Tangible shadows seemed to flit across an endless void as I delved slowly into the locator spell. It was with a wry smile that I focused keenly on my objective and recalled that this very spell focusing on this very same pony was the catalyst for this whole mess. Albeit a much more rudimentary form of the spell. Once I would've been lucky to find the target within a matter of city blocks. Now I was scouring the edges of dimensional space.

“Pinkie... where are you?” I whispered mentally, and perhaps physically as well, the connection between mind and body while in the divining trance is blurred substantially.

Focusing on the well of power I had grown accustomed to tapping into I pulled split the darkness with the blade of my mind.

PINKAMENA

The word was like an edge, the disparate shadows split and I stared across an endless desert. The desert was uniform and bleak, sand stretched for illimitable miles save for one thing...

A narrow strip, like a spine on the wind-blasted skeleton.

“Where are we Pinkie? Where have you brought me?” I wondered softly to myself. I could feel the cold weight of the crown pulsing in time with my heartbeat. It was the deep bass roar of a sea the power that was the divine right of the sun goddess. Now it was my responsibility. Was I using its powers selfishly? Maybe. I couldn't deny my worry for her but even without that... Pinkie knew things about this new reality that I could only scratch at and frankly I didn't have time to learn it all from the ground up.

Something was moving. Slowly, at least from my distant perspective but there was definitely movement. A crawling black insect moving along the dead spine of the desert spewing torrents of smoke. A black train...

I felt the spell tug and pull. She was there on that train, Pinkie, but why? What was on that train?

I swelled with energy and manifested a portion of my psyche in the air above the desert.

A mistake, I think.

As soon as the breath of the heat-blasted landscape touched my skin I felt a terrible foreboding which gave me barely enough warning to stretch my newly formed wings and barrel roll away from a titanic shape.

Fast! the thought scraped through my mind as I rolled and spun, too fast, way way too fast for something that big.

The winged thing vanished into the roiling dark clouds as I righted myself and searched for its presence. All I could see was shadow-strewn clouds drifting along the sky.

Drifting against the wind.

“No...” I muttered gravely, I closed my eyes, knowing what I was about to see and bracing my sanity for it's shape and image. “Goddess preserve me,” I prayed softly my eyes snapped open, power pealed through my horn and I turned to face...

Eyes. Each like separate moons. The sheer size of the equine face staring down at me shook any shred of defiance I had mustered away. It wasn't simply the size, no words could do justice to it. It was like staring into the heart of the very stars themselves. My mind peeled away as the vast and impossible psyche of the entity before me violated my mind. Images, emotions, this was the language it spoke in.

A flash of light.

Long hallways, cold with discomfort and unreasoning hate. Fear tinged with the soft raindrops of tears. Innocence lost and found, broken and mended. A place of learning where the lessons are violence. Intolerance. And despair.

FREAKIMPOSSIBLEEVILCHEATERWITCH

Another flash.

A castle of stone and hopeful dreams. Secure from pain. From life. From loneliness.

I'MNOTAMONSTER

Another flash and I was staring into the entity's brilliant orbs again, I felt something gripping my shoulders, I was shaking. Being shook? I was-

The world shattered around me and I was staring into the very worried eyes of my friend.

“F-fluttershy?” I said, my voice as weak as a filly's.

“Oh Twilight, thank the goodness...” She pulled me into a tight embrace, when she finally let go I saw trails of crimson on her pastel coat.

“Is... that blood?” I asked, my mind was still reeling, I couldn't remember much, just eyes and a flood of images. I reached up to touch my face, my hoof came away red, blood was leaking out of my eyes. My jaw was tight and painful, like I'd been screaming. “Fluttershy, what happened to me?” I asked perhaps a little too sharply, but she didn't seem to notice, she just shook her head.

“I-I don't know Twi' but it scared me, one minute you were in that trance and then suddenly it was like... like you were being electrocuted. You went rigid and your mouth stretched open like you were trying to scream and you...” she trailed off as she shivered and dabbed some of the stain from my face with a warm towel, “you started bleeding... and then you spoke...”

I had been cleaning myself a bit when she said the last part but at that I snapped up and stared, “Spoke? What did I say? Tell me, every single word, don't leave anything out.” I whipped a spare quill and sheet of parchment from the nearest work table, dabbed some ink and floated them over to her.

Fluttershy shrugged, “Uhm, you didn't really make much sense, it was... well... words, but they were jumbled.”

I shook my head and jabbed the parchment, “It doesn't matter, write it down. Every word you can remember.”

She sighed and nodded, “O-ok, if you think it will help, you said, now let me remember... It went a bit like...” Fluttershy trailed off as she wrote, occasionally crossing words out as she recalled the proper word she was looking for before finally handing me this:

Foal of little night she wander.

Little fledgling tastes deep waters.

Rapacious night would drink and fill.

Heart whispers lonely and pained.

Blight and burning fills ruin of sorority.

Rapacious night seeks shadows, pain in feast and plenty.

In seat of scepter and orb to scour.

I stared at the passages, Fluttershy definitely hadn't been far off the mark. They were pretty much gibberish. “What the hay is any of that supposed to mean?! What is 'Rapacious Night' and 'Foal of Little Night'?”

“Well that part is obvious isn't it?” Fluttershy said in a matter-of-fact tone that made me stare.

I crooked an eyebrow, “Uhm, it is?”

“Oh well, I just thought that since you read so many books that... well” Fluttershy said embarrassed. “It's an old poem, kind of, I really like it. It's about a stallion who's in love with a beautiful mare, uhm... don't laugh... ahem:

Little night came and passed

Whispers and heartbeats shared in full

O starry mane she stood

Caressed in light

Of little night and star”

I smiled, her voice was enchanting and she her recital was rich with her love for the work but...
“I still don't get it 'Shy”

“Oh well, uhm, it's an excerpt from a poem by Lord Manewest called The Mare in Little Night and well...” she stared at me for a moment before smiling shyly “It's you.”

“Beg your pardon?” I said in a deadpan voice.

“Well, uhm, Little Night is an old equestrian euphemism for the time of day we know as Twilight.”

+=+

After processing that tidbit and resting I came back to sit next to Fluttershy.

“So what about Rapacious Night? I don't suppose that's a euphemism for something too?” I asked as I sat, Fluttershy just shook her head.

“No, but it doesn't sound good, Rapacious isn't a very nice descriptor,” I always admired Fluttershy's talent for understatement.

+=+

I didn't get very much rest that night after Fluttershy and I retired. Not that I was surprised, I haven't been sleeping much at all these past months. A hour or three every couple of days is a good average for me. The others are worried, maybe I should be too but I just can't be bothered. I have too much on my plate to worry about proper circadian rhythm right now. I would say that dawn came but it didn't the sun never properly rises anymore. Without Celestia the sun seems to have abandoned Equestria. Still, morning came and with it the storm of activity. What's left of the Apple family busied themselves with the kitchen while Rarity and I patrolled the grounds. Once I asked Applejack if she'd like to go but she just politely declined before retreating back to the kitchen. Only afterwards did I remember the death of one of her family was firmly on the hooves of the creature that was now guarding our perimeter.

Rarity.

The ground was covered in ash and nothing grew in the hard earth. The smell of smoke and viscera was a sort of omnipresent malaise that I had grown to ignore. Rarity didn't seem bothered by it either which didn't surprise me anymore. The walk was filled with companionable silence for the first half before Rarity finally broke the proverbial ice.

“Do you really want to know what happened darling?” she asked out of the blue, I had been expecting the question in a way though. We didn't break stride, there was simply a few more minutes of pensive silence before I shook my head, my long and unkempt mane flaring.

“No Rarity, I don't. You know I don't. Dear Celestia I really don't,” I sighed before continuing, “But it doesn't matter what I want anymore, so tell me anyway.”

Rarity nodded and took a deep breath, “It starts with despair...” she began, “not sadness or grief really. It's not healthy or necessary or a natural part of life.” It took me a moment to get what she was after but I guessed I saw what she meant. After all, everyone is sad sometimes, it's part of life, and grief is a part of the acceptance of loss. Despair though, by one definition it's like losing yourself in that morass of emotion. Ponies have wasted away, consumed by despair after deaths of loved ones, great failures, or other tragedies.

“So Despair is the name of...” I started, already fairly certain of the answer.

“Yes, my Other is called Despair, just like Pinkies is Madness and Applejack's is Duplicity,” she answered softly.

“How is Despair part of your element though?” the analytical part of my mind was kicking into full gear.

“Ah, that's a bit of a question: imagine a generous pony without anypony to accept it, nopony to be generous to, nopony to share their tears and laughter with,” I could see a glimmer of water in her eyes as she spoke and instantly felt ashamed.

“Oh... I guess... that would feel pretty horrible...” I said a little lamely.

“You have no idea darling, none at all...” she whispered, and for a moment I saw tendrils of darkness reach out from the edges of her eyes and threaten to engulf her pupils... then she chuckled sadly and wiped the tears away. “But you don't need to hear about all that dear, you need to know How it happened.”

I didn't answer, I just moved in and wrapped my forelegs around my friend and pulled her into a tight hug. We stood there quietly as the ashen remains of our beloved Ponyville fell around us, holding each other up as I felt hot tears trickle onto my shoulder. After a few minutes and with a proper sniffle Rarity pulled away and dried her eyes. “Oh my, I'm sorry Twilight, standing her bawling my eyes out like a school-filly who's just been turned down.”

“No, don't be, we all need a good cry now and again right? You taught me that,” I said with a supportive smile as my friend tidied herself up with a compact she'd whipped out of nowhere.

“I did at that I suppose,” Rarity said with a smile that made her seem like her old self again, “now then... the How”