Prologue — The Immortals of Canterlot Castle
"Celestia! Celestia?" the voice of Twilight Sparkle echoed through the halls of Canterlot Castle.
The Princess of Friendship turned to a guard who stood nearby, pale. "Could you tell me where Princess Celestia is?"
"Her room, P-princess. You know your way there?" The guard trembled ever so slightly.
"Thank you!" The gracious thanks did not alleviate the guardspony's trembling.
Twilight Sparkle skipped up the stairs. She skipped past the paled guards. She traipsed to the door of Celestia, the most powerful being in all Equestria, and knocked. The door opened, shortly after, and Celestia looked down on Twilight Sparkle. The tall, snow-white figure of Celestia was imposing at the least of times, but at this moment, it was slightly different. It was imperceptible to all but the most observant, but Celestia's eyes were somewhat puffed. As if she had been crying a while ago, but that said 'while' had already been diluted into miserable but well-suffered years.
"Leave." A taut frown had been drawn across Celestia's face.
"Bu-but Princess Celestia!" A rictus of despair spread across Twilight's visage. "I'm your prized student!"
"Your form does not amuse me, Chrysalis. Leave." The frown of Celestia deepened.
"Oh, bah on you, Celestia." An ugly sneer spread across the face of Twilight Sparkle. "I shouldn't have expected you to be any fun."
Celestia stood expectantly in the doorway, watching the disguised changeling queen.
"What, do you expect me to leave, Celestia?" Chrysalis laughed, but her laugh was hollow and mocking. "I'm here to parlay. To talk it out. You're not going to turn away diplomacy, are you?"
Celestia breathed in slightly in aggravation, but she stepped backwards, allowing the facsimile of her student into the royal chambers. Purple wings flapped as Chrysalis took flight, looping around Celestia before alighting eventually on the recently-inhabited bed of the diarch. She hit the bed hard, rolling onto her back as she became entangled in the giant comforter that lay atop her landing zone. It would have been significantly more endearing had Chrysalis not been cackling malevolently the whole while.
"Oh, Celestia," she called out, her voice temporarily softening. "Your bed is so warm! You should come, and join me!" Chrysalis couldn't keep her face straight, though, as the act gave way to more sickening laughter. "You should have tasted the hope you had when you first saw me! It was priceless! That an old crone like you could still hope for something so miraculous gives me hope, Celestia, you have no idea!"
Celestia walked towards the bed slowly and purposefully, speaking with words that were alloyed with equal measures of patience and ire.
"Speak your piece, Chrysalis, and be gone from here."
Chrysalis rolled over again, so that she faced Celestia. "Well isn't it clear, Celly-welly? I have a proposition. I can take the place of your Princess Twilight. You solve all sorts of civil unrest, no charge for you!"
"You're delusional, Chrysalis. Not in a million years. Now leave."
"Wait, wait!" Chrysalis chuckled. "I'm not done yet. I have a counter-proposal, should you not accept my proposition. See, if you don't accept, I defeat you, your sister, and all your guards, then raze Canterlot to the ground before conquering the rest of Equestria."
Celestia raised an eyebrow.
Chrysalis laughed. "You don't think I can do it, do you? But I can, Celly, I can! I feed off of emotions, in case you didn't get that last time. I stopped at Ponyville on the way here. The despair there is so thick that I could grow thirty times as strong as I was at the wedding just by passing through, but I stayed for eight hours, Celestia. You have no idea how powerful I am right now. Even if you were a hundred fold the strength you were at the wedding, your sun would be a pale candle to hold beside the flame of my power. I am invincible, Celestia! I truly am! And you have no trump cards that can save you. The Elements of Harmony aren't going to help. I have no idea what happened to them, something to do with a tree. Your Royal Guard? Weak. Even if you had Cadance here, I doubt that three alicorns could stand against me! And your precious little student, Princess Twilight Sparkle? She isn't going to help you. So what choice do you have, Celestia? You can lose, or you can die." The little lavender alicorn of lies rolled over onto her back again. "Your choice!"
"Leave, Chrysalis. My patience is running thin."
"Oh, and what will you do? Will you go all solar on me? Don't kid me. You can't stand up to me. You should bow. Bow to your Queen!" The horn of Twilight Sparkle was enveloped by green light. An aura weighed down on the front half of Celestia.
Celestia didn't budge.
"Not going to bend so easily, are you?" The green glow overtook the entire body of the enshrouded changeling queen as she righted herself. The lavender body that she had claimed stepped delicately over sheets before she hopped off, gingerly steadying herself after hitting the floor with a throaty chuckle. "I've been looking forward to this for a long time, Celestia. Any last words?"
Celestia huffed a bit of air, like she was disappointed.
"Very well. Now die."
Chrysalis' green magic swelled into a beam of destructive energy, melting the body of Celestia. The body of the sun princess vaporized into ash before Chrysalis' spell. And when she had finished, she laughed. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It was easy!
"You didn't have enough, Celestia! The love of a unicorn laid you low! The great sun princess!" Chrysalis sneered at the ashes. "It should surprise no one that the despair of an entire town could turn you to ash! I can't believe that I ever feared you."
Chrysalis kicked the ash, and stepped towards the door. Each hoof-beat filled her with confidence. She was the Queen! Princesses were trifles to her! She was a goddess! Not a goddess—The Goddess! She reached the threshold, and stopped in thought. She should say something. Some kind of a taunt? A proclamation! She could tell the entirety of Equestria that two Princesses were dead, and that she killed one of them. It sent shivers down her borrowed pony spine. Times were changing, and the dice were all rolling up changeling.
She sucked in a deep breath with the last step to the door. Yet as she prepared to call out, she couldn't quite set her foot down. It stuck, in the air, like it was tangled in string. Chrysalis held the breath that she had taken in. She needed to listen. Chrysalis' ears twitched. She knew the sound of flame, but this sound, it was a paradoxical one. It was the crackling of fire, but with none of the popping noises that came with it. Like distilled, liquid fire. Tamed fire. Chrysalis turned her head.
Crowned in a wreath of flame the color of purest gold, Celestia frowned at Chrysalis. She towered over Chrysalis, even given the fact that Chrysalis had crossed at least half the room before turning around—the aura of pure power that Celestia exuded warped space and ideas like a lens would bend light. Yet still, as she stood there entwined in the phoenix-flame, her frown was the most terrifying thing about her. The simple frown that was completely unchanged from several seconds before, but now communicated implacable rage.
Chrysalis lit her horn in desperation. The same beam as before ripped across the room at Celestia, but the beam of magic itself melted before it could even touch the white and gold phoenix-fire.
"Chrysalis." The sense of measure was gone, along with the illusion of politeness. It was a vocation of pure contempt. The word 'chrysalis' could never be spoken again in the ear of the changeling queen and communicate anything other than the sheer ire of Celestia.
"I tried lenience. But you have gone too far." Chrysalis launched spell after spell at the speaker, but they all failed before Celestia's brilliant aura. Chrysalis felt herself lifted into the air—Celestia's horn didn't even glow. It was as if Celestia had simply willed Chrysalis to rise, and the universe had chosen to make it so.
"No!" Chrysalis screamed. "No! It isn't fair! How can you be this powerful? I am the Queen! I have power worthy of immortality! You are a fluke! You cannot be, you should not be alive! Why wouldn't you die? Your student died just fine, but you just couldn't do it! Why won't you die? When will you die? Just die! Die! Die!"
"Yes... about my student." Celestia breathed out shortly and harshly, and the first actual wave of heat from the flames buffeted Chrysalis' face. "That is the reason that I have lost my patience. The reason that I will not let you leave this room without suffering punishment. You have the audacity, the sheer gall, not only to walk into Canterlot Castle and hand me an ultimatum, but to do so while wearing the skin of my beloved and faithful student. You disrespected not only our nation, but our hero. Princess Twilight... I had hoped so much of her. She would have saved so many lives, helped so many ponies, made so many ideas. To be taken away so early seemed an impossibility to me. And so you brashly trot into my castle, wearing her fur as an insult and a challenge to me, and expect it to go uncontested."
Chrysalis was sobbing, now, letting loose spell after spell and trying to shift form, trying anything to escape. The spreading phoenix-fire did not allow that, though. She quailed before the gaze of Princess Celestia, but found her head turned, forced to face the sun princess and her rage incarnate.
"Pay attention." Celestia's voice was full of anger, but it was not anger directed at Chrysalis. It was vague and nebulous scorn, which made it all the more frightening. Celestia was venting not only her anger at Chrysalis, but her anger towards the entire universe in all of its unfairness. "I am about to tell you what you did wrong. It would be wise of you to listen."
"Your mistake, Chrysalis, was all too predictable. It was exactly what I would expect from you. Your mistake was thinking that your victory over me three years ago at the wedding was a true measurement of my power. But really, it was deception. I only needed to stand up against you so that the public did not think I had abandoned them. Other than that, I could use the entire wedding as a working lesson for my little ponies. It also comes with a lesson for you, Chrysalis. You could take that lesson in more than one way. You could perhaps look upon it as a criticism of your confidence, that you would be so sure of yourself and the strength of the cocoon you put me in, to prevent me from escaping. You could view it as an attack on your strategic ability, that you would even consider keeping a trophy whose power you know at least rivals yours, rather than just killing me. But the lesson that I would like to have you take from this is the incredible sort of irony that is involved. That the queen of deception is the most gullible, the most naïve of all the enemies I have ever faced. That indeed, the worst card dealt to me is superior to your entire deck. If I had no lessons to teach to my little ponies, I could have disabled every changeling in Canterlot without a second thought. But in the end, I outwitted you. I tricked you into thinking that your power was greater than my own. The fact that you could not deflate your tremendous ego for a single second in order to realize that you are not the only liar in the world, that was your downfall.
"But you made another mistake. You misunderstood me and Twilight. You came here after seeing a simple student die, and went to bully her woebegone teacher by taking the form of the recently deceased, hoping that the teacher's emotional baggage would make her weaker." The phoenix-fire leaped up, dancing at the false lavender hooves of Chrysalis. It only tingled, leaving Chrysalis' hooves untouched just like the rest of the room, but Chrysalis still yelped in fear. "Instead, you got centuries of loneliness that was just denied a constant companion. I'm not sure what I thought of Twilight as. A daughter, that I could have never had? A friend who I could have been able to keep, for once? A student, the first that would one day surpass me? I was denied those things, Chrysalis. And you come into my chambers, impersonating her of all the options available to you. That made me angry. I'm not sure you realized that I could get angry. I control my anger very well. I would hate to hurt any of my little ponies. Yet even with my centuries of practice at not becoming angry, you succeeded in making me very, very upset. Congratulations, Chrysalis."
"I hope she died in pain!" Chrysalis gurgled, writhing in Celestia's arcane grip.
At that, Celestia's bottom lip curled into an ugly scowl, an unequine leer of teeth and anger. The phoenix-fire finally was finally unleashed, swarming about Chrysalis. It crawled up her body, and Chrysalis shrieked anew. The imitation of Twilight Sparkle was melted away and consumed by the golden white flame, dripping globules of essence running down the false body and collecting beneath in a pool. The puddle of seething, silvery essence bubbled and swelled, and Chrysalis was melted away until all that remained of her was the roar of phoenix-fire and the glimmer of mercurial essence. Warped and bulging under the phoenix-flames, something eventually arose from the pool. Screaming in fear and confusion, a filly not even a full head tall extricated itself from the arcane waste, her shrieks carrying over the sound of dying, unnatural flames.
The filly was light grey. Her mane was a darker grey. She was an earth pony, with no cutie mark. She was very small, but average-sized for her apparent age.
"Celestia!" the filly cried out, "Celestia, what have you done to me?"
Celestia smiled grimly at the tiny, squeaking filly. "Why, I gave you the thing that you wanted all of your 'subjects' to have, my dear 'Queen Chrysalis.' I gave you the body of a pony. You will find as you grow, in fact, that you are utterly unremarkable in every way. You are the perfect changeling, now. Your disguise is impeccable. It's what you would want for every one of your changelings."
"But I can't change! I'm stuck! I'm not a changeling! How can I rule like this?"
Celestia turned back towards her bed. "You won't rule. The invasion you planned on Canterlot was plenty enough to plant the seeds of discontent. Without you to boss them about, I'm sure the changelings will be happy to work out whatever differences they have with each other on their own. Diplomatically. Hopefully, they'll come to me, and perhaps stop a mess before it begins." Celestia's golden aura wrapped over the little filly, and gently set it outside. "You have to take care of yourself, now. I'd recommend you start at an orphanage. Now, as I said before, she who was once Chrysalis. Be. Gone."
The tiny filly raised her hoof as if to speak out... and then shivered, turned tail, and ran. The door to Celestia's room slammed shut behind the little filly. Celestia, meanwhile, stood herself up tall in her private chambers. She breathed in deeply, and when she finished breathing out, she had slumped some. She turned to the mirror in her quarters.
"Well. That was interesting." An asymmetric head, with asymmetric eyes, asymmetric teeth, and a slight downwards slope to his mouth judged Celestia from within her mirror.
"Discord." Celestia sighed in admission. She had not only grown to accept the draconequus' company, but to a certain extent, she had actually come to appreciate it.
"Forgive me if I intrude, my dear Princess, but I must say," Discord exited the mirror calmly, scooping an errant strand of phoenix-fire from the air and twirling it between his claws. "That I have never seen you quite so liberal in dispensing your anger. You always struck me as a pillow-puncher, to be honest."
"I..." Celestia bent her head. "I let my emotions get away, yes. But Chrysalis had to understand that she had gone too far. I ended her venom."
"Oh, believe me, Celestia, I truly do understand." Discord stretched the golden white flame into a feather, and stuck it behind his horn. "Quite honestly, were she saying those things to me, I don't think I would be nearly as gentle as you. You let her walk away on her own power." Discord grimaced. "I more likely would have changed her into something unpleasant. A bubblegum mousse, perhaps. Nasty, sticky stuff."
Princess Celestia didn't respond. She instead walked solemnly to her bed, and with a little trepidation, used her magic to straighten the sheets.
"Ah, Celestia." Discord tutted. "So grim, as always. I know as well as you do that there are other things you could be doing right now."
"Yes." Celestia closed her eyes. "Yes, I suppose you might be right."
"Then why so sad, Celestia?" Discord traced a smile across Celestia's lips, earning him a raised eyebrow for the invasion of her personal space. "It wouldn't kill you to crack a genuine smile, now would it?"
"I don't think you're nearly so clueless as you would wish me to believe."
"Ho-no-no, Celestia," Discord frowned, raising a question-mark from out of sight and wagging it disapprovingly before gently flicking it at Celestia. "I have not given you any sort of allowance to dodge any questions!"
"...No, Discord. It wouldn't kill me to smile." Celestia grimaced, turning to inspect a nightstand, focusing on even its unimportant details. "Perhaps my immortality factors into that statement. Perhaps if that privilege of mine hadn't been so exclusive, it wouldn't be an issue in the first place."
"Oof!" Discord winced. "Ouch. Poor word choice on my part." The draconequus coiled and sprang, compressing himself to paper thickness and drifting to a stop on top of the nightstand. "Look, Oh Great Princess, you just can't have Survivor's Guilt. Not that you can't pull it off well, but it doesn't really befit the situation or your character. And that aside, it makes you seem incredibly angsty."
Celestia's horn glowed, peeling Discord off of the nightstand so that she could look him in the eye. "I was the only Immortal in Equestria for at least nine and a half centuries, Discord. It's been at most forty years since Cadance was born, and she has never had the time to become my peer. Now that my significance has finally waned somewhat, with you, Cadance, and Luna all here... I feel entitled to a little angst."
"Yes, yes." The tiny paper Discord rolled its eyes. "Don't let me stop you from feeling needless misery over the quote 'demise' unquote of our ever so dear Twilight Sparkle."
"Discord, you—" Celestia hissed, her eyes narrowing, but was interrupted by a bang from just a couple meters to her side.
"Sister!" Luna glimmered with blue motes of power from her recent teleport. Her darker blue coat held a marred luster—ruffled from the hasty magical movement, but her mane still shone with countless stars, ethereally fluttering in the windless room. She looked around, swallowed, and spoke carefully. "I heard word from a guard that just recently, Twilight Sparkle was seen on the grounds."
"Chrysalis." Celestia needed only put forth a single word in reply.
"Oh." Disappointment etched itself across Luna's figure. "I suppose I should have come when I felt such surges of magic earlier, but I figured you might have simply been... venting."
"Venting? Ha!" Discord's neck telescoped out as he made himself known to the moon princess. "You should have seen her! I don't think I've ever seen Celestia so angry!"
Luna's brow creased in concern. "Was anypony harmed?"
"No, Luna. Everypony is fine."
"I see what you did there, Celestia." Discord wheedled his way out of Celestia's magic grip, grinning as he held up a flipbook. "I'm not sure you could have said the same in regards to 'everyling.'" The flipbook's pages turned, and showed Chrysalis vanishing in a poof of smoke, leaving a small filly behind.
"...Did you really?" Luna asked.
There was a brief moment of silence between the two sisters. Celestia just sighed, and sat herself on the floor. Luna stepped forward slightly, before sitting as well. She watched Celestia carefully—it was only this morning that Twilight Sparkle had died, and Luna knew that while no longer technically Celestia's student, the two still had held tight bonds. Celestia still held herself with reserve, patience, and control, but Luna had known Celestia long enough to spot the signs. Celestia would, under normal circumstances, never lose control of her emotions. Even against Chrysalis. The Celestia that Luna had long been familiar with had levels of self-control that paled in comparison to the pony that Luna was now getting to know once again, and even then, Celestia had lost her patience. To lash out in such a fashion seemed terribly out of place for the solar princess, but Luna was certain that no trickery or replacement had occurred.
"As much as I'm appreciating the absolute moroseness of the room, I don't suppose either of you are planning on actually doing anything, are you?" Discord idly hovered above Luna. His brows were creased in what Luna might have characterized as concern, had she not known the draconequus for his sheer lack of tact.
"I suppose that I should return to whence I came..." Luna sighed, turning away from her sister. "I left in the midst of some 'upkeep.' I was aiding the dear familiar of your... of Twilight. He needed somepony to talk to."
She began charging her horn for a new teleport, mentally tracing the path of the spell, a line of magic connecting her back to Ponyville as she gathered her focus. As energy filled the matrix she had made for her casting, though, a clawed finger wafted through the air. Discord propped himself on the line of magic that had former, bending the line as he leaned on it like a tired minotaur might lean on a wall, his weight shifting the line of arcane power. Luna's eyes bugged out wide as she watched the action—it took place faster than the mortal eye could see, and even for Luna, the motion was so quick that she could not react. Instead, she was forced to follow through with the spell, taking her wherever the new location was.
Luna popped into being right above her sister, falling with an unceremonious thump. Celestia didn't immediately respond to being fallen upon. Luna stood, awkwardly, and looked down at her sister, crumpled flat on the floor by the impact. Luna opened her mouth a little to speak—to chastise Discord, or apologize to her sister—but Celestia's hooves quickly shot out towards Luna's right front leg, interrupting her.
Luna stepped forward a little before hauling her sister up from the floor, and wrapping her forelegs around her in a hug. Celestia didn't cry out, in anguish or sorrow. She didn't sob, or sniffle. But Luna suspected that if Celestia hadn't forgotten or unlearned how to do each and every one of those things in the past several centuries...
"You can thank me later, Princesses." Discord gave an uncharacteristically gentle smile as he set up a small wicker chair on Celestia's bed, balancing on it with his tail as he propped open a book, The Art of Reading Upside-Down. "I'll even let you angst in my direction later."
"Shut up, Discord." Luna muttered.
Chapter One — The Immortals of Canterlot Castle
Chapter One — A Twilight Vigil
Luna's next teleport was a bit more effective; sparks of white-blue lit up the room that Luna had meant to reach, leaving a spattering of color on the floor as the violently red-orange adobe was exposed to the arcane energy. The magic could have been made efficient—more complex weaves could reduce the sound and light of a teleport to next to nothing, and even more esoteric matrices could hypothetically leave no waste energy behind at all. Luna wasn't the sort of mare to engage in such needless complication of events, though. She much preferred the simple yet effective methodology of a standard teleport. The leakage of energy was after all, quite negligible, and would not have any effect on any realistic or ordinary situation.
Luna breathed in deeply, taking in the room. The dark adobe brick shack was hardly lit, but her powerful night vision cut through the veil of darkness like a blade cuts through gossamer threads of spider's silk. The blue-black color that the walls took in the darkness contrasted their true red and orange coloration, but the difference in the colors was purposeful. It was the ultimate change: blue to orange, dark to bright, so that when candlelight shined in the room it would symbolize what it meant to be to be aflame and alive. A candle could not light the whole room, though, and the shadows and corners of the room would stay dreadful blue-black. This room was a Dead Room—the massive bluestone casket that was the room's centerpiece made that abundantly clear.
Pony burial practices had hardly changed since Luna had been possessed by the Nightmare Force, and subsequently banished to the moon. There was still the Dead Room. The Dead Room was where ponies could say their last words to the departed. The first night was private, for friends and family, and the day after was opened to the public. Right now, the Room was mostly empty. Its one occupant had asked for privacy, and had already spoke with the princess in the dark silence of the Dead Room. Luna tried not to look past the central casket's crystal lid. She already knew what was inside. Instead, she checked the base of the casket, and found who she was looking for.
Huddled by the casket was the silhouette of a very small monster. Spines crawled down the head-sized ball as it heaved and sobbed, primal shuddering bringing forth a rasping growl at irregular intervals. Luna spoke to it quietly.
"Young Spike, I apologize for my late return."
"S'okay, Princess." The rasping whisper from near the casket made Luna's quiet tone sound like a roar of improper volume.
"T'was a false alarm at the castle. My sister summons you most urgently, and to render a visit upon her might do you some benefit as well."
"...Gotta say goodbye... Then I can go..." Spike rose. He wiped at his face, and as his arm flicked away from it, dragon-tears scattered themselves in across the floor below. He balled his other claw, and wiped at his face again. It was still wet. Spike reached out for the casket, and feeling the bluestone. It chilled his scales, and the nerves beneath them distantly registered the pressure he put against the unyielding and monolithic casket. Bluestone was nigh impermeable and would never weather, which was fitting for a royal coffin, but bluestone was more of an aesthetic choice than a practical one.
Spike shuddered as his eyes brimmed with tears again. Blue was the color of death.
"I'm sorry," he began, quietly. "I'm so sorry. I wish that I could have done more. I did all I could, but it wasn't enough. I-I know you'd be upset at me if you could hear this. Y-you'd be upset, because it wasn't my fault. Because I can't blame myself for what I cou... for what I didn't do. But it hurts anyways. D-did I do this to you? Maybe if I had pressed you more about going to the hospital from the start, this wouldn't have happened, but... But you wouldn't want me to hurt from that, would you? So I'm g-going to try not to."
"You... you loved me, didn't you? Th-that was my greatest fear. That you'd turn me away. But you never did. I... I hate myself for it, but the first few days that you were sick, I enjoyed it. You were forced away from your duties, and it was like it used to be. Us two, reading, or talking, or playing a board game. I-it felt good to know that you hadn't stopped loving me, that you hadn't stopped thinking of me as family. Not that I... it's not that I didn't like being 'Number One Assistant,' but I was worried that it was all I was. You were able to prove that wrong before you went. You told me that I was like a brother to you, but... but maybe you were more like a mother to me."
"In those last few days, even then, you still tried your best to smile when I looked at you. I... I'll miss you Twi-Twilight. I'll miss you f-forever. G-goodbye."
Those were the final words, Spike's last words to Twilight Sparkle. It was a farewell, the whole point of the Dead Room. It was a fair sentiment, a pledge made both by the mourner and the deceased that while one was above ground and the other was below, neither would pine for the other. The romanticism had long been lost for Luna, but she kept pretending, for the other ponies. Luna had seen enough deaths to know that the pledge did not work. The living would mourn the dead until they were finally joined. No 'farewell' could change that. As the young drake tiredly trod towards the dark alicorn, Luna did not show her distaste for the oath, though. There was no reason to break the dragon's heart—Spike's longevity would let him do that to himself, eventually.
"Y'wanna say anything?" Spike muttered in the direction of Luna, vaguely clinging to her foreleg. The moon princess reflected on the dragon's request, before settling on an answer.
"It would be unfitting not to give some words in the name of Twilight Sparkle. She was a fine mare." Luna turned to the casket, and dared to look past the crystal. The lavender-furred body that rested there looked peaceful, forelimbs crossed in gentle repose with hind legs stretched out as if in total zen. Luna blocked out images of the same face with a different visage.
Purple eyes wide and unblinking, sometimes darting back and forth, other times rolling unchecked. Every muscle in the body tensed beneath the fur, yet motionless, as if nailed to the bed. The smell of sweat and urine as the doctors changed the catheter. The occasional high and quiet whining that was clearly meant to be a scream, but was muffled by teeth clenched so tight that the nurses couldn't feed her anymore. Dreams clouded by an endless interfering void. A total emptiness of magic, as if one had simply removed her from the second sight. The sound of a heartbeat monitor, with patterns that changed hour to hour—long and steady beats, slow intermittent ones, contractions as rapid as the patter of a squirrel's feet. Yet the purple eyes never, ever closed.
A hiss left Luna's mouth as she sucked in air through her teeth. Not all memories were so easy to turn aside.
The faint presence of the adolescent dragon reminded Luna that she had to maintain her composure. Spike was just a sample of the trauma her entire nation would suffer at the loss of such an important figurehead. Luna's hiss left her mouth differently, slow and contemplative as she prepared to speak.
"We owed much to you, Twilight Sparkle. My sister, as well as I. She mayn't have required of you all that she asked of you... but rest easy in knowing that all she ever could desire was a student like yourself. That you could free me from the Nightmare Force as you did meant more to her than you could imagine... and it should come to no surprise that your actions bore great significance to me, as well. You were a stalwart advocate of mine, at all times. 'Twas of great surprise to me when you stood at the forefront of those who would have my position in Court revived, though in reflection my shock was baseless. It was you, after all, who stood up for me when first I left Canterlot, and many things you had done for me since. All the same, I hardly spoke with you, in comparison to my sister—of all the Princesses, I suppose it was I who knew you the least. Another fair supposition would probably be made in saying that I have a heavy burden to bear while Cadance and my sister recuperate, though Discord... seems surprisingly unperturbed." Disturbingly so, Luna almost added. "Fair luck in whatever comes next for you, Twilight Sparkle. Fair luck, and fare well."
Luna frowned. She was satisfied with what she had said, but it still didn't seem like it was enough, or proper. Lighting her horn, she hoisted Spike onto her back, speaking to him softly. "Celestia doubtlessly still awaits us. We should leave the Room, and invite the next group inside."
Spike didn't respond, so without his prompting, Luna swiveled around, searching for the door. The latch was slid open, and the door pushed wide, sunlight filling the room with bright orange and long, distended shadows. The falling orb of fire mingled reds and yellows together as it kissed the horizon, and its light on the adobe of the Dead Room filled it with an unreal vitality, the cracks in the bricks filling with deep shadow that crawled as the sun continued to sink downward, giving the very floor the illusion of movement. For just as blue was the color of death, so too was orange the color of life.
It was at that moment, surrounded by red adobe and lit in brilliant orange, that Twilight Sparkle tried to scream.
So, how many was it, who had said farewell? Twilight counted them mentally. First it had been her parents. Then Shining Armor, and Cadance. Her uncle Inky Black, and his two kids from Detrot. They'd be her cousins, wouldn't they? Detrot! He had come all the way from Detrot in a single day. That would be all of Twilight's family—the Sparkle clan was not nearly so prolific as other unicorn families. Then Spike came, with Luna...
Never before had Twilight been glad to be unconscious for the majority of something. She had lost awareness sometime in the middle of that one—a mind-eating exhaustion had rendered her dormant, before something sparked and reawakened her. Again, Twilight tried to scream, to bare forth her guttural instincts and let lose a primal shout. Something, anything, to tell the ponies around her that she was alive. Nothing.
I need to get up, she thought. Before they show up. I need them to know I'm not dead. I don't want to have to hear them. I don't want to hear them, but they're coming next. They're coming next!
Twilight Sparkle strained, but where all of her muscles were, there was nothing. Total numbness, too, not just an inability to move. Twilight Sparkle couldn't see, couldn't speak, couldn't taste, couldn't smell, couldn't feel. Utter physical helplessness—so far as she could tell, only her ears still worked. She knew this already, but tried just in case. After all, if she was numb, she wouldn't know if she was moving or not: trying to move anyways might come to some amount of success in some way.
Don't be stupid! You're in a Dead Room! Your family has mourned and said farewell! You. Are. Dead. Your heartbeat, your breathing, it all must have ceased. They don't bury ponies alive anymore. Twilight ignored that rational part of her mind. There was a different rational part to listen to, the one that said 'I think, therefore, I am.' If Twilight could hear things, and more importantly, if she could have thoughts, she existed. Her sense of hearing might be irrelevant to her existence, actually—she could be hallucinating the sounds. Yet, they were consistent enough with her memory. I'm not hallucinating, and I'm not a mind suspended in space. I am a mind with a location. I am a mind located in Equestria. I am the mind of Twilight Sparkle. I am... in a coma, of some kind? And now is certainly not the time for an existential crisis. I have priorities. I have to show them I'm alive, and I have to show them before—
The sound of five pairs of hooves in near-unison were normally something that Twilight Sparkle looked forward to. Not now, though. Not when she was helpless but to listen to the mourning of her five closest friends. I'm not dead! she wanted to cry, to scream to the heavens above and the earth below, shattering the sky with the declaration. She wanted all the universe to know her for what she was.
Alive.
Applejack was at the head of the party, ignorant of Twilight's turmoil, and far too possessed with her own. She carried a brass-handled candlestick in her teeth, her jawline fraught with irregularity. When she set down the device on the edge of the casket, there were repeated indents in the worn metal that weren't there before. She looked at the damage with a far-away gaze, the flame of the candle dancing in dead eyes. Eventually, she frowned, shook her head, and turned the handle away from her, reflecting solely on the tall white pillar of wax.
Fluttershy delicately slid around Applejack, with a candle of her own. The yellow wax contrasted pleasantly with the chocolate-brown wood that held it upright, and she set her candle a respectful distance to the right of Applejack's. The wooden candlestick looked fresh and new, never used before, and smelled of raw sap and salty tears. Fluttershy's eyes were deeply sad, but filled with a sort of steel that kept them steady as she sat down by her candle, breathing rhythmically and meditatively.
Rarity walked in with her eyes closed, taking each step with deep concentration. They fluttered open from time to time, but for the most part remained shut as if to shutter some behemoth pair of floodgates. In her magic, a brilliant jewel floated, wobbling from side to side to a certain degree. The jewel itself was a diamond, cut octahedronally and set into a small pillar of resplendent ruby-studded gold. The diamond itself glowed a color identical to Rarity's magic, a snowy tint of blue, but the light it sent forth was a pure white like Rarity's own coat. She took a place adjacent to Fluttershy.
Pinkie Pie was next. She hobbled forward with a three-legged gait, balancing a rock in one hoof. It was the bottom half of what must have been a near-perfect sphere of plain stone, but from above, a plain iron candlestick rested inside a hollowed-out cavity lined with intricate crystal. The geode was at once random and rigidly structured, cheap and ordinary crystals filling its insides in a confusing pattern of multicolored quartz. Cloudy white, cherry red, pastel pink and orange, periwinkle, dandelion yellow, and icy blue scintillated and twisted underneath the candle, reflecting strange paintings onto the adobe ceiling above. Pinkie watched the patterns shift and change as she hobbled into position opposite to Rarity and Fluttershy, bright blue eyes filled with ponderous wonder and mouth turned up in a wan smile, tears repeatedly forming and reforming under the edges of her eyelids as blinks banished them again and again.
Rainbow Dash entered last. With great trepidation, she puffed a breath of air, casting forward her light—a rough shard of ice holding a sluggishly bouncing bolt of white lightning, ringed in black storm clouds. The clouds drifted slowly in circles around the shard, the whole thing drifting back and forth like a piece of paper held by a balloon as Rainbow Dash guided it to Applejack's left. It alighted a little closer to Applejack's candle than was generally considered respectable. Rainbow quickly settled by it, seized up, and buried her face into Applejack's coat. Applejack bluntly received the her friend, and slowly draped a hoof around Rainbow's shoulder, moving with such mechanical caution that it almost seemed as if the hoof had never moved at all.
With a great slam, the door swung shut. The orange brilliance of the sun disappeared, and the room was instead filled in light of crystal, fire, and lightning. The floor stopped crawling, instead replaced by shadows in the walls dancing merrily about, and the shadows in the corners foreboding blue-black.
No, Twilight pleaded. Don't let them talk. Let me scream, move, do anything before they talk. She struggled impotently. No change. In desperation, she called for her magic. It answered, but it was a pitiful answer. Like reaching for a font of power that had been replaced by a flask of power, an ocean substituted for a puddle. But it's something, thought Twilight grimly. I have to try!
Twilight's magic expanded out explosively at her whim, restoring to her some sense of tactility as its borders contacted the walls of the casket. The regularity lent Twilight Sparkle ammunition against the existential dread that had been creeping upon her. I am a mind, named Twilight Sparkle, in Equestria, with mourning friends, in a coffin. I am not hallucinating, or else my hallucinations are self-consistent and might as well be safely assumed as real.
She pushed at the lid of the casket. It must have been the telekinetic equivalent of an ant's pushing against the border of a mountain and expecting it to budge, but that was alright. Twilight was just testing the edge. That was all. Twilight then shoved, expecting the lid to give way. Instead, something else gave way—her mind. Sanity collapsing and crumbling, Twilight Sparkle felt memories tumbling away like grains of sand pouring through out of a shattered hourglass. Reeling, she withdrew her power, forced simply to listen as she recuperated.
Applejack was the first to speak.
"Looks like Spike left somethin' behind."
The miniature silver bowl full of molten wax stood forlornly by the far end of the room. Pinkie Pie glanced at it, her smile wavering instantly at the glancing sight of the casket, then returned her gaze to the ceiling, tilting her geode back and forth. Fluttershy looked up, and fixed her eyes on the candle, as if her staring at it would pull the wax back into a column. Rainbow Dash didn't look up from Applejack. Rarity did something that had some resemblance to a nod.
"I remember when she first came to Ponyville. It seemed such an adventure—the Princess' student, awkward and lonely, but géniale and driven. It was so romantic. So... detached from the ordinary." Rarity's eyelids clamped shut, desperately resisting the reservoir behind. The seal proved to be less than water-tight. "I guess it... well, I guess it couldn't last forever."
"...It's not fair. Fukken' feathers, it's not fukken' fair." Rainbow Dash muttered into Applejack. "She didn't have to die. It's not fair. She shouldn't have died. Fuck, we were supposed to die before her, not the other way." A choked sob.
Fluttershy's composure broke with a heart wrenching squeak. The steel in her eyes melted, pooling in her lower eyelid and brimming over, dripping onto the ground to splatter salty wet onto the earthen floor. As her sobbing become more intense, Fluttershy's head came down to rest on the edge of the bluestone. Applejack turned her head slightly, and raised the hoof that wasn't holding Rainbow Dash.
"C'mere, 'Shy."
Startled, Fluttershy looked up.
"Ah don't think Twi'd want you cryin' on her coffin like that. 'Sides, Ah got some more room on me." Applejack smiled with half of her mouth for a split second before it curled back down into a set frown.
It didn't take long for Fluttershy to decide. A flap of her wings brought her hooves around Applejack, one reaching all the way to Rainbow Dash. Applejack clamped down with her foreleg, holding both of her friends tight.
"Ah've got you. Don't you worry."
"Ah've got you. Don't you worry." Big Macintosh held her sister tight in his hooves as he gently intoned those words.
The same Dead Room. A different casket. Applejack bawled for hours, but Big Mac was always there. He cried sometimes, but not often. His sister was the important thing. He was the stallion of the house now—his feelings weren't important. Even if it was his father in that block of wood before him, Big Mac knew that he couldn't cry.
Their mother died just a few months later. Birthing problems. Applejack didn't cry as much that time.
Applejack cringed a little at the recollection, then pulled her two friends tighter together.
"Ah'll stay strong for you, Twi. Don't any of y'all worry. I'll stay strong." The emptiness left Applejack's eyes, filled instead with a gentle and caring measure of sorrow.
"If that's the case, then I—" Rarity swallowed, hesitating with her next breath. "Then I don't suppose you have room for another, do you?"
Rainbow stuck her head out from the pile with bloodshot, watery eyes making for a truly terrifying glare.
"Real question is why you weren't over here ten minutes ago."
A spectre of levity graced the room. Fluttereshy hiccuped in her sobbing with a tittering giggle. Applejack's lips curved into a warm smile. Rainbow's pointed frown exaggerated itself in jest, before breaking into a halfhearted smile. Rarity dragged herself from her position by the cold stone, around Applejack and over to the side of Rainbow. Rainbow Dash quickly stuck out a wing to drag Rarity in, sandwiching her between cyan feathers and orange fur. And for a moment, the four were content. They took stock of the sheer lack of lonesomeness that there was, and for a moment, all was good.
Then, Rainbow was crying again. Fluttershy moaned before returning to ordinary sobbing. Rarity shook her head, inclining it into the near intersection of two bodies. She had never stopped crying. Applejack simply couldn't smile anymore, and the warm curve froze and turned over. The crystalline lid warped the candlelight, but revealed well enough the lavender body beneath. Applejack couldn't shake herself from it—the very best that she could do was to rest her chin on Fluttershy's head, and sigh. A moment of fatigue overcame Applejack.
"Dammit..." Applejack muttered, as a tear spilled onto Fluttershy's pink mane. "Dammit all."
That a little hum broke through the air just then seemed to defy all reason. The sound was difficult to describe, but best described as a very pink sound, much more pink than other sounds. It was a warbling and happy sound, a sound that danced across the eardrums with a smile, proudly defiant.
Four sets of eyes plastered themselves on Pinkie Pie, who was still fiddling with her half-geode. Her hooves shook as if caught in a dreadful tremor, the spastic energy in her hooves translating to the colors reflected on the ceiling. It was of course, Pinkie Pie who was so pinkly humming. And as if a ghost had tapped her on her shoulder to warn her that her friends were watching, Pinkie looked down from the ceiling to meet the gazes across the casket, and broke into a tear-flanked grin. Rainbow Dash opened her mouth as if to say something, followed by Rarity, but neither were given the chance. Pinkie closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, before—
"A long time ago, Granny Pie used to talk with me,
She helped me know what was right from wrong.
Helped me realize who I wanted to be."
"But before she passed, I never got to say goodbye,
Even though her life was good and long.
I got to go to her Dead Room, but it felt like a big ol' lie."
"Then Grampy Pie took my hoof, and said
'Pinkie, oh Pinkie, please don't be sad.
It was a happy life that your Granny Pie led.'"
"I went to ask why he could say such things,
Surely, seeing her go was only bad.
But before I could talk, his voice rings:"
"'Pinkie, dear Pinkie, don't frown at something like this.
Granny Pie lived a happy life, so don't cry that it's done.
Celebrate those times that you had,
Keep close every second gone by.
The things you did with Granny Pie;
They'll never be undone.
The only thing worth doing now,
Is to be glad that she lived at all.
It's not like Granny Pie is resting better
By knowing that you're sad.'"
"So with a tear in his eye, and me in his lap,
We said farewell to her that frigid night.
And early the next morning, Grampy woke me with a tap."
"He asked if I'd slept well, and I had to say yes.
He talked with me, made sure I was alright.
I could only tell him, 'I suppose, even if we are less.'"
"And we cried, oh we cried,
but it didn't really matter.
Because though we cried, oh we cried,
We also got to laugh."
"Isn't that right?" Pinkie asked, giving a gigantic snot-filled sniffle (it sounded mostly like "snork") and dabbing her eyes with her hooves before giving a quick giggle. "It's not like any of our time with Twilight went away because she did. "
"That's not a very happy song..." Fluttershy quietly mused in between sniffles. "But I guess I know what you mean... Twilight wouldn't want us to be sad... not ever..."
"Nu-uh!" Pinkie said brightly, shaking her head emphatically. Applejack was reminded of Winona shaking water from her fur as little flecks of water freed themselves from the Pinkie's pink fuzz. "Twilight would never ever want that! She loved us all so, so, so much, and she'd never want us sad, or bad, or mad, or unglad."
Fluttershy gave a gentle smile across the casket. "Yeah. I guess you're right."
Rainbow Dash gave a rough chuckle, shaking her head, then looked down past the thick crystalline walls of the coffin's lid.
"Leave it to Pinkie, huh egghead?" asked Rainbow quietly, a wry grin on her face. Not quietly enough to avoid the ears of every pony in the room—but it seemed clear that she had no intentions of keeping the comment a secret of any sort. A light smile of some variety or another adorned each pony's face.
Yeah, Twilight thought. Leave it to Pinkie.
