As we walked through the red-cast wilderness, I brought up the rear. I was coming down from my adrenaline high fast and my warmth left me feeling almost feverish. My lungs made me feel like I could exhale smoke. My muscles felt like they were turning into gelatin. What kept me going, physically and mentally, was the fact that I didn't want to hold my friends back but didn't want them to go on without me either.

Carrot was leading the way while she explained her path to Cloud Kicker. I couldn’t imagine she remembered more than I did before the caves in our last memories, but maybe she had some kind of training that helped her navigate woods. For me, I had just a general sense of the direction we needed to head to but the landmarks were lacking. Everything was just ‘familiar’. Like a child that had been led somewhere a dozen times but never paid enough attention to get there by herself.

When we weren’t ducking behind trees and hiding from the hellspawn that passed, Minuette still hummed along to the distancing songs from Ponyville. They were motivational as much as they were a siren call to the horrors barely missing us.

“...I think I have a better idea about the spell Luna used on Discord,” my little Pinchy softly started after some melting, slithering things were out of earshot. Since she had been tripping on exposed roots and the wading underbrush she was riding on Comet Tail’s back.

“Which spell? The one that you did with her?” Comet Tail asked his new magic buddy as we started moving again.

“Yeah. With all the experimental magic we’ve been doing, I think I got a better idea of what we did back then. I don’t think it was just a powerful version of a magic beam I can do. It felt like she was… pulling things straight? That’s why we were safe afterwards; she cleared his interference in the area around us.”

“...so it was like an anti-chaos spell?”

“That’s what makes sense to me. That part anyway. I don’t remember all the details; it was still a dream.”

They kept theorizing. I didn’t understand the magic talk between the two and I wondered if Minuette didn’t either. I listened anyway, of course, but I just liked to listen to their cadence as they talked: Ruby’s always rose and fell in curiosity. Comet’s was slow, thoughtful but peaked at times. I imagined his tone sounded like it was leading you somewhere. They were such smart ponies. It was easy to see where she got her brains.

“Berry, feeling better?” Blossomforth asked me.

“Huh?” I responded. She was bringing up the rear with me, or just making sure I didn’t fall behind.

“You’re smiling,” she said, gesturing to me with a wing. All my friends in front of me unconsciously slowed a little to glance back and look at me.

“I just like listening to my friends talk,” I half-lied. It was specifically Comet and Ruby that got me. Especially together after what I heard Pinchy call him. Now was as good of a time as any to ask I suppose; before things go to hell.

“Pinchy?” I asked. Comet Tail slowed and they both stopped to look at me, causing the rest of the group to stop too. My legs shook trying to hold my weight standing. And now, with them both looking at me, I realized I didn’t know how to ask this. “So… what’s…” I looked at Comet Tail then back at her. “You’re calling him ‘Dad’ now?”

“Um, we were trying it out. It was Comet’s idea,” my daughter explained to me. I looked at Comet. He seemed to struggle with the answer as much as I did with the question. He didn’t look like he was dismissing it when we continued walking. I could tell he was just thinking about it.

“Seeing all that death… put a lotta things into perspective,” he finally explained. In the light cast from his horn he looked older. “I was figuring, if a pony can be more, why shouldn’t he be?” He smiled. “When we were resting after all that fighting, I was telling Rubes she’s the smartest, bravest pony I know; her intuition with magic is inspiring… and I was proud of her. …and bedtime stories and good night kisses weren’t soundin’ too bad in the moment.” I saw Ruby look away with a bashful smile. “We don’t have to be the best pony for something to do it. We just hafta wanna and put in the effort and try… and that can mean the world.”

That sounded an awful lot like ‘warmth’ to me. I couldn’t hide my smile, especially not when I reestablished eye contact with the little pony on his back.

“So you did want him to be ‘Dad?” I asked. I thought she didn’t see him as one. She squirmed a bit to answer the question. She did though.

“Did you ever… not realize you wanted something because it never occurred to you that you could have it?”

I couldn’t think of anything specific like that, but maybe that was the point. Either way, I thought I understood. I was looking forward to figuring out what our lives were going to be like after all of this was over.

---

After some time traveling, we found a cave. There was no immediate way to tell if we found the right one. So, we tried it. The deeper our little group went, the more the doubt that this might not be the right cave went away. Instead it was getting replaced by a feeling of deja vu.

After being sure there wasn’t anything down there, or that we couldn’t hide anywhere even if there was, the unicorns wrapped everypony in light. That pushed the darkness further away than a few lit horns did, but not the sense that we were going somewhere we shouldn’t. The distant music of Ponyville didn’t carry down there and I started to miss Minuette humming along to it.

When the path split, we took the wider, more forward path: the one you’d take if you were running from something. Even when the path was starting to widen and the ceiling was getting higher, I wasn’t feeling better. I was getting a horrible sense of dread in our descent.

I could tell I wasn’t the only one: Blossomforth was ahead of me and once the path widened I saw her stretching her wings out and visibly fidget. I could see all of the missing secondary feathers.

“You know, I was thinking if the cave got wider I’d feel better… I don’t,” Blossomforth admitted.

“Yeah. My wings are feeling restless too,” the pegasus ahead agreed. “Is it safe to be in a cave when there’s volcanic activity?”

More than half of us directed our line of sight to the astronomer of the group.

“I haven’t felt anything yet,” Comet Tail reasoned. “Snaking passageways are generally pretty safe. I think…”

Cloud, still leading the way with Carrot, took that information in stride and looked back to where she was going.

“So, just have to keep an eye out for any more of those ursa bear thi-,” Cloud Kicker stopped. I saw her grab Carrot Top next to her and flap and rear, falling backwards from what she was reacting to. Carrot, when she saw it too, reciprocated the grip on the pegasus until they got a few more steps away.

“What?! What is it??” Blossomforth demanded as she started backing up into me.

“It’s… a hole,” Cloud answered. Comet Tail carefully passed by me, still with our daughter on his back to see what they were looking at.

“Sure is,” the professor concurred.

My Pinchy’s horn lit up and a soft beam of light shined down into it. It was deep. There was still a path around the pit, but the path ahead was littered with even more pits.

“Were these here before? This seems really dangerous,” Minuette asked, confused.

“They look dug,” Pinchy observed. I saw her beam sweep around then up towards the ceiling maybe twenty feet above us. It fell on what looked like loose piles of rocks, each above a hole below them.

My best friend and I exchanged glances.

“We’re goin’ the right way,” Comet explained to everyone else. “These’re the holes the creatures came out of; the ones that made all the noise and shaking that made us run.”

I saw Ruby’s horn return to its familiar green and she delicately pulled a pebble from one of the piles on the ceiling. She brought it in front of her muzzle, stared at it, then let it go.

The pebble fell back up to the ceiling and tumbled across it, like it would have if it hit the ground.

“Did D- …is this from chaos magic?” Ruby asked, hesitant to say his name in this place.

“Yeah,” Comet acknowledged. He shook his head. “Of course it’s still active; why would it just expire…” He muttered more to himself.

I saw Minuette repeat what Ruby did: she took a loose rock from one of the piles on the ceiling and let it fall back towards it.

“...I think I feel it; the magic,” Ruby claimed.

Comet Tail nodded. “Yeah, I think I can tell something’s there but I don’t know what I’m feel- Rubes?”

Ruby had carefully slid off his back and was now standing next to him, still looking up at that pile of rocks. I knew that look. I was starting to recognize the way her ears focused when she made that face too. She was about to try something.

Ruby’s horn lit up and filled the cave with repeating strobes of green light that seemed to widen and narrow then speed up and slow down. Like it was trying to tune itself in. I sat down. We all seemed to oblige her. This continued for what seemed like several minutes, occasionally stopping and restarting.

From all the magic she was trying in the enclosed space, the air in the cave was turning acrid and I was starting to worry she was going to burn herself out. Before I could say anything, she finally stopped on her own and caught her breath.

“You gave it a good shot!” Minuette praised. “Seems like some advanced stuff.”

Ruby wouldn’t take the compliment. She looked frustrated so I forced myself back to my hooves to go to her.

“It’s right there. I know what part of the spell I need to do but it’s like… my magic can’t focus sharply enough. It was finer… before,” Pinchy complained.

“In your dreams?” Minuette clarified.

“No- well, yes, but I mean before… I blew up my horn.”

I snuck up on my daughter and, with Comet carefully stepping out of the way, I nuzzled her. She reluctantly nuzzled me back.

“If it’s any help, I’ve found that if the way I’m doing something is too hard, there’s prolly an easier way,” Comet advised.

“But I don’t know any other way to dispel chaos magic,” Ruby whined. I brushed a hoof against her mane while Comet kept talking.

“Maybe you shouldn’t dispel it then. Maybe there’s another way to get the effect you’re lookin’ for.”

“Like what?”

“Well, …I don’t know honestly,” Comet admitted. “You described it like it was space all scrambled, like knotted up, right? Instead of undoing the knot, why not just cut it out.”

“That doesn’t…” Ruby started but stopped to really consider what he was saying.

My Pinchy looked back at me, up at the rock piles, and then lit her horn again.

The rock pile she was concentrating on was wrapped in a green glow. The rocks shifted in her grasp and she brought them gently down to the ground.

Her horn extinguished itself but the rock piles stayed with its green glow. When Ruby kicked it and I saw the glowing rocks behaving, I knew it was done.

“You did it!” Minuette cheered.

“Kind of? But they’re still full of bad magic. They’re just wrapped up in the counter spell so they react normally,” my smart little filly explained.

“Amazing,” Comet approved. He picked up a rock in his own magic to look it over before tossing it back to the pile. “This is basically your chaos counter theory but injected into the shield construct, isn’t it?”

“It is! It’s basically a shield against chaos.”

“My little genius,” I complimented my filly and gave her another nuzzle.

“That’s amazing, Ruby,” Carrot Top spoke up. “...not to interrupt the magic talk but we really do need to keep moving.”

“Yes. Please,” Blossom eagerly agreed.

“Right, right,” I admitted. We stalled long enough.

Still not trusting myself to carry our daughter in my state, Comet Tail picked her back up. Then, carefully, we continued down the path still pocked with pits and holes of monsters from long ago. We were forced to really take in our surroundings and walk painfully slower. It forced me to really contemplate where we were going: we were literally on a broken path towards our past. After a while, the silence was broken.

“Broken glass,” Carrot warned cryptically from ahead. After Carrot, Cloud and Minuette, and Comet with Pinch single filed around what she pointed out, they stopped ahead so Blossomforth and I could pass it.

A broken wine bottle. I couldn’t make out the label anymore but I still recognized it. I could even still taste it. I think everypony ahead stopped to see my reaction. So, I gave them something.

“Who leaves a wine bottle in a cave? What a litter bug,” I tried to joke. The sound of my mirth was hollow though and it didn’t carry in the cave. I sighed and Blossomforth and I joined them on the other side of the hazard.

The passageway opened up further into an antechamber and then a wider one. Then just like that, we stepped into an old nightmare. Long-decayed food was mixed in with molded blankets, disintegrated parchment, broken lanterns and toys. I was still here. Like no time had passed at all I was right back there again.

My head was screaming for me to run. My heart was racing. I realized I was holding my breath, subconsciously trying to listen. I was listening for those horrible grinding noises or even for that laughter to start. It made me feel sick and lightheaded.

I heard muted mumbling from Minuette ahead of me and the ponies closer seemed to hear what she was saying better.

“Minnie? Are you…” my Ruby reacted. I recognize it now:

“She is,” Carrot confirmed. I latched onto it, anything was a respite from the fear I was stuck in:

Blossomforth joined her and that made me smile:

“Then what is?” Comet Tail offered the question. Minuette and Blossomforth both began singing a little louder at the encouragement:

We all joined in:

The song abruptly ended and genuine laughter and giggles replaced it. We got through the chamber and the memory together.

Eventually we reached the point in the passage where it curved down and turned into a slide that dropped you down into a lower one six feet below.

Carrot, Minnuette, and Cloud made the drop fine. Comet took my daughter. Blossomforth volunteered to help me down and I took it. What I didn’t realize was just how narrow the passageway was or how weak her wings were now. She clipped something and we tumbled down. It was a short fall, but even a short fall hitting rock wasn’t a good feeling.

“Oh no! Berry! I’m so sorry!” Blossomforth said as she got out of her own tumble next to me.

I was too stunned to get up. I think that was the last shake my legs needed to finally fail me. The ringing in my ears told me not to get back up. I thought I was going to pass out or throw up. Maybe both.

“Berry?? Did you hurt anything?” Carrot asked.

I was really starting to question us coming down here. Maybe it was selfish to go with them. Maybe we should have waited for the Mane Six to do this.

“I’ll be okay. I just need a minute,” I called up to my friends from the bottom of my tunnel vision. I didn’t know if that was true. The world swayed and my stomach felt choppy. I would have loved a cold toilet bowl to press my head against at that moment. After a fair amount of time passed and I was still laying there, Comet Tail proposed something to the group.

“Maybe we should split up? Cloud could take Berry and Rubes back to Ponyville and we could all meet back later after we find this entrance?”

It was a nice sentiment caring about me, but it frustrated me. He didn’t kick and buck monsters until it felt like he was rattling himself apart. He wasn’t beaten down with injuries beforehoof. He wasn’t sure where his tremors were from. He didn't understand that I really did want this but I couldn’t do it. He couldn’t understand my pain.

I looked up at Comet Tail to tell him this, in less polite words, but my voice died when I saw the fresh bite on his leg wrapped up in one of my old torn sleeves. Then I saw the bags under his eyes.

I saw my daughter on his back. That tired, pitiful look on her face reminded me of when she and Nathan found me in that cage: the impossible distance and exhaustion she experienced or her breaking point when she cried in the rain because she wasn’t the innocent filly she wanted to be.

“...No. I’ll be okay,” I insisted again. I focused on trying to drive the light-headedness away instead.

“Are you sure?” Carrot checked on me too. I watched her carefully as she came closer. Her coat was still matted and singed in places. I couldn’t help but imagine the slight limp to her hind leg now.

I nodded.

“We’re almost out. Once we find the gate, we can look for a shorter way back to Ponyville,” Carrot promised.

“I think everypony needs a hug break~!” Minuette sang-song as she came for me specifically. Everypony gathered and embraced me.

We hugged and squeezed each other. I smelled my friends and their sweat, sacrifice, and magic. I could smell the smoke and dust of our battle. I could have fallen asleep being held like that. We reached what felt like a natural stopping point, but Minuette squeezed us back together.

“A little more!” Minuette teased. And then we kept going until we felt silly and then it felt good again. My friends picked me up in their group hug. Somewhere, somehow, I found more strength inside of me.

Or maybe some strengths are external.

Minuette picked up my dropped saddlebag in her magic. “Hay, mind if I carry your saddlebag for a while?” she offered. I didn’t immediately reply because it was barely weighing me down. I liked it mostly because it gave Ruby something to hold onto other than my neck and sides. Now that I wasn’t carrying her though, there wasn’t a reason to be wearing it. “I can be the pack unicorn!”

“If you want?” I finally permitted. With that, Minuette dropped the pack onto herself.

“Oh, it’s really light! I was hoping you packed snacks,” Minuette teased me.

“Just the essentials,” I teased back, looking over my friends.

“So, are you good to keep going?” Carrot asked me, now that I was standing and talking.

“I’m fine, really. I just picked the worst possible day to quit smoking.”

I said it mostly to get a rise out of Carrot and she gave me the gently disapproving look I was looking for. Cloud Kicker had a response though.

“Aw. Don’t say that, Punch. I think you’re still smoking,” Cloud Kicker flirted.

Minuette giggled and Comet Tail looked away, probably to grin. I think my daughter let out a little snort but I couldn't hear it over mine and I was too busy rolling my eyes to see it.

We carried on. There were more passageways and more chambers and more broken glass. I thought I could imagine the smell of the soured wine as we passed. I half-expected us to turn a corner and find my remains entwined with Comet’s. Somewhere along these cave walls, Comet Tail had held me in our last moments before our second lives began. Further up still, the passageway got rockier. It looked like a partial cave-in. We had to walk single-file to squeeze through.

“I think… I did this. I was… really emotional,” Ruby explained. With the way we were walking single-file I couldn’t get to her but Minuette, walking right behind Comet, nudged her rump to get her attention.

“And here we are, twenty-five years later, still together!” Minnie reminded her. We saw a red glow at the end of the tunnel: outside.

We squeezed past the narrowest part where the rocks on both sides of us nearly scraped our muzzles. And then, one by one, we pulled ourselves out. The ground around us fell away and we re-emerged on the side of a mountain with red sky above. The forest below was dead and coated in ash just like on the way here. I didn’t see a difference from where we had entered the cave besides us being in a steep valley.

“Oscura Forest…” Carrot Top introduced us to where we were looking. I vaguely remembered her calling it that last time.

“Sky! It’s smelly and red but it’s sky!” Blossomforth praised when she came out last behind me, relieved to get out of that cave system.

“Sssh!” Carrot shushed with a hoof to her muzzle. She pointed up the mountain we came out of the base of.

Looking back and way up, there was the ‘volcano’. There was cooling lava and a trickle of creatures still glowing as they fumbled down the mountain towards Ponyville to our left.

Ponyville was on fire.

Granted, it was only a little bit on fire and we left it looking about the same.

The fight was still raging on. It looked like another wave had come hard. The larger creatures like dragons, hydras and that ursa were visible even from here. The rest were shifting colors in the skies and over the buildings. I didn’t hear music as much as I felt it. It wasn’t clear if we were winning but we were still fighting. That was a good sign.

“Come on,” Carrot gathered our attention and directed it away from Ponyville with a hoof. “The gate’s this way.”

We started walking down the mountain diagonally. It was slow going. I kept sliding and falling against the mountain. The weight and pain in my legs was throwing off my balance and I really didn’t want to tumble down instead so I fell towards the mountain. My friends were patient with me now. They knew how much I wanted this.

“Hmm. What’s that saying about red skies?” Blossomforth made idle chat as she helped me up.

“Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight; red sky in the morning, shepherds take warning,” Comet answered her. “There’s some truth to it, depending on which way the weather’s moving and the way it makes light scatter.”

“Hmm,” Blossomforth considered. “So is it morning or night here?”

“That’s not… well, it was night when we left? I think…” Comet tried to answer her follow-up question.

“Hey, Ruby,” I called to my daughter from the back of the pack. She looked at me from Comet’s back. “Got the time?”

Her horn lit up and she lifted the watch around her neck to her smiling face to humor me.

“Uh…seven thirty-three!”

“AM or PM?”

“Yes.”

“As good of an answer as any,” Comet approved.

Moving the sun and moon were still going to be an issue even after Equestria was taken back. Especially if Princess Luna and Princess Celestia were staying on Earth for now. I looked up at that red sky and wondered if the stars were going to just come back at night or if Princess Luna had to do something to make them visible. I also tried to think about how we could restart the seasons or if the animals would migrate back. If the trees could be saved. Not to mention feeding everypony. There were lots of major issues.

Those weren’t problems for me to solve. I was just trying to help find a way to get to where the hellspawn were coming from. And after a surprisingly short distance, I saw it.

Carved into the base of a mountain, surrounded by thorny trees and volcanic vents there were a few wide steps that led up to… an opening leading down.

There were no gates, no door, no seal but right within the archway, there were the remains of one. Huge, carved rock doors that used to seal away Tartarus lay shattered. Beyond that was only darkness. Tentatively, we all got closer until we were standing right in front of it. I sat down and just let my body relax. We made it.

“Well, that makes getting in easy I guess. Was it like this when you came the first time?” Cloud clarified with our leader.

Carrot shook her head.

“No. They were still up! I think they were even closed? I remember that carving on the door. It was like a tribal seal with a red sun. It made it look dangerous. I would have remembered if it was broken.”

Comet Tail, still with my- our daughter, approached the door cautiously and peeked at the immediate rubble inside.

“Yeah, that’s the door…” Comet agreed. He looked around at the archway to Tartarus. “Funny, I kinda expected an inscription above the door, you know?”

“Well, we need to find a safe, easy way back now. Preferably without the cave,” Cloud Kicker reminded us.

My little pink unicorn stared into the abyss.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing deeper.

“...you see it too?” Comet quietly asked her.

“What is it?” Carrot asked them. My curiosity was getting to me now too. The two of them, carefully, slowly, with both of their horns glowing, walked into the archway of Tartarus and around the broken chunks of the door.

“Be careful!” I pleaded in a loud whisper. I saw Comet Tail pick up something misshapen, held up by a strap in his light. He caught part of it when it started to fall apart.

“A saddlebag?” my daughter asked quietly.

Carefully, without putting their backs to the darkness beyond, Comet Tail stepped backwards out of the entrance of Tartarus and back under the red sky to show what they retrieved.

It was a saddlebag. Comet Tail slumped it down in the middle of us. Then with reverence, carefully turned it over and examined it. We kept looking over our withers at the abyss it was fished from and then back at what Comet Tail was doing. Pinchy hopped off his back to get a closer look at what they found.

It had two halves like mine and zippers. It kind of looked like mine if it was made out of two smaller, identical ones. One half looked like something burned a hole through it. Whatever was inside of that side must have been flammable because it was filled with ashes and charred bits of paper. As Comet Tail sifted through the paper, he found a few curled, brittle corners exposing that it had been lined paper. He pulled out a half-burned, modern-looking pencil with a metal band holding an eraser. The eraser was still faintly pink.

“...did we have zippers? As ponies?” Comet Tail asked the group. We all started brainstorming, trying to remember anything from the show or in our collective memories. We didn’t have to think much longer because our investigator unzipped the other side and a little book covered in rock band stickers and a shirt fell out, a shirt fit for humans. Comet Tail lifted the shirt up it to try and understand what he was looking at. "I think it's... from a camp?"

“Humans were here…” Blossomforth wondered. “Or Sunset Shimmer?”

Comet carefully, with metaphorical magical gloves, flipped the little book open to its first page, then the second, then did a quick skim.

"It's a diary. The dates are in the 90's," Comet confirmed what we were thinking.

I stared at the burnt side of the saddlebag. I couldn’t help but imagine the hole was book-sized. Composition book-sized even. The fire that burnt it looked focused. Like maybe just one item inside of it burned.

A sense of guilt crushed me.

“She came with her friends…” I admitted.

“You don't think this is Sunset's?" Comet Tail asked while he skimmed to the end of the diary.

“They each had a composition book linked together like Sunset’s journal… what if that half is burned because one was inside of it? It could be any of theirs,” I explained.

“Like the one we tried to steal?” Cloud clarified. “The ones those ponynappers had?”

I nodded.

“Oh. I think you're right," Comet Tail agreed. He looked up from the diary. "It's mostly poetry but there's a few mentions of someone named 'Sunny'.”

We took in the enormity of our discovery in a moment of silence.

“...they did this?” Ruby wondered aloud while she looked towards the destroyed gates of Tartarus. “That means they were breaking into Tartarus, right? Why would they do that?”

“To stop the hellspawn?” Blossomforth guessed. Comet Tail provided another theory.

“Maybe there’s something down there that she was hoping to use against Discord?” he speculated. “It held all kinds of bad things, right?”

“Was there a note or anything on the last entry? 'To Whom It May Concern'??" Carrot asked, peering over Comet's shoulder.

Comet shook his head. "It just kinda ends. Ain't even a mention of Equestria or the portal. Maybe that's intentional. I s'pose if there was something like a final note that'd be in the other one: more likely somepony would read it, being there was copies on the other side," Comet rationalized. He closed the diary up and carefully put it and the shirt back into the saddlebag.

I looked at the burnt hole in the bag. The composition that I burned had pages torn out of it. If those were torn out by the ponynappers, maybe this copy of the missing pages would have still been sitting loosely in the saddle bag. I knew I had to and couldn’t have known, but I felt guilty all the same for having to destroy all the copies. The words of friends and the last notes of Sunset Shimmer; I potentially burned those.

I brainstormed what little we knew about Tartarus for a reason why: I remembered Discord threw Celestia down into it. He specifically tricked her and disposed of her that way, at least at first. It even made it into the show so somehow Twilight knew about it. Maybe Sunset knew too.

“...she was hoping Celestia was still alive down there?” I threw in my guess.

“That’d be a heck of a Hail Mary,” Cloud Kicker looked at the swallowing darkness we were standing around in front of. “This is all speculation.”

“Sunset Shimmer was here though” Carrot defended. “…or at least her friend or somepony from Earth who came with her.”

I stared at the hole to pony hell. My fear of it was being overridden now by my need to know what happened to Sunset Shimmer and her friends.

There was a potential way to get answers staring back at me.

“...I want to go down,” I decided. All of my friends looked at me but I knew they had to have been thinking it too.

“Punch, you can barely walk,” Cloud pointed out. I was sitting down so I shifted my weight forward. My neck didn’t like that, but it helped me get one rear leg under me then the other. I slowly rose back to a standing position.

“I want to know what happened to Sunset and her friends. Maybe we can find something?” I felt an emotional connection to her. She redeemed herself and tried to become a better person. Her higher power was her friends. She may have died hoping she could still save Equestria or at least Celestia.

“That’s true. But we’re supposed to just go back and report what we found. We can go down there as a bigger group after Discord is defeated,” Cloud Kicker offered.

“Will Ponyville even last that long? Everypony is exhausted. What if Sunset was on the brink of… something that could be used to stop the endlessly spawning… hellspawn.”

“...Berry’s right,” Carrot rose to defend me. “I say we go down now.”

“...are you sure?” Cloud asked. She started to look less concerned and more intrigued. Minuette speculated next.

“What if… maybe Discord magic doesn’t work down there and there’s a bunch of ponies safe down there?” Minuette asked. “It had a bunch of nasties locked up, right? Maybe it’s got anti-bad guy magic built into it.”

Comet Tail frowned but seemed to be considering it as well.

“I dunno about that …but we ain’t figured out where the hellspawn are comin’ from yet,” Comet reasoned.

My little pink unicorn was looking at us talking then at the entrance.

“It looks pretty dark down there. I bet we could sneak around anything down there like we did getting here.”

“I don’t know how I feel about going back underground…” Blossomforth started, looking up at the sky then back at my daughter. “But… I want to find out what happened to Sunset Shimmer too.”

Seeing the party was decided, Cloud Kicker let go of the grin she was holding back.

“Yeeaaaah… I want to go down too,” she admitted. “Why let some other ponies take the glory? Let’s stop the hellspawn! If they’re all coming from one source let’s just… seal it up.” Cloud Kicker glanced towards my daughter with a silly grin on her face. “Pinch, you think you can cause another cave-in?”

“Uh, I can sure try!” my daughter agreed.

We were all convinced then: we were going down. With every pony lit up with magic, our group of seven walked down into Tartarus.

Next Chapter: 33. Empathy Part 2 Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 21 Minutes