What Shall be True

The five of them stayed like that for some time after Twilight ran out of tears. Simply curled up in a pile until the sudden dimming of the world signaled them that nighttime had arrived. At which point, they continued to stay piled onto Twilight until Dash got a cramp and nearly sliced Rarity open with a wingblade.

So the five of them instead sat in a small circle around a campfire Rarity and Fluttershy had built, nibbling the apples that Applejack had brought along with her. Rainbow Dash had removed her wingblades (much to everypony’s relief), but elected to keep her hoofblade on, “just in case”. Fluttershy had removed all her gear, and it rested in a small pile that leaned gently against her barrel. Rarity kept looking at the fire nervously, and had lowered the hood of her cloak, which showed Twilight both how little of her mane was actually left, and more horrid burn scars than she ever wanted to see in her life. Applejack had left to check on Pinkie Pie, only to return with a report that she was crying alone in a tent, and threatening ponies with her party cannon if they disturbed her.

“Well, why don’t we all go try and cheer her up?”

“If you wanna taste the business end ah that cannon of ‘ers, you can be mah guest.”

The group was silent for a moment. as if trying to silently send comfort their friend's direction.

“All because Twi broke a promise?” Fluttershy’s soft voice barely broke the silence.

Dash took another bite of apple. “Taffk avoush an ufferreasshun.”

“Ugh…Dash, could you please at least try to have table manners?”

Dash swallowed, then smiled an idiot grin. “I’ve got plenty of table manners. But do you see a table anywhere nearby?”

The five of them couldn’t help but share a laugh. Then Dash turned to Fluttershy, giving her an indecipherable look, while Applejack consoled Rarity that they were only joking.

“Is…something the matter with Fluttershy, Dash?”

“What? What’s Dash doing?”

“She’s…staring at you. She has been, off and on, since we got here.”

“Sh--She has?” The yellow pegasus cringed slightly. “Wh-Why?”

“Well…look, sorry if this breaks the mood, but I have to ask why you ran away. And how you ended up here. Did you…” Dash looked into the fire. “…did you hate me for…Luna?”

“What? Oh, oh no, I could never hate you.”

“Then why? Was it something I did? Something I said? So-“

“Let ‘er answer, Dash.”

Dash gritted her teeth slightly, but obeyed.

“I…I just…You were still learning how to walk again, Dash. You had a war to try and salvage. You had Scootaloo to look after. You had so many important thing to do, and me being blind and all, I…I…” Her voice dropped several decibels as she cowered somehow even farther into the ground. “I just didn’t wanna be a burden on you…”

“So you left!? Just ran away with no warning except a note?”

“Um…yes…”

Rainbow face-hoofed with a phantom limb. “Ugh…Fluttershy…”

“I’m sorry!”

“No…it’s fine. It’s just…what in the world could make you think you were a burden to me?”

Fluttershy didn’t answer, just tipped her head so that it almost looked like she was looking at the ground solemnly. Rainbow glanced over, forced to turn her head to see the blind mare, and set a reassuring wing on her back, fluttering it before she did so ‘Shy would know where it was. That perked her up a little, if not entirely.

Rarity cleared her throat, interrupting as politely as possible. “It’s not as if it didn’t turn out for the best. After all, she’s more adept than any blind pony I know of.”

“Oh, yes! The bats in here taught me everything they knew about seeing with my ears. They were so very kind.”

Applejack chuckled. “Careful now, ‘Shy. Ah don’t have any pony-sized apples layin’ around.”

Fluttershy just threw her apple core at AJ (with impressively perfect aim), who simply let it bounce off her shoulder as she broke down laughing. It wasn’t long before the rest of them joined in. Applejack laughs were contagious like that.

"But how'd you end up here?"

"Oh...it's a funny story, actually." She pawed the ground nervously, drawing shapes she could only imagine. "But...um...Rarity tells it better."

"Oh, darling, you know that's not true." Fluttershy didn't answer. "How about I tell it, and you just fill in the blanks?"

Fluttershy nodded, looking a little less upset.

"Well, it was a few years after the Invasion, and I was just learning about some of the herbs that can aid in the healing process. So, naturally, I had gone out to gather some, since this wasn't something I keenly trusted the border guard to do properly"

"I was...um...practicing my archery. I wasn't all that good back then, so I had some of my animal friends throwing fruit into the air to practice on. I missed a shot, and...um..."

"And it hit me! Right in the flank!"

"Oh, dang! I bet you were screaming like a little filly, huh?"

"Actually, all those burns have deadened nerves, so I barely felt a thing! I just kept on going, picking flowers, not realizing I had an arrow in me"

Everypony couldn't help but chuckle as the story just got more and more absurd. Or, at the thought of Rarity with an arrow in her flank. Both were pretty funny.

"So, um, when I went looking for my arrow, it wasn't there. So I went searching and searching, and eventually came across Rarity. I didn't know it was her at the time, though, so-"

"So she hid in the bushes and started threatening to shoot me! And then I asked her what she was doing out here, and she said something about collecting arrows, and it was only then that I noticed the one sticking out of me. So I went to give it back to her--"

"Once she stopped panicking..."

"--and who should walk out of the bushes but Fluttershy! So, naturally, we started talking, and I offered to bring her back here. She refused at first-"

"What!? Why?"

"I...um...I had my reasons..."

"--but she eventually warmed up to the prospect and became one of our border guards!"

Four of them shared a moment of impressed surprise and laughter at the whole story. Twilight, on the other hoof, had more pressing questions on the mind.

“So…I have to ask.” Twilight leaned slightly towards Fluttershy. “Since you can understand animals, but Timberwolves are made of tree chunks…can you still understand them?”

“Oh, of course! They’re still animals enough. They don’t have a whole lot to say, though…”

“How could you even get close enough to a Timberwolf to talk to it?”

“You just fly! Duh!”

“I meant about their breath! It smells absolutely horrid!”

“Y’just stick a couple corks in your nostrils an’ call it good!”

“Ah-I-wh-What would possess anypony to do…?” She stopped when she saw Applejack wearing the biggest cocky, playful grin she could possibly wear. Realizing they were messing with her, she just sulked and stared into the fire. “Very funny, Applejack.”

“Would that even work?” Dash contorted her eye to try and get a look at her nostril.

“Only one way tah find out!”

“Oh, please don’t…”

The two of them got idiot grins on their faces, and Applejack reached out a hoof that Dash bumped with a wing.

The five of them stayed like that for the rest of the night, chatting and laughing and joking for hours about nothing at all. It took them a long time to realize that Fluttershy had fallen asleep (after all, her eyes were always covered. The only way they could tell at all was the fact that her ears stopped moving). Once that happened, their efforts to be quiet left their excuses to stay awake flimsy at best. Dash was the next to fall asleep, followed by Rarity and then Applejack.

Twilight was left awake, staring up at the canopy above her. The whole sky was black beyond the trace outlines of the leaves, but if she closed her eyes, the glow of the Moon Moss was enough to let her pretend that the moon and stars were far above her, lighting up the sky in a way she hadn’t really appreciated until it was gone.

Once again, her mind whirled with questions that kept sleep just out of her reach. But these questions weren’t like last night. These questions were kinder, less pressing. Questions like what the title “the Last Alicorn Princess” actually meant. After all, only one princess had actually died. Celestia was just imprisoned, and according to Scootaloo, Cadence had decided to make the Empire disappear for another thousand years rather than see it fall. They were still alive.

Except they weren’t, to these ponies. They would all be dead before Cadence returned, and the odds of them ever seeing Celestia again were nigh-unthinkable. Which meant they might as well be dead to the average pony. Just like Twilight had been dead to two out of five of her friends, maybe even three. Which meant she really was the last of the four princesses in this timeline.

This timeline which she couldn’t bring herself to leave. Which made her the last alicorn princess, period.

Twilight let out a sigh. Was she making the right choice? By leaving, she’d be condemning this version of Equestria to a fate worse than Tartarus. But by staying, she’d essentially force her friends to go through every horrible thing they went through in the time she had skipped.

Then she cleared her mind of all those thoughts with a single idea.

Maybe she could learn to like it here?

‘After all,’ she thought to herself as she finally drifted off to sleep, ‘this place isn’t half bad.’

Twilight snapped awake to the sound of screaming.

Then bolted to her hooves at the sound of an explosion.

As she glanced upward at the flaming canopy above them, she saw a bullet of green fire tear through and slam into the ground not far from her. She knew what it was long before it crawled out of the crater it made.

She tried to throw a magic bolt at it, only for the spell to get caught up in her horn.

The Changeling spotted her and started to charge, until Dash swooped in and caught it with a wingblade to the eye. It fell to the floor, screaming an unequine cry of pain, as Dash rounded on Twilight and shouted, “COME ON, TWILIGHT! GET YOUR TAIL MOVING!!”

Twilight did as she was told, turning and fleeing the scene as Rainbow took off.

The hot air from the fires started to register in her sleepy mind, as it burned into her lungs and flank.

A stray bolt of magic whizzed by Twilight, and she caught a glimpse of Rose Fields fighting off a pack of Changelings with his two levitated swords.

She drove the image from her mind and kept running, as fast as she possibly could, and then a little faster.

She managed to catch a glimpse of Fluttershy shooting down Changeling after Changeling, drawing shot after shot in her teeth, before a Changeling caught her in-between shots. She saw Dash’s multicolored contrails dart this way and that, before her wingblade caught wrong on a Changeling and sent her spinning into the ground to be piled on by a pack of them.

She ignored it.

Twilight had become a single-function running machine.

Another Changeling hit the ground in front of her, and she barely even stopped to spin around and plant a solid kick with her hind-hooves into its head with a resounding Crack!.

And as she saw behind her, she faltered.

The patches of sky that she could see through the burning trees were nothing but black. But it was daytime. This wasn’t the black of this future’s night, that was the absence of moon or stars. This was the black of everything in creation being blotted out by black chitinous monsters who made the whole world hum and throb with the beating of their wings.

Thwack!

With a sudden, searing pain, one of the Changelings planted a kick on the back of her head. Twilight let out a scream of pain she couldn’t hear over the din, and fell to the ground.

The world around her began to fade and disappear.

As she looked up, she spotted the Changeling hovering above her, grinning with a vile pair of fangs.

Then he vanished.

Twilight felt like she was floating in an endless void.

Then she lost touch with her hooves, like they were disappearing.

The rest of her quickly followed suit.

And it wasn’t long before she slipped into the folds of unconsciousness.

She held on to one thought as the world faded away.

'I'm sorry, girls. I failed.

I'm so sorry...'