Chapter 24

“Full Circle”

    Pure chaos.

    Yes, that was the only possible definition, he realized, as he looked over the room stuffed full of ponies. He had even gone so far as to reduce his size to keep from being crushed between two wounded guard ponies that were somehow wedged into the same space he was. Admittedly, Discord had not anticipated quite so many ponies being pulled into the base of operations he had been using, and it impressed upon him the real depth of power the suited mare truly held. Zilch had gone well beyond his intent, which had been to simply withdraw the individuals collected about the Princesses, and teleported every still living pony on the field. Unfortunately, many of them were severely wounded and in dire need of immediate medical attention, which they had a distinct shortage of. By his count they only had two, three if you counted the unicorn guard captain, medical ponies.

    Normally he’d have been thrilled to just drink in the chaotic mess around him, but now was not the time, plus it was difficult to enjoy it with so many ponies pressing in at once. He attempted to teleport across the room, but found the attempt only made his scales itch and sighed. So he was forced to dodge around hooves until he could fly up to the side of the conference table, upon which Princess Celestia and Spectrum had been given a shared position of dubious honor, before resuming his normal size.

    “Now, ponies…” he tried to soothe, attempting to get their attention, only to be drowned out by a shrill cry.

    “Zilch!”

    Flourish was there in a flash, teleporting to the suited mare’s side and catching her before she could collapse fully. Discord frowned, hoping she hadn’t overextended herself. “She used far too much power,” Celestia said softly, echoing his own thoughts.

    The draconequus nodded in agreement. “She went well beyond what I thought she was capable of. Junkyard, take Zilch to her chambers then return here. I have a feeling we’ll need your help further.” The diamond dog nodded and leaned down to scoop up the rather frail looking pony, the suit appearing somewhat deflated, as if someone had let some of the air out. Junkyard carefully carried her from the room, followed by Flourish’s worried gaze.

    “Clockwork!” the mechanized stallion shouted over any other chatter, his massive armour barely having room to turn, much less move. “Ve muzt hurry! It vill not take long for ze gryphonz to begin zere zearch for uz; ve need to prepare defenzes!”

    “Right! Where’s your lab?” the mare called back, and carefully maneuvered her suit towards the room exit. She had taken to hovering over the crush of ponies since she appeared, but she had to be careful not to add to their injuries with the hot plasma jets.

    “Stand down, you two,” Discord interrupted, ducking slightly as Clockwork’s armour came to a stop almost directly over him, “we are not in the desert you think we are. I was not about to risk giving my position away by setting down so close to that ghost town. It was far too close to Appleoosa and Las Pegasus to work properly as a staging area.”

    “Vhy lie to uz about zat?” Burner asked, confused.

    “Same reason he didn’t tell us he was the Prince,” Crosswind piped up, “that plausible deniability thing he brought up before.”

    “You are partially correct,” Discord noted with a smile, “and partly because I did not wish to risk this base of operation to any spying eyes, it has importance beyond just housing us. Besides, if you wandered outside, you’d find the weather most disagreeable. Regardless, we need to set aside a place to stash all these ponies, especially all the wounded. Kaos? Call up our doctor friend and get her out of there before the gryphons reach her. If she objects, just point out how much money she’ll make once the gryphons take full control.”

    “Yes, my prince,” the zebra noted, and trotted from the room.

    “We gonna have room for all these ponies?” Crosswind asked reasonably.

    Discord smiled. “It is far larger here than you suspect. Take the captain with you and find an open area that you can use for a medical wing. Burner, take Clockwork and see if you can pry her out of that suit. I know you have some rudimentary medical training, Professor, and both you and Clockwork have the motor skills and mental focus suitable for the job, so you will need to assist the medics. If you can’t find where they are, swing back around and one of us will direct you. Do you have any medical training, Professor Relic?”

    “I’m afraid not,” the sandy unicorn answered distractedly, “but I think Quagga has some emergency training.”

    “Only first responder training, I fear,” the zebra answered for himself.

    “Right now, that’s good enough,” Captain Light answered simply, “come on. Let’s find a good spot we can start triaging these wounded. Flourish! You’re with us, we’ll need you to ferry the wounded back and forth while Zilch is down!”

    “Yes sir!” she snapped smartly, and trotted up to the Captain. He inspected her for a moment, as if trying to remember her, before shaking his head and leading the small group off. Burner waved a clawed hoof to Clockwork, and clomped the opposite way down the hall, followed closely by the armoured mare.

    “Hard to believe that just this morning he was devoted to killing her,” Discord mused aloud.

    “I must confess that I am impressed by everything you have managed here,” Celestia added softly, “but I do wish you had worked more closely with us. We may have been able to circumvent direct combat with our Element bearers. Had our team been more… capable, we may have fared better.”

    Discord looked down at his mismatched feet, one of them a gray pony leg and heavy hoof and the other a scaled claw resembling that of a dragon, and sighed, “I tried, Celestia    , I really did. You never took me seriously or, even worse, you treated it as if I were making the threat myself. Neither you or your sister took my warning seriously.”

    “I cannot recall any such warnings,” Luna noted, tugging off the heavy helmet she was wearing and thunking it down on the table, careful of the other pony who had been laid there behind Celestia. Spectrum looked almost like she were ready for a casket, given the pose… but that was fixed in short order as Flourish transported her teammate away first for triaging, leaving behind the vain hope that they could find a way to save her.

    “Well, I’ll admit I was a bit new to all that friendship stuff, and dealing with other ponies was never my strong suit,” Discord admitted, “so I may not have come off as plainly as I hoped. Besides, it’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re just as willing to toss whoopee cushions on your thrones as you are to deal with existential questions from beyond the fabric of reality itself.”

    “And here Luna said just a few days hence that you would scoff at the idea of anything you did having a reason,” Celestia joked with a weak smile, her eyes flicking as Flourish appeared and vanished about the room, grabbing two and three ponies at once before teleporting away in a cloud of pink smoke.

    “That I did,” Luna admitted, “I would seem to be mistaken.”

    “If things hadn’t changed… if Fluttershy hadn’t changed me, you would have been correct,” Discord answered with a wan smile. “However, since neither of you saw this threat, I felt the need to act myself. To that end I split myself into two halves, one of which I left in Canterlot, while the other only possessed some rudimentary shape shifting powers so that I could hide among the ponies and search for a solution.”

    “Why would you do that? Disappearing from the palace would hardly be unusual for you,” Celestia asked.

    “You, your sister, or Twilight Sparkle would have eventually noticed, as would many other ponies if I wandered that far afield as I searched for answers,” Discord noted simply. “I’m not so sure it was one of my better ideas, truth be told. As I mentioned before, the longer I stayed split like that, the more different traits of myself became manifest and exaggerated in one copy but not the other. My smaller, wandering, self became more methodical, and… I’m not sure how to phrase it… more gentle? Less antagonistic? It was like all of my anger and aggression was stuck in the version I left in the palace.”

    “That would explain some of what occurred with Fluttershy, and prompted the bearers to lock you away again,” Celestia said softly.

    Discord looked at his feet again and scratched behind an ear. “I wish I remembered what happened, but it’s… hazy. I remember the rest clear as a bell, my time as Mare-Do-Well and the budding friendship with Clockwork, and my time as the Prince as Kaos’ mentor and guide. But that third split… it’s just a blur of red that tastes like blood and… pizza sauce.”

    “You taste memories?” Luna asked, raising an eyebrow.

    “You don’t?” Discord countered with a mischievous smile.

    “I would recommend not pushing the matter,” Celestia slipped in, “you will remember in time, and when you do… I will be here. I have a feeling you will need some pony to talk to.”

    “Perhaps, but for now,” the draconequus said, changing the subject, “we should find the last of these ponies somewhere to stay.”

    “Agreed,” Celestia said, and looked over the few uninjured ponies. She frowned a little at the shell-shocked expressions that met her gaze upon those who should have been innocent to such horrors. The one maid looked about ready to pass out, almost wholly supported by the other and her daughter. But the rather forlorn, almost depressed, look on the sandy unicorn’s face surprised her. “Professor Relic? Are you alright?”

    “I suppose so, Princess,” he sighed a little, “Just a little… put out.”

    “That seems an odd thing to feel,” Luna said, stepping forward, “especially as a the new bearer of --“

    “Of this?” he interrupted, his magic levitating the orb of his element. The Princesses glanced to each other as the stallion continued, “I was thrilled. I mean, this was everything I’d spent my time studying, learning about, both independently and for the crown. And hell, what colt hasn’t fantasized about being the big hero? And yet, after we did the deed, I was somehow… drawn inside it. Like time stood still as I faced a reflection of myself. Some sort of embodiment of the element, I… he… explained. He was nice enough about it… hell, he was downright apologetic, but told me I wasn’t the… I wasn’t the bearer. I was a convenient vessel, the bearer of the moment, but the element was not linked to me. It was… it is waiting until the proper bearer was ready.” Discord winced visibly and Celestia’s expression softened, but it was Skillet who spoke first.

    “Is still honor, yes?” the crippled pony offered. “You and zebra mention something about not knowing how the elements function was important, so maybe you are just knowing to much?”

    “Maybe,” he sighed softly. “Still, to come so close…”

    “Look less upon it as having lost the element,” Celestia suggested, “than looking upon it as a once in a lifetime chance to actually have wielded it in the first place. You can claim something very few ponies can claim, that you once felt the weight of an element upon your soul, and with it you fought the very embodiment of the Nightmare, eliminating it from this world.”

    “Y-yeah, yeah I guess so,” the stallion answered. Discord glanced back to Celestia before herding the small group off. Only Luna hung back in the now large and seemingly empty room, looking to her sister.

    “You cannot believe that the Nightmare is destroyed,” Luna said once the others were out of earshot.

    “I do not,” the elder Princess answered softly, “we were lulled into a false sense of security last time, and We shall not make the same mistake twice.”

    “The royal ‘We’,” the regent of the moon chuckled, “I approve, and concur.”

    “However, until we see evidence to the contrary we shall not voice these concerns to any of our little ponies,” Celestia concluded.

    Luna nodded, and trotted off to catch up to the group, thankfully moving slowly due to Skillet’s handicap. She simplified that by simply lifting him telekinetically and carrying him along to speed things up.

    “Princess LOOOOOoooonaaa!!” Indigo proclaimed, standing on her mother’s back, eyes wide with excitement.

    The Princess of the Moon chuckled and lifted the little filly onto her back with a sweep of her wing, smiling broadly as she trotted along with the rest of the group, doing her best not to show the concerns that ate away at her.

    “Your turn, Princess,” Flourish said, drawing Celestia’s attention away from the group. The pair vanished in a pink cloud a second later, leaving the once overcrowded room empty once again.

    “What time is it?”

    “Late,” came the answer from the stallion who all but collapsed on the floor beside her. The stone floor of the narrow hallway might not have been the most comfortable, but they both were so exhausted that they just didn’t care. Besides, all the beds Flourish and Junkyard could find had gone to the injured and dying.

    Clockwork covered her head with her hooves, “Goddess I’m wasted. It was late when the battle started, and now? It has to be almost dawn.”

    “Actually, dawn was several hours ago,” a warm and familiar voice answered. Both of the ponies struggled to rise as Celestia rounded the corner, hobbling on her newly grown leg, but she quickly waved it off and sat down with them far harder than she intended.

    “I see you are nearly healed, Princess,” the unicorn stallion noted.

    “That I am, Captain Light, I simply needed time to focus my energies. My task is nearly complete, but I must strengthen the new leg and wing, which will take a day or so,” she answered smoothly. “But tell me, what of your other patients?”

    “We should only lose only about half a dozen of the fifty plus guard ponies Zilch managed to rescue,” Captain Light answered, shaking out his naturally red mane, “the worst was rescued while being impaled with a gryphon spear. He’s already passed, but I was at least able to make his last moments comfortable. Another died of a brain hemorrhage, thankfully unconscious the whole time. The others simply lost too much blood before we got to them, and we can’t just magically summon blood bags. Other than that, they should all survive…”

    “Even Spectrum?” Clockwork asked hopefully. The stallion’s expression twisted and Clockwork immediately knew her answer.

    “She lost a lot of blood as well,” he answered softly, “and while we were able to prolong her life, she still hasn’t woken up. I don’t know that she ever will, honestly…”

    “And the rest of her team, Captain?” Celestia asked, even as she noticed Clockwork rest her head back down in a combination of exhaustion and disconsolation.

    “Filigree refused to go under, but she’s out of danger for now that we’ve managed to partially heal that broken rib. What she really needs is to stay off her hooves… claws for at least a few weeks. Trixie should wake up soon. She slipped briefly into a coma last night before we found a small fracture in her horn and focused on healing it. Galaxi had her leg wrapped, but it’s a fairly minor sprain. Still, she needs plenty of sleep, she’s suffering from what I can only describe as magical burnout, which I know isn’t possible because she’s an earth pony and a psychic, but it’s the closest explanation I have.”

    “Given her capabilities, that is an apt description,” she answered softly. “I trust that you are finished?”

    Clockwork snorted, “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

    The captain stifled the urge to berate the mare for her rudeness to the Princess, and sighed instead, “No. We’re down to the final stretch, but we still have a few more hours to go before we could be called finished. Unfortunately, Clockwork and I are starting to make mistakes and need a break. Thankfully those that remain are non-lethal injuries, so we can afford to slow down a bit. I think the real medical types in there are on the verge of tossing both of us, along with that unicorn stallion Burner, out on our flanks. The zebra though, Quagga… he’s a damned machine. He didn’t falter or flag one iota all night.”

    “Yeah, I don’t know how he does it,” Clockwork yawned.

    “Why don’t you go get some sleep, soldier,” Captain Light said, starting to stand up, “I can handle the rest of this. You had to fight the Nightmare before… before all of this.”

    “No, that’s okay,” she sighed, “I couldn’t sleep anyway. I’d just end up hovering by Spectrum’s bed, like Filigree is doing. Even Skillet showed up there sometime during the night, if only to keep Flourish from falling over.”

    “Is the entire team there?” Celestia asked softly.

    “Almost,” the mare noted with a weak smile, “I’m not, and Trixie hasn’t woken up yet.”

    “What do you want to wager the unicorn wakes up now?” Light teased with a grin.

    Clockwork groaned, “She’ll be pissed that she missed beating up Nightmare again.”

    “Oh?” Light asked simply.

    “My student and the Nightmare have a history,” Celestia answered for the short mare. The Princess slowly worked her way to her hooves, the unsteady new leg shaking under the weight before she nudged Clockwork. “Come, we’ll check on my pupil, and then join your team.”

    “You’re coming along too?” she asked, surprised.

    “Yes, there is something I wish to see for myself,” she answered, her gaze far away for a moment.

    “I’ll let you ladies do that,” the captain sighed, “I’m going to rest here for another few minutes and then get back in there.”

    “Do not overwork yourself, Captain,” she told him, and limped towards the open cave-like door that lead into the wide chamber that had served as both operating and emergency room for the past night. The pair of medics, one mare and one stallion, worked tirelessly it seemed, even if the solar regent could tell they were near exhaustion themselves. Still, she flattened her ears against the hoarse cry as the pair set a guard’s broken leg, one using magic to hold it still while the other started wrapping the limb in gauze and splints. They would need medical supplies in a hurry, she realized, not to mention other necessities she had long gotten used to not thinking about. She would have to discuss with Discord about establishing some sort of supply line.

    The chamber itself was an open cavern with a smooth ceiling and a quartet of platforms towards the center of the room. The Princess couldn’t help but wonder at the uniformity of them, but they certainly seemed unnatural. Perhaps Junkyard altered the room to suit, but Celestia didn’t feel the need to question it right now. Instead she hobbled past, almost surprised when Clockwork attempted, then withdrew, from trying to steady her, the poor mare simply too short to be of any help. Celestia still offered her a genuine smile, making sure she knew the effort had not gone unnoticed.

    The pair moved beyond the room and into another long chamber. This likely had once been a connecting hall, but had been turned into an emergency ward, lined with all the beds that had been found. Surprisingly, they had found enough for all the injured, though they were hardly hospital quality, more like thin metal frames and unadorned mattresses. Still, it was more than they had any right to expect, given their present status. A red mare stalked along the length of the chamber like a wraith, checking on the ponies as she went, and ducking out of the way of the Princess when she came close.

    “Odd mare,” Clockwork muttered softly.

    Celestia opted not to opine on the mare as they moved down the line of beds before reaching one that housed a rather familiar cyan unicorn. Her cloak of stars was draped over her like a blanket, and the conical performer’s hat she frequently wore nowhere to be found. The shorter mare moved forward, standing to the side of the bed and touching her friend’s foreleg with her hoof worriedly. Celestia carefully moved alongside the other side, her eyes washing over the form of her apprentice and student. With a trembling touch of her newly formed hoof she brushed the unicorn’s mane from her closed eyes, exposing the heavy bandage wrapped about her horn. To her surprise, the mare’s eyes snapped open…

    “Princess?” Trixie asked weakly, and Clockwork let out a wordless cry, hugging the weak unicorn. She squeaked a bit in surprise, then pet a hoof over Clockwork’s mane in confusion, looking up at Celestia again. “What… what happened? Last I remember was fighting those other ponies, then… then falling.”

    “You fell and struck your horn,” Celestia answered soothingly, “got yourself a nasty little fracture. No pony could wake you.”

    “That explains why my head feels like a troupe of buffalo did a tap dance on it,” she sighed, “but this doesn’t look like Canterlot Memorial…”

    “We’re not in Canterlot,” Celestia said softly, “the gryphons had outside help. They drove us from it.”

    “Damn…” the unicorn whispered softly, “so Kaos and his team were just scouts.”

    “Actually, the stallions helped us fight off the Nightmare,” Clockwork filled in, finally pulling away from Trixie enough to talk, “he was working with the gryphons.”

    “Wait, the Nightmare?” Trixie asked, sitting up suddenly, only to be pushed back down by the Princess’ gentle hoof.

    “The Nightmare,” Celestia confirmed, “though he had joined with Ultrapony and called himself Eclipse.”

    “What?” Trixie asked carefully, looking from one to the other intently as she tried to determine if they were joking. “Okay, I’m lost…”

    “Here, let me bring you up to speed,” Clockwork said, and began to regale the story of the past night to the unicorn. Celestia sat back and only half listened, adding her own input when needed to elaborate on one point or another. Instead, she couldn’t help but feel relief at Trixie’s quick recovery. She would be spared the loss of another student, and that lifted her spirits considerably.

    Trixie’s spirits, conversely, seemed to sink as she listened to the tale. She didn’t ask any questions, instead staring at her hooves with a nearly unreadable expression. Clockwork finally trailed off, and left the trio in a seemingly uneasy silence.

    “Trixie…” Celestia started, uncertain what was bothering her student.

    “So it happened again,” she sighed, her voice tight with frustration and resignation.

    Clockwork shook her head, confused. “Come again?”

    “It happened again. I was just some damsel in distress, lying around helpless to save myself, much less any pony else, while the real heroes did all the work,” she answered sourly.

    “Now wait a moment, you were there when we took on the Nightmare --” Clockwork insisted.

    “Sure, after I spent two months trapped on the moon as she chased my dreams to try and break my spirit,” Trixie interrupted sharply, “and now I spent an entire fight out cold because Zilch dropped me on my damned horn! I’m supposedly the most powerful mage in all of Equestria, if not beyond, and I’ve been removed from almost everything… twice!”

    Clockwork was at a loss, but Celestia slid in smoothly, “You have an ‘Achilles’ Hoof’, my student, and you will need to take care to protect it more in the future. But that does not make you any more or less vulnerable than the rest of your team. Yours has simply been exploited more than the others.”

    “It didn’t used to be a problem,” she groused softly.

    “You also had the Elements impaled on your horn for a long period, not to mention having your entire horn replaced,” Celestia pointed out, “that may have altered the flow of your magic, and thus require you to protect your horn far more than you otherwise would have. If you wish, we can experiment to determine the exact nature of this weakness. But you know you have it now, and that can make all the difference.”

    Trixie sighed softly, “I… you’re right, Princess. I just hate feeling so… useless! I mean, we might have been able to stop the Nightmare before it hurt Spectrum if I was up. We could have used the Elements…”

    Celestia smiled and nuzzled the brow of her student, “I understand your frustration, but it would not have helped. Discord spoke with me briefly about it. While I do not understand all the details yet, he informed me that the Elements of Harmony would have been useless against Eclipse. Do you remember when the Nightmare absorbed the energy in your previous meeting? I suspect that would have happened again, and no amount of swapping around who took point would have helped this time. The use of the alternate Elements, which you were unaware of, was necessary.”

    “Is the Nightmare really gone?” Trixie asked in a small voice. She was hardly mollified when her mentor looked away.

    “Are you in any shape to move around?” Clockwork asked, changing the topic.

    “I’m not sure, why?”

    “We were on our way to visit Spectrum,” Celestia answered, motioning with her head, “I suspect the rest of the team is already there.”

    “I’m well enough to get there,” Trixie said resolutely, but proved far more weak than anticipated. Thankfully Clockwork was there to brace her, and the trio resumed their progress down the hall and through the doorway near the far end. Beyond the entry, a short hall led to a trio of doorways, all three had something hung over the entrance to offer some sort of privacy. One had an old wool blanket hanging over it, so old they couldn’t tell if the gray was due to dirt or if it was originally intended to be that color. Another had some torn sheets hanging over it and reeked of alcohol, and Clockwork quickly informed them that it was where they were cleaning what medical equipment they had when they could. The final entrance had a simple white sheet hanging over it, and it was this that Celestia used her weak hoof to brush open, allowing the ponies to enter before she herself did.

    A number of heads swiveled to face them, puffy eyes recognizing them. Flourish sat near the back wall of the small room, where she leaned heavily on her beau, Skillet. Galaxi was near the entrance, and stood to gently hug Clockwork and Trixie as they entered. Luna stood like a shadow to one side, and nodded to her entering sister. Filigree sat in attentive watch at the bedside, her claw resting on the edge as she struggled to keep her emotions bottled up.

    On the bed itself laid the still and unmoving form of Spectrum. Her white coat stood out against the dull green cot she rested on, her hooves folded over her chest and covering the slim incision made by Eclipse’ horn. Her wings were laid spread, as if she could just take off into the sky from where she was. But aside from her weak fluttering breath, she didn’t move at all.

    There was an air of quiet depression and anticipation that filled the small room, as they each silently watched the dying figure. One final goodbye and the silent prayers for a last minute reprieve.

    “You may stop hiding now,” Celestia said suddenly, causing every pony in the room to jump in surprise. Her gaze, however, was not upon them, but on a spot on the wall, just near the head of the where Spectrum lay.

    “How did you…?” the ghostly voice asked, as the stallion materialized through the wall. Trixie gasped, having not entirely believed that part of Clockwork’s tale, but now witnessed for herself the spirit of Ultrapony.

    Celestia smiled sadly, “I knew you would not abandon your daughter, Sunset Sparkle. I can also sense spirits of those who have passed on as part of my celestial duties is to escort those souls to their final reward, a compulsion I find strangely absent right now.”

    The ghostly pony smiled sadly. “I’m sure that’s just because I have some unfinished business.” Before the Princess could ask, he drew out an orb, which he set on the bed by his daughter. The orb itself pulsed with a gentle inner life and was somehow solid, unlike the figure who placed it there.

    “The Element of Sacrifice,” Luna whispered, “where in Equestria did you find this?”

    “Would you believe it was just lying out in the open?” he asked with a weak smile.

    “Discord’s plan,” Celestia interjected softly, “he told me that he planted it for you to find, but not why. I suppose we know that now.”

    “Maybe,” Sunset Sparkle hedged, frowning as he looked down at his ghostly hooves. “But if he could have predicted what I did, he might have been better served to stop me than to feed my misguided belief I was doing the right thing.”

    “Sunset Sparkle… I feel I must ask,” Luna said in an oddly hesitant voice, not entirely sure she wanted the answer, “how did the Nightmare subdue you so that it might possess you?”

    The stallion’s face twisted and his eyes closed. “She didn’t subdue me,” he whispered.

    “Then how…?”

    “Trixie was right about me,” the stallion said after a moment, nodding to the wide eyed unicorn, “my ego was out of control. I thought… I was such a foal; I thought that I could somehow control the Nightmare. I… I let it possess me.”

    “You… what?!” Luna sputtered.

    “The Nightmare was wounded, badly, after your team hit her with the elements. I was sure that, given that she survived them once before, that she could do it again. I even guessed correctly that she would go hide in the Everfree Forest, in your old palace,” the stallion continued.

    “Which explains why we never found her,” Celestia said softly, “the mystic energies of the Everfree would have hidden her well from our detection spells, especially if the Nightmare kept close reign on her powers and blended with the powerful magicks that ebb and flow through the forest.”

    “The Nightmare arrived wounded and weak, missing a foreleg and wing and intentionally suppressing her own magic so you couldn’t spot where she might have gotten to,” the stallion continued, “and that’s when we met for the first time. Somehow I expected more, to be honest. I’d heard Princess Luna speak about The Nightmare, and of course were all those imps she was sending at us. I always envisioned her as some sort of massive machine of destruction, an overwhelming power that rivaled even Princess Celestia when she was at her full fury. Instead, I got a rather sad and injured alicorn that seemed downright pathetic. I thought it would be easy to simply turn the tables on her and return as a hero…

    “But the conqueror quickly became the conquered. The Nightmare took over so quickly I didn’t even have a chance to second guess myself. That’s how she became Eclipse… and he spent a great deal of time gloating and tormenting me for my failure. He knew, somehow he knew what I planned to do, and he used it against me. I never had a chance… and I only have myself to blame.”

    “I know from personal experience how easy it is to underestimate the Nightmare,” Luna said softly. “the Nightmare held me in thrall for a thousand years, and at times even convinced me that we were one individual, or that she was the real Princess and I was nothing but a shade. Were it not for the kindness of my sister, I never would have recovered once the Elements saved me from it.”

    The ghostly stallion nodded. “I had to learn the hard way, just like I always have. I had to sit and watch while Eclipse planned his moves. How he found the hidden dragon hatchery, how he wrangled a group of gryphons to raise a hoof-full of them to test his theory, and finally his seeking out King Goldtalon to form an alliance. I saw it all, but could do nothing. I was so powerless I barely managed to talk him out of killing the one gryphon cub, and I could do nothing when he threw her into the desert.”

    Filigree sat up at this, her eyes widening. “Verdigris….”

    “Yes,” the ghost confirmed, “that was her name. She was part of a small family of gryphons he stumbled over in the Everfree Forest, and on a whim he recruited them to do the hard labor for him. He disguised himself as a gryphon magus and hypnotized them, in a way. He convinced them he could get them back in good graces with the gryphon clans so long as they raised the dragons for him, essentially doing Eclipse’s dirty work for him. But the little one, Verdigris… she kept shaking it off. Eclipse started to guess she was a special, she was far smarter than a rather sheltered gryphoness her age should have been. He also realized early on that they were your family, Filigree, and thus hoped to use them against you.”

    “That is much the same plan that Goldtalon himself had,” Celestia noted, and watched the gryphoness carefully for a moment before continuing. “Still, I must confess that the dragons were a surprise to me.”

    “They must have been very clever to have hidden such a cache even from us,” Luna interjected.

    The stallion chuckled, “As Eclipse explained it to me, the hatchery was broken, and the spells wouldn’t wake the eggs until a dragon triggered the spell. With no more mature dragons left, the eggs simply remained in stasis, and would have remained that way for all eternity.”

    “Given Eclipse has an expansive knowledge of magic, thanks to our time together,” Luna said simply, “it should not have been overly difficult for him to manipulate and alter such spells.”

    “And the proper spells can accelerate the aging process of a dragon,” Celestia continued, “and as Twilight Sparkle once proved, with the help of Spike, it leads to the sort of snub nosed and animalistic creatures we witnessed this past night. They are ruled entirely by instinct and aggression, not by their potential intelligence.”

    “We will have to be careful to eliminate as few of them as we can,” Luna thought aloud, “otherwise we risk eliminating the race as a whole for a second time. I wish we knew what the balance of male to female survivors was…”

    “It should be easy to return them to their child-like states as well,” Celestia noted, nodding to her sister in agreement, “though a memory spell might be necessary to eliminate the horrors they are being forced to endure and perpetrate.”

    “Definitely,” Luna said with a thoughtful smile, “Plus, if we can --”

    “Not to interrupt your excitement, Princesses,” Trixie cut in, “but if I understand all this correctly, Ultrapony helped the Nightmare return?”

    The stallion shrunk and looked down at his hooves as eight pairs of eyes landed on him, some more accusing than others. He took a slow and steadying breath before nodding. “Yes, it is entirely my fault.”

    The silence was deafening, and he found himself unable to meet any pony’s eyes. This seemed so much easier in his head, but… it still needed to be done, he had to own up to this. In a way, it felt like a weight lifted off his back to finally lay all this out, to admit his failure…

    “So what is this ‘unfinished business’ you mention?” Skillet said, breaking the silence.

    “I thought no pony would ever ask,” Sunset Sparkle said with a relieved smile. “I have two things I have to do before… well before it’s all over, for me at least. First, I need to find a new bearer for the element.” He reached over and patted the orb on the bed, the pulsing glow it put out bathing Spectrum’s face in an odd light.

    “That could be harder than it sounds,” Celestia offered, rubbing her chin with a hoof thoughtfully, “there are only a small number of stallions here that were rescued. We lost access to the larger numbers outside the… well, wherever Discord brought us.”

    The ghostly stallion managed a soft laugh, “You are looking everywhere but the obvious, Princess. The perfect bearer is right here.”

    “But there is only one stallion….” Luna started, before it dawned on her.

    “Well, how about that,” Flourish teased, nudging her beau.

    “Nyet! I am not in condition to carry element!” said stallion objected.

    “Do you think I was?” Sunset Sparkle asked reasonably, and he lifted the element off the bed and carried it over towards the other stallion. Flourish only grinned as she nudged the broad-chinned stallion forward, while the other mares took a step or so back to give Skillet and Sunset Sparkle room. Finally the ghostly stallion stood before the larger, still living, stallion and set the orb down between them.

    “Am thinking I am not good choice…” Skillet grumbled.

    “But you are,” the other stallion countered. “You have sacrificed far more than any pony should ever have to. You sacrificed the very powers that made you a special, perhaps becoming the first and only known special to have no current powers. You sacrificed everything to protect your fellow ponies, and then you got up and continued to give of yourself. You stayed with the team, and you refused to let depression take you. The very fact that you are standing here, surrounded by ponies who care about you, tells me that despite losing everything, you turned it to your favor. Now I have to admit that I don’t know what you did after you got out of the hospital, but you obviously ‘got the girl’, if you’ll pardon my lame joke. Heck, even Eclipse heard tales of your valiant defense of the hospital, coordinating defenses against the Nightmare’s imps while lying wounded in a cart like the leading stallion from some movie. You deserve this far more than I do. I didn’t learn the meaning, what it meant to sacrifice anything until I… until I lost my daughter. You, meanwhile, know what it is to sacrifice and how to keep yourself from spiraling into depression. You… you deserve this far more than I do.”

    “Nyet, Nyet, I…” the big stallion started, but was interrupted by the orb before him launching itself into the air over him. It spun, wobbling slightly as it whirled about faster and faster until it burst apart into a number of glowing shards. The sapphire glowing shards circled Skillet, who looked at the ring suspiciously for a moment. But the orbiting crystals simply continued to surround him in a spinning halo…

    “Isn’t it supposed to do something?” Trixie asked after a moment, confused.

    Celestia just smiled. “It’s waiting for him to accept.”

    “But am not good choice!” Skillet insisted. “There are many other, better, stallions than I, stallions which do not have to be carried by princess, or can walk without pain! I am just old cripple who help out as able…”

    “And that’s what makes you the perfect choice,” Sunset Sparkle put in. “You are even willing to sacrifice your chance at bearing an element because you feel another could do the job better. No, Skillet, no pony could do this better than you can, and no pony could protect the element from corruption better than you could. This element, this is the element who had itself drug through Tartarus and back thanks to ‘he who cannot be named’. This was the element that spawned the corruption in all of the Elements of Justice before, and it is this element that is the most fragile and in need of a stallion who can truly understand what it represents… who can truly understand the burden he must carry. There is no one else who can do this.”

    “But --!”

    “Sweetie,” Flourish added, her voice dripping with honey, “just give it up. You’ve lost this fight.”

    “Trixie would be hard pressed to find fault with this decision herself,” the cyan unicorn added.

    “Skillet, I’ve known you since I was a filly. If there’s ever something you deserve, it’s this,” Clockwork agreed from beside the unicorn.

    Galaxi chuckled softly, “The element seems to agree as well. It’s simply a matter of accepting it.”

    “It is an honor you should not reject,” Filigree offered herself.

    Skillet looked at the mares about him before casting a pleading eye to the Sister Princesses. To his dismay, Luna only smirked slightly while the elder sister spoke, “This is a great honor to be bestowed upon you, Lord Skillet. I can think of none more suited.”

    “Every pony is against me,” the stallion grumbled to himself and dipped his head. With a slow breath he nodded and spoke, “If element wishes me to be bearer, I will be bearer. I still believe other would be better, pony who can walk normal, for instance, but if --”

        The element gave him no more time to equivocate, his words acted upon as the light exploded from the crystals, followed by an oddly satisfied sigh as they arrowed into the large stallion’s breast, causing him stumble comically before Flourish steadied him. Skillet spent the next few moments running his hooves over his chest, checking for perforations in his gray coat…

    “You’ll have the chance to get to know the spirit within the element. He’s a little suspicious but… I’m sure you’ll be able to protect him… it properly. As I said before, I can think of no pony who has sacrificed more. I only sacrificed my life, and that was easy compared to what you have had to do,” the stallion said softly. He paused and took a slow breath before he continued, “A sacrifice which wouldn’t have been necessary if it weren’t for me.”

    “Come again?” Skillet asked, pausing in his search for holes.

    “I didn’t immediately act to stop the Destroyer Imp. I… I could have, but I didn’t. At the time I… I’m sorry,” Sunset Sparkle said, lowering his head. “I don’t know what else I can say or do. I should have acted, I should have moved sooner, I should have --“

    “Nyet,” Skillet interrupted with a crooked grin, “you acted. Is all that need to be said. We all knew risk when we started, we all knew we could be hurt, ya? We sign up to stop imps and save ponies, and we do that. Second guessing does nothing, and you do nothing that need forgiveness from me.”

    “I… Thank you, Skillet, you are a better pony than I. But… you may not think I need forgiveness from you, but I do from others. I… I did so much wrong. I was an arrogant ass, and in the process I wronged many ponies, a small number of which are in this room. I think perhaps the only one I did not wrong is Filigree, and that is only because she took one of the open spots after I left the team,” Sunset Sparkle noted softly. “I harassed and teased Galaxi far more than she deserved. I threatened Trixie physically when she stopped kissing my flank. I was hard on Flourish right from the beginning. Even Princess Luna I made unreasonable demands from. I can only beg forgiveness from each of you….

    “And then… there’s Clockwork Key.”

    The short mare raised an eyebrow at the reference to her name. Her face was set in stone as she glared back at the ghost as he moved to stand before her. Clockwork had been able to ignore that longtime anger she harbored with the ghostly stallion up to this point. After all, he was destined for his eternal “reward”, right? He deserved nothing short of the deepest pits of Tartarus, so there was no point to feeling hatred or anger when the final judgment of his soul was at hoof. But now he was apologizing? Was he trying for a last reprieve? The anger she’d carefully ignored and pushed down threatened to boil over, making her hoof tap irritably on the stone floor where she sat. “What about me?” she asked carefully, hoping the tightness in her voice didn’t betray the roiling emotions within.

    “There’s only one pony in this room I own a larger apology to,” he admitted sadly, “and I don’t know if she will ever wake up again. But I wronged you. I was… hell, I lack the words really. I was out of line, for sure. I struck you; I laid my hooves on you, three different times to my memory. Once when… when you were younger. Yes, it was accidental but… but I still did it. The other two times I let my anger overtake me and cloud my judgment. It was stupid, it was foolish, and I --”

    “Stop,” Clockwork growled, bringing the ghostly stallion up short, “just stop.”

    “I… I don’t understand. I’m just trying to --“

    “SHUT UP!” Clockwork all but screamed, coming to her hooves as if the power of her shout had launched her there. The ponies in the room looked startled at the short mare, and Sunset Sparkle recoiled. “I know what you’re trying to do, and I don’t want any part of it! You’re trying to apologize, you’re begging forgiveness, and once again, this isn’t about any pony other than you, the most selfish pony in the room! You’re trying to slip out of your own fate! You only have one potential place to go right now, and that’s straight to the special little hole in Tartarus with your name on it, especially reserved for bastards like you, and you’re desperately trying to avoid it by begging for forgiveness.”

    “If only that were true,” he admitted ruefully. “That orb I handed over? That was the element of sacrifice, as Princess Luna correctly identified. Did you think I managed to get anywhere without giving up something? It refused to wake the other elements until I offered something, until I sacrificed something. I have no chance to go to the Summerlands, I’m not even destined for Tartarus… I had nothing else to give, so I had to offer my soul to the element. After this, I will cease to exist. I have no chance of a reprieve…”

    The ponies about the room gasped at this news, looking to each other, then upon the ghostly pony with both horror and pity. All except one, whose rage seemed to redouble with the news. “You… you … you ducked out of your punishment?!” she all but screamed, making the ghostly form wince.

    “But it was all I could --“

    “You Celestia damned ass!” she cut him off, stomping forward until she was nose to nose with his transparent form. “You didn’t sacrifice a damned thing! You’ve weaseled out of the punishment you deserve with some clever wording!

    “But I thought you --”

    “So now, everything you did, every pony you screwed over, means nothing! You just get to vanish, poof, cease to exist and never endure the punishment you so richly deserve!” she cried, shouting him down. He literally backed up a step, eyes wide as she continued to close on him. It didn’t matter that he was far taller than he was, he felt no more than two inches tall under the torrent of fury before him. “Do you have a clue what you did to the ponies you screwed over? Do you even have a Celestia damned clue what you put me through?”

    “N-no --“

    “Do you have any idea what sort of hell I had to put up with because you ‘accidentally’ knocked me halfway across a hotel?” she demanded. “Do you? After you were done calling me things I wouldn’t dare repeat in front of the Princesses, you intentionally, not ‘accidentally’ you bastard, INTENTIONALLY slapped me with your hoof. You back-hoofed me. You, one of the strongest specials in Eqeustria, slapped me, a filly only just out of school, hard enough that I got more air than some pegasi! I spent two months in a Celestia damned hospital because of your ‘accident’! I had a black eye and bruising on the bone around my cheek where you nearly shattered my skull! The impact with the dresser at the far end of the hallway dislocated my left shoulder and snapped two ribs! It almost punctured my lung, all because of your ‘accident’!”

    “I-I’m sorry! I --“

    “Can sorry stop you from slapping me?” she shouted in his face. “Can it stop you from telling the Agency how, when I reported the incident, I was just trying to take advantage of your popularity for my own benefit? I spent the next five years, count them, FIVE CELESTIA BUCKING YEARS, having to duck around and be teased by every supervisor I had in the agency, put down and harassed because I tried to ruin the great and all powerful Ultrapony. And the reason for all of this? Because I wouldn’t let you screw me! I turned you down and hurt your big stallion ego when you couldn’t have a toss in the hay with a mare you deigned to give your attention to!”

    “I… I…”

    “And then, just when things are finally getting back to some semblance of normal, you show up in my life again!” she cried, stomping back and forth as she paced, her eyes trapping his. No matter how hard he wanted to, he just couldn’t look away from her. “My brother died, and all you were worried about was your damned ego! You made my life miserable all over again, in person this time instead of by proxy, and did everything in your power to undercut me at every turn. Did you think I would somehow miss all those times you went crying to Luna to try and have me removed from YOUR team? Did you think I somehow didn’t know how you hated the fact I could mimic your mother’s move with my armour? Did you think, for one Celestia damned minute, that I couldn’t feel you staring daggers at me every waking second? You had me trotting on eggshells, scared to so much as sneeze out of line, lest you decide to try for a repeat performance!”

    “N-now I don’t --”

    “So when I finally get sick of your crap, you do it again anyway! Or did you forget that day when you forced Princess Luna to step in and separate us? Did you forget how you shattered my shields, threw me against a wall, and was ready to destroy me and my armour? Did you know that is the reason I always have a back-up now? I made a spare so that when the time came, and you or any pony else wrecked my armour, I would have a back-up ready to go. And guess what, you did do it. Or did you forget the fact you made me famous, again? You… you stuck up arrogant… it had to be about YOU! I wasn’t famous on my own, oh no, I only got famous because of YOU, and the fact I had the balls to stand up to YOU! I was in the hospital for over a month because of you, and you got out after one day, but I was the first pony to hurt you, so YOU made ME famous!” she laughed bitterly.

    “I’m sure that --”

    “And now… now you want to say ‘I’m sorry’ and expect it to all be better?!” she shouted in his face again, and the stallion sat down, his eyes wide. “You expect me to just tell you everything is forgiven? You expect me to pat you on the head and say ‘there there, it’s alright’ in a soothing voice? BUCK YOU! Apology not accepted… you are NOT forgiven! ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t cut it. Sorry won’t bring back all those years you took from me. Sorry won’t take away the scars you’ve left me with. Sorry won’t cure me of the limp you left me with. Sorry won’t do a Celestia damned thing!

    “And how many other ponies now have to pay for your sins? You unleashed the Celestia damned Nightmare upon us, with YOUR abilities! How many ponies and gryphons did he terrorize before arriving in Canterlot? How many did he kill tonight alone? While we’re all crying about Spectrum, how many other mares and stallions have friends and relatives that will never return home? How many more will suffer because he handed an army of bucking dragons to Goldtalon! The entire success of the invasion lies on you! Every life a dragon takes is another bloody stain on your hooves. Every pony in the entirety of Equestria is under direct threat of their lives because of YOU! Is sorry going to fix all of that?”

    “But it’s all I can do!” Sunset Sparkle managed to interject, all but crying in frustration.

    “It’s not good enough,” she growled, and turned sharply on her hoof. Not a sound was heard outside of the clop of Clockwork Key’s hooves as she stormed out of the small room. The echo of her hoof beats echoed down the hall for several long moments before finally the room was left in complete silence.

    “Maybe… maybe I really do deserve to go to Tartarus…” the stallion whimpered softly, his spectral form trembling as he looked down at his hooves, almost certain he could see the blood on them.

    “I could have… have told you that wouldn’t… work,” a weak voice managed. Heads shot up and looked at the source of the voice. Spectrum managed a pained smile from where she lay, leaning up just enough that she could see her father. That lasted all of a second before the collected ponies all swarmed her, hugging and cheering and laughing with a sudden surge of relief. Only one hung back, looking with her blind eyes at the exit.

    “Leave her, Galaxi,” Skillet counseled as he hobbled after his marefriend.

    “But…” she started.

    “She need to cool off,” he said simply. “Once she blow off some steam, then we try talking.”

    Galaxi nodded and instead joined the group, now gathered in a tight knot around the bed and the weak Spectrum lying upon it. She smiled weakly to each of them, before looking to her father and repeating herself, “I could have told you it wouldn’t work. Her wounds are too old, too deep. She can’t see past who you were when you caused them.”

    “I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway,” the ghostly stallion answered with a rueful smile, making his daughter wheeze a short laugh.

    “How much did I miss?” she asked softly.

    “Less than I did,” Trixie joked.

    “The stallions got their act together, and your father used the Element of Sacrifice with the rest of their elements to defeat Eclipse,” Filigree put in plainly.

    “He’ll be back,” she wheezed softly. “So did we win?”

    “The gryphons drove us out of Canterlot with their dragons,” Luna said sourly.

    “That explains why they hung back,” Spectrum said softly, “wait until we wipe ourselves out with the elements, then home in and destroy the carriers and every pony else while they recover. It just took a threat big enough to draw us out. Goldtalon is smarter than he looked… So where are we?”

    “Discord’s base of operations,” Galaxi answered.

    “For now, do not concern yourself with these things,” Celestia added with a motherly smile, “you need to focus on recovery.”

    “I will,” she answered, “after I take an opportunity that I thought I was robbed of. Daddy….”

    Sunset Sparkle sniffled, rubbing his nose with his hoof. “I… Rainbow I… I don’t know how I can even ask you to forgive me, so I won’t. Please, I beg of you, to understand how sorry I am. I didn’t understand, I didn’t … Goddess, I’m such a horrible father…” he sobbed.

    “Daddy,” she said softly, reaching a trembling hoof up to try and touch his face. Her hoof passed through his cheek, but she held it there anyway, the slightly cool sensation from his spirit comforting to her. Sunset Sparkle’s words lost coherency as he devolved into tears, blubbering in a heartfelt stream of apologies fueled by guilt, and further sparked by the diatribe he just endured. “Daddy, please stop and listen to me for a moment…”

    It took a noisy sniffle and a wipe of his hoof before he managed to stop and look to his daughter attentively. “I’m listening, Star…”

    “I forgive you, Daddy,” she said softly, “I always forgave you, and I will always forgive you. I knew it was in you, I knew that you could become the hero every pony believed you to be. It was always there, but you drowned it under rage and bitterness…”

    “I think I might have passed that on to another…” he admitted weakly.

    “Maybe, but unlike you, she has a team and friends who care about her. You always isolated yourself from anyone who might have gotten through, even me,” she said.

    “It took almost losing you to wake me up,” Sunset Sparkle added sadly. “’You never know what you’ve got, ‘till its gone’, if I remember the song quote properly.”

    “Exactly,” she answered with a smile, tears just starting to fall from the corners of her eyes. “Thank you, Daddy.”

    “F-for what?” he asked, startled.

    “For proving me correct, for showing me that my faith in you for all those years wasn’t wasted,” she answered tenderly, barely able to see through her tears, “for finally letting yourself be the pony you always had the potential to be… and for coming back so I could say goodbye.”

    “Star I….” he sniffled, lowering his head to try and kiss her brow, “I love you, Rainbow Star. I know I never really said it but… I’m so, so proud of you. I wish I had been the father you deserve. I wish I could be here for you, or even see you again…”

    “I could always come visit you in Tartarus,” she joked weakly.

    “I won’t be there, sweetie. I won’t be anywhere…” he admitted softly, “There was a price to save you and every pony else, one I willingly paid. The ultimate stupidity tax… if I hadn’t been so full of myself, it never would have come to this.”

    “Daddy…  I don’t understand…”

    Sunset Sparkle hung his head and looked down at his hooves, “I had… nothing left to give, to sacrifice...nothing but my soul. For me, there will be literally nothing left of me when I am gone. No Summerlands, no Tartarus, nothing at all…”

    “Ya, about that…” Skillet interrupted with a lopsided grin, “Element tell me it is rescinding that claim.”

    The ghostly stallion looked confused for a moment. ”Why would it…?” he started, but his eyes grew wide and he looked up towards the ceiling suddenly, “M-momma?! But why...” he started, leaving the other ponies to look confused to each other. Only the Princesses smiled at the oddly one sided conversation that continued from the ghostly stallion. “No, I… thank you,” he said sadly, “I never did get to say goodbye all those years ago.” He paused, then laughed ruefully, “Yeah, I guess I was a bit of a crybaby back then. Still, thank you for seeing me off… What do you mean ‘what do I mean’? There’s no way they’d ever take me into the Summerlands… not after all I‘ve done.” He looked pointedly away for a moment, before his attention was yanked back to whatever unseen figure he was speaking to, “Of course! But everything I’ve done…  I really do deserve to go to Tartarus. Clockwork Key was right about me, at least in part… Wait, but Mom, I can’t come with you! What do you mean ‘why not?’? Weren’t you listening?” His face fell a little, and his eyes slid to the side, looking uncomfortably like a young colt put on the spot, and perhaps a little scared. “Mom…  I had to sacrifice my soul to save her. Yes, I mean my daughter, your granddaughter… and every pony else to boot.” He blinked and turned suddenly, anger crossing his face. “What? Buck yes it was a worthwhile trade! What kind of question is… Yes, I’d do it again!” His anger melted away almost as suddenly as it appeared, his eyes widening in surprise, and perhaps a bit of hope. “Wait, what? That… that did?! But… but everything I did, shouldn’t it…?” He fell down on his flank, sitting with shock. “It… did? Really? They would… they’d take me back? They want me back?” He asked, his voice tightening. His spectral form began to glow with a gentle light, and the years and horrors he’d endured begun to melt away…

    “They’d let me try… I can try again?” he asked, his voice steadily growing younger and younger. His appearance passed that of the powerful stallion the ponies surrounding him knew, and he regressed further into childhood. “But what about… what about Star? I don’t want to forget my daughter! Not after taking so long to realize how much she meant to me...” Sunset Sparkle, no more than a young colt now, stood up. His squeaky childish voice filling the room as he nearly cheered, “I’ll be big, AND remember, when she gets there?! Good, cause she’s the bestest daughter ever! So… I can come home now, right?” The colt that was once known as Ultrapony let out a child-like cheer after a moment and leapt into the air, his little wings buzzing, forelegs stretched out to embrace the figure no pony else could see… and vanished into thin air, leaving only the vanishing laughter of a foal in his wake.

    For several minutes, the ponies stared at the rocky ceiling the colt had vanished through, their faces etched with confusion and, in an odd way, happiness. The silence was only broken when Spectrum sniffled, her eyes blurred with tears. "Goodbye, Daddy..."

    Celestia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and spoke, “That… was the narrowest of margins I have ever witnessed. His ultimate fate hung upon every word…”

    “Leave it to one of Lady Dash’s ilk to get away with it,” Luna answered with a wry smile.

    “Out, out!”

    The gryphoness smiled crookedly at the red coated mare as she was shooed from Spectrum’s bedside. Once the shock of seeing Sunset Sparkle vanish had faded, one of the ponies had gone to fetch the medics, and they had looked over the pegasus once more…

    It was declared a miracle by them, but Filigree suspected a bit of intervention on Sunset Sparkle’s behalf, be it from the element or from the unseen spectre of Lady Dash she could not say, but miracle still seemed an appropriate word to her. Rainbow Star was still terribly weak, but she was out of danger now, and would simply need time and patience to recover.

    “Very well, I am ‘out’,” Filigree noted and gave her friend a quick wave of the claw before the sheet was yanked into place to cut her off. “I should look for my little sister anyway. Hopefully she will forgive my delay…”

    “From what I heard, Miss Spectrum nearly died,” a soft voice said, catching the larger gryphon off-guard. The smaller gryphon stepped into the downright tiny antechamber from one of the side rooms, pushing aside the tattered sheet and followed by the acrid smell the alcohol she had been using to clean their medical instruments. She offered a tentative smile to the elder sister and shook her head, “I would have to be heartless to hold that against anyone.”

    Filigree’s face went through several emotions before settling on relief, and she swept forward to hug the smaller gryphoness, causing her to squeak in surprise. Then, almost as suddenly as she had swept her younger sibling into a hug, Filigree released her. “I’m sorry, I am forgetting myself.”

    “It’s… it’s alright,” she answered softly, her eyes sliding to the side and away from her sister. She hadn’t been sure how she would respond in seeing her, and now she still wasn’t sure how she should feel about it.

    “No, it’s not,” the elder sister stated, and for a moment it seemed as if she collapsed to the floor. Verdigris had been about to cry for help, when her eyes widened and she recognized the posture. Filigree’s foreclaws were crossed under her beak, and both were settled on the ground, the traditional position of submission. “There was nothing ‘all right’ about what I did. I made a poor decision, and you paid for it. I left you with our parents, which we both know are less than fit for their job, rather than take you back to Canterlot with me. You begged me to take you, and I did not listen. I allowed my fears to overwhelm me, and I have done nothing but regret every moment since then.”

    Verdigris sucked in a breath when the other gryphon paused, lifting her foreleg as conflicting emotions warred across her face. “Do you… do you know what happened to me?” she asked, her voice tightening. “Do you have any idea what you could have prevented, had you not sent me away?”

    “No,” Filigree responded softly, “but I would ask you tell me. I only know the barest of outlines of how you ended up in this place, and both Kaos and Discord have put me off until things calm down. But now I would ask you, so that I might learn from my mistake, and know the extent of my sin.”

    The younger gryphoness looked down at her claw, watching it shake with repressed emotion. Anger, worry… hurt, she could all but taste it, like acid on the tongue. A bitter pill, but she swallowed anyway, forcing it all down. When she finally did speak, her voice was tiny, almost lost among the soft whistling of the breeze through the hollow stone room, and drained of emotion. “My… our father refused to have anything to do with the gryphons of the town. He insisted they were traitors, turning their tails on the Clans that they should owe their very lives to. On his insistence, he drew all of us from town and into that horrible and chaotic forest they call the Everfree. I was unable to slip away, my mother kept me close, which she and father both insisted was to keep them from corrupting me. Despite my best attempts to delay, I was forced to enter the forest with them.

    “Had I remembered the way back, I would have abandoned them at the first opportunity, but I was quickly lost, as were the rest. Not that father, our stubborn, stubborn father would admit it. By the time we stopped to make a fire, we were lost deeply within the wilds. I climbed a tree and found some fruit, hiding it from them, while father tried, and failed, to start a fire.”

    “It was then that we met Eclipse,” she continued, blue eyes foggy as she witnessed the past in her mind. She had unknowingly set her claw upon her elder sister’s head, and Filigree in turn watched her sister as best she could, the weak weight upon her brow the heaviest she could remember knowing. “He came to us as a black gryphon bearing sweet words and promises. He wove his spell upon all of us, and led us to the place he called home: a reliquary of dragon eggs, hidden from all eyes, where he was stealing their youth and forcing them to grow into animals of war. They were fed the freshest of meats, while we were given only the rancid leftovers in that hellish cave. Fed directly from sulfur vents deep below the surface… it was always hot and dark. And yet, for whatever reason, I constantly saw the cracks in his sweet words. Maybe it was the fact I was assigned to shovel dung, but I like to think it was because the rest of our family was just that blind. I tried to run, but clipped wings and the threat of being hurled out of a high cave to my death made that escape attempt short lived.

    “When the other gryphons came, and I knew I had to run, just like he knew I would. He caught me, threatened to make me his personal slave, to reveal to all his belief that I was a special… and I lashed out at him. My claw caught his eye and I tried to run. He nearly choked me out for my ‘insolence’, the doctor says my voice will always rasp from the damage he did to my throat, and he hurled me through another portal and into the desert to die. I hurt, I couldn’t think straight, and the nullification of his heat damping spell sapped me of all my strength. I barely managed to drag myself to a ghost town I had seen in the distance before I collapsed. It took two days to reach it, but I felt like I was dying every step. I couldn’t even fold my wings, I was just so tired. I was starting to get fatalistic, and the idea of just curling up in the sand and letting the wind sweep me under the dunes started to sound good. Just let me die in peace… I never asked for any of this.”

    Tears splashed down on Filigree’s beak, shed from the other gryphoness. The despair, the hopelessness in her voice was so palatable that she ached to hold her younger sister, to protect her. But the weight on her head held her in place, unable to act upon that desire. “In a way, when that blast shattered the wall of the room I sheltered in, I welcomed the oncoming oblivion. I was ready to give up; I was ready for it all to end. Then entered Kaos and his team. If it weren’t for Zilch and her constant companionship, I would have slid back into depression. She shared her toys, she shared her secret hiding places, and she shared her kindness with me. If it weren’t for her… I don’t know what would have happened.”

    “Then I owe her much thanks,” Filigree said softly. The younger sister blinked, almost as if waking up from a nightmare. It took her a moment to realize what she was doing and recoiled from her sister, lifting the claw from her head.

    “I… I…” she stammered, then wiped a claw over her face.

    The elder sister took that as permission to rise, lifting her head until her blue eyes could meet her sister’s green ones, “I should have been there to protect you. I can only beg your forgiveness, and offer my sincerest promise to never allow anything to happen to you again. This I vow…”

    For a long moment, silence reigned between the pair, their feathers ruffled by the slight breeze that whistled by them. Then, Verdigris turned away, “I’ll take you to the medics, you really need to be seen to.”

    Filigree’s head drooped in defeat and followed.

    “You must think I’m a horrible pony.”

    Celestia shook her head slightly, looking down at the far smaller pony before her. Clockwork Key hadn’t even turned around to face her, sitting at a table in one corner of Bunsen Burner’s rather expansive lab. Her armour stood in the corner like a misbehaving filly, right next to a work table that Clockwork obviously tried to burn out her anger at by working on some widget or another. The solar regent honestly had no clue what the half finished item with the wrench lodged in it was supposed to be. But when she arrived, the short mare had simply been resting her head upon the table, sitting there staring at the blank rock wall. The Princess suspected that stillness hid the frantic whirling of the smaller mare’s mind. “No, I do not,” she answered soothingly.

    “How can you not?” she asked in return, her voice sounding utterly drained and exhausted. “I just unleashed on a dying stallion, technically an already dead stallion, with all barrels. I didn’t even give him a chance to defend himself, just… kablam.”

    “You feel guilty about your anger?” Celestia asked softly.

    “Yes… and no,” Clockwork responded with a sigh. “He deserves to rot in Tartarus. He’s a horrible pony and he’s hurt so many. Yet, everything I threw in his face was just… just selfish. I barely even touched upon what he did to any pony else, just me. How he bucked up my life. How what he did made my life harder. There I am, accusing him of being selfish, and I’m screaming about me…”

    “After you left, he expressed the concern that his anger, his bitterness, may have rubbed off on you,” the Princess said, sitting down and watching the short mare’s back.

    Clockwork snorted, “Now I’m torn between even more guilt and anger.”

    “Explain?”

    “Guilt in that he actually worried about the results of something he did. That means he truly was sorry, instead of why I thought he was apologizing,” she sighed and shook her head. “Anger, because he has the stones to take credit for what I did… again.”

    “It was a deeply rooted thing for him,” Celestia said softly, “before he… left, he was stripped of all that anger and reverted to a young colt. That’s how great the stain left upon his soul was. Stripping it away required taking almost everything he became since he was but a child.” The Princess paused for a few moments to let that sink in before pressing on, “How deeply has that taint sunk into you?”

    Clockwork whirled on much larger mare, eyes blazing with anger. But, for whatever reason, she paused, and the anger bled away, leaving her feeling silly and staring down at her own hooves. Celestia just nodded slowly.

    “Exactly,” the solar regent said with a gentle smile. “Anger can be good. Righteous anger, for instance, which you have channeled appropriately multiple times, can be used for the greater good of all. But bitterness can only poison you, poison your soul. It leaves a stain that is very difficult to remove.”

    “I…  I’ve always been a little angry,” Clockwork admitted, turning back to the work table and nudging the incomplete widget with her hoof, “but I always used it to drive me. I could channel it. Life is unfair, after all. It took my mother from me… I don’t even remember what she looked like. It took my father from me… it took my brother, Widget, from me. Life has a habit of beating me down… and that makes me mad. It infuriates me… it frustrates me. Then I channel it and do everything I can to overcome it. Widget always warned me that if I kept it bottled up, I’d just explode, like a firecracker.”

    Celestia made a face. “That gives a rather unpleasant image.”

    “Yeah, I suppose so,” the mare chuckled softly, then sobered. “But he made his point. Working, inventing, testing, it gets it out of my system. But ever since… ever since winter, it’s just not working. It’s not coming out, it’s not releasing, and I just keep getting more and more frustrated… and more angry.”

    “Clockwork, come here…” the solar matron said softly, and laid down on the stones beneath her. She flared a wing slightly, obviously indicating where she intended the smaller mare to sit. Clockwork was slightly hesitant, but stepped forward and curled around, settling stiffly into place. She was mildly surprised when Celestia tucked her wing over her and used it to tug her close against her side. For a moment, the small mare seemed about to pull away, but forced herself to relax in place. “You rejected something Trixie told you in its entirety when her subterfuge came to light, something I played a role in as well. I thought the revelations within would help you, show you that you are not alone, but you rejected it all. However, I want you to know something, something that has been kept very much a secret for over a thousand of years. Something that my pupil discovered purely by intuition, and what has led me to be the sort of alicorn I have become. I swear to you that what I am about to tell you is the absolute truth, Lady Key.”

    Clockwork Key blinked slightly as she looked to the Princess in confusion. “I… I believe you, Princess.”

    The Princess of the Sun, the solar regent, smiled gently and dipped her head, “You are not alone in the suffering of your condition. My pupil improperly attributed it to the Nightmare in the missive she showed you, which I confess I signed. You saw through this ruse immediately, even if its intent had your best interests at heart. While it was indeed the nightmare that planted this seed inside me, it was not done a year ago, but over a thousand years ago. There is no history of what my sister and I did, how we fought, for a reason. The Lunar Republic she formed as Nightmare Moon nearly won, they nearly swept across Equestria and destroyed the light. Battle after battle I witnessed those I trusted, those ponies I cared for, fall under my sister’s withering attacks and tactical superiority. It was only in pure desperation that I turned to the Elements of Harmony, and they answered my clumsy attempts to use them by imprisoning my sister upon the moon. The ultimate ‘time out’, if you will. But, just like that, the war was over. Thousands of ponies were rounded up, and had to be tried. Their guilt had to be judged. In the end, I only had the heart to condemn a hoof-full of her cruelest commanders, and I pardoned the rest. I bade the ponies to learn from the war and to remember its lessons… and to welcome peace into their hearts.

    “It was not an easy lesson to learn, for them or for me. I oscillated between fury and depression for years after the event. I chased away the palace servants and became a ghost within my own castle. In one fit of rage, I blew out the wall, and that was when I knew I was out of control. I knew something was wrong, but not how to ‘fix’ it. If it weren’t for the friendship of another, I never would have. He showed me how to live with it, how to adapt and learn to deal with these feelings inside me. That I needed other ponies to lean on, and through their support I could find my ‘cure’. Starswirl the Bearded was many things, and wise was one of them. It is to my disappointment that he failed in his final attempts to ascend to the level of Alicorn, but his mark upon my life, and Equestria, is everlasting. And it was through his kindness that I learned to accept every pony as the children I could not bear myself, and every pony became ‘my’ little pony.”

    “Then…” Clockwork squeaked softly, her eyes wide, “you really have the same condition I do?”

    “Yes, Clockwork Key, I do,” she answered with a gentle smile. “You were never alone, and know that you never will be.”

    Words belied the small mare, her mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. Her green eyes were wide, but hidden behind a veil of tears that she couldn’t control. The wing pulled her closer to the owner, cloaking her in comforting warmth as the mare known as Clockwork Key wept. The only sound for the longest time was the relief that flooded from her, and the gentle humming of the Princess. A lullaby from eons past, from a childhood she barely remembered, but that felt important in that moment.