Prologue – Four Vignettes Concerning Loss
“Equestria is a land of beauty, filled with love, friendship, and magic, but in all things there must be balance. Where there is great light there are also long shadows, and in the shadows the dark things like to play.”
- Lockhart, First Ringmaster of the Dark Carnival.
The forest lay silent in the night. Heavy rain was falling over its decaying trees and toxic flowers, forcing all the manticores and the cockatrices to seek shelter in their caves and burrows. Nothing native would venture out on a night such as this, and so the out of place cluster of circus tents sat undisturbed in the dark heart of the Everfree.
The black and white striped tents came in all sizes, ranging from small opera house to barely large enough for two ponies to fit comfortably. The circus, like the forest, had been culled into stillness by the oppressive rain, its inhabitants off to sleep or keeping to their secrets out of sight from prying eyes. One little tent, however, was quietly and obliviously disrupting the greater silent order. The weak crackle of a radio was struggling feebly against the downpour; a silky smooth baritone distorted by static and the rain.
“...and welcome to the Moonsaddle jazz party, another big Tuesday night jazz get together with all the gang in the Moonsaddle kingdom. Our big jazz party, you know, goes until two o'clock in the morning, and it's only eleven twenty-five. To help you forget wherever you are, here's W.C. Hooves with Hollow Shades Blues...”
Inside the tent a diminutive female earth pony was working tirelessly by the flickering light of a dying oil lamp. She was sewing. Her eyes strained and her hoof trembled as she carefully stitched a fraying piece of burlap cloth into the semblance of a doll. The thread was coarse, she had nothing finer, and the fabric stained and old, having previously been used for potato sacks. She had been able to scrounge together little buttons for eyes, but they were mismatched in size and colour. Four already finished dolls lay scattered on the tent floor before her.
Flicker, static. Static, flicker. The radio and the light, they kept her mind off her task, off the night and the darkness, and off her pain, but she was very tired, and she wasn't sure how much longer she would last. Her vision was blurring, but she tried to ignore it. Her head felt heavy, as if a millstone had been hung around her neck. She wanted to go to sleep, but they wouldn't let her, she had to keep working. Maybe they would let her stop if she finished this doll. Maybe... she dozed off for a second and jerked her head back up in terror. NO! She couldn't let herself fall asleep. No sleep. Sewing, she had to keep... she looked down and realized she had stabbed her leg with the needle. Small drops of blood were dripping down her fur and onto the half finished rag doll.
Her lower lip began to quiver, and a weak desperate sob forced its way up her throat. She dropped the doll and fell crying onto the floor, tears flooding from her bloodshot eyes. In the corner of the tent two pony-sized rag dolls stared at her with their dead unseeing button eyes. They were smiling wickedly. That's how she had made them, but still, she thought, this time they were surely grinning at her. She kept crying long into the night. The radio kept crackling, and two voices whispered delightfully to each other in the dark.
-
It had been raining for a week straight. Rarity had barely noticed. The other day at Sugarcube Corner Thunderlane had sheepishly suggested that Rainbow Dash do something about the weather. Mr. Cake had politely asked him to leave. Times like this they all figured it was supposed to rain. It was supposed to be wet, and grey. Today all of Ponyville had gathered out on the grass behind the library. A few hundred dark silhouettes holding their silent vigil in the rain.
Sweetie Belle was crying. Rarity would have comforted her, but she was crying as well. Not as violently as Sweetie Belle, but her mascara was forming some very noticeable lines down her cheeks. Pinkie Pie was sitting next to the two of them, but she wasn't crying. She wasn't doing anything. She just sat there, and stared at the hole, and at the coffin suspended above the hole.
Applejack was hugging her. Out of everyone there she by far looked the most composed, but if anyone had bothered to ask Apple Bloom, who sat nestled between her older sister's legs, she would have told them that Applejack had spent most of the day hysterically wailing into her pillow. Fluttershy was hugging Spike, they were both trembling, and neither one of them really knew who was comforting who. They just needed someone to hold them. Rainbow Dash wasn't there.
Rarity took a deep breath and tried her best to stem the flooding tears. It wasn't easy. There was a hole inside of her, a hole she shared with her five... four closest friends. There was a pain in that hole, a cold indescribable pain she knew no other pony had ever felt.
The pain was offset only a little by a bitterness that had at first surprised her, but was now festering slowly. It was a weak after-thought in the back of her mind, but it was there. Resentment. There had been a huge burial service in Canterlot. Dignitaries from around the world had attended, and hundreds of ponies had taken to the streets in “mourning”. It was a shallow farce. Twilight Sparkle's coffin had been paraded down the street in front of everypony in Equestria and she had eventually been interred in the Royal Canterlot Cemetery. There had been speeches, and a twenty-one gun salute. Rarity hadn't gone, none of them had. All those ponies didn't matter, the dignitaries didn't matter. The only ponies who mattered where here now, gathered around an empty coffin.
The tears grew stronger and her chest quivered violently as she struggled to control herself. She would not break down. Not in front of Sweetie Belle, not in front of her friends. She needed to be strong for them. They all needed to be strong for each other. She wished Rainbow Dash was there.
-
The door to Carousel Boutique crashed open with such force Rarity feared it might break of its hinges. It didn't. Instead a very upset looking Spike came marching in to her work area, smoke streaming in thin tendrils from his nose.
“She's late!” he exclaimed, throwing both hands into the air. Rarity sighed and trotted over to close the door behind the distressed dragon. It had been five years since Spike had first come to Ponyville. It showed. He was almost as tall as Twilight, and just as tall as Rarity. Unfortunately he wasn't yet used to his new frame, or the muscles that came with them. Like all teenagers, she thought, praying quietly that Sweetie Belle was staying out of trouble.
“She's late!” he repeated, slightly less aggressively this time. “And she hasn't written to say why. She always writes to say why! Why hasn't she written to say why?” The anger in his voice slowly turned into worry. Rarity put on her best consoling smile and gestured for Spike to sit down on one of the many ottomans that dotted the ground floor of the Boutique. He did.
“Now deary, I'm sure she's fine. It's only been a day. You know being a princess keeps Twilight very busy,” she said, picking up the dress she had been working on when Spike barged in. “She always seems so tired when she comes home from these ambassadorial trips. I'm sure she just hasn't had time to write.” Spike grumbled something very rude about griffon royalty that Rarity chose to ignore. She draped her half-finished dress over a mannequin and pretended to work on it. She didn't want to indulge Spike's self-pity, but she couldn't just ignore his feelings.
“Yeah well, maybe if she brought me along she wouldn't be so tired. I could totally help. All I ever do is write letters and check-lists, and clean the library,” he said, pouting like a petulant child. Rarity rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Spike, really, you can't go with her everywhere. You know how griffons feel about dragons. Besides, didn't she take you with her to Saddle Arabia a couple of months ago?”
“That was one trip!” he whined. “And it was only because one of their silly Sheikhs wanted to see 'the famous baby dragon'.” He made little quotes in the air with his fingers as he said it. Rarity had to stifle a chuckle, which, terrifyingly, turned into a snort. Ladies did not snort. Much to her relief Spike seemed to not have noticed.
She gave up pretend-fuzzing over the dress and turned to face Spike. She had meant to tell him that coming along for being a 'famous baby dragon' was better than not going at all, but the words died in her throat.
Something stabbed her in the heart. Something invisible and so tremendously painful it sent her whole body into shock. She tried desperately to grasp for air, but her lungs just wouldn't work. Her vision blurred and she crashed to the floor, causing Spike to jump up in surprise and run over to her. He was saying something, fuzzing over her, but she couldn't hear him. Everything was growing dark, her legs were cramping up, and she was pretty sure that she had wet herself. Something was squeezing her, crushing her from every angle, tighter and tighter until she was sure she would die. It was cold, and she was going to die. She could feel something being ripped out from inside of her. It pulled and pulled until Rarity felt broken. Then it stopped.
She sucked in as much air as her burning lungs could handle, then started coughing and crying at the same time. Spike was staring at her bumbling and unsure of himself. She wanted to tell him she was okay, but her throat hurt, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to speak if she tried. Besides, she knew she wasn't okay. Nothing would ever be okay again. Spike was saying something, but Rarity ignored him. Nothing he could possibly say mattered right now. She was too tired to move, so she just lay there and wept. Finally Spike gave up trying to talk to her and moved to go get some help.
For the second time that day the door slammed open. Spike almost jumped out of his skin, but Rarity only tilted her head so she could see who had entered. Applejack was standing in the doorway. Her eyes were red, tears and snot were running down her face, and she was breathing like a mad pony who had just run across all of Ponyville. Rarity knew she had.
“It's... not... true...!” Applejack cried in-between heavy breaths. “It... it can't be.” Rarity closed her eyes. She couldn't look at her friend like this. She couldn't tell her she was wrong. They both knew the truth. Twilight Sparkle was dead, the Elements of Harmony were broken.
“Please...” The scared and confused voice belonged to Spike. Rarity opened her eyes and looked up at the still very young dragon. “Please, what's going on? What's happening?” Applejack closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and Rarity could only admire her friend's ability to cope.
"Give us a moment to get cleaned up Spike, then we'll tell you what's happenin'," said Applejack, in the most mollifying voice she could muster. Rarity tried to stand, but it took the help of both Spike and Applejack to get her there, and Applejack was wobbly herself, having gone through the same ordeal.
Spike helped them both to the rest room, and waited patiently as the they got themselves cleaned up and under control. After several minutes and two more bouts of crying from Rarity they found themselves clean and seated in the kitchen around Rarity's only table. Spike looked at them hesitantly, confusion and worry plain on his face. Rarity shot Applejack a pleading glance. She couldn't tell him, she could barely open her mouth without sobbing. Applejack understood. She reached across the table and placed her hoof on Spike's shoulder.
“Spike, this ain't gonna be easy to hear...” she hesitated for a second as Spike's eyes grew large with sudden dread and understanding. “Twilight's dead Spike... She's not comin' home.”
-
The machine beeped along. Beep... beep... beep... Gearcrow wasn't sure how it worked yet. Something about magic and little metal conductors. He hadn't looked it over. He knew what it meant though. It meant he was alive. Normally he would have been eager to study the thing, take it apart, figure it out, but tonight he didn't really care. He found himself thinking about how nice it would be if the machine stopped beeping. He imagined it would be peaceful. If it just stopped. It would be nice.
“Is it peaceful princess..?” he asked the air quietly. He didn't worry about anypony hearing him whisper to himself. It was way past midnight. Almost all the hospital staff would be at home for at least another hour. A token nurse and a couple of security guards still roamed the hallways, but they wouldn't care. He didn't care.
He had been staring at the same spot of the ceiling for the last hour. This was his ninth day stuck in a hospital bed. Magic had set all his broken bones in a flash. It had taken the nurses less than three days to fix them right as new. The hole in his left lung had taken a couple of days longer. Still, he should have left the hospital three days prior. According to Doctor Ward he was fit as a fiddle. Some hoity-toity pegasus psychiatrist had been going on about trauma or some other horseshit though. Said Gearcrow needed to be supervised. Watched. Why was the ceiling so white? Not even any patterns. It bothered him.
He flexed his legs, tried wiggling them around a bit. It felt weird. He hadn't worn his armour since he got to the hospital. That was a long time to go without armour, at least for him it was. Even when he took leave it usually wasn't for more than a week. Nine days. The first day had been crazy. There had been blood everywhere, he remembered that very vividly. Other things were blurry. Royal white had been there. She had been talking loudly at him, but he remembered not being able to answer, even though he had tried very hard to tell her what had happened. And Shining Armor was there too. He had been crying. At the time Gearcrow thought it was weird. Shining Armor wasn't the captain of the Royal Guard anymore, he was a prince in the Crystal Empire, why did he care what happened to some lowly guardsman? In retrospect it was obvious why the former captain was there, but it had been hard to think straight when he had been bleeding profusely from at least five separate lacerations.
They had asked so many questions those first days. When, where, why, how? Then he had been demoted. They hadn't even bothered with a ceremony, or proper paper work. Sergeant Left Hook and that same slimy pegasus psychiatrist had just marched into his room and told him he was no longer a sergeant. They had at least been courteous enough to swap the rank on his armour, which was lying across the room from his bed. Then royal blue had shown up and suggested that he maybe go on indefinite leave. Seeing as how it had been royal blue suggesting it he found it really wasn't a suggestion as much as a thinly veiled command. He had been honoured and all that it was a princess who “suggested” it, and not some hopped up officer, but it hurt just as much for that.
It hurt. He could still hear her scream for him in his mind. It wasn't a normal scream. He had heard plenty of those. It was a different kind of scream. When Parrot Bay had lost her front left leg to dragon fire she had screamed, and it had been the most pitiful, shrill, and terrifying sound he had ever heard. He thought he would never hear a more terrible sound in his life. Then that dark thing had come for the princess, and he had been proven wrong.
He tried not to think about it, but every time he closed his eyes he could see that eerie smiling face. It had been a top hat. Just one bug with a silly top hat. Gearcrow had laughed at him. Laughed and brushed him off. One bug couldn't do anything against a powerful alicorn princess and an elite member of the Royal Guard. He had been right of course, a bug couldn't possibly do anything on its own. It hadn't been the bug though, it had been the top hat.
Gearcrow had felt terrible things before. Discord, Chrysalis, even Sombra when he had first gone with Shining Armor to the freezing north. They had all been terrible and evil forces, and he knew what their magic felt like. This thing though, it wasn't evil or malicious, just dead, and uncaring. It was made up of terrible colours and terrible sounds that had grabbed at her and strangled her until her magic and life was gone. What it had left behind was less than a corpse. It had turned her into something grey and misshapen that was altogether impossible to describe. It had oozed icy sorrow, a coldness that still gripped violently at his soul.
Someone knocked on the door freeing him from his flashback. He realized he had been sweating profusely.
“Errh, yeah, come in.” His voice was hoarse, he hadn't really spoken much lately. It was an orderly who entered; the "token" nurse. A blue little pegasus with a cream coloured mane and an empty syringe for a cutie mark. It was an unfortunate cutie mark.
“Sir, we're signing you out today. I need you to fill out some paperwork.” Gearcrow stared at her for a moment, mulling over her words in his mind. Then he nodded slowly.
“Yeah, of course. Not a problem.” The orderly smiled at him and handed him a clipboard with a bunch of papers. He stared at them apprehensively as the dark things clawed away at his insides.
