Discovery, Discharges And Remains.

(VI)

The electric motor whirred faster and faster; the dial that displayed its revolutions per minute had a definite upward trend. I could see Head Wind sitting at the other end of the room, glancing at the dial every five seconds. His mouth moved quickly as he shifted the paper with a forehoof. I felt a numbness descend upon my form, emanating from my horn. I could feel myself weakening like I was overworking muscles yet there was only a feeling of fatigue and weakening in my body. My horn, in comparison, felt like it was being squeezed by a vice. I had been pouring energy into the wires of the electric motor’s circuit.

“I’m going to stop the flow,” I said to Head. As I cut back on the flow, the glow from my horn died little by little, and I could feel that weakness intensify. My rear legs buckled under my own weight. That was par for the course though, as Lotus told it. I was building up magical endurance. It seems a touch of telekinesis or a mote of light isn’t enough to build a reserve of magical energy. Knowing why I was falling to the floor, Head Wind sprinted over to me. I had just made it to the floor in loose pile of equine. I looked up at him, with an absurd effort I flipped myself over. The concrete was cool on my back. I let a slight smile warm my face, even as my extremities angled out and away from their upright positions.

“Permittivity, it’s fuckin’ scary watching you go limp like that,” Head said.

I said nothing to him, I merely let my frame rest.

“Whoever poured this concrete did an admirable job.”

My words earned a quizzical look.

“I can carry you if you want me to,” he said primly.

“If I wanted a strapping young buck to carry me home I would’ve went to the pub with you,” I said. My eyes met his, immediately thereafter the two of us burst out laughing.

“If you’re that much of a lightweight I kinda want to see it with my own eyes. I mean, I’m free tonight, like most nights.” His words had trailed off at the last few words.

“That sounds nice, I did enjoy that place you told me about in the hospital.”
I was feeling fresher by the moment. His body was loosening, his worries about my condition assuaged, he was looking more and more like the stallion I had met in the hospital.

“That place is pretty far away, and I’ve heard about this hole in the wall just a block or three from here,” he said as I pulled myself off of the ground. My legs were better than they had been, and my breathing was approaching normalcy.
I was getting better, the last time I had overexerted myself I had been lying on the floor for half an hour.

I stumbled forward; only by virtue of his position did I not strike the floor.

“Let’s get you into a chair,” he said with a chuckle as I used him as a crutch, a foreleg wrapped around his neck. It was nice feeling his coat against mine.

“Barstool?” I said to him as we walked towards the door. He just winked at me. I shook my head while chuckling.
We made our way out to the street, and I locked up the decrepit building. I felt better now, knowing that I had made progress. The streets were quiet, there were few ponies around this block. This block was mostly under-utilized property built back before the invention of the cable car. Tenement housing now. I thought for a moment, before watching Head Wind kick a rock ahead of him. He was an enigma, I thought before he turned his head to look at me. His eyes were open and inquisitive; I looked away instantly. My mind shot back to that time in the hospital, and on that bus. Leaving him at that station was one of the hardest things I had ever done…
I let my head drift, I could see him in my peripheral vision, he was still leading.
That was for the best.

---===*===---

“And this fucker, he had me on the ground, he kept stomping on my back. I kept yelling at him, telling him to surrender. The fucker never expected me standing up and knocking him on his ass.” A couple of ponies at the bar had started talking to Head Wind and I, so, Head was telling them a story.

“So, you snap his neck?”

“Break his leg?”

“Feed him his own shovel?”

“No,” he responded to the ponies around him. Two mares and a stallion had sat around us. After hearing that we fought these ponies had bought us a round. It was an implicit trade, war stories for beer. “I tackled him. If you hold a pony long enough they’ll give in,” he said with a sudden chill.

“You said you were in the hospital, how did that happen?” a short yellow mare said to us She must have been of age to serve, barely. The ones who won the lottery, I thought to myself. A frown appeared on my face as Head told them the truth.
“I was sitting in my trench, waiting for the Celestians to advance across no-mare’s land,” he leaned forward. “Then me and my mates, we heard howitzers firing. We had a few seconds to hit the deck. Then there was a loud fuckin’ crack and a hail of shrapnel. A second after that, another went off. And again. I could feel metal digging into my coat, and little spurts of blood oozing around the wounds. It kept going.” He paused and took a long drink, slamming his mug down on the countertop. “It ended eventually, but we were all cut up or dead. We gave up that forward trench and they took it. I got a big chunk of steel in my back, they had to drag me out and to the hospital.” He motioned in my direction. “I met this lug in that hospital.” He told them with pride in his voice, along with something else. I couldn’t quite place it in the second I had before the younger mare asked me about my wounds. I felt my lips turn down before I straightened them out. My momentary half sneer wasn’t recognized for what it was. I forced a smile.

“There is zero possibility that you missed the scarring on my muzzle.” I said to them. The mare chuckled at what she thought was a joke. “I received them at the end of a Celestian blade. To preempt the succeeding question: I have more than these scars.”
At that I dropped from the chair and placed a mote of light near my stab wound.

The bare patch of fur stood out. “That must have hurt!” One of the stallions said before calling the bar pony over. “Pick anything over there, I just got paid.” He seemed taken aback by my scars. I balked internally.

“That isn’t necessary.” I said to him simply.

“Yeah, I’ll go half and half with you, Cobble.” They exchanged a look before laughing good naturedly. This was their good act for the week, helping some soldier drown his pain. I stared at them, my eyes focused on their faces.

“Cinnamon rum,” I told the bartender. My eyes hadn’t shifted from their muzzles.

“Rocks?” The bar mare asked quizzically. My head turned left and right slowly.

From behind me I felt Head lay a hoof on my shoulder, he pulled away automatically upon feeling taut muscle. The mare pushed the finished drink to me. I took hold of it with a hoof, brought it to my mouth, tipped it back ever so much, and tasted a drop of it. I dropped off of the stool again. My eyes closed just before giving the four of them a come hither look. The three admirers glanced at each other, surprise written across their faces. Head looked at me gravely. In my mind, I realized why I had ordered this drink in particular.

“We’ll be back in just a moment.”

The three followed me to the door and beyond, making small talk all the while, whispering about what this pony had in mind. My ears registered the mare saying the words horn head just loudly enough.
The streets outside were gravel speckled dirt, though wider than those of the older districts. I cleared my throat.
“The night I received these wounds was a night like this, cloudless, nippy. With me was a stallion by the name of Wool. He is–was an honest stallion, he had a love for his home town. One time he described it to me. Only half a thousand ponies lived there. Most were there to fish the sea for cod, though sometimes the fishers would go further out. A hundred years before his time one of the ships happened to get caught in a storm. A single pony ended up over the deck.” I had gotten their attention. And without thinking my horn was glowing more brightly. “When the ponies made their way back to land they were in a foreign port, far from home. There was a celebration as they survived something many wouldn’t. Yet there was still a tinge of melancholy for that sailor who would never return, who never saw land again. So the captain in the strange port ordered a spiced ale. Or tried to. They had no ale, so he simply got a vessel full of rum, he took it outside.” I stopped for a moment, my breath hitched. My audience was boring holes into me. They were aware that my horn was doubling up on its glow. Whatever warmth the liquor had brought me, I still felt a draft moving through my core, chilling and throwing my stomach into knots.

“For the sailor who never saw home again, he poured the glass into the earth. A final drink for a lost one.” I gave a glance to glass, it was shaking in the magical grip.

I turned it over and the liquor fell onto snow.

“That was sweet,” the mare said after a few seconds of silence. The upended mug showed a hint of fracture. It was a faint noise in my ear.

“No, it was an attempt at reconciliation.” I said to them before dropping my voice.

“I knew that he loved cinnamon, and that he hated field rations. More than anything else he was caught between duty and disillusionment. Weeks ago, his family received a letter delivered by a polished officer informing of them of their son's’ sacrifice.”
The three were quiet for a moment before one of the stallions moved to embrace me. I backed away. Whatever temperament I had attained shattered. Just as the glass did. He backed away into the flank of his companions. These ponies held no comprehension, only unimaginative platitudes, sentiments gleaned osmotically from speakers and dogmas baked indelibly into their minds from birth!

“Are you alright there?” The mare asked. I felt a flush, I was roiling. Warm tears flowed down my cheeks. I gave a glance towards the lone streetlight casting a washed out yellow on this scene. My horn lit up for just a moment. The light flashed like pulsed and lit our faces, making the shadows cast by us starker-just before dying as the filament was immolated by the current passing through it.

I stood there as they balked, I forced the emotion out of my voice to croak a response. “Yes,” I said. In the now darker streets I realized that they couldn’t understand, that I couldn’t understand. What can be understood in a thousand ponies writhing in agony? A hospital wing so replete with festering wounds that the stench taints the entire building? One pony left to pick up the pieces when so many fell to pieces?

“Don’t honour me when there are multitudes more lost than I.”

I cast a mote of blue light and held it ahead of my muzzle. That was the only conclusion I could draw. I only wished understanding, and the chance that it might help them understand. Maybe if they understood, they could prevent the next war.

“Next war,” I said under my breath. My mote expanded and brightened.

I turned and walked inside. The warm air was uncomfortable, the glances from others more so. My horn had discontinued its glow; still, eyes seemed to glance at it more than the radio or the decor, even the barkeep. A rush of hot concern to match the ash laden air shot through me. Legs that had been steady wanted nothing more than to take leave. I ran my eyes throughout the place, looking for the one pony that mattered. After a redundant pass or three I went up to the bar and ordered a double of Imperial, poured over ice of course, to calm me. When she had finished pouring it, with the added touch of a hostile look, I flashed my horn to pick up the liquor. It found its way against my lips.

The radio behind the counter blared music rife with horns and an endless succession of drumbeats. I let the liquor enter my mouth as I let my eyes shut, I tried to let my mind ease, after a few seconds and a thorough swallow, I felt current being induced in the radio. I didn’t want to damage it. My mind’s eye pulled close to it, a simple metal piece wrapped in a dielectric material…
My face soured as I tried something. And just like that the radio turned to static, the antenna wasn’t tuned to the frequency that it had seconds before received. The bar pony turned to it and moved the dial. That solved the problem, the frequency was only slightly altered. The dialectic wrapped antenna had gotten me thinking. Inducing a current in a circuit, what was I doing? Adding energy, increasing the flow of electrical energy.

I was changing the universe, and the altering laws that I had spent so much learning.

The radio went back to static as I quit pouring magic into the air around the antenna. Antennas were covered in a layer of dielectric materials so as to change the permittivity around the antenna, to change the wavelength that would be received. When I focused on the space around the antenna I poured magic into the area, but I restrained myself from charging the brass inside. I let my drink drift towards the table. The strain was more telling than it was with telekinesis or current induction.

Before I gave more thought to the magic I heard a door opening in the back. With a flourish of magic I lifted the last of the liquid in a cradle of telekinesis letting it form into a sphere before throwing it into the recesses of my maw. It burned as I turned my head to watch Head walk inside. He looked at me, his lips were tight on his skull, before clambering onto the stool beside mine.

“You look thoughtful, and knowing you, that isn’t a good thing,” Head said.
“Do you ever wonder what you’ll be remembered for?” My voice was slightly slurred.

He looked me in the eyes, before chuckling for a moment.
“I imagine ponies will remember me as a damnable soldier, damnable drunk, and a solid lay,” he said to me. I let out a huff. He merely smiled at me.

---===*===---

“Perm, you’re coming home with me. That last shot hit you like a brick.”
And so he had my right foreleg over his shoulder. He was taking me with him. I didn’t argue. He felt nearly as warm as I did.

---===*===---

The door opened and we piled in. My eyes caught sight of his bed. I wanted a place to rest badly. It was as if I had ingested a great deal of poison. The truth was, I had only ingested an average amount of poison. I let my magic light up the room, just as he kicked the door behind us. He let go of my foreleg before locking up the door.

“Not the best neighborhood, if I recall,” I said.
“The rent is cheap,” he said before giving me a look of concern. “Perm, something is bothering you.” He stated unequivocally. I had slumped over on the bed, the feeling of the fabric under me was pleasant. It wasn’t as dirty as the sheets in the Maidenpool Inn.
My face warped at that thought. I said nothing as he ambled over to the bed. His bed. I remembered with a spark of cognition. He crawled up beside me before laying a hoof on my shoulder.

“Was it the bar ponies? I mean, I kinda wanted to bring the mare back here.”

I grunted.
“Head, is there any way we can change things, to make them all understand, to avert-”

“Perm, if we had any way to stop war, to show em’ what it’s like, well, we woulda stopped having them a long time ago.” Head said quickly, as if angry at the question posed. “Hell, half the ponies that started this war have fought in em’, so I reckon there ain’t a way to stop em’. It’d be like stoppin’ a damn glacier.”

“The purview of gods, not mares.” I shivered slightly. “I just don’t understand.” I let my tongue loose as his dark shape stayed where it was, the only sign that he was a living pony was the ever present warmth flowing from his hoof. “Why them? Why any of them? Why are we left to pick up the pieces, to bury the dead, to continue living?!” My voice crescendoed across the room and into his flickering ears, following the contours of my visage there was a line of warmth falling across my cheek. It chilled as it flowed.

“I have no fuckin’ clue about that last question, but this here,” he said as he pulled his barrel against mine, tail falling over my rear half. He glanced at me. “None of those ponies that died get any of this.” I rested my head against his neck, he in turned his eyes forward, eyes focusing on the blackened wall. “I know what this is about Perm, I’ve known it for a little while. You’re hurting. You’ve been hurting since the day you learned about your family. You were still you when left that bus, numb, but still you.”

My throat tightened, leaving him behind had been hard. That journey back to Maidenpool, difficult. When I arrived, it had been nothing but reminders of how this war had hurt the Empire, the mote of homefulness I might have felt withered as I viewed the collapsed buildings and shrapnel embedded in the streets, the blackout curtains hanging from most of the flat windows. No-one there truly believed it was over. I watched their eyes dart over me. The sullied great coat telegraphing where I had just came from. There were no thanks given, nor were there any ponies looking for a courageous tale from the front.

They had been on the front. My parents had been on the front, and were rather the worse for wear.

I had lost track of his words. The memories of that triumphant homecoming running through my mind like a like a reel of poorly spliced film, waiting to fall to pieces and ignite...

“Everything in life is a little bittersweet Perm, breathing, fucking, drinking, mourning. But, unless you wanna join them, buck up, live like you want to live!” He had yelled that last bit, the poison in his blood slurring those words. It fit him.
Live for the moment, and leave nothing behind! That was his modus operandi. It rang hollow. I had seen too many lives ended in a moment, leaving no more mark on the world than the blood seeping into it.

It had nearly happened to me. My head pulled itself out of the crook of this stallion I had fallen into, a stirring of magic in my horn illuminated my forehooves splayed before my eyes.

“I–we–almost died out there. We were fortunate and others weren’t, random chance alone prevented us from adding to that places’ stench. It doesn’t matter what they did in their lives. At this moment ,their bodies are decomposing. At best their bones might calcify, their remains might be excavated by some future ponies. The legacy of their forms nothing more than a curiosity, pony turned to stone, pony mummified.” My breath caught for a moment, as I realized the path of my thoughts. Head said nothing.
“Head Wind, Drying Wool, the stallion in whose name I performed a rite of libation, he will be remembered by his siblings and his friends. They will soon be much the same state as he, as we all will be physically. Their children may hear of him, but it will be a shadow of him left behind. Out of living memory, and only bones. I-”

“I know damn well what you’re gonna say, that you want to leave something behind. I’ve seen it in you, seen it since you got back from Maidenhead or wherever you went,” he said.

“I want be do something that will change the world, to do something worthy of mention millennia from now. It’s been done before. This magic is something never seen before. At the very least, it hasn’t been glimpsed by the instruments available to us. And you’ll-”

“I’ll be a fucking footnote. I don’t care. The future ponies, I’ll never meet, why should I worry about whether they’ll read my name. ‘He threw the switches and made sure that the great scientist Permittivity ate food.’ I don’t have any anger at those ponies, it just doesn’t affect me, if I’m dead then why worry? My problem is with you. You’re running yourself into the ground! You look worse now than when I first saw your wounded ass. Permittivity, you’re a smart stallion, smarter than any that I’ve ever met, but you’re blinding yourself. What’s the difference if some random pony, as different from you and I as we are from cave ponies, knows your name? Perm, everything crumbles given time. I poked around in a science magazine once, if I know this then you know this: even stars die.” I felt a dampness around my eyes. Steeling myself I felt his words slough off of my mind.

“I can’t just drown my troubles, I can’t believe that nothing matters. I can’t give up on my legacy.”

“You’re killing yourself! At least I know my liver has another couple decades left.”

“So what? Head Wind, what if I don’t want to live that long? What if I just want this all to end? Head Wind, what if the idea of leaving something behind is the only thing that keeps me from sparking a gas line with my magic?” My eyes bored into his, both of us had adjusted to the dark. He was breathing faster now, his exhalations and mine now took the places of our voices.
I had cleared the air, poisoned it. I had let my words slip out. Emotion boiling over. I hated that I could get like that, that something inside of me had forced itself out.
We’re creatures of memory, though sometimes we forget…

I shook in surprise as I felt that rough pair of lips make contact with my own, it soliciting a reaction just as well as that buried memory, though the reaction was a great deal more pleasant. The feeling of him in that moment was like a charged degaussing coil… it cleared those thoughts from my head. The following moments were an oasis.
I was weary, and only him and Trace could let me rest. Rest being a metaphor in this instance for physical intimacy.

The fabric continued to feel nice under me…

---===*===---

Time passed, as it always seems to.

Head Wind and I, we grew ever more comfortable around one another. Whatever our relationship was… it was pleasant. Trace Line, on the other hoof, had taken to doting on me whenever I was around her. She was the better at telling when something was troubling me. Which was often. This made me detest her company on some level. Head Wind had, our intoxicated dialogue aside, left well enough alone. Perhaps, it was that aspect of him that brought me more frequent moments of levity. But, that part of our reality, like most, are only explained by merely educated guesses, raw conjectures, and heuristic tricks, if we try to explain them at all. Even an inquisitive soul such as mine can only explain parts and pieces of how our lives work.

And that is at a cost. As it is with everything else.

---===*===---

The paper that would make me who I am today had just been accepted for publication by the Journal of New Physics. I stood beside the steel table that had been my desk for the intervening months. In the warehouse there was a chill to the air; I never started the furnace until after the post was read. Whatever malaise I had within myself had been shaken, I thought to myself. All the months of strain and cataloguing, all of the self-imposed exile, all of the acts I had let myself commit.

It was as if Steel had been grafted into my bones. I would be a member of the Royal Society, I would assume a position as someone of unique talents and demonstrated intelligence. I looked up from the letter, the greatcoat draped across my back felt like a sheet of paper. In my moment of private triumph, my body called to me. I dashed over to the water closet. It was in the far rear of the place.

If I had been paying attention I would have heard the sound of a side door being pushed open…

When I exited the restroom, everything was as quiet as it had been before. As I returned to my eratz desk I heard the characteristic groans of the worn door as it gave way to Head Wind’s force. I looked up from the letter, and aimed a sly grin at my assistant.

“Two months,” I said to him as he stepped in from the howling winds.
He shifted his eyes from me to a place slightly behind me. “Perm, who’s that?” Head Wind barked, his eyes widening in fear as he judged the threat of the unknown pony. I turned to face the intruder. It was a she, and I knew exactly who she was.
“Two months to what?” Trace asked with a curious note to her voice.
“My paper’s publication date, New Physics,” I said to her excitedly.

She had heard my ramblings about that journal, among others, and she knew what it meant to me, what it could mean for me. Her eyes opened and the edges of an easy smile crossed her muzzle.

“So, you know her? Did you let her in?” Head Wind said to me as he trotted over to my side. His posture was protective, as always. I knew at that moment that this was going to end poorly. Yet, the feeling of having the only ponies I felt any attachment to together felt magnificent.

Before I could respond in any tactful way I saw Trace’s throat clear. At this moment time slowed to a crawl.
“Yes he knows me, I’m his marefriend? And you are?” She said to him, her wing muscles flexing underneath her fur and feathers.
I turned to face him. Trace angrily huffed in response. Head’s visage twisted in suppressed fury, his body was pulsing as his eyes bored into mine. He could see the truth in them. It had never really been hidden. That might have hurt him the most.

He looked between my eyes and hers, the moment passing at glacial speed.

“Permittivity,” he said finally. “How could you?” He tittered and thrust his chest out. “I don’t give two flying fucks about others, because I’ve been dead inside since my fucking parents died.” He let his voice spill out of his chest, the warm baritone that I had fallen asleep listening to turned to ice in my ears. “So, I’m going to fuck with everyone, because nothing matters to me other than getting into some fucking unicorn circle jerk club!” He said to me, before striking me in the muzzle. The impact sent me to the concrete. When I recovered my wits, I watched him slam the door shut with his rears. He had used enough force to shake instruments on the far side of the room.

As I pulled myself up to my hooves, I felt a trickle of blood flowing out of my right nostril. When I lifted a hoof to staunch the bleeding, I made out the faint sound of tears from behind my desk.

“Trace,” I said softly, penitently, mootly. The pit of my stomach had turned to rock. Perhaps, I was still dazed, I walked towards the desk with unsure steps. My lips quivered as my mind tried to think a way out of this, to seal the cracks, to maintain the bulkheads to prevent the whole enterprise from sinking. But, a captai-

“Is it true?” She said simply from behind the desk her voice monotone.

“What are you referring to, love?” I said as I stopped at the right side of the desk, my voice carrying an affected lilt. The sensation of stone had travelled into my throat, even as my tear ducts dilated in anticipation.

“Being coy was never your strong suit, Permittivity,” she said tonelessly. “So, what is he to you? I know how you work, ‘it doesn’t count as a lie if they never know to ask the right question’.”

I took a deep breath before giving her the truth. I stood there bog still as my diaphragm pushed outward. An involuntary shiver worked itself through my flesh, the feeling of twitching muscle under deep pockets of scar tissue, making every hurt I had incurred in my life known again.

“I met him in the hospital, he was friendly when most others were dying or fatigued nearly to that point. We made friends. He was there when I received the news.
He comforted me. Trace, I never realized what was happening until we had fallen into each other.”

“Just a lapse in judgement that happened once-,” she interjected in between one of my breaths.

“No, he was similiar to me in ways that you can’t be. You made it out of the killing fields unscathed, he nearly died as did I. He suppresses something he gained there. Or lost there. Head Wind drinks beyond moderation, and I wanted to keep an eye on him, he reciprocated. So, I offered him an outlet. Companionship is grand, you should know this well.”

The pleading had bled out of my voice, a numb passivity had taken its place. The ship had sunk. I could feel the cold water well enough.

“Permittivity,” One word. “I can’t stand you right now, this is… I don’t even know what this is... cheating on me with a stallion? Him?” She had restored herself, tempered herself with the anger of betrayal.

“He’s a good stallion. Full of life. You would like him in different circumstances.”

“In different circumstances, what do you mean by that? If you had told him that you had a marefriend, then maybe he would have backed off? Permittivity, you’re making me a hate a pony that didn’t do anything wrong all because I can’t stand hating you! You can’t even make it easy for me to hate that buck.” She had gotten to her hooves and was glaring at me. My head had fallen forward. I couldn’t look this mare in the eyes, the mare that had never done me wrong. Head Wind hadn’t deserved this, and neither did she.

“Trace, I love both of you. I don’t know why I did what I did. I–”

“That’s not how things work Perm, when you open your heart to somepony you expect you’ll have all of them. You know this, or you wouldn’t have hidden this from me, or him. Permittivity, you need help… Help that I can’t give you. Just... get things together and I might–” She paused before looking away. “I don’t know what I want, I don’t know if I can trust you again. I mean, I never even knew you were into stallions, you never even talk about things anymore. All you talk to me about is the damn news, and this work of yours. How do I even know it isn’t all made up?” She had become angry again. If I modeled her anger it would be in the form of a sinusoidal wave.

My head turned to face hers. A path of electrical potential was carved out of the natural spacetime with my magic, in a second a point in the middle of the room was home to an electrical discharge powerful enough to turn air in which the electrons traveled turn to ozone and plasma. There was a crack as displaced atmosphere filled the gap created by the ionized gases.

The flash of light burned both of our retinas. I didn’t lie without cause.

“Trace Line, I wish I could take it all back. But I can’t,-” I had to yell to get her to hear through her ringing ears.

She turned her head back towards me one last time. The fear in her eyes was palpable.
I had caused that. I had caused the people I loved pain and fear.

As she sprinted away, the unfamiliar smell of ozone burning her muzzle, tears flowing once more…

As I imagined Head Wind in his flat numbing himself with poison, feeling used and betrayed by me…

I knew what I had to do, I could fix the root cause.

---===*===---

Everything was in place.

I had written many things: a full write up of my journal with explanatory notes, letters to Head and Trace, and a will.
I walked into the kitchen of my flat. The oven that Trace and I had used to cook many meals on. That would finish my time here. This life had been useful, I had discovered what it felt like to love and to be loved. To serve a grand cause, and to see that grand causes destroy more than they create. I had seen the fate of the world. It was all too similar to mine, and my parents. My siblings had been anything but familial, but being the youngest child whilst being the only unicorn had made me less than favourable to them.

That funeral had been worse than anything I’d ever experienced. Pain of the physical variety, it has a purpose. Stop doing that! Your body says to itself.

Pain of the emotional kind. Why does that exist? It’s a break in the mind itself, you cannot prevent yourself from losing loved ones, so why does it exist? It serves no purpose, or even less than the entire living business. Why?
Ponies fill in the gaps with things: Family, friendship, personal advancement, hedonism and some perverted spirituality. I had these things. They seemed to push the darker thoughts away. Even if I wanted to pull the trigger, even if at times I wanted nothing more than an end to this existence, I could always pull myself from the edge of the abyss with a thought towards the feelings of others. Suicide as a selfish act, that’s what we’re taught to believe. I don’t think that it’s wrong. As a prevention mechanism, it does have an assumption built in. The idea that others will be hurt by your end.

By this point though, I had lost those connections. I had already caused pain in those that I loved. They would be better off without me dragging them down. Permittivity had been a damaged stallion before the war, someone who had thought frequently about the purpose of existence, someone who had pored over all those explanations and found them lacking in the end. I had tried to put a goal in my mind for a while, write this, learn this, graduate from an institute of higher learning. Find out what your name means. I had done all that had been put in my path. I had killed another pony in the defense of my nation-state. I had nearly found peace and a hero's death at the hooves of a celestian blade.

None of it provided a solution, no purpose presented itself with gravity enough to bind me to this place. Nothing within reach was ever worth the cost. No momentary break in the daily degradations could end the pattern. And so, when the die was cast, when I had achieved everything achievable, or just about, I had sabotaged the only relationships I had left. By embracing those that I cared about I had destroyed those embraces. In hindsight it was clear, as it typically is. As I removed the pilot light from the oven, I understood the world clearly.

We’re here because of random chance. We live in a complex universe devoid of inherent meaning. Any accomplishment will in time fade away as civilization turns itself to ash, as it always does. There is no proof of an afterlife, and religion is an unfalsifiable construct… If the only way to derive meaning in life is pleasure, then when that becomes impossible. Then you simply turn on the gas.

You walk back into your living room knowing that a molecule very similar to the paired oxygen you breath is slowly filling the room, slowing binding itself to your lung tissue and ending the slow march of decay that you’ve been caught in since before you were birthed…

It all followed as a matter of course.

The Couch was comfortable as always.

Especially as my mind began to fog.

That was to be expected.

Hypoxia:

My eyelids drooped and my lungs began to fill and empty with rapidity, yet all was calm, I had waited for this.

I had just began to fall into the blackness when a sudden knocking on my door broke the spell for a moment, I coughed for a moment. My oxygen starved brain firing at near random.

That must be Trace or Head! They had forgiven me perhaps. Maybe this had all been a dream these last months. A loose grin mustered itself on my visage. Maybe!

My head was flowing, each thought more of a triumph to complete.

But, by some miracle I made it to the door, where the knocking had increased in volume. It was nearing the intensity of my heart beats, which was quite fast. Not that surprising, I thought to myself as I opened the door.

As my magic made contact with the door it seemed to weaken, my vision was blackening, and the lungs that had carried me since my birth were straining in vain to deliver oxygen to my beligered body.

For whatever reason I wanted to answer that door. From some part of me I summoned the will to overglow my horn to compensate for my weakened magic. I guess that my under-oxygenated brain wanted to see who was knocking.

Curiosity saved me. Living was pain, but not knowing was a death I could never bear.

The door opened in a rush, I poked my head out of the room and into the clear air. It was ambrosia. My lungs continued frenetically as I spied the pony that had knocked. They were a crystal unicorn, an older stallion bespectacled and wearing a tweed coat. I had enough time to register this before my vision blackened completely, the carbon monoxide rendering me unconscious.

Everything was in place, except I.

---===*===---

The first event that registered other than waking was a deep throbbing in my skull. This was a hangover like no other. It being the consequence of an alcoholic binge was seemingly confirmed by the stinking pool of bile that my head was resting upon. With a jerk I pulled my head from the remains of my last meal.

What would have been my last meal, I realized with a start. I was supposed to be dead. The fuzzy memory of an open door and a unicorn stallion was recalled. Who were they?

A sudden bump sent my body upwards a few centimeters. My head darted about, I was riding in a motor carriage. In the seats in front of me sat that same unicorn and an earth pony driver. Through the windows I could see the spires and obsidian of the crystal city.

“Who are you?” I forced out of fatigued respiratory system, which made that same system initiate a coughing fit. My form spoke of the poison that it had been replete with.

“I’m head of the archaeology wing of the Royal Society,” He said with a note of nervous pride.

“Why am I in a motor car at this moment? Why did you arrive at my domicile?” I croaked out.

“We have an understanding with the editorial board of New Physics. Your paper was quite interesting Permittivity, someone of the highest authority wanted to speak to you. So, I merely decided to ask if you wanted to see said person. In person is more discreet than a vulnerable telephone connection. Clearly it was a good choice,” he said with a laugh. “Truly, borrowing that oxygen mask from the nearest fire marshal will be interesting to explain, now won’t it?” On the floorboard of the carriage was a tank of oxygen connected by a rubberized hose to a mask. He had saved my life. Concentrated oxygen was the only treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning. In conjunction with time.

“What aspect of it was interesting? Any unicorn with rudimentary apparati and a cursory knowledge of physics could have written that paper.” I said. My eyes locked onto a mare walking flank to flank with a stallion, they were of middle age and there was a blissful expression plastered on their muzzles. They seemed to take no heed of the cold.

“You’re half right. All will be explained when we arrive,” he told me before turning his head to watch the road ahead.
In the time that I had awoken my breathing had become steadier. And now I had a burning question to occupy my mind. Distraction was good. I felt stronger as my form purged the poison.

---===*===---

This is a bewildering experience, I thought as we ascended the crown jewel of the crystal city. In the elevator beside me was an Imperial Guardspony and Doctor Fetters. The good doctor was wearing a long coat with a tweed jacket below, the guard was wearing a dress uniform. However, the rifle he carried was still quite potent. It was the same rifle I had carried not that long ago.
Doctor Fetters had gotten the two of us to the Guard ponies with haste. This was strange to me, what important pony would like to meet with anyone at this time of night?

The rush felt out of place in the subdued atmosphere of the cold months.

You’ll understand soon enough.

I shuddered as an alien thought entered my brain.

After an eternity the elevator door opened, light spilling into the dark corridor. Fetters trotted out and to the left, and immediately after I heard a heavy switch being thrown; the pathway was lit. He turned around before ushering us forward. This room had been retrofitted with the fluorescents. Their wiring was lining the corners between the ceiling and the wall. Curious I let my eyes close as I felt for the flowing energy. It indeed travelled those bundles. What? In the room immediately ahead something was pulsing with an energy that I had never felt before.

The closest thing it reminded me of was my little trick with the radio, bending the fabric of space-time… But as I felt it with the spell I had gotten my Mark using, it chilled me.

It was with curiosity and a new found apprehension that I stepped into the room.

The room was easily fifty meters in diameter. Hanging from long chains were sodium arc lamps. In the center was a mirror with a frame made of a black crystalline material. My eyes were drawn to it, the quiet in the room seemed to fit its grandeur.

“It pulls the light towards it, doesn’t it?” Fetters said in a hypnotic voice.

“Yes,” I said as I stepped towards out of some need.

“I’ll leave you two be,” Fetters said simply before taking a necklace off and kicking it towards me with a single mechanical movement.

This startled me, this whole roomed was ebbing with an energy that I didn’t need the slightest focus to sense. It was reminiscent of that cataclysmic explosion. Still, I heeded none of the warnings that my instincts gave me. I stopped only when I was a heads length away from the side of it. The frosted glass reflected back the image of a broken pony. My visage was gaunt, and deep valleys of scar tissue spoke of a pony that had been through enough. I had had enough, I thought to myself as a breath left me.

“Can I ever face them again? I just wanted to feel loved, and to feel something in return. This must be a dream, I must be dying in that flat, my starved mind creating some fantasy in its final moments.” My eyes returned to the pony that looked back. There were tears in his eyes, the icy blue orbs had heavy shadows beneath them.

I felt my forelegs lose strength, and in an effort to not meet the floor I pushed my left foreleg against the mirror. Every part of my body was numbed the moment contact was made. When I cried out in surprise the breath exiting my lungs froze before my eyes.

I know what you did just hours ago. I can feel death permeating your whole being. Soul voided, you were in the process of completing the transformation from a living being to a dead one.

“What in the–” I yelled before backing away from the mirror, a staccato heartbeat from galloping from whence I came.

I’m the person you were set to meet. Permittivity, that’s quite the name. Mine is much shorter but quite memorable in its own way. Sombra.

That voice echoing in my mind as if it was an empty valley… It had found what could hold me. Simple curiosity.

“How can that be, you’ve been dead for a millenia?” I asked in shock, somehow knowing that this mirror was the correct object to face whilst speaking.

I never died in the normal sense of the word. I placed my soul into this object before my corporeal form breathed its last. Cycles of slumber and wakefulness have proceeded that re-birth. However, this war, it strengthened me. And I strengthened the empire in kind. This is why I called for you using that peon. You have potential unimagined, you are not the speck of dust in cosmic sand that you think you are. Without hyperbole, I see myself in you. I was once a unicorn of great power, great enough to challenge the gods of this world. Enough to win.

“Until I came to this city I knew the same number of spells as I have hooves, you can’t tell me that I’m some font of magic–”

We cannot choose our parentage, or our homes. You would have under the attention of a mage learned many spells, yet they would have tempered you, blinded you from your true potential. I have peered over your work and examined your life in detail, a soldier, a scholar and a pony lacking the one thing he always desired.

Meaning.

I can give you one. One beyond words on a page, or gold or whatever lusts drive a pony’s loins. I can give you a life worth living. Unique beyond all measure, for there are worlds other than these. And I just happen to be the key.

His words were had been driven into my mind. His rhetoric perfect. His voice charming to the last. I let a hoof move down the frame of the mirror. It was glass. Obsidian, volcanic.

“I don’t understand,” I dropped my hoof to the floor. A floor that I now realized was covered in arcane glyphs beyond my knowledge.

That weapon of immense power, I know that you saw its detonation. The design of the weapon came from a world beyond this one. A dead one but one with weapons such as that. Now, if you desire a place in history, and for there to be a history, you must accede to my demand that you travel to another world.

As he said this I heard the crack of a gunshot from the hall, and a scream of pain shortly thereafter. I tensed as I felt the impulse to take cover behind the mirror.

The time is short, Fetters is giving his life so that my descendants and their blighted imaginations cannot prevent the only plan to save our world. For on the other side, Permittivity, is all that is need to win the next war before the Celestians obtain the same weapons. Your mission is to weaken that world, to prepare it to be brought into the empire.

My thoughts had been upturned yet again. The war that had cost so much had only ended because of some piece of technology brought through some otherworldly gate? This was too much, too much too soon. I let a breath from my lungs as I took in the picture again. My prospects had seemingly gone from suicidal mad mare to a mad mare of a different caliber entirely. Enchanted mirrors that broke the barriers from this world to the next? That I could almost believe, I could feel the power in it. I could also feel the familiarity to the most peculiar spell I could cast. But, the spirit of the first emperor residing in that object, and a plot involving the crown and the future of the world. None of this made sense but as I remembered what I had done not five hours ago… And listened to the sounds of gunfire from the corridor advancing steadily.

“I don’t believe you’ve left me much of a choice.” I said as I gave the mirror a glare. “If half of what you say is true it doesn’t matter. I question your faith in me, but I’ll be steadfast.”

I don’t reveal myself for just anypony. Now bow. His voice once again found purchase from within my mind, it was compelling in a way that nopony had ever been.

It was edged with mirth. But, I did as he requested, the cacophony of gunfire nothing more than a backdrop as my legs lowered with what grace I could muster.

Take that talisman and place it around your neck. That is your connection to this world and more importantly to me. To most ponies like Fetters it does little but provide a reserve of crystal from below. It will give them strength and nourishment. And bind them to me. I deftly pulled it towards me, the blue of my magic reflecting back upon me. My eyes closed as I manipulated it above my head. The talisman found its place hanging in the front of my chest. My eyes opened. Magical energy flowed from my horn draining me as it normally would, however the talisman replenished it. Furthermore, the stallion in the mirror looked resolute and vigorous. The scars remained, the sleeplessness still marked him as well. But in his eyes there was fire where before there had been emptiness.

Rise, Sir Permittivity of Maidenpool, may your victories be numerous and mine. May your glories be yours alone. Now make haste towards them.

I rose to my hooves feeling stronger than I had ever been. I felt that I could do battle with half this tower’s guards and be victorious. Being knighted had been a dream of mine since my colthood, though that aspiration had died alongside many others as adolescence became adulthood. This mirror had known things that I had not considered in decades. I felt an involuntary shudder.

“Tell me how I am to weaken this other world? If they are as strong as you make them out to be?” I said with a note of trepidation in my voice. On the other side of the door I heard the gunfire abate, with loud voices filling the void soon after. They were coming.
With a flash, the mirror’s surface became one of iridescent blue. A sea of possibility rippling with ethereal energy. If I had closed my eyes it still would have been left an impression in my mind. The magical power it exuded becoming something beyond my comprehension. The door handle detached itself from the door as the security ponies breached it.

Our time is short, remember these things, time flows the same here or there. There are places where the boundaries between worlds are porous. You can contact me there. Though there is only one place where things may cross. Lastly, these ponies are strong but irrevocably divided, all that is needed to ease the conquest is to find the destroyer. The catalyst. You will meet them. That I am certain of, though I know not why.

That expressed doubt sent a pang of confidence through me. Omniscient he was not. Though that was balanced by a feeling of near understanding at the mention of a fated meeting. Remember this, your purpose is what drives you, and your purpose is nothing less than what mine was so long ago. From behind me, the sound of a door opening made me stay still.

A stallion ran inside with several others following, they aimed rifles and pistols at my back. At the same time the shimmering became something else. It showed neither my reflection not some space between spaces, rather it showed a pitch black room now illuminated by the same sodium bulbs as this one.

“Stop where you are Celestian!” The first guard yelled at me. “Turn around and keep that horn dark,” He followed with.

This is all an aspect of the plan. Sombra spoke into my mind.

The irregular chunk of obsidian hanging from my neck gave me an idea. It all depended upon the amount of power I could pulse at once. My lungs filled once more. And in a fraction of a second, every light exploded from the sheer power flowing through them. The burst of light gave way to absolute darkness as I lept into the portal. Just before the bullets followed Sombra shut the entrance. One final thought leapt across the void at me.

Two moons hence, it begins. Be ready.

I lit my horn, feeling at once exhilarated and drained by the flurry of emotions I had experienced, alongside the magical strain that I had just bared. In the light of my horn I realized that I had no idea where I was, other than on another world. I had nothing but my wits and a talisman. Under my hooves was a smoothed concrete. Behind me was a circular object hewn of reflective metal with wiring crisscrossing that frame. I looked around, and to that end there was a solid metal door. I walked towards it. I looked to the left and right of it, it seemed to have no obvious locking mechanism.

This could end poorly. I thought to myself before trying my spell once again. There were pathways buried in this door, electromagnets were used in the proper operation of this door. So, this facility would appear to be abandoned. I thought as I gave electrical potential and amperes to the wire coiled around the ferrous bars. As I did this I realized that this door was most likely meant to be remote operated from a safe distance. Which would make sense, if this portal was anything like the portal that Sombra... was.

The door opened as its locking mechanisms were pulled away. And I stepped into a corridor filled with Arabian Ponies who were just as surprised as I was.

There was a shriek from a female and a number of stallions that took up defensive postures.

“Stand where you are Transient!” A stallion said in butchered equestrian.

“I don’t know what’s going on, who are you?” I said in a pleading voice, the confusion written across my muzzle was half manufactured, the fear was purely a facade. Sombra had been a mover of worlds, and he had named me the same. I was going to act like one. To make a life for myself, for myself.

Hello, brave new world.