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.