Romance and the Fate of Equestria

Chapter Seventy-Four

It was almost dusk when all of the pony friends filed into Golden Oak Library.

"HI!" Twilight sang. "Hi, everypony! Good to have you here!"

"Hello, Twilight," Rarity said lovingly, nuzzling her.

"Been waiting for this one since… well, since the last one," said Rainbow.

Applejack winked. "Glad you thought of it, Twi. Good way to get us back in the groove."

Pinkie trudged in at the end of the line, in a cold sweat and with dark circles under her eyes.

"Pinkie?" Twilight said in concern.

"I'm okay," she said hastily. "I… I think I'm a bit ill… but I'm fine. I wouldn't miss this… I don't care how sick I am. But, um, if I could use your facilities…"

"Facilities?" Twilight said blankly.

"The bathroom, Twilight," said Rainbow.

"Oh. Yeah, of course."

Pinkie rushed off.

"All right, while we're waiting for her," Twilight said, "does anypony want any marijuana?" She pulled out a heavy plastic bag full of the plant.

The others stared at her, silent and surprised.

"Come on, I just got this, I wanna try it," Twilight said excitedly.

"…Really, Twilight?" Rainbow said in amused derision.

"Oh, what?" Twilight demanded. "It's not like we're gonna go out of control and run around town getting into fights. That's alcohol, ladies. Marijuana will just make us sit around and not move, staying right here in the safety of the library. And yet alcohol is the one that's socially acceptable? I call nonsense on that."

"Twilight…" Rarity began.

"This'll relax us, turn our brains off," Twilight said. "I've never done that. Look, I might not even like it, I just wanna give it a go at least once." When the others remained unresponsive, she stomped her hoof. "COME ON! I want tonight to be about forgetting everything that's weighing down on us. So let's get high and just… drop any worries or fears that we had coming in, and giggle about stupid stuff all night long."

Fluttershy sighed. "It almost appeals to me, but… there are other ways to make bad thoughts go away, Twilight. Healthier ways. Please consider, just… getting rid of that stuff. If you would."

Twilight shook her head. "I have it on good authority that this is high-quality hash, not to be wasted. Wasn't easy getting my hooves on a dime-bag, so with or without the rest of you, I'm rolling doobies."

Rainbow and Applejack glanced at each other, amused. "Could be worse; at least she can say 'marijuana'," Rainbow said dryly. "She could be pronouncing the J."

"Excuse me?" Twilight exclaimed. "Are you saying I mispronounce words? Since when have I given any indication of that?"

She looked around at the others pleadingly.

"Really, girls? Nopony? Nopony at all?" She scoffed. "Well, I sure as hell don't want to be the only one here who's high, that's just uncool. Fine then, I'll succumb to peer pressure and not smoke marijuana with you guys. Pfft, talk about your immature schoolyard bullying. Boo."

Pinkie returned from the bathroom, looking even paler and weaker than before.

"Pinkie, you're my last hope," Twilight called to her, not looking. "Want any marijuana?"

"Um… I probably shouldn't," Pinkie mumbled. "I raid enough fridges as it is… ugh, I still don't feel so good…"

Pinkie hacked and coughed with horrifying ferocity. Her stomach gurgled loudly, and she tossed her head back and forth involuntarily.

"Euuurrrggghh—WAAAAUUUGGGHH!"

Alongside that agonized scream came a torrent of blood. It poured out of Pinkie's mouth like a waterfall, warm and thick, sizzling like acid when it made contact with the carpet, pooling out into an ever-widening puddle.

"Glurgh… Gaahh!" Pinkie choked out, tears dripping from her eyes in pain as the pouring blood became thicker and darker, accompanied by chunks of half-digested food, unidentifiable as they were entirely covered in blood, and occasional globs of black and green bile.

"No…" Pinkie squeaked, her eyes shut tight. "No more… AAAHHH!"

A final hacking cough released one last explosion of blood. A few smaller coughs were accompanied by tiny trickling lines of red dribbling down her chin.

The other five ponies had stood there staring, stock-still, too stunned and terrified to move or speak. Fluttershy was the one to break the silence.

"PINKIE!" she shrieked in horror.

"Right," Pinkie said in a frail and raspy voice. "Gotta clean that up… I'll take care of it…"

"I… I… Pinkie, no!" Twilight gasped, shaking herself out of her stupor. "You don't have to… I mean… we need to get you to a hospital!"

"No, no, I'm all better now," Pinkie peeped. "Do you have a mop or a scrubby-brush of some kind? I'll do what I can, but it might not be enough. I'll pay to have your rug shampooed, okay?"

"I can deal with it, Pinkie," Twilight said. "Look." Her horn lit up, and her magenta aura surrounded the sticky puddle of blood and vomit; there was an explosion of lather and bubbles, the sickly scent of stomach acid was replaced by the soothing aroma of lavender, and in a matter of seconds the carpet was completely clean.

"Please, you're sick," Twilight went on. "You're seriously sick. Let's get you to a doctor."

"I'm not sick," Pinkie insisted. "That was my Pinkie sense."

"…WHAT?"

"Yeah," she said, nodding. "A horrendous blood-vomit usually means that some sort of ancient evil is about to escape from the depths of Tartaros."

"Usually?" Twilight demanded incredulously.

"Well, you know, both things have only happened once before in my life," Pinkie mumbled. "But they kind of overlapped. I was fourteen. It could mean something else…"

Twilight's face quickly darkened. "Are you talking about when A-Bao-a-Qu got away in 999?"

"That's the one."

Without another word, Twilight started up the stairs to the library's second floor. The others looked at each other in surprise and followed rapidly.

"Really, Twilight, it could just be a coincidence," Pinkie called after her.

"No," Twilight said, peering through the huge telescope set in one of the high windows, pointing upwards and to the southwest. "No, it's no coincidence. This is the real deal. I trust Pinkie sense a lot more than I trust the security of Tartaros." Twilight thoughtfully pulled away from the telescope for a moment and chuckled. "Heh heh, can you imagine if my past self heard me say that? Say, from about two and a half years ago? She'd probably slap me."

"Hey, she'd just be slappin' herself," Applejack said, chuckling as well.

"True," said Twilight, peering back into the telescope.

"What are you doing?" Fluttershy asked.

"It may have passed unnoticed with everything else that went on that week," Twilight said seriously, "but Cerberus abandoning his post was no small deal. I don't monitor 'everything' anymore, but I have kept an eye on him ever since then. Um, here, let me show you."

She cast a quick spell on the eyepiece of the telescope, and it expanded out into a magical screen, which displayed the image of Cerberus at his post, standing in front of the gates of Tartaros, gates with bars that looked like the hairy legs of a spider, set at the entrance to a damp tunnel filled with solid blackness.

"We can't stop whatever's happening, but that warning of a few minutes should show us what we're up against," Twilight said confidently. "I think your prediction will prove quite valuable, Pinkie. After all, no one noticed A-Bao-a-Qu was gone for months, and they never did catch him. And considering every creature who tries to climb his mountain is overcome by fits of insurmountable despair, they probably never will."

Rainbow Dash frowned as the image of Cerberus scratched behind one of its necks, then she glanced at Twilight's telescope suspiciously.

"How are you getting that picture?" she demanded. "You can't see the entrance to Tartaros from here, not even with a telescope. Especially not one aimed at the sky."

"Actually, the telescope is aimed at a series of mirrors I set in the upper atmosphere immediately after the time-travel incident for the sole purpose of being able to see Tartaros from here with a telescope."

"…Oh," Rainbow said lamely.

"So, let's see what we're looking at here…" Twilight said darkly, adjusting the telescope slightly.

The sun was down in Ponyville, but at the entrance to Tartaros, the sky was still a pleasant red. Cerberus stretched and yawned, seemingly unaware of the huge black shape emerging from the tunnel behind him.

A narrow snakelike snout came into view. The snout tilted itself to the side and opened its mouth wide, gripping the gates of Tartaros in its fangs. The wide mouth snapped shut, tearing the gate off of its hinges.

The image on the screen had no sound, but they could easily imagine the snapping of the sinister bars, and the growl of Cerberus as he spun to face the escaping creature.

A head emerged from the tunnel, revealing itself as a black-scaled snake with furious eyes a hypnotic shade of light blue. The head was only slighter smaller than Cerberus' body, and when the snake opened its mouth a second time, its obvious intent was to swallow the three-headed guardian whole.

Cerberus retaliated with a swipe of his claws, beating the snake back. It clamped its mouth shut and took a different approach, battering Cerberus over the heads with its chin. Cerberus collapsed to the ground and the snake breathed on him, a cloud of gray-black smoke that made the beast's muscles atrophy visibly and its fur start to fall out in clumps.

The snake sniffed at Cerberus's withered body and nodded, seeming satisfied. It pulled itself a bit more out of the tunnel; white spikes were mounted on its spine, spaced at regular intervals, and just behind its head were four waving and flapping flippers that couldn't possibly have enabled it to fly, and yet it was flying—up into the air, its body coming out of the depths… and coming… and coming… and coming.

The ponies gasped at the impossible length of the snake's body. Twilight pulled a few levers and knobs on her telescope, zooming out in an attempt to get a look at the entire creature. At last, its spade-shaped tail emerged from the tunnel, and the entire creature hung vertically in midair, its weak little flippers undulating slowly.

It looked around methodically, scanning and observing its surroundings, then opened its fanged mouth impossibly wide in what seemed to be a triumphant scream or roar of some sort. It then turned around and flew off, sailing west at a leisurely speed.

When the huge flying snake was out of sight, Twilight stepped away from her telescope. She and all of her friends had been stricken silent for the second time that night. Nearly a minute later, they all jumped in surprise as the sound of the creature's call actually reached them. It was a bone-chilling and unearthly high-pitched screech that rattled the windows even from so many miles away.

"What… was… THAT THING?" Rainbow demanded.

"It musta been…" Applejack stammered, swallowing hard before she finished. "Musta been two hundred feet long."

"Two hundred?" Twilight muttered as she led the group down the stairs. "No, that's a gross underestimation. It had to have been at least twice that."

"Four hundred and eighty, by all accounts of her rate of growth," said a voice from the library floor.

Princess Celestia stood in the center of the lobby, flanked by the very fearful-looking Cadance and Shining Armor.

"Princess!" Twilight rushed forward to meet them.

"It's said she started at exactly an inch long, and grows another inch every five thousand years," Celestia went on. "But that would make her, what? More than twenty-eight million years of age? I doubt that very much. I'm sure that, at least, is just a myth. Regardless, she is bigger than she was when last she was seen, so the 'constant growth' aspect of her legend would appear to be very, very real."

"She?" Twilight said nervously. "Who is 'she'?"

Celestia inhaled and exhaled deeply. "My mother-in-law," she answered gravely.

A snare drum rang out, followed by the ting of a cymbal.

"Thank you, Pinkie Pie," said Celestia appreciatively. "Well-timed."

"Saw it comin' a mile away," Pinkie said earnestly from behind the drum set that had somehow appeared in the library.

"Princess!" Twilight exclaimed incredulously.

"What?" Celestia said with a defensive giggle. "It's a joke. I'm not allowed a bit of end-of-the-world comedy relief? Fine then, I'm sorry. All joking aside, her name is Sørmur dï Mitgaeard. In the long-forgotten tongue of the serpents and gargoyles, it meant 'Serpent of the Matrix'."

Twilight shivered with fear.

"She's a very unusual entity," Celestia muttered. "She's too young to be one of the Old Gods, but far older than the current pantheon of goddesses… though she's not quite what you'd call unique in that respect. Tartaros was built an age ago, specifically to hold her. But it can't hold her, not really; it only works as long as she remains stimulated. Something must have reminded her that she doesn't like being locked up."

Rainbow pounded her front hooves together eagerly as she hovered in the air. "What are her stats? We just saw her in action, pretty intense, but we should know the full extent of her combat abilities. What's she got?"

"A powerful if limited array of magic, much of it taking shape in her breath," Celestia said dispassionately. "Physical strength average for a serpent of her size. She is the spirit of order and logic, and follows those precepts to apocalyptic extremes: her goal is worldwide geometric perfection. She's tried it twice before—there are two places in the world where there were once forests and valleys, which are now inhospitable fields of gray goo. Once she's turned the whole planet into a perfect, lifeless orb of glass—what she calls 'the Matrix'—she'll wrap her body around the equator and crush the world in her coils. Then, I assume, she'll repeat the process on the rest of the universe… but I'd rather not think that far ahead."

"I guess not," Twilight murmured. "Well, I assume you brought the Elements of Harmony? Just give 'em here, I guess, and we'll go—"

"No, Twilie," Shining Armor said solemnly. "Didn't you hear? Order and logic. The way she uses it, it's a sick perversion of the concept of harmony, but it's harmony nonetheless. The Elements would be worse than useless against her… she'd feed on their power, and they'd only make her stronger."

"Then what can we do?" Twilight said nervously.

"You? Not a damn thing," Shining Armor said regretfully. "You'll have to leave it to us."

"So we're useless?" Rainbow snapped. "Why even bother to tell us all this, then?"

"I make it a point to keep you six in the loop," Celestia said casually.

Rarity looked Celestia over. "This creature is out to destroy the world," she said. "How can be you be so… calm?"

"She works… slowly," Celestia said, sounding almost smug. "Very, very slowly. After all, she wants the completion of her project to correspond exactly with the day she's big enough to encircle the world. When she started her mission over a million years ago, it took her two hundred years to fill in one lake. Then she was placed in her tailor-made prison, no lasting harm done. The one other time she escaped Tartaros, she spent almost a thousand years leveling a minute portion of a forest before the armies of the earliest pony civilization took her down. I intend to have her back where she belongs inside of a year. She'll make no progress, none whatsoever."

"Of course," Cadance said pointedly, "there's no such thing as destroying a 'minute portion' of the environment. We're looking at a year as the absolute maximum amount of time we can allow her to roam free."

"Naturally," Celestia agreed with a little smile. "Then we'll have to find a better way to keep her mind occupied, a more permanent means than previously used. Or, alternatively, I suppose we could find a way to kill her. That's perfectly acceptable, even desirable, given her heartless nature… I'm just not entirely sure it can be done."

Fluttershy's eyes sparkled with inspiration. "Was that a plea for environmental preservation, Princess Cadance? I didn't know you loved nature."

Cadance smiled back at her. "I love everything."

"So do I," Fluttershy giggled.

"So… what is the plan?" Twilight cut in.

"Mobilization of Equestria's army," said Celestia. "Luna and I shall strike first, followed by a wave of soldiers from all directions. This is how she's been beaten before: overwhelming military force." She sighed and looked away. "I only wish I could face her alone. Alas, it would be a coin toss: her power and mine are comparable."

"And she may be lazy, but she responds when provoked," Shining Armor said darkly. "When we attack, many valiant ponies will lose their lives. This is why we need to plan: find out where she's setting up shop, decide the best way to deploy." He snorted bitterly, grinding his teeth. "I don't think I really care for the 'death and bloodshed' part of this job."

"You'll do great, my prince," Cadance said gently. "Your every decision will be the right one, I know it."

Twilight bit her lip fretfully. "At least give me one piece of good news: Tell me this is the storm you foretold."

Celestia chuckled. "Yes. There are a few loose ends to tie up as far as omens are concerned, a few things I still don't understand, but there's nothing else waiting in the wings that's any worse than Sørmur dï Mitgaeard."

"And there's nothing the Elements of Harmony can do?" Twilight asked, just to make sure.

"Nothing, my sweet. I'm sorry." Celestia leaned down and rubbed her nose against Twilight's. "We'll keep you informed. And have no fear. There are well-documented accounts of her previous defeats… and apart from getting bigger, she never changes. It's a tremendous task, make no mistake—but one we can plan and predict with ease. Go about your lives with no fear. We can handle it."

"Stay strong, little sis," said Shining Armor. "Your time to fight again will come sometime. You gotta be ready for it."

"Love you, Twilie," Cadance said, beaming. "Take care."

Celestia's horn glowed yellow, and she vanished in a flash of white light along with Cadance and Shining Armor. The six assembled friends stood in silence for a few moments.

"So," Applejack said casually. "Sørmur dï… Mitgaeard, was it?"

"Uh-huh," said Pinkie. "No wonder I was so queasy…" She ran her tongue along her teeth. "Ugh, that's terrible, my teeth have stomach-blood all over them. I'm gonna go brush." She picked up her saddlebag in her teeth and trotted to the bathroom.

"And there's no way for us to help," Fluttershy whispered. "That's really quite disquieting."

"I know," Rainbow growled. "It's messed up!"

"Well, we can hardly expect to fight harmony with harmony," said Rarity.

All of them turned to Twilight, the only one who hadn't spoken. She remained silent as she walked up to a window and looked out at the night sky.

"Twilight?" Rarity said, concerned.

Twilight sighed and turned to the others, giving a weak smile. "Hey, the Princess said not to worry. The sleepover's still on, right? Where were we?"