Fallout Equestria

Chapter 39.

Souls.

Souls are the spirit and essence of a pony, the fundamental core of their nature and the kernel of life that exists beyond the biology of flesh and blood and mental synapses.

I had seen empirical evidence of the reality of souls. Beyond that, my beliefs in an afterlife where the souls of dead ponies continued on in eternal peace and in the transcendent souls of Celestia and Luna as Goddesses who watched over us with love and pity and hope -- these surpassed the foundations of knowledge and were the architecture of faith.

But the two things I did know: souls had a living power, and a soul was a hard thing to kill.

There was no way I could know for sure if the Black Book had been destroyed. But if it was not, then it was either buried under rubble or fused into a crater of glass.

The Black Book hadn't needed to be the conduit of some eldritch cosmic horror, or its pages filled with blasphemous magic, to corrupt those close to it. It was enough that the Book was the host to a wicked and twisted soul -- the soul of an insane, maleficent zebra.

The Black Book called out to those around it who were susceptible to its influence. Two alicorns walked into the throne room. One sensed the presence of the Black Book. The other did not. Calamity had not reacted to it when I had found it; my other friends had been near it as they traveled with me. But it had sunk barbed hooks into my mind even before I had retrieved it. We had encountered two alicorns who had been affected by the temptations of the Black Book without ever having seen it or opened its pages. Nightseer had been transformed by the Book's proximity. She had been one of those who the Goddess had sent to find the Book. Did her telepathy leave her especially defenseless? Had the Black Book filled the void in her mind left by the absence of the Goddess?

I was vulnerable to it. My weaknesses -- addiction, curiosity and the shame of having only a single spell -- played to its strengths.

The soul of the Black Book had been particularly ancient and powerful. I had possessed the Black Book for less than two days, and it had already begun to tempt me. Clumsily perhaps at first; the Book wasn't telepathic like the Goddess. Most of the horrors in my nightmare I had provided myself. The Book merely used the tools my fevered night terrors gave it. And still, I did not have the strength alone to withstand its first probing attacks. To be able to stand against that influence as it continuously tried to erode you away, to hold to any part of yourself after years with the book, much less to take its twisted gifts and create something noble and good from them... that would take a level of moral endurance and fortitude almost beyond comprehension.

Be unwavering!

How often had those six ponies from the past, through the radiance of their souls, given me insights I couldn't have had myself, or allowed me to tap reserves of strength and will that I shouldn't have been able to muster? They had saved me and guided me since finding Applejack in Old Appleloosa, their influence growing with each statuette I found. But it was only after I had brought them all together that they had been able to intervene on my behalf more directly.

I believe it was no coincidence that Rarity was the first to appear. My mind and soul had ever-so-briefly become the battleground for two warring influences. One powerful soul of evil and madness against six shards that shone with the virtue and hope of Rarity and her five closest friends. The shards of the statuettes were not truly those of the Ministry Mares -- I suppose they were more like Rarity's soul wearing perfect disguises -- but they shone with the true nature of those other ponies. They burned with the love and compassion and virtue and nobility of each of the Ministry Mares in turn. They were eternal, metaphysical images of the deepest, truest nature of those ponies, lit up like beacons, fueled by a shining piece of Rarity herself.