Cracking the Elements of Harmony

Twilight Sparkle stood up from the ground, Shining Armor supporting her every move. For the past few minutes, she had experienced the kind of pain she could never have imagined, and it was only the rapid response of her brother that had stopped her from bleeding out as she hit the ground. Now, her hooves were cracked to the bone, she was bruised all over, and in place of her wings were two small bandaged stumps; she could still feel the rotation of the joints below them as she moved the muscles that once gave power to her wings. A healthy dose of painkillers and the resin-like medicine, infused with the doctor’s magic, sealing the cracks in her hooves were the only factors that allowed her to stand up at all.

“I’m so sorry, Twilight,” were the first words that reached her. There had been others before that – Shining calling out to her as she lay on ground shattered, the doctors rushing to her aid, asking all sorts of questions and giving all sorts of orders to help her the best they could – but Celestia’s words were the first to leave a mark, not because of who was saying them but because of the way in which they were said. Twilight turned to follow the sound of the voice and saw Celestia standing close by. She was standing as strong as ever, her head held high and her posture as perfect as ever, but a black stream was flowing behind her muzzle, drops of it forming on strands of fur at the bottom of her jaw, then dropping to the ground. Her lips were parted, stretched back to one side in a painful manner, teeth showing behind them. Celestia was crying.

Dazed by the drugs and the events of the past days, the scene before her looked like something out of a bad dream and Twilight shook her head slowly to regain focus, but the image stayed the same. Then she suddenly felt the heat from Shining’s hoof, wrapped around her lower back, and turned to see him. Shining Armor was just as he was when he first burst into the throne room – mentally and physically exhausted to the point that even an event, as gruesome as the one he had just witnessed, could not change his expression. Instead he stood as solid as a rock, with only the slightest trace of tears in his eyes, offering the only thing he could offer to her now; his undying support. Twilight looked at him, one pair of empty eyes staring into another, both understanding how much the other has gone through and both knowing that words were best left for another time. With a slow twist of her head, Twilight looked back at Celestia, the question of how the force field would be maintained already on her lips, when an image flashed before her eyes. Instead of the question came a mind-clearing gasp.

“Spike.” She looked at Celestia as if her tears were nonexistent and only this one piece of information was of any importance at the moment. With a panicked voice, she asked, “Where’s Spike?!”

The urgency of the question had a sobering effect on Celestia. With a gentle jerk of her head, she forced her lips closed and started retracing the events of the past few minutes. She looked at Twilight with dread in her eyes, realizing she had never ordered the Guards to investigate what had happened to him. Then, as the outline of a flexing muscle appeared on Twilight’s foreleg, Celestia wrapped her in her magic and picked her off the ground, then took to the air as Twilight let out a single scream, “Rarity!” Shining galloped behind, leaving Luna in the throne room to keep a gentle stream of magic attached to the bright blue bubble so high in the sky, it wouldn’t take most ponies long to forget all about it being there. But Luna’s knees were shaking, ever so slightly, from the burden of carrying the new sky on her own. She kept glancing upward, at the ceiling through which the stream of magic flowed, forcing herself still to keep the force field up until somepony would take over the burden.

Celestia slammed open the door to the room where Rarity was and flew in, Twilight in tow. Spike jumped backward and slammed into the wall, shocked senseless by the combined noise of the door and the sight of a giant shape flying toward him. He fell to the ground, then picked himself up and brushed his eyes with his claws as Celestia rapidly scanned the room for any signs of trouble, but apart from the hyperventilating dragon, there was nothing out of the ordinary. “Spike!?” Twilight shouted from behind Celestia, stretching her neck to see past the princess’s outstretched wings. Seeing there was no immediate danger, Celestia folded her wings and hovered Twilight over to her side before gently placing her down. Twilight didn’t waste a moment. In two long jumps, as if she were as healthy as the day before, she jumped over to Spike, the only reminder of her injuries coming in the form of her hooves sagging and rebounding with every landing and push as the concoction struggled to hold them together, but it didn’t matter. Spike, as dumbfounded and scared as he was, was alive and well.

“Spike!” The word was meant as a shout, but came out muffled as she snuggled the dragon before she could fully say it.

“Twilight?” came the response, half scared, half in pain. “What are you doing?” He looked at her as if she had attacked him.

Feeling a heavy chain lifted from her heart, Twilight replied. “Oh, Spike, I-”

“You’re hurting her,” Spike said, the tone of concern overwhelming everything he felt before. He pulled himself back onto the chair next to the bed, where he had been sleeping before she entered.

“What?”

Spike made himself comfortable in his chair and placed a claw on Rarity’s wrapped foreleg. “She doesn’t like loud noises.” He gently brushed the bandages with his claw.

Twilight tilted her head slightly to glance at Rarity in the bed. All of her bandages had been recently replaced, and for the first time, there were no spots of blood visible from below, no stains covering her eyes. Somepony had even taken the time to fix up her mane and tail, even if it wouldn’t have been to Rarity’s standards. Then she looked back and Spike, and the look in his eyes made her heart sink. She saw, by the way he was looking at the empty shell of a pony in front of him, that what he was seeing wasn’t a body, sustained by magic and medication, but Rarity. In a spark of imagination, she saw him talking to her while she was away to investigate. She saw him telling jokes and playing card games, a stack of which she only now noticed on the cupboard next to the bed, all the while increasingly ignoring the fact that Rarity wasn’t talking back. He’s making his own reality, she thought, sadness creeping in, And it’s all my fault. Twilight moved to the other side of the bed and placed a hoof on Rarity’s body, looking first at the white bandages that gently caved in where Rarity’s eyes had once been, then at Spike, a sad smile forming on her face. I won’t leave you now.

With a motherly voice, she asked him, “I guess you sent that message because you were scared, huh?” She was about to turn back to princess Celestia to reassure her that the danger she thought Spike was in was a cry for help of another kind when Spike responded.

“What message?”

Applejack was half lying, half sitting on the hospital bed that had been placed in the temporary infirmary at Twilight’s castle. She had slowly awoken to the sound of a familiar voice speaking to her. She had only caught glimpses of words, but the soothing tone in which they were being said had made her feel safe and secure. As the heavy eyelids struggled to let the light into her eyes, and the fuzzy outlines of ponies appeared before her, Applejack was convinced she had had nothing but a bad dream. But there was a frozen expression of pain on Granny Smith’s face when Applejack had finally recognized her, and it stayed there despite the smile that she had put at her awaking. Big Mac’s eyes had betrayed the rest.

“They’re sayin’ you’ll git a fancy new jaw and a new set of legs! Carved from the best…”

Granny’s voice faded in and out of Applejack’s consciousness. She expounded with great enthusiasm about the prostheses that would be made for Applejack in the coming days, trying to liven her spirits, if only by a fraction. Applejack sat still, looking at the covers below. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel the tight grip of the bandages on her stumps and the remains of her muzzle; a feeling made stranger by the fact she could still feel every one of them. The image of wooden legs and a wooden mask to cover her injuries appeared in her mind, yet she didn’t even shudder or cringe at the thought. Instead, a strange detail became the centerpiece of her struggle – that of all the dirt on Big Mac, who she now knew must have rushed to her side in the middle of cleaning the pigsties. As Granny Smith talked on, Applejack kept her gaze down.

I can’t smell anythin’.

She felt the sting of an acid reflux and instinctively tried to swallow it back down, only to feel what remained of her tongue lifting helplessly up toward the top of her mouth cavity, never fully reaching it to push the saliva down. The images came one by one; from the sight of Big Mac and Apple Bloom feeding her, to Granny Smith wiping her private parts when she would need to use the restroom and everything in between, or – even worse – of somepony else doing that because her family would be too busy fending off starvation by working themselves to the bone. The reflux turned into a burst of vomit that moved unhindered to the only obstacle on its way. It collided with the bandage and shot out at the sides where the gauze was loosest, spilling onto her face and the covers below. As the nurse and her family moved in to clean her up, Applejack, tears now streaming from her eyes, started thinking of ways to end her own life, knowing fully well that the love for her family, the final string of life still keeping her sane, would never permit her to do it.

From beyond the force field, pulsating over the whole of Equestria, Discord looked back. He put his claw to the edge of the field, as an inmate in a prison trying to feel the touch of his loved one, and smiled. He knew the pony his gesture was meant for could not see him, as he could not see her, but the final salute marked the end of their arrangement. He turned away from the field, breathing in the crisp, high-altitude air, as if he had never taken a breath before, and looked over the lands spreading before him. Equestria was now out of reach, but so was he. He took his claw off the field and smiled, knowing that there was now no force in the world that could stop him.

Standing on a small hill overlooking Ponyville, Sunset Shimmer felt the sudden urge to glance at the sky above the Macintosh Hills in the distance, and smiled. The plan had worked to perfection and the sweet taste of victory was the only feeling she had allowed herself to feel. With the Guards returning back to Canterlot now that the threat had passed, she had but one thing to wait for before living out her dreams in Equestria - Twilight Sparkle to take over the endless task of maintaining the force field. And as the first purple pulse shot upward from Canterlot, Sunset Shimmer took the first step down.