Radiant decided that it was Ataxia’s pacing that he hated the most. The mare was beyond nervous, skittish, and annoying. In truth, she was starting to worry him. Ataxia nervous was always a bad things, and it wasn’t like she had the best reputation with anypony in Equestria.

Given she was, without a doubt, a loving wife, a devoted mother, and a great friend, but that’s not all she was; she was also a sociopath, or at least she had been. She had been a mare that did what she wanted, when she wanted, and how she wanted.

She hadn’t been that mare in years, decades even. But right now, pushed to the cusp of inactivity, with the mare she loved on her deathbed, Radiant was beyond worried that Ataxia would snap. He was worried that she would revert to her old self and try to use force to solve the problem. The white unicorn had no idea what the sphinx could do, but he knew what Ataxia could do. Memories of that horrible night that almost cost him everything still haunted him in his sleep, especially after the death of his wife.

“Rainbow,” Radiant whispered as he walked over to the cyan mare who was unusually quiet.

Rainbow turned her eyes from the sphinx. She had been eyeing the creature for the past ten minutes. Examining attack vectors and the threat radius of it’s attacks—just in case. “What is it?” she asked.

Radiant gestured with his muzzle to the pacing mare. Rainbow looked up at Ataxia, almost as if she were seeing her for the first time. “And?”

“What if she… you know, tries something?” Radiant whispered.

“Could you stop her?” Rainbow asked.

“W-what?”

“Could you stop her from trying something?”

“Um… no.”

Rainbow chuckled. “I couldn’t either. Heck, we’d be speed bumps—at most—to that mare. The only one here who might be able to hold her back is Dayspring, and even then I wouldn’t want to be within a thousand hooves of that fight.”

“So we just, what?”

“Let it be,” Rainbow said with a smile. “There ain’t shit we can do about it, so why worry?”

“That’s a horrible plan, Rainbow.”

“Who do you take me for, my wife? I’m a mare of action, and, honestly, if I had my wings, I’d be right there with Ataxia.”

Radiant fell back on his flank and huffed. Rainbow just shrugged turning back to the sphinx. The creature was sitting patiently on the sand, watching Twilight and Dayspring work out the riddle as best as they could.

“I do not wish to disturb, but your time is almost over to save your loved ones,” the sphinx spoke up, smiling slightly.

Twilight looked up and glared at the sphinx, angrily.

“Mom, we need your head in the game,” Dayspring chided.

Twilight looked back at her son, before blushing at her overreaction. “Sorry. Okay let’s start over again. I’m at the beginning of the end, and the end of every place.”

“I think…” Dayspring paused. “Maybe we’re looking at it too literally?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the last riddle was referring to a word and a position. Bookkeeper being the name for something with three pairs of consecutive letters and the pony that keeps the books.”

“Yes, but…”

“So maybe we need a different perspective?” Dayspring asked.

“Are you really trying to say we’re too smart to solve this?” Twilight asked with a giggle.

“We need Rainbow for it.”

“Hey, she’s not dumb!” Twilight growled.

“No, I never said she was, but mother thinks in a way quite differently than the way the two of us go about it,” Dayspring said with a smile.

Twilight raised an eyebrow, then looked over Dayspring’s shoulder to her wife. To her amazement, Rainbow was just sitting patiently, almost like she didn’t have a care in the world. It was unusual to say the least. “Hey Rainbow. Come over here for a second.”

The cyan mare got to her hooves and walked over, a confused expression on her face. “What’s up, Twi?”

When she got close enough, Twilight asked, “What’s at the end of time and space?”

“E?”

Dayspring Gleam face-planted his muzzle right into the sand. “Oh Luna, I’m a bucking idiot!”

Rainbow looked confused. “What?”

Twilight laughed, walked over, and kissed her wife again. “Thank you, Rainbow. You continue to be the smartest mare I’ve ever known.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just thanks.”

The pegasus raised an eyebrow before turning around and heading back to rejoin the other group. Twilight walked over to her son and wrapped a wing around his barrel. “You know, she told me once that I was too smart, that because of that fact she could see things I couldn’t.”

“That was bucking obvious, and we wasted half an hour,” Dayspring mumbled into the sand.

Twilight kissed him on the side of the head before approaching the sphinx. The creature’s lion head raised up and looked at her, smiling.

“You already know we have the answer, don’t you?” Twilight asked.

“Yes.”

“Then do we really need to say it?”

The sphinx laughed. “Protocol, what can I say?”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Very well, the answer to your riddle of what is at the beginning of the end, and the end of every place, the beginning of eternity, and the end of time and space. Is, of course, the letter E.”

“That is correct,” the sphinx said with a smile as the group gathered around.

“I still can’t believe that it took us this long,” Dayspring bemoaned.

“A fact of life, resurrected, the higher your intelligence, the more uncommon the common is.”

“Thank you for the obvious,” Twilight mumbled.

“Are you ready for your third and final riddle?” The sphinx asked.

“No!”

Everypony and sphinx paused. All as one they turned to the speaker: Ataxia.

“Ataxia, what do you mean, ‘no’?” Radiant asked, more than worried.

“Ataxia, we need to do this,” Dayspring said.

“No, we don’t,” Ataxia said, smiling as she approached the sphinx.

For her part, the creature seemed unphased by her sudden reversal, leading Twilight to believe that she either knew what was going to happen, or that it didn’t really matter to her. “You’re going to go ahead and answer our questions, without asking us another riddle.”

The sphinx raised a paw and started to lick her claws. “And why would I do that?”

Ataxia grinned the sort of grin she’d normally have right before doing something really dumb. “You said we only have to answer three riddles of yours, correct?”

“Yes,” the sphinx replied.

“Ataxia, we can’t waste time like this,” Dayspring said.

Ataxia silenced him with a glare that all but said to shut the hell up. Dayspring gulped and did just that.

“So I have the answer to your third riddle. You asked Luna the riddle, closer than you expect but never seen, fighting for a love never known, older than eyes can see, what am I? The answer is Nighttide, her daughter. That’s a riddle from you, answered.”

The sphinx chuckled. “Technically, you are right. Fine, rules are rules. But you are wrong in one thing. I’m not answering your questions. I’m answering one.”

“Go, Ataxia!” Dayspring cheered at not having another riddle to pound his head against the sand over.

Radiant, Rainbow, and Twilight all went up to congratulate her. Ataxia felt like doing something other than being praised. “Thanks, guys.”

Dayspring spoke up. “Well, let’s get what we came here for. You want to take the honors, Mom?”

Twilight smiled. Even after all these years, I’m still the only one he calls mom. “Sure thing.” The others spread out, letting her face the sphinx directly. “Sphinx, what is the unicorn Red’s tru—”

“How do I save Shimmering Night?”

“What the hell, Ataxia?” Radiant asked, all but jumping on her.

Four sets of eyes glared at Ataxia with a look of betrayal and one with a look of amusement.

“Ataxia, how could you?” Radiant asked.

She cried as she spoke, “How could I not?”

“The question has been asked,” the sphinx said as her wings shot to her sides and she levitated in the air. “The answer to your question, young dragacorn, on how to save your wife’s life. The life of one who was poisoned by the magic of a dead god, is through the application of chaos magic.”

“Chaos magic?” Twilight asked.

“Chaos magic, the magic that is intertwined with your dragon fire.”

Ataxia’s eyes widened as she realized what she had to do. She took one more look at the group of ponies all around her and said, “I’m not sorry.”

A flash of white later, and she was gone. They blinked their eyes clear as the aftereffects of Ataxia’s teleport made itself known.

“I’ll get her,” Dayspring said and made to follow.

“No,” Twilight said, stopping him. “To be honest, I don’t blame her. I’d have done the same thing.”

“Me too,” Rainbow said.

“Me too,” Radiant said, looking down at his hooves in a frown.

Dayspring huffed. “Yeah, I guess that’s true of us all.”

“Indeed,” the sphinx said.

“This is what you meant, wasn’t it?” Twilight asked. “You said she had another question in her heart; you knew she’d do this.”

The sphinx smiled at her. “I did. I can see into all your hearts, I can see your true selves. Ataxia, her heart, it belongs to one mare and one mare only. You might have stopped your foe had you been able to ask your question. But it would have cost you your daughter, and in doing so, cost Ataxia her last measure of restraint.”

“So, is this for the best?” Rainbow asked.

The sphinx grinned. “So many questions, so few riddles answered.”

“But… you already answered my question. Does that mean you can answer if you want to?” Twilight asked.

“Not your true questions. I can have conversations with ponies, I can talk and make friends, I simply cannot tell them the answer their heart truly desires to know. Not without answering the riddles.”

Twilight considered that, then paused as she thought of one more thing. “Tell me, if you can. You sought out Princess Luna all those months ago to warn her, to tell her about her daughter. If I may ask, why?”

The sphinx grinned at that as magical energy started to surround her, preparing her for a teleportation of her own. “I overheard, what you might call, a joke question. Two ponies were talking in a restaurant, and one asked the other when the world would come to an end.”

“I-I…” Twilight stammered.

“In two hours,” the sphinx said as she teleported away to a destination unknown.

“She's joking… right?” Dayspring asked.

In a flash of white, a unicorn arrived in the courtyard of Celestia’s Palace. This, in and of itself, caused quite a stir. Being an hour before sunrise, the sudden magical teleportation alerted every guard on duty.

They all paused when they saw just who it was that teleported in the center of the courtyard. There wasn’t a pony in the Royal Guard or the Night Guard that did not know of Ataxia, and it would be an understatement to say she had a reputation.

The first thing the mare did upon arriving was puke. The few remaining contents of her stomach spilled out on the ground as she hurled it up. The effects of teleportation never sat well with her. With one hoof she wiped her muzzle clean and looked up in the location of her bedroom, where her wife would be woken up for the last time, to move the sun and moon for the last time, and then to die.

“No, I won’t let it happen!” She shouted into the sky.

“Princess Ataxia?” One of the guards asked.

“Stay back! Whatever you do, don’t come any closer!”

They were hesitant, but did as they were ordered.

I can do this, I own you, bucker. Where have you been hiding? She looked inward, feeling around to parts of herself that she had put to the side, that she had tried to forget about, parts of herself that she needed, now.

It didn’t want to be found, or, at the very least, she couldn’t find it. Not at first. It was like trying to grasp onto the lyrics of a song one hadn’t heard in years. Every time her mind thought she had it, it simply slipped through her hooves.

Bullshit, bucker, I will find you, I will use you, I’m bucking Ataxia, and I. Command. You!

Ataxia was a mare of chaos, the god of Chaos’s Avatar in the mortal realm. All she’s ever had to do in her life was to want something and focus on one thing enough to make it so.

That held true, even for this.

She found it buried deep inside of her. In her mind’s eye she saw it as a rabid creature of chaos, one with fangs, teeth, and claws that lashed at her, that fought against being caged for almost twenty years.

There you are. Now, come to momma.

She embraced it. Fangs. Teeth. Claws and all.

It laughed maliciously.

The guards overlooking the courtyard held their spears tightly. They grasped their bucklers and readied their spells as they watched the purple mare scream out in pain and agony.

Ataxia’s neck shot up, her head arched back, and her legs gave out from under her. Her tail fell out, each and every strand dropping to the ground as she was overcome in pure, unadulterated pain. A flesh-tail grew in it’s place. Purple in coloring, it simply… grew. Her muscles convulsed as her other form took over, as it sought dominance and control over her body.

She screamed a beastial roar that was impossible for a pony to make. Her muzzle extended as the fur on her face and body fell out, only to be replaced by scales. Her teeth fell out one at a time, replaced with sharper, longer, far more dangerous ones.

Ataxia’s legs doubled, tripled, and then quadrupled in size as they were overcome with pure growth. On her back, huge wings started to form; they were small at first but soon increased at an exponential growth rate that doubled in size every three seconds, until, at last, they were large enough to block out the moon’s light from the entire courtyard.

In the matter of minutes, the guards in the palace readied themselves for their soon-to-be death; as, for the first time in almost twenty years, the dragacorn was back in Equestria.

The dragacorn arched her long neck up into the sky and let a roar that echoed across Canterlot Mountain. She shot a long burst of chaos dragon fire that lit up the sky almost as if it were a second sun.

Her eyes focused, her hatred returned, and she looked at the palace as her natural instincts sought out what her body, what her very existence wanted. The death of every single alicorn in Equestria.

One was close, very close. And the fact that it was on its last leg, almost-dead, meant nothing. Almost-dead wasn’t dead-dead. And she wanted them all dead-dead.

Ataxia, the pony, screamed in anguish as years, decades of rage and suffering washed over her. The pain, the horror, the pure hate. It was all so much, too much. She felt fangs bite into her neck and throat. She felt claws lash at her face and head, she felt herself bleeding from hundreds upon hundreds of cuts and bites as the creature she thought she had tamed, that she thought she had put aside for the rest of her life, took it’s vengence.

All she heard—other than the sounds of her own cries of pain—was the sound of laughter. The laughter of something that existed long before the first soul on the planet. The laughter of something that took joy only in the pain of others, the laughter of something that wanted her pain.

And it was getting it, in truckloads.

“N-n-n-n-no!” Ataxia futilely screamed out as she tried to focus her power, her ability on something, anything. It didn’t matter what, as even a basic light spell that a little foal could do would be some measure of victory.

She felt the creature rip her throat out. She heard its laughter increase in volume. She felt her blood spilled by the gallons. She felt pain, pain far worse than anything she had ever experienced in her life.

No, that night was worse.

That thought wasn’t a pleasant one. It was the reminder of the worst night of her life. The night her mom died, the night her dad died, the night her love… This had been the first time in almost twenty years she had even thought about that night, avoidance being her go-to method for dealing with life’s problems.

But now that she had, it gave her something to focus on, something to grasp other than the pain, other than the laughter, other than the feeling of dying over, and over, and over again.

“That won’t help you.” The voice was a hiss and a curse all in one. She knew it came from the laughing voice, the creature that she had caged.

“You think so? Years didn’t just help your anger, it also made me stronger!” Ataxia yelled back.

“You? Strong? You’re nothing but a weakling!”

Ataxia felt a mountain slam against her side. The impact stole the air from her lungs and left her coughing up blood. “You’re nothing but a dumb, stupid mare trying to play with fate! Trying to change who you are!”

Ataxia picked herself up from the ground, coughing up more blood, but unsurprised to find herself still alive. She wasn’t a smart mare, but even she knew that she should be dead ten times over from what she’d already been through. This realm, wherever she was, it was one of pain, not death. Her wounds hurt and bled like any other, but they were only sensations, feelings, they didn’t actually cripple her.

“Yeah? Who the fuck caged who then, bastard.”

The darkness cleared and, in front of her, stood the largest dragon she had ever seen in her life. It roared and started walking to her, it’s intent clear: to cause her even more harm. “Yes, you beat me, once. That’s one times too many, stupid bitch. I’ll swallow you alive, and you’ll spend the rest of eternity being devoured in my stomach.”

Ataxia couldn’t keep the grin off her face if she tried, and she didn’t even bother. This creature, this dragon essence inside of her. It hated her; it wanted to cause her pain and suffering. Those were emotions she knew all too well. The mare forced herself to her hooves.

“Bitch, I’m Ataxia. Do you really think I’ll suck your dick that fucking easily?”

At those words a steamroller fell from the sky, aimed right at the dragon’s head. Without even looking, it batted the thing from the sky with one swipe of its huge claw. “You’ll have to do better than—”

Two anvils came swinging up from the ground and impacted on either side of the dragon’s head. Ataxia rolled to the side, already knowing what would come next.

The dragon roared in pain and rage. It shot a huge torrent of fire out of it’s muzzle, straight for the spot that Ataxia used to occupy.

Ataxia shouted out, “To think I was afraid of you… you’re nothing, I’m the fucking one in charge!”

The shout was a mistake. Sure Ataxia had the momentary advantage, but by shouting she gave away her position to the dragon. She felt herself hit by the dragon’s tail and slammed against the side of the wall. Ataxia cried out as she coughed up even more blood and viscera.

“No… You won’t win. Do you know why?” Ataxia coughed.

“Because you think you’re strong?” The dragon laughed. “That’s amusingly funny.”

“No… It’s because I have somepony to fight for. Because there’s somepony making me strong!” Ataxia roared, concentrated her magic, and fired shot after shot at the dragon.

The shots were imbued with chaos magic, shot from the Avatar of Chaos herself. Each of them would slay a lesser being, against most dragon’s they’d either have to flee or risk real injury. Against this dragon, they were nothing but beestings.

It reached down and grasped the mare in it’s claws. Ataxia didn’t stop firing, but even she could see that it was pointless. The growls of pain and anguish told her that she was hurting it, but she wasn’t stopping it.

“I wonder how all that defiance will taste going down?” the dragon asked, amused.

“You’ll choke on me for the rest of eternity,” Ataxia growled back.

“Amusing, but this is the end, little pony.”

Ataxia scowled as she was brought to the creatures large, opening mouth.

It was so cliche, but Ataxia really did see her life flashing before her eyes. Her memories flashed before her at the speed of light, until it stopped, suddenly, on one point. At that moment time seemed to slow to a crawl. It was an event only two days old, but it seemed to play through her mind almost like it was happening now.

“Mom, have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“Starlight, I think I’ve had my fair share of prophecies in my lifetime, I don’t want to hear another one.”

“Well, too bad, you’re going to hear another,” Starlight said as she hugged her mother tightly. “A self-fulfilling prophecy is when your pre-conceived belief that something will happen makes it happen.”

…

“If you don’t believe in her, if you don’t tell her you want her here, if you give up, she might quit fighting.”

“Don’t you see, Mom? If we don’t fight for her, she won’t fight to stay with us. We have to fight for her, we have to keep fighting to the very end. For that’s how we show her that we truly love her.”

The last words weren’t her memory, for they hadn’t happened before; instead, it was like… Starlight was speaking directly to her, from wherever she was.

The dragon’s hot breath played over her fur, it covered her from mane to hoof, causing her skin to boil and blister under the heat. Yet, as Ataxia looked down the gullet of what would now and forever be her new home, she did two things that came as a surprise.

The first thing she did was cry.

The second thing she did was smile.

Shimmering Night woke to a commotion she hadn’t heard since Twilight Night’s birth in Canterlot all those years ago. The alicorn demigoddess felt weaker than she had in her entire life. Her eyelids felt heavy, too heavy to open. Her mouth was bone dry, but she knew that even something as basic as swallowing was beyond her abilities right this moment.

She knew… she simply knew this was the end. This… this was the day she would die. Her body might have been that of an alicorn, but alicorn’s weren’t immortal. Far from it. The death magic she used in Tartarus had taken its toll, it had poisoned every cell in her body these last six months.

Had she been able to cry, she would have. For her last regret was that she wouldn’t be able to tell her family, her kids, and… her wife, one last time, how much she loved them. How much she would miss them for the rest of eternity.

Her body simply did not have enough water in it to produce tears.

Still, it could listen. She heard a ruckus outside, which, in and of itself, wasn’t that far from unusual around here. If the stories she had been told were true, little Vela had almost destroyed the palace just the other day.

How I wish I had seen it.

Still, this sounded… different. She heard roaring, she heard spell flinging, and the bark of orders demanding more and more of… something.

However, what really got her attention was when she felt the room itself shaking as something large and ungainly seemed to slam into the palace. She heard the sounds of something ripping and tearing at the very stone itself. She felt the palace shudder as part of the external walls were ripped away.

The sounds and vibrations grew louder and louder as it increased in intensity. On the outside of her door she could hear ponies running, scrambling to react to whatever it was that was attacking the palace itself.

The sound increased to a crescendo and the ripping and tearing of brick and steel coming from her room echoed about. It then grew quiet, the calm before the storm.

It was the sudden breeze that got to her though. She felt cold as the wind played over her fur. So much so that she struggled to try and grasp the blanket to pull it up over her fur.

Then, suddenly, the breeze became hot, taking on an acidic tang. The combination was strange. She had felt something similar but simply couldn’t place it.

Night struggled with all her might to open her eyelids. Her body didn’t want to, it didn’t have the energy to, but she forced it.

What she saw was something that would give most foals, and grown ponies, nightmares. A large, adult, purple dragon head was sticking into the room through a hole that had been torn in the side of the wall. Rows upon rows of teeth, each bigger than a pony, each strong enough to bite a mountain in half, greeted her as the dragon huffed each and every breath through its nostrils.

The creature looked at her, it’s green eyes staring directly at the lavender alicorn dying in bed. Shimmering Night locked her eyes on the creature’s. She saw the pain and anguish that was in those eyes. Out of her peripheral vision, she also made out one final detail of who this creature was, who this dragon was: she made out the large purple horn at the top of its head.

Not that she needed to see it. Shimmering Night would recognize her wife anywhere, regardless what form she took.

The alicorn opened her muzzle, a gesture that was almost as hard as opening her eyes. Her mouth was dry, her tongue felt wilted. Still, this was something she wanted to say, something she had to say, something she needed to say.

“A—Atax—xi-a… I-I lov—”

The room was engulfed in magical dragon fire.