’Wait, I wake up from being knocked unconscious and I’m not in severe amounts of pain?’ Clearly a trap.

Nix sensed a mellow warmth blooming across his face, and heard the melodious chirrup of songbirds all around him. He could feel a gentle breeze sighing contentedly across his skin as he lay on the ground on something that was amazingly soft. ’Never has something ever existed that wasn't such an obvious trap. Maybe I should just pretend to be unconscious and hope they forget to spring it...’ Peeking through cracked eyelids, certain his vision would be subsumed by a gigantic chunk of marble hurtling towards his handsome, handsome face, he was met instead with a brilliant blue sky. Gossamer white clouds hung almost motionlessly in a carefree scatter across the cerulean tapestry of the buoyant afternoon sky. The sun beamed down cheerfully above him, extending welcoming rays of light that didn’t hurt his eyes even as he stared directly into the burning celestial body. Instead of a wincing pain in his optic nerves, he rather felt a firm reproach reminding him that looking at the sun was bad for him, as if his senses were kindly asking him to direct his gaze elsewhere instead of sending screaming alarm signals to his brain demanding he instinctually focus on anything but the fiery ball of fusion-y death in the sky.

’Well, this is...nice,’ he thought with a small frown.

He had come to atop a cozy bed of blue flowers that seemed to glow delicately with an ethereal azure light, in the center of a meadow crowned by lavish trees with broad, verdant leaves exploding from every branch. Except where the sun’s warmth directly caressed his skin, the temperature outside was perfect, for lack of a better word. It was like that rare twilight in spring or summer, once or twice a year, that felt neither warm nor cool but rather matched the perfect equilibrium of temperature between a person and the waning hours of the day. Even the breeze seemed flawlessly paired to the irreproachably temperate clime as it ticklishly ruffled the short-cropped blonde hair on the back of his neck.

White streaks of light shimmered down upon the ground around him as a leisurely floating cloud engaged in a lazy dance with the benevolent sun overhead. As he slowly sat up, a flurry of white butterflies erupted from the flowers around him, catching one of the radiant waves thrown off the waltz between the sun and the cloud as it illumined them into a brilliant sparkle of bobbing, gleaming fae in the quiet afternoon light. One briefly alit on his nose, tickling it a bit, before it fluttered after its brethren. And all around him, the meadow and the sparse woods seemed alight in song; hundreds of songbirds cried joyously in rapt contentment. If he singled out a particular bird’s gleeful chirping, its singular melody ached with an innocent beauty and an unchained soul that reverberated to to the very core of his being, but all the birds singing at once in a celestial orchestra of mirthful elegance, amidst the astonishing beauty of his surroundings, made his heart clench in his chest and his throat tighten in disbelieving sorrow. It was so perfect. Too perfect, and he at once wanted to reach out to it and recoil from it to protect it from his impure touch.

’Did I...did I really die? For real, this time? Is this heaven?’ he wondered to himself. He had died a lot of times in the past. Sometimes there was a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it, sometimes he floated over his own corpse as an astral projection, and other times still he felt his consciousness waning as angelic whispers gently shredded his very concept of individuality as he slowly melded with an infinite number of voices that all cried out in welcome even as he lost himself. Every time, however, he felt those same glorious, destructive burning talons at the base of his soul, dragging him back and replacing him in his tired mortal coil.

However, he had just taken the glancing blow of a blast that he knew should shatter an entire planet. It was an attack he would normally laugh at, coughing up some blood in the process before healing, but between his waning power, and the fact that the energy from the shot was mostly his own, he began to hope he had been freed from his Sisyphean travels even as he regretted not making it back to the family he was forced to abandon centuries ago. After all, he had never tried shooting himself with...himself. Maybe that caused some sort paradoxical short-circuit with the lifeforce that sustained him? Even considering that jumping dimensions left him with but an infinitesimal fraction of an entire Universe’s lifeforce, he had never really understood the intricacies behind his powers. It was always possible...

’Nah,’ he concluded cynically. 'This is just an illusion. Any second now, some catastrophe is going to hit this place, and an army of frightened townsfolk will emerge from the trees screaming for help and I’ll have to use the last of my cosmic lifeforce to save them before I’m booted rudely from this world into the next one, before I can even buy a safety helmet for the trip. Any second now. Demonic rift opening in the ground, wilting the flowers and setting the pretty butterflies on fire in 3...2...1...’

The idyllic existence about him continued without the interruption of evil forces.

’Okaaaay. So this is Actual Heaven? How in the Hell did I manage to make it here? And what in Monad’s name am I supposed to do now? Frolick about like a damn Disney character?’

He surveyed his surroundings, finding no one. ’Got nothing better to do...’ He began to skip aimlessly through the flowery field, his newly restored, charcoal-toned duster flowing behind him gaily as he pranced. “This is so stupid it hurts.” He was distracted by a sharp gasp, and his foot got caught in a particularly thick tangle of the glowing blue flowers. After kindly introducing his face to the soil, which again brought no pain but merely a chiding niggling in the back of his brain, he turned towards the sound. A small, dark blue alicorn stood at the treeline, staring at him.

“Oh, goddammit. You motherfucking horses followed me to the afterlife!” Nix started to seriously consider whether this was actually Actual Heaven, or if he was in Actual Hell. He also wondered if he could destroy both like he did Fake Heaven and Fake Hell a long time ago. An overreaction? This place had made him prance, it must pay for its sins against his ego. His thoughts were interrupted by the blue alicorn cantering into the center of the field, passing straight through him and causing his form to shiver. She acted as though she didn’t see him.

“Yeah, that’s weird, don’t do that,” he warned the small pony. She ignored him, her head continuing its confused swivels about the meadow.

’Odd. ‘Twas a queer presence emanating from this place ere I arrived. Methinks I’m too far removed from my sister to think evenly.’ The feminine voice lilted through his thoughts.

“Oh, God, stay the fuck out of my brain. You goddamn horses have kicked my ass six ways from Sunday since I got here, and you are not gonna start in on the mindrape now.” The blue unicorn continued to ignore him, scanning the field of blue flowers one last time before turning to leave.

“Helloooo? Nix to unicorn-thingy? Do you read me?” He tried summoning a fireball to grab her attention, but reaching for his lifeforce, he felt...nothing. ’Oh, right, dead means no lifeforce.’ She passed through him again, causing his form to shimmer. “Oh, goddammit, so annoying- wait...I’m a ghost?” He grinned evilly. “I’m going to haunt the crap out of these God-forsaken ponies.”

He began skipping after the blue alicorn. “Get back here, I can’t frolick fast enough!” ’First thing’s first, I’m gonna have to learn how to levitate vegetables. And then, the nightmares will never en-’

The world around him twisted and he was suddenly in a completely different area. His foot caught mid-leap on a downed tree and he flipped forward onto his face. ’Even the ground tastes good. Huh.’

“Sister, dost thou believest our parents will return today?” Nix whipped his head around and found the blue alicorn perched on the log that just assaulted him, sitting next to a white alicorn with pink hair. ’Wait just a goddamn second...that’s-!’

“Mayhaps, Luna, mayhaps not. ‘Tis better to enjoy the harvest of a day’s joys than to worry thyself without need,” the white alicorn replied. The blue alicorn bowed her head sadly.

“As thee wishes, Tia.”

“Tia, you get me the fuck out of this illusion right now! I know I blew up part of your castle, but you have no fuckin’ right!” The white alicorn smiled softly and closed her eyes, enjoying the light breeze as it made her pink mane dance slightly. “Lu, this isn’t funny. I was a long ways from liking you guys before I blew my arm off trying to save your stupid ass, and you screwing with my head isn’t helping matters.” The blue alicorn merely kept her head bowed, her mouth pouting in thoughtful ponderance. “Jesus H.-” he interrupted himself, shuddering slightly. “Goddammit all.” He tried smacking Celestia but his hand passed through her, wavering slightly. He was about to try kicking her off her wooden perch before the world twisted and warped again.

He was standing at the edge of the idyllic forest, before a gigantic wall of swirling blue mist that seemed to extend infinitely into the blue sky.

“Lulu, thou mustn’t!” He turned to see Tia at the treeline, a horrified look on her face. Child-Lu was a few paces to his left, staring curiously at the wall. “Father forbade us from traversing beyond the grove!”

“We tire of waiting, Tia. Our parents are out there. Wouldst they not desire our company as much as we desire theirs?” the blue alicorn uttered blankly, her mind elsewhere. She gingerly reached out a hoof to the swirling blue mist, and Nix’s world tumbled violently as he was assaulted by a billion sights, scents, sounds, and sensations all at once. He steeled himself against the onslaught, but insodoing the rush of unmitigated sensory data seized upon his brain with increasing hunger, shattering his hardened mental shell and driving deeply into his mind.

The clockwork harmony of the grove shattering. The sun beginning its descent from the heavens, and Celestia using her magic to hold it up in the sky in a panic. The breaking of the Grove’s harmonic magic, resulting in the formation of thousands of confused ponies, each one similar to the two sisters but ultimately flawed copies; some with unicorn horns, others with pegasii wings, others still without either. Celestia discovering pain for the first time. Luna first feeling the full brunt of sorrow from the absence of their parents. Celestia collapsing after months of holding the sun up, sending the world into darkness and the ponies into a terror. Luna scrambling to raise it for them, and forming the moon from the soil of the earth instead.

Nix grabbed the back of his head and buried his face into his forearms as he hunched over, gasping deeply. ’What the fucking fuck?!’ The imagery stuttered to a sudden standstill, and lifting his head, he found himself next to a slightly larger Lu, who was sitting and gazing at a bonfire in the distance. It was nighttime, and her moon bathed the landscape in a pleasant blue glow; however, Nix noted that the sky was without a single star. Tia danced with reckless passion about the pyre, surrounded by a throng of laughing ponies who joined along in her reveries. Luna merely smiled to herself, content to observe her sister’s happiness. She knew her sister had felt enchained by the sudden responsibility to keep the world bathed in light after she herself had disrupted the harmony that maintained it, and being able remove the yokes from her shoulders for half the day had restored to her a certain amount of vigor and joy. Tia had taken immediately to the multitude of strange ponies that had been born by Lu’s shortsighted actions.

Her sister trotted up to her. “Dost thou desirest to join in our reveries, Lulu?” Her coat had a thin sheen of sweat and she flashed a bright, open-mouthed smile. The tips of her pink mane had gained a multicolored hue to them.

Luna smiled subtly. “Nay, sister. Warmth aplenty alights in our bosom for thy renewed vigor and the love thee feels for our new brethren.”

“Dost thou possess no such love, Lulu?” Celestia asked, her brow furrowed in concern.

Luna considered the question carefully. “Remind us though they do of our mistake in disrupting the Grove fashioned for us by Father and Mother, we remain fond of them. ‘Tis just...” she paused, “we find their energy tiring. It pleases us to see joy on their faces from afar, however.”

“So?” Tia cocked an eyebrow, the tips of her mane seeming to suddenly vibrate in anticipation.

“Providing them a light in the darkness brings us greater warmth than thine’s capers about the fire, Sister. Never doubt this.”

Tia smiled and nuzzled Luna affectionately. “And our expression of affection to our little ponies need not require a bath to cleanse the odor of physical exertion,” Luna muttered dryly. Tia nudged her sister with her hoof playfully and retorted, “At the very least, our new friends have inspired thy humor.”

“Oh, yeah, she’s a veritable damn fount of hilarity. About as funny as whatever the Hell you two are doing to me right now,” Nix muttered cynically to no one in particular. Not like they could hear him anyway. Celestia smiled and turned back to the fire as Nix’s world turned violently along with her, sending him hurtling again through a cataract of memories.

The barrage stopped as a scream pierced his ears and the stream halted, plopping him outside of a simple canvas tent. Lu, almost her full size, now, rushed past him and into the open flaps.

“Calm down. It was Colonel Mustard with the wrench in the library!” he shouted after her. He looked around, and seeing nothing of interest going on outside, he sighed and phased through the tent flaps. Celestia held the prone form of a light grey pony in her arms, her face twisted in terror and confusion, as Luna stared dumbly at the scene. Nix waltzed up, prodded the still pony with a shimmering finger that never made contact, and swung his gaze soberly to the two alicorns in the room. “He’s dead, Jim.”

“Mist Floater. Mist Floater! Wake up! We know of thy exclamations of intense fatigue, but thou must awaken!” Celestia’s voice pleaded. Nix found her exclamations odd; she didn’t really seem like the yelling type. Celestia turned her head to her sister. “Luna, why won’t he wake up? We still feel the magic within him.”

Luna approached her sister and the motionless pony, her horn glowing as a blue light passed over Mist Floater’s body. ’Odd. His body teems with the magic of harmony, yet he moves not.’

“Sister, his magic binds to him still, yet his vessel appears...broken.”

Celestia’s eyes searched Luna’s hopefully. “Then we can fix him, yes? Our magic was repelled when we tried our healing. ‘Twas as though some sort of chaos muddled the ebb and flow of our healing weave.”

Luna recoiled slightly as her own attempts to heal the grey unicorn’s body dissolved and snapped back wildly. “Nay, sister. ‘Tis but one course left to us.” Rather than attempting to fix the vessel, Luna instead began severing the connections of Mist Floater’s magic to said vessel. As she tried snipping the final cord, it instead snapped of its own volition, causing her magic to recoil as she shielded her face with one hoof. A brilliant light erupted from the room. As the light faded, an ethereal form resembling the grey unicorn floated above his old body, smiling happily. He regarded both of the alicorns with a contented gaze before floating towards the exit.

“Wait! Mist Floater, where art thou going?!” Tia chased after him, Luna following cautiously. Outside the tent, he turned and again regarded the two sisters.

“Celestia,” he said with a silken voice, “we have danced many a night away into the early hours of the morn, have we not?”

“Yes, Mist. And I hope thee will dance a great many more nights with me.”

The apparition shook his head sadly. “Nay. Though our interactions were the wellspring of so much joy, I both fear and rejoice that I may and must dance with another, now.” He turned towards Luna. “The steps you take are a quite different dance than I am used to, and though I may falter I hope you find the experience as amazing as I know I will.” Luna’s brow furrowed in confusion, before Mist Floater shot skyward, emanating a brilliant light. The searing luminescence of his soul’s magic finally came to rest a few degrees from her moon in the night sky, twinkling mirthfully as Equestria’s first star.

“But...Mist Floater...” Celestia uttered mutely.

Luna's mouth gaped with a sudden realization. She wrapped one wing over her sister comfortingly. “His vessel having reached its limits, he chose to share his light with all our ponies rather than remain bound to this world. Wouldst thee abuse thy friend a congratulatory smile on his final arrival after such a long journey?”

Celestia’s eyes welled up and shimmered in the moonlight as she regarded the mote of light in the deep purple night sky. She turned to her sister.

“We know he’ll cherish thy company every bit as much as we ourselves have, Luna.”

Luna smiled. “Aye, dear Sister. Though thou might have to accustom thyself to such affections from afar.” Celestia met Luna’s grin with a sad smile of her own. “Aye, sister, we suppose we might.”

Nix remained silent, pondering the birth of the first star in the night sky.

Nix shuddered violently as he curled into the fetal position on the ground. The memories gnawed at him, seeking out every crevasse of sanity that cracked his mind and invading violently. Upon gaining purchase, they expanded explosively and pierced his meager attempts to maintain some semblance of reason. They temporarily halted their assault, but he didn’t care. He remained curled on the ground, muttering quietly to himself. Thousands of years scored his psyche deeply, punctuated by the most recent horrors of the slaver Sombra and the twisted, violent machinations of Discord. Through a fearfully lidded eye, he shot a glance to the night sky and saw it populated with an impossible numbers of stars. ’So many dead...’ the thought died even as it formed, instead replaced with the nagging voices of two princesses.

“Sister, thou desirest both communion with those that have passed, and our own vested involvement with those still in our midst. We believe this spell might provide both of us our due.” Luna had pleaded with Celestia for the last few weeks, and her sister finally seemed on the verge of acceding. Too many of their close friends had perished in their attempts to restore harmony in the last few years—most of them in the creation of the Elements of Harmony—and their benevolent glow as the newest celestial bodies in the night sky had not escaped the white alicorn’s notice.

“Very well, Luna. If thou believest this the best course of action, we trust thy judgment. We hope this ‘Soulmeld’ spell works as thee intends.” Celestia seemed very tired at this point.

Luna merely nodded excitedly. “Indeed it shall, Tia! ‘Twas a masterwork of Starswirl himself before-” she cut herself off even before she noted her sister’s drooping features and tearing eyes. “‘Twas what he would have wished,” Luna finished in a subdued tone. She charged her horn.

’Can’t block it out. To many images. Just make it stop. Just let it pass. Let it flow...flow...’ Nix ceased his attempts to resist the flow of memories and abandoned himself in their current. The assault on his mind ceased almost immediately. ’Huh...’ he thought, pleasantly surprised, ‘had I known not giving a fuck would have worked this entire time-’

A vivid memory impacted with the pleased waves of his relief and dragged him into another experience.

’-oh for fuck’s sake!’

Celestia stood with a look of horror and despair on her face, an entire city burning behind her. Nix could still hear the wails of ponies in the distance as the city burned; he wondered how many were mourning the loss of loved ones in the blaze, and how many were the cries of anguish from those directly caught in its devastating path.

“Luna...LUNA! HOW COULD YOU?!” Celestia screamed, fury tainting her normally regal voice.

Her rage was met with cruel laughter. “Luna? Luna died the second she tasted the adulation of your little ponies, dear sister,” a voice spat cruelly. Nix turned his attention to the harsh voice, seeing it belonged to a large black alicorn with a flowing blue mane that screamed in similarities to Lu's own hair, though the stars that flitted between its flowing emanations seemed...dim, synthetic.

“For 9,000 years, the poor girl slaved away in your shadow, never realizing just how much those vile little ponies adored you. Well, the gig is up, Celestia. I shall make them adore me with all the love you’ve stolen from me over millennia. I shall make them love my night as much as they pine for your warm days. They shall join with the stars as I bring them to their end and free them from the shackles of their limited existence on this flawed plane. I shall bring them night eternal; I am Death Incarnate. I am Nightmare Moon!”

Nix held a hand to his forehead. “Jesus, could you be any more fucking melodramatic?” He stumbled forward, attempting to balance himself against the flank of the evil megalomaniac before his hand sailed harmlessly through her and he found himself balancing his face against the scorched earth of his surroundings. “Guys, this shit is getting really old,” he muttered, puffs of blackened earth shooting about as he wheezed the words out.

“Perhaps it is thee who need be reminded of the plight of thine own stars, Sister,” Celestia replied quietly, her gaze blank as she tried to maintain her composure.

“Hah! I am the Night itself,” Nightmare Moon bragged, cantering forward towards her defeated sibling. “As if I would need to be reacquainted with-”

Prismatic arcs of lightning and fire shot forth from the rubble around the two princesses as a small thunderclap shattered the evil alicorn’s monologue. The Elements of Harmony floated in the air, summoned from their hiding places in the rubble and surrounding the two princesses. They hummed and whirred, seemingly incapable of fully containing their unbelievable power.

Celestia brought her gaze up to meet that of the twisted being that was once her sister. “Goodbye, Luna,” she whispered, barely audible, before the Elements shot forth with blinding light, impacting against Nightmare Moon with immense force. A brilliant pillar of light erupted where she stood, connecting with her moon.

“No! NOOOOO!” she screamed as her form dissolved into condensed shadow and rocketed towards her beloved night sky. Nix felt himself being dragged along with her. “Wait! I don’t want to go with Miss Monologue-” His world whirled and he braced himself for the incursion of more unwelcome memories.

Loneliness. That was all Nix could feel. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel. His entire world was one black seed that blared aloneness, separation from others. He found it comforting. ’Ah, solitude, my old friend,’ he thought wistfully.

After his run-in with Merlin, he had tried to involve himself more deeply in the realities he visited, had tried making friends. Those friends perished because he failed to save them, or even worse, survived long enough to stare at him with sorrowful eyes as he was forced to leave their world forever. He hated that look, those sad eyes. They reminded him too much of the look Sarah gave him every time she stood up to their father for him. He had sworn that he would save her, and himself, from that look, and-

-and what? He mentally sighed. Instead of the memory he was looking for, he instead received a memory about Ayla and her mother. They were the first people Nix had tried to befriend after he left Merlin behind, and he didn’t want to remember that. He banished the thought and basked in the isolation of this present memory. After about nine millennia of this accursed slideshow, he certain he was seeing all of Luna’s life. It started out nice enough, but the last 2000 years or so had been awful for her. He honestly felt more than a little sympathy for her, and was actually a bit glad that he hadn’t appeared this reality’s timeline a thousand years ago; she had been turned into the very sort of defiled god that had plagued numerous realities his own past.

And he had killed every last one. He wondered how many of them had been corrupted from innocence as she had...and if they could have been saved instead of slain. His thoughts quieted as they were replaced by the seed of loneliness that was Luna’s prison, and he let the memory of her time there flow past him. Overlapping runes of light and dark began forming at the edges of his mind as the spell came to an end, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

Nix sat on the floor of a white room that seemed to expand infinitely into the distance. Lu was seated a few yards away on lustrous, red-cushioned couch. Swinging his head around, and seeing the vast expanse of nothing he shared with the princess of the night, he shrugged.

“Tank, we’re gonna need guns. Lots of guns.” Nothing happened. Nix frowned in disappointment, but Lu merely raised a questioning eyebrow. He noticed her reaction immediately, and cocked his head to the side. She matched the motion, a small grin forming on her face.

“Oh, so you can hear me now.” She nodded. “Mind explaining to me why I just got assaulted by 10,000 years of your awful life?”

“Our thoughts traveled a similar path to thine own. ‘Twas an incomplete Soulmeld spell, but one nonetheless. We would know thy reasoning for casting it. What say you?”

“Uh, Soulmeld?” Nix responded dumbly

Luna nodded, replying, “Aye, ‘tis an old spell, one that intermixes the experiences of two souls into one. What thou just experienced was incomplete, however. Experiencing the life of another without an actual melding of souls.

Nix thought back. He had been able to expel most of Lu’s lifeforce from his gun, Umbra, before it discharged, but not all of it. “I’m assuming it has something to do with you toying around with my weapon,” he postulated, sending a quick glare her way and causing her to frown slightly, “since it uses one’s lifeforce, or their soul, as an attack. I wasn’t able to completely expel your soul from the gun before it discharged. Honestly, that’s my best guess. I’ve never fired it with more than just my own lifeforce, and when others tried it generally ripped out their souls and they died.”

“Yes, that much we do remember. Ayla, her name was?”

He scowled at her. “Just leave it alone.”

“Very well,” she said carefully. “Though we are interested in how thee maintained thy sanity. An onslaught of ten millennia could very well have shattered your mind.”

“I’m a thousand years old. Do I act like it?”

“Thy behavior is more akin to a child than one with such years.”

“Well, let’s just say that the same force that keeps me alive physically also regenerates mental scars. Psychologically, I’m effectively the same as I was when I was 27, not 1000ish years old.”

“We don’t recall thy behavior as quite so insufferable in thine own memories.”

He paused, eyeing her warily. “You know, the thought of you knowing all my memories when I can’t, not in their entirety, is pretty damn perturbing. But if you must know, my psyche might be the same, but I’m not suddenly bereft of what’s happening around me or what has happened to me. My situation is ludicrous and insane, and I tend to fight fire with fire. Ya’ know, since I’m Phoenix and all. And just because I haven’t become all sagely and wise doesn’t mean I don’t remember the ride, even if I get confused now and then. I still have a thousand years of battle experience, for example, which means I’m a lot better at wielding my armament than most. Or rather, I was, before you and your sister stole my weapons and then you tried blowing up your small little world with one of them.”

Her eyes leveled with his as they wavered with seriousness. “We know that thou dost not require thy weapons to lay waste to large swaths of creation. But that’s not you, is it, Sean?”

He clenched his jaw. “Sean died a long time ago,” he growled, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. “If you’ve seen my memories, you know full well why.”

“...Nix, ‘tis been a millennium. Dost thou truly believe thy family yet lives?”

“Of course. It’s been a thousand years, relative to me. Think back. I’ve revisited one reality once, mostly because of Merlin’s meddling, but I appeared a couple weeks after I had previously left. But, it had been 30 years since I originally left the place. I make it back to my world, I pop in not too long after I was forced to leave. Easy-peasy. Honestly, you just sat through an encore of my entire life, you should know how things play out...including why you should never call me ‘Sean’ again,” he finished darkly.

Luna hopped off the bed and paced towards him, meeting his gaze a few feet away. “‘Tis true. We know why. But do you?”

His gaze blanked over and he frowned. It was quickly replaced with a grin. “Nope! But instead I just remembered this one time that a fire demon was haranguing some village, and all the villagers were running around, screaming, all terrified and shit. Honestly, the demon, I think they called it a ‘Balrog’, he was a small fry compared to what I normally go up against, so I figured I’d have a little fun. Instead of killing him outright, I began sending lightning bolts through his limbs, causing him to twitch all over the place. Eventually I was able to target his nerves well enough that he just began dancing around in the town square. So here this village was, in the throes of fear over some bloodthirsty demon, and then all the sudden he broke into a happy jig in the center of their town. He could cut a rug better than most I’ve seen in hundreds of realities.

“The townspeople were still terrified, but then a young girl with blonde hair, a lot like mine, pointed at him and started laughing. All the people in that town soon caught on to how crazy the whole situation was, and it wasn’t long before they were all on the ground, tears in their eyes as they died with laughter at the waltzing demon. His expression was priceless, really. Equal parts confusion and pleading that someone, anyone, would save him from his graceful dance. And then I dismembered him.”

Luna frowned. “That’s not...not how things played out, Sean-”

“Nix,” he interrupted, shooting the princess a dangerous glare.

“-yes, Nix. The townspeople were all dead, and the Balrog stomped atop a small girl that reminded thee of thy little sister-”

“-stop-”

“-amidst its rampage, and thine hours that day were spent torturing the demon-”

“-please, Lu, stop-”

“-before thee tore off its limbs and bludgeoned it to death with them.”

“You think I don’t know that?!” he shouted furiously. “You think I don’t remember every single one of the fucking blank stares on the faces of those villagers’ bodies? That I don’t remember the scorched corpses of mothers hugging their dead children as they tried to protect them? That I don’t remember how much I hated myself that some lesser fucking demon I could kill with a snap of my fingers just slaughtered an entire town and I was too late to do anything about it?”

“‘Twas beyond your control-”

“NO IT WAS NOT!” he raged. “I HAVE THE POWER TO END UNIVERSES, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SAVE A GODDAMN TOWN OF SCARED VILLAGERS, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SAVE CORRUPTED GODS INSTEAD OF WIPING THEM OUT MINDLESSLY, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO RETURN HOME AND HUG MY FUCKING SISTERS AND HAVE A BEER WITH MY BEST FRIEND. I SHOULD-” Luna approached him cautiously. “-but I don’t,” he finished with a hoarse whisper.

She draped her wing over him, drawing him close. He shoved her away roughly.

“Nix-”

“Get your fucking wing off me, you goddamn monster, and just end this ‘Soulmeld’ bullshit already. It’s bad enough you nearly destroyed your own fucking world, again, without you dredging up things that you know nothing about,” he hissed.

“We possess all the knowledge thee does,” she whispered quietly, “and mayhaps a bit more.”

Nix slapped her, before jerking his hand back and staring at it, dumbfounded. “I- I-” She merely kept her head bowed from the sudden blow for a few seconds, before looking up at him with sad eyes.

“I...hate that look.” He bowed his head in shame. “I’m sorry.” She merely gazed silently at him, the look remaining. “If it weren’t for the fact that my sisters and my best friend were waiting for me, I don’t know what I’d do. I force myself through it all, and try to put on a grin because I still want to be Jessi’s big brother, and I still want to never see that look,” he pointed at her, “on Sarah’s face again. Or any other face. And I still wanna be able to laugh with Mike.” He paused. “And I know you know what it’s like. I know about your stars, and the four that took pity on your plight and freed you. ‘Soulmeld’ with your sister may have changed your nature, but even before, when you still kept your distance from your ponies, those four still managed to inveigle themselves into your life. You were saved from your loneliness and your corruption by those four souls.

“My...’three stars’, my family, are worlds away. But they save me every day, every day! And one day, I will get back to them,” he finished, meeting her gaze once again. Luna’s eyes glistened. Her melancholy had deepened the longer he spoke.

’God, I hate that look. I would do anything to never see it again. Anything.’ He threw his arms around her neck, noting with satisfaction that the pain in her eyes was replaced with surprise. Mission accomplished. He just had to hug a damn horse to get it done. Her memories still flitted across his consciousness.

“You know,” Nix felt a hoof on his back, matching his embrace, “they always did love your night sky, and they never stopped adoring you.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “We’ve known that from the start.”

“Excellent!” he exclaimed suddenly, pushing her away from him and melodramatically motioning to the spotless white pocket dimension around him. “This place is a mess, how do I leave? Also, I still hate you and your bulimic sister. Although thank you for not crushing me to death with your blaring voice. You’d think a thousand years of silence would have taught you a thing or two.” He wore a manic grin better than most ponies she had known in her ten millennia.

She scowled. “Thy ignorance ‘tis every bit as grating as thy impropriety. The spell hath ended days ago. Thou art dreaming, we merely paid thee a visit through them Thou shalt awaken within the hour, but first we must inform our sister of thy impending consciousness.”

“Good, good, I imagine she’ll need a bath after you dredge her up from her vat of frosting before appearing in public. And the sooner I wake up the sooner I can get my powers back, and continue on home to Sarah, Jacey, and Mike.”

“Jessi,” Luna corrected.

“I hate you, leave now,” he waved her off, hiding a grin.

The white room faded as Luna came to in her royal chambers, the glass of her balcony doors still unreplaced since the blast had shattered them. Levitating them open, she stepped out into the cool night air and gazed upon her sky. Her sky, and the sky of everypony that had every lived. She took particular note of four stars that seemed to be shining with unnatural brightness, and smiled sadly to herself, remembering her old friends.

Her smile faded, and a somber look fell across her face as her horn began to glow. In one far corner of the night sky, three stars winked into existence. One shone with a subdued but constant light, its softness betraying its quiet strength. Another gleamed gleefully with humorous vigour, as though it possessed a mischievous smile. The last twinkled regularly with a mellow light, its yellow tone closely matching the mane of a certain vile alien.

She gazed mournfully at the three stars before she sighed and returned to her room. The stars glittered gleefully at their new brethren, and all shone down upon Equestria with their exuberant light.