boots and a hand encumbered by a slight exultant tremble. A toothy beam threatened to circumnavigate the entire width of his head, stretching from one side to the other. Mandible quivering while gazing at the uneven lake of heads he waited at the flange of. Skulls all turned to face the demon housing a vessel of flesh and muscle. Their craniums optimal domiciles for the sextet of rounds in his revolver’s cylinder.

On his sharp left, herded around an effigy of a pony clad in star-patterned garbs and a wizard’s hat, was a family of three. A tough-as-teak bearded father with two miniscule daughters in matching pigtails. The one on the father’s left chirped. “Is that-”

“Yes, honey,” He spluttered. “Come on, we have to get home.”

The patriarch and his pride and joy darted out of his peripheral. Materializing into the vacant oblivion beyond the margins of his eyesight.

The sod flickered his eyes across the crowd, all petrified deer in the glaring spotlight of his blood-starved vision. A feeble earth pony stood shakily before the extravagant, zany stone colossus of Discord’s coveted statue. Clad in a forest-green-and-brown checkered flannel jacket buttoned to the penultimate round black button. Donning an oak-brown flat cap over a thinny sinewy pate of sand-blonde hair with conspicuous arteries of iron. Two gibbous hazel eyes displayed in sooty frames of quarter-sized eyebags, far from the sole emblem of age’s roughshod, barbarous influence. Unyielding to the elder’s pleas and plights for youth and limitless vigor he possessed in times long passed. Gary honed his irises. Brows sewn together by furrowed optics.

The man chuckled and sweeped his tongue across the face of his teeth.

He was ready.

He was more than ready.

Discord was not.

“Stay still!” He exclaimed with bounties of pride and ardor in his timbre. The crowd jumped. “This won’t take long.”

TIme defected from its meaning and rudimentary laws. The ticking of the clock slowed, the smoldering fists of fervor walloping his heart followed suit. In a singular motion, intractable to the world’s undertakings at correcting the primordial chronometer, Gary tore the Schofield from his jacket pocket. A modicum of the velvety flaxen interior snagging onto the hammer before it fully embraced the idyllic sunshine from the cyan airscape above. He straightened his arm, caged the senior’s forehead in his vermillion iron sights, and with a thrillful tug of his index, the hammer plowed into the cylinder.

BLAM!

A sweltering cylinder with a hankering as voracious as the man who fired it launched from the slender barrel. Barreling into the top-left corner of the geriatric’s wrinkled papery forehead. Eyelids parachuting. Laying his bewildered, panic-struck orbs bare to the obdurate abundance of gut-trundling carnage. Eyes that flickered with a fulgent ignus fatuus of concentrated undepurated fright, pumped straight from his stormish heart to his globes with zero gratuitous processes to adulterate it. His head sprung back like a visceral spring rider and his felt hat catapulted from his scalp and flipped in the open air. Landing topside upon the trimmed grass a foot behind Discord’s graven uncanny image. A thick, ink-like ribbon of aglitter crimson sparkling in the pudgy fingers of sunlight as though adorned with a rhinestone crust. Scintillating before it varnished the left leg of the statute, scandalizing the convex knee of his dragon’s appendage. A wispy silver-grey smoky phantom slithered from the barrel and drifted into the cloud-speckled sky, unseen amidst the vivacious backdrop of pepful cyan. Cessation claimed ironclad dominion over his willowy bewrinkled frame and the cadaver fell onto its left side. Torrents of scarlet disgorged from the dime-sized tunnel bore into his cranium.

Discord shuddered. The vandalism of his cement prison impaling a heart he was entirely unaware could still be assailed by emotion.

Molten vials of hellacious primordial wrath tipped and what poured from the short hooked spout was unlike any savage extravaganza ever spectated by a pony in recorded history. After all, making a name for himself as vile and depraved as humanly possibly was his second secreted objective. A mission where the hulking prospect of a brutish demise wasn’t recognized, and would doubtlessly be refuted if it reared its hideous head.

Ineffable, unutterable chaos that surpassed the capabilities of description by a living being poured from its tormentuous vials. Brawny, herculean tentacles of aberrant pandemonium scrabbled from the molten fathoms of Hell. Bursting forth from its plaguy confines of soil and bedrock, rupturing its innate manacles binding it to its own dimension where its behavior was hallowed and tolerated. Far afield from the earthly realm where astute unicorns who slept and lived in libraries could exist in peace. Each elemental force of spurious anarchy and candid brutality could reside in its own world, unregarding to the blissful beings above.

Like every sanguineous affair where Gary Demonio was a centric organ, unbending laws and the very prospect of its frivolous existence plummeted into a vacuum of nullity. Shirked and belittled, its superfluous sojourn in Equestria and the soon-to-be mangled Museum lost to time’s shifting tides and reeled into the eye of the void.

“You all ready to see some real fun! I’m here to show you!” Gary thundered.

A vicious cacophonous monsoon of Babelic sights and sounds. Planet-struck shrieks stridulent enough to bisect the Earth erupted from their obstreperous throats. The influence of their gutshot sentiments perhaps loud enough to split the moon in two and slice the oceans apart. Awaken even the most groggy and dog-tired of hibernating creatures stowed away in their intimate sanctuaries. Tucked away comfortably in their own cavity of the universe.

Ponies dashed towards every arrow on the compass. Paths interconnecting and bodies colliding as exits from the upcoming acapella of gunfire were deafened. Struck nebulous and nigh on chimeric in the thick ineluctable fog of bodies and pounding hooves. Loose manes flapping frantically like flags in a hurricane.

Gary vociferously sniggered. “How was that for some fucking entertainment, huh!?” Shouted the inhuman beast donning the skin of a man.

With a vertical arm and the click of a hammer, he assumed aim once more. Scarlet sights perusing the riotous bounties of angst-ridden souls scuttling every which way like ants fleeing their irreversibly marred hill. A tranquil superlative domicile forever razed by goblets of wrath.

Seconds of scouring the skittering glut of glorified clay pigeons, Gary located his second victim. A female earth pony that jutted like a pictorial pearl in a sea of lank stygian. Endowed with a stunning pastel pink coat and satiny mint-green locks bound in a messy bun like a gibbous lump of faded emerald. His crosshairs followed her head as she ran for the hills. Arm bedeviled by a rabid quake of jubilation.

BLAM!

The hapless pony seized her rhythmic gallops. Limbs freezing and movement becoming an alien concept in the mare’s figure. She crumbled to the soil and her jaw dug into the dirt and scooped a hearty chink of turf with her chin. The remainder of her frame crumpled in a shambolic cadaverous pile like a heap of lorn branches.

“It’s that fucking easy?” He bellowed. “Is it really that easy to kill you worthless cocksuckers? Are you kidding me? Do you think a bounty is gonna stop me!?”

Gary beveled the hammer and rotated the cylinder to the next receptacle of unbridled misery and ruination. He took aim at his next target. A mustang with a short-trimmed royal blue mane and scintillating cerulean mane scrambling towards arcadian safety.

BLAM!

The round crashed into his left temple and slung his head before wadding into a mess of hooves and limbs upon the ground. Rivulets of ichor puked from the wound onto the grass.

“You think a few fucking dollars is gonna take me down? I’ll shove it down your fucking throat, you annoying sons of bitches! Send your fucking worst!”

The crowd had vastly waxed. Countless darted towards town, flushed by the barbaric onset of gunsmoke and envenomed ridicules towards the dead. A modicum of pitiable stallions resided within the jury-rigged warzone. Resided within the capabilities of Gary’s Argus-eyed sharpshooting.

Discord shuddered in the butcher’s head as he gazed through the eyes of the infernal monster of his own creation. In the peripheral of Gary’s shared vision, towering over the gushing corpse of the inculpable elder, slain without a herald towards the reckoning coming his way, stood the God of Chaos’ statue. And upon his coarse visage perpetually masked by an unwarranted mirth towards a victory he foolishly believed was in his talons, a fissure shot across his gaping countenance.

Gary screeched incessantly. The overzealous disciple to a savage, brutish faith of his own creation, where his heart’s abominable muses were the hallowed relic, bellowed to no end. Shouting curses and combinations of uncouth vulgarities that would halt the heart of a feeble elder of the Christian faith. Some words formerly unharked by the Draconequus, others were discerned from the pandemonious ravel of his hell-roaring prey to his unbounded madness. The nefarious profanities plucked from the dissonant sour ensemble of screams and horror-struck howls.

Another round was fired and a broadside of embittered gleeful jeering ensured, unrecognized by Discord as he stared with a heart routinely skipping beats at the cracks in the stone. Gazing merrily awash with jubilation at the triumphant sight. And there, within an ardent infernal fishbowl pregnant with hypervivid recollections of innocent souls tactlessly dying to his hands, Discord defied the odds and smiled. A disembodied wisp among the unending teeming congeries of memories washed in a spring of ichor. Grinning amidst the unsalvageable bedlam scorching the corpses of the fractional quantities of tranquility and serenity.

Equestria would know his name once again.

Equestria would kneel to the herculean brassbound fist of chaos.

Beautiful, ravishing, exhilarating chaos.

Chapter 1: Where one life ends

He walked to the edge of the beach, ready for what came next, or what would come next. He fell to his knees at the edge, right where the tide came in and almost touched him but just barely missed him. He watched as the water receded back into the ocean and disappeared, leaving the sand a dark brown color. He wished there was another way, but there wasn’t, he was going to die and that was the end of it. He looked to his left and saw two horses, one with rainbow hair and another with blonde and a brown stetson hat.

Next to the blonde horse was his friend, Alan, who smiled at him and said “It’s time brother.”

The man nodded, turning to his left revealing more horses. He saw one with purple and black hair, pink curly hair, purple wavy hair, and pink straight hair. He smiled and with tired eyes stared out at the ocean, looking at the horizon which had the afternoon sun shining brightly, casting the beach in a gorgeous orange shade. “You ready?” A raspy voice asked him from his left.

He looked and saw the rainbow haired horse smiling up at him, he couldn’t help but let a smile form on his face from it. “Yeah..” He replied, looking back out at the ocean and admiring its beauty like it was the last time he was ever gonna see anything like it. “I love you Dash.” He said.

“I love you too.” The rainbow haired horse said.

He stared out at the horizon, admiring its beauty like it’s the last thing he’ll ever see. He felt a blissful feeling deep in his chest and his eyelids grew heavy, and he felt all of his pains and discomforts leave his body as he finally closed his eyes.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! The alarm clock blared, awaking the man peacefully sleeping inches away from the clock. “Son of a bitch…” Levi Cronell groaned, reaching over and turning off the alarm clock that was screaming in his ear.

He sat up in bed and loudly stretched and groaned out of relief as his back cracked and popped after a good night's rest. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and hopped off onto the soft carpet of his bedroom, he grabbed a pair of black sweatpants from inside of his dresser and slipped into them. He also reached inside of his dresser and grabbed his favorite blue dress shirt along with a white t-shirt and gracefully slipped into the shirts as he walked into the bathroom. He walked in and turned the light on, immediately flinching at the bright light and holding his hand over his eyes for a few seconds.

When his eyes adjusted he looked intently at himself in the mirror and squinted at his reflection, he ran his hand over his chin and felt his stubble prickling his fingertips. “Damn, I gotta shave.” He thought aloud, grabbing his razor and switching it on. The buzz filled the small bathroom and he watched as his stubble left his face and fell into the sink,

As he looked in the mirror staring into his own green eyes, he couldn’t help but frown at his own reflection. This was because Levi held a terrible secret that nobody could know, he was a meth cook. He was not proud of it, not proud in the least bit, but he had to do it. If he didn’t he wouldn’t have had a house, a car, or even a life for that matter.

However, Levi led a relatively normal life in his small apartment in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In order to hide his meth cooking side hustle from the rest of the world, he got a good paying job in landscaping. While he didn’t like his job, he had to in order to prevent him and his partner, and childhood best friend, Alan Sizemore from being arrested.

Alan had proposed the idea 5 years prior and Levi, while hesitant at first, ultimately decided to go through with the idea. As he was struggling to pay his bills and put food on the table, and to top it all off, he had a severe alcohol addiction which ate up a good portion of his paycheck every week.

“Dammit…” He sighed, putting his hands on the sides of the sink and hanging his head above the sink. He looked in the mirror but couldn’t bear to look at himself in the mirror, he was ashamed.

After brushing his teeth, he left the bathroom and walked into the living room while buttoning up his shirt and rolling up his sleeves to just below his elbow. His living room and kitchen were practically the same room, with his old and torn up couch being right next to the counter and oven. He walked in and like a robot opened the refrigerator door and grabbed a can of his favorite beer and slumped onto the couch, he grabbed the remote and aimed it at the T.V and pressed the power button but realized the batteries were dead. “Shit!” He growled angrily, slamming the remote back onto the couch. ‘I have to go out and buy more’ He thought to himself, annoying him even more.

On que, there was a loud knock on the door which surprised Levi considering it was 6:30 in the morning and no one should really be up yet. “Who is it?” He called out, walking towards the door.

“It’s your landlord! Open up!” He ordered.

Levi rolled his eyes and unlocked the door and slid chain lock and opened the door to reveal his landlord, Howard. He had a black sports coat on with a white polo shirt, tucked into black dress pants with a solid black cloth belt. He had on expensive dress shoes that clacked against the floor everywhere he walked, the sound made Levi’s blood boil. “You need somethin’ Howard?” Levi asked, aggravated.

“Actually yes I do Mr.Cronell, your rent is due. It’s that time of the month again.” He said, annoying Levi at his comment.

“Yeah you know I’m strapped for cash, you followin’ me? Just give me like a week man.” Levi replied, trying to end the conversation as soon as possible.

“Mr.Cronell-”

“Levi.”

“Mr.Cronell!” Howard stated aggressively. “This is the 5th time this has happened since you’ve started living here. This doesn’t just affect you y’know? My higher ups aren’t gonna be too happy when I show up late with the payment for the 5th time.” Howard explained.

“Listen Howard, I got my own shit goin’ on and I know you know that. Just give me a few days alright? Can you do that for me?” Levi asked, attempting to close the door on his and end the conversation.

Howard placed his hand on the door preventing it from closing and said “I’m giving you three days, if you don’t come up with it then you’re outta here! You understand me?”

“Yes!” Levi sharply exclaimed, closing the door but making sure not to slam it so as to not wake the other residents. “Fuck!” He muttered to himself. The truth was he didn’t have the money to pay the $800 required for his rent, and his dead-end job was certainly not gonna provide $800 in 3 days. He sighed to himself and ignored the feelings of shame brewing in his heart as he walked into his bedroom, pulled his phone off the charger and called Alan.

“Hey,” He answered, his country accent making the word sound funny.

“Hey,Alan, we-uh-we gotta cook a few batches.” Levi said, grabbing his jeans and belt.

Levi walked outside of his apartment building and trudged towards Alan’s pickup truck parked outside for him, he adjusted his camo hat on top of his head before swinging open the truck door and hopping inside his best friend's car.

“W’sup brother!” He exclaimed happily, going in for a bro hug.

“Nothin’ much man! How ‘bout you?” Levi answered, a smile forming on his face. No matter what mood he was in or whatever illegal activities they were indulging in, Alan never failed to brighten Levi’s day.

His face quickly turned serious in a matter of seconds. “you ready for this?” He asked.

“Yeah, let’s go get the trailer.” Levi replied, his smile fading from his face. Alan put his dark green truck into drive and set off to their friend Mark’s house, to the man who was holding their mobile meth lab.

It’s been hours after Alan and Levi picked up there trailer and were now headed out to there usual cooking spot, as they were flying down the highway at 70 miles per hour Levi leaned his head against the window and looked out of the window as trees and other cars zoomed by them. Alan took notice of this and decided to break the silence between the pair by asking “Anythin’ on your mind Levi?”

Levi turned his head and looked at Alan with a somber expression and debated on whether he should really tell him what was on his mind, he was practically Levi’s brother after all. “Find a restaurant and we’ll stop there for a little. I’ll tell you everything.” Levi said in an unintentional demanding tone.

“I’ll see if I can find one.” Alan replied, giving Levi a confused look. That's what Levi was expecting. He looked out the window once more and thought about where he was at, what he was going to do, he thought about all of the promises he made to his Mom and Dad all those years ago when he said he would be a successful man. ‘Don’t let that boy turn you're like upside down now! I’m telling you Levi that boy is nothin’ but trouble!’ She would always say, and he never thought that she was right. She was. Levi loved Alan like a brother and he was his best friend, but Levi didn’t want this life.

This sorrowful life of cooking drugs for poor addicts that can’t do anything to help there addiction, it made him sick to his stomach thinking about it, but it was the only option and the only thing he could do.

Eventually, they arrived at a Golden Corral after Alan went off the highway due to Levi insisting they go to a restaurant and his mind couldn’t be changed. After they were seated and Alan got himself some food, Levi not, Alan felt that something was wrong with Levi.

“So…what did you wanna talk about?” Alan asked, forking mouthfuls of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

Levi sighed and leaned closer to the table as to keep there conversation as private as possible in a public place, “I feel like a piece of shit Al.” he stated bluntly.

Alan choked on his potatoes, caught off guard by Levi’s straightforward explanation. “Why?” He asked.

He felt a lump begin to form in his throat, all these months of pent up emotions coming to a boiling point. “It’s just-” He felt tears in his eyes and he tried as hard as he could not to cry and let it all out “I don’t wanna live like this anymore.” He said, a tear beginning to stream down his face.

“Whaddya mean Levi? You mean the cookin’?” Alan asked, placing his hand on Levi’s and attempting to comfort the man in front of him.

Levi nodded and added “I feel like a worthless piece of shit…I feel like a bastard…I mean i’m giving these…” he maintained his composure and lowered his voice down to a shaky whisper “Damn drugs to people and I’m making them worse man. I’m ruining their lives.”

“Levi..” Alan responded in a soothing voice “You can’t think about that, I know it sounds selfish but they made their choice and we gotta live.” He explained.

“Dammit.” He said, wiping away his tears. “But we’re destroying those people, there dying and it’s our fault!” He whispered.

Alan sighed, knowing good and well Levi was right. “Look think of it this way, we stop cooking and you know what’s gonna happen? We lose our house, I lose my truck and you lose your car, we lose everything.” Alan explained.

Levi turned his head around and looked out of the window and saw Levi’s truck, his pride and joy, and the metallic blue trailer that was used as a rolling meth lab by the two. He closed his eyes and sighed and turned back around and faced Levi and said “You're right, absolutely. I just wish you weren’t.”

“Yeah, I know.” Alan reassured with a smile, taking his hand off of Levi’s.

Alan looked at his watch and stood up and he told Levi “Come on, we’ve been here long enough.” Levi smiled, feeling better about his current situation but still feeling slightly guilty about the whole thing. However he shrugged those thoughts off and took his friends' words into consideration, about how they're in charge of their own situation.

“Let’s get outta here.” He said, pulling a $20 bill out of his wallet and laying it on the table. They both promptly left the restaurant and hopped into Alan’s and began to drive to their cooking spot.

Click Alan unlocked the door for the trailer and the door opened and the familiar smell of methylamine struck their noses, “Hotdamn!” Levi exclaimed. They both walked in the trailer and inside was two white fold up tables covered by a blue tarp with glass beakers, jars, and tubes atop of the tarp which are the 3 main things you need for a cook. In the back is an oven, refrigerator, and multiple cabinets and cupboards. “So..” Alan said, closing and locking the trailer door behind him. “Ready?” “Ready.” “Good.” Alan responded, grabbing a yellow apron off the coat rack in the corner of the room.

Levi did the same and the two put on the aprons and tied it around their bodies. Also on the rack were two gas masks, which the duo also put on, but before they started cooking Alan suddenly announced “Almost forgot!”

Alan pulled the tarp away and pulled out a backpack hidden underneath the table with the cooking supplies. “The hell is that?” Levi asked, pointing at the large gray and orange backpack. “A new recipe.” Alan replied, unzipping the backpack and taking out its contents.

Alan put what looked like a can of kerosene, a blue bucket, and a silver pan with the top duct taped on securely. “What kind of recipe is it supposed to be?” Levi asked. “A good one.” Alan answered. He slid the backpack under the table once more and stood back up. “Who gave it to you, Mark?” Levi asked curiously.

“No. It was actually one of my buddies I’ve known for a few years, his names Big Ray” Levi explained, much to Levi’s confusion.

Levi blinked and paused for a few seconds and looked at the man in front of him, “I’m sorry what?” he managed to ask.

“Big Ray gave me a recipe man. He said it would make you high as a kite for days.” Alan said.

“We’re taking meth cooking advice from some guy named ‘Big Ray’” Levi said, refusing to believe Alan wasn’t joking.

“Naw man Ray’s the real deal down in my neighborhood” He said.

“I’m just saying if this blows up in our face and kills us, I’m kicking your ass in Heaven.” Levi joked, putting on his yellow rubber gloves.

“We’ll see about that.” Alan responded, doing the same.

“Hell even is all this in the first place?” Levi asked, motioning his hand to the mystery chemicals on the table.

“Caustic soda, muriatic acid, and hydrochlo- somethin’ like that. It ain’t important.” Alan explained. Alan pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and said “Now he gave me a set of-”

“It’s not important!” Levi interjected. “You're starting to worry the hell outta me Al what if this kills us!”

“Now just slow down.” Alan said, holding up his hands to Levi. He unfolded the piece of paper and cleared his throat and said “Get the methylamine and all that shit too you’re gonna need it”

“Yes sir.” Levi said sarcastically, kneeling down to get the supplies out from under the table.

When all the jars and glasses were filled with the ingredients necessary to make a successful cook, Alan began to read the paper: “Cup and a half of caustic soda”. Levi grabbed the measuring cup and grabbed the rusty can of caustic soda and carefully poured it until the one cup line near the top. Almost immediately, the soda began to bubble and a sharp hissing sound was heard. “Al!” Levi called out as the soda continued to fizz and hiss like a knife across a chalkboard. “Put it in the damn-” Before he could finish his sentence the measuring cup gave out and the bottom melted, causing the soda to fall onto the table and Levi’s foot.

“AHHHH SON OF A BITCH!” Levi screamed, clutching his foot and dropping the soda causing it to spill soda over the carpeted floor.

“FUCK! LEVI!” Alan screamed, dashing over and grabbing the soda off the floor before it could cause anymore damage. A large hold was burned into the carpet and the metal flooring of the trailer could be seen.

Alan, without thinking, grabbed the soda and dumped a small portion of it into the bucket causing it to fizz and bubble. “DAMNIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” Levi screamed, clutching his foot and yelling with pain.

Alan fell over trying to get the paper but he grabbed it and stood up and began to look at the instructions. “Uh-uh-muriatic-” “AL!” Levi shouted, getting to his feet and hopping on one foot over to the table.

“We can’t turn back now Levi, we're in too deep!” Alan exclaimed, grabbing the acid and pouring a large portion in there. “STOP IT YOU’RE GONNA KILL US!” Levi yelled, attempting to take the acid out of Alan’s hands, but the men lost their balance and fell backwards. The acid splashed onto the wall and floor behind them, burning the carpet and staining the wall.

Alan stood up and without even looking at the paper, grabbed the last ingredient and tore the lid off and dumped its contents into the bucket.

This caused this bucket to make a loud gunshot popping sound, which startles Alan enough to where he jumped backwards and crashed into one of the counters behind him.

As Alan groaned in pain on the ground, Levi grabbed his hat and put it on once more and shouted to Alan over the loud noises the bucket was making “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO!”

The bucket popped, sizzled, hissed, and shook. Some of it’s contents dropped onto the floor which burned a hole clean through the entire floor. A bright white ball of light began to rise from the bucket and brightened the entire room.

“LEVI!” Alan screamed, grabbing onto Levi’s forearm. “I’M SORRY BROTHER!” “DON’T LET GO AL!” Levi screamed back, gripping onto Alan’s forearm.

The light got brighter and the noises grew louder as a strong and violent wind came from the light. The wind blew them and pinned them to the wall and cupboard. The wind smelled strangely..inviting. The light continued to grow brighter and brighter.

“I LOVE YOU BROTHER!” Alan screamed over the deafening noise.

“I LOVE YOU TOO!”

FOOM!

There was an explosion…and all Levi could see was a bright rainbow explosion and a white unicorn with long flowing pink and green hair along with other colors stuck her wings out. Levi could tell he was in for a long, long journey.

Author's Note

Good Lord this chapter sucks lmao, I gotta rewrite this. If you're still here don't be dettered. Trust me it gets better.

Chapter 11: When the dead come knocking

BOOM!

Rainbow Dash almost jumped out of her skin as the door behind her slammed shut, the blaring snare drum sounding noise rang through the corridor as she was plunged into darkness. The only thing lighting her way was the dull moonlight shining through the yellow stained glass windows, transforming the moonshine into a lighter more pleasing color. There were black metal bars on the window that went up and down to make a design similar to a checkers board on the windows. The moon shined down onto them and created two small, rectangular chess boards on the ground a few feet in front of her. The glow lightened the area enough for her to see the coal black bricks that formed the wall and the tall imposing pillars that stood in between and on either sides of the windows.

Rainbow gulped nervously as she scanned her surroundings, at least the ones she could make out in the dark, and found that all around the huge corridor were just pillars lining the walls. A gaping entryway sat in the middle of the right wall like the open mouth of a whale, sitting there ready to swallow anything that stepped through into its darkness. Rainbow whipped her head around in a panic and set her magenta eyes on the maroon door. She galloped over to it in alarm, thrusting her hooves against the door while she shouted “Levi! Twilight! Somepony! Open the door!”

Rainbow’s face was inches away from the maroon painted wood when she suddenly heard and felt a loud thump on the door which echoed through the hall. She jumped back in fright as her hooves once again met the cold stone floor, her eyes as wide as dinner plates.

“FUCK!” a man's voice boomed from the other side of the door, reverberating not only in Dash’s ears but off of the walls around her as well. Through the anger and frustration lacing it, she recognized the voice immediately and realized Levi was the one trying his damndest to get through the maroon door. Before she could react or go back to the door and help the man open it, the unbelievable happened right in front of her eyes, forcing them wider than ever before with shock and astonishment.

Like something you’d see out of a fairytale, the door, the walls, the pillars and windows, everything around her instantaneously vanished all at once. The bricks that once formed the mighty walls were now nothing more than an empty space, replaced by a thick wave of dust that came crashing down onto the pegasus. All she could do was stand there and watch as her only means of escape fell down upon her and swallowed her into its vision-altering abyss of grey. The rainbow pegasus attempted to inhale a breath of oxygen to calm her nerves racing like a derby horse and her mind forming into a screeching cacophony of emotions. Much to her dismay, her esophagus filled with the dense fog that encompassed her, erratic coughing followed for seconds afterwards as her eyes shut tightly instinctively.

Tears formed at the corners of her magenta orbs as she opened them to see the aftermath of the vanishing of everything around her. Her heart plunged into her stomach and her breath quickened at what she saw all around her. As far as the eye could see, a sea of thick grey dust stretched for miles around her and she found herself still trapped in the wave that had crashed down on her just seconds before. The walls were no more. The beautifully constructed pillars were just a distant memory. The intricate windows were gone. All that was left was the frigid stone floor at her hooves, the feeling of icepicks penetrating her feet that she was starting to become used to still there reminding her of her situation.

She wiped her eyes with her hoof, freeing it from the torture of standing on the ground for just a few moments before placing it back down. She blinked rapidly for a few seconds in disbelief, hoping this was just a bad dream or some sort of act put on by Nightmare Moon to stump her and her friends. It would explain the sudden appearance of a very fresh looking door and rug that just so happened to appear in front of them, leading her here. Wherever “here” was. In this vast wasteland of nothingness. Dust all around her that simultaneously clouded her vision and allowed barely anything to be seen in her vision, if there was anything to see at all. As her eyes darted everywhere, questions ran through her mind like a marathon. Was she dead? Was this the afterlife? Is she in another dimension?

“Rainbowwww…” her blood turned cold and her thoughts ceased upon hearing an ominous voice call out her from the grey oblivion. She backed up a few steps, not knowing why considering there was nothing out there to back away from. Nonetheless, she decided to project confidence and a sense of boldness despite how worried she really was to whatever could be out there calling her name.

She stood up on her hind legs and narrowed her eyes, “Show yourself!” she demanded as she threw a few punches in the air, “I’m not afraid of you!”

Her voice echoed through the ocean of smoky grey, hearing her voice with a false sense of confidence be repeated back to her numerous times, like whatever had brought her here was trying to mock her.

“We’ve been looking for the greatest flyer in all of Equestria…” the voice declared. Rainbow landed back onto the sub-zero floor and cocked her head at a random place in the dust. At this statement, Rainbow went from anxious and worried to a lot tense in a few moments, thinking that whoever this pony was may not be as sinister as Rainbow made her out to be.

“Who?”

“Why you of course Rainbow Dash…” the voice answered, “And we can set you free from this place..but on one condition…”

“What’s that?”

“If you join us…” cutting through the silent air was the sound of multiple pairs of hoofsteps running towards her like an energetic race horse. Rainbow took a few cautious steps back as the echoing hoofsteps grew louder as they drew nearer to her.

Her vision cleared as the cloud of dust that sat in front of her was broken, allowing her eyes to see clearly once again. With her now crystal clear sight, Rainbow’s magenta eyes snapped to the ones who broke the cloud who sat on the ground a foot or so in front of her.

“The Shadowbolts!” the ominous voice declared once again with the rainbow haired pegasus now finally seeing who it belonged to as she and two other ponies slid on their knees into view. In the center was the female who had a sky blue coat and dark blue slicked back hair, identical to the two other pegasi who sat on either side of her, all of them with their wings extended to their sides as they puffed their chests out pridefully. A pair of yellow goggles hid there eyes and the black face covering left only their mouths visible. All of them had stone cold serious looks on them excluding the pegasus in the middle who had a grin full of shark teeth displayed on her face. Her black and purple outfit had a yellow lightning bolt on the middle of their neck, the middle of their arms, and the middle of their legs, with all of them looking like a jagged yellow staircase with only three steps.

Rainbow’s eyes moved over to their flanks as she saw a morbid skull with wings of bone as their cutie marks. She looked at them with a confused look as one question bogged her mind. If that was their cutie mark, then what are the Shadowbolts?

She raised an eyebrow at the trio as she waited for them to speak and eventually, the female pegasus’ eerie voice filled her ears once again. “We are the best aerial team in the Everfree Forest, but soon, we will be the best in all Equestria!” she boasted loudly.

She zipped over close to Rainbow’s confused face as her eyes hidden behind her goggles met Rainbow’s. Rainbow saw her bewildered face in the reflection of the pegasus’ shiny golden visors as she continued her offer, “But all we need is a captain” the pegasus crooned as Dash eyed the pony from head to toe. Even though the pegasus’ eyes were hidden behind a shield of yellow, she could still feel her convincing conniving stare burn into her retinas. The blue haired pony began to hover in circles around Rainbow with her shark tooth grin still plastered on her features.

“I..I can’t…I have to get back to my friends” The hovering pegasus suddenly landed sharply in front of her, catching the rainbow haired pegasus off guard. “You’re ‘friends’,” she replied with a snicker, “If they were really your friends they wouldn’t have abandoned you here now would they? They would’ve saved you by now”

Before Rainbow could rebut her outrageous claim, the blue haired pony stepped forward and leaned her mouth close to her perked up cyan ear and whispered “But if you join us, we can save you”

Feeling her personal space invaded, Rainbow bounced back a few steps away from the penetrating scheming eyes of the trio. “I can’t!” she refuted louder than she expected, “I can’t just leave them behind! They’re coming for me, I know It-” “But do you?” her voice, now poison to Rainbow’s ears, interrupted sharply as she took a few steps closer towards her. The two stallions marched closely behind her like bodyguards almost immediately after.

“Yes I-” “Look around you Rainbow Dash. Your friends can’t help you now, only I can” she interrupted again with an insistent tone. The cyan pegasus took a quick look around her, being met with the derisive glare of the ocean of dust that surrounded her and the trio. She looked at one of the waves of dust that raised up a few inches above the surface before crashing back down, causing the dust to splash and behave exactly like water. It was at this moment that Rainbow knew she was nowhere near Equestria now. In fact, she couldn’t even begin to comprehend where she might be at all. The Shadowbolt may be right. She and her posse may very well be the only key to Dash’s freedom, and her rejecting their offer may be her sealing her fate. Dooming herself to sit on the cold stone, alone, watching the moor of grey splash around around her as she waited for death.

But, in that moment, something inside of her heart had ignited. Something fierce, untamed, a burning desire that could only be met by one thing. Getting back to her friends. The loyalty that burned in her chest like a bonfire wouldn’t allow her to accept the Shadowbolts offer, everything inside of her revolted at the idea of giving into these connivers in front of her.

The pegasus’ voice, now more persuasive than ever before, suddenly cut into Rainbow’s thoughts like a sword and asked “So..what’s it gonna be Rainbow Dash?”

She took one last look at the sea of dust around her as waves danced soundlessly, giving Dash an uncanny feeling. She looked at the blue haired pony deep in her eyes shielded by gold goggles and knitted her eyebrows as her heart slammed in her chest at what she planned to do. Nervousness and anticipation churned inside of her, creating an indescribable feeling that felt like excitement to the pony but was anything but.

With her magenta orbs still transfixed on the Shadowbolt, she spat “No!”

Rainbow could see her eyebrows raise behind her visors. “I have to get back to my friends and nothing you can say can change that!” Dash could see the anger building up on her face with her bodyguards mirroring her emotions, Rainbow watched in satisfaction at her small win against the Shadowbolts.

“Find another captain” she hissed towards the Shadowbolt, her face now twisted with rage as she watched Rainbow turn around and began galloping towards the edge of the platform. Dash could hear her loud growl over the sound of her heartbeat in her ears and her hooves pounding against the stone floor.

“CATCH HER!” she bellowed, hearing the sound of two pairs of wings whistling through the air behind her, quickly followed by a third. The female pegasus lunged forward in the air at the back of the rainbow haired pony’s legs, the sound of her hoof making a sharp sound through the air as she swung it. She was a second too late as Rainbow’s back hoof went straight up in the air as her body went vertical and, much to the trio’s disbelief, watched her dive headfirst into the grey smoky abyss below. The two stallions and the mare landed with sudden unexpected calmness on the edge of the stone floor, looking down perpexly as they saw a cyan blur disappear underneath the waves of dust. As far as they were concerned, never to remerge again. Without warning, the trio abruptly evaporated into a blue sparkling smoke that all combined into one glittery mass swirling and contorting in the air above the platform. The blob resonated with frustration as it disappeared into thin air, ready to torment whoever it came into contact with next.

THUD!

Rainbow hit the ground hard, finally being free from the prison of dust she was trapped in just seconds before. When she pushed herself up and rubbed her head before opening her eyes, she was met by the taunting gaze of the stone floor staring her in the face. She felt dread overtake her as she jumped in a panic and whipped her head around like a madman with wide eyes. Much to her relief, the sight of the beautifully crafted pillars in between the equally as gorgeous windows sent a wave of relief washing over her. With the horrible emotions now having run its course, Rainbow could now calmly look around at the walls with solace as she could now fully focus on catching her breath. Her once racing heart from the adrenaline of her plummet down slowed to a more tranquil pace.

With the Shadowbolts and her entrapment now becoming nothing more than a bad memory, she allowed a small grin to overtake her face, partly of triumph and partly of relief. She had done it. She won against the Shadowbolts. Her loyalty prevailed. She felt immensely proud of herself at that moment. She knew she had done some very, very impressive things through the years, she knew for sure this one takes the cake. Out of all of her accomplishments, none of them came close to essentially swallowing her eagerness to show ponies how awesome she was and save herself. She took the peaceful solitude of the moment to think back and reminisce on all of her past feats and achievements. She felt nostalgia creep there way into her when she thought about how she had beat the bullies at her flying school and came first place.

In a weird way as she thought about it, something inside of her longed for that sense of freedom and excitement she got from putting those bullies in their place and winning. It was odd due to the fact that that’s practically how she lives everyday, rushing through the sky and bursting the clouds satiated her desire for that excitement while flying. The wind blowing her hair every which way. The breeze gliding over her feathers. The satisfying whistle that filled the ears of every pony below her as they looked up at her in astonishment. Then proceeding to shower her with compliments when she touched the ground with her racing heart. She loved it. The exact opposite of how this journey was going for her. Being stuck in some weird wasteland of dust, being attacked by a manticore, being scared senseless by transformed trees, it all just didn’t sit right with her. She wanted to just live the life she’s been living, calm and laid back with a good Daring Do book resting in her hooves as she fell asleep on a soft cloud above Ponyville. The town she loved with all her heart. The town she was most loyal too.

What she and the rest of the group were doing that night though was anything but that, it was stuff they’d assume Princess Celestia would handle. Not them. A country pony who worked on a farm and a booksmart unicorn seemed like a recipe for failure and looked like the start of a bad joke but somehow, it worked. As she stared at a wall with a blank stare completely zoned out, the thunderous sound of someone’s foot slamming into a door angrily ripped her out of her trance. Rainbow was able to blink a few times before the kicking began again, causing the pegasus to almost jump out of her skin. She directed her eyes over to the maroon door which threatened to bend inwards with every blow. The doorknob rattled with a faint jingling sound like a christmas bell as the next bash came.

The ear-splitting booms against the door echoed through the hall, snapping the pegasus back to reality from her trip down memory lane. She unfolded her wings and instinctively bent her knees like second nature to boost herself into a hover. The very second she did that, she heard two very distinct footsteps behind her that made her blood run cold. She could tell for sure they belonged to a human from hearing Levi’s similar sounding ones all night. These however were starkly different. They sounded heavier than Levi’s like he was wearing boots made of solid wood, clacking against the ground like cowboy shoes everywhere he walked. Before she could whip her head around and confront whoever stood there, she felt a strong calloused hand forcefully cover her mouth and yank her towards him.

Her heartbeat quickened from fright but her fight or flight quickly made itself known, attempting to kick the man in his knees before her legs were lifted from the ground. Her hooves thrashed wildly in the free air under her in a panic. Her rapid alarmed breathing was forced in and out of her nose from his iron grip tightening around her mouth. Her cheeks stung in pain as the man laughed while pulling her closer, feeling the buttons on his shirt press firmly against her back. Through her wild almost animalistic kicking of her legs, she felt her hoof make contact with the man’s thigh bone as a pained grunt followed. He leaned down to the right for just a split second before recovering, now angry at the rainbow haired pony who was at his mercy and his alone.

“Listen to me bitch!” he growled with his mouth inches away from her ear, resentment lacing his voice. “Sit still and be quiet!” demanded the man in his malicious tone.

“Nightmare Moon has plans for you.”

BAM!
The wood finally gave out after one final blow. The maroon painted door broke free from its hinges and clattered loudly to the ground. The sound echoed off the walls of the empty hall, filling Levi with an intense worry as soon as he noticed.

“RAINBOW!” he called out, “RAINBOW DASH!”

His eyes darted all over the beautifully lit room like the vibrant colored pegasus would just jump out in front of him and they could continue forward. Instead, he was only met with eerie silence aside from the sound of the ponies walking in behind him. They too looked frantically around the room looking for the cyan pony but finding nothing. Not even a hint of where she could’ve gone. Levi stopped and stared at where the moonlight shone on the desolate floor, trying to imagine in his mind that the rainbow haired pegasus was sitting right there safe and sound in an attempt to comfort himself. The guilt that raged in his heart was ruthless, attacking him for allowing whatever took Dash to take her.

The room suddenly exploded with light thanks to the lilac unicorn standing next to him. The first thing his green orbs snapped onto was the behemoth of an entryway in the right wall, filled with seemingly impassable darkness. Twilight followed his eyes to the hole with her light moving her with her . It illuminated a small portion of the dark inside, revealing a wedge of the coal black bricks that formed the wall. Not finding anything worth looking at, she immediately lost interest in the passage as her purple eyes moved from it and looked ahead of her. A few feet in front of her, a maroon door exactly like the one that was knocked down seconds before sat between them and finding their friend. The wood seemed to taunt them as her light revealed its features. The chocolate bar-like design with four squares on each corner pushed out surrounded by a thin border. The golden doorknob which reflected Twilight’s light back at her and the rest of the group who had shifted their attention over to it. Without a second thought, the group ran towards the maroon door with purpose in their step.

As they all dashed past the entryway in the wall with an exhausted Levi lagging behind, a chilling voice rang out from the darkness and stopped him dead in his tracks. Skidding to a sudden stop as the ponies' hooves clacked and echoed on the ground, Levi turned his head towards the mouth in the wall and stared into the dark. He didn’t know what to make of what he had just heard, whether to be excited or worried or relieved. He didn’t know. On one hand, it’s entirely likely the man he heard could be there. On the other hand, it was very unlikely considering how far he and the group had to travel to get here and the obstacles they overcame. As much as he loved his best friend, there was no way he could encounter a Manticore and escape with his life. Right?

“Leeeeviiiiii…” the voice with a country twang repeated, a very familiar and oddly calming twang. Even though he instantly recognized the voice and knew it like the back of his hand, something was off about the way it sounded. It was spoken in a way like his best friend was trying to beckon him towards the hall full of nothing. Could Alan be here? That question swirled through his mind as the hole of darkness gained his full attention at the snap of a finger.

His heartbeat quickened at the voice he was all too familiar with calling his name, all of the worrying and nights where he would wake up and just stare at the ceiling in thought about him. Alan. The name was like candy to his worried mind, but at the same time, he had no idea if he could trust this or not considering the circumstances.

“Come here brother! I’m watin’ for ya!” Alan’s voice spoke as it echoed through the tunnel it came out of. He felt his legs course with adrenaline as it began to pump through him, making Levi standing still a monumental task, forcing him to nervously bounce on his heels in place. As much as he wanted to and as much as he wanted to take that chance and find his brother, Levi’s gut twisted uncomfortably and screamed for him not too. Trying to make the risk of it apparent to the man but his brain sang him a different tune. His mind told him yes, his body told him no, but his legs still yearned to run into the inky blackness. To fly with the wind all the way to Alan.

“Levi?” Twilight’s voice cut through his thoughts as he directed his attention to her, seeing she was being followed by the rest of the group as they approached him worriedly. “Are you alright? You look nervous?”

He couldn’t conjure any words to say how he was feeling to her. The confusing stew of emotions brewing inside of his heart were beginning to feel overwhelming for Levi. He felt like he needed to take the chance. He also felt like he needed to help the group at the door. He couldn’t decide. His breath quickened to match his racing heart, each thump he heard in his ears growing the tension significantly. He shifted his eyes from Twilight’s to the hole. Twilight. Hole. Twilight. Hole. He shut his eyes tighter than ever as he felt a bullet of sweat roll down his face. He felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders and it was in a way, at least this world. Equestria’s fate rested in his hands. Something deep inside told him the ponies needed him and he believed it, why else would the Princess of Equestria send him to Twilight specifically if there wasn’t a greater purpose? His mind had no room left for any other insignificant thoughts at that moment, the only thing he could think about was the choice between his newfound friends or his brother.

“Levi?” Rarity’s soothing voice chimed in, mirroring the concern from her lilac comrade.

He took one last look at the group of ponies he befriended over this treacherous journey, all the memories he had made with them flashing before his very eyes. Some good, some bad, some downright horrifying. Nonetheless, they were still precious memories to the man. Fluttershy taking him in, meeting Twilight for the very first time, trying his best to protect them from the Manticore. He looked into Twilight’s big eyes one last time and, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he knew very well that this could be a trap set up brilliantly by Nightmare Moon to lure him away. With how upset he was by his best friend's loss, he was willing to take the chance to find him or not, even if it lead to his death. After looking down at the ground for a second with his constant bouncing slowing down, he then shifted his eyes into the shadow in the entryway in front of him. He knitted his eyebrows together and dug his heels into the floor as he bent his knee.

“Twilight…” he paused to think about how to say his potential final goodbye to the unicorn who was, to him, one of his closest friends out of the group. He imagined how betrayed she might feel. How upset she might become. His journey to begin with when he first went to Ponyville was to find Alan but instead he was led on this wild ride, the exact opposite of what he wanted. As much as he wanted to stay, finding Alan was the only thing that clouded his judgment in that very moment.

“I’m…I’m sorry.”

He launched himself into a sprint in the blink of an eye. The group watched in utter dismay as their friend ran blindly into the dusk, seeing him disappear into its pitch black clutches before they even had time to convince him otherwise.

“LEVI!” The man heard echo behind him through the passage combined with several pairs of hoofsteps following her but stopping at the entrance. Twilight’s horn expelled the darkness and allowed her to see into where the man was dashing towards. All she saw was the back of his vibrant blue shirt before he vanished into the blackness once again, the padded sounds of his footsteps fading away as they grew more and more distant. “COME BACK!” She yelled in vain to the now far away man as he ran further and further away from them.

“We have to go after him! Come on girls!” Exclaimed the unicorn as she began to charge recklessly into the darkness after her friend.

“Wait up!” Applejack called out, running into the shadow after Twilight, her blonde ponytail twirling in the air behind her as her hooves carried her. Begrudgingly, Rarity groaned as she began to run after the duo too. After Fluttershy, Pinkie was the only one left standing there and, like usual, a huge smile was plastered on her face. She saw this whole adventure as one big game to her child-like mind and as such didn’t take Levi’s sudden bail as anything to worry about.

“Ooooohh I like this game!” Her squeaky voice declared. Setting her eyes on the blue and purple lights dimming as they moved further and further from her, she began to prance down the gloomy hall with Twilight’s worried voice echoing off the walls like she was yelling through a megaphone.

“Keep going Levi,” the voice beckoned as it rang in his ears “You’re almost there.”

Twilight and the others noticed the ghostly sounding voice calling his name and one pony crossed her mind the second she heard it. Nightmare Moon. She knew it was a ruse to bring the man right where she wanted him to be, away from them. She already threw everything she could at the group to stop them in vain, but nothing worked. This was her final resort and if this didn’t work, Nightmare may’ve been out of options completely, but Levi was falling right into her spider web of a scheme. She also thought about Rainbow’s sudden disappearance as she ran and how that might be tied into her master plan to sabotage them all. Twilight’s mind kept racing as Levi continued to ignore her and Applejack calling out to him, trying their best to reason and get him to stop, Twilight doing it a lot more desperately. She knew he didn’t have a clue about what he was throwing himself into.

“Yes Levi..keep going..don’t let them stop you brother!” Twilight began to grow angry at the voice ordering her friend that spoke from thin air. She saw straight through the mask that Nightmare attempted to keep up, not caring at all for what the unicorn shouted at her in vexation. The group followed the man as he whipped around a corner, almost immediately coming face to face with an armor stand sporting shiny golden chain mail. His eyes widened as the hard alloy collided with his already aching body.

The head of the stand collided with his side, tripping him up severely and causing him to almost tumble to the floor. His feet kicked up high into the air behind him and he struggled to regain his balance. The stand however was not so lucky, crashing to the floor as the beautifully welded together armor crashed to the floor like an army of dinner plates hitting the ground. Clattering and clanging together like an orchestra of very unpleasant sounds. Combined with the echoey hall they were storming through, it made the sound almost ear-splitting. She shut her eyes tight at the abominable almost screech like sound but fought through the pain in her eardrums, shooting them back open wide and setting her sights on the man in blue.

The bricks that formed the walls around them changed to a more pleasing stone grey color. Chandeliers holding dead halfway melted candles hung from the ceiling. Several paintings that Twilight couldn’t make out dotted the walls. The hallway felt a lot less dreary then the rest of the castle they had explored but still made Twilight all the more tense on what could be hiding in the shadows as she ran.

Her narrowed eyes continued to stay lazer focused to him like a hawk but left him briefly as he swung around a corner messily. A loud bang and a crash following it rang through the hall, accompanied by a disgruntled exclamation. 10s of what sounded like dinner plates all crashed to the ground loudly, some of them being muffled by the carpet they landed on and others were not so fortunate. Twilight and Applejack rounded the corner swiftly and they were met with the sight of a toppled over armor stand formerly holding beautiful golden chain mail, now on the ground in ruins. Several of the armor plates on the outside were broken off and laid on the ground. The helmet of the stand landed a short distance away from where the rest of the armor landed, still rolling after the collision even as Levi continued to run further with his hand clasping his side.

“You’re almost there broth-” “Quiet Nightmare Moon!” The unicorn interrupted sharply, “I know what you’re doing! You won’t get away with this!”

Despite having clearly heard what Twilight had said, Levi continued to run down utenated hallway, feeling himself pass the point of no return more and more each time his foot hit the ground. A sharp pain awakened in his kidneys. His breaths became deeper and deeper. His calves burned calves and thighs burned like they were being held above a fire and the impact zone on his side throbbed. Levi couldn’t care less. He had become tunnel visioned on the idea of finding his brother in this dark, dank castle, and he wouldn’t let anybody stop him now. Not even the ponies frantically bolting after him, excluding Pinkie, who casually bounced behind them like it was no big deal.

“LEVI STOP!” Applejack cried out, “YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GETTING INTO!”

Levi’s ears picked up the blonde ponies' pleads after having subconsciously tuned them out. At the same time, a set of tall coal black old looking doors appeared in his vision at the end of the hallway. This was it. The final decision. It was either he ran in there blindly and hoped that Nightmare had not planned for something to kill him on the other side, or he stopped and apologized and went back to the door. The damned maroon door. Right before his eyes, he saw all the memories both good and bad with Alan flickering in front of him like a broken TV. Everything they had accomplished together ever since they had met. All the good times. While bad ones weren’t excluded and were scattered here and there, the good outweighed the bad in every way. In an unusual way, Levi felt slightly peaceful about reuniting with his friend once again because he knew the two were now free from the shackles of bills and taxes. No need to cook drugs and sell them to helpless people just to keep the lights on. No need to risk their lives every time they went to a deal. They could just…live. Something they hadn’t been able to do for who knows how long. As he came closer and closer to the door and the deadline rapidly approached, he shifted his body and curled his arm around him and aimed his shoulder in the center of the right door. Levi shut his eyes tight and braced for impact as Twilight’s desperate cries continued to pang his ears, causing his heart to sting in guilt for what he was doing, but he couldn’t turn back now.

“LEVI PLEASE!” Twilight screamed, her voice exponentially more desperate than before as her friend bomb through the door in horror. The door flew open and slammed against the stone wall with a sharp cracking sound, sending small fragments of rock clattered to the ground. Twilight got a peek inside of the room for the few seconds it was open and was shocked at what she saw. A thick fog engulfed the entire room, not even leaving an inch spared from its ruthless invasion of the hall. She saw her friend's bright colored shirt disappear into the impenetrable grey as he tripped from his collision. The last thing she heard was squeaking of shoes against the ground and an echoey thud before the door was slammed shut by sparkling blue magic. Her heart thronged with an intense dread, instinctively running as fast as her hooves could carry her the rest of the way to the door which sported a glittery blue and black border, courtesy of Nightmare Moon. Her subsequent pounding on the door and her pleas fell on deaf ears as Levi realized all too late that Twilight was right.

Levi placed a hand on his throbbing shoulder as he stood, turning his head every which way and studying his surroundings, or at least what he could make out through the barrier of fog. The only two things he could really see were the lighter colored stone grey bricks and an old, chipped pillar that stood a foot or so in front of him. The pillar was gorgeously constructed, the many spirals that ran up the aged stone slithered around it grey snakes. It was in surprisingly good shape considering how long it had been left here to rot, or Nightmare could’ve created the illusion it was old. Levi had no idea what to think at that point. The only thing he was focused on was finding a way out and finding Rainbow Dash.

Levi walked through the mist like a blind man without his walking stick, cautious and anxious at what could be hiding just out of sight. Anything was on the table considering Nightmare had already thrown Manticores at them and collapsed cliffs to try and stop them from getting here. And now that there here, she was fumbling for one last trick up her sleeve, and Levi had fallen right into the trap she had sloppily set up. Just for him. The only sound in the entire hall was Levi’s deep breathing and his heart beating out of his throat in anxiety. The silence was almost penetrating, it was like someone was waiting to jump out at him and Levi knew it but had no idea when or what. A sense of impending doom began to loom over him with each inch that he gained closer to what he hoped was an exit, the same doom in the hallway after he had examined the painting of the Grim Reaper but worse. Since this time, doom may just be another step ahead. Water particles from the air made their way onto Levi, making his already damp clothes even more soaked then he already was. A cold gust of air ran right on the back of his neck as shivers ran down his spine. Stopping dead in his tracks, a very out of place smell suddenly traveled into his nostrils. Very confused, he cocked his head and took a few more sniffs to make sure his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. Mixed in with the pungent smell of dew was the oddly comforting scent of…exhaust? An unwarranted noise occupied the silence of the hall which gradually got louder and louder. The sound annexing his ears was a soothing and almost therapeutic sound of the calm hum of a car engine. He was overcome with confusion more than anything else, wracking his brain for any possible reasonable answer for what he was hearing.

The first thing his mind jumped to was this was all some ruse put up by Nightmare to get some form of reaction out of him but he didn’t know what. He also thought of the possibility that the noise may not be what he thought he heard, but the fragrance of exhaust fumes quickly ruled out that theory. All of his answers would hit him like a truck in the worst way possible when another sound came to life from behind the wall of fog in front of him. A terrible buzzing noise like an army of cicadas arose from the once comfortable sound. Levi winced at not only the atrocious sound that invaded his ears, but the two beams of blinding white light that shot straight into his retinas, somehow cutting through the fog like two spears. A loud exclamation of discomfort escaped his lungs. He threw his arm over his eyes to protect them from the merciless blaze that attacked them, the dampness of his sleeve soothing some of the pain that was growing in his eyeballs.

Bravely, he lowered his forearm just barely to get a glimpse of what could be the cause of the onslaught on his pupils. He squinted to mitigate the irritation in his eyes while he slowly lowered his forearm to his side. The fog around him leisurely dispersed and with it slowly revealed what the shafts of light belonged to. His vision finally began to clear after what felt like hours since he had seen clearly. As the fog continued to take its time leaving the air and his eyes remained trained on the center of the two beams, the first thing he noticed was a silver grill staring menacingly right at him. His eyes went wide at what he saw but the light forced them back to a squint. More and more of the airspace began to be free of the pesky mist, revealing more and more of the vehicle along with it. The matte black, shiny hood came into view. The almost pristine rugged tires came after. The two dirty and smudged headlights reared their ugly heads afterwards. Before the fog fully unveiled it, the center of the grill held the word ‘GMC’ in metallic bold red letters with a single black border around the logo.

The windshield and windows were all tinted as black as they could be, allowing nothing to be seen inside. His right side view mirror hung limply against the driver's side door, hanging on by a red, green, and white wire that were left exposed. The fog was almost completely gone at this point but a thin smoky grey smoke shield still prohibited Levi’s view from seeing the back of the truck. The unrelenting headlights were suddenly flicked off, much to the pleasure of Levi. High above him on the ceiling, a black metal chandelier with half melted candles in each of its arms. Each of the candles flickered to life with a satisfying popping sound like a campfire as each of the wicks ignited to life. Levi jerked his head up curiously and watched the candles resurrect after who knows how many years they had been left up there to collect dust. With the newfound candlelight, it revealed years worth of dust and grime covering each arm leaving only a sliver of the black metal to be seen on the bottom.

Levi couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the spectacle he was witnessing. Watching in amazement as each formerly lifeless candle flickered to existence once again and made the joyless corridor just a little bit more lively. Little by little the candles brought some much needed light into the room, illuminating the hall and rejuvenating from the dark and gloomy state it was just seconds before. Shadows from the candelabra formed and danced on the wall like a puppet show. The elongated dark shapes looked like puppet shows on the grey bricks, some of them wrapping around a pillar that stood high and mighty above the man. The sudden sound of a car door swinging open pulled him from his trance and gained all of his attention. A set of boots hit the ground and echoed off the walls, walking a few steps away from the seat he bounced out of.

An intense sense of anxiety overwhelmed him at that very moment, every part of his body screaming at him to run, but his legs completely betrayed him and only allowed him to take a single step back before they planted into the ground once again. He was forced still like a statue, a terrified, anxious mess of a statue. His heartbeat began to speed up faster and faster and his breathing became deep. His mind raced with possibilities on what possibly could wait for him behind the curtain of fog in front of him and he had no intention of finding out any time soon, but the entity orchestrating her trap had other ideas. He could almost feel Nightmare's satisfaction in the tense air around him, satisfied that her plan to do whatever it is she was going to do was coming to pass. Her bone chilling cackle at the Summer Sun celebration repeated in his mind, the images of those armored ponies being struck down mercilessly, left to lie there on the ground helpless. The man behind the car door was nothing more than a silhouette behind the wall of grey but despite that, he still felt his piercing stare through it as he laid his eyes on the man.

“Heya there, Levi!” A voice tainted with arrogance proclaimed, slamming the car door shut loudly as he walked a few steps forward closer to him. The mere sound of his footsteps bouncing off the walls filled him with fear as he felt like an insect under the slightly taller man's gaze.

“Long time no see!” The fog was finally completely gone, revealing the man who stood just a foot away from the brown haired man. As soon as he laid his eyes on the male, they grew wider than dinner plates as they overflowed with fear and dread, mixing together to form an awful concoction of emotions.

He had a turquoise short sleeve dress shirt on with the top two buttons left undone, revealing a white tank top underneath with a disgusting bullet hole right in the center of his chest. The crimson crater was bordered by dried blood and had a red streak and ran down his tank and disappeared underneath the rest of his shirt. He had stone grey work pants with a few patches and holes. His old brown boots were worn and looked as though they’d fall apart if his foot hit anything other than the ground. He had piercing amber eyes and jet black hair that was just long enough to not be considered a buzz cut with a coal black stubble to top it all off. His heart sank into a bottomless pit as the realization of who he was looking at hit him like a freight train.

“Gary…” His mouth fell agape as he felt years of trauma buried deep down in his mind resurface as the black haired man flashed a shark tooth grin at him.

“The one and only,” his eyes looked him up and down with his grin not leaving his face, “Jeez, you look like shit.” he scoffed.

“How the hell are you still alive!” Levi demanded with a quivering jaw, ignoring his observatory insult. “Alan killed you! I watched you die!”

“Alan? That sumbitch is still kicking?” He replied with a sinister chuckle that shot anger through Levi’s body like an arrow. His anger was overshadowed by his much stronger dread, the most intense dread of his entire life as he felt the weight of years of trauma dropping straight onto his heart. He couldn’t understand. How was he alive? It was impossible. He watched with his own two eyes as the man in front of him left the Earth. He remembered the news. He remembered the very second when…it was better if he didn’t think about it.

“Admit it, you missed me.” He asked with his signature toothy grin on his face. The anger in the other man’s heart burned like a raging fire at how nonchalant he was acting. Levi wanted nothing more than to run over and strangle him, watch the life drain from his eyes as he knocks him off his high horse. However, Levi’s body disagreed, still not allowing his legs to move. A small sense of fear still lingered inside him despite the fury overshadowing it, keeping his legs locked in place like a statue.

“How are you alive?” Demanded Levi angrily, “How! You died, I saw it! You’re DEAD!”

“Now just calm down, Levi,” He shot back, holding his palms out dismissively in front of him before one of his hands snaked around his back. He grabbed ahold of something that Levi couldn’t see but, judging on the person, it was probably the furthest thing from good. “Here, I got you a little somethin’ to cheer you up!” He finished while backing up towards the seat behind the driver with his hand still gripping whatever he held in the back of his pants.

The door swung open, his hand grabbed onto a squirming and feisty creature confined in the back seat of his coal black truck. Veins jutted out of his arm like small green snakes hiding under his skin as he struggled to pull out whatever was in there. For a brief moment, amidst the chaos unseen by Levi in the back of his car, the sliver of a cyan hoof could be seen in the crack between the car door and the frame of the vehicle. A very familiarly colored cyan hoof. Levi refused to believe what he saw at first glance, but when the pony letting out angry muffled screams was pulled a little further out of the car, more and more of her cyan coat could be seen. Rage and dread replaced all other emotions inside of him in the blink of an eye. His body finally released his legs from the internal shackles it had put on them, giving him every opportunity to run over and wrap his hands around the throat of the black-haired devil in disguise. He unwillingly went still as a statue once more when his bruised hand reappeared from behind his back. He was brandishing a midnight black flawless pistol that blended in with the door he stood in front of, lightning bolts of fear shot through his body as his eyes went wider than ever before.

His legs fought to be free like chained up angry dogs, trying their damndest to dash towards Gary and send him back to hell where he belonged but Levi refused. He knew he was one wrong move away from a bullet to the brain. It took every ounce of self-control he had in his body to resist the urge to sprint at him, but he allowed his face to display the sheer resentment building up inside him like a volcano ready to explode. He watched with furrowed brows and a wrathful snarl as Gary fully yanked the pony from the clutches of his truck and dropped her on the ground like she wasn’t even a person, just a piece of garbage left to rot on the side of the road. The car door boomed and echoed off the walls after he slammed it, a smirk displayed on his face that only had one emotion behind it. Pure evil. On the ground bound with rope and white duct tape was a mortified rainbow haired pegasus, she kicked and squirmed while on the stone-cold floor while simultaneously screaming unintelligible words at her captor, who only stood above her with a wicked toothy grin. Her frantic eyes caught onto Levi, growing wide as dinner plates in the blink of an eye. She began thrashing and wiggling around erratically, her saucer-like eyes begging him to come and save her.

He flung the door shut and placed his boot down on the back of Rainbow's neck, sending panic coursing through her body faster than her own blood. The hard rubber on the bottom of his shoes dug into her skin like gravel being pressed down mercilessly, feeling a dumbbell was suddenly dropped down onto the side of her neck as she continued to scream unintelligible yet scornfully at her tormentor. Her pleading eyes still trained on Levi as he battled with himself on whether or not he should help the pegasus. The question wasn’t if he should. The question was how would he. If he did, he risked catching a bullet between his eyes no questions asked. If he didn’t, he risked watching his friend get executed in front of him. Begging for help in her final moments and watching in agony as he didn’t help her. His heart wretched at the thought.

Her cries became less like screams and more like stifled whines from an injured animal, her magenta eyes becoming more and more desperate for him to help her. The urge to run became stronger and stronger by the second. His index finger and his thumb tapped together fast like they were trying to give morse code, but it was anything but that. His jaw clenched. A fire ignited in his eyes. His already singed heart was enveloped in a roaring fire in pure fury.

“Is this your friend, Levi? Thought she would be tougher than this!” His utterly pompous comment only added fuel to the fire burning in his chest as the bottle of emotions inside him filled more and more. The cork at the top was ready to pop at a moment's notice. The volcano of wrath in him was reaching its limit. Their eyes locked on to each other, green met amber, as Gary lifted his foot from her neck and bent down next to her. He jabbed the barrel of the gun against the pony’s temple, her heart skipped a beat as she began to thrash around and her whines turned to screams once more. Her wings, once bound with a single old-looking rope, snapped free with a satisfying popping sound. Her soft feathers invaded Gary’s face, the absolute worst time to annoy the black-haired man. He grabbed a hold of her wing and slammed it painfully onto the cold ground, her cyan feathers poking out from the space between his fingers like small weeds on a sidewalk.

Rainbow flinched and let out a pitiful muffled wince which made the magma in Levi’s heart bubble and stir. Gary was the polar opposite of Levi at that moment. A big, goofy grin plastered across his features like a brightly colored painting on a wall of black, but in anything but a good way. As he looked deep into his eyes, almost being able to feel the dudgeon swirling inside of him like a furious dragon, he dropped a bombshell that Levi didn’t think was the truth at first, but he had never been more wrong.

“You know, when Nightmare Moon brought me back from whatever hole I was buried in to come and stop you and your friends, I didn’t think it was really you. Maybe a different ‘Levi Cronell’ from another place, but it really is you!” He ended his sentence with a chuckle. Levi and Rainbow couldn’t believe their ears. Twilight was right all along. This was the trap that Nightmare Moon had set up just for him and Rainbow Dash, the most evil thing she could come up with, bringing this monster back to the land of the living. A place he never should’ve been to begin with. It seemed Hell didn’t even want him. Fitting.

“But you know, all good things come to an end,” He pushed the barrel harder against her skull as if to cement the fact that she was as good as dead further into her panicked mind. “just like this.” His finger slid into the trigger guard, fitting like a glove, as his finger rested on the trigger. It was now or never. Levi knew if he didn’t act now, he and Rainbow were goners. He took one glance at the pony forced against the ground before he angrily spat at the man in the turquoise shirt, “Put down the gun!”

He raised an eyebrow at the man. “Come again?”

“Put. Down. The gun. Fight me like a man, Gary!” The gun wielding man was taken aback by Levi’s sudden proclamation. Easing the force he pushed against Dash’s head, he was quick to snap back at the man with fire in his bones. “‘Fight you like a man’ huh? Like how your buddy Al ‘fought me like a man’?”

Fear and displeasure came back in droves as she felt the force of the barrel dig painfully into the back of her head once again, a small whine escaping her lips unwillingly. “Do you see where I am right now? Your little friend’s life is in my hands, and you wanna fight me?” Gary received no response, only his blazing green eyes staring daggers at the man who had shifted his stance to a more open one.

Gary got the memo Levi was wordlessly expressing. He wanted a fight and so did Gary. After all, Nightmare didn’t bring him back from the dead for nothing. He kept his eyes locked with Levi’s as he eased the barrel from Rainbow’s head, slowly moving his hand back and was in the process of lifting up the back flap of his shirt before Levi interrupted. “No guns!” With a scoff, he stood up and rested his arm on his side and shot back ”As you wish”

He took wide steps over the shivering body of the pegasus and walked over to the hood of his car with long, menacing strides. A barely audible thunk was heard as he begrudgingly placed the weapon down onto the metal, amazed how it stayed in one spot without sliding down. His hard boots made his footsteps known as he walked over to the man with veins threatening to pop in his forehead. They stood inches away from each other, the air so thick it could be sliced with a knife, as their tense standoff commenced. Both of them waited for the other to strike and kick off their battle to the death. They stared deep into each other's eyes like they were studying their souls, Gary’s eyes cocky and pretentious with Levi’s filled with sheer rage towards the man like lava pooling in his irises.

However, somewhere underneath the burning wrath coagulating in his heart, fear rested there dormant. An intense fear overshadowed by the anger towards the treatment of his rainbow-haired friend, a fear that was buried deep in his mind to the point where he had blocked out Gary’s actions that were burned into his memory. Years of intense therapy had been the dirt shoveled into the grave where his trauma laid, seemingly forever. But seeing the one who had caused months and months of night terrors, sleepless nights, and everything in between was extremely surreal. Levi’s mind jumped back in time to the moment when Gary had scarred him. The moment Gary changed he and Alan’s lives for the absolute worst. He thought back to all the nightmares he had had all those years ago, when Gary somehow resurrected and was back for revenge. Now, those nightmares were seconds away from becoming a reality, and the gravity of the situation was coming down onto him all at once. Underneath all of the bubbling and boiling anger in his green orbs, Gary could see the foreboding look he was trying in vain to hide, bringing a smile to the sadistic man’s face.

That smile was the straw that broke the camel's back for the brown-haired man. The cork had popped. The volcano erupted. He drew his head back and smashed it into the man’s nose like a bat to a pumpkin. He let out a loud scream as he stumbled back into the front of his car, slamming his hand thunderingly on his shining hood to stop himself from falling. His free hand was clasping his nose that was leaking crimson liquid like a faucet, spilling out from in between his fingers and running down his face as the pain became almost unbearable. Red drops dotted his shirt as the blood refused to cease, continuing to pour out of shattered nose without any sign of stopping.

He removed his hand from his gushing nostrils as it ran down his face, creating crimson lines like a macabre maze from the nose down, some of it trailing beyond his upper lip and into his mouth. Spitting it out, he gritted his teeth and glared with the most malicious look at Levi, noticing the morbid mess of his blood splattered on the center of his forehead.

“This is what you wanted, shitbird!” He boomed, “I’m gonna break your FUCKING neck!”

Levi watched as Gary propelled himself off the hood and began to charge towards him in a tackle run. Before he could react, he found himself wrapped in Gary’s crushing grip as he was lifted up in the air and slammed onto the ground back first. Lightning bolts of pain shot down Levi's spine, letting out a guttural scream from the searing pain that echoed through his body. When he opened his eyes, he looked up and saw the wrathful man’s boot lifted high above his face, ready to deliver a fatal crush onto his skull. In a panic, he bit the bullet and fought through the pain in his back and rolled to safety. His foot came crashing down onto the already cracked stone.

Levi scurried to his feet and readied himself, holding his fists in front of him like a lion ready to pounce on a gazelle. Gary however was not so willing to settle this like a civilized fight, he was ready to put an end to Levi’s life no matter what. No one hurt him in such a way and lived to see the end of the day. He dashed towards Levi like an angry primate and drew his fast back and launched a devastating punch like a rocket right to Levi's face. He managed to duck and dodge the right hook at the very last second, hearing the wind whistle above his head as his wrathful fist soared through the air. He delivered a punch dead center on Gary’s gut, causing a pained grunt to escape his lips as he stumbled back a few steps. While he was recovering from the punch, Levi took this as an opportunity to unleash all of his fury onto Rainbow Dash’s tormentor.

He lunged forward and his fist collided with the man’s already demolished nose that was barely recognizable as a nose anymore, more like a gnarled root protruding from his face. He felt the soft mush of his cartilage on his knuckles as Gary howled in pain, hitting the ground with both of his hands covering his nostrils which began to spurt crimson like a grotesque fountain. As much as this went against all of Levi’s morals, he felt Gary needed an exception. For all the pain he’s caused not only to him, but to the people around him in Tuscaloosa, Gary deserved this. The furious brown haired man straddled him like a horse and just as Gary moved his hands from his now blood splattered face, Levi brought his stained fists down onto him.

Hit after hit. Blow after blow. Lev wailed on the black haired man below him. His cheeks began to grow more and more purple with every punch. His teeth threatened to break from his gums. Blood entered his mouth. Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end, as Gary delivered a devastating blow to Levi’s face and sent him careening off the man and landing a few inches away from him. He groaned in pain while lying on his side on the cold, unforgiving floor. His fingers and knuckles were polluted with his crimson liquid and they pulsated in pain from the force he was hitting him with. The moment he heard the alarming sound of Gary’s boots scraping against the ground as he stood, Levi was quick to jump to his feet and continue to lock horns with the monster.

When Gary was kneeling on one knee and was in the process of standing, Levi rushed over like a ram and his foot connected to Gary’s side, shooting him into the front of his truck. A metallic thunk was heard as the man collided with his beloved vehicle, and another more concerning noise was heard right after. The soft sliding sound from the pistol sliding off its spot on the hood of the car and clattering to the ground inches behind Gary.

Levi looked at the gun.

Gary looked at the gun.

Then they looked at each other. Moments felt like hours as time seemed to slow around them. This was it. The final move. If Gary grabbed the gun, Levi’s life was over. If Levi grabbed the gun, Gary’s life was over. The tension was like a shaken up soda bottle, ready to pop and explode at a moment's notice. Neither one of them moved, Gary leaned his head against the tortuous headlight and scowled at the man. Levi stood with small drops of blood dripping from his fist like an hourglass, a look with a lot more resentment set directly on Gary’s badly beaten face. Levi never thought of himself as that much of a strong guy, but looking at the black haired man’s sanguinary mug, his opinion changed.

A flip switched simultaneously in both of the men's heads as their primal instinct to survive kicked into high gear. They both leapt for the pistol like leopards to an injured antelope, adrenaline flowing through their veins like blood. Both of their hands met on the coal black grip. Their eyes locked together. In the blink of an eye, Levi went from dead still to bashing Gary’s already battered hand against the car door. His aching knuckles took the brunt of the assault, jolts of pain shot through his hand like he was being electrocuted. Eventually, the iron grip he had on his gun was beaten out of him, causing it to drop to the floor and almost immediately be snatched by his attacker. His shoes slid on the floor like he was walking on ice as he scurried to his feet, setting Gary’s forehead right in his crosshairs as they shook. The almost drum-like thumping pain in his hand persisted and caused his teeth to grit in an attempt to mitigate it.

The rage in Gary’s face dissipated and was replaced by a look of sinister arrogance. A sick smile grew on his face as he spat blood from his mouth onto the floor, struggling to stand and leaning against his freshly dented car door for support, leaving a faint bloody handprint on his car window.

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” He piped up, spitting another loogie of crimson onto the ground, “I thought you were the same old pussy back then. Boy, was I wrong.”

He stood on his own two feet and leaned his body up against the car door, his hand gripping his love handle as it stung in pain like a thousand bees. Even with a gun aimed straight at his face, Gary kept the same look of conceit on his face. Dark patches of purple plagued his cheeks and face. Lines of blood streaked down from his obliterated nose like a gruesome work of art. His lip bottom lip looked almost identical to a split open piece of raw steak, blood continuing to dribble down his chin. Levi looked in satisfaction, knowing good and well that this is what the bastard deserved for everything he did, and Levi was finally gonna be the one to put him down. For good.

“The hell are you waiting for? Shoot me, Levi! Return me to whatever grave that alicorn dug me out of!” Levi couldn’t wait. The anticipation became almost overwhelming. He managed to steady his trembling hands enough to focus his sights right between his eyes, ready to send the demon back to hell where he belongs. A small triumphant smirk appeared on his face as he finally pulled the trigger.

There was no bullet. No bang. No nothing. In fact, the trigger met resistance as he pulled it, or tried in vain to pull it. His heart sank to the pit of his stomach at the realization he failed to make as soon as he grabbed it. The safety was on, and an enraged Gary was still alive.

“You dumb sumbitch!” Gary bellowed like a foghorn, “Safety's off!” he reiterated to Levi as if to mock him for his failed attempt on his life. Knowing Gary, he probably was.

Levi's thumb began to shake like an earthquake while he fumbled in panic for the safety, but was interrupted by a devastating blow from the black-haired man. He flew to the side like a ragdoll blown by the wind, the gun clattering to the ground as it fell from his now limp hands. He slid on his side on the floor and collided with one of the pillars to his right. Before he could even think about standing, he felt two strong hands grip onto his collar and the back of his jeans and toss him through the air a ways away from the pillar. He hit the ground hard shoulder first. Pain simultaneously exploded in his arm and rocketed through the rest of his body. He let out a loud scream as Gary’s smile grew wider, marching over to the pistol on the floor and switching off the safety. Each step Levi heard was like a reminder of his impending demise. He flipped over on his hands and knees, albeit painfully, and tried his damndest to stand up before the monster got to him first. He heard a menacing laugh fill his ears and stabbing dread into his heart like a knife.

“You’re not going anywhere!” His foot smashed into his gut like a baseball bat, sending him back down onto his side, the cold floor only amplifying his suffering. Gary watched as he struggled to get on his hands and knees once more like an injured dog with Gary being the one ready to euthanize it. His stomach felt like he had been shot with a shotgun as the pain only got worse. He shut his eyes tight and gritted his teeth so hard he feared they might crack under the pressure. His jaw grew sore from the constant force. However, the thing he felt the most was the most intense dread of his life as he felt the cold metal of the pistol's barrel be pushed against his head, his hair being the only thing protecting him from the stinging cold of the metal.

Another hearty yet piercing laugh struck fear in his heart as his venomous voice followed it, “And here I thought you weren’t a pussy anymore!”

His voice made his blood boil. His hands curled against the ground and his fingernails dug into the soft skin on his palms. His breathing became deep and labored, pain erupting in his gut every time he inhaled. The click of the hammer being drawn back cut through his thoughts like a sword, pulling him back to the situation at hand. He wanted nothing more than to put Gary back in the ground but he knew he couldn’t. He was as good as dead. His eyes snapped back over to his rainbow haired friend still lying on her side with her wings folded awkwardly against her side. She looked up at him remorsefully but still kept the pleading look that had ignited Levi’s fighting spirit to begin with.

Suddenly, a brand new never-before-felt feeling caused his heart to race like a derby horse. Coursing through his veins was not adrenaline or strop or anything of the sort, it made Levi feel like he was on top of the world. It was unexplainable and confusing, but Levi had no time to try and decipher whatever was coursing through him. He had, maybe, only a few seconds to decide what he was going to do before Gary painted the floor with his blood. Time seemed to slow, but this beyond comprehensible feeling only sped up through his arteries. It made his heart slam in his chest a million miles a minute. Slowly, he felt all the pain and ailments on and in his body caused by Gary slowly dissipate, leaving a brand new more elevating feeling in its wake. Sheer power.

He understood now. It was crystal clear to him what this once unexplainable feeling is. It was like it’s been with him his whole life. An energy. A force of nature. Intense vigor. No matter what he used to describe it, one thing he knew for certain was that if Gary didn’t back away in the next few seconds. Something was going to happen, he could feel it in his bones. Gary was going to die.

“Gary..” Levi growled in between deep breaths like his lungs increased their capacity, “Let. Her. Go.”

“Mhmmmm...how about no,” Rebutted Gary.

He felt the barrel dig into his scalp like a shovel to dirt, only amplifying the feeling even more and filling Levi with this new powerful God-like feeling.

“Any last words, Levi?” The feeling got more and more intense. His heart sped to unimaginable levels. It felt like he was gonna have a heart attack at any given moment. The power. The unfathomable feeling he couldn’t decipher. He felt like…a God. As it reached its peak, its climax, he lifted his hands above the ground as they trembled uncontrollably by the powerful feeling. Gary’s finger slid into the trigger guard and placed it against the trigger as he slowly began to squeeze, wanting to savor the moment up until the bullet took his life. When Gary was moments away from killing the man, Levi let out a primal, guttural roar from deep inside of him as he slammed his closed fists onto the ground. A brilliant white flame trailed off each of his fingertips like strings on a puppet. The very instant they made contact with the ground, an ear-splitting explosion felt like it would split his head in two. Gary’s life flashed before his eyes as he yanked the trigger in a panic but it was too late. Unpredictable. Unbelievable. Unfathomable. He didn’t know how to describe it but he knew one thing for certain…no one could prepare for it.

BOOM!

Chapter 29: Ballad of the Lost Minds

In the numberless amount of centuries since its gloried inception, uncounted and frankly unthought of by the Man in Blue, coffee was a systematically beguiling grail for all who reveled in its empyrean savor. It was a delicacy the brunete rarely ever indulged in if it wasn’t an apparatus to bring forth the onset of a mass exodus of lethargy. Rigorously employed to shrug the cumbersome adamantine chains of sleep and smother the incessant hankering to slothfully lumber back to his mattress. The divine home to his equally sacred metropolis, tenanted solely by placidity and the many facets and synonyms of the word and its blissful definitions. All welcomed with open lovesome arms gaping to greet its touch-starved chassis. Living in that hellscape of cleft-littered concrete, crocodiled sidewalks and rusted cadaverous exoskeletons of lorn vehicles, peace was a steaming commodity. An exotic, rarefied currency that most damned souls condemned to that crude purgatory without a means to revive it. One that anyone, even the most impoverished beings who every waking hour groveling in a drunken heap, would give anything and everything to their name to achieve it.

As it so happened, and how Levi unquestionably preferred it, that euphoric kingdom of serenity had tailed him across the span of however many universes he surpassed. One clamorous skull-splitting vociferator, booming like the furious voice of God, and Levi Cronell was gone. Burglarized from the ordinary run-of-the-mill existence pent in a quotidian realm, where all possible captivating or stupefying knowledge and discoveries have all been incepted. Their mold-shattering creation passing, enjoying its cursory position as the apple of the nation’s eye, before finally washing ashore upon one of two islands. Staring down the barrel of execrable obscurity and fading into the most wretched of recesses, or rocketing to the moon. Achieving stardom and grandeur never once considered to be a veracious possibility. In Equestria, the mastodonic and, at least in the thunderstruck brothers’ perspective, unendly domain lived a colossal cornucopia. Its convex fruits of enlightening knowledge about species both foreign and revamped by the bewildering wizardly magic of these lands and riveting discoveries to pore his curiosity to. Sow the seeds of ribbing books into a muddled spate of excavated cognition and, for the first time in an amount of years unnumbered by the peppy duo, utilized intuit to thoroughly ascertain novel information. At long last, the dust-soaked stock-still cogs of his brains were accorded the invitation to chug and turn once more.

Their fruitful and verdant odyssey into the unmeasured trove bereft of a constated depth or numbered fathoms of bounteous skills to hone into something warranting substantial marvel. Facts varnished in a scintillating coat of effervescent blandishment. Innovations and galvanizing discoveries sitting unexhumed and unseen thus far by the Man in Blue. Idling impatiently beneath the earth like chimeric buried riches with an existence suffocated by ineliminable ambiguity, the magnitude of its affluent profusion untold. The first merestone in the pair’s long-standing voyage down the gripping gem-studded tunnel, adorned with avant-garde ideas and concepts, dwelled within the palms of their het up palms. Tall pink-rimmed paperboard cups fraught with a soil-brown indulgence he scarcely wallowed in. Coffee. A sacrosanct, hallowed pleasure where fully casting cessation upon the humdrum of their everyday toils and availing himself from their mundanity. Observing and evaluating the potential alterations of the numinous Sangrail, slotting them into one of a duo of categories of extremity. Either a rattlepated brutality of the drink justified a sanction of vehement scorn, or the reverse opposite. Glorying in the honorful spring of unrivaled praise and gilded accolades.

Sugarcube Corner was the saccharine marrow of Ponyville’s tycoon of intoxicating pastries and banquets. A revered castle home to the incontestable magnate of all things sugary and benevolent, Pinkie Pie, and the very same hub where Levi and Alan visited on a bitter Autumn day. A morning that, at least to the standards of the twain, was as uneventful and serene as an unpestered cemetery. Twilight spent the latter part of the betimes with a bold yellow feather seized by the ironclad grip of her proficient lavender magic. Extemporarily jerry-rigging the broad kitchen table into a stalwart garrison, with the sole barracks being the partly unfurled scroll of papyrus and the beavering quill. Joined exclusively by a tiny glass flash half-full of sable ink, she feverishly scratched her hastened thoughts. Exercising her errorless penmanship without a flaw or straggling line of black marring the cursive letters. A feat ne’er thought possible by either recently awakened man as they voyaged down the curling flight of birchen steps and gazed with eyes agog and mouths part agape. A short mite of conversation endowed with the split-second proposal by the eager Man in Blue came and went. An idea spurred by the jackbooted, unforgiving lethargy conquering his weary frame with a fist of robust iron. Lazing snarky and awash with arrogance upon an illustrious throne reserved solely for the vivace and vitality, cruelly snuffed by the unfeeling dismissal from the world of euphorically slumberous spirits.

As Levi often did when a pluperfect opportunity such as this stared him down, all but roaring with every droplet of oxygen occupying its figure to be acted upon, the male gleefully surrendered to its cries. Recruiting Alan to an exponentially overdue chat belonging to the most enthralling, eye-catching variety. Sitting lesireful and careless to the potential droves of clandestine discord residing just behind the tree line. Hell, maybe even just past the town borders. And where the nebulous fringes of Ponyville were precisely located was a puzzling haze with a deprivation of a lucid answer.

Lev and Alan spoke their cordial goodbyes to the ebulliently laboring unicorn, asked if she desired a confectionery dessert from the location stamped onto the crown of Levi’s list of undertakings, and the pair were out. Sauntering into the very same elysian terrain destitute of limpid margins and passed rife throngs of mellowly laboring ponies. A mite of tranquil short minutes thoroughly inundated by merry colloquy passed before the duo happened upon the treacly nave. The titanic building assuming the form, encompassing every last nook of every detail, of a colossal cupcake. The only inelegant addition bankrupt of the trademark cloying grandeur the shop held in a coffer of pride was a red-brick chimney. Erecting from the ceiling a few inches beside the pointed vertex of the edifice of icing upon the structure, turbid ropes of smoke lifelessly drifting from one of the bakery’s unseen cavities. The belly of this prime example of the quaint, old-hat inventions and construction implemented to the utmost and, to Levi, in the most fantastic comely ways imaginable. Behind Sugarcube Corner past the long tallow-colored counter with a delicate cyan top was a lone door leading to a small benign backwater. A spot with three round tables of speckless glass bordered by stark-white-painted metal with two chairs positioned at either end of the same hue. Fixed to the center of the gibbous disc of glass was a moss-green market umbrella. The tables dwelled in a long two-foot wide area of brilliant azure linoleum bordered by violet metal railings.

At the far left table sat two men grinning to the brink where the potential of their skin grimly splitting open was all too possible. Chompers laid bare for all of Ponyville to see, Levi’s mouth of glistening opal and Alan’s ever-so-slightly yellowed teeth contrasting. The blemish nigh-impossible to remark and intuit in the benignant shafts of lenitive luster. Paperboard cups coiled by their eager digits and gazing into the eyes of the man they believed to be stone-cold dead out in the inhospitable, barbaric reaches of the Everfree Forest. Home to every mythical beast of antediluvian mythos and monsters of the human category. In spite of the direful circumstances and ruthless hampers that led them to each other’s presence, they somehow managed, by the bold stroke of undiluted joy coating his heart, to mirthfully guffaw over superb coffee.

“So, Levi, tell me that one more time.” Alan chuckled through a mouthful of amiable hilarity. “You found a what?”

“A manticore! The real deal, no joke. Scorpion, lion paws, all of the above.”

“And it was-” A chuckle severed his sentence in two. “Bothered by a thorn in its paw?”

“Exactly!”

“You almost got torn to bits by a thorn!” Alan reared his head and leaned back in his chair and pointed his riant visage towards the sky. Washed in the molten gold of the herculean benevolent sun. “I can’t believe what I’m hearin’!”

“I wish I was joking, man. It’s all fun and games now but in the moment, I thought I was a dead man.”

“No doubt. No doubt at all. Surprised you made it out without soilin’ yourself.”

Levi rejoiced in a dwarfish sip of his shockingly wondrous coffee. A sanctified, reverable liquid where unsullied perfection was achieved solely by an elaborate, deemed tedious and inordinate by some, gauntlet of measurements and mixtures. Where the slimmest of failures during any facet of the congeries of processes would spell inevasible ruination. The decay of its former eminent grandeur stretching past miles beyond the feeble margins of salvageability. Borders that Levi believed were carelessly bounded as he spectated the verveful buoyant equine. Darting fervently to every corner and hastily scurrying across the peppy tiles. The radiant linoleum incomprehensibly outmatched in breakbone battle of who would be helmed as the most vibrant entity in that precious vicinity. A more fitting and warranted name being the sole matchless sanctified abode that Pinkamena Diane Pie could graciously name her sweet, sweet home. She bumbled around the vast space behind the counter, brisker than a hummingbird that jammed its slender beak into a lorn brick of cocaine. Scrabbling every which way with, from an outside point-of-view, looked as farcical as an up-priced circus act in a miserly carnival hellbent on raking in funds no matter the means of acquisition. Jamming her avid hooves into a manifold of buttons and slamming down plastic levers, time and time again. Her zealous nonsensical ritual only began to mold into a sensible, sane-minded routine when the duo of rangy cups materialized in her hooves. And a dumbfounded Levi watched helplessly from the buzzing sidelines occupied wholly by one another soul, a pleasantly astonished Alan. The brunete’s dispirited eyes spectating the unbounded carnage and unethical erroneous injustices upon his drink, like a bereft owner watching his dog be lambasted by a horde of coyotes. Thick rivulets of caramel spewed from a large steel box embellished with an innumerable catalog of buttons and switches. Hills of sugar dumped into the inky abyss without a scant atom of hesitation or any morsel of clear concise thought injected into her febrile movements.

Her final stop was at the counter where the two men sat in silver stools with sky-blue leather cushions, its numberless years of rigorous use and service in the Corner’s lifespan unmapped upon its leather flesh. Dropping the paperboard between the two starkly differentiated brothers. Each one an austere, unabashed delineation of a stark emotion. Alan Sizemore, joy and lofty heaven-scraping spirits and expectations for the improper heedless savagery untamed imposed upon the drink. And Levi Cronell, as surly and disheartened as an ancient chipped gargoyle. The virtuoso stonemason chiseling a brazen hangtail visage upon an exanimate cadaver of stone. Gazing disenchanted at the ferverous pony’s splendorous orbs, mushroom clouds of elation bursting within their soft cyanic confines.

Outside, however, the old ill-natured man with an immovable frown graven upon his dejected countenance was swiped away. Struck joyful and smiley by the drink’s altruistic reaches and influence. A detail he hoped Pinkie Pie noticed through the panorama of square glass panes beside them.

“I am too, honestly.”

“What other legends did you see out there? Things that shouldn’t exist, you follow me?”

“Nothing that exciting,” Levi rejoindered with a plentiful draft of his coffee. Its infectious warmth delightfully hugging his organs and cascading his throat. “What I saw can’t really beat a manticore.”

“Y’never know. Maybe it can.”

“A sea serpent crying by a river about its mustache and some scary trees in the dark. Like I said, can’t beat the manticore.”

“Now that ain’t a fair judgment, is it? They're still interestin’.”

“Not as interesting as your story.” Levi smiled at his confidant, returning the paperboard to his raring lips.

“I’ve told that a half-dozen times by now, brother. Just starvation and wooden wolves. Wish I could’ve saw a stinkin’ manticore or a giant snake.”

“Have you ever wondered how those timberwolves came to be?”

Alan cocked a brow at the Man in Blue. The sun’s redoubtable, ravishing creeks of radiance bathing him in a heavenly ethereal glow. Shafts of luster shoutlining the unflawed leather, sewn and stitched as one in glamourful harmony. The limitless adroitness in its creation bleeding from every fine unflawed grain of sable leather, united to form the picturesque garb sleeving his willowy framework.

“I haven’t got a chance to stop and give it much thought. Haven’t had the time to stop and breathe until I got here.”

“You got any theories, Al?”

Alan paused and leaned back in his chair, whiter than the unabashed showcase of a full moon on an unstarred night, gazing into the cloud-freckled ether above with a thoughtful hum.

“Some magic carpenter way deep in the woods.“

“Making the wolves?” Levi responded with a bantam swig.

“Yeah, somewhere out in that forest with a couple of knives on a table. Carving away. Making as many wolves as his heart can handle.” Alan enchantedly explained while splaying open his stationary jazz hands, fingers spread like a Chinese shan.

“And the magic?”

“I’m sure he’s got his ways. Either way, I’ll never understand how all that works. Even in America.”

“What? Magic?”

“Yep. It’s real now, brother. Now I’m obligated to learn it.”

“We got books and unicorns who can explain better than I can, and even I’m not entirely certain how it works.”

During the vast majority of Levi’s nightly hours-long sojourns in that pullulating mob of books and unbounded literature, often known by its layman name of the Library’s bottom floor, he was chaperoned by two friends. A duo of entities whose sole purpose on the earth they perused and tenanted day-in and day-out was to provision comradeship to the Man in Blue. The twain of cursory comrades armed with the consecrated almighty present of life by the rich tenebrosity bore a name. Deep thought and the moon. The moonlight smiled down upon him and beglossing his frame with its pale varnish. Lathering his blank visage, twisted in a mangled contortion of fathomless thought and scrutinizing pondering. His laboring mind ambling to engrossing realms zealously devout to one category out of the multifaceted catalog of perplexing wonders. For the last three nights preceding Alan’s palliating knocks upon his front door, he sauntered into one of the innumerous idiosyncratic dimensions equipped with nought except the elephantine, growling stomach for knowledge quartering in his skull. He read impassionedly, sweeping his mesmerized irises across page after page of throngs of paragraphs. Ferociously snagged by its enthralling contents with barbed keen hooks, no intention extant to release him from its brawny grasp. After all, if the magic of these ambagious ponies and their kin can drown an entire nation in perpetual darkness, what mind wouldn’t thirst for more? Scrounging the unending scapes of the library’s pages, feasting from stark cover to stark cover. Foraging for answers to his boundless rotund storm of restive inquiries.

“I ain’t tryna figure out how it works. All that scares the daylights outta me.”

“What’s there to be scared of?”

“I don’t know. Just the…unknown aspects, I guess. Everythin’ I can’t come closer to understanding. That’s what freaks me out.”

“Well, we got all the time in the world, brother. No rush to find out what’s what.”

Alan paused. Viscid soupy quietude infected their stalwart bubble of serenity. Their retirement to their own personal cubby of the world unrectifiably sullied by a vile cogent intrusion, reckless to anything harboring a semblance to rational thought or reasoning. It begriped a singular epithet, dread. One of the most august, well-thewed elements among the limitless variegated regimes of Mother Nature’s infantry. The whelming alarm from the interminable peril gnawed at the resolute demarcations of their personal impregnable bubble like starved mosquitoes. Ruination of biblical proportions looming direfully as an unwelcomed itinerant blight upon the sun-kissed horizon. The sole extant parallel to the dissonant madness yet to fully bloom into the catastrophic pestilence it truly is was the Book of Revelations. A spoilsome foe so exorbitantly infatuated with destruction in carnage that, from an outside perspective, seemed to plant his roots in whatever fictitious world he thought was deserving of his brutality. Yet, life and the unfeeling world around the duo was heedless to their feelings and vehement objections. Whatever grisly event would besmirch the torrent of headlines next would prove that twentyfold.

The raven-haired man leaned forward with a stony spartan visage and scooted his drink a few inches to the right. Fashioning a perch for his folded bronzed arms in its absence.

“Do we?” He asked gruffly.

Levi stared blankly for a split-second before glorying in a saccharine draft of his coffee before placing it upon the table and sitting up, spine level with the chair’s backrest.

“What’re you getting at?”

“I mean, if we let Gary off scotch-free, there won’t be much of a world left. We’ve already been livin’ on borrowed time for years now.”

“No one’s letting him go free, Alan, I thought you understood that by now.” Levi retorted.

“I understood we’re letting money-hungry bounty hunters handle this!” Alan hissed. “We’d be better off going after him ourselves. I’m shocked we haven’t already.”

Levi’s hands fell and slapped against his thighs before he tilted his head in both directions. Motioning for the closer examination of the tight-knit intimate hive of homes and cottages encompassing the flourishing thrumming heart of the town.

“Look around us.” He spoke while holding his hands in either direction. Gesticulating towards the thin school of chinwagging sans souci ponies of every category and classification, not one bearing any similarities to another sans their specific species. Some dragging wooden wagons with a rich brown varnish draped with a blonde burlap sheet, secreting their passionately devised wares from the peeping eyes of the outside world. Others colloquially meandering about, paying a cursory visit to a neighboring friend or beloved family member, either indifferent or uneducated about the harum-scarum menace on the vista.

“We’re practically on the Oregon Trail, Al. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was secretly 1850 here.”

“So?” Alan fired back with a curled lip. “What’s that gotta do with anythin’?”

“We don’t got cars or planes or helicopters with thermal cameras. Nothing. It’s just us and our wits.” Levi replied. “If we did have the slightest clue of where he was it’d take us weeks in a wagon to get there, and he could be gone with the wind by then.”

Alan harrumphed and compacted his fists, staining his knuckles a luminous ghostly white, with a scalding glare trained at the unblemished table. A skiff of the soothesome sun’s fair consolatory rays, blending and ingratiating flawlessly with the chill Autumn gales. His gooseflesh-riddled triceps graciously mitigated by the behemoth of unadulterated molten gold above their heads. The fulgid gibbous glass sparkled like morning light upon the face of a lake, a fervid troupe of scintillating gleam dancing across its surface. Every individual sparkle an aureate rhinestone studded upon its comely visage since the hour of its inception.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“It ain’t good, it ain’t smart neither, but it’s what gotta be done, brother.”

“He could be outside Ponyville right now waiting for us to leave. What happens when he gets in here and we’re gone on a wild goose chase?”

Alan flattened his hands and stood them straight on the table abreast and aimed at his brother emphatically. Every word brought a knock of knuckle against glass. “If we find a wagon and get some supplies, we’ll be-”

“What about weapons?”

“You got that sword, doncha?”

“I already had that run-in with him a few weeks ago and he damn-near killed me, Alan. Even with my sword I’ve only been practicing for a week, not good enough to kill anyon. Especially not Gary.”

Alan paused and met Levi’s irises once more. “You got me there, brother.”

“I know.” Levi took a gratifying swill of his coffee.

“What weapons do we got? Which ones can we get?”

“Listen, one of Mortimer’s guys, Dread Shot, told me of a vendor in Appaloosa who can provide some good honest guns. Nothing automatic or modern.” He raised his cup into the brisk frosted air. “Here’s hoping they’re high enough caliber.”

“Guns?” Alan inquired, dubiousness prolifically oozing from his words.

“Old-fashioned ones. Six-shooters, repeaters, shotguns, that kind of deal.”

Alan released a brief hum in profound thought. “Ya think it’ll be enough?”

“All we can do is hope and pray it will.” Levi replied. “I know how much you love doing that.”

“Whatever you say.” Alan chuckled

“Look, we can take a hot air balloon out there after this and buy ourselves some. It’s by a river called Fool’s Doom, I got plenty of bits.”

“That’s another way we can look for him! A balloon. Why didn’t ya say that sooner?”

“Because it won’t work,” Levi sipped his coffee, the full quantum of the dark lake of caffeine and caramel almost a quarter-full now. “Did you forget how high they go? We can’t see through clouds.”

“Alright, all’s I’m sayin’ is-”

BOOM!

The unpropitious, skull-fracturing guttural cry of unmitigated lightning erupted from the terrifyingly near distance, its fulminous ruinous bellow like the vociferation of a chagrined god. Extending its planet-sized head from His lavish gilt-edged throne. Tucked away in the most grandsome unspinting guildhall in the superfluent firmament it asserted hard-and-fast, indomitable preeminence over. With a colossal heart enkindled by whatever beseeched the ire of the resolute maestro of sovereignty, he departed from the stars and shouted His blinding wrath unto the earth. Perplexingly, the injurious fragor of the most tumultuous caliber was grounded.

Not bound to the unfettered metropolis of a radiant azure sky smudged with elongated streaks of jagged slender clouds. Not the tonitruous offspring of some cement-grey thunderhead, a meager byproduct of a pewter-colored sky as though the globe was plunged into a vat of roiling molten iron. The daunted earth steeling away from the austere acapella of grumbling stentorian thunder and raring bolts strutting across the doomful vista. Practically trembling with elation to pounce from their discordant grim cage and impale the unwary soil.

Although, none of those pestilential prospects could blossom in reality’s rolling welcoming fields with a sky exquisitely forged in incomprehensible splendor of the highest caliber. Akin to the azure beaut presently above their muddled heads. Not a hint or stray thread of the silvery gloom that heralds a storm of the Homeric proportions rioted by the lightning’s boom.

The men bounced an inch of their seats and the sparse mob of ordinary ponies threatened to leap from the fear-laden suit of their skin. Burdenous double-wheeled barrows piloted by yoke-clad ponies ceased, cessation strangling the mild groaning of their antiquated wood. Euphorically gallivanting fillies engrossed in their infantile games and civilians sauntering to where their errands dwelled halted. Their heads aimed at the crevasse between two quaint belts of homes to the right of Sugarcube Corner. Rapt by the conduit of the tumult.

“It can’t be rainin’ again!” Alan groaned, vexed.

“Look at the sky, it can’t rain. Rainbow said we’re clear for another week.” Levi spoke, captivated by the din spewed from the minute path. Slowly rising to his hearty feet. Alan followed suit swifter than his comrade.

“What’re we dealin’ with, brother?”

BOOM!

Lightning bellowed once more and shook Ponyville and its timorous residents to their perturbed cores.

The crowd recoiled and sprung miles into the air like frightened cats.

Levi flinched.

Alan winced at the dagger-like stabbing of his ears and blinked hard at the violent rumpus.

“We’ll see soon enough.” Levi muttered with furrowed brows.

He and a myriad of inquisitive, perhaps overly so for their own good and well-being, tentatively stepped towards the path. Alan Sizemore lacked the temerity necessary to accomplish the task, standing rooted to Sugarcube’s tiles within the violet rail margins. A fleeting haven that undertook the Augean duty of bolstering the noirette to the all-too-probably peril and its potentially ravaging ramifications. About a half-foot in front of Alan, far closer to the narrow mouth incessantly vomiting raucous vociferance, stood Levi Cronell. His poker face gilt-edged and adamantine, as stringent and regimental as unadulterated, pristine titanium. However, to the bewilderment of no entity neither man nor pony in that disconcerted herd, his mind was an ineffably factious and inaccordant civil war. Each smoking round zipping from a barrel with the tug of a trigger was an atrocious thought. Every pin ravished from the oval frame of a grenade a perturbed assumption as to the identity of the dissonance’s generator. Mortar fire of baseless ostensible suppositions pockmarked the scarred terrain, triumphing over malignance and dominated by felicity once upon a bygone time. His psyche dashed into avenues of black direful thoughts.

Could the thunder be gravely misidentified gunfire? Perhaps an assault by puissant weaponry unfathomed by the Man in Blue? Maybe unique solely to Equestria? Could Gary have returned and brought the sinister forces of Hell with him in his back pocket? Did these sonorous booms come garnished by a dale of corpses?

BOOM!

The anonymous broadside upon his senses exploded from the path again.

The crowd retched and recoiled in unison, Alan teetering on the verge of bursting from his skeleton and forsaking his unnerved suit of skin. Alan’s widened optics flicked to the sky for a split-second and all the clouds were gone. Just the golden beam resting in an ocean of cyan. Another anomaly patiently awaiting a coveted explanation.

BOOM!

The answers to the town’s collective unforbearing churning pool of inquiries and scorching questions would arrive anon. Levi clenched his fists.

A lone unicorn clad in a red-and-black checkered flannel shirt with unrolled sleeves and buttoned to his throat pointed down the path. Jaws divorcing and bushy jet-black beard oscillating with his stentorian shout.

“I SEE IT!”

“See what-?”

The author of the arduous, ear-splitting raft in all of his enigmatic glory was spat out by the gaping entrance to the path. It didn’t walk or run. Didn’t bellow or cry out. Didn’t bear bipedal legs or cloven hooves. More importantly, they didn’t possess any of these common familiar attributes and extremities.

Droves of chickens spilled into the nave of the town, darting higgledy-piggledy in towards no lucid destination with no prime objective stamped onto their marble-sized brains. The locuplete discordant horde was far larger than his rampant berserking mind could’ve ever began to conjure, his mazed globes agog and paralyzed. Refusing to fully fathom the farcical sorry-excuse for an extreme circus act before him. Pinning the blame of the thunderous booms upon the broad body of these plump farm animals was too irrefutably nonsensical to be considered.

Alan dovetailed to his side and strode across the grass. Standing beside him with unequivocal, peerless disarray flooding his peepers, they stared confounded at the variegated broad body of fenetic chickens. Nigh on forty of the feathered bags of nerves stormed the core of Ponyville. Their ranks ever-increasing with the inordinate addition of countless stragglers sprinting out of the path’s maw, abstracted and lagging behind the central legion. Levi’s befuddled emeralds washed over the mob while they haphazardly and thoughtlessly melded into the sporadic group of townsfolk. The aggregate of the chickens were colored in their quotidian insipid scheme, far from deviating from the conventional criterion. The other majority bore a sprawling manifold of contrasts to its banal brethren. Feathers coating its stout frame and riding up its neck were a bold, mesmerizing fiery orange like Jack Daniels’ bottled flames. The tart depths of an ochre whiskey bottle colored green with wild envy at the lucent hue. Its belly and posterior feathers were colored a sublime resplendent yellow, leagues brighter than the celestial spheroid of fire injecting tinctures of life into the Earth. Every soul with swelling able lungs and a rhythmic hale heart stared with deep-seated bafflement at the…whatever Ponyville could possibly classify this exotic oddity as. Was it a threat that necessitated exacting scrutiny, or a ludicrous act of scoreless humor? Not a mortal in that crowd knew, not even the sun, who ogled inquisitively at the absurd unforeseen affairs unfurling beneath it.

“Whaddya think, Levi? We needa call the National Guard for this?”

“I don’t know who to call, maybe Applejack.”

“The apple farmer?”

“The only apple farmer,” Levi replied, prising his bound up stare from the twain of mammoth crowds and greeting Alan’s irises. “Maybe these are hers.”

The knockabout uninvited feathered visitors melded into the static crowd of ponies, idling while the emancipated birds halted at their hooves. Curiously eyeing the equines and herky-jerkily rambling in abnormal circles around them, keen bemired talons lacerating the turf.

‘I must be dreaming. This has to be my imagination.’ Levi chimed in the anonymous sanctity of his thoughts. ‘I can’t understand this.’

Another enigmatic straggler trotted into the town’s core and took the mighty gallant step into deviancy. Rupturing the chains of its brethren's creed of staying in that tight-knit clod and, geared by unknown motivations, beelined to the Man in Blue and stalled at the steel ends of his boots. Begrimed talons mere inches from the notch glimmering silver at his toes. Only when he pivoted his head and aimed his countenance at the quizzical creature was when it truly dawned that, in his nearly month-long tenure in Equestria thus far, he’d never laid eyes upon a chicken. Perhaps in this outlandish, outré universe largely unplumbed by the pair, this was the average custom. But confirming those suspicions at that precise instant bore no position in the realm of possibilities.

“Well, wouldya look at that.” Alan grinned down at the rooster. “I think he likes you, brother.”

The vivacious cockerel snapped his syrup-colored eyes to meet the brunete’s with a lowly mite of conscious thought behind them. Just a ring of rich amber with a deep stygian core like vortexes to lifeless kafkaesque dimensions. Brazen orange neck hackles akin to a scarf of pacified fire and gilded saddle feathers unmatched by the sun. Crimson comb flopping flaccidly with the cock of its mindless head and a low, trill floating from its onyx beak.

“You think?” Levi mirrored his brother’s beam. His high-strung guard waxing with each hushed cluck rising from the chicken’s throat. Its community ambling aimlessly behind him awash with avid curiosity, differing starkly from the waning interest of the townsfolk.

“I know.” Alan responded. “But what about the noise?”

“Yeah, what abo-”

In the matter of two seconds, bereft of exaggeration or unethical stretching of the truth, the mystery corralled back into the limelight by the raven-haired man was granted its answer. The chicken flicked its head towards the ground with a violent flare of marmalade-tinted wings, its beak divorced. Springing an inch or so above the soil, the chicken burped. At least, that was the name of the event as far as Levi’s understanding was concerned.

The chicken burped.

A bolt of concentrated, undiluted lightning exploded from its maw.

The rooster’s golf-ball-sized head devoured by a convex flash of empyrean alabaster-white light. In fact, the entirety of Levi and Alan’s vision was callously robbed and in its stead was the almighty blast of candescence like an explosion of the moon. The earthbound supernova struck the hapless man stone-blind for seconds on end that stretched into oblivion. His ears lambasted and colonized by an incursive bombination more stridulent than a constellate of blades scraping glass.

The bolt barbarically speared the ground between the small aisle between the two men’s bodies. Skeleton rocked like a cannonball pelting each and every facet of his limbs and bones. Ribcage staunched by an Augean, hulking fist his chassis of flesh and marrow stood zero chances of besting. Chiliads of morsels of dirt and pebbles accompanied by the sporadic root cruelly wrenched from its domicile battered the full breadth of his frame.

The brothers took flight in the panicked air. Jettisoned by the blast and left for dead about a half-foot from the cavernous crater. The volcanic dagger-like maw of an hellacious heat his brain was unqualified to apprehend locked onto his left ankle. Gnawing like Hell’s brawniest jackal and thrashing its blistering mouth with whetted teeth and a dancing tongue of torrid slag lapping his flesh.

Ears plagued by an eternal drone. An impregnable bulwark for the leviathanic manifold of sounds and grating cacophonies spurred and given life by the inexplicable vanguard of monstrosities storming his home.

Eyelids opening to greet a world now consumed by ravenous conquistadors bent on preaching the divine word of chaos wherever its feet land.

The unamenable helter-skelter world-rendering in every known sense and utilization of the word.

A sickening, bone-trembling capella of booms sounded like an unrelenting air raid. Mortar fire launching in ravaging clusters from an infrangible fort, where breaching and ceasing the limitless cataclysms soaring through the clouds was an unachievable feat. A pathetic pipe dream with no light existing at the end of the murky, sloughy tunnel. Where ghastly tenebrosity clung to the gloomful walls like blackened putrefied mucus and thorned vines swingled from the ceiling. Each poke from the noisome armor of spikes circumscribing the vine an unsympathetic prod from reality. Injecting its unassailable influence, blighting his bloodstream with the acidic, unfeeling toxin of unheard proportions. Reality stabbing his frame and clawing at his bare flesh. An alarming reminder of the dastardly realm he was unobligingly subjected to.

His eyes were released from their cursory sentence of mordant frenzied darkness. Lids dividing to the dazzling fury of the sun upon his irises, spawning a viscous film of tears. The broadside of golden benign rays against his globes was short-lived and snuffed by the inalterable behest of a…eccentric cloud. One of tens of hundreds that, in the span of the fifteen seconds he spent in a quaggy haze, marauded the sky. Clouds in the precise copybook shape of molars roved across the cerulean ether and sweepingly forayed the airscape. The ivory smears present mere minutes prior were nothing but a vaguened recollection now, a memory where the prospect of recalling was inconceivable.

“Brother!”

A voice echoed ceaselessly in the grand foggy hall of his skull. His hearing being returned piecemeal, each second a new fragmented shard was placed into the kaleidoscope ruptured by lightning. In sync with his intimate’s shout was the unceasing grating symphony of lightning and dissonant warbling of chickens was screaming. Unholy, opaque, stomach-twisting screaming. As though the blast launched him from this world governed by an inherent ordinance of peace and serenity and slung into the fathoms of Hell. Lambasted by the loathsome cries of the pitiful damned.

“Brother!” That voice echoed again. “Are you alive? Levi? Levi!”

The aghast shout attained an achievement Levi thought impossible. Trumping the nauseating, poignant symphony of grating, frenetic shouts and the stately clobbering of an uncounted nimiety of hooves. The uneventful yet semi-tranquil atmosphere burgeoning from a flat undisturbed lake of conglomerated bemusement and anxiety into an incoherent warzone. All in the matchless, milliseconds-long snap of a finger. The blink of an eye, the flick of a lighter, the vague wispy phantoms of the calm that previously begriped Ponyville’s reigns gravitated towards nullity. A new creed was in order now with an immediate sedate ingratiation, disusing and slighting the ireful prospect of any answer that smelled of insubordination.

“Ye…Yeah!” Levi called into the tempestuous, skull-splitting vortex of frenzied cries. The ground rumbled and vibrated under his back. Illimitable ponies ran amok in every direction imaginable by the conscious mind. Some darting back to their homes imprudent towards their means of arrival. Others undertook sprinting in frightened circles around Sugarcube Corner, pursued by the volatile phoenix-colored roosters. A Lilliputian sliver of the petrified garden aimed their head forward like charging bulls and ingeniously scudded out of town. Deserting Ponyville and falling prey to a bizarre state of circumstances ne’er predicted by any being currently breathing and present on Earth. These autonomous horses, some with robust ironclad hindlegs that could split a jaw into fourths, others armed with ineffable magic and possibilities, were bullied out of their homes by chickens.

In an unanticipated way, Alan wanted to laugh at the absurdity, but all he could manage to do was sloppily scrabble over to the unenergetic Man in Blue. His hands encumbered as though clad in leaden gloves and feet frozen glacial ingots of ice. The blurred, swirling image of Alan Sizemore’s dismayed countenance spurted into his vision. Within a matter of meager seconds, the domineering face was blessed with the powery gift of focus. The mazed irises bluer than the ravishing sky his head completely eclipsed, rowdy stygian tentacles of his haphazard locks, light stubble coating his jaw. All the while, the chickens rousted the civilians with a morose drought of ruth. Storming every which way and expelling lightning from their craws sporadically. Some were separated by seconds, other by half-minutes, but never permitted a conclusion.

“Levi! Levi, are you hurt? Look at me!” The noirette declaimed, soldering his hands to the scrambled man’s shoulders and pinning his arms to his side.

“I’m fine!” Levi wrenched his right arm from the imperious male’s clutches and manacled a hand onto the other’s wrist. Alan shifted to a squat and rose the pair to their feet.

“You sure?”

“That doesn’t matter, how’s everybody?”

“I think you can see the answer to that.”

The hell-roaring lion’s growl of thunder blighted the Babelic town. Aswarm with uncounted insatiable scores of chaos-famished chickens, their interminable booms of lightning disgorging from their guts uneducated on the simplex concept of relent. Every raucous detonation of sound like two galaxies bound by rigorous velcro mercilessly torn from the clutches of one another with a colossal guttural snarl. A clamor that refused to surrender to nullity’s ironclad creed, reverberating through every cranny and cavity in the known universe.

“Get serious, Alan, how is everyone?”

To the duo’s right, a novel newfangled belligerent encroached upon the already discordant array, surpassing the unfeasible labor of amplifying the Homeric muckle. Inflating the iron-handed dissonance to heights never thought possible by any living being that ever laid their inquisitive sight upon Ponyville. Rotund beach-ball-sized spheres of stone-grey smoke leaped innumerable feet at a time across the trodden scape. Pluperfect orbs of smoke bounded with incomparable fervency and furor with fluffled saw-toothed flanges twirling and threatening to lacerate the torrid ambience. The foreboding, direful color a consummate grey flawlessly mirroring that of a forthright thunder. A herd of roughly twenty of these hellacious tumbleweeds bounded in unison, unmarred by the cloven-hooved petrified stampede it flamboyantly encroached upon. Whenever it touched the ground and hopped into the sky once more, the deafening thunder cracked.

“Just fine!” Screamed Alan. “They’re all runnin’, they’re gonna be okay, I think!”

“We gotta get to the Library!”

“What about-”

“They’re gonna be fine like you said, they’re getting out of here! I gotta make sure Twilight’s alright!”

“I’m right behind you, brother!”

Their enkindled bones, coated in a glistening varnish of raring gasoline, burned rubber down the rampacious northern road they once strolled down as a softhearted easing pastime. A tranquil pleasantry undertaken by the Man in Blue. now conjoined by an equally stressed Alan, to recuperate from the world-shattering onus saddling his gloom-stained heart. Now, anarchy was the only noisome language that besmirched the tongue of the assailed tenants. Ponies scrambled into their susceptible homes on both sides. Front doors slamming. Hardy deadbolts feverishly spun and actuated. Windows bashed back into their frames. Curtains slung together and squealing against their rods. Walls quaking against the herculean brawn of the tumult. The unwearied phalanx of beaked instruments of mayhem not putting forth the slightest ounce of effort in a pursuit. Raiding the eastern facet of Ponyville while the angered tumbleweeds bombed into the western sect.

The men halted at the staggering head-spinning awe of the Golden Oak Library. Standing monolithic and unperturbed by the mass genocide of Ponyville’s paramount trademark beatitude. With each sonorous boom of a ruination-hungry bolt and grumble of the mind-boggling nimble thunderheads, another seam was slit in Ponyville’s shoddy seams. Unraveling and sinking deeper into the pot-bellied stomach of primordial, unmendable disharmony with the passing of each panic-bathed second.

The far-flung cacophony sounded almost akin to a decadent skirmish between an elephant and a lion. The explosions of the leathery titan’s footsteps and the snarls of nature’s sovereign ensnared in an inhumane clash, where both parties pledged to fight until their conclusive breath.

Golden Oak’s prodigious breadth was bordered by an inaesthetic collar of bowling-ball-sized six-inch deep craters like clods of soil abstracted by a titanic ice cream scooper. Placed upon the towering cone of whoever bestowed life to this vile stage play slaking the malign muse of some unseen kafkaesque entity. A masterful farce powered solely by the unholy hankering for…whatever this pompous ungovernable display strived to achieve. Levi wasn’t entirely keen on the exact sadistic, malevolent audience would pay top-dollar to bear witness to this vile grandeur. But if there was one thing guaranteed, a deviant singularity amidst unending plains of discordance, was that those avid spectators were far from displeased.

Outside the solemn Library stood six ponies, resting uneasy with frayed, inflamed nerves kicked into the highest gear possible with the solitary exception of a hovering rainbow-haired pegasus. Her expertly secreted apprehension about the mayhem blanketing her cherished home radiating with every anxious wing flap. Twilight’s enkindled horn levitated the coveted object of Levi’s agog desires. A war-torn, eroded scabbard with a pristine holographic gladius sleeved within. Its lanky listless belt pendulating below like the swinging cadaver of a snake.

“Twilight…” Levi dashed to the congeries of disconcerted souls, some more stoic and tacitly composed than others. “Twilight, what the hell is going on?” The male seized the scabbard and slung the flaccid strip of threadbare leather around his waist. Quivering fingers twiddling with its gleaming silver clasp as he spoke with arid sweat-choked lungs.

“I don’t have a clue!”

“Does anyone have a clue?” Exclaimed the Man in Blue. “There’s chickens shooting lightning out of there mouths! We gotta figure something out!”

“I saw!” Spike chimed, all but welded to the side of the lavender unicorn. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We’re all at a loss.”

“Ain’t this grand.” Alan griped. “What about them people in town? We gotta help.”

“How do you suppose we do that?” Levi coiled his digits around the sleek hilt of his superlative sword. Unsheathing the crystalline magnum opus of the maven who manufactured it with its honed edges singing against the leather.

“Their chickens, just kill ‘em! It’d save us all the trouble.”

Fluttershy’s heart lurched at the noirette’s sanguinary proposal.

“I think we got more important things than them chickens,” Applejack interjected in her low hayseed timbre. “The apple trees were alive! Started swingin’ all about and chasin’ me and my family! Ran us out of our own farm, Levi.”

“One of my rabbits turned into a b-brute! I’ve never seen anything like it.” The timorous pastel yellow pegasus squeaked, seeking fruitless refuge behind her salmon-pink locks.

The chagrined growl of thunder sounded from the genesis of the northern path. Their unwarranted reckoning slamming its unrenounceable fist upon the door. Levi snapped his emeralds towards the din and back to the group, an oriental pearl of sweat galloping down the bridge of his nose. “We don’t have time for this. Twilight, what’s the plan here?”

“We were on our way to a hot air balloon to get to Canterlot and get the Elements of Harmony. It’s the only way.”

“Only? What’s that gonna do, we don’t need the Elements.”

“I’ve only heard about this kind of magic in books and my magic won’t do anything to stop the source. We need those Elements to save Ponyville.”

“I heard one of ‘em scream somethin’ about a Museum. Pointed down that way. Said it’s all comin’ from there.” Alan stammered with a rugged index jammed back down the northern road. The very same paved by primordial, irrevocable havoc. A rip-roaring path feeding into the eye of the maelstrom of madness they barely eluded meager seconds before.

The brunete’s heart pounded in a newfangled, exhilarating cadence. Singing an assuaging song of the most eye-watering caliber of beauty, bringing blissful cessation to the roughshod hoplites of befuddlement. Dredging the stomach-roiling slurry of fright, terror, and restive questions from his core. Salvation herded to the Man in Blue’s feeble, encumbered heart by a stupefying revelation, whose provenances of either truth or stark misdirection was ambiguous.

Could all this be…a test?

Not only a gauntlet for the rigid fortitude and long-questioned sensibilities of Levi Cronell, but also the alleged skillset of the entirety of their harried troupe. To subject the rudimentary capabilities of the octet to exacting tribulations with the guiltless civilians bated to paltry pawns. Apparatuses instrumented by the maestro of this behemothic travail to assay their ostensible, yet to be properly affirmed, prowesses. Looking upon the involute scenario the eight found themselves penned in the throes of, it wasn’t obvious to intuit as to why this ludicrous pretense existed. A band of mortals that, hardly a month ago were as quotidian and run-of-the-mill as a blade of grass, were now endowed with the responsibility of bearing the Elements of Harmony, Levi would be plagued by doubt himself. Dubiousness. The gravest pestilence ever conceived by humanity. Deadlier than a disloyal army of weaponized Judases, eager to swiftly turn their back on the compendium of ideals they vowed allegiance to. A mutinous regime that could briskly engrave the end of a city, no matter the magnitude of its grandezza and might. Doubt was nature’s first serial killer. Spelling the inexorable doom and self-fulmination of countless, leaving unbounded carnage and anguish in its smoking wake.

Levi twisted his skull once more and glowered down that boisterous path with knitted brows and unyielding emeralds aflame. A bone-splitting grip strangling the glossy gold-lined hilt of his sword. Channels of veins dilating.

“Where are you all going, Twilight?”

“To the edge of town to get a hot air balloon.”

“Alan, you go with them and keep them safe. To the best of your abilities.”

Agonized sorrow harrowed his visage. Bottom lip threatening to tremble. “Have you lost your mind? I ain’t leavin’ you again!”

“You got to,” Levi dropped a condolate hand upon his intimate’s shoulder. Giving his flagging frame a mild yet hearty shake. “For me. You need to.”

“Can’t we both?”

“I gotta get to the Museum before more ponies get hurt-”

“What if you get hurt, Levi?”

“I might…but when has that ever mattered? Especially now. I’m the Element of Protection. This is my job.” He swallowed hard with shut eyes and sniffled before he continued. “And your job is to help them.”

“I take it there ain’t no convincin’ you, is there?”

A chicken vomited lightning. Closer now.

“GO!” The male barked, slinging his brother’s figure to the antsy ravel. “Now! We don’t got time to lose.”

Alan melded into the ragtag congeries in small, pitiful shuffles against the holey earth. A poignant gaze stood unceasing and stalwart in the face of the anarchy strangling every clean-handed facet of Ponyville.

“I better not lose you again.” Alan exclaimed.

“You…” Levi paused as he shifted his heaving back towards his comrades. “I won’t make promises.”

“Where can we find you?”

“I’m gonna shoot for the Museum. Judging by…all this.” He jabbed the honed point of his sword toward the gimped aviary, unfiltered insanity soaring to every corner of the town. “I’m sure it won’t be hard to miss.”

“You sure?” Rainbow inquired. “Who knows what else could be coming out of there?”

He lobbed a solicitous gaze over his shoulder at the remnants of the town. Its essence and every fine grain of beauteous alluring flair razed to pitiful pouches of ash. “I hope so.”

“Just-”

“Get outta here! All of you!” Yelled the male, motioning to the right with a hardy swing of his blade. “You’ve got a job to do. So do I.”

“Stay safe, brother.”

He nodded with plaintive orbs. “I’ll be just fine.”

With vehement impetus traveling through an inspiriting exclamation to her team, the couriers of those land’s most formidable artifacts, the bunch set off. Twirling behind and haring off into the thick cusp of a raving Ponyville, in hot pursuit of a titanic balloon whose continued existence in the town was a slim roll of the dice. A high-wire gamble where the titanic, unfathomable losses of a brutish drubbing were far broader than the rewards of the victor. A frenzied civilian, the fear of God igniting their flagrant veins, could’ve easily, destitute of hesitation, pilfered the sole balloon and tucked tail. Nobody knew, not even Alan Sizemore. His feet remaining affixed to the spongiform soil for a few seconds longer with a mournful, rapierlike stare before he followed suit. Uprooting his obstinate soles and dashing into the labyrinthine knots of locked-down homes and cottages.

Levi’s turn for indispensable optimized action had arrived. He spun on the heels of his bemired boots. The exclusive reminder that maroon leather formed the four-squared footwear was the tall shaft encompassing his calves, largely untouched by the sludge. Its steel ends like brown metal peppered by tiny dots of silver defiant to the mud’s loathsome suffocation. Marching towards the vast menagerie, a petty handful of chickens fed with Zeus’ indiscriminate wrath strutted out of the mouth of the northern path. Four lawless reprobates in total. Jutting its head forward with every stride and razor-like talons mercilessly impaling the doughy terrain, thoughtless to the further indefinable ruin they shepherded upon the hamlet step by step.

The male accosted the feathered, nettlingly oblivious miscreants. Demanding the full volume of their attention with the minatory thumps of his boots. Heart encased in an infrangible cage of torrid, red-hot glowing coals.

“You!” Levi snarled through gnashed teeth.

The rooster snapped its beady marble-esque globes unchaperoned by even the most slim hollow mite of conscious thought. Enlightenment to the grave jeopardy storming headlong to their precise location. Torrid flaming nuggets of magma hosteled in his sockets.

“You little bastards!” The rooster stood unfazed with unwavering talons spiked in the dirt. He cocked his head at the Man in Blue. The creature’s comrades began to saunter to the sidelines. “Do you see what you did!? Huh!?”

He rammed a boot onto the ground a mere two inches in front of the cockerel.

Again, stout in the face of morose peril.

“I didn’t want it to come to this!”

SHUNK!

Levi lunged on a bent knee and cocked his right arm before slamming the trigger on his bones. Somewhere in his stinging, scathed heart, a hammer smashed against the rear of a bullet. The full length of his scintillating, gleaming blade dove into the plump breast of exuberant orange feathers. Its entire breadth swallowed by the swath of shell-pink crude flesh beneath. A starburst of tiny fiery feathers ruptured from its chest and pendulated endlessly in the rambunctious air. Each puny sliver of flashing orange, its conspicuous color nigh-deafening, swung left and right to the furthest possible degree. Gravity all but stagnating and dragging the feather to the earth slower than carbon creating diamonds. A faint strident trill erupted from the appalled bowels of its throat before its rotund frame was claimed by stern flaccidity. Its slender neck struck limp like an empty sock and his skull plopping onto its chest and lolling to the side, unanimated obsidian eyes and parted beak trained to the erose eastern horizon. Abated toes falling slack and drooping down like a loose braid.

Levi rose to his scorching calves and the knifelike hellacious iron maid his hapless feet were lampooned by. The rooster’s stone-dead cadaver stood unbothered and stock-still upon its whetted, crisp edges. The lax corridor of its neck oscillating against his breast with every slight tenuous movement undergone by its plaintive attacker. Dragging his penitent irises across the lifeless whiskey-colored frame. Painted like some inbred forebear of an incandescent phoenix, marred by decadent machinations somewhere down the lineage of untold length.

Levi spun and faced the chicken’s mortified goons. A trio of strengthless impotent hens obeying the mundane color scheme of an average banal farm chicken.

“I don’t wanna kill any more of you! Leave before you all die!” The male bellowed with a gusty stomp before the, unfortunately, breathing nuisances. “LEAVE!”

The hens followed the Man in Blue’s necessitated entreaty. Taking it on the arches and fleeing in an odious, grating orchestra of noxious trills and clucks. Tucking tail and scrambling to the Levi-free margins of Ponyville and, hopefully, to pastures far greener and further from the sanctified grounds of his home.

He wrenched his gaze from the fleeting crowd materializing into the unseen ether behind a swath of houses and looked upon the skewered corpse with acute regret. “Damn it…” He whispered. “I’m so sorry, buddy.” He pointed the end of his blade to the ground and gave the sword two well-set shoves. Its form slid off the prismatic, mesmerizing crystal in a matter of three harrowing seconds and left in its grievous wake a glistening thick mantle of crimson. The chicken walloped the ground like a grocery bag of sand and a handful of diminutive scarlet eyedrops followed it from the sword’s tip.

“Damn it…”

He regarded the mass of feathers and ichor for a few seconds longer before launching off his heels, initializing a meteoric beeline down the northern path. Past two adjacent strips of hunkered-down homes, every naked crevice and peephole battened down to the absolute utmost, he stormed into Sugarcube Corner. Standing at the dawn of this visceral Tartaren flutteration. Succumbing to forlorn childlike pining for the warm tender embrace of better days. For the opportunity to relive those penultimate minutes before the town he loved and adored, bathed in praise and appreciation day-in and day-out, became seized by squalor. To bless that precursor before a pandemic of mind-twisting madness with the gratitude it deserved.

That was then, this is now. And all Levi could do was take a feverous stab at any endeavor possible to alleviate the mayhem, where no degree of effort or retaliation could’ve possibly kept it at bay. Presently, all that could provision any minute ministration towards his benevolent cause was unflaggingly combing through every diminutive nook of Ponyville. Feverishly scouring the incalculable facets of divisions yet to be breached and canvassed by the sword-wielding antithesis to the opaque bedlam blanketing Levi’s inculpable abode.

He swept his formidably defiant eyes, obstinate to fear’s gluttonous intrusions. Starved for even a nanoscopic sliver of jurisdiction over the Man in Blue’s trembling hands. Governance over his roaring extremities, cramping fingers, wrists stinging like a bracer of piqued hornets. The paint-like sweat swathing his forehead and dripping off his sharpened chin and the ball-point tip of his nose. His blurred terror thirsted for dominance as he scrutinized both the land and air, glowering at the distasteful craters as though wailed on by a colossal icepick. Paused and tapped into the unbridled capabilities of his superlative senses.

Sight? Nothing.

Touch? Only the sleek metal of a glossy hilt.

Smell? Singed grass and sweat.

Hearing? Finally, oil was struck.

An ear-splitting scream erupted from the eastern road tantamount to the sparking brakes of a halting train in coalition with a guttural mirthful laugh. One of which the likes of have never been previously intuited or witnessed by the Man in Blue. A sinister guffaw creakier than the rusted hinges of a backyard swing at a grandmother’s house. Combined with the most inherently bizarre and exotic of all the callous broadsides upon his senses that day was a groan. An almighty gruff groan trumped every sound and sensation that dared to perpetrate the inclement cardinal sin of meandering into its territory. Ascertaining a pinnacle dominion knowing a lengthy pamphlet of regulations instilled by a mighteous iron fist. Grievously pounding every modicum of a noise that threatened to wrench it from its throne, unsparingly jawing the ill-starred soul until it slinked back into the weeds.

Levi whipped his blade towards the ground and shucked off the gluey jacket of sordid scarlet. In all of his years of penniless fighting and trudging through the vulnerose streets of Roseville, blood was a quotidian commodity. How he forgot how viscous and soupy it truly was a shock to some, but a God-given miracle to Levi. With his current state of affairs and cumbrous occupation he ne’er would’ve beseeched, it appeared he wouldn’t forget the sight for as long as he breathed in those alien lands.

He practically jumped from his heels stabbed into the dirt and drove his smarting legs, a smoldering, torrid mining drill of agony gnawing every inch below his kneecaps. Bones adust with an unholy blaze bearing sky-scraping dimensions that he couldn’t begin to comprehend, even if he had a thousand years of unremitting thinking to do so. The male scrambled across flattened blankets of grass and flickered to the lavishly spewing fountain of the sound. Ponyville’s eastern road. He zipped around the corner and gazed down upon the unaccounted exhibit of unchained, undiminishing madness. Fanatically scrutinizing the hard-grained sight with widened astounded orbs.

Two beings inhabited the width of the road. A vehemently overwrought earth pony, shrieking with the gallons of air tenanting her grafting lungs, and a colossal ineffable beast haranguing the ill-fated equine. Wide like a bridge’s support beam was a mammoth stygian tree darker than any genus of wood Levi had ever laid his perturbed eyes upon. Black as though a meager cut-out of the stark oblivion of a perfect midnight. Its jagged bark like war-scarred alligator scales with two stocky logs appended to its sides, carved in the almost copybook formation of human arms. Curved elbows and sanded wooden skin gave way to a balled fist of frighteningly authentic fingers with clusters of tiny budding branches sprouting from its fingertips. A twisted visage of oval-shaped vermillion eyes the color of lucent lazers absent of eyelids and a wicked grin akin to an overembellished cartoon villain. Graven upon his flagitious countenance was a skillfully carved smile, a broad stretched-out U with a gaping toothless maw. Those bone-shivering infernal caricatures of baleful glee erupting from that inanimate cavity. Forever imprisoned in that grim snapshot of an untoward Cheshire smirk bleeding sadism with each second. Time reverting to a pace easily trumped by a moving plodding iceberg. Seconds seeming like thousands of lifetimes. Perhaps time, in accordance with the dismayed Man in Blue, was paralyzed in its own intolerant glacier of primal fear.

‘You’ve done it again, Levi,’ His mind chided. ‘What’ve you gotten yourself into?’

The roborative allure, once enkindling the tree’s blackened heart into ardent craze, had long since bled from the tirelessly shrieking mare. Veins mapping her willowy neck and protuberant windpipe bulging from the chasm of her throat. Vivacious yellow coat gleaming in a hide of sweat. Pepful orange braid dangling like a loose thread over the left side of her head. The tree’s profound irises, akin to heated bars of silver glowing fulgent scarlet in a furnace, leisurely shifted from his strident toy. Infernal beam of unbridled unabashed mirth shone glary like the uncurbed elation of a child on Christmas Eve. He completely twisted his frame to face the Man in Blue. The sound that reverberated from his craggy bark and hauntingly veristic arms was a gruff almighty groan. If the male had his eyes zipped shut and was robbed of all context of his ghoulish state of affairs, he’d be forgiven for assuming the din flared from the hull of an antiquated warship. The war-torn, dog-eared steel-and-bolt skeleton of a fearsome vessel that once stopped the hearts of weaponized vagabonding sea-goers aboard forbidding crafts of their own. Now, its pathetic whimper echoes in a macabre exanimate graveyard of similar beings. Piningly pleading with their fleshy architects and possessors to drag their deplorable lives to the terminus that awaited all of them. Foreshorten their chassis into a shambolic mound of ground steel and crumbled rusted metal.

“Huh?” The tree grumbled. A sound like the warped wobbling of sheet metal played through an impaired gramophone. “Namuh a?”

If the devil were to ever be foolishly issued a mortal voice to spout his despicable declaratives to this serene world, this tree was it. The apparatus for the sovereign of Hell to speak and dance his forked-tongue.

His previous victim shot a fleeting yet thankful glance at the Man in Blue before tucking her vibrant sun-yellow tail between her legs and running for the hills. Hopefully able to excavate a tiny filament of security in the razed town.

‘What the hell is wrong with this place? Who’s doing this?’

“Nuf eb dluohs shit!” The tree spoke. His lips, in spite of being nothing more than mere lifelike carvings upon wood, moved in unison with his dreadful words. If one could even label the jambled streams of nonsense shooting from his maw “words” at all.

The tree’s movements were as awkward and stunted as they came. He waddled step by step. One stride sanctioned a complete twist of his jaggy body to one side and then a full twist to the other. All the while that sonorous moan boomed from its bark and annexed the airspace. Atop his head was a vast sinuous wig of rangy root-like branches that grew almost two-feet from his scalp, almost identical to a map of a system of warrens in physical form. The tree dwarfed the male tenfold, almost nine-feet tall, and his egregious hair painted the padded grass with a labyrinth of shadow.

“Loof, won llits hlod.” He grumbled with speech somehow slower than the drying of paint upon a wall. “Kciuq esimed rouy ekam lliw I.”

Even with the matchless eccentric fashion of walking, the tree was far from sluggish. Covering almost a foot in two colossal strides.

‘I don’t have time for this! This is getting out of control. I have to get to the Museum before…anymore of this happens!’

“Ynitsed teem dna drawrof emoc. Namuh, won ouy stiawa etaf.”

The Man in Blue had a decision to lean one way or the other on with nothing resembling a median present in this reality. Both options donning their own personalized roster of benefits and ramifications, some more inherently dire and cataclysmic than others.

He could stand and wage an irrefutably unequal skirmish against this hellish autonomized obelisk of wood, with victory a hazy blip on the ruinous horizon. A vastly more preferable and exponentially less sanguinary lazed in Levi’s good graces. Fleeing. Cutting his soon-to-be losses and darting for the hills and leaving the colossus, a meager archetype of its diabolical hankerings and fantasies, to its own devices. With his novel status as Equestira’s solitary protector, he wasn’t entirely keen on how his unrefined proposal would sit in the eyes of the general population. After all, if some thunderstruck hunkered-down pony created a divisor between their blinds and bore witness to his yellow-bellied deed, what savage adjective would spawn on her mind’s foreground? A coward? A hero attempting to preserve his life? Hell, even labeling him a hero afterwards would be far too generous. But the way he saw it, what choice did he truly have?

The male challenged the sickening vermillion smirk gleaming down from feet above his swirling head with a coarse scowl and lip crinkled in stern defiance. It all came clear now. The doubtful grime and soot cleansed from the panoptic windows in his tardily pacifying psyche. Those options, the nigh-answerless plight of either a penniless inequitable clash, where the victor stands over the corpse of the other, or shameless cowardice, were unmendably nullified. Those choices were the machinations of Levi Cronell being granted a say in the council of his brain. The Man in Blue, however, had a vastly differing decision. One that kept the gaping door to conjecture and scalding debate shut and chained.

The Man in Blue fights.

The tree chuckled as Levi gritted his teeth and ejected off his feet once more. Off to the races again, hopefully for the final time during chaos’ vitriolic tenure in Ponyville. Only the odds were the writing on the wall that this tree wouldn’t be the final foe in this vile sojourn. The tree halted its labored sorry-excuse for movement and swept his left arm through the air, the razor-like knot of thorns at the end of each fingertip hungering for slaughter. Levi ducked and the mammoth comber of wind flapped his collar and raced down his sodden back.

“Elbmin.” Spoke the tree.

The beast flattened his hand and cocked his arm far behind his frame. Moments before he could divebomb the spearhead of thorns, Levi committed an Augean swing of his own. He glowered at the beast’s arm hanging low and static near its base, clutching his hilt with two stringent palms and shot his arms to the sky. Iridescent avid blade raised high above his indignant head and slamming down the whetted utensil of devastation.
With embittered muscles saturated with raw, unbitted might, every modicum writhing in a hell-roaring fire pit of undiminished wrath, he powered the blade through the air. And the fruits of his toil was the crystal burrowing barely a scant six-inches into the tree’s forearm. The beast guffawed in minatory, mirthful amusement. A jetstream of the fiend’s
breath billowing onto the right side of the male’s being, its dictatorial scent enigmatically redolent of sap and old sodden wood.

“Namuh, suoirallih era ouy.” Another indiscriminate onslaught of byzantine jargon plagued the discordant airscape. “Hsirep ouy hctaw ot levram a eb lliw it.”

Levi wrenched the gladius from its fruitless cage of sable wood and swung again.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

No dice.

Each undertaking burying the blade an otiose handful of centimeters deeper into the wood, and all that much more arduous wrest from its grasp. The branch like an effectual beam of unalloyed, irrefragable tungsten.

The tree refracted its left arm from Levi’s bootless equation of unnumbered abortive swings that equaled a spartan dearth of progress. Its raised its left arm high above the disorienting complex of roots budding from its scalp with an open hand while its right dive bombed.

Levi cowered in the grim face of the speary extremity, whipping backwards posthaste and diving into the sanctuary of unsullied open dirt. The arrowhead of injurious thorns and barbs harpooned into the soil at Levi’s previous location. The virulent hand and its entirety submerged beneath the trodden plain and shambolic chunks of earth erupted towards every notch on the compass. Every gimped lump spanning across a broad spectrum of size and rough-grained shape. A clod catapulted from its wasted providence and crashed down upon Levi’s back, deflowering the expanse of cobalt with a grotesque tan patch.

He scrambled to his feet as the conductor of this volatile onslaught spoke again.

“Kcul.” He growled.

The tree swung his left arm with spread fingers and hooked tips and Levi bounced off his heels. Eluding the barbarity aimed at his torso by a whopping two inches. Another potent gale assailed him and the flaccid flaps of his shirt and bangs flapped wildly like storm-tossed sails. The tree balled his fists and raised his right arm several feet in the sky. His melon-sized fist stationed in front of the sun’s refulgent image like Icarus challenging the golden behemoth.

Levi flew off his soles and shot the starting gun for an unequaled marathon with stakes higher than the domain of a demiurge in the cosmos. The vexed vessel of boundless chaos refused to take the abasement of forfeited prey as an answer. He brought down a predominant vigorous hand like a judge’s colossal gavel and bashed the ground at Levi’s scurrying heels. A meteoric boom and the stentorian cataract of sound as its acolyte rattled his bones and hastened his feet. Socks akin to scuttles of scorching coals boiling his feet. Heart a frantic dinner bell rung by a starving patriarch. If the male was told that a reneging spaceship became unmoored from its path and spear-dived back to Earth behind him, not for a second would he consider any mistruth behind it.

The male bounded across the barren road like a frightened rabbit and shoved his crimsoned sword back into its weather-worn scabbard, its informal weight battering his thigh with each elongated stride. The tree’s scarlet glunch scalding his back with an untold ire that threatened to blanket the town in vivid, tempestuous flames. At his back came that thunderous moan of the beast’s laggard waddling.

“Drawoc!” The tree exclaimed. “Desiprus I ma yhw?”

Levi couldn’t be bothered to entertain to picaroon. All that dwelled in the pastures of his psyche was running. And running was exactly what he did.

“Namuh, sdneirf drawoc rouy gnirb! Lla meht gnirb! Devrats m’i.”

Running.

Running.

Running.

Was this abandonment?

Did this warrant the detrimental torrent of guilt his action sanctioned?

Did he desert the people he swore to the overlord of these lands that he’d protect?

What would that tree do? What plans did he reel into the limelight in that garbled muddled battery of words and sounds. That auditory ossuary housing the mangled corpses of sentences. A cipher with no answer. One crypt he couldn’t solve even if he was sanctioned a dozen decades zealously dedicated to it.

He could only wonder what the tree saw and intuited from his posthaste escape. As he ran down the remaining leg of that tamped road, what suppositions blighted his ruby-red envenomed vision? Did he merely see a potential victim, ripe for a five-course platter of his wrath? Gazing like a dejected grizzly staring at salmon frolicking and leaping down an impetuous dale? Or did he…nothing at all? Just a man with a sword who made three puny incisions that abysmally failed at crossing the line of being superficial. Mere runty tokens of his piddling presence.

He sprinted down empty streets with his adhered to his scabbard and flinched at the fulminatory moan of the tree’s trundled coggling. The sonorous, stalwart din galloping over roofs both sloped and clad in pastel shingles and those that are most eccentric. Shaped like upside-down bowls and wire-haired with flaxen hay.

Levi ran.

And he ran.

And he ran.

Past appalling heart-stinging craters and locked placid houses, wreathed in an unsung yet all-too-blatant tension, he ran.

His lungs begged him to cease. Each breath a bucket-load of slag funneled into his drudging chest. Every bone inhabiting his frame echoing that selfsame statement.

But all of those complaints and ailments were the machinations cowered as they stared down the barrel of the picture far more mastodonic and ineffable than they ever could’ve conceived. The oracular marrow of that picture lie in that hellacious Museum.

The one that Levi ran to.

Running.

Running.

Running.