On the twelve-hundredth day after the world ended, Abacus Cinch awoke as usual. She showered as usual, currycombed herself as usual, briefly considered which of her dark blue blazers to wear, pulled her mane into its usual tight bun at the back of her head, and moved into the kitchen for breakfast.

Flash Sentry was already at his post outside the window, his orange and blue and gold the only splash of color in the beige and ivory of the place. "Morning, Ms. Cinch," he called, waving a wing.

Cinch gave him her usual crisp nod and prepared her bowl of oatmeal.

"Again," Sentry said, "I'd really recommend a little brown sugar and cinnamon on there."

"Duly noted," she replied, adding no spices whatsoever to the concoction as punishment for her constant betrayal of the principles to which she had once devoted her life.

Swallowing the oatmeal with a glass of tepid water, she very carefully thought about nothing. It was a skill she'd developed more than a thousand years ago, though of course it seemed to her a mere twelve hundred days since she'd failed His Majesty so completely.

But that was one of the main things she didn't think about.

"And tea," Sentry said through the window, that damned face of his nearly glowing with an innocence she still thought must be feigned. "There's nothing like the scent of a nice breakfast tea mixing with warm brown sugar and oatmeal, I always say."

"Yes," she observed, not looking at him. "You do always say that." She leaned forward, licked up the last glob of gruel, patted her muzzle with her napkin, and took the bowl and glass to the sink.

This put her much too close to him, standing in his regular spot on the little stone walkway beside the house she'd claimed as her own when she'd come groggily to consciousness after the end of the world. For just over three years now, she'd been living here knowing its owner would never return, using her given name and original skill set for the first time in decades.

All of which was more information that she didn't think about. The round number of the occasion—twelve hundred days and all—must be making her maudlin, something she couldn't afford to be. She would never give the usurpers the satisfaction of witnessing her slip up.

"Sorry, Ms. Cinch." Sentry shrugged his wings. "Since we see each other so often, I guess I kind of get into a rut when it comes to conversation topics."

With soap and sponge, she cleaned her bowl. "No need to apologize, Sergeant. We're each merely doing our duty, after all."

She had no idea if Sentry actually was a sergeant in what currently passed for the Empire's royal guard. She'd been calling him 'sergeant' since this whole unfortunate business began last year, and he'd never corrected her. Not that she could imagine a spineless specimen such as himself ever correcting anypony the way her former underlings in His Majesty's service had been so adept at.

Blowing out a breath, she also blew away that thought. She needed to get to work and focus her attention on something else. This twelve-hundredth day since she'd been too weak to fulfill the duties His Majesty had expected of her was obviously playing havoc with her sense of decorum and propriety.

Stepping back into her bedroom, she snapped her earrings into place, slung her purse on, and left by the front door. She didn't look around for Sentry: his one saving grace was the discretion he showed during her morning and evening commute.

Of course, she worked in the palace and was therefore surrounded by guards the entire day. But the only reason she was able to maintain a life here in the Empire was that no one involved insisted on marching along behind her the whole way there and back. The usurpers had no doubts, she was certain, as to her identity, but every action they took concerning her absolutely reeked of compassion and their desire to welcome her into their herd after receiving her heartfelt confession and bestowing their loving absolution.

Careful not to strike her hooves any harder than necessary against the crystal cobblestones paving the streets between her little house and the palace, Cinch nonetheless imagined the sound and feel of cracking skulls with each step she took.

---

The work, fortunately, numbed her mind wonderfully. She'd made her living as an accountant for a decade before His Majesty had deigned to notice that her crunching skills reached beyond the world of numbers.

Everything she'd experienced in the two decades after that ranked at the very top of her list of things not to think about, and employing her namesake device to track the current Empire's income and expenditures helped her not to think about them. Sliding those beads up and down, she could see the numbers they represented much more clearly and distinctly than the ponies who filled the desks around her or chattered inanely in the cafeteria at lunch.

Continuing her practice of the past twelve hundred days, she kept her head down and her mouth closed as much as equinely possible. Her calculations let her finish her assignment exactly at the moment the clock in the corner of the accounting office chimed six, so she stood, folded closed the top sheet of her work folder, and left the desk to the night clerk standing quietly to the side. More than three years now, and Cinch had no idea of the pony's name. She rather thought it wasn't the same pony with whom she'd shared this desk at the beginning, however. That first one had been a mare, she thought, and this one was a stallion.

As if it mattered in the slightest...

She signed out, took the same careful steps back home, and by the time she'd removed her earrings, hung up her blazer, and entered her kitchen again, Sentry was back outside the window. "Evening, Ms. Cinch," he said.

With a nod, she prepared her usual hay and dandelion salad, weathered his usual comments about the variety of dressings that were available for such a dish, ate it plain as usual, then took her plate and glass to the sink.

In the darkness of the spring night outside, Sentry didn't watch her wash and dry. His attention as always shifted from the street at the front of the house to the alley at the back. "Well," he said, "everything seems secure. So I'll see you in the morning, ma'am."

"Yes," she said after stretching her neck to set the plate back in the cupboard. "I imagine you will."

About half a smile pulled at his muzzle, and he moved away from the window's light. She had no idea if he watched the house all night or if the usurpers had a separate contingent who took over from him, but she couldn't say she cared much. Her part in the history of the Crystal Empire was past, and she would never play a part again.

Settling onto the sofa, she took up the most recently published volume of Reflections and Recollections, the monthly periodical published by the usurpers' Truth and Reconciliation Committee. They'd set up the committee as part of the reforms they'd instituted when they'd come to power after the Empire's reappearance and the final destruction of His Majesty's pale and shabby ghost. The magazine contained nothing but propaganda, of course, designed to show those citizens whose memories of His Majesty's reign still remained fragmentary that the new regime was infinitely better.

Reading it every night was another part of her self-imposed punishment.

A few minutes into this night's reading, however, something clicked in the hallway. The closet door opening, she knew at once. She kept her ears from perking, though. She'd long suspected that Sentry or another of the usurpers' minions went through her things on a regular basis. Surprising that they were here so late and with her present, though. looking for evidence that she was actually—

"Chisel," a voice muttered from that same hallway, and Cinch couldn't stop her ears from perking. The rough, guttural tone tickled memories she didn't dare think about, but the figure that emerged from the shadows into the light of her reading lamp couldn't've been any other pony.

Still— "What's the meaning of this?" she demanded as quietly as she could.

A scar jagged along the left side of his snout, a scar she'd given him during his training as her assistant a thousand and fifteen years ago. It flexed with his humorless smile almost like a second mouth. "Good," he more rumbled than said. "You're not denying it."

She'd assumed Pestle had died with the others when His Majesty had sucked the life from his loyal retainers just before the end of the world. The crystals that powered the spell for wrenching the Empire out of the time stream had required quite a charge, after all...

It took almost no effort to keep her expression blank. "Though I of course can't stop you from rifling my cupboards and drawers, I've nothing of value here."

His chuckle didn't have any humor in it either. "You always kept yourself behind the scenes, Chisel, 'cept when it came to the actual smashing of bones and grinding of flesh, I mean." He shuffled another step forward, a glint in his eyes. "But you underestimate your value to those of us who've been planning a few things. And now that we're ready to get started, we've spent a week digging a tunnel into your hall closet, and I've come to bring you up to speed."

---

Work the next day stretched horribly and excruciatingly. Cinch's hooves clattered so often against the abacus beads, she almost felt the sound reverberating from the walls and shaking the whole room.

It wasn't, of course. But it certainly felt like it...

At home afterwards, she nodded to Sentry's greeting and forced herself to eat her usual salad. Everything needed to appear the same as before. That was absolutely vital.

As she washed her dishes, Sentry blew out a breath. "Have a good night, then, Ms. Cinch."

"You as well, Sergeant." With a concentrated bit of willpower, she kept her plate from crashing and clattering when she set it into the cupboard, but sitting on the sofa, she found herself reading the same paragraph over and over again as she waited for—

The closet door clicked down the hall. "Chisel," Pestle said, stepping from the shadows. "Or do you prefer Ms. Cinch these days?"

"Honestly?" She stood, and when she put the copy of Reflections and Recollections on the end table, not a page of it rustled. "I don't care in the slightest."

"Ah." He gave that zigzag smile of his again. "Just like old times, then." He slid sideways and gestured a hoof toward the closet door. "The way's easy enough. But I'll bring up the rear so you don't get lost."

She gave him about half a glare—he wasn't worth much more than that—and moved to the closet. Indeed, some unicorn had obviously been at work, judging by the rectangular hole cut in the wall behind the rack of clothes that had been there when she'd moved in. With a huff of breath through her nostrils, she bent her neck and entered.

By the glow of a lantern with three fireflies in it, she could just make out steps leading downward. The tunnel at the bottom sloped downward as well for the first few moments of travel, then it evened out for a somewhat longer distance. The dim light followed along behind her, Pestle's heavy hoofsteps and breathing pulling at her ears, and she found herself wishing she'd grabbed her blazer before they'd left. Still, she doubted this evening would qualify as a formal affair...

After fewer than ten minutes of travel, the darkness ahead took on a different shape in the lantern light: stairs heading upward. She mounted steadily one at a time, not allowing any emotion to show on her face, in her scent, or by the least twitching of her tail. A wooden door stood at the top of the stairs, and Cinch pushed it out of the way with her nose, the sour-salty scent of nervous, sweating ponies coming to her quite clearly.

A gasp echoed from ahead, and she looked out into what could only be a warehouse, boxes stacked along the walls. A dozen or so mares and stallions stared at her with wide eyes, and while she didn't recognize any of them, she knew their types instantly: followers, each and every one, stooges, sycophants, and cannon fodder, the kind His Majesty would've sucked dry and left behind without a second thought.

Her lips curled into a sneer despite her efforts, but she stepped to the side on the concrete floor to let Pestle enter the room. "And this." he said, his rumbly voice carrying in the silence, "as promised, is Chisel herself. So we can begin."

"Begin." Hearing that name again made her put as much scorn into the word as she could manage. "Begin what, exactly?"

Pestle moved past her toward the circles of other ponies, their long coats and slouched hats showing as various shades of gray in the lantern light. "Begin the plan to bring His Majesty back." He looked at her over his shoulder. "Discord pretending to be Grogar revived him once, after all, and His Majesty then led our forces to conquer Equestria! So our plan is to kidnap Discord's lover Fluttershy and force him to revive His Majesty once more, but in secret this time. With His Majesty and you both working underground, Chisel, we can take the people's hearts again, power up the true Empire, drive out the usurpers, and finally fulfill our destiny!"

His eyes were shining, but as before, she knew it was the light of a fever dream. "Fools," she hissed.

The big door in the far wall of the warehouse exploded to shards, Flash Sentry and his forces bursting in. "No pony move!" he shouted.

---

The next morning, though, Sentry was back outside the kitchen window when she entered. "Morning, Ms. Cinch," he said. "And thanks for helping us out last night."

She shook her head, the water in the kettle sloshing as she set it on the stove. "Such a lot of nonsense," she muttered.

Sentry shrugged his wings. "The captain doesn't think so, and neither does the princess. Collaring a whole group of Sombra loyalists like that for the Truth and Reconciliation Committee to start working with?" He gave a low whistle. "That's big stuff."

Cinch snorted and turned on the burner. "Yes, I'm sure my commendation is in the mail."

His laugh was about as far from a snort as possible. "Being honest, I think you confused them, telling me about this Pestle guy yesterday morning and letting us put a magical tracker on you."

"Confused them?" Cinch knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she found herself feeling unusually peppy this morning. Seeing the tortured looks on the faces of Pestle and his toadies had given her the best night's sleep she'd had in over a year "I can't imagine anything that might confuse intellects as stalwart as your captain and your princess."

"They mean well," Sentry said with a sigh. "But they actually think it matters if you're Chisel, so they're at a disadvantage. They just don't know you as well as I do."

"Really?" She popped the lid off the oatmeal container. "You know me, do you, Sergeant?"

"Yes, ma'am." He sounded so serious that she had to look up, a hardness in his eyes that she'd never seen there before. "What you're doing now, it's pretty much the same thing you were doing then: trying to make the world quiet and peaceful. You can't use the same methods as you did before because, well, us decent ponies don't work that way. But you've got the same goals for this Empire as you did for the last one." He blinked and became his usual hapless-looking self again. "So I knew you wouldn't throw in with some weird and likely doomed plot to resurrect Sombra."

"Resurrect." Another snort wasn't nearly strong enough to express her disgust, but it was all she had. "Discord never resurrected His Majesty. The thing that came strutting through here was nothing but a puppet that Discord animated as part of his effort to get Princess Twilight to understand her role in the world. Anypony who'd ever known His Majesty could see that." She very carefully spooned dry oatmeal into her bowl. "King Sombra is dead, and all Discord did was desecrate his memory. If Pestle and his simpletons thought otherwise, well, it just proves that they were on a fool's errand from the very start."

In the following silence, she didn't look at Sentry, but when the kettle began to squeal, she had to move back toward him to turn off the fire.

"Oh, well," he said then, and a shaking sound came from outside. Glancing over, she saw that he was holding a small box in the feathers of one wing. "But I brought some brown sugar. Just in case, y'know, you wanted to try it."

The twitch that pulled at her face, she felt certain, looked like a smile to him. "Thank you, but no." She turned away and grabbed the kettle's handle in her teeth, the heat of it clawing at her cheeks and gums. His Majesty was still dead due to her selfishness, after all: had she been brave enough to let him take her life when he'd killed the others, perhaps the true Empire would still be standing. But she'd run from him, the world had ended, and now pain and misery was all she deserved for the rest of her sorry life.

She carefully poured the boiling water over her oatmeal as usual and set the kettle back onto the stove.