“What do we stand for in the end? And in the end, is it really worth it? I know it was. Despite the blood spilled and the lives lost. In the end, it was worth it.”

The howling winds outside were atrocious, the tainted snow fell in torrents around her as she wandered the empty land around the Ponyville Library. I didn't like it. I really, really didn't like it. Too bad she was the only thing keeping the rest of us alive. I scraped a hoof across the worn wooden table to smooth out the page I had been reading. Despite the insulation we'd added to the worn out tree the wind still seeped in, a draft here, a whisper there. The veil was thin but thanks to my little invention in the basement we were keeping it solid for now, well, solid around here. Celestia damn me but that spiteful thing was actually proving to be useful. I think some part of me knew that the pony I used to be would've blanched at the thought of performing the binding spell I had used to produce the stabilizer array. Too bad that pony isn't around anymore.

I miss being her to be honest. I miss the sunny days and the starry nights spent on the hill overlooking Sweet Apple Acre's. I miss watching the sun rise with my friends and spending the day at the spa. I miss the playful magic experiments I used to do, pure research. Knowledge for the joy of learning. I scoffed at the thought.

“Uhm, what's so funny Twilight?” A soft voice completely at odds with the clanking footfalls and pneumatic hisses of mystoalchemic gearwork. Fluttershy was coming up the steps from the basement, I turned sharply.

“Shy, who's maintaining the stabilizer?” I asked, probably more harshly than I should have. It was a testament to how much we had all changed that she didn't even flinch, her sky-blue orbs just met mine evenly.

“Spike is, I traded off, uhm, sorry, but I've been watching that thing for two hours and...” she trailed off. I lowered my eyes, feeling guilty.

“Sorry 'Shy, I'm just wound up, but if we do this right then we can finally get out of Ponyville. Out of the Zone.”

Fluttershy nodded, my eyes lingered on her... damage. From head to tail she was the picture perfect pegasi, delicate and demure with a naturally straight mane of pink silk and a flawless coat of pastel yellow. The only marring of that beauty was the harness. Attached to her shoulders was the beginning of the pneumatic harness, a combination of James's mechanical genius and Rarity's delicate horn-work taken to an unbelievable extreme. Four months ago during the event that created the Zone a nightmare had visited my friend in her cottage by the Everfree Forest border. Its name was Contempt. A mockery. A parody. Contempt was the incarnation of a broken element. It was a wicked creature who had taken Fluttershy captive and locked her in her pantry. Once it had its captive Contempt proceeded to take its time torturing my friend in more hideous ways than even my now-twisted mind could imagine.

“So where's Scootaloo?” Fluttershy asked as she trotted up to my side.

“Routine perimeter sweeps, ever since she bonded with the Element of Loyalty she's either been in the air or itching to go back to it,” I said, a small amount of my old humor slipping back into my voice.

“Yeah, Rainbow would be proud of her, is proud of her I mean, after all, those feathers...” she trailed off, a ghost of a smile lingering around her mouth. I knew exactly what she meant though, they finally tracked me down here at the Library the first thing I did was summon the necklace that signified the Element of Loyalty.

Well. Sort of. When they found me I was half mad with delirium, I hadn't eaten or drank in days, I was sick with fever, and my horn... Well, it did grow back. Somehow Pinkie brought me out of it. Though to be fair if anypony knew anything about coming out of madness it would be her.

Anyway, once I had come to my senses and heard the stories they had to tell I did what I said before, and let's just say Celestia wasn't a sun goddess for nothing. As soon as I placed the symbol around Scootaloo's neck it erupted into light. Pinkie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, and I all felt the song flow out of it. Friendship, the bond between us was unbreakable. I think that Rainbow Dash was there too, no, scratch that, I know she was.

“And Applebloom?” she asked hesitantly.

“She's up on the watchtower waiting for Scootaloo to come back, those two...” I trailed off a little but the smile stayed. Scootaloo was always the strongest of the three, quick-witted, streetwise, and a knack for the wild idea. Just like her predecessor. Applebloom had come to rely on Scootaloo more and more in the month that their group had spent alternatively moving slowly around the wrecked village and holing up in safe-houses for weeks at a time. I guess it wasn't too strange that her reliance might turn in to something more. Personally I thought it was cute, I knew Emilé found it a little strange but Applejack was surprisingly supportive. Rarity and Pinkie too though somehow I was less surprised about that. “I'm glad you know...” I said softly.

“About what?”

“I'm glad that they're not too... damaged... that they can't still find love, even in this place,” even now I guess I'm still a romantic at heart. My words made Fluttershy stop for moment before nodding.

“I guess I'd never really thought of it like that, I never known two mares who... well... I guess I'm glad too,” a small but sincere smile found its way onto her face.

I turned to look up at the second floor balcony, “Sweetie Belle! I can you finish this transcription? I need to go check on the matrix downstairs.”

“The pre-goddess third dynasty one right?” My apprentice popped her head over the railing, a pair of pince nez sat lopsided on her face.

“That's the one, you need the practice anyway, your accent is an abomination to the linguistic arts,” I said with a wry smile.

“I only learned the syntax a week ago, cut me some slack,” she said, her childish lips curling into a pout. I crooked an eyebrow and harrumphed in a manner that would have made my teacher smirk. “Ah, I mean, yes teacher, at once,” she hastily corrected herself and I heard the crash of her latest pile of study material get swept up.

I made my way towards the basement door but a pneumatic hiss made me halt and turn as Fluttershy moved to my side. “Are you sure you want to come?” I asked, real concern edging into my voice. “I won't insult you by saying I can imagine what it's like but...”

Fluttershy shook her head and smiled sadly as she looked down at the lovingly sculpted augmetic facsimile's of her forelegs. They were magically grafted to what little remained of the fleshy originals and given animate life connected to their host by Rarity. “Don't mind me Twi', uhm, to tell you the truth I...” she cast her gaze down so I couldn't see her face, “...I think that thing deserves it.”

I shivered at the coldness of her tone but continued down. We were all damaged merchandise after all so who was I to judge. How could we not be? How else were we expected to survive this place?

+=+

The basement in almost no way resembled the manner in which I had first received it. The walls had been torn out and the space had been extended by using the massive roots of the tree as make-shift frames. Worktables and shelves lined the majority of the space. The apparatus taking up the central mass was my pride if not my joy though. A mass of mathematically grown and arranged resonance crystals glowing sickly white in the darkness. In the middle of all of them was a fragment of glass, like a piece of mirror. Fractured and broken, left to molder on the floor of a particular basement. Altogether I imagine it was, in my more arrogant moments, one of the foremost miracles of thaumaturgical genius.

“Spike, how are the levels?” I asked softly, cantering up to my long-time assistant who was standing in front of a raised dais. Set into the dais were seven crystal spheres, one for each of the crystals grown from the ground. Spike had grown, Dragon physiology and growth patterns are fairly mysterious even to the most learned ponies so I'm hardly a master of the subject. Regardless of our knowledge, where once Spike's, well, spikes, had barely come up to my chin now he could look me in the eyes. His originally soft and pliable head-spikes had hardened into ridges of bone and his childish hands had taken on a slim draconian delicateness to them, giving him finer dexterity. His eyes had changed too but I wasn't sure if it was time or the things he's seen that did that.

“Holding I guess,” he said distractedly, his voice a low rumble as he reached out to rotate one of the spheres that had begun to glow a little to bright. It settled back to a dull shimmer.

I nodded, “good, now step back, I need to talk to it.”

Spike started, he turned to face me with a defiant look, “Twilight, I don't think that's such a great idea, you know what she's like.”

“It, Spike, I know what 'It' is like, not she, it's not a pony, whatever it wants you to think,” I replied with low menace in my voice as I advanced towards the hovering shard. I remembered the damage it caused, the pain.

“Then you know that this is seriously a bad idea, we should have just shattered the shard when Pinkie brought it to us,” he said, worry slipping into his tone.

“Uhm, Spike, I don't like her, It, either...” Fluttershy corrected herself as I shot a look at her, “But, well, you know we'd probably be... how would Rainbow say it? Plot-deep in bad stuff?” she blushed at the phrase before continuing, I allowed myself a mental grin. She was still as proper as ever. “Anyway, we'd be in trouble without this machine and the shard is the only thing keeping it running.”

Spike released a low growl, “I know that, but I think we're playing with fire here, that thing shouldn't be allowed to exist.”

ENOUGH. The word echoed out of my mind and roared into the space around me. A trick I'd learned from Accursed, or one I had retained anyway. It stopped my friends in their tracks. Unspoken words hung static in their mouths. It had gotten easier with practice. My 'word' was a tactile pressure of weariness, the taste of impatience.

“Spike, how do you know that breaking that glass wouldn't have just let it free? How do we know that thing isn't all that's keeping it imprisoned?” I asked quietly, Spike took a step back and looked down.

“I... I don't... but-”

“But nothing Spike, we know almost nothing about the metaphysics at work here so I'm not going to do anything rash that might damn Equestria more than I already have,” the unsubtle reminder of my own shame cowed him, “are we clear?” Spike nodded his assent. “Good, now, don't interrupt me, I'm going to try and get more out of it.”

With that said my friends backed up and Spike returned to his station at the dais. I stepped inside the circle of crystal growths and raised my head slightly, concentrating as I found resonance with the crystals around me. Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of screaming. Pain, rage, other inequine noises and emotions I mercifully was not privy to. The sounds quieted as the thing in the mirror shard registered my presence and manifested into a clearer image where my reflection should have been

“Good morning Contempt, ready to talk?” I asked smugly, staring into the smoldering and hateful eyes of the abomination that stood trapped in the fragment.