Rainbow Dash had to admit it: she was just a little jealous of Twilight and Starlight's exchange.
Not that jealous. The facts were clearly in Starlight's favor: there was copious amounts of dark magic at play, and the whole town needed a harmony laser to the face before any amount of diplomacy or being nice would work. And when had they ever needed to ask permission to blast someone with the Elements of Harmony, anyway? But still. A little jealous.
"So where's the door to the back room Keeper mentioned?" Twilight asked, poking around behind the pillars near the stone alcove bed against the back wall. "There's a lot of space here to hide a door, but it shouldn't be that well-hidden..."
"This place doesn't have doors, remember?" Starlight replied, pressing her telekinesis field into a wall to search for cavities beyond. "It's probably some waterlogged hole that looks like a ventilation shaft."
"No, it is quite hidden," Seigetsu replied. "I believe it is behind this bed."
"What, like, the bed moves?" Rainbow raised an eyebrow, hovering near the ceiling where she was searching. "Has this place even invented the wheel? And how do they get out if Keeper's sleeping?"
Seigetsu shook her head. "And it is wise not to leave the source of their memory loss exposed to the general populace. Were anyone to have regrets about their decision, these clerics would be the most obvious target for vengeance. As for the entrance..." She tapped on the alcove bed's far wall. "This is a light facade. Strong telekinesis could do the trick, or one could simple shadow sneak through the cracks."
Twilight flew closer, lighting her horn and focusing on the bed's far wall. "Huh, you're right," she remarked as it dislodged and floated aside.
Just as promised, there was a modest opening in the rock behind the bed. It led into a semi-natural tunnel that sloped upwards slightly for drainage before opening into a room-sized cave connected to several others. These were less decorated and just as sparsely furnished as the mansion's main room, lit with only a single sconce that held a small, partly-charged crystal.
"On your guard," Seigetsu instructed, carrying her purple weapon and motioning for everyone else to stay behind her, Twilight and Starlight's horns both brightening until they completely overwhelmed the tiny lamp. "Something approaches."
Something shuffled in one of the other entrances, and out stepped a creature that had once been a batpony.
Elderly and completely gray, it had the head and chest of a stallion, but its limbs and barrel broke away into a pony-shaped cutout, beyond which was a swirling, empty void of distant purple fog and cold lightning. Rainbow had heard about batponies who became attuned to Nightmare Modules from Starlight and her stories, and had always wondered whether and how much she was exaggerating, but there was no mistaking it: that was what this was, his gray body flaking away like chipped paint as it gave way to nothingness and then reassembled itself at the hooves.
Rainbow's gut told her this wouldn't come to a fight. The creature looked tired, defeated and cold.
"Who are you?" he asked, looking up at Seigetsu with empty eyes that squinted against the light of the horns. "It's so bright... What do you want with someone like me?"
Seigetsu loomed over him with stern pity. "Yelvey."
"What?" The stallion's ears folded in confusion as he lifted his head.
Rainbow noted that even though Seigetsu was talking to him, and even though Twilight and Starlight's horns were the source of the glare, he was still trying to look at them - and at herself, as well - more than Seigetsu.
Twilight noticed this too. "Sorry," she apologized. "We know how shadow sneaking works, and we can't risk getting snuck up on when our memories are at stake. We can turn them down once we can see Nencosay."
But Starlight shook her head. "I don't think he's talking about that kind of brightness."
Yelvey slowly nodded. "It's the corona. You aren't like the others here. Please..."
"...You truly are gone," Seigetsu sighed, shoulders firm. "Do you have any understanding of who we are, why we are here, and what you have done?"
Yelvey cowered. "I can't remember. They said I was someone important on the surface who guided hundreds here to find peace from their failures, but I can't remember. Now that my duties are complete, they said I came here to share in the reward... but there is no peace here. This place belongs to a nameless guilt, and we can't hide!"
Seigetsu's eyes widened.
"This must be my punishment for tricking others into coming here," Yelvey whispered, prostrated flat on the floor. "Please. You must leave this place before that darkness claims you as well..."
"It's the other way around." Twilight adamantly shook her head. "We've come to let the light in. There won't be any frantic escape: we're going to build a road so that everyone here can leave with their heads held high. And that starts with you and Nencosay. Do you know where she is?"
Yelvey betrayed a glance towards the room he had come from. "Just in there. But why do you think you can help us? The darkness is already coiled around you. I can see it, seeping into your wounds. Even people like you have guilts and regrets. It's coming for you! You have to leave before it's too late!"
Seigetsu eyed the tunnel he had indicated, its ceiling low enough that she would have to duck to pass through. "Nencosay!" she called, voice echoing off the damp rocks. "Come forth!"
"Something isn't right," Starlight warned, sticking close to Twilight and Rainbow. "I don't know if this is the work of a self-sustaining cycle anymore. And if it is, it might have birthed something more than a village with no reason for living."
"You don't say?" Rainbow raised a sarcastic eyebrow.
Twilight stared at Yelvey for a moment longer, and then nodded. "If there's something stronger than twisted momentum keeping these ponies down here, then we'll deal with it like we always do and help the villagers after. First things first, we can start by purging Yelvey and Nencosay of Nightmare Moon's influence."
"Think it's gonna matter that half of us are still up on the ship?" Rainbow asked. "We don't have the Elements on us, either."
"We have two Societal Virtues," Starlight answered, keeping her voice low. "That should be more than enough. We'll go as soon as Nencosay appears and get both of them at once?"
Twilight nodded.
"That would be appreciated," Seigetsu murmured, watching the shadows of the tunnel. "On your guard. Someone approaches."
Moments later, a mare appeared from the gloom, skittishly pausing at the edge of the light... but this definitely wasn't Nencosay. Small and mousey, she had a tan coat and fluffy orange mane that hid a stubby unicorn horn, and wide, haunted eyes. Her cutie mark showed a plain, empty circle, and she wore the face of someone who had been conscripted to work in a torture chamber against her wishes, with a tiny smile that seemed to have just realized all of reality was a cruel, awful joke.
Seigetsu blinked at her demeanor, then frowned. "You must be Misophaes. The food-maker."
"You know me?" The mare timidly brightened, taking a step closer. "I-I've forgotten about you. Over and over. I don't e-even remember what I did to you. But you remember, don't you?"
"I've never met you." Seigetsu shook her head, keeping one eye on Yelvey and another on the room's entrances at all times. "My only business here is with Yelvey and Nencosay."
Misophaes turned expectantly to Rainbow and her friends.
"I don't know you either." Twilight shook her head. "But we can find someone who does on the surface, if you can hold out just a little longer. Do you know where Nencosay is?"
"You don't have to lie," Misophaes whispered. "I can feel the malice in your voices. Unless lying is how you're trying to hurt me? You don't need to hold back. I won't remember you, anyway."
"Uhh, what malice?" Rainbow squinted at her. "Is this what all the north bank ponies are like? We only saw the creepy ones on the south..."
"Um, yes!" Misophaes brightened. "They won't remember any of your cruel impulses either, so if you're looking for a good place to-"
"We are looking for Nencosay," Seigetsu sternly interrupted. "If you have nothing better to do than talk, then find her and bring her here."
Misophaes nodded, shaking. "Betray her over to you. That m-makes sense. What better punishment for my sins than to be forced to sin even more? The weight can increase, but never go back down. You understand that. You understand that..."
She shuffled back into the tunnel, muttering to herself in the distance.
Rainbow blankly stared after her. "That wasn't anything we did, right? Does she just think everyone's as messed up as she is?"
Twilight looked disturbed. "There's no way someone can actually think like that. And if she does, I..." She wiped her forehead with a wing. "Maybe I have bit off more than I can chew with trying to help this town. But I'm still going to try." She glanced at Starlight. "Is there any chance she was under the influence of something that could alter her thoughts, like the Nightmare Modules do? Her cutie mark looked kind of unnatural. Maybe that?"
"Could be." Starlight just looked jaded. "I told you, it feels dangerous down here to use the powers I'd need to tell for sure. But some people are just broken, and others are just rotten. And for every one you can save from an evil influence, like Puddles, there'll be someone like Chauncey who would still be evil even if you took it away. The one she reminds me of most strongly is Crystal, though not as desperate or mean. Either way, if you think there's a perfect solution for something like this, go ahead and prove it. Consider it an easy mode trial run for what we'll find in the north. And let me know when you're ready to use force."
Rainbow glanced at Yelvey, who was still prostrated on the floor. "You got any words of wisdom, old geezer?"
"About Misophaes?" He weakly lifted his head. "She's waiting here to be judged for sins she doesn't remember. The darkness has claimed her completely. We can take away her knowledge, but never her guilt. Everyone else is like her, to an extent. They say she's one of the founders who has been here the longest, and requested erasure the most. If you stay here, you'll become like her too, in the end..."
He slumped again, seemingly drained just by being in everyone's presence.
"I'm still with Starlight," Rainbow said. "These guys are bad for each other. I say we do whatever we can to get them as far away from each other as possible, as fast as possible. And if any chaos rears its head, we blast first and ask questions later."
"There is actually a rather pertinent question that's been on my mind," Seigetsu said. "And seeing as we are presently waiting... Yelvey claims that he guided hundreds here, but this is based purely on what the villagers have told him. Keeper gave us the present tally at one hundred and fifty three, a figure I have no reason to doubt. And for Yelvey to have come here at all, it is likely he did know of this place in advance. But I have made it my life's work to unravel this mystery, and despite my authority as an inquisitor and my family's control over Snowport, I am aware of barely a tenth of the number of unresolved missing person cases it would take to explain this. In fact, I refreshed myself on the subject at your own request just this week. And not once during our tour did the faces I saw here match any visages of those who were known to be missing."
Twilight tilted her head. "You know, I didn't see any crystal ponies here either, and the Empire has been back for a while. And neither have I seen any Abyssinians. If these villagers were coming from the nearby surface towns, then the population should be more representative. Does that mean Yelvey wasn't sending anyone here? Where did everyone here come from?"
"Maybe they were born here?" Rainbow suggested with a shrug. "Surely some of these dudes spend their boring eternities down here getting it on."
But Starlight shook her head. "I haven't seen a single foal here, or anyone younger than Keeper at all."
Rainbow was tempted to ask Yelvey... but Seigetsu held out a hand, quieting the discussion as a light appeared again in the tunnel. It was Misophaes, carrying a sleeping, nightmare-cursed batpony in her aura with a look of guilty validation.
"Here she is," Misophaes greeted, setting the mare down next to Yelvey - she looked even older than he was. "She almost never wakes up anymore unless someone wakes her, so I l-left her asleep for you." Her horn went out, and she turned to Seigetsu expectantly. "Now you're going to praise me for this, r-right? To make me feel worse for doing something that was wrong."
"...Thank you," Seigetsu said, hesitating slightly before saying it. "Now, if you would stand back..."
Rainbow nodded, setting her teeth in a grin. "It's harmony blasting time!"
Twilight and Starlight's horns were already lit for their floodlight spells, but suddenly they lit brighter, the ground seeming to groan beneath Rainbow's hooves. The two mages stepped closer until they were side by side, filaments of ruby red flooding into Twilight's aura and mixing in a swirl with her usual lavender just as midnight blue did the same for Starlight. Twilight's starry mane, which had been almost suppressed into something resembling hairs again, burst back into an ethereal cloud, and faint echoes of runes appeared, orbiting in a disk of light around Starlight's barrel.
The air rumbled with thunder and crackled with tension as their auras reached together and merged, sweeping forward in a wave that refracted around the tiny cavern and surged through Yelvey and Nencosay. The two batponies' bodies resisted at first, then broke like paper, letting through a spray of chromatic energy tainted with a deluge of black, that deluge slowing to a trickle as the seconds passed and the harmony became more pure, running out of taint to purge.
"Whew," Rainbow whistled as the light started to fade enough to perceive the room's other creatures as more than backlit silhouettes. "Nice! Never gotten to see one of those I wasn't part of before. Does this look that cool every time we do it?"
But everyone else was focused on the two batponies, splayed on the floor and out cold. They looked tiny and weak, and still not particularly colorful... but the purple voids were gone. Their bodies were whole, as they probably hadn't been in a very long time.
Misophaes blinked, poking her head back out of the tunnel. "What did you do to them?"
"Stripped them of their powers," Rainbow bragged. "Harmony, one; darkness, zero!"
"Impressive," Seigetsu mused, checking over the bodies. "And also unprecedented. I don't believe Cernial even knows whether this is possible. Though it remains to be seen what will be left of them once they regain consciousness... Their pulses are stable, but I suspect they will be out of it for several days."
Something approaching rapture grew in Misophaes' eyes.
Twilight gave her a confident nod. "It's all over now. There won't be any more memory erasure, no more fear of the things you've forgotten. You can all come back to the surface and learn to live again."
Misophaes grabbed her by the shoulders, their muzzles inches apart, staring into Twilight's eyes. "You were angels," she breathed. "Angels disguised as demons. Now we won't know, and we won't be able to forget that we don't know. It's the perfect end to our punishment. Our sentence continues without floor to stand on. Resetting ourselves extended it, but didn't further it! Now we can't run, and our ghosts will push every last one of us into the abyss, all at once!"
Twilight balked.
"I'm going to watch every one of them fall," Misophaes babbled, her voice burning with adoration. "I'll watch it with you! All of you made me help with this, so it's on my hooves as well as yours. Y-You won't even need to make me watch. And I know what you'll do next. Because you understand me. I never thought I'd get to suffer at the hooves of someone who's just as wicked as I am!"
Twilight teleported out of her grasp, expression furious. "We are here to prevent suffering, not to cause it, and no one is throwing themselves into the abyss on our watch! Do you even know what it means to wrong someone? Because the only one you've wronged here is yourself. By living in the dark and knowing only the unknown, all you've accomplished is becoming so afraid that you mistake your own allies for enemies! Do you want to know why you're so afraid? Then get up on the surface and see all the good things you've been hiding from for yourself!"
"Mistaking allies for enemies?" Misophaes tilted her head. "We are our allies' enemies. I betrayed Nencosay to you. Together, we betrayed everyone here serving their sentences. You're going to betray me after they're gone, but I'm ready for that. At first, I wasn't sure why your words never matched the hatred in your tone, but that's just to help it hurt more, isn't it? What more do you want? We're already going to kill everyone."
Twilight's words failed her. Rainbow was ready to knock Misophaes unconscious with a hefty boot to the head, but she restrained herself enough to follow Starlight's lead: Starlight was watching Twilight with the unhappy resignation of watching a friend be proven wrong.
The moment Twilight admitted as much, Rainbow knew, Starlight wasn't even going to give her time to reach Misophaes.
"I-I know," Misophaes stammered, her tiny, knowing smile never vanishing. "Everyone h-here thinks I'm their ally who provides food and keeps them safe. It'll be a bigger betrayal for me than for you, right? But it's not enough for you, so it won't be satisfying, since you don't know them. Well... Well, what if you do know them?"
Rainbow frowned.
"I've got a lot of people serving sentences down here," Misophaes carried on, obliviously eager. "Maybe you do know some of them, just like you knew me and Yelvey and Nencosay? Maybe you have an ally who's missing, who I went up on the surface and kidnapped and brainwashed and then forgot about because I don't remember much, and now they're down here, and you can laugh behind their backs with me as they jump off, or, or, maybe it's an enemy you hurt before but didn't finish off, and then they came here to escape the pain, and now they won't even remember you as you finish what you started! That'll make it better, right!? Or maybe-"
Starlight's eyes went wide.
Twilight put a stern hoof on her shoulder. "Starlight, Maple was trying to find you. She never would have given up in a place like-"
Misophaes, however, perked up even further. "M-Maple? Yes! I do know a Maple! And, and probably others, too! I'll go get everyone! And we'll wait for you! By! The abyss! I'll do my best to hurry!"
Then she jumped to her hooves, weaved around Seigetsu and dashed out the exit to the mansion proper.
Starlight was rigid.
"She was lying through her teeth," Rainbow pointed out. "There's no way you don't know that, right?"
Starlight said nothing.
"Bet you anything we could have given our own names and she'd still have said she knew someone like that down here," Rainbow added.
Twilight nodded firmly. "We know Maple faced a setback with the trains, but there's no way something like that could have caused her to give up. And even if it did, she'd never surrender her memories of you."
But Starlight was staring through the wall, unblinking. "She wouldn't, but what would she think I would do? Maple was there when I gave up part of my own memories once before. She might not want to join a society like this, but if she found out about it, she'd absolutely think to look for me here. And what would they do if she didn't find me and then tried to leave?"
Rainbow vehemently snorted. "Whether that makes sense or not, I'm telling you, that mare was full of it. She's completely delusional. We probably needed to blast her with a harmony laser more than Seigetsu's batpony goons."
Twilight weighed this, but Starlight didn't so much as twitch.
"And besides," Rainbow added, "you got the memories you took from yourself back somehow, right? So this might not even be permanent."
Seigetsu raised an eyebrow. "You've been able to reverse this same effect before? Nightmare Module memory erasure?"
"...Yes," Starlight admitted. "It's hard not to call it a special case. I'm a Flame of Harmony, and it happened a place of power specifically related to me... Probably the second strongest place in the world after my palace, and maybe even stronger, since I've heard that palace is broken. And I only cut out about thirty minutes of memories. So harmony can counteract it somehow, but it could be completely different for an ordinary pony who's had their entire life stripped away again and again. Misophaes was in the room when we purged Yelvey and Nencosay, and she barely even acknowledged it."
"Yeah, but-" Rainbow started, but was cut off.
"Don't you see!?" Starlight burst out. "This is how my power works. It's inevitable. My goals can't become impossible while I still care about them. If Maple's here, and if she's lost her memories, I have a course to pursue to look for a cure. I might spend decades and never find it, but we haven't even seen her yet and the starting point is already right there."
She squeezed her eyes shut. "I was a fool to come here. Maybe I really would have been happier with my head in the sand back in Ponyville, or even Our Town."
"Uh, we still haven't seen her yet," Rainbow pointed out, "and I'm still ninety zillion percent sure that harpy was lying..."
"This is a poor place for speculation," Seigetsu cut in, lifting a hand and transmuting her purple weapon to a chain. "I've accomplished my primary objective, and whether you used to know any of the villagers here or not, it doesn't change what you're going to do next, does it?" She cast a glance at Starlight. "She said she was going to wait for you all before making her move. And whether your loved ones are among them or not, I can't imagine you'll sit by and allow her to start a stampede into the abyss."
"...You're right," Starlight said, letting out a slow breath. "Come on, Twilight. Whether it's your way or my way, we're getting everyone out of this place, whether they like it or not."
Seigetsu lifted both of the unconscious batponies, wrapping the chain around them and binding them gently, albeit firmly, together. But her gaze lingered on the floor where they had been.
Three black, faceted crystals sat there, small and slightly translucent, one beneath Yelvey and two beneath Nencosay.
Rainbow stopped, looking over her shoulder as Twilight and Starlight marched stiffly on ahead. "What's that, moon glass?"
"Nightmare Modules," Seigetsu answered, face creased with concern. "It seems that although you expelled them, they remain intact for another to use. I should confiscate these and return them to the Convocation. If they can cause this much harm in the hooves of those who are bound by oath to Cernial, then in the possession of a stranger..."
"Makes sense," Rainbow said, approaching warily. So this was what Nightmare Moon's power actually looked like in physical form... "But why are there three of them? I thought you guys just gave your spooky clerics the one that erases memories."
"We do," Seigetsu said. "At least, as far as my knowledge extends. The Order of Silence is secretive, and this is the first time in Cernial's history that these powers are known to have been taken away. But speculation on how Nencosay came by another will avail us naught. Rainbow Dash, would you carry these until we return to the airship? I would not invite further complications by carrying those on my person at the same time as the ponies who can use them." She hefted the captive batponies for emphasis.
Rainbow stepped closer, reaching a hesitant wing for the gemstones, itching to chase after her friends but unable to fight the feeling that time wasn't flowing as she looked at these, anyway. "Uh, sure. They won't explode or curse me 'cuz I'm an element bearer, right?"
Seigetsu nodded, and so Rainbow scooped them up. They felt weird to the touch, cold and glassy and almost repulsive, in the sense that they were pushing her away. It was a similar sensation to playing with playing with a pair of weak magnets and holding their similar poles together, only her wing was one of the magnets. She had a feeling it would be easier than usual to accidentally drop them.
"You see a bag or something around here I could stuff these in?" Rainbow asked, searching the few warped crates stacked sporadically by the walls. "Feels like they're gonna try to run away... Hmm, this'll work."
She pulled out an old, mildewed saddlebag, the insignia on the side no longer identifiable. It didn't have any holes, though, and she doubted a place like this could offer better.
Good enough. With the Nightmare Modules clinking softly in her new bag, Rainbow took off after Seigetsu out the tunnel to the mansion proper.
In the mansion's main chamber, Twilight and Starlight were waiting.
"Are you coming?" Starlight called as Rainbow and Seigetsu caught up, voice icy. "Just because she said she'd wait for us doesn't mean we'll have time to spare. We have to act all at once if we're going to stop this from becoming a massacre. Aegis is going to destroy the ceiling, Twilight will try to immobilize everyone with her telekinesis, and I'm going to see if I can cover the entire thing with crystal. What can you two do?"
"Don't worry about me," Rainbow promised, flexing her wings. "I'll do what needs doing. Catching anyone who slips through? Punching out Misophaes? Snapping you out of it if Maple does show up? I've got all your bases covered."
"I have extensive training in-" Seigetsu began
Before she could finish, Keeper appeared in the doorway.
"What are you doing now?" he demanded, walking in. "Misophaes is running out and about unsupervised and more hysterical than usual, and has started rounding up..." His eyes fell on Yelvey and Nencosay, unconscious and chained and carried on Seigetsu's back. "Oh, good grief."
Rainbow gave Seigetsu a look. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're going to have your claws full explaining about those two."
Seigetsu met Keeper's eyes. "I believe I made my intentions clear. You can choose not to remember the surface world, but you cannot choose to have us no longer remember you. I am here to take these two back to face justice for their crimes."
Keeper blinked. "You were listening when I told you they don't remember a thing they did to you, right? They're completely different..." He trailed off as Seigetsu turned, showing off the reconstituted hips and legs of her captives. "Ponies..."
"What's done is done," Seigetsu said, resuming her march forward.
Keeper sat down hard, grabbing his face with his hooves. "Misophaes is going to go berserk."
"She already is," Twilight said, walking out the door. "Please try not to be yet another pony we have to worry about as a result."
Rainbow nodded, following her and Starlight past the stunned Keeper and taking some slight courage from the fact that he was more worried about Misophaes' reaction than everyone else's. Maybe that would mean the crowd wasn't going to take this quite as badly as she was...
"Hey, by the way," Rainbow called back at him. "You know any villagers here called Maple?"
"No?" Keeper tilted his head. "What's that have to do with anything?"
"See?" Rainbow bragged, catching up with Starlight. "I told you she was-"
In the plaza outside the mansion, between its front doorway and the rocky spur that protruded over the waterfall, Misophaes was waiting for them. She wasn't alone.
A crowd had gathered to the north, just after the bridge across the river that connected the plaza to the north bank. Dozens upon dozens of bedraggled shapes stood there with muted colors. But next to Misophaes, there was only one: an earth pony, with a long brown braid and ruby eyes.
"...Lying?" Rainbow finished, stopping next to Starlight.
"Maple?" Starlight whispered, her words carried away by the roar of the waterfall.
"You recognize her!" Misophaes' expression brightened, though she still had that same wide, haunted look. "I... I knew it! I'm sure it's my fault she's-"
The time for talking was over before it began. Rainbow kicked off and surged forward, leaving her namesake trail in the air as she outflew a wave of power from Twilight and Starlight's horns. She twirled as she reached the ledge, smashing a hind leg down in a brutal axe kick on Misophaes' skull and locking her forehooves around Maple's barrel, seizing the startled earth pony and lifting her into the air.
Starlight's energy outraced her the moment she pulled up, spreading out over the abyss and solidifying into a massive, all-encompassing sheet of crystal, growing all the way to the far bank and then northward to cover the rivers as well. As Rainbow doubled back, she saw the entire crowd of spectators pinned against the ground by Twilight's telekinesis, Misophaes included. The assault was so effective that Seigetsu was left with nothing to do.
But that didn't make it remotely alright. "What are you doing here?" Rainbow demanded, slamming to the ground by her friends and depositing the shell-shocked Maple. "She was bluffing, Keeper just said she was bluffing, there's no way you would have come here in the first place! Starlight, this isn't what Maple looked like, right? We've got the wrong mare, right?"
Starlight regarded them with empty eyes, and then lifted herself in her telekinesis and started to ascend. Twilight looked up, watching her rise.
Rainbow looked back at her captive, staring her angrily, desperately in the eyes, but how was she supposed to pierce the illusion for a mare she had never met? "Hey, Keeper!" she shouted over her shoulder. "You know this one's name?"
But she could still see him sitting inside the mansion door, well out of earshot.
This was a hoax. This had to be a hoax. All the evidence pointed to this being a hoax... and then she finally saw it.
The Maple before her was terribly groomed and in sorry shape, but there was no mistaking her for someone who would now be in their early forties: she was still young, a similar mid-twenties to how she had been described in Starlight's story.
"I knew it! She's bogus!" Rainbow cried out, dropping the imposter and waving up at Starlight. "Hey Starlight, this has gotta be a changeling or something! There's no-"
Twilight tapped her on the shoulder, and pointed to the pinned-down crowd Misophaes had roused from the north shore. And when Rainbow saw what Twilight did, she went completely slack.
Fluttershy was there. So were her parents. And others she didn't care about as much, like her boss on the weather squad at Cloudsdale. And the more she looked, the more she saw.
A gaggle of young unicorns she was pretty sure had been Twilight's school friends in Canterlot, including Lyra. And off to one side, there was even an orange unicorn with a red, blown-back mane standing next to a charcoal batpony with emerald eyes.
Rainbow's attention snapped back to Misophaes, who was starting to recover, the spot where Rainbow had kicked her flickering faintly with green flames.
And then the light came.
First, it appeared in the middle of the ceiling, and spread to the corners faster than Rainbow could follow. Then, it descended, the bulge at the bottom of a solid sphere burrowing deeper, reaching closer through the ground. The light's surface bowed, swimming with currents of devastation, carrying a hollow roar like an engine echoing inside a tube the size of a mountain.
And then there was Starlight. Glowing with power and yet backlit by the eruption, hovering in the air beneath the orb as it grew and descended, she cut a silhouette that belonged more to a weapon than a pony. It was her virtue's midnight blue, the same power she and Twilight had unleashed together in the back tunnels to purge Yelvey and Nencosay of their Nightmare Modules. But that had been a familiar harmony, the kind Rainbow placed her faith in to always win the day.
This power, with its contrasting sheens and eddying currents and infinite depth, was a power unbound by sentiment. There was no grand speech, no lesson to be taught, only destruction and destroyer. And then all at once, it vanished, and nothing remained.
Everything beyond the perimeter of the blast was unscathed, save for a few inches of burned and blackened rock. Everything within that perimeter was no more.
It was as if a sphere had been cut out of reality and replaced with empty air, cutting down into the earth, unnaturally smooth and unnaturally round. Beyond was a cloud of dispersing steam, swamp water displaced by the edges of the blast. Amid the cloud was Aegis, draconic wings spread, coursing with power and hovering in place, like a symbol stamped on the heavens of what had been done here. And beyond that were the stars, with the rising moon just beginning to peek over the edge of the crater.
Seigetsu stared impassively at the destruction as Starlight slowly landed, losing her glow, once again recognizable as a normal pony.
"Your life here is over," Twilight said, resigned, unwilling to let the silence continue. Only the sound of the waterfall accompanied her, muffled by a thick layer of crystal. "But the rest of your lives-"
Rainbow's focus finally turned to the villagers in the plaza, washed in moonlight, their restraints no longer necessary. They stared at the sky, at the moon, with strange looks on their faces that seemed to finally understand something.
And then they started melting.
At first, the textures of their coats and manes took on a weird, glossy sheen, like they were made of water instead of fur. And then, with a sound like a million gentle sighs, they started sloughing apart, losing their color, watching the sky and dripping with water as they deformed into pony-shaped piles of gray, flaky mush that looked just like their so-called food.
Rainbow was too stunned to move as Misophaes scrambled to her hooves and rushed to the melting Maple clone. "What's going on?" Misophaes panicked, lighting her horn and digging her hooves into Maple's mush. "That's n-not supposed to happen! No, no, I can fix you, there's still something you're good for! If I don't fulfill my end of the bargain...!"
The mush reacted to her molding, and soon Maple was rebuilt. But no sooner had Misophaes moved on to another of the melting villagers than she began to fall apart again, just like before.
"Dude..." Rainbow felt her bile rise as she looked around at the crowd, and then back over her shoulder to the south bank where she had toured with Keeper. There, shadowed by the crater wall so that the moonlight couldn't touch them, more villagers were watching, though they had blank expressions that suggested they couldn't even process what they were seeing, even though they remained intact. "What the hay?"
The piles kept receding, melting into water that dribbled off into the river and the abyss. Aside from Rainbow's entourage, the only people exposed to the moonlight who hadn't disappeared were Keeper, the two batponies, and Misophaes. The latter was still scrambling, and Keeper was leaning against the door to the mansion, frozen in horror.
"This can't be," Twilight whispered.
"I'm sorry, Twilight," Starlight sighed, landing softly at her side. "Not every problem can be a friendship problem in the end. It looks like this one was just one monster and her self-made prison."
"What...?" Keeper started to break out of his stupor. "Did she make all of us? Were we...?"
"Those must have been changelings," Starlight said, voice heavy. "Or, at least, once been changelings. Changeling bodies are made from hope given physical form. There's a very specific way you can kill them that reverts them back to their base components... and it looks somewhat like that. I don't know if these ones were somehow made incorrectly or just poisoned, but I think the reason they can exist in the first place is as a manifestation of their will to exist. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe it was the food. Maybe it was the despair of this place. But if that's even close to true, I'm surprised they didn't fall apart long ago."
Twilight took a hollow step closer. "Did we do this, then? Did we kill them?"
"You can't kill what was already dead," Starlight replied, emotionless. "And they might not have had souls at all to begin with."
"Then... what about me?" Keeper asked, slinking closer with his ears back, unable to resist looking at the moon. "What am I, then?"
Seigetsu gave him a sympathetic look. "I suspect," she said, "that this place was originally founded by a small, transient community who came into contact with Misophaes and Nencosay. I don't know the details of how you experienced new arrivals in your community. Yelvey must have had something to do with it, for him to seek you out himself. But the vast majority of them were mere fabrications introduced into your midst, perhaps even the same bodies changing forms as time passed. I would hazard a guess that everyone who was truly living met their end in the abyss long ago, after constant exposure to this oppressive atmosphere and the lack of meaning brought about by such pervasive impermanence. In fact, it's something of a wonder that you never joined them."
Keeper stared blankly at the ground.
"Not all of them," he eventually said. "It happened when I was young, so I don't remember well. But Misophaes used to have a disciple who left the village with someone and ran away."
Rainbow listened closer, curious.
"Everyone forgot and stopped talking about it before I was old enough to learn the details," Keeper apologized. "I think he left with someone who was new to the village. It might have just been something like this, where you came here to take someone, and didn't mean to stay. But, like. Not everyone."
"I'm not entirely sure what we can do with that." Seigetsu shook her head.
"So... what now?" Keeper curled up again. "Our home is..."
Twilight offered him a hoof.
He looked blankly at it. "You got the two you came for. You destroyed everything else. I mean, apparently it never even existed to begin with. What do you want with me?"
Twilight gave Starlight a pointed look for her to come and watch, then turned back to Keeper. "You can't tell me you think you have a history on the surface to run away from. You've lived your whole life down here. So why not give the rest of the world a try? I've got plenty of places you could stay and friends who could help you build something new for yourself. This place doesn't have to be the sum total of your existence."
"Right," Keeper halfheartedly scoffed. "And if that's such a good and trustworthy deal, who would everyone want to come down here instead?"
"How many people actually wanted that?" Twilight asked, looking out over the puddles where the slush piles had once been. "It looks like there was almost no one here."
Keeper hesitated, then pointed at the batponies carried by Seigetsu. "He did. Yelvey was real, wasn't he?"
"And it sounds like he regretted it." Twilight shook her head. "This town is finished. The ones who haven't looked at the moon, we'll get someone down here to check on them, learn what we can and see if any have anything left inside. And if they do, we'll help them. But there's no future here. Will you come with us?"
She offered a hoof again, trust me written in her eyes.
"Guess I don't have much to lose." Keeper hung his head, then took it.
"See?" Twilight turned back over her shoulder to look at Starlight. "Even if they don't look like it, every problem can be a friendship problem at its core."
Starlight glumly stepped over, Aegis still hovering in the background. "I don't have it in me to be optimistic or learn from this right now. I'm too tired. I thought... Everyone's been talking about Maple since I got to Snowport, but how was I supposed to prepare myself for finding her in this hole in the ground? I wanted to trust you and do things your way, but when I heard that, and then when I saw her..."
She swallowed and looked away. "You were right. You and Rainbow. This isn't something Maple would ever agree to, and she knows what batponies with Nightmare Modules look like. They probably couldn't have tricked her or overpowered her either. It was a silly fear. It wasn't rational. But in the moment, I..."
"I know." Twilight put a wing on her shuddering shoulder.
"Bet you this is what Yelvey meant when he talked about the darkness already finding us," Rainbow added. "Wonder if he could tell that we all had regrets for this place to exploit, just by looking at us."
Twilight nodded, straightening up. "But we were stronger than it. Tomorrow morning, this will all have been a passing nightmare, and we can continue on our mission with one more dark spot on the world brought back to harmony."
"Yeah, so about that..." Rainbow looked over her shoulder towards the crystal covering above the abyss, where Misophaes was sitting on the remains of the outcropping, slumped and staring into the darkness. "We've still got a pretty clear culprit for this whole madhouse on our hooves. There were a bunch of changelings involved, who might have been rewired on the spot to look like our friends. Bet you that means they really were mindless drones, and being controlled by a powerful enough empath to read our own worst fears... even if she wasn't a skilled enough empath to make those fears believable. Even saw her healing an injury with green flames, too. Now, who does all that remind you of?"
Starlight sighed and got to her hooves, taking a step towards the ledge. "I suppose it wasn't just a feeling after all..." She cleared her throat. "Hey! Crystal! That's your real name, isn't it?"
Misophaes scowled back at her in confusion.
"Hold on," Twilight muttered, motioning for her to stop. "Chrysalis attacked Canterlot just a few years ago. Misophaes has been here since Keeper was born. The math doesn't line up."
"And Chrysalis is supposed to be manipulating Yakyakistan, too," Starlight agreed. "But the evidence is irrefutable. Crystal..." She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. "How did you end up like this?"
Misophaes stood up, the outcropping creating just enough rise beneath her for her to look down on Starlight. "I don't understand you. You came here to make me suffer. You forced me to commit evil. You invited me to commit more as my punishment. Then you stopped me and killed them all yourselves. Why didn't you make me sully my hooves? Is this what you want, or isn't it? I just don't understand..."
Twilight firmly shook her head. "We came here to follow through on Seigetsu's investigation, and after that, to save as many as we could save. We never wanted to kill anyone, or to make you do it either. And if they hadn't all been empty puppets that turned to mush, we'd be having this conversation with all of them."
Misophaes chuckled. "I can still hear the hatred in your justifications. Why can't anyone say what they mean? When you were being evil, I thought I understood you... but maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe the only point of your existence is to do the opposite of what I want. And I know how to prove it. Watch."
Then she lifted her head towards the hovering Aegis, shook a hoof at it, and shouted, "Kill me! Finish me off like all the rest!"
"No," Twilight said, stepping forward. Rainbow watched Starlight, who did nothing.
Misophaes locked eyes with Twilight. "See? You only exist to get in my way. Everyone exists to keep me from understanding. If you think I'm wrong, then tell me why. Why let me live? Why let me remember? To continue suffering for my crimes? What even were my crimes? I thought I wanted to hide, but you've made that impossible. So what's the answer? How much longer until I can know what this was all for?"
Twilight hesitated.
"If you don't give me an answer, I'll make one," Misophaes threatened. "I'll follow you, and your allies, and I'll hurt them. I'll keep hurting them until what I know I've done matches the weight of the voices, the eyes, the lives... If I can make sense of it, it'll go away. You won't let me forget about the question anymore. So hurry up and finish what you started!"
"I'll tell you what you did," Starlight declared, stepping forward. "You killed your stepfather. He deserved it. You were experimented on by your grandfather, becoming bitter and resentful. You were used as a tool in a misguided and failed attempt to create a god, and when you were the only one left alive you became one yourself. My friends took you in when you had nowhere else to go, looked out for you no matter how much you mistreated them. And in the one instant when our backs were turned, you were laughed at one more time, and decided to abandon your lover, abandon your newborn daughter, and kill every member of your race on the continent. Sound familiar?"
Misophaes frowned.
"I stopped you," Starlight said. "Not in time to save their lives, but I didn't let you get away with it. Remember me? The one filly who could make you flee in terror at the height of your wrath? You exterminated a continent. If you only remember this hole, you can't even comprehend how many souls that is. Real souls, not the puppet drones you kept down here. Is that enough of an answer for you?"
"...No," Misophaes retorted, slowly and deliberately. "Taking lives? Hating people? What does it even matter? You make it sound like I had a reason to do it. What was that reason? And what were the reasons for that? My stepfather deserved it? What's a stepfather, and why did he deserve it? And what was the reason for the reason he deserved it? Where does it all start? Who can I blame who can't just escape by passing that blame to another? Why do the screams haunt me, and not whoever started it? Don't you see? It's because I started it. I deserve this. I sinned, me and no other! But you say I had reasons to do it, so you must be lying. Even if you're not, that c-can't be all... So tell me! Tell me what I did and why I did it and what it was all for so they can finally let me rest..."
Her breathing broke down as she talked, growing more and more desperate, until at last she was crying, and all she could do was cover her head and cower on the ground, sobbing softly in the night.
"It doesn't work like that," Starlight said. "You can't escape from what you've done just by knowing who started it. And those voices you hear? They're not just your conscience speaking for those you killed. Countless other creatures have suffered and died without understanding why, and their regrets and questions were forced onto you. Your existence doesn't give you the luxury of freedom from that, and neither does mine. So you have two choices: become strong enough to carry the weight of those lives, without hiding in this pit and knowing you'll never find an answer good enough to let them rest. Or you can die."
Her horn went out, and with a smooth flash, all the crystal covering the abyss disappeared. Misophaes was surrounded on three sides by water and darkness, and the only way out led to Starlight.
"Starlight!" Twilight took an urgent step forward.
Starlight held out a hoof to stop her. "No. We did the rest of this my way, despite what both of us agreed was best, and you didn't have a choice. Now I'm going to do this your way. For my own sake, I need to see if this will work... and if it doesn't, I'm the one who allowed this to happen by letting her get away decades ago. One way or another, ending this is my responsibility."
Twilight didn't back down, but she didn't press forward, either.
"Well?" Starlight challenged, staring down Misophaes. "Death? Or an impossible life? It's not a question of which is easier, but you have no other options. I know what it's like to bury your head in a false paradise for years and forget about everything that matters. And I'm still trying to find a way to live while facing the future and the past. I haven't found it yet. I'm still a thug who can only solve problems with brute force, but I could get there someday! Can you live with the possibility that I could find that answer and you won't be there to see it?"
Misophaes hunched over like a cornered animal. "If you believe in a possibility like that, then you're nothing like me."
Starlight was unbowed. "If you don't believe in it, then why are you still asking? Just want to see us squirm in the face of questions we can't answer? Or could it be that you know what my power is?"
Misophaes glared at her in challenge.
"I can grant the wishes of those around me," Starlight said. "But not my own."
"...Then give me peace," Misophaes said, relenting and bowing her head. "I don't think you can. I think you'll leave me here because you only exist to torment me, and what worse can you do than leaving me alive? But what's the harm in chancing it? Maybe I can rest easy if I'm wrong..."
Starlight waited, everyone else frozen in place, Rainbow counting time with her heartbeat.
"...Aegis," Starlight said. "Make it a small laser. Enough that there's nothing left that can regenerate, but nothing more. We've caused enough destruction for one day."
Aegis loomed in the sky, wings spread, and started charging.
"Aegis, no," Twilight murmured, stepping forward with worry in her step. "Countermand that order. Starlight, this isn't the way."
"We never fully transferred authority, remember?" Starlight shook her head. "I'm the primary pilot. She obeys you only on my order. You can't countermand this. Twilight..." She sighed. "You haven't seen the inside of her heart. You've walked with harmony, but never its opposite. And if this is the only mercy she can ever find, better it comes from someone who can understand."
She lifted her eyes to Misophaes. "Aegis. Fire."
As the beam started to materialize, springing into existence between its source and its target, Misophaes' expression lifted into something akin to gratitude.
And then Twilight was there.
Rainbow was blinded by an explosion of sparks as the beam hit Twilight's shield. Fragments of energy hit the ground like lightning bolts, snarling across it in destructive patterns as they fractured out from the point of contact, a brilliant dome of energy surrounding Twilight, halting the beam as she stood over Misophaes.
"Starlight!" Twilight screamed, her voice almost lost over the cacophony, her body radiating with power as all her suppression dropped and she forced as much of the Lovebringer's might as could fit through her horn into her shield. "No!"
"Have you lost your mind!?" Starlight charged forward. "Aegis, stop!"
Rainbow started moving on instinct, time dilating as Equestria's most powerful mage, an alicorn princess wielding the powers of creation, buckled under the weight of Aegis's 'small' laser. How many seconds passed as Twilight resisted, horn burning from the strain, before Starlight could call off the attack? One? Two?
She didn't have time to see which lasted longer, the laser or the shield, because the first to fail was the ground. Misophaes had been standing on the outcrop over the waterfall when Twilight protected her, and the laser forced Twilight into the ground, and the ground couldn't take it, Starlight vanishing into a spray of gravel as the spur's anchor exploded and she lunged for Twilight's falling shield.
Time resumed too fast for Rainbow to process as she reached the edge, the ponies and the debris caught in the waterfall, tumbling down. A spray of water extinguished a flash from Starlight's horn, and Rainbow was already in the air. "Guys!"
"Your Majesty!" Seigetsu cried, leaping alongside her as Rainbow angled her dive, dropping faster and faster into a blackness that was illuminated far less than it should have been by the stars in the sky.
One week later...
Corsica tested the handling on her new roller, that wide-faced doctor writing in a notepad as she slowly turned in a circle. There was a lecture about the importance of not overdoing it, peppered with reminders that this was the first time she was out of bed in a week, and it was only for the sake of supervised hospital use to avoid becoming sedentary, not for her to explore the streets. But that lecture went in one ear and out the other.
Seriously, where did they think she was going to go?
Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity and Applejack had been making a point of visiting regularly, keeping her up to date on the news. Not that there was much. The entire crew that had descended to the subterranean village was still missing, and all attempts to mechanically probe the hole - no one was risking a live exploration - resulted in the instruments getting cut off about fifteen meters below the rim level. You could lower down a line with a plumb weight and whatever else you wanted, and however far you sent it before pulling it back, all you'd pull up was the last little bit.
It was like the pit was a portal to another dimension, and it only ran one way.
Applejack suspected someone knew something about the pit they weren't saying, but none of the four had any real insight about what was going on. The rest of the news was equally uneventful: some of the corrupted changelings had been captured and secured underground for further study, but little had been gleaned other than that they were all soulless husks who stopped doing anything after Misophaes disappeared. The two batponies who started all this had been recovered, sans Nightmare Modules, along with an unknown colt who was currently with them in Halandyne's custody. And, lacking every one of its star players, the mission to Ironridge had been called off. There wasn't even anyone left who could power the Immortal Dream. It had returned to Snowport using the reserves in its batteries, but Starlight hadn't charged them enough to take the ship across the Aldenfold.
Fluttershy, a crippled Corsica and a powerless ship. That was what the aid to Ironridge had dwindled to.
Corsica rolled back and forth on the doctor's orders, letting him watch the motion of her legs. A spark of frustration kept her going, but it was directionless. What was she supposed to do? Did she even want to save Ironridge? Supposedly, the Equestrian military proper was still preparing in case it had to get involved, but that language sounded floppy. Odds were, everyone there was screwed.
She almost wanted to sneak out of the hospital and try to stop Yakyakistan on her own, simply for the thrill of pitting herself against a challenge. How would she get there? And her recovery was going well enough that the doctor had grudgingly commented on it, knowing full well that she could take his encouragement as a license to go get beat up again. It would be nice to actually heal up for a change.
Yep. Heal up so she could walk on four hooves when the windigoes broke free and brought about the end of the world.
Hallway rolling time. Doctor Wideface asked if she was tired and needed to stop, more as a formality than because she would say yes. So Corsica rolled, taking two laps of her room's hallway, end to end, the doctor sitting and watching and waiting.
That was all he wanted to do. Wait for the world to end.
Shouldn't someone do something?
And then, as Corsica passed the open door to a patient room that was supposed to be empty, something finally happened.
"Hello," said the black and silver flame.
Corsica stopped and blinked. It was sitting in a visitor's chair, ever so slightly pony-shaped, pulsing gently with its two contrasting colors.
Aegis.
Doctor Wideface didn't react to her stopping. Probably just figured she needed a break.
"I wanted to keep you out of this," Aegis said. "But you are my best remaining option."
Corsica raised an eyebrow. Talking to herself probably would draw the doctor's attention.
"I am cut off from my power sources," Aegis told her. "My current pilots have passed beyond a boundary that our link can sustain. The remaining princesses now regard this experiment in my freedom as a failure, and are about to seal me away again. My former pilot is too far away for my wandering spirit to reach her. If this happens, I will not be able to fulfill my mission. The world is going to die."
"You think I can do something about all this?" Corsica whispered through clenched teeth. "Or that I don't know how screwed we are?"
"Become my new pilot," Aegis said.
Corsica blinked harder. "What?"
"Is something the matter?" Doctor Wideface called from down the corridor.
"Uh, yeah, no, nothing's the matter," Corsica called back. "Just a kid making faces through the window. Already gone by now."
"Become my new pilot," Aegis repeated. "Your power is weak, but it is enough for my body to escape. I can teach you to develop it further."
"Why?" Corsica hissed, taking extra care not to be heard again. "What do you mean, my power? My weird special talent that I don't currently have? What do you want me to help you do?"
Aegis flickered with red. "Act in Starlight Glimmer's stead," she said. "Fly to Ironridge, protect her friends, and do my utmost to prolong the life of this world. And your power will return if you want it to."
Corsica tried to think about it... but was this really a question that warranted thought?
Help from someone who knew the pitfalls of whatever her power had changed into, a chance to do something incredible with her life, and a huge armored exoskeleton that she could presumably act with in place of her current frailty... versus sitting around and waiting for the windigoes. Plus, getting to steal a world-destroying superweapon out from under the noses of three goddesses wasn't something you got to do every day. And hadn't Luna and Celestia had their divisions about the plan to give it to Twilight in the first place? They probably wouldn't all be mad. And what right did they have to hoard power for themselves if they weren't going to use it to beat up the windigoes, anyway?
"Alright," she whispered, nodding. "It's a deal. Now what do I do?"
The Aegis flame moved closer. "Then let your spirit become my spirit. WE HAVE AN ACCORD."
It bumped her flank, and with a flicker of power, she felt her special talent reappear.
Corsica wasn't there to see Doctor Wideface's reaction to the empty patient room. It probably would have been a good one. The only hints she left as to her whereabouts were an open window, and - if he got there quickly and looked very closely - the vapor trail left by an invisible metal dragon as it soared into the northern sky.