“Some still pray to us and the others, you know,” Loki said quietly. “I don’t know why your kind still wastes their time. We never answer them. We never can answer them. But, even after all these years, when raiding parties have been replaced with lawyers and ruinous pillaging takes place behind closed doors in towering office buildings...people still pray. To us, and to the others, and even to Him.” He snorted in disgust. “‘Please, just let my factory stay open. I have two kids. I need this job. Money’s tight.’ Or, ‘Just one more john. Just one more and Papí won’t hit me again. I know I’m getting older, and those pretty young things over there are so much slimmer, even if they miss their parents, but just one more john. One more, so I can feed my son proper. I hope Papí’s not angry. My boy is old enough to notice the bruises...’ Or the zealots. ‘May my wrath kill many in the name of whatever-the-fuck god I’m pretending to worship.’”

Nix held his tongue. Loki stared blankly into the distance.

“The worst, though,” Odin said from the door, having entered halfway through the conversation. “The worst are the children.” He paused before Nix, looking him up and down. “‘Mommy got angry again. I don’t know why. The fireflies are so pretty.’” Nix’s eyes narrowed. “‘I keep asking Daddy when Mommy’s coming back, but he just looks at me funny and goes into the kitchen.’”

“You’ve made your point, god,” Nix said, spitting the title like it left a bad taste in his mouth. Odin and Loki had taken his pistols and his sword, perhaps wisely. He still felt antsy without the familiar weight of Excalibur over his shoulder. But the longer he stared at Odin, the more repulsed he felt. The All-Father had been useless. He’d done nothing.

“I don’t think I have, boy.” Odin stared at the human, his eyes flecks of shattered granite. “All the violence, all the death, all the souls, they go to Sammael. But us old gods, we still hear them...” He paused. “The prayers. The people. The abandoned. We hear every one.”

“And we’re sick of not being able to answer,” Loki hissed, his knuckles white as his fists clenched up at his sides. “This isn’t about a few pantheons of gods annoyed that someone bigger put them under their thumbs. It’s about a few pantheons of gods annoyed that someone bigger put all creation under his sadistic yolk and fucking ignored its people! Used them! We still hear them, and yet we can’t lift a fucking finger to help!” Odin placed a hand on Loki’s shoulder, calming him.

The trickster shook his head, sloughing off his anger and smiling slightly as he met Nix’s gaze. “And that, Newbie, is where you come in.”

“Even if I trusted you, I don’t see how I can help you with this,” Nix responded honestly.

“Oh, but we do.” Loki’s smile broadened. “You’re going to kill the one preventing us from answering your kind’s pleas. You’re going to kill God.”

Nix stared at him dully. Instead of seeing Loki’s green eyes, however, his mind was consumed by the memory of Athena’s piercing cerulean gaze.

Phoenix looked at the two gods. He simply said, “Gladly.”

Luna cantered through a large stone tunnel, its crudely carved walls black as soot but sharply mirrored like obsidian. The way was only lit by the occasional torch of green flame, lending the glassy, twisted walls the appearance of sickly green apparitions where the light reflected. As Luna exited into a cavernous room with a ceiling that extended beyond the reach of the torches’ pale green light, she failed to repress a sigh.

“Hiya, Lu. A bit soon to spring me from my eternity of imprisonment, don’tcha think? It’s only been a coupla days.”

“You...look terrible,” she blurted out.

Nix snorted. He lounged between the prone paws of Cerberus, nestled between two of the beast’s heads and lazily stroking one of their noses. The guardian appeared to be sleeping, oblivious to the presence of one of its masters. The central head snuffled peacefully, no doubt sleeping more easily under the gentle ministrations of the human’s hand on its snout. Nix’s black duster and his two holsters were draped over one massive paw, seemingly unharmed. The rest of his outfit, however, was torn to shreds. His tattered black shirt hung loosely off his shoulders by a few threads, barely concealing deep red gashes twisting across the unhealed skin of his lithe frame. Similar wounds could be found on his upper thighs, and his blue jeans ceased to exist past his knees. His face was a mess of bruises, cuts, and scrapes. He was little more than a construct of rags, dried blood, and scars.

Except for his eyes, which shone brightly with their own gleeful blue light. They flared briefly as he greeted Luna with a maddening smile.

“Yes, well, your prison here had quite a few unsavory individuals.”

‘Had?’ she thought, before she was distracted by a sudden stab of fear.

Luna shot a glance towards the thick stone doors shielding Equestria from the horrors of Tartarus—they were wide open—and flitted another look at its sleeping guard dog. Her horn began glowing, a defensive measure lest any dark shape appear in the mists beyond the threshold of the doors. “Ape, this prison holds some of the most vile creatures that have ever plagued our lands, yet right now its doors would fail to hold back a gust of wind, and its guardian is sleeping. I have your memories, primate. I know you, and I know you wouldn’t loose these evils upon us out of spite.”

Nix blinked at her, and the princess looked at him for a long time.

“Have you gone mad?” she asked finally.

Nix covered his mouth as he broke into a wheezing fit of laughter. Cerberus stirred slightly before settling back into his slumber. Luna’s eyes narrowed, and her horn began to glow more brightly. Had he finally realized? Had he finally lost himself? She might have to stop him here, if that were the case.

However, Nix’s mirth tapered off, and he shook his head. “Didn’t you hear me the first time? And you should give this mongrel more credit, Lu. He’s doing an excellent job guarding your prison.” His hand dropped from the beast’s nose as he stood and collected his trenchcoat and pistols. He began strolling towards Luna, and the exit. He paused when he heard a rumbling growl and glanced back. The center head glared at him through one opened eye.

Nix met her eyes again and motioned to the guardian. “See? He’s guarding the entire population of Tartarus.” He turned back to the hound. “He’s such a good boy! Yes, he is!” Cerberus’s tail wagged lazily, flicking a few errant boulders across the room.

Luna took in a few measured breaths, attempting to calm herself, before continuing. “My sister and I imprisoned hundreds of vile creatures here. This prison, by design, was never a permanent measure. It was meant to hold those incompatible with the Harmony of this world until such a time as they could be reintegrated. Its denizens were a population-”

“That I depopulated,” Nix interrupted. “Completely. You’re welcome.”

“-that ultimately might come to understa- YOU DID WHAT?!” Luna whipped her head towards the door, then back to Nix, her eyes wide.

Nix shrugged. “They were evil. I just saved you the headache of dealing with them.”

“They were nefarious, but they had the capacity to change their ways, given enough time!”

“Then I saved them the headache.” Nix hadn’t stopped smiling.

“You...find this funny? This wanton slaughter?!” Luna started towards the open door.

“Not at all. Mostly just annoying.” He paused for a second. “You’re not gonna beat the shit out of me and then break down sobbing because you can’t fix me, again, are you?” She halted and shot a glare his way. “Seriously, that’s some abusive serial killer shit right there. ‘Why won’t you let me help you?!’ as your magic blast cracks all my ribs again.” Her frown deepened. Nix’s smile brightened and he spread his arms. “You look like you need a hug. Would you like a hug, Luna?”

“No, Nix, I would not like a hug.” Her eyes narrowed and she peered at the open door. Her horn flared for an instant and she seemed to relax. “Thank goodness, you only breached the first circle.”

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t even mind hugging you this time.”

She glanced back at the human, who bore a manic grin on his ruined face. “You minded the first two times?”

“You smell like livestock and wet dog,” he said flatly.

Luna gaped. “We most certainly do not possess so base a scent as thou implies!”

“Pretty sure I did more than imply it.” Small tendrils of glowing white steam emanated from his wounds. And still, his maddening grin.

She raised her head and stared down her nose at the human. “Apologize for thine insolence immediately!”

Nix plopped down against one of Cerberus’s paws. The guardian grumbled and shifted slightly before settling back into its slumber. Nix cocked his head, resting a finger on his cheek ponderously. “Also, you talk funny. Thought we went over this, Shakespony?”

Luna opened her mouth, but paused. Then, in a measured tone, she continued. “What are you doing, Nix? You lied to my sister-”

“Again.”

“-choosing banishment over the path that would eventually see you on your way.” Luna focused on the open doors, and began to walk towards them. “At every turn, you defy us.”

“Yes, bad business, that. Defying royalty. I’d make a terrible merchant, given my fondness for bad business.” He was toying with her, she knew. Dancing around some issue and stubbornly avoiding something that should be obvious. She reached the threshold of the prison. “I, uh, wouldn’t do that, Lu. It ain’t pretty.” She ignored him, peeking her head through the doors and into the inky blackness they guarded.

She immediately recoiled and her face blanched. She did her best to repress the waves of nausea that overtook her.

The human plucked a cigarette from his breast pocket and summoned a fireball. He frowned at it, the whirring ball of light and heat being barely larger than a teardrop, before touching the end of his smoke and dismissing the paltry fire with a disgusted snort. Luna fought her gag reflex as she tamped down the images from the prison beyond. So much blood. The human glanced at her. His smile had disappeared.

“I tried warning you.”

“How...how...what are you?” she stammered out. She flicked through his memories, searching for some reason, some justification, for his violence. His past was horrible, as he was fond of pointing out, but it was equal parts beautiful, and loving, and...did he really think he was alone all those centuries, that he never made a friend? In realities he was in for longer than a few days, she saw that he almost always ended up befriending someone. Usually several. He had always been blunt, she knew. But he was never this...intractable. This outwardly violent.

“By my reckoning, Princess? I’m a monster, I guess. I seem to only be good at hurting things. I’m still trying to figure out why those things I hurt in there are so horrible that your sister refused to put you with them. They were pretty squishy.”

“There are ten levels to Tartarus, ape. You merely slaughtered the first.”

“Oh, good, it appears I’ll have something to do with my eternal imprisonment.”

“You have yet to heal from the first level.”

“Yeah, but I can’t die. I’ll figure something out.”

“You don’t understand. Every being from the second circle onward possesses power of much greater magnitude than those before it. You can’t even heal yourself after having...murdered the first circle.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that.” The white mists around his wounds had coalesced into tiny flames, slowly knitting together his flesh. It would be days before his wounds were fully healed, she realized. “I had quite a bit more power when I came here. If I’d had it before, I probably could have even handled that breeding horde of timberwolves without my pistols. But all that power just seemed to evaporate. It was...terribly inconvenient. Especially considering I still had three foes left.”

“And why did you even attack the others to begin with?”

Nix broke his gaze with her, suddenly intrigued by the glowing tip of his cigarette. “They were evil.”

“Bullshit.”

Nix cocked an eyebrow. “Alright, then, they attacked me first.”

Luna slowly approached the human. Cerberus shifted and raised its three heads, regarding the small princess in a stupor as she stopped before him. Her horn glowed as she magicked the cigarette out of his mouth and tamped it out on the ground. Her cold blue eyes never broke his gaze. He seemed annoyed that he was deprived of his cigarette, but he remained motionless as he stared up at her. She stood silent for a time, looking down upon him. He really did seem broken, in spite of his eyes. Luna always felt her gaze drawn back to the strange, blue orbs that glowed behind his eyes. They seemed separate from his eyes, those glowing orbs. Flares buried in hallowed grounds but awkward and out of place. She tried to ignore the glowing orbs so she could search his eyes, and failed again. Those wavering circles of light were like jewels embedded into a ring of gold; they were two parts of a whole, yet separate. If only she could separate the man from the power, get a good look into eyes unpolluted by strength, she might be able to understand him. Memories were not—were never—enough. But seeing into untainted eyes?

The human’s stoic features cracked as a smile reformed onto his face and he spread his arms wide. “Sure you don’t want a hug, Princess?”

She glowered down at him. “Don’t call me ‘Princess’. And what has gotten into you?”

He bit his lip, and the light behind his eyes seemed to fade. For a brief second, there was only her blue eyes locked with his. “You sure? I mean, if you didn’t want to hug something like me, I’d understand...”

She bowed her head and sighed. “If you really must, I suppose I wouldn’t-”

“Excellent.” Nix clapped and shot up from the ground. She steeled herself, waiting for his arms to wrap around her. The seconds drew on as her bare neck continued unembraced. Her hooves shifted slightly before she brought her head up and noticed the human standing a few yards away, his back to her and his fists on his hips as he stared at the doors with an odd look on his face. What was wrong with him?

“Nix,” she started apprehensively. He held up a hand, glancing back at her over his shoulder.

“I asked if you wanted a hug. Never said I’d go through with it.”

Luna scowled at him. “Right. Livestock and wet dogs.”

Nix waved his hand dismissively. “Nah, I was only fucking with you. You smell like you bathe in perfume.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Too much perfume, actually. Just as off-putting, though, to have a horse that smells like a flower.”

“We are no-!”

“Pony, horse, whatever. Look, at this point, I’m so damn happy I could plant a kiss on those hairy horse lips of yours.”

“What?!” Her sudden outburst sent the human flying across the room. She immediately shot a hoof to her mouth as Cerberus’s three heads shook off the last of their lethargy and the beast drew up its massive form. Luna immediately pointed a pleading hoof at the human’s crumpled form against a nearby obsidian wall. “No, wait, we meant thee no-”

Nix burst out laughing, slowly pushing himself off the ground as luminescent tendrils of white mist continued to dance around his slowly healing wounds. “S’alright, Luna.” His mouth quirked for an instant. “Err, ‘Lu’.” Cerberus’s panting heads created a mild breeze as they glanced laconically between the alicorn and the human. Nix gathered himself up, and let out a puff of air. “I have...something I’d like to ask you.”

She drew herself back subtly, regarding the human with a sideways glance. “What?” she asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“I’d like you to summon my sword, Muramasa,” he said, the otherworldly lights behind his eyes flaring up again. “It’s important.”

Nix waited calmly, standing before the Princess of the Night with his hands clasped behind his back.

‘Please work, please work, please work,’ his thoughts begged to no one in particular.

“Absolutely not!” Luna said. His hope deflated under her wilting glare.

“But-”

“No ‘buts’! Upon arriving, thou hast been a whirlwind of chaos. Thy bumbling actions have created naught but discord. Dost thou truly believe we’d surrender our charge, giving thee another tool of destruction, thereby making thee more dangerous?”

Crap. She was reverting to Shakespony speech again. This would make things more difficult.

“It isn’t,” he started, his smile faltering. “It isn’t just a tool of destruction. I just need to ask it a question.” He held his hands up. “Honestly.”

“You need to ask your sword a question,” Luna replied, her tone droll.

“Yeah.”

“Your memories have nothing about conversations with a weapon.”

“I doubt they would. Soulmeld spell only kinda mixed our souls. Masa kinda has his own...”

He dropped his smile as her blue eyes narrowed. “Fine. But, ape, we do this my way.”

“I- okay?” Luna’s horn exploded with sudden light, temporarily blinding him and shooting streaking stars through the darkened room. Cerberus growled and recoiled from the sudden display. With a final flash, the embers of her horn’s sparks shuddered and fell from the air. As his vision slowly recovered, he at first only saw blue flames floating in the air where the princess once stood. As the pain began to recede from behind his eyes, those flames resolved into a mane and tail that fluttered in a nonexistent breeze, flaring brightly around the black, armored form of an imposing equine. It wasn’t wearing armor; it was armor, its numerous segments and plates seeming to flow organically as the being drew breath. Pale blue light leaked in a laconic mist from its many segments, and from the multitude of runic shapes seemingly carved into its onyx plates. A pair of cold blue eyes in the armor’s head flared suddenly, licks of lightning dancing around its harsh glare, before the metal-sheathed horn flared brightly and a plain-looking katana in a scuffed black sheath popped into existence in between the human and the pony, hovering motionlessly.

“Damn, Lu,” Nix said, still holding his hands up submissively, “if I’d known you were gonna go final form on my ass, I’d have asked for a safe word beforehand.”

The glowing eyes behind the reflective black helm narrowed, and the horse-armor shot out a tuft of steam. “Thou surely does not believe thy Aeon armor unique?”

“Well, uh,” Nix dropped his hands and buried them in the front pockets of his duster, looking away. “I kinda did, actually. You’re the first to...” He paused, biting his tongue. “No, actually, this would make a lot of sense, if I’m right.” He reached for his levitated sword. The imposing, armored pony stamped her hoof, shooting cracks along the blackened stone and causing Cerberus to slowly begin backing away, the huge beast’s tail tucked between his legs. Nix held still, and locked his gaze with the glowing orbs of Luna’s armor.

“You can trust me, Luna,” he said quietly.

“Prove it.”

“Allow me to. Please.”

Nix gingerly reached for the hilt of his katana under the watchful glare of the princess in her armor. If her older sister had access to this level of magic, if she could summon the Aeonic armor like her little sister just had...He wasn’t so certain Luna had lied to Tia about being as powerful Sammael had been when the human had slain him. The waves of power crashed off of the mare in a violent squall, battening against his soul. He never broke contact with her ‘eyes’, though. The orbs of light in her black helm were different from the princess’s true eyes.

They always are, aren’t they? a voice lilted through his head as he closed his hand around Muramasa’s hilt. Humans. Gods. Monsters... it continued, the eyes truly are the window to the soul. But when there’s more than one soul? I wonder... Nix fought off the voice, same as he always did. He noticed the burning eye sockets of the black, armored mare narrowing slightly as he clasped onto his sword.

“Masa, speak out loud so the nice princess knows the resident godslayer hasn’t gone mad and decided he suddenly dislikes hugging living goddesses, please?” Nix said cautiously, staring at the being who was Luna, and was also not.

”Oh, so you admit it? I always knew you were soft, Sean,” a metallic voice rang out through the cavern, echoing and muddled as though it spoke from a great distance. The flaming blue mane of Luna’s armored form seemed to dim slightly.

“I told you not to call me that, Masa,” Nix grumbled angrily, breaking his gaze with Luna’s awakened form and stabbing the sheathed sword at the ground. It stood, perfectly balanced, on its very tip as Nix released it.

“Don’t get me wrong, boy,” the sword continued. “I was really, really annoyed when you abandoned me-”

“Didn’t abandon you, Masa,” Nix said, exasperated.

“-but I felt the soul of the one I was given to, felt how utterly gorgeous the valleys and mountains of her lifestream were, and, well, I wasn’t angry at all. Actually, could you give me back to her? Her soul is so much more beautiful than yours.”

“Yes, I know. Part of the reason I left her alive.” Nix glanced at her. He was surprised that his admission that he still allowed her to live hadn’t caused more luminescent ether to leak from her armor; she knew how to use it. Mostly. Though he wondered how well... “Although you should cool your jets, Romeo. I doubt she’s much into swords.”

“Oh, she is. Though her sword is kind of an arrogant bitch,” Masa replied sullenly. “No matter how nicely I try to talk to her, she refuses to respond.”

Nix sighed. “Masa, we’ve been through this. Most swords don’t talk.”

“I talk.”

“You’re not most swords. Think about it. How many swords have actually talked back to you over the years?”

“Well, not many, but I just figured that was because I was making their masters dead...”

“You obviously didn’t gut Lu, here, and her sword didn’t speak to you...seriously, talking swords are pretty damn weird.”

The sword let out a grumpy, metallic huff and fell silent. The glaring blue orbs in the black pony’s helm narrowed slightly.

“To what end did thee request we summon thy sword, ape?” Luna demanded, lowering her head threateningly. The blue mist seemed to blur from the segments of her armor more rapidly and the runes began glowing slightly more brightly. “Our patience is already a hair’s breadth away from its limits.”

Nix rubbed his forehead slowly. “Masa, you like her, right? I barely have the strength for this right now, you know.”

“She’s the most gorgeous advent of the night I have ever felt, Master. Are you sure you don’t want to give me to her?” The sword seemed to lean towards her. “I promise I’ll behave. I wouldn’t dare twist her thoughts to something other than what formed betwixt her own cute, floppy blue ears.”

The man nodded to himself, but Luna simply stared at the two. Her glowing armor creaked and popped as she shifted her front hooves. Good. She was uncomfortable. She wouldn’t see this coming.

Nix disappeared, streaking towards the sword in a blue blur. Luna gasped sharply and immediately began charging her horn. The weaves of protective magic immediately winked out, cut at the source of her horn almost instantly. Her weaves were a molding of extremely high level magic—if she had actually finished forming them and began casting them, their severance would have struck back at her with enough force to incapacitate, or possibly even kill her. She twisted her head around, the arcane glow of her ‘eyes’ widened in fear, as she attempted to get a bead on the human. Nix, however, had been doing this for a very long time, and this wasn’t the first opponent gifted armor of the Aeons he had faced. Hell, she wasn’t even an opponent.

It was over in less than a second. First, the human seemed to disappear, and the next, he reappeared in front of the night princess, idly cleaning out his fingernails with the tip of his unsheathed blade.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Muramasa complained.

“Hmm, yes,” Nix responded, gazing at his fingernails.

Luna growled and put one hoof forward. She failed to place the other hoof forward as all of her armor fell to the ground in a loud clatter. She looked at the plate mail with shock before her eyebrows furrowed and her gaze whipped towards the human. The human was faster at whipping his sword to her neck, however. The razor sharp blade hovered there, motionless, as the human continued regarding his fingernails.

“If I really wanted to, I could have killed you at least seven times,” he stated plainly. Luna glared at him, the power of her Aeonic armor evaporating into the air in a whisping mist from the numerous pieces of plate mail at her feet. “Today, anyway.”

Nix dropped his free hand and turned to look her in the eyes. There was no glow behind his pale blue irises. Luna felt the katana at her throat relax slightly. One of the human’s eyes twitched and he dropped the sword from her throat.

“Coulda killed you the first day, actually, instead of running. I’d just rather not,” he said, before stalking off to an outcropping of rock. He reached his hand behind the black stone and tossed a lump at her feet. Luna’s stomach twisted as she recognized it as a severed head, its feminine features draped limply with numerous dead serpents. A thin, steel blade immediately drove itself through one of the head’s eyes, and Luna’s eyes traced up the silvery blade, past the clenched hand, to a pair of cold blue eyes hiding behind a few golden locks of hair.

“Masa, there’s a pretty good chance I might have gone insane over the years.” Nix maintained eye contact with Lu. She almost looked afraid. He ignored this, successfully holding together the ragged bits that remained of him. Again. “I need you to verify something.” He looked down at the severed head of Medusa. “Feel familiar?”

“Err, Sean?” the sword offered.

“Don’t call me that. Ever.”

“How long have you held onto Medusa’s head?”

Nix withdrew the sword and stared into its reflective blade like it was retarded. “Uh, never.”

“Then, why is this the exact same Medusa I remember beheading a thousand years ago?” Nix regarded the katana carefully, before he wiped off the blood that had stuck to its tip on his pants.

“Best of luck to ya’ with the lady sword. I’ll see you again in a bit.” The human smiled and ignored Muramasa’s muffled complaints as he jammed it back into its sheath and offered it back to a clearly shocked Luna. “All done, got what I needed to know.” He gave the night princess his warmest smile. Her gaze flicked between his eyes and his proffered blade.

“You attacked me!” she shouted, thankfully not with the force of a dragon’s roar.

“No, I didn’t,” Nix said matter-of-factly, waving the katana’s hilt at her slightly.

Luna scowled at him and motioned to the remnants of her black plate mail, most of which had dissolved into a soupy blue mist by this point.

“Oh, that? Never could resist the chance to get a princess out of her clothes, you know.” He winked.

Luna’s eyes shot wide and she sputtered out a cough. That was weird. He wondered how she caught the subtext, considering the horses—ponies, whatever—walked around naked most of the time anyway. The princess’s brain seemed to have hitched up, and she just gaped at him awkwardly. Alright, maybe he had gone a bit too far with the poor mare. Considering recent events, he should probably stop going out of his way to try to alienate the ponies. He was gonna be here for a while.

“I’m just fucking with you, Lu,” he said, and Luna’s paralyzed uncertainty seemed to be replaced with anger. ‘You were?’ Masa asked him with an amused tone, speaking directly to his brain again. ‘Shut up,’ Nix thought back. ‘She’s a damn horse.’ His sword just tittered at him. He refocused on the mare, who was glaring at him with a small pout.

“That wasn’t funny, Nix.”

“I agree. It was hilarious. You should have seen the look on your face.” His eyes glowed mirthfully for a second, then faded. He paused, then continued honestly, “I had to know if you had ever fought another immortal before. To confirm something.”

“And that was?” she said, regarding him suspiciously.

“You’re not responsible for bringing me here. Ergo, I can trust you.” He thought back to her outburst in Ponyville. “Probably.”

“Brought you here? You said you came here with your own power.”

“I did. Same way I went to every other reality. Do you even talk to your sister? I just told her my fears a few days ago, before I got myself banished here.”

“You think something’s pulling your strings?”

He pointed at her. “Bingo. Which is why I’m also gonna have to train you to actually use that armor, just as soon as I have the power to summon my own.”

She gazed at him sternly, finally removing the katana from his tremoring hand. “Ape, I’ve had the use of that armor for longer than you’ve been alive. I assure you, I know how it works.” She gave his sword a longing look before shaking her head. With a small flash of blue light, it vanished.

Nix shook his head and sat down, his back against a jagged black rock, and took out another cigarette. He almost seemed out of breath. He summoned a fireball the size of a marble and lit the tip, then held the levitated orb of red flame. “See this?” Luna rolled her eyes. “This is the largest I can make it with the power I have access to. And it’s dark red.” The alicorn sighed and twirled her hoove exasperatedly, motioning for him to get to the point already. “My flames, particularly those of summoned wing feathers, burn a certain color depending on how strongly I can access my lifeforce. Goes from red, to orange, to yellow, to blue. There’s also white, but that involves something else entirely. I’d summon my wings to show you, but I don’t have the power to even do that. Hell, I can’t even heal my own wounds, and I’d almost gotten to the point where I could do that instantaneously. You, on the other hand, were just wielding enough power to destroy stars.

“And I still stripped you.” He finished with a satisfied smirk, the tip of his smoke dancing gaily in the muted light of the black cave.

He was dancing around the issue, he knew. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but the sudden optimism he felt at encountering Medusa—not a Medusa, the Medusa with the exact same soul as the one from his world—was tempered by sheer terror over what that could mean. He was, as he suspected, being manipulated. Something larger was going on, here, and he intended to find out. But until he did, until he fixed the problem...Hell, he was under no illusions about what that entailed. He was going to find the thing that had been guiding him to all these awful realities, and he was going to kill the everloving shit out of it.

This reality wasn’t like those in the past, for the most part. He actually liked Lu and Tia, even if he’d never admit it to their faces. He knew this world had had its problems, some of which were similar to ones he ‘solved’ in other realities. No matter what he might have told Tia, he was deeply, deeply relieved he didn’t show up here a thousand years in the past. He flicked a glance at Luna, who seemed to be mulling over his words, and allowed a small smile to escape onto his lips. She may be ten thousand years old, a princess, and a damn winged unicorn, but she was a lot like him.

She was a bumbling fool whose brashness got her into too much trouble. And that’s why he needed to train her, and her sister, how to use that armor of theirs and how to guard themselves better. They may be ageless, but they weren’t immortal. And so long as his power remained so pathetically meager, he was incapable of protecting them.

He flicked his cigarette into the shadows and stood on shaking legs. He had used up the trickle of power he felt when he saw Luna barreling through the prison’s entrance, but at least its use had been able to make his point to the princess. He walked slowly up to her, his stumbling arousing her from her mulling. She deserved the truth.

“Lu, I’m sorry for killing, err, everything in your prison.”

“T’wasn’t everything, ape. Only the weakest,” she paused, “but also those most likely to have turned from their ways.”

“She was from my world, Lu,” Nix said, motioning to Medusa’s severed head. Luna paled, trying not to focus on the ragged tears on the head’s throat, on what Nix had done to her. Nix slowly rolled the head behind him with his foot, and gingerly lifted Luna’s chin until she met his gaze again. “She wasn’t a copy, or this dimension’s version of her. Her soul was the same. In a thousand years, I’ve seen no sign of my home, and yet suddenly, here she is, in the very prison I was sent to?”

Luna jerked her head slightly, out of the human’s grasp, and stared at him. “So you’ve decided to stick around a bit longer.” Nix nodded. She sighed and looked away. “I’ll talk to my sister. I believe you may have hurt her feelings when you lied to her.”

“Nah,” Nix said, waving her off. “Your sister’s a bigger ice queen than you are.”

“You might be surprised how off the mark you are, ape.”

“I doubt that. I at least know I’m an idiot, after all.”

“One would hope that was common knowledge, at this point.”

“Hey-” Nix cut himself off and drew his black pistol. The alicorn tensed up, but with a flourish, Nix held the gun out to her handle first. “Here, go play with this a bit. I hear a coupla planets around here could use some accidental pruning. Starting with this one.”

The pony sighed and rolled her eyes, but gave him a small smile. “I have never really been known to possess a temperament as even as my sister’s.”

“That’s okay, us fools have to stick together. Strength in numbers, and if worse comes to worst, we can pool our slack-jawed drooling together and drown the smart ones.”

She snorted with mild amusement, and turned towards the exit. “I shall speak with my elder sister. She will not be happy, but I am certain she will see the reasoning behind your actions. She also must know of your concerns. I will contact you when she agrees to release you from your banishment.”

“No need.”

Luna twisted her head back around to the human, who had holstered his pistol and walked towards the large doors leading deeper into Tartarus. “I have to check out the lower circles to see if there’s any more from my world,” Nix called over his shoulder.

“Cease thy movement immediately, human!” she shouted in a harried tone, teleporting in front of him. “Thou art to remain here until we return! The beings contained within are beyond you in your current state. The fiends in the lowest levels rival even my own power! Thou art- you are not even healed!”

“Meh, I’ll live.” He moved to walk around her but was enveloped in a glowing blue aura and lifted from the ground.

Nix sighed. “Look, Lu, I don’t even have the power to break this spell. Just please put me down. I’m closer to my goal now than I have been in a millennia. I’m not gonna stop.”

Her head whipped towards the entrance for a second before she turned back to face him, her head cocked to the side. “Would you be willing to wait until you have more of your power?”

He shook his head. “Look, I need answers before something bad happens, and my power isn’t cooperating. If I can’t get it back as quickly as I need to, the very least I can do is arm myself with more information.”

“I’m not letting you go, ape,” she said. A cruel smile flashed onto her face. “Oh, dear, I may even feel another spell of violence coming on.”

“Very funny, Lu. Put me do-”

“Yes. Yes! I told you, we’re almost there,” a voice echoed from the entrance to the cave. An incoherent response, a mumble, floated off the walls of the cavern. Nix glanced down at Lu. She hadn’t stopped staring intently at him, but she had dropped the evil smile she had on. Mostly. He could swear the edges of her mouth almost formed a smile. “Of course I know where it is! I told you before that I had to bring Cerberus back here after he got out.” Oh, that was definitely a smile forming on Princess Blue Butt’s face. What was she planning?

Nix suddenly decided that being cooperative was not the best of his ideas. The damn horse princess was royalty, after all. He should have just kept everything to himself. The way he always did.

He hated this world.

Twilight Sparkle rounded a bend and cantered into the room, looking back over her shoulder with a smug grin. “See? I told you I knew the way.” She paused, adding in an annoyed, muted tone, “I should have never told you about Celestia’s letter. How are we even supposed to get him out, anyway?” She turned back and nearly tripped over her own hooves. Halfway across the large room, Luna held Nix several feet off the ground with her magic. The human was a mess of lacerations and bruises. Cerberus sat on his haunches against a further wall, two of its heads watching with boredom, but the center head gawked at the pair with a ludicrous expression of concern painting its features. Her five friends burst from the entrance beside her, Rainbow Dash hovering anxiously and shooting her head around sharply, searching, until she, too, saw the pair.

Finally, the rearguard, the poor mare who had been fooled by the human and had pestered her to lead a rescue mission, barreled through her friends. Rarity loosed a small yelp and grumbled slightly as the light green unicorn barreled past her, almost knocking her off her hooves. The unicorn darted between the rest of them, followed closely by Pinkie Pie as she sang a small limerick about slaloms, before breaking through the front and seeing the Princess of the Night levitating Nix in the air.

She froze, the bright orange curls of her mane jostling at the sudden stop before a thick lock of hair settled over one of her eyes. She pursed her lips and blew it from her vision distractedly, staring at the pair.

“At a time of 3.1 seconds, the winner of the living pony slalom challenge is-” Pinkie collided with Ridge Dancer’s rear, sending both of them tumbling the rest of the way into the room. The jumbled, multicolored mess of mare hair and flailing limbs came to a rest a few yards before Nix and Luna.

Twilight pressed a hoof to her face. She had postponed writing next week’s book-shelving schedule for this?

“Oh my Goshess!” Pinkie squealed loudly, having easily untangled herself from Ridge Dancer, who stumbled to her feet slowly. The pink mare had leveled an accusatory hoof at Luna. “Princess Luna is eating Nix’s soul again!”

The bright green unicorn exploded with shocking speed, charging at the pair.

‘This...isn’t going to end well,’ Nix thought. Dancie stood with her back to him, staring down Luna and clopping one hoof on the cave floor threateningly. Her horn glowed and whirred with a deep green energy, shooting off a shower of bright green sparks that flared and reflected off the glassy black surface around the three. Luna glared down darkly at the lime green pony, her eyes chiselled glaciers. ‘I have to help her.’

“Uh, hey, Lu, what say we just forget-”

“Silence, vile primate!” Luna bellowed in the Royal Canterlot Voice. Ridge Dancer wavered under the force of the blast, but held her ground. “Thy very presence incites treason in the hearts that thou infects! Thou believest we would allow thee thy freedom to spout thy twisted invectives against my sister and I?!”

A cyan blob blurred to Ridge Dancer’s side and grabbed both her shoulders. “Uh, heya, Pri- err, Luna! Long time no see! Ridge Dancer here got, uh, jungle fever from all the...jungle out in the Everfree on the way here. She’s probably half-crazy or feverish or something, eheheheh,” Rainbow Dash said in a scratchy rush. She turned her attention to Dancie and whispered hoarsely, “Are you completely insane?!”

Dancie pushed Rainbow Dash away slowly with one hoof, never breaking away from Luna’s icy stare. “Let him go,” she whispered, her breathy tone a rasping dagger being dragged from its sheath.

“Thou wouldst dare command thine own princess? A Royal Guard would dare stand in the way of our divine Justice?!”

Two of Cerberus’s heads barked with muffled, gleeful thunder, guffawing in the beast’s own way at the tiny mare that dared challenge its master, a goddess. The center head, however, just flicked his eyes to his neighbors and began staring at his feet, abashed. Ridge Dancer whipped her head to the gargantuan beast, her lip curled back in a snarl. Nix saw that her pupils were gone and her eyes glowed with shrieking white light. The two amused heads on the savage dog-monster immediately cut their laughter and gulped, the guardian doing its best to subtly shuffle its tail between its sitting legs without outwardly appearing to do so. Ridge Dancer turned gaze back to Luna. A swirling black mist had begun forming behind Luna as her horn began to glow as well. The expression of malevolence and distaste on the princess’s features were plain.

“Kid-” Nix started.

“Silence!” Lu and Dancie interrupted simultaneously, never breaking each other’s gaze.

‘Dancie, no,’ Nix thought. ‘I’m not worth it.’ He was a godslayer. A killer. He killed beings of untold power, things beyond the ken of mortal understanding. Hell, even he didn’t understand most of it. But he had power, disgusting, beautiful, raging power, twisting realities and entire galaxies to his every whim, laughing in the face of arrogant gods even as he ripped out their eternal souls and tore them to shreds for hurting the beings they were supposed to protect. He wasn’t a protector, he was a killer, he just mostly killed those who deserved it the most. But above all else, he was power. Gods cowered at his feet. He would not—could not—be bowed by force. His current issues and his incomplete mastery of the lifeforce he held notwithstanding, he had truly never encountered another entity possessing the amount of raw force he was capable of.

He hovered a few feet off the ground in a blue haze of magic, helplessly incapable of movement, as a small green unicorn mare who was terrified of crowds and who was scarred by her childhood stared down a pissed off Goddess. She was small, wasn’t she? Funny, how easy it was to skim over the small details. She was smaller than even Sparky. Positively tiny. Her head barely even reached his chest. And she was staring down the fuckin’ Pony Goddess of Death. For him.

Something twisted in his chest. He felt...

“What say you, Ridge Dancer?” Luna spat, dropping her booming voice to a mere shout. “Will you really abandon the kindness shown to you by my sister when she allowed you to join the Royal Guard? Will you really forsake your search for your father, for justice, for this...this hairless ape?”

Ridge Dancer bowed her head, the glow on her horn dimming. She sniffled, shifting her hooves uncertainly. “My father destroyed my life,” she whimpered. She slowly raised her head, meeting Luna’s eyes again. “This hairless ape saved it. Let. Him. Go,” she growled.

Nix felt...

Luna stared down at the small mare, her ageless heart tearing in her breast at the sight of the poor mare leaking tears down her light green cheeks. Ridge Dancer was little better than a Private in the Royal Guard, and that was mostly just a kindness, a bare nicety, that Celestia had shown the orphan she had found wandering the mountains years ago. She willed her features to remain the same, an emotionless mask much like the one her sister was fond of employing. A bit too often employed by her sister, she thought, but useful nonetheless.

Her eyes didn’t twitch in the least when the magical field that she had summoned to hold Nix exploded. Millennia of practice, and no small amount of suffering from physical pain, stilled her hoof as the human severed her threads forcefully. They recoiled back and slammed into her consciousness, a tsunami of pain and psychic force that hammered at her mind as her vision dimmed slightly. She almost blacked out. She remained still, showing nothing. She was going to have an awful headache.

The ape had teleported in front of the mare, blue and white flames dancing all across his form. He glowed. Emanated warmth, not heat. The glow didn’t touch his eyes. No light glowed there, just the light sapphire rings of his own eyes. No brilliant light, she thought, but much more forceful than the flames dancing around his form as he stood, arms wide, in front of Ridge Dancer, protecting her from her ‘angry’ princess. The human really did have a beautiful soul, even if he hardly realized it himself. So long as there were others around him who did, however...

“Hmph, very well.” Luna tossed her head up arrogantly. “You’ve convinced me.”

Nix’s blue flames and Ridge Dancer’s horn immediately winked out, and they shared a confused glance. The white flames still danced across his wounds, the cuts healing much faster. He glanced at the white flames, then at Ridge Dancer, then at Luna, then back at Ridge Dancer. Luna smirked. His raised arms flopped to his sides.

“Oh, this is so stupid. So fucking stupid,” he said with a tone of resignation, glancing between his almost-healed wounds and the lime green unicorn at his side. He looked back at Luna, whose smug grin stretched wide across her face as her eyes squinted shut with glee. He stared for a second.

“Oh, shut up. No one asked you. Bitch.”

“Ape.”

The human snorted, but something flicked behind his eyes. A glow that wasn’t born from the burden of his lifeforce. He grinned and raised his middle finger at her. Was this an expression of joy for humans?

Probably not, but she saw enough honest mirth behind those eyes that she didn’t much mind.

The human turned away from her and patted Ridge Dancer on the head.

“Come on, kid. We have to go.”

The green mare shot her gaze between Luna and the man. “I- I don’t understand.”

Nix rested the back of his head in clasped hands and looked towards the ceiling, letting out an annoyed grumble. “It occurs to me that I might not get my powers back, ever, unless I...make some friends.”

Ridge Dancer stared up at him with a confused look, an expression shared by Twilight and most of her friends. Except for the pink one. Luna could never quite wrap her head around that particular pony, though Celestia assured her that Pinkie Pie was one of their more savvy subjects. At least, Celestia thought she was. She never said for certain. Nix waited for a few seconds before glancing down at the mare at his side.

“We’re going back to Ponyville. I have a few apologies I have to make.” His eyes flitted to the six brightly colored ponies at the entrance to the prison. “And also, plans.” He swatted Ridge Dancer’s shoulder. “Come on, we’ve got things to do.”

“I don’t believe my sister ever released you from your banishment, Nix.” Luna said simply. She dearly wished she had one of her sister’s tea cups to sip on at the moment. Ten thousand years, and she still hadn’t figured out where Tia was hiding them to summon at a moment’s notice.

“Yeah, but if you leave me here I may get bored and kill your guardian.” Two of Cerberus’s heads let out threatening growls. Nix cupped his hands around his mouth and whispered loudly, “No, I wouldn’t. Center head is awesome.” The beast’s growls subsided and the central head panted with a stupid grin on its face. If Luna remembered training the three-headed pup correctly, centuries ago, the center head was the dullest of the trio. She liked it best, anyway.

“Hmph, very well. I’ll have my sister deal with your transgressions, again, at her earliest possible convenience.”

“Yay, no consequences for being banished at all! It’s like I’m all-powerful again without actually having the power!” Luna rolled her eyes as the human and Ridge Dancer approached the shell-shocked Elements of Harmony, who, for the most part, had viewed the entire exchange with quite a bit of confused shock. Except for Pinkie, of course.

“Private Ridge Dancer,” Luna said sternly. She noticed Nix tense up immediately and the fiery-maned guardpony began to tremble. “You were an admirable example of the friendship of magic, today.” Both seemed to calm. “But we’ll still need to have a talk about the lifeforce manipulation magic you used to conceal your presence as you approached.”

Twilight’s mouth gaped. “I knew it!”

Ridge Dancer merely bowed her head. “Yes, Luna,” she said quietly.

“Uh, right. So, we goin’? Wait...wait!” Nix turned back and walked up to the alicorn. “Why walk back when you can just teleport my lazy ass?”

Between concealing her splitting headache and the insufferability of the human, her eyes were beginning to ache with the amount they had been rolling.

“Please?” The human put on a fake pout and widened his eyes. He really was quite ugly, when she chose to dwell on their physical differences. She rarely did. Still, he was annoying. The human spread his arms wide.

“I’ll even give you a hu-”

Luna teleported him immediately.

Nix flashed into existence in a dark, musty room, feeling like his intestines had been frozen. At least when he quantum transmuted himself, it didn’t feel like he had done a three year stint in a running microwave.

He quickly scanned his surroundings. No demons, evil gods, or all around nasty things to kill. Which was good. He only had a steady stream of power feeding into him. He’d need an ocean of the stuff to deal with gods. This was just a bar, anyway. There was a pony behind the main counter, lazily polishing a gleaming pint glass, and a few other equine patrons sat in darkened booths at the edges of the bar’s dim light, engaged in hushed conversation.

Well, at least Lu had the presence of mind to send him straight to some booze. He walked lithely from the entrance towards the counter. He really did like the princess, even though he was convinced she was batshit crazy. He shuddered as he remembered just how hard he had hit the ground in Ponyville as she bounced him effortlessly through the town. Nothing a quick drink wouldn’t fix, though.

He plopped down on a stool. The bartender pony didn’t look up. “What’ll it be?” he said, his deep voice rumbling boredly.

“What’s on tap? I could really go for something-”

Nix exploded off his stool, knocking it to the side. His eyes flicked wildly through the room. Something wasn’t right. He reached slowly for his pistols.

The bartender stopped his compulsive polishing of the single pint glass, and his gaze crept up to the human’s.

“I wouldn’t. Not the place for it.”

Nix glared back at him and abandoned all pretext of subtlety as he whipped his twin pistols out. The bartender continued staring dully, one of his eyes matched to a silver gun, the other to a matte black barrel.

“Where am I?” Nix growled.

He couldn’t feel the worldstream of Equestria at all.

Author's Notes:

I know, it's been a while since I updated. I also know that it's only 9k words. Personal circumstances made writing the story...difficult. And I still have to go through and make the earlier chapters suck less. Yeah, I'll, uh, get around to that.

But writing newer chapters will always take precedence.

I think I made up for it with this chapter. Stuff happens, and stuff! Even if it only takes place in a single room! Huzzah, learning to write stories!

Right. You won't have to wait a month for the next update. I doubt you'll even have to wait a week. We'll see how many fucking beehives crawl out of my ceiling and assault me as I screech like a little girl.

Special thanks to Akumo- akuma- aku- mo-ma-getsome. Yeah, Akumomagetsome for letting me borrow his bar, The Eight Bits, for the end of this chapter and the first halfish of the next.