Chapters Twilight Sparkle sheathed the enchanted blade and put her hoof on her chin.
“That should have worked,” the alicorn Princess said thoughtfully.
The mint green stallion facing her was still staring eyes agoggle, his white mane tossed from the startle he had received. Despite the cool air, he felt a flush of sweat on his skin. The princess’s grim athame, wielded without warning, suggested the memory of a cruel refrain, ‘along not across’. The residual ache—
“You see,” she interrupted his morbid flashback, “I expected it to cut between dimensions so you could slip through and return home.”
That explained her sudden shout, swearing to send him ‘where he belonged’. He had flinched as the blade passed past him, edging away from the sharp extremity of the ceremonial knife. There may have been some draw pulling him towards a world he had escaped, a clammy suction he had resisted.
“How was that supposed to work?”
“Do you know anything about higher dimensions?”
“Nah, I said I do numbers—” he shrugged towards his cutie mark “—but it’s accounting, not physics.”
“The higher dimensions are empty, but the dimensions we actually use are all crumpled up, and distant locations, such as your home world, are right next door if you can find a way to jump across. Does that make sense?”
“Sorry, no, I don’t follow that.”
“Okay, let’s use the string analogy.” She accepted a length from her butler, who silently bowed as he passed it over. “Say that this string is a one dimensional universe. If you want to get from one end to the other, you have to travel all the way along the string. But—” she wadded the string into a tangled ball “—now you can just jump across. Get it?”
“Maybe? And three dimensional space is crumpled up like that?”
Without a glance in his direction she returned the string to the butler who bowed again and silently departed before she could start her monologue.
“Well, the material universe occupies seven physical dimensions not just three, but yes, and according to a physicist I once knew back in Ponyville, she explained that the seven dimensions are crumpled up in an infinite number of higher dimensions. The more dimensions you fold into, the smaller the universe seems to get, so as the number of folds tends towards infinity, the size (and thus the distance between any two points) tends towards zero. The trick would be making the right cut, and I was expecting the enchanted blade to do that for us. Otherwise you could literally land anywhere .”
“Have you ever done this before?”
“No, I had to give it a try! I’ve never been to the planet Chiron, or else I could just open a normal portal and walk you to your own door myself. If you had stayed human when you came to Equestria it’d probably be a lot easier to track your home down.”
If he had appeared here as a human, he wondered, would the ponies would have welcomed him so warmly? Would they have taken him in to live among them as a friend and equal? He knew that the human culture on Chiron wasn’t evil, it just hadn’t worked for him, nor he for it. But this life did. He had received so much friendship, and found himself able to give it as well, that he truly felt that he was part of the community. After only a short year, Equestria felt so much like home he had come within a hair’s breadth of asking a mare to marry him. Instead, his case of displacement had come to the Princess’s attention.
“Uh, thank you for trying, your Highness.”
Maybe this escape was only temporary.
“Puh-lease, Vingent. With a Queen reigning in Canterlot, and me out of the running for the throne, there is no need to be so formal addressing a purely administrative princess. This is just an individual consultation, not a fancy ceremony with lords and ladies and titles and bullshit. You’ll know when it’s time to be formal: you should see me in a crown .”
“Sorry, uh, Twilight. The ponies of Greenburg really respect you a lot and I kinda picked up on it from them.”
The princess lost focus for a moment, staring dreamily into space.
How could this dorky mare, now zoning out with a half-smile on her face, be one of the great heroes he had heard so much about during his time in Equestria?
“Ah, they’re good ponies,” she said, snapping back into the moment, “I love them all. You picked a great place for a temporary residence.”
“What if it wasn’t t—”
“Now don’t you worry, I’ll have you back home one way or another! We’re done here for today, but I’ll have another spell ready, same pony time, across the same pony channel, tomorrow. Grimmle can show you out.”
As if by magic the butler had reappeared at the door of Twilight’s magic workshop, infinitely dignified despite the dirt in his mane and the basket of potatoes now balanced on his back. Apparently everypony at the tiny castle wore more than one hat.
—
“Don’t you worry,” the stallion piloting the small boat out into the greenish water of the lake boasted. “Even if today didn’t work out, once the Princess puts her mind to something, nothing can stop her!”
That, Vingent reflected, seemed to the the universal opinion. Nothing could deter their princess from her chosen task, and everypony was very proud of her determination. She certainly gave every indication that she was the type of fixer who gets her hooves on a problem and works it to death.
Ha, ha.
Death.
—
“You’re still here!”
Carren had been moping in her front yard when Vingent appeared at her gate. Absently snipping the buds off her rose bushes, she had left the faded blooms drooping where they hung. Dropping clippers, she ran across the yard to talk to him.
“Did she say if it’s impossible?”
“Impossible?” Vingent strove to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I don’t think Twilight knows the word.”
“The Princess ,” she stressed the correction subtily, “is incredible, but does she really need to—”
“She’ll have another spell to try tomorrow. Nothing’s going to stop her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, it just seems inevitable.”
She reared to throw her forelegs around him, held him with more fervency than she had shown on any of their dates. But he stiffened in her embrace – a moment later he pulled back from her.
“Why are you pushing me away?” she cried, eyes threatening to overflow.
“I’ll be gone soon! And if we get any closer it’s just gonna hurt you that much more.”
He turned away to hide his own tears.
“I’m sorry.”
Wilted petals drifted down, covering the clippers and buds.
—
“No luck?” the boss asked.
“Well, I guess it depends whose definition of luck. Do I still have a job? I’m not quite done fixing all your accounts.”
“Of course you do! However long it takes, you’re the best accountant I’ve ever hired. It’ll be a shame to lose you. It’s almost like you have some special talent for this.”
“Funny story about that.”
Cardale had been one of several ponies to mistake Vingent’s cutie mark for a landscaping diagram, and had offered him relevant employment. It was a step up, but having eventually traded in a shovel for a pencil and ledger, the newcomer had provided far more valuable service than that of a landscaper.
They shared a laugh at the memory of that mix-up.
“Er, what about you and—”
“I haven’t done anything dishonorable with your daughter, sir. I swear.”
Carren’s sire didn’t doubt Vingent’s word, to the best of his knowledge their dates had been quite chaste and proper. But only a fortnight before, he could also have sworn that he saw the younger stallion at the jeweler's shop.
The silence grew heavy and awkward.
Both had more to say.
Neither did.
The boat trip up the lake was slow and introspective and Vingent spent the ride staring absently into the distance, reflecting on his time in Equestria. He never could have expected to find himself in such a wonderful place when he—
“Say, what is that, anyway?”
“Eh, what?”
“Your mark, buddy,” the lake pony who was ferrying him today clarified, adding unnecessarily, “mine’s a sculling paddle. Nothin’ I’d rather be doing.”
He patted the handle of the paddle as he slowly swept it back and forth, propelling the small craft from his seat in the stern.
“Mine’s called a t-chart. We use it in double-entry book keeping. Accounting.”
That was one thing that seemed to work the same on this world of talking ponies. Friendship and magic were everywhere , but at the end of a fiscal cycle the books still needed to balance.
“Not a clue what that is.”
The ferry pony belonged to the ‘chuck all your cash in a bowl on the kitchen table’ school of business finance.
“You’re probably happier that way, it’s not the most exciting profession.”
“How you get one like that?”
“I had a job digging ditches. Honestly, I was grateful for that much, and I was doing the numbers on the back of an envelope, trying to figure out if I could afford to buy food and pay rent. The next thing I know, my flank starts glowing. Everypony mistook the mark for layout lines for designing a formal garden and I got offered a job in landscaping. That was an improvement over ditch digging, but now I’m doing the books for a company that employs over a hundred ponies.”
They were drawing near the rocky island where the castle stood.
“Uh, huh.”
His attention was on navigation now, as they threaded the final approach. Around the big rock, through the tunnel, to the jetty beside the castle.
—
“Is it going to be the knife again?” Vingent asked Grimmle as they climbed up the stairs, instead of down. The alarming first attempt at undoing his displacement had taken place in a large cellar below ground.
“I think not, sir.”
“Thank goodness. I wonder where that thing came from.”
“I believe it came from a human world, brought by a visitor a century ago when the Princess was young.”
The butler turned away from the next flight of stairs and gave a single rap on a door before opening it.
“Your eleven o’clock is here, your Highness.”
—
“So tell me about the alpha centaurs of your world. Centaurs are almost as mythical as humans , but they’re typically too mindlessly aggressive to form a stable society with alphas and betas, et cetera .”
“Uh, no, centaurs aren’t real, as far as we know. Alpha Centauri is just the name of the star we orbit, it’s the first star in the constellation Centauri, as seen from a planet called Terra. Of course, I’ve never been to Terra.”
“I see.”
“And Chiron was a wise and peaceful centaur who taught some of our heroes, so we named the planet after him.
“Got it.”
The princess led the way to a huge metal disk hanging on the stone wall of the room – it was nearly a length across, with a slight lip.
“Let’s do this, we’ll have you home, safe and sound, in just a splash!”
From a tall, slender, ewer the princess poured a measure as if she would let it trickle down the shallow plate. Instead of falling to the stone floor, the liquid clung to the disc, dispersing across its surface. By the time it had spread to the raised edges, the water was little more than the thinnest film, barely wetting the pale metal.
She chanted a spell as she poured, and the skin of water agitated as though there were invisible turbulence writhing beneath it. As her words ceased, the churning fading into little waves. Each wave held more water than the Princess’s pitcher could hold, protruding impossibly from the vertical surface. Placidly, they concealed a hungry deepness.
“Can you see anything? Can you see your home?”
To his eyes, everything had grown dim as the tottering pier creaked under his weight, Twilight’s voice was a distant murmur from the far shore, indistinct. The only light, dancing glints of reflection from the rippled surface granting no indication of where they were reflected from.
Between the flashes of light, glimpses of a lake bed, black beneath the water. Vertigo struck – was he looking horizontally at a water-mirror posed on a wall he could no longer see, or down into the fatal depths?
“Vingent? What do you see?”
Ignoring the question he reached a hoof towards the familiar wavelets; the sensation of cold on his fingertips came as a shock. Perspective shifted and he was falling into the waves. Once again the water closed above his head, dark-bright in the moonlight.
Sinking, sinking, into the cold. Somewhere far above the Princess was watching helplessly as he drifted to the bottom, worlds out of reach.
Inevitability.
He deserved this, he let it all go, drowning, suffocating. Had Equestria been a dream, the delusional random misfiring of oxygen starved synapses? The need in his lungs became unbearable, as his hands touched the muddy bottom. There was a sensation of falling as awareness faded…
And then found himself gasping for breath as he sprawled, hooves scrabbling on sunlit stone. Light streamed in through the window and litres of water poured from his coat and mane. He was soaked, chilled to the bone, shivering and panting.
“A towel, Princess?”
There was something preternatural about Grimmle’s almost prescient readiness for every eventuality. Vingent watched silently from the floor as the butler first applied a towel to his mistress’s coat where she had been splashed when Vingent emerged from the drowning depths.
“Thank you,” he said, a moment later, staggering up to his hooves and accepting a towel.
“But of course, sir.”
The towel had been warmed, a great comfort after the chill submersion.
“Sir will find hot tea in the chamber adjacent, if sir steps right this way.”
He did, and he did.
Brewed strong, three sugars and a touch of brandy. Perfect.
The Princess had preceded him here and paused between bites of cake.
“Well, I guess that didn’t go so well, did it? Are you alright?”
“I think so.”
Between the towel and the tea, at least he was warming up.
“Do we have to keep trying this?”
“Nah, that was messy. I’ve got a surefire potion I’ll whip up for tomorrow. There’s an entirely different route we could maybe try if my partner were home—”
“I can wait.”
“—but he’s off sitting by an old enemy’s deathbed.”
“To make sure the enemy really dies?”
“No, nothing like that , they’ve made their peace.”
The stallion who could look forward to a lifetime of the princess’s laughter was a lucky fellow.
“Apparently,” she said as her merriment moderated, “they are now having a very small symposium on mental health pharmomancy.”
“Ugh, that really would kill me!”
“Oh, no, it’s totally fascinating, you see—”
Vingent was glad to accept the butler’s offer of escape. Back at the small jetty his ride waited and they were soon out on the freedom of the lake again.
—
“What if I went with you? To your world?”
“No, Carren, no, that would be the worst thing possible!”
“Oh? Are you married after all? You told me you were always single.”
“No… uh, yes, I mean. Yes, I am.”
“What’s your wife’s name?”
“Uh—”
“When was your first foal born?”
“Well—”
“Merde .”
He winced. Carren never swore.
“You’re not fooling me, Vin. Do you hate me now or something?”
“No! You know I don’t!”
It wasn’t his raised voice that made her look like she’d been hit.
“You know that I…”
He couldn't finish.
“You’re going to have to find a way to go on without me. And I don’t want to do anything to make it even harder for you to do that.”
“What if we ran away together? Equestria isn’t the whole world, we could find somewhere to hide.”
If he was honest with himself, the thought had a lot of appeal. But what kind of life could they have, on the run in a world where he was an utter stranger? He was a bookkeeper, not an adventurer. Carren had been his first good friend in this world –really, any world– and nearly more. He wanted only the best for her. Somehow, being a fugitive was not quite what he had hoped to offer her. Princess Twilight had been cordial, friendly even, in her efforts to rid the land of an intruder. But if he fled the shoe might be on another hoof and he really didn’t doubt the Princess’s ability to track them down. She was, after all, widely considered to be unstoppable.
“Stay with me tonight.”
Carren had found this final strength in her despair.
“But—” he tried to protest.
Her misery was irrefusable.
“Even if we don’t do anything that you think would be wrong, just stay.”
The morning of Vingent’s last day came far too early.
“I don’t want you to go, I don’t want you to go away, is that selfish of me?”
“No, it’s not. This is just so out of control, I’m sorry.”
For a long moment they held each other. There was nothing more to say, no tears left.
“Remember, if she doesn’t send you back to your world, you still have me.”
And if she did, well then he didn’t.
—
“The books are balanced, sir, every account, down to a hundredth of a bit.”
Vingent had made full use of the delays resulting from failed return spells to finish the major project he had been hired for. Years of sloppy ledgers had been set right, and just in time. He needed to head down to the ferry dock now.
“You’re leaving behind some big horse shoes to fill, y’know. This could a permanent position.”
“Anypony with an associate’s degree in business accounting should have no problem keeping it all in order. It should have never gotten so mixed up.”
“I didn’t ask you before, but in your professional opinion, was Barker robbing me?”
Vingent hesitated to speak ill about an old diamond dog he’d never met, and who wasn’t here to defend himself. But there was no point covering for his predecessor either, he owed the boss an honest appraisal to the best of his ability.
“No, sir. I never met him, but judging from the books, he was either incompetent or lazy. I think if he was embezzling, he’d have kept the books better, with just a few false entries. You’d probably have been better off than the mess you had when you promoted me.”
“Thank you for all your hard work. I hate to lose you from the fam– eh, firm.”
“I hate to go, sir.”
Before Cardale could say anything more, Vingent raised his hoof and they shook.
Whatever the older stallion was going to say was lost.
“Good luck. It’s been a pleasure knowing you, son.”
—
“I’ll be waitin’,” the ferry pony said as his passenger disembarked onto the stone jetty, “just in case.”
“No, the Princess is sure this one will work. You might as well head back to shore.”
There was an unexpected sound of defeat in his voice.
“Uh, hey, are you okay?”
“No, I’m not. Here.”
The ferry stallion caught the thrown wallet.
“You already paid me!” he said in surprise.
“I won’t need that anymore. Thank you for the ride, Charon.”
“No, it’s Charlie, pone, my name’s Charlie Onne. I’ll hold onto this for you!”
He waved the wallet at a retreating back.
—
Vingent approached the heavy iron and oak door.
For long minutes he stood there, his heart pounding. What if he fled, took Carren, and vanished into lands ruled by another species? Could they plead sanctuary, would there be any chance of hiding from an unstoppable alicorn?
Old injuries ached as he raised a foreleg to knock; as always the door swang open before his hoof made contact. Grimmle stood impassively behind, as if he were part of the very stones of the tower.
Grasping for any delay, he asked “How long have you worked here?”
“My father, and his fathers before him, have served the Barons of the Rock since before Princesses Celestia and Luna ascended to their thrones.”
He solemnly made an obscure gesture of reverence when he spoke the previous rulers’ names. Ponies had sworn up and down that the reigning Princesses preceding the current Queen had ruled Equestria for eleven centuries. After the wonders he had seen he could hardly doubt, and he mirrored the butler’s obeisance.
“Of the Rock? I guess I thought the Baron was the Baron of Greenburg, or something.”
“Sir stands at the door of Rock Keep. His Lordship, the Baron of the Rock, is away on a mission of mercy, but the Lady of the Rock, Princess Twilight, will see you now.”
Lady of the Rock; her style had a nice sound to it. Vingent regretted that he would never get the chance to swear fealty to the Baron and his Lady.
“If sir will please follow me.”
—
Sitting at the bar in The Burned Mark, Greenburg’s quietest drinking establishment, Cardale presided over a collection of empties and peered listlessly out the window. Far across the lake he could just make out The Rock island, and the keep tower rising above it.
Would clouds and lightning gather around that edifice, or would rays of light spring effulgently forth?
Or would there be nothing at all to indicate when his daughter’s chance at happiness was snatched away?
“Take the filly and run,” he had almost said. Should have said.
He could have bought them enough time to make it across the border. If the Princess needed Vingent out of Equestria for whatever reason, why wouldn’t a distant land be good enough? What danger could a lad like him pose?
Cardale’s trade partner, Prowler Fatts in far away Abyssinia, could have employed Vingent. A good bookkeeper is always in demand and Cardale’s letter of recommendation would carry suitable weight with anycreature who did business with him. Prowler was a good bet because he was a bit of a noble and had a royal grant from the Abyssinian king. Enough influence to slow down any effort at extradition. If any such effort even came.
Coins hit the bar top.
“Another double.”
—
Vingent looked at the tiny flask of potion as if it were some ill viaticum.
Slightly winded from the steps, he paused before asking, “Are you sure—”
“That this will work? One hundred percent!” Twilight said brightly.
How cheerful she looked about it. If only she could understand, if only he could say, no .
“Sorry for wasting your time with those first two attempts. Even the Element of Magic is always learning and that means always trying new spells.”
There was no point in delaying any further and he drank it down, not even surprised that the flavor was familiar.
Instead of intestinal pain this started with a sudden sense of the unreality, the impossibility, of his situation. The planet Chiron was a rough, industrial, world. Utterly unlike the glorious scenery he could see from here atop the tower. There were no oak forest surrounded lakes with stone castles on mysterious islands, there was no magic. And who on Chiron would believe a tale of friendly, talking, colourful ponies? Not that telling anyone about them would be an option.
If only he could have just told the Princess.
But, satisfied with a job well done, Twilight waited for the potion to work its magic and return the wayward human.
Vingent was already fading out and his reaction was not what she expected. The tears running down his muzzle didn’t look like any sort of a homecoming.
“Vingent, what’s wrong?”
Confused, maybe even alarmed, she rushed to his side to ask the crucial question, too late.
“Don’t you want to return to your real life?”
“It didn’t work, it didn’t work!” he wailed, too distraught to answer directly.
“What didn’t work? The potion is working, it just takes a moment.”
Equestria had seemed like Heaven when he found himself meeting ponies and making friends and almost—
But now where he was certainly going…
“When I cut my wrists, it didn’t work, they saved me. When I tried to drown myself, it didn’t work, I chickened out. But, third try’s the charm. I got some poison.”
Twilight’s eyes were wide in horror and new understanding.
“Vingent?”
The connection was breaking
He was locked into the ruin of a self-ended life
The dark confines of a coffin
“Princess, I killed myself. ”
“.ʇlɘƨγm bɘlliʞ I ,ƨƨɘɔniɿꟼ ”
niʇʇoɔ ɒ ʇo ƨɘniʇnoɔ ʞɿɒb ɘʜT
ɘʇil bɘbnɘ-ʇlɘƨ ɒ ʇo niυɿ ɘʜt otni bɘʞɔol ƨɒw ɘH
ϱnimɿoʇɘɿ ƨɒw noitɔɘnnoɔ ɘʜT
“⸮tnɘϱniV”
In darkness beyond darkness, the black depths of a suicide’s lonely grave, a sense of noisome fœtor. For an instant awareness is forced shudderingly back into the long-cold remains of a body cast off in despair.
Rose coloured magic follows a trail of tears between worlds, the instant rewinds itself, events unrolling in reverse until once more he stands on the summit of a sunny tower, one hoof again holding the potion. The tiny vessel is full, undrunk.
Time flows correctly again and momentum carries the cursed nostrum to his lips.
There is terror in his eyes as the contents tip fatally towards his mouth.
THWAK
Twilight smacked the vial away from Vingent with a swift wing after reversing the crucial seconds – it flashed in the sunlight, sailing over the parapet.
tinkle
Crystal shatters harmlessly against flags far below.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” she demanded.
“Princess?”
He was half numb with shock, the horror of experiencing his own dead body from within the semi-liquescent decay.
“Why in Tartarus didn’t you bucking say something?”
She could have just shaken him from frustration.
“But you were trying so hard to get rid of me.”
“I have been busting my purple ass to figure this out because I just assumed that you would want to go home. I have not been trying to quote Get. Rid. Of. You. end-quote.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop bucking apologizing,” she grumbled, “I’m the one who damn near murdered you.”
“I’m— I—”
He caught himself before apologizing again; almost apologized for that.
“Ok.” She was starting to analyze possibilities. “If you couldn’t make yourself speak up to me, why didn’t you petition Queen Dusk when you went to Canterlot last week? She could have granted you full citizenship. Even I would have gotten the hint.”
“I didn’t think of that and I didn’t want to do anything that might reflect poorly on you, like begging her Majesty to stop you. All the ponies of the Green think you’re the greatest. And I do too.”
“Like sending a pony to his death is going to reflect any better!”
“Nopony would have ever known.”
“Humph. And when I figured it out? Like I just did? That’s something I do, I figure things out. I would have known. If talking to me or the Queen was too hard to do, what if you pulled a runner instead of showing up today?”
“I thought about it. I know you could have caught up with us.”
“And then I would have wanted answers and we would have gotten down to brass tacks and figured out what was what. But what makes you think I would bother to chase you down?”
“Nothing can stop you, Princess.”
“You say that like it’s a bucking good thing. Listen, I’m sorry for being a little salty, Vingent, but I really hate killing ponies.”
“You– you really thought you were helping me?”
“Yes! I was possibly a little heavy hooved and myopic about it, but, yes , I only wanted to help. Not harm. But all you needed to do is say ‘I don’t want this’ and we would have talked and we would have figured everything out.”
“I thought you were trying to protect Equestria from me. I thought you still viewed me as a human.”
“Tell ya a secret, colt. I’m not afraid of humans.”
Princess Twilight winked, above a warm, but slightly mysterious, half smile.
“I’m fine with humans, that’s why I was so enthusiastic about trying to help a human, whom I thought was in need of help. Anyway, the man you once were is dead, Vingent. For the rest of your life, this is your home. You belong to Equestria, my little pony.”
The tears, now, were tears of joy.
—
Vingent was still half-dazed by his change of fortune as he tread the walk to a small white house.
Like a dreamer he climbed the porch steps, no longer afraid that he might yet wake to his old life, or his old death.
Carren’s front door wasn’t locked.
“Honey, I’m home.”
Us
Vingent had said that the princess could surely catch up with ‘us’.
Twilight had noticed the use of a collective pronoun and said nothing at the time. Events were moving too fast to delve into an intriguing choice of words.
But now, as she stood on the outer wall watching a hired punt ferry him back to Greenburg on the far shore, she wondered who the other half of his ‘us’ might be. Lucky mare! He was a good pony; Twilight would send word to the capitol and get a citizenship application fast tracked for him. Vingent would be a fully eligible marriage candidate for whomever. (Some discrete inquiry would reveal the specifics.) For now, all she could do was give thanks that she had not destroyed a relationship as well as a life.
Spreading her wings in the sunset light, she lifted her voice in prayer.
“Holy Equus, I thank you for your hoof of grace guiding me today. Without you, I might have made a terrible mistake. No, that’s not right. I did make a terrible mistake, forgive me. In fact, it took me three tries to really mess things up. But with your power upon me, I was able to repair the harm, praise be to your name. I plead your blessing on Vingent and his beloved, I ask you grant them long life and happiness together.”
A whisper of feathers in the air above told her that her own beloved had returned home.
Us, she thought again, with a hint of almost divine amusement.
“Oh, and grant them fertility, too, I pray.”
