The Sun rose.

As the first rays of dawn filtered across Equestria, probing into the dying night, they cast long, weird shadows that flickered and leapt in uncouth ways. Who should fear this, though? Every morning as the Sun rose higher in the sky, asserting its dominance, the spindly shadows always shortened, assuming their proper, everyday proportions and shedding the eerie mantle they had worn in the morning twilight. They never lingered, always fading harmlessly away before they could become aware of themselves and their power. That was the way of things. It had always been the way of things.

No longer.

Gangling things that had once been rabbits tottered up on stilt-like legs, their tiny bodies swaying two yards above the ground. The long, clawing shadows of trees detached themselves at the roots and went swimming away across the fields like two-dimensional hydra, snatching with their tentacle-branches at the smaller, darting shadows of shrubs flowing through the grass in huddled little shoals. One or two bushes had uprooted themselves and were crawling and flopping across the ground after their errant shadows, pulling themselves along with their branches, but most seemed limited to flailing ineffectually whenever one of the escaped shades happened to glide within reach.

In her stone-walled dungeon of a laboratory, the Dark Lord Sassaflash shooed a scuttling alembic away from the spidery sigils she was chalking on the floor, sending it scurrying off into the shadows under the great brass-bellied cauldron in the corner. After scratching a few more runes on the worn stones, she spat the piece of chalk out and, raising her head, called, “Mr. Mule? Were you able to locate the raskovnik?”

“Yep,” came the hollow, muffled answer from somewhere overhead. There was a sound of rattling wheels on the winding stone spiral stairs that led down into the laboratory, and not long afterward the Mule appeared, sliding his wheelcart carefully down and trying not to wince as the wheels bumped from one step to the next. “She—I mean, you—ain’t woke up yet?”

Sassaflash glanced to one side, where a blonde pegasus lay unconscious on the hard stone cobbles of the dungeon, her turquoise coat a dirty green in the flickering torchlight of the wall sconces. She shook her head. “No, I am still sedated. The ether may, perhaps, be wearing off at this point, but even if so the spell I cast should keep me under.” With a frown, she added, “Really, breaking in and drugging me was far too easy. I need to reevaluate my home security spells; even granting that I had prior knowledge of what they all were, it should not have been that easy to subvert them. Did you happen to look out the window while you were upstairs? How are things developing?”

With a shake of his head, the Mule responded, “It don’t look good. The sky’s gone all green and the clouds is pink—and they’s things blowing up, somewhere off Sweet Apple Acres way. I heared ‘em.”

“Hm. Discord’s testing its strength, then.” She bit her lip. “Fhtagn! I’ve underestimated it, I just know it. I should never have gambled on its hubris; I had no right to be so confident in that.” Turning back to the concentric rings and angled symbols scrawled out on the floor, she sighed and continued, “Nothing to be done about it now, though; all the pieces are in place, and the game must be played, to whatever end.”

“You done your best.”

“Hah! Yes, my best—and my worst. We shall see which is stronger in the end. Did you bring the balloons? Yes? Excellent. Kindly tie one off for me and pass it over. No, don’t inflate it, just tie it. I am reasonably sure this should work, but it would do well to test it, nonetheless. Best get out the raskovnik, as well.”

Taking the proffered balloon, Sassaflash laid it in the very center of the chalked diagrams and sigils upon the floor. After peering at it with bleary, sleep-deprived eyes for a moment, she took the chalk in her mouth again and made a few modifications to the surrounding sigils. “I wish I had gotten a chance to get some rest; I can’t think straight. It’s just as well we’re testing this on the balloon first...the raskovnik, if you please.”

“Already?” The old creature held out a clover-like sprig. “What about all them chants and dancing you did when we was coming back from Hippoborea?”

Sassaflash shook her head. “Not necessary. I was forced to construct and maintain everything myself, there, but here I have the resources to conduct matters in a more efficient manner. The ‘chants and dancing,’ as you put it, are encoded in these drawings. What matters is that the Aklo is understood and held in its entirety within a mind, not that it take this particular form or that. Indeed, it’s perfectly possible to cast simple spells without saying a single word; if I recall correctly, you’ve seen me do it before, when Starshade attempted to bind me back in the Hollow Shades.”

She lapsed into silence, her face clouded. The Mule shifted in his wheelcart’s harness. “You ain’t heard nothing anent what happened to your sister after you done gave her worrywort?”

A short shake of the head. “No. But it may be that no news is good news. Not that my family has ever been particularly communicative with me. Or I with them.” The pegasus frowned. “I don’t think that rift can ever be healed. Even were it not for our history, we’re too different now. I’ve seen and done too much to return to their frightened little world. I would be just another monster to them; a horror from the outer dark.” Whisking around, she returned her attention to the limp red balloon lying within the mesh of diagrams and sigils. “But none of that matters now. To the matter at hoof.” Reaching out, she let a single leaflet of raskovnik flutter down out of the air to touch the balloon. For a moment it seemed to freeze in place, as though it had suddenly fallen against a drop of sticky sap, and then with an abrupt snap both leaf and balloon disappeared. The Dark Lord continued to stare at the spot where they had rested with narrowed eyes, and a moment later there was another mane-ruffling burst of displaced air as the balloon reappeared, apparently none the worse for wear. Sassaflash permitted herself a quick, fierce little smile, and turned to the Mule.

“I owe you an apology, Mr. Mule—yes! An apology for my own stupidity. I could have spared you your broken bones, if I had only had the wit to see it at the time. When we teleported back to Ponyville, I gambled that the distance would be great enough to avoid any harsh discontinuities in space, and you paid the price—but I need never have made that wager in the first place.” She raised a hoof, gesturing towards something far beyond the grimy, soot-dusted stone ceiling of her laboratory. “As though vast distances are a rare thing in this cosmos! Idiot. I should have seen it.”

The Mule shrugged. “If’n you say so.”

Sassaflash made a small, half-formed noise, and then blinked once or twice, unsure how to respond. After a moment the Mule took pity on her, and with a smile said, “Beg pardon, Miss Sassaflash. I was supposed to say ‘Seen what,’ weren’t I?”

“...Humor me my exposition, please, Mr. Mule.”

“I does, Miss Sassaflash, I does. Just so long as you knows you’s doing it. ‘Seen what?’”

She hesitated, but after a smile and an encouraging nod, she continued, “Well, as I said, vast distances are hardly rare. Rather than teleporting directly from one part of the world to another and hoping that it was far enough, all we really needed to do was jaunt far out into deep space, and then teleport back to our destination. There is, as the name would suggest, plenty of space in space. Exposure to hard vacuum is not, of course, particularly healthy, but if it’s brief enough—and the fact that this balloon has returned unpopped from just such a voyage strongly suggests that it will be—we should be perfectly safe.” Taking care not to scuff the inscriptions on the floor, she lifted the little balloon from its resting place and tossed it into a shadowed corner of the room, beyond the reach of the flickering torchlight. Looking up, her pale mane shining in the warm glow, she said, “I suppose there’s no way I can talk you out of coming.”

The Mule shook his old head. “I’m a-going to see this through to the end, Miss Sassaflash. I’m coming alongside.”

“Very well.” After making a few more modifications to the chalk lines arcing across the stone flags, Sassaflash slung a saddlebag on to her back and trotted over to the corner where her double—herself, one day younger—lay drugged and unconscious on the floor. With some effort, she hoisted her own limp body up on to her shoulders, and trudged over to the center of the spell circle. At the Dark Lord’s gesture the Mule wheeled his way over to her side.

Their eyes met. Sassaflash raised a questioning eyebrow, and when the Mule nodded she gave a grim smile. “Very well, then.” Clearing her throat, she barked a short, guttural command, and around them the world dissolved.

Far to the north, a dry wind whistled through the bleak Hippoborean sky, carrying clouds of powder-dry ice dust over the rocky expanse of the glacial outwash plain far below. Here and there among the rounded pebbles of the sandur small blue-white pockets of snow had accumulated, protected from the low summer Sun, but for the most part the immense sandur was bare and gray, a waste of dust and emptiness bounded by the horizon and the distant, gleaming line of the northern glaciers. Only one feature interrupted the flat sweep of the wash: a heavy black door in its very center, framed by glittering, sharp-edged crystals.

Space stretched, ruptured, and was whole again, and with a rush of air and a crack like a tiny thunderbolt two tiny figures stumbled into existence not far from the brutish door, one bearing upon her back the limp body of her exact doppelgänger. The Mule, propped up by his wheelcart, managed to stay upright, but Sassaflash almost dropped her burden as she slumped forward, choking in shock. Lifting a hoof to his throat, the Mule wheezed, “Feels—feels like somepony done bucked me in the lungs. You alright, Miss Sassaflash?”

At first Sassaflash made no answer, but after a few strangled gasps she managed, “I am adequate, thank you, Mr. Mule. Yourself?”

“I reckon. That sure is one way to wake a body up. But what was that?”

“That, apparently,” she responded, “is what it feels like to have the air drained from one’s lungs and then have it all slam back in again at about a hundred yards per second. Unpleasant.” She drew a ragged breath. “But we seem to be unharmed, which is all that matters.” Turning, she looked at the jagged gate nearby, dusky and sinister amid the desolation. “Our task awaits.”

The Mule followed her gaze. “You said this here Solemn Gate—”

“Somber Gate.”

“Right, that. You said it was cursed. What kind o’ curse, exactly…?”

The pegasus gave a short, humorless laugh. “Where shall I begin? Very little is known about the empire that once dominated these lands, or of the ponies who inhabited it. Even less is known of the cataclysm that sealed their fate. The traditional tale is that a powerful warlock-king took hold of the empire, feeding on the magic of its denizens and enslaving them for his own purposes. He hunted out and devoured magic wherever it could be found. He might have been attempting to turn himself into a God—like the monster Tirek, in classical mythology.” She shook her head. “Of course, he was doomed to fail; hoarding that much magic calls down the wrath of Yog-Sothoth, and buries the presumptive God-to-be under an avalanche of bad luck. What happened, exactly, nopony knows. There are rumors that Celestia and Luna were involved in the disappearance of the warlock-king and his empire, but they’re only rumors.”

The Dark Lord shivered as the wind across the waste picked up, cutting cold against her flanks. Shifting her unconscious self into a more comfortable position on her shoulders, she trudged towards the tall doorway, gesturing for the Mule to follow. The pegasus said nothing more until they were standing in the very shadow of the Somber Gate and she had laid her own past self upon the rocks in front of it. Then, looking up at the mass of crystal and stone looming above them, she said, “But there was one thing that survived the disappearance of this forgotten empire: the Somber Gate. Its original purpose, and why it alone survived, are both mysteries. It was a torture device of some kind, perhaps. There must be more to it than that, but I can’t imagine what.” She propped her past self’s head up on a hefty chunk of rounded granite, and arranged her so that she was facing directly towards the gate. “Stand back, Mr. Mule, and whatever you do, do not look into the doorway when I open it.”

Stone grated against stone as the Mule wheeled back. “But what’s it going to do to her—to you?”

“That,” said Sassaflash, “is what we are about to find out.” Hooking her hoof into the heavy metal band hanging from the front of the door, she gave it a sharp tug and pulled it wide. The Mule raised his forehoof to his face, blocking out his view of the open portal but allowing him to see Sassaflash standing beside it. Likewise averting her eyes, the Dark Lord looked down at her past self, lying unconscious on the ground with her head facing the door, and spoke a single word.

“Zhro!”

The prone pony’s eyes flickered open, already vacant and filmed with green light, and her face slipped into a strange expression—half pain, half puzzlement. A muscle twitched in her neck, and her ears swiveled back against her head, but other than that, she made no movement. Sassaflash knelt beside her and peered into her eyes, then straightened and edged noiselessly away from her mesmerized self, gesturing for the Mule to follow. When they were perhaps thirty paces away, she whispered, “There. That should be far enough. We should speak softly, though; I do not know how fragile the enchantment is, and it must not be broken.”

The Mule was still looking back at Sassaflash where she lay in front of the gate, staring straight ahead through the empty arch. It was hard to tell at this distance, but occasionally her muscles seemed to spasm under her coat, and he thought he could see something very like agony beginning to creep into her eyes. Turning back to the one-day-older Sassaflash standing before him, he murmured, “I ain’t sure I like this, Miss Sassaflash. What’s it doing to you?”

The Dark Lord raised a hoof to shield the gate from her sight, and looked back at herself. “Torturing me. The stories say that anypony who looks through that gate is forced to face their worst fears, hallucinating a nightmare-scape in which everything that they have ever loved or cherished is torn apart before their eyes. Unless disturbed, they remain ensnared in that state until they die—usually of thirst or exposure, though there are reports of ponies who suffered heart attacks or who simply stopped breathing. I suspect those particular cases were ponies who chose to take their own lives.” The Mule’s eyes widened, and he started to trot over to where the past Sassaflash lay bespelled, but Sassaflash laid a gentle hoof on his shoulder and gave a wan smile. “You can’t save me, Mr. Mule. I have to suffer this. It’s me or the world.”

In front of the gate, the enchanted pegasus drew a long, ragged breath. Her wings were shivering at her sides, and the hairs on her face were wet with tears. The Mule gritted his teeth. “I ain’t a-going to stand by while—”

“Mr. Mule, listen. A day ago, I destroyed Equestria. I saw the shattered ruins of mountains lying dead across a lifeless waste, and walked through a world that had been so twisted and mutilated that space itself had been torn to pieces. Nopony survived. Everypony died. That is what I’m seeing now—what the Somber Gate is forcing me to see. By showing this to my past self, we ensure that it never really happened—that the explanation of my experiences is not an actual apocalypse, but a mere hallucination. It’s a small enough price to pay.” Sassaflash‘s past self gave a piteous whimper, and the Dark Lord gestured towards her. “Listen! Do you want this to have been real?”

The Mule started to protest, but he was interrupted—not by the mare at his side, but by the pony slumped in front of the gate. Throwing her head back, her bewitched eyes frantic with loss, the pegasus screamed, “Mule!” The old creature started back in surprise, while beside him Sassaflash bowed her head. “Parchment! Sweetie Belle! Angel!”

“You see?” said Sassaflash.

The Mule said nothing.

The low autumn Sun had slid further along the horizon, dipping slowly towards night, and the shadows across the rocky sandur were long and cold. The Mule sat alone on a small rise, far enough away from the Somber Gate that he could no longer hear Sassaflash‘s occasional broken outbursts, but near enough that he could just make out her present and past selves, one lying in front of the portal and the other sitting a bit off to the side, watching herself as she wandered through nightmares of death and destruction. In the end, seeing her suffering had been too much for him, and he had excused himself to this distant perch while the Dark Lord remained by her own side—to satisfy herself, she had said, that the hallucination was covering the same ground as her memories.

Despite his best efforts to stay awake, he was just beginning to drowse when he heard the sound of hooves scraping on the pebbles nearby, and scrambling upright saw the Dark Lord Sassaflash approaching, her wings clutched tightly to her flanks against the cold and her ears drooping wearily. Stepping forward, the Mule asked, “It ain’t over, is it?

“No,” Sassaflash shook her head, “It isn’t. But I wanted to check on you. Your injuries, the cold…” She gestured vaguely with an outstretched wing.

“I’m fine.”

“Good.” The pegasus nodded. “Good.” She lowered herself on to the ground, and looked back over her shoulder at the distant spot of turquoise blue-green that was her past self. “I was concerned that it would fail, but fortunately my worries appear to have been groundless. It would seem the reports of the Somber Gate’s effects were not entirely accurate.”

“Sure looked like you was having a nightmare to me,” observed the Mule. The Dark Lord nodded.

“Indeed. The confusion in the tales is very understandable. From what I had heard, though, I hoped that its effects would be more subtle, and now I am quite certain that they are. The Somber Gate does not force a pony to face their worst nightmares; rather, I think, it does something even worse. It unmakes them. It takes everything that they value about themselves, every element from which they have constructed their identity, and razes it to the ground. The young mare in love is told that her love is a sham, the earnest student is told that her beloved mentor despises her...”

“And a pony who reckons she’s got what it takes to be boss o’ the world gets told that that just ain’t so.”

“Rem acu tetigisti.” Sassaflash gave a grim chuckle. “Do you know, Mr. Mule, I think the evil warlock-king of ancient Hippoborea may have been, in his heart of hearts, something of an idealist? It seems not to have occurred to him that for some ponies, the extermination of their ego might actually be a good thing.”

The Mule considered this for some moments. Then, nodding his head in the direction of the Gate, he asked, “Where is you at now?”

“In my hallucination? My despair is past; when I left to check on you, I was just preparing to summon Starswirl the Bearded. If all goes well, with his help I will be traveling back in time soon, and the loop will be closed.” Lifting herself to her hooves, she continued, “In fact, I had better be returning. Even at this late stage, it is possible that some divergence might creep in, and I need to know if one does.”

“Hold up,” said the Mule. “I’m coming.”

They trotted along in silence for some moments, shivering in the twilit chill and wading through shadows. At length the Mule asked, “Miss Sassaflash? You said your other self was fixing to summon up Starswirl to send you back in time, right?”

“That had not been my original purpose in reviving him, but that was the end result, yes.”

The Mule’s long ears twitched back in puzzlement. “That don’t make no sense, though. If you was—is—dreaming, and he was just a dream, he couldn’t’a sent you back in time.”

Sassaflash gave him a sharp look. “No? Just because he existed only within my mind? I summoned him with Aklo, Mr. Mule, and Aklo works regardless of whether it is scribed into glyphs and symbols upon a stone floor, or merely held within the mind. I performed the rituals needed to drag Starswirl back from beyond the grave, and I performed them correctly. Little details like which reality, precisely, I performed those rituals within are utterly inconsequential. The Starswirl that I revived was truly Starswirl, with all his own faculties intact; his existence just happened to be hosted in the neurons within my skull, rather than in the arrangement of atoms in the cosmos without.” Drawing to a halt, she raised a warning hoof. “But hush. We are drawing within earshot. We cannot allow ourselves to stumble now, so close to success.”

Not far away, her past self still lay prone in front of the Somber Gate, staring with empty eyes into the gaping arch before her. Sassaflash and the Mule positioned themselves off to one side, sitting so that the open door blocked their view of the gateway itself. At odd intervals the mesmerized pony would mutter a disjointed response to some unspoken question or statement, carrying on a dream conversation that existed only within her own head:

“Can’t you do something? Can’t you save them from me?”

“Then I’m on my own.”

“What do I—are you offering to help me? Half a minute ago you had me pinned to a wall!”

And, at last, “Take me back in time.”

Sassaflash leaned forward, her wings tense, and a shiver ran up the Mule’s spine. This was it; the last great magic. Space and time, undone and defied by Sassaflash‘s will and Starswirl’s lore. He wondered what it would look like; a shattering of space, like what he had seen when the Hounds of Tindalos had forced their way into the universe? An echoing eddy of moments, with Sassaflash‘s past self flickering back and forth through time before vanishing from the present? Something else entirely, unimaginable and strange? A minute passed...two minutes...five minutes…

Beside the Mule, Sassaflash gave a small start of surprise. Rising to her hooves and motioning for him to stay where he was, she stepped closer to her hypnotized doppelgänger. For some moments she stood there, staring down at herself. At last she raised her head and looked back at her friend, her face a strange blank.

“It’s over.”

The Mule blinked. “What?”

Raising a hoof, the necromancer pushed against the Somber Gate’s heavy door, swinging it gratingly across the pebbles of the wash back into its frame with a solid, final thunk. Her past self made no motion, continuing to stare ahead with empty eyes. “What I said. It’s over. Starswirl has sent me back to one day ago, and the course of time is inevitable again. No more choices.”

“But you ain’t gone nowheres. You’s still a-sitting there just like—”

A rough push from Sassaflash‘s hoof, and her past self slumped to one side, her head lolling against the cold stones and amber eyes still staring lifelessly ahead. The Mule started back with a gasp, and the necromancer nodded.

“Yes, I’m dead. My body, at least. Did I not tell you that when I traveled back in time I had to construct a new body? Only my mind was sent back—and this is what happened to what was left behind. It’s just an empty shell now, and the apocalypse I witnessed is nothing more than a dream.” She gave a sad little chuckle. “Funny, I thought I would feel a greater sense of accomplishment. Some...some sense of having made things better. Then again, Discord is still loose, and we have no way of knowing how successful the Princesses will be in bringing it to heel. They may fail. Really, all I have definitely succeeded in doing is destroying the world slightly less than was originally the case.”

“Don’t you talk like that.” The Mule stepped forward and laid a hoof on Sassaflash‘s shoulder. “Don’t you say that. They’ll beat it, you’ll see.”

“Will they?” asked Sassaflash, raising an eyebrow. “Shall we return to Ponyville, then, and find out what exactly I have wrought? There’s nothing to keep us here, and I am exhausted—and I have no doubt you are equally fatigued.”

The Mule shivered, and looked to the west, where the sinking Sun still glowered on the horizon, painting the craggy landscape by turns with splashes of fire and deep, blue-black shadows. “Alright. But I reckon they’s still one thing left to do afore we go.”

A pillar of fire rose above the rocky sandur, trailing high up into the night sky. Sparks drifted against the stars, blown here and there by the wild wind of the wastes, and tiny crystals of ice hissed and popped among the heaped stones surrounding the flames, steaming away into vapor. A dark figure lay curled within the blaze, its limbs folded tightly and its head tucked against its side like a resting bird.

Not far from the pyre, the Mule and Sassaflash sat in silence, watching as the Dark Lord’s body burned. At length the Mule, turning to his companion, said, “Y’know, when I said we shouldn’t ought to leave you a-lying out here like this, I figured we could just get some rock stones and pile ‘em over top of you, that’s all. I didn’t think—”

“I happen to like fire,” responded Sassaflash, “and it is my funeral. In any case, it’s much easier this way.”

The Mule nodded. “Fair enough.”

For some minutes the two sat in silence, watching the past slowly burn and crumble into ash. At length the Mule, who had been staring into the flames with a puzzled expression on his long face, spoke up again. “Miss Sassaflash?”

“Yes?”

“They’s one thing I can’t quite square. Everything you seen—everypony dying, Equestria getting blowed up to smithereens, the Princesses getting wore out and losing their magic—that was all just a dream, right?”

“Yes,” said Sassaflash, her voice harsh, “and we worked very hard to make sure of that.”

The Mule’s look of puzzlement deepened. “That don’t make no sense, though. I mean, we brung you here to make you dream that the world had ended, but we wouldn’t’a done that if’n you hadn’t had the dream in the first place, and you wouldn’t’a dreamed it if’n we hadn’t brung you here, and—” He stopped at the touch of Sassaflash‘s hoof on his shoulder. She shook her head.

“Don’t try to make sense of it, Mr. Mule. It is easily enough explained—causality is only ever approximately true, free will is an outright lie, and we are all puppets of chance—but to actually accept that explanation is not really possible. Not for a sane pony, at any rate. Be still, and be grateful that, just this once, the world was not as cold and cruel as it could have been.”

The Mule cast a glance up at the glittering stars overhead, and murmured, “It’s still awful cold sometimes, though, Miss Sassaflash.”

She nodded. “That it is, Mr. Mule, that it is.”

“Seems to me, though,” said the old creature, “that when it’s cold, the thing to do is find someplace warm or start a fire. Do something about it.”

“Do you think so? Hah!” Gesturing towards the pyre on which her body was burning, Sassaflash said, “I think I’ve set enough fires in my life now, don’t you? The last really large one I kindled nearly consumed all of Equestria. No, I believe I will stay out in the cold from now on, and leave tending the hearth to those with humbler ambitions than my own. It’s safest that way.”

The Mule shook his head. “Maybe so—but I don’t reckon you’ll be able to help yourself. You’re a firebug, and that’s the truth. You ain’t a-going to just go back home and sit on your hooves all by your lonesome; you’ll do something.”

With a frown, the necromancer responded, “You think I haven’t learned my lesson, then.”

“I didn’t say that. Might could be, though, that you ain’t clear on what kind o’ lesson you learned.” He turned to look at his companion. “The mistake you made the first time wasn’t wanting to fix things; that’s fine. It was thinking the world was broke, when it was really something inside you that’d gone wrong. You’ve got a lot o’ power, Miss Sassaflash, and you could do a powerful lot o’ good with it—you really could. You just got to make sure that you use it the right way.” He shrugged. “I don’t reckon you’ll make that same mistake twice.”

“Well.” The fire was dying down now, its hungry tongues rising low above the sooty remnants of the Dark Lord’s body and licking against her blackened bones. Flickering firelight danced in Sassaflash‘s eyes as she gazed at the flames, staring into her own empty eye sockets. “Perhaps not.” Rising to her hooves, she trotted over to the smoldering pyre, speaking over her shoulder. “Perhaps I will not be given a chance. Do you think Celestia, when she finds out what I’ve done, will be content to leave me to my own devices? Even if she is inclined to be merciful, once the blame has been pinned on me I will be exposed to other powers, and they will have none of her scruples. I see it coming. Tartarus-wind...titan blur...black wings...Yog-Sothoth save me! The three-lobed burning eye…” She stood there for a long moment, looking down at her remains in silence. A charred feather, blown free from one of her burning wings and wedged into a crevice in the rock nearby, caught her attention, and for a moment she extended her hoof to it, as though to pull it free.

Then another thought seemed to occur to her. Abandoning the feather, she raised a wing to shield herself from the heat, reached out, and knocked her own scorched skull away from the fire, sending it rattling away across the stones. The Mule started. “Miss Sassaflash, what—”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Mule,” she responded, “I have no necromantic purpose in this. It is merely sentiment.” After waiting a few moments to let it cool, she touched her pastern to it once or twice to assure herself that it was safe to touch and then tucked it under her wing and trotted back to her friend’s side.

The Mule gave the skull a dubious glance. “Sentiment, you say.”

“Yes, Mr. Mule, sentiment. A memento, if you will. I need to remember this, you know. What I did. What I was.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “That’s fine, I guess. Don’t you forget that that ain’t who you is now, though.”

“I hope not, Mr. Mule. I hope not.”

It took Sassaflash little time to prepare the spell that would take them back to Ponyville—she had, as she told the Mule, had plenty of practice at it lately—and many hundreds of leagues to the south, the silence of the necromancer’s lair was soon broken by a sharp crack as air rushed away to make room for the arrival of the two travelers. After recovering from the shock of teleportation (“Miss Sassaflash, I don’t mean to complain, but ain’t there someplace out in space we could teleport to that has air?” “By all means, Mr. Mule. Which would you prefer? Amalthaea’s carbonic acid atmosphere, perhaps, hot enough to flash-boil you from the inside out? Or perhaps you’d find the bracing chill of Auðumbla’s breezes, blowing off a sea of liquid azote, to be more to your liking? Then of course there are the crushing depths of George, where the pressure is so great that the line between air and metal is blurred, or Sleipnir’s clouds of muriatic acid, or—” “Okay, okay, I get it”) and depositing Sassaflash‘s skull in her cauldron to be boiled clean of residue later on, they made their way up out of the dungeon into the bookish labyrinth of the necromancer’s home. Sassaflash trotted over to the front door, laid her hoof on the latch, and turned to look back at her friend. “I must warn you, Mr. Mule, that I have no idea what we will see once we step outside. Discord was making its presence known even when we departed, and that was many hours ago now. My hope, of course, was that in its hubris it would let its guard down sufficiently to allow the Princesses or the bearers of the Elements of Harmony to overcome it, but...well. We shall see. The continued survival of this house, at least, shows that the ultimate destruction I feared has been averted, so there is some comfort in that. Still, be prepared for anything.” She pressed down on the latch, and swung the door wide.

A placid, starlit Ponyville night greeted them. Snug little cottages slumbered by the cobbled byway, deep in restful shadow, and a little ways down the street a flickering lantern cast its warm glow on moss-rimmed paving stones. A few clouds drifted overhead, their edges silvered by the full moon, and between them the stars shone in still, silent beauty. Everything smelled fresh and clean, like the air after a summer shower.

Sassaflash stumbled down from her stoop to the street, her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide. Craning her neck back and staring up at the stars, she executed a bewildered little half-turn in the middle of the street, then looked back at the Mule, who was still standing in the doorway and regarding their peaceful surroundings with a mild, approving eye. He nodded. “Looks like it worked.”

“But I don’t—Discord was free; it was beginning to warp the world even when we left. One cannot just sweep a God under the rug like that!” She hesitated, and then hurried off down the alley towards Mane Street, the Mule ambling along behind and trying without much success to stifle his yawns.

Despite the lateness, there were a few ponies still on the streets, and Sassaflash wasted no time in accosting the nearest one. The Mule wasn’t near enough to overhear their conversation, but brief as it was it seemed to satisfy Sassaflash, for after nodding a hurried thanks she darted off down the street towards town hall, gesturing for the Mule to follow. It was not far away, and after ten minutes at a brisk trot the necromancer came to the edge of the hall’s long, spired shadow, her pace slowing as she peered into the gloom at a long, low thing sprawled in front of the building. The Mule drew up alongside her and, following her gaze, murmured, “What is that?”

Sassaflash made no answer. Stepping forward into the building’s moon-cast shadow, she made her way to the prone shape and raised her left hoof into the air, holding it high over her head. There was a brief, brilliant burst of flame, stabbing up from the necromancer’s hoof into the sky, and for a moment the thing in front of her was lit with fiery orange light. Its granite surface gleamed, and the Mule had a glimpse of mismatched wings, sharp claws, a misshapen head that was part pony, part dragon, and part nightmare, and a twisting, sinuous body like a monstrous snake. The light faded. Blinking dazzled eyes in the darkness, the Mule repeated, “What is that?”

Hooves thumped on the trampled sod in front of the hall, and Sassaflash emerged from the shadows, a dazed look on her face. She looked up at her friend. “It’s Discord. Turned to stone. It worked. It really—I can’t believe it worked! They really did it! Hah!”

The Mule smiled. “Didn’t I say so? Princess Celestia ain’t ruled these thousands o’ years just to be beat now.”

“Ah, no.” With an awkward flutter of her wings, Sassaflash said, “It wasn’t Princess Celestia, according to the pony I talked to back on Mane Street. It was, um, the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.” She directed a sharp look at her companion. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“Nope.”

“I thought you said something.”

“I didn’t.”

“Hm. Yes. Well. Don’t.” The Mule returned her stare with a look of placid innocence, and at length, after a valiant but doomed effort to maintain her stern glare, the necromancer gave in and laughed, “Oh, very well. I was a fool, and I completely underestimated them—fortunately for us all!” Glancing back over her shoulder at the petrified God lying in the dirt, she continued, “I am tempted to take a chisel and sledgehammer to that thing—its continued existence worries me—but others have clearly chosen otherwise, and perhaps they had a reason for that. Perhaps I should acquaint myself with all the facts before acting. There is a first time for everything, is there not, Mr. Mule?”

The old creature smiled. “I reckon so, Miss Sassaflash.” He gave a tremendous yawn, and inquired, “They ain’t nothing more we need to do now, is they? Only I could do with some shut-eye.”

“No,” answered Sassaflash, shaking her head, “Our labors are at an end. The world is saved. Evil has been vanquished, and good has triumphed.” She raised a forehoof, and made a flourishing gesture in the air. “The End!”

“Good,” said the Mule. “I’m tired.”

The following days and weeks passed serenely enough, with the Mule staying at Sassaflash‘s cottage, at her insistence, until his leg healed. In the Dreamlands the Mule told his wife what had happened, and though she grudgingly admitted that she might have misjudged the necromancer, she had no opportunity to say so to the mare herself, for Sassaflash did not venture down the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber the first night or any night after that—or if she did, she gave the mules’ cabin a wide berth. There was an undercurrent of uneasy tension to her every action. She seemed at loose ends, and when she wasn’t working on translations of tracts and monographs (which, the Mule learned with some surprise, was her main source of income. Most ponies had little use for forgotten knowledge of the elder world, but there were many scholars and writers from lands beyond Equestria who wished for their works to see a wider audience, and Sassaflash was more than willing to translate them into Equestrian—for a fee, of course) she spent her time flipping listlessly through ancient tomes or fidgeting around with various minor spells and rituals, apparently to no particular purpose. It was as though she were waiting for something to happen.

One evening after dinner when they were both in the kitchen, the Mule washing dishes and the pegasus hunched over in a corner reading a surprisingly modern book entitled Recurrent Mythic Archetypes in Palaeopony Cultures: A Hippological Interpretation of the Elkdown Shards and the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Mule hazarded that if it was Celestia finding out what had happened that had got her so worried, she should probably just go talk to the Princess herself and get it over with. Sassaflash shrugged off the suggestion with a blank stare and a distracted laugh. “What, and waste perfectly good bits on a train ticket?” the necromancer said. “No, let her come to me, accompanied by her golden guard and radiant with fury and might! The least I can do, after unleashing Discord on the good fools of Ponyville, is give them a spectacle before I go.”

“Supposing she don’t come?” asked the Mule, sliding a dish into the drying rack he had insisted that Sassaflash buy shortly after their return from Hippoborea. “Might could be she don’t know where to start looking. I ain’t said nothing, and I know Miss Sweetie Belle ain’t a-going to, neither.”

One of the necromancer’s ears twitched askance, and she shut the heavy book in front of her with a soft whud. “You think not? I made her face the Hounds of Tindalos and Discord itself, Mr. Mule, and she has not forgiven me for it—and nor should she.”

The Mule shook his head. “No, I mean I talked to her. When I gone to the market yesterday, she was there with her friends, so o’ course I said ‘howdy-do.’ She asked if you was alright, and I said you was, mostly. Then I asked her if’n she’d be coming back, and she said no, never. ‘It’s her fault I met Discord, and her fault he done all them things to my Mom and Dad and Rarity and everypony else. I know she done her best to fix her mistakes,’ she says to me, ‘but she wasn’t supposed to make mistakes in the first place. She was supposed to be better than that. She made me think she was better than that. I know she tried, and I ain’t a-going to tell nopony abouten her, but I ain’t a-going back, neither. I can’t.’”

Sassaflash‘s ears drooped, her head bent as she stared past the book in front of her into some abyss that only she could see. “She trusted me completely, as only a foal can trust, and I betrayed that confidence. Innocence lost...” She sighed. “Miserable fool that I was. I wish she could know how sorry I am.”

“Miss Sassaflash, you—”

“Goodnight, Mr. Mule,’ said the necromancer, rising to her hooves. “I am going to bed.”

Several days later, one of the Mule’s follow-up visits to the hospital yielded the good news that his bones had grown together enough for the usual bone-mending magics to be applied. After an hour spent under the surgeon’s horn, he bade a glad farewell to his wheelcart and cast, and ambled out of the hospital that evening with a light heart. It would be good to be able to do work again; he didn’t like being a burden, and his presence could only have served as a reminder to Sassaflash of her failures. It would do her good to see him well again, to see that wounds could heal. Besides, he suspected that some of Sassaflash’s anxiety was strain from having to share her space. She was not, he reflected, the most social of ponies.

It was dusk when he turned on to Haybale Lane, and the cottages lining the little back street were sunk in deep blue shadow—all but for a splash of vivid gold and white across their very tops, where the low Sun shone in over the rooftops. A little speck of black whirred across the painted sky, bobbing and weaving as it hunted for insects on the wing—a bat, probably, out seeking an early meal. The evening chill bit at the tips of the Mule’s long ears, and with a shiver he hurried up the steps of number 108 and rapped at the door.

After the usual muffled shuffling and the sounds of bolts being shot and locks being unlocked, Sassaflash peered out of the cracked door. Her eyes widened at the sight of the Mule. “Your cast! Your cart! You’re well, then?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” nodded the Mule, with a broad smile. “Them doctor ponies knows what they’s doing.”

“Excellent news!” The necromancer stepped back and gestured with an outspread wing for the Mule to enter, shoving a few small stacks of books out of the way with her hind leg. “Most excellent. I had not anticipated it would be this soon, but all the better. This is a great relief.”

“Yep. I’m a-going to head out and look for work first thing tomorrow; it’s a mite late in the season, but I reckon they’s still some harvesting that needs doing. I’ll be outen your mane soon enough.”

Sassaflash gave him an odd, sidelong look. “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I will be out of yours.”

“Begging your pardon?” The heatless cathode lamp that normally lit the book-filled room was off, and but for the open door it would have been completely dark. As it was, the shadows draped from the ancient oaken bookshelves and precarious stacks of tomes were too thick for the Mule to make out Sassaflash‘s expression. There had been a strange note to her voice when she had spoken; not unnerving, exactly, but strange. It spoke of hidden things.

“Close the door, if you will, Mr. Mule,” said the Dark Lord, and the Mule heard her trot further back in amongst the stacks. A moment later an electric hum filled the air, and the colorless, bleached light of the cathode lamp flickered to life. “I have a request to make of you, now that you are quite well. It is not critical, but it would make things easier.”

The Mule’s long ears flopped back in puzzlement, and he pulled the door to. “Well, alrighty. Only I ain’t sure I follow. What do you mean, you’ll be getting outen my mane?”

Sassaflash settled herself behind the little desk on which the lamp rested, and for a moment the Mule was reminded of their first meeting, when she had sat just so, with Sweetie Belle at her side and a stern, assured look on her face. She was still stern, but there was clarity and sadness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Folding her hooves in front of her, the pegasus said, “It will not have escaped your notice that I have been...uncomfortable these past few weeks. I made horrible mistakes, and other ponies paid a terrible price. That our labors barely averted a worse catastrophe does not excuse me. I can’t bear to just carry on with my life, free of repercussions, as if I’d done nothing at all.”

“Miss Sassaflash, there ain’t no sense in beating yourself up. That ain’t a-going to fix nothing.”

The necromancer nodded. “Indeed not! But while I may not be able to undo my crimes, and while self-flagellation may be pointless, I can at least make some measure of atonement.” Her eyes flashed in the dark. “As you said in Hippoborea, I possess great power—and my skillset is nearly unique. There are things I can do that nopony else, not even the Princesses, could hope to accomplish. I have a singular talent, for example, for deicide.

“For all the wrong I did, there was one deed that I can be proud of. Tsathoggua is dead. It will never erupt from Voormithadreth, wild and ravening with the hunger of a God, to lay waste to the world. But Tsathoggua was not the only Great Old One biding its time until the stars are right. There are others, slumbering in deep and hidden places—and I mean to hunt them down.”

Her tone was even and calm, with none of the bombast or frantic ferocity that used to mark her more megalomaniacal moments, but the grim determination in her voice was, in its way, more unnerving than any wild outburst would have been. Feeling as though his bones had turned to ice, the Mule stammered, “They’ll kill you! Or worse! You barely got out of Voormi’s Address—Voormithadreth—alive, and you was skeert crazy when I found you down there. I had to feed you worrywort just to keep them things that wasn’t shoggoths off’n our tails.”

Sassaflash gave an odd, twisted smile. “And yet we are alive, and Tsathoggua is dead. Do you appreciate the significance of that? Tsathoggua was a God. We should have had no chance; not a small chance, but none at all. If I pit myself against another Great Old One, I will probably die, it is true—but I might not. That ‘might’ is one of the most miraculous, improbable, precious things in the world.” Placing her hooves on the desk, she rose upright, her wings half-open at her back. “It is not a question of what I can do, but what I must do. Do you think all the strength in the world will be able to prevail against, say, the Father of Serpents or the Twin Blasphemies when they rise? I, a mote of dust cloaked in shadows, unknown to both Gods and mortals, may be the only one who can strike them down. I have to try.”

With a dull thump, the Mule sat back on his haunches, his head swimming. “I could stop you. I could tell Princess Celestia what you done.”

“And bring me to the attention of the Outer Gods? You’d only guarantee my destruction. I am certain they are seeking me now; Tsathoggua’s death cannot have failed to draw their notice. But if I blot out their eyes, perhaps they will never find me. Even their emissary might find it difficult to maneuver on this world, without its priest to guide it.” She waited for a response, but as the Mule seemed to be having trouble finding his tongue, at length she continued, “Well. Don’t let it disturb you, Mr. Mule. It need not concern you. I only mention this now because I could not leave while you were still recovering; I had to make sure you were well, and could look after yourself. Now that your injuries have healed, though, I do have a request to make of you. There is a possibility, however slim, that I will be able to return home to Ponyville after this little quest of mine, and in the interim I’ll need somepony to look after my house. Now, of course Angel and Crowded Parchment could manage that, but they both have their...peculiarities, and as you do not currently have any lodgings, I thought it might suit both our purposes well if you stayed here in my absence. I would, of course, leave you detailed instructions, as well as remove the more dangerous articles I possess. What say you?”

The Mule digested this for some moments. At length he raised his head and said, “You want me to house-sit while you go off God-killing.”

Sassaflash blinked. “A blunt way to put it, but yes, that is the gist of it.”

“No. I ain’t a-going to do it.”

“Ah.” The necromancer’s face fell. “...Very well. I confess to being a bit disappointed, but no matter. Thank you for hearing my request, in any case.” She squeezed her way out from behind the desk, sending a few stray leaves of close-written paper fluttering to the floor. “I’ll leave a note for Parchment, and be off tonight; as it happens, I’ve been packed for a week and a half now.” She was just trotting past the Mule, bound for the spiral staircase that led down into her dungeon lair, when a thought occurred to her and, pausing, she turned and said, “If I may ask, why did you refuse?”

With a note of mild surprise in his voice, as if what he was saying was the most natural and obvious thing in the world, the Mule responded, “Because I’m coming with you, o’ course.”

“What?” The Dark Lord froze, staring blankly at the old creature. He gave a shrug.

“What I said. I’m coming with you. If I can’t convince you not to go, they ain’t no way I’m a-going to let you go up against all them monsters and beastes and Gods all by your lonesome.”

“No. No! Absolutely not!” Whipping around and sending an umbrella rack filled with ancient scrolls clattering to the floor, Sassaflash stomped over to the stairs and, turning, gestured for the Mule to stay put. “I cannot let you risk your life again for one of my schemes. This is my sin, and my penance; not yours. Besides, your wife would kill me if I ever let anything happen to you.”

“If’n you say so, Miss Sassaflash,” said the Mule, halting at the head of the stairs. “Only I ain’t exactly innocent myself. I helped you all along the way, you know. You couldn’t’a done it without your minion.” He paused. “Have you packed up some food?”

“Of course I packed food,” came the muffled call from below. “It’s in the kitchen; several small haybales and plenty of pemmican. I have done this before, you know.” She emerged from below, a saddlebag slung over her back. “If you’re feeling guilty about aiding and abetting my crimes, by all means...I don’t know, go do community service or something. Pick up litter. Something safe.”

The Mule, who had ambled into the kitchen, poked his head into the study and said, “Maybe I will, maybe I will. You sure this is enough food? It don’t seem like much.” He tilted his head, eyeing the Dark Lord. “What are you looking for?”

“My copy of the Ponypei Scriptures, if you must know. I had it out to study a week or two ago, and I seem to have neglected to put it back in place. And if you think there’s not enough food, just pack more. I can’t attend to every detail, Mr. Mule. I expect more initiative from you.”

“Yes, Miss Sassaflash. Sorry, Miss Sassaflash. I reckon that’s what you’re looking for over there, ain’t it? No, higher; inside the ribcage. The other ribcage, I meant, next to the giant eye in a bottle.” The Mule ambled out of the kitchen, travel-sized haybales and packages of pemmican strapped securely to his sides, along with a collection of pots and pans, spirit lamps, and lamp oil. “D’you reckon maybe you should bring along an extra bedroll, just in case the other gets lost or torn up?”

Sassaflash emerged from amid the stacks of books and nodded. “That seems advisable. Just a moment, let me fetch one from the dungeon.”

The Dark Lord disappeared down the spiral stairs, the clack of hooves on wood fading away below. Lowering himself carefully to the floor, his burden swaying slightly at his back, the Mule looked idly about. It was a nice house, he reflected, even if a little unconventionally decorated, and it would have been pleasant to house-sit. He hoped Angel and Crowded Parchment, whoever and whatever he was, would enjoy taking care of—

“Mr. Mule.” Turning, the Mule saw Sassaflash standing at the head of the stairs and glaring at him. He returned the look with a cheerful smile.

“Yes, Miss Sassaflash?”

Raising an eyebrow, she observed, “You appear to have loaded yourself up with supplies. Extra food, too.”

“Yes, Miss Sassaflash. I don’t reckon you could’a carried it all by your lonesome”

“And you just tricked me into getting another bedroll.”

“Suggested, not tricked.”

“You also appear to have packed—is that a sheaf of worrywort? And raskovnik?”

“Might could be you’d see the Elder Sign again, or something like it, and need to forget it in a hurry. Best to be careful, I reckon.”

“I seem to recall saying that you were not coming along on this expedition.”

“You did, at that,” agreed the Mule, amicably. He made no movement to remove the items strapped to his back.

For a long, long moment the two stared at each other, lit by the eerie glow of Sassaflash‘s lantern and by a few rogue fragments of sunlight, reflected off the upper storey windows of the house across the lane. The Mule tilted his head to one side, asking an unspoken question.

Then the Dark Lord Sassaflash laughed—a genuine laugh, happy and colored with a note of relief. Trotting forward, she swung the front door wide, sending a burst of fresh air rushing into the dusty, mouldering house. Yellowed papers fluttered into the air, drifting and flapping like great pallid moths startled from their rest. Turning back to face her friend, she said, “Why not! Why not, in the end? I submit; turn out the light, shutter the house, and follow me. We have a train to catch. You are certain you want to do this?”

“I’m certain, Miss Sassaflash.”

“Then come, Mr. Mule. Let’s go kill Cthulhu!”

Author's Notes:

Well. So it ends! Hopefully satisfactorily, although it is, oddly enough considering the giant world-devouring monsters featured in this tale, rather a quieter ending than that of my last story. Here's hoping it satisfies!

Lessee, now. Before closing up shop and shuttering the windows, there are some things I rather need to say. First, I want to express my immense gratitude to The Masked Ferret, without whose prompting and editing help this story would have been written far more slowly and imperfectly, and possibly not at all. Similarly, I have to thank my mother, who also offered invaluable editing help, and who continues to baffle me with her pride in the fact that I'm writing MLP fanfics. A mother's love knows no bounds, I suppose. And lastly, of course, I'd like to thank you—all you wonderful readers and commenters, who've been willing to give this tale a chance, and who've encouraged me with your thoughtful critiques, helpful impressions, and gratifying reactions. Thank you, all of you!

So, whither now? I'm still considering tackling a Celestia fic, as I believe I mentioned earlier, but if I do embark on that particular journey it'll be a little while coming; at present, there are a few other writing projects I'd like to focus on, most particularly an attempt to write a faithful interpretation of Lovecraft's Necronomicon (all 800+ pages. Yes, I know I'm insane), and an original science-fantasy tale of my own. Who knows, though? I certainly didn't have any intention of writing fanfiction at all before the season two finale aired, and yet within a day of watching it I'd banged out the first chapter of Mendacity, because dagnabbit, that story needed to be told. Perhaps the same thing will happen again. Season six is coming...

...Oh, right, I almost forgot. For those wondering, the planet George is an astronomy in-joke of sorts. Poor Uranus never really had a chance when it came to getting a nice, dignified name that schoolchildren wouldn't snicker at on the playground, and actually the name it ended up with is arguably better than the alternatives that were suggested at the time, which included Herschel, Neptune George the Third, and Georgium Sidus ("George's Star"). I find the idea of the planet George to be so hilarious that I couldn't help throwing it in.