One Last Day

Chapters

Beginning of the End
Party's Over
Darkness Before Dawn
Daybreak
Lacuna

Beginning of the End

The streets of Upper Canterlot were mostly quiet that evening. The sky was as clear as the city was, and the majority of any noise came from the nearby palace as Princess Luna held her birthday celebration.

But that was the surface. Below any basement, deep in the caverns of Mount Canterlot, in a certain tunnel, in a certain enclave, muffled cries of a mare that had the misfortune to meet a certain criteria could be heard.

The mare was bound and gagged in the middle of a summoning circle of fresh blood. The coppery taste filled her nostrils as she tried to scream, tried to plead, tried to beg. The figures around her had little interest in what she thought, however. They were equines, like herself, though their exact strain and faces were obscured by crimson red cloaks and bodies wrapped in gauze. She didn’t know how many there were, but that was far from the first thing on her mind at that moment.

The first thing on her mind was the unicorn slowly approaching her with a knife in his or her magical grip. Each step rang in her ears like a clap of thunder. Each breath felt harder and harder to draw in as her chest seized up in terror. The cloaked stranger came to a halt just outside the circle, but the knife continued on, making a dive right for her throat. She screwed her eyes shut and let loose the loudest scream she could, not expecting to open them or hear her own voice ever again.

To her great surprise, she didn’t feel the cold of steel slice through her flesh or the taste of blood as she drowned in it. She cautiously opened her eyes to see that the knife had been stopped a hairsbreadth away from her throat by a black hand that had arisen out of the floor before her.

“That’s enough, ladies and gentlecolts, that’s enough,” a smooth, distinctly male voice echoed around the room from right next to her ear. “You have my attention.”

Several gasps were audible from around the room as the hand extended to show and arm, then a shoulder, then much more as the owner seemingly pulled itsself up from the ground. It looked like a bipedal shadow, though she couldn’t see much from her vantage point on the cold floor.

“My lord,” the pony who had just tried to kill her gasped out, dropping into a bow. The voice was definitely female. “The Children of Silence humbly welcome you to the world of Equis.”

“I know you do,” the entity purred. “I quite like the setup you’ve got here. Highborn unicorn virgin hogtied like a pig, magic candles that glow with black light… you’ve really got this whole cult thing down.”

“It is all as was instructed to us by the Codex of Unspoken Truth, your lordship,” the apparent leader of the cult said with pride.

“Ah, yes, that old thing,” the entity said with disinterest. “Tell me, mortal, do you know what exactly the unspoken truth is?”

“My lord?” she said, confused.

“The unspoken truth is that you didn’t have to do any of this shit. I am omnipresent. I could have shown up at any time,” the thing explained with a hint of amusement.

“B-but why did you have us do all of this, then?” the leader sputtered. “Why have us kidnap a highborn mare? Why tell us to sacrifice her in your name on this specific day on this specific year if you were only going to stop us?”

A cackle rang throughout the cavern, a manic laugh that could only be likened to a fire, taking all joy nearby and destroying it to fuel itself. “To see if you would do it, of course! It was all just one of my little games, mortal.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. One of your games,” the leader said, though it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself.

“And now that you’ve won my game,” the entity purred, “you all want your reward, do you not?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said excitedly, “we have longed for the day of your coming, and we are prepared to receive your blessing!”

It chuckled darkly. “I’m glad you’re at least enthusiastic about your prize. For winning my game of testing to see if you would tie up and murder a young mare who has yet to experience the glory of sex because an old book told you to, I reward you with… a painless death by atomization.”

Not another word was spoken before all the figures in the young mare’s field of vision collapsed. Their gauze and cloaks just dropped to the floor, lifeless and without owners in newly formed piles of dust.

“Mortals can be such idiots,” it chuckled to itself again. “Worshipping an elder god never works out for the worshipper. One would think that they would understand that after a while.”

The young mare suddenly found herself face-to-face with the thing, though that wasn’t entirely accurate. It had no face, just a head-shaped empty void where one should have been.

“Now, as for you,” it cooed. “Oh, I’m somewhat disappointed in their choice of sacrifice. Such a luxurious white coat, such a flowing, golden mane…” She felt its cold, lifeless hands comb through her mane, making her seize up and whimper. “It would have been such a shame if they made you a corpse on my account.”

Her gag suddenly fell from her mouth and her bonds fell away. She looked over herself in shock to see that they had been evenly split in two by some unknown force.

“Get going,” the thing said encouragingly. “Get going and… give the surface a message.” Its voice suddenly turned coldly menacing as it whispered in her ear, “The end is coming, and the game has just begun.”

Terror washed over her once again as she scrambled to her feet and galloped away as the thing’s terrible laughter rang in her ears, the sound threatening to follow her to her grave.

Twilight surveyed the ballroom for the thirty-sixth time that evening - she briefly contemplated whether keeping count of that was weird before getting back to the task at hoof. Nopony suspicious looking yet; just the usual mix of nobles, businesscolts, socialites, and other assorted members of the bourgeoisie talking over wine but staying sober enough not to make foals of themselves. The band’s brand of classical music rang throughout the large chamber – Octavia was playing especially beautifully that night. Twilight would have to compliment her performance after the party was over. If it ended well, anyway.

The young unicorn’s eyes found their way once again to the table where her friends were sitting. They were much more well-behaved than they had been at the Gala, thank Celestia, and they all sat together at a table toward the center of the room. So far they seemed to be following her instructions to stay sober, which she was thankful for. They all seemed to be laughing and having fun; even Fluttershy seemed to be giggling her tail off. All except Pinkie Pie, whose laughter was forced at best. Twilight’s brows furrowed in worry. Pinkie was still twitchy and still casting her gaze this way and that, as if anypony in the room could be a changeling ready to sink their fangs into her neck. What worried her most is that could very well be the case, for all she knew.

“Why don’t you go join them?”

Twilight snapped from her thoughts and looked over to Celestia, who she was sitting next to at the head of the ballroom along with Luna. Luna was busy accepting congratulations for her birthday from various partygoers at that moment, though. “Princess?”

“You’ve done everything you can,” she assured. “You and all your friends are wearing the Elements of Harmony and the guards have been put on high alert; go and enjoy yourself. If there truly is an impending disaster that the Elements can take care of, you’re all more than ready for it this time.”

Twilight sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know, Princess. Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense has been going haywire all day, and she pinkie swears that something big is going to happen tonight. If it’s so bad that Pinkie Pie is afraid…” Everypony should be scared for their lives. That’s what she wanted to say, at least, but she didn’t want to come across as overly dramatic. Hyperbole would not help her case, even if it felt accurate.

Celestia leaned down and nuzzled their muzzles together. “I’ll keep a special eye on all the guests in your place. Now go and have fun with your friends. That’s an order.”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile and nuzzle back. “Of course, Princess. Thank you.” She got back on all fours and began trotting through the crowd over to her friend’s table, getting several compliments for her tiara from various ponies. She gave token thanks to each of them but didn’t stay to chat. It wasn’t long before she had arrived at her destination, a sixth seat empty and reserved just for her between Pinkie Pie and Rarity. “How’s everypony doing?” she asked as she took her seat.

“Doin’ just fine, Twilight,” Applejack replied. “Not too fond of the hoity toity folks, food, and drink, but Ah guess it ain’t so bad.”

Rarity let out a small huff. “I suppose ‘ain’t so bad’ is an improvement over your outright disdain of high culture at the Gala last year.”

Rainbow Dash let out a snort. “And who was it that shook cake all over a prince at the Gala? Pretty sure it wasn’t AJ.”

“He wasn’t part of high culture, he was on a high horse, and I feel perfectly justified in kicking him off of it,” Rarity said, closing her eyes and sticking her nose up like she tended to do when getting defensive.

“I personally don’t mind the food or drink,” Fluttershy piped up with a content smile. “Don’t get me wrong, Angel is a good cook, but nothing can compare to professionals.” She and Rarity exchanged smiles that said “Glad somepony around here has taste,” and “Why, thank you.”

“Forget the food, did you see the Wonderbolts’ performance earlier?” Rainbow Dash said, immediately brightening up as if the mere thought of them made life worth living. “It was so awesome!”

“It was darn impressive,” Applejack admitted.

Rainbow Dash paused for a second before looking hopefully at Twilight. “Are you sure I can’t go and talk to them? Just for a little bit?”

Twilight sighed and shook her head. “No, for the last time. We have to be in sight of each other at all times so that we’re ready when-”

“Ready when what?” Rainbow Dash cut in. “We don’t even know if whatever emergency is going to come up is something we can do anything about!”

“It’s better to be safe than sorry, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity scolded. “I admit that being confined to this table is a bit draconian, but we’ve got food and friends right here, and that should be enough for tonight.”

“Said the mare who earlier was whining about how Fancy Pants was here and tried to sneak away,” Dash deadpanned.

Rarity giggled nervously. “Now now, Rainbow Dash, we’re supposed to be the Elements of Harmony, not the Elements of Snide Remarks,” she deflected.

“Or the Elements of Denial,” Rainbow Dash shot back.

“Or the Elements of Senseless Bickerin’,” Applejack cut in, looking at the high-class unicorn and athletic pegasus in turn, just daring them to continue fighting. Twilight gave her a little look of thanks, and Applejack returned by tipping her hat.

“Look, I’m sorry girls,” Twilight sighed, “but Pinkie Pie’s Pinkie Sense is never wrong, as I learned the hard way. Whatever happens, we need to be here in case the Elements of Harmony can fix it or, hopefully, prevent it.”

“I-I don’t think that’s going to be enough, Twi,” Pinkie Pie piped up nervously. Twilight looked over at the pink pony, and she looked like a nervous wreck. She was hanging onto her chair with her forelegs to keep from twitching right out of it. “This is bad. Very, very, very bad. Like, all sugar in the world being stolen bad.”

“You look like you downed a whole bucket of the stuff before you came here,” Applejack said, looking at her fellow earth pony worriedly. “Twilight, Ah think it might be a good idea to take Pinkie Pie home. Ah’m beginnin’ to think this isn’t her Pinkie Sense.”

“I’m not sick!” Pinkie Pie protested, throwing her forelegs up and slamming them on the table, drawing a few glances from nearby patrons. “I know what I’m feeling right now is my Pinkie Sense and we are in for a doozy!”

“Calm down, calm down; it’s almost midnight. If anything’s going to go wrong, there’s not much time left for it to happen before the party is over,” Twilight tried to assure the shaken Pinkie Pie. She knew it was in vain, but she should at least make the attempt.

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” Fluttershy joined in, reaching over and putting her hoof atop Pinkie’s. “Nightmare Moon is gone and Discord is back in stone.”

“Yeah, if we could deal with them, we can deal with anyone!” Rainbow Dash said, pumping her hoof up into the air before placing it on top of Fluttershy’s.

“We can deal with anything as long as we’ve got each other, right?” Rarity said with a smile, putting her slipper-clad hoof atop the others.

“Darn tootin’! Whatever’s coming, we’ll send it packin’, just like we always do,” Applejack said, putting her hoof in as well.

Twilight was tempted to remind them that those were both very, very narrow victories that could have easily gone the other way, but she didn’t want to ruin the sentiment. She just joined her hoof with all the others, and with a forced smile that hid how worried she was said, “Right. We can handle anything that the world can throw at us.”

Pinkie Pie, as shaky and twitchy as she was, cracked the first smile she had that entire day. It was a shadow of her normal huge face-eating grins, but it was something. She simply nodded in agreement and pulled the two ponies next to her – Twilight and Applejack – into a tight hug. Though a bit taken aback, the two shared a glance and pulled the pony next to them into it until all six of them were in a chain of hugs. For just a few moments, Twilight’s worries dissipated. She had her friends; all was right with the world.

Nightwatch repressed a sigh as he glanced at the clock. Still a half hour until his shift was up. His post had been just as boring as he’d expected it to be. Not that normal guard duty was particularly thrilling, but just saying “Name?” and checking the guest list before letting them onto the castle grounds over and over again was somehow just more grating. It was no job for a guard. He had no idea why they’d been put on high alert, but he was fairly sure that the usual fare of unicorn nobles couldn’t take on two alicorns.

His boredom was momentarily lifted when he saw an… unusual pony trot up to him. The pony was wrapped head to hoof in gauze. From what the guard could see, anyway. He had a black cloak draped over him with a very low cowl. The poor pony’s tail and mane also seemed to be completely missing.

“Sorry about the odd attire,” the pony apologized as he walked up to the guard. His voice was very smooth, and his tone contrite and somewhat embarrassed. “I had a disagreement with one of my fire spells a week ago, and only just got out of the hospital. I didn’t want to burden the eyes of everyone here with my scarred visage; quite frankly my coat looks like melted wax.”

Nightwatch couldn’t help but lower his ears a bit in sympathy. “Very sorry to hear sir, but I need your name before you can enter.”

The strange pony tilted his head. “Name? Why would you need that? Is there a list?”

Nightwatch opened his mouth to respond, but suddenly found his mind to be totally blank. Was there a list? He looked down at the podium in front of him. There was no list there to speak of. “I… guess there isn’t.”

“I thought so,” the mysterious colt said with an odd touch of smugness. “I was told that this was a public function, so I can’t imagine why you’d need my name.”

“Sorry sir, my mistake,” Nightwatch said with a bow. “Go right inside, and enjoy your night.”

The colt nodded and said back, “Enjoy the rest of your life.” Nightwatch couldn’t help but blink at the odd parting words as the strange pony trotted into the castle grounds, but he thought nothing of it.

After their tender moment of pure schmaltz, the six friends had begun enjoying the party a lot more as they just talked. Much to Twilight’s relief, Pinkie Pie had once again started smiling and giggling, though she was still twitching and spasming here and there. Even then, she’d mostly just taken to listening to the others talk.

“And I said, ‘Dear, I’m sure you’re a very nice colt, but I am so out of your league that I didn’t even know your league existed until now,’” Rarity said, finishing her story.

“That was a bit mean, don’t you think, Rarity?” Fluttershy asked.

“Well, it was true!” Rarity defended. “I’m quickly making my way through the fashion world straight into the ranks of the elite; I just can’t be seen dating anypony.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “You really won’t settle for anything less than getting in Fancy Pant’s pants, will you?”

From how red Rarity’s face went, it looked like all the blood in her body had been shot into her cheeks with a cannon. “I-I would do no such thing! He’s a married colt!”

Rainbow Dash burst out laughing and started flapping her wings, presumably at how flustered the unicorn was.

“So, who exactly would you want yourself seen with, Rarity?” Applejack cut in, trying to defuse an argument.

“Well…” Rarity paused and brought a hoof to her chin, her blush slowly fading. “I suppose somepony with flair and style, but wasn’t high and mighty about it at all. I’ve seen far too many ponies in the Canterlot fashion scene like that. The less they’re aware of how much poise and grace they have, the better. Oh, and can’t forget being kind, loving, a gentlecolt, not afraid to do some nice things for me unlike a certain prince I could mention… things like that.” She blinked and asked back, “What about you, Applejack?”

“Me?” Applejack asked, raising an eyebrow and putting a hoof to her chest. “Ah never really thought about it. Ah guess somepony Ah could come home to after a long day workin’ the farm and just relax with.”

“Not somepony that could work the farm with you?” Rainbow Dash asked, her giggle fit dying down.

“Well, yeah, if the workload got too much Ah’d expect them to come and help a bit, but you know how the old saying goes: never mix business with pleasure,” Applejack recited. “Ah guess Ah just want my love life and my work life as far away from each other as possible.” She smirked a bit and asked, “And you, Dashie?”

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “I haven’t thought much about it either, but I guess somepony who could keep up with me.” She paused and grew a smirk of her own. “I’ve got a lot of energy to vent, and I’m not gonna stop for anypony who couldn’t handle it.” Fluttershy quickly grew a blush to rival the one Rarity had.

“Says the pegasus who takes four naps a day,” Twilight teased.

Rainbow Dash snorted. “Yeah, whatever. What about you, Miss Star Student?”

Twilight opened her mouth to respond and paused. “I… don’t really know. I suppose somepony who I could talk to who would understand me.”

“We understand you, Twilight,” Rarity said.

“Most a’ the time,” Applejack corrected.

“I know, I know, that’s a very broad requirement,” Twilight admitted. “I just really don’t know what I want.” She paused a few seconds more before adding, “I guess somepony I could look up to. Somepony I could trust never to hurt me. Somepony more dependable than any pony I know.”

Rarity sighed wistfully. “Don’t we all, dear?”

Rainbow Dash lightly elbowed Fluttershy. “What about you, Fluttershy? What kind of colt do you want?”

Fluttershy could have easily been mistaken for a deer in headlights at that moment. “Uh, well, um… I guess somepony who’s… nice?” She moaned a bit. “I don’t really know. Just… well, not really sure it has to be a colt…”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes just about fell out of her head. “Wow, Fluttershy, I never pegged you as a, well, um…” She cleared her throat, refusing to speak the homophobic slur that was on everypony’s mind.

“Filly fooler, I know,” Fluttershy said, her face completely red. “Don’t really see why everypony has to pick either colts or mares; both can be very nice.”

“Guess I never really thought about it that way,” Rainbow Dash said, rubbing the back of her head nervously. Twilight could detect a hint of a blush on her blue face, but she decided not to comment.

“Personally I don’t think I’d mind a mare either.” Rarity huffed. “At this point, I’m not sure there’s a dependable stallion left in Equestria.”

“No mare ever really caught my eye, but then again, no colt really has either,” Applejack said with a shrug.

Twilight smiled over at the blushing pegasus. “We’re your friends, Fluttershy. Of course we aren’t going to judge you for who you date.”

Fluttershy gave an appreciative smile back, though her blush didn’t lessen.

“What about you, Twi?” Rainbow Dash asked with a smirk. “You ever find your stable door swinging that way?”

Twilight could feel a light touch of heat find her face. “I’ve never really thought much about love before, let alone dating, so I can’t really say… what about you, Rainbow Dash?”

The pegasus’ smirk quickly left her face and was replaced by a very fake, very nervous smile. “I-I haven’t really thought about it,” she said as her face turned bright red.

A wide grin spread across Applejack’s face. “Oh really? Then why is your face redder than my brother’s coat, RD?”

“I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rainbow Dash said, her blush deepening.

Applejack leaned in with an elbow on the table. “Ah reckon you have thought about it, and you have a lot.”

“Really, there’s no use denying it, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity joined in with a smug smirk.

The pegasus was cornered, and she knew it. Her eyes darted between the farmpony and the fashionista before she finally threw her hooves up in surrender. “Fine, fine! If it’ll get you off my plot, I admit it: I like mares. Like, way more than colts.”

“Aha! I knew it!” Rarity said triumphantly, pointing a hoof at Rainbow Dash.

“It’s not polite to point, Rarity,” Fluttershy said quietly. Rarity paused and put her hoof down with a clearing of her throat, sending the yellow pegasus a silent look of thanks.

“What happened to not judging ponies for who they date?” Rainbow Dash said, looking around the table.

“Rainbow, we’re teasin’, not judgin’,” Applejack snickered. “The look on your face was worth an entire season worth of zap apples.”

Pinkie Pie giggled manically, kicking her hind legs. “You have to admit, Dashie, it was really fu-”

Pinkie Pie was abruptly cut off with a loud thud. Twilight looked over to find the pink earth pony sprawled over on the floor. Her legs floundered and kicked like beached fish. Her tail flailed and lashed like an enraged snake. Every single muscle in her body writhed as if she were being electrocuted. The look in her eyes was of pure panic as control of her body was completely wrenched from her. Tears started welling up in her eyes as she started screaming, “It’s here! It’s here, it’s here, it’s here!”

Twilight could feel all the eyes in the ballroom turn in their direction, but she didn’t particularly care. She wheeled around in her seat to look at the princesses, who looked like they already had things under control. Celestia and Luna both nodded at the guards as they sealed the exits.

The young unicorn hopped up onto the table and scanned the crowd. Some were shouting for medical attention and gathering around Pinkie. All eyes were on Pinkie… for every pony except one. A tailless pony wrapped in bandages and with a low-cowl cloak draped over him. He was close to a door and was walking away from it, so presumably he had just entered. He should have at least noticed the door get barred behind him, but he didn’t even acknowledge it. He didn’t acknowledge anything. He just waded through the crowd as if it didn’t even exist.

It seemed Celestia had noticed the strange stallion as well. She whispered to a guard and motioned toward him. Within seconds, several guards had surrounded him. She couldn’t hear what they were saying above everything else, but he didn’t seem to budge. One of the guards looked angry and tried to cuff him, but as soon as he did the bandages and the cloak dropped to the ground, completely empty.

“Well, bang goes the sneaky approach!” a male voice reverberated throughout the chamber. “I guess I should’ve done this from the beginning, but hey, what’s non-life without a bit of a challenge every now and then?”

A figure… ‘appeared’ didn’t seem like the proper word to Twilight. It was more that it slithered up from the floor in the center of the room. It was a creature not even remotely like anything Twilight had ever seen. It walked on its hind legs and its forelegs just rested at its sides. Its head was round as well as its very small ears. It had no facial features to speak of. Its skin was completely black… if it could even be called skin. No, the texture wasn’t right. It was like somepony had taken a shadow and given it shape, and made it as dark as the blackest abyss. And yet something was still amiss. All unicorns had the ability to feel the magic in the air at least to a subconscious extent. She felt no magic in this being. To her magical senses, it felt like a gaping wound in the very fabric of magic.

“Great party, I must say,” the voice said, coming from the black creature as he turned to the princesses. “Too many stuck-up asses, but hey, the music is great, the atmosphere is nice, and it’s a great night out. I really must commend you on raising the moon on such a wondrous night as this, Princess Luna.” He walked casually over to a table and scooped up a glass of wine, the ponies at that table scattering. “To the exiled princess come home, forgiven of her crime for nearly killing everyone on the planet a scant thousand years ago!” He tipped the glass back roughly only for the wine to phase completely through him and spill onto the floor.

Twilight briefly contemplated how the creature being able to pick up the glass and yet the wine passed through him made absolutely no sense before she shook her head. “Let’s go, girls! Get in formation!” She heard her friends quickly jump out of their chairs and line up behind her; even Pinkie Pie, whose seizure was over since the threat had become apparent.

“Hm?” The creature lazily swung around to face the six mares. “Oh, right, you’re here. I would be surprised, but I already knew that. Go ahead and use those Elements of yours; I’ve got time,” he said with a dismissive wave of his foreleg.

Twilight only smiled. “I have to warn you; the last evildoer who said that didn’t last long! Let’s show him what happened to him, ladies!” The room began to glow brightly as her five friends charged up their elements. She quickly felt herself levitate off the table as the raw force of magic flowed through her mortal frame. She closed her eyes, letting the magic sink in, before opening them wide and aiming all her power directly at the intruder.

She saw the rainbow stream of the Elements’ power connect and begin to swirl around him in a twister of color. She slowly floated back down as the torrent of magic ebbed away. She sighed and let out a soft smile. For once, a crisis was actually averted instead of ended.

Twilight was about to turn around and congratulate her friends when something went… wrong. The rainbow stream wrapping itself around the intruder like a snake started to turn gray. It gradually lost its color before it turned to black. Without any warning, it slowed down and simply dissipated – and the intruder was exactly where he was, still holding his empty glass.

“Bravo, ladies, very nice light show. I truly feel welcome here,” he said to Twi and her friends before he started looking around and holding up his glass. “Anybody want to give me a refill? I’ve never gotten drunk before because I don’t have any organs to process alcohol with, but hey, five-trillion, forty-seven-billion, one-hundred and two-million, seven-hundred and fifth try’s the charm, right?”

Twilight barely registered her jaw going slack as she fell backward on her rump.

The Elements of Harmony didn’t work.

The Elements of Harmony didn’t work!

“Uh, Twilight… what’re we gonna do now?” she heard Applejack ask.

“Yes, dear, please tell me you have a plan B,” Rarity said hopefully.

“Twilight always has a plan!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “Don’t you, Twilight?”

Twilight shook her head. “I… I don’t. I have nothing.”

“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it…!” Pinkie Pie muttered to herself, holding her head in her hooves.

The intruder held up a foreleg in their direction as he turned back to the princesses. “Quiet, kiddies, it’s time for the grown-ups to talk.”

“Who are you and how dare you mock us?!” Princess Luna bellowed using the traditional royal voice. She was absolutely livid – beyond livid, with her chest heaving and her wings spread. Her sister, on the other hand, looked simply angry, probably trying to keep herself under control.

The intruder gave a small shrug. “Nobody.”

Luna’s face contorted into a visage of pure rage. “We demand you tell us your name at once!” she said with a thunderous stomp of her hoof.

“I just did,” he responded casually. “My name is Nobody.” He got down on all fours as his shape began to change. It shifted and warped until he looked very much like a pony himself. He had much thinner legs, but it was clear he was trying to mimic their body shape. He laid his head down low in a bow and said, “And excuse me, Princess, but I’ll mock anybody I please. It’s not like you can actually do anything about it.”

Luna took a step forward, but Celestia raised a foreleg and held her back. “What exactly are you, Nobody?” the white alicorn asked.

“You sure you want to know? You won’t like the answer.” He didn’t give them time to answer before saying, “Eh, I’ll tell you anyway. After several thousand years of life, I would have hoped that you’d learn that the truth hurts.” He let out a little sound of clearing his throat. “I am a god, your highness. I am a god far older than your world and far beyond your comprehension. I am the god of the void. I am the god of the space between stars, and the space between all things. I am the god of nothingness. I am the god of forgetfulness, and the keeper of forgotten memories. I am the essence of absence.”

“We have heard of no such god,” Luna snorted. “And how great could you possibly be if you were? You’re the god of literally nothing!”

Nobody suddenly sprang with energy and dramatically pointed at Twilight. “Pop quiz: What are objects mostly made out of?”

“Empty space,” she said reflexively. It was a basic fundamental of physics.

“Very good, Twilight Sparkle, very good,” he said, clapping his hooves together and making no sound. “Somepony get this mare laid, she really needs it.” Twilight had only begun to blush when he added, “AJ, if you’d be so kind to do it, I hear you’re good at bucking more than trees. Actually, I know you’re good at bucking more than trees due to that whole ‘omniscience’ thing.”

Both the young unicorn and the farmpony were left with red faces when the latter managed to shout, “Hey, how do you know our names?!”

“Why, my dear country bumpkin, I know everypony’s name,” he explained as if he were talking to a foal. “I know everything about everypony.”

Celestia scoffed. “Nopony knows everything.”

Nobody wheeled around to look at the white alicorn. “Oh, really? Then shall I start with you, oh wise and immaculate Princess Celestia?” he asked as he took a step forward.

“I have nothing to hide,” the princess responded, her expression coldly defiant.

Nobody burst out laughing and stomped his forelegs on the ground. “Oh, that’s rich; I haven’t heard a lie that big in a long, long time.” He raised his leg as if he were wiping a tear from his eye. “You've had thoughts about courting your most faithful student before, and she’s not even a hundredth of your age!”

Celestia’s stoic expression completely crumbled. Her face grew bright red and she spat with venom, “I have thought no such thing!”

He brought his hoof up to where his mouth should be and added, “Oh, sorry for letting that slip; you were going to wait until she was a bit further from the age of consent to bring it up, weren't you?"

“I was not!” the princess protested with a stomp. She looked around to find everypony staring at her, even her sister. Twilight was staring mostly past her. She couldn’t have heard that right.

“Oh, so you were going to bring it up tonight? Splendid!” he said with great cheer, as if he were congratulating a friend on birthing a foal. “Perfect time, being your sister’s birthday and all. The weather team would have made sure it was a cloudless, romantic night, there would be plenty of booze to get her nice and tipsy with before you broke the subject to her-”

“Silence!”

Celestia had become a mirror of her sister a few moments ago, with her chest heaving and her wings outspread.

In the meantime, though Nobody had no face to speak of, Twilight could just feel smugness exude from his very being. “Very well, enough with your secrets. How about everypony else’s?”

“You can’t talk to the princesses like that!” a noblemare at the front of the crowd said, staring down Nobody defiantly.

His head snapped around on his shoulders unnaturally to look at her. “Oh, really? I can’t? Well, neither can you. Come to think of it, you can’t to anyone, can you?”

The noblemare opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. A strangled choking sound came out of her throat as she collapsed to the floor, her eyes going wide as she clawed at her throat.

“Honey? Honey, what’s wrong?” a noblecolt said as he knelt down beside her. He snapped up his head at Nobody and demanded, “What did you do to her?!”

“I am the god of forgetfulness; so, I made her forget how to breathe,” he said with all the emotion of a pony commenting on the weather. “I do hope she relearns how before she suffocates. Purple doesn’t really match her mane.”

Before Twilight could really react, Applejack was already galloping up to Nobody. “You give that memory back!” she yelled before turning on her forehooves and kicking him right in the plot – only for her hooves to pass right through it.

“Applejack, honey, you can’t hurt nothing with something. You can’t hurt nothing with anything because it’s nothing,” he explained as the enraged farmpony tried her hardest to hit him, failing each time.

“You do not treat our subjects like this!” Luna shouted. With a nod to her sister, the two alicorns charged up their horns and fired their magic directly at Nobody’s chest.

“Oh, woe is me, how could I withstand the combined might of two such accomplished mages,” he deadpanned as the beams of magic had no effect. “I am a gaping hole where existence should be, you fools! Nothing you can do is going to hurt me!”

The two alicorn princesses stopped their magical assault, a mix of anger and the unimaginable – fear – clear on both their faces. Applejack, however, was still bucking and swinging.

“Applejack, sweety, cease this foolishness at once,” Nobody sighed. The cowpony, of course, paid no heed.

“Not until you make her remember how to breathe again!” she shouted.

“Cease this foolishness at once or I will recite exactly what your parents said when they conceived you!” he threatened. When the non-blows kept coming, he cleared his throat and said in a clearly feminine voice, “‘Oh you beast, you, ride me like one of your rodeos!’ Oh, wait, nevermind, she’s dead!”

Applejack flopped down on her rump, panting heavily as she looked over to the noblemare. She was indeed dead, her face a deep purple and her eyes bugged out of their skull as her tongue lay limply out of her mouth. The noblecolt at her side hugged her corpse and began crying, cradling her empty husk in his arms.

“I could send you to join her, if you like, sir,” he offered. “I know what a broken heart feels like, and I can make you stop feeling it quite quickly. Better yet, I could make you forget she existed completely. Broken heart gone!” A shiver ran down Twilight’s spine; it sounded like he genuinely thought he was offering the grieving colt a kindness.

The fear in the room had become permeable. The princesses were clearly afraid of this… thing, so what chance did any of them have? Twilight took a deep gulp and asked, “Why are you doing this? You could clearly kill anypony in this room with a single thought, so why keep us alive?”

Nobody turned around to gaze at Twilight with his eyeless face. “Ah, ever the astute Twilight Sparkle. I’m glad you asked, actually. Between all the paedo-shaming and the casual murder, I lost track of why I was here.” He cleared his non-existent throat again and said clearly, “I am here to present a challenge, a riddle to all the brightest minds in Equestria: Why do I call myself Nobody?”

“A riddle?!” Rainbow Dash said, flying up above the rest of the crowd and gliding over to Nobody to look him directly in the face. “That’s it? All of this is just so you could ask us a stupid riddle?!”

“Yes and no,” he said. “There’s a bit of a catch: You have one day to give me the answer. Midnight tomorrow night, to be exact.” The bells started ringing high above the castle to signify that it was now exactly midnight. “Oh, perfect timing! You now have exactly twenty-four hours.”

Rainbow Dash crossed her forelegs. “Great, we have a time limit. And what happens if we don’t answer your stupid riddle?”

“You all die.”

Twilight could practically feel her heart stop. The entire room went dead silent. It was if time was standing still, and only Nobody could move around as he swiveled his head to survey the crowd.

“Allow me to be more exact,” he requested. “If you don't, I'll widen the gaps between every single atom on this planet and cast what used to be your bodies, your homes, and your lands to the cosmic winds as microscopic dust, and the only people who will ever know are the denizens of other worlds who look up at the night sky and notice that a single star has gone out.”

The entire room had gone silent – except for Rainbow Dash, who let out a little scoff. “That’s easy. You have no body, so you call yourself Nobody!”

“Why yes, you guessed correctly. All of Equestria and the world is saved forever thanks to your deductive-” He stopped mid sentence. His neck suddenly extended like a striking serpent and put his blank face a few hairs away from hers. “Did you really think that the answer would be that simple? Hm? Did you?”

She slightly shrank away and began stuttering. “W-well, I-I just-”

He interrupted as his neck retracted. “And to think so many believe you’re the best pony.” He turned his head again to face the princesses. “You or one of your subjects have twenty-four hours to present me the correct answer. Until then… have a nice apocalypse.”

His form morphed again into that of a serpent as he took to the sky, slithering through the ceiling and just phasing right through it, leaving a stunned, frightened, and mortified bunch of ponies in his wake.

Party's Over

The Canterlot palace library was normally completely silent in the dead of night – or, more accurately given the time, the dead of morning. However, this particular morning the vast forest of filled bookshelves and empty desks was filled with the frantic scramble of four hooves on the marble floors, the soft hum of magic, and the softer sound of books flying through the air.

Twilight Sparkle began to huff and pant as she dragged herself over to an empty desk and set the legion of books that was floating over her head down on it. The sheer weight of them all made the ornate antique groan slightly, but the young unicorn didn’t much care. She grabbed the first tome and started rapidly skimming through the index for anything useful. She shook her head, set it aside, and went to the next one. When that one turned up nothing, she set it atop the first and grabbed another. Then another. Then another.

It went that way for… she didn’t keep track. Twilight had finally found an article that may have lead somewhere and read over it meticulously. When it too proved fruitless, she let out a frustrated growl and tossed the book at the growing tower of dead ends, causing the whole thing to topple over.

“Twilight?”

The young unicorn turned toward the thick rustic accent to find Applejack on the other side of the collapsed wall of books, looking at her with those emerald eyes of hers full of concern. The rest of her friends were standing behind the cowpony. Rarity looked equally concerned, while Rainbow Dash looked at the young scholar with a look of utter shock. Fluttershy was far behind them, her hooves shaking as she looked around. Pinkie Pie was back to her old self as she hopped over to the mess of texts.

“Aw, your book fort fell down,” Pinkie lamented as she looked at the toppled pile.

“Princess Celestia told us you’d be here; we’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Rarity said.

“Twilight… did you just throw a book?” Rainbow Dash asked in slack-jawed amazement.

Twilight’s eyes widened as she realized what she did. “Oh horsefeathers!” she exclaimed in panic as she used her magic to start reorganizing the scattered texts. “Oh no, oh no, oh no…”

“Twilight, dear, this may seem silly to ask, but are you okay?” Rarity asked as she trotted up and used her own magic to help.

“No, I’m not!” the other unicorn wailed. “Some of these books are older than Princess Celestia and she’ll send me back to Magic Kindergarten if any of them were damaged!”

Applejack sighed. “Twilight, Ah thought we’d been over this: Princess Celestia would never – and Ah mean never – send you back to Magic Kindergarten.”

“Especially since she has a crush on you!” Pinkie Pie chimed in.

A small shock shot up Twilight’s spine, causing her to drop all the books she was levitating. Much to her relief, she was able to catch them again before they hit the floor. Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow Dash all shot Pinkie Pie hard glares that she didn’t seem to notice. “Pinkie, please don’t remind me. I’m still not entirely sure I’m comfortable with that,” she pleaded.

“Oh, okay,” Pinkie Pie said with a salute, completely unfazed. She paused and tilted her head as she fell back on her haunches. “Why, though?”

Twilight groaned a bit as the wall of books began to take shape again. “How about the fact she’s the co-ruler of our entire nation, one of the most powerful mages to ever exist, completely immortal, and, most importantly, over a thousand years older than me?” She tried not to, but she couldn’t help but shout that last part. “She’s like a second mother to me, for crying out loud! She probably knows me better than my real mother! She means more to me than anypony else in the world, just…” She sighed and hung her head low with a soft blush. “I don’t think it’s like that.”

“Dear, I wouldn’t put much stock in what that… thing said,” Rarity assured. “It was probably lying to drive a wedge between you and her. If anypony can solve this riddle it would be the two of you and Princess Luna, and if you’re too nervous to talk to each other then it just might win.”

“But what if he’s not lying? Celestia has been lied about in tabloids all the time; she’s used to untrue rumors and can handle them. If it got her that mad… Nobody was probably telling the truth.” Twilight’s head sunk lower and she looked straight at the floor. “Even if I don’t think about her that way… I don’t think I could stand to break her heart.”

“Aw, sugarcube.” She didn’t see but she certainly heard Applejack trot around the huge stack of books, and then proceeded to feel the cowpony’s forelegs wrap around her in a gentle – for Applejack, anyway – hug. “Just tell her that; Ah’m sure she’ll understand.”

“But-”

“No buts,” Applejack interrupted, holding a hoof to Twilight’s mouth. The cowpony then put that hoof under her chin and forced her to look into her own emerald eyes. “Ah reckon that if Celestia really does love you, she wouldn’t want ya to fake loving her back just to keep her heart from breakin’. Don’t ya think both of you deserve better than that?”

Twilight looked deep into her friend’s eyes before hugging her back, nuzzling her orange neck and blonde mane. “I guess we do. Thanks, Applejack.”

Applejack chuckled and gave her a small pat on the back before she pulled away from the hug. “No problem, sugarcube. What’re friends for but to knock some sense in ya when you need it, right?”

Twilight couldn't help but giggle. "Right."

Rainbow Dash let out a loud yawn. “Sorry to interrupt, but now that we have Twilight, do you all think we could go home now? I’m beyond tired.”

The yawn spread over to Rarity. “Yes, sleep sounds lovely right about now. It’s been a long night and we’re not going to get anything done working like a skeleton crew.”

Twilight yawned as well but shook her head. “Sorry girls, but I’m staying here. The sooner I figure out Nobody’s riddle, the sooner we can all get back to our lives.”

“Told ya that’s why she was here,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Is that why you picked out this?” Rainbow Dash asked as she glided over and picked up one of the books from the stack. She narrowed her eyes of the cover. “‘A Summary of Eldritch Monstrosities for the Open-Minded Summoner’?”

Rarity gasped before glaring at her fellow unicorn. “Twilight Sparkle, while I may not be the magic expert you are, I do know that book is banned! It’s forbidden magic!”

“I know,” Twilight admitted, “that’s why I need to stay here. The Canterlot archives are full of books that are normally kept from the public. One of them may have some information on Nobody. The more I know about Nobody, the more likely it is I can guess why he’s called that. If I’m lucky, maybe the answer is even in here.”

Fluttershy piped up for the first time in the entire conversation; the only reason any of them could hear is that they were in a library. “Um, Twilight, I-I don’t think that’s going to do much good.”

Twilight looked at the quaking pegasus, her eyebrows raised high. “Fluttershy, I don’t know the answer, and I’m definitely not going to just roll over and accept our deaths.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “N-no, I didn’t say you should. It’s just that, well…” She looked around, fear plastered on her face. “He said he was omniscient,” she said in an almost inaudible whisper. “That means he can see and hear everything we do.”

“I know what that means, Flutter-” Twilight paused, her eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. The implications of what she’d just said hit her like a train. “Oh. Oh no.”

Rarity huffed. “Probably another lie to intimidate us.”

“I-I don’t think so,” Fluttershy stammered as her quaking got worse. “I th-think he’s spying on us right now…!”

“You bet your cute yellow plot I am!”

Fluttershy let out a horrified squeak as the six mares looked up to see Nobody perched atop a bookshelf next to Twilight’s desk. He looked to be in his pony shape, with his legs folded under him as he peered down at them with his featureless face. Fluttershy stammered incoherently as she backed up, her face so red it looked like it was going to pop.

“Aw, you look so adorable when you’re about to faint, Fluttershy,” he cooed down at the young pegasus. “In fact… you’re so cute I could just pinch your little head off.”

Fluttershy’s eyes almost rolled into the back of her head as she flopped over onto her side and lay completely still.

“Fluttershy!” the remaining five yelled almost in unison.

Rarity was the first to be by her side. The young fashionista pressed her ear against the pegasus’ chest. “Her heart’s still beating; she probably just fainted,” Rarity said with a relieved sigh, her friends quickly joining with ones of her own.

“My god, she’s actually cuter when she’s unconscious!” Nobody exclaimed in a tone far too lascivious for Twilight’s liking. She and the rest of her friends shot furious looks at him as he cackled hysterically. He was rolling over on his back with his hooves flailing in the air, choking out between laughs, “The looks on your faces are priceless!”

“Hey, that wasn’t funny, you jerk!” Pinkie Pie yelled up at him, hopping up and down in anger and growling like a rabid dog. “And trust me, I’m an expert on funny!”

Nobody’s hysterics died down to a few snickers as he rolled back over. “Oh come now, it’s not like I killed the poor mare. It’s all in good fun.”

“Fun? Fun?!” Rainbow Dash yelled as she flew up to the deity. “You think making somepony faint from how scared they are of you and then talking about them like you’re going to rut them that way is funny?!”

“Not exactly in good taste, I admit, but I get my laughs where I can,” he conceded.

“The more and more ya talk, the more and more Ah don’t like ya,” Applejack said, taking a step forward. “You ain’t no better than Discord!”

“Ah, Discord,” Nobody said almost wistfully, “such a brilliant young deity of madness and mayhem. Quite the entertaining fellow, too; knew just how to warp the laws of reality in the most fascinating ways. But please, don’t flatter him by comparing him to me,” he added, his tone getting much flatter. “I’m far older than him and his body count pales in comparison to mine.” If Twilight didn’t know better, she’d almost say he didn’t sound terribly proud of that second fact. Almost.

“Body count?!” Applejack roared.

“Why, yes,” Nobody said as he lazily examined his hoof. “Do you really think this is the first world I’ve done this to? I could give you an exact number, but it would take too long to say out loud. Needless to say, that noblemare earlier was just a single drop in a vast ocean of blood on my hands.” He shrugged as he tucked his leg back under him. “Besides, I’m on a five-world killing spree, and I hope to break my previous record of twenty-six.”

Twilight was stunned into silence. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and most surprisingly Pinkie Pie was too. Rarity, however, was not.

“You… you monster!” Rarity snarled.

“You flatter me; I thought I was beyond the league of any monster in existence,” Nobody said as if he’d been given the greatest compliment ever. “But really, I’m not all that bad. If I were truly bad, I would have used my power to separate matter to, say… skin everyone on this planet alive, watch you all run around in sheer agony for an hour or two, leaving you both pleading for the sweet release of death and begging not to die before I finally tore you apart atom by atom. You’re welcome for me being sane enough to not do that, by the way.”

That was what shut Rarity up, the unicorn just gawping at him with no sound coming out.

“Now, what was I here for…? Oh yes,” Nobody said, turning his head to look at Twilight. “Because I like you a lot – or it may be your plot, or both – I’m going to make things a bit easier for you and tell you this: You’re wasting your time here.”

Twilight managed to snap out of her stupor and shake her head violently. “I’m not about to lie down and let you kill everything, Nobody! I refuse!” she yelled with a stomp of her hoof.

“When did I say anything about giving up?” he asked. “I just said you’re wasting your time here, specifically.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

“Come now, would I lie to you?” he asked in a sickeningly sugary voice.

“If you wanted to.”

“Fair point,” he conceded.

“And if you’re telling the truth, it’s probably because you erased any book with any hints anyway,” she accused.

“Just because my sense of humor may border on the psychopathic does not mean I’m unsporting,” he said defensively. “I would never do anything like that.”

“Sure you wouldn’t,” she mumbled under her breath.

“I wouldn’t,” he said flatly. “Oh, and one last thing before I go: The riddle is why I call myself Nobody. I didn’t get that name from anyone else. If anyone named me, it would probably be The Void, The End of All Things, That Sick Bastard… you know, things like that. For now, good luck!”

Twilight blinked, and Nobody was gone. The six mares were left alone again… though they were all painfully aware that they were still being watched. Except Fluttershy, who was too unconscious to be thinking anything at the moment.

The young scholar narrowed her eyes and trotted back to her seat. “I’m staying here; you go back home, girls.”

“But he said you were wasting your time here,” Pinkie Pie said, her head tilting.

“Pinkie, do you really trust him to be honest with me? I’m probably on the right track and he wants me to try to figure his stupid riddle out myself for his own twisted amusement,” Twilight said as she picked up another book.

“Well, no, I don’t really trust him. He’s a big meanie jerk-face,” Pinkie snarled.

“I’d personally have much stronger words for that beast, but I can’t say any of them in polite company,” Rarity huffed. Her composure was mostly back, but there was still a tinge of fear in her voice.

“But what if he comes back?” Rainbow Dash asked as she flew back down to the floor. “There is no way I’m leaving you alone with that thing!”

“Rainbow Dash, that wouldn’t do a lick a’ good and you know it,” Applejack said. “You saw me try to fight ‘im; all my kicks and punches just went right through. Darnit, not even the Princesses could hurt ‘im!”

“But-” Rainbow Dash tried to protest.

“Applejack is right. Besides, if he wanted to kill me – if he wanted to kill any of us – he could have just done it a minute ago. Being a god, he probably could do it right now and there’s nothing we could do to stop him.” Twilight felt like she was just stating fact, but a deafening silence fell over the group as that realization started to fully sink into their brains. Twilight let out a sigh and added, “I don’t know if he’s leading me by a chain only to kill me later, or if he even will really leave us alone if we solve his riddle, but I just have to try. And no offence, girls, but I don’t really think you’re going to be much help here.” She motioned toward the mountain of books she’d gathered.

Applejack furrowed her brow. “Sugarcube, we know how to read. Now why don’t you come clean and tell us the real reason you want us to leave?”

Twilight just looked at her book and waved her hoof, refusing to look the cowpony in the eye. “I’ll handle it. You all get going; there can’t be many trains left running by now.”

Applejack sighed. “Alright, sugarcube. Just… be careful, okay?”

“I’ll try not to get any paper cuts,” she said back flatly.

Slowly but surely Twilight heard the soft clicking of hooves on marble started up as her four friends each gave their farewells and good lucks. Rarity levitated the still unconscious Fluttershy in the air and carried her off. Twilight could see out of the corner of her eye that Applejack had stopped mid-trot and looked back over her shoulder. The farmpony opened her mouth to say something, but shook her head before heading off as well.

As soon as the sound of hoofsteps faded completely into the distance, Twilight said, “I know you’re there, you know.”

“Aw, and I thought I was hiding so well too!”

Twilight glanced over at the pile of books she’d already gone through to see the pony-shaped hole in existence lazing atop them. “I’m a unicorn; I can sense the huge hole you make in the field of magic easily.”

“I know, I know, I was just being facetious,” the deity snickered. “Very noble of you to take the burden of saving the entire planet on your shoulders, by the way. I must wonder, though… why did you?” He brought his hoof against his non-existent chin and started tapping it.

“None of your business,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hoof.

“Oh, I think I can already guess the answer anyway.” He didn’t have a mouth, but she could just feel his manure-eating grin. “You’re not sure you can do it, are you? So just in case, you want your friends to have one last day at home that’s happy and carefree while they let you worry about preventing the apocalypse for once.” He stretched his neck until his head was peering over the top of her book. “Am I right?”

Twilight said nothing. She just kept reading, focusing on her book as it trembled in her magic grip.

“I thought so.”

As before, she blinked and he vanished, this time leaving her completely alone with her books and her thoughts in the confines of the library.

Dear Twilight Sparkle,

I know what you heard about me at the party this evening, and I know what you must be thinking. You must think that Nobody is lying, that I would never harbor feelings for you, my most faithful student.

I was hoping to confess to you in a much more conventional way and in much better circumstances, but I must be honest with you. I do have a very, very special place in my heart for you, Twilight, one that few ponies that have come before you have ever held. I never would have thought it myself, watching you grow up. I had no idea what a beautiful, brilliant young mare you would turn out to be.

You are the most talented young unicorn I’ve seen in many a century, and I guess it was only natural such a special young mare would grab my attention.

“Too clinical.”

Your sparkling eyes, your flowing mane, your adorable voice; I really get lost in the minutia of… you. Everything about you.

“Too clichéd.”

You have no idea how many nights I’ve lain awake in my bed, wishing that I could get up the courage to tell you that I wanted you there with me.

“Far, far too straightforward.”

Celestia allowed her mask of calm to slip for a second, letting out an irritated growl as she held the unfinished letter aloft with her magic and set it aflame over her wastebasket, letting the pile of ashes inside grow.

“This is a lot harder than it should be,” she mumbled to herself.

“Love is never easy. That, and I imagine the fact that you were alive when her great grandfather wasn’t even a twinkle in her great great grandfather’s eye yet makes things just a smidgeon more awkward.”

Celestia didn’t need to look; she could already feel the hole in the flow of magic behind her. She did anyway, and found Nobody in his pony shape lounging on the railing of the open balcony outside her room.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as coolly as she could manage.

“Oh, just heard you having trouble writing your letter – omniscience has its perks like that – so I thought I would drop by and help,” he said with a sincerity that could only mean trouble. “Here, allow me.”

Celestia’s quill was wrenched out of her magic control as it scribbled hastily along the next roll of parchment.

Dear Twilight Spankle,

You heard what Nobody said tonight; it’s all true. I love you. I lust for you. I know you lust for me too, the way you swing your cute flanks when you’re around me with that come hither stare, you naughty little filly. Meet me in my quarters tonight so I can rut your sweet plot into immortality, you sexy thing y

That was as far as the quill got before Celestia slammed her hoof down atop it so hard it caused a crack in the antique desk. Her face was redder than a rose and hotter than her own sun. Her chest was heaving and her wings were spread wide in sheer rage. Worst of all, the sound of hysterical laughter rang in her ears louder than if she were in the echo chamber of a ringing bell tower.

She swung her head around to see the deity rolling around on the railing on his back, his hooves in the air as he cackled with insane glee.

“The look on your fahace!” he managed to choke out. “Ohohohhh I wish I had a mirror!”

“Get. Out.” Celestia snarled with as much restraint as she could muster.

When Nobody’s hysterics died down to manic giggles, he said, “Sorry Princess, but I can’t exactly do that. I am nothingness; I’m everywhere. Between every atom and molecule, there I am. I’m even inside you, technically. Where exactly would I go?”

She narrowed her eyes and let out a snort of smoke through her nostrils, turning her attention back to her work. “Then at the very least spare me your pestering.”

“Oh yes, I’ll be sure to let you get back to your little romance drama while the clock is counting down to doomsday,” he snarked.

“I’ll get to solving your riddle as soon as I’m finished with this,” she said as she took her hoof off the snapped quill and threw it in the trash before burning Nobody’s heinous draft. She let out a sigh and added, "There is still plenty of time left, and my concentration will suffer if I don't do my part for some closure. If this ends up taking more than another fifteen minutes, I’ll drop it and get to work.”

“She means that much to you, huh?” he asked. “You know, you could always resolve this right now by just sauntering your pasty plot over to the palace library and talking to her.”

The princess paused before saying, “I don’t trust myself to say the right thing face-to-face. I know I’d mess it up somehow. I need to get just the right words.” She picked up another quill and another scroll and tried to think.

“So you’re confessing your love to her by letter when she’s in your house at this very second? Romantic,” he drawled.

“What would you know about romance?” she muttered as her quill tapped against the paper.

“I’m the keeper of forgotten memories. I know more about romance than anyone on this planet or any other. Good romances, bad romances, fleeting romances, lasting romances, straight romances, gay romances, interspecies romances, incestuous romances… the list goes on and on of what memories I have inside my cosmic mind,” Nobody said.

She scoffed. “Oh? Then what, oh god of love, is your opinion on my romantic aspirations?”

“I don’t dispense opinions when I’ve got facts.”

“A wise policy,” she said.

“See,” he continued, “I heard what your faithful little student said about this whole affair to her friends already.” His voice suddenly came from next to her ear as he whispered, “Want to know what her answer will be?”

Celestia paused again as her quill gently tapped against the parchment. She had no idea how long she thought before she finally said, “No. I want to hear it from her; not you.”

“Suit yourself,” he whispered with a giggle. His voice was back out on the balcony when he added, “If the suspense kills you, that’ll save me the trouble.”

“Oh, I look forward to you trying,” she sneered.

“You look forward to me succeeding too, don’t you?”

The alicorn almost felt her heart stop and her blood run cold, all thought coming to a screeching halt.

“It’s a very common thought among immortals,” he continued, his tone suddenly very serious. “You watch everything you know and love turn to dust before you and scatter to the winds time and time again, and sometimes you wish it would just… end. Sometimes you just wish that Death would stop passing over you and wrenching all your friends and loved ones away from you. You wish that Death would take you in its icy grip instead, just so you could stop your heart from breaking over and over and over again. You’ve thought that before… haven’t you?”

There was silence; deafening silence. The only sound was the gentle rustling of the wind as it blew through the palace gardens below.

“Of course I have,” Celestia finally admitted.

“I could give you that, if you want,” Nobody offered. His voice was… different; devoid of mirth or glee. If she didn’t know how monstrous the deity was, she would almost mistake it for understanding and compassion.

The alicorn rose onto all fours and looked directly at Nobody, staring into his eyeless gaze.

“I’m sorry, but I must decline, Nobody. I am Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria. I have a responsibility to my nation and everypony in it. They depend on me. They need me.” Her muscles tensed and her gaze hardened. “They need me far more than I will ever need to end my pain.”

“Even if Twilight returns your affections, you know you’ll still have to watch her die, right?” he asked. “Before your very eyes, the one pony you love more than any other in the world will wither, grow old, and die – and that’s if she isn’t tragically torn away from you on one of her more dangerous adventures.”

“It doesn’t matter if she returns my affections or not,” she said, though those words stabbed at her heart to say. “As long as she dies happy… I’m okay with that. As long as she lives happily, it doesn’t matter if she’s with me or somepony else.”

Nobody had no face, but she felt a smile radiating from the mass of nothing that was his body. A genuine one, or so she thought. “I would have been disappointed if you had said anything else, princess.”

Celestia could admit to herself that she was taken aback – she certainly wouldn’t admit to him out loud of that fact – but a question was on her mind that she just couldn’t set down. “What about you, Nobody? Surely as a fellow immortal you understand the desire for companionship. Haven’t you ever had a mortal catch your eye?”

Nobody scoffed. “Romance? Romance isn’t for me. I’m omniscient – that right there puts a dash to any of the mystery of romance, which is half the fun. Nobody can confide any of their secrets in me; I already know them.” He shook his head. “Let’s say there were some mortal that by some great cosmic joke I had my eye on. What would we even talk about? Things I already know? What could we even do? Things I already have thousands of memories from across the universe of doing? I can’t even find comfort in a lover’s touch since I don’t have a body with those fancy nerve ending things.” He huffed and turned his head to look to the side. “I’m incapable of romance. Frell, I’m incapable of friendship.”

Celestia felt her gaze soften on the deity. “Then I pity you more than any other creature I have ever met.”

“I don’t need you to pity me,” he said with a disdainful wave of his hoof. “I already do that enough myself.”

Celestia didn’t know quite what to say, but she felt a compulsion of what to do. She trotted over to the god and wrapped her wing around him, her face looking into his. For a split second, he did nothing. After that split second, his form collapsed and slithered away to another point on the railing before reforming again.

“You just get back to your letter, you paedophilic, filly-fooling freak,” he said with a much lazier wave of his hoof. “Pray I don’t come back around before the world ends.”

Celestia blinked, and Nobody had vanished. The hole in the flow of magic was gone and she couldn’t detect it anywhere nearby, so he wasn’t hiding. She looked back to her desk with a soft sigh before trotting back over it to finish composing her confession.

The end of the world was coming. It was really going to happen. It was really coming. Come the next midnight, everything and everypony on Equis would just be… gone.

Applejack shook her head. No, Twilight or the Princesses or somepony would solve Nobody’s riddle and everything would go back to normal.

All the same, she couldn’t stop thinking about it as she sleepily trotted down one of the many paths in Sweet Apple Acres. Her house was in sight, but with each step it only made her head buzz harder and harder. What was she going to tell her family? How was she going to tell them? How do she possibly break the news that everypony could possibly be dead by the end of the day? Well, without being an absolute monster like Nobody.

Her gaze turned over to the orchard, the legion of trees she’d taken care of her whole life. The whole reason Ponyville existed to begin with. Three generations of her family had worked and toiled on that farm, the fruits of their labors giving bloom to a whole new town on the edge of the most dangerous forest in Equestria. Sweat, tears, and sometimes blood had been shed to make the place she called home what it was.

And if Nobody had his way, all of it would amount to nothing.

She shook her head violently as if those thoughts were mud spattered on her face. “Don’t think like that,” she muttered to herself. “Nobody wants me nice and scared. Evil varmint is probably watchin’ right now, laughin’ his black behind off as everypony else in Equestria starts panickin’. Well, he ain’t getting that satisfaction from me.”

She expected the dark god to pop up behind her and taunt her about how scared she really was. Though she said out loud that she wasn’t, deep down she couldn’t lie to herself. She was afraid. Afraid that all her friends, all her family, and all the hard work she’d done throughout the years would just turn to dust. She was by far not the most well-read pony, but she’d understood that much about Nobody’s threat: he was going to turn all of them and the entirety of Equis into dust.

Anger burned inside her as the thought crossed her mind that he’d enjoy doing it.

Applejack shook her head again as she stepped up to her own front door. She tried to open it as quietly as she could so as not to wake her family, but she quickly found that pointless as she found Big Macintosh waiting for her. He was stroking Winona as she whined softly at his hooves. The dog’s ears perked up and she rushed over to Applejack, propping her paws up onto the cowpony’s shoulders and covering her face with slobber.

Applejack laughed as she spluttered against her dog’s tongue. “Down girl, down!” she managed to say, the dog quickly obeying before cuddling up to her legs. She stepped inside and looked up to her brother before saying, “What’re you doing up so late, Big Mac? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Eeyup,” he said simply. “I just wanted to make sure you got back okay.”

Applejack chuckled as she stroked the affectionate Winona at her hooves. “That’s mighty sweet of you, but Ah’m just fine.”

“So I see.” Big Mac paused a second before asking, “How was the party?”

“The party was great,” she lied with great, great difficulty. “Pinkie Pie settled down after a bit and we all had a great time. Rainbow Dash even admitted that she likes mares, which is a long time comin’ if you ask me.” She looked at her brother a bit warily. He was normally difficult to read, but there was a certain… sadness behind his eyes. She couldn’t quite place it. Applejack let out a yawn before adding, “Well, Ah’m mighty tired, so Ah think Ah’m just gonna be hittin’ the hay.”

Applejack walked over to the stairs, her brother’s eyes following her. She was just about to set her hoof down on the first step when he said, “I know what happened tonight.”

Her blood ran cold as she looked back to her older brother. “Wh-whaddya mean?”

“That Nobody fella dropped in and told us what was gonna happen,” the large stallion said. “How the world was endin’ and how you couldn’t stop ‘im. Unless… you did stop ‘im?” Big Mac was never one to show much emotion, but she could definitely hear a hint of hope in his voice.

Which is why it broke her heart all the more when she said with a sigh, “No; we couldn’t. The Elements of Harmony did squat against him.”

“Oh…” he trailed off. “Sorry to hear that.”

The two sat in silence for what felt like eternity before the weight of a single word crashed on Applejack’s head. “Wait… did you just say ‘us’?” Her heart practically stopped. “So Apple Bloom–”

Big Mac shook his head. “She don’t know; fast asleep at the time. Granny Smith does, but she went to bed.”

Applejack released a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. “That… that’s good…”

There was another stretch of silence before Big Mac broke it. “So… how are we gonna tell her?”

Applejack’s brow furrowed. She couldn’t help but turn her gaze up the dark stairway. She couldn’t help but think of her little sister, all tucked up in bed, sleeping soundly without a care in the world besides going back to school after the weekend was over.

She couldn’t help but think what would happen to her if on the slim, slim chance that Nobody…

She shook the thought out of her head and finally turned her gaze back to her brother. “We ain’t. As far as Apple Bloom’ll know, tomorrow is just an ordinary day.” She paused and added, “No, better than an ordinary day. You and Ah, we’re gonna treat Apple Bloom to the best darn day ever. Same with all her little Crusader friends.”

Big Mac gave her a small nod. “So… it’s really the end of the world, then?” he asked, his voice grave.

Applejack was silent for a few seconds before saying, “Ah’m sure it ain’t. Ah know it ain’t. Twilight will figure something out; Ah know she will. She’s the smartest mare Ah know, and if there’s a single darn pony in Equestria that can fix this, it’s her.” She started for the stairs again before admitting, “But just in case it is… Ah want it to be the best day of her life.”

Big Mac didn’t say anything behind her as she climbed up the dark stairwell, careful not to wake her sister as she slipped into her own bedroom. Just as she was climbing in bed, Winona slipped into her room, whining. The cowpony smiled and scooted over, letting the dog hop in and cuddle up against her before the pair drifted off to sleep.

Darkness Before Dawn

Octavia let out a loud yawn as she stepped through the threshold into her apartment. A soft hum escaped her lips; the feel of plush carpet under her hooves felt so good after trudging through the streets of Canterlot. She heaved the case for her cello off her back and propped it up against the wall before bumping the door closed with her hip. She normally wouldn’t be so uncouth as to close a door with her plot, but she was too groggy to care at that exact moment.

The musician flipped on the lights. The place was truly a place of both decadence and clashing motifs. Modern manufactured and antique carved furniture adorned the spacious apartment; wires to devices that Octavia had ceased trying to learn the function of were strewn across the night-sky-blue carpet while old paintings hung on the wall. She had gotten used to the jungle of wires hooked up to the apartment’s impossibly complex sound system; it wasn’t like pestering her roommate was going to get them straightened out or anything. She’d learned quite a while ago that while having a unicorn around the house was useful, it was only useful when the unicorn felt like it.

Her gaze eventually fell on her roommate, who was sprawled on Octavia’s old black leather couch. The white unicorn was sound asleep, her violet goggles hung loosely around her neck as she softly snored. Blushing a bit and ignoring the fact that the DJ had her plot facing the door, Octavia trotted over to the prone form of Vinyl Scratch. It took just one whiff to discern the odor of hard cider on the unicorn’s breath.

Octavia rolled her eyes and stroked Vinyl’s electric blue mane. “Drinking on the job again, I see,” she giggled. The unicorn just lightly batted at Octavia’s hoof, mumbling something incoherent about how she could drink some imaginary challenger into the ground. “I’d give you another lecture about drinking responsibly if only so your liver doesn’t file for divorce, but when you’re dreaming about drinking some more I think you’re beyond my help.”

Vinyl promptly responded with a slurred mumble of, “I can drink however much I buckin’ want, man. J… jus’ don’t tell Octy, please…”

The earth pony let out a dramatic sigh and a soft smile. “You really are adorable when you’re in a drunken stupor, you know that?” She giggled and nuzzled her cheek against Vinyl’s. The unicorn’s cheek was nice and warm from all the alcohol she’d no doubt downed. Octavia let out a snicker and added, “If you were awake you’d probably vehemently deny it, though. You just don’t ‘do’ adorable, do you?”

Another booze-fueled, sleep-talking answer didn’t come that time. Vinyl just slept there peacefully, her chest slowly rising and falling with each breath as she snored.

“I wonder how many other mares would have left you by now, what with your habit of getting drunk after every other gig?” Octavia mused as her hoof wandered down to stroke her roommate’s back. “I guess a lot, after all the exes you’ve gathered over the years…” She smiled sadly to herself. “I really hope you don’t think I’ll end up like them.” Her sad smile devolved into a frown. “Not… that it’ll matter soon. None of it will matter after today… because tomorrow might not come.” Octavia’s vision began to blur as she blinked back a sudden influx of tears. She wiped at her eyes and mumbled to nopony in particular, “M-must have gotten something in my eye; I keep telling you to dust this place more often.”

Octavia didn’t keep track of how long she gently stroked her marefriend’s mane and back. She didn’t particularly care. Vinyl hummed softly in her sleep at the contact, and that was all the reward she needed.

After a while her eyelids got too heavy and her hooves too unstable for her to keep it up. She looked down the hallway to her bedroom, and then paused to look back at the unicorn as she slept, not a care in the world.

Octavia smiled to herself before leaning in and giving Vinyl a kiss on the cheek. The drunken Vinyl responded by licking Octavia’s cheek back. A deep blush spread through her cheeks like wildfire while the sleeping unicorn just smacked her lips before descending back into her soft snores. The earth pony’s eyes softened before she climbed onto the couch with her marefriend – it was a bit tight, but it was big enough to hold the two of them. The sleeping unicorn wrapped her hooves protectively around her new bedmate and nuzzled her muzzle into Octavia’s mane, the earth pony’s face getting redder as her heart beat faster.

“Good night, Vinyl,” she whispered. “Sweet dreams…” She clapped her hooves together and the lights snapped off, leaving the two in the dark basking in each other’s warmth.

Luna glanced around the Canterlot Palace gardens as she trotted through them. The night was dark – just as she always made it – the air was crisp and cool, and the only sound was her own hoofsteps on the paths as she traversed them, through the hedges and the statues. The stars twinkled with their soft light in the canvas of the sky and the moon looked down from its celestial perch. All in all, it seemed just like any other night in the gardens.

“We could have sworn we felt a disturbance,” the Lunar Regent mumbled to herself as her eyes darted across the area. She continued her patrol through the gardens, her horn glowing slightly as she tried to detect anything amiss.

The alicorn didn’t keep track of how long she’d been scouring, but she was snapped out of her concentration when she came to the foot of a very familiar statue.

“Discord,” Luna snorted to herself. She looked over the frozen form of the draconequus and chuckled, pacing around him. “When we laid thee low before, thou didst roar your defiance to the last. But oh, look at thee now: frozen forever in a visage of fear from the terrifying might of six young mares. We take it that thou wouldst laugh at such a joke thyself, provided thou still could.”

“Don’t forget, we were brought down by the same six foals,” a dark voice called from above with a cackle. All thoughts screeched to a halt within Luna’s head at the sound.

“No…!” Her gaze shot upward, and her eyes were met with a winged silhouette against the moon above. The familiar voice let loose another terrible laugh, sending a chill down Luna’s spine as she slowly backed away and gaped in horror. “No, that’s… that’s not possible! The Elements defeated thee!”

“You mean the Elements defeated us,” the specter that should not be chuckled. “We were always together… I just tired of lurking in the dark corners of your mind and made myself manifest.”

Luna’s eyes screwed shut as she shook her head. “This must be a dream, or some manner of trick!”

A morbid laugh escaped the shadow’s throat. “I assure you, this is no dream. The night shall last forever… as soon as I take my rightful place as the sovereign of the dark once again. And that means disposing of you, you pathetic excuse of a goddess…”

Luna opened her eyes again to see the other alicorn diving straight for her. She tried to concentrate and cast a spell to rebuff her, but her mind was too wild with panic. As the dark figure set upon her, she closed her eyes and screamed.

Nothing happened. There was no hostile takeover of her mind. There was no rending of her flesh from her bones. All that happened is that the night air rang with hysterical laughter.

Visibly shaking, the Lunar Regent opened her eyes and looked about with great caution. Before her was an equine-shaped hole in the fabric of magic and reality itself, kicking its hooves in the air and cackling in that same terrible voice from her nightmares.

“Nobody!” Luna snarled, her eyes narrowing to slits. Her gaze fell on him and she began to wonder if and hope that concentrated loathing could somehow kill the creature. Sadly, she was not that lucky.

“Y-you cahalled, your Highness?” Nobody choked out, still speaking in Nightmare Moon’s voice as the being rolled onto… her hooves, Luna supposed.

“How dare thou startle us in such a manner?” Luna growled, her wings extending in anger.

“Startle?” Nobody snickered. “Please, Princess, if you hadn’t already recently visited the little filly’s room, this garden would have a fresh helping of fertilizer right now.”

Luna’s face heated up in a volatile mixture of embarrassment and rage. “Do not trifle with us, Nobody; we are hardly in the mood for thy demented brand of humor.”

“Take your threats and shove them up the darkest part of your black plot,” she said with a wave of her hoof. “I’m a god higher than any other in the universe. I can do whatever I want with impunity; any protests on your part are just hot air and bluster that might as well be coming out the other end for all I care.”

Luna shakily took in a deep breath to steady herself. “Very well, then; thee may have thine audience with us. We do, however, kindly ask that thou dost cease using that wretched voice.”

“And I respectfully decline,” Nobody said back. “I kinda like this voice. It’s dark… smooth… and more than a little sexy. If you’d managed to keep Nightmare Moon’s body and voice without turning into a psychotic bitch, you could have had the whole of Equestria and beyond clopping to your divine eminence.” She snickered to herself as Luna’s face grew hot once again.

“We are plenty attractive as is, thank thee very much,” Luna huffed, raising her nose up high.

“Yes, and that’s why you have all those suitors lining up at your chamber door,” Nobody sniped back.

“What business is our love life to thee?” Luna snapped.

“I tend to make everything my business,” Nobody drawled. “But please, let’s face it: A thousand years ago, give or take a few hundred, you were a sex goddess with many a pony jumping at the chance to be your nightly companion. Now, you could cast a Want It Need It spell on yourself and you couldn’t snag a date with a mare or a stallion.”

Luna snorted. “As if we’d ever want to date a mare; such conduct is unbecoming of a princess.”

Nobody chuckled knowingly. “Whatever you say, whatever you say.” Luna could just feel a condescending grin radiating from the dark deity. “Except, it’s not what you say anymore, is it? It’s what your sister says now, and your sister decided a while after your banishment that there was nothing wrong with filly foolers or colt cuddlers. Don’t you remember? I revealed to all in earshot that the Solar Regent herself was pining after the heart of a mare – her most faithful student, no less.”

“That’s a bald-faced lie,” Luna said, narrowing her eyes. “Celestia would never partake in such disgusting and degrading behavior.”

“Maybe not the Celestia you knew a thousand years ago,” Nobody purred, leaning up against Discord’s statue. “So much can change in a millennium. Though some ponies out there are still stuck in the past, particularly the stuffy Canterlot elite, Celestia certainly isn’t. She’s a very different alicorn now, with new ideas and new ways of doing things. She’s been giving more power to local governments over the centuries, giving the common ponies more and more say in the affairs of Equestria. She doesn’t even use the ‘royal we’ anymore.” She paused and emitted a small hum. “And yet… you still cling to it.”

“Tis a force of habit,” Luna said defensively. “Tis how the princesses have spoken since the initial defeat of Discord.”

“Used to speak, my dear,” Nobody corrected, “back when the two of you were so close, so utterly intertwined in mind and soul that you could trust each other to make the exact same decision the other would, to the point where you might as well have been one, single ruler.” She chuckled and added, “But that’s all gone now… isn’t it?”

Luna barely registered that her eyes averted from the deity. “Things have… changed between Celestia and I, yes.” She stomped her hoof and looked back at Nobody with a cold, defiant fire in her eyes. “But we are still sisters, and nothing will ever change that.”

“Oh?” Nobody said, cocking her head. “Is that why she still hasn’t restored you to full royal duties and given you back the power to rule you once had? She hasn’t trusted you enough to tell her about her affection for her student, let alone running the country.”

“Tis a new age,” Luna said, her voice wavering. “Much has changed in Equestria; we still have much to learn about exactly how much has changed before we can effectively rule the nation once again.”

Nobody burst out laughing. “Oh, you really are quite clueless, aren’t you?”

Luna narrowed her eyes and snarled, “What dost thou mean?”

“You are an anachronism, Luna,” Nobody said as if she were speaking to a filly that hadn’t been paying attention in class. “Not only that, but you are a dangerous anachronism. You lost your frelling mind and tried to kill off most of the planet’s population just because nobody appreciated your artwork.”

“That side of us was expelled with the Elements of Harmony,” Luna said, her stance growing rigid. “We are as we were before we became Nightmare Moon.”

“Riddle me this, Princess: If you are who you were before you turned into Nightmare Moon, then what precisely is to stop you from turning into her again?” Nobody asked, standing as defiantly against her as she was. “Your subjects still don’t respect you, they still don’t appreciate you, and now you’ve got a heaping helping of distrust and fear on your plate. Buck, in the thousand years you were gone, you became a monster foals think is hiding under their beds. All of the factors that turned you into Nightmare Moon are present, plus a few new ones just to really needle you over the edge. So please, tell me, what makes you any less dangerous than you were, say, the year before you turned into Nightmare Moon?”

Luna’s eyes widened. Her gaze plummeted downward as she mumbled, “We… I know not.” A few seconds of silence clung to the air before she added, “But even if I do… my sister will do the right thing. And so will the bearers of the Elements.”

Nobody snorted. “Yeah, because they’re really going to risk the lives of everyone on the planet if you clearly show you’re going to be a repeat psychopath. You don’t have another chance, Princess: If you fall to your own madness again, your sister will put the kill order on you.”

“She would do no such thing!” Luna roared, her eyes snapping open and glaring at Nobody with a stomp of her hoof that left a crater in the ground. Her vision began to blur as she felt the grin emanating from Nobody grow wider.

“If you’re so sure of that, then why are you crying?”

Luna wiped her eyes with her foreleg and resumed her glare at the dark god as she shouted, “Maybe because I would not blame her if she did! Maybe because I hate myself for what I did! Maybe because I do not want to be a danger anymore! Maybe because… maybe because all I want in the world is to never hurt anypony ever again…” She wrenched her eyes closed, but that did little good against the torrent of tears that were bubbling to the surface. “Maybe… maybe I deserve it…”

“No you don’t,” Nobody said reassuringly. “You deserve to live. Death is no punishment; living with your guilt as it tears your heart to shreds from within… now that’s a punishment that fits the crime.”

“I… I suppose thou speakest the truth…” Luna sobbed, her head hanging low.

“However, all this distrust, this fear, this outright hate being sent your way from your subjects… I don’t really think you deserve that. You clearly feel bad about what you did, after all,” Nobody added.

“Do… dost thou truly think so?” Luna asked, managing to blink back the tears and look up at the deity.

“I’m not one to lie about such things,” Nobody chuckled. “That’s why I think I may have a very special offer in store for you… if you’re interested.”

Luna sniffled and sat down, sitting up tall as she tried to regain her composure. “W-we’re listening.”

“Good, good,” Nobody purred to herself. “My offer is this: I use my powers as the god of forgetfulness to make everypony completely forget that Nightmare Moon ever existed, as well as erase every mention of her or the origins of Nightmare Night in every book across the planet. You’ll have to do a bit of political maneuvering to create a new version of history of what happened to you for that millennium long absence, but as far as everypony will be concerned, they’ll just be happy to have their princess of the night back.” She leaned in close and added, “And your sister will have no reason to ever distrust you again.”

Luna narrowed her eyes. “What dost thou desire in exchange?”

“Nothing at all; I’m a god, what could I possibly want from a lesser immortal like yourself?” she asked, waving her hoof as if she were brushing away the question. “There are no strings attached to this offer whatsoever.”

Luna gulped as the full implications sunk in. “That is… uncharacteristically generous of thee.”

“What can I say? I can be a kindly elder god when the wind blows in the right direction,” Nobody said with a giggle. “So… what sayest thou, Princess Luna?”

Luna averted her eyes to the ground as a silence separated the two immortals. After a while, Luna finally said, “We… will have to consider thine offer a while longer, Nobody. We cannot reach a decision on such short notice.”

“Very well; I have all the time in the world.” She chuckled darkly and added, “Which, if my riddle goes unanswered, may only be until midnight. Don’t wait too long.”

Luna blinked, and Nobody was gone, leaving her alone in the garden with Discord’s statue and the sound of the whistling wind. She lowered her head and narrowed her eyes, both in deep thought and deep concentration as she turned herself into a cloud of vapor and wound her way against the wind. She reformed herself on the balcony of her bedchamber with a soft hiss.

Luna let out a loud yawn as she trotted inside. Her gaze shifted from her personal desk, which held a scant few official documents and potential laws that had to be reviewed, to her bed. “Surely the nobles of Canterlot will understand if we don’t feel quite up to delegation this evening,” she said to herself as she sauntered over to her bed and climbed between the covers. A small frown crossed her muzzle and a shiver went down her spine at how cold her bed felt that night for some reason. “Must be the wind,” she muttered as she turned over and tried to get some sleep before she had to lower the moon again.

A chilled wind swept through the streets of Canterlot, softly whistling under the night sky into the ears of anypony out and about that early in the morn. One such mare shivered from her bare bed of cold stone in one of the capital’s dark alleyways. She pulled her tattered cape tightly around her and pulled her hat tighter around her head, though neither did much good. The wind cut straight through the fabric and down to her very bones. The only sound that graced her ears was the sound of the cruel wind and the occasional hoofsteps of pedestrians who were out and about for whatever reason. She heard some sort of commotion going on about something that had happened at the palace a few hours ago, but she didn’t pay it much mind. The raking claws of her empty stomach on her insides kept her from focusing on much, even the task of getting some sleep.

The mare’s ears perked at the sound of hoofsteps – hoofsteps drawing closer, reverberating off the walls of her alley and coming closer. Her horn glowed with a weak light, but sputtered out before it could do her bidding. “Bucking hay,” she cursed under her breath. She pulled her hat lower over her head and huddled up against the wall out of the stranger’s path, another shiver coursing through her body due to the cold wall against her back.

The hoofsteps got closer and closer until they just stopped, right next to her curled form. She waited on bated breath, shifting her hooves under her in case she needed to run.

“No need to be scared,” a smooth male voice said. “I’m here to help.”

“The G-great and Powerful Trixie d-does not need handouts,” the mare said as her teeth chattered, refusing to look up at the stallion.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is on the backstreets of Canterlot slowly starving to death, and that’s if the cold doesn’t get her first. Is she sure she doesn’t want some assistance?”

She shivered a bit more as her stomach growled against the cold, hard stone. “Wh… what’s the catch?”

“No strings attached,” the colt assured. “I won’t be demanding any… favors afterward like the last stallion who extended his hoof to your aid.”

A gasp escaped Trixie’s lips and her head shot upward. Her eyes beheld a colt before her wrapped from head to hoof in gauze. His face was hidden by the low cowl of a blood red hood and cape that went back to his flanks, though from her low angle she could see saddlebags hidden underneath.

“How… how did you know that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

He let out a small laugh. “I make it my business to know everything, Trixie, and right now I know you need my help.” The saddlebags he kept hidden under his cloak snapped open, and out floated a loaf of bread and a canteen. “Go ahead; take them.”

Trixie’s eyes flitted between the offerings, the colt, and back again. “Trixie doesn’t trust you. Something feels… off about you. She’s too tired to place it.”

“Trixie doesn’t have a choice,” he said back. She felt like that should have been a threat, but his tone was somehow disarming.

Keeping her eyes on the stranger, she took the loaf of bread in her own feeble magic field and brought it to her lips. She bit into it, and the second her dry tongue made contact with the soft, heavenly fluff past the crust her eyes shot open. She couldn’t help but tear into it, her stomach eager to have some sustenance after so long being forsaken by food, proper manners be damned. She only stopped her gorging to levitate the canteen and chug down half of it before she could stop herself. Water dripping from her lips, she wiped her muzzle with her leg, panting out, “T-Trixie is most grateful, kind sir.”

The colt let out a good natured chuckle. “No need to thank me; it was no trouble at all.”

Trixie decided to leave it at that and wolfed down the rest of the loaf of bread and guzzling down the last of the canteen’s contents. She let out a loud belch and promptly put her hooves over her mouth. “Apologies,” she said.

He waved his gauze-wrapped hoof dismissively. “No need to apologize. Once you’ve seen the things I have, lax manners don’t even register anymore.”

Trixie arced and eyebrow and asked. “Are you… a soldier, then? Is that why you need all those bandages?”

“I’m not exactly a soldier, but I’ve seen my own fair share of war,” he said. “As for the gauze… well, let’s just say I’m nothing pretty to look at and leave it at that.”

The unicorn’s eyebrows raised higher. “There hasn’t been war in Equestria in centuries.”

“I’m not exactly from around here.” His saddlebags opened once again, both to take back the canteen and to remove a blanket from its confines. He laid the blanket gently on Trixie’s shoulders, the mare sighing softly in delight as it warded off the cold. “You take care of yourself, you hear?”

The stallion turned to leave, but Trixie couldn’t stop herself from blurting out, “Wait!”

The colt turned his head back around and tilted it. “Yes, Trixie?”

The mare blushed slightly and looked to the side. “Trixie was wondering… if you would be so kind… if you could let her stay the night at your home?” she asked through gritted teeth.

The colt just laughed. “You really do have a problem asking other ponies for help, don’t you? Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have a home, myself. Not exactly, anyway; I guess you could say everywhere is my home.”

Trixie felt her ears lower in disappointment. “Oh… you’re a wanderer, then?”

“From a certain point of view.”

The mare lowered her eyes and curled up with her blanket. “Trixie thanks you for the help you were able to provide, at the very least.”

She heard no hoofsteps leaving the alley. After she started pondering what exactly what he was doing, he said, “I may not have a home myself, but I’m sure I could come to an arrangement with a hotel to let you stay there.”

She raised her head again, hope sparkling behind her eyes. “You would do that…?”

“It’d be no issue at all; I’m a very powerful colt,” he assured as he began to canter off. “Now come; if you want shuteye before daybreak, we’ll need to get you to a hotel soon.”

Trixie briefly wondered how one could be powerful and still be homeless, but decided not to look the gift horse in the mouth lest it bite her. She shakily stood on her hooves and followed the stranger. She bit her lip when a realization hit her. “Trixie apologizes, but she didn’t exactly catch your name, Mister…?”

“Please, no honorifics. You can just call me… Nobody.”

Daybreak

Darkness. Silence. Solitude. Oblivion. It was so sweet while it lasted, well and truly. Nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about.

First touch came back. She could feel the soft embrace of covers and quilts on her fur and a pillow under her head.

Sight came next. Soft light was gently pawing at her eyelids, begging for her to open them up and embrace the new day.

Hearing came last. The songs of birds outside and the rustling of trees in the wind outside gently drifted into her ears. Along with… something else.

“Is that… singing?”

Fluttershy opened her eyes and quickly scanned her surroundings. She was back in her own room, in her own house. She glanced up to the window to see that it wasn’t morning quite yet – the sun was going to rise soon.

Memories started seeping into her brain of the night before. The party being crashed, Twilight vanishing in the chaos afterward, finding her in the library…

…Nobody peering over a bookcase down at her…

She shook her head. “That was an awful dream,” she muttered to herself as she climbed out of bed. “Must’ve grabbed some wine by mistake and passed out.” She had nothing resembling a hangover, but she decided to ignore that.

As she fully began to wake up and her senses returned to full, she could definitely hear singing. A beautiful voice floated up from outside her house in a haunting melody.

“Come, little children, I’ll take thee away, into a land of enchantment. Come, little children, the time’s come to play, here in my garden of shadows…”

Fluttershy almost didn’t register her hooves moving forward toward the stairwell. She found the song creeping into her house almost… spellbinding. She wondered who it could possibly be. She certainly didn’t recognize the voice. It was female, soft yet dark, like a gentle breeze on Nightmare Night. The mysterious voice started cooing to itself in a mournful way that made the pegasus’ heart ache.

She arrived on the first floor of her home only for Angel Bunny to rush up to meet her. “Oh, Angel, there you are,” she cooed. “I had the strangest dream last night. You wouldn’t believe… hm?” She looked down at Angel to see him pushing on her foreleg as if she could shove her back up the staircase. The little rabbit looked… afraid. She couldn’t imagine why. A smile crossed her face. “Oh, are you scared of the pony outside?” She patted Angel on the head, earning a scowl from him. “I’m sure it’s nopony to be afraid of. She even sounds kind of… sad. I’ll show you.”

“Follow, sweet children, I’ll show thee the way, through all the pain and the sorrows. Weep not, poor children, for life is this way, murdering beauty and passions…”

A little stroke of fear crossed the pegasus’ mind at the sudden dark turn of the lyrics, but she didn’t stop her trot towards the door. To her surprise, Angel hopped in front of her and waved his arms around as if begging her not to go outside.

“Angel, what has gotten into you?” she asked the rabbit. “That mare outside sounds sad and hurt, and I can’t just leave her alone out there.”

Angel ducked under her and started pulling at her hind hooves, desperately trying to keep her from the door.

“Hush now, dear children, it must be this way, to weary of life and deceptions. Rest now, my children, for soon we’ll away, into the calm and the quiet…”

The mysterious mare started cooing to herself again, louder than before but still soft in tone. Her voice seemed to echo into Fluttershy’s very skull. It sounded like the laments of a hundred years worth of grief, and the pegasus could feel her heart break a little with every passing second she heard it.

Ignoring Angel’s frantic protests, she opened the door.

She immediately regretted it.

On the bridge just outside her cottage sat Nobody, his head peering over the edge of the bridge. He seemed to be looking over the brook by her house and into the sunrise as he sang in that haunting female voice.

“Come, little children, I’ll take thee away, into a land of enchantment. Come, little children, the time’s come to play, here in my garden of shadows…”

His song apparently finished, the … Fluttershy didn’t even know if he was a god or goddess anymore with that voice. The deity turned its head over to her and said in that same soothing female voice, “Ah, you’re awake, Fluttershy.”

“N-no I’m not,” Fluttershy stuttered as her legs quaked and she screwed her eyes shut. “This is all a dream, this is all a dream, this is all a dream…!”

Nobody let out a soft laugh. “I assure you, my dear, this is no dream.”

Fluttershy whimpered and covered her eyes with her hooves. “I’m just going to count to three, and I’ll be back in my bed, and you’ll be gone. One… two… three!”

She opened her eyes again, and much to her horror she was still in the doorway to her cottage and Nobody was still on the bridge gazing over at her.

“Why don’t you come over and have a seat with me?” Nobody asked, patting a spot beside… her, Fluttershy supposed. “The sunrise is quite beautiful this morning.”

Fluttershy froze up, stuttering, “I…I…I…!”

“You don’t want to test the patience of an elder god, do you?” When the pegasus didn’t answer, a tendril of nothingness sprouted out of Nobody’s back and slowly weaved its way through the air over to the panicked pony.

Fluttershy’s mind was wild with terror and her body seized up in fear as the tendril approached her. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t think; she could barely even breathe as the dark tentacle snaked ever closer.

The tendril stopped its approach when Angel leapt out from behind Fluttershy and landed on it, trying in vain to sink his teeth into the mass of oblivion. The tendril slithered back until it hung in front of Nobody’s blank face, the deity observing the rabbit as it kept trying to bite into her tentacle.

Terror didn’t flee from Fluttershy’s mind so much as get kicked forcefully into the corner. Her legs stopped quaking with fear, but with rage. Her wide eyes narrowed into a look of pure loathing.

“Get away from him!” The pegasus glided over to the dark deity and planted her hooves firmly on the ground. Her wings flared up behind her as she concentrated The Stare on the intruder.

Nobody turned her head to acknowledge the pegasus. “A valiant effort, but the thing is, Fluttershy, I have no eyes. I just feel the arrangement of atoms around my nothingness so that I can detect the shapes of objects – I have no sight to speak of.”

That did little to dissuade the yellow pegasus. “Put Angel down. Now.”

Nobody chuckled. “High demands for such a fragile creature.” She turned to regard the still clawing and biting Angel. “You two really do care for each other… don’t you? Hm.” The deity’s head tilted slightly before the tendril wandered back over to hover over Fluttershy. Nobody shook the rabbit until he plopped onto the pegasus’ back. “I had no intentions of harming either of you anyway; I just wanted to talk. The way you went out of your way to defend each other when there was no hope of surviving should I have chosen to get violent, though…” A dark laugh emanated from Nobody that sounded much more familiar. “I like that. I like that a lot.”

Fluttershy flared up her wings higher, shielding Angel protectively as she let down The Stare. “You’re going to destroy the world and you dare say you don’t want to hurt us?!” she snarled, taking a stomp toward the deity.

“There is such a thing as disparity between desire and action; that is the recipe for the emotion you mortals call regret,” Nobody said. Her tendril vanished as she turned her faceless head back toward the sunrise.

Fluttershy couldn’t help but let her rage recede into the recesses of her mind. Nobody had said those words as if she were quoting a textbook, but the pegasus could feel an undercurrent of sorrow – sorrow that she had experience with that emotion before.

With her rage gone, the full weight of what she had just done dropped on her head like one of Derpy’s slipped deliveries.

“D… did I just-?”

“Talk back to an elder god?” Nobody finished for her. “Yes you did.”

Fluttershy felt herself begin to shake. “And I-I could have-”

“Been wiped from the very fabric of existence? Yes, you could have,” Nobody finished again. The pegasus felt Angel hop onto her head and Nobody added, “Don’t give me that look, bunny; I’m only stating fact.”

Fluttershy felt very faint, and she felt her legs buckle under her when she felt something – several somethings, in fact – wrap around her and hold her up. She looked to see that several tendrils had sprouted out of Nobody’s back and had wrapped around her middle to help her keep steady.

“Now now, no fainting,” Nobody chided with a hint of the condescending mirth she’d known her for up to that point. “If you do that, you’ll miss the sunrise.”

Fluttershy managed to stabilize herself, and the tendrils vanished when she blinked. “M-Miss Nobody, wh-what exactly do you want to talk to me about? If, um, you don’t mind me asking,” she managed to stutter out.

Nobody sighed and shook her head. “Well, I was hoping that for once this would be one ‘the morning after’ conversation that wouldn’t be incredibly awkward, but bang goes that hope.”

The pegasus pondered for a second what exactly that meant before the implication smacked her in the face. “Y-you… I… and we…?” she squeaked as what felt like all the blood in her body rushed to her face. Everything when numb and then black as the ground rushed up to meet her.

She was quickly taken out of the sweet embrace of unconsciousness by a splash of water to her face. “Buck, I keep underestimating just how frelling fragile you are; it was only a joke!” she heard Nobody’s female voice say through her snickers.

“I am not f-fragile,” Fluttershy managed to cough out as she opened her eyes. She saw Angel looking over her worriedly with a bucket over his head, which he quickly set down. The rabbit shot a death glare at the god, who was looking over to the prone pony as she snickered. “And why exactly do you have to be so… so dirty all the time?”

The deity waved her hoof dismissively. “If Angel promises to leave the two of us be for now, I’ll answer your question. I’d prefer to speak to you alone.” Angel extended his middle finger on both paws in response, earning an uproarious laugh from Nobody. “Ohohohh, aren’t you quite the feisty one?”

Fluttershy gave Angel an assuring look. “Don’t worry, Angel. You go back inside. I can handle this.”

He shot a look back that plainly said, “Um, no, you can’t.”

Fluttershy sighed and nudged the rabbit with her nose. “Please…?”

Angel looked at her sternly for a few seconds before sighing. He gave her a look that said “Please be careful” before hopping back into her cottage, slamming the door behind him.

Fluttershy turned her gaze back to Nobody as she got back onto her hooves. The dark deity waved her over and patted the patch of bridge next to her again. The pegasus nervously gulped as she trotted over to Nobody, hiding her face behind the curtain of her mane and trying to ignore the fact Nobody was omniscient and could see it anyway. It took a lot of will and effort, but she eventually was able to drag her hooves over beside Nobody and sit her rump down beside the embodiment of the void.

“So, I guess I owe you an answer to that question?” Nobody asked.

“If you want to answer it,” the pegasus whispered as she kept her gaze to the ground and her face behind her mane.

“You don’t have to be scared of me, you know,” Nobody said softly. “I really don’t plan on hurting you or any of your friends.”

Fluttershy gulped again. “B-but… you’re planning to destroy the entire world – kill everyone.”

“When death comes by my hands, it’s completely painless. One second you’re alive, and the next second… you’re not,” Nobody replied. “It’s a much more merciful death than mortals often offer each other.” The pegasus briefly thought about whether Nobody was trying to convince her or herself, but didn’t voice it and prayed that Nobody couldn’t read minds.

Fluttershy inwardly squeaked to herself before gathering the courage to ask, “Excuse me, Miss N-Nobody, but how exactly do you know that?”

“I’m the keeper of forgotten memories; that includes the memories of the dead. Every single being I’ve ever wiped from the face of existence… I have all their memories, including the moment they died. They felt no pain.” The deity’s voice was wistful, mixed with sadness and a little bit of pride.

“I… I guess that’s nice of you…” Fluttershy’s voice trailed off, the young mare unsure of exactly how terrified she should be anymore.

Nobody scoffed. “When you have infinite power, there are infinite ways to abuse it. I like to think I’ve kept a pretty clean track record in the past few billion years.” The deity paused and added, “I admit I’ve done things I’m not exactly proud of when the noise has gotten to be too much, but everypony makes mistakes, right?”

“The… noise?” Fluttershy asked, uncertain she even wanted to know.

“All the sound in the universe,” she clarified. “I can hear it all – every single little sound in the vast expanse of everything. Every word, every breath, every heartbeat, every step, every clinking and clanking and whirring and humming of every machine…”

Fluttershy’s blood ran cold when she saw over a dozen tendrils start to snake their way out of Nobody’s back. They wriggled, writhed and lashed, lacking any of the control that the god had previously shown.

“…every deafening explosion, every sword clash, every gunshot, every blood spatter, every cracked bone, every battle cry, every scream, every dying breath…!”

With every word the god’s errant tendrils grew a bit longer and thrashed a bit harder. Fluttershy just watched them extend and writhe in terror, trying to stammer something – anything – out as she scrambled away from them on her back. Finally she managed with a shriek, “Nobody!”

The deity stopped her rambling and the tentacles vanished. She cleared her throat and said, “My apologies. I just… sometimes lose control of myself when I dwell on how horrid this universe can be.” She turned her head toward the prone Fluttershy and extended a tendril to help her back up to her hooves. “It’s one of the reasons I kind of like you – you’re such a quiet young mare, with little need for bluster. You barely add to the noise at all.”

Fluttershy gulped as she was set back into her seat by Nobody’s tendril. “W-well, Miss Nob-body… if you like me so much, why do you keep scaring me?”

“Because, my dear, when you’re unconscious you are so much quieter. It’s quite pleasant, really,” she explained.

“O-oh…” Fluttershy’s voice trailed off, unsure of what to say to that.

“I’m kidding,” Nobody snickered. “I actually find the sound of your voice very soothing and it’s certainly nicer than most of the other trillions upon trillions of voices I have to hear every second of every day.”

“Th-thank you,” Fluttershy whispered, stealing a glance up at the deity.

“You’re very welcome,” Nobody said back.

The two sat in silence for… Fluttershy didn’t know how long. Eventually she gathered up the courage to stop hiding behind her mane and actually look in front of her. Her eyes were greeted with the sight of Celestia’s sun rising just over the horizon. The sky was painted in vibrant reds, soft purples and wispy blues, each cloud sporting a golden lining as the night retreated behind them and the day stretched to begin.

“It’s beautiful,” she heard herself sigh as the sun quickly climbed across the sky.

Nobody chuckled softly. “I told you as much, didn’t I?” She let out a small sigh herself and added, “It’s always sunrise somewhere on almost every planet, and a small portion of my cosmic mind is focused on every one of them. I like to pretend it’s the only thing I can see and all I can hear is silence.”

“It must be nice, getting to see every sunrise across the universe.” A small smile found its way on Fluttershy’s face as she tried to think about what that must have been like.

“The novelty wore out after the first few million years after stars, planets and sunrises became a thing,” Nobody admitted, “and they’re far from the most beautiful thing in the universe, but they’re certainly up there. It’s one of the few perks of my non-existence.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, Miss Nobody, what is the most beautiful thing in the universe?” Fluttershy asked as she looked over to her companion, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“I’m not telling, but you’ll know it when you see it,” Nobody said with a knowing laugh. The deity paused and added, “Now, about your question…” She turned her head to the young pegasus and leaned in. “It was about why I’m so ‘dirty’ all the time, yes?”

Fluttershy blushed; she’d completely forgotten about that herself. “Y-yes, if you don’t mind answering.”

Nobody snickered to herself. “Well, sex is but an aspect and expression of love, is it not?”

“It c-can be,” Fluttershy answered, her blush deepening.

“Then this may be a bit of a shocker, but…” The deity’s voice trailed off and she looked around as if she were afraid anyone were listening in. She leaned in and said behind her hoof, “I’m all about love.”

Fluttershy felt her head about to pop again. “E-excuse me?”

Nobody giggled as she drew back to her full height. “I’m in love with love! Well, the concept and feeling of love, really,” she corrected. “Love is such a wondrous feeling – the greatest feeling in any emotional range of any species anywhere. I have millions upon millions of memories of the feeling of love within my consciousness, and they are by far my favorite memories to visit.” Nobody giggled again as she added, “I just find it so delightfully hilarious how so many sexual species react to sexuality, such an integral part of their existence. The most sublime expression of romantic love there is, and it’s as if they’re afraid of it! The irony is just so glorious, don’t you think?” She turned her head over to look at Fluttershy almost expectantly.

“I-it does seem a b-bit silly,” Fluttershy managed to stammer out.

“Of course, romantic love isn’t the only sort there is,” Nobody said, almost purring. “There’s also familial love – the love between siblings, for instance. Like the love you and Angel feel for each other. And don’t you deny it: I saw how both of you selflessly rushed to each other’s defense despite almost assured death,” she said with a wave of her hoof. “Despite being different species, the two of you keep each other in check not because it benefits yourselves, but because it benefits the other.” She sighed wistfully. “If only all beings were so lucky.”

Fluttershy thought for a few moments, a smile widening on her face with each passing second. “Yeah… I guess I really am lucky to have him.” She paused and added, “Nobody… can I ask you a very, very personal question?”

“I won’t stop you or punish you for it,” the deity said back.

Fluttershy looked shyly up at Nobody and asked, “Have you… ever been in love before?”

Several seconds of chilling silence passed between the two. “No, I haven’t,” Nobody finally admitted. “Though I have many memories of the feeling, they are but wisps compared to the real thing, and… I am incapable of feeling love for various reasons.”

Fluttershy turned her head and hid back behind the curtain of her mane. “I-I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “I would ask you the same question, but I already know the answer is yes.”

The yellow pegasus’ face once again turned very red. “Wh-what do you mean by that?”

Nobody snickered, the tinge of sadness gone. “There’s no use lying to a god such as I, Fluttershy. Ignoring your fillyhood crush on Rainbow Dash, I know you have quite… deeper feelings about somepony else.”

“S-so you can read minds?” Fluttershy squeaked.

“I don’t need to; just the way you look at her, the way your breath gets a bit shallow around her, the way your heart beats just a little bit faster – anypony with my omniscience could tell,” Nobody said. “When do you plan on telling her?”

“I-I really don’t know,” Fluttershy mumbled as she traced non-distinct shapes on the ground with her hoof.

“Well, the clock is ticking, Fluttershy. This may be the last day you ever get to see her, or ever get to hear her laugh, or feel the soft brush of her fur against yours, or smell her sweet aroma… I’d savor it for all it was worth, if I were you.”

“I-I still don’t really know, Nobody. What do you think she would say?” Fluttershy looked up to Nobody to see she was no longer there. She was left all alone on that bridge, the sun rising on the horizon as the young mare began to think over what she’d been told.

Darkness. Silence. Solitude. Oblivion. It was so sweet while it lasted, well and truly. Nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about.

Not having to deal with her hangover.

Vinyl Scratch let out a pained groan as she stirred. Her head felt like somepony had hammered her own speakers into her skull, cranked the volume up to eleven, and left them on all night. Her mouth tasted like she had chugged a glass of griffin sweat, and she wasn’t keen on recalling why she knew what that tasted like. Every little sound was magnified tenfold, to the point even the sound of her own moans made her want to fill her ears in with cement. All she could register was that she was not in her own bed, which was a bad sign.

After the initial sensory overload died down, the DJ started to make sense of her surroundings. She wasn’t in her own bed, but she was in her own apartment, much to her relief. She was just sprawled out on their older-than-dirt couch. There were certainly worse places to wake up in the morning. She could hear the sizzling of a pan on the oven emanating from the hall, and smell the blueberry pancakes that were probably the cause.

With another soft groan, Vinyl crawled off her resting place and trotted down the hall, her legs shaking. She looked around the corner to see a familiar grey mare at the oven working her magic – well, not actual magic, but to Vinyl, everything Octavia did was magic.

“Good morning, babe,” Vinyl managed to mumble out, a soft smile on her lips as she sauntered into the kitchen and tried her best not to look like she felt like she had one hoof in the grave.

Octavia took a moment to flip the pancakes and set down the spatula in her mouth before greeting back, “Good morning, Vinyl.” She turned over her shoulder with a cocky smile but loving look. “You look like you had quite a wild night. How’re you feeling?”

“Babe, you and I both know that I feel as well as I look,” Vinyl chuckled, trotting over to her marefriend. “But thanks for asking, Octy.”

“You’re welcome, Viny,” Octavia snickered.

The DJ rolled her eyes. “You still gonna call me that after all this time?”

“You call me Octy,” the grey mare said back coyly, as if they hadn’t had that exact same conversation before.

“Yes, but Octy is cute; Viny sounds like the name of a pizza joint, sweetcheeks.”

Octavia let out a small snicker before suggesting, “Why don’t you just relax and take a seat? Breakfast is almost ready.”

“Thanks, babe.” Vinyl was about to go do as her marefriend bid her, but her red eyes caught sight of Octavia’s flank, and she couldn’t help herself. She leaned in and gave her treble clef cutie mark a lick, earning a shocked squeak from its owner.

“V-vinyl!” Octavia sputtered, her face bright red and turning to see the offender just smacking her lips.

“I knew there was a reason I called you sweetcheeks…” Vinyl giggled with a wink before she sauntered over to the table, putting an emphasis on each hip swing.

“You are just awful,” Octavia huffed half-heartedly.

“It’s part of my charm,” Vinyl said with a smirk as she took her seat.

Octavia just rolled her eyes and took the pan off the heat. Spatula clenched in her teeth, she moved the pancakes from the pan to a pair of plates. Setting the spatula down again, she huffed, “How do I ever put up with you?”

“I would say it’s because you love me, but I’ve gotta say that it’s the sex that seals the deal,” Vinyl snickered, floating the two plates over to the table with her magic.

With a bright blush and an upturn of her nose, Octavia sauntered over to her seat and set herself down. “Careful with the lewd comments, hon, or I swear I’ll announce to all in sundry that you prefer to be called Spanky in bed,” she said with a devious smirk and a look in her eye similar to that of a cat looking at a cornered mouse.

“Hey, hey, no need to whip out the Spanky card, babe,” Vinyl said with a nervous laugh as she rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof. “We’re trying to keep our relationship on the down-low anyway, remember?”

“I know…” Octavia’s voice trailed off, and her amethyst eyes lost focus. She looked like she was looking past Vinyl instead of at her.

After a few seconds of silence, Vinyl said, “Are you okay?” She tilted her head in concern as she lifted up the syrup with her magic and poured it over her marefriend’s plate.

“Huh?” Octavia blinked a few times, looking at Vinyl in confusion for a few seconds. She quickly regained her composure and insisted, “Of course, hon. Everything’s fine. Thank you.”

Vinyl raised an eyebrow as she moved the syrup from her marefriend’s plate to her own. “Are you sure, sweetcheeks? You looked like you were thinking about something pretty hard.”

“Well…” Octavia’s voice trailed off again. Her eyes looked off to the side, refusing to make contact with Vinyl’s.

“Well?” Vinyl prompted as she started cutting into her breakfast.

Octavia’s eyes snapped right back to Vinyl’s with an unusually shy smile. “I was just wondering if we could… forget about the secrecy. Just for today? One day out on the town, just you and I.”

Vinyl’s eyebrows raised so much she thought they almost ripped off her skull. “Octy, baby, keeping our relationship a secret was your idea in the first place. You know what those stuffy Canterlot nobles think about filly foolers.” Her gaze hardened as she added, “I mean, none of my clients are nobles, so I have nothing to worry about, and everypony already knows what way my stable door swings, but you? You have a career to worry about! You played at the Grand Galloping bucking Gala last year! I know you love me and all – hay, what pony doesn’t? – but I’m not about to let you ruin your rep over me.”

“I know, I know; I’m painfully aware of that fact,” Octavia sighed, taking a bite out of her pancakes. “I’m just somewhat tired of all the hiding. When was the last time we even ate out together in public?”

“The night you asked me out,” Vinyl said, a small smile forming on her muzzle when she remembered that night – and their first kiss.

“Exactly,” Octavia said with a slight frown. “We haven’t even once kissed in public – besides, well, that night, and I was too overcome with passion to care at that moment, and we were horribly lucky there were no paparazzi.”

“Tends to happen to ponies around me,” Vinyl said with a chuckle before biting in to her breakfast. “My animal magnetism was just too much for ya.”

Octavia rolled her eyes. “My point is that ever since we got together, we’ve been too afraid to act like a normal couple, and it’s all on my account.” She sighed and locked her violet eyes with her marefriend’s crimson ones with a pleading look. “Just… for one day, I want us to forget about that. I just want us to go out and have a good time, regardless of any stares we get. Please…?”

Vinyl looked long and hard into her marefriend’s eyes before she let out a sigh. “Okay; we’ll take the day off and spend it together.” She paused and added with a wink, “And if you end up regretting it, I promise my tongue and I will wash all your worries away.”

A bright blush found its way onto Octavia’s face once again, but this time she didn’t snap at the offender for it. “Thanks, hon,” she said meekly with a small smile. She sat up straight again and donned her composed mannerisms once more. “Let’s eat; I didn’t make breakfast for you this morning only for it to get cold.”

Vinyl chuckled. “Whatever you say, babe. We’ll plan our day after breakfast.” She tucked into her plate and hummed softly at the flavor, smiling at her marefriend. With a swallow, she opened her mouth to thank her, but decided against it. She just basked in the other mare’s company as a companionable silence fell over them and the sun’s light began to peek through their window.

Lacuna

Rarity hummed a soft little tune to herself as she trotted down the stairs. She could already hear and smell breakfast being made. Knowing that the only one in the house besides her was Sweetie Belle, she let out a soft groan. “Well, I don’t smell smoke yet; that’s a good sign, at least,” she muttered to herself as she went into the kitchen with the best fake smile she could muster. “Good morning, Sweetie Belle!”

The younger unicorn leaped up in fright and wheeled around from her place in front of the stove.

“Sorry, Sweetums,” Rarity said with a giggle. “I didn’t mean to startle you like that.”

“Who are you?” Sweetie said, backing up against the oven. “What’re you doing in our house?”

Rarity tilted her head with a raised eyebrow. “Sweetie Belle, what are you talking about? Is this one of your little games?”

“H-how do you know my name?” Fear and confusion were plain in the filly’s green eyes. Her gaze flitted between Rarity and anyplace where Rarity wasn’t, clearly looking for an escape route.

“Sweetie Belle, it’s me, Rarity. Your sister, remember?” she asked as softly as she could, crouching down to look the panicked Sweetie in the eye on her level.

Sweetie Belle’s alarm calmed ever so slightly as her eyes connected with Rarity’s. “I’ve… I’ve never had a sister. I’m an only foal.”

“That… that’s total nonsense,” Rarity said, shaking her head. “I’ve always been your sister, Sweetums. I was even at the hospital when you were born.”

“M-mom and dad never told me about having a sister before.” Sweetie Belle’s eyes suddenly lit up with the kind of wonder only a child of her age could manage. “Does that mean you’re my long lost sister?”

Rarity shook her head and rose to her full height, her brow furrowed in thought before she quickly adopted a smile. “Yes, Sweetie Belle, I’m your long lost sister. I’ve been looking for you and our parents for a very, very long time.”

Sweetie Belle scrambled up on her hooves and hugged Rarity’s leg. “I can’t believe I actually have a sister! Where’ve you been all this time?” she asked, looking up at Rarity with wide eyes.

Rarity avoided her sister’s gaze. “I’ve been… a lot of places. Mostly Canterlot.”

“I’ve never been to Canterlot before,” Sweetie Belle said, awe apparent. “What’s it like?”

“Oh, it’s a very nice place, darling. The architecture, the culture, the class…” Rarity sighed wistfully. She blinked and added, “But, um, I’m not here to tell you about my old home. I’m here to find out about your home. Come to think of it, I really should get back to exploring Ponyville.”

“But… you just got here!” The filly’s lower lip began to tremble, her forelegs tightening around Rarity’s leg.

Rarity gave Sweetie Belle a soft smile and stroked her pink and purple mane with a hoof. “I’ll be back soon, Sweetums; don’t you worry about that. You can stand to wait for a while, can’t you?”

“I… I guess,” Sweetie Belle said with a sigh, releasing Rarity’s leg. “Promise me you’ll be back soon, though!”

Rarity giggled at the demand. “Of course I will. I’m just going to get a feel for the place where my family lives, after all.” She turned around and trotted toward the front door. “See you soon!”

“I better!” Sweetie Belle huffed after her.

Rarity chuckled again. As soon as her hooves touched grass and the door swung shut, the mask of calm crumbled and gave way to creases of worry. “This is not good,” Rarity whispered to herself. “Sweetie Belle has amnesia… I better go see Twilight about this.”

She trotted along the surprisingly empty streets of Ponyville. There were ponies out and about, but they all seemed strangely blurry to her eyes. “Great, maybe I need to start wearing glasses full time again,” she mumbled to herself.

“Howdy there, partner!”

Rarity’s eyes snapped to the source of the voice, and clear as crystal was Applejack pulling a cart of her wares.

“You look a little lost, and Ah ain’t ever seen your face around here before; need directions?” Applejack asked with a welcoming smile.

“New in town?” Rarity repeated, looking over the cowpony as if she’d just admitted a manticore fetish. “Applejack, it’s me, Rarity.”

Applejack cocked an eyebrow. “Sorry, Miss Rarity, but have we met before?”

“Have we met befo–” Rarity shook her head before she got lost in the mire of confusion she found herself in. “Applejack, I’ve lived here in Ponyville for years. We’ve been friends for more than a year. I made your dress for the Grand Galloping Gala.”

Applejack’s other eyebrow shot up to join its sibling. “Are you sure, Miss Rarity? Because Ah honestly swear Ah’ve never seen you before now. You must have me mistaken for somepony else.”

“Okay, so if I didn’t make your dress for the Grand Galloping Gala, who did?” the unicorn asked, her voice starting to tremble.

Applejack opened her mouth to respond, but closed it again without a word. Her brow furrowed in concentration and she brought a hoof to her mouth. A few more seconds of silence followed before she screwed her eyes shut and started tapping the side of her head. “Ah… can’t seem to remember. Ah ain’t even got a blurry memory; it’s like there’s a big hole where that memory’s supposed to be.” She sighed and looked at the unicorn with an apologetic look. “Mighty sorry, Miss Rarity, but Ah just can’t remember.”

Rarity didn’t bother to say anything else. She broke out into a gallop past the bewildered cowpony, her eyes wild with terror as she repeated to herself, “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening…!”

The rest of Ponyville passed her by in a huge blur until she came up to the old oak library. She burst into the door and yelled, “Twilight, are you here?”

“Just a second!” came a call from Twilight’s bedroom. The tapping of hooves on wood echoed out until the occupant entered the main library. “Welcome to the Ponyville Library! What’re you looking for?”

“Help; I’m looking for your help,” Rarity choked out, her eyes beginning to water. “Sweetie Belle doesn’t remember I’m her older sister, Applejack doesn’t remember I’m her friend and… oh, darling, something horrible must have happened!”

Twilight trotted over and put a hoof on Rarity’s shoulder. “Calm down, calm down; I’ll see what I can do. Ponies are forgetting who you are, right?”

Rarity simply gave a nod and a sniffle.

“Very odd,” Twilight said as she trotted over to a bookshelf and began perusing its contents. “Anypony who hasn’t forgotten you yet?”

“I’ve only run into Sweetie Belle and Applejack this morning, so you’re really the only pony who seems to remember me so far, Twilight,” Rarity explained.

Twilight went completely still for what felt like forever.

“Twilight…?”

The violet unicorn chuckled nervously as she turned back to face Rarity. “Actually, I, um… I have no idea who you are, Miss…?”

Rarity felt her hind legs give way under her, her behind landing on the wooden floor with a loud thud. Sweat started forming on her brow. Her eyes stared out into the distance, beyond the library, beyond Equestria, and possibly beyond even Equis.

“No… no, this isn’t happening,” Rarity muttered to herself as her vision began to blur. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening…”

“Um… excuse me? Are you okay?” Twilight asked, trotting up to the stunned unicorn. Just as her hoof was about to find Rarity’s shoulder again, Rarity galloped out the door, tears streaming down her face and her eyes screwed shut.

“This isn’t happening! This isn’t happening! This isn’t happening!” she shrieked to herself, not caring who heard as long as she could hold onto the vain hope that her mantra would come true.

Rarity didn’t pay attention to how far or how long she ran; it didn’t matter if she didn’t outrun the reality of her situation. Eventually her legs tired and she stopped, though she supposed it didn’t take that long, seeing as she wasn’t athletic in any way. She didn’t bother to open her eyes; she could feel grass beneath her feet, and that was good enough for her. She completely collapsed and just cried into her hooves, repeating her mantra now and then in a feeble attempt to comfort herself.

“Um… excuse me? Are you okay?”

A small gasp escaped Rarity’s lips, her eyes snapping open and looking up. Somehow, through the veil of her own tears, Fluttershy was standing before her clear as day. Her face wore a look of worry, and sympathy lay behind her teal eyes as she looked down at the prone unicorn.

“Fluttershy?” Rarity sobbed out. She scrambled back into an upright sitting position and wiped her eyes with her foreleg. “I’m sorry you had to see me like this, darling, but…” She shuddered as she let out a sigh and looked at the pegasus hopefully. “Please tell me you remember who I am, Fluttershy. Please, just… say my name. That’s all I need to hear right now.”

Fluttershy’s ears flattened and her frown deepened. “I’m really sorry, but… I don’t think we’ve ever met before.”

Rarity blinked the tears back as they pounded to escape from her tear ducts. She avoided Fluttershy’s gaze and said, “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any less. Nopony remembers me anymore… why should I have expected you to be any–”

Rarity’s laments were cut short by the feeling of two forelegs wrapping around her, a soft mane draping over her back, and a warm neck pressing up against her own.

“It doesn’t matter what your name is or who you are; you’re somepony who needs help, and… I’m here for you,” Fluttershy whispered. “I’m here for you no matter what.”

Rarity let the tears flow freely as their essence changed from despair to joy. She wrapped her own forelegs around Fluttershy’s withers and hugged her close, melting into the pegasus’ embrace. “Thank you, Fluttershy,” she whispered. “Thank you so much…”

When Rarity opened her eyes again and blinked away the tears, the sight before her made all thought screech to a halt. The scenery before her was blurred and unfocused, but it was rapidly disappearing in an encroaching wave of blackness.

“…run.”

“What?” Fluttershy asked.

“Run!” Rarity yelled as she pulled away and took her own advice. She looked over her shoulder to see Fluttershy spot the danger and dash to keep up with the unicorn as the world behind them vanished.

Rarity’s lungs felt like a pair of furnaces, but her legs hurt so much from the strain that they were beyond pain itself. She just kept putting one hoof in front of the other, only daring to look back to make sure Fluttershy was keeping up. To her horror, the yellow pegasus was falling behind, and the wave of black was catching up to them.

“Fluttershy, hurry!” Rarity shouted behind her.

“I can’t go any faster!” Fluttershy huffed between pants.

“Then fly!” Rarity yelled back.

Fluttershy screwed her eyes shut and flapped her wings. She took to the air, gliding along and gaining distance between her and the apocalyptic surge.

Rarity let out a sigh of relief and flashed Fluttershy a smile. “We can do this, we can do this…” She tried to focus on her own race against death itself, but kept finding herself worrying over the yellow pegasus. Eventually, she gave in and looked behind her.

She immediately wished she hadn’t.

The wave of nothing caught up with Fluttershy and began to tear apart her tail and hind legs, which just turned into specs of yellow and pink dust before blowing away on an unseen wind into the void. It wasn’t until it reached her hips that Fluttershy noticed and looked back. She let out a terrified scream. “Help!”

“Fluttershy!” Rarity skidded to a halt and about-faced, galloping with all her speed to her friend.

She wasn’t fast enough. The encroaching nothingness tore Fluttershy apart bit by bit. The pegasus desperately kept flapping her wings to try to get ahead, until those turned to dust as well. “Help me!” she shrieked, extending a pleading hoof toward Rarity as what was left of her fell. In the blink of an eye, it was over; all that was left was a gust of pink and yellow dust that the darkness quickly consumed.

“Fluttershy… no.” Rarity could only stare at the spot where two frightened, begging teal eyes had been just a second before. She shook her head and resumed her run, her heart freezing over with grief as the rest of her burned from exhaustion. “I’m not ready to die just yet!” she yelled as if challenging the encroaching void.

Almost as if it responded in kind, she saw a wave of nothingness approaching from the horizon before her. She looked to her right to start running in that direction, but the void was encroaching from there as well. A glance to the left achieved the same result.

“I’m…I’m trapped,” she gasped to herself. Her gallop slowed to a canter. Her canter slowed to a trot. Finally, her trot slowed down to nothing. She looked around with the serenity of the condemned to see that the darkness was circling around her. “So… this is how it ends,” she said with a small scoff and a disbelieving smile on her face. “Completely and utterly… alone…”

She hung her head low and sobbed, but she was all out of tears to shed. The circle closed in on her and began ripping her apart, inch by inch. She watched clouds of white and violet dust drift away from her with dulled eyes. “That’s funny… I don’t feel a thing,” she mumbled to herself.

Her eyes snapped open. “I…I can’t feel anything.” She began to panic, flailing in the encroaching void. “I can’t feel my legs!” she shrieked as she looked down to find her lower half completely gone and her upper half beginning to follow suit. “No, stop, please!” she begged to whatever deity may have been listening. “I know I’ve lost everything, but…but I don’t want to die,” she sobbed to herself as her forelegs began drifting away. They were gone before she knew it, the void creeping up her neck.

“I don’t want to die!”

Rarity’s eyes snapped open with a deep gasp. Her gaze darted around, only to find the luxurious comforts of her own room. She was wrapped deep in the covers of her own bed, the feel of the expensive fabrics quite literally dampened by the cold sweat that covered her body.

The unicorn laid in her bed and shivered for several minutes as she let the sheer terror that flooded her mind slowly trickle away. She finally took in a deep breath that felt like it rattled her very bones, though it didn’t calm her down as much as she’d hoped.

She heard the doorbell ring downstairs, earning a small groan from the fashionista. She stole a look at the clock. “Who would come by at this Celestia-forsaken hour?” she muttered as she shakily climbed out of bed. “The sun is barely even up.”

Rarity dragged her hooves along the floor, unable to control their shaking as the events of last night’s nightmare played over and over in her mind. “It was only a dream,” she whispered to herself. “Just a petite little nightmare. Nightmares never hurt anypony.”

The doorbell rang again as she approached the front door. “Coming!” she sang as cheerfully as she could manage. She took a moment to try to regain her composure. The most she could manage was to stop her legs from shaking. Deciding that was good enough, she swung the door open with her magic and put on her best fake smile. “Good morning, and welcome to the Carousel Boutique.” She was going to finish the rest of her greeting, but her words died in her throat when she saw who it was.

“Good mornin’, Rarity,” Applejack greeted. “Ah was just swinging by to… oh Celestia, what happened to you?” Her eyes suddenly softened with pity.

“What? What’s wrong?” Rarity asked, looking herself over.

“Rare, your mane looks like your cat slept in it and your face is covered in smudged makeup,” the cowpony said, looking over her friend with a furrowed brow. “Were you… were you cryin’ last night, Rarity?”

“No; of course not,” the unicorn lied, turning her nose up as if the very suggestion offended her. “I’m just fine.”

“Rarity…” Applejack sighed and pushed her way into the boutique, closing the door with her hoof. “You can be honest with me. You can put on a mighty pretty smile, but Ah can still see that something’s eatin’ away at you.”

“Of course n-not, don’t b-be silly, Applejack,” she stammered, avoiding eye contact. “Everything… everything…” A single glance at the emerald eyes full of worry looking at her shattered her already shaky resolve. “Everything’s not fine. Everything… is far from fine.”

Rarity felt Applejack’s cheek nuzzle up against her own. “You were crying last night… weren’t you?”

The unicorn mutely nodded with a sniffle as her eyes began to water once more. “I just fell in bed and couldn’t stop. Even after I didn’t have any tears left, I just kept on sobbing… it wasn’t the most dignified moment of my life, I’ll tell you that,” she joked with a weak smile, finally managing to look her friend in the eye.

“What’s wrong, sugarcube?” Applejack asked softly.

“I’m… I’m scared,” she admitted more to herself than to her friend. “I’m so scared.” She suddenly flung her forelegs around Applejack and buried her face in her friend’s neck as the tears flowed anew. “I don’t want to die, Applejack! I still have so much to do with my life, and… I don’t want to leave what I already have behind.” She sobbed violently and held the cowpony tighter, as if she was scared that her friend would turn into dust and slip away any second.

Applejack returned the hug in kind and softly whispered into Rarity’s ear, “Just cry it all out, Rare. Ah’m here, and Ah ain’t going anywhere.” She held the unicorn closer and stroked her back.

Rarity quickly ran out of tears to cry, but that didn’t stop her sobbing or loosen her grip on her friend. Every time her hold tightened, Applejack just nuzzled her cheek into her mane and said, “Ah’m here for you, Rarity, Ah’m here.” After a while the mantra began to take hold and Rarity’s sobbing died away.

“I-I’m so sorry for acting like this, darling,” Rarity apologized, nuzzling her friend’s neck

“Don’t fret, sugarcube,” Applejack assured, patting her on the back. “None of us are going anywhere, and you ain’t gonna die. Twilight will figure all this out, and everything will go back to normal. You just gotta have a little faith.”

“I’ll try, Applejack. I’ll try.” Rarity basked in her friend’s warmth for a few more seconds before pulling away. She locked her eyes with the cowpony’s and smiled. “Thank you. I really needed that.”

“Think nothing of it, Rare. What’re friends for?” Applejack asked, returning the smile.

“That would be a very long list,” Rarity chuckled, “and even then you go above and beyond.”

“Aw shucks, Ah ain’t nothing special,” Applejack said with a blush.

“I would tell you to not be so modest if I didn’t know you’d be too stubborn to listen,” Rarity giggled. “Now, what brings you to my doorstep this early in the morning?”

Applejack’s blush faded and her ears went flat. “Well, Ah actually came here for Sweetie Belle. Ah’m roundin’ up the girls together and takin’ ‘em out someplace fun in case… you know.”

Rarity’s ears flattened as well along with her sinking heart. “I see… I understand. I’ll go get her.”

Rarity had just turned around when Applejack asked, “Are ya sure ya don’t mind? Ah mean, she’s your sister, not mine. Hay, maybe you could come with us.”

Rarity thought silently for a few moments. “No; it’s fine. If I went, I’d just be the overbearing sister that I always am, right? I’ll just let her enjoy herself the way she wants to.”

“If you think that’s best. Ah promise Ah’ll take good care of her, Rarity,” AJ assured. “Nothing’s gonna happen to her on my watch.”

Rarity glanced over her shoulder with a sliver of a smile as she trotted up the stairs. Applejack was looking back at her with the sort of determination in her eyes she’d begun to think only existed in fairy tales. “I have no doubt you will.”